Rates & Barrels - Jarred Kelenic gets the call, prospect projections, stashy-worthy minor leaguers, and a new Kyle Gibson?

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Jarred Kelenic's promotion to Seattle, the limitations (and benefits) of projections for prospects, stash-worthy minor-leaguers, the struggles of Lourdes Gurriel Jr., and the quiet success of Kyle Gibson in Texas to begin 2021.  Rundown 1:01 Jarred Kelenic Gets the Call 9:24 Kelenic vs. Andrew Vaughn for the Rest of 2021? 13:50 Which Prospects Are Next? 27:32 Expectations for Khalil Lee 31:58 What Should the Angels Do for a Spark? 38:29 Wood Bats in College? 46:02 Is Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Just Not That Good? 50:46 Will Shane McClanahan's Workload Increase? 56:11 Kyle Gibson 3.0 60:13 Dynasty League GM Woes Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this Wednesday. We're going to discuss the arrival of Jared Kelnick. It's happening. It's Thursday. That's going to be his major league debut. It's all happening.

So we're going to talk about some players that we would compare to Kelnick in terms of short-term fantasy value. We'll talk about some of the limitations that projections have when it comes to projecting first time major league players. And we'll take a look at a few other players that might be knocking on the door for early season promotions. A lot of great questions flowing in in the mailbag as well. So we'll answer as many of those we can get to on today's episode as well. But yes, it is finally happening. And by finally, it's only been a week's worth of minor league games, but there was obviously a pretty compelling argument for Kellnick to be on

the Mariners big league roster. He's had no difficulty at AAA in his handful of games there. He's got a couple of home runs. He's stolen a couple of bases and he's mashing. And I think the immediate place I go, and usually this time of year, we're talking about Fabapalooza. We're talking about a wave of prospects coming up to the big leagues together and throwing a lot of money at these players or using our top waiver priorities on these players, trying to get some impact pieces for the rest of the season. And a few years ago, when I wrote a piece for the ads and drops column, I reached out to our friend, Derek Cardy, and asked him a few questions about projections because he, of course, makes the bat and the bat is one of the very best projection systems out there. And I wanted to know what some of the limitations are. And some of it's just the inputs, right? The scope of the inputs that can go into a major league

projection is much broader than the inputs that can go into a minor league projection. But his word of caution was, even with those limitations, you don't necessarily want to ignore what the projection systems are spitting out for prospects. And that's because they often come at a very high price tag, right? Our other friend, Ariel Cohen, pointed out they're generally a bad fab investment, but they're not always a bad fab investment. That's what gets us to come back every time. That's what gets us to throw 25, 30, 35% of our budget at players like this when they're available. So from a numbers standpoint, Kelnick's projection for the rest of the season from the bat is a 235, 298, 417 line. I'd be surprised if that happened, but I wouldn't be shocked if that happened because he's just

been so good at every minor league stop. It seems so unlikely to me that he would fall completely on his face upon arrival, even though it's still possible. You can't rule it out, but I don't expect that. So I would take the over on the projections but how far over those projections should i be willing to go i mean you should at least probably give him a league average babbitt i don't know why you wouldn't that uh could be something that derrick could explain further but um i think when i look up and down his minor league uh roster there's only you

know his his numbers there's only one time when he had a below average babib so um if you give him that then you got a 250 average right um and then i think the big question is is he going to strike out 27 of the time uh that's going to be something that's heavily regressed because he has such little time at AAA. But if you look up and down again, there's one year we had a 25.8% strikeout rate and then otherwise he's around 20. So if he only strikes out about 23% of the time, let's even give him, then you can get him up to 260, 270 even, right? And then the OBP is probably around 320 330 and the slugging you got to give all that back to the slugging too so now you're at about 450 so that's uh i i you i do look at these projections i don't think that they're useless not at all i know that some people think

that but um i i think that they're you know one of the things I think they're really good at is combining age at level in a rigorous way. Right. Like we can we can look at something and be like, oh, well, he was 23 or 24. So I got it. But the projections and say this is what 21 year olds who did this did, you know. So I he's actually not as as heavily uh regressed his projections are actually pretty decent for a person who hasn't played the major leagues yet you know because he's 21 years old and he's he's been really good at every level so this is this is what a good a decent projection look like and of, of course, it's a probabilistic thing. He has some chance of being worse than this,

some chance of being better than this, and this is what they've come along as the sort of median projection. Yeah, what I said is generally I think he will do better than that, and I think it will be because he strikes out less, and he has a better Babbitt. And there are plenty of leagues where he's just been held since draft day, so it's a moot point. You're not going to go out there and pick him off the waiver wire.

I think there are some more shallow leagues out there where people might be wondering, is he good enough in my 8-team, 10-team mixed league to be rostered right away based on that probabilistic thinking, based on the 10% outcome or the 20% outcome, the better case scenarios, are those likely enough to occur where it's worth taking the chance on him now? If it doesn't work out, replacement level in those leagues is high enough where a couple weeks from now, if you don't like what you see, you part ways with Kelnick and you move on in a

shallow league and come back to him later. I don't think I would ignore him even in shallow leagues because of where the ceiling can be. Oh, yeah. I mean, in shallow leagues, I almost think it makes more sense because you'll spend less. The waiver wire is so much better that if it doesn't work out, you'll be fine. And you're just going for ceiling. And the absolute, I mean, ceiling on Kellink is probably, he comes in hitting 280 with like 25 homer power and 15 steel type speed. Huge if he pulls that off.

That makes an impact in all formats. I think the other thing you got to think about is if you were going to give him 25 home runs, rest of season and 10 steals, who else is projected to do something like that? What kinds of players are even in that realm? Marcus Simeon actually has a projection similar to that with a 263 average. So that's pretty interesting. Buxton, a healthy Byron Buxton would actually be projected for something pretty comparable. You look through, you see Will Myers with a lower average, 249, 22 homers, 13 steals

projected the rest of the way. So those guys are all good mixed league players. And that's not immediate superstar output, but that's a top 100 overall player right away if that happens i think we have to realize that's a really good outcome that is a highly successful debut if that's how it plays out yeah and uh you know let's uh you know here's a here's a name that i think might be interesting let's say you're in a 10 or 12 team league and you've got Tommy Pham. I think that would be a really tough decision. And I think I might, as much as I think that Tommy Pham is a buy low, I think I might go for Kellnick there.

