Fantasy Baseball Today - Corbin Carroll Injury, Lance Lynn vs. Jose Berrios & Prospect Updates! (7/7 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Corbin Carroll injured his shoulder AGAIN (1:30). ... Lance Lynn was awesome against the Blue Jays (8:18). ... Jose Berrios was pretty good on the other side (13:55). ... Andres Gimenez is heating up (15:55). ... Luis Severino is broken right now (24:10). ... What's the latest on Grayson Rodriguez and Christian Encarnacion-Strand (28:15)? ... Gunnar Henderson had a massive game and Ryan O'Hearn is playing well (31:17). ... News (38:18): Jose Altuve went on the IL. ... Cody Bellinger had a huge game but is it sustainable (41:40)? ... Do Jack Flaherty or Kyle Bradish matter for Fantasy (48:05)? ... We wrap up with leftovers, bullpen updates and streamers (52:15). Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  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/ 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

In tough fantasy baseball today on July 7th. I am Frank Stamphill, joined by all of the Chris's Towers and the Welsh. Today on the show, good old-fashioned pitching duel between my guys, Lance Lynn and Jose Burrios, some massive hitting performances, prospect updates, and much more. Before we get started, please like this video and subscribe on YouTube if you haven't already. And if you're listening on the audio side, download, follow, and leave a five-star rating on Apple. or Spotify. Now I hate to start a Kokomo Friday this way.

But if you are watching us live on YouTube, you could tell the Welsh has not cracked a smile, not even a single smile yet. That's not normal for the Welsh. Normally he comes on here. He's very cheery. We just had some massive news before. I guess not, we don't know what the news is yet.

But there could be massive news coming. So let's just get it out of the way. We'll lead with this. Corby and Carroll left mid at bat. He took a very hard swing, immediately dropped the bat and started holding his right shoulder again, that right shoulder that has been giving him some problems recently, the same shoulder that he had surgery on a couple of years ago. We're still kind of processing this. I'm sure there's going to be an MRI and we'll

learn more in the next coming days, but Welsh, immediate reaction is, it looks pretty bad for Corby and Carol. Yeah, it's pretty much as bad as you could get, especially we were talking off air. There's very Fernando Tatis Jr. vibes. And Carol has a lot of lot to the swing. There's especially a lot of back motion. I mean, he generates a smaller guy. That's why everyone forever was like, oh, I don't know if he got power, blah, blah, blah. He's able to generate. He optimizes to the umth degree. And in that swing, there is a full comeback and extension that comes back. And, you know, if you watch the play, he comes back in the shoulder, it goes so far back that it almost, it just pops. It has to pop forward. The momentum brings it back.

and he had all the bat speed that he has in his body going back full extension as it pops forward everything just drops he went immediately to the shoulder and listen we could try to be an optimist the first one was a big scare but really the first one was just the beginning of what this was that probably even though i think they said there was no concerning structural things going on in there something started and this looks like it's going to finish it they're you know in different reports that obviously if there's anything torn this is going to be season ending I guess best case scenario is could be a dislocation I'm not really even sure what the timeline is here's all I know I think it's devastating for him in

real life gonna go home be a rookie all-star that's done for fantasy owners that's done and the best case scenario is still garbage here there I I would be utterly shocked and I will gladly eat my words if this is anything but serious Well, it looked bad. The game just went final as we're talking a little before we went final and Tori Lavullo is speaking of reporters and there is this quote, quote, he has some right shoulder discomfort. Things checked out a little bit more positive than expected. We got some encouraging news.

The Estha will be an MRI tomorrow morning. It's definitely a red flag more so than it was four to five days ago. He definitely felt something. I don't know how many games he'll miss or if he'll go on the I. The positive news was the strength and shoulder stability will. fine. So look, it's, it's, to me, Chris. The, the, that's what the manager is saying in the immediate aftermath of the game, but he's going to have an MRI. And, and the, I think the, the key thing to say here is just as we're speaking, we don't know. You know, hopefully it's a best case scenario. And I mean,

really, a best case scenario here might be he misses three weeks, you know, like if he misses the All-Star game. He comes back like a week or comes right around the All Star game. That's the best case scenario. Yeah, but you would also have obviously concern moving forward about the stability of the shoulder and whether this is going to be become a recurring issue. Because remember, you might not remember as a listener because he wasn't in the majors at the time. But Corby and Carroll did miss basically the entirety of the 2021 season with shoulder surgery. He had a torn labrum, played seven games last season came back from it and didn't affect his development, didn't affect his play.

For the most part, he's been able to avoid issues there. But now we're dealing with what looks to be a recurring issue. And even if it is a best case scenario, that doubt's going to creep in, I think, moving forward. And I think you have to, you know, even if let's say it ends up being a three week injury and he's back relatively quickly and there's no surgery required or anything like that, it's going to be in the back of your mind. you know, he's probably going to wear a harness and try to keep that thing. But like, as we saw with Fernando Tatis, you can still play at a very high level with that kind of situation. But eventually, you know, it catches up. And obviously there's going to, I think, elevated risk moving forward.

But let's hope it's a best case scenario. And obviously there's still room even given that quote for, you know, a worst case scenario. I'll also just throw in two quick little things. What I do worry about and what you're talking about. is if the optimization of his swing, like how he swings is causing part of this, and he has to change, what does that do? There's a part of me that almost might treat this kind of like a handmade injury. Like, you know, Trout is out for what, six to eight weeks or the handmade injury,

and that historically typically kind of can be a zapping of power. If he has to change his approach, his swing, this might change the fantasy player, the real-life player that he is. Now, that can manifest in different ways if he's not. not full back extension and maybe selling a little bit and it's just more contact. It's less homers. He can steal more bases. But to your point, it creates so much worry across the board, even if there's good news in

there that it's just a huge bummer. But Frank did get to do every fantasy owner's favorite thing when you have friends in a league. Now Frank didn't do this, but this is what I would do to my best friend Scott Bogman is you get to break the worst news. There's nothing more magical. Outside of winning a fantasy championship, I don't know about you two, there's nothing more magical

than getting to break devastating news to your best of friends. Knowing that you broke their heart, but you slight, just like, did it just a tiny bit? You're just like, hey, did you hear? And Frank got to do that because he, I had turned away for a second

and he went, cry face Carol, and I went, oh my God. And this was about 20 minutes ago, by the way. So congratulations, Frank. You got everybody's dream. Oh, well, who do you think I am whilst you think I get some kind of a joy of breaking this terrible news to you.

Look, it sucks, no matter what way you want to put it, whether you're a Diamondbacks fan or a fantasy player. Obviously, baseball has been awesome this season with Corby and Carroll playing. The third overall player in Roto, heading into Thursday night, the sixth best hitter in Head to Head Points Leagues. Obviously, he has been amazing.

We're speculating right now. We'll get more news in the coming days, but the immediate reaction from us is, you know, it looks like this could be pretty bad. Manager Tori Lavulo, sounds like he's a little bit more optimistic on Corbyn Carroll. With that being said, let's get into the rest of Thursday's action. Let's go. All right, let's start with, who do you guys have?

