Rates & Barrels - 3,000 Strikeouts for Kershaw & Fourth of July Weekend Waiver Preview

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss the 3,000-strikeout milestone for Clayton Kershaw, injuries to Max Muncy and Spencer Schwellenbach, a demotion for Josh Jung, and an opportunity for Colby Thomas with the A's. Plus, they dig into weekend waiver-wire targets before checking in with Senior Hot Dog Correspondent Niv Shah ahead of the Fourth of July Weekend.Rundown1:29 3,000 Strikeouts for Clayton Kershaw5:55 Who Else Will Reach The 3,000-Strikeout Milestone?10:04 Max Muncy's Early Exit w/Knee Injury12:48 Spencer Schwellenbach to the IL w/Elbow Fracture22:07 Josh Jung to Triple-A, A DVR Miss27:16 Luis Ortiz: On Paid Leave During Gambling Probe32:15 Colby Thomas: Nothing Left to Prove at Triple-A?40:50 Senior Hot Dog Correspondent Niv Shah Returns! (The Texas Dog delivers at Nats Park, and Six Picks strategy talk)1:04:05 Otto Lopez's Push to Shallow League Utility1:13:55 Hayden Birdsong's 2025 StrugglesFollow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.socialFollow Niv on Bluesky: @ottoneu.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisProducer: Brian SmithGuest: Niv ShahExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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It is Thursday, July 3rd. We have a special episode today because there's no Friday episode this week with the 4th of July here in the states and as we will do hopefully every year that this podcast exists until the end of time we will celebrate one of America's birthdays by talking about hot dogs thanks to our senior hot dog correspondent Niv Shah he will join us a little bit later on in the show We'll talk about the hot dog plans we have for ourselves So if you're not getting to the ballpark and you're making them on your own grill, how are you coping? What are you doing?

What's your plan because I think you know is building his plan on the fly Baseball wise though. We had a milestone reached on Wednesday Clayton Kershaw got to 3,000 strikeouts We had more injuries Max Mun Wednesday. Clayton Kershaw got to 3,000 strikeouts. We had more injuries. Max Muncie actually got hurt in that game. We learned of a Spencer Schwellenbach injury that could turn into a significant absence for him. We have a demotion. We have a gambling probe.

And we have your usual pre-weekend waiver outlook. So we have a lot to talk about here for a Thursday. You know, let's start with Clayton Kershaw. Gets to the 3,000 strikeout milestone. A little bit of a grind for him to get there. Kind of a fun night at the ballpark if you're a Dodgers fan because the Dodgers actually came back to win a game that it looked like they were going to kind of quietly lose

to the rebuilding White Sox. And I was thinking about a few different things when Kershaw got to number 3000. My brain goes into the Jason Stark mode when these milestones occur. I noticed it was Vinny Capra who was at the plate for strikeout number 3000. And I've just burned a little spot in my brain to remember that in case I'm ever in a bar trivia situation where that answer will pay for my tab. I'll have no hope. Well, if you're with me, I've got you covered.

I can try to put that one in there. I even wrote about it. I even put it in text. I had a nice little thought while I was, you know, preparing for this. I would highlight his slider, you know, and he got the 3000 strikeout on a slider to to Capra. It was an interesting thing because he had the most swinging strikes he'd had on the season, and the most in a while in the game.

But they weren't coming with strike two that you know or not he like got to strike two a lot and it seemed like they had a specific plan which was hunt slider on strike two and they all kind of just kind of filleted and served the sliders out into the field I mean there there wasn't, there was a hard hit, Austin Slater hit one of the sliders. That wasn't a particularly well placed one for a homer, but there was a lot of little dinks and dunks off the slider and they just seemed to be, also I think none of them wanted to be Vinnie Capra. They all wanted to stay out of the record books on that one. So I was like, oh, this isn't gonna happen.

Like this is not gonna happen. You know, it kind of kept dragging on. And I was like, he was at 90 pitches and threw five. And I was like, I don't know if they're gonna let him back out there. But the announcer was like, well, you know, Dave Roberts is not even looking at him. You know, like I think he's gonna be back out there. And then he got the second one and you're like, Oh, I just need one more. And I think he got the 3000 strikeout

on his last batter to game. I don't think he would have come back out to the seventh because that would have meant, you know, pushing him past well past 100 pitches. He's just come back from injury and like it just, it would have been sad, you know, because he had the whole crowd ready for it. They were ready for it from pitch number one. So it's an interesting thing just from sitting there watching at standpoint where he did it the last possible moment and in grand fashion kept his team in the game even though his stuff wasn't the best and that slider he you know he didn't have that when he first came up. He came up fastball curveball and they told him, get a better change, get a better change his whole life. He's been trying to get a better change.

He's throwing a splitter now. It's still he doesn't have a great change up. He's never been able to do it. But, you know, in the second year of his career, when he had, you know, a walk rate over five per nine and it wasn't really the Kershaw we know now. He just picked up a slider. They just were in Wrigley and they were like, hey, have you tried throwing a slider? And he's like, I don't know.

How's this? And they're like, yeah. Man, the mid 2000s and pitch development were just wild. It sounds like it actually was about as casual as when we throw an idea out there for someone to add a pitch. Like there's reason behind it. It's usually something that fits the arsenal

and would actually add something when we throw it out there. But the spit balling, hey man, try a slider. Have you ever thrown before? Yeah, I don't know. And he just does it and you're like, no one had this idea before? I know. Why?

Why didn't he try one before? Maybe as a lefty they figured he didn't need one, but he has, he throws a particular kind of harder, more gyro-y slider that, you know, it's like Kikuchi throws a similar one where it's just like, that works against opposite hands. The question a lot of people are asking on Thursday is how many more pitchers are we going to see reach the 3,000 strikeout milestone, right? Because Kershaw is the 20th major league pitcher to do it and he's the third currently active pitch to do it. Both Verlander and Scherzer have reached that milestone. When I looked at at the active strikeouts leaderboard today,

the idea that Scherzer and Verlander are just continuing their careers to be atop that leaderboard, like the best the other, that crossed my mind as a likely explanation for why both of those guys keep pushing themselves, even as their bodies begin to really tell them how old they are. What was the old Nike commercial about anything you can do I can do better? Well and there was the tennis? Was it Nadal and Federer? I feel like they

had a few iterations of those or I'm mashing up some of my favorite commercials from the last like 30 years. That's an interesting idea that they've driven each other to this moment. Who is like that right now? Who are the dynamic duos that kind of love hate each other that are pushing each other? I kind of feel like that's probably a unique story in history of baseball. Yeah, I think that's the thing that might be fading a little bit over time. Those types of rivalries seem less likely to exist, but I mean, Garrett Cole, with good health going forward, could do it. I think Chris Sale with good health could reasonably do it.

We might find a sort of different way of of doing it, you know, in terms of like really high strikeout rates, you know, or make it more possible to do it in fewer innings, you know, with this, with this crew. 300 wins, I think, is the one that's not coming back. I think that one's out the door. But 3000 strikeouts, I think it'll just take, you know, maybe we as a sport are at the beginning of a real focus think it'll just take, you know, maybe we as a sport are at the beginning of a real focus on health that'll help. You know, maybe some of these biomechanical results will start to, you know, help health outcomes a little bit more. And then you're just going to have, you know, to some extent Verlander, maybe his mechanics

are perfect. I mean, that's people have that idea. But then also maybe he also just has a really resilient ligament. So like you could just have somebody who has the strikeout rates of a verlander, has this resilient ligament and managed to make it as long as he did. So I'm not as pessimistic about 3000 strikeouts

as I am about 300 wins. Yeah, but there's a pretty big gap once you get past the likes of Cole and Sale, where you kind of look at a bunch of guys that are going to fall short. I mean, you Darvish started his career professionally in Japan, so he's not going to do 3,000 in the big leagues. So there's a couple guys like that that are on the list

that probably had that kind of talent if the timeline had worked. And then you get down to the younger pitchers. I mean, even like a guy like Dylan Cease, I think he's 1800 or more strikeouts away. And you're like, is he going to pitch long enough to do that and remain effective enough? And again, it comes back to the K rate, like you said. But I would agree with you, unless we change how wins are awarded. I don't think we're going to see 300 wins from a picture again.

