Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - The Biggest Surprises In 2024

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

- Biggest Surprises - Masyn Winn - Michael Siani - Andre Pallante - Michael McGreevy - Ryan Fernandez - Matthew Liberatore - Honorable Mention Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms… 🎧 https://link.chtbl.com/LOSTLCardinals?sid=YouTube Locked On MLB League-Wide: Every Team, Prospects & More 🎧 https://linktr.ee/LockedOnMLB Follow on Twitter/X: @JDSPORTSRADIO Follow the show on Twitter/X: @LO_Cardinals Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime. FanDuel You can start the season with a big return on FanDuel. New customers can place a FIVE DOLLAR bet and you’ll get started with ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS - if you win your first FIVE DOLLAR BET ! Visit FANDUEL.COM to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) #ForTheLou #stlcards #mlb #lockedoncardinals Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

These were the good surprise players for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2024. You are Locked-on Cardinals. Your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey there, Cardinals. I'm J.D. Haffordan, and I'm your host for Locked-on Cardinals, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, covering your team every day. You can follow me on Twitter X at JD Sports Radio. You can also follow the podcast at L.O. underscore Cardinals.

I want to thank those of you who make Lockedon Cardinals, your first list. and every day. We're free and available wherever you get your podcast. If you were a more visually stimulated type of fan, also available on YouTube. If you haven't stopped by yet, please do so, like, subscribe and hit that notification button so you don't miss a single episode because this is a show. Serving Cardinal Nation and giving the best fans in baseball, all of the info about the birds on the bat. Today's episode brought to you by GameTime download the GameTime app, create an account, use the code locked on MLB for $20 off your first purchase. So the St. Louis Cardinals, 2014 season was littered with good and bad performances, which we touched on in the things that went right and things that went wrong episodes.

So if you haven't seen those yet, I encourage you to go back into our library, check them out for yourself in case you missed them. But today, I want to tackle the biggest surprises from the season, but the good ones, okay? We're going to start with the good ones because the more and more that I went through what happened this past year, the more I was like, you know, there's a lot of good that went on as well as bad. And I know that focusing on the bad is something that a lot of people like to do and that's okay. But today we're not going to get negative. All right. Today we're going to stay positive on a Monday. You know, this team wasn't a full-blown disaster last year despite what people may say.

and talk radio around town and what fans might say, you know, you see a lot more negative stuff online than you do see positive stuff. That's just the nature of things like Twitter. But it just wasn't a full-blown disaster like people make it out to be, you know. 83 wins is not bottom of the league, bottom of the barrel, bad. This isn't Mike Tyson, Jake Paul, bad from this weekend. It wasn't Netflix trying to figure out their buffering this weekend during that fight when they knew everybody was going to be coming into watch it. It's not that bad.

It isn't where you want to be by any means. I'm not letting the Cardinals off the hook when we talk about these things, but it just wasn't the disaster like 2023 was. That was a disaster. That was like what has happened this year was actually a step in the right direction. and now we're moving in a totally different direction where we're going to go with a more youthful approach in 2025. But the standards, yes, have to be higher than 83 wins.

The standard should be a World Series each and every year. Okay, that's not going to change and it shouldn't change. But I do want to focus on some good things. You know this, I know this. It's got to be better. We don't want to settle for mediocrity. Not a good idea. And I agree with you on that.

And I'm not settling. I just want to point out some of the positives and good surprises that we did see here in 24 because there was plenty to go around. So let's start out with what I consider the most positive thing from the 2024 season. And that was Mason Win. Shortstop Mason Winn tops on the list for me. Because Faith in Mason win, at least from a fan perspective, it had waned a little bit after we got called up in 2023 and he struggled at the plate.

At the ripe old age of 21, sometimes I have to remind people how young some of these guys really are. Wynn made 137 played appearances at the end of that ugly, ugly 2023 season. And he fit right in with what was going on that year. Hit 172. The OPS plus of 28 is more minus 0.6, okay? Not great. And those stats had many wondering if he was actually even good enough to hit at the major league level. people were questioning it.

