Rates & Barrels - Cody Bellinger Goes Back to the Cubs, Spring Games Begin, & Working Backward for Draft Strategy

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Cody Bellinger's return to the Cubs on a short contract with multiple opt-outs, the start of TGFBI, a busy first weekend of spring action that featured a lot of new pitches, and a lot of information about velocity and iVB changes. Plus, they dig into the importance of working backwards when building out draft-day roster construction plans.  Rundown 5:32 Cody Bellinger Re-Signs with the Cubs 17:37 A Live First-Round Pick from Eno’s TGFBI Draft 22:56 Two (!) New Pitches for Hunter Greene 28:02 Cole Ragans’ Improved Fastball Ride in Spring Debut 34:02 Carlos Rodón Has a New Cutter 39:55 Quick Thoughts on Strikeout Park Factors 46:03 Draft Strategy: Working Backwards, or At Least From the Middle 57:15 Looking for Late Power, Without Sacrificing Average Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/r9u5jBvV Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our new livestream episodes w/Trevor May! 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's Monday, February 26th, Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you. On this episode, we dig into some first weekend news and notes. We've got a big signing. Cody Bellinger goes back to a familiar place, so we'll dig into the implications of that. A lot of pitchers making their first appearance of the spring, so we're seeing velo readings.

We're seeing some new pitches. We're seeing IVB numbers, so we're going to dig into some of that. And for the later part of the episode, we're going to talk about some draft strategy, thinking about what you're going to dig into some of that. And for the later part of the episode, we're going to talk about some draft strategy, thinking about what you're going to have available in the middle and later rounds of your draft and how that informs the decisions you're going to make in the foundation. Right. Got to think about what's going to be there later as you build your teams.

Eno, how was your weekend? It was good. Little League season started. Shout out to Felix, who got a seam tattoo this weekend. He got hit hard in the flesh second, but then I shook it off and got back in the game. They did not fare so well, but it was just a scrimmage and just getting the rust out. I think it'll be a good season. I'm back to being jealous that Little League season begins in late February,

where you live, because it doesn't begin quite that early where I am. Good weekend with Potapalooza that Justin Mason put together. I know a lot of money was raised for charity. Great job by Justin doing that again. I saw the panel that you were doing with Paul, Carlos Mercano, and James. I thought that was really good panel. I was kind of glued to the living room this weekend, so Potapalooza came at the exact right time for me.

Between that, tweets coming by for starts that I couldn't watch like the cole reagan start uh it did feel like baseball was really just around the corner this weekend a little frustrated by like not and not being on tv maybe it's just early but i have seen some schedules where i'm like you know forget what team it was it's like on TV 10 times this spring. The money thing. I also saw, I was watching the Orioles Red Sox game on Saturday. I think it was the day that Corbin Burns pitched. That was so bad.

The center field camera. Oh, I was like getting nauseous. On the mass and feed. It was like it was in the wind or something or in the breeze. It wasn't mounted properly. Fortunately, the Nessun feed was better. They had a different camera. I was worried it was going to be the same camera on both feeds.

I switched to the other feed, and it was totally fine. But yeah, you could barely watch it. It felt like someone was just hand-holding a camera and just couldn't keep it still out in center field. I think a lot of the spring training stuff comes down to money. I think teams don't want to spend on broadcasters to be out there and camera crews to work those games. And it's too bad because I think it helps get people excited for the season

at a time when nothing else is firing quite right. The NBA is not to the playoffs yet. The NHL is not to the playoffs yet. There's kind of like a lull in the winter sports. And you could have this post super bowl excitement about baseball that builds up especially since it's like a it's a day sport game you know like nba is like almost always nighttime you know and hockey's more nighttime so like like on a saturday in march you should just be able to turn on your spring training game for your routine

you know i guess you get the stretch run for men's and women's college basketball and I was watching Wisconsin women's hockey on Saturday night because they're pretty much the best program in the country. They had a great game against Ohio State. I should check out the Stanford schedules and see if I can get the boys to see one more Stanford women's basketball game. Sorry if it's all over and I missed that. But I have been taking them to some Stanford baseball games. And we were excited that Rintaro Sasaki, the big Japanese high schooler, signed with Stanford.

We thought he might be here this year, but apparently he signed for next year. Oh, bummer. Yeah. They made the announcement a couple weeks ago, so it seemed like it was going to happen right away. And maybe it'll be an interesting year. I saw that Stanford was top five in some of these stuff plus they had for college baseball.

I guess that was Mason McRae. But anyway, the results have not been stellar. They are like one and five or something. And it seems like a bit of a lack of pitching is the problem. So I'm interested to see where this stuff plus but bad results thing goes for Stanford this year. All right. Well, that's what we're watching. That's what we did this weekend.

Hope everybody was excited to hear about that for a few minutes. But hey, we're real people. We do other things once in a while outside of baseball as well. Be sure to hit the like button in this video. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. We've got our Friday live stream of Trevor May at one o'clock Eastern again this week. And if you've enjoyed the discord yet, that is open. Be sure to click the link in the show description to jump in there and connect with a lot of other listeners and viewers of the show. Let's start with Cody Bellinger. He goes back to the Cubs. The final number, three years, $80 million, but it's a complicated deal, which makes sense because Cody Bellinger has had something of a complicated career. It's three for 80 with two opt-outs. He can opt out after this season. He can opt out after this season. You can opt out after 2025. It's not the mega deal that Scott Boris and Cody Bellinger were hoping for

when the offseason began. But when you consider just how bad the final two seasons for Bellinger were with the Dodgers compared to the incredible bounce back year he just had with the Cubs, you can begin to understand why teams were hesitant to think about a seven or an eight-year deal, not knowing how his profile was going to age.

We've talked about him several times as someone that kind of put the best parts of his profile together in his first season with the Cubs by getting his K rate back down to those 2019 and 2020 levels. He got back to the 20 home run power level with 26 homers. He was still stealing bases. And that was without a full season last year too. I mean, this is only a 556 plate appearance. It's 130 games for Bellinger from a year ago. The complicating factor is that even though the season was good,

very good by most offensive measures, the underlying numbers are a little bit misaligned with the performance. We're talking about a guy that was basically a top 10 hitter by the auction calculator for roto purposes, but the more you look at stack cast, the hard hit rates, the barrel rates, you have these questions about how sustainable the approach was for Bellinger a year ago. Yeah, I've seen some pushback.

Travis Sawchuk was talking about how Cody Bellinger is good at pulled line drives and fly balls. And so I wanted to look at that in the context of other players. And one thing that I see is that he doesn't do a lot of it. So I don't know if he's just good at it when he does it, but in terms of how many of his fly balls are pulled, he's not like Isak Paredes.

If you want to say, oh, he's got the Isak Paredes dream, Isak Paredes is up there with Joey gallo and adam duvall at like 45 now that's that's someone i think that can sometimes outdo their we've talked about this a lot but outdo their their expected power numbers right um that that is you're pulling 40 of your fly balls that means any time you put in the air like it's almost 50 50 that it's to the pool side right like that's really good and really big well uh cody bellinger is at 33 uh 33 he's 36th in the big leagues at this uh by anthony santander and i guess marcus simon so like Simeon kind of does this approach too to some extent um but it doesn't seem to me like he's in that group that needs to um needs to be seen as like over he's going to do better than his barrel rate or whatever I want to do this again really

quickly so that was how many of your fly balls are pulled so now i want to do how many of your pulls are fly balls do you think there's like one is better than the other like how many of your pulls okay so joey gallo and adam deval are the top of this anyway of their pulled uh balls 50 are fly balls so So we, and Paredes is fifth. So it's very similar. It's 40%. And Bellinger, not on the first page again. Not on the second page. Not on the third page.

