Rates & Barrels - Making better in-season decisions w/Vlad Sedler

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

DVR is joined by Vlad Sedler (@RotoGut) of FantasyGuru.com to discuss in-season decision-making, in-season hits (and misses), the demotions of Keston Hiura and Jarred Kelenic, the results of the Memorial Day Weekend second-chance drafts, and more.  Rundown 4:14 What Matters on a Week-to-Week Basis? 12:17 Newest Tools You Rely On 21:26 In-Season Hits, So Far 28:23 Keston Hiura, Jarred Kelenic, and In-Season Misses 38:08 Second-Chance League Draft Results 46:05 Recency Bias in First-Half Surgers Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Vlad on Twitter: @RotoGut e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps and Topps Project 70. Check it out as soon as you can. A lot of cool cards launching each and every day. Derek Van Ryper back from vacation with a guest co-host, one of my best friends in this business, Vlad Sedler. You know him on Twitter as RotoGut. Vlad, of course, writes at FantasyGuru.com, and he is one of the absolute most successful players I know,

both in fantasy baseball and in fantasy football. Vlad, thanks for joining me today. Thank you, DVR. Always a pleasure to talk to one of my oldest friends in the industry. Yeah, man. It's been a while now since we've been doing these things together, and it's been really a strange year. I think we say this every year, like, oh, this year is so weird. This year is so different. 2020, okay, a shortened season pandemic year that was unique onto itself and hopefully we never live anything like that again this season the injuries have been through the roof i mean derrick rhodes has the the data on that over a baseball prospectus and you see just how much we're dealing with injuries league-wide and it's

unprecedented how are your teams doing so far? Have you weathered the storm pretty well through the first two months and change? I weathered the storm for the first month and a half. You're never as good or riding as high as you think you are. Then reality sets in and that's basically what's happened over the last couple of weeks. My most important teams reality sets in and that's basically what's happened over the last couple of weeks my most important teams uh have just been all been hit so hard with uh with injuries and just one after another and it just never ends and uh to be honest i mean i mean over the years there have been certain seasons where just fantasy baseball just flows by really smoothly your transactions you're setting lineups you're picking up the right guys. And it's easy. It feels

easy sometimes. This year does not feel that way. It feels a lot more difficult, a lot more grinding. I think I'm more tired at this point in the season, middle of June than early June. See, I already think it's middle of June than I would be in previous seasons. And yeah, we still have two thirds of the season to go a lot, a lot to do a lot to battle. Yeah, there were a few weeks in May, a few Sundays where I was grinding fab and, you know, it runs at nine o'clock central time for me. So not really late, but seven o'clock would roll around. And it was just like, am I done with this yet? And I love fab. I love fantasy baseball. So I think that's a pretty consistent feeling because it does seem like we're all digging in the corners more than ever before to replace all those players that we're losing to injuries.

I don't think anyone's been immune to it so far. I think maybe the one major frontrunner of all the leagues I play in, Michael Rathburn, is killing the Tout Wars Mixed Auction League right now. He's got about a 15-point lead over second place. Jeff Zimmerman's there. And then there's like another 15-point gap between third. Like those two guys are 1-2, and I don't know if anyone can catch them. And I wonder with Rath if he has just been

not only drafting a good team, but has been incredibly lucky with injuries on top of that to have a lead like that. Because it seems like health and playing time volume has been the key to success so far this year. But there's lots of cool stuff we're going to talk about on this episode. We'll talk about some new tools you've been using, how you make decisions week to week throughout the year, because we spend all this time getting ready for draft season. Basically, the day after the current

season ends, I start prepping for the next season. I think you're not that far off that sort of timetable too. It's a year-round endeavor. And then I feel like we make hundreds of decisions in season that are not quite as connected to all of that research that we did. So making those decisions is really important. We'll talk about how we do that. We'll talk about some of our biggest in-season hits

and biggest in-season misses thus far and some of the unique formats out there, including the second chance leagues that have been a little more popular again this year over at the NFBC. Some results came in from those, so we'll talk about some outliers there as well. But let's tee it up with the week-to-week. What matters on a week-to-week basis? I have started to look at playing time on the baseball reference team pages every single day. I've always used that tool, but I feel like I'm glued to those lineup pages every single day, looking for those patterns, looking for guys who are playing 90 plus percent of the time instead

of maybe two thirds or three quarters of the time. As you're trying to make those decisions, who to go after, who to cut, what is really moving the needle for you on a micro level? So the added element this year that I'm looking into more than ever before, and you basically hit the nail on the head, it's activity and it's health. We're seeing teams really manipulate the 10-day IL, whether these are legitimate injuries or not. The fact of the matter is these guys are going on there at a higher rate than ever. And the one thing that we know as fantasy baseball players is the one thing you cannot allow yourself to do is accumulate zeros whatsoever. They're going to happen at times, but those are things that we can prevent.

And part of that is having the right backups in place. zeros whatsoever. They're going to happen at times, but those are things that we can prevent. And part of that is having the right backups in place. A lot of us are working with a seven-player bench, usually not more or less than that. And hard decisions sometimes need to be made. And that involves not holding starting pitchers that may or may not come back from injury in the middle of summer, things like that. So activity and health is really number one. I even had tweeted about it earlier on Tuesday, talking about how much I'm glued personally to a roster resource there. For a free resource, I'm constantly looking at the transaction trackers. I'm basically at every team. I could tell you over the last week who played, what position, and how many days last week.

These are all such important factors. So there's a lot more to that, but I guess that's where we start. I know a lot of the leagues you play in are NFBC leagues. NFBC leagues, of course, don't allow trading. Do you play in any leagues that have trades at this point? I don't. It's been a couple years for me. It's kind of a nice thing to not have to worry about.

So just over the last couple of years, made sure to just concentrate on a specific type of format and just make that repeatable. Because what ends up happening is I become a draft monster in January, February, March. I just love to draft. And I try to be mindful of the teams that I have to manage during the course of the year. So I try to make more of those best balls and draft champions. But still this year, I ended up with 12 fab teams, which is much more than I've ever had. Usually I'm at six or seven. So yeah, I mean, that makes a difference. But the other big important part of it for me is, you know, I'm looking at the stuff we've always looked at. It's, you know in a week. Seven versus five, I think, makes a difference. In NFBC, we got those half weeks that we need to look into.

For this half week, a lot of teams are playing two games, so a lot of three. And then, of course, digging into the stadiums that they're playing in, opposing starting pitchers, a handedness of those pitchers. All those elements, I think, are all part of the giant formula looking into it. Yeah. And I think projecting playing time or at least understanding how teams utilize their players is probably an undervalued skill in our game. The people who do that really well are much more likely to either make up ground or gain ground in season than people who don't pay as much attention to that or just simply don't have the experience to do that as effectively as they probably should.

The tool that I've been using a bit more this year, too, is the rest of season projections. They have them over at Fangraphs. You can look at those pretty easily. And those work if you're in leagues that have trades or if you're in leagues that don't because I think they can ground you a little bit when the shiny new toys come up, right? We've had prospects come up this year. We've had some players like Adelise Garcia come out of nowhere, play a lot more and end up exceeding expectations and trying to figure out like, okay, who am I going to drop? Who am I going to pick up? Looking back at those numbers gives you a better sense of what is likely to happen going forward

than what has happened so far. It's so easy to be trapped in that recency bias. And I think I'd rather sort, if I'm looking at free agents, I'd rather sort by playing time than actually sort by production when I'm looking to make in-season moves. But then I want to look at the skills through the lens of the rest of season projection. Yeah. The first thing I do, as a matter of fact, when I'm sorting through free agents and I'm starting that work on Thursday or Friday before I write my Fab Values article, first thing I'm searching for is at bats. I'm looking at bats over the last seven games, over the last 14, and then I'm diving into the depth charts and looking to see how teams are playing, who's playing against lefties, righties, even the catchers.

Maybe there's a platoon. Is it based on who the starting pitcher is or is it based on lefty, righty? So all those things are really important to me. So I'm looking at all that. The other element that I think a lot of people don't really think about or look into, but I think it's important for even for those that play DFS. It comes from those that play DFS, but it's looking at bullpens because a lot of times when you're looking at matchups, like, okay, this guy gets, you know, he happens to face the three worst pitchers on the nationals this week. It's like,

you know, Lester and Joe Ross or whatever. But a lot of times these guys come out early and then sometimes a good bullpen steps in. They have, you know, they have good swing men. They have a good back end of the rotation. So, and they're covering anywhere from, you know, two thirds, three, or I'm sorry, one third or so of a game, sometimes more if the pitcher gets pulled early. And, you know, for example, I don't want, you know, my guys, my hitters that are probably going to expect, we're going to expect less runs from all together if they're going to face you know the brewers bullpen the dodgers you know things like that uh for me you know right before the show i wanted to take a look and see you know

how how are the bullpens doing like over the last couple weeks over the course of the year and i just noticed that the reds just happen to have the worst bullpen in the major so far this year i mean i remember some of your garrett blowups but i didn't know they had an ERA near six. I didn't know that they were the only team in baseball, only bullpen with a walks per nine of over five. So a lot of those things matter. Or another thing, I didn't realize that the Royals have one of the best bullpens over the last few weeks. You look at the names, it makes sense. But to actually look at it and allow it

to help formulate your plan per week is a different story. Yeah, I think building in more ways to look at matchup difficulty for hitters and kind of getting that as part of your core decision-making at the beginning of the week or in the midweek example too, that helps. That's a big deal. I don't know if I always did that as well as I probably should. It's probably an area of my game that I could still do a lot better. Do you use any weekly projections at all? I know Derek Cardy's system, The Bat, has a weekly projection option. I think Raz Ball has some tools for that as well. Do you have any numbers that you lean on looking at a more micro level other than the games played and the matchup stuff that we've talked about?

level other than the games played and the matchup stuff that we've talked about? I don't. I don't. No reason other than I just kind of want to be able to trust my own research and instinct and not to say that those numbers wouldn't be helpful. And hey, perhaps maybe that's something I should try one week and just see how it compares and run an A-B test there. But for the most part, I feel like I already have opinions on the following week earlier in the weekend. By Friday, Saturday, when I'm looking at the matchups for the following week, as long as the pitching rotations don't change all that much, aren't too many rain outs, I pretty much have a good idea of what I'm going to roll with. Or sometimes you just get a feeling, you're looking at the schedule and you're like, okay, Brady Singer at Oakland this week. And typically I would start a Brady Singer, but there's just something about it that just doesn't feel right.

And then I'll dig in and see how he does maybe against those batter types and things like that. So you can go into rabbit holes, but sometimes it's that instinct that starts things off. So the next thing I want to look at with you is the new tools that you use. We'll say the newest tools. It doesn't have to be something that came out in the last year or two. I think for me, I'm beginning to scratch the surface more with Stuff Plus and Command Plus, some of the things that look at individual pitches on a really granular level, spin and movement and different things. What I'm using that for is to find reasons to separate guys like Brady Singer from seemingly other ordinary pitchers. Like that cluster of guys that they're basically not top 50 starting pitchers,

but they're rosterable. They're on and off rosters. You definitely want them for two start weeks, definitely want them for easy matchups. Trying to figure out which of those guys are more likely to become fixtures on a team, that to me could be a pretty big source of an advantage. And I feel like you're not always going to see it in results because it can go wrong so easily for a pitcher. It can be one bad inning that completely changes those numbers. So when you glance at ERA and WIP, you see a guy that has underperformed on the surface,

but then when you look at the numbers like Stuff Plus and Command Plus, you might see someone who's actually well above average in terms of what they're working with. So like for me, that's been one of the things I've tried to use to make better pitching decisions on the margins. Is there anything that you've been going to more often in the last year, last couple of years that you didn't have back when you started playing? Well, I have a lot more than when I started playing. And I think back to, I'm trying to think back why and reason why 10, 15 years ago, I actually was doing well and had success where I didn't even know about platoon splits. I didn't know all these numbers and stats

and just kind of ran with it and things worked out. And obviously the competition is more vast. It's a lot tougher. And these leagues that we're playing in, especially where I'm in, NFBC, are just so incredibly competitive. It's insane. And so I try to gain whatever edge I can. There's still a lot of just sort of overarching basic things that I'm looking at that are just common sense. I'm watching pitchers. I'm looking at basic advanced metrics. and I'm not diving in too much. And the other thing I try not to do is try to glean too much information from something I don't quite yet understand. And I'll be the

first to admit if there's something that I don't get. I mean, there are a lot of, all of our Alex Chamberlain's and Jeff Zimmerman's of the world. These guys are just like a galaxy brain, like super smart guys. And sometimes I don't get what they're saying. So if something that seems interesting to me, I'll dig in further. And obviously the groundbreaking stuff that Eno's been doing over the years, I think is also fantastic. So I'm not quite at that level of extreme advanced metrics and being able to just, you know, just spit out every, everyone's, uh, number and relevance to it. But I'm trying to get there, uh, even with, with stat cast, like I'll look at it to maybe confirm things for me.

I mean, like for example, one random thing that I happen to look at for hitters, uh, are, uh, you know, just seeing how hard someone's hitting the ball. Not necessarily average exit velocity or exit velocity, but percentage of balls hit over 95 miles per hour. It was something that basically made me think about why Evan Longoria is all of a sudden sort of back at a career renaissance. Sadly, he hits the IL, and we're not going to see where that takes things. But things like that, looking for the outliers, things that you haven't seen over the last couple of years or players that are just sort of coming

out of nowhere or coming back from nowhere. Yeah. The interesting thing about Longoria too is that he wasn't the only hitter on that roster who just got a lot better with the underlying numbers. There's clearly something in the organizational approach, in their instruction from their hitting coordinators that has taken effect, whether that's hunting certain pitches, or I don't know what exactly it is, but there is a philosophical change that has happened with the Giants that is real. And I think that has made me kind of reconsider a lot of hitters on that team that I'd previously kind of thought, oh, we got this guy figured out. We know what Longoria is. We know what Brandon Crawford is. I think it also makes me more willing to buy into some of the other players they believe in, right? So if Lamont

Wade Jr. comes up with the Giants now, I'm a lot more interested just by default than I would have been maybe two or three years ago when that park was playing even more pitcher-friendly and prior to these successes. Yeah, I mean, it's true. I mean, even looking back, the seed was planted even for this prior to the season. I mean, look at Mike Yastrzemski. I mean, he wasn't supposed to come up and be just this amazing prospect. He was sort of a marginal one, and he just had basically the pedigree in terms of the name. But he wasn wasn't supposed to be this good at least i didn't think so and so there's just a whole bunch of surprises like these these career renaissances of buster posey after taking a year off brandon crawford never in a million years would i draft him or consider drafting him over

the first of these last few years and now i'm paying more attention to the giants i'm separating my fandom from the Dodgers. I'm having respect for the Giants for what they're doing from a fantasy perspective, both on hitting and the pitching side. And notice the correlation there with Gabe Kapler. I understand he's not the pitching coach or the hitting coach, but he has his influence there

and he's very heavy in analytics, which I think is important. And you see them as kind of the East, the NL Tampa Bay Rays, where they're the team, the first team that comes to mind where you're like, okay, let me see, do the Giants have mostly lefty pitchers they're facing this week or mostly righties? Because they'll set their lineup that way. You kind of get stuck in your head. You know, okay, a bunch of righties coming up. I can play Brandon Belt. I can pick up Alex Dickerson. Lefties,

oh, okay, it's Wilmer Flores week and things like that. So a lot of ways that you can take these things to your advantage, I think. Yeah, I think reacting somewhat quickly is important in fantasy baseball. For years, my default advice through April and even through May was, I'll be patient. Keep starting your best players. Ride it out. It's a long season. It's a marathon, not a sprint. I've probably said some variation of that every year for the last 15 years. The more I say it, the less I actually completely believe it in this absolute truth sort of sense. Yes, it is still a long season. Yeah, you could be in eighth place today and still win your league three plus months

from now, but you need to be willing to react to things that are different. And I think deciding what is a little more predictive, what is more meaningful, what changes are more sustainable, that's still hard to do, even though we know it's important. So I guess what I'm trying to get at is I always try to want to push back on all of the things I used to think because the more I learn, the more I realize I didn't really know as much as I thought I knew back when I started. Yeah. It's the same thing that a feeling or thought, basically something I recognized over the last couple of pre-seasons is taking this as a week-to-week season. It's 26 mini-seasons and really compartmentalizing it.

Because there's nothing you can do now from three months from now because it can be an entirely different league. And we're seeing that even more this year with everybody hitting the IL. league. And we're seeing that even more this year with everybody hitting the IL. So what can you change now or what moves can you make to put yourself closer to a better position end of the year is to attack this week. You're still keeping the macro approach of the long-term season and the next month coming up. But the only thing you can really address is for that week. And sometimes you do have to make those tough decisions and cutting your Carrascos of the world, not having the patience to wait around for them to avoid taking that zero for the week at your hitting spot or whatever it is. And we have to be much more discerning on how we're holding that bench and who those players are within it. Yeah.

And I think of an example just from today. I mean, we're having this conversation Monday afternoon, so lineup lock will happen by the time people actually get to listen to this show. But J.D. Martinez wasn't in the lineup on Monday. It was the kind of thing for me where, depending on the quality of your next best option, you could justify sitting him down for the first part of this week in NFBC leagues, just because injury optimism, even on a micro level is pretty risky. Now the reports suggested, I think Jen McCaffrey from the athletic had a report suggesting that JD will be back in the lineup on Tuesday. Those plans changed, right? I mean, the team expects him back. Doesn't mean

he will be back. So I think I've tried to be a little less optimistic when it comes to even like a day-to-day, like a hamstring strain or a bruise or the types of things that you ordinarily say, oh, it's not an IL thing, it's fine, and I want to start my studs. Sometimes you just want to lock in the production because getting two games instead of one

or three games instead of two, that starts to add up when you make decisions like that in the right way over the course of the season. All right, Vlad, we've talked about having to make better in-season decisions. What has your process led you to in a good way so far this season? Who are some of the biggest upgrades you've found along the way through the waiver wire? So the funny thing is the more sort of attention as being this fab guru that I'm getting, the less results I'm personally getting. And I'm honestly admitting it. Maybe it's just a small sample of a couple of months, but I'm looking back at my fab pickups and I'm noticing that it's basically the draft that ironically has been carrying me and my success or the teams that

are successful most of the year. I have jumped on a few times in the right spots. Like for example, Adolis Garcia. I picked him up a week before the hype when I kind of saw him playing in the middle of the lineup. I saw his monster minor league numbers from 2019, and I grabbed him for basically the teens, $12 in one league, $15 in another. And even that was an overpay at the time. Nobody was bidding on him. The following week, he's going for $100 plus, so I was happy about that, and that worked out. Outside of that, I did have a main event team, an FBC main event, where I picked up someone, dropped Corey Kluber after three weeks, I believe. And I got an

absolute fantastic run. I got the no hitter with him and Spencer Turnbull, actually, I picked him up for $12 on that same team. So I had at the height of my season, two no hitters on the same main event team in the same week, which is fantastic. Both are now on the L. One guy's gone, but yeah, those guys are now part of the past for me. So Garcia is really interesting. He's been one of my biggest in-season waiver wire hits as well. I don't have him everywhere, but the funny thing is Nando Dufino has loved Adelise Garcia

before anybody cared about him at all. It's just such a Nando guy because he tore up the minor leagues, had power, had speed, going back to his time with the Cardinals in 2018 and 2019. And last year, just didn't really have an opportunity to play in Texas. So we didn't get a chance to see what he would have done at AAA again. Maybe he would have tore it up for a third time. Most likely, probably would have. But I think Garcia is really interesting because from a cyber metric standpoint, he's a flawed player. He doesn't draw a lot of walks.

He strikes out a little more than you'd like him to, but he does so much damage when he connects and he does all the things we care about. And I just wonder sometimes if I get a little bit myopic or I start to look as though I'm looking for real life value instead of fantasy value because they're not one in the same. There's a clear difference. And I think what drove me to Garcia, aside from Nando kind of pestering me about him for a few episodes of Under the Radar, was just that the Rangers were locking him in, in the heart of that order right away. And I know we've seen players get called up and sent down like 10 days later after they hit cleanup. Like Nate Lowe in Tampa Bay a few years ago had that opportunity.

I thought, oh, this is it. They love him. They're hitting him right in the heart of the order. He must be here to stay. They sent him back down. The difference, though, is that a non-contending team like the Rangers will ride that out as long as they possibly can. And I think it reminded me of Danny Santana two years ago, where it's just like, there's no downside for the Rangers to just keep letting Garcia play. Where do you think we go from here,

though? I mean, 16 homers, seven steals through 51 games. If he doubled up over the final 100 games or so, if he finished with 32 homers, do you think that'd be a reasonable sort of assessment? I think that's fair. I actually brought it up in a conversation earlier today. Will he even double his home run total from the rest of the year? And a lot of that has to do with, obviously, can he stay healthy if he's going to stay healthy over the course of the season? There's a good possibility that at least hits the 30 home run mark. I think we can absolutely get there.

We see the type of power that he has. We see that the way that this lineup is configurated, where he should continue to get a shot somewhere down there in the middle, maybe if it won't be hitting third or fourth, even fifth or sixth. I mean, these things will continue to change over the course of the year. But absolutely, either way, it's still a win for a lot of the folks that didn't spend too much. Even for those that did, he's essentially paid off for you on this big stretch.

And even if he does fall cold for a two, three-week span, chances are a guy like that who probably fits that streaky mold could get hot again and go on another barrage at some point. So I wonder, too, how much, now that we have barrel rate, like I think barrel rate's really important. It's one of the newer things that I look at and I feel pretty confident that it does in fact mean something. It means a guy can do damage that we're looking for.

He can hit the ball hard, he can hit the ball on the right launch angle. That's a combination of things that I think is generally pretty sustainable. A 17.4% barrel rate so far for Garcia, that's sort of the missing piece. If you go back and look at those plate skills in the minors, and you don't know what the barrel rate was when he was putting up those great results at AAA, you kind of shrug him off. But if we knew, if he was putting up a 15 to 20% barrel rate that

entire time at AAA, I feel like those low fab bids you were using to get them, that wouldn't have happened because everybody would have been just all over this guy saying, oh yeah, he did this in the minors too. So we believe we're going to throw 10 or 15 percent of our budget at Garcia instead of one to 2 percent. Yeah. And it's an interesting case study for all the guys that have sort of fallen into that mold since then. Think back to Jermyn Mercedes and his tremendous start to the season and how he sort of faltered since then. Patrick Wisdom really falls into that as well. I mean, what really is it that's causing him to have this insane barrage of power, some change to his swing. What's happened there that a 29-year-old

all of a sudden hit so many balls out of the park in such a short period of time? And is that something that's sustainable? Is this an Adoles Garcia for us? Is there even a comparison there? And next week, it could be somebody else, right? I mean, you never know where these guys are going to come from. The one common denominator is people will always overspend on these type of players based on recency, not only just over the course of the week, but like for 100% fact, folks wouldn't have spent as much on Patrick Wisdom this week. He was a top bid in a lot of 15 leagues if he hadn't hit those two home runs on Sunday alone. If he had just quietly 0 for 4 that day, he would not have received the same height.

But hey, seven homers and 50 plate appearances sure does look a lot better than five and 50. Yeah, or even instead of a two homer game, if he had two doubles, if he barreled up two balls and there was doubles in the gap, instead that changes the way people react because we're so results-based. So I do find myself kind of looking at the barrel rates and trying to decide, hey, actually, maybe I can override my previous concerns about this player's poor plate discipline because he barrels up a lot of balls, which kind of brings us to Keston Hira, who I think has been one of the most discussed players on this podcast.

People email us about him all the time. Did you say discussed or disgusting? on this podcast. People email us about him all the time. Did you say disgust or disgusting? Both. I meant both. I said disgust. I have a lot of disgust about Kesson here every time we discuss him. I feel bad because I think he's a good hitter who's lost his way. And the reason I think he's a good hitter, I've always believed he was a good hitter, is because he uses the entire field. I don't think bad hitters hit the ball to all three parts of the field with authority, but he is so far away from the player he was when he showed up two years ago in terms of making good decisions at the plate. If you watch his plate appearances, he has a lot of non-competitive plate appearances where it's just like, slide her away, slide her away, slide her away.

Three swings and misses. Back to the dugout. And he went down to AAA once. He just got optioned back down earlier today. Went down the first time. Hit a lot, like did a lot of damage, but didn't lower his K rate. And I think that maybe should have been the warning sign that we all needed to say, hey, wait a minute, he's still not quite fixed.

There's two ways you can struggle. You could be totally without confidence and going to AAA and just mashing at AAA could give you your confidence back. But if you're not making good decisions at the plate and you go down and you're still not making good decisions against lesser quality pitching, we shouldn't really believe you're going to come back up and fix that major problem that you had

that got you optioned down in the first place. Yeah. I mean, this is a perfect example of a failed hypothesis of mine where for many years now, I'm just, you know, have had success picking up the struggling hitter, the former all-star who who slumps for a bit goes down to the minors gets things fixed and comes back up and i was just way too optimistic in this case uh where majority of folks weren't i'm just you know thinking to myself hey this is kesson hero he's not just gonna fall to nowhere and and be a nobody i i still believe in this guy but i feel like there are some fixes that he needs to make along the way. And I was too optimistic seeing him seeing that K rate in the minors

and still sort of ignoring it and just thinking like, well, I wasn't interested in the preseason at that ADP. Now that he's dropped, I can pick him up on the cheap and let it ride and just, you know, ride off into the sunset. But that's the beauty of our sport. And that's what keeps it humbling is always something like this ends up happening. And so that's the case. This is where we're at now. Some folks probably went ahead and dropped them this past weekend. What I did on my teams with Hira, I just made sure that I set up myself up with another either corner or middle infielder since he's second and first base so that I wouldn't have to start him this week. Like I just didn't have the confidence with him not even being in the lineup. He pretty much was

only hitting against lefty. So I made sure that I had somebody in for him so I wouldn't have to play him this week. But I also at the same time didn't want to drop him. Yeah. And I think you have to decide what are your bench spots really for? I think mostly in the NFBC especially, but this applies to any league that has a reasonably small bench, I think you can afford to stash one player. You can have one long-term stash, one struggling star that got sent down like Hira. Maybe we're using star a little too loosely here, but I don't think so. I mean, I think he looked like an early round fantasy pick coming out of that rookie season. You could stash a prospect who hasn't come up yet, Wander or Brujan,

like someone that you think is really an impact player. Or you can stash a really good injured player. Like one, you can always get away with. Two, you may have to get away with, but you got to have more multi-position eligible bats on your roster to have that second player stashed away. And I don't think you were wrong. If you waited out the first emotion for Hira, if you waited that one out, I don't think you were wrong. If you waited out the first demotion for Hira,

if you waited that one out, I don't think that was a bad process. I think in most mixed leagues now, if you want to wait out a second demotion for him, that's bad process. I think you probably have to cut him pretty much in any sort of non-keeper league or any sort of mixed league with 15 or fewer teams.

You get to like a 20-team mixed league, it's so hard to find anyone who plays on the wire in those leagues. Sure, that plays like a mono league. You can st a 20-team mixed league, it's so hard to find anyone who plays on the wire in those leagues. Sure, that plays like a mono league. You can stash them away on your bench there, but this demotion could be a lot longer than the last one because he's going to have to cut the K rate down before he comes back. I think the

other problem that works against him, the Brewers don't necessarily have a better option at first base, but it's not that hard to go get a first baseman. Plenty of teams have an extra corner infield guy available that hard to go get a first baseman. Plenty of teams have an extra corner infield guy available that you can trade for, especially bad teams. So I don't necessarily see him coming back anytime soon unless he gets back to being the guy that he was before that previous promotion way back in 2019. Yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me,

and I guess you're kind of like my my roto psychologist because i'm thinking that man i don't even i'm not even practicing what i preach because i have more than one stash i'm always preaching just just hold one stash keep that flexibility but you know the it's the it's the brand of names it's you know it's oh my god it's it's severino it's carasco it's gallon it's sale and before you know it you have a whole bench of these guys because you can't let them go oh and then luke voight got hurt but but it's Gallen, it's Sale. And before you know it, you have a whole bench of these guys because you can't let them go. Oh, and then Luke Voigt got hurt. But it's Luke Voigt.

How can I drop him? And so that becomes really difficult to manage. Voigt is legitimately one of the most difficult players to make that decision on because it seems like a lot of his injuries are four to six week injuries, which are usually long enough to cut a player. But he was so good, especially in the shortened season and really on a per game basis since he's been a Yankee when he's been healthy. He's been amazing. He's one of the most difficult players to drop in a 15 team league because you know he's better than anybody else you're going to throw out there once he comes back and you're going to lock him in when he's

healthy, but it takes a lot of discipline to actually follow through on this. That's why we talk about it as much as we do. I think we're kind of naturally talking about some in-season misses now, too. Jared Kelnick got optioned down on Monday. And I'll readily admit, I'm wrong. I thought he was Major League ready coming into the season. I thought the Mariners were wrong to even delay bringing him up initially. And the reasons why they did it, of course, are wrong. I'm never going to defend that. But clearly at a certain point, when the results are as bad as they've been

for a player like Kalanick, you do need to send a player down. And in this case, it seems more like a confidence problem than a process problem where expectations were really high. He wanted to come up right away and crush it. He didn't. So now he's going to go back to Tacoma. Would you consider still stashing Jared Kelnick? If you had a reasonably healthy roster, do you think it's still worth waiting it out? Or do you think it's more like the hero situation where obviously in keeper and dynasty, he's still great and AL only leagues you wait, but in mixed leagues, do you have to cut them loose? It depends on the format. I think in 15 teamers, I think you continue to hold so long as you don't have too many of those stashes now. 12 teamers is a different animal because it's a valuable

roster spot. And there are guys that, what are you really holding for? You're holding for the 90th percentile outcome, which may not even come this year. And we don't know when he'll even be up. And there are always viable bats available there in free agency. So I think you can go ahead and drop him in 12th. The sad part is, is he leaves on that streak, right? So when he comes back, there'll be a lot of pressure to get that hit. I think his 0 for 39 is still standing. Yeah. And I think back to when Kyle Tucker debuted a few years ago, I think he had an 39 is still standing. And getting that kind of off your back is obviously better than carrying it for a week. But yeah, you're right. I mean, just the mental block that you have to break through is kind of a big one in this case.

I think in most mixed leagues, he probably is more of a cut than a stash because most people have more than one significant injury already. I think you have to be in a really fortunate health situation to be able to get away with holding him for the time being. But if you told me he's back in three weeks, I mean, I guess we're probably still talking about a guy, if he mashes, he's going to go for eight to 10% of a fab budget where he gets dropped. It'll be less than the first time where available, which was almost nowhere, but it's still going to be a significant amount of fab relatively speaking to go back and get him when he comes back. Yeah. I mean, just in general, it's just a good, these are, at least for a fantasy learning

perspective, these are good things for it to happen, at least for the folks that are willing to get a lesson from it and just to, you know, sort of just be careful on the hype. I mean, no matter who it is, I mean, is anyone really worth 50%, 60% of our budgets? And everyone's human. At some point, this is going to happen to anyone. So, yeah, good lesson for us all. We're going to go through that with Brujan, I think, more than anything else. Because Wander, like Kelnick, has been stashed in so many leagues that there aren't that many places where you're going to have a chance to bid on him once he gets that opportunity.

But Brujan was drafted a lot less often so once he comes up and especially if he does what what patrick wisdom did this week if he has a big week that first partial week that he's up it's going to be just complete chaos based on the quality of the season he's having a triple a and all the expectations that we have for him at this point but yeah two guys that i mean both here and kelnick i i thought they'd be much better than they've been to this point. But yeah, two guys that, I mean, both here and Kelnick, I thought they'd be much better than they've been to this point. All right, Vlad, we've made it through the paying the bills portions of the show. And I want to talk to you about some of the second chance league draft results, because I think we're hitting a point in fantasy baseball where I don't think

the game needs to be overhauled, but I think I'm reaching this point where I want to do the most fun part of the season more than just in March. And I think we've had a few legitimately fun attempts at this over the years. Second chance leagues, I think, are the biggest mass marketed ones so far. Jake Seeley was doing a league in the past where the season was broken up into thirds. And after every 50 games, you'd get back together and redraft again, but there was a little bit of a holdover effect in the roster. You could hold like 10 players that you drafted,

so you didn't completely lose the core that you started with, which I thought was a pretty good creative idea. A few years ago, Ron Chandler had Chandler Park, which was like a monthly salary cap game. So you'd go for about four weeks. Prices would change every month. You could go ahead and sign up

and do it again at the end of the month. It was awesome. And I wish the timing had been different on that because I think that format was one that people would actually have wanted to play if it had come out like now instead of five years ago. But the Second Chance League is kind of exactly what I want

because it's a chance to not only gauge the market, but to take advantage of heavy, heavy recency bias that comes into play. I was looking at the results before we started recording, and I'll throw them up if you're on YouTube watching this. The first round is scrolling across the bottom of the screen. The first round didn't seem like complete chaos to me. It kind of seemed about right.

Reasonable adjustments were made. More pitching than you normally would see in a draft back in February or March. So I'm just kind of curious from a general standpoint, did you think that sort of adjustment made sense? Would you have pushed pitching as much as everybody else wanted to in these leagues? I think I would have.

I did not end up entering any of those second chance leagues, although I was sort of entered by default with Rob Silver, who put together a team. And basically, I'm in that. I didn't draft. I wasn't in on the draft, but I'm invested. And I would absolutely spend the money on the draft but uh but i'm i'm invested um and i would absolutely um spend the money on the pit or invest on the pitchers early just because uh it was there was actually a fantastic thread

on it uh a very good nfbc player phil uh du salt uh gentleman north of the border was talking about how the the the the pitching really is is it's it's almost a more bankable asset as long as you, we can't predict the health, but we pretty much know what you're getting from start to start within a smaller range of outcomes with the guys like Jacob deGrom and Garrett Cole and you Darvish. And with hitting, you just know how many amazing values there are going to be later,

just literally because of how bad they've struggled over the last few weeks or somebody that's on IL. You look at these draft boards from the second chance leagues, and it's just remarkable, some of these values. Like Alec Baum is 100 overall two months ago. All of a sudden, he's 350 or whatever it is. And just Francisco Lindor, second rounder, now a fifth rounder. Just so many different things. And we're only one third of the way in the season.

A lot of rambling that I just kind of threw out there to basically say, yes, I would invest in the pitching early if I were to do a draft. And just load up on those hitting values. A lot of the guys that I feel will produce, they just hadn't really started to do so yet. Yeah, I think leaning into the quality bats that fell more than they should, that does give you that little nudge of confidence to say, yeah, it's okay. Get that pitching early. I think the other part of this is maybe this belief that if you make it through the first two months of the season healthy as a pitcher, it seems more likely that you're going to stay healthy the rest of the way. If you're going to break, you're going to break in the first two months of the season.

I don't know how true that is. It's just one of those things that I'm more confident in pitching having seen 10 starts than I am coming out of spring training by comparison. We're going to see the sea change, I think, for next season as well. So long as things keep up sort of at the pace that they're going now, there's going to continuously be a bigger uptick of early round pitchers, right? Because five, six years ago, it really wasn't a thing whatsoever. You'd be lucky if there were one pitcher taken in the first round. Now you got half the first round in these second chance drafts filled with starting pitchers and worthy ones as well. Next year, it's just something you're going to start seeing more and more, especially if somebody

wins the main event with a pitcher as their first rounder, because through the history of the main event so far, that hasn't been the case. There's never been somebody that has won the overall with a pitcher in their first round. This year, we've seen a lot of the sharpest players take Jacob deGrom in the first overall, Garrett Cole in the first. So the times, they really are changing. Yeah. And if you're not watching on YouTube, Cole Acuna, Tatis, deGrom, Bauer was the top five. Then Trey Turner, Vlad Jrr bieber darvish soto six through ten jose ramirez max scherzer mookie bets brandon woodruff and beau bichette rounded out the first round again going 15 deep so i mean bichette was a guy that i i liked him back during draft season but i thought

he was going too early. So that's definitely a miss for me. I looked back and said, we don't have enough track record here to spend an early second round pick on him when I could get Walker Bueller or Hugh Darvish or one of the kind of back of the top 10 starting pitchers was guaranteed to be there in that early to middle part of round two. So I am without Bo Bichette on all of my teams this year. And I am definitely sad about that, seeing that he made the leap into the first round. Not that he had far to go, but I just, I think that type of player, the either one season or less early round player is one of the most difficult players to make a call on in any draft. Yeah. And I felt similar to you. It was that I didn't like Bichette. I mean, he was

basically the top candidate for my this year's Yellich column in 2020. Obviously a huge fan, but this season I wasn't willing to pay a second round price tag. Just as it so happened in a main event I did online where I really wanted to get Vlad Guerrero, I got Bo Bichette in a spot where I just couldn't pass him up. I think it was something like Corey Seager was gone already and sometimes luck lands to you that way. So I got the two, three hitters sometimes luck lands to you that way. So I got the two, three hitters. Start with Garrett Cole and then Bichette and Guerrero.

And that team is doing pretty well. It's up there and it's competing. And now that I think about it, I like the Blue Jays offense for a lot of reasons. I usually target AL East hitters. But gosh, I should have just gone all in on the Gritchucks, like everybody, all the Toronto guys, anybody with a pulse that plays for the Blue Jays. Yeah, Marcus Simeon, what he's done this year,

just a great all-round value in free agency for the Jays. I think he's going to get paid next time around because I think he's still a good enough shortstop to go play shortstop too. You don't really hear his name mentioned in that class with a lot of the guys who are going to be available, Story and Seager and that whole group, of course. But I think he's a great relative way to go. If you need a shortstop and you're not going to go out and spend $200-plus million on someone,

you could be just as happy on a shorter deal with Marcus Simeon based on what we're seeing from him in Toronto this year. The recency bias, it's like worse than ever when you do a second chance league, but that's what makes it so fun. I mean, Nick Castellanos, who does pop, if you look at rest of the season projections, he appears among early round hitters in terms of like projected Woba the rest of the way. And I know it's a gambler's fallacy of sorts to look at what he's done so far and go yeah that's great but he's not doing that going forward he's only going to be able to be the player that we projected him to be the rest of the way right i think some of those those big risers were actually pretty hilarious to see like he i think he went 32nd overall on average in

these drafts which just is mind-blowing. Carlos Rodon at 40, Adelise Garcia, who we talked about earlier, 46 was the ADP, Mark Melanson at 52. I think I was probably more wrong about the San Diego bullpen than I was about any other bullpen in the entire league, which I deserve a cone of shame for that. No, no, no. I'll tell you why, because there was a period of time, you remember, a couple of weeks before that. No, no, no. I'll tell you why. Because there was a period of time, you remember a couple of weeks before the season where even coach speak made it very much likely that it was going to be Emilio Pagan.

There were really no signs for it. I really do feel like anybody that was, you know, gung-ho, it's Melanson all the way because it used to be a close, you know, all the after, you know, the confirmation bias that would have come with it. I wouldn't believe those people if they were to tell me,

it's Melanson, because it really wasn't up in the air situation. You had Pomeranz, Pagan, they just signed Kiela. So yeah, I mean, it was a tough call. Loaded Penn with a lot at stake. The kind of place where if you struggle, you're going to lose your job quickly. He's been great. All that being said, I'll admit being wrong about Melanson. There was no way I was

getting near him at pick 52 if I was doing a second chance league. That's just extreme. Francisco Lindor went 74th. You mentioned him as a guy that was a pretty big faller. I think he's exactly the type of player I'd be looking for in that range. I'm saying this as someone who's actually traded him away in two leagues in the last couple of weeks one is a keeper league where i'm contending i traded him to another team that's contending to free up cap space to get pitching so it was just kind of like a necessary move it was like well lindor might bounce back but the mets have been so banged up the ceiling for the counting stats i think is a bit lower than it was coming to the season whereas i had no concerns about lindor back in march i thought he was fine at the season. Whereas I had no concerns about Lindor back in March.

I thought he was fine at the early part of round two. Probably I would have said Lindor over Bobachet's a no-brainer. Look at the track record. That's the kind of dumb analysis I would have had just three months ago. I think you do have to look at that Mets offense and take a little bit off expectations-wise for Lindor, even if you're expecting a pretty big bounce back. So when you

start to look at some of the players who've had their value fall a few rounds and they have that long track record, who are you most willing to believe in as legitimately strong rebound candidates for the final three plus months? I was kind of looking at this as maybe just teams as a whole. And when they get some pieces back and the offenses are at full strength or hopefully there'll be times in their full strength, the two teams that come to mind are the Mets and the Yankees, to be honest, because it's hard for me to imagine them just being sub 500 bottom of the barrel teams. I think the combination of their pitching, their strengths, the ownership that is willing

to go out and get what is needed to not be an embarrassment to the city, to the fans. I just don't see how these teams aren't going to fix things. You look at the Mets injury list and it's insane. I mean, everybody's visited. Think about a week and a half ago where I think Lindor was the only healthy guy from the original roster or opening day that was on there. There were guys that I hadn't even heard of.

And at some point, Jeff McNeil is going to be back. Brandon Nemo is going to be back. Michael Conforto, who I could really use, will be back. And at some point this summer, the pendulum will swing in the favor of the Mets. Maybe Carrasco and Syndergaard are in the rotation, and things are just really just popping off. And I can see that, especially with Dom Smith there, Pete Alonso. I like that team. To be honest, I think I like it a little bit more than the setup for the Yankees right now.

Yeah, just looking at that roster, you know, Joe Urshela is your four-hole hitter. LeMahieu struggling at top. Stanton Judge always a worry with injury risk. I feel like that's a team that's going to end up needing to pick up a bat at some point. I was just wondering too, were you in on Glaber back during draft season at the discount, especially? Because he was like a sixth rounder for a guy that I thought was going to play every day and easily hit 25 homers with a chance of bouncing back closer to 2019,

even if he didn't get all the way back. I didn't think that was totally out of reach for him given how young he is and the quality of the lineup around him. He was a backup plan because most drafts, there was always a shortstop that I would love before. And a lot of times that was, unfortunately, it was Corey Seager

or there was Lindor or Turner or Tatis in the first round. So he was always the, if I get into those rounds and I don't really like anyone, then I'm going to go Glaber ahead of Baez. And an interesting thing with Glaber Torres, just a week and a half ago, I was doing just randomly looked at the bottom exit velocity guys. He was top five. He was there with the worst of the worst, fifth worst in the league in average exit velocity. It's really strange because I didn't see that coming early in his career.

It's made me wonder if he's been hiding some kind of longer-term injury or if there's just something going on with him that we that we don't know about yeah i'm looking at it right now there's 124 qualified hitters on the average exit velocity leaderboard glaber torres 121 so fourth from the bottom i mean you just don't expect to see him down there with david fletcher kevin newman nick madrigal adam frazier jp crawford jerks and profar miles straw isaac kinder for left, none of those guys hit for power. None of those guys will ever get near a 30-plus home run season, and Torres did it as a 22-year-old. It just doesn't add up. He almost hit 40, right?

Yeah. He hit 15 against the Orioles that year. Even if you said, nah, the Orioles will get better. He's not always going to hit 15 against the Orioles. Fine. That's why my 25 expectation didn't seem unrealistic at all. It seemed like a very good median expectation and with great counting stats. I thought he was one of the best values in the range. I think you're right. I think a lot of people that could have liked him could have easily missed out because it was so easy to

end up with a shortstop prior to that point. And I thought Baez coming into the year was actually a really good value too, just because he doesn't really get days off. I think I was really seeking playing time, even in the early middle rounds of drafts as something that would maybe separate something that popped up into that range for the first time from someone who had fallen into that range after a few years of being an earlier round option. Yeah. For myself, just for whatever reason, didn't end up with a lot of Cubs hitters on my teams.

And then go figure, Casey Cha, who was recently inducted to the Hall of Fame of the NFBC, who, as far as I'm concerned, is the best fantasy baseball player out there. He had a theme this spring. It was all basically NL Central hitters. You look at his team, he's got all the Reds, he's got all the Cubs. And you look at the leaderboard, he's leading in homers, RBIs, different teams, a different pitching thing. But there's something that he

locked in on for this year. And I can talk about it now because the drafts have happened. But yeah, he's got Castellanos, he's got Baez like all these guys that I wasn't super excited about in those ranges. There was always someone else that was like, oh, pitching in this area. Oh, I got to grab my closers here. He was just pounding those guys, and he's having a successful year so far. I don't have any teams where I stacked them or anything like that, but I was always getting one of those guys. The only problem is I also liked Nick Senzel. So there were some times where my Reds exposure ended up being Nick Senzel, and I thought Senzel could be like Winker, but with some speed, maybe a little less power.

Yeah, not so much. It's been another injury-plagued season for Senzel so far, but maybe in the second half. Well, it's like a deal. It's just a deal with the devil. There's just no way. If you already love Senzel, like the majority of us fantasy players, we'll be in next year. He can keep getting herped. It'll always be like,

this is the year. We just can't quit Nick Senzel. No, he was so good in the upper levels of the minors. He has power. He has speed. He should be a five category player. So yeah, I will be a dummy forever with Senzel and probably Victor Robles too. I think it's easier to talk myself out of Robles, like blue ink year over year over year on the

StatCast page after like three years. Finally, I might say, okay, yeah, he's not going to hit the ball hard. It's just not going to happen, but I'm pretty stubborn. So you never know, maybe one more year for both of those guys. Vlad, before we go, let our listeners know where they can find you on Twitter and where they can read your work. Twitter, I am vladsettler at rotogut, R-O-T-O-G-U-T. And my work can be found on fantasyguru.com slash MLB. And yeah, that's where I'm at. And I really, really appreciate you having me on and having me on and, uh, happy to talk with you anytime. Yeah. Loved, uh, having you step in for Eno today. Always a blast to catch up with you

and always a lot of fun and picking your brain, learning more from you as one of the absolute best players that I know, uh, the success you've had. We talked about, I think back during draft season, just the stats are ridiculous, dude. Your stats, like in 12-team NFBC leagues especially, you're awesome in every format, but that format, unbelievable. And I think the hardest thing for me in a 12 will always be cutting players that I think deserve to be rostered. I cannot separate myself from those players

that are the fringy top 150 dudes who underperform. That is the hardest thing for me about playing that format. It's the same thing for me. Like this is what I'm doing. Like before we jumped on the show and I kind of knew some of the topics, I'm looking back at my, my, my, my fab bids over the last few weeks. And I'm just catching a lot of, a lot of errors, a lot of biases, a lot of things that I preach and talk about not to do, I'm catching myself doing. So this was like kind of a good checkpoint two months of the season to try to keep myself from making these errors and then hopefully being back at the top of the standings at the end of

this year. Yeah. Do what you've been doing for like the last 15 years, because that has worked really, really well for you, but really appreciate your time. And again, give Vlad a follow at RotoGut on Twitter. Great follow there. Read his stuff over at fantasyguru.com slash MLB. By the way, before we go, if you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, you should get one. $3.99 a month gets you in the door at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Eno and I are back with you on Wednesday.