Fantasy Baseball Today - Kelenic Demoted, 2020 vs. 2021, & Redrafting The First Two Rounds (6/8 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

Frank and Chris are joined by Andrea Arcadipane (@scoutgirlreport) from NBC Sports Edge and start with Jarred Kelenic who was demoted Monday (2:40). Should you hold him in redraft leagues? ... Andrea recently wrote an article about Nick Pivetta and his curveball (12:14). How has Pivetta got back on track? ... We're just about 60 games into 2021, how has it compared to 2020 (14:58)? Who are the biggest improvers? ... What about the biggest losers year over year (27:33)? Which players should you be buying? ... We're redrafting the first round for the rest of the season (33:09). Where does Vlad Jr. get drafted? What about Ohtani? ... The second round is filled with a ton of former first round picks (48:13)! Who's the SP4 drafted? Does Nick Castellanos make it into the second round? ... We wrap up with Team Names Tuesday (1:02:47)! ... 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. Center field. 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 up, everybody, and welcome into fantasy baseball today. Frank Stample joined by Chris Towers, and we decided to go live on YouTube at a reasonable hour because there's only three games on today's slate. What's up, Chris? We're not used to podcasting before midnight. This might be our best work yet.

Yeah, I didn't. I don't know. We could have waited, I guess, like three more hours to record when we normally do, but, you know, it'll be nice to go to sleep before four today. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, like that.

Maybe I'll only stay up until three tonight. Don't know. You have some call of duty. You have something that you could do, I'm sure. Oh, I have a game. scheduled for immediately after the podcast. And your cat is back, which is great. It's been a while. It's been a while. David Bowie is already. You saw that. You saw as soon as he hit the button to start, if you're watching, she moved. She was off screen. And as soon as he hit the button, she moves into

screen and starts yelling at me and biting me. So that'll be a whole thing. Superstar. This also gave us the opportunity to get a little creative with only three games on the schedule. There's not really much to recap. So we wanted to do something a little bit different. We're going to compare 2020, which was a 60 game season, to 2021 thus far, which for most teams, they've either played right around 60 games, just over 60 games. So it's a nice little test to do and compare some players who has overachieved, who has underachieved to this point. We will redraft the first two rounds. We still have your team name Tuesdays.

And of course, we will talk about Jared Kelnick, who got demoted on Monday. And to help us do it, we are not alone. We are not alone. brought along a great guest. It's Andrea, founder of Scout Girl Report, and a contributor at NBC Sports Edge, Prospects 365, and D. Rays Bay. Make sure you follow her on Twitter at Scout Girl Report. What's going on, Andrea? How you doing? I'm good. I'm so excited to be here. And congrats. I know that you recently joined NBC Sports Edge, so you're making moves. Yeah, thanks so much. I feel like this all really happened very quickly, so it's been an exciting ride so far. Yes, well deserved. And of course, before we get into some of that stuff later on, let's just jump into these news and notes here.

And the biggest news of the day, Jared Kelnick, sent back to AAA over his last 11 games struggling mightily, did not have a single hit. Oh, for his last 37, with a 41% strikeout rate. And there was actually a really interesting article from Robert Murray at Fanciated. And he wrote about a player who reacted to, originally he was reacting to Kesson Hira,

who also got sent down on Monday. We could talk about that. But had this to say, the environment in the big leagues now, everything is hard on hitters, never been a bigger gap between AAA and the big leagues so that it didn't really help him on what he needed to do to succeed here consistently. Again, that was about Kesson Hira,

but I think it's relevant to what just happened with Jared Kelnick as well. So Chris, where are you at with Kelnik? Should you continue to hold him in redraft leagues? Don't do anything rash in Dynasty, obviously. Yeah, it's always tough when this kind of thing happens because the reasons we like Jared Kalanick haven't just disappeared. He is still this incredibly talented hitter who we think is a future star. And I don't know, he played what, 22 games, 23 games, something like that.

Like that's not enough to know one way or the other. But what it ultimately comes down to is whether the Mariners believe that he's worth giving another shot. at some point in this season and hopefully some point quick. And that's a much harder question to answer because it's not just, okay, Jared Kellanick goes down and has three good weeks. It brings into account some of the service time questions and stuff like that. The obvious comparison, if you want to be optimistic, is Mike Trout. He had a 492 OPS in his first 14 games, got sent back down to the minors,

but he wants to participate in the conversation. He did come back a couple weeks later. and he hit better, but certainly wasn't Mike Trout, but eventually, and I mean like the next year, he was the best player in baseball. Jared Kellanick, I don't think is going to be the best player in baseball, but it's entirely possible that he just goes down for a few weeks, needs, you know, an opportunity to see some hits drop in, to face some pitchers who aren't, you know, quite as tough and get that confidence back.

So much of this game can be just about confidence. And when you're Jared Kellenick, this is probably the first time he's failed playing baseball in his life. I mean, you look at the minor league numbers. You look what he did in college. Like, this is not a guy who has much experience there. And so it could just be as simple as go down and, you know, sort things out. And we'll see in a few weeks. So, yeah, that's a long-winded way of answering a simple question, which is, yes, I would hang on to.

if I can, but knowing how many injuries there are right now, it may be hard. Yeah, definitely would be tough to hold on to Kelnick. I tweeted out that I would try to hold on to him in redraft leagues. I play in a lot of five outfielder leagues,

so obviously there, I think it's even easier to hold on to him. And as bad as he was, I mean, he was batting 0.96. He did have two home runs and three steals. So it started to flash a little bit that power speed combination, but of course,

just wasn't making enough contact and the batting average is down as well. I would not dub myself as a prospect guy, girl, guru, anything. But Andrea, you contribute to Prospects 365. So what do you think about Jared Kelnick in this whole situation? Would you be optimistic about him? Maybe not for returning value this season, but obviously still long term.

I think there's a lot to like. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think long term, he's definitely going to, you know, come into his own and get back to the numbers that we want him to have. have. He's a top prospect. And I agree with Chris that the sample from this year was so small. It's, you know, not really fair to judge him based on that. But I don't know. I kind of feel like if you have the roster space for him, he'll hang on to him. But if not, I wouldn't be opposed to dropping him. I don't think it's crazy. Just because I don't think we'll see him for a while.

He was really struggling. So I think it'll probably be, you know, quite a few weeks until we see him again. Yeah, I don't think this is just like a one week situation or anything. If he goes down, hits a couple home runs. It's going to be at least two, maybe three weeks. Maybe it's not until after the All-Star break, which, you know, at that point, we're looking at a month from now, four to six weeks, something like that. It was only 23 games at Jared Kelnick played so far this season. And that's the thing. Like, he played 27 games between double A and AAA in his career. Yeah. And he's played 23 in the major. So he's still, I mean, he's 21, but he's also very young baseball wise. And I mean, this kind of gets into the larger discussion that we've been having for the last

couple of weeks about the fact that these guys didn't play last year. And baseball is a sport about repetition. And it's a sport about getting your reps. And most of these guys didn't get real reps last season. So the jump to the majors seems to be more difficult right now than it ever has been. And it's certainly, if you look at the hitting numbers across the board, they're worse than any season over the last decade when you compare to league league average. Sorry, my cat sat on my keyboard

and erased a cell. So, rookies right now, the average woe before a rookie right now is 91.3% of what the league average is. That is the lowest of the last decade. Last year was the second lowest. That makes sense.

