Rates & Barrels - Draft Strategy & Thinking Ahead

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Rundown2:02 How To Determine Draft Order Preferences (KDS)9:39 Taking Risks for Overall Titles17:01 Game Theory w/Early-Round Selections22:35 Discipline w/In-Season Drops28:13 Balancing Risk & Reward with In-Season Pickups34:07 Building the Right Pitching Staff40:12 Monitoring the Schedule on a Weekly Basis46:42 Beer of the Month Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 73. It's February 28th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is a Friday. It is the Friday of Labor Weekend. We are recording from a Marriott in Clearwater, I think. I hope. I don't really know where I am, to be completely honest. It's sort of this little island. And it's not actually an island, so that makes it... America's butthole. No, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. That's rude. People are from here and they like it. I don't know. The beaches are nice. And Dunedin, downtown Dunedin was great. The brewery there. And St. Pete, last night I went out on the town.

And you'll hear a little bit more about it in Beer of the Month at the end of the program. But right where we are, not my favorite place. No, same here. I think we're just kind of in between a few good towns. Yeah, exactly. We I think we're just in between a few good towns. We'll make our way around in the next few days. If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the time to do that. We'd greatly

appreciate it. And if you're listening to the show for the first time, you can get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. So we're going to talk about draft strategy on this episode. It seems prudent to do that since the Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational started up this week. Eno, you just knocked out an online championship league with the NFBC while you were down here in Florida.

So we're going to talk about some different things like KDS and how to build your team and how to plan for the amount of streaming that you're probably going to have to do in a smaller mixed league like that. Obviously, the streaming concepts apply to 15-team leagues as well, but I think one of the key differences between a 12 and a 15 is being willing to turn over maybe even the bottom half of your roster, not being too glued to the players that you invested in on draft day. So as you kind of get ready for a draft for the NFBC and for a lot of formats, you get to actually set up your draft preferences.

KDS is Kentucky Derby style. I did not know what that stood for. I think in the Kentucky Derby, you rank your gate priority and then it's a lottery to see which gate you get because certain gates are a little better than others. Anyway, it's the same kind of thing for our draft position you rank all the draft positions the system draws a name and you get your highest available draft position previously i think you mentioned that you were okay with just going 1 to 12 or 1 to 15 but it kind of sounds like your mentality about that has changed yeah you know i did a very simple analysis where I just added up that projected auction values

for 1 and 30 and 2 and 29. Did I do that right? Is it 1 and 31? I don't know, whatever. You know what I'm saying. The first two picks, I added up all the first two picks for everybody and they were within a dollar of each other.

And in fact, there was like, you know, sort of third or fourth, there was like 64.30 was the peak value for the first two. And then the bottom value was like $63.20. So I was just like, this doesn't matter. You know, people like we're not, we're not, we don't know things down to 80 cents. You know, like, like this doesn't matter. Like, this doesn't matter. But then I had an online conversation with Ariel Cohen,

who reminded me of a piece that once I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, I remember this. And what he did was just look at all the NFBC teams that he could find. He had a pretty good sample. And what he found was just generally winners and top finishers came from the middle and i think that the theory was what we talked about it was that you can adjust you can adjust to runs you can adjust the draft better you're not waiting 30 picks basically or whatever it is my i can't do math right now anyway um so uh i think he might be right. And another way, and I know this is just anecdotal because, you know, we're just in draft season and I can refer to an actual draft that I'm doing. But I got the 14th pick because I just, you know, put out there sort of 1 into some issues, I think, where just so much happens between picks that I feel a little bit alone on an island. I feel a little bit like I can't adjust.

I can't, you know, I don't like, I don't know what to do. Um, and so, uh, uh, or I just, I feel helpless. Like I'll just have a queue and it just gets decimated because I'm just waiting so long. So, um, I think that might be right. I think there might be something to it where I think my real priority, I think I'd still want one because I, from everywhere I look, Trout is like like $3 or $4 more than the second best players in the game. And so I really want to either have one or maybe something like,

and then five through 10 in the middle and then maybe take 15 because there is some value to two in a row and then fill in the rest, I some value to two in a row, and then fill in the rest, I think. That would be my ideal KDS, I think. I think I'm a little bit less math-driven in my approach to KDS. I think I look at it where if you look at recent drafts that are the same style,

so if you're going to play Maine, look at a 15-team ADP report from NFBC. If you're going to play online championship, look at 12s. Start to map out some of your options through the first four to five rounds. Look at different foundations that you could realistically build and run through the exercise from all different positions, an early, a middle, and a late. I think you might find that your strategy, based on the players you like, actually changes where you want to be in the draft order in any given year because of where certain clusters of players tend to go. Now, things can unravel quickly. Any room can be unique enough to just totally break ADP and you're left scrambling. So a lot of that comes back to just being prepared, having your homework done, and just being flexible with what you do. But I'm drafting from the five spot in TGFBI, and that was pretty low in my priority list.

