Rates & Barrels - 2025 AL Central Team Previews

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Eno and DVR continue their 2025 Team Previews Series in the AL Central. Can the Guardians continue to avoid projected decline after flipping Josh Naylor to the D-backs this winter? Will the Royals and Tigers follow-up their impressive runs to the postseason with a return trip to the playoffs? Can the Twins deliver on their status as the team with the highest projected win total in the division? And, while the short-term outlook is still cloudy for the White Sox, will the long-term picture come into focus over the course of the season? Rundown 1:01 2025 Cleveland Guardians Preview 18:48 2025 Kansas City Royals Preview 31:16 2025 Detroit Tigers Preview 47:50 2025 Minnesota Twins Preview 1:03:32 2025 Chicago White Sox Preview 1:11:40 A Selection of Sleepers From the AL Central Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Note: Win Total Projections for the episode are from Baseball Prospectus' PECTOA system at the time of the recording. Support BP -- they do great work! Current PECOTA Projections: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/ Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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slash connections. Continue the team preview series in the American League Central we are now heading into our fourth team preview Episode so two more to go next week if you missed any of them so far check them out The NL Central is the previous episode in the feed we have both of the AL West and NL West in the feed from last week Tons of ground to cover, you know, we're not gonna have pleasantries, we're just gonna go. The only pleasantry I'm gonna offer is that the Discord is open, you can join with the link in the show description, we've got team channels, strategy channels, everything you could want

all in one place, so come hang out with us and some other rates and barrels listeners. We begin as we do on every one of these team previews at the top of the AL Central from last year with the Cleveland Guardians and yet again we are asking the same kind of question, can they once again defeat projected decline? I don't love what they did with the group of hitters this year by trading Josh Naylor in a deal that brought Slade Zaccone back to Cleveland and then signing Carlos Santana. It just feels extra risky because Naylor

was pretty clearly their second best hitter behind Jose Ramirez last year and even though they only had one more year before he was going to be a free agent, I feel like replacing Josh Naylor with a soon to be 39 year old might backfire for a team that still needs to find ways to score more runs. Yeah, I recently got offered Carlos Santana in a dynasty league and just laughed. I mean, no matter what his projections are and they're mediocre, I wouldn't even believe them. I mean, this is just the point of a career where one little thing, one little injury, one slump to begin the season and your career's over. I guess what they believe in Cleveland is that they are set at that position. If that happens,

Kyle Manzardo just takes over. His projections are nicer. His projections, if they are wrong, are wrong in the good way. And he breaks out at 24. He's put together in the minors, everything you'd want to see from a guy in terms of not striking out, walking and hitting for power. In the major leagues, it hasn't been as impressive for Kyle, but when we had him on the pod,

I felt like he was pretty cerebral and he's going to do his best to kind of figure these little patch these things. I do think that he admitted himself that he might have a little bit of a hole at the top of the swing and so maybe those minor league strikeout rates are deceptive to an extent and he's going to be more 23-24% this coming year. That's still going to afford him the chance to hit, you know, 250 with 20 homers as projected. And I think the upside to, you know, to kind of do 25, 30. Yeah, one thing we've started to do with each of these team previews is discuss who the core five, the rule of five is essentially that if you have a 13 player position, position player group, right, four guys

on the bench, nine starters. You can mix and match four of those spots. Five guys have to be regulars or near everyday players, okay? So Jose Ramirez, of course, is one of those five. Stephen Klon is another one. I assume they look at Carlos Santana in that light. And Lane Thomas by projections is in that group. And then Rokio is your kind of touring of this group where he's like in for the glove.

Yeah, yeah. In there for his defensive ability. And maybe I think the comp I made last year was to Heraldo Perdomo, where it's just like, well, hey, look, he's going to play a lot and maybe he'll steal 15 or 20 bags and occasionally run into some homers and I don't know, 232.94, 326 slash line. That doesn't really play anywhere. That's an NL only end game guy. I wanted to find something exciting to say about him and I was going to make that Perdomo comp because the year you made that, Perdomo was, that was like one of his best years.

He was actually, you know, kind of useful in a lot of leagues that year. And since we've also seen the downside of Perdomo. I was looking at Rokio's hard hit chart and his rolling hard hit percentage at the end of the season was five. Five percent. Five percent. I don't think I've ever seen a chart that low. So I don't have too much hope for him breaking out or anything.

I think he's a volume play. I don't know that their other short stops are ready. They always seem to have their kind of a shortstop factory, but none has been as good as Lindor and I don't think Rokio is anywhere in that conversation. Just a kind of a warm body approach. But I think Carlos Santana is a soft entry into this rule of five just because of the reasons I said earlier. So you know, commons are those sixth in projected plate appearances could easily join the five. I think I do think most of the other players behind them are flawed or role players or

catchers. You know, John's can't see Noel is fun because he hits the ball really hard, but he also has a 28% strikeout rate. That hasn't been the type of player that the Guardians have given a lot of playing time to in the past since Fronvil Reyes. So maybe he can be a Fronvil Reyes that he could be an outside shot to join the five. And then I think Juan Brito is just interesting because second base is an open position until Travis Bazana comes up at least. Juan Brito is going to get the first shot.

And so I thought I'd look at some of the comps for him. And I just looked at 24 and under. Burrito is 23 now. So he's going to be better than a lot of these comps because he was younger than them. But this is high walk rate, low strikeout rate, non-zero power, and non-zero speed. And you have some boring older guys like Jiwon Bae is on here. Caleb Durbin is on here. Asenbarger, Ryan Bliss, Tristan Peters. These are lower ceiling guys that might be close to the big leagues and were interesting. Some are playing in the big leagues

this coming season for sure. As you get younger, you get a little bit more interesting. Nick York is on here at 22. Jackson Holliday at 20. Nacho Alvarez Jr. at 21. Juan Brito at 22 last year. As you could see, it's not, you know, Tyler Black is on here at 23. It's not a list of the best prospects in baseball. Maybe it's because it's triple A and not double A. They're not super young. the average age is 22.8 on this list, but the average slash line for these group of comps for one burrito is 307 418 on base percentage 495 slugging in a 141 wrc plus Given that these guys are all younger than either age appropriate or younger It's a good list of players

I don't know why it's not producing top prospects, mainly because this isn't the sort of top end power guys. I took the top end power guys off of this. Manzardo was a comp on this, except he had too much power. I don't think he had much to do with what Juan Brito was doing. And I think the other thing that we don't have here

is we don't have the battered ball data. I didn't use that as part of the comp. And so we don't know if those guys get to their power by their legs or by their bat. And that seems to be important for getting to the big leagues, especially if you're looking at a group of players who steal bases. So I think Brito is interesting from a plate skill

standpoint, but I don't necessarily have him circled as someone I need as a sleeper for this year in drafts. Like what do you think, even if he got the job and played all year, I think his upside is like 250, 12, 15. Yeah, a deeper league, decent middle infielder, but not necessarily someone who's cracking a 10 or a 12 team fantasy league That's probably the the year one sort of expectation for Brito And it's funny even on how Martinez a teammate in the organization is right there on that list as a comp to seems like This is the type of player that either by trade or even just by International free agency draft and development the Guardians always have guys like this and every once in a while

they are kind of boring and the maxi V is boring and draft and development. The Guardians always have guys like this and every once in a while they pop. But the hard hit is kind of boring and the max EV is boring and you know the bat speed might be boring. Do wonder too how tricky it is when we're talking about the switch hitting middle infielders which also it's another trait that a lot of the Guardians options have. You know maybe you've got more power from the left side than the right side and you know, you're a little more sloppy from one side so that takes your overall hard hit rate and drags it down and makes it look less interesting. There's a lot of different ways that being a switch hitter could make this even more complicated but I agree with your overall assessment of Brito.

