Fantasy Baseball Today - ADP on Different Sites! Wander Franco Debate & Logan Gilbert Hype (3/25 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

We did it! We are the champions! What's so different about ESPN's scoring format (3:37)? ... Which hitters are ranked higher on ESPN (7:01)? ... Chris and Scott debate Wander Franco this season (10:25). ... Which hitters are ranked lower on ESPN (21:35)? ... Why is DJ LeMahieu ranked higher around the industry (31:46)? What's the case for Yuli Gurriel and Michael Brantley on Yahoo? ... Take advantage of these discounts on Yahoo (40:20)! ... Which players are ranked higher on CBS (41:47)? ... Randal Grichuk was traded to the Rockies for Raimel Tapia and a prospect (48:37). What does this mean for Grichuk and Alejandro Kirk's value? ... We wrap up with spring standouts, including hope for Logan GIlbert (1:00:05). 'Fantasy Baseball Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And welcome in to fantasy baseball today on March 25th, Frank Stamphle, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. On the happiest of Kokomo Fridays, we are the champions. We did it. FBT won the 2022 Fantasy Baseball Podcast Bracket, hosted by our buddy baseball pods on Twitter. Shout out to Derek Van Riper and Eno Cyrus of the Rates and Barrels podcast. Those guys are awesome, and it was an honor to be going up against them. Huge thanks to all of our listeners, supporters, and anybody who voted for us. This was our third year in the bracket. And we finally took it down.

Scott, it has been an awesome year for you. I know Freddie Freeman is no longer a brave. But if you think about everything in totality, the Braves, champions, Georgia, national champs. And now this. It's a big year. It's a lot of winning. A lot of winning. This is the biggest of all, though.

That's right. That's right. Chris, we are the champs. How you doing, bud? I'm good. I'm not used to winning things. I don't know how to react. I don't know what to do with my hands.

No, it's cool. It's nice to be recognized for the work that you do. For sure. On the occasions that it happens. I'll take it. Yes, thanks again to everybody who voted for us. Thanks to our buddy baseball pods for putting that on. And if you haven't, like go back, look at the bracket.

I encourage everyone to like check out all the great podcasts. There are a lot. And of course, you know, we want you to stick. with us and watch and listen to all of our content. But there's a lot of great content out there. So we encourage you to check it out as well. I voted for Rain Tamarles. You can't blame me for us. Don't blame me. I voted for Eno. We made such a strong case for them on the show yesterday. I kind of got that impression that we were all going to vote for them. DVR, man, the voice of an angel. That is true. I honestly, you know, got to have a sappy moment.

I do want to thank you guys as well. I mean, you've made my job very easy. It's been a very seamless transition filling in for Adam Mazur, which is no easy task to do. So thank you guys for making the job very easy. Today on the show, we are going to look at the different site rankings and average draft position. The big hitters, ESPN, Yahoo, obviously, CBS. And we're going to compare and contrast. We'll look at which players are outliers on each of those websites. We had a trade today.

Randall Gritchick was traded over to the Colorado Rockies. Some spring performances. I read an article about Logan Gilbert working on. out with Jacob de Grom in the offseason, and I might be getting, like, too irrationally excited about this, so I'm going to need Scott and or Chris to calm me down, because I'm just, I'm going haywire right now. And then I will present the case for elite closers. Jeff Zimmerman is a very smart analyst and fantasy player.

He slid in my DMs on Twitter earlier on Thursday, and he said, you guys are killing me with the elite closer talk. So I will present his argument, and then we will get a... rebuttal from Scott and Chris. Let's start off with ESPN and the players who stand out most there. And before we even get into the players, I'm just going to set this whole up by letting you know that their point scoring format in heads head points leagues is very different than CBS. And I think that's going to be the driving force for a lot of the players you see ranked either higher or lower in ESPN leagues. So in headside points leagues on their website.

Hitters lose a full point for strikeouts. That's half a point on CBS. They only get one point for stolen bases. That's two points on CBS. So, double whammy. I mean, you know, when we talk about base dealers on CBS and how, like, devalued they are in points leagues, that's with two points per steal.

On ESPN, that's only one. So they're devalued even more in that format. And then... They're made next to worthless. I mean, basically. The true base dealers, unless they make a ton of contact to. I don't know exactly where somebody like Whitmerfield would slot.

He may still be usable, but he's not going to be high end. Whitmerfield, 71st ranked on ESPN. His ADP is 34.4. So he's actually much lower in their format. Yeah, it's not bad. On the pitching side for them, you only get one point per inning pitched compared to three for CBS. You lose two points per earned run.

That's minus one on CBS. You get one full point. one full point per strikeout for pitchers compared to just half a point on CBS, five points for a win, minus five for a loss, nothing for a quality start, no bonuses there, and then you get five for a save. So we were talking beforehand,

and Scott, basically, this puts even more of a separation between, I guess, the elite starting pitchers, the haves, and the have-nots in this format. Yes. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking two, minus two points for an earn run as opposed to minus one, and a full point per strikeout versus half a point for strikeout. Yeah, I mean, there's so much separation between the legitimately high-end starting pitchers and everybody else. And so even though they're only getting one point per inning, they're kind of, yeah, they're kind of creating this big distinction at the position.

And I think what they've done there with that scoring format is they've basically optimized it for like a 10-team league. they've built in scarcities for shallow leagues and like they've eliminated the incentive to stream pitchers but they've just pretty sure 10 team leagues are the most popular format as CBS from what I've heard. Yeah. Well, they've really shrank the pool of usable players on both the hitter end and the pitcher end

so that if you tried playing in a 12-team league or anything deeper in that scoring format, it would be, I imagine it would be really frustrating. I get that every site is different and, you know, we're all independent. It's fine. You can have your own scoring system, but I kind of wish that there was just one uniform scoring system for head-to-head points leagues in fantasy baseball. It would just make talking about that format a lot easier.

Like, you know, football is pretty standard across every website that you play on, basically. But baseball, it could be very different depending on which site you go to. So with all that being said, some hitters on ESPN that are much higher in that on that website. First overall, Show Hey Otani. His ADP is 9.8 on Fantasy Pro,

so that takes into count all the websites. He's first overall, and I believe you can get his hitting and pitching points together, even if you start him as a utility batter. That's the way that would make sense. Yeah, I remember last year people were pointing that out to me that on ESPN, you get all of his points.

You get his pitching and his hitting points. even if you just have him in there as a hitter. So, I mean, Chris, like you said, I mean, it would make sense that he's the first overall player, if that's the case. Yeah, because this scoring format doesn't actually benefit him and the way he plays. He's fairly strikeout prone.

He derives a decent amount of his value from stolen bases. So the scoring format itself doesn't necessarily benefit Shohay Otani. But if you can get both his hitting and pitching points at the same time, then yes, he's obviously the number one player. It doesn't really matter what the scoring format is. So I think that's, that's what must be going on there. Scott, one that really stands out for me,

Wander Franco. I think generally you and I are excited about Wander Franco. Chris, maybe not as much. He's ranked as a 16th player on ESPN. His ADP is 46.6 on Fantasy Pros and he is going ahead of Bobichet. Do you think in a format like this, which devalue steals and puts more weight

on plate discipline and making contact, that it's actually justifiable for Wanderfranco to be a top 24 player. Yeah, I think it is. I mean, you just look at our scoring format. I don't have per game averages for ESPN scoring format, but the thing that Franco does bet,

like the thing we know for sure that he's going to do well is not strikeout. He's going to put the ball in play. And that is, at least among hitters, where you see the biggest differentiation between their scoring format and ours. In our scoring format, where it's just minus half a point for every strikeout,

Franco last year as a rookie, so we're not assuming any more growth. We're just taking exactly what he did last year and assuming that's what he's going to be this year. Franco averaged almost exactly as many points per game as Corey Seeger. Compared to Bo Bouchette, Bobauchette was 3.52, Wander Franco was 3.32, so not a huge gap there. I imagine if you factor in the difference in strikeouts between the two,

it would move Franco's per game total ahead of, what Bichette did last year. And again, that's assuming Franco doesn't improve it all in his second season. Chris, I know you had a bit of a take on Wander Franco before we started. Do you want to share that or do you want to keep it to yourself?

You're muted, bud. Should have lost the contest just for that. I don't know what the contest is. I don't think, I don't think, you know, I don't think, you know, Saras has ever muted. I'm just going to start playing, I'm just going to start playing the Gallo-Shallow song whenever Chris is muted.

honestly, it seems a little unfair to put that on me. Like Scott doesn't accidentally mute himself. It's happened a couple times. I think it happened twice in one day. But I think it happens more frequently with you, Chris. I'm sorry, bud.

Well, you know what? I have memory problems, all right? I have attention problems. It's a thing. Yeah, no, my take about Wander Franco is that I think people are probably going to dislike Franco. at this point next year. Given the way people react to top prospects,

I just, I think the hype is possibly outstripping the, the likelihood of him being the type of player that people are hoping he's going to be at the prices he's going to garner. And I think, yes, he was in this format, according to the rough calculations I just did, ever so slightly better than Corey Seeger last season.

If you gave them the same number of games in the ESPN scoring format, Wander Franco was at 290 points and Corey Seeger was at 283. So ever, ever so slightly. And obviously Wander Franco is a young enough player that I think it's not unreasonable to expect improvement. The amount of the improvement needed would probably be greater than what I'm willing to account for in a normal scoring format. But maybe in this format, you know, having him over Corey Seeger makes some sense. But we're talking about that.

The second round is just... What was it? We're talking about Boba Chet, not Corey Seeger. Oh, Boba Chet. I didn't look up Boba Chet. So I did Corey Seeger. You mentioned that earlier. Yeah, yeah, I was just, yeah.

And so like... Points per game, they were almost exactly the same last year. Bichette was ahead on our scoring format, but not by so much that... Yeah, I can understand being excited by Wanderfranco and bumping him up in this format, but 16th overall just... That feels like you're drafting. way closer to the ceiling, even accounting for the fact that this is a scoring format.

What ceiling do you imagine Wander Franco halving? I mean, 16th overall is really, really high. That is. Like, where's Freddie Freeman being drafted? For a strikeout? Let's see. On ESPN, Freddie Freeman is 12th. So, like, right behind Freddie Freeman, a guy who we know is a 900 OPS bat,

who doesn't strike out very much, who contributes production across the board. Like, that's just asking an awful lot of a 21, a 20 year old who last season was pretty good in a points league, but he's, he's not going ahead of Freddie Freeman, though. Right. He's going basically at the same price. 16th versus 12. Like, that's, that's a rounding error. Right. Well, but who deserves to go in between them, I guess is the question, because there aren't that many productive hitters who strike out as infrequently as Wander Franco does. And, and I, I, I do play in a head-to-head points league where it's minus a full point for

strikeouts. And Wander Franco is absolutely somebody I'd be paying up two or three rounds for in that format. All right. A few other names here that I wanted to mention who have very low strikeout rates who are elevated in this format. Nolan Aronado is 27th overall. Jose Altuve is 33rd.

Carlos Correa is 53rd. And then I wanted to mention two second baseman. Max Muncie is 56th. He still strikes out quite a bit. even though he walks, but that seems very, very aggressive. His ADP is 109.4. And DJ LaMayhew is 63rd. His ADP is 117.8.

So, look, I guess I could see the high-end outcome for Max Muncie if he's able to stay healthy. But these were two that really set out to me where, you know, even if it works out, man, top 70 for each. Seems tough. Yeah, no, I agree. And obviously, there are other factors. beyond just this is the scoring system. Every site has its own projections that it's working with. And there are all manner of ways to do projections that may mean they're using a more favorable one for DJ LaMahue than other sites are.

And they may not be downgrading him for playing time concerns that may now exist with him not having a spot to call his own anymore. So there are other reasons why that may be other than just the scoring system. But yeah, I mean, he's helped by the scoring system. He doesn't strike out much. That's part of it. I want to go back to the Wander Franco thing for just a second because I saw, I'm not going to say who it was, but I saw somebody tweeting about this the other day.

And he was basically, I forget which projection system he was looking at, but he was basically comparing Wander Franco's projection to Alex Verdugo's projection. And like, why draft Wander Franco when you can draft Alex Verdugo? And like, there's an obvious answer for that. which is, I don't know of any fantasy league that scores on projections. You know, like, yeah, maybe that'll be the way it goes. Or maybe Wander Franco will take a huge step forward in a second year, sort of like we saw from Vladimir Guerrero last year.

Although worth pointing out was not year two for Vladimir Guerrero. And people overpaid for Vladimir Guerrero for many three years. We didn't know what year it would happen for Vladimir Guerrero, and we don't for Wander Franco either. And frankly, I'm more encouraged by the way Wander Franco's rookie year was than I was Vladimir Guerrero. So I just think it's weird that there's this assumption this is all Wander Franco is when he was the top prospect in baseball, what, three years in a row? And just his back control is unbelievable, sort of like Vladimir Guerrero's is for a player that age. Yeah.

I guess so what I would say is if you have to bet on an elite skill, manifesting into elite production right away, or, you know, relatively soon, good bat control, mediocre, honestly kind of below average quality of contact was what Wander Franco had last season, or good bat control and elite quality of contact. Now, obviously, Vladimir Guerrero had things he had to improve.

And I think, you know, overall, they were very, similar as pre-breakout players, assuming that this is pre-breakout for Wander Franco. Vlad was a little worse. He was more like a high 700s OPS bat. Wander Franco ended up at 810, but it is worth pointing out that Wanderfranco's quality of contact so far is pretty bad. 66%tile averages of velocity. Max, well, max exit Velo was 66%tile. Average exit velocity was 88.2 miles per hour. Okay. You're right. I don't know what the percentile is that for that because he didn't qualify.

But 4.9% barrel rate, 346 expected Wobah on contact compared to a 369 for the league, 37.6% hard hit rate versus 35.4% hard hit rate for the league. I just think you're digging too deep into the numbers for a 20-year-old who was in the league for the first time got 300 plate appearances. I mean, it's just. Scott, you were down on Vlad over the last two years. So I don't think I'm digging too deep into the numbers. I think you're more optimistic about Wander, and that's fine.

But I just hear a lot more naysayers with Wander Franco. Like I, his ADP is like 48th. I don't want to draft. His ADP is right around what Fads was. Yeah, I don't want to drop Wander Franco in round three or four or four or five. But six or seven? Yeah. Yeah, I'll shoot for the upside there.

Like once Corey Seeger's gone, basically, I'm fine taking Wander Franco. But how many times have you drafted Wander Franco, given that perspective? None, because there's usually somebody in the league more excited about it. So that's what I'm saying is that's why I think people are going to be frustrated with Wanderfranco, because he's being, he's being drafted as if he's already there. But that, well, not necessarily because his upside. As if he's already there would be like round two. Yeah, his upside is he could be a first round player. He could make that leap.

He is a hard player to project because his median projection is what you see on fan graphs. And it doesn't look that exciting. It's 290, 18 to 20 homers, 6 to 8 steals, something like that. But when you're a prospect of his caliber and you make contact as frequently as he does, you know, you can squint and you could see him taking a huge step forward. And, you know, he hits 25 plus homers. He hits 320, awesome counting stats, 10 plus steals. And if he does all that, you know, he probably is a second round player.

So no, it's not necessarily. Like, I can see why people are excited about Wander Franco. It's just, in my eyes, it's a lot of projection and not a lot of the act. Like, it's not that I think Wander Franco is going to be a bad hitter this season. It's not that I think he's going to be a bad major league player. I don't think his skill set is going to be particularly conducive to fantasy production right away. That's my concern. It's that I just, I don't know if he has the over-the-fence power.

I think he's being projected as someone who might steal. And I think it's entirely possible Wanda-Franco's like a non-factor in stolen base. is at least relatively speaking. I think that there's a better chance he's a five-stallown-based guy than he has a 15-stolen-based guy. And his steals were part of his game in the minor, so maybe that's baked into his projections a little bit. But he was a really, really inefficient base stealer in the minors. And it's the race. And they're not going to let a guy who runs at 65% success rates, which would be a 10-point to percentage-point improvement over his minor league career.

They're not going to let that kind of guy run, even if it's a top. prospect. And he was not great against Wrighties last season either. He had a sub-700 OPS against them. Are we really nitpicking what a 20-year-old did? Like for a 20-year-old, what he did was unbelievable. Yes, but like, well, no. What he did was really good. What Juan Soto did was one-soto like, yeah. No, Juan Soto was so much better than Wanderfrode. It was second to Wans Soto. Right, but it was like a 100. OPS difference. It was a really big gap. Like, Juan Soto came to the majors as a 20 year old and was hitting the ball really, really hard. Yeah.

The question with Juan Soto, when he was a rookie, wasn't, is this guy going to hit for power? Can he elevate the ball enough? I think he struck out like three times in September or something. Did Wander Franco? Yeah. Juan Soto had a 923 OPS as a rookie. So he was considerably. Right. But you get what I'm saying. Yes. Juan Soto was here, and maybe Wander Franco was here,

but then all the other 20-year-holes, you know? I get it. Look, I hear what you're saying, Chris, specifically in Roto Category leagues, Wanda-Franco might be overvalued right now. In points leagues, I'm okay taking him in like a fourth or fifth round. I'm good with that. And specifically in the SPN format where strikeouts are so heavily penalized, I think you can make a case for him being more valuable than I'm allowing for, certainly.

But even then, second round is, I think that. that's too much. Starting pitchers who are much higher ranked on ESPN. Robbie Ray is 17th overall. Aeronola 22nd. Kevin Gausman is 30th. Luis Castillo is 46th. Nathan Avaldi is 76. So we spoke about starting pitchers early and why that might be elevated in this format. As you can imagine, the hitters that are much lower in ESPN, there's a very constant theme here. Strikeouts, base sealers, or a combination of bolts. Salvador Perez is ranked a little bit lower. He's 50th overall. Whitmerfield is.

171st, Javier Baez, 140th, Adelberto Monassi, 231st, Bo Bichette is down at 233, Willie Adamas is 216th, Jazz Chisholm is 217th, Cedric Mullins is 59th, so you see a common theme here. Starling Marte is lower, he's outside the top 100, Byron Buckson, outside of the top 100, same thing with Randy Arosa Rana. Now, what I will say about this is if you play in a Roto League on ESPN, and they have the same rankings here that are being displayed on fantasy pros, then, I mean, Scott, you could just have a field day because, like, you know, someone like Mondesie

is being ranked outside the top 200 in a Roto League. I mean, that's just completely insane. So I didn't go into a Roto draft lobby to see if that's the case. But if it is, you can take massive, massive advantage of that on ESPN. Yeah, surely they don't have it set up that way, I would say. I hope not. But I don't know.

I never really draft on ESPN, so I can't say for sure. You know, and I do wonder on Fantasy Pros, like, where do they get this ADP info? Because, you know, at CBS, we have separate ADP info for head-to-head in Roto. It's not like it's combined into one single ADP. So I just don't know where they're pulling the data from. And I know even less about where they're doing it from ESPN. So keep that in mind, too. But yeah, the players you mentioned, like I imagine an ESPN head-to-head points,

League Jazz Chism is just, even if he has a good season, it's just going to be worthless because he's going to strike out a ton and a big part of his value is stolen bases. And Javier Bayes, I'm surprised he's not even lower than you mentioned Frank, because what do you say, like 140th overall? Yep. Which is getting into fringe starter territory, which certainly he's more than that on our site. But yeah, I mean, that's, those are the kind of players that are going to suffer, definitely.

I want to go back to the starting pitchers because I think it's one thing that's interesting about this scoring form. I feel like not as many points per inning. Bigger penalty for earned runs, bigger bonus for strikeouts, no quality start bonus. That does seem to value a guy like, I don't know if Robbie Ray is the right, but Freddie Peralta last season or Trevor Rogers, the guy who doesn't necessarily go six innings every time, who's not going to be a quality. start machine, but who's going to get a lot of strikeouts per inning, who's going to be really good in terms of the earned runs that he's allowing per inning, that definitely takes away some of the value of an Adam Wainwright, let's say, you know, because he's not going to have such a volume

advantage. He's not going to get consistent quality start bonuses the way he would in our format. And wins. It's seven points for a win on our site versus five on theirs. So, yeah, winning. and pitching deep enough to get a win, which is something I put a lot of emphasis on. Yeah, you're right. So, Shane O'Mac, Frank. Yeah, potentially. Yeah.

Into that category. Probably like Dylan Cease, too, would be more valuable on ESPN. Sure. Yeah, for sure. Last one I'll mention here. Ronald Acuna is ranked 41st on ESPN. He has an ADP of 10.2.

So I would say, take advantage of that regardless of format. You know, he gets a lot of value from his steals, but he should still be really good regardless. The Maddenance, This continues. Don't miss a moment of the action on CBS, TBS, TNT, and True TV, and download the March Madness Live app to watch every game anywhere, anytime, live. Reminder, number one, we have a mailbag pod and an FBT and 5 that is coming out on Saturday, so be on the lookout for that. And our second reminder, we are now accepting your FBT Podcast League submissions. The 12 team head to head points league draft will be this coming Wednesday, March 30th at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. We also have the For the People League, which is a 16-team Head to Head to Categories League. That draft will be the following Tuesday, April 5th at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

Remember, send us something creative, a song, Photoshop, a picture of us. We've already got some great submissions on Twitter. So somebody fulfilled my request of the Kokomo thing, except it's the weirdest thing. One of the weirdest things I've ever experienced on social media, someone sent us this picture. and I look at it and it's a picture of Frank and it's a picture of Scott and then it's a picture of this guy I went to college with named Eric Feldman.

What? So apparently if you Google me one of the results that comes up is my LinkedIn page. But for some reason, the image that comes up when my LinkedIn page is indexed on Google images

is this guy I went to college with who I, I mean, I may have seen him once in the last decade. Actually, no, that would have been 2012. There's no way I've seen him in the last decade. Nothing against Eric. We worked at the college newspaper together. But this person sent me this image and I'm just like, how did this happen?

It took me like 15 minutes of like some sleuthing to figure out what would have happened there. And it was, I mean, he's also a bald guy. So I guess I can see, but he's much skinnier than me. But it was just so weird to see this face of this person that I've just like, have not thought about really in such a long time. I don't know why that happened with my LinkedIn page. Yeah, I saw it. And I was like, is that even Chris? I don't, I don't know. Who is that person? I don't know. It's like, wait, that's Eric from college? I don't know. I haven't been in college in such a long time. We actually got another great Photoshop of, it looks like a,

I can't believe it's not butter commercial, but I can't believe it's not butchery. And it's Scott and it's Chris. And there's some Michael Kane in there. My face is kind of embedded in some toast. People are getting creative already. So we're enjoying it. So Photoshop a picture, make a poem, create a t-shirt design, or just tell us why you deserve to be in the league.

Email your submissions to fantasy baseball at cbsi.com. Put FBT Listener League in the subject line. and please let us know which draft you could be in because we're going to broadcast both of them and we have to make sure that you're actually there and you're on time so everything can work out smoothly. We're going to take a quick break and when we return, we'll get to Yahoo

rankings and differences here on fantasy baseball today. All right, so let's take a look at Yahoo and a reminder here that mostly head-to-head categories and roto leagues on Yahoo. I went to their mock draft lobby. I clicked on every head-to-head lobby that I could find. None of them was a points league.

So I don't even know if they, do points leagues, but it looks like they're mostly head-to-head categories and Roto, as I mentioned, very liberal with position eligibility on Yahoo. Austin Riley, Chris Bryant, Kyle Schwaber, and Lordus Guerrille. They each have first base eligibility. Mookie Betts has second base, Wander Franco has third base, Alberto Mondesi has shortstop, and Franville Reyes has outfield eligibility. Another one here, Chris, DJ Lame.

The joke we used to make with, when I was doing baseball, was that, that if you've thought about a position, or basketball, that if you've thought about a position, you will be eligible there at Yahoo. Seriously. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, again, like...

I kind of like it, you know? I don't know. I mean, I think it takes... It takes away from the strategy of, you know, having to make decisions and position scarcity. Yeah, who likes decisions? Just make a lineup full of utility spots.

Exactly. You're probably one of those people who wants to eliminate tight end in fantasy football, too, don't you? No. No. Gosh, those people are there. Come on. I mean, you're trying to make the game too easy at this point.

Honestly, one of the main things that distinguishes fantasy baseball from fantasy football to me is that there are so many positions that you have to account for. And so if you, if your eligibility rules are too broad like that, then, you know, you're kind of removing one of the main appeals of the game, I feel like. I'm just, I agree. putting myself down as pro-wackiness. I liked wacky races with the little dog. So, yeah.

No, I'm just pro-wackiness. Yeah, right? He's like, yeah. I'm definitely trying. You're too young for that one, but that was a very good impersonation of this dog. No, I think I know who you're talking about. Dirk Dastardly, was that the bad guy in that?

I think I know what you're talking about. This was a Havana, Barbera production. I'm definitely making that into a GIF or a short video, something like that, because that was great. Anyway, about the players that are higher in... Gasterly and Muttley. And the dog is going like this.

Right there. Look it up, folks. Are we good to go? Are we good to go? Players who are ranked higher on Yahoo. DJ LaMahue, again, maybe we're just too low on him. That's what I'm learning here.

His ADP is 117.8. We have him 134th on CBS. He's 63rd on ESPN. He's 90th on Yahoo. So again, DJ LaMahue, someone that stands out. And Anthony Rendon, 81st overall. His ADP is 101.4. I mean, Chris, these kind of take me by surprise because in a head-to-categories league, or even a Roto league, I mean, are Lamehue and Rendon going to be standouts technically? I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, one thing is, you know, depending on how the projection systems work, a lot of the default rankings on sites are based on projections. And, you know, it's not hard to see how DJ LaMahue and Anthony Rendon could be standouts. projections. If you're projecting them for full seasons, you know, they were really, really good the two seasons prior to last year. So, you know, if you're not overweighting last season, both of those guys look really good. And, you know, I started out the process with Anthony Rendon right around 81st. I was, you know, I've moved him down since then. But I certainly believe there's bounce back potential for both Rendon and LeMayhew. I'm more optimistic about Rendon because quality of contact in the past has been much better. But yeah, I wonder if that's, you know, what's going on there.

But I don't necessarily dislike either in that regard. It's just, you know, you don't have to take them that high in other leagues. So why would you? All right. A group of outfielders and then a couple of Astros ranked higher on Yahoo. J.D. Martinez is 57th overall. John Carlos Stanton is 69th. Dylan Carlson is 146th.

And then Yuleiguriel is about 30 spots higher than his ADP. He's 162nd. and Michael Brantley is about, oh, 60 spots higher, 154th overall. Scott, what do you think about those players in this specific format? Again, mostly categories,

J.D. Martinez, Stanton, Dylan Carlson, Gurriel, and Michael Brantley being ranked higher. I like that they're different. I like seeing differences of opinion because I feel like there's a little too much... A little too much consensus. Yeah. Homogeneity, that's a good word, a little too much of that going on in the fantasy baseball world these days.

And part of it's just because the introduction of Stackcast however many years ago, I'm sure people have thought this before in history and were proven wrong in time, but I kind of wonder how much more there is to know about players than that. How much better can we evaluate players than we currently are? But it's still predicting the future, right? So you're still going to get things wrong a lot. And like you could definitely, I think originally I had Ulygueriel and Michael Brantley ranked much higher. And I just kind of was like, well, nobody's drafting them that high.

It's kind of silly to rank them that high, I guess. So I moved them down closer to consensus. Ergo the homogeneity. Yeah. Well, I mean, sure. But that's how I've always operated. Yeah, no. And I mean, when I saw this, one of my thoughts was like, this looks kind of like my rankings before I get shamed out of,

ranking injury prone players too high. So, you know, like that, it could just be that, you know, there's a less of an injury penalty in their projections or something like that because, you know, a lot of these guys have playing time concerns for one reason or another. And if you're projecting Michael Brantley for, you know, 550 plate appearances, he's probably going to finish this high or maybe higher because his batting average is going to be so good. So yeah, it's again, it's nothing, it's not necessarily that I dislike them.

And actually, I think Yulele Geryel's probably ranked more appropriately here than he is elsewhere. And that's including my own rankings. I probably have him too low. There's just a skepticism around him because of his age and his skill set and the lack of power there. But like, he's going to hit for a good batting average. He's going to have a bunch of counting stats. Yep. Well, this is, you know, this is kind of what I was talking about too.

is like I understand why you'd rank Yule Gereal lower than where he fits in the projections because I feel like he's pretty projectable as much as you can say for a guy that age anyway. Yeah. But there's a clear limit to his ceiling

that might make you prioritize Spencer Torkelson over him. Sure. Or you know, what's another good example? I don't have rankings pulled up in front of me. Although it is... I feel like we just collectively kind of forget that you're the girl that did have 31 homers and 104 RBI two years ago.

It was by far an outlier. It was combined his previous two seasons combined home run totals. And it was mostly like a two-month stretch. But still, I'm confident that he's never going to do that again because that was 2019. He had 15 last year. He could have 23. And it wouldn't be a shocker. And, you know, there's room.

It's sort of highlights our, the way that we view age as a proxy for upside or lack of experience, perhaps is a better way of framing it. And it's upside, but it's also variance and it's also the unknown. And so it's, you know, like, Gilly Girl has upside. It's just you can't talk yourself into a huge season the way you can with Spencer Torkelson. Like it's easy to talk yourself into Spencer Torkelson being one of the, those rookies that hits 275 with 30 plus homers and 100 RBI. You can't really do that with Yuli Gurriel. But that doesn't mean it's realistic or that his realistic upside is higher than Yoli

Guriel's. I'm more likely to target players like Brantley or Guriel, high floor players in deeper leagues where, again, like you need, you just need production. You need played appearances, right? Like if you're playing in a 15-team Roto League and, you know, you get to that point in the draft, you're looking for a corner infieler who can help and batting average and just provide stable counting stats, then yeah, you're probably looking at somebody like Yuli Guriel. You know, you want to take some chances earlier on, and then you fall back on

higher floor players later. That's typically where I would target players like this, because again, it's like in a 10 or 12 team league, are they going to stand out that much? Probably not, but I bet you didn't mention him. I bet Guriel is one of those that was higher, Yulee Guriel, not so much Florida's, but Yulea Guriel is one of those who was higher in the ESPN points leagues. Because in our points leagues last year, which, you know, the Gurriel doesn't strike out much. He strikes out like 60, 70 times a year. Yeah. In our points leagues last year, he was ahead of C.J. Crone and points per game.

He wasn't that far behind Pete Alonzo, really. No, it's a good point you bring up, Scott, because he's ranked Uly Guriel 118th on ESPN. His ADP is 196. So he is going about 80 spots. higher in that format. And again, if you, you know, if you're losing points for strikeouts, it does make sense. A few pitchers who are higher on Yahoo. Jake McGee is 148th overall. His ADP is 212.6. He's actually going ahead of Camillo Duval. Scott, you expect DeVall to open as the frontrunner for saves for the Giants, correct? Yeah, I do. We're not going to hear it, though.

I mean, we're just going to have to see what Gabe Kapler does. And then there, that's, yeah, that that seemed like the giant. Speedwriters were all hyping him up as the closer toward the end of last year and obviously he was getting all the saves down the stretch. And then Devin Williams he goes about 80 spots ahead of ADP

on Yahoo! 197 and a lot of these fringe closers, the Joe Barlow's, the Dylan Flores, basically the Scott range of closers, those are all propped up in Yahoo leagues which I think makes sense because based on heads head categories you want more relievers in your lineup.

I think the default lineup in Yahoo is three starters, three relievers, two pitchers. So I was looking... At least I did one the other day that had that. And I didn't see that it was a special category or special format. So, you know, that could be part of it too. I joined a mock draft lobby where it was two starting pitchers, two relief pitchers, and just four pitcher spots. So I don't know. I guess that's what I'll go with there. Players Yahoo is lower on. We'll quickly run through these. Willi Adamas is 165th overall. Marcel Lozuna is 19th. Sayas Suzuki is 192nd, and then three pitchers,

Sandy Alcansara 53rd, Logan Webb 98th, and Scotty, Ranger Danger, Ranger Suarez, 199th. Honestly, I could see taking advantage of all six of those discounts. Adamus, Ozuna, Sayas Suzuki, Akonsara, Webb, and Ranger Suarez on Yahoo. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think that's less to do with scoring format than just preferring different things in player evaluation.

There are naysayers about Sandy Alcantra out there because he doesn't have the big K-per-9 rate. Of course, usually you're not scoring K-per-9. You're usually scoring total number of Ks, and he's going to throw a ton of innings. And we think he has strikeout upside that he hasn't demonstrated yet. And then, of course, Ranger Suarez, relative to where we normally draft,

the kind of pitchers who are going where we normally draft him, he doesn't have as much K-per-9 potential either. And so I think whoever does the rankings for Yahoo, whoever projects for Yahoo, just maybe has a bias against that. And I'm not saying, I don't mean the word bias like they don't know what they're talking about. It's just they value different things in players than maybe we as a whole tend to. All right. Let's get to the players that are ranked higher on CBS. And no surprise.

I mean, these are players that we've been talking about all offseason. because I'm pretty sure it's either using our consensus rankings or just how we draft. And typically we are drafting these players higher. So, Reese Hoskins, Brandon Belt, and Luke Voight, those three at first base. Austin Riley is 31st on CBS and his ADP is 41.2. So I think Scott might have contributed to that one a little bit. Josh Donaldson is 143rd. Corey Seeger is 48th.

Willie Adomis is 116th. We are far and away the highest on Willie Adomis. just basically in the industry. George Springer, 45th overall. I see you, Chris. Kyle Swarber, 94th, the beefcake, Marcelo Zuna 142nd, and Joe Adele, 195th.

So look, again, Chris, we talk about these players all the time, but yeah, those are the ones that we are ahead of the entire industry on. Yeah, and we've made our cases for all these guys. I don't think you need to hear them from us again. If you do listen to any episode of this podcast, and you'll likely hear us talk about any one of these guys. Yeah, our projections are part of the draft room or our rankings are part of the draft room for CBS.

You can go up and select CBS average, which is all three of us. You can do projections or you can do any of whichever one of the three of us are your favorite. Hopefully Chris Towers. And yeah, if, you know, we're all higher on some of these guys consent in terms of the consensus between the three of us, like Willie Adamas or Corey Seeger. Or it's just, in George Springer's case, like, I'm much higher. So I'm sure that plays a part in that as well. And then the projections are part of it too. But yeah, you're not going to hear me disagreeing with any of these because I play a part in why all of these are higher.

And I imagine you picked out the sample of names you chose there, Frank, were ones that are personal to us. These are just the ones that I went position by position. these were just the clearest outwires in terms of CBS versus ADP. Because I've seen some on CBS that are like way on the opposite end from us too. And, you know, the default view in the CBS draft rooms is projections, which we have nothing to do with. Somebody else does those. But as Chris pointed out, you can change from the devolved view of projections to each of our individual rankings.

And maybe a lot of people are. Maybe a lot of people who draft on CBS listen to us. and so they're, you know, they're just naturally pulling those guys up from where they may show up in the default view, which is projections. So I just want to mention that too. As a quick aside, if you're doing a draft this weekend

or over the next couple of weeks on CBS, as soon as you enter your draft room, please, please toggle off of the projections. To anything else that Chris mentioned, if you want to hit the drop down. Honestly, that's not just ours. You should do that in any draft. in any league because

those are one, those are just going to track most closely with how people are going to draft in that league and look, you've heard me say it a lot, but one of the few ways in which you can potentially differentiate your team is by zinging when everyone's

tagging. So if there's a bias built into the projections or the rankings that are default to any scoring format, any lead, NFBC, ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, you're going to have most of people in the draft room defaulting to whatever the default in the room is. And if that means that one version, if whatever scoring format you're on, is inherently higher on pitchers or hitters,

that means that there are going to be values available when you're going away from the default. And so I think that that should be the way you look at it all the time, no matter what. And just not to give ourselves too much credit, but I think rankings from the quote unquote experts or analysts will probably give you a better path through the draft than the projections. Because like Scott was talking about, the projections, when you're talking about median projections, you're talking about the most likely outcome

or some weighted average of the most likely outcomes. And so you're going to have situations where people are higher on Logan Webb in a way that the projections may not account for. Maybe those projections will be right, but you're also going to miss on a lot of things. Drafting by projections, it's an easy way to finish in sixth place. Drafting the most likely outcome every time

is the easiest way to finish in sixth place in your league. Because you need people who are going to beat their projections as well. Yeah, and I don't know that, you know, for any provider, like how often people are updating projections, but I know that we're updating our rankings every day. So once you get in that CBS draft room, just toggle off of the projections, hit the drop-down menu, go to expert average rank, or use Scott or Chris or myself, whichever one you want to use. But just a heads-up. Definitely do that if you're drafting on CBS. A few pitchers that were higher on Noah Cindergarde, 162nd. Patrick Sandoval, 180th. Make sense. Carlos Carrasco, 225th. Also makes sense. Scott, Corey Canable, 136th overall on CBS. 187.2 is the ADP. So I don't know if we're all just like collectively higher on Corey Canable or I don't know,

maybe he's projected for some kind of crazy amount on the CBS projections. But I thought that was interesting because we haven't really talked about being that much higher on him. The CBS projections, I haven't looked at them, but they may, they may be more, they may be hedging, not so much hedging their bet with the saves projection for Kinebel. They may just be giving him a full saves allotment because he's currently in the closer role and maybe some others aren't.

So that might explain that. I don't feel like I'm personally higher than Kinebel on the consensus. He's in that range of closers I like to target, but not so much because he's Corey Kenebel, just because I like to target that range of closers. All right. That just about does it for all the rankings here. Before we hit the news and notes,

I want to share a little cheat code for keeping tabs on March Madness, and that's the CBS Sports mobile app. It's not only your gateway to watching every tournament game, but the best for lightning quick college basketball scoreboards, updating brackets, expert picks, and the latest news on all the action for the men's and women's tournaments. The app is free. Just search CBS Sports in your app store,

and if you're like me, it'll soon be your go-to sports app for everything. We had a trade on Thursday. Randall Gritchick has moved over to the Colorado Rockies in exchange for Rimal Tapia and prospect Adrian Pinto. So there are a lot of moving parts here. Chris will start with you. Randall Gritchick, what do you think about his value here?

Is it on the rise? It still seems like the Rockies, they have a lot of names there between Outfield and D.H., Conor Joe, Charlie Blackman, Sam Hilliard. So what do you think? I mean, they've got a lot of names. They've got a lot of names that fantasy.

players know, but those aren't names that fantasy players know because we think they're especially good baseball players. We know their names because they're on the Rockies roster. And that means they get to play half their games of course field. And I'm not going to say Randall Gritchick is so much better than all those guys for sure. But I am going to say that I feel very confident he's going to play a lot more than those guys, or at least he's got much more of an assured role than someone like Connor Joe or Sam Hilliard or whoever else we might be talking about. And so, you know, he's got a decent salary. He's making $9.5 million this year, I'm pretty sure they traded for him. So I'm going to go ahead and say Randall Gritchick is going to be in the everyday lineup. And maybe he'll just be so bad

that it won't matter and he won't be an everyday player. But the Rockies don't tend to adjust for course field factors in how. they view players. I don't want to disparage an entire organization, but I'm going to go ahead and say the Rockies are not the most analytically savvy or well-run franchise in baseball. They very well may be the worst in both of those regards. I love that. We just always rip the Rockies. I mean, rightfully so. They deserve it. That's true. They do. This is a really poorly run franchise. That is fair. Randall Gritchick is going to play every day. And playing half a his games in course field.

I'm not going to say he can be better than Chris Bryant, but it's a similar situation to Chris Bryant, where he's a good enough hitter that the floor and the ceiling just got much, much higher. And 275, 30 homers, 190 combined runs in RBI, that's well within the realm of possibility, and that might be in the fat part of the curve

for Randall Gritchick's outcome. So this is a big deal for his fantasy value. I don't think it would be an overreaction to move him into the top 40 outfielders in both points on Roto. Whoa, top 40. All right. I saw a tweet from, I think it was Rasball on Thursday that they moved him up to, I think, 39th in their outfield projections this upcoming season. That is what I was thinking of.

Yeah. So the ADP for Randall Gritchick is 340. He's made more contact the past couple of seasons, which is... Right. That's what I was going to point out. That's something that bodes well for Randall Gritcher. A little average shortcut rate. each of the last two seasons.

Yeah, he's not a big strikeout guy anymore. We know he has over-the-fence power. So, you know, it's not going to be a Sam Hilliard situation. And I think, honestly, I think this trade was all about Sam Hilliard. I think it was about getting somebody who they felt comfortable playing center field who wasn't going to be just like a complete zero on offense. Their general manager, Bill Schmidt, the first thing he is quoted as saying here in the write-up on the Rockies official site is we've been looking.

looking for another power bat, and I think we acquired one with Gritchick. The second thing he said was he can play center field. And so part of that calculation is I think they do want Conor Joe in the lineup, because remember they were talking about maybe we can play Rymel Tapia in center field. I think they wanted Connor Joe in the lineup more than Sam Hilliard all along, and I think acquiring Gritchick allows that to happen because now they're not as stretched in center field as they would have been, you know, if they were going Tapia and Joe in their outfield.

So I think it's good news for Gritchick, as Chris already covered. I hadn't considered moving them all the way up to 40. I just moved him up to 37. Right ahead of Hunter Renfro and Jorge Salar. Jeez. I moved him up to 66, but I may need to think about that a little more. Wow.

It's coarse field, guys. And he's a decent hitter. I mean, it's Randall Gritchick. But he's been like a 740 to 790 OPS guy the past four years. And most of that is he's not a great OBP guy. So like if he's going to hit 270 in Coorsfield, that probably comes with a 500 slugging percentage. It could be like Michael Codier's years in Coorsfield maybe.

Sure. Yeah. Those were great years. I guess part of my thinking was like nobody's going to start drafting Randall Gritchick that high. based on. Like, I was thinking I'm going to rank them so that I can get them on the stealth still. And maybe that's not as possible as I think it is. Well, part of it is also just, I, I rank Hunter Renfron, Horace-Hilera in the top 40.

I think they're either right at the beginning or right at the end of a pretty significant tier. And so I think there are like 36 to 40 good outfielders. And I think there's a pretty big drop-off after that. And so I just, I think Gritchick's on the right side of that now. Michael Kodier wasn't a great comparison. The years I was thinking of actually came with the twins, though he did play with the Rockies later on. Yeah, he was like a 300 hitter with the Rockies.

So stock up for Randall Gritchick, clearly. I think stock up for Connor Joe. I also think stock up for Alejandro Kirk. As we were talking about on yesterday's show, like, why couldn't they just make him the full-time DH? Randall Gritchick was the main other hitter who was interfering with that. Not that Gritchick was going to be a full-time DH, but he would spell all the other outfielers and let them play some D.H.

And I still imagine we'll see Teasca Hernandez at D.H. Some. We'll see George Springer at D.H. some. But I get the feeling Alejandro Kirk is going to be the primary D.H. That's part of the plan here for the Blue Jays, is to clear Gritchick out. so that they can get Kirk in. And that is exciting because he's a catcher-eligible player with contact rate like Yuleguriel and exit velocities like Bryce Harper.

So, not saying he's going to put up Bryce Harper numbers, but definitely want at-bats from that, especially as a catcher-eligible player. And one other thing is there's been a lot of speculation even before this trade that Randall Gritchick might not be vaccinated. and I don't know if that's the case, but there does seem to be a lot of assumptions that that played a part

because he wouldn't have been able to play for the Blue Jays if he wasn't back. Didn't I say on the podcast just yesterday, don't be surprised if we see some Blue Jays traded in the next couple of days? And I just kind of said it like tongue and cheek, right? But no, it's a legitimate concern for that franchise. Not for New York as we

learned today. Did we talk about that on yesterday's podcast? Yeah, we did. All right, I mean... It's official. New York does not have a vaccine mandate for professional athlete. All right, so I didn't expect this move to shake up the rankings as much as it did, but man, Scott, I'm looking at your catcher ranks.

You've got Alejandro Kirk all the way up as your 10th catcher now, ahead of Gary Sanchez, Joey Bart, Travis Darno, Mike Zanino. I was tempted to move him ahead of Tyler Stevenson, too, but I didn't. I resisted. All right. I moved up to number nine, because I don't have Tyler Stehant. Stevenson ranked inside my top 10 anyway. I don't even think you haven't ranked

inside your top 20, Chris. Last time I looked at your rankings. All right, I'm just eyeballing it myself. I'm trying to figure this out, but I think I'm going to move Gritchick up to 50th, which would be just behind, 50th outfielder, behind Alex Kiroloff and Dylan Carlson.

I still kind of like the sleeper slash breakout appeal of those guys, so I think that's the right range for Randall Gritcher. I'm going to move up to outfield 50. All right, we have a lot more. We're not going to get to the case for the elite closers. We'll get to that next week.

I promise, Jeff. We'll get to it. Yankees manager, Aaron Boone, speaking of closers, said that he's entertaining the idea of using Oroldeus Chapman more in the eighth inning this season to keep the closer sharp during lengthier periods in between save chances. Here's what Aaron Boone said exactly. It will serve him well at times and protect other guys at times. It will help us as a staff and keep Aroldus more regular rather than let him get to five,

six days without pitching. So at first it sounds really bad. I don't really think that this affects his value very much. They're just going to pitch him a little bit more frequently because they noticed if he goes five or six days without pitching, you know, during safe chances, then usually that's when he's pretty rusty. So maybe in close games or games where they're losing, you'll see him pitching the A thing. You don't know when you're five or six days into a period where you don't get a safe chance until you get that safe chance. So it's kind of like maybe if they get to a third day, they'll use him in the eighth inning. But that could also mean that he might miss out on some safe chances because let's say they go

two days without a safe chance and they want to use them on a third day just to keep him fresh. And then they get saved chances the next two days. He's probably not going to pitch three days in a row. And so it's entirely possible that there could be some situations, only a handful, where, you know, he misses out on a save chance because he's already been used in a non-save situation. That's kind of the risk in as much as it exists for closers who aren't strictly used in the ninth inning. All right, I was already avoiding a role this Chapman, so, you know, just another reason to maybe knock him down a peg. The Red Sox are planning to platoon Jackie Bradley and J.D. Martinez in right field this season.

Martinez will, of course, still be the DH on days that Jackie Bradley plays. That leaves Alex Verdugo and left and Enrique Hernandez and Sanchez. Center. Trevor Story is going to play second. Zander Bogartz is going to play short. So as of now, it looks like Jaron is on the outside looking in, I think likely to start the season in the Miners. He had a pretty rough day on Thursday as well. I think he went 0 for three with three strikeouts. So not looking great for Jaron. Mike Miner may have to open the season on the injured list due to mild shoulder soreness. And Scott, I mean, between him, Luis Castillo dealing with the shoulder, I'm starting to think that there's a realistic chance that Nicola Dolo

could actually break camp and be in the rotation to start the season. Are we sure he's out of Hunter Green? Not sure. I think so. I think he's a little bit more stretched out in that regard to give them more length than Hunter Green,

but I could be wrong about that. I'm still going to bet against it for what it's worth. Neither one of them, especially Lodolo, pitched that much last year in the minors. And of course, the Reds are not in, not in contention mode right now.

So there are other pitchers they could slot in their rotation instead. And I think they will, especially since it's short-term injuries for the pitchers who aren't going to be ready to go. All right. Ranger Suarez will throw a live batting practice on

Sunday and could make his spring training debut next week. Spring training performances that I wanted to mention vying for that fifth starter job with the Dodgers, Tony Gonsland fired three perfect endings with four strikeouts on Thursday. Tyler Anderson followed that up with three innings of one-run ball, striking out seven. I mean, Scott, why can't we just tell Andrew Heaney to take a walk? He's currently projected.

Ross the resource has him as like the fourth starter, but theoretically, they could go Gonslyn and Tyler Anderson as the four and the five here, right? Yeah, I don't, I don't think they will. I think Heaney's spot is pretty secure. Is Tyler Anderson really the guy that we're like pushing guys out of the way for? I mean, that's, I think they want them to start. They gave him, I don't know, I think a decent amount of money for one year. Well, not as much as they gave Heaney. True.

And, yeah, I think the plan is to piggyback guys to start the season. Price, Gonsolin, Anderson, and, and Heaney, those four in the last two spots, and probably figure it out from there. But Gonsolin of those four is the one who has the most relief experience. So I'm a little concerned about that, but he's obviously also the most talented, I think. So hopefully it plays out, you know, at this time last year, I was worried about Julio Arias being the odd man out because he had the most relief experience. And obviously that didn't come to pass. So, yeah, don't bury Gonsolin, but I'm a little less gung-ho about him than I was before the Anderson acquisition and, of course, Kershaw re-signing.

Mitch Keller, through three no-hit innings with two strikeouts. Velocity way up. Fastball velo, four miles per hour up compared to last year. 97.7 miles per hour. The curb ball and the slider, where each up five miles per hour. Still needs to work on command overall, but Chris, I mean,

you're throwing four to five miles per hour harder on all of your pitches. That helps. That helps someone like Mitch Keller. How dare you? I would also like to see him throw the change up more. he only had three swinging strikes on 43 pitches so still only a 26% caught plus swinging strike rate that's still not at all where you want them to be

but I mean he looks good the stuff looks really good and I thought he was watching the start I thought he looked better as it went on the command you know in the third inning especially he was hitting his spots really well and a lot of it's going to come down to that but the thing about you know if you're throwing four miles per hour harder he was consistent consistently sitting 98, 99 in this start as well, is your margin for error is just a lot wider. And you can get away with missing your spots when it's 98 instead of 94. And so that could be significant.

I think Mitch Keller still has a lot of work to do to prove that he can be the kind of guy we hoped he would be as a prospect. But yeah, it's promising stuff. It's interesting that he's throwing his curveball more this spring than his slider because the slider's been the better pitch for him. The curveball was pretty bad last year. So, you know, maybe the curveball was supposed to be the better pitch when he was a prospect. So maybe there's, you know, something to him rediscovering the feel for that pitch as well. We'll see. All right. A couple of the eye opening, if nothing else. Massive, massive upgrade in Velo for Mitch Keller. A couple other notes here. Sean Mania, four and two thirds of one run ball, apparently was sitting 88 to 90 miles per hour with

his fastball. Last year, he averaged 92.2. That's part of the reason why I've been very excited about him. So I do want to watch that closely. Carl Sordawn, two and two thirds, innings of one-run ball. His fastball apparently was in the upper 90s, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Good news for Carl Swarden. Bobby Witt Jr. blasted his second homer of the spring, and it's going to be hard for them to keep him down. So if he's playing this well, we very well could see opening day, the timeline there for Bobby Witt. Yeah, I'm almost 100%. on Bobby Wood being on the opening day roster.

All right. The best for last. Carlos Rodon hit 98 miles per hour several times in this start. So that not just sitting up or hitting upper 90s, but yeah, was pitching like he was last year, apparently. Best for last. September last year. Yeah. Logan Gilbert through three innings of one run ball with six strikeouts.

No stat cast for this game, but there was a very interesting article that came out from Daniel Kramer of MLB.com. and apparently Gilbert worked with Jacob de Grom during the lockout. They have the same alma mater, Stetson University, and what did he learn? Here's what Logan Gilbert had to say about DeGrom. He throws everything glove side. That's a focus for him.

I'm trying to incorporate that more in practice in bullpens. So I feel like that helps. We're both on the first base side of the rubber. So everything is in the glove side lane, which is the hardest thing to do with the extension out front. So if you do that, you can go to any, side of the plate. In addition, Logan Gilbert said that he's throwing a firmer slider this season compared to a sweeping slider, which he threw last year. And he's also throwing his

curveball harder this year than he did last year as well. And with all this, I mean, Scott, I'm ready to go gung-ho. I already liked Logan Gilbert. I want to like push him inside my top 30 starting pitchers. Talk me off the ledge here, Scott. Talk me off the ledge. I mean, here's the thing. Like, Logan Gilbert has a ton of upside and if if his slider if he's made that into more of a weapon he has that much more upside so I

don't want to talk you out of upside you know I would rather like there's a lot of upside at starting pitcher especially because there are so many starting pitchers and I prefer upside targets who you know are already

shown they can be successful at the major league level like Shane McClan another one you like. Gilbert is much cheaper. Yeah, he's not being drafted in that range. So I don't, I think I would still keep him behind that group. But no, I mean, like, how am I going to argue against him as a breakout candidate? Of course he could break out.

And of course, you like to hear things like this from somebody who you already have a lot of hope for. Chris. He feels like a really intimidating pitcher to go up. against because he's so big and he's got massive extension on his pitches. The release point is seven and a half feet off the pitching rubber, I think, is how that's defined. You usually see guys below seven feet. So those fastballs, I mean, he throws 95.

Those fastballs probably feel like they get on you even harder than that. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, I want to see him throw more of the secondary stuff. You know, he was basically just fastball slider that would change up and curveball. were like 18% or 16% usage total. Changeup was really good last season when he threw it. So there's a lot to like about Logan Gilbert as an upside pick. Yeah, as I mentioned multiple times, if you just look at all of his pitches individually, they worked.

But for some reason, it just didn't work like collectively, like when he was on the mound. So there was inconsistency from a start-to-start basis, which is acceptable for a rookie starting pitcher. But, you know, you read something like this and you see how, well he's pitching so far in the spring. You don't want to overreact, but you also don't want to miss out on a potential breakout candidates. So lots to like there with Logan Gilbert. And we're going to wrap there. Scott and Chris, I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy

Baseball today. We'll be back again on Monday. Bye-bye.