Fantasy Baseball Today - Recapping Our 2026 Sleepers, Breakouts & Busts! (10/13 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

It was a magical season for the White Sox (2:52). ... News (4:42): updates on Spencer Schwellenbach and Spencer Strider. ... Parker Messick was a sleeper pick we both got right (14:13). ... Stop trying to make Fetch happen (24:30)! ... Chase Burns came through as a popular breakout pick (35:26). ... How did we all miss on Kyle Bradish (45:13)? ... Noelvi Marte was always going too high (52:12). ... Is there anything to learn from Zack Wheeler and Nick Kurtz (1:00:50)?Subscribe to our YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign up for the newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters

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. Now here's Frank Scott and Chris. Every year we give out a bunch of sleepers, breakouts, and bus. Let's take a look back and see how we did. Welcome into Fantasy Baseball today.

I am Frank Sample, joined by Chris Tower. today on the show, you guessed it. We're recapping sleepers, breakouts, and busts. What went right and wrong? What can we learn from it? And I did not mention the date at the top of this show, Chris, because we are recording at a different time than usual. If people are watching, they can actually see the sun in the background of your camera here.

And we're recording at 2 p.m. Eastern time here on Monday, October 12. So it's right before two more playoff games. And then this audio is going to come out on Tuesday. so everything's kind of all over the place. How you doing? I'm good. I feel like I've been here before. Yeah.

Yeah, nothing to do with that. Before we get into some of the news and notes, just want to quickly mention, like, of the playoff updates that makes sense for us to talk about right now, the Guardians came back from down 02 against the White Sox, and obviously, awesome, awesome for the Guardians and their fans to come back down to O,

like obviously that's a huge accomplishment. Love seeing Jose Ramirez ball out in the playoffs. Dude, home run on a ball that was like on the ground. It was like nine inches off the ground, I think. But yeah, he hadn't really done a ton in the playoffs before this. So it was good to see him carry them to a division series win. Yeah. I wonder if you would say the same thing for Aaron Judge, Chris.

Oh, he has to do it first. Anyway, disappointing end to the season for the Chicago White Sox and their fans. But not that you need. me to remind you, but keep your heads high, man. It was a great season for White Sox Baseball, for their fans, obviously trending in the right direction, have all this young

talent and much more young talent on the way, too, when it comes to top position player prospects like Caleb Bonimer, Rock Chilowski, could be up in the next year or so, and then you have these young pitchers that you could transition into start a role as Grant Taylor, Hagen Smith. It kind of feels like pitching

is the biggest bugaboo, obviously, for the White Sox, but great. great season, great turnaround for them. And I think much better days are coming very, very soon. Yeah, it feels like a team that's got like a bunch of three and four and five guys in the rotation. And could use like one really good stabilizing starting pitcher. Of course, that's easier said than done.

They tried to trade for Luis Castillo to be that guy. He's clearly not that guy. So there is some work to do. But yeah, a very bright future overall there. All right. not going to touch on the other games because again, there's a bunch of other playoffs stuff happening before this podcast actually comes out. Quickly run through the news and notes before we get to our preseason sleepers breakouts and bust. The Braves had their end of season press there, and we did get some interesting items here.

Both Spencer Schwellenbach and Spencer Shrider should be part of the team's rotation, but the team doesn't expect either to fill a starters role for the entire season. So basically, they're hoping that those guys could be starters for next season, but not necessarily banking on them, starters all season long for the Atlanta Braves. Injury update on both. Schwellenbach had the fractured elbow last year. Surgery to remove bone spurs from the elbow in February of this season, 2026. And then he had a second surgery to repair the right elbow fracture in August of 2026.

Strider went on the IEL on June 13th with right elbow inflammation. He never returned to the Braves, not in the regular season, not in the postseason. And then we learned they were shopping him in trades. You know, there was apparently discussing him for Jacob de Grom, some kind of trade. there as well. So, uh, we're in an interesting spot, Chris. I feel like both Schwellenbach and Strider are wild cards for the Braves and for fantasy for next season. Yeah, I mean, Strider, unfortunately just kind of feels like we're done here. Like, even when they were rumored to be talking about him in trades this offseason or at the

deadline, it did seem more like he was like a salary dump than a key piece, which is probably right at this point, unfortunately. Schwellenbach, he's a little bit younger. He's actually going to be 27 next year, so he's older than you might think. And it just kind of depends on how this surgery goes. You know, with Shreider, we really haven't seen anything from him in the last three years.

Like, 2023 was the last time he was really a relevant pitcher for fantasy. But Shwelenbach was very, very good in 2024 before that injury. And so if this, you know, suite of surgeries can fix the injury, issues. Yeah, maybe, but I think you have to look at him the way the Braves are. Anything you get from him is a bonus. If he's healthy to start next season and he costs the 280th pick in the draft, yeah, I'll happily take a chance on Schwellenbach. But I don't think you can view him as someone that you can expect anything from. Somebody you might be able to expect something from next season is Didier Fuentes, who will enter spring training as a starting pitcher, could be transitioned into a

relief role if needed. But Fuentes got to over 90 innings this year. So I know Mark Bowman threw out 130 innings as a possible innings jump for Fuentes. But Chris, when you dive in, the surface level numbers, the underlying stuff, you watch and pitch.

Obviously, Fuentes is really awesome. I think we would be very interested in him as a starter for next season. But also in the back of my mind, I just kind of wonder if they don't bring back Ryssel Iglesias, Robert Torres had an injury plague season. like if they don't have a closer,

could they look at Fuentes in that role? So I don't know. I think either way, he's probably going to be fantasy relevant. I think we would like him more as a starter, but I mean, maybe as a closer, I don't know.

Yeah, he's someone in my first round of rankings that I released on the FPT newsletter. He was my number seven RP, I believe. Let me make sure that that's right. Yeah, number seven. And so that was basically,

there's kind of all the elite guys, and I include Mason Montgomery in that elite category. Maybe that's a little too much. I love it. I love it. But then I kind of slotted D.D.I. Fulentes in as an R.P. Or as a spark. But, yeah, I think he's someone, you're just going to want to draft next year.

