Rates & Barrels - A Giant Power Boost, Spring Moves, Draft Season Risers & Fallers + Show News!

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Eno and DVR share some show-related news and discuss Jorge Soler to the Giants, a recent swap between the Twins and Marlins, catcher additions for the Brewers and Pirates, and a few spring items to watch for the Rays. Plus, they examine a few risers and fallers among pitchers since the start of draft season in the fall.  Rundown 0:49 Show Announcements! Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels 5:20 Jorge Soler Signs a Three-Year Deal with the Giants 11:37 Nick Gordon to the Marlins for Steven Okert 17:29 Spencer Turnbull Joins the Phillies 23:40 Gary Sánchez to the Brewers 29:26 Yasmani Grandal to the Pirates 33:39 Things We Recently Learned About the Rays 42:54 Spring Injury Updates: Edwin Díaz, Shohei Ohtani, Garrett Crochet 46:11 ADP Risers & Fallers (Pitchers) Since the Start of Draft Season Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Jorge Soler Thumbnail Photo by Jonathan Hui-USA TODAY Sports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Tuesday, February 13th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. Pitchers and catchers trickling into spring training. We have lots of news updates to pass along. As it turns out, we talked about the Giants as part of a team preview episode on Monday. They went out and added some power, so we'll talk about Jorge Soler, how he fits in San Francisco, along with a few other recent trades and signings that have gone down. Time permitting, we got a few risers and fallers over the course of draft season that we'll try to get to as well. Now, we begin the show with some news of our own today. Trevor May, former big leaguer, is going to join us every Friday this season on Rates and Barrels,

and the Friday episode will be a live stream on our YouTube channel starting at one o'clock Eastern each and every week and beginning this Friday, just three days from now. Yeah, it's really exciting. You know, we're trying to do something with Trevor that approximates the conversations I had with him in the dugout, in the clubhouse. And the way that I think about it is hopefully it's intelligent and inclusive so we're going to try and look at some of the things that you might have heard us talk about and some of the

things you might hear on you know when you're listening to it to a game or that you might not know right away what it is and kind of you know go through these concepts explain what they are and then explain them from the standpoint of say maybe an analyst a team r&d analyst the kind of perspective that i can bring and then from the player himself and and hopefully get some idea of what sort of what coaches are thinking about and what it's like on the field when you're trying to implement these strategies when you're trying to get ivb out of your fastball what is ivb what is a good foreseeing fastball and how do people coach it up so we're gonna do uh stuff like that but then we're also uh we've got a lot of plans for fun segments uh where trevor will let us in a little bit into what life,

uh, on the other side is like, as you've probably heard or seen, if you've ever seen him on YouTube or on his Twitch channel or heard him on the radio, we've heard maybe on this pod as a guest a few years back. Trevor's insight is awesome. Uh, it's very, very honest and that is great.

I love that about him. So really excited to work with Trevor this year to make the show more interactive, making it a live stream. We hope you can come by. 1 o'clock Eastern is the start time 10 o'clock AM Pacific on Fridays each and every week. Of course, those episodes will be podcasts and they'll be available to watch

on YouTube after they happen too, but we'll take questions will engage. It should be a lot of fun and in a similar questions, we'll engage, it should be a lot of fun. And in a similar vein, we have a Discord channel that's going to be available very soon because we've had a lot of people ask us, you know, what are you going to do if Twitter goes away or where can I go to connect with everybody who listens to the show? We've got a solution to that. It's Discord. So if you don't know what Discord is, this is a good time to kind of dig into it a

little bit. Basically, it's an online chat room just set up for a group of people. So we'll have a way to connect with us directly where you can submit mailbag question ideas, maybe find people to play in leagues together. It should be a lot of fun to have that. It's a great way to build some community here around the show. Yeah, an early idea is to have a discussion of how we could compete against each other as a community. Yes, we want to have a league where everyone can play against each other for this season. Yeah, and how does that look?

What kind of a league can we do where we can include more people? It doesn't make much sense. The reason we haven't done them so far is it doesn't make much sense to have a 12, 15, even like a 20-team league, even a 30-team league. There's many more listeners than 30 so a few you know yeah so we need to figure out how we can have some sort of competition when when we had covid lockdowns you know that was a kind of a fun uh you know way that we competed against each other what was the the name of that project? Project Goat. Yeah. Project Goat, where we had to put

together the best fantasy team of all time. That was interesting because there was really no limit to the amount of people who could take part. So we need to dream up something like that where we can all take part. And yet there is still a winner. That's the goal.

We're going to be taking some ideas for that. Discord channel should be up by the end of the week. Maybe even by the end of the day on Tuesday if things go really well for me this afternoon. I have a hard time making deadlines for myself right now. It's not a strength, but we're excited to have it because there's a need

for us to be able to connect with listeners in a way that's a little quicker than an email. Email gets a little buried sometimes. Keep an eye out for that. We'll be sure to tweet that from the Rates and Barrels Twitter account, plus our own Twitter accounts, and we'll put that in the show notes once we have an official link for people to join our Discord. On to the news, Eno. The other news. The non-Rates and Barrels news. Jorge Soler has signed a three-year deal with the Giants, giving them much-needed power.

We talked about it on the team preview. They had one hitter inside the top 200 overall in ADP. Now they've got two. And Jorge Soler, now that he has a team, might actually move up a little bit in terms of where people are comfortable drafting him. I look at Jorge Soler. little bit in terms of where people are comfortable drafting him. I look at Jorge Soler. I see a guy whose power plays everywhere, and he's spent most of his career in pitcher-friendly environments. The move into Oracle Park doesn't change a whole lot about how I feel about him. Given the needs on this team, I think this is a potential max PT volume player so long as he's

healthy. With health, we're talking about a guy that can actually hit 40 home runs pretty much anywhere he plays well he's done that once right but i think yeah the the health is the key last year uh he remained mostly healthy but he had he did have an oblique strain and in 2022 he only had 72 games due to pelvis and lower back injuries so i expect that on some level there will be a stint on the uh on the il um another thing that's interesting to me uh about solaire is that it's not doesn't quite perfectly map but he has had better years in contract years at least in terms of volume so is there any worry that when he gets a three-year deal uh year one or two of the of that deal will be lower on volume uh i don't know i don't want to really uh go down that road because who knows what uh why he was hurt and when and what was going on there. And from a team perspective, I think the Giants are like, it's okay if you're hurt. We have exciting, but he's an above-average bat, you know?

