Fantasy Baseball Today - Late-Round Starting Pitchers with Alex Fast! (12/17 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

It's snowing in NYC! Has Scott White ever seen snow? Joining us on today's podcast is Alex Fast from Pitcher List (2:12)!... Let's get started with the news and notes and Rafael Montero getting traded to the Seattle Mariners (4:35). Who will close for the Texas Rangers? Anthony DeSclafani signed with the San Francisco Giants. Does this matter? And we have a whole bunch of other stuff... Let's get to those late-round starting pitchers, beginning with Mike Minor (18:10). ... We hit on Dane Dunning recently in the Lance Lynn trade but why is Scott so excited about him (24:44)? Is Texas a better environment for him? ... You may have Nathan Eovaldi fatigue at this point but he was actually the best version of himself in 2020 (29:51). ... JOHN MEANS BUSINESS (34:35)! ... Why is Alex excited about Jake Odorizzi (36:10)? ... If Griffin Canning can stay healthy, what is his upside (39:35)? ... Justus Sheffield progressed in 2020 but how (43:27)? ... We wrap up the show with another edition of Guess Who (48:07)! ... Email us at [e-mail]. Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday '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, @AdamAizer, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday 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/ 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

What do you, Santae Forcoccaulta A jack like Michael Walker Polanco and from What two Corbynardin Burns and Dylan Bundy have in common? They were both drafted outside the top 250 picks entering the 2020 season. Welcome to fantasy

baseball today on Thursday, December 17th. Frank Stanfield joined as always by Scott White here to talk some late round starting pitchers. But first, it is snowing outside here in New York City. Are you a fan of snow, Scott? Have you ever seen snow? In person.

Yeah, I've seen snow before. I haven't lived in South Florida my whole life. I grew up in suburban Georgia. There wasn't, you know, we didn't get a ton of snow there. But maybe once or twice a winter, there'd be a little bit of a buildup on the ground. So I've seen snow before. You know, it was novel enough that it was always fun, particularly when I was a kid. You'd go out and play in it.

And in Georgia, pretty much everything would shut down. wouldn't be a lot of responsibility attached that went along with it either. So yeah, I would say I enjoy my experience with snow. I do not enjoy like cold weather, just cold, like a cold, cold temperatures just in general. You know, I have enjoyed since moving to South Florida, never having to experience that anymore. And my, like, not only that, but my threshold for what cold temperature is, has totally warped. Now, like, If I get in like 50 degree weather, I got to bundle up because I'm just not used to it. Yeah, I'm pretty picky.

I don't like the cold weather at all. I prefer the warmer weather, the summer, spring months here in New York. But I don't mind snow. So whatever, take that for it. I just picky, picky everything. Piggy eater, picky when it comes to weather as well. We had Ellen Adair on two weeks ago. We had Ian Kahn on last week.

I thought, why not just go for the hat trick? For the third week in a row, we have an actor joining us to, find those late round diamonds in the rough. You've probably seen him somewhere on ESPN or MLB Network FSWA Award winner for Research Article of the Year in 2019 for the fantastic CSW stat. Make sure you follow him on Twitter at Alex Fast 8.

What's up? The actor himself, Alex Fast. What's up, buddy? I think it's so fitting that for the podcast about late value people, like people who maybe will be good, you got the worst of the three actors. And I think that's really funny.

you know, like Ellen obviously fantastic. Ian obviously fantastic. They're like, yeah, I guess we'll get this failed prospect juco guy to come on to talk about the other failures. No, but seriously, I am honored to be here. This is amazing. I love your guys's work. So very honored to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like you do fantastic work. We've already had Nick here on the podcast. And you guys, I know, do just great work together over on the podcast that you guys do. and just in general with pittlerlist.com. So yeah, it's well-deserved. And it wasn't being facetious about the actor thing. Someone on Twitter recently asked a bunch of fantasy baseball experts. I'll call myself an analyst. They asked, like, what was the furthest you went in your life

in your baseball career? And Alex responded, I was an actor. So that's why I said that. Yeah, I couldn't even play one. I never even got cast as one. I think they looked at my body type and they were like, yeah, maybe he'd be a front alpha sky, but I don't know about a baseball player.

Alex, I know you're a big fan of the snow. Yes, I am. So I live not far from you. I'm probably a couple of miles from you down in Brooklyn, and I am loving it. It is gorgeous in New York City when it snows, and it is miserable in New York City the day it stops snowing. So I'm going to enjoy the fact that it's snowing for now. It just gets so quiet in the city when it happens. So I really like walking around in New York when it's snowing. Indeed, I enjoy it as well. I mentioned we have some late round starting pitchers. I have a game of guess who later on. We'll find out if Alex can perform better. than the Welsh.

When we had the Welsh on, that was just a game for the ages. The Welsh versus Scott in that one. So we'll see if Alex can perform better there. It was a disaster. Scott's probably putting it lightly. And we do have some news and notes. Let's start right there.

Raphael Montero traded to the, I wrote here he was traded to the Texas Rangers. That is not correct. He was traded to the Seattle Mariners for prospect, Jose Corniel, and a player to be named later. I think we all assume Rafael Montaro steps in as the Mariners closer, right, Scott?