Let's start with Towers. Player of the night. Oh, gosh, there's a lot of options tonight, but I'm going to go with Lance Lynn, who had a masterful performance in a real pitching duel between him and Jose Barrios. That game went into the 11th inning with a score. list high. Jose Brios and Lanselin didn't pitch 11 innings, but they both went seven shutout innings allowing one hit. Lance Lynn in particular, 11 strikeouts to one walk. He had 25 swinging strikes, 12 of them on his four-seem fastball. It was a heck of a performance. The Blue Jays are

not a bad offense, certainly, but we've seen pitchers have some success against them over the past a couple of weeks in particular. So that's something to keep in mind. But yeah, it's a, it's been a real weird season for Lance Lynn, but that is now what two dominant performances in his last four. The problem is he sandwiched that around a start where he was fine, five and two-thirds innings,

three-on runs, and then another one where he gave up five runs in six innings with three home runs allowed. So I don't know how you can feel any amount of confidence about Lance Lynn, right now, but you feel better about him than you did in, like, early May, late May, right? I think so. I mean, I was kind of holding on to hope all of that time, basically, until we got to, just recently, I was just kind of like broken when it came to Lance Lynn. He had that awesome start

with the, what was it, 16 strikeouts, and then two kind of clunkers after that. And I was just talking with Scott recently, and I said, man, I'm done, man. I got Lance Lynn fatigue. It's just such a weird season. He has 127 strikeouts. That is. the fifth most in all of baseball, yet he has an ERA over six and a 1.42 whip. And the crazy part is that he's kind of earned those numbers. 1.9 home runs per nine. That's tied for second most among qualified starting pitchers. You look at his, okay, 477 XERA, maybe he's been a little bit unlucky. That's still a really bad number. That's one of those things when you have a 477 XERA, like, okay, yeah, you've been a little unlucky. You haven't been that unlucky, right? Like, when

you're earning, when you have a 429 expected Wobo, which I believe is the worst among starting pitchers on contact, yeah, you're going to have starts where you give up a few more runs than you should. He's been there, he has not been without promise this season for sure, but he's been bad. Like he's, he's been bad in a way that he deserves his results. He's been bad in most ways outside of strikeouts. That's basically it. He's given you strikeouts. He's really giving you nothing else. This is Lanselin that we're talking about.

I've seen some rumors that he could get moved. I think it makes total sense, right? The White Sox aren't really going anywhere. This is a pitcher in his mid-30s. Maybe he gets shipped off to Baltimore or something like Cincinnati. They should trade him tonight. Yes, they absolutely should. Maybe tomorrow morning. Be a fantasy owner, just like a fantasy person.

Great start. Send out all your offers. You want Lanslin, right? He's going to help your fantasy team. 1,000% pre-all-star break. By the way, also, interesting too, that the amount of guys that we can just, like, you can track of success with high usage of sliders that come off of fastballs

and guys who have just lost that fastball to dead center, I mean, it's just one for one. And how many guys have found the success one way and have lost the success the other? Because Lance Lynn's fastball, heat map, is just dead center. Four miles per hour more average exit velocity against the fastball.

this year. It was like 87 last year. It's over 91 average exit velocity with a 280 batting average. The fastball is setting everything up in the worst way for him. And he's even trying to throw it less. He threw it 46% of the time last year. It's down to 41%. And the other pitches, he's throwing the cutter, which is getting a little bit more whiffs, but he just doesn't have those others. He's trying to live off that fastball. And when it's not there, it's, we're seeing the results. We're seeing what's bad about all of it. Though there's a nice little catch to these strikeout pitchers. And Frank, I think you and I was kind of, for the most part, I've been with you on the, like,

Lansland preseason stuff. You were the conductor, but I was definitely, you know, I had a ticket. And it's just one of those things where those strikeout pitchers, those guys that have high-end strikeouts, even in all the bad stuff, you can just see the little light at the end of the tunnel. If they can just get things right because there's elite strikeouts in there. And he's always been that guy. So I don't know. Could you have lived with a 60RA up to this year?

Maybe not. Maybe you've been benching him, not starting him. But hopefully it's moving in the right direction. But that fastball has got to get better. I do wonder if a change of scenery is something that can help Lanslin get back on track. Baltimore would be awesome. Cincinnati, given this hard contact, not so much. Yeah, that would be ideal. He's the leader in Homer.

He gives up the most homers in baseball by any single pitcher. Let's not let that. We actually looked at this the other day. It might have updated in 24 hours. There are five hitters in baseball who have hit. more homers than Lance Lynn has given up. Only five. 23 homers or more. Yeah. That's a crazy number. Yeah, that is a crazy number. Indeed. By the way, Lance Lynn against Jose Barrios, uh, I guess you can call that a pitching duel,

can't you? It's time to do. I promise Twitter that I would play the soundbite for these two. Yeah. Someone in the chat said they were looking forward to the Yu-Gi-O. So there you go. There you go. Let's quickly talk about on the other side of this game, Jose Barrios. He threw seven shutout innings as well. One hit, one walk, six strikeouts with 10 swinging strikes, lowers the ERA to 3.5 on the season with a 1.14 whip. Towers, this is pretty much prime Barrios. What we knew before last year, it just seems like he's back on track the season. Yeah, and it's, it's so weird because, like,

he hasn't been a significantly different pitcher when you break out by, like, velocity and, and spin rate and movement and all that. Like, he doesn't look that much different, but obviously the results are very, very different. And didn't have a good explanation for why he was so bad last season. Don't really have a good explanation for why he's been so much better. This season, the XERA actually not much better than it was last season. Last season, it was 511. Now, coming into this start, it was 4.74.

I would imagine it's improved coming off of a very good start today. but I don't really know how to make sense of Jose Barrios. Like he's getting more strikeouts, but he's still right around an average strikeout pitcher. I tend to think sell high, given that he's been very good for most of the last two months, but because I don't know what's fueling the good and what fueled the bad,

I can't say with confidence either way. You could try. The one thing I'll point out, it's weird that his XERA is as high as it is because his average exit velocity against is down over two miles per hour compared to last year. So he actually does, he's done a better job of limiting hard contact this year.

Jose Burrios has. You can try and shop him. Still might have some name value around the fantasy industry. But if not, I'm down to just kind of ride this and let's see where it goes. But for the most part, Barrios has been rock solid with that 3.5 ERA on the season. Well,

so let's go over to you. oh my goodness gracious player of the night. So this one's going to kind of even turn into a question here. But Andres Jimenez, who has darling for me in the preseason, someone I really, I thought he was a guy that could actually contribute into maybe the most stolen bases in the league. That would have been one of those guys I thought would really get into there. It's just been a weird off season. But tonight, a homer, three stolen bases.

That's beautiful around 20% of the overall production. He's now up to 14 stolen bases. The home run total is up to seven. This is coming off of a $253 first month, second month in May hitting 230 combined three homers in there. June was 241, then all of a sudden it's picked back up. 333 in the month of July. Now two homers, six stolen bases.

