Rates & Barrels - More Issues with the Baseball, Home-Run Rate Questions & An Eno Barrel-ISO Concoction

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Eno & DVR discuss the latest issues with the supply of baseballs used during the 2021 season as first reported by Bradford William Davis, the potential implications of inconsistencies with the ball when reviewing home-run rates, plus Eno unveils as a ISO-Barrel Rate formula in attempt to find players who underperformed their barrel rates last season. Plus, did the Padres quietly sign a closer during last week's flurry of activity? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, December 6th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we have a lot to talk about, even though the lockout rages on. We're here with Eno Saris on this episode. We have a lot to talk about, even though the lockout rages on. We're closing in on the first week of the great lockout of 2021, but we are going to talk about a huge story that broke last week. We teased this on the pod last Wednesday. Bradford William Davis had a story at Business Insider about massive differences in the baseballs used throughout the 2021 season. So we'll talk about the implications of that.

Going to dig into some related home run rate surprises and figure out what to do with those players going forward. Eno's got an ISO barrel rate concoction to pass along. So we're going to look into that and try and figure out if there's a hidden source of value there. Yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to do. I wanted to make it sound like either a sandwich or a nice adult beverage. So I feel like I successfully did that.

And we've got a few more early draft observations as well. Eno's been doing an auto new mock. I had the XFL auction over the weekend, not the old football league run by Vince McMahon, but a longstanding keeper league that was created by Ron Chandler about 20 or so years ago now. So that actually happened on Saturday. We'll talk about some stuff that came from that and the other early drafts that we've done as well. But I think we do need to start with the baseball because Craig Calcaterra, as he tweeted this morning, pointed this out. This is a bigger story than the amount of attention it's received so far.

And I think this is interesting because we've talked about the ball, I think, almost as long as this podcast has existed, right? We've started the show back in the spring of 2019. And the baseball has been… That was the peak home run year with the craziest baseball. Yeah, the baseball has been under the microscope that entire time. That was the peak home run year with the craziest baseball. Yeah, the baseball's been under the microscope that entire time. Dr. Meredith Wills has been slicing open baseballs for that period of time, plus a few years prior to that. It was her findings that were a big part of the story that Bradford wrote. This is different though because what was reported here

is that there's not a, this isn't just random variation in production. These are separate batches of baseballs with heavier and lighter cores. And the concerning thing is that the core was supposed to be changed and yet the time stamps on the ball, the manufacturing stamps on the ball

prove that the changes didn't actually happen the way they were supposed to happen. So that leads to a lot of questions. Plenty of people quoted in the story and around the game are saying, well, what the hell? Could Major League Baseball have been sending baseballs to specific places for specific reasons? baseball have been sending baseballs to specific places for specific reasons. There's currently no evidence of that, but it's just opened the floodgates for

even greater mistrust between the Players Association and the league, given that as we've said on the show before, the league has a major stake in Rawlings. They have more control over this process than they've ever had before, and yet here we are with further evidence that there are some massive problems with the consistency of the ball.

Yeah, and the league tried to kind of throw Rawlings under the bus again. That's kind of what they do. You know, when we found out that there was a new ball that they were going to change that core, they said they said oh you know rawlings was gonna you know put those out there we said no we got to hold on to those and test those for a year you know that was the whole idea that they were going to test these new balls and they weren't going to use them right away and then in 20 in 2021 they were supposed to use them uh but instead they used some old ones too they threw rolling on the bus and basically said uh because of covid they couldn't they didn't have a full factory. Because they couldn't do full production, we sent some old balls out there.

Now, we all had to figure stuff out during COVID. Supply chain issues are still out there. There's still an uneasy agreement between supply and and demand is how I'd put it. And large jumps in demand for certain things. I think that's part of why the production cycle has been arrested. Like the sort of the relationship is, is, is not at ease because, you know, we went from wanting industrial work, toilet paper to wanting industrial work toilet paper to wanting only home toilet paper.

And the problem wasn't that there wasn't enough toilet paper. It was that nobody wanted those big rings of toilet paper anymore because they weren't pooping at work anymore. So that's why. It's not like we pooped more during COVID. That would be weird. I didn't expect you to choose anything else for your supply chain related like day-to-day product changes, but I like how your mind went there.

And mine was Clorox wipes because if you wanted bleach wipes last year, they were impossible to find for a while. And we learned, oh, well, actually the demand for them, of course, that was pretty obvious, was never this high because a lot of people were at work and cleaning supplies at work or cleaning crews at work took care of it. But in this case, in this case, it was a little bit more that I think this also is part of the supply chain crisis is that we're there's like a different relationship between work. between work, people are sort of reevaluating their relationship between their home and life balance and what they're willing to do for work. Because I think at some point there was a question, am I willing to sort of put myself at risk health-wise to make money, right? There were a lot of jobs, a lot of service jobs now that are having a hard time getting filled because A, they pay like crap. And then B, you're on sort of on the front line of just like seeing

people inside you know during a pandemic so um you know in this case they said they didn't have enough people at the factory uh to hand sew these balls and so they had to use old ones it's it's it's a it's a great story it's it might be true the the problem is that uh they haven't really been see-through about this from the beginning um you know i think all the way back to when rob manfred said uh that you know that the reason that home runs were up in 2015 was because they were putting uh power hitters at the top of lineups now um and uh so you know kind of this could go right into that where it's like it sounds uh like an interesting uh story and it could be true the the the kind of missing piece of reporting as

i see it is um this is union leadership uh basically saying whether or not they were told. Because we do in Bradford Story, which is great, we do have player reps who didn't know. But maybe it was told to some union leadership and didn't get down to all the players. So there's some question there of what happened there. If they did not tell the players, then I think it's a fairly big crisis. It's like a crisis of confidence in the commissioner to do his job and to be, you know, to be, what's it called?

