Fantasy Baseball Today - Roto Strategy! Category Targets, Punting & Category Sleepers! (2/27 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

What is our general Roto strategy this season and has it changed (2:30)? ... Roto lineups are deeper than H2H (9:27). ... What did you need to finish third place in each hitting category last season (15:30)? ... What did you need to finish third place in each pitching category (22:14)? ... Can you punt in Roto (25:45)? ... Always protect your ratios (30:47)! ... What early-round pairings make sense (35:07)? ... Which players are better in Roto (41:02)? ... News (44:28): Bryce Harper is OK after getting hit by a pitch. ... Who are some sleepers in the hitting categories (49:32)? ... What about sleepers in pitching categories (1:00:07)? 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, @CPTowers @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. Move over head to head. It's time for some roto talk.

Welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today on Thursday, February 27th. I am Frank Stamphill, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Today on the show, we are doing Roto Strategy. We'll take a look at category targets from 12 team leagues on CBS last season. Can you punt and still win? Plus sleepers for each category and the latest news slash stackcast data from Wednesday's action. But let's jump right in and get into the Roto Talk, also known as Rotissory or 5x5, the most traditional way to play fantasy baseball.

Usually there are 10 categories, five hitting, batting average runs RBI, home runs and steals and five pitching wins, strikeouts, ERA, whip, and saves. The goal is to rank as highly in as many of those categories as humanly possible. Scott, we will start with you. Do you have a general Roto strategy that you are employing this season and has it changed over the past couple of years at all? Well, I feel like, and this is, I know a frustration for some of our listeners, but I feel like we kind of default to Roto talk most of the time on the show.

So I feel like most of the strategy points I've been giving throughout have been mostly with Roto in mind, unless I've said otherwise. And so, you know, obviously emphasizing hitting early, at least my first five picks generally. Sometimes it's gone to my first seven picks, taking a hitter. Basically, taking hitters until I think all the stud hitters are gone. And it hasn't been my approach every year.

I would say generally in 17 years doing this job, 14 of those years that's been my approach. But I think the player pool is especially geared for that this year with how deep the mid tier is at starting pitcher. And really more than the mid tier, the mid to high tier at starting pitcher goes so deep that basically every time I do a rotodraft this year, I push it to its limit. And I think, yeah, I probably could have pushed it a little further waiting on pitching because of how good I felt my pitching staff. looked at the end. Obviously, you've got to balance the categories. I try with hitters to be especially careful with batting average early, not get too many low batting average guys because that's a difficult category to make up for.

There just aren't many batting average specialists who don't also hit for power. And if you're a batting average specialist who hits for power, you're just an early rounder. So yeah, that's probably. probably the main point in terms of focusing on categories. Yeah, I would say the biggest one for me is I would prefer, if at all possible, to avoid relying on true specialists, guys who are not just like really good in one category, but I want to avoid guys who are really bad in multiple categories. And that's why, you know, as we've talked a lot this preseason, like I tend to shy away from

Ellie De La Cruz at his price because especially in those early rounds, getting a deficit in multiple categories can be, it's not that it's hard to overcome. It's just it locks you out of a lot of value as the draft goes on. And then when you're talking later on, like, I would really prefer not to have to draft Bryce to rang. I'd really prefer not to be in a position where I have to go out and get a guy who is almost certainly only going to help me in stolen bases. So that's more what I'm looking for is just avoiding guys who are zeros or huge negatives in multiple categories. If it's one like the four category guys or a power hitter like Kyle Schwerber who might

hit 230, you can live with that. You can build around that. because they're helping in multiple categories. It's more the true, the Luis Arias, the Bryce Terrangs, the guys who just, there really isn't a path to helping in more than one category for those guys. Yeah, I think that's the ideal for sure. Bryce Terrang specifically, I just don't like Bryce Terang. I think he's going to be a big liability and batting average.

What did he do to you, Scott? But I don't mind. did as much. I will say this. We've talked, you know, yesterday, obviously, we talked about head-to-head leagues and we talked about how they have smaller lineups and you need to make sure you get impact in every spot, whether it's categories or points, really. That's less of a concern in Roto. You have 14 hitter spots to play with. You're going to have a weakness somewhere. Right. As long as you don't overdo it in something, if you have to take more of a specialist in one of those spots, it's fine, it's fine.

You're not going to get impact out of all 14 spots. That's just not realistic. So it's really more about finding that balance. And one strategic point specific to this year that we've brought up a few times in the offseason here is that stolen bases, there's less pressure to get them early. I know you were saying, Chris,

you don't want to neglect them so much that you have to get a stolen base specialist, but it would be kind of hard to neglect them that much, particularly in a 12-team context. They're just so many more stolen base sources than there were even two years ago. By design, I mean, the league changed the rules to encourage more stolen bases,

and it's led to this democratization of stolen bases that I think when I look at some of the industry drafts, I don't know that the industry's caught up to it yet. It seems like they're still pushing up base dealers, beyond what they should. Well, part of it is you need more steals. Yeah, that was... I was going to bring that out.

But there's more sources. It's not just that... It's not that a higher number is going to the same select few individuals. It's just that there are so many more ways to get steals that you'll happen into a solid number without even trying, really. And I think to that point on the waiver wire,

finding steals might be the easiest category. right? Because home runs as we've talked about as the draft goes on it's kind of hard to tough, kind of hard to find and you're not going to find batting average on the waiver wire either. So I think just from the hitting categories the one that you can find on the waiver

by the most is probably seals. And just to put some numbers on this and Frank I know we have a whole discussion about this later. In 2024 or 2023, I guess I'll, I can just look at 2024 numbers. I do have those. In 2024, the

average 12th place finisher in stolen bases stole 105 bases in a 12 team league that's in 2021 that would have been good for sixth place on average well so that alone like that tells you how much more how many more stolen bases there are and how much easier it is to find them. Yep. One other thing I wanted to mention with the Roto format is that the lineups are deeper. Scott, you mentioned there's 14 hitters, so two catchers, which some people hearing that might, wait, you start two catchers. That is insane. It is a little bit crazy. But yes, in Roto, it's two catchers, one of each infield position, one extra corner infielder, one middle infielder, five outfielders, and one utility spot. So, you know, something that I've noticed, more so in