It seems like a long shot. By the way, that caveat, I like I'm yeah, let's change how Windsor is like, yeah, like if someone throws four and they win, don't give it to the guy who threw one. It's like, it's easy. I don't know. Maybe I'm not an official scorer, so. It does seem like a thing we could change and it would probably

enhance the value of the stat. But hey, what do I know? I don't want to push too hard on those traditions because you never know what you'll break in the process. Max Muncy, as I mentioned earlier, did leave that game with a knee injury at least at this this time, midday Thursday. We don't know the severity. He needed some help getting off the field and down into the tunnel. The injury happened on a stolen base attempt. The throw from Will Smith just kind of led to a collision

where Michael Taylor, sliding in head first, just crashed into Muncie's leg. Taylor left the game too. They called it a trap contusion, but I think you're always worried about a concussion and different things that can happen with a collision like that. So this could end up leaving a pretty significant void for the Dodgers if the Muncie injury ends up being a significant one. Yeah, there's some discussion going on. And I actually sort of agree with that generally without having the knowledge of a, of a trainer,

the specific knowledge of a trainer, I don't think they would have let him even walk off like that, like put any treasure on it. If they thought he had ruptured a bunch of ligaments. Think about the different ways you've had people like taken off the field. There's, there's like the, like, there's like the seat where two people are, like, have his butt, you know? Yeah, they just carry like, like the Diaz injury.

Yeah, the two people were like... World baseball classic. They just kind of carried him off. And I do know this, that like, whether or not you can put any weight on it is actually a test. So the fact that he was able to put some weight on it, I think is maybe a positive. Again, I'm just talking.

You're trying. You're trying to have reason. Trying to give a little bit of hope. Yeah. I think the thing about Muncie's season, too, is he was having vision problems early in the year. Once he corrected those, he's hit 12 homers since the start of May.

He's been more like the good version of Max Muncie for the better part of two months now. So finding someone to replace that production at third base, I think, will be tricky. We've talked about several teams looking for upgrades at that spot as the trade deadline approaches. And it's going to take, I think, a larger supply than there is available for everyone to get the upgrades they want. So we'll see if we get some good news on Max Muncie. We'll see if Dr. Eno comes through with that call. But and I've seen some weird stuff with the ACLs. That's true.

People have finished. People have pitched through torn things and yeah, Gallardo tore it and pitched another inning on it before coming out of the game. I mean, like, it's so hard to know. I mean, you can guess you can do those on field tests coming out of the game. I mean, like it's so hard to know. I mean, you can, yes, you can do those on field tests and get an initial like, is it definitely torn? Yes or no, but further testing likely happening for Max Muncie.

Let's talk about Spencer Schwellenbach for a moment. This one was a bit of a surprise. He ended up going on the IL with a small fracture in his elbow, a small, small fracture as he characterized it. And David O'Brien had a story about this on the Athletic. Schwellenbach believes it may have been the recent uptick in velocity. He actually touched a hundred with his fastball for the first time on his 25th birthday. So we don't know for sure, but it's just one possible explanation for what caused

that to go wrong for Spencer Schwellenbach. Timetable on this one's a little bit tricky, but probably in redraft leagues, a guy you're thinking about dropping, even though it is being labeled as a small fracture, and it puts another strain on an Atlanta rotation that has been just reeling after losing Chris Sale a couple weeks ago. Remember I had been talking about how I think it's called an avulsion fracture where the ligament pulls the bone off and I believe that's what's happened here but we did get a little tiny piece of good news is it didn't sound like they're doing surgery so it didn't sound like it has actually pulled the bone off. It's a stress fracture so it's made it's created a sort of a

fissure like a weakness in the bone, a fracture within the bone. It doesn't sound like they're needing surgery to push it back together. So it didn't pull it all the way off. That is meaningful because surgery itself adds weeks to the recovery time. So what you're doing now is you're just waiting to see that stress fracture heal. You know now there's a question of do I grow right back to doing the thing that was causing the stress fracture?. Now there's a question of, do I grow right back to doing the thing that was causing the stress fracture? Because there was something that you were doing

that was causing repeated sort of stress there. So I don't know how that gets figured out and what that means for his future because obviously he was putting stress on the elbow there. We do have some research that I've mentioned before that in season Veloelo boosts are not great. It's called Should We Overthrow is a piece in the baseball prospectus if you want to

look it up. And it highlighted sort of Strider's Velo boost before he went down. In this case, Schwalbach was enjoying that before he went down. So I just took a look at who's up Velo-wise over the beginning of the season. I know it's rubbernecking or gross. Are you gonna make us all sad? Like don't make everyone sad.

We've got a long weekend coming up, come on. It's analysis, it's just analysis. Yeah, all right, all right, proceed. It's just analysis. Andrew, all right, all right, proceed. It's just analysis. Andrew Abbott, number one. Okay, I don't even know, you didn't send me the list before this started, so I don't know who was on it.

You didn't send the chart. It's not on YouTube. I'm going to say- I swear I didn't mess around with the numbers, man. I didn't monkey anything. Automatically, I will say this with no context, Andrew Abbott is the least likely of all the pictures you're about to say to get hurt.

Yeah. No reason. Just no, no, I just. That's how you feel. All right, all right. I'm confident every name you say after Andrew Abbott will throw considerably harder, and we're gonna be like, oh, yep, yeah, okay, yeah, we're worried, we're worried, we're worried.

There is a question of like, is it how much is relative and how much is fixed, right? So he went from 91 to 92.9. So, you know, relative to himself, 1.8 ticks up. Chad Patrick, 1.8. Walker Bueller, you know, sometimes you're like, are you, is he just getting back to normal? Or is it up? You know, sometimes you're like, are you, is he just getting back to normal? Or is, is it up? You know, Walker Buehler 1.4, Ben Brown was up before he went down. Hmm, that's like a poem. Andrew Palante was up 1.3, Zach Efflin, who is scuffling, is up 1.3, Zach Wheeler 1.2, Clay Holmes, that's a little weird because of just the situation of going from relieving to starting. We'll finish just with Shane Smith, Logan Allen and Max Fried as the names that have all been up a tick. I don't know. The thing is, you look at that list and you're like, yes, somebody from that list will be injured. But it doesn't have to do with this or just the might just be the hazard of pitching. Every list of pitchers has injured pitchers.

I, until there is more evidence, we'll just say it's just a hazard of pitching. It's not the velocity specifically ticking up in season, even though it might be specifically ticking up in season, even though it might be a little bit of an indicator that something is loosening or fraying or getting to a point where it becomes a problem. Some of these people on this list have a real reason to push themselves. Chad Patrick is trying to establish himself

as a major league starting pitcher. He's trying to avoid Nashville. Trying to avoid Nashville. And I've even seen, I saw analysts after the start before last being like, that's the last start, we'll trying to avoid Nashville. Yeah, trying to avoid Nashville and and I've even seen I saw analysts after the start before last Being like that's the last start. We'll see if Chad Patrick and I was like, ooh To live like that must be so hard. You know Walker Bueller is trying to rediscover Something because he's all of a sudden looking like his next contract will be as a reliever, you know So that's he's fighting Zach. Eflin is is probably is fighting for his next contract, for example.