I think he hit 293 over the last like 19 games was a stat you had put on there. But my question becomes about this, because I think this is encouraging, this is great. It's good to see overall. Also, its hard hit numbers have improved in that time. That was another unique thing. garbage early on as I'm looking to pull those back up. In May he had a 19.7% hard hit

percentage according to fan graphs 32 in June up to 42.9 not updated recently and the soft hit percentage so far under 10%. So hey guess what hitting the ball harder, making better contact, getting better results. My question is this though when we ooh and awe over the performance tonight is how much can we ooh and awe over over recent performance of a player like Andres Jimenez when he's got one of the grosser baseball savant pages and I know there's been lots of talk about like hey how do we process all this and the nerds with all the stuff but it's like it's the worst exit velocity it's one of the worst hard hit it's bad expected wobup bad

expected batting average he doesn't barrel guess what he also doesn't do he doesn't walk all of those things are not good there's not a redeeming factor in here and these are typically those type of guys those sub five percent barrel type of guys that it's like there's not a lot of counting stats and he hasn't been stealing bases at an elite level so if he starts stealing bases more that's good but how much stock can you put into recent performances of what is everything we would battle against arguing for a player on a baseball savante page yeah that towers you probably got to take on this the thing the thing that's been so weird is scott's talk Scott talks about this a lot he's certainly not the first person say it but

stolen bases are as much about ability as desire, right? And for some reason in May and June, he just didn't want to run. He had one stolen base in May, one stolen base in June. He got caught stealing once and each. So he was basically not running at all. Despite like, in June he had a 313 on base percentage. She got on base 31 times. It wasn't, you know, that's not great, obviously, but it's not a disaster.

And then so far in June, he's played, or July, he's played six games. he has six stolen bases after tonight, three tonight. And he's hitting the ball way harder. 92 mile per hour average X velocity in the month of July, 91.7 entering today. Before that, it was 82.2, 82.7, 82.3. That is about a slap hitty, a slap hitting gets. I was not an Andres Jimenez guy coming into the season.

The underlying numbers didn't really support the big breakout last season. So I thought there was regression coming. but I also thought he would be better than he has been so far. So I buy improvement, but I don't think it's like, okay, yeah, he's a star again. You know, like he looked last year. I think the truth is he's a light hitting middle infielder who doesn't run as much as he should. And if he wants to run more, I think Andres Menace could steal 40 bases. I mean, he's that, like he's a 94th percentile sprint speed.

In this environment, he could be a 35, 40 stolen base guy. it's just a question of whether he wants to be. I think that's the path for him getting back to being a must-start fantasy player if this little run is for real. I tend to think it's not. I tend to think this is a, I'm on here, you're Frank. Obviously, I didn't interrupt you.

But I'm a sell in this. Like, this to me is the opportunity to sell because there's nothing outside of a three stolen base game that's telling us that this is going to continue. Everything looks bad here. I just want out of the business. Even if the whole package at the end of the year, we're like, oh, 12 homers, 15 homers, 25 stolen bait. I want out from it because that offense has been putrid. Most of the underlying stuff is putrid.

And we're also talking about like hard hit and average EV numbers through six days of a month. And every step has been bad. It's encouraging that he's hitting the ball harder. But I just don't think there's anything that's telling us a long-term story where he will be a major impactful player. and how often are you going to get a guy, kind of like the Lance Lynn situation, 11 strikeouts, how often are you going to get Homer, three stolen bases,

and a gaudy July of stats from a player that this week run might be better than a month run he has in August. So I'm a sell, Frank, but any different? I'm a little bit more encouraged by Andres Jimenez. I think it's totally fine to try and sell, but I think most people who are looking at him are going to see the overall line and probably think the same thing that we are.

been an overwhelming season. I don't know how much you'll get for Andres Hemannism. Just a little bit more I guess glass

half full and the fact that he's getting better as the season has gone on and the hard hit rate is up so far in the month of July. I know it's a really small sample size.

If you just look at the rest of season projections from let's say the Bat X for example, 268 with eight home runs and 14 steals. I think that's doable and I think that's a really

valuable player. So I'm kind of I guess I'm more of like a buy on Andres I'm a little bit more optimistic there. Can't really talk about adding him

anything he's 85% rostered so maybe in the shallowest leagues and he is much better in a in a category league head-toe Categories roto than he is in points for the reasons you guys pointed out he does not walk um he does he'll take a pitch though he may like on on his elbow not like he doesn't really take pitches he he basically swings at it if it's not hitting him but he has been hit 15 times was hit 25 times last year that's weird that helps a little bit yeah um i always love a guy who gets hit by a pitch it's So weird that he doesn't run more though. He's 53 for 60 on the base pads in his career. Both of them like both of those guys should be running 35 times a year and they haven't been.

And especially in this environment, I just don't understand why neither of those guys has been more aggressive, especially on a team that's so desperate for offense. I wonder sometimes if there's something to not wanting all players to have green lights. If like, you know, maybe it's a managerial thing where it's like, all right, there's all, it's like a hall pass. There's only so many green lights that I can give. Kwan, green light, Jose Ramirez, green light, Miles Straw, if you ever do anything, green light. Those are your green lights, and they want to be really situational of worrying about it.

But also, just pointing out, like, he could be put in a situation to steal more bases if he walked. And that was a stupid thing even for me to think, like, oh, he could steal a whole bunch of bases. We should probably be targeting much higher walk percentage guys because when they're not hitting and they can go and get on base. That actually had to be worried about corporates. Carol at the beginning of the year. He didn't walk for three weeks. And I'm like, this is not good.

What happens when you go through slumps? Anders-Hemez doesn't do himself any favor outside of throwing that elbow out and getting binged a little bit. Yeah, 325 OBP on the season. Not great there for Andres Jimenez. Let's take our first break when we return. I don't know. Maybe I'll talk about my player of the night. We're only, what, 25 minutes into the podcast. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back. And a quick reminder to follow us on TikTok at FBTPod. If you are using on the desktop for some reason. I don't think anyone does that. TikTok.com slash at FBTPod

where we do take some highlights from the full length, the five minute podcast, big news of the day, players of the night, covered up with some highlights. We're putting out some fun clips. You can scan that QR code if you're watching us on YouTube. That will take you right to TikTok where you can follow Fantasy Baseball today. My Player of the Night is unfortunately a bad one.

And we spoke about them recently. I don't know that there's much else to add, outside of the fact that just more confirmation, Luis Severino is broken. Two and two-thirds innings pitched, 10 hits allowed, seven earned runs, 11 hard hits in this game,

94.4 average exit velocity against. There is no way this guy is healthy right now. Just no way. The slider and cutter have absolutely nothing right now. It's a walk year for him. I almost kind of feel like both him and the Yankees kind of have this agreement where,

like, let's try and get the most out of this as we possibly can. and he wants to pitch well so that he can get a contract, whatever it might be, and obviously, you know, the Yankees just need help in their pitching staff right now. But it all adds up to a 7.38 ERA and at 1.80 whip.