I think I think he's interesting enough to be a big leaguer. It might be more of a soft regular than something that's going to be great for us in the lower. There is a note from Mandy Bell of MLB.com that says the Guardians quote, continue to express their extreme excitement on quote end at getting a look at Brito at second base this spring. So, you know, I could see a draft and hold like third second baseman might be, might be a good use for him. Let's shift the focus over to the pitching side,

where there were a few changes. I mentioned Slade Zaccone coming back in the Josh Naylor trade. They acquired Luis Ortiz from the Pirates. John Means recently was signed at a couple of editions in the bullpen with Paul Seewald and Jake Junas entering the fray. So a lot of changes here, and even the return to health of Gavin Williams after an arm injury slowed him down weightlifting accident that turned into a pretty significant problem for him in 2024. He's projected to be a much larger part of the equation this year. This is where Cleveland continues to exceed expectations most years right.

They find enough pitching to be better than expected. They get just enough secondary support around Jose Ramirez and they do well in the AL Central it's just sort of the script that's worked so well for them. I know you've liked Luis Ortiz for a long time a lot of what he did last year from a success standpoint came in the bullpen what are you expecting from Ortiz moving back into a regular starters role with the move to Cleveland. Well, one thing that I really liked about him as a starter was just that he added the cutter, you know, once he did that, he was a three fastball guy

that has a 86 mile an hour kind of power curve type slider. That's the type of slider that you can probably use against both hands. You know, you always actually with three fastballs, you always have two fastballs you can use against each hand. You know, let's say you want to avoid sinkers, righty, lefty, then you could gen your cutter four seam slider against them. And if you want to avoid the four seam fastballball against varieties or whatever, then you can be cut or sinker against varieties. So he's got always options. I think one of the problems is the change really sort of fell off for him. The cutter at 91 is not necessarily the swing and miss pitch and that's why you get this low strikeout rate from him. But I tend to believe the lower babbip

that he's had, 265 for his career in 238 innings for Luis Ortez. Oopsie that uses stuff plus says he's gonna have a 287 babbip. I think that's gonna be part of the key is limiting walks. The cutter really helped him limit walks, getting just enough strikeouts and limiting damage on balls and play. And I think all of these things make him interesting for me.

I don't think he's what steamer says a four six era guy for me. Luis LRT is like a, you know, zips three nine nine era guy. Oopsie four 10. He's a usable guy in there. Maybe the whip won't be great because that's what happens a lot of times if you just let balls in play. But I'm interested in him. Gavin Williams, I mentioned the injury before. I think he's the pitcher I like most relative to draft cost right now in this group. Projections from Oopsie are really aggressive in a good way.

A 369 ERA, a strikeout per inning stuff. If the innings total ends up being low, which I think based on some of his minor league workloads, there's reason to believe he can actually work close to a regular season, like full workload, then Gavin Williams could be a huge value this year, just a matter of avoiding those nagging injuries. They will eventually get Shane Bieber

back into the equation too, which if his stuff comes back post injury, I think changes a lot about the ceiling of this group, right? If you add Bieber to the mix and he's even a two or a three It softens the blow you're worried about the rug being pulled out from Ben Lively because he throws like 89 and it's deceptive but it doesn't seem like it's going to the magic's gonna keep going for him and you're worried about health for Gavin Williams. And to some extent, Luis LRT has collapsed percentage to I have Tristan

McKenzie at number 150 in my rankings. I wanted to sneak him in there. The reason I did is not because I love necessarily what he's done on the field. He's out of options. And so he's going to make the team. Beaver is going to be on the aisle. Cantio is going to be in the IL. Cantio's gonna be in the minors. And Jake Junis is going to be the glue that in case of emergency break

glass guy when Tristan McKenzie's starting or just generally, you know, the middle reliever with some length to him and the spot starter. So Tristan McKenzie, this is, this is your last, I mean, not your last shot, but this is like, this is one of your last shots. This is the big deal. So maybe he'll come in with his best velocity and his best command. We saw this bullpen on full display in October

and it was phenomenal throughout the regular season last year. I think the only question people are gonna have is, will there be a hangover effect of the heavy workloads for the group? Emmanuel Classe, one of the heavy workloads for the group? Emmanuel Classe, one of the best closers in baseball we talked about on the reliever preview. Cade Smith had a massive breakout last year.

They add Seawald as another veteran. Hunter Gad as Tim Heron. Lots of quality depth there, like one of the best and deepest bullpens in the league. But do you expect them to take a step back after their usage last year? I wanted to look at the heaviest used pitchers from 21 to 23 and see if we saw any of them fall off in 24, Tyler Rogers, number one, Chris Stratton, number two, I believe we saw some fall off there, Scott Barlow, number three, I think he was hurt last year.

Emmanuel Classe, four, Hector Neris, we definitely saw a stuff reduction from him. Brent Suter throws 89, no one's worried. Kyle Finnegan, Phil Maton, Clay Holmes, and Trevor Steffen. That's the top 10. I wouldn't say that it's super obvious. I can't use 2020, so let's do the three years going into 2020. In that time, Yosemite Petit, Craig Stamman, Mike Lorenzen, Miguel Castro, Michael Givens.

You don't always get innings because you're the best reliever. And you don't always get hurt because you got a lot of innings. But I tend to think it's a little bit of an issue that Emmanuel Classe is the leader in innings in the last three years. I just, I feel like that's a large workload for him, especially given his VELO. He's seven innings free of Tanner Scott. There's not really another closer that has thrown as much as him. Camillo Duvall has thrown 20 fewer innings. Jason Adam is

30 fewer innings. I mean, you know what I mean? Like it's the combination of bulk and velocity. It makes me a little bit nervous about Emmanuel Classe this year. The way they're built though, if something were to happen, if it were to end up in the IL. Yeah, Kate Smith is fire. They're fine. Their bullpen's still going to be very good. Your fantasy team may not be. Right, yeah, you may have a scramble on your hands

using an early pick on class A if he does in fact break down. Picota does not love the Guardians. 79.9 is the win total projection. Too hot, too cold, or just right? I'm just gonna go with too cold because of the magic dust. Whatever it is the magic dust they've got, they're gonna sprinkle on the team again. Not a very scientific answer. I mean, I guess it's just, you know, maybe our focus, a lot of the focus, a lot of the

projections we look at like the Bat X and Oopsie and stuff, they focus a lot of the focus a lot of the projections we look at like the bat X and and oopsie and stuff they focus a lot on bat speed and and Bat a ball velocities and they seem to be doing pretty well in Cleveland without that same focus Yeah, I think you get to a certain point you do it for a decade and keep doing it with different personnel You just get the benefit of the doubt this felt light to I think it's a team. That's just built to be Personnel you just get the benefit of the doubt this felt light to I think it's a team that's just built to be Unloved by the projections. That's the way I look at the Cleveland Guardians I think they're still contenders in that division even with the Puzzling decision to move on from Josh Naylor prior to his walk here

But defensively they are better with Carlos Santana at first base pretty big swing at that position if you're looking for the why'd they do? It reason I think that's at least one of them to consider and maybe they really like Slade Zaccone too. So we'll see how they use him, but he has options left. As Eno pointed out earlier, Tristan McKenzie among the players that don't, so it may take a little longer for Slade Zaccone to actually break in in Cleveland. It's the season to shop new styles, electronics,

and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back with Rakuten, you can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone, clothes, skincare, or a getaway, well, you can get cash back. So treat yourself, family and friends and book that holiday trip now Start getting cash back today by joining Rakuten It's free and easy to use and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check

