Rates & Barrels - Injury Chaos Continues & A Big Weekend of Spending

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss the early exit for Tyler Glasnow on Sunday due to a shoulder issue and a new favorite emerging from the Dodgers' pitching depth as they look to round out the back of their injury-plagued rotation. Plus, an impressive return for Eury Pérez in his first rehab game, a closer change in the Bronx, and mailbag questions about being cautious with velocity increases and the slow start of Brandon Nimmo, before a look at where the money went in fantasy baseball leagues this weekend. Rundown2:04 Tyler Glasnow's Early Exit & A New Favorite in Dodgers' Depth Options?9:46 Eury Pérez Makes First Rehab Start19:31 Roman Anthony: Slowed by Foot Injury24:42 Closer Chaos Continues: Luke Weaver In for Devin Williams27:07 Did We Miss on Eugenio Suárez?29:42 A Tough Break for Luke Keaschall38:12 Worry About Velocity Risers During Draft Season?49:45 What Should We Do with Brandon Nimmo?57:01 Where the Money Went: Splashy Bids: Nick Kurtz, Jordan Beck, Agustín Ramírez & Closers on the Move Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, it's Noah Chestnut from The Athletic. If you're into games and sports, pay attention. I'm going to give you four sports terms. You tell me the common thread. Ready? Game. Match. Point.

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Welcome to Rates and Barrels to Monday, April 28th, Derrick Van Rye for Enocerous here with you. On this episode we take a look at some of the big fantasy takeaways from the weekend, lots of news, lots of injuries unfortunately, and some more turmoil on the closer carousel. It was not a surprise, but a change in the Bronx has been made, at least temporarily with their ninth inning plans. Got a bunch of great mailbag questions that have come in through our Discord. If you have not joined the Discord yet, you can do that with the link in the show description. Be sure to hit the like button if you're watching this video on YouTube and drop us a nice rating

and review if you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any platform that allows that. You know, how the weekend treats you. Pretty good. Lots of little league baseball, and we had a birthday party for the 13-year-old, and so there was kids crawling over the house on Saturday. It was pretty insane.

They were doing Nerf battles and ping pong tournaments, and whatever. I mean, it's just pandemonium. So it was fun. It was fun having a bunch of energy around the house. I watched the Warriors and it was a great game. On Saturday, it was a great game. Yeah, I didn't watch Saturday's game.

I watched a little bit of what Nick's Pistons on Sunday. It was the early game and I caught some of the disappointing Bucks Pacers game. I watched a little bit of what Nick's Pistons on Sunday. It was the early game and I caught some of the disappointing Bucks Pacers game. And once Dame got hurt, that game immediately turned. And yeah, sad. That's like a real sour note, too, because they're they're worried it's a long term injury. Yeah, that'd be a huge bummer. But we are not a hoop show. Check out No Dunks.

Check out the athletic basketball show. If you want to follow the NBA playoffs in greater detail. Let's get to some of the news and notes for today. This one of course sticks in my craw as one of the great Tyler Glasnow supporters on the planet. He left his start on Sunday with what they're calling shoulder soreness. Dave Roberts talking about it more as a concern of short term variety and IELTS didn't seems likely they have not announced it at least at the time of this recording. It's about one o'clock Eastern on Monday as we're having this conversation but this puts more strain on an already strained Dodgers rotation.

I feel like every third or fourth episode we're talking about an injury that this team is trying to deal with in that group of starting pitchers. Talked about the Blake Snell setback last week as one that's going to leave the door open for some of their back end guys. And I think we had a question in the Discord about the possibility Ben Kasparis stretching back out as a starter. That actually seems much more realistic coming off of Sunday's glass now early exit than it did just 48 hours ago. Yeah. And Casperius might be the most exciting of the group. I've, you know, had my shares of Landon Nack and he does some things well, probably better than his results have been because he's got that good kick

change, the fastballs about average and the breaking ball seem OK. But, you know, the results and especially the K minus BB have just been awful. And I don't really know that when I watch him, I'm like, this, this is a guy I need to put my stamp on and say he's going to be the next one. Robleski has been another guy that, you know, I've had shares of in my 20 team leagues, but again, the K minus BB here and in AAA and last year in the big leagues, uh, now that sort of 50, 60 ish innings, he's had a really bad K minus BBs and the stuff doesn't scream that you got to take him. So Kasparius is the guy I'm going to pick out of the group. You know, Bobby Miller, there's a great piece on baseball perspectives about not only is Bobby Miller's command worse than we thought it was coming up

and everything that Location Plus said it was, and I didn't quite believe in the smaller samples, not only is his command so bad, but his pitches are really obviously different. So you can tell them apart quickly. And that actually makes a little bit of sense. It's almost like tipping in the way you pitch as opposed to tipping in mechanically. You know what I mean? It's like your pitches are so differently shaped that everybody can see them coming. But you can kind of change that a little bit by locating your pitches in different places. If you think about it, if you have a curve ball with a big hump and you're throwing low fastballs, maybe you should throw a high fastball to hide the hump on the curveball. So I think Bob Miller needs a sort of rethinking of the entire way

that he pitches. And I recommend that piece from Baseball Protective from Mario if you can read it. But Ben Casperius is the guy who seems most ready to do things now. His stuff plus is off the charts. Even if he switches back into relief, I think it'll be able to handle it. You can see that in his last two outings that were three plus innings, he still had really excellent breaking ball stuff. Plus his fastball did go from you know hundred low hundreds to high 90s in the longer outings so he did you know have a little bit of a drop-off but I think he has such excellent breaking balls and that fastball you know around average is gonna enough. He has multiple elite breaking balls. So Kasparius is my bet for the replacement.

I'm sorry for you. I have zero shares of glass now I realize. Well, I've got them all so you couldn't. I mean, this is part of the game, right? This is the risk. This is the downside playing out. And I think the hope is that it's one of those relatively minor things where he felt something stop throwing and takes a few weeks or a month off,

comes back and is fine. That is in the range of outcomes, at least for now. I do wonder too, across all athletes, if you have some players who are just better in tune with their bodies and are quicker to shut it down when something doesn't feel right. Glass now certainly comes off as someone that might be in that boat as someone who might say this isn't good in hopes of avoiding the devastating injury, right? So maybe we'll get lucky. He was really worried about those cramps and it ends up being in a different place, but it's like, yeah, maybe he just wants to stave off the big thing, the big surgery or whatever it is.

I think the action item here for him is to wait for more information. We had AJ Puck on our main event team and he had elbow inflammation. And when he went on the IL, we decided to keep him for one week because again, over at Baseball Prospectus, they have this injury return chart

and you can click all of the things and be like, oh, what is the most likely outcome? And what we saw for AJ puck was the two most likely outcomes were two to four weeks and two to four months. And we were like, let's find out which bucket he's in. So we waited one week and we found out he's in the two to four month bucket. And so we dropped him. And I think with the shoulder soreness, the same idea, what you're going to do is you're going to wait and just wait for the next thing. Don't drop them right now. You know, wait for the next piece of information. This is the only the first piece of information. We're going to get an MRI or something like that. And there's going to be a prognosis. I think it's worth waiting for the

prognosis. The other related good news is that Tony Gonsolin is ready to come off of the IL. He had an extended rehab assignment at AAA, got all the way stretched out. He's expected to join the Dodgers rotation for his season debut Wednesday. It's a home start against the Marlins. So I think that Kasparius turn might be if they're gonna put him on the Glass Now schedule in Atlanta on Sunday. That would be the next time that Glass Now was scheduled to start, assuming that this turns into the IL stint, and it appears it will.