You know, that you're, you also see it with lowest bab-up for rookies relatively average, highest strikeout rate, lowest average, lowest OVP, lowest slugging percentage, all of these things pretty much align. And the question is, how long is this going to, this effect going to last? And which hitters are going to be able to overcome it, which aren't?

These are tough questions to answer. And it might just be that you want to fade rookies or maybe reach that point where the top prospect gets called up, and trade them that day. You know, that might be where we're at. It's not, to be clear, this is not a long-term thing. This is not something that has been, like, getting worse. It's just the last two years.

And so that could just be this class of players. I think the more likely explanation is that they just didn't get their reps. Yeah. And I think that makes a lot of sense. And we saw it last year with someone like Joe Adele too, which he has issues in his own right, where he has a lot of swing and miss in his game and he strikes out quite a bit. but if he didn't get called up to the majors last year

and he had a normal minor league season and he was doing what he's doing so far this year, maybe we would see him already in the majors. But I think the fact that they did see him struggle already at the big league level is why they are playing a little bit safer with Joe Adele thus far. Chris, I know that you are a big fan of Kesting Hero coming into this season, so I will just ask you.

He's optioned back to AAA. He's still just 24 years old. But I think we're entering some worrisome territory here because a 33.5% strikeout rate in 716 career plate appearances, that's pretty bad. There is not really anything at all to be optimistic about with Keston here. And that's kind of true going back to the start of last season. Like, as a rookie, he had that outlier batted ball quality that made it. So, you know, he struck out a lot.

Yes, he was like 31% that season. but when he did make contact, he was crushing the ball and you can live with it. Now he's been more average, average, maybe a little below average, when it comes to quality of contact. And when you're doing that, while striking out 31% of the time or 34% of the time,

that's a recipe for a bad player. You know, I still hope there's some Rognito door potential here, where, you know, he got off to a really good start, struggled, and then eventually figured it out. but I don't see any reason to hang on to Kestanhira at this point. Yeah. Even in Dynasty, what do you think? I mean, I guess you just got to hold, right?

Because his stock is so low. I'm not going to drop him there. I still think he has some potential based on his prospect pedigree. But imagine that on June 7th, we're talking about hopefully Kesson Hira could get to Rognito Dors' kind of career path, right? I mean, look, Runeito Dore was a very good. He was very good for a while. At one point.

Yep. But yeah, similar plate discipline issues, a lot of that. So I don't know, there's not a lot of reason to be hopeful right now, unfortunately. The rest of the news from Monday that we had, Byron Buckson will begin a rehab assignment on Tuesday at AAA. His teammate Kent Maeda will make a rehab start on Wednesday. Jock Peterson and Javier Baez remained out of the Cubs' lineup on Monday. J.D. Martinez remained out for the Red Sox with a sore wrist. The Mets do not have a timetable on when Carlos Carrasco will be able to

go on a rehab assignment, and we have a few more prospect updates. Angels Outfield Prospect. Brandon Marsh is out with shoulder inflammation, though the issue is not considered serious. And the Yankees promoted infield prospect Oswald Paraza 2A. He was batting 306 with five homers and 16 steals across 28 games at high A. If you have Paraza in a Category League, Category Dynasty League, should feel pretty good because I've heard multiple people in the industry talking him up. We only had three games on Monday, but Nick Povetta started one of them.

And, Andrea, I know that you have recently wrote a great article highlighting Nick Povetta's curveball. It wasn't his best start on Monday. Four and two-thirds, seven hits, two runs, three walks and six strikeouts. But overall in the season, he's been one of the better surprises. 3.78 ERA, 74 strikeouts across 64 and a third innings pitched. That curveball in particular, what did you see when you dove deep into that? why has that curve and why has Nick Povetta been so successful this season?

Yeah, so he just improved that pitch altogether. He improved the spin efficiency on it, which just means that more of the spin of the ball is going towards the movement. So as a result, the pitch is moving more in both directions. And it's also mirroring the four seam. So it's a lot harder for hitters to recognize. which one is coming, whether it's the fastball or the curveball, because they look very similar until the curveball breaks at the end.

And I think that that's really, it's causing the results of his curveball to improve and his foreseem as a result. So now he has two above average pitches versus last year. It might have been a little easier to read. Yeah, and on top of that, he has a slider that he uses. And according to Fangraph's pitch values, his slider is actually his best pitch. So you put those three things together,

and the fact that now he has two breaking pitches that he can, use in tandem with that fastball. If we get the, I think, the control down for Nick Povetta, that's like the last part of his game, where if he lowers the walks, I mean, we could see a pretty decent strikeout pitcher. He's been a great find for the Red Sox. And so far for fantasy as well, in Points Leaks, he has SPARP eligibility.

Chris, what have you seen from Nick Povetta this year? I'm always going to be wary of Nick Povetta because he does historically get hit very hard. And that's always been the concern for me, is even when he's getting strikeouts, even when he's avoiding walks, the times he does give up contact tends to be pretty loud. That being said, this season, he does have his second lowest ex-Wobon contact for his career. It's right around league average.

If he can do that and be an above-average strikeout pitcher, Pivota can be an above-average pitcher, and that's what we're seeing right now. I mean, he's probably, I kind of have to recalibrate 3770, I guess, for fantasy is probably more like average now. which is weird to think about. Like a strikeout per inning now is average. There's a lot of weird things going on in baseball that I've had to recalibrate.

But yeah, I feel more optimistic about Nick Povetta than I have at any point since probably March of 2019. Well, let's talk about some of those league averages, Chris, because you did a great job of gathering all this data comparing the 2020 season to 2021 thus far. and the average ERA for pitcher, this is just unheard of, as long as I've been doing this. Last year was a 4.45 ERA, a 1.33 whip. This season, a 4.70 ERA and a 1.27 whip.

I mean, that type of run prevention, we are not used to seeing from pitchers. And, you know, that brings into a further question of this crackdown for substances, foreign substances, that pitchers are using it to get all the spin, which ultimately helps them get strikeouts and so on and so forth. But yeah, the league average pitcher this year is much better than we've ever seen before.

And we'll talk about a few more. Talk about those pitchers a little bit more. Some of these guys that are overperforming to this point. And in terms of hitters, non-pitchers. So, all right, so, oh, you found this data out for this season as well. Yeah, I took all, I took the pitchers out. You can do this on fan graphs. you can just take pitchers out of the equation,

and it gives you a better comparison to 2020 because pitchers didn't hit. Yeah. Yeah, and that makes sense, too. That's the way that we should be looking at it. But last year, a 245 batting average across the league versus this season a 240 batting average overall for non-pitchers that have hit so far the season. Of course, back in 2020, we had the Universal D.H.

