Fantasy Baseball Today - Fixing Aaron Nola, Rankings Updates & Gausman's Trade Value (6/9 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Robbie Ray, Framber Valdez, and Pablo Lopez were all awesome on Tuesday (2:47)! How do we rank them rest of season? ... Gerrit Cole should be a politician after his awful press conference (12:00). ... News and notes (16:19)! Trevor Story isn't back yet, Flaherty could be out until after the All-Star break and Corey Seager is eyeing early July. ... Should you sell-high on Kevin Gausman (19:48)? If so, what is his trade value? ... What is wrong with Aaron Nola (26:34)? Nola or Walker Buehler rest of season? ... These elite players did elite things (35:34). ... Where should you add these waiver wire options (40:42)? There are a ton of catchers available! ... How has Brandon Crawford been this good (50:18)? ... We wrap up with bullpens, streamers, and Fantasy Justice For All (53:18)! ... Email us at [e-mail]. '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, @AdamAizer 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

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. I drive. Centerfield. What is magnificent? Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Well, fantasy becomes reality.

Now here's Frank Scott, Chris and Adam. What's going on, everybody? And welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today on Wednesday, June 9th. I am Frank Stamphill, joined by Chris Towers. another well-deserved day off for Scotty Dubbs, Scott White. But don't worry, we got you, baby. Today on the show, we are going to attempt to fix Aranola. What is going on there?

We're going to rank some mid-tier starting pitchers who had great performances, some Waverwire ads, your fantasy justice questions, and we're going to play you Garrett Cole's audio when he was asked if he has ever used Spider-Tech, which is one of these foreign substances that we continuously talk about. It was bad. I don't know how he didn't realize that. question was coming that somebody was going to ask him about it, but it was very bad. Chris,

can you remember a time in life when you were that flustered in a public forum? Yeah, pretty much any time I had to speak publicly in high school or college. I know I come off as such a bright and outgoing person who's extremely erudite and says good word things all the time in this context, but boy, let me tell you, put me in front of seven people in like a ancient Greek history class and have me ask me to speak. And I sound exactly like I do right now. Well, what if I told you there were 67 people watching us on YouTube right now? Would that make you feel better? No, it reminded me of, you haven't seen Big Lebowski, have you? You've never seen any movies. I haven't seen anything, yeah. There's a, there's a scene.

with John Goodman. It reminded me of a scene in the Big Lobowski where John would, John Goodman is talking about a marmot. And it, it's the same energy as that. Just like kind of three word sentences followed by a pivot to a completely different sentence,

that kind of thing. So I very much enjoyed watching it. We will get to it, man. That, uh, it was, again, it was, it was quite bad for, for Garikull,

not a good look for him. And really not a great look for, I guess, it's extremely like, Like, my, I don't know how to answer that question. T-shirt is garnering a lot of questions already answered by my T-shirt energy. It was kind of that, that kind of thing. Yeah, it was like the most obvious admission without actually admitting what you did wrong.

Oh, my goodness gracious. All right, let's start off with some standouts from Tuesday. Chris, where would you like to start? Let's start with, I should have, yeah, Robert Glenn Ray. Robbie Ray, Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher. We talked about him a little yesterday. He continued to do what he has been doing pretty much all season. And that's kind of throw the ball right down the middle of the strike zone.

And he was once again excellent. 13 strikeouts and 6 in the 3rd. Annings give up one run on a solo home run to the White Sox. I was off. That was by Andrew Vaughn. 102 pitches, 21 swinging strikes. he's been absolutely awesome so far this season and it really is incredible

you look at his illustrator on baseball savant the game feed and it's it's an overstatement to say that it's all down the middle because he's got a ton of sliders low and in to right-handed hitters the fastball is just all in the strike zone now like it really it's incredible

he threw what was this 40 strikeout 51 fastballs and it looks like maybe 9, 10 of them aren't in the strike zone or at least on the corner of the strike zone. He's become a completely different pitcher and as I mentioned yesterday, it's just by throwing it down the middle

and letting the stuff take over. And it's been a really effective strategy form. And like we will talk about with Framber Valdez coming up very shortly, I guess it doesn't matter all that much. Of course, if you're allowing hard contact, it's not optimal. But I think when you're allowing that hard contact into the ground,

it does help a little bit more. I mean, the way that analytics have played into things and the way that teams are shifting as efficiently as they are nowadays, obviously that helps a ton when people are hitting the ball hard into the ground. And for Robbie Ray, while it's not one of the highest ground ball rates in baseball, like Framber Valdez, 45% for Robbie Ray this season represents a career high, which is very good for him.

So you couple that with he's getting as many strikeouts as he has 11.5, per 9, 2.10 walks per 9. That is also a career best number for him. That has never been lower than 3.5 walks per 9. Like we said yesterday, this is the best version of Robbie Ray that we have seen. And he is in the 84th percentile in walk rate. He is great. Like legitimately good at a void. He has a significantly lower walk rate than Shane Bieber right now. And the other thing on the batted ball side, he's only giving. up, you know, per baseball savant, 22.9% line drive rate. And so his fly ball rates about where it was last season, the ground ball rates up. And so what that means is that he's giving up a lot fewer of the type of

batted balls you want to avoid. You know, you get hit hard, you give up fly balls. Those will turn in the home runs eventually, you know, a decent amount of them. I would guess he has a pretty high home run to fly ball ratio. But they also, when they don't turn into home runs, often turn into outs. And that's the same thing with ground balls. Ground balls usually turn into outs. It's line drives that really kill you. And so if you can keep runners off the base with free passes and you can strike, you know, 30% of the bat as you face out, you'll live with the occasional solo home run. I don't think he's going to continue to be, you know, he's been one of the best pitchers in baseball really over his last, I don't know, eight or nine starts. I don't think he'll continue to be

that. But I do think Robbie Ray is a must start pitcher right now. Yeah, I'm with you there. And let's make this an oh my goodness trifecta because I mentioned we wanted to talk about mid-tier starting pitchers that had great starts. Robbie Ray is obviously one of those, the other two, Framber Valdez at the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night, seven and one-third innings, five hits, one earned, zero walks, eight strikeouts, 18 swinging strikes on 96 pitches for Framber Valdez. Nine of those came on the curve, which is his best pitch. He now has a 1.47 ERA through his first three starts, which came against the Padres and the Red Sox twice. So pretty tough matchups there, and he has succeeded.