But Gonsolin coming back is a nice silver lining. After that, it would be at Arizona. So a pretty tough matchup. So really two tough matchups if you're trying to lean into those depth options, whereas Gonsolin gets the Marlins twice. First he gets them at home, then they go into Miami next week. Well, Gonsolin's the pickup here. I think asparagus in deeper leagues is still a pickup. Maybe if you can pick him up and leave him on your bench, that sort of stuff and watch him through

this. The reason I think that I'm still into it is that Snell's prognosis wasn't amazing either. He got backed up off of his rehab. And then I think Kershaw is just gonna take a really long time. Yeah, it seems months away. Otani, we learned, is not even throwing sliders yet. So Kasparius has a little bit of a window here where he could take a job for two months.

And that might be good enough to get him onto the roster, even in some more shallow leagues, too, given the team context and the skills that he brings to the table. Speaking of the Marlins, Yuri Perez hit 98 in his first rehab start. Certainly good to see that as he begins his process of getting back to the Marlins following Tommy John surgery since a Tommy John surgery. Since he had Tommy John surgery last April, the fact that he's even on schedule to be back maybe by the end of May, if he does the full 30 day rehab window at all indications on he's going to be close to that because they're going to bring him along very carefully. It was a one inning outing on Saturday in Jupiter.

This is one of those situations though where we always wonder coming off of TJ, does the command come all the way back? Does the stuff come all the way back? Do you get one of those two things? Do you get both? Do you get zero? At least with Perez, the first little box

and it was only the one inning is checked is like, well, the VELO's there. So this is a big step in the right direction for a Marlins team that may prove to be feisty over the course of the year as they get healthier and as they kind of figure out which of their their young bats are going to contribute on a consistent basis as well. That would be the worst max for him since 2021. So and that's a pretty small sample for Perez. I don't even know how they have data for must be spring training.

uh, for Perez, I don't even know how they have data for him. Must be spring training. So there's a chance that it's a little bit of both. He doesn't, I don't know, like I don't think he has plus plus natural command, but he's, you know, he's nowhere near, he's not like an Edwardian Cabrarian. So I think that he's most likely to be pretty good. We're also seeing from Sandy Alcantara though, that something that our doctor friend would have told us, which is that, we're not guaranteed success coming off of TJ. We've got a lot of success stories recently, but there is no guarantee of success coming off of Tommy John.

The study that Michael Mastroianni cited cited us in in his discussion of return to play found that less than half of the pitchers provided the same value in F-war after TJ. So they just didn't have the bulk. 75% of pitchers recovered to pre-injury levels and stuff plus, and 89 got there back to the location plus, but that was by three seasons after the surgery. So this is three seasons by three seasons after, you could also say only 75% even got back to their old stuff plus. You know what I mean? So, you know, we tend to think of it in binary, like did the surgery work and does their elbow is their elbow connected and like, can they pitch and if they can pitch and they can throw 98 then bam, let's go get them. Whereas there's still a risk in terms of the stuff and then the command and then

putting it all together as, as much as I think that Sandy will be okay eventually this season, I think his bumps in the road right now, 93 location plus, worst of his career, and way worse than he was even last year, just shows you that just getting back in, I prefer the year after the return. I like year two when it comes to returning from surgery. I don't necessarily rush to get them back in year one. Yeah, I mean, I think there will be cases and plenty of them to use

Yuri Perez when he's back this year because the threshold for a back-end fantasy starter is low enough where even a guy coming off of TJ that has his ceiling can make it at 70% of the way back or wherever he actually ends up falling on that scale. I think if you're in a keeper or a dynasty league, you're in that window now where things have gone well enough in the recovery, maybe you realize this isn't going to be your year. We're talking about a 22 year old. And I also think there would be a better long termterm prognosis for a younger pitcher having a TJ

versus an older one, right? So maybe the downside is a little bit lower when you have the benefit of as much time as Yuri Perez does. And even Sandy is not old, he's 29, but I think that might have a factor in those outcomes as well. The other Marlins news though is Ryan Weathers is actually working his way back from a forearm injury. Struck out six over three perfect innings on Sunday in Jupiter.

So I would almost wonder from a would you rather perspective, would you rather, if you had to set it and forget it, once they come back from their respective injuries, would you rather just throw Ryan Weathers out there consistently, or would you rather throw Yuri Perez out there given their respective skills, differences, their ceilings and the injuries they're coming back from? Given all those concerns you outlined with Sandy, do you take the lower skilled guy that has a less serious injury?

I'm going to take Yuri Perez. You put me on the line and I will, I will become the stuffest that I am. This is the best stuff of Reathers career. He has worked so hard. He's done so much to change his fastball shape and his breaking balls and everything. He's done all this work and he's got his stuff plus to 100 for the first time. So I'm gonna take Perez. I still like the changes Ryan Weathers is making.

I'm in the same bucket. I think the main reason I put Weathers on the rundown is he's probably a little more interesting than people are giving him credit for. There were some adjustments last year. We know the Marlins organization has changed a lot too. So I think you have to leave the door open for a little more improvement from Weathers

in another season with this group. There could be a little bit more for him to still do. You know, best Velo of his career, best breaking ball Velo is here. First time his breaking ball has gone over the magic number of 85. You know, he was sitting 97 on the fastball before he got hurt.

Best fastball ride of his career. You know, I think the best combination of drop and velocity on the slider. fastball before he got hurt, best fastball ride of his career. You know, I think the best combination of drop and velocity on the slider, even the change, best drop of his career on his change up, which actually started happening late last year, but he's sort of got it together. And so now he's got a four pitch mix. He's somebody worth picking up as well. Weathers was really kind of a two pitch guy in San Diego a few years ago too.

So just a kind of a clean slate for him during his time in Miami. I did see a note that George Kirby is scheduled to throw a live batting practice on Monday. So that might be happening as we speak. We'll see where things go from here, but gonna build up and probably take a pretty lengthy rehab assignment to get stretched out

given the magnitude of his shutdown. But if handled carefully, the hope is that George Kirby, because it wasn't a devastating injury, he could come back and maybe hit the ground running at some point, maybe in late May, if everything goes well. Does this provide us a possible timeline for Tyler Glassnow as well? They both started with shoulder inflammation.

You know, you have to think about that when you think about Glass now. But we want more information. We got that information for George Kirby. I think it's about time to pick him up if you see him anywhere. Yeah, if he's in a league, you know, don't have IL spots

and he's sitting out there, definitely get him now. You're gonna have to wait probably another month or so, but that's going to be worth it more likely than not. He's been shut down since March 7th for the sake of the timetable. That'd be like a two and a half month absence if that's what it turns into. Yeah, it's not great, but at least a month plus of it

is gone, so you're kind of, you'd pick him up this, maybe you pick him up this next Sunday, and you only have to wait three weeks. That could be worth it. You Darvish might be on a similar timeline timeline because you Darvish is scheduled to throw a more aggressive bullpen today. I believe he's a little bit further along than Kirby than, you know, because again, the injury wasn't as bad and the timeline seems to be set up with their moves on their

roster that they went since they optioned Kyle Hart. Like they don't really have a fifth starting pitcher right now. And they don't really have one in the minors. So it seems to me like, you know, they may have you Darvish do a second rehab stint and the rehab start in the majors. He may have a three inning start in the majors because they may need him to come up as quickly as they can because they don't have anything in the cupboard anymore. You know, they've gone to the cupboard. The good news for them though

is schedule wise, the Padres were off Monday, they're off again Thursday, and they're off again next week Thursday, so they will need a fit starter early next week in their series against the Yankees. That's on May 6th, so if they can wait until then to bring Darvish back, maybe you're right, they can bring him back at 60 or 75 pitches and lean a little heavily on the bullpen but not necessarily go all the way to the 6th, 7th, 8th starter range where they would have to find another sort of replacement. It's been tough for pitching injuries so far this year to put it mildly. I did see a note from Jen McCaffrey of the Athletic.

