Rates & Barrels - March ADP risers and 2021 bounce-back targets

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

Eno and DVR looks at March ADP risers -- including Tejay Antone, Myles Straw and Bobby Witt Jr. -- and try to make sense of Cristian Pache's steals projection, the importance of lineup position in relation to stolen-base opportunities, 2021 bounce-back targets, and more. Rundown 3:14 March ADP Risers 8:46 A Promise DVR Can't Keep 11:47 Making Sense of Cristian Pache's Stolen Base Projections 19:34 Bobby Witt Jr.'s Excellent Spring 25:16 Is a Playing Time Path Opening Up for Jonathan India 28:33 Bounceback Targets for 2021 38:36 A+ Makeup 47:20 Adjusting Auction Values for Reserves 51:14 Looking for New Leagues Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Sign up for a subscription to The Athletic for just $3.99/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Please fill out our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/athleticaudiosurvey 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 is Wednesday, March 17th. Happy St. Patrick's Day, if that's something you're into.

Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we'll talk about some March ADP movers as part of our draft season observations to this point we'll talk about some spring stats that actually matter and we'll talk about some players who might be primed for some rebounds in 2021 coming off of disappointing 2020s you know how's it going for you on this wednesday horrid terrible oh my god i am so tired i'm just so tired oh my god a time change is like one thing and then something something three cats two dogs two children I mean just Horrid and I don't know. I thought last night. I'd be like god. I'm so tired I'll just crash tonight and everything be fine I'll be fine tomorrow and I remember coming back from Japan and having 13 hour time differences and dealing with it better

so either I'm just old or I have to blame all the animals in the zoo of a house or i don't even know what it is but um i don't want to do this anymore daylight savings that is i'm just gonna be like kids get your own asses up yeah daylight savings is tough it's not good especially in the spring i don't mind it in the fall because you kind of get the extra hour but the the spring takes a couple't mind it in the fall because you kind of get the extra hour. But the spring takes a couple of days to get used to. It's easier when you're traveling because you're tired. You're tired from being in a bunch of places.

You're run down. And I'm usually in Arizona now. So you're just tired because you're socializing and drinking and working and doing all those things. Anyway, yeah. Oh, my God. I was just thinking about that because it it's, it's a happy St. Patrick's day.

And usually, uh, almost every St. Patrick's day I spend in Arizona. Um, and it's, um, uh,

you know, there was often that like MLB, um, that like, uh, they always had that like St. Patrick's day concert that was was somehow MLB related. It was MLB network related.

Anyway. If you're watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe button. Hit the like button on this video. You might notice I'm wearing a green Brewer sweatshirt. I think it's from the St. Patrick's Day festivities about 10 years ago. The old majestic stuff is indestructible, as I have mentioned before. That looks nice, man. It doesn't look that faded or anything.

No, the colors and everything have held up really well on this, so I'll probably have this for another 10 years. What's older, that or the hat? The hat is half the age of the sweatshirt. The hat looks beat up. It was distressed when I bought it. You could see the SD fraying. That was by design, but the hat's got it.

I've got the pine tar stain on there. I got my sunscreen mark. You're ready to scuff up the ball. I'm ready. I'm ready to throw 75 pitches today. I'm almost ready for opening day. Let's get into some of our ADP movers. I just updated this before we started recording. I wanted to see who has made the biggest leap in NFBC drafts since the calendar flipped to March.

We're looking at March ADP from March 1st forward, comparing that to the entire month of February. February and our guy TJ Antone number one on the list with the move of almost 100 picks up the board ADP getting close to number 300 overall as I think board more people realize that his role should be a very prominent one and with those innings he can do some very good things for us as fantasy players yeah I mean I think I mentioned before that he had the biggest spin rate increase year over year in minor league baseball. And maybe more relevant is that only Jose de Leon has more innings pitched on the Reds this spring. And I'm not, you know, that's just a measure of how stressed out they are.

They're obviously looking at him. He has the same amount of innings as Michael Lorenzen, and yet he has twice the strikeouts. Oh man, Anton's pretty nasty. Miley's hurt-ish. It's still interesting because what is ADP now?

3-16 Yeah, that bakes in the risk That's a bench piece That you'll drop If he doesn't Get the rotation spot That's how I would still put him I don't know if I'd push him much harder

Than that Still kind of like a 75-90-ish type pitcher where you're like, you know, if he makes it, there's a lot of upside. If he doesn't, I gotta go find somebody off of the wire. Do you prefer the ADP calculation in the middle of the report, or do you prefer

the left column number? Because the left column number actually seems more indicative of where a player's actually going to go. So in the case of TJ Anton, it's 297, right? So it's just the order of the players. There's not much that separates players at that point, so they could have ADPs that are 30 or 40 apart in the calculation

and still be fairly close together in the actual order. But a fringe top 300 guy, I think, is the right way to describe tj anton at this point miles straw was a big mover and i think he he pops as a guy that has a spring stat that actually matters about a 90 pick jump for him since february there were some rumors that he might be a candidate to lead off but But my simple argument against that, Eno, is that the Astros have a lot of good hitters, and Myles Straw wasn't a very big part of their plans until just now.