deeper leagues, but even in like a 12-team Roto League, I do want more of an emphasis on. floor and playing time, guys that I know are projectable and are going to be in the lineup all the time. I still want to take shots on some upside guys in the middle to later rounds, but I also want to make sure that my core and really the base of my team, there's a really, really good playing time projection. Whereas, you know, in a shallow format, maybe you take a few more chances just because the replacement value is better. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, obviously that goes double if you're playing in a 15 team Roto league where the waiver wire is just going to be dry

but even you're talking 12 teams Roto that means about 350 players are being rostered as opposed to 250 in a head to head so it's a big difference yeah yeah so I agree with you I mean you obviously don't want to go too far with it because you still need to have a better roster than the rest of the league And so to a certain degree, you know, you can't always, you can't always forego upside for, you can't always forego ceiling for floor, but you have to be strategic about it. And you can't pursue the upside so often that you're leaving yourself with a dead lineup spot, basically, if things don't pan out the way you hope. One thing I would add in that regard that I think is worth keeping in mind, just in a general sense, is playing time.

drives so much of fantasy value because seven of the 10 Roto categories are volume-based. And so we talk a lot about volume in head-to-head points because it's specifically directly the scoring. But in Roto, when you're talking about projections, I think it's when it's most important to look at, the difference in values between one player versus another, a lot of it will just come down to who has more playing time. And that's how it works, right? Like if you play 162 games, you're going to be pretty valuable no matter what.

White Langford wasn't that good last year. But he played basically the whole season. He missed a little bit of time, but he was mostly out there and ended up being like a $10 player as a result of that. And so the problem, and Ariel Cohen talked about this when he was on the pod, and he talks about this lot with projection. is that's the hardest thing to project is playing time.

And the projection systems that do the best with playing time are often the most accurate because that's such a big part. And so if you have two players who are projected for a similar value, but one's projections 135 games and one's 155, you probably should just take the guy with the lower playing time projection. because if they play the same number of games, he'll probably be more valuable. That's not always the case. We know some guys are more likely to miss time. Some guys are less likely to miss time. But that is something I will say is that you can screw yourself over drafting,

basically drafting a player at their ceiling if their projection carries a 155 game projection. All right, let's take a quick break before we do that. Just a programming update tomorrow. We'll have a mailbag. We'll be live with that at night on YouTube. And then we have a bonus pod with Jeff Zimmerman coming out on Saturday. And then starting next week,

we will have six podcasts per week leading up to the start of the season. So there will be a podcast in your feed. Monday through Saturday. The Saturday one will be a mailbag every week. Technically it's seven podcasts because one of those is going to be a live mock draft which is broken into two podcasts.

So content, enjoy all the content. There's a lot of it coming your way in March. If you do enjoy that content, make sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the YouTube channel if you haven't already. We have crossed 29,000 subscribers, and we are marching towards 30K. Let's take a quick break. We'll be back right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball. Today we are talking at Roto Strategy, and here is what you needed on average to finish third place in each category in 12-team Roto Leagues on CBS last season.

Why do I say third place? because if you shoot for third place in each category and you achieve that goal, you most likely will win your league because that will assure you 100 points in a 12-team Rotel League. And that most likely will be competitive in that format. So third place in each category last season,

259, 1,024 runs, 2192 home runs, 991 RBI, and 193 steals. If you look at this on a per-player basis, is 73 runs scored, 21 homers, 71 RBI, and 14 steals. On the surface, that might sound pretty easy, right? That's not too bad. 21 homers, 70 runs, 70 RBI, 14 steals, we could do that. When you factor in, you're starting two catchers.

You've got to go five outfielders deep. You've got a middle, you've got a corner. It gets a little bit tougher. So just keep that in mind. It's not that easy. I don't know if either of you pay attention to like tracking stats or trying to achieve these goals, but I generally have a loose idea in my mind of,

yes, this is kind of what I want my players who average out to at the end of the draft. I'll admit I haven't really approached it that way before, and I am surprised how high the stat line is for it to average your whole roster, all of your hitter spots to average that, especially like you said, because one of those is probably going to be a not-so-good catcher.

But that's an interesting, way to think about it. I might try to implement that moving forward. Chris, hearing what you need per player, just to finish third place in each category, does that shape how you are approaching hitters in Roto League this season? No, not really. I don't know. Like, I think I have a mental model and, you know, you can look at your team and say, I'm a little short on runs in RBI or whatever. But I think the thing to keep in mind is your final total, your final season total is probably going to be a lot higher than what your projections suggest because your final season total is going to be

whatever 182 days worth of baseball. You're going to have fill-ins when guys get hurt. Your projections aren't going to be 162 games for every player, but you're probably going to get something close to 162 games from each lineup spot. So and obviously projections are a median and X number of players are going to overperform and X number of players are going to underperform. And whether you win or not probably comes down more to how many of your players overperform rather than whether you hit your projections. So I don't think like we're going to talk about Jonathan Indy.

a later. I think Jonathan India's projections are vastly understanding a lot of what he's capable of this season. So if I plug him into a projection, my personal mental model is going to be better than what the projection systems suggest, even though, like, projection systems, well, on the whole, are going to be better than me at projecting the outcome. So it's all about identifying who you think is going to be their projections. And, you know, so I don't, well, I think it's a useful mental model, but it's not something you need to like, if I don't have 14 projected stolen bases per lineup spot, I'm screwed, you know?

Well, this is interesting because the whole idea of plugging in projections into your lineup and cross-referencing those to make sure you have enough of everything. It's just totally foreign to me. I have a mental model for every single player. You're saying you have a mental model for Jonathan India, so you default to that over projections, considering you do what you do.

I presume you kind of have a mental model for every player. You still reference projections more, or do you just default to your mental model? I mean, you can technically, if you are tracking this, if anyone's doing this, you can kind of just project the players on the spot to what you think they're going to do, right? And I've done that in the past.

Like I've kept a spreadsheet and keep track of... Well, mentally, you don't have to keep a spreadsheet to do it. I just assume that's the way the layman drafts is they have an idea in mind for what they think a player is. But it's not, I need 292 home runs and I only have 265, right? Because that's not how it's going to work at all. What I think, when I say I might think about implementing this stat line. So the average player to finish third and everything, the average hitter, you said, Frank, just to go over it again, 259 batting average, 21 homers, 14 steals, 73 runs, 71 RPI.