Roman Anthony has been slowed by a foot injury Foul to ball off his foot on Friday It has not played since at Worcester and I think this may be Delaying a potential call-up at this point also saw our friend Mike Petriello on blue sky Wondering it when the Red Sox call-up Anthony at some point in the near future if Sedan Rafaela might be the at some point in the near future if Sedan Rafaela might be the corresponding move going down despite the contract extension, right? Because you look at what Rafaela is doing at the plate so far this year, hitting 233, it's still a 295 OBP, better than last year.

He is striking out less, but it's a 349 slug. So there's some underlying stuff going the right way in terms of hard hit rate and barrel rate, but still a lot of chase and just not that much of a contributor on that side. It's an 80 WRC plus when you add it all up for Raffaella. I think we talked about this a little bit with Jen McCaffrey, but I think the idea that Christian Campbell is playing center field is most meaningful in this regard, because if Christian Campbell can be your backup centerfielder and that changes things for sit down rough.

Given Jaren Durand. Slow down and still. I just felt like it that time. That was just the troll job. No, Jaren Durand's like, you know, foibles historically with defense. We can't know that these like this season's poor defensive numbers and small sample are for real. But you pair them with some of his issues he's had in the past. And I think for me, I would rather probably have Sedan Rafael in the big leagues,

at least for now, because I think he's the best centerfield defender they have on this roster. And I don't, I don't know, there's a of a, a still of a roster puzzle to figure out here with Masataka Yoshida and Saddam Rafa'el being the best center field defender, but you know, the, maybe the worst bat of the group. And so there's a lot, I think there's a lot to figure out here. I'm, I'm not pounding the table for Roman Anthony to come up right away. I don't think it's, I don't think it's a rush job right now, especially if he's hurt right now. It's got a 61.7% hard hit rate so far.

Triple A's popped five homers, got a couple of steals. They've moved them around all three outfield spots so far. Six starts and left. But how many bad gloves can you fit on one team? I mean, I don't think Roman Anthony's a bad glove, but what's the concern? But that he's not a center fielder and that Jaren Durant's not a center fielder either Yeah, I don't know they've given him starts in six and left three and right four and center for Roman Anthony so far at Triple-a ten starts at the DH spot. Maybe they'll just figure out they'll think that Roman Anthony is a better center fielder than Durant

That's probably gonna be the cutoff. Oh, well, he can play it better than Jaren Durand does, but that's fine. And then Raffaella might just be a backup. That's been the concern for a long time is that he's just a good backup. Great glove. He is Lee and in late, late inning substitute, you know, just gets a lot of playing time, but not a lot of plate appearances, if that makes sense. And if he's the backup, then Romy Gonzalez has been everything they want out of a backup You know at least a bench piece, you know, and David Hamilton can I think can still be that so

David Hamilton is a better shortstop than sit down Raffaella So I think you know if you're building a bench it starts with David Hamilton Romy Gonzalez and your backup catcher. And there's only one lonesome spot over there. Yeah, it's the more things change, the more they stay the same. We still look at this Red Sox depth chart and say they have the good problem of it being crowded. Also helps, though, that Trevor story looks better than he has in a couple of years.

Five homers, six for six as a base dealer. Still a good bit of swing and miss, but you'll take that. Like the overall outcome and the most important number, 29 games played already for Trevor Story. Like he's holding up physically and that's just, it's nice to see him healthy again after all the injuries he's dealt with over this four year span in Boston. I think this Red Sox team is still dangerous.

You know, they're 16, 14 is not exactly how I expected them to start, but I think they've figured out, you know, they're pecking order in the, in the, in the bullpen. I think Brian Bayo coming back is pretty important. I think the next thing on the list is figuring out what Tanner Hauck can do. And there's a really great piece by Andrea, Scout Girl on Twitter that breaks down what they need to do with Tanner Hauck. And it lines up exactly with what I see, which is he's got to do something against lefties and I think maybe bring the foreseen back, you know, bring the cutter back, do something.

This is this is not working. It's back to like a 700 slugging by lefties against Tanner Hauck. It's he's completely useless against lefties and teams are just loading that up. So there's something that needs to be figured out there. And that's the next step for the Red Sox, I think. The other big story out of the Ale East from the weekend, Luke Weaver in as the closer, Devin Williams out at least for now. That's the way it's being reported by Brandon Cutie from the athletic.

What do you think the look, the realistic timetable is for Williams to get that shot again. Is is it a couple of weeks? Is it a month? How long do you think they're going to take before a safe situation arises? And by choice, Weaver pitches in front of Williams and Williams gets that chance. I don't know. I mean, there's like when we looked at Emmanuel Classe versus Devin Williams, you know, my

analysis still says the same, which is that Devin Williams has seen an actual drop off and stuff, you know, that we can see in terms of Velo and stuff plus, whereas Classe's was not as pronounced. And I believe that Classe is on his way to getting his job back. He's already pitched. I know that Kate Smith pitched the ninth and Klaus A pitched the eighth, but I think this is just Klaus A shows he's healthy and he's got it back. I don't know if that's the case with this one.

Will Devin Williams magically start throwing 95 again in the next couple of weeks? I think it might be more likely that there's an injury list and that's how he gets his job back. He goes and rehabs, whatever is going on, comes back with his regular stuff and gets a job back. Cause the other thing is Weaver's a little bit like Kate Smith for me, which is a really, really good alternative that isn't struggling. So, you know, Weaver stuff is down too in terms of Velo, but the

K's are there. I'm gonna give it a month. A month. Okay. So maybe by this time in May, we'll be talking about Devin Williams getting saved chances again. Tough hold in a lot of cases to use a roster spot that way. But given how much it costs to draft him, I would imagine more people out there than not are going to try and ride this out for a few weeks or possibly a month as he Suggested and wait for Williams to get that opportunity again as opposed to just cutting him out right too much Maybe it's too much two or three weeks class a is like two or three days. I think Yeah, maybe the next opportunity ends up being his in that Guardians bullpen

I did see you Hanio Suarez popped a four homer game this weekend, so he joined a group, I think it's still smaller than, is it 19 people now that had done it? It's a relatively small group of players that have hit four homers in a game. How many of them did it in a loss? I think only one that I remember seeing

in some of the reaction to that over the weekend. It is hard to do that. It is hard to hit four homers in a game and have your team lose. What's the over-under in his batting average the rest of the way? 230. I think it's probably the safe number. He's hitting 206 for the season. He's popped 10 homers. Four in a game helps. Still striking out 27.7% of the time. Same as last year. It's not often your ISO is 150 points better than your batting average.