So we have options on the days that Jorge Soler is hurt, and when he's not hurt, that's what we really want, is a guy who can actually hit even 30 homers. The last time they had a 30-homer hitter in San Francisco was 2004, and his name was Barry Bonds. So, you know, one thing I have noticed is Soler's got a tomahawk chop. I think, you know, one of some of his most iconic homers, you just think of like, you know, a high pulled, you know, just screamer. And in San Francisco, the easiest place to hit a

homer is to left field along the line or just just left field power alley the right field power alley it's called triples alley that's where balls die um there's a big wall there you know even if you you know hit it hard you might get a double or triple out of it left field is where you can still hit homers so yeah i think youer, 30-plus homers, maybe like a 230 average, but definitely a good on-base percentage. The thing that's been frustrating to me just watching him is that I think he has a really good sense of where the zone is, but I don't think he has a great sense of spin. And I think that's been true of his whole career that's why you see really good walk rates but also fairly high strikeout rates that go along with it the nice thing about someone who does know where the zone is and can't tell spin uh so well is that you can uh tell him to kind of uh shorten

the zone like if you if you understand place right but not so much pitch type well then just really focus in on high and tight how many people are throwing high and tight sliders you know um and that's been i think what he does in his best years he just really focuses on high high and tight and tries to spit on lone away even in the zone as much as possible. But that's still where he's gettable, is sliders in the zone. And I expect that as he goes past 31, the strikeout rate will increase and the batting average will decrease. But they're saying three-year deal. He hits the snot out of the ball.

This is something we need. Yeah, and you look at two of the last three seasons, the more complete seasons in 21 and 23, the strikeout rate was under 25%. So some of the elevated swing and miss concerns where he was in the 30% range earlier in his career, those have faded a little bit. I think you're looking at a guy

that also is going to an organization that, as we said yesterday, has shown a propensity to make veteran players better, but not necessarily young players better. So I wonder if they'll have anything location strategy or anything with his approach that they'll try and tweak a little bit to keep him unlocking that

power throughout the entire life of the deal. But I'm only thinking about this year as far as how much I like this addition for them. Projections are a little higher on Solaire maybe than you are just in terms of average. The bad X has been at 249. 30 home runs seems realistic and that's only with 539 plate appearances projected.

So there's some injury risk already baked in and some occasional days off already baked in. I wonder if the park factors have already been applied. I mean, this is fairly fresh news. So those may be sort of more context neutral. So watch those projections and see if they drop down to where I'm talking about because San Francisco is a tough park.

Though, hitting this not out of the ball, as you can see on this leaderboard that we just had up, 15% barrel rate and 48% hard hit, 350 balls in play last year, Shohei Otani, Marcel Azuna, Matt Olsen, Kyle Schwaber, Adoliz Garcia, Ronald Acuna Jr., Corey Seager, and Jorge Soler. So that is a nice little group of hitters.

He does hit the ball hard. Good company to be in. A lot of those guys easily top 100 players, and a few of them, of course, are very early round picks for fantasy purposes as well. Let's move on to a trade that went down recently. Nick Gordon on the move. He gets flipped from the Twins to the Marlins. A reliever, Stephen Okert, goes back to Minnesota. Just a simple one-for-one

swap. All I could think about after I saw this trade go down was the Marlins just have a type. They are okay with a, a lighter hitting bat. They just thrive on adding these guys to their roster. I do think the Gordon playing time outlook might be a little more favorable with the move to Miami than it was if he had stayed in Minnesota.

And Ochert is actually a pretty nice bullpen addition for the twins who are piling up a pretty impressive stable of relievers. If it were not for 2022, if you looked at 2021 and 2023 exclusively, you would consider Nick Gordon a non-tender candidate. And I do believe that at times he's been close to that we still have the 443 plate appearances he put down in 2022 where he had a nine percent barrel rate and a 110.7 max ev and showed us that it's not a completely empty stick so i'm wondering how much of last year's small sample and injury and if he can get back to an

eight or nine percent bail rate if he can he could have league average power even in that park he's got some legs he's been an option in center he could be the guy who steps in when Jazz is hurt. He could factor in at any of the outfield positions plus second base, pushing a rise to first some days and bell to DH. So there's a lot of different configurations where Nick Gordon can get some playing time. where Nick Gordon can get some playing time, I'm not sure that behind Byron Buxton wouldn't be a better situation for him. So I'm not sure how many played appearances to give Nick Gordon this year.

Right now, the depth charts over at Fangraph say about 150. I don't think that he's going to clear that. Yeah, I think he's versatile enough, and he has shown enough flashes where they're going to want to see what he can do. And I think there was also the story that Dan Hayes wrote a couple of years ago where in addition to missing time with COVID,

there was a stint where I think he had chronic gastritis that caused him to drop down to like 153 pounds. That could affect your power. There was a major health issue that he was dealing with. Now that that's further into his past, I think you can start to look at some of the high points and think that that's at least attainable for him. On the surface, it looks like a typical Marlins acquisition. The more you look at it, the more you can see, hey, if they're able to get back to that 2022 level which to me seems more it's more like a function of just playing every day too it's hard when you don't have a spot to call your own we've talked about the difficulties of being

a part-time player i just think it is a question of where does he really fit in best defensively as you try and put the pieces together i think i figured something out i was i was wondering why the twins would trade away a backup center fielder when they're going to be trying buxton and center and buxton has played so much um you know what happens when buxton goes on the il and willie castro is your starting center fielder you know what do you do then i don't want matt walner. No, no, no, no. Kind of funny, actually. But no, I don't want Matt Walner or Max Kepler in center. Here's, I think, what makes the trade make all sorts of sense.

Nick Gordon has no options left. So if you're going into center field and you're building a bench, someday that'll be a good segment and people will look forward to it i promise year five still sisyphus sisyphus with this rock um uh so if you're building a bench in minnesota uh you look at willie castro backup center fielder, Kyle Farmer, backup shortstop, Ryan Jeffers, or Christian Vazquez, a backup catcher. You have room for one more, right? Yeah. And as of right now, I think roster resource has Jose Miranda in that spot.

Yeah. So one more is Jose Miranda or Trevor Larnak. Yep. Could be Larnak. You know, so those two are better bats. And I don't think you want to keep a third backup center fielder, even if you like Buxton, you know he's hurt. So the answer to why they traded away Nick Gordon is Austin Martin.