And this season, we do not. Hopefully we can have that heading into next season, but there's a big labor discussion that's going to have to happen in the offseason. So hopefully they can be fun to follow. Will it though? Will it though? Yeah.

And so I think there are two key things that are going into the batting average being down. If you look at the numbers, one BAP is down five points from 2020 to 2021, 2.91 last season, 286 this season. There was a really good piece on baseball prospectus last week. I can't remember who wrote it. I'm sorry to that person.

But talking about how much, much better defenses have gotten over the last really five years at turning batted balls into outs. And so it's not just strikeouts. It's not just fewer home runs, which is also, you know, a home run to fly ball ratios down from 14.8% last season to 13.4%. But also, the times you do put the ball in play, the times you don't hit a home run, the times you don't strike out, are more likely to become an out. And so this is just like we've spent so much time talking about it this season. But it's just this self-reinforcing feedback loop where if you can't get, if you can't score a run by getting, you know,

two singles in a sack bunt or whatever it would be in the past, you kind of have to try to hit home runs, but now the ball's not traveling as far. So the home runs that you would have had last season, you know, maybe three or four percent of them aren't traveling out of the yard this season and strikeouts are up. And it's,

it's all just kind of moving in this one direction that's leading to offense being down. That being said, that trend has been slowed in, you know, the last month or so. So let's take a look at some of the hitters that have seen the biggest jump in Wobah in 2021 versus 2020. And specifically, I want to focus on the ones that we downgraded after last season when we had just a 60 game sample to deal with. And the ones that stand out on this list, Jose Altuve, Max Muncie, Marcus Semyon, Brian Reynolds with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who's been great, J.D. Martinez, and Austin. Meadows. For all different reasons. For Meadows, he was dealing with COVID the entire season. He came back and he had an oblique injury after that. J.D. Martinez complained that he didn't have in-game video

to use and that's what affected him mostly. Jose Altuve didn't really have an excuse, I guess, just like they were coming off the whole cheating scandal and maybe that was weighing down on him. Everyone on their team struggled last year really. Yeah, yeah. It was very weird. But in particular, Jose Altuve, Andrew, I'll throw this one to you. Do you just think Jose Altuve is back and that 2020 was kind of a blip on the radar because basically everything he has done this season looks like he is back to being maybe not exactly prime Altuve but pretty damn close to it. Yeah, I think Jose Altuve might have gone in his head a little bit last year because, you know,

cheating scandal or no cheating scandal, he is still a really good hitter. And even when they were, you know, doing whatever they were doing with the sign stealing, I always felt that he didn't need to use that to hit well. And that was one of the most frustrating aspects of the whole thing. So, yeah, I think maybe last year was a down year, but it was also a short season. So, you know, a lot of guys were struggling last year with, you know, personal issues or this and that.

So, yeah, I think that he's back this year and he's, you know, just being himself. Jose Altuve batting 302 on the season with nine homers, 39 run scored 27 RBI 2 steals I don't think he's going to run anymore we saw that part of his game already start to decline even before this kind of recent stretch for him and with an 835 OPS

Jose Altuve has been great this year so I think ultimately the regular season did not matter for him and what was so interesting specifically about the Astros was once the postseason started they all just kind of flipped the switch and they were awesome Altovae was great in the postseason Carl's Correa was great in the postseason as well Chris

among the names on this list, Tyler O'Neill is actually the top one, which I guess you can argue that he's a sell high candidate right now, but I just don't think you're going to get much for Tyler O'Neill, so you just probably just hold on to him and just benefit everything that you can get from him. But outside of who stands out to you on this list as someone who, okay, maybe they're overperforming a little bit, and let me see what I can get in return right now, a sell high candidate from last year's Wobah to this year's Wobah. It's weird because I liked Marcus Simeon as a bounceback candidate. And when he was struggling in April, I liked him as a buy low. And now that he's doing well, I think he's a sell high. So maybe I'm just a contrarian. But the things that he did so well in 2019, that big breakout season where he finished in the top three in MVP voting and had an OPS near 900, the biggest change was the plate discipline. He became almost a strikeout to walk, one strikeout to one walk. guy, you know, 11.6% walk rate, 13.7% strikeout rate. This season is walk rate is still very good,

9.8%, but strikeout rates up to 24.7%, which is, uh, you know, slightly above average. He's thriving because of a 353 babbup, which is the highest of his career. He has not historically been a high babbip guy. And, you know, despite home run to fly ball rates being down, he has the highest of his career at 16.5%. There are reasons to, buy in, to a certain extent. His hard hit rate is higher. He's hitting the ball a little harder overall, but I think you look at it. And at the very least, the 294 average doesn't seem realistic to me. I think this is more a 240 to 250 hitter. And that's not as bad as it used to be. You know, when the whole league is hitting 240, if you're hitting 245, you are above average.

And the fact that he runs and the fact that he plays in a great lineup and the fact that that he, you know, does have some pop. I think all of it adds up to Marcus Simeon. He's still going to be a good player, but he's playing over his head right now in, you know, I think some pretty obvious ways. The XBA is 244. X-SL is nearly 100 points lower than his actual slugging percentage.

All of it points to Marcus Simeon being somewhere between last year and this year. He is the 16th best player in Roto leagues right now, which is just amazing. But it's hard to argue with the, against those points that you mentioned there, Chris, specifically the plate discipline, I think it's a really good one. The underlying numbers there for Marcus Semy. He's been great, can't take anything away from him,

but I would bet against him keeping the numbers up that he has provided so far this season. If we look on the pitcher side of things, Kevin Gosman, Kyle Gibson, Danny Duffy, Robbie Ray, Matthew Boyd, who has regressed a little bit recently. But Andrea, I'll throw Kevin Gosman your way. And the Giants have done a great job the past couple of seasons of finding these reclamation projects

with starting pitchers and getting their careers back on track. He's throwing harder than ever before. And the splitter, he's developed a newfound level of consistency with the splitter that he has never, ever had before. Our own Scott White, the poor guy, he was sad last night. Let's call it for what it was. He was sad because he's an Atlanta Braves fan

and his team gave up on Kevin Cosman. He goes to the Giants and now he's amazing. So Andrea, what have you seen from Kevin Gosman? He's obviously not going to keep up a 1.27 ERA, but can he be a sub three ERA pitcher rest of the season? What are you thinking about him? I had my doubts about him, I guess, like everyone else. And then he went to the Giants,

and I feel like that's kind of like a trend with them. You know, people are going there and just becoming really, really high-quality pitchers. And like you said, the split finger is really effective. He's using that way more this season than he did. last year and I think 10% more and he's using that change up less. The results weren't that great against a changeup and against a split finger. It's working a lot better. So he's improved his pitch mix and he looks great.