He is 82% rostered. I would drop him for Tarek Scouble, who I think is up to like 73 or 76% rostered. Would you guys drop Luis Severino for either of the Kyle's? They're kind of next up on the most added list. Kyle Braddish and Kyle Hendricks who are both pitching well right now.

If you're desperate for someone to, like, you're not for the next week, at least. You're not desperate for someone to start, right? Because neither, I guess Kyle Hendricks pitches this weekend, but Braddish pitch tonight, so you're not going to get anything from him for at least a week. I just think there's nothing, Chris. I think he has nothing right now. I think that's fair. But, like, the big thing with Luis Severino is, look, the velocity's still mostly there.

The biggest thing is just his slider and cutter have been a disaster so far. is Slider actually got a couple of whiffs tonight. Hooray. But he's not throwing either of them with confidence. He's throwing them way less off and then he did last season. And the whiff rates on those two pitches have just completely collapsed. He doesn't have any confidence in those two pitches. He's not throwing them well.

That being said, like, if he's healthy, I still think Luis Severino certainly is a more talented pitcher than Kyle Braddish. And like, Kyle Hendricks. has had good results. He's got like a 14% strikeout rate. So I don't think Kyle Hendricks is back to being himself either. I think those are guys, Kyle Braddish and Connrichs, the right matchups,

Kyle Bradish at home or against, you know, teams that can't really hit him hard on the road. I think he's fine to use like the Yankees are a good matchup right now. But I still think like if I'm projecting forward, the best case scenario for Louis Severino is a lot better, than Braddish and Hendricks. And I just, I don't think you're going to miss Kyle Hendricks and Kyle Bradish

if you don't add them right now. That's what it comes down to. And so even if the likeliest outcome is Kyle Bradish has a lower ERA than Luis Severino, I think Kyle Braddish is probably a low fours ERA guy anyway. So I'm not really, like, I would drop him for Terrick's Google because I think there's legitimate upside there.

I would drop him for Alec Manoa who's rostered in a similar range. There aren't that many interesting pitchers, right now who I besides those two I think I agree with this I don't think I even realize how broken he really is I mean that not only is the slider less effect the the way his slider is getting destroyed the whiff percentage is almost cut in half from last year it has not just a 296 batting average against but a 357 expected batting average against but throw on top of all of it is his change up has lost a significant amount of whiff

It went from 31 down to 21%. Even though it's the lowest batting average against pitch, he's throwing it 21% of the time and not getting strikeout. So you just want to talk about broken across the board. I was trying to look. I couldn't find it in time. I wanted to see what the stuff plus numbers looked on him. But I would take him over.

I completely agree with the statement you said. Like, no one's going to miss Braddish. Tarek Scouble, I would make that cut. And I'd be looking for maybe even the next rookie pitcher. someone like, Grayson Rodriguez. Yeah, I would,

actually, I would drop him for Grayson Rodriguez, who has looked really good his last couple of starts in the minors. I think that's fine. 4 and 0 of the last couple,

no doubt about that, looking more effective with the secondary pitches. He had some absurd. His last start, it was like 50%, it's somewhere, I'm just rounding,

but it was like 50% swinging whiff rate and a 50 or close to 60% CSW percentage in his last start. So Grayson is no doubt, but I would, even look at some guys that might be coming soon, like a Ben Brown,

if the Cubs want to give him a shot. Huge strikeout numbers in AAA, really, really good fastball. I might look into the rookie prospect speculation of pitchers that are around AAA. Grayson being the best, if available. Yeah, he was someone that I was going to bring up later on with some prospect updates, but you mentioned that last start, Welsh, with all the whiffs and the CSW. That start was on July 4th, six shutout innings with 12 strikeouts to zero walks. for Grayson Rodriguez down to AAA.

He has only one total walk over his last two starts, and in six starts since getting down a 183 ERA, a 0.96 whip, 13.4K per 9 for Grayson Rodriguez. That is the pitcher we thought we were getting coming into the year. One of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball, 55% rostered. And I had this written down for later. You could tell me if I'm wrong.

I think he is unequivocally the top prospect to stash right now in baseball, even more so than Christian and Carnaccio and Strand. Yeah, I would agree with that, especially with the impact needed for in some of the pitching departments across the board. Yeah, Christian and Carnacian Strand, like, what are we doing? I don't even know what's going to get called up. Yeah, I don't know when he's going to get called up. Positionally, it's tough. We were talking off air about Spencer Steer, as we all should be talking about Spencer Steer, but the Reds are in a glut of riches at this point. So yeah, you want to talk about top potential prospects that can produce. with Colton Couser off the board, it is without a doubt, Grayson Rodriguez.

CES is number two. And then I think we're just jumping into a bigger batch. Maybe Colt Keith is number three. And then it's a batch of quite a few other players. But yeah, Grayson Rodriguez, top guy. If you can make that move, might burn, but do it. You'll thank us later for Grayson. Speaking of Encarnacio and Strand, there was an article on the athletic from C. Trent Rosecrans,

who is arguably the most dialed in Reds beat writer out there. And he wrote that CES basically needs an injury or expanded rosters to get up to the Reds, which if there's no injury, we might be waiting until September to see Encarnazio-Tren, which it's unfortunate. I didn't think we would get to a point this season where we said the Reds have a logjam of talent where one of their top prospects cannot get called up because they're playing so well. But that is where we are at with the since Ed Reds. Make sure we get those Nixon zealot bats. It's very important.

Hey, I think he hit the go-ahead home run today for the Reds. So there you go. Salty. Let's talk about what the Orioles did, by the way. I mean, they clobbered Luis Severino and the Yankees. They put up 14 runs on 20 hits. Gunner Henderson, one of the most awesome games you will see this season. Four for seven with a double dong, five RBI,

and he had six hard hits in one game. And I believe it was Towers here who wrote this information in, But I've never seen this before. Apparently it has been done before six hard hits in one game. Yeah, Austin Slater of the list of players who have had six hard hit balls in a game during the stack ass there is kind of hilarious. Cause like it is some of them makes sense. Reese Hoskins and jock Peterson have done it.

Austin Riley did it. But then you have guys like Austin Slater and Lordus Greal. Cateau Marte, he makes sense. He hits the ball really hard. Yeah. Danard span. Had six hard hit balls on June 2nd, 2017. I didn't think we're any at a Denard Span drop this week.

But yeah, that's a, that one threw me for a bit of a loop. Apparently, it had six hard hit balls in a game in 2017. That sounds like Statcast had just come out, and it was probably a little bit buggy back then. And that's how he got his six hard hits. They didn't update it. It was like the first run. And they're like, yeah, we'll go with that. And they did never update it.