You know, there's a lot of a lot of people and there's there's some really low view, low people on here that are just being like, man, I can't throw 90 anymore. Like Logan Allen, Andrew Abbott, just being like, I don't know, 90. I don't like that anymore. Yeah. Well, we'll see where it goes with that group. It wasn't as packed full of guys I was already concerned about because they live so close to their maxes. That leaderboard, that one always gives me the extra sort of pit of despair in my stomach.

As far as Atlanta goes, Didier Fuentes, I think gets even more opportunities, right? He had one anyway with sale going down and now the doors open for who knows Hurston Waldrop Maybe to get a look or it's getting thin Jackson Stevens like what they do as a team I mean, maybe they don't really ever want to punt a season in Atlanta So maybe Alex and Thopolis goes out and just gets a couple of the get you there sort of veteran starters that are easier to acquire and kind of does does the non flashy deadline hoping that for the final two months of the season they're able to play at a level where they can grab the last wild card, whatever whatever low percentage probability that is, like maybe

that's what they play for. But it's been rough to try and find yet another option you could be excited about getting the chance in Schwalbebach's absence. Yeah, I like Fuentes' last start. I know it was short, but the nice thing was he got those six strikeouts, he got the stuff on his fastball back over 100. He used four pitches, he used his splitter a little bit more, which, which I liked.

The VELO was back over 96. Just a lot of, you know, a lot of things would look nicer in that start. And so I'm struggling to, to rank him a little bit just because the stuff plus the numbers look good. The projections are uniformly bad. Even oopsie has them for a 448 ERA. So I think that's partially because as numbers in AA weren't that good, it's a tiny sample. So it's pulling back to 498 ERA in AA and a 727 ERA last year at single A. Because it doesn't

have anything. The projection systems don't have anything to put in you know It's very little Sampled you know so I'm excited about him. I'll have him higher than his projection suggests I should it's a tough one to push too high in terms of what the Braze will do I don't you know like they don't see they don't when was the last time they sold I feel I don't know what what they're gonna do there but I would see like you know acquiring a rental maybe like Merrill Kelly on the high end but I think Merrill Kelly will actually probably be one of the more sought-after names if he gets if he gets out there on

the much cheaper list you have somebody like Cal Quantrill, Andrew Haney, might make some sense. Not something that'll change anything, but also something that won't cost them much. I could see them doing that. Yeah, that's where I think they'll go if they're trying to hang around for 2025. What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door.

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start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N rakuten.ca. Let's go to the story from the Rangers. Another corner infielder option to AAA this time is Josh Young. I gotta admit this, Josh Young is probably one of the players I've been the most wrong about in the past calendar year. I think last year in my leagues where I was not competing, he was a target for me while he was hurt because I thought he could come back and be a mid-20s home run guy that

if he wasn't in the heart of that lineup would be right behind the heart of the order, would rack up pretty good counting stats and the quality of contact is still lagging compared to where it was in 2023 when I got excited about Josh Young for the first time. He's lower to strikeout rate though so some things have gone right, other things have not gone well, and the slugging percentage all the way down to 366, easily the lowest we've seen over four different seasons where he's been in the big leagues. So at this point, I mean, I can obviously let him go

in all those leagues where I was expecting a lot, but I wonder why I missed so badly on Josh Young. I don't think you could have known that he would lose this much bat speed. He's not showing up because he's not qualified in both years, but I just looked and he lost between last year and this year in bat speed. He went from 72 to 70.4.

So that's from above average to below average. And he would rank with that among qualified hitters 11th in biggest drops in bat speed. We've gone over this before because, you know, Juan Soto is on this list and hasn't hurt him apparently. But Lamont Wade Jr. was number one. It certainly hurt him. Willie Adamis is number six. It's hurt him apparently. But Lamont Wade Jr. was number one. It certainly hurt him. Willie Adamis is number six. It's hurt him. I think it's even hurt Josh Naylor at number five.

Gavin Lux has no power to speak of at all. He's at number eight. It's generally tough to lose a mile and a half of bat speed. If you are Juan Soto, apparently you can shrug it off, probably because there's a whole host of other things you do at elite level to get there. I don't think that we could say that Josh Young really does anything other than power elite. And he maybe wasn't elite there either. So if there was a warning sign, it was,

hey, he's not great in terms of eye, he's not great in terms of I he's not great in terms of making contact And so there's a lot of pressure on that power and oh his 72 mile an hour bat speed and 9.9 percent barrel rate and 108 max CV those aren't elite He wasn't big on my list partially because of the plate skills I think you know just being like, if he did all those things and was Joe Adele or something, then I might have some shares. But to be fair to you, you thought maybe that last year

he was just hurt, because he was. And it was wrist injuries most recently that were the problem. There was some neck stiffness that came up for Josh Young late in spring training. You always wonder, is that actually the result of something else being physically wrong? That would certainly explain, I think,

where some of the bat speeds gone this year. So the health grade was probably a D or an F going into the season, but I thought I was getting a very solid, maybe a top 10 sort of third baseman based on roll and underlying skills, even with some of those limitations. I think I was getting a superstar. The best case scenario was the Austin Riley path. So maybe that is flirting with that superstar sort of level.

Maybe my pie in the sky expectations led me astray and led me to just run right past a pretty unfortunate combination of injuries. I mean, he had a calf injury. He's had, I think, a labrum tear in his shoulder. I mean, it's been a lot of stuff over the years that has slowed him down. I'm not trying to write the epitaph on his career. Like, you know, I think he'll get another chance. You know, one thing that I do notice also is that like when somebody cuts in a sort of small sample, cuts their strikeout rate down, but their swinging strike goes up, is, you know, I don't really trust that. So I think he'll always have some issues with strikeouts.

I don't think his LBP will be very high in his career. But I do think that if he gets right, he also is letting the ball travel more this year. So like maybe he gets down there, gets confident, starts to go get the ball, you know, starts to really unlock that power again. And maybe we hear that he'd been dealing with something health-wise. If he can ISO closer to 200, then he's more of a viable major league starter.

And for playing time in Josh Young's place, Josh Smith's already playing a lot, not quite every day, but I would say you get a little bump on his playing time. Ezekiel Duran, probably the other guy that ends up playing in excess for the time that Josh Young spends at AAA. And Smith is just like, he's like a deep lead guy at most. I mean, he's boring, but you know,

in terms of, he's really interesting in terms of how teams are built and like what type of player he is, because I don't think he'll stay much north of I mean I know he has he's 1.8 war this year Josh Smith does and 2.9 last year But I don't think he'll ever have like an all-star season, you know unless things go really right for him but You know, he is going to play his entire

I think he's gonna get all the way through arbitration. And I think he'll maybe even get a free agent deal. It might be one of those deals where he's kinda year to year traveling around a little bit. But his core skillset of like being able to play okay defense all over the field, make contact, you know, draw walks and have non-zero power and have some speed, it's five tool, but it's like, it's five mini tools.

Even if everything's gonna average across the board or you get one above average and everything else, four average, like it's still good. It's a good player. And I probably- Reminds me a little of like Joey Wendell. Sure. Yeah, I think it's a good comp.

Yeah, I think I've probably underestimated Josh Smith a little bit. Liked him a little bit as a prospect, kind of backed away when he got to Texas and he's exceeded expectations both last year and this year with occasional stretches where he plays a lot as a result of injuries. The other big news story that we learned about on Thursday, Luis Ortiz on paid leave due to a gambling probe. So that's all we know so far. It's a story from Zach Meisel and Ken Rosenthal on The Athletic to a gambling probe. So that's all we know so far. It's a story from Zach Meisel and Ken Rosenthal on the athletic.