And whether it's as, you know, hey, him and Jacob Lats don't have a lot in common. But Jacob Lats was someone in my deep sleeper's column. I was like, yeah, he could be a useful end of rotation piece. It turned out he was like the third best closer in baseball. I think Fuentes is more talented. And so whether it's as a starter or if he gets a shot in a high leverage situation, Didier Fentez is someone who could be really impactful next season and absolutely deserves to be on fantasy radars going into 2027.

And that's been a popular theme so far since the season has ending is getting back to trusting skills and not necessarily roles and just like drafting players who have very clear talent. And I think Fuentes fits that. I think, again, the White Sox guys that we mentioned, Grant Taylor and Hagen Smith, in whatever role they are, we're hoping that they turn into starting pitchers for next season. And we've seen a lot of these relievers turn starters work out in previous years for fantasy as well.

So I hope that what the Braz are thinking is Fuentes is a starter for next year. But, you know, the fallback, even if he's the closer, I mean, that could be pretty awesome as well. To work out either way, yeah. For fantasy. A couple of their news. items here. Shane O. Mack. Shane McClanahan will not be available to pitch for the rest of the postseason. He went on the IL with forearm soreness in early September. And there was another update earlier today that Kevin Cash said that Shane McClain will be healthy heading into the off season, but they just,

they're not going to bet on him to provide anything in the playoffs, obviously, when he's been hurt. He's another wild card, Chris, where it's like at this point in his career, he's dealt with so many injuries. He's shut down again. It's just, I don't really think that we should expect. much from Shane McClain and heading into next season. I agree. I think like Schoenlbock and Strider, you just view it as anything you get out of him is a bonus. He'll be drafted ahead of those guys, assuming he's healthy, but not someone that you can draft, I think, as a starter for your team. Vlad Jr. underwent laser eye surgery and perhaps this can have a Max Muncie-esque effect

on Vlad. Remember, Muncie put on the glasses in, what, May of last year, and he's just been awesome ever since. was good before that too, but obviously you know, kind of resurgence in Max Muncie's career. So perhaps the vision was a problem for Vlad. We'll see if that can help him get back on track.

Corey Seeger. Nobody cared who I was until I put on the glasses. Corey Seeger underwent surgery to remove a bone spur from his right elbow. He should be fine for opening day, whenever that is. Caleb Durbin had successful surgery on his left pinky finger, should be ready to go for spring training, and Jacob Marcy

underwent UCL surgery with an internal brace on his left elbow on Monday, and he is expected to be ready to play in games within six months. So could be ready for opening day. I think the more likely outcome is that, you know, we're probably misses the first month, maybe the first two months. So for any of those sickos that are drafting way too early drafting here during the fall and wintertime for next season, just remember Jacob Marcy might not be ready to go. I know there are a few prospects that are close, Chris, that maybe could make an impact in Marcy's place for the Marlins.

Yeah, I know Scott really likes Cam Canarella for the Marlins. He was a, he started the season at High A. He finished it at AAA, hitting 282 with a 393 on base percentage at AAA. He's only 22 years old. There's a little bit of pop,

only 15 homers, although he does hit the ball pretty hard. There's a little bit of speed as well, good approach at the plate. If Jacob Marcy's not ready, Camerrella is, a definitely a name to know for the Marlins and Centerfield. All right, big thanks to everyone watching us live or on demand.

We appreciate you being here. Make sure to hit that like button. Let's take a break. And we'll be back right after this. All right, let's recap our preseason sleepers. And I wrote down, added all to the rundown. Our sleeper's 2.0. Our sleeper breakouts and bust 1.0 are all published usually in January.

and obviously that's very, very early on in the offseason before, you know, many drafts are happening. And so it's very interesting to look back and see what those names look like now. I'm not going to read off all the names here, Chris, but I mean, you got some definitely some big hits here between like Okamoto and Connor Griffin and Chase the Water. Parker Messick was a big one. Carson Benj, you had as a deep sleeper. And then in your 2.0, Carter Jensen, J.J. Weatherholt, Dale and Lyle, those are the ones I wrote down as like, bolted as, you know, probably your biggest wins. But what sleeper pick would you consider as the one you got most right? Or maybe the one that you learned the most from writing up way back then in the offseason?

Yeah, I think it's clearly Parker Messick in both lists. And to be clear, the way, I think we all have kind of different definitions of these. But for me, I do tend to be pretty strict about keeping it tied to ADP. and so I think it's just outside of the top 200 I'll consider anyone a sleeper I know you can make the case that a top 50 pick is a sleeper if you think they should be a top 20 pick

I get that but I stick with the top 200 I like to give myself a little more specifics on what I'm picking from and I think the message from Messick is especially when you're that far away from the season, if the biggest argument against a player is their role, that'll probably get sorted out. You know, that's not always true, right? Like, Kate Anderson, I think, would be the primary thing

where the only thing he needed was an opportunity. That's what we thought anyway, but let's stick with that. The only thing he needed was an opportunity and an opportunity should come up eventually. Well, in his case, he was pitching at AA and had been drafted a year, less than a year before. Parker Messick was proven at AAA. He had made 20 starts at AAA in 2025. Very few top prospects ever spend more than 20 starts at AAA. I think I looked it up last year when Bubba Chandler, in 2025, when Bubba Chandler was stuck down there. And I think Bubba Chandler and, oh gosh, the Phillies guy who got traded to the twins, whose name I'm blanking on.

Mick Abel. Mick Abel were like the only two top 50 starting pitchers who made more than like 20 starts at AAA in the last five years. And that was because McAable just wasn't good at AAA. Generally speaking, once you've proven it at AAA to that extent, you're a major leaguer. and I know there was some concern about whether Parker Messick would end up in the Guardian's rotation. He did. Life finds away, as we know. And I think one lesson to take there is for players who have already gotten to the major league level, for players who are proven, like who don't have anything left to learn at the high minors,

you should just kind of not worry about playing time because it'll figure itself out if they're good enough. And there are worlds where Parker Messick just isn't very good and gets sent down or flops at spring training and doesn't make the rotation. But given where he was being drafted, which I think was outside of the top 300, it just doesn't matter. There's no downside to making that pick. I think people were sleeping on Parker Messick in the classic sense of just overlooking him, overlooking how good he was as a rookie, overlooking how good he was at the minors. and I think that's the big lesson here is life finds a way. We say it all the time, and especially at pitchers,

