Fantasy Baseball Today - ATC Projections vs. Scott White's Rankings! Plus Analyzing Risk w/ Ariel Cohen (2/4 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Ariel Cohen joins the show (1:12)! ... What do you need to know about projections (4:00)? ... What are ATC projections (5:00)? ... How can you measure risk and volatility within projections (9:00)? ... Let's compare the ATC projections to Scott's rankings, starting with Justin Verlander (16:45)! ... Why is ATC down on Julio Urias (22:12)? ... Is Max Fried being undervalued (32:19)? ... What did Sean Manaea do differently in 2021 (37:52)? ... How much does Ryan Mountcastle lose with the new Camden Yards dimensions (42:52)? ... Whit Merrifield is an iron man (46:40)! ... Why is Scott so low on Tim Anderson (53:15)? ... Is Josh Bell undervalued (58:40)?  '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

Happy Kokomo Friday and welcome in to fantasy baseball today on Friday, February 4th. I am Frank Stample, joined by Scott White. Scotty, our first Kokomo Friday of the year. How's it going, bud? Hmm. I didn't know that. But yeah, now that was nice. That was nice hearing that song again.

It's always nice. It's always great to get a podcast started with Kokomo. A little spoiler alert, but we could have a new rendition of Kokomo coming soon. I'm sure we'll mix in the old. one as well, but some updated lyrics, maybe, uh, it's about time. Some frank, some frank involvement in there. Let's, uh, I'm excited. I'm excited to see how it turns out. We are not alone joining us today on the podcast, the mastermind behind the ATC projections, which you can find on CBS Sportsline as well as Fangraphs. Writer over at Fangraphs and Rodo Baller. It is my good buddy, Ariel Cohn. What's

going on, Ariel? Hey, I'm doing great. Nice to be on the show on a Kokomo Friday. I love it. We had Groundhog Day 2-2-2-2. Can't beat that, huh? Cannot beat that. It's been a fun week. Interesting dates. First, Kokemo. Things are ramping up. Even though there's no baseball season as of now, we'll see what happens. It's a complete mess right now. I don't want to talk about it. It's only going to upset me. But regardless, the show goes on. We are still prepping for fantasy baseball. There will be a season. We just don't know when it's going to start. Make sure you follow Ariel on Twitter at ATCNY.

And we were talking beforehand. I never realized, Ariel, that I just assumed that the projections were named ATC after your initials, but it actually stands for average total cost. So there you go. You learn something new every day. Yeah. Well, it stands for both. My initials are ATC.

But yeah, I took an economics term. And you got that picture here in the background here with the normal distribution. And I don't know, it sounded geeky enough, so I stuck with it. What's your middle name? I was just going to ask that. Is it Siberia? It's a transliterated Hebrew name, Zvi. It means deer.

so whatever. T sounds like a proper Tom, terrific. Sounds like a great name. All right. Arielle. We're going to steal your identity now. RELT. Cohen. All right. So today on the podcast, we're going to identify risk in projections. We'll talk more about that. And then later on, we'll do the ATC projections versus Scott White's rankings. And I love doing this. We did it last year as well. Scott hates projections. So we're going to have a lot of fun with this. and, Scott, would you like to remind the people why you hate projections?

I don't, gosh, I wasn't prepared to answer this. I'm sorry, bud. I don't like the idea of specifically building rankings off projections, drafting off projections, because you're reducing a player's range of outcomes, which in the case of some players can be very wide

and you're reducing it down to a single stat line that's, you know, maybe it's the most likely possibility, but there's only going to be one possibility. So I, you know, I don't see a lot of practicality to them, but, you know, Ariel's had a lot of success with them. So I'm not trying to undermine the success here. Yeah, he sure has. The most accurate projections two years in a row,

according to fantasy pros. Ariel, what would your retort be to that? When someone's looking at projections and trying to figure out how to use them for fantasy baseball purposes, correct me if I'm wrong, but the projections are a medium, medium projection, so that's like a 50th percentile.

And obviously, within that 50th percentile, there are ranges of outcomes. Yeah. Well, first of all, if you're doing a ranking or if you're giving analysis on players, you're really doing your own projection yourself, right? You might not agree with how it came up and we're taking a three-year weighted average

and we're using some velocity to project performance. You might not agree with how that's done, but if you're saying that I rank this guy higher than this, you're projecting some kind of production off of one guy versus the other. So, you know, I kind of think it's just a different process on your end, more human eye than automated. It's a nebulous projection as opposed to a very specific singular projection. Yeah.

And the good thing about ATC, though, it's not exactly a singular projection because ATC looks at a bunch of other projections who all have different ideas. Some of them are manual projections where people come and they type in what they think and, you know, do stuff in a ranking sort of way. Some are the bulk of it actually are automated projections underlying. And it gets a nice average based on the wisdom of the crowds, based on a lot of different opinions. And not only do you get the average of ATC, but my new risk metric surrounding them

give you a flavor for how different the projections are from one another. So I kind of like ATC as a middle ground of taking the automated stuff, but taking the middle, taking the manual stuff and giving you a best of both worlds. Yeah. And this is really the, you know, other years I've, I dove into the projections. I didn't really, I haven't really learned about how projections are made like the nitty gritty but I've learned more about it this off season and people are literally projecting playing time and then within the playing time they're projecting the skill stats per plate appearance so you know basically whatever Mike Trout I'm going to completely butcher this but obviously he's going to be ranked above everyone else like however many home runs per

plate appearance and they input all of those for each and then it spits out a number based on what that skill is and over the course of however many played appearances are projected for said player. So I've been trying to learn more about it because I feel like I should. I host a fantasy baseball podcast. But Ariel, you spoke a little bit about it. Explain more about the ATC projections, maybe what you're pulling from where. Obviously, you mentioned that this is an aggregate of different projections. And we have all these different projection systems over on Fangraphs. When you look at a player page, you could see ATC, you could see the bat, the bad X. You could see steamer projections. You could see Zips projections. All these different projections, which ones are you using

and maybe which ones are weighted in different directions more than others? Well, I'm actually not allowed to say exactly what projections are in ATC. I can tell you all the fan graph stuff are in ATC, plus a bunch of other free ones you might get over the Internet. And, yeah, the nice, see, most people who do aggregation just take a straight average and say, all right, I'll take four sources and we'll just add them up and divide by four, and that's the projection. But ATC is smarter than that because some projections do a much better job

projecting homers and some projections do a much better job projecting stolen bases or pitch or strike at. Why in the world would I want to use the same weight even for everyone if I know historically one has performed better? So what I do during the off season is I review what projections over the last couple of years have performed better than than the other in a certain statistic and then I weight them. You might have one projection having a 10% weight in homers and 20% in stolen bases and 0.2% in strikeouts and you can have something very differently. So that's the crux of what ATC does in aggregating them and it's wisdom of the crowds, right? It's going to be in the middle of somewhere.

