Rates & Barrels - Italian Beef, Chasing Future Value & Avoiding Prospect Traps w/Clay Link

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

DVR is joined by Clay Link, Senior MLB Editor of RotoWire.com to discuss Vinnie Pasquantino, the pursuit of future value, avoiding prospect traps while taking appropriate risk with young players, and much more.  Rundown -- Italian Breakfast or Italian Beef? -- What Matters to Clay When Seeking Future Value? -- Christopher Morel's Arrival -- Shifting K% Marks at Double-A for Elite Hitting Prospects? -- The New Cody Bellinger Baseline? -- Balancing Prospect Risk Appropriately -- Ezequiel Duran's Opportunity in Texas -- A 2022 Mulligan? -- Finding Joy in This Season's Cincinnati Reds Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Clay on Twitter: @claywlink Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, June 9th. Derek Van Ryper here with a guest, Island Eno, getting some actual time on the beach today. So I brought in one of my best friends in this industry, a former teammate of mine, a voice that's probably very familiar to you if you listen to the Roto-Wire podcast or the many serious XM shows that, of course, is their senior MLB editor, Clay Link. Clay, how's it going for you today?

Good, Derek. I really appreciate you inviting me on the show. I'm a big fan of this program, what you and Eno do. So very cool to get an opportunity to step in. And we miss you here at Roto-Wire. But it's great to see you thriving and out west now. How are things out west? Pretty good.

I got to be honest. I've mentioned it a couple times in various places. Pretty good. I got to be honest. I've mentioned it a couple times in various places. You lose track of the seasons in Northern California because they look really similar. Winter was maybe three weeks long, a little bit of rain. It's a little scary how infrequently it rains out here. I'm becoming a person who's very worried about weather, but at the same time, I know what I'm going to get most days and time flies out here, by the way. So great to catch up with you. And how's your season going so far? I mean, we're kind of in the one third point in the season, bottom of the third inning for our league. So it's like if you're doing well, you feel like you got a 1-0 lead or if you're kind

of mid pack, maybe you feel like you're in a tie game and need some things to turn in the next couple of weeks to really make a run. But overall, across all your leagues, what's this season looking like for you? It's been okay so far. I'm doing well in some leagues, not so great in some others. Kind of across the board, up and down with certain teams. But doing well in Tout Wars. I'm in search of my first Tout Wars championship.

I know you've taken plenty of Yoo-Hoo baths, but is that labor? That was Tout Wars. The first time I won mixed Tout Wars, I think it was 2014. I recommend the Yoo-Hoo shower, but I advise some

caution. Do it outside. I dumped the bottles. I thought I had it planned out pretty well. I did it inside the shower. Yeah, I remember seeing that clip. It splatters everywhere. You're cleaning Yoo-Hoo out of every crevice of the bathroom for the rest of the time you live in that place. So my only advice is if you're planning a yoo-hoo shower for yourself at any

point at the end of a future season, do it outside and maybe have someone with a step stool or a ladder actually dump the yoo-hoo on you too for a fact that might add something as well. I think that was what Corey Swartz did years ago. That's what inspired me to do it. I saw Corey do it. I thought this looks fun. I know it's like tradition. Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of, you know, I'm looking to take my first you who shower at some point. I've never won the top wars league and, um, first place there is points league, which,

you know, I love Roto, but I'm having some fun with this. And I think I'm up there in the FSGA champions league, but I have like 28 hitting Roto points. So, um, I picked up both Vinny Pasquantino

and Riley Green. That's why I tweeted that meme yesterday. I did the old Bernie Sanders meme with him once again asking, and I put in prospects to save my team. I could really use those two up pretty soon.

You mentioned Pasquantino, so I'm just going to ask this question right off the top. Did I twist up the story? At some point, did you not refer to him up pretty soon. You mentioned Pasquantino, so I'm just going to ask this question right off the top. Did I twist up the story? At some point, did you not refer to him as Italian Beef instead of Italian Breakfast? Did you make that up as a spin on the nickname for Vinny Pasquantino? Well, it's kind of funny. James and I just kind of mistakenly called him Italian Beef. Okay. I didn't make it up. apparently just the the actual nickname that he had was italian breakfast which is a nod to country breakfast yeah billy butler billy butler right i guess they look somewhat similar and maybe somewhat similar skill sets but i yeah i we

were kind of calling him italian beef but it was just a mistake and then we've but i kind of like it that you've been carrying it on i think it's kind of sticking yeah if he's okay with it you know it's not like a i think the the worst popular nickname i can recall from my time in fantasy was in football it was doug martin and it was the muscle hamster and he hated it and i just thought don't call him. It's not a good nickname in the first place. He's like publicly said he doesn't like it. So unless Vinny Pasquantino has some objection to Italian beef, I think Italian beef is a fantastic nickname.

You know, I immediately think of Portillo's and going to the Fall League and all that too. So a lot of happy memories associated with that particular meal. What was that place we went to in Arizona that had the great Italian sandwiches? Casella's? Casella's, yes. Yes, the local spot. That was real good.

I love that place. I hope that place is still there. Really friendly people. Yeah, me too. Yeah, nice family-run place. It was there for like 40 years, had the wood paneling on the walls. A great stop, not far from Salt River. So if they're still open and I'm there for Fall League, that's going to happen again.

Hopefully we can get the old Casellas gang back together. Yeah, us and James Anderson perhaps and Alex Becky. We missed you at AFL last year. They have a weird year just getting out here and having some family in town. Just didn't quite work out last year. Hoping to be back out there when the time comes this year. This has been, I think a pretty strange season in part because of changes to the ball.

Again, you know, and I've talked a lot about that. It's the beat that he doesn't really want to be on, but that he is kind of thrived on in recent years. And then you also have the humidor in all 30 parks and it's, it's definitely, it's kind of changed some of the things we're looking for in season. So I'm curious,

regardless of the situation, because you play in a bunch of different leagues, you play in some very deep leagues, you play in some, we play in a keeper league together. It's a 16 team mixed league where future value on the waiver wire is really important to find. I'm curious, what's driving you toward players on the wire right now when you don't have a lot of information? What matters to you in this environment? That's a good question because it's a moving target, and it's been that way for a few years now with the offensive environment changing, the ball likely being changed, and what, multiple balls in play last year?

It's so hard to nail things down, but really it boils down to strikeouts and walks. It's pretty boring, but that's where I start. It's kind of the water of baseball, as Scott Pianowski has said. We all kind of want something that will unlock everything, and strikeouts and walks don't do that. But strikeouts and walks really tell you a big part of the story with hitters and pitchers. So that's where I start.

