Rates & Barrels - Draft Market Movement From NFBC Main Event Weekend, Cody Bellinger's Spring Slump

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss a few takeaways from another weekend of drafts including the first wave of NFBC Main Event drafts. Closers continue to rise, Jacob deGrom shoots back into the first round, and early oatmeal players take a tumble down the board. Plus, is it time to target Cody Bellinger amidst a strikeout-heavy spring? And, how will the use of humidors in all 30 MLB parks change offensive output? Rundown Eno Main Event; Being 'Ready' On Draft Day Another Bump in Closer Prices Discounts on Injured Players Seiya Suzuki & Logan Gilbert Move Up Cody Bellinger's Spring Struggles All 30 MLB Parks to Use Humidor Fantasy Baseball Category Ideas Dakota Hudson and the Pitching+ Model Cleveland's Pitching Development Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, March 28th. Happy allergy season to those of you observing. I am with you. Eno is with you. We are hoping that the allergy symptoms are under control that your your eyes aren't so itchy and watery that you can't see your screen and do your drafts and do your research and things of that nature on this

episode we will discuss a few happenings from nfbc main event weekend including eno's actual foray into the main event that took place on Thursday. We'll talk about some notable shifts in the draft market from those drafts, some spring performances, continuing of the rising price of closers. That is a major problem for a lot of us right now. And a few mailbag questions to get to today as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this monday yeah itchy yeah you look uncomfortable oh my god yesterday was a dry and windy day and we have an oak tree in the back that just has this fine yellow pollen that just gets kicked up

around i'm it's rained this morning and i'm just hoping that that's going to put a damper on things. But I don't know. Nobody cares about this sort of stuff. Although my mom did say, well, she thought that we didn't do enough banter in the morning, so she couldn't. Really? She couldn't, yes.

She used to watch to see how we were doing. She was mad that you weren't asking how I was doing. Yes, she was mad. And now it seems that we've been really slacking on our banter. I kind of blame the sport being on hold and then coming back and having months worth of news to cram into an hour or so. I think that's been a big part of it. And, you know, we get to talk occasionally in person.

So a lot of our banter occurs off mic. Yeah, that's been a big part of it. And, you know, we get to talk occasionally in person. So a lot of our banter occurs off mic. That's right. We see other times to banter. I had a great trip to Arizona that was completely hectic. I tried to do like two camps a day. And I also had to schedule the social part. So I had two camps and then a social part every day. And I scheduled all my drafts for that week so that I wouldn't bother my wife when I got home. And so almost every day I had like two camps, a draft, and then

something socially happening afterwards. So it was pretty hectic. And then, you know, when you, you have to get to camp at like 7am. So it's like, those are some long, long days, but we finished two auto new drafts while I was there. And my main event was Thursday night. And that was fun. That was fun. Because with that much money on the line, it's it's like a $1,750 buy in which I funded with my winnings from last year. You know, you kind of you start to thinking about like I had a nap, you know, and, you know, I didn't have to run that day but i ran like two miles just enough to like get some sweat going and like you know you know sweat out the meat and

the beer you know for the night before and um you know i was thinking about my you know my first pick i i thought about it three different ways i talked to people about my first pick about what i was going to do i did some like extra kind of looking at the ADP board and what was likely to fall to me. I even envisioned my first six rounds at some point, I think with you. Then, of course, you sit down and my second pick already, it was like, oh, no. This is not what I expected at all. I tried to warn you about that. No matter how experienced you are, the first time you sit at that table,

literally in Vegas or New York or Chicago or even just in the comforts of your home or a hotel room or wherever you happen to be when your draft happens, something feels different. Maybe the way that playoff baseball feels different. As someone who rooted for a team for a long time that didn't play in the postseason, when I finally went to a playoff baseball game, there was a certain electricity in the air that you could, it was palpable. You could kind of tell, this is different. This energy is different. I think that's the best way I can describe playing an event like this. I am not playing the main event this year.

I'm playing the salary cap draft auction equivalent that's coming up next week. So I've got some time to continue my preparations. But I think something you hit on is important regardless of the types of leagues you play in. Sitting down for a fantasy baseball draft is a two to six hour experience, a pretty wide range of outcomes there. And I know most people sit all day long for their jobs and stare at screens a lot for their jobs, but it makes a huge difference when you get some fresh air,

when you eat well, when you sleep well, when you try to get outside and take a jog or hit the elliptical machine or go to the weight room or whatever it is that you do to feel good on your best days i feel like you should really prioritize that anytime you have a draft

but at least on the days where you have your most important drafts because it will put you in a much better headspace than if you overslept and you ate garbage all day and you you kind of like were multitasking you just didn't get your mind where it needed to be to get the task done the way it needed to be done yeah yeah but i guess i recommend like a weekend draft for your biggest draft then you know you just have more more chances for you to actually have slept and maybe done some of those things and not just been like frantically trying to get through the day to get to your trap. I am going to use a actual vacation day on the day of my big auction

and I'm going to drink, you know, some kind of juice, fancy juice thing in the morning. Juice cleanse. Make sure I get some vitamins. That's going too far. That might be going too far because then you're like,

oh, I got to go back to the toilet. Now you're, yeah, now you're just not comfortable because you've done something abnormal to yourself. Don't do that. Do the normal things that help you feel good when this comes around. How do you feel about your squad? What spot were you drafting out of? Where did you want to be drafting?

And what was your plan going in? Because I think in any draft, coming up with a core idea of what you want to do and a couple other alternatives based on what the room is doing. We talk about this a lot. Kind of a decision tree sort of process is really important. So what was your decision tree like at the top or at the, I guess, at the roots in this case since trees grow upwards? I wanted to be safe. I was nicknaming it the safety draft. I was just going to try and be safe for as long as possible. And in fact, I think what is kind of cool about that is it opened up two shots

for me late that are very unsafe. But because the rest of my roster was so safe, it's kind of like when we talk about steals, if you get your steals up top, then you can get some values with you know sluggers um in my case i was i thought i was so safe with my draft that it allowed me to take some shots later so i'll explain um i've got a picture of my here we go so uh my my just to run it through real quick, I've got Real Muto and Stassi. It's a 15-team league, 5x5, very short bench, no IL slots. I went Real Muto, Stassi, Votto, who I bold predicted into 40 homers. And I'd just done the math on that and the work on that. So I was like, okay. I had some moment where I could have taken a Bray you.

And instead I was like, I'm just going to take Votto a couple of rounds later, India Swanson, Machado, O'Neill Cruz, Nate low. And my outfield is Tucker Yelich, Hayes,

Kepler, Ken Ha, yes. My bench is Cesar Hernandez, Mike Moustakis, and Julio Rodriguez. My starting pitchers are My starting relievers are And my bench is So, obviously, I decided to and Tyler Rogers. And my bench is Taiwan Walker, Luke Weaver, Reaver, San Martin, and Tyler Wells.

So obviously I decided to punt saves, not punt, but I invested less in saves. And the thinking is that Pitching Plus does really well in small samples with relievers and even beats projections. So I just took Pitching Plus champions. Bednar, Soto, and Rodgers are really rated well. I think that the Giants will actually spread their saves around. And even if I don't think Tyler Rodgers is going to get 30 saves, if he gets 15 saves and has a 190 ERA, he's an ideal guy to put in there while I play around with that Tyler Wells spot looking for a third closer.

So I thought good ratios, good numbers, and maybe a handful of saves. Wheeler I got on a discount. I got him in the fourth round, but he just had his, you know, it's funny because you get this information as you're going. He just had a bullpen and said he was on track. So we think the most recent news thinks that he might miss one start. So I thought that's a fine place to get Wheeler. And then Musgrove's in my top 10.

