Fantasy Baseball Today - Pitchers to Target or Fade! The State of Pitching w/ Nick Pollack! (1/7 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

To display your continued support of the show, please vote Fantasy Baseball Today in the Sports Podcast Awards in the "Best Baseball Podcast" Category https://www.sportspodcastgroup.com/sports_category/best-baseball-podcast/ We're joined by Nick Pollack from Pitcher List (2:38)! ... Let's start with the state of starting pitching (5:04). ... How should we handle big innings jumps from one year to the next (10:36)? ... How does Nick analyze pitching (20:10)? ... News (26:10): Charlie Morton signed with the Orioles. ... Gavin Lux was traded to the Reds (29:20). ... Chris Martin signed with the Rangers (34:30). ... Nick is pretty high on Garrett Crochet and Roki Sasaki (41:30)! ... Crochet over Corbin Burnes (47:02)? ... Will Shane McClanahan bounce back (52:08)? ... Nick is also higher on Max Fried and Joe Ryan (58:07). ... We finish up with five pitchers Nick is lower on compared to early ADP (1:01:21). 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, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Well, fantasy. Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. Hello, and welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today on January 7th, 2025. Still weird.

I am Frank Stamphill, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. A little behind the scenes, but this is the first time we've seen Scott since before the holidays. So, Scott, how's it going, man? How'd everything go? I mean, you two personally. But we did bank a couple before I went on vacation. I actually, so it's. I think I've seen Nick Pollock more recently than I've seen Scott. That is true, actually.

You came to my Christmas sweater party. Yeah, Nick Pollock is here. So I love having your eyes. It's all good. We were going to get there eventually. Nick Pollack is here on the podcast. What's going on? What's going on?

Nick, how you doing, buddy? I'm great. I am, yeah, I'm engaged. So this is weird.

Whoa. Finally doing the likes of you guys. Here we go. You technically don't have a ring. I don't have one. I don't have mine. Here's my tip. You're going to want to play with it.

You're going to want to play with the ring. And I made the mistake. We went to Washington, D.C. For our honeymoon. We were in one of the museums, and I took it off and started fiddling with it and dropped it. And it, like, careened down every single stare, like a cartoon. Oh, my God.

As I'm scrambling past it, and I look back at my wife, and she's just like, I'm going to kill you. So don't do that. It's funny, as you went into, don't play with your ring. If you watch the video, I am actively playing with my ring while you start into that. You do it constantly, yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking, I'm thinking like a really dark blue ring. I don't like gold.

It's too shiny and everything. But that's not what we're talking about today. I'm just so happy to be here with you talking about baseball forgetting about a lot of stuff. You got to talk about pitching. That's exactly right. I love that like fresh off my longest vacation of the year. I got to go toe to toe with Nick Pollock. No easing me in.

Like I'm probably a little bit rusty. Scott, Scott, it's not toe to toe. Who were the two guys last year and Paul Spore who were in on Cole Reagan's last year? So that would be three guys. It was us though. It was us. It was not toe to toe.

It's no toe to toe. The same thing. Shoulder to shoulder. There it is. There you go. We'll see if that remains the case later on in the show because we do have some pitchers that Nick is either higher or lower on versus early ADP.

And we'll be talking about all things pitching. The state of pitching, which stats to use when analyzing pitching. and so that's why we brought on Nick Pollock. He's from Pitcherless. So go to his website, check everything out, pitcherless.com. You can follow him at Pitcherlist on X.

You can follow him at nick Pollock. com on Blue Sky as well if you are over there. Love how those Blue Sky handles, just roll right off the top. We also have the Pitcher List one. So like we've actually separated it out. It's me in Blue Sky. And then we have the Pitcherless Media one too.

I couldn't figure out a better way to like promote someone's blue sky. So I guess you just have to read everything. thing off. Let's get right into things. And the overall pitching landscape, it bounced back in 2024. Offense was up in 2023. You know, things have kind of been a little bit volatile the past couple of years where one year it's like offense is up. The next year pitching is up and we don't know which baseball they're using and all this fun stuff. But based on the most recent results, it was a better season for pitching in 2024. The problem for fantasy is that pitchers are getting

hurt at an alarming rate and a lot of the highly ranked names that we've seen are either coming back from injury or just had a huge jump in innings year over year. So for example, Garrettochre Col Regens, Michael King all saw huge innings jumps from 23 to 24 and then we have- Scuba. Yeah, we have Jacob de Grom. We have Shane McClain. We have San Al-Contz are all coming back from either a first or second Tommy John surgery for some of those guys. And there are other pitchers like Kodi Shing is coming back. Showhoyotani. Yeah. So lots of moving parts. Nick, what's your overall take on the state of pitching right now for fantasy? Well, oh man, how long do you have? No, I'll make this very quick. Looking at ADP so far just from NFBC, there are many

pitchers at 300 with relative value of last year. They're around 200. So what that tells me is that you can take a lot more chances than 12 teamers this year because they're going to be so many to choose from who won't get drafted. And then there's the other side of it also emphasizing that point that if you drafted players last year, you would have remembered, wait, guys like Garrett Cole, the standard of consistency and being healthy was hurt for a long period of time. So many guys just all of a sudden fell off and got injured. And the argument can go both ways of, oh, he's thrown too many innings.

So he's going to get hurt now. Oh, he's thrown too few innings. He's going to hurt now. And then he realized we have no idea who's going to get hurt. So putting weight on the stable guys who are going to get me my innings, I know that's going to happen versus I don't know they might get hurt. Well, Chris Hill just threw what, 160 plus innings out of nowhere? We don't know.

You know, the biggest argument I think Scott and I were making last year was that Cole Reagan's and his one and a half Tommy Johns was actually okay to throw over 150 innings. What do you know, he threw over 180 last year. And I'm going into this saying, go after the guys that when they are healthy are going to give me guaranteed quality innings because I have no idea

if the guy coming back from Tommy John who has a repaired elbow has a better or worse elbow than the guy who's been pitching from multiple seasons of 200 endings like Corbyn Burns. I just can't tell you. I want to say Cornyrd's because he has been doing it, but I don't know.

Maybe it was a guy that has the repaired elbow instead. And you can look at it another wrinkle in that, regard is like at least strider and otani i'm not sure about anybody else but those two guys are also not just coming back from Tommy john surgery but they're coming back from the internal brace procedure or otani it actually as weirdly has not been confirmed what he actually had there's been they've been they've been so cagey from it but it's fairly clear it's something like the internal brace procedure and so we have like no track record of that for pitchers really so it's it's a lot of unsubed

uncertainty, but like I published my, my rankings, like an early look at my rankings on the newsletter today. And like the names that didn't make my top 48 at starting pitcher, it's like Seth Lugo, Luis Heel, Shamaniah, Shane Boz, Kevin got like guys who are names, like who had a lot of value last season or have had value in the past who just didn't make it in the top 48. That's 48 names. Like, yeah. Think about last year when we were struggling to name like 35 pitchers that we learned. I mean it's 400. It's well.

