Rates & Barrels - 2025 Outfield Preview, Part 1

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Eno and DVR continue their position preview series in the outfield! With a slew of players carrying first and second-round Average Draft Positions -- and and significant influx of youth at the position, there are plenty of strategic approaches to consider. (Note: This is part one of a three-episode series focusing on the outfield) Rundown 6:42 ADP Tier 1a (The First Rounders) -- Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Kyle Tucker, Corbin Carroll, Fernando Tatis Jr. *Mookie Betts, Julio Rodríguez 28:33 ADP Tier 1b (The Second Rounders) -- Jackson Chourio, Yordan Alvarez, Jarren Duran, Jazz Chisholm Jr.*, Jackson Merrill & Ronald Acuña Jr. 41:50 ADP Tier 2 -- Michael Harris II, Oneil Cruz, Wyatt Langford & James Wood 56:38 ADP Tier 3 -- Teoscar Hernández, Lawrence Butler, Brenton Doyle, Seiya Suzuki, Luis Robert Jr. & Bryan Reynolds 1:14:46 ADP Tier 4 -- Anthony Santander, Riley Greene, Cody Bellinger*, Christian Yelich & Spencer Steer* 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 Share your Positional Rankings in the HiveMind Ranks for Outfielders: https://forms.gle/59oP2HGp8nNXFcky6 Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels 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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with a handcrafted espresso beverage from Starbucks. Savor the new small and mighty Quartado, cozy up with the familiar flavors of pistachio, or shake up your mood with an iced brown sugar oat shaken espresso. Whatever you choose, your espresso will be handcrafted with care at Starbucks. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Wednesday, January 22nd. Derek VanRyper, InnoSaris here with you back to our 2025 Position Preview Series.

Today we begin with Part 1 of 3 as we focus on the outfield and that means pitcher week is next week coming up very quickly a lot of ground to cover today we're going to probably get through the first 25 or 30 outfielders most of the guys drafted inside the top 100 overall based on NFBC ADP so that's about where the cutoff will be for this episode. We'll get to the next group on Thursday, we'll get to the final group on Friday so a lot of outfield talk coming up here in the next few days and then our Discord where you can also be part of the Hive Mind rankings. The link to join those is in the show description as is the link to join the Discord. We've got a separate channel for that. It's gonna be 50 outfielders for the Hive rankings so you

can wait for a couple episodes to come out and then do it, or you can just go at it right away. Your call. The decision is entirely yours. You know, how's it going for you on this Wednesday? Good. We kicked over a bit of a hornet's nest with the Dodgers conversation,

and I just wanted to clarify a couple things because I've been talking to people nonstop since our episode dropped and one, we didn't have to sort of construct it as a conversation about the Dodgers. You can think that the system is broken because the pirates aren't spending, for example, more than the Dodgers are spending. But you could still think that the system is broken. So I wanted to put that out there. I also wanted to say that parody may not have such a final sort of yes or no answer to it. I think I suggested as

much when I said that there's such a thing as too much parody for me. If I didn't know who was good at all, I would have a hard time following a sports league, especially as a sort of fair weather fan. And so when we look at the parody and say, we think that there's parody, I can see how other people might suggest that smaller market teams have smaller windows sort of fair weather fan. And so when we look at the parity and say, we think that there's parity, I can see how other people might suggest that, you know, smaller market teams have smaller windows, you know, regular season wins still have some correlation with payroll, if not the tightest.

And that could be a basis of an argument, but I would still, you know, put the ball back in the other side of the court in terms of these discussions I've been having and say say I'd like to get an argument for what is broken and not one that is just like oh the payrolls because that's The sort of just a fact of the sort of inputs. I'm talking about the outputs It was your evidence that baseball is broken from an output standpoint because baseball, you know is over 12 million dollars It's basically tied with the NBA as the second most popular sport.

It's got the most attendance and views it's ever gotten. We don't have repeat champions. We've had four different champions in the last four years. Exactly. So like those terms, what is broken? That's my question because something I'm teaching my kids is like whenever you're having an argument that you were talking about overrated you know like the question of overrated the other day because they were talking about like characters in Smash Brothers and they were yelling oh that guy's totally overrated and it's like hey guys

if you're gonna have a conversation like this you have to define your terms you know what is the rating system what do you mean you know like do you have any sort of rating system who Who's rating it? Who's making it overrated? What's what's underrated? You know, so like, in this discussion, I think defining the terms what is broken is the question that I have. If we can define what is broken, then we can continue to the conversation about how to fix it. I don't look at other sports with caps and say that they have it necessarily better. You know, I look at football and there are teams that have never won, that are terrible, you know, that, you know, they just suck every year

and they're dynasties and they have a cap, you know. I do have a bias, all things equal. I would rather that the players union was strong and they had guaranteed contracts. You know, I think that if there is a minute way that football is better in some way, I mean, I do know in terms of revenue, they're better off. You know, that they have the weakest player union

and the weakest contract situation. Yeah, and that matters in a huge, huge way. I don't think the intent was ever to just point out our side and just run away. It's never really how this works. There was an ongoing conversation, which is why Discord's such a great place to drop in. Big deferrals, I think, was a big thing

that came up in Discord that we didn't talk about on the show, but I do find that to be particularly frustrating, not having to pay present dollars, being able to just kick that so far down the road, how that circumvents the competitive balance tax that we have in baseball, how that actually impacts his taxed revenue in the places where these players live. That has like a whole,

there's another hornet's nest to kick. I'm not gonna kick that today. Like that wasn't the point. They could be avoiding California taxes with a lot of that and that's a relevant thing. And then also, you know, like I said that maybe there could be some stuff with TV, sharing TV money in a better way. I brought that up. So I'd like, we're not saying that there's nothing that we can change about the current system. It's more like I think one thing that we're pushing back against the idea that a cap would be better for baseball. You know, if you're going to make the argument that a cap is going to be better, I'd like to I like to hear it because I don't I don't really see it. And then, you know,

another thing you one thing I want to bring up a really quick about deferrals is just that the reason they exist is because both sides think that they're beneficial. Now, we can from the outside say that, oh, this doesn't look beneficial to the player because present value is higher than future value, but they have tax lawyers that are on this. The players have people on their side that are doing the math and the team has people on their side. So there's a little battle over this and if it wasn't good for the players, I would think that like Boris Company and those guys would have figured this out by now.

So there are some benefits for them this way or that and that's why it still exists. Hopefully we didn't just kick three more hornets nests on the way to the outfield preview. That was not the intent yesterday. It was not the intent today. But sometimes you kick them on accident and that's the way life goes sometimes. It was not the intent today, but sometimes you kick them on accident and that's the

That's the way life goes sometimes. It's not pleasant when that happens. Let's get to the outfield preview. We'll start at the top Studs I split the top tier This is all tier one the first the first group you see on the screen if you're watching on YouTube They're the first rounders But I would say the second rounders are also in tier one because you can pretty easily argue some of those guys Up into this group and you can see Maybe a couple of guys from this group falling just a little bit mostly because of health related concerns I think but we begin at the very top Aaron judge probably deserves a first overall argument I don't think we have to go into great detail

But the main reason for it is the power is phenomenal right and in a game where? The main reason for it is the power is phenomenal, right? And in a game where stolen bases are easier to find in many corners of the pool, one of the areas where you can really stand out from a power perspective, and Judge does that. Three seasons in a row, it's just absurd contact quality. A barrel rate above 25% each of the last three seasons. Every time I look at that, I'm like, is that real?

Did that actually happen? No, that actually did happen. I think the counterarguments to Judge that I'm like is that real did that actually happen no that actually did happen I think the counter arguments to judge that I see and hear the most are injury related I think he has a greater combination of bizarre kind of freak accident type injuries I mean the toe injury at Dodger Stadium that he he suffered running into the base of the outfield wall yeah he mentioned having to maintain that for the rest of his career but I think we sometimes

lose sight of the fact that players suffer injuries and then have to rehab or maintain things from them forever and they don't always tell us what they are. We don't always realize it, like it's just, that's part of being a professional athlete, maintenance. Yeah, and in terms of results on the field, you got 633, 696, 458, and 704 in terms of plate appearances for Judge. I mean, that's actually pretty healthy.