So I felt really good about that. And then didn't take a starting pitcher for a while, as you can see, with Stroman, Wood, Rasmussen, Patino. Wood apparently is throwing 93 to 94. That's where he's sitting right now. So I don't want to put too much stock in that, but he's a good pitcher in a good park. And if he's up to 93, maybe he has good health

and he's going to have a good season. So, but back on the hitting side, this is where I was safe for as long as possible. And I took Kyle Tucker and I just was looking at Acuna, who, yes, the news has gotten better, and he's coming back in late April now to DH, and then in May he'll start in the outfield. However, there is some risk that he doesn't steal as much

coming off an ACL injury. We saw with Fernando Tatis he didn't steal much after his injury so i think the big injury might lead to lower steal totals so even though he's projected for a higher value than kyle tucker i wanted the guy i think he's going to play all year who's going to be the astros best hitter by projections and he's going to steal some bags and just seem really safe across the board. Even Mookie Betts didn't seem as safe coming off a hip injury, you know, because he's a little bit older and he's had an injury. So I took Tucker. The real place where I went against my values was Mookie Betts

was still available in the second. And I took Manny Machado. I'm both sad and mad and glad about that uh thank you dr seuss um i i like manny machado i have him projected at like top i think the bat x has him is basically a top 15 bat it has bets is like a top five bat so maybe i made a mistake there but here's why i just didn't want to come out of the first few rounds with two outfielders because look how i think how much value i got in the late rounds and outfielders austin hayes max kepler mark kanha mike yastremski I took all those guys really late. All of them steal bases. All of them hit homers.

And yes, Max Kepler and Yastrzemski, we'll see about the batting average, but I have reasons to believe that could be better too. So being safe as long as possible, let me take O'Neal Cruz super, super late. I don't think you could take Bobby Witt, who's going in the fifth round, and then also take somebody like O'Neal Cruz, super, super late. I don't think you could take Bobby Witt, who's going in the fifth round, and then also take somebody like O'Neal Cruz later.

You know? You can only take one shot at somebody like that in your starting lineup. I paired him with Cesar Hernandez in case he's down for two weeks to begin the season. I think it's going to be really obvious he's ready to play the big leagues, and it's going to be more of a two-week thing

than a, you know, he's up in July thing. So that's my bet. And julio rodriguez on the bench is the other one that i took super super late i took it partially because kyle lewis is not going to be ready for the beginning of the season and julio rodriguez is has like the best ops in spring now i'm not saying that his spring ops is that predictive but i'm'm just saying that if you're building the best Mariner squad to come out of the spring training right now, Julio Rodriguez is one of your outfielders. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think my argument all along on Rodriguez has been pretty similar to what you were outlining with O'Neal Cruz. None of my analysis of Bobby Witt is about me not liking him. It's me not liking the price. Fifth and sixth round for someone you might have to cover for a month or two or two weeks at least.

I don't know. I don't know if it's more than a couple of weeks. I really don't expect that to play out. I think it's more of my lingering questions about how much of an adjustment phase young players are going to go through this year, I think. Diffel hit his park too. Remember Alex Gordon was a top, top prospect and he hit that

park and was like, what happens to fly balls in this park? They die. Yeah. I mean, I think with width, there's a lot of ways he could still make value. He could be a good pick at that spot. I just think it's more likely someone like Rodriguez, where he goes, is going to be wildly profitable versus Witt being wildly profitable

just because of the difference in cost. That's a huge, huge part of it. I think what you had to do early, I think the Betts versus Machado decision is one that hopefully you knew exactly what you wanted to do ahead of time and you followed through on it because it's a more predictable sort of problem. It's a more predictable sort of decision. Those first few rounds, you know exactly how many players can be there. So you can go through a lot of the either or possibilities before actually making that pick.

Hopefully, it's not a decision you're making while the clock ticks down from one minute. Hopefully it's a decision that you made in the last two to three months. The surprise was that Betts was there. I just didn't think he would fall to me at 20. Yeah. So I stuck closer to my plan than reading the room and adjusting and taking bets.

But I think there is something to how much value I got in the outfield later that's not there in third base. You know, like my late third base pick was Mike Moustakas. I mean, it could be all right, but I would take like Max Kepler, Mark Conhaugh, and Mike Yastrzemski over Mike Moustakas. I think I would take Moustakas over all of them but Kepler. Really? Now that they've cleared

things out. With Suarez gone, yeah, I think he's just the guy at third base. I mean, he's often injured too. And then when he does hit, he's probably more likely to be like a mediocre average slugger who doesn't steal whereas Kepler, Kanha, and Jastrzemski steal bases.

Yeah, those bottom half of the roster steals do end up making a pretty big difference. I think this is a very quintessential Eno squad. Especially with Patino and Rasmussen on it. A lot of guys that we know you like, Musgrove being on there as your SP2. I think the discount on Wheeler makes sense just based on how the injury news has flowed to this point.

Stroman seems consistently undervalued so i think that makes a lot of sense too wood throwing harder is a nice spring tidbit because i don't think he even had to really add anything to be good in that park especially so i think this is a very well-balanced team now i think you obviously are looking at your save situation and saying well i am probably throwing money into the pool at relievers at some point sooner rather than later. A lot. Tyler Rogers is really interesting because I think it's fair to expect the

giants to split saves again until they show us that their plan is something different. Yeah. And I think that's where my every night, you know? Yeah. Maybe Doval is that guy maybe what they were doing at the end of last season the postseason with him is an indication that

they trust him in that role i just want to see it and i think even if delval is that guy rogers could pick up a few loose end saves and even if he's not that guy it's easy to drop a player that you drafted that late that's not really that difficult if things don't break the way you want. How much did you want to have higher priced or higher ranked closers on your list? Because it was a game of chicken that I think people had to play all weekend. We've been doing this throughout draft season and it became even more extreme in the main event drafts.

We saw already inflated closers going for the highest prices we've seen at any point this draft season. Yeah, so I was even texting you when it happened. I had a choice between Joe Musgrove. I don't think I could press. It was no Presley. So I had a choice between Joe Musgrove, Aroldis Chapman.

I had a choice. Yeah, I think it was a choice between. I think there was three choice between I think there was three guys I think they all went I had a choice between Joe Musgrove and then they had there was Chapman Gallegos and Romano and I thought there's three closers some of the guys around the turn even had closers already so I was like you know three closers two teams without closers one of these guys is gonna come back to me Joe Musgrove I have in my top 10 if i don't get him now i'm jumping down into like it would have been like maybe logan gilbert or something you know i would have taken somebody that i thought could be really

good but joe musgrove i feel like it's proven more so i said okay three closers on the board i'm gonna take this chance and it just went like galleg chance. And it just went like, Gallegos, Romano. It was like Chapman, Gallegos, Romano. I was like, ah! So I don't know. All of them? Didn't even get a shot at one? Come on.

No, they all just went. And I couldn't believe it. When I came back, I don't know, I think I took India there or something. So I ended up with like Musgrove in India instead of, I could have, I guess I could have taken India again anyway. i took india there or something so i ended up with like musgrove in india instead of um i could

have guess i could have taken india again anyway but i was just kind of rattled and that kind of really annoyed me so when i took bednar later i did jump him uh not quite min pick but like i was looking at it i was pretty close to the min pick so i jumped bednar more than i wanted to and it had something to do with us i was like if i take gallegos or if i take gallegos here romano here i'm i'm jumping them like 20 points right and i thought if i take them with my next pick i'm not jumping as much versus my values and adp and stuff but then i ended up having to jump Bednar like 20 points later, maybe even more. So you have to pay for saves at some point. And I ended up having to jump David Bednar

just to get him, make sure I got him. But it was nice enough that it was enough of a jump that people, nobody took the, oh, I have to draft like Soto now. It didn't start a closer run. So I jumped Bednar and when it came back to me, I took Soto again. So I like Bednar draft Soto now. It didn't start a closer run. So I jumped Bednar, and when it came back to me, I took Soto again. So I like Bednar and Soto a lot.