And the nice thing about this year that I alluded to with the projection volatility is you can get a flavor for how much the projections agree with one another. You know, for some players, you know, you can have, let's say, Bryce Harper projected for 32, 33, 34, 35. very well, projections are the same, and there's going to be an average. And I know that if the projection is very close to one another, it's a pretty super safe projection. Whereas there's some projections that are just all over the place for a certain player. 15 homers, 30 stolen bases. 30 homers, 15 stolen bases. And projections don't agree.

It adds to the risk element. And this year, ATC is able to quantify it because I see what the underlying projections are. and I can see what the spread is. So, yeah, it's one nice thing about ATC. You get flavor, not just a median. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit more about those volatility metrics that you mentioned. Ariel wrote a great article, which is live over on rotopolar.com.

You can go seek that out where he really breaks it all down. So I recommend it. I read it earlier on Thursday, and it was a great read. But you specifically talk about interprojection standard deviation. Ariel, like this is, you know, if you're nervous hearing all of these, turns. Don't worry. We're going to break it down. Interprojection standard deviation and then inter projection skewness. What does this all mean? Break it down in layman's terms for me, REO. Yeah. So, you know, standard deviation is talking about how different, I mentioned how

different projections are. If the projection standard deviation is high, it means projections do not agree. And if it's low, it means projections do agree. And my research, the important thing is my research has shown that for the same dollar value of a player, the player who is having projections all over the place is actually more risky and will perform less than their projected dollar amount. Whereas if you're very low in risk, on the whole, you'll perform a little bit better than average. Skewness is a little bit different. It's sort of a, it's a shape, metric. So distribution is when you have things all over the place, but sometimes you have have it spread evenly all over the place, like five projections up, five projections down.

And sometimes it's like eight projections up, two projections down, or the reverse. Positive skew is when you have most of the projections down, but there's two projections that are very far up that are pushing the average, but the bulk of the data is low. So positive skew is actually bad. Negative skew is better where most of the projections are up, and it's just one stinky projection down that doesn't like a player, you want to ignore that a little bit. And so if you see a negatively skewed projection, you know that it's going to be better that the player is going to make more than the projected amount.

So those are two things to help us with the risk. Now, obviously, a $25 player is going to be better than a $15 player. But if you have $2.25 players, you might want to actually take the less risky ones. Or I can say this as follows. If you take a very risky player early on, maybe take a very risky player early on, maybe take a less risky player later on. And this helped you paint the picture as to some of the parameter risk of the player.

For example, Jacob de Grom is projected as the highest ranking pitcher according to ATC projections. However, the interstandard deviation is 7.38. And just looking at the other starting pitchers up at the top, that's one of the highest. That's the one of the highest.

And that makes sense because obviously there is a little bit more risk, not a little bit, quite a bit of risk involved with Jacob de Grom right now. Scott, how do you typically handle risk, obviously, when drafting? I feel like, you know, our normal takeaway would be, you know, avoid risk early on and then maybe take more risks the deeper we go into the draft. But how do you do it when inside of a draft, when actually drafting? I mean, that's the most basic premise.

You just set it is, you know, there's, it's more important. to make the early round picks stick to make sure they count? Is there a chance that this riskier guy that you're passing up could be better? Well, sure it is, but missing out on that isn't going to cost you the league in all likelihood. Bombing with your first round pick very likely will cost you the league. And, you know, that second round pick, third round pick, fourth round pick, and it depends on the size of the league. the format and everything when it does become worth

taking a shot at upside gambling a little bit with the pick but basically toward the end of the draft the middle to late rounds let's say I kind of want there to be fair amount of risk with every pick because I want to hit big and hope

to get early round production from those guys and if you're playing it's safe you're not going to you're settling for mediocrity yeah the old fantasy adage says you can't win your draft in the first round, but you could certainly lose your draft in the first round. Go ahead, Ariel. Yeah, I'm going to say that, you know, I agree with you. And so what I said earlier about risk being bad, that too early on, and I agree

with you that riskier is better later on. So for earlier rounds, I might take my guys who are colored in green for risk, but later on, I might actually look for the riskier ones and say, you know what, I'll take a more risky one than a safe one because that player could potentially give me upside. And so ATC projections can help with that. If you look at a high amount, yeah, later on, that sounds like actually a better pick for me. And I do like that your system accounts for all these different variables. It's not just lining up players by medium projection and, okay, this is the order you should draft

them because that's what I feel like projections are often reduced to. And I think it's limiting. But with your color coding and all those different variables that I don't remember the names of, it definitely makes it a much more useful and practical tool, I think. Yep. So when sorting through the ATC projections over on Fangraphs,

you'll see on the right side, inter-SD, inter-SK. Again, that is the inter-standard deviation and the inter-projection skewness. The lower the inter-SD, the better. in terms of early round players. You know, you don't want that number to be high when drafting early, you know,

when drafting players early in your draft. Six of the top 12 hitters I noticed in interstandard deviation are prospects, which makes sense because we don't really know how to project prospects. Maybe as we get closer to the season, we'll see who's playing in spring training, you know, who has more of a chance

of breaking camp with the team, so on and so forth. So obviously those are harder players to project. And then three of the top six highest pitchers in inter-standard deviation are Justin Verlander, who we'll talk about a little bit later on, Shane Bieber and Jacob de Grom. And it makes a ton of sense, because those are all pitchers that come with inherent risk.

Obviously, Verlander, 39 years old, coming back from Tommy John's surgery. Shane Bieber dealt with a shoulder injury for much of last season, returned. The velocity was down. Jacob de Grom, we talked about him quite a bit as well. As you mentioned, Ariel, the negative inter-projection skewness

is better in terms of risk here. pitcher projections being pulled to the downside. John Gray, who I noticed, Chris Sale, and Max Scherzer hitter projections being pulled toward that downside. Andrew McCutcheon, Gavin Lux, Brian Hayes, Luke Voight, Cody Bellinger. Bellinger is an interesting one too, because it's like, he's probably one of the hardest players to project right now, right? Just based on last season, former MVP, we don't really know what's going on with him.

