Rates & Barrels - Deep League Pitching Sleepers, Future Closer Watch & Eno at Brewers Camp

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss a few spring news items including a shoulder injection for George Kirby, before looking at a few deep league pitching sleepers and wondering if we'll ever see Reid Detmers put everything together for a full season in Anaheim. Rundown 4:22 Bobby Witt Jr.: OK After HBP on Wednesday 8:36 George Kirby: Had Biologics Injection in Shoulder 14:40 Tyler Stephenson: Headed to the IL to Start Season 17:43 Eno's Stop at Brewers Camp in Maryvale 29:15 Deep League Pitching Sleepers 44:36 Craig Yoho & Other Future Closers to Watch 53:29 Utilizing NFBC Main Event Draft Results in Prep for Other Leagues 1:01:14 A's 3B Job Battle & Eno's Love for Jerar Encarnacion Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's free and easy to use and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. ["Rakuten Theme Song"] Welcome to Rates and Barrels.

It is Friday, March 14th. Happy Pi Day. Derek Van Riper, Eno Saris here with you. Eno, not in a ballpark right now. Not eating pie. Not eating pie, it is only 9.55 in the morning where you are right now. But pie, I think, is a pretty solid breakfast dessert.

I feel like we should introduce more pies before noon. Also, like, savory pies are underrated. Like meat pies and shepherd's pie and all those those I mean shepherds pies not even a pie There's not even a crust on it. I don't even know why they call it a pie. It's delicious There's no crust so I don't want to get into a whole thing. We've got enough conflict in the world already, but But shepherds pies delicious even though I don't really think it resembles pie not a pie just just a pie name Just a pie in name it Just a pie in name. It brings back all the old, is it a sandwich debates,

which I don't want to do that. Don't want to do that again either. Let's wade into some details about our live podcast coming up. Less than two weeks away already, Bear Bottle Brewing Company, Burnell Heights location, March 27th and March 28th, 430 start time both days, March 27th, of course, opening day. So a lot of baseball.

We're going to be there watching games before we start recording, pretty much hanging out throughout the afternoon and evening. Yeah. And it looks like Trevor May will be on the 27th and then we'll have Ben Clemens from Fangraphs on the 28th as primary guest. But if you listen to or attended the New York shows, you'll know that we will spot people in the crowd that may have projects that may want to talk about them.

So we're going to leave that open and maybe we'll bring Lester on. You know, we should do that. We could bring Lester on to talk about the beer and talk about the collaboration and talk about his fandom. He has a bit of an interesting history there himself. So that would be, I think that's something we should do. Yeah, I think we should do a toast, maybe like an hour into the show, right?

An appropriate point in the show. We stop, toast some Kayakers Cove, toast everybody who's there to a great opening day and a great season ahead. I think that might be in order. Lester would be a great fit for that. He's done an awesome job putting everything together for us, really looking forward to those live shows.

Oh, here's a little tidbit though that was kind of interesting. The assistant brewer that was helping us while we were brewing this beer was the assistant brewer at Old Irving. Really? When we did ETHIS. Really, I didn't, that's a small world.

I mean, look, I realize the brewery world is slightly shrinking, but that's a pretty small world coincidence. You're standing there next to each other, he's like, this is the second collaboration beer I've done with you, and I'm like, what? I haven't, I've done a few, but I haven't done that many. And I'm like, you don't work at full tilt.

Yeah, and he, with the collaboration we did there was a was a five percent hazy called EFIS that I think they still brew and it was very popular. So I should swing back down there someday and get some because I think I missed EFIS. I had both of the full tilt beers. I was either close enough to you and I lived there. You shipped me some, but those were both great. That's wild that they made a beer called stuff plus like it's just ridiculous I will I will always I will always love them

like what that's Absolutely amazing and then I've got the Of course these have long been consumed but the sticky stuff too, right? so that's why I think stuff plus made sense because it was like it was a you know A beer that came after sticky stuff So and now I sequel have too many cans and beverages on my desk. Don't drink the wrong one That kind of Friday that kind of Friday. Yeah, well, these are empty there. There's a little dust But if I drink that I'm gonna know it's nothing and dust at this point

It's been a nice decoration though for the office. Let's get to some spring news and notes though. I was there for this Yeah, you saw this we didn't talk about it yesterday because I in my mind I wanted to forget that it ever happened Bobby Witt Jr. Got drilled by a pitch on Wednesday Very scary situation when it happens it looked like an immediate You know fracture or some kind of injury that was gonna cost them all the time the good you want is right off the yeah by a pitch on Wednesday. Very scary situation when it happened because it looked like an immediate fracture or some kind of injury that was gonna cost him a lot of time. The good news is- He walked right off the field.

Immediately just took off. Forearm contusion was the final diagnosis. He's day to day right now. He basically said if it were opening day or if it were October, he'd be playing. So it doesn't sound like this is gonna be a problem with nearly two weeks to go before the Royals get their season underway

You know, sometimes they'll say this and then you know, you'll also hear from people Like why was your April bad? And I go yeah, I got hit by pitch, you know early on and you know It affected my swing or whatever So hopefully there's good news that this is happening during spring and they'll give him more time than usual and he won't actually have any sort of lingering ramifications. Another thing that was good news was that he wasn't like, like I could see he wasn't doing the wrist like, you know, or the like, you know, the squeeze test, you know, they didn't like stop and do all that. So, you know, but it was scary. And the one thing like hit by pitches is I guess there's a little bit of predictableness to it with certain batters.

I mean, you have your Anthony Rizzo's of the world that do have, you know, like a hit by pitch skill, I guess, or like a, or they just like stand really close to the kill and liability. So yeah, and some of that is how you set up and where you're comfortable, what you're trying to do as a hitter. Some of that is the quality of the pads that you wear.

It's a few different factors, I think, that would make you more or less likely to get hit a lot. But yeah, Anthony Rizzo is the first player that comes to mind in the current era of guys that get hit a lot. I think Starly Marte was one for a while, too Yeah, he has the body armor on and he just sort of hangs out there But you wouldn't guess who led the league last year and hit by pitches and is fourth overall over the last three years

Andres Jimenez, no, no, no field. Yo, that was good, dude He's second over the last four or five years. He just seems like a guy that would get hit a lot. I don't know why. I don't know why. Randy or Rosa Raina led him last year and his fourth overall in the last five. Ty France is like is out there to get hit the gold standard. He's really he's the leader over the last five years.