I love DeNard Span. Yeah. You know what? I don't want to clown on Denard Span because I was a huge fan of him as well. So it was a good player. Yeah, I really liked him. Not a home run. Not a hard hitter. No, not a six hard hit in a game guy. He, I mean, bottom of the list, we're probably picking for this game. But that's a great pull. The point is, Gunner Henderson is, is, he's awesome. Jordan Westberg, by the way, he is hitting well to start his career. Two for five with a double in RBI and two runs scored. He is still just 57% rostered has gained third base eligibility on CBS. Probably going to get second base at some point as well. So I think that number should be higher than 57%. The last thing here for the Orioles, uh, someone,

one tweeted at me today was I pretty sure it was an Orioles fan and he said you guys got to talk about Ryan O'Hern well here we are we'll talk about Ryan O'Hern he went three for four I think we have to we can we can we can we can sure we can mention him we can mention him let's do it three for four with a walk and four RBI and we should mention him because he's doing some interesting things he's batting 308 with an 895 OPS 93 mile per hour average exit velocity a near 14% barrel rate expected numbers look pretty good. I mean, they're, they're not as good as actual numbers. Um, he's not gonna play against lefties. This is a deep league situation, but he's 8% rostered. Well, it's anything to see here. Ryan O'Hern, this is like AL only, you know, 15 team

league like corner infield, something like that. I mean, to your credit, what you're saying, 56% harder hit rates pretty wild to go with, I mean, man, you get that double digit barrel percentage and then an over 50% hard hit percentage and that kind of gets me going, but he's hitting 125 against lefties. He is, the straight up split. This isn't Josh Lowe, though. This isn't going to be the next Josh Lowe. But there's something there, though, would point out, let's see how they construct their roster the rest of the year. Because if you could believe it, there's still more prospects. They still got more guys. Connor Norby would be probably the next guy and a guy that doesn't help the situation.

But Heston Kerstad is a lefty, and he's been playing some first base since he's gone up to AAA. So just pointing out that this is cool about Ryan O'Hern. I agree. Maybe deep, deep league. or AL only that he can platoon like this, but there are still a couple prospects if the Orioles just want to throw it all in. And I do expect to see both of those players in the near future. And I do think that would come at the expense of Ryan O'Hern when it does happen.

Well, so I know Kobe Mayo is crushing it right now in the miners too, but he's down at AA, right? We probably don't see him this year. No, I don't think. It would be Kirstead, for sure. Since the move over to first base, Kobe plays third, huge hard hit numbers too. I've been booze. He's been steady increase across my prospect. throughout the year. But yeah, that's a guy that they're going to let settle. Might be an

AFL guy. Orioles like to send out some pretty good prospects. But Norby and Kirstot are the next guy's Mayo, I don't think, is an option for this year. Hey, speaking of the AFL, I remember seeing Heston Kirstad out there in the home run derby. Dude's got some big pop. He also has a really big leg kick, which maybe could be exposed at the major league level. But the power is for real when it comes to Heston Kirstad. Want to point out the Mets offense, they also had a big game here. They put up nine runs on 17 hits. And most notably, Francisco Alvarez, two for three with his 16th home run, back-to-back games with a homer.

He leads all catchers, all of them, with 16 home runs in 214 plate appearances. He's also been, like, ridiculously clutch. I think he has five home runs in the seventh inning or later to put the Mets up. Yeah. The next closest behind him, Sean Murphy has 15 home runs in nearly 50 more plate appearances. So everything that you could have imagined for Francisco. at least in terms of the power is coming to fruition right in front of her eyes. He's...

Remember we were worried about Thomas Nito? We were like sitting back, man, what are they gonna do? Are they gonna screw us on this one? But he has been crazy, crazy impressive. Also, when you go and just look, you look at the line, it doesn't make sense. Hard hit numbers are garbage. XBA is garbage. But that's what's fun, because I know people get all worked up.

It's like, oh, you guys are always citing the same stuff. It's like, well, these are just some underlying things that tell us stories. But at the end of the day, you know, the clutchness of what he's done for fantasy outside of batting average is there. And he's starting to get better. And he's starting to look a lot better. And I would not have bet he was going to be the number one catcher as far as homers go. Just to watch out, though, when you talk about those platoons, hitting 138 against lefties this year.

And he's playing in every other month game, which is not great. That shows the inconsistency. He's 194 in April, 292 in May, 151 in June, up to 351. 53 this month. So let's see if he can stabilize a little bit. I know last week we spoke about Francisco Alvarez. He's down to 73% rostered. We said that we would drop him for Henry Davis. Oh, no. Uh, any remorse on that decision. No, I still have Henry Davis ranked higher, but it's nine and 10 in my catcher rankings. Yeah, it is super close. I think Davis is probably the higher floor play at this point.

He doesn't, it doesn't strike out as much. It looks like he's hitting for, you know, a lot of time edge for Davis. I mean, he's playing every day in the outfield. Yeah. Yeah. That helps too. So it's close between those two. It's fun. And I mentioned this probably last year, even two years ago. I said there was a catcher renaissance coming with all these guys that are getting called up. It was first it was Adley Ruchman, but then we get Alvarez and Henry Davis.

And there's even more guys coming in the next couple of years with like Harry Ford. There's a whole bunch. By the way, it's going to be awesome. Henry Davis has started all but one game since he got called up. And I believe he entered that game as a pinch hitter. So he has appeared in every game since he called up. There's just no catcher who's playing as much as he is right now. Yeah, that is huge for fantasy purposes there.

Let's talk about some news and notes quickly, and then we'll hit a break and then we just got to go, I don't know, rapid fire through everything else that we have here on the rundown. So the news and notes, Jose Altuvae was placed on the aisle with left oblique discomfort. MRI results showed just a minor issue. He didn't offer a timeline, but expressed optimism about returning shortly after the All-Star break. Ray's manager Kevin Cash said he's very confident Shane McClainan.

He will start next Sunday against the Royals. He is on the IL with mid-back tightness. Max Fried will begin a rehab assignment with AAA this Sunday and could be back with the Braves by late July. Framber Valdez has been clear to make his next start Saturday against the Mariners. He missed his previous turn with a sprained ankle. Kattel Marte was back in the lineup after missing. two games with lower back discomfort.

Tigers manager, AJ Hins, said Riley Green could be activated this weekend. He was betting 296 with five home runs and six deals in 52 games before getting hurt. And Riley Green 70% rostered. So if you do play in a shallower league

and you need some outfield help, I think Riley Green is a name that you can look at and we were getting really excited right before he got hurt. He was doing some really, really nice thing. So would be looking to add Riley Green if I could. Matthew Liberator was optioned back to AAA. I think I'll take the L on that one. I'm sure many people are taking Ls right now on Liberator, but he basically looked as bad as he did last season. 6.75

ERA, a 184 whip in his time in the majors this year. Tommy Edmund has missed the past two games with pain in his wrist. MRI revealed no structural damage. Tristan McKenzie was transferred to the 60-day IL, which ensures he'll be out until at least mid-August. Calquan, was placed in the IL with right shoulder inflammation, which means maybe Logan Allen will get another opportunity with the Guardians. We'll always have that one save from Daniel Hudson that we got on. It really does, man. It's it just sucks. Yeah.