Yeah, there's no denying that. There will be some regression, of course. He's not going to be the number one starting pitcher in fantasy baseball for the rest of the season. Or maybe he will, but I would personally bet against it. A few others that are atop this list, Chris. Lance Lynn, as great as he's 1.23 ERA. We know he's good, but come on now. Gilgipson has been great. He's started throwing a cutter this year. Danny Duffy is trying to

return from injury. Brandon Woodruff, we talk about quite a bit. John Means just went on the aisle recently. Robbie Ray is one that stands out that like I just love everything that he's done this year in terms of the velocity being up, the walk rate being down. He just, this seems like the best version of Robbie Ray that we've ever seen. And he was someone that, you know, two, three years ago, we were drafting inside the top 50 picks. So Robbie Ray has been one of the biggest steals this season. Is there anyone that you would be trying to sell right now because you don't trust that they're going to keep up this level of production? Well, part of me, like, 2016, Chris Towers is furious at Kevin Gosman for waiting this long to finally throw his splitter. Because it was,

it was a yearly thing with him. When he was with the Orioles especially, he wouldn't throw his splitter until the end of spring training, maybe not even until the start of the regular season. And he would kind of slowly ramp up and he would always get off to these. miserable starts. He would get absolutely rock because he had this, you know, straight as an narrow fastball. It didn't really have great breaking pitches. It was kind of all about that splitter. And then he would throw it more in the second half of the season. They'd be like, ah, he's figured it out. Let's go. Kevin Gosman, break out 2017. And it never actually happened. And now it's actually happening for him. And like, yeah, you can sell high on him. He's not going to, if someone,

if someone views Kevin Gosman as a top 10 starting pitcher moving forward for fantasy, I think you can probably get something good for him. But I don't think it's a necessity. If I'm looking to sell high on anyone in this list, Matthew Boyd sticks out like a sore thumb because he's not even doing the things that we like Matthew Boyd for back when we thought he was going to be good. And that's not to say he can't be good as a 20% strikeout rate guy. There are pitchers who succeed at 20% strikeout rate.

I don't see any reason to believe Matthew Boyd can be one of those guys because he still gets hit pretty hard. He's still, like his career, he's been about average when it comes to quality of contact allowed this season a little bit better than average. But I don't necessarily know if, you know, that's the kind of thing that fluctuates a lot in small sample sizes. If he's not going to be a high strikeout rate guy, I think he's just a guy. I have much more faith in what Robbie Ray is doing, what Kevin Gosman is doing. Kyle Gibson to a lesser extent. But Matthew Boyd, if I could get, I mean, honestly, if I could get anything of value for him, if I could get a player, I feel comfortable starting at any other position.

I would do that because I could see Matthew Boyd being dropable in three weeks. Some of the biggest losers in Wobo from 2020 versus 2021. And one that stands out to me, Anthony Rendon, who I liked him as a value, coming into this year, you were getting him in the third, fourth round, and I still thought that he could provide elite-level production. And admittedly, I do have Jackson CoR's first start on, on my side computer here, and I'm watching what's going on, and it doesn't look great so far.

And one of the reasons is Anthony Rendon has an RBI single off of him, and Rendon is showing signs of life the last seven games. Batting 333, the power numbers are not there. Andrea, what do you think about the prospect of trying to buy Anthony Rendon in a fantasy league right now? or do you think the fact that he's getting up there and age a little bit he's had a lot of injuries

do you think those things are kind of catching up to him or would you still hope that he gets back on track to what we've seen the past couple of seasons from Rendon? I think he's capable of getting back to at least close to what he's been. He's still seeing the ball really well. Sorry if you could hear the barking in the background. But yeah, he's still, I mean,

he's swinging at more pitches in zone. He's doing everything right. He hasn't changed his approach. he's still not striking out that much. So I don't know if he'd be on the top of my list, but I think that he will improve from how he's done so far. Chris, in terms of

pitchers, I do want to get to redrafting the first two rounds, so we're going to kind of just like speed pass this a little bit more. But ones that have lost the most, ERA, I guess gained the most, right? That would make more sense. The ones that have gained the most, Brad Keller, Dallas Keikle, Luis Castillo, obviously, Max Reed, Dylan Bundy,

Kentomayda, Dylan Bundy's on the mound right now as well while we're recording. this. Who is, who are you looking to buy most on this list? Is it still Luis Castillo or have you, the dream has died with Luis Castillo? The problem is I've tried to buy Luis Castillo and we get comments on Twitter and an email like, oh, I'm going to drop Luis Castillo. I can't watch this anymore or, you know, should I trade him for like, you know, Chris Bassett or something. And like, then I put out, you know, better offers than that in leagues and nobody wants to. And nobody wants him or nobody wants to give him up.

And maybe it's because people listen to this podcast and they know how much I like him and they want to get more out of him. But yeah, I would still try to buy Luis Castillo. It's the same as it has been all season. There's not necessarily any specific physical reason why he's struggling that I can see. There are some small changes that he's made. You know, his change up is dropping more.

The rest of his pitches aren't moving as much. and, you know, there are reasons to think that he's not the same guy, but they're not, it's not like, oh, his elbow's barking or his velocities down. His velocity was up in his most recent start, and it was his best start of the season probably. So I would still be trying to buy Louise Castillo if I can. If there's someone on this list, I'm probably not trying to buy. I mean, Zach, please, Zach's an easy answer just because he is hurt right now. but I also kind of think just like the 414 ERA, maybe it's a little high,

but that's probably close to what he is. And I think we're going to look back on 2020 as being an amazing eight-start stretch, where he did some stuff he'd never done before. And, you know, it didn't prove sustainable. I think that's what we're going to see moving forward. That's not necessarily to say that he's not a useful fantasy option. I think he will be. But he's not someone on.

trying to buy right now. Yeah, I think that makes sense with Zach. Please, Sack. Clayton Kershaw, someone who stands out to me on this list, and I brought it up yesterday. I think that he is a good buy low right now. If you can, he still has a 3.66 ERA, so it's not like the overall numbers look bad or anything, but he has been roughed up a little bit his last couple of starts, and the swinging strike rate is his highest since 2015.

That was prime Kershaw that we're talking about. So if you can acquire him on the cheap, that's something I would look into doing right now. Before we hit a break, I just want to remind everyone that you can follow. and stream both fantasy baseball today and fantasy baseball today and five, our daily five-minute podcast on Spotify. If you are listening on Spotify right now, go to each show page and hit that rectangular follow button so that when new episodes are dropped,

they'll be at the top of your feed. And if you're listening elsewhere or watching us on YouTube, thank you, and give Spotify a try and drop us a follow. We're going to take a quick break, but when we return, we are going to redraft the first two rounds for the rest of the season. We'll do it next here on fantasy baseball today.

All right, so let's redraft these first two rounds, and the way we're going to do it is I'll throw it to Andrea. She will have the first pick, and we'll just go round and round. Chris will have the second pick. I'll have the third, then we'll go back to Andrea, and we'll try and get through two rounds, hopefully, if we can. So, Andrea, you can kick us off here. This is redrafting for Fantasy Baseball leagues

for the rest of this season. If you had the first overall pick, who would you take? I would take Acuna, Acuna Jr. for sure. He's just been doing so well this year. He's a five-to-a-player he strikes out less than some of the other guys in this list. And I think he's got great things ahead of him this year. I mean, if there are great things ahead, he's already been about as great as you could possibly be, but a 278. I'm an optimist. Yeah. No, that's good. We need some of that here. 278 batting average, 17 home runs, 46 run scored 35 RBI and 11 steals for Ron. Donald Ducunya so far this season.

