Fantasy Baseball Today - How to Account For A Shorter Season; Favorite Picks from Rounds 4-6 (03/18 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

Updates on Justin Verlander, Willie Calhoun, Giancarlo Stanton's injuries, plus Ariel Cohen joins the show to talk about how he is taking into account the potential of a shorter season. How much do guys like Rich Hill, Justin Verlander, James Paxton benefit from a delayed season opener? (17:00) Then, Ariel introduces us to his ATC projections system, available on SportsLine.com, and how he's using them to account for the delayed opener, as well as the potential of a shortened season. Who benefits in such a case? (26:00) Then, we go through our favorite and least-favorite picks from Rounds 4-6, including a disagreement about Ketel Martel! (39:00) Plus, your emails at [e-mail] 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. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Where fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Adam, Scott Heath and Chris. We're back on the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast. This is Chris Towers, joined by Scott White, and a very special guest today.

We've got Ariel Cup. who contributes to Sportsline, fan graphs, all kinds of places. You might know him from his ATC projections, which are on Sportsline.com. Eh, how's it going? I'm doing wonderful. Thanks for having me on the show, Chris.

Thanks for coming on. We talked yesterday about how we're handling, like, the self-isolation and what TV shows and movies we might be watching. What have you got to pass the time right now? You know, it hasn't really hit me so much in terms of boredom. Things at my day job are actually very hot right now. As you can imagine, I work for an insurance company, so we're talking about what possibly can we be on the hook for? I mean, we do a lot of commercial property, and, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of business owners who are going to file for some business interruption claims.

And so we're dealing with a lot of that. And I got two kids at home here, who I got to watch during the day, and that's. spills into the afternoon evening. So boredom is not my problem at the moment. Scott, how are you holding up? That sounds like a nightmare insurance. We're worried about when baseball starts. Scott, how are you holding up? I love my job. I get a nice view of a lot of things that go on in the world from it.

So it's better than you think it is. Not your job. I just mean dealing with it right now with all the uncertainty. Oh, yeah. But we love uncertainty as actuaries. Scott, you holding up all right? Yeah. Yeah, I'm holding up fine. You know, I've been staying home during the day with the kids for the past couple years now. So that's not new.

But what is new is that particularly over the past year, one of them's been at school all that time. And now they're both home. and their favorite thing to do when they're together is try to hurt each other, or try to get the other in trouble or try to take something that the other wants. So I'm playing a lot of referee right now. I'm not bored either, though. That's not a problem for me either. Yeah, see, I don't have kids, so it's pretty calm around here.

You know, it's just the cat who, you know, as soon as I start recording the podcast or as soon as I jump on a meeting for work, they mostly ignore me during the day, but then as soon as I start talking, that's when they just want all of my attention and start yelling at me. So, you know, that's the only thing, but, you know, I can't complain.

I've got it pretty easy. I've got a pretty cushy home setup. So don't want to complain too much. We're going to be talking about some of our favorite picks from rounds four through six. We're going to be talking about the ATC projection. which you can get on sportsline.com and just kind of what goes into them, what's being updated right now, and who gains and loses as a result of a delay to the season. So we'll get to that

a little later, but I also want to tell you guys about a lot of other stuff that we've got going on, including we're going to be trying to do some Ask Facebook. Ask Fantasy Baseball today, anything live shows on our Facebook group. We'll probably record those as podcasts, but basically what we want to do is just kind of interact with our audience, you know, try to find ways to pass the time and just use you guys to give us questions and we'll pretty much answer whatever you guys ask. So make sure you join the Facebook group. It's facebook.com slash group slash fantasy baseball today. You can also just search for fantasy baseball today on Facebook and you should be able to find it. We'll be recording a fantasy baseball today

draft special for CBS Sports HQ in the coming days. Not exactly sure. sure when that's going to air, but probably next week. Scott has spent the last couple of days updating our top 200 player rankings, breakdowns, where we make the case four and the case against drafting each player. Those have been updated. They're on CBS Fantasy right now. Scott, they're all updated now? They're all updated, the top 200 and gotten good feedback from the people who've read them.

So it's a lot of information there, but it's obviously something you have for time to pour over, dare I say, right now. And it'll make you as prepared as you possibly can be for your draft, at least knowing the upside and downside for everybody that you're going to want to pick in the first 200. And if you want those sent directly to you, you know, right now it's a pretty good time to sign up for our fantasy baseball today. Newsletter, we're going to still be sending that out daily. You'll get all of our stuff right in your inbox. It's really great. I write it. I put it together, so I make sure that it's got the best content that we have, right in your inbox every afternoon.

And, of course, as always, your emails at Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. We'll get to some of your emails later on in the show. But first, we do actually have. some injuries, news, and notes to go over from the last 24 hours or so. And the most important one, Justin Verlander had surgery on his groin, and he will need six weeks to recover. This is in addition to the lat strain that had already kind of,

you know, delayed what would have been the start to his season. Does this change how you view Justin Verlander at all? Scott. Not really. I mean, it's, they say he should be ready for the start of the season. It caught me by surprise. I mean, here we were worried about his lat and he's going in for surgery on something else. Apparently, this was something that was reported early in spring training, though it got swept under the rug pretty quickly.

I guess the, like, I'm not worried about his recovery from the surgery itself, but it is, it is interesting that here in his late 30s, before the season even starts, he has to fairly. significant injuries and at some point his body's not going to be able to do it anymore. Could this be the start of it? It's a little too speculative for me to move him down based on it, but the thought has crossed my mind. Arrow, how do you view Justin Verlander in light of this news? Is he still one of those top four starting pitchers for you? I mean, I brought him down with the news injury of the lat way back. I don't think this groin surgery affects it. I mean, if you really want to know answer. Maybe ask Kate Upton about that. But in terms of moving down any further, no, the coronavirus delay of the season should heal him up for that. I know that Verlander is an adamant

guy about sleeping at least 10 to 11 hours a day, so he actually does know how to get his body in shape and how to recover. So I'm optimistic about Verlander. If people want to take a discount because of this, I'll buy it. Ten, 11 hours a day. Jeez, good for him. That's right. Yeah. Then, we should all be so lucky. Yeah, now he's very adamant to that, a healthy, the way that he stayed healthy is because of his sleep management. So I can't say that I doubting him. Yeah, that's, that's a good tidbit. I hadn't heard that before.