He suffered a sprain MCL Wednesday night. In the other knee. Not even the same knee he has surgery in. That is annoying. You know what's wild too? Just a side down. I saw him like three times pitch out here in Complex League while he was working his way. back. And on 4th of July, I didn't have anything going on in the morning. I snuck over to the

Dodgers complex. And that place is so wild. Because if you go in the midday, it was an early thing. It is just, it's like a all-star roster of guys that are just hanging around. It was like Dustin May had thrown the other day. I saw Walker Bueller throw a little bit. Ryan Pepio was there. Gavin Luck. I mean, you've got all these guys that are just walking around the complex. And it's just another player there. I don't know if there's a complex out there that has just more injured players, just wandering aimlessly and poor Daniel Hudson might have to take a cart around too if he does. Yeah, and there's no official timetable, but they said he's going to be out, quote, quite some time, Evan Phillips back in the driver's seat in the Dodgers bullpen.

Kibrian Hayes was activated from the IL and Rowanzi Contreras was optioned back to the miners. Martine Perez will have his next turn in the rotation skipped. He currently has a 481 ERA to go along with a 148 whip. Last been at least, Brett Beatty was out of the long. lineup due to hamstring soreness. Let's take our final break. And when we get back, we'll talk about everything else here on fantasy baseball today. Welcome back and let's get into it.

We will talk about some big hitting performances from Thursday. Let's start it off with Cody Bellinger, who went 4 for 4 with his eighth home run, two runs and three RBI. On the season now is batting 298 with eight home runs and 10 steals in 55 games. Obviously, you missed some time there with a knee injury. The good news is an 8th. 13% strikeout rate is Cody Bellinger's best since 2020. The bad news is that the underlying numbers, the quality of contact, the expected stats,

none of it is buying what Cody Bellinger has done this season. Towers, would you like to apologize and maybe take back what you said about Cody Bellinger? No, I understand that this guy was an MVP candidate for, was the MVP four years ago and has had several good months. months in the four years since then. I don't know. Like I'm rooting for him. I hope I'm wrong. I don't buy it at all.

Like his quality of contact metrics. You know, we make fun of the guy who calls Ronald Acuna a slap header on Twitter a lot. Cody Bellinger actually looks like a slap header right now. Is it max exit velocity is 36 percentile. Average exit velocity six percentile. Heart hit rate fourth percentile. Expected Wobah is 294.

Last season. it was 278. So hey, improvement. But yeah, I don't know. Like, this is a situation where he does pull the ball a lot and he hits the ball in the air. And so that is a combination of things that can make him outperform his expected woba. But we're talking about dreadful expected stats.

We're not talking about like, well, the expected stats are decent and then you can add on top of them. This is like the expected stats say that Cody Bellinger has been really. really, really bad, and the actual numbers are pretty good. So I, like you compare him to the other guy that you have in this group, Christian Yelich, who also, I mean, he was second to Cody Ballinger in the 2019 MVP, I believe. And then similarly has fallen on harder times over the past couple of seasons, has been much better than Cody Ballinger in the past two seasons in particular.

But similar career trajectories and bouncing back and having a very similar season to Cody Bellinger. The difference is Christian Eelsch's 93rd percentile average Egs of velocity 98th percentile max eggs of below, 95th percentile hard hit rate. Expected Wobah. Really, really good. 383. That's the best it's been since 2019

when he was an MVP candidate. So it's like, I am perhaps a curmudgeon, perhaps a contrarian. Perhaps I like to poo-poo the hot thing that everybody is enjoying, and then maybe that's a negative character trait of mine. Maybe it's, I'm not the kind of person you want to have drinks with

because I will tell you why the drink you ordered is terrible. I don't know. But trade code. Actually do that, but no, I would never do that. That's, that's,

I mean, I don't love whiskey. And so, like, if someone buys me a whiskey shot, and I'm kind of not super excited about it, but it's fine. But that being said,

trade Cody Bellinger. What a day for the Welshman. We're here breaking Corby and Carol injury news to him and now he finds out Towers doesn't like whiskey. I mean, this is a rough kind of like bourbon. That's a, what are my brands? Corbyn Carolyn Bourbon, I think. Yeah, you know, an interesting one too is, um, I was going to say, I don't know

we won't spend a ton of time on it, but like, is there a bigger fraud as far as production versus what underlying stats tell you than Cody Bellinger? It's pretty, it's pretty dramatic. And even though statistically, like you were saying, Yelich and him look similar, it's wild to see that Yelich has double the heart. hard hit percentage and double the barrel percentage. I mean, it is a sweet spot of what I want. Give me 10% barrel.

Give me 50% hard hit and let's run. Cody Bellinger is at the bottom. He is half of what that is underlying. It's pretty hard to believe that Cody Bellinger will be able to sustain. Where Christian Yellich looks like he has kind of gotten back into the things that made him a great player in the past. He's making the right decisions and underlying stuff is in his favor. Fastballs don't get by him. He's destroying fastball.

and you're seeing the results. And Welsh, you asked the question. Is Cody Bellinger perhaps overperforming more than any other hitter in baseball? Well, according to Stackast, he has the sixth highest difference between his Wobah and his expected Wobah in a bad way. So he is among the league leaders in players who have outperformed that so far this season. And I know sometimes it's hard for people to separate like fandom from fantasy. You know, people listen to this podcast and they get annoyed when we say something negative about a player. It's like, we are just telling us.

telling you what the stats say to us. I hope I'm wrong. Yes. I genuinely hope I'm wrong. Cody Bellinger was so good when he was good. I just, he's had like one good month in the past three years. Like it's really hard to buy it. We have to keep it real, man.

I mean, that's what we're here to do. It's not just read off the surface level numbers and say, oh yeah, you know, Cody Bellinger is going to be this good for the rest of the year. It's we're here to tell you what did the underlying number say? Is this sustainable? And right now, like, it doesn't say that's true for. for Cody Billinger. So how many power hitters, if we were to go and do the math,

how many good quality, decent power hitters in baseball have a sub 5% barrel percentage and a 27% hard hit percentage? Those are just things that don't equate necessarily. I mean, there might be a guy or two. Someone could be like, well, I found one. Okay, great, you found one. But the majority, you're not gonna find high quality hitters over a season that have that poor of both barrel,

barrel and hard hit. The one example, and even this is not as extreme, but Chris Bryant, like, consistently, well, yeah, but when he was at his best, he consistently outperformed his expected metrics. So, like, guys can do that. And it's, again, hitting the ball in the air, hitting the ball to the pull side, those can help you do that. But it's still, like Chris Bryant was putting up 340 X-WAs with 380 actual Wobas at his best. again Cody Ballinger's

294 X-Woba that's a big gap we are doing a great job of doing this rapid fire style so let's keep it moving let's go over to some waiver wire pitchers from Thursday's action two names here it sounds like you guys

are not too excited about Kyle Bradish Jack Flaherty I don't know what to do with this guy he's been really inconsistent this year he's had some really good starts he's had some very bad starts this one at the Marlins was pretty good six and two-thirds shutout innings nine hits allowed

five strikeouts, 12 swinging strikes on 111 pitches. Velocity was up across the board. His fastball was up 1.4 miles per hour. The curve up 2.5 miles per hour. So some good things there for Jack Flaherty. For the most part, the walks had been a real, real issue for him this season. Kyle Braddish drew six shutout endings with five strikeouts, only seven swinging strikes on 92 pitches.