I think they're one of the few kind of guys that people think don't have a hold on their closing job. Soto was announced as the closer, you know, like the end of last season for next season. So I kind of think that he's got some some leash and then Bednar just has great stuff. Plus, and, but you're right.

Yeah, there was, that was the big choice. Joe Musgrove getting Wheeler plus Musgrove was important enough and it had something to do with the Wheeler injury news. So, you know, if I,

if I had taken like Woodruff with my second pick, I could have taken a closer instead of, you know, Musgrove or whatever. Yeah. I kind of think that's the key difference, right? It's feeling that extra pressure to take Musgrove to get that SP2 because you have a little bit of injury concern with Wheeler. And rightfully so.

I think you're better off having that cover in your pitching staff than you are overpaying for closers that you're almost sitting at to overpay for anyway i mean i think the jump on guy like blake trinan for just in the nfbc main event drafts this weekend pick 96 is where he was going that that's easily the highest he's been going i was gonna take trinan and then he just like blew past his adp he just like went like three rounds before i thought i was like that I was like, oh, I guess I have to jump Bednar now. Yeah, Corey Knabel picked 99 over the weekend. I think Taylor Rodgers had a massive jump as well.

Doval actually went down slightly. Scott Barlow was another one that jumped. Picked 118 this weekend for Scott Barlow. I mean, I like Scott Barlow. I think the Royals just have other relievers they could use. I think mixing and matching might still be something they want to do by design. If you have to overpay for someone, he's just not the guy that I want to overpay for because of so much uncertainty about how exactly their late end preferences are actually stacked

up. I think we're getting different signs from the Pirates and from the tigers and necessarily royals and i think that i think the the competition is different like david bettnar's big competition is chris stratton who's just like he's okay yeah comparatively a lot less to worry about their soto who you mentioned pick 162 wasn't really up a lot compared to where he'd been going the weekend before in nBC drafts. So less of a jump on him. All of this has made me rethink the way I've been approaching saves throughout this entire draft season. When draft season started, and even up until about a month ago, I was willing to possibly

get two top-end closers. That has become increasingly difficult and increasingly costly. Somebody in one of the mains this weekend double-tapped closers to start. Went Hayter Hendricks. Hayter in the first, Hendricks. Oh my god, it's crazy. If you know everyone's going to overpay and you want to get

the best two, I can understand some of the game theory and the rationale behind it. You know there's going to be some runs, there's going to be some value that comes because people are pushing up all their guys. I it you can you can try to build a team that way i like i like strategies that are different i don't know if i would be comfortable enough with getting enough starting pitching and everything else i need to execute that way i think one of those guys might be my preferred way if i was going to be aggressive yeah first turn i really

want maybe i would take one and not both i really wanted romano so i think i'm down to the i will overpay for one of my top closers if i'm even able to and then after that i'm gonna have to figure it out with some yeah you're gonna have the just the the sort of the one number like what is the number you'll go to you'll go to 22 will you go to 24 i think the top guys the hater and the hendrix duo at least will probably get to 25 plus now in those formats i'd be i'd be willing to go to like 22 or something try to get somebody like romano or presley for like 22 iglesias save those three dollars you can use those three dollars later in the draft that gets you a two dollar outfielder or a $3 outfielder instead of a $1 outfielder.

I think the challenge of a salary cap situation like that is, depending on the timing that you're overpaying, you don't know how much people are overpaying for other things. If frontline starting pitching is also going for $3 to $5 to $7 more than you expect. And first-run bats are going for $3 to $5. Speed guys, yeah. If Turner and stud bats that run, Boba Shett, if they're all going for a lot more than you expect. And first round bats are going for three to five. Speed guys, yeah. If Turner and stud bats that run, Boba Shett,

if they're all going for a lot more than expected, then those extra couple of dollars on a closer are, to me, they're less important because there's plenty of $1 guys late that should be $6 or $7 guys

if it's really aggressive room. If the room plays generally tight and you get a closer early and you overpay and you are in a room where every single dollar matters later. Then it can come back to bite you. But I think if you have to make an assumption, I think right now you have to assume people are overpaying. I think in the drafts I've seen, people are more aggressive than ever going to get their guys.

That's just how it's been in the rooms that I've seen so far. So I think it's the way I want to play it. Not knowing what's behind the other door, not knowing how it's going in the rooms that I've seen so far. So I think it's the way I want to play it. Not knowing what's behind the other door, not knowing how it's going to play out. I'm assuming overpayments on those types of players. Yeah, and if you don't join in at all, I think you have too much money at the end. You know, I think I've seen that.

Like when I bought Kyle Tucker for too much in AL Labor, I didn't see that much of a penalty for my team later. Like I still had, you know, two and $3 outfielders and still had guys I liked at $1 still, you know, still got Steven Kwan and reserves and stuff. So like, I feel like there's there's all sorts of ways to do it. But you have to really cut you have to go really, I think you have to go really hard at the middle. If you don't overpay with people at the top. You can do well with that strategy.

I've seen Jeff Zimmerman do it. I've seen Ariel Cohen do it. I've seen Larry Schechter do it. I've seen Eric Haribel do it. There's plenty of great players that build teams that way. What I think is interesting is a lot of the players you're talking about that you'd be getting in a salary cap situation are guys that actually were falling in the mains this weekend. Paul Goldschmidt dropped about 20 picks off of where he was going. Nolan Arnauto dropped about 17 picks. Alex Bregman dropped about 20 picks. Those guys are early oatmeal.

I mean, they're the multi-year established, at least at one point, former first rounders who could return early round value again i found it really interesting that all three of those guys fell as much as they did because that's the profile that when i can go get anybody i want in a salary cap situation those are the guys i want and the rooms over the weekend were going other directions well other than goldschmidt they don't steal right that's part of it yeah um maybe there's just an age component too i like i really was kind of surprised by how many people were taking bobby witt in the fifth and sixth um in these mains so maybe there's uh you know i think that another thing about the main that's interesting is that it has an overall prize and so you know

that's sort of i my julio adregas and o'neill cruz picks were kind of like hey i'm gonna take i'm gonna take one little shot here at the overall right because if o'neill cruz is up all year and like you know hits his 75th percentile he's a guy who could go like 25 25 or whatever and like you know be absolutely something that could help me win the league and maybe even matter in the overall if julio rodriguez is just like oh yeah he's our starting center fielder he's up all year like who knows what he could do you know so i wanted to take those shots and so i think that there's some strategy even the dual even the dual closer or, or, you know,

doing like four pitchers in a row. And some of these things are like, I just want to differentiate myself from the group. It's like when you do DFS, if you do DFS, you can just pick the best players every night. Right. And you can just be like, these are the best players. My, my system spits out these guys, but then there's also gameplay where you're like well if i want to win this overall tonight if i want to win the milli or whatever it is that they do that you know the hundred thousand so i want to win this this entire tournament tonight then i got to do something different than everybody else so maybe i'm going to take this guy who you know is a little bit more of a long shot in my model but i i feel good about it or or he's just not being used that much so i think some of these strategies are like hey nobody's really doing this

strategy so i'm going to do this strategy and if it works i could win a hundred thousand dollars right well i would think that that leverage concept i mean it certainly applies when you are building a roster where you end up with hater and hendrix together and i think you can do that previously from the two three turn but in the mains which just started up recently there might not be anybody else that has that exact combo yeah the one two turn i think yeah it was the one two turn but you can start to build these combinations of players that nobody else has and if that combination hits you will have leverage over the entire field even though you might have a lot of other top 10 teams that have some of the players you have none of their top 10 teams will have all of the players you have in that specific combination