For me, it's just, you know, famously Justin Verlander has only been on the IL once in his entire career. It's a very long career. He's 37 years old. That streak will continue. as of opening day because neither of these ailments are going to land him on the IL. But I do wonder, like, if this had happened while games were happening and then he comes back, I feel like people would be more concerned. You know, I think, like, a lat strain and then groin surgery, he's going to be coming back from both.

He's 37 years old. It's just, it's warning signs. Like you said, Scott, I don't think it's necessarily something that I would move him down for, but it's definitely something I'm concerned about. and it might make it more likely that he's the fourth of those four starting pitchers. Right. One other thing, though, the fact that the season is going to be shorter means that he doesn't have to go full strength for 200 innings.

He's only going to have to go full strength for 120 innings or so. So he doesn't have to be durable for an entire season, just has to be durable for a short season. That helps any of the older guys, if you have concerns about age, guys like Charlie Morton, Max Scherzer, I think this whole delay helps all those guys. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be really interesting to see what ends up happening with the schedule. And we'll talk about that a little more.

But, you know, if the season is shortened, the one thing I do wonder is, is it going to be like the, I think it was the 2010-2011 NBA season where they played 66 games, but they also had fewer days off? I wonder if that's something we're going to see in baseball where, you know, maybe they keep the same number of days off, but they have more double-headers either way. It might be fewer opportunities for guys to rest. That would be my concern. I think it's a given it's going to be shorter. But how much shorter and how they rejigger the schedule for that, it remains to be seen that. I've seen that there are talks about maybe having the playoffs even extend into December,

letting them in a neutral site that's obviously element-free in closed stadium or whatever. So it seems like a lot of ideas are still on the table. And I mean, it's impossible to guess at this point. But I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be at least three quarters of the season. All right. Willie Calhoun also vows to be ready for opening day. I saw the report that he had surgery, put a plate in his chin. He hasn't had any concussion symptoms yet.

And, you know, if the Rangers were continuing with spring training, there would have been a chance for him to start participating in team activities as soon as next week. So it doesn't sound like the hit-by-pitch that Willie Calhoun suffered when he got hit in the face is going to be a concern moving forward. So how are you guys handling Willie Calhoun? I moved him back up most of the way. That's what I've done for pretty much all of these players. I don't think I moved a single one all the way back just because of recovering for

an injury, there's possibility of a setback, there's possibility of it hampering effectiveness right from the start. But most, but basically all of them, not Chris Sale, because his situation's a little sketchier, but the rest I've

moved almost back to where I originally had them. This is it maybe hurts Nick Solax value a little, though I still think he'll find a way to get in the line at more days than not. five days a week or whatever, just moving around the diamond.

But Willie Calhoun is somebody you shouldn't be too scared of drafting. Yeah. Do you like Willie Calhoun? I like Calhoun going into the season. To me, I would spend two seconds worrying about him. He's back to whatever his value was. I think the bigger thing for him is that I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of helmet he wears. If you remember that whole Giancarlo Stanton helmet a couple years ago, that was pretty cool.

He's got the time now to come up with this really cool helmet. So that's my fantasy take on him. It's the helmet, which is more interesting than the injury. He's fine. Stan had that cage that was a G. You know, obviously a C for Calhoun makes the most sense. But I would like to see like a stylized W. I think that would be the cool way to go.

The W is the best letter to stylize. There's just, it's already so wide. So there's a lot of like surface area to work with. You can make W's look fancy, schmancy. I know this as somebody whose last initial is W, and I've seen a few monograms in my day. You can make the W look pretty cool. L's good too.

L's good too, but I think W's best. W is tied for first with M, right? I think for some reason, just that the fact that the W is like, face like it's a bowl you know like I feel like you can do more going into the into the bowl of the W than you can coming up from underneath

the M I could be wrong the best letter is the letter X and fun fact for you there has never been a major league player with the last name that starts with the letter X who has hit a home run that is a fun fact there's there been there have been players whose last name is X but nobody who's at a home run

that's right wow I don't know if I can even think of a player whose last name started with X. Probably XU for some Asian player or stuff. Yeah, yeah, I guess. But yeah, I can't think of anything. And then, speaking of Jim Carlo Stanton, he took batting practice at Yankees camp.

I guess he's hanging out there. And, you know, we've seen him take live batting practice already. Another one, I know a lot of people moved him down. A lot of people haven't had him discounted before the injury. Scott, you had him as a bust. Obviously, you've probably moved him back to where he was, but what's your outlook on Jarkalo Stanton this year, Ariel? I mean, Stanton's injury tendencies,

it's not like somebody who has an injury and you have to discount him front-loaded season. He's more like the Troy Tolowiceky type injury where he's just injury prone and you don't know where he's going to be. So any discount on him is not because of this current one, it's because of what he could be. I mean, Giancarlo Stanton said to a reporter yesterday that if this season started now when there was no coronavirus, he would hit 80 homers. So that gives me a nice boost of confidence.

I think he'll be recovered from his calf injury and time. You know, I would treat him like you would have back in November, you know, where he's going to be maybe a fourth, fifth round player because of injury risk with the upside of first round if he can stay healthy, which could mean. 60 plus homers in Yankee Stadium. Yeah, I'm all in on drunk Carlos Dan. I'm trying to get him as many places as I can. Before the injury, after the injury. Love the value for him. Even if he does settle in in that fourth and fifth round range.

For me, it's just when he's been healthy, and yes, obviously, that when is doing a lot of work there, he's been a top 25 player pretty much every time. and so, you know, he didn't miss a single game with injury between 2017 or 2018. 2019 was obviously a disaster, but we know he can stay healthy, and the upside if he does stay healthy is so significant. We've seen no sign of his skill set diminishing that I just, I love taking the chance on John Carlos Stan. He's going to be, he's already on a lot of my teams, and from when we draft moving forward,

he's going to continue to be on a lot of my teams. All right, let's get to an email of the day from West, from Oakland. As always, Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com to get your emails. I put the answer to the little game in the notes that I sent you guys accidentally. So I think you're going to get this one. Hey, Mancini, Young, Turner, and Turner. Obviously. That's four different trades.

All spelled differently. Oh. That's funny. And none of them spelled like, you know, an after. actual tray like you'd put food on. Well, I don't think anybody spells their name like an actual tray, right? Like, T-R-A-Y. That's, I'm sure.

I'm sure somebody could pass that off as a name. Like, I feel like T-R-E-Y is the one you see the most. And then obviously there's T-R-Y-T-R-A-E, T-R-E-A-T-R-E-A. And T-R-T-R-A-I, I believe he's an offensive lineman in the NFL. Definitely plays in the NFL. It's cool how there are four across three sports and they are all spelled differently. That's Wes's comment. His email.