Where do you have them ranked amongst your relief pitchers? Yeah, that's my assumption. They are probably the team in most desperate need of a closer. And the fact that they went out and acquired somebody to fill that role, I think, gives you a look into their intentions for 2021. So he is certainly in my top 20 relievers right now. I mean, there are so many close. that are undeclared at this point, or at least we can only make an educated guess as to who's closing,

that anybody who is slightly above that is going to be in the top 20 probably. So like, for instance, Richard Rodriguez of the pirates, just because, like, he's obviously their closer. I don't know that in the end he's going to be a top 20 reliever for me, but that's where he is right now. And so Rafael Montero is kind of in that same territory. and it's kind of a net gain for the relief pitcher position as a whole because you get Rafael Montero making more or less lateral move here in terms of fantasy value. But then you also have an opening for the Rangers

and they have more interesting options to close than the Mariners did without Montero. Jose LeClerc could get another look in that role after missing last year with a shoulder injury or they could turn to Jonathan Hernandez who looked pretty dominant as a setup man. Jonathan Hernandez was great in 2020. 2.90 ERA, 103 whip, 31 strikeouts, and 31

innings pitch. But we're not here to talk about him. Or Jose Leclerc. Leclerc, what are we looking at here? 5.7 walks per nine in his career. It's all about DeMarcus Evans. My man. 2019 in the minors, a 0.90ERA 103 whip,

100 strikeouts in 60 innings pitch. He has some walk. issues of himself. Alex, here on December 17th, who do you predict will be the Rangers closer on opening day? It's funny that you should ask. So every year I write an article called, we're drafting saves wrong, and every year I have to rewrite it because every year we draft saves wrong again. And one of the things that I noticed about the Rangers in particular is now that the Oakland Athletics have had Liam Hendricks be the back-to-back saves leader, the Rangers are the longest organization to go without having a back-to-back saves leader. The last person who closed for

the Rangers who led the team in consecutive years for saves. Can I guess? Yeah, go ahead. Go guess. I think I think you're like you gave me the first letter, but I was going to say Joe Nathan. It was. It was Joe Nason. Can you guess the year? Oof. That might have been, let's say, like, um, 2010 and 11? 2012 to 2013. So it's almost been a decade since the Rangers have had back-to-back saves leaders. I don't know if it's an organizational thing. Sometimes they just don't necessarily have the talent associated with the position. Obviously, they paid Jose LeClerc a couple of years ago.

I think you're kind of spot on. I think Evans could step into the role. His stuff is absolutely electric. Jonathan Hernandez, like you said, a 22% swinging strike rate in his slider last year, which is really great. I think that's just going to be one of those teams where at the end of the year, we see the saves dispersed throughout a bunch of guys, which I kind of like because then you know what you can do.

The last pick, instead of taking a closer, take someone else and then pick up whoever gets the lion's share of the saves or whoever starts to emerge as the leader off the waivers in the first couple weeks of the season. Yeah, and let me be fair to Jose Leclerc, because Evans has walks issues of his own. And, you know, in the minors, you see a bunch of five walks per nine, four, six walks per nine. So Evans has issues of his own, but he does have electric stuff, high spin rate fastball. It's not really that hard. it's like 93, 94 miles per hour, but high spin rates and a really great breaking pitch as well. To a lesser extent, Anthony Descalfani signs a one-year $6 million deal with the San Francisco Giants. Scott, any interest here?

Not really. I mean, I kind of liked him heading into last year, and so I don't want to just bury him and pretend he doesn't exist. But you've got to get pretty deep in my pitcher rankings before I'm making him move for Anthony Desclafani. going to a big park, you know, could help him restore some value, but there's no need to make a play for him until you actually see it happening. Deis Gafani was terrible in 2020, but it was a small sample, of course. 7.22 ERA in 33 and two-thirds innings pitched, but his career splits 4.94 ERA at home in the Great American Small Park

and a 3.61 career ERA on the road. Alex, I don't know if you saw this. situation kind of play out this past year, but offense was up in Oracle, and there was this big storyline about how the archways were closed in the outfield, and the reason why that helped offense is because wind was not blowing in from the water. So apparently, like, that wind would just knock down every fly ball, usually, when there are fans allowed in the stadium. So they closed those archways last year, and offense went up as a result. So if they opened them again, theoretically in 2021, then maybe it becomes a pitcher's park again. So maybe that's where

Deis Glefani would have value. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I think there's a few things there. I mean, I think, Oracle has actually been, I think, a better park for hitters than people necessarily give it credit for over the years. And I think terms of pulled barrels, there's an article I wrote last year called What Barrels Tell Us About the nuance of Park Factors. And it revealed that Oracle is actually not as friendly as people think. I also think in terms of an organization, this is an organization that all of a sudden got a lot of great stuff out of Trevor Cahill, got a lot of great stuff at a Drew Smiley, got a lot of great stuff at a Kevin Gousman, right?

Kind of fixed Kevin Gousman the way that the Orioles and the Braves didn't necessarily, you know, weren't necessarily able to do. So I'm curious to see what they could do with Tony Disco, as we like to call him over at Pitcher list. I don't think he's a guy I'm going to be taking a risk on. I also know, you know, Sarah's talked about how his curve and his slider have started to kind of morph into the same pitch. and we'd like to see a little bit more a separation

in those two pitches in terms of movement profiles. So I don't know if I really want to take a risk, but I'm going to keep an eye on them early on in the season to see if you can finally turn that corner. The MLB is apparently looking to delay the start of the season until May, even if it meant shortening the season in order to get vaccinations for players and staff. Here we go again.

I'm not going to talk much about it because it's just speculation at this point, but Scott, we went through this all of last year, constantly waiting for the season of start up. And so I'm just, I'm just kind of used to it at this point. I don't really know if there's much to take away. Yeah,

I think that, like, it's, it's kind of troublesome territory to, to wait too deep into. But I would say, considering they figured out a way to navigate those two months,

or really three months, including the playoffs, that the only reason for a delay would be, because we think it would take this many extra weeks to ensure everybody's vaccinated. So it seems like it would be a very definite timetable if they did delay it as opposed to last year

where we just kept waiting and waiting for them to figure out a plan. You know, because they've shown they can move forward without this vaccine if they need to. But if it's right there on the horizon, then it probably does make sense to make sure everybody's vaccinated. I have some rapid fire news items that I saw earlier today.