Austin Martin can play center field. Austin Martin profiles pretty similarly to nick gordon where it's like okay he does a lot of things well what's the power like he can play center field and he has three options left nick gordon has zero options left so i think that explains the deal in its entirety really yeah and you look at austin martin a little bit of power a little bit of speed last year 16 bags at triple a a 106 wrc plus i mean not a lot left room to prove at that level necessarily but also could be an up and down guy pretty easily if you want yeah it doesn't it doesn't profile necessarily as a starter uh in the big leagues unless that you know with he's had a fairly robust injury history so maybe there's another you know another

year removed from uh from that and he starts hitting the ball 108 109 hard hit rate gets to 35 you know then we can start to believe that he might have some power at the big league level let's move on to another signing spencer turnbull has signed with the phillies and we wondered if maybe the padres should have been in on turnbull the way you look at the phillies depth chart right now wheeler and nola at the top ranger suarez taiwan walker christopher sanchez kind of your back three so turnbull looks like the sixth starter at least for now maybe you could win a job over the course of spring training but you actually like the signing quite a bit as a guy that should give them meaningful innings at some point this year. Yeah, I don't know if it's easy to keep him on the roster,

what the agreement is, what the exact details are. I saw some speculation that he might be able to play in the minor leagues and still be paid like this two million you know like that that this would allow them to keep uh spencer turnbull in the minor leagues as their sixth starter um i don't know exactly how that would work because he's a major leaguer it's major league deal if you keep him on the roster as a starter um you know does taiwan walker or does he does he have to claw past taiwan walker is he still a candidate for me maybe being cut in the spring? I guess so. But they had Matt Strom on last year as a kind of

reliever slash starter, and I could see Turnbull doing something similar. And then just in terms of what he throws and, you know why i circled him mostly it's because he throws a lot of pitches uh they're not all great um if you look at uh the stuff plus um you know only the change up really rates that well the curve is all right but the slider is close to average and the four seam-seamless sinker, 91 and 93, that's not really terrible. We've seen some 60s and 70s from Major League starting pitchers. That's just below average. I wouldn't call it terrible.

And he locates the fastballs well. So if he locates these fastballs well and they're okay, and the changeup and the curve look good, I see that some of this injury that he had last year, the neck injury, which in the light of Billy Epler's suspension, I'd have to point out that Spencer Turnbull's neck injury last year was really weird. He was demoted, and then he came back and was put on the Major League IL. So I'll just point that one out real quick. If there was an injury or if it was just one of those down years, the fact that he couldn't locate a slider just leaps off the page to me. So if he can locate the slider and locate the two uh the two fastballs and then the change up and

the curve are his action pitches there's a real opportunity here and and again it's like this thing where it's like the dean kramer thing it's like he has five pitches like two of them are probably okay can we get a third one can we tweak one of these ones that he's actually used in the major leagues can we tweak one of them and make it a little bit better that's a little bit more uh i think it's got to be easier uh than taking a guy who has two pitches who's never really thrown a third pitch you know and has never really shown the ability to to shape that pitch i think it's easier to work with somebody like this plus with five pitches he's just like you know he's like a really ideal sort of fifth sixth starter um you know i think this is a great signing for them i i'm not trying to say that

spencer sternbull is amazing i'm just saying that he he sort of represents like think of the guys who've been signing these one year and 12 million dollar deals yeah right a lot of them are like they're veterans they have enough pitches pitches. They've started the major leagues. That describes Turnbull and you just got him for $4 million instead of $12 million. That's how I see it. Yeah, the big difference, of course, we've seen one season in which he's been able to work as a starter all year long at the big league level. That was back in 2019. It was a 461 ERA one 44.

We have the year of the super happy fun ball. So it didn't go particularly well, but we've seen flashes 2021 before the injury Spencer Turnbull looked like a different picture. And I think if they use him as a, a right-handed Matt Strom, that could be optimal in the short term injury strike. Maybe you go to four or five innings with them at some point later on this

season, that lack of bulk is the difference in cost. And that's why Lance Lane and Kyle Gibson, those guys, command more money. But I look at someone like Jake Odorizzi, who's still a free agent. I'd kind of forgotten about him until I saw his name pop up in a Roto-Wire update. He could be similar. You could just sign Jake Odorizzi if you had a need for pitching. And he's actually done it several times in terms of providing a little

more bulk. We've seen teams more recently veer away from him come playoff time, but if he's healthy, this is a guy that I think could sign a similar deal to Turnbull somewhere and end up logging a surprising number of innings. Remember last February, were

we talking about Seth Lugo as someone that was going to pop up and chew up a bunch of high quality innings for the Padres? I certainly wasn't. I think that's the kind of signing you're looking for at this point in the spring. Right. I think the Giants showed you what you can do. You don't have to do it with three spots, but what can you do with two or one spot at the back of your rotation is uh just buy innings you know just buy innings and figure it out and i think that's why we're seeing some of these veteran pitchers sign and be like i think the signing team is thinking can we get 75 innings then we should we should do this you know 75 innings that may not be high leverage 98 miles an hour pitching the eighth

and it may not be you know somebody who qualifies for the era title um or you know really we want to like put down on our depth chart as our fifth starter but something in between is always useful jake junis was really important for the Giants over the last few years. Has value in real life, even if it might have limited value in a lot of our fantasy leagues. A couple other players on the move. Two catchers. We'll start in Milwaukee.

Gary Sanchez has signed with the Brewers, and it looks like a lot of his time might just come as a DH, because the way this roster is built, you think about William Contreras as one of the more heavily utilized catchers. Sanchez could rotate, be the backup catcher and primary DH option, give them some more power from the right side. And we talked about him accidentally on the Monday show. We were just talking about how

people notice past balls, right? And the perception of Gary Sanchez's defense versus what some of the defensive metrics actually say are very different things. So you factor in the Brewers having the organizational ability to make catchers better in the first place, Sanchez not being as bad as everybody thinks and still having a lot of power. I kind of understand why he fits on this roster. Now, this is a weird slash line right we're talking about three years in a row where he's been 217 or less obps below 302 of those three seasons it's kind of power with not a lot else next to it from an offensive profile perspective yeah but we saw with the diamondbacks we were talking about the diamondbacks and how they were good at a lot of things but not great at power.

They add some power and patience, guys. I think this team has become pretty good at contact over the years. If you think about what Christian Yelich brings to the table, but also Sal Freelick. Joey Ortiz is going to make good contact.