I could name 35 pictures. How many of them I liked is a different question. Last year at this time of course, I was all about the glob. This large indistinguishable mass of pitchers in somewhere in the middle of the rankings. And so at that point I was taking a tax similar to Nick where it's like there are there are so few differentiators at this position right now before you get into the glob that I I'm not even going to worry so much about durability because I just need impact wherever I can get it. But now I think it's the reverse. Now I think it's there is a large mass of indistinguishable pitchers, but they're actually good. They're all really good. Like Chris was saying that the number of quality pitch like I'm as I was going through my pitcher rankings, I was repeatedly. shocked at how low everybody was.

Like that guy needs to be higher. Oh, wait, but that guy needs to be higher. And I could say that I've said before during the off season, it's like 15 to 50 in my starting pitcher rankings. I almost don't care how I rank them because they're virtually indistinguishable. And yet in a way where I feel confident I'm getting quality. So that doesn't mean I'm going to go completely the other way. and like, oh, it's all durability.

I've made, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, short in the past. Everyone threw around 60, 70 innings. And there were still a bunch of pitchers who threw over 150, 10060, 170, the following season. after that. So I know there's previous analysis that points out, all right, a big innings jump is probably bad for a pitcher.

I wonder if it's outdated. You know, it's something I got to look into myself and I don't want to downplay any research that anyone else has actually done on this, but it's something I want to look into because I wonder if it's still as prevalent or a big issue as like we're kind of making it out to me. What I would say is it's less that.

Like, because there were, I think, more Tommy John Sergers in 2021 than any other season on record. I was reading that the other day. Yeah. It was after 2020, there was just so many more because they weren't trained. It was a baseball prospectus piece. They had an anonymous pitcher who plays organized baseball. I don't know if he was a major league or a minor leager, but he wrote a column for them. And he mentioned that there were more Tommy John surgery in 2021 than any other year on record.

So it was an issue for injuries in 2021. But the other thing is 2019, we had, I'm going to pull a number. off the top of my head, 18 pitchers get to 190 innings, whatever the actual number is. Whatever that number is is way smaller now. Frank, you might have those numbers in front of you. So I think part of it is just that guys coming back from big innings jumps are probably at a higher risk of injury than everyone else. But if nobody's throwing 220 innings anymore, the impact of 130 really good innings is probably a little higher for your team. Like your team is going to have fewer innings now than it did five years ago anyway.

So we do have to adapt, adapt our approach and reconsider how 130 really good innings, you'd still rather have 180 really good innings. But the 130 really good innings are more impactful than they would have been last year, the year before, the year before that, because those inning numbers are going down every year. Well, I mean, it's like the 180, 180 is the new 200, right? which means that in 150 is the old 180. Yeah. You know, and this is also the interesting point about that.

We kind of forget that like George Kirby and Logan Gilbert were not workhors until the all of a sudden they threw a ton of innings and then they were horses. Pablo Lopez. Same thing. You have to have right. Pablo Lopez was like, I don't know, the shoulder and everything. He's going to throw 80 innings and throws 180 or so. And then that's what he is now.

He started three years in a row. Exactly. So what's also interesting is our perspective of what a heavy work. workload is is really distorted now because there's two conversations. There's an actual volume of innings and then there's a percentage jump. And when it comes to volume of innings, well, I'm hearing like Greer Crochet throwing too many innings. This is wild to me.

What the White Sox did is everything you'd ever want them to do to set up a good 2025. They literally say, great, you're going to pitch normally and then it's just four innings. We're going to take care of you too much. So you're just through 160. And that's great. Or actually underneath that, I think it was like 145. Yeah, I want something 140. Like, it's perfect.

It's exactly what you want. People saying, I don't know too much of an injury jump because of the percentage. And the percentage is incorrect. His percentage was zero. It's what people have told us we want. I'm not convinced, like back to the how we got down this tangent. I'm not convinced that the whole innings increase from one year to the next means you're going to get hurt the following year.

I'm not sure there's a lot. For me, it's more, if you haven't proven you can take on an ACE workload, given how high effort throwing is today, if you haven't proven you can take on an ACE workload, I don't trust you to take on an ACE workload. That makes sense. And one way I look at is like Jacob de Grom and Sandy Alcantra through, Alcantra didn't throw any innings.

DeGrom through, what, 11? I don't even think he did minor league. Yeah, it was like maybe he'd cut through a couple, but so they're going from a super low baseline. But if Jacob de Grom and Sandy Alcantra are healthy all year and pitch like they're capable of, they're going to throw 180 innings. You can come back and say,

Jacob de Grom's not going to stay healthy for 180 innings. I agree. That's unlikely. But if he does, he can't. Right. Roki Sasaki is someone that I'm very convinced. There is no path to 180 innings next year. Just he's going to be on a six-man rotation every time. He's never going to throw with four days rest.

He's never thrown more than 130 things. That's the distinction for me. Yeah, I get that. Which is building on what Scott said. And I just want to emphasize, I hear about percentage a lot. So like a guy goes from 70 innings to 110. Like, oh, man, that's a big percentage.

And it's not a thing. So at least how I think about it is the first year a guy pitches. Generally, what teams go for is about 110, 120s. What we saw from Alic Manoa and Kirby and Gilbert and McClain. of hand so on so forth and then after that the next season they're kind of free reign once you hit that 120 generally when it comes to a first year you can go up to about 140 or so and then again it's free rain after that when you think about like michael king switching from relief to starter that was the biggest thing i heard was oh too big of an innings jump for this to happen and i'm saying

if you are a reliever through a year that's strenuous the number of innings the volume doesn't matter are you continuously pitching through the year is what matters. And King showcased that he could do that as a reliever slash starter with the Yankees. And what does he do? He turns into one of the most consistent guys in baseball after about May 23rd. It was unbelievably at a 30% K rate in 24 starts. Like what? Yeah.

This is the new Aaronnola we have right now. He had, I think, 200 strikeouts last year. Yeah. Which is crazy. And I'm absolutely enamored. with Michael King entering this year because of this. So that's the mentality I just want to move away from. I'm not saying you guys say,

but I've certainly heard this percentage talk. And it's not about that. It's about the volume and the routine. And then is this a routine that sets up for every five days? One pushback I have for you, though, Chris, is that generally after Tommy John, you don't see 180. You do see something of like 150.

They don't want to push them from zero to 150. Has anybody ever done 180 after Tommy John? No, no. I think Lance Lynn is just like you got a rip a lot of his hand. You know, you got to saw it off to get it out of his. I thought the record was Verlander. And Lance Lynn got to 186.

Okay. Verlander did push it. I remember that. Did he have a late return the year before though? Lance Lynn, no. Lance Lynn didn't pitch at all in 2016. And then he came back in 2017 through 186. I would think for Alcantara and McClainan specifically those two guys,

like they will be protected more so than maybe to Grom. And the thing is, The conversation is the same because it's the gram. So it's, I think 150 is like the cap for all three of those in my head entering next year. All right. Let's take a quick break. And when we return, we'll talk a little bit about the stats that each of us are using and how Nick analyzes pitching. It's a loaded question.

Of course, you've got some news and notes and all that kind of fun stuff. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball today. We are joined by special guest, Nick Pollack from Pitcher list. He is here. What are you doing, Nick? I say you dancing during that. That was such a short ad break.