But I do want some, like, hint of category juice, too. I don't want to build, and you can't really build, like, a team with 10 Luis Arias. As nice as Luis Arias is is and hitting for a super high average in the Roto game you got to hit for some power or steal some bags or a little splash of both so

I start with plate skills but I really want to see some sort of category impact potential and so that I'm not just the Nick Madrigals of the world you know they're climbing uphill they have a nice little foundation to and so that I'm not just the Nick Madrigals of the world. They're climbing uphill. They have a nice little foundation to play skills and bat the ball.

It's a nice little foundation, but you've got to have some thump or some speed to make people uncomfortable on the base paths. Yeah, I think one of the players that's come up this year who really wasn't on my radar at all until he was promoted and he probably got on the radar even faster because of an early highlight the beginning of his career is Christopher Morell for the Cubs and he's doing all the things that you're describing right the k-rate's even better than it was in the upper levels in the minor leagues he draws walks and there appears to be good categorical balance he's already popped three hom. He's got six steals in his first 21 games.

How good do you think he can be? Because I think one of the challenges right now, analyzing young players coming out of last season, something I know you and James Anderson talked a lot about the AAA level. That was a problem last year because it was depleted from on the pitching side. There were so many injuries, the big league level pitchers had to move up. Quality pitching went down went down hitting performances might have been less meaningful and there's probably even a trickle-down effect to some other minor league levels to some degree but if you see like for me i see morel's strikeout rates in the minors and they scare me a little and i'm kind of wondering how sustainable is an

improved strikeout rate against top level pitching when we're talking about a guy who hit AA last year, struck out 29.7% of the time. Yeah, that's so tough because it is a game of adjustments. So you figure – I'm sure there was some book on Morel when he hit the big leagues. It's kind of a theme nowadays where there's a book on you before you reach the majors. But we haven't really seen him go through that adjustment period back. So I think Murrell will probably see some adjustments in the way he's handled. And then it'll be up to him to make those adjustments. So I do expect that K rate to tick up once more people figure out the best way to attack Christopher Murrell.

more people figure out the best way to attack Christopher Murrell. But I just completed an update to my top 300 list, and it had just been kind of chaos past three weeks or so. But it finally got him on the list, and I slotted him in 124 right behind Cody Bellinger. Maybe Bellinger I have too high still. And ahead of Brian Reynolds and even Tyler O'Neal. I actually have Christopher Murrell slightly ahead of Tyler O'Neal. O'Neal's back, so maybe I can see the case for bumping him up.

But I still have some concerns about his played skills. Yeah, Murrell leading off for that Cubs team. It just seems like that endorsement to slot him in atop the order, it feels like a ringing endorsement that he's ready and ready to help drive that offense. So I'm pretty excited about Murrell. In one league where I overspent on Vinny P, I got him on the cheap, so it was kind of nice to help balance that out.

But it is kind of crazy. It almost feels like the AA kids are more prepared than the AAA guys. The AA pitching is more advanced than AAA. Do you get that sense? Yeah, and I've also wondered, though, the PCL and how problematic those environments are and if those can lead you to some bad habits

because the pitching, kind of like the same effect you have at Coors Field, in some of those environments, pitches don't move the same way. So you get more hittable breaking pitches. In most of those PCL parks, the ball flies. So then you can kind of fall in love with trying to hit for power and maybe lose some of your approach and develop some bad habits that way. So I definitely see, I guess I'm less likely to write off a player making the leap from AA, even when they're not an elite prospect.

Christopher Murrell wasn't a highly regarded prospect. Not a guy we were talking about as a top 50 guy or anything like that compared to someone like Michael Harris, who I think on a lot of lists, I think on James's list was definitely in the top 50, even probably top 20 by the time he got promoted. I'm more open to those promotions now than I used to be for the reasons that you're suggesting. And the other part of trying to figure some of these things out, too, it just comes back to the playing time opportunity. Part of what made Murrell immediately appealing is that you can look at a team like the Cubs right now, below 500 team with several holes in the everyday lineup,

and you could kind of say, yeah, he might be bottom third of the order for the first week of his career. But if he hits, they're going to tinker, and he's going to get a chance to produce even more higher in the order. And the counting stats will quickly start to follow, even on a team like that that might only have, you know, four or five long-term big league bats in that lineup. Yeah, yeah. And another guy, by the way, who jumped from double a michael harris

um not like lighting the world on fire but you know holding his own 701 ops no homers or steals but it almost feels like double a is now like the the most advanced minor league level it almost feels like triple a is now quad a and that's kind of where you know depth is kept and guys who are trying to claw their way back and uh you know it's a big gap between the minors and the the majors but it almost feels like right now the guys at double a are seeing higher quality pitching and are more ready to uh to slide in and hit the ground running it's i'm sure it's not you know a unilateral thing that you can apply, but it feels like a lot of guys at AAA just aren't really ready when they get that first look.

Here's the other aspect to this. This actually came up for the athletic baseball show that went up on Friday. I was asking Keith Law about this because I was looking at Corbin Carroll. I think he's the number one prospect now on James' list over at Rotowire. I was doing the leaderboard

comps at Fangraphs. I'd like to do that just to kind of put into context, what is this player at his age doing against seasons we've seen in the minor leagues in the last 10, 12, 15 years? You can split that information out pretty easily. And I think it just gives you a better sense of what the player might do upon arrival, what the ceiling might be. At least it helps me. Maybe I'm just wandering off into the fog and leading myself into a path to nowhere, but I think it helps kind of ground my expectations more often than not. Projections also help do that a little bit too. All this is to say that one thing that really caught my eye is that while Corbin Carroll's having a fantastic season at AA, and I like him and I have absolutely no argument against him a 24.5 k rate for an elite prospect at double a might have been more troubling five or ten years

ago than it is now and my question to keith and i'll throw the same question to you was should we not really be bothered by that because the quality of pitching throughout all the minor leagues is just better. It's harder to hit double-A pitching in 2022 than it was in 2012. So a 24.5% K rate at double-A is really not a problem as it pertains to Carroll or any other players that are similar in age at that level who are doing everything else at such a high level. That's really interesting. I think you're on to something there because you know it's i don't know man it's uh again it feels kind of like the the new

top level where you know you kind of want your prospects to be because they'll face the the best pitchers and um yeah i just i do think you kind of have to recalibrate expectations with a lot of things. Like with offense nowadays at the big league level, a 7-10 OPS may not sound so good, but it's like an above-league average slightly. So we've got to recalibrate there, and I think you're right that we have to recalibrate a little bit