And that might be an actual actionable piece of advice for the people in shallower leagues. There could be somebody with a tommy fam type being like god you know i'm just holding on because the projections are good you know a lot of the this plate discipline still there a lot of the bad ball stats look fine but why wait when kelny could do better and the projection is somewhat similar just without the batting average so i think i i would do something like that yeah i think the key here too with fam he's projected for 12 homers and 12 steals with a 258 average the rest the way 354 obp you're giving up about 30 points of projected

woba which is a lot but you do bring a lot more power right away from Kelnick. Pham's on a good team where they can afford to start playing him less if they're healthier and getting good mileage out of some of their super utility types too. I think with Kelnick, unless he's brutal, he's just a fixture in the lineup. There's no concern about playing time beyond his own performance. He's up, and they're going to play him, and it's as simple as that. Who's it cost? Trammell? Trammell's going down, and it makes sense.

Trammell's striking out more than 40% of the time. Never played at AAA, so it was an aggressive promotion to bring him up. We're going to have plenty of guys that with their aggressive promotion, they fall short. What's really interesting to me, though, looking at the projections from the bat, is that you have the shiny new toy in Kellnick, and you have a draft season shiny new toy in Andrew Vaughn. And the way Vaughn has started, some of the luster has worn off in the first few weeks. Their projections, at least in terms of Woba, are the same the rest of the way.

And I think there's some people out there that might be cutting Andrew Vaughn to add Jared Kelnick. And I think I'd rather have Kelnick than Vaughn, too. I like Kelnick. Yeah, there's a little bit of a fantasy difference, too. I mean, a lot of that Woba for Vaughn is tied up in OVP. Yeah, but I do think maybe there's a bit of a cautionary tale. We thought Vaughn was going to come up and just hit right away. a bit of a cautionary tale.

We thought Vaughn was going to come up and just hit right away. The thing that's challenging, I think, here, Kelnick at least played some at AA for a week at AAA. Vaughn didn't get that. Vaughn made the leap from high A at the end of 2019 to the big leagues to begin 2021. I think just the fact that he's at

257, 361, 357, still looking for that first big league homer, the average and the OBP aren't bad he's not embarrassing himself he's on pace to be an above average or above replacement level player at least so i would be careful about giving up on vaughn in the long run i would be comfortable moving on from him in shallow mixed leagues especially if kelnick is out there yeah yeah i mean he's just not going to steal many bags and even though his max av and his barrel rate look like he will eventually hit a home run um i i think that the speed is a big

difference maker there um but uh yeah i mean that's that's the thing that we forget is like how you know quickly we've moved on from the last shiny toy I actually for the most part have overspent early in dealing with

injuries for the most part on my leagues and so I don't think I will be part of this. Also, what I found is that the quality of prospect in Fabo Palooza has gone down. As you mentioned with Jared Kelnick, he's gone. You know, he's been, I've been in TGFBI for, as an example, I've been holding onto Wanda Franco this whole time. And ask me how it's been.

So, you know, if you're talking now about how is the 28th best prospect going to do when he hits the ground running after six games of minor league play in the last two years. I just, I don't think that it's all set up. Kellnick could do fine. Franco could do fine. These are like the superstars, right? I'm talking about some names we'll get to.

Here's a name. Can I do this? Is this off am i going am i going rogue no i can i can just you know do that well this is almost like who else not to stash i sold uh a stash i sold a guy jaron duran i sold, uh, just now, uh, and got Eddie Rosario in auto new. And I just don't know that he's going to hit the ground running in the major leagues. I don't know that literally will he hit the ground running? Like, will they allow him to steal bases?

Right. And stealing bases is a large part of what he does. Um, and then be like, it's just, it's just not that much um i think i did the one b thing anyway uh you count like buzz from home alone yeah uh b uh i just you know there's not that much uh minor league game time on his resume and um you know it's Boston, man. Like my I thought Michael Chavis was going to be amazing

and he might still have a third or fourth act, but he's been an up and down guy. So I just think Durant is just not a top five type prospect where, you know, I want to drop 35% of my FAB and run around the house screaming because he's been called up. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I think I was starting to put together a list of stashable minor leaguers, mostly prospects,

and I felt like after the first two hitters on the list, now that Kelnick's up, Wander and Brujan, we've talked about both of those guys quite a bit, there was a massive drop for the rest of two hitters on the list, now that Kelnick's up, Wander and Brujan, we've talked about both of those guys quite a bit, there was a massive drop for the rest of the hitters because you're starting to get into guys like Duran, who playing time might be pretty stable because he can play center field, but he could also be buried in the bottom third of the lineup.

Then you get down to the pitchers. And also strikeouts. I just want to say real quick, strikeouts. I mean, that's another part of this game, right? 11 strikeouts in seven games so far, and strikeout rate is one of the things I look at. Right, I think with Duran, he's getting to more power in games, but the cost of that might be a swing that's leading him to swing and miss more,

and he's still got to make some adjustments to that new swing. So that could lead to some more difficult growing pains for him in the big leagues. And I don't know, the pitchers that I had clustered together, I had Manoa, Jackson Cower, Mackenzie Gore, and Logan Gilbert. And Gore's got the down arrow going right now. And it's not because he's made a bunch of starts at AAA, but it's just that I'm having this increased pessimism about him coming up and being amazing right away. pessimism about him coming up and being amazing right away. He's not dominating at AAA, and guys who we've been told are less talented or guys who don't have the same ceiling as Gore are doing

better at that level. Again, this is a long-term sort of thing where I'm not saying bury Mackenzie Gore for the long run, but I was holding him in Tout Wars, 15-team mixed league for the first month of the season, and I dropped him in early May. And I actually really don't have a lot of regrets about that. And if I was going to stash one pitcher right now, I think I'd be more likely to stash Alec Manoa than Mackenzie Gore because I'm having an easier time seeing the path for Manoa to claim a spot and make an immediate impact with Gore. I feel like he's going to have kid gloves because he's had kid gloves even in the upper levels of the minor leagues. I think there's also a question of

how much we're going to love change-up first guys going forward. It's a breaking ball league right now and Gore's best pitch is that change-up. Logan Gilbert has a big curveball and added velocity. Kowar has a big curveball and added velocity. Kowar has a good slider. And I think that there's a need.

One of the things that you can see with Toronto and Kansas City and Seattle is an immediate need. And with Toronto and Kansas City, surprisingly, or I don't know, surprisingly is not the right word for Toronto, but a surging team that could push their prospects. And we already heard about Bobby Witt being a possible add, but it almost looks like right now, with Modesty coming back at some point, that Kansas City needs it more in the rotation. So I think Kowar and Manoa are the two best, because I think that Seattle could still slow walk Logan Gilbert.