There's no reason for them to immediately install him as the leadoff hitter simply because he's replacing George Springer to begin this season. You can move your better hitters up. I know Carlos Correa is one of the candidates to also get a chance to possibly this season. You can move your better hitters up. I know Carlos Correa is one of the candidates to also get a chance to possibly lead off. So when you look at Myles Straw, do you see leading off as a possibility maybe later in the year if he proves that with everyday run in the big leagues that he can draw walks and be effective? I mean, I think he kind of has to prove that he can hit big league pitching consistently before he's going

to get a prominent spot in the order. Because by all measures to me, he's a prototypical number nine hitter in the American League. Yeah, I've got the bad X projections up. And it's Jordan Alvarez first, Alex Bregman second. Why can't Alex Bregman lead off? Jose Altuve third. Yeah, Altuve's a prototypical leadoff guy even. Or Correa. I think I'd just go Altuve, Correa,. Altuve's a prototypical leadoff guy even. Or Correa.

I think I'd just go Altuve, Correa, Bregman, Alvarez, Brantley, Tucker. Tucker could lead off. All these guys have a much better WOBA. These guys are all, those guys are good. Those guys are all projected to have basically a 330 WOBA or better. Jason Castro is projected to have a better Woba than Myles Straw. Aledmis Diaz is projected to have a better. Yuli Griel, Abraham Toro, Chaz McCormick.

Oh, there's Myles Straw. There's Myles Straw. Did I just make an argument for Chaz McCormick over Myles Straw? Anyway. And thanks to our pal Jeff Zimmerman, this is maybe the most important lineup slot thing because I really respect the work that Mike Curlin does where he's looking at lineups every day.

I'm not sure what the relationship is between spring lineups, just like we're saying with Myles Straw. Maybe in spring they just want to see a lot of Myles Straw, right? Maybe Josh Rojas is leading maybe in spring they just want to see a lot of my straw right maybe josh rojas is leading off in spring because they want to see a lot of josh rojas but when he's actually playing they're like yeah well you know you're seven eight nine yeah right so um i don't know what the correlation is between them i just haven't seen that research and then um on top of that but it is it is useful for more plate appearances at the top of the lineup. And then this one, this is great.

Jeff Zimmerman found this. If you move a hitter from the eighth spot in the lineup to the seventh spot in the lineup, the average hitter gains nine stolen bases. Pro-rated to 600 plate appearances. So, you know, over a course of a season. Nine stolen bases just from moving from eighth to seventh. It's not because the lineup slot has magic to it. It's because in the National League,

you know, you don't really steal in front of the pitcher. Every time this comes up, I feel like a complete heel, but I'll bring it up again, which makes Victor Robles' 2019 all the more impressive. He was running from the eighth spot that year, and he might not be there anymore. He could move from eight to seven or eight to one. What happens to hitters who go from eight to one?

Because that is a possibility. It is much more likely that Victor Robles leads off in Washington than Miles Straw leads off in Houston. 16. Boom. 16 plate appearances. 16 stolen bases difference. I do wonder how much of this is true for Straw in the American League,

but I do think that there's some probably some effect, at least on the 8th to 1st, and for Straw, I think the big difference also would be plate appearances, because you want him to get more plate appearances to get more stolen bases, and I just don't see any likelihood

he's up there. And every sort of slot that you go down, you lose something like 20 plate appearances on the season. 15 or something. So he could lose a lot of plate appearances batting 9th. He'll get 3 when everybody else gets 4, and he'll do it over

and over again like that. So, I think for Straw, the effect will mostly be from player appearances, but there may be a lineup slot effect in the American League too, but pretty amazing in the National League, right? So, if Robles does make

that switch to leading off, an extra 10 stolen bases would be pretty nice on that lineup why do we always talk about the same guys geez because i love him and and i'm here to promote the piece from maria torres that went up on wednesday morning really good piece looking at the changes that robles made this offseason he was trying to bulk up and trying to be like Juan Soto. Britt told us on Friday that he saw Soto and thought, I could be like Juan Soto. It's good to be inspired by Juan Soto, but that's not your game. And I'm glad the right people were in his ear.

He had people that were in his ear telling him, no, you're more like Lorenzo Cain. You're more like Starling Marte. And those are really good players. It's good to be those guys. They've had very good careers. So I'm as optimistic as I've ever been. I don't have Bailey's in my coffee today. I'm convinced it's going to happen with Robles. I promise I will stop talking about him for the rest of draft season. This is the last time on a pod barring injury news that I will mention Victor Robles on this pod until we get to opening day. Not at all possible. No, it's happening. Eat your hat level happening. But I

think you had a question. That hat looks very edible. It's very tender. I think you had a question in our mailbag. Where was it? Our mailbag. This is where I am. I'm one step from punch drunk. I'm tired. I can't make fun of you. You're very tired.

We had a question in the mailbag for this one. Yeah, so there was a question about Christian Pache. And it was, why is Christian Pache only projected for single-digit steals despite an elite sprint speed and playing time projection of 120-plus games? Is Atlanta expected to apply an anti-running philosophy to Pache, or is it something else about his game? It seems like he could swipe 12 to 15 bags in his sleep and could be undervalued as a potential 15-15 guy

with a solid average in the later rounds. Cheers, Gregory. What do you think about that? Do you think there's something with the lineup placement with Pache? Because I do see him being pretty stuck in the bottom of the order. I do see him being there for his glove first in that lineup where he's probably not getting out of the 8th spot, barring some pretty unforeseen development at the plate in year one.

Well, I have shares of Pache, and I sort of agree with this idea that maybe the projections are light on him or just that we have more upside than the projections. And he's kind of in that area where, like, why are we hewing so close to closer projections on basically a prospect? I mean, he's played a little, but not a lot. So we're basically talking about a prospect. Yes, projections give us the best sense of the middle of where a player like this ends

up, but you're not drafting him. I mean, and only you're drafting him and really hoping for a certain amount but i have shares for him in like nfbc format and and best ball format and and these these formats were like um it's a hope it's a he's a bench guy he could break out and i think that if he does break out there is a non-zero chance that he gets his way up to the top of his lineup if he like ends up at his sort of 60 and 70th percentile right or that he gives us what robles did top of his lineup if he ends up at his sort of 16th, 17th percentile, right? Or that he gives us what Robles did out of the eighth slot anyway, right?