Wilson Contreras makes good contact. There's not a lot of bad strikeout rates on this team. Adamas is about the closest it gets. So adding another bad strikeout rate, guy that might YOLO and win you a game, I think is fine. And my big question is if Eric Haas makes this team. I know that sounds like a very small question,

but if Eric Haas doesn't make this team, Sanchez is going to get as much playing time as a lot of catcher ones. Because that's how I agree with you in that way, is that Sanchez's ability to win a game with a homer is not necessarily matched by Sal Freelick or Joey Weimer or Garrett Mitchell, who are the other candidates for DH when they're not starting in the outfield. And if Eric Haas doesn't make this team, my build-a-bench is gary sanchez backup catcher uh backup center is tough i'm gonna go back up short first joey ortiz i think joey ortiz makes his team because they just traded away

corbin burns you know might be starting at third dude might be starting a third so it's it's kind of actually hard to to to build this you to build a starting lineup before you can build a bench. So, all right. Joey Ortiz. So Tyler Black. Okay. So Gary Sanchez, Tyler Black, Garrett Mitchell, and Joey Weimer. That's my bench.

That's two outfielders. that's my bench that's two outfielders but joy ortiz is very uh joy ortiz and bryce turing and tyler black can all play multiple positions well see that's the tricky thing with the brewers right so if terrain's your starter at second he's also your backup shortstop so you don't have to carry a backup shortstop on the bench he's at the backup infielder if joy ortiz is starting third he's your backup shortstop right i mean you've got multiple shortstops you got multiple center fielders that's the that's the good thing about the way this roster is constructed right now. You could send Joey Weimer down to AAA if you want to and give him more time there to try and work on some things. Who makes the team if they only take one extra outfielder?

Owen Miller? Andrew Monasterio? Probably Monasterio. Wouldn't you rather have Weimer than Monasterio? Probably Monasterio. Wouldn't you rather have Weimer than Monasterio? It depends on what else is going on with the rest of the roster. I've been looking at it assuming Jackson Churio is the center fielder. Right, me too. And then

Freelick has the upper hand to be the right fielder. It's interesting that the roster resource build has Yelich as the primary DH. Joey Weimer is worse than I thought. He's a great defender and center. He has power and speed, but the approach hit tool needs some work.

I think you send him down so he can play every day and then bring him back up later on in the season. I think that's the right approach. Mitchell's a little bit more polished. Mitchell and Sanchez kind of sharing DH.

Mitchell would play in the field. Yelich and Sanchez sharing DH. Mitchell playing the field when Yelich doesn't. That still doesn't give Garrett Mitchell a lot of playing time. But there is an opportunity for Garrett Mitchell to pass Sal Freelick.

I still have Garrett Mitchell semi-circled as an interesting player going into this season. I think Freelick is safer than Mitchell by a healthy margin. I think he's a priority play for the Brewers in the lineup. I think Mitchell has to earn his spot a little bit more. We've seen a lot of swing and miss from Mitchell in the brief time he's been in the big leagues. Well, we'll have a team preview. We don't have to make this podcast the Milwaukee Brewers podcast, so we'll get into that. I'm just trying to identify some opportunity.

I think the opportunities here, other than the obvious, are Gary Sanchez and possibly Garrett Mitchell in deeper leagues. Joey Ortiz, if he takes that starting spot. Can I interest you in another NL Central catcher signing? Yes, Monty Grandal lands with the Pirates, and at one point it looked like Gary Sanchez was going to be a Pirate, and that didn't quite come to fruition, so the next best available veteran free agent lands there instead. I assume this is just like a little bit of insurance in case something happens to Henry Davis.

I mean, is this really going to keep Henry Davis from quickly becoming catcher eligible again? I don't know. Fangraphs has them on the depth chart as sort of even catchers. I would say that I'm surprised sometimes when I talk to team officials and analysts at how much they're obsessed with catcher depth. And I wonder if it has a little bit to do with spring training. It's a weird segue or tangent here, but in spring training, you can't have enough catchers. Just think about all the bullpens that had to be thrown, you know, and you know, pitchers and catchers report and you need enough catchers to catch all those

pitchers. You know, that's, that's more of like a minor league operations. Do I have some bullpen catchers? Can I hire like a local college guy that played in d1 to like catch you know in spring training that's a little bit different than what i'm saying generally but i think because of that obsession they're they're like one of the things that they think about all the time is where who's catching a triple a you know who's catching double a think about how many catchers the giants have claimed off of waivers all like sable cooper hummel like they had that guy papierski like they they've been they've been really obsessed with catcher depth so i think jason delay is a fine backup uh you know catcher

in the big leagues but they might think jason delay still has options left so it's better for us if we have a third catcher in triple a so grandal is pushing delay to triple a more than he's pushing davis off of catching and if for whatever reason if you're just not happy with henry davis is catching this spring and you really want to move away from him at the position, then you've got DeLay as your glove-first option and Yasmany Grandal as a veteran backup. That's what he is at this stage. The interesting thing that happened, he finally started chasing.

For a long time, he was really good at not chasing pitches outside the zone. Last year, 30.4% O-swing percentage. That cheap power he used to offer hasn't been there for a couple of seasons. We have two seasons in a row now from Grandal where he's been dealing with injuries. Barrel rate's under 5%. He's just not quite that same guy he was when he signed that long-term deal with the White Sox coming off of a career-high 28-homer season during his one year with Milwaukee. So, yeah, it's a depth move, as you said.

with milwaukee so yeah it's a depth move as uh as you said he he speaks a little bit to the superiority of using uh zone swing minus uh uh chase rate or o swing um if you're looking at fan graphs because the way that he's achieved not chasing is not swinging and if you look at his career zone swing rates they are 10 percentage points below average and then if you think about uh you know what happens as you get older um you know your contact rates go down so uh you know he has had decent strikeout rates paired with those huge walk rates, and it's been a great way for him to be a good catcher. But as he gets older, especially if he's not going to add those barrel rates along with it, it profiles like a backup catcher. One other minor sign in to quickly get to, Jesse Winker has signed with the Nationals. He gets a non-roster invite this spring.

He just looked so hurt at the end of last season that my expectations have pretty much been zeroed out for him, given this two-year stretch that he's had between Seattle and Milwaukee, but an okay flyer for a team like the Nats, just given they've got some playing time that's still up for grabs. There was a raised notebook that Mark Topkin put together for the Tampa Bay Times, and it sounds like they have a lot more options than I realized, just based on the way this team's built. I shouldn't be surprised anymore, but there's things I learned about the Rays from Mark's notebook. And one of those things is that Richie Palacios has played some second base. I had not realized that. He played a lot of double A and triple A in the Guardian system back in 2021. that. He played a lot of double A and triple A in the Guardian system back in 2021. Made just one appearance with the Cardinals there last year. He's kind of moved a little more to the outfield, probably because of team needs. But when you think about the way the Rays distribute playing time, they lean a lot into that versatility. And you start to think about the defensive limitations of Jonathan Aranda, who they really want to play as a DH. I'm starting to think that maybe Palacios is a glue guy that can bounce around and give them versatility more than I previously thought.

