Rates & Barrels - A Weekend of Major Injuries and Another Attempt at Making Adjustments

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss another round of injuries including a UCL sprain for Spencer Strider, Tommy John surgery on tap for Shane Bieber, a significant hip flexor strain for Luis Robert Jr, and a dislocated shoulder for Trevor Story. Beyond injuries, they discuss Ronel Blanco's encore and the ongoing battle in the Astros' rotation for a spot once Justin Verlander returns, and several players whose value shifted over the past week.  Rundown 1:31 Spencer Strider Has a UCL Sprain; Course of Action TBD 6:20 Shane Bieber Will Have Tommy John Surgery 14:09 How to Adjust to Losing an Ace Early 17:04 Luis Robert Jr.: Grade 2 Hip Flexor Strain 25:30 Gerrit Cole: Ready to Begin Throwing Program! 32:11 Adjusting Draft Strategy or League Setting in the Future to Counter Multi-Year Trend of Elevated Pitching Injuries? 44:25 Trevor Story's Suffers a Dislocated Shoulder 48:01 Alex Kirilloff & Oliver Dunn 53:22 Eno's Bargain Adds From Week 2 59:22 A Case for Spencer Turnbull Beyond Streaming 1:04:10 Good Pickup, Bad Pickup? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, April 8th. Derek VanRiper here with EnoSaris. On this episode, we dig into the rash of injuries that popped up over the weekend. It was not a good weekend on the health front for several players around the league. We'll dig into that. We're going to take a look back at where some of the money went as far as fab pickups, discuss whether it was good spending, bad spending, or something in between. Get to a few questions I think from

our discord over the course of the show as well. If you're not in the discord yet, the link to join is in the show description. No matter where you are listening to or watching this podcast, just look at those show notes. You'll find that link. Join the many folks that are in there discussing their favorite teams, strategy, news and notes, everything you could all want in one place. You know, how's your elbow feeling this morning? I actually have a little bit of elbow soreness because I've been holding my phone and doing too much game changer at the little league games.

But it's doing pretty good. I'm one of the few people who doesn't need to see Dr. Keith Meister right now. Yeah, I don need to see Dr. Keith Meister right now. Yeah, I don't want to see Dr. Keith Meister today, tomorrow or ever if I could help it. Unfortunately, Spencer Strider is having a visit with Dr. Keith Meister for a second opinion. And unfortunately, we already know Spencer Strider has a sprained UCL sprain is a tear. The severity of that tear is to be determined once we know the severity of the tear,

we'll know what the course of treatment is, be that Tommy John surgery, which would be Strider's second, he actually had Tommy John back in college, Clemson 2019, internal brace or PRP injection and rest, like all those things are still on the table at the time of this recording, one o'clock Eastern on Monday, a lot can change very quickly. Regardless of which of those things it is, it's going to be a

prolonged absence for Strider. This is going to put immediate strain on the Atlanta rotation. And I think about Garrett Cole, it's sort of like a best case scenario, right? A couple of months would be like everything being amazing. And I don't think that's quite what we're getting from Strider based on the current direction, but options in Atlanta to step in. Bryce Elder, who pitched really well in the first half last year. Dylan Dodd, who I think by schedule would line up for Strider's next turn. That sometimes gives you the idea of who's getting the first shot. And then younger guys like

AJ Smith-Schaver and Hurston Waldrop would be in contention as well. So how do you think Atlanta is going to navigate a stride or absence, at least in the short term and possibly in the long term as well? Yeah, I think they're going to do it internally and you know, the wear of the terror is and You know, the where the terror is and and how severe it is, you know, where is also important. That's that's why I think with the Otani thing, they were trying to like pretend that it wasn't necessarily Tommy John because it was in a different spot. And, you know, that's why they could get I think what they ended up

getting was the internal brace. So I just, you know, from a fantasy standpoint or from, you know, Braves fantasy standpoint or from, you know, Brave's fans standpoint, I'm I'm not super excited about their options. I don't think that I, you know, any of those guys is going to step up and even be, you know, three quarters of Spencer Strider. So I know that, you know, some people are excited about Smith Schaver and he did have a better fastball in the spring.

I don't know. He pitched two thirds of an inning in AAA. Walked three. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was a brutal first start for Smith Schaver at Gwinnett his first time out. Well, why did they not even let him pitch through it? Like I don't even understand what two thirds of an inning means.

That's so very strange. So it looks like a lot of pitches, actually three, three walks, a couple hits. So he just sort of wild pitches, like just didn't have it. Hmm. And there's just been a weird disconnect even, know with the model like in terms of you know what the stuff model has said about him is that you know even as his fastball did improve the spring. It didn't like his curveball and it never really has so. He's the only one that I could I'd circle and be like there's some interest interests I want to know more, but it hasn't started well and there's still questions about it. Yeah, Hurston Waldrop, who I mentioned is another possible option. You look at what he's been able to do in the minor so far. It's so early. It's like, can you even can even put stock in anything you see in one minor league start?

Can you even put stock in anything you see in one minor league start? Like, no, not really. Conditions are strange all over the place. Um, at Waltrip starting at double A for what it's worth. He finished last year at triple A was cruising through the minors that he pitched at four different levels also had a pretty rough first outing. So I don't know. Like it's more of look elder as much as the underlying numbers weren't excited about him last year, he pitched well enough for a long enough stretch where I think you would try

to go to him first and then see if you can get Smith, Schaver, or Waldrop right before eventually elevating one of those guys into the rotation. But pitching depth takes a massive hit when you lose your best starter, no matter who you are. Every team would have a problem like this losing their number one guy. It just so happens their number one guy is the consensus number one pitcher in fantasy baseball. I just, I don't know. But Bryce Elder, unless he added a new pitch, I don't have any reason to think things would be a lot different. K-rate was up even compared to what he did during his brief time at AAA previously.

So that's a mark in the right direction. But he's the guy I'd be turning to from a who would I pick up perspective. I'm looking to find some short-term innings. No one's expecting a replacement to be Strider. And Cleveland's going through this right now with Shane Bieber. We learned that Shane Bieber is going to need Tommy John surgery over the weekend. Same kind of problem, an organization that has a lot of pitching, but once you take off the ace, the guy at the top,

it creates a massive problem at the very back end. I think part of the reason why we talk about injuries this time of year every season. And I was just looking at an excellent piece by Rob Maynes over at Baseball Prospectus along with Derek Rhodes who maintains their injury information. And there's a spike every April, spring training in April. And if you read the Shane Beaver news, it wasn't that he got hurt. It was that he was hurt. You know, he said basically the elbow was bothering him late last season. It's what he went on the IL for last season. He trained all offseason to try and get back. But then when he got to full game intensity, there's the elbow pain again. And so that's what we're seeing in April

is this normal every year spike in injuries in April where people are shaking the dust off of injuries and finding they're still there. Trevor May put it really well. He said like in the off season, you can say, well, I'll just take two weeks off and come back to this and see how it feels. You're also not throwing at full intensity

and game type intensity. So those two things sort of hide injuries a little bit. Then you get to April, there's a big spike. What we do see is that once you get past April, injury placements go down. Um, and then they, they start to spike again and sort of August and September. Those I think are fatigue injuries, new injuries, you know, basically what I'm, what I'm surmising is a sort of April is the time for the last year's injury,

uh, to, to really manifest. Um, and so that's, that's, I think the case for, for Shane Beaver. Um, you know, this is a team that has been thought of the Guardians as a team that keeps pitchers healthy. Um, and my sort of theory on that has been mostly actually, they just trade pitchers away before they get old. Mostly actually they just trade pitchers away before they get old. And Shane Bieber's, you know, you know,

production and, um, and health just didn't line up for them to trade them away. They could have easily have traded them away last year. They would have gotten more. If he had been healthy at the deadline, they would have, they would have gotten more for Shane healthy and producing. Well, they would have gotten more for him than they would have traded him like they traded other guys in the past. They didn't manage to do that this time. I'm not a big fan of a Xavier on Curry. Uh, Ben Lively's, you know, kind of interesting, but he's like just this invisible guy.