So it's kind of interesting that I ended up in a spot that you think is pretty desirable, and it's turned out to be just fine. I ended up taking Betts in the first, Sale in the second, before we knew he was going to miss opening day. But it's pneumonia. It's not an arm problem, so it's probably not going to be a lengthy absence. Javier Baez was there for me in the third, Machado in the fourth, Rizzo in the fifth, and Tommy Pham in the sixth. I'm light on pitching with that foundation, but I think you can map it out about that far and say, you know what, when I'm in the eighth position, I like being there because I'm not as vulnerable to starting pitcher runs or speed runs or later on maybe closer runs. In leagues with no trading especially, you have to be really good at knowing when those are going to happen, especially if you're on an end. Because if you have the wheel, you make back-to-back picks at 12 or back-to-back picks at 15, and something runs off the board in the 20-plus picks

that are going to happen before your next one, you're kind of up a creek without a paddle. That can definitely happen, too. I can think of a couple places in my draft where it's already happened. I went Arenado first at 14 in mine, and Buehler around the horn. The reason I did that was I identified what I thought five starting pitchers that were cut above everybody else and didn't really have question marks and were worth being sort of first or second round pitchers. And I thought Bueller was on that list and I wasn't sure that people after him would be. So I thought I'm going to get Bueller and then

I'll just peace out on pitching for a little bit and get a bunch of hitters. That ended up being what I did. But because I chose Buehler in the second, and because I'm a little bit worried about the second base pool this year, right after that, in the next 30 picks, Albies, Torres, Quetel Marte, and Jose Altuve went. And even though it would have been too early

to take any of those four second basemen at 17, I'm really good at math today. Yeah, you're a player. So it would have been too early to take any of those second basemen at 17. All of a sudden, the top second basemen are off the board. We've talked about how I don't like Jonathan Villar here. So all of a sudden, I have a choice when it comes back to me

what to do about second is already in my head. And so I already feel like, wow, how did this draft get so crappy on me so quick? And it's funny because everybody goes on Twitter and they feel like, this is amazing, I'm doing the best. Look at my lovely team, I'm so in love with it. I was already after two picks feel like, this is amazing. I'm doing the best. You know, this is, look at my lovely team. I'm so in love with it. I was already, after two picks, being like, what the crap? Like, what is happening?

So I felt George Springer fell too far when I got back into the third. But I was already thinking about second base. And I knew that Team 15 didn't have a pitcher. And he went Clevenger-Knoller, and I kind of expected that. I didn't expect necessarily those two pitchers, but I expected a two-pitcher turn, which is what he did. And then I went Keston Hura in the fourth round, which may be a reach by values.

He was sort of in there, but I knew he wouldn't come back to me. Right. And one thing I also am thinking about, and this is sort of TGFBI specific, but also NFBC, is that there is a league crown in these types. And I don't know how many other people play in these types of situations, but there is a league crown and then there's an overall crown. And if you want the overall crown, you need a lot of things to go right beyond just the

kind of stuff that wins you games, wins you leagues. You need all your young players to pop. You need like, you need all your pitchers to pop. And so I thought going in, I'm going to be kind of an upside drafter in this one. I did end up with Springer and Goldschmidt who are a little bit more, you know, veteran, you know, maybe more downside than I wanted. But Hura for me was like, I don't know if this this was a reach it might be a little bit early to be taking a player that you sort of, I like that guy and I want him, but in the fourth round there I was like, I don't really

want to be in the Muncie Moustakas group and Kevin BG on a batting average league, as much as I like him, I don't want to depend on him so I'd already sort of been like, you know it's going to be Hura, and so I maybe I got forced into that by being in the 14. Or maybe it was just overreacting to the second base pool.

Or maybe it's a good pick. I don't know. What do you think? I think Hira is a pretty good pick. He went in the 3-4 turn in my draft. So the team in the 15th position took him with the second of their two picks. And I was in the 14 and I took him in the second one. I took him the same turn.

I think here's why it makes sense. It's more of a game theory thing. That team started with Nolan Arenado. You started with Nolan Arenado. I've talked about my concerns about Fernando Tatis Jr. Not that I don't think he's a good player, but that I think you can build a more stable foundation without him

and still get that high variance. To still get that upside. To still get the potential for more than what you paid for from other players. I'm more comfortable doing that starting at the 3-4 turn. I think in the first two rounds especially, you just don't want to screw it up. If you have to pick a lane between being aggressive or being conservative in the first two rounds, being conservative early makes sense, and starting to open it up and take shots where appropriate makes a lot of sense.

We've talked about Hira as a player who's probably going to cut the K rate in this first full season. Last season was a partial two-thirds sort of year, but the K rate is probably coming His batting average inflated versus his K rate last year, but he can improve the K rate and still have a decent batting average. That's sort of what I think is going to happen. Right. He can offset some of the flukiness that happened last year with basic skills gains that are reasonably easy to project for him. Because in the minor leagues, he had like 18% strikeout rates and stuff.

He didn't have this big 30. And I don't think that just because he had 30 in his rookie season means he's going to have a 30 again. But I think the thing that you hit on a little bit was that you knew he wasn't going to come back to you. And you felt like there was a pretty big drop in value at the position especially whereas the depth at other positions was so good that you weren't really giving a lot up that you could wait at third base or first base or outfield or other spots but guess what happened there was another run in the next 30 and it was on speed victor robles, Tommy Pham, Ramon Laureano, Whit Merrifield, Luis Robert, VR, I don't know, Bichette, you know, there was a lot of speed went in four or five, right? And again, I'm on the

outside being like, you know, okay, so far, I have like 15 to 20 stolen bases between Hero and Springer, you know, like, that's it it and they just all the kind of 20s and 30s just went and so already in my head I'm like ah stolen bases which I think to be fair everyone this year is kind of like where am I getting the stolen bases from and so on my next pick I took Anderson and Goldschmidt you know hoping for 15 to 20 again. Right. And so my general strategy in a lot of leagues has been 15 and 20 to death. Just get a bunch of guys, 15 and 20, try to get a bunch of them and add up. But in my NFBC online championship, I had that same strategy. Uh, and I ended up with, uh, we counted up maybe 80 steals plus Kyle Tucker on the bench.

