Rates & Barrels - Joc Pederson to the Cubs, dynasty league auction values and strategy, and the elusive Inbox Zero

Episode Date: January 30, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Joc Pederson as a Kyle Schwarber replacement, and several mailbag questions including dynasty league strategies, prospect rankings vs. fantasy prospect rankings, and more.  Rundown 3:39 Joc Pederson in Chicago 10:22 Dynasty League Auction Values & Approach 18:46 New to Dynasty Leagues: Tools & Sources to Utilize 23:55 Julio Rodriguez, Cristian Pache & Prospect Rankings v. Fantasy Prospect Rankings 27:50 12-Team Strategy vs. 15-Team Strategy 32:41 Dismissing Yelich’s Poor 2020, Accepting Bauer’s Great 2020? 39:17 Making Sense of the Angels’ Starting Rotation 44:40 Andres Giménez in Keeper Leagues 46:56 Jake Cronenworth’s 2021 Outlook 51:01 The Orlando Arcia Slander Will Not Stand 55:55 Eno’s Scouting Report on Rays Pitcher Joe Ryan 66:16 Kohei Arihara & Normal 2020 Workloads 70:51 Jo Adell vs. Byron Buxton in Keeper Situations 74:16 Root Beers of Interest Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Friday, January 29th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris.

Two-person booth today. Britt Giroli getting a much-deserved day off. We have a mailbag that has been overflowing for the better part of a month. And in my never-ending quest to reach inbox zero, we're going to answer as many of those questions as we possibly can. You don't understand, Eno. When I have dreams, they're stupid dreams. Usually, I'm in a stadium answering emails,

and tens of thousands of fans are just chanting, inbox zero. That's my dream. That's the dream I want to have, actually. It's not a dream I have had yet. I don't know why. I'm type A. I'm trying to figure it out dream I want to have, actually. It's not a dream I have had yet. I don't know why. I'm type A. I'm trying to figure it out.

I'm trying to let go, but the email box is out of control. So we're going to try and help a lot of people out and have a lot of fun with it, and hopefully it'll be very engaging and fun for everybody else because there are some really great questions we've been receiving here over these last few weeks. I've got a personal inbox that's doing okay but the uh the athletic one i just gave up on because i was getting like 50 zoom invites a day you know during's edge because the cat woke me up three times and one of the dogs woke me up three times. So it was a little bit like the Chinese water drip torture thing last night.

Gah. Gah. last night. Gah! Gah! Gah! That cat especially. And you know what it is? It's rain.

It's like three days of rain have somehow just erased our animal's ability to poo and pee outside. It's not what you want. No, we've got a lot of poo inside, a lot of cats inside, fights between the cats and the dogs. I live in a farm. An indoor farm. Yeah.

We have seven koi, five small fish. We used to have a praying mantis. We've got three cats and two puppies. And two boys under the age of eight. Which of those creatures ate the praying mantis? The ants. That was

disturbing. That was disturbing. I think we might have hid the evidence from the children because I think we came out there and were like wow whoa these ants are intense but um you know

we've uh Ken Rosenthal calling me should you answer it on the pod you gotta tell him he it on the pod? You got to tell him he's on the pod if you answer the phone. We're video now. Yeah. I don't know.

I'm actually a little worried that you just told the truth about the praying mantis on the video because your kids are about 100 times more likely to find our podcast on YouTube than they are anywhere else. What if I type dad's name into YouTube? What happens? That's what happened to him. All right. Well, we have a little bit of news to get to. Jock Peterson is now a Cub. So shout out to the Cubs for saving $3 million basically on a Kyle Schwarber profile.

Bad defender, low average, good OBP, decent power. They are very similar players. But one thing that jumps out to me is that Jacques Peterson has been similar to Kyle Schwarber while having the better home park over their respective careers. Dodger Stadium is a more power-friendly environment than Wrigley Field. So Schwarber gets an upgrade leaving, going to the Nats, like we talked about a few weeks ago.

Peterson gets a home park downgrade going into Wrigley. So I actually am bringing down the power expectations slightly for Jock Peterson with his move to Chicago. Yeah, it's an interesting thing too within the confines of the Central, the Central super winnable. I just did a Futures article where the projections for the Central cap at 81 wins for the Brewers. Solid. I don't think that 81 wins will win the Central, but it would be hilarious.

Hilarious and sad. But now the Cardinals are in talks to get Arenado. The Cubs have got Peterson. Cardinals are in talks to get Arnauto. The Cubs have got Peterson. And there's, you know, some sourced reporting out there today that ownership has loosened the purse strings a little bit for the Cubs. Maybe there'll be another move or two. I think that personally, the trade value of one-year guys, especially a guy like Javi Baez coming off a bad year,

I think that the trade value of Bryant and Baez is not very good, and I think they could do better just keeping those guys and trying to win. Maybe throwing a qualifying offer on one or both of them. I think Bryant would be worth a qualifying offer on one of one or both of them i mean i think bryant would be worth a qualifying offer and uh he might even take it if you know the market is wonky again um so and then you get your picks i think those picks will probably be worth as much as like a 17 year old in a ball or whatever so um i think uh i think they they should go for it because it's super winnable they're at like 78 wins or something, and the division winners at 81. I picked the Reds as an interesting bet because there's super good odds on them.

StatCast, the Bad X, likes them more than Steamer, and Stuff, the Metrics, like them more than their sort of pitching ranks. So I could see them kind of doing that kind of driveline, stat cast regression, Moustakas coming back. Moustakas is actually, I don't think we gave him enough love in our second base thing as a good option at second base for fantasy, but also a good reason the Reds might be competitive. So 84 wins. How about that?

84 wins wins the division. 84 is not an unreasonable estimate for what it's going to take based on what we're seeing right now. I have seen some reports Friday morning that Eddie Rosario has been linked to the Brewers. It would be really interesting if they brought him in to play first base. They've obviously got a pretty big crowd in the outfield. If you assume that Avi Garcia is still a regular, Kane's coming back. Not my boy Vogelbach, dude.

Don't touch my large adult son. Come on. Let's be real here. In the event that there's... He's getting projected for 110 WRC+. Yeah, he's not a bad player. He's just all hitter. And he's kind of fun, you know?

Yeah, he'd be better if there was a DH. But there's a crowded outfield already. What is it? Kane's coming back. Kane will be back. Have a sale. He's going to play nearly every day. And Yelich.

They've still got Gamble, right? Gamble's gone. Or did they let him go? Gamble's gone. Sorry. Yeah, I think they're still kind of in the market for a fourth outfielder, unless they think Tyrone Taylor can do it. But if you bring in a guy like Eddie Rosario. Who's the third outfielder unless they think tyrone taylor can do it but if you bring in a guy like eddie rosario outfielder yellich oh who's that guy who's horrible last

year do you know did you notice that i named ben camel before i did i did this is what happens when you wake up eight times in a night i I think it totally makes sense at this point. That's it for news for now. I mean, Abyssal is not a guy you kind of want to play every day. And he had such a bad season, I think he'd want to put some insurance in there. And then you'll have some games with DH, so you can play Vogelbach at DH. And they're like a depth play, right, as a team? They're like a team that builds everything up as much as they can around the edges

so that they're always competitive and they never have a total zero out there. Yeah, that's what they're all about. I was hoping that they'd get in on maybe Justin Turner. I guess that's still maybe a possibility too. But hard to see him leaving Los Angeles at this point. For some reason in my head he's just glued to the Dodgers even though he's still out there you kind of have that like Wainwright Yachty feeling with him right a little bit yeah because I mean the full breakout for him didn't

happen until he got there right he bounced around between Baltimore and the Mets and got to the Dodgers and became the player that he's been for the last, what, geez, seven, eight years now, it seems like. So I just have a really difficult time picturing him finishing his career somewhere else. Yeah, yeah. Theoretically, I think the Brewers have about $20 million. And yeah, they could use just a bat. I don't think it's going to be on the top end, and it can't be a DH type. So I'm kind of scrolling down here to see who hasn't signed.

Didi Gregorius, if he ends up being cheaper than people think, I think he'll go back to the Phillies. Scope? They did that. It didn't work, right? David Stearns admitted worst move. Yeah, they acquired him for depth at the trade deadline in 2019, and scope just didn't hit for those final two months in the postseason,

so I don't think they'd go down that path again. Wong and move Hero over to third? Man, Keston Hero's issues are throwing. I don't know if moving him to third base fixes that. They want more of a bat, right? Yeah. Yeah, Rosario looks actually pretty interesting. Mitch Moreland I don't think really fits that well. Tried that sort of last year with smoke in some ways. I mean, I think Moreland might be a tick better. Ouch, dude. They need to do a trade, I think. Yeah, I think they do,

but no idea what they're looking at. Their trades usually catch me completely off guard, which makes me embarrassed as someone who follows the team as closely as I do. Let's dive into some of these mailbag questions, though. Lots of good ones here. First one comes from Sandy. Sandy writes, I played Roto baseball since 1992, and scoring was done manually using box scores in the newspaper.

Times have sure changed. Yeah, just a quick sidebar. I can't imagine scoring rotisserie baseball leagues by hand. I know Sports Weekly was the publication that everybody loved. I think you get AL stats one day, NL stats the next day. I can't even imagine doing that, like pre-Excel for a lot of people too when fantasy was first invented. But Sandy is for this year joining a startup dynasty league. It's going to be an auction format with a $260 salary

cap. Sandy's never played in an auction before, and he's wondering if we could give him a couple websites that have good dollar value rankings and maybe some early mock drafts. He writes, I've been a Fangraphs regular, but I'm not sure about other sites that'd be worthwhile for research. Do you have a recommendation or two? A lot here to think about. The dollar values on Fangraphs and the auction calculator are good. We talk about those on the pod a lot. The thing I like about them, and I think this is something you probably like about them, you can mess around a lot. You can change the settings. You can change the projection systems. There are multiple sets of projections right there. So it's very easy to adjust to your liking with that tool. The RotoWire draft software is good for dollar values. It uses the RotoWire projections.

RotoLab is similar if you're looking for standalone stuff. The issue I think you run into is that there really aren't dollar values geared towards startup dynasty leagues. So any of those sets of dollar values, which are all really good for all the different reasons, I mean, they have different strengths and weaknesses, of course, but you're still going to be in this weird position where a player like Andrew McCutcheon in most of those systems is going to be worth 10 or 15 bucks. And in an actual dynasty startup league, you shouldn't pay 10 or $15 to get Andrew McCutcheon at this stage of his career. He's probably more of a three to $5 player. And in those very same projections, some very good young players, guys like Gavin Lux might be $5 to $7 players. Gavin Lux should be a $15 to $20 player

in a Dynasty League auction because you're talking about the indefinite future, right? So I think this is the most challenging part of Sandy's question. How could you account for the major difference between values for 2021 and values for a multi-year future? Yeah, before Ronald Acuna Jr. hit the major leagues, when he was just a prospect, Tom Trudeau in one of my leagues traded away Paul Goldschmidt, Trudeau in one of my leagues traded away Paul Goldschmidt, Corey Kluber, and like a third major league piece for Ronald Acuna Jr. And there's no projection system that would have said that was a good idea. And in fact, my initial reaction was, that's insane. And now looking back though, I'm like, well, you know what? When people rank prospects, they rank ceiling. And so it is true that like there's a 40% bus rate on prospects, but it's also true that the stars were mostly big prospects,

you know, because we are actually okay at sort of spotting, you know, ceiling, you know, all, you know, Trout was a top prospect, you know, all these guys that are at the very top of the game were most of them were top prospects. Mookie Betts is like the one that I can think of that kind of surprised people, but most of the other ones were top prospects. So sometimes it's worth over overpaying for like Wander Franco, if you just believe in him. And so no projection system will say he's worth a ton of money. But Wanda Franco, you know, I think the bad X is the high man on Wanda Franco. And it said he was worth like $5 this year. But if you were doing a dynasty startup, you might be worth 2530. He might be

like a second rounder first rounder if you like, really want to go that way. And that's the big problem. And I've been chasing this myself as a side project for a long time. I've been working with my homeboy, Matt Denowitz. We did beer graphs together. We've done a lot of work together. And what we've been trying to do is sort of incorporate actual trades to get a sense of what has actually happened in auto new leagues and other dynasty type leagues to get an actual trade value. auto new leagues and other dynasty type leagues to get an actual trade value and then maybe incorporate an aggregate prospect ranking and then sort of turn that prospect ranking into dollar values. And, you know, it's very hard. And the other thing I could tell you, the other part of this that I've tried to do, and I've done this on The Athletic before, is take Zip's three-year projections, which exist, and then turn those

into auction values by weighting them. And then if you do that yourself, you can decide what the weighting is. Am I 70% this year, 20% the next year, 10% the next year? Am I 80% this year? Do I only care about this year? Do I only care about years two and three? Like, am I more like 30, 30, 30? Because I really want to, I'm kind of building and i want to i want young guys um if

that sounds like too much work for you i have a simple simple-ish solution and you may have to do vlookup on on on excel but if you can do this find a way just to do maybe the auction calculator or Rotolab, whatever it is, find a way to get age on there. And just mentally note the age. Every player that hits 30 in a Dynasty League almost immediately loses trade value unless they are, you know, the very top end stars. And even then they start losing trade value as they are, you know, the very top end stars. And even then they start losing trade value as they get older. So I would say if you put age in there and you just target, don't shy away from 26 and 27 because they'll have some great net win now years. And that's great. And you, and you, and they might be undervalued in some cases, 28, even 29, but

really think about 30, 31, 32, 33 33 and really get a discount on those if you're going to buy them and so therefore you can just do the quick math where you're like oh you know kutch whatever he is he's 32 33 you know uh dollar value 15 i'm only going to buy him if i get him for five you know because he's 33 uh but this other guy 24 and it says 15 well i might go to 20 on that so i mean it's that's the intuitive way the math way is really difficult and that's why i haven't really seen it uh we also at the athletic have a new colleague who will be helping us on this yep we i'm not like announcing anything that people don't know, right? He said it publicly, right?

He tweeted it. I don't know if the company has announced it. Okay, well, Ian Kahn. Yeah, we have Ian under the radar pod. He's on the podcast already, but he'll be doing a little bit more. And he is very good at Dynasty. He has a very sort of different approach to fantasy baseball and evaluating players, but I really value it.

And I used to kind of denigrate that approach. It's a little bit more sort of feeling it out, a little bit more scoutish, a little bit more consideration of character and sort of energy level and stuff like that. But it is something I really respect. He, for example, is super, super all-in on Jason Dominguez and did a Ronald Acuna-esque trade, I think. I don't know if it was in one of the leagues you were in

where he bought Jason Dominguez for three decent major leaguers. I heard about the trade, but I'm not in that league. But yes, that type of mindset is the correct way to play Dynasty. Ian's as good in Dynasty leagues as anybody, and he's good in all kinds of leagues too. A lot of that, the trade you described at the beginning that Tom Trudeau made where you're giving up two or three current stars, like guys that go in the first couple rounds,

like a first rounder, a second rounder, and a fifth rounder in a redraft, giving them up for the number one prospect in baseball is the great long-term trade that you hope you can make if you have to make a trade like that. The key here though, and there's a question from Josh as well. He's new to Dynasty Leagues and is looking for good sources or tools to learn about prospects he's not familiar with yet. I would say there's a couple things. Keith Law has a new top 100 on the athletic. There's only one little bit of caution I want to put out there. Keith's rankings are for major league value and you have to look through that lens and realize that defensive value especially is going to carry a lot of weight a mashing future left fielder is going to sink like a stone in keith's rankings

and an elite defender in center field who has some questions about his bat might jump up a bit higher because he's going to play center field for five plus years in the big leagues at a minimum and he might be a gold glover who if the bat develops is a perennial all-star sort of superstar sort of player. So just keep that in mind. If you look at those, you can look at Roto-Wire's prospect rankings, which are a hundred percent for fantasy purposes. So there you're going to see a guy like Trevor Larnach be a lot higher than he would be on someone like Keith's list, right? So you have to adjust accordingly. Make sure you're not drafting and targeting tools that are less helpful to you as a fantasy player. Like defense matters, right? Like you want a guy that's going to be on the field a lot because playing time is huge. But if the offensive ceiling is capped, account for that,

lower that player in your rankings. I think the general point, though, for Keeper and Dynasty Leagues, when you're starting out, choose a direction. Choose your window for when you're going to compete. So if you're in Sandy's situation, you're in Josh's situation, look at what you want to do and say, I want to win this league in year two, year three, year four, pick that spot, or year one. If you're going to play in year one, okay, you got to go all in. But my advice would be not to go all in for year one because more likely than not, that's the year that most of the people

in the room are playing for. So you're going to be competing for a lot of the same players, trying to execute the same strategies. There's going to be more value. I don't know if that's the case, dude. I see, like in my dynasty leagues, there's like five perennial rebuilders

who just like are all about the next, you know, top prospect. I feel like, you know, I've made some bones in Dynasty Leagues just by being the only guy who's like, yeah, sure, I'll roster Tommy LaStella. I don't know if you guys want him, but I've got him for free, so sure, I'll do it. So, I don't know. I would keep an eye on those veterans that drop too far because a lot of times you can trade them for free, so sure, I'll do it. So I don't know. I would keep an eye on those veterans that drop too far

because a lot of times you can trade them for prospects later. So, you know, I would actually say do both, you know, and do the top-end prospects. Like pay for the top-end prospects and then buy a bunch of veterans and then buy some prospects that you believe fell too far. So that's like sort of my general strategy, but I'm always a wishy-washy. But you know the names?

Do you have more? I was going to say, well, if you're going to build it that way, if you're building for the multi-year future, you start with Wander and Jared Kelnick and the guys that are universally top five, top ten prospects. Seek them out first and then lean into the guys in their late 20s. Fill out there if you're going to play for the near-term future because those players will be a little bit undervalued. They haven't hit 30 yet, so they haven't lost their trade value. You can flip

those 26, 27, 28-year-olds that you get in rounds four through 10. You can flip those guys for more young guys to put with Wander and Kelnick if you're not doing well right away. It gives you that flexibility. But the biggest part of your core should skew younger, generally speaking. Think about year two, year three, and maximizing the value for the long, long haul because that'll give you a perennial contender. Whereas if you shoot too high right away,

if you get a little too old right away, you might win a league title immediately. You might win it in year two, but your core is going to drop off pretty fast and then your trade value is also going to be eroded too. That's why I think that sweet spot's a couple years in that you're aiming for. If you win early, you win early,

but you want to set yourself up to win for multiple years. I found myself, because I do like these veterans and I do think they're undervalued on draft day and stuff, I have found myself, you know, because I do like these veterans and I do think they're undervalued on draft day and stuff. I have found myself just swallowing a veteran, like just having a player as he retired just because I couldn't get any trade value out of him at the end of his career. And that's not ideal either. So, you know, there is a kind of hot potato thing.

Like right now I have Josh Donaldson and I'm like, oh, I think I got the hot potato, dude. Like I'm I'm happy that he's on my team and we're going to we project to be, you know, top three, 14 in this league. And so I'm happy to have him next year, but I'm not going to be happy to have him the year after. So there's definitely, you know, this longevity thing. I think putting age in whatever auction thing that you have is a great way to do this. But, you know, back to your point about the prospect rankings. It is good, I think, sometimes to use somebody like James Anderson's rankings. There's a site called Dynasty Guru that does some pretty good prospect rankings for fantasy in particular.

Because when you look at Keith Laws, there's two names that come to mind that just immediately went into focus. I thought you were going to say their names and you didn't. to mine that just immediately went into focus. I thought you were going to say their names and you didn't. But Julio Rodriguez is a little bit low for some people in Keith Law's rankings. I have, well, I don't want to say that like I think he's a lock. You know, I don't know if there are locks as prospects, but I have like extreme confidence that he'll hit in the major leagues and be a good hitter.

I guess there's some doubt about how much defensive value he will have. He's not going to be a center fielder. So he ends up below somebody like Christian Pache. Yep. Who is projected, and yeah, projections on prospects, I understand, I understand, but projected to be kind of a guy who's 10% worse than league average, strikes out a little bit more than league average, walks a little bit less than league average, has less than league average power, but is like a defensive whiz and can play center for anybody. There is the opportunity

for Pache to put it all together because he's had some bigger power numbers at the high minors. He's also had some 17% strikeout rate years. so he may not have the plate discipline but he may be able to be a guy who walks five percent of the time strikes out 18 of the time and has like a 180 to 200 iso that would be a comfortable to be above average player that would be a guy who could do 20 20 type seasons uh while being in center field so pache is still a good dynasty a fantasy prospect but i think for me uh unless you have a cf separated out and even if you do julio rodriguez is the better fantasy prospect right and that that was a mailbag question too about pache so uh yeah i mean do you do you do you have an an opinion on if you think he's

going to put it together or not? I've been more skeptical about the bat than, I guess, Keith, for sure, but than most. I look at him and I see maybe an empty bat, bottom third of the order type hitter whose glove keeps him in the league forever.

I see that as more of a median sort of outcome. And they're NCR-ish, maybe less OBP. More like that, but definitely a good long-term center fielder, a great long-term center fielder. I've never questioned the defense at all. But look, I trust Keith's scouting eye. If Keith sees a possible 25-25 guy, that says something to me.

That says, hey, that says something to me. That says, hey, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe my lack of experience as a scout is working against me. Maybe I don't see power projection as well. I number scout, but that's what I have to do. I don't get live looks at players. At the very least, I'm considering the possibility that in a dynasty league full of people that analyze everything from the fantasy perspective, Christian Pache might be a little undervalued by the group, so

maybe I should consider making a move for him. Third on a prospect list, it's not just like Pache is at 40 on Keith's list and he's at 90 or 100 on everybody else's list. Three is a really strong ranking so I'm definitely warming up to the idea that there's more there with the bat than I previously

thought because look there I don't think Keith would put an elite defensive center fielder with major questions about the bat at number three on his list that's major questions about the bat are what drop guys down lower in the list that's part of the concern with Rodriguez on top of the defensive concerns as well. So check out his list because the thing I like with Keith is that he's writing paragraphs about every player too. There's a scouting report. It's not just a list of names. Some places you go, you get a list of names. You don't always get a scouting report.

Another good source too, Eric Langenhagen. Fangraphs does great work as well. Their prospect board is great, but similar to the key situation, you have to make sure you're kind of filtering out things that make a prospect a good real prospect and not necessarily a great fantasy prospect. Let's move on to a question from Isaac who wants to know, is there any different strategy in a 12 team draft versus a 15 team draft he said he did both kinds of nfbc leagues last year and approached both the same way taking the best player available keeping on the rotowire draft software to make sure he's not totally neglecting a category which is a really nice feature of

having draft software you can track your category targets as you go. So that's one reason why I like draft software, by the way. He's wondering if we have any differences in our approaches to the two formats. So 12-teamer versus 15-teamer. And we can broaden this question even further. I know some people out there play in 10-team leagues. I am more willing to take on more risk in the more shallow league. The fewer number of teams, the more risk I'm willing to take. That can be performance risk in the form of young players who could be absolute busts,

but it could also be injury risk because in a 10-team league or a 12-team league, the waiver wire is going to be a lot better than it's going to be in a 15-team league or something deeper. So the quality of what I can get in season, and without spending a lot of fab too, is pretty high. So I'm going to take more chances. I'm going to take chances on prospects who might not debut right away on draft day, because if I don't like the way the playing time looks in a 10 or a 12-team league, I'll drop that player and try to pick him up later when he gets the call back up. league, I'll drop that player and try to pick them up later when he gets the call back up. In a 15, I don't want to have a bunch of guys I have to wait on because in a 15-team league,

playing time is even more important. It matters all the time, but you can't have holes in a 15-team league. If you have a hole, it's much more difficult to replace it. Plus, you're competing with three more teams for every single good player that becomes available too. If you're in a situation where you don't have enough saves in a 15-team league, your fab is going to get destroyed as you try and chase closers once they become closers. I just think the types of

risks I'm willing to take really are adjusted based on the size of the league where I'm much more aggressive in a small league than I am in those deeper formats. Yeah. I'm, I'm just, uh,

I'm fascinated with the second base position cause I hate it so much. So I just, I pulled up second base, uh, auction calculator, 15 teams. And, um,

you know, there's a, there's a fair, there's a, there's a group of players that are projected to be worth anywhere from $2 to minus $2 that I find very interesting that i think say a little bit about how my strategy difference is different so uh in this group there's gavin lux um and starlin castro um and um you know scott kingery so those those three players are very different. In a 12-team league,

I 100% want Gavin Lux. I don't care about the projection even because I'm only buying the ceiling. You know, it's almost like in a dynasty league where I'm just, I'm buying the future. I'm buying the possibility that he starts at second base on day one and just has a great season because I know that I can drop him and then pick somebody else up and I'll be fine. So I only want that ceiling. In the 15-team league, I might be more likely to want maybe Scott Kingery, especially because if he doesn't start at second base every day, he might end up playing at third.

And in the outfield, give me a bunch of availabilities where I can play him at different places in my lineup and get some steals and get some homers in the deepest league I might white Starling Castro because he is oatmeal he's gonna be there he's gonna play he's probably just gonna play all year and just be boring as heck and not give you any value that we have any value in a 12 team league he's starting cast will be on the on the waiver wire in the 12 team league all year so but in the the deeper the league gets the more i want starling castro because he's just going to do the thing um so i think that sort of describes a little bit of the difference between how i might approach a position say in deeper leagues yeah the position shapes and the drop offs are going to vary a little bit in a 12 versus

a 15. So you do want to account for that as well. And just broadly speaking, I think with pitching, you're going to find so many more two-start pitchers and streamers in a 10 or a 12-team league than you are in a 15. And like I was saying before, fewer teams to bid against to get those arms, too. I'm a

little more risk-tolerant with the types of pitchers I'm taking chances on. Again, more skills risk with pitchers in shallow leagues because I know I can make up that ground on the wire a lot easier. In a 15-team league, I don't want to have three or four guys with major innings and injuries concerns because I'm not going to find enough quality innings quickly enough on the wire to actually be competitive across all my pitching categories in that circumstance. Thanks a lot for the question, Isaac. Next question comes from Gus.

It goes by the nickname The Wage. Gus wants to know, how come it's so easy to dismiss a bad 2020 season for Christian Jelic, but Trevor Bauer, who in 2019 was 11-13 with a 4-48 ERA, has only had an ERA under three once prior to the shortened season in 2020. So we don't dismiss Trevor Bauer's 2020? It's a fair question, right? A good season in the shortened season is just as much of an outlier, relatively speaking, as a bad shortened season performance. What do you think about Bauer in general? He's at five seasons with an ERA above four. And I think I'm at the point where I'm not drafting him where he's going. And I'm trying to figure out if I'm way off on him or if I'm just a little bit off, but it's enough because it's early in drafts where I'm missing out because I have him

eighth, ninth, or 10th in my pitcher rankings instead of having them in the top five? Yeah, it's a difficult one. I will say that agents tell me that when a team calls in on one of their pitchers, they almost always exclusively ask about stuff, velo, movement, spin, that they want to know that. But that's a little bit more true for a reliever than it is for a starter who has given more bulk and can be projected in a normal way. If you project Bauer in a normal way, he's like what you said, he's more of a top 10 guy than he is a top 5 guy which is probably why I also won't end up with a ton of shares of Bauer

let's see here the bat has him as a well the bat has him in the top 4 actually that's very interesting and the bat is one of the more quicker moving ones that has more of this sort of stuff type metrics in it. But the bat projection still 362 ERA, 11 strikeouts per nine, a bigger home

run rate than last year. It is baking in some of those poor outcomes in 2019 and still comes to a pretty good conclusion about his talent. So I think he's a very talented pitcher. I think there's some risk. If I want to buy a top five pitcher, I would rather have less risk. The only other thing I can say is that I think he will continue to use pine tar. And that was a big part of his breakout last year. And he had the best spin rates on his fastball, best outcomes on his fastball. I think a lot of that will be meaningful as his B-low has maybe already begun to drop a little bit. Yeah, I mean, the thing that surprises me

as I look at the underlying numbers from your Command Plus report, though, Bauer's got a 92 Command Plus. It's the worst of the top 10 pitchers that I've got. I mean, Buehler, Giolito, Darvish are the other three that are below 100. And then you look at called strikes and whiffs, Bauer's at the lower end of the range for top 10 pitchers there too. So, again, I'm not trying to just make a statement. I'm just looking at it and saying, hey.

Top 20 stuff number though. Yeah, yeah. He's definitely – I would say that he reminds me of Hugh Darvish. A wide collection of pitches, doesn't always have the best command. Hugh Darvish had one a wide collection of pitches doesn't always have the best command you Darvish had one of the best command plus numbers of his career last year and he had that good season but he's also had other years where he did not have as great command plus and did not have great seasons and I think that's a little bit of the up and down in you Darvish's career and maybe explain some of the up and down in Trevor Bauer's career there are guys

that have equal stuff numbers, that have higher command numbers, that are very interesting. Zach Plesak has an equal stuff number and a league average command. Julio Urias has equal stuff number and above average command. Kenta Maeda has top 10 stuff and well above average command. And then there's a couple other names on here. I might keep it to myself. But rankings will come out soon.

Yeah, that'll shed some light on some of those players. I mean, to the wages other question, will he be good? Sure. Trevor Bauer will be good. And I think he's got A or A-plus durability, which stands out in a year where we're worried a lot about innings for pitchers in general. Is he a first rounder?

Not for me, but if he ends up returning second or third round value and you draft him late in round one, that's not going to be the reason why you didn't win your league this year either. So there's plenty there to like with what he's likely to do. That long shot that he pitches every fourth day.

And actually, I wonder if this thing is dragging out, right? I kind of wonder if maybe it's becoming more likely that he signs like a 1-37 with somebody. And the minute he's, if you see him sign a one-year $37 million contract, it becomes way more likely that he tries to pitch like 300 innings. All right, because then he's really just betting on himself, and the team doesn't have a nine-figure commitment to a player that might spend an entire year rehabbing from Tommy John.

Although, in the event that Bauer broke, he'd be out there like the next day saying, oh, I'm going to be back in three months or some crazy stuff like that. No, you're not, dude. Video every step of the way. No, no, you will not be back in three months. some crazy stuff like that no you're not dude video every step of the way like it's no no you will not be back in three months good try though uh thanks a lot for the question the way you know how boring my life would be if i put a gopro on my head and made you guys watch every second of it i mean making lunch for the kids in the morning.

This is me making a PB&J. People would understand that I make a show sandwich once a week, and then I make a lot of other sandwiches that are not show sandwiches. Second pagers, as I call them. A couple pieces of meat and a piece of bread, but not even toasted. Yes, I do that. You don't toast the bread every time? You're shattering the illusion of yourself as a

sandwich maker. We assume everything was either in a panini press or in the toaster. Sometimes I just need sustenance. And quick because I'm working too hard. Fair enough. Yeah, the gaps sometimes in the schedule are pretty small.

The next question comes from Michael. Michael wants to know, what do we make of the Angels starting rotation? I can't figure out who to target in redrafts. Are there any low-risk, decent upside starters that I am overlooking? Keep up the thought-provoking content. The Angels have a lot of volume in the rotation

right now. It helps them that they added Jose Quintana. I think he's just one of those guys that can go out there and give them decent innings even if he's not the player that he was a few years ago. So you go Bundy, Otani, Heaney, Canning, Quintana is probably their core five. They're probably going to use a six-man rotation because of

Otani. So one of Sandoval or Beria or someone like Dylan Peters or Jose Suarez probably gets that last spot if they don't add somebody. Reid Detmers might not be that far away. They drafted him last summer, but he might be pretty quick to the big leagues. As I look at this team, I never feel great about drafting Andrew Heaney.

I really don't want Dylan Bundy at the increased price, as good as he was in the shortened season. Especially with the decreased innings pitch due to the six-man rotation, the decreased likelihood of ever having a two-start week, that sort of deal. That does hurt the other pitchers in this group. Canning, I like the skills. I just worry a lot about the health because he's had the injection

and he's had to deal with that. Maybe he ends up being fine. So I don't really see anybody in the Angels rotation that I'm necessarily targeting. I mean, Otani, I think it's kind of now or never as far as whether or not he's going to stick as a two-way player. If he can't pitch effectively in 2021, we start seeing Shohei Otani for 160 games as an outfielder, maybe occasional DH, and he's going to be a monster if that happens. And as good as Otani was upon arrival as a two-way player, I'm very hesitant to rely on him as a pitcher, even in leagues, which is most leagues now,

where he's one player. I think the fallback of being a good hitter is nice, but he's UT only in that circumstance. You can't have drafted one of the other UTs either. Difficult on in weekly leagues because he'd probably give you four or five days. He's a very specific type of player that if you have him as one type of player and you have daily lineups, then he becomes very interesting.

And I don't know that I'd push him into the top three rounds or five rounds with this risk, but I think he becomes a very interesting sort of top 75, top 100 type player back end because of that upside. But I would only buy the cheapest of those starters. One that sticks out for me is actually Sandoval. I see him as having basically league average stuff and league average command. Could be a league average type starter. Could be a good one to kind of put on your bench or use in a deeper league for innings. Um, but generally, I guess I'm out. And I think the six man rotation thing is, uh, the nail in the coffin. Bundy's going to be expensive because he's a high player. Um, Haney's always been expensive because his projections are good. Cause it's K minus BB is good, but you've got that health

angle on him. Um, I suppose if he dropped in a league, I might end up with him. He has above average stuff, above average command. So that's good. But the six man rotation is a thing that you need to watch. And we've got a thread going on Slack about it and different beat writers are chiming in about it. The Red Sox are considering it, which is a bit weird because they don't seem to have good pitchers. But, you know, if your pitchers are all sort of mediocre, maybe you should have six of them. The Royals seem set up to do it and have considered it. So I would think about that.

The Mariners are doing it. So as much as Marco Gonzalez is a whiz kid at getting decisions, wins and losses, and he's not happy about this six-man rotation thing. He declined to comment on it. But that tanks his value a little bit. But the Padres are considering it for the beginning of the season. I think it will be more of a Morahan-type piggyback thing. And the Rangers, with the young guys on the back end of their rotation,

and the Rangers with the young guys on the back end of their rotation are considering a piggyback thing that might devalue, might massage the innings of a guy like Kyle Cody. So that's the state of the six-man rotation in baseball. You have to downgrade. If you ever hear the Royals are doing it for sure, you have to downgrade all the Royals, downgrade the younger Rangers, that sort of deal. Yeah, I've said it before, but I like tandem starting so much more than a six-man rotation

because you've got two guys who are ready to step up and take on a spot if you lose a starter but you're also maximizing the effectiveness of back-end starters or guys whose innings you're hoping to limit you know the six-man i just think creates some some problems we've talked about the good piece over at fangraftrafts that looked at that. Some teams would benefit a little bit from it. Other teams would actually be doing quite a bit of damage because the gap between their fifth starter and their sixth starter is pretty big, and then you're taking the ball out of the hands of good starters

if you're not letting those guys go on regular rest. Interesting that more teams are messing around, but I think that has a lot to do with the shortened season and less to do with tactical desires for the long haul at this point. Thanks a lot for the question, Michael. Next question comes from Matt. I listened to the episode a few days ago where you discussed Andres Jimenez and his fantasy value. And I have a question. What are your thoughts about him in a keeper league? We have a luxury tax, so his cheap price tag coupled with speed and multi-position eligibility have made him a very intriguing player for me to consider keeping.

I went from thinking he'd be a guy with no power and limited OBP skills to seeing a possible 800 OPS at the second base position. I find second base is always thin in terms of identifying keepers. Am I giving Jimenez too much credit? 800 OPS? I don't know if he quite gets there. That's a leap from a power perspective for me. I don't know if he's going to give us that much power.

He hasn't walked at an average rate since rookie ball. He's been very young everywhere he's played. There's reason to believe he could still get a lot better. 732 in his debut, though. A little bit more power once he added the leg kick.

You see that in his AA numbers. But a little more power was still below league average. Yeah. I don't have a problem keeping him. Because I think the speed and the position flexibility, it's nice in most leagues. May not have a job right now. We're talking. So that's the thing I wanted to bring up.

So with Cesar Hernandez going back to Cleveland, my first thought was this isn't good for one of Rosario or Jimenez, but I think it was actually in Keith's 100 where he had something about Jimenez possibly playing short and Rosario playing center field. And I hadn't really thought about it that way. And now there's a rumor that Rosario's going to the Reds. Nice.

So put off that decision as long as possible. Yeah, I guess I just really hadn't thought about Rosario moving out of the infield. But that certainly makes some sense as one way to make everybody kind of fit in that lineup in Cleveland. But Matt, I do think you're giving Jimenez a little bit too much credit for power and probably for OBP, as Eno said, too, at least in the short term. Really interesting long term, a tough player to decide. If you're in like a keep six scenario,

he probably falls on the outside looking in for me. I see too many things that have to go right for him to jump up and be like a top 75 sort of player in 2021. Mike writes in, excellent breakdown on the first two positions. During the first base breakdown, I believe it was said that multi-position eligible players such as Jake Cronenworth would be discussed at their most relevant fantasy position. Was he meant for and missed in the second base roundup or was he coming up in the shortstop group? Good question. We didn't really talk about Jake Cronenworth at any of those positions, other than maybe a quick throwaway line about how crowded things are and

how that gives us some doubts about drafting him around that pick 150, 175 range. How much of what we saw from Jake Cronenworth as a rookie, skills-wise, are you buying into, Eno? I mean, let's just put the playing time aside. How good is Jake Cronenworth as a player? Is he someone that we believe should be an everyday player at some point? I mean, there's sort of the proof of the pudding in terms of how his team is treating him. The team didn't treat him as a fait accompli at second base. They signed Haseon Kim and jerickson profar at

the two positions where cronenworth could have started and so they're treating him as a depth utility piece that's that's a major uh major piece of information i think um the other is just looking at his minor league power numbers i would probably regress his barrel rate, which at 10%, 10.5% was pretty good. Uh, the max CV at 110 wasn't as standout. Um, so I would expect him,

uh, to have, you know, at best league average power, uh, which at this point is sort of like 15 to 20 homers, which sounds good, but in the context of the league these days,

uh, I don't think it's that amazing. Um, maybe, uh, you know the context of the league these days, I don't think it's that amazing. Maybe sort of 10 stolen bases. So let's give him like a 280 average, 15 homers, 10 stolen bases, and that's in full time, which I don't think you can give him full time right now. He has to literally beat out two free agent

signings, or a free agent signing and a re-signing. So, I kind of see him as moving around all over. If he does hit to the upper end of those power projections, and Haseong Kim doesn't translate, then Haseong Kim becomes the

utility guy, and Cronenworth is the starter, second base. So it's kind of an all-or-nothing pick a little bit, I think. And so that makes it an awkward pick for deep leagues and maybe a better sort of 12-team pick on the bench. But in either case, the ceiling is not that great, so I'd rather have Gavin Lux's ceiling on my bench in a 12 team than Jake Cronenworth. Am I wrong? No, I don't think you're wrong.

And I just, I think outside of like NL only leagues and draft and holds, I can't really talk myself into rostering Cronenworth with that crowd at the present time. I think the price is too high. If he was cheaper, he could fit in a 12 or a 15 team mixed league and I'd say, okay, well, it's a little bit like Scott Kingery. He doesn't necessarily have one position to call his own, but he plays enough spots where, yeah, he'll move around.

He'll do a lot of things well. I do sort of buy into the skills, but clearly the Padres aren't all in on believing he needs 600 plate appearances because they did two exact things that would block him from getting that. The two mission players they acquired play positions he would play.

Right, and they're paying Eric Hosmer a ton of money. Hosmer's coming off a great sort of renaissance 2020 season. Just a lot there to work against him. So that's where I'm at on Cronenworth. Nice player, but just still too overpriced, not getting dropped. Maybe now that they've got both of those guys, we'll get a few more weeks of drafts in, and we'll see Cronenworth drop 50 or 100 spots or something in ADP. If that happens, okay, I could entertain the thought of possibly having him on a roster.

Rather have him on my bench in almost any league. Yeah, I don't want to rely on him as a starter in most mixed leagues at this point. Probably the best email in terms of subject line, which a good subject line will always make an email pop for the mailbag, comes from Zachariah. The Orlando Arceus slander will not stand. That got my attention. So here's this email.

In just in good fun, I'd like to point out that Orlando Arcea has some prospect pedigree and had career high significant gains in 2020, including exit velocity up to 89 miles an hour,

hard hit percentage up to 38%, launch angle up to 9.8%. And barrels up to 5.6%. Not to mention lowering his K rate from 20% to 16% with a walk rate up near 8%. He also fits into your favorite category of O-swing percentage improvers from last year. Some things to like there if you change the name on the jersey. Of course, these gains make him basically league average still trending in the right direction thanks as always you guys are the

best don't ever let brit leave the three of you are liquid gold together thanks zachariah and again for clarity brit's just on vacation she'll be back next week. This conclusion is perfect, though, because that's the whole story. Orlando Garcia, for the shortened season, was actually probably the Brewers' most consistent hitter. I watched just about every game last year. He didn't really go into major prolonged slumps. He didn't have any stretches where he was the best hitter in baseball. But he was just kind of good all the time at the bottom of the order. And he did show some skills growth. But I mean, talk about players who are really at that now or never

point in terms of securing his future. This is it for him. If he's not hitting enough, if he's making mistakes defensively, which is always frustrating because Orlando Arcia can make difficult plays and he can kick routine ones in this very odd sort of way that I find very frustrating. It's easy to see the talent and then it's frustrating to see when it sort of breaks down on him. Were we too hard on Arcea, you know, or is he just one of those guys that is an early season filler and maybe he's fine for like an NL only league and you end up getting him for five bucks and he returns 10 or something. I don't think there's any more reason to believe that he's going to take another leap, right? I think we may have seen

what he's capable of in 2020 possibly stretched out over a full season. Like if he held those gains in 2021, that'd be okay. Like a league average hitter at the bottom of the lineup that play. Yeah. Yeah. You know, to that end, you know, a bad X projection on Orlando Garcia you know, that includes a lot of this stuff gives him as a $2 player in the 15 team league with MI. So like, he's like, he's a playable guy that you could just wait on. And that means that that,

that includes some regression in the barrel rate to further away from league average again, and probably closer to 4% or something. His max EV is not good and never was. So I just don't see him as having much more potential for growth. In fact, having that been his 26th year season, I have a sneaking suspicion it could have been his best season. So maybe he can do this sort of 250 batting average, 15 steals, and eight stolen bases. I think if the Brewers are lucky, he kind of Nick Ahmeds it up.

Not a bad player if That's what he becomes. Nick Ahmed's a nice player. And then he just becomes a guy who is 10% to 20% worse than the average of the stick, but is a good defender at a tough position. But as far as fantasy, I don't see the additional upside. I kind of think that was his peak. But the lesson that I take from this is I hadn't checked back in on him, and I put him in a place in my head that was a dark place. And to get that email was a refresher of like, hey,

sort of retest your assertions, retest your feelings about players. Like look at players again and be like, Oh, that guy sucks. Oh, wait a second. I mean, he's, he's not great, but he's not what I thought he was. Um, and so, um, you know, like I, I basically stashed away the 2019, 2018 version of Garcia where he was basically 50% worse than the average of the bat.

I mean, just like one of the worst bats in the big leagues. Real bad. And just not very useful. But even in 2019, he hit.223 with 15 homers, 8 stone bases. You're just expecting a slightly better batting average. That'll play in some leagues if you just don't want to pay a lot of money for shortstop. There's a postscript on Zachariah's email. He wants to know,

can Eno look into and talk about Joe Ryan on the raise, who throws his fastball 73% of the time and led all of the minors in Ks as a starting pitcher in 2019? Could this work? I'm curious what you think about Joe Ryan because I stumbled upon him while number scouting, kind of looking for some drafted hold targets. I thought

he was pretty interesting. I searched on Twitter. BatflipCrazy found him about 10 days before I did, so I was already late to the party on Joe Ryan, but what's the outlook for him? I'm here to throw some cold water on it, but at least it's interesting cold

water. So is it like vitamin water or something? Let's all take a bath in vitamin water. I reached out to a couple of people I know that have access to minor league track, and can tell me a little bit more about Pitcher's Arsenal. And I was told that Joe Ryan is basically the vertical approach angle king. And what that means is that he's kind of like a shorter guy, he has a super low release point. And then he has good ride, a little bit like a LeJay Newsome in Seattle, but even more effective, a better fastball.

And it's an interesting profile because, you know, I texted somebody in the Rays organization. They said invisible, you know, just a weird, you know, weird release point, deception, ride, carry. People can't hit the fastball. That's why he throws it as much as he does and he gets those strikeout rates. I don't think it's enough to be a starter in the big leagues. And that's what the rival personnel person said. He said that basically they've improved his changeup and maybe he has two pitches, but they don't think that he has three pitches. So I think he could come up and be a bulk reliever for them.

I think he could be a good reliever for them. I think he will strike out a fair amount of guys. I'm not sure he's going to be a starter in the big leagues. Yeah, it's disappointing as someone that was going to start loading up on some Joe Ryan rookie cards. But there's another guy who's like him if you want to follow along.

But let's see here. Joey Murray. Let's find his page. Joey Murray. I haven't heard that name before, I don't think. If you want to buy an even cheaper version. Oh, look at these strikeout rates. It's a lesson to us that number scouting pitchers, I think,

is probably even more folly than number scouting hitters. Probably. Think of a guy who has an invisible fastball, has decent command in the minor leagues, and he's facing guys in A ball that don't have command of the plate as hitters, right? I think that you could see these great strikeout rates and not see a huge amount of success

in the major leagues still. Yeah, it's just, we did see the home run rate jump in the very limited time that Joe Ryan got to AA, but he was good at keeping the walks down at high A, did a good job with home runs prior to AA. I don't know. Number scouting really got me excited about him, but I appreciate the cold water.

It's good to have more realistic expectations. Let's cross our fingers for Joe Ryan and Joey Murray. I will say that there's no harm at all in not spending anything on these guys. You know what I mean? Like in sort of last pick territory, last 10 picks in a dynasty league that's like a 20-team dynasty league,

that sort of situation. There's no harm at all in using number scouting like that in fact carson sastouli uh was hired by the blue jays because he found um basically gaps in uh the in prospect reporting and he found number guys were popping according to the numbers that were popping in at times where the lists weren't coming out late in the season, that sort of thing. And that is how he discovered Mookie Betts. And he discovered a lot of, of really good players just by kind of number scouting and looking,

looking at, at players that might've slipped between the cracks when it comes to, you know, making a top 100 list because of when the lists are done and how the lists are done. So, you know, put a Ryan or a Murray on your, you know, making a top 100 list because of when the lists are done and how the lists are done. So, um, you know, put a Ryan or a Murray on your, on your, on your roster. Don't get, don't fall in love. Don't trade for them. Um, you know, don't bid them up. Don't buy all of their rookie cards. Only buy a few of their rookie cards just in case.

Oh, I need to explain something else. Approach angle. Do I need to explain approach angle or did I, I explain approach angle? Or did I? When you've got the low release point and you throw something with carry, the ball comes in in this weird way where it's like this and then swings are designed to kind of come up.

And so what happens is you can see if this is the approach angle and this is the swing, then you're going to pop it up or what happens is you can see if the if this is the approach angle and this is the swing then you're gonna you're gonna pop it up or miss it right you just this is not you expect the approach angle on a pitch to be like this so there's a couple good pieces on it where you can look at alex chamberlain um and uh pitcher list i think has a... Oh, what's Matt Williams' website? I just used him on Twitter.

I'm not even sure I've ever clicked through to his website, sadly. Prospects365, is that him? I don't think he's a Prospects365 guy, but while you dig that out, I'm just thinking about what you're saying here with with this this angle i'm wondering if this is maybe roto roto fanatic roto fanatic roto fanatic has a really good piece about uh approach angle too so just sorry not to interrupt but the approach angle matters you know the teams are thinking about this the rays especially are thinking about

this well and i wonder we wonder, scouting-wise, there always used to be this premium placed on tall pitchers, right? Big, strong, tall pitchers. Naturally, wouldn't they often be throwing down more into the optimal swing plane, whereas a smaller starter, which are less desirable in general, wouldn't be throwing down at quite that same sharp angle? I mean, again, how you release the ball and there are other factors that will impact that. But I don't know. How many surprising, deceptive, shorter pitchers have you seen?

I mean, I think of like Tim Collins, Michael Givens. There's like a list of pitchers that are just surprising. Yeah, I think Tim Lincecum, I think one of the things that made him so amazing was shorter guy who jumps at you, you know, so the ball is in a weird space like towards you, but also, you know, had some year for pitching because, you know, he does well by stuff, does well by command. I'm hoping he's healthy. But also one of the things that's cool about him is he has a really drop and drive approach where, you know, the carry numbers on his fastball don't look amazing. But once you adjust for his release point, he's actually kind of throwing this ball that kind of stays on a level and doesn't sink to meet the bat.

I mean, that's the whole thing. I think those taller pitches you're talking about, that's the norm. So batters have created an attack angle with their batting that matches the norm. And so anything you can do to be different from the norm, release from lower, you know, you know, release from higher, you know, you know, anything you can do to do this is good. So, yeah, Alex Chamberlain wrote a fanatic. Check out those pieces if you want to go down another rabbit hole. Freddie Peralta is a guy I think of. He's small.

A lot of deception in that fastball. And he's way out there. And he used to be, ah,die peralta yes dude freddie peralta that's a great if joe ryan could be freddie peralta that's that's i'm buying all the rookie cards now huh but think about like the struggles that peralta's had the the strikeout rates that he's had you know the the theout rates that he's had, the questioning if he's a starter or reliever, the arsenal. The fastball's amazing.

It's way out here. It's got a low release. It's got carry. It's like the fastball's amazing, but he can't pair it with another pitch. He's almost been looking for a second pitch. Yeah, so the slight difference in the profiles, just looking at the scouting grades from fan graphs, Joe Ryan has better command than Freddy Peralta.

That could be really meaningful because that's part of why Freddy Peralta's at some tough times. And future 60 command, but the key difference here, Freddy Peralta has a 55-grade slider. There is no secondary pitch for Joe Ryan above a 50. His curveball gets a 50 with a future 50, change 45-50, cutter 45-45. But it is similar in terms of just how he might break in, might try to be a starter, might fail, might go to the pen, have a lot of success there, might get a chance to start again. Could be a long and winding sort of road. But long story short, Joe Ryan, very interesting. And to our friend Matt williams i'm so used to

seeing his twitter threads like 90 of the content i see from him is a great twitter thread breaking a bunch of stuff down that's why i can't remember he has some good writers on rota fanatic that attack uh some interesting concepts and uh and i'm sorry that i don't remember the person who wrote the approach angle one but uh it was on a road to fanatic. A little bit of love. We wish it was more complete in this case. I could do more Googling, but now that we're on video,

I, you know, I already did the, I already moved the screen down. I probably look terrible for a little bit. The Google faces are not our best. Yeah. Nobody wants to be. Um,

yeah, so, uh, yeah, it's over here. Hold on. Hold on. A couple more questions to over here. Hold on, hold on. A couple more questions to get to.

Next one comes from George. Kohei Arihara, who was in Japan last year and had a normal workload, is the subject of George's question. He just wants to know, does it make sense to give Arihara a little bit of a boost because he's going to be maybe more prepared for a full season workload. Arihara is pretty low in my rankings, so it's pretty harmless to boost him. Like if I jumped him from 100 or wherever I've got him right now, let's see, I've got him down at, he's in the 120s, he's pretty low. If I jumped him up to 90, it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

He's still kind of an endgame sort of guy, but I just hadn't really thought about that. Players that pitched overseas are in a position to have had a much more normal, from a workload perspective, 2020 than the players who were here in the States. So any thoughts on that? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, it might be interesting to think about how that dovetails with the other thing that we're talking about in terms of the Rangers maybe piggybacking on the back end of their starting rotation. So right now the depth chart on Fangraphs has Gibson, Lyles, Dunning. I feel fairly sure that they're just going to mostly want to let those guys go. Dunning doesn't

really have the full IP though, so maybe Dunning, Allard, I'm assuming he's Allard. Allard, Cody, Palumbo, Arihara, maybe they're in a mix there, and maybe Arihara jumps out of that mix because

it's actually Gibson, Lyles, Arihara, and then dunning allard and cody palumbo you know um i don't think arihara has really great stuff so um i think he may struggle at first but he does have a really wide arsenal um and it looks more like a starter and he has been a starter so maybe they're comfortable letting him work some kinks out uh and soak up some innings while they you know bring their their young guys on along um in a maybe a safer manner for for innings and health i would look at him as more of a four to five dollar late auction guy for an al only league

and maybe the very last pitcher you draft in a 15-team mixer. I think anything more shallow than that, he's wait and see. And I probably, in that space, will find more exciting ways to spend my money and time, I feel like. I just don't see the upside there. Another question from George, a postscript. At three bucks in an AL only league, Josh Stomont, Tyler Duffy.

Which one of those relievers do you think is more interesting at the price? For me, I just trust Duffy a lot more. Stomont has great stuff, but no command at all. I have no idea how the Royals are going to handle saves. I think there's a better chance where if Taylor Rodgers either shares the job with someone or struggles and loses it, which I don't think is likely, but it's possible.

I think Duffy actually has a better path to just steady value in the form of part-time saves and just good numbers all overall. Whereas Stomont could be really feast or famine. He could actually blow up your ratios if things aren't going well i if we were just talking about starting pitchers i would have agreed with almost all of that uh but when it comes to relievers i tend not to worry about command as much it does lead to their volatility but relievers are so volatile year to year uh just generally um just look at edwin diaz um and so um i'm keeping stonemount because he's got the stuff and i think he's the closer right now there was something thing where like um some uh royals coach did a zoom and they had a board behind them and it had still one on them still it had a terosinthal on it no i had a rosenthal on it yeah uh but other people uh were kind of trying to sleuth and

said that like uh it just looked like a board that hadn't been updated from it was like a 2019 board or someone else's white board yeah just you know it was like yeah it It looked like who's available tonight, but from 2020, because there were other names that were not supposed to be on it. So I don't know if we can run screaming, breaking news, breaking news. But to me, Stomach's the closer. I want him. All right. Almost done here.

Got a question from Ryan. Hey, guys. Remember from last year, I kept Otani hitter and Adele over Matt Olson after your advice in a 16-team 6x6 head-to-head five-keeper league. I'm not loving the Adele keeper anymore, but the next best option is Buxton. I'm sticking with it, man. Sticking with it. I feel like I'm crazy if I keep either Adele or Buxton.

Throwing bad money after good. Yeah. I think they're both keepable in that format. I mean, I think we were sort of... The actual question, I talk too much, I'm sorry, but the actual question was Buxton now versus Adele, right? Yeah, and I think you could justify Buxton over Adele. I don't think the power-speed balance we saw from Buxton last season

is what we're going to get going forward. I think he's still more of a 15-20 homer guy in a normal season with 30-plus steals. T tons of injury risk. He's got bad luck. He's got everything possible under the sun on the injury ledger. I think Adele is still really interesting. You said in the last episode, especially because of the limited time we saw him in the big leagues and the fact that he hadn't really figured out AAA yet. He's very young for the level everywhere he's been. There's still a lot more to like with Joe Adele than the vibe is around him right now. I know we may have to wait a bit for him to play every day this season. That's part of the concern too. But if you kept Adele again over

Buxton, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. The only thing I can say is that if you think you have to have a sense of... I don't think that Matt Olsen was a big loss, honestly. I just don't think he was. The profile screams to me 230 hitter. He's going to hit homeruns with

the strikeouts, the pull, the pop-ups. I just think that's who he is. He's a 230 hitter with a lot of power. But power is really easy to get, and the guys that you have choice from now, Buxton and Adele, both have speed, and that's good. So I would think about your league and think about where guys like Adele have gone in the past, and if you want to take Buxton, it's a good consolation prize.

I mean, the projection on Buxton, if he stays as healthy as the projections say, 29 homers, 20 steals. Like, he could be a 30-20 guy next year. So that's a fine consolation prize. I would take Buxton over Matt Olsen. So you haven't lost anything. Everything's fine. And then I would just think about your league.

Do you think you can get Ade adele back uh in the draft at without much cost because of his is your league the kind of johnny come lately like you know what have you done for me lately kind of league and they're just going to ignore adele now because of 132 player appearances then throw him back and buy him again don't don't don't don't be like me with Arcia, right? Don't put Adele in a box and then forget to check again. So I would say Adele still has a lot of things going for him. Even his projections are all right, and his value is beyond the projection thing.

The Fangraphs last had him as the ninth best prospect in baseball. Any top 10 prospect, it deserves more chances than 132 player appearances. Completely agree. And I think where you think those guys will go if you throw them back can probably dictate your decision.

Buxton still has some ceiling. Adele still has a very bright future. Just sort of decide based on that if you're able to do that. Thanks a lot for the question, Ryan. Last question here. Part of an email that we didn't get to previously from Reggie. You guys talk of beer often, but do you like root beer?

Abita root beer is my favorite, especially if chilled on tap. There's actually a brewery, Sprecher, one of the old Milwaukee area breweries that makes amazing root beer. Their beer is fine, but I actually like their root beer even better. That's probably my go-to. I don't think they distribute very far outside of Wisconsin. Good root beer is sneaky good, though. It's just a little hard to find some places. Yeah, I dig on it.

I understand the value. it's a craft it's a craft proposition there's craft root beer right like that there's i think a difference between the smaller root beers and the sort of nationally available ones uh i have had uh sort of aha moments with it my problem is i don't do caffeine so a lot of i think a lot of root beers not all uh not all but a lot of root beers have caffeine so um you know it's a thing that i have you know on the order of twice a year um but i like and i also don't do soda because i drink water or beer. That's probably a t-shirt. Any more calories coming in. I drink beer.

And because the kids love sweets, I try not to eat the sweets. But the sweets are always around. So, you know, maybe daddy has two Oreos when he gives the Oreos out to the kids. And do you know that two Oreos is like 100 calories? It's a serving, isn't it? Yeah, 140 calories per serving. I forget if the serving is two or three Oreos. Two Oreos is a beer.

Sorry, dude. I'm going to have the beer. I used to eat a sleeve of Oreos, like six of them. Remember when they had those when we were kids? Like they had like the six pack of vending machine Oreos? That's probably like 350 calories.

That's a double IPA right there i drink my calories so uh and i and i and i do it at night so i don't normally have the uh the root beer but when i've had it also i actually like root beer floats and uh when you can do a root beer float with a craft like a cool root beer it's really cool i've even had some craft beer floats that I enjoyed. I have to take plenty of pills afterwards to deal with that. That's just being old. That's just old man stuff.

We have top of the scale ice cream in Wisconsin, as you can imagine. So yeah, some pretty good root beer floats around here. They do root beer flavored milk at State Fair too. It's actually pretty good, right? If you think about everything that makes a root beer float good, you can just make milk taste like root beer. It tastes like a root beer float.

Thanks a lot for all of the great questions. I promise we will try to stay on top of the emails better going forward because I am still pursuing in box zero. If you want to sign up for a subscription to The Athletic, best deal, I'll never get there. The best deal for

a sub, $3.99 a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Thanks to the many of you who've signed up. If you're enjoying the show on any platform that allows you to rate and review it or give it a thumbs up on YouTube, please do that. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. It will look pretty in the near future,

I promise. On Twitter, he's at Inoceros. I am at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with the next installment of our position preview series on Monday. Thanks for listening.