If anything stands out to you guys, I will pause for a brief second after I say each one. If you'd like to throw any quick comment in, feel free to do so. We will start off with a lot of Mariners stuff apparently. Dylan Moore and Shed Long will compete for the starting second basement job in Seattle. Ty France is expected to be an everyday player for the Mariners. Mitch Hanigur is expected to be ready for the start of spring training. The Mariners are committed to. running a six-man rotation in 2021, which includes Marco Gonzalez, Usaic Cacucci, Justice

Sheffield, Justin Dunn, Chris Flexen, and a mystery man. If it is Logan Gilbert, I will lose my mind. I do have something to say about that. I do think it's exciting and people shouldn't necessarily be sleeping on Chris Flexen. I actually think he has higher upside as an SP5 or SP4 for the Mariners than Justin Dunn does. I know Michael Ogedejo over at Lookout Landik just published a really great piece about Justin Dunn. And I made a few giff overlays of him. And aside from the curveball slider combination, which wasn't already great, the fastball change of combination is really, really, really poor. The changeup looks really poor right now.

He just doesn't have any command of it. Chris Flexen was a guy who had a lot of success in the KBO. That obviously doesn't translate to MLB success, but a 10.2K per 9 over there with a 3.01 ERA. That's not something to, you know, that didn't come from nowhere, too. He also had some minor league success. There's a reason the Mariners wanted to sign him. So he's someone that I'm going to keep on my radar.

I think he could be an interesting play. The raise re-signed Mike Zanino on a one-year $2 million deal. June is a, quote, reasonable expectation for Noah Sindergarde's return. He had Tommy John in March of 2020. Mets manager Luis Rojas said the team has talked to Ahmed Rosario about shifting from shortstop to third base. Would that mean that J.D. Martinez? J.D. Davis would move to the outfield. If that happens, then what about Dominic Smith?

Yeah. Go ahead, Scott. No, you start playing that what-if game. And we talked on the last show, Frank and I did, about how there's room for both J.D. Davis and Dominic Smith without a DH spot. But it would mean pretty bad defense on the left side of the diamond. Presumably, Ahmed Rosario would be an upgrade there at third base. I imagine that would not be in every single day scenario. It would be a lot of shifting around of players.

and one possibility is to include Ahmed Rosario in that mix, while probably playing some shortstop too. That would be my guess of how it plays out, but we can't completely rule out the DH possibility in the NL yet either. Is there any team that would benefit more from having a DH in the NL than the New York Mets? I really can't think of one. I feel like that would just solve so many of their issues. They have so many great bats that are liabilities on defense.

I just think it would fix so many of their problems. And if you're going to have a guy like Marcus Stroman be your number two guy for a while, you need a really good infield defense without sacrificing some bats. So I'm curious to see how it plays out. No, it's a good point you bring up because I was just scrolling through NL teams the other day, trying to find one that would really be affected by the National League DH. And I guess it depends where Marcel Ozuna signs. He's not going to sign until he knows if there's a National League DH.

So that was something that caught my eye, Will Myers. but then when I looked into it, he actually played all his games in the outfield this past year. Like, he did not DH at all. So, yeah, I think it's really just the Mets and then everybody else. Buster Posey will return

as the Giants primary catcher in 2021. Rest and Peace, Joey Bart's redraft value. Amir Garrett said Tuesday that he intends to take the Reds's closer roll, quote, to me, it's mine to lose. I'm going to go ahead and take it. I love it. I mean, you got to figure he's the,

I don't know if he's the best option. he's obviously the most fiery option. This is a guy who had, I think it was the first or second or no, maybe second best slider by swinging strike rate last year at around 30% with a minimum 150 thrown. But then Lucas Sims, man, he was in the top one or two percent in barrel rate and expected ERA, expected batting average, expected slugging, expected Wobah. Both of those guys have walk issues, but, you know, they call it Spin Sanati for a reason.

Those guys are really a lot of fun to watch with great stuff. Yeah, and we spoke about this when they trade away of RISLegl. And I know Sims ranked 99th percentile or better in both fastball and curve spin rates. So according to the second. So he actually was the second highest riser in Bauer units as well over the course of the season, meaning that he increased spin rate and velocity. Bauer obviously a pretty sticky situation. But Sims showed a lot of strides in that way.

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and it will go out early on Thursday morning, Thursday afternoon, sometime. So sign up for a newsletter. Late round starting pitchers. I asked each of Alex, Scott and myself, oh, I didn't ask myself, I just did it, to find two pitchers that are going outside the top 250 picks over at the NFBC ADP

as of now. And Alex, why don't you get us started? You don't have to go with both. of them just whichever one you like more we'll start with that one sure yeah let's let's go ahead and start with mike minor so last i checked mike minor was going around pick 323 which like i understand it i understand why people want to be reticent about mike minor 4.25 fifth 4.51 sierra made that mid 3 e r a from 2019 it was already a little prime for regression and i don't know if you remember you remember his like 200th strikeout in 2019 oh yeah you know yeah big controversy

see. Yeah. Let a pop-up drop so that he had a chance to record his 200th strikeout. Yeah. That was pretty best up. Yeah, it was. It was something interesting. There are a lot of interesting things that I think I've had about Mike Minor.

His K rate increased from 23 to 26 percent, swinging strike rate maintained, whip maintained, walk rate pretty much maintained. When I see those statistics, I don't think of someone who's ERA increased by over two full runs. So I took a pretty deep dive. You look at some other stats that really pop. pop out 1.75 home run per 9, 63% left on base rate, 15.7% home run fly ball rate. These are all career lows or highs. They're all at one side of the spectrum, but they're not

great. Obviously, the VLO drop was concerning, but I think he sort of falls into the guys that I'm writing off a lot of 20, 24, for that exact reason, almost like a Patrick Corbyn. If mine are still sitting 90 miles an hour coming into spring training, then yeah, there's going to be some worries there. but even with that, even with that lower velocity, 102 WRC plus in the fastball is not terrible. 230 batting average against in the fastball actually better than last year with the highest swinging strike rate of his career on that four seamer. The change was one of the best changeups in baseball in 2019 by PVal. It wasn't there for him in 2020.