We'll see where it goes gambling on a lot of the early. Yeah, at first it was it was paid, non disciplinary, administrative leave with no comment from the guardians. That was the initial report. And people started speculating, which you really shouldn't do in a situation like that because there's a few other things that could have been the cause anyway. We know it's a gambling related probe

and we also know that that leave will go through the all-star break. And then from there, we might get further updates as to what the probe reveals, or we might get the classic, add a week, add a week, add a week, sort of thing for a while until the probe is complete The good news if there is any here is that if you are looking for pitching there is a new pitcher that might not be

rostered in your leagues that is somewhat interesting in Joey Cantillo Cantillo comes up to take Ortiz's spot in the rotation effective immediately so I Getting trying to find a positive in a story where there really isn't one at all but Joey Cantil is missing a lot of bats at AAA I know the stuff numbers haven't jumped off the page during his time in the big leagues but I kind of think this could work at least in deeper leagues as a home streamer and a guy that you use somewhat carefully. He violates a rule that I have which is I want somebody to have a good breaking ball. However, I'm amending that rule because he's a lefty.

So, you know, he has a good fore seam and he's a good change up. And he's always had a good change up. So the two of those together are probably enough. Now, the thing that I think is actually more impressive, even than the strikeout rate right now in AAA is the walk rate. I mean, he's dealing with the challenge system

and he has an 8.7% walk rate in AAA right now. He's had a 10% in the majors so far. Those are far better than some of the numbers he put up in 2022 and 2023 in terms of walk rates in the minors. So hopefully he's figuring something out in terms of targeting rates in the miners. So hopefully he's figuring something out in terms of targeting, maybe simplifying things. But, you know, if you like Chris Bubich,

Joey Cantillo may not have the same command, but there are some similarities there. Hey, I like Chris Bubich. I'm here for Chris Bubich 2.0. That could work. Get some breaking news here from our producer Brian Smith. The Dodgers are calling up Asturio Ruiz according to John Heyman. This is as a result or at least somewhat related to the Max Muncie knee injury that we talked about a little earlier. Ruiz has been at AAA for the Dodgers this year, 66 games, 8 homers, he's 38 for 44 as a base dealer,

sub 20% k-rate, walking 11% of the time, but a 27.2% hard hit rate. So the how hard will he hit the ball question is still there, but Asturias doing pretty typical Asturias things in the highest level of the minors right now. I wonder if the minor league hard hit rate has bunts taken out. This is something new. We have to bring up the Asturias bunt discourse again. Do you remember this? Oh yeah.

I mean, I once tried to make sure that Victor Robles's bunts weren't being counted against him and I was so disappointed to learn that Statcast already had taken them out. I was like, oh, well, darn. But does Statcast take them out of AAA? You know what I mean? Yeah, the hard hit numbers on fan graphs. Are those coming from Statcast?

Are those coming from somewhere else? Great question. I like that the strikeout rate is pretty decent. That's a good combination of walk rate and strikeout rate. This is, I would have to say, I don't see much that's different from what he's always done. I think sometimes we give credit to good organizations for like, oh, he tweaked something. You know, this is a different Astoria Reese. I think they were just like, hey, really fast guy with options.

We could use that. You know, yeah, I mean, he's hitting the ball on the ground more. So it's not like they got him to lift it more. But hey, maybe that's actually the better version of a streweries to say you're actually not going to hit 20 home runs to big leagues. So, you know, lift and pull the pitches you should lift and pull. But don't try and lift and pull pitches that you shouldn't try and lift and pull. Like, maybe that was the direction, right?

I think we always have the going to hit the ball in the air more, going to hit the ball in the air more as the best possible adjustment in this instance, that might not be it. And the playing time could still be sparse. So we'll see who they move around like. Are they going to play a lot of Kike Hernandez at third base? It's quite a puzzle Why would Ruiz be the corresponding move that means that somebody on the outfielder?

Hey, it's young Kim. You can move move Edmund. So you're gonna play Ruiz in No, you're gonna play Pahez in center and you're gonna play Ruiz Against lefties so against lefties. So against lefties, maybe Ruiz actually takes center against lefties or maybe Edmund moves to center only against lefties.

And Ruiz plays a corner because you don't want to play confordo against lefties. And you don't want to play pahas necessarily. So you're thinking maybe a small side platoon rule, which is reasonable given that they've been stashing Ruiz at AAA all year. So diving into the weekend waiver preview, comparing him to say Colby Thomas, who really doesn't have anything left to prove at AAA is a couple of years younger than history Ruiz since last season kind of combining 24 and 25

together. Colby Thomas has 34 homers in 149 games at that level. He's 22 for 29 as a base dealer. A's called him up earlier this week. He's made consecutive starts in left field and the corresponding moves or recent roster moves that kind of give you the playing time snapshot are that JJ Bledea got optioned to triple A and Seth Brown got released.

So there appears to be a window, depending on what they wanna do once Magellan Duhar is done with his rehab assignment. I think they're also looking at the standings, and I think they're moving a little bit from we're competing this year to let's see what we have for next year. To some extent, that's why you would put Denzel Clark

in center over JJ Bledea. You wanna see if he's your everyday center f have for next year. To some extent, that's why you would put Denzel Clark in center over J.J. Bladay. You wanna see if he's your everyday center fielder next year. And I think that Miguel Andujar maybe doesn't even provide that much of a threat to Colby Thomas this time because Miguel Andujar is not somebody that you're counting on for next year. So I think he'll get a little bit of run here when they just try to see what their team looks like

for next year, if Colby Thomas can step in. I love that when you go to Colby Thomas' page, there's a quote, the last quote, the last piece of news is, "'Athletics manager Mark Kotze said that Thomas "'will be used primarily as a pinch hitter "'against left-handed relievers.' "'Then he goes out and does nothing to suggest he should get more playing time. And he's suddenly playing every day.

Anyway, managers lie all the time. The thing that's annoying about Thomas is that he has a bunch of swing and miss and he's been swinging and missing even more. The thing that is interesting about him, especially with Denzel Clark out there, is that he is a much better defender than Andy Orr. So they may just want to give him more rope in terms of, you know, give him more time to let that power come out and let that power and speed come out and see if he can manage

the strikeouts a little bit. I would rather have Comey Thomas in most situations, unless I was desperate for speed, unless I was just sort of bat streaming and I saw a bunch of lefties coming up on the schedule for the Dodgers or something like that. But I think I'd put like $3 out of $1,000, maybe $5 of $1,000 on Thomas and I'd put maybe one out of $1,000 on Ruiz. All right. Where does Dalen Lyle fit into that conversation?

So we're looking at other somewhat widely available outfielders. 22 years old does not have the strikeout rate problem. And generally, I don't think, you know, there are with strikeouts, I'm biased against them. But I also think that in the long term, like if you give a guy with a strikeout rate, bad strikeout rate, enough time, they can improve. You can see, and if they're young enough, you know, James would improve his strikeout rate, Joe Adele improved his strikeout rate. They can be special players still. But when you look at strikeout rate in the minor leagues, there's research

that bears us out that it does not always a negative, but they, the sort of. Boom or bust is bigger, right? Like the boom or bust percentage is bigger. With lower strikeout rates, the medium outcome is bigger. So what I like about Lyle is lower strikeout rate, more likely to help you in a redraft, more likely to be a non-zero going forward. So I could see putting a little more money on him

in a redraft situation. In a keeper league situation situation out of all the three I think I want Thomas You know because there's power and speed there beyond what Darren Lyle is gonna give you I think Dailin Lyle's like fine as a Contingency bit he's playing a lot. They've given him like almost an everyday sort of role But once Dylan Cruz comes back, I think you could see that playing time fall to the point where it's really only gonna work

in an NL only league. So interesting skills there, but more of a deep league, long term sort of stash. Thomas, I could see doing enough and playing enough to break through in some of the wider range formats, like 10 and 12 team leagues eventually. I don't know if I see that for Ruiz or for Lyle at this stage.

All three are single-bidget bids at most in redrafts. Just like somebody you'd like for the next week maybe. I do think that Thomas could give you a whole zero for the week though. So it's what he's done so far, you know. It's tough. The other breaking news item, there's even more. From our producer.