the uh other interesting thing rob silver was pointing this out on twitter is that the the injury risk tolerance seemed to be about as low as it's been in maybe ever but at least lower than it's been in a while yeah chris sale was a guy that fell a ton. Even Acuna early fell a little bit in the main drafts compared to where he was going in 15 teamers prior to this weekend. We've talked about that a lot. I think it's one of the things that makes NFBC leagues very different. Most leagues have IL spots. These leagues don't. and waiting for guys to come back and trying to deal with a short bench almost certainly hurts you with either innings,

which hurts you with Ks and wins and can hurt you in ratios, or it hurts you at bats, which is going to hurt you in all the hitting categories. So I understand where that's coming from, and I wonder if the general trend here is leading to some late draft season value anywhere. Like if there's a point where you could say okay in this instance this made sense well we talked about tatis going into the weekend whether it's a kunya whether it's sale whether it's someone else who slipped because of injury is there a situation where you would say this player at this price with this injury is actually an appropriate use of resources because i would compare the risk profile here,

similar to that of some of the prospects you were describing earlier, where you say, Oh, they're not going to be up on opening day. We're hoping for two to three weeks. If you're looking at a similar timetable for an established player going cheaper than they should go, I'm kind of on board with it,

but it's just a matter of only doing it one time. So you're not completely screwed on your bench when other players inevitably get hurt or get sent down or have a smaller role than you expect them to. Yeah, I mean, I did try to take some advantage of that. Mike Moustakis I took with the 385th pick, and I think that was a little bit being just scared of the fact that he was injured. I think there was even some chatter in the room about whether or not he was currently injured. So I think there is definitely,

if you wait long enough, especially if you're talking about the bench, that's a really great place to put a player that's injured. Right. But I can also feel that, um, that feeling of like, just, I don't want to pick someone here where I'm not going to get the full innings. I mean, I have enough of Jeff Zimmerman in my year, it's innings and plate appearances. That's what wins you these games.

So I tried to stay away from platoon guys as long as possible. Tried to stay away from injured guys, took Manny over, over, you know, a potentially better player that just was injured last year. And also Dodgers, all of the Dodgers will lose time to other Dodgers,

you know, just to the way the Dodgers do business. I was staring at Chris Taylor at the top of my board for a while, and I was just like, I can't tell you exactly how many plate appearances Chris Taylor is going to get this year. He dipped a little bit, more than 30 picks off of where he was going the previous weekend. I think for the exact reasons that you outlined, you look at that depth chart being as crowded as it is right now, it could all work out. One significant

injury to someone else probably bumps up the playing time back to the pre 2022 levels. But if it's more minor injuries, then with the depth they have, he probably plays a little bit less than people were expecting. So I can totally rationalize his little bit of a drop the other player that

was in this range that fell quite a bit was dj lemayhew i he's having a good spring right like yeah but he's i mean they kind of they kind of have guys locked in at so many positions that he's like a utility guy. But even Chris Taylor has more of a locked-in position because center field, right? Or second base? I mean, I think this was a clear reflection of the Rizzo addition to the infield. The way things fall right now, you could probably tell me that it's too crowded.

Yeah, Donaldson is going to be... I mean, it's what happened when they signed LeMahieu. We talked about where does he play, and then he found plenty of playing time. So I guess that's what you're saying. It's like he'll DH some, Donaldson will DH some, Donaldson will be hurt. I mean, I just wish LeMahieu could play the outfielder. I guess. It is similar to the Taylor situation, but he seems healthy again.

I think a healthy DJ LeMahieu could actually exceed expectations. This might be the case where that discount puts him right in a sweet spot where I actually feel pretty comfortable drafting him. Whereas most of this draft season, I wasn't necessarily interested. I think it's kind of funny. Earlier on, Cedric Mullins and Marcus Simeon slipped a little bit in these drafts. I don't know if it's because they, in the case of Mullins, I mean, we're talking about a first-time early round pick,

so there were some reservations there. We're only talking about a half dozen or so picks, so half a round at most in a lot of these cases. Simeon, I think I took Simeon before we knew where he was going to play in the at most in a lot of these cases. Semien, I think I took Semien before we knew where he was going to play in the second round of a 15-teamer, and it seems like he slides in a lot of drafts. I don't really

see any particular reason for that other than to say that the park situation is more difficult and the lineup support isn't as good as it was, but I feel like that's priced in, And now that discount is just extra. Like I think there's an overcorrection happening at the last minute with Marcus Simeon. Yeah. I expected, uh, to take Marcus Simeon with my third pick and he was there for me,

but I went with real Muto. The value said I should go with real Muto. I didn't think he would still be there. And plus for my kind of build where i'm keeping i'm getting a little bit of steals and trying to keep my batting average high as long as possible real moto was a really nice way to keep from having like a 220 batting average for my catchers you know yeah so uh i could have had i could have had simeon there and then um but i think that simeon and mullins also uh suffer a little bit just from the fact that people are taking pitchers higher and closers higher so if you think about it that's uh that's very much where you need to get your closer right so in our draft mullins is in the third uh iglesias went right after him, and Hayter, Hendricks, and Nola went before him.

I think that's what's pushing those guys down a little bit. We saw Jacob deGrom. Because you never thought you would take a closer in the second, but if you're taking a closer in the second, someone that used to go in the second is going to go in the third now. Yeah, naturally, there's going to be some kind of counter adjustments to that, but we saw Jacob deGrom jump up. He was in the first round, not totally surprising, just given the shape of the spring that he's had and given the overall

components and the way that people tend to play in these drafts but the other two players that i thought were worth talking about we'll move on to some other stuff here in just a minute say a suzuki just because we haven't had a lot of drafts where we've known where he's going to play he was up at pick 144 in main event drafts that seems about right based on projections and maybe even a tick lower than it needs to be when you go back and look at some of the projection systems and see that he compares very favorably from pure number standpoint to someone like christian yelich and i realized with yelich's track record and previous ceiling being as high as it was that's part of why Yelich is going ahead

of Suzuki but that seems like a very reasonable sort of expectation for a guy that will play a lot and maybe do a little bit of everything and maybe a lot of some things for us in his first season with the Cubs and ours he went in the 13th ahead of Marcel Azuna behind austin meadows alex verdugo and dylan carlson and uh i had taken yelly in the seventh so i wasn't thinking outfielder there that's where i was taking soto stroman and alex wood i needed to get my pictures but um yeah i yeah all the sort of moral stuff aside, I might take Ozuna over him. I don't know, just as a player. It's interesting that he went right by Verdugo because he could end up having similar stats to Verdugo.

The one thing that I like him better than a lot of people because he has the stolen base capability and he has that upside and he hit 38 homers, but he also got caught stealing a fair amount and you that might not be a big deal except that in america like they have really optimized uh stolen bases to the point where if you are getting caught a lot you don't get as many opportunities in the future you know because definitely they've they've you know they ran the numbers and they know exactly what your success point needs to be. So he may end up having somewhat similar numbers to Alex Verdugo

where he has a good batting average, you know, some good power, but will it be, you know, will it be 38 or will it be more like 24 or something, you know? So what if he comes out of here with 280, 24 homers and five steals? Then you would maybe rather have Verdugo and Arzuna than some of those other guys. Yeah, I guess if you're worried about the speed drying up, I think that would be your best argument to go a different direction in that range.

But I'm definitely in on Suzuki if that's where the price stays. I bought him in one of my auto-new drafts for like $24, $25, something like that. I bought him in my points one because I do actually think his plate discipline is going to pour it over. Yeah. His skills translate very well to leagues that more closely mimic real life value.

I think that's the OBP over average. Those kinds of challenges in Japan. Yeah. The pitcher jump in this range was Logan Gilbert. You mentioned him before. You might've had to chase him if you didn't get Musgrove where you did a little bit of buzz on him this spring. I think it's probably warranted.

