Fantasy Baseball Today - MLB Rule Changes & Effects! Trevor Story Out 4-6 Months (1/11 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Link to Scott's article- https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/what-the-rule-changes-mean-for-fantasy-baseball-in-2023-from-banning-the-shift-to-limiting-pickoff-throws/ Trevor Story is out 4-6 months after having UCL surgery (4:11). Who's going to fill in? ... Should you lower expectations on Rafael Devers (11:00)? ... Brandon Belt signed with the Blue Jays (12:45). ... Johnny Cueto signed with the Marlins (15:43). ... MLB is implementing a bunch of rule changes in 2023, starting with a pitch timer (21:15). ... Which pitchers had the slowest tempo in 2022 (23:00)? ... Pitchers will be limited to two pickoff attempts as well (25:25). ... As a result, steals could go way up (29:20). ... How much did steals go up in the minors (38:32)? ... Which players could run more (42:59)? ... There will also be defensive shift limits (48:15). ... Which hitters and pitchers could be affected most? Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Get Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-baseball-today?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-baseball-collection Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Where fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Frank Scott and Chris. At least Major League Baseball had the courtesy to tell us about their rule changes in 2023.

How will it affect fantasy? Let's discuss. Welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today on Wednesday, January 11th. Frank Stamfield joined by a joyous Scott White and Chris Towers, who is entering baseball mode. We'll get to that in just a little bit. We had a very eventful day, which means we're going to have a very eventful podcast. Trevor's story is out four to six weeks following UCL surgery. Months.

Yes, I wrote months. I said weeks. I'm not really sure why I did that, but you're right. You got Ricky Weeks on the brain. Yeah. It happens. I loved Ricky Weeks. Four to six months for Trevor Story.

We had a few signings, and plus we will break down all of the, MLB rule changes coming this season and what they mean for fantasy. Scott, congrats on the dogs. You're quite the run, man. I watched them really hard. So you should be congratulating me for all that effort I put in. It's 65 to 7. I mean, what can you say? It's a total domination. felt too easy. Obviously, you know, in retrospect, it feels like, like the championship game was the semifinal game against Ohio State, because that definitely didn't come easy. But yeah, back-to-back champs.

I don't know. I don't know. It feels different than last year. Last year, you know, 41 years since the last championship before I was alive versus, oh, this is happening again, you know? I don't know. I don't know how to feel. I don't know what to do with my hands.

I mean, one. one, they didn't play FIU so fraudulent championships two Stets and Bennett's like 47 years old right that guy can't actually be eligible that's not fair that's not fair that he's allowed to play

certainly far from the first college quarterback to be 25 has been you know what was Chris Winky like 28 yeah Chris Winkke and Whedon would be the other two old guy

and quarterbacks and then you know it's a consistent thing I think in the BYU program for other reasons. But yeah, it happens. For those watching at home, when I just start to look around, this is a topic that I know nothing about. So as you can tell, I don't know anything about college football. So I'm just going to move on.

Can you name a player on Georgia's team? On Georgia's team. Well, the Bennett guy, you just mentioned. The Bennett guy. I think they have a really good defensive lineman who's going to be like a top three pick or something like that. I don't know his name those. That probably doesn't help.

I can only name two at this point. I'll do my research once they get drafted. Chris, I'm happy to see that you were now getting ready for baseball season on Twitter. Yeah, they let me keep my blue checkmark when I changed my name. So, you know, I'm feeling good about that. I'm getting ready for baseball season. I got through second base. I got through the first three positions in my ranks.

I got like, you know, a top 600 outline ready. But obviously you got to you got to start fine-tuning things from there. So I've got another cat yelling at me. Unbelievable. Yes, this. If you listen to the episode early, here. This is the great thing though. Liz Lemon in the Carlos Correa episode wanted to get out of the room. Now, of course, she wants to get in the room. It was ridiculous.

Feel free to just throw your headset off and let your cat in and out as you please throughout the podcast. Chris, absolutely no worries. Let's start off with the news and notes. Obviously the big news of the day. Well, I guess second biggest news of the day. Trevor Story's injury. If you're looking for the Carlos Correa content, Chris did mention that we did an emergency podcast earlier in the day. so you can give that a listen, go watch it on YouTube, wherever you consume. But that other news. Trevor's story underwent an internal bracing procedure on the UCL in his right elbow on Monday and is going to miss time.

How much time exactly? Pretty wide range of return dates that I've seen from May through maybe not even this season, but I think the realistic timetable is four to six months. So something like May to July, Heim Bloom did say the Red Sox quote, can't bank on story playing in 2023, so do with that which you will. Scott, the second base position

already wasn't great. I think recently on a podcast, I tried to make the case that it was alright. Well, it just got worse. They lost Trevor's story. His ADP was 73 as the fifth second baseman off the board. How far does he drop in your second base rankings? And let's see you play in a league with IL

spots, what point of the draft would you actually consider selecting Trevor's story? Well, it obviously depends on the league size, the league format, the shallower the league is, the more you should be willing to invest in him because the easier it is to find a replacement player. So I actually downgraded him less in my head-to-head points rankings than in my roto rankings because head-to-head points leagues tend to be smaller and fewer hitters rostered overall. So you could probably make do, you know, with a spare second basement easier than you can in a standard roto league. But I dropped him.

Basically, he's more of a late-round pick now for me, where that actually puts him at second base would be around near the 20 range at second base, a little inside the top 20 for Trevor's story. And yeah, I mean, it helped if we had a clearer timetable. I'm expecting roughly mid-season, whether that's June or July, nailing it down that precisely would be hard to do.

I don't take the Heim Bloom comment that seriously about, oh, we can't bank on him coming back at all this year. I just kind of saw that as, you know, strategically setting expectations low so that the team can, the team can get used to the idea of being without him. And so there's no over promises of when he's going to return. the timetable for this procedure is less than that of Tommy John.

And Tommy John doesn't take as long for hitters as it does for pitchers. So, you know, four to six months, probably about right. So I'm thinking mid-season for Trevor Story. That would put him on close to the same type of table as Bryce Harper. Obviously not the same caliber of players as Bryce Harper. But I think a similar downgrade there. You know, more than what it means for Trevor's story is what it means for the player pool as a whole, because second base was already looking pretty yucky.

