Fantasy Baseball Today - 🚨Nationals Are Promoting Top Prospect James Wood! - Emergency Podcast (6/28 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Now here's Frank Scott and Chris. It's happening. The Nationals are promoting their top prospect, James Wood. Welcome into fantasy baseball today on the happiest of Kokomo Fridays, June 28th. I am Frank Stamphill, joined by Scott White, long time, no see. And according to Grant Paulson on Twitter, James Wood will be called up to debut in D.C. with the Nationals on Monday. A very small slate of action.

Starting point is 00:00:25 Three games on the slate on Monday. All eyes will be on James Wood and the Nationals. for good reason. James Wood, a consensus top five prospect in all of baseball. He's 21 years old, massive outfielder, six foot seven, who has had a breakout season in the minors, batting 346, 10 homers, 10 steals, a 10-36 OPS in 51 games. He did miss some time due to a hamstring injury, but he is back. Scott, there are massive exit velocities here, improved plate discipline. Talk to me about James Wood, your excitement for him being called up.

Starting point is 00:01:00 I'm excited. And I haven't been able to say that about many prospect callups this year because they've by and large been such a letdown. But if there is anyone to get excited about, even in what's been just a brutal environment for young rookie hitters, this is it. This is it. James Wood, you know, you said he's a consensus top five prospect. I don't think anybody would look at you sideways if you said he's surpassed Jackson Holiday as the number one in all of baseball because he was. already so high end coming into the year. And that was after a season that didn't go so well for him last year, especially after moving up to AA. He struck out 31.5% of the time last year. So the tools were tantalizing.

Starting point is 00:01:50 You mentioned the exit velocities. He's a good runner. He's very athletic. But yeah, I mean, he still had some work to do clearly coming into this. year. He gets to AAA this year. Really, it starts in spring training and just looks like he's suddenly put it all together. That strikeout rate, again, it was 31.5% last year. It's 18.2% this year. He's gone from having close to a three to one strikeout to walk ratio to one to one, basically. And that is the sort of growth that obviously has turned him into just

Starting point is 00:02:30 an absolute monster statistically to put a comp on the exit velocities themselves, 115.3 mile per hour max at AAA, 95.1 mile per hour average. Only two,

Starting point is 00:02:47 I'm sorry, only three major league hitters have an average exit velocity that high and two of them are Aaron Judge and Shohei Otani. Yeah. This skill set is just so tantalized. It's so fun, exciting times for James Wood. And I know there will be some doubt, Scott.

Starting point is 00:03:04 As you mentioned, it's been a rough year for prospects. But if there's anybody we should get excited about, I do believe that it is James Wood. You touched on the improvements that he made from last year, a 34% strikeout rate at AA down to 18% this year. I think there could be an adjustment period, some holes in the swing. Again, he's a really, really big guy.

Starting point is 00:03:24 But I think that's a, probably the most promising part of James Wood's development has been the plate discipline over the past year or so. It will be easy for some people to make the Aaron Judge comp just based on the size and the exit velocities. I'm not sure that's entirely fair to James Wood. But I hope he gets there someday. If you had to make a comp, an upside comp,

Starting point is 00:03:45 what do you think? Because the skill set is so intriguing. He's run more than the average big guy who gets called up to the majors. Yeah, yeah, that's, I think, what separates him from Aaron Judge. I made that I in past years I would make the Aaron Judge comp since he was a 6 foot 7 outfielder

Starting point is 00:04:05 who could hit the ball extremely hard but I think subsequent levels have shown that he's going to be more of a base dealer than Aaron Judge. You could you could try for the L.E. Dela Cruz comparison because L.A. La Cruz is a 6 foot 7 guy who runs more and still has those premium exit velocities and we'll get to it but would have Wood may have one flaw in common with Ellie De La Cruz.

Starting point is 00:04:30 But the thing about Ellie De La Cruz is he might be a 70-5 steel guy, and I don't think Wood's going to be that. So if we're talking purely statistically here, what you can hope for from James Wood, if we get the magical miracle outcome that we've been denied from other prospect call-ups this year, I would say it look a lot like Kyle Tucker. What is that flaw, though, that you're referring to? Okay, yeah. So we've done the upside thing. Maybe we should get into how white could go wrong for James Wood.