That's a pretty good four-year stretch. I mean, you would project that just based on those numbers alone to be mid-600s this year. Right. So I don't have major playing time concerns. I mean, the biggest knock might be that he's 33, so we could see decline start to creep in, but it really hasn't been there to this point. I don't really see evidence of Aaron Judge losing skills and he's on the very short list of players that

you almost expect to hit 50 home runs if the playing time holds up from a health perspective all year. Yeah I could see the stolen bases going back to sort of three to four a year and I can see at some point the strikeout rate starting to change and what you can see in the projection systems is their different aging curves for strikeout rate so oopsie has a 25% strikeout rate 25.3 and steamer as a 26 so it's already a little bit of a difference in terms of what kind of aging curves are using nevertheless judge a top three player for me probably a top three player for a few other folks doesn't fall much further than like pick four, pick five in most rooms and for good reason.

I think it really opens up as far as what do you like in your first round pick if you're going to go to the outfield with the rest of this group though between Soto, Tucker and maybe even Corbin Carroll, but Soto and Tucker in particular, I think are your pretty common like next to outfielders off the board. I wonder with Soto, moving into Citi Field, leaving Yankee Stadium as a home park, should we be concerned? Because the X, the expected homer number

shows no difference from the year he spent at Yankee Stadium. Like if he had played last year in Citi Field by X homers at least, he would have expected to hit the same number. Kind of a surprise. It was his career highest in pull rates, so maybe he pulled more of his homers last year. Right, but I think when we talk about things hitters

can control and how good they are at making adjustments, you'd put Soto in whatever your top tier is for being able to adapt, change, and modify his approach. I think he's got that sort of elite ability. He's had that along with phenomenal strike zone judgment from day one in the big leagues. And the biggest change is that he had the lowest ground ball rate since 2019.

That helped push the home run total up over 40 for the first time in addition to pulling it and using the park. But other than the fact that he's just not gonna do much with steals, I mean this is a guy that stole seven bases in the biggest walkier Senso Tani. That's true. He's not gonna run more than that I wouldn't think even though he's only 26 and it's just not his game right so he's just a four category stud it's not that different than judge albeit maybe with a little more variance on the batting average potentially. For Soto? Yeah

for Soto like that's the weird part, right? That's weird because the strikeout rate is so much lower than judges. Yeah, that's the part that you wouldn't expect, but we've seen the variance kind of in both directions. I mean, the shortened season hit 351, it's only 47 games, but even the 313 that he hit in 2021 with the Nats, that's in there just as there was a 242 in there in 2022,

like just some odd things for a hitter that good. It goes up and down a little bit with his pull rate. The year that he hit 313, he pulled 31% of the time and the year that he hit 242, he jumped up to 38, which he's sort of figured out how to mesh those two approaches, I think, where now he's pulling more than ever, but he still can go

oppo. You know, like he's still part of his ability. And I think one thing that he does is he loves the pitch up and he will basically spend the first half of the season only swinging at pitches up. And then if pitchers are able to fill him up in the zone down every once in a while, he'll just go back, go down there and do something with it and force them to kind of rethink going back up, you know? So it's, it's a cat and mouse for him, but he's so good at it. And he's so good at knowing where he wants to swing. His chase rate is so elite, his sort of command of not only the zone,

but his, where he wants it, you know know is so strong that I think he's basically meshing a kind of a two strike fight it off approach with a I'm just waiting for you to make a mistake up that I'm going to take out of here and those two together are going to produce an OBP over 400 and I think at least 33 homers. One thing that I worry about is playing time. We've seen his sprint speed really drop for Soto and he's not athletic like he used to be in the outfield. The very beginning, he did have one of his better defensive numbers last year, but those years in San Diego still exist where he was pretty wooden out there in the outfield. And so I wonder if, you know, being out on the field as much as he has been and playing,

you know, averaging close to 160 games a year for the last three years, that might be the part that changes. You know, that there's some maintenance, some body maintenance that he's going to do now that he's got the full deal that he wanted. And so we may see more like, I don't know, 620 plate appearances which isn't a ton of a difference but it will reduce some of his runs RBI and his potential, this top-end power potential. I don't know, I mean I do know that Colton and the Wolfman often talk about

you know how they don't want to get a guy in his big contract season. And we have some reasons that we've seen. You mentioned the steals, you know, but I also think playing time. One thing that you'll see from players in their walk years is a playing time boost. And so it makes sense that they might step back off of that playing time once they're guaranteed for however many years on the flip side. It's still 26 and the Mets are paying them $51 million a year, so they're probably

gonna play them heavy these next couple of years and maybe slowly taper into something like you're describing with that added maintenance sort of built in. What are you doing if you're looking at Tucker versus Soto though in the middle of round one? Because I think this is kind of a question of do you want that potential for the better power floor which I think Soto reasonably has although Tucker man he was on a great pace last year like the fracture in his leg cost him about half

the season and hit a career high OBP, a career high slug, it was a 46 homerun pace so the power was ticking up a little bit. And I think Tucker's stolen bases, even with low sprint speed, are more reliable than the contributions you get from Soto in that category. So where do you go if you're looking at those two in the middle of the round? I'm going to go with Soto. I've gotten a share of Tucker, but Soto wasn't available to me. So I think generally ADP has Soto slightly ahead of Tucker. I think it's just such an excellent floor. And then here's where I think there's some question with Tucker is the new park. So if you look last year, we have this up on YouTube, is the difference between home

runs and expected home runs. And Anthony Santander had 44 actual homers and 36.6 expected homers. That's the biggest difference. 7.4. Somehow Enrique Hernandez ended up second. 14 homers, 7 expected homers. It's kind of amazing. Third is Kyle Tucker with 23 actual homers, 16.7 expected homers.

So that's a large difference and if you look at the difference in park factors between the two stadiums he's going from basically a 105 you know kind of ninth you know friendliest park for left-handers in Houston to like a 95 park factor for lefties which is more like the 23rd friendliest for lefties. I tried to look at his spray chart where you take his hits from the last two years and then overlay them on Wrigley. I think there's two things going on here. Of course, Wrigley is smaller.

You see all those homers for Kyle Tucker that are along the on along the wall in Houston He's got a lot of room If you just did this you'd say wow look at all those Outs and doubles that are gonna turn into homers in Wrigley promise Wrigley is cold and the wind blows in So those balls won't even go as far so I think that the competing bits there that the park is smaller But but colder and the wind is going to affect him, I think it'll kind of go out in the wash a little bit. I mean, if you look at the expected homers by park, it's not that different.

So it said basically that over his career, Kyle Tucker would have lost three homers if he had his career at Wrigley. So I tend to think this is going to be fine. I like Tucker. I chose Tucker over Tatis because I think that Tucker's health issues seem like kind of localized within one year. You know, I know it wasn't great, but we only had like one year where Tucker had a weird injury that took forever, you know, and there's there were some whispers that maybe Houston misdiagnosed it and

kind of you know mistreated him a little bit, you know, in terms of the treatment plan and all that stuff. So that's different than Tatis, who I have to admit as much as I like, seems to have something every year. Yeah the concern with Tatis is multifaceted. I mean, it was a femoral stress reaction in his quad last year. He's had what, wrist stuff, shoulder stuff, major shoulder concerns.

Two surgeries before 2023, I think. If you look, I mean, he hasn't returned to the pre-PED suspension barrel rates, but he's showing enough power that you look at him and say, okay, it's 30 homers pretty easily with health, but the with health there is a bigger lift than it is with Tucker. I would agree with that because with DeTis it's multiple years in different body parts. He also went 11 for 14 as a base dealer last year. It's a little light, a little lighter than what I would

have expected. Projections love him. It's just a question of how much you believe. Oh my God, oopsie, 280, 39 homers, and 22 stolen bases. I think most of the projection systems say I made a mistake with the Tucker shit decision. But they all have them for 680 plate appearances. Right, are you buying 600? I mean, 679 plate appearances would be a career high. I did get to 635 in 2023, first year back.

