Rates & Barrels - 2025 Outfield Preview, Part 2

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Eno and DVR continue their position preview series in the outfield with a focus on early-middle round options (~Pick 120-210 overall). As you accumulate depth and seek categorical boosts, which players should you target with options available throughout your draft? (Note: This is part two of a three-episode series focusing on the outfield) Rundown 3:05 ADP Tier 5a -- Ian Happ, Mike Trout, Pete Crow-Armstrong & Randy Arozarena 27:46 ADP Tier 5b - Dylan Crews, Steven Kwan, Adolis García & Jasson Dominguez 46:35 ADP Tier 6 -- Colton Cowser, Josh Lowe, Brandon Nimmo, Nick Castellanos, Ceddanne Rafaela, Parker Meadows, Tommy Edman, Lane Thomas, Taylor Ward, Tyler O’Neill, Kerry Carpenter & Victor Robles 1:20:52 ADP Tier 7 -- Heliot Ramos, Cedric Mullins & Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (more Tier 7 to begin Part 3 of the series!) 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 Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like so worried about my sister. You're engaged! You cannot marry a murderer! I was sick, but I am healing. Returning to W Network and StacTV. The West Side River is back! If you're not killing these people, then who is? That's what I want to know.

Starring Kaylee Cuoco and Chris Messina. The only investigating I'm doing these days is who shit their pants. Killer messaged you yesterday? This is so dangerous. I gotta get out of this. Based on a true story. New season premieres Monday at 9 Eastern and Pacific. Only on W. Stream on StackTV. Hey guys, you know what this playground could use?

A wine country, huh? A redwood forest would be cool. Ski slopes! Wait! Did we just invent California? Discover why California is the ultimate playground at visitcalifornia.com. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly get back. CBC News brings the story to you live. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know

what's going on and what that means for you and for Canada. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. Download the free CBC News app or visit cbcnews.ca. Welcome to Raids and Barrels. It is Thursday, January 23. Derek Van Riper, Enosaris here with you, continuing the position preview series, part two out of three focusing on outfielders. Yesterday, day one of the outfield previews.

We got through about pick one 20 overall in terms of the outfielders we covered. So you can go back and listen to that. If you want the early outfielders, if you want these mid round guys, we're going to focus on them for the next 90 minutes or so. It's kind of funny because there are no real tears in the outfield at this point. They're all just connected to each other with very small gaps. Nevertheless, we'll try and find some values along the way and maybe point out a few players that we're not excited about at their current prices as well.

Join our Discord, the link in the show description within the Discord, you can find links to the Hivemind rankings for all the position previews that have gone out so far. So the in-field, all available, and the outfield, which is deeper, it goes 50 players, they're going to participate in those rankings. All those links are in the discord.

So be sure to jump in and do that. We'd love to compile those and share those with everybody. Once we get a nice batch of those in, you know, how's it going for you on this Thursday? Good, good. Uh, going to see a show tonight. Excited about that. Continuing the arguments about the Dodgers.

I got, I looked and in the last four years, uh, you know, Chad Young brought something up, so I looked in the last four years, six of the top 10 in playoff wins have come from, um, the top 10 in payroll and two have come from the bottom 10 in payroll and two have come from the bottom 10 in payroll and two from the middle. So there might be some evidence that, you know, money can buy you championships, I guess. But there was another piece out from baseball prospectus that looked at a team's ability

to change their win totals year to year. And the Gini coefficient, which is the sort of relationship of inequity, you know, within win structure. So basically saying, are there a lot of, a lot of 110 win teams and 110 with lost teams, you know, like that sort of stuff and looked at it within the history of baseball and found that. We are an unremarkable place when it comes to those things. And that the seventies in particular, the Gini coefficient was much higher and the ability for teams to change their lot in life was much lower.

And the seventies is right before free agency started. So it's an interesting time slot. So anyway, then there's the whole discussion about whether or not a cap would actually help, which involves other sports. And it's all very complicated. And we'll continue the conversation here. But we are here to talk about outfielders. And the thing I wanted to say other than that was we do have a bias

towards maybe towards 15 team leagues and weekly leagues and leagues maybe with shorter benches. So if you hear us talk about injury risk and you have an unlimited IL slot in your team, then you can maybe discount that player less than we will because you will probably especially if it's maybe ten teams with unlimited il's because then Your waiver although the waiver list will be affected if you have unlimited il's you won't have as much on the waiver wire But your replacement level could be something you factor in somebody brought up in my DMs about Tyler Glass now getting 130 great innings from him plus what you can get off the waiver wire.

You know, it is a meaningful thing in a 15 team league. It's not super meaningful. Like you're not getting the greatest players off the waiver wire. So that's where our bias has come into play. Another one is I've been trying to throw in some draft and hold and some, um, a best ball analysis because best ball, you really like variability and draft and hold, you kind of hate variability. You kind of want safety, you know, so, um, you know, there are these different biases that we have and we're just trying to excavate those biases in front of you and, uh, give you analysis for different kinds of leagues. Yeah, is as wide of an approach as we can reasonably take. It's why it's just, it's player analysis. What do we like about this player? What concerns us about this player? And you can try to apply that a little bit more specifically to leagues.

But as Eno said, it's kind of framed around a 15 team mixed league sort of conversation. So keep that in mind throughout this series. Tier five, as I guess we'll call it in the outfield, does run from pick one twenty to one fifty or so, so up through the end of round 10 of a 15 team league. It's a fun group again. Ian Happ, Mike Trout, Pete Crowe Armstrong, Randy Rose Arena, Dylan Cruz, Stephen Kwan, Adelise Garcia, and Jason Dominguez are the players that are clustered here together.

Mike Trout being in this group is just jarring to me, man. Like he hit 40 homers two years ago. It was the last time he played triple-digit games and he's still a barrel machine. Like the little bit we saw him in 2024, he popped 10 homers, went six for seven as a base dealer in 29 games. So the potential Roto goodness seems like it's still there

even as his body continues to betray him. Now that he's 33, is the risk reward situation one you're comfortable with with Trout at this point? Because we've talked about projecting playing time based on what we've seen over the last three years and you're not going to get a very large plate appearance number from Mike trout doing some back of the napkin math Marcel in your way to a number based on how banged up he has been in recent seasons. Yeah. A Marcel projection for him would be maybe like a 300 plate appearances for the season. The actual projection systems have him somewhere between 480 and 560.

And then I just wanted to break up, bring up a guy we talked about a lot. We ended with a Brian Reynolds party, uh, at the end of last season. I just want to say that these projections in 480 to 560 plate appearances look superior to Brian Reynolds. Yeah, man. That's the thing about trout. And just as you were saying before, using the glass now example on the pitching side is you get to replace them when he's hurt. Or if he's out for prolific significant periods of time, if it's day to day stuff,

maintenance where he's getting days off weekly leagues, you can't always get a substitute in there, but if he's on the IL for a month or two, you're not taking a zero, you're shuffling in the best available outfielder or the best available bat based on how you shuffle lineup around. So I don't think this is a bad value. I do think that lower number you referenced, which is alongside the ATC projection right now at BanGraphs, the 482 plate appearances seems much more realistic, right? Because the 2022 season I was referencing before, that 40 homerun year, he played 119 games,

was 499 plate appearances. That's still superior to Ryan Reynolds projection though. 255, 28 homers, eight stolen bases and 482 from ATC. Yeah. So I think if you go in with that as an expectation, I think you might be pleasantly surprised. You might get a good healthier from Mike Trout. I don't have a strong case against them at this price. It just feels like enough of a discount where if you have not built a lot of injury risk into your foundation already,

you should feel pretty good about Trout where he's going. I think also, you know, there's a question of like how motivated will he be to stay on the field? Will the, would the angels be bad again? And, and, you know, he doesn't care to get back on the field. I do actually wonder if there becomes a time when he kind of might be motivated by his legacy. Um, he's a hall of Famer already. I don't think that's a crazy thing to say. I don't think you kicked another hornet's nest just now, but Hey, we'll find out in about eight hours.

We'll see. Uh, but you know, he'd be much, he'd have like a no doubt first ballot hall of fame, uh, kind of approach. I think if he got to some numbers, like at least 400 homers or, you know what I mean, like there's there, he is starting to, uh, make people wonder if there's a little bit too much of a David Wright situation here, you know, like he, he is not tapering well. make people wonder if there's a little bit too much of a David Wright situation here. He is not tapering well. And so I wonder if, I think people care about their legacy, even if they will admit it or not publicly. And so even if the angels are bad, I could see him

having some motivation to play a decent season, play a full season. Yeah. I mean, I think in the case of Trout, he's had to deal with the organizational. Out of Anaheim at some point. Well, he's played with the organizational frustration in Anaheim his whole career. And this is what he's been able to do despite that. So I don't, yeah, I don't worry about motivation and things for him. I think it's more just doing things that just keep him healthy. And there's a lot of things he has to do to stay on the field, but him. I think it's more just doing things that just keep him healthy and there's a lot of things he has to do to stay on the field. But I don't think it's impossible even though recent seasons have been mostly unkind on

the health front for Trout. Ian Hap does go a little bit before him. I see Hap and I see Brian Reynolds with maybe a slightly different tilt where in an O.B.P. league, Hap gets a bump. In an average league, he gets a little bit of a ding. But I think he's just a nice player and there's projections agreement pretty much across the board on what Hab brings to the table at this point in his career. Projectable, yeah, projectable, easy, a lot of baseline results at 30, not quite into the place

where you'd be worried about a precipitous decline. So, um, you know, with power or speed, you know, just a decent, decent guy across the board. And then I just wanted to throw this up on the screen because this may be loud in the second half last year, Ian Hap had almost exactly the same barrel rate, max CV, hard hit, reach a chase rate and swing strike rate as Jackson Churio. I'm sorry. It's not, I'm not trolling you. This is literally something I saw and laughed and wanted to bring to you.