I thought they were going to play him in a corner and platoon him. So I'm curious, like, how much do you think Palacios is going to play? And do you actually trust more positive news around Jonathan Aranda that the Rays are high on him? positive news around Jonathan Aranda that the rays are high on him. Mark's report says basically with Luke Raley gone, Aranda's the guy as the left-handed hitting primary DH. Would it be some sort of strange platoon where the left-handed Richie Palacios platoons with Brandon Lowe? Brandon Lowe.

And they're both lefties. They're both lefties, but Palacios might have more juice against lefties than Taylor Walls, who's kind of listed as the other platoon candidate. Jonathan Aranda is a right-hander, I believe. No, also a left-hander, but also a poor fit because of the the defense he's not parades is a right-hander but and he did play second base last year but then who do you play at third base you know doesn't make a lot of sense I think Perez might be and also like if you're looking at this team who's the everydayer you know Randy Rosarena's an everydayer.

Are they really going to platoon everywhere else? And especially if they're so many lefties. Aranda's a lefty. Lau's a lefty. Lo's a lefty. You know, it's a and Aranda's a lefty. So I haven't figured this one out.

It's my yearly like at some point I sit down with the Rays depth chart and try to understand it better because it's not easy. I'm excited that Palacios could maybe play some second base. I'm glad that the Rays seemingly want to give Aranda that opportunity. And the other thing in the notebook, it seems unlikely, according to Mark Topkin, that Junior Caminero breaks camp as one of their 13 position players, which I think given his age

and how quickly he moved through the upper levels of the system, given their needs on the roster last year, that makes some sense. It's more of a question of when do you think Junior Caminero is going to join this mix? Because he brings so much more to the table than the likes of jose caballero you know taylor walls once he's healthy with slavish passabe like they have a handful of other infielders that can play shortstop none of them bring the bat potential to the table that junior caminero offers yeah i wonder you know he wasn't being used at shortstop in the Dominican league that he was playing in. And I just I wonder maybe they they use that and they say, hey, you know, why don't you go to the minors and play short? Because if he can play short, then he the depth chart is much easier to overcome.

If you can't play short, then is it all the way until they, you know, if they have a bad season, they trade Brandon Lau? Or someone gets hurt. There's a couple ways. Brandon Lau's on a really nice deal that includes club options in 25 and 26. However, that is often when the Rays trade people because they have good return value. You know, somebody would pay. If Lyle's having a good season and the Rays are not,

somebody might pay actual players to get those cheap club options from the Rays. So that might be a time after the trade deadline. Or just up for injury. He could definitely be an injury replacement for somebody. Comes up for injury and then just stays up because he hits and earns it. We're talking about a guy that skipped over AAA entirely last year, had 81 games at AA, turned 20 last July, and was phenomenal at AA. 20 homers in 81 games, kept the K rate under 20%, drew a lot of walks.

And there's everything in the world to like about Junior Caminero. We may have to wait a little longer than some of us would like for him to get that opportunity in Tampa Bay. Another thing I hadn't really thought enough about was that they may do something similar with Shane Boz that the Dodgers are doing with Walker Bueller. We may get 130 or 140 innings, but they might be a little more backloaded. And the early weeks of the season the starting five right away. So we could see a little more of Zach Littell or somebody who looked like they were previously on the outside looking in, at least to begin the season in this raise rotation. Yeah, I asked a team official, you know, do people still talk about young players in terms of innings? You know, young pitchers, do they say, you know, innings or do they say, oh, well, monitor him and, you know, pitchers do they say you know innings or do they say oh we'll monitor him and you know watch his release points and watch his injury data and like you know give him rest when he needs it they said no we still have to talk about innings because we have to talk about the shape of the

season where we want him to be we need to talk about what levels he's going to be in when and we need to plan out the season a little bit and so so, you know, I think that's what the teams are doing is, you know, saying, well, you know, we project to be one of the better teams in the league right now on the depth charts that sort of sum

up your war projection. The Rays are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 eight ninth so that's a playoff team if we play like a playoff team then we need to think ahead of time uh how we want this to work and we want shane boz in our playoff rotation you know um and so if we have 130 innings out of him this year, then we better not just blow them all in April and May and June. So, yeah, that makes them hard for people to draft and depend on. What happened with Bradley?

Didn't there was something similar last year? When did Bradley come up? Man, Bradley was all over the place. We thought, oh, they got to bring him up. They got to bring him up. And he was up and down. They needed him early in April. He made a three-start stretch, and then he was down for a few weeks.

For a month. Yeah. Yeah, he was down for like a month between turns. And that was a stretch that he actually pitched well in. His first three starts, he went five every time out, gave up a total of six earned runs over 15 and a third, had 23 Ks against two walks. He looked phenomenal

in those first three starts, but they knew. You had to hold him against for a month. I mean, it's just in these leagues where you don't have a deep bench, you might have to hold Shane Boz for a month at the beginning of the season. Yeah, I'm not wild about that. You're not wild about that. I get it. I'm really excited hold Shane Boz for a month at the beginning of the season. Yeah, I'm not wild about that.

You're not wild about that. I get it. I'm really excited about Shane Boz's stuff, and I think he's a top-end talent. A month is almost doable for me. I don't think it'll be more than a month. As long as it's not, and it seems reasonable that that's where they would draw the line, that's fine fine i just think what i've learned over time is leagues with small

benches in particular especially with an il stint if they're just managing him carefully just using him as like the the last pitcher on the roster or they do send them down you just have to have everything else super tight on your roster you can really only burn one bench spot unless you have really, really deep benches. So I would just say your format and your rules really determine. You'll be staring at that Shane Boz spot all month. Or he's your only one. You're not waiting on other prospects. You're not taking a flyer on somebody else if Boz is your guy. I think the talent is there, no doubt about that. So just plan accordingly. Last thing I learned from that piece was brendan

mckay has actually been throwing going back to the end of last season he's looked pretty good too so he's in camp as a non-roster guy yeah could actually see him maybe get some innings at some point again this season just a fun story to root for as a guy that's been through a ton of arm injuries so i hope for his sake that he's able to turn the corner and get back this season. Some really nice strikeout rates for him in the minors. It's not impossible. Absolutely. We always get injury updates this time of year. Just a few of these to pass along.