And if he'd been more playing time time would have been probably led last year Peter Lonzo gets hit a lot too. I mean, I guess do you would you like put a little asterisk next to these guys is like Uh-oh and why is Jeff McNeil out? Cuz he's a pitch guy, too Oh, it's an oblique. Okay, Brandon Nemo misses time. Sometimes he's in the top 10 I don't know. Would you put an asterisk next to these guys? It's like maybe won't play as much as we think I would consider taking the perennial Or the chronic hit by pitch guys if we had good data for this and we figured out they typically lose

50 plate appearances or 80 plate appearances season if we could quantify this I'd be very interested in utilizing it Gut feel that's something I have not adjusted for in the past No, it's not something and I doubt it's something that any projection system puts in unless unless they just say he has missed time in the past and so therefore right and I think some of that's kind of Kind of random to though like you're gonna get hit like sometimes you're gonna hit in the hands I was gonna hit the fingers. I'm just gonna get in, like sometimes you're gonna hit in the hands, sometimes you're gonna hit in the fingers, sometimes you're gonna hit in the elbows, sometimes you're gonna hit in the meaty part of the shoulder.

Right on the pad. Sometimes you're gonna get hit on the butt. Like, you know, there's a bunch of different, where you get hit also matters a little bit too. Chaos. Yeah, it's a little bit of a chaos thing. So I'd be pretty strict to the numbers if I was going to try and account for that.

Have not done that so far, but glad to hear Bobby Witt Jr. is likely to be fine here in a matter of days. The reporting on the George Kirby situation is throwing us for a little bit of a loop this morning. Shannon Dreyer had a report that George Kirby had a biologics injection in his shoulder and my first thought was that's probably PRP but I'm not sure and I started looking it up and I think biologics injections are just the broader class of Injections that include PRPs, so it may or may not have been a platelet-rich plasma injection But nonetheless it is an injection with some kind of living organisms to help improve healing in the shoulder of George Kirby

I think more importantly than the specific nature of what he had injected into his shoulder is that it was all sort of planned like they they he wanted to pitch through this and the Mariners said no and He may may be able to return to strength activities in three to four days according to Shannon Dreyer's reports So I think we're still kind of in the this probably isn't terrible situation with George Kirby but thinking about the different adjustments we're making in rankings and seeing that he fell pretty far in our our Champions League that we're doing right now there may be a good discount worth taking on Kirby in some draft rooms. Yeah the difficulty for me is just that I've

just been reading this piece from Casey Mulholland at Connect Pro. He's kind of doing a not a rebuttal but a response to the MLB study on injury. And his focus is fatigue. And he says, you know, when you see these spikes, there are two spikes in injuries. And we've talked about this on the show, there's the March spike in injury, and then there's an August spike in injury. And he says it's obvious that the March spike in injury has something to do with roster rules and like you don't have to put a guy on the IL until you know opening day. So there's obviously going

to be these spikes you know around those roster rule days. But August doesn't have the same roster rule, but it does what it does have in common with March is a period of rest right before. So his his thing is like some of the injury situations going on right now has to do with our idea of how to limit injury is to like limit pitches, limit starts more rest. But the problem with that is that you don't build up. We've talked about acute to chronic ratio on the show, which is like the idea that you need to the easiest way to think about is if you're going to run a marathon tomorrow, I mean, if you're going to run a marathon, you're not going to run it tomorrow. You have to run.

You have to build up the sort of ability to get there. So you have to run three and then five. You know, you sort of get there. You know, you build up the ability. So if a pitcher wants to pitch a full game, they need to build up to get that. And I'm not saying the Mariners won't do that. But you know, like starting strength activities could be it's now February 25. For him. You know, and he's gonna have to build up slowly from there. So he could still miss them a month.

Yeah, it could still be a month, but then you may get heavy emphasis on May, you may get a five month window where George Kirby is pretty much himself once he comes back because they took the more conservative, more cautious approach to getting out in front of this injury still comes at risk, but I'm cautiously optimistic here. I'm doing a working ranks that the full ranks will come out next week. I have maybe not dinged him enough.

I'd give him 150 innings because he's been so good at innings otherwise. And he's 16th in the working ranks. I have a feeling if I investigate that further, he may fall more to the kind of Yamamoto Strider Sasaki area, which is the early 20s. Would you rather have George Kirby or Yoshinobo Yamamoto? I would take Yamamoto today and say that as a Kirby health optimist relative strider than because Strider has the same shape. Or Yamamoto is at least healthy now. Right.

So you could theoretically go further. How about Strider, who's not healthy to begin? That's a good toss up. I might be more inclined to take Kirby than Strider. I would bucket them very similarly. My interest in Strider is greater in leagues with IL spots because I just want that roster spot. I think that's because there's also the possibility Kirby's back maybe a week or two ahead of Strider. They're saying late April for Strider. They do have a trip to Coors on the schedule though at the end of the month. I don't think you want to bring someone back

off the IL and drop them in Coors for their first start back. But you know, how about George Kirby versus Luis Castillo? Kirby. That gets harder, right? Yeah, it's tough call to what's the gap right now between between Castillo and Strider though in your rankings? Is there a gap there or they all they also cluster together?, between Castillo and Strider though in your rankings? Is there a gap there or they all, they also clustered together? I have Castillo behind Strider just because Castillo has oatmealed me and I don't think he has the ability to dominate anymore

the way that Strider could dominate for four or five months. Okay. I have Castillo with like, Aranola, right? Like I have a little tear of like, oh, you know, for the Yolo Yo-Yo or whatever, like, you know, if you if you did get Strider, then you probably want, you know, or if you've got Gert Crochet, you kind of maybe want Aaron Nola over Spencer Strider, right? That's where I have Castillo.

Kirby is weird because he used to have the bulk of the Luis Castillo Arenola tier, but he has the upside of the Spencer Strider tier. I do think that's where he belongs. He belongs somewhere in that group. That's where I'm comfortable beginning to put Kirby onto my rosters, given what we have information wise right now. Another catcher injury popped up.

Tyler Stevenson is gonna go on the IL with what they're calling a low-grade oblique strain. So hopefully, hopefully it's only an April thing and not a multiple weeks beyond that kind of thing, but that's kind of a big deal if you're trying to wait on catchers. I think Stephenson was pretty fairly priced before this injury news,

and even more so than Francisco Alvarez. I think it makes it harder to draft Stephenson because he's just a hair below that threshold of a player that you wanna wait on in most mixed leagues. Especially if he's a one catcher league, he's what, he's like the 10th best catcher in a one catcher league. And maybe, yeah, he might even be like 14th, 15th,

more like that range where he's like- Well, I mean, that was before- Yeah, yeah, and you're kind of like streaming him anyway in a one catcher league, You're trying to play the matchups Maybe use him at home play somebody else Otherwise, I think this is enough to sort of bump him out of the out of the mix for me in mixed leagues Mono leagues still fine il leagues endgame Maybe but I'd be a little more careful with Stevenson now as a result of this injury

Edward Cabrera may miss his next spring start apparently it's just blisters and I saw reports thing He has chronic blister and fingernail issues How many pictures deal with frequent blister and fingernail problems like this? Is this a bigger problem than people realize? It's a lot. I mean just in camp today Forget whose picture I was taking us taking his grips picture and he had stuff all over his fingernail He said like I had like a gluey sort of like a bonded I was taking this grips picture and he had stuff all over his fingernail. He said he had like a gluey sort of like a bonded. Yeah.