You know, like still manages to just steal a bunch of bags even though the pitcher's hitting. There's going to be some pinch hitters. There's going to be some reason to make him take off. And, you know, it is, I can do the same game that I did with the Astros. So I'm not trying to say Straw is good and then use the same reasoning, or Straw is bad and say the same reasoning and say Pache is good.

Because, yes, you go Freeman, Acuna, Ozuna, Albies, Swanson, Darnot, Riley, and you even get bench guys Lamb, Sandoval, Kipnis, and Irvin before you get to Pache when it comes to Woba. But the difference is price. What is it? Do we have it in front of us? Pache is going around pick four. Not quite four. Like 350 in March.

This is what I'm saying. The ADP number is 441, but the actual pick slot's more like 350. So you're still talking about, what, 20th round, roughly, is where you're going to draft him? That's late. That's your fifth outfielder. It's because the playing time floor is safe. Yeah, it's maybe even one of your bench guys.

I've been getting his bench guy. And I think that's a big difference because I'm picking him up as a bench guy. Bench guy means he's gone if it doesn't look good. Right? And if it doesn't look good means I want to see stolen base. Actually, you know that stolen base attempt rate becomes meaningful pretty quickly?

So if he's not taking off, then that's one thing. And if I don't see a good max exit below, I know I'm supposed to give three, four months, but with him, I will make the choice quickly because he's on the bench. And if I really needed something from that lineup spot that I'm not getting, then he'll be gone. Straw, you're putting in your lineup,

and you're circling sort of 25, 30 stolen bases, I think. Like, that's what that draft position says to me. You're circling it in pencil, maybe, not pen, but you're still like, I really hope Straw gives me those stolen bases, and I kind of have to play him. And you know you're going to nurse him longer. You'll nurse him longer because you paid more into him. Like, the sunk cost thing doesn't always work when you're gonna nurse him longer you'll nurse him longer because you paid more into him like the

sunk cost thing um doesn't always work when you're like no i needed those stone bases from straw i'm gonna hang on to him longer so anyway pache to me uh we did we ever come up with a we had some good we had some good suggestions what's the what's the replacement for eat this, not that? Oh, I had a few of those here. There was a draft hither, not tither. That's a tongue twister, man. Yeah, I can't say that one. Unfortunately, I appreciate the contribution from Peter, but that's not going to be it.

It's like the time when I worked at Rotowire, we named the blog initially. It was the Rotosynthesis blog. And then as soon as someone said it out loud, we were like, well, crap. That's not going to work. There's a really simple one that was dropped. This is not that. And I was like, yeah, okay.

Yeah, there was Go Big or Go Cheap, I think, was one that came in. Oh, that's getting at the idea behind it, yeah. That was from Christopher. And there was a couple other ones sprinkled in. None of them were the clear-cut winner yet, though. So we're still dancing around it. Still fielding offers. Who do you think? It has to come with a hook.

Well, who do you think Pache is the discounted version of, just from a stats perspective? I think it's tricky because if you think too much about it, you could see rapid growth potential from Christian Pache. I think I mentioned before, his numbers at AA were a lot better than I realized, and he was very young for the level when he reached AA. So I should probably have come away a little more impressed by those numbers in 2019.

But in terms of the actual projection, one-to-one, who do you see being a more expensive version of Pache that you're passing on because you can get Pache where he's available? I don't think it works like that this year because there's so much more risk around Pache, right? But if you want a sort of accomplishedness sort of situation, I think a Starling Marte. Wow. That's a big...

Yeah, you're right. That's probably too much, but... That's not what I'm hoping for this year. Yeah. But when I look at the skills, I don't see him at all. Myles Straw is a zero power guy, right? That's like Nick Magical power. If you look at his skills, I don't see him at all. Myles Straw is a zero power guy. That's like Nick Magical power.

If you look at his minor league track record, 20 game power according to fan graphs backed up by the numbers. You can count him very quickly in his entire career, including his little bit of time in Houston. Myles Straw has hit five home runs as a pro. Yeah, right. They're not the same player. I wouldn't want our comparison to mean that're not the same player uh so yeah if we like i wouldn't want our comparison to to to mean that they were the same player um you know pache has a 55 50 55 raw power

um on fan graphs and um i think he can tap into it i mean he showed he showed glimpses so yeah i think like a 15 to 20 homer guy with 30 to 45 steals, depending on where you catch him in the peak, in his peak, that's where I could see him going. This year I'm just hoping more for like what the commenter said, 15-15 with okay batting average. Right, and I think there are a lot of players like that that go in the 200 to 250 range or even the 200 to 300 range. If you miss on them, Pesache is a really nice fallback option

because you do get more ceiling with him than some of the other players, even though it comes with some downside of him not quite being polished enough to hold his own in the big leagues with the bat just yet. The glove should keep him in the lineup, though, because that's gold glove defense in center field that the Braves are going to get from Christian Pache. We should talk about Bobby Witt Jr. I don't know if we've even mentioned him on the pod yet. He's coming up

everywhere else right now. Third biggest riser. Huge, because he's now, he's reached the point where people are starting to throw their last pick at him in a 30-round draft, a 15-team league, ADP creeping into that 450-500 range and still rising because there were comments made by Dayton Moore the Royals GM that he's becoming open-minded to wit possibly making the opening day roster which is just I was nowhere near that coming into this season I thought wit for sure was 2022 at the earliest needed to play play high A, double A. I mean, second overall pick, plenty of pedigree, but a high school kid.

I just assumed there was no chance we'd see him in the big leagues this year. What are you doing here? Are you throwing a late dart on Witt? I don't know. Nah. I, you know, I do one, I have a piece coming out tomorrow

about string stats that matter. And, you know, one of them is actually plate appearances and Witt is I think third in plate appearances in the big leagues this spring training so they are giving him a shot but I think fifth is C.J. Abrams and to me

that's like the same deal. C.J. Abrams is not going to play on the Padres this year. C.J. Abrams is 20 years old. C.J. Abrams is just getting some burn because they didn't have minor leagues last year they're just trying to see what he looks like against other pitchers other than their own organization pitchers uh trying to get him some good competition especially since minor league the minor leagues this year delayed some so like you know get him in there keep him playing you know uh keep him developing and i think that's

the same thing for bobby wood jr so like yes yes, Jim Bowden, our own Jim Bowden reports that Dayton Moore is quote unquote, open to putting Witt on the roster. And yes, you know, I saw some really cool reporting to come out last night that Dayton, like actually cut his own salary in order to keep salaries for the Royals employees afloat. to keep salaries for the Royals employees afloat. We know that Dayton has spoken out against service time manipulation. And so there's, I think, maybe like a 5% to 10% chance, which is higher than I would have put it, that Witt makes the roster.

But this is how... The problem is just like, he's a shortstop. You have Adelberto Mondesi for now. And I think that Witt is actually part of the large bust rate that still exists for Adelberto Mondesi for now. And I think that Witt is actually part of the large bust rate that still exists for Adelberto Mondesi. So I don't think that it's necessarily going to happen this spring, but June, July rolls around,

and Adelberto Mondesi has a 275 OBP. Well, here's the other thing to consider, though. If Witt Merrifield's going to play in the outfield, they have a black hole at second base between Nicky Lopez and Hanser Alberto. It's not like Hanser Alberto late. Yeah, so it's like you can bump those guys out of that spot and pretty easily just play Mondesi at second

and play Witt at short if you think Witt's actually ready. Yeah, yeah. to see it second and play with it short if you think wits actually ready yeah yeah and and he had like a one of those standout batted ball events where you know max exavilo does matter and he did have a standout um on that front but wait a second was that on a backfield or something because it doesn't show in the savant search. You know what I'm talking about, that big homer? No, actually. That's not me disputing that it happened,

but I do wonder if it was a backfield thing, which is frustrating because backfield stats don't count. There are a lot of spring parks that don't have stat cast data at all. I saw Luis Urias homer off of Clayton Kershaw, and I said well how hard did he hit it i just want to know like did he yeah did he actually hit a rocket or was it just kind of a garden variety home run off of clayton kershaw like those little things to me mean something especially when we're looking for signs of growth from younger players in particular

i also saw it was a piece on fan graphs like Brendan Rodgers hit a scorching ground ball and I was like oh okay that's something yeah Rodgers has a really nice but he had a good exit velocity last year so max exit velocity last year so his exit velocity didn't actually improve he just showed it again he does have that power 116 max exit velocity

like the worst case scenario for a 116 max exit velocity is like Cattell Marte which if we're talking exit VLO is like Cattell Marte, which if we're talking about draft trends, I have Cattell Marte in like 95% of my leagues. I think I have one league where I don't have Cattell Marte. He's your Robles. Yes, and I'm approaching 100 leagues.

That's how it feels. My God, have I ever done this many leagues? I think it's the best ball thing where I'm like, ah, it's just a draft. Yep. They pile up real fast. I had so many drafts going on right now. Nobody wants to hear you complain about it.

It's a great job. Shut up. You know, I think I've got one on the, on the calendar for next week that I've got to put an NFBC draft or two on there for next weekend. And then I'll be right. I got to do some NFBC, man. I got to put an NFBC draft or two on there for next weekend, and then I'll be all set. Right, I've got to do some NFBC,

man. I've got to try to get some more practice at that. I've played like two NFBC leagues in my life. You could play like ten, if you put your mind to it. You could play ten this year alone. There's still time. There's still enough days in the calendar. Yeah, I get it.

But there's not enough head space. My head is falling apart. What were we even talking about? Bobby Witt Jr. Oh, backfields. Bobby Witt Jr. I think the power is there.

I think there's still a fair amount of questions. So I don't... And that... Yeah, I guess he could play second, but I just... Or Montes could play second. I don't have any shares. I think, you know, here's a rookie that's playing a lot, that's getting people, getting some buzz that I think might actually play, which is Jonathan India.

Yep, I would agree. He's not showing on this yet. So we talked about him on Fantasy Baseball in 15 on Wednesday morning. Al Melchior and I were talking about him. And basically, it's just like, if they shuffle everything around and they're serious about Suarez playing short, Moustakis goes back to third, India is the net winner for playing time. And he did come up. I was reading a really good piece over at Baseball America about 25 players who've impressed this spring. And they had some scouts quoted in the piece,

and India was one of those guys that was featured there, so I highly recommend you check that out if you've got a Baseball America subscription. But I think with India, the main thing for me is that he has lost some time to injuries, and I wonder if that has sapped his power a little bit in the minor leagues. He may never be a guy that fully lives up

to the expectations of where he was drafted, but he could still be a very good regular in that lineup. And if that's their best combination and he's the net winner, then I think he becomes relevant in deep mixed leagues pretty much from the jump this season. Yeah, I mean, it's all hinged on a 29-year-old third baseman moving to short. But to kind of make the argument pro, and I have Suarez, this whole thing is in my piece for tomorrow. There's just fewer and fewer chances of short. There's fewer and fewer balls in play. And Suarez is an above average third baseman. He's ranked among a bunch

of shortstops in outs above average. It's sort of average-ish for infielders in general, and he would be bottom half. I'm not pretending he would be a top half defender in short. But with those fewer balls in play, I think you're just saying the offensive upgrade we get is worth the defensive downgrade, especially when our defensive incumbents are Kyle Farmer, former catcher,

and Dee Gordon, who was moved off shortstop a long time ago, and then Jose Garcia, who's like right now, I think, just pretty much a zero at the plate. I think that this might actually happen. I think this might actually happen. And India is, I think he could do india is um i think he could do league average power i think he could do league average patience the strikeout rate is a question he's projected for high strikeout rates from a lot of people but we also haven't seen numbers on the

strikeout rate since 2019 in double a when he struck out 18 of the time and that was pretty nice so what if he just strikes out 21 of the time, and that was pretty nice. So what if he just strikes out 21% of the time? Then we're talking about a league average strikeout rate, better than league average walk rate, league average power. League average hitter? I mean, there's no other infielder you're adding to that infield right now that's a league average hitter. Right, and I think with some of those skills that you mentioned,

maybe some upward mobility in terms of where he hits in the lineup over time too. So all those things are generally just good for Jonathan India and the price is really next to nothing right now, an end game sort of consideration. Again, it does hinge on Suarez sticking at shortstop, which doesn't look like it's locked in by any stretch right now, but I'd love to see it even just for a little while. All right, you know, we had a lot of great questions rolling into the mailbox. The pursuit of Inbox Zero has been delayed until after opening day, but that's a thing we're very grateful for on this show.

Had a question from Mike. Are there any players who were awful in the shortened season that you're targeting for a bounce back in 2021? You named one. Gattel Marte is on pretty much all of your teams, he just said a few moments ago. And he was brutal last season. So, just

prying at that a little bit, what has stood out to you? What makes you confident that we are going to get that bounce back from Quetel Marte? The max exit VLO. It's as simple as that. Actually, it's a little bit more complicated. It's the contact rate. So, it's the contact rate and the max exit below.

So I think that the worst case scenario is he hits for a good batting average and has 20 homers and 10 steals. That's what the projections are. And would you look at last year? Even in last year, he had the good contact rate and the good max exit below. He should be able to manage those two things, those three things. And then I think that the max exitzevillo actually hints at some sort of upside beyond that, the upside of going back to 2019 and showing us even better power than 20 homers.

I'm trying to pay for the 20 homers. Every time I pick him, he's the best value on the board. But I am jumping him in ADP. His ADP is around 80 and I keep getting him around 60 and 65 and stuff. But when I look at projections, maybe it's like setting to setting because I'm doing these best ball drafts and stuff. So it could be just the setting. But in a number of ways that I've run the projection calculator, Quetel Marte shows up as the number one second baseman. And that's just the projections. And I think there's a little bit of upside beyond it.

Yeah, I'm with you on Quetel Marte. I don't have him nearly as many places as you do, but he does come up in that 6th, 7th round range, especially as a guy that really kind of stands out. And I think he's one of the few early middle rounders that you can get that can help you start to turn around a foundation that might be a little light in batting average. Because of all those categories,

if you're skeptical of the power coming back to 2019 levels, if you're not sure that he's going to run as much as he did earlier in his career, he's going to hit for a good average. That's definitely a skill that Quetel Marte owns. So I do like the idea of having that to sort of fall back on as a security blanket, kind of in that same vein of like a Jeff McNeil or other players that kind of live in that same space. But I think you do get the possibility of more power

because I don't think 2019 was a complete fluke from him. So I think you're definitely right to be on him this year. He has four batted balls over 110 miles an hour this spring. Really good sign that he's healthy again. It was a wrist injury that he was dealing with during the shortened season, I think, that really caused things to go haywire. Looking at the early rounds, one guy that I ended up with in one of my earliest auctions who I've been kind of stuck going back and forth on at the time since is Javier Baez.

I know he was among the players who complained about the lack of in-game video. We know that there is going to be some in-game video this year, but last season, a 31.9% K rate, only a 3% walk rate, a 57 WRC plus. We did still hit the ball pretty hard. The max exit velocity was there, 116 I believe was his high a year ago. So there's still plenty of raw power. I think I'm in on Baez mostly because he's always had an unbalanced sort of plate discipline. There's always been a lot of swing and miss in his game, very free swinging sort of approach. And even when it didn't go right for him last year, eight homers and three steals really isn't bad in a terrible slash line short

in season. No one pushing him for playing time at all in Chicago. He's the guy. This could be the last year for him as a Cub, but I think the bat had him projected for just over 30 homers, 14 steals, and really good counting stats. I'm in on Baez. I don't know if he's going to have him everywhere sort of player in any given year anyway, just because of the way he gets there. But I do think he makes a lot of sense at the deflated price. Yeah, you know where I like him a little bit more than other places is best ball. And the reason is that, you know, Bill Petty had the stat called volatility that he did back in the day. We haven't seen that much of it, but it was really cool.

He just sort of looked at swings in WOBA over time and then sort of graphed them and had like a volatility metric. And we did some fun things with that back in the day. But when I asked him, like, what's the major driver of volatility? When you look at the inputs to your volatility, like when you correlate things to it, what's most correlated? He said strikeout rate. So I think that if you see, this makes sense, if you see these big strikeout rate guys, a lot of them will just be on fire at some point.

And in best ball, I just took him as my third shortstop in the cut line, in the athletic cut line one. I took him as my third shortstop because i had tatis i had uh torres at mi and i was like you know what i don't i want baez he may not he may be my util some he'll be my util in weeks where he's amazing and maybe he'll be on my bench some some weeks when he's just terrible so i like him better in that sort of where you can reward the peaks, and especially in best ball, where they get rid of the valleys for you. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's the hardest thing when you're like,

ooh, like, matchups. Is this going to be the week Baez goes nuts? But it's not that hard when the computer's like, this is the week Baez went nuts. He's in your lineup. Thank you, computer. Yeah. So, yeah, I like him a little bit more in best ball

than in other situations. I do think that reach rate and the strikeout rate do mean that volatility is still going to be there. But maybe one of the things that just happened last year is we didn't give him the opportunity in terms of length of season to have that blinding red-hot stretch that would bring everything back up to regular values. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, too. up to regular values. Yeah, I think that's a really good point too. A lot of players got up to a slow start, pressed a little bit, and never had that chance to bounce back with a strong

third or fourth month. That just wasn't really something they were afforded compared to a normal season. I do think the other guy that goes in this range who I believe in, he's got a similar skill set to Quetel Marte, is Jose Altuve. I think we've talked about maybe the stolen bases not coming back,

but if he gets you even eight stolen bases and hits 20 homers and hits for a high average, we just described another Cattell Marte type. I think you could have both of those guys in the same roster because of Marte's eligibility. I think it would work. I have both in a couple places. They showed up as 1-2

in my best ball evaluations, and they kept dropping. So I was like, all right, I've got the first and second best, second baseman for this format, I think. I don't think that the stolen bases are coming back. But all you have to do is mash his playoff numbers into his regular season numbers,

and you realize that Atobe wasn't as bad as people thought last year. No, he definitely wasn't. I did a piece early in the offseason about projected war bounce backs. There's some people on that list like J.D. Martinez and Adam Eaton. They were number one and number two that I'm not that as excited about

because Jeff Zimmerman has a piece about projected bounce backs for 33-year-olds and older not being as reliable. But the younger guys on the list, Jock Peterson, Tommy Pham, Gliber Torres, Rafael Devers, Austin Meadows, and then Cody Ballinger and Christian Yelich, I'm all in on almost all of those.

I know Pham has that wrinkle of being hurt, but, I mean, he's playing. If he was like, I'll get on the field next week, like, Jordan Alvarez is not playing yet, is he? He just started playing Tuesday. I think he was going back-to-back. He was going to play again on Wednesday while we're recording. Okay, I couldn't find him on some played appearance list I was looking at.

But yeah, if that's what Pham was like right now, I'd be like, ooh, he has a big scar on his back, and that's worrisome. I know from sourcing that he's been hitting for a long time. I think it missed

the organs. I don't think it got his oblique. I don't know. I think he's probably recovered. He has a great eye. If I want someone to bounce back, I probably recovered. And he has a great eye. If I want someone to bounce back, I kind of want them to have a great eye. You know, I just think that's a great place to start.

That's why Baez in a regular league, I may not jump all over. But Pham has a great eye. So, you know, I think he'll be fine. It's interesting because Pham's kind of always had that as a big leaguer. Marcus Simeon hasn't. We talked about him probably back in the fall. And it's interesting they landed in Toronto. But if you look at his 19 and 20 stats combined,

Marcus Simeon has a 15.5% K rate over the last two seasons combined and 11.4% walk rate. Like there's probably more bounce back potential in marcus simeon than that i've given him credit for thus far the drawback as we've said before is like in his peak season with the a's in 2019 he absolutely maxed out playing time he let off and i think he played all 162 games so he's absolutely can't play more than that right he's absolutely not going to do that in Toronto, right? Because they have great depth. Where he's going right now, though, if the ADP is in the 120s, I could see a pretty nice bounce back from Marcus Simeon. I wonder

if the projections are dinging him a little too much on average because of who he used to be as a hitter, since his plate skills are not as firmly locked in as a lot of other players that walk that much and strike out less than 20%. I just wonder if there's a little more noise in the numbers with him. Mitch Keller is getting whooped.

I don't have him anywhere. Yeah, I don't have him anywhere either. It's just bad fastball command and bad straight fastball. No, here's something you may not expect to hear from me. I have some shares of Marcus Simeon for nothing that has anything to do with numbers in any case. I have shares of Marcus Simeon because I don't think I've seen a single player more dedicated to his craft. I don't think I've seen a single person that I would put the grade A plus makeup

stamp on on the same way. I think he is an A plus teammate, an A plus effort guy. I think he's just he's one of those guys he doesn't have the abilities of Trout

but when Trout sees a flaw he goes and eradicates it you know what I mean and that's because Trout starts with like NFL linebacker type athleticism right and so he adds that with the makeup and the and the effort Simeon doesn't quite have that same athleticism, but at the same time, he does have a good amount of athleticism. And every time he identifies some small flaw, he goes at it. I mean, you should have seen him working with Ron Washington on that infield defense, man. He just looked at, he said he even looked at war and was like, what are the components of war? What are the things that need to matter? Oh, okay. Defense is going to be in there. Base running is going to be in there. And if you look at all of his numbers, he just improved every single one

over time. He's like, oh, reach rate is important. Oh yeah. I'll stop reaching, you know, like, oh, you know, like defense is important. I'll work every day to, to, to be the best shortstop I can be. So, um, I say, give him a regular season, I can be. I say give him a regular season. Give him a nice lineup around him. Get me 260 batting average, 20 plus homers, 10

steals. The really nice player at the price. Double eligibility at some point too, right? Maybe even the first week. After the first week, he'll probably pick that up. He's a good target. I would say there's one more player that I keep falling into this trap. Tell me if I'm wrong, but you've mentioned before,

Gary Sanchez, infielders can play him further back because he's slow. I get that. He still hits the ball really hard. He's still in a good lineup. He's still in a good park. The Yankees kept him. All the things he needed to have that bounce back, they're all in place. The question is, bounce back to what?

If I said Gary Sanchez will match Sal Perez in terms of fantasy value, would you say stop putting Bailey's in the coffee? Or would you say, no, that actually makes sense? Yeah, I actually skipped over his name in that list of projected war bounce backs. I see. I was hoping to avoid this conversation I would just say that I don't know that he'll ever hit for

like the 280-299 average that he had early on I don't think that's coming back because they can play him you know they can pay him 15 feet deeper than they'll play D Strange Gordon just as a name

and so that those 15 feet matter. So they'll steal a bunch of singles from him. They'll, they'll, they'll, um, they'll shift them. They'll, you know, they'll steal singles from him by playing him deep, but the homers are real and the playing time is real. So like two 30 with 30 homers. Yeah. And it's like exactly what Sal Perez could do.

I think Sal is more likely to hit 240 or 250. We saw a crazy good average from him last season. Maybe more playing time for Sal, but that doesn't happen every year. We've talked about this. You'll see a thing where it's like, even for a regular position player, it would be like 650, 600. Like it was Marcus Simeon, 650, 650, 650. Oh, not 650.

You know, it finally caught up with them. So I don't know that's, I do have some Sal Perez shares just because, you know, two catcher format, the allure of getting a ton of plate appearances from your catchers is there. But I don't know that it's a guaranteed lock. Let's get one on the pitching side. One pitcher who was awful, just

awful in the shortened season that you believe in. Because it'd be weird to only talk about hitters here. Ryan, we gotta throw someone in there. I mean, Iberios was not great. Was he awful? No, like Matthew Boyd was awful. I don't know if you believe in him at this point, but

that would certainly count as awful. Okay. Okay. Was Montas awful? No. I don't know. Corbin was awful. Paxton, he was hurt, but he was awful. Montas would count. Well, then, of those, I'm

picking Montas. Luke Weaver? I'm trying to... I mean, I have Montas ranked higher, but there's some stuff to like about Weaver? I mean, I have a Montas ranked higher, but there's some stuff to like about Weaver, man. I like him as a bench final pitcher type guy. Yeah, he ends up on a lot of my teams because he's available after pick 300. He's pretty clearly got a job,

and I think he could at least just split the difference between 19 and 20. It's just a matter of really staying healthy for Weaver that I think is the big part of why his price is down. Yeah, his health. You're starting with at least league average kind of stuff foundation where you're talking about good fastball, good changeup, and actually really good command numbers.

So that's a pretty good foundation because all you're doing is trying to futz around with the cutter and the curve ball. I mean, yes, Michael Walker had a hard time with that same combination for a long time. But I think that just comparing the two weavers command is much higher, much better than walkers. You get some other really bad names.

Madison Bumgarner was awful in the shortened season. He's sitting 90? I think he wasn't throwing that much harder when he was really good. So much of Madison Bumgarner is extension that he gets off the mound. He's releasing the ball pretty close to home plate, so that 90

gets up on you a little quicker. Arm slot. I could see him bouncing back a little bit. Last guy I want to throw at you from the pitcher section. about jake odorizzi we didn't really talk about him from a fantasy perspective i'd suggested that houston might go after him when fromber got hurt which was far from rocket science that was just basic connect the dots or paint by number sort of analysis but uh what do you make of him because the very little bit we saw him in 2020 wasn't pretty,

but I like that he landed in Houston just from a nice park to pitch in. The division as a whole is mostly soft landing spots. I think Odorizzi is still undervalued even with his ADP ticking ups and signing. He had a really small sample compared to other people. 13 innings. I'm trying to find his fastball velocity. It was good. Yeah, fastball velocity was good.

The home run rate was through the roof. And that's not at all useful in a 13-game sample. I guess his competition is getting better. Is it, though? He's on probably the best team. I mean, last year, he didn't get to reap the benefits of the weird schedule last year, really.

It's just the typical AL Central from 2019 versus 2021 AL West. I don't think there's that much of a difference. It could be a little tougher for him now, but the toughest lineup he would have to face is the team he's on, so he doesn't have to face them. Right, that's what I'm saying, yeah. So that gets pretty good.

I think all signs are pointing up. Projections liked him quite a bit throughout the offseason too, so I'm in for a Jake Odorizzi bounce back here. I think I have him. Let me see. Yeah, I have him 68th. That's probably higher than most. Projection on the bat had him 54th.

I was taking some shots on him before we knew he was going to pitch, so I've actually got a decent number of teams that Odorizzi on there as a dart throw for some late round innings. Unfortunately, he may not be ready for opening day, but if he does miss opening day, I don't think it'll be by much. Because even if he just started now, I think he'd probably miss a turn, right?

Yeah, probably one turn at most because it's not an injury. It's just getting fully stretched out. So a few pitchers sprinkled in there that you could go after who were very bad in the very short 2020 season. And since March Madness is here, I should also mention the Ding You presented by MGM. It's the athletics college basketball crew bringing you everything you need to know

on the court and off the court and at the sports book and picking the brain of BetMGM's top bookmakers as well. Check that out in the daily Ding podcast feed and streaming on YouTube. So catch Ding You all throughout this tournament. All right, we've got a couple more questions to get to before we go. A question from Brett. I have been producing my own auction values using the SGP method for a number of years. In my auction, you also need to purchase your reserve picks, six bench spots in this case. How do you account for this when creating auction values i've tried researching this and haven't come across a great way to do it yet thanks brett yeah i think you just have to add them to the different player

pools because i think stp you're like you're like this many you have this many second baseman or whatever this many mi i think you just have to kind of guesstimate maybe you could look the one the one thing that stgp is stronger at than z score is that um you can capture if you're in a league that's been the same league for a while you can capture league trends because stp looks at like, um, how much, uh, like a standings point in stolen bases, for example, uh, costs. And if you're in a league that maybe everyone fades stolen bases, then the price per point in stolen bases changes. Um, and so if you're in a league that's been with the same competitors for a while, SGB can be better than Zscore. So I think my solution would be just to look at how benches have been constituted in the past

and add those players. It may just be, I know that a rough average is going to sound gross, but there's no good solution. Maybe the gross one is the right solution. And so what you do is you'd look and say, okay, over the last three years, the bench has added on average one outfielder, one MI and one CI.

And then you just add that, you know, account for that in your CI replacement level, in your MI replacement level, in your OF replacement level, in your MI replacement level, in your OF replacement level. Add another spot, basically, to those. I mean, practically, how many people are going to put a catcher on their bench? Right?

Right. Probably not more than two teams, I would guess. So you don't want to just add the value to every player because not a lot of people are going to put a catcher there. Yeah. I also wonder in a league like that, how many one and $2 players do people end up with in their rosters? Does the room account for this correctly or does the room not account for this correctly? Are we just talking about basically a reserve round that turns into extended dollar days instead? That's what it sounds like to me.

If that's the case, do you really need to tweak a whole lot? Or are you just putting a little extra weight maybe on the players at the top? I think there might be some ways to fudge the numbers that actually get you closer to what you want to do than trying to account for those spots in the most precise sort of way, which is maybe an unsatisfactory answer. But I would definitely look back at how people build those benches and how much people are spending on those last six spots per team. Yeah. And then ask yourself, also play the game, what if I had budgeted an extra dollar for those and could steal a bunch of other people's bench slots would it have been a good idea you know like i know at the time you're like oh i i got that sleeper you know i took him away from his bench but you know if it's an only bench uh you know

that's like me being like you know woo i got hunter alberto away from you two dollars to your one and then three months later, you're like, why did I care about this? So yeah, I would kind of do some retroactive analysis there too, where you're like, would it matter, or can I just budget $1 for all these guys? Yeah. Hopefully that helps

you out, Brett, and anybody else who's in a similar situation. It's not totally uncommon, but I know it's not the most common way people tend to play those auctions. I had a question here from Ryan. My head-to-head keeper points league of 17 years is folding and I'm looking for a fresh start. I've never played any other formats and I'd love your suggestions as to what I should try this year. Thanks for the advice, Ryan. Sorry to hear your league broke up. That would be crappy to have a league that ran that long that wasn't coming back. We talk about the NFBC a lot.

They don't pay us to talk about them. I think they just do a good job running leagues. You can go in at almost any price point now and play 12 teams, 15 teams. If you want to go high stakes, you can do that. You can do draft. You can do auction. One thing you can't do is Keeper, though. No, they did launch Keeper Leagues this year.

Oh, they did? They did. I think they come in at a higher price point than most. I would say for Keeper Leagues, if you want to go in as just one team, AutoNew is probably the closest thing to what you were playing before.

You can go in and pick up a team by yourself. Those are probably your two best options. They also have boards where you can just pick up orphans or try to organize. One thing that's hard about like sort of picking up a Keeper League on Yahoo or something is that I don't know about the resources in terms of

where to find those. Other than like go on Twitter and ask for a like or a retweet or something. You know what I mean? I don't know how people find each other anymore. It used to be forums. Yeah. Yeah, RotoJunkie back in the day and then we had a thread. I think RotoJunkie might to be forums. Yeah. Yeah, RotoJunkie back in the day, and then we had a thread. I think RotoJunkie might still be around.

Yeah. RotoBaller. Yeah, there's some forums. You can look for forums. That's one way. But AutoNews is really nice because they have forums too, but they also have a board where it's like, here are some orphan teams that you could pick up, or do you want

to start? Do you want to try to get some people together and start a new league? And then AutoNew is 12 teams, but it's 40-man rosters, and it's $400 for your reserves and your FAB. You just basically, 40-man roster, $400, make a team. There's some inflation and stuff, but the nice thing is inflation, all the minor league lists, all that stuff is handled by the platform. So, you know, I think that's the way to go. Yeah.

We talked about it a little bit on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast a couple weeks ago. Niv Shah was the creator of AutoNew. He was our guest on the pod. So if you want to hear more about that format in particular, definitely check that episode out from about two Thursdays ago. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. You can go ahead and send those questions our way, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com.

If you'd like to sign up for a subscription, we've got lots of good deals going right now. Theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels should get you in the door. If you can't do the BetMGM thing, that's the way to go to get the most bang for your buck on the subscription side on Twitter. He's at, you know, Sarah's I am at Derek van Riper. And again,

reach out, send us questions. We'll get to as many as we can. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.