He has a 76% ground ball rate with 22 strikeouts, only four walks on the season. That is Framber Valdez and Pablo Lopez, who going up against the Colorado Rockies, they were on the road, it was in Marlins Park, eight innings, five hits, two runs, zero walks, eight strikeouts for Pablo Lopez. And over his last five starts, 2.32 ERA, 33 strikeouts, over 31 innings pitched, And he's using his breaking pitches more. And that was something that, yeah, I liked Pablo Lopez quite a bit coming into the year. Scott kind of pushed back on it because he said,

Pablo Lopez always talks about using his breaking pitches more, but he doesn't actually do it. Well, now he's throwing four different pitches over 10 plus percent of the time. So that includes his curveball, his cutter, his changeup, which is his best pitch. And then he has a decent fastball that he throws, you know, 93, 94 miles per hour. But I think it's a very good arsenal that Pablo Lopez has. So, Chris, how would you rank those three starting pitchers following their awesome starts on Tuesday? Valdez, Lopez, and Robbie Ray. Yeah, you look at what Lopez has done.

He's allowed zero earned runs in, uh, wasn't now six starts. He didn't allow any runs today, right? He allowed two. Two earned runs. Okay. So he's allowed zero runs in six of his 12, uh, five of his 12 starts. No, sorry. Five of his 13 starts.

He's allowed two or fewer earned runs in, 11 of his 13 starts. He's basically had two bad starts, and I feel like that's kind of been Pablo Lopez's issue. He'll have, like, last year, it was seven earned runs and one and two-thirds inning against the Braves.

Other than that, he, you know, had a sub-3 ERA. He had, God, I want to say there was a start where he gave up 10 runs in less than an inning or maybe one inning against the Mets in 2019. Other than that, he had like a 3-5 ERA. So, you know, that starts coming.

at some point. You know, that, that seems like kind of unavoidable, unavoidable for him, but he's making them few and far enough between that. I do have him at the top of this group. I've got Lopez 22nd at starting pitcher, and I did have him higher than Robbie Ray

and Framber Valdez coming into the season, even before Framber's injury. So for me, it's Lopez, a little gap, Robbie Ray at 28, Framber at 31. So all of them, I think must start pitchers right now,

all of them, you know, top 35, top 36 starting pitchers, but I do trust Lopez a little more. I guess Frumber has been about as good as him over the last two seasons. It's just fewer strikeouts, I guess is the biggest thing between the two of them. Yeah, I mean,

it hasn't been the case so far this year, right? For Framber Valdez, he's getting as many strikeouts as he is, limiting walks and doing it while getting a ton of ground balls. Now, he did allow a ton of hard hits on Tuesday, but again, a 76, that is a lot. That's a big number too. But a 76% ground ball rate, that's going to help mitigate a lot of the damage there for Valdez. So I put up a poll actually on Tuesday night asking where should Valdez rank rest of season in terms of starting pitchers.

Top 20, top 30, top 30, outside the top 40. Which one do you think won, Chris? I must say top 30. Yeah, top 30, 49%. but actually second place top 20 starting pitcher 38% of the vote so I'm not ready to do that I think I need to see a little bit more from Valdez but I actually rank him first of this group might be aggressive I moved them up to SP 28 I have Lopez at SP 30 and I have Robbie Ray just behind at SP 33 there's still a sliver a sliver of doubt when it comes to Robbie Ray though

oh no I totally get it yeah um I mean he's definitely been the worst of this group group over the last three seasons at his worst. And his best hasn't been appreciably better than the other two guys best. I'm not sure it really has been better. But, you know, when I say for Amber Valdez is 32, I really look at my rankings and like, I think starting with Joe Musker of at 17 and really through Valdez at 32. I've got Sunny Gray at 33, Kentomite at 34, Hazer Salazar at 35. Those guys are very iffy.

and so I think there is a gap after those guys. I think any of those 15 pitchers, you could put in any order. And some of them have a little, like Carlos Rodon, I think has a little higher upside than some of the other guys in there. But I feel like there's not much separating that group as a whole

between, you know, injury risk for some guys, performance risk for others, lack of upside for others. They're not all the same type of pitcher, but I value them very, very similarly, even though there's a relatively big gap between them. Look at you, Chris, man. You come so far since high school, public speaking, because I thought that was very well said. And maybe Garrett Cole can actually...

My hands are shaking. Maybe Garrett Cole could actually take a little bit of some notes here from Chris Towers because he was asked if he has ever used Spider-Tech. Again, one of these foreign substances that pitchers are accused of using. And this audio comes from at SNY videos on Twitter. here is what he had to say. And how do you ever use Spider-Tat while pigeon? I don't... Today.

I don't know if... I don't quite know how to answer that, to be honest. I mean, there are customs and practices that have been passed down from older players to younger players, from the last generation of players, to this generation of players and you know

I think I think there are some things that are certainly out of bounds in that regard and I've stood pretty firm in terms of that in terms of the communication between our peers and whatnot

you know and again like I mentioned earlier there's you know this is important to a lot of people that I love the game and this is including including the players in this room, including fans, including, you know, teams. And so if MLB wants to, you know, legislate some more stuff, that's a conversation that we can have. Because ultimately, we should all be pulling in the same direction of this.

So that was a minute in 16 seconds, Chris, where... He said maybe 22 words. He said nothing. He said absolutely nothing. The guy should be a politician. It was embarrassing. In conclusion... In conclusion, spider tack is a land of contrasts.

Yeah, if you're watching on YouTube, I've posted, shared my screen of the Amazon page for Spider-Tac. And it is a guy with a cinder block and he's got spider tack on his palm and he just put his palm down on a cinder block and just lifted it up. That's how strong this stuff is. Look, man, it's public speaking's hard. Someone pointed out on Twitter and I hadn't thought about this, but like this whole thing, literally this whole thing is happening because Trevor Bauer didn't like Garrett Cole when they went to UCLA together. And he decided to publicly accuse Garrett Cole and the Astros of doing this. And that's pretty much how this whole conversation started in terms of the mainstream baseball discourse. So I do find that kind of funny.

that it kind of just like if it wasn't for the fact that those two dudes just don't like each other this may have never happened this whole conversation may have never happened and then Trevor Bauer the past couple of seasons call it for what it is if you can't beat him join him

because he has the highest spin rates in baseball over the past two seasons by no means am I discount you know I'm not saying that Gary Cole is not wrong I mean I think I'm saying actually quite the opposite so he is This was basically an admission of guilt.

How did he not know someone was going to ask him this question? Did he want to come off this way? This isn't even, this isn't even on Garrett Cole. This is on Garrett Cole's agent and the Yankees PR staff for apparently never having this conversation with him. It's just like that is your job. And Garrett Cole pitches on Wednesday against the twins.