Oh, this is a good one. Yeah, James Wood will be in the home run derby, joining, I think, so far we know Cal Raleigh and Ronald Acuna Jr. are the other two players that we know are going to be in there. So nice field so far. That is a fun one. I don't think I'll be able to watch it this year.

I'll have to watch highlights. I'll be in Germany Yeah, that time change might not be working in your favor Yes, I'm not gonna stay up to middle night to watch them over on derbies as much as I like it I'd like it, but I'm not doing that You need to get the the German Broadcast version the German call of the derby Get a little clip from that because I'm just curious. I just want to know if is it better. Oh, I'll definitely turn on the morning news the night after That's gonna make the news

Would be part of it did It's only about a it's a seven-hour time difference from me So I guess that makes it a nine-hour time difference you. Brian Smith says it's already nighttime in Germany. Yeah, yeah. I don't think you're watching the Derby while you're there unless you're having some major problems with sleep while you're there, which I hope is not the case. Hope you're getting some good rest as you travel here during the break. Let's bring on our favorite end of the week guest.

He's usually our only end of the week guest, but he's still our favorite. Even if we had multiples. He's our senior hot dog correspondent and the founder of AutoNew. It's Niv Shaw. Niv, what's going on? VP of Hot Dog Affairs. Oh, man, it's moving on and up. I love it. Do you know that the algorithms have started to serve me a lot of extra hot dog content? I got an email.

They're getting me from every possible place too. I got an email from Yelp featuring the best hot dogs in the Madison area. Thought that was kind of funny. I got served a reel on Instagram of some random girl making Gatorade hot dogs. Don't know what that's all about. Sounds terrible.

Is it like boiling it in the Gatorade? She boils it in the Gatorade first. I think, I don't know if she even do it on the grill. I think she just cooked them in it for the electrolytes. Or for the sugar. I don't know. I mean, that's what electrolytes are, right? They turned a very odd teal sort of color.

So there was that. And then I saw on Blue Sky, some person I don't follow showed up in the, what, Discover tab or whatever they call it on that dumb app. And they had a study about eating too many foods with nitrates or something. It was like, was it very- Yeah, I got the, I got that one. The sweet.

They said it was people who average at least one hot dog a day, I think was the cutoff. And I was like, boy, that's a, that's an of thing cut off that's a lot of hot dogs though. I don't know if you are senior hot dog correspondent I hope you're not averaging a hot dog a day. No I am not. I'm not eating seven hot dogs a week. Seven a week seems like a lot and I don't want to get into the like what would lead people to do that but I just thought it was odd that that study randomly came out and was like hey look lead people to do that, but I just thought it was odd that that study randomly came out and was like, hey, look, I understand that I shouldn't eat one a day. Like, I got it.

Like, you don't have to tell me that. I get it at this point. So, hey, in honor of the Fourth of July, it seemed like a great time to check in and see what you've been eating recently. And I feel like after last week, the Slider Dog in Cleveland left many of us Not just the people, you know working on the show, but I think for the listeners and viewers it left us all wanting something more

I feel like I've been looked at a little bit differently now from people who have seen that I have eaten this and I'm not sure there was respect that is now lost And I'm not sure there was respect that is now lost But you told them it's for science right we got a recover guys we got a really good this man a we are science shirts First one off the presses is gonna be your response. I love it Worked into that no that's an interesting way to that makes the shirt even weirder to people that don't listen to the show, which is those people. All right, so here's what we got. You're back at Nat's Park and the Rangers were in town

and I love it. So they come up with the Texas dog. In their words, the all beef hot dog tucked in a pile of our house smoked beef brisket, slathered in barbecue sauce, and topped with pickled onions and jalapenos. Now by description, Niv, that is a 10 out of 10. Well, that is a great dog.

I think it's a solid representation of Texas as well. Visually looks pretty good. They hit the pickled onions really hard. This is what I'm talking about. What about the ratio of pickled onions on this thing? The construction of the dog, not consistent from hot dog to hot dog at the stand, you know? Depends on how busy they are, I imagine, right?

I mean, you're throwing them together fast, but there's a long line. Yeah, I think, you know, he just thought I'd like the pickled onions. I think, you know, he got a couple extra in there. I mean liked the pickled onions. I think You know, he got a couple extra in there I mean that the ratios are a little off I don't disagree with that, but this was I mean, it's 4th of July tomorrow This was an Americana hot dog guys. It was it was awesome. This game was back on June 8th I think you know, so it was actually I had this dog before I actually eat the Froot Loops dog that we talked about last Week this one gave me a lot of hope for hot dogs going forward Immediately dashed and clean immediately dashed so the brisket

You know there's a lot of there's a lot of barbecue purists out there a lot of people with opinions about barbecue I am one of them. You know many people have that opinions about how you do brisket properly This was a cubed brisket in a sauce that pretty Texas-y, a little sweeter. You know, Texas sort of goes with a little bit more sweet mesquite flavor, which I prefer, frankly, but not for everyone. And the cubed brisket, it's unwieldy. It's a mess. It's a mess picking it up.

This one I brought napkins and forks to and that helps this is the best Nats away dog I've had this season like it was awesome Yeah, it checks all the boxes and their barbecue sauce was like pretty good like again We talked about a few weeks ago, but it's like a DC interpretation of Texas Barbecue sauce and DC doesn't do condiments super well, but this was this was just all around quite good I was very happy with it. What the food that dc is known for? if like I I don't know if you said like make a dc dog dvr make make a Make a hot dog that honors the nation's capital on the 4th of july. I would just central american chicken that that's really good

So there is a lot of peruvian chicken a whole roasted chicken like like south american chicken That's basically like a rotisserie chicken though, right? That's like with good spices on it, it's real tasty. There's a lot of that. There is a Natz dog at Natz Park at the Taste of the Major stand. It has a lot of ideas, but the one, and you know, maybe we'll do it on a future episode

or whatever, but the one DC thing of it is this thing called Mambo sauce, which is Mambo sauce is like a DC condiment. And you only get it at like really old school, like before Obama was president, places that do carry out chicken wings. So it's like kind of Chinese general sauce, but like a little bit more appropriate for a chicken wing.

Well, a little sweeter, honestly. Sweeter. Yeah, which you know, general so's can go pretty sweet in a lot of places, but this is like on the sweet side of that. I'm sure there is someone out there who was like, man, if you were butchering what Mambo sauce actually is. But that's like the impression I get from it.

And it's good. And they put it on the hot dog at Nats Park. But it's that hot dog has a lot of other things going on. And we can talk about that. I don't know. It's a whole other whole other conversation. That hot dog. I think we're going to get a question or two about before Obama was president being described as old.

Well, I'm not like there's like a there's actually a thing that happened in D.C. and like not to get too deep on it, but a lot of people during Obama's presidency moved into the city, and most of the people during other presidencies lived around the city, in the suburbs in Virginia, Maryland, or whatever. So there was a core constituency in DC that has slowly been pushed out because things have gotten very expensive here. But there are still some holdout, like takeaway chicken wing places that are, you know, like 30 years old or whatever that stand by their mombo sauce or whatever. And then you'll see mombo sauce at like all kinds of random DC institutions.

It's something that McDonald's did a mombo sauce in 2023. Yeah, it's a thing. So I think if you're ever in DC and you see a place that has a mombo sauce in 2023. Yeah, it's a thing. So I think if you're ever in DC and you see a place that has Mambo sauce available to you, worth taking a try. Yeah, I'm gonna keep an eye out for that. If it's ever, I don't know how I'd find it here in Wisconsin, but if it ever happens. Yeah, I don't think it's a...