Transparent? That's it. That's the word I was looking for. I was like see-through, but it's not see-through. That'd be weird. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, it's like beingparent? That's it. That's the word I was looking for. I was like see-through, but it's not see-through. That'd be weird. It's like being on a game show sometimes. Being transparent.

And if he's not going to be transparent, then he's going to fall into the bucket of the Japanese commissioner that changed the ball without telling anybody and then had to resign. I never knew about that until I read this story. i that was among the things i learned here i didn't realize there was that much of a scandal in japan with baseballs previously

that cost the commissioner his job now i don't think we'll be that lucky here if i had to if i had to guess um as you might assume. But this does have potential. I think that's the other thing that's really interesting about this. This does have potential impacts on the CBA talks. And on the ownership side, you're looking at your guy and you're saying, did you send me the dead balls, Manfred? There's a story out there that someone did some research and was like, the Yankees got sent some dead balls, they think.

It's like I don't want to vouch for that story and say that's necessarily true, but that's the type of thing that could lead to a little bit of like, hey, Manfred, why did you send me the dead balls? Right. Oh, you hate the Yankees, huh? If it is found that specific batches were sent to specific teams and specific series even for a reason, I mean, this is a problem regardless.

That's the major sort of question mark on top of all this. And also, I think, you know, if people are frustrated that there's no follow-up coverage yet I mean partially follow-up coverage takes a while you know you're supposed to if you're reporting on a story like have something new to advance it right in terms of writing a story now if you're gonna aggregate it then of course you can you can write about it but I think people are looking at this and trying to find the way to advance the story as opposed to, like, the athletic is never going to just be like,

you know, here's the story from Bradford, as amazing as it is. You know, like, if you're not going to advance it, then you're not going to really write about it. So that's just my perspective on this, that I'm looking for a way to advance the story to write about this further. But Meredith and Bradford did a really good job, and I think it is really interesting. So to me, the two aspects that are most interesting are whether Union knew

about it, what this means for the labor negotiations, and so on. I think it leads to questions for us in terms of what happened to these guys, whose performances were perhaps most impacted by the highly variable baseballs that were in play. And I think there's a few ways to go about this. The home run rate is really noisy year to year anyway. I think it is becoming... pitchers yeah for pitchers

it's become a lot less important in how i look at it too that's why we have barrels right yeah yeah but i just think it's one of these it's one of those stats that used to be like when 10 ish years ago when i was looking at a pitcher it was it was k rate walk rate home run rate and that was kind of for me a complete portrait of a pitcher and i think the weight of home K rate, walk rate, home run rate. And that was kind of, for me, a complete portrait of a pitcher. And I think the weight of home run rate, if I were still only using those three things right now, is a lot less now than it was back when I started. That being said, it shouldn't be dismissed completely.

So my thinking was, well, let's just see who are some of the biggest year-to-year changers, risers and fallers in home run, right? And we can dig into this. And the hardest thing about this type of year-to-year analysis, of course, is coming off a 60-game season in 2020, there was more noise than ever just because we didn't get a full season's worth of innings for everybody. seasons worth of innings for everybody. So you're going to have guys that were surprisingly good or surprisingly bad in 2020 who regressed back to their norm or close to their norm in 2021. So those are going to be some of the players you see popping up. Yeah, right. Like Dylan Bundy popped up, but you know, I, I ran the, the fan graphs leaderboard on this. We've talked about this page, the season stat grid year to-to-year changes. I just said it from 2017 to 2021, popped in 20 innings pitch just to knock out a few of the guys that only threw a handful of innings.

One of the first names that stood out to me is Adbert Alzalea. And I like him anyway, like regardless of what's going on with his home run, right? Just because there's a clear opportunity for him. He's shown improved control. just because there's a clear opportunity for him. He's shown improved control. That was the major skills gained for him, I think, compared to what he was doing in the upper levels of the minor leagues and even in his first couple tastes of Chicago.

Big step forward from Alzelay in 2021. A 1.79 homers per nine. That's a massive jump from where he was in the shortened season. And again again you go back and look at his minor league numbers didn't really have home run issues until 2019 at triple a and if you've listened to this show for a little while you know that 2019 at triple a home runs hit their total disaster total chaos right they were using they were using the major league ball they were using the rabbit ball and the pcl which iowa, the Cubs affiliate, is a part of, even though it's not Albuquerque.

It's not one of the extreme hitter environments. The whole league was a mess for home runs. There were hitters that had amazing seasons who actually weren't that amazing. And there were pitchers who got smashed that actually weren't that bad. And I think looking at the bigger picture, I'm not convinced that the home run issues we saw from Alzalea in 2021 are necessarily a reflection of his typical home run rate baseline.

Yeah, yeah. But there's a couple other things going on with Alzalea, which is that he added a cutter late in the second half. And, you know, if you look at when he added the cutter and you look at stuff and location, you see, oh, my gosh, he had a 106 stuff plus from the time he added the cutter. The only word of caution I have there is that he also kind of went to,

like, a multiple inning bullpen roll at that point and those two things are going to conflate your numbers a little bit because everyone's stuff looks better in two inning stints but I would say that I think this is a guy who has above average stuff I don't know if I'll go all the way to 106 I think this guy who has above average stuff improved his command and know if I'll go all the way to 106. I think this is a guy who has above average stuff, improved his command, and with now the cutter-slider curve, I think he's just going to be a three-breaking ball guy. He's shown the ability to spin it.