I just had a draft tonight Monday. Went heavy on the risers from delayed spring training like we were just talking about. And one he had forgotten about and hadn't heard disgust on the podcast was Rich Hill. He probably won't be ready for a delayed opening day, but now he won't be missing half the season like before. And we know how good he is on a start-by-start basis. No question. Just wanted to point him out as another delayed opening day riser. and Rich Hill is someone that

in some of these deeper leagues that I've done Rath Slam in particular, I believe I have Rich Hill on my roster in that one and yeah I think that's a really good late round flyer that a lot of people aren't talking about the only concern with him

is he I believe for went foregoed Tommy John surgery It was definitely Forwent Tommy John surgery

tried for like a different kind of shorter recovery period and I just don't know the track record. Like what we've seen when guys have tried to delay Tommy John surgery is almost always they end up having Tommy John surgery. I think the one exception was probably Masahira Tanaka, right? Irvin Santana. There you go. He played with, he never ended up having it. He played most of his career with a slight tear. So it's not out of the question.

Maybe he did, I'm sorry, maybe he did finally happen, but it was years later if he did. It's not out of the question that Rich Hill avoids elbow surgery, but what we know with Rich Hill is like John Carlos Stan, it's not necessarily do you downgrade him because of the opening day injury now, it's you downgrade him for the subsequent injuries and the limited innings that you almost always have to deal with. But how do you guys view Rich Hill in 2020? All right, Irvin Santana did not have it. Okay, I looked it up now.

Did not have it. He suffered the injury in 2009 and didn't have it. So, Rich Hill. I was curious what the original timetable was. It was like June. So I was looking it up, and it was like early mid-June. Yeah. So that's, that could be opening day.

There's not much hope of the season starting more than a couple weeks before that. That's a really good one. I need to move him up my rankings. I had him buried, not expecting any kind of contribution this year. But, I mean, the questions you say about how he's going to bounce back and just general durability, I mean, he's a 40-year-old coming back from elbow surgery. But good ratios when he's healthy. That's always been the case.

Arrow, how are you viewing Rich Hill in Minneapolis this year? I mean, the twins decided to spend $3 million to bring in Rich Hill. that's him pitching nothing. It'll cost him $12.5 million if he pitches a whole half a season. So they felt the need to gamble, and the twins are actually one of the more analytical organizations that I respect. So I think that very likely you might see him pitch, assuming we'll start the season somewhere in the middle,

and it would be a good gamble, and I think a very good player that had his value boosted. I mean, you want to get these players now at a discount who were going at discounts a couple weeks ago, but now because the season starts in the middle, Mitchell is worth quite a lot more. He might miss very little time, and you can get a possible mid-level starter for next to nothing now. All right, bonus question from Wes.

What's the deal with Matt Carpenter? Is everyone just assuming he's washed? Adam wanted me to point out that Adam hates when people say, washed, but that is because Adam is the oldest person in his mid-30s in America. The kids say washed. Adam wants us to say washed up. I'm fine with either. I'm not going to let Adam, you know, be an age.

Wash up is enduring, all right? Washed is going to be gone next year, right? Who says on fleak anymore? You can't get caught up in the trend. The problem is. So here was the problem. is like on fleak was a thing that like

not cool olds decided to start saying like Heath Cummings started saying on flea that ruins it isn't it isn't it going to ruin washed I don't wash has been around for a while you know washed is a

I feel like wash is going back like a decade now washed has had less I don't even know what you guys are talking about I've never heard of any of these so what do you what do you guys think of Matt Carpenter Scott, you haven't racked behind the guys like Kyle Seeger, Thomas Estella, David Fletcher. Yeah.

Does he still have star or starter upside in an OBP league? UPS? I mean, I can foresee a scenario where that works out nicely for you. Yes, I think it's a low probability play. When a guy in his mid-30s crashes that hard, uh, I'm generally inclined to believe it, especially since, I mean, down the stretch last year, Tommy Edmund was playing more than him. I'm not sure the Cardinals are fully invested on Matt Carpenter as an everyday player anymore.

Yeah, Carpenter, he's done this kind of shenanigans every spring where he, oh, my goodness, got a bad back, and you think he doesn't play. In 2018, he played pretty well. It took him two months to get into it, then he hit 36 homers for the entire season. And the question is, you know, what's his upside for the? this year, assuming he's healthy, I don't think it's more than 15-20 homers, and I don't think he's going to hit for more than about a 230, 240 batting average. So he's not that exciting in terms of his upside. If you're in an OBP league, maybe a little bit more.

He's got about 120 difference between his OBP and batting average historically. But for me, he's not that interesting. I really can't see, especially in a shallower league, even putting any money on him, because I'd rather throw money at a prospect or somebody interesting. Even if he is healthy, 15, 20 homers, 2.30 average. It doesn't interest me at all, so I'm going to pass. I think the upside's a little higher. Just because I don't necessarily believe that one down season means, you know, it's the end.

It could possibly be, like Scott said, at his age, it's not out of the question that he just lost it. It's hard for me to take a flyer on him in the 12-team league. I think I have him in at least one of my 15 team leagues, and I think that's okay. I think that's where you start to reach a point where even in a 15 team league, you probably don't have to draft him as anything more than a reserve player. And in that case, I'm fine grabbing him there. Sorry. Go ahead, Ariel.

Yeah, I was going to say that. You know, because of the situation here, you know, if you grab him as your last reserve pick, and the season starts somewhere in July, and you find out he's not playing, you just cut him really easy. But if he's able to get himself in shape and play from day one, that could be a big pick. I like him more in this scenario than earlier in the season where you're grabbing a guy, he's a slow starter. Should you have him? Should you cut him? Even in 2018, a lot of people who had him, they cut him right away in the first month or so. I wasn't one of those guys.

I held on to him, but a lot of people did, and they lost all the upside. So I think he's more valuable now than he was before, but I'm still passing. So when I'm targeting upside late in those 15 team drafts, and this, I'm not saying either scenario is right or wrong. This is just what I tend to do, and I've had some success with it. But, you know, I'm sure there, it's not necessarily the right way to go. I'm just saying, like, I tend to go more for like a Ryan Mount Castle or a Nate Lowe or even like an Alec bomb.

kind of the next wave of players. And so I'm so focused on those that I don't even give a second thought to Carpenter, who I'm mostly convinced is over and done. But it's not like I can definitively say there's no upside there. So if that's more where you're inclined to go, I mean, it just depends on where you think he is in the aging curve and how close he is to being done. All right, let's move on to the ATC projections.