Road trip. I don't think it would be nice. I don't think it would be nice coming to DC. I would love that, but I don't think it would be nice in Virginia. Like, I don't think it is in Virginia. Like I don't think Virginia doesn't even get out to Virginia. Yeah it doesn't cross the river. That's incredible. So I learned a lot in the last few minutes. Hope we continue to learn some things. So the new session of six picks just started up. It's interesting to me that the prices, I think they're just the decent every month, the prices go up and they go up more often than that.

They go up every Friday or no, every Sunday. I'm sorry. Every Sunday overnight. So it'll be Sunday. Generally the last game is Sunday night baseball. So that generally is like 7 p.m. Eastern time. So it'll be after some of the night baseball ends. But the pricing is based on how many people in the past week

picked players more or less than what is expected. So if you have 10 people play, you would expect Otani to be picked. I don't know, like one time out of 10. And if all 10 people pick Otani, the idea is that Shohei Otani is then underpriced. Right. And so the prices go up based on we saw it happen with Soderstrom pretty early. Soderstrom was priced as if he was like a first basement. He was like a six dollar first baseman, but he's in the catcher group.

And like probably the first week, everyone was just like and he had such a great April. Right. Yeah. And so we're starting to see some of that stuff balance out like S Sørstrøm and Ben Rice are two examples of guys that sort of plateaued at the $20 range where they started, like, you know, said, like the two, $3, $4 range. But Cal Raleigh is still flying up the charts. No reason to not pick him at $40 or whatever. He was the second biggest gainer last week with Tarek Scoobal. And then, you know, guys like Otani are still being picked at like a super high clip. Guys like Aaron Judge are still... It's very hard because that is two-thirds of your budget.

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Get a free bedding bundle when you buy now at loganandcove.ca slash podcast. There's like in the 50 cent bin, especially I think in outfield, there's just usually a matchup where you're like, oh, that's a decent matchup. I was wondering about that from you, you know, like, do you look at the outfield? Do you look at like certain positions and are just like, I'm going to get 50 cents here. I'm going to find something that just it's that it's a way of zagging a little bit like

you're going to pick someone that no one else picks. But like, what position is doing that for you this season? I have an order that I go. Okay, what's your order? Starting pitcher. Always starting pitcher first. Yeah, that's where I start too. Because there are sometimes are cheap starting pitchers

and I try to get a cheap one. But sometimes you have to get a more expensive one because the slate's not good or whatever it is. I just wanna find my matchup. And then I go middle infield, corner infield, catcher, relief pitcher, and I'm trying to be cheap at catcher and relief pitcher mostly.

What I'm trying to do is leave some money for outfield. But if I get expensive along the way, then I know there's lots of outfielders. So I just feel like leaving outfield for last means that no matter what money I have, you know, I can find an outfielder. I can find an outfit or like, you can't just say always go cheap on outfield because there are studs in the outfield. And you just want to like, I'm not going to take Aaron judge ever.

You know, it's like, sometimes you want to to so I'm trying to leave some money for it But if I know that if it comes down to 50 cents, I'll do it and then when I have if I have money left over then I'll Reinvestigate my other choices and see oh do I want to? Want to take more expensive CI or MI now that I have money left over the one thing that I've started doing And it's partially because of discord a lot of chatter about this is the second position I'm looking at is relief pitcher now just to make sure there isn't a follower if there's a follower that is like the secret sauce in six picks because they're still scored like

a relief pitcher you don't get half the points but you're getting three or four innings if there's a follower those are also generally the only caveat is that followers are not great Starters, they're bad. They're bad at pitching like that. They're not I use the game Ben Casperius follower one time and I got a whole 1.6 points out of it. Yeah, right. I mean like There's a reason they're not starting and there's a reason they're not starting pitchers, right? But if you can find a follower that's sort of fun You can lock in 50 cents at your relief pitcher right away otherwise you sort of feel like you want a guy who's gonna pitch at relief pitcher and you want

someone who's gonna get you a whole dress save like sort of leveragey but I will say there are a lot of 50 cent relievers that are decent I mean just somebody like Will Vest is still 50 cents and you're like there's still people down there they're 50 cents Kirby Yates still 50 cents. And you're like, there's still people down there that are 50 cents. Kirby Yates is 50 cents. Like, what's nothing wrong with Kirby Yates? As long as he pitches in the game the day you pick him, you're probably going to be happy.

That's the other thing. Saves are easier to predict. Like, when the game is close, they use their saves guy, right? Like, they use their closer. That's when people have said, like, oh, I'm in a saves plus holds league. Like, how many closers do I have? And I'm like, get plus holds league like how many closers I have and I'm like get one Get one elite one, you know because it's easy like you'll get more saves plus holds even from that guy

But you can supplement with setup guys after that So I do prefer the closer if I can get it and then I also I don't know Where DVR where you guys are on this? But like I also I also I don't know where DVR where you guys are on this, but like I also try to be cheap everywhere and then come back and I'm like, who do I want to root for today? Hmm. No, I I do a fair amount of that because I do a lot of with my son. So we'll overpick Padres and Giants and you know, like somebody who's the game will be on tonight.

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So starting pitcher is the number one thing for me because the impact of the starting pitcher is really big and I wanna make sure I'm rooting for the guy. I don't want it to be like a bugger-rugging starting pitcher chase. Yeah, and like do I wanna watch that game?

Right, right, right. That might be a good matchup over there but I don't really wanna watch that game. I don't really wanna watch that. So you guys didn't, you were not part of the crowd that used Dustin May on the Thursday slay. I thought the pitching was so weird today because it was mostly near minimum or minimum guys,

and I didn't wanna pay up today, and I thought, all right, a lot of these guys have risk. Dustin May hasn't even pitched that well, but he's home against the White Sox. If I can't talk myself into Dustin may today like when away What would I ever use this guy? But apparently I was the only one who thought about it that way because he's in like 10% of the lineups today Yeah, I you know today is a weird one the thing that is gonna cost a lot of people is Brian Wu got bumped to tomorrow

Oh, all right. that's what I chose. And I chose Yannier Diaz who's not in the lineup, so I'm not going to score well today. These noon starts that then, you know, you don't have the full lineup information. It's tough. And you know, tomorrow there's an 11 a.m. I think here in fact, here in D.C. I'll just tick Brian Wu again. So I've already put in my stuff for tomorrow. I was like take a Tony Yeah, we know who was pitching tomorrow. I just go ah

Do we yeah? What if he got bummed back if something doesn't feel right and then it feels worse tomorrow and you get get scratched two days in A row they said then it did not say because of it wasn't I don't know. I'm not trying to poison the well here. I'm just saying. Let's not get. I'm here to step. You're going to out earn me today and pick six for sure. Seth Lugo was the big pitcher picked today.

Twenty one percent of people went with Seth Lugo. I don't know. Like Seth Lugo has been around for so long that I just don't like how that feels. I don't like the idea of I have to root for Seth Lugo today. Does that make sense? To some degree, if you're looking at multiple guys at similar prices with similar skills and risk, take the one that you're actually excited about,

I get that. I'm not surprised knowing our audience and how much Eno was into Lugo going into last season. I am not surprised to see that 21% pick percentage next to his name for today given the way today broke out. Right, just given what was available to you or whatever. That makes sense. Will Vest is a great shout. He's 8% at a relief pitcher spot. That's kind of weird. And then, yeah, I mean, the thing that's nuts to me is that Shohei Otani is still the most picked guy. 23% of people pick Shohei Otani. He's the most expensive player and he's gonna go up.

I mean, I guess... I've done some bills with him. It's just a little bit hard because it's not just one 50 cent player. Yeah, you're sort of stuck especially like a catcher or whatever if your guys aren't playing you like you're and it's not a Good thing to do on a short slate day I'm a little surprised that they're doing on a Thursday because You want to do it on a big slate day because then you have way more 50 cent guys who are available more people to playing Yeah, I feel like it's been a pretty fun Competition so far this year. We've had like, you know 200 250 people playing every day We've had different winners in the ratesates and Barrels department all three sessions.

That's been fun. Do we still have hats? We still have hats. I can still promise hats. I promised the person who won, he was in my Discord. Let me see here. I promised him macro data uprising. Congratulations. I promised him a hat hat but I also told him I'm about to go on vacation so and I just don't have a hat for the last session out like on Friday shipping stuff is not fun man we talked about that

it's my kryptonite but yeah so it's been a pretty fun competition and then we have like a good slate of baseball tomorrow. So it should be pretty fun. Well, one last question before we let you go, Niv, producer Brian pointing out the joy chestnut back in the the Nathan's contest or the I don't know. It's still I think it's still the Nathan's contest after doing his own thing for a little while. Whatever. I don't care about that. The number and it's still the Nathan's contest after doing his own thing for a little while. Whatever. I don't care about that.

The number, and it's disgusting, the number on his total for over-under on hot dogs is 71.5, which is just... I've reached the point with the choice. There's a nitrates problem there. There's a nitrates problem there. I think he's the one breaking it for everybody. Oh my god. That's crazy, man. Like 71 and a half. I know why he got why he went out.

Right. Like he ate a bit. He did a vegetarian contest. And Nathan's like, that's against the rules. So they like that. And that's because he like ate a veg. I he a veggie dog. He ate a vegetable. Oh, a veggie dog. It was like a competition competition and like they were like, oh, that's unacceptable. So

Nathan's just make a veggie dog Jesus. I'm taking the under I'm taking the under I know you think he's I don't think he's up for it. I don't think he remembers what nitrates are. I mean, it's gonna be a rates are. I mean, it's going to be a... Oh my god. Never ever ever would I actually put even like five bucks on something like this because it's so absurd. But I've seen the highlights so many times and been grossed out every time and I'm convinced that he'll always beat whatever the number is. Like it's an automatic over. I think generally if you dabble in betting at all, a very good casual thing to do is just bet the overs on things.

Everyone always wants more points. Everyone always wants more runs, more whatever. Oh yeah, more of everything. I don't think I want more hot dogs. I think I'm gonna be on the number on this one. The first time I watched it, they had to explain that if you like barfed it up and didn't eat it back, it didn't count. You have to eat it back up. Yeah, yeah.

That's terrible. That's such a... I was like, I'm out. I'm done. What? Yeah, we need a new tradition. This one needs to go. I'm thinking about it a little bit more and it's like, well, you know, who's even going

to push him? Who's pushing him to get to those heights? I just liked liked crazy legs Conti because he had the name crazy legs. I don't even know if he's still in crazy legs I eat a lot of hot dogs. They call me crazy legs Doesn't make any sense This is a tradition I could do without I'm glad there's an 11 o'clock baseball game. I can start watching baseball right away. Oh my god it's just one of those things that's on because we're like waiting for something else to be on and I'm not gonna watch this

That is how they did it. I love that our senior hot dog correspondence like yeah, that's the bad idea We should shut down that hot dog eating contest. When I go these games, I'm getting one dog. Maybe two dogs Enjoy them talk about them think about what the best things are on them And then don't a little hiatus. Oh, yeah Savor savor the dogs in moderation Niv we appreciate your time and your insight have a great holiday weekend. We'll catch up with you again next week. Sounds great guys Thanks so much. So senior hot dog correspondent Niv Shaw. I mean the Texas dog like that sounded amazing That's what I want to do tomorrow. Oh, yeah, I want to make my own version of that or something special July 4th plans

I'm right now. I'm doing Hamburgers, but well you could add a pack of dogs pretty easily and pickling the onions doesn't take that long pretty easy They look pretty good call man like easy easy to do real quick couple more Yeah, it doesn't take long just like a couple hours pretty fast There's a there's a there's a speedy way to do it a couple questions before we go going back to our waiver preview Otto Lopez is he becoming a shallow league player? He's on like a 20 homer 20 steel per game sort of pace I think he lost some time to an injury earlier this year

So the counting stats don't pop but he's playing a ton for that Marlins team The underlying numbers are actually kind of solid. Yeah, one thing I like is at least so far all of the defensive Metrics are a positive for him. That's a weird way to answer your question But I think that just means that the playing time is there. They've moved Xavier Hernandez off the position. He has a slightly Xavier Hernandez-esque, you know, appeal in that he makes a lot of contact. He does not have great power. I don't believe in the 20, the first 20. But I believe in the second 20 and I believe in the playing time. And sometimes if you just get the full

Playing time you can nudge that Homer total close enough to 50 to say rounded up But I think true talent he's somewhere like a 260 1225 guy Which has its appeal for a lot of people who are either struggling at second base Which has been a terrible position this year or in a deep league or just need that categorical goodness or replacing somebody that's been hurt. So definitely relevant in all leagues. I think if you were a 10 or 12 team leaguer,

if you were like a dynasty player or somebody that was planning on Otto Lopez for the future, that would be a less than ideal solution. Yeah, but nice player at a position of need at the very least, and he started every game for the Marlins since May 28th, so maxing out the playing time could make him easily a top 10 player at that second base position where there just aren't 10 great players right now

as a result of some pretty disappointing performances. Also looking at it in the Marlins bullpen, Ronnie Henriquez starting to get some love. That started to happen over the weekend in main events. I noticed that people were taking that flyer. How do you think Henriquez fits into our future pursuit of saves? I think he's the guy. You know, he has the best stuff in that pen. The guy who he's fighting, the closest guy, it was

Calvin Fauche for a while, but in terms of like quality all the way through the season, it's been Anthony Bender. And Bender's, you know, stuff is decent, but it's slider first over fastball and it hasn't turned into strikeouts. And remember, it's old-school analysis, but one of the main things the new closer has over the incumbent closer is VELO and strikeouts so Henriquez is 33% strikeout rate Trump's doubles more than doubles Anthony Bender's like 17% strikeout rate so I'm taking Ronnie Henriquez I think he's a pretty good bet for the rest of season is. Is he a good bet for next year? I don't know Maybe I mean it's it's not an area where the Marlins are going to do and like invest anything in terms of

They're not gonna bring in an established closer for any reason so it's gonna be Guys like Enrique is sort of competing with each other for those highest leverage opportunities I think the fear would be the lack of track record and the ability of Peter Bendix historically coming from the Rays of building great bullpens, right? If he's doing the same things in Miami that the Rays have done then there's always going to be competition even Without a free agent addition someday, right? So good enough, though, I think, to at least take that flyer in in deep, deep leagues. And I think maybe some of the cracks as like a third closer, second closer and deeper formats before the end of the season. They want to take the job and run with it.

I think that's the kind of ceiling that he brings to the table. That could be pretty appealing. So good job if you got out in front on that one and got him before the bid prices started to take up. I get to bring out again. Did you did you did you did you breaking news breaking news? This one's from Milwaukee. We've got Milwaukee breaking news.

Oh, my goodness. We have two pieces of breaking news. Brandon Woodruff is listed as the probable starter for Sunday's game against the Marlins. Hey, good that he gets back after the long rehab. We talked about multiple setbacks along the way. I think you've been very, very pessimistic about what he's going to be able to do with reduced velocity.