if you're the sixth guy on a team's rotation plans at the start of the season and you stay healthy, there's a pretty good chance you're going to make 25 starts that year. That's just how pitching works. Yeah. I actually had Parker Messick in my sleepers 1.0 as well. I wish I drafted more of them this season, but I think everything that you said was spot on, especially, and this has been a pretty consistent theme so far since this season has ended,

but really getting back to just like focusing on skills. For me, it's a little bit, I just like that security, and I'm sure this is the way for most people, like that security of knowing already that somebody is in a rotation spot or in a lineup spot, in a starting spot. So you almost want that confirmation before you draft somebody. But again, when a player is going as late as Parker Messick was, around pick 300 or even, Once you get outside the top 200, I mean, all those players are late round flyers at that point. Bet on skills. And Parker Messick flashes skills down the stretch of last season. He had seven starts

where he looked very good. Minor league track record, obviously was very good. Came with prospect pedigree. And in an organization that does really, really good with pitching development. So, yeah, I think Parker Messick is one that both of us got very right and hopefully could learn to lean into the skills even more, even if we do have some questions about what the role will be on for a specific team. The other name I wanted to mention is one of the sleepers I got most right. And that is Alec Berluson, who his ADP was 175. He finished 24th overall. And my thinking with him was that I assumed that he would step into an everyday role with the Cardinals this year, that he would just play more than he has in years past. And there was some skill growth.

in previous years we saw last year his average exit velocity went up, his barrel rate went up. I didn't think that he would lead the majors in RBI by coming into the season, but I just thought that he would be a solid all-round type player

like someone that doesn't hurt you anywhere, good batting average, like 20 to 25 home runs, good RBI because he puts the ball and play a bunch and he was just going too late. So to have someone that plays every day at that part of the draft I think obviously it worked out pretty well here

What's crazy is that part of the reason I had him as a sleeper Is that he improved against lefties last year He was awful He was so bad against lefties It's so weird It came back down this year He was awful against left-handed pitching But he was mostly an everyday player

And he led baseball with a 116 RBI So It genuinely one of the weirdest stats I can remember Is Alec Berluson Had a 548 OPS lefties this season. It was awful. He had 212. He had 40

RBI against lefties. I think he was tied for second in the majors in RBI against lefties. I have no idea how this happened. More than a third of his RBI came against lefties. And

I don't understand because he was incredible against Ritees. He had 311 with a 939 OPS and he had 76 RBI against Ritees. in 464 plate appearances. He had 40 RBI and 206 played appearances against lefties. It's baffling.

I don't understand how this happened. And I think this is a, we're going to do an FBT Express, and Alec Berlison may or may not be one of my early bus calls for next season just because I think, if nothing else, that RBI total is going to come way down. And I think he's a pretty good player, but not a great one. and so if it's more like 88 RBI in 2027,

I think he could be a pretty big disappointment. Yeah. What's hard about the way too early bus calls that we're going to have is that we just don't have ADP yet. Yeah, we have no idea where he's being drafted. Bus calls for all of us are usually just relative to where they're being drafted. So without knowing where players are going to be drafted, it's just like, all right, we're kind of forecasting a little bit.

But yeah, I could see that being the case if people kind of overvalue this season too much for Alec Berlinson but he does it in that kind of Josh Naylor way that he makes a lot of contact so with runners on base he just naturally is going to have a higher RBI total and if you look at the underlying skills he really has

just gotten better every single year in terms of hitting the ball harder and optimizing his launch angle more and OPS and WRC Plus just like constantly getting a little bit better I feel like maybe he could take a little bit of a step back against Rite's but based on how like

he wasn't great against lefties in 2025, but it was an OPS over 700. So I just thought that like, all right, maybe that can bounce back a little bit. So perhaps a little bit of evening out next season for Alec Berlinson, who was like just kind of a,

don't hurt you anywhere, boring player coming in, but I thought it was, the process was right there. It was a great call by you, for sure. Yeah. A couple others that I got quite right.

Gabriel Moreno, Cosma Okuboto. I had all the rookie short stops on here again. We wrote this in January before like ADP kind of settled. Obviously Connor Griffin got pushed way up, but Griffin, Weatherhole to McGonigal, you know, in January, all we had was like NFBC

and I think their ADPs were all outside the top 200 at the time. I had Ian Seymour as a deep sleeper, Parker Messick as well, and then sleepers 2.0, not great, not great by me. I had Trevor Rogers, Emanaga, Musgrove, Durbin, and Andrew Vaughn. Really, I mean, EMAGA was like the only one that kind of paid off there. But yeah. Yeah. Durbin was really good for like two thirds of the season.

He was just at a bad position. So bad early on that, you know, the final numbers don't really blow you away. But I think, well, I guess there's also just if you drafted Caleb Durbin, you probably didn't get any of the good numbers from him. Because he was so bad early on. You probably dropped him and someone else reap the rewards there on Caleb Durbin. So those are the ones that we got most right. Chris, what about the sleeper you got most wrong?

and what can you take away from it? I think the biggest one for me is probably Francisco Alvarez. And I say that because, look, I had Kyle Manzardo and Matt McLean on there as well in Sleepers 1.0. Justin Crawford. I had some pretty bad players on the Sleepers 1.0 list. But I went with Francisco Alvarez because personally I ended up drafting him a ton. His price ended up moving up as the offseason went on to the point where he no longer qualified. for Sleepers 2.0

and I think I replaced him with Carter Jensen and actually moved Francisco Averaz to my breakouts, which are the calls that you're supposed to feel more strongly about. And he was pretty bad. There were a couple of injuries in here for Francisco Averres,

but I think part of where I went wrong was he had that turnaround in 2025. He got sent back down to the minors, crushed it at AAA, got called back up and was really, really good for the final, like, month and a half, two months of the season. And I just kind of bet on there being, if not continued growth from there, him kind of establishing a new level. And I think I ran into the full season statistics are more predictive than partial season statistics. And I bought into a narrative that, hey, he's young. He got sent back down. He changed his story. He changed his

swing, he figured it out. And sometimes that works out. I'm not going to say that never works out, but it is easy to fall for the like second half breakout narratives with young players. And it's not always going to work out the way you hope it does. Yeah, I think part of it for him too is he can never stay healthy. Yeah. And it's a lot of different. I think it was a hand and a knee this year or something like that. And yeah, it's just always something with him for sure. Like he hits 16 homers in 113 games. Even if he plays like 130, that's not a great, he's probably somewhere in like the 20 to 25 home run range. Still like hits the ball hard. The barrel rate, 15% was the highest of his career, but also strikeout rate went in the wrong direction.