So front and center, everyone's going to be paying attention to baseball savant, first pitch of the game, seeing what these spin rates look like and rightfully so, because I don't know what's going on. balls. Yeah, right. Just throw 80 sliders in a start, I guess. There's sliders and changeups. 80 sliders, 20 changeups coming on Wednesday against the Minnesota Twins. And again, his Gerichol spin rate was down in his last start. It was the lowest it's been since 2018. Mind you,

2018 was the year he broke out with the Astros. So even if he just maintains that spin rate, he should still be really, really good. So overall, I'm not worried about this, but it obviously is a very big storyline in baseball and for fantasy baseball as well. So, news and notes from Tuesday. Trevor's story did not return as expected, but is still, quote, very close. Jack Flaherty is likely out for the rest of the first half of the season with that oblique injury, which means we likely won't see him until mid July at the earliest. I saw one person say, one, one reporter say it might not be until August. Oh, yeah, I know Scott originally just kind of predicted that we don't see him again until the second half. So good job there from Scott.

But man, August, that would be a pretty, pretty crushing a crushing blow for when he was healthy, you know, one of the top 15 best starting pitchers in fantasy baseball. Sunny Gray was removed from Tuesday's start with groin tightness. He is set to undergo an MRI. Adbert Owslai placed on the IEL with a blister that he suffered in Monday's start.

So after weeks and weeks of begging people to add Albert O'Sly, this is how we're rewarded in a two-start week, so I'm sorry. Joey Gallo was removed with right groin tightness on Tuesday. We had a bunch of players return. Joey Vado was back and batting cleanup. J.D. Martinez returned to the lineup. He was dealing with the wrist. Brandon Belt was back and batting cleanup for the Giants. Michael Brantley also returned from the

IL. We had some rehab news. Lance McCullors will make a rehab start on Thursday. Jeff McNeil could start a rehab assignment on Friday. Trent Grisham will begin a rehab assignment at AAA in the coming days and D.D. Gregorius could begin one by the end of this week. Other news, Corey Seeger's broken right hand is healing quicker than he initially anticipated. And I saw The hope is that he can return by early July. So there was an update last week, which sounded like he was much closer than that, but I guess early July is what we're looking at right now for Corey Seeger.

Zach Plesack will begin throwing this week. Remember, he's the guy who broke his thumb, rather, aggressively taking his shirt off. Danny Jansen went to the IL with a right hamstring strain, and a prospect actually for the Toronto Blue Jays, a catcher prospect was called up. He was batting 250 with a 10-10 OPS in 19 games at AAA. Chris,

I would assume only in two catcher leagues, but anything to see here with Riley Adams? Yeah, I mean, if you've got a pulse and you're a catcher eligible player in a two catcher league, we're going to take notice. He has a 788 OPS in his minor league career, strikes out a decent amount, walks a decent amount,

but so far in AAA this season, he had six homers and 19 games with a 10-10 OPS. So, you know, that's certainly, eye opening. Yes, a name again to pay attention to there. Riley Adams. Jamer Candelario was placed on the bereavement list. Issoc Paredes was recalled for the Tigers and a few other prospect updates. Twins starting pitcher Matt Cantorino was diagnosed with right elbow inflammation after undergoing an MRI, which is quite unfortunate because he was dominating at high A ball. He was a name that I brought up over the past month or so. I still really like him, but hope this isn't a long-term injury for Matt

Cancerino and Marlin's pitching prospect, Braxton Garrett, has been recalled and is likely to start on Wednesday. He had a 3.28 ERA with a 1.22 whip through five starts at AAA. Not a highly regarded prospect, but a name to monitor is. Former first round pick, I believe, yeah, seventh overall pick in 2016. Former top 100 prospect. He's dealt with injuries, but, you know, does have a 344 ERA in his minor league career. So someone to watch. watch. The email of the day, this one came from David. He says, is it crazy that Kevin Gosman is the number one starting pitcher like you said the other day? Is he a great sell high at this point? What hitter can I get? I'm in a head-to-head points league and my pitching is pretty good,

being led by Tyler Glassnow, Clayton Kirschaw, and Kevin Gosman, as well as Domingo Hermann, with Tony Gonslin coming off the IL. So Chris, I know you mentioned that if you can sell high on Gosman, just because he, we don't expect him to remain the number. number one starting pitcher. Can he pitch to being a top 15, top 20th starting pitcher rest of the season? I think that's possible with the way that he is pitching right now. 1.27 ERA, 0.76 whip. Obviously those numbers are not going to remain for the rest of the season. But yeah, like we say with every sell high, if you can actually sell high and get a legitimate player in return, I think it's something that you should look into doing it. There's

nothing wrong with trying. And a few early round hitters, Chris, that have disappointed to this point, if you can turn Kevin Gosman into any of these, I would try it. Freddie Freeman, Cody Bellinger, Bryce Harper, Mani Machado. I don't know how realistic it is,

but I did see, they were doing these NFBC drafts recently where it was from June on, rest of the season. It's like a second chance draft to play out the final four months of the season. And Kevin Gosman was a second round pick in one of the drafts that I saw.

So somebody somewhere values him as a top 10, 15-ish starting pitcher. Do you think it's realistic to get any of Freeman, Bellinger, Harper, or Machado for him? Maybe. I mean, I got called out on Twitter for having Kevin Gosman too low, and I had Kevin Gosman too low. I had him 32nd. I moved him up to 20th. So I think it's entirely positive.

19th, actually. I think it's entirely possible he can be a top 20 starting pitcher for the rest of the season. I actually do expect it. I don't think he'll be a top five starting pitcher. probably not a top 10 starting pitcher. There's too many really good starting pitchers out there. But yeah, I think, like, yes, if I could get Mani Machado, Bryce Harper, Cody Ballinger,

Freddie Freeman, even Christian Yelage for him, I would do that because I think those guys will be more valuable moving forward. But that's not to say that I don't think Kevin Gosman will be good moving forward. And, you know, one type of trade you might consider doing would be maybe moving him for a pitcher who I think is probably a downgrade like Charlie Morton or Kyle Hendricks, but who I think will still be good, who I

only have a little bit below him, and see if you can get another hitter thrown in there who hasn't been great, but we expect better things from moving forward. Who that hitter might be, I would have to come up with another. I mean, maybe like, God, I wish Mike Mastakis was healthy because he'd be a really good answer for that.