It's the smartest way to shop plain and simple start your shopping at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app That's r-a-k-u-T-E-N dot C-A. Let's move on to the Royals. Are we buying the bump up in 2024? One thing that really surprised me, kinda looking back at some things from 2024, was that the Royals finished 86 and 76. They had a better Pythagorean record by 5 wins. They were 91-71 based on

runs scored, runs allowed. And they continued to try to make the roster better. They made that trade with the Reds to bring in Jonathan India. It cost them Brady Singer. Joey Weimers there too. We'll see if he ends up with a bench roll in the outfield. But they didn't really lose any hitters of great import. You see Garrett Hampson, Paul DeYoung, Tommy Pham, Uli Gurriel, Adam Frazier, roll guys all gone. They added in Carlos Estevez, re-signed Michael Walker and Michael Lorenzen. So really keeping the band together, adding one pretty high volume player with health to the position player group, and at least the guy that'll get on base

a lot, even if we have questions about the power in Jonathan India. So I think the biggest question I have for you and I look at this Royals team is beyond the India edition is there anyone else that you could see getting better because part of the story last year was Bobby Witt Jr. ascending to superstar status like you get to the 10 war level there's nowhere else to go. He's not going to give you a season better than what he just did. You're hoping for a repeat. And even that is a tough ask for any player.

So it kind of seems like to continue down this path and continue to improve as a club. They need other guys to step up in that supporting cast. Yeah, I mean, they were 22nd and WRC plus last year. I mean, maybe it's 20th, but 13th and runs scored, which does underlie something about the park, which is interesting, which is that it can suppress homers, but it does. It is a neutral environment, at least for batters. This has been something that upset Eric Hosmer very greatly to hear.

And I, you know And I do plead guilty. I spent a lot of time looking at the home run park factors. I found those the most interesting and important park factors for pitchers and hitters generally, especially in fantasy. But what Kauffman can do is decrease strikeouts. That's an interesting thing to think about when you think about MJ Melendez,

who's had the strikeout problem while being in Kansas City. You may not be rooting for him to get a chance elsewhere. Maybe it may have more strikeouts in it and be worse. Melendez, I just wanted to mention real quick because he has a new swing. He has reduced the toe tap. He's trying to be flatter into the zone early on. He is kind of scoopy. Could that be the reason he breaks out? I'm not waiting anymore. I mean it's 26 and he has 1,600 plate appearances basically in the major

leagues with a 91 WRC+. I'm gonna stop looking at his max EV at this point and just be like, this is who he is, I guess. And it's, it's not super exciting, but maybe this is the reason he breaks out. I mean, you know, fourth year in the big leagues, 26 years old, new swing, that could be it. But I'm a little bit more excited about Vinnie Pascantino. So I prepared this little slide for you because early in the season, he was swinging 71.2 miles an hour, late in season 71.8. Early in the season, the swing length was 7.4 feet,

late it was 7.3. So his swing got shorter and faster. He had an interaction with Tom Tango where he was talking about metrics that we don't have access to, but Tom Tango told him that late in the season, he made contact three inches out in front, further out in front of the plate

than he did early in the season, and that he was two inches closer to the plate than he was early in the season, and that these things were both good things. I've seen some analysis that Tom Tango's written recently that if you wanna miss along the barrel, you wanna miss closer to the handle rather than closer to the end. And so getting closer to the plate, making contact out in front of the plate where you're likely to have a little more loft in your swing, doing it with more bat speed and a

shorter swing. All these things are good. Vinnie Pascantino had a 176 ISO early in the season and a 243 before he got hurt late this season. And so if Vinny Pascantino has the upside to have a 243 ISO all season, that will be a major breakout because that is 40 to 70 points higher than any projection system has him and that would be probably something that looked like a 270-275 average with 30 homers because he's projected already for as much as 26 homers so do you want a first baseman with 275 and 30 homers? I do. I want a first baseman that is further removed

from shoulder surgery. That freak thumb injury that happened with the collision at first base last year. But a low strikeout rate guy that actually also takes walks and is getting to more power despite the ballpark. Those are all good things. Even if you want to set the expectation to the mid 20s for home runs, I think that's a nice step forward for them and the type of improvement you need probably from a couple other guys as well To get that supporting cast to be more dangerous in a playoff situation as well

You can see it in the rule of five is that the fifth one the fifth entry is really soft And it's not a fifth entry that's like oh, he's our shortstop So it's okay the fifth entry is Michael Garcia right now with a 91 WRC plus So it's okay. The fifth entry is Michael Garcia right now with a 91 WRC plus Projection or MJ Melendez surprisingly with a 99. Are we an oopsie or is this the bad X? This should be the bad X. It is the bad X Wow, so the bad X thinks he can he can push that that rock other one Sisyphus is gonna do it this year So, I don't know between Melendezez, Garcia, and Massey, I do think you have three, I mean, they're all projected for sort of 90-ish WRC+, to have one of them break out into 105, 110

territories. You're not asking too much. They're not old. They're actually all in the peak age range. So they're set up pretty well. I'll just say that I have touted these guys for two or three years now, and I'm tired of it. Just honestly, I'm tired of it. I'm not going to do it this year. And this will be the year they break out, right? Well, I did see we got an email from Brandon Funston, one of our fantasy editors,

asking for staff sleepers. So if you would like to write up MJ Melendez again, you are free to do it because I will not do it, sir. No, he's, I've already submitted my list and he's not on it. It's nice that he's making some more adjustments and it's not impossible, but I'm not going to put that on the site with my name next to it at this point. Let's take a look over at the pitching side here.

I mean, Seth Lugo was phenomenal last year. Cole Regans is really the ace in terms of stuff and ceiling. We get that. Michael Walker pitched really well again last year too, so having him back was really important. I think the common theme though with the Royals, I mentioned the Fini Pes, Quintino thumb injury, they were generally a pretty healthy team compared to many others in the league last year That's where it can go a little bit more wrong in this rotation because it's not a deep rotation. Yeah, they They brought back Lorenzen for innings

I imagine Lorenzen is the kind of guy that is your five and gets you through the regular season and probably doesn't throw a pitch At least as a starter in a playoff series Maybe he's your last reliever in for bulk depending on who's healthy or something along those lines. I wonder if we're going to find extra value from either Kyle Wright coming off of major shoulder injury or Chris Bubich who came back and pitched really well in the bullpen last year. I think getting a little more from the back end would help it would probably offset an almost certain injury to one of the more important pitchers in this group. It seems very unlikely to me that the top three guys, especially given Lugo's age, Reagan's and Waka's injury history, that all three of those guys give them 30

plus starts again this year. Yeah. And I think there's a decent amount of sort of chance that the league has now seen Seth Lugo with his eight pitches and you know, it's kind of hard for him to be like, now I have 15 pitches. I don't think if anyone could do it though, it's him. Lugo and Darvish, those two guys.

Reagan's lost more Velo over the course of the season than anybody else. I did somebody to point out that his max was okay and that he didn't lose as much max as he lost sitting. So maybe it was about, and then also that Cole himself, Nick Pollock was saying that Cole himself talked about lower half mechanics and getting that back. So maybe, maybe it was just a little sort of blip in the road. But usually when I see a large number like 1.6 miles an hour lost, I, I, it makes me

worried. I don't really like any of their depth uh, depth starters as, you know, people that I think we're going to break out. No, Lorenzen's a little bit like Lugo where he's just got a lot of pitches. I think he can have good stretches, but I, I doubt it'll last all season. Bubic has a small arsenal. I think he's going to lose effectiveness as he loses Velo. Kyle Wright, it's major surgery.

