Fantasy Baseball Today - A's Promote Jacob Wilson! Week 27 Sleepers & The State of Prospects (7/19 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

The A's are promoting one of their top prospects Jacob Wilson (3:00)! ... Why is Scott getting excited about Twins prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez (12:18)? ... News (20:55): Kyle Tucker has no timeline to return. ... Who are the top sleepers for just this weekend (28:26)? ... Who are the top sleepers to target for the long scoring period from July 19-28 (33:51)? ... What is going on with prospect development in baseball (39:25)? ... How should we handle prospects in dynasty (50:53)? ... We wrap up with monthly offensive trends (53:12). Why does offense keep changing so drastically? Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Get awesome Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 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/ 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

Welcome in to fantasy baseball today on July 19th. I am Frank Sample, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Today on the show, we have a little something for everyone. Lots of prospect talk, our week 17 preview, and offense in July. But let's get things started with a prospect promotion. Hot off the presses, heading into the second half. The A's are promoting Jacob Wilson, son. of Jack Wilson.

And we spoke about him extensively just a couple of weeks ago. He was our prospect spotlight on actually one of these Friday episodes. 22 years old, the sixth overall pick in last year's draft. This season in the minors, he was batting 438 with seven homers,

25 doubles, and 1161 OPS in 46 games across three levels. Jacob Wilson is 16% rostered on CBS. He's shortstop eligible. Scott, we will start with you. What size? leagues, are you looking to add Jacob Wilson, if any?

I ain't anywhere I need a shortstop, probably. I don't think he's must add across the board. My initial placement of Jacob Wilson in my rankings is 28th at shortstop in Roto, 26th in points. The two players difference being the base

Steelers, David Hamilton and Jose Caballero, who I have ahead of Jacob Wilson in Roto, but on points. And plus, you know, given the low strikeout profile, Jacob Wilson you'd think would be better suited for points leagues. Anyway, now that sounds very low, and it sort of is, but what I basically did was I slotted Jacob Wilson right behind Willie Castro, who of course was an All-Star, and right

behind Josh Smith, who a lot of people think should have been an All-Star. So it's kind of just the nature of the position, especially for Josh Smith, I don't see the argument for putting Jacob Wilson ahead, because that seems sort of like what Jacob Wilson is aspiring to be. It's a really interesting profile, a really unusual profile for the

modern game. He is just the highest order of contact hitter and the game's really not well suited for contact hitters. But he is so far beyond what we usually see

from that like phenotype of prospect. You mentioned the 438 batting average. That's the number that immediately stands out. And that includes, that includes, uh, double A where he played 22 games. That includes sometimes in rookie ball. But if you just look at the AAA stats for Jacob Wilson, his strikeout rate is 3.3%.

His zone contact rate is 99.1%, which means when he swung at a pitch in the zone, basically he's never missed. So these are exceptional, exceptional contact skills for Jacob Wilson. And so it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Now, he's not supposed to have much power. He doesn't run much at all. It would be helpful if he did, but he doesn't. I say he's not supposed to have much power.

The exit velocity readings aren't good. He actually has hit for a good amount. If you just look at his ISO-slugging percentage minus batting. average, so that's removing the impact of singles from slugging percentage. It's high. It's mid-200s. A lot of doubles in there, more home runs than you'd expect. His time at AAA was Las Vegas, good place to hit. But he may have a little bit of a Brooks Lee thing going on here where he just angles the ball so perfectly that it still amounts to damage, even though he's not hitting it that hard. Having said that, I'm more skeptical of the overall profile for Jacob Wilson than

even I was for Brooks Lee, and I was pretty skeptical of Brooks Lee, remained pretty skeptical of Brooks Lee. But, you know, if you just want to dream of what Jacob Wilson maybe could be, I think best case scenario, Stephen Kwan without the steals, which would be an impactful player in fantasy, obviously, but there are limits to the upside. And we're talking best case scenario. We're talking things going very, very right here in terms of this profile. still performing at the major league level. It's Luis Arias, right? Like, that's Stephen Kwan without the steals.

A little more damage than Louisa Ryes. I mean, I would say. I don't know, maybe. Luis Rai's- Best case scenario. Yeah, Luis Raya's quality of contact is much better, but I guess he doesn't hit for power. He hits the ball harder than Jacob Wilson does. To put some statistical markers on it,

2.6% whiff rate, that is, when he swings, he missing, 2.6% of the time. The next best in the minors this season is Javier Sanoha, Marlon's prospect, 8.1%. There are only four players below 10%. Now, that's not every minor leaguer. They only have it, I think, at high A and or the Florida State League and all AAA League.

So we're dealing with incomplete information here, including Fort Wilson. This is only counting AAA. But he's a true outlier in that regard. Average exit velocity, 84.3 miles per hour. Average launch angle 8 degrees. That's one thing that Luis Arias in particular does much better. He elevates the ball 12.8% average launch angle. Everything Luis Arias hits is a line drive, right?

Like he doesn't really... Michael Wilson hits a lot more ground balls. Luis Ruiz also doesn't hit for power, so I don't know how much that matters. But Stephen Kwan's average launch angle at the major league level has been 10.7% or 10.7 degrees every year. So Jacob Wilson, fewer line drives, fewer fly balls than either Kwan or Arias, who are I think the two most obvious comps for him. I'm pretty skeptical. The high contact rate, very little power.

I don't want to say zero power because people got mad at me when I said that about him on Twitter. And clearly he has hit for more than zero power here. So it might not be a Nick Madrigal situation. But this is a profile that I tend to not bet on. I've seen a lot of guys like this fail, but he is a more extreme version of like, Nick Madrigal strikeout rates were in like the 7, 8% range. Wilson is at what, 6.5% so far this season.