So does that make sense? The pitchers and the hitters that I brought up in terms of the negative inter-projection skewness, does that make sense? Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, it's nice when what you think is going to happen with the metrics, turn out actually to happen with the metrics, and that sort of validates it for you. But yeah, no, I agree.

I mean, you mentioned like Chris Sale. Chris Sale has upside. I mean, he's got that Sawyong type thing. And he could be a league winner this year. I really think. I mean, if he's, it's health. Health is the thing and cutting down the walks that he, that he came back with last year.

He could be a nice thing. It's nice to see that ATC is showing that potential for upside. All right. Well, let's jump into some of these ATC projections versus Scott's rankings and find the biggest differences. I have four pitchers here and four hitters that we're going to look at. And let's start with the aforementioned Justin Verlander. Currently projected as the SP12 by ATC projections,

SP30 in terms of rankings for Scotty. and he will be 17 months removed from Tommy John surgery by March. That's assuming that we have spring training in March. And like Cody Bellinger, I just have to imagine projecting Justin Verlander right now is probably one of the hardest things to do for fantasy baseball purposes. He turns 39 years old on February 20th,

and projection systems have him for between 141 and 185 innings. So again, we're seeing that projection kind of all over the place here. Ariel, you personally, how are you handling Justin Verlander who has an ADP right around 100 so you could wind up with him as your SP2 maybe sometimes as your SP3? Yeah, well, first of all, my latest ATC update, which will be over the weekend, has taken him down. He's not no longer number 12. He's number 20. Still much higher than Scott.

I don't agree with it. It's one of the cases where I'm seeing what the projections are doing. And how can Verlander be projected for more endings than Jacob de Grum? The dude is 39. He's coming back. Hasn't pitched in a year. How can projections put him for a 1.07 whip? I just can't see the guarantee of that happening.

He's actually got one of the highest interprojectional standard deviation as there is. I mean, definitely the highest in the first 20 rounds. He is a hard pass on me. I'd rather take the degrum risk than the Verlander risk. Who knows? I mean, you know, guys coming back from Tommy John, if they're like 24, 25, Okay, they'll get back to speed in 18 months. He's 39 years old.

How many pitchers have come back at 39 period, less from Tommy John's surgery? I don't believe projections at all. And I'm a projections guy, so there you go. Yeah, this is where it's kind of tough with projections because Justin Verlander, we know how great he is when he's been on the mound, right? The last time we saw him over a full season was 2019. He finishes the number one overall player. That's how amazing he was that season.

There's no doubt about it. Scott, Justin Verlander, officially signed a one-year, $25 million deal this offseason to return to the Astros with a conditional option where if he reaches 130 innings this season, he gets an additional year at $25 million the following year for the Houston Astros. So obviously, you don't have a problem taking him. We just did a mock draft the other day, headshead categories. You wound up with him as your SP2, I believe, in the eighth round. But I mean, he's a pretty hard player to project, admittedly. Yeah, and I'm more of an optimist, even though my rankings have him 10 spots behind Ariel's and he sounds more pessimistic. I kind of would like to rank Verlander around 20th. I just, you know, I bake into my rankings ADP to a certain degree, perception, because I treat my rankings literally as,

okay, somebody's going to open up my rankings during a draft and draft off of them. And I don't want to compel somebody to take Verlander several rounds earlier than they'll need to. But I actually think Verlander's age works to his advantage because he doesn't have to map out the rest of his career coming back from entry. He can just let it go.

He's got a year or two left. He's had plenty of time to recover, as much time as anybody ever needs to come back from Tommy John surgery. And the last we saw him, he was winning 21 games, striking out 300 batters still. I mean, he was best in baseball, a best in baseball kind of pitcher. Like he's been for much of his career. You know, some of the guys who you've seen take on big volume coming back from Tommy John surgery, you know, just go on top of mind. I think of like Chris Carpenter. I think of like Tim Hudson, guys who are all so old.

I don't know that he's going to be able to get to 200 innings or even 180, but I think he has a chance. I think he has a chance to set the record for most innings from a pitcher coming back from Tommy John's surgery just because of the stage of this career. And performance-wise, I mean, you know, this is always more often than not, pitchers get back to being who they were. So, yeah, I like getting him more as my number three than number three. than number two that I drafted him as in that mock draft you refer to Frank.

But he's somebody I hope to get, I go into draft, I go into every draft hoping that I'll get Justin Verlander. Yeah. And he's, look, if he goes 170, 180 innings, admittedly that, that's, it's kind of hard to expect that. But if he does, that means he's probably pitching pretty well, because that means the Astros are probably pushing him to get that far. So, yeah, I think Verlander right now, one of the biggest risk.

reward propositions in fantasy baseball, going in a similar range as one, Cody Bellinger. And I think, look, if you're going to take a risk at that point in the draft, that's probably where you want to do it, right? Around Pick 100, where this guy can literally be a league winner for you or, you know, you might be dropping him a month or two into the season. So he's just one of those risk reward players. Julio Reyes is another one here where actually Scott is higher on than the projections. SP10 for Scott in the ranks, SP20 over at the ATC.

projections there. And it was a fantastic season for Julio Reyes last year. He finished 31st overall in Roto, the SP5 in that format, the SP10 in heads head points per game. Obviously, he was helped out by winning as many games as he did. He led baseball last season in terms of wins. But Ariel, I can understand why the projections might be a little weary of someone like Julio Reus or even his teammate Walker Bueller because as good as he was, the underlying numbers don't necessarily match up with what Julio Reyes put out on the surface. So what do you think about where he's going right now, which is typically as a top 10, top 12 starting pitcher? Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned Walker Bueller because you see the same phenomenon. Like for Jureurias, his career ERA 3.09, FIPP 332. His

ex-fip is 4.09. Sierra is also over 4. So he's outperformed his metrics if you look at just those base components, strikeouts, walks, and homers, right? And the same is true. Walker Bueller. Maybe it's a Dodgers thing. Maybe it's because they pitch in L.A. Maybe. That's one possibility. Projections, as just you said, projections like to

regress. One of the biggest components elements of a projection is they say, if a guy has overperformed, he'll come back to reality. He'll come back to what he should be if you look at his components. Every projection system has different components they look at, but that's the basic tenet.