Yeah, and I think it also affects Raphael Devers, which I'll get to in just a little bit. Chris, Trevor Story was expected to play shortstop for the Red Sox. As of now, Rasta Resource has Enrique Hernandez at shortstop. They have Christian Arroyo at second base, and they have Jaron Duran playing center. John Heyman mentioned Elvis Andrus, Jose Iglesias, and Josh Harrison. as potential replacements there. Obviously, none of those very exciting. Elvis, Andrews, was pretty awesome down the stretch last year,

but not sure we can expect that once again. There is a prospect in their organization that I know Scott likes quite a bit, N. Manuel Valdez, who last year hit 296 with 28 home runs, a 918 OPS is a 23-year-old in the minor. So maybe he gets a shot here. Are you interested in a Valdez or anyone else that's filling in here for the Red Sox?

I think we probably are far enough away that it's too early to say one way or the other way, whether you should be interested in any prospects. My guess would be that Boston's going to sign someone. My thoughts were Cesar Hernandez, Elvis Andrews, Josh Harrison, like those types of names make sense. They don't inspire a ton of confidence. But, you know, Christian Arroyo, as you're starting second basement every day, already didn't inspire much confidence. I think this is a situation where they probably have to make an addition after losing Trevor Stoll. but you know you look at the the the problem with this injury with not the injury but with

this specific type of surgery that he's having which is a like a piece of tape that they attach to your UCL and it's only you can only do it in certain types of breaks when the when the partial tear is in a certain spot and so that there have been only a handful of situations sean doodle was the most recent we obviously haven't seen him come back from it but Eli White had his surgery in September. He was ready for, you know, mid-March, but obviously the timetable much, much different there. But, you know, that kind of gives you an idea of this could be a situation where, you know, it might be June or July before Trevor Story is available to play. And then he's got to start the process. You know, he's got to get ready for the season in the middle of the season. So

it's not just the time he's going to miss, but it's the risk that he's not going to be himself. And, you know, we saw last season that the version of Trevor Story outside of course field may not be as enticing for fantasy as it once was. So it's, I didn't move him down quite as much as Scott did, but maybe I should. I moved him down to 16 at second base, like 170 overall. You know, again, like Scott less so in head-to-head points leagues. But, yeah, I think it's definitely someone that you don't draft until the second half of your draft at the very least. and expectations should be pretty muted. Scott mentioned Bryce Harper as a

comparative timetable for Trevor's story this season. And over at the NFBC, there have been 127 drafts. Bryce Harper's ADP, 127 drafts since December 1st. Harper's ADP is 178 during that time. These are all different kinds of formats. I don't think he's actually going to go that late and just, you know, you're staying in a 12-team league. But I think that is a...

I could see Trevor's story going similar to something like that, like outside of the top 150, basically, is the point I wanted to make. Yeah. I mean, yeah, and that's a hard comparison to make with NFBC because they famously don't have IL spots. So long-term injuries are, you know, those guys get completely buried in those formats. But, you know, probably, so I have Harper around 115, 125 in my rankings and story, talking about an overall rank, like 100 spots behind that, basically. So even outside the top 200. All right, good to know there on Trevor's story.

Scott, I said I wanted to ask you about Rafael Devers. Take a step back, the macro view of this lineup. It is bad. This is a really bad Boston Red Sox lineup. And I know that you had Rafael Devers as a borderline first round pick this year, Scott. Are you thinking about lowering him a little bit because of the issues with counting stats or no lineup protection around him? I think you can at least make the argument for someone like Manny Machado or Austin Riley

or maybe even a Bobby Whitman. Jr. over Rafael Devers. You could, I guess, I'm not really persuaded by those arguments. I mean, Devers is just such a good bet for batting average. And, you know, doesn't take a backseat power-wise to any of those guys either. We've seen hitters of his caliber.

Granted, I mean, his RBI runs total suffered last year. They did. It dropped a lot from 20, 21. And so maybe the, maybe that's just going to continue. But I do think there was an element of flukiness to it. And certainly we've seen like when the guardians had awful lineups,

Jose Ramirez was still studly when the Braves were rebuilding. Freddie Freeman was still studly. Like this question has come up. Yeah. When you have the stud batter in the middle of a bad lineup. And I think usually, usually it turns out fine. It does raise the, the risk, I guess, of him continuing with low run and RBI totals like he had last year.

It's still a really good ballpark to hit in. It's still a great division in terms of ballparks to hit in as well. So maybe you don't worry too much about Raphael Devers, but just something to consider now that Trevor Story is out for the next four to six months. We had a few signings. Brandon Belt signed a one-year $9.3 million deal with the Blue Jays on Monday night, and he's finally free from San Francisco. I say that a little tongue-in-cheek because,

I think some Giants fans actually are going to miss Brandon Bell. I mean, he was a lifelong giant. But we always wondered, what are the possibilities for Brandon Bell's if he would actually get out of Oracle Park? And now he's going to Toronto, for what it's worth. According to Stacast, Rogers Center is 25th and left-handed home run power. And Oracle Park is just one spot behind them 26. So do with that, which you will. Oracle's gotten better and Roger's Center's gotten worse in recent years.

And I just think it's so late at this point. I mean, Brandon Belt's turning 35 this year. I don't even know how much he's going to play because obviously they have Lad at first base. They need to keep D.H.Bot partially open for Alejandro Kirk. So, yeah, I think it's past... Yes, we were anxious to see how it would go for Belt, but I think the ship has already sailed.

Yeah, this is more so for deeper leagues. You know, AL only, deeper mixed leagues, stuff like that. I think at the least, Brandon Belt, when healthy is going to be a strong side platoon bat at designated hitter. But Chris, I do wonder if maybe this means slightly less plate appearances this season for both of Alejandro Kirk and Danny Jansen in this lineup. Yeah, the one thing that I do want to point out is I wonder, were you looking at the multi-year park factors or the year old case?