These are the projections that Ariel puts together every year, and they tend to be pretty good. Ariel, tell us about them. Yeah, well, fantasy pros rank them as the number one most accurate projection model of last year ahead of their own projection systems. So that really says a lot. If anybody hasn't seen them,

ATC stands for average total. cost and it is an aggregation of many other projection systems. You know, I do an insurance modeling and I actually do a lot of a hurricane forecasting modeling. If you guys ever see those three and five day cones where, you know, here's where possibly a hurricane can be and they have a dotted line in the middle. Oh, we've seen a lot of them living in South Florida. We've seen a lot of them living in South Florida. Yes, you would have. And that dotted line represents actually an aggregation of a bunch of other projection models. There's the European model, the BAM model, the fuel dynamics model, the North America model,

so on and so forth. But it's not just a straight average. What they do is some models are better for temperature. Some models predict wind speed better. Some models predict a storm surge better. Each one has things that they're slightly better at, and the aggregation of it takes a higher weight of the models for the variables that are better, and they take a higher weight for them.

So I use that principle and I apply it to fantasy baseball, which is more important, of course. And there are some projection systems that historically have been better for home runs. Some have been better for pitcher strikeouts. Some are better for stolen bases. And I give more credit to the historical models for the ones that are better at whatever they're better at and less weight to the ones that they're crappier at. And when I do this, it's a very smart model. It's very much like what Nate Silver does at 538, where he projects, uh, pull up, political forecast and he's really, really accurate in doing so. And so I've been accurate in doing so thus far.

And if nothing else, it's a really great base model. You know, if you're going to start and say, hey, what projection system should I start with? Start with ATC, because that's going to give you the best elements of everything else. Yeah, and you can get the ATC projections on Sportsline. Do you have a promo code, by the way? I don't think I have any special promo code for Sportsline. I think Parley is one of the codes that are going around here, and I think you can sign up for Sportsline for $1 for the very first month, very, very worthy investment. Yeah, and you're going to be updating those on Thursday.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about the updates that you're making at this point, given all of the uncertainty surrounding the season, when it's going to start, you know, what are you taking into account when you're updating the ATC projections at this point? Yeah, I mean, usually at this time of March, I'm relying on the other projections systems that are underlying ATC to update. And by this time, it's pretty stable. We're just looking at injured players and who's hurting, who's getting more playing time. Now that's pretty much stopped as far as the COVID-19 issues. But what I am updating on Thursday is, we're going to be.

we're going to be taking into account a lot of players that are going to have a higher percentage of playing time. You know, we're talking guys with injury risk and so on and so forth. A lot of players will go up and some players will go down based on the anticipated delay in the start of the season. What kind of assumptions are you making as far as the delay in terms of, like are you assuming there's going to be a specific number of games or is it still projecting for 162 game season? Well, what I'm going to put together on Sportsline is an assumption of, we're going to do a June 1st assumption. That's the most optimistic assumption of how many games are going to be played. Personally, I think the whole scene is going to be canceled. I think there's a very good likelihood of that.

I mean, think about it, if somebody comes, if we come back June 1st and somebody on the Orioles test positive on June 15th. They're going to have to shut the whole thing down again, yeah. Yeah, you're going to shut it down. They're going to start and stop. So I think there's a good, I hope not. And that's why I'm projecting June 1st. And so I'm going to take into account players who are gaining in value. I think that the players are gaining a value are injured players who were due to come back sometime in 2020.

Pitchers with innings caps, if a player like, I know, Jesus Luzardo, A.J. Puck had an innings cap. They might have been just shut down at some point. Now if they come back, they're just going to go the whole season and pitch a almost all. their innings, so they're going to gain. Also, prospects. You know, guys like Joe Adele, well, maybe he wouldn't have come back in July, but now if he comes up in

July, he's going to play most of the season. So can't miss prospects will be up. It goes the other way. Players who decrease in value take suspended players. Domingo Harmon. Well, if he was supposed to miss 50 games,

he's now going to still miss 50 games. And if this whole season shut down, the 20-21 value will be lowered. So ATC will take that into account. Prospects also, this one's harder to figure. I haven't done so many updates for this, but sometimes there's some service time manipulation needed. They just hold prospects down for like a month. So to the extent I can take that into account, they'll also get a lower value. Personally, I'm not going to reflect this into the projections, but I think closers are going to be, should be valued lower. I mean, if I'm a team and I'm on the fringe of making the playoffs,

first of all, with a shorter season, you're going to have a higher chance of making the playoffs now, right, because it's more random. But also, if a closer's struggling, there's no time to have and work it out. Every game counts more. The manager is going to go with the next guy. So guys who are not fantastic closers who don't have big track records, Jose LeClerc lost his role last year. I mean, if he falters in his first two outings, goodbye. So I would bring down personally my value of closers and auctions and drafts. One thing that's going to be really interesting, and it's sort of, it's hard to take into account with your projection systems,

but it's something to keep in mind. There's going to be less time for regression to take place. If a guy gets off to a slower start, you know, usually you have 162 games to bet on them getting back to it. But those guys who get off to a slow start, there's going to be less time for them to make up for it also, but those slow starts are going to hurt you more. It's going to be really interesting to figure out how to approach this.

And then from a 2021 standpoint, let's say we play 120 game season. Go look at 1994 and 1995. Go look at 1981. The strike shortened seasons. We had some absolutely bonkers stat lines. You know, we had Matt Williams was on pace to break the single season home run record in either 1994 or 1995. I can't remember which one. Jeff Bagwell, Jeff Bagwell had this crazy season in one of those years.

Greg Maddox, I think, had an ERA below two both years. Now, he was in a stretch where that was just kind of what he did. But we're going to see more outlier performances in 2020 just because there's going to be less of a sample size. So you're going to, Tony Gwyn hit 394 in 94, 95. And so you're going to see some stuff like that that's going to make it harder to value guys for 2021. And it's going to be fascinating to see. Like, I don't know if you can kind of bake that uncertainty into the projections at all, but there are going to be more guys probably who hit their 90th percentile projection

and more guys who hit their 10th percentile. just because of that increased randomness. I mean, for projections that do more of a stochastic projections and where they simulate a number of games, yeah, you're not going to see the average or the median projections, like from what you get out of a projection system change much, but the percentiles are going to change so much. There's going to be a lot more volatility.

And I'm recommending to people that if you're rostering a pitching staff, that you roster less starting pitching, and you roster an extra middle reliever. Interesting. We are playing six starters. That number six starter, if he has a bad outing, he's going to really kill your ERA and WIPP in a roto format.

So you're probably better off for risk mitigation, throwing an extra relief pitcher in there to keep those ratios as controlled as you possibly can. It's going to introduce a lot of really interesting strategy like that. Another thing that you'll want to keep in mind is that, like guys who don't walk much are going to have an even greater impact on your batting average in a roto league because they're going to take up a higher percentage or not a higher percentage but each individual at bat is going to have more value so it's going to be or yeah i think that's

how the right way to put it it's it's going to change a lot of like the underlying game theory surrounding fantasy baseball it could be really fascinating You don't think we're at all at risk of overthinking this? Well, I think we're at risk of overthinking everything, Scott. I've seen a lot of wild ideas floating around on Twitter, and it's just like, we're still going to draft the best players. I mean, it's not, let's not, let's not dig so deep into the minutia here. No, you're going to draft the same players with obviously the different adjustments

because of the timing of it. But in terms of roster construction and risk mitigation, that really should play into your role. I just mentioned the ERA thing with pitchers. Yeah, you want to avoid blowups. I mean, if you're playing in a head-to-head, you know, that's probably going to be about the same, right? A weekly head-to-head thing, it's really the same.

But for season-long accumulation stuff like Roto, you know, the safer guys, to me, they're going to be worth more and they're going to be better to roster, the five category combo guys. I like them better because less of a chance will fall off the map. And will somebody raise and be fantastic outside? Maybe, but you just don't know where they're going to be. So it to me it's a roster construction issue, not just a who to pick.

Yeah, blowups are going to hurt you more this year. Assuming there's a shortened schedule, that's a key thing. But when it really good starts also count for more? slightly, but the range between the great start and the good start is three runs. The range between a bad start and a really, really bad start is a lot more. Yeah, the downside is a lot stronger than the upside. Sure, if Garrett Cole has a fantastic start, it's going to count more than it would have. But the guys who blow up, oh, that's really going to crush you.

The magnitude is outweighed in the downside. Yeah, I think Just draft good pitchers though, like I do You don't have to worry about it Yeah, I mean, it does make Some of those late round dart throws A little harder to trust And that's one of my things is I always

Like to trust the late round dart throws who I like You know, the Mitch Kellers and and you know, Dylan ceases But they are high variance picks And with less time For them to figure it out you're going to have to potentially pull the plug on them a little earlier than you might otherwise. Yeah. And I'll also say that the people who have uncertain playing time or fighting battles,

take a guy like Tommy Edmund, okay? We weren't sure. Is he going to play second? They're going to play outfield. Where's it going to play? Well, when you have a shortened and the team wants to make the playoffs, they're going to play with a higher skilled guy. Tommy Edmund had a 2.3 war in half a season last year.

They're going to play him. They're going to find time, and I value those guys even. more. I take a look at like DJ LaMayhew last year. We didn't know is he going to play third, second. Well, when Andehar's injury went, all of a sudden his value went through the roof. Same thing is going to happen with those guys, and it's even going to be more

pressing because of the shortened season. All right, let's move on to look at some of our favorite and least favorite picks from each round, according to ADP. We're going to be going based on Fantasy Pro's ADP. We talked about this a little bit. It went through the first three rounds yesterday.

basically what we're going to do is look at players 36 through 48 for 37 through 48 first and just say you know who's your favorite player to draft among this group and who's your least favorite and so we'll start with 37 through 48 for me my favorite this is not a range that I love you know we talked about round three also kind of being an area that it's just a little it's kind of a no man's land between like the super studs and then kind of everyone else. And so for me, round four, it's George Springer and Catel Marte. There are definitely concerns about whether both of them can sustain their 2019 breakouts.

There are obviously injury concerns with George Springer. But these are two guys who last season basically performed like first or second round picks and you're getting them 30 spots later than that. So that's what I like. George Springer going 41st overall. 80p. Ketalmarte going 42nd. Scott, I know you like Ketalmarte a lot. What do you think about that?

The two players I tend to draft most often from this range are Jordan Alvarez and Katel Marte. Yeah, I think I think they have been downgraded for

just concerns about repeatability and I think it's overkill. I think I think the underlying numbers are good enough that I'm willing to at least trust them to perform like fourth rounders. And I think you can get a lot more impact potentially from that group. Jordan Alvarez is somebody I love to draft if I emphasize steals at the start of the draft. Like if I got a Trey Turner and passed up the big hitting stats that I could have gotten in that same range,

I think knowing you can target your Nalvarez with your fourth pick makes that a lot easier, or your third pig to be safer. But that's a pairing that I think makes a lot of sense. Ariel, who's your favorite player to draft from this group? Or favorite player? Well, I was going to say that my least favorite player was Get El Marte, actually. Since we talked about him, I'll just talk about him now. Yeah, I really can't see him making this.

his price here. I don't see him as a fourth rounder. Regression, regression, regression. I hate picking players that have had their outsized career year. And he did by all means last year. Those guys are almost always

bust the following year. Anybody who picks an outsized career year, it's just going to be a bad value next year. I mean, he had a 380 Babbat last year in the second half. 380 is ungodly. Most players average about a 300. Maybe he's a little bit faster than others. He should have average a 310 or so.

Babbitt, by the way, is a batting average on balls in play. If you have a very high Babbup, it means you've been very lucky that balls are sneaking through. If you have a low Babbat, it means they're not. So he was lucky. His home run per fly ball rate more than doubled from the previous year to this year. He became a monster home run guy. If you actually take a look at what he's done in terms of power, most of his home runs were just. enough home runs, meaning they just one foot over the wall, they just made it. If he played in a longer ballpark, he would have had half the number of homers. So be wary of that.

I don't really believe that. And especially if the ball goes back to, like, the 2018 ball, he's probably going to lose half his homers. Not to mention his walk rate has now been in steady decline. He had a back injury last September. There's just so much uncertainty and so much regression, I cannot see myself earning profit out of this guy, so I'm going to stay away, and that's why I don't like him here. That's one of the tough things when we're talking about regression. There's, you know, statistical regression and then there's skill set regression, and in

Cattel Marte's case, the underlying skill numbers mostly backed up what he did. You know, his hard hit rate increased dramatically. His barrel rate was up. You know, the expected batting average, the expected slugging percentage, mostly back up what he did. And so it's always hard because I'm with you. I'm almost always the bet against the career year guy. But in Cattel Marte's case, the thing I do like about him is if we were buying him solely based on what he did last season, he'd probably be a second round pick. And so there is a discobar. If we were buying him of what he did in the second half of the first, it'd be like the third overall pick.

Which we should. He had a 380 bad bit, but he had 358. Nobody's drafting him to hit 3.58. Yeah, come on, Ariel. No, no, no, no, but still, the luck is there. Let me ask you a question. What's the difference between him and Marcus Semyon? Well, that's another player Scott loves.

Yeah, but Marcus Semyon is not going in the fourth round. Marcus Semyon, I got in TGFBI in the seventh eighth round. I like Simeon. That's fine. Yeah, the value for his 30 homers that you're getting at Simeon is better than the value that you're getting Kettle Marte. So I think that what I'm saying... But there's a batting average difference. There's a position scared.

issue. Those would be the biggest differences, I guess. But yeah, I do think Simeon's production is a little bit more sustainable than Cotel Martes. But even so, I mean, you're talking about an expected batting average of like $2.90 something for Cotel Marte, which is more than I would count on from Simeon. Right. So for me, the 25 points of batting average is not worth the...

the three, four round difference that you're getting. But anyways, move on to my favorite player. I'd rather take Austin Meadows in this round. He is what I call a many paths-to-value player. He is at least a half of a standard deviation better than the average player pool in all five rotos scoring categories. Stolen bases, runs, homers, you name it.

He's above average. There's actually only 11 players that fit that discreet. You know, you got all the guys the top, Trout, Gellich, and all that. And you have Austin Meadows. A little bit later on, actually, you have Keston Hayura, who's also in that range, which is very interesting. But Austin Meadows, listen, he hit 33 homers last year, and that was being out in April with a thumb injury. He had 21 homers in the second half and hitting 290 with no Babbup luck at all. To me, he's the guy who's the potential first rounder.

He's only 25 years old. He's got more upside than almost any of the other guys in this range. I'd go Austin Meadows if I had to pick in the fourth round. The thing I struggle with with Austin Meadows, and I do like him, but when we talk about single-year outliers, he's a pretty significant one too. If you look at what he was doing in the minors, this wasn't someone who routinely posted absolutely monstrous lines in the minors.

In 2018 at AAA, he was just about an average hitter. In 2017 at AAA, he was significantly below average. And so if you look at what he did last season, at the major league level, relative to the league he played in, it was actually one of the best seasons of his entire professional career. I struggle with what that means because he was a guy who the scouts absolutely loved and always said, this is coming, this is coming. But the numbers weren't quite there.

You know, in 2018, split between both the Pirates and the Wraise, he was actually a little better with the Pirates, whereas the Rays are usually a team who we think of as getting the most out of their players. And then all of a sudden last season, he takes this monster step forward was better than pretty much ever in his professional career. I don't quite know how to handle that. Yeah, I mean, power sometimes needs time to develop. So I'm not surprised that it actually took a little bit longer, and I think he's there.

Either way, I mean, the trade for Chris Archer, that's going to be probably the best trade in the last five years. It has to be. What a crazy fleecing the Rays did. And it looked bad the moment they hit it except. Yeah. It's only gotten much worse since then, because it's meadows, it's glass now. It's Shane Baz, who the Rays have kind of. of glass nowed in the miners in terms of getting his arsenal making it more of a power

arsenal which is like glass now better suited for his skill and yeah that that's I mean you you're hopeful Chris Archer's gonna bounce back this year Chris but it would take a full bounce back and it would take more than a full bounce for the trade to come even close to equal value Chris Archer would have to pick like pitch like 1994 Greg Maddox or 1999 Pedro Martinez for that trade not to look like a fleecing. I think there's basically no world in which the pirates end up happy with that trade at this point, especially now that they're actually like developing their pitchers and, you know, using them the way they should be rather than having everybody throw sinkers 65% of the time like they did for years.

Let's move on to that fourth round, and this is players 49 through 60 in ADP. and for me, there are, this is actually a range with a lot of players I like. I like Kestanhira a lot. I like Lucas G. Alito a lot. But for me, the clear best value in this range is Charlie Morton at number 50 overall. He has been, you know, I did a couple of the like blind player comparisons yesterday on Twitter. And the first one I did was just Patrick Corbyn versus Steven Strasbourg. And 70% of the Twitter followers picked Patrick Corbyn when they did.

didn't know the names applied to them. Who would have thunk? But I added Charlie Morton to that poll. Patrick Corbyn still won. But Charlie Morton got more votes than Steven Strasbourg, and that was without taking into account that he's going 28 picks later. And so I... You could have included 2017 and there was 2018 and 2019.

Yeah, I mean, the result would have been different, right? Possibly, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I didn't. because I wanted the results to be what they were. It was not a random sampling. It was not, it was not, it was not, it was a bad use of polling. But it gave me, it gave me the result I wanted.

And that, that made you, you made your, you made your point. But it's also worth knowing. Charlie Morton wasn't bad in 2017. You know, he was starting to figure it out with the Astros. 2018, he really figured out. In 2019, he was a top seven starting pitcher. He was exactly, basically exactly as good as Stephen Strauss. Osberg last year, except he won two fewer games.

Yeah, no, I mean, it would be, it would more bring down Corbyn. Yes. Because he was, you know, he didn't become good until, and he happened to become good in 2018, and that's when your poll started, which was, which was interesting. But, no, I mean, like, part of the, I've, I've shared this stance with you before. Like, part of my thinking on why I'm taking Straussberg first is because, I might want both Strausburg and Corbyn

and I'm more likely to get both of them if I take Strausberg first. Now I've actually not drafted Strausberg I think in a single league yet and I've drafted a lot of Corbin so it's not like it's not like ranking them that way has hurt me. I do think Corbyn's a little safer

I think Strausberg showed last year that his best is better and I as we've talked about before I like some of the underlying changes with his pitch selection, making him more of a ground ball pitcher. We're talking about Charlie Morton, though, Scott. Oh, we're talking about Charlie Morton.

My favorite picking around five. I got off on a Strausburg tangent, right, I'm sorry. I already won the Strausburg argument. Yeah, no, Charlie Morton, he kind of answered the workload question, right, because the Astros were being, just because they didn't need to have him pitch like a, front line starter in terms of that many innings. The raise did, and he was able to get them.

And I'm fine with them. I think he's probably pretty good value. The age question brings him down a little, and the fact it was just the one year. He's talking to retirement, potentially, after this season. I don't know if the delayed start is going to change his thinking there. But, you know, he's, he has. just downside in terms of how old he is.

But obviously he's coming off a career best season, so I'm not that concerned about it. I think that's just probably the thinking there while he goes this late. But look, I'm fine with him as my number two guy. That'd be great. Ariel, what about you? Who's your favorite pick in this round?

Well, before I say my favorite pick, I do love Charlie Morton here, and I have him on two of my teams. He's a guy who, at worst, pitched 3.13 ERA in the last two seasons, He had over 200 strikeouts. And all he has to do is pitch half a season, right? It's a shortened season. He's a guy that gains in value.

So I love Morton. My guy in this range is Chris Paddock. Chris Paddock is one of those guys that I think would have had an innings limit. Wouldn't have been like a hard 160. It might have been like 180. But he can actually pitch and go the distance the whole way every single time. So he's going to gain more innings now than people think. He had a 13% swinging stride rake in the second half, which is elite.

He only had a 10K per 9 in the second half, but it's gaining and gaining every single half season, and you're gaining from the minors. We're talking guy who's going to have a low 3-R-A, a 1-1-Wip. This is basically Zach ranking numbers, and by all accounts, you can make him your fantasy ace. I just took him in Tout Wars head-to-head this past Sunday, and he's my ace there. I think he's a nice, nice value here in the fifth round. The biggest question for me is that third pitch. Most pitchers, he's kind of pitching backwards relative to a lot of young pitchers. Most young pitchers have kind of the Mitch Keller approach where they've got the big fastball,

they've got the great breaking ball and they're trying to come up with that third pitch, the changeup. In his case, the change up incredible, one of the best in the majors, the fastball is really good, high spin, commands it and locates it really well. The curveball was just kind of a show-me pitch, and he spent the second half of the season working on it. He spent the off-season working on it. He developed a new grip for it. Unfortunately, we don't know how that's going to look.

And so I do have questions about how he's going to go, how he's going to do going third time through the order, pitching deep into games without if he doesn't have that reliable third pitch. And unfortunately, we just don't know if he does yet. He didn't last year. And while the ERA was really good, some of the peripheral. furrows weren't quite as, you know, some of the defense independent pitching stats weren't quite as high on him. So that's the only concern for me. It's not really a significant concern. I actually, I don't think he's a good value, or a bad value here. I don't think I've drafted him

this season either, but it's not like I'm opposed to him. You know, he wasn't my least favorite pick in this round for sure. So who is? Josh Hader I just I can't see paying up for the number one closer any year really I generally speaking

if I have to pick a bust at relief pitcher it's going to be whoever is being drafted as the number one closer and in his case he's going 10 picks ahead of the number two closer Josh Hader is awesome he might be the best reliever in baseball but

I'm not 100% sure the Brewers want him as their full time closer. It wouldn't surprise me if someone else came in and took some of the saves away. He's going to give you amazing ratios. He's going to give you incredible strikeout numbers. But saves are unfortunately a significant part of a pitcher's value. And so picking him in the fifth round, 56th overall, it just feels like reaching. And he might lose saves to Corey Knabel, who's going to be coming back and he'll be ready on time. I mean, Hader is a great value in terms of he'll get as many

strikeouts is like a number three starting pitcher. So he's going to have more strikeouts. But I just yeah, it's I don't know. You usually won't lose money in fantasy baseball fading whoever the number one

relief pitcher in any given season is. Last season it worked out really well. Edwin Diaz was not the number one reliever in baseball last season. No. I don't think that's going to happen to Josh Hater, but it's just the margin for error is slim there when you're

picking him ahead of the pack at that position. Yeah. Well, I wonder, I know you're concerned about Corey Keneville, Ariel, but I wonder if what you were saying about

wanting lower, less volatility among pitchers and maybe slotting an extra reliever in your lineup as opposed to another starting pitcher, if that makes you, if that same kind of thinking makes you more inclined to draft hater or, or Kirby Yates, 10 picks later, like a high-end closer.

I mean, I don't know where you stand on closers to begin with, but if that is factoring into your thinking here. Yeah, the closers that are going to make it the whole way are going to be of huge values. If Kirby Yates is the man and there's nobody close, he is going to earn a lot of value because now a save is worth more. And especially if you don't want to have a lot of crap

starting pitchers, it pays to load up on starters. I'm not saying pick a lot of these closers who cost a lot. I was just saying that you should put middle relievers. No, I agree, though, that Hader is bad value here. Any closer is too pricey here. I mean, take the Oakland Athletics.

You know, last year, Liam Hendrix was the main guy in the end. Previous year, Blake Trinen, Brick Trinen, you know, the Oakland A's actually had a different opening day closer in each of the last five years. And they've had some pretty good closers. It just shows you how fickle closers are, and they're just terrible fantasy baseball investments.

I'd rather go for quantity over quality. I'd rather take four of the $1 closers than take any one of these guys who are going to cost you a fourth, fifth, sixth round picks. Yeah, I think we're all on the same page there. Not paying for saves. All right, let's move on to the sixth round. And I know my favorite pick is not Scott's favorite pick. My favorite pick is Yohan Moncata. He's another guy.

You know, I think maybe I'm making, making Ariel grind his teeth with all my picks because it's all these guys who broke out in big ways last season. But in Moncada's case, it was him finally living up to the player he was projected to be in the minors. You know, he wasn't very good in 2017 or 2018, but there were underlying reasons to believe he would be good. And we talked about him a lot yesterday.

the reasons I like him. When he swings the bat, really good things happen. He hits the ball hard. He's fast. He makes things happen. In 2017 and 2018, he just wasn't swinging the bat enough. He had like a 40% swing rate. Last season, that went up to about 47%, 48%.

It did lead to an increase in swinging strike rate, but it actually conversely led to fewer strikeouts because he took a lot of strike three lookings early on in his career. Yohan Moncada, the skill set is there, it's obvious. For me, the changes that he made were changes to his approach. They were changes to his intention. And that's why I think they'll stick. And he might run more this year.

They've talked about that as well. Yeah, Moncada is a guy who I like better for not falling flat. He did have a 406 Babbat last year, which was the highest of anybody in like 30 years. so he's definitely not going to hit for average like he did. I mean, he was like a 230 hitter for the first couple of years. But no, the power speed blend is enormous. If you were going to consider a guy like Tim Anderson, Mankata is right there.

And I think he qualifies at multiple positions, too. So he's very good for fantasy rosters in terms of flexibility. My favorite... I'm sorry? It depends where you're playing. On CBS, I think he's just third base eligible. Oh, okay. And sometimes he could be a second base guy.