I have mentioned him a few times over the course of draft season. I actually thought his ADP would be higher in the NFBC all along than it has been even higher than it was on main event weekend. So to see him get a jump in the mains, that's not necessarily a big surprise, but I'm still wrong in the sense that I thought Logan Gilbert, because of what he showed us at times last year, might be sitting inside the top 100 overall consistently. So now I'm really intrigued. Even with this increased price, I do like him where he's going, and I think we could

see a massive step forward for him this year. Yeah, that's when I told you that I jumped Bednar. It cost me Gilbert. Yeah. So that ended up being around 140, pick 140. I think that's a great place to take Logan Gilbert. I bold predicted him to be the best pitcher for the Mariners this year. But I did want to also mention Matt Brash because he's moving in my rankings. Both of them look really good. Gilbert already had a great fastball. He releases with great extension really close to the plate.

And so that's a really good place to start because his fastball rated well by stuff metrics, but also just by the eye test. He's this really tall guy, six foot six. Nobody releases the ball closer. He's like a, you know, glass now in that way. And he's looking for secondary pitches, but he's, you know, he had an answer for me for every secondary pitch. stiffer wrist on the curveball, going away from the sweeper and towards like a deGrom kind of tight power slider that I can place better. And you saw them all on display in his first start.

It was pretty amazing. The changeup, he was even flashing pretty good. That was flashing good at the end of the season last year. Curveball looked better, and the slider looked totally different. It was like a little tight thing, but he could put it where he wanted it to. I think that's going to be really important for him so love gilbert there matt brash is just has uh excellent breaking balls and a really high velo fastball and the reason that i had him you know at 110 is i had him around all the guys that i really like that i don't wasn't sure that it would break camp with the team you know Ronzi

Contreras territory but it looks like he's the favorite for number five if he breaks camp at the five position if I knew that right now um I have right now around 90 if I knew knew for sure he was the fifth starting pitcher and he would be sort of in the 80s maybe back in 70s even so that's how excited I am about his stuff. But you're always balancing, you know, is he in the rotation? And where does it matter less to take that shot? And I think it takes a long time because, you know, I took Tyjuan Walker in my bench slot because I was like,

what if Patino and Rasmussen you know don't make the rotation then i would really like to have a starting pitcher i know is in a rotation somewhere right so like even with my bench spots took time on walker and luke weaver because i was like i would might need even by week one i might need i might need just an actual starting pitcher and be like oh crud i've got one of the hottest prospects in the minors on my bench, but I don't have a starting pitcher for week one. Well, the end game, I think the end game is more about the first week

and the first two weeks than people realize, especially in 12 team leagues, but even in 15 team leagues. You want to make sure you've got plenty of options. You're looking ahead at the schedule. If there's a team in Colorado and there's an extra bat that might be useful for that first series or for the first week, it's definitely worth factoring

all that in and making sure if there's going to be a projected two-start pitcher, once you get closer to the time where it's easy to see the schedule, can you just draft that guy late and have him on your bench and not go out into fab and use precious fab dollars to get that player? There won't be any in week one this year. Not in week one, but

week two, after that first free week one, but week two. After that first free agent run, there will be. I just think if you can get ahead of that, that also helps you out. It's a little hard to do that now because you can't quite forecast everything out the way you want to, but by this weekend, I think that's going to be a little bit clearer. Those would be fourth and fifth starting pitchers.

Matt Brash might have a two-star week in his first week that'd be pretty fun that's a great way to have to test yourself too how much do I trust this pitcher always get two stars oh and they're against pretty good teams but not like the kinds of teams that you're

automatically fearful of okay well let's let's see what we got here are my highest rated fours and fives according to the Fangrass dev chart which is not exactly like oh this is where they sit it's it's an idea of like who will give them the most innings right so it's not exactly like they're the fourth and fifth starting pitchers but using it as a proxy it's in my rankings you can do this yourself but my highest rated fours and fives that might be

two-star pitchers in the second week are manoa gilbert rasmussen uh severino copec if he's the five um patino or kitty but alex wood what if he guys are all getting drafted though already it's gotta be someone that you want to be it's gonna be more like on the fab line and this again this probably is more for 12 team leagues than 15 team leagues but it is something to keep in your mind okay so i'm down in the lower part how about alex cobb cobb i think would would apply here it's starting pitcher probably not going to start opening weekend might have a double start in a second uh tristan mckenzie are we close enough he goes brash early enough brash would count for sure if i don't know what the starts are, but if Eflin's starts are good,

Eflin might be interesting. Like Dakota Hudson, Drew Smiley, maybe could be in that kind of range. You could take a shot on Nick Martinez, but that would be very low information. Luke Weaver, Carlos Hernandez.

Weaver and Hernandez would be in this group for sure. Those are some names for you that might be two-star pitchers in the second week. It's fun to look ahead at things like that. Let's move over to Cody Bellinger, who is having a rough spring, to put it mildly, through seven Cactus League games. He is 3-for-19 with 14 strikeouts. That's the problem. 3 for 19, who cares? That doesn't matter. 14 strikeouts against one walk makes you think something is just wrong, either with mechanics of his swing or just something in the underlying approach could be a little bit off right now. Timing, whatever it might be. How do you respond to this? He was not among the players

that had a big dip in the mains, at least in the aggregate results. Maybe there were a few rooms where he slipped a little bit. I think the discount you're going to get on Bellinger, that's happening now. That's going to be in the next week to 10 days, especially if the strikeouts continue to pile up. So most spring training stats are not super predictive. However, Dan Rosenheck did find that like spring training OPS did have some slight small predictive quality. So there was there, there is some signal in there so that it is worrisome.

However, the whole idea of the why it's not more predictive than just a rent, a regular two, two week or six week sample is that people are working on things, right? That's the whole thing. You hear about pitchers working on things right that's the whole thing you hear about pitchers working on a new pitch this or that and that's what i see when i watch cody bellinger

right now what i see is he's taking his a swing at the high pitches and he's swinging through them and what i think he's doing and this might be too much galaxy braining it and making excuses for him but i think I've seen, we've seen his B and C swings. We've talked about on this podcast. It's been, it's been a thing we've thought about for a long time. We,

and if you've watched Cody Bellinger, you've seen that he has a slappy oppo, you know, put the ball in play high, high swing for the high fastball. He has that. He has a B and a C swing. You're not seeing that right now on the high fastball he has that he has a b and a c swing you're not seeing that right now on the high pitches so what i think he's doing is just trying to time his a swing

and take the big swing at every time and i think by the time this regular season rolls around if he figures he can't hit the high fastball with his a swing, he's either going to take the high fastball until two strikes and then break out the B and C swing, right? Or, I mean, that's it. That's the theory. The theory is he's going to take more of these pitches in the regular season or swing with the B and C swing out. Right now, he's swinging his A swing at everything. I don't think that's Cody Bellinger anymore. That's not a guy who had a 16% strikeout

rate last year. You know what I mean? No. No. The natural follow-up question is, are you drafting him or he's going? Fringe at the top 100. If you don't get a discount, are you still taking him at that spot?

If he falls, are you definitely in. I think Yelly and Belly are awesome picks in your round pick 100. I have mostly Yelly shares just because Bellinger's been going a little bit higher.

Yep, that's been the case in a lot of drafts and changing now. Yelly is projected to have more value because he has more steals. Well, I'm with you. I'm with you on buying the dip. Both of them are like

former MVPs, dude. And they, you know, they're more distance between them and their big health events. Belanger's still 26.