I'm not saying Ian Hab is Jackson Churio. I'm just saying Ian Hab is actually a pretty, a pretty decent player. And if you're risk averse, he's probably a better, a better pick than Mike Trapp. I'm so tired right now. I want to punch back and I feel like I just have nothing in my legs anymore. I'm just wobbly. I realized the age difference. I know Churio has more upside.

It's just, I'm just laughing. I'm not trolling you, but I'm trolling you. I don't really know where you were going with that other than to say, I'm not a bad player. Yeah, that's it. That's about it. Let's go to the other cub in this group though. Pete Crow Armstrong.

He's been frequently discussed on this show over the past year or so. 27 for 30 is a base dealer last year. Pop 10 homers. And that was just 410 plate appearances. I think when I look at PCA, one of the things that kind of stands out is the K rate came in a little lower than I expected. 23.9% not bad for his first extended run as a regular.

And better in the second half, 22.5 in the second half, although September he kind of burst back up again. But the thing that we've always liked about Pete Crowe Armstrong is that he is a phenomenal center fielder and it's to the point where he will play a ton. So you have speed efficiency on the base pass right away, a hitter that's at least good enough to hold his own with the potential to get better.

So now that we've seen some of the underlying numbers of 36.8% hard hit rate last year, you know, 7.4% barrel rate, not bad again for a 22 year old with the first prolonged run in the big leagues. I think you can talk yourself into growth. It's just how much growth do you get this season? Is it going to take more time or is the breakout, the full breakout coming right here in 2025 from Pete Crow Armstrong? Yeah.

And you had that second half that gave us a peek of maybe what a full kind of breakout season would be for him because in the second, the first half, he had a 64 WRC plus and a five 82 OPS and you know, um, was skating on it was mostly living on his defense, which I is so elite that I actually voted in the field, not the feeling bibles, the sports info solutions, um, awards that they give out. And I voted him as the best center fielder. Um, the second half for peak arms, 262, three 10 OBP, four 25 slugging, one Oh four WRC plus, I think that is a reasonable thing to hope for from him. Um, two 60 average. It's not what he's projected for. I think it's a reasonable thing to hope for from him. Um, two 60 average, it's not what he's projected for.

I think it's a reasonable thing to hope for is projected for sort of two 40 to two 50 with 14 homers. Um, if he, if you can hope for maybe. 18 homers, two 60 average and 40 homers, that's something to, to help for you pay for the, um, you know, the two 40 to two 50, 14 homers and 30 stone bases. I think the elite defense will keep them out there. The one caveat I have is that even if he has elite defense and he's out there every day, you may not want to put them down for, you know, six 50 plate appearances

because there was a piece in the athletic by Sahadev and Patrick Mooney, just these are the things we've heard and there's a whole section about who will lead off and, um, they basically have, they had like two people, like a person in the front office and Craig council say, not Pete, which not Pete. Not Pete. It was, that's how they ended the article. They had to go, not Pete. So Pete is not going to lead off.

I mean, he did have moments where his OBP became above average across the league. And you saw maybe he could be a lead off guy, but I think in this year, he won't, won't be him. So. You saw maybe he could be a lead off guy, but I think in this year, he won't, won't be him. So his 580 played appearances, what he's protected for a little bit low, maybe. But I also wouldn't push it to like, you know, 650 and just like, you know, I, I think it's much safer to, to use the 580 as a baseline. Right.

Cause it could be the bottom third of the order for all of this season and maybe longer term with that growth that you could see, then there's a flip to the top of the order or top of the order against righties. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like I said, his great second half was a 104 WRC plus. Like maybe he's just a guy who's an average bat, but a great glove. One of the tools I like to use, by the way, just to look back at lineup position, I find at baseball reference, they have the batting orders tab on the team pages, you can go back and then you can click player

highlights where that player hit across the bottom. It shows you how many games each player started in each slot in the batting order. So you have 66 games in the leadoff spot last year, Nico Horner, 65 for the Cubs. I think Mike Tachman came in third with 26 and like Wisdom and Christopher Morrell had four and one respectively. But yes, I do think it's still probably more of a half or Horner situation up top, health permitting with those two guys. So that does work against Pete Crowe Armstrong a bit in terms of counting stats. Could be a Cubs lineup that takes another step forward though with the addition of Tucker that we talked about in part one of our outfield series. Before we get to Cruz and including

Arroz Arena, what are we looking at in would you rathers at other positions right now? That's a great question. Because I like these players and I'm like, yeah, I would like to have HAP. Oh yeah, PCA 30 to 40 steals in my outfield with non-zero homers. Yeah, I'd like that. But I don't think I have a draft where I have one of these guys yet. All right. Snap calls here are the four players going just in front of Ian HAP by ADP right now, last 14 days, Luis Garcia, junior versus HAP.

HAP. Casas versus HAP. Casas first base gets real dicey late. I'm with you on these first two. I like Cassis better and I do like Hap better than Garcia. Logan O'Hoppe versus Ian Hap. Well, that's a two catcher situation. Uh, I probably, I think I might go with Hap because I think,

uh, yeah, listen, if I don't have a catcher at all, then I'm taking it with Hoppe. Okay. But if I have a catcher, I don't, I don't, I think I might take Hab because. All right. Royce Lewis versus Ian Hab. I have made this decision and I took Lewis, but that was also because I didn't have a third baseman yet.

If I did have a third baseman, I would be pretty happy to not take Royce Lewis. I think I was sort of desperate for a third baseman when I took Lewis. So. I'll give you two more names. Ezekiel Tovar versus Ian Hap and Beau Bichette versus Hap. We're getting towards the bottom of shortstop here.

Right. This is already like 10th and 11th shortstop probably. Yeah. You got Volpe still available a little later in some drafts, Xavier Edwards, but yeah, shortstop starts to wane a little bit. I like Volpi enough. I might take out. Okay.

All right. So appropriately priced at the top, you know, I think, do you like trout more than half or is that just me, by the way? I'm finding myself to be pretty risk averse these days. Coward. I'm not saying like draft every health grade F player and I'm not saying to do that. That's absurd. Well, I've just found that there are lots of, uh, bad health grade players

available later in the draft and I, and I'm just, I gave myself, I give myself the ability to draft those guys. If I don't draft them early. So, okay. We need like a rolling counter for how much like injury risk you've taken on with a cumulative health grade to then know how many of those darts you could throw late. We have draft software that we can use that tracks how we're doing and counting stats, average, all that stuff, but we just need like a risk meter, like an actual,

take a shot here. You've been boring and oatmeal-y. all that stuff, but we just need like a risk meter, like a actual, Hey, take a shot here. You've been, you've been boring and oatmeal. You've been super conservative with your build. Like, you know, you can take a chance now or the opposite. You could maybe do it like projected IP and PA. Yeah. It's something that's just an, like a innings pitch counter with like a, that's like really conservative.

That's like, just like dings all the health grade people down to like 80 pitch in his pitch and stuff. And do little cutouts of our head. Yeah. If you get any, if you're like a head, like somebody that's like, Oh, this is what the league's averages or the rest of the league is doing. This was your IP is doing like, because what I did in my whole driving holes, I went cordon burns, Logan Webb, Ryan Pepeo. And I felt like I had a pretty good base of decent health grades. So that allowed me later to take Sandy Alcontra and Luis Garcia,

which are returning from surgery. And I have no idea what they'll give me, but I did, I did balance it out. Note to self, quantify risk more effectively throughout draft. Do not use gut feel quite so much. All right. So speaking of gut feel, Randy Rosarena is in this tier. At the time that he was traded to Seattle, we talked about going from one difficult place to hit to another. I think you hear a lot of similar complaints about the trop that you've heard about T-Mobile field. Batter's eyes tricky, righties have struggled there. Just kind of similar chatter, I think,

we could classify it as, right? So I wasn't really worried about Randy Rose Arena in that regard. He'd already produced well in a difficult situation. 20 plus homers now four years in a row, 20 plus steals four years in a row. I think he's still mostly that player. It's interesting though that the projections are starting to pull down that batting average to an uncomfortable level.

And it's a rough slope, right? I mean, the first regular season where he was a full-time player in Tampa Bay, it was a 274 with a 356 OVP down to 263, 254, and then 219 last year. There's been a little bit of an increase in K rate over the last three years. Got up to 26.1% overall last year, including 28.5% after the trade. So yeah, maybe there was some adjustment to the new park built in, but Randy Rosa Arena isn't so old that it should all be falling apart. He's going to turn 30 at the end of February. I guess I'm wondering how much would you be worried about the barrel rate in the

second half, basically post-trade dropping all the way to 5.3% because I feel like the floor for the power does take a hit if he's not able to barrel the ball the way he was previously. I I'm surprised. Like to me, it seems like a blip and I'm generally in. Is there something I'm missing with Randy Arrozarena? I think he's got two approaches and he gets enamored with one or the other. You can see this in the bouncing around of his ground ball rate and even his splits from Tampa to Seattle, 43% ground ball rate with Tampa, uh, two 49 Babap, 10%

barrel rate, 180 ISO with Seattle, uh, 47% ground ball rate, three 23 Babap, 5% barrel. I think those are the two Randy Rosa-Reyna's, you know, there's the one who, you know, hits the ball hard, pulls it a lot on the ground, um, and. Reduces his power upside, uh, but gets a little bit more out of his batted balls in terms of singles. Um, and there's the one who hits fly balls and, you know, I think when he's at his best, he's kind of toggling between them at such an intense, tense rate.