Cause he like cracked it. He like kind of cracked it and he was trying to like, he put something on it to like kind of keep it together. And I see that stuff a lot. And then, you know, when I thought I was having a blister issues in it was chillblains, the COVID toe situation. I was doing a lot of research on blisters and it brought back all the Rich Hill had blister problem, Josh Beckett had a blister problem, and you know, I was doing a lot of toe pickling

because they talked about, you know, putting their fingers in pickle juice. But like, that's what that's it. And then there was even, wasn't a Moises Alou that was like peeing on his hands for blisters. So I don't want to go back into the past and I don't want to realize that. I just don't. I'm not going to search it. I'm sorry. Edward, get the pickle juice out. P on the hands.

Start start figuring this one out. Usually I think what happens is a lot of these pictures have it and they figure something out that gets them past it Yes, and I hope whatever maintenance that is if it's any more gross than pickle juice is something that is keeping themselves I don't actually want to know what remedies are being used I just want to know if they can get these under control and Cabrera seems to have more recurring problems with his fingers with the blisters And the fingernails so keep that in mind as you try and stash him away maybe as a late pitcher of interest. You know still in for one more year right? One last ride.

Well you've been on the move. We didn't talk a lot about what you were doing in Merryvale. We recorded our episode yesterday with Trevor May and you were in the ballpark in Merryvale and there were a few people you talked to that I think are pretty interesting. You talked about Tobias Myers with that body blade as something that he was utilizing but I think Myers is someone I keep throwing on to rosters late because I'm probably a homer even though I try not to be and I think his job security in that rotation is actually pretty solid right now. We know that his pitches look really similar by shape coming out of his hand. So he has that sort of added deception,

one of those kind of newer things we've been seeing people report on now. And I think there's also that possibility of just one more gear because he's changed organizations before, and maybe now he's got that right fit. He's got an organization that knows how to optimally utilize his stuff.

But I'm just curious, what else you picked up while you were at Brewer's Camp, either talking to Tobias or anybody else he had a chance to catch up with? Well, first of all, I just really enjoy talking to him. Him and Andres Munoz from Mariners Camp were my favorite people to talk to for different reasons. I mean Munoz is kind of heady and does obviously care about his craft.

He has added a sinker and a change up over time. You know and you could have just been like hey I'm a fastball, I'm a forcing fastball slider, 100 mile an hour guy. Like why do I need these other pitches, you know? But also, both of them just have this, like they're good dudes. Like, I don't know, like they just, they are smiling and are polite to people and like engaging and present and inquisitive. I just found them both a real joy to talk to just generally.

And in the context of me also pursuing a story about like makeup and what makeup is, like when I was talking to them, I was like, these guys have good makeup. I don't, like I don't, and I don't know how to exactly explain it. And that's what the story will be about. But, you know, so Myers,

we did talk about a little bit about his journey. And so he was a raise pitcher that was traded for Junior Caminero. And that must have been a devastating moment in Guardians history. I feel like that must have been, it's a little, it reminds me a little bit of like the Josh Fields for Jordan Alvarez. We're like, once that happens as an organization, you're like, what? And I think what I've actually heard in both cases, they sort of upped their self-scouting after that.

After trades like that, you take one of your scouts and you say, we don't wanna miss a guy again. Can you just turn your eyes around? Don't look at the other teams, look at our team, and tell us who we might be missing on so that we don't trade. And I'm not saying that Tobias Meyers is terrible. It's just like you'd rather have Junior Cameron Yarrow.

I think that's a reasonable thing to say. Yeah, right. But he goes from, you know, Tampa Bay raised well regarded, you know, to the guardians who are well regarded. And then he goes to the brewers who are well regarded all in terms of pitching development. And I asked him like, what like how different were these places?

He goes, oh, Tampa is just like Milwaukee. Like I hear the same things from Milwaukee that I heard in Tampa. And so he was talking about to some extent, rip it. He talked about the one target thing. He said in Tampa, like

until you get to triple A, like you're not even allowed to have more than one target, like just everybody is a one target guy until like double A or something. And so he was like it was one target all the way through and it was all about, you know, repeating your delivery and and rip it and kind of, you know,

basically just aim middle and let the different movements on your pitches go to different places, you know, and he said that once he got to Cleveland, it was a little bit more put it in these places. And sometimes I think about like, you know, I think that teams sometimes have patron saints, you know, like they have these things that worked out in the past. It's almost like the opposite of like losing Kevin Harrow.

So it's like, if you had Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez and they were two guys that made a lot of contact and had good play discipline and added power as they grew, you might as an organization say, let's just get a got a lot of guys who have good play discipline and make contact and hope they add power over time. It hasn't really worked the same way to produce another Lindor or Ramirez, but you're kind of like, keep waiting for the next one. Maybe it's Brito. Like you had a Brito profile similarly in a lot of ways, except just doesn't hit the ball as hard and hasn't yet, but hit a

homer at camp the other day I was watching. It was kind of good. He said they were more about placing it and what has worked for the guardians in the past. They've had Kluber, who's a God of command and Shane Bieber, who has great command. And those are probably in some levels, they're touchstones, theystones they're you know patron saints of pitching development and so they get to bias Myers and they're like we think you have great command and guys in the past have a great command they told him apparently to do some front door sinking some front door sinkers you know that's the Cory Kluber like that's what Cory Kluber did and he was just like I have good command, but I don't have that command. He's just like, I don't like aiming at the pitch,

at the batter. Okay, so that kind of ties into the nice person, good makeup vibe, you're getting huge. I don't want to throw it at the guy, that's not cool. And so he said, he said it was a little bit like more about precision there and like a lot of game planning that had to do with like different quadrants and different things they wanted to do in different places. And then when he got back to Milwaukee, he's a little bit more like, hey, just rip it. Let's just rip it through here.

And he said Chris Hook was all about, like, just nasty stuff in the zone. Just do your nastiest in the zone. One thing that we did also talk about that is underrated about him from a stuff angle is that he has a good foreseam and I quizzed him. I said I told him what stuff plus was and I was like now that you know what stuff plus is what do you think is your best pitch by stuff plus and he got it right. He knew. I didn't think he would because he only throws the change up 11% of the time and so you'd think if that was your best pitch, like, you know, wouldn't you throw it more? But he said it's a straight change.

And so it's a little bit finicky in terms of command, you know, it's not necessarily something he wants to like, he can't rip it as much as the other pitches. He says, what he's trying to do because he can't spin the ball that well. And that's something you can see from his stuff plus profile too, is just throw the slider really hard. And was like I heard that from Casey Meyers. You know like if I just throw like a gyro like boring slider but it's 90 like that's going to look like my fastball but be different and that'll work. So I think Tobias Meyers in some ways is where Casey Meyers needs to, you know, and Casey

Myers will look great this spring. So there's also, I have this bias away from change up guys, you know, and we've talked to it, we talked about Trevor May just yesterday, but Myers and Myers, you know, they do tell you a little bit how it can take a long time to put together if you're a change up first, right? But they also tell you that there are roadmaps for these players. It's so weird that we've flipped baseball on its head. It was like, do you have a change up?

Now it's like, I don't care if you have a change up. Do you have a breaking ball? Can you spin it? It's the season to shop new styles, electronics, and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back? With Rakuten, you can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone,

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Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's r-a-k-u-T-E-N dot C-A. And I wonder if you're in his position, you're Tobias Meyers, you're 26 years old now and you don't have a great feel for spin yet, when do you finally say, yep, I just, I'm not gonna throw breaking balls more than 30% of the time.

It's just never gonna be my game. Like maybe he sort of reached that point. Maybe that's where the multiple fastballs, that's where the multiple fastballs guys now have like a second life or a second path they can go down that will actually give them a major league career, whereas 10 or 15 years ago, that wasn't necessarily a lever that as many teams

and player development groups were willing to pull. I think he's also better for having the fastball and the cutter and the slider. And I do think the upside for him is upping the sinker usage through a little bit last year and then upping the change up usage. And he seemed to think that that could be a possibility. For me, he's kind of in between 12 and 15 teamers.

Yeah. I did just drop of in between 12 and 15 teamers. Yeah. I did just drop him in my 12th teamer. You know, it's like, I don't know that he has the upside to be like, oh, I really want this guy. But he's great oatmeal for 15 teamers. I actually really like him as a guy that I think will throw 160 plus innings, and they'll be pretty decent.

Two things I noticed in Tobias Meyer's splits, and neither of these things are really surprising. When you think a lot about them, the splits against righties are really good. 21.2% K minus BB percentage, right? He strikes out just over a quarter of the righties he faces, only walks 4.5%. Which is pretty good,

because he only strikes out 22% overall. Right, the lefties gave him a lot more trouble last year. The K rate goes under 20% against lefties. Walk rate goes over 8%, so it's a 10.7% K-BB. It's a 136 whip against them compared to an even one against righties, just to kind of put it in the context of whip. Home and away, though, you see kind of a similar split.

He was great at home. Overall at home, 25% K-rate, 5.7% walk rate, 102 whip. Interesting. You know, a little bit of a home run problem, because the park does boost homers. home 25% K rate, 5.7% walk rate, 102 width. You know, a little bit of a home run problem because the park does boost homers, but on the road, 12.5% K minus BB, it's the sub 20% K rate, a slightly higher walk rate, and we know, we talk about it with the trop a lot.

We talk about it with T-Mobile in Seattle, American Family Field, ballpark in Milwaukee, is another one of those parks that does boost up Ks a little bit, and with the the roof closed as often as it's Closed you create that more consistent environment I think that might matter a little bit more when you don't have the Superlative stuff across the board when you don't have the arsenal full of plus pitches So I think conditionally I do look at him much more as like a home streamer

And then if you see a lineup that can just load up a bunch of lefties against him Maybe you try to steer away from that matchup to when you start getting to that level Yeah, you get to that level of conditional matchups That is harder to rely upon as an as a regular fixture on your roster in a 12-team league a very good pitcher I just I wonder what else he could do to Improve against lefties. That would be the next step that would unlock him being for me The obvious answer is throw the change up more to improve against lefties, that would be the next step that would unlock him being better in shallow leagues. For me the obvious answer is throw the change up more.

And at least it's a good pitch, but maybe. If you said the walk rate is higher, maybe that is the problem, he's not able to throw the change up more because he can't command it as well. And that's why the walk rate is higher against lefties. He's probably, the change up use is a little bit higher against lefties probably.

Since we're talking about some deeper league pitchers, you wrote about deep league sleepers. There's another guy in Brewers Camp that actually popped and you put together a board for the story on the Athletic. We'll throw it up on the screen if you're watching us on YouTube. Late bargains by projections, we're looking for after pick 300 by ADP over at the end of BC

with PPERA projections below four. Aaron Savalli is the other brewer that pops by that criteria. And man, I think of oatmeal pitchers that I'm drafting late, Aaron Savali I think is another kind of oatmeal pitcher that makes a lot of sense as one of the last pitchers on your roster. Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if you had similar splits to what he did in Tampa

now that you're talking about how the K's are augmented and they close the doors a lot, like I feel like Savali thrived in Tampa but had pretty bad home away splits. But even in a weekly league, deeper 15-team leagues that are weekly leagues, you could still be like, oh, Savali has two at home or if he has a two-start week and one's home, one's away, you might still use them. So I'd say Savali is the kind of guy like the reason one of the reasons I liked Lugo last year was he projected pretty well. You know, the park was a good fit. And I thought worst case scenario, I'm going to start Lugo 75% of the time. You know what I mean? And that's kind of how I feel about Savali. It's like it's not a sexy pick

It's not a stuff plus. I mean there is a little bit of stuff plus action there, but it's He's not a girl. He's not like totally different than he used to be just doesn't have a great fastball has like three breaking balls He's sometimes struggles to keep separate, you know they're kind of very similar all of his breaking balls, but I think I will start Savali most of the time at home and maybe half the time on the road. And that that's sort of what I thought Lugo might be. I didn't think Lugo would be, you

know, get Cy Young votes last year. So so always. But no, just to throw that up real quick, I do like other names on there because Verlander is very similar actually use case for me than Savali is like. I think I'll use them at home most

of the time. And there's a chance he recovers. He's you know, he talked in camp about his neck really hurting him. And he's getting his old delivery back. Edward Cabrera was on the show today. Dustin May looks like he's with Tony Gonsolin's back injury. Looks like Dustin May is the fifth starter in in L.A. David Festa and Ben Brown, I think, are six starters in Kumar Rocker.

Everybody knows his situation where it's like, he's great, is he in the rotation? But I did want to ask you what you thought about Reid Detmers. I don't think about Reid Detmers a lot. Is that like the Mad Men thing? I don't think about you at all. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't trying to go down that road, but may have accidentally done that.

Why isn't Reid Detmers better? I come back to this all the time. Last season, things ticked up a little bit in terms of underlying skills. We saw the best Sierra he's ever posted as a big league. It was only 87 in the third big league innings last year. 377 Sierra, but he had a massive home run problem that basically put the ratios into the stratosphere of unusable. It's a massive blow up, it's a 670 ERA, a 156 whip, but 109 Ks in 87 in a third innings.

The highs and lows with Detmers have been all over the place, we've seen that. The peaks and valleys are about as wide as any pitcher we've seen break in in the last four or five years, right? He's still just 25. And he still has a great slider. Still has a great slider. We've seen a little more Velo the last two seasons

than when he came up, so that feels better. So I think I'm just sort of like blindly in, even though I can't fully explain why he struggles so much and because he's a lefty and because he's an angel I feel like we asked a lot of the same questions about Andrew Heaney for the early stretches of Andrew Heaney's career. You know like you think about Heaney is one of those guys that was always on breakout and sleepers lists earlier in his career because if it all clicks it's gonna be good.

That's the read Detmers movie tagline poster. If it all clicks it might be pretty good. And year after year after year Andrew Heaney was a guy that also underperformed his ERA indicators and the best versions of Heaney we saw were the years where he was just more of a workhorse. There was the one year in 2018 through 180 innings, struck out 180 guys. That's fine in deep leagues even with a 415 ERA and a 120 whip, but it still wasn't quite the ceiling we'd hoped for from a guy that had been the ninth overall pick when the Marlins

took him forever ago. And Detmers, same kind of draft pick, same kinds of expectations. College guy, lefty, lots of polish. I don't know. I don't know if it's that there's a disconnect between the pitching coordinators and pitching coaches and what they think Detmer should do and what he himself thinks he should do. But something just feels a little bit off. The results should be better for the skills that he flashes.

Yeah. I mean, even just to look at K-Bb for his career, 25 Ks, 20% Ks, 9% walks, like that should be an above average picture, then it comes with a 490 ERA career, and you're just like, what is happening here? It's been Holmers a lot, it's, you know, for some reason his BAPIPS have been really high, and maybe that's just something that needs to regress and just has been randomly high, but I do see that his better year,

his best or one of his better years in terms of quantity plus quality, he threw the slider more. And I think that that's an easy thing for him to do. He should go back to throwing it 30% of the time at least. He's shown a propensity to spin the ball. And so I know it's a little bit risky for a guy who has a slider and a curve and a four seam

But his four seam gets whooped and it gets whooped Especially by lefties, you know, so I feel like well actually last year He had a you only had a 241 slugging against the four seam That's not bad But I do think a cutter would just help him reduce the usage of the four seam. And maybe it's the sinker. He threw 62 sinkers last year, 105 in 2023. That's another pitch he threw fewer in 2024 in a bad year. He threw fewer sinkers last year, 67 versus 117.

I think he should up that sinker usage to like 15% and take most of that off of the cutter and throw to varieties, throw all his pitches to varieties basically. And I think that's something that a pitching coach would tell him. And maybe he just doesn't like that plan or, yeah, there is something missing, but you give me an elite slider like he has, and you give me a good strike on it on his walk rate,

and I'm still interested. It's like the Edward Cabrera thing like I'm still in and you can correct the price keeps getting cheaper too yeah right you keep throwing the darts and maybe this is the year and you can you can find things to like about him I think it's falls into that why hasn't it happened yet because I they've made some changes in the organization during his time there he has not had all of the same voices in his ear the entire time that he's been in Anaheim either.

It's not just as simple as- He had our boy Bill Heisel for a while, and then now he's got, I forget his- Yeah, who's the actual pitching coordinator? He's the pitching coach, is the former pitcher. Matt Wise? No, he's got a funny name. A funny name?

Yeah. A funny ha ha kind of name or? Well, no, just like a kind of, I'll notice as soon as I see it, Barry Enright. Oh yeah, Barry Enright. I just think it's funny because it doesn't sound like a baseball player.

It sounds like a lawyer. Yeah, it's the Barry, just Barry. Yeah, Barry, Barry's a general. I mean, Barry Bonds was obviously one of the best baseball players of all time. It's a funny first name for a guy. It doesn't sound like a pitcher. No. Running back, of course. Barry.

Yeah, maybe. But to the why isn't Reid Detmer's better question, the other thing I think about when I'm trying to explain the large gaps between the area indicator and the actual results is how much hard contact do you allow overall? Like we don't talk a lot about hard hit rates for pitchers, but over multiple years, especially if you see someone who is among the worst in baseball at the type of contact they allow, that might actually mean something, right? It means you're not locating very well or guys are seeing it well, or there's not a lot of ride on the fastball or whatever else. 39.6% hard hit rate. It's not like at the top of the league. So that's a three-year snapshot from 2022 to 2024. It's kind of wild. Garrett Cole also right there next to Reid Detmer is in that category, kind of bizarre.

You see some good pitchers kind of sprinkled in here. Which is why we don't use it too much. Yeah, yeah. So again, it's just like, what is wrong? I don't know exactly. I think he's still worth throwing the late dart on if you're trying to find innings in a deep, deep league. The other guy that came up in our prep for this show

is a name that I have not drafted at all. Mitch Spence. What's going on with Mitch Spence? What makes him interesting? I mean I think we were looking at Tobias Meyers before, pretty strong splits. Aaron Savalli by the way for his career has been better by K-BB against lefties than against righties. That's kind of weird. What is interesting about Mitch Spence? Something similar. It's a really boring arsenal.

So it is not, again, like, I think I've gotten in trouble in the past in these articles, like, just, you know, ogling the Joe Boyles of the world, you know, and the Edward Cabrera. So in this case, I'm hyping a guy with a 99 stuff plus overall, and a 103 location plus that has, you know, four pitches that he goes to regularly has an attack plan at the plate and had a 450 ADRA last year with a 19% strike rate and a 6% walk rate.

It's like very average, sounds like, you know, and it may just be very average. But one thing that's kind of cool about Spence is how it fits together. So he has the type of stuff where he has a cut. It's a cut fastball. It's not necessarily a cutter. It's a fastball he cuts and that gives him a fastball that really works against lefties. And the other pitches in his arsenal also work in a way that they are useful against both lefties and righties. He's very platoon neutral.

In fact, he has a reverse stuff split. He has a 101 stuff plus against lefties and a 99 against or 98 against righties. And I'm okay with that because it's not such a big differential. He's that he doesn't have a great change up. So it's not like you're gonna John Danks theory him. So there was this old theory that John Danks had reverse platoon splits because he had a great change up with no good slider

And so teams would actually put same-handed guys in against John Danks I think the Rays might have been one of the first to do it and it was called the Danks theory and I don't think that Spence has that kind of cache. He doesn't have a great change up No teams are never gonna be like oh, we're facing Mitch Spence, better load up the lineup with lefties today. So I think he'll just continually be like a credible pitcher. The little ounce of upside that does reside in his body is he's up two ticks this spring.

And it's stayed steady into longer outings. So if you take a guy that's super platoon neutral and you give him two ticks, maybe you get a few more strikeouts or maybe he avoids a few homers this year. Maybe the park doesn't play as negative as everybody says. Oopsie says a 418 ERA. It's an oatmeal play with just a tiny bit of brown sugar,

you know, upside crusted on the top. You know, you have that nice brown sugar. I know. Are we torturing the oatmeal analogy at this point? No, you're describing what I eat every day. And I said, I gotta get away from that. When I get to the draft table, I don't want more bread. Yeah, you don't like these guys.

You don't love these guys. But I think maybe it's draft and hold season that had me there, but also in deep leagues, breakouts come from a lot of places that people don't expect. And so I'm willing to take shots at different profiles. So in our league that we're in together, Devils Rejects, where you keep 28 players, it's 20 teams.

So 560 players are off the board. You know, two of my first four picks in the 600 range were Osvaldo Bidot for, I think has much more upside. And then Mitch Spence, just to be like, some weeks I just wanna have an option that won't like poop the bed. Right. Yeah. In the league that deep, anybody that's a useful starter with a projection like that is definitely worth rostering.

We may look back and be like Mitch Spence had the better season than Osvaldo Bidot. Right. Even though Bidot pops more in the model, and when you watch him, just looks like the better of the two pitchers. I think that's kind of interesting with Mitch Spence that I had not previously noticed. You don't really see any great runs in terms of ratios anywhere in the minors. He was in the Yankee system. Which trade was he a part of? He had been a part of a trade, right? Yeah, what was he? Walda Chuck and Spence came together?

That sounds right. Nevertheless, doesn't matter. Came out of the Yankees organization. Swing his strike rates 13% and higher throughout his time in the minor leagues. Did that with a lot of 21 and 22% K rates. Maybe a little more swing and miss coming in the future. It might not be like a future 25% K rate guy in the big leagues, but at least had appropriate like age to level.

It wasn't old for the level, it wasn't young either, but it was actually, it was like showing kind of interesting skills. He's a rule five guy. Spence was a rule five pick? Yeah. How about that? That's pretty good for a rule five pick.

I do agree. You know, like the swing strike rates being higher than the strikeout rates is interesting. Yeah, I think that could be maybe a cutter thing. You know, I don't know why. And this spring, his swing strike rate is more in line with that minor league one that you're talking about. It's up to 13%.

K-Rate hasn't moved with it yet, but you know, nice spring so far for Mitch Spence and a guy that hasn't really got a lot of love on the show up to this point. Now you were also talking to Craig Yoho in Maryville. Did you actually get to talk to Craig Yoho? I need to have a team where I do the YOLO yo-yo with Yoho He's great because he basically

was taught the Devon Williams airbender like he Doesn't throw it exactly. It's not exact copy of it, but stuff plus loves it it's one of the top three four pitches in AAA last year by stuff plus loves it. It's one of the top three, four pitches in AAA last year by stuff plus. And he obviously studied Devin Williams when I asked him about it, he's like, oh, yeah, it's very much like Devin Williams.

I do the same kind of I'm over like I'm really aggressively pronating over the top of it. It comes off my middle, my ring finger very much like Devin Williams. It's not as quite as beautiful, but it is pretty beautiful to watch. But he's really proud of his breaking ball

because he had this breaking ball. And the reason he got drafted by the Brewers in the first place is that it's a 3000 RPM breaking ball. And he started describing to me the metrics on it in terms of like, he called it a slurv and he said it was this, I forget exactly the numbers he gave me, but it was like this X and this Y in terms of movement.

And I was like, that's Ryan Presley. So you've got a guy with, you know, a young man's fast ball, a Devin Williams change up and a Ryan Presley curve ball. The one problem he's really had is staying in one piece. He's had a few surgeries. Some of them were freak.

I think he got hurt as a position player one piece. He's had a few surgeries. Some of them were freak. I think he got hurt as a position player one time. I think he hurt himself like playing in the field. But he also had Tommy John. He's had trouble staying healthy. He's also has options when there are other, you know, veterans around. He may not make the opening day rotation, but I do think he's the next Milwaukee Brewers closer. I don't know if it's gonna happen this year because they have, how long, they have McGill for a while. And they do this where they groom the next closer, right? And then they trade their closer

when he has one or two years left. They've done this repeatedly. So I think Trevor McGill will get traded at some point and Yoho will take over. I just can't tell you exactly when that'll be. Well, if you had to ballpark it after 2027, Trevor McGill will be a free agent. So probably after 2026, if he's still a healthy, effective closer, he would be a guy. Or trade deadline 2026 if they're not competitive.

Right. There would be your rough timetable. Yeah, Yoho elbow and knee surgeries that cost him complete seasons in 2021 and 2022. So I think that's part of the how this guy sneak through and like, why is he a little bit overlooked outside of Milwaukee? That's a big part of it. It's health. He said he was drafted for spin rate and the slider. So that's not what people think of him. When you say a 3000 RPM breaking ball, I thought of Trent Thornton.

Oh, interesting. to a 3000 RPM breaking ball, I thought of Trent Thornton. Ooh, interesting. There's a random name that had the really good spin rates and it just didn't come together. Health was a factor too, I think, with Trent Thornton and why he didn't get there. He's got another chance in the Seattle bullpen. He's getting more chances in bullpens now and he could have a second life where Thornton comes back

and he's spinning it again. So the timetable for Yoho might be further into the future than most people want. You talked about Devil's Rejects, the 20-team dynasty league we're playing in, and it's like you're not generally trying to stash relievers that are that far away. Like you maybe with your last roster spot

for a little while can just wait and see if it happens sooner than expected, but predicting future closers and dynasty leagues doesn't bear a lot of fruit. It's like having too many catchers. It's one of those things. You generally don't do it. Just always have like four roster slots, you know, or two or three or something. And Jebels rejects them. Just just have guys in there, you know, just like rotate them through. And yeah, I think with with McGill, it's also like,

it's not a long track record of big league success. Like he could just struggle and the door is open. And I think who closes next is a fair question to ask about that Brewers team. It could come faster than. The soonest would be like 2020. Like if McGill's struggling and Yoho is on the roster at that point in the season,

then you start thinking about it more as an in-season pickup this year. Because right now they could still paper over it with Piamps who's not a great closer, but he's a capable guy, and he's done short closing stints before, you know. And they still have Abner Uribe who lights out stuff and no command,

and if he's healthy, he might be the first guy who gets on that roster, you know, because he was given the first shot. So it is something to stick around for later. I would prefer if I was looking to stash closers like future closers, I would prefer to look on major league rosters right now. All right. You know, so who are you looking at for future closers? I don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

I think Justin Slayton is right there. And I think Liam Hendricks, Neil Hendricks stuff this spring has not been good. You know, you could use Chapman, but he also has poor command and he's a lefty. So you may, you may have a tandem situation there, but I'm excited about him from a stuff angle. I wish his fastball was a little bit better,

but he does have a four pitch mix and he does have a dominant secondary pitch that he could even throw more often, I think with the curve ball. So I don't know though, he may, you know, on some sites he's already listed as a co-closer, so it may not be a great answer for you. I keep looking at Hunter Biggie.

I think I mentioned him in the AL East team previews. The Rays, I mean they've got plenty of options, but the reason I keep getting drawn to Biggie, three above average pitches by stuff, an average location plus number, that's a really good recipe for someone that could end up in some pretty high leverage spots. They still have Fairbanks, Fairbanks is healthy right now. We say that it was good at the end of last year. So it's not going to be a straight line path, but I think Biggie is just one of those names I've got circled that I'm watching really closely

to see how he does when he gets his first opportunities in 2025. And then, of course, just watching that bullpen as a whole to see how the chairs might get moved around. Yeah, I was doing, I heard some good things about Mark Church's slider when I was in Texas camp I heard some good things about Mark Church's slider when I was in Texas camp and he was getting attention from the media which surprised me a little bit. Like he had like two or three interviews in a row

and I think that's partially because he's striking out a third of the batters he's seeing. His manager mentioned him as a possibility and his slider may be the best single pitch in that bullpen. I don't know if the four seam fastball is great, but he's also got enough touch on the slider that he can throw it a ton.

He can throw it as much as, how much was he throwing it? Where is this here? 53% of the time. So he pitches backwards a little bit. And in that sort of scenario, I think not having the best fastball, you know, I have said before

that these are not my favorite types of closer options, but there is the relative quality of the bullpen around him to consider, where I think Chris Martin's fine, but I do think there's opportunity there because until somebody like Emiliano Teodoto becomes a reliever, which is not gonna happen this year. They don't necessarily have a young guy that's coming up

that's gonna blow Mark Church away with his stuff, and that bullpen could use a new closer this year. What's some breaking news? We got some breaking news. Uh-oh, that doesn't sound good. It's not always good. In this case, it might not be good. Austin Riley just left Friday's Grapefruit League game, apparently as a precaution to getting hit by a pitch on

the right hand and that's the same hand that he fractured last year cost him time at the end of the season. So they're saying it's precautionary but you need don't you need imaging to know for sure? Yeah. At least keep an eye on that going into your drafts this weekend just in case they do give them an x-ray to make sure because that's brutal. That's literally the same hand that was broken last season. That's no good. Yeah.

Sorry. Sorry to take the wind out of your sails with the sad breaking news at the end of the show about a player possibly walking off with an injury. I want to ask you some questions as we get into our mailbag segment. The main event drafts at the NFPC have started up and you play in the main event. We had J.H., our friend, co-managing that event with

on the show earlier in the off season. How much do you care about the results of the main events that happened before yours? Do you look at those boards? Do you study them? Do you look at the main event drafts only in isolation on the ADP report? I mean, what do you think the value is for people competing in subsequent main events? And what is the value beyond the NFVC ecosystem for people out there that are just looking for signs of what other folks are doing with their roster

builds and maybe players that are just looking for signs of what other folks are doing with their roster builds and maybe players that are really aggressively pursued in the higher end of the high stakes market. You can go too far where I think then you just subscribe to the group thing, right? You're just, oh, this is what the group thinks. And you don't, I don't think you need to change what you feel about a player based on what's happening

in main events. However, I think it's really important to fold ADP in if your league is very similar and these guys are all really, they are really smart and doing a lot of work on these, maybe the most informed, you know, fancy players out there. They're putting a lot on the line in terms of money and they care about these things. It's good to at the very least know what the room might be thinking about players, right? So if you do like a player and his you know, his number is rising, his ADP is getting lower and then you have to know that oh I have to jump him further than I thought in my league and it might be okay to jump him a whole round just to make sure I get him, you know? So you kind of have to

take your values, your value sheet. It's like the Yandy Diaz problem. Or like Yandy Diaz is a value every time you look at the sheet. You can't just take him exactly where the value is if you know the room might let you have another couple rounds, you know,

because you can still get that value two rounds later. So I am a proponent of using ADP analysis and looking at trends in ADPs and looking at what is happening. I don't know that I would only look at MEs. What I usually do is 15 teamers to try and make it look like my team that I'm doing. But I do want to know the most recent ADP because I'm going to have a dance between my set of values and what I think the room set of values is. And that dance is just what I'm saying. What if I don't want to jump Diaz if, you know, what's the backup plan too? If

I let him go and then somebody else jumps in, you know, I have to have backup plan. So there's, it's about looking at what you value and what you think the room values. And I honestly, I think if you don't look at what the room values, you're leaving opportunity on the table. I would agree with that. I think I've over time wondered if these results matter quite a bit less than I previously thought to everybody else playing fantasy baseball on other platforms. Right. Right. I mean, I think I've I've kind of guilty of maybe overinflating

NFBC drafts in general to a larger population of people that just, they don't even know what it is. Like they're playing on Yahoo or ESPN or even FanTrax or wherever they're playing. Different room, different players, different buy-ins. Different settings. Different settings, different rankings. If you're not playing a weekly league,

you're playing a daily league, don't not take Josh Lowe just because, you know, MEs are not taking Josh Lowe because they're worried that he won't play all the time. Right, so I do think the value of those boards and those results, it's there. I think you have to be good at adjusting for context when you look at them.

I think you can find sleepers, I think you can identify players that are generally sharp group of players really agrees on or likes, and I think that could be useful if you're not playing anywhere near that price point even on that side at all. But the thing that is sort of related to this is if you don't even know what the player list look like or how they're ordered. I mean think about the differences even just playing on Yahoo or ESPN. The games played by position thresholds are different.

So you see different names on there. The ADP data is completely different because it opens at a different time and it's comprised of drafts, people with completely different goals. I think the order of the players in the draft room is very influential in how people make decisions. So I think- In our league that we're doing right now, we have weird ass settings. Thank you again for setting up the league, Jeff.

You know, I'm gonna send you a thank you card. Thank you, Jeff. But it is really jarring to look at your value sheet and then be like, where is this player? The number one guy on my value sheet is like, I gotta scroll down, scroll down, oh, there he is. So I'm dancing the dance in this draft. And, you know, there's a current player that I'm eyeing

that I've been eyeing for two rounds. I've been leaving out there who's like high on my value sheet. And I want him and I keep letting him go and being like, please come back to me. And it's really annoying because I'm 15. So I really have to wait a long time and just watch that. And I'm just like, I'm not gonna look at the draft. I want, and then I'm like, is this the time? Or do I let him go another round?

You know? He's not showing at the top of any of the lists when you sort them because he's not, the ADP isn't right, so. I'll let you guys know if I get him at the end. But it's your settings and then what shows up in the chat bot. And then, and to some extent, that's what ME,

that's what looking at main events is, is like, is the ADP, you know, and it can lead you astray. If your settings are totally different or your values are different, it does tell you a little bit about like where players usually go, which is still gonna be information for you. I think it's helpful when you go to through the related,

like where you wanna draft the Kentucky Derby style process, and you're trying to figure out your first six rounds, your first eight rounds, who's likely to be there, what choices am I likely to have? I think that's where, if I'm playing in a main, I want to look at the other main results, see who jumps up, see who falls, and I can better have a plan,

because those leagues do play differently than the other NFBC leagues. It's the time of year too, right? It's the buy-in, it's the time of year, it's the information we have, it's the helium hitting. Sandy Alcantara is going to be treated differently this weekend, next weekend, and weekend after that. Then he has been up to this point because everything generally looks pretty good and now we have that added information and this type of player coming off of Tommy John surgery shows he's healthy in the spring they move up every single year so just how much and how

aggressively people are moving him up I think that kind of information is important if you're trying to play in that format especially but even even in the broader it's like okay there's there's reason to be confident here that you can you can push Sandy a little bit more he might be buried on other sites I haven't looked at ESPN and Yahoo I don't know how far they bury guys that didn't pitch the previous season I know we had for a while Dave Gaunlos used to write like a hacking the draft room thing for the athletic looking at the different rooms and finding buried players I think that's that's as much doing your homework for a league on those sites as pulling ADP

from other sites. I would almost be, if I only had an hour to spend on it, I might spend my time digging through the draft room trying to find those undervalued players before draft day because that's probably going to serve me a little better than what's happening over in the other ecosystem of high stakes. A couple of quick questions here as we go, mailbag questions. This one is from Jay The Wolf.

Could we comment on the third base battle between Gio Urshela and Luis Urias for the athletics? Is that a nickname you have for him there in the cryon? Wee Choo, yeah, it's his nickname. Oh, what does that nickname mean? I really should have looked that up before I put it on a cryon. They were calling him that on the broadcast and stuff too.

So if the broadcast steered me wrong in this case, I'd be very, very surprised. It's on his baseball reference page, right? They wouldn't put a actually bad nickname on there, would they? No, no, no. I trust baseball reference to do right in this instance. I just don't know what it means.

That's all I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, Urshela is such a high floor guy that I just, I kind of thought in my head that he's just got the job, and then they don't really have a backup shortstop, so I thought Urias was gonna slot in as the backup shortstop, but I would say that offensively,

Urias has more upside than Urshela. He's playing better in the spring. And there's always a chance that he gets it. I think they threw two darts at the dartboard, basically, with this one. And even if Urias is playing at third and he's the backup shortstop, that works. You could just move Urius to short

if something happens to Jacob Wilson and put Gio at third. So I think that they'll both play. The long-winded, the short version, TL didn't listen, is that they'll both get 400-plus played appearances. And the difference between 400 and 550 is who's the nominal starter at the position. And I guess it could be yours. I'm starting to think it won't matter much beyond mono leagues, though.

And I haven't really been interested in this position battle overall, because I think the answer might be the other Max Muncie, who already has played 50 games at AAA in this organization. He can play shortstop, so he could also probably slide over and play third base capably if they prefer. they prefer Jacob Wilson defensively with the glove there, right? So I look at Muncie as the longer term threat, like maybe, I guess if you said pick between the two, give me Urius by a hair, even though it's been two pretty disappointing years between Boston and Seattle, trying to find a fit, basically,

since leaving the Brewers hasn't really happened yet. He's just younger. I think Urias is just the more interesting player because they can do pretty similar things. But I think the answer, who ends the year with the job, might be Muncie or someone else who's not really on the big league roster yet. Yeah, I do think left field and third base

are the biggest sort of pain points and points of opportunity for young players in this organization. So it is worth thinking about a little bit, but don't break your brain too hard. It probably won't matter that much long term. Thanks a lot for that question, Jay The Wolf. One from Gilded Age before we go.

Any chance? Explain your interest. Any chance you could please share a deeper level of your impression under our incarnation. I feel like in the bat speed discussion, other past episodes about the NL West and outfield rankings, you mentioned his name and then moved on very quickly. He was a mess in 2023 in the minors with 200 strikeouts

with massive gains in 2024. In 2023 swing striker was 17.9%, zone contact rate was 67.3% in 2024, 11.8% for the swing strike rate zone contact jumped to 82.1%. So given that he has elite bat speed and lofty max EV, often champion, I'd love to hear a greater in-depth commentary on Encarnacion. Yeah I think one of the things that he just did was he was a lot more aggressive in the zone in the past.

And I think what you know, the comp that I have for Gerard is Jorge Soler. And I think that the the book on him was to basically fill up the zone with sliders. Because if you look at his slider percentage with Miami, you know, you can see that he was aggressive in the zone. He swung at them a lot in the zone. And what he's done now is to calm down on that. And I think that was, so there's big problem, you know, sliders in the zone was his big problem.

But both of these guys have a decent shot, a decent sense of what the zone is, and both have extreme bat speed and extreme power upside. So if it clicks and he's Jorge Saler for cheap for them, I also, part of the interest is that, as much as I love Wilmer Flores, I'm wondering how close he is to Dunn. I mean, we're talking about advanced age for a guy

that was a bit of a part-time player at his best You know kind of a maybe underrated but kind of a guy who fit in When he was nearest to his peak and now he's pretty far from his peak Yeah I think that's part of it too if someone's the depth chart some of it's the improvement that was even highlighted in the question And some of it's just that and carna sione hits the ball so hard He has more buffer with that swing and miss anyway and 28.6% in his first run with the Giants last year even the small sample is still like hey that's

enough damage for a k-rate like that we're we're happy with that. He'll run higher babibs because he hits it so hard so he's going to he's going to have a slightly better batting average and he's batting average dependent you you know, so far. But another thing that can click with these guys, if they're murdering the ball, then pitchers become more careful. And they can walk just because they have an okay sense of the zone and the pitchers become scared of them.

I mean, that definitely happens. I also kind of noticed this pattern with a lot of minor leaguers that have to repeat a level. Sometimes it just takes a little more time to adjust to what a new level throws at you. You kind of see high K rates upon arrival. You've double A with the Marlins coming off the lost pandemic season.

38.1% K rate at double A. Went back to that level in 2022, 25.7%. It's extreme, but I think even Austin Riley, I'm not saying Encarnacion is Austin Riley, but if I remember correctly, Austin Riley was also a player like this where you kind of would see year over year an adjustment phase at each level that he reached. And then he'd go back to that level and he'd be better. And that's not all that surprising. Just because you're making those adjustments in the minor leagues doesn't mean you won't make them in the big leagues It may just take longer because it's the highest possible level right the stuffs even better

So I do think that's part of the definitely some natural swing and miss so like you know that caps is upside He's 27, so I'm not saying he's you know gonna be amazing, but like three-year Jorge Soler run I think it's possible that would would work. That would definitely work. We need to wrap things up. Eno has a chat to get to, so we are going to sign off on our way out the door. A reminder, you can join our discord with the link in the show description.

Find Eno on Blue Sky, enoceras.beesky.social. Find me, ddr.beesky.social. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. Have a great weekend, everybody. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. Shut your face. I can't quit you.

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