Struck out more than ever. I mean, one of the lessons I have for later on is I had, um, Royce Lewis and McKenzie Gore in my breakouts 1.0. And it's just like, Stop trying to make fetch happen, basically. You know, when we have enough of a sample, I understand, like, progress for these super top prospects is not linear, and they can, like, break out later on in their career. I get that, but it's like at some point, you got to take what they've done in their career,

especially when you have a three- or four-year sample. You have to take it at face value. And I think you could say that about McKenzie Gore and Royce Lewis. I think Francisco Alvarez, unfortunately, kind of falls into that same bucket with those guys. I think he's squarely in the number two catcher discussion for next season, but not someone. Like I was drafting him as a top 10 catcher. And I do think we should be careful about falling for this with Carter Jensen, who closed out the season incredibly strong.

That's September, 1194 OPS in the month of September. His month by month OPS, I've started like deep diving catchers for the off season. His monthly OPS was just all over the place. Carter Jensen. Really good in March and April, really good in June, really, really good in September.

Absolute disaster. The other three months. Yeah. So he kind of did it in like an accumulator type way. I don't want to look, 27 home runs as a rookie catcher is really impressive. Yeah, no,

it was good for Carter Jensen. But yeah, just like to make sure that we're not overvaluing that too much to the point where he's being drafted as a top eight catcher or something like that. I think if he's going to, if he's in the,

that like 12 to 15 range, I think that's fine. Yeah, I'm going to view him as what he did overall. And I worry that it's going to be, yeah, I have him 11th, a catcher. He could go to 10th, Liam Hicks. I think, yeah, I think that's fine. That's a good range. But I think there's going to be a, yeah, but look what he did down the straight. He figured it out.

And it's like, maybe he figured it out. Or maybe it's just a high variance player being a high variance player, you know? Yeah, he is young enough where he can obviously. continued to improve and he can build off of things like that. I don't think that we should overrate any of the small samples. I think Carter Jensen right now, what we're learning is that the plate discipline is not great, and as a result, he's a pretty streaky player. Lots of Royals hitters are streaky so far early on in their careers, but that's

kind of my early takeaway for Carter Jensen. But yeah, that's a good point. Like, don't overvalue you that September too much. He did something similar last September, right? And so he still paid off where he was drafted, but yeah, just don't overvying that too much. the sleeper that I think I got most wrong. And again, I got a lot of these wrongs. I could point out of a few,

like I had Jorge Polanco and Marcus Semian. It's just, dude, why are we going after these like old kind of injury prone dudes? I kind of liked the Mets off season. So what the heck do I know? Yeah. Chris Bubitz was a letdown. Joe Musgrove was a letdown.

Both on my list as well. The one that I think I was, I was most convicted on. He was the pitcher I loved on Valentine's Day was Nick Lodoll. low. And I think I just didn't put enough stock into his injury history and the history of blisters that he specifically has. And look, he could bounce back next year. Obviously in 2025, he didn't really deal with the blisters. And he was great. That was part of the reason why I really liked him coming into this season. And that could still happen. Like, he can bounce back and be healthy

and he can have a great season. But I, I just kind of overlooked that injury history a little bit too much. Like blisters are something that, you know, if it's happened multiple times year over year, it starts to become pretty consistent. We've seen this with Max Free too. It's like it kind of pops up every year, unfortunately. So I think just not putting enough stock into a certain pitcher's injury history and just paying a little bit more attention to that.

But I had lessons I could take away from all these guys. Like Bubich and Musgrove, it's just like drafting injured guys when they're not healthy. And the last time we saw them, they most recently were not healthy. it's just you really don't know what you're going to get. You don't know if they're going to show up to spring training and be healthy or not. So that's just kind of a shot in the dark type thing. And then it's like Polanco and Marcus Semi. And it's, you know, betting on older guys, especially on Polanco's case where...

Don't bet on the Mets. Yeah, that might be the lesson there. Polanco just really, outside of 2025, really has not been able to stay healthy in his career. Do you have any other takeaways here from kind of drafting injured pitchers or a Nicolodolo who's just dealt with blisters over and over again? No, I think the Lodolo one specifically is just you got to get a discount on your kind of iffier players. And he was more, I don't think he was like crazy expensive or anything. But if I remember correctly, he was like a one, a top 140 pick.

Yeah. Top 150. And so around there for sure. Yeah. That's, I mean, look, it's not like the other guys in his range were great. Zach Wheeler went right A few spots ahead of him Okay that would have been an awesome pick

Sunny Gray would have been an awesome pick But also Emishian Brandon Woodruff Blake Snell Ryan Pepey I'm kind of like blanking on Michael King Here's the problem with that Chris Is that like Cam Schlittler was also in that Right ahead of yeah

Yeah Chase Burns was a little bit ahead of him Zach Wheeler Or Jacob Mizirowski was 10 spots ahead of him yeah Yeah Oh it's all coming back to me now I remember all these This range of pictures like

I love Lodolo, I love Pepio, and both of those guys obviously dealt with their injuries. But, you know, Gavin Williams was going after him. So there was a bit of an opportunity cost. Obviously, you have to pick the right pitcher. We don't always know who that pitcher is going to be. Maybe the lesson there is just don't fall in love with one pitcher. Yeah. No, that's fair.

Diver. Like, just take everyone in every range of drafts because you're probably not going to, like, the chances of any individual pitcher, hitting like that are really slim, just by the nature of the position. And so that might just be my overall pitching lesson for next year is just draft everyone. Just do not have a preference for any player in any tier. And just every draft take a different pitcher at every point in the draft. And hopefully I will hit on some good pitchers.

I feel like we're kind of hitting on a lot of, you know, Scott's lessons learned and his strategy talk for next season where, you know, he's, he's mentioned his nips a few times where it's no intentional intentional player strategy. But also he talks a lot about starting pitchers just like taking as many shots in the middle rounds as you possibly can and trying to do it with volume and just, you know, take as many breakout sleeper chances in the middle to late rounds and just hope enough of those guys hit and it pays off.