And in this world of wanting things right now, we always need things right now, this moment, no patience, everybody is in a freaking hurry. It caused some people to panic. And I tried to remind people when it was going on at the end of the year that every level of baseball that Mason Wynn got promoted to, he immediately struggled out of the game. Every single time, A ball, double A, triple A.

There were struggles. were adjustments that had to be made. So him coming up at the end of the year and not having a whole lot of success, it didn't surprise me by any means, but it didn't bother me either. But it caused some people to panic. My timeline and comments were littered with people who had made up their mind after 37 games that he played that year that Mason Wend was garbage. He was a bust. You got to trade him. Get him out of here. Similar fashion about the way people are talking about Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker already. They suck.

It's over. Give up on them. Get rid of them. And baseball is not that type of game and that type of business. You know, this is a game that is meant to be slow played a little bit. And you got to kind of think that way when it comes to your prospects, too. Because now you're talking about Mason Wynn as your new face of the franchise in my opinion. He was easily one of the best rookies in all of baseball in 2024. The fact that he's not

in the NL rookie of the year voting, it's not a slap in the face to Mason Wynn. It just shows you how much talent was actually there in the National League this year. I mean, we're talking about Paul Skeen's generational type pitcher, Jackson Chorio, Jackson Merrill, those are the other two finalists. They were all outstanding this year. Mason Wynn belongs in the conversation with them. If they had four finalists, I think Mason win would be that fourth guy. Hit 268, 15 home runs, 57 RBIs, 85 runs scored, 11 stolen bases, OPS plus of 102. His war was 4.9. His war is actually better than both Jackson Shurio and Jackson Merrill. But they were on better teams. They went to the playoffs. They had a much higher OPS

plus. So I get it. But it doesn't take away what Mason win did and I think him being as good as he was both offensively and defensively, leading all major league shortstaps in defensive front save, 14 and being a gold glove finalist, I think that was a really good surprise for sure. I who wants to argue with me on that, that it wasn't a good surprise. Like if you thought that Mason Wynn was going to be gold glove caliber defense this year, raise your hand. God, raise your hand. I didn't. I thought he'd be good. I didn't think he'd be right there.

So that was a big surprise, and a good surprise, obviously. And then on top of the on-the-field stuff that he has shown you, you've got the off-field maturity that he displayed this year. He's just got, you know, he's got a nice, calm, relaxed demeanor about him. I mean, although sometimes when he gets upset, he'll drop an F-bomb once in a while, but so what? But he's got a cool look about him, you know, and he just, he saw him. I'm plastered everywhere, everywhere when it came to promotional photos for uniforms and getaways.

And he's a star in the making. So to have him as the centerpiece of this reset is certainly a plus for the Cardinals and arguably the most important position on a team. People will tell you that shortstop is the most difficult position to play. And if you got a leader and a captain type of guy that plays that position, it's huge. and the Cardinals have a guy like that in Mason when. So whether you were a believer in Mason or not, I don't think I'm going out on Atlanta here by saying he exceeded expectations for most of us this year and was a good surprise, good surprise.

We're going to head to the outfield for our next group of surprises. We'll do that here on Lockdown Cardinals. Get ready to tackle the NFL action with Van Dole, America's number one sports book, because right now new customers can bet $5 and get $150 and bonus bets If you win, the Fandall Sportsbook app is going to give you everything you need to place your live vets on the NFL. It's all in one place. We've got Monday night football tonight.

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Thank you again for making Locked on Cardinals your first listen every day. Leave your comments on YouTube as well as on Twitter X. Anytime you want your feedback is always welcome and encourage. We're going to get back to some fan feedback segments this week. Last week, a busy week didn't get a chance to do a lot of those. So we're going to get back to it this week. So leave your opinions down. low, good, bad, whatever it is you want to get off your chest.

Let me know. We'll talk about it this week. My everydayers are not going to be shocked by my next choice for the biggest surprises of the season. But here he is, in all his glory, the one, the only Michael Ciani. Yeah, Siani is arguably one of the biggest surprises of the whole season, considering where he was at the beginning of spring training. When we talked about the outfield depth chart, Michael Cial.