He has been great and I think it's going to be really fun. Assuming health to watch both he, Tatis, Vladimir Giro, Jr., battle it out for the home run lead all season long because I have a feeling that is the route that we are going down. Chris, you have the second pick. Who are you taking? I think it's got to be Tatis.

We were asked this in our week 11 mailbag. We do like a Q&A at the beginning of every week. One of our editors sends out questions. And that was the, who's the most valuable player in fantasy moving forward? I said Ronald Acuna, the speed, the power, the fact that he's suddenly this plate discipline God, like he's only striking out 21% of the time. He's walking 14% of the time.

Tatis isn't far off. Tadis is up to a 13% walk rate, 25% strikeout rate. Not quite as good, but for a guy who had the struggles that he did with plate discipline his first season, that's pretty good. and oh yeah, he went on the IL for two weeks and he's tied for the National League lead in home runs and leads the NL and steals. He's hitting 292.

I think this is officially the start of the Acuna Tatis era. I think this is those two guys at the top and everyone chasing them for the next decade in fantasy drafts. I mean, you know, six, seven years at least. Fernando Tatis will be 28 by that. time. And he'll not even be halfway through his massive contract extension that he got. And rightfully so. The guy is absolutely amazing. Chris, imagine being worried about his shoulder injury,

like, wow, who would not have been me? Yeah, definitely wouldn't have been me either. Fernando Tatis is averaging 4.9 fantasy points per game this season, which is far and away the best hitter in fantasy baseball right now on a per game basis. Number three, for me, we'll assume this is a, we'll go with five by five roto. And I actually did this exercise. I was on the ITL podcast in this league with the Welsh and Scott Bogman last week. Friend of the program, of course, Chris Welsh, who used to host this podcast. And I had the third pick for this exercise. And I took Garrett Cole. I will not be taking Garrett Cole today. The player that I will take is Trey Turner, who just flying under the radar. We haven't talked about him much. He's just doing his job. He's doing everything that we wanted him to do,

actually, and then some. He's batting 311 with 10 homers, 13 steals, 31 runs scored, 29 RBI. 29 RBI for a guy that leads off most of the time for the nationals. He's not even hurting you there either. So a true five category contributor, Trey Turner is legit. Andrea, the fourth pick. It's back to you. Who do you got? I'll go with Jacob de Grom. Obviously, best pitcher in baseball. I was a little hesitant on him because he doesn't, or he stereotypically doesn't get the wins. But he, has five this year. So I think they still count wins, right, in some weeks. So I'll take that. Unfortunately. Yeah.

Yeah. We shouldn't. He limits hard hit. He gets the strikeout, so it's all good. Yeah, we should not count wins, right? I mean, I guess you could go with quality starts or you find a different metric to go by. It's just so fluky, but I guess that's part of what makes fantasy baseball challenging and fun at this point. Look, as great as DeGrom has been in his career, this is the best version of him that we have ever seen.

A.0.62 ERA through nine starts. That is the lowest. in MLB history, which we noted on yesterday's podcast. Chris, the fifth pick goes to you. I think I would go. This is a really hard one. It is. I'm looking at my overall rankings from last week in the trade values chart, and I have Juan Soto and Garrett Cole as the next best players. I think I would go with Soto. And it doesn't, it's stupid, but it doesn't feel great. And I know that I'm just overreacting to 46 mediocre games, just like, you know, maybe we overacted to 47 amazing games last season,

which is, I think, kind of why the, you know, looking back at 2020 exercise, but you look at his last, you know, since the start of 2022 or 2020, uh, 93 games, 20 homers, seven steals, hitting well over 300. Like, that's a 30 homer 15 steel-ish pace. I think Juan Soto is still fine. This season has been frustrating, but he's still crushing the ball.

He actually has the highest hard hit rate of his career. His ex-slug is 584. His XBA is 319. I think all things considered Juan Soto is fine, and I just have to get over the fact that the numbers aren't great right now. For what it's worth, it's only been six games in June,

but he is betting 333 with three home runs so far this month, and that includes a 50, 50% fly ball rate. And we know that traditionally, Juan Soto hits a lot of ground balls, and that's what has held him back at times. I mean, you say it relative,

because Juan Soto is amazing, obviously. But man, if he starts hitting fly balls, not to this level, but even a little bit more than he ever has, you know, we could see a power breakout for the rest of the season when it comes to Juan Soto. I think that's a fine pick, Chris, and I don't have an issue with it. And I'm actually going to take someone who has also

struggled so far this season, has traditionally been a top five pick year in and year out. And that is Mookie Betts, who is batting just 258, still has five homers, five steals. The plate discipline looks great, 12% walk rate, 15% strikeout rate. He is hitting a few more infield fly balls this season than ever before. 12.7% strikeout infield fly ball rate. That's his highest since 2017.

So I do think that'll regress and that'll come back down to his, career norms and we'll get mooky bets that we have seen in the past. So I will take bets with the six pick. And number seven is back to you, Andrea. I'm going to take Vlad Guerrero Jr. He, you know, he made a swing change over the offseason. He lost 42 pounds. And it's, he's just been incredible ever since. He's seeing the ball insanely hard. It's so much improved from last year. He's seeing the ball better. And I think he's first in like nearly every single offensive category. So I'm all in. He's the closest thing to John Carlos Stan and Aaron Judge when it comes to the average X velocity to the max ex and Velo,

all those numbers. And he strikes out half as much as those guys. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say is. And that gives you such high upside in the batting average in particular because those guys, I mean, Judge hits 280 and that's with a 30% strikeout rate. So you cut that in half and the sky is the limit. You could be looking at a 320, 330 plus type of hitter with Vlad June. When he was a prospect, we were comping him to Albert Pooleholz in the best case scenario, and we're seeing that now.

We're seeing an Albert Poolechels-esque season. I don't know that there is a better, just pure four-category contributor, someone who is not going to give you steals better than Vlad Jr. at this point in the season. So, Chris, the eighth pick goes to- Yeah, Soto's close. All right, I'll go with Garicol. I'm not afraid of the spin-rate monster jumping and getting him or Joe West. You know, like he's awesome. I don't know. He had one weird start where his spin rate wasn't quite as high as normal, but it was still very, very high.

And he didn't pitch all that well. Garrett Cole's awesome. Like, you're not, he's not throwing 97, 98 miles an hour because of, you know, Rosen or whatever. Like he is incredibly talented. He's going to continue to be incredibly good. And, you know, I did some research. And his spin rate was down 100.