Yep. Just knowing that's the average player. If I see at any one of those categories, my mental model matches up with it, I will know that's average. That is the average of what I'm aiming for. Yeah. And I did just want to bring this up

because I know a big talking point this offseason has been targeting batting average in power early on, and you can get speed in the middle, late rounds, maybe even find it on the waiver wire. for every non-stolen base player that you draft, say you draft Yordon Alvarez. He is going to virtually give you zero steals.

The next player needs to give you 28 steals, but if we're following this logic, right? For every player that gives you zero, the next player has to give you 28. But that's only if you want to finish third place. Again, there are multiple ways to build a roto team. You can finish middle of the pack in steals. You could finish sixth in steals,

but maybe you finish first and home runs, and then it kind of evens out that way. too. And I do want to point out like a player who came very, very close to this average lineup spot last year. It's like Brian Reynolds. No, like Paul Goldschmidt last year hit 245. Okay, that's 14 points lower. That's not nothing, but it's in the ballpark. It's spinning distance. It's probably 10 hits over the course of a season. 22 homers 11 steals 70 rbii 70 runs 65 rbaa so like he was in within spitting distance of all slightly below average so that's that's how late in the draft you can get us last year right yeah

yeah that's how late you can get a slightly below average hitter the range paul goldschmidt's going in on the pitching side of things here's what you needed to finish third place in 12 team rhodo leagues on CBS last season. 95 wins, 81 saves, 1,417 strikeouts, a 351 ERA, and a 115 whip.

Per player, that's 10.5 wins, 157 strikeouts, and then depending on whether or not you start three relievers or two relievers, if you start three,

then you need 27 saves per closer. If you only start two, then you need 40-ish saves per closer. And obviously, like, the 10 and a half wins, that's based on nine roster spots.

wins are really hard to project. Like, relievers are going to give you a few. Say you start six starting pitchers, you probably need on average 12 or 13 wins from each of those starting pitcher spots. So hearing that, what is your optimal breakdown for pitchers this season? I know typically it's like six and three or seven and two.

What do you think based on hearing those numbers? I think it depends when you take your first closer. Yeah. Because if you take a closer early, you probably should only take two. Maybe you have another guy on the bench who you think could get saves, but I think to start out,

look, you also have to keep in mind your starting lineup in week one will not be your starting lineup the whole season. And if you find you need more saves or you just stumble upon another save source who's good, you can put them in your lineup.

But I think it just mostly depends on what you've invested. If I'm going to be the person who takes a fifth round closer, I'm probably not going to have three closers in my starting line. It's just not an optimal way to distribute your resources. And I'll also point out that historically when I've looked at this and when I've seen other people do it, saves have the lowest correlation between your total and winning your league.

It just doesn't among the 10 categories. Yeah, it's the most isolated category. Doing well in saves does not really guarantee. you will do well in other categories and saves are the category that you can afford to do worst in and still have a chance to win your league. But it is a very easy category to try.

It is a very easy category to be good at if you set out to be good at it. Sure. You have a lot of control over where you place and saves. Obviously, if we're talking 15 team versus 12 team, this is probably the category that makes the biggest difference and how you approach it based on league depth.

But in a 12-team league, certainly in anything shallower, like a 10-team league, I always try to get three closers. Granted, I'm never the guy taking one in round five. Yeah. So maybe if I was, I'd think differently. But my feeling is you can never have too many safe sources. You can always find other starting pitchers

to supplement those stats. And people will always be willing to trade for closers in leagues where trades are allowed. That doesn't mean if closers are getting pushed up And I have to, it's really going to harm me somewhere else to take a third closer. That doesn't mean I'll absolutely do it. But if it gets to the end of the draft, not the very end of the draft, but if it gets kind of late in Kyle Finnegan sitting out there,

even like Calvin Foshe, it's like, why not? I don't know if I'll need these saves. At some point, I'll probably want to plug in a third closer, even if it's not the default lineup for me. So why not? Let's talk about punting. First, if you play on the NFBC and there's any type of overall component,

you cannot punt, period. If you want to try and compete in the overall, I mean, you can punt, but you might win your league, you're not going to compete in the overall. So just keep that in mind. It's a completely different animal. If you play in a standalone roto league

without an overall, you can punt, but it's really, really hard. Chris, is this something that you have tried? Would you recommend trying to punt a category and still trying to win your standalone Roto League? No, I don't think you should recommend it. I think if

it happens, it happens. You will find weaknesses along the way. Now, there is a big difference between punting a category and not specifically targeting a category in your draft. And we're talking about saves mostly. That's really

at this point, it's kind of the only category that you can punt because I don't know, man, I guess you could you could punt steals, but you're kind of going out of your way to do it. Like we were saying before. It kind of means you're passing on good players to punt steals, whereas saves, you could just not draft a reliever. And I do think that could be a viable strategy because what you're looking at is there are going to be, what, six closers who are. emerge in the first month of the season probably and maybe 12 over the course of the first half of the season hopefully not chris come on six closers in the first month that it's going to yeah last year was pretty stable till the trade deadline but but that's pretty typical i'd say

the scenario chris is laying out and so the thought process would be i'm going to take 12 pitchers out of my 29 picks. So nine starters, three on the bench, maybe four on the bench, whatever the number is. And a lot of those guys are basically, I'm going to watch them pitch once or twice. And if it's not happening, I'm going to drop them. Like, AJ Puck last year was a perfect example of this. And then you already know that when, who was the Tigers Closer who lost, Alex Lang, this job on the first day of the season.

Like that will happen. They will be probably within the first weekend of the season. Some closer that we didn't think was the closer who now is, whether it's because of an injury or because of an unexpected emergence, whatever. You've now got that guy. You need to go get them. You need to go get the next guy. It's tough because you're going to have competition.

But you can punt in the draft. You really can't punt the whole season, though. It's just, it puts you at such a disadvantage. I think if, like so many people who play fantasy baseball these days have been playing for so long, they've just, they got into it when it became popular and they've just stayed with it. And there's now so little margin for error, certainly in the sort of leagues we play in, that it's hard to imagine you'll do well enough in all the other categories that you can afford to punt one. If you're playing in a league with your grandpa and your 11-year-old nephew, maybe.