That's interesting because I'm seeing, okay, I'm seeing something different on stack cast, but might just be looking at the wrong thing. But yeah, I would think fewer played appearances, but he might be the kind of guy who could have, you know, a rowdy Tellez or, you know, Dan Vogelbach type of season where he hits 25 homers or, you know, possibly more. And, you know, is a useful fantasy option. I'm sure there will be stretches where we're talking about him

as a waiver wire at throughout the season, but probably not someone that you need to, need to draft in most leagues. The only thing I can think of, Chris, is on the drop-down for bat side. Do you have it selected to left-handers, or do you have it as both? I have a selected the left. Okay. Well, then you have to click on home runs and not Park Factor.

Did you do that? I didn't hit update, and that was why. All right. I see. That's my bad. That's on me. Totally fine. Yeah, it's just kind of...

What you see in Brandon Belt's career, sorry, is he hits for a lot less power at Oracle Park. But he's actually been a better hitter overall at Oracle Park because it's been much better for doubles and triples. He has three times as many triples and, you know, 25% more doubles than he does on the road. So, you know, it's, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. I'm not, I think it's probably, you know, a good thing on net. But because of the playing time concerns, I don't think he's, uh, he's necessarily someone you need to spend too much time thinking about anyway. All right.

Let's move on to Johnny Quedo, who signed a one year, $6 million deal with the Miami Marlins with a 10.5 million dollar club option for 2024. last season. Actually pitch very well did Johnny Quato. 3.35 ERA, 1-2-3 whip, but only 5.8K per 9. The control was great. The underlying numbers

did not like Johnny Quato very much. Scott, do you have any interest in Johnny Quato in the deepest of leagues? I mean, deepest of leagues? Like, if you're talking in an NL-L-L-L-Ling,

okay, yeah, he probably needs to be drafted. but anything shy of that. Probably not. He obviously had stretches, pretty long stretches where he was useful this past year. And if that surprisingly happens again, then I guess we'll talk about him as a streaming option from time to time. But in terms of draft capital,

there's no reason to invest in Johnny Quedo at this stage of his career. We know it's a great ballpark to pitch in, obviously they're in Miami, but run support wins probably going to be hard to come by for Johnny Quedo. Chris, if you take a look at the entire Marlins' rotation, it seems like they needed a veteran presence outside of Sandy Alcancra.

They didn't really have, you know, Pablo Lopez is fine, but they didn't have another veteran that can go deep into games or provide innings for the entire season. So this could just be, all right, they wanted a vet in here. But it could mean that they're looking at a trade, too. Whether it's Pablo Lopez or Trevor Rogers

or Edward Cabrera, I was doing some research and I didn't even realize, Apparently the Rockies and the Marlins talked about an Edward Cabrera trade a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't see it at all until I was researching him last night. So I found that extremely interesting. But who do you think is kind of on the outside looking in right now for the Marlins? Whoever gets traded? It's the most obvious outcome.

The Marlins are going to trade someone. I'm probably more pessimistic on the Marlins' rotation than most people who think about professionals. professional baseball at this point because I think you kind of saw last year like when you when you build a rotation around young arm to all 30 miles an hour they're going to get hurt and so I think they needed another guy regardless like this is not a team that has I think the kind of depth a lot of people think because attrition like two of these guys are going to get hurt in spring training like that's just how this works when you have guys who throw that way like it's just I I think there's going to be a trade but I think whoever gets

left out at the start of the season. Braxton Garrett is another guy who showed a lot last season. Trevor Rogers. I'm looking at the, I'm looking at the roster resource pays for the Marlins right now. If we presume Quato has a spot already

and he's not going to be like a long man. There's no way they gave him $6.5 million not to have a spot. That's like 40% of their... Have you seen the contracts relievers have been getting this offseason? If we presume Quato's in the rotation, then two of Edward Cabrera,

Braxton, Garrett, and Trevor Rogers won't be. But, you know, life finds a way. Someone will get hurt. Someone will get traded. I think those guys are going to make 20 starts somewhere, at least. And I'll just get out ahead of this now in case it happens. Pablo Lopez, if he's traded, his career splits, he is much better at home in Marlins Park than he has been on the road. So let's just say, for example, he winds up, you know, with the Boston Red Sox or a team like that.

I don't necessarily think that's going to be a good thing for Pablo Lopez's value. So just something to consider if that trade does go down. Corey Dickerson signed a one-year $2.25 million deal with the Washington Nationals. Not much there. Lots of contact. Decent batting average, but pretty empty stats at this point for Cory Dickerson. Could actually hurt my guy Stone Garrett, which don't really love, but we'll see what happens. And a few rumors out there.

According to Hector Gomez, the Giants are showing interest in Gary Sanchez, who could probably platoon with Josh. Peterson at DH and play a little catcher. And according to John Heyman, the Padres, are among the teams interested in Nelson Cruz. Somewhat interesting because they also signed Matt Carpenter this offseason. So I'm not really sure where everyone would fit, but life finds a way. As you guys mentioned. It feels like Gary Sanchez and Joey Bart are kind of the same player, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Joey, it's hard. It might be like the one catcher in baseball who strikes out more than Gary Sanchez. I was just going to say that. You're not going to find many catchers who do that,

but Joey Bart might be the one who strikes out more than Gary Sanchez. Let's get into these MLB rule changes. There's a lot coming up this season in 2023. We'll go through each of them and figure out what it means for fantasy baseball. There's also a great article that Scott wrote on the site, which I will include in the podcast in the YouTube description. So you can follow along and just generally see what kind of thoughts Scott had on each of these rules, even though you're about to find out anyway. Well, I mean, before we get into it, I will point out that a couple of the rules have a much, much bigger impact on the fantasy game than some of the others. And in fact, the one that has the biggest impact on the fantasy game, if you're just looking at a rundown of the rule changes, is kind of a subheading under the rule change. But we'll understand what I mean when we get to it.

Yeah, and we're going to get to it right now. Each of these rules has been tested extensively in the minors. and we're going to start with the pitch timer because it'll transition nicely into our next rule change after this. But again, it was implemented to create a quicker pace of play here in baseball games and there will be a 30 second timer between batters. Between pitches, there will be a 15 second timer with the base is empty and a 20 second timer with runners on base.

