Fantasy Baseball Today - Starting Pitcher Tiers! Strategy, ADP and Targets (2/2 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Before we get into the tiers, what does the pitching landscape look like in 2023 (3:20)? ... Let's start with the elite tier (7:40). Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer are screaming values. ... Floor-ceiling combo of Woodruff and Wheeler (17:40). OK with Rodon, Strider, and Cease as your SP1? ... No Joe Musgrove love (26:10)? Buying these breakouts? ... News (37:14): Paul Sewald should be good to go for spring training. ... Buy the Hunter Greene hype (39:25)? ... Fade the veterans from last season (47:10)? Will Berrios, Giolito and Flaherty bounce back? ... We wrap up with the deep-league names to know (56:32). Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Get Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-baseball-today?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-baseball-collection Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 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. Got a fantasy question, email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your lead. Where fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. I feel like we haven't talked enough about starting pitchers, so let's change that. Welcome into Fantasy Baseball today on Thursday, February 2nd. I am Frank Sample joined by Scott White and Chris Towers.

today on the show, starting pitcher tears. All of them, all the pitchers. We're going to talk about every single. No, we're not going to talk about every single one of them. Scott, I didn't see your face because one of my screens was blocking it. How was the intro today? Was it all right? Yeah, it was fine.

I mean, I was surprised to hear you say you don't feel like we've talked about starting because I feel like that's half of fantasy baseball is starting. So how could we have not talked about it? But then I was, you know, I was just thinking it through just now. And I was like, you know, there may be a reason for that. And it's just that it feels like starting pitching isn't nearly as interesting going into this year as it's been in recent years. The stakes feel so much lower at this position than they felt in the past few years. Like the middle class is back.

Like when we're going through the tiers, we're going to see, oh, the middle tiers are actually fleshed out pretty well. It's not like, you know, like it felt like during the worst of the juice ball era, there was no middle class at starting pitcher, and it kind of lined up, the tears kind of lined up like they do in the outfield now, where you got these super studs at the top, and then you got a bunch of crap at the bottom, and not a lot in between.

And outfields that way now, but starting pitcher doesn't feel that way anymore. So it's just not as interesting because of that. You know, I entered this off-season, Scott, thinking that pitching was deep and it was plentiful, and maybe I'm starting to overthink. I get to a point in the off season where I just overthink every single thing. But with the rule changes coming in, offense is going to go up.

That's what we've talked about. There's going to be more hits. There's going to be more steals. As a result, there's going to be more runs, right? That means somebody has to be charged for these runs. Some pitchers will suffer. There may be some amount of reeling it back in from last year. But like the way offense is going to go up is.

is a base at a time, right? It's going to be a few more singles because of the shift band. It's going to be some more stolen bases. It's not going to be home runs, which are, of course, the most dangerous thing for a pitcher. And that's what really going back two years ago, but especially last year, that's what last year corrected was the home run issue for pitchers.

And I don't think the snapback effect of these new rule changes is going to be nearly as extreme or felt nearly as hard. by the position as a whole. I think the way to think about it is it'll impact individual hitters more than it's going to impact individual pitchers. I think there will be like a class-wide effect, but generally speaking, you know,

the types of hitters who are impacted by the shift tend to be left-hand hitters. So we can say that left-handed power hitters, hitters who hit the ball on the ground, to the right side of the infield, they're going to be impacted more than your typical player. But while every single one of Joey Gallo's plate appearances takes place as Joey Gallo, naturally,

only two played appearances every game, or two hitters in any given lineup, you know, throwing a number off the top of my head, are going to be impacted by this. And so I think it's a much more diffuse impact for the pitchers, then it will be for hitters, just like some hitters won't be affected at all. The benefit for hitters will be concentrated for a select few.

The impact on pitchers will be spread out much wider, to the point that it's hardly felt. The one thing I worry about with pitchers and analyzing them for this year, and I really don't even know what to do with it, is the ground ball guys that. I've gotten so used to emphasizing, of course, Framber Valdez is an outlier. He's far and away the best ground ball pitcher, but there are other pitchers whose stock is elevated by generating ground balls. Max Fried, Kyle Wright, pitchers who pitch for teams other than the Braves.

You know, there are some pitchers out there. And could their whip increase to a point that, you know, they drop a notch in fantasy? I don't think so. I'm not ranking them that way. More what I'm doing is I'm not degrading fly ball pitchers as much as I used to because now I'm looking at a high fly ball rate and thinking, okay, that could be an asset now that it's not likely, that those fly balls aren't as likely to result in home runs.

I guess the way I would put it is guys like Chinman Wong and Brandon Webb, you know, were in Fausto Carmona, Roberto Hernandez, I think was his actual name. like those guys were really good long before the shift ever really became as prevalent as it has been and we're still going to see some degree of shifting. You know, we're going to see short stops line up right on the edge and then take a step once the pitch is delivered. We're going to see stuff like that. So like ground ball pitchers were still very valuable in the pre-shift era in an environment

that I think is going to look more like the one we, You know, like, I think it's fair to say that Major League Baseball this year could look more like it did in 2008. You know, there are going to be more strikeouts than there were back then. But like in terms of the number of home runs, the number of stolen bases, we're probably going to see a return to an environment that looks somewhat more like that. And like Brandon Webb was a, you know, one of the three best pitchers in baseball for like a five year stretch. So I think ground ball pitchers are still, you know, the really good ones are still going to thrive in this environment. I have a question related to this too, but we'll get back to that a little bit later on. I don't want to bog us down too much here early up top.

Let's jump into the tiers. The elite starting pitcher tier. It includes ADP 12 through 39. That's right. We barely have a starting pitcher going in the first round of 12 team leagues at this point. But, you know, that's Corbyn Burns. That's right there. Him and Garikohl that are right on the cuff there.

In the mock drafts we're doing, you might not see the first starting pitcher go till the end of round two. Yeah, we've seen that a lot. what ADP is showing, yeah. Yep. So that ADP spans 12 through 39 for Scott's first tier here. That's rounds one through four in a 12 team league. And it includes Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Corbin Burns, Sandy Alcantara, Garrett Cole, Jacob de Grom and Shane McClanahan. Just a preamble to all of this.

This year more than ever before, look, starting pitcher rankings lists are going to look different across the industry. There's no doubt about that. But I feel like it's even more prevalent this year, Scott, because there's no slam dunk SP1. For example, you have Justin Verlander as your SP1. When we had Nick Pollack on the podcast back in October or November, he had Justin Verlander as his SP20.