He doesn't throw hard. Uh, you know, it doesn't have great secondaries. Tyler Beatty is in the organization and he's the guy who had no command for the Giants and he's on the Major League roster. But he's been kind of relieving. So I don't know if they're going to switch him over. And so the one I'd be excited about, if I heard about him coming up, would be Joey Cantillo, who hasn't pitched yet this year.

Yeah, he's got a hamstring strain. He's out eight to 10 weeks. That was a late spring training injury. Eight to 10 weeks. Probably like a grade two almost, a three I think requires surgery. That's a complete tear. So it must have been a grade two hamstring strain. So we're not going to see him until June.

So I guess my guess is it's Xavion Curry. Yeah. And probably Carrasco, Gavin Williams will be back soon. So that certainly helps a little bit. I mean, it's almost like when you look at a major injury and this applies to any team dealing with it. So same for Atlanta, same for Cleveland. Everybody who's still there needs to be as good

or better than their projection to offset that loss, right? Now, no one person's gonna go inning for inning and replace the ace that's gone. But Tristan McKenzie has to stay healthy and pitch well. His start on Sunday got rained out. He got bumped into a two-star week. Very interested in what his velocity is gonna be in his next start. Because McKenzie and Bybee-start week. Very interested in what his velocity is going to be in his next start because McKenzie

and Bybee are both among the biggest losers in fastball velocity. Bybee bounced back in his second start. We didn't see that. It was a little bit better. 939, yeah. It's somewhat encouraging. Hopefully for the sake of the Guardians and for anyone who has McKenzie on their rosters, we'll see the same from McKenzie. But now it's just like you need McKenzie to be healthy and effective. You need Bybee to be healthy and effective. You need Williams for this weightlifting injury to be something that's just in his rear view mirror

and not something that is a recurring problem. But then even at the back, like Allen and Carrasco, a lot of questions about Carrasco in particular, Cantillo is eventually gonna be the guy that gets that spot. Like that's the longer term play, but you can't pick them up and stash them outside of keeper and dynasty leagues right now.

It's too long of an injury. It's strange that I was looking at James Anderson's top 100 or top 400 prospects in the Cleveland system. It's mostly bats right now. It's chase the lottery, Kyle Manzardo, Brian Rokio is playing shortstop for them right now. A Ralphie Velasquez, a catcher who's a long way away. Juan Brito, who I think is the guy they got back in the-

In the Nolan Jones trade. Nolan Jones trade. Franco Aleman is a relief prospect, which is super rare. And then you get to Cantillo, but it's not as pitching rich as we're accustomed to seeing in Cleveland right now. And I think that could be a pretty big problem for them if more injuries pile up on top of Bieber. Timing for Bieber is really unfortunate too with his walk year coming.

If this was the year he had a chance to get a big payday, now he's one of those guys who's probably looking at a two year deal to do his rehab, to finish his rehab and then to try and open up his value more the following season, which is just brutal. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks. Sucks for him. Strider at least has some long-term, um, yeah, long-term contract,

but yeah, sucks for Braves fans. Cause it's, that seems like a juggernaut and you'd love to go into the postseason of Strider and sale. And I wonder they have a lot of time before we get to the trade deadline, the number of pitchers available will change based on fortunes of a lot of different teams. They've been trading away a lot of guys too. Like, do they have the arrows in their quiver? I wonder if you, if you give up on Smith Shauver and or Waldrop, if you do the thing where

you give some young pitching to get established pitching and say, Hey, you know, we're giving up control in favor of ceiling because our windows wide open right now. If you look at the rotation, freed, Max freed, man, he is just, I said there was water in the boat with my ratios already. We're going to need some buckets real fast because I'm, I'm soaked, man. Like it, it got worse. Like it was a seven earned in four and a third. Uh, not great.

Uh, actually did lower the season ERA though, in the process. But just an 18 over five innings is not, uh, not what I was hoping for. So there's, you know, probably a, a whiff of concern at least because freed had a forearm injury last year. Sales had a difficult time staying healthy in recent years. Charlie Morton is capital old as much as we like him. He's 40. That's your first three.

And then Ronaldo Lopez, we've talked a ton about over the course of the spring is moving back into the rotation after a few years in the bullpen. They might just need to keep them in there all year. I think this is definitely a bigger window now for Lopez for sure. I mean, it's one of the things that happens in there all year. I think this is definitely a bigger window now for Lopez for sure. I mean, it's one of the things that happens in the fallout. And I think there's a lot of questions right now because this has happened at the beginning

of the last two seasons, but it does happen often. You know, what do you do if you built a team around Spencer Strider from a fantasy perspective, what is your tactical adjustment right now? Because you built that team expecting to dominate in ratios and strikeouts, and in a lot of leagues, you're looking at replacements like Renell Blanco, Spencer Turnbull, some of the guys we're gonna talk about

later in this episode, Alec Marsh. Obviously, no one you pick up is supposed to do the things that Strider has done, but you probably have a little bit of a categorical deficiency somewhere else on your roster if you started with Strider or if you went pocket aces and you're like scrambling now. Do you stream more? Do you push for early season saves instead? What kinds of tactical adjustments are you making on the fly when you lose such an important piece of your roster?

I think you've got to pick the part of his production that you can replace. I think that's K's right? It's streaming to get the K's like knowing that you may take ratio damage. And you may not have had the best ERA projection for Strider out of everybody, you know, because he does give up homers. So you may have been like, Oh, I just need like a three, four, but I need a ton of Ks. That's, that's what Strider represents. And so, you know, you're not going to get the three, four or the ton of Ks, but if you go for the Ks, at least you might get a four one with a ton of case. It's yeah, I think you just got to pick one side of the other of the ledger.

This is it's interesting. The way you're you're talking about it reminds me of how like Ariel Cohen talks about players production across categories and how if you pick like in a story is like a story is going down, it's drew Riz going down. I think he'll be back up. It's not the same as a strider injury, but it's similar in that you're like. He was my steals guy and now he's gone. And when you take a picture that high in the first round, you're like,

this is my picture guy and now he's gone. You know, so there's a little bit of a correlation there for me But in case yeah, I would I think I would kind of try and stream for case I think that's the only thing you can do because you kind of you thought I'm gonna get maybe 250 270 K's out of this one spot Yeah, yeah, and you you probably you probably can still do well, especially if you hit the early season streaming. We know streaming early in the year when the weather's cold, pitchers tend to be a little

bit ahead of hitters anyway this time of year. You can take advantage of that. So you're looking for the two start weeks, you're looking for the low hanging fruit against some of the teams that either weren't good to begin the season or have been quickly picked apart by a few injuries certainly describes the White Sox. Luis Robert, grade two hip flexor strain. The White Sox are a team that I think we feel bad that they have such limited talent right now and then you lose both Robert and Eloy Jimenez. The Eloy injury is not quite as bad as this one. What is it?

It's an adductor strain for Eloy Jimenez. So that's probably more like two to three weeks. Yeah. You know, that's funny that they're not, they're not that far apart. Adductor oblique, hernia, uh, hip flexor. It's like, it's your core, you know, it, it's it's it's how you turn on your cords. It's obviously a modern baseball phenomenon. We know that turning your core is like the like turn your core fast is like one of the best things you can do in baseball.

So we're all chasing it. And so it's a little bit like the Velo thing. If we're all chasing, you know, core trunk speed, then we're going to have these injuries, but it's also interesting that these two guys are on the same team can't, can't stay healthy. You know, will they, will they look at their internal processes for, for weightlifting and training? Or is it just that these guys are injury prone, which is also totally possible.

Right. Maybe you've got something significant that is always going to be there. Or is it just that these guys are injury prone, which is also totally possible? Right, maybe you've got something significant that is always going to be there. And the fact that this has happened to Robert before, it's the same hippie injured back in 2021, makes it more concerning. I saw the note, James Fegan had a tweet about this, that Robert couldn't sleep the night after the injury

happened because he was so worried about how bad it might be, right? He's just worried it was more of the same, which gives you a sense of how he feels. And also usually players tend to have a pretty optimistic, I'm okay, I'm okay. That's almost a defense mechanism in some ways, but if you've heard something before and you heard it again

and you have familiar feelings coming back, that's definitely a level of concern. I wonder if having this happen twice and I'm sure, I think this came up on one of the Friday shows, you know, Royce Lewis getting hurt again. He already changed things about how he was training and it still happened again. Sometimes it just happens.

You can put in the most logical effort to try and combat a problem and still have the problem. Nietzsche was wrong. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Like whatever injury you had is not, your recovery from it doesn't make you stronger in that area. Although I have heard that broken bones,

especially when you're young, are a little bit different. Because the bones kind of like grow into like a thicker spot there. I don't really want to test that. I'm not gonna go and try to break my kids wrist again. Say, hey, say it's fine. It's good for you, it's good for you that this happens. Now I'm not going down that road.

But I mean like with the white socks, you know, it's for fantasy purposes, this there's always like that, you know, Oh, it's a bad team. Like I could, I could find, you know, Nikki Lopez, I could find, I could find some, it's, I think it's like a deep league thing. Like as much as you want, like, you know, you, you'd love this sort of Eric Fetty beginning. Um, and it has looked OK. He's going to really struggle to give any wins.

Like he may get six wins on the year, you know, and still have a good year and even crochet. Like, you know, what's what's he going to do in the wins category? So this is a really tough place to go shopping. It's it's sort of last chance to Looney. Like I'm trying to get Michael Kopek in a keeper league. I'm not excited about Michael Kopek. I don't know how many saves he'll give me, maybe 20 saves. But it's a deep enough league where I'm like,

is somebody else gonna give me a better closer right now? It's April, all the people who have closers think they're contending. Yeah. The adjustment to the lineup, Dominic Fletcher was already playing a lot as it is. I think his playing time is safer. He's started both games in center field since Robert got hurt.

Was there a corresponding move like Deloach coming up or something? Robbie Grossman is on the roster now. He let off on Sunday. That's a gross, that's a gross, that's a gross switch, man. Yeah, he's going to get an extended chance to serve as the White Sox leadoff hitter.

I mean, he projects to be slightly below league average with the bat and below the average with the glove. And if you gave him a full season, like might be able to give you a win. It's just not what the White Sox should be doing. Like, what are they doing? They're already one and eight. Release Paul DeYoung, release Robbie Grossman. Free Brendan Shoemake. I don't even think Brendan Shoemake's any good.

Just play him. Play Zach Deloach. What are you doing? That's the key, right? Is play guys like Deloach. I mean, they got Kevin Pilar on this roster. Kevin Pilar is 35 years old. Like what?

Why are you doing this to yourself? Play Kolos, play Deloach, play everybody who's young. And I don't even think it can't even be like, oh, well, they really want to tank. So they'd rather put worse players in. You're not going to win with Deloach or Shoemake. I'm not suggesting that this will happen, that they'll all come together and be great. What I'm suggesting is by the end of the season, you'll know if Shoemake or

Duloch or whatever, you know, or Nikki Lopez is on your team next year. That has been my argument about rebuilding teams for ever. You're just trying to find one or two guys that'll be there when the young guys come up. Yes. Take the guys that are 26 and under who've never had a prolonged run of time and let them have it. That's what these A's do, right? The A's are like, hey, anybody who's stuck between AAA and the big leagues, come on over, we'll give you an extended look. Well, I do think Oscar

Koloss eventually gets a long run with this team. I mean, he was, he struggled last year. He had a 53 WRC plus. So it's not necessarily malpractice to get him right briefly at triple A to start the season before bringing him back up. Pretty good for him there. I mean, he's made more contact. Yeah, K-Rate's down early. Yeah.

I like that. So I think that's probably where this goes eventually, regardless of, you know, the next six to eight weeks, it, it might be the back half of that when we see Oscar Colas again, but you got to play guys like that. He's hit a ball 114, you know, that's pretty cool. That's cool. Yeah. I like he's a D interesting stash actually, cause how long do you think the grossman thing is going to go? Really? I mean, you could keep grossman on the roster a little longer.

I don't have a problem with that. I think the other, the other aspect of this, yes, the playing time is, is currency. You do need viable veterans in the clubhouse in the sense of like teaching guys the right process. If your team is super young, my argument would be, well, you do have Martin Maldonado, like there's, there's, there's one, you have Andrew Benintendi. Like if Benintendi is your Jason Hayward, we overpaid him, but we love X, Y, and Z, fine. Like it doesn't matter.

Like I can live with that. Like you probably already have those veterans on this team, at least a couple of them. I would also suggest that young players will not look to players like Kevin Pilar and Paul DeYoung, and maybe not even Andrew Benatendi for leadership. I'm sorry, like it's just the way that it works when you're in the clubhouse is like,

who's the best player in here? Who makes the most money in here? That's who people look to. Without Robert and Jimenez, I honestly don't know who that player is. I think it's Andrew Vaughn. On the pitching side, it's Garrett Crochet right now. Yeah, but the pitches are,

it's an awkward leadership position because you're like not visible for a couple days of the year, a couple days of the week, or at least two or three days of the week. You're just not really around, and you don't play every day. There's still a little bit of like,

you need to play every day for me to kind of look to you to know what it's like to kind of You know these slings and arrows of the of the season, you know What's some good news a little bit of good news Garrett Cole is going to begin throwing program today or tomorrow Monday or Tuesday Have you ever heard the details of what was wrong? I Thought we did get some small update at one point. I just heard like it's an elbow. Yeah, let's see.

Somewhere on the elbow. When they put them on the IL, they said elbow inflammation. Okay. They put them on the 60 day and it was nerve inflammation. That's what they called it. No tear it says. Nerve inflammation, that's what it was. I remember, I knew there was a firm diagnosis.

So it was nerve inflammation, which just usually takes time. Yeah. That's just my elbow hurts, I guess. I guess that's good. It seems good. And one of the Strider teams I have, I have Garrett Cole, who was inexpensive because it was an auction. I'm like, well, that might be.

Wow. That might be insurance policy that I thought was, uh, less than that. I thought that was a way of dominating, but it might be a life raft for me and my, my boat of sinking teams. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's some stashes you can make. I don't know if Verlander is really out there to be stashed, but you know, he's, he's throwing on his way back.

Shane Boz in some, in some, in some like smaller leagues is he's not really hurt, hurt. I don't think I think that they are using the IELTS a way for him to come back from previous injury and manage his innings. So I think we might be a few days away from some sort of Shane Baws update, and in which case it'll be too late in those shallower leagues. So if you are looking for Spencer Strider and you'd rather just like take on kind of a home run swing for somebody that could replace, you know, Spencer Strider and fewer innings.

Shane Vaz is your guy. Yes, I think the other injured pitcher that I saw available in a decent number of leagues that got picked up over the weekend is Edward Cabrera. There's a chance he might still be floating out there. Not because you're expecting him to be Strider, but because you're looking for a higher ceiling starter than a lot of the other guys that are getting picked up right now. The tumbling dryer of pitchers, if we'll call it, I guess, because it's just every week you look and it's a similar group of names and you're like, okay, what's different about these guys? Oh, two starts. Oh, an easy matchup. I got to cut this guy that I picked up last week

because his matchup's bad. That's sort of the ebb and flow of weekly leagues right now. Where the money went, I mean, on the pitching side, where available, and it was actually decent number of places, it was Ranelle Blanco who put together even more, five more no-hit innings before he finally gave up a hit. So 15 scoreless innings to start his season for Ranelle Blanco. He's been fantastic so far. You mentioned Verlander coming back. At what point does Blanco just sort of pass JP France on the fly as the number five starter? Like, is there a chance that Blanco's already done that? Yeah, I think it all comes out of this next Texas start,

you know, for Blanco, because, you know, Verlander's gonna be up really soon. France gets Kansas City. If he does, fine there, you know, Verlander is going to be up really soon. France gets Kansas City. If he does find there, you know, and then Blanco gets blasted in a second look at the at the Rangers, maybe there's a little bit of like, oh, he's a guy we don't want people to get multiple looks at. You know, he's a guy that he's our up and down guy, you know. But if he if he pitches capably, you know, against Texas a second time,

um, both France and Blanco have options and, and if France, France doesn't have a great outing against the Royals in their offense, sometimes clicks and, you know, produces, um, you know, then I, then I think that, uh, it's hard to like look at the model or strikeouts or anything because we've talked about how France was a different guy in the minor leagues. And he's trying to emphasize, you know, the cutter more this year and get more strikeouts this year. Um, and, um, he basically looks worse by stuff plus this year than he did last year.

I don't know what exactly France is doing wrong. Blanco, you could look at it and say, oh, 99 stuff plus, that's not good enough. The average starting pitcher is actually at like 97 or something. So he has above average stuff. He has an elite change up a slider. That's working. It could work as a, as a package. The command we saw go from like good in the no hitter to not as good in the second one.

We saw more walks by the Rangers. And so that's why I think a second look at the second team, at the same team, could show us like what's the real penalty of not having great command and everybody knowing you're going to throw your soft stuff on two-oh counts. You know, and they've seen your shapes, you know, so now, now they're more ready for everything. So I think a lot of it rides on that on the next start for Blanco. Um, I may not have them in my lineup. I had them in TGFBI for that two weeks start.

That was great. Uh, I almost thought about dropping him. Then I'm watching the game Sunday and I was like, well, I can't drop him. So I ended up dropping Trevor Rogers instead, who the model really doesn't like and the K minus BB really doesn't like, and he has the Braves next week. And that's the tumbling dryer that you're talking about, because if he had anybody other than the Braves next week, you know, Trevor Rogers might still be on my team, but I was just like, maybe I can try to get them back next time. But for now I'd rather have Blanco. And that's how I want to treat Blanco. I don't want to, I don't want to invest.

I don't want to go and buy him and keep release. He's 30 years old. You know, don't buy, don't buy the top on this one. You know, if you got him, congratulations. If you got him, congratulations. If you got him for less than 50 bucks, congratulations. If you paid 150, 200 bucks, like 20% of your auction, your auction value or your free agent money for the year, I'm not with that necessarily. Bids were all over the place on Renal Blanco because I think you see results like that.

Some people say this might be something really special. Other people say, is he completely out of that ongoing job battle? Like even if he's temporarily the guy over JP France, if he hits a stretch of three or four starts where he's very hittable, they can make a pretty quick decision. What was the case versus walks in the second star? It was like four and four. Four and four. Yeah.

That's more like what I four. Four and four. Yeah. That's more like what I expect out of Blanco. And that four and four is not gonna get you, that's not gonna be good most weeks. So I got a broader question just thinking about how these leagues work and we're gonna get into more detail about what's causing pitcher injuries to happen at their current rate.

It's a complicated answer. That's gonna be the focus of our Tuesday episode with Britt. People were asking in our Discord about just the fantasy implications of all these injuries beyond the, how do you adjust to not having Strider? Okay, chase strikeouts might be the best way to go and worry less about the ratios because it's harder to get all of those things from the wire.

If we take a look back and we say, OK, there's been like this five plus year window where pitching injuries have been a problem. Is there an adjustment in fantasy that should be made either tactically to how we build rosters in the first place or even structurally to how the game is designed? I was starting to think about it a little bit yesterday. You're messaging me about some of the pictures you were looking at. I just said, is fantasy baseball as a 15 team mix league

actually the right answer for the modern game when pitchers break like this? Because this isn't a complaint. This is a question of just so hard. Is this a good gameplay experience to lose an ace or even a third starting pitcher on your team and replace them with someone that you didn't even have on your radar at all? Like maybe it's a fun puzzle to solve. I think it's it's frustrating at times and fun at others.

But what adjustments should we be thinking about, if any, to how we play the fall in my main event, which is this 15 team NFC league that's really high stakes and you know people are good owners we identified the like one of the best arms i mean i don't know if it's the best time one of the best times and best schedule combinations that was available was trevor williams. And so you know we weren't even losing somebody due to injury but. Like if you were going to replace spencer str with Trevor Williams, I feel like that's almost so far of a way down that it doesn't make it fun in a way. Like take the money out of it. Like if we weren't playing for money and it was just your friends, like how deflating

would it be just be like, oh man, all the way down to this. So yeah, I think that maybe that's why 12 teamers are so popular is because, you know, if you are going to be playing with their friends, then make the penalties not so bad. And, and, you know, I think most of the leagues that we've seen from when we asked information from y'all is 12 teamers and with like fairly robust injury list. And I like that too, because I'd rather not have to drop a guy because he's injured.

Right, so yeah, so even, so this is one of the tactical problems, I would say, of the NFC leagues is that you don't have IELTS spots, it keeps action available on the wire. I don't understand it for why they do it. You know, it'd be even worse in the main event if we had IELTS slots and I wouldn't even get Trevor Williams. Right.

For a 15 team league, especially the deeper the league, the more it kind of becomes sort of necessary, but from a gameplay experience, is it great? Not knowing this weekend what the final diagnosis was Strider, you're like, okay, I'll wait a week. I'll wait for that second opinion. It's probably not going to be good. I'm probably going to cut him even if it's a six to eight week injury, depending on what's happened the rest of my roster, but not being able to even hold them if it is six to eight weeks and C is kind of an annoying problem that's sort of unique to that format. So I've shifted over time on this. I used to think it's fine. You don't need IL spots. Make the tough decision. Keep the wire lively. I'm just I'm looking at these problems and this is not just this year. It's not just last year. Our roster is too deep. Do you say instead of starting nine pitchers, you're going to start seven in a 15 team league?

I guess would that make the gameplay better? Just because you still have to be right. You still be more right than everybody else. It's still a challenge. Deal with injuries. You're still going to deal with that. Should I drop this guy because he's hurt question. Yeah.

It's not a plea for a change. It's the question as to whether or not how we play fits. And I've wondered this going back to some of the old industry leagues that are out there, right? They're based on the original Roto design with a few modifications, but it hasn't changed like batting average being a category. That's from the original rotisserie game that Dan O'Crenton and company put together at the rotisserie game that Dan O'Cranton company put together at the rotisserie restaurant forever ago.

And the roster with the two catchers, and that was all designed around a mono league. I don't know if that's the right way to play fantasy baseball, period. There's also like what kind of adjustments and strategies should we make? I put up last year's leaders in fastball velocity, minimum 90 innings. I put up last year's leaders in fastball velocity, minimum, uh,

90 innings. Um, and it's, it's a list of people we all wanted. Bobby Miller, Hunter Green, Sandy Alcontra, Yuri Perez, Grayson Rodriguez, Spencer Strider, Shohei Otani, Shane McClanahan, Jesus Lazardo and Garrett Cole. All of those guys are rosterable in any league, except maybe, I don't know, my son's six person league. Maybe maybe maybe there's somebody who wouldn't but I think even in his like you kind of want all these guys well guess what that's ten names I just gave you and six of them are hurt. And the public peer reviewed research that's out there you know suggest that below below is the thing. And it's just a tough thing to kind of keep in your head when you're trying to draft really good pitchers.

Is are you going to have a little question mark in your back of your head? Be like, oh, does he throw too hard? Does he throw too hard? I don't want to ask that. It's not a fun question to ask. That's not good for gameplay. It's not good for analysis.

Yeah, because I want to I want to tell you who's good. Based on who's good, like, you know what I mean? Like, I want to just be like, who's good? I don't good should be good. Like there's some chaos in injuries that happen in every sport. And I just think we've hit this point, again, beyond these last two seasons that is unsustainable. It does not it doesn't work really well the way it is.

Right, like am I gonna tell you not to draft Jared Jones next year because he throws too hard in 1997? Mackenzie Gore in 1997? You know, Keaton wins at 96. Like am I gonna tell you not to draft these guys? Well, are you just gonna say I'm not drafting pitchers in the first five rounds, seven rounds, eight rounds?

Are you gonna go the old school route again, like the go down that road and say early pitching is for everybody else. It's not for me. I mean, that's my instinct. That's that's where I've been. But if you don't like early, like I when I started playing fantasy was like, don't draft anybody after 10 rounds. That's I don't think viable anymore because people would push everything pitching up so high that if you actually stop the, don't do anything for 10, 10 rounds and you're really just, your ACEs is, is not that good. I mean, you've, you've, you've experimented this in some of your draft

and hold some of your league builds where you've waited until what the fifth and sixth or something. I did a Tyler Malley SP one two years ago. Now that was 2022. Is that the year he was okay or the year he was hurt? I think that was the year he was okay. He wasn't an SP one. It wasn't some shrewd. Oh yeah.

I was absolutely right about Malley. It was, uh, I think it was the 441-22 year for the ratios. It wasn't 2021. 2021 was the year that inspired it. And 2022 was the year that wasn't quite as good. I know Ariel Cohen has shown some research that like, you know, aces are way better and this and that. But the thing that I gravitate sort of is.

You know when you look at side young seasons and stuff you know a lot of times there is a pop up side guy. You know sunny gray didn't win it but he's a pop up side guy and what i find is that like. You know in the top twenty there are a lot of pictures that with things going right that year, could still be an ace. It's really, it's a lot harder. And sometimes maybe it does happen, but it's a lot harder for someone in the 70s. People are like, Oh, who's, who's the next Kyle Bradish? And I'm like, I'm not sure there is one every year, you know, but every year there is like a Logan Webb who was drafted as the 15th best SP and just had a really good year and almost won the Cy Young and ended

up being a top five SP. So my instinct and it's not necessarily supported by all the data so far, but we are also in an ever changing environment because the rules are changing. The injuries are changing. So my instinct is to go for two number twos, try to get two number high and number twos. And this year in one build that ended up being Grayson Rodriguez and Yuri Perez. And I was like, well, I got two very exciting young arms. That could be really great.

The nice thing is that because I did two right there. Like I didn't lose. Yes, I lost Yuri Perez, but I have Grayson Rodriguez. So it's like it was sort of a 50 50 shot, which is kind of is with injuries. And so I just bought two at that one price point that I thought was fine. And I lost one, but you know, I got the other. So you can't, the one problem with getting a guy in the first or second round is you can't get two, some guys are out there doing that.

I guess you could just go, what have you gone Strider burns? Oh, I did that. I have a team. I did it. Remember labor mixed labor. I had the fifth pick. I went Strider burns and then people were saying, well, you could have just took Mookie Betts or Kyle Tucker at five and your team would be a lot better today.

Yes, that's right. That's a hundred percent true. But if this were a double tapped at the high end SP, you're, you're better off now than if you hadn't gone stride burns Yeah, I mean I guess one other thing I didn't talk about at the time of doing the pocket aces is you built in some Of that security if one breaks you still have an ace like you don't know if one or both are going to break But if one breaks which is somewhat likely You're in a much better spot than if you only drafted one and you have had one that broke.

Yeah, I'm kind of, I guess I'm advocating for the pocket king strategy. But yeah, there is some work we have to do to kind of go through this. Would you say that these things were predictable? I don't think the Spencer- Strider deal was that predictable. Bieber was hurt last year. So you'd be strider throws really hard and has a TJ in his history.

See, that's the thing. Did we cruise right by the Strider 2019 TJ because it happened in college. And we thought, well, I mean, some people probably didn't even realize he had Tommy John surgery in college, unless they went back and read the old player outlooks. But the one thing Strider does, right, he sits pretty close to his max and he throws hard. So that's, that's your, even if you didn't know what the previous TJ, that's your yellow flag if you're going to use high V lo starters as.

Guys that you're maybe not going to be as excited about. Hunter, Hunter Green, I guess, you know, the guys that are left on my list that aren't hurt, you know, Hunter Green kind of sticks out. Grayson Rodriguez, you know, we think of him as healthy now, but he had a really hard time staying healthy, I think in the 2021 season or 2022. So. Right, yeah, he said, and it's like, okay, well that's there, it's on the ledger, it needs to be accounted for,

it should certainly be factored into expectations. His Lizard has had injury problems. But that, if you let them in now, now you've lumped everybody in but Bobby Miller. And Bobby Miller could just break randomly. Cause he just throws hard. He throws really hard too. Again, sits pretty close to his max, right? Yeah. But if you start taking people who've, who sit from your, uh, far from their thing, like you, you'll also probably get and don't throw hard.

You'll probably get older guys. And what do older guys do? They break. They break from cumulantare and tear, right? It's just like, there's no answer. We're gonna get into it more on Tuesday's show and try to figure out what the game could even try to do as a means of reducing this problem, because the trends are long-term trends and they are very much concerning long-term trends.

There's one more injury we didn't talk about yet that this one was just so frustrating. Trevor story dislocated his shoulder over the weekend shoulder too. Same shoulder as the arm. He had the elbow surgery on Tommy John. That's what it was. But I thought he injured a soldier. But yeah, he hopes to play again this year. That is so sad. Yeah, it's brutal because he goes through all the injury rehab from the elbow, comes back last year, isn't quite himself, finally gets the healthy be it be a regular baseball player instead of a rehabbing baseball player off season

gets all the way back and suffers this injury in this eighth game of the season. And he just knows like he just knows what the fans are saying, like he's just wearing it. Yeah, it's awful. No, no player. No player wants to be hurt. No one. No one wants to be hurt over and over and over again. You know, no matter what stage of your career you're in,

I look at this Red Sox team, it's like, okay, so Story could miss the rest of the season based on this description. I'm sure once we get more tests, more information, we'll know, it's probably one of those situations we need inflammation to calm down before they can really get a clean look. David Hamilton is on the roster now,

left-handed hitter, tons of speed. I don't know if David Hamilton is gonna be a good enough hitter in the big leagues to make good on those tools. I think that's a open question for a lot of people, but he looks like the first guy that's gonna get a shot at increased playing time, and they'll probably move a bunch of other guys around trying to make the pieces fit.

I'm surprised I didn't just put Raffaella back at short, but there's a defensive component to this too, where maybe Raffaella is in center because they didn't love him at short. And Hamilton has an interesting story because he's a guy who has good contact, really good swing strike rates, good plate discipline, and they gave him weighted bats,

and in 2023 he hit a ball 111, and he'd never done that before. We haven't seen that quite yet this year. The hard hit numbers aren't great, but if he has that in his bag, if he can hit 111, that changes his offensive profile, and he could be somebody that I and I doubt the bad ex has that hundred eleven from triple a in its in its algorithm but maybe it does. You'd be pretty exciting player that if you need for hit for league average power is a guy that maybe could hit to 3240 with 15 homers and 30 steals the rest the way i mean he does have legs he stole 59 in 2023 and 70 in 2022. So it was funny is that a lot of people that were buying story were buying him for stolen basis so. If you are in a deep league and there's not much out there, Hamilton might be the pickup. Yeah, that's a brutal though for story. And I think it's interesting.

I didn't know about the Hamilton way to bat stuff. Projections don't like him at all. He in deeper leagues, I'm sure was targeted this weekend, but, uh, he has the sort of tools that if it clicks, he'd become relevant in 12-team leagues and smaller leagues potentially too, because that's a ton of power and speed. I mean, that's, yeah, I want to see where it goes as far as how he's pitched and how he handles top-level pitching over a prolonged window. You're going to have to gamble before you get to see it, in the case of David Hamilton.

Let's go back to a few more players that were scooped up this weekend. Let's go to the position player side briefly. There's only a couple position players that I saw get picked up a lot of places. It seems like the faith in Alex Kirilov is returning in smaller leagues, 12 teams and smaller. I saw him heavily added in a lot of online championships, partially because he started all but one game this season. The only time the Twins faced a lefty

was the game that Alex Kirilov did not start. And he's had a very prominent spot in that twins lineup as well, which I think bodes well for his chances of kind of cracking that shallow league barrier again. Now that he's finally healthy, it's been a lot of setbacks, wrist injuries, things that have kept him off the field in recent years. The early returns, he's still hitting the ball hard in the very limited sample, still kind of looks like the guy he was when he first debuted back in 2021. Yeah. The, uh, the one caveat is that, you know, I don't think the 10% strike rate is something you should be looking at.

Uh, the swinging strike rate is something that's, uh, the down denominator is pitches, um, and he has seen 106 pitches. So that's a little bit further along than the 30 plate appearances where he only struck out in 10% of them. So the swing strike rate suggests that he's going to, he's going to strike out around league average 22 to 24%. And so I don't know that he's going to be a 10% strikeout rate guy. That's a great average, but, uh, you know 250, 260 with 20 homers, 25 homers.

That seems within his grasp. And yeah, the playing time is there. He had a triple, so the legs seem to be there. He seems like in good health. That's a, that's, I know he didn't hurt his legs in the past, but you know, just being generally in good health is something that he hasn't necessarily had for a little bit. It's been the wrist really.

Lot of wrist problems for Alex Kiriloff, but seems like he's finally put that behind him. It's nice to see him getting this opportunity for the twins. I saw Oliver Dunn getting scooped up a lot of places, and I think there is a bit of an ongoing battle in Milwaukee for playing time. Dunn is probably getting this extra playing time lift

right now because Sal Freelick's playing center field while Garrett Mitchell's down. Mitchell's probably down for another six weeks or so. That keeps things a little less crowded on the infield. I would look at Oliver Dunn and say, there's a lot of ways it can go right for a player like him as well. Doesn't have the wheels of David Hamilton, we just talked about, but actually has pretty interesting power and some speed to go along with it. Has some swing and miss concerns, but has also shown a patient eye during his time in the minors.

Put up great numbers, old for the level at AA in the Phillies organization last year, Redding, the ballpark there is hitter friendly, but a 148 WRC plus. The Brewers scooped him up in the Rule 5 draft. They're giving him some chances to play third base. He looks good defensively. He looks like he fits over there. He has second base eligibility in some leagues already. And the reason why I thought he was kind of interesting as a pickup is not only just the short-term opportunity, multiple ways to be valuable, but I think even after Freelik comes back, if you're better than the cluster of players duking it out right now, they could prioritize anyone they want because of the way that roster's built.

There's so many moving parts that the cream will rise as far as the hitters are concerned in Milwaukee this year. And I think Bryce Terang is off to a great start as far as stealing a ton of bases. I know the early batting average was really good as at least a couple of days ago. He's still hitting like 360. But I don't know if Bryce Terang has actually changed a lot from the player he was last year when he put up a 60 WRC plus. Terang's a phenomenal defender, but that's still an open question as to whether or not

he's going to hit enough to be more than an all glove player at the big league level done might actually be able to hit enough to displace terrain later on this season. If, and when things are more crowded. Yeah. And just to throw another name on the mix, Joey Ortiz is not really starting every day. Yeah.

He's more of a small side platoon guy right now. Yeah. He's just in and out. Yeah, he's more of a small side platoon guy right now. Yeah, he's just in and out. And so if Joey Ortiz was playing every day and playing to the best of his abilities, I could say, okay, this is gonna get crowded. But we always knew that there was a little bit

of a spaghetti with the wall situation on the Milwaukee infield, right? Like we knew there were a bunch of candidates and we didn't know exactly how it would shake out and that meant there was risk for any one of them to work out. And I think it would be a shame to kind of look at this 360 average and the seven stolen bases

for Turang and be like, he's got that locked down. So it's Oliver Dunn versus Joey Ortiz for third base because Turang does not hit the ball hard. Does, you know, strikeout rate is not as good as you'd expect for somebody like this. And the main difference, I mean, he's hitting the ball hard, 10% hard hit. The main difference is a 474 Babbitt this year

versus a 268 Babbitt last year. That's 200 points of Babbitt. That's the main difference. I don't see anything everywhere else where I'm like, Oh, he really improved his process. And when it comes to hitting the ball hard or pulling the ball or barreling the ball or maxi V or any of these things. So, um, yeah, I think, uh, I wouldn't invest too heavily in terrain and I would take a wait

and see almost with that whole, um, with that whole lineup. And what I've found in the early going is you've got this like, you know, you want to buy someone that you could, you want to buy a share of someone that you could have all year. So you kind of, you want to be aggressive early on and you want to put a big bid out there and get this player that could be good all year. And I get that. But what I've found mostly with the guys that were available is I would rather just put together a list of smaller

bids and just take whoever I get with the smaller money because I don't think any of the guys we've mentioned so far have been worth much money maybe curl off a little bit. But as an example I put out there that JJ Bladay was also available in a lot of leagues and was picked up this weekend in 15 team leagues. I had him already in a lot of places and I had him in some places and I never spent even more than ten bucks out of a thousand to get Ladea where I had to get him. And Ladea, you know, versus any of the guys we talked about

has shown a little bit of change in what he's doing in terms of groundball, fly ball mix and and whatnot. And then, you know, is this playing every day and has a shot to make himself a position that he's going to play for the rest of the season. So, you know, I just put all these guys into the mixer, you know, give one guy like a little bit a dollar or two more. And, you know, I haven't seen anybody. I don't think I've seen anybody in the early going that I've thought was worth a hundred dollars out of a thousand. Right. I think there's always this urgency to do something, especially if you have an

injury. And there's the FOMO of if I don't pick up someone who gets an early season opportunity and keeps it, uh, I'm going to miss out on a lot of long-term value. I don't know if that's entirely true. I think a lot of times fab dollars are just not well spent and maybe you're aggressive early because he has to be. Last week was like Foley Foley's already lost a saw it save appearance to, to, to Lang. Hey, Jay Hinch apologized and used, they used, they, it's

got to be Lang, right? It's Lang. Got to be Lang. Don't let Trevor get in your head with pronunciation. You got enough going on trying to don't, don't let him influence you on that. I think it's, it's worse when you have an injury because you feel like I got to do something because I got this gaping hole on the roster. So cool.

You just have to patch it and see what happens. Don't be over-aggressive with the Fabs. I kept most of my bids again this week, kind of in that 5% range, targeted a few different pitchers. I mean, you went cheap. You went Tyler Freeman and Myles Michaelis, who I think for a lot of people

would have been contingency options, but not necessarily top-end options. But the gap between Freeman and Dunn or even Freeman and Kirolov could end up being pretty small over the course of the season. I mean, if you like Bryce Turing, then you should like to hire Freeman. They're very similar guys. And what I put together was just a look at some process stats. None of these are really stabilized in the sense that like, oh, you can totally believe them, but they're a little better than looking at other numbers. So strikeout rate, max TV and hard hit rate. At least you're looking at things that, you know, uh, stabilized quickly

or have a decent amount of pitches or balls and play kind of behind them. Um, and if you look at this list, I'm not saying this is a list of the best players in baseball, but these are players that are above average strikeout rate, above average max TV, above average hard hit. They're all decent players. And if Tyler Freeman has the worst power on this list, which he might, then he can join Jung-Hoo Lee and Juricsson Perlfar

and Jordan Westberg maybe at the bottom of the list. Well, guess what? I think all of those three of those guys are gonna hit 10 homers this year. And maybe 12, maybe 15, somewhere in there. And all three of those guys have other things they can add. Profar is maybe the weakest of the three, but if Tyler Freeman turns out to be jerks in Profar,

then that'll be valuable in some leagues. And Freeman is not going to platoon, I don't think. So he could be better than profar just by playing every day. He has that in common with Jung-Hoo Lee. So, you know, the everyday playing time of a Jung-Hoo Lee and the power of her jerks and profar doesn't sound like something you want to rush to the bank to get. I paid, I think, an average of $4 of a thousand to get him.

Um, but he might be an everyday player. You look up at the end of the season, he's hit two 75 with 12 homers and 18 stolen bases, and he was absolutely worth, uh, playing in most leagues. Not. Tens and twelves, but. Yeah, I could see Freeman's categorical value going from, you know, steals to average to runs to homers to RBIs. Like that could be the order in which he's valuable, but if he's good in

three of those categories and passable on the other two, that will play for sure. And deeper leagues and especially in leagues where you just need somebody sometimes like a, an extra bat that can play multiple positions Freeman should be a pretty good fit. I was surprised you had Myles Michaelis on your your contingency list as far as a bargain pitcher goes. I think it was Mychalus and Trevor Williams were two guys that you ended up picking up that I just didn't see coming just pure schedule grabs. Just a schedule. The other two starters Myles Michaelis, I think has San Diego at home.

I forget what the next one was. Maybe Arizona on the on the on the road. But, you know, he played he he got a win against San Diego with two runs on on seven hits in a walk over six innings. He struck out four like I think he can do something like that again. He's a credible starting pitcher. Trevor Williams has the A's and the Giants in good stadiums, not in Washington.

So, I thought those were decent matchups. And I liked your tumbling dryer analogy. I'm just trying to make it to next week. Yeah, and that's sort of the main reason why I was interested in Spencer Turnbull because I thought he fit in the 5% or less range. Well, what did you pay for him? 57, 5%. Yeah.

I saw people, well, oh, you paid 57. Out of a thousand. Okay. I wasn't willing to go that high. I wasn't willing to go that high. I thought he was a streamer and streamers for me, I don't necessarily want to spend much more than like 11 or 13 at most, because you have to think about the numbers.

Like if you're going to stream every week, you can't like you 57 is a little bit more like you might keep them. I think that's exactly where he fits for me. So here's the, why I think he's more than a streamer. It's two starts this week, but assuming he's still in the rotation, to start week this week in terms of like possible people to pick up. There were, it was bad. Matchups were horrible for pitchers this week for the widely available guys.

It's the cards and pirates this week. It's the latter of the two at home. White Sox at home next week. Turnbull is going to be in the rotation for at least two more weeks because Tywon Walker just started throwing live BP last week So he's gonna need a full rehab assignment before he's ready to go at least three probably four Maybe five rehab starts before he comes back and he hasn't even started that process yet So I think turnbull someone that gets you through April and my my new threshold for how long does a guy have to have a job?

For me to not really worry about him being a complete streamer? It's about a month because in a month, how many of the starters who are currently healthy and effective in that rotation around him are still going to be healthy and effective? One of Christopher Sanchez or Ranger Suarez could struggle or Walker could have a setback or literally anyone could get hurt. I think Turnbull looked good enough in the pitching model as well, where I thought, OK, all these factors point to someone that has a good short term opportunity and slightly better than average skills

that could actually make him good beyond easy schedule and favorable schedule spots. Yeah, I could see it. I guess maybe I topped out at maybe 17 or 21 on him and it didn't get him, I think. Um. It's not absurd to be careful. Like if you didn't have a, I had a need in a lot of leagues too though. I had him on all my drafting holes, three shares of him. My drafting holes. I was like, yes, you're putting him in. And the reason why is I've told this story a million times is that just, I asked a pitching coach, you know, what's your favorite type of player to get?

And he was like a player who's like played in the major leagues and has a bunch of pitches. And that's Spencer Turtelmull to me. You know, it's like, and what do they do with them? They replaced his foreseen with a cutter and, uh, and added a sweeper. And it's like, wow, they couldn't do that in Detroit. And I think they couldn't do that in Detroit because there was some bad, there was other stuff going on. There was obviously some problems there. Um, and I think, uh,

I think he came to a new team and felt wanted and, and, uh, opened his ears and said, okay, yeah, that sounds fine. Let's do that. And now he has the sort of cutter, yeah, that sounds fine. Let's do that. And now he has the sort of cutter. Uh, he has a cutters slider sweeper, uh, situation going on. Um, and I think his sinker is just good enough and it's five pitches and it's decent command and, and people haven't seen this Spencer storm turnbull too. And he's pitching in a league where he hasn't seen as many of the teams. All reasons why I think it can work out a little longer than expected for Spencer Turnbull. The other name that I thought was kind of interesting that we were floating around

before the show is Javier Asad. He's got a career sub three ERA in the big leagues. He's kind of split his time between the rotation and the bullpen for the Cubs and doesn't have the whip that you like to see with a sub three ERA, but the Cubs have their own approach with pitching and I think Assad might fit into that. Yeah, I think he fits a little bit of the same as a turnbull like this. He's a sinker, sinker slider guy where, you know, teams are increasingly like willing to take a chance on a sinker, sweeper, sinker, slider guy if they think they can add other breaking balls. And so he's sinker, cutter, sweeper curve.

You know, it's it could work. It's a lot of breaking balls, but they're all different breaking balls and they can all work differently to different hands. So he's going to have trouble against lefties at some point. But it's a, it's a package that could work. Real simple game better K percentage and stuff. But it's more, a little more of a streamer for me. And it's a two-star week this week too. So I felt like that, that alone was worth targeting just for the innings and possible Ks of getting two turns

this week. Let's go good, good pickup, bad pickup, assuming these were mostly cheap ads, so you can hit us with a thumbs up if it's good, hit us with a thumbs down if it's bad, we'll see if we get graphics or not. Hey, I got them both times, so we'll see. We'll see if we're that lucky. Cody Bradford, good or bad? Thumbs up. Thumbs up. Yeah. It could get some innings.

Change a little change of shape on the fast ball and a new curve ball, which doesn't model great, but he's always had the great change up. So that's, that's three pitches. Graham Ashcraft, anything different this time? Sinkers, a lot of sinkers. I'm going. The gentle up. Yeah.

We'll, we'll see when the, the emoji gods agree with you and actually rather, I'd rather there was a curve ball in there, but I just liked the fact that he's throwing something else, throw a wrinkle in it. How about a sod's teammate, Ben Brown for deeper leagues, unqualified thumbs up. Uh, yay. We got a simplified arsenal that's helping him with his command. The only problem is

they haven't necessarily just installed him in the rotation. Looks like he's gonna be kind of a bulky guy. But he performed well in his first one and I think there's an opportunity for him to make himself a spot in that rotation. Let's try Chad Green. And I think there's an opportunity for him to make himself a spot in that rotation.

Let's try Chad Green. Oh, big thumbs up, especially in the short term, I think he could gravitate his way towards saves and even if he doesn't, he is in a spot where they could use him for wins. So you could end up getting a sixth inning win and three innings and five strikeouts. And like that would be good for a streamer in some leagues. They got might be a better option in some leagues than than trying to pick up a guy off their waiver wire. How about another position player, Blaze Alexander,

who actually gets a boost in playing time because Heraldo Perdomo suffered a torn meniscus, another shortstop injury he's gonna miss at least one month and I mean that's a that's one of those injuries that's... Is Lawler still hurt? Yeah Lawler's gonna be out that whole time so it's not gonna be Lawler they brought up Kevin Newman for extra shortstop depth. But Blaze Alexander should play a lot. I'm thumbs up they were playing with DH. Like he was playing. He's 24, for 24 years old he's in his peak. I know he's striking out too much but a 10% whiff rate does not predict a 30% strikeout rate. So I think he can get that back down a little bit. And he's, he's doing okay. I know some of it is propped up by batting average on balls and play, but he is a guy who is speedy and kind of sprays the ball around.

I mean. I don't know. I don't want to get too excited, like, I don't know if he's a 12 team. No, but at least a 15 team, if you're thinking about David Hamilton and Alexander, like, who do you like better? I think Hamilton. But more categorical juice and a longer possible runway, if it were definitely and Blaze Alexander, like who do you like better? I'll take Hamilton. But it's close. More categorical juice and a longer possible runway, if it works.

Definitely more stolen bases and more contact. I do lean towards more contact. We gotta do a little research. Why did a guy named Blaze Alexander only have two steals in 73 games at AAA last year? He's on base all the time. He's a good player. It's like if Cutter Crawford didn't have a cutter.

It'd be like if Cutter Crawford hated cutters. He's like, no, I'm not throwing that. He's a good player. It's like if Cutter Crawford didn't have a cutter. It'd be like if Cutter Crawford hated cutters. It's like, no, I'm not throwing that. It's a stupid idea. Why would I throw that pitch? I don't even like the name of that pitch. On that note, I think it's time for us to go. If you don't have a subscription to the athletic, you can get one at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels.

That's the best way to get in. As I mentioned earlier, jump in on the discord. The link is in the show description. If you made it to the end of this video or the end of this episode, drop us a nice rating review, hit the like button on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, if you haven't done so already on Twitter, you can find Eno at Eno Sarah's find me at Derek van Riper, find the pod at rates and barrels. That is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels.

Back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.