I'm more in the, if you lower your expectations to the point where they're not anywhere near the pre-surgery version of Woodruff, you can at least get to a level where he's probably still gonna be useful in some leagues. I mean, a matchup like that, the Marlins are not a bad lineup. They're at least within reach of being closer

to league average than people expected. I would still say the concern is more Woodruff specifically. How long does he get into his starts, and where is that sitting velocity getting off of rehab? Will there be a little bit of a bump and can he sustain that bump too? We've heard a lot of guys talk about not being able to get all the way to their actual comfortable sitting VLO on rehab assignments. So it could be physical given the nature of the injury and the duration of the absence But I think Sunday like the result on Sunday will go a very long way toward determining

How aggressive the bid numbers end up being for Woodruff because everyone's desperate for pitching at least a lot of people are desperate for pitching In most leagues Fangrass has them going to a six-man Basically, it says Woodruff Sunday Peralta Mizorowski King Thailand Queen Priester Chad Patrick. I suppose if anybody's going to lose their job right now, it would be Chad Patrick, although I like him enough. And with managing Mizorowski's innings, you know, the reason to not do a six man is that you would get you will lose one or two Freddie Peralta starts by doing it. That's meaningful. But you can also play some games where you kind of have

Freddie Peralta more on a five, you know, or if there's an off day, you don't skip Freddie Peralta. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's ways to kind of prioritize him and yet still kind of do a six-man rotation. Otherwise with mizurowski I'd be want him on a six-man for lots of reasons I mean he was sitting a hundred was it you that I asked how long can he sit in a hundred and you said 0.3 seasons Uh, you didn't ask me that but that seems like the right answer. I mean I mean, it seems like it's impossible to sit at that level. He's already dropping off it a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. The Quint Priest or Chad Pratchett, they're going to go into innings totals that they haven't before. And then Jose Quintana's an old, you know? And olds like me, we like an extra day. So I think that they might do the six man. But Woodruff himself would like the six man, probably.

The extra day makes a lot of sense for that rotation right now though. I mean the Brewers have a lot of inexperience, but even like Peralta, he's had some arm injuries in his past and he's been able to work through them coming off of a post season run last year. I think they wanna try and keep everybody

as fresh as possible. I think there's more reasons to do it than not. We've seen the Brewers lean on more starters in the past We have that also Team received word from a hand specialist that following additional imaging the main cause of his current pain is due to inflammation The specialist also indicated at this point in the recovery process the small fracture that have been sustained is now a non-factor in the discomfort That he's currently experiencing. Hmm. That seems good as a result of injections. I would say it's probably cortisol, you know, to relieve it.

Cortisol, you usually have about a 48-hour inactive period, and then usually you can kind of get back pretty quickly. So this might be good news. It might. I'm going to say cautiously, might, because we've seen, you know, Kyle Tucker, oh, he has no right leg anymore. Yeah, so I don't know exactly how this will go down,

but I would say that, you know, the fact that the fracture is a non-factor, I would say is good news. Yeah, I guess so. I'm thinking about deep league Shea Whitcomb maybe being kind of interesting. His first big league homer and he was the DH on Wednesday. Whitcomb is interesting for keeper in dynasty leagues. I mean we talked about Devil's Rejects sometimes on this show. It's a 20-team league and Whitcomb is one of the triple-A guys that's been stashed on my roster

for a few weeks and I think players like that are always worth holding on to if you can through a trade deadline because that's exactly the kind of player the Astros, if they're not using could just flip as part of a deal and some other team that's looking to the future might have near everyday playing time they could give Wickham. So if he doesn't break through for the Astros during Alvarez's absence or in this time before the deadline maybe you get something from him on the other side of that. So the other follow up with that Yordan-Alvarez thing, the time frame has now shifted to a couple days rest rather than anything more. Yeah, that's definitely good news relatively speaking.

Like we'll see if it stays that way because it seems like every time we get an update it's a setback for Yordan, unfortunately. Last question before we go, you know, Hayden Birdsong has been struggling this year. Lefties in particular have crushed him. Lefties are hitting 278, 361, 539 against him. I notice that Birdsong is dipping quite a bit in terms of his roster rate in CBS leagues.

Do you look at Birdsong in leagues where he's becoming available as someone you should shrewdly be picking up where available or do you see his struggles kind of lingering on through the second half and possibly leaving him vulnerable to getting replaced in the rotation for some stretch? Yeah, I'm gonna answer in a graph form. I think this is his game by game location plus and

The boldest one is a slider The reason that's bold is because that's the one that he's had the best command over you can see that yes It dips below a hundred, but it never goes negative I've never seen negative before it never goes negative like the change-up Which as a kick change, I could believe that that might be an erratic pitch for him to command. And so when you look at Birdsong's usage of the kick change, stuff plus always high, location plus all over the place, usage really game to game.

I think he shows up to the game and is like, is it there for me today or is it not? So that's a little bit problematic. So you say the change up, sometimes there. The slider always there in terms of location, but guess what? Stuff Plus hates it. And batters are hitting 480 off it, slugging 480 off it, I think.

So it's not a good pitch, it's just the only one he can command. And then you look at the fastball, and it's all over the place. It had a two and a 42 location plus in recent games. And all these things have gotten worse since he's gone into the rotation. So to recap, we have a fastball, not great by Stuff Plus, terrible by Location Plus. We have a slider, not great by Location Plus, by Stuff Plus, okay by Location Plus.

And then a change up that's all over the place. Now the curve is good, but he's kind of gone away from it a little bit. So I just don't see the way forward that's like, oh he'll do this. I think it's going to be, I think he's going to be tantalizing for the rest of our lives. Yeah, I mean the the whiff rates on the curveball and the change-up were good last year and they're good this year and they give you hope. And the thing I was worried about was them not being able to fix this fastball. And well, that's been at least part of the problem so far. But man, the park, the park will always

bring us back in. So long as he is a giant, you will tell yourself a story. Throw him out there at home. It'll be fine. It's frustrating. I thought we would see at least a small step forward from Birdsong this year. Edward Cabrera redux, it is him. It is, because it's the same thing, where yes, okay, I can tell you, you can use him at home maybe. Edward Cabrera was usable at home, even in the bad years.

He actually had okay, because the walks just don't turn into runs as much, you know? And so you just had a high-ish whip, but good strikeout rate and low-ish ERA. And he can probably do that for you. I'd still be careful. Like, do you want to throw him against the Cubs at home? I don't know, maybe.

You know, so, you know, in terms of the Probables grid and where he's headed, I also think, you know, this is a team, the Giants that are struggling and they could make a change. Landon Rupp struggled a little bit, but he made it through four and gave up like two runs and the team won the game. You know what I mean? Birdsong's struggles seem to be more explosive when they happen.

I mean, I was watching a Birdsong start where it looked like he just lost control of the fastball just from one minute to the next. And the Diamondbacks reacted immediately and just stopped swinging. And he loaded the bases and gave up a Grand Slam. You know what I mean? It's just like, it happened so quickly that I think that Birdsong is the person that would be replaced in this

if Carson Wisonhunt comes up. So right now you've got Birdsong at Sacramento on Sunday. That's a no for me, dog. And then you've got him home against the Dodgers on Saturday. Also a no for me. That's not going to work. So that's part of what I think is prompting people to say, all right, maybe he's back on my roster later, but I'm not going to hold him through a stretch where I can't use him because those are unlikely environments for him to figure it out. That doesn't line up well at all. So that'll happen if that's the tier that you fall into as a pitcher.

And by the way, you might be right about Edward Cabrera. Like it's looking pretty good for you. It's finally happening. 341 ERA, 128 whip, 14 starts, more than a strikeout per inning. Now it's time for the Marlins to trade them, right? Maybe he's the guy that actually gets more interest than Sandy given how well Edward Cabrera has pitched so far this year. But we'll see, halfway there.

So you got to be feeling pretty good about that. We need to go. We got to get the grills cleaned up for the 4th of July weekend. We'll reveal any hot dog revelations from the weekend once we get to our Monday episode. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for keeping us in the loop throughout this show and for putting this episode together. Thankfully, no more breaking news so we actually can say goodbye. You can find us on Blue Sky, enosaris.bisca.social and dvr.bisca.social.

Enjoy the holiday weekend if you are celebrating in the States. We're back with you on Monday.biscout.social and dvr.biscout.social. Enjoy the holiday weekend if you are celebrating in the States, we're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. Yeah, baby. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back, the most savings on your shopping. So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Uniqlo, Best Buy, Expedia, and other stores

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