Edwin Diaz threw a bullpen session, had no issues after that on Monday in Port St. Lucie. So everything appears to be on schedule for him. That's according to the Athletics' Tim Britton. Shohei Otani was hitting on the field at Dodgers camp on Monday. I saw Grant Brisby joking that he's wasting all of his home runs already, which is fantastic. I look at Otani and I've made it clear I trust him as a late first rounder. I think he's well on his way to doing more amazing things this year. Timetable-wise, it looks like he's good to go for the start of the season.

So far, everything's falling into place with that. We haven't really seen him on a team with a great lineup. No, we have not. He's topped out, even though he's hit 46 homers and stolen 26 bases and been at the top of a lineup. He's topped out at 103 runs and 100 RBI. Yeah, we could definitely see something with the 110s, 115s, even 120s in those categories.

Here's the unexpected one. White Sox GM Chris Goetz didn't rule out Garrett Crochet beginning the season in the team's rotation. Last time we talked about Crochet, we thought he might be the favorite to step in and close, just given the way that bullpen has been decimated. And given Crochet's injury history, expecting him to be a full workload starter all season seems completely unrealistic. But I think he'd fall into this opposite camp where you'd say, if he's healthy and you think he's a starter long term and you're rebuilding, you get as many innings out of him as you can in the early part of the season and shut him down later and taper him off at some point this summer.

Because if he were to get hurt again, you're going to lose time. You need the benefit of the schedule in the case of Garrett Crochet if you want them to be someone who can stretch out as a full season starter at some point a year or two down the road. Yeah. You've got him till 2027. So it's worth, you know, seeing what the best version of him is. I just don't think his changeup is,

is all that great. He's never thrown it more than 8% of the time. It's gotten some okay results at times, but when you throw something 8% of the time, no one's expecting it. When you start throwing it 20% and 30% of the time, you start using it a lot more against lefties than they expected. How will will it fare then model says not well um plus all the injuries it's like we're gonna solve all the injuries by putting them in the rotation you know i some players maybe it works because everything's on a schedule and you get those five days of rest maybe maybe it'll work. I remain skeptical.

It just looks like such a dominant reliever arsenal in the first place. Why mess with that? I know there's more value if you can turn them into a starter, but it's never really looked like that was going to work as a pro for Garrett Crochet. That report came from Vinny Duber of allchicago.com, by the way. Let's get to some spring movers. Let's look at some guys that have moved up the draft board and moved down since the start of draft season. We're going to focus on pitchers today.

Using ADP again from the NFBC, I built a giant spreadsheet, one of my favorite spreadsheets to build. It should come as no surprise that among the biggest risers in the early rounds for pitchers is yoshinobu yamamoto he's up about 35 spots since november is now being picked around 45 overall mostly it's just he's on a team the specific team that signed him and for how much money they signed him probably influencing this money's a big hint at how good he is and then of course as we've talked about the arsenal which you dug into is phenomenal it points to a guy that will offer top 10 upside among pitchers from day one this looks like a possible sp1 in yamamoto that the dodgers have brought in so so i completely get it and i am still in at the inflated price like i am 100

on board with the idea that yamamoto is going to come in right away and pitch really really well completely get it. And I am still in at the inflated price. Like I am a hundred percent on board with the idea that Yamamoto is going to come in right away and pitch really, really well. Yes. The home run rate's not going to be as low as it was in Japan, period. That's fine. It doesn't need to be. I think you're going to get very good ratios, enough innings, maybe not as many as the other workhorse aces that are out there. If Yamamoto throws more innings than some combination of Garrett Cole, Zach Wheeler, Kevin Gossman, Corbin Burns, I'd be surprised. That's probably the one thing that sets him back from that group. But talent-wise, I think he belongs in that conversation.

Yeah. The only thing I said was I don't know where the slider is but i i've been talking with a couple pitching coaches about that and they thought it would be pretty easy to have him throw like a sort of harder tighter little gyro slider uh that that would really pair well with his forcing fastball uh then he has the bigger shape pitches the curveball and the change up uh on top of that so it's just such a full arsenal with command and demonstrated results. And just, you know, there's nothing really to point at other than that slider thing. So, yeah, I could expect him to continue rising.

I mean, just at some point, you're going to run into people being like, well, he's never done in the major leagues, so I'm not making him a top five pitcher before he gets here. Right. That's where it stops, somewhere probably in that pick 30 to 35 range. But if he's going late second round, early third round come March, that wouldn't be surprising at all, especially with a big spring. It's the common theme, right? You have a lot of players that we just haven't seen a lot of, whether they're coming over from Japan or if they're prospects,

they can send their ADP to the moon by having a really nice run over the course of spring training. They went for $45 in my auto draft last night, which is a lot. If coal were available, what would coal have gone for? Those are leagues that have a lot of inflation. $40, $45. I haven't really seen a pitcher go for $50. were available, what would Cole have gone for? Those are leagues that have a lot of inflation. 40, 45. I haven't really seen a pitcher go for 50.

Yeah, so okay. Expectations already creeping up even more for Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Just to be clear, there's inflation, so that means that you keep a bunch of players at an under-market rate, which means that you have extra money.

It might just be thought of as a rental for his team. I did notice that a lot of closers are down just eight to 10 spots overall in ADP, but it's a shift in the type of drafts. When draft season starts, it's a lot more of the draft and hold formats where people have to push up closers because they don't have the ability to go get them on the waiver wire. I don't think it's any sort of strategic shift. It's just the different nature of the drafts that compile the data. Interesting though, there were some exceptions, closers that have jumped, all guys that have basically had good news. Edwin Diaz. Edwin Diaz creeping up a little, but Craig Kimbrell up almost 100 picks because he signed

with the Orioles. Makes sense. People had no expectation he was going to be a closer back when draft season began. Jose Alvarado up about 40 picks because Craig Kimbrell didn't resign with the Phillies. He left and looks like the best overall reliever maybe in that pen, at least with the experience. And then Robert Stevenson, who we

talked about when he signed with the Angels, up about 100 picks, even though we don't have any sort of confirmation that he's their guy. It sounds like for now, Carlos Estevez has to lose that job, but pretty big moves for all three of those guys. From our team preview section, maybe you'll see some Robert Suarez movement in the next few weeks. I think so.