Like when he was killing the playoffs, I think he's kind of toggling between those two where pitchers don't know where to go. If we go low, he smokes a double. If we go high, he hits a homer, you know, like he, I think he has those two swings and he kind of toggles them. And when he's in a bad place, he doesn't know which one to use. Um, if he is impressed upon by the park If he is impressed upon by the park and it was a random things. Okay. In this park, I really just have to hit the ball hard on the ground. Then he will maybe have a slightly better batting average. He's projected for a two 96 Babbit. Maybe he could go back to his three 18 Babbit for his career.

And he had a three 23, even in Seattle in the second half. So maybe you could add 20 points of batting average, uh, to him. If he's going to take this lower approach, but you would have to subtract some power. So if he stays what he was a Rosemarie in the second half with Seattle, I think you could have maybe a two 45 batting average for him next year, um, with maybe 18 homers. And 20 steals, you know, would you take that over at two 25 to 30 average and 23 homers? I think that's the range for him, depending on sort of which Randy or Rosa Ranch shows up.

I think I like them the most of this group other than trout. I think I like them the most of this group other than Trout. I think I like them more than Ian Happ. We've seen multiple seasons of lower averages from Happ along the way. So we've already got that kind of baked in based on the pipes of batted balls. Healthier than Trout. And we see lower stolen base totals too. Even though Happ's an efficient base dealer, the volume's been there for Randy or Rosa Reyna. Unless the Mariners are going to give him fewer green lights, I guess that's a possibility, but they still strike me as a team that will have to find ways to put runs on the board

because the lineup isn't just so amazing top to bottom that they're going to mash and do it, so they should be a pretty aggressive team overall with the guys that at least can offer stolen bases. So I'm pretty in on Randy Arroz-Arena, even though I do think he could be one of those guys that gets caught in between those two approaches on a somewhat regular basis. I was reminded that over at FanCrafts, they had these dashboard cards. I think it might be, if you remember, um, but, um, you can choose the player Raider as one of your dashboard cards. And there's a couple of options on it, but what's interesting about this is for

me is, you know, it's giving me a weekly value for Randy Arreza Arena in 15 team leagues, it's puts out a 46 best outfielder, um, for last year. So that's way lower than where we are right now. Where are we? We're, we're in the sort of 25 to 30. Okay. And, um, and he was 46 last year, but also it has the weekly value. It has the weekly value in green and he was below zero last year

for, well, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine weeks. And two were the last two weeks of the season. So I was actually also talking to Jeff Zimmerman about how he just cut. Randy Rose arena in one of his leagues last year, because he realized that getting full playing time with that batting average was actually draw, dragging his batting average down and he wasn't getting enough juice out of the homers and stolen bases, um, to make it worthwhile for his standing. So that was just like a specific team situation where, you know, he looked at

the standings and he looked at his team and he was like, Oh, I, Randy's not going to help me and he's only going to hurt me. Um, so I'm not saying that that is true for everyone, that he was totally droppable. In fact, you can see the ownership level and stayed near a hundred percent the whole year, but I will say that. That's the risk that he hits two, 10 again and goes 15, 15. And in some places it's not rosterable, especially like 10 team leagues and

leagues where your, your batting average is really important to you. And he's not a good OPP guy. I think he's better than we're giving him credit for overall right now. Career 346 OPP. And even last year was a 332. Like there's more value. 356 with Seattle. He brings more value to the Mariners than people realize.

And he's 14% better than league average by WRC plus last year, even in a really weird down sort of year. So I'm in, I understand where the downside comes from, but I think the more likely the median outcome here is still good enough where at price I'm definitely in. And again, I will take Randy or Rosalina over E and a half if the price ends up being even on draft day. Dylan Cruz. Okay. I frequently discuss player on this show as well, because the player we thought he was coming out of LSU and the player he's been so far as a pro kind of seemed like two different players.

So it's okay. I thought he had like light tower power to all fields and that is not what we've gotten really. Yeah. And I think the reminder, I like to use the fan graph cards. I have got the prospects report open. Game power, present 45, future 60. That was a 2024 update.

Raw power, present 60, future 60 as well. I think it's still supposed to be there. It just isn't, it isn't there, at least in the first run in the big leagues, but even AAA, you're like, OK, 13 homers, 25 steals in 449 plate appearances, age appropriate. This is good production. 43.3% hard hit rate was 15% better than the average.

Everything's fine. There's nothing wrong there. I just thought maybe the balance would be slightly different. That would be power overspeed, even if we're going to get both. So this is all good. The surprising thing for me too, you've talked about this in the position preview series, the ground ball rate spiked during the time in the big leagues last year for Dylan Cruz. What do you think comes next?

That looks like an outlier. Generally, when we see a 15 percentage point increase in ground ball rate, we don't look at that in a 31 game sample and say, that's who he is now. So I think we're getting some more power, but how much more power do you expect from Dylan Cruz in his first full season with the Nats? Yeah, I tried to avoid some of the sort of results numbers and processing look more process so i try to find some cops and so you know throw up the cops list if you can please sir. And what i used was bel rate max cv hard hit rate and i and i wanted a baseline of ten stone base those only results that i use cuz i just wanted some speed in there. And swing strike rate below 10%. The, with the max CV you'll see on this comp list that, um, I, I

set the baseline at 109, even though he's at 1096 because he hit a ball 112.6 in the minors, so I wanted to kind of skew a little bit higher than he'd shown in the major leagues, uh, with the max CV and that. And so he has the lowest max CV of these comps, but that's his major league max CV and he has a minor league one that puts him square in the middle of these comps. So barrel rate, max CV, hard hit chase, swinging strike rate and stolen base. That was the basis of these comps.

The comps are Seiya Suzuki, Brandon Nimmo, Christian Yelich, Jurek and pro far Wyatt Langford, Lane Thomas, and Corbin Carroll. Now I think the lane Thomas and jerks and profile. Uh, bits are maybe upsetting, but every good comp list has, you know, kind of the bottom and the top. Right. And the average of this group that includes crews that only had a small amount of time in the major leagues.

The average of this group is 17 homers, 20 stolen bases, 255 average, and a 117 WRC plus. So I think we can say it almost doesn't matter what his power ceiling is. He's shown enough sort of underlying aspects to hit for some power and he's most likely to, you know, end up with 15 to 20 homers and maybe 20 to 30 steals. And a good batting average, if we look at his cops. So I think he's a good player. You know, like if you look at his chase, it's pretty good. If you look at his hard hit, 44, seven, pretty good. That max to be in the minors, one 12 is pretty good barrel rate at 6.4 is not great, but it's not terrible.

And so I think sometimes we look at a prospect like this and we say, Oh, there's a, here are all the things he can't do. And we forget that he makes good contact. He has a good eye at the plate. He has elite speed. And he has shown enough underlying stuff where, you know, I think it's going to be non-zero power. I mean, the funny thing was, is Dylan Cruz spent time at AA and AAA last year.

He struck out less in the big leagues in 31 games than he did in 51 games at AA, where he started the year. That's a great thing to see. The K-ray didn't go up, it went down. Tiny sample being accounted for, it's like, oh, okay, that's good. Got a good approach. Maybe recognizing pitches really well. So I think it's more of like, do you see similar floor and similar categorical

contributions to Pete Crow Armstrong? They're right next to each other. Crow Armstrong has more time in the big leagues, so I think you can have a little more confidence in what we've seen so far. But I think Cruz was supposed to have a higher offensive ceiling from the first day he was on our radars. So there's a little bit of a, okay, like, do you want that extra ceiling or do you want that locked in seemingly safer playing time? You mentioned lineup position for Pete Crowe Armstrong. I can see Dylan Cruz being in a more prominent spot in the nationals lineup. Maybe that could end up being the difference. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, Dylan Cruz is more offensive outside than Pete Crowe Armstrong.

That's not a dig at Pete Crowe Armstrong, I think to be clear. Yeah. And I think it just really has a lot, maybe it's ogling the strikeout rate too much, but I mean, there's a lot to like in a guy who only swings and misses 10% of the time and has a 20%, 21% projected strikeout rate. Few more names in this group to get to though. Steven Kwan lives in this tier.