They're just, you know, they've done that before and he didn't come up right now. So I don't know what they're necessarily going to be waiting for. They've got an injury in the rotation. They've got opportunity in the rotation. They haven't used it yet. So I would say Manoa, Coar, and I think that they are both stashable actually. I like those as

stashes almost over Durand because I just think that they've got the stuff to land with Grace. The other guy that I think is kind of tricky to place right now of all the players I put on the list just about all of them are triple

a guys who are obviously just the last step before they get the call Elliot Ramos in San Francisco he looks like he is overmatching pitchers at double a right now so maybe he gets a quick bump to triple a and that gives us some more insight as to

what his short term flaws might be but I don't think they really need to and that gives us some more insight as to what his short-term flaws might be. But I don't think they really need to wait on him that much longer. I think we could see him maybe next month. I don't think he's going to be in this first wave of minor league call-ups, but he might be in the second one. Yeah, the Giants are – what's funny about the Giants is that they're so old. I say this it is funny because I'm an old man um but uh they're so old and it's like uh they're so decent you know that it's like okay yeah we're gonna

call up Ramos he's gonna push aside Dickerson Slater, which has been a pretty decent combo? Are they going to wait for an injury? Or are they going to give up on Togman? But Togman seems like he's been playing pretty good. What is the event? What is the opportunity we're looking for? Dickerson gets hurt? I think Farhan Zaidi can

run this team the way we turn rosters. That's what he's shown us. He is as much like us in his desire to just get through as many rosters as possible, as many players in the roster as possible, and find that

best combination. Mike Tauchman could get traded again. There's no reason to say that he's stuck there. There's plenty of other teams that could use a capable fourth outfielder. There's not enough there to block Ramos. If they think Ramos is ready, they should bring him up. I didn't realize that Alex Dickerson has not

been playing that well. That's actually a pretty good opportunity. Mike Yaz is the only guy that I think they can really justify prioritizing at a similar level to Ramos right now, and even that in the long run. If it came down to Yaz versus Ramos, what's more important to your future? You'd find a way to trade Yastrzemski and make room for Ramos at the deadline. The one thing that Farhan and his ilk like to do, though,

is to never give up an asset for nothing. You know what I mean? So if he thinks that Alex Dickerson is still an asset long term, he doesn't want to DFA him. That's what they want to do the least, is DFA a guy.

They want to keep him on the roster somehow. Yeah, well and just playing the projections game, a 329 projected Woba for Dickerson. That's better than a typical bench player. That's actually a guy that does play based on that number if you think he's going to hit that. So the question is, can you go to the White Sox?

Can you go to a team that's starved for outfielders right now and move one of your veterans to make space? And our team's going to be... Why didn't the White Sox get Tauchman? Because they didn't want to give up a reliever? Back before the season started, I thought that made sense. Just when Eloy was down,

I thought Tauchman made sense there. He's a Palatine kid. He's from the Chicago suburbs. It would have been a great coming home sort of story. It would have fit on every possible level. James Fagan could have wrote up great stories about it, and we were robbed. We were robbed of that because of Rick Hahn.

Rick Hahn's fine. I don't have any beef with Rick Hahn. But Alex Dickerson shouldn't block a guy like Ramos, but he should play somewhere. That is a problem. That is an actual issue. But I thought Ramos was one of the more difficult players to measure from a stash perspective

because I don't think in a 15-team mixed league, I'd want to pick him up and use my only prospect stash spot on him just yet. But he's trending in that direction with what he's showing us early this season. The other tricky one, we talked about the Marlins a little bit last week, with Monte Harrison going down, some of the issues they're having with production in their outfield. Jesus Sanchez is off to a really nice start in the minors. I mean, I'm looking at him as a guy that maybe he's actually going to make an impact this season, but they have to make a move.

They have to do something to create playing time for him. You look at his AAA numbers so far, 556, 571. That's a 1074 slugging percentage early on. Only striking out 10.7% of the time. That's the key number, right? Getting that K rate down because he was up at 28.2% in AAA with the raise in 2019 before he got sent to Miami. So he's cutting down on that swing and miss in his game. They have clear needs to try younger players there. It's just a matter of time before there's actually room for him. younger players there. It's just a matter of time before there's actually room for him.

Yeah, I suppose Adam Duvall is the character here then because he's not playing center field. I think maybe if he was playing center field, he'd be up already. But with Adam Duvall having kind of up and down, I mean, he has six homers, right? And he's close to league average in terms of production, but he's got the same old problems he always had, which is that he strikes out too much and doesn't walk. And he's not a great defender. So that's the obvious spot to do it. Yeah. And Sanchez really is a corner guy,

so you're not going to play him in center the way that Monty Harrison, we talked about last week, could actually play out there and be a good defender while he figures things out at the plate. So I would say Sanchez, even though it's a really nice fast start for him, I'd be careful about stashing him right now. I'd be interested once he gets called up, but I'm not necessarily waiting. If you also look at the projections compared to Vaughn and Kelnick we talked about earlier, Sanchez is projected for a 286 Woba, probably getting

buried a little bit because he was up for 10 games last year and was awful. Struck out 38% of the time, hit 040 with a 172 OBP. That will do damage to your projection, even in a tiny sample. So it takes him from a subpar projection and brings it down even further.

So be very careful with Sanchez, even though that start is a good one. There's a philosophical question here between the Giants and the Marlins that I think is pretty interesting. Because the Giants have leapt out to a start. You don't think of them as being playoff contenders, but because of their 22-14 start, they actually have a 26% chance of making the playoffs. Now, when faced with that, do you think we need to get Ramos up here now to catch lightning in a bottle and just take advantage of the 22 wins we've got? Or do you say, no, the team's playing well. We don't need a lightning in the bottle. We're just going to play well with the players we've got in the major leagues. And it doesn't make sense to bring up Ramos and

platoon him and play Slater over him against lefties or whatever it is we might do, right? So that's one question. And then the Marlins, on the other hand, have started out to a 15-20 start, and they have a.5% chance of making the playoffs, even with as much of a mess as that whole division is.

And you kind of think, well, isn't it time to sell off? Yeah. Well, I think part of the problem for really both of these teams is the rest of the league in general ready to start choosing a direction this early. We're coming off of a year where everything was sped up, multiplied every game by 2.7. Is someone going to buy Duvall off you,

or do you just have to lose him for nothing? Right. Do you have to just cut him and accept him as a sunk cost and pay his prorated salary, less the league minimum when someone else signs him as a free agent? Do you have to accept that as the best possible outcome, or can you convince a team that might be underperforming in the corner outfield spots

that Duvall's an upgrade? Or we pay all the salary and you give us an actual, like a relief prospect. That could be useful. Right. So I hope that teams are a little more aggressive.