And I was just making fun of the Masters. Oh, the Masters. Oh, yes, the Masters. Welcome. Welcome. Let's take over baseball's second weekend from us. Oh, my gosh. It's the worst.

I hate it. I'm sorry, Nick. Let's talk about something that will cheer you up a little bit. Get you back on track. Look, you have dedicated your entire craft to analyzing pitching. And I give you a ton of credit because it's hard. It is really, really hard to analyze pitching. And I know you do all different types of things from film.

analysis to looking at it seems like every type of micro level stat that you possibly can. So I guess talk to people about how you analyze pitching because I'm sure it's different than other people. And then I guess like what you recommend the general audience or fantasy players should look at. Like what matters most when analyzing pitchers for fantasy? It is so hard. I think the number one thing I will encourage everybody is to move away from your standard metrics that you know. Move away from the saber metrics, the shallow ones, the ERA, the whip, the

K-per-9. Try to move away because those are just outputs of inputs that we actually know, right? We know what creates those things. How do they get their innings? How do they get their outs? How do they get their strikeouts? And the answer is actually the pitches themselves. I'm very much of a person that needs to know, okay, he had this game. And is it because his fastball was good, his slider was good, his curbault was good, and making a picture of how this pitcher goes on the mound and gets out, or he doesn't. What is it that's failing? And you can actually look on our website on pitcherless.

You can see this kind of stuff also on savant. But what I actually made pitchers for is to get those exact stats in front of me as easy as possible. And to look at, okay, what are the strike rates of these? What are the ICR, that is the ideal contact rate, when this pitch is point in play is it contact that is good for the hitter a bad, not just barrels. There's also solid contact. There's also players and burners. Those are good for hitters that pitchers want to prevent.

So there are a lot of things like that. And I can talk a long time about it. But really, every single start, knowing the story of the pitcher, what they are trying to do on a given night. And then looking at Savant Game Feed, actually, if you have PL Pro, we now have our own live tracker for every single game. so you can see the actual inner workings of every single pitch that they throw,

which is really, really fun. It's what I use for writing my daily starting pitching roundup of every pitcher. So that is the biggest thing. It's really hard to do, but once you try it a couple times, go to your favorite player, go to your favorite pitcher,

see their pitches and like, oh, that's the highest swing and strike rate. We have percentiles and averages for every stat so you can quickly know, is that good or is it bad? And then you'll quickly realize, oh, he has a low ear rate because, yeah,

his sinker does not allow any good contact. Or he gets all these strikeouts because, yeah, he has a 25% swing, strike rate slider that he throws a third of the time. You'll quickly understand how he gets those things. And then you'll also understand, oh, wait, there's nothing that's good in this arsenal. Maybe this guy isn't actually going to last this very long. And it's so much better than your FIP than your Sierra, than all of those stats, because those are just looking at all of these things that we actually

have so much more. information for. And so that's the biggest word of advice I have for anyone. One thing I want to add to that is like you look at a team. I think the Mets are a good example of this with what they did with Shamaniah and, and who's the, Severino. Severino last year.

Like this is clearly a team that like I don't want to say they don't care about results, but they're clearly looking at the stuff that Nick is talking about the, the pitch characteristics individually, how they play off each other and trying to build off of that. So that's one where like, you know, you look at the guys that the Mets are signing, you know, Frankie Montas, right? He's signed with the Mets. Yep.

Clearly, like, he's the most Mets pitcher ever. The first thing I thought of when he signed with the Mets, I looked at his arm angle has been dropping since his peak in Oakland. The first thing they're going to do, I promise they're already working on it. Get your arm set up. That's probably easier said than done. I'm not. But like, because he's a splitter fastball guy. the first thing they're going to try to do is get more of that vertical separation between the fast bond splitter to try to get him back to what the best version of himself will be.

And that's the kind of thing where we can't say, hey, Frankie Motas should raise his arm angle and then he will do it. Like we can identify something like that. Like that's always easier said than done. But that's the kind of thing that the smart teams are looking at. They're looking at how the pitches play with each other, how what the arm angles look like and all that stuff. more than just, hey, he had a 15% home run to fly ball rate last year. That's going to go down. You know, they're looking to fly.

And if people want to find some of those things, I would say, you mentioned obviously some of them, baseball savant.com is somewhere you could go. You could search up pitchers and you could look at all different types of individual pitch characteristics, whiff rates, expected Wobah, all those types of things. And they're adding more in terms of like IVB, like vertical break and induced vertical break and all those things. And obviously, Pitcherlist.com,

and I'm not just saying this because I use it as well, but if you go there and you search up, like whatever pitcher you want to look up, you can find all different kind of stats on every single pitch and all these different kind of crazy things.

It's intimidating at first 100%, but the more you jump into it, it's like anything else. It's, you know, the more you research it and the more you look at it every day, you just kind of pick things up and you learn from it.

So just hop on my stream in the morning. I'm starting to do this again, doing every single team rotation. five days a week, playback.tv. slash pitcher list. I'm live streaming at 10 a.m. Eastern time. So I will walk it through with you

and show you the process if you're trying to get into it. I literally made this site so I could analyze pitchers better. That's why I did this. There you go. All right, let's talk some news and notes before we get into pitchers

that Nick is higher or lower on versus early ADP. And there was some little things that kind of went down, but might have some fantasy value, some very recent things as recent as today. some things from last week as well.

The Orioles have made their big pitching move. Chris, you asked, and they delivered. They signed Charlie Morton to a one-year, $15 million deal. Morton is now 41 years old, coming off a subpar season with a 419 ERA 132 whip. The whiffs took a step back. The fastball velocity continues to drop off. He's 41 years old.

I mean, these are things that we should expect. Scott, is there anything left for fantasy in Charlie Morton to ball? Baltimore. Probably not. And I say that mostly because I've, the last, what's last three years in Atlanta weren't particularly good for fantasy. And a couple times I said, yeah, but there's still this going on with him that I like. And it just didn't pan out. What's weird about him, the way his decline is gone, because you figure, okay, 41 years old, of course, you're going to drop off of 41. But it isn't the like conventional age indicators. The decline isn't what you'd usually expect to see from a guy who's 41.

It's mostly tied to control. You mentioned his fastball velocity dropped a little last year. It wasn't lower than it was like four years ago, though. You know, his velocity is actually held pretty steady, and his curveball is still one of the highest RPM pitches in baseball. He did lose a little bit of swinging strikes finally last year. His K-per-9 dropped below 10 finally last year. but mostly it's just he stopped throwing strikes.

Yeah, I just think the command is bad. And could he get that back, particularly with the change of scenery? It's not outside the realm of possibility, but I feel like I know better than to bet on it, especially in a deep pitching pool like we have right now. I'm going to make the same joke twice during this segment. Here's the first one. The Orioles rotation is, oops, all number four starting pitchers.