26-year-olds don't just completely disintegrate like this. Guys who've reached that level. And I know they have the luxury of resting him against lefties and doing some things if they need to with their depth to get him right so you may have to weather that they're much better if he's a star right right i just you see a lot of lineup projections this time of year and different things they're doing in spring training and you think oh okay well maybe he's hitting seventh. If Cody Bellinger gets

it back, he will hit higher in the order. They will move him up and everybody else will move down. That seems like an absolute no-brainer to me that I feel like people are just glazing right over with Bellinger right now. I actually think that they probably, he has enough cachet in the

organization to not start at seven you know what i mean you might have to hit his way down that's very possible but you could argue that maybe what's happening this spring is enough for the dodgers to say hey look we're gonna take some pressure off you right just be you we're gonna move you down like that right i could see that but i just think it's not it's not difficult for him to move up into a prominent spot

if he doesn't begin the year in a prominent spot so like you i'm buying the dip if there even is one on bellinger it certainly sounds like there will be though based on reactions uh that everybody's been having oh before we get to some category ideas and a question you had some uh interesting stuff you shared from uh boog boog's yambi from the Cubs booth, found out that all 30 parks are going to use a humidor this season. So what are your takeaways, you know, knowing that that's going to be the case that we might have a little more consistency with the baseball from park to park? Yeah, it's hard to tell because, you know, the actual,

like the really the fine line details actually matter here a lot because I can tell you that um very dry parks become more humid and and that's what a humidor is it regulates it's not always adding humidity it's um if it's a very dry park like arizona we saw even though it was a dome it had a huge impact um on on baseball there it went from being a hitter's park to being neutral just with the humidor. So that's a big, really big impact. What's left because Denver and Arizona are easily the driest places. What's left is to impact our humid places and a humidor in a humid place will actually remove humidity from the air. And so those balls will be drier. Now, this is another thing that people, um, I ended up having to argue about a lot on the internet this weekend.

It was not super pleasant. So this might be surprising to some of our listeners, but the most humid ballparks in America are San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco. Those three parks. I know I've lived in Atlanta. It's super humid in the summer. I get it. But part of that is temperature. I think people associate the word humidity with higher temperatures, right?

If you just go, you can do some spot looking. Just look at the humidity level in San Francisco today. Yesterday, it was 88%. If you also just think about where these ballparks are, because this is where we scrape the data from the ballpark locations. Data courtesy Derek Carty, I should say. That's the we in this situation. We've been talking about this all weekend.

Those ballparks are right on the water. And you know what humidity is? Water content in the air. So that sort of stuff matters. And then what really separates and what makes all this modeling that we're trying to do hard, we don't know where exactly the balls are stored because it's all about the hours that the balls arrive. Where do they go for the next six hours before the game?

Do they go into an air-conditioned room that's temperature controlled? So that's what I'm working on. I'm going to write the piece. I will tell you this, Oakland, big surprise. It wasn't in a temperature-controlled room. There's not a lot of temperature-controlled rooms. They don't have one.

I've never been to the stadium, but I've heard enough stories to know they don't have that. Yeah. Just think about what you know about the Coliseum. So there's a large chance here that oakland will play more offense friendly so even if montas and i don't go it may play differently than we're used to in the past because the balls will be drier and it's not necessarily about lightness or heaviness in terms of the it's about springiness and i think people understand this like if you

ever hit a wet tennis ball you know it's not pleasant dry one right the wet one's just like it's not good one goes further so it's about bounciness but uh yeah so waterlogged balls are less bouncy and so humid the humidor will dry out oakland balls and so oakland balls will go further this year yeah well i mean i yeah so san francisco san diego those places could be impacted in very similar ways and those are all parks that have played much more pitcher friendly than hitterter-friendly over the years, even with changes. I think San Diego's the only one that's really changed notably in the last decade or so, and that was a lot of construction around the stadium,

big scoreboard in left field, some things that just changed airflow around the ballpark, I believe that had an impact on home runs and different things that were happening there. I don't know how much to change my pitching ranks based on this. So I don't know how much to like change my pitching ranks based on this. You know, I just, I don't know. And I think, um, I would say that the,

to the general public and to most parks, other than the three that we mentioned, almost no effect. I was worried that maybe even Tampa, because Arizona was a dome, Tampa is wet, you know, that could be a big deal. However, the relative humidity in Tampa was not as high as I expect. And I think it's easier to take water out of the air with air conditioning than it is to put water in.

Like if you're in Arizona, you're going to humidify everybody. No, you're just going to cool them down. But in Tampa, when you're when you've got the air conditioning in there, maybe you take some water out seems plausible so anyway um i think that the main part main effect will be in these three and then it won't be as much as arizona because arizona was

more dry relative to average than those places are wet relative to average so if you want some sort of back some sort of guess that I'm at right now, I would say about half the effect of what you saw in Arizona for those three parks. Still could mean a few extra homers for Manny Machado. It could mean Tony Disco. Maybe I should put him down a couple. Discofani, put him down a couple in my ranks

because he already has homer problems. It could mean something on the fringes but i wouldn't not take logan webb you know because of this news sometimes i wonder if i will live to see the end of drama about the baseball itself and the older i get the more certain i am that i will not i will not make it more granular and weirder it's just yeah we've run out of the the the thread that we use to do the seams we had to change it we don't know what's gonna happen yep i mean i can't even begin to predict all the other plot lines i just i feel like there's gonna be a never-ending supply of them one way or another i think what they're trying to do is trying to make the parks more uniform and i and i hear people

that say they liked that the parks are different and that there was all this and that was part of the joy in baseball and i agree with you to some extent but i also just know that if i was running a team i've said this before if i was running a team, I've said this before, if I was running a team, I would rather have something closer to the average park so that I can grab hitter, pitcher, whatever, you know, that,

that I think is undervalued and they'll come and play in my park. You know, imagine trying to grab an undervalued starting pitcher and, and convince them to come to Colorado. I think from a, an on-field play perspective, I prefer consistency with the dimensions of the ballpark. I think in terms of how they're designed and the architecture

and the things that make them fun. Yeah, you could do some cooler stuff around it, right? Yes. I feel like that's where you can crank up the dial and have more of a unique feel to everything. But I'm sure people have strong feelings. It doesn't have to all be strong feelings like let's let's let's take a let's take a little bit of a foot off the grist the brick gas pedal and not

make every single mark brick you know it works for camden doesn't have to work for everybody else it's one of my favorite things about target field in minnesota right it's the minnesota limestone i think is what it is. They do a fair amount of brick there, though, too. They do, but I think they sourced... Yeah, it's limestone, and it looks awesome.

I think it's one of the most beautiful parks. I'm not talking crap on Target Field. No, one of the most beautiful parks in baseball. I think once they had the All-Star game a few years ago, it started to get more recognition in those conversations that it had previously. All right.

A few questions to get to. Some category ideas. This question came in from Daniel. He saw someone talking on Twitter about a modified quality starts stat they were using in a customized Roto League. The stat defines a quality start as either five innings pitched with two earned runs or fewer, or six plus innings pitched with three or fewer earned runs.

That's the traditional definition. This seems like a really nice solution to the problem with using wins or quality starts as a category in the modern game. Got me thinking about whether there are custom stats that we could use to replace some of the particularly bad ones in 5x5. Setting aside, of course, programming difficulty for the host websites. Do you guys have any creative ideas? So here are Daniel's ideas. Two thoughts I came up with. Replace saves or saves plus holds with a stat based on high leverage usage for relievers,

something like an appearance of at least one full inning and a leverage index above a threshold. This would weight fifth or sixth inning fireman appearances higher and discount the cheap saves that result from three run leads or one out saves, etc. And two, replace stolen bases with something like total extra base running bases. This would be the sum of stolen bases plus things like advancing from first to third on a single or scoring from second on a single

or advancing on a sack fly. So two different things here. I mean, there's limitless possibilities. I have a general rule that I think we need to adhere to, though, before we can revamp stats. I think if you want to go down the rabbit hole of making stats that more clearly reflect the value of players in the game. You're going to mimic what's happening in Major League Baseball

in your fantasy league. I think you should go play auto-new. I think that's – it cuts out a lot of the how do you tweak Roto and traditional fantasy to get there. I think the thing that fantasy needs to really think about long-term, the biggest stats- related problem in fantasy baseball is making sure that if you keep changing rules and changing default scoring settings, that it's still easy to follow. Right. You need to be able to pick it up right out of the box score. You didn't you didn't know as you're watching the game what the situation is and how that actually impacts your team like think about it with the traditional baseball stats think about a different sport

like basketball like basketball points assists rebounds steals and blocks that's that's perfect you can see those things they happen you know they're good and you can kind of tally as you go so i think you don't want to stray too far from easy to observe easy to observe, easy to cheer for, easy to account for things. Otherwise, you start to get further into the war black box problem with a fantasy game. And I think that becomes less appealing to a broader audience to play, even though I think a lot of us around this podcast would say, well, that'd be a really fair way to play and a really fun way to play. It has its merits, but I just think it would lose a lot of mainstream appeal if we turned fantasy baseball into something that was too far down that rabbit hole. Yeah, and maybe

there's room for us all. There's all sorts of people listening to this podcast, and some people would hate the idea. I was thinking about shutdowns and meltdowns um where you know it's whether or not you have it's win probability added so how much win probability did the player add the pitcher add to his team or subtract if it's over a certain amount he gets a shutdown if it's under it's a meltdown um it's that's a that's a meltdown. That's a really good way to think about relievers and how they add value. And it's also not something you could calculate while you're at the game.

You'd have to bring up your fan graphs, a win probability thing, and know when the player went in and sort of... But for our listeners that have models that they've built just to win their fantasy their fantasy leagues like uh they would welcome something like that so uh but there's probably room for both i mean that's just an idea that i had shutdowns and meltdowns something for relievers wpa wins probably the added something like that i will say that you it's really hard to bring defense in and do like a real war league because uh they just don't run

defensive stats the same way on a nightly basis at fangraphs you don't there's no defensive box score there's no like you know number that's going to come through the one game it's uh stuff that's brought up in chunks that you know they do they they do the the defensive stats once a week or a month or whatever it is i don't know exactly but it's not done every night it's not like your war number comes through every night like that you know defense kind of adds you need a lot of sample i mean it's like one game like what what if you had no chances what what what do you do with the defensive number then there's there's

games where the you know the right fielder gets one ball it's right at them and that's it so um there's those are some those are some real limits to how close you can get to the real game i don't know does it good if you do it like with woa base points fangraphs points uh you know saber points those are all uh designed to reward every action on the field exactly correctly, like it's rewarded in the game. But I love 5x5. I think it's a simple game, and I think you're right. If I was going to introduce someone to something,

I would not start with Auto-New. My kids are not going to start with Auto-New. And that's not at all shading the game it's just it's it's a higher level it's a more yeah you need something a little easier to get into at first i think you could maybe just do something as simple as scoreless relief appearances that are a full inning i think you could just have a name for that and the rule is that the game's got to be within two runs instead of three. That at least makes it more important. And yeah, you'd still have some middle relievers that come in and rack up one of those, but you still have other categories that matter. You still have strikeouts,

you still have ERA, you still have whip. So you still have to be better to make more of an impact in those other categories. I think that's one way that I've thought about tweaking the relief appearance thing without making it too complicated. Yeah quality start thing is i think it's amazing that they they came up with this idea of the five inning thing because quality starts as a metric has gotten worse over the last few years worse even than wins because uh nobody goes six so like they can't even so have guys going to like four and a third that are getting wins. Right. The bolt guys. Yeah. So, uh,

and I actually, I think that's a cautionary tale, right? A little bit. You come up with quality starts because you're like, you want to reward these guys that don't, don't get wins. Cause you think wins is a terrible stat.

And then the game changes again and wins become a better stat because they're now rewarding it to the bulk pitcher that did the best right so um yeah that's the other way around this if we could just get wins fixed then wins are less terrible yeah i mean we're one little like email to the score is being like please be more liberal with where you give your wins like please just give it to the guy who's pitched a lot and did a lot and not to the guy the reliever that happened to be in the game when the go-ahead run was scored then all of a sudden winnings wins would actually kind of reflect all the stuff we wanted them to reflect you know the bulk pitcher that did the most for his team right and the official scorer could use the formulas that we're talking about. And we would still have a general idea of how it does work.

And when you're following along in a game, you go, well, that guy pitched three and two thirds inning. No one, no one else pitched that much. It was three and two thirds scoreless. He's going to get the win.

Like it, it's not ridiculous to see it as it's happening. I'd be okay with that. But thank you for the question, Daniel. I just think it's important to keep it somewhat simple just from a gameplay perspective and an interest level sort of perspective. Yeah, and there's some news that they're going to be testing a different placement of second base that'll lead to shorter base paths along with the

large bases. So, you know, there's all this bellyaching right now in fantasy about stolen bases, right? And like, should we have them as a stat and should we go away from them and how hard they are to get and it's not representative of the game. But stolen bases come back in the game

and there's tons of stolen bases and, you know, then you just have to adjust. And there's something simple about 5x5 that I like for that reason. Everybody stolen bases. And you know, then you just have to adjust. And that's, there's something simple about five by five that I like for that reason. Everybody steals bases. Everyone's getting 15 plus bags. Now Pujols just stole eight in his last season with the Cardinals. What the hell is going on here? That would be,

I'm putting the bases that close together, but yeah, I'm curious to see how that plays out. A question about Dakota Hudson that came in. Thank you for that question, Daniel. This question comes from Hudson that came in. Thank you for that question, Daniel. This question comes from OJ. He writes, I know Eno has said that his numbers dislike Dakota Hudson,

but I wonder if there's something they miss. He consistently outperforms his XFIP. His results, admittedly limited innings, seem to be much better than any system expects. It looks like maybe there's something about ground ball heavy pitchers, Fromber as well, that the model could be having some trouble with.

Is another pitch shape deal or is there something inherently flawed about his approach even if it has worked briefly thanks oj and i think it's interesting just because dakota hudson is a more important pitcher for st louis right now with the injuries they're dealing with to jack flaherty and alex reyes i mean hudson now that he's healthy, is firmly back in this rotation. Yeah, I stared at his thing and moved him just based on this question, just sort of moved him up a little bit based on, you know, where he was before, but I still have him like, you know, in the 120s, just not that big a fan of his, you know. So his sinker is an important question here because, you know, the stuff model says it's a his sinker is uh an important question here because you know the stuff model says it's a poor sinker and yet he does get good ground balls with it also for his career

against the sinker batters hit 275 with a 413 slugging that doesn't seem like an amazing pitch to me um so i i'm not sure that this doesn't like it's a pretty good sinker like it has good depth but it's it's 93.9 is not impressive velocity anymore and it's not outstanding depth uh doesn't have much seam shifted wake deception to it so i i would just say it's a pretty good sinker uh a pretty good slider i think he could be an average pitcher that's what pitching plus says in the end is uh you know it comes around to him 96 pitching plus because he has just enough command of the slider i just don't see anything that stands out for him and you know there's nothing i don't like his strikeout rate and even his ground ball rate which is plus you know sierra has that in it and his sierra for his career like sierra cares if you have a 60 ground ball rate

that's that's where you start getting outsized returns your babbitt goes down when you start having 60 ground ball rates now he's got 58 for his, so he's close and a 258 BABIP. So maybe he's already getting that benefit, and maybe that's what we're missing. But Sierra says he has a 496 Sierra for his career. I also think saying consistently beating his FIP, I don't know that that works for me when we have one real season out of him. I don't know that that works for me when we have one real season out of him.

He was more of a reliever in his first season. And then since we have 47 innings in two years. So there's nothing that I can hang my hat on here. It's a pretty good sinker, a pretty good slider, and a really good home park. Maybe he should be higher, but it's not somebody that I want to, you know, put a lot of bets on, you know,

I feel like so much Brad Keller here. Like it's just, it's the same thing. And park and defense are obviously important. And maybe that's what gets lost when you're looking at players like that. We finally did see Keller bring the K rate up last year, but the results were disastrous. It finally happened.

After saying, I don't think Brad Keller's good, I don't think Brad Keller's good, you quietly get Brad Keller on the bottom of your roster, you see a two-start week, and uh-oh, it didn't work. It all fell apart. I get those same kinds of vibes with Dakota Hudson, but a guy they're going to be relying on a bit more. DH is going to be a big deal for players like this, I think.

I would guess that he has a mid four zra and not great strikeouts this year yeah i i don't see something in dakota hudson either i've been confused by how he's been able to do it in the past and i had brad keller's my comp i think he's going down the br Keller path. So hopefully I am right. And we don't see the Cardinal devil magic come through with a low three ZRA and a 120 whip because that would be absolutely maddening. Thanks a lot for that question. OJ, last question for today. This one comes in and it's about Cleveland's pitching staff as a whole.

It's about Cleveland's pitching staff as a whole. It was prompted with this decision made by our listener to get Gavin Williams in a dynasty league. And Gavin Williams, I saw him in a write-up that Kevin Goldenstein had over at Fangraphs, just as I was trying to dig into the profile a little bit. Kevin's write-up was just putting him in a group of possible first-rounders in his draft class. So there's plenty of talent here just from a base perspective. But the question is, what effect does the guardians coaching and analytics team have on pitchers? Do they improve secondaries,

increased command and control, and by extension with the hiring of former assistant pitching coach, Ruben, the able by the Padres, how long until we may begin to see effects on Padres pitchers? So just a broader question inspired by Gavin Williams. I think it's always really difficult to play this game because somebody DM me and asked me,

do you have a list of pitchers that went to driveline? And not every pitcher that went to driveline became amazing. Cleveland has failed with pitching prospects in the past. And San Diego may not turn it around based on one prospects in the past. And, and you know, San Diego may not be, may not turn it around based on one coach in their system. I did see a lot more presence of visuals like track man screens, a lot of, you know,

a lot more Padres pitchers looking at the track man screen right after they threw, which suggests to me that probably he was telling them, I want to see you spin it at this, or I want to see your vertical movement go to this. And, you know, they're, they're looking to see if they can do it. You know that's, I think that's good coaching. I think that's part of what Cleveland does well. However the Cleveland base model is to take a high command pitcher and then send them to gas camp and try to add three or four ticks just based on physical fitness weighted balls the whole program and so that can work for pitchers

but they've also produced a lot of josh tomlins you know where the is yeah the guy has control but where's the out pitch. And so almost every time I look at a Cleveland pitcher, I'm like, is this Josh Tomlin or Shane Bieber? You know, when they come up, cause Shane Bieber was Josh Tomlin. I don't know if people know this. Shane Bieber threw like 87 for Santa Barbara, you know, and then he got up to 94.

That's like, that's a really good outcome. But I don't, like if you see my Cal Quantrill ranking, I don't give any one organization the benefit of the doubt for pitchers. I just, I can't see it. I do like what Mariners are doing. And I do think Kirby and brash are, and Gilbert are better for it. But if Emerson Hancock comes up and the stuff numbers aren't good, I'm not going to just immediately say, well, you know, Emerson Hancock is going to be amazing because the Mariners are doing an amazing thing. So I just, I don't think

you can, I don't think you can put it over like that and there's just too many things going on because all these guys have their own coaches they go to their own drive lines and treads and they have their own voices in their heads and some of those guys will listen to Ruben Abla or some of those guys were listening to only their guys they have at home you know and uh knowing that ahead of time is is practically impossible. Right. I think it's nice to look back at results and have a sense of, okay, this should be an upgrade. This should be a good thing. But to drill down to individual characteristics, I think, becomes a really slippery slope.

And circling back around on Gavin Williams, I was just pulling up Keith Law's Guardians rankings for the top 20 prospects. I was just pulling up Keith Law's Guardians rankings for the top 20 prospects. Keith had Gavin Williams at six in that organization overall, which is to me exactly the sweet spot in a dynasty league where you can get someone before they take a massive leap in the write-up. Keith points out top 15 sort of ceiling based on pure stuff. So that's exactly the type of pitching prospect when you're throwing your late darts in a dynasty league. Those are the characteristics you want. Great stuff. So that's exactly the type of pitching prospect when you are, when you're throwing your late darts in a dynasty league, those are the characteristics you want. Great stuff slipped a little due to medicals in an organization that you trust. Even if the specific flaws that Williams has aren't necessarily something

Cleveland has a clear track record of fixing. In this case, it might just be health. Is Cleveland good at keeping pitchers healthy? Not necessarily. Are they bad at pitchers healthy? Not necessarily. Are they bad at keeping them healthy? Not necessarily. Is anyone good at that? Where does

he have Espino? He has Espino at three and 51 within his top 100. I hear really good things about Espino. He can really spin it. Gavin Williams based on the Keith Law Guardians rankings, is the second best pitching prospect in that organization right now.

And he's definitely a guy that if you didn't follow the 2021 draft, I have not seen his name a lot. And Morris is hurt. Yeah, he's going to get more opportunities. You hear more about Logan T. Allen, too, than you do about Williams. At least I have to this point. So keep that in mind as well if you're playing that long, long game. I have to this point. So keep that in mind as well.

If you're playing that long, long game to some extent, um, an eye on the major league park could be as useful, you know, because I have some shares of Matthew liberatory. Right. And I don't like,

he's a sinker guy. He's not like, you know, the, the, the, the, the profile everyone's looking for a ride ball and all this and that,

and this, however, he's going to have a nice park waiting for him, you know, when he gets there. the profile everyone's looking for, ride ball and all this and that and this. However, he's going to have a nice park waiting for him when he gets there. And I know for certain that he has his own people he trains with, that he has his own approach to his own career and where it's going and what he's going to do with the shapes of his pitches. So even if I don't know that St louis has great uh you know player development

there's a nice home park waiting for him i mean like on the extremes that's pretty obvious but it's why you know part of why like edward cabrera it's part of yeah it's a much softer landing spot it's just a you can get away with mistakes a lot easier in a park like that especially with the defense the cardinals have have put together behind their pitching staff as well. Thanks a lot for that question, Kerry. It tells you a little bit about how we think of player development and what we think. Oh, yeah, the Cardinals, they're all devil magic. They turn out good pitchers.

They have a nice home park. Well, yeah, they have a nice home park. If they play good defense and they've got a Hall of Fame catcher behind the plate too. Yeah, too. Yeah, right. All the things that we look at to evaluate pitchers a lot of times strip out defense and those kinds of factors. It's a huge factor for how they have success. Neutralizing for park, well, that would also be a problem because they're in that park, and we know how that park plays i like elizio hernandez but you know he would be

he already has a homer problem can you imagine if you was somewhere else oh i can imagine if you were in colorado or cincinnati it would be very very bad yankees ends up trading for him yeah lots of ways it could go wrong. But thank you for that question, Kerry. Lots of great questions on this episode. Keep the questions coming. Ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. I know we don't get to all of them, but it's always nice to have them as food for thought as we put together our

rundowns on Twitter. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. Get a subscription to The Athletic. $1 a month for the first six months. That's the deal that's going on right now. The screen is wrong. The man's voice is right. In this case,

I am telling you it is $1 a month for the first six months. If you go to the athletic.com slash rates and barrels, the best deal that we run throughout the year dollar a month is pretty good. That's going to do it for this episode of rates barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.