Now, you know, that's an extreme, but that's an example of you're going to see very different rankings list this season. Yeah, it makes me very uncomfortable to be that far off from the consensus. But, like, at the same time, I'm picking the reigning AL-Sye Young winner who led the majors in ERA and WIP and, you know, it was obviously testing for the Hall of Fame. I don't see how you could feel bad about making that guy number one like I do. Of course, he's turning 40. He may have already turned 40 in the offseason.

He's going to be 40 this year. But I don't worry about that at starting pitcher because what matters, like I think the biggest risk factor at starting pitcher is the, like, volume, things that are going to cut your volume short. And it's not usually the old guys that are suffering from that. It's usually the young guys who are suffering from that. So it just seems like relatively low on the risk factor rank list for me, Verlander's age. It's the kind of thing where like you'll see someone will do like a baseball reference index search

and it'll be like, no 39-year-old starting pitcher has ever had 180 innings of an ERA below three. And it's like, well, okay. But like if that's what Justin Verlander did last year or Max Scherzer or whoever you want to pitch, like that these guys are already outliers. So like, yes, Justin Verlander being the number one starting pitcher this year would be an outlier historically. He already is.

So like it wants you account for the fact that he's done it already. It's the same with, you know, hitters who get into their late 30s like David Ortiz and you start to look like, nobody's ever done what he's, what you're expecting him to do at 39. And it's like, well, but nobody did it at 38 either.

You know, like that's, there is attrition. There are guys do fall off. as they get older, but once someone has done it at 39, the chances of them doing it at 40 are a lot higher than for your typical pitcher. Yeah. I'm kind of changing subjects here. So maybe it'll reel me back.

But kind of to get back to your thought of there's no consensus number one, I think the closest thing we have to that is Corbyn Burns. And I could get behind him as the number one, seeing that he did get over that 200-inning threshold that I think is essential for a true age. last year. Doesn't mean he can bounce back and do it again. He may never do it again. That's what I like about the old guys

is that they've shown they can take on that volume year after year. But, you know, of course, Corbin Burns, zinning per inning is one of the best pitchers and he's at least coming off a year where he did take on that big workload. So that's probably the consensus number one. He's third for me. Realistically, I'm not drafting the number one

no matter who it is. So I'm disinclined. to overthink it. You know what this is? This is just Scott gaming the system. So every time we do a mock draft, he's going to end up with his number one starting pitcher, who was like the seventh pitcher taken.

He's like, wow, I feel really good about my team. I got my number one starting pitcher. And it's like, well, yeah, man, if you made Max Freed your number one starting pitcher, you could end up with him on every team too. That's all this is. I see through it. Well, Scott, I was going to say,

like many times you've already said you're not going to wind up with your SP1 or your SP2 or really anyone in this tier. But the ADP for Verlander is 38.7. The ADP for Scherzer is 42.7. I love that. Those are three, that's a three four turn. I mean, you could take hitters with your first three picks and still wind up with one of those two pitchers. And to me, they are screaming values. So I have no problem. If it actually turns out that way, I have yet to participate in a draft where it did probably the last muck we did, the head-to-head categories came closest. I was picking late in round

three. Verlander was still there. I took J.T. Real Muto, which I regretted in the long run. So maybe that would have been an instance where it would have been better. By the way, all the second basement were gone at that point. Even Jazz Chisholm was gone. It was ridiculous. So I still couldn't take a second basement in round three like I want to do.

But maybe it would have made sense to take my number one pitcher who was obviously not the number one pitcher taken. But my number one pitcher Verlander at that point late in round three. Chris, Jacob deGrom and Shane O. Mac Here comes the money. Here we go.

Money talk. Here comes the money. That's Shane McClanahan for anyone who didn't know. They were both awesome last year. We know what Jacob deGrom has done in the past couple of years. Since 2018, he's got a 205 ERA, 087 whip, 12.2K per 9. Sign a five-year deal with the Texas Rangers this offseason. But he has just made 26 combined starts over the past two years.

years. He's been on the I.O. with oblique, forearm, and shoulder issues during that time. Speaking of shoulder issues, Shane McClanahan had a shoulder impingent in late August, and once he returned for his final four starts, he was not good. He had an ERA over five. His swinging strike rate was below 10%. So as a result, if you're looking, if you're talking about pitchers going in the third round that have injury risk, I don't know that I'm willing to take that risk on a Jacob deGrom or Shane McClanhan. I'm not out on them, but DeGromam and McClanahan. I'm not out on them, but de Grom and McClanahan are ninth and tenth for me at starting pitcher. And there's a pretty gradual gradient in how I rank my pitchers.

I don't necessarily have like an obvious. Like I was trying to think of like I'm looking at my raw auction values and your salary cap values. And, you know, I was trying to think like where would the tier be? And it's like, well, my top two are 26, then the next three or 24, then 23, 22, 22, 21, 21. And it's like, I guess there's not really for me an obfirm. tier. But those guys are on the lower end of this group for me. Do you think I'm a hypocrite for liking Max Scherzer, but also kind of downplaying Jacob de Grom and Shane McClain. No, because I think the nature of Scherzer's injuries over the past couple of seasons have been

different than certainly DeGrom, who, what was it, an elbow last, or forearm last year. And shoulder. And he hasn't had more than 92 innings in a season since 2019. Now that's, you know, sort of unfair because 2020 he did pitch a full season. It was only 12 starts. Who knows what would have happened. And then McClan, he's just never done it. You know, that's always the tough thing. It's tougher with a guy like DeGrom who, if DeGrom makes it through 32 starts without an injury,

he's going to throw close to 200 innings. You know, he's done it before we know he can. McClan, you know, last year was, I assume, the career high for him. And, you know, that's including. including the minors, and it was 166, which is a decent number in today's era. But even in today's era, you know, that's, you're going to fall short of being the number one starting pitcher. Andy broke down before he got to 166 with the shoulder impingement, which wouldn't

be so bad in its own right, but he comes back and makes five starts postseason included. He goes from a 16% swinging strike rate before the injury to a 10%, like really bad swinging strike right after it. Even though the velocity was still there. That's the tough thing, the velocity was fine. Yeah. But it's just like,

Shane McClanahan's arguably the hardest throwing left-handed starting pitcher ever. And so we don't have like a precedent for what kind of workload that the hardest throwing left-handed pitcher in history can take on. You know, it'd be one thing if he was built like Randy Johnson, but he's six foot one. Yeah.

So I think there are real durability concerns there. People thought Chris Sale was going to break down for a long time. And eventually he did. But if it takes nine years for Shane McClanahan to break down, I think we'd all be pretty happy with that. You know, I have seen people do the like, I knew Chris Sale was going to break down. It's like, buddy, it happened.