19 RPM on average from his previous start. It was down 123 from his previous five average, which was, I think the drop was the ninth highest from one start to the next since he got to Houston, which is the seemingly relevant timetable for him using something to increase his grip. And that's ninth out of about 120 starts or 110 starts, which is, it's noteworthy. It's certainly not proof of anything. and on average his spin rate moves in one direction or the other,

either goes up or goes down from one start to the next, about 50 RPM. So we're still talking about, you know, this is a stat that stabilizes very quickly within a start, but it fluctuates from one start to the next. So we've talked about it a lot. Maybe we've given the sense that we're worried.

I want to be clear that. I'm not particularly worried about Garrick Cole. And I think the most interesting part of Garrick Cole this year is, I've said this a lot, but I think this might be the best version of him that we've seen. Because when you think of Garrick Cole, you think, okay, four-scene fastball up in the zone, he's got a great fastball, he's got the slider, he's got a curb ball. You don't really think change-up. His change-up, according to Fangraph's pitch values, is the fifth best change-up among qualified

starting pitchers. He's starting them more than ever. Yeah, this is, again, like, the fact that he has this, in his back pocket now, as part of his repertoire, a legit four-pitch mix for Gary Cole. I think he's going to be just fine. I'm not worried about the spin rate issue either. Number nine, for me, I'm up.

I am going to go with Jose Ramirez, who I know that you were a big fan of coming into the season here, Chris. And while the batting average is not great based on this environment, it's still pretty good. 262 batting average for Jose Ramirez, 13 home runs, six steals, 39 runs scored, 31 RBI. It seems like that blitz. that we had from 2018 to 2019,

we're way past that. He was a monster last year in 2020, and that is carried over thus far, in spite of playing for one of the worst lineups in baseball. Jose Ramirez is the ninth pick for me. Andrea, you are up with the 10th pick. So I was going to pick Jose Ramirez. Because he, I don't know,

he just, people think he's been overperforming, but he's not. Like you said, he's been putting up this performance every year. So I guess I'll go with Rafael Devers instead, which is by no means a downgrade. but he's been having a great year. His expected numbers and his actual are in line and they're elite.

He's barreling the ball really well. He's hitting it hard, and he's really putting up some great numbers this season. That's a 275 batting average for Devers this year. 15 homers, 38 runs, 48 RBI with three steals. He does have four caught stealing. He is an extremely inefficient base runner, but he's going to chip in.

He's going to give you six to eight steals by the end the season. And there's just this weird connection between him and Alex Cora. And whenever we've seen them together, the past two years that we've seen them together back in 2019 and now in 2021, Rafael Devers has performed at this level consistently as an elite hitter. So a borderline first round pick, and I don't have a problem with it. Chris, you have the 11th pick. So going by my trade values chart, it would be Shane Bieber. And there is a pretty significant gap between him and the next guy have on there. So I guess I have to go with Bieber.

And I don't know, I feel like there's a little bit of disappointment in Shane Bieber, you know, with, you know, he has had one of the highest rises in ERA. He's been so bad. He only has a 308 ERA while leading baseball in strikeouts, batters faced. He's got a 1.19 whip. Shane Bieber's awesome. I think, like, he's not Jacob de Grom. And I don't think he's Garrett Cole.

I think he's in kind of a third tier by himself. But when you're talking about, you know, Jake, he's closer to Cole than Cole is to DeGrom, I think. But when you're talking about like not Jacob deGrom, that's hardly an indictment on Shane Bieber, he's awesome. He's, you know, the sub two ERA,

he probably gets hit too hard to sustain something like that moving forward. But, you know, he's had this weird control blip where he's got, you know, 3.3 walks per 9 by far the highest of his career. I think that's going to be okay. You know, there have been some changes in his arsenal. He's throwing his slider more that could be leading to more walks.

But given the track record with Shane Bieber, I still think he's a clear number three at the starting pitcher position. Yeah, I like it. I have no issue with it. I think on the surface, it seems like maybe he has disappointed, like you mentioned, Chris, I think the 1.19-wit probably stands out more than anything else for Bieber. But that does have to do with the walk.

So if he can get that under control, which I do have confidence in him doing. I still think he deserves to climb in the first round here. I'm going to do it. 12 pick, last pick of the first round, and I'm going to take Shohei Otani, who the batting average has taken a dip. He's down to 256.

He's been walking more the past two or three weeks, so he's been a little bit more passive. But he's still doing that with 16 home runs, 42 RBI, 37 runs scored, and eight steals. So the guy is just, he's a freak. I mean, the things that he can do in terms of stat cast, hitting the ball as hard as he does, and throwing the ball as hard as he does.

I'm just talking about him from a hitter perspective. And this is actually the first time this week, Chris, where I opted to start Shohei Otani as a pitcher rather than as a hitter because he's facing the diamond backs as a pitcher, and they have three games in the National League. So he might sit out one or two of those games as a hitter. And because of that, I said, you know what? This is the first time I'm going to fire him up as a pitcher this week.

It feels a little dirty because I don't want to miss out on any home runs or steals, but I think it makes sense, at least for this week. So, show how to-that being said, show-Haw-Hatani, probably going to have outfield eligibility sometime this week. He's already made four appearances in the outfield. Yep, yep. That was also something that I noticed. That's massive.

And if he does that, he's a top five-ish outfielder, rest of season. So I think that makes a lot of sense. Andrea, you can kick off the first pick of the second round here. This would be 13th overall. I'm going to pick someone that I'm not entirely confident in, but I kind of like, I'm going to go with you Darvish. I think it's, you know, he's been doing well this year. He's, no, she's really mad at me that I picked him. But you know what?

He's, I think he has a 29% K rate, which is 78th percent tile. He has six wins. He's limiting hard contact. And I'm going to take the risk and go with him. Yeah, I don't think it's all that risky. I'm actually fine with the pick. 2.25 ERA, 0.93 whip. I think once we get past Bieber,

you can probably make the argument for maybe three or four different pitches as that fourth starting pitcher off the board. But based on what Darvish has done this year, I have no issue with it. Chris, you have the second pick of the second round. This is pick 14. I'm going to go with Bryce Harper,

who kind of like Trey Turner has sort of settled in as one of those guys we never talk about. and he hasn't been like this season because of the injury. He hasn't been quite as good as he was early on. But I just think when Bryce Harper's right, he's, okay, he's not as good as anyone. You know, not Juan Soto, not Vladimir Guerrero.

But in terms of the combination of power and speed, I think he's a 30, 15, 30, 20 guy who's not going to hurt you in batting average. and the numbers don't show that quite right now, but I still feel very confident in Bryce Harper moving forward. Yeah, part of what has hampered him is he only has 14 RBI on the season, which isn't his fault. It's just, you know, the Phillies ahead of him haven't been getting on base. And I know Bryce Harper also had a really rough May where he was playing through some injuries

and the strikeout rate really got out of control. But in April, he was awesome. And I haven't checked in a while, but the stat cast numbers were really good, even dating back to last year. So Bryce Harper, just a healthy man. That's all we need, and I think he's going to be just fine. Third pick of the second round here for me, I am actually going to go with someone that I had labeled as a bus coming into this season,

and more so overvalued. It's not that I didn't think he was a good player. I just thought he was being drafted too high. I was wrong, and that's Boba Chet with the Toronto Blue Jays, who you look at the numbers, they look a lot like what Jose Ramirez is doing right now, and we have Jose Ramirez in the first round. Boba Chet batting 262, 11 homers, 34 RBI, 7 steals. with 46 runs scored

and this comes at a time where he said he doesn't even feel like he's clicking yet at the plate so if he does kind of get into a zone there's a possibility that we see even more from Boba Chet I mean that's the thing is Bobeshet hasn't been that good this season like obviously for fantasy he's been awesome

11 homer seven are seven stolen bases tons of runs he's got a 774 OPS I agree he's better than that yeah so it what are the fantasy numbers going to look like when he's a 830, 850 OPS guy? It's in that lineup, it's fun to think about. Yeah, 100%.