Starting point is 00:05:04 The biggest we've already mentioned is that it's gone wrong for every high-profile hitter who's been called up this year from White Lankford to Jackson Chorio to Jackson Holiday and dozens of other lesser prospect call-ups. It's just a really difficult time for a young hitter to break into the league. but that doesn't mean there will never be one who's an instant success again. So that's the biggest way it could go wrong. The other issue I see here with James Wood

Starting point is 00:05:36 is that he puts the ball on the ground way too much. A lot of that premium contact is wasted. His fly ball rate, according to fan graphs, is only 18.1%. ideally it'd be closer to 40 if he's going to maximize his home run output. You'd take 35, certainly. You'd take double that.

Starting point is 00:05:58 But that's where a long way from it is the point. High line drive rate. So it wouldn't take much, I think, for him to put his launch angle in a more optimal position. But it's not there yet, or at least it hasn't shown up at AAA. So it may not, what may not end up delivering quite the home run output we're hoping for in his initial go around the league, which will put a lot more pressure on him to keep the strikeouts low and to run a lot when he gets on base. So that's how it could go wrong, is he just doesn't elevate enough to maximize those exit velocities. but again, it will go right, again, for some hitter, some high-profile prospect who gets called to the majors.

Starting point is 00:06:54 So I think, you know, you have to think of it as a lottery ticket. I know that's not a novel analogy, but it's maybe more fitting now than ever for these hitting prospects. If it doesn't work out, the cost was low and your life remains unchanged. But if it does work out, like I said, you have a Kyle Tucker on your hand. out of the sky. And if anyone's wondering about the splits being a big left-handed bat, in the minors this year, it's a small sample size, 45 that bats against lefties,

Starting point is 00:07:25 333 batting average, five of his 10 home runs, and an 11-01 OPS. He actually has had a higher OPS against lefties this year than he has against righties in the minors. Let's take a quick break, and when we return, we'll talk about the add-drop situation of all this. Who are we dropping? Is he a must-ad player? Kind of sounds like it. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in.

Starting point is 00:07:48 The Nationals are promoting their top prospect, James Wood. He is 65% rostered on CBS. Scott, is he a must add regardless of format? I would say so. Yeah. And again, it's been harder for me to say that about these prospect callups, but James Wood is a special case. How much fab are you looking to spend?

Starting point is 00:08:08 This is always a fun question, and I think it depends on the size of the league. Maybe you're not as aggressive in a three outfielder league. versus a five outfielder league. But just if you had to give a vacuum idea, how much fab? Are you just emptying the clip on James Wood here? Pretty close.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Yeah, I don't imagine we'll see a bigger prospect call up than this the rest of the season. Like physically or? No, in terms of impact potential anyway. You know, Jackson Holiday could come back, but the enthusiasm for him won't be nearly the same is the first time around. So I would go as far as you think you realistically need to go.

Starting point is 00:08:51 It does depend on whether or not your league runs waivers daily or weekly, whether or not zero dollar bids are allowed or not. If they're not allowed, obviously you need to reserve more for future moves that you need to make. But I would think in most leagues a third to half of your budget, is, you know, the shallower of the league, the closer you'll have to come to half. The deeper, you might want to stay closer to a third. And I'm talking about like your preseason budget, not what you have left. I think that's what you can anticipate spending on James Wood.

Starting point is 00:09:30 That's what I was about to ask, because we're just about at the midpoint of the season. Let's say you started the year with either $100 or $1,000 fat budget, and you have half of that left. Let's just say, whatever, we're halfway through the season. So you have $500 or $50 left. Are you, you throw in like 300 of that, 400 of that to try and secure James Wood? Yeah, I mean, if you're fortunate enough that you still have 75% of your preseason budget left, I think you could go as high as 40 or 50%. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:02 $400,500. Whatever increment your league uses, I know a lot of leagues use $100 rather than $1,000 as a starting bid, but you get the idea. You can do the math in your head. Um, yeah, I think so. If you only have half your budget left, which is probably more realistic, yeah, you got to leave some. So 35% maybe.

Starting point is 00:10:28 There's a chance you'll get out bid, but you know, you can't have everybody. You got to reserve something for the rest of the season. I understand that. And if you play in NFBC leagues, James Wood might not be available because over at the NFBC, a prospect needs to make his debut first to be in the player pool. However, if he was drafted and then dropped in your league, then he would be available. And that actually happened in my TGFBI league last week, the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational, a 15-team Roto, $1,000 fat budget. Someone had dropped. James Wood a couple of weeks back. I picked him up last week for $3 out of a thousand.

