Fantasy Baseball Today - Starting Pitcher Tiers! Charlie Morton Is Undervalued... Again! (1/25 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Scott White's starting pitcher tiers- https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/2022-fantasy-baseball-draft-prep-starting-pitcher-tiers-1-0-from-the-elite-to-the-leftovers/ Finally, starting pitcher tiers (3:05)! ... Starting pitcher elite tier (4:40): do we trust the health of Jacob deGrom or Shane Bieber? ... Near elite tier (17:15): will Aaron Nola bounce back? Why is Charlie Morton undervalued again? ... Next best things tier (32:05): which breakout do we trust more between Logan Webb and Freddy Peralta? ... Fallback options tier (51:05): favorite breakout from this group? ... Last resorts tier (55:25): what do we make of this tier? ... The deep leaguers tier (57:28): whom are we interested in most here? ... Email us at [e-mail]. 'Fantasy Baseball Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday 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. I drive. Serafeas is magnificent. Got a fantasy question. Email fantasy baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. With fantasy. Now here's Frank, Scott, Chris, and Adam.

Finally, we've made it to maybe the most important tier conversation of all starting pitchers. Welcome into fantasy baseball today on Tuesday, January 25th. I am Frank Stanfell. barely alive after a long weekend in New Orleans, joined by my fellow beat up co-hosts, Chris Towers and Scott White, but you know what? The show goes on. What's happening, Scottie? We've got a lot of pictures to get to today.

Yeah, yeah, big position, full of big tears, and big disappointments every year. Right, what was that you were saying before we started the recording, Chris? Yeah, you want to make God laugh. Tell him about your fantasy baseball starting pitching staff. That's right. Or buy him a Dave Barry book. What books has Dave Barry done, Chris?

I don't know either. I just laughed anyway. It's just a dumb 30 rock joke. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, that's usually my go-to scout when I don't know anything. I just laugh. And I'm like, yeah, of course I know what you guys are talking about. But half the time, I just have no idea. I knew it was meant to be a joke.

So I extended the courtesy of a laugh. Thank you. There you go. What's going on, Chris? how do you never lose your voice at concerts? Because I know that you go to a lot of them and obviously apologies for those that are listening. My voice is kind of beat up right now

but there was a lot of singing involved this weekend, Chris. So how do you avoid that? I don't know. You would think it would be an issue. Maybe just I have a lot of experience with it. I did lose my voice. We did karaoke for my last birthday. Not my last birthday, my most recent birthday.

Hopefully not my last. And I did lose my voice. after that. Yes, hopefully not your last, Chris. We need you around here on the podcast. My past birthday. Yes, the most previous birthday that you celebrated, of course. Yeah, I've got to take some notes because we did karaoke on like Thursday night and I'm

still beat up now. So I don't know what I did. Honey. I had some tea with honey today, man. And gosh, this is still the result. So there's a lot going on. And speaking of a lot going on, I did want to point out first and foremost that the MLB and the Players Association had another meeting on Monday.

this Monday night, and there was some progress, and they're going to meet again on Tuesday. So I know a lot of people, you know, we're putting out fantasy baseball content, tweeting about fantasy baseball. There's a lot of negative people out there that are saying, well, there's not going to be a fantasy baseball season, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I mean, this is a step in the right direction. So I just thought I would point that out and let's be optimistic when it comes to getting a deal done here between the players and, of course, the owners. Let's get into the starting pitcher tiers, and you know what we've got to do. It's word association time. Who wants it? Who wants it? I'm looking at Scott. I'm looking at.

at Chris and we're going to go with Chris starting pitchers go unpredictable unpredictable that is definitely fair Scotty I'm trying to think of like a famous upper middle class family like the severs from growing pains would they be considered upper middle class

I don't know Chris are they I don't know definitely growing pains is a little bit more my time the Jeffersons would probably be upper middle class right well they were moving on up so yeah but they weren't like wealthy I don't really know. I don't know either.

But you get what I'm saying. Yes, Scott. I mean, look, something we've talked about a lot towards the end of last year and so far this offseason is that the upper middle tier or just the middle tier of starting pitchers seems to be a lot better

than it has been in years past and maybe that's solely due to the baseball and the fact that they de-juced it a little bit before heading into last season but for whatever reason, starting pitchers were more plentiful than we've seen in years past. So we'll see if that's the case again

heading into this year. Of course, we've got to find out what ball they're playing with because we still don't know. But hopefully we will find that out soon enough. Let's start with the elite tier. And all of these pitchers are going inside of the top 30 picks of ADP. We're using Fantasy Pros ADP, which is live. And it was updated just last week. So if you want to follow along, you can do exactly that.

I guess we've been doing that all along, right? Yeah, yeah. We were stuck using just NFBC for a while. And that was getting on my nerves. Yeah. So we've got NFBC, RT Sports, and FanTracks. It's a culmination of all three of those over on Fantasy Pros right now.

The elite tier feature is Jacob de Grom, Garrett Cole, Max Scherzer, Corbyn, Burns, Walker, Walker, Brandon Woodruff, Shane Bieber, and Zach Wheeler. And Scott, I think a lot of people will be surprised to see that Jacob deGrom is still your number one starting pitcher for fantasy.

He was ridiculous last year. There's no doubt about it. He is far and away the best pitcher on the planet, but he's missed quite a bit of time the past two seasons to neck, lat, back, shoulder, forearm, and elbow issues. So there is some risk there. And what would you say to that, Scotty?

Well, what I would say to that is I'm prepared to move him down when there's clear reason to move him down. And, you know, right now they're saying he's going to be ready. If spring training starts and there's all this, you know, hand ringing about his elbow, when's he going to make his spring debut, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, then I should probably move him down. But I don't really understand the compulsion to preemptively move him down.

Unless you're genuinely ranking for people to draft today, January 24th, very few people are actually drafting now. And very few people should be drafting now. So I'm kind of curious, since I'm alone in ranking DeGrom number one, it seems like, what it's going to take other people to move him up to number one. If he has a drama free spring, does he vault back? to number one for you guys? I think that would be a mistake.