So I can understand how projections do that and how they've they've actually put him down. I look at a couple of elements myself as the human analyst. You know, his swinging strike rate is only about 11%. That's good. That's not really great. And that's certainly not a top 10 pitcher in baseball. I do think there's a little bit of health risk. And, you know, he did gain a little bit in his strikeout and walk rate last year. Question is, was that just a little blip of luck? Was that something he can sustain? I don't know, but I think that's going to be too much for me to take as a top 10 pitcher. So I kind of agree with the projections on this one for Urius. All right. Yeah, I was going to quickly pull up

the league average swinging strike rate because I would imagine it's probably around 11%. Maybe it's a little bit lower than that. It is, yeah, 11.3% last year. So he's lower than league average. and you want to draft him as a top 10 pitcher. I kind of find it hard to do that. That's why. Scott, what do you think, man?

We're buying Julio Reyes really at the top here. You know, he broke out last year and the Dodgers really let him go. I mean, that was the biggest difference. He went six plus in 15 of 32 starts last year. He only went six plus innings 10 times in 38 starts from 2016 to 2020. So they took the kids gloves off.

And he was just better. I mean, he was more efficient. The walks came way down. He did a great job limiting hard. contact. He had a change in pitch mix where he threw his curveball career high, 34% of the time. So there are things there. I mean, there's reasons that you could look at as to why he broke out. But now the question is, do we want to buy Julio Rias coming off the best season of his career? Yeah, I hear what

Ariel's saying. And, you know, the main things I look at when evaluating a pitcher, it's true. O'Reas doesn't measure up. But I think he's an exception because one thing that he has consistently shown the ability to do. And if it wasn't so consistent, I wouldn't buy it, is limiting hard contact. He suppresses hard contact year after year. You mentioned what the FIPP XFIPC, all of that looks like. The one you didn't mention is XERA, because XERA, which is mostly a measurement of quality of contact, it actually backs up his performance for the most part.

It was a little, it was 351 this past year versus the 291. 36 ERA, but the previous two years of 298 XERA, a 295 XERA for Aureas. And all three of those years, he's been in the top 10% in hard hit rate, meaning a low hard hit rate as a pitcher. So I just think, you know, that's not a skill. I usually put a lot of stock in a year at a time. But when there's that kind of track record, I'm inclined to believe it. And then, of course, having the Dodgers is the supporting cast there.

He was the only 20-game winner in the majors last year. That kind of moves him ahead of some of the others I might consider in that top-10 range. Sandy Alcantra, who's, of course, on the other end of the spectrum in terms of supporting cast or like Lucas Gilito or Aeronola. Yeah, I prefer Aureas. And I'm pretty sure that the projections don't love Sandy Alcantzra either. They have them 2, 4, 6, 8. 10, 12, 14, 15, SP 15.

All right, so it's not awful when it comes to Sandy. But I could see why. I mean, again, they're waiting the past three seasons for Sandy, and he really just broke out last year. He's been good the past couple seasons, but last year was where he really took the big step. Ariel, just putting a bow here on Julio Reyes, I think it's fair to say that projections struggle with a pitcher like this,

where he relies on limiting hard contact as much as he can, and that's maybe why he can outperform the underlying ERA indicators, X-FIP, Sierra, whatever you want to look at, is it fair to say that the projections kind of struggle with a pitcher like this? Yeah, we saw that all the years with, like, Kyle Hendricks, who control pitcher not a lot of strikeouts, but he does limit hard contact. Yeah, but it is a blind spot of projections.

On the whole, players do tend to regress. So the question is, how much do you buy regression? How much do you buy of? he can sustain the going above and beyond his components. I'm going to say that it's half and half, or even if it's not half and half, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to buy him in the top 10, right?

Like, if you want to tell me that he's a top 15, top 20, okay, but I'm not spending a third round pick on him. The other thing is, especially homers, he has a career 8% Homer to Fly Ball ratio. I kind of think that's fluky. I don't think he can control that. Fly balls go up. We've seen that pitchers have hard time controlling whether it goes over or not.

And he is not a full fly ball pitcher, but he's got a fly ball rate over 40. So I can see maybe it's not going to affect his whip, but I can see a little bit more to give in the ERA. Like I don't think he can go sub three for an extended period of time, even if he does control a lot of the stuff better than others. Do you suspect, because I certainly do, that the introduction of the new baseball last year, which wasn't even wholesale, it turns out, it was kind of intermittent the use of the new balls. But we saw the way the ball carries, the way fly balls behave. We saw it change. So we're not seeing as many of those pop-up home runs that a ball goes in the air.

It has a chance of being a home run pretty much always, right? I'm hopeful that's not the case anymore. that's not the case anymore, then it does seem likely that certain pitchers would be able to control how often a fly ball is a home run. Yeah, I agree with that, actually. And that is an argument for Urius, that the ball did affect him. I think that is a very good theory. And if the ball continues, you know, there you go.

I was listening to the podcast with Enosaris and DVR rates and barrels. And we were talking about like the Yankees. It seems like the Yankees actually got more than their fair share of the new less homery, bouncy balls last year. I'm sour on a guy like DJ Lemayhu, who maybe he was a product of that ball in 2019, and last year he wasn't, maybe last year he was more of the truth to him.

And if the ball continues, maybe sour on him. So that is a point in favor of Urius. If the ball continues, that will help him. Yeah, and that's a really good point. And we spoke about DJ Lemayhew earlier in the week. Scott wrote this article basically breaking down the correlation between exit velocity and home runs and how some of those hitters

who recently were power hitters, maybe it's not so real based on this new ball that they're using in Major League Baseball. Let's take a quick break. But first, if you haven't already, download and follow fantasy baseball today in five, wherever you listen to this podcast.

It's our five-minute podcast where we take the biggest discussion topics from this podcast, and we talk about them in just about five minutes. So, you know, there might be days where you can't catch the full-length podcast. You might just need something shorter. Download and follow FBT and 5,

wherever you listen to this podcast. When we return, we're going to jump into Max Freed here on Fantasy Baseball today. All right, so let's talk about Max Fried. And Scott, I thought, just in general, on this podcast, we like Max Fried. You know, we have him ranked inside the top 20. Well, ATC likes him a little bit more.

SP11, as of now, projected for ATC, SP20 for Scott. I moved him recently just inside my top 20. I think he's 18 or 19. he's right in that range. 304 ERA last year, 109 whip, just under a strikeout per inning.

All of the underlying numbers basically line up with what Max Fried and maybe a little bit of regression coming for him. But yeah, he was great. I mean, you want to talk about another pitcher,

another left-handed pitcher who did a great job limiting hard contact and going deep into his starts. Six plus in each of his final 12 starts last year for Max Fried. Seven plus in five of those. He was absolutely fantastic. Scott.