You know how Kyle Tucker was basically our by-low for the whole beginning part of May. I think Charlie Blackman has kind of taken over as like the universal by-low. And he's not really a by-low anymore because the numbers- O-QAS is almost around 800 now. Yeah, I think it's the last 15 games or so.

He's batting over 300. So he's performing well. I just think, A, people haven't realized it. And B, he's older, so no one's really excited to trade for Charlie Blackman, but I still think he's a good trade candidate to try and acquire right now. Heck, what about DJ LaMayhew?

and a pitcher. I have my concerns about DJ LeMayhew. I'm worried about LeMayhew. Me too, but if I could get DJ LaMayhew and Luis Castillo, that's a risky trade, but there's a lot more upside on your side of the trade

if you're making that. Yeah. I think a lot of people wouldn't do that. I think you could, though. I think you could. And I don't know, if you're in a position where you're like trailing, if you're in like 10th place in a Roto League,

that's probably a trade you should do. No, that's a good point. Yeah. And we probably don't talk about that enough is how you should make trades based on where you are in the standings, right? So, you know, if things are not working out the way that your team is currently constructed and you have players that are overperforming, you should be looking to move someone like a Kevin Gosman if he's on your team, which, I mean, if you have Gosman, the chances are your team is probably doing pretty

good. But if you can flip him for two pieces, too, or even three pieces, you know, but especially I think the key is, the lower you are in the standings, the more risk you should be willing to take on, Because, yeah, especially in a Roto League, but even the head-to-head points league, look, if you're 10th place, it doesn't matter. Like, if your team gets worse, it doesn't matter. Because you need things to drastically turn around. And so what that means is that you can't necessarily stay with the status quo. Unless you've got, you know, let's say you have Manny Machado and Freddie Freeman and Cody Ballinger on your team. Then you could probably count on those guys turning it around.

Yeah. And helping you really make a run. But, you know, if you've got a team that just isn't that good and you don't have a lot of hope for turning it around, you should probably be trying to acquire big name players who are either injured or coming back from injury or haven't been good. Christian Yalach, I think, is a perfect example of this because, look, if Christian Yelich continues to hit the way he has, your team's going to continue to stink. But the cost of moving from 12th, from 10th to 12th, there's really no cost there. But if Christian Yelich starts playing like the Christian Yowlich, we know he can be, that can push you into contention. I just want to go back to Manny Machado real quick here,

because I don't really understand why he's struggling. When I look at all the underlying numbers, I just don't see it. He's batting 2.35 now on the season. Another 0 for on Tuesday. He's currently 0 for 3. He's set to actually lead off the next inning. But he has a career high average exit velocity, career high, hard hit rate.

His home run to fly ball ratio is the lowest that it's been since 2013, despite the seventh highest exit velocity on fly balls and line drives in baseball among qualified hitters. So when he's putting the ball in the air, he's hitting it very hard. If anyone is worried about Machado because they see the surface numbers, I would be trying to acquire him. I just don't really understand why his numbers have been as bad as they are. He's lost some line drives.

you know, his added ball profile looks a little more like 2019 than 2020, 2020. He kind of traded both line dry, fly balls and ground balls for line drives. That's a good trade to make. He's gone the opposite direction so far this season, but I don't really, like you said, I don't really see any reason to think that there's been a significant change in his skill set where he won't be a very, very good hitter moving forward. All right, so we're trying to acquire Mani Machado. Should you try and acquire Aaron Nola?

What is wrong with this fella? Can we try to fix him? Let's see. He was going up against the Braves on Tuesday, and he allowed seven hits, four runs, two more home runs, over five innings pitched. He did have seven strikeouts,

so that was a positive, but he has a 5.06 ERA and a 1.19 whip across his first 13 starts of the season this year. The biggest differences that I can tell, he has a career low 41% ground ball rate. That number is 49.8.

for his career. So that is a massive difference. I mean, you're talking nearly nine percentage points difference in ground ball rate. As a result, he has a career high, 38% fly ball rate. He's got a 320 Babbup against. That is 293 for his career. So it's not egregious, but I think you can expect some regression for him in that department. The four-scene fastball is getting hit pretty hard. It's something that I've noticed. And Aaron Nola kind of goes as his foreseem fastball goes. If you look at the fastball, basically every year that he has struggled, which is every odd year, basically, it's been that his fastball allows a higher OPS

or weighted runs created. I was looking at it earlier than in even years. It's just like a random volatility thing with Aeronola, which I don't really understand why that happens, but there is volatility with his four-seem fastball. And then the change-up. It's lost some of its luster this year. It has a 748 OPS against. That has been sub-600 each of the past two years. Those are things that I noticed with Aranola. However, his 3.36 expected ERA entering Tuesday was basically identical to last season. And is he going to be

a low-3s ERA pitcher that I expected coming into the season? I had him as my SP4. I was very excited about him. That probably isn't going to happen. Can he be a sub-3.5 ERA rest of year? Yeah, I would take the under on that with a 1.10 to 1.15 whip. 10K per 9. Yes, I think that's who Aaronola can be rest of season. Chris, what have you seen from him? And let's do it. Worryometer Wednesday.

Are you actually worried about Aeronola? Yeah, one thing I'm trying to look up is just to kind of see whether the Phillies have had as a whole some issues defensively, because one thing that really stands out, and it's a relatively minor thing. But when we're talking about this small, you know, two-month sample sizes, relatively minor things can matter. And, you know, that Babbitt being high, the first thing you go and look for is, well, is he giving up more line drives? He's not.

He actually has a slight lower line drive than he had did last season or in 2019. Yes, he's getting fewer ground balls and he is giving up more fly balls, but more fly balls generally doesn't lead to a higher batting average, allowed and certainly not a higher Babbitt. Batting, you know, like I said earlier, fly balls tend to turn into outs. and he's not really giving up home runs. 10.8% home run to fly ball rate. He actually has a 10.8 infield fly ball rate. So one home run for every infield fly ball. Nothing wrong with that.

One thing that does stand out is he's given up 10 infield hits. That's really high. He's given up four. He gave up four last season and basically the same amount of time. So that's something worth looking at. It makes me wonder if the Phillies defense has been bad, but it really hasn't rated out as particularly bad. Don't have a good answer.

Unfortunately, they do have the eighth highest babbitt, but it's 297 for the team versus three. What is after today's start? 322. So, yeah, I mean, like you said, his fastball is getting hit harder, but I don't know if there's necessarily a great explanation for that. He's throwing it more,

which isn't necessarily always a great thing. He's throwing his four-seem fastball. more than he did last season, about 14% more. He's traded a lot of sinkers for four seamers. Maybe that's just not a particularly good change, but I don't see a lot that would indicate the fastball should be less effective. I don't know.