Well, we'll make the second one later. but that like it just still feels like Grisden Rodriguez. Sure, Grayson Rodriguez is actually good, but everyone else is just a god. Zach Efflin is not terrible. Come on,

Chris. The point is this, this is a rotation that badly needs another impact arm. And look, maybe Zach Eflin gets back to 2023 or maybe Grayson Rodriguez takes a step forward because he's, I think,

more good than great right now. He's one of those guys that like, you look at the component part, everything should like it should be better. Like the end result should be an ERA that starts with 3.1 rather than like 3.4 or whatever it is. And obviously the park's going to be a little less beneficial for everyone. So yeah, I still think Baltimore needs to make a big swing here somewhere.

I don't know if they're going to, but they should. Of course, the offseason is not over and they still could make a move. I don't think that it will come in the way of signing somebody, although they've kind of been linked to Jack Flaherty. I don't think that's going to happen anymore after signing Charlie Morton here. But could they trade for Dillen C's? It's not crazy. Obviously, they have the pieces to get it done.

I believe he's entering his final year of team control. So that is something that could happen, but obviously has not happened yet. The Dodgers signed Korean infielder High Sung Kim, not Haasang Kim. I mean, this is going to take some time. There's going to be a lot of confusion. It's High Sun Kim, H-Y-E, High-Sung Kim. Kim to a three-year $12.5 million deal on Friday. No relation. At the time, Dodgers GM Brandon Gohm said the plan for now is to use Kim in a utility role with Moogie Betts and Gavin Lux still slated to start in the middle infield.

And then on Monday, the Dodgers traded Gavin Lux to the Cincinnati Reds for outfield prospect Mike Sorota. Definitely not confusing either. Also very confusing. And then a and a competitive balance round a draft pick, which according to Jeff Pass, Passing should be around 37th overall. So, Chris, there are lots of moving parts here. I know you wrote an article. It looks like Highson Kim, who is, will be 26 years old on opening day. It looks like he will be the starting second basement for the Dodgers, I think.

And then there are lots of moving pieces trying to figure out where everyone will play for the Reds. So what you have? I think it would be a mistake for him to be the starting second baseman, not because I don't think he should be a starter. although I think there's a lot of question about whether the bat's going to play. I just don't think Mookie Betts is a shortstop. And he was well below average in arm strength for a shortstop, well below average in range factor, OAA as well. I just, I think it clearly makes more sense and would be beneficial for fantasy.

I'll admit there's a little wishful thinking here that Mookie Betts play second base and Hysong Kim, who was a golden glove winner in, I believe the KBO calls it, golden glove. He is the only player in the KBO history to win a golden glove at both shortstop and second base. It's a little bit of an Andreas Jimenez situation where he's a playable, very good shortstop and an all-world second baseman perhaps. And you should probably play that guy at shortstop. And I think the skill set offensively is pretty Andres Jimenez-esque. There's a third lineup permutation for the Dodgers potentially. Yes. And that's Bet's moving to second Tommy Edmund coming in from center field and on Andy Paez playing

center field. Yeah, I can't remember who I saw, but one of the reporters said it's going to be like an open competition between James Outman, Andy Paez, and High Son Kim. And they'll just put Tommy Edmund wherever the other guys fit. And it'll probably actually just be different every day. Yeah. Yeah, and Kim is left-handed, right? He's a left-handed batter.

I think so. So there might be a left-handed, right-handed thing that comes into play, at least early on until things sort themselves out. I don't have a lot of hope for Heisung Kim for fantasy. He could be a base dealer if he gets on base enough. Yeah. But there's not really any power to speak of there. And he's not a contact hitter on the level of like a Jung-Hul-Lee, for instance.

He is pretty good contact hitter, but it's hard to make that profile work in the league as it is now. Now, the other permutation of that joke that I made relates to the Cincinnati Reds, who are following in my beloved Miami Marlins footsteps and building an offense around oops all second basement. I tend, like, there's been a little bit of speculation that Gavin Lux could be like a utility guy for the Reds. he's a pretty mediocre second baseman and played his way off shortstop. And the times that he's played the outfield, I think has been pretty bad. It's been very limited. But I don't think he's a utility player.

I think he's going to play primarily at second base, maybe a little bit of first, maybe some third, although that feels like a stretch. So I'm taking this as hopefully the Matt McLean and center field experiment in Arizona went well. he only played like three games there but maybe they saw enough and think he can hack it because otherwise I don't know how everything fits together here well I presume Matt McLean

would be a higher priority for the lineup than Gavin Lux would be I would hope so yeah yeah I mean Gavin Lux is like a 700 OPS guy I know he had a he had better numbers in the second half but that was really just like August and then he fell off again in September and there's enough of a track record in the postseason

you'd wonder if Matt McLean will stay healthy but he played in Arizona Fall League and looked healthy there. He only got three games in center field. He mostly played second pace in the Arizona Fall League. So I assume this is stocked down for Gavin Lux.

It doesn't look like his power is going to play much better in Cincinnati. It doesn't look like he has much power. So it does obviously crowd things, but I don't think it's going to come at the expense of Matt McLean. Maybe of Noel V. Marte,

maybe of some of the outfielder's, T.J. Friedel are more likely, I think they still have Jake Fraley. Jake Fraley and scheduled for a lot of the bets. Yep. Yeah. The Rangers signed reliever Chris Martin to a one-year deal and he has had a very solid career. He has immaculate control.

14 career saves though he's never been a full-time closer. Scott, just looking at the Rangers roster right now, of course they can still make another move. But based on the way it's kind of set up, I would guess that Chris Martin gets the first save if they don't make another move. Yeah, but they got to make another move. If they honestly view themselves as contenders,

Chris Martin's turning 39 this year. He was really good last year. He can't stay healthy. Has to make good since parachutes. He's sometimes vulnerable to home runs. I don't think he's somebody, a contender really wants as their closers. Bridge to the closer, great.

But I got to think with Kirby Yates still out there. that's probably or Kenley Jansen or or I can't ask as toves Carlos Estevez there's still a lot of or proven closers out there Jack Leiter or don't do that to me don't don't you dare take Jack lighter he's their number seven started right now don't don't do this Chris I look I think he'd be a really good closer there's another prospect in their system that might also be another closer is Emiliano Seoto so just pay attention to that name. All right Nick Pollack is still here. Let's

get some thoughts. The National signed Trevor Williams to a two-year $14 million deal. The Royals re-signed Michael Lorenzen to a one-year $7 million deal. Nick, do either of those matter? Well, I'm happy I'm wearing this shirt talking about Trevor Williams. I'll say that. But I, Trevor Williams,

what he was really good at last year over a two ERA and a 104 whip was he had like the best command I've ever seen from keeping so much of his pitches low and just barely putting fastballs inside that's own when he needed to. I think it's something we see often where a guy gets into a group for a moment and then it goes away, especially with command guys. Everybody's a major league for a reason. And if they get in that feel for a bit, they will just be at their best for a little bit and it will fade. I don't really expect Trevor Williams to be a thing for you to add at the beginning of the year. There might be a

couple weeks, but yeah, you should be going after him. I think streamer, fodder for either one, Trevor Williams and Lorenz, and I will just point out with Williams, he went to drive line baseball last offseason, and he did start throwing his sweeper more, and it was a really good sweeper last season. So, yeah, of the two, I think you're more likely to stream Trevor Williams, but I don't, I don't think either are draftable in a 12 team mix. I'm going to tell you that it was only a 50% strike rate on that sweeper, which was just 13th percentile. Pretty bad. Yeah, fair enough.