Oh God. Speaking of strikeout rate. They had 9.4% last year, 9.8 for the career. Got to more power than I would have guessed. Got to 14 homers and lost some time on the IL as well. So it was a step back playing time wise after he got up to 718 played appearances in 2023. Projections are not in agreement on the power. You see Oopsy spitting out a seven home run total for Stephen Kwan,

Steamer up at 14. So whose projection is right? More likely to be right because I know the real answer for us is probably somewhere in the middle, but which, which outcome is more likely with, if playing time ends up coming in in the high 600s for plate appearances. I'm looking at the rolling fly ball rate graph for Stephen Kwan and it just goes up over the course of the season and his wobble goes down. And I'm trying to remember that I wrote a piece about the quote unquote lucky power hitter and, um, tried to find the players who least deserved their early power and Steven Kwan was on it and I got, I got yelled at and then I'm

remembering that he sort of cratered. I do want to point out though, that, you know, where we have Randy or Rosalina being negative, uh, in so many weeks, um, Steven Kwan last year was a negative value in fantasy one week. One. Wow. One. So even in the second half, when he's hitting too many fly balls and maybe

taking the wrong approach and not really capitalizing on that nation power that we thought he had, he was still providing good value. So I'm going to say the under on a 13, 14 or 11. I'm going to, I'm going to say nine, you know, might be my over under and yet, and yet I think he's a decent play. You know, maybe it's for certain builds. Maybe it's you were aggressive on guys that had bad batting averages. Maybe it's your Ellie spackle, you know? You know, um, but I do think he is a good player, even if he hits 285 with nine homers and 15 stone bases. Yeah, I think Kwon is easier to fit into most rotisserie situations than Luis Arias who goes 40 picks later, even though Arias might have even more ceiling in the batting average. It's just because you get the possibility at better stuff between homers and steals for Kwon.

I think the gap between those players is real. That end position a little bit, you know, like if you're putting Arias at first, you know, you're ceding a lot of power to the average at that position. Right, you have to make up for it somewhere else. And kind of the same as second, like I know that I've had these averages that I've been saying about, you know,

15 team leagues, but they, there's also sort of an average per position. So whenever you put a player at a position, you're either behind or ahead of that position, you know? So in Quan's case, I think you it's easier just to, to fit, fold him into an entire outfield as opposed to being like, Oh crap. I'm having, I'm playing Steven Quan. I've been playing Luis Aris at first base.

I am now like 30 homers behind pace. The difference between a player like Quan and Adolis Garcia going right after remarkable just player squishing machine, please. I'll find. between a player like Quan and Adolius Garcia going right after him. Remarkable. Just player squishing machine, please. I'll find. I mean, Garcia versus Rosa Reyna, I think very similar skilled players, similar in terms of what they bring in Roto.

We've seen higher power ceilings from Adolius Garcia. We've seen four consecutive years with a hard hit rate above 45%. We've seen barrel rates above 11 and a half percent each year during that span. I don't think there's any doubt about the power. I think the questions are now creeping in. It's been two years since he swiped the 25 bases. So how much has he run even in this

environment? And then is 224 the worst outcome for batting average? We just saw that. Is there some bounce back? Is he a 235, 245 type hitter again? What do you make of what happened to Garcia in 2024? Does he make any more sense than a Rosarana does to you as a possible bounce back candidate in this cluster? We've got a real slowing of the sprint speed. You know, back when he was stealing all those bags, he had 28, uh, point four feet per second, Swin's sprint speed last year at 26.8. That's a pretty big drop. I mean, that's going from 80th percentile to 36th. Um, you know, I forget who I was looking at, but you know, they had

changed, you know, by less than 0.1, um, seconds to first base, but he has dropped 0.15 seconds to first base. And I think that starts to make a difference, you know, on singles and stolen bases. It also speaks to your just general ability. He was a negative on the base pass, according to Statcast. He was a negative on the base pass, according to stat cast, um, you know, base running runs. He was a negative in the field last year, uh, according to stat cast fielding runs. And he went from being a pretty good positive, the first three years to last year, minus 11 in terms of runs on the field. He went from, you know, a three outs above average in 2022 in center field to a minus 12 last year in right field. So, uh, you know, I had heard that, um, I

don't know if everything's been reported, but you know, there've been, there were some, uh, surgical procedures on the Rangers at the end of the, at the end of the year. Um, and I don't know, he has a, he has a, he had a knee and he'd been clear to begin running. So he had, he had something going on in his knee at the end of the last season. Um, so maybe there's an injury that is underlying this, or maybe we're seeing the beginning of the decline of his physicality. that is underlying this, or maybe we are seeing the beginning of the decline of his physicality.

And then on top of that, at 31, we are starting to enter the part where his chase rate is going to lead to bigger strikeout rates. He does have that sort of high chase rate that doesn't age well. There's a great piece, it's old, but I still believe it, which is this Bill Petty, Jeff Zimmerman piece on aging curves, component aging curves, and you can see contact outside the zone ages worse than almost any other ability for a hitter. And so I would personally take the over on all of his projected strikeout rates at 28%.

I know he's 20, eight for his career. He's been under 28, just under 28 for the last three years. I'm going to take the over. I think it's going to be more like a 30% K rate, um, maybe with like, uh, a 200 ISO. And I'm going to take the under on stolen basis. So I guess what I'm suggesting is a 220 batting average again, maybe a little bounce back in homers to 30, but maybe only five stolen bases. Yeah. I think I'm willing to give up the extra power to have the balance with

Randy Arroz-Arena so I could see myself missing out on Adolius Garcia this year and maybe not being all that sad about it. Jason Dominguez, last one of this group, tons of hype ever since the Yankees signed him as an international free agent years ago, comes in I think as a top 30 outfielder if you run a 15 team league with Oopsy into the auction calculator. What do you think of Dominguez at this point? I feel like he's a fun pick. I don't know if he's necessarily a good one. I'm still kind of caught in between the lofty expectations we've always had for him and then reality based on how he's performed in the upper levels, the minor leagues, which I think only got further

complicated by the amount of time he lost due to injury last year. He was great in 44 games at Scranton last year. I just wish we could have seen that for, I don't know, 80 plus games and then a longer run in the big leagues before being all in for 2025 on what Dominguez should bring to the table. We have an interesting discussion in the discord right now about, uh, the difficulty of breaking into some of these, uh, first division teams that, you

know, are active in free agency and are competitive. And, and, and so, you know, I talked once to a, an executive player development executive for the Yankees and, you know, he said, you know, for our prospects to break in with our team, you know, they have a high bar to clear. And so, and it's just hard to give them time to, you know, go through the lumps. I think even Anthony Volpe got the chance to do that because that was the one year that the Yankees weren't making the playoffs, you know, and they just let

Volpe kind of go through some bumps and that probably helped him, um, you know, be at least a decent, um, you know, starting shortstop when they needed him. And so Dominguez hasn't had that opportunity. I think that same year he was hurt or something. I mean, uh, I think that was, it was at 2023. They didn't make the playoffs and they gave Volpe the chance and they even brought Dominguez up and he got 33 plate appearances, but, um, I don't

know why he got so much less, so many fewer than Volpe. I think there might've been an injury there. Um, my point is this. I think he has done enough in the minor leagues to make me super excited. You know, I mean, he is only 21 years old. Every time you look at a level and you say, Oh, you know, he had a 121 WRC plus last year in AAA, he was 21. You know, um, every stop that he's had, he's been 20 to 30% better in the

league average and one of the youngest players in, in, in his league. So I think he's done everything that he needs to do in the minor leagues. I think another team would have given him a longer shot by now. And, um, I think that, you know, this is actually an opportunity to buy someone that is actually somewhat on par with the kind of Langford, um, Churio last year. Like this is a top, top prospect that has runway, has a job waiting for him. It's just the Yankees here in this case actually makes me a little bit worried that, you know, they'll find some other solution, you know, or they'll, they'll

sign some guy late, they'll sign jerks and profile and say, you know, you know, you know, Dominguez is, is going to be in the mix, you know, he's going to be part of the solution, you know, and, but he'll have to still get by somebody. So, um, I'm just a little bit worried about that aspect, but in terms of. His quality as a player, I actually think he's like, look at his swing strike rates, like they're not bad. Like he, I think he'll have about an average strikeout rate.

He's had plus walk rates everywhere. He's shown power and speed everywhere. He's hit the ball 111.6. He's had great barrel rates. I don't know. He doesn't have a problem with ground ball rates, like he, except for in a small sample debut last year. So I, I see this guy as basically being a five tooler. I think there's so many ways he could be helpful immediately. And if he does everything all at once, then you are talking about an early round pick next year, and those are exactly the kind of players that in pick

one 50 range you want to have, like you want to take those shots. That's where I took cheerio last year. And I profited, you know, when I, when I got him in this, in this group. So, you know, I do understand that the Yankees are kind of a different beast sometimes. If you do think about it though, flip the calendar ahead, six weeks, get into Grapefruit League play and by then we'll know if they add a veteran or not. Let's assume they don't, but if they leave it open as far as the spot that it's going to be Dominguez's left field predominantly, if they leave that to him and he mashes in the spring, he's easily in the helium.

Every week, every week. Shoots up a few rounds. Yeah, exactly. Because people want to believe with Jason Dominguez. I think that's probably. Any options other than him, if they don't sign, you know, a free agent or like as Waldo Cabrera, Paraza, you know, like it's not, not, not everyday starters, he's the guy that profiles as an everyday starter in that outfield.

Right. Barring that extra edition. That's the only lingering doubt I think I have depth chart wise. I don't really worry about him outplaying the guys that are currently in that mix. Let's move on to what I'm calling tier six, which is just the outfielders after Dominguez all the way down to about pick 200. That group includes Colton Couser, who I think is actually a little more interesting than people have given him credit for so far this draft season. Josh Lowe, Brandon Nimmo, Nick Castellanos, Sedan Rafaela, Parker Meadows, Tommy Edmond, Lane Thomas, Taylor Ward, Tyler O'Neal, Kerry Carpenter, and Victor Robles. This episode could be really, really long because there's so many outfielders just jammed in here.