And apparently this reduced the average time of minor league games by about 26 minutes throughout all of the testing process. So that's pretty good. I think faster baseball games. Chris, we were talking beforehand. That's, I think it's a plus for everyone involved. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's worth noting it's not you make the pitch, you have 20 seconds to make the next pitch.

It's from the time the ball gets thrown back to the pitcher, whether it's, you know, the umpire throwing it to the pitcher or the catcher. And batters also have to be in the box with eight seconds left. They have to be in the box and ready with eight seconds left on the pitch timer. That's the other aspect of the rule. And something I saw out in the Arizona Fall League, and we couldn't figure it out at the time, catchers were lobbing the ball back to their pitchers. Like, we thought they were throwing knuckle balls

back to the pitcher. What's going on here? And apparently that buys pitchers in XRL, half a second or full second for them to recover. So if you see catchers doing that this season, apparently that might be the reason for doing so. The rest of this rule, a pitcher must begin his delivery

before the expiration of the pitch timer. pitchers who violate the timer are charged with an automatic ball and batters who violate the timer are charged with an automatic strike. I really don't think that this will be affected too much. I don't think pitchers will be affected too much by this, but these were some of the pictures I noticed that had the slowest tempo in baseball this past season. Scott, you can let me know if you're worried about any of these guys again, I don't really see much, but the names here that stood out, Shohei Otani, Luis Garcia of the Astros, Corbin Burns, Michael Kopeck, U. Darvish, Lucas Sheolito, Alec Manoa, Jordan Montgomery,

and Kevin Gosman, Aranola, and Justin Verlander. Apparently, those were the slowest starting pitchers in terms of tempo this past season. Yeah, so I mentioned on one of our recent podcasts that it doesn't, though that thought has been raised in the past that introducing a pitch clock could hurt pitchers who take a lot of time in between pitches,

could cost them velocity. with the testing they've done in the minors and they did it across all levels this past year, that doesn't seem to have been the case. In fact, the average fastball velocity this past season in the minors was exactly the same as the previous season before the pitch clock was introduced. Now, that's average.

And so when you go to the extremes, could a handful of pitchers maybe, could it have changed in a way that didn't impact the average for the entire minor leagues. Yeah, I mean, that seems possible. But I don't think it's realistic we're going to pick, if somebody is impacted by it, I don't think it's realistic,

we're going to pick them out beforehand. Stands to reason it would be some of the ones who take the most time in between pitches, but is number four on that list going to be less impacted than number one on that list? I don't know. It's not something I'm factoring into my, my player evaluations that much.

Yeah, it's truly hard to say to just kind of pinpoint which pitchers it might affect. It likely could affect pitching overall, but we won't know that until after the fact. And it could be something as easy as, all right, this pitcher has to rush a little bit more maybe than they have in years past, and maybe they don't throw as hard on a certain pitch, and as a result, it gets hit for a home run or a basis clearing double or something like that. And again, we won't know that until it happens and after the fact. So it's really hard to predict which pitchers this is going to affect. But very quickly, I'll mention the slowest relievers in terms of tempo as well.

Aroldus Chapman, who remains unsigned, Devin Williams, Kyle Finnegan, Kenley Jansen, and Giovani Gallegos. Now, this rule also includes limited pickoff throws to first base, which I think is what Scott was referring to. That's what I was getting at. early on. So, pitchers are limited to two disengagement, pick-off attempts or step-offs per plate appearance. If a third pick-off attempt is made, the runner automatically advances one base

if the pick-off attempt is not successful. So, Chris, what this is going to create is just a bunch of chaos because if a base runner is leading off far and a pitcher has already thrown over twice, they either need to be completely sure that they are going to pick up, off this base runner when they throw over a third time,

or they're automatically awarded second base. So I actually think it could cause some chaos here this upcoming season. Yeah, my one question is that that's not going to be called a stolen base, right? That'll be credited as a bulk, I assume. Yeah. That's unfortunate. Yeah. No, there's definitely going to be, you know,

I think there are going to be probably more psychological impacts of this kind of thing. But yeah, I mean, you look at the minor league numbers. And this isn't the only thing that they've done to increase stolen bases, that that was a focus of these rule changes. And there's another one that we'll talk about that. I think we'll have less of effect, but still, you know, probably has some kind of compounding impact. But, you know, last season, I'm looking at a baseball America story on this. Across the miners last season, teams averaged 1.4 stolen base attempts per game per team. 1.1 successful steals per game. Success rate was 77%. I think it was like the success rate

prior, the year prior was 68% on stolen bases. And it was 1.707. attempts per game. So you had as many successful steals as attempts the previous year. And it wasn't distributed equally throughout the miners. I would imagine it was less impactful at the higher levels where teams are going to be a little more concerned about actually trying to win games rather than letting players do whatever they want. But, you know, this is the one that I think, you know, along with the larger bases, is going to potentially have the biggest impact on fantasy baseball because stolen bases have become so scarce and it's at least possible that we're going to see a lot more stolen bases this season, you know, the 28% increase or whatever it was in successful steals

in the miners last season. That's a significant number. The question will be, is this just Trey Turner and John Birdie and Alberto Mondesie? Are those the guys who are going to run more? Or is it going to be, you know, the 10 steel guys become 13 steel guys? and the 15 steel guys become 19 steel guys. Is it going to be distributed equally? And I think that's probably a harder question to answer, but it's going to be fascinating to see. It is a fantastic question, by the way, Chris,

and it's something I've also looked into. And I do have an interesting take and some names that I think could be, like very specific names that I think could benefit from this moving forward. Again, I just want to point out the stat that Chris revealed, with this rule in place in the miners last season, steel attempts per game have increased from two points. 0.23 in 2019 at a 68% success rate to 2.83 in 2022 at a 77% success rate. So this is massive and it's something that Scott has been hitting on all offseason and it's also in conjunction with

another rule that I'm going to bring up right now, which is the bigger bases. The bases traditionally have been 15 inches square will instead be 18 inches square. Home plate will remain unchanged. The primary goal of this change is to give players more room to operate and to avoid collisions, though it also can improve stolen base success rate. The change will create a four and a half inch reduction in the distance between first base and second base and between second base and third base. Scott, I know that you have a bunch of specific stats that compare the early 2000s to this past season. So if you want to go over any of those and kind of give people an idea of how much steals are going to go up moving forward.