So I'm like, I'm kind of searching for other names on this list even. Yeah, I think if you go outside of the projections, Noah Cameron is a guy that our friend Jason Collette has written about. He might end up making some starts for this team at some point this year. Alec Marsh is kind of one of those glue guys

they could lean on as well. We have been pretty complimentary too of what the Royals have been doing with their bullpen over the last year plus, finding different guys via trade. They added Carlos Estevez. Hey, Noel Cameron looks kind of interesting. Lefty with 30% strikeout rates, 29ish. Remember the scouting report correctly, it's not overpowering stuff. It's more like being really polished. So he might not be a high strikeout rate guy in the big leagues,

but he might not be a terribly low strikeout rate guy either. Royals are the cardinals of the American League. No, come on now. No, we like this pen. I think the takeaway I had when they brought in Carlos Estevez was he's probably good enough to keep the bulk of the save opportunities, so that's the direction I'm going,

even though I like Lucas Ercig more in a vacuum. Hunter Harvey should be healthy. That's kind of a heavy like loaded should all the time. We're talking about Harvey, unfortunately Ribers good. Yeah, they're a good deep bullpen So I think this is a pretty well-built roster Carlos Hernandez another guy that I've predicted his breakout every year You do that again, this would be the year He takes over a closer That would take some calamities. I think I mean if Carlos Hernandez is closing games for this Royals team Yeah, things did not go them as an organization Picota has this team as an

81.1 win team so right at that 500 mark is that too hot too cold or just right? I'm gonna go with just right I've been a little down on them in this preview I don't mean to suggest that I do not like them as a team and in fact last year I bold predicted that they would get the wild card and I did so it's just weird because the reasons I bold predicted them into the wild card are not the reason they got the wild card I liked some of their young hitters. Their young hitters were mostly boring. So I don't want to pat myself so hard on the back that I say, oh, too cold. And

they're going places. I'm going to say just right as well. I think the main concern I have is depth. I think that's an area where they still lack something. I think they're doing a nice job in that front office as well. Maybe the long-term arrow is still headed in the right direction, but it could be a small setback for the Royals this year. I think it's in part because I am more of a believer in the team that ended up surprisingly getting to the postseason and finishing third in this division, even though they're the same record, I believe, in the regular season as the Royals,

it's the Tigers. I think it's because the Tigers do seem to have that next wave of talent, a few more internal options that you can talk yourself into as still still getting better, still reaching their respective ceilings. I think that's where that extra little bit of optimism comes from, even though the overall quality of these teams at last snapshot was very similar. So you look at this Tigers team,

they were the winners of the Gleyber Torres sweepstakes, not exactly the outcome Gleyber Torres was probably hoping for when he knew he's gonna be a free agent going into the winter, but an opportunity to. Especially not with that swing. He's a righty that's gonna try and go to the deepest part of one of the deeper parks. Yeah, it's a tough place to have a pillow deal as a hitter,

but he also projects to be their highest volume guy. And this is a great rule of five team because Scott Harris has, I think, constructed the roster kind of similar to what you see in San Francisco, but he's got a better infusion of young talent to work with. has, I think, constructed the roster kind of similar to what you see in San Francisco, but he's got a better infusion of young talent to work with. So you can look at all the pieces and you can kind of say, okay.

He's a rule of five stymier is who he is. He likes to break that rule. He does not like the rule of five. Let's just try to find the five here. So Gleyber Torres, okay, everyday guy. Riley Green, everyday guy. No pushback on that, right? We agree on those two.

Parker Meadows, because of his defense, does he become a rule of five guy? There was a time when Parker Meadows and Colt Keith were trading off and sitting against lefties. And I think one of the difficulties was it was hard for them to get to a rule of five if both those guys and Kerry Carpenter and Matt Berling were all going to be platoon guys, right? Like it's just that like like we say with the rule of the math doesn't work out that way.

And I think that Parker Meadows, you know, over the course of the season became more of a guy that played against lefties and he was so good against righties and just in general that you would project him to be useful against lefties. So in the second half last year, he became more aggressive. He was a little bit less patient. His walk rate went down, but his strikeout rate really went down. His power went through the roof and he was a much better player when he was aggressive and he hit 296, 340, 500. That's a 137 WRC plus. Given what you know about players at 130 WRC plus,

you'd expect at least a 100, 110 work against lefties. You mentioned the glove. So between what you'd expect him to do against lefties, what he can do with the glove, I think he's the everyday center fielder. I think these projections are low and I wanna buy at this level of projection. I like that, you know, 229 batting average,

16 homers, 17 stolen bases, that's gonna be worth something in your league. But just sort of mentally circle him as someone who doesn't have to hit 229. I mean, look at this strikeout rate, 24% strikeout rate with a 160 ISO and he's gonna hit 229 like that math doesn't work out almost I don't know why they would project him for 279 babbitt his legs, you know, he has some power So I think Parker Meadows is maybe my favorite sleeper on this team and I I'm putting him squarely and in the in the five

All right, so that covers three spots Colt Keith making the move over to first base. Does he also get a spot or do you think he's still gonna leak a little bit of time against lefties? You can lose a little bit of playing time against lefties. You just can't be a strict platoon guy and make it into that top five group. Yeah, I think it'll maybe be a little bit. His sort of all fields approach seems like something

that could lead to smaller platoon splits. His platoon splits. His platoon splits aren't that large for his career so I think he should be okay. I think that what makes this difficult is that Kerry Carpenter is so good and yet they just won't play him against lefties. So it's hard to put Kerry Carpenter into the five but he is really important. but he is really important. So I think Colt Keith is in I guess. We have Matt Vierling as near the top and played appearance. I think it has something to do with his versatility. He's right-handed. I don't think he's a pure platoon guy. He's just gonna move around and that's why you'll have guys losing

against lefties because they're just gonna play Vierling and so sometimes they'll play Vierling at first. yeah I think they'll reduce how much they play him in center but they'll play him in the corner outfield and they'll probably play him a fair amount at third so if I really had to like do this Jep chart I think I would do Keith is in the top five and Vierling is really in Carpenter yeah I think they just have four have four. I don't know if they have five. I don't know, man, it's tough. I guess I believe the way this is.

Veerling and Keith are in the five. Kerry Carpenter is like a super sub, like a great sub, you know, if you're talking about the rule five. But their second best hitter by WRC Plus behind Riley Green, which makes you think that they probably need him to be more in that group than out Maybe you flip Veerling and Carpenter in terms of plate appearances and you're talking about 50 to 75 being the difference

It's not that much of a difference But I think we do based on the usage so far understand that Kerry Carpenter is Definitely a big side platoon risk despite just being phenomenal Against righties. They also have a lot of young guys that could step into larger roles. Jace Young could be in a larger role than projected. That's a possibility. You could see Trey Sweeney possibly play a larger role. And some of this depends on their willingness

to just make Javier Baez a super sub or a clear backup or a small side platoon guy despite the big contract. So I think that's one of the unknowns. We've wondered all winter if Spencer Torkelson would still be in the organization on opening day. He could be a triple A like Toledo is a possibility for him just to clear out the roster space. I guess that's kind of baked in here as well.