And that's kind of what I wanted to bring this up for, is the goal is really to figure out who's going to move next when you're trying to find value in your drafts. you're drafting now or a few weeks from now it doesn't matter when the entire goal in fantasy baseball is to draft players who are going to be more expensive later because that means they got better they did something right or something broke in their favor there's generally there's often like i think the two classes are generally health news somebody like carlos redon coming to to camp and throwing 98s and saying his back feels great. You'll see him go up.

The other kind is when it comes to position time battles. Justin Henry Malloy comes to camp and starts raking and is playing third every day. It starts to look like he might be the option there. Justin Henry Malloy comes to camp and starts ranking and is playing third every day. It starts to look like he might be the option there. Young players kind of pushing veterans that they're at the same position. That's where I could see Colt Keith going up. Because they've already announced he's basically it, but they said he has to win it. So if he hits well for a week, then you're like, oh, he's winning it. So that type of player I could see

also moving. Do you have any young players? Does Cole Keith already move? He already started to move since the start of draft season. He was up like 75 picks or something. That's pretty normal. Jackson Churio, same thing. Signed the extension with the Brewers. Jumped up, I don't know, 100, 125 picks in some leagues just because... I bet Von Grissom will move over time. Yeah, Grissom's another good one.

I bet I could probably check this out real quick. I love when I'm trying to look something up and I've got my Google sheet open and it just decides to sign me out as I go to look something up. That's awesome. That's such a great feature. What are you saving me from like four different gmail accounts so like sometimes it's just like i'm in the wrong one like yeah i'll get that for you right now i go i go look for it nope i've on grissom's up 131 spots since draft season started totally makes sense he was

that's the trade too yeah yeah buried in atlanta gets a chance in Boston. It's funny that the other side of that trade, Chris Sale, also up. It's a winner-winner situation, but he's up about 40 spots since November. I think it's kind of a few things. It's getting out of Boston, but also signing an extension with Atlanta, right? The fact that it was a team that people trust. Yeah, trust. It's like good health, team that people trust because they've done a lot of smart things in recent years. And since they extended him, it's like, oh, okay, well, there must be something left in the tank.

If Atlanta is willing to sign him to an extension, Chris Sale must still be good. And I don't disagree with any of that, but I wonder where the limit is for Sale, if we've already seen as much of a bump as he can reasonably get over the course of draft season now that he's going to pick 140 is there any reason to fade Max Freed for all the reasons you just said the team

just signed Chris Sale to an extension and they are not they're pretty ostensibly not signing Max Freed to an extension let's see let's play a game who's Max Freed's agent Scott Boris They're pretty ostensibly not signing Max Fried to an extension. Let's see. Let's play a game. Who's Max Fried's agent?

Scott Boris. I think that's got more to do with it than anything else. Maybe. Is Scott Boris Chris Sale's agent? I don't think so. That's a good question. I don't think he is, though. No, Wasserman.

Interesting. Just some thinking out loud. Who are some other big risers? Anybody that's not fallen to a category that I was talking about? Darvish, good health news, up about 20 spots. Shota Imanaga, 46 spots, has a team now. Griffin Canning was healthy at the end of last

season, up about 39 spots. See, some of these guys get put on sleeper lists too. As you get later and later, of course, it doesn't take as much to move up, but Chris Paddock is up almost 60 spots since November. I'm still really skeptical, even though I get it. From a velo perspective,

it looked like everything was kind of back in place. He came back at the very end of last season. I wonder if that's a stuff plus movement. I mean, stuff plus on Fangraphs now. Could be good in a short term, but the stuff plus revision wasn't as good. One 11 on the change up 96

stuff plus on the four scene fastball. I mean, two and three inning stints. Does that really mean that much? It's good that the velo is up, but that doesn't mean he's going to sit at that velo if he's going to be a regular starter again. And the general revision from relief to starting is to take off five or six points of stuff plus. And

with the Stuff Plus revision his overall Stuff Plus let me see if I can find that real quick is 99 so if you take 5 off of that to make him a starter 94

that's not doable there's plenty of guys with 94 with good command, but you're also asking a guy to have good command off of Tommy John surgery. There's more questions, I think, than answers necessarily for why that number goes up.

You're not going to crush your own roster if you take him around pick 275 or 300 where he's going but probably gonna end up just dropping if it doesn't work out yeah that's the range that you're still in for paddock going even later than that i see sean mania and trevor rogers both moving up kind of from the back of the top 300 to the front of the top 300 i think in the case of mania it's just that he could be used like a regular starter again. And if they're going to use him like a regular starter with the Mets,

the range we saw between 2021 in Oakland and the one season with San Diego in 2022, it's 158 to 179 innings. If he falls somewhere in there, you're probably getting close to a four, slightly below ERA maybe, like a 380. It seems possible because of the park. You're not going to use him for every single start, right? Sean Minaya at Atlanta. Probably on your bench.

But playable in a lot of his home starts. Yeah. You know, also, you get these tweets where people are like, Oh, Sean Minaya was so much better after he added the sweeper. Which doesn't quite capture it because he didn't throw the sweeper a lot. It didn't do that well for him. He had a little bit of a velo boost last year. Sometimes we boil pitching down to

look at this one thing I found and that made him so much better when we didn't know exactly how good he was before. Saying that now I know exactly that he's better and it was because of this one thing. I do think it's generally good that he added some sweep to his slider. His slider and changeup have never been that good. It's always been kind of his fastball. The VLO boost was good and I think that the roll change is good. So I generally agree with it.

I just don't know that the sweeper is this magic bullet for him. Now a few other fallers up and down the board this is probably the most surprising one for me it's not a massive drop but based on where he goes it's not without some significance hunter green down 20 picks since november like hunter green seems like the kind of guy that could only catch helium as long as he's healthy he's not hurt? So I don't really understand why he's dropping. I think Hunter Green is exactly the kind of player that can show up at spring training, toss like 15 innings, strike out 18 or 19 guys, and not only erase that drop, but then like jump up 20 spots from where he started draft season. That's absolutely in his range. Especially interested if he's throwing a curveball.

Yeah, that'd be huge for Hunter Green, right? Get to a third pitch more often. I think even if you put Spencer Strider in Cincinnati, it'd be harder. Just look at what happened to Spencer Strider last year. He just struck out everybody, but Atlanta's kind of a tough place for homers, and guess what? Strider had a little bit of a homer

issue as a two-pitch guy, basically. So, I just think even if it reduces his stuff plus, Hunter Green needs to throw another pitch. Yeah, it makes some sense for him to try and do that. Walker Bueller makes sense why he's down. We talked about it when it happened. The Dodgers have just revealed they're going to be a little more careful with him. He's done about 60 picks since November, so you're getting a decent discount. I'm still not convinced I'm going after him right now. It might be more of a 2025

target for me based on what happens during the upcoming season. Gavin Williams down a couple of rounds, down 30 picks since November. I talked about him on the starting pitcher preview. I like Gavin Williams a lot in the range. I love that there's a buyer, like a

buying low opportunity, relatively speaking. Is there anything you could think of that would explain Williams sliding? Is there news? I haven't seen it. Innings should be there. He had 128, no, 142 last year. Right, so you're not really looking at a major restriction or anything. It's not a depth chart problem. He's in the top 5. It's a team we trust with pitching.