I mean was hardly a blip on the radar. If Michael Siani had been standing in a lineup, you would not have known it was him in spring training. You would have no idea what that man looked like. You didn't have a clue. Don't lie. The idea going into this season, and it was a good idea.

It was a wonderful dream that you would have a large Newpar in left field, Tommy Edmund and Centerfield and Jordan Walker in right field. That's what it was supposed to look like this year. It didn't even come close to looking like that at any point this season. But that was supposed to be your starting outfield the majority of the time. Then behind them, you were going to have Dylan Carlson, who could play all three spots. Alec Burleson and Brin Donovan. You could play in the corners.

And then way down at the bottom, you found the name Michael Seon. A former fourth round pick out of high school by the Cincinnati Reds in 2018, cardals claimed it off waivers back in September of 2023 at the end of their horrible season and in no way shape or four. Was Michael Siani really supposed to be on this roster at the beginning of the year? And he sure as hell was not expected to play in 124 games and compete for a goal glove. But with Tommy Edmund, Lars Neupar, and Dylan Carlson all getting injured in spring training and Victor Scott the second, not really ready to hit at the major league level,

there he was in center field getting regular playing time by mid-April. And we can clown him for his offensive inadequacies all we want. In fact, that's why I put this picture of him up on YouTube right now of him actually swinging the bat. Because certainly not known for his offensive capabilities, right? The stats don't lie. He had 228, two home runs, 20 RBIs, his OPS plus was 61, and almost 300 at bats. I know that's not good. I realize this.

Not nearly good enough for a starting major league baseball player. But you cannot tell me that you weren't shocked and surprised by his lockdown defense in center field that had him finish the year with a plus nine defensive run saved and an ounce above average of 15. What he wasn't giving you at the plate, he was making up for it by saving this pitching staff with plays on defense. running balls down in the gap, making diving plays. Like he, almost every game, one or two, you know, web gem caliber type of plays Michael Ciani was making. And then he was making strides offensively before the oblique injury that knocked him out in early August because he was trending up early on,

disgusting, terrible at the plate. 128 that first month. And he got better, 254 May, 277 in June, was hitting 3.10 in July was coming around. Things were starting to find grass for him when he was putting the ball in play. And then the injury happened. And he was knocked out for about a month. And then he did not look very good at the plate at the very end of the year.

Just didn't. Now, is he going to be your starting center fielder in 2025? Or should he be? Probably not. Probably not. Just being honest with you, I'm a fan of them. I was rooting for him because he's an underdog story. And I don't even know if I remember if I told this story or not,

but I was at a Reds game, and I saw a Michael Ciani Reds jersey. I should have brought it with me into the episode today. But I found one sitting in there, in their, you know, the authentic shop. You know, the Cardinals got one at Bush Stadium. They had one at Great American Ballpark. I went in there and saw Ciani and rescued it.

I bought that sucker. for like 150 bucks to rescue Michael Siani. Because nobody in Cincinnati was going to buy that jersey. So I bought him as a super fan. Yes, I had had a few beers at this point when I did this. But point being, I loved me some Michael Siani. I thought he was great. Should he be the starting center fielder next year?

Probably not. Probably not. Probably best to be a left-handed bench bat. Obviously defensive replacement, latent games. Spot started here and there when you need him. But he certainly earned a shot at the starting job in center field. Will he get it? Probably not.

But we'll see. Hopefully, either he becomes better offensively or somebody like Victor Scott takes over center field or maybe Lars Newport becomes your center fielder. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. But I think he was a great surprise in 2024. Let's move on to the starting rotation for our next surprise. I'm going to give you two names, actually.

Let's do two. Let's start with Andre Palante. Good old Andre. I got a photo of him. There is. Ooh, that's a good face. Here we go. The rise of Andre Palante this year,

I think that was another one that I don't think a lot of people saw coming. I think most people figured he was going to be a reliever for most, if not all, of the 2024 season. And, you know, in his rookie year, 2022, flash promise. You know, he won six games. His ERA was 3.17. ERA plus of 1, 23, and he had that ability as a right-handed pitcher to still get out left-handed hitters. It was weird that the righties were the ones that gave him trouble.