So what do you make of some of the younger guys, but specifically Sweeney and Jace Young trying to carve out large roles. Yeah, Sweeney is really interesting to me because that number looks really light to me. Out of above average had him as a positive plus two, but that's not the greatest spot for a shortstop. I mean, just around Willie Adamis, Willie Castro, JP Crawford, those aren't the best defensive short stops in the big

leagues. And, you know, below, if you're, if you're significantly below them, you're not really a starting shortstop. That's where it's like David Hamilton and, and then Javier Baez is at minus one. So I actually think that that projection of playing time is wrong for Trey Sweeney. I'm going to go with more of a sort of, give at least a hundred of Javier Baez's played appearances to Sweeney and maybe more. Yeah, I think that's the right sort of adjustment there. And then with Jace Young, if he plays more, I think Matt Vierling would have to play less,

even though Vierling can play a lot of spots. Yeah, I guess if Young emerges, I think that I think they'd be fine with that. I mean, Veerling's projection is OK. 103 WRC plus. It's not something that you like need to get in the lineup. It's I think it's more roster spackle. I think if Young emerges, then someone if someone else is hurt, then Veerling is now playing second because Glaver's hurt.

Or you know what I mean? Like they'll find ways to use him. But if Young emerges, they'd rather Young emerge and be a starting third baseman. I just hand him the hand in the bat and the glove. You know what I mean? Like just hand him that position. I think that's what they would rather have. Yeah, I think with Veerling, we've seen over the course of his career now, a 248-307-399 line against righties.

That's not a must play against righties. That's a can play against righties, but you're looking for that better option. So I do think this sets up pretty well. The situation that we were worried about with Jace Young back during the position previews was that the Tigers were interested in Alex Bregman and if Bregman came in third base,

they were Bregman's and then Jace Young ends up having to play more of a super sub role or go back to triple A and wait for an injury. and now at least there's a chance for him to get into the postseason and then to even try and survive in the postseason. They bring back Jack Flaherty after trading him away at the deadline to get Sweeney and Dairon Lozano. They are, I think, a challenging team to figure out, but a group of pitchers that we generally like even behind Scoobble.

The more we look at this group, like Reese Olsen came up as a sleeper I think in our starting pitching preview a few weeks ago, as long as he's healthy, Scoobl, Flaherty, Olsen is a nice trio atop the rotation and they've got plenty of interesting candidates to fill out those other two spots, especially with Jackson Job knocking on the door to take one of those spots because Jackson Job has the ceiling of a true ace. It's just a matter of time and avoiding the injuries that have been nagging him through his ascent in that Tiger system. Yeah Job did suffer a little when it came to the revamp of

the Stuff Plus model and I think it's because given his arm slot, his fore seam really only has maybe like two inches more ride than you'd expect rather than a raw look at his movement. Now that we put in arm slot, we can have something like that. A raw look at his movement would say, oh, he 17 inches of IVB, like he's pretty good. I think given his arm slot, that's not as impressive. And even 17 inches is not really that impressive. So it's not the best shape in fastballs, but it is 97. The cutter was good.

The really weird thing for me about Jackson Job beyond the stuff upgrade, which still has a 106 stuff plus with a really nice cutter and a good change up. The real problem for me is that he had these great stuff plus numbers in the miners and he did not have you know superb strikeout rates. You'd expect someone who has this much hype to have had 30 plus strikeout rates in the minor leagues. That's, that's usually what happens in Jackson job in AAA last year. That doesn't count, but let's do double a 27% for the season last year in the minor leagues, 25.6%. Those are surprisingly lowered numbers than you, than you'd expect from a big prospect like this.

And that's why the projection systems all have him for 20% strikeout rates or lower. And he didn't really come up and strike everybody out in his small sample, I get it, opportunity last year. So I don't know that I'm souring on Job as my favorite prospect, but I don't know that he necessarily has to break camp with this team because Cater Montero is a boring but useful high floor guy who's done it before. And so, you know, you're not taking any chances if you put Mize in at four and Cater Montero at five, you're just, and you're sending Joe back to the miners. You're managing his playing, you know, he's managing his team control years and giving

him the best possibility to land on his feet. But if Job does shove all spring and the spring stuff numbers are great and he started to get strikeouts, if he's striking people out this spring, I will have slowly have an up arrow on him. Yeah. The other factor here is that Alex Cobb is out a month with hip inflammation. That became a problem once he was ramping up in his off-season throwing program.

So we'll see if Cobb's able to shake that off. Shows the reason on both hips. So it's didn't have great hips. Yeah, it might just be death for later. He actually explained it to me that he had like part of the hip that was like, it's like a genetic degenerative, not degenerative, but like a genetic predisposition to injury in there where he had like a shape

that like where the hip fits in the socket, he had a shape on there that was like always gonna lead to injury and he just knew that it was gonna be surgery on both hips eventually and you know, it just came to the point where the pain was too much and he had to have the surgery. Yeah, he's managed to get through a lot of injuries, get back from a ton of rehab to carve out

a pretty long career, which is surprising given the stuff that Alex Cobb has dealt with at various points. I do want to say really quickly, I think Mai is kind of a sleeper here a little bit. I mean, he's pushed the foreseam to where it has good shape and good velo. He has a good splitter.

It doesn't have the same feel for the splitter as maybe a Kevin Gossman, but he does throw a 90 mile an hour breaking ball that if he just develops just enough feel in that pitch, I think he could break out still. I mean, he's a former 1-1. I think he's going to get the chance again. This is a super deep bullpen in terms of options. We saw AJ Hinch deploy it really effectively throughout the second half and the postseason.

Who closes games most often out of this group? I liked Bo Brischke this time last year for really deep leagues, and by the end of the year, it looked like I may have been finally onto something, but not to the degree where I look at him today and say, he's clearly the guy. Do they even have a set closer or is this going to be an absolute mix and match fast all year? Well, we don't have the problem that maybe Kenley Jansen comes and just sits at the end

for this team. So I like Bo Briskey a little bit better today than I did a couple of weeks ago. And in fact, I like Bo Briskey better, not necessarily because his stuff number is great, but we did notice that his stuff number is a lot better in the second half when he's more of a reliever and going shorter outings. I like him because he throws a four seam. Jason Foley throws a sinker and I want my closer to throw a four seam. It's a bias, but four seamsams are less platoon-splitty

and they are more whiffy, and you just don't really want your closer giving up contact. So the win total projection for this Tigers team, 78.9. Too hot, too cold, or just right? Too cold. Yeah, I'm gonna anticipate you probably going there too, but I see Bo Brischke becoming the closer and everyone sort of falling

into place behind him. They've been good at mixing matching with job. They have some upside and mice. They also have catered Montero and Alex Cobb is as floor situations. I think even if Flaherty gets hurt and there's a decent chance of that. Cause his VELO was down really big in the playoffs and he signed a deal where he gets $10 million basically in 2026, even if he's hurt, which is a weird little aspect to that deal that made me think that maybe he's worried about

it. So I think that they do have the depth to overcome some injury there. And they have young players that are ascendant that are kind of interesting. Yeah. And I keep wondering if there's one more level from Riley Green to we've wondered for a long time, is the strikeout rate that we see right now really where his true talent strikeout rate lies? My bet is that it's still going to get better.

It's going to put even more balls in play is going to be a even more complete bat as one of the key hitters for the Tigers here in 2025 and beyond. So I'm on the too cold side of this one as well. We've been agreeing way too much on these two series. We need some healthy disagreements on this show. Let's talk about these twenty, twenty five twins basically running it back after a really disappointing slide late in 2024. Harrison Bader is in, Ty France now in,

they ended up making a small deal to get Diego Cartaya when the Dodgers DFB'd him, Danny Colom added to the bullpen. The weirdest thing for me about this team right now is that the core they have put together has been through so many injuries that it's got to be one of the lowest projected cores you could imagine. Their rule of five guys are somewhat easy to identify, but you look at how much less they're expected to play than most teams rule of five

group and you begin to understand the importance of depth for the twins and probably why they've been such a frustrating team relative to their projections. I mean, you can see it already with why Willie Castro's in the rule of five, but he's like a utility guy. He's like either number one plate appearance projected guy.