He's always had strikeouts at every level, and those home runs that we've seen kind of go up and down have a little bit of a story to them in terms of the amount of sample, his first real full year in the big leagues, the rabbit ball in 2019. So I think he's a really intriguing arm.

I don't know how far to push this one. I don't know if I want to give him the Eno stamp and then all of a sudden people are taking him as the 30th best starting pitcher or whatever. I don't know if I go all the way or Keedy levels deep into this one, but I just got him an auto new mock draft that I'm doing for two bucks, and I put that kind of approval on him any day. Any type of keeper situation, if you have back end starting pitching keeping, if you can acquire him, just know uh just a generally an interesting

arm draft and hold i love him got him in my draft and hold an nfc um and uh and i would recommend as such for people yeah elzaleh hasn't cracked the top 300 in a draft for the nfbc in the last two weeks or so so if you're looking back through any draft that's held since November 20th, it's only a dozen drafts. The earliest he's been picked is like 320. Let me see if I did that. I mean, it's possible it wasn't me. It's also not way off where he's been going overall.

His range is fairly consistent. It's 326 to 417. 343, okay. I took him 343. I took him 343. The other pitchers near there, just to paint a picture here, Nestor Cortez. I'm not sure about his role even though what he did this season was good.

Kyle Gibson. Yeah, no thanks. Not really interested in him. Tywon Walker goes in that range that seems reasonable i think maybe more innings from walker it's gonna be close and six those sanchez uh health permitting could be a nice bounce back candidate for sure in that same i think draft and hold is just uh it's a little difficult and draft and hold with the injuries you're just you're kind of trying to buy in in innings and so, you can only take a shot on a couple of guys with injuries. I feel like,

you know, because you don't want to have that staff where like everyone's injured and you're, and you're not, you know, like don't have enough innings. So, uh,

the, a couple of interesting names in my draft that went after him was Elisa Hernandez and Jameson tie on. Um, I absolutely think they belong in that conversation and maybe we should have taken Elisa Hernandez ahead. but, uh, that that's i stand on i believe in in alzalea to that extent and we chose to take him over elizur i got a question for you about michael kopech just because we're talking about guys that have

been between the two roles alzalea more time as a starter than kopech in 2021 ended up being four starts for Kopech. It was his first game action in years. Literally, the last time he pitched for the White Sox was 2018. So a three-year layoff, came back, pitched very well out of the pen. I know the Stuff Plus model loves Kopech. The home run rate we saw from him at the end of 2018, I mean, we're talking 14 and 30,

and he's not really enough to read into that. So long ago. So 1.17 homers per nine as a reliever in 2021. If we threw out his 2018 debut, that'd be the highest home run rate that Kopech had anywhere as a pro. So even still, the question I have for you with Kopech is... And with huge velocity like that, you wouldn't expect necessarily a home run rate problem.

Yeah, he leaned really heavily on the fastball and slider working in that mostly relief sort of role. They're going to give him a shot as a starter. He's pretty expensive compared to Alzalealea i mean copex like a fringe top 150 guy adp in that same span it's about 165 do you think when you start adjusting for having to work deeper into games he wins a spot in the rotation do you think this stuff holds up because it wasn't just like when you look at copex past he also had issues with walks and that took a step in the right direction as a reliever as well, right? Just over three walks per nine, certainly not a problem

there. I'm just trying to decide like how much, how much can we bank on Kopech being a legitimately good starter based on what we saw from him in that mostly relief role for the White Sox? Because I'm pretty excited about him looking at the core skills and seeing how much the stuff model likes him yeah it is interesting that uh we didn't get that many of his secondary pitches um you know so that is kind of an open question and then this velo is going to of course uh come down in multiple inning stretches. But I do really like that. It doesn't look like he has a big command problem. And the Stuff Plus model, part of the reason why I like them so much is because he did rely on the foreseam and the slider. However, it's interesting to me that the Stuff Plus model likes his foreseam better than a slider. So I think that he'll be able to handle a little loss in velocity.

He really likes the movement of it. And the curveball is a 96 Stuff Plus, 95 location pitch that ends up scoring as an average pitch. So I think he's going to be foreseam, slider, curveball with only the occasional changeup. And I think that's going to be the approach. And I think he'll still have a better stuff plus than Alzelay. You know, Kopech last year had a 115 stuff plus.

And he's going to go down. Alzelay is going to go up. But I think he'll still, he has enough space there for regression to end up being a positive. I also see enough out of that curveball to like it and give him three pitches. Yeah, if he's got three pitches consistently, thinking about the AL Central, you're going to use him much more than you're going to bench him,

I would say, if he ends up in the rotation. The main question is just how many innings can we give him? Steamer says 145, but that strikes me a little bit like the sort of Giancarlo Stanton, he will get 650 plate appearances projection. Well, I don't know. Kopech did 140 and two-thirds back in 2018. It's true.

I mean, before you get injured. Let's break it down this way. Let's say the curveball is inconsistent. He throws it enough to have three pitches, but it's inconsistent, and he's a pretty steady. He's five innings per start on average. Like if that's where you want to go. Okay.