So it's not that far in the rear view mirror. But I think for any player who's been in the big leagues for a few seasons, buying a career high in played appearances when the reason for absence includes multiple injuries, it's a risky move, especially in round one. You don't have to do it. Round one, yeah. So maybe there's a few rooms where he slides back a few picks and you're like, all right,

I'm looking at Tatis at pick 15, pick 16. Great, that's an outlier sort of scenario. But I understand the cases against him, even though the payoff could be top three, top four sort of hitter. He has those kind of skills that's just been kind of funky from an injury perspective. The other thing on Tatis I thought was interesting,

he has maintained a lower K rate each of the last two seasons compared to what we saw back in 2021. So. That's why there's that potential 280 batting average possibly. Yeah, the low 20s K percentage I think is what's kind of driving the average and overall projections

up a little bit from what we've seen in addition to those playing time boosts. So Corbin Carroll is a frequently discussed player on this show for obvious reasons. He's fun to watch, has been a first rounder before, had a weird season last year, and managed to bounce back in the second half. Carroll was the fifth most valuable hitter from the Fangraft playerator in the second half. Carroll was the fifth most valuable hitter from the Fangraft player-rater in the second half last year. Otani, Judge, Witt, and Vlad were the four ahead of him. 17 homers, 17 steals in the second half,

which should, the power especially, should ease some of the concerns we've had about the health of Corbin Carroll's shoulder. Average was still kind of light in the second half at 258 while he was doing that, but he runs well, hits the ball over the place doesn't strike out a ton. I think Generally, that's a lighter end sort of average for a guy with Carol skills I guess if I'm looking for something beyond

Longer term questions about his shoulder, which maybe are reduced after the second half left-handed Pitchers have been pretty good against Carol. He's got a 242-309-394 career line against them. It's a 93 WRC+, probably not bad enough for a player that young with the contract he signed to lose playing time, but maybe enough to cost him spots in the batting order, depending on who they can mix and match in the order on any given day against lefties. And his defense is not a problem, but it's not center field defense, I don't think. Which is a little surprising to me given his tools. And so if he's not your center fielder, a 93 WRC plus becomes less playable, you know, if it sticks that way, right?

There is a little bit of smoke there. I'm just pleased that the underlying numbers also for Carroll suggest that in the second half he was lifting the ball more and hitting the ball hard in the air more. The power is the real question mark I have around him. But you know, a max EV of 113.8 in 2023 and last year 111.5, that's enough of a max EV, I think, to have good comps, basically. You know, I'm looking here, I have second half numbers, but you know, if you're looking in the high 111 to 112 area, you can find Jackson Truro, Elliott Ramos, Lars Knutbar, Nick Castellanos, Trevor Larnock. Julio Rodriguez only had a 112.6

and we don't doubt his power at all. So James Wood had a 111.4, Corbin Carroll, not quite there with a 111.5. He's there with Wood, but like, you know, the second half was 111.1. I think he probably has enough power to be a 25 homer hitter. I think that I believe the projection projections there. It is interesting to see Steamer more homers than oopsie. So something in the bat speed

Which you can see in the max TV is dragging down the sort of power upside for Carroll But let's say he just hits 20 homers steals 40 bases and has a batting average regression back to 262 60 to, that is a top 10 player, I think. Do you not just see another version of Trey Turner here? Like is it just Trey Turner from the left side playing in the outfield instead of playing on the dirt? Like that's what I see. Yeah, that's pretty good.

And there were a lot of years where Trey was returning top 10 overall value. So I think if you if you're not worried about the shoulder, absolutely fine to build around Corbin Carroll, I think you get a lot more in terms of speed when everything's clicking for him, too. We saw proof of that with a 54 for 59 he had in 2023 and even the 35 for 43 last year with a 40 point drop in OVP, that's still a pretty good outcome for a down year, like Corbin Carroll just had.

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It's just delicious. New York Times Cooking has you covered with easy dishes for busy weeknights. Find these recipes and more at nytcooking.com. Smells so good. Julio gets in here just at the back of round one. Here's the thing I'm worried about with Julio. What's changed from last year with his supporting cast?

Like I feel like there's a limitation around him that is unique for this entire group. Would you safely say the Mariners supporting cast is worse than the Yankees, the Mets, the Cubs, the Diamondbacks, and the Padres supporting cast? I mean, it's not all their fault. Like there's a park factor involved in this too. Yes, right

But as far as it as far as how it impacts Julio run that RBI production could lag I know we talked to Trevor May about this a few times You wonder if there's a an extra pressure a player like Julio is going to feel Trying to swing his way out of a team slump, right? You mentioned last summer when it seemed like he was beginning to put the pieces together is right when he hit the IL briefly so that stretch that might have helped correct his season got nicked by the injury. Where do we go from here with Julio? Do we still have top five ceiling? Do you still see all the things in that profile that made everyone chase

him at the top of the round early early in the round, a year ago. I mean, I think the plate skills are a little odd for a first-rounder. A career 6.6% walk rate's a tad low for a guy that's still striking out 25% of the time. But I could also convince myself that he's so young, he just turned 24 in December, that that strikeout rate's not necessarily

the strikeout rate we're gonna get as he kind of moves into his peak. Yeah, that's interesting. By aging curves, you can improve your strikeout rate until 26 and 27, so he still has the possibility there, and that's, you know, for Steamer, suggested he's gonna have the best strikeout rate of his career.

Actually, all of the other systems do. Yeah. I do wonder about the, you know, maybe the early 30s for him, because the chase rate is not great, you know for Julio, but he's in his athletic prime he's stolen, you know 24 25 bags every season and He has way better about a ball quality than Corbin Carroll. So if Anybody we've talked about right now up to this point has a 30-30 season in him, it's him.

He has more health than Tatis, probably more health and he's faster than Tucker. And he has batted ball qualities that are at least on par with current Tatis, not pre-susp suspension Tatis. So I don't know. I think, you know, would you agree with me that if somebody was going to go 3030 so far, it would be it'd be Julio. Yeah. Out of this group of outfielders. Yeah, because I think Tucker probably does fall short by speed, only by a little.

Soto won't do it. Judge won't run that much. Carol probably comes up short on power. Yeah, I think that's that's sound. And then to tease, it's the playing time. So it's sort of like a less risky version of the Tatis projection for me because the health track record's not nearly as scary. There really isn't.

There's just the minor injury that was last year from Julio. So. And even then he still put up 6'13 flight appearances. So. I think the thing that I like about being in this sort of position, and Mookie Betts, we covered him in the shortstop preview He's still outfield eligible

Of course, even though it's more shortstop duty coming for him in 2025 is that you can pair someone like Julio With a more established player someone who's done it for a few years, right? So you can kind of have your cake and eat it too because you have two picks clustered together and you can feel like you've got Too easy first round sort of talents. That's part of the appeal for me of being later in the draft order. We'll talk about where we really want to be. Probably in February we'll do a Kentucky Derby style discussion about which draft positions are the best and why we like them.

But the flip from where we are right now to the guys that are in round two is a lot of fun. So if you look at the second rounders, Jackson Churio, Yordan Alvarez, Jaren Duran. Still studs, still studs. Jazz Chisholm Jr., we talked about him on the third base preview. Jackson Merrill goes in this range. Then you got Ronald Acuna Jr. coming off

of his second ACL tear in this group as well. But we'll start with Churio. I mean, he went through what you would describe as I think a pretty typical adjustment phase of any young player, especially one as young as him. Seeing big league pitching for the first time, we saw improvements in the eye. We saw the power rise over the course of the season. There really wasn't a lot of swinging miss for a guy that didn't spend much time above AA.

Like there's just a ton of things to like about the progression. The raw talent is it's just it's obvious. Right. To see him right there at the end around one beginning around two, though, is it's an even more aggressive decision than taking Julio in that spot, in my opinion, at least. So I'm curious if you think the market is pushing Jackson Trujillo too fast or if this is just one last stop on his way to the early part of round one. The talent is undeniable,

but there are some questions I think for Trujillo in terms of true talent power that Alvarez has answered. Jordan Alvarez is one of the two best pure hitters in the game, you know. And maybe there's some questions about his knees and his health and how many play appearances he'll give, but he seems to be in the prime of his career and in terms of playing time there.

So if I was doing the Julio connection, I think a Julio- Churio connection would feel great in a 10 teamer and feel pretty good in a 12 teamer and feel a little bit riskier in a 15 teamer, I feel like. Is that just my like sort of anti-risk warning going off too early? But I don't know. You could come out of that with two guys that hit for an okay batting average and have like 24 homers and 20 steals and that's fine and that'll still be pretty high floor and

that's why you're buying them in the beginning but that's not two superstars that you're kind of that's not the projections you know so I just wanted to throw that out there also for me what's interesting about Churio is that there's this gap between Churio and Merrill. And in fact, I think I picked Merrill over Churio in one league. And this is why I don't see a difference here. They're the same guy as the Spiderman meme. I mean, look at this. They're exactly.

There's no difference between these things. Jackson Churio is 20, I guess. Jackson Merrill is 21. That's not a big difference. In the second half, they both had 12 homers. Churio at 12 stone bases Maybe you'd like that better but in terms of sprint speed, I don't think they're that far apart So it's just a willingness to steal which Jackson Maril could display more of in a second year

They both don't walk a lot, but they both make a lot of contact Cheerios ISO is 242 Marils is 283 both run high babbitts their slash lines. Churio 310, 363, 552. Jackson-Merrell 314, 349, 596. It's really nice. Barrel rates go to Merrell. Max CV slightly to Churio. Hard hit 46.8 for Churio, 44.4 for Merrell. Chase rate goes to Churio by a couple of percentage points. Swing Chase rate goes to Truro by a couple percentage points. Swing strike rate goes to Truro. So maybe you can like Truro off of these things. Maybe I made a mistake in taking Merrill over him, but I don't think there should be a gap. I think they should go right next to each other. And I guess my

argument is they should go right next to each other at the top of this tier, behind Jordan Alvarez. Yeah and for those who are not watching on YouTube, you might remember from The Office when Pam brought a couple pictures to Michael and said, corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture. And then it cuts to her sitting there. They're the same picture. That's how similar the numbers really were in the second half. I'm with you in that.