That's a little weird. No, no. So you said that and I went and I just took the depth charts at Fang Graff's. I took their five best projections in terms of plate appearances and just summed them up. The Marlins have the fewest out of their top five players. I think that reflects the fact that when you're putting that depth chart together, you don't

know who's at each spot. So you have to give chances to guys that aren't maybe going to make the major leagues roster that are going to play later. You know, like the Marlins roster is in flux. And so that's why they're at the bottom with, uh, you know, 2,667 played appearances from their five top five guys, Minnesota, which is a veteran team that should know who's playing where. And you know, what's going to happen only has 50 more played appearances.

No, actually a hundred more plate appearances from their five. I mean, look at the other teams that are in here. It's Miami, Minnesota, Chicago, white socks, Tampa Bay rays and the angels. And the rays, I guess are like Minnesota, maybe like the tigers where they're mixing and matching, but they're also a little bit in an underrated fashion in transition as a team. But they're also a little bit in an underrated fashion in transition as a team so you don't know exactly how many chances you can mirror junior caminero or

Jonathan Aranda are gonna get so you do have to hedge your bets These are humans making these depth charts and making guesses But for Minnesota to be in this mix is a little bit weird and it has something to do with how injury prone their main guys are I Think when you look at the WRC plus projections for this team, though, you see that they have done a pretty good job assembling a roster where there are enough good players on it that even when you're missing your best possible players, you're not dead in the water. You actually have some quality behind this group.

And the five would really be Carlos Correa's second and played appearance projections at 5'16", Royce Lewis at 5'01", Byron Buxton at 4'36", as much as he's able to play as a regular. He's in their group even though he's not projected for top five plate appearances on the roster. That's not a platoon situation, it's an injury situation. Right, it's almost like because Byron Buxton's actually in,

Willie Castro, despite being projected for the most played appearances on this team, really isn't in for me. But even if it's Correa and Lewis and Buxton, who are the other two players that are in their core five group that's there on an everyday or near everyday basis when they're not in the IL? Yeah, there's a little bit of a problem here

in that Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnock are both guys who hit the ball hard and can get on base. Walner has top five bat speed in the big leagues and really murders the ball, but both of them are really kind of soft on platoons and not great against lefties or have not been so far. And so again, you know, if you've got a guy like Trevor Larnock who's projected to be 116 WRC plus, you kind of expect him to be passable against lefties, but it's just not how it works. So some guys have different approaches.

Like I said about Colt Keith, you know, like letting it travel seems to work a little bit better against lefties. You see the ball a bit longer, you know, guys who maybe are pull happy trying to hit the snot out of the ball. Kind of a Minnesota Twins way of, of hitting recently has been kind of pull fly balls, hit it as hard as you can kind of deal. Those guys have, you know, maybe been traditionally more susceptible to platoons, but it's in Walner and Larnock have been platooned. So if you were platooning Walner and Larnock, you have to have Castro available for Buxton replacement. You have to have Castro and Brooks Lee on call for Royce Lewis replacement.

And then Jose Miranda doesn't have a good projection. And so you may only want to play him when the handedness works out. That's how you get into trouble. That's where it's, it seems a little bit sometimes like a little bit less mix and match to profit and more, oh my God, what are we doing today? Like, you know, like I feel like being the manager of this team is actually probably harder than most teams. Yeah, perhaps it is very stressful to be Rocco Baldelli

on a day-to-day basis given some of the uncertainties around this team. I mean, I get the similarities between Wallner and Larnac. It's interesting to see just how much Larnac's K-rate projection has improved over time. A 25.9% is fine if you're going to do damage as much as he can. Where I wonder about the solutions comes from guys like Brooks Lee, Edward Julian just looks like a big side platoon at best.

He spits right in whatever I'm saying. If you have a 103 projection like Julian does, then you don't want to play that guy against same-handed. You know what I mean? Like a 103 projection suggests that he could be as bad as 85 against lefties. And that's not looking at results. I'm just saying sort of theoretically,

you'd expect that kind of a split. Yeah, what's the best case scenario from the bottom half group here? Like who emerges to maybe join that five? Who solves a problem for this team? Is it Brooks Lee? The projections aren't crazy. I mean, 427 plate appearances with eight homers, three steals, a 242, 290, 356 lines,

an 83 WRC plus. Purely by the numbers, you're not looking at Brooks Lee as a solution, but is there anything in the scouting report in the minor league results that makes you think that those projections might be light? I know they were super excited when he was coming up that they thought he was in the words of Kevin Millar, hitterish. And I can see what they're saying is that, you know, like he's hit the ball one hundred and nine at triple A before.

That's not great, but it's not bad. And in 2023, he had a 48% hard hit rate in AAA. That's decent. It's better than what he did last year. So he has the ability to hit the ball hard, makes a lot of contact, takes walks, isn't a pull guy necessarily, can spray it around, doesn't hit the ball 50% in the air or 50% on the ground so it doesn't have any of those markers, swing strike rate's pretty good. So I like him actually.

I think that maybe he's the guy that takes off just because he has such a balanced approach. This kind of, this seems like the kind of player that, and he's a switch hitter, you know? So this is the kind of player that I think will just be good across the board and and Give you a guy where you're not worried who the opposing pitcher is You know, like there's so many guys for the other ones where you're like, oh lefty or right whatever it is Like Brooks Lee you could maybe just be like hey, he's a switch hitter. He's gonna be he's gonna be decent He's got good glove too, right? Like he's he was the shortstop. So you can put you can plug him in at almost any position.

I think he's the new kind of Willie Castro for this team. And I think he'll he might play his way beyond that. Julian, I kind of like to. I don't know why he strikes out so much. If there was a way he could reduce that strikeout rate at all, he could really take off. I kept looking in the outfield mix. Emmanuel Rodriguez could be a machine for them in center field, take some of the wear and tear off

of Buxton, maybe Buxton plays in a corner when he plays in the outfield eventually and spends a lot of his time at DH again. But Rodriguez has K issues too, right? With a big OBP though. It's been a really tricky profile to try and project the entire time, it's been like, okay, is this, is like what's really going to happen here?

A 479 O.B.P. in 37 games at double A last year. 114.6 max EV. And that was with a- There's something nice in there. There's only 46 K's and 167 plate appearances I think some of the swing and miss that we saw was really early in his but I heard that some of this swing and miss Is in zone. Mmm. That's the concern then yeah, and he said some injuries, but if you look at the swinging strike rates They're not bad. So the overall swing strike rates

Yeah, I mean Rodriguez is a divisive figure different people have him in different different places. Fangraph's put him 20th overall. It's pretty high, man. It's an impact guy that's gonna be probably knocking on the door in the second half. So there's a few different ways that can find supplements to that supporting cast from guys they've already got in the organization. Maybe that's part of how they landed on there.

Let's not do anything this offseason. Let's just basically bring this entire roster back and see if we get a different result. See which of these young guys takes a step forward. Pitching's in pretty good shape, at least with the top trio, Pablo Lopez, Bailey Ober, Joe Ryan, I think we like Ryan more than Ober. They've got a slightly higher projection for innings on Ober

because Ryan finished last year hurt, but he's healthy now, so that bodes pretty well. And I know that David Festa, Zebi Matthews are two guys that actually graded out pretty well in the model. So if they end up usurping Simeon Woods Richardson and Chris Paddock and guys that have been in the four and five spots a lot for this team, one through five, it could be one of the better rotations

in the American League with health. Yeah, I think if you just say it another way, which is just repeating what you said basically, but one through seven, it's one of the better rotations. It's a nice group. Once you start counting depth, I think, you start to like this a lot better. I don't know why Woods Richardson is projected so high.