Don't do it to grandpappy. Maybe you can get away with punting a category. But you know your league. You know how competitive it is. If it's everybody's really sharp, I just don't think it's going to happen. It's like too much of a tight rope walk. But that being said, finishing in six place and saves, totally violent. That's not a fun.

Yeah. Yeah. You can finish middle of the pack in. multiple, like two, three, four different categories, but then you also need to probably finish first or second in a few other categories as well to kind of offset that. Because again, on average, you want to be like third or fourth place in every category to place near the top in the league. And you're probably not winning your league if you're sixth in home runs. You're probably not winning your league if you're sixth in ERA. I'm not going to say it can't happen, but it's just

because of the nature of the interconnected nature of all these stats, you can finish in sixth and steals and win your league. You can finish six and saves and win your league. It's probably not happening if you finish sixth anywhere else. Just because if you're sixth in batting average, it probably means you just didn't have a great offense, right? If you're sixth in ERA, it probably means you didn't have a great pitching staff.

That's not 100% the case. There will be exceptions, but I think generally speaking, saves and steals are the two that you can think, you can think middle of the pack and still win your league. And you brought up a few of the ratio stats there.

Well, Scott, did you have another point before you want to? Well, I had a comment on a ratio stat, so maybe you get into what you were saying. Look, I just want to give a PSA to everybody. Protect your ratios, because the rate stats are much harder to overcome later in the season. So Chris mentioned seven of the 10 stats

are counting stats. So depending on if you're low in steals or home runs, you can kind of play the waiver wire or make trades. And you can finagle your roster to move up those categories faster. If you're 9, 10th, 11, 12th in ERA whip batting average, it is incredibly hard to make up ground in those categories later on in the season. Especially on the pitching side, if you went starter heavy, you're just, it's so big.

How many innings. Yeah, that's just that. You're not going to find pitchers that are good at ERA and whip on the waiver wire that also eat any. Like, they're just, they're not out there. To comment on the specific numbers, so to finish third in ERA, you need a 351 ERA. That seems kind of high. That seems to me like I try to avoid pitchers that I know are going to have an ERA as high as 351, but that would be the average pitcher to finish third in that category.

that's useful to know. Meanwhile, the 115 whip, just from my own sensibilities, that seems kind of low. I'm surprised it's that low. Maybe it's because when I started this, a good whip was like 1-25. I know that's not the case anymore, but 115 seems especially low. There are some aces we think of who I don't expect a 115 whip from. So I've heard a few people mention this year that you should draft pitchers for whip. and I do remember a long time ago

I kind of had a saying where ranking the categories by priority for pitchers I went strikeouts one, whip two and I kind of haven't talked about that much lately but maybe I should start talking about it again because 115 whip does make it seem like if you want to finish third in that category to 12 team league you got to be really conscious

of what your whip looks like. And it's just a forgotten category right? To me on the hitter side runs is kind of the forgotten category where you could just, you know, forget about a little bit. You have middle of the order guys. Maybe you're not thinking about top of the order guys that can maybe give you more run scored.

And then on the pitching side, it's whip because we're so, where the first number you see is ERA. Then you're thinking about strikeouts. And do you go deep enough into your starts to give me wins? And, you know, whip usually on the end. You're not, maybe it's not in the back of your mind as much as it should be. But, yeah, I think whip and runs. Those are kind of the forgotten on each side that you want to make sure you are paying attention to.

Yep, absolutely. Let's take our final break. we return, I got a few other talking points here, then we'll talk some news and notes, some category sleepers right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball today. We are talking Roto's strategy. And do you guys ever think about early round hitters in terms of pairings that makes sense together? Or is it just, hey, best player available? Let me grab Aaron Judge with Freddie Freeman. I don't care that I'm not going to have steals because we've talked about this before. And there are pairings that make a lot of sense in the first two rounds like

Aaron Judge and Trey Turner. You get a little bit of everything. Ellie Dela Cruz and Freddie Freeman. Well, even that, you might be a little bit light on home runs, but the batting average from Freeman should help out Ellie or Juan Soto and Jaron Duran. Right? These are just top of mind things that make sense, but do you guys ever think about planning out your roto draft

based on like pairing players together that complement each other? Not as much as you seem to. I will say that. It is just two hitter spots out of 14, so you don't need to cover every base with those two. Again, like I said at the top, it's mainly batting average. If I get Ellie De La Cruz in round one, which isn't very likely, but let's say I get Francisco Lindor at the end of round one

or somebody else who I'm not expecting to be a true plus in batting average, I'll try to make sure the other one is a true plus and batting average. You probably don't want to start Corbyn Carroll, Francisco Lindor. I know there's some question about Corbyn Carroll's batting average in weather last year. But like, those are, that's probably two really high plate appearance guys,

like lead off hitters on elite offenses, who walk a decent amount, but not a ton. They're going to have a ton of that bats and are probably going to hit like 270 between them, which isn't bad. You hope it's 270. But it probably puts you at a deficit relative to other first rounders.

I mean, picking 12th in a Roto league, that kind of sounds like my ideal care. and Lindor. So you make an interesting point because maybe I am doing the thing I just advised not doing. I think, look, Lindor isn't bad at batting average.

He's 275, right? Yeah, he's just not as good as most of the early rounders. I don't think either of them is guaranteed to be bad. They're just not good. And maybe I just have more confidence in Carroll's batting average potential, but I think he's going to default to being around a 270, 275 guy too.

and so that yeah you end up weaker than maybe most teams with those guys as your first two picks you end up weaker in batting average I just think I'm willing to for how good they are in the other four categories I think I'm willing to live with it though

I would just say you look at like the way ADP works out and like you start with those two guys and then you come back in the third at the end of the third round and Matt Olson's the best player available. You might not be able to take him. Sometimes he's good for batting average. Sometimes he's bad for batting average.

The most likely outcome is like a 250 or 260 batting average. Or like, I mean, he goes back and forth. Like O'Neill Cruz. You probably, I think, what it comes down to is not, these guys are definitely going to sink your batting average. It's what we've talked about with L.E.

De La Cruz and the way you have to manipulate the rest of your job. draft around him. So if you take too mediocre bad. Maybe it's Jose Altuve you take. Maybe it's William Contreras you take. It's, yeah. You got to,

you maybe you take Jose Altuvae, maybe you take Corey Seeger. You got to probably take a couple of guys off. You can't take Pete Alonzo. Right. In the third or fourth. Right. Yeah.