Do you have any favorites out of this bunch? I mean, because I think what happens when you get far enough into the draft, this is the point in the draft where ADP starts to mean a lot less as far as being reliable to what the room is likely to do. The further into the draft you go, the more likely it is someone's going to jump up a few rounds off their ADP. So if you like someone at the back of that list, I feel like you could end up in a scenario where you have to take them over nearly everybody else in the group, just because of the randomness of what happens at this portion of the draft. Yeah, there are definitely players I like in this, in this group, but

There are definitely players I like in this, in this group, but this is where something really important happens. I think if I'm in weekly leagues, I'd let a lot of these guys float down to the bottom. Like I just sort of grab who drops and I don't really try to get my guy here because there's something that all of these guys share a risk that is bad for weekly leagues. And I think there's, I'm going to try and pick out two names, maybe three names. The only guys that I think don't really, uh, share this risk and maybe Brandon Nimmo, um, maybe Tyler O'Neill, but he has the health risk. Um, and maybe how Elliot Ramos, everybody else in this tier, as far as I can see, shares platoon risk, just really aggressive platoon risk.

You're getting to the part it's super easy to platoon, especially a corner outfielder, you're getting to the part of the draft or the start, the part where teams are like, Hey, we have, we have four outfielders, we have four outfielders for a reason, one of these guys are going to platoon. So I looked at percentage lefty on lefty among outfielders last year. Jordan Alvarez only saw 10% of his at bats were lefty on lefty. I did not realize how aggressively he was being platooned. That actually takes him down a notch for me because that is plate

appearances he leaves on the table. But other than Jordán Álvarez being number one in this group, you have Josh Lowe, who's in this tier, you have, uh, who else you have, You have, uh, is Dalton Varsha on this tier yet? Lawrence Butler was in the last year. Colton, Kouser, I mean, could be in danger for that. Kouser is in danger. He was a platoon. So I think, um, uh, Evan Carter drops out of this list.

I use a certain playing time restriction. Um, but Cedric Mullins is in this tier. Uh, JJ Bleday is I think in the next tier. Uh, but you start to get a lot of platoon risk here, uh, with these players. The reason I, I kind of brought out Brandon Nemo is I see him as being able to get on base against both at least, even if he doesn't hit as well against lefties. And that I see him as one of the core players for the Mets that will play a lot.

I think Nick Castellanos is a righty. So maybe he is, uh, will play as often as healthy. Tyler O'Neill is a righty. He'll play as often as he's healthy. Um, and LA Ramos is a righty and the giants need some players to play all the time. So those are the ones I pick out as, uh, as possibly playing as much as they want. But Josh Lowe is here.

Colton cows are is here. He's a platoonable guy. Sedan Rafaela place is going to play centerfield. And so is a Jared Duran and they're the J and Duran. They're going to try and play, uh, you know, they say they're going to try and play Masataka Yoshida in the outfield. Some Tommy Edmond is a part of a team that's going to mix and match. Uh, maybe he'll get as much time as he wants in centerfield.

Maybe not lane Thomas is a righty. Um, but, um, it's on Cleveland. I don't know how much I trust him to get full playing time. Taylor ward is a righty and Taylor ward is actually maybe my favorite in this tier because he is boring AF. He is the oatmeal of this tier. He drops in everything. His projections are going to be fine.

I like Taylor ward in this and, you know, you know, in dynasty leagues and stuff like that, I love Parker Meadows and I've gotten him, but Parker Meadows does have platoon risk in terms of he's been platoon before he's a lefty, he platoons. He's, and he's being taken right by Kerry Carpenter, who has a lot of platoon risk. He's seemingly locked into a platoon where he's not going to play against lefties at all. play against lefties at all. Um, so that's, this is the part of the draft where you combine injury risk and platoon risk, and you start losing plate appearances pretty hardcore. I'm going to bring up the same tool I brought up earlier. This is another time where it's important to look back at what was

happening at various points in the year. And it can fluctuate of course, based on the health of bench options and platoon partners and different ways that the roster interacts with other players on it. Kerry Carpenter, I think, has more of what you would describe as a true strict platoon usage, because what you see, if you look at the baseball reference batting orders page, you'll see a pound sign when the opposing starting pitcher was a left-handed starter. And if you see throughout the second half of the season when he was healthy, I think Kerry Carpenter had one start against a left-handed

starting pitcher from August 13th on. Any other time the Tigers faced a left-handed starter, Carpenter didn't start that game. But as we saw. Carl Parker, they kind of played with it a little bit. Meadows, let me highlight him real quick. That's because they were trying to decide who's going to be platoon more often, him or Colt Keith. Parker Meadows at the end of the year, and this

is where defense comes in big time. Yeah, he's also a center fielder. That's something I care about here. His, his return to being in the mix post injury, post emotion was post emotion. I think in Meadows case, August 3rd. And I see one, two, three, three starts against lefties all kind of bunched up in August where he was given a day off. But from August 29th on, Parker Meadows started every game, played every game. He flipped down to the bottom of the order when it was a left-handed starter,

but he was leading off against righties and still playing against lefties. And I think this is where you can't platoon everyone. We said that all the time and defense matters a lot. It at least keeps you in the lineup. Yeah. Maybe the first two plate appearances are going to be against that starter, but there's a good chance the bullpen won't be able to match up a lefty with you every time.

So those games aren't as much of a throwaway game as they could seem and it's opportunities to improve too. So I think that's the other key here is finding the key defenders. My favorite late draft and hold outfielders and in, we start getting later and later in outfield. My favorite thing to do is target center fielders. Yeah. You want guys that are going to play because of their glove.

I mean, that's huge because it breaks through the possible platoon risk. Uh, I'm going back to something you said about Jordan Alvarez, just because I think there's an explanation for this. If you look, he's at the top of the, of the board, you know, put together only 10% of his plate appearances were lefty on lefty.

I think that's the result of maybe the Astros just not seeing a lot of lefties. And the rest of their lineup, there's no platoon risk there. Like they don't, they don't platoon him. They're a very right-handed team. So if you're matching up even relievers against them, you're not bringing in. Okay. Lefties.

Are we seeing other, are we seeing Joey Lepofito was with them for a little bit? He's on this list. Yeah, but I mean, like totally different in terms of usage though. Yeah, I'm surprised we didn't see other, there are other outfielders there, but. But a lot, they're very right-handed team right now too. So like how you match up,

but I think that's what's happening with Yard and Alvarez. I don't think it's anything where they're like trying, they're not, they're not. Yeah, there's a better way to do that query. You know, it's like, I would like to say of the left-handers you could have faced. Yes. How many did you face? Platoon risk, not a thing in the case of Jordan Alvarez, even though he didn't see a lot of left.

Thank you. Thank you. That was something I did not understand there, but I do think that that list has a lot of people with clitinous on it. I think Meadows has this tier has a fair amount of platoon risk. Um, and, uh, and so sometimes I would hue towards, you know, sometimes like a kind of a blink assessment who, like, remember we said, you can only platoon basically like three positions on your team. So, because you have to have a backup catcher. So like take catcher out or continue or say four, if you think that this hitter is one of the top five hitters

on their team, then they don't have as much platoon risk. So that's sort of why I'm thinking with Brandon Nemo. I think Brandon Nemo is boring, he's old, he doesn't do as much as you want him to do in other places, but he is, I think going to put up something that's pretty close to league average that I was saying is two 58, um, 20 homers and, uh, 13 steals. He's protected for two 52, 18 homers and 10 steals, basically nine steals. So he's not going to really hurt you anywhere.

He's kind of an oatmeal way to keep it going. And I think he'll be high in plate appearances because Brandon Nemo last three years has, uh, passed the six 60, uh, plate appearance level three years in a row. So I think he's safe and boring. And that's my favorite ones in this. I'm, I'm safe and boring today. Taylor ward, Brandon Nemo, Ian Hap.

Give me safe and boring. I think Colton Couser is interesting because he plays more than people think against lefties. I think when you remember how his season was shaped, he was on fire to begin the year, played really well, went into a slump. His second half was actually good and they were leading him off at points. He was getting some starts against lefties. And he was actually platooning with Cedric Mullins in this weird thing where he got center field at bats against lefties and center field. Yeah, they, they, they had to move some stuff around at various points, but

other than the strikeout rate, when you look at Colton Couser in the second half last year, he was 33% better than league average, 267, 337, 477. He was important for the Orioles. That offense was struggling throughout the second half, but it wasn't his fault. So if you believe that the swing and miss is going to come down, I think the playing time numbers can at least match last year. And then you also have the possibility of a guy getting better. There's a lot of things he does really well.

Yeah, he has, he has elite bat speed, elite sense of the zone and non-elite feel for contact, but it's not terrible. Yeah, he has, he has, uh, elite bat speed, elite sense of the zone, um, and non-elite feel for contact, but it's not terrible. I mean, he's, he was regularly running sort of nines and tens and swing strike rates in the minors. Um, and, uh, last year was 12.8. Uh, it's not in that sort of 15 to 16, like, you know, oh, he's definitely going to strike out 30% of the time level.

He also played around with the weight of his bat last year, where he was hit so much bat speed, he almost wanted to slow his bat a little bit. So that would be in the zone longer. So he kind of swung a heavier bat in the second half. So that's what speaks to me as someone who is willing to think outside the box, do different ideas, um, and make the most of his, of his, uh, skills at the plate, which are elite in two really important places, which is I and bat speed. So you give me someone who's elite in I and bat speed.

