Fantasy Baseball Today - Prospect Report: Grayson Rodriguez Update & Bo Naylor Coming Soon? (Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:02 Could Bo Nailer join his brother in Cleveland soon? Find out next on Fantasy Baseball today in five. Welcome into FBT and Five on Saturday, June 17th. I am Frank Sample, joined by Scott White, the five prospects on the verge of getting called up, Christian Encarnacion Strand, who actually played right field on Thursday for the Red's Triple A affiliate,

Starting point is 00:00:26 Colton Couser with the Orioles, Grayson Rodriguez, making some noise down in the minors, Bo Nailer with the Guardians and Michael Bush with the Dodgers. Scott, three names we haven't seen on here recently. Grayson Rodriguez, Bo Nailer, and Michael Bush. Yeah, so Grayson Rodriguez, he maybe should have automatically gone in this section once he got sent down.

Starting point is 00:00:48 It kind of felt too obvious. But now his roster rate is down basically at the same level of Christian and Carnaccio and Strand. And his most recent minor league start, was very impressive struck out 10 had 28 swinging strikes according to Stackhouse which is the most for any AAA pitcher this year

Starting point is 00:01:07 and he does seem to have a plan for getting back to the majors he said it's getting back to commanding the fastball down in the zone up in the zone I kind of shied away and went soft a lot through a lot of cutters and that's really not my game

Starting point is 00:01:23 I'm getting back to the basics and establishing the fastball and putting guys away also said he needed to work on the shape of his breaking balls. I think he's still the best pitching prospect in baseball, and we'll see him again pretty soon. Bo Naler, look, the Guardians have always had a very high threshold for what they expect from their catchers defensively, and I think that's the main thing that's held Bo Nailer back.

Starting point is 00:01:49 But they've been going with Mike Zunino, who's a 182 hitter over the past five years, even worse than this year. And they have major offensive shortcomings. Like, they, they, they had used an injection of offense anywhere they could get it, Bo Naylor would provide that a catcher. And besides, Zunino doesn't rate his very good defender anymore anyway. So it seems like this is going to happen soon. Naylor was a 2020 catcher last year, which is obviously not something we often see.

Starting point is 00:02:19 He got his first two stolen bases of the season Wednesday. I don't know where they've been all year, but he got two in one game. It's something he's still capable of doing. Obviously, we've been seeing a lot of them in the majors. and so I remain hopeful that he'll be a contributor in that area when he gets there. He probably needs to be because he's not a great source of batting average, but he does get on base a ton.

Starting point is 00:02:40 That's Bo Nailer. We're stashing away in two catcher leagues. Michael Bush, we saw him up in the majors earlier this season, playing just kind of a part-time role when they had some injuries. And then he got sent back down to AAA and didn't do much for a while, but he has been on fire lately hitting a bunch of, long, long home runs. You go to the article,

Starting point is 00:03:03 the latest prospects report of mine, you'll find links to some of these videos of the home runs. But they're very impressive. And he's been playing exclusively third base in June, which is interesting because the Dodgers third baseman Max Munzi is currently dealing with a hamstring injury and they've been kind of conflicting reports

Starting point is 00:03:19 about how serious it is. Doesn't sound like he'll go on the IL, but I don't know. Michael Bush seems like a ready-made replacement if that happens. I know we kind of we're focusing on the new guys here so we skip past Christian Incarnazion Strand but I do want to key in on him again

Starting point is 00:03:36 because what he's been doing it like it's been amazing all year but it just keeps getting better and better and these are the numbers through Wednesday so they're probably a little outdated now but so in his first 28 games of AAA this year in Carnacian Strand had three walks versus 36 strikeouts pretty bad play discipline

Starting point is 00:03:55 and closer to typical for him But in his last 16 games, 18 walks versus 11 strikeouts. He's completely inverted it, the plate discipline, much more patience at the plate. And you know what? Hasn't changed his production at all? In fact, he now is hitting 325 over his minor league career. And among players who've gotten at least 800 plate appearances in their minor league career, only 10 other than in Carnacian Strand have hit at least 320.

Starting point is 00:04:26 and it includes guys like Mike Trout, Vladimir Guerrero, Wander Franco, Julio Rodriguez, Jose Altuve, that's half the 10 right there. And that's what Encarnacion Strand is doing. With bat, like, he's excelling in every way a hitter can right now. Even batting average, which we don't even think of as being part of his game. We think of Incarnazion Strand as this hulking slugger, which of course he is, but I don't know.

Starting point is 00:04:54 We may be selling his ceiling short, And I hope the Reds, you know, they've been so aggressive with their prospect callups this year. I hope they find a way to get them in the lineup soon. All right, the five prospects on the periphery. These are players doing something of note. Jonathan Aranda, a second baseman with the Rays. Pete Crowe Armstrong and outfieler with the Cubs. Jacob Miziarowski, a starting pitcher with the Brewers.

Starting point is 00:05:16 Drew Thorpe, another pitcher with the Yankees. And Davis Schneider, a third baseman with the Blue Jays. But if you want to find out about those, you're going to have to read about it on the site. Because we're all done. For more extensive fantasy baseball coverage, listen to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, the Odyssey app,

Starting point is 00:05:34 or anywhere else podcasts are found. Thanks for listening to Fantasy Baseball today in five, and we'll be back again on next week. Bye-bye.

Fantasy Baseball Today - Prospect Report: Grayson Rodriguez Update & Bo Naylor Coming Soon? (Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 podcast)

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