Like, he made his major league debut a long time ago when you guys were talking about that. So like after four, four, 200 inning season is another couple of 190. The thing to keep in mind about starting pitcher, is they all have significant injury risk. Like just the baseline level for every starting pitcher is like certainly lower for Garrett Cole, who has basically no injury history since 2017, I think. But like, it's an incredibly violent thing to do to your body. The human elbow was not designed to throw baseballs the way we do.

There's a reason quarterbacks don't get. elbow injuries nearly as often as baseball pitchers do. And it's because one, they're doing a lot less often and two, it's a more natural throwing motion. It's a very unnatural thing to ask the human body to do. And so Shane McClanahan has more injury risk than Shane Bieber to name one guy. Shane Bieber still has a lot of injury risk, relatively speaking. Yep. Let's move into the near elite tier, which spans ADP 32 through 70, and that is rounds three through six. and it includes Brandon Woodruff, Zach Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Carlos Rodon, Shane Bieber,

Alec Manoa, Spencer Strider, nice shirt, Scottie, Dylan Sees, Shoahe Otani, Julio Reyes, Max Freed, U. Darvish, Luis Castillo, Zach Allen, and Kevin Gosman. There are a lot of names in this tier and rightfully so. Scott, I would like to have at least two starting pitchers by the end of this tier.

That doesn't mean I need to have one in tier one and one in tier two, I could have just two in tier two and be totally fine with it. Yeah, that's generally what I've preferred to do two. It's not the end of the world if I only have one because I think the middle class is so strong here. But if I do only end up with one by the end of this near elite tier,

I'm hitting starting pitching pretty hard after that. But yeah, two seems to be what I'm doing most often. and my number one will usually come from this tier. It'll usually be somebody like Shane Bieber or Alec Minoa, and then I'll pair like a Max Fried or Udarvish or Kevin Gosman, somebody like that with him. And I feel like that should be perfectly fine. So yeah, that's what I'm doing too.

I figured it out. I figured out what Scott's shirt is. There it is. It's a reference to the Thrashor skateboard magazine. There you go. I knew it was familiar. So all before the podcast started, Chris was researching all different kinds of metal bands. And he's like, where is that font from?

I thought it was Slayer at first. It's not Slayer at all. It's Thrasher Skateboarder magazine. There you go. Yep. For anyone watching us on YouTube, you can see Scotty's rocking the Spencer Strider Roto Ware shirt. And yeah, I didn't even know. It was modeled after Thrasher.

So there you go. Chris, two names that I really like in this tier because I like the combination of their floor and ceiling are Brandon Woodruff and Zach Wheeler. Maybe they won't be the SP1 in fantasy this season, but I feel really good that they will be n SP1. They will be a top 10 or top 12 starting pitcher. Woodruff over the last three seasons, 284 ERA, 101 whip 10.9K per 9. Wheeler over the last two seasons, 2.80ERA 102 whip,

and 10 strikeouts per nine. The fastball velocity was down a little bit last year coming back from the shoulder injury for Zach Wheeler. But if you look at his month by month velocity, it actually went up as the season went along. So it gives me a little bit more confidence in Zach Wheeler. Chris, what do you think about the floor ceiling combination for those two? I think Wheeler probably is the better floor ceiling combo. I do have Woodrow ranked ahead of him.

But I'm thinking I need to change that because, you know, the one thing with Woodrow, if we talk about that, you know, 180 inning mark, he's never actually hit the 180 inning mark. It's not like he's had a lot of. of injuries over the past couple of seasons, but there's been a few nagging things over the past four seasons. The bigger issue more, just doesn't go all that deep into games. Generally, doesn't average, you know, he's usually below six innings per start, which is, I think, kind of the, the ace threshold. So I think he probably is someone who he does have a high floor. The ratios are always going to be good. He probably doesn't have the counting stat potential

that someone's like Zach Wheeler has. Zach Wheeler, you know, obviously 2021, 21, 213. innings, even last season. I think that's just below six innings per start. But, you know, given that he was coming back from injury, I think you probably give him a little bit of a a mulligan for that one. All right, Scottie, you're wearing the shirt. It's time to put you on the spot. Are you actually okay with one of Carlos Sordawn, Spencer Strider, or Dylan Cs? I know we all have CIS as a bust, but, you know, he's being drafted as a top 10 starter. Would you be okay with any of those three as your SP1? Yeah. I absolutely would.

In fact, I did take cease in our last rotomoc as my number one, despite having him as a bust candidate for this year. And then I paired him with Max Fried with the very next pick. I think those two pair nicely because Freed a very safe source of ERA and wins and cease. You know, even if he does bust, apart from an injury situation, if he just busts in the way I think he's going to bust. He's still going to have a ton of strikeouts. So, yeah, I'm comfortable doing that. I'm okay doing that.

Strider, since we've brought him up and he's in this tier, I do think it's worth mentioning that if it is a head-to-head points league where the ability to slot a starting pitcher in a relief pitcher spot is so valuable, he is far and away the best spark this year. It's not even close. And so that is reason to zero in on him early, something like round four. I will say, that's the earliest I'd go. He might even go, I end up going earlier because of that.

But after Strider, it's like Hunter Brown, T.L. Hall. It's Garrett Whitlock. Like, it's real. It's pitchers who might not even be drafted at all. So Strider's kind of the only one who's going to be drafted in every league. I will say that's probably the only context in which I'd be willing to pay full full. right for Spencer Strider. I just, when you talk about

the way where he's being drafted, he's being drafted as a top 12 starting pitcher, right? Yeah, he's being drafted earlier than I had. I think he's being drafted ahead of Shane McClanahan on average. And like, he's never, I mean, last season he threw 130-something innings. If you include the playoffs, he might have gotten to 140. Yeah, it was 130

exactly in the regular season. Yeah. And then what do you make? How many starts in the postseason? Was it just the one? I think he just made the one start and it wasn't very good, am I remembering that correctly? I could look it up. Yeah, it wasn't good. He was coming off an IL stints.

Yep. So I just in your standard roto league where the volume really matters, and I mean, volume matters in head to head, but because you can slide him in your SPARP spot, or your RP spot, it's definitely a lot less of a concern. I just can't justify the price. You know, he's awesome, but one, we don't know what it's going to look like

when he has to, you know, go from day one and pitch, the way he does for six months, it just, there's too much uncertainty there. Yeah. There is a lot. For what it's worth, for what it's worth,

um, now that we have some other ADP sources mixed in, um, fan tracks, one of them. So there's, it's not just NFBC anymore. If you go to fan,

if you go to fantasy pros, you'll see the average of the ADPs. And the average of the ADPs has strider going behind Mclanahan. So it's more reasonable. NFBC doesn't, factor in downside risk as much because people are shooting for upside. I would rather have Rodon than Strider. Yeah, I have Rodon ahead of Strider also.