So he's even better than that. But I still think the likeliest outcome is he's just not a particularly impactful player. He might hit an extremely empty 290 as like his median outcome. But I think this is worth talking about. within the context of the larger prospect discussion, which is that when we are talking about prospects and when we are acknowledging that most prospects have failed over the past couple of years, and it's been a really bad couple of years for prospects, and I think there are structural issues within the game that are causing this. But they are still worth aggressively chasing on the waiver wire, because when you look at the types of guys who are generally available on the waiver wire in,

I'm going to look at a 12-team Roto League, so probably in the middle in terms of depth. The best players year-to-date available are J.P. Crawford, Jorge Mateo, Edmundo Sosa,

Ernie Clement, McGillet. We know who every single one of those guys are. And with the exception of J.P. Crawford, none of them matter for fantasy. And we're very, very confident that none of them matter for fantasy. Who was that list supposed to be?

That was the best players in production to date available in my 12-team Roto League. Okay. Shortstop position. Okay. Jacob Wilson's likeliest outcome may not be that much different in total impact from J.P. Crawford. But we know that J.P. Crawford

outside of last season has been a pretty mediocre player. Jake Wilson's tails are much wider. He might just be completely overmatched. You might just get the bat knocked out of his hands the first time he sees a 98 mile an hour fastball. Or he might hit 315 the rest of the way. And so that's the thing that I'm always going to hammer when we're talking about prospects,

especially at the midpoint when they're getting called up, is the guys available on waivers are so underwhelming for the most part. I'd rather be aggressive in chasing any, prospect, even guys I don't really believe in, rather than the boring also rands that are going to be available on waivers in most leagues. Chris, this is something you said a lot about Masataka Yoshita, right? The skill set for Jacob Wilson seems like it would play very well in a points league, but points leagues are often much shallower than Roto League. So, you know, I don't think you need to add Jacob Wilson in a points league right now. Obviously, if he, you know, gets called up and he hits the ground

running, then it's a conversation we can have. But if you play in a, League that has a middle infield spot, a little bit deeper into the player pool. You need batting average, maybe run scored. I think that makes some sense. Tout Wars Fab ran tonight on Thursday, July 18th, and he went for $58 out of a $1,000 budget. That is in a 15-team roto. So just to give people some idea, frame of reference there, for how much Jacob Wilson

went for in Fab. All right, from one prospect to another, it's Friday. Let's get into our prospect spotlight. Let's talk about Twins' Outfield Prospect, Emmanuel Rodriguez. who checks in at number 10 in Scott's mid-season top 50 prospects, which is currently live on the site. Make sure to check it out. Rodriguez is 21 years old.

He's currently on the aisle with a thumb injury, but he was tearing it up before that happened. 37 games at AA, 2.98 batting average, eight homers, nine steals, and 1,100 OPS. He obviously has some power and speed. Strikeouts have been a problem between 26% and 36% across four different levels in his minor league career. So, Scott, I asked you earlier for a prospect

that you wanted to discuss someone that kind of stood out on your top 50 list, and you chose Rodriguez. Why is that? Well, I think maybe I'm becoming a little bullish on him after being a bit hesitant because he's a prospect of extremes. All the extremes. Every way a prospect could be extreme. Emmanuel Rodriguez is hits the ball very hard,

lots of power, as good at stealing bases, lots of speed. But both the strikeout rate and the walk rate are insanely high, especially the walk rate. And it's a passivity issue. He's very, very, very, very, very selective about what he swings at. And that can work out against minor league pitchers who are going to be outside the zone more often. You'll get a lot of walks that way. but against major league pitchers who are in the zone more often,

it could lead to some issues. It doesn't appear that that's changed. So an article by J.J. Cooper, Baseball America offered some analysis on Emmanuel Rodriguez this year. He swings at just under 32% of the pitches he swings. The median in the minors is 45%. So he's an outlier in terms of taking pitches. But I feel like,

we should see that become more of an issue. Like if, as he climbs the minor league ladder, as he sees pitchers who are going to throw more strikes, we should see that become more damaging to him. And now he's up to AA, is Emmanuel Rodriguez, which is often thought if it's the biggest hurdle in the miners. And it, he's still killing it. He's still killing it.

He's reached base at a 474 clip this year, which isn't out of character for him because he walks so much. His strikeout rate's actually down. It's still high, but it's 27.5% instead of 30%. So, you know, still high, but trending the right direction. And there's still the power and speed. So I think partly just the fact that Emmanuel Rodriguez is at AA now and still thriving puts me at ease a little bit. The fact that the prospect pool right now seems so shallow.

Makes me see him a little more with rose-colored glasses. I have Emmanuel Rodriguez in, I would say he's in my mid-season top 10. My mid-season top 50 just came out. I would say he's in the top 10, but it's a little tricky the way I did it because I didn't include players who've already appeared in the major. So realistically, it's probably more like top 20. But you get the idea. Emmanuel Rodriguez, I think, now is one of the more legitimate prospects in the minors with a lot of upside.

I imagine he's going to struggle to hit for average in the majors, be more like a 240 hitter, but hopefully the walk rate is high enough, the on-base rate is high enough that he'll still be plenty worthwhile with a batting average like that and give you power and speed. So that's Emmanuel Rodriguez of the Twins.

You said it was 32% swing rate? Yes, swings it just under 32% of the pitches he sees. The lowest swing rate of a qualifying hitter over the past 10 seasons at the major level is 33.9%. Wow. Now, the thing to keep in mind is swing rate by itself isn't, it doesn't tell you anything. The two lowest this season are Juan Soto and Hossiung Kim. Like, that's a pretty wide range of hair types. The more important thing that I would want to dig into is like out of zone versus zone swing. Because you look at Juan Soto and he's usually 10 to 15% out of zone swing rate. He just never swings at a ball out of the strike. zone. And he's like 55 to 60 percent in zone swing rate. And when when you talk about like the passivity versus patience discussion that always makes me think of like Kevin Bissio. Yeah. Yeah.

Who's walked. Yeah. He wasn't as he wasn't nearly as tooled up. Yeah. His his approach might have worked if he could hit the ball more than 370 feet. You know, like that was the issue for Cabin Bissio, but also just what you don't see a lot of is really good hitters who don't swing at strikes. That, like, guys who are below 50% zone swing rate, there's a couple of Joe Mower late period seasons, but otherwise it's David Fletcher and Bad Yesmani Grondal and David Fletcher again. So it's like, that's what you want to look for is, are they swing at the right pitches? And from everything I've read about Emmanuel Rodriguez, he does. It's just there's a lot of swing and miss there too.