And I am super interested in this guy has non-zero speed too. Um, and at 24 Colton Couser could steal more than his projection still. His projections are nine to 11 stolen bases. I mean, he has the capability next year of hitting two 50 with 30 homers and 15 steals. That's what I believe. I just, I like the setup for him more than I thought I would. When last season started, I came away pretty impressed overall by what

last year looked like from Kouser. The Josh Lowe questions, man, they just don't stop. What are we doing? What are we doing with Josh Lowe questions, man, they just don't stop. What are we doing? What are we doing with Josh Lowe? I think weekly leagues have to discount him. I think that the he's, I think he's the new Brandon Lowe. You know, I think that they're, they're just going to, uh, get a lot out of him on a per plate appearance level and they're going to shield him against lefties.

Yeah. I think he's really similar to Brandon Lau. If you think about it, he's going to have a high strikeout rate, uh, good power, good stone bases. He is lovely in daily leagues. He is great. And I don't know. He's, he is somebody that if I could acquire in dynasty leagues that were

daily lineups, I would acquire him right now. That's what I think about him. I think he has good bat speed, hits barrels, the ball, a decent approach at the plate and athleticism that you want in a 26 year old right in his peak. He hasn't given us his peak season yet. I don't think. So at price, given the playing time platoon situation, it makes sense to be in on Lowe, but the weekly leagues thing is important. There will be some weeks where it's a little harder

to rely on him or partial weeks if you're playing in twice weekly lineup changes, such as the NFBC. But a lot of ways for Josh Lowe to be good and makes it even more frustrating that he's like their Brandon Lowe being teammates that don't pronounce the name spelled the same way differently. Cause that will only add to the, uh, the confusion that we have here on a regular basis. Uh, Nick Castellanos, I think for a couple of years now has been someone we've been kind of afraid of at price. Has that changed now that he's kind of falling into this 150 to 200 range overall? I mean, I like the volume.

Um, and I did point out that he's a right-hander that makes him a, he's not going to be platooned the same way as others. Um, and he did just cut his strikeout rate, um, which is, would be something that I would sort of point to and be like, Oh, this is good news, except that he is a big chaser and he's 32. So I have a feeling the strikeout rate is going to go big the other way. He had a 27.6% strikeout rate in 2023. Castellanos did, and then he had a 21.1% last year.

Like I believe the 27% more. I see so many similarities though, in terms of projection and what I think they're likely to do between Taylor Ward. I don't have a pushback on Taylor Ward being the, the fine oatmeal, the option. I think with Castellanos having two years left on his deal at 20 million each, they're not going to pull the plug on playing time for him either. So I think it's a little bit of a spider meme situation there. If you're just looking for a really safe option.

Oh, that's so funny because they're so different in terms of, you know, Ward is uber patient. Mm-hmm. It's a totally different approach, but they get to the same place with it. That's so hilarious. It's a really similar,, but they get to the same place with it. That's so hilarious. They, it's, it's a really similar, you could just put both of them on the board and pick one, but I would say that I think, and, and, and Ward is older than people think he's 31.

Right. And it's Casanova's 32, but Ward's approach should age a little better. So if I was forced to choose between the two, I would take Ward, but I do think it would be a reasonable proposition to kind of have them both in your queue, in your draft and kind of just take one of them. How many plate appearances would you project for Tyler O'Neill? Uh, I mean, a righty. So like he's, it's not that he's going to, he didn't, they didn't sign him a three or $50 million deal to platoon him.

Nope. Of course not. You know, um, let me do, I'm going to do Marcel real quick cause it's, he's got a funny up and down and I can't, I can't eyeball it. It is going to be lower than what all the public facing plate appearance totals are on fan graphs right now. I'll hate to spoil that for you. All right.

Let me see if I can do it real quick. And 266, he had 266 in 2023. And then he had 383 in 2022. Uh, and then he had three 83 in 2022. I love when Eno gets a calculator out on the show. 392. All right. Is the, is the plate appearance projection by Marcell's, which is just five times last year, three times a year before two times a year before that divided by 10.

last year, three times a year before, two times a year before that divided by 10. And, uh, that is, uh, 150 play appearances, fewer than he's projected for him. Coming off of a season in which he struck out a third of the time, ends up in a new environment, good lineup. I agree with what you said, like if he's healthy, that we'll play him as much as the projection suggests. They're not, they're not going to play them. It's lefties at that price. It's not at all what you do with, with a player like that. Are you sure we're getting everything from Tyler O'Neill given the number of

leg injuries and things he's dealt with too? I mean, he was four for four as a base dealer last year, five for five in 2023 in this environment where steals are easier to come by. He ran more when it was harder to steal bases, but he's running less, I think in part because of health, like he's, he's a bit of a mystery for me. Yeah. He also had some real decline in some of his

physicality. Um, this was the guy that I was looking at that I was surprised by, um, how much his, his, his running has changed. Um, last year he went, um, from a guy who used to be elite in running. I mean, even in 2022, he was top three in sprint speed. Tell her Neil was 29.7 feet per second in 2022, 28.5 last year in 2023, 27.5 in 2024. And he went from a 97th percentile to 55th.

And, you know, even in him, when it comes to his fielding, he was a guy that could fake center field for a while. And then last year was the first time he was significantly bad. Uh, and he was significantly bad by ounce above average in left field. So, uh, you know, maybe he played through the injuries that he would have not played through before. And it affected his sort of physical measurements, like his, his stack cast numbers and he might not play through those if he has a guaranteed. Well, it's that and that's not like always just like a player decision.

That's also the team trying to manage them to stay healthy. There's, there's a little bit of a collaborative nature here to the, how much do we play them? How much do we push? When do we say it's okay to play banged up? When do we not say that, right? That could be different from org to org. It could be different when you've got the multi-year deal,

who your next best option is. All of those things matter. I tend to think, you know, Tyler O'Neill is fine where he's going right now because he would fall into that group of players that you still get to replace when he's down, even if there's a higher likelihood that he spends some time on the IL based on the injuries he's amassed over the course of his career. I just think there's a solid player there.

I just think that you, you, you, you got, you like your, your team has a different package of risks. This, this, this tier has different packages of risk and you've got the sort of like young player who hasn't really shown us all of it yet risk. Right. And then you have this sort of old player who could be injured risk. Um, and Tyler O'Neill in some ways has a little bit of both and just said, like, has he really shown us like, just said, like, has he really

shown us like, you know, 700 or 650 plate appearance, like this is everything kind of, you know, this is what we're dreaming upon, you know, and yet he also has now old player hurt risk on top of that. I think I would rather take cows or Dominguez low if I'm going to take some risk on because I could be like, oh, these guys are young and they're gonna show us what they haven't shown us before. And if I'm gonna go old, I'd rather go Taylor Ward, Nick Castellanos, who have been really boring

and have kind of done it every year. So Tyler O'Neill falls in between. I'd rather have Parker Meadows, I think, than Tyler O'Neill. So, you know, he falls in between in a way that I don't like. Kerry Carpenter is the player in this group that deserves a little extra attention. I think it's like, when you look at what he does on the big side of Platoon, it's phenomenal. And I probably underestimated him every day up until the postseason last year. And now I've finally come on board with like, okay, this is real.

This is a player we should care a lot more about in fantasy, even if the usage in strict platoon does hamper the value in weekly leagues a bit. Because as I mentioned earlier, we know Kerry Carpenter is going to get played appearances even in the games he doesn't start. That's obviously part of how that roster is built. Who are the cops? Like who does he remind you of? There's really not a ton of speed there.

It's like six steals over 236 games, 868 plate appearances. Again, a little wonky because sometimes those are pinch hit opportunities and not just full game started. So he doesn't offer much in that category. Jock Peterson. I mean, it doesn't look anything like him. Uh, the way Jock's used now, I think it's similar. Yeah.

Carpenter being five years younger certainly is a good thing. But he doesn't have the max CV and the bat speed to support some of these barrel rates. Jock has shown more batting average downside so far too. That's true. And it's been a little less these last couple of seasons. You look at the 274 and the 275 from 2022 and 2024. But it's a very kind of pull fly ball barrel,

you know, a little bit less weight for it, a little bit more aggressive. Yeah. But Carpenter's barrel rate last year, 16.9% is better than anything we've seen from Jock. Little more of a free swinger chases outside the zone more than Jock ever has. But I think in terms of how he functions on the

roster, I think that's where the similarities are and having that power heavy contribution with some batting average risk, even though we haven't really seen that much downside in that area from Carpenter yet. I just think he's a fascinating player because of the formats we play in. If you're in a daily league, he'd probably

go quite a bit earlier because you would end up using him much like the Tigers do. You just have to mix and match and manage your roster a bit. Yeah, I think best ball is a good one for him too, because he's going to hit weeks where he just sees righties, right? That'll happen sometimes.

You know, so if he, if he sees a week where he just sees righties or, you know, with his kind of a more aggressive, you know, pull approach, I think he could see a week where he just hits like four homers in the week, you know? So, uh, I like him as a best ball guy, even though, you know, normally with best, best ball, you're like, Oh, I want all the Rockies and he's in Detroit. Like he'll have weeks where he's away from Detroit, you know? So, uh, I think he's better in best ball.