He had so much success over the heart of the plate and then what baseball Savant calls the shadow zone in 2019. And there was so much regression there because it looked like he was just missing. I think it was Gloveside a lot when he threw that pitch. I think it was Gloveside. 30.4% of the changeups over the heart of the plate in 2020. In 2020, it was up 6%. He was able to get some swings and misses,

but when it got hit, it got hit hard. Overall, there's two really important takeaways. Number one, that change up, I think, is going to be able to come back. He's going to be able to get it where he needs to. And number two, Kansas City is a much better power park for him. I took a look at how many of his home runs would have left if they were all batted balls in Kansas City this year,

and his home runs go from 11 all the way down to 5. So that park is going to do a lot of wonders for him. He's someone that I think if you really stack up high risk, high reward pitchers in your middle rounds, get Mike Minor at the end of your draft, because I think the floor is a little bit higher than people think. Before I jump over to Scott, Alex, I just want to follow up. You touch on the velocity a little bit.

Is this something where do you think his, for him to get back to where he was, was at that 2019 level, do we have to see the velocity jump back up? Or do you think this is something where he can bounce back regardless just because his spin rate on that fastball is great. It's in the 97th percentile. Yeah, the spin rate is really good. I don't know how good the active spin is on it, but I know that if he can perform that way, even at 90 miles an hour, obviously the 92, the extra two ticks is not only just going to help the fastball. It's going to help the other pitches. I think it's mostly going to help the slider, which is not a great pitch to begin with.

So I think while it would be beneficial, it wouldn't necessarily be beneficial to the fastball per se. I think the most important change has to be the change up command. Something I'm going to be paying attention to in spring training. I want to ask Alex, because he talked about kind of just dismissing the fastball drop for Mike minor given the oddities of this season. And kind of threw Patrick Corbyn into that mix too. I think Corbyn's probably the most high-end example of that. And is that just a, like when you see a velocity drop, you're just kind of riding it off as,

okay, this guy didn't get his normal chance to prepare. He wasn't able to follow his normal routine getting started for the season, and you're just giving them a pass for it. I say that with the full caveat of I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to analyzing 2020 statistics, right? So I really have to pick and choose, in my opinion, as an analyst, to what are the things that I'm going to be able to give credence to to and what are the things that I'm not going to be able to give credence to?

If Mike Minor all of a sudden showcases his lowest fastball velocity since 2012, then I'm going to have to say there was probably something wonky in his ramp up to the season. And then hopefully just explore it in spring training to see if it comes back a little bit. It's the same thing with Patrick Corbin. Patrick Corbin's obviously, like you said, a high-end example. He's someone who's lost his fastball. All of a sudden, it's come back to him. It's clicked and he's been dominant.

He said, I think it was two years ago, hey, I don't have my fastball right now. He got it back. The fastball slider combination was one of the best in baseball. So yeah, for guys like that, I just personally think, like, okay, I have to imagine with a full regular offseason and a full spring training. It's going to come back. Scott, let me ask you this. I looked into Mike Miner's 2019, and he went six plus in 21 of 32 starts. So that's typically something we would look for in specifically a head-to-head Points League, that's very like Lance Lynn Light. So do you think he is someone that can maybe excel more so in the head to head points format versus Roto? Yeah, that would probably be his better format if he's able to get back to being good. I have, I'm more skeptical than Alex. I mean,

he had a, even during that good 2019 season, he had a 460 X-FIP. It was actually lower the X-FIP last year. and so I was fading and pretty hard going into last year before we saw the big decline in velocity and obviously the cost is much less now the cost is next to nothing. Probably most of the people listening your draft's going to be over before Mike Miner's taken and you can just observe what he does on the waiver wire.

But I don't have high hopes for him. I think there's a good chance he just gets replaced when the royals start calling up guys like Jackson Cowar Daniel Lynch, maybe even Asa Lacey. So I chose 250 or later ADP solely because I know if I chose 200, Scott would have selected John Means as one of his favorite late round pitchers. So I obviously wanted to push it back a little bit further. So he couldn't choose John Means. So as a result, Scott, you went with whom as your first late round pitcher?

Well, I feel like this is a guy we've talked about some recently because he got traded. but Dane Dunning like if I was making if I was ranking the most interesting pitchers heading into 2021 he might be in the top five we were really excited about him when he first got called up

and he was missing bats like crazy and you look at his minor league track record and it's like wow this guy clearly didn't get didn't get the hype he deserved as a prospect and then the WIFs just evaporated The Whist just evaporated right about the time he started pitching deeper into games too. And there's such a strong correlation to the way his pitch selection changed during that time. So it just, you know, I kind of built this narrative in my head that Dane Dunning came up,

featuring a lot of four seamers and sliders, was missing a ton of bats with them. It looked really encouraging, but he wasn't going that deep into his starts. so Don Cooper old school pitching coach pulled him aside said hey you got to make outs earlier in the count let's feature your sinker and change up more which aren't great swing and miss pitches for Dunning and it worked out well you know box score wise those first couple starts six shutout innings seven one run innings

but then everything just fell apart from there his last two starts were by far his worst two and it stood to reason that was going to happen because he just wasn't missing bats anymore So to put exact numbers on it, it was an 18% swinging strike, great in those first three starts featuring the four seamer and slider, and then the last four starts featuring more changeups and sinkers. It was 7% the swinging strike rate opposite ends of the spectrum completely.

So I was kind of sour on Dane Dunning, and then he got traded. He got traded to a team that gave up their best trade chip for him. And so I'm hopeful that means the Rangers know, know how to get the most out of Dunning when he seemed to be he seemed to be going the wrong direction with the White Sox. And in particular, those first three starts,

you mentioned the slider usage, it was 28% in those three starts. The final four starts dropped down to 17%. So he did use it 11% less over those final four starts, which really doesn't make sense because if you just dig a little bit deeper into that slider alone,

a 38% chase rate and a 21.8% swinging strike rate according to Fangraphs. Alex, is this something that you can get behind? Dane Dunning moving over to Texas, which is a positive park shift for a pitcher as well. I mean, he's moving from Chicago to Global Life Field where it's a better pitchers park.

I'm not sure that it's a pitcher's park in general, but it is better than Chicago in general. Can you buy into the park shift and maybe him going back to that slider more? Yeah, if he asked Joey Gallo, what's probably the best pitcher park in all of baseball? He feels like all the power's gone from his bat. I definitely, the first thing I had written down

is echoes exactly what, what Scott said, and that is I don't trust the Chicago White Sox at this point to best develop pitchers. I don't think we've seen them develop a great pitcher since Chris Sale, and that was 2010. You look at guys like Reinaldo Lopez, who obviously got his start with the Nationals, but came over, didn't really succeed. Carlos Rodon, Dylan Sees, obviously, jury's still out on there, but I'm not necessarily. Gialito. Yeah, but Gialito's biggest change didn't come from the White Sox. It came from his high school coach who made him change his arm angle. Ah, okay. Yeah, so it wasn't him. It was.

them at all. That's what that's what cracks me up about it. Like they didn't they didn't do anything to improve them. So I think that I am really excited to have Dunning go to to Texas. That sinker is really fantastic. As you said, not necessarily by swinging strike, but by CSW by called strike plus with. It was the fourth best sinker in all of baseball. This is up there with Chris Bassett, which is one of the best overall pitches by CSW. Then Kyle Hendrix and I think it was Sunny Gray. It also had the best Wobicon in baseball. When you have a pitch like that, that's fantastic. At a 194 Wobicon.

I've never heard of a pitch that's like below a 300 Wobicon. So that's fantastic. I worry a little bit that he doesn't have a pitch that he can put in the zone. He puts that sinker in the zone about 60% of the time. And that's great so he can get some ground ball outs when he needs to. But I really want to see what he can do with that slider and that fastball is not good. So I really want to see that kind of fastball go away, maybe turn into a sinker slider change up kind of guy.

And for those listening at home, we haven't used Wobicon much here on this podcast, but that is weighted on base average on contact. It's not some kind of new nerdy convention or anything like that. I actually prefer to call it Woh Bacon. Just because it sounds better. I agree. Come on. Who doesn't love a Woh, bacon, egg, and cheese, right?

So Dane Dunning, definitely someone I can get behind. 291.1 is the ADP. I'm going to take the low-hanging fruit just outside of the top 250 for me, and that's at 253.9. Nathan Avaldi, and he's going to miss time, there's no doubt about it. Like, the guy just can't stay healthy for the course of a full season.

I understand that. But he was the best version of himself that we ever saw, granted, small sample size, like everything that we're dealing with. But his 22.6% K-minus walk percentage would have ranked top 12 among qualified starting pitchers and just ahead of names like Luis Castillo,

Zach Rankie, Dylan Bundy, a career best, 9.6K per 9. Career best 1.3 walks per 9. 3.72 ERA. Gets a ton of ground balls, 49% ground ball rate. Career best, 13% swinging strike rate. He throws five different pitches.

Nathan Avaldi does. Four seamer, cutter, cutter, and he really just had one dreadful start against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium where he gave up eight earned runs. If you take that start away, which is definitely a slippery slope and dangerous territory.

But if you take that start away, he had a 2.51 ERA in his other, I believe it was nine starts. So I think Nathan Avaldi was probably the best version of himself. Scott, are you interested in going back to the well? Yeah, yeah, I am. It, I mean, the fact he featured a curveball much more than ever before. And I don't, I don't know that, I don't know that I classified the curveball as this great pitch. I don't know, maybe Alex has another way of rating it that would say otherwise.

Like just by featuring a true off-speed pitch when his arsenal was so hard pretty much across the board otherwise for his entire career, it made pitches like his cutter, like his splitter. Like he didn't throw them more often than usual, but they were just much more effective than they've been in the past. At generating swings and misses,

he had more than strike-up per inning, which is not something we've seen much from Avaldi over the course of his career. So the curveball was at least good enough to get away with throwing, and it just kind of seemed to round out his whole arsenal in a way that made him more effective than we've ever seen him before. Alex, I feel like people just have of all the fatigue at this point.

Like, we've just heard about him for so long. He throws hard, but he's never going to amount to the pitcher we all thought he was going to be. But, like, he's quietly really good when he's on the field. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it's all, you know, I hate to rely on this, but it definitely depends on where you're going to be able to get him in drafts.

And if you're getting him for free, there is so much nice upside that's going to be there for you. obviously, you know, we have two concerns with injury guys. One, the fact that they're probably going to get injured and two, how many innings are they going to throw in a season where no one passed 85 innings overall? You know what I mean? So is it more value? Should we knock these guys a little bit more knowing that we might not even get 100 or 110

innings out of them whatsoever? I think the curve ball, I agree. I think it's a really nice pitch. I thought it was nice to see that that walk rate regress to what was a normal walk rate again, you know, just to show that 2019 really was pretty fluky for him. I think he had a bone spurs surgery on that elbow. So I don't know who else the Red Sox are going to throw out there right now. I think all three of us would be really good number fives for that squad right now.

So I think it depends on where Iovaldi is going to go for me. Yeah, so that ADP is 253. That's over at the NFBC. So he's going super late there. I'd imagine in most like home leagues, 12 team leagues, he'll be one of the last round picks unless he does something crazy in spring training, which causes his ADP to rise. but I think for the most part, people are just like,

I'm done with Nathan Avaldi, like, been there, done that, whatever. But he was really damn good this past season. We're going to take a break. When we return, we have three more late-round starting pitchers that you should be targeting. All right, we're back here, fantasy baseball today. Alex, you got to started originally with Mike Miner, who is a second starting pitcher here that you like

that's going outside the top 250. I would be remiss if I didn't bring up that I also wish I could talk about John Means, not just because of Baltimore, but just because I love him and I'm so excited to have a good pitcher. You can talk about him. Honestly, I know that you're an Orioles guy. Like, if you have any additional insight as to like what we saw from John Means down the stretch and like the added velocity, go right ahead. I'm just happy, man.

Like, let's go. Like, not necessarily just the increased fastball velocity. I think the fact that he's bringing it a little bit down a little bit, there is this really nerdy term that I learned through some drive line guys called pro presuppriation, which is essentially the feel of a pitch. And I think John Means had so much movement and so much velocity on that fastball that he lost the pro preceptiation of that. fastball when he brought down the velocity a little bit, it was more effective. That curveball is a really, really good pitch. It looks good. We already know about the changeup. I could go on

for hours about him. Also, like, John Means got injured at the beginning of the year and then sadly lost his father. You want to talk about throwing away a season. Like, I don't know how anyone would be able to focus in the middle of a pandemic, dealing with the passing of your father, and then finally getting a chance to start, you know, you're the opening day starter for the Orioles, something you've been dreaming of your entire left to be an opening day starter, not necessarily for the Orioles. and all of a sudden that gets ripped from you. Obviously, the father passing is the biggest concern there. But anyway, I could talk about John Means forever.

The guy that I did want to talk about. Scott, did you want to say something about John Means before? Oh, no. I've talked about John Means enough. John Means business. John means, yeah, exactly. John means business. All right.

So the guy that I picked was Jake Oteresee. No job, obviously, as of yet, linked to Boston, Tampa Bay, San Francisco, and the Mets interested at one point. I mean, I think we can all agree that we should probably be willing to chalk up the 2020 season due to injury. This is a guy who was on the aisle a lot, both with a chest injury, as well as a blister injury, just 13.2 innings pitched for him. That's in no way, shape, or form a significant sample size. So we have to look back at 2019.

The success he had that year was really in part because of that elevated fastball. He elevated his fastball almost more than anyone in the game. He elevated his four seamer 41% of the time in 2019, which led the league with a minimum 1,000 fastball's thrown. He returned to 250 Wobah on elevated four seamers, which is really, really good. That's also in the shadow zone as well. In the shadow zone, like the edges of the plate, one of the best pitchers in baseball top 10 with that four seamer, better fastball than Scher and Verlander by that metric.

It doesn't mean overall, of course, but by that metric, it was very, very good. He went to his cutter 18% of the time in 2019, which was a career high for him. It returned to 76 WRC plus 268 Wobo, which was the sixth best in 2019 with a minimum 500 cutters thrown. You take a look at how well is heater cutter. and Splitter play off of one another.

They tunnel super, super well. It makes sense why he was able to be effective. I don't think we're going to see 27% K rate again. I don't think 25% is unfathomal, though, especially if he hovers around 11, 12% swinging strike rate. He's out of the top 300 behind guys like Matthew Boyd and Domingo Hermann, who we don't even know if he has a job yet and how many innings he's going to throw.

Another late round guy, not the highest ceiling, but you can pair him well with like a Framber Valdez or a Lance McCullors Jr. A guy who's got really high upside, but a lower floor. And Jacob Rides was really the opposite of Mike Meyer, the pitcher you spoke about earlier in terms of workload, right? So he only went six plus innings pitch in 10 of 30 starts in 2019. And that was partially because his third time through the order numbers are just quite bad.

His first time through the order, 3.36 ERA. Second time, 2.70 ERA. Third time through the order, 5.65 ERA. that tells me, Alex, that he's probably better as like a roto or head-to-head categories guy just because he's not going to give you that huge volume of endings. It tells me if he goes to Tampa Bay, I am very interested.

They'll do the glass now, the snell, whatever. Give him two times through the order, go to that elite bullpen, and you're good to go. You're not worried about his win potential in that scenario because, I mean, the win is the most valuable stat in fantasy for a pitcher. I mean, it's not the most predictable stat, but you can pretty, if a guy's never, ever going six innings. You can pretty much predict he's not going to get many wins.

I worry about everything in my entire life. I worry about walking up the stairs. So yeah, of course, I'm worried about it. But I don't know. I think for me, that's probably the one category that I wait the most. I particularly play in points leagues a little bit more. I think in a quality start league, it's very valid to say that you can knock Jake Oter Reesie down pretty significantly, though. Yeah. And let's just give the twins a little bit of credit here, too. And I'm not comparing them the situations directly, but like they handled Ken Tamayeta the right way this year. Like they didn't put too much on him. He went six innings quite consistently. The pitch counts didn't get very high, but like they've done a good job with guys like Kentimae and Jake Oterese that have come in. So

kudos to the Minnesota Twins. Scott, your second late round starting pitcher that you had here. Well, my first one was dunning. My second one is canning. Sound like a comedy duo or something. I don't know. Griffin canning, who about this time last year I was very enthusiastic about and then there were the irregularities in the elbow and spring training and some velocity issues once the season started and it's just like, I don't know if this guy's all right.

But he's another pitcher, much like John Means, much like, I guess Nathan Avaldi to a degree, he really took off late in the year. And I have a difficult time pinpointing exactly why. Like his slider, which was the pitch that made him as a rookie in 2019, it was just nowhere to be found early on last year. And, you know, with, with an elbow ailment, you know, you can, you can understand why he's, he's not, either he's not comfortable snapping that slider off as well as he needs to, or he's just

incapable of it. We didn't really know what was going on with his elbow, but the slider wasn't there. In the meantime, he started featuring a curveball that got better and better as the year went on, and then at the end of the year, the slider came back too. So it was a really strong finish for Griffin Canning once he had both of those breaking balls working. And let me pull up some numbers here for you to demonstrate. Okay, so last five starts for Kenning. He had a 314 ERA.

He had 33 strikeouts in 28 and two-thirds innings, a 14% swinging strike rate, which would be like top 10 in the league if somebody did that over a full season. And, well, three of those five starts were at least more than five innings. One of them was eight innings. So, yeah, he looked, he looked like he was building up to something that could get me excited again. And I think one of those starts was in Colorado.

I was looking up his game log earlier. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't one of the best ones, but it was okay for being a start at Colorado. Alex, can you, would you attribute the decrease in slider usage just in general? for the entire season to the issues that he had with the elbow again. He had chronic changes to his UCL. This is Griffin Canning back in spring training of last year.

He had a PRP injection and then said that his elbow felt like normal after that. Would you attribute the slider being down to that? Yeah, it definitely could be. I mean, that's kind of the reason why I'm particularly staying away from him. I don't know if he's going to be like a Tanaka where it's like every year. We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop and he's going to miss the entire season with an elbow injury. I think when we're hearing, it was almost like with Chris Sale last year before they finally opted to have Tommy John surgery. I just get really concerned where there's like a one week window where they're like, okay, he's going to have Tommy John surgery.

Actually, no, he's not. So that scares me, especially for just a 24 year old guy, especially considering just the Angels track record with health and pitchers for the past 40 years. That scares me a little bit. The slider was just really not great at a 410 Wobah last year, which wasn't really. fantastic. I think what scares me about him, I mean, he's perfect for these kind of rounds because it doesn't matter if he kind of stinks. He cut bait in the first two or three weeks and you can just get away from him. I think what just scares me is that floor. Excuse me. He can really fall off every once in a while, although, yeah, to your credit, 314 RERA in those last five and with a 2.95

FIP, I mean, that's really fantastic. Again, Griffin Canning, the ADP 311.7. And for most people, like you'll get these guys last round pick in your draft. You could pick them up early in the season, potential two-star pitcher and then see if he turns into anything. But he was a prospect. He had some pedigree, and obviously there is some swing and miss potential there with Griffin Canning.

The last name that I wanted to bring up, come on, former Yankee prospect, duh, you see the stuff behind me. I've got to go with Justice Sheffield. 294.1 ADP. Finish the season with a 3.58 ERA, a 1-30 whip. The whip higher than you'd like it to be. The walks were still a bit of an issue.

But he's progressing. I think he's just getting better as a pitcher, and it's taken some time. The walks went from 4.5 per 9 in 2019 to 3.2 per 9 in 2020. The strikeouts also came down as well. But that's part of this change in pitch mix that he had, where he went away from this four-seem fast bowl,

just completely ditched it, and went with this two-seemers. So this is kind of like the opposite of what we talk about usually with him pitching to contact, but 49%, 50% ground ball rate form, 50.6, but that, it seems like that sinker really helped him kind of elevate his game to the next level. We know he has a really good slider. I think an underrated changeup as well. The problem is, can he get that swinging strike rate for the slider back up to where it was two seasons ago? And if he

does that, then we see the strikeouts come back up as well. And if he can continue to progress in terms of the control, then I think we've really got something here for Justice Sheffield. And I will just point out his first two starts of the season got us to a very rocky start. His final eight starts, two earn runs or less in seven of those. And when I sent you these names, Alex, you said, ooh, just the Sheffield. I like Justice Sheffield. Why is that? Yeah, I mean, you did a great job with what you just said. I mean, I pretty much agree with all the points that you made. I think that he's zigging. And really, the Mariners organization is almost zinging while a lot of organizations are zagging, right? And I think they're kind of preparing for what the baseball landscape is going to look like when they're competitive

in two years as opposed to what it looks like right now. And I like guys that do what he's doing and that he's going to sit low in the zone, almost like Lance McCullors does with that new sinker, and it's going to make that change up and slider much more effective. Because while you can look at one area of the zone, if you're a hitter, those three pitches are breaking in completely different directions. So I do buy into that.

It actually does remind me of something about Griffin Canning that I forgot to bring up. Griffin Canning and Andrew Heaney were both in the top five in Wobah and Wobicon on middle, middle fastballs. I know that's a lot to process. I'm going to break that down. down a little bit more clear. Essentially, they can get away with mistakes, not only last year, but in 2019 as well, much more so than average. And one of the reasons for that, in my opinion,

is because they sit that low, right? Guys know that Canning Orhini in particular are going to try and elevate that foreseamer. So when they see a pitch coming middle, middle, their first guess isn't necessarily going to be, this is a mistake fastball. It could be, this is his fantastic curveball that's going to drop off the face of the earth. And I'm not going to look like an idiot. swinging at it. And I feel the same way about Justice Sheffield. When you can look low all the time, but you have that kind of pitch mix, it can really work wonders for him. Yeah, so a lot like Griffin Canning, Justice Sheffield comes with the prospect pedigree. He is still just 24 years old. He's going to turn 25 in May. So is it impossible for him to continue to progress and work on that control and get the

swinging strike rate back up a little bit? No, I think it's certainly doable. Scott, any interest in Justice Sheffield. There's some interest. I don't have a lot of confidence in the upside, that there's significant upside from Justice Sheffield. And in a standard-sized league, something 12 teams are shallower. Obviously, I want upside more than anything

with a late-round pick. 8% whiff rate from Justice Sheffield last year. I mean, you pointed out he's had a better swinging strike rate in the past in limited samples. and, of course, in his minor league career. And so, yeah, if he can recapture that with the, while having adapted his pitch mix

with more sinkers and getting more ground balls and everything else, and that'll end up being, I don't know, maybe he could end up putting up Fromber Valdez type numbers. But that's a big if. That's a big if. I think right now, presuming this new pitch mix puts a limit on the amount of swinging strikes

he can get and thereby the amount of strikeouts he can get. I feel like Justice Sheffield is kind of aspiring to be Marco Gonzalez-like. And look, Marco Gonzalez has turned into a pretty consistent pitcher against all odds going by the things I normally judge pitchers on. But Sheffield certainly doesn't have Gonzalez's control. And, you know, I wouldn't consider Gonzalez a high upside guy either. So, you know, it kind of depends how deep the league is. And a deeper league, I'd probably be more interested in Sheffield because I think the floor is pretty high. I also think the ceiling is pretty low.