Then you had regression in the, in 2023, the walks went up, the strikeouts went down, the ERA jumped to 4.76 as ERA plus drops down in 92. So coming into 2024, you were just hoping for a rebound of sorts. And after the first nine games coming out of the bullpen, it was bad. He was 0-1.1. The ERA was over 6.6.6.30 to be exact. And teams were hitting 318 against him. And you're like, what happened to Andre Palante? What happened to this guy? Did we break him to? What happened? Got to send him back to the minors because he's not doing well. No, no production at the major league level. And he gets sit down. But instead of remaining in the bullpen, Palante and the Cardinals agreed to move him back to his starting role.

That was something that Andre wanted to do. Cardinals were like, yeah, well, let's give it a trial. Let's see what's up. And boy, oh boy, did that end up being a good decision? Because he comes back at the end of May. May 29th is a starter the rest of the year, makes 20 starts at the end of it all. Those 8 and 7, 3.56 CRA, he strikes out 88 hitters with just 43 walks, becomes a viable starter in the rotation.

And he's one of the reasons why veterans like Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn, have become expendable this offseason. If there's no Palante, they probably are like, gosh, I guess we got to keep one of them. Kyle Gibson's probably still a Cardinal. That's probably the case. And they're going to,

they would have to pay them more money. So Palante's not making much. So that worked out. Worked out well. Also want to show some love to Michael McGreevy. Michael McGreevy, definitely a big surprise. Well, I should say big, but a good surprise. former first round pick in 2021 had not really set himself apart from anyone during his time in the minor leagues.

And I caught some hell from fans earlier this year when I was like, you know, Michael McGreevy. I mean, what a turnaround story? And they're like, what do you mean turnaround? He was a first round pick. He's supposed to be good. I'm like, yeah, but he hadn't been all that great in the minor leagues. There wasn't anything that made him stand out. Like he just seemed like every other run of the mill minor league starting pitcher.

And I know it takes time. for some of these guys to get comfortable and do what they need to do. And, you know, maybe he's facing better pitching now or hitting now. But in 2023, he goes 11 and 6. But his ERA is at 4.49 with AAA Memphis. The whips at 1.467, only 107 strikeouts at 134 innings. Like if I just gave you those stats, you're not going to say, hey, first round pick, right? No, you're going to think that that's just an ordinary minor league starter.

So this year, he's at 5 and 7. That's his record. This year, 4.45 ERA at Memphis. Nothing about that stands out, right? July 31st, the Cardinals call him up for a spot start against the Texas Rangers. And Michael McGreevy just blows them away. Seven innings, one run, five hits, tremendous job. not a lot of strikeouts, but just, just, just attack the strike zone.

He was all over it. And the Rangers had no answers, a tremendous job. Certainly raised some eyebrows from all of us. I remember the postgame interview with Tommy Fam and they're like, he's like spot star, man, we got to keep this guy around or something to that fact. So they had it, they sent him back down to Memphis because, again, it was supposed to be a spot start. And he goes back down. And in August, he ends up going to a.

and one with a 2.83 ERA. He makes two more starts in September. He wins both those games for AAA Memphis before getting called back up and ends up making three more starts with the Cardinals. And he goes two and O. And the Cardinals end up winning all three games that he appears in. He gives up four runs over 16 innings, strikes out 15, has an ERA of 2.25. Opponents only hit 193 against him. he like Palante made these high-priced veterans much more expendable.

They made the Cardinals front office, made their job a whole lot easier to say, eh-uh, we're not going to, you know, trigger those options for you guys. The club options, we're out. We got two guys who can do something like that. So, and now his hat has been thrown into the ring for a starting rotation spot to open up the 20-25 season. and the Cardinals, they still got Sunny Gray, who apparently doesn't want to leave anymore. That's the reports. Eric Fetty is still here.