with strikeout rates for prospects. I think Aaron Judge kind of helped rewrite the the rules there because he struck out a ton but it hasn't really mattered like he struck out a ton as a prospect but it's not really the death knell it used to be a high k rate in the minors and you have to consider age versus level too like with corbin carroll it's um the strikeout rate may be a little high but when you consider the age versus level it's really it's acceptable nowadays a higher level of swing and miss you can get by with and i think the the other player that led me down this road of starting to ask some questions about minor league strikeout rates and how much they actually

matter just kind of coming from the other direction is Keston Hira. And because Keston Hira didn't have a problematic strikeout rate coming up before he debuted, I kept thinking it's going to come down. He's going to be a 25 to 27 percent baseline strikeout rate player at the big league level, if not something better, because of what he was doing at double a and even even triple a in 2019 26.3 at that level mashing even running a little bit back when he did that i just thought the hit tool is going to come through eventually so maybe there's something here in how hitters are striking you out you know there's there's certain ways that minor league pitchers can strike a hitter out and there are maybe other ways that big league pitchers can get you out that minor league pitchers can't. The skill difference.

Maybe it's the command of breaking stuff. Whatever it might be. The high fastball. There could just be some differences. Like a 25% K rate for two players at AA might be completely different in how they got there. And that might matter more in determining what the big league strikeout rate is going to be down the road. Yeah, that's well put. Not all strikeout rates are created equal. I think maybe it was Kyme Bloom who was saying Tristan Kassa still had some things to work on

before he got hurt, so that was delaying his promotion. There's a lot that teams see that goes beyond just K rates. K rates on certain pitches. Are they struggling against lefties or struggling against certain pitches from lefties? And it's a whole new world with technology and what we know about opposing pitchers and guys trying to learn on the fly. So I think it's kind of amazing how we feel like we know a lot, but we're still just kind of scratching the surface of what we can learn about this game. So I do think it's probably getting really granular inside major league organizations. We obviously don't know the full extent of the knowledge

and technology and data they've collected, but it does feel like it's becoming more of an individual pitch thing where a guy may have a high K rate, but maybe he shows more plate coverage or better handle on breaking stuff than a guy who just sits dead red on heaters and knocks around double- or single A heaters. Because once you get to the majors, they can get a lot more over than just the fastball.

And when you're in the minors, sometimes a guy can just get over fastball and you can kind of lay off everything else and sit dead red. You mentioned that your new top 300 over at Rotowire. I know rotowire.com slash radio would always get a 10-day trial before. Is that still the best way to get a trial? Yeah, you can get a trial. No credit card required. So give us a shot.

Awesome. Yeah, definitely check out Clay's list. Check out everything else that's going on over there as well. You mentioned Cody Bellinger and just where he was relative to Christopher Murrell. And I'm wondering now

that we've got a third of the season in the books, can we start to look at this version of Cody Bellinger and just say, okay, this is the new baseline. He's not MVP Bellinger anymore. And every time he comes up, Christian Jelic usually comes up because their careers have just been on similar arcs. I don't really know why exactly, but that's just how it's played out so far. We have some power.

We have some speed. He's six for seven as a base stealer, but the K rate's only a tick below 30% right now, and the slash line's ugly. 210, 283, 409. Context-wise, though, it's a 96 WRC+. This is just the run environment that we're in right now. Are you at the point, at this point in 2022 where

you say, okay, Cody Bellinger's not coming back? 2019, Cody Bellinger's never coming back, and even 2018, Cody Bellinger is probably out of reach at this point. I think if you're being realistic, you do have to say that. But he's still on a pretty good pace for Roto with seven homers and six bags. And I talked about recalibrating your mindset when it comes to offensive stats. Even with that slash line, he's really about league average by WRC plus 96. So it's been bad, and I get that there's a level of frustration with Bellinger, but he's bounced back a little bit. So I don't think 2018 or 2019 is going to be in reach,

but I also don't think it's been quite as bad as everybody thinks. It's a big improvement on last year. So I'm not completely out on Bellinger. Do you think I probably have him too high, though, in the 120s? I get it. He plays for such a good team and plays pretty much every day that I still think he could be useful for even shallow mixed leagues.

I think there's a couple things that still work in his favor. I'd be more... The ranking seems about right. I don't have a set of rankings up right now, so I don't have a direct comp. Part of now so i don't have a like a direct comp but part of the reason why i would buy into that valuation and why i might be interested in trading for him in leagues where i'm just chasing offense in general if i'm kind of saying i'm not worried

about average or i got enough in the bank whatever it might be steals are really hard to come by they're condensed in roto leagues like always he's on pace for about 15 steals this year, so you're getting 8 to 10 more bags at the current pace. But the team context, if you take overall offensive production and you kind of compress it league-wide to the point where the highs aren't quite as high and the lows

relatively speaking aren't as far away from the top, the difference is probably going to come down to elite run producers and elite RBI producers in our game. That might be what separates you. And the Dodgers offense around him is still elite. So he can, despite being a player that's not quite as good as he was in 18 and 19, maybe

not nearly as good as he was back then, exceed expectations in those categories. And that might be the difference when we look back at the final standings at the end of this season, if homers and steals and everything else are a little more compressed than they ordinarily are. You know, I went pretty hitter heavy early in my drafts this year, but tell me if this is the case for you. Are you like looking for offense and hurting for offense on pretty much every team? I had a few different builds i in the tout wars i'm in the 15 team auction i tried to sit back and not overspend i'm trying to be more disciplined when i have the opportunity to build rosters that way and there was a ton of value in the 22 to 28 range and i overspent like in the second hour of the draft over air quotes overspent so it really pushed me to this imbalanced build where I think I'm winning four out of the five hitting categories

and I'm third or fourth in steals most days so I'm getting a ton of hitting points and then that pitching staff has been a mix of you know Luis Severino on the relative cheap because he was coming off of a lot of injuries. Nathan Evaldi is a little bit of an older, injury-prone, kind of cheap, ace-ish sort of pitcher. Kind of went cheap on closers. Joe Barlow has been on that team. And then it's been kind of like Gore as a reserve pick and George Kirby off the waiver wire and just trying to cobble it together on the pitching side. And I'm finding that build is actually a lot easier to work with for me than the opposite build. Chasing bats this year seems like it's kind of a miserable experience. Because in a lot of other leagues where I've got a more balanced team or if I was a little more pitching heavy, I'm not finding good productive bats on the wire consistently. I'm finding I'm turning more spots over. You know, I'll pick someone up for a week or two, not seeing what I like, not seeing enough hard hit balls, seeing bad play discipline, and I'm moving on. And it seems like there are more revolving doors this year than there have been in years past. I don't have data to back it up,