I think it's mostly because they gave him innings last year. And so it's like, well, they trust him. I don't trust him. I don't trust Chris Paddock either. As a starter, you've finally beaten some sense into me on that one. My favorite is Zebby Matthews of the final sort of four through seven guys here. My favorite is Zebby Matthews because he has a nice large arsenal, different kinds of pitches, different ways to succeed.

Festa is a little bit of a small arsenal guy that needs to really out stuff his opponents. And I think Zebby has the real, maybe the best ceiling of their depth guys. I'm probably not buying a lot of SWR or Chris Paddock and Zebi is more of a, you know, kind of a draft and hold last, you know, one of the last few pitchers that I'm going to buy. So it's more circle Zebi and David Festa's names because I do think Simeon Woodridge, singer Chris Paddock at the job to start, Paddock, Festa and Matthews have options. But circle those names because when they come up, they could be better options than what else

is out on your wire. It's a pretty good bullpen too. We've talked about John Duran is a guy that's still kind of a circle of trust closer for us. Griffin Jacks is phenomenal in the late-ending mix. Louis Varland working in relief is a lot more interesting. Brock Stewart has looked good as a reliever when healthy too. So I like what they've got going on the pin.

We could do an episode on like funky, weird things that people need, but SP eligible relievers. Yeah, Sparps. Yeah, Sparps. I don't know if it deserves a whole episode, but let me just give some Sparp love to Louis Varland. I think that he's going to Excel in relief. I think he's going to get a couple of ticks.

The slider is good. He doesn't have to worry about everything else. And I think that they have a place for him in the eighth or seventh, right around driven driven, Jackson Griffin. Jackson can't pitch every game. So we've Arland's got to set up some games. And also, Duran for me is the last elite acceptable closer. And, oh, by the way, I did win my game of chicken in the DC I'm in right now. Duran had a ADP of 68 and my pick was coming up at 68. and I did not jump him. And I took somebody else and waited and got.

Durin. So I'm, I was happy to do that. I'm happy to get Durin. I'm a little bit now worried that I have too many shares and if he goes down, I'll have too many shares of him. I don't know what people think of diversification, but might as well Yolo Yo-Yo with me. Hey, I'm glad you won people think of diversification, but might as well yolo yo-yo with me. Hey, I'm glad you won that game of chicken though.

I was encouraging you to waddle out and I'm glad it worked in your favor. What did it give me? Because I waded, I was able to pick... Pete Alonso. That's pretty nice. Yeah, that's better than getting Durand there. So the Picoto win total projection for the twins is 87. I'm afraid we're gonna agree again.

Do you think that's too hot? Because I think that's too hot. I'm gonna go just right. Cause I thought it was gonna be lower and I was gonna say too cold. Okay. So you thought it was gonna be like 84 or something. I was a little surprised by 87.

Yeah, 87's like pretty legit. But I think this is a legit team because what you said, we sort of been underlying our analysis is just that yes, they have flaws, but their depth has been getting better and better and depth is underrated. Sometimes when people project and people think about what's happening this year, they look at it. I don't like Simeon Woods, Richard.

I don't like, you know, Chris Paddock. Well, if they are bad, then somebody else is gonna pitch. And it's nice to go seven deep in the starting rotation. It's nice to have Brooks Lee, Julian, Juan Miranda, Emmanuel Rodriguez. That's a pretty good selection of depth batters that each could break out in their own way and make even 87 look too cold.

All right, well, I'm staying too hot. I think it's like 83, 84 as it's currently built. I think if they stay in the mix and buy at the trade deadline, which they seem weirdly reluctant to do, then sure, I like what they're doing too. I'm just worried about the way they're built. If more than one bat or arm breaks out of their young guys, then A7 is too low because they've got these quality veterans. I guess if more than one young guy breaks out

and more than one veteran is surprisingly healthy. Right. That's the other flip side of the coin. For me, the too hot came from the simple fact the twins were 12 and one against the White Sox last year and they were 70 and 79 against everyone else. Like yeah, they made their layups, but they really, really took advantage

of just how bad the White Sox were a year ago and I'm a little nervous about that. Speaking of the White Sox, let's talk about the 2025 version of this squad. I'm gonna answer the cry on no. Yeah, the long-term outlook improving. I think the long-term outlook is improving. 2025 version of this squad. My answer to cry on no. The long term outlook. I think the long term outlook is improving. I think you can you can look at this group.

And there's only one way to go. There's only one way to go. Lost more games than anyone else in history. And that's probably even a conversation for a completely separate episode. Like how are they doing with their rebuild? I think this is a good question to ask a prospect centric analyst. Perhaps we will do that by the end of this week. Maybe we'll even have someone on this week. Might even have a perfect person to answer a question like that. This would be a tough group to identify a core group of five in right

now because they haven't done much this offseason to help make the roster immediately better. They're definitely better in the long run. And one of their top five projected hasn't played in the big leagues yet. Yeah, that's kind of exciting. The guys they brought in, Mike Tachman, Josh Rojas, Austin Slater, Brandon Drury, Michael Taylor, Matt Thies, all guys that are just glue guys to sort of get them through the year. All guys that could get pushed off the roster, they could be cut, they could be traded, they

could be bench guys. They're actually hoping that one of those guys has trade value. That's all I can read into this. Right, you're trying to get something back. A low A reliever or just the future value and in the meantime some veteran leadership, right? That's the trade you're hoping to make.

Okay, so Luis Robert in the five. Andrew Vaughn, so long as he's on this team, is in the five. Andrew Benintendi with that contract. Any good second half, talked about that. He's in the five. Three of those five spots are covered. And then there's a big dip in terms of projections.

Team, man, it's too depressing to run it. Like who are you gonna run out there at shortstop this year if you don't run him out there? Like who are you gonna run out there at shortstop this year if you don't run him out there? You could put Chase Meadroth out there maybe. You could put Brooks Baldwin out there. You could play Brian Ramos at third base. You got a few options.

But who plays? Okay, so out of that, beyond the Vaughn and Robert Benintendi, people understand what those guys do at this point in their respective careers. I think you just give Montgomery a short stop and just play them all year. Play them all year and say, you know what, you're gonna beat that 77 WRC plus projection.

You had a better year in 23 than you did in 24, and we just want you to learn in the big leagues. I would agree with that decision. I think that's the right mindset to have. And then they don't actually have a fifth guy in the rule of five, and they're just hoping that Miguel Vargas plays into it, or Chase Mazaroth or Brooks Baldwin, that they're just hoping one of those guys

plays their way into it, because they don't have it right now. Yeah. I'm not playing Mike Tauchman every day. I'm not playing Josh Rojas every day. I'm not playing Brian Jury every day. I'm not playing Alison Slides later every day. Did Joey Gallo actually sign with him? I guess he could play his way into the fuck.

Come on, man. What? No. This is, this is his problem. It's bad, dude. That's my point. It's bad. It's bad.

And I don't even know who to circle and say I'm excited about. Cause I'm not excited about most of these people. Coles Montgomery. I like him. Coles Montgomery, I like him. Coles Montgomery hit the ball 113.8 in the minor leagues last year. Had a 34% hard hit rate.

He had a little explosion in strikeout rate, which he'd never had before. If he can get back down to even a 24% strikeout rate with power and patience, it's not necessarily a type of player that we've seen a lot at shortstop, but it could be a slightly low average, but otherwise, that's exciting.

It is pretty gross. I do think behind the plate, things could be better. Kyle Teal's big part of the trade that sent Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox. We should see a lot of Edgar Caro and Kyle teal behind the plate this year Maybe even one of them spend some time dh-ing to just as I can both be in the lineup together and both been the big league Roster without like sacrificing playing time I think that'd be but teams don't give up assets like Cory Lee even if you don't think Cory Lee is that great?

They don't normally give up assets like that. And so What are you doing with Corey Lee while all this is happening? He's got a 66 WRC plus projection. With all due respect to Corey Lee, I think they can give up on Corey Lee or pass him through waivers and keep him at triple A. He has one more option here, I guess.

Oh good, they can just option him. They don't even have to go through waivers. Like, come on, what are you doing? Balancing the short-term grossness with the long-term potential is something that I think White Sox fans are just going to have to do for a little while. I did see in our Discord, KB Dot wrote, I hate that I'm kind of getting excited to watch these kids play, but I'm excited to see Teal, Coles, and Medroth. I think Robert has a nice bounce back year.

And hell, even Lennon Sosa is tearing up the Venezuelan League or something. Who knows, maybe we only lose 99 games this year, which is amazing because Picota has them at 62 and 100 for their record. So that's sort of the question. Like are they are they still a 100 lost team as they try and bring some of this young talent up to the big leagues? Yeah, of course 2025. I'm not excited about any of the veterans they brought in really. And I'm not even excited about the young guys. I'm not excited about Brooks Baldwin really. I'm not really excited about Chase Medroth.

Colson Montgomery is the only guy I'm excited for. And he has some serious question marks about what the strikeout rate is actually gonna look like. I mean, can we even get you excited about pitching in this group? I know you like Sean Burke. One guy, yeah, Sean Burke, that's it. I like his fastball.

I actually, Davis Martin, I think is interesting because he has that kick change. He has two pretty good breaking balls. And if he kind of figures the touch around how to use all those pitches, I think he could break out a little bit. So those two pitches, Davis Martin and Sean Burke had been on my rosters.

You have to remember what's funny when you're searching for players in this group. It's a little bit like that when we saw the rule of five projections, the bad teams had lower ones. You know, when you're shopping on bad teams, you have to remember that the pitchers aren't going to give you wins. The relievers aren't going to give you that many saves. And the hitters may not give you all the plate appearances you think they're going to get because they're just going to spread it around and give everybody shots. So it makes it tough to, especially in 12 and 10 team leagues, you might just avoid

the team altogether. Maybe Robert and that's it. But in 15 team leagues, I think Davis Martin, Sean Berker are useful. And in the draft and hold, I actually did a pre-Landauer barrow with Justin Anderson handcuff because it was so cheap. It was like my 48th and 49th round picks. I'm going to agree with you, though, as far as this still being a year away from avoiding the dreaded 100 loss season. I think some of that speak to the quality of at least three

of the other teams in this division, possibly all four that we talked about this episode being still good enough to pick on the weakness of the White Sox for one more year. I think there'll be a lot more watchable by August than they are in March and April. So you have that going for your White Sox fans and hey, maybe we should go to a White Sox game this year, you know? I mean, it might just be fun thing to do second half of the season when the weather's nice, not, not any,

or maybe even like a post deadline. See who, see who they bring up, what kids they bring up. Yeah. Yeah. They traded away. What were the guys? They released who they bring up. My optimism for this team will start to increase when Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith and those guys are deemed ready because I think they're really exciting top end pitching prospects that can help turn this around relatively quickly. I just don't know if we're gonna see those guys

any earlier than August. I kind of feel like they're gonna wait it out a bit longer before they start pushing more of those guys into the mix. Let's get to a few sleeper selections from this division. Do you have a sleeper bat that you like from the AL Central? I forgot to prepare this aspect. I'm gonna go with Kyle Manzardo.

All right, you stick with Kyle Manzardo. It's a bet against Carlos Santana's 38-year-old knees. Also, just a bet that that team needs a slugger. It needs its Josh Naylor, you know? And I think that's the best guy to step into it is Kamenz Arda. I actually went Jonathan Rodriguez from the Guardians as a super deep sleeper, not usually,

usually we're looking at like 12, 15 team leagues. I think Rodriguez has big time power. It's a bit like the John Kenzie Noelle, like high hard hit rate, lots of swing and miss at AAA, but they're gonna be looking in every corner they can to find some thump I think they are gonna miss Josh Naylor even if Kyle Manzardo Basically fills those shoes. They seemed like they were still one really good power hitter Maybe two power hitters away from being a more dangerous Lineup, and I think Jonathan Rodriguez could get them there. How about a sleeper starting pitcher? I'll go first to buy a little extra time.

I think Chris Bubich is pretty interesting because pre-injury in 2023, he was showing us a little bit more in terms of a swing and miss sort of stuff. It's a lot more command than overall pitch quality. So I think that's part of it. But I think in that ballpark especially, you mentioned it suppresses homers,

but it doesn't suppress runs. It's still an overall good place to pitch. There are some soft landing spots in division. I like Chris Boob. It's trying to make the move back into the rotation this year. So he's going to be my starting pitcher sleeper from this group. Go on with Gavin Williams. The Guardians don't usually have a guy with a good fastball and he throws pretty hard.

And I think he can have a good fastball for them. Has two good breaking balls. I think a healthy year from Gavin Williams could be pretty exciting and relevant in every league, which is I'm not sure Chris Bubich will be. So this could be even a 10-team last, you know, last starter or one of your last bench starters. Gavin Williams is appropriate in any league. How about a sleeper reliever? I'm gonna say Matt Manning. I think Matt Manning's days as a starter might be over and I think it solves the who's the best reliever

in that group of Tigers relievers. I think one thing we saw with Matt Manning were a lot of fluctuations with his fastball velocity. If you put him into short relief, perhaps you keep the floor higher and you increase the ceiling at the same time, shorten up the ar arsenal a little bit. Matt Manning, 20 saves this year?

Would that be the weirdest thing you've ever seen or would it actually be pretty fun? That is pretty fun. So I will avoid going up against you with Bo Briskey and I already sort of said why I love him. I'm going to go with Lucas Ersag. He has better stuff, better projection than Carlos Estevez. And the ninth inning does still have the highest leverage. People talk about, oh, well, do you need a fireman in the seventh or eighth?

If you look at it, the ninth inning still has the highest leverage. So there is actually a reason why, over the course of the history of baseball, we have used our best pitchers in the ninth inning. And I think generally, that's what happens, is that the better pitcher starts being used in the ninth. And I think Lucas Orsak is the better pitcher

and will eventually take that job. All right, so we're split on that one. I'm just taking the Carlos Estevez shares in the cheap and hoping he can just ride that wave all the way through the season again. I think he's a little underrated too because he spent so much of his career in Colorado. So that's probably in the back of my mind

every time I think about Carlos Estevez. And it's also the the quotes from last spring when his pants didn't fit like no one's pants fit the whole pants fiasco still one year away from being resolved to. Steven Nesbitt wrote about that for the athletic the material for the jerseys has changed material for the pants one more year. Gotta wait for that to catch up I guess. If I had to choose between which one I would like to see through I think I would Use that material for the pants. Yes if I give it the exact same material I think they should have made the pants first that would be my

General advice if you can only make one the appropriate thickness. Oh my god. There's that one guy from the Giants There's a Casey Schmidt picture out there in the world. No, it's just's just it's a bad bad bad bad pants everybody don't do it don't don't do it. We are gonna go on our way out the door a reminder you get a subscription to the athletic at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels you can find Eno on blue sky, enosaris.bsky.social, mdvr.bsky.social. Thanks to our producer Brian Smith for putting this episode together. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.