And I think that's kind of the overarching thought that we're talking about here as well. Let's take a break. And when we return back into our preseason break, out and busts, and we will talk about those right after this. I'm pretty confident talking into a mic. Hey, I'm doing it right now, but home projects, I second guess everything. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? Who do I even call? That's where Thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note, and it uses AI-powered search

to match you with a right top-rated local pro. So instead of guessing, you get clarity and can hire with confidence. For your next home projects, try Thumbtack. Hire the Right Pro today. Welcome back, Fantasy at Baseball's Day. We are recapping preseason sleepers, breakouts, and busts. What do we get right? What do we get wrong? What can we learn? And Chris taking a look back at your breakouts from before the season, some of your big hits. Breakouts 1.0. You started it with a section that was like bounce back candidates. Yoron Alvarez, Jackson, Merrill, and Dylan Cease. Just check, check, check, A plus. Plus, I mean, you could do no wrong after those three picks.

You also had Kate Smith on that list of breakouts. And then in 2.0, you had Caglione, Chase Burns, and Yvonne Herrera. So all those names I thought were the biggest winners in your breakouts, one and 2.0. But what do you think the one you got most right was and what you could take away from it? Yeah, if we're not counting the guys from 1.0 who were established star level players before. and I think crucially we're still in their prime and didn't have an obvious reason why

they couldn't be good again. Like Dylan Seas, the skills were still really strong. Jackson Meryl, really, young player who has really strong physical tools and was hitting well last year in 2025 before he had a concussion.

And then Yorna Alvarez, I hammer this point home a lot, but if the only argument you can make against the players that they can't stay healthy, you only need one thing to go right. And that's what happened with Erdan Alvarez. He mostly hit like himself and stayed healthy. And that was enough.

If we're not counting those guys, I also don't really count Kade Smith. That felt like one of the most obvious picks you could possibly make elite pitcher who's now a closer. Great. I would go with Chase Burns, who I think is also a very, very obvious breakout pick.

Elite, elite town. who just, there were, I guess, some questions about the workload. There were very, very faint questions about whether he'd be in the rotation to start the season. But even at the time, it felt like something not worth worrying about because he would be in the rotation eventually, even if it did happen. That was just a bet on an elite talent, and it worked out. I didn't really have any performance concerns for Chase Burns. Any concerns about him were strictly workload or, injury related. And I guess for those of you in a points league, unfortunately, the workload

questions did crop up. He didn't really make a valuable start in September. And that stinks in a head-to-head points league. But I think on the whole, it was a remarkably effective breakout season for Chase Burns. Yeah, he was a popular one. I think we were all pretty intrigued by Chase Burns. And he was specifically interesting during spring training because there were talks of, you would he definitely be in the rotation? Are they going to go with a six-man? I feel like maybe he had some kind of like slight injury thing pop up

or like a fatigue thing during spring training that maybe scared us off a little bit. But we talked about this last week where, you know, if you have conviction and your eyes tell you that this pitcher is really awesome and he's a good breakout candidate, like don't let spring training sway you one way or another too far.

Obviously like Camp Schlittler had a thing in spring training and so I think the same thing could be said for both Schlittler and Chase Burns. I'm trying to figure out who a candidate could be for next season's Chase Burns. It's not as obvious because we don't

have this, like last year we had this obvious group of like Burns and Schlittler and Mizzerowski and Treyia Savage and Bubba Chandler and not all those guys hit but obviously the ones that hit they hit really big but we don't really have that same crowd. Jared Jones is going to be popular breakouts.

I think it's the obvious one. I'm trying to just think more like a prospect who got called up like Kate Anderson, but it's different. He wasn't very good. Kate Anderson, but Chase Burns wasn't, he didn't really do much in the majors once I I guess that's fair. Yeah, yeah. But it's just, I think it's different because Chase Burns, you watch him pitch and it's very different than Kate Anderson, right? It's like the stuff obviously played. The way that those guys are going to be good are are very different. So,

Didier Fentes, if he's, if it looks like he's tracking for a rotation spot. But yeah, we are, this And this stuff is all cyclical, right? Like this stuff is all anytime there's a bunch of young players, that generally means that the next year there won't be as many young players because a bunch of those guys graduated. It's like looking at my rankings. Didier Fentez looks like the most obvious one. I think Kate Anderson should be included in that to conversation.

I ended up bringing him right at 48th at starting pitcher. which is just kind of a, yeah, you belong. We'll see. Jared Jones, for sure. I think the other group is like elevated past this point. Like Cavali and Logan Henderson, I think those guys are going to be drafted higher than where Burns was going. Yeah.

Probably not. Maybe Emmett Sheen, if it looks like he's got a rotation spot. You can do that again? The Dodgers hate that guy. Maybe Connolly early. Yeah. You know, if he's healthy. I think some of the relievers make sense.

They're going to be drafted much later, though. Like the Fuentes, Grant Taylor, Hagen Smith group, they're all talented. They all had some level of prospect pedigree. Like, you watch them pitch. They're clearly talented. They're going to go much later. Then, you know, Burns' ADP was 115,

and Schlittler was, like, around 125, and Mizziarowski was in that range. So this is just your latest reminder that, like, every year's draft pool is very different. It's not, you can't always draw conclusions, like, who is this year's, Chase Burns, Camp Schlittler, Mizzerowski.

Yeah, nobody. We got a couple of people in the comments saying Andrew Painter, maybe. I like Painter, too. Like, I dug in a little bit so far on him, and we did our early breakouts for last week for the FBT Express, and he was on the short list. He was a name that I considered. Basically, once he got called back up and he changed that pitch mix,

he was really good, and the Stuff Plus metric was really good on Painter, too. So, yeah, I can see that one being pretty interesting. It is a lot harder to do that exercise. this year than it was last year for sure. Yep. Some of the breakouts that I got most right this past season, I mean, some of the obvious like Ben Rice, Camp Schlittler, South Stewart, those were all at breakouts 1.0 and everybody was excited about those guys. I don't think I can really take too much away from those.

In 2.0, I would consider Jonathan Arrondo a win. I know he kind of fell off as the season went on, but I think he was around 150 and he finished as a top 80 player, so that obviously came through. Jack Caglione. The one I want to highlight is actually Braxton Ashcraft. His ADP was 239.

He finished 78th overall. And it was up and down. Obviously the first half of the season was tremendous for Ashcraft and then he struggled a little bit. He changed things up, started throwing a sinker more and got back on track towards the end of the season. But basically what I learned here

is pretty similar to Parker Messick. It's like, we had a small sample last season of Ashcraft in the rotation and the eight starts that he made. It was a 216 ERA, 114 whip, over a strikeout per inning. And I just remember when I was diving in in the off season, the pitch mix looked good.

He had two breaking pitches that got whiffs. Got a lot of ground balls around a 50% ground ball rate. It's just another one of those things where we did have some questions, is he definitely in the Pirates rotation? But you dig in and he has a prospect pedigree and he has the skills.

So it's just, it's another one in that same kind of Parker mess mold, Chris, where it's like just bet on some pedigree and some skills and they don't always work out but for these two in particular, Messick and Braxton Ashcraft did. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I think

Ashcraft's a tough one for 2027 because the skill set was very different in the second half. He reverted back to being much more of a contact pitcher, much more of a groundball pitcher. And you can still be effective that way.

It's really hard to be as good as he was early on in the season that way. You know, he was a guy who had a couple of double-digit strikeout starts, you know, looked like an ace for about three months. And then in the second half, he kind of looked more like he did in, you know, the limited role in 2025. So I do wonder how to approach Graham Ashcraft for next season. He ended up 33rd in my first run of rank.

Kings right behind Jared Jones. That's an interesting one because Jones I think has much more upside, but Ashcraft probably a lot more projectable. Yeah, I think I agree with Jared Jones being ranked ahead of Ashcraft. And Ashcraft also ended this season hurt too. Right arm discomfort and fatigue in September. So that's not great. I think all fair points for projecting him forward for next year. I also think, and I mentioned this midseason, I think, that the pirates just pushed him too hard early on in the season. You remember he was going like six and seven innings regularly. And, you know, he does have a history of being a starting pitcher in the minors,

but he hadn't really handled the workload on a per star basis like that at the major league level. And I, at the time, I just felt like, yes, it's great. we're getting all this production. But it's also a young guy. I felt like the pirates maybe pushed him a little bit too hard early on in the season. And that's why he winds up, you know, production takes a step back. And he winds up hurt towards the end of the year, too. So it doesn't make for an interesting evaluation for next season is Braxton Ashcraft.

What about the breakout that you got most wrong, Chris? Everyone in the fantasy industry got Kyle Braddish wrong. Yeah, that's what I wrote that too. I'm just like, what did we miss? How did we get here with Kyle Braddash? I don't think we missed anything, honestly. He was just significant. Like, maybe we overreacted to some small sample size success in both 2024 and 2025.

around the Tommy John surgery, he had outlier strikeout numbers. You know, 12.1 K per 9 in 2024, 13.2 in 2025. It was 71 innings total. Before that, he was around a strikeout per inning guy. The problem with, well, we should have seen this coming was he was really good in 23 as a K per 9 guy or a K per inning guy. because he had really good control. And that completely evaporated this season.

And he stopped being as good of a ground ball guy as he was. And it was just every single skill set got worse. Like it'd be one thing if, you know, you look at 2023 and he had a 283 ERA and a 327 FIP. He wasn't an ace, but he was very good. If he did that again, I think maybe it would have been a mildly disappointing season for Braddish, who remember was being drafted off and as like a top 15 starting pitcher. But I think we would have been fine with it.

Yeah. 2026, he was just a completely different worse version than he had ever been. The whip was 146. His walk rate was 10.5%, four percentage points higher than in 2023. His strikeout rate, four percentage points lower than in 2023.

He got hit a lot harder. It was just, I don't know how we should have seen everything got worse coming. That feels like a difficult process to try to figure out. Yeah, and I think that's the lesson here is that maybe we didn't do anything wrong with Kyle Bradish, right? I looked into, so his career before this past season,

22 through 2025, 67 starts. That's a pretty substantial amount. 347 ERA 116 whip 9.5K per 9, just under three walks per nine. If he gave us that this year, like you said, maybe a slight disappointment, mid-3s-ERA, solid whip over a strikeout per inning. Yeah, not a top 15 starting pitcher. I kind of thought that was the floor. Like that was like your median expectation for Kyle Bradish. It's just what he has done in his career.

But I thought there was a ceiling based on what we saw last year where he can, okay, maybe we are talking 11, 12K per nine. and, you know, he takes that ace leap. I really thought that was possible. But, I mean, for his whole career, 2.9 walks per nine, and then this year, 4.1 walks per nine. His career 9.5K per 9 down to 8.3, career 106 location plus this year, 98. I just don't really know that there's anything,

like any way we could have seen this coming. The only other thing I could point to is that he had surgery for a sports hernia after the season. Like, they said, oh, he was pitching through it for three or five. four starts. Maybe it was longer than that. Maybe it was just like most of the season he was dealing with this hernia thing.

Because I don't really know how else you could explain that his control just completely goes away. I mean, look, I had a when I was in the hospital earlier this year, I had a cat scan and they found that I had a hernia from, I don't know when. They had no idea. Yeah, maybe.

I don't know. I think the thing with cow bradish is I think you can very reasonably say that the process for ranking him as a top 15 starting pitcher was wrong. That we bought too much into the best case scenario outcomes for Browash

based on very small sample sizes in 2024 and 2025 where he struck out a lot of batters. But I think the lesson there is that he should have been ranked 25th. Right. And he finished, what, 70th or something? thing. Like it, I just, yeah, not, sometimes stuff just happens, you know, like I think that is,

I have been criticized for saying, I don't know, uh, when asked questions on this show before and I understand. But sometimes the answer is just, yeah, sometimes unexpected things happen. And I think that's the biggest thing with Cabratis is just what we, maybe it's what we said earlier about Nick Ladola. Don't fall in love with one pitcher. Maybe that's the lesson to draw because it seems like everybody in the industry fell in love with Cal Braddish.