I think that would just be a mistake in process because the question about Jacob de Grom isn't, is he currently healthy? It's the same thing with like Derek Henry in football where people are like, well, if he has a good playoff game, he's going to move up draft boards. And it's like, the question isn't, is Derek Henry healthy right now,

or is Jacob deGrom healthy right now, or will he be healthy on opening day? The question is, can he make it through a full season? And nothing that I could, learn right now would make me more confident in his ability to do that between now and opening day. Because it's unknowable. Maybe that's the question for you, but I don't think that's the question for the majority of people. I think the majority of the people genuinely don't believe his elbow is okay right now. I, he actually, there was UCL damage detected in the MRI at one point, but then it was

gone, supposedly. Right, right. And I think it's fair to be skeptical of that. But again, there are other warning signs we can see between now and then. I just don't feel that motivated to move him down from number one based on what we're hearing right now. I think his value can only go down from here, at least in my eyes. There's no, there's, and look, I've got him second, I'm pretty sure. So it's not like I'm low on Jacob de Grom. He's the best pitcher in the world. Like there's no question about who the best pitcher in the world is right now for me.

And so it's just a question of health. And so for me, there's nothing that I could learn between now and opening day, because I'm assuming that he's currently healthy. So there's nothing that I, like, he could go out and have an amazing spring. He could have a terrible spring. Neither would change my view. The only thing that could really change my view on Jacob de Grom is if he suffers some sort of injury between now and opening day. But as long as he makes it to opening day healthy, then he's healthy.

then he's healthy on opening day. You know, that doesn't really, um, I didn't really tell me anything. Yeah. That's, I, I can understand giving the edge to Garrett Cole and,

you know, I might too. I'm kind of making a stand by leaving DeGrom number one right now, but in, in the mocks we're doing now. One way of looking at it, to make another football analogy, I'm the only person on our team that has Christian McCaffrey as my number one

running back for 2022. Sure. And part of it for me is just, running backs get hurt. And so the fact that Christian McCaffrey might have a little more risk than everyone else, that doesn't really change my view because I think he's that much better. And so I can absolutely see the case for Jacob deGromit, number one, just because I do think he is that much better than everyone else.

Based on what we've seen over the last four seasons, we're looking at one of the best runs from a starting pitcher ever. We're talking about, you know, better than Sandy Kofax's best run kind of stuff. Like this is peak Randy Johnson, peak Pedro Antinas, peak Greg Maddox, that kind of stuff. And so it's just a question of whether he can get through the season healthy. But that's the question with pretty much every starting pitcher. You know, like they all get hurt at such high rates that it only causes me to downgrade him a little bit. Yeah, I'm actually on the complete opposite end there.

So I guess those people that Scott were referring to, I'm one of them because I have Jacob deGrom as my SP 7 right now. And I would be encouraged, Chris, if I see him show up to spring and he's throwing as hard as he is and he's ripping off 93 mile per hour sliders with absolutely no issue. That would actually give me more faith in him and more confidence for his ability to stay healthy for the season. So for anyone drafting right now, I mean, I'm doing a few drafts, best ball drafts and stuff. Nothing too crazy. But yeah, if I'm drafting now, there's no way I could draft him. I need to see at his cost. I mean, he's like a second third round pick right now. But if I see him healthy in spring, then yeah, I definitely will move him. up. I just personally, I need to see that. And I was, I was actually going to put him and Shane Bieber both in my bust column for the same reason. It's just because I just don't know right now. With Shane Bieber, I mean, we saw him return towards the end of the season. And well, I don't want to put too much stock into that. He made just two starts. The velocity, the fastball velo was down like one, one and a half miles per hour. And his spin rates were way down too. That was the first time we saw him pitch after the sticky substances situation. So there's a lot going on with both Jacob deGrom and

Shane Bieber where if I'm taking a stuff, starting pitcher in the first three rounds, I really, really want to be sure that they're at least healthy now because as you mentioned, Chris, we're going to get a lot of injuries just from now moving forward. Like, pitchers and catchers, spring training, all of that stuff. Like, things are going to happen. Yeah. The difference there for me is I might set the over under on Jacob deGroms' IRA at 2.5. I would probably set it at 3.25 for Shane Bieber. You know, like that, that's the big difference. It's just like, Jacob de Grom is worth that risk in my eyes in a way. that Shane Bieber isn't just because the upside is like if you get 200 innings out of him

you're going to get you know if not the number one starting pitcher nothing worse than number five you know top five Frank would you feel different about Shane Bieber if he hadn't made those two appearances at the end of last season because you say you don't want to put my stock in it but that's what you're citing is your level of concern that's always tough that's all it's a fair question and I think I think the answer would be no that I would still be worried about him regardless because it was a shoulder injury and obviously that's pretty substantial so I really wanted to see something Scott like the fact that he returned that should be a good thing but also at the same time with the VLO being down and the spin rates being down as much as they were it's like you

shouldn't take much from it but also you should I guess take something because he was actually out there pitching so I was rooting against him to return because I didn't think he could do anything in the little bit of time, the few innings they were going to give him to relieve anybody's concerns. Right. And I'm just kind of of the mind, whatever.

I mean, the spend rates being down, it was the first innings he threw with the sticky substance ban. All the other pitchers eventually figured out how to get their spend rates back up. So I suspect he will too. And then the velocity, obviously wasn't always stretched out.

It's like those situations where a top prospect comes up for a month has a bad first month and they get sent back down and all of a sudden we're downgrading them relative to their peers who never made it to the majors and it wasn't even a month

it was three innings you don't even get the opportunity to fail and so that's always tough though because it's evidence we shouldn't ignore evidence but we also need to keep in mind that it's three innings weird things can happen in three innings

especially coming off an injury so I think you look at all the pitchers in this tier Jacob de Grom Garrett Cole Max Scherzer Corbin Burns Walker Beeler

Brandon Woodruff Shane Bieber Zach Wheeler Who doesn't have an obvious risk factor Woodruff I guess Wheeler Beuler Woodruff

Wheeler Woodruff Beuler now Wheeler I mean Wheeler you know this season obviously is an outlier for him in his 30s

I still have been here but he's been I guess I'm talking about like injury risk like blow up I think he's going to be pretty good. And he's weirdly become one of the more reliable

workhorses in baseball. I think he's probably more like Sandy Alcantara than Walker Bueller or Corbyn Burns. But the risk factor for Wheeler would be regressing to like Jose Belios type production. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, and I think it's a fair question, Scott. I think really you could say that if we're saying that about the first tier of pitchers here, we're going to say it about all the pitchers. There are risk factors with

every single pitcher, uh, pitcher, but I think the ones that are already starting with the injury ones are the ones that I'm a little bit more worried about just because, again, things are going to happen. I'd rather know that my SP1 is healthy,

at least for now. And I guess that's probably the biggest difference between my rankings and your guys rankings is like, I made my rankings based on who I would draft right now. So things could obviously change. And I'm sure they will as we get closer to the start of the season. One thing, go ahead.

One thing I want to add about this tier based on research you did last year, which I want to follow up on, but I believe it was for the previous five seasons. Yeah. There were 14 pitchers who were drafted in rounds one or two over the previous five seasons total. 50% of them finished as top 50 overall players. 57% of them finished as top 100 overall players. The rate for every other round after that is significantly lower. You're talking about around a quarter of pitchers drafted in rounds three through four, five

through six finish as top 50 overall players. So history does show that if you're going to draft a pitcher early, your chances of succeeding with that pick are a lot higher than waiting a couple of rounds and drafting starting pitchers. Having said that, having listened to that, I guess, I do feel like this particular version of the elite at starting pitcher, this year's elite team. is I'm less confident in it standing apart from the following tiers

than I have been the past couple seasons. It was just part of the reason why I stress the upper middle class aspect of the position. I think starting pitching at the high end has lost a little something, but at the middle end it's gained a whole heck of a lot. And I think part of that is just you look at the guys in this tier

and obviously de Grom, Cole, Scherzer have been the top three pitchers, probably in ADP, you know, three of the last four years or something like that. Everyone else really has done it once. You know, like Shane Bieber had a low 3 ZRA and a bunch of strikeouts, so he was elite, but he wasn't at the, you know, first round level, I guess. You know, Bueller's only done at one season. Woodruff has been really, really good, but there have been ending. innings concerns throughout. She burns, obviously. And so that is, I think, what separates this year versus other years is the guys who

usually get taken in the first or second round are the guys who have not only proven they have the upside, but have proven they can do it multiple seasons. This year, it's definitely really high upside guys who really have only proved it once. And that's true of the next tier. And I think all of that in conjunction with the fact that I feel like the elite hitter pool is not as impressive or maybe not as deep as we've seen in years past. Like it just feels like once we get out of the first two or three rounds of hitters that there's just like this huge glob of hitters.

I think that's more of a reason for me to maybe want to just load up on a bunch of those mid-tier starting pitchers in rounds four through 10, whatever it might be. So and what we're going to talk about those names right now. Featuring the near elites here, which again has names from rounds three through seven. Robbie Ray, Julio Arias, Sandy Alcansara, Lucas Chilito, Aranola, Charlie Morton, Kevin Gosman, Lance Lynn, Chris Sale, and Jack Flaherty. Scott, we talked a lot about Aranola last year. Every fifth day, he was on the mound, and you stuck to your guns the whole time. You said, I'm rolling with Aranola. I'm throwing him out there every time he's pitching. And for the most part, he just never came around. I don't know if it's possible to be unlucky for an entire season, but it sure seems like that's exactly what happened to Aranola. He had a 4.6. 63 ERA, yet all of his ERA indicators were much, much better than that, 3.40 or less for X-FIP, Sierra, expected ERA. It tells me that we should probably be confident that Aeronola is going to bounce back at least

to some degree. Yeah, I mean, I think a basic, a simplistic way to describe it, simplistic enough. Simplistic but accurate enough, I would say, is that, yes, You can be unlucky for all season, and that's what Aaron Nola was. I mean, 337 X-FIP versus that 463 R.A. The XERA FIP and X-FIP were all 337, so they all said this guy is, you know, the Aaron Nola you thought you were getting. But he gave up, you know, more home runs than we're used to seeing the strikeout

and walks rate. The walk rate was actually the best of his career. I think, you know, if you want to get nitpicky, it may not have been luck in the purest sense. I mean, is it ever? You know, he may have just missed his spots a little bit up, which caused some damage on batted balls unlike we're used to seeing from him. And I think there's some evidence for that. Yeah, but the point is it's not something that will probably be a long-term concern. and since the underlying numbers are still so very impressive, ace-like,

and since you know he's going to take on a huge workload, I am fine drafting him as my number one if it comes to that. Chris, I don't know if this is the evidence that you were referring to, but what stands out to me most, just pulling up Aaron Ola's Fangrass page, very glaringly, is the ground ball rate versus the fly ball rate. So his fly ball rate was 40.5%, which was far and away a career high. was never higher than 31% any other full season that he's pitched. And obviously, the inverse of that is his ground ball rate was much lower.

As a result, he gave up more home runs just because of pure volume on fly balls last year. And I think if that kind of just regresses to where he's been the rest of his career, he's probably going to be a mid-3 ZRA guy like he's always been. Yeah, so the thing I was looking at was something called meatball percentage. And he had the highest of his last. four seasons. He had the highest swing rate on so-called meatballs, which are balls in the heart of the zone. And so, you know, he had the highest swing rate of his career on those pitches. So it does at least seem like, you know, he was missing his spots in bad places more often than

not. But the thing that's weird about it is he didn't really give up more hard contact. you know, his average exit velocity allowed wasn't really up his expected slugging, like this is the kind of thing that you would expect, it like seems like a reasonable explanation, but then when you actually like, that's all stuff that would get caught

up in FIP, an X FIP, an XERA and Sierra and whatever pitching estimator you want to use. That would all show up presumably and so that's the hard thing. If it's not impacting his averages in terms of how hard he's hit on average, but maybe there are more extreme

peaks. But that would still get caught up, that would still get caught in like expected home runs or something like that. And that really wasn't that much different. Like he had 23 and a half expected home runs in 2021. He had 24 and a half in 2019. You know, like it just, it doesn't seem like it was there.

I think part of what it was was 15 of the 26 home runs he gave up were within, I believe they defined doubters. is how they call them as within 10 feet of the fence. 15 of the 26 this year were 9 of 27 and 2019. So, you know, I think there's probably just some bad luck there. Like he probably didn't pitch as well as normal, but if he pitches as well as he did last season, he will probably get better results even if he continues to make those mistakes

because he probably just had some outlier poor luck on some bad at balls. It's the kind of thing that if they come in the wrong spot, if they come with predominantly based runners on base, that will inordinately impact your outcomes. So are you saying that you're in on Aranola, Chris? Yeah. Yeah, I think he's generally speaking

when you're talking about a player who has been as good as Aaron Nola has in his career, you buy the dip. Like, that's, like, starting pitcher is simple in a lot of ways because like buy guys when people are out on them is very straightforward advice that will more often than not work out because

there's so much fluctuation from year to year starting pitcher. All right, Chris, I'm going to stick with you here and ask you about one of those Miami Marlins pitchers, Sandy Alcantara, the ADP all the way up at 35.7 right now. I wanted to ask, is that price too prohibitive for you? We saw last year. He really just progressed as a pitcher.

Changeup usage went up about 10 percentage points. No, went up about 13 and a half percentage points from 2020 to 2021. And as a result, the swinging strike rate went up. The K to walk rate went up for Sandale Concert. Is that price too prohibitive for you, Chris, around that three, four turn in a 12 team league? It's a little high because he probably has to throw 200 innings to get to 200 strikeouts.

And if you're looking at starting pitcher, you know, strikeouts are sort of a proxy for upside. I don't think he has that same strikeout upside. that some of the other guys do, but I don't see much difference between him and Zach Wheeler. You know, like Alcantra has also become

one of the more reliable innings-eaters. You know, he had 197 innings in 2019, only 42 in 2020, but that was only in seven starts. So he still averaged six innings per start, despite having COVID during that season. If you remember, the Marlins had this massive outbreak and he missed almost half the season.

He pitches deep into games about as consistently as anyone. on in the game. So I think, like, his price is a little too high, and I won't be making him a priority target, but it's fine. I think there's some risk, but. I do think, I do think a step forward could be coming. Oh, yeah. Sure. I mean, Scott, you, you know that I'm about it. And Chris, I know the full season statistics are more predictive than, than partial season statistics, but his final 13 starts, 15% Sweeney strike rate during that stretch. I mean, that's something, like a top five starting pitcher would provide us. So I think,

Scott, I'm with you there. I think there's a chance. And there's not much downside. Like, it's not like we need him to take this step forward to justify the price tag among pitchers with at least 20 starts, just to put specifics on it. At least 20 starts, he was fourth innings per start. He's, you know, an elite ground ball pitcher. So the ERA is going to be low.

The innings are going to be high. The strikeouts, you know, count on one per, one per inning. if it ends up being 10 and a half per nine, I don't think I would, I don't think that would be particularly shocking. Yeah, I'm right there with you. The nice thing, and this is why I liked him a lot last season,

his price was because there was just, there's not a lot of ways that things can go wrong for him because he's so good at suppressing hard contact and suppressing quality of contact, that he's just like, he's sort of like Jordan Hicks was as a closer, but with much better control. He's actually kind of stunningly become

a really good command and control pitcher. And that just, he just, he doesn't give up barrels, you know? Like that's, you never see hard contact off of him. And so he's, you know who he is. He's Pete Carlos Martinez.

But, you know, you're not going to get the gody strikeout numbers, but other than that, he's, you know, reliable and very good. I think, with even better control though like like you're saying Chris I mean Carlos

Martinez we had years where you know this the walks were pretty bad and I feel like the whip was never great for Carlos Martinez but yeah sure he was more like three walks per nine yeah I would say Sandy Alcantara and he's he's already being drafted like this so maybe it's not you know maybe it's not a particularly impressive thing to say but I would say sandy Alcantra is like a super powered Max Friede sure yeah but with what I think to be more strikeout upside than someone like max for you. But I think that's fair. And obviously he's on Marlins, so you could factor that in

in like a roto league where he'll probably get held back in the wins department. But he also goes very deep into games. The last name I wanted to talk about in this tier, Scott, is Charlie Morton, just another year where he's being undervalued. Maybe it's because of the age, the fact that he's coming off a broken fibula, which he suffered in the World Series. I don't think that that's going to be an issue for him by the time we get to spring training. But his ADP is actually the one that's far below everyone else. I mean, he's the only one going outside the top 60 within this year, and he's going at pick 84.

So for whatever reason, people are undervaluing him, and it's fine with me. I don't get it. I presumed it was because of the broken fibula in the world series. Just, eh, that's a very boy. I don't want to deal with. That's what people are saying. But, you know, yeah, he's old as is Max Scherzer, you know, like. Well, Charlie Morton's been old the entire.

entire time he's been a fantasy relevant pitch. Yeah, of course, of course. And yeah, it could in this year, but that's not, that is not a risk factor that stands out at this position. Like, age is pretty much irrelevant to me. It's almost a good thing because they get grandfathered into this old workload that the young pitchers aren't even capable of. So, yeah, I mean, got off to a slow start with the Braves,

but then ended up with a 334 ERA 105 whip, you know, 10.5K per 9. 185 innings and all the expected stats pretty much back it up he's a great ground ball pitcher great bat misser doesn't give up a lot of hard contact at all honestly

this within this tier I feel like Charlie Morton's one of the ones I feel most comfortable with I feel most confident in certainly more than like Kevin Gosman or Chris Sale or Jack Flaherty

but you know even look at some of the guys higher in the tier like Robbie Ray or Arandola for that that better. I mean, I feel like my, just in terms of how confident I am that he's going to be good, I would, I would say I'm even more for Charlie Morton than Aaron Nola. I expect very similar things from Nolan Morton. Yeah. And with, with age, it's like, well, there are only so many 38 year old pitchers who have ever done X is one of the things you'll always see. It was an argument against Max Scher's last season. But the thing about that,

and it's true of Justin Verlander, and it's been, you know, it's true of all these guys who pitch into their deep late 30s is like the only guys who have done it at 37 are like max scherzer and charley moore and Justin verlander and those guys and so the fact that nobody's done it at 38 doesn't really mean anything because nobody's done it at 37 except for these guys like they're the exceptions already and yeah the the price on morton is ridiculous it's it's he's he's nelson cruz at pitcher yeah he's just going to be too cheap for as long as he pitches unless something dramatic happens. Actually, everyone who's listening to us just completely disregard what we just said.

We want to keep that price down on Charlie Morton. Keep letting him slip as far as he possibly can. He is currently SP 27 off the board, according to fantasy pros. He is inside each of our top 18 at starting pitcher right now. Our rankings are live on the site too if you want to go check those out and follow along. I should have mentioned this earlier, but we're not going to get to every single pitcher within every tier. We're going to save that more for our position previews, which are coming up in February. February, but we'll talk about the most polarizing players within each of these tiers.

We were going to hit a quick break, but before we do that, just a few reminders. First, that we have a five-minute podcast as well called Fantasy Baseball Today in five, where we take some of the main points that we talk about on this podcast, and we expand on those in just five minutes. So make sure to follow that podcast wherever you are listening to this one, whether it's on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you find it. And also, you can find each of our podcast over on our YouTube channel. for both FBT and FBT and 5.

YouTube.com slash Fantasy Baseball Today. Subscribe and tap the notification bell so that every time we go live or we drop new videos, you get notified. We have some fun mock draft live streams that are coming up in really the next coming weeks all the leading up to the season. So those will be YouTube exclusive live streams

and I encourage everyone to go check them out. We're going to take a quick break when we return the next best things tier here on Fantasy Baseball today. All right, so let's jump in. Into that next best things tier, which features 12 pitchers being drafted from rounds 5 through 12, and it includes Frankie Montas,

Max Fried, Jose Barrios, Logan Webb, Freddie Peralta, Clayton Kershaw, Joe Musgrove, Luis Castillo, Shohei Otani, Blake Snell, U. Darvish, and Justin Verlander. Scott, we'll start with you.

Which breakout do you trust most from last year? Logan Webb or Freddie Peralta? Well, before I answer, that. I want to say that this is the last tier that I feel like an ace outcome is remotely predictable from these pitchers. So if you don't grab your one and maybe even your two by the end of this tier, I think that's where you're, you know, you may be hurting because of that. And that's kind of why it felt appropriate to slot Justin Verlander here at the end of this tier because nobody seems to be giving him much credit for his comeback from Tommy John's surgery,

given that he's a historically dominant pitcher. And so I wanted to rank him as low as I could possibly justify, and this is where I have him. But anyway, yeah, to answer your question, Logan Webb versus Freddie Peralta, two pictures that I think I have ranked below the consensus, right? I think Freddie Peralta with the strikeout potential is higher upside, but I feel like there's more that could go wrong for him because his control isn't on the same level. And because Logan Webb's workload was naturally spared some by that injury. I forget what injury he had midseason, but he missed some time with an injury in midseason.

But once he returned and once he got built back up again, it was six or seven innings basically every time out. I feel like the Brewers are going to continue to be careful with Freddie Peralta's innings in a way the Giants, won't necessarily with webs. So I would prefer to have Webb, though I do have them ranked side by side here. Yeah, that was a right shoulder strain for Logan Webb that occurred in the middle of May and then he returned a few weeks later. His final 14 starts, you're right, Scott. He went deep in a lot of those.

He provided a quality start in 12 of 14, a 268 ERA 101 whip, 61% ground ball rate during that stretch. So he gets a lot of ground balls and he actually gets a decent amount of strikeouts as well, 13% swinging strike rate during that span. He made two starts in the postseason against the Dodgers, and he looked amazing in both of those starts. So I do, I like these guys both quite a bit. I mean, I wasn't expecting to be the high guy on Logan Webb. I just checked.

I haven't ranked as my SP 15. I mean, that's pretty damn aggressive. The high guy among us three or among the whole industry? That's the highest of us three, and his ADP is SP20. So I guess I'm ahead of consensus as well. As I've talked about a few times going through this process, I do my rankings in like October when there's literally nothing to compare them to. And I do want to account for, you know, where they're likely to go so that I'm not encouraging anybody to take a guy, you know, 20 spots too early or whatever. I expected to be higher than most people on Logan Webb just because, you know, most fantasy baseball analysts are not.

naturally cautious. You see a half season production like Logan Webb had and... Young player who showed out in the playoffs, that is exactly the kind of guy who gets overrated. I don't want to say he's definitely overrated, but like, that is

the type of thing. The most recent time we saw him was in a high profile situation and he was awesome. And so if we were going to overrate a pitcher, that would be one of the guys. Well, who do you mean by we because I feel like analysts

us, the royal we tend to overcompensate for that usually when maybe the general public, the general drafting public would, yeah, maybe give that too much credit. That's been my perception over the years, but you know, I could be wrong. I mean, the thing is, Chris, you're right.

I mean, he was amazing in two high profile starts, but he was also just really good for his final 14. Right, but that's still, like I'm not saying he's overrated. I'm just saying if a pitcher were to be overrated, this would be the type of pitcher who would become overrated. And I do think 20th in ADP, 15th in Frank's rankings, I think that's overly aggressive, but it's not based on like a specific flaw in his skill set. like he's got an amazing slider as his putaway pitch. He's got a heavy sinker that does a really good job of limiting, you know,

bad outcomes. And so those are all things you want. He's got a 60% ground ball rate and a strikeout rate of 26.5. He checks all the boxes. It's just progress isn't always as linear as we think it will be when it comes to top, you know, top flight starting pitchers. That natural skepticism that goes along with any. breakout season, especially when it's just a partial season like it was for Logan.

When he went on the IL for that shoulder injury, it was basically rostered nowhere. Yeah, correct. His ERA wasn't that bad or anything. It just, he just hadn't, like, wowed anybody. And that was after he got a lot of momentum in spring training. So he had cost himself spots on rosters with his first couple months and then came back and looked like a, like legitimately looked at. like a

Logan Webb won plenty of people championships last year. But, you know, and I like him. I think he's probably legit, but you know, you compare him to guys who do it year after year

like Jose Barrios and, frankly, Charlie Morton, for that matter. And I wonder why you'd give Logan Webb the edge compared to them. And just as a general rule, um,

this would probably be historically the least lucrative range to draft starting pitchers. You get by far the worst return on your investment from rounds really four through 10 in terms of like how much you have to spend on them, how likely they are to hit. The rate of pitchers finishing as top 100 overall players from the fourth round to the 10th round is like 30%. like you should expect at this point in the draft half of these pitchers to not be like super great pitchers.

You know, however you want to define it, must start, top 30, whatever. You should probably expect half of these guys to fail to live up to their price. Chris, I wonder how many fantasy football references we can make in this one podcast. You probably made too many already that people are good. It's the RB Dead Zone. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. It's the SEP Dead Zone.

That was a huge thing in fantasy football this year. Everyone was talking about middle round running backs and how you shouldn't draft them. The one thing I would say, Chris, is that we had an environmental change this year that kind of changed the landscape of pitching. So that's why we were kind of perking up this middle tier of starting pitchers again, like with the ball being dead in.

So, you know, I respect your research, and I think that it's valuable. But maybe do things change now that, again, we've had that environment change. Yeah, that makes me think of the, Rested Development, uh, bit where Lindsay and Tobias are like,

you know, all these couples go to couples there and being convinced themselves that it's going to work. Well, does it? No, it never does. But it just might work for us. It's that kind of thing where like,

you can, you can show me all the data you want, but this is different. And it's like, maybe it will be. I don't know. I don't know anything. Yeah.

I'm an idiot. But no, come on. Historically, based on, I mean, we're all idiots. Like, when it comes to predicting what is going to happen in fantasy baseball, we're all pretty

bad at it. It's just, that's just the baseline is really low because it's really, really hard to do. And that's especially true at starting pitcher. So all I can say is historically, the research shows that this is the least profitable range of starting pitchers. I like a bunch of these guys. You know, I, I just, if you are going to take a data-based approach, this is the range that you should avoid because they don't necessarily hit any more frequently than guys

drafted in the double-digit rounds. Fair enough. That's well you mentioned you like a bunch of names in this tier. Do you like any of these three Chris players pitchers rather who are you know have bounce back potential. Luis Castillo who you were on while everything was kind of crumbling for Luis Castillo last year you told everyone to keep the faith and he paid off for those over the final four months of the season and then we have Blake Snell and you Darvish. Of those three Castillo, Snell, Darvish, who do you think it's most likely to bounce back? Do you like any of those names? Castillo's the obvious one.

I mean, because we already saw him do it for the most part. Snell and Darvish, I have very little faith in. Snell, it just, I don't know, it always seems like there's just too many things that he has to get right. Like, you know how you have to thread a needle? It feels like he's got to thread like three at a time to be a really good pitcher, and he so rarely does it. you know we're what one like 80% of a season as like an elite pitcher basically for Blake's now and then smatterings of good and bad but Castillo he seems like an obvious buy he was a top 15 starting pitcher last season probably top 12 and yeah I there was I didn't see any reason to

think that he was going to continue struggling last season I don't see any reason to think he's going to be as bad as he was this season so Yeah. The thing I'll say about Castillo and why I've gone from ranking him as a top 15 guy the last two or three years to now he's what outside my top 25 is that for as well as he turned things around. ERA was I believe 273 from the start of June on, the final four months of the season. Yep. During that same stretch with the 273 ERA, he had a 1.2 whip. He had 9.6K per 9.

And he's had better K per 9 rates than that. You know, maybe that'll bounce back. But if you can't count on that being there, and most of all, if you can't count on him being a benefit in WIP, like I'm to the point now where I think Castillo will more likely than not hurt your team's whip. I mean, three of the past four seasons, it's been over 1.2. And that's just not good in today's game. So, you know, I still rank him as a number three fantasy starter,

but I'm not really holding out hope for a number one outcome anymore the way I have in past years. Yes, Scott, you and I actually have him ranked exactly the same at SP 26. And I recently wrote him up in my bus 1.0 article just because there's so much volatility on his year-end outcome. So I looked into his 5x5 roto finished the past four years. It was SP 62 in 2021, SP 25 in 2020, SP-15 and 2019, SP-14 and 2019, SP-F. 50 in 2018. So he's just as likely to finish as a top 25 starter as he is to finish SP 50 or outside of that. So there's just a lot of volatility in his game.

And he gets a lot of strikeouts, I get that, but you're 100% right about the whip. And because he walks as many batters as he does, he doesn't really go as deep into starts as you would imagine, which kind of limits his win potential. And in head-to-points leagues, we need volume. So regardless of what format you look at, I'm kind of down on Luis Castillo just across the board. The last name I wanted to ask you guys about was Clayton Kershaw. I mean, the reason why this tier is as big in terms of the range of ADP, rounds 5 through 12, is because of Kershaw.

He's going all the way down at pick 140 right now. And I think it's just because we don't know what's going to happen, right? Scott, so like in terms of he didn't pitch in the postseason to left forearm inflammation, and the Dodgers didn't give him a qualifying offer. So now he's a free agent. We don't know where he's going to pitch. You know, the fact that a team doesn't give a player a qualifying offer after he's been there for so many years, that's pretty worrisome as well.

So where are you at on Clayton Kirchow? So I ranked him, I think I actually had him a little higher than 24th at first, moved him down to 24, thinking I was going to be on the low end for Clayton Kirshall. I mean, it's Clayton Kirschall, right? Like, an historic pitcher who, even last year when he was healthy, was great. I've been stunned to see how late he's going in very early drafts. You know, obviously, we're concerned about his elbow. I get it.

But my assumption now, like with DeGrom, is that he'll be ready for the start of the season because we haven't heard anyone say he won't be. If that changes, obviously, I'll move him down. Again, this goes back to me making out my rankings in the blind. And one thing I actively decided to do when doing that is instead of going for this kind of fence-straddling position on a player like Kershaw, like DeGrom,

where I'm going to have to move them up or down, regardless of what happens, just pick a side and then adjust to the other side if you need to. So that's kind of where I am with them is I just need more information, and that's why you don't draft in January. There's a chance he retires, right? Yeah, I mean... I haven't heard any... I haven't heard that chatter at all.

I mean, there seems that have been rumored, like, linked to him already. I think the Rangers are probably the team that's been linked to him the most. he's from Texas and obviously they can use pitching. I haven't heard the retirement rumor, Chris, but I guess it's a possibility. I think the thing is there's been, or there was from last year to the previous year, there was no sign of skills decline.

And he has, like, I think part of the downgrade is, one, he just hasn't signed yet. And so that, I think, just generally pushes players down. Right. It's a fence-straddling position. But two, I think it's also like, The fantasy community at writ large has kind of been waiting for Clayton Kershaw to fall off

the last like three or four seasons really. And so every sign that it's happening is like, oh no, now it's going to happen. And maybe it will. Again, I don't know. I'm an idiot. But this feels a little like Max Scherzer last season. Obviously, it doesn't cost as much. He's not, probably not going to be as good. But it just feels like there's more of an assumption of a skills decline than there probably should be. I do feel like comparing to Scherzer, and I haven't ranked much lower than I had Scherzer ranked last year.

The concerns about the elbow are more concrete than the concerns were about. Yes, but it was a shoulder. Back and neck, I think, was all it was. Yeah. Yeah. But it's worth remembering, you know, having seen him make it through a whole season as a top five starting pitcher, it's like,

ah, those concerns weren't that big of a deal. but at the time, you know, they were. I get it. I was drafting Scherzer in the second round last year still, and I think all of us were. But you had the opportunity to. Frank, Frank wasn't. That's true.

You know, the only league where I wound up with Max Scherzer was Tout Wars, which I won because of Max Scherzer. So thank you. Thank you, Max. It's the sort of thing where Kershaw is going now. There's no doubt. In March, come the middle of spring training, let's say, because we don't know when it's going to begin.

there will be Clayton Kershaw will not be going where he is now he will be either going much earlier because he's pitching and looking healthy in spring training or maybe he won't be getting drafted at all because he'll have gone under the knife

for Tommy John so But there is no risk to Clayton Kershaw at 140 like if that's what his price is there's just there's no reason not to take him out of two three four rounds ahead of that there's just there's none in my opinion especially the shallower of the league

because obviously you could take more risk and then the replacement value is higher. So I do agree with you there. I am unsurprisingly again on the other side of the fence here, Scott. So I hear what you're saying. You're on the positive side. I'm on the other side.

I have them SP 48. So if we're drafting right now, I am not getting a single share of Clayton Kirchow. I just need to see more. That's me. I don't want to say I'm on the positive because I'm genuinely very concerned about Clayton Kirschaw. Mm-hmm.

I just don't think it makes sense to rank for late January. That's what it gets down to. Like, if there's somebody whose status is going to be exactly the same today that it's going to be on March 25th, you know, then that's pretty straightforward. But when there's players like Kershaw, like DeGrom, who have these very big questions that still need to be answered, the spot they're in now is just kind of a placeholder,

and I'm waiting for those questions to be answered. Sure. When you're drafting in that range, 10th round, 12th round, whatever. And you're like, oh, this player is risky. Just remember whichever starting pitcher you draft there is more likely than not not going to be a must-start player. Just remind yourself that. And it's a good point that you bring up. And maybe it's hypocritical of me because I said something very similar when we did the Outfield Tears podcast last time.

Chris, you weren't here, but. Very disappointed. I missed it. Did you guys talk about Joe Adele? We might have... He's my new Iron Buxton. I'm totally cool with that. I'm totally cool with that because I have him in my breakouts 1.0, Chris.

So I'm right there with you. But I said that about Bellinger and Yellich is like where they're going. That's where you want to take a swing on someone who has first or second round upside. I mean, they're going right around pick 100. It's like, why not? Why wouldn't you take that risk at that point in the draft? If they fail, they really don't hurt your team all that much. And see, for those two, I'm not sure anything could happen this spring to really

convince me of anything one way or another. It's also production related. It's not just injury related. Right. No, that's fair. Yeah, maybe I'm kind of talking to myself. It's a Kirchall a little bit. I don't know. Kirchaw and DeGrom and the guys we've talked about so far and we didn't talk about Verlander. But I would lump him there.

I don't have many concerns that they're going to be good. As long as if they're out there, I think they're going to be great. That's what it comes down to. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, let's move through a few more tiers here. We got quite a few names to get to, but let's see how many we can get to. The fallback option This includes 26 names ranging from rounds 7 through 23.

It's quite a massive tier, so I am not going to read off all of the names. But in terms of ADP, the high end is Dylan Cis. Zach Ranky is the low, and I think he's going to pick 277 or something right now. Which is just, yeah, that's kind of bonkers too. But yeah, this is the group of pitchers I've been referring to throughout the offseason, number 31 to 55 in my rankings. I feel like you could rank them in virtually any order, which is the whole idea of tiers, right?

Instead of trying to parse the difference between player A and player B, just, okay, they're all about the same, or at least in terms of overall projected output if you're not looking at individual categories, what they're going to do is more or less, what you expect them to do is more or less the same. Obviously, it's not going to play out that way

because nothing's that predictable, but that's also why you shouldn't be parsing one player versus another. Chris, there are quite a few breakout candidates in this tier, but I believe the most popular ones will be Alec Minoah, Dylan Sees, Trevor Rogers, Logan Gilbert, and the two Shane, Shane, Boz, and Shane McClanahan. So again, it's Manoa, Seas, Rogers, Gilbert, Boz, McClanahan. Who is your favorite of that group? I don't want to be a Marlins Homer, but I think it's,

it's Trevor Rogers, just because I think he showed it most consistently last season. Like, he definitely tailed off last season and there was, you know, the workload. He also had like an off-field thing, like a family issue. Yep. It's always hard to know how to, you know, a player comes back from something like that and doesn't pitch well. Well, how much of that is he was running out of steam anyway versus, you know, just not being fully engaged. But he looked like a, he pitched like a top. 12 pitcher for what, the first two and a half, three months of the season. He was amazing. And so

I think he's shown that more consistently from start to start than anybody else here. All right. Yeah. I mean, 27, 28, and 9, and my pitcher ranks are Trevor Rogers, Alec Manoa and Shane McClanahan. So I like all three quite a bit. I mean, McClanahan, we talked about a lot towards the end of the year, Scott, and how much we were going to like him this year. I mean, the numbers are amazing. 14.8% swinging strike rate from McClain. tied for eighth among pitchers with at least 120 innings pitched. He's got some issues with like hard contact that I think he needs to figure out. But the arsenal and the stuff absolutely looks like it's there for Shane McClanahan.

There's also another interesting group within this tier, Scott, which features the Tommy John recoveries. Luis Severino, Mike Clevenger, Noah Cindergarde. And Chris mentioned recently that he likes the idea of targeting one, if not multiple of those players. What do you think of that idea, Scotty? Severino, Clevenger, Noah Cindergarde. Um, they all tend to go in the same range, right?

So realistically, I think it would be hard to get more than one. If nothing else, I think I'm looking to do too many different things at that point in the draft to commit to that. I don't have a problem with it in theory. I've said in past podcasts that by the end of this tier, I want to have seven pitchers already. It's very likely four or five will come from this very large tier. and if two of them happen to be Severino and Clevenger, okay, that's fine with me. I mean, the good thing about them and Verlander as well

is that they all should be full go from the start of the season. We saw Severino and Cindergarde. We actually saw them return to the mound last year, and Clevenger and Verlander both have had more than a full season, if they had close to two seasons to recover. I guess Clevenger's had more like a year and a half, right? But they both should, they all should be fully recovered, is the point. They all should be ready to go by the start of the year.

How much will they have their innings managed? I think that's a big question. But, you know, that obviously goes for that breakout group you talked about with Chris. McClanahan, Dylan Cs, certainly Shane Boz. You know, they're not going to take on more than 140 innings in all likelihood, maybe 150, something like that. All right. The next tier we see the deep leaguers. There are 33 pitchers in this tier.

I know the last resort. You skipped a very small tier. That is, you are correct. It's so small. I skipped it, Scott. The last resorts. Anthony Descophani, Sunny Gray, Mike Soroka, Kyle Hendrix, Carlos Carrasco, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Cal Quantrell actually has RP eligibility for those who play in points leagues and they want to target Sparps. Ranger Suarez and Luis Severino from the previous tier also have SPARP eligibility. Yeah, what do you think about this? It's a small tier, Scott. What made you make this tier so small compared to the two tiers that it's

surrounded by? Well, the tier ahead of them, that very large tier, are players who have, you know, looked very good in the past. And I basically, in the recent past, and I basically fully buy it. You know, they may have workload concerns. They may have control concerns, health concerns, whatever. But, like, I feel pretty confident saying they're good. this group could be really good.

They've all had really good seasons in the very recent past, but they all have major warning signs too. Generally speaking, this whole group, either they were good last year and I don't really buy it, or they were bad last year, but they were good in previous years,

like Kyle Hendricks and Carlos Carrasco. Yeah, I will say of this last resort tier, I'm probably most intrigued by Eduardo Rodriguez because he had this Aranola thing going on last year where a 4.74 ERA 139 whip. The underlying numbers were great. I mean, the best strikeout stuff, the best control that we've seen from Erod. And now he goes to the Tigers where it's a bigger park and it's a much better division to pitch and he doesn't have to face his ALEs teams anywhere. It doesn't have to pitch in Fenway. So I'm pretty intrigued by it. We'll see if he can kind of bounce back to some of those peripheral.

numbers from last year. The deep leaguers. Now this is the final tier that we will quickly talk about, even though it features 33 pitchers. No, I'm not going to read them off. It's perfectly fine. But lots of intriguing names within this tier. Chris, we'll start with you. Maybe one or two names

that you are more interested in than the rest in this group. I love the talent with Tristan McKenzie. I still think there's a chance he puts it all together and has a really good stretch. Really like Alex Cobb. with his splitter change-up thing. It's actually called the thing.

He's one of those guys who, you know, like Frankie Montas and Kevin Gosman, he's got this one really, really great pitch. And his peripherals last season were very good. And then, I mean, there's a ton of guys in here. There's going to be six or seven guys in this group that finishes top 25 starting pitchers. I will say Chris Paddock, just taking a late round flyer makes a ton of sense on him. Alex Reyes,

in case, you know, either he's good in the rotation or becomes a reliever again and works in high levered situations. And, um, the one guy I'm not interested in is Sixtho Sanchez because,

oh my gosh. He does not look anywhere close to contributing. Um, all we've seen so far was a video that came out within the last couple of weeks of of him just like playing catch. And it sounds like he's in the very, very early stages of his comeback. And look, I'm not in position to talk about anybody's fitness or their physical appearance, but kind of had like a Bartolo Cologne thing going on to him in that video.

He's always been a little bit of a husky boy. But yeah, that was, you know, he was on the bigger side. Yeah, it didn't look great. There's a ton of interesting guys in here. I just, I think, though, I was hoping he was going to be a sleeper for me this season, and I just

I don't think at this point that he's worth drafting in your standard I mean, even in a 15-team league with five bench spots, I don't think he's worth drafting probably, so that's frustrating. Yeah, no, I hear you. What Chris is saying about this tier is another indication of how much more depth

there is at starting pitcher, because there are a lot of pitchers in this tier that I would have gotten excited about in years past. And I have several of them in my sleepers 1.0, my breakouts 1.0 that are already out on the site. But I'm finding that drafts are ending before I really even get to this group. You know, like, I think this could be the year for Tony Gonsolin. Sure. When he was finally healthy in September, he looked pretty overpowering again.

And the Dodgers need him unlike ever before. I like Alex Cobb, like Chris mentioned. I think Joe Ryan is, you know, he could be hugely impactful. You just look at the numbers he's delivered throughout his minor league career. And that mostly carried over to the majors and the five starts we saw. The last one was kind of shaky. It got the ERA over four, but it was a .79 ERA. It was like 11K per 9.

That fastball may be a gimmick that catches up to him at some point. I kind of feel like that happened to Dantrell Willis. But like until it happens, as long as the price is low, why not take a flyer and see where it goes? Yeah, and there was a great article I encourage everyone to go read it. it's over on twinkytown.com. It was written by a gentleman named John Foley because I was trying to research Joe Ryan and figure out why, why is this guy so successful?

And there's this thing called vertical approach angle, which helps explain sneaky fastballs. It's like guys that have a really low release point but they could create rise with their fastball and while he only throws like 91 or 92 miles per hour, he's able to do that. So it kind of, I don't know,

it makes like this ghostly effect that makes him so effective. So if you want to read more about it, I encourage everyone to check it out. It's one of those things where if you think about most of the pitchers you see generally look pretty similar. Obviously, there's differences in velocity and spin angle and all this stuff, but generally speaking, most of these pitchers fit within a fairly narrow, you know, range.

And so when you have these guys who can pitch effectively and command the ball in a unique way, it gives them an edge. You know, Marco Estrada. We can't go too many podcasts. without a Marco Estrada reference on FBT. He was kind of the opposite. He had that just like straight overhead angle that made him really hard to square up.

So it's the kind of thing that can absolutely, you know, be sustainable for at least a while. Yeah. Now, the last name I'll mention, Chris, one that you also mentioned, he's in my breakout's 1.0, but Tristan McKenzie had a 10-star stretch last year from July through September,

2.96 ERA, 0.73, we have 12.9% swinging strike rate, and he was one of the most valuable pitchers in fantasy during that stretch. So I still think that there's something there. We just need consistency. We just need it to be prolonged over the course of a full season. He has barely pitched the past four seasons. The 153 innings he's pitched at the majors are effectively all he's thrown in the last four seasons.

Going back to 2018, when he had 90 innings. So he's also still very much a work in progress. the fact that he's been able to keep his head above water, you know, last season coming back after not pitching for two full seasons was, you know, is a, or two full calendar years. I think he's been very impressive given the circumstances. All right, we're going to wrap there. There is one more tier.

It's the leftovers and you can check it out over on the site. CBSports.com slash fantasy slash baseball. Season three is great. Another good, like that's a show I need to watch Ozark. I just keep hearing great things about too. So, man, too much. Too many shows. Not enough time to watch them all.

for Scott and Chris. I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball today. We'll be back again tomorrow. Bye.