No, but usually these tears are more like August. This is early. It's a often your ISO is 150 points better than your batting average. No, but usually these tears are more like August. This is early. It's a little early. So is he going to pop 40 homers this year? With a lower average? Or is it just the best month of the season happens to be the first month of the season? Because I think Suarez was a player we were generally not excited about. I think it's the takeaway I had. It's better to be a year too soon Than a year too late on a player that has swing and miss trends like this Especially when we saw the chase tick up last year

like despite the fact that it turned out to be a really productive year if you had Iohannou Suarez in your roster and You just left him in because it was like 15 team league as disappointed as you were by the first half last year The final results were probably profitable in every single league based on where he was drafting. So he still hit the. So maybe do the reverse this year where you don't fall in love with his first half, because maybe the second half is going to be the first half last year. I don't know, man.

I just wonder if we've just underrated him as an older player that still does enough things really, really well and has no real threats to his job security either. That's the other part of this. I think they really like Eugenio Suarez. I think if they were gonna make a change like that, they maybe would've traded Suarez this winter and let Lawler be the third baseman from the jump.

It feels like one month in, a player that I was probably a little lower on than I should've been, not because he had four homers in a game, he had six before that. But because he's still producing and part of a good Arizona lineup, right? Team scored more runs than anybody in the league last year. So those counting stats were probably a little safer than I was giving him credit for throughout this entire draft season.

Some other IL stints. Oh, man, are we not done with injuries? Oh, Luke Keishel. That was the brutal one. Gets hit by a pitch, has a fractured right forearm. I haven't seen an official timetable. How twinsian dude. Jesus. Horrible luck in that position player group. It was on a weekend too where Carlos Correa started to hit a little bit. They had a pretty good series overall against the Angels. Just kind of like started to look more like the team we expect them to be. And Friday night, Keishel gets hit by a pitch, leaves and is going to miss several weeks as a result.

Sucks. You know, it might be worth a little quick question of like, you know, what is Keishel's true talent, you know, when he does return? He came in and, you know, 412 babbip and, you know, had a strikeout rate. It's almost rate that's almost a half of what it was in the minor leagues. But I do think that this is a good sign for him in terms of the swinging strike rate ported over to the major leagues. He made contact. He doesn't have that 10% to 20% hard hit rate where you're worried about their ability

to hit for any power whatsoever. He did have an ISO that started with a zero in AAA this year, Keishel did, but before that he's been mostly above average there. So I'm comfortable giving him 10 to 15 homerun power. And the fact that he stole five bases when he landed in the big leagues suggests to me that he can steal, I think, 20, 25 bags in the big leagues. So now you're talking about the guy who has a skill set to have a good OBP, a good batting average,

and mediocre power, but like sort of maybe 10 to 15 homers and 20, 25 steals. What does that sound like? Is that like a better Tyro Estrada? Yeah, Bryson Stott. Yeah, yeah. But maybe a better hit tool, better floor in terms of batting average.

I mean, Stott's a 258 career hitter. We've seen some highs like 280 two years ago. We've seen the 234 when he debuted. I think Kiesel has a better offensive floor because of his plate skills than Stott. But the Roto comp would be Stott. Yeah, Stott's pretty similar. Stott with better plate skills is a good player because Stott himself is not a bad player.

But that's a huge blow to Luke Keishel's rookie campaign getting that forearm fracture as a result of hit by a pitch. I saw Garrett Mitchell land on the IL after suffering an oblique strain over the weekend, they're in a tight spot as far as finding bottom half of the lineup contributors. Garrett Mitchell to me was one of those guys in the bottom half of the Brewers lineup that at least has upside. Daz Cameron was the corresponding move. I think that's a small side platoon, kind of a two or three starts per week sort of player where you're just gonna see

a lot of the usual Churio, Yellich and Freelick combo, and then occasionally against the tough lefty, Daz Cameron's gonna play, and Jake Bowers plays a little more at first, and Reese Hoskins, D.H. is a little more. I think that's the adjustment for the Brewers right now. God, so much depends on Joey Ortiz. I mean, they've got six competent batterers right now. God, so much depends on Joey Ortiz. I mean, they've got six, you know, competent batters right now.

You know, when you talk about Tourang, Jackson Churio, Yelich, Freelick and William Contreras and Reese Hoskins, I think those that's that's your batting order, right? Something something along those lines. You've got six competent to great batters. I think William Contreras is going to do better going forward. I'm not worried about him. Joey Ortiz making it seven would just be so important.

If he could just be a league average hitter, they would go seven deep and they could platoon their way out of the eighth and ninth spots. And Mitchell would be a part of that when he came back. But having three zeros at the bottom of the rotation is a little bit rough, at the bottom of the lineup. I think my primary reason for believing there was still something there, and there will still be something there eventually

with Garrett Mitchell is the bat speed has been phenomenal. 95th percentile in bat speed. The glove was carrying the playing time. He's also a burner on the base pass, 93rd percentile so far in sprint speed. The glove was carrying the playing time. He's also a burner on the base pass, 93rd percentile so far in sprint speed. So there was enough real life floor to keep the plate appearances flowing that eventually, like I think Garrett Mitchell is gonna snap out of it and do some of the good things we've seen at various points around all the injuries he's dealt with. But another guy that's just had a very bad run of luck

throughout his time in the big leagues and trying to stay on the field but having one thing after another sort of pile up on him. We'll see if this ends up being probably like a three to four week injury. A lot of times the obliques are not the minimum but we'll see if we get positive news here in the near future. Joey Ortiz just, you know, he's lost bat speed. He lost over a tick on the bat speed. He went from 76 percentile down to 54th, which sucks because that changes his power upside. You know, you may not be in a point where

his six percentile barrel rate is significant just yet that usually takes about a month, month and a half. It does, he's getting closer and closer, but it does mean that there's something behind it other than just not barreling the ball. He's not swinging the bat as fast. He's also went in 2024 from a 75th percentile chase rate to a 38th percentile chase rate this year. So he's all sorts of messed up and there might be a physical component to it if the bat speed is down. It's just so weird because last year he, you know, you

can look at the sliders on, on savant. They're not all red, but they're red in the places that I care, you know, bat speed chase, whiff. He hasn't been able to capitalize on that. It's been a very disappointing season for me from Joey Ortiz. I'm hoping he can turn it around in a way that's just not obvious in the numbers. I think the one thing that's keeping him on the field is he's still an excellent runner and I think he has the tools, if not the defensive numbers right now to be an excellent shortstop. He did make a really nice play in a game I was watching recently. So I think he's a good defensive shortstop and that's keeping him on the field right

now. That's something to watch closely though too. Is Bryce Terang healthy enough to play some shortstop? Does that change anything at all about who's who's in the mix like I feel like their infield depth in the minors right now is so brutal that the door is open for a long time for Joey Ortiz despite the early struggles it's like cuz if you're like okay we moved to hang over there and we put Durban at second and we just restart the carousel at third he's going

back to Oliver Dunn at their cap run done And yeah, we want to start doing more of that What happened to that guy who was exciting at third base for them that hit the ball hard was just drafted like two years ago Brock Wilkin. Yeah, what's going on with Brock Wilkin get hit in the face with a pitch last year? And he's not back yet. Yeah, he's back. He I back. I haven't looked at his minor league numbers this year. They sent him back to AA and it looks pretty similar to last year. OBP's up at 409 but he's got a 179-409-373 line so far. He's popped three homers in 93 plate appearances. Yeah 24 walks against 27 strikeouts in 93 plate appearances. He looks like a little bit like Suarez, you know, just hits the ball hard but may not

give you a good bounding average. I wonder what the internal conversation is about Brock Wilken right now. Probably need to see him go on a good month long sort of tear before they either bump him up to triple A or maybe give him the leap all the way to the big leagues. But yeah, it's going to be interesting to see if anybody else gets into the mix for the Brewers here in the coming weeks. Ortiz just doesn't quite look like himself at the plate to this point. Let's get to a couple mailbag questions. This one comes from Blake, and Blake wanted to know in the wake of Christopher Sanchez going on the IAL after adding a few ticks, should players that add Vila without a change in role be avoided in drafts or are there enough examples of players throwing harder year to year without injury that's still worth paying

the premium for arm talent despite the possible added injury risk? Yeah, I struggle with this one. There's an excellent piece by Russell Carlton called Should We Overthrow on baseball perspectives that does make the argument for being worried about guys who have VELO surges. It's more rigorous work than I've done here, but I did want to just show you who had VELO increases last year and I just don't find this list to be super compelling. I, I talisized the players that had major injury and so Kyle Freeland being up 2.7 miles per hour and then being injured may not be the greatest example. Joe Ryan was up 1.7 miles an hour and then he was injured to finish the season and now he's back just throwing basically at 92 his pre-injury Vilo.

Maybe that means he'll be healthier all season but also have that big home run rate. But then there's a long group of people that did add VELO who were healthy. Michael Walker, Dylan Cease, Mackenzie Gore, Chris Sale. I don't know which bucket to put him in but you were happy with the season you got from Chris Sale last year. Logan Gilbert. Are we seeing the ramifications of Logan Gilbert's Velo Surge from last year this year? That's where you need to do these more rigorous studies to figure out, but there's still Ryan Nelson Brady Singer, Tyler McGill, Bryce Elder, and then you get Patrick Sandoval and Shane Bieber who were hurt last year, so that wasn't good. Then

you have David Peterson, he was hurt, but this is the post-injury Velo surge. You say Kikuchi, Bailey Ober, and Blake Snell, who italicized for injury. But by the time you get to Blake Snell, it's a half mile an hour increase. So Sanchez is more on the likes of Freeland Ryan, Waka, Cease and Gore, and Waka, Cease and Gore were fine. And generally when someone is throwing wildlife, I think they look they're healthy and they're happy, you know, and it looks good. Everything's right. But you know, maybe once someone is, this is another thing that's hard to figure out

is that like, are you a player that's growing and adding? Or are you a player that already had an established baseline and are overthrowing on top of that? You know, I think that's one of the hardest things to even figure out in Christopher Sanchez's case because Sanchez has been around for a while and I don't know that people realize that he's already 28. So maybe the VELO that he established at some point, maybe he's more a veteran with an established VELO that had a surge on top of that. Maybe that's when you get worried.

I mean, he was 93s, 92s, 94.5 last year, 95.7 this year. That's a pretty big increase for somebody who is 28 and had already really, you're not like, oh, he's 22 and filling into his body. You can not draft the guys who throw hard, you can not draft the guys who throw too hard or are surging, you can not draft the guys who were injured last year, and then you can not draft anyone. Yeah, just don't draft anyone.

That's the solution. No, and it's not, I mean, we're not making fun of the question. It's a fair question, I just think it's another inconclusive, because I would wonder if there are points in your career when the velocity additions are less likely to cause a problem, or if that even is also just like, well, it's still random.

How'd you pick up that velocity? Did you start lifting weights differently? Did you get physically stronger because you were in your early 20s? Clearing up something mechanically. Yeah, like they come from your legs. There's all sorts of explanations for it. So I don't think I would generally be that worried. I think I'd be still more worried about the top end velocity band players in general than I would be about the velocity risers.

Who knows? Maybe we'll find out someday that that's a terrible approach. But I think sitting close to what we know are our maxes for guys, I think that's probably still the area where I'd be the most cautious if I'm going to exercise some velocity related caution. This year, the other players that are at the most Jordan Hicks, I think we've already seen that sort of recede a little bit. Jose Alvarado in the relief role. I'm just less worried about a reliever. I don't know. I just don't think that's worrying me.

Emerson Hancock pitching for his life in the big leagues I guess. Hunter Green. Now there is a sort of convergence of a guy who was already throwing hard, who's now throwing like the hardest of the big leagues, has had some injury concern in the past. I think if I was a rebuilding team and Hunter Green was my main pitcher, I might actually consider selling. You could get a huge package for him at this point, I think. You don't know. Hunter Brown up a tick and a half off of an established level. Maybe that is something to worry about. Then Christopher Sanchez is next at 1.3. Jesus Lazardo. See, Jesus Lazardo,

is that a Velo surge or is that him getting back to where he once was? I think that's getting back to a previous level. But then if he gets back to his previous level, I think Lizardo at his previous level starts to get onto the high end, just top starter velocity leaderboard where you're kind of worried about that. And he had injury risk in the past, right? He got injured in the past. Shane Baas, is that getting it looks like he's getting back to his old yellow.

Yeah that seems more like a return to previous levels but previous levels were there when he got hurt so. Gavin Williams plus one and Gavin Williams has a scary injury history in his past. I just it's it's it's tough sliding with with trying to divine pitcher injury. Like Jameson Tyon is the next one. He's up a tick to 91.1. Are we worried about that? I don't think I am. Verlander's up a tick.

No, that's kind of regaining previous velocity again. Despite how old he is, still it's within his ranges of normal places he sat over the course of his career. Then you got Wu, Schwalbeck and Reagan. See, now you're just going to scare people. There's no, I don't know. You should always be scared about Brian Wu anyway. Spencer Schwalbeck, I know that our pal Jason Collette had some worries about the huge innings pitched increase for

Schwannbach who doesn't have a long history of pitching even. He started pitching in college. I don't know. Cole Regans, he dropped Velo over the course of last year. I think I'm just happy that his Velo's up because I figure maybe he's a guy who like comes in with his best Velo and it sort of falls off over the course of the season. So yeah, I wanted it to be up, you know, but again, bad injury history for him. Freddie Peralta up 0.8. See, my instinct is just to be like, good. Right? I mean, you're not going to get the guy that has Tyler Glass now on eight teams

to say that he's worried about much of anything. I think because this is so difficult, this is part of the reason why I'm willing to embrace the injury risk and try and just max out the skills. I think the risk reward is in a place where if players like Glassnow are available at pick 100 or later, and I think they've got top five type skills at the position, I'll take that gamble knowing that in the range of outcomes something could come up and 140, 150 innings might be the higher end outcomes and I'll just find the replacement for the 50 innings when he's not available and try and reap the

rewards when he's out there and pitching well. Yeah, and every year there's a guy that was, you oft injured that you know puts together a great season and does so for on a budget for last year so like last for last year was Chris Sale was the third best pitcher in baseball you know and he was the oft injured guy that you know you weren't going to take and then in 2023 I'm sure I can Blake Snell, third best pitcher in baseball. That's interesting. A year before that or two years before that, it was Carlos Rodin's done it before.

The list of guys that you try to do that with that fall short or just don't put up the result is longer. But the reason you take on the risk is trying to hit and knowing that you're gonna deal with injuries anyway. There's a baseline, pitchers get hurt, everyone's dealing with that, we don't have great tools and ways to determine who's gonna get hurt and when they're gonna get hurt. So knowing that I try to be a little more risk tolerant than everybody else. That's just the way I try to approach it, Blake. I can't tell

you that there's a one thing that I'm definitely avoiding on the pitching side right now. I guess my one would be that I don't like to get the guys in their first year off of off of DJ. I'm not buying him. I do have I do have some fair some shares of Sandy Alcantara I guess though too. So there's no I don't have any hard and fast rules like I have to avoid anything. His spring and I think the timetable for him, how far away they are from surgery, that matters, right? So if a guy had surgery the previous March and through spring training is one year removed

in the first couple months of the season or like months 13, 14, and 15, that to me is more risky than if they had surgery the previous June, missed all the season, came back and had that longer runway of recovery The ideal situation is coming off the injury We see a little bit at the end of the previous season then they have that normal offseason instead of a rehab Yeah, and I think again people are like well the not like with the Grom's whole history I'm just saying like do Grom coming back and showing us the stuff was back

and showing us that he could compete, you know. That's made us. Boz, like Boz last year was able to do that. And it was like, well, he doesn't quite look like himself. And I thought, okay, that's fine because he'll have an off season where he's not rehabbing anymore to go through that last push to be

the Shane Bozzi was pre-surgery again. That's to me the type of injured pitcher that I'm most likely to feel good about. Yeah, the guys coming straight off the injury without that runway, they're a bit more risky. I had a question here from Andrew in our Discord. What should we do with Brandon Nimmo? Is Nimmo a player you would drop for someone interesting on a heater or do you think Nimmo himself is actually on the brink of maybe figuring it out again and having things click? I mean I think this is complicated because we know that last season Nimmo was dealing with plantar fasciitis. He didn't feel air quotes normal until sometime probably in January based on the news that I was able to go back

and read different updates that RotaWire had. And then on top of that, he had a knee injury this spring that slowed him down. So when you start to look at the underlying numbers for NIMO this year, you see decreased sprint speed. Well, that makes sense. You wanna tack on a plantar fasciitis injury with some knee stuff in the spring,

yeah you're probably gonna be down a little bit in sprint speed. Four homers so far, a 192, 239, 337 line. That's where people are worried. Okay, sure. Your foot was bothering you for all of last season. You were stealing bases anyway. And then your knee bothered you this spring,

so you're not gonna run as much early in the season. That's fine. The rest of your profile should be better than this. So where are you at on Nimmo? Is this the beginning of decline? Is it just health-related short-term blip? Do you still like him? Where do you go?

Well, you know, that ex projection right now for him, 247 average with 14 homers and five stolen bases the rest of the way, seems really restrained and also contains a fair amount of value and it still, that lines up as the 55th best outfielder. So you'd really have to be in something shallower than the 12 team 5 outfielder league to drop him I believe. But there are a couple pitfalls in that projection, which is that there's a five stolen base projection there.

If you say that's zero and you take away his, you know, that whatever value he has there in stolen bases and make it worse, then he could drop to something like maybe the 65th or 70th, he could be right there with Andrew Benentendi, you know, at 66 or Michael Conforto at 68. Those are guys that have slightly different shapes on their production, but you're like,

oh, I don't need to own those in my 12 team five outfielder league. And so let's say he does not have that speed and he's just gonna hit 247th, 14 homers, and zero stolen bases the rest of the way, then I think he's droppable in a lot of leagues. But I do wonder about that 247 average. I mean, it's a 259 average for his career and then we had better than 274 for like four straight seasons before that. So I wanted to look into this idea that he has to be a 247 hitter with like a 280,

290 babbip. And I wanted to look at, given his skill set in terms of like his strikeout rate, his hard hit rate, his ground ball rate, his pull rate, where's his babbip over the last year plus ranked? And given those comps, and there's about 17, 18 comps here, and if you look at the averages that are up right now, he fits right into those averages in every way except he has the worst babbip of all of his cops. He had a 267 babbip going back to the beginning of last season and you

know cops for him are Otani, Harper but you know even more realistically Brian Reynolds it seems like a really great comp actually Brian Reynolds you know just a professional hitter with a little bit of power, a little bit of speed. But Gunnar Henderson's on here, Jordan Westberg, Trevor Larnock's on here. All of these guys have better batting average and balls and play than Brandon Nemo has over the same time period. In fact, they have a.307 PABIP and he's had a.267. So I put forward to you that he's actually been a little unlucky on top of the bad, you know,

leg and knee situation and that he's more likely to hit something like 2.60 with 15 homers and three to four stolen bases going forward. And if he does that, he's a backend top 60 outfielder. I can't imagine he won't recover his eye. I know he's been more aggressive and he's been chasing a little bit more, but he's been swinging at pitches in the zone He still has his great eye and I think this will work out for him because you've seen his you know Barrel his power numbers kind of go a little bit in the right direction underneath the hood

I think he's trying to to hit for power I think it'll all come together again and you'll have some good good stuff and it'll look more like 260 260 plus With you know 15 homers and three stolen bases going forward. I think the nimmo Situation that you could have touched on at the beginning there is that in a shadow league If the projections right now are light and the projections say he's kind of fringy for a five outfielder 10 team league a top 50 outfielder is kind of borderline for that. Yeah you could almost drop him in that. You can probably think about it because even if you want to say well I think he is Bryan Reynolds because I think you made a good case

that the average is probably projected too low and I think he will run a little bit as long as his legs aren't an ongoing problem that's the unknown right now. Bryan Reynolds projection let's just throw that on Brandon Nimmo. He's the 37th ranked outfielder. That's fine. That's good. That's a guy you'd be happier to have. That's what you're risking if you drop him.

But you're also not. But that's the ceiling. Like I think you can live with dropping that in a 10 team league. And I think that the weirdest thing about it is that I'm confident enough in the playing time around health, as long as he's healthy He's gonna play a ton signed through 2030

Not that money matters to the Mets But I think Brandon Nemo is much more likely to be an everyday fixture for the next year or two than not I Think in a deeper league, especially like keeper or dynasty league you're getting a discount right now You probably actually acquire you're probably trading for him in deeper leagues where you're starting four or five outfielders and like 120 outfielders are rostered. Because at that point, a guy that sits top 50 at the position for a couple more years

is probably a little overlooked. Even if the ceiling is beginning to fall a little bit, the floor is still really good. The quality of the contact is really good. So a nice player, not a cornerstone, but I think it really is league dependent at this point. I'm with you, I think he's been a little bit unlucky. The quality of the contact Brandon Nimmo's been making,

really for three years now, is just better than we saw earlier in his career. His power is as stable as it's ever been, and I think it's still non-zero speed. Even a 15 for 15 that we saw last year might not be doable because of the knee and the plantar fasciitis and the lower half injuries he has been dealing with.

Thanks a lot for that question, Andrew. One more segment to get to before we go. We'll have some more mailbag a little bit later in the week because there's a lot of good questions that have been rolling through our discord. I'm a little salty. You're salty? What are you mad about? I didn't get any of them? Okay, so there were some splashy bids this weekend, right?

I mean Nick Kurtz we talked about last week Jordan back came back up had a huge weekend at home against the Reds Augustine Ramirez is getting some run for the Marlins He's been red hot in his first run with them this season. There were some closers on the move, like Will Vest, who I know that you like. You like Will Vest back during draft season as an inexpensive dart throw in that Tigers bullpen. So you got shut out on this group of pretty high priced players. Like this felt like one of the more aggressive spending weeks we've seen so far from a free agent

bidding perspective. One thing that is interesting about Nick Kurtz is that, you know, as bad as his start has been on the surface, there's a lot to like underneath. He's already hit a ball 112. He's averaging around 94, 93 on balls and play in terms of exit velocity. That's not a super predictive stat that we use a lot, but in a tiny sample, it means he has hit the ball hard when he's hit it so far. And even if he runs a 28% strikeout rate, he could run a 330 BABB with that, with the

power and a 200 plus ISO and be a really good player. But one thing that my co-manager pointed out about the guy we ended up getting, Jock Peterson, we, is that Jock Peterson's worst projection is for a 777 OPS, and Nick Kurtz's best projection is for a 744 OPS. Both of them could be platooned. We've already seen that they delayed Nick Kurtz's call-up by a day because they were facing a lefty.

He sat in the clubhouse during a game because he was up, but they were facing a lefty. So if they're gonna be similar, then I guess I'm glad I didn't spend 360 bucks was I think the average on Nick Kurtz. That's 36% of your free agency budget. But the reason I'm sad is I was, there's one of my leagues, my bar fleet

that I won last year and was in the top 10 overall for Earth and was very proud of that. This year is hurting. I had Garrett Cole at the top of that rotation and made some other mistakes maybe. And it's Aaron Judge and nothing else on that team but I thought I'm going to push myself as hard as I can on Kurtz and Beck and Beck seems like a Mickey Moniac with more speed and a slightly better eye at the plate so I didn't really want to go that hard on him. And I pushed myself to about 56 bucks on

Beck and he went for like 96. And I pushed myself on Kurtz all the way up to like 269. Cause I was like, I want to have a shot at a big bat. This team needs a big bat. And he went for a 370 or something in our league. So I can't put $37, 37% of my money on the line like that. I just can't, it's too much in one go. I gotta, you gotta be buying all year, you know?

Yeah, well, I think despite the fact that we look at Nick Kurtz and say, the A's could be patient and they tend to be a little more patient than other clubs. They call a guy up to see how it goes for at least a few weeks before sending them back down. Getting sent back down is still in the range of outcomes. Case in point, Tyler Soderstrom. Case in point, Lawrence Butler. Lawrence Butler got sent down last year and turned into the player he did. And I think if you're the A's, you might say, hey, our process is great.

If someone doesn't click right away, we can send them a triple A. They can click there, come back. And then later in the year, they could. I don't think it's that simple. But I just look at the recent behavior of the organization and try to get a feel for it. You can do the same thing with the Rockies. And the Rockies are just like random number generator.

Like you could tell me that Jordan Beck will follow a Nolan Jones of two years ago arc where he gets sent down, comes back up and goes on like a 30-30 sort of pace for the rest of the year. And I'm like, yeah, okay, that could happen. And he might do it with a really high K rate because there's always been some swing and miss there.

And he's a young player figured out in Colorado. That could happen. You could tell me he'll strike out 12 times in his next five games and get sent down before next Monday. And I could believe that too. You don't get the five homers he hit in two days, you know? Yeah, I mean, just an unbelievable week, but like they, their process was,

you had a great spring, you're on the opening day roster, you're in the bottom third of the lineup playing every day, now you're getting sent down, now you're back up in two weeks, you're gonna hit in the bottom half of the lineup, and now you're the lead off guy because you hit three homers in two days and you're going to be at the top of the order. Now you're on a platoon. I just, I don't know what their process is. I'm not sitting there to make

fun of them. I'm not saying to be a jerk. I cannot get a read on them. They are the drunk person at the poker table. How are you going to this hand? Like I just, I can't tell. It's frustrating. I believed in the skills. I was surprised they sent him down so quickly. I thought the reason they traded Nolan Jones for Tyler Freeman was to play Jordan back. And then they did it and then they stopped really quick

and they switched gears and went back to it again. And I don't know. I don't know if that was a good value if you picked him up on Sunday night. He may have had 80% of the stats he's gonna give you all season in three games that weren't on your roster. That also could have happened.

I'd be careful with them. I mean, we're happy with our Mickey Moniac buy because we're going to use them in half weeks. And I think I would just at first use Jordan back in half weeks, use him in Colorado. Again And I think I would just at first use Jordan Beck in half weeks. Use him in Colorado. Again, at the risk of looking like a doofus in the long run, I picked up Moneak in some deeper leagues.

I like Beck more than Moneak, because Beck's younger, I think they've got a lot more invested in him. He's got a better eye, he runs. Moneak stopped running. Yeah, I can see, and like at least the good thing with Moneak, K-Rate's down early on this year,

and he's chasing less, and he's hitting the ball harder. There's some things he's doing well in a limited sample that give you some reasons for hope. They can coexist in that outfield, that's possible. So all of those things are there, but man, I am having a harder time than ever figuring out the Rockies. I think that's the easiest way I can spell it out.

I think the player that's probably the most intriguing of the bunch, because the upper level minor league production is great, the hit tool looks good, the quality of contact has looked good at triple A going back to last season, Augustin Ramirez. And we talked about the Marlins catcher situation being wide open back during the team preview.

Defensively, maybe there's still some work to be done, but when the depth chart is as soft as the Marlins depth chart is, if you hit, you're gonna play. Bottom line, right? So we saw huge numbers in some leagues. I get it. This is a guy that last season at AAA hit 25 homers,

stole 22 bases in 24 attempts, has catcher eligibility, struck out less than 20% of the time and walked more than 10% of the time, and he was young for the level while doing it. And now he's on a team where playing time shouldn't be a problem. So where does he rank today among catchers? What's the floor and what's the ceiling

for Augustin Ramirez? I think he's in the top 10. I would say that it may may be surprising but I still think that he's kind of in the back end of the top 10 Pretty good just using Yeah, I mean, yeah, really good. That's more than projection system will give him I that's that's what my personal sort of reading but when you talk about ten catchers, there's some really good catchers You're talking about Cal rallye Will Smith Salvador Perez William Contreras. Those are about 10 catchers, there's some really good catchers. You're talking about Cal Raleigh, Will Smith, Salvador Perez, William Contreras. Those are all great catchers. J. Langley, JT Romero is still there, Ali Rutchman.

So like, you know, I think it gets hard to decide between Augustin Ramirez and Gabriel Moreno who's struggling. I'd probably take Ramirez over Moreno. Ramirez versus Austin Wells, I think is pretty tough. Hunter Goodman is a Colorado catcher with great underlying batted ball stats, but maybe less playing time. Sean Murphy is a bounce back guy. So, you know, that's all, those are all guys sort of 10 through 15 by the projections that I think you could pick Augustin Ramirez over a lot of those guys. Even if you say, oh, I'd rather have Murphy and I like Wells and

I like Ohapi, you're still going to put Ramirez somewhere around 11 or 12. I'm with you. I think the Moreno would you rather was one I was going to throw at you too. If you're in a single catcher league and Moreno is your catcher, even though projections will tell you Moreno is safer, and he probably is, you take the chance on the pie in the sky outcome for a power speed combo with a good hit tool and Ramirez I think Alejandro Kirk and Kavit Ruiz and Gabriel Moreno Tell you the ups and downs of taking a catcher that makes a lot of contact, but doesn't really have great power Sometimes they have great seasons. I mean, I think they're actually decent buys

For like second catchers and stuff, you know, because they don't cost as bad coming off a bad season. They may just have better babbitt luck and then, you know, be decent catchers. But when you're in the middle of one of those seasons where you're like, Oh, he's making a lot of contact, but it's not really doing anything. Like you don't have to stick, you know, you don't have to hang on to that. You know, it may just go, it might happen all year. I think catches have a harder time, maybe like recapturing their babbitt luck,

you know, because they don't play the same as everybody else. It's not like, you know, not like a joy or tease. We can just go out there every day and figure it out a little bit out, a little bit out, a little bit out. It's more like the catchers are like, I figured something out, I figured something out. Now I got to sit for two days. Yeah, I think that threshold for Ramirez, though, his ceiling's high enough where you're cutting some pretty stable

catcher two types just to take the chance. And if it doesn't work for one reason or another, the league figures out a hole or two or something, you'll just say, you know what? I at least went for ceiling at a spot where it's hard to find ceiling on the wire. You get a lot of floor players at catcher, especially at second catcher spots. But yeah, top 10 possibility for Ramirez, I think made him really intriguing for a lot of people out there in leagues on Sunday night.

I would take Francisco Alvarez, even with the crazy strikeout rate to start the season. I would take Francisco Alvarez over Moreno as well. Yeah, oh, 100%. I actually think Alvarez versus Ramirez is interesting. I like Alvarez more than Ramirez and I like both players, but I think we've seen the defensive value that Francisco Alvarez brings already. We've seen the quality of contact he's made in the big leagues over a few seasons now. We're talking about almost 800 career plate appearances

with a double digit barrel rate and a guy That's trying to put the pieces together approach wise talked about that story Will salmon wrote with Alvarez and JD Martinez kind of working together on an approach like that That seems like a guy trying to take the best parts of his skill set and round it out So I think I'm even Alvarez over Ramirez too But that's they're both high ceiling players at a position where it's hard to find high ceiling players Closer front as I mentioned will vest a big pickup in leagues where you know didn't have them already I saw some haste whose tonoko love in 15 teamers. Yeah, that one's still I

I'm sort of she getting to like just avoid the Marlins vibe I mean, it's like what are you gonna do? You're gonna get a guy and then they're gonna I think that they're already doing this thing we're like it's to no go tonight but it might be better tomorrow and you're like oh well screwed you it's not like you have that many save chances to begin with you're gonna take your 20 save chances and split it by three then I just don't even want to be I don't want to be involved I mean maybe I'm just bitter because I have Bender, and I still think Bender will have the most saves in that bullpen, but it may be seven. It's one of the chaos bullpens for sure at this point.

Porter Hodge got some love in 12 teamers because Ryan Presley had his knee drained last week. Presley was out there though in a tight spot against the Phillies on Sunday night. I think that's still their plan for now, but I think rostering Hodge and waiting on Hodge makes sense if you've got a roster spot to play with. He's my favorite now that Vest, I think, has the job.

It looks to me like Vest just has the job. He's one of my favorite speculations. I know that Shelby Miller is out there as a speculation, but I think that Shelby Miller has Justin Martinez to contend with and below average stuff. And I know that he's had some nice strikeouts, but I think he'll be a part of that pen. But I think it's just a lot easier to take Shelby Miller

and make him set up guy and take the guy who throws a, you know, a hundred plus and make him your closer. Yeah, I think Justin Martinez is a lot safer now that AJ Puck has that lengthy injury. I would say Miller would probably need a Martinez injury to then have a chance at a lot of saves. So you're going to be in a pretty deep league I think if you want to hold Shelby Miller at this point. Last name to throw at you before we go on this episode, it's a tick long. Sorry to our producer Brian Smith for running a little long today.

Noel V. Marte fetched some pretty big bids in the 12-team Rotawire Online Championship, but I think you can see the corresponding move for a lot of folks was letting Jamer Candelario go whose playing time has been slipping at Marte's expense. Marte is off to a great start in the brief time that he's been back up with the Reds. They've been very quick to send him back down if they felt like he was the next guy to be moved out, but I kind of get the sense things are changing with the Reds and recent usage and Marte is doing the thing he has to do. He's hitting to earn that job back. He had seven hits in Colorado over the weekend, had a homer, drove

in seven runs, had a couple of steals on Sunday. He's looking a lot like the guy that we saw at the end of 2023. Oh, it's definitely a Mardi Parti. You know, the thing is that he has and I'd build this lineup tracker over over at Fangraphs. He has three, six, eight straight starts. And in those eight straight starts, Jamer Candelario has three. Yeah, I think they're just willing to say Jamer Candelario has three. Yeah, I think they're just willing to say we were wrong about Jamer or we just want to prioritize Noel V. Marte instead.

Like you can keep Jamer on the roster as a backup, that's fine. They're a team that has, as we talked about with C. Trent Rosecrans last week, they have not scored runs as expected. They need to solve that problem and Noel V. Marte is helping them do that. Yeah, and I think if CES gets right

and is killing it in the minor leagues, the next corresponding move at that point might be letting Jamer go, because there's probably not enough room on that bench to have Jamer and a CES. I've been tracking Gavin Lux pretty close, and I did wanna ask Trent about that. At the time that we had Trent on,

Gavin Lux had been playing DH. He has settled into left field since. But there's a basically Gavin Lux and Austin Hayes are sharing left field and DH. And then it's Friedl, Fraley in the other spots. And it's really actually calming down. There's not, if you look at this lineup, there's not really any magic to it.

Espinall, Dunn, and Candelario are backups. And they're not even really doing strict platoons. If you look, you might be more likely to see Espinall and Dunn against lefties. And it probably comes at the cost of Fraley and Lux. I think the pieces fit well that way for the Reds so seems like they're making the adjustments that seem possible but also needed a few things to break a certain way to happen like Novy Marte had to seize an opportunity kind of a

part-time opportunity in order to push himself back into the plan of the Reds that is what's happening right now. But a huge weekend for bids, big numbers. Huge weekend, I'm gonna be super excited about my Jock Peterson and Jeff McNeil purchases. I'm just gonna, that's something I'm just gonna pet them as I go to bed. You just have to remember, take a snapshot

of the players that were added this week that were much more expensive. What about a leaderboard, book market, check in a month, check at the end of the season, and see how you did with the low cost players. I mean, the Jock Peterson thing, it's funny because it's exactly like the Brandon Nimmo situation,

where it's like you can sort of understand the deeper the league, the more likely it is it makes sense in a shallow league, the ceiling might be a little bit too low to hold on despite the struggles, and you should still be believing in projections in deeper leagues like that where a Bad start to bad start no matter what your track record is it happens it can happen for a month edge to but anybody

Yeah, well, I guess I at least I have some free agent oxygen money left Yeah Yeah, you still got money left for the next time for buddy loses their minds and throws a quarter or more of their budget at Some players it'll happen. We'll have another fabapalooza, inevitably. Oh, it's going to be for Roman Anthony. Oh, yeah. If he hasn't been held through all of this, we'll see. We'll see how that goes. Join the discord, the link in the show description.

Thanks again to our producer, the legendary B Smith. Putting this episode together, you can find us on blue sky. You know, you know, Sarah's got B Scott at social. I'm DVR, B Scott at social. It's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.