The White Sox signed Josh Rojas to a one-year deal. I'm not going to ask you about Josh Rojas, just going to mention it. And the Red Sox, some notes there. Apparently, Vaughn Grissom is the favorite to open the season at second base, with Ceylon Raphael of focus primarily on center field. And speaking of the Red Sox, apparently they are the preferred trade destination for Nolan Aeronado, if the Red Sox have interest, which we don't know. So two notes.

One, Craig Breslo has said, like, 12 different times this offseason. Rafi is our third basement. I think that's like the exact. He has like, there's like a button that he hits and that's what he says. He just keeps saying that exact quote. We'll see.

Aronado to Boston is like the only chance Aronado has of being fantasy relevant next year now that Houston's off the table. The other thing I will say is I did some digging on this Von Grissom thing. And it was like one reporter said he is quote, the nominal favorite. to open the season at second base, which like, I think it makes sense. Like, he was kind of the centerpiece for the Chris Sale trade. Let's see if he can do anything in spring training.

But like it feels like his last chance. Yeah, like if he has a bad spring and Christian Campbell's tearing the ball, but the cover off the ball, I think Christian Campbell can overtake him. Like I'm not saying that definitely will happen, but Christian Campbell should still be on your sleepers list. He will be on my sleepers list. Ooh, spoiler alert. Those are coming out next week, by the way.

Chris will have sleepers, I'll have breakouts, Scott will have bus. So 1.0 for each of us of sleepers, breakouts and buss, and rankings will be live on the site on Tuesday, January 14th. So make sure to check that out as well. Reminder, everything that's going on here, some programming updates. FBT is back to three times per week in January. We're actually live on YouTube right now. Thanks for everyone for hanging out.

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights, 10.30 p.m. Eastern time. If you want to come watch us live, that means you'll have an audio podcast in your feed every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings starting next week. Also, our 5-minute podcast, Fantasy Baseball Today and 5, has been rebranded as Fantasy Baseball Today Express. Slightly longer episodes. So more content for you around 8 to 10 minutes in that range. So make sure to subscribe to FBT Express wherever you listen to podcasts.

Let's take our final break. And when we return, pitchers that Nick Pollack is higher or lower on. We have like 20 minutes to talk about 11 pitchers, so that should be fun. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in to fantasy baseball today. Nick Pollack is ready for a fight. He's ready to defend his rankings, which are actually live on Pitchelist.com,

if you want to check them out. I took a look at some of those rankings and found pitchers that Nick is higher or lower on based on early ADP. Two names that you were kind of in sync with ADP, Chris. Chris, Nick, your name is Nick. Two names are Garrett Crochet and Roki Sasaki. So Garrett Crochet you have is your SP3,

which is amazing, very aggressive. I love it. Behind only Terrick Scubel and Paul Skeens. Crochet is currently the SP5 in ADP. And then Roki Soasaki is your SP15. He's SP19 in ADP over the past month. And I used the last month because that's kind of when things started to ramp up knowing that he's coming over and all that fun stuff.

So Nick, you've got, I don't know, like a minute or two to tell me why you love Garikrochay and Roki Sasaki. Extension, that's the word. Carrey Crochet throws the ball super close to the plate at 97 miles per hour. And he has two different fastballs off of that four seamers at 97 that go in opposite directions. You have the cutter going underneath the right-handed bats at 92. Then you have the sinker that he added that had like a 20% plus swing striker, which you don't see from a sinker unless you have an absurd extension. And guess what?

The one ding was that he was on the White Sox and now he's not anymore. I don't care about Fenway because if you're an ace, you're an ace. It does not matter to me. I had him at three. I'm not worried about the health or anything like that because they just set him up perfectly. And I expected him to be moved in this offseason. And what do you know?

That's what happened. I'm actually kind of shocked that ADP followed because when we saw it at first pitch Arizona, it was 51 overall for Gere Crochet. And I had to go up there with Eric Smolski and bat off everybody. Like stop being ridiculous. He should be up here.

And I think that he could be SB number one. I'm that into him because I just feel you have such a good foundation. With Sasaki, I don't know. I see 19. That's fine too. I could push them all the way down to 25 if I want by my February rankings. I made my initial rankings the beginning of November.

And to me, it's about him actually adding extension all the way up to seven feet, which is elite. That's what you want. Seven foot. Oh my gosh, that's like Bailey Ober and Logan Gilbert. Garrett Crochet is up there too. And he's past seven feet.

And that's amazing throwing hard with a splitter and breaking ball that works really well. But yeah, the innings cap is a little. but worrisome. It's just that when you get past 15 in the rankings, you start to lose some of the upside of a 30% strikeout rate with good ratios. You get two out of the three for the most part. And that's why I put Sasaki where I did. I might be pulling him down to like 20, 25 range.

And I see ADP at 19. So I've got no real problems there. But I'm so stoked for crochet. He's amazing. Yeah. He is amazing. And it's one of those you're ranking him third where it's like pretty clear. If you think it's too high, it's pretty clear why.

If you think it's just right, it's pretty clear why. By the dominance indicators last year, and I'm talking outputs more than inputs, other than ERA itself, Garrett Crochet was like the most dominant pitcher in baseball by virtually every measure. It's just he was basically a starter for half a year, and it was the first half of the year.

And getting back to what I was saying at the start of the show, particularly for a guy who was known for getting for being unable to stay healthy before he joined the rotation, missed almost the entire previous two years with injuries. I'm not totally sure he can take on an ace workload. I'm willing to gamble on it at 9, which I think is where I have Garrett Crochet. So, like, you know, I'm not saying I have to be sure you can take on an ace workload for me to draft you as an ace. but obviously the higher you go in the rankings, the more sure I have to be for it,

because obviously that's what I'm paying for, for you to be a true ace. I preferred the status quo Nick was talking about. I came back. I assume you were talking about it first pitch when everybody, when he was very controversial at like 13 or something. I was like, what are you doing?

Loved that. He's eight for me, so I'm right there with Scott where I like him a lot. probably not enough to draft him. So it's just health, right? It's not... For me, it's basically... Because it's basically...

...as health are as good as anyone out there. That's what I'm trying to get at. It's not just health. It's... Yeah, we were talking earlier in the show. 150 dominant innings means a lot more than it used to. Right. But for the number three pitcher,

I need 180, 190 dominant innings. And I'm just not sure you think that skeins is going to throw more or fewer innings that... I have the same doubt about Skeens. I'm a... I'm actually lower on skeins than the consensus. I have more on skeeers. I think both guys have Metsp3, right?

Behind Wheeler and Scoobel. Wheeler. Yeah, Wheeler and Scoople, yeah. Right, okay. So I guess what I'm getting at is you can honestly, I'm probably not drafting anyone side of my top 10 unless they fall to like 15 or 20. Yeah, me, me too. For me, it's not worth it hitting is so much more valuable in those rounds.