So, I don't know. It's a ghost, man. Like, like he doesn't of his pulled balls not that many are fly balls and of his uh fly balls like an okay amount of pulled oh there he is he's on the first page he's 22nd do you think that like somebody who's 22nd in a skill, like 20th to 30th in a skill, is an outlier? Very barely. An outlier is 50%, not in the scrum with 30%. Yeah, an outlier is extreme. I think it made sense to start it with Isak as a good extreme example we've talked a lot about.

Is it having a good plan? Is it taking the pitches you should pull and doing damage on those and taking pitches that you shouldn't try to pull and hitting those in a way that's more effective? Because the other thing about Cody Bellinger's offensive profile last year is that he hit 319 on balls in play. That was his highest BABIP ever. He had a couple of low 300 BABIPs back in 18 and 19. 19 was his 47 home run season where everything was working for him. I just wonder if he had a better all-around approach and plan with the Cubs than he had during his previous two seasons with the Dodgers. And how much it was just being completely healthy again, too. That's always been part of the story with Bellandry.

He hurt his shoulder a few years ago and didn't seem like he was really the same guy for a couple of years. So that's also the kind of unknown as far as how you project him going forward. But as far as where he ranks in that pull trait, that seems pretty normal to me. It doesn't seem like an outlier.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean mean he's like slightly towards the top i also want to see like with two strikes i think very obviously um we've got a player here that has changed um his two something about his approach and i think to me like something about it is his two strike approach so i want to look at his two strike production by year and what you see is that 2023 was his second best of his career um and he hit 279 with a 313 obp and 411 slugging with two strikes um i don't know. It doesn't seem sustainable given his career.

If you look at his two-strike production, the last time it was this good was 2019, and then it went in the tank. And it wasn't that good. Even in 2017, 2018, when he was good, his wobo was below 300. His slugging was 330 those years. So that seems to me like that's gonna regress

right like you wouldn't expect him to hit 280 with a 411 slugging against two strike counts going forward when the league uh you know hits what did the league i got the league average last year was with two strike i mean it's gonna be super low two strikes last year the league hit 172 with a 249 obp and 273 slugging that just seems to me like it's screaming regression no matter what your approach is you know yeah and the other weird characteristic here is that cody bellinger improved against lefties to ridiculous levels. We have said time and time again, you can't trust any one-year split in a handedness sense, especially a left-handed split.

It's even smaller. Yeah, 183 play-by-play against us last year. A 164 WRC plus, Cody Bellinger hit.337 with a.388 OBP and a.596 slug. He popped 10 homers against lefties and only struck out 15.8% of the time against lefties. So yes, that could be small sample noise. And yeah, you're probably expecting too be foolish to assume he can't do 75% or 80% of what he just did from a power perspective. Projections spit out a decent range on him. Zips is optimistic at 267, 327, 441. The Bat-X is down at 254, 321, 449. Okay, those are fine projections, especially when you're talking about someone who should go 20-20 around

them and still plays pretty good defense too. Yeah. I mean, I think it made sense for the team and it made sense for the team on this kind of a contract. I think one of the things you look at, the

way we're talking about them, is there's just so much risk around what type of player he will be going forward. Is he becoming the sort of Slappy McSlaperson that can put the ball in play and hold his water against lefties and hold his water in two-strike counts but not be the power threat? Which way is he going from here? Which one of these approaches is going to stick? hold his water and two strike counts, but not, you know, be the power threat, you know, which, which way is he going from here? What, which one of these approaches is going to stick? And if you do a three and 80, um, you're just not going to get locked into something where you're

like, Oh man, we have like Jake Cronenworth at first base now for like another a hundred million dollars. You know what I mean? It mean it's instead like well if he turns into jay coronaworth at first base you know we're cool with that for like a year you know and then we'll be and then we'll be clear you know uh but if he turns into the old mvp form you know would be happy to pay 30 million dollars a year for him so i think that's why you saw the years come down the dollars go up um there's a question about whether or not this is a good strategy by boris you're kind of seeing a little bit more of this sort of result from some of the guys he's holding out the longest but i think he held out carlos redon pretty long and got like 170 million for him. And I can't say that holding out long

has been really bad for him or his clients. So yeah, think about it this way. It's 30 million for this year for Bellinger. If he opts out because he has a good year, he has to beat two for 50 on the open market next winter. I would say there's a very good chance that he can repeat most of what he did. He's going to beat that.

So it's sort of like kicking the can down the road to see if you really get that long-term value. Betting on yourself to some extent, which again, probably is the function of every team having a model that spit out some question marks or numbers much lower than what Bellinger and Boris were hoping for when they were trying to model what a longer-term deal would look like for him.

One more really good year would change those outputs quite a bit. He'll be 29 next winter, so it's not absurd to go back and try and get the bigger deal a year from now. Looking at the projection compared to other players in the pool, again, using the Bat-X, the 22 homers, the 18 steals, the 254 average. I just filtered for that. There's just those three categories. There's only one

player projected for those numbers or better going after Cody Bellinger in drafts. It's Matt McClain. He's the only one who has each of those three boxes ticked. I think there's a general air of skepticism around Bellinger in fantasy circles as well. He goes right around pick 60 or so. Maybe going back to a familiar place. He'll creep up a little bit, or at least he'll stabilize in the sense that there won't be rooms where he falls as much as he has. He won't sign with the Giants.

Right. The fear of him ending up in a really picture friendly environment or just going to a new place, not really knowing how that would work out for him. That's all gone. I got him in the sixth round, late sixth round of the mixed labor draft last week. And my thinking was the projection's good.

He was almost the top 10 hitter by Roto value last year. He doesn't have to be a top 10 hitter for me to be a good value late in round six. So I'm in when he falls, especially, but I'm not opposed to drafting him even at market value, potentially, if it makes sense for my build.

Speaking of drafts i'm on the clock yeah we're always on the clock now why don't we make my first selection in tgfbi on air we need a sound for that uh you're on the clock uh the in front of me i'm surprised by what is allowed uh for me to choose from uh i am the seventh pick and i have the choice of kyle tucker corbin carroll or fermando tatis uh it is a smorgasbord of opportunity here uh that was allowed because spencer strider went ahead of me and freddie freider went ahead of me and Freddie Freeman went ahead of me, which were both players that usually go behind my spot. Now, I just wanted to run through this real quick because you can see a little bit of my process. I have some custom-made values uh from Ariel Cohen uh by uh using ATC and um he is in his custom made values I should

be taking Aaron Judge none of these three but I don't I don't know there's a little bit of risk there he's talking about how his toe uh is uh something he's gonna have to manage his whole career and so I I kind of treat that ranking with a little bit of a side eye. And so when I look at who I could really take, it's Kyle Tucker at $33 and Corbin Carroll at $32 and Fernando Tachis at $31.8. So basically it's saying, hey, good luck, you know uh make your choice the way you want to um if i use the bat x uh i think things are a little bit different here um i have to get the settings right but if i remember correctly the bat x is going to spit out uh fernando tatis Jr. So let's see here. Yes. The Bat X says Fernando Tatis Jr.

$45. And Corbin Carroll $34. And Kyle Tucker $35. So this is a pretty easy win for the Bat X saying take Tatis.