I think what prepping for this episode led me to was wondering why people prefer Jaren Duran and Jazz Chisholm Jr. to Jackson Merrill. That's right, I think that's probably the answer. It's just slightly rearranging that group and that's not shade at Jaren Duran, that's not shade at Jazz Chisholm Jr.

We've talked a lot about those two guys and I think the questions between the Jacksons and then you're an Alvarez, that's a what type of profile are you more comfortable having locked in? And then are you taking Julio or Churio with Alvarez? Are you trying to pair some combination of those guys together, right?

Like that's a possibility as well. I do wanna throw an idea out there real quick. I've sort of normally shied away from two outfielder beginning because I feel like there's so many outfielders at the end game, you know, but you know, almost in the first two rounds, you should almost take the position off of the names. I feel like, cause you're buying bats. You're just buying the best bats in the game. You know what I mean? And so if you come out with two outfielders, that's fine. You might have just come out with two guys that might go

30-30 this year. You know, with good batting averages. Who cares what position they play? And that allows you to then, you know, take a break off of outfield for a while. You can still have a stars and scrubs outfield. You can still like take advantage of late outfielders just because you have two, you know, got too early. And the nice thing is, the one thing that is a little harder to do, it's a little bit crazier to kind of take two short stops in the first two rounds,

because you're locking yourself in in more ways than taking two outfielders. You have five outfield slots in most leagues. Yeah, I don't worry as much about the outfield outfield combo as other people do, so I've done that before and didn't feel like it messed up my build or steered me in a direction where I was chasing something. I think you have to be a little more sensitive

to where the drop-offs are at other positions if you do that because if you have some longer waits, especially if you're drafting from an end position, which you probably are more likely to be doing if you take a combination of guys we're just talking about right here, longer break between picks, okay where where are the huge cliffs? That way you don't get bumped down a tier or possibly two

at multiple positions as a result of having to stretch it out a little bit more. But I don't think anything's tailing off so fast where two outfielders causes a problem for you quite like that. Now, the Jaren Durand jazz chisel like that, we're not skipping these guys. I think with Jaren Durand, Jazz Chisholm, like we're not skipping these guys. I think with Jaren Durand, he's finally healthy. He had that foot injury in 2023. He was able to play a ton, 20 home or 30 steal season with the defensive strides we've talked about. And now we've got about a thousand plate appearances from the last two seasons where he's been more than 20% better than league average. He's a very good fantasy player and real life player at this point in his career.

I'm wondering though if because of age, and maybe this would be true of jazz as well to some extent, if it's easy to talk yourself into the next level from someone like Merrill being higher and that's why it's easy to just kind of shift him around in the order, right? That's probably what my brain is doing to some extent, but Merrill was showing more pop in the second half in a way that I had not previously noticed. So I think it's really important to look at that. I think it was the baseball HQ forecaster box that also did a good job illustrating that.

So shout out to Brent Hershey, Ray Murphy, and the great team over at baseball HQ for the great work they do on that book each and every year. I would just point to the age as being relevant maybe to the stolen bass projection. Everyone projects him for 30 stolen basses, but he's 28 and I just remember when Jeff Zimmerman did an aging curve for stolen basses, it was a cliff. It was just like down, down it goes. I could see Jaren Duren having a good season this year

as a 28 year old and striking out more than he did last year and having a 260 batting average and going 20, 22. Which is fine, it's still a pretty high floor. But it's not necessarily what you're looking for when you're buying a second round outfielder. Right, and the reason I still prefer Jazz, if you're looking at those two against each other, maybe Merrill's gone, I think the speed,

once we saw Jazz get to New York, the swollen bases took off to another level, and the quality of contact has been there for longer, right? Jaren Durant sort of got to that level, got close to the double-digit barrel rate. We've seen it three times from Jazz Chisholm, two over, air quotes, full seasons, I'm not counting 2020,

because we only played 21 games that year, but even the full season in which he did it, 16.6 and 12.2%, I just think we see that a little more year over year from Jazz. So that's the other part of the profile that leads me towards Jazz over Jaren Duran. But I don't think Jaren Duran's way out of place as a second rounder, I just think I like the other guys

in this group a little bit more. What are you doing with Ronald Acuna? I have no idea, dude. I just, it's a second ACL surgery. I mean, you know, we already saw his sprint speed totally drop off. I mean, what are you doing with him? These projections were 40 still on bases.

I'm saying nope. I think it'd be foolish to assume that. I mean, we have one data point coming off of a torn ACL before, and I think you'd be foolish to assume that. I mean, we have one data point coming off of a torn ACL before. And I think you have to look. The first time he came off ACL surgery, he had 15 homers and stole 29 bases over 533 plate appearances in 2022. That's a good season coming off a major injury like that.

If he did that again, that's a good outcome. And now he's two years older, and it's another tear. It's like, I can't imagine you would get better than 2022. I can't imagine you go through all this rehab again and the conversation you have internally is, well, let's just keep running the way we have. Like maybe, maybe you just say, ah, this is how I play, but I think you have to err on the side of caution

in terms of maybe the Braves saying, let's not play him every single day coming off of a second ACL tear. And so he's torn the ACL on each knee and tear it in the same knee twice just for clarity for those who don't know. But and let's not sell, you know, steal even 30 bags, you know, like, right. The only other skills thing that was kind of wild with Acuna is that in the monster twenty twenty three season, he brought that K percentage way down and that snapped right back to kind of the pre 2023 levels as well. The power wasn't there before he got hurt last year.

Last year was a strange year before Acuna got hurt, which I think adds another wrinkle to figuring out what to do. Where you're choosing him is often the top end. Bad speed is still there though. Yeah. It's like, maybe that was just, we've talked about the Braves having a different approach as a team and teams may maybe adjusting to that in 2024. So making some changes will be something that everybody

in that lineup has to do over the course of the off season. Filling up the zone with low fastballs, yeah. But if he's not gonna run the same way, if we're not expecting to run quite the same way, it puts more pressure on the power being there the entire time for him to return value. And right away after surgery, yeah. Which he wasn't last time.

It's very easy though if you're sitting there, you start your team with Otani or judge and Acuna's sitting there at like pick 28, 29 or 30, like well, let's just go straight to the moon if this works out. Lean into the risk, yeah. But even, okay, so what would your most optimistic projection?

Acuna feels great, gets back pretty early in April or maybe early May, but sounds like sometime in April is reasonable. I think what I just said kind of for Durin, 260, 2020, maybe 2025. So are you taking Jaren Duran or Ronald Acuna Jr. late in round two? Or are you just going somewhere else entirely?

Duran. Okay, just wanted to make sure. So a safer version of what you expect a CUNY to do this year and maybe, maybe the big rebound for 2026. I don't think the projections are capturing this correctly because they don't know it's the second ACL surgery. Right, yeah, I don't think there's really a way to put that into the inputs.

Not a lot of guys have two ACL tears, like that's also kind of a strange sort of thing. I mean, I thought Royce Lewis, but also like Royce Lewis is a totally different kind of player. Like just doesn't have the same core foundation, wasn't up in the big leagues long enough to do the things that Cunha's done.

So I don't want to like throw that out there and be like, oh, he's Royce Lewis now. No, that's not it. He's a Cunha with two torn ACLs. I don't know what that actually looks like. So I understand why people do it. I don't know if I'm going to have a Cunha with two torn ACLs. I don't know what that actually looks like. So I understand why people do it. I don't know if I'm gonna have any Cunha this year. It feels weird to pass on him to be completely clear.

It's just like something in your brain's like, you should take him. Like, no, you shouldn't. Proof, I think, is the first time he came off an ACL tear. It just wasn't quite the same right away. I think it's gonna take some time. Yeah, Lindsey Vonn tore her ACL twice. Oh, so now we're going to skiing comps. Yeah. Well, I think that's probably a good indicator for us to make our way into the next tier. Hazel's ready for us to move on to the next tier as well.