I think he's better in daily lineups. I think he suffers a little bit in kind of main event, weekly leagues, draft and holds, because he's going to siphon plate appearances away from you. I do think in leagues where you can make moves, the normal sized bench leagues that are weekly, that's where I have the hardest time rostering him. I think in draft and hold, I'm not as worried about it because I think the thresholds for what you need playing time wise go down because of the attrition on your roster and not being able to play as guys.

And there's also no free agency. Right. So I think there's a little bit of a difference for me in those formats too, with how I think about Carpenter at this point. But yeah, it just seems like big side platoon is what he is. I trust the skills.

It just takes kind of a specific scenario for him to make, make a lot of sense. Where are we with him? Let me see here. We're, if we're, we're talking about, uh, by average draft position, we're talking about 47. So, um, for, in a 10 team league, your fifth outfielder, Oh God, I love that. Because especially if you have a daily lineups, you could take him as your, as your fifth outfielder. Um, and then have somebody on your bench that you just, like, you

can just have someone super cheap on your bench that you just bring in for the other days. Like you can have someone like Jung-Hoo Lee later. That's just, you know, comes in to give you some singles off the bench, you know, when Carrie Carpenter is not playing. If you that's the player smushing machine, you know, um, and that would work. So 47 though, in a 15 team league, he's now your third outfielder. Um, which suggests that like, are you going to try and platoon? Like if it's an auto new situation, you know, or something like that, are you going to try and platoon three outfielder positions? You can do a lot of platooning and auto new, the roster's bigger than a big league roster.

I've had, I've actually had trouble platooning three outfield positions. Like I. Three, yeah, three in the outfield, all in the outfield might be tough. And then generally platooning three positions, I've just found it difficult because you will keep injured players on your bench. You have to keep people for other positions. And so I've found that my magic number for like platoonable spots in auto new is closer to two.

Um, but yeah, you could, I mean, it's just a little bit early to be taking a platoon guy in, in 15 team leagues. I think I'd be, I'd be searching for players who play all the time right now. I think you mentioned him at the beginning of the segment, Brandon Nimmo, he doesn't really get dinged badly. He sits against some lefties, but not all lefties and he hits so high. And my boring Taylor ward, Cassiano's group. I think I like it the most of the, of the trio.

I think it's the, the quality of the Mets lineup is fine. It's good. Like we saw last year, similar to the field. I think the best approach of the three really I think it's the, the quality of the Mets lineup is fine. It's good. Like as we saw last year, similar to the Phillies. I think the best approach of the three really, cause he's, you know, Ward does get in trouble where he's trying to hit a fly ball a lot and Nimmo is a little bit more of a balanced approach. And then Nimmo comes out and swipes 15 bags and 15 attempts that gets more steals than he had in the previous four seasons combined.

But he used to be a center fielder and stuff, so I always thought he could steal more. In my head, he steals bags. It's surprising me when I look back at his old steals totals, but I guess he's had a lot of hamstring injuries, I think. Yeah. Pretty healthy though, the last three years. Look at these plate appearance totals, 673, 682, 663. So I would say I think Brandon Nimmo is a little bit underrated and coming off of the season where the average dipped down to 224 for reasons that probably aren't all sustainable, repeatable. I think there's a pretty decent bounce back coming from him. And as always, there's a boost in OBP leagues from Nimmo as well.

Dude, we are in trouble. We're only at like the 50th outfielder, dude. Yeah, we're definitely in trouble. We're going to have to breeze through like 50 outfielders tomorrow. Uh, or it's like a four hour pod, you know, clear out that calendar, buddy. We're starting to 5am. We might have to leave some out, some out, like the deep league. We might have to do like a, like a real deep league, uh, one pod.

That's just like deep league players. Maybe I can come up with a new format in the brief time between this episode and the start of part three. Maybe I can come up with something. Are we going to try to do one more tier to make it a little bit easier on ourselves? Um, we could start it. There's no, there's no, we make the rules like on the fly sometimes. What's in tier seven.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't work like that. We're not done with tier six yet. There's a guy on the screen, there are only two names on the screen. We talked about one and I'm not allowed to talk about the other. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not into Robles.

I'm not into taking Victor Robles here. Um, I just think that we've seen so much of a boom and bust cycle and to, for us to believe that this is the guy that comes to Seattle and conquers, you know, his own swinging strike problems in the past and does it in Seattle. Like I just, I don't know why I just, I don't believe it. And you know, his projections by oopsie, which factor in his bat speed for below average

work. Um, you know, with the bat two 42, three 17, three 48, that's sort of what I believe out of him. I mean, his career is two 47, 317, 348. That's sort of what I believe out of him. I mean, his career is 247, 321, 370. So, and he's in Seattle as opposed to Washington. So for this part, so I think it's totally believable that that's what his output will be. And if that's what his output will be,

you know, are they gonna keep playing him? I guess it's the Mariners, but like that's, that's a 98 WRC plus. Maybe they will. I don't know. Would you, they don't really have options other than if Mitch Hanniger and Mitch Garver both are doing okay. Then Victor Robles can become a backup, I think, or if Dominic Hanzone breaks out.

Yeah. I mean, the alternatives are so uninspiring that the guy that swore off Victor Robles forever is slowly falling back in that direction. I, okay, a couple things. Like. Well, Kanzone hits the ball hard and has struck out less in the past, but he was so bad last year that I don't know, but his projections are

actually better than Robles. I will try my best to bring some very basic analysis that justifies this ridiculousness right now. Even in the brief time that Robles was healthy in 2023, we saw some things that were kind of similar to what happened in Seattle last year. We saw 299, 385, 364, again, just 36 games, massive injury, just didn't play much. A slash line that looked a lot like what he did last year with a little more thumb, 433 slug being kind of the big difference. The 126 ISO from Robles, that was with a 307 average last year, was his best ISO since 2019. And that's when this whole mess for me started. I trust the speed. I trust the playing time because the depth chart is not good. And I think this

might just be one of those situations where a fresh start in an organization with reset expectations might be okay. I think this could be, let's try to find a comparable, it took longer than we hoped for things to work out, even if they didn't hit superstar level. What if this is like another Jirx and Profar type story? Top prospect that had health problems that top prospect that had health problems that hampered development. And after several years of trying to make those adjust to the big leagues, it actually happened and it wasn't superstar, but it was still good. Is that a possibility for Victor Robles? And I'm saying this as someone again, who tried to swear off the possibilities ever happening, I've tried to be an open-minded reasonable

person about what happened a year ago, and I think there's enough here to like to justify him as a making up bag sort of play with non-zero power. I think you could still say he has non-zero power, 6.2% barrel rate, best we've ever seen for Victor Robles. Is it going to go up from there? Doubt it, probably not. But if you're chasing speed, I think you could do worse for a fourth outfielder than Victor Robles. Yeah. Um, I, I pulled up Sean Figgins is a page for some reason talking about

Mariners and stolen bases, I guess. And your brain just thought of Sean Figgins. Well, just also like the viability of a player that doesn't play a premium defensive position and doesn't play a premium defensive position and doesn't really have great power. You know, Figgins had some great years in there, at least for fantasy purposes. And I also think that the options are bad in Seattle because even if you do have some love for Dominic Kanzone still, there's a chance that Kanzone

breaks out and just replaces the Hanukkah Garver situation, which is not great. Yeah. Right. You have a soggy DH situation. You have, is this the worst infield ever? Rayleigh, Neil Rivas, Dylan Moore, JP Crawford. That's a bad infield. It's one of the best utility guys, maybe of the

recent time he's been really good utility guy, but he's a utility guy. Don Mansell on. Oh, he's been a bench guy for many years. Luke Rayleigh is probably the best hitter of the year. I mean, he's been a great guy. He's been a great guy.

He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. He's been a great guy. but he's a utility guy. Donovan Solano has been a bench guy for many years. Luke Rayleigh is probably the best hitter of the bunch. Yeah.

I mean, it's just, it's a very untested rookie with nothing going on. And JP Crawford has been losing, uh, defensive viability, uh, over the last few years, although he bounced back a little bit there and profiles as a slightly above average site, offensive slightly below average defensive shortstop. He's probably the best overall player of the group. Yeah. I mean, JP Crawford's fine.

Like it's just like, man, like usually you look at a depth chart like that and you can pick out maybe two players that at draft day costs that you like. Oh yeah, I could roster those guys. And I look at the depth chart of those positions and I'm like, yeah, JP Crawford is like my third or fourth shortstop in a draft and hold or a hail only.

Yeah. But it's not. Luke Railey in a daily league. They're all roll guys for me. I mean, obviously Cal Raleigh behind the plate is great. We talked about in the catcher episode, man, they are just thin on the infield for bats that are viable at this point.

All right, we'll break tier seven open. We're gonna get maybe like two or three players in probably before this episode has to come to an end. We should try. I'm gonna read them out for you. Does that make sense? Well, we'll just split it. We'll split it.

We'll split a few names off. Let's, let's just cover the first three guys in tier seven. It starts with Elliot Ramos includes Cedric Mullins who came up in passing earlier and Lorde's Gareal Jr. As you start to look at this group, I guess I'll name the rest. We'll get to them in detail in part three. Profars here, Jung Ho Lee, Jake McCarthy, Jorge Saler, Alec Berlison, Willie Castro, qualifies almost everywhere, George Springer, Brandon Donovan, Jesus Sanchez, Byron Buxton,

and TJ Friedle. Huge group, spans all the way down to pick 250. Do you see anything from the first few names like Ramos, Mullins and Gurriel that make you think that they're a little bit under drafted relative to that group? We just talked about. Yeah. I think Elliot Ramos is on a, is a righty on a team that is desperate for an everyday player and also desperate for young stars that, you know, capture the imagination of their fans. Um, Ramos is bilingual fun, you know, hits the ball hard, strikes out a little bit too much,

but you know, has an all fields approach that probably serves him pretty well in San Francisco. Is not a terrible defender, but it's not a great one. He's definitely not a center fielder. I think the playing time projections on him are light. I think that if you look across that roster in San Francisco and you're looking for your five everyday players, he's in that list. You're talking about Willie Adamas, Matt Chapman, Jung-Hoo Lee. And then you start with the dot dot dots.

And that's only three names. So Ramos is comfortably in that top five and they're only projecting him, uh, in projection systems because all it's San Francisco and, oh, whatever you only had five 18 last year or whatever they're projecting him for five 70 to 600. I even think he'll be near the top of that lineup too. So I think you could give him six 40, six 50. That gives him just a couple more homers. If you use oopsie projections for Elliot Romulus to you get 25 homers

because of the bat speed. So now you're talking to 50, 25 homers, you know, they're only projecting seven steals, but he had six steals last year. Maybe it gets more comfortable. You get 10 steals. I mean, two 50, 25, 10 is what we were hoping for, for a lot of the players in the last year. So he could actually use, of course he's the first guy in this tier. Of course he could almost, he could be in the last year, but I, this is comfortably the best player in this tier for me.

Yeah. My hesitation with Ramos, I think is that against righties last year, 26.8% care, right? That doesn't crush you. He did hit homers against righties, but it was a two 42 86, three 87 slash line against same handed pitching. So the possibility to lose a share of that role, if he begins with an everyday role, I think it's, it's there. It leaves the door open for major playing time loss. If he doesn't somebody else steps forward.

So you're like, you know, Tyler Fitzgerald step forward as an everyday guy or. Or even if it's not, it's not like a strict platoon where he's only playing against lefties. It's the loses a start or two every week against righties that starts to kind of ding him in a way where he becomes a little bit like the big side platoon guys, but also.

Mashes on the small side. It doesn't do enough against same-handed pitching to really make up that gap. That's the worry. It's just like, man, 88 WRC plus against righties, given their situation, they should give them another look and see how it goes. I just think he has to take another step forward in that split, especially if he wants to lock down that playing time. It's nice to see a 222 WRC plus in a split that was against lefties last year, he just destroyed lefties.

What is your fancy platoon chart say about Mr. Mullins? Because I've lived through that and it seemed like things changed near the end of the season. He was definitely at some point almost in a strict platoon and a weird one with Colton Causer, if I remember right. Yeah. Fancy chart man.

What'd he do down the stretch in like September? Let's start with perception. What was your perception? How many times do you think he sat against most lefties, all lefties? What was your perception of Mullens? Most lefties. Most toies. Let's make the cutoff mid August, uh, August 14th sat against the lefty played against,

started against one on the 16th sat against three consecutive lefties. The week after that, I remember that sat against two more lefties that weekend. That was a bad week for Mullins from playing time. They had seven, seven games that week, five against left handed starters.

That was kind of a nadir. People were dropping them, you know, definitely. Got a one start against lefty on the first of September. Didn't see another lefty as a team, as a starter, until the 17th, Mullens started that game, sat on the 20th, was back in the lineup on the 22nd, and then sat against a righty on the 28th.

So yeah, it was not great as far as the leaking planning time against lefties from Mullins and for his career, you know, Mullins who used to be a switch hitter and gave that up, um, for his career, Mullins has a 78 WRC plus against lefties 119 against righties. Um, it's in a decent amount of split 775 plate appearance against lefties. I know that there's some numbers that say you'd still want to regress that blah, blah, blah. I think, I think he's bad against lefties. I think you would the given with the history of it being used to be a

switch hitter, like I think he's just never going to be getting his lefties. He is however, a center fielder. And so sometimes I think they just put them in to have good defense out there in center field. He's probably, you know, it's getting close because he's getting older and, and Calzars younger, but I would say he's probably a better defender than Cohen, Cohen, Cohen, Hauser and center. So there's some days where they're like, ah, no lefty starting, but we really

want to have good outfield defense for whatever reason, the pitcher or whatever. So he's going to be a little bit better than a strict platoon, but I, I think he's sort of capped at it as a platoon guy. And so when they project him for 525 to 580 played appearances, that's why I believe more veteran daily leagues still has the legs still has non zero power, still a decent player. Um, but the batting average, I don't know if it'll ever go back to where it used to be and he is 30, uh, at some point he's going to be a platoon corner outfielder.

Um, and, uh, you know, the contract negotiations aren't going to go that well and his fantasy value from here on out is only going down. It's interesting. It gets to the power pretty consistently, even since the 30 home run season, 16, 15, and 18, the last three seasons for Mullins with 4.9, 6.5, and 4.8% barrel rates. This is a left-handed Victor Robles in terms of the rototo, like power, speed, underlying numbers. And then the question comes out to average. If you believe that the average we've seen from Vic, partial season in 23 and then time last season is real, there's a big gap there. But those are the two guys you're looking at.

You're trying to pull every fly ball. Look at those fly ball rates, 49%. You're not going to get a good babbip if you're pulling, you know, you're trying to hit 50% fly balls. Right. The approach sort of supports that whittling babbip you see year over year from Cedric Mullins. I think he's okay where he's going. I don't think he's a must target or a must avoid player. I think you outlined our concerns for playing time really well. One more who belongs, I think in the oatmeal crew, we were talking about

Taylor Ward, we were talking about Nick Castellanos. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. I submit him as a player that does a lot of similar rotisserie things and maybe brings kind of a happy medium, not as much chase as Castellanos, but not as much patience as, as Taylor Ward, similar in age, a good lineup in Arizona. So supporting cast is nice. The best contact rate out of all of them. Lowest K rate, uh, 18.3%. Yeah, it should be.

And maybe most boring, you know, bad ball stats of the three. Yeah. But another option, if you're kind of looking for similar backup plans, basically is at least a competent backup plan if you miss on Ward and Castellanos? Why does he lose playing time? He had 592 in 2023, Loris Groyal did, and he had 553 play appearances last year.

Why does he lose playing time? Is it his defense? Defense isn't great. Does he get replaced in games defensively? I think he does. Fancy chart man. Gonna take a look at the stars. I don't know how I, how, how I won that award on this show. There, there was some kind of IELTS in September because he didn't start a game

between September 2nd and the 19th. Like it's a clear gap there. But Jake McCarthy is a lefty who plays better defense than he does. Yeah, they're, they pick their spots, I guess, to give them days off against righties mostly. That's just, you know, every two weeks or so, it doesn't play against the righties kind of a pattern

if there is one. So it's just. I prefer Ramos. I think, you know, what you also have to think about is this is the part of your draft where you're starting to lose the, you're starting to draft players who won't be on your roster at the end of the season, especially in a 12 team league. Yeah.

But even in 15 team leagues, you start, you start getting to like about 50% of the players you're drafting here, make it with you all the way, you know? And, uh, if that's the case, then I may want to switch a little bit. There's a, there's a kind of a moment. Guriel is like right there. Um, and ward and Castellanos, maybe I'd like to pair like a Ramos with a ward Castellanos or Guriel. You know what I mean? Like somebody who has a little bit more upside so that I definitely wouldn't want to continue being, you know, who I've been in this podcast today, you know, all the way through this and end up

with Taylor Ward, Nick Castellanos and Lourdes Guerrero Jr. as like my final three outfielders. I think there would be something missing. I just wouldn't have the upside that other people would be chasing at all. And I'd basically be so much oatmeal that it either works out and I'm okay or they're old. One of them breaks and I didn't buy anybody that was better than expected. You know what I mean? It's a group that's just more likely to, to meet their projection or underperform it than a group

that includes someone that's going to go over and way over. I mean, you may get a slight bump over, but it just feels like the ceiling comes down quite a bit. It would be too much oatmeal. It'd be three or four scoops instead of like a normal healthy one or two. You can only eat so much of it.

That's right. And we, we got down to 53. Good luck to us. Yeah, we'll get 87 outfielders or so into the part three. I'm sure that's doable. Join our discord. I'm sure we're going to 87 outfielders or so into the part three. I'm sure that's doable. Join our discord. I'm sure we're going to miss outfielders tomorrow. So you can ask us about those players and we'll make that cutting room floor

episode maybe again, coming off of the outfielders. I think that's going to be a necessary part of the build here for us. As we look at these next few weeks, be sure to jump in on those hive rankings. We at least got far enough in where we talked about enough outfielders where I think you could get through 50 if you want to, If you want to wait until we get to part three, that is fine too. You can go back and fill out rankings for the other positions we've covered so far all around the infield. Those are all available in the Discord. You can find enoceris.bsky.social on blue sky and dvr.bsky.social. That is is gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Hello, I'm Ian McIntosh and I'm the host of the Daily Football Briefing. What is the Daily Football Briefing? It's a special 10 minute daily show designed to bring you up to speed with the most important stories from across the football world. Except on Monday mornings when it's 15 minutes and we try to cram in the results, standings and stories from the That is a difficult one to explain, so let's go bit by bit. Or it's Champions League week and you just need someone to put it all into context. It's made for a very useful away point in a difficult game, in a difficult week. Listen to the daily football briefing in 2025. It's out every weekday wherever you get your

podcasts.