Starting point is 00:11:03 So I feel great about that. But yeah, yeah, just good. And of course, in a lot of leagues, he's been stashed for a long time. But 100%. He is available in 30. 35% of CBS sports leagues. So that's a significant number. I don't know if you can look up Yahoo or ESPN. You seem to come up with that answer quicker than I could. But I imagine it's even more than 35% of leagues. Yes, let's quickly look up Yahoo,

Starting point is 00:11:26 because I do have that pulled up right now. James Wood is 29% rostered on Yahoo. So available in just over 70% of leagues, go add this guy. Regardless of format. Again, if the skill set translates, what we saw from from him in the minors this year, he should play regardless of format. The plate discipline has improved, the power, the speed.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Yes. So go add. Somebody in the chat is saying he's available in 93% of ESPN leagues, which I can't confirm, but wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. And, you know, if a league is in that context, you maybe don't have to quite blow the budget out for him, maybe you could go like 25% just because it's a lower,

Starting point is 00:12:11 threshold, a lower roster ship threshold to meet. But the point is you should be really excited. A few other questions on James Wood. Would you rather add him or Nelvie Marte, who we saw return with a pretty big game here on Thursday? I really want to add them both. I think just, I think you're going to find more competition for James Wood, since he's getting an emergency podcast. And that's the extent of the enthusiasm. So I'll say, would, it wouldn't surprise me if Marte was better. He's already found some success in the majors, which seems to be the biggest hurdle to clear. So a nice consolation prize if you don't get wood. And really, you should be trying to add both. Would you drop any of these outfielders for

Starting point is 00:12:57 James Wood in shallower leagues? So let's say three outfielder leagues, George Springer. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to drop George Springer, but if it came to it, yeah. Dalton Varsho. Yeah. Brent Rooker. Yep. And Brenton Doyle. Yes. Last question on James Wood, and we've heard people try and do things like this before in leagues. As soon as a prospect gets called up, you just try and trade them away. Now, obviously not in Dynasty or Keeper Leagues, but in a redraft league, would you maybe try and cash in on the enthusiasm right now?

Starting point is 00:13:29 You think you could try. Again, if we're treating James Wood as a lottery ticket, then the presumption is it won't work out. And I think that's the most realistic way to treat it. But obviously, the payoff is huge, so you don't want to undersell them either. I haven't had a chance to update my rest of season rankings. I think it's worth looking at so we can gauge what exactly we mean when we talk about trading James Wood. I think in my outfield rankings, my initial placement of him is going to be top 30. So that's going to put him ahead of like Elliot Ramos and say a Suzuki and Tyler O'Neill.

Starting point is 00:14:17 I don't think I can go past like Brian Reynolds, you know, who obviously doesn't have as much upside as James Wood, but is just a surefire starter in all leagues. So I think I think the 25 to 30 range of my outfield rankings. So if you can use James Wood to just in the strictest. By low sense, if you can get Adoles Garcia who's been slumping. Yeah, yeah. I think I'd have to do that. I'm looking at some other outfielder. I have ranked in the top 25 and, like, Cody Bellinger's in there.

Starting point is 00:14:54 I don't know. I don't know that I'd be thrilled to trade James Wood for Cody Bellinger, to be honest. It's, you have to weigh, you have to weigh whether safety or upside, the relative importance of those in your. specific league context, obviously the shallower of the league, the more you sell out for upside, the deeper the league, the more you have to play it safe. I think that's, I think there's going, there's going to be variables that play into this calculation beyond just where does he rank.

Starting point is 00:15:25 I'm going to have to rank them a little more conservatively. But, but yeah, if you can buy low on a player like that, if you could package James Wood with a pretty good starting pitcher for an Austin Riley, I think that's worth doing. those trades seem fitting to me. Would you trade him straight up for a Kevin Gosman or a Franber Valdez? Probably it would depend what the rest of my pitching looks like, but probably I'd do that, yeah, because I don't imagine either of those guys are going to be dropped at any point.

Starting point is 00:15:59 All right, just a heads up that our fantasy baseball today and five podcasts that will come out on Saturday was recorded before this news. So that is why we did not talk about James Wood on that specific podcast. All right, we're going to wrap there again. The Nationals promoting their top prospect, James Wood. For Scott, I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning into fantasy baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify.

Starting point is 00:16:21 And we will be back again next week. Hopefully no more emergency podcasts. Bye-bye.

Fantasy Baseball Today - 🚨Nationals Are Promoting Top Prospect James Wood! - Emergency Podcast (6/28 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

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