Let's see if Alex can perform better than the Welsh in a little game of Guess Who. The way this is going to work is I will give you guys, and it might not take as many clues as I have. I have five clues written down here. I have six clues written down. I have six clues written down. After I say a clue, you can just blurt out as many answers as you want. If you get it right, guess what?

You win. That's the game. It's guess who. I'll start off with a few statistical ones and then I have a few wackier ones later on. So let's get started. And you'll figure out it's a pitcher. If my... I'm doomed if that's the first clue.

Just a chef here. It is not just a chef. To start naming pitchers at this point. If my 10.4K per nine qualified, it would have ranked 14th among starting pitchers. It's a very general clue. Kevin Gosman?

It is not Kevin Gosman. Okay. I posted a 5.63 ERA in eight games. seven starts, but my Sierra was 4.12. What was the, say the first part again? I posted a 5.63 ERA in eight games. Seven of those were starts, but my Sierra was 4.12. Oh, I can't think of his name, Howard.

Spencer Howard? It is not Spencer Howard. If my 12.9% swinging strike rate qualified, it would have been tied for 14th among starting. pitchers with Trevor Bauer. Hmm. To read Scuba. What would you say, Scott?

Terrick Scoobel. You got it. Oh, wow. That is unbelievable. Damn, Scott. Aaron Savali, wow. Oh, man, I had, like, I'm going to obviously reveal the other clues that I had,

but they were pretty wacky. The other ones I had, I'm 24 years old, a lefty, and average 94.5 miles per hour on my fastball. and the wacky ones. Without knowing for sure, I would guess this pitcher is into scuba diving.

That would have been the one that really gave it away for me. Most would say I'm not just a good prospect. I'm great. Because he plays for the tigers. That's a little... That's a little...

Yeah, that's probably a hurdle too high for me. But that's fine. No, it's Eric Scoobble. So what are we going to... Is anything more to say about him? Well, I know that Nick, Nick Pollock recently had him on the Pitchelist podcast, fantasy baseball podcast

that you guys do. So I listened to that just before we hopped on here and I thought it was really interesting and I just don't want people to judge his 2020 at face value because it was a weird season and I still think that there's a lot of upside. And of course, you know, he was a

highly regarded prospect entering the season. And I think that there are some underlying numbers for scuba that are pretty interesting. So Alex, I don't know if you have anything else on him in general regarding scubel, but if you want to... I agree with exactly what you said. I mean, I think they knew that like this is going to be kind of, uh, just go see what works, man. Get big league experience, you know, like have fun, try and figure out what works and what doesn't. So it's another one of those guys where it's like, I'm just looking at the pitch mix as opposed to looking at the actual statistics for him personally. His fastball is so good that he really didn't have to

work on the other stuff in the minors is part of it. And you saw as he was up the change up get better and better. I mean, his numbers got better and it was mostly tied to him getting more comfortable with the pitch to play off that fastball. So I think, like, I was much more encouraged by what I saw from him than what I saw from Casey Mize. Alex, I was looking down at my phone because I wanted to make sure that I got the podcast name correct over at Pitchelist. So it's just, the pitcherless fantasy baseball podcast. So you can listen to Nick and Alex there as well. We appreciate you coming on. Make sure you follow them on Twitter at Alex Fast 8,

the number 8, and just do fantastic work. Alex, is there anything else that you'd like to promote while you're on here? No, happy holidays to you both. And thanks so much for having me on. It was a great conversation. I appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I wanted to ask you, like, in the middle of the podcast, I didn't remember until now when you just brought it up, but like, favorite holiday Christmas song, you have one? I mean, I'm sure you have one. Unless you're just one of those people that... There's some people that just hate Christmas music.

Like, if you work somewhere where you have to listen to it all day long, you probably get annoyed by it, but you have to have a favor, right? It's all new to me. I'm Jewish, so I... It's all kind of a whole new thing to me. I, like, we... I have a Christmas tree to the left of me, and I don't know how you guys huff all this pine so much.

Like, it is such a strong scent. So, yeah. Well, this one's a fake one. That helps. Metal and plastic. Yeah, this one is not, and I think I'm going to pass out. I think I'm going to pass out. Yeah, I normally have a real Christmas tree. Didn't get one this year because I got a new cat, and I didn't want the cat to eat the tree, and, you know, something bad happens there.

So I moved away from that. Scott, any favorite holiday Christmas music songs? Yeah, sure. A lot, actually. Can we just agree that it's last Christmas by Wham because George Michael is just the fan? No, we can't. And he has beautiful feathery. I don't agree with it. We have a tradition. I've tried to carry it over with my kids,

but with me growing up, the song my dad would turn on that would signal, all right, time to come out, an open presence, was Mannheim steamroller decked the halls. So that gets me amped. Yeah,

it kind of sounds like futuristic, you know, reminds me of the Starship Enterprise for some reason. That is like, to play that for a young child, that early in the morning. You're going to rip those presents apart. Like, that's intense.

Oh, man, it's like a natural caffeine for a young Scott White back in the day. Awesome. Yeah, exactly. Alex, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it, dude. Yeah, thanks a lot, guys. For Alex and Scott, I am Frank.

Thank you all for listening and watching fantasy baseball today. We'll be back again next week. Actually, Scott, I just realized you're not going to be here for the next two weeks. So, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Thank you, Frank. Same to you.

I just thought I'd slip that in there. And next week, next week we will have Justin Mason joining us here on the podcast, which should just be an absolute treat. So for Alex and Scott, I'm Frank, thank you all for listening and watching. We'll be back again next week.

Bye-bye.