And that's going to be a 12-team league, so they're going to expect maybe 120 stolen bases to be above average. That would be above average, because we were looking at the TGFBI league I was in last year, and 120 would have been more like top three in that league. In a 15-team league. So you're going to need more than 12. I might be last in steals 15 team league so you're gonna need more last in steals you might be and i did the 15 and 20 strategy so that's getting in my head on tgfbi

now and so what did i do and this is a little bit jumping down further in the draft what did i do just now i made a big boo-boo i made a mistake i picked malik smith oh yeah the you you will only regret that i mean we've talked about him as one of those bad speed sources where job loss is a concern uh the lack of power is a major concern the fact that he could be a nine hitter and a bad lineup in the al that drives down the runs i mean there's god it's he doesn't show up well on the auction calculator because overall when you add it all up, it's not worth it. But it was a category play for me. We're talking the 12th round now.

And I got an attaboy in the draft room and was like, I don't know, man. It's not what I feel good about. And then here's the way I'm going to mitigate it. I'm going to hope that I get 20 or 30 stolen bases before he loses his job. I'm going to 15 and 20 this position to death still after this. I've got a queue full of, and I can't state their names, I guess, but I've got a queue full of guys who are going to steal 10 to 15 that I'm still going to pick going forward.

I built a good power base with Paul Goldschmidt, Wilson Contreras, Keston Hero, Tim Anderson, Nolan Arenado, George Springer, Michael Conforto. So I feel like, hey, I've got the power to take this shot, and I'm going to do some 15-15 guys going forward. I'm going to try and get a lot of stolen bases, and maybe it won't hurt so much when Malik Smith loses his job, because we're just sort of assuming it. And by the way, I think this uh sort of a there's an associated

group of sleepers that because of malik smith are interesting kyle lewis beats the snot out of the ball his his strikeout rate is bad but he beats us not out of the ball and jake fraley um is kind of an okay all-around guy uh that can kind of do a lot of a lot of everything and might be kind of like a 15-15 guy in center. So, you know, I think that's associated with that. And maybe I'll do something about that at the very end of the draft and try to cover my investment a little bit. But, you know, I think both of these things that happened kind of had a little bit to do with the shape of a draft.

And I don't, you know, the pitching for me, I actually feel pretty good about this ace and take a while off because my pitching is Buehler, Soroka, Ken Giles, and Jesus, Jesus Lozardo. So if I've got the Jesus lizard and Walker Buehler, like, I feel like, you know, I'm, I've got a good staff. I feel really good about it, even though it's only four pitchers, like, you know, they're all really good. Um, and I think I can keep doing that. So overall, I guess I, I feel okay about it, but you know, already a little really good. And I think I can keep doing that. So overall, I guess I feel okay about it. But, you know, already a little bit of a wobble in the draft, you know, starting in pick two, you know. And normally you want to feel like, you know, I think for the first four or five rounds,

I think you want to feel like you're just taking the best players, you know, and then you'll figure it out later. That's mostly how I felt. There was only one spot early where I had to do something that seemed a little bit against the grain with regard to how I've got players ranked for this season, and that was the sail pick in round two. And I think when you're near an end, but not on the end, you do have to pay close attention to the people next to you. You might not have the luxury of knowing their tendencies, but you can look at the grid and see what they did first.

Now, coming through the second round, obviously the four people who picked ahead of me, they all had hitters. So I knew that coming back through with their second and third round picks, they were going to get a pitcher. And three of the four owners did take a pitcher. One skipped pitchers entirely. So I said, I've got to take Sale here if I definitely want to lock him in, and the hitters

coming back are going to be fine there's going to be a javi baez a xander bogarts an alberto mondesi if i want to chase speed or springer there and who did you miss out on hitting wise you missed out on gliver torres yeah the hitters that went between those two turns so i took sale judge went torres went el tuve pete alonso and Ozzie Albies. I do like Albies quite a bit. I think he was one of the guys that if he'd fallen there, Albies versus Baez would have been a really tough call for me because of the second base depth concerns and because if I had passed on Baez,

that would have left me some options later that I really like. Carlos Correa, Corey Seager. We talked about it in the shortstop breakdown. There's so many players kind of in that 100 to 150 range at shortstop that you're perfectly content to use as your regular shortstop, and there's so much depth. You can go MI and UT with shortstops this year too, which is something that, frankly, I just never thought I would say.

But that was the game theory thing that I had to decide on that I really hadn't thought about prior to being in the TGFBI. I was like, okay, how much am I willing to push Sale based on how I feel about him compared to Bieber and Snell and Strasburg since there were six starting pitchers off the board when I came up with my pick in round two? Yeah, so in my online championship, I thought there was another thing that stuck out for me. This is the league where I'm not sure I have enough stolen bases. And for my speed, I have Altuve, Tim Anderson, Eddie Rosario might steal five.

I'm going to mention him. Kyle Tucker again. Brian Reynolds might steal five. Colton Wong. Harrison Bader. And that's about it. And so that's not enough steals. And I'm just going to have to think about it.

I want to say two things about this draft, though. So Jose Atube, I took him. And I took him in the fourth round. That's cheap. As the third second baseman off the floor. So I felt like, like okay you know uh if you're gonna let the who supposedly is the first uh by projections we talked about why we might not buy the stone base projections but who's supposedly a 20 player i've taken soto arenado

jordan alvarez i need to take some speed and i like, it's a little bit early for Cattell Marte. And I, you know, Victor Robles, I don't, I'm not that big into him because of the bad ball stats are pretty bad. So, you know, I was like, sure, I'm gonna take it. And there have I've had some conversations online with people who were saying his sprint speed, especially in the first 10 feet was still elite. And you know, they think he's going to steal bases so you know this is the kind of thing when a 12 team i'm like okay if i'll two base steals 20 this year i'm in a lot better position you know and and then i'm only a few stolen base and tucker plays i'm in a lot better position but someone also commented that they didn't think that i did a good bench strategy

in this 12 teamer um and it's fair because my bench right now is Kyle Tucker, Michael Kopech, Kyle Tucker, J.D. Davis, James Paxton, Nathan Yvaldi, Mitch Hanager, and Austin Voth. Now, if you're counting along at home, that's Kopech, Paxton, and Hanager at the very least, and maybe Davis. That's four players on my bench that are hurt or coming back from being hurt or not playing to begin the season. And he was saying, like, you need to be flexible.

