Fantasy Baseball Today - Prospect Report: Add Grayson Rodriguez & Christian Encarnacion-Strand Update (Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:02 Bracer Rodriguez is dominating down in AAA. Let's discuss on fantasy baseball today in five. Welcome into FBT and 5 on Saturday, July 8th. I am Frank Stamphled joined by Chris the Welsh. Let's talk about Grayson Rodriguez, who had his best start of the year. Down in AAA the other day on July 4th, he threw six shutout innings with 12 strikeouts to zero walks

Starting point is 00:00:29 and over his last six starts since getting sent down a 183 ERA, a 0.96 whip, 13.4K per 9. This is the pitcher that we thought we were getting coming into the season. One of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball. Welsh, your latest thoughts on Grace Rodriguez. Yeah, four of the last five, he has struck out eight or more at least. And this is really encouraging. Three of the last five, he's walked one or less.

Starting point is 00:00:57 This is what you want out of Grayson. Let's throw one more on there. four of the last five, he's gone six in the minor leagues. These are things that we want to see. And his last start, it's actually interesting because baseball savant, sometimes there's a lot of movement. It's all screwy with what this, they call it an unknown pitch. So I can't give you exact numbers here because what they do is they register as fastball at only 14% usage. But 51% on this unknown pitch registered this.

Starting point is 00:01:22 So I'm not going to focus on the pitches. But to tell you, he had 27 whiffs in this start on 92. pitches. That's crazy. That was a 56% whiff rate and a 49% CSW, which is crazy. His change up was bonkers, 70% whiff rate. And something we've seen in the miners so far, at least over his last couple starts, is it looks like one of the fixes to get the command better is cutting the cutter. When he was up in the majors, he was throwing that around, it looked like around 12% of the time. Over his last two starts, he threw three and he threw four. So seven total cutters. over that time. So it has been fastball, change-up, slider. He's getting big whiffs off the change-up,

Starting point is 00:02:05 which has been good. The fastball, we're getting better command on. And clearly, he is getting back to himself. Maybe that cutter was throwing things off. It doesn't seem to be a bigger walk issue. He's going deeper into games. The strikeouts are there. Listen, sometimes the process, as I've said, million times, it's not linear. It takes some work. It takes some movement. We saw us with Taj Bradley. Tage Bradley had to go through this, and I think the cutter was actually the same issue with Tampa Bay. Grayson Rodriguez is the prime number one prospect to pick up. Hitter or pitcher.

Starting point is 00:02:35 If he's still sitting out there because people gave up, you should go and pick him up. Roster him, store him, because things are looking good for the second half when he does get the call up at least. Grayson Rodriguez is currently 55% rostered on CBS. And a question that came up on our full-length podcast, would you drop Luis Severino, who is struggling mightily to stash someone like Grayson Rodriguez right now? I'm making that move. Luis Severino looks broken, broken across the board, nothing.

Starting point is 00:03:03 It's not just like one pitch, by the way. It's like three of them are drastically bad right now. So I don't know where things fix with Luis Severino. So I would much rather go with the upside of Gracer Rodriguez, who presumably has fixed some stuff and him being with the Orioles. For those who listen to FBT and 5 and the Full Lane podcast, you know, we've talked a lot about Christian and Carnacio and Tran. When might we see him?

Starting point is 00:03:28 Well, we got an update recently, Welsh, and written by C. Trent Rosecrans over on the Athletic, he speculated that we're not going to see Encarnacian Strand until September. He said basically there needs to either be an injury or the roster needs to expand to get CES on the Reds roster. Do you think that's actually what's going to happen here with the Cincinnati Reds?

Starting point is 00:03:53 They're just loaded with talent. It's crazy. I mean, if they're saying that's what it is, I think it's hard to disagree with, especially him. The thing I have a problem with is I just don't know what else he needs to do. Low ground ball rate. It's in like 37, 38% rate. He has a higher fly ball rate. Crazy.

Starting point is 00:04:13 Every single stop in the minors for Christian and Carnaccio and Strand, he has had a 20 or higher home run to fly ball rate. That's crazy. He's pulling the ball. He's hitting over 300. He's just under a 4. almost a 346 slash guy. His strikeout percentage is low. His walks are up. He has 18 homers. So this is one of those things where I go, okay, what, he there literally is nothing else he can do. So the only logical thing here is that they clearly don't have roster space, that they feel

Starting point is 00:04:42 what they have got at the major leagues is not conducive to him coming up and maybe sitting on the bench. So that has to be the truth. And that's devastating. If you wanted to pivot, I will give you a pivot. I think that pivot is Colt Keith with the Tigers. 16 homers, three stolen bases, 335 average, 400 OBP. He's moved from double A to AAA. He's hitting 414 in AAA since his call-up over eight games where he hit 325 in double A. This is one of the premium bats in the minor leagues that should be up soon. He has more walks and strikeouts so far in AAA. We're going to see him in the futures game and we will probably see him with the Tigers. I wouldn't be shocked if it's sometime at the end of July or at least

Starting point is 00:05:26 early August, especially if that team makes some moves. All right. So a name there for you is Colt Keith of the Detroit Tigers. We're going to wrap there for more extensive fantasy baseball coverage. Listen to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or anywhere else a podcast are found. Thanks for listening to Fantasy Baseball Today and Five, and we'll be back again next week. Bye-bye.

Fantasy Baseball Today - Prospect Report: Add Grayson Rodriguez & Christian Encarnacion-Strand Update (Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 Podcast)

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