30 starts is 150 innings. Like that's so I don't know if I'd project him for 30. So maybe I'd go 26 or 28. And that's 130 or 140. So I think that 145, you know, coming from the fan graphs, depth charts. That seems appropriate. Then it leads to a question. Are you also comfortable drafting guys who you're expecting 140 innings from

in that 150 range when you're passing up on guys that don't have those workload concerns? Usually you're giving up ceiling to go for more innings. Names nearby, Ranger Suarez, Sonny Gray. See, I'd take Gray just because I feel like the stuff was still really good and the innings were more of a lock, but I'd take him, Kopech over Suarez any day.

I'm not in on Suarez at all. Yeah, that choice was super easy, but I bet you if you listed more pitchers around where Kopech's going, I could find other pitchers I would take. All all right i'll take that action luis garcia yeah yeah yeah i think you're garcia over kopeck okay yeah uh going a little earlier stroman going stroman over kopeck i mean innings they probably have to go down the other way for a couple more names of kershaw, I mean I don't know what to do with Kershaw right now. I take Kopec over

Kershaw actually because I think they're both like the question is innings not talent. I think the question is innings. Kershaw right now is not even throwing. The question is innings and the key difference for me is that the Kershaw outcomes are closer to including a possible zero.

Like any pitcher can blow out and get the zero. I think the worst case scenario for Kopech is he's in the bullpen and he probably gives you pristine ratios. Yeah, I mean, you're still a little salty about it if he's your 10th round pick, but you probably would hold on to him and say, yeah, I'll give it a few weeks and try to make it through. If you draft and hold, he'd still pitch you some weeks, right?

The other guys that are all clustered together, a couple older old guys, you've got Edwin Wainwright and Hyunjin Ryu, and then you've also got Tanner Houck. And I think the Houck situation is pretty similar to Kopac too, because we're expecting a lot more innings, and we're wondering, will the innings be as good in the expanded role? Totally fair question to ask exactly yeah so that's why i take like sunny and stroman over him uh but i would take kopec over how can kershaw you over the innings questions right so yeah this is that's i think he belongs in that

group but my personal uh the preferences would have some of the guys behind him ahead of him and so on and so forth. So it sounds like more likely than not, you'd get someone else that you like in that range and someone else would end up with Kopech. I think so, but if I walked away with Sonny Gray and someone took Kopech in that same round, I wouldn't bat an eye.

All right, that's fair. Going back to the year-over-year changes to home run rate. Oh, yeah, that thing. Yeah, that thing. We were talking about home run rate along the way. Well, Bundy strikes me as a very interesting one because Bundy sort of went back to where he'd been. He'd always had home run issues,

and then they went away for a season. In 2020, he had a really good season, and then they came back. so i think there's just as much a possibility that dylan bundy just had one great season as there is that he's going to be better going forward yeah i mean i think the thing that he he could give them is 160 or 170 innings affordably like that's the the main thing they're probably looking for. I'm not expecting it to be a great turnaround, but I think it is. We talked about it a little bit on Friday.

I think this is a good test for the Twins pitching. We have kind of said, hey, it looked like they had a few pieces in place to take guys like this and make them pop. And last year was kind of a step back. This might be one of the pitchers that that group is largely judged on, the success of Dylan Bundy and trying to turn him back around and maybe split the difference.

If you get him down to like a 1.3 home run rate, you can live with that if the walk rate comes back down. He has to have one of those things get better if he's going to be consistently effective in Minnesota. There's a bit of a strange story told on his stuff page because I can't port it over to Brooks Baseball and tell you exactly what's going on. But Bundy, his slider has added more drop over the last two years, basically. But if uh look at how much drop he's added and then you look at the stuff chart for uh you know his slider uh his slider has just lost stuff consistently

since the beginning of 2020 as it's been adding drop so for some reason in this case the model does not like the fact that he's adding drop to his slider and i think maybe because it's becoming more like his curve and maybe they're becoming more similar but uh there's something needs to happen with that that that slider i think maybe throwing it harder with a little bit less drop uh more like a cutter remember bundy was the whole thing where he was you know drafted as having this great cutter and then um the orioles were like it's not a cutter because we don't like cutters remember that yes that was uh a lifetime ago almost but yeah that's the thing that happened so if he could maybe think cutter a little bit uh maybe that'll work for him the uh i i don't i think that you know bundy's somebody that i would probably have

in that sort of 100 to 125 range. I take some shots in deeper leagues, maybe, if they drop. But no way I'm putting him in my top 100. Yeah, I had him at... Alzalea will be in my top 100. Bundy's at 134, easily the lowest of the pitchers we've talked about so far. Not ADP, 134 starting pitcher ranking currently, as those continue to grind along in

the background. You Darvish actually has a similar home run rate fluctuation to Bundy. That's not to say that they are any in any other way the same. But I think what it is for me is it's a reminder that Darvish has always had trouble with home runs and a big part of it for a while. You know, the old ballpark in Arlington, that was part of it. But even during his time with the Cubs, I mean, that's a pitcher friendly environment. He had major home run issues there and he can have success with that because the strikeout rates as good as it is and the walk rates been great. I thought Darvish was pretty consistently undervalued in some of the early drafts that I've seen. I'm wondering if maybe I'm a little too aggressive

on that given the longer term track record. Even in pitcher-friendly environments, he's had issues keeping the ball in the park. So I'm curious, where do you fall on Darvish as a possible early pitching bounce back candidate this is a guy that was going in the second round of 2021 drafts who's probably going to fall outside the top 75 overall more often than not here in 2022 we went sail darvish in our draft and hold uh but that was because as you can probably tell from the names we went light on starting pitching in the very early rounds we went heavy hitting uh ended up with like trout and bets in our first two picks right um so darvish we got in the fifth at 73 so you're about right about where he he

stands you know we we debated him or musgrove who went 77 uh that was the debate for us in terms of veteran starting pitcher uh we might have taken uh barrios who went at 69 if he had dropped to us so that was the conversation we were having we thought it was a little bit early for the super young like alec manoa uh who went 75 right after us, we did discuss him a little bit. So that's where I still have Yu Darvish, obviously, from that pick as pretty high. We took him ahead of Luis Castillo even. But I was happy to get him.

I think that when you see that home run rate going up and down for you, Darmish, it's because of his command. But I could see him just having a good command season next year, and the stuff was still pretty decent. So I'm just betting on a command bounce back with you, Darmish, basically. But he also stands, it's pretty funny, in that up and down cycle. He sits just a few up from Andrew Haney. And I did a little bit of a different query when we were kind of preparing for the show where I just looked at strikeout minus walks. And then I wanted to look at the high home run rates associated with that. And just basically saying, who could you bet on for strikeouts minus walks that maybe will regress their home run rate um you know next season

the names that pop for me off this list were number one was eduardo rodriguez who was 22nd in strikeouts minus walks among uh you know starting pitchers and had a 139 home run per nine um i think that'll regress uh especially with the new park that he's pitching in um another name that uh that pop was shane mcclanahan with the 127 with the new park that he's pitching in um another name that uh that pop was shane mcclanahan with a 127 i don't know that he needs to have that high of a home run rate especially calling tampa bay right tampa bay home andrew haney who uh we will forever bet that the home run rate is coming down and someday we'll be right um and then uh you've got a blake snell who i think you know there was a little bit of an up and down in his pitch mix and i think he found a better pitch

mix near the end of the season um and uh the last one i wanted to mention was zach gallon in the top 50 for k minus bb and also owning a 1.3 homer per nine. So I like Zach Gallin for positive regression. Yeah, Gallin, I've got him at 33 right now on my starting pitcher ranks and puts him right around Stroman, Snell, who you mentioned, puts him a little behind, actually puts him behind Shane Boz, which is, talk about your tough ranks.

Well, obviously I have a tough ranks episode at some point between now and, and March. Like what, what do you do with a guy that shows that? I take the young veteran with some upside or the, the guy who's all upside who hasn't maybe hit his bad. Yeah.

Yeah. Before publication, I could see Boz sinking a couple of spots. Cause it's, it's, it's one thing to make the list. It's another thing to follow through on it when you're, when you're on the clock and so, okay. It's another thing to take the list. It's another thing to follow through on it when you're on the clock.

It's another thing to take Alec Manoa over. Here we are. Shane Baugh is my SP2 this season. I don't know if I want to go quite that far. I feel a lot better if he's a 3 or a 4. I feel so much better if I could get one of those guys as a 3. Yeah, 3 is more realistic. Maybe in a 12-teamer you could make him a 4 if you're pretty aggressive with pitching. Yeah, it's interesting that McClanahan had some

home run issues. I don't think that's really going to be a part of who he is. The other pitcher that I had up near Darvish, Darvish versus Charlie Morton ended up being the toss up in the rankings. I think Morton is just consistently underrated. Their ADPs are almost identical. They're both going in that 85 to 90 range based on ADP. But Morton should be healthy for the start of spring training. And yeah, it's age. That's the only thing. That's the only thing about Charlie Morton that people, I think, could really quabble with

because he gets plenty of swings and misses. His stuff number's good. His location is good. He's not walking guys. He doesn't have a home run issue. He doesn't allow an overwhelming amount of contact in the zone. More than the guys ranked ahead of him for the most

part. That's one of the areas where I use that conditional formatting when I'm looking at skills and compare guys across the list. That's the one area where he's not quite like the other guys that I have in my top 20. In what way? Zone contact rate.

He gets hit in the zone a little more than the other top 20 pitchers, but it's not an alarming problem. I don't know. One thing that I like is that at his advanced age, 95.5 still, and that arrested a decline that I was worried was related to his shoulder issues. So pretty nice to see that VLO number there. Absolutely. I'm in on him.

I even bought him in my auto new league. We're doing a mock. And I bought him for like 19 bucks uh you know and i'm fully knowing let me get the number exactly right um i paid 20 bucks for charlie morton that's my number two behind gary cole and uh fully knowing that you know i may not i may only get two years of value out of that i traded for him in a keeper league before the keeper deadline because I felt like for a draft pick upgrade,

it was a relatively small cost. I didn't have convincing keepers up to the limit. So I said, you know what? I might be able to get an SP1 or a fringy SP1 in disguise in this 15-team league for a relatively small amount. I'm not that worried about long-term value

if I'm trying to just either get someone I can trade later or win. If you're trying to compete now, he's a great, great player. I think a keeper in dynasty leagues especially, it's never going to cost you as much as it should to trade for him if he comes through and does what he's projected to do and sustains what he's been able to do over these last two seasons. Yeah, no, I'm a fan. Then also just personally, he's been able to do over these last two seasons yeah no i'm i'm a fan then also just personally he's just such an excellent person it's i love how thoughtful he is do you

have a specific charlie morton antidote to share anecdote i want to say the asterisk is just one at all i'm i'm not sure maybe it could have been an alcs uh my my my memory is not great uh but uh i i know for a fact that they're all celebrating everyone's smoking cigars and you know there's alcohol everywhere pretty sure they want it all this is uh you know after after they won it against the Dodgers. Yeah. Yeah. They won it all. Everyone is celebrating, smiling, just, uh, running around the room, being a ridiculous person, uh, you know, doing all sorts of selfies, you know, just, just over the moon. And Charlie Morton is crying and he's just like in the corner crying. And I had been asking him about, I don't even know what,

but it ended up being about his teammates. And he was just so proud of them and the feeling of camaraderie. And he was talking about the emotions of sharing this moment with all of them. And he was just crying and uh i don't know it was just it was like that's that's charlie martin me you know still you know just to take the reason he started to cry was because of some question he was trying to answer the question correctly and and be honest and and and tell exactly how he felt and at that moment it meant that he was going to be crying

instead of running around with a cigar in his mouth. From just a baseball perspective too, his career has been a lot of peaks and valleys. It took a lot for him to get to the point that he's reached in the back half of his career, just in terms of the injuries he's had to come back from. So I could totally understand that, just being very emotional in a situation like that.

I think one thing, though, is that with pitchers like hard contact, even barrels allowed, ex-WOBA allowed, home run rate and stuff, a fair amount of what we're looking at right now is just noise and regression and just saying these pitchers are good otherwise and their home run rate was high and we can expect a regression because of the statistical facts of how the ball flies off a pitcher. That's not so much the difference in the two balls.

I'm not saying necessarily you darvish was throwing to harder you know he had the hard ball right like but you know with hitters uh it is interesting because there's a usually a really tight relationship between your barrels and your home run rate i I think I just saw the relationship of barrels to home run rate. I don't know if it was the R squared or just the R, the correlation, but it was tight. It was like 0.75 or something. Even if that was just R, that's pretty good.

So one thing I had, a little aha moment, was that you could treat ISO, isolated slugging percentage, as a percentage. When we look at it on the leaderboards, it's usually 0.205 or something, right? Not listed as percentage, but what the, what ISO is another way of saying ISO is your, um, your, your extra base hit rate. That's what it is. Cause what you take is you take, you take basically slugging and you subtract the average out of it so it's just it's basically the rate of x-rays hits so if you start looking at iso is that rate of x-rays hits and then you look at barrel rate now you have two things to

to subtract from each other they're on the same scale and uh when you have a large difference between them uh it means it probably you overdid your barrels a little bit and if you have a large difference between them, it means that probably you overdid your barrels a little bit, and if you have a small difference between them, it means that you didn't get as much out of your barrels as other people. But quickly, when I did the query, I realized that you have to do a little bit more work on top of that because the number one, the person with the

smallest difference between his iso percentage and his barrel percentage was jake bowers who had a five percent barrel rate and had an iso of 0.067 the problem is that five percent barrel rate is also not good so even if he plays to his barrel rate next year and has like a 0.100 iso like so bench player you know still it's still still a problem for him still needs to hit the ball harder so uh instead what i did was okay who is near the bottom in the difference between iso and barrel rate um and also has a good barrel rate. So the interesting names are Bradley Zimmer, who has the third smallest difference and had a 9.4% barrel rate.

And then Trevor Larnak pops in this. But then if you set the cutoff at 10%, the names really pop for me, which are Nico Goodrum, Bobby Dahlbeck, Andrew Vaughn, Tommy Pham, and Josh Donaldson. With a little bit of Rowdy Tellez. Got to get a mention in for Rowdy Tellez and Matt Chapman there at the end. I mean, for the most part, I think I like all those guys to have better power going forward. Yeah, so that group, it's got a good mix of players because you've got the younger guys you've got the former prospect in Zimmer who's just really struggled to stay healthy you've got a couple of older guys uh where Donaldson and Pham you look at those two guys and they both

Donaldson and Pham they pop into my head when when you bring up that there's a greater likelihood of a projection failing you with an older player. When you go down that road, they're the kinds of guys I think of, mostly because of health, because of Donaldson. That's a big part of it. The projections come out really good. People know, yeah, well, Donaldson's way past 30. Fam, I think, is a little bit younger than that. You look at Fam and you say, is he he gonna run as much as he's always run you know is he where's he gonna go where's he gonna end up playing Donaldson how many games you gonna get like those questions pop

up but I like that you have you have this thing where you've caught some young players Andrew Vaughn I think had had a good rookie year I I think it's so important to remember the context for a guy that was coming through the minors the way he did, right? A college bat who didn't get a 2020, who made the leap essentially from high A at the end of 2019 to the big leagues, learned a new position and didn't fall on his face.

A 94 WRC plus. Yeah. Okay. That's not a great season compared to just guys that have been in the big leagues for a while, but for a first time, big leaguer in those circumstances. Sort of thrust into baseball,

maybe a little bit earlier than kind of happy with it. Yeah. Like if, if the triple a season had started on time, they might've sent Vaughn down to triple a to begin the year and let him spend the first few weeks or the first month there. He really could have benefited from a 2020 minor league season. But I think he held his own. And the underlying numbers are good, right?

The K rate, 21.5% K rate for a guy making a three-level leap. That's huge. That's the big separator, I think, between these names. If you're wondering, well, you know, some of these,by dalbeck already had power how can he have more or whatever um the if you then say i'm more interested in guys who don't strike out 30 of the time then you remove good room and dalbeck from this list and von becomes uh you know one of five basically you know oh and and the youngest. So I would bet, just statistically, I'd bet on these.

You're right to bring up the age on Donaldson. That's a big question mark. But he's also falling in drafts and someone that I find really intriguing and more interesting almost as his price falls. I want to get where, because we had a debate. I'm co-managing this, and we had a debate, and we didn't get him. He went in the 17th round at 255 in this draft and hold, and I was a little disappointed he didn't go to us. I think he went right before us.

go to us i think he went like right before us or we were we were thinking about something else for some reason and didn't take him what do we take what is our name in this i'm kind of enjoying this this uh this sleuthing process what is who who are we he must have changed our name. Oh, man. I can't find us. Who did we take? Donaldson never goes too early at this point in his career. Never. I've not been in a draft in years where Josh Donaldson was drafted, and I said, well, that was too early. I think people have...

We didn't have a catcher, and so we took Mitch Garver because we didn't have a single catcher. I think the only category with Donaldson that you know is just pretty much mediocre or possibly bad is batting average. You're not getting a great average from him at this point. Even though the K rate's not bad, I think in leagues where you use OBP, you get a bump because he's always drawn walks and he's still 13 plus percent. I think 13 percent was his lowest walk rate since 2015. It's pretty amazing. I think the other thing that works in Donaldson's favor is that even though you have that added injury risk because of the recurring calf issues and other ailments that pile up on a guy who's now 36 in a couple of days,

when he's healthy, he rarely gets days off. He's still closer to a max volume plate appearance sort of guy for the time that he's available. And basically, it's just a longer way of saying he's never going to be a platoon guy. Like, I don't think that's the case at all. Like, when healthy, if they've got seven games in a week, he's starting at least six of them,

and maybe all seven if he's had a day off somewhat recently so i i like him yeah he's more of a load management guy he's like he's like lebron at this point where he's just like he's gonna be good when he's in i like him a little better in week in daily lineups but i'll still take him in weekly because i think he'll be useful really interestingly he went uh in a in a round that included Bobby Dahlbeck. And also, a name that's sort of on my query, doesn't quite make the barrel rate. I think he had a 9.5% barrel rate, but Nate Lowe.

25% strikeout rate, nearly a 10% barrel rate, and a poor ISO given that barrel rate. Nate Lowe is definitely, and he went in that same round. Nate Lowe is somebody that's showing up on my teams. So Matt Chapman was on that list too. He goes a bit earlier. He goes in the, yeah, he's right there by Nate Lowe. Yeah, Chapman, we don't know where he's going to play next season

because it seems like there's a good chance he gets traded. But if they're going to trade only one of Olsen and Chapman, it seems like it makes more sense to trade Olsen, given that Chapman could still be an elite defender and possibly bounce back and bring you more to trade later on. Fringy for the top 200 in terms of ADP. I'm in on that all day because I think even though we're talking about a guy that did have the hip surgery, I think is what it was, going out of 2020,

he will play every single day possible. It's kind of like the Arenado playing time. Like Donaldson, there is legitimate batting average concern, probably worse, much worse because of the K rate. He's getting beat on high fastballs pretty badly, but I feel like there's got to be an adjustment he can make. 18 and 19, even if the 36 homers because of the rabbit ball is something he can't do again, high 20s seems very attainable,

and it's with good counting stats, and I think we've seen the floor with his batting average. I think the K rate's going to go back closer to what we saw pre-2020 from Matt Chapman. And there's a very good chance that with a trade, if he does get traded, he's ending up in a better lineup and in a better park, too. So that could also give him a pretty nice boost. A's 25th by home run park factor on baseball. Yeah. So, unless he goes to, I guess there's a risk he could go

to the Cardinals or Giants, but... He won't go to the Cardinals. Yeah, he won't go to the Cardinals, yeah. And I kind of doubt he'll go to the Giants. If he went to the Giants, though, I would have a lot more confidence in his high fastball issue being fixed, given the successes they've had. Yeah.

And also, the lineup, they managed to score a bunch of runs, so he'll at least have people on base. But there's also 24 other teams where he would have a better part for his home run. Yeah, Rowdy being on this list is interesting only because I don't know if the Brewers are going to make some kind of trade and end up with a first baseman that way or if they'll get a bargain-free agent. It was a little disappointing to see his defense. It is a concern.

I remember very clearly a couple moments in the series against the Braves where I was like, oh, that's your range. There was a ball that was maybe three or four feet away from him, and he fell down trying to get it. His range is his body

to the left and the right. Yeah. I don't know if anyone's ever played with... There was this table soccer game that my grandparents had when I was a kid. And the goalie had a button to dive left and a button to dive right. And he was on, like, a little metal wire. So if you want to try and make a save, you could fall over to the left or you could fall over to the right. Yeah, he wasn't going to jump off of his mooring.

He was just going to fall down. If the shot was in a corner, he wasn't quite tall enough with his arms outstretched to the right. Yeah, he wasn't going to jump off of his mooring. He was just going to fall down and left and right. If the shot was in a corner, he wasn't quite tall enough with his arms outstretched to stop it. So if a well-placed shot happened, he couldn't get there. But he could fall down to the right. But he could fall left and right. That's Rowdy Tillis, baby. I got to find a picture for a visual.

Fun game. Kind of wish I still had something like that. The last name from that list, I mean, Larnak's interesting, Dahlbeck's interesting for their own reasons. I think we've talked about at least Dahlbeck in the not-so-distant past, but Bradley Zimmer. Bradley Zimmer is basically free. His team is super cheap

because they're not going to spend any more than they have to. They did go bargain shopping. They had Eddie Rosario last year. That didn't work out. But I just think it's, at this point, a 35% K rate for a guy that's now 29 years old. I'm worried that he's just not going to fix that enough. Even though there are tools. 15 steals, too.

15 for 18. I remember Ian Kahn a few times on the Under the Radar show throughout the year was saying, yeah, I'm interested. He's playing. He's running a bit. He's still got some power. And I think it was more for deeper leagues. I want to say it was more for like A.L. Labor and maybe 15-teamers, on and off the roster sort of guy,

depending on the schedule. Have we seen enough of Zimmer to say this is who he is when we're talking about a guy who's this old? Or can we look at it and say, actually, he doesn't even have a thousand big league plate appearances yet because of all the injuries. So why would we assume this is who he is if that's how we want to grade players' skills over time? Yeah, it's tough. The one thing I would say is that the fairly constant, the thing that's been there his whole career and that is believable in small samples anyway is the strikeout rate. So I think even if he's good, he's going to strike out a lot.

But he could have a good season where he walks 10% of the time, strikes out 33%, 35% of the time, has like a 250 ISO. I mean, his barrel rate suggests that he could have a higher ISO. His barrel rate last year was 9.4%. That's good. 10% is good. So if he had like a 200 ISO even, then he would probably be an above average bat,

given the patience. And then his defense is going to make him good. I don't think he's going to take Straw's job. So the good news for him is that the Guardians don't have any other outfielders either. I mean, they've got Josh Naylor coming back from a huge injury. I mean, they've got Josh Naylor coming back from huge injury. And then I think for the two other spots other than Straw, what you're seeing is a battle between Brad Zimmer,

the ascendant Nolan Jones, the recovering Josh Naylor, Stephen Kwan, who I think we've talked about on the show before, but is really good in terms of doesn't strike out and walks a lot we'll have to see what his batter ball rates look like um and then the sort of recovering oscar mercado so zimmer could absolutely beat out any one of those also when i look at the guardians depth chart i want them to just play josh Naylor at first base. Josh Naylor's a first baseman. Play him at first. Just let that happen. I mean, it's awful to me that they were playing you Chang there. I mean, just awful. And, you know, Jake Bowers was also awful for them. And then Bobby Bradley is more of a DH type, I think. And, I mean, he projects as a worse bat than Naylor. So I think I agree with you.

I would put Bradley and Naylor in a competition for that role. Yeah, and I would expect Naylor to ultimately win that. I know I'm getting a little too excited about a guy that's got a career 87 WRC plus, but he doesn't strike out, does show flashes of power, put him in his natural position. Bradley reminds me of the old Chris Carter type almost. When you're striking out 36% of the time, you don't have defensive value, and you don't really have a great walk rate, then you're closing in on Chris Carter.

Yeah, I'm not seeing any more than that coming from Bobby Bradley. So I do think if you're trying to figure out where outfield playing time goes, you could reasonably say Josh Naylor's going to play first base this year, and he's not part of that outfield rotation. And Nolan Jones has to come up and start his clock, which they may not want to do because he's striking out a lot anyway in the minor leagues. So the opening day outfield might be Zimmer, Straw, Mercado

just for sort of playing time, like service time type reasons. Yeah, and I could see Mercado ending up being more the fourth outfielder and small side platooning with Zimmer and then serving as a backup center fielder if Straw's unavailable. And then they go some old veteran, some cheap old veteran. I would have said a Cole Calhoun type, but Texas got him already. So some guy like that. Yeah, they could add a cheap veteran to that and make it a foursome.

Then the next round of cuts and drops will be Zimmer and Mercado, right? I think sometime this next season, if Zimmer and Mercado aren't any better, their roles will be cemented as something other than a starter. No, I think that's... Am I being too pessimistic about Mercado? Did he have a bit of a bounce back? I mean, a slight bounce back. His 2020.

Oh, he was still 15% worse than league average. His 2020 was just awful. The K rate came back down. He walked more than he walked upon arrival. That's right. But the power is not really there. No. I mean, it does look like a 12 to 15 homer, 15 steal guy that doesn't get on base a ton so enough to to keep or at least not enough

to be a leadoff guy right if he's if he's getting if he's like a 30 obp guy is that going to be enough for them to lead him off or is he going to be a 6-7 hitter i think it it's probably the latter uh and he's a little older than i thought too he. He's already going to be 27 in just a couple of weeks. I think it's basically pooper. We got off the potty time for Zimmer and Mercado this year. Two. They'll start moving other guys in. Two references to the bathroom. Let's get one.

It's not to a counter. My life, the bathroom figures high in it. I've got two little boys. They can't hit the target let's get to a couple of uh possibly overlooked padres moves we didn't talk about these in all the transactions that happened last week uh let's start with the the addition of nick martinez he goes to the padres former ranger He goes to the Padres. Former Ranger? No way! To the Padres? A Ranger? That never happens. I think the deal is

four years and $20 million, but if I remember correctly, there's an opt-out after the first year, so if he's really good, then, you know, onward and upward. Anyway. God, they couldn't just get him? They gave him $20 million? They couldn't just get him?

Actually, opt-outs after 2022 and 2023. God, they couldn't just get him. Like they gave him $20 million. They couldn't just get him. Actually, opt-outs after 2022 and 2023. Okay, so. Guy has a career 477 ERA in America. He's 31. Then they gave him an opt-out. But