But even then, he shouldn't have been this bad based on what we knew coming in. The other names that I just wanted to mention here quickly again, it's with Royce Lewis and McKenzie Gore. It's guys that are pretty established at this point. They did have a lot of prospect, pedigree. Let's probably just take their career stats at face value at this point. And then,

you know, if they take a leap, good, but let's not necessarily expect that to happen. Specifically with Gore, and I could tie this in with Michael Burroughs as well, who I had in my breakouts 2.0. It's like sometimes a change of scenery doesn't result in, you know, a huge breakout or anything like that. So I thought Burroughs going to Houston and obviously they have their pitching development. and, you know, he showed some signs last year, but obviously that just did not work at all. One thing that I'm going to start doing is, I think the Astros might be, like, a bad organization now.

And they just let go of their GM, right? They've let go of pretty much everyone from the good years. Dana Brown has gone now? Dana Brown is gone, and their owner is the acting GM right now. And it just seems like their reaction to a lot of the sign stealing and everything that's happened since has been to move away from analytics and get more old school. And I don't really think the Astros have that edge that they used to anymore. So I actually think like, you know, the baseball prospectus, Jared Seidler did a ranking of every organization based on, just how competent he feels about them.

And I'm pretty sure the Astros were very close to the bottom of the list. And it's kind of hard to argue at this point. Yeah. All right, let's wrap up with preseason busts. Some of the ones that we got most right and most wrong. Chris, again, some of the names you nailed here in Bus 1.0. Blake'snell, Spencer, Shrider.

I mean, those were kind of like the free squares. It's just like hurt. Blake's now always hurt. Strider. Coming off injury wasn't good the year prior. Didn't know what to expect. Beaver also kind of in that bucket. Although I think you wrote this before we knew he was hurt.

Did we know he was hurt? Yeah, we didn't quite know yet. Although there was that one report that came out around December of last season that he had like not recovered well, but he was still being drafted in like a top 150 pick. Yeah. At that point. And I think that was clearly a mistake. Yeah.

Some of the other names here, Jacob Wilson, you went out on a limb there and you got that one right. I mean, part of it for him was like he was injured all year too. Nick Povetta, that's another one where I, I technically you got it right, but we thought the performance was going to take a step back. It was really just that he was injured all the year. And then in your bus 2.0, you had Noelvi Marte, Luis Robert, and Carlos Estevez, as some of the names that you nailed there. So what would you consider the bust that you got most right this season? Well, I don't think Blake's now counts because he's been a bust in like eight of 11 seasons that been in the majors. It's just,

you know what, Chris? If he's a top one under pick next year, I'm going to have him and bust again. It's just like, I don't know what the spell is that he has over the fantasy industry. I know that when he's healthy and good, he's incredible. He's unhittable. But like, we can't keep drafting this guy as a top 20 starting pitcher based on the good month and a half, two months you get at him every year. It just isn't worth it. And for the most part,

I could find the stat. There's some stat that, like, he has been a top five starting pitcher twice in his career, and I don't think he's been a top 30 starting pitcher at the end of the season any other year. When it works, it works really well. But at some point, we got to stop giving him the benefit of doubt. That being said, I think the player that I most went out on a limb on, I think was Noelvi Marte, who was the 130th player. in ADP in NFC drafts last year.

I don't know if we said the name to Helvi Marta after like, I don't know, May on this show, like whenever he got sent down, I guess he got called back up again at one point. We did hype him as a pickup, or at least I did once he came back. I thought there was a chance it could work. It did not.

Yeah, and that one was just, you can go wrong reading spring training stuff sometimes. but that's when it comes to like performance stuff or like, oh, this guy looks really good or this guy's having a great spring. Like I don't care about that at all. I don't care if a beat writer thinks a guy looks good. I barely care if a manager thinks a guy looks good. But with Noel V. Marte, if you started looking at quotes from the coaching staff in Cincinnati, there was a lot of like, we're not sure this guy can play the outfield. we're not sure this guy can hit lefties.

There was a lot of stuff out there with Noelvi Marte where they were talking about, you know, is he even an everyday player? And it was pretty clear early on that the coaching staff had soured on Noelvi Marte. And that just never crept up in his profile. And I mean, what were redrafting this guy 130th based on? Like a good month and a half in 2025?

the fact that he was a prospect of some note a few years ago. Like it was a very flimsy case to begin with with Noel Lvimarte. He was in 2025. He was pretty good in July. He was pretty good in August. Very good in August. He was awful in September. He struck out 32 times in 98 plate appearances.

He gave a lot of that back. And it was just kind of like it didn't really matter. We were viewing him as a as an everyday play. and that was never there. So that one, I actually feel pretty proud of my ability to like read what was actually happening in Cincinnati with Noelvi-Marte. Yeah, yeah, I think you were on top of that during spring training too.

So that's a good call there on Noelvi-Marte. And I understand people trying to like slice and dice and say, oh, you know, he's a prospect pedigree. But that you really need like he's locked into. playing time if you're going to make that case. And we just didn't know that at the time. So I think that was obviously a good call there on DeWLV Marte. If you look at my busts 1.0 again, put this out in January.

I don't want to toot my own horn. But I got 8 out of 10, like just nailed this bus 1.0 article here. Carlos Estevez, O'Neill Cruz. Okay, I got that one wrong. Spencer Shrider, Byron Buxton, Trevor Story, Blake Snell, Tyler Glassnell, Cal Raleigh, Riley Green, got that one wrong. And then Geraldo Perdomo. But like eight out of 10, like clear, clear busts this past season.

And honestly, like, usually busts are the hardest thing for me to come up with. Like, naturally, I just, I don't want to be negative about players. Like, you know, I'd rather try and find, like, the good and present, like, the upside case. But, yeah, I mean, for me, Raleigh and Pardomo were just some of the easiest calls because this is like paying for the career year. It just never made sense for either. Raleigh. What's up?

Even that with Raleigh is kind of like Kyle Braddish, where it's like, yeah, you could say, you could see, oh, we're overpaying coming. Oh, I didn't think it was going to be this bad. Yeah, there's no way. We still thought he'd be good. I thought he would be, I thought he would go back closer to the catcher he was before. 35-ish homers and he ended up almost a third as many homers as he had the year before. I mean, it was, you could see it being a bust for sure.

how bad it was, that was a lot tougher to see coming. Yeah, for sure. 100% agree on that one. And then Perdomo is an interesting one because, again, it's like, you didn't know what to do with him last year. Those were there.

He was a top 20 player in terms of where he finished last season, and then the ADP came in around like 70 or 80, I think it was. So you were getting a discount based on where he finished, but it was obviously far better than anything he had ever done before. So he's an interesting player because I know you and Scott were on him and then obviously I was off and I'm not like there's stuff that you guys get right and I get wrong, but yeah, for like these two in particular, I just, I was never going to pay for the career year. Especially when you think about shortstop too, like it's just such a loaded position. It's just why did we have to make that bet on per domo like inside the top 100 picks, you know? Yeah, that's one where if he was second base eligible, I would feel a lot less dumb about...

Or even third base, you know? Yeah, how much I drafted Heraldo Pardomo. Because, you know, you look at the final numbers, and it's not great. It's nine homers, 21 steals, 262 average. The counting stats were very poor. That was, I think, where I expected this Diamondbacks offense has been really good for fantasy over the years, and it just kind of wasn't this year.

They were 11th and run scored. I guess that's a little better than I thought, but I don't know. But yeah, the county stats just weren't there. But if it was like, if he was a second baseman, you know, he's probably more like the 13th or 14th best player. And it's okay. But yeah, I think that one just not paying up for the career is a good lesson. Yeah. And to your point, depending on where the ADP falls for Allie,

Burlinson could be a similar case. It's, you know, I don't think this is going to happen, but if for some reason he's like a third or a fourth round pick, like that seems like a pretty obvious fade. And then, spoiler alert, one of the names I have for FBT Express is Randy or Rosa Rana, just because I hope that people don't overvalue this career year for Randy. It was a great season, no doubt,

but we have a long established track record of Randy or Rosa, or Rana not being this good and being more like someone you should take in maybe rounds six or eight. If he's the top five round player, I think there's a good chance that he can let you down. But again, we don't really have ADP for next season. What about the bust you got most wrong here, Chris? The bust I got most wrong. Well, there's some good ones.

There's some good choices here. Ben Rice, although I took him out of 2.0, so I don't want to hang that one on myself. I think it's Zach Wheeler. I was just too cautious about that one. but in a way that I don't really feel like I need to learn a lesson from. It's very specific. I don't know that we're going to have many future Hall of Fame pictures coming off Thoracic Outlet surgery in their mid-30s, you know?

Well, and specifically the version of Thoracic Outlet surgery that he had was not as seemingly as big of an issue as the one. But like, yeah, that's just like, I still feel like it was a huge risk to drafts back wheeler where we were and it worked out sometimes risks work out like that that's the other thing is kind of the the counterpoint to the cow bradish is sometimes that works out but there doesn't necessarily have to be a lesson he's a really good pitcher maybe the lesson is don't remove really good pitchers from your list and and maybe that's kind of the corollary to what we're talking about with nick ladolo where it's don't fall in love with one player don't completely take one player off

you're bored either because every player has a range of possible outcomes. But yeah, that's, I think, clearly the biggest miss there. You know, Nick Kurtz not a great call either. But, yeah, I think Wheeler's clearly the biggest one for me. Yeah, we mentioned this last week when we were doing the best picks by round. And we mentioned it with Chris Sale. It's just like betting against the first ballot Hall of Fame pitchers to even though they're getting to their mid-30s.

I know Wheeler was a very, very specific case, but it's just, he's one of the best pitchers when he's on. These guys are different. Yeah, they're just different. They age different.

And again, it's like, unless we see, in sales case, unless we see a reason, like, that the production is starting to slip, which we haven't seen, Wheeler,

Wheeler's different. Wheeler's is a very, very specific case from this past season. I think the bus calls I got most wrong. My 2.0, not as great as my 1.0, by the way.

So, bus 2.0, I had Nick Kurtz, Jaron, Aroldus Chapman, Nick Povetta, Sunny Gray. So Povetta, technically I got right because he got hurt, but I mean, I just thought he was going to take a step back. Jaron, that worked out pretty well. Kurtz, Chapman, and Sunny

Gray obviously did not work out. Yeah, I mean, Kurtz... I think the process for Kurtz was fair because it was a second round price tag for a guy who strikes

out as much as he does, who we had a limited sample from. Granted, you know, he's super prospect and very, very loud tools hits the ball extremely hard. But going in a part of the draft where there's other very established players at a position

that was the most loaded coming into the season, I don't think the process was bad for Nick Kurtz. I think for him and O'Neo Cruz, I kind of lump them together in that just betting against tools that loud is kind of the But my takeaway here is that you probably just don't want to do that.

Yeah, I mean, look, he went from slugging 619 as a rookie to slugging 483. He went from hitting 36 homers in 117 games to hitting 21 and 99 games. He was still a really good player. But part of the case against Nick Kurtz was not, this guy's going to be terrible. It was you are paying a very high price for a skill set that has some real downsides. And that works when he hits 290 with a 364 Babbat. When he hit 256 with a 363 Babbat, the Babbat was actually the same this year,

but he couldn't keep the batting average up because he strikes out so much. And so, look, I think Nick Hertz is an awesome player. My view of him hasn't really changed. And I think I'm probably more likely to draft him this year than I was coming into 2026, because he might be more of like a third round pick than a second. But I think that's an okay bus call. It's not a huge win for you or for me. I had him

on my list as well. But I think it's okay. Like he's, it wasn't a terrible call. Based on the way that it finished. But if he stayed healthy, right? And that hand thing never propped up. That last like three weeks was really rough. If you look at his July, it kind of dragged the numbers down. But through June, 276 with 19 home runs. Yeah, that's fair. And a 937 OPS. Not as good as a sample from last year, but you know, that's, uh, you just double that. I mean, he's on pace for nearly 40 home runs while hitting 275. I mean, that would, that's fair. That would have been a pretty,

pretty awesome season there for Kurt. So, um, that'll do it. There you go. Recapping sleepers, breakouts and bust some of the things we learned. What we got right. What we got wrong. We will have another podcast later this week. We'll go live later on Wednesday night. Um, and we'll be I think drafting the first two rounds for next season. We'll kind of, you know, rotate all three of us, me and Scott. So we'll do

that then. We are going to wrap there for Chris. I am Thank you, 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 later this week. Bye-bye. On podcasts. The core short from Viori is one pair I keep reaching for. Morning run, afternoon training, watching the game.

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