As a matter of fact, I do. And I do want to mention, though, the stolen base size increase is less significant than the pickoff limits, I think. You know, four inches, you're talking about the length of a hand, basically. So imagine any bang, bang, play on a stolen base at second. Those are all going the runner's way all of a sudden. So it's not nothing. But, yeah, the pickoff rule is the biggest one, because,

the size of the lead you can get is pretty bit. You can't walk halfway to second base, obviously, because then the pitcher knows he's going to be able to throw you up, and you can get a huge lead. And in fact, I think runners are going to be incentivized to take big leads to encourage throws one and two so that the pitcher's in that position where, you know, the runner's at a huge advantage.

And yes, when we're talking about the increase we saw in the minor leagues, Morgan's sword and that's his actual name an MLB executive who was kind of laying out the rules when they were first announced in the impact of them in the minors. He said that if we see a similar increase in the majors to what we saw in the minors with these rule changes implemented, then it's going to take us back to basically the early 2000s in terms of how stolen bases play out.

And so, you know, let's just start with the year 2000. And let's just look at that. So in the year 2000, Marlon's second baseman, Luis Castillo, led the majors with 62 steals. Three players had more than 50. Compare that to the numbers I have here for 2021, because when I wrote this, 2020 wasn't done yet. But compared to 2021, Starling Marte led the majors with 47 steals, and only one other player had even 40. So nobody got to 50. In 20, 42 players stole 20 bases or more.

In 2021, only 19 did, less than half as many. In 2000, there were almost 3,000 stolen bases in all. It was 51% of the number of home runs hit. In 2021, the number of stolen bases was only 37% of the number of home runs hit. So, you know, you look at those numbers and you can understand why we've gotten to a place in categories leagues where these stolen bases are essential. In early in drafts, they've come to supersede all other stats, right? Like I feel like early in roto drafts, we're kind of just drafting all the stolen base guys till they're all gone. And then dealing with all those other stats later.

That's kind of the mentality that's taken hold because of the way these have trended. And I think if we see increases to this extent, that's going to change dramatically. We're going to, it's not going to happen in drafts this year because everybody's still stuck in that past mentality. Yep. But if it does change, as we're going to, in future years, see a wider variety of drafting styles

and an emphasis on other contributions the hitter makes in the early rounds and not just selling out so hard for stolen bases, which I think will be better for the fantasy game. And not only that, but I actually think the increase in the majors could be even bigger than it was in the minors. Because basically,

going back to early to, well, around the time I outlined, early 2000s, when, when Moneyball came out and slowly that that same sort of thinking began to permeate league front offices, there's been such an emphasis on efficiency that stolen bases have been discouraged, unlike ever before. Like, it wasn't worth the risk to take that extra base if it created an extra out. You know, I have so many outs in a game to work with after all. But because of that, because like you, you had to be really cautious about when you ran and the success rate, stolen bases in the majors in 2021, the success rate was 76%. The success rate was basically what it became in the miners after they implemented these rules.

change. So they were taking much bigger risks in the miners previously, understandably, because the emphasis wasn't on winning. The emphasis was on development. They were already, relatively speaking, running wild in the miners, willing to get thrown out 32% at the time. And they weren't doing that in the majors. Well, if you get that, if these rule changes allow the success rate to creep over 80%, like we see a corresponding improvement in the success rate in the majors, like we saw in the minors from 68% to 77%. If the starting point, 76% in the majors, you know, we're getting up to 80%. 85 success rate on stolen bases, that's going to change the math completely,

especially at a time when home runs are on the decline and teams can't rely as much on that for scoring runs. So I'm kind of throwing everything out expectation-wise for stolen bases. Could be like in basketball with the introduction of the three-point line. When the three-point line was initially introduced, basically only guys who were really good,

good at three-pointers or only situations where you were desperate for a three ended up having a three-point attempt. And as you've seen the NBA move along and, you know, embrace the efficiency revolution, the Major League Baseball has, you've seen teams are more comfortable with having worse shooters take threes because it, you know, the, we understand that the, the math works out that way. And that could be what we see in Major League Baseball is it might not be a situation. I'd be surprised if we saw the stolen base success rate jump up to 85%.

But it might be a situation where the stolen base rate jumps up to 78%. But teams go from, well, John Bertie has a green light and nobody else runs because he's the only guy who can do it to, well, if we can get a 78% chill. Like if we creep past that, you know, this is worth doing mode, then it will probably see a lot. more like Scott said in it. Just to give some more numbers to what we've seen, I went back and compared all double A and AAA players from 2021 to 2022. In 2021, there were 11 players between AA and AAA who stole at least 30 bases.

In 2022, that jumped from 11 to 32 players with 30 plus steals. In terms of 20 steals, you had 34 guys steal 20 bases and 2021 between double a and triple a you had 66 so almost double the number of 20 steel players and with 10 steel players you had 96 between 21 21 and 134 and 22 so you do see the guys who are better at running ran more you had you saw more you saw a bigger increase in 30 steel guys than 20 steel guys and a bigger increase in 20 steel guys than 10 steel guys which makes sense but you also saw an increase across the board. And so obviously not the same number of players

got the same amount of playing time. And I think 2022, 2021, there were fewer games played between the two levels. So that would be explained some of the gap. But you know, you could see, I think, across the board pretty significant changes. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm expecting.

The same way the juiced ball era brought about a democratization of home runs where even these smallish middle infielder were putting up 20 home runs consistently. I think we're going to see a democratization of stolen bases where a guy like Brandon Lowe, right? That's how you pronounce the same. Brandon Lowe, who's not slow,

but he doesn't have much incentive to run. But I think he could emerge as a 15-20 steel guy and a lot of other guys in that same range could. Like I was saying, I'm basically throwing out all expectations for stolen. basis at this point. And happy to let, in these roto drafts, happy to let everyone else go crazy for stolen bases in the early rounds because I think, I think it's going to be hard to predict

how many stolen bases any team ends up with based on their investment in them, just because the, the distribution is going to change so dramatically. I'm not saying I'm ignoring stolen bases. Like, I'm going to make, I'm going to make a reasonable effort. for them, but I don't feel confident in my stolen base projection for any particular player. And so I think in light of that, it makes sense to not draft like I do, basically. I will say, you know, one thing that we did see in the minors last season when we were talking about prospects and guys who might get called up or did get called up is like we did see some ridiculously inflated stolen base totals last season that, you know, estuary, you're, we, Ruiz, I think was one who had 85 stolen bases in the minors last season.