Welsh, I'll throw these two names your way. Anything to see here, or you're just kind of keeping it moving with Jack Flaherty and Kyle Bish? I think it's relatively keeping it moving. I would be very interested to see if maybe he was a part of a trade if the Cardinals started to move off guys, maybe a change of scenery. But I don't know, the walk percentage to the K's that really get out there, to the weird catching stuff that's going on, and the expected stats not telling us this awesome story.

I think this is borderline streamable, you think, with Jack Floyd. I think that's like the general space of him. Same thing with Bradish. Braddish, to me, is like a step under that. Okay. I think maybe I'll put Bradish a step ahead of, Flarity, but they're in the same range. I think they're both mostly streamers at this point.

Maybe Kyle Bradish, you trust a little bit more, at least based on the results that he's provided this season. In deeper leagues, Carlos Carrasco had his best start of the season at the Diamondbacks, eight shutout innings with four strikeouts in that one. And even after this great start, he is a 5.16 ERA and a 143 whip. Two other names in deeper leagues, both Sparps on CBS. Christopher Sanchez continues to pitch well, A strong start at the raise.

Six innings, one run allowed. Only two strikeouts. Did have eight swinging strikes on 75 pitches. Changed up his pitch mix in this start through his change up a ton. And that is a really good change up, at least so far this season. 47% whiff rate, 1.25 batting average against. I'm pretty interested in Christopher Sanchez. I like what he's doing here.

Renele Blanco is the other name. Turned in a quality start versus the Mariners. Six innings, three runs, nine strikeouts. with 18 swinging strikes. His slider and change-up, they both have higher than a 40% whiff rate this season. That's good. The problem, his fastball gets crushed.

Lots of swinging strikes there. Towers, anything to see here with Ronell Blanco, Christopher Sanchez, and Carlos Carrasco. Sanchez is kind of interesting. The one thing, though, is he's had elite, elite control so far in his five major league starts. 1.42K per 9. that is a minuscule number.

He has really bad control basically throughout his minor league career. 5 to six walks per nine at AAA this season 3.14 last year. That's not terrible. But then 5.92 the year before at AAA. So if he can sustain the walk rate or, you know, there will be some regression from 1.42 per 9. But if he can be a good walk rate guy, I think he's a pretty interesting. picture because of the ground ball rate because, you know, he's not going to get a ton of strikeouts, but it's not Kyle Hendricks. It's just I don't buy the walk rate. So he's got to

prove more. But I think he's worth adding for, you know, streaming purposes. One thing I wanted to add, not to believe it, but Carlos Carrasco, there's a weird thing I saw before the game that Carlos Carrasco, I don't know how true it is, but we can see it. This was a published article that Carlos Carasco found a new slider grip just going through videos, finding, I think he found, said he found it on Instagram or TikTok, and he found some slider grip. And then in this game, his slider had a 50% whiff rate and a 44% CSW. So just wanted to throw it out. He threw it 17% of the time. Don't know how much that equated to this new grip he found, but it was a very, very effective pitch against the diamond back.

So just another one of those weird corky things about pitchers. Yeah, something will watch moving forward with Carlos Carrasco. I don't know that we've ever done the Woriometer for just one player, but I'm about to do it because I want to talk about Nathan Avaldi. His velocity was down once again at the Boston Red Sox. Five and a third innings, four runs loud. Four walks in this start. Two starts in a row with four walks for Nathan Avaldi.

And he has now averaged under 95 miles per hour on his fastball in three of his past four starts. That is 95.6 miles per hour on the season. And I don't, look, he didn't say that he's pitching through anything. He said it's like a mechanical issue right now, but I feel like in the past, at least in recent years, when Nathan Avaldi has tried to pitch through injury,

it's been with lower velocity. So that's the first place that my mind goes. And over his last six starts, he has an ERA just over four, a one-two-one whip. Towers, the Wariometer on Nathan Avaldi. I'll say four. I didn't buy Nathan Avaldi as being just like

all of a sudden an ace, you know, a top 15 starting pitch. He's remained, I think, in like the 30 range for me at starting pitcher. So like in that regard, I'm not too concerned because I expect him to be more like a mid to high three's ERA guy moving forward. And that's basically what he's been over this run. But I certainly can't say zero given the walks and the velocity. You know, that the that they identified a mechanical tweak and that his velocity was up in his

previous start doesn't make me think that like this could be fixable. But obviously the fact that it dipped down again is a little concerning. Is there anything actionable we could do, right? It's, I mean, do you try and sell while the overall numbers to look really, really good? Yeah, I mean, I still think like he's going to pitch worse than his overall numbers right now. His overall overall numbers still make him look like one of the best pitchers in baseball. And I don't think he's going to be that. So like if someone values him that way, then yeah, I think there's a cell window, but I think the cell window was a month ago.

All right. Let's get into some leftovers here. We'll start with the pitchers. Freddie Peralta posted his second double digit outing of the year. Double digit strikeout outing, I should say. Five and a third, three runs allowed, 10 strikeouts with a career high, 28 swinging strikes for Freddie Peralta. Velocity was way up across the board for him in this start. the problem is more of the same. Inefficiency, walks, home runs being a big issue for Freddie Peralta this season. He's got a 4.70 ERA and a 1.30 whip on the season.

Yuri Perez, strong bounce back versus the Cardinals. Six innings, one run, seven strikeouts with 15 swinging strikes there. George Kirby, a quality start at the Houston Astros. Six and two-thirds innings, one run, three strikeouts. And while filling out his pitching line and some of his underlying numbers, I just found myself saying, under my breath, he is so boring. George Kirby is so boring, but he's good.

He gets it done. It's a good ERA. It's a good whip. It's just, you know, the strikeouts are so uninspiring for him. And Julio Arias, a nice bounce back start up against the Pirates. Six innings, two runs, eight strikeouts there. Welsh, lots of names, lots going on here. Arias, Kirby, Yuri Perez, Freddie Peralta, anything you'd like to add on this group.

Just lately, I watched a lot of that Freddie Peralta start. The stuff pops. Just getting later into games is always going to be the problem. He's always going to be a negative or at least a down in quality starts leagues. It's just not something he can do. But the strikeouts were awesome. He looked fantastic. Uri, we should be very encouraged about that this is continuing going on. And Julio Urius inducing a lot of that weak contact and getting back to himself. These are all positives. And I couldn't agree more. George Kirby is super boring. Like the only thing they could talk about in the broadcast was how mad he gets when he walks a guy. He just, oh, he eats, walk. guys, he just, he got a pitch to contact and it's like, that's boring. He is. He's, he's, he's the new Carlos Silva, except he throws 97 instead of 87. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a pitch behind the is that the right, is that the right name Carlos Silva? Did I pull that one out? I don't know. I mean, that's probably more of a Welsh question than me. It's how long ago is Carlos Silva pitching? I, I honestly couldn't tell you. Carlos Silva like eight years. Point four walks per nine in 2005. Oh, geez. There you go.