The next group of outfielders go between pick 30 and pick 50. So start of round three. God, these are still studs, dude. Yeah, it's a nice group. It's Michael Harris, O'Neill Cruz, Wyatt Langford, and James Wood. You could talk yourself into probably anybody in this group moving up the tier if you really want to. I kinda want one of these on all of my teams, you know? I could almost just take one of each

on a different team. Just keep going, one from each group yeah three outfielders start out of five I don't know this is super exciting maybe it's a an argument to stay away from during and Acuna and the back end of tier two maybe because I mean I think of this group the weird thing is the guy that I'm least sure about from a what is his ceiling Relativity to others perspective is Michael Harris. We've seen more Michael Harris in the big leagues He continues to have a high chase rate, but he doesn't strike out a ton

He was 10 for 16 as a base dealer last year Although it was a hamstring injury that he spent time on the IL with Phenomenal defender that keeps him on the field maxes out his playing time 23 it's, dude. Yeah, here's what's happening. I don't think Michael Harris is Dylan Carlson. But I'm mentioning Dylan Carlson here for a moment because I noticed something the other day. I was looking at Dylan Carlson's profile and Dylan Carlson showed

up in the big leagues in twenty twenty and that was basically one of the best versions we saw of him was when he showed up. Like 2021 was his first full season. That was the best version. 2022, a little worse. 2023, a little worse. 2024, a little worse. And it shouldn't have declined quite like that. And I was really thinking about this pattern when I looked at Harris's page because Harris

came up, it was phenomenal in 2022. 37% better than league average. It comes back in 2023, 15% better than league average, comes back in 2023, 15% better than league average, comes back in 2024, 99 WRC plus, just a shade below. It's like, what's happening? Why isn't he actually getting better with the core skills that he has? I like him a lot as a player.

I just started looking at a couple things, like the chase, the lack of walks. He's just super aggressive, so sometimes he'll make bad contact, right? Is walks. He's just super aggressive, so sometimes he'll make bad contact, right? Is that what it is? I mean, because he has, he's not Dylan Carlson in terms of, he has excellent bats.

Yeah, he hits the ball hard, like he's a different player. It's the showing up and then just getting a little worse thing that I'm like, hmm, why? Maybe it's easier to have a book on Harris than some other players, because you're like, he's just gonna get up there and swing. He's up there to swing. I've seen this in Little League a lot.

You know, pitchers immediately put you into a box of like, you're up there to swing or you're up there to take. In Little League, it's really obvious, kind of, three of the two. You know? Like, there will be guys who just don't swing until there's two strikes, you know? Because they don't really want to swing.

And I think Harris is- Coach gets the swing, please. That's my thing. Oh, my God. Yeah. The coach is always yelling, swing at those guys. I mean, my kid's one of them. It's fine.

He wants to be a pitcher. And so Harris is up there to swing and you could probably coax some poor contact out. And so you see that 361 bap. You can also say maybe that's luck, but since he hits hits the ball hard 361 bap at 334 about 300 about it for Harris and those contiguous consecutive years so I don't know I'm a guy who loves bat speed and and and the ability to hit the ball hard and he hits the ball really hard and he has really nice bat speed and I think my personal theory of baseball is you have these athletic skills that you start with

and you peak with those at the very beginning. And like a sprinter, you're peaking at 23 with stuff like sprint speed and bat speed and stuff. And then you have these learn skills that I think only go up over time until you're 30, 31. And at some point at 30, 31, the learn skills can't stave off the the athletic skill decline you know and that's where

they both you just start declining in general and I do have evidence for this you know one of the things is you swing less and you chase less over time that's that's the aging curve for swings and and chases so that speaks in Harris's favor is like what if he had a full healthy season wouldn't I would expect his chase rate to be The best of his career his swing rate to be the lowest over the course But by the end of the season and for him to have you know the season we've all been waiting for There is an element of will he do that because he hasn't done it. He hasn't crossed the 539 plate appearance threshold yet I'll say it again. I don't think Michael Harris is Dylan Carlson.

I was just surprised that each year we've seen him has gone the wrong direction given the things that we like about him. I might like him the least out of this group because I really like the other three. But here's the other thing about Harris that I think needs to be in the conversation more often. Harris was moved to the big leagues faster than anybody probably planned on bringing him to the big leagues. 43 games at AA before he debuted,

and then just a couple rehab stints and AAA since. And given his age, if he hadn't debuted until last year, that wouldn't be ridiculous. We'd still be very, very excited about him. So what he's been able to do already at this point in his career is extremely impressive. There is still more there. There are those adjustments that you're suggesting.

I think they're still possible, especially with the quality of contact that he makes. It's just making those last changes on swing decisions. I guess some of the hardest decisions to make because you've probably had an approach that served you really well your entire career. And now to get to that next level, to push yourself to be consistently in the top of the order, even when everybody's healthy,

that's the kind of change you have to make. So that's probably the other little thing with Harris. I'm like, yeah, where's he hitting that lineup when everybody's healthy? Does he get a little buried sometimes? Does that work against him as well? Compared to these other guys, all three of which I think are critically important

to the productivity of their respective lineups. O'Neill Cruz, you like bat speed from Michael Harris, we talked about O'Neill Cruz. As much bat speed as you could ask for, right? And we saw some growth from him last season. The swing and miss is still a concern. 30% K rate, but it was an improvement from what we saw back in 2022 when he came in with a 34.9% K rate.

Uses the bat speed to make hard contact, like Harris hits the ball in the ground, probably a little more than we'd like, but has power, has speed, and is clearly an everyday guy for the Pirates at this point. There's no short-term platoon risk. It would be absurd for them not to continue playing O'Neill-Cruz as much as they possibly can.

And I think I did say something about the Pirates not creating an above average hitter, and I don't know why O'Neill-C much as they possibly can. I think I did say something about the Pirates of the Nights not creating an above average hitter, and I don't know why O'Neill Cruz didn't show up. Maybe because of the plate appearance threshold. He has a thousand plate appearances, but it stretched over three years. We're waiting for him to have the full season. The injuries that Cruz had though,

are a little bit different than Michael Harris's, I believe. I mean, the big one was just an awful situation at home plate where he kind of his foot stuck, you know. I don't know off the top of my head what the injuries were last year. Yeah, fractured ankle was the bad one in 2023 that cost him most of that season and, you know, it's just, that's more like the fluky bucket Like it's severe, but it's very, very random. It's not your quad for three, four weeks on the IL with the quad every year or something. It's just a devastating injury that you can't really stop.

Last year, I have to look back to see what he missed time with. I mean, I played 146 games. If he missed time with an actual IL set in, it was brief. But what do you do here when you're looking at this group? Because Wyatt Langford versus Cruz is more of, I think it's more of a like, do you want the extra ceiling?

And who has the higher ceiling? Because I don't know if that's an easy question to answer. I think they both could be first rounders. They both have future first round skills. I think actually all four of these guys could play their way into the first round this year. Which is amazing because that means four players in the first round are going to fall out. I don't think all four of them.

No, I meant each of the four. It's possible that any one of them could have a season like that. Yes, yes, yes. I doubt that it would be pretty big odds to get. You have to give me some good odds for all four of them. You're unhatching a bold prediction already on the 22nd of January. No, each of them has the skills and you know,

each of them has, you know, at least Harris and Cruz have some health issues. Langford, you know, I think he, we should look at that second half hard hit rate, I think. Langford wasn't on this, Harris was. Harris had a 51.7% hard hit rate in the second half, which I think was just really stand out. And then James Wood, 51.5. So that's, not only is that top five for the position, but when we've shown this hard hit rate leaderboard

for other positions, the bottom has been around 36 for second base and 40 for third base. The bottom of this list is Jazz Chisholm with a 48, Lars Knutbar with a 48, and Julio Rodriguez with a 49. This outfield is a great place to get your hard hit. James Wood, I also left strikeout rate on there. Obviously, James Wood has a 27.9, but Mike Harris had a 18.2% strikeout rate on there. Obviously James would has a 27 nine, but Mike Harris had a 18.2 percent strikeout rate in second half along with that 51.7 percent hard hit So, you know, there's a lot to like in Harris there and would is a little bit more your you know

Big strikeout guy like I don't know he Adulis like a younger Adulis Garcia with a better plate approach though So or maybe like a Jorge Salares that can run, you know, like there's a lot to like about James Wood. Lankford is I think a little bit more, it's not like all on the hard hit. He's a little bit more just good at everything and not necessarily elite at one thing. But that's a heck of a guy to build on in

terms of, you know, what kind of a floor is a guy who walks 10% of the time, strikes out 20% of the time, and barrels 10% of the time, and oh he also is gonna steal 20 bags, you know? Like his floor is that 260-2020 that we've been talking about, and the ceiling comes from maybe adding a little element of power into the game, adding more barrels, adding more fly balls, whatever it is. And he really took, got into his own in the second half. And there's a great piece by Michael Rosen on fan graphs about how Wyatt Langford in the second half was more upright.