One of the best lineups in baseball. Andrew, you have the fourth pick of the second round. Where are you going? I'm going to take Xander Bogartz. I think that he's doing even better than he did last year. And I think, oh, in the same amount of games, 56 and 57. and yeah, he's really putting on a show. His weighted on base average is top 6% of the league.

He's hitting the ball really well, really hard, much harder than he did last year. So I think he'll be a good fit. Perennially undervalued, Zander Bogartz, batting 318, 10 homers, four steals. Guys, is awesome. I'm so happy I have him on so many of my teams. Yeah, and you know,

he was just like an easy third round pick for me every time. Yeah, he was like the forgotten shortstop. It's just he was in that tier and everyone's like, okay, I'll, you know, if he falls to me, I'll take him. I felt like no one was like super excited to get Bogarts, but the guy has just been awesome. Andrea, I know that I saw that you were a contributor to a Tampa Bay Rays website. Are you a Rays fan? Are you a Red Sox fan? Because you've now drafted Devers and Zander Bogart. So I just, I've got to ask.

No, I'm a raised fan. Okay. But I do appreciate good players and other teams, so. Okay. Well, do you hate the Yankees? because I'm a Yankee fan. Although I'm rain- No, I don't.

I'm from New York, so I don't hate them. All right. All right. So, all right. You're from New York, so that's a plus. I'm the only one, I guess.

You're a Tampa Bay Race fan. All right, all right. It's fine. We'll let it go. Chris, you have the fifth pick of the second round. Where are you going?

I guess I'll go Trevor Bauer, who I have valued the same as U. Darvish and actually Max Scherzer, so he should probably go off the board pretty soon. Hint, hint, guys.

Trevor Bauer, again, And like Garrett Cole, there are reasons to think that his performance may be impacted by some kind of upcoming crackdown on foreign substances. I still think he's going to be really good. I still think he might not get as many strikeouts. He might have the control problems that we've seen in the past crop up in. Maybe those things will happen. But all in all, I think Trevor Bauer is going to be someone who racks up a ton of strikeouts.

and you know, guys pitching on, they haven't been the best team in baseball so far, but the Dodgers are the best team in baseball. I don't think anybody can really argue with that and he's going to get a ton of support. I'm putting my flag down as not being particularly worried about individual pitchers with the coming expected crackdown on foreign substances.

I think it could have a big impact on the league as a whole, but I'm not changing my viewpoint of specific pitchers that much yet. I think a big part of life, Chris, is you have to be able to learn from your mistakes. And you can do the same thing in fantasy baseball. When you make mistakes, you have to be able to learn from them. And I've already learned from Boba Chet, who I had as a bust. And the other one, the poster child of my bust article for this season was Max Scherzer. And I have learned from my mistakes.

And I will be taking him here with the six-pick of the second round. kudos to you. You never wavered in confidence. You had him ranked as your fourth starting pitcher coming into the season. A 2.22 ERA, 0.82. whip, 104 strikeouts in 77 innings pitched

for Max Scherzer. The guy looks like he always has. I had concerns about the age and he's dealt with some back and some neck issues. He's 100% healthy right now or if he's not, he looks like he is because he's been amazing.

So, again, you can make the argument. He should go ahead of Darvish or Trevor Bauer. but I think early to mid-second round it's probably a good place for him to be drafted. Andrea, you have the seventh pick of the second round. I'll go with Cody Bellinger, which, you know, he hasn't really been around this year,

but I think I still have faith in him. Yeah, that's a lot like Chris's Bryce Harper pick in that, you know, they've dealt with injuries so far this year, but, you know, when Cody Bellinger's right, we know that he is one of the 10, 5 best. players in fantasy baseball. We just, we need to see that.

We need to see him get right. I just want to see him out there. You know, I want to see him like play for a month without having to miss time. And let's see what this guy can do because last season was such a weird year. He was coming back from the shoulder surgery. Like, I just want to see a healthy Cody Bellinger again.

Like just maybe he's not as good as he was in 2019. It's entirely possible. Maybe that's the best we'll ever see of Cody Ballinger. But I want to find out. I want him to get a real shot. And that's what he has. hasn't had yet, really. So the eighth pick of the second round, Chris, you're up.

Freddie Freeman. I feel like this is a somewhat easy one. There's some interesting things going on with Freddie Freeman's swing. He's not pulling the ball nearly as much as he usually does the pull rate down to 29.4%. That's the lowest in the stack cast error. And if you look at his spray chart, he doesn't really have any hits to right field. He's got some to like right center. But they just kind of stop right in right center.

It's very strange. But you look at the overall numbers, top 8 percentile in XBA, top 6 percent on X slug, top 4 percentile on X Wobah, 51 percent hard hit rate. Strikeout rate is still much better than league average. Everything points to Freddie Freeman still being an absolute stud. Yes, he hasn't been good so far this season. He's been a disappointment. I think it's going to be fine. It's mostly Babbitt related.

I think he's maybe a tiny tweak in his swing. to start pulling the ball more away from, you know, you said there's nobody like Vlad in terms of, you know, four category production, not including stolen bases. The last five years, that's been Freddie Freeman, you know,

like he won MVP last season and what he hit? It's like 340 last season. Yeah, 3.41. So I'm pretty confident that Freddie Freeman's going to be just fine. Yeah, It's a lot like Mookie Betts, who we brought up earlier, who you just kind of have faith in a veteran getting things back on track

just because there's such a long track record there. I'm actually going to go with the ninth pick of the second round here. I'm going to take Whitmerfield, who's a little bit older. He's 32 years old, and the batting average is, it's a little bit down from where it's been at past couple of years from 268.

He has 17 steals, which just completely separates him from anybody else in baseball. He's a massive contributor. in that category. Five home runs. I think that's fine. He'll probably get somewhere close like 15 on the season, but 38 runs, 35 RBI. Whitmeryfield has been great, and I have reason to believe the batting average will get better. He's someone who traditionally hits a ton of line drives. So Whitmeryfield, ninth pick of the second round. Andrea, you are up with your last pick of this draft. It is the 10th pick of round two. I'm going to pick Christian Yalich. He just consistently

year after year as well. So, you know, I picked Cody Bellinger and that was like a little risky. So I'll go with Yelich to even out the power numbers a little bit. I think he's right there. It's again, like Bellinger, just be healthy. I just wanted to be like the back injury this year has been such a problem. And I think that explains, you know, why he's been a little disappointing. But like he's been hitting the ball well.

He's still running fast. I think for the most part, he hasn't looked like himself, but he looks enough like himself where there's not more than five or six hitters with more upside than Christian Eulch. Yeah, he's just got to get healthy and stay healthy for that. But the power stroke is coming around a little bit. So hopefully there's a sign of things to come for Yelich. And he's been running still a decent amount this year as when he has been on the field.

So, Chris, your last pick in this draft, the 11th pick of the second round? I am going to skip one player. Actually, no, it's fine. It's on my, I'm looking at my trade values. That's how I'm going about this. And I've got two guys ranked as 31 point or dollar players. And one of them's Trevor Story.

Eh, old news. Brennan Woodruff. We were talking about him sometime last week. Brandon Woodruff is, I don't think there's any reason not to include him among the upper echelon of the non-beaver group. I think he's right there with Darvish and Bauer and Scherzer. He's an elite strikeout rate pitcher above 29% three years in a row.

Doesn't walk anybody. He has a 240 expected ERA, a 142 ERA. He goes about it very differently than nearly any other pitcher in baseball right now. He's a bit of a throwback to the days when guys relied really heavily on their fastballs. he's still above 60% on his four seam and sinker usage combined. But he gets so many whiffs with that four seamer that it doesn't matter. He doesn't have to sacrifice swinging strikes the way a lot of pitchers do, which allows him to have that great command, that great control,

and still be an elite strikeout pitcher. I think Brandon Woodruff might be the most underrated pitcher in baseball. I could go with Trevor Story as well here, Chris, but it's, I mean, come on. It's not fun, right? So I am going to go with Nick Castellanos. And I have always said that I thought that he had this Freddie Freeman-esque season in that bat. And we are witnessing it right now. 359 batting average, 12 homers, 37 runs, 31 RBI, 52 games played thus far for Nick Cassianos,

who sat out a bit for a suspension. But I always thought he could do it. He's making more contact than ever before. And he's hitting a ton of line drives. Great ballpark to hit in as well. So one of the best four category, contributors to this point, Nick Castiano's, and I have a feeling that that will remain the case for the rest of the season as well. So there you go. Redrafting. All I'll say to repeat myself from

last night, Winker better. No. Andrea, who do you think? Who would you rather have rest of the season, Andrea? Nick Castellanos or Jesse Winker? They're so close. I don't, I mean, I'm going to go with Jesse Winker just because he's been so hot lately. But, I mean, they're both like incredible hitters. So I think you're fine either way. I mean, as great as Cassiano's has been, Winker does have five more homers, and he's now up to 17. He has two different three homer games this season for Jesse Winker. Another one, just stay healthy, man.

And if you do that, we are witnessing the breakout season. So there it is our redrafting the first two rounds for the rest of the season. And a few other names that didn't make the cut here, but obviously Trevor Story. Kyle Tucker was someone I wanted to get in who had just a massive May after a slow start in April. Marcus Semyon, if you are buying into the player that he is now, I guess deserves to kind of be in this discussion. Kevin Gosman has been great all year. Zach Wheeler, who we have talked about recently.

We have moved Zach Wheeler ahead of Walker Bueller. Glass now definitely should be in this conversation as well. So a few names that just missed there. But our top two rounds, if we were drafting for the rest of the season. We're going to wrap up here with some team name Tuesday. And Chris, last week you made a request for everyone who emailed in a bunch of scrubs. lost and then I threw in Parks and Rec because I'm watching Parks and Rec for the first time

and I really enjoy it. So we have a bunch of those. Andrea, are you a fan of any of those shows? Scrubs lost Parks and Rec? I should really watch TV more, but I have seen Parks and Rec. Yeah. We'll start with these from Baker.

They are Scrubs themed. Turk Wendell and JD. Like it. It all started with Brad Penny in Door. I don't quite get that one. Yeah, I haven't watched Scrubs, so you got to help me out here, Chris. You should watch. It's very good. I've heard good things.

Cody Reed, Moment Killer. I like it. Who has two thumbs and doesn't give a damn? Ryan Klesko. That's excellent. That's very good. These are from Kevin. These first couple are lost themed.

Line drive shaft. Very good. Duval Everybody. Duval Everybody. It's very good. The Darvish initiative. I like it. I like it.

Parks and Rec themed. Potit yourself. I like it. A big fan to that. You just got famed. I like it. Money Plesack. That took a second.

This is Scrubs themed. Mona Lisa is the worst. Oh my God. No, really. She is the worst. John Ralphio, man. Oh, gosh. Scrubs themed.

Ian Happletinis. I like it. I like it. These are all from Lucas. I'm picking an apple teeny. Hold the teeny. A ton of Parks and Rec ones here from Lucas. Riesel Leslie Nobler.

Nob Glacius. That's a stretch. Way too much. But I appreciate it. Ron Dansby Swanson. Yep. April Aaron Judgegate. Yeah.

Chris Trey Turnerger. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Andy Van Dwyer. Sure. Ben Wyatt Matheson, who is a Debex infielder, Wyatt Matheson, apparently. Sure.

And Cam Perkins. Well, the one obvious one for there is the former twins closer, Glenn Perkins. Glenn Perkins. Yeah, that's right. Glenn Perkins. Hello, they're Glenn Perkins. Cameron Perkins is a Dodgers outfield prospect, apparently.

Gary Gerrichich. Yeah. Anthony Ren, Donna Miegel. Sure. Tom have a Mike Ford. Yep. John Ralphio Segura. Gene Ralphio, Seguera.

From David. Shout out to, he says, shout out to Andrew Gable for helping with these. I'm no Kluberman. Yeah. Yep. Do you see what you get when you mess with the story or?

The story or. Yep. Yep. Yep. The torquil tones. Yep. well that's i i i always think of spencer turkelson torkelson that's what kelso would always call turkleton and mrs turkelton uh who has two bums and doesn't give uh who has two bums and

doesn't give a crap hi i'm bob klesko yep i'm your rendone uh dr juan etor yeah that's a very good reference. Bacana Hammack. Did you put a yee me in the door? Welcome to Sacred Bart. Cool cats.

Tell her I've known you Kronger. And this one's up to you, Chris. If you want to sing it because they said it's much better if you sing it, but I don't know how this is supposed to go. Yeah, I'm trying to think of it.

It's the Sanford Sun's theme, but I can't think of how this one would work. I actually went out of my way to listen to Stanford and Sun's theme before this to try and figure it out, but it might have just been something from watching this show. So completely messed out one up. But we are going to wrap there. I want to thank you so much for joining us here, Andrea. And again, you can follow all of her work. And you can follow her on Twitter at Scout Girl Report. She is a contributor at NBC Sports Edge, Prospects 365. And DeRay's Bay, of course, the founder of Scout Girl Report. Thank you. so much for coming on, Andrea. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. Yes, indeed it was for Andrea and Chris. I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball today. We'll be back again tomorrow.

Bye-bye.