You need to be churning in a 12 team. And I understand that. But I am not married to Nate Eovaldi. I am not married to Austin Voth. There are guys in my lineup right now, like Spencer Turnbull and Sandy Alcantara and Ryan Helsley that may end up just being early streamers, people that I have early and don't hold on too long, people that I get rid of when I see a better matchup somewhere. So I think I sort of baked this in. I wanted

ceiling. So Paxton is already throwing, and he might be back in April. And so that's worth the ceiling for me. If I don't end up holding on to somebody like Mitch Handegar, I'm not going to cry about it. He's not probably going to solve my stolen base situation. So I think that I still have the same flexibility. I'm just going to try and start with the churning with Eovaldi and Voth, you know, rather than try and start with Paxton. And if I get to the point where I have to drop Hanegar,

I have to drop Hanegar. I mean, we're still four weeks away from opening day. The first week of the season's a partial week. Fab runs on that Sunday. I think it's fine to have players that you think, hey, you know, if Ryan Helsley wins the Cardinals' fifth starter job or if he's their closer, I caught lightning in a bottle. If he doesn't, he's the first guy off my roster.

Hanager, too. We don't really know much about his recovery right now, so it's okay to take those chances. I think the discipline required to be a good player in shallow leagues is cutting them loose, not thinking about what's going to happen when they come back, but saying they're not ready, they don't have the role right now, I need someone getting starts, I need someone getting playing time,

and just being willing to let them go, knowing that you do have a shot to get them back later in fab once they're healthy, and if someone else gets them, so be it. There's going to be other players that come by in a 12-team league that are good. J.D. Davis is cuttable, right? If he has a shoulder injury and he's out a month, like, he's just cuttable, man. I don't have to be sad about it. He's not going to, again, he's not going to solve my Stone Bay situation.

And I think you can do a little bit of Stone Bay streaming. I made a little reference to that. The Mets, for example, have Wilson Ramos behind the plate and Noah Syndergaard, who's given up like 35 steals a year. And this guy, guy like just does not keep guys on base and so the combination of that makes it fairly easy to say oh look Washington's playing uh you know the Mets early on if uh you know in a 12 team guys like uh Castro or uh Estrubo Cabrera who don't steal a lot of bases when you sum it all up. If they get five stolen bases this year, then three of them might have been because of Mets.

You know what I mean? So there's some opportunity to kind of stream for category needs and 12-teamers and just generally churn your roster and be hunting that U-word because it's a 12-teamer. And that's one of the reasons i don't like it as much you know because the pressure is so hard on getting stars in a start like the league is all stuff oh they're all great players you know i'd rather i'd rather they're all relevant to me rather than just the top x percent you know and uh and so you know it's a little bit it is a little bit harder for for me sometimes to win in these 12-teamers where I'm like, wow, I have to cut this decent player because I think that this other player might be better.

You know, it's a kind of, I'd rather kind of be, like, spot a guy who's a starter who no one else would have as a starter who no one else thought was a starter. Like, Anthony, like, picking out, like, knowing Anthony Discofani was going to be a fine Major League starter when a lot of prognosticators said he wouldn't be, that gives me juice, you know? He's not amazing. He's not amazing. I'm not telling you that he's a star, but he's a starter, you know? I was thinking about this after listening to some podcasts on the way here. I was listening to Sleeper and the Bust because I was looking for pitchers in the 40 to 60-ish range,

and they had an episode for exactly that. It was Sporer and Mason, and they had Nick Pollock on, so I was like, this is exactly what I need for a DGFBI right now. So they changed my mind on a few guys, and one interesting thing that Nick said during that episode, it was about how there were so many quality starting pitchers that emerged over the course of the year on the wire and it makes things as true every year but think about lance lynn this time last year did anybody actually

want lance lynn going into texas especially with the old version of arlington um you know frankie montas it was an al labor reserve pick by Colton and the Wolfman last year. If you start to look back at where some of this year's second tier and third tier starters came from, they were last year's waiver pickups. Max Freed, a guy that I had an NL labor as a reserve a year ago. I mean, I reaped the benefits of a big chunk of what his breakout is. Like, if he gets up to ace level, then there's still more profit this year. But finding those guys early in the season is really important. Like, the first month of fab is critically important to making sure that you're not missing something that the market as a whole may have missed.

If you see guys buried outside the top 480p, it doesn't mean they're not going to have value. It just means the collective approach to valuing players is overlooking them for one reason or another. Sometimes it's playing time, sometimes it's skills. I just think it's really interesting to see how many of these guys that we are chasing now in the mid-rounds were basically undraftable in mixed leagues this time a year ago.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's something that's been important to my journey as a fantasy player, like getting better, has been a better in-season strategy. I remember famously my first FAAB run in labor. That's this weekend. first FAAB run in labor that's this weekend I spent 24 out of my $100 of

FAAB on Brandon Maurer and I was just convinced that he just won a starting role in Seattle he had a high spin curveball you know at the time I was just learning about spin rates and I thought I was out in front of everybody and I knew all my

stuff and you know I was the pitching guy and I'm going to front of everybody, and I knew all my stuff, and I was the pitching guy, and I'm going to get Brandon Mauer, and he's going to be great. And I think we looked at the game log, and in the first week, he had two starts that tallied up about six innings together, and he gave up 14 runs. I mean, you're going to make mistakes. That killed my season. That was already killing my season.

I'm so far behind. I've just given up 14 runs in six innings and the worst part was we looked and he had like one good start after that i might have kept him on for another run where he gave up like 18 runs in three starts just like oh man that was terrible and so you know i don't know the process was was so terrible because i thought you know i i this is a guy who's going to start. I need a starter. I had a need coming out of the draft, and this guy's going to do it. And so I went big.

But judging by the fact that the second bid was like $5, just learning how people FAB, how the people in your league FAB, how the people in your format FAB, like how much is a top draft, like how much is a top pick, like a top FAB worth in terms of investment? Like, you know, figuring that out in TGFBI was interesting for me too because all these like big rookies that come up, you know, we that someone would spend 50% of their free agent acquisition money on one player. But I think if you're good at taking smaller shots, I think you can afford to take a big swing here and there. I think you just want to be very careful about what type of player you're going to do that with. When it was Keston Hira, a guy with a great hit to a power speed,

30% of the fab budget made sense. Austin Riley, I mean, a guy that brings a lot of power. I think you could justify it. Well, his flaws, people already knew that he was flawless. His flaws were clear. Like, you could see level to level as he got first promoted, he struggled a bit, and then after some time, he kind of figured it out and produced at a much higher level.

Brendan Rodgers, when you're talking about a guy that could have been an everyday player in Coors, if not for that shoulder injury, those types of players, I think, are worth heavier fab bids. So I think the key to being successful in fab is being able to look ahead at the schedule and saying, hey, you know what? In a week, this guy's going to face the Marlins. So I'm going to go ahead and pick him up now, stash him on my bench, use him, cut him loose. And just kind of being one week ahead on two start weeks and being one week ahead on really nice matchups, you can save some money. Now, the only way that's going to work in a league that doesn't have IL spots

is not stashing too many injured players. So your roster management in season. Ah, so you think I screwed up. No, I don't think you screwed up because you took the chances on the guys you want. What's going to happen though, if you hold them too long, you're going to have to make those hard decisions. That's where you might screw up later. That's where I think if you have the discipline to cut all those guys loose, if they don't

get the roles you want, you're fine. As long as you're actually going through that turn. But if we get close to the season and the Mariners say, oh, Hanager's going to be ready in about two weeks, and you sit there and say, oh, man. I can make it, I can make it, I can make it. I'm fine, I can wait two weeks, and you wait on him, and you've already got Paxton, who you have to wait for

for at least a couple of weeks. I could get into some trouble. Kopek goes to the minors. It's still, you know, with discipline, though, you can get there, I think. And, you know, these types you can get there i think and and you know these types of players came at a massive discount like i just need to find where i got paxton i got paxton in the 18th round that's a really big discount we were talking to derrick

cardi last night about that it was pretty clear that he based on the projections for paxton especially thinks that the market is overcorrecting for this particular injury. Right, and he seems to be fine, but then you have the sort of accumulation of all his injuries where you're like, this is not just this one thing. He's been injured a lot, and he doesn't give a lot of innings. But we've also talked about here on this show about how there's only going to be five or six guys that have 200 innings.

And so 130 and 140 become more valuable, especially if they're good innings. So, you know, I took McCullers Jr. before him. Which of these guys are going to have more innings? I have no idea. Yeah, that's a really tough call. I mean, I think they're going to be pretty close for different reasons. And that was one of the things the sleeper and the Bus guys were talking about. I think they were a little bit divided on how exactly they wanted to handle him.

Nick was on the side that said, Don't draft an injured pitcher? He's just trouble. With McCullers, this was the point he made that I thought was pretty interesting. If you're going to project him for 130 innings, tell me how those innings are going to show up. Are they going to give him some short starts in their bullpen? Are they going to skip him? Are they going to give them some short starts in their bullpen? Are they going to skip them?

Are they going to front load them? Yeah, and that was a fair point because it's – They could even have like an option left. They could option them down and just let it happen that way. So I think it's a pretty tough exercise to go through because you have to think about managing players in season. And this came up on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast, the Under the Radar episode.

Nando threw a toss-up at Ian and I, and he said, Herman Marquez or Joe Musgrove? And for toss-ups, usually I just look at my rankings and talk about the player I rank higher, and that's what I do. But that one stopped me for a second because of Marquez. Format. Yeah, it's format. So if we're thinking like a 12 or a 15-team mixed league,

I'm not just going to let Marquez sit in my lineup every single start. I'm going to try and duck the home starts. There's a major flaw with all rankings. I'm trying to do dynasty rankings right now, and thank you guys for asking about it. I'm going to try and do it. It's just really hard to do dynasty rankings because, like, I'm going to try and do it.

It's just really hard to do dynasty rankings because, like, are you winning now? And you're willing to trade your prospects for win now? Or are you rebuilding? The rankings are going to look drastically different. And I was just thinking, I used to play 12- and 15-team Yahoo leagues. And Yahoo is a lot of times it's, like, daily lineups instead of weekly. And it makes sense to have, you know, a of like six starting pitchers and then herman marquez becomes immensely valuable because you can slot them in for the away games you know uh and you can play around with that and and you

you don't get really penalized for it because it's daily and you kind of you have this like you have this bench full of matchup plays it's almost like best ball or something where you're like i'm only using these guys when in certain situations you know and that's how i used to play but now uh just because of the industry like i've been gravitating towards nfbc tgfbi like 15 team weekly lineups and that's a whole totally different thing where i'd rather not have i'd rather have musgrove because he's more likely to be in my lineup on any given week. I kind of think of pitchers in a couple different buckets and one

of those buckets is like a crockpot pitcher. Someone you just set and forget. And I think you can have hopefully in your roster, if you have nine active pitching spots in your league, which is pretty standard at this point, you'd probably want to have at least four of the starters as crockpot starters,

guys that you just don't take out outside of Coors. I don't know if crockpots are different at Elevation. I know cooking instructions for things change as you go to Denver. I haven't tried to put anything in a crockpot in Denver before, so let me know if that breaks down because of the Coors stuff. But I think you only want to have a couple of spots where you have to tinker because your bench is only so big. And if you have too many innings cap guys, too many McCullers types, too many Lizardos, too many guys that are in and out because of innings caps

and matchups, you end up having to make more tough cuts than you need to, more than you want to anyway. And that starts to work against you too, because then you start to fall short in innings. When you fall short in innings, you fall short in strikeouts and you fall short in wins. And you're kind of capping yourself as like a mid-pack standings person in those two categories. So then it becomes really difficult to win your league because you're already capping yourself at six or seven points in two of the five pitching categories. Yeah, yeah.

And with this high variance pitching strategy that I had in this particular 12 team, Manola, Glasnow, Carrasco, McCullers, Paxton, Alcantara, Kopech, Turnbull. I think my work is set out for me. Like, I don't have a lot of crockpot. I have Nola. Carrasco's a crockpot pitcher for me. Yeah, I mean, when he's healthy. Yeah.

And Glassnow is, too, when he's healthy. Yeah, yeah. There's a fair amount of injury risk. There's a fair amount of, like, Alcantara, maybe I want to bench him away from home. You know, Turnbull might be a home play versus a road play. So there's a fair amount of risk in this one. I have my work cut out for me.

And also, I wasn't even going to talk about this one. You know, clerk's voice. I wasn't even supposed to be here today. Because I wasn't going to talk about this one. the what the when did i schedule it for i landed here in florida before like three or four days before any anybody's coming to this first pitch thing because i wanted to do some interviews i went to philly's camp i went to blue jays camp and uh i landed and i was like that night i I'm going to have no responsibilities really. And I'm going to be on West Coast time. So let me do my first NFBC ever, you know, the $350 Roto-Wire Online Championship.

And I'm not going to tell anybody I'm doing it. And I even considered using a pseudonym and like trying to really do it incognito just to get my feet wet. And I fully expected I would make mistakes. Even if doing TGFBI does not prepare you for this sort of thing. Plus, it's a 12-teamer. I haven't done a 12-team draft in a really long time. So I expected all that to happen, but it wasn't filling. So you were panicked.

I panicked. You were pretty sure. You're like, oh, I signed up for this, and now I'm not going to get a draft in. But I wanted to get the draft in, so I tweeted about it. Ah, so people smell blood. And so then somebody joined the draft, and I swear to God he was using my pitching ranks. Because he was right before me, Team 8. I was Team 9.

Right before me, he took Cindergard, Woodruff,ardo rodriguez matthew boyd uh yanni chirinos like he was like reading my ranks dude i was so many times i was mad at him it was crazy um so anyway what were you gonna use for your name like how are you gonna mason saunders yourself like what's your i don't know what's your al know which is the most madison bum garner thing possible like that's that's more to his core than the dirt bike accident well i don't need to tell i i have a i have another last name which i don't i don't really want to tell people yeah don't tell people that but i can't tell you about my middle name that i might have used as my first name, which is Kama, which is interesting because K-A-M-A, from the Kama Sutra, sex is my middle name. And to make this even more awkward, I once asked my mom, who gave me a copy of the Kama Sutra when I was in middle school.

I said, Mom, is this book all about sex? And she's like, yeah, you know, positions and stuff. And I was like, God! Mom, is my middle name sex? And she goes, no. It's the fulfillment of all desires. And I'm like, that's so weird, Mom.

That is so weird. That is so weird. We gotta have your mom on the pod yeah oh no mom i love you i'm not i don't think you're i mean yes you're weird i'm weird weird is good so if you if you listen that far don't feel don't feel it's a great life it's a great name i love my name don't worry about we're in the 40th minute i don't think mom makes it no no no no he's you're right she kind of listens the beginning to see how we're doing i'm doing well yeah i'm doing well mom i know like she she got on you for not asking me so i just stopped asking

you a while back i very rarely ask how you're doing on the pod anymore for that reason wow so okay that that i didn't even know that about you so i'm i'm a little bit uh on my back foot right now i'm a little surprised that was that was that used used to be like a line for me I use it as a line sometimes I'm I don't know should I be proud of that or not proud I don't know it worked a couple times so there you go Wow all right yeah so we, have we, look at our topics. Have we done all our topics? Yeah, let's go back to the outline. Let's gather ourselves here. Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of did. Like, the differences between 12s and 15s is something I talked about with Vlad Sedler a couple weeks ago.

And he's done really well in a lot of formats, but he crushes the 12s. Really? And that was the main takeaway I had in that conversation was just that he has the discipline to move away from players and really value volume within a week. Weekly projections and weekly schedules are really important. My favorite tool that I probably used it for a long time because I help populate data for it, Rotowire does the projected starters grid.

That's what they've always called it and you can look at who's going where which pitchers are pitching where for up to about 14 days at a time nice so you can look at how many team games there are you can look at left righty and see different things like that so i find that really helpful for looking down the road at who projects to have a two-star week, teams that project to have maybe six or seven games when other teams might have five. I think being aware of that and really making that part of your routine when you're picking up players is a key way to get an edge really in any format. Knowing what's coming schedule-wise is going to open up a lot of interesting waiver plays

that you probably wouldn't have thought about otherwise just based on skills alone. Yeah, and I thought that actually factored into the Sandy Alcantara pick for me because I identified the Phillies-Marlins series in that short week, the four-day week that starts the season, as a place that I just wanted to get a pitcher. I don't think that the Phillies are a bad lineup, but it's just such a boost, I think, to even with the fences coming in in Florida, I still think it's going to be at least St. Louis levels, you know, if not San Francisco level.

It's going to be, it's going to depress the offense. And, you know, most of those guys have good splits. I mean, I know Yamamoto didn't, but you can just assume that they're going to pitch a little bit better in it's a it's home and b it's that park so um I think that's a that's a kind of a good edge to get if I drop Alcantara after that because I don't like his next matchup again I'm going to be looking at that sort of I'm going to be trying to be more proactive when it comes to thinking about matchups and getting ahead of that but it is interesting if you get if you think you know about matchups like you know teams are uh are changing you know

and so just because the team had a bad lineup last year especially the people who get really into it are like oh you know the Padres are bad against lefties last year well is it the same rosters the same people were they bad against lefties because you know Tassie was hurt a lot you know like is he going to be healthy the first you know, Tashees was hurt a lot, you know? Like, is he going to be healthy in the first? You know, like, you know, there are a lot of, you can get too deep into it. Like, you know, I think that park and temperature are a good place to start. And if you get beyond that, like, especially, like, you know, people talk about, like, oh, this team is good against sliders.

I don't think going that granular makes sense like a pitch type because your slider and my slider are not the same yeah like the hitters tell me that they're just they're just not the same yeah like is andrew miller's pitching right now there's like like does andrew miller and masahiro tanaka's you know slider they have anything to do with any each other like they're like exact opposites you know it's righty lefty it's sweeping it's it's more like a small baby hook from tanaka you know what i mean like they're not at all the same thing so yeah just saying a team is good against or bad against sliders i don't think it's very useful but but looking at the schedule looking at when you know two starts happen especially two starts in good parks like that is something that i plan

to do heavily with this roster considering how much injury risk there's already on it, considering what you're saying about making sure I get the IP. I think in the future, I didn't want to talk about too much of labor strategy. Hi, Glenn, and hi, Rick. I didn't want to give

away my secrets before the labor draft. You're drafting tonight, and I think we're going to maybe sit in, sit in on each other's drafts and, and offer any sort of, uh, things that we spot in the room. Um,

uh, and so once we get that done, we can also talk about our auction strategies with, uh, with concrete examples. So it won't be so much like I'm hoping to do this or I like to do this. It'll be, I did this.

And maybe we can even say, well, Derek Carty did this and yeah, you know, get inside the head of some of the other strategies that we didn't use. Maybe because they foiled us, you know? Yeah.

So, um, I, I'm definitely considering lots of different things. And I, one thing that I did do, and if you have an option this weekend, I would,

I would suggest you do this. And this is without giving much away is what I call decision trees are if you have an option, this weekend, I would suggest you do this, and this is without, giving much away, is what I call, decision trees, or just like, you know, create, pick a star,

that you like, you know, and then create a roster, off of that star, just pretend like, it's almost like a mock, just pretend like, you're filling in,

your roster after that, and you'll see, the different, certain player groups, come to the fore, like when you, start with some steals, with your guy, then you can, you don't have to take, the steals only Like when you start with some steals with your guy,

then you don't have to take the steals on the guy, and you kind of have different people in different places. You might gravitate towards the same players, and that tells you something too where you're like, oh, no matter what different decision tree I did, I kind of end up with these guys a lot. So I guess I like them, and maybe I should consider them kind of targets, but not something that I'm going to be in love with and have to get.

I don't like that. But doing those decision trees. And also on the pitching side, what I did was I'm going to do a stars lineup, stars and scrubs. I'm going to do a no scrubs lineup. I'm going to do a no stars lineup and just see what kind of different pitchers I get in each of these approaches. And that gives you a good idea. And you also have three or four different ideas when you get in the draft so if one kind of falls away you you can just kind of go to one of the other plants and kind of look at the different groups of players i think that applies to drafts and auctions really because we talked earlier about being on end or being in the middle and you can look at what players are traditionally

available on the ends in the middles yeah so you can kind of set yourself up but then if runs break against you you have thought about what you're going to do. Oh, what is my plan if the top 10 closers aren't there? If I don't have Hira, if I don't have... I'm planning on drafting Trey Turner at 7 in the first round, but if he's not there and I end up taking someone who runs less or I take a pitcher in that spot, where am I going to get the bags I want?

If I'm expecting 40 bags from Turner and I don't take him him in the first round there aren't a lot of 40 steel guys so where am i going to find those 40 steals what types of players am i going to target in the early rounds like thinking through those things in advance will absolutely pay off over the course of a draft or an auction so definitely like a cross format sort of thing i think we should close things out with a beer of the week. Oh, that's right. Or beer of the month. We got the new beer of the month.

Yeah, that's not our best sound effect. I'm still used to beer of the week. The beer of the month is working out a lot better for us. You had something very local last night. Yeah, I did a little hop. I did Green Bench here in St. Pete. Actually, I just want to give a little shout-out to Eric Hamann, who was gracious enough. He used to be a Rotographs rider for me.

He's been a D-Rays Bay rider. And he is a professional shuffleboard player. That's pretty awesome. And flies around and has a custom four-part shuffleboard stick that he can like fly with and shit oh and poop um and so much better and he showed me around his shuffleboard club which is just amazing downtown st pete there's there's like there's like a lake out in front of it and there's these you know these low-hanging trees i should know what they are i used to live in the south but you know those those low-hanging trees that give you that Southern feel. And he's showing me his shuffle.

We play a little bit. He's giving me pointers. I'm like strategy and stuff. So that was great. So after that, I went to green bench, uh, and I went to cycle after that. And my two beers are from those two places from cycle. I had, I'm going to do a co-beer of the month on this one. The cycle I had hazelnut cream and sugar, which was just like a milk stout, basically, obviously. You can hear it in the name. But I just wanted to give a shout-out to hazelnuts because I love them. I love hazelnuts, like marzipan.

Is that a thing that people know about, marzipan? If they were born in the 50s, yeah. Or they have German parents, you know. Anyway, so marzipan is just like a hazelnut paste that people in Europe put into chocolate. I just love it. I think Nutella has, if you had Nutella, that's the taste I'm talking about. And it just, it was so great because it just tasted, it was just like a dessert in a glass. And it wasn't even that strong.

It was like 8%. And I just, I love that beer. But I think if I had to rank the two breweries, I might rank Green Branch ahead. Because I had a mixed firm Saison there. And what a mixed firm Saison is, basically they do some fermentation in steel, I think, or in normal vats. And that gives you kind of the regular Saison start. And then they put it in what's called a Foder. Foder? Foder?

They get those at Funk Factory. F-O-E-D-E-R. And it's just a big wooden vat. And you don't get a ton of wood like a barrel--aged, because the barrel-aged stouts are in smaller, in like whiskey, you know, a lot of times whiskey barrels. Yeah.

So they're in smaller barrels. So you get a lot more contact with the wood per average inch of beer or whatever. You want that. Yeah, you get more flavor out of it. And then you get a lot of that oak flavor and stuff, the wood flavor.

You don't get as much of that wood flavor in these mixed firm saisons, but you get a little bit. And what you do get is like a real thick saison that's tart. And they put some hops into the end, so you kind of get a little bit of the hoppy sour thing, but without it being super sour. And it's almost like a hazy IPA, too, because it's kind of thick. And it was just so good.

I mean, all the right flavors and the great mouthfeel. That was called Stead, I think. Stead was the beer. Also had a Turbid 7 from them. So Green Bench, really impressive. Cycled it too. Both of those are top shelf, now on my list probably of sort of the top 20 or so breweries I've ever been to. Like, I think they were that good.

They were really, really good. But Green Bench was a little bit ahead. been to. I think they were that good. They were really, really good. But Green Bench was a little bit ahead. I wanted to shout out Cigar City because I remember going to the Arizona Fall League for first pitch Arizona about 10 years ago. And at the time,

craft beer hadn't blown up yet. And Cigar City was some of the best stuff around. It's still very good. We had some last night. Guyabara? Is that the proper pronunciation? One of the pale ales. Highly was the first one I ever had. Well, I'm not one to ask for a pronunciation. I'll just have to say that.

And Maduro is the brown ale. So I've had a bunch of their beers over the years because they've become easy. They're pretty widely distributed now. And I just wanted to bring them up because last night when I landed in Tampa, I walked up the runway. The first thing I saw were the tap handles at the bar in the terminal. And it was Bud, Bud Light, Stella maybe, and then Highline. And I thought, okay.

That's okay. This is much better. We've reached the point where that's become so mainstream. The Beatles have to admit it's getting better. Yeah. I think there's people out there that would say, oh, well, Highline is easy to get now, so it's not as special. They signed a deal. They bought out, whatever, whatever.

It's still good beer. Yeah. It's still great beer. And if you go to the place on Spruce Street, as I did as I got off the plane, literally just going right over there, they have really good barrel-aged stuff. I don't think that that goes out as much. I don't love chili and cinnamon in my stouts,

so Hunapu is not actually my favorite, but they had a pistachio vanilla stout. I was like, this is amazing. What is this? I've never had these tastes. Yeah, that's a nice combination of any junk. I would check them out. They're worth it still. Don't let people tell you that they've

fallen off 100% because they're big or whatever. They're still doing fun things. A lot of places like these are doing fun things in their tap rooms that you don't see in their Safeway in your grocery store, even if you see Highlight in your grocery store. Yeah, that's going to be just a marker, I think, of this era of craft beer where you're going to see things that used to be rare that become a lot less rare. You've talked about Pliny.

Pliny's going to start showing up. You're going to start seeing it they doubled the double their production don't start rating pliny lower if it tastes the same as it used to just because you can find it easier now don't be a jerk like if it's if it's still great it's still great score it the same way yeah rates and barrels t-shirt don't be a jerk oh that'd be a great t-shirt. We need to get some t-shirts going. Yeah. Feel free to use the email. What is the email again?

Cratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com if you want to get us that way. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. Give us some t-shirt ideas. Yeah. Send your t-shirt ideas at Derek Van Ryper on Twitter. You got to draw them yourself using paint. Microsoft Paint, hopefully. Those will be the best submissions.

Show me what I'm a stuffist would look like on a t-shirt yes and maybe we'll start making some t-shirts if we get some good submissions we have a couple other fantasy pods we're running this season at the athletic check those out as well fantasy baseball and 15 every weekday morning and the athletic fantasy baseball podcast a lot of team shows picking up next week too so if you're a fan of a team and want to hear some great talk about that particular team, we've got about 15 shows, I believe, getting underway to begin next week. So it'll be a great week.

Thanks for listening to Rates and Barrels. We are back with you next week, hopefully with amazing labor titles. Yeah, that was my line. Thanks for listening.