Maybe it's a touting situation. Let's say like a 23.5% strikeout rate is a big drop from where he was in the minors. Perhaps some people think that's going to stick and I guess projections might be a little bit lighter on strikeouts

than people expect. But a guy who struck out more than 30% of the batters he saw in the minor leagues and then struck out 23.5 in his first try, that's somebody I'm interested in. Take every model and throw it out the door. I'm interested in that guy. You know what I mean? Jeez, the AL Central?

Sure. I'll take a young pitcher with talent in that division that I can use more than half the time easily. Maybe use all the time. Yes. Sign me up for Gavin Williams. I've used that minor league strikeout rate lower. Great minor league strikeout rate lower in the major leagues.

Just use that as your rubric. You get Brian Baio, Bobby Miller, and Gavin Williams. Those are pretty interesting guys. Yeah yeah nobody in that group is bad i think of those three bales the one we have the most questions about because we've seen a little more of him in the big leagues but any one of those three all three of them could be a lot better than they have been to this point especially in terms of k rate uh christian javier is the other faller i think that you. I think you've just been throwing so much cold water on Christian Javier

that he's just tumbling down the draft board. It's like 20, 25 picks really since November. I think we established in the Astros preview, we're choosing Hunter Brown in that range for this season. We think Hunter Brown has the up arrow while Christian Javier has that slight down arrow. Hunter Brown won for like five or six more dollars than Christian Javier in the honor draft last night.

Yeah, so the preference for Hunter Brown seems to be growing and wouldn't be surprised to see the shift. That's a really interesting one as you think about it. Think about how far we've come. What if Christian Javier is better than Hunter Brown this year? It would be kind of hilarious because the advanced statistics are all pointing towards Hunter Brown, but if you look at the actual results last year,

it was Christian Javier. I mean, Javier in 2022 had a 33.2% K rate, a.254 ERA, and a.95 whip over 148 and two-thirds innings. That's really, really good. That wasn't that long ago. At some point, that price will come down, and I'll have a share, and somebody will laugh in the

draft chat. I'm less worried about Javier than you, so I'm already kind of intrigued, and I like that we're starting to see little discounts on him, too. So I'm probably buying some of the dip on Christian Javier. Not going to have him everywhere,

but... Where is he going in 15 team leagues? What SP is he for you? He's going to have him everywhere. Where is he going in 15 team leagues? What SP is he for you? He's going to pick 184. That's probably your 4th, 5th. That's probably his 5th. Dude, I'm bored. Is he my 5th? He's in the Pavetta, Brown,

Bryce Miller range. You don't really expect your 5th to stick around that long. That's right around the point where... Oh, but Bryce Miller or him? Well, yeah. There's a few other guys in the cluster that I would take over him, but everybody else seems to like those guys too. So when they get

jumped up and Javier just stands still, okay, that's fine. If he's the one that's still left in the group, I would take him over Eduardo Rodriguez. I would take him over Shane Boz just based on what we know right now about Boz's workload even though I like Boz's talent. The Boz problem is like Boz is a terrible

would you rather because you just have to do the right things with your roster to even take advantage of it. It's not a toss up for him. It's just like if you're in a 10 team league that like if you have an NA spot like a lot of guys. NA spots are made for Shane Boz in 2020. 10 team league with NA spot like

then you should draft him over Christian Javier 100% of the time right but if you're at a 15 team league where you have the bench problems man bench yeah then then it's a totally different scenario there's just so much that has to be right about the scenario for now with Boz maybe a month from now really hard to rank honestly Walker Bueller and Shane Boz are one of the hardest ranks because I'm trying to rank for most of people. Never easy. But if you want to check out those rankings, they are available.

And you had a recent piece go up, right? You talked about that at the end of the show yesterday, looking for some breakouts. Starting pitcher breakouts. And I believe we're going to release a bunch of fantasy content this week and part of that will be

my deep sleepers. The deep sleepers, which I think we're going to have a podcast episode tied to that or loosely connected to that at least because we had some requests for more names and we didn't get to. We had three episodes covering starting pitching and we We didn't get to. We had three episodes covering starting pitching. We still didn't get deep enough.

So we'll try to get a few more names out there. The Deep Sleepers are actually a little painful for me because I don't want to publish them. And there's like a name on there I don't want to publish. And it reminds me of I did the Bay Area Beer Guide over the weekend. And I didn't want to put – there's this place called place called garage I didn't want to put it on there just because I like it too much and the lines aren't bad and it's literally like two blocks from third and king from a Giants game and like it has an amazing beer list it It's not really expensive, and the sandwiches are great. It's like the best pregame spot, and it's never that crowded.

People go to 21st Amendment because that's what they've heard, and they have a Giants beer on tap, and it's bigger, and that's what they've heard of. But Garaje is like this little hole in the wall. I took a major league player there, and he was like, this is great. Do you have more places like this? And now I've ruined Garaje.

I got to go tell him, don't go back to Garaje. I probably blew that one up. Well, it might be good for their business, but yeah, it's not as good for you getting in and out of there with a sandwich and a beer efficiently. Yeah, right. But so yeah, the deep league sneakers is my Garaje list. Fantastic. We're all looking forward to that so we can use it against you uh goodletic.com slash rates and barrels will get you a subscription two dollars a month if you'd like to use eno's deep sleepers against him uh that's the

price for the first year you can't really beat two dollars a month for a year with the all the great coverage we've got not only of just baseball but nba past the trade deadline. Now NFL going into off season mode and we'll have all that stuff covered. Now that it's NFL draft season, whatever you like, we probably have it covered at the athletic, the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can find, you know,

on Twitter at, you know, Sarah's you can find me at Derek, my paper, follow the pod at rates and barrels. Be sure to hit the like button on this video, especially if you made it all the way to the end. We really appreciate you drop us some comments and questions there.

We'll get to some mailbag questions in the near future that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels we're back with you on thursday thanks for listening Thank you.