Miles Michaelis and Stephen Matt are still here with Palante and McGreevy, who in my eyes are the two next logical rotation guys if something were to happen, if some trades go down. Like moving Michaelis and Matt's is clearly something that the Cardinals are looking into so they can open up a spot and drop some payroll. both of them are making way more money than they should, considering what you're getting in return. So, I mean, someone's got to want Matt's, right?

At least I understand why nobody would want Michaelis. It's going to be hard to trade him. But Matt's, I feel like somebody might, somebody's got to be interested in him, being like, you know, one of those swing guys, left-hander. Somebody, right? Anybody? Anywho, so that's how I look at the biggest surprises from the rotation and this year and going into 2025.

We're going to make our way down to the bullpen for our final good surprises from the 2024 season. Next on Locked on Cardinals. There's not a whole lot of things better than going to a live sporting event, whether you're going to a baseball game during the summer or right now you've got the blues, got hockey, got basketball, football, and of course, the baseball games. You know, with the game time app, you're going to be able to find tickets to all of your favorite events, the things that you want to go to, whether it is blues hockey, whether it is college basketball,

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Corbin-Berns. all of the sell, all these top free agents, blakes now, whoever it may be. Soley's going to talk about it. Find locked on him, I'll be on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, Ryan Helsley had a career year, and we could easily put him down as a good surprise, considering how dominant he was. But I think a lot of us knew he was a good reliever. So when he's healthy, we expect good things out of Ryan Haley.

So I'm going to roll with some guys that I think we had question marks about coming into the season. I want to start with Ryan Fernandez, and then I want to go to Matthew Libertoy. So Ryan Fernandez, Rule 5 pick from the Red Sox, remember, 23rd round pick out of Hillsboro Community College in Tampa back of 2018, solid numbers in the minors. 17 and 10 record, 3.33 ERA had played at all three minor league levels in 2023, and the Cardinals were able to snag him from Boston. Thank you, Heinblum. I'm sure you had something to do with that. and we're able to get him, and he becomes a key cog for the Cardinals bullpen throughout the entire season. You get 62 appearances out of him.

He has an ERA of 3.51, the ERA plus of 120, strikes out 71 hitters in 66 and two-thirds innings. Andrew Ketridge, who I loved with the Cardinals this year, I wish we would bring him back, but they're not going to because they don't want to pay him. He's a free agent. I'm guessing that Ryan Fernandez and his gorgeous mustache will be at the top of the top of the pecking order to take over that particular role this upcoming season. Now, in an article from Derek Gould at STLt Today.com, Fernandez said that this offseason, the biggest thing for him on how to improve what he did this past year is by putting a little bit more strength back on.

This year, he said he had a little bit less strength than he'd had in the last two years that showed up in his velo a little bit. He says, I'm not way down. The only reason I say that is because I top 99 the last two years and I haven't hit 99 this year. It's not a big deal. I've shown I can be very successful without that. I just would like to have that in my back pocket if I want. Sounds good to me. I am on board with that. Now, the one thing you have to remember is when it comes to Velo, if it's straight as an arrow, who gives a crap? They're going to hit the snot out of it if it's a straight ball, which is why

some guys need to learn to take a little bit off to get a little bit more movement on their fast balls and on their pitches. because they throw them so hard where there's no movement and then become easier to hit despite how hard they're throwing it. So I'm sure he's got to find a balance there. But it wouldn't be nice to just have, like he said, 99 miles per hour in his back pocket to unleash if you needed to. The next guy is a guy who did hit 99 this year on a couple of occasions. Matthew Libertor. That is not Matthew Livertor. That was Palonte. There we go. Matthew Livertore. You know the story here. Former first round pick by Tampa Bay, He traded for Rania Rosa Rana comes a postseason star with the race,

all-star outfielder. He's now with the Mariners. Meanwhile, Libby continued to fall short of expectations. A lot of pressure on him to live up to what Radio Rosa Rana was doing with this former team. And it just takes a little while for pitchers to develop for the most part. It just usually does. Outside of Paul Skeens, like it's not normal for them to just come right up and just start killing everybody. Spencer Strider, another one of those that just, whoop, there he is.