I think Rodon the fact that he answered any performance questions last season. And he made it through the year without issue in terms of injuries. That obviously given his track record, that's no guarantee moving forward. But I think like I might feel more confident in Rodon's performance than Strider just because we've seen him do it for two seasons now. He's been that good. I think there are some concerns about a fly ball pitcher in Yankee Stadium, but he gets so many strikeouts. He does such a good job with control.

He doesn't really get hit all that hard. I think he's going to be fine. And I don't worry as much, Chris, with a left-handed pitcher who is a fly-ball pitcher in Yankee Stadium because the short porch in right field, that's more so beneficial for left-handed batters. And obviously you're going to be facing more righties as a left-handed pitcher. Chris, I don't know if you've got the rundown open, but would you like to get the top two starting pitchers in K per 9 over the last two years?

Well, I'm going to guess Carlos wrote on. That's right. He's number one. He's only 12 and a half, right? 12.2. I mean, Jacob de Grom clearly doesn't count because he's putting up elite closer type ratios. I don't know who number two is. It would be Garrett Cole, 11.8. How about

those Yankees? Oh, my goodness gracious. Can't wait for him to get booed in his second start at Yankee Stadium because he gives up two home runs. Well look, you better perform unless you're going to get booed. That's how it goes. The next best things tier, ADP 67 through 129. That spans round 6 through 11 and includes Framber Valdez, Joe Musgrove, Robbie Ray, Christian Javier, Tristan McKenzie, Clayton Kirschaw,

Tyler Glassnow, Logan Gilbert, Logan Webb, Blake Snell, Kyle Wright, Lance Lynn, George Kirby, Luis Severino, and Nestor Cortez. Scott, you might notice a theme at this point. by the end of this tier, I want at least three starting pitchers. Do you agree? I might try for four. And it's going to be easier.

The draft isn't going to follow these tiers exactly, of course. If you look at where Lance Lynn, who's in this tier is being drafted, there's a good chance he's going to last longer than some of the guys being drafted in the next tier. So I don't think it's hard. It's going to necessarily be difficult in a 12-team league to get four.

or potentially even five of the people I tier as next best things are better. So this is the point where I'm hitting starting pitching pretty hard, I would say. Like I've already built the foundation of my lineup. I've already addressed the scarce positions, everything, but first base and shortstop probably. And so I'm going to load up on pitchers now to make sure I'm still strong in that area. and that's going to mean at least a couple of these guys in all likelihood. I did want to ask out about Joe Musgrove.

I kind of feel like maybe he deserves to be in the previous tier. If you look at his last two seasons, very consistent. 306 ERA, 108 whip, 9.6K per 9, nearly a 12% swinging strike rate, and exactly 181 innings pitched in each of those seasons. So I feel pretty good about him as like a tier two pitch. And I wrestled with that.

Like, um, So, for instance, the last two in the previous tier are Zach Gallen and Kevin Gosman, and the first two in this tier are Framber Valdez and Joe Musgrove. How much difference is there between Zach Allen and Joe Musgrove, really? At positions with this many people, it's harder to know exactly where those lines are between the tiers. You know it's somewhere within this group of names, but do you have it at the exact right spot? I think there's a fair amount of blending on both ends throughout the tiers at this position. It's a gradient.

It's not a, you know, whatever the alternative to that would be. So, yeah, if you wanted to tear Valdez and Musgrove with the previous one, I think that's fine. But then that also means you're tiering Framber Valdez and Joe Musgrove with Brandon Woodruff and Zach Wheeler. And that's where I start to get a little iffy on. And I don't know that I want to draw the line quite there. Yep, all right. Look, I get it. It's not an easy task to rank these pitchers, to group these pitchers, obviously to tier them either. Let's do a little rapid fire. Buy or sell last year's breakouts. I have one, two, three, four, five, six names here within this tier.

We'll just kind of go back and forth. Chris, you will get Framber Valdez, who set the single season record with 25 straight quality starts last season. Buy or sell his breakout from last year. I'll buy it. It's no different than what he'd done the previous two seasons, really. You know, it's, kind of in line with the lower ERA around the league. And I just, you know, his control has been really good the past couple of seasons. He's the elite ground. Like, he's Dallas Kikele. He's peak Dallas Kikele. That's the obvious comp being that he's a Houston Astro, but it's an obvious comp for a reason. He's really, really good. I buy it. Yep. Big Velo jump last year. Added a new cutter for Framber Valdez. Pitches for one of the best teams in baseball. So win should be very good as well.

Let's stick on that same team. Christian Javier, 11.7K per nine, third, best last season. Scott, we saw two no-hit outings from him last year. One against the Yankees. He left early in both of those. And then one in the World Series as well. Buy or sell. Christian Javier. I buy him. I think I like him more than the consensus, actually.

He also had the highest, or the best opponent batting average. 169. It was the best mark for any pitcher with at least 100 innings. And so, you know, you could look at that and say, oh, well, you must have had some good luck. the bad bit was low, obviously, to get to a 169 batting average. But part of this he just puts the ball in the air a ton.

And like, even when the juice ball was an issue, it didn't hurt him that much. And so now that it's not somebody who puts the ball in the air that much and also record strikeouts at what, like 11K per 9, something like that for Christian Javier. 11.7. There's just not a lot of room for hitters to do damage against him. And of course, he's going to have a great lineup. attacking him. So yeah, if he's able to up his innings from 148 to like 178, Christian Javier is going to be, there's a good chance he's in the Sion conversation at that point.

I know Spencer Shreder was amazing last year. I don't know that there is a huge difference between Strider and Christian Javier and you're getting Javier two, three rounds later than when Spencer Strider is going. Trista McKenzie, Chris, he always had the talent, finally stayed healthy, career high, 13% swinging strike rate, buyer sell McKenzie. I hate it because I'm a big Tristan McKenzie fan. I liked him a lot going into last season. He had a great season. I don't buy him being as good as he was last year and probably not worth the price.

There's a lot of injury risk here given his history. And like he's another guy like Christian Javier who gives up a lot of fly balls. And so that'll keep the babit blow. I think it was 237 last year. And that was actually higher than the previous season. he gets hit pretty hard when he does give up contact. He doesn't have the elite strikeout rates that Christian Javier does. He has very good control, but not elite control.