I'm kind of stumped. This is one that I just kind of think it's a little bit of bad luck maybe. So what would your worryometer be on Aeronova, one to 10? Three or four. I still think he'll be a, 330 ERA guy moving forward.

He, the Phillies rather, are 28th in defensive runs saved. They are 18th in UZR. So I don't know which defensive metric you prefer, Chris, but at least by defensive run saved, they are quite bad. And I think that makes sense

because Andrew McCutcheon and Bryce Harper in your outfield is definitely not a recipe for defensive success. Someone asked me on Tuesday night on Twitter, would I rather have Aranola or Walker Bueller rest of the season? I thought it was a really good question. because Walker Bueller just continues this weird season

that we've talked about quite a bit, but he was at the Pirates on Tuesday. Seven shutout, two hits, only one walk, only two strikeouts. He did allow eight more hard hit balls. The ERA is down to 2.56. That comes with a 3.73 X-FIP for Walker Bueller. 8.4K per 9 represents a career low,

but he's also had the best control of his career. So I kind of feel like he's purposely pitching the contact more. Maybe that's what has allowed him to go deeper into start so far this season. and be more efficient, but who would you rather have, Chris, Aranola or Walker Bueller rest of the season? I would rather have Aranola. I know the results haven't been there.

And, you know, Bueller's arguably been better on a per inning basis over the past three seasons. Actually, probably not that close. But I just look at the underlying stats and like Walker Buehler has an expected ERA of 369 entering this start. can't imagine it got much better with a two strikeout start where he gave up a bunch of hard contacts. So I'm inclined to say that Bueller has been fairly lucky. That's not to say that there

haven't been changes that he's made. You know, like you said, conscious changes, I think. But he has the highest expected Wobon contact allowed of his career and the lowest strike rate of his career. That's not a good combination. And I have to think at some point that, is going to catch up to him. If you're trading strikeouts for soft contact, by all means, that's a great trade-off. But in Bueller's case, I just don't think that's quite what he's doing. And so I have a hard time believing it's going to sustain this level of effectiveness. I'm with you. I said I would rather have Aranola over Walker Buehler. I do think it's very close. I think they're right in that 10 to 15. 10 to 15 starting pitch of range in terms of our rankings.

of season, but I will take Aranola overall, not worried about him. And I know it's been frustrating if you have them on your team a lot like, not to the same extent, but Luis Castillo, it's what do they do from here forward? And I do think that Aranola will be a sub 3.50 ERA rest of season. Before we hit the break, I just want to remind everybody to subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't already. Thank you to everyone who's watching us live right now. Of course, we are live very late, like we always are here on the East Coast. We are coming up on 1 a.m. Eastern But if you'd like to watch this show live or any of our FBT and 5 videos, you could do that on the channel.

Subscribe. It's YouTube.com slash fantasy baseball today. Hit that subscribe button and hit the little notification bell. You will be notified every time we go live or a new video drops on the channel. We'll take a quick break. But when we return, we'll take a look at some of the elite players and what they did on Tuesday, some waiver wire options, and another double dung for Brandon Crawford.

We'll talk about it next here on Fantasy Baseball today. All right, so the elite, the elite, doing elite things. Ronald Lecuna had three more hits, including his 18th home run of the season. He's hashtag good. Show Hey, Otani. His 17th home run of the year, a 470 foot shot off of Chris Bubich, lefty on lefty. The guy is just an absolute freak. And, Chris, remember yesterday when I told you that I started him as a pitcher this week rather than a hitter? Well I mean look he hasn't he hasn't He hasn't he hasn't But I already feel terrible And this is part of that decision making process Which is so frustrating for me with Otani

Because yesterday Mind you this is in a 15 team roto league Where any offensive stats that you can get Are obviously very valuable It's in the NFBC main event Which is my most expensive league by far He had a stolen base on Monday He hits a home run on Tuesday

I feel terrible And I shouldn't because he still has a great pitching matchup going up against the diamondbacks. I know that these were the rules coming into the season. That's on me, whatever. I've got to live with it. But again, moving forward, I don't care if it makes him more valuable than every other player in fantasy baseball. If he's this good as a pitcher and a hitter, we should be able to earn his stats for both

throughout the course of a week on the same day, whatever he's doing. I agree. Even if that makes him the number one drafted player in fantasy baseball, if he's that good, he deserves to be. I agree. My only counter to that. You can have that and that is fine. But if that is the case, there is no logical reason why every pitcher's hitting stats shouldn't count and why Williams Astidio's home run given up to Jeremy Mercedes shouldn't count against your ERA. That's all I'll say. If we're going to count it, let's count it all. I am actually, I am in favor of that. If position players pitch, although that is good by NL pitchers.

is impossible to predict because it's really just based on blowouts when they don't want to tax their bullpen. But hopefully by next season, there will be a universal DH. So we won't have to worry about pitchers hitting and dragging down your batting stats anyway. Come on. Let's just, let's make this happen for Shohei Otani. A couple of pitchers who were, well, one of them was elite. The other one not as much, but we'll talk about it. Tyler Glass now up against the national. Seven innings, one run, 11 strikeouts to one walk. Ho-hum. Guy is amazing. 27 swinging strike. on 114 pitches for Tyler Glass now, who is cemented as a top 10 bordering on a top five starting pitch

for the rest of season. He now has seven double-digit strikeout games this year with a 2.57 ERA and a 0.93 whip. Shoha, not Shoah Otani. Every time I see S.H now, I just want to say Shohei Otani. Shane Bieber, rather, at the Cardinals. Six innings, one run, two walks, five strikeouts. Not his best performance, Chris.

11 swinging strikes on 98 pitches. he still has 122 strikeouts across 85 innings pitched. Still allowing a lot of hard contact. I think he's just kind of going through something right now and he's trying to figure it out. And all the while, he still has found a way to be very valuable.

Yeah, it's something that I've noticed. He, I don't know, man. It's been an interesting season for him. And I want to, I wish I had found this story before the podcast because there's a story from, Michael Aheado at pitcher list about Shane Bieber. It came out last week talking about the changes that he's made to his arsenal.

He specifically set out this offseason to work on his slider to make it mirror the curveball better. Just give hitters opposing hitters one more thing to try to figure out. And, you know, apparently he added more gyrospin to that pitch, which is, as we talked about yesterday, if you weren't listening, gyrospin would basically be a football has like a hundred percent gyro spin. All the spin is directly, it doesn't affect the movement of the pitch. It's basically the way to look at it. So he's getting more gyrospin, so less spin efficiency with his slider, which is causing less movement with it. And he's ditched his cutter.

And I think overall it's made him just a little less effective. He's throwing fewer strikes. he's walking more and I'm confident that he'll figure it out though. I haven't moved him down from number three. He's been number three pretty much all season. I think the only time he wasn't was when Jacob deGrom was on the IL. I think he'll be fine moving forward, but like you said, he's definitely working on some stuff.

He's a different pitcher than he was last season. I think right now he's a worse pitcher than he was last season, but that doesn't necessarily mean he won't be very good moving forward. Not as good as he was last season, but I don't think that ever should have been the expectation. I think that's exactly right. He was awesome last year. He was basically historically good,

and the expectation should have never been that he was going to live up to that. Kind of similar to like Juan Soto, how great he was last year from the hitting side of things. Some waiver wire options that we need to talk about. Justin Upton, we've talked about him quite a bit recently. He now has eight hits over his last six games,

including four home runs, and he's basically let off for the Angels since the middle of May, and he has been awesome ever since. So the strikeout rate is still very high, Chris. What we'll do for each of these players is you tell me what format Justin Upton needs to be rostered in. He's already 63% rostered.

Does he need to be added in three outfielder leagues, or is that still too shallow for him? Three outfielder category leagues, I think it's fine. He's just not going to be particularly good in points. There's too much swing and miss in his game, and you're really only going to have, you're only going to get a lot from him in those stretches where he's really

hitting for power, which you know, as we know with Justin Upton, things tend to come in waves for him. He's one of the streakier hitters in baseball. At least anecdotally, I don't actually have any numbers to prove that, but I think if you ask most people who are the most, the streakiest player in the game, the ones who think of Justin Upton,

we'll say Justin Upton. I would drop, I'm looking at two outfielders that are rostered in more leagues than he is. I would drop Jorge Soler and David Peralta for Justin Upton. Totally fine with both of those, yeah. Ahmed Rosario is someone that we've tried to tell you about, and he's been great since the start of May,

303 batting average, two homers, five steals. He had three more hits on Tuesday. He's 30% rostered. Chris, where, if anywhere, should you be adding Ahmed Rosario? So he is 30% rostered, so that probably means any roto league deeper than 12 teams he's already rostered and probably a decent amount of those 12 teams.

I'm not going to say every single 12 team roto league. I would say that if he ran more. And he's kind of had some stretches where he's run more, but only five stolen bases over the course of the season. You'd like to see that be higher. But I think

he's going to be a decent source of batting average moving forward. And he is shortstop and outfield. Is he also second base eligible? He is only shortstop and outfield. Shortstop and outfield. That's still pretty useful. though.

I am starting from Adrosario in more than one league as an outfielder. So, I mean, I actually, I looked this up yesterday. Of the top 24 outfielder's

in Roto finished last season. So not necessarily where they were drafted, but just to where they finished last season. Nine of them are currently on the aisle, which is just, I feel like a pretty good example of, you know, we've talked about how many injuries there have been

and that it's true. Outfield has been hit especially hard with injuries. And it's been hit especially hard with poor performances. And we had what Joey Gallo go on the IL today. And there's probably someone else. So yeah, I think I'm under Zario is a useful 12 team roto outfielder.

I will say, you said select 12 team roto. I will say all, I think at this point, most 12 team roto leagues. Yeah, if you have a middle infielder and more than three outfielders on your, fantasy team, then I think Omeda Rosario needs to be rostered in your league. And those five

steals that he has, Chris, have all come since the start of May when basically he's become a full-time player. He's betting second in Cleveland's lineup. It's not a great lineup. But a lot of runs scored to be had there, hitting ahead of Jose Ramirez. And with those five stolen bases, zero caught stealing. So normally he's inefficient on the base paths. That hasn't been the case so far. So he's super fast. I mean, he's 98th percent on sprint speed right now. I'm pretty often. mystic about a mede rosario. How about Patrick Wisdom? The guy just continues to mash.

She hit his eighth home run on Tuesday. He's batting 3.85 now. He's not going to keep that up. He's 52% rostered. So he's already been added in a ton of places, Chris. Where does he need to be added? It's hard for me to argue he needs to be added in more places, but he's so hot right now that it's probably worth doing.

Just in case, he's got seven home runs and one, two, three, four, five, six. non-home run hits. So that's pretty impressive. He's got an 81% hard hit rate. Also impressive. 99% average average exit velocity. 99 mile per hour average eggs of loss.

Also very impressive. 38% strikeout rate. That's, I think, probably going to be the defining feature for him moving forward is just too many strikeouts. But the home run he hit today, it was like,

he hit it 110 miles, an hour. He was on the outside half of the plate and he pulled it like 405 feet. That is, that's an incredibly strong man. That's an incredibly strong man who was apparently sitting on whatever pitch. I think it was a fastball. But now that was a change up. Change up. Okay. Yeah. That's a floating. He was sitting fastball then. He got out ahead of it. But he's very strong. He's got legitimate power. I just, you know, sometimes it turns into Dolis Garcia and you can, you know, kind of live with the bad plate discipline. My assumption is that it'll end up costing him,

but right now, if he's out there, sure, go at him. It's actually first base and third base eligibility that wisdom has over on CBS. And I become more wary of these mid-career breakouts that, I mean, we've basically seen a ton of them with the Dodgers with Max Muncie and Chris Taylor. I'm not saying he's going to be that good, obviously. but even like a Luke Voigt with the New York Yankees,

we've seen more of these guys, you know, break out the past couple of seasons. So wisdom, if you do need power, someone that you can look at. Last one I wanted to bring up here, Chris, Miguel and Duhari had two more hits. He's batting 269 with three home runs over his last 15 games for the Yankees.

And we know what his upside could be. We saw it back in, I think it was like 2018 when he was a candidate to win rookie of the year. Did he win rookie of the year that year? I finished second to show hell, Tanya. Yeah, rightfully. Do not at me, Yankees fans. 21% rostered is Anduhar.

I think if you're desperate in a five outfielder league, you can do it there. Anything shallower. I don't think you need to do it yet. Is he only outfield eligible right now? Yes. Okay. I find it pretty hard to get excited about him,

especially now that he's striking out quite a bit, 26%. It's a very small sample, so it's only 87 plate appearances. But, yeah, I'm not particularly excited about him. Okay. In deeper leagues, J.P. Crawford went, he had at least three hits. He's betting 352 with two home runs and one steal over his last 15 games for the Mariners. He's 21% rostered. And Bruce Zimmerman with the Baltimore Orioles is only 5% rostered up against the Mets on Tuesday five innings, two runs, seven strikeouts. He now has a 2.98 ERA over his last three starts. And he had 13 swinging strikes in this one. He had 19 swinging strikes in his last. Again, Bruce Zimmerman is the name here.

It looks like he is in line for two starts next week versus Toronto, which is a very tough start in Camden Yards. And then at Cleveland. So one good, one bad. Deeper leagues, sure, on Bruce Zimmerman, but anything shallower than like a 15, a 14 team league? Probably not yet, but a name to remember. Catchers, Eric Haas.

We have a lot of awesome catchers randomly recently here. Eric Haas, eight hits for the Tigers over his last. six games, including six home runs. He is 27% rostered. Max Stasi, eight hits, including three homers over his last five games. And he was very good in 2020. Serious Power Stroke with the Angels.

It looks like that is starting to carry over now that he's healthy. He's 15% rostered. And William Contreras, brother of Wilson Contreras, went three for four with his sixth home run on Tuesday. He's batting just 241. But that comes with an 846 OPS. He is 40% rostered. So, Chris, rank Ericas,

Max Stacey and William Contreras and would you drop Gary Sanchez for any of them? All right, so I would go Contreras, Stacey, and Hoss. I think there's a small gap between Contreras and Stasi, pretty close. Stassie. And Hoss is probably a decent ways behind the two of them. I don't know if I would have the guts to drop Gary Sanchez for any of them because I think they're all, you know, Stassie and,

Contreras are kind of similar players to Gary Sanchez. You're hoping for power. You're hoping for a respectable enough batting average that they're not killing you. And Gary Sanchez obviously has more upside. But if you're desperate right now, I don't think it's necessarily crazy to drop Sanchez for Contreras. Yeah, I think I might put Stasi first of that group. I like what he's done the past two seasons, but he has dealt with a lot of injuries himself. So keep that in mind with Max Stacey. And it's worth noting for Gary. Sanchez. He went two for five with his seventh home run. His last 15 games. He's batting 271 with two home runs. Obviously, I watch a lot of Yankees games. You know that by now. He strikes out a lot.

But when he does not strike out, Gary Sanchez still makes a lot of hard contact. So in a one-catcher league, if you want to drop him to stream a hot catcher, like, I don't know that anyone's going to run out to add Gary Sanchez. So especially in a points league, if you want to make a swap, I don't have a problem with it at this point. I told someone that they could drop him for Omar Nerva's on Tuesday. Yeah, I think that's okay. Yeah, I'm cool with that one. Some double dongs on Tuesday.

Brandon Crawford, he is now up to 14 home runs, 41 RBI, he's batting 269 with a 938 OPS on June 8th. Of all the crazy things that can happen in a baseball season, yeah, I think Brandon Crawford with a 938 OPS on June 8th is up there with one of the more wild things that have happened

this season. and he's making very hard contact. Both his barrel rate and expected slug are in the 91st percentile or better. His 96 mile per hour exit velocity on fly balls and line drives is tied for 24th in baseball. I don't know how long he's going to keep this up, Chris,

but as long as he is making this level of contact, I think he's going to be a pretty good power source at the least. Yeah, and it may not be a fluke. There's a very good piece in fan ground. that came out on Monday from Luke Cooper. It's called How Brandon Crawford's New Swing Turned Things Around. And you can see very obviously when you look at the clips in here.

His stance is way more open right now. And he's changed his setup a little bit so that there's less movement in his hands and with the bat before he swings. And these are not necessarily subtle changes, but they're relatively small changes in the grand scheme of things, but they seem to be playing a, you know, paying big dividends for him.

And he is, sorry, looking up some plate discipline numbers. He's swinging at pitches outside of the zone at a lower rate than any point in his career since 2014. He's swinging at pitches inside of the zone at the same rate, which is pretty much what you want to see. You want to see fewer bad swings or swings of bad pitches.

and the same or more swings at good pitches. You don't want to see passivity. You want to see selectiveness. And that seems to be what we're seeing from Brandon Crawford. So I've been pretty skeptical. I've been pretty dismissive of what he's done so far. But, you know, there may not be, this may not be entirely a fluke. I don't think he's going to continue to rank 11th in barrel rate,

which is where he was before hitting two home runs today. Brandon Crawford is definitely better than I gave him credit for, is what I will say here. And if you can sell high on him, I guess you can try. I just don't see anyone that's going to be excited

to trade for Brandon Crawford. It's kind of similar to what we've said about Yulegri-L where it's a veteran. He's been really good. You can try, but I don't really think anyone's going to give anything of value up for Brandon Crawford. The other one,

the other double dong was Pete Alonzo. who is now up to nine home runs. He's batting 255 with an 814 OPS on the season. Bit of a letdown so far, but he's dealt with some injuries and hopefully a sign of things to come for Pete Alonzo. The call to the pen, it was a very quiet day in terms of bullpen updates on Tuesday,

which is fine by me, actually. For Tampa Bay, JP Fire Eisen was used to start the eighth inning in a three to one game. He was facing 9-1-2 in the lineup. He walked three of the four batters that he faced. He was removed from the game. Diego Castillo pitched in the 9th,

He picked up his 10th save of the season. Diego Castillo now has the last two saves for the Reyes, and I am officially making this comparison, Chris. Kevin Cash and Bill Belichick are Spider-Man meme. Every time you think you have the Reyes-reliever situation figured out, Kevin Cash changes it. It's very similar to how every time you think you know the Patriots running back situation with Belichick,

he changes it up. So that's where I'm at with Kevin Cash. I think if you play in a Categories league, both Diego Castillo and JP Fire Eisen should be rostered, but it's going to be frustrating. I made Ray's fans on Twitter mad at me earlier today somehow by saying that the Dodgers are the best team in baseball. I didn't really think that would be a hot take.

I'm going to go ahead and poke the bear again here and just say that Bill Belich's had a little more success in big games. Oh, for sure. Yeah, no, I was just... not quite as many big game screw-ups. I was just comparing bullpen usage to running back. I was just being a jerk. No, but you're definitely right about that.

Kevin Cash has not showed up in the biggest games, but... Well, arguably showed up a little too early. In the most recent big game. For the Tigers, Jose Cisnero now has the last two saves for the Tigers with Michael Fulmer on the IL. He is 2% rostered. This is only the deepest of leagues if you are super desperate for saves. but it sounds like Fulmer is going to be back

after a short stint on the aisle. Kenley Jansen picked up his 13th save. Lou Trevino got his ninth for the Oakland A's. To stream or not to stream for Wednesday, Brad Keller at the Angels, Griffin Canning versus the Royals, Vladimir Gutierrez versus the Brewers, Austin Gomber at the Marlins,

Shane McClan v. The Nationals, and Chris Flexen at the Tigers. Well, last night, or tonight's didn't go super well. I think I went with Marco Gonzalez, who gave up four runs and four and a third tonight. So hopefully tomorrow's better. And I'm going to say,

Gomber, McClanahan, and Canning are the best streamers for when, Nezday Night. I like it. Canning has been so inconsistent, but so has the Royals lineup. I think Gomber and McClanahan are actually very good streamers.

Yes, I would agree with that. And for Thursday, this is a very bad list. And I, I've only included five names on here because there's a few TBDs. So Justice Sheffield at the Tigers, Mike Miner at the Oakland A's, Chi Chi Gonzalez at the Marlins,

J-Hatt versus the Yankees, and Anthony Descalfani at the Nationals, who I don't think actually qualifies as a streamer because he's rostered in too many leagues. But I threw him in here anyway because that's how bad the list is. Yeah, Descafonni is pretty good. I think you would want to start him against maybe not most matchups, but enough.

I'll say Mike Minor. Braxton Garrett is Wednesday, right? For the Marlins, that's what you said earlier? Yes. Then minor and Descalvani. And no number three. If you're desperate, I would probably go with Justice Sheffield, though.

Yeah, Sheffield, I think, is certainly the most talented pitcher of the three remaining, and Detroit's a good enough matchup that he could be good. All right, it's been a while since before. fired up the fantasy justice. But let's help some people out here, Chris.

I can only do... No, whoa! I'm only going to do fantasy justice when you were on the podcast, Chris. This one's from Jordan. What is your opinion on this situation that happened in my league today? Apologies, some of these are pretty old, admittedly.

I haven't had enough time to get to them. Sorry. I am in a league where our lineup locks daily at the start of the game instead of weekly. I picked up Griffin Canning last night to be a spot starter, and three hours before the start of his game went to add him to my lineup.

I was not able to put him in my lineup because of the double header starting in the afternoon and he was locked on my bench. I asked my league if it would be fair for the commissioners to put him into my lineup because the game has not started. I got a resounding no. From every person in the league,

I'm not fighting the decision because a vote is a vote, but I feel like this is not an unfair request. What do you think? So a double header for the Angels Griffin Canning was scheduled to start the second game, he locked in the lineup because the Angels started earlier than this person realized, the first game did at least.

I don't really have a problem with putting him in the lineup. If he was scheduled to pitch all along for the second game and you knew that he started at, let's say, 7 p.m. Eastern Time and there was a doubleheader that started at 4 p.m. Eastern Time, whatever it is. I feel like you should be able to get Griffin Canning in your lineup. I don't think it's an unreasonable request. I also don't think it's unreasonable for people in the league to say no.

Oh, come on, Chris. kind of thing where you can't ride both sides of the fence we need an answer we need justice yeah my answer is if you are doing something that is outside of the bounds of the traditional rule set you need unanimity from the league in order to approve it if if you know in this case there is unanimity in favor of not allowing the move to go through so i think it's fairly straightforward that you don't let the move go through it's not unreasonable to ask but they said no boo boo boo boo i against it. You should be able to use that pitcher in the second game of a doubleheader, even if it locks. So take that, Chris. This one's from Cole. Hopefully not Garrett.

We'll see if there's any typos in the email. Yeah, he gets this one through. My league is ahead to head points keeper league. I have been catching a lot of heat for trading with another team who was currently 0 for 8 in this league. Made a trade earlier that was accepted by that 0 and 8 team back at the start of May. It was me getting Clayton Kershaw for Stephen Mats and Nelson Cruz, which, I mean, at the beginning of May, that's, I guess that wasn't a terrible trade. Yes, a bit in favor of me, but hey, he accepted it and felt as though it was fair enough to do it. The majority felt it was unfair, and I was exploiting another team by taking advantage of his quote, baseball knowledge, which, hey, it's all fair game in

my mind because he joined the league and paid to get in. Everyone else had the same opportunity to trade with him and see who they can get in return. So yes, overall, now I am being referred to as the Houston Astros of the league. How do you guys feel about this situation? We had an email like this a couple weeks ago, I think, where someone did this, but it was too like a middle school or early high school-aged person who was playing fantasy baseball for the first time.

And that's a jerk move. You shouldn't do that thing. Yeah, I think it was like someone's daughter that was in a league or something like that. But if this is an adult, you know, who is able to make decisions of their own wherewithal. Like, I'm sure this guy has access to lots of resources, presumably the internet to start with,

but also maybe a newspaper, you know, maybe the sporting news. And like at some point, if you're in a league and you're paying money for it, you're on your own. I could see at the time of a trade if the manager,

you know, gets a bunch of feedback. and realize it's like, oh man, I made a crappy trade. I didn't realize it. And, you know, maybe you can turn it back. But if he didn't do that, then I think you're fine. And it's another one where the league has to, if the league wants to do that and you're willing, you know, it's your decision.

But that didn't happen here. So now you shouldn't feel bad. It's a bit of a jerk move. But, you know, check still clears, right? I would feed into it, Chris. I would be spiteful to the league. would, every time I win a matcher, I would take it on trash cans.

Exactly. Yeah, I would take videos of me like banging on trash cans and stuff being raucous and loud and spiteful. Get a, every time I want. Take a buzzer to your chest and have it go off every time your team hits a home run. Yeah, like have someone record you maybe like running around your block and crossing home plate, I guess would be

whatever, at the front of your house or something. And you're like, no, don't rip my jersey off. Don't rip my jersey off. and just feed into it, man. Be the Houston Astros. And hopefully go on to win your league the way that Houston Astros have won as well. We're going to wrap there.

For Chris, I am Frank. Thank you. Wait, no, I didn't play it again. Justice has been served. Chris? I was trying to think of another one, and then for some reason, I was trying to think like another

Metallica thing. And then for some reason, like, I stand alone by Godsmack came in my head, and that's not the same thing, and I didn't want to do it. And so I just kind of froze. I had a Garrickole moment there. Oh, right.

I think that's a great way to end the podcast. For Chris, I and Frank, thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball today. Scott will be back tomorrow. Bye-bye!