And in the first picture on the left, that's beginning of the season Langford in the second half was more upright and in the first picture on the left, that's the beginning of the season Langford and he was really loading hard in his back hip. This is a kind of a college swing as what Rosen put it and what you can do if you load hard in your back hip in college, it's really great for lifting the ball and lifting the ball with power especially middle middle. But it doesn't give you the same kind of plate coverage that you might need in the big leagues when people are throwing, you know, sweepers with 10 inches,

12 inches, 16 inches of break, and also trying to hit you up and in. So in the second half, Langford went to a much more upright batting stance that allowed him to cover more of the plate. And you just saw his strikeout rate go down, his batted ball stats go up and he looked a lot more like what people thought. So I don't know if this is controversial but I would say that the ceiling is higher for everybody else in this tier but the floor is the highest for Langford. Right and I think you're saying that again not to say that Wyatt Langford lacks ceiling it just says something about the skills that everybody else in this group also has. All right, you say you like all these guys,

if you only get one for 20, 25 at these prices in round three, who are you taking? Who's your choice? I'm gonna take Langford. I'm still pretty risk averse in the first three rounds. I like Langford there, although I'd be really tempted by Wood because he's got all the tools,

and he's gonna, you know, I don't know how low his floor is, like they're not gonna set him down, I don't think. We've hit that one a couple times where it's like, what would he learn by going down? I don't think he'd learn really anything, because he was so good at triple A. I think the interesting thing with Wood is, he doesn't chase that much for a guy that struck out

28.9% of the time so you see it becomes more aggressive You know he could swing a little bit more often and with that swinging striker at a 10% You'd expect a lower strike out rate Yeah You see projections already taking about 2% 2 and a half percent off of the rookie K rate from James Wood He could maybe even do better than that So I think that's pretty encouraging. A lot of ways for him to be good

as we've talked about before. Hit the ball 115 in AAA last year, which is harder than Langford's ever hit it in terms of track balls. Yeah, just needs to lift the ball a little more often. We even at AAA last year, 52.4% ground ball rate. That was actually the highest of any stop of his career until he got from the big leagues

and then it was 55.6% with the Nats but that's like the biggest concern. I think we talked about this like people debut with the highest ground ball rates of their careers a lot and if you can go back and look at their minor league system and kind of you can kind of see where they're gonna go with the ground ball rate as opposed to you know if a guy comes up and hits 55% ground balls but he's been doing that all long in the minor leagues then you might not forecast as much of a change. Yeah, I think of this group, though, I like them all. I think Wood, Wood for me is the ceiling play even above Cruz.

And I think Cruz has another level he could get to, especially if he keeps keeps running, man. He was 22 for 23 as a base dealer last year. He's a burner. So if it doesn't come with more power from O'Neill Crews it might come with more stolen bases. A lot of ways for this group to get better, probably one of the most fun tiers of all the positions that we've talked about so far in the series. Let's move on to the next cluster which basically runs from the pick 50 range all the way down. Oh so you had those guys as like sort of a continuation of the other tier. They're kind of their own tier, they're like the real tier two,

whereas the first two groups we talked about are all tier one. It's just kind of like one A and one B because they're going inside the first two rounds. This is where I start to have questions. This one I may not have a lot of shares of. This is where I'm shopping in other bins. I'm looking for other things to do.

And it's even closer to pick 60 where you see Teasca Hernandez. It goes, we'll say pick 60 to pick 100. It starts with Teasca Hernandez, Lawrence Butler, Brenton Doyle, Seiya Suzuki, Luis Robert and Brian Reynolds round out the group. A fun group in the sense that they all do slightly different things. They've all got varying levels of experience and things that you like and things that you don't like. I can just really quickly go through this and give you a flaw for each of them, I feel like.

Okay, what's the Oscar Hernandez's flaw? Age, okay. I mean, he's not old old, but because of his age, you worry about strikeout rate slippage. Yes, strikeout rate plus age. Lawrence Butler, track record. Brenton Doyle, strikeout rate and track record. Seisuzuki, health, plus he's DH-ing full-time this year.

Robert, health, plus strikeout rate. Reynolds is the highest floor of this group and the hardest sort of to pick the knits, but I would just say ceiling is a flaw. Can I use that? Can ceiling be a flaw. Is that, can I use that? Can ceiling be a flaw? Can you be too consistently just very good that we don't think you can be amazing? He has no ceiling.

He has no ceiling. What I put on the sheet for today, it's an open question, feel free to throw this into part of our Discord conversation, but here's what I wrote for Brian Reynolds. I wrote this like a player outlook. The Toyota Camry of outfielders? Not much disagreement between systems when the inputs are this consistent. If you were to surprise us in a category,

would it be a spike in steals or homers? Because everything for Brian Reynolds, and I say this with a lot of respect for being very good year over year over year, is extremely difficult. And that's what Brian Reynolds has been. Metronome player, 24 or more home runs, four years in a row. Run production limited in part by what he's got around him.

Still it's like every single year looks about the same. You're getting 70 plus runs, you're going to get 80 plus RBIs most years. Stolen bases, low double digits seems to be the norm now for the last two seasons. Little beginning of a slippage in bat speed, I think. Yeah, maybe, that's pretty normal. He's kind of at that part of his career now, so everything about him points to a graceful decline. I think the thing that works against Brian Reynolds,

and maybe the thing that keeps people walking when they look at a Toyota Camry, is like, well, you can find a more interesting player in this range, and you can find a more interesting car in that price point if you look for it. What do you want? Do you want dependability and reliability? This is not a Toyota commercial. I don't even own a Toyota. I think that there's something to that where it's like, well, you know, I don't want maybe you took on a lot of risk early. Maybe you took a few swings early. Maybe you got some younger players in your core or you took some injury risk already. Brian Reynolds is really safe where he's going. He's a lot like Seiya Suzuki with a better health track record. And I have no qualms with Suzuki where he's going.

I guess one of my only problems is, and I'll repeat this because somebody asked about it recently is that my 15 team average player is 256 with 20 homers 13 steals basically like 77 he runs an RBI and he's uncomfortably close to that he's about 10% better and everything except for steals that's pretty good yeah I guess he's better than those numbers I was gonna make the case that if he is an average fantasy player then he should be going with an average pick which is later on than this I Mean I get it. It's not sexy. It's not exciting I think you pointed a few things out with this a group though that I want to push back on I mean to Oscar Hernandez Age I can't actually deny what is on the player page. He is getting older, we all are getting older.

Something that stuck with me, also from the forecaster, with Teasca Hernandez is the player he was last year, from a pure skills perspective, is the player that he was also in 2021 and 2022. The outlier year was the one year in Seattle, which he talked about. It's a miserable place to hit. Things didn't go well for him there.

He bounced right back. And even then he was a 258, 26 homer, seven stone base guy. So like if that's your floor or whatever. Oh my god, he was basically Brian Reynolds in his worst year. Which is why you're paying more. You're getting him at pick 60

and you're getting Reynolds at pick 100. But you're getting Te'Oscar in a place where he came back on a multi-year deal. He wants to be there and the Dodgers wanted him back The speeds actually little sneaky 83rd percentile sprint speed for Teasca Hernandez So I don't think the stolen bases are a lock to dry up there I'll probably run at least as much as Reynolds does Sporting cast is good as long as you don't think the strikeout rates gonna just go to the moon quickly

And I don't I don't think that's the case with the Oscar. I think he's okay here No, you know guys running 16 and 17 percent swing strike rates. Just make me really nervous Yeah, it's keeper dynasty concern, but I don't know if it's a 2025 concern for me It's a steep price to pay You know, I play enough keeper in dynasty that these things bleed together and can affect me Yeah, they creep in but I think with the Oscar though Part of it is looking at this group and saying, I don't know if I'm getting a lot more from most

of this group than I'm getting from the group behind. Lawrence Butler put together his best full season at any level as a rookie in Oakland last year. He's always had power, he's always had speed. There were a lot of lower level strikeout ratings. I wanna push back on my Butler one. Yeah, he was a top 15 hitter in the second half by the Fangraphs player raider.