I think Corbin Carroll's shoulder is a little bit scary Tatis of course has his own injury history and Kyle Tucker is just so boring and great but Tucker yeah Tucker is second in the bad X. I am going to go with Tatis. I just love the balance in the production, and I think the second year off of his shoulder, he's going to have a good year, and I'm

a little bit scared about Carroll subluxing that shoulder, so I am drafting Fernando Tatis live on the pod. Just happened. I think I would have taken Kyle Tucker. I don't think there's a bad choice in the bunch. I mean, I think the fact that the projections, depending on which set you run,

are all going to kind of steer you a different way, gives you an idea that you probably can't make a bad choice with the information we have right now. I think for me, the difference is I look at Tucker and I see a little more stability in the batting average category. And I think I like having that cushion. I've started to think that maybe

I need to calculate batting average as a counting stat just to quantify it better in my head and understand the value of it as I'm going along. Like how many hits you're buying? Like how many hits am I really buying? Yes. Or just like, I don't know. It's so easy to look at a 30 30 player and know how valuable that player is in

roto but a 300 hitter that hits 20 homers with 12 steals you're kind of like oh that's a good player it's like no that's a really good player but your brain your brain loves 30 30 your brain loves 30-30. Your brain, for some reason, doesn't seem to love 30-20-12 the same way, or 300-20-12. Yeah. I mean, Tucker was probably my second. Carroll went right after me. It is why

I like picking earlier in the first round. I do not like picking after this because I think now your choices are Judge, Soto, Cole. Those are exciting players, but there's injury. Soto doesn't run the same. His batting average is a bit of a

question mark. Garrett Cole's strikeouts were down. So you start... I mean, the whole draft is more and more question marks as you go along. So probably I should have taken Kyle Tucker because that's the fewest question marks, right? With Tatis, there are still a couple question marks. Well, you're playing to win the overall.

You do that with any one of those guys. But the Tatis feels more like the give me the highest possible ceiling of the trio. Some might argue Carroll has that ceiling, too. Yeah, for sure. That's why these decisions are fun. It's good to have two or three guys you really like instead of just saying, well, I got the one that I knew I was going to get.

Freeman going a little earlier is interesting. I think we are going to see a few more people push batting average into their foundation more aggressively this draft season.

So that'd be one way to do it given what Freeman has done in that category. Let's talk about some stuff that was going down this weekend. Hunter Green showed a new splitter and a curveball in his debut. Two new pitches, gotta like that. It sounds like he's got a little more confidence in the splitter so far.

He's going to keep working on the curveball this spring. We'll see if both of these pitches, or at least one of them, make it into his arsenal when the games begin to count. What are you doing with all the information that seemingly it's grown? Like the, the amount of working on a new pitch has a new pitch. Velo is up. Velo is down.

Induced vertical break has increased. Like there is a flood of information. I think it was Torres takes on Twitter this weekend. It said, I remember when people thought spring training was meaningless and no one did anything at all based on spring training. And now people dig into every possible morsel of information trying to improve their process, trying to improve their valuations of players. And I don't think it's necessarily wrong to care about a lot of these things. And I don't think it's necessarily wrong to care about a lot of these things, but I'm curious to know, like with Hunter Green and some of the other guys we'll do but risky uh vets like carlos rodon justin

verlander michael king and so that that 30s is where um you buy upside and you know i was a little bit worried that hunter green's uh er ray is you know projected to was a little bit worried that Hunter Green's, uh, ER Ray is, you know, projected to be higher than someone like Carlos for dones, you know, and like, do I have them in the right place? And, um, you know, I've been trying to means test my, my rankings and sometimes I've passed on green, but I've also, uh, been picking green, uh, as like one of the last, you know, players that I think has, you know, Cy Young type upside young type upside you know um and so with this news i'm i feel a little bit better about my ranking you know so i'm not going to move them much um and you know i think the the big mover for me is injury so cal bradish dropped you know

70 spots with his with his news even though there's some okay news that he's playing catch and responding well and you know but he's opening the season on the il that's not ideal that's going to tank you a lot so i i move a lot for for that in terms of movement um i'm i'm excited to hear about it i you know stuff plus is built on the idea that these things are important in small samples and they can be the the difference for a season. If you look at Chris Paddock as an example, you know, he came up with a fastball with great ride and a straight change and was looking for a breaking ball. He started throwing the cutter and it cut the vertical movement on his fastball and so everything sort

of fell apart a little bit and you can see this in the story of his stats and like what he's what he did with those movements so to hear that he's got more ride than he had last year on the fastball this spring which you can see if you look in the uh in the stat cast uh you compare you have to compare the stat cast player page to the stat cast uh box score because the stuff that's happening in the box score, where it's comparing it to before, is not always right. So you have to look at Chris Paddock's average. And in the box score, it said that Chris Paddock had 13 inches of vertical break. And if you look on his player page, he had 14 last year.

So he's got an extra inch of vertical break. That's just you know again i don't think it's going to make me move him a lot but he had been dropping my rankings mostly because of you and uh and so i may cease to drop him you know like i'm going to i'm going to put a little bit of a floor on there because this is good news that he's throwing a cutter but also has the best you know some some vertical movement on his good news that he's throwing a cutter but also has the best you know some some vertical movement on his fastball that he's had in the last couple years so if he can somehow find a way to throw the cutter get right on his fastball and his changeup has an extra four

inches of movement on it this spring um horizontally maybe there's still like the best chris paddock that can emerge out of this. But like, you know, jumping him 20 points in the rankings or something based on, on some IBB, I think is problematic because, you know, I think that spring training, probably the sites are calibrated. Well, I'm not, I'm not trying to like speak ill on anybody that does this job, but I think that it wouldn't be surprising to me if they weren't calibrated as well as Major League Parks. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. There's a collection problem, potentially, with the data. And the inconsistency from park to park, even having it available, is still frustrating. I can't believe in 2024 we don't have a little more of a standard for all the spring parks to at least have that as an offering. Now, Lance Brozdowski got everybody excited with a tweet about Cole Reagans. Reagans was doing it himself.

He was being gift like crazy, blowing 101 past Anthony Rendon, who really didn't want to be there yesterday by most accounts. Wasn't even supposed to be here today. And so what we're seeing is Velo with more induced vertical break from Reagan's Lance pointed this out in the tweet last season, the closest shape and Velo combo he had. Reagan's had was a 98.9 miles per hour on the fastball with 20 inches of IVB. He got up to one Oh 101 last season with Velo, but it was only with 15 inches of IVB.

The strikeout he had on Sunday, one was against Zach Netto, was 101 with 20 inches of induced vertical break. And these are just eye-popping numbers. I know for a lot of people listening, this is still a relatively new concept. We dug into it in detail with Trevor May on our first Friday live stream. Go back and listen to that if you haven't had a chance to, because it'll start to make a lot of people listening, this is still a relatively new concept. We dug into it in detail with Trevor May on our first Friday live stream. Go back and listen to that if you haven't had a chance to because it'll start to make a lot more sense. But how sticky is induced vertical break? When you see a jump like this and you see that on top of the velo, is this something that we assume is now a skill Cole Riggins has?

How do you account for that? now like a skill Cole Reagan's has like how do you how do you account for that when we did the validation for stuff plus and we we even redid it this offseason because we were working with Jordan Rosenblum on the projections the sort of sticky amount stuff plus is, I think, 20, 25. So, you know, and then last year, there's an instructive example here. Lance Wazowski is saying that he threw one with 20 last year. His average was 16 IBB on the season. So even in a season where your average is 16, you're going to hit 20 sometimes right so he could have just hit his 20 for us and still be around 16 right so there's still it's inconvenient information

we're running to these like it is information designed to be more important in smaller samples but we're we're pushing it on the on the ones yeah like to come running with one pitch be like woo I mean like even within stuff plus even saying that movement and velo and stuff like that is sticky people have ranges within that so um you know he hit he threw 120 last year and he had a 16. if he gets it up to 17 or 18 this year on average, that would be good. We would want to see these two starts of that, and we'd want to have the data in hand. One of the things I saw people talking about was,

well, people seem to be making all these gains in the offseason when they're throwing at their facilities, and they have, oh, this much IVB, and then it doesn't seem like it's always the case when we get to spring or we get to the season you know there are atmospheric effects when you're in a studio like if you're in a place like tread or driveline you know that's like being in a dome you're inside you know in terms of humidity and like most of the things are ideal and then you're going to get out there, you know, I don't know where, wherever A's are going to play or where, you know, like you're going to like, what if you're in Salt Lake City?

And that's not, that's not Treader driveline anymore. So there's, or you get down to Arizona, you know, where it's higher elevation and drier. Maybe these things aren't going to pour over. I'm interested. I'm going to keep my ear open. I'm going to maybe try and collect some of these and write about it at some point. But for right now, I'm like, that's nice. That's cool. I like Cole Reagans. You like Cole Reagans. I feel like we're going to all see players like this not just Reagans

players like this get significant bumps over the course of draft season if they're able to do it in multiple appearances even though we're talking about a total of innings that would probably be roughly two starts from the start of Cactus League and Grapefruit League play until the end that's probably

about two starts two full regular season starts worth of pitches. The more we see it, the more people are going to react to it. And I'm worried that if you are a helium player like Regan's, you go from potentially draftable in your current range, which is around pick 100, to impossible to draft if he jumps two rounds even. I mean, he's creeping up into SB2 territory. And then there are other SB2s that you could take that I think would be more solid when it comes to injury,

like Grayson Rodriguez and Bobby Miller. Nothing like the same injury history and great stuff themselves, right? To the most solid, boring veterans like Logan Gilbert and Zach Gallin. You're going to really push Reagans up into that? I'll take Logan Gilbert over Cole Reagans no matter how excited you are about Cole Reagans. Logan Gilbert is... We haven't yet come up with a term for like good oatmeal.

Somebody has suggested one in our inbox. I forget what it was. Better oats. That's an actual product. Eggs and toast, I guess. That's just not even oatmeal anymore. Yeah, right. Completely throwing that aside.

Restaurant oatmeal. The oatmeal that somebody else prepared for me. The psychology behind that's real. You can make yourself a sandwich with the same set of ingredients as someone else and the sandwich that someone else made for you tastes better because of the anticipation, right?

You kind of break down the anticipation while you're doing it and the unknown is what adds to some of the appeal apparently carlos rodan has a new cutter which is kind of interesting but that came out with word that his velo was down a couple of ticks compared to where he was last season and this to me is a situation where if people were to react and back off of rodan i would say that's wrong because the first start of spring shouldn't be the same velo as

your regular season velo. Why would we expect that to be the case? We just had this bullpen session where everyone was raving about his velo. 93.6 I think I've done some actual looking at this,

and a tick to a tick and a half is completely plausible for spring training. So getting him from 93.6 to 95.1 is totally fine, and I guess his year average last year was 95.3. And then there is a lot of variation around that for players because I think there's just veterans that want to show up to camp and ramp up over camp. And then there's, like we talked about with Trevor May, this idea that the young guys who are trying to make the team

are going to swing at first pitches, right? And I think the pitching version of that is they're going to arrive pretty close to their opening day velo because they don't want to they don't want to lose out to anybody they want to spend spring training convincing everybody that they're the number four starter whatever it is you know what i mean so uh in i think radon is going to be more in the camp of like yeah my spot is there for me. I've got a role. I'm trying to be healthy all year. Let's just make it look good.

I thought he looked good. I thought it looked good. I thought it was just one of the big things was he's placing his fastball better. It was better fastball command. He was able to hit spots up in the zone. The cutter, I thought, was all right. There were some really ugly swings. I thought it was a good outing.

I'm not going to be too upset about the velo on that. Other interesting thing from that one is, I know that Bowden Francis gave up some runs, but he has a really interesting fastball with good shape, and I thought the curveball made some people look pretty silly. So I think that Bowden Francis is someone to put on your list of, you know, like seventh, eighth starters that might move into the,

like he probably has more innings than Ricky Tideman, so he might be the guy that ends up spot starting or taking over somebody if they're hurt in Toronto. Yeah, that's interesting. The depth could matter in that spot. Didn't really have to tap into it that much last season, but you can't really bank on that being a year-over-year sort of trend. The other notes here, I'm going to run through a bunch of these quickly,

and we'll kind of circle back after I get through them and talk about ones that matter. Spencer Strider was working on a new curveball and Lance Bresdowski had some details in his sub stack post about it. It's similar to the tie on or Bryce Miller curveball, but with more sweep through all three of those to lefties during his outing this weekend. So that could be another weapon for Spencer Strider to have in his arsenal. Lucas Giolito's got a new slider, and I saw this one too. Zach Plesak went to driveline. He's swapping in a two-seamer instead of a four-seamer.

His slider is becoming more of a sweeper. That was a story that Jeff Fletcher wrote over at the Orange County Register, but Plesak's the kind of dude that can go into an offseason, revamp everything, and he'll actually cruise somewhat under the radar because expectations are just so unbelievably low. But hey, he's got an opportunity for a job and seems to be at least trying to revamp things in a way that'll make him more effective. Yeah, I do wonder, you know, when I hear that, I hear problems against lefties and his four-seam fastball had a 38.5

stuff plus last year uh so I maybe the old slider becomes more of a cutter and he's cutter sweeper sinker and then against lefties he's kind of like cutter sweeper like you You hear there's something that came out of that panel that talking with James Siano was just a sort of refocus. And this is something that Nick Pollock talks a lot about. Sort of thinking about what the player is going to do against lefties and righties. Thinking about what the pitcher's arsenal looks like.

That's a big thing that I think I missed on Graham Ashcroft was like, how's he going to get lefties out? You know? And we saw even Brandon Fott, like, throwing that sinker, getting better. He's still struggling against lefties because you don't want to throw that sinker to lefties. So I think this is an interesting way for him to recover his career. And obviously, since his foreseam shape was so terrible, he had to do something else. But it does

sort of lean reliever-ish to me. Right? Become more of a sinker-sweeper guy, get righties out. You know, doesn't seem to have the arsenal to get lefties out. I just want to see where he's throwing

the two-seamer. Is he trying to use it for sink, or is he actually able to throw it up in the zone? Yeah, more of a lateral two-seamer, yeah. Yeah, that's the thing I want to see. Just thinking about what Bassett does with his, part of that breakdown is like, okay, you got a two-seamer.

Where are you throwing it? That's, to me, really important. Right, we didn't have the heat map, but Brady Singer, lone away away and middle-middle, not an approach against opposite-handed guys with sinkers. The important thing is we all looked at the heat map. Even though it didn't get turned into a card, we did look at the heat map. Some other news and notes here. Shohei Otani's spring debut should come Tuesday,

so good news for him as he tries to get ready for the opener in Korea, which is just a few weeks away. I saw Emmett Sheehan has not thrown in recent days due to general body soreness. That comes from Fabian Ardaia of The Athletic. Maybe the most interesting Dodgers story that I saw this weekend was about Teoscar Hernandez talking about some difficulties he had picking up the ball in Seattle last year at T-Mobile Park. about some difficulties he had picking up the ball in Seattle last year at T-Mobile Park, and it was reflected in his production. Almost a 200-point difference between his OPS at home and his OPS on the road. I wonder if we're going to get more stories like this going forward. I mean, the Willie Adames one from the Trop is one of the first times I heard a player, in recent years anyway, talk in detail about how much they didn't like hitting in a certain

ballpark, and it makes a big difference, especially when that's your home park. You're playing half your games there. Not being able to get comfortable, not being able to see the ball the way you want is going to have a massive impact. American Family Field is a dome, correct? Well, it's a retractable roof. It's usually closed. Usually closed, right? I'm just interested.

closed usually right um i'm just interested i'm doing the start stat cast uh park factors for strikeouts which is you know comparing home and away for players and seeing who strikes out more in those stadiums than uh in other stadiums tampa is number one and yes i talked to uh willie domis about that and he said it was the lights i've talked to chris bassett it wasn't necessarily like the lights in your eyes or anything. Bassett was saying that natural lighting on a ball is more natural.

I don't know if that came out right. It's just like if you have LEDs, if you have hospital lighting on a ball, it's going to be really well lit from the top and really shadowy from the bottom right whereas there's something maybe about sunlight or the way sunlight reflects off of things that the ball is like just more uniformly lit

and maybe in a way that our brain is just used to seeing like we go out like how many times have you played baseball in a hospital and how many times over your course of your life if you played baseball outside so you know there's something about the lighting that may be affecting it may be a little bit different than people it's not like lighting in your eyes or whatever but i otherwise i think of um of the batter's eye um and you know i don't know what it could be about the batter's eye in milwaukee and the last thing i think about is maybe pitches move really uniformly like we're just talking about like maybe in a dome pitches are like easy to predict they move the way you're expecting them to and so

whatever you plan you've come up with your stuff plus and blah blah blah you know you like you you can execute it because it's a dome right um but that's not true for some of the other names behind them because we've got the Braves at Truist Park is the fourth highest for strikeouts. Yankee Stadium is fifth. Angel Stadium is sixth. Angel Stadium has changed their batter's eye recently. So, you know, there could be batter's eye issues.

I don't know what it is, but it is a little bit weird to me. If you, this is like something that I had to come like to terms with recently was that they are park factors for strikeouts. You know, like you wouldn't necessarily think that that would be a thing, you know what I mean? You just say, oh yeah, I get it. When you hit a ball this hard in that direction, you know, sometimes you're in a place where the walls are, you walls are 20 feet further.

Yeah, I get it. Or you're in a place where it's 10 degrees colder. I get it. But with a strikeout, I'm like, why? Yeah, and thinking about the opposite end, Colorado, which makes sense because the condition is there, nothing moves, has the lowest strikeout park factor. The three-year park factor from stat cast

is at 85 on strikeouts at Coors it's interesting there's a handful of parks that aren't that far away Kaufman Stadium Kansas City is an 87 Nationals Park is an 89 Bush Stadium's a 90 and that's PNC's a 92 why so those are your five most hitter-friendly parks by strikeout park factor, which is just kind of a, yeah. What do those parks have in common? They're not, I mean, I guess Kansas City and St. Louis probably have similar weather. Humidity, right? Hot, humid summers. And DC, I guess, would have some pretty humid summers.

Pittsburgh probably too, but I guess that's kind of what they have in common. And I guess, oh, I did, a thing that is not obvious is that balls move more easily through humid air. Yeah. Yeah, that's counterintuitive to me. I always thought that heavier air would provide, air quotes, heavier air would provide more resistance. But water molecules are lighter than air molecules. I don't understand that. Yeah, that does not make sense to me.

I need to go back to school and take science classes all over again. Yeah, it's like making me think that I don't even understand the concept of heaviness anymore. Air is this heavy and water is definitely heavier, but you're talking on a molecular level. And so maybe the ball moves easier through humid air, so maybe it doesn't move as much. The pitch doesn't move as much. Would people watch a baseball science YouTube show?

You've got Bill Nye. We could get Bill Nye. Let's have Bill Nye on a Friday if we can. He'll make us feel so dumb, but we'll enjoy it, so it'll be okay. Or Alan Nathan, who knows very specific baseball physics stuff very well. I'm going to say it's about 90% or better that Alan Nathan would respond and join the show. I'm going to say it's less than 10 percent that bill nye makes an appearance on rates and barrels we'll try we'll try to get both because

i think both would be great guests but yeah if you think a science specific baseball episode would be valuable let us know we'll probably try and make one someday at least let's move on to some draft strategy right this is the time of year everyone's starting to think about what they want to do in their drafts. You mentioned TGFBI. You're in the seven spot. Those are 15 team leagues. It's a slow draft, four-hour clock. We've got in-season moves, very standard five-by-five league, 14 hitters, nine pitchers, seven bench spots. I've got the 15 spot, which I put in the middle of my draft preferences. I put one through seven first, and then I went 15 in part because of the four hour clock in part, because I like building teams

from the wheel. I like to take two players together. You cannot, I don't care if it's Bill Nye or Alan Nathan or any of the smartest people on the planet, Ariel Cohen, whoever, whoever wants to come at me and say, there's no advantage to two picks in a row. You're wrong. There is an advantage.

I can't quantify it. I can't prove it. And someday I will quantify it and prove it until then. Right. It's just, it's a comfort for me. Because theoretically at seven, you know,

what the, what the research has shown is that maybe, you know, these middle picks would have been better. I think those's a blanket. Theoretically, at 7, what the research has shown is that maybe these middle picks have been better. I think those are a lot dependent on the group think of the moment because runs are the herd running in one direction or the other.

Maybe two picks in a row is more an advantage if you don't participate in runs or you have a good way of avoiding runs. The good way of avoiding runs and the good way to avoid runs to put yourself in a position to never need anything you know and so you know at seven the theoretically the reason that it's nice to have seven is that you know i can react if a bunch of closers start going i can get one of the closers before i am not part of it but i would say that most drafts have runs

where no matter where you're picking, the run goes too quickly for you to take part. The tiers, the groups of players, are not large enough to always leave you something just because you're in the middle. How many closers are in your circle of trust? If you choose not to take a closer in the third round and because you say, say well there's still four

closers left my circle of trust well how many times do you think it's gonna go bang bang boom and you're like oh there they go all the time because there is sort of a market and room induced panic that occurs people start to say uh- oh these people next to me just got their closer i better get mine right now and there's only a couple more that i trust and most people in the room have a similar group of players on that list that's just the way it works so yeah i mean in auctions and in in in in draft situations you almost never want to have one player on your queue situations you almost never want to have one player on your queue that you really need you know and i just i just learned this with you know juan moncada i i let one i picked something thinking juan moncada is going to come back to me nobody wants juan moncada um and uh i took

tyler black over juan moncada to back up elio de la Cruz. Well, Juan Mercado went, boys and ladies and gentlemen. And so now I'm going to have even more risky situations behind Elie. So this league that I'm in is going to sink or swim with Elie de la Cruz because I've got Tyler Black and a bunch of nincompoops behind him. Good use of nincompoops behind him. Good use of nincompoops. How many teams have you built with Ellie on them? Two now. Two now.

Okay. On the first one, did you do a better job backing him up than you did on the Mankata fail team? Yeah. So you sort of knew going in, right? Part of a draft strategy is thinking about the different extremes that could present themselves. And extremes could be in the form of just a player that you think is polarizing or challenging to roster. Player type. Ellie would. Like closers or, you know.

Yes. And so the other, the more practical examples just beyond an ellie would be what if i do miss that on the closer run what am i going to do then like you should be thinking about that now and not when the clock is ticking down in between your picks right you should have an idea yeah okay clay holmes is is your answer and then if someone gets you on clay holmes you got to have a plan of okay i don't have any closers i got to get one that has the job now and then i have to throw a certain number of darts later and if i'm going to do that that means my roster at the bottom looks different i can't throw darts at starting pitchers as much

because i need to throw them at the relievers because i didn't i didn't buy a reliever early and this is really important in drafting holds you have limited amount of slots so if you don't get an early closer like i did in that one um and you you're like that's fine i'll just have eight relievers well that's two slots that you could have on backup infielders or other starting pitchers you know like so there's you're always going to pay for it somewhere. Always. The way I would look at it is try to break down every category that matters in your league and figure out what is available in abundance later on. And even within that, you might notice some patterns. Oh, okay. Well, there are late steals available, but most of those players are outfielders and middle infielders. Okay, so if I don't have speed early, I have to make sure I don't take players in the outfield or the middle infield spot

who fail to meet that categorical need. And to put some specifics to it, I was looking at the bats projections. I was looking for 20 steel players available after pick 150 overall. So later than the 10th round, this is a pretty short list of players. And I also said 500 projected plate appearances. I want some decent confidence. This player is going to have a meaningful role. Jaron Duran, TJ Friedel, Trevor Story, all. Jaron Duran, TJ Friedel, Trevor Story, Tommy Edmund. End list. That's it for 500 projected blade appearances and 20 steals after pick 150. There are other players that are projected for 20 steals. They're just projected for less playing time either because of their injury histories or

crowded depth charts. So Starling Marte would pop on that list. Whit Merrifield, Willie Castro, Jose Siri, Bryce Terang. But you can hear the difference in the names for the most part. Those are really risky players. I think you could argue Marte at least being capable of 500 plus based on opportunity desired usage. The idea of giving him more playing time is obviously there. They would like to do it. It's just a question of whether his body holds up. But a lot of the other guys, it's harder to talk yourself into a larger role for them. Harrison Bader, John Birdie, Jake McCarthy, Miles Straw. I think Adalbert Omondesi is projected for 20 steals. Don't know how he's going to play enough to get there, but what that tells me is I don't want to chase a lot of speed late, but if I have a

roster that's set up to get guys that give me maybe 10 bags, there's still plenty of options. It's just knowing that if I need 20 from someone that I trust, it's someone above the Edmund line. It's going to be before pick 200 because none of those guys other than Marte are available after pick 200 right now. And if Marte is healthy all spring, he's going to join those other guys. He's going to join the four guys that are actually projected to be everyday players out of that group.

There is a sort of flip side that's maybe specific to draft and hold, which is that there are these kind of speedy types that are fringe that don't have the playing time that you could start picking as backups. And so you can pick like Tylerler black and sedana rafaela and like you know you there's like a group of players that are like fourth outfielders might get a job this year young players that have speed and so you know you can try to get up like so in this one that I'm doing right now, I have 160 steals

out of my starting lineup. In the main event, you want 180, 185, but I have found that in drafting holds is a little bit lower because you don't have free agency. You can't be streaming hitters, you know, you're stuck with whatever you got, right? So maybe I have just enough stolen bases. I want more. So Tyler Black was one of my first prospecty pickups right because i'm like here's a guy who stole like 40 50 bags whatever it was like you know if he gets a job he can get one and i might try to re-up in that bin where i get a bunch of sort of speedy prospects that could come up um so there is a sort of dividing line but if you want an actual player that steals bags you kind of have to pick them earlier it's a little bit easier to find a nelson velasquez type later where you're

like i just need you know 25 to 30 homers i think it's a little bit easier to find that but the main thing that i saw in the rundown i don't hope i'm not ruining anything batting average you limited a lot of your queries by 260 plus batting average because 260 is the general sort of place you want to be at the end of your draft you don't want to take a lot of guys

260 is good you don't really want to take under that so you know if you want 230 and 30 homers or 230 and 20 steals, there's a lot more going for you. That means you've got to keep your batting average up at the beginning. Right. So the reason I started digging into this was because I had a theory for my mixed labor team. I had the fifth pick and I took Strider in the first round. Didn't love

the hitters that were there in two, so I went ahead and paired Strider with Corbin Burns. It wasn't the predetermined must-do strategy. It was the thing that made the most sense at the time. I said, okay, go pitching heavy and do the pocket aces and still find enough value in the hitters that I get in the next seven or eight rounds, get a couple closers eventually,

I think I can still build a really competitive team. Maybe I can actually win the ratios too. I'll try to win ERA and whip and Ks and hopefully win wins. I was shooting for a 150. Pitchers are good enough. It's possible. Pitchers are good enough. My thought was, okay, if I go pitcher, pitcher, what do I want to do with my offense for my first couple of picks? What are my bats going to look like? Is there a categorical weakness that I'm more comfortable with? Am I more comfortable taking the flyer on finding late speed, or am I going to be more comfortable taking flyers on late power?

And you could end up with both. You could keep it balanced. taking flyers on late power. And you could end up with both. You could keep it balanced. I ended up building it a little more imbalanced at first because my first two hitters were Vlad Jr. and Royce Lewis. And the reason I went with those two is because I wanted young hitters with power

with high batting average potential. I wanted to try and lock in average to give myself some cushion in case I needed it for the power and for late, late power. But I also figured there was more speed available late. That's what I figured. I figured the quality power bats would have more of those flaws like you described. And I should have done the rundown for today's show before last Tuesday's draft. But I think I was mostly right.

And this is what you were getting at. Guys that will hit 260 with 20 plus homers by projection, available at pick 150 or later. There are five, only five hitters that meet that criteria. Christian Encarnacion Strand, and his playing time's a little light if he ends up getting everyday playing time. Big value.

Oh, wrong way. Taylor Ward, Elo value. Oh, wrong way. Taylor Ward, Eloy Jimenez, Andrew Vaughn, and Ryan Mountcastle. Those are the only five hitters. And 260 is an arbitrary cutoff. It's not actually. I mean, at 260, if you end up your

draft with 260, you're good. Right, but I'm saying if you put the filter down to 257, it's going to give you a couple more names, right? Yeah. So it's like you could mess with these a're good right but if i'm saying if you put the filter down to 257 that's gonna give you a couple more names right yeah so it's like you could mess with these a little bit but it's just to give you an idea what's available to you if you keep your batting average high right and then on the other side i cut the speed threshold down to 10 steals because i thought okay maybe i'll just get like 10 steals from 10 or so players in my lineup. A couple guys will run more than that, but I'll

plan on getting at least 10 from 10 spots and some will be a few more. You'll find yourself a lot of times, I have four slots left and I need 40 steals. I don't need to get it all from one guy. I just need to keep getting them. Maybe because stolen bases don't correlate as strongly with

the other categories, I can be okay in steals, not bad, and that'll be fine. And that list is pretty big. 260, after pick 150, 10 steal players, Jaron Duran, Novi Marte, Cabrian Hayes, Tommy Edmond, Ezekiel Tovar, Stephen Kwan, Jeremy Pena, Michael Garcia, Vaughn Grissom, Whit Merrifield, Sal Freelick Tim Anderson and then late late late you got Alec Thomas, Ahmed Rosario Andrew Benintendi, Birdie and Edward Olivares so there's some decent players it's a decent group of players

that I like most of the players on that list as late players because they do a little bit of everything and they run enough to be at least kind of average in the category at the price. So I think by looking at where late power comes from and what else comes with it versus what late speed tends to come with, I'm pretty comfortable being lighter on speed than I am on power if I have to be lighter in one of those two things. You may build a very balanced team where you don't have this problem, but you don't always have the luxury of choosing.

Sometimes you're left with what the board gives you, and then you're stuck chasing something later on. Well, one thing I like about that too is it goes into my biases, which is that I want to take a backup middle infielder. No matter what type of league I'm in, I want to have one of those everyday players because, you know, middle infielders, especially shortstop seem to be everyday players. So if I have a backup shortstop, you know, that that's like good for my team. It's a backup. Am I? It's another shot at greatness because a lot of times, you know, you've got young players

that could really emerge. I don't know. I don't like Tovar, but maybe you do. You know, I like Zach Netto. I like Jeremy Pena. Getting one of those guys on your bench gives you an opportunity to get a young guy that could steal some, that's going to play every day. And a lot of times they steal a little bit. So all those guys I mentioned, Pena, Tovar, and Netto, are all projected for like 15 steals.

So that's a great thing to head, you know, head to head, maybe get those in just to get a couple extra steals. They're going to play. So if you've got the opportunity, you can put them in. And then the other thing I'm always looking for late is outfielders because I feel like there's just always plentiful outfielders. I think the fourth outfielder plays more than most people think. There's a lot of places where young players will break in on the outfield

because their glove isn't as good as you thought. Justin Henry Malloy or Senado Raffaello going from the infield to the outfield. There's a lot of times where maybe Tyler Black will end up in the outfield. There's just a lot of players in the outfield pool that are kind of coming and going. And so if I'm going to take outfielders late

and I'm going to take a middle infielder late, I i love that they're probably gonna come with 10 to 20 stolen bases and so like i almost program that into most of my strategies is like to do something like that yeah so that's a big part of why he's like at my door parking i gotta let him in i guess he's upset let him in let him in it's okay well you Eno lets the good boy back into his office, I also made a list of 240 average 20-plus homer players, picked 250 or later. That's got CES, Logan

Ohapi, Story, Murrell, Adames Hoskins, Jamer Candelario, Tyler O'Neal, Brandon Drury, Ryan McMahon. I ended up with a decent number of players from this group. There's a few more names on here as well, but I found that this was a good bin to shop in overall, like the 240 bin with the 20 plus home run power. There's a ton of good players in that group.

And because I had the early batting average foundation between Vlad, Royce Lewis, and then Nico Horner. Nico Horner is my guy who runs more, but also helps in batting average. I felt like I could take a couple of swings in the 240 bucket and it wasn't going to tank my average, but it was going to be enough of a categorical benefit in runs and RBIs and power to justify it. So I felt like this was a good, good value range to target. And we talk about these guys all the time, Adames and Hoskins, Eloy. Ryan McMahon is the most oatmeal-y player ever, but he's a good defender.

He plays every day. He's second and third base eligible. If you play in a deeper league, especially a 15 team league or deeper, he's just a really good glue player to have. Even though there's probably not one more level there, it's not that exciting, but players like that are very helpful to have over a full season. Yeah. With these LA builds, I've been forcing myself, and maybe with this Tatis choice, I've been forcing myself to really keep an eye on batting average. i've been forcing myself and maybe with this tatis choice i've been forcing myself to

um really keep an eye on batting average i've been using the rotowire software i'm not putting in everybody because i don't want to do that but i've been just putting my team so i can check my targets and and and so i can do the math for me and tell me you know what my projected stuff is and uh i've been trying to keep that batting average above 260 for a 15-team team, 15-team league, and what I found was that if I, you know, I took Tyler O'Neal and MJ Melendez in the middle of my outfield because they fell. They were, you know, the auction calculator said they were good values.

I needed outfielders. Both of them are going to steal a certain amount, you know. They're non-zero stealers, but with with power but their batting averages aren't great and so my batting average kept getting closer and closer to 260 so i felt i needed a couple of players and that's another thing there's two ways to look at this you don't want to look at your queue and say that that's a player that's one player i need that's not good and then you also don't want to pick a player because you need to, you know, which I think you do sometimes with batting average. You put yourself in that position.

So I took Alex Verdugo and Luis Camposano because I needed to, to some extent, you know, because they were good batting average players, you know, put up against their peers and they were going to keep my batting average players put up against their peers and they were going to keep my batting average above 260. Guess what happens when you take Luis Camposano and Alex Verdugo

you fall a little bit behind in the power. But you can find some of that cheaper power later that you position yourself properly to take on. The cheap power is there. You just have to make sure you are in a position where it doesn't hurt you to take it.

Yeah. And in the drafting holds, I think you also just want to, because the multi-eligibility really helps, because you really want to get like three bodies and four eligibilities at most of your positions and so um you'll see like that's why the juan mcconnell i've really messed up because juan mcconnell was the everyday player that was going to sit with tyler black behind elio de la cruz now i'm sort of searching for that um so you what you really want to do is when you're with your early picks, take some multi eligibilities,

take your look at what is going to be available later. You know what I mean? Like, and think about, you know, okay. The value, the auction calculator says I should take this player,

but there's only like two first basemen that start every day left. So I should take one of those guys. And the more you can avoid, you know, getting into decisions like that, the better. And the way you do it is thinking about eligibility is the same way we've just been thinking about stats,

you know, you know, you can get pushed into a corner by eligibility as much as you can get pushed in the corner by stats. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually you'd say, I have to have something that fits here,

and the runs might break in a way where you're taking a player you just don't even like, but you have to. You literally just need a starter there. I'm going to be with my third and fourth third baseman on this team. Yeah, maybe you cut that a little too thin. I was going to ask,

have you built any pocket aces teams the last couple of years? I don't remember us ever talking about it. I've never done it. I might have done it for TGFBI last year, but I don't do it. It's never really come up. The hard thing about it is figuring out when you

go back into pitching. You feel like, oh, I've got to get bats. Eventually, you have to round out the rotation. You can't just walk into the start of the season with your pocket aces and your two closers and say, ah, I'm good. Like, no, you don't want to chase five pitching spots. That's going to be a problem. But I think what you were describing was keeping an eye on each position cue, seeing where those drop-offs are, seeing how much value is left at each spot. I was using that as my guide for how long I was going to wait to get back into pitching.

So as long as there was enough quality at each position that I was looking at for the bats, at that point, I'd go back to pitching. And if there were drop-offs that were coming, I would try to address needs as long as I possibly could before going back. And you miss out on some pitchers you like, because I didn't draft a starting pitcher after I took Burns in the second. I took Helsley and Fairbanks in the seventh and the eighth for the two closers. Hopefully protecting the ratios. Hopefully getting two actual good closers.

Fair amount of injury risk. Tons of injury risk. But it's a free agency league. Free agency league and you can trade. So there's a few ways to get what you need. I waited all the way until the 13th to get Yu Darvish as my third pitcher and I got Aaron Savali in the 16th.

So those are my first six pitchers. Six pitchers in the first 16 rounds on pocket aces. I don't know if I completely aced it based on the opportunities I had. Did you make it into a weakness by waiting too long in the middle? But one nice thing is that by taking those two first ones,

you're now looking at bats whenever everybody else is looking at arms. Yes, and that was huge for me. It was saying there's kind of like this leverage to the build component. Everyone else is looking at different things in those middle rounds when people were loading up on the starting pitchers that we all like. I mean, look, we all like the value on someone like Dylan cease or, um, Verlander or Hunter green. Like there's really so many of those guys to go around Bryce Miller. It was hard to watch those players go for fair values,

knowing that I really needed to be addressing, but you were also probably looking at some fun bat, but I was, I was loading up on bats. I mean, so when Vlad jr, Royce Lewis, Nico Horner,

Cody Bellinger, three through six, the Helsley Fairbanks seven and eight, then back on bats. I mean, so it went Vlad Jr., Royce Lewis, Nico Horner, Cody Bellinger, three through six. The Helsley Fairbanks, seven and eight. Then back to bats, I went Jackson Churio in the ninth, Zach Galoff in the 10th, Cal Raleigh in the 11th,

Reese Hoskins in the 12th. Squeezed in the Darvish pick to get some more innings. Hopefully some more innings. It's just so interesting. I think that like, I would recommend, you know,

mock drafting or, you know, having a league that you don't care about as much. You know, I would recommend trying different things because, you know, in the last two drafting holds I've done, I've tried, you know, you know, a little bit slightly different pitching strategy. And even just not taking a pitcher in the second round changes what you're looking for when other people are looking for things um i just noticed like so by not by taking elliot cruise in the third instead of a pitcher and what happened was that kirby and castillo went and i just didn't really want to take a back end top 10 uh starting pitcher there when you know elliot cruise is sitting there so um you know know, just by taking Elliot Cruz in the third

instead of a pitcher, my infield is pretty sexy, I think. It's Goldschmidt, Hoskins, Betts, Simeon, India, Swanson, Netto, Elliot Cruz, Tyler Black. I think it's, at least on the starting level, it's awesome. Maybe we'll see what happens to my third baseman depth there. But I feel really excited about that that that infield crew um even if you push mookie to the outfield to make my outfield better my bats are good it just by doing something as simple as not taking a starting pitcher in the second round i was doing something different than the rest of

the league and was looking at different player groupings. So, you know, whatever you can do to do that. Like, yeah, I ended up with Holmes. My starting pitching is Fromber and Bobby Miller. And my relief pitching is the one that got hurt the most by doing this because I didn't take a closer in the fourth because I didn't take a starter in third and I took a starter in the fourth. So then I didn't take a closer in the fourth. I lost out on all those closers.

I got Clay Holmes. But getting Clay Holmes makes you think, well, maybe I need to spend a little bit more on relieving because I got one of the worst closers won. So I took Jansen as my next pitcher and Robert Suarez because I still believe in him even though what's-his-face is looking good.

Yeah, Yuki Matsui. Yeah, Yuki Matsui is looking pretty good. So I ended up, like we said earlier, you end up paying always. And I ended up paying in sort of jumping Suarez and Jansen a little bit, like 10, 15 picks on their ADP just to,

to, to get three good closers. So, you know, it's just a, it's a, the fingers and the dike holes. It's like,

you're just, you're just trying to stop leaks wherever you can. And, you know, but I would recommend at least trying one where you do something totally It's the fingers and the dike holes. It's like you're just trying to stop leaks wherever you can. But I would recommend at least trying one where you do something totally different and see what kind of players you're looking at. Yeah, it's the best way to really problem solve it is to put yourself in it. You can try and do it by theory. You can try to do it with ADP reports. That's better than not doing anything at all.

But you have to understand when you pull this string, happens if you pull that string what happens what's going to be the weakness in the end and i think for the pocket aces build that i used maybe it's a little bit of speed maybe it's the risk on closers but i at least have a shot of being pretty balanced across the board and i would say i wonder if a build like this is one where you shouldn't take a highly regarded prospect. Jackson Churio in the ninth is pretty risky when you started building your hitters late. Yeah, because you need great appearances and stuff. But maybe you need a first-round pick.

And which one of your guys is going to play like a first-round pick? Maybe Vlad. Yeah, Vlad could be. Royce Lewis could be like I said Bellinger was almost a top 10 hitter last year I got him in the sixth round what if he's a second or third round value again this year it's not it's not out of the question the thing of with Churio is just before that happened I took him with the fifth pick around nine Anthony Volpe went off the board two picks before Jeff Erickson I thought that was a good pick that

would have fit my team really well because I didn't have a short stop yet I think Volpe went off the board two picks before Jeff Erickson. I thought that was a good pick. That would have fit my team really well because I didn't have a shortstop yet. I think Volpe could take another step. The picks after Churio as far as the hitters, Josh Naylor, nice player. You can find more of that later. Estre Ruiz, I wouldn't have taken him in the ninth. Cedric Mullins, he's fine. But I just – Got a lot on my belt.

I didn't miss out on anybody that I really, really like on the hitter side in that range. Riley Green. I think Mullins versus Churio is fascinating because there's an extreme likelihood that they get pretty close in outcomes. You're just a lot more safer with one or the other. I think the top end outcomes are better with Churio. Really easily, they could go through the season and both hit 250 with Churio, but like it could like really easily, they could go through the season and both hit two 50 with 15 homers and like 25 stolen bases.

Well, yeah, I think you're right. I think that both the ceiling and the floor on Jackson Churio are further apart. Yeah. It's nice vaulted ceilings. Cause I usually end up taking a first and second round bat.

But then the thing i always do after i draft the team is i look at the player that i felt like i reached for and i play that game where i'm like well if churio switched spots with zach geloff in the 10th would i feel better sure would i feel bad about geloff in the 9th nope not really uh if churio switched spots with cal raleigh in the 11th would i feel bad about raleigh moving him up to the 10th no not really seems okay big power good run production, low average. I think I've said this before, but I,

I'm perfectly content to take on some of my water in the batting average category from the catcher spot. Raleigh plays a lot. So he, he will have a little more of a negative impact than some of the guys that play less than him, but I'd rather get that there than have it from someone that could go 600 plus plate appearances.

You don't want the, it's like bad ratios. Same concept. You don't want bad ratios from a high volume starter. You're talking about that with Aaron Nola on your panel. Part of the reason why when it goes wrong for Aaron Nola, if the ratios are a little high, it hurts you badly because the thing you drafted

him for was the volume. He gave you the volume, but it was just a bunch of bricks in your backpack. That's not good. I kind of do that game where I'm like, okay, well, if I took Chorio in the 11th or 12th and everybody else I took after him, I had to take one

round earlier, that'd be fine. It's the collection of players you walk away with in the end. That's always what it comes back to. What a fun draft, though. That's always what it comes back to. What a fun draft though. I love the 15 team format. I really do. And I think everything I'd done at this point was a slow draft.

So I didn't have the immediate gratification of building a team and looking back at it and go, oh, that was a plan that I didn't expect to use that I felt like I executed pretty well. Usually it takes like two weeks to build a slow draft team. You look back at it after a while and you're just like. Watching it fall apart in real time. It was really slowly falling apart. And by the time you're done building it, you're like, oh, I don't want to see that team again for a month. Yeah, I've been calling this one the yo-yo draft because I'm yo-loing, but then I'm trying to pair

like really high upside with really high floor, one pick-to-pick, and I've been yo-yoing on how much I hate it, too. It's the waffle draft. Come on. We are going to go on our way out the door. Just a reminder, you can get a subscription to The Athletic. It is $2 a month for the first year.

Theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels will get you in the door. Draft kit launched last week. Lots of great stuff rolling out through there. We've got weekly recaps from the pod that go up every Friday afternoon. Now, a reminder, we got the live stream coming up again, one o'clock Eastern this Friday. We got another team preview episode coming out this week. I think we have two more of those on the schedule for this week.

And then we close the book on those next week. So tons of content coming at you fast and furious this time of year and on twitter you can find eno at enoceris you can find me at derrick van riper follow the pod at rates and barrels and be sure to jump in the discord if you haven't done so already that link will be available in the show description under this video or in the show notes on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. So I got the live stuff in New York to look forward to March, 2021. But otherwise good luck drafting and thanks for listening. Thank you.