My favorite guy in this range is actually U. Darvish. You know, guys who have good control, we found, have now, good command, I should say, are lasting longer and they're more valuable. Guys like Kyle Hendricks, guys who don't walk a lot of players, they're becoming more durable and they last longer. They can win you more games, more quality starts. And that's U. Darvish. You know that in the second half of last year in his final 81 and change innings? He only threw seven walks. Seven walks.

That's less than a walk per nine innings. So he's got an extremely good floor for a whip. His average fastball velocity last year in the second half was 95 miles an hour. That's the highest it's ever been in his career. Strikeout rate was 13K per nine. So you got no walks for him. You got tons of strikeouts. Stronger stuff, stays in the game longer.

he's a great great spot for him I love him as like my number two pitcher and you can get him in this sixth round so Darvish is my pick here and Scott you're a fan of Darvish right I am

yes I feel like well I don't expect him to sustain his second half production over a full season I feel like it's closer to the true Darvish than the first half and then obviously 2018 was just can entirely throw that out the window because of the

the injury he was dealing with. But yeah, he's a very, he's always been at such a good source of strikeouts. And if he's figured out something there with the control, I mean, because the strike throwing we saw down the stretch, it was definitely an outlier for his career. But he made some adjustments to his pitch selection that I know contributed to it. and if that's something he can halfway sustain, then you're talking about a legitimate Zion contender here. So that's, he usually ends up being more like my number three than my number two,

just because of the way I'm emphasizing starting pitching, but it's somebody I'm happy to take here. I think maybe the best value among this group here, the 60 to 72 range is Matt Olson at 64 overall, who I think might be more Pete Alonzo than even Pete Alonzo is. And it's a sneaky pick to lead the majors in home runs. He has a swing that's perfectly suited for home runs in terms of where he ranks in exit velocity and the launch angle.

Some bad splits at home and some bad splits against lefties are something that have held him back to this point. But if, like, you look at his same. expected stats versus his actual stats last year, he underperformed his expected stats and still had an incredibly productive year. Those would be reasons why he might underperform his expected stats moving forward. The bad home park in particular, but also struggles against lefties. And I'm not sure about his splits with the shift on versus off, but that's another thing that could potentially hamper a player from reaching their kind of peripheral value.

But, you know, I think Matt Olson is a good reason to not reach for Pete Alonzo. But then, like, you know, maybe Jorge Saler is a reason to not reach for Matt Olson. Maybe Miguel Suno is a reason not to reach for Jorge Saler. For me, it's like, and then there's Nelson Cruz who's 83rd overall, and we'll get to him, you know, probably tomorrow, and he'll be my favorite pick and whatever round that is. as the eighth round. Hey, um, can I ask you guys a question? Sure.

Here's a thought question. You were talking about like Darvish had a very, an amazing second half, an okay first half. Are you guys more inclined to buy into a guy if he, if the player had an amazing second half, but an okay first half? Or is it better to buy into a guy who had an amazing first half, but an okay second half? Like, which one is better for you? Well, what do you think, Chris?

Well, you always say. My catchphrase on this podcast is, Full season statistics are more predictive than half-season statistics. For me, it's just, was there a reason? In Udarv's case, I think there was a pitch that he didn't really have command of. I can't remember what it was, but it's something where, like, if a player was dealing with an injury early on and then got healthy, like Corey Seeger, where he was clearly hampered coming back from the hip and elbow injury,

and then from like the beginning of May on was pretty much the guy we've always hoped he would be. you know that's where I'm more willing to to balance it but in terms of like first half versus second half is it better to get off to a hot start or a great finish I from what I've seen at least I don't think there's much predictive value to either one yeah I mean it's it's one of those things where you can talk about the the macro what um what the wide what what what league wide, if you plug every player into a formula what it shows, it probably shows that the second half's not predictive.

And yet there are those examples where a second half resurgence then leads to a breakthrough. And so what is behind it? That is a question that's worth asking. So, I mean,

generally speaking, I'm going to value the second half over the first half to get back to the specific question but if if there has to be a reason for why i think the player improved in the second half then um then it's just being you know kind of the way the season played out yeah yeah i just think we remember those guys who turn the big second half into a breakout season rather than you know the guys who have the big second half and then just kind of fall short like brett lowry was a guy who very famously one year, maybe his rookie season or his second season,

put together this huge run at the end of the season. And, you know, fantasy people were all in on Brett Lowry. Everyone was. Everybody loved him. And then it turned out that it was just a good month. You know, sometimes guys just have good stretches. You know, we talk about guys getting hot. And now we have all these underlying stats, and we can look at him.

We'll say, well, no, it wasn't fluky because he hit the ball harder. but sometimes guys just hit the ball harder. Sometimes guys just do get hot in like the classic hot hand theory way of thinking about it. And then it turns out to have just been like they were just locked in or whatever answer it is. You know, maybe they figured something out and then pitchers figured something out about them. I don't necessarily, there need to be extraordinary circumstances for me to, take a big second half and say, well, we're just going to kind of brush aside what happened before and say this is the new normal, I guess, is the way I would put it. Yeah, no, I tend to agree with everything you guys say that, you know, especially, you look at the whole season.

Don't just look at one half. The one thing I'll say, though, is if a player gets off to a red hot start in the first half, he'll probably get the playing time the entire rest of the season, even if he sucks. But if a player has a crappy first half, he'll have less of an opportunity to dig himself out of the hole. So in that sense, maybe I'd tilt a little bit more towards the second half. than the first. Sure. All right, that's going to do it

for today's episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast. We did not get to emails. Unfortunately, there were a couple I did want to get to, but we'll get to those tomorrow. Thanks so much to Ariel for coming on. Ariel Cohen, you can check out

the ATC projections on sportsline.com. Arrow, where else can people find you? Yeah, you could read my stuff on Fangraphs, on Rotor Bowler. You can follow me on Twitter at ATCNY, and you can check out my podcast, which is the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational

Beat the Shift podcast. Check that out. All right, and obviously Scott White, you know where to find him. Right here. And on CBS Fantasy. And on Twitter at CBS Scott White. Right? I got that right. You're CBS first? That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a CBS second guy. Neither of us

have the clout of an Adam Azer to just ignore the CBS brand in our names. He's got the personal brand. Our personal brands aren't quite as strong. We need that CBS. branding. Thanks so much for listening to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast. We'll be back on Thursday. We'll see you then.