It does kind of him you in. Yeah. It's not insurmountable. Nothing is insurmountable. I don't know. If you take a bad player in the first round, it's insurmountable, I guess. but I finished third in the league where I took wrong where I spent

$48 on Ronald Ocuna last year like you can still do it so and and I found I found there isn't at the point where they're supposed to go sometimes even beyond the point where they're supposed to go it just doesn't feel like there's been a lot of competition for Luis Arise or Alec Bohm as my corner infielder and corner infielder the corner infield spot is kind of hard to fill even in a 12 team league it just seems like by the time you get to that point, the good, you know, the real quality first basement and third basement are gone. So I find I'm ending up with them a lot. I don't know. Just the way my mind works when building a roto roster is kind of like weaving a web.

And I always want to come back to that midpoint, right? Like that's just the way my brain is wired for drafts where, okay, if I take Corbyn Carroll or Ellie De LaCruz, I've got to take Freeman to get everything back to the middle. Like I'm always thinking that way within a draft. I don't know why. I just, I think the other way to say it would be after the first, the core of my whatever five picks, whatever you want to call it,

I'd really rather not have a glaring weakness. You know, I'd rather not have one place where I'm like, unless it's the pitching stats because I haven't taken one yet. Yeah, sure. But I'd rather not look at it and say, man, I really have to make, Because then what that does is like if you really are weak at batting average after the core of your team,

what if one person takes Luis Arias 50 picks before ADP? Well, now your options are. Yeah. Make sure Jacob Wilson's your middle infielder. Like you really don't have a lot of places to turn. So that's- I guess the way I think about it. And maybe this is just the way my mind works.

I'm always being conscious of batting average. average, maybe above anything else. And so it's not like if I go weak on batting average early, I have to get Louisa rise. I'm constantly feeding that beast, opting for the guy who I think has a chance to hit 280 rather than settling for the potential 230 hitter. Which players are better in Roto than in head-to-head points league? So hitters who provide power and speed, but maybe not great plate discipline, those are the ones that stand out.

Hitters who don't walk much, but maybe offer a strong skill, like power or speed. Someone like Jake Burger comes to mind with that. Platoon bats are much easier to use in Roto than they are in head-to-to-peachers. Per-inning pitchers are more valuable in this format. Strikeouts matter much more in Roto than they do in Head-Dead points. And closers, which we've talked a lot about the past couple days. In head-dead points, you can get away with waiting your last two picks like Scott did yesterday and just grabbing your closers then.

in head-to-categories, obviously they matter a lot too, but in Roto, you need closers, because again, you don't want to punt any of those categories. So some specific hitter names, Ellie Dela Cruz, Fernando Tatis, and by the way, by saying they're better in Roto, doesn't mean they're bad in points leagues.

They're just better in this form. People will often overthink that and say, like Trey Turner for years was like a third round pick in Rota, or head-to-head, when he probably should have just been a second round pick. Yep. So L.A. Dela-Cruz, Fernando Tattis, Jr., Julio Rodriguez, Jazz, Chish,

Trey Turner, O'Neill Cruz, Michael Harris, C.J. Abrams, Tayasker, Hernandez, Brenton Doyle, Jordan Westberg, Luis Robert, Mark Viento's, Jake Berger. Those were all names, I think, in the top 12080p that really stood out to me better in Roto. And then on the pitcher's side, Dylan Sees, Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, we think. Tanner, Bybee, Freddie Peralta, Jared Jones were names that sit up. I would also say some of the whip specialists, not whip specialists, but like, Bryce Miller, Bailey Ober, have decent strikeouts, but pretty average-ish, really good whips. They obviously help you directly in both of those.

I think those are probably guys who are better in Roto than head-to-head as well. The only starting pitcher who I tier higher in either format, I put him in a whole separate tier different based on format is Blake's now. I have him a tier higher in Roto. That doesn't mean there aren't other pitchers who are more or less valuable in the format. just not so much that I put them in a different tier. There are more hitters that are like that. Boba Shad is better than Roto. Yes.

Better in Roto. Not better than Roto. He's not better than an entire scoring format. Luzer Eye is probably better in Roto. Which is weird because he doesn't strike out, right? But he's not. He doesn't walk. He doesn't get any counting stats.

If you need batting average, he is a, the perfect pick for that team in Roto. But I think just generally, like any team could start Luis a rise at second base in a points league and be okay. So he's a tricky one. Bretton Doyle, I think really stands out as much better in Roto. Even if you think he's going to repeat what he did last year,

he was pretty fringy and had to head points. Luis Robert, too. It's just even when he's at his best, he really does not walk. He strikes out a lot. and in his best season it was 30 homers, 20 steals. That's awesome in Roto, but

he's really not going to get on base much or at least he hasn't so far in his career. All right, let's talk about some news and notes real quick and then we'll come back to some category specialists, some sleepers in each category a little bit later on. From Wednesday we had Bryce Harper exited after getting hit by a pitch on his right arm. He is expected to be okay.

Aaron Judge expected to bat second this season for the Yankees. Aaron Boone also implies, Cody Bellinger or Jazz Chisholm would bat third, at least against right-handed pitching. Freddie Freeman will make his spring debut on Thursday, his first game action since undergoing off-season ankle surgery. Wyatt Langford has resumed light baseball activities. He was shut down last Friday with a mild oblique strain. Philly's pitching prospect, Andrew Painter, has ditched his cutter and added a change-up as his fourth pitch. Liam Hendricks touched 96 miles per hour while

tossing a scoreless inning in his spring debut. The last time, we saw him healthy in 2022. He averaged 97.6. So not all the way back to that, but I thought this was an encouraging sign from Liam Hendricks. And Jack Peterson started at first base. Just thought it was a little bit interesting, right? If Jake Berger needs a day off here or there,

maybe we can get Jack Peterson first base eligibility at some point. I just love Liam Hendricks. He was asked why he wants to be the closer. And he basically said, I believe the direct quote was I don't actually I don't know if I can say it because it's a slang term in another country but he said you basically you look like a doofus

if you get excited and pump your fist after getting it out in the seventh inning and you look cool doing it in the ninth great I'll say his velocity readings in this game getting it to 96 it's really the first time I've taken him serious as a closer candidate. I just,

I didn't think after all he's been through physically, and at his age, he would be able to recapture it, especially the velocity reports we'd been seeing up to that point. I still consider Rolda's Chapman the frontrunner for saves in Boston, but it could happen for Hendricks.

Yep. Yep. Some stack cast data from Wednesday's action. Corbyn's velocity was still down a little bit compared to last year, but it was much better than his first spring start, so pretty sure he'll be fine. Max Meyer only through one inning, but he aired it out.

His fastball was up 2.3 miles per hour. His slider was up nearly four miles per hour. He was throwing a 92 mile per hour slider here on Wednesday. He mentioned big off season in the wait room for Max Meyer. Tomo, he also talked about wanting to throw a sweeper. Didn't see any of it today, but I think if he does introduce that, the Arsenal kind of starts to make a little more sense because it's, I mean, if it's a 96 and a half,

mile an hour fastball, that's huge. But it's a gyro slider, which should help against lefties and a sweeper to get righties out. It's a very encouraging first start from a guy who needed to give us some reason to have any interest in him. Tomoyuki Sugano, who came over from Japan, he signed with the Orioles this offseason. He threw two shutout innings in his debut. He used six different pitches and averaged 92.1 miles per hour on his fastball. The splitter was his most used pitch. Terrick Scoobel, two shutout innings.

He averaged 98.4 miles per hour on his fastball, which was up 1.5 miles per hour compared to last year. Scoobel, you're good, man. You're great. Just the way you are. Let's not blow the arm out here in spring training. All right? Let's take it easy, guy.

Gavin Williams, two perfect innings with three strikeouts. He had seven whiffs on 34 pitches. No cutters. Remember last year he started using this cutter instead of his slider. It was just fastball slider curve, and he threw one change-up. So I thought it was a little. encouraging there for Gavin Williams. Maybe all of those people who know something I don't know. Maybe they actually know something I don't know because that's an encouraging first start for Gavin Williams.

Yeah, he was coming back from the elbow injury last year and there was some speculation. Maybe he wasn't throwing his slider as much because it hurt his elbow to do that. So an entire offseason where he's healthy and hopefully no no problems here for Gavin Williams. Mitch Spence of the Oakland A's through two shutout innings, Oakland, whoops, two shutout innings, fastball and sinker were both up 2.5 miles per hour for Mitch Spence. I mean, it's like AL only, but we'll see if he keeps the Velo up.

Marlins catcher prospect Augustine Ramirez hit a single 115 miles per hour, and this is not Stackass related, but I thought it was encouraging. Corby and Carroll has three hits to spring. Two of them are home runs already, so we didn't see any power from him last spring. He got off to that awful start, and hopefully this is a sign that he can avoid the slow start to begin the 2025

season. And hit 280. Yes, that would be great. He also stole two bases on Wednesday, so he's ready to go. On that same note, or a similar note, Julio Rodriguez is going to play in more spring games this year explicitly with the hope

of not getting off to a slow start. That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah, certainly would. All right, let's wrap up with sleepers in each Roto category. You can use this in a head-to-category. as well if you're just trying to find specific stats later on in your draft or off the waiver wire after you draft whatever it might be batting average we've got yandy dyes junghu lee alec abe omel jacoboam josecorell and masataka yoshita anybody else come to mind as a

potential batting average help later on i mean you didn't mention them the most obvious we've mentioned a few times the show louisa rise and i thought maybe it was just because he's going to early but he's going after some of the names you mentioned yeah he's going to like 190. I felt weird calling him a sleeper just because he's like the biggest handout in the category. But yeah, I guess.

I see what you mean. Yeah, the two I highlighted were Junkhu Lee and Jacob Wilson. Lee looks like he's either going to bat lead off or third for the Giants. We didn't really get to see anything from him last year. He played 37 games and got hurt. But he's healthy now. He's already homered in a spring game.

I think he could be a pretty useful player, Junkhoo Lee. probably worth he goes a little early but probably worth mentioning Stephen Kwan here potentially Xavier Edwards though

he's still kind of a mystery box if he's going to be good it's because he's good at batting average in addition to steals I would definitely put Nico Horner in this category his injury has him going later than he would otherwise

and he in theory will be helpful both in batting average and steals which is fine part of the reason why I find find him so handy to draft. Luis Renhifo was good at both of these things last year. I'm skeptical that he will remain good at both of them. I'm not sure he'll remain good at either of them.

But he was good at both of them last year. Yeah, yeah, steals an average. Yeah, Louise Renhifo, but obviously we're talking about batting average specifically now. Yeah, I guess we'll stick with those for now. And if he gets a chance, Chandler Simpson, from the raise prospect. We want to mention a prospect who he hit like $3.50 last year in the minors. It was mostly in the low miners, if I remember correctly.

But he had huge contact rates and batting average skills. A couple of guys that maybe if you're just looking at the numbers, you won't think of them as helpful in batting average. But I think they're more likely to be than not. They're more likely to be a help than a hindrance. Let's put it that way. one is Vinnie Pasquantino and one is Alex Burleson.

Yeah. Yeah, I want to talk myself into Burleson. I like the player. I like the skill set. He doesn't strike out. He doesn't hit the ball extremely hard. It just reminds me so much of Josh Naylor. I'm just convinced that he's not going to play against lefties.

And he probably shouldn't. He's been bad against lefties in his career. So it kind of just cuts off some of the upside there for Burleson. But I do kind of like the skill set. Also, Gabrielle Moreno. He only hit 266 last year, but relative to the number two catchers, that's actually very, very good. To your point, I want to say when he returned from injury. Alejandro Kirk and I think Yvonne Herrera too.

Yeah, potentially, Freddie Fermin hit for a decent batting average last year, as did Connor Wong. I'm less convinced about either of those guys. But getting a catcher who hits better than 260 is actually kind of a big deal. Yeah. From July 1st on last year, Gabriel Moreno hit 325. Oh, wow. I didn't realize it was that good. Yeah.

Yeah. In the home run category, we have Jorge Soler, Isok Paratus, player we all love. Max Muncie, Reese Hoskins, Michael Tolia, Tyler O'Neill, Matt Wallner, A. E. E. E. E. Hennel Suarez, Tyler, Soderstrom. Brandon Lowe. Anybody else come to mind? Davis and De Los Santos, if you're looking for a sleeper prospect, don't know if he's going to make the Marlins, but if he does.

he could potentially be, I mean, he had 40 homers between AA and AAA last year as a 21-year-old. You do not see that very often. Carrie Carpenter maybe would fit this description, particularly if he gets his way and gets to play against left-handers more. A.J. Hinch does not sound persuaded for what it's worth, me reading between the lines there. But Carrie Carpenter is trying to prove this spring

that he can hit left-handers because he wants to be an everyday player. Did you mention Max Muncie? Yeah, you got Max Muncie here. Yeah, maybe you hit the biggest ones already. I think we're probably ruling it out because of the elbow injuries, but you're in Carlos Stanton, if he is healthy. We'll hit a bunch of homers. I mean, Byron Buxton.

When he's on the field. On a per game basis, yes. He puts up 30 homer paces. Tyler Sauterstrom, potentially. That's more of a 15-teamer. Yeah, that's probably. we probably hit the biggest guys. Runs are a tough one because, I mean,

it's really just the best hitters are going to score a lot of runs. Oh, Ryan Malk Castle for home runs. Potentially, yeah. But we mentioned the name Jonathan India earlier. I think that one makes a lot of sense. He's going outside the top 200 should lead off for the Kansas City Royals. George Springer, we're not sure if he's going to lead off

or bat in the middle of the lineup just yet, but he has been a lead-off man for the majority of his career. Jerks and Profar could lead off for the Braves, while Ronald Acuna is out. Claver Torres should be up near the top of the lineup, Yandy Diaz, Willie Castro maybe with the twins, but this was a tougher one to find. You know, I put together my list before I looked at yours.

You pretty much covered everyone I wanted to talk about. RBI, a lot of the same names as home runs, but A. Eugenio Suarez, Nick Castellanos, I think makes sense in the middle of that lineup. Alec Bohm, I believe right at 97 RBI two years in a row. Andrew Vaughn. He's a great one. Andrew Vaughn, Isok Paratus, Rees-Hawley.

Hoskins, Nolan Aronado, as long as he's there, he's going to hit in the middle. And Arnaudo was one that thought of. Max Muncie, yep. Potentially Michael Conforto. Yep. Based on where he's batting in the Dodgers lineup. Anybody in the Dodgers lineup. If Alex Breggman's ADP doesn't go up, I think he could be an RBI, you know, relative sleeper, I suppose, to his value.

Yeah, I mean, it's like him, guys like him, Mark Vientos, if he's batting fourth or fifth in that lineup, Brandon Nimmo if he's batting cleanup for the Mets. I mean, gosh. Vinnie Paswantino and Josh Naler are both going to be RBI standouts relative to their overall production. They should drive in more runs than they, than you would otherwise think because they have very contact-heavy approaches while hitting for power. So that's those are those are two. I'm going to say if Mount Castle hits and if and if he suck Paredes hits. You love Ryan.

Mountcastle, Scott. You got Paretas in here already. Yeah, I do love him, Brian Mount Castle. There you go. Let's go. Let's get it done. Maybe Andrew Vaughn. Yeah, I throw him in there just because he's going to bat third or fourth in their lineup.

Okay, he's in there. Okay, I didn't see him, man. For steals, we have Victor Robles, Xavier Edwards, Jake McCarthy, Bryson Stott, Cedric Mullins, and Andres Jimenez, Michael Garcia, Lane Thomas, Tyler Fitzgerald. Maybe Victor Scott this year, Chris? Could. be absolutely. It looks like he has a decent chance to be the starting center fielder.

He hit a home run the other day. He did hit a home run. It was like a 99 mile an hour exit velocity, but it was a home run. I think if they hold on to Aeronado, based on what I've been reading from Beat Riders, they're probably going to play new bar and center just so they can get Gorman at second, allowing Brendan Donovan to play left. But a trade for Aeronado could, with involvement. Alving Aeronado could still happen. And I do think Scott would be the favorite to start in center field if it does. I do actually have one name you didn't mention here, Frank.

All right. Who finally happened? Jacob Young. Yes, that's a good. 33 bases last year. He's a very good defensive player. So he's probably going to play a lot. I saw some pictures that he's jacked up.

Oh, he's, yeah, he's. I think he, there was a quote that I saw from him where he was like, I need to, I need to give the photographer some money because I am not actually that big. He also scored 75 runs last year, which I didn't realize, which is decent for a guy that we kind of think of as just a steel specialist. I think there are a lot more steel specialists than this too. I mean, Luis Renhifo, who I mentioned before for batting average, Zach Gelloff, Tyro Estrada, even though he had like, what, two steals last year. Usually he gives you more of those. Tommy Edmund.

Your boy, Zach Veen? Yeah. If he finds a way into the Rockies line. I know he's been hitless since I talked him up. So I have no like is there any room for Jose Caballero to play? Because he's told 47 bases last year, I think. I don't really see it outside of a super util, but yeah. I think him and David Hamilton for the Red Sox will find their way into 300,

350 of bats, which could possibly give them 30 steals. It's just obviously you're sacrificing a ton everywhere else to get them in your lineup. You want to know a true. Terrence Gore-esque stolen base specialist. Give it to me. I think I know where you're going with this. Diron Blanco. Yep.

Oh, yes. 56 steals and 277 plate appearances the last two seasons. Just literally nothing but steals. Yeah. I think we covered. I think if we took longer, I could come up with a bunch more names.

This feels like a category that you can really. I'll mention, well, T.J. Friedel could potentially be one. The other outfielder, Jake Frailey. Willie Castro has been a good source of steals. Tyler Fitzgerald stole a bunch of bases last year and is super fast. That is the one skill you can count on for Tyler Fitzgerald.

He's fast. Dylan Moore, I don't really buy it, but he wasn't terrible last year. He was only good at steals. He'd like two years. Chandler Simpson again. He stole 100 bases last year. he finds a way into the race lineup at some point. He should be a very, very good source of steals.

Garrett Mitchell. We could keep going. I think we could go forever with steals. Yeah. Well, let's talk about some pitching sleepers for wins. Seth Lugo, Jose Burrios, Michael Waka, Christopher Sanchez, Nathan Avaldi, Merrill Kelly, U. Darvish. I was looking for pitchers that have high inning pitch per start and are on good teams.

And those were the names I found. Kevin Gosman. Yep. He's fairly cheap. Raynolde Lopez. Don't know if he'll, you know. He said a goal of 30 to 35 starts in 200 innings this year, Chris. I'm glad he has that goal.

I don't really buy it, but he's on a good team. And then Christopher Sanchez was my other guy. Yep. Yeah, I mean, if they're on a good team and they go six innings with fair consistency, then, like, this is probably the least predictable category, but those are the things you're looking for. So Justin Steele, who was a liability in Wins last year, could be a 16-game winner this year. It's totally possible.

Yeah, and to that point, I don't know that he's going to help you anywhere else, but James and Tyone on a good team, he's going to give you innings. It's more of a deeper league play and more of a streamer, I think, but he was someone that popped up when I was just sorting by the wins category. Four strikeouts, Mackenzie Gore, Luis Heel, Tage Bradley, Nick Pavetta, Spencer Arroghetti, Jesus Lazzardo. There are lots of names with high strikeout. rates, but it's a little bit tougher because you also need these pitchers to give you the

innings, enough innings innings in order to give you those strikeouts too. So, specialists are harder on the pitching side, I think. Yes, much harder. Uh, anyone else come to mind for strikeouts? It feels like there's no, you took all of mine. Jackson Job. Sure. I think the other raised pitchers too, while we do have some concerns, like Ryan Pepio should give you a lot of strikeouts, I think. Yeah, this is another one where I feel like there's so much turnover within the pitching. ranks that we could go on forever highlighting possible. Yeah.

Like Chris Bubich. He could be a big strikeout guy if what he didn't relief translates. Edward Cabrera. Maybe. And I'm purposely picking an obscure name there to make a point. Obviously, we could go higher end with like Jared Jones if he ups his innings total this year. And I mean, there's a lot of, there are a lot of strikeout.

targets. Yeah. ERA almost feels impossible because really just the best pitchers are going to give you good ERAs. But someone who might be a swing man who is just good whenever he pitches is Drew Rasmussen. So I think he'll provide good ratios. I don't know how many innings he's going to give you or if he'll be in the Tampa Bay rotation. Christopher Sanchez is someone who stands out who might have a higher whip, but I think his ERA will actually be helpful.

Yeah, ERA because he's a ground ball specialist. That's what you look for with ERA if they keep the ball on the ground. That's why I'd like Clay Holmes as a sleeper because he's as good as Fromber Valdez at getting ground balls. By the way, I know we're on ERA now, but in the chat they mentioned Robbie Ray for strikeouts, and I think that's a good call. Yeah, that's a very good call.

I'll also just point out high leverage non-closer relievers, especially ones who will throw multiple innings occasionally are going to be perhaps the most true ERA and whip specialists. So Cade Smith, Brian O'Brien-Breyu, Griffin Jacks, Matt Strom. Luke Weaver, I think. Yeah, those guys, anyone who could get 75 to 80 innings, which is pretty rare, with great ratios, 100 strikeout upside. And obviously, they're nice to have a round, especially in a 15-te-te-team league,

because if anything happens to the guy ahead of him, like, Kate Smith's a top-five reliever if he's, you know, closing. Yeah. People keep suggesting good strikeout targets. Nick Povetta. Yes. Yes. Good one.

Is another one. Even when he was kind of underwhelming, I think he got 171 last year. Yep. Yeah. Whip is a little bit easier to find guys later on that could actually help you because that skill set of, you know, throwing strikes, not walking many, fly ball pitchers, Nestor Cortez, Cody Bradford, Bowden, Francis, Nick Povetta. I think Nathan Avaldi is going to be a positive whip contributor. those five in particular make a lot of sense. Low walk rates, high fly ball rates.

With the high fly ball rate there is a tradeoff where you might have kind of a high ERA relative to the whip, which we saw obviously with Bailey Ober last year. But yeah, I like Cody Bradford for this. You know who had a surprisingly good whip last year? Nick Martinez. I wanted to just get him in real quick

because he became an elite strike thrower last year and that is mainly what I'm targeting him for and Rodo very, very late whip help for Nick Martinez. Max Scherzer had a 115 whip last year, even amid all of his struggles. ERA was a little inflated, but he's going outside of the top 200. Looking under the hood, there's a lot to like there with Max Scherzer still. I don't know that he can hold up. Yeah.

But it's a different situation to me than Justin Verlander. I don't know. Justin Verlander's velocity was up in his first spring start, so maybe he's going to bounce back. but I have, I'm much more likely to roll the dice laid on Scherzer than Verlander because I don't feel like there's been as much skill erosion there. He's just having a harder time staying healthy. Saves, aka who are your favorite sleepers at relief pitcher?

I think AJ Puck is interesting. Edwin Usato with the raise. Calvin Foshae looks like he has the job. He's going really late. Maybe Jason Foley or insert any other Tigers reliever you like. Chris Martin looks like the closer for the Rangers for now and oh Ryan Kirkering potentially with the Phillies. Yeah, Porter Hodge, for what it's worth,

Ryan Presley himself says he's competing for the closer role. So I think all they offered him to get him to waive his no trade clause is he will have a chance to work the ninth inning. I think he'll be the ninth inning guy to start out, but I don't think Porter Hodge is totally out of it. And same thing with Lucas Erseg after they signed Carlos Estevez. They're officially calling that a committee. I don't think it'll stay a committee for long,

but it could be that Irsseg comes out on top. I would also take the opportunity to mention, again, set up men behind unproven closers, I would say. So I think the Phillies guys, we have a lot of questions there. We don't know if it's Strom or Kirkering or Jose Alferado, who actually had more saves than the other two guys last year. Griffin Jacks, we think is a very good pitcher. I, if, oh, I'm blanking on the Giants Closer, I'm sorry, Scott.

Ryan Walker. If Ryan Walker, obviously, he looked very good last year, but he doesn't have a long track record. Camilla DeVall was an All-Star prior to 2024. If he's back to being good, it might not be out of the question that Camillo DeVall could end up the Giants Closer again. All right. Well, we are going to wrap there for 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. Mount Podcasts.