but that's just been my experience managing those rosters so far. It feels like more platoons too. It feels like a theme across my leagues that I'm hurting for offense, even where I paid up early for offense. Even with the offensive surge across baseball the past few weeks, most of my teams, I'm doing okay with pitching, but I'm just constantly looking to plug holes on offense, you know, picking up Edwin Rios, that window shut pretty quick, you know, like trying to squeeze something out of Isaac Paredes, hoping and praying not all guys are going to be Christopher Murrell. And it feels like most of my offensive

pickups have been pretty underwhelming so far. I picked up Jake Berger for like a week. That didn't go so well. So I'm really, I hate to keep beating the drum on Vinny Pasquantino, but I just really need some power, some juice. And maybe, yeah, maybe trading for a guy like Bellinger at this point wouldn't be the worst idea because it feels like people are ready to kind of leave him for dead

when your Ks are up a little bit actually on last year, but everything else is improving. Yeah, I think just getting RBIs, runs, we don't discuss those stats as much, but it's so important. And a guy like Bellinger who, again, plays every day for that team, I think a guy like that could be a nice buy low at this point do you also find that compared to when you first started playing fantasy baseball

or maybe when you first joined rotowire and kind of became part of the industry do you pay more attention to defensive ability because of its importance in playing time than you used to? Because I am finding I care so much more about defense today than I used to. And for a long time, I was like, oh, defense doesn't really matter for fantasy. Well, no, it matters for playing time. And playing time is huge in our game. So if you're not paying attention to defense, you might be leaving playing time on the table. Yeah, I think that's really smart. I didn't really think much about defense early,

but playing time is king, and you have to be able to play your position okay unless you're such a good hitter that you can DH. I'm with you. I find myself thinking about that. A guy like Christian Pache, you don't want to overvalue his defensive contributions, but a guy, yeah, if he's not so good

defensively i've learned during the draft process that probably want to scale that guy back and bump them down your rankings reduce playing time because uh most often that that will cost the player playing time you know if they're bad defensively like you know keston here uh that will cost the player playing time. If they're bad defensively, like Kesson Hira, countless others, I do think that should be probably not at the forefront of your mind, but it should be a big part of your draft evaluation and in season too. If a guy's just stinking it up when it comes to defense, it could result in less playing time pretty quick.

It raises the bar, I think, of what the player has to offer to stay in the lineup. You have to hit a ton if you're a bad defender when you're trying to break through, especially. I've wondered, too, if part of the reason we're not finding a lot of high-quality hitters on the wire throughout the first half of the season, there have been some. I'm not going to pretend like Taylor Ward hasn't happened, or Brandon Drury has been pretty valuable so far and at multiple positions too there have been good hitters to pick up part of it for me is that i'm usually willing to spend even though research generally tells me not to on prospects that come up in season a lot of those

players were debuting with teams on opening day or soon after. And a few like Adley Rutschman and Riley Green were hurt and missed some time and Green hasn't even debuted yet. But how do you find balance both during draft season and in season as someone who I think really appreciates prospects and wants to have prospects and wants to be right about them same as anyone else? How do you find that balance of taking chances but not taking too many chances or not falling into the trap of having to wait all season for someone to start figuring something out because i think the the way you win in fantasy baseball it's that's a few things it's avoiding mistakes and having a good well-balanced, but it's hitting on outliers. And sometimes prospects end up being league-winning players

because they come up, they mash, they steal bases, they do everything we're looking for. Last year, it was big on the pitching side. I'm just curious how you try and avoid those pitfalls or how willing you are to fall into a trap while chasing the possibility of some great production from a young player? Well, I think I fell too much into that trap in recent years. I probably swung too hard toward that side of things with prospects because I was spoiled.

And I think all of us were in the fantasy baseball world by the Ronald Acuna types, Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis, just coming up and being superstars on day one. And the year I won TGFBI, and I don't mean to pat myself on the back too hard, but the year I won that, it was mostly driven by rookie Jack Flaherty, rookie Walker Bueller, and had Blake Snell breaking out that year. So I think that kind of getting help from those guys made me fall even more in love with prospects. And maybe I overdid it.

Last year, I whiffed big on Jared Kelnick. So I've kind of tried to dial it back and find more of a happy medium instead of falling too much in love with prospects. It's a really hard game. Baseball is incredibly difficult. And to play at the highest level. Even Vlad Jr., who I was so sure was going to be awesome, it took him a few years. You shouldn't assume a guy's going to

hit the ground running and be a superstar like we saw with some of those guys. I've been trying to be more realistic. I was so sure that Kelnick was going to be good. I was even saying that maybe he's going going to be good. And I was even saying that, you know, maybe he's going to file a grievance at some point.

Which looks silly now. So I'm not going to say the same thing about like Vinny or Riley Green. But, you know, think about the year Trey Turner came up and Gary Sanchez came up that year too. These guys can really swing things. So, yeah, I don't get too carried away, but in leagues where I can stash, I do kind of like to have a high upside stash

who can help me out. And most of those stashes are on the hitting side this year for me because I'm excited about a few of the arms, but I'm not hurting for arms on most of my fantasy teams. Yeah, it's something Ian Kahn talked about this a bit on Under the Radar this week. He was trying to be a week or two ahead on a few of the prospects coming up. He's in NL tout this year. So I think in this example, it was Luis Garcia coming up for the Nats. And maybe Garcia is not necessarily a player we're going to be excited about in 10, 12 team mixed leagues this season.

We'll see if the AAA power holds. We talked about that a bit earlier in the week. But what he was saying was he wanted to be in a league like that. He wanted to be a week or two early because it would save him in fab. And I think one of the things, obviously, you have to know the league rules. In that case, you have to play a player the week you pick him up. You pick up a guy in the minors. You're taking a zero that week.

You can afford that in a league that deep though, because the last player you're playing may only start one or two games that week, depending on the circumstances. So I think you can, you can invest in those young players in the right circumstances. A huge part of it, whether it's draft season, whether it's in season, is just making sure you're not paying the tax and then some, because that's often what happens, right? The part of the Fabapalooza trap that makes it a trap is that you're paying 30 to 40% of your budget sometimes for the best players that are coming up in those clusters. And it's really difficult for any player, and this applies to closers too, to actually return enough value to justify that much of your budget.

So I think being sort of thrifty about it is a huge part of kind of threading the needle. And some of it's accepting that for me, like Bobby Witt Jr., he's having a good rookie season. I think he's played a lot better in the last five weeks than he did in the first four or five weeks of the season. So he's absolutely trending in the right direction. four or five weeks of the season. So he's absolutely trending in the right direction. It's also accepting that he could go 2020 and he's not going to be on my roster if his ADP was pick 75, pick 80. And that's okay.

It's fine if somebody else gets fair value or a slightly undervalued player the first time around. I'll have chances to have Bobby Witt Jr. on my team in future years. I can take my chance this year on someone who goes a lot later. You got to kind of learn when to walk away. That's something that I've had to learn the hard way. And I just want to get back to Luis Garcia of the Nats for a second

because he's kind of a fascinating case study because if this guy had not debuted in the big leagues before and he's just putting up those numbers at AAA, 314 average, 368 on on base 531 slug with eight homers in the bag i mean we'd be pretty darn excited about him but since he already had debuted it's like he loses so much of that shine it's like the new car off the lot thing was prospect so kind of always remember that that you know they in dynasty leagues if you're paying

top dollar for guy well you know the second they come up you're paying top dollar for a guy well you know the second they come up and have a little bump in the road they're going to lose a lot of their perceived value and you know trade value so um i just think garcia i'm pretty excited about him i know james is pretty excited but i think the community at large would be a lot more excited if we hadn't seen him for a couple of brief cups of coffee in the past. Yeah, and I think it's kind of funny. It's like a pendulum because I was thinking about Leote Tavares this morning. I was dog-walking thoughts.

Leote Tavares, that's where my brain goes. And I was like, he's still really young, and he's 23. He'll be 24 in September. And I was having that same thought in my head. I said, if he had not debuted yet, the conversation around him would be quite a bit different, right? He's got seven homers, seven steals at AAA.

He's lowered the strikeout rate a bit from where it was last year. Not walking as much as he did a season ago, but a power speed combo like that on a team that's still looking for some answers in its lineup. We would like Leote Tavares more if we didn't have 82 big league games of him hitting 188 with a 249 OBP and a 321 slug. And he did that as a 21 and a 22 year old. So it's like debuting hurt him. And I think I've wondered about this for projections for a few years. If sometimes that drags the projection down too far, if there's a little too much weight

put into big league failure when we're talking about young players trying to figure it out. I guess you want a future forward example, Jared Kelnick. You might be wrong about Kelnick today, but you might be found right on Kelnick later this season, next year, maybe it's 2024, but you could be right in the long run about that. I mean, you and I have made trades in long-term leagues where I've lost a trade from day one, and then two years later, I look at it and go, okay, that turned out okay for me, but I still lost because I didn't get enough value in the moment. But it's like, Eno has said this before, you can be right and then wrong and then wrong and then right, and it shifts all the time.

You got to be humble in this game because you're going to be wrong a lot. And yeah, those things that look wrong at one point can flip and your hits could end up looking not so great later on. So yeah, it's a humbling game. And with Tavares, it is kind of amazing. I remember, too, when he came up, 2020, he had four homers and eight bags, and then people were drafting him. That was just last year.

And I think there is something like that kind of burn me, he burned me thing where, and I'm guilty of it too. Just you pick up a guy in the past, he stinks to join up, and then you just kind of write him off. But these players are constantly changing. They're not just static numbers on a baseball card. So yeah, I think it's wise to not close the book on Tavares. I didn't realize how young he still was.

Not faring too bad at AAA. I'm kind of excited about Ezekiel Duran on that team too. Yeah, I like that they're shaking some things up. We've reached that point in the season where the teams that are not on track to make the playoffs are moving away from some of the veteran holdover types. The Pirates are doing it. Part of the interest in Vinny Pasquantino right now in redraft leagues is that the Royals are probably at that point with someone like Carlos Santana.

And why wouldn't you bring up the guy who's tearing up AAA and doing it with great plate skills and plenty of power? Duran was part of the Joey Gallo trade, I believe. So when you look at Duran, what do you see as a reasonable sort of comp? He's another player that's making the leap from AA, doing it with even less experience there than a lot of other players making that leap. Only 45 games, but he's a little on the older side relative to some of the players called up. He just turned 23 a couple of weeks ago. Do you see legitimate power and speed, even if maybe the batting averages we've seen at a few stops might be a little bit out of reach for

him at the big league level? He's a hard guy to figure out because he's kind of like a pop-up prospect. But one thing I love seeing, and James kind of makes fun of me because i i look at doubles sometimes but i mean seven homers at triple a kind of modest but 25 doubles so he was slugging 582 i think he could be i mean is it crazy to say he could be like a what yon mancada is right now kind of what he is or maybe maybe like a cabrian hayes type maybe i'm a little carried away luis arias the third base um i kind of see him as like a top you know in that 150 to 200 range if he's able to play every day that third base spot's been a pretty much a disaster for texas and uh four hits yesterday in the double header it seems like you know why not give this kid a look and uh a little splash of speed as well had seven bags so and i love to see him being more efficient

on his steel attempts and you can tell me if i'm maybe getting a little too carried away but you know a guy like mancada kind of down on and i think those guys like Javi Baez I think is kind of in that mix too. I'm trying to find a good equal ground or level-headed spot to put Durant, but I haven't surged and passed quite a few of these middling infielders.

Did he land in your top 300? Let me look at exactly where I'd put him. Yeah, there he is, 244. Yeah, 244. Maybe I need to bump him up a little bit higher because I am pretty excited about him. But as I said, I'm kind of trying to find that middle ground with being excited and keeping expectations reasonable because I have been burned. But Duran's numbers at AAA really popped out to me, especially

those doubles. Looking at where you've got him compared to Gavin Lux in redraft situations, Andres Jimenez, Luis Garcia, we just mentioned a couple minutes ago, Ryan McMahon, that's kind of the cluster of second base eligible players. That seems appropriate for now given the big leap and the couple things that i i always want to keep an eye on for players like this especially guys that don't necessarily have the established track record where people across the the prospect community agree on the long-term big league ability how aggressive is he in terms of his

swing percentage and how hard is he hitting the of his O-swing percentage and how hard is he hitting the ball? I think those are just two things that really help fill in the gaps between the players you were describing as possible comps. If he's swinging at pitches outside the zone 38, 40% of the time when the calendar flips to July, that's going to temper our short-term expectations a lot and probably even temper the long-term expectations a little because that's a really aggressive approach and it's very difficult to live with something like that if he settles in more in the low 30s range that might get us a lot more excited if the hard hit

rate looks really good that the power comes through and we say hey this is this is 25 plus home run power you know if his underlying stack cast numbers actually resemble some of the things we've seen from a guy like Mankata, I think it's fair to jump on board with that being a reasonable sort of expectation. And he's another guy who jumped straight from AA. So it seems like that's becoming more of a theme. And maybe I saw James Anderson tweeting about maybe Corbin Carroll, who he kind of touched on briefly. Maybe he gets the jump from AA at some point. James said he didn't expect the Diamondbacks to do that, but man, Corbin Carroll sure looks ready.

And yeah, I think maybe because so many guys are jumping from AA, it makes it even more difficult to judge these guys. And yeah, maybe I'll bump Durant a little bit higher, And yeah, maybe I'll bump Durant a little bit higher, but I put him in the 240s mostly because I want to keep expectations reasonable. But I'm pretty excited about him and a lot of my middle infielders like Ahmed Rosario, those types really hurt me. So I'm hoping Durant can provide a little bit of an upgrade. Totally possible, and he'll have multiple position eligibility a lot of places sooner rather than later if he doesn't have it already in your leagues. Here's a question I always like to throw out there early summer. It's golf season.

If you don't live in a warm other place, it's finally golf season for many people out there. If you had one mulligan, one 2022 do-over, it could be a player, it could be a strategy, it could be anything, what would you change about the season so far? Well, I've had some bad ones, as we all do. Maybe Trevor Rodgers. There was another one who I was thinking of, but it's escaping me at the moment.

But Trevor Rodgers, I ended up in a few spots. Think about the other arms going in that range. Verlander, Manoa, McClanahan. To hit that landmine of Trevor Rogers has really, really hurt. Hoping he can get on track a little bit today, but that'd be a big one. For a long time, it was looking like Randy Rosarena was going to be a big one, a long time. It was looking like a Randy or Rosa Raina. It's going to be a big one, but he's actually gotten pretty hot.

Eloy Jimenez too. And that's another one, you know, with the defense where it comes into play, where maybe I didn't, didn't put enough stock into his defensive issues. And just the fact that he's a big lumbering guy with maybe some, you know, I didn't really put the injury risk

you know tying that to having to play the field so much uh eloy's looking like a big whiff hopefully he comes back but i saw he's dealing with some leg soreness again so yeah i'd say trevor rogers eloy are up there randy rose come on so i wouldn't wouldn't really put him in that mix but also julio rodriguez i got shut out on him now i have a top 10 player did you get him anywhere wow yeah you get him in top 10 overall it makes sense doing everything right now i've only got him i think in one early league and i sat here on podcast for the better part of a month and said take the chance on julio where he's going instead of wit because they're more similar than they are different. I didn't expect Julio Rodriguez to run this much. I didn't expect him to be immediately

this good. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. If I had him everywhere, maybe then I would feel comfortable taking a partial victory lap. But to your point on Randy Rosarena and the slow start for him and players, they're human in're human, uh, in their, their performances, their waves, like in every wave, every player has different like amplitude. If you look at production on a, on a graph, right there, there are higher highs for some guys and lower lows. And a Rose arena kind of fits into that more high variance sort of mold

because of his approach, right? His O swing percentage is up this year, 34.8%. He's always had a reasonably high K rate, kind of in the 28% range these last two seasons. So it can be a little more feast or fam when you have swing and miss like that. But I think it's that uptick in O-swing percentage that was making me more concerned about what was happening earlier this year. If the underlying plate skills metrics were the same, it wouldn't have been as troubling. So things have at least tracked in the right direction. The other question with Randy Rosarena, right now he's on pace for probably 25-ish steals, which would be a career best for

him, of course. He's not very efficient as a base stealer. He's 10 for 15 this season. He was 20 for 30 last season. I just wonder how far into the future the Rays keep letting him run at this rate if the success rate doesn't improve. That's a really good lesson is that we talked about defense, but also, yeah, look at success rate on the bases because what is the break-even mark? Like 70% for it to be worthwhile for the team? Yeah, I think it's 70%. So if he's not hitting that mark, yeah, you may want to scale back expectations for subsequent years. And the big thing, too, with Randy was that

he wasn't hitting for any power early on. He's up to six now, but when his first was like May 4th or something, he went forever without a homer. So good to see that tick up a little bit. You do kind of wonder if maybe he was a beneficiary of the slightly juiced ball. His home run per fly ball has been ticking down. And yeah,

I mean, he's got a 12% infield fly, so he's got some warts, you know, he's got a 12% infield fly, so he's got some warts. He's hit some dead duck pop-ups, but I still like Randy. I think maybe I 2020

may be out of reach for him, but if he gets the 20-plus bags, even if he's only up to the teens when it comes to home runs. In this environment, that'll play. Yeah, he's still pacing out to be a good value where he was

going back during draft season. I think his long-term value is going to be really interesting to track. If I had him in a keeper league or a dynasty league, I might be more inclined to move away right now and try and reshape the roster a little bit. And I'm also curious, in the Rays, they churn that roster a ton.

Maybe Randy Rosarito is a player they move on from this offseason. Maybe they flip him and instead they're going to have Kevin Kiermaier, I think, finally moving on to free agency as well. But clearly a team that has a lot of depth, clearly a team that's not afraid to make a deal. And if they trade him away, I think there's going to be at least temporarily a drop in his value. I think the community have this sort of window for the time in the offseason that he's traded until he shows that he's at least the same guy in season where you would be getting less in a trade for him than you would get if you moved him now or at any point before the Rays move on from him. Yeah, I put a lot of stock into what the Rays do. Maybe appealing to authority a little too much, but they really know what the heck they're doing.

If they traded Randy Rose-Randy, which I really could see too. They're not a team to really hold on to their guys and keep pieces long term, aside from Wander. I could see a trade, and if that were to happen,

maybe people would be hard out on Randy and create a little bit of a buying window. But also maybe he just falls apart without that kind of guidance and the teaching from that staff. By the way, Julio Rodriguez, I just want to say maybe the most amazing thing about his line is that he's batting 270 even though all those calls were going against him. That was comical early on. How many borderline and just blatant balls were being called strikes against him. So 329 average over his last 21 contests. Yeah, rookie strike zone treatment. I mean, running way more than expected.

He's 17 for 20 as a base stealer this year. Has that great success rate, but tons of green lights. A 336 OBP for a 21-year-old in his debut. Yeah, we'll take that. Double-digit barrel rate. Everything that you're really looking for. And I'm okay with a slightly elevated O-swing percentage for a profile like this because he is so young. There are so many signs that this guy is going to keep getting better as he spends more time in the big leagues. Is he another Acuna type in terms of our categorical expectations? that this guy is going to keep getting better as he spends more time in the big leagues.

Is he another Acuna type in terms of our categorical expectations? Is that the type of ceiling you now see for Julio Rodriguez? Yeah, I think he's just outside of that. I think he's first rounder and just kind of behind the Acunas of the world. Yeah, he was over his first month batting 205 with a 37% K rate, Julio.

So the fact that he's really brought his numbers around so much in a little over a month is pretty amazing. And I'm glad that he's sticking up for himself a little bit. I saw he drew a line in the dirt where he felt one ball went. So I'm glad to see Rodriguez maturing so quick. And yeah, that,

that slow start in terms of average and K rate seems like a distant memory. And you got to remember that, yeah, with all those calls, he was really battling uphill during that time anyway. Yeah, no doubt about that. For those who may not know,

Clay is a Cincinnati Reds fan. It is not the most fun team to be a fan of You want to find some joy watching the Reds, watch Hunter Green. A lot of recent success. Last six starts have been a pretty big step forward overall. At least six strikeouts in each of those outings. It's a 43 to 13 strikeout to walk ratio over that span. There's still a little bit of a control issue, but not nearly as bad as some people had feared initially. Do you feel like Green is beginning to turn a corner, and what do you think the rest of the season is going to hold for him from a fantasy perspective?

He's a tough guy to figure out because that fastball that was so highly touted, it's actually been knocked around a lot. He's bringing the heat most games. There was that little bit early in the year where his fastball kind of dips, but it brings the heat heat but it's it's not enough you know only the heater can only carry so much of the weight so um still looking for him to kind of develop that change up a little more seemed like for a while he had bagged the or i'm sorry he needs to develop the slider a little more it seemed like he had bagged the change up for a little bit i saw him throw a few in his uh most recent start i think more than anything it's just great to see hunter green

improving and making adjustments from start to start he uh will show flashes but it's just it's amazing the progress like the fact that he's had some clunkers, he had that eight run blow up, but then he'll flash the kind of upside he did like against, uh, Pittsburgh and, and, uh, Boston recently. I'm excited that he can,

he's got a really good head on his shoulders too, that he can make these adjustments and kind of show progress at a quicker rate than a lot of these young arms. But I still think there'll be quite a few bumps in the road. So, uh, I'm tempering my expectations this year i think he's got a really bright future but he really needs to get that change up to a point where he feels confident using it i think last time i checked his change up usage overall was like five percent and uh i think he needs to

ramp that up and just be more confident and otherwise kind of a reliever-ish profile you're obviously going to give him a long time to prove himself as a starter but about that third pitch it's going to be a looking like a reliever profile yeah i think that's the the key though the reds have a lot of runway to keep trying things out and we've seen guys get by with two pitches. The problem, if one of those pitches is a, even if it's a high velo fastball, if it's a relatively straight fastball, hitters can just sit back, wait for the fastball, and do damage against it. That's been the recipe that's worked for them so far.

15 homers allowed already this season for Hunter Green, 11 against the fastball. I can't remember, and I'm sure there are times this has happened, I'll have to do a StatCast search sometime. I can't remember seeing a fastball with a 98.5 mile per hour average velo that had a.352 batting average against and a.714 slugging percentage against like that. And I'm sure like small sample relievers, it's probably happened. But for a starter, that is highly unusual.

So I'm with you. And the changeup is a really important pitch for him. Or a new third pitch maybe in the offseason could be absolutely huge for Hunter Green long-term. Yeah, very excited about what he brings to the table. But yeah, for a while, for a couple starts, he just bagged the change-up entirely. Then again, I did see him throw a few against Arizona. So it is crazy, but it goes to show that if you don't have the secondaries and you can't really get them over for strikes consistently, major league hitters are going to sit dead red on that heater

and not really pay any mind to the breaking stuff. They'll just spit on it and sit on the heater. So as good as that fastball is, it's not going to, that alone isn't going to lead him to a long, successful big league career. He's still got to make, still got to come along in a few other areas. I think one thing that's going to be key is green sort of taking his future into his own hands.

He's plenty of players have to do this. If you're not an organization that you fully trust to get it right with your development, you know, you got to do the driveline thing or tread, or you got to go to one of those facilities, find something that works for you in pitch design and pitch shape and, and work on the secondaries that way. I think if we get reports of Hunter Green doing that, which doesn't seem out of the question at all, that's going to fuel even more optimism for me about his future as a big league starter. Tyler Maley just had a nice start, 10Ks before we started recording,

and there's one league that I drafted earlier this season. It might be a league that we're in together. I think it's the AFL Speakers League. Slow draft, 15-teamer, where Maley was my first pitcher in that league. I went really hit her heavy. I remember that.

And I'm dropping the Tyler Mailey SP one tweets kind of 97% tongue in cheek. But, you know, sometimes you build rosters that way and the first one is the first one. So you deal with it. It's been a rough year for him so far. Are there signs of him turning it around even beyond what we just saw on Thursday with that 10 strikeout performance? I don't know, man, because he's such a

Jekyll and Hyde type. For whatever reason, he just has such issues pitching at home at Great American Ballpark. Good outing though Thursday. That was encouraging to see, but wouldn't you know it, the Reds blew the save for him. So even when he pitches well at home, he can't get the dub. But I kind of like Malley as a buy low,

like buy lowest, because I guess after this outing you can't buy lowest, but people just seem like ready to almost drop Tyler Malley. So I could see maybe buying low. He's a lot better than he's pitched so far. They got Luis Castillo back.

I got to tell you, Derek, I'm pretty excited about Graham Ashcraft. He's a guy added to my top 300. I like Mallee a little more, but i don't think it's crazy to think maybe ashcraft could perform at a similar level not a ton of k's but uh keeps the ball on the ground and actually ashcraft stuff is nasty so i could see see it translating into a few more but yeah if you can't get ashcraft off waivers i could see maybe sending out some offers for tyler mallee yeah ashcraft i think because of green's arrival and Nick Lodolo's arrival, especially I think when you're the third or fourth pitching prospect in an organization

where the first two are so well-known, it's easy to get overlooked. And I think that probably happened a little bit with Ashcraft. People just didn't think that much about him because they didn't really see a path for him. They thought Vladimir Gutierrez and, and, uh, Reaver San Martin. And some of those guys were going to be the, the glue guys,

but Ashcraft getting an opportunity now in Cincinnati, I'm beginning to fear that Nick Senzel is my new Victor Robles. And because I've experienced Victor Robles the way that I have, I'm not as committed to Senzel by comparison, but I'm still not ready to give up on Nick Senzel despite slowly mounting evidence that I probably should. And it's slowly mounting because unfortunately he's still missing time with injuries. It's just one thing after another, unfortunately, where it's a mix of maybe bad luck and, of course, a propensity to get hurt, which is the worst combination of all for a guy trying to figure it out at the big league level. Yeah, real quick, one last thing on Ashcraft, if you don't mind.

I'll just say that there's a little anecdote I shared with James on XM. But yeah, Kyle Farmer, the red shortstop, was talking after Ashcraft's last start. He was talking with the media. Kyle Farmer said that mid-game, he was talking to his teammate, and they were like, man, does Ashcraft have the nastiest stuff on the entire team? Again, that hasn't translated to Ks, but it's kind of amazing that that's what the players are seeing, some of the nastiest stuff on the entire team.

Keep that in mind with Ashcraft and Nick Senzel. I think I'd probably advise you to, to move on just because it has been one thing after another. You don't want to completely give up on him. And he is playing a gold glove caliber center field, which has been nice to see, but I just can't have really any fantasy expectations for nixon's until he's able to i don't know play 100 games with some success yeah it's been three

full years since he's been able to do that the big league level of course 2020 no one could play 100 games that year but only 36 games played last season he's already missed about 20 games this season with a few different injuries. And in the times that we've seen him, the plate skills are still fine. The K rate's been under 20% yet again, but we're not getting a lot of hard contact, right? So we're talking about a guy who already hasn't shown much in the barrel rate department. And in the times that we've seen him going back to that shortened season, it's been more bad than good on that front.

So the part can can mask some of the flaws. But I think the thing that's been most disappointing for me performance wise is Nick Senzel stole 14 bases back in 2019. He has struggled with his success rate in the time since right. Two for three in the shortened season, two for seven a year ago, two for four this year. I mean, it's brutal. So that aspect of his game could very quickly disappear, and then it puts a ton of pressure on him beginning to hit the ball a lot harder

if he's ever going to deliver on that potential. We talked a little bit about efficiency, and he hasn't been very efficient on the base pass, just four for seven over the last couple seasons. And it seems like every time he's starting to get together starting to get hot he's hurt again so to start june he was betting 323 with a couple steals over his first seven games but then hurt again so back issue and you know as good as his skills are and as great of a prospect as he was or highly touted or well thought of, just hasn't been able to stay on the field. And the best ability, Derek, as you know, is availability.

And Sendell just doesn't have that on his side. No, not yet. No, not yet anyway. I think I've downgraded him in my mind to being more of a throw-in for a keeper dynasty league, where if I'm playing for the future and I just want one more lottery ticket as part of a trade, he's the second, third, fourth player. The last thing I'm asking for just to make me feel a little better about the return that I'm getting in a trade, but not the centerpiece of anything of great consequence when we're talking about long-term formats. Can I throw you an either or? Sure. Because I just acquired Tyrone Taylor in your Maki League, which I really appreciate you running that still. Would you take Tyrone Taylor pretty easily over Senzel, or is that closer for you than maybe for me? Maybe a little closer for me than it is for you,

but at the same time, Tyrone Taylor has the underlying numbers that we like. It's at least a decent barrel rate. It's a pretty good hard hit rate. K rate, similar to Senzel. Walk rate, pretty similar. Maybe the difference is Tyrone Taylor doesn't quite have a spot to call his own every day,

but that chip could fall. That last little adjustment could be there. I mean, Lorenzo Cain, still a very good defender, but just not showing enough with the bat. So when you factor in Senzel's injury issues, playing time probably comes close to even. It's a great toss-up, and I think long-term, if I were in the rebuilding

situation i think i'd take the flyer on senzel but it's very close interesting yeah that is like i think both those guys are kind of yeah like decent like throw in uh pieces to see what you got come off season though i could see us talking in the offseason, and it's Senzel by a decent margin. I think those two are kind of interesting because they're not... I don't think you want to build around those types, but they could be nice supplementary pieces for a winning team.

Yeah, and you're in a league where you keep 10, 15, 20 players, and it's a deep league. That last player, you could find someone that actually could do a lot. And then we'll see what happens, you know, next year in center field, maybe Tyrone Taylor is the regular center fielder for the Brewers. And in 2023, if he doesn't become that player even sooner. Yeah. It sounds like this is going to be Lorenzo's last year, probably. Right. Yeah. I think this is probably about it for him, which, you know, a great career, a really fun player to watch, too. A guy that I probably didn't appreciate as just a great baseball player until he was a brewer because I didn't watch a lot of Royals games other than those postseason runs. That was not a must-see team for me in that peak era for him in Kansas City.

city but uh well my best my best in park opening day memory was the not today catch that lorenzo cane made opening day 2019 at the right year i think that was the year that it was against the cardinals pulled one back that was a awesome catch best catch i've ever seen live i remember carlos gomez doing that to joey vato several years ago i remember that when he just robbed Votto and then Votto wanted to see the ball. But Gogo was a fun player too. But Lorenzo, I think I saw something about him kind of hinting that it'd be his last year. And yeah, he has been a really fun player to watch.

And I'm like you, I think I underappreciated Lorenzo Cain for many years. Yeah, final year of the five-year contract that he signed before the 2018 season. So probably the swan song for Lorenzo Cain. Clay, before we go, I mentioned up top, you are everywhere at Roto-Wire. Let our listeners know all your projects,

where they can find your work, and how they can connect with you. Yeah, man. I'm on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio on Thursday, Friday, saturday right now at least until they make the football switch and you can catch me on the friday podcast over at rotowire and uh yeah a lot a lot behind the scenes but also i got this top 300 now uh refresh so yeah you can catch me and james on uh fridays and saturdays on xm and it's usually me

and jeff erickson on thursdays so follow me on twitter at clay w link and derrick really great talk with you man thanks so much for the invite always great catching up with you and yeah give clay a follow on twitter at clay w link really appreciate the time and appreciate you filling in for eno while he was out here at the end of this week. If you've got a question for a future episode, you can send that my way on Twitter at Derek van Riper, or you can always email us rates and barrels at the athletic.com.

That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you next time.