I think we could see a return to some ridiculous, like, 60 stolen base totals, which is exciting. And it could, you know, that used to be not routine, but something that you would see once or twice a year, you know, Scott Pesednik and Michael Bourne and Juan Pierre and those guys. But, you know, I hope we can get back to that level. Yeah, somebody's going to steal 60 bases, at least. somebody might steal 70 bases.

I'd be shocked if somebody stole, well, shock isn't the right word. I'm not going to say somebody's going to steal 80 bases, but I think it's more likely somebody steals 80 bases than nobody steals 60 bases. I'll put it that way. I think we probably need Billy Hamilton to have a full-time job to get an 80-sealed player

this upcoming season. I almost wonder if 2022 was a trial run. Like managers and organizations knew that this was a change that was coming, and as a result, they were more aggressive in anticipation. because this past season, there were 2,486 steals across baseball. That was the most that we've seen since 2017. It was more than 270 than the previous season than in 2021.

I think the home run environment, the changing home run environment, incentivize that. I mean, if you're not getting home runs on the long ball, A, you don't have to worry about as much about taking the chance on the base paths. And B, you kind of need to, to manual. It's the old school way. And this is going to encourage that all the more. And these things are all related, right?

Like we talk about strikeouts and how they're continuing to go up every year. And that's one of the reasons why stolen bases have gone down because it's harder to string together, you know, multiple hits to get it run. But, you know, if it can become a little easier to manufacture those runs, you know, that's, I think it's all a good thing. I think ultimately like Major League Baseball still needs to figure out a way, and I don't know how you do this to lower strikeouts. I think all of the issues with the game come back to that and just the constant Cold War between or the arms race between hitters and pitchers for strikeouts.

But like anything that can create offense that doesn't just rely on the home run is a good thing. And yeah, that's something I wanted to bring up too. I think all of these rule changes are for the better. They're going to help the real life game for sure. And I think as I was pointing out, the way drafting tendencies have changed in Rotelis, I think they're going to help the fantasy game in the long run too. It's frustrating right now because it's new

and potentially so transformative that we don't know what to expect to that much. But in the long run, once we get past through this painful adjustment period, I think it's going to make everything better. It's going to make for a more exciting, more fast-paced game. And, you know, kind of pull us out of this three-true outcomes era that may have made sense mathematically, but it took away so much from the aesthetic of the game. And it's been going on for so long that a lot of people don't even remember what it was like before.

I mean, it's like the boiling frog, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know, the boiling frog. Which pitchers... No, I understood that one. I understood that reference. Which players could be, could benefit from this the most. Well, I'll let you know in just a bit.

Let's take a break. But first, reminder to follow us on TikTok if you haven't already. Yes, we have a TikTok where we're putting up short clips, throwing some highlights on it, having some fun. At FBTPod is the TikTok username to follow. And a reminder that the fantasy baseball product launch, will be next week on CBSports.com, Tuesday, January 17th. Our rankings will be live on the site,

which hopefully will be implemented into draft rooms. So if you want to do mock drafts and all that stuff, it'll all be updated coming soon. Again, the product launches next Tuesday, January 17th. Let's take a break and we'll be back right after this. All right, let's dive back into stolen bases. Again, this is not a perfect exercise by any means. I agree with Scott.

I think it's gonna be nearly impossible to project steals on a per player basis. I don't think this is all of a sudden going to make slow players fast or anything like that but I think it could we could see 10 to 15 steel guys push up over 20. We could see those 20 to 25s up over 30 30 to 35s up over 40, so on and so forth. Now, sprint speed doesn't mean everything in baseball, but this is a measurement on statcasts which tells us who are the fastest players in baseball. Each of these four early round players, with the exception of Jake McCarthy,

are in the 98th percentile or better in terms of sprint speed. I think these four could go absolutely ballistic if they wanted to. Bobby Witt Jr., Trey Turner, Julio Rodriguez, and Jake McCarthy, who I also just mentioned. Again, they're all 98th percentile or better in sprint speed, according to statcast. I look specifically at players between 10 and 20 steals last season that were also 90th percentile or better in sprint speed.

So again, these are ones that I think could maybe push 25 or push 30, up over 30, something like that. Nico Horner, Andres Jimenez, Michael Harris, Harrison Bader, Tyler O'Neill, Jose Siri, Jazz Chesham, Bryson Stott, Jeremy Pena, Leoti Tavares, and no surprise, O'Neill Cruz, who is someone we've talked extensively about recently, and we will continue to talk about a bunch this offseason. Players in the 5-9 steel range, 90th percentile sprint speed are better,

Matt Veerling, CJ Abrams, and Byron Buckson. C.J. Abrams, by the way, I was texting the Welsh about this earlier, and he thinks C.J. Abrams is one of these guys that could just completely go off, like 25 plus steals this upcoming season. Well, C.J. Abrams had, he was a stolen-based machine in the minor. I'm pretty sure he was... Wasn't he 70-grade speed? Oh, yeah. I mean, you saw some evaluations given 80-grade speed.

Yeah. And, okay, so I was actually looking up as minor league steel totals. They weren't that high because his batts never got that high. But yeah, he is, he is the most, one of the most surprising thing about C.J. Abrams debuted to me last year is that he ran so little because that is the main thing he's supposed to be providing. So I would think 25 is, if he's going to be useful in fantasy at all, 25 is the starting point of what's that, what's going to be the cause of that. So I'm looking at the fan graphs grades that are giving out to prospects right now. 80 grade. 80 grade speed for CJ Abrams.

So absolutely someone who could benefit. And one other player who didn't play enough, but actually led all of baseball in sprint speed last season. Corbyn Carroll, 30.7 feet per second. He was 52 for 59 in stolen base attempts in 142 minor league games. Again, statistically the fastest player in Major League Baseball last season. I think there's a chance he can go for 40 plus steals. The projection on fan graphs, I get it.

It's his first year rookie. These are conservative projections, but there's a real chance he hits 15 to 20 home runs with 40 plus steals. That is not out of the range of outcomes for Corby and Carroll this season. Chris, I know you took a little break. Were you letting Liz Lemon in or out? We bought an automatic cat feeder. You might have heard some kind of da noise in the background just now,

and I realized that only one of the cats is in the room right now. And so I can't let the automatic cat feeder go when only one of the cats is in the room. Because frankly, David Bowie needs to lose a little bit of weight also. So I don't want her to eat because she will eat all of the food. So I had to kick her out of the room. All right. Felt bad she was sleeping. Fair enough.

Of the players that I mentioned again, it's on the rundown too. If you want to just take a quick gander at it, players between 10 or 20 or 5 to 9, is there anyone that stands out here that maybe you think, could see a dramatic increase in stolen bases this season. Yeah, I mean, two that jump out to me, and it's not on your list, but I think Ahmed Rosario is in this range.

I think he's like 95th percent on sprint speed as well, and he was like 18 stolen bases. We talked about him yesterday. But, you know, both him and Andres Jimenez are fully capable of stealing more bases, and if you look at their minor league record, they did. And so that's one where it comes down to, is Cleveland willing to,

to let them run more when the balance shifts more in the favor of it being advantageous. I think both of those guys could definitely see an improvement there. And then I think Jazz Chisholm, you know, we've seen him run a decent amount, but we've also seen, you know, Miami let John Birdie go like they did last season. I think if we reach a point where Jazz Chisholm is,

you know, stealing bases in a 90% clip, they might let him really run wild. So that's another one that really stands out. Yeah, he had a really. particular pace last year too. It was like 35, 35 over 150 games. It's just a matter of whether or not jazzism could actually stay healthy this upcoming season. All right. Well, now that we have five minutes left, I don't know that we'll be able to do justice on defensive shift limits, but we will try our best. This is the last one we'll talk about today per MLB.com. The defensive team must

have a minimum of four players on the infield with at least two infielders completely on either side of second base. These restrictions are in ten. to increase the batting average on balls in play, to allow infielders to better showcase their athleticism and to restore more traditional outcomes on batted balls. So not only are we expecting more steals, but we're expecting more hits, and we're expecting more batting average as a result as well.

If the infielders are not aligned properly at the time of the pitch, the offense can choose an automatic ball or the result of the play. And I think the assumption here is that left-handed pull-heavy batterers could see the biggest increase, and batting average. Why? Because of the most shifted hitters in baseball last season,

the top 46 of them were all lefties. You have to go to number 47 to find the first right-handed batter on that list. So again, more often than not, right-ease are still shifted, but lefties are the ones that have been most extremely shifted over the past, you know, handful of years, you know, really started over the past decade or so. Scott, I know that in your article you referenced a few lefties or you switch. hitters, Mark DeShara, and Brian McCann as two examples that really stood out to you where, you know, their numbers just completely fell off once the shift became a bigger part of baseball. Yeah, and I also mentioned Albert Pooholz, who of course is a right-handed batter,

but he was the most shifted upon right-handed batter for most of his angel's career. And his batting average fell off around that same time. You know, obviously these players were all getting older because we're going forward in time, not going backward in time. And there were probably other factors. But it wouldn't surprise me if a select few players saw an increase in batting average by as much as 40 points or so because of this rule. Corey Seeger, you know, if you're just looking at a player's numbers last year when they were shifted on, not shifted on, I mean, Corey Seeger's like an outlier and he's the one everybody keeps talking about most. It was kind of a one-year phenomenon for Corey Seeger. It's why, you know, he had

been a consistent 290, 300 hitter, and then suddenly he's batting average fell off last year. And so the fact that it was just that one year, I mean, it may have been fluky for other reasons, but getting rid of the shift can only help him. I think, you know, you've heard a lot of talk about players like Joey Gallo because the shift is so extreme with him. Like, I don't know that that's the right way to do it.

I mean, Joey Gallo strikes out so much. That's the thing, yeah. He gets so few hits that aren't home runs that it's, it's hard to see it transforming his batting average. Kind of the shortcut I've taken, and it's not going to be 100% because it's a shortcut, obviously. But just going player by player,

looking at how often they were shifted on, what their numbers were on the shift, kind of a trend I've noticed is that if a player's underperforms his expected batting average, and this goes for both lefties and righties, if he underperforms his expected batting average, There's a good chance it was related to the shift because I don't believe that's accounted for in that formula. And it just seemed to be something that I saw over and over again with players like Rowdy Tellez, Christian Walker.

The two factors would be shiftability and speed. Yeah. When you're a slow player, the infield can play back further, even if it's not necessarily a shift. So, like, those are the two factors that I think most impact players under or overperforming their expected batting average. And if you want to get, you know, if you want to get into the finer details of that, you could probably come up with a more accurate list. But I just think for the layman player, if you just want to shortcut a quick guide, that's the one I'm leading on. difference between expected batting average and actual batting average, particularly if it's a, you know,

kind of a hulking, slow-footed guy like a routing to Les and Christian Walker, too, I just mentioned. I think the best way to think about this, and I'm looking at that Baseball America article that I referenced earlier, and like if you look at the league-wide numbers at the minor league level in 2021 versus 2022, it's kind of all over the place. Babbitt was up one point at AAA from one year to the next with the shift ban, three points at double A,

but it was actually down at high A and low A. So it's like it was all over the place. But one thing I think you can look at there is the league-wide trends, you're probably not going to notice like some massive difference. And then part of that is what percentage of total plate appearances would you guys guess are left-handed batterers hitting a ground ball to the pole side? Because it feels like we think it happens a lot. What percentage of what?

Total plate appearances in Major League Baseball ended last year with a left-handed batter hitting a ground ball to the pole side. I don't know what percentage of batters are left-handed. So it's 4%. I was going to say 10 to 15%. So 4%. So you think like it happens a lot. And yeah, 7,992 plate appearances last year.

7,921 plate appearances ended with a left-handed batter hitting a ground ball to the pole side. And those aren't the only batted balls that are impacted by the shift obviously. It's just to illustrate that, like, it happens a lot. You see it every game multiple times, or at least you remember it happening. But like, it's actually pretty rare. And so on the league-wide, you know, when you look at the whole numbers, you're probably going to be pretty disappointed, perhaps,

that the impact is very limited. Like, you're probably only going to see a couple of points of shift in league-wide Babbup and league-wide batting average. But those points are going to be predominantly concentrated among a handful of players. Corey Seeger and those kind of guys. Kyle Schwerber is another name. Yeah.

I think I saw the five most shifted play. The five players who had the most played appearances against shifts against the shift last season were Corey Seeger, Marcus Simeon, Matt, Matt Olson, Freddie Freeman, and Jose Ramirez. So like, you know, five guys who all signed nine-figure deals. You know, so it potentially could be very impactful for fantasy just because it could be predominantly very relevant players who are impacted as well. Yeah, I was going to point out that looking at this,

there were 19 left-handed hitters shifted over 90% of the time last season, and five names that sit out to me instantly on that list. Kyle Tucker, Kyle Schwerber, Corey Seeger, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Cody Bellinger. Those are five hitters, honestly, four hitters being drafted inside the top 100 picks, and then Cody Bellinger, he's 180 or whatever. So five hitters inside of the top 200 picks. likely all going to be drafted in each of your fantasy baseball leagues. I know reading the baseball forecaster, what they pointed out, was left-handed hitters who make a lot of contact are ones that

could also see the biggest increase. So again, Corey, senior, Kyle Tucker. They're going to be more of their plate appearance. And you've got to consider, so that's kind of what I brought up with Joey Gallo. Like, he strikes out so much. You're talking about maybe 40 plate appearances total for Joey Gallo where this actually might come into play. Right, exactly. So, and then you also got to consider how, often does this hitter put the ball on the ground? Because ones who do more often are going to be helped more than ones that do less often. Of course, that takes you to a completely new line of thinking, which is our hitters in general going to keep putting the ball in the air so much in light of these rule changes, because the fly ball revolution was a direct response to all the infield shifting

that was happening. You know, a common refrain at the time was, well, why adjust my swing to get around the shift when I can just hit it over the shift? And then, you know, more and more players were putting the ball on the air. And it paid off because the juice ball was entering play at about the same time. But now the juice ball is gone. Now the shifting is going away or at least severely limited. So I don't think it's going to be an instant change. It's going to be the kind of thing that takes place over the next few years.

But are we going to see more of a line drive focus from hitters in really? response to that because they're no longer fearing the ground ball in a way they did in the past. And if offense is going up, that means ERA and WIP are also going up. So the inverse of that is that, you know, maybe pitching is affected slightly. Again, which starting pitchers are affected? I think it's really impossible to say what I did for this exercise is I looked at a few right-handed pitchers with high ground ball rates and lower BABIPs than league average last season. And so unsurprisingly, a lot of these are the best pitchers in baseball because that's exactly why. A bad-up and a lot of ground balls is a good combination.

Yeah, and, you know, they induce a lot of weak contact too. San Diego Concert is number one on this list. 53% ground ball rate, 262 Babb. He also induces some of the weakest contact in all the baseball. So I don't know how much you could put into this, but a few other names. Corbyn's 47% ground ball rate, a 259 Babib. This one is really interesting. Zach Gallen, 46% ground ball rate, 237.

BABB. That is a really, really low BABIP, regardless of how good of a picture you are. Miles Michaelis, 45% ground ball rate, 249 Babbap, and Meryl Kelly, 43% ground ball rate, a 269 Babbup last season. Which teams shifted the most last year? There were six teams over 40%. The Dodgers, the Astros, the Blue Jays, the Mariners, the Marlins, and the twins. Seeing something like this, guys, does it maybe worry you a little bit about pitchers on those teams who have really, low babbips, Julio Reyes, Justin Verlander coming

off of the Astros, Alec Manoa, Jose Orkiti, any concern there? No, I think that's an oversimplification because a flyball pitcher like Arkiti is going to have a low babbidip, you know?

And I've brought this up on recent podcasts how, like I kind of feel like I trust my analysis of pitchers less now, too, because during the juice ball year, which lasted six years. the whole generation from a fantasy baseball standpoint,

it became easy to value ground ball pitchers over fly ball pitchers because obviously a ground ball is never going to result in home runs and home runs were being hit very easily. Well, now home runs are being hit less easily and ground balls, we think, are going to result in more hits than they did during the juice ball era. So does that mean I like fly ball pitchers more now? not exactly, but I at least have to give a Nestor Cortez more, show him more faith,

you know, Tristan McKinsey. I need to show guys like that more faith than I would have during the juice ball era when I worried all those fly balls were going to turn into home runs. The one thing I would add, though, is, you know, like we were talking about how this is likely a change, the shift change is likely something we will see more of an impact with individual hitters than at a population level. It's probably the opposite case, or at least, yeah, probably the opposite case for pitchers where because pitchers are going to see a whole population of hitters, right-handed hitters, left-handed hitters, guys who hit flyballs, all that stuff, you know, some pitchers do

tend to see more left-handed batters or right-handed batters, but generally speaking, you see much more of a mix. And so you're probably going to see a much more muted effect of the shift change on the pitcher side because they're facing the whole population of batters rather than every time Corey Seeger hits, he is a left-handed hitter who is going to get shifted. Whereas every time Julio Aureas pitches, it's not necessarily going to be a left-handed hitter who gets a significant shift. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

That does make a lot of sense. Again, there's a lot of moving parts with each of these rule changes. And again, maybe the best route is to just kind of draft how you have drafted and maybe like evaluate at the end of the season. But I think tangibly, we know a few things that are going to go up here. And it sounds like steals, batting average are going up. And as a result, we're probably going to see some ERA, some whips on the rise as well. Maybe not as great of a pitching environment as we just saw this past season. Whip more than ERA, I would say.

Yeah. And that's something. that Scott also points out in his article, which you can find at cbsports.com slash fantasy slash baseball. We went a little bit long here, but obviously there is a lot to talk about. For Scott and Chris, I am Frank, thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball today. We'll be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye.