Fantasy Baseball Today - Mock Draft MEGA STREAM - Underdog Best Ball 12-Team Mock Draft (3/16 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

Check out the Underdog Best Ball 12-Team Mock Draft as part of the Fantasy Baseball Today Mock Draft Megastream Marathon! 🏀 Join our Fantasy Baseball Today Bracket Game: https://shorturl.at/zezZC Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Get awesome Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CPTowers @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/ 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 lead. Now here's Frank Scott and Chris. We are no longer talking about the NFBC because we are moving on to Underdog. And I want to talk about some best ball drafts. And to help us do that is Brendan Tuma. Make sure to follow him on X at Tumma.

Much, Tuma. Brendan, thank you for joining us very late in the evening here to do a best ball underdog draft. How are you doing, sir? Thanks so much for having me, guys. My home league, including myself, has been listening for a long time. So it's a really cool moment to be here with you. Yeah, man. Thank you for hopping on. Again, I know it's a little late here. We're kind of delirious. We're seven hours into the mock draft megastream. And this next one we're about to do is not a mock draft either. I mean, this is a best ball. underdog draft that has a tournament component to it as well. You're playing for an overall prize and the long haul and thinking about upside and later in the season. And so we will talk about all those

things. And this will kind of act as a little best ball strategy as well because there's, there's no one better to do it than Brendan Tuma. You work at underdog. So if there's anyone that could tell us about best ball in these specific drafts, it is you. When I saw the schedule just like when you had said it was going to be later at night and just knowing, you know, you guys, as his history. I did think this was like kind of a perfect way to cap it off. It's something you can have a little bit more fun with. It's a $10 entry point if you if you're still thinking of doing the dinner. But there's a, you know, really high prize payout. So there's always that chance that if you draft the right team, then it can go really, really well. Brendan, I do have to ask you

before we get started. Do you run the underdog MLB fantasy account? Because whoever does, you're doing God's work, man. It is a great account. I had notifications turned on for it. Yeah, I've definitely been part of it. And I don't want to take credit for everything that's gone well with it, but I don't want to get blamed for things that might still be work in progress. So, yeah, no, that's definitely been a huge focus of mine since getting to underdog a few years ago. And yeah, just trying to kind of build up kind of the underdog baseball brand. And for me, a huge part of that is fantasy.

And, you know, in my opinion, in some ways we've gone out of order in terms of getting everything in the place it needs to be. but as long as I'm there, fantasy's going to remain a really big focus. I think we can all agree. Whatever's gone right is on you. Whatever's gone wrong? Not at all. I don't know if I should give him too much credit

because I believe you are a Red Sox fan, Brendan. Well, they're going to win the division, according to Frank. I am a Yankees fan, but I'm also like the eternal pessimist. So how can you not be? I mean, Garicol is done for the season. they lose Luis Heel, John Carlo Stanton, so it's been a rough go here for my Yanks.

But, you know, Red Sox's dealing with a lot of injuries too so far. Yeah, they've been a pretty interesting team to talk about, especially with the Debra stuff. I know you guys have been drafting all day basically, so I'm not sure what you've seen, but Campbell, Anthony, and May are all home tonight

in the spring breakout game. So starting to get a little bit more attention for them. Yeah, that's pretty neat. All right, let's pull up the draft lobby here in on the underdog website and uh if you're following along it's underdog fantasy.com slash lobby. I have the Dinger pull up here, which is one of their signature MLB contest. And I will tweet out the link before we get started. We haven't clicked to enter yet. I just want to talk a little bit about the format and what people should know and maybe a little

bit of best ball strategy because honestly, we need the help too. So you're you're helping us, Brendan, along with everyone else who wants to play in the Dinger contest. So what do we need to know about this contest. I guess if you want to start at the top with what is best ball, because to be honest, we don't talk much about best ball content on our show, but I know that there's a lot of people out there that play it. So I guess walk us through what is a best ball contest and then what is the dinger here on Underdog? I think a lot of people get chipped up just hearing best ball. It's a point scoring, so that makes it feel a lot different than if you're used to playing roto or categories or anything like that. But I think the best way to think

about it is just a different form of fantasy. It's like playing. in an OBP league. It's like playing in a quality starts league. There are a couple more things to get over the hump to translate it. But it's once you understand the scoring, the strategy behind it, it's just its own game. It just changes the valuation of players. Certain types of players become more valuable in best ball and especially in tournament-based best ball than are in, you know, five-by-five roto.

But, yeah, I like to think of it as it kind of exposes you to, you know, players that you otherwise might not get to and get to in other formats. Yeah, and particularly with best ball, once you draft your team, that's it. You don't do any other work after that. Your lineup is automatically set for you throughout the course of the season. They just take the highest scores every single week. And those are the points that you get. It fills out your starting lineup.

Obviously, you have bench spots and things, but it puts the players in your lineup based on who scored the most that specific week. So you are shooting for upside, but there's also no waiver wire. So you don't want to take too much injury risk because if you lose too many players throughout the course of the season, there is a luck element involved with a lot of fantasy baseball. But specifically with best ball, you just need to win the battle of attrition because there's no waiver wire. And there are 20 lineup spots, 20 roster spots, 10 lineup spots, right? Yeah. So we kept it initially, especially kind of purposely simplistic in the, in terms of the position.

So it's supposed to be like a low barrier to entry game just in terms of not needing to know. you know 12, 15, 20 deep at every position. But then I kind of think the beauty of it is within that it's accessible to everyone, but then there's multiple layers. You can go deeper if you want to. It's kind of like a really good video game where, you know, anyone can pick up and play it. But if you want to master it,

there are things that you can do to create an edge. So, yeah, that balance of, you know, upside and safety is sometimes I think one of the mistakes people make is they think, oh, I need huge upside. I need to risk it all with every single pick. but that's just going to have way too much. That team's going to have way too much volatility to actually get through and make a difference. All right, so let's go over the scoring and the lineup format

just a little bit here again before we get started. And again, so we can kind of familiarize ourselves and everyone else who might want to play in this format. So the scoring for a pitcher, you get five points for a win, five points for a quality start, three points per strikeout, three points per inning pitched, minus three, four, and earn runs. So that is it.

You're not, okay, so you're not worried about getting penalized for hits, walks. It's really just earned runs here. And you want a lot of strikeouts, too. I noticed, you know, on CBS, we get half a point for a strikeout, three points for innings pitch. So the boring innings eater type does get a little bit more value in that format. So, Brendan, you got a balance here. You want to get quality starts.

You want to get innings, but you also want to get a lot of strikeouts as well. It really is the strikeouts. If you can just picture, you know, some of the best pitching lines from a Tyler Glass now when it's, it might only be six sittings, but it's 12 strikeouts. And when you do the math, that that really does make a difference. The quality start, the win. Those are kind of like the cherries on top. But strikeouts is definitely the biggest driver. The issue that, you know, you run into, especially without waivers, is the best strikeout pitchers are usually the most injury prone.

Yeah, yeah, lots of volatility a lot of times with those starting pitchers. On the hitter side, you get three points for a single, six for a double, eight for a triple, 10 for a home run, three for a walk, three for a hit by pitch, two for RBI, two for run, and four for a stolen base. So, Chris, I know you were taking a look at this earlier and you were, you know, trying to figure it out a little bit more, the single double, triple home run. Brendan, I mean, I can imagine trying to figure out how much value to put on each of these things is kind of a work in progress and trying to figure out what works best here.

But based on this scoring format, what types of hitters should we be targeting most with this scoring format? Yeah, I think the simplest way to put is you can put all that in an auction calculator and use your favorite projection system and kind of see what it spits out and adjust it maybe on a per play to appearance basis. But I wouldn't just overall not focus too much on the exact differences between double, triple. I break it up into three things. You know, plate appearances because it's point scoring, so that drives volume.

Homers, homers are worth the most. You get the run. You get the RBI. It might be multiple RBIs. And then, you know, I don't know exactly. I'm still playing around with how I want to phrase this, but for now I'm just calling it dynamism, which is kind of this package of stolen bases, runs, doubles. It's those things kind of add up all the one.

If the poster boy I use for this is like Jaron Duran, he's not getting. Yeah, he's not getting there just from the stolen bases. You know, it's not Adibardo Mondesi, even his prime, like wouldn't be good in this format. You need the steals with the runs, with the doubles, and that kind of all adds up together. So those are kind of the three ways I break it down. Plate appearances, homers, and then, and then, yeah, whatever combination of, you know, runs, stolen bases, RBI, and doubles. And all right, so this next part is, I think, a very interesting talking point.

the roster, the starting roster each week, three pitchers, three infielders, three outfielders, and one flex, one utility hitter, basically, and then 10 players on your bench. So it's a 20 round draft. Brendan, how many pitchers versus hitters should we draft? Like, what should be, or what have you noticed is the most common or ideal breakdown of infielders, outfielders, outfielders pitchers to wind up with on a team yeah i'll give a shout out to stacking dingers there a sub stack and a youtube show that does a lot of underdog mob bestball content and they've looked back on previous years and underdog releases all the data for the tournament so if i don't have the skills but if people have good to excel or coding skills and uh can can figure that out people are

free to play with it and the most common the the short answer is that the staying pretty balanced you know 776 767 767 however it shakes out you just don't want to have you know a five in there for any of the positions and yeah there's no need to go to like nine on on any end either it's staying balances it's the boring answer but uh it just gives you a fighting chance at at every position what it does to the player pool is it makes outfield really scarce because there's so much few of them and you'll feel that like while drafting they'll start getting picked off pretty early also notably catchers just are barely going to matter. Yeah, you don't need it.

You just need three infielers. So it's, you don't need a cat. Like William Contreras will probably still be drafted just because he's still so awesome. But I can't imagine there's many other catchers besides that being drafted. I would guess Addy Rutchman's pretty good in this, in this scoring format because of the walks, because of the doubles.

But like, yeah, Yiner Diaz, he's never going to walk. He's never going to steal a base, you know? I mean, first baseman Wilson Contreras might. matter, I guess. Yeah, and it's a good one if you plug them into a rejection system, I guess as it comes out, you know, lower than you would think if you're just used to playing five-on-five roto. The only other thing I'd add to, you know, who's good in the format and

everything is sometimes all it takes is one or two weeks. So there is an element of any player can get hot for a couple weeks. And in best ball, all the monies won at the end of the season, it typically the calendar the way it lines up for us because we still end it a little bit early before the actual regular season ends, but I think it's, you know, late August, early September is where a lot of the money's won. And last year, the diamond backs were the team that were just absolutely insane guys like Eugenio Suarez, you would be good in this format.

But if you have him and he gets that hot, especially if, you know, not everyone else has him, it can be a real game changer. Yeah. So looking at the tournament schedule here, because, you know, within this best ball draft, you are looking to advance to the later rounds. try and compete for the championship. It's almost like a playoff scenario, you might say, in like a head-to-head league, but there's no head-to-head component.

You're just competing against everyone within the league. So the qualifiers are weeks 1 through 17. The quarterfinals are 18 to 19, semi-finals weeks 20 through 21, and the championships are weeks 22 to 23. And how many teams run in from each league move on to the qualifiers? It's just like the top team in each league, and then, you know, the top point scores from there just continue to advance? And this is where there's multiple layers to refer.

It's, again, meant to stay simple enough in terms of the scoring and the positions, everything. But if you do want to go deeper, you can plug those weeks into the calendar, figure out when they are who has the most games during that week. Maybe, you know, the Rockies have 10 out of 14 games at home during the finals. And that's a reason to try to put some Rockies hitters together. In terms of advancing, it's, you're testing me on the exact specifics. We have across all sports, there's, there's, different contests at advance at different rates.

So I get them mixed up. But for the most part, it's, you know, the top three. And then when you get towards the end, it's like the top two from pods move on to each round. All right, Chris. So you and I will be advancing to the quarterfinals round, right? We'll win the league, obviously. Yeah, great.

And we'll see where we go from there. I'm trying to figure out the Rockies. That was the first thing I thought of when you said that is like August, they do play. It looks like in the first. because I think the last week of the season is August 24th, if I'm reading it correctly. It's a baseball fallacy, but I feel like I try to get at least one Rocky on every bestball team just because they can have huge games when they're in Corrus Field, right? So why not? I mean, there's not many teams on there, not many players on our team were drafting, but Brenton Doyle for sure. Yeah, it was like he would be in the mix there. Oh, is there anyway first to guarantee that we're in the same draft, Brendan? Because that was.

something I kind of worried about. Chris wants to draft his own team as well. So we were going to I think just both, both try to enter. I mean, it's one of those things that the, the, contest just they start once there's like 12 people there. And so, uh, I guess if there was 11 right now and you both tried to join, but I think, yeah. There's no, there's no guarantee. I am going to tweet the link out now for those watching us if you want to try and, uh, I would try you guys get in and then you can share the link maybe one, uh, oh, go ahead. Yeah, let's do that. but I do want to, there's one schedule note I want to point out. On three.

One, two, three. Woo. Are we in? Are we in together? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it seemed like there was only three or four people when I got in this draft.

So, mine just filled. Is this, Frank? This is your screen that's up right now? Yeah, my screen. Oh, we're in it together. Yeah. Oh, look at that. We both have a top three pick. Nice. All right. All right. Let's go. What were you going to ask, Chris? Oh, I was going to say that I don't know if we've talked about the Ray's schedule, but they're playing something like 45 of their first 65 games at home. Yeah. And so they're not going to be at Steinbrenner very often late in the season during that that playoff stretch for this. So that's one thing to keep in mind is those raise hitters that were. boosting up may not benefit as much from the schedule as we are expecting.

I'll try to pull up this draft board view as much as possible, but whenever I'm picking, I'll obviously have to come back over here, figure out who I want. Brendan, you mentioned 776 is the most likely breakdown. Oh, no, 766. So, yeah, that's 7.7. 7, 76. Why can't I do math?

Yeah, man. I mean, the race only played eight home games in August. total it feels like it probably makes more sense for one of those sevens to be pitchers right just because there's so much volatility yeah most the most common strategy is is to kind of wait on pitching uh even more so than we're seeing in in in rhodo leagues this season uh and so what that does is because if you didn't spend your early draft capital on and chris you know you're up right oh yeah uh Carewax get auto drafted, dude.

That's okay. It's not a bad auto. I had Aaron Judge Q'd. It's fine. Oh, really? Over Otani. Yeah, I think so. Is that wrong?

I did not. I didn't get the chance to... I did the auction calculator. That's what ATC told me to do. I'm just going to listen to Ariel Cohen. So what does ATC say to take Soto or Bobby Witton's format? It says Soto. And outfield is tougher.

I don't know. It feels a little dirty, though. Brendan, what do you think? Soto or Bobby Witt? I think you'll feel a lot better later on if you take the outfielder now. Yeah, I think that's probably the move. So as much as it pains me to say, as a Yankee fan who lost Juan Soto to those cross-town New York Mets.

Yeah, not something I would typically do in like a points league or categories league, but based on this specific format. And even Corby and Carroll went ahead of Bobby Witt Jr. as well. So that is interesting to see here. Corby Carroll was off to an awesome start in spring before he just felt with the back. And I mean, he's fine now. He's playing in games. But yeah, how do I put?

Yeah, Witt. The thing for him is he doesn't walk very much. Right. And so that dings him a little bit in points, but he also has a very low strikeout rate for his skill set. So in a typical points league, he probably gets boosted a little bit more because of that. Here, because you don't lose points for strikeouts,

it doesn't matter quite as much, I think. All right, Bobby, let's go with the fifth pick and then L.E. De La Cruz. Go ahead, Brendan. I was just going to add to the tough part too about the walks is, is sometimes the guys who walk a lot, though, they're just statues on the bases. And it's tough then to really get the amount of,

but it's the same thing. If you're just a speed guy, you're not doing enough with, you know, power to get doubles to get Homer and all that. So it's really like I kind of try to view it through those three pillars of played appearances, homers,

and then everything else kind of jumbled together. And it's preferred when, when someone has two out of the three of those. Mm-hmm. Next couple of picks, Kyle Tucker and Yordon Alvarez. And yeah, that feels a little bit earlier than we're used to seeing Yordaun Alvarez. But again, I think people wanting to grab outfielders, it does make sense there. Let us know in the YouTube chat.

If there's anyone else that's in this best ball draft. If you have one, I will pull up your comment on the screen and we'll talk about it. Frank Chris, I'm in with you. Not so silent majority one. You are here with us. Not sure what the, uh... What the team name is. Yeah, but...

Maybe it's Tommy Salami. That's my name. Who's just sick Jose Ramirez. Gunner Henderson as well. I mean, this has been a theme all spring, and I've been asking people all day long, Brendan, but any concern about Gunner Henderson dealing with the intercostal strain? He's working his way back.

He's uncertain for opening day, or do you think around ninth pick makes sense for Gunner Henderson? I think if you're only playing, you know, one draft sort of thing, I'm the type who in round one. I just don't want any sort of interest. risk, especially something that was suffered this month. But in best ball, I think it's, you know, this is the type of format to just keep thinking about the outcome when everything goes right for a player. And I definitely, you know, especially if I had multiple drafts, I'd want to get,

you know, some exposure to Gunner for sure. All right. After Gunner, Jose Ramirez, Vlad Jr., Julio Rodriguez, and Jackson Truro at the turn. So getting the outfielder's there. Brandon, what do you think is more beneficial to get a seventh outfielder or a seventh infielder? Because I think seven pitchers make sense. Yeah, I think it comes back to where you spent your draft capital early. If you do start your draft with three straight outfielders, maybe you then only end it with six. And if you're playing catch up in infielders, it might make sense to grab that extra one. So that's kind of the way that I try to think about it.

I think there's eventually going to be a cliff, a clear cliff with outfielders. And at that point, you don't want to keep chasing them up the boards. And again, that's why it'll always just feel the most comfy if you take care of outfield fairly. All right. After Truro at the turn, Francisco Lindor, Jaron, Fernando Tatis Jr. And Mookie bets, that feels a little bit lower than seeing Mookiei. He goes 17th overall here. But he's only an infielder, right?

So there's no dual position eligibility. That's correct. Gotcha. And Mookie expected to play shortstop this season. so that does make sense to have him as an infielder. Kyle Schwerber has out. Yeah, that's the big change. Yeah, Matt Olson.

You know, worth mentioning didn't bring this up earlier. There's no, well, there is just a flex spot, but Otani counts as an outfielder in this league. He does not play outfield, obviously. But I guess if you were going to give him a position, yeah, like how do you decide that, Brendan? It's, I guess, a little bit. A lot of it ends up out of our control,

and it's never as simple as it seems like it should be. but in the case for Otani is that the position is supposed to be outfield slash DH. So like OZuna is, you know, still like the outfield slash GH, Swarber and Otani gets lumped in with that as well. But every now and then there's a position that, you know,

we'll slip through where it might have cases for multiple options. All right. I am on the clock. The last two picks Ozuna and Rooker who do have outfield eligibility here. And thinking about a few different things, there's still some really awesome infielder that are coming up. I'm going to go ahead and I think take

Jackson Merrill so I could get another outfielder on my team. Acuna has higher ADP, but the report today might not be back until mid-May. Again, once you draft, there's no waiver wire here. You've got to wait six weeks,

and that's assuming there's no setback for Ronald Acuna. He's one of those players, I guess, where if you're thinking the long game and you're trying to compete later in the season, if he comes back and he's a Kuna, then, I mean, he's a league winner in a best ball draft.

but you talk to me into it you don't have to you don't have to twist my arm uh so you wound up doing that chris and and you have judge and acunia so two outfielders uh the pick between us was freddie freeman uh and your backup the busiest eye of spring trainings on the board for you oh let's do skeins yeah why not means that it will be interesting i've i've done two other underdog bestball drafts and pitching falls really far that i've noticed so uh yeah i know i know attempting it is like Terrick Scuba is here in round three, which you almost never see. But yeah, I think there's going to be really good pitchers that are going to be up later on in the draft. So they did not let me get Bryce Harper in the last draft, which means I'm going to go ahead and do it here.

Bryce Harper, one of my favorite players in the league who has just been awesome for so long. And he's sitting in the middle of one of the best lineups in baseball with the Phillies. And oh, that's something I wanted to ask you out, Brendan, stacking teams. So I think the Phillies lineup is going to be awesome once again. Is that a viable strategy? I took Bryce Harper. Maybe I just load up on a bunch of Phillies later on as well. You definitely want to stack.

And what I would encourage to do is just to try to always think of it, you know, one or two levels deeper. What I mean by that is a lot of people think of their stacks early on getting, okay, I have Matt Olson and Austin Riley. I have Jordan Alvarez and Jose Altuvei. But everyone's going to have that at some point, you know, in the tournament. And so I think what you want to do, is get a little bit unique in the middle to late round.

So again, I keep referencing the Diamondbacks from last season, but in the in-season contest for MLB best ball, it was won by a team that had, I think it was like Catell, Euhaneo Suarez, and Jock Peterson, which was kind of a random collection of, you wouldn't think of that as like a stack that you set out to make, but the Diamondbacks were just so hot. And Jock and Suarez, nobody else had them,

especially tied to Cattel. So, yeah, so that's kind of the, way I would think about it. I would try to attack it in the middle and late rounds to round out a stack. All right. I'm looking up and down the board right now to see. So team five has Osuna and Austin Riley together so far. So I mean, I think the Braves are obviously an awesome team to stack if you wanted to do that. Team seven has Kyle Schwerber and Trey Turner together. So picking up the Phillies. Yeah, a little bit of a conscious decision there. I don't see anything else stackable so far. So, I mean, my first three picks Soto, Meryl, and Harper. Padres, I don't,

I don't think there's huge lineup upside. Maybe in the top half, it could be pretty good. But the Mets and Phillies are two teams that I could definitely see myself stacking at some point throughout this draft. Yeah, it's the type of thing if you're between just making it up like a Viantos and another similar player, because you have Soto, that could be a reason to take him sort of thing. And yeah, I think already trying to, the way you were, just thinking through who are the middle to late round options that you might be able to get with the stacks you've already started is the right way to go about it. A couple of picks here after I took Harper, Teoscar Hernandez, Austin Riley, Terrick Scouble, Trey Turner, Michael Harris, James Wood, and Anthony Santander. If 80P and picks look crazy in this, again, it's just remember it's a different format. There are different scares.

Completely different. So it's going to be different ADP than you're used to seeing in a standard draft. So I'm curious to your guys thoughts on this because again, like this draft is playing out, you know, even more, a little bit more towards the extreme ends in terms of how few pitches are being taken. And I mean, thinking about this, again, just with, you know, traditional fantasy and head-to-head categories leagues right now as well is, I just wonder where that point is where the pitchers get pushed down too far, kind of, if you guys, I know, play a little bit of football too, but kind of like, what happened with the running backs this year,

where it just felt like the industry pushed it down too far. And I think being conscious of trying to find that point where that happens, and it becomes a real value is going to be really important, not just this year, but the next couple of years. And I think that, you know, the research that I've done has suggested that the pitcher and running back comp works out really well. The way the positions play, how fungible the positions are,

how much they get hurt, how much their success depends on things outside of their own control, means that the way both positions tend to work is the high-end guys, the guys who have done it multiple years in a row, are way more valuable. It's not like a linear drop-off in terms of value. The high-end guys are up here. There's a steep drop,

and then kind of everyone else is very flat. And so, you know, I don't know specifically how that impacts this format, just because I don't have a lot of experience with this scoring system. But that's what my research has shown on pitching as a whole. And I do think, like this year for fantasy football, like you said, clearly everyone went too far in fading running backs. And if you were the person who took Saquan Barkley, took Derek Henry, like, it worked out really, really well for you. So, yeah, I'm a- So there's going to be a pivot point at some point. And, yeah, like this draft that I'm seeing play out in real time here is, it feels very extreme. Yeah, I mean, there's only been, I believe, two starting pitchers taken.

Yeah, Sack Wheeler is still there in the fourth round. And I'm probably not going to take him. That noise I made was jazz going. I don't typically target him, but I was going to take him in this format. I'm going to take someone else I don't typically target, and that is O'Neill Cruz, who I do think still has a lot of upside. From a season-long perspective, I worry about some of the floor things and not hitting lefties and strikeouts and too many ground balls.

But I also recognize the upside is still massive. And so if it comes together here, you know, I think he's like 26 years old, whatever it might be, there's still massive ups. upside on like a weekly basis. So being able to to garner some of that, not the best lineup. So I don't think I'm going to be stacking the pirates lineup at any point. But yes, I'm willing to take an O'Neill Cruz in a format like this compared to the normal standalone format. So at the next pick was Adoles Garcia. Chris, you selected Brian Reynolds. I haven't started stacking yet. And then Ozzy Albies is your is your next pick. So you do have a stack. Chris, you have Braves. You have a Coonia and Albies.

Oh, there you go. We got a stack. A stacking expert right here. This is the point where I'm hoping to start a pitcher run and I might just wind up not timing this out correctly. But the fact that Zach Wheeler is there in the fifth round and there are so many picks between now and my next pick, I'm going to take Zach Wheeler and hope that it does start a bit of a pitching run and then maybe some other hitters fall back to me here. Garrett Crochet did go right before you though. Yeah. And look, he has about as much upside as. anyone, right? Like, we talked about this, Chris, from a skills perspective, is there a huge difference between Crochet and Paul Skeins? Not last year. Crochet had the best K-minus walk ratio in baseball. Well, let's ask the Red Sox fan. Rendon, how do you feel about Garrett Crochet, his ability to stay

healthy, which he, you know, he did last year, but we'd never seen like a full 160, 170 inning season out of him. How do you think, what do you think about that ability and how the Red Sox will use him. Will he just be used like an ace starter and they let him go, you know, six, seven innings out every time? I think scuba really changed my perception last year because I viewed him as going into last year. I don't know if he can say healthy. Same thing with Regens. It doesn't mean it always works out. But crochet, the fact that he never got hurt to end last year makes me feel really good about him entering this year. And he hasn't been signed to an extension yet. That's been a bit of a storyline around the Red Sox. But the way I kind of read his

intent and why he hasn't yet is he really does think of himself as someone capable of handling whatever an ace level workload is considered nowadays. And I think he kind of sees some of the money that's been done around in free agency and realizes he's only two years away. And he might be betting a little bit on himself with that. After I took Zach Wheeler, we are starting to see some pitchers go, Dylan C's, Logan Gilbert. There is Brenton Doyle, Sayas Suzuki, Christian Yelich, and Corbin Burns. If I didn't take Wheeler, I would have taken another outfieler, probably say it Suzuki or Brenton Doyle just getting exposure to those home games in Cores Field. Alex Bregman is next up.

That team also has Jaron Duran, so that seems pretty conscious trying to get that Red Sox stack. I think the Red Sox lineup could just be awesome this season. Brendan, you know, we keep asking you Red Sox question, so I'll go back to it. Feels like there's been a lot of drama this offseason with the Red Sox between Devers doesn't want to play third base. they bring in Alex Bregman. I saw there were some comments from Tristan Kossis about how he openly said in a press conference, like, I don't think the prospect should be on the opening day roster, which I thought was kind of an interesting comment coming from him.

He's kind of a young player himself. It's not like he has like that much, you know, ground or, you know, that much say in the Red Sox organization. So just lots of drama. What is your takeaway with the Red Sox this off season? I think you add to it to just the general angst from the fan base. the past few years. And so there's a lot of energy. And it's a lot of like mixed energy,

I would describe it coming into the year. I do think the, especially the way spring training's played out with, with Cole and Grayson Rodriguez and maybe Gunnar Henderson, the Yale East feels really open or especially you combine that with how late in the game Bregman signed. And now what, you know,

the expectation is kind of going to be reinforcements from Anthony and Campbell and that sort of thing. And the Red Sox have had a few minor injuries as well. the division does feel open in general, and it's one of those things. I think if they're winning, you know, all that goes away pretty quickly, and especially in Boston. All right. After Corbyn Burns back in round five, there was Bregman, Randy Rosa Rana, Cole Riggins,

and then round six, Luis Robert, Jr. Camerro, Brandon Nimmo, C.J. Abrams, Jose Altuvae, Chris Sale. so still not as many pitchers as I thought would be gone. I mean, there was some that went, but only five. went between, you know, my previous pick and now. So I thought maybe there would be more pitchers going. This is where, again, Chris, going back to the running back analogy and kind of where that pivot point was this season.

But to me, the hitters that I'm seeing coming up on the draft board are starting to feel pretty flat. They're starting to feel pretty similar to each other production that might be able to be cobbled together, you know, strategically later in the draft. And this is where there's still some pitchers that feel like they can be separators. Yeah, I think one of them just went off the board, Blake Snell. Blake Snell, who on a per-star basis still has massive, massive upside here. So outfield is starting to thin out a little bit.

And I'm going to shoot for a little upside here. And I'm going to take Dylan Cruz to pair with my Juan Soto and Jackson Meryl. So two second-year players, you know, not the safest floor, I guess you could say. But shooting for some upside, I still don't have any stacks going on unless you want to count my Zach Wheeler and Bryce Harper does that count as a stack the season? No, I don't think so. But maybe if Bryce Harper hits a home run, it helps Zach Leeler get a win. Galaxy brain thinking right there.

If the Phillies just get super hot as a team, they go on a 12-game win streak during the best ball finals. There you go. Yeah, I guess that's one way to think about it. Yeah, it does start to feel like the hitters are flattening out here. But just taking a look at outfield, it's it gets a little. gross. It gets a little gross here. Yeah, and that's where you start talking yourself into, again, just, and this is kind of, in my

opinion, part of the fun of basketball, too, is talking yourself into all I need is, you know, this player to have a few hot weeks during the season. So he makes my lineup those weeks. And hopefully maybe, you know, some of those hot weeks happened during the playoffs. All right, I am on deck. Chris at the turn, you took Jason Dominguez and Marcus Semyon. So you still only have one pitcher, right? That's Paul Skeens. Yeah, still just skeins. Okay.

Have you, do you have any other stacks so far outside of your, oh yeah, you got Dominguez and touch together. That's cool. Yeah, that's why I took Dominguez there. It was right around an ADP. It was about to take Castellanos to go with Bryce Harper. I opted to take Cruz because I figured if I didn't take him, would you have taken him, Chris, if Cruz was there?

Yeah, I was looking at him and Dominguez and Cruz. Brandon, I did want to ask you about, um, you know, the pitching thing. Oh, I'm not time out. William. Is the pitching being pushed back more a product of something inherent to best ball? Or is it that like, is it because like a random two start pitcher who's low end could very well outscore Blake Snell if he has one start and so it's not worth paying up? Or is it something specific to the scoring of this?

tournament or or is it a little bit of both it's it's definitely multi-layered i think uh at a table stakes level the pitchers just don't score as much as the hitters on a season long level so the the first quote unquote round like the regular season of best ball is however many months four months and so it's it's all points based and it's cumulative points so the the highest scoring hitters are going to out produce the highest scoring pitchers so that's the table stakes level This contest started in 2021, I think, was the very first one. It was a lot smaller back then. It's gone bigger each year.

But the data shows now that we do have five years of data, it's not, you know, a ton. But people quickly figured out that consistently taking pitchers in the second, third, fourth round was just not advantageous. And then so there's that narrative to it too. And then I just feel like during prime draft season, all we ever hear about, there are some hitter injuries, of course. but it's the pitcher injuries that are out for the year. If you were drafting these teams in February and you took a decent amount of

Garrett Cole, it's just, you know, that's the case for any format of fantasy, but again, without having the waivers of the ability to replace them. So is there a true fear, I feel like, of taking any early investment in pitchers? And I do know that there are, you know, there are a lot of drafters who might probably start now, but especially the final week leading up to the year, try to come late to the game on pitching and push it up that final week when you can feel a little bit better that they made it through spring training healthy.

Because that's the time when injuries happen the most is spring and early April. And so if you make it through there, you're not out of the woods by any means, but you're, you know, you've passed the most risky point of the, the air.

But yeah, something like 40% of starting pitchers will go on the IL in any given season. And so just if you draft seven starters, you should expect three of them to go on the IL at some point. And that's, you know, if it happens at the wrong time, you don't have a lot of alternatives on your roster. Brendan, I would like to put in a formal request to add a catcher position because I got William Contreras, unfortunately, with my auto pick. You know, it's a 30 second clock so i think that's a good kind of teaching point it goes fast you got to have to be ready to go and i kind of got caught off guard because i wanted nick casinos to do that philly stack and

and he was for my money i i love william even in this format he's probably the only catcher that can hang maybe adly the plate appearances for the others are just really low that said you know salvador prez can get hot for a couple weeks you can get really hot for a month again if that happens for the finals like you still want salvador prez even though he might not have been a great process just by thinking through the playing time. But anyways, William plays so much that he still, he makes it work for this format. Last year he got off to that great start in the in-season contest. He was going in like the third round.

So I think, you know, there's a case to be made that you got him even at a little bit of a decent value. All right. You're welcome on whenever you want to come on. You like my picks. You like my auto picks. That's great. And, you know, I missed time the pitcher run by one turn because I took Zach Wheeler in round five. And then it was here in

rounds, what do we, seven and eight where a bunch of pitchers are off the board here. So, and it kind of sucks because I wanted to take a picture when I, when I got auto picked William Contreras, I was just, I was talking and I wasn't making picks. And so that's, too much yapping. Too much yapping. We've done a lot of that today, Chris, you know, a lot of yapping. Buddy. You know, I am looking at it and like,

when did you take, you, you, you, you, took jazz, right? No, I wanted to take jazz, but I was one pick. He was round four, I believe. Okay, yeah, I'm thinking like maybe jazz instead of skeins to have that jazz uh, Dominguez

judge stack might might feel a little better, but you know what? I'm doing it, man. I'm doing it. On a per star basis. I'm taking Jacob Cromch in round eight. I mean, it's crazy. Like, I might not, I might only get two or three starts out of him. But if I'm shooting for the upside at this point, it's all the other

pitchers I'm looking at here, like, Roki Sasaki is the same ADP. It's like, how many innings am I going to get from Roki Sasaki? And there are other guys, like solid pitchers that I can get later. So I think I could just build some safety around Jacob de Grom where even if he's, if he's out for the entire season, if I can, you know, build safe around him, then I'll feel right about about that one. Yeah. And all that talk about, you know, limiting his innings early. well, that's certainly less of a concern when you're talking about, you know, if he's limited early, okay, that's not great.

But if he's fine in August and they're letting him go six innings and he's dominating, that could work out well too. Yeah, Outfield's getting a little rough here, man. I just took a look at Outfield and, you know, we're up to Outfielder 42 in ADP. So again, you know, just put that in perspective. It's, you know, guys like Lane Thomas and. Jorge Salare that we're looking at drafting in round nine, but you know, you need to wind up with seven of them or six of them by the end of the draft. And so I understand why this happens,

why they're getting pushed up the board. Go ahead, Brendan. I felt like you wanted to say something. I cut you off. No, I can talk while you pick. This is where I kind of think the little microedges start coming into play. And I think there's a certain element of always wanting to whatever draft room you're in a draft applet you're working off of to respect ADP or the default rankings at some point, but I've been outspoken about it. I think a lot of underdog drafters, as you can tell, from the draft where they really understand the macro dynamics of outfield or versus pitcher in particular. But I don't always think that the ADP in terms of the player evaluations comes out in the right order. So like when you pulled up outfield just now and seeing, you know,

Lane Thomas and Jorge Saler kind of back to back, like I just think that's, that's so wrong and that Lane Thomas isn't even in the stream stratosphere. So like there is an element of nailing the positions, but I sometimes think, uh, you know, just a pure like player eval perspective to underdog is, would work really well, uh, as well. Yeah, no, I think that totally makes sense. And I did take Jorge Saler, which is, this is much earlier than we're used to seeing him go. I mean, I took him 99th overall. But, uh, for me, it's just, uh, the opportunity cost. Like if I wait until later, what, what did the outfielder is going to look like? It's just, I know it turns into a lot of platoon bats and things. And I still do like Jorge

layer and he's looked good this spring and you know if he gets hot he's one of these guys that can blast like 30 plus home runs so looking for that i don't have any stacks yet so that's that's kind of feels like a problem chris i saw you took jake burger to go along with your marcus semyon early on early on yeah i've got three stacks in progress i don't know if i'm overthinking it but that that's where i'm at right now i probably reached for burger a little bit relative to ADP as well, but, you know, maybe, maybe it'll work out. Look, I'm, I'm learning. I'm, I'm along for the ride here as well. Brendan, be honest, what do you think about my Jacob Grom pick? Is this the right time to take a shot or is it just good? Yeah, I think that's actually

what made me first think of the ADP comment and not even the outfield is because Glass Now is another who just went even like a full round later, but we talked early on about, you know, prioritizing strikeouts and just those starts where it's, you know, a 12 strikeout game sort of thing. And to see guys like DeGrom go after, I'm trying to look at the list here, but just like a Nola type or even a Pablo Lopez, I just,

I feel like the true de Grom ceiling and in this format, you know, you're playing to win $100,000, not just, you know, $10 sort of thing. And so, yeah, I do like the, that range of DeGrom and I think sale went late, like sale to Grom glass now.

in the middle rounds is all those guys are live for me. Yeah. All right. After I took Horace O'Halear, there were a ton of picks, Roki Sasaki, George Kirby, who's dealing with the shoulder, Jordan Westberg, A. Eugenio Suarez, Tyler Glass now, Hunter Brown, lots of pitchers going down. Lane Thomas, Freddie Peralta, Elliot Ramos,

Sandy Alcantara. Sandy. Tell me about it. Stowe. Shota Imanaga, Luis Castillo, and Ezekiel Tovar. So another Rocky. I was actually considering Tovar. Yeah, for those home games, man.

Yeah. I get it. It feels for Imanaga. I wonder if people are just kind of scared off by his spring has not been so great and his velocity was down the other day. So I wonder if people are getting a little scared off by Imanaga. Probably a little bit of that, yeah. Yeah.

What were you going to say, Brendan? Now I'm trying to remember what I was going to say. Oh, the, the Rockies, another ballparky's. parks. It's just kind of thinking through the underdog format and those positive run-scoring environments. It's forced me to dig, you know, a little bit deeper into the baseball savant and park factors and trying to figure out. Like I think the, we talk all the time about Rockies and I've just been surprised, like looking at like Red Sox, for example, is pretty favorable home offensive environment, but it just, I don't know, I don't feel like it always gets the,

I feel like the Rockies get all the talk for, for hitting and the Mariners maybe for pitching. I think even just knowing the top three or four can help inform some decisions for some run scoring environments. And Fenway is the second best hitting park in baseball. And it's not Cores, obviously. Coors is on a different level. But in terms of the overall inflationary effect on offense, Fenway's not that far off. It's a really great place to hit. It just is weirdly not a super great.

place for power, especially for left-handed hitters, but it has a hugely impactful effect on batting average specifically. Chris, you're up, by the way. I don't want you to miss out on your picks there. I'm continuing my Yankee stack. Let's go. Paul Goldschmidt, he's looked great so far, and you've got him, Dominguez, and Judge. And then I'm thinking, I'm going. Pretty unique stack. I don't know how many people are going to have judge domingez goldie i mean that's a that's a pretty random combination yeah where they fall in the draft though it ended up working out okay because it was like you know judge obviously at the top but then dominos was like 70 something i got him right at aty p i think yeah goldschmidt was a very slight discount uh relative to adp and

the fact that that worked out with uh with a little stack i think is a is a nice bonus I wonder if maybe I'm going to be overdoing it with pitchers here, but I'm going to go ahead and take my fourth pitcher. So I took Bryce Miller and Bailey Ober here. And I don't have to worry about those eight earned run outings from paleover, which happened from time to time. And my thinking with Bryce Miller is the home road splits. So at home, he has these awesome dominant starts in Team Mobile Park.

So I'm thinking I can get some big starts with that. And I don't have to worry about starting. when he's on the road. If he has a bad start, they'll just throw someone else into my lineup. So I do take Bailey Ober and Bryce Miller there to kind of supplement my, my Jacob de Grom risk. And there's just, A, not many hitters that are standing out to me at this point, but I'm sure they're only going to get worse as the draft goes on. And nobody from the teams that I need. Everyone's got all the Mets and the Phillies already. I think I missed out on all my stackable players. It's honest things.

This is where you, you know, some would say you might have to do something gross and work in a backstack of an offense that, you know, you might not have any early round players of, but maybe there's a team out there where there's at least two to three that you like grabbing late and you can kind of boost the value of all of them. You know, on his own, I'm trying to think of a ramps example, but like on his own, Josh Lowe might not be your favorite pick,

but if you get, you know, Josh Lowe, and Christopher Morrell, that could be something that you can put together late sort of thing. Yeah, no, that's a pretty good point there. Lots of pitcher is going off the board. Let me pull up the draft board so people could see and follow along. After I took over, there was Jung Hu Lee, Royce Lewis, big upside if he could stay healthy.

Sunny Gray, Tanner Bybee, Shane O. Mack, Shane McClannahan, and Robbie Ray, who this ring has just been awesome. Eight strikeouts. again here on Thursday. He's learned the change up grip from Terrick Scuba. I think it's 17 strikeouts to zero walks is what I. That's awesome. I saw earlier today. Brendan, are you buying in on the Robbie Ray, I guess, re-breakout this season? I'm a huge sucker for for new pitchers or, you know, all the reports of, you know, like the Clay Holmes example where he's working on everything new and

You're seeing the buzz from, you know, Lance Brzdowski and TJ stats for every start they make. And it makes me feel like I need to get more of them whenever I see those posts from those guys. And so, so yeah, the way I try to view it is I try to make my rankings before spring training starts. And then I will move guys up or down a little bit if there's buzz around them. And that kind of signals to me, I might just need to draft him a little bit earlier than I was expecting. but just trying not to then, you know, overreact. And I feel like when, whenever I'm making rankings, you know, during spring training or during training camp those times,

it's that's where I find I end up overreacting. All right. The latest picks here we have, I'm not up right. No, not even close. All right. So lots of pitchers have been going. There was after Robbie Ray, Kevin Gosman, Lordus Grayel,

Vinnie Pee, Vinnie Pasquantino, Michael Tolia, Danesby Swanson, Seth Lugo, Nick Povetta, Grace and Rodriguez, okay. Interesting timing there. 100s 30. And he's healthy by August, right? Yeah.

Chris, how do you feel about passing on so many pictures at this point? You only have Paul Skeen still, right? Yeah, I mean, it's just when you look at like the projections, everybody's really still within like the 800 to 900 point range. Whereas Skeens was in, you know, and projections aren't everything, but Skeens was like 1200. And so that I think is that there's still a decent amount of viable starting pitchers. And I think I'm okay with it so far, but we'll see.

All right. It was really common. Oh, sorry, I was just going to mention it was really common last year when Strider was going, I think he was going even earlier than Skeens, but like to take Strider and then basically say to yourself, he's making my pitching lineup every week. And then the math changes, then you only need two more pitchers. Yeah.

Yeah. I wanted to take Josh Lowe and he just went. So I was thinking about doing exactly what you brought up, Brendan, and trying to build that backdoor Tampa Bay Array stack. But there goes Josh Lowe. You know, I think in Swamp-Renner Field, it could be a big bounceback season for him. I'm going to go ahead and get my stack here and pair Alec Bohm with. I was going to mention Bome for you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm thinking about if there's any other players that I can kind of find to put together. I've got four, four, four, four, four, four infielders, four outfielders, four pitchers. I have no idea if that's what it should be. I mean, obviously, there's balance at this point in the draft, but if you look at the outfielder, like the top name is Matt Walner. So it's, uh, that's not great.

Not the best. Those guys are the toughest for me. The lefties that get, it's not just that they, sit against lefties is that they might get pinch hit for midgame and just trying to trying to project what that does to weekly volume it makes it really hard yeah yeah i totally get that i was thinking about doing that too chris i was actually trying to get a pitcher there and timed out i didn't get to it in time but i got let's back it up no uh yeah i was going to take no one jones and maybe kind of build out a a little rocky stack here for when they're at home

but that will not be the case. All right, let's see if there's anyone in the outfield. Yeah, I was disappointed to see Michael Toglia go because my plan was a Tolia Nolan Jones stack there. You know, you could argue that's not the best stack, not the best plan, but I liked it. You can, I know you're up right now, Frank, but another time when you have more of a stack in that little search bar,

you can type in, you know, Phillies. Oh, okay, I was wondering. whatever it is. Yeah, that would have been. Now you tell us, Brendan. I went ahead and took Garrett Mitchell. I got William Contreras early on, so trying to build out maybe some of the brewers,

some of the Phillies here on this team. I don't know if there's any others left. I guess, you know what? Let's try that function. Let's see what we could do here. So Phillies. You got Stott still out there? Yeah.

You got... Good pitchers. Oh, all right. I don't want to say his name. This guy right here. I don't know. So maybe he'll be a late round pick for me. What else?

I've got Mets. Yeah, a lot of their best guys are gone. Oof. All right, Metsag, you're out the window. It's Swan Soto by himself. Who are some of my other top picks? I got O'Neill Cruz, a Pirates. Oof, yeah, that's not happening either.

I think Brewers might be a sea. There's, I just took Garrett Mitchell. Yeah, there's not a lot. Yeah. I mean, man, if you could get Reese Hoskins hot at the right time. Philly's might be your best bet based on those options. And the fact that I missed out on a lot of their big names, it does make it, I guess, kind of unique.

The Philly snack that I would have. Chris, what's going on, man? Who's getting locked up in the back? Look, there's a hospital not far. We made it through most of the day with only like one or two. So, yeah, I think we set the over under on sirens during the stream at like, 14 and a half. And I think the under,

we've got to figure this stuff like. I've got jack hammers going on during the day. Sirens going on at night. So, yeah. Another just pro tip, sorry, if you want,

you can cue those Phillies guys just so they're always right there for you if you want them. I guess you're streaming. So everyone would be able to see it. But I'm not another time. That's why I didn't do it. I thought about like putting guys in the queue earlier, but I figured they're just going to take it.

all the guys they want so this might not be the best idea uh all right what other teams do i have anything else good podres i can look into the podres i think a lot of their good guys are gone though nationals angels what did you just ooh chris i had literally added jonathan india to my cue two seconds before he got picked uh nationals by the way there's some guys yeah not the most exciting but some some of it too like the feel You mentioned not having their top guys, and it's impossible to do in the moment, but I think that a lot of the best basketball players are able to do this. They kind of suspend belief and say, okay, you might not have all the best Phillies guys,

but what if you get to August and Schwabers down, but the rest of them are all going nuts. And in this case, not having Schwabber is actually a plus for you. And so it's those type of things that you can't even project right now, but when you look back at a winning lineup, it all seems so obvious in that sense. So I think just trying to get as much positive inertia on your team as you can. And I think stacking is one way to do that and then just kind of let the chips fall where they may. Gosh, his ADP is so low. I don't think I should take him now.

Who's that? I can't tell you. You pick before I do. You know what? It doesn't feel great. I don't think I want to do that. Like should I take Luis Arise with Jackson? and Merrill like Luis a rise in a best ball draft like uh yeah it's one of those things like if

like uh if you played one best ball draft i probably wouldn't but is there a scenario in in august where it's it's a rise and marrow at the top of the lineup going nuts um could be yeah i mean just for a week sort of thing i can feel like a rise and and uh bogarts here and just kind of stack up the Padres, but, I don't know. It doesn't. All right. Who are here for pitchers? Is anyone exciting?

I like myself some Lazzardo, some strikeout upside there. Yeah, he's the guy. Let's go with Hazes Lazzardo. Although that is a little, it's injury risk with Jacob de Grom, but I've got some other, I've got Wheeler and Bryce Miller and. DeGron. Oh, yeah. So I think my last two pitchers probably should be maybe some pretty safe kind of boring guys,

but you know per game strikeout upside with Lazardo there Evan Carter the next pick Chris was gonna take him yeah there you go I was gonna take him I'm gonna go with a different and you know what I think this is such a fun team to stack this year too like if their lineup gets back on track and you've got Sammy Ann and Berger and Peterson that could be fun I agree that's that's what I've got I've got Semyon burger and Peterson is that I have another one or that's just those three. Okay, I got those three.

Yeah. He's really low down the list, but I do want to take him for the stack. And I'm going to go ahead and take Max Kepler. I think he's going to have a big year too. He's looked good so far in spring. He's healthy. Scott was talking about swing adjustments that he's made so far this offseason. And I think he's going to be in every player.

I don't think he's going to sit against lefties or at least that's the expectation. They have Brandon Marsh too. And I really don't think he will play against lefties. So they can't platoon everybody. That's just, you know, that's the fact of the matter here. So I pulled them up, but I'm trying to get some Phillies action here. I've got Bryce Harper, Alec Bohm, and Max Kepler here on the same team. Brendan, what do you think is like the max, or maybe there's probably not a right answer to this,

but what's like the min max on how many players you would stack on the same team? Like, do you think you should get at least three if you're going to do it? Like, can you go as many four or five? what do you think is kind of that sweet spot? Yeah, there's still, I think, more just time needed to understand more specifics about stacking. There's some signal that points to it as being something you want to do, but then when you start looking more into it, I'm trying to think it was two years ago. I think Lane Thomas did really well, and some data showed that like stacking Nationals

was a success, but that might have just been, if you took Lane Thomas late, you benefited from that. So it's a long way of saying that, uh, the exact add-on stacking there is kind of just something that you want to mix in and do right now and it can be done in multiple ways it can be getting two to three players from three teams it could be you know two four player stacks there's different ways to do it and i think the thing that i try to think about is it's a it's a really big contest so you do always want to get value and i just i always want to be willing to get unique like your kepler pick is a perfect example uh harper bohm kepler that's a unique combo with with wheeler and Lazzardo shoving and racking up those wins during that

during that final stretch let's go philly should i go put the jersey on i i can throw it on let's go let's go phillies all right what else do we have i mean it's like too late for me to just catch everyone up on pace but let's see if there's anyone interesting that's been drafted parker meadows we'll see if he's healthy by opening day uh ryan mcman you're getting those course field games in there. Brandon fought Jackson Job. Jackson Job, if he can if he can ever get strikeouts, you know,

we keep talking about this, but the stuff looks nasty. It's just, you really haven't seen big strikeouts yet. Someone who could get a lot of strikeouts is Nick Ladolo, who went there on the tour. He had six strikeouts today, I believe, in four innings of work.

And he's always had good stuff and strikeout ability. It's just, he needs to stay on the field and, I guess, develop a little bit more consistency. Ryan Pepio is an interesting one because I think the talent is there. It's just there's a lot working against him moving out of Tropicana and into George Steinbrenner field. And he was so dependent on his fastball for whiffs last year.

And I just worry with the ball not moving the same outdoors if that's going to work for him. But I will say I watched his most recent spring start and the fast ball still looked really good. He was still getting like 19 inches of vert on it, which is elite. if that if that change up plays up the way it was supposed to and it started to at the end of last season you know he could have multiple elite with pitches and i'm worried about it you know he's not someone that i love but he was in my queue um in this like tournament mode yeah i think that that upside is worth chasing especially with you know they're not going to play a lot of games

at steinbrner field at the end of the season like i mentioned earlier so Yeah, that's fair. That, yeah. I think the, the raise, the A's and the Orioles park changes has been my favorite thing to analyze or try to, like, think through for fantasy this off season. I think it's such a cool and unique thing about baseball, about how every ballpark is different. And I mentioned, you know, trying to spend some time on Savon and not just know Rocky's offensive Mariners pitching friendly, but trying to understand, like, in the middle, like you were saying, Chris, too, how Fenway's not the best for power necessarily, but it is good for batting average

and just trying to kind of teach myself as many of those exact differences as I could. And that's been really helpful. What do you think, Brandon, about the raised pitchers in particular this season? A lot of them give up hard contact, they're fly ball pitchers. So it's moving outdoors to a lineup that,

a ballpark that has the same dimensions as Yankee Stadium. It seems worrisome to me, but what do you think? I used to love starting pitchers on the road who were pitching in the trap and getting that boost because everyone thinks about it for the raise, but not always necessarily the visiting pitcher. So I'll miss that is something that I went to a lot. And I think I am worried about the pitch, the raised pitchers now because why I just can't stop thinking about is the Blue Jays in 2021 and in Dunedin. And I know that it's for me, it's not even so much about the dimensions. I've, uh, it's more that just the feel of the minor league park.

It all feels smaller. I think a lot of the Blue Jays players talked about that after the fact. And you know, there's less like foul territory for instance. Like it's all really condensed. And so I just think there's, there's a little bit of extra factors that make me believe that if things go crazy in one direction, that it will be pretty offensive. I think the, the, the, the, the air bands are pointing more in that direction than it's playing more neutral. You know the thing I worry about in Sacramento specifically is it is not a major league facility in terms of like the the locker room. Like they're there, I think I was reading the clubhouse is in the outfield.

So when they come to the game, they're going to have to like in college. They're going to have to walk around the stadium and get there. They might maybe a bus. But the bigger thing is it's really hot. in Sacramento in the summer. Like it averages, I want to say there was like a stretch of like 40 straight days of 100 degree heat in Sacramento.

It was some like a really high number. The one thing I worry about offensively there is just like those everyday players, the guy standing out in the outfield, that might take a real toll on them in a way that is impossible to factor in beforehand. but it's something that like if we get to the end of the year and you know Lawrence Butler only played 145 games but he was healthy but they just had to give him extra days off or you know brett rook or whoever it is like that wouldn't necessarily surprise me just because it's going to be i think just from a physical standpoint the toughest place to play in the majors um and

that matters over 162 games season. Like those guys could get pretty run down. Yeah, it is an interesting thought and one I hadn't considered, but it's not crazy. I mean, it's just the unknown of baseball every year is A, the baseball and kind of finding out about that once the season starts. But now we've had this added unknown of the ballparks and all the changes that are happening this offseason.

I think the sorry Frank to cut you up I think like like that I thought those are great thoughts by Chris and the Blue Jays example from 2021 the further we get removed from that I know Vlad's career in particular has just been so up and down especially from the expectations fantasy managers have had of him and I just think the more I look back on that it was really just such a boon for for the Blue Jays offense for that the first half especially because then eventually they did go back to Roger Center And I know they were in Buffalo at some point in between there, too, but the Needing stretch was really favorable. So I've just kept that fouled away that I think the raise and A's, again, the best way to describe it is the Arab Bands. If it leans any way, I think it could be pretty offensive. And I think another reason to be kind of worried about the pitching is just there's going to be a lot of rainouts.

I grew up in South Florida, and every single day between 2.30 and 5, it's going to rain. And you just, you know, growing up as a Marlins fan, there were a lot of times that you think the game's going to start. And they maybe get one inning in and then you lose your starting pitcher for, you know, after one, two innings. And they're going to try to pick those games up and play them because they know they've got to get through the whole season.

And there's going to be a handful of rain delays that just wash out a start. And it's going to be pretty frustrating. All right, I just took Nestor Cortez, who I think is my seventh pitcher. So I think I'm done with pitching. I wound up with Zach Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Bryce Miller, Bailey Ober, Jesus Lazardo, Nathan Avaldi, and Nester Cortez. So there's more injury risk than I wanted after Jacob de Grom. Like, Lazzardo has had injury risk.

Avaldi has as well. But if you look at all the pitchers here at this point, it's who doesn't have injury risk, right? It's Walker Bueller is at the top of the list. and Reese Olson, we like him as a sleeper, but he dealt with the shoulder last year. And then just like the boring guys are really boring. So I didn't like Merrill Kelly,

I guess I could have talked myself into that. But how much per start-bass upside is there with a Merrill Kelly. Yeah, I will be going with the seven outfielder, seven infielder, six pitchers approach and just hoping that Skeens is in there every week. And two of right now, it's Justin Steele's, Eflin, Ryan Weathers, and Reese Olson. And I'll take one more with my last pitch. Just hoping two of those guys are good enough every week to hang.

I don't know. I hope so. Yeah, you took, you mentioned Ryan Weathers there at the turn along with... It was Rees Olson. Resulson, right? Right as you were bad-mouthing, Reese Olson. I hit draft. I like him, though.

I mean, I like Reesolson. And if he could stay healthy, we both think he's a good pitcher. He's got two pitches, two secondary pitches with a whiff rate over 40%. It's, you know, he's just got to mature a little bit as a pitcher, figure out the pitch mix a little bit. And it's forcing fastball just so hitable. Yeah, I think there's been some improvements with his sinker this spring. We're talking about Reese Olson, right?

Yes. Yeah, I think his velocity and movement on the on the sinker are up. So that's a good sign because that is a path. His change up and slider are such good swing and miss pitches that I think he could live with the sinker as his primary pitch, as his primary fastball. Not missing many bats with it, but when they make contact, it's weak contact. And the change up and slider could be, you know, should be really good put away pitches for him. We are in the second to last round here. there was a pick that just came up that I

Bubba Chandler Temma I meant to call you Tuma Brendan I kind of put him together like oh Tammu he sees Tameu Brendan no but there are prospects here that are being drafted Bubba Chandler what do you think about drafting prospects especially

prospect pitchers like Matt Shaw just went too he's not a pitcher but he is a prospect so what do you think about taking prospects in a best ball draft like this this is that balance of getting the upside but not wanting to get a zero I think I am very against the potential for zero in best ball because if you're getting like even if you take

uh i'm trying to think of an example you don't want to get like you know too gross to say but there's a chance at bubba chanler is effectively a zero and you can say that i guess about any pitcher any player really but just talking realistic range of outcomes uh he carries a lot of risk so you know if i was drafting a lot of teams which a lot of people do because the the tournament structure is set up that you can enter it a lot of times. A lot of people then end up looking at it more through a portfolio lens. I would not want to be like overweight on prospects like that. All right.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, we might have said something similar about Paul Skeen's last year, and then he came up and he was like one of the best pitchers in baseball. So it's not impossible. No one knows. It's Bubba Chandler could get called up in June, and he can be, you know, a top 30 starting pitcher from that point forward.

it wouldn't be crazy to see something like that happen. It's just, I guess if you build it out with enough pitchers you feel safe about early on in the season, that is a way that it could work. So let's see, did this guy get drafted? I was going to take one more Padre and yeah, he's still there. Jake Cronoward, the most unfun player. Well, let me make sure Luis Arise isn't still there. No, he went.

Okay. Yeah, I'm going to take Jake Cronoward. So I wind up with three stacks of three players each, the Brewers, the Padres and the Phillies. I think you bet you were, you know, a little nervous early on about the sacks, but you built it out well in the middle to late rounds. And that's, I think, the best way to do it. All right. Well, the last thing to do is take a look at our teams and find out who won the draft.

And Brendan is going to be the judge who won between me and Chris and this one. I'll share my screen when it's my turn as well. For the pitchers, I got Zach Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Bryce Miller, Billy Ober, Jesus Lazzardo, Nathan Avaldi, and Nester Cortez. infielers, Bryce Harper, O'Neill Cruz, William Contreras,

Alec Bohm, Reese Hoskins, Zander Bogarts, and Jake Cronoweth, my outfielder's, Juan Soto, Jackson, Merrill, Dylan Cruz,

Jorge Solair, Garrett Mitchell, Max Kepler. So outfield seems a little light there on the back end, but I wanted to grab that Padre stack, and I was not going to take

Jason Hayward as an outfielder on this team. Brendan, how do you think it came together? Yeah, I gave you the love for the getting the stacks together. I think that was a great job.

And then I think my single favorite value pick that you got, it wasn't even part of your stacks, but it was Jorge Soler, especially with, you know, how pushed up outfield is where in general to get, to get a guy who could have, you know,

five, six homer week for you in a best ball, you know, spike week environment is very favorable. All right. I think maybe I could just, yeah, I could pull up your team here,

Chris. So unless you want to go for it. Chris, you got Paul Skeens, Justin Steele, Zach Eflin, Ryan Weathers, Reese Olson, and Justin Verlander. I like the Verlander pick late there. Infielder's Ozzy Albies, Marcus Semyon, Tristan Kossis, Jake Berger, Paul Goldschmidt, Salvador Perez, and Xavier Edwards.

And in the outfield, Aaron Judge, Ronald de Cunia, Ryan Reynolds, Jason Dominguez, Kerry Carpenter, Nolan Jones, you got a Rocky and Jack Peterson. So you got the Rangers stack. I got a Rangers and a Yankees, three-person stack. I got two Braves. I couldn't once once the good players were off the board it was like I'm not taking Orlando Rcia like like like I thought about like Brian Dela Cruz or or Jared Kelnick but they're not going to be full-time players even when Akunia's out so couldn't really get to the third one on the Braves so only the two connections there but yeah and then the pitching you know a lot

banking on skeins but I think steel is you know rock solid must start. guy when he's healthy. I think Eflin's going to be good for the most part. Yeah. I hope I have one pitcher in the lineup every week in schemes. I think Steele will be in there most weeks and then there's some upside the rest of the way. I don't know. All right. Well, if you don't know, maybe Brendan

does. What do you think? I would describe this lineup as fragile and that doesn't mean it's a good or bad thing. It just means in terms of the pitching investment, it could go one of two different ways. But again, The other way I describe this is this team, the way is built, because the pitching might just not get there on a season-long basis, it might be considered less likely to advance to the playoffs.

But once you get to the playoffs, that gap in the middle pitchers really tightens because instead of competing over, you know, four months, it's just a two-week playoff stretches. So if you get to the playoffs, you know, with this offense and skeins, you'll probably have a leg up, you know, offensively. compared to the other teams and then you just need your pitching to hit. All right. Well, we do have projected fantasy points here. So you have 21,697. And I, oh, man, you know. Oh, win. It's not even close. You have like 600 projected points.

Oh, that's what happens. We love to see it. We love to see it. I pull up guys like Max Kepler and Garrett Mitchell, my stacks on this team. So maybe I force it a little. bit. I think that is a possibility. You know what? Don't believe in the projections. Believe Brendan, because he said my team is, no, I didn't say that. Brendan, we do want to thank you so much for walking us through here. I think this was really instructive because, again, we don't do a lot of best ball content. And I know a lot of people do still playing it. So definitely wanted to have you on for this. That's why we wanted to make it part of the mock draft mega stream. That wasn't a mock draft. It was a real draft. But, you know, SEO and all that stuff. So thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate

it man. No, I really appreciate it too. And like I said, like, you know, myself and a lot of my buddies have been listening to you guys for a while. So it was cool to come on. I know they'll be giving me a hard time for it. And yeah, I hope to do it again sometime. Yeah, make sure to follow him on X at Too Much Tuma. And you can't miss the Twitter advertor because it's, it's Pablo Sanchez from back. It's one of the goats out there. A legend. Brendan, anything else that you'd like to promote before we let you off the hook here? I don't know. That's everything. right on substack. It's just Benintimmed.com. And then every couple of weeks, I got a piece coming out on Baseball America on Fridays. Awesome. Yes, baseball America, the substack there. And again, over at Underdog Fantasy. So thanks again. Brendan, we do appreciate it.