So I just, I look at the whole package and it feels a little closer to an average pitcher with some injury risk. So I, he feels very Jose Burrios to me where like there are a lot of things to like about him, the highlights and the good. starts are really good, but I think there's going to be more bad this year than there was last year. Scott, Logan Gilbert's kind of a tough one for me to figure out. There were really good results last year. Obviously, pitches for an emerging team with the Seattle Mariners, but he didn't have a wipeout with pitch, and he allowed a lot of hard contact by herself, Logan Gilbert's breakout. I mean, I buy it. Now, like, to justify his, his ADP, he's probably going to have to get a little better. But I don't think, like, I feel better about Logan Gilbert than I do about George Kirby, who I brought up on the bus podcast.

And Kirby's going higher. Like, I see, you know, you say Gilbert doesn't have a great width pitch. Well, the swinging strike rate for him, unlike with Kirby, was still respectable. And it got better over the course of the year. He started missing more bats. So I think there's enough of an arsenal there. He throws enough strikes. plays for a good team in a favorable venue.

I think Gilbert's, you know, I'm fine with him as like my number three. I don't know that he has a ton more upside from here, but I think it's, I think a small step forward is more likely than a big step back. Chris, Kyle Wright, led baseball with 21 wins last season. The only 20-game winner, he leaned into that improved curveball. He had a 56% ground ball rate, 11. point nine percent swinging strike rate. Are you buying what we saw from Kyle Wright? I mean, he's going to be worse than he was last year because he's not going to win 21 games. I think Max Fried was a better pitcher

than him and he won 14 games last season on the same team. That's just random. There's nothing you can really do about that. But I do buy Kyle Wright being a low to mid three's ERA pitcher who, you know, probably goes pretty deep into games pretty regularly. So I think he's, I think he's fine. I don't, you know, I don't have any. palms one way or the other. Scotty, you get nasty nester. 42 starts since the beginning of 2021.2.61 ERA, 0.98 whip over a strikeout per inning. Are you buying it at this point? Yeah, I mean, and you combine that with what he did at the end of 2021 and there's not a lot of room for doubt anymore. Now, this is an example of a pitcher who I would assess very differently if we

were still in the throes of the juice ball era because there are so many fly balls. And though his strikeout rate is good, it's not like he's an elite batmisser. It's just a pretty good more than strikeout or any kind of guy. But, you know, the fly balls, clearly he's able to limit damage on them. So they turn into easy outs and keep the ERA low and he throws a lot of strikes. And he's done it now for more than a year straight. So that's the main reason I'm tearing him with this group and not the one that follows. All right.

Before we hit the break, just a reminder that tomorrow we'll have a live headshead points mock draft on YouTube at 9.30 p.m. Eastern Time. So if you want to join us and watch live, us three will be here as well as our buddy Chris Welsh. So we'll have four people on drafting live. We'll have a lot of fun with it. It'll be in your podcast feed on Friday as part of a two-part episode. and make sure to listen and follow our five-minute podcast as well. Fantasy baseball today in five. Cover a lot of things that we do on this podcast, but it's just five minutes.

So if you ever are, you know, running low on time and you still want to get your fantasy baseball fix, that's fantasy baseball today and five. Listen anywhere that podcasts are found. Let's take a break, and we'll be back right after this. Let's hit some news and notes before we get back into the starting pitcher tiers, and there's not really much going on, but there must have been some kind of,

Jerry DePoto, I don't know, press conference because it's basically all Mariner's news. So we'll start right there. Paul Seawald has resumed throwing and should be ready to pitch in games during spring training. Seawald underwent a cleanup procedure on his right elbow and an additional surgery on his heel. His counterpart, Andres Munoz, on the other hand, is out of his walking boot and has started a throwing program. He underwent foot surgery this offseason. And Scott, it sounds like Munoz is a little bit. bit behind Seawald the fact that he's just starting his drawing program now. Yeah, that does,

because I was kind of backing off Paul Seawald knowing he's coming back from a couple surgeries. And so the fact, Moonho's is too, looks like they're back to square one. And I would prioritize Seawald over Munoz, both because the timeline seems better and because he's the incumbent and like a really good incumbent. Like, people are quickly forgetting that at this time a year ago, we were all rooting for Paul Seawald to be the closer and more or less became that in the second half and now we're ready to move on to Munoz. He was very talented. I get it.

But like, Seawald's great. Yeah, it's crazy because you're totally right. Seawald is an elite reliever. But man, if you watch Muno's pitch, he's just a little bit better, a little bit more fun to watch than a Paul Seawald.

So I get it. Jared Kelnick and Taylor Trammell will battle this spring for a, for the job of the strong side play. a tune in left field. So, still ready for Jared Kellnick. Hopefully he can get back on track, but it's obviously been a rough go to this point. Matt Brash will be competing

for a relief role during spring training, and it appears that anybody could be the Rangers closer because yesterday I had a news item about Brock Burke, and then we got this per Levi Weaver. Jose LeClerc is the frontrunner still for the Rangers closer job, but GM Chris Young said that Jonathan Hernandez could be the closer.

So I don't know. I guess everybody could be. the closer for the Texas Rangers this season. I still think LeClerc is probably the favorite as of now. Let's get back into those starting pitcher tiers and we've got the fallback options with an ADP of 111 through 175, rounds 10 through 15 and includes Tony Gonselin, Dustin May, Jesus Lazzardo, Nick Ladolo, Hunter Green, Kodai Senga, Charlie Morton, Chris Sale, Freddie Peralta and Jeffrey Springs upside for days. I like getting one of these guys usually as my SP4, Scott, it sounds like maybe these are SP5 for you,

based on what you said about. Preferably. It may have to be four, but ideally it would be more like a five for me. Yeah. I feel good about it because at this point, you have at least three starting pitchers. That's your base, right? Ideally, you haven't taken on a bunch of risk by then,

unless, of course, you've drafted Jacob de Grom and Shane McClan and all those guys. But if you have that base that you feel strongly with, now's the time where you could take a risk on someone where a lot of these guys, we have concerns over their innings this upcoming season, but again, there is a lot of upside. Each of Dustin May, Hazel Lozardo, Nicola Dolo, Jeffrey Springs were in my breakouts 1.0. We've talked about those recently on some of our sleeper breakouts and bus podcast.

Chris, I wanted to bring up Hunter Green, someone I know that we talked about a lot last year. You could see a path to Hunter Green being this year as Dylan Cs. The strikeouts are immense. the whiffs are there. He throws extremely hard. He's got that wipeout slider. And six starts in the second half last year. 102 ERA, 0.75 whip, 51 strikeouts to just eight walks with an 18.6% swinging strike rate. That is a number we only see from someone like Jacob de Gras to put that in perspective. But it was also a really light schedule. He faced a Marlon twice, the Cubs, the pirates.

So, you know, you put all that in perspective. All right. You know, he's not going to be that good. But obviously, Chris, the upside is massive for Hunter Green. Yeah, the thing that's hard about that is you look at the last six starts when he came back. I think he, did he have an elbow injury or like a minor? He had some kind of minor thing, but it didn't stop him. He missed like two turns in the rotation. He came back and he was throwing hard and he was getting a lot of swings and misses. And that's great. But like what was specifically different? That's the really hard thing to say because, you know, he threw hard all season. He had a high spin rate fastball all season. His slider was awesome all season. The big difference in those last six starts is his fastball

stopped getting crushed. And I don't know how much you can take from that because the much larger sample size suggested that his fastball, despite being the hardest fastball probably in major league history, I think the stat I found was 45% of all 100 mile per hour fastballs thrown last year by a starting pitcher were thrown by Hunter Green. Crazy. Just a bonker stat. But got hit hard all year with that fastball until September. And we know it changed. What's that?

No, it changed. Yes, he was throwing the fastball very hard all year. But it was even harder over those final starts, particularly if you look at the one right before the eye. Alston. It was more like the average fastball velocity in those starts range from 98 to 101 when before that it was like 97 to 99. But that was like in July he was throwing 99.3 miles per hour with his fastball. I'm just looking at the month by month breakdown. It was 99.3 miles per hour in July 99.8. Look, maybe the difference between Hunter Green having an unhittable fastball and one that gets crushed routinely is that 99.3 to 99.8 mile per hour. But I, I, I tend to think that that's probably not the explanation, but I don't know. Like, I genuinely don't know. It's something that he's really fascinating.

I think he's a really interesting pitcher. It's just I don't necessarily love the price when it's so much about that six-start sample size. If nothing else, it seems dubious that he could sustain that improved velocity over a full season as opposed to just a month, you know? So, yeah, I think people are getting maybe out over their skis with him, particularly in NFBC, like all the upside guys, as we talk about all the time, or get overvalued in NFBC. And so, you know, we're at the point now where I'd like to consider the cumulative ADP more. But, like, just straight up, I prefer Nick Lodolo to Hunter Green, because. because he was pretty dominant too, and he doesn't have the amazing fastball

that lights up the radar gun at 101 consistently. But he was dominant and dominant, more consistently from start to start than Green was. I do think Lodolo is a more polished pitcher, too. So I think I have him one spot higher than Hunter Green, but I do like both guys. I'll point out with the ADP, it's 111 overall for Hunter Green. It's 112 at the NFBC.

actually 93 over at fan tracks. So inside the top 100 there for Hunter Green. It is worth pointing out with Hunter Green. Like he's thrown very few innings as a professional. I think he's below 400 for his career. He might not be over 300 for his career because remember he got drafted as a two-way player. He got hurt, missed the 2020 season.

2021, I think was his first year back. So he's also very raw. You know, for even as young as he is. is. So you definitely don't want to write him off. And if the changeup takes a step forward or if he starts throwing the slider a bit more, there is room for him to improve. I just, I think the fastball, I'm not convinced the fastball became this huge weapon yet. Last point on Hunter Green, eight walks over those final six starts. I think control was a huge key down the stretch for him and maybe help that fastball play up. If he's not falling behind in counts, you know, then people know

he has to throw the fastball in the zone. They're obviously going to tee off on it. So I think the control overall just helped Hunter Green take off over those final six starts. Scotty, I know that you like Chris Sale. You have him as a sleeper. You didn't get to talk about him the other day. Why are you in on Chris Sale? I mean, it should be pretty obvious.

He's Chris Sale. We were all excited about him finally coming back from Tommy John surgery this time last year, ended up with the stress fracture in his rib cage that kept him out until mid-season. and then he made only three starts right before a fractured wrist into the season. Stress fracture in the rib cage, fractured wrist. Those are not the kind of injuries you normally worry about for a pitcher. And they aren't the sort of injuries that I think will have some kind of carryover effect for Chris Sale. For the stretch that he came back from Tommy John surgery in 2021, he looked more or less like Chris Sale.

There were some command issues that made the whip a little higher than we're used to seeing. but that's typical coming back from Tommy John. It feels similar to Justin Verlander at this point a year ago when I was talking him up coming off Tommy John's surgery. He's an older guy. He'd been a while since we'd seen him pitch. And so we weren't as willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. And of course, come spring training when everybody's seeing Justin Verlander pitch again,

his ADP shot way up. and I could see that happening with Chris Sale as well. Yeah, there seems to be a good sale on Chris. The last resorts tier, Lance McCullors, Joe Ryan, Chris Bassett, Frankie Montas, Pablo Lopez, Jose Barrios, Lucas Gilito, Jack Flaherty, Tyler Anderson, Merrill Kelly, Miles Michaelis, Luis Garcia, Jurasmussen, Grayson Rodriguez, Martin Perez, Reed Detmerge, John Gray, And Jorhini, and Jordan Montgomery.

Halfway through reading that, I realized this probably should should be the point in the tiers where I just stop reading all the names inside of the two. Yeah, but no, I'm glad you did because, like, on the one hand, this is the first tier where I hear you rattle off those names and I'm like, yeah, I'm not that excited to draft any of these guys. But on the other hand, Chris Bassett is in this tier, like how reliable he's, has he been over the past few years? Extremely. of Merrill Kelly, Miles Michaelis, Martin Perez.

They were all mainstays in fantasy from start to finish last year. Grayson Rodriguez is in this year, the best pitching prospect in baseball, who looks like he's going to be in the roster opening day. Reed Detmer's a big second half breakout from a year ago is here. Jack Flaherty's here. I kind of like this year. Lucas Gialito, Jose Perrios, guys who we thought were aces, you know, at this time last year. So it's still really strong,

even though compared to all the pitchers we've been talking about, it feels risky. Like, if you grab your number five guy from here, it could still go really well for you. Chris, some of the veterans standouts that Scott highlighted there, these are the ones that I kind of worry about with the shift restrictions, right? They pitch to contact, maybe rely on ground balls,

soft contact a little bit more, don't miss as many bats. The Tyler Anderson, Merrill Kelly, Miles Michaelis, Martin Perez group, they were awesome last year. I don't know how awesome they're going to be this year. Yeah, I mean, I think Tyler Anderson really stands out among this group

just because the Dodgers are so analytically inclined. They shifted, I believe, more than any team in baseball last season, and everyone on that team outperformed their expected stats. And so I do worry Tyler Anderson changing teams. That seems like a pretty. pretty safe-ish bust call. But the other ones, they're boring. And this type of pitcher can tend to fluctuate from year to year because Babb

tends to fluctuate a lot from year to year. And they're going to be more impacted by that because they rely on the defense behind them for more of their outs. So I'm not particularly excited about any of those guys. I think they're all probably okay. But definitely guys that I fall back on rather than target. There are some guys in this group that I would target, but I'm less intrigued by those guys, not so much because of the shift ban as much as just, I don't know how much I believe what they did last year.

We don't usually fire up a lot of meters here in the off season, but let's do that right now. The faith o meter, the bounce back o meter, whatever you want to call it. The three obvious names, Jose Burrios, Lucas Gilito, Jack Flaherty. Scott, we'll start with you. You get Jose Burrios. The top two, Berrios and Giolito, just straight up awful last year. Jack Flaherty didn't pitch very much. He's been dealing with injuries.

What do you think, Berrios? You know, the bounce back o meter. 10. All right, complete confidence he's bouncing back. One, I don't know, really not feeling it. This feels like a cop-out, but I'm inclined to say five. That is the cop-out answer. Like if it was higher, if I had more confidence,

he brank higher. than this. He was awful, like you said last year. I didn't see a lot of reason. I'm like, I'm pulling up the Stackass page again to see if anything's jumping out to me now. But over the course of last year, I didn't see a lot for him that had changed other than just the results were worse. So it seems like it may have been one of those situations where something was off a little mechanically. that was costing him command and allowing him to get hit harder. It wouldn't be an environment situation

like, oh, he's just not suited for this environment anymore because obviously the pitching environment improved and especially in Toronto. So I don't think that's a valid explanation. Velocity-wise, everything was fine. So, like, Jose Barrios had been a reliable pitcher in fantasy. I think he'd long been kind of overrated in fantasy. People kept waiting for him to take this next.

next step that he never took, but he had been a reliable innings eater who'd give you about a strikeout per inning, double-digit wins. And I think he could get back to that. I don't, I'm not banking on it, obviously, but I took him in our most recent mock draft at the appropriate point. And it certainly wouldn't surprise me if he, if, if come the end of 2023, 2022 feels like a distant memory. Drafting Jose Burrios is the same reason why you draft Juan Soto, just not to the same extreme. Obviously, Soto has a much better track record. But if you look at Jose Burrios, from 2017 through 2021,

374 ERA 117 whip over a strikeout for inning. The track record is there. He's been a quality starting pitcher for a long time. So that's the reason to buy back in. Chris, Lucas Gilito, the bounce back o meter. Where are you at? I want to say six, but I think I'm going to say four, because I'm not a coward like Scott.

I'm with you on four. I think four is the right answer on Gileo. And like Boreos, I don't know if there's an obvious explanation for a while. Like he didn't throw his hard last year. That's a more obvious explanation than with Boreos, whose velocity basically held steady. And it could just be that, you know, Gialito, when he was good, it did always kind of feel like it was teetering on the edge of disaster a lot of the times,

especially, you know, in 2021, it really felt like that where like the bad starts were really bad. And so it could be just that he lost that margin of error. And that the margin of error was really slim. You know, I'm looking at, you know, Seris's, you know, stuff ratings. And Luz Giulio Lido rates out well below average in terms of stuff. I'm actually surprised Jose Brrios is a little above average. That could just be a velocity thing. But I want to buy into Gialito.

I want to buy into the track record. But I think the track record kind of suggested that what we saw, last year wasn't necessarily an anomaly. And there's also been this thing for Gialito that's been going around online, like video of him remaking his delivery. It looks a lot more conventional, I would say, in terms of how he's extending his arm on the delivery. He's not short-arming the ball the way we're used to seeing him do.

And people are kind of talking him up as a bounce-back candidate because of that. But like, changing his delivery to that short-arm delivery is what allowed him to take off in the first place. Because prior to that, he looked like a total failed prospect. So reverting to a more traditional throwing motion, I don't know that that's a winning formula for Lucas G. Lito, and it certainly introduces even more risk. Yeah. You guys said four, I might be a three, man. I'm pretty much out on Lucas Jolito. Jack Flaherty is the last one here.

The bounce back O-meter. Scotty, you're up. So I'll go six on him. I decided, so, you know, when I was initially making my rankings in the blind, not knowing how anyone else was going to rank Jack Flaherty, I decided, okay, I'm out on Jack Flaherty, too many injuries, too many lost opportunities. And in between the injuries, it's not so clear he's even the same guy anymore as when he was last healthy. So I'm out.

But then, once the ADP data started coming in, once other people started release rankings, it became clear everybody was out on Jack Flaherty. And that kind of pulls me back in. Like if the price is so good, he is being drafted outside of the top 200. And NFBC outside of the top 220. Like he's, if you're talking about a 12-team league, Jack Flaherty might be one of your last couple picks. And so obviously there's no way that can go wrong for you.

but can only go very right. And, you know, after that stretch in the middle of last season, he came back too early in June and looked terrible, and then he got put back on the IEL for more shoulder issues. When he finally did come back in September, the velocity was back. The results were pretty good. I still think there's reason to believe a good pitcher is in there, and that health is the primary concern for Flaherty.

But ultimately, it comes down to the prices right, and the risk seems relatively low because of that. Let's slide over to the Deep Leaguers tier. And again, there's eyeballing it, I don't know, 20, 25 names in this tier. So I'm not going to read off all of them. But I am going to try and just go a little rapid fire on the ones that I think are most interesting. Chris, I know Trevor Rogers is someone who finished the season strong last year. And looks like he will be in the rotation following the Pablo Lopez trade.

I know Braxton Garrett was very good too. So maybe those guys are battling out in spring training. But any hope for Trevor Rogers? Yeah, I think there's a lot of hope. because, you know, there were some signs late in the season. He's another guy where it's not exactly clear what went wrong for him. There was some talk that he might have been tipping his pitches or something like that. But, you know, the velocity was still there.

He was still getting a lot of spin on his fastball. He wasn't spinning the change up, which is what you want, generally speaking. You want that differentiation. And like I said with, I think it was Edward Cabrera on the Sleepers Breakouts Bus Show. I think the Marlins are generally a franchise that you, it's worth betting on. the starting pitchers, especially when they're cheap like this. I also want to mention for Rogers real quick that it didn't last long because he got hurt again, but after he came back from a rehab assignment in late August, he had a four start, really the three full starts.

The fourth start he left with another injury. But those first three starts back from the IL were his best three starts of the season. And he had an awesome rehab start right before coming back for those three starts. So I like Rogers as a sleeper this year. Hey, music to my ears. I traded Chris a haul a couple of years ago in the Scott White Dynasty. Part of it was Jose Briah, so it didn't really work out for either of us. Yeah, that's fair.

So I'm hoping and praying that Trevor Rogers gets back on track. Scott, the underlying numbers for Alex Cobb last year were awesome. The projections over on FanGraphs really like Alex Cobb. Do you really like Alex Cobb? I don't like Alex Cobb. But it feels like, he's pretty routinely underperforming his expected stats and certainly has well-established durability issues.

And so given the current state of starting pitching, it's just hard to get that excited about him. But I certainly wouldn't mind taking him as the last pitcher to fill out my staff. Hey, if he just pitches to his ERA the past two seasons, 373 and 376 this late in the draft, that's a pretty serviceable starting pitcher. Chris, Edward Cabrera had written down, but we spoke about him the other day.

Noah Cindergarde I have in my sleepers 1.0 article. It's pretty much just a blind faith type of sleeper because he pitches for the Dodgers. That's all I've got. I guess I could see just kind of giving him that benefit of the doubt because of the team he's pitching for. They do tend to get the most out of everyone. But he just, he was not as good of a strikeout pitcher as he seemed like he should have been even at his best. and last year he was just not a strikeout pitcher at all. He was one of the worst strikeout pitchers in baseball among qualified starters, in fact.

And now the good news is he still maintained his very good quality of contact metrics from his pre-peak. But I don't know, maybe they can figure something out, but I just, I'd be surprised. Word for you, Chris. Drive line baseball. That's exactly right. I mean, look, if we get some kind of sign that he's, I haven't seen, maybe you've seen something, but if we got some sign that he was throwing drive line baseball, right, right. But if he was throwing 99 miles an hour, I feel like they would probably be, you know,

promoting that. But if we got some kind of sign that he was doing that, that would change it. But based on what we've seen from him since he came back from his injuries, I just, I'm very skeptical that he's at all a plus pitcher at this point. Again, I have no data to back this up. It's basically just the names I would point to Tyler Anderson, Andrew Heaney, Tony Gonson, all having, you know, awesome seasons last year out of nowhere.

When they signed Heaney last winter, you know, I joked they're finally going to get the best out of Heaney. And among pit, he obviously couldn't stay healthy, but among pitchers who made double-digit starts, he had the second best swinging strike rate, he did, behind only Jacob de Grom. Yeah. Only other name I wanted to mention here on this list,

veteran Kenta Maeda. Scott, just wanted to remind everyone of the name. Don't forget, he's coming back from Tommy John. surgery, which he had in September of 2021. So he will be well rested, good to go. Apparently, no restrictions in spring training. I missed the name. Sorry, who was it? Kenta Maida. Yes. Yes. I like him. I like the value. Again, it's a situation where I would have liked them a lot more last year or the year before because I was, you know, desperate to find upside anywhere I could. and I just don't feel like the positions like that anymore.

So it's easier to see the flaws. And for Kinta Maeda, I mean, he's had a lot of trouble over his entire career pitching that third time through the lineup, giving enough innings to be a big wins guy. He was awesome during the pandemic short in 2020 season, and I got suckered into that and then was not so awesome. In 2021, may not have been at full health. He could be about,

I suspect he'll probably be a pretty serviceable pitchers for the twins this year. Will he be somebody who's rostered even in shallow leagues all year long? I'm going to bet against that. Some young, interesting pitchers, you just need to know their names in this deep leaguers tier.

McKenzie Gore, Aaron Ashby, Hunter Brown, Dre Jameson, Brian Beyo, and Braxton Garrett. Chris, anyone from that group that you have any thoughts on or you'd like to hit on quick? Gore's going to be someone that I draft a decent amount. He's going to be in my sleepers column.

And it's just the talent level is very obvious. There were flashes of it last season. Although, you know, when he was going well, I think we didn't really buy it. But he's still young enough and has still shown enough flashes that I'm willing to take a very cheap flyer on him. Scotty, any of these young pitchers?

You like to highlight? So again, I didn't. listen to the names you said. But yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of pitchers here who's upside I like. Aaron Ashby, I'm still I'm still thinking there's a, I don't know if that was

one of the names you mentioned. I was. Ding, ding, ding, ding, me, okay. I'm still thinking there's a very, possibly a very high-end outcome there with the ground ball skills and the bat missing skills.

Again, it looks like he's going to be on the outside looking in for a rotation spot at the start of the year, but I'm sure at some point He'll get his chance. I like Drey Jameson. Did you mention him? Dinging, me, me, me, ming. All right.

I like Brandon Fott, not fat, unfortunately. He's in the next tier, Scott, but I'll let you get away with it. PFA. Well, just because I mentioned one Diamondbacks prospect pitcher. I'll mention the other. I like him even more than Drea Jameson, but he's further down the pecking order, I would assume. Yep.

The prospect hounds love Brandon Fott, too. I know the Welsh is someone who's been on him, but even other prospect outlets that I've seen, there's a lot of hype growing for Brandon Fott. And if he performs in spring training, maybe he does earn that fifth starter job. So, so we'll watch. Cody Morris.

Did you mention him? I did not, but you could do so now. I'll share a couple stats for Cody Morris. Guardians pitcher, of course, they have a great track record getting the most out of their young pitchers. Cody Morris, his biggest issue, has been staying healthy. Let me see if I find the numbers. Okay, so last two years in the minors, again, trouble staying healthy.

So it's like 82 innings. But a 164 ERA, 0.92 whip, 14.4K per 9. And the little bit we saw of Cody Morris in the majors last year, he had a 13.9% swinging strike rate, which would have been good enough for eighth among all qualifying pitchers, presuming he had the innings to qualify. So I don't think there's going to be a Spencer Strider this year, but if you're forcing me to say who is this year Spencer Strider,

a guy who has a lot of relief risk, doesn't show very high on prospect lists, but could be a real standout in fantasy. Cody Morris is my pick. I like that. Let's get Zach Plesack out of the rotation. We'll get Cody Morris in there. We'll have a lot of fun.

Aaron Savali, I know people are pretty much done with him, but he made a pitch mix change. last year and I wrote them up as a very deep sleeper as well. We're going to wrap the air for Scott and Chris. I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching. Fantasy baseball today. We'll be back again tomorrow with a live mock trap.

Bye-bye.