Another thing I like about him, looking again at this data from JJ Cooper of Baseball America, is that he is especially good, like his hot zone is up in the zone, which makes him well suited for the way modern pitchers approach hitters. So I think that's going to work in Emmanuel Rodriguez's

favor too. Yeah, overall, I'm encouraged. Again, probably not going to be a batting average, a good source of batting average in the majors, but I think everything else will be good. The only thing that gives me pause is hearing you guys talk about the passivity and some potential strikeout issues is Edward Julian, who came from the same exact organization. And, no, just because it doesn't work for one,

doesn't mean that it'll work out the same way for a different prospect, but it does give me a little bit of pause. And maybe that's something that they're kind of teaching within the twins organization. Yeah, so it just kind of stood out to me hearing you guys break him down. considering he's like a top 20-ish prospect for you, Scott. Emmanuel Rodriguez probably should be rostered in all dynasty leagues, I would imagine. Yeah, it probably already is. Maybe not the most shallow, but he probably already is.

Again, that was Twins Prospect, Emmanuel Rodriguez. Make sure to check out Scott's mid-season Top 50 Prospects, which is live on the site now. Make sure to download and follow our five-minute podcast, Fantasy Baseball Today and Five, wherever you listen to podcasts. And a reminder that we will have a bonus prospect episode coming out every Saturday of the season. Let's take our first break, and when we return, we've got some news and notes.

We'll preview week 17. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in. Let's talk news and notes, and maybe we got too ahead of ourselves yesterday because Astros GM, Dana Brown, said in an interview Thursday, that Kyle Tucker remains without a timeline for a return. Brown added that Tucker is doing light on-field baseball activities and will require a rehab assignment before returning. We knew that last point already, but the fact that he still. doesn't have a timeline.

It's so tricky. I don't know what else to say about Kyle Tucker. It's obviously discouraging, and we'd like him back sooner rather than later. In other news, I guess a little bit more positive. An MRI on Fernando Tatis's right quad showed improved healing, and he's expected to increase baseball activities.

He is currently on the aisle with a femoral? Yeah, so yesterday I was writing about it, and we had the whole discussion about how I'm dumb and don't know doctor terms. and I read, I read, femoral stress reaction. Femoral, yes.

And I wrote, he injured his right femora. And then I looked at it up. I thought about it. And I was like, there's no way that's what it is. And it's not. It's a femur.

Which is the big bone in the thigh, by the way. It's the most important bone, probably. It's certainly the biggest bone. The bone that should never be broken. Yeah. He has a stress reaction in it.

So that was very concerning to me for Fernando Tatis. But it seemed like there was a wide range of possibilities when it happened. And it sounds like he's going to be on the earlier end of that range, hopefully. So maybe he should have been in the discussion for redrafting the first two rounds. After building up to four and two-thirds innings and 67 pitches in his most rehab outing this past Sunday, Kodi Senga will make one more rehab start before rejoining the Mets. so could be back in late July, assuming all goes well. Michael Harris is still at least two or three weeks away from returning from the IL.

He's been out since June 14th with a hamstring strain. Tristan Kossis could be cleared to start hitting in the cage within the next week and may head out on a minor league rehab assignment before the end of the month. He's been out since late April with a strain and torn cartilage in his left rib. Jesus Lozardo has been participating in bike workouts and working on forearm and shoulder strengthening. in recent weeks. He's been on the IL since June 22nd with a lumbar stress reaction

and I believe on the 60-day IL so the earliest he can return is late August. Again, that's Jesus Luzardo. Speaking of the Marlins, Max Meyer could be up next week. According to Eli Sussman of Fish on First, the Marlins would gain an extra year of control on Meyer if they call him up after July 21st.

So Chris, Peter Bendix hasn't been there long but he's already kind of got the raise imprint on the Martins. Let's not blame this on the raise or Peter Bendix. The Marlins have been doing this stuff for years. They got, what's the term? The Marcel Ozuna, there was a service time manipulation grievance filed against them way back like eight years ago. Now, this is classic Marlins stuff, baby.

I guess it's just Florida baseball. Yeah, well, I mean, they don't they don't actually have a need for a fifth starter until then. It just so happens. So, well, like, they'd be shooting themselves. They have no good starters. So they have a need for one.

Yeah, they've been trying to. They have one rotation opening, and it makes sense to slot Meyer in as the fifth guy. If they do, It's so silly. Like 2029. Like the chances of Max Meyer who will be 31, I think, by 2029, the chances of that mattering are so slim.

If you're not considering all the variables, are you really playing the game right? I don't think you are. I think it makes sense what they're doing. They obviously weren't competing for anything. It makes sense. It's still dumb. Okay.

I think it would be dumb to do the opposite. We're using the word dumb totally differently. Okay. I will note that if he is up for the fifth turn, it sounds like maybe he could be up for the fourth turn and still accomplish the objectives, but I assume it'll be the fifth turn. He'll line up for two starts during week 18,

meaning the first full week after the break. If your league separates that from the first weekend, we call that week 17. If your weekend separates the first, if your league separates that first week and week 17 from the first full week, week 18, then Meyer would line up for two starts in week 18, which would be interesting.