But I, what I'd say is when it comes to predict. innings. I see Gary Crochet going out there every five days. And I would not say that his health risk is higher than any of the other guys. So to me, it's about skills. And at that point, and like crochets are just unbelievable.

Now, that's kind of where I see. But why do you say that? I get that Wheeler. I understand the Wheeler case because Wheeler's been really one of the only guys that can actually go seven, eight innings consistently. What about Corbin Burns?

Corbyn Burns is interesting. I debated this back and forth because for five months he lost this cutter and then he got it back in the sixth. And it completely changed. It was a pitch that had minimal drop and all of a sudden a ton of drop and he finally got the pitch low

and that set up the other pitches too. I was so excited about it. If you read my roundups, you'll see me just go get elated all of a sudden. The cutter's back and I'm shouting this from the top of the mountains. So I'm excited about that.

But I don't know. know if that's, I'm not as confident in those skills, right? I also, and I'm not going to just say that Burns is healthier. I just can't because we've seen guys, Max Fried was one of them. Yeah, you can't. Cole was one of them. Shane Bieber is one of them. I can't just say that like he's going to be totally fine. I think it's all a step. Injury, but you, I mean, it's obvious. There are some pitchers who never get to that ace work. Like they're just never able to max effort delivery to get there. And Corbyn Burns, has for multiple seasons. Absolutely. I would say, I'm saying there is a slight, there's a higher,

like a, like a better chance for Burns, but I'm not saying that Burns is like, oh, I know I'm going to get it. So like that's kind of what I'm getting. Every pitcher has a 40% chance of going on the IL in any given year. Right. Which is why just go for the sales. Corbyn Burns probably has a 30% chance of going on the IL. And Garretre Crochet probably has a 50% chance of going, you know, like that whatever whatever the specific numbers are you can fudge them but yeah that's the way i because like so i go on this rant all the time i talk about injury either they get hurt or not well that's that's that's why actually talk about it and it drives me crazy because it's like well he's injury prone he's not yeah right right it's not injury prone it's like no you can you don't

want to you don't want to do single factor analysis basically ever yeah exactly i get your frustration with that. But like Corbin Burns is Corbyn Burns. Unless you don't think he's Corbyn Burns anymore. Right. Well, he hasn't been. For August, he was a 30% strikeout rate in 2023. And he had that pretty much all of last year until September when the cut of early back. And

he seemed very sure of what he needed to do to get it back and to keep it. And he managed to work around it amazingly well for not having it for all the months he did. Right. Right. I think I think performance-wise, there's no

reason not to trust corporate. I mean, look, I have crochet at three and burns at five. So I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, I understand. I will say, I have Sasaki 35th. That's fine, which is, I think, mostly a reflection of, I just think there's a lot of good pitchers. And his velocity was down two miles per hour last year. But it was down to 96 with 17. It was down to 96 from 90, but like, I think people are viewing. I think there's a couple things going. I think one, people are just looking at like he had a 215 ERA last year. Oh, I didn't know. I think a lot of people are just looking at that, but like the league ERA in Japan last year was like 304. Oh man. Or something. They are in in the middle of like the dead ball era to end all dead ball eras.

And he was not Yoshinova Yamamoto. He might be similarly talented, but Yamamoto was a much, much more decorated, much more proven pitcher. And he's going, I don't know, know, like six spots in the pitcher rankings behind Yamamoto now with when we've seen like Yamano, it worked. Like he was a very good pitcher last year. He just got hurt. Right. I'm not going to hold that as much against him as,

Roki Sasaki, who also got hurt last year. Yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting conversation. I haven't really had it yet. And I think there is something to be said about the thresholds of what is success in Japan versus in the MLB. and when I

I haven't watched Sasaki in the States pitch yet no one has really that said from my understanding of the skill sets Sasaki's is better suited to have a 30% strikeout right here than Yamamoto

Yamamoto is better suited to limit walks and to be more of a six inning guy so they both have their strengths and weaknesses I think I had Sasaki higher because for me to be actually a top five guy and a potential, you have to have a 30% strike at rate.

And I saw that with Sasaki. I don't quite see as likely, even though it could happen for Yamamoto. But I'm probably lowering Sasaki underneath Yamamoto. It just makes more sense to me of the safety of it, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I'm so curious. I don't know. 35 could be right.

Like we're completely just, we don't know yet. I'm excited. Yeah. I think I can't wait to watch him for sure. Right. Yeah. We do have to move on. Nick,

you fit in perfectly because I said, oh, let's keep things moving. He spent like 10 minutes on. He did fun. That was a fun conversation. Everyone was. It was.

We're not going to get to many other pictures here. All right, let's go. Shane Mclanhan. Shane O. Mack. Here comes the money. Here we go. Money talks.

Here comes the money. For those watching on YouTube, you see this beautiful mug that Nick is drinking from as well. You have him as your SP7 early ADP has him at SP 35. How could you? I don't know. What am I doing?

Look, I'll put it this way. Shane McClaintyhan was Terrick Scoobal. Lefty throwing hard with a changeup that was deadly. And also Terrick Scuba with a better breaking ball. The thing is, obviously, he's getting Tommy John. And I think there's a massive way we're talking about before the show about second Tommy Johns. And my thought process right now is I don't know what to

make of it. Because our data on second Tommy John is somewhat limited. And guys are getting their first Tommy John far sooner than they used to. So we don't really have too many guys who are absolute young studs getting their second Tommy John. And I don't know if that means that this is bad or not. I want to think at times that, hey, this guy has a healthy elbow now, while other ones are ready to explode.

And there is a Tommy John honey. moon that we've seen from a lot of pitchers as well. So the way I see it is, hey, this is Shane McClanahan, who was a top three pitcher in the majors coming back, and he's going to have a healthy elbow, so that's 150 innings of amazingness. I'm not going to put him above that because it's the raise, and generally you shouldn't really expect more than 150, you probably even say 140. But it's a different kind of impact than the other guys, because this is one of the best

pitchers in the majors. And I want that on my team. So maybe I am too aggressive on this, and I really tried to wrestle with the quality of inning versus the volume of it. But at the end of the day, I am certainly favoring impact more than, that was a steal a phrase from Scott here,

favoring impact more than longevity because we have the massive pool of pitchers on the wire this year. So I put Shane McLean at 7. I know. Crazy. Yeah, I mean, it just, It just seems like you're willing to sell out security completely. I mean, this is going to change when we see spring training, right?

What's that? It's going to change when spring training arrives. Like, I'll put it this way. If Shane McClainton looks like Shane McClainty and spring training, where does he go to your rankings? Yeah, that's a good question because what you're saying about his upside, that was certainly true in 2022. But when we last saw him in 2023, he wasn't quite that guy. Yeah, he was striking out less, walking a lot more. And maybe it was because his elbow wasn't totally right.

But we're mostly basing the upside on that sample of that one year, which wasn't even the most recent year we saw him. And when you look at 2023, it's worth noting it's a precipitous decline as the season goes on. This is what that didn't ring right to me. And it's because I'm thinking of him until the middle of June. And then he got hurt. And then it was like, he wasn't the same. before that injury, it was a

212 V-R-A-1-10 whip, 27% K-rate across 15 starts. Yeah, the K-rate was still down a little bit. Stomlow your 30% swing strike rate in that time, and that's not sticky stuff. I mean, that's him just being the dope of dope, right? And that's the guy

I'm expecting to come back. Now, I mean, really, I think what's going to happen is spring training arrives, and we're going to know. And if Shane McClain, it doesn't look like Shane McClain or he's delayed whoever, he's falling way down am I read. Here's a weird, here's a weird wrinkle.

I'm curious where he moves on yours. Here's a weird wrinkle for the race that I just thought of. They are going to be playing in a spring training stadium this year. They are not going to be playing in their spring training stadium. It doesn't matter. I just think that's weird. That's pretty hilarious. I know there's a weird scheduling quirk with them too, which we can probably talk more about

on another episode, but they're playing a large majority of their home games in the first half of the season so that in the later summer months when it rains every day in Florida, they're on the road somewhere, which makes sense. But it's just, I wonder if there's just going to be more of like a fatigue factor. And I do think there is a chance that Tampa is playing in like the most favorable hitting environment outside of Colorado in baseball. Because it's Yankee Stadium dimensions in the Florida heat and humidity. I think there's a chance that this is just an extremely bad play. And we talked a little bit about this before the show.

We've mentioned on the show before. But stuff, like the stuff metrics are better for pitchers at Tropicana Field than any other park in baseball. I don't know if it's hitters. We've heard, you know, Willie Adomas famously didn't see the ball well.

There's evidence that the ball rises more at Tropicana field than anywhere else. Internet has increased in drop. So that you also have to account for. kind of everything that we know about these raised pitchers doesn't not everything gets thrown out the window but like the environmental shift here is a really significant factor that I think could push you know all the raised pitchers down at least a little bit that's a really good point I don't think I really take into account that's

it could be George Steinbrenner field in the summer heat yeah a decent amount I mean I just think about Dunedin a little bit there too yeah that impact so that at the very least should bring down McLanian into the teens for me. And I also hope they don't trade Brandon Lowe. That's my opinion. I don't know. I want to see him hit 40 home runs this year.

He is way undervalued. But that's a different story. Does he still have second base eligibility? Yeah. Yes, he does. Oh, boy. We'll save that for Scott's Sleepers 1.0. I got to add him to sleepers right now.

Brandon Lowe will be on that list. Nick, two more names that you are higher on here. Max Freed you have at SP 17. Joe Ryan at SP 18, based on early 18. based on early ADP, they're going about 10 spots lower in the pitcher market. SP28 for Freed, SP29 for Joe Ryan.

As we've learned today, it sounds like you're a bit injury agnostic, so perhaps that leads to the ranking for both of these two, Freed and Joe Ryan. I think so too, yeah. I will say,

having a 0.99 whip last year, Joe Ryan is not getting enough respect. I mean, I think that's why. Look, yes, a 360-year-rate. Oh, he allows some home runs. Okay. Home run rate is actually, the least sticky pitching stat among all the basic

cyber metric ones. So yeah, no, don't worry too much about that. He also had 27% strike rate last year as Joe Wright increases velocity. He also got more comfortable with his secondaries as well. Messing around with a sweeper in there also with that slider. I think Joe Ryan is just fantastic. I think he's just an overall solid pitcher. Yes, he had that injury at the end of the year. All signs are pointing to him being healthy.

I'm good with that. And then Max Fried, Max Fried does this lovely song and dance every year where it's like four starts until he actually revs the engine and goes. The only problem last year is that he got interrupted midway, so he had to rev the engine a second time, and that means his overall stats weren't as good.

But this was even before he became a Yankee, and that's such a good scenario for him. I think he's potential for 15 wins here, and he's always been a ratio, darling. So Max Fried, if you want to talk about like a safe solid starter, Max Reed always fits the bill. I actually agree wholeheartedly on Joe Ryan. And I was dead wrong about him last year.

I had him on my bus list. I worried about how many home runs he gave up in previous years. But he upped the velocity. He threw his sweeper more last season. And Joe Ryan was really good. I just wonder if upping that velocity maybe it contributed to the shoulder injury that he dealt with later on in the season. And so maybe he won't throw at that same velocity.

again this year. But it's possible. Yeah. You never really know. Velocity is one of the weird things that we try to guess too. And that's honestly, when it comes to being right or wrong on a pitcher, I would say the number one thing, save for injury, is guessing velocity. Either guys all of a sudden have more velocity or all of a sudden they don't.

Yeah. Those are the-broughts. I didn't know about that. Those are-that changes the analysis. And it's fun because it's fun because a lot of this stuff, you got like, well, that was a good start, but we'll see. Velocity, it's like four pitches in. okay. He's just throwing two miles an hour harder.

All right. Those are the breakouts that we never see coming. And we can't really predict. I mean, you can read about, hey, this guy went to drive line. This guy went to tread in the off season. Or they show up to spring training. And hey, their first start, first start, you know, with velocity readings. Boom, this guy's up two, three miles per hour.

Like, whoa, where did this come from? Jack Flaherty last year. Yeah. I mean, we just can't really predict those things, which, you know, that it adds an interesting wrinkle to pitching analysis in spring training for sure. Nick, I'm going to throw. I do podcasts every day in spring training just to do velocity stuff. And I'll be honest with you.

Sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's wrong. Yeah. You know, so. I'm going to throw five names your way that you are lower on entering this year. So give me a quick thought on each of these. Chris Sale,

ADP, SP7. You have him down to SP 22. Blake Snell. Guys, okay. Okay. Chris Sale just really quickly. Like,

I know I'm like, oh, injuries or nothing. Like, there's no way. He quit didn't even survive for the playoffs. So we all know that was like this golden moment that he had. He's not going to repeat that.

He can't. It's like the same thing as the Grom. See, the one thing I will say is DeGrom gets hurt pitching. So does. Yeah, I don't think. No,

Chris Sale. Two of his injuries were. Oh, yeah, he also riding a bicycle and weirdness. And like one was riding a bike to his finger. Yeah. And then didn't he have like a rib injury that wasn't from pitching or was that?

Yeah. But also. There was like a broken wrist. Yeah. And then also I think the wrist was from the bicycle act. I honestly think Jacob de Grom's physiology can't hold up to how hard he started throwing the baseball in, what was it, 2019? 2020. I forget which year it was, but since then, he just, he can't even throw 100 in.

He last 100 innings. So he seems like the most overvalued pitcher of all, as good as he is inning per inning. You're getting 100 innings. I feel pretty comfortable saying from DeGrom. Sale, yeah, I'm worried about his. ability to hold up, but it doesn't, it seems like more the bucket every pitcher falls into in terms of injury propensity. It's just he happens to have come up wrong more often than most of them recently. We just saw like this career peak ridiculous season that nobody could

have predicted happen. And I think the ADP is reflecting him to just be that again. I mean, not that, I'm saying like 90% of that. And that just doesn't seem right to me. I struggle with where to rank Chris Sale. I have him fifth or sixth, but I feel like it's by default and I don't actually want to draft him there. I just don't know where I'm supposed to put him. Yeah, I'm eight.