It might not be this month, probably in June. I hope we see more action in June with trades than we ordinarily do as a result of everything kind of getting stocked by the backlog during the shortened season. You know, I think we have to have teams choosing direction a little bit sooner to get some separation. I mean, offense is a problem league wide. So there's plenty of teams out there that could justify an upgrade. It really

just depends on what the situation looks like, what kind of commitments they have to those players who are currently underperforming. And I hope for San Francisco's sake, to answer your question about Ramos, the immediate step or more immediate step is to bump him up to AAA. Maybe give him another week. If he keeps mashing at AA, bump him up to AAA. If he keeps mashing there for a couple of weeks, you've probably seen enough and you say, all right, he's ready because it should be more about his timetable. I imagine they look at their playoff odds with the same amount of skepticism that we would look at their playoff odds with. They'd say, yeah, this is nice. We didn't expect to be here just yet. that we're getting Elliott Ramos right for the next seven years instead of pushing him up two months too early for this unexpected shot at a playoff berth. And that is, I think, if you talk to farm directors, their biggest fear is pushing a guy up too early

can create other confidence in a way that can have lasting effects. created their confidence in a way that can have lasting effects. We are very impatient from where we sit, saying we want these best players in the major leagues, but there is an ideal process

I think, which brings a guy to a level when he's ready for it, so that he can succeed right away, and not question his abilities at every new stop. level when he's ready for it so that he can succeed right away and not sort of question his abilities at every new stop. I think it was a unique challenge to assign players to the proper level coming off of a non-existent minor league season. As much as you can look at the numbers from the alternate site and try and make your best calculation, teams are going to be wrong

in both directions. Ramos might be a case where they just underclassified him. They missed one level too low, and they're probably going to make that right sooner rather than later. All right, we got another prospect coming up on Wednesday. The Mets called up Khalil Lee. A lot of injuries piling up on them in the outfield. Lee, if you look at the projections, not necessarily exciting on paper. A 281 projected Woba. I think this could be a somewhat temporary assignment for him. I think once they get healthier in the outfield, he's probably going back to AAA because he was playing there for the first time and wasn't playing at such an incredibly high level that it was a foregone conclusion that

he was going to come up. Mostly just getting on base a lot, drawing lots of walks. If you look back at his minor league numbers, the first thing that's going to catch your eye, 53 steals in 65 attempts at AA in 2019. So anybody who runs that much in the upper levels of the minor leagues, even if you want to start cutting opportunities in half, he's an interesting player, even when it's a temporary sort of opportunity like this might be for Lee. It's interesting to see that he has a 55 speed, you know, on a 20 to 80 scouting scale. He has a 55 speed from Eric Long

and hanging that fan graph, suggesting that this is more about aggression than it is about actual speed. Yeah, I mean, his raw power is a future 60, which is just amazing for a guy that runs this much. And also has had 100 or sub-100 isos in the minor leagues for so long. So I think we're kind of waiting for him to tap into that raw power that he kind of showed more at the beginning of his career.

So I wonder if the Mets were making a sort of swing change, swing adjustment bet where they were basically saying either we can or we've seen something, we can make this adjustment with him, or we see something he's already made that adjustment. They were making some sort of bet on him because remember they got involved and they traded a pitching prospect in the deal for Andrew Benintendi in order to get Khalil Lee. There was a bit of a sort of my prospect for your prospect situation there. And so they see something with him, but I kind of think what they see is more of a long-term situation.

And I don't – nimmo's already swinging you know almora might be out for a while but do they keep lee up to be a backup center fielder i kind of doubt it yeah so i think more time at triple a is coming and just looking at the initial eric longagen write-up, this blows my mind. Maybe some of this is due to how intense his swings are, but I get 40-grade run times on Lee from home to first. That does make sense, right? If you're measuring home to first and the guy's off balance, badly off balance, that's going to skew some of the measurements that people have. Because Jeff Zimmerman has found that home to first is more predictive

of your stolen base aptitude than your sprint speed but here you're fine you're talking about a confounding factor actually you could when you turn when you turn to sprint to second you you haven't just swung the bat right you're just getting off the blocks much like if you were running in track right yeah straight line speed. I would describe this, I've probably said this before, getting out of the box quickly, home to first,

is more of a measure of functional athleticism than it is of raw speed. And that's why it ports over to stolen bases, I think. Because if you're talking about functional athleticism, you're not actually off the blocks when you're running to second. You have to turn. You've got a running, walking lead.

You're turning. There's more action there. So that's why it normally works. But the idea that a violent swing could mess that up, I think, makes sense to me. If you have a big swing, you might still be fast on the base pass where you haven't just taken a swing. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just strange that Eric's write-up points to him not being confident in Lee playing center field long-term, which he's going to try and play center field initially,

which seems like a stretch and questions about basically this whole profile actually working in the long run. So I'm interested in terms of short-term steals, despite these flaws, but I'm going in expecting a relatively short stay and some potentially volatile performance from Khalil Lee here in. Can we go off the run, the rundown for a second? Sure.

Cause I'm interested in getting your all y'all's opinion on, uh, because I'm interested in getting y'all's opinion on the Angels in the same way that we were talking about the Giants and the Marlins because I think that they're in a murkier situation almost than the Giants and Marlins

because they still have a 34% chance of making the playoffs but they're under 500 they need a spark. Joe Adele is there, and Joe Adele's production so far has been heavy on the power, but with the strikeouts that you always, that you kind of, I think you just have to expect at this point. You've got, who you got playing in right field right now. I guess Jose Rojas, who I kind of like. And I'm looking at his sort of day-to-day production.

He's trending in the right direction. He's better than he was when he first got up. I think there's something to like there. But I also kind of like him as a utility guy, maybe a Rendon replacement who then becomes more of a utility guy uh then I like him as a starter in right field and right now they're trying to find a starter in right field and a backup from Rendon and they're failing at it a little bit right so with Rojas we're seeing him play a lot in the infield because of the Rendon

injury I think all but one of his starts this year have been at second or third base Right. So with Rojas, we're seeing him play a lot in the infield because of the Rendon injury. I think all but one of his starts this year have been at second or third base. Jose Iglesias being banged up means David Fletcher slides over from second to short. So that's how Rojas is playing over there. And it leaves them with Taylor Ward playing a lot in the short term. The problem for the Angels, Brandon Marsh is coming off of shoulder surgery, so he hasn't started playing minor league games yet. Adele is playing. He is still striking out a lot, but not quite as much as he did before. He's down in the low 30% range, showing some power at Salt Lake right away. What is enough? When you evaluate him from their perspective, when have you seen enough improvement to think,

all right, we can bring him back up and he can at least hold his own and if he strikes out 35 of the time in the short term as long as he's doing damage and playing good enough defense in a corner for us we are better off with him than we were with pools playing and with walsh in the outfield like i think finding that sweet spot is actually pretty tough. It is. And that's why I find the Angels fascinating because they obviously have two of the top five players in the game. Yeah. That's very fair to say.

Maybe the best two. Right. And I would say that their pitching staff, I know that people are clowning on it a little bit but I think this is one of their better pitching staffs that they've had in a while right?

I mean in Bundy and Haney they have a pretty good 1-2 Otani is a pretty good 3 Canning is emerging so now you've got your good 1-4 in the rotation I mean that's more than a lot of people can say. So yeah, you know, maybe Quintana has spit the bit. I don't even know what that means.

It has something to do with horse racing. Maybe he's no longer a great starting pitcher. But if you're talking about your fifth and sixth starting pitchers, I think they can find their way through it. And then the, the bullpen, I mean, I wouldn't say it's one of the best in the league,

but Myers and Iglesias, you know, they got, they've got some arms in there. I, I would be like, let's call them up now. That's how I feel.

I think you kind of have to do it sooner rather than later because if it doesn't work, if he is striking out too much, if he hasn't made enough adjustments, you're going to want to trade for an impact corner outfielder. You're going to want one more really nice bat to put in this lineup. And the weird thing for me was when they added Dexter Fowler, and we don't know how that was going to play out because Fowler unfortunately tore his ACL and is out for the year. That to me was a sign that they weren't sure on Adele or

Marsh and they wanted some extra depth because of maybe Marsh's injury and the performance issues we're talking about. But the rotation is not the problem. The Angels rotation is 11th in war as a team so far. I would agree with your assessment of that group. I forgot Cobb. Yeah, Cobb's fine too. far. I would agree with your assessment of that group. I forgot Cobb. Yeah, Cobb's fine too. Cobb's been fine. They're not necessarily going to be elite with that group, but they're at least good

enough to be competitive with that group. If they want to be on the short list of teams that goes out and tries to acquire another starter at the deadline, they could justify that if they're in the right spot record wise once we get to the back half of July. I think that all makes sense. But I think that the calculus for me, after maybe another week,

if Adele is holding that KRA close to 30%, providing power at AAA, he comes up and you give it a month. And you'll know by the end of June if that's going to work or not. Plus, you've got an opportunity if Marsh gets healthy to switch Adele out and bring up Marsh if that's not working. Right. If Upton struggles enough, you could have Marsh and Adele playing alongside Trout. You have that option, too. And if the team tanks, at that point, you kind of want to put Marsh and Adele out there just to see what happens in the next year. So at some point, you want to see what you've got if you're not going to go to the playoffs.

I guess the one wrinkle is, what if you're planning on trading Adele and you want him to look as good as possible before you do? What do you think looks better in the eyes of other teams and their respective models? Mashing a AAA, I bet. You think mashing a AAA looks better

than holding your own in the big leagues? Not a good AAA looks better than holding your own in the big leagues? Not a good look. Well, holding your own in the big leagues would be one thing, but if he came up and struggled in the big leagues. Right. That would raise more questions. That would tank all of his trade value. I don't know.

And maybe I'm just thinking like a fantasy person. Maybe it wouldn't trade. Maybe everyone else, maybe the real life people are like, no, I know he's been having a hard time, but I want to take him off your hands especially if you're talking about like uh maybe the marlins or somebody you know what i mean i'd really like to see joe adele just get a chance to play because i want to see what happens so hopefully he is the spark hopefully he's the guy that they give that opportunity to and i think if marsh were healthy he already would have been up. They would have given him the first shot just based on where those two guys are at in their respective development plans. We had a question come in about wood bats in college.

It came from Robert. Why don't they use wooden bats in college? Wouldn't it make the transition easier for players drafted into college and help the players out of college reach the majors quicker? I've always thought this was a money thing. Wood bats are just really expensive and you break them. So you got to replace them a lot more often. Is that the main issue? On a per bat level?

No. On a per bat level, a metal bat runs about 500, 400 to 500 bucks. And a wood bat is about a hundred to 150. I thought wood bats were more than that even. But you're, But you're right. You're going to break a bunch.

If you break, you know, like for example, you get a shipment of 12. If you're a professional, you get a shipment of 12 wooden bats, right? And you order multiple shipments a year. So that gives you an idea of like how much that might cost to keep up. Whereas like, if you have a metal bat, you probably have a metal bat all year. One.

Yeah. I would be surprised if you went through more than two. So in the end, the, yeah, the raw expenditure is probably a large part of that, but because, and this is just an interesting sort of bad thing.

Cause I've got a, I've got a piece on bats coming out next week. Because the per unit price is so high on metal bats, that's where the engineering is. That's where the bat companies are spending their time. And there's also a larger possible market for metal bats just because of like this person is asking right there's no there's no college there's only a couple wood bat leagues like the cape cod league a couple other leagues where you play with wood bats and so and there's very few like softball like pickup leagues in your local area they're like doing wood bats right it's like i've never

right i don't think i've even heard of that so uh so you're selling to a much larger audience and they're and they're and the per unit price is so high so i don't know that didn't really answer the question it kind of digressed i think the it's a question of economics for the most part and i don't think that a college program could afford, let's, let's say it's three shipments of 12 bats per player. I mean, do you think a college bat could afford to,

a college team could afford to do that for their players? No, I don't, I don't think most college programs, some could obviously, but yeah, your, your big programs can afford it but your typical program like d2 and like you know yeah yeah so like i i doubt you know i doubt that a lower division a team would ever do that so then it would like you would only have the upper division and then if you put it on the cost on the players

then it just seems unfair and it makes an already expensive sport even more expensive. So I guess I don't think it's going anywhere. One thing that's interesting is with those minor league teams going away, you do have some minor league parks that are out there. So there could be some new minor leagues that pop up.

Independent leagues. And some of those could be wood bat. so there could be more opportunities for players that didn't get drafted because the draft keeps getting shorter if the draft keeps getting shorter you might have more opportunities for those players who didn't get drafted to play in a professional league that uses wood bats to kind of show show them what they got i'm kind of thinking about the the timetable aspect of Robert's question, though, too. I don't know how much the transition from a metal bat to a wood bat

is actually delaying an early college hitter's arrival to the big leagues. I think the typical timetable for an early round college bat is about two years after they were drafted, right? You get drafted in June, or let's say this year's draft's July. Let's say you get drafted this July and you're a college hitter, you're probably up by July of 2023 in most cases. We're talking early round picks. You're going to move fairly quickly. I don't know if having a wood bat during college would shorten that timetable at all.

would shorten that timetable at all? How much of the adjustment to facing professional pitching is slowed by learning how to use a new bat? I mean, it's heavier. That's the biggest difference, right? It's the weight that's different. There's also a relative density question because there's more relative density in the barrel. So it's kind of whippier in a way.

in the barrel so it's kind of whippier you know way yeah and there there is there can be more potential power um in that whip so you kind of have to like but i think what happens is that players a lot of times um uh practice the the the higher end players practice with bats The higher end players practice with bats. Like I remember on my high school team, we were not good. But Alexis Papias Lefevre, I thought he might get drafted back in the day. Great name. We did have a Milton Academy guy was drafted in the first round, I think, maybe by the Rockies. And he was another one of these guys that threw 100 in high school.

And it hasn't worked out so far. I've been mostly injured. I forget his name. It's not Riley Pint? Sorry. It sounds like Riley Pint, but it's a different guy. And so we weren't good enough to normally think about drafted. But this guy was the best guy on our team.

And he would take a round of batting practice with a wood bat at the end of games or at the end of batting practice. And that was afforded to him because he was a star. So I assume that something like Bryce Harper was swinging wood bats for a long time before he got drafted. Yeah, I mean, at that end of the scale, sure. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think the borderline guys would be Trevor Halver, the prospect who's tearing up low A right now. He was drafted in the third round by the Yankees out of Arizona State.

He should tear up low A. I'm writing about him in the piece this week. People are excited, and it's a great first week but it doesn't mean a lot when you're almost 23 going up against low a competition like great there's your age at level yeah age the level matters a lot so don't drop a really good prospect to take especially in a ball because those a ball numbers are nutty anyway. But I prefer my nutty A-ball numbers from like a 19-year-old international signing or like a high school guy than from a 23-year-old guy that played three years at ASU.

Yes, I think that's a good way to look at it. Like the age, the level, young guys debuting for the first time, mashing Francisco Alvarez doing what he's doing right now in that same league, that means something, right? Pete Crowe Armstrong hitting a lot at that level that matters to me I think his first name is Alejandro Mojica we had a intrepid listener bring it up and I had just picked him up minutes earlier thanks to James Anderson on Devil's Rejects. He's a thick boy, right-handed, third-base prospect for the Pirates that is mashing. There you go. You're looking for that, right?

Age to level, probably much more impressive when you put that context on the numbers. A bunch of mailbag questions have come in again in the last couple of days, so we're going to cruise through those. Eric wants to know, short and simple, is Lord Ace Gurriel Jr. just not that good? I'm trying to be patient, but he looks downright awful. What do you make of the younger

Gurriel? He's actually not that young since the older one's so old. And the older one's so good. Much to my chagrin. Yeah. I've downgraded my expectations, and I get a little bit of that Starling Castro vibe

where I thought, here he is, a guy who's improving a little bit every year, and then I forget that 27 can be post-peak for a player. So, you know, when I look at his barrel numbers, they've completely tanked. Even if they regress a little bit in the positive direction, they kind of create an idea for me of maybe like league average power, whereas I used to think he had more than that. And then he's not running at all.

So I think the cap on stolen bases for the year is probably like four or five. So I think right now, to me, he's like a 250 hitter with 17 homers and five stolen bases. And that might be the year totals. Yeah, I'm looking at Gurriel and Teoscar Hernandez kind of side by side. And to this point, Teoscar's been the better of the two. And projections wise, it's kind of interesting.

It seems like the projection systems from an average standpoint, prefer Gurriel. From a raw power standpoint, they have a pretty clear preference for Teoscar, probably because of barrel rates and some of the things that Hernandez has done for a couple of years. I was worried about Hernandez more than Gurriel coming into the season because of defensive value and the crowding on the depth chart.

The strikeout rate. I thought that was going to be a bigger issue. I don't see yeah are you saying that do you think maybe lords plays a little bit less it's possible that they can move things around to make that happen and kevin biggio has been kind of disappointing too so i'm not quite sure what the jays are going to do to correct it i think they're going to probably just see what happens for their month and then start to make some more significant adjustments but i'm not seeing anything in the underlying numbers with Gurriel

that makes me want to go out and get him everywhere. Even if he's not necessarily a player to avoid or a must-cut, I don't know if he's necessarily an obvious buy low either. Yeah, I guess the guy to watch is Rowdy Tellez, ironically. Weirdly. Because Tellez has a 15% 15 barrel rate can smash the ball and uh doesn't strike out much so the underlying metrics suggest that he can be a better hitter going forward and if he's a better hitter than lordis then i think that's what creates an uncomfortable situation when they're all healthy, right?

Because you're kind of like, well, normally we'd send Rowdy down because Springer, you know, Gurriel Hernandez in Gritcha gives us four outfielders we like to play, right? But if we want to play Rowdy, then we might just bench Lourdes more often. Yeah, play Rowdy at DH, move to oscar to outfield corner and where he has not been terrible i mean he's not he's not like a league worst type defender yeah it's an ongoing battle to say the least i mean rowdy i know our buddy vlad

sedler was picking him up in places where he was available. Rowdy doesn't look good on the surface. It's encouraging that the barrel rate is still there. He's got a 47 WRC plus in 22 games this season. It's weird. Yeah. It is very un-Rowdy. And it's weird because he's got a 23% K rate

is actually better than average now. You've got to keep recalibrating that. Keep lowering that bar. Keep lowering that bar. But a 15% bail rate, no matter what the ball is doing, is still impressive.

I'm still in on Rowdy long-term. And I think this would be a decent time to buy him in Dynasty. But in redraft leagues, I have no idea what to do with him yeah scalding the ball right now i found it tough to hold on to him though in a 15 team mixed league the team that i managed with todd zola he was a drop for us just a couple of weeks ago so i never feel good about dropping a player that vlad sedler is then scooping up in his leagues means i'm maybe missing something and i think the barrels and the hard hit rate especially are reasons to be somewhat optimistic

that Rowdy can, in fact, turn things around. But I'm less optimistic. At least I don't see anything at this point in Gurriel that makes me think that a massive turnaround is coming. I think maybe we have seen his peak. And it's a question of how close to that peak can he get if he's able to hold onto that playing time. I had a question come in about Shane McClanahan and his workloads to this point. He's gone four in each of his first three big league starts, hasn't faced more than 18 batters in any of those outings and has thrown 80 pitches in the debut, 63 pitches in the second start and 59 pitches after that. Actually, I had that backwards.

59, 63, 80. So he's building up in terms of pitches, which I think is probably the Rays' early season adjustment to make sure that he's fresh and can be used like a regular starter going forward. Do you have concerns about McClanahan frequently being a guy that falls short of going five innings, or do you think this is just kind of the shape of his season as a younger pitcher who they're trying to protect for the rest of the season i went all in so you got my answer um he was my big acquisition he was my fabu palooza guy

um and one of the reasons i liked it is because the Stuff number loved him so much in his debut. And I thought it was a good timing of the debut where I got the midweek debut, got the Stuff Plus number, and got that before FAAB. So if you're on Twitter or something and there's a similar situation, hit me up. I can give you a Stuff Plus number on Twitter very easily. I'm still looking into how to disseminate this um but um you know so i bet on the stuff mostly but i also uh wanted to look at luis patino because i feel like his uh ramping up is instructive uh and he got to four innings last night against the Yankees.

Love it. And he's kind of had the two, two, three, four. I think this was the plan all along, dude, was that the Rays bought Rich Hill and Michael Waka and Chris Archer and hoped that they would just, the olds would hang around long enough to ramp up the youngs and then bring in the youngs. And I do think that McClanahan can get to 150 innings, which means that he'll have some five-plus inning outings. McClanahan's projection from the bat is a.368 ERA the rest of the way

and a.124 whip. That is a really good projection. It's beautiful. Yeah, with lots of Ks too. I mean, like more than a strikeout per inning. If that holds with a workload comparable to other starters league-wide, that would make him about a top 30 starting pitcher here on out. Yeah.

I know that wins will be a problem, but listen, I'm just throwing my hands up on wins, man. I don't know where you get to wins. Nobody's getting wins. No one's getting wins. Jonathan Loizaga has three wins for the Yankees. I'm sure those were three wins that would have gone to starting pitchers in the past. Yeah. Showing up at just the right time in the game to make that happen just the right

sort of usage i think to answer the the core question here with mcclanahan mike was basically saying is this a raised thing or what is this i don't think it's a raised thing i think it's a way they wanted to shape his season thing and i think we're going to see five plus on a somewhat regular basis i don't know that we'll see seven or eight. I don't know that they would ever let him throw 120 pitches. But you see that nice progression in the pitches, right? He went from 50 to 80, so I think he'll get to 100. And if you can get to 100, you can get to five innings.

And I think he's got a deep enough arsenal. You're not looking at him as a guy that will be overexposed going through the lineup a third time. Almost be a little bit more worried about that with Patino. Yes, his Arsenal by comparison gives you more pause. But I do like the fact that in a tough matchup, no less, Patino's workload jumped last time out. That is a good sign.

That's what I'm saying. They could have easily taken him out and been like, we kept the Yankees down and you did it for three innings and thank you for your service. But they let him go four. So I think the next time out, my prediction would be the next time out, maybe both of these guys go five. And this is the Rays' plan too. It also keeps guys cheap, right? Because it keeps their workloads down and it has the timing so that now Wander Franco can come up and they get the extra year and everything so it's all part of their long-term plan but by the end of the season they

should have their best team on the field which should include Franco at shortstop and Patino and McClanahan in the rotation with Glass now and And in fact, when I look at it that way, we're not a betting podcast, but at 19 and 18, you might get good odds on the Rays to win the division. Yes. Yes, indeed. And I think they might be worth it. I picked the Yankees because I'm a closet Yankees fan apparently. It's not a bad pick. They're a good team. This is not to slag on the Yankees because I'm a closet Yankees fan apparently. It's not a bad pick. They're a good team.

This is not to slag on the Yankees. This is just saying that the Rays did the treading water bit and now they're about to do the add the stars bit. Yeah, warp speed, right? About to get to fire it up because it's not just Wander.

I mean, it's Fidel Brujan probably coming up, giving them some kind of offensive lift at some point in the next few weeks as well. Thanks a lot for that question, Mike. James in St. Louis wants to know, Kyle Gibson looks like a brand new pitcher and has suddenly become one of the best in the AL. Do you believe he can sustain this success over the course of the full season? What do the underlying numbers say? I was surprised to see that he's throwing a cutter a decent amount this year. That's one of the adjustments for what I'm calling Kyle Gibson 3.0.

The first version of Kyle Gibson was unusable in Minnesota, and then he became the kind of guy that was on the factor fluke panels at first pitch Arizona when he became useful, and now it seems like he's making that next set of adjustments to possibly find a late career level that might actually keep him in rotations a bit longer what do you see stuff in command numbers any good on kyle gibson well stuff plus actually hates his cutter it's his worst pitch at 86 but but 86 is not terrible to add another pitch. You know what I'm saying? Like, I've seen 60s and 50s on pitches, right?

Like, this is like a meh pitch, but it's giving him six. He has six pitches now. And the foreseam, changeup, slider, and curveball are all average or better. And the curveball and slider are actually very good pitches. And let me see the command plus I've got on a separate sheet so I've got to get that one open but

I'm figuring that it's going to be good it's always been good for him so I think he's just doing the he's on the Hyunjin Ryu plan just throw a ton of pitches and have good command of them. The kitchen sink plant.

115. 115. And if you do it by pitch type, what's cool about him is when you have a 115 command plus, I know this is true, they're all above average command. And yes,

the four seam fastball and the cut fastball are his worst worst command pitches but that's that becomes interesting in terms of game planning right where you're like hey you can really command your breaking balls really well so if you need a strike go to the breaking balls which are also your best stuff number you know your best stuff pitches so his best stuff pitches are his best command pitches that's a a pretty good combo, I think. Now you're just using the cutter and the foreseam to surprise guys. I think I said this back during draft season,

the Rangers have had a surprising amount of success taking seemingly ordinary veterans and squeezing a good bit of mileage out of them too. So I shouldn't be completely shocked that Kyle Gibson didn't just go to Texas and keep doing something that didn't work because we have some evidence of them making a few adjustments with guys in recent years

that have paid off. I don't have my rankings in front of me necessarily, but I think he can probably put up a 3.8 ERA. That's a little bit better than his projections. You know, the whip might not be great. He does allow balls in play. That defense is not great. Strikeout rate won't be great.

Yeah, the defense is not amazing. So then the strikeout rate is not amazing, so he's not going to be a super asset there. So I still think he's like kind of a back-end top 100, maybe 75 to 100 but that's a lot better than he was before and that makes him uh maybe a buy high in al only yeah i don't think you're gonna get a lot of resistance for anybody where you're trying to trade for kyle gibson yeah exactly i think you're gonna get plenty of willing sellers who say, I got to get out of here before this blows up on me.

Exactly. I think it could be a buy-high in AL only. Then I think in 15-team leagues, he's probably going to be a good streamer in some weeks, but when he's home against certain offenses, really good streamer. Home, two starts, occasional road spots, be careful. I'm not throwing him at Houston, for example. I don't really

want any of that. But more useful than we expected going into the season. And hey, that's a small victory that we'll take. So thank you for that question, James. One last question here to get to from Andrew. Andrew's in a Dynasty League, 10-team league in year 12. And an original owner has been rebuilding and tanking for hitting prospects for the last eight to nine years to the point where his shortstops are Corey Seager, Gleyber Torres, Tim Anderson, Javi Baez, Eugenio Suarez, and Wander Franco.

But he only has six healthy starting pitchers. Our only official anti-tanking rule is a limit on the number of prospects, which he isn't violating. At this point, the rest of the league would prefer to replace him rather than have him compete. But there's hesitation since he's an original owner. Are we justified to simply hold a vote and boot him? Thanks, Andrew. It's a tough situation because someone's been in your league for almost a decade. Whether they were friends with you when you started, they're a friend of you through fantasy baseball now.

So I don't think just voting to boot him is fair. I think if you haven't talked to him about this already and said, hey, you know, it's kind of weird that you're not strategically rebuilding your roster. Like, why are you hoarding shortstops when you can't play them? That's a problem. But I think the first thing you got to do if you're running this league is put in a few more anti-tanking measures like you should not allow a team to only have six healthy starting pitchers there should be some way to change up the rules and you probably have to put those into effect for next year you can't put them into effect immediately to at least force some action and squeeze, squeeze this owner into making some decisions that are a bit better for the

general wellbeing of the league. It's a really tough situation. I don't like it at all. Uh, I like when you get to it, I think one thing I could say is if you're going to push this to a public vote at some point, I want you to know the results of the public vote before you do it. You know what I mean? Cause I think that if you're going to push this to a public vote at some point, I want you to know the results of the public vote before you do it.

You know what I mean? Because I think that if you're like, oh, I think we'll boot him, and I think it'll go this way, then that means that there might be some people that get really pissed about it, right? Let's say it's a 7-4 vote, right? And you think, well, that's fine, we'll boot him. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

What if those four people are like that was really unfair you know and now i am a little bit less likely to kind of want to stick around yeah and then all of a sudden the league's gone and this is a league that you've done forever so i think if i want went to, I want it to be 11 to 0. So it's got to be unanimous to actually kick someone out. I'm not even saying that. I'm just saying I want to know. Or if it's 7 to 4, I want to know the other four kind of like, eh, yeah, let them go, whatever.

I want to know what their vote is like. So, I mean, it's more work for the GM, but I would check with every other owner and get the temperature. Because even if it's only three or four that vote against it, if they are super pissed, that is kind of a rot that can fester. I'm in Devil's Rejects, man. They bring up stuff that is like eight years old. I don't even know what they're talking about sometimes. And they're like, oh, this is just like the time you rather and i'm like whoa all right you know but we have the strength of kind of it being an industry league and there's some momentum and so old you know something smaller like if someone's really mad they'll hold on to that and then it'll come up

again and other things and it'll just it'll be a fester and honestly this guy hasn't done anything wrong you know you just think that his approach is wrong yeah it's frustrating to have someone who plays the league so differently than everybody else but at the same time everybody played keeper and dynasty leagues the exact same way that would be bad too. That's the one thing that we want out of, that's the one thing, we were talking about changing the rules of regular baseball, right? And one of the reasons we want to do that

is to make sure that there are different ways to win. When we talk about wanting triples and stolen baselines and stuff, we want it so that there's one team that's like, hey, we're the go-go Marlins, you know what I mean? We steal bases like nobody's ever seen. We want somebody to do something different. You know?

And so I think in a dynasty league, like, if this guy ever won, it'd be kind of, wouldn't it be epic? If he finally was like, ooh, Wander's here. He's my golden child. I'm going to sell off some of these other guys and get the starting pitchers I need, and I'm going to win. I don't know. I lean against booting the guy isers I need, and I'm going to win. I don't know. I lean against booting the guy is what I'm saying.

But if I talk to everybody and it was like 10 guys wanted to boot him, one guy said, I don't care, then the people have spoken. I think the bigger issue here is just making sure you have the right anti-tanking rules in place. Just making sure that the league is set up in a way where you're not incentivizing a team to be bad forever. Or you're penalizing teams that are bad for multiple years. Sounds like an innings minimum. Yeah.

And failure to meet the innings minimum causes you to pay a bigger entry fee. I think a monetary penalty for breaking these rules. Yeah, I think something along those lines. It's got to be pretty clear, though. Make it simple and clear. Don't make it subjective. Set a threshold. Everyone's got to get there.

If you fail to meet the innings threshold, make it attainable. And the penalty, you could maybe make the votes separate. Are we going to have a higher innings minimum? Yes, no. If we do have a higher innings minimum? Yes, no. If we do have a higher innings minimum, do we want to have a cash fine or a draft pick fine? Right. Yeah, and you can figure out,

based on the temperature of your league, how severe those penalties should be, but have some penalties in place for that. And that might be like a proxy vote for this guy, right? Mm-hmm. Where you're taking the temperature of everybody by doing this proxy vote. And if everyone's like,

11-0, yes, and then 11-0, cash, 11-1, cash, you might be like, ooh, I think I know how this vote went down. But it also gives the other guy kind of a shot across the bow. Exactly.

So hopefully that helps, Andrew. It's not a fun situation to be in when you have a manager, an owner, someone in your league who's making the league less fun for everybody. That might not be this person's intent, though. This might just be the byproduct of them trying to do what they think

is the best possible thing. They have Wander. They think they're having fun, I think, probably. Well, depending on how the eligibility works, right? I mean, Seager, Glaber, Tim Anderson, so shortstop, middle, maybe one of these guys. Suarez plays third. Franco's not even in the lineup yet. I mean, there's a way to play most of these guys.

And if you've got really loose position requirements, maybe there's a way to play all of them in some cases too. So it might not be as egregious as it seems with all those names listed out. As strange as it is, and yes, I would not quite go that far in my rebuild. I would try to get a little more balance across positions. I can see where it's frustrating, but I don't think you should boot him right away. I think you should

work on fixing some of the structural issues with the league instead. Thanks a lot for the email, Andrew. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Before we go, I should say, if you'd like to subscribe to The Athletic, you should do that at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

$3.99 a month gets you in the door on Twitter. He is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening..