Rates & Barrels - Matt Mervis and Brandon Pfaadt Arrive At Last

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

DVR, Eno and Al discuss the latest round of prospect callups, including Matt Mervis, Bryce Miller, Brandon Pfaadt and Gavin Stone, and share their approaches for determining FAB bids. They also talk about the two latest additions to the Twins’ rotation and assess the coming week’s cohort of streamable pitchers. Rundown 1:04 This week’s big callup news 16:59 Deeper-league hitter callups 22:33 Should we stash Christian Encarnacion-Strand? 26:24 Lineup developments 28:35 Notable pitchers 45:10 Streamers/two-start pitchers 55:42 Bullpen report Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Al on Twitter: @almelchiorBB e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Friday, May 5th. Derek Benry, Bernal Melchior, Eno Saris, all here. Full house on a Friday. It's rare. We knew when we set out to do more pods this season that we weren't going to have every single episode with everybody available. But this is one of those days. One of those special days. I knew it was going to be a good day because I door-dashed donuts again this morning.

Let's get the Welsh. Dad life. Dad life, yes. You're like, he can't even go and get his own donuts. Like, no. But I need them so bad. It takes a lot to get out of the house right now. It takes extraordinary efforts.

If I get a haircut in the next six weeks, it'll be a miracle. But I'm hoping I don't have to resort to using the clippers on myself. That is not what you want. But a lot of ground to cover on this Friday, and we're going to start with our big news of the week. Tons of prospects coming up. A lot of pitchers earlier in the week. We're going to start today with Matt Mervis getting called up by the Cubs.

This is a player we were hoping we'd see on the opening day roster. Unfortunately, we had to wait until May 5th for that to actually happen. That probably made it very difficult to stash Mervis in a lot of redraft leagues. There's a good chance he was dropped even in leagues where he was previously drafted as a reserve player. I think the simple question is, you know, what are we expecting Mervis to be? Is he enough of an impact guy at first base to immediately start cracking lineups in 10-team leagues, 12-team leagues? Al, where are you dropping the cutoff for Mervis as you think about picking up this weekend? I think he's borderline 12-team relevant. And I thought about this, and the way that I broke it down was I looked at the projections,

which I all thought were maybe slightly conservative, having him around 245, 250 batting average. If you figure he is going to play close to every day here on out, maybe he can get the 20 homers. And I figured that puts him kind of in Josh Bell territory. And so to me, that's somebody who's kind of on the fringes of 12 teamers. Yeah, he's hit every single stop since the start of last season. It's really impressive, bringing the K rate down, bringing the walk rate up, showing plenty of power. Doesn't offer any speed, but most first basemen don't. Eno, do you think the projections are a little light on Mervis too?

Because that was what I saw. When I ran the auction calculator for the rest of the season, the numbers for Mervis versus Nick Prado were actually surprisingly close in the calculator. And for me, Prado is like a very borderline, maybe AL only sort of player, whereas Mervis actually is going to help us in a lot of formats. He doesn't have amazing hard hit rates in the minor leagues, does Matt Mervis. And that's, I think, the only kind of concerning bit is how does he get to that power um and uh you know because otherwise you would say well here's a guy who's

basically had a 300 iso since 2022 began at three different levels and we're projecting him for less than a 200 iso like is that right um he hits a fair amount of fly balls but what if he's hitting them softly um i don't know do you hit uh since the beginning of 2022 do you hit 40 plus homers softly seems hard doesn't it seems hard so uh if the projections are light on power uh then you were talking uh yeah easily hitting those that 20 homer mark and you know i think it was interesting to bring up josh bell because i'm falling out of love with him in a couple places and 12 teamers and i think i might make that switch if it was available to me. The projections are really similar, 250, 260 for both, 15 to 18 homers for Bell,

but the error bar skews towards positive for Mervis, I think, and less so for Bell, who has once again, or maybe, you know, once again, a bad ground ball rate, and actually this time, the worst ground ball rate of his career. Yeah, Josh Bell, for a player that you'd think would be consistent, isn't. Like, the variation in his performance, he's so much more erratic than you'd expect him to be. He doesn't strike out a lot. You'd strike out guys you think wisdom patrick wisdom would be the guy that would be like all over the place you know right yeah someone who controls the zone

like josh bell you would just think if you looked at the rolling wobit chart you'd see a pretty narrow range the the peak wouldn't be crazy high the lows wouldn't be terribly low but we've seen this before from bell what's funny is i think people are going to go out and throw pretty big bids at Mervis. He's probably at least a 10% fab range player at the minimum in most leagues, probably going to get bigger bids at some of the high stakes leagues that are out there. Bell's going to get cut, and next weekend in those leagues, those very same leagues, Bell's going to go for half as much. That's probably what's going to happen. That's sort of how FAB works. FAB is like this voluntary exercise where someone in the league overpays for everyone.

That's what happens in FAB. It's not efficient. It reminds me of what's the thing that Andrew Friedman said. If you never overpay, you never get a free agent. Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's just the economic structure of baseball is the same way, but fantasy baseball is like that too. We all have these bloated $1,000 budgets.

We want to spend them on someone. We know it's not helpful to have money left over at the end. It's not like you get it back in prize money. Hey, you saved $200. Here's some money back. It's like, no, you got to spend it. You don't want to leave money on the table. So it's like these hyper inflated bids because we're all just hoping

to catch lightning in a bottle. And then we're playing these small sample size games, which still, even on May 5th, we're still dealing with 30 games worth of information, about six starts for pitchers. A lot can go right and a lot can go wrong in a sample that size that isn't

necessarily meaningful. Ever since we brought up Masataka Yoshida on the show 10 days ago, he's the nothing but hit. He has been on the biggest heater ever. He's been unbelievable. Now he looks like a complete stud. Positive effect. I mean, that's the power of a couple of weeks so i i just say that because i i think

if you expect fab to be this perfect exercise of efficiency you will be chasing the ghost forever you will always be disappointed you will never and ever be efficient at fab it's so it's impossible to be an efficient fab player in the sense of always getting the bids right and not overpaying for the players you have to get. Because everyone sees and hears the same things that you see and hear going into the weekend. We're all talking about the same players on these pods. We're all writing about the same players in these articles. And the pool is only so big of relevant players. Everyone's sorting by the same categories when they're looking at those boards on every site.

So that's my keeper league. Al plays in my keeper league now, Maki. The bids this year have been stupid. Like most of the bids in that league, and that's a league that only uses a $100 fab budget because the price that you pick someone up at is the price they would be as a keeper. But there have been so many double-digit bids on players

that I thought were $3, $5 players. It's just there's something that gets into people, especially early in the season, to just spend up. thought were three five dollar players it's just there's something that gets into people especially early in the season we have to spend up we have a question about how how you run your fab so i want to throw that question you guys i mean it's i could i could look for the details of the question is basically like how do you guys come up with your fab numbers and the real answer is like you the more you play the more you start to be like okay this is a guy that's like 20 like 20 and like you hear us talking about 20 and 5 i mean you know i think that my general rubric is just like if it's a streamer i want to spend a single percentage point like single

digit percentage points you know one to three percent if's, if it's only going to be with me for like a week or two, then that's what I want to spend. If it's someone that I could pick up for a few weeks or like has the upside to become a starter, then I can get to double digits. Um, and then if I want to get to three digits out of, you know, if this is a thousand, right? Like if I want to get to three digits out of a thousand, uh, you know, I've done that for Taj Bradley. I would do that. Maybe for Mervis, if he's like replacing, like if I don't have a first baseman, I'm like struggling at first base and I'm struggling at power and batting average. And you know, here, Bryce Miller, like if I really needed a pitcher, Bryce Miller is number two in Stuff Plus on the board. And even if he comes down off of that and regresses off of that, he has great stuff.

He has the best fastball ride among all starters in baseball right now. So he's a dude. And he looks like he has excellent runway. If you want to go to three digits out of four for him, then I would say, if you still have the money, do it. Yeah. We were ranking pitchers earlier in the week, the rookie pitchers and Al just thinking about other rookies we've seen come up. Do you use previous similar players from this season as your grounds for what to kind of bid, within range, of course.

If you're looking at bids for Mason Miller and Taj Bradley, Tanner Bybee, what did everyone spend on those players in your leagues? That's probably as much of a guide of what you need to bid on Bryce Miller as anything else. Anything we say, we're trying to guide people, but what the room is doing, the other 11 or other 14 people you're playing against, they're shaping the market more than anybody else is. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's a big part of my process. I'm sure with you guys too,

is that, yeah, the first couple of weeks you're sort of flying blind, but then once you have those first prospects come up and then you see what the rooms are paying in those early bids. And yeah, that kind of calibrates things for me going forward. But it's not 100% based on that because when I make recommendations in my waiver column, it's partly based on what I think it's going to take to win the player, but it's also based on what I would actually do and how I value that player. And so for an example with Bryce Miller, I'm a little concerned because he hasn't pitched to AAA. And I know that AA is actually probably the more difficult space,

but still there's a lot of cases of players coming up directly from AA and having to go back or go to AAA. And Miller had some struggles. And again, in a very small sample, but we're working with a small number of minor league innings, AA no less, to go on. So yeah, he had that great first start against Oakland, but then how do you weight that? And so I went very cautious on Miller. I recommended 5% to 6% in 15-teamers for Miller. So that's not the triple digit. I'll let somebody else spend the 10% on Miller and take that risk.

And it might pay off for them, but it might not. I think what bridges the gap between where each of you are on Bryce Miller is your need. If you are set with pitching, you won good pitching earlier, you had enough pitching all along, then that lower range bid is fine. You still want to bid on players that you think are good, even if you don't need them. And you still want to throw something out there because there are some times where the room misses. That happens in leagues too. I see it happen every single week. I see the screenshots.

There are very competitive leagues where odd things happen in fab. But I do think a triple digit bid is probably what it's going to take to get Bryce Miller in most leagues. I think the start was so good. And then the fact that it's backed up by the stuff numbers, that's only going to solidify those numbers even further. I think that's one of the things that really drives confidence right now is having this new tool that takes a very small sample and gives us a much better

idea of what it's likely to mean. It's not just Bryce Miller available this weekend, though. I think this is a really fun exercise for Fab too. Brandon Fott has major issues with the home run ball in that debut. I'm curious what he looked like in the model compared to what we were seeing at AAA. We've talked a lot about him on Tuesday episodes, the Project Prospect stuff we've been doing. How did Fott actually grade out as far as the quality of his pitches, even though the results were just horrendous in Texas for him

earlier this week? Yeah, it actually looked great. I mean, a 99 fastball stuff plus was basically above what he was doing at Reno, which might've been affected by altitude. And there is a weird thing where batters weren't swinging at his fastball. And I think that probably has to do maybe with where he was locating it. And they were sitting on his breaking balls and hitting them, but his breaking balls have good stuff. So I would not just be out on FOT after that one start. In fact, I think the underlying numbers were something that I'm excited about. And the thing about homers is it's I think one of the hardest things to see is that homers are noise. Homers are the biggest way to skew someone's stat line in a negative or positive way, depending on if you're talking about batters or pitchers that, you know,

have a certain amount of luck involved in them and aren't sticky or aren't, don't tell you a lot really quickly. So the fact that he gave a bunch of homers does not actually mean that much. And if you look at Bryce Miller's minor league line, it was because he gave up a lot of homers that, you know, they didn't look so good. And I talked to him about it and he was like yeah the games in which i gave up the homers like we literally had 40 mile an hour wins to center field and like just knowing

what the minor leagues are like and like what my he was like and every squib hit i gave up like found grass or you know like a defender couldn't get to it so it's like i've seen plenty of of of little league games like that literally yeah and uh minor games like that um and so i you know i think uh you know for fought the homers not great but not doesn't mean i'm getting off the bandwagon yeah and i think we also have gavin stone thrown to the mix here too so i was never on the bandwagon you've never been off the bandwagon. Yeah, and I think we also have Gavin Stone thrown into the mix here too. I was never on the bandwagon. You've never been on the bandwagon for Stone. It looks like Stone's going to go at Milwaukee

for his next turn. Yikes! Alan, leagues where all three are available, you know I got to speak about this a little bit earlier in the week, is Fott still the guy that you'd actually have at the top based on all of our previous expectations for him? Because that actually still makes sense to me. You shouldn't take one great start and one bad start and just completely throw everything from

the last couple of years out the window. If you thought Brandon Fott was the better pitcher of the two, thought he was better than Bryce Miller going into this week, you probably shouldn't have changed that unless you didn't know anything or know enough about Bryce Miller. It's possible that there was a gap in knowledge. I don't think people were talking as much about Bryce Miller throughout the winter as they were about Brandon Fott. Yeah. I mean, Bryce Miller was not somebody who was getting drafted in order to stash. Brandon Fott was.

So, no, the one start doesn't change anything for me at all. I didn't downgrade Fott. And I mean, the nice thing is maybe you can knock one or two percent off the bid just because maybe your league mates will be more down on him. But they shouldn't be. It's just one start. And plus, I made a comparison between Fott and Stone in the column. And one factor there is that Fott's going to be, I think, in that rotation to stay.

Where's the competition? I mean, we've seen some puzzling moves and players getting sent down that we wouldn't think they would, or those who stay up that we wouldn't think. But there's not the level of competition there that there is in the Dodgers rotation. Yeah, Bobby Miller's coming. That's right. They have a bunch of different guys. in the Dodgers rotation. So I, yeah, Bobby Miller's coming, you know, like they have a bunch of different guys.

If you struggle in the Dodgers rotation, I think you're back in the minors. Exactly. And maybe even if you don't struggle, maybe if you're just decent, but it's just a numbers game. So I'm pretty much out on stone in 12 teamers. I just,

he's not somebody that I would feel good enough about to, to be holding down a bench spot and stashing for what could be a long time once he's down again. I assume that unless something changes injury-wise in the next 72 hours, we find out that one of the Dodgers starters goes on the aisle. They've been messing with the schedule a lot. Maybe that's an indication that Gavin Stone would have a longer window to stay in this rotation. I think I'm a little more interested in Stone than both of you, but he's a clear third for me among these three where all are available. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze, and it felt a little like... life's a trip make the most of it at best western

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Wasn't playing particularly well at AAA. This is a Kansas City team with plenty of opportunity. What's your interest level, Al? of opportunity. What's your interest level, Al? I mean, there's been some interesting numbers from him in the past as far as having this kind of power-speed combo. And I don't know, I kind of think the Royals need anything they can find that helps their offense since they've been one of the worst lineups in the league this season. Yeah, I'm not too worried about the playing time, but the team context is it's sort of a double-edged sword because, yeah, maybe he'll not have to struggle for the playing time,

but he also could really struggle to produce runs. So the power-speed combination is something that makes him certainly something I would want to bid on this weekend in 15-teamers, but that would be the extent of it.

This is Garcia? Yeah. Yeah, Garcia and Xavier Edwards, J.J. Blede. All these guys are all up, and none of them are going to be nearly as expensive as Mervis. None of them are going to be hyped like a lot of their top prospects that we tend to see. Yeah, they're in secondary bids.

The thing for Garcia is I was ready to write him off as not having power, and that's still potentially the case um but i did watch him drive the ball all the way to the wall that's kind of a funny thing you know like we're just talking about how homers are noise and like i saw that i saw him like really drive a ball and i'm like is that i mean is that the best you've if that's the best you've got then you don't have power right you know what i mean but if that's like in your bag and you have better than that then you're kind of intriguing so i'm a little bit out on michael garcia um the you know the

power he is one level 186 plate appearances at one level where he had a above average iso so i think he's in a long line of Nicky Lopez's and so on and so forth. So I'm more in on Blede who told me that he's made a bit of a swing change, a change in philosophy. He is swinging a lot less, chasing a lot less,

and he has put into his head the idea that he is going to swing down on the ball. Now that doesn't idea that he is going to swing down on the ball now that doesn't mean he's actually going to swing down on the ball but he had a long loopier swing and by thinking swing down on the ball he can shorten it and so that's what you see when you see a great improvement in his swing strike rate in AAA for Oakland this year it's only been eight appearances but that swing strike rate has poured it over so far. And it would be really intriguing to see J.J. Bleda put up the same kind of power that he's shown in the past

with like an 18% strikeout rate. I think that would change what I thought of him as a player. So Bleda is kind of interesting to me. I think he's going to get some runway too. And he spent a lot of time at AAA last year as a member of the Marlins organization, struck out 27% of the time over 85 games, got that down to 12.6% through the first 25 games of the season.

That's a massive improvement. Even if that's not the true talent level, that's a lot of improvement. Even if he's a 15% to 18% guy at AAA, a low 20% strikeout rate from J.J. Bleday in the big leagues. That would be better than we expected based on what he did when he debuted with the Marlins a year ago. Because that KRA was at 28%. I didn't think he was a center fielder.

We talked about that at the time when he got called up. But I do think in Oakland, very, very open runway for him to play and to play a lot. So we'll see if they can make good on the trade that sent A.J. Puck to Miami. Xavier Edwards got called up by the Marlins, speaking of the Marlins, and he's kind of bounced around through the minor leagues and shown speed and the ability to get on base and not a lot of power. I think this is a guy that has even less power than Michael Garcia, so if you're looking for that classic speedster sort of play, the question will come down to whether or not

Edwards is going to get on base enough to take off and really use his wheels. So Al, how do you see him fitting in with the Marlins in terms of his playing time? I mean, the Marlins, it doesn't seem to matter what the regime is. The Marlins love speedy players. And this is a roster that's already got

John Birdie and Garrett Hampson. But given that, I'm just not sure if Edwards is going to be back down pretty quickly. So he has yet to start a game with the Marlins. So right now, I'm not really that interested. Even 15-teamers, I think I could probably find steals elsewhere. I think more of a watch list player for deep leagues. And, you know, of course, mono leagues,

I think there's a good reason to pursue them. But I think right now, otherwise, he's just something to put on the watch list to see how the playing time develops. The speedster to think about instead might be Nate Eaton because Kyle Isbell is going on the IL for the Royals. Oh, I saw him hurt himself. Yeah, grabbed a hamstring. That's a bummer, but Nate Eaton can take off

and offer up some cheap, cheap speed as well if that's a category that you need. He has just a whiff of upside about him, where the strikeout rates have not been bad in the minors. The ISOs have been good. This is a guy that maybe if he was given some real chance, he could do better than his projections, I think. I think Eaton's a little complicated because he's been old for the level everywhere he's played, which was also, like many players, made worse by the lost 2020 season.

But you could do a lot worse, especially in deep leagues. I think even in 15-team leagues, you might want to take a flyer on him as kind of the bottom of your bid list sort of player because he may play more than you think, and he might be a little better than people realize. The other player I wanted to ask about on the hitting side is christian incarnacion strand we've had multiple mailbag questions about him this week is it time to start stashing him in redraft leagues where available and you know how does he fit into the reds playing time picture right any thoughts on ces you know i know there's

like there's this real buzz is there actually some news i haven't seen anything yet as far as a call-up. There's that kind of building buzz where people were just like, he's killing it down there. He had seven homers in 10 games. Oh, that must have been it. That starts circulating on Twitter and everyone's like,

when's he coming up? Is he the next guy? I don't know. I mean, Votto's got to come back soon too. And Encarnacion Strand has played six games at first this year and two games at DH and two games at third. because Votto at some point is going to... I mean, Votto is not even rehabbing. He's just like, I don't feel right yet. So at some point, he might just be like, I'm ready to go. And once he does that, then I think the Reds get more complicated

in terms of what the depth chart looks like. So right now, who's playing first for them? A lot of... Will Myers went on the depth chart, on the DL, IL. So who's playing first for them. A lot of... Will Myers went on the depth chart on the DL. Who's playing first for them? They have been a revolving door at a couple of spots. I think first for them... Steer's been playing some first or can

play some first. That's the way you could make it fit. Nick Senzel's been playing a lot. Senzel's been playing third. He's been playing third and Steer's been playing first Nick Senzel can also play the outfield I like him more on the infield

I think that actually makes a lot of sense so far this year Nick Senzel has played 11 games at third 13 in the outfield and 4 at second it's a lot of versatility he's always had that athleticism. I wonder if this is just a little bit too

crowded at those spots for now. Then again, is TJ Friedel really blocking someone? Is Henry Ramos blocking someone? Are they good enough to block someone? I know people like Friedel. Some people like Ramos.

They don't seem like long, long-term pieces. If they think Encarnacion Strand is ready, they'll bring him up. With basically kind of a league average-ish player. I don't think Fairchild is really pushing for more time.

He looks like a fourth outfielder type. You've got a little bit of sogginess on the depth chart where DH, first base, and even one of the outfield spots could all be pretty flexible. Fraley's a 27. You know Fraley, Friedel, and Fairchild? It's funny that they all start with F,

but they're all older than you think and don't have as much upside and would be fine outfielders if if you didn't need them to be like better than they are you know what i mean like the ideal fourth outfielders yeah with a universal dh they'd be perfect fourth outfielders because you could start them three or four times a week never play them against lefties and life would be good but if you put them out there six or seven days a week... Yeah, and I think the path for CES has to be, unless Steer really drops off,

I think it's got to be DH and replacing somebody like Ramos or people who are playing in the DH slot. That's the low-hanging fruit. Maybe just shift Votto to DH. Yeah, or that. From here on out. And then you've got Steer,

Senzel, and Encarnacion, Strand sort of sharing first, third, and DH with Votto. I don't know. I want to throw this out there as more of a general question. We've got a group of players we've seen see upticks in playing time this week. It includes Nick Prado, who I mentioned earlier, who I don't think is very good. Emmanuel

Valdez, who I think is kind of interesting, Emmanuel Rivera. He had some of the best hard hit rates in the minors. Yeah, he popped for us as a prospect of the week, I think, at some point last year. And some of the worst swing decisions and in-zone contact. And I don't think he's much of a defender either, but he has started seven of the last eight,

and second base has been sort of a revolving door in Boston. Tyrone Taylor's back. Dominic Fletcher, we talked about him a little earlier in the week. Gavin Sheets. Al, I'll go to you first. Does anyone out of that group really stand out as someone you want to go after and bid somewhat aggressively on this weekend? I mean, honestly not.

And even in a deep league, I missed out on Fletcher just because I'm not sure long-term if there's playing time for him, anything more than as part of the platoon. So like you said, Valdez is kind of interesting. I don't know if he sticks at second base, but a little bit of power there. It's kind of funny because the two Emanuels have sort of similar profiles, so try not to get them confused but uh uh they're uh i would say in the case of fletcher valdez uh in particular they're like contingent 15 teamer bid types for me they'll be like some

single digity like if i was rating some of these i might put the day ahead of valdez and yeah i definitely would but the daya has changed his ability and has more runway maybe than the rest. This entire group felt like it was worth throwing out there as possible names to look at, but not necessarily the clear, obvious, like, yeah, yeah, make him a priority.

With Valdez, the other thing that's strange, Boston's among the teams that has two off days on the schedule this week. And since he's a lefty, he may actually sit a couple of times because of their five games, two of them are against left-handed pitchers. They'll see Max Fried and Steven Matz. So it's a stash and not a stream for sure. Right. So don't pick him up expecting a lot of production this upcoming week. There's a very good chance he starts three games, and that's not what you're looking for in a weekly format.

very good chance he starts three games and that's not what you're looking for in a weekly format let's move on to some other notable pitchers as we've seen with the injuries in the twins rotation bailey ober and louis varlin likely sticking around for a while this is the other part of the how do you do your fab i think there's a trap people fall into where they think i've got to solve this for the rest of the season no you got to solve a week at a time. And if you're thinking about a player's longer term viability, a month might be the most realistic window for a lot of players you're bidding on Fab to say, what does the month look like for them? Because after a month, everything's going to change. Chaos rains down upon the player pool, and we're going to have a whole bunch of other decisions to make. But we've talked a lot about Ober and Varland and the twins as a group, you know, have done so well in the pitching model. I'm just curious, what is the longer term outlook for them now that we know we're going to see more than just a couple

of spot starts for each of them? Yeah, it's interesting. Bailey Ober, I think, may have a bit of deception to him that my model doesn't capture he is extremely over the top the twins have invested heavily in the type of technology that can tell them about types of deception that i don't have access to in uh stuff plus uh his numbers have been really good almost everywhere you know like he's been he had like a a one era in a ball like i mean he's been good and so i wouldn't i wouldn't tell you not to to be in on him um but if he costs more than varland i might just do the sneaky varland play uh because my model says that louis varland has four pitches that are average or better by Stuff Plus and has maybe as much command as Ober.

And if you're looking at minor league numbers, they've been good for Varland. And that doesn't even include a two or one mile an hour increase in velocity this year. His swing strike rates have always been better than Ober's. His strikeout rates have always been better than obers his strikeout rates have always been better than obers so um you know if if you're giving me a dollar i'm definitely gonna take varland interesting okay varland's actually among the pitchers that might be available to start us to start week coming up because a lot of the two-start pitchers this week are clearly rostered players given that i'd almost be like, okay, I'll put $1 or $2 more on Varlin

because the short-term situation is even better for him. This is a pretty good stretch of schedule for the Twins to sort of prove it too. The upcoming week, they've got three at home against the Padres, a little easier series over the weekend with three against the Cubs. Then they go on the road for three against the Dodgers to start the following week, an off day,

and they get three against the Angels on the road. So a good test for the pitchers, just a good test for them overall as the current leaders of the AL Central. Al, same kind of thing for you, just an Ober versus Varlin preference? Is it getting the discount? Yeah, no, it came up in your league, DVR,

because they were both available, and I put the same bid amount on both of them. Didn't get either, because like you said, the bids are really getting inflated, but you have to prioritize who you'd rather have. So I put, Ober was literally above Varland by a hair. And for me, the reasoning was just simply, we've seen him succeed at the major league level, whereas we haven't seen much from Varland yet. So I like them both. Varland with that two-step is, you know, if you're talking about more of a pitch and ditch situation in a more shallow league, I would probably give

Varland the preference, but in a deeper league like yours, I'll go with the more proven option in over. I want to ask you about Brian Baio. Al, is Brian Baio ever going to be good? He's coming off of an outing last night against the Jays that certainly wasn't bad given the difficulty of the matchup, right? Two earned over five innings, five Ks, one walk. Yeah, we'll take that. And a W against the Jays, that's excellent. A night where Kevin Gossman actually struggled. It seems like Bayo's sort of important to the Red Sox if they're going to hang around and be a playoff team, Baio pitching well and showing us something similar, not in ratios, but at least in terms of just good K sort of stuff like he did last year at AAA.

That's part of their story for this year. Are you buying into it? Do you see enough there to go ahead and throw some bids on Brian Baio? I am, and he's had two good starts in a row. The Toronto start was definitely the bigger test, but the prior start against the Guardians, five innings, one run allowed, six strikeouts, which is nice to see against Cleveland because they're not a particularly good offense,

but they don't strike out a lot. So it's only two starts. But given that we were really excited about Bayo this time last year, there's really, you know, I guess other than some of the major league struggles he's had, there's not really, to me, a compelling reason to not still be enthusiastic about him. So, yeah, seeing him put together a couple of nice starts, I'm in. How about you, Eno? You know, it's possible the model doesn't capture how good his changeup is.

It's been rated by scouts as a strength for him. It looks nice. It has decent results. So you've got a good slider, good changeup, a decent fastball. I think he's got what he needs. I don't know that I would throw him at the Braves next week. And so if I don't throw him at the Braves next week, he's a stash

in weekly leagues. And then the start after that might be the Mariners at home. Yeah, that's what it looks like. That looks okay. And then if the schedule holds at the Angels again, that's a little bit close.

It's not a great park. It's an okay offense. So he's a little schedule dependent for me. Yeah, it's hard because there were 129 Ks in the minus for him between AA and AAA, and that was in something like 96 combined innings between those two levels, which is just absurd. Didn't have a home run problem. It kept the walks in check to a reasonable degree as well. So if that change, in fact, was the best pitch from a scouting perspective, as we've learned, that's one of those things that the model doesn't always capture, and that might leave a little bit of a buying opportunity for some players.

He did lose a tick, though. That's something he really can't afford. But I do think he is important. I think he's got a good bit of job security for the Red Sox. And he seems like the guy that's kind of filling in for Garrett Whitlock. But if he pitches got a good bit of job security for the Red Sox. He seems like the guy that's filling in for Garrett Whitlock, but if he pitches well enough, he probably stays and someone else might get bumped once they get Whitlock

back into the fold. One other pitching-related question. The Astros have been scrambling for replacements. Jose Urquidy and now Luis Garcia both hurt. We're supposed to get an update on Garcia this weekend. It is an arm injury for him, so hopefully it's nothing too bad. Hopefully it's just like a one-month thing as opposed to something much worse. But we did receive confirmation that

JP France is going to start on Saturday, which is nice in weekly leagues because we'll actually get to see it at the big league level without having to just buy in based on minor league numbers. I did take a peek, though, at the AAA stuff numbers. You know, JP France actually looks somewhat interesting. Yeah, I think 16th among starters, and that includes some guys with only one start, you know, Mason Miller on his way through, Bobby Miller types. So if you raise the minimum innings, he could sneak into the back end of the top 10 maybe. the minimum innings, he could sneak into the back end of the top 10 maybe.

He obviously does have some stuff because I think he led maybe the minor leagues or at least AAA last year in strikeouts. That's a raw number, so not necessarily rate. It's also affected by the fact that he had 110 innings at AAA, probably more than most. I mean, maybe the most, you know, if you think about it, like how AAA works. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a lot of other people

that had more than 110 innings at that level last year. But, you know, the Fangraph's grade on his command is 50, and the location plus data on his AAA starts this year has not been super kind. It's kind of a 95 location plus, which is a little bit borderline starter reliever. So I think he's, you know, a little close to kind of the Josh James conundrum where it's like, okay, we believe in the stuff, but is the command going to be enough to be a starter? And so that makes me very tepid by and sort of more of a stash situation. And also because we won't really know how good his major league walk rate,

how good his locations are after one or two or three starts, you know? It's true. The thing I'm looking at right now, by the way, I'm looking at last year's leaderboard of innings at AAA. Yeah. And France, he was 37th in AAA innings. Okay, so I was wrong. There was a lot of people.

But it's a leaderboard. Ordinarily, you'd be like, yeah, durability. That's a good thing. You want to have lots of innings. But you don't want to have durability at AAA. It means you're not getting the opportunity. Darren, is it Darren McKagan? I know it's a... Oh, yeah.

He was number one. Mariners sort of depth starter, yep. Yeah, Peyton Battenfield, Austin Cox, Cesar Valdez at 37 had 146 in the third innings. Matthew Kent, Colin Wiles, Matt Crook. Ryan Nelson is the first prospect on the list, realistically, and he's eighth. Kyle Muller was up there, too. Muller threw a ton of innings at AAA last year.

Not a great list to be on. Josh Lindblom, who is retired and has moved on. A guy who retired. The 37-year-old might be retired. Yeah. And Lindblom, he seems like an awesome guy. I think he got an MBA and he's on to his next career already after 133 innings last year at Nashville. So yeah, it's not necessarily a good place to be. Hopefully, if you have a big workload at AAA, it was because you also were

at AA that year or because you got called up. That's what it usually is. I was trying to decide if there's anybody else in this organization that's worth thinking about. This is two spots they have to fill. They tried to stretch out Ronel Blanco because they're a little bit worried about their pitching depth. Ronel Blanco,

good fastball, good curveball, not sure he has the full arsenal and the command hasn't quite been there well the tricky thing too is if forest whitley had a couple of nice starts to begin the year at triple a and has had about three rough ones since then so it doesn't really look like he's going to get that opportunity which is a bummer that means he's i've got numbers on him huh you should have some numbers on i don't think they looked awful but they look great. 100.4 stuff plus 91 location plus.

Yeah, that's got some reliever feel to it, doesn't it? Where he's going to shorten up the arsenal and throw harder and just be part of their bullpen. If that happened, though, I wonder if they could pull the Brian Abreu stretches out. I've wanted that for years. Just give me a chance. Also poor command. Just give me one chance to have my heart broken

by Brian Abreu as a starter. Beautiful stuff. And they've done it before, right? We've seen them do it with Christian Javier. He could pull the Javier. That's why, that's proof of concept.

That's what I'm saying. So I don't know, I don't know if you can do it in a lot of redraft leagues. It's probably more of a keeper league, dynasty league play. And Brian Abreu is around that sweet spot where he's not really getting saves. So he might actually be available. Could be a good stash in some deeper mixed leagues where you've got 15 plus teams.

And starting pitching is hard to come by. What I have found is that sometimes it's valuable to have a guy like him on your roster when you're like oh crap like all my pitching matchups this week like or they're like i don't have enough good starting pitching matchups and i i think i'd rather you know just plug in a reliever and get some you know get three to four innings of good you know with good k's and maybe sneak a saver win and you know and so having a around in a run environment where four three eras average i think uh it can be good even if he doesn't become a starter yeah i was just thinking you know if france is decent then they could just go with the the johnny bullpen uh route for like france starter three three and Brian Abreu for two or whatever.

Well, but, you know, I think, you know, Abreu is pretty important to them in the later part of the game. I mean, I'll – That too, yeah. It's more exciting to think of the idea of Abreu being converted to a starter or pitching longer stints. But, you know, I thought maybe Bialik would be more likely to be filling that role. Yeah, I kind of like Brandon Bialik a little bit.

He's got a deep arsenal. Nothing's great in it. It's just he's got a lot of options, and that's kind of what you need if you're just going to hang around in the back of a rotation. Maybe he's more of a four-and-change starter on a regular basis for them, but that's probably your best bet for your second guy

that's going to take over a spot if, in fact, Luis Garcia is going to miss a lot of time. Yeah. It's really a bummer it's not Forrest Whitley, though. He was supposed to be so good. Maybe it'll still happen in some role. I hope for his sake he can figure it all out. Just on a related topic, too,

it's kind of strange with the pitching injuries to the Astros and the fact that the offense is ranking very low in terms of WOBA and ISO, that the Astros are sort of a team to think about streaming against right now, hitters and pitchers. Oh, you're killing me. We had a choice between Jason Adam and Ross Stripling in our main event. Ross Stripling had a two-step at Astros' home against Milwaukee, and we chose Adam. Now, we got two saves from Adam, so we're not too angry, but Stripling looked good against the Astros, and they definitely look like a team you can pitch to. I hate to say that about somebody with a team with Jordan Alvarez,

and I will point out that Jose Altuve has been taking grounders, so I don't know how long that'll take, but since he's been out so long, I bet you there's going to actually be a rehab stint. I would think he would need about a week's worth of games, probably a lower level than an upper level, and that's probably coming off of work at the complex where he's getting a ton of at-bats and running a lot

and just doing all those things to make sure he's good to go. What's the quickest he could be back is like two weeks maybe, I feel like, from right now. Yeah, two weeks seems like a pretty reasonable but aggressive timetable. Last week, we were talking about the teams we're constantly streaming against. Rockies, Tigers, Guardians, Royals, Reds, Nationals. Those are all the bottom teams by WRC+.

And since it came up on the 3-0 show, we were talking about some of the teams that were surprisingly bad offensively. Teams that were worse than Oakland. And at the time of the recording, Houston was one of those teams. The Yankees were one of those teams. The Yankees were one of those teams. The White Sox were one of those teams. I ordinarily don't want to stream against any of those clubs, but the Yankees without Judge,

the Astros without Altuve, the White Sox just got Tim Anderson back, so they're probably closer to themselves than they've been really at any point so far this season. Just got K'd by Edwards Guerrero, sorry. Oh, stupid day games at Wrigley. Yeah. God, I hate the day game at Wrigley far this season. Just got K'd by Edwards Guerrero, sorry. Oh, stupid day games at Wrigley. Yeah. God, I hate the day game at Wrigley on a Friday.

You were talking about streaming against Yankees. Well, the good teams that are underperforming. And if they're missing one of their best bats. It's a tight rope, dude. It's a really tight rope. Because then they could wake up against your start and you're like, oh, duh. Yeah, and I think the thing that you'd also look at,

of course, would be strikeout rate. The Astros still don't strike out a ton. So you're not getting that extra boost in that category to take on the risk. So I'd still be pretty careful about messing with the Astros with kind of mediocre starters. Even though by numbers, they're right there in the thick of things with some of the teams that we're picking on all the time.

But then they could string together a bunch of hits with that count tag rate, yeah. Yeah, so I'm cautiously optimistic that they're going to find it. Plus, there's still Joran Alvarez and Alex Bregman on that team. They still, and Peña can go off, so they still have three really dangerous hitters that can

hurt you. Yeah, and then the salt in the wound will be the guys that shouldn't hurt you also hitting a two-run jack off your pitcher too. Martin Maldonado goes yak. I mean, that's why we didn't play his pitch stripping in the end. We were like, eh, I don't know. Right, you're just protecting yourself from the worst possible outcome. I had a handful of names listed as possible two-star pitchers

that might actually be available some places. I'll throw them all out there. We'll talk about whether or not we want to use any of these guys. Kyle Gibson, two at home against good teams, the Rays and Pirates. Graham Ashcraft, probably only available in shallow leagues right now, like eight and ten team leagues. Home against the Mets, road against the Marlins. Deeper leagues, Michael Lorenzen, maybe available everywhere. At Cleveland, home against Seattle. I think I'm just done waiting on something good to happen with Michael Lorenzen may be available everywhere, at Cleveland, home against Seattle. I think I'm just done waiting on something good to happen with Michael Lorenzen. No, I like all three of those so far. You like all three? Okay. And Clark Schmidt, home against Oakland, home against Tampa Bay, the absolute perfect stress test for the model and for our hearts. So I know you've got a lot more to say about Clark Schmidt. He's becoming the new Mitch Keller.

He's the guy whose name in the word cloud just keeps getting bigger every week on this show. I just want to be like, call a moratorium. I just want to get his name on the wall behind me on this side, and it'll start as like a 10-point font. Every time we mention him, it's going to get bigger, and eventually it's going to cover the entire wall behind me. You're just going to see the L-A-R in Clark. Yeah.

I'm trying to get his picture card. What I'm trying to see is if he's changed his usage at all. There's some evidence he's changed his usage. I like this. He's going to the sweeper less and the curveball more and he's had a real hard time against the lefties. Also, he's using the cutter less, which is not so great, but has not gone to the foreseam.

So what is he? He's just going curve sinker to lefties? I don't know what he's figured out against lefties, but he's using the curve a lot more, the slider a lot less. Let me do it just for lefties. Couldn't figuring out against lefties be not throwing a trash cutter against them? Couldn't that be the answer? It's like, hey, we got this bad pitch that I shouldn't throw in this situation.

So I'm just going to throw in two good pitches instead. Against lefties, cutter 65% to 40% to 35% to 20% this month. There you go. Okay. All right. I'm back in. I'm back in. I like them all.

Buy them all. All right. You got to defend Michael Lorenzen for us because I don't see it. What's good here? I mean, it's fairly simple. He added a sweeper in the offseason and just gives him – he's got kind of the kitchen sink, but with the sweeper, he has an out pitch. So like a 107 four-seam fastball, 119 slider by Stuff Plus,

and then a bunch of kind of 80s to 90s. So it's a kitchen sink. It's not very impressive, but it's in a two start in those matchups. I kind of, I kind of feel okay about them. What do you think about this group, Al? Yeah, I'm, I'm passing on Lorenzen. It was a little bit hard with those matchups, but yeah, I've got Schmidt, my 15 team or somebody dropped them and I'm passing on Lorenzen. It was a little bit hard with those matchups. But yeah, I've got Schmidt in my 15-teamer.

Somebody dropped him, and I'm happy to use him for this two-step. Not going to pursue him in 12-teamers just yet. So let's see. Was there Gibson? Nah, the Rays matchup scares me a little bit. Ashcraft is going to be always in my rotation with two starts. So the matchups definitely don't scare me. He's not the guy I think that we were hoping he would be back in spring training. He's not really emerged as a strikeout pitcher, but he keeps the ball in the

park and contains damage that way. So I'm definitely always in on Ashcraft as a two-start guy. The one pitcher that isn't included, that actually we talked a little bit about offline, is Garrett Braxton. Oh, yeah, Braxton Garrett. Garrett Braxton. Garrett, him too. I finally did it.

I had been waiting to reverse the names, and on this show, I finally did it. It is kind of a two firsties, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Garrett's more of a first name than Braxton. What's he got? Mm-hmm. So, yeah, why... Garrett's more of a first name than Braxton. What's he got? Sorry. Continue.

So, yeah, so I'm planning on starting him in a 12-teamer this week. I think that the Braves start was an aberration for him. We've seen, you know, Sandy Alcantara blow up. We've seen seemingly

everybody has blown up. I mean, the Braves are good. Yeah, it's a good two-start week. At Arizona and then home against the Reds. That's solid. Yeah, yeah. a good two-start week at Arizona and then home against the Reds. That's solid. Yeah, yeah. And prior to the 11-run blowup, it was pretty much looking like the picture that I was expecting to be this year,

which is a guy that I could at least sometimes use with two starts. Yeah, I think if you're going to watch only one of those two starts, maybe watch the Cincinnati one. Cause if, if something bad is going to happen to Braxton Garrett and those matchups, it's going to be the diamond backs at Chase field, doing it to him more likely than the reds at whatever they call Marlins park. These days I've lost track of who's sponsoring that particular stadium, loan Depot,

loan Depot. Yeah. Loan Depot, loan Depot field. So now I've botched the pitcher's name and his ballpark. And we're giving away free advertising. So we're going to get in a lot of trouble. Uh, anything good in Jake Irvin's profile, you know,

he debuted for the nationals this week. He's got a two-step he's at San Francisco and home against the Mets. So just by combination of quality of those teams, that's sort of a not taking a chance, but it's more of a deep league sort of question uh looks like a kind of a sink or slider guy that uh may have some trouble against lefties uh by the model at least uh but uh he is tied for the lead in stuff plus on washington with an even 100. They collect, right?

They collect the 100s. Damning with faint praise, you might call it that. Given his minor league strikeout and whiffed rates, I'm not super into him. Yeah, seems like a matchup-dependent guy, and that could be a pretty tough profile to use, especially as we get into that warmer season in D.C. We've seen the ball really fly at Nationals Park the last several summers. Al, I think you mentioned before we started recording, Rich Hill has some pretty nice matchups coming up. So you're going to try to stream him for a week or two? Yeah, 50 teamers, definitely. It's one start weeks, both this

coming week and the week after. But this coming week, he's got the Rockies in Pittsburgh. That's a perfect matchup. And then at Detroit the following week, and he's got the Rockies in Pittsburgh. That's a perfect matchup. And then at Detroit the following week, and he's actually been pretty good lately. It's all been pretty favorable matchups, although the recent three-start streak, and you can maybe extend it back to four against the Astros. He gave up two runs in six innings, but didn't strike anybody out.

But then he went to Colorado and gave up one up one run and six there yeah that was the weirdest seven strikeouts and then good starts against the reds and and the nationals like the adam winwright vibe you know so he's got the elite curveball and he's just gonna he's gonna play everything off the elite curveball so i think that can work with these uh two stars he's got the the blue jays here on on friday so that might not go so well, but I wouldn't let that dissuade me from taking him with those two matchups coming up. Yeah, I do like him beyond the weekend,

so I think that's a good call for some of those deeper leagues out there. I would say that there's a little two groupings where it's like Ashcraft and who else do we have that we all liked in the two-star? I think Clark Schmidt. Clark Schmidt and Ashcraft. I think I kind of like those better.

And then I have this, like, more riskier group with Lorenzen. I would put Hill in the more riskier group with Lorenzen, Hill, Gibson, and Garrett. And honestly, I know I'm not supposed to say this, but I think it's like luck. Like you could throw a dart at those. We have models and we have our opinions and we're going to tell you what we think, but any of those, they're of the quality where any of those guys could be pitcher of the week. Or they could win the opposite of that award, which has not been named yet. And this year, it seems like it's worse than usual, right?

And we're seeing, because of the run environment, everyone's getting hit. The ball is flying more. The drag is down on the ball. So it looks like the ball is back to 2020. Oh, the 2020 ball. Good. Yes, we're looking at the 2020 ball and the shift means that all these guys that don't have great strikeout rates,

Garrett and Gibson and Lorenzen are a little bit riskier because just a group of ground balls could get through and all of a sudden that's a big inning. I think they should change. Here's what I think they should do with the ball. I think they should treat the ball the way that car models work where you go like four or five years and then you have the new version of that model.

So you kind of know like the 2023 versus the 2024 and the 2025. Oh, that's the same because it's one cycle. But in 2027, we're giving you the new ball. And then you can talk about all the when they introduce it, they can talk about how amazing it is, all the new features they added to it. And then we can analyze it and kind of adjust to it and get used to it. Neon threads. Neon threads. You know that back in the day, What's-His-Face

wanted to change the color of the ball. Wait, wait, which? Who? Who wanted to change the color of the ball? The legendary A's owner, I think. Chuck Finley? Or is he the Angels owner? That's the pitcher. I think. Chuck Finley? Or is he the Angels owner? Finley, something Finley. Charlie Finley?

Charlie Finley, I think. Was he an A's owner or an Angels owner? Changed the color of the ball. Yeah, he wanted like a neon yellow ball, I think. I've never actually played softball with one of those. I don't know if I'd like it better or not. But yeah, I just think we got to have a little more consistency with the ball. That's all.

We've talked about that plenty over the last few years. Lean in. Just be like, this year think we got to have a little more consistency with the ball. That's all. We've talked about that plenty. Or just lean in. Like this year, it's got wings. How about every game? How about they make a different ball for every game? They manufacture 162 balls, juggle them all up, and every day you get whatever random one. Like a Tlingo machine or something? Yep.

What ball are we going to have today? So the day that Colorado gets the crazy ball at Coors, they're going to score 38 combined runs. But then the day that they get the concrete weighs twice as much as the other ball's ball, it's going to be a note, like a combined no hitter for both clubs through nine innings. Right.

Oh my God. You don't know which one you're going to get. What would the betting market think of that? Oh, I would love to see the betting market have to deal with that because there's nothing they could do about it. It would be the chaos that just destroys them. It would be amazing.

Bullpen report. Let's dig into a few bullpens. Liam Hendricks making progress toward a return. He's going to have four to five rehab appearances before he's activated, so I think that means if he is available in your leagues, this would be the time to go ahead and add him to your roster. It's not going to take long. This is just an amazing story.

It's great to hear that he's doing well on a health front. Arisal Iglesias just got activated before we start recording. They didn't make him go back-to-back yet. So I don't think if you've got AJ Minter on your roster, it's probably not an immediate drop situation. It's more of a wait-and-see. Make sure Iglesias has all the velo back. They could share opportunities in the short term before Iglesias sort of moves back into that primary closer

role. Eno mentioned Jason Adam earlier two saves this week because Pete Fairbanks actually went on the IL to begin the week Adam did give a couple runs against the Pirates in the second of those two saves so it wasn't on the edge of our seats for that one. It wasn't perfect but he looks like he's sort of the guy right now

for the race so good pickup where he's available. We talked about Will Smith earlier in the week. That was on the Wednesday show. He appears to be getting the bulk of the save chances now in Texas. I still like Jonathan Hernandez. You're going to wait it out with Jonathan Hernandez? I am. Here's the other part of this. The Yankees,

we talked about them earlier in the week too. Are you more likely to hold Jonathan Hernandez or are you more likely to try and get Michael King right now? Okay, I would rather have Michael King than Jonathan Hernandez, yes. If someone outbids you for Michael King, is Ron Marinaccio a fallback bid for you, in case the Yankees want to leave Michael King where he's at and just keep a one-inning guy as the closer?

Oh, he has some spicy numbers, Marinaccio. Mm-hmm. Look at that. I just worry that if Holmes loses the job that it's not going to be one guy. They could just go to a committee. But the thing is with King, I think he's got value. Obviously, he has more value if he's getting steady saves, but

he's also got ratios value if he's also giving you some two-inning stints. Marinaccio has some whiffs of command issues ratios value if he's also given you some two-inning stints. Marinaccio has some whiffs of command issues. Yeah, he's got a career 13.6% walk rate through 58 innings, but an even one whip and a 202 ERA so far to begin his career. It's working so far. I don't know how long it works with a walk rate like that.

It keeps the ball in the park. I guess that's how he's getting away with it so far. Ian Hamilton's been pitching really well despite mediocre numbers in the model. The thing that I would mention about that is I think his slider is unique and I need to look into a little bit more, but he's got one of those pitches. Alexis Diaz, Yenier Cano and Ian Hamilton all have unique pitches in terms of release point, velo, and movement that stretch the ability of the model to do anything. Because the model is basically comping pitches, not that brute force. But it's looking for combinations of release points and movements and velos

and trying to compare them with what's happened before. And so if you have an Alexis Diaz fastball, nobody else does. So the model's like, I don't know, it could be like this, you know. And Yannick Cano's sinker, nobody else throws that. You know, he has the most drop on a sinker from a non-sidearm. So it's a unicorn. So Ian Hamilton is's a, it's a, a unicorn. So Ian Hamilton is the name I'd throw out there too. Are there any other relievers that you're trying to stash away right now?

We talked a lot about some, some interesting stuff guys earlier in the week, you know, but Al, do you have anybody else you think is close to an opportunity to close? Not, I mean, the guy that I'd been waiting on was Adam.

So he's getting his chance now. And, and the thing, you know, with Kano is, I mean, he's behind a really good closer. It was struggled a little bit,

but still, and Baker's profile. So I haven't made any, any moves to pick him up. So not really. It's been more of the emerging guys like Smith and Estevez and Adam. So yeah, no closers waiting right now. Two names real quick to throw on the heap.

Jeremiah Estrada, just I think obvious. Fulmer has really fallen off. And there's a real opportunity in that bullpen. And at some point, they're just going to be like, hey, we've got a rookie with stuff, and we're actually good, so let's screw it. Why worry about year six of a reliever? Come on.

Not sure. They also had Brad Boxberger serve up a walk-off home run on Thursday against the Nationals, too. Just happened. So Lucas Sims also is another name I want to throw out there. Real plus plus slider. Good fastball. Alexis Diaz.

I mean, it's not his fault. The park is part of it. But Sims is always someone that I have sort of at the tips of my fingers just in case something happens. All right. Well, there you have it. Hopefully some help as you get ready for the waiver wire this weekend covered a lot of ground over the last hour give us a follow on twitter you know is that you

know saris al is at l milk your bb i'm at derrick benriper if you don't have a subscription to the athletic one dollar a month gets you in the in the door the athletic.com slash rates and barrels check out al's waiver wire column that runs each and every week at the end of the week on fridays you get chats and articles from you know plus all the other great stuff we have as well. Some new articles just dropped this week, so be sure to check those out. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Good luck with your bids this weekend. We're back with you on Monday.

Thanks for listening. Thank you.