He is still the projected starter for the jumbo shrimp on Saturday for what it's worth. So that's the keep an eye on. Max Meyer, 46% rostered. I know it's a little bit different to compare him against some of the IL stashes, because if you have an IL spot, it's much easier to stash those players. But let's just say in a vacuum, right? the, I think the top three we keep getting questions about are Jeffrey Springs, Clayton

Kershaw, Robbie Ray. Where would Max Meyer rank among that group? Probably ahead of Ray, but behind the other two for me. Yeah, I think, I think that's right. Obviously, you can stash those others in an IL spot right now and you can't, Meyer, so that might make a difference in most cases. I'll be honest, I'm not that excited for Max Meyer. I know he looked pretty good early on, like the results were good, but it wasn't a ton of strikeouts. It wasn't a ton of swinging strikes. He really only has the slider

to get whiffs with at this point in his career. I think he's probably a bullpen arm long term, personally. I don't really buy him. Yeah. Well, his major league role is at, like, I think they could have moved him in the bullpen to save his innings, and that might have been a better usage of their time anyway,

but I think he ends up in the bullpen long term. All right. Again, that is Max Meyer. Some other prospect updates. The Nationals top prospects, Dylan Cruz and Brady House, outside of James Wood, of course, are likely to make their debuts before the end of the season. So maybe some of those late August, September call-ups, you know, save some fav for that point because some prospects do get called up. And the White Sox promoted one of their infield prospects, Brooks Baldwin. He's 23 years old. Having a fine season in the minors, batting 324 with eight homers, 17, Seals and 851 OPS.

Anything to know on Brooks Baldwin? I would be lying if I had a lot to, if I said I had a lot to impart. Great name, by the way. I mean, the alliteration. You gotta love that. He sounds like a villain in a comic book or something. Brooks Baldwin.

That darn Brooks Baldwin. Yeah, I mean, look, he's been productive this year. I don't know. He may be one of those, there's always a chance, It's one of those late bloomers. Didn't see him coming sort of guys who are just productive at AAA,

and then they remain productive when they get called up. He'll certainly get opportunities there with the white socks. So we'll see how it goes, but the fact that I just had to look Brooks Baldwin up right now, I think is not encouraging. All right, let's get into our week 17 preview, and this is not going to be our usual preview because there are different lineup periods

depending on the format that you play in. If you play in Roto, you only have to set your lineup this Friday today when you're listening to this for the weekend, and then you'll reset it again on Monday. But for many head-to-head leagues, the lineups will set for the next 10 days. So just a really long scoring period from July 19th to the 28th. So let's just start off with this weekend,

sleepers for this weekend, and we will begin with the pitchers. Scott, who are some sleeper pitchers for this upcoming weekend? So obviously just one start options. My favorite is Reese Olson, who is pretty much always on this list. I don't know why he's still available enough to qualify for this list, but people don't like Rez Olson for some reason. He's at Toronto.

It's a good matchup. Michael Waka gets the White Sox. Great matchup, obviously. And he's been very reliable lately. Spencer Schwellenbach against the Cardinals coming off two really good starts in the first half. Brandon Fott gets the Cubs, which is more of a middling matchup, but he's also been pitching well of late. generally works deep into games

and can sometimes come away with a bunch of strikeouts. So I like fought for this week. Provided you don't just have a bunch of Aces to fill out your staff. It may actually be more likely you have to turn to one of these guys on the waiver wire given that

only 60% of each team's rotation is starting. Less than that for the Brewers and Twins who each have just two games. Why is that? Do we? Is there any explanation for the Twins and Burrers only playing? They lucked out and got a five-day break instead of a four-day break.

That's weird. Playing in a weird venue or something like that? Yeah, I don't know. I'll keep going here. Matt Waldron is at Cleveland, which of course isn't a great matchup. But I think when the knuckleballer is on, it doesn't really matter what the matchup is. So you're hoping the knuckle ball is on for Matt Waldron. Jose Cantana at Miami,

the worst team against left-handed pitchers, according to OPS. And the second worst line. Reality. According to just run scored. Regardless of handed this. Tyler Anderson at Oakland, Jose Soriano at Oakland.

I'm a little worried about Oakland. They hit a lot of home runs. Believe it or not, I believe they're fourth in the majors in home runs. But their offense ranks where it ranks in terms of runs scored. So Anderson and Soriano seem like reasonable bets.

Frankie Molintosh at Washington, Luis Severino, at Miami. There you go. All right, let's get into the hitters for this weekend. The best matchups, the Giants who are in Colorado, the Angels, the Royals, the Mets, and the Marlins, the worst hitter matchups this weekend. The Brewers and the Twins, as we mentioned, they have a two-game series. The Astros, the Blue Jays, and the Rangers. Scott, who are some sleeper hitters you like for this weekend?

So I will lead off here with Mark Vientos, facing the Marlins staff. He's getting pretty close, I think, to just being advisable regardless of matchups, but obviously those are good matchups. Reese Heinz at Washington, not the easiest matchups, but as hot as he was in the first half, I think he just got to ride that as long as it lasts.

with the Giants traveling to Colorado. I've got to recommend this guy right here wore the shirt just for this purpose. Jorge Saler would be my favorite sleeper choice from the Giants lineup to take advantage of those matchups in Colorado, that venue. Tyro Estrada is also on the list for that reason. J.D. Martinez.

I'm a little frustrated with J.D. Martinez because the Mets are giving them the Old Man Tree Minutes. a lot of sitting-in-day games after night games and that sort of thing. But he gets those same matchups against the Marlins, so I think he's a good play. Michael Bush was hot before the break. His matchups are okay. Going against the Diamondbacks. Michael Tolia.

I don't know. Do we want to gamble on that big power surge he had right before the break? Three home runs the final day, six home runs in his last six games. Definitely has power. He's at Coorsfield. All those home runs, the six-and-six games, came on the road, by the way, for Michael Tolia. So, you know, got to like that he still is able to,

that he's done it on the road and now he heads back home. You got to like that. A couple Marlins hitters going against the Mets staff, which is not very good. Got Brian Dela Cruz and Xavier Edwards, who is hot before the break. He's kind of the real deep sleeper here, only 8% rostered. And finally, Colt Keith, just for how hot. he's been his, let me give you the exact numbers here, Colt Keith, his final 14 games before the break, 353 batting average five home runs.

It's hot that Colt Keith, you know, I've just spent all this time trying to figure out why they have two games and I can't find a single thing. It's just so weird. The twins and the Brewers getting Friday off and, yeah, having a longer break. It's just, it's pretty weird. What about for the longer week, the longer, lineup period, 10 days from this Friday all the way until next Sunday. Very similar names on this list. We mentioned the pitcher is the only one that's different, Scott. I mean, is Andrew Heaney,

who faces the White Sox and at the Blue Jays. You also have Brandon Fott, Reese Olson, Tyler Anderson, and Jose Soriano. Great matchup for Heaney, and he's, he's looked better over the past month or so. He has thrown that slider harder, getting more whiffs and two really good matchups there when you broaden out to 10 days. And by the way, If you are thinking ahead to week 18, you do split the next 10 days up into two scoring periods, and you're thinking the first full week, week 18, I believe Heaney's matchups,

those two favorable matchups, also line up for just the typical week 18. So something to keep in mind if you're in one of those leagues. I haven't done the full research for that. It'll be out probably Saturday, if I can get somebody to publish it on Saturday. So we won't leave you hanging as far as that goes, but you'll have to rely more on the written form

if you are splitting up to two weeks and want all the recommendations for week 18. If you want some other two-start options for the big 10-day scoring period, let's see. Michael Lorenzen gets those two same matchups as Andrew Heaney, White Sox and Blue Jays, Spencer Schwellenbach.

I mentioned him, Cardinals coming out of the break, but then he gets the Mets for a second start. I think he's decent. Michael Waka, White Sox, and then Diamondbacks. So good matchup,

not so good. But I think those would be among your better choices. The best hitter matchups for the long scoring period, the Giants, Rockies, Angels, A's, and Braves, the worst hitter matchups,

twins, Brewers, Blue Jays, Reds, and the Yankees, the sleeper hitters for the 10-day week, Jesse Winker, Jorge Salare, Luis Garcia, Michael Tolio, Lawrence Butler.

So the names that stand out here, Scott, are the nationals that you get in there, and Lawrence Butler, who had a three-homer game right before the break. Yes, he did. And I really do like the athletics matchups for the longer scoring period because they get the Angels pitching staff

for seven of their 10 games. And with only two lefties on the schedule, I'm hopeful Lawrence Butler can take advantage of that. Lawrence Butler and Michael Tolia they were both so hot going into the break and they have plenty of raw power like you could see it turning into something

but very volatile with the strikeouts and everything. I don't know. I'm kind of being bold here including them among the sleeper hitters just because it's fun to work in new names. Obviously if you're not in a desperate spot don't feel like you have to do it

but the matchups are favorable for them Lawrence Butler and Michael Tolia and they were as hot as they were. So it wouldn't be crazy to run them out there. No, I like the call on both. You know, Tolia has the dual eligibility for a base in outfield. And Lawrence Butler, any leagues that are five outfielder leagues, I'd imagine there's more than 22% of those on CBS.

I think Lawrence Butler needs to be rostered in five outfielder leagues just to see if this is legit or not. And with the good matchups coming up, why not? Let's take a shot. Again, if you need these sleepers for this upcoming week starting on Monday, July 22nd, As Scott mentioned, he'll try and get those up on Saturday this weekend, so be on the lookout for that. Let's take our final break, and when we return, the state of prospects.

We'll talk about offense in July, so we're bouncing around a little bit, but we'll do that right after this. Welcome back in. Earlier in the show, Chris alluded to the state of prospects, top prospects in particular, and how they haven't performed well over the past couple of years. It's felt a little bit light up at the top recently. And look, these struggles, it goes beyond the majors too.

I mean, some of these names are struggling in the minors as well. They're struggling, you know, both when they get called up, before they get called up. And, you know, it seems like there's kind of the shortage of elite talent, at least right now. And obviously, some of these names could develop. Chris, do you have any reasoning or theories as to what's going on in baseball right now, why this might be happening with prospects?

So I think there are a couple of theories. I want to shout out Jeffrey Pastor Nostro. I think is his name from baseball prospectus, who wrote a really good piece on this very topic. And just kind of talked about how basically like the top five guys in their midseason top 50 update probably would have been more like top 15 guys in previous years. And I think the two explanations that I think make the most sense are one,

the COVID year. Just we're at a point where guys who were saying, 16, 17, 18, and 2020, who didn't really get to play college baseball, didn't really get to play minor league baseball. A lot of them didn't get to play high school baseball if they were at that level are now 20, 21, 22. And so we're just dealing with a whole generation of players who just lost a year of development. And I think that we're probably seeing the tail end of effects of that in a way that makes this a unique situation. I don't think 2029 will have a similar issue for example. But I think one other thing, and this is something I hadn't really thought about,

but it was something in the minor league collective bargaining agreement, teams are limited, organizations, sorry, are limited to 165 players during the season. That's the total number of players that they can have on, I believe just their minor league organization. that is total. That includes players on the IL, that includes players on restricted lists, whatever.

That was 180 back in 2022. So this is the first year of that limit. So I think one thing we're probably seeing is just as a whole, the minors probably are less, have fewer talented players. Now, you would think that teams would get rid of their least talented players, and that's probably what happened.

But there's a difference between like talent and projectability and current skill. And I think the likeliest explanation for what teams did is they got rid of a lot of those organizational filler types, those 29-year-old AAA starters who were never going to become major leaguers, but who had experience, had developed physically, knew what they were doing. And so I think just the level of play in the minors is probably lower than it's ever been. and so hitters are, I mean, hitters and pitchers are playing against worse players at their levels relative to what they've faced in the past. The jump from A to double A is different than it's been in the past.

The jump from AAA to the majors especially is probably much bigger than it's been in the past. And those two issues, the 2020 season and that are working in tandem in that regard. So that's my working theory is just, The minor leagues as a whole are a worse place to develop baseball players right now. I'm hopeful that this is just a small term blip, but I think there are some structural issues. And then I think also just they are playing with different rules in the minors. AAA has this season up until the All-Star break, I think they were using automated ball strikes during the week. and the challenge system over the weekend,

which is literally leaving them with different strike zones to play with in season. It's crazy. And then when they get called up, they have a completely different strike zone than the one they were like it. That is a, that is a major, major thing

that I think is probably messing with guys' development and just their ability to adjust on the fly while getting the call. So I think those three things are the biggest ones I would think. It shouldn't be a different strike zone, though, right? They're not... They actually changed the strike zone. No, but the automatic strike zone,

the automatic ball strikes, particularly is just, like, technically it's the same strike zone. They're supposed to call it the same, but we know that Major League umpires have less consistent strike zones. And this was something that when they introduced automatic balls and strikes in the miners,

what they tried was created as it's written in the rulebook. which is not that flat plane that you see on TV, but is a three-dimensional box, and any part of the baseball going into any part of the box is a strike. And that is way different than how strike zones have ever really been called at the major three level. And so that led to really drastic changes when they first introduced it in walk rates and strikeout rates.

Offense was put down when they first introduced it. So I just part of it is also just they keep fudsoning with, the game at the minor league level in a way that I think sense. Like you got to test this stuff somewhere, but probably having some impacts on development. Sure. No, I mean, I think it's been beneficial to baseball overall because a lot of the rule changes we've seen in recent years

with the pickoff limits and bigger bases. Yeah, all of that was tested in the miners first. And I'm sure they wouldn't have had the pitch clock. Gosh, that's the biggest change of all. And they've been resounding successes. but they wouldn't have had the confidence to implement in the majors, I doubt, if they hadn't tested it in the minors. So I don't know how much longer that'll go on.

Clearly, baseball is going through a period of transition now. But, yeah, it's clear something has gone wrong with development, and it's been frustrating in fantasy. It's not like this is the only stretch in baseball history where minor leaguers have had trouble adapting to the majors. I think that's been more of the wrong. ruled in the exception, in fact, looking over all of baseball history. But we've gotten accustomed in fantasy to big prospects being big successes right away. And it's made our end of things

difficult to manage. And we just have to adjust to it. We just have to adjust to not putting so many eggs in that basket to treating them more like literal lottery tickets in that they're probably not going to pay off. But if they do, then you have a nice big reward. And, and go from there. But I definitely feel as somebody who just, like I said, I just put out my top 50, my mid-season top 50. And it was hard to get enthusiastic about the guys at the top. Like a lot of the ones that the consensus and the data all seem to agree,

these are the most talented minor leaguers. They're just not performing. And so do you elevate the guys who are performing well? or do you stick with the guys who you think are the most talented? And for the most part, I stuck with the guys who I think are the most talented. That seems to be what all prospect rankers are doing. But at some point, we want to see actual production from Roman Anthony beyond just him dominating the skills showcase at the futures game.

Yeah, I think this is a – it's obviously a huge talking point. I've heard it discussed on another podcast as well. And something you touched on, Chris, is, again, that jump from 8. A ball to double A and then from AAA to the major leagues. I mean, we heard, what was five, six years ago now at this point, maybe longer. When Keston Hira got called up, he said it's like this is the hardest it's ever been, right? To make the jump from AAA to the majors. And on top of that, like we're about to talk about, like offense this year has been hard to come by.

It's hard to hit, man. And some of these pitchers that are, you know, like Paul Skeens and all this velocity and throwing up in the zone. and it seems like pitching has kind of had the edge or at least in terms of strikeouts, right? Strikeouts have been up massively over the past decade or so. So I also think it's just we're in an era where going from AAA to Major League pitching is just so, so incredibly hard.

So I think that has kind of factored into it as well. Yeah, there's probably a lot of variables at play here. Like any time there's a foundation, change like this, it's easy to speak with too much confidence about what the issue is when probably there's so many variables we don't even know to think of.

But yeah, the ones Chris are talking about, I think, are among, probably among the biggest. To oversimplify, I think hitters don't, they, I'm going to sound like an old fogey here. But like, you don't face a pitcher until

you get to the majors anymore. In like the pitching versus throwing dichotomy, like to oversimplify, I think that's a lot of it. It's just like, yeah, the miners are younger. They're less experienced as a whole. And so you just don't have those like crafty journeymen sitting in the miners, you know, working on their craft in the same way. It's it's much more development focused than competition focused, I think. And it makes me think that there was a, I can't remember, one of the, one of the advanced stats reporter guys wrote something about there was a movement during the CBA to get rid of the minors entirely. I don't know if you guys remember this detail.

But someone was not. We should just get rid of minor league baseball being affiliated with major league baseball and just have everyone have development systems. Like they have in, you know, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic. And watching what's happening right now, that was so obviously a horrible, horrible idea that was just designed to save money. And I'm so glad that nobody took it seriously. But I worry that that's what some teams still want to do.

And it's just nothing can replace competitive games for developing players. Yeah. Well, part of the reason I don't think this is going to be a longstanding issue is because, like, they need they recognize it's a problem as much as anybody there's there's so much incentive at this level to to to not miss to not have any sort of efficient inefficiency in the development process and if it's not going well teams are going to figure out ways to set up their minor league to structure their minor league team so that it does go better whether that does mean bringing in some of those 29 year olds you were talking about just to to help build these players

up or something else entirely that we're not seeing here. I agree with that. Last question regarding prospects. And Scott, you kind of touched on, you know, treating prospects as lottery tickets. And I think a lot of times we talk about that from a redraft perspective. Is that also your approach in Keeper and Dynasty leagues as well? Because we all play in the same Dynasty League together, the Scott White Dynasty League. And I have noticed that you have been more open to trading your prospects away than maybe

you were five or ten years ago. So has this changed the way that you are approaching prospects in Dynasty as well? Yeah, exactly that. I've been saying when we've had the dynasty conversation the last few years, I've been saying I'm always playing for next year. And a lot of that means continually stockpiling prospects. But I'm less confident those prospects are going to pay off now. And you could just end up wasting so much time and resources pursuing them, particularly when the economics in that particular Dynasty League are what they are, where people cling to those prospects because they're kept for a low dollar amount and they'll pay off for years to come.

Well, if they're not necessarily going to pay off for years to come, then maybe we shouldn't cling to them so tightly. And so I've kind of adjusted my calibration there in trades. I just traded, I just included Roman Anthony in a trade with Chris actually a few weeks ago. And part for that reason, Chris is out of it. It made sense why he'd want a prospect like that. But the players I got back aren't like long-term pieces. I may keep a couple of them next year, but probably not beyond that. So it was really not the sort of trade I'm accustomed to making in that league, particularly with giving up a prospect as high in as Anthony.

And there were other considerations there that are specific to this dynasty league and not to the general discussion here. But broadly speaking, yeah, even though Roman Anthony I think is a top 15 prospect, I'm not sure how long it's going to take him to be good when he does reach the majors. And most of these dynasty leagues are set up so that they have to be good quickly to have been worth the weight. All right. Let's wrap things up with a look at offense in July, just a macro look. And I guess even more so month-by-month production and see if we have any takeaways from what is currently happening in the league. So league-wide offensive trends by month. In March and April, the league-wide batting average was 240 with a 699 OPS.

The home run to fly ball rate was 10.8%. In May, it actually got slightly worse, which is surprising. 239 batting average 695 OPS, 10.7% home run to fly ball ratio. In comparison, this year's March, April, and May were significantly worse than offense compared to the same months last year. I didn't look at previous years, but just last year versus this year. This year, March, April, May were way down. If you look at June, up to 246 batting average, 721 OPS, 11.7.7. home run to fly ball rate. That was pretty close to last June. And then so far in July, halfway through

the month, 250 batting average, 738 OPS. The home run to fly ball ratio is up to 13.5%. So it has jumped quite a bit from June to July. But if you look at July of last year, it's actually pretty similar. So I think what's happening is it feels like offense is up so tremendously, just relative to this year because it was down so much earlier on to where we started in March, April, and May to where we are now in July, it's like night and day in terms of home run to fly ball rate, whereas it doesn't usually jump that much.

So similar this July to last July, but just relative, it's up much more this July compared to earlier in the season, if that makes sense. Well, yes, it makes sense. But let's also compare it to 2022, because that's the comparison we've been running this whole time. You know what the home run to fly ball rate was in July? Because remember the first couple months this year, it was even, I'm sorry, I'm saying the wrong words.

You know, the first couple months this year were pacing even behind 2022, which was the worst year for offense in any of our recent memory, 2022. And it was pacing even worse than that. First two months. What is it in July now this year? 13.5%. Home run to flyball rate, 13.5%. In July 2022, it was only 11.5%.

That's a huge difference. Yeah. So suddenly, and all of a sudden, it's not really pacing behind 2022. Overall, if you don't do the month by month thing, you just do the season long numbers. 2024 now is basically in line with 2022. So is it going to surge ahead of 2022 as the summer continues? I think that's a possibility.

Let me look at what August was, 2022, 11.0 home run to fly ball rate, still very different than what we're seeing now here this July. And so I don't know exactly what to make of that. Remember a talking point for us two years ago during that awful 2022 season was that. that, okay, they're storing the ball in humidors in all 30 stadiums now at the same temperature and humidity level, even though that's going to interact differently, different times of year and different places relative to the humidity of the air that they're playing in. That ball stored at that consistent level is going to react differently in different places and different times of year. And when it heats up, maybe we're going to see more extreme fluctuate.

from the cold months to the warm months and how the ball performs. And we're seeing that extreme play out this year. I don't know why it skipped a year. I can't account for that. Why that didn't happen in 2023. It happened to some extent in 2022. It seems like it's happening to an even greater extent in 2024.

If we could just trust that that was the new reality, okay, we could develop a plan of attack based on that. But then what happened in 2023? I don't know. I mean, let's just address the elephant in the room. The baseballs. Yeah. Like this is something that we've talked a ton about,

but hasn't really been as much of a discussion this season. I don't know if just people have looked into it and they haven't found anything. But the usual suspects who investigate these things, I haven't seen anything. Like Meredith Willis at baseball astrophysics. has been probably at the forefront of this kind of research in terms of testing the actual balls. And one thing to note is that Major League Baseball sends a new shipment of balls to every team every month of the season. And so the balls tend to fluctuate over the course of the year based on production changes that are within the established norms of blah, blah, blah,

everything that Major League Baseball says when they're asked about the juice balls. It's possible that there's just something different about the production of the baseballs that were used in July. I haven't seen. I'm looking at Dr. Meredith Willis's Twitter page right now and I don't see anything. Maybe we can get the home run ball guy, the guy who catches all the foul balls and home runs. Maybe he can send some to her on a regular basis. He can make a positive contribution to this and we can find out, find some answers. I haven't, I haven't seen any analysis of this, any good data to say one way or the other.

But given what we've seen over the past couple of years, Anytime we see these kind of wild swings, my prior is something happened with the baseball. Yeah. No, I mean, that's, that is the variable underlying all of this, right? Yeah, that's the known unknown. The acceptable range, the balls are all hand stitch. The acceptable range is too wide in terms of how they perform in games.

and until they change something there in that manufacturing process, I don't know how we get the consistency we're looking for. But the thing for me is just like, it would make sense that there was inconsistency within the batches, but the batches should be roughly the same amount of inconsistent every time. Yeah, I just don't know how they're bundling up the batches. You know, that's the thing. Like, do they take, you know, Johnny's Baxter?

batch over here and that becomes the July batch, well, you know, Frank's batch, not you Frank, but a different Franks batch over here becomes the August batch and okay, maybe that would make sense why it plays differently from month to month. I don't know. Is it the same

mixture of people putting together these balls every month? That would be more suspicious. It could be like, I don't know, weather, I think the factories are in Central America somewhere. Maybe the weather is different. I don't know. I have no. Like, it's just, I wish that we could just say that there's something,

I wish we could say that it wasn't baseball putting their finger on the scale one way or the other. You know, like that. And I just, I don't feel confident that we can say that. So it could be that, oh, no, offense is down. Hit the offense go up button, you know, like that's, that's my, always my concern here. I tend to go with the never attempt to explain by malevolence what can be explained through incompetence, whatever that quote is,

but it just, I don't know if they've earned the benefit of the doubt on that one. Is it Occam's Razor or Handlin's Razor? It's one of the Razors. Yeah, I think it's Hanlon's Razor maybe. Both of the Razors, I think, are in play here. Yeah, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Okay, yeah, that's the one.

So, I've had a good point, but now I don't remember what it was. That's what happens when you're getting older. Yeah, sorry. Hopefully, I think of it before we sign off here because I don't know what it was. It's ultimately, like, it's hard to draw firm conclusions because we're dealing with incomplete data. Oh, okay. All right, here we go. So the point you were making, I know, and I appreciate it.

So the point you were making about you, you hope it's not MLB putting their thumb on the scale and, oh, offense is down, we need to have juicier baseballs. To a certain degree, I want them doing that. I want them to find the happy medium and then stick with the happy medium. Yeah, sure. So I kind of hope they are doing that if it's not just, you know, if they're not just going to continue to vacillate like this.

I want them to tighten the acceptable range, to find what the true acceptable range should be. and then to stick within that range. And so maybe they are doing that. I hope it's to the right end. I can't imagine it's in their interest to have this constant anxiety within the media and the baseball fan world over the state of the baseballs.

I can't imagine that's in baseball's interest. Gambling is. Everything has to be above board. So I don't think they're actively changing things in that way because that would be a huge scandal. But it just, I wish I could, I wish I could believe that 100%. And either way, for the purposes of this discussion, I think we're constantly, everything we're dealing with is incomplete and small sample sizes.

And so my hope is that people smarter than me who have a background in physics and can really look into this start to produce some research that can give me something to grab onto. because right now it does sort of feel like I'm just grasping at straws and or air in these discussions. It makes so much of a difference the way we set up our fantasy teams and the strategies we take both preseason and in season. I mean, I was making the case just yesterday for Aaron Judge's the best hitter the rest of the season because of the way the ball is playing. he's going to be far and away the best power hitter. But if the ball isn't playing the same way, that's not necessarily true. And that's just a very small top of the rankings example.

But obviously, the effects for our game, for the fantasy game, are far reaching. And I wonder if the biggest takeaway with all of this, whether it's attributed to the way the balls are manufactured, or weather, humidity, whatever it might be, is that things kind of even out, right? Like, if offense gets off to the super slow start, again, whatever it's attributed to, you know that offense is going to go up at some point throughout the season.

And that's typically what we should expect, right? The summer months, like, okay, the ball flies out a little bit more. We don't usually see extremes this big, like the difference in home run and fly ball rate from April and May to where it is now. I mean, that's just like a huge, huge difference. Yeah, a three percentage point jump in the middle of the season from April to July is.

wild. But I think the biggest takeaway is, okay, if by season's end, we can look at it and say, hey, things aren't really that far off from where they were last year or the year before. You understand what I'm saying? Like, we can kind of bet on by the end of season, things are got in rotissary leagues. Yeah, I mean, look, that's the tough thing is like baseball's hard enough to predict as is. Yeah. Let alone when we have these gigantic swings from one month to the next, one year to the next. I will say, you know,

we refer to it as the steroid era. I'm, this whole thing has totally, red-pilled on me to the point where the 90s and early 2000s should be the juiced baller. I am firmly convinced

that that's what was happening. 1987? Where did that home run spike come from? Like throughout the history of the game, there have been, uh, ebbs and flows in terms of, okay, offense is better now,

pitching is better now. And there have been various reasons applied for various explanations applied. But now we have the technology to measure this stuff and the insight to measure this stuff and know to look at this stuff with the way the ball is structured and have learned how the tiniest little changes in seam height can make such a big difference in how far the ball travels,

imperceptible to the bare hand. but with the right ability to measure it, we see this as a big impact. And so if I have to imagine in decades past, there was even less oversight on the ball, less sophistication in terms of how it was measured. Of course, it was hand-stitched back then too. And so, yeah, definitely,

it definitely changes my perspective on all of baseball history, learning what we've learned about the ball the past few years. And lastly, what can this mean for fantasy moving forward at least this season? I mean, my thought is, if offense remains up this much throughout the summer months, there will be regression all around for both hitters and for pitchers. So I did look into some hitters who could see their home run to fly ball rate jump from this point forward, just compared to what they've done in years past. And some names that I found, Corbyn Carroll, Bobauchette, Ozzy Albies,

Nolan Aeronado, Glaber Torres, Austin Riley. Matt Olson. I think that list makes sense. I think the first five names make a lot of sense. Because I think the guys who are most likely to be impacted are guys who hit wall scrapers. You know, like when Matt Olson's hot, I don't think it matters what the baseball looks like. He's going to hit him 40 rows deep. Right.

Aronado, like even when he's good, he's hitting 380 foot home runs to left field. and very rarely much longer than that. And so I think that's the bigger thing with this crew is you think of guys without huge max power, but consistent pull swings, which, you know, Beshet, Albi's Arnado certainly applies to, and I think Carolyn Torres to a lesser extent. Some pitchers who could see their home rate jump up

doesn't necessarily mean it will happen, but these are just some guys that have maintained a pretty low home run rate or home run to fly ball rate so far this season. Ronaldo Lopez, Chris Bassett, Seth Lugo, Luis Heel, Hunter Green, Mitch Keller, and of course, two of our favorites, Tyler Anderson and Andrew Abbott. Oh, yeah. I mean, we've been talking all season about what if it normalizes. We think it probably will normalize in the summer.

It's gone beyond normalization, at least through half of July. And yeah, those are a lot of the pictures we've identified who are going to get throttle. Did you mention Andrew Appet in there? Oh, I sure did. Javier Assad. He's already kind of come back down to Earth a bit, but even more. Yeah, it's

like I don't know that the July rate is going to hold the rest of seasons, so I don't want to swing too far the other way. I just want to kind of keep a healthy median take on the whole thing. And I've been careful not to bury Bobauchette in my rankings or Xander Bogarts or any of these others.

I think Nolan Aeronaut is the one I've been most skeptical of because he also has age working against him. But, you know, I don't think he should be dropped anywhere. And I think that remains true. All right. Some fun discussions. We are going to wrap there for Scott and Chris. I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning into fantasy baseball today.

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