We'll start with you this time. I guess you need to defend why you have Max Fried so low compared to the ATC projections who have met SP11. Well, he has yet to have a 180 inning season. So that's kind of the minimum standard for ranking a pitcher like an ace to me. I have to be able to see that you can do that. And because Freed missed some time early last year with an injury, he didn't get that. He got to 165 and two-thirds. So that's part of it.

Less than a strikeout per inning for the second straight season. We say Areas is kind of underwhelming with the strikeouts, freed even more so. I do think because he's such a good ground ball pitcher, throws a lot of strikes, I do think he's legitimately an ERA standout. You throw out his three starts before the aisle stint last year. His ERA for the year drops below 250, again, for the second straight year. But it's interesting that the projections view him so differently from Arreus. considering like Arias,

freed outperforms his, his FIPP, his ex-FIP, consistently by a pretty significant margin. Yeah, it is. Like, they are very similar players. I was, you know, just kind of realizing that myself, is that they both made huge gains in terms of control last year. Obviously, freed a much better ground ball pitcher, so maybe that kind of factors into it.

Because, as Ariel mentioned, Julio Reyes gives up a good amount of flybouts. Over 40%. I mean, that's a lot for a pitcher here. So, Ariel, what are you thinking? What's the difference here? Why does ATC maybe value a pitcher like Max Fried more than it does Julio Arias? I think you got it.

I think that the ground ball rate is a big thing. And they have a very large ground ball rate difference. Freed is superior. I mean, we're talking 50 plus ground ball rate. Strikeout rate is not fantastic, but it's K per 9, right? It's 1K per 9. Cape Rending, I should say. But yeah, when you have the ability to strike out players and any other ball is not going in the air,

it's going to be in the infield. I mean, that's just going to limit your downside. I think Max Fried's downside is much higher than Urius's downside, right? Just a tick of more homers for Urius, the ERA just jumps up. Freed, a tick of more homers, I mean, doesn't do much because most of the balls are not going up in the air. So I think that's really the major thing as well. And, you know, he was lucky last year a little bit, but he wasn't that unlucky. I mean, most of his luck metrics are pretty standard here.

And the other thing I say, you mentioned the innings, you know, to me, that's not a knock on him. I think that getting 180 innings is kind of hard to do. There was only 20 major leaguers who had more than 180, and only 11 who had more than 18. last year. So the standard of health is no longer the 200 that we had. And I think the 180 doesn't bother me as much. He's kind of the anchor for the team now. I mean, he won a World Series. So no reason why they wouldn't push him full throttle. I think he's very low risk. And I kind of like Max Reed. Yeah, we know very well in this podcast that he won a World Series with the Atlanta Braves. It's been a great past six months for Scott between

the Atlanta Braves, and of course, the University of Georgia taking it home there for good old Scotty. Scott, who would you rather have? Julio Reyes at pick 30 in the third round, or Max Fried at pick 66, going in the sixth round of 12 team leagues? I haven't had an opportunity to draft either yet, so I can't lean on that for my answer.

Let me see comparatively where I have them ranked. Me, right? that quickly. All right, Julio Arias, I have 33rd, so a little behind his ADP. Freed I have 57, so a little ahead of his ADP. So I'm going to say Freed at his cost. And that's what my inclination was anyway. I would assume that's a pretty easy call for you, Ariel.

Yeah, I mean, I have freed ranked above Eurias, so for sure. I'll take three rounds left to get freed. YIPIA. All right, yeah. I mean, look, we hear a lot of people use this analysis, right? And I feel like sometimes it's a slippery slope. I fall for it as well. Why draft Julio Reyes in the third round

when you can get the same pitcher three rounds later in Max Fried? Most of the time I feel like you're probably not getting the same pitcher, but in this case, they might actually be pretty damn similar, Julio Reyes and Max Fried. So I think that's a good call there. Sean Minaya is the next one up here. SP 26, according to ATC projections, SP44 for Scott. And I'm basically smack dab in the middle,

SP 35 for me, and I actually wrote them up in my side. sleeper is 1.0. I like Sean Mania quite a bit. The surface numbers, not great overall last year. 391 ERA, a one-two-three whip, but the underlying metrics, 20.3% K-minus walk rate, 3.62 Sierra, both of those ranked 16th among qualified starting pitchers last year, better than Walker Buehler, better than Joe Muscoe, better than Max Freed, who we were just talking about. How did all this happen for Sean Minia? Big velocity jump. Can he maintain that year over year? I think that's probably the biggest question mark, but it's fastball and change up, jump two miles per hour, the curve ball up five miles per hour year over year from 2020 to 2021. Arielle, we'll start

with you. What do you like about Chalmanai? Yeah, I don't like him as much as my projections indicate, but I do like him quite a bit more than Scott does, I think. Yeah, it's really the strikeouts. I mean, he struck out 194 batters in less than 180 innings. The ERA under four. I kind of think that he was a little bit lucky. I mean, if you look at his Babbip, if you look at the difference between his ERA, Sierra FIP and all that, he was somewhat unlucky. Unlucky plus great strike at rate means for a good combination.

ATC shows him as SP26. I think I would take him a little bit lower than that. I don't want to grab him all the way up in the 10th round. But if he slips another two, three rounds, I'm fine with grabbing him as my SP3, high, four issue, you can say. All right. Yeah, we actually just did a 15-team Roe-Mockdra before we hopped on this podcast. And I wound up with Sean Mania as my SP3. I had Sandy Alcansara and Freddie Peralta as my SP-1 and SP2. And, you know, I think in a 15-team league, that's fine. I probably

want a little bit better of an SP3, but I like Mania. So it's fine there. Scott, I think the biggest thing that we have to answer, again, along with the velocity is can he maintain the strikeout gains, right? So 12.3% swinging strike rate for Mania, 9.7K per 9. Both of the biggest. of those were far and away a career high for him. Can he maintain that? That's the biggest question mark. But if he does, then you have potential steel on your hands. Maybe he can perform like a top 30, like a top 25 starting pitcher. And right now he's being drafted outside the top 40. Yeah. Anytime you see a pitcher who's been around a while, do something he's never done before, you know, we see the velocity tick up, we see the strikeouts go up. I really want to see him sustain it

for a full season. And he got hit pretty hard in the second half. His ERA was 492 in his 14th second half starts, which, you know, for a more established guy, that wouldn't mean much to me. But for somebody like Manaya who broke through with something more in the first half, I'd like to see him finish stronger than that.

I'm fine taking him, you know, in the Nathan of Almond. Aldi range, which is where I have him ranked. But I certainly don't want to make him any kind of priority for me on draft day. It's just, I don't think there's enough upside to justify that. I think what's so interesting about Manaya, which you mentioned is he's being devalued, right? So he's not being drafted like he broke out. He did technically, you know, based on the velocity and the strikeout gains, but he's not being drafted that way.

He still, I believe it's SP 46 in ADP right now. You mentioned the second half, 4.92 ERA. That comes with a 3.58 X-FIP and a 3.50 Sierra. So 10.3K per 9, under two walks per 9. He gave up a lot of hard contact. I mean, that's the biggest issue. And looking into his pitch mix, he throws way too many sinkers. Like 60% of the time, it's like, nah, it's got to go.

So we'll see what happened. Like where he's traded, I think maybe he goes to another team that could change up his pitch mix a little bit, rely maybe on the change-up on the breaking pitch a little bit more. And if he does that, then could be looking at a true breakout season for Sean Mania. But I'm cautiously optimistic on him. Yeah, but I think that with Sean Mania, I'm not counting on him when I'm drafting him where he's going in the ADP for a big breakout. Like, I think he's going to return enough of a marginal profit and give you the bank of strikeouts. Like, I'm okay with it. If I'm drafting him as an SP4 and he's giving me close to 200 strikeouts,

I'm okay with getting the couple dollar couple round bargain, even if he's not going to be a stud pitcher, right? I'm comfortable making little increments, and I think Minaya does that enough. Yeah, look at the ERA projections for all six that are over on fan graphs. He's between 3.65 and 3.75 ERA. It's not spectacular, but man, that's totally serviceable as your SP3 or SP4.

So I'm about it. I'm about Chalmaniah this upcoming season. Ryan Malthcastle, this is going to be a fun one, who ATC has as the outfielder 21 right now, and Scotty has as the outfielder 38. It was an awful April for Ryan Mountcastle last year, but from May 1st on, he had 266, 32 homers, 82 RBI, with an 853 OPS.

Plate discipline, not fantastic during that time, below an 8% walk rate, over 26% strikeout rate. And on top of all that, we now have the park dimensions changing in Camden where they're pushing back the left field walls quite a bit

Derek Cardi over on Twitter which if you're listening to this podcast you should follow Derek Hardy he does fantastic work he had this long thread breaking down just how much this means for right-handed power and he's pretty worried

so Scott any other reasons why you don't like Mountcastle and you haven't ranked this much lower than ATC so what was ATC Outfieler 21 And I'm 38th. Yeah, I'm totally comfortable being the low guy on Mount Castle. There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for him among fantasy analysts.

And even before those changes were announced to Camden Yards, the dimensions to Camden Yards, I didn't really understand it. He hit 33 home runs last year. He provided some power. There is no other skill here that I see for him to fall back on if he doesn't provide a big home run total. and he's not really equipped to hit that many home runs in the first place. Average exit velocity was 45th percentile. The plate discipline is horrible. He's in a bad lineup.

RBI runs aren't going to be there. They weren't last year, even with him hitting 33 home runs. And now, you know, suddenly Camden Yards is transforming into maybe the worst park. Like if you just do a park overlay Camden Yards, every other Major League Stadium, it looks like the worst place for a right-handed hitter. to hit the ball out to straightaway left in all of baseball. So you throw that on top of everything else. I'm not positive Mountcastle's going to hit 20 homers, to be honest.

So I feel like I could stand to move him down some, actually. All right. 20 homers. Can't get to 20 homers. Scott's going crazy here on Ryan Malkcastle. Ariel, what do you think about this projection for ATC? Do you like Ryan Moutcastle as much as the system does? Yeah, well, also, it's important to,

to note that with the projections, most of the projections do have the fact that the Orioles did take the wall back. Some of them don't. I had Dan Zaborski, who runs the Zips projection on my show last week, and he said he's not touching it. He doesn't want to put any park factors in that make Baltimore look like worse because

he doesn't know how it plays. So you do have to be a little mindful that ATC could be a little bit optimistic because of that. And currently, the, the bat projections that have not been updated with ATC yet for that. They will be over the weekend. So you'll see him lose a little bit of a home run. And he did go down a couple of spots in the ranking because of that.

But I can't see 20. I mean, to me, he's a 30 plus homer guy. And if you want to dig him for- What does he do that? Because like I was saying, even before those changes were announced, I'm like, this doesn't look like a power hitter. You know, 45th percentile exit velocity. That's like right in the range where we saw a lot of guys lose power last year.

His max EV is decent. His barrel rate is very decent. And he hits quite a bit of fly balls. Yeah. Yeah. So he's getting him in the air. And you know what? His contact rate is,

you say his plate discipline is bad, but his contact rate is not bad. He's actually been fairly decent. He's not like at 30%. In the miners, he was closer to 20 than 30. I see him as having a decent batting average. I mean, he had 255 last year.

I think he beats that by a little bit. Maybe he goes 260. I take off four home runs from his projection, so maybe he's not a 32 homer guy. Maybe he's a 28 homer guy, if you want to take into account the Baltimore thing. But, you know, I mean, he's a mid-round player. He's eligible at first in outfield.

You do not want to draft him as your first baseman. but as a middling outfielder, sure. I will say, though, I don't find myself getting him in draft because, as you said, there's not many skills. He doesn't steal. He's not in a fantastic lineup. I think there are better options available at the same time. But in an auction, your salary cap draft, if you call it, you could get a good couple of dollars off of him. Of course, maybe the market is not that in love with him.

I can see myself buying him in an auction as like a third outfielder who will get me the skills that I want, which is a little bit of power, a little bit of RBIs and an average that won't kill you. All right. Yeah, you mentioned that home run dropped from 32 to 28. That's exactly what the bat projections have dropped off there. So four home run difference for Ryan Mountcastle.

Scott, I think I could have been more on the Mountcastle bandwagon before this shift. Again, we don't know exactly how it's going to play out in Camden. It doesn't seem like it's going to be. good. But we would see guys in the past like Mark Trumbo and Mani Machado where they would have these huge home run outputs just based on putting the ball in the air. So if Mountcastle did that, we probably could have still seen 30 plus home runs. But now with this change, I'm a little bit more conservative myself when projecting forward for Ryan Malkas. I was skeptical before and now I'm just

like certain. I don't want anything to do with this guy. Completely out. All right, let's move on to another one. We have Whitmerfield, who ATT has as the outfielder 23. Scott has as the Outfield 11 in his roto rankings as of now. 277 last year for Whitmeryfield, only 10 homers, 97 run scored, 40 steals. That was second in baseball. He is a compiler. He has played every single game over the past three seasons. That is crazy. That is completely unheard of. The fact that this guy is an Ironman in today's day and age when it comes to baseball, He turned 33 in January. I guess really what the projections might be worried about here is the fact that his rate stats, they're not great.

He needs a lot of games and a lot of plate appearances to get to these totals. That's why I'm kind of worried about Whitmeryfield myself. Ariel, what do you think about everyone else who's drafting him in, you know, sometimes a second, third round of Roto leagues purely for his steals? Yeah, well, first of all, I don't have him that low. I think he said 23. I have him as outfielder number 13. He's actually the number three second baseman that I have. So I do like him.

I don't love him like a top 10 outfielder though. There's a lot of risk to him. You mentioned he's played every single game and his value comes in that. It's hard to project more than 600 at bats for anybody. I mean, he is actually the number one projected playing time person I have. I have them for 606 at bats. You don't find projections projecting them because things happen.

Today, in baseball utilization, there's people who shift around positions, take the day off, go over there. There's no more Cal Ripkins. It's hard to really pencil in that. And if his value comes from that, there's a risk in drafting him if, hey, he misses some time and you were counting on that time. I do think that we've seen, though, with him that when he's on the field, he's been fantastic. Certainly if you've drafted him in any of the last couple years, he has, I mean, since 2017, he's had over a $25 rotisserie value in every single year. It's only risk of playing time for me. So I'm not opposed to drafting him where he is and you get the full steals.

You do have to watch out, though, because if you are counting on him for steals and he bucks because he gets injured, you have a hole. So you might have to rost pad yourself a little bit more with steel than you think. think, but he's somewhat safe. He's been very safe for the last couple of years. Scott, I have no reason to believe that Whitmeryfield is going to get hurt all of a sudden and not play as many games as he always does, but I just

feel, you know, a player that is turning, that is 33 years old now, like, anybody could be prone. Like, you know, you're healthy until you aren't. I'm not going to say that it's going to happen, but someone who relies on this much volume, you're always at risk because you never know. Anything can happen.

The problem here is, you know, in RotoDrafts, find myself deciding between Whitmerryfield installing Marte, Marte is basically the opposite, right? Like, you could basically pencil him in for at least one aisle st per season. So, you know, I can't really make the case for one and not the other because it seems hypocritical. Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm kind of intentionally ranking them a little lower than the consensus. I feel, I don't know if that's actually true, but that was my intention because I, as I've talked about many times on this podcast. I'm making it, it's my intention this year to not be intentional about stolen bases, meaning I don't want to sacrifice in the other categories

for the sake of stolen bases. And considering those two are both being drafted like elite players, even though they might not hit more than a dozen, best case scenario 15 home runs. Yeah, I just don't know that I know that I know. need that big glob of steals that early, I'd rather pick it up piecemeal almost unintentionally over the course of an entire draft. Yeah. But fun fact about Merrifield, he actually led all of baseball in doubles last year with 42, tied with Bryce Harper, with J.D. Martinez, and Heimer Condolario as well.

Watch out for Condolario. If those doubles turn into Homer's, you got something there. All right. Ariel, I mean, take some notes. Doubles, they help in points leagues. Obviously, we'll be facing off. here in the tout. Oops, I shouldn't have said anything, Frank.

Don't worry. I like Condolario a little bit myself as well, especially in lineups that are deeper there like that one is. Let's take a look at Tim Anderson, who is the fourth shortstop for ATC and is the 13th for Scotty. I mean, this could just be a product of the shortstop position being as deep as it is.

Scotty, you know I got your back, man, but I don't get the Tim Anderson. Shortstop 13? I don't, I can't, I can't get behind the Scott. Who's number 12? You have him 89th overall in Roto, Scott. Francisco Lendor's 12th. You have Tim Anderson 89th overall, Scott, in Roto.

Yeah. Last year he finished 47th overall, and that was with playing just 123 games. So even if you're projecting, even if you're projecting an Ileston in there, he was a top 50 player last year in Roto. Yeah, I mean, batting average has a, I would say is the majority of that. I just don't trust him to keep up into counting stats. He's never been the base dealer.

People imagine him being, you know, he's more of a 20-homer guy, certainly than like a 30-homer guy. Maybe if he stays healthy, he could get 25, maybe. But, you know, that's a big if. And what if this is the year he doesn't have this, like, outlier Babbitt?

You know, he's managed to do it three years in a row now, so I think he probably will. But what if he doesn't? I really don't want to shortchange the power. I really don't. And I don't think at his going rate, I don't think the other stats are worth it. Even if the roto formula says they are,

I just trust myself to get what he provides in batting average and stolen bases. I trust myself to get that in other ways. All right. Yeah. Look, this comes down to what type of format you're playing into. If you're playing in a standalone roto league, you don't have to focus as much on steals early.

I think you should still be drafting for balance, but you could find speed throughout the course of the draft. You can find some batting average later on, Gileg, Charlie Blackman, something like that, help you out. But if you're playing in some kind of overall contest, then of course, I mean, you want to be as balanced as you possibly can. So it just comes down to what format you are playing in, and I would imagine most people listening to this

are playing in a standalone roto, head-to-head points, head-to-head category league. Ariel, look, the 150 game pace since the start of 2019, I don't know if Tim Anderson's going to get to 150 games. You know, he seems like he's due for one aisle stint per year. 32-batting average, 22 homers, 20 steal, 111 runs scored. He's just rock solid, man. He is rock solid.

Yeah, I mean, you know, 40% of your offensive output in a 5x5 is runs and RBIs. And that is a monster lineup in Chicago there. I mean, he should score 90 runs easily, easily. He could close his eyes and score 90 runs as well. In a points league, less valuable. In an OVP league, less valuable. But in the standard 5x5 roto, he has all there. And I'll tell you one thing also.

He's a many paths to value player. He's got plenty of steals, plenty of homers, plenty of batting average. Like if something goes wrong somewhere in one category, he can make it up in the other category. If he sells that for power and the average goes down, he'll make up the thing. value. Let's say he sticks with the average and the homers go down. He still has the value. He doesn't steal as much. Okay, but he'll score more. I think that there's just enough ways for him to make the value that he's super safe to take that you can bank on. Like, what do you want to do in the first three rounds? You want to bank on stats. You want to bank

on value. I think he's uber safe to do it. And he's on a great lineup. Just everything positive. I don't see any knock on him at all to shoot. I'm sorry, Scott. 12. Yeah, I mean, I know people don't like it, but, you know, if he doesn't hit for average, he's not scoring that many runs because he has no on-base skills apart from that batting average. Sure. And, you know, everybody who draft early has a chance for 90 runs, right? I mean, there's probably a couple exceptions there, but I don't know. I just, it's also weird to me that, like, he had, this last season was his worst that he's had in the past three years, and yet I feel like he's going higher. So it was the worst he's had in the past three years.

The position's only gotten deeper in the past three years. And yet he's going the highest he ever has. And that doesn't add up to me. I was going to put, who has the highest qualified batting average since the start of 2019? Would you like to guess? Soto.

Juan Soto is seventh. Well, tied for six, 304 batting average with Freddie Freeman. Scott? Luis Arias. Luis Arise. He might not qualify. I don't see him, no, I don't see him qualified.

Yeah, I mean, who wouldn't? Is this batting average, you said? Yeah, yeah. Highest batting average since the start of 2019, qualified hitters. And it's not Soto, it's not for, well, I mean, is it, is it Tim Anderson? It is Tim Anderson. 322 batting average since the start of 2019. So I just kind of buy it, Scott.

Like, I know he relies on this big babb and he hits a lot of ground balls. And look, if he ever, you know, lower the ground ball rate a little bit, maybe some of those turn into home runs. maybe he can push 25 home runs. I wouldn't project it myself. I'd say 2020 is a fair projection for him with a lot of runs and a 300 plus batting average. And I think that that is a really, really valuable player in fantasy baseball.

Let's wrap up with this last one here. Josh Bell, who ATC has as the 8th first baseman and Scott has down at 14. This could be another predicament where first base is actually just is pretty deep, especially within those top 14, top 15, first baseman. He was awful in April last year. and then turned it on May 1st until the end of the season,

279 batting average for Josh Bell, 25 homers in 865 OPS. We won't have to worry about Ryan Zimmerman. I don't think it's a great lineup, but obviously Juan Soto is part of it, so it's at least pretty good. And of course, my guy, Lane Thomas, is leading off there, so you know.

This is going to be plenty of RBI opportunities for Josh Bell. Ariel, tell us why you are, well, maybe you're not. I don't know. Do you agree with the ATC projection when it comes to Josh Bell? Yeah, I do, I do. and he shows up usually very positively in ATC every year. You know, he has done it.

It's not like a guy who's never done it. He's done it. I mean, in 2019, he had 377 homers batting 277. He hits the ball really hard. I mean, his stack cast numbers are pretty good. His contact rate is fantastic. I mean, his strikeout rate last year was only 18%. So there's a guy who puts the ball on his plate who doesn't strike out that much.

He's a interprojectional standard deviation, darling. the projections all agree very similar stats. We're talking a guy who can approach 30 homers. I think the batting average has a very high floor. I mean, ATC has him at 267. I think that is pretty fair. And if you do the math and add up all his stats, he's like a $17 player going for 12.

I think he's a bargain. Now, I will say, though, that he's another guy that I can see myself in an auction. But in a draft, there are some better values for the round than him. So I'm probably not going to get him in draft because I like a lot of first baseman lower than him, even better

per their draft round. But in an auction, I think I can get a nice bargain off of him and roll with it as, and I'm comfortable with him as my starting first baseman. All right, Scotty, you have just looking at this, you have Josh Bell, again, your 14th ranked first baseman behind Ryan Moutcastle, who you poo-poohed

as much as you did before, and behind Thai France as well. What's going on, man? No love for Josh Bell. I have more love for Josh Bell than that. I do. And in fact, when we were just doing right before this podcast, you and I, Frank, were participating in a 15-team mock draft for the site.

And I was highlighting players during that draft that I wanted to adjust in my rankings. And the one first basement I highlighted was Josh Bell, because, yeah, I want to get them up ahead of Ryan Mountcastle for sure. So I can at least make. move him up to 12th. I don't know. So the next three ahead of that are Jake Croninworth, Max Muncie, and Reese Hoskins.

I don't know that I can move him ahead of any of those. I mean, Muncie obviously is a big question mark there with the elbow. Is he going to play at all? I've already moved him way down because of that concern. And so it's, it's, would I absolutely take Max Muncie over Josh Bell? No, I mean, it very much depends on the circumstances.

But, and then obviously, Kronenworth has that triple eligibility that makes me want to, just in terms of an overall ranking, lean toward him over Josh Bell. But, yeah, I mean, if you just look at the numbers from May 1st on for Josh Bell and April was a wacky month for hitters across the entire league, so I think it's reasonable to do that, then he was certainly must start from that point forward,

and especially by the end of the season, he was playing every day as well. Plus, he has a fantastic theme song here on the podcast, so take it away. Josh Bell, I do have ranked, as much as I like Reese Hoskins, I've talked about him in the offseason, first base preview coming next week. I do have Josh Bell ahead of him. I think it comes down to what you need at that point in the draft. If you need a little bit more batting average, a little bit less power, I think Josh Bell is the answer for you.

If you need the opposite, if you need less batting average, more power. I think Reese Hoskins makes sense. So it all comes down to what you need at that point in the draft. In a points league, I actually think they're both pretty good. Josh Bell makes a lot of contact. He's going to walk a lot. Same thing with Reese Hoskins. He walks a ton. I probably give Reese Hoskins the edge in a point. Yeah, I will, for points leagues, it's a little clear, I think, because Hoskins, 3.21 points per game last year, Bell, 2.89. I don't know what it, if you eliminated May, I mean, if you eliminated April, I don't know how much that would change for Bell, but, you know, just season long average.

Hoskins has a clear advantage there. All right, so that'll do it. ATC projections versus Scotty's rankings. We had some fun there. Make sure you follow Ariel on Twitter at ATCNY. Again, the man behind the ATC projections, which you could find over on Sportsline and on Fangraphs, a writer as well for Fangraphs and Roder.

Ariel, we appreciate your time, buddy. Oh, thanks so much for having me on again. Great to talk to you guys. Yeah, looking forward to TOW Wars. Unfortunately, we'll be doing it online again this year, but I look forward to, you know, the first intermission when you and I have no players and then we're just duking it out for all the players in like the second half of it. So it's going to be fun. No, it's going to happen. Yeah, that's what happened last year, too.

So I'm looking forward to it. For Scott Nariol, I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball. Today will be back again on Monday. Bye-bye.