With Libby, things weren't working out as a starter. You wanted him to be a starter. You were hoping he would be a starter. It wasn't working out. And then they'd move him to reliever. And then they'd give him another spot starter to. And then he'd go back to relieving and just kind of back and forth and when eventually he gets locked in as a reliever. And personally, I was just really impressed with the results.

it was a very good surprise for me. As a starter this past year, small sample size, take it for what it's worth, six starts this year, one and two record, the ERA at 6.35. As a reliever, 54 appearances, 2 and 2 record, 3.69 ERA. And as I've said before, at this point, find something that he does well and let him roll with it. Let him get his, you know, his confidence up. because at one point, I'm sure he was very confident. And then this year, when he was in that reliever role and that was his thing,

you could see him exuding confidence on that mound where he'd come out and just rip right through people's lineups. And he was a guy who could give you a couple of innings if you needed to. It wasn't just a one and done type of guy. Obviously righties are going to hit him better than lefties, which is not a shocker. But why can't Matthew Libertor be a Tanner Scott light type of? guy for the Cardinals this upcoming season. You know, Scott didn't actually find his groove until after he left Baltimore at age 26. He didn't really figure things out until he got to the Marlins, and his last two years have been

incredible. Let me just turn 25. He's still a young man. The potential is there. We've seen it in flashes. And maybe this is a year where if that's his role and he stays right there, it all comes together for him. maybe if Ryan Helsling gets moved,

Ryan Helsley gets moved, he is kind of your closer and waiting with his arsenal. Maybe they just go with the bullpen by committee when it comes to closing out game. Just like, who's available today? Is it Jojo? Is it Fernandez? Who else we got out there?

Matthew, you know, maybe they do it that way. Maybe it's not just one guy they rely on every time. But I was pleasantly surprised at how much better he was in the Relever Bowl this year and how much confidence he gained and how much better he was. Some other surprises that I want to give some honorable mention to. Pedro Pahas behind the plate. Was he on anybody's radar coming into the season?

No, but his capability of handling the pitching staff. And because Wilson Contreras got hurt this year, like he and Yvonne Herrera are going to tackle that catcher's role this year. And Wilson Contreras is able to move down to first base and fill a need that the Cardinals have now that Paul Goldschmidt is out of the picture. It makes that move a lot less stressful. Alec Berluson's strong year. Also a solid surprise. The only reason I didn't mention him is like a bigger one is he's a second round pick and has shown the ability to be able to hit

really, really well in the minor league. So it's not as if we didn't think he could hit. He just had to do it at the major league level. And we keep forgetting that Alec Berluson was only in his second season in the major leagues. It's not like he's a four year veteran and still trying to figure it out. He was in year two. He was a rookie in 2020. And then this year, 269 average, 21 dingers, 78 RBIs. Nothing to sneeze by any means.

Splits between lefty and Ritees obviously is very drastic, very drastic. 292 hitter, 18 home runs 66 RBIs, OPS plus of 125 against Rides, 196, three home runs 12 RBIs, OPS plus a 45 against lefties. But a heck of a second year for Burley, who, you know, He's going to play some corner outfield and handsome first base, I'm sure, this year against right-handed pitching. Also a shout out to Brennan Donovan for holding down left field as well. You know, when all those injuries took place and all these guys were gone, it was Brennan Donovan, who took over left field and never relinquished it, really.

He was very solid in left field. Whether he's in left, second, or third base this year, we don't know yet. But Donnie deserves all the love for his ability to handle the every single position he goes to, defensively very, very well. And coming off the elbow injury in 2023, solid year at the plate, 278 14 home runs, 73 Arbys, OPS plus of 112, the world was at 2.6. You got to love you some Vernon Donovan as well. He's one of those glue pieces that every team needs. So those are my good surprises. Are there any ones that you would have added outside of the ones that I've mentioned here? Let me know in the comments section down below and we can talk about them at a future date.

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