So I'm, I'm, yeah. I feel like, I don't want to deal with it. I feel the exact same way. It kind of feels like a respect ranking for Chris Sale because he just had this awesome Cy Young season. But this is the exact picture that you buy. when his ADP was 133 last year, but then he has the Cy Young season,

and now his ADP is 38. So you probably want to hop off now that he just had that amazing season, you know. That is also extremely true of the next two guys on the list. You know, I'll tell you this. Chris Sale, in our most recent mock draft, he was there in round five, and I was getting excited to take him. So, like, I think that's the point.

I'll rank of where I rank them, but I'm probably not taking a pitcher until round five, and if it happens to be Chris Sayl, I'll be happy with it. Well, that's the way I see about it too, right? It's just like, whoever's there I'm going to be happy about because there are so many. There's so many good pitchers. Yeah, well, apparently Blake Snell is not one of them.

You have them as your SP 23, and in early ADP, he is the SP12. Dylan Sees, you have at SP24. His ADP is SP10. And then two others, Franbervaldez, you have down at SP 33. The ADP is SP16. And Hunter Green, you have at SP50. the EDP is SP25. Yeah, okay.

All right, I got this. This is easy, okay? Blake Snell, it's like we just forget. We take like some drug that makes us forget about the first two months of every fantasy baseball season. I don't know why. If you've ever rostered Blake Snell, you know what it feels like. And you know you never want to put yourself through that again. Okay?

It just isn't consistent. And it's also every single year, Blake Snell has a different new skill that saves this season. It's not like it's just. just one thing that always it is a new skill. I remember like two years ago, it was like he should never throw his change up again. Right. And then last year his change up.

Yeah. And then last year was like, oh, cool, my curveball is now going to be thrown for strikes. Like, and yes, he is doing this very delicate tightrope of not giving in, not throwing meatball pitches.

He has the lowest mistake rates. It's a pitch we have, sorry, it's that we have on our site. Double the chance of allowing a hit. He has the lowest percentage of that, which is crazy. But it's so hard.

to do that and replicate it with how he does it. And he doesn't do it for a bit. All of a sudden, he just goes on a rhythm. What he just, like, and it's not like he's, it's not like he's,

he's not avoiding mistakes like Greg Maddox was avoiding mistakes, right? Like, he's not like pounding the corner of the strike zone and like, it's not command. He just, he throws, I think fewer pitches in the, in the zone than any pitcher in baseball.

Yes. Yeah. I'm, I'm going to push back on the command. Or command versus control. What is like enough strikes to do it. He doesn't have control. because it's not in the zone. Yeah.

But it's a, but he does have good command. He's doing his tightrope because if you're a bad command, you'd be too far out of the zone. But I think the real takeaway here, and it's kind of also true of Dillon C's, is just we have a track record of how thin the margin for error is.

Yes. For these guys. Right. So, so Dillon Cs is a different problem. He has two pitches. He has a four seamer and he has a slider. He tries messing with all these other things.

I keep banging the drum for him to learn to cutter because that's the solution to all of his problems. but no. He tried it once and allowed a home run. He's like, I'm done with this now. Great. Thank you so much, Seas. Well, I tried to help. The thing is, he's bad against lefties. He doesn't have consistency against them because his slider kills righties,

his four semen kills righties, but then against the lefties, he doesn't trust the slider enough, and he leans into the fastball too much, and the fastball command isn't so good that that becomes also a disaster for him. He needs that cutter to get those strikes and side on them. He's not really utilizing that, and that's why you see the volatility all the time from Cease. When he's facing a lot of righties, then it's easy. But when he faces a lot of lefties,

especially when he's not able to command his fastball that night and not really bury that slider down by the ankles of them, yeah, he gets hit pretty hard. And I don't think that's going to change. I think this is going to be the constant song and dance that we see from Dylan Cease of everything's great, everything's bad, everything's great, everything's bad. And I, again, just don't want to deal with that.

If I'm getting a guy inside my top 20, I want the chance of that being everything great. You know, I don't buy that Cease is going to find that rhythm he had was it, 2022, 2021 at this point? I don't remember what it was. That's a glorious season. But I, I just can't, I don't want to put myself through that one.

Framber Valdez, for Amber Valdez was having a horrible season. It was the worst. I was texting Jason Colette, being like, oh, you thought that Reagan's was worse? I don't. And then all of a sudden, the second half, Valdez found his, not only his old curbel,

but like took his old curbel, polished it and made it like one of the best curbed balls in baseball. And it's safe. He saved his season. I mean, you look at the whole season and go, oh man, this is really good under three ERA. He had a four three ERA until like the six weeks stretch in August to September that just completely saved everything. So I hate that too.

I really don't like guys who are not a consistent skill set, who all of a sudden go rapidly one way, then rapidly another because they drive us bonkers as managers. We don't know what we're doing. We don't know if this is good or bad. And what do you know, here comes Hunter Green. All right. Here's the guy that does the same exact thing.

He throws that fast, well, he throws that slider. Does he allow a home run? Who knows? That's it. That's under green. And I don't want to deal with that again. He is not going to have a point seven home run for nine again in Cincinnati. That's just not the world he lives.

And the splitter was bad. It was not the thing that fixed him. It was bad. It was just this four Seamer game. We're fortunate last year for whatever reason. I dug into it for so long. And I'm like, it's the same pitch. I don't buy it.

The only thing I could think of, and this is entirely theoretical, and I have no idea how you prove it, is just the presence of the splitter made it harder to get on the barrel of the ball. But like that feels like finding a conclusion. It was so not thrown. It wasn't like a 25% of the time or something. Yeah. I just think that it's, look, baseball's weird.

We look at it in numbers, but like sometimes it works. sometimes it doesn't. And I feel this was one of those good times. But now I just can't buy that he's going to do that again. All right. We went a little bit long, but we had to do it for Nick Pollack. Nick,

here from pitcher list. Before you leave, Nick, why don't you promote everything you've got going on? I know it's a lot. Oh, man. So come on by to pitcher list. I write my SP roundup going over every single pitcher every single day of the baseball season.

Also, in P. In PL Pro this year, we're going to be launching a live draft assistant where you can upload your team. and have a live draft assistant with our PLV projections built as web app, not Google Sheets. So that will be coming out in February. Go check that out.

We have our 2025 projections with our PLV metric, our pitch-focused metric, which is different than your normal projections. It actually uses the stuff that not only pitchers throw, but the stuff that hitters see and how well they use it to make our projections. It's incredible. So go to pitchos.com slash premium. Check that out. But yeah, guys, I can't think enough for bring me on.

It's so much fun doing this. and Scott, who's the guy that we're most aligned on that we love? Is it Michael King? I have Michael King 14 and I said at the top of the show it's 15 to 50 that I can't decide on the order. So Michael King is the last one before we get to that. Good, because I have like nine. I love him.

Go get Michael King, everyone. Okay, cool. There you go. You heard it here. The King of Kings. We are going to wrap there for Nick Pollack. As Scott and Chris, 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. And we will be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye. Paramount Podcasts.