2005. I was in high school man. Yeah. I was in high school too. We I wish that's a long time. It's more like Cliff Lee with the walks. Yeah. The strikeouts and not Carlos Silva. That would be, I wish you were saying Cliff Lee, but he doesn't get the strikeouts. That's that that is the thing. I think George Kirby would be a better pitcher if he was more willing to walk to walk to throw pitches out of the zone. Not to walk guys, but to throw more pitches out of the zone. But the, that's that is who he is. And you like he does not want to walk anyone. He talks. about that a lot. Two quick questions on Yuri Perez, something I absolutely should not do on July 7th, but it's just a fun talking point. Towers, where do you think? Just right now,

where will Yuri Perez be ranked as a starting pitcher heading into next season? He's going to get drafted as a top 25 starting pitcher next year. I mean, if he throws 50 more innings, he gets to about 120, maybe even, maybe 130. You know, he was at 77 last year.

Let's give him 20. 60 more innings. He gets to 125 so you could project 175 innings for him next year. Yeah, what we've seen, like he went heavy on the slider today. They were talking about on the broadcast, and it was awesome.

He was great, and he's just, I think he's the real deal. I think he's a legitimate ace. I was, I pulled up this year's ADP to see if there was like a comp in terms of a breakout hype guy that was going around that range.

And, you know, there really wasn't. I know as draft season went on, guys like Jeffrey Springs got pushed up the draft board and Reed Detmer's and stuff like that, but yeah, maybe. Where were Gilbert and Kirby going? You know, maybe.

Yeah, the eyesightment around. I think the strikeout potential. Yeah, I think he's a lot more exciting. 25 was my number, by the way, as well. So I'm with you. Kirby was like 30 at starting pitcher. The other quick question on Yuri Perez, well, someone asked me this today on Twitter,

and I think it's a good idea, at least knowing what we know right now and that Yuri Perez could be limited in the second half of the season, maybe shut down at some point. Would you look to sell high on him and kind of a combo by low on Julio Arias who also pitched today?

I think it's a great idea. I think it's a phenomenal idea. I hate doing it because if the world breaks and something changes and the Marlins find the way to do, you hate to sell out on that, but this is like what you do. You sell the rookie if you could actually go get Urius. You know the Dodgers are going to make their moves.

They're going to, the diamond backs are falling apart in front of our eyes. The Dodgers are going to capitalize and jump on it. And Julio Arias will be maybe the most important piece of that outside of Kershaw being healthy. So yes, absolutely make sure. Yeah. We're saying Yuri Perez will be a top 25 starting pitcher next year. Well, so will Julio Arias, you know.

Yeah. I think that's fair. Yeah. We got a, we got an email. Sorry. Like during the middle of the second inning, drop Arias three question marks. Don't email during, during a. start guys.

Yeah. At least not until they're pulled from the game. Six innings, three hits, two runs, one walk, eight strikeouts for Julio Reyes. No, you should, no, you should not drop him. A 476 ERA, I get it. He's, you know, he's been a disappointment this year and he's been injured, but, I mean, Arias has been one of the most consistent pitchers over the past three years. So, yeah.

Something I would be looking to do as well. A few bullpen updates, Cincinnati Reds. Alexis Diaz gave up an unerred run, but picked up his 25th save and is now tied. for the league lead with Camillo Doval and Jordan Romano this season. For the Brewers, Devin Williams was unavailable. Yowell Pyeoms picked up his third save of the season. For the Cardinals, right back to Jordan Hicks, who threw a clean ninth inning for his sixth save,

only 57% rostered still, and I am on record. I've said it time and time again. I think he's running away with his job. I know he had the weird blown save on Wednesday night, but Jordan Hicks has looked really good in the closers role for the Cardinals. For the Blue Jays in game one of their doubleheader, Jordan Romano pitched the 10th inning with the game tied.

He wound up with the win. Yemi Garcia picked up his first save, and then in game two, Nate Pearson got the final four outs for his first save of the season. And then I am seeing the Dodgers. They probably wanted to give Evan Phillips another day off. I know he's been used a lot lately.

Alex Vesia entered with a three-run lead. He struck out one and picked up his first save of the season. I believe just got called up today. Yeah, he was rehabbing camp like two weeks ago and then he got up to the miners. And I believe Brewstar is just dealing with like a thing. Yeah, he was added to the aisle, right? I don't know if you went on the IL, but I know he's dealing with like a shoulder. He's not available right now, yeah.

Yeah. So that's why we saw Alex Vessy get the safe here on Thursday. Let's wrap up with to stream or not stream. And we will start with Friday, who. I did this for the newsletter for tomorrow and this is not a great weekend. There's a lot of TBAs on the schedule right now, but this is not a great weekend for streamers. No, it is not. Friday, I like Aaron Savali versus the Royals. I, we said it yesterday. I don't think you could start Alec Minow and his first start at the Tigers.

I wanted to know if you guys were going to do it. I won't. I'm looking at, I'm going to do any book and I'm looking at what his walk prop is going to be if they post it. And I'm taking the over. I'm not betting Manoa, except on his walks over. I would not, but I would not. I think you should add him. Yep. I think he's right around 70, 75% rostered at this point. That is Alec Manoa. On Saturday, yeah, not much going on here.

I guess Brian Wu at the Astros is okay. It's not a great matchup, but there's no Jose Altovae, so that obviously helps. Which one is Heaney pitching? We have him under Friday and Saturday. I like whichever one he's pitching. The problem is the nationals are actually good against lefties. They are. They're like ninth in the majors in OPS against lefties,

and I believe they have like the second lowest strikeout rate against lefties. Yeah, they are. That was one I identified initially, and then I started researching, and I was like, oh, I don't know if I actually, it wouldn't surprise me if Andrew Heaney had a good start. He's capable of that. It's just the matchup wasn't as good as I liked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's more about just what's available. And again, there's not much. So I think it's Brian Wu at the Astros. Heaney at the Nationals on Saturday. I think it's okay. Same thing with Drew Smiley. He's been not great over the past month or so, but neither have the Yankees.

So I think that's a route you could go down. On Sunday, same thing. Kyle Hendricks at the Yankees. I think that's fine. And, uh, yeah, Yankees are 26th and OPS against right-handed pitcher since June 1st. I don't really like anything else.

Brandon Belak had a good start against the Rockies last time out. Maybe against the Mariners. I don't like it. I don't like it. Yeah, all right, rough weekend here for streamers, but we tried. For the Chris's, I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning in to Fantasy Baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify.

We'll be back again next week. Bye-bye.