I mean, those were first round skills at the end of the year, and you're getting them in round five of a draft right now. That's pretty nice. And the second half included some, you know, actual adjustments back and forth. I wanted to show, you know, if you look at his rolling graphs over at Fan Graffs,

I've got his zone swing and his fastball percentage against his Woba. And so what happened was that first Woba spike is when he hit like three homers in one game in Philadelphia. And like, remember he just like, there was a point where everyone's like, Oh my God, Lawrence Butler, you know what I mean? It's like, he just sort of just blew up in a scene and he had this, this crazy Woba, Woba spike where his rolling Wba was over 500 for a while.

And then he had a return to earth. And when you see the return to earth lines up exactly with when pitchers stopped throwing him fastballs. And I asked him about this. I said, they've stopped throwing you fastballs. They're filling up the zone with junk. And guess what Butler did? He started swinging more up the zone with junk. And guess what Butler did?

He started swinging more in the zone. So he reacted. And I think this is just huge. I mean, this to me, the two Woba peak, because he got back to 500 Woba again later in the season. And this is when pitchers had a different strategy against them. They weren't throwing them the fastball,

they were throwing them junk in the zone, and he exploded again. So to me, he's done it twice with two different approaches. I think that's huge. I think it's exactly what you wanna see a young player do. Play that game, play the adjustments in a way where you are still dangerous even with the second or third way teams are pitching you.

I think that's exactly what Lawrence Butler did. And that was a great way of pointing it out. I think if I had to take one player at price from this group, Butler's probably that guy. It doesn't mean I'll have a lot of Lawrence Butler. I think he's going to be in a lot of riser sections. He's not going to be in sleeper columns because he's going in the top 100, at least. Is he going to steal more bases than anybody else in this list?

Yeah, maybe. Everyone except for Doyle. So the thing I was gonna push back on with Brenton Doyle, you said his strikeout rate, he got down to 25.4% last year. Like that's a massive improvement. I didn't see that coming at all. He went from a 35% when he debuted to 25.4%,

walked a little bit more, chased a bit less, made hard contact more often. But he's 26. Just as I kind of brought the Michael Harris walked a little bit more, chased a bit less, made hard contact more often. But he's 26. And just as I kind of brought the Michael Harris barely played above double A before getting into the big leagues argument, where did Brenton Doyle play college ball, you know? I don't know, where did he play?

Brenton Doyle played college ball at Shepherd University in West Virginia. And I believe Shepherd's D2. Is that division one? Oh, it's D. And I believe Shepherd's D2. Is that division one? Oh, it's D2. Pretty sure Shepherd's D2. And I've actually heard, this was a little bit that I heard just randomly from,

I was talking to a D2 coach that in some ways, sometimes D3 play can be better because D2 schools are really strange. They're like trying to be D1, they're trying to move from one to the other and so what you'll see is that D2 schools disappear. Like their programs disappear. Either they become D1 or they disappear at times. So there's an over-undone whether or not Shepherd still has a baseball

program. Sad but probably it's true. It's something to be mindful of. I bring it up though, because it's like, okay, we talk about the quality of pitching labs and tech and information data, all the training. He wasn't doing it. He didn't have that. And even if- He still doesn't have that, to be honest.

And like, the other thing I wanna point in here is like, even in places like that, there can be great coaches. There can be sharp people that are helping you get better. Even in Colorado, I don't think Colorado is an organization devoid of intelligent people. I think they're under resourced as an organization. That's the main flaw, the biggest flaw, in my opinion, of the Rockies. So the thing I like about Brenton Doyle is that he is an elite defender at a position that is valued right 100% like two gold gloves in two years in center field got the Fielding Bible title for Best son or best center fielder their award

It's pretty good against same-handed pitching 18 of his 23 homers last year came against righties Had the big home road splits that you'd expect it was a twenty eight point eight percent It's actually good to have a righty at a premium position because you just, you don't feel like they'll get platoon. Yeah, so I mean, I think there's max volume playing time here so long as the way he plays center field is an occupational hazard, part of his greatness will hurt him.

If you took him and put him in a different park, I would be a lot less interested in it. But that's not happening, he's not going anywhere. He's a rocky man. He's not leaving. So even if you want to split the difference in K-rate and say it's 28% K-rate and batting average is probably going to be just sort of OK,

the projections are all going to spit out 20 homers and high 20 steals. And I can't really push back on that. He's efficient as a base stealer. He's going to play every day. And he's showing signs of getting a little bit better. Let me give you this though. Do you want to play this player?

$222, $273, $356. It's a $629 OPS. I don't want to play that player every week on the road and at this price to sit him is costly. That's another part of it. It's like I've done this with Ryan McMahon where I was like happy to get him and then I realized that in his splits aren't even as bad. There were times where I was like, dang, I bought this guy to be my starting CI or whatever,

and there are weeks where I'm trying to find somebody else. I just don't wanna run right by Brenton Doyle and pretend something hasn't, he's changed. He's showing some signs of growth at the plate that make him a little more interesting. I don't know if there's one more. But Butler has a shot at 30, 30, you know, I don't think anybody else in this tier does.

And I think Hernandez and Reynolds, you know, are actually the oatmeal of the group. And then Doyle has his own risk. Suzuki has a lot going for him. And, you know, I was a little bit flip on him just saying, you know, age 30, difficulties, staying healthy, he's topped out at 585 plate appearances. But he's been 29% better than the average

when he's been in there, say, as he has. And there's something in the max EV and the barrel rates that suggest that if he pulled the ball a little bit more, he could have a little bit of a power outbreak. And nobody's projecting him for that. They're all projecting him to go 260-2012, which is you know a lot like Bryan Reynolds with a few more stolen bases. But Bryan Reynolds does not hit the ball 115.5.

So there's something in Seiya's profile that suggests that there might be a bigger power ceiling than the people are giving him. I definitely like Seiya Suzuki more than Brian Reynolds. It's reflected in ADP, it's there. I probably wouldn't take Brenton Doyle ahead of him. I would take Lawrence Butler ahead of Suzuki. I think that's right. I think you can kind of like shift these players around by their multi-categorical contributions and then you kind of end up with this Brenton Doyle

versus Luis Robert toss up that we may have even put on the show back in the fall. I feel like that came up as a hey, these guys are going next to each other. That's kind of weird. If you like risk and reward, I mean, take your shot. The projections for playing time for Luis Robert are all above career levels. So you have to tell yourself that story easier to do that at this point in the draft than it is at the very top with someone like Tatis. All the systems agree that he's at least a better than league average bat So are we looking at a top 25 or 30 hitter coming at a slight discount because he's in a pretty bad

Rebuilding white socks lineup because it also comes with some injury risk second time He's had a lengthy absence with a hip injury last year So that's kind of lingering in there too as part of the risk profile with Luis Robert. Yeah, oopsie has him $8 apart and has Robert Jr. as the 13th best outfielder in baseball. It also has Robert with a 665 plate appearance number that he has never, he's never even crossed 600. So I'm gonna take the under on all that.

We saw the worst K rate of his career last year. So there's that kind of built in. The batting average risk you have with Doyle, the swing and miss risk you have with Doyle, it's right there. I mean, to me, this is one of the best toss-ups. Which of these things is more likely to pan out? There's also, you know, I think there's a little whiff of the industry making a comment

on this, which is that, you know, a guy who is under potential team control for three more years, or this year and two more, at a cheap deal, you know, at like 10 million per who can still ostensibly play center field, with teams that have some unsettled center field action and are contenders. I mean, we got the Astros with Jake Myers at 24th, the Rays with Johnny Luke at 25th, the Royals at 26th, the Blue Jays even with Dalton Varsho at 27th, the Mets with Jose Sirian, Tyrone Taylor 28th on the

depth chart. These teams have not traded for Luis Robert. It's still late January it's still possible. It is still possible I mean Robert would be a pretty big pickup for the Mets I think but it also suggests that maybe the White Sox are looking at these like oopsie type projections and saying you better give us something for a top 15 outfielder who can play center field. And the other teams are saying, dude your guy can't stay on the field

and he strikes out a bunch and this is a league that's trying to add more contact. That's the tricky part is I think the White Sox best path to get something closer, like the return you'd get if you believe on the high end projections, is having him play really well for three or four months to begin the season.

And strike out less. Strike out less, don't get hurt, and Frankenstein, the best parts of your profile together. The return changes considerably if that happens. That's the gamble I think they have to take. I think they're right to wig it out. They're not getting what they want right now because of the runway.

He's also a really interesting thing that, we know, we say chase rate a lot. We talk about chase rate a lot, but each player has their own optimal chase rate really. And the way, the reason I bring this up is that he was really aggressive 21, 20, 22 and 23 where he was swinging at almost 50% of the balls he saw outside the zone. And his strikeout rate was lower combined of those three years. He had a similar swinging strike rate in 2024 and he chased less and he struck out more. And that's because he has a poor sense of the zone.

And asking him to swing less will lead to more, you know, taken strike threes. So, you know, I think chase rate is one of those things that's like very hard to actually change. It does describe a lot of your aging patterns and it's not a one-number thing where you can say chase rate bad, player bad. You know there's it's it's one of those more nuanced things but I do I have heard from coaches that it's very hard to change with coaching so and you can see

sort of in this case I might tell Robert Robert, hey, just swing away, man. Just go for it. I'm Robert Overdoyle, if I'm choosing from that group. Got one more group we're gonna try to get to here before we wrap up this episode. It's the beginning of the fourth tier. Pick 100 to pick 120. We've talked about Cody Bellinger before.

He's kinda sandwiched in here. He's not really into them. I think he's fine at the price, but this group includes includes Anthony Santander, Riley Green, Christian Yelich and Spencer Steer, who was also covered on a previous preview. So not as many names to talk about in this group. Let's start with Santander. We didn't talk about this with the move, but the park factors moving from Orioles Park to Rogers Center.

Is it a slight bump? I think when we had this card up a little earlier looking at homers minus ex-homers, Anthony Santander had thirty six point six expected homers, forty four actual homers last year. So if you were looking at what he did last season and saying, it's probably coming down, well, ex-homers agrees. But the other thing that caught my eye on this graphic is that it also includes no doubter percentage, percentage of home runs that would have been Homers in

all 30 parks. Anthony Santander, 45.5% of his home runs were no doubters. The only player who also was on this card that has that is Aaron Judge at 49.2%. So it's legit power. There's no question about that at all with Anthony Sontair. It's very obvious, but I thought it was kind of a funny thing that he was very, air quotes, lucky in terms of homers last year. There's just like give and take every year. So if you look at expected home runs by Park, which takes wall heights, distances, and environmental effects into account. So you know, temperature and things like that.

He has 151 expected home runs in Baltimore and 151 career expected home runs in Toronto. So, most of my worries about Santander are longer term and a little bit more about his real life package, which I think he'll be a DH after not long. And that can affect his play on the field, but he does have an enticing mix of contact and bat speed that should produce at least two 40 and, you know, 30, 35 homers next year.

You know, that's a below average when it comes to average. And so it's, it's a build play. It's like it works in some builds and it doesn't work for others. I would say if you were bummed to have missed out on Teasca Hernandez a few rounds earlier Santander is at least kind of similar, albeit probably with 10 to 15 points less in a batting average projection. And in the final output, line of quality Dodgers versus Blue Jays also gonna impact the counting stats a bit.

But as far as the thump you need, this is power spackle, maybe a little expensive, but it's good power spackle nonetheless if you're looking to catch up in homers. Maybe you took Carroll early when other people were taking guys who were gonna hit 30 homers. I think the Riley Green question is a fun one. It's the second year we saw the barrel rate nudge up as he's lifting the ball more. He's only 12 for 18 as a base dealer now in his career. It's the second year we saw the barrel rate nudge up as he's lifting the ball more.

He's only 12 for 18 as a base dealer now in his career. It's 329 big league games, like a half dozen per year. I don't think that's ever happening. Yeah, I don't think he's gonna really be a stolen base threat. So what I think the question is with Riley Greene, redraft, long term, it applies to both.

If he's going to be a four category stud, it has to come from batting average. And if that's gonna happen, I think the strikeout rate has to come down. Now he's young enough where it could easily be part of the profile, could keep improving in that regard. Are you banking on that? Yeah, it's 24.

XBA had him at 253 last year. Do you think there's 270, 280 batting averages coming from Riley Green as a guy that could be taking one more step forward here as he continues to gain experience? I think if he takes a step forward, it's actually in power. And my reasoning is that a 114 max TV is pretty good. The bat speed is good. And you can see with oopsie, you know, with similar playing time, they're giving oopsies, giving him 25 homers and steamers giving him 22, 23. So, you know,

I think the upside here is for a 260 30 guy. That's where I'd be, I'd be hoping for 260-35. His swing strike rate, 11%. He's projected to improve his aging curve suggests he should, he should improve his strikeout rate, but I don't think it'll be by so much that he becomes like a 21, 22% caperate guy, which I think you have to be to kind of get to 280 territories. So could he be a little bit lucky on balls and play hit the ball hard have a good babbip so far He's had a pretty good babbip could he get to like?

270 yeah, but I'd be more interested in him hitting 260 265 with 30 homers. I think at least a reason to not draft Bryan Reynolds Because I think you can get the Bryan Reynolds numbers as sort of like a safe this is what he does already. Whereas Reynolds were like I'm not really sure there's any more ceiling there we would have probably seen more evidence of it by now. You still get some ceiling with Riley Green and you're not really giving up a lot of floor I think that's probably the the best way I could describe him right now but yeah I just thought it was a little strange that coming up maybe we looked at him as someone that was gonna hit 280, 290, maybe

even 300 someday in the big leagues and I think that has started the fade a little bit last But not least of this group as I mentioned we talked about Bellinger and steer already in a previous episode Christian Yelich we haven't heard a lot really since the winter meetings at that point Yelich was on track in his recovery from back surgery that was during the winter meetings in December at that time He had not started baseball activities. The surgery, you might recall, microdiscectomy, performed to try and eliminate the back stuff that was bothering him for a few years.

So everything was trending in the right direction in December, that's nice. What are you doing with Yelich here? Because I think you can, it's kind of like another version of the Acuna problem where if you look at projections and the projections assume that he's just gonna be okay coming off a back surgery then the optimism and the projection says must draft at price. But when you start to think about the mechanics of that injury and just coming off of surgery and how they might be a little

more careful with him, do you start to temper your enthusiasm a bit? Like everyone's like, oh, yeah, he'll steal 20 bags and hit 18 homers. Like there's like, the projections are all the same for him. I'm just not sure that he's gonna steal 20 bags. So I think my personal projection for him is like, 575 plate appearances, 17 homers and 12 bags. All right, you're just cutting stolen bases in half,

basically, you're not even dinging them that much on playing time compared to some of the numbers that are out there. That's not bad. But the numbers that are out there are dinging him on playing, like 575 played appearances is not for fools. Right, yeah, they've already built in some buffer. And the preventative maintenance or buffer

if he's not ready to start the season, which is not even the indication right now, it's all in there. I'll grab him if he's falling, I'll grab him if he falls. You know, I may have a green share. I don't think I'm going to be buying Santander. Bellinger and Steer are Spider-Man meme for me. They had exactly the same launch angle,

like the exact same max DB, like the exact same barrel rate. Like, you know, they both stole 20 bags and they both are going to have nice parks. So for me, I think I might put Bellinger, Yellich and Steer in a little mini tier if I had a need there, and once one goes, maybe I take one of the other two.

My only argument that I have for Yelich, and this is not a Homer argument as much as it's just saying, his back was bothering him these last few seasons. Last year he was 21 for 22, he was a base dealer with a bad back. Right, if it fixes the problem, I think it's an important part

of how he provides value to this club. So I don't think, whereas with Acuna, it's kinda like, hey, two torn ACLs, let's just be a little careful initially with Jelic, maybe they'll do the same kind of thing. Maybe he's just like, you feel good or you don't. Right, and even when he wasn't feeling great, he was still running as much as he did.

He still stole backs, yeah, that's an interesting argument. It's just one of those things I'm thinking about. And it might be an argument for near full playing time because that team doesn't have great hitters up and down the line. Dude, you can't just do that when you know I have to end the show. You can't do that. Because then the people that follow the Brewers,

that love the Brewers are like, DVR didn't even defend the Brewers, like Eno slandered them, Britt gets them all the time, Katie Wu drops in and slanders the Brewers, they can't hit, they're not gonna get it. I heard it, I will defend it later, because we literally have to go.

We have to go. So just know, Brewers fans, I am acknowledging that dig, and I will, I will get even for it at some point, at a date to be named later. Maybe it will happen in the Discord when I have a moment of clarity, but it will happen at some point. You can join our Discord with the link in the show description. Get those high mind rankings in for the previous positions or for the outfield. Again, the outfield is bigger. It's going to go 50 deeps. It's going to wait until parts two and three of our position previews in the outfield come out.

Feel free to do that. On Blue Sky, you can find enoceras.beesky.social. You can find me, dvr.beesky.social. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening. Studs. world. Except on Monday mornings when it's 15 minutes and we tried to cram in the results, standings and stories from the top 10 leagues on the planet. Or at least the top 10 leagues I run on a football manager save. Follow this show today and you'll never miss another big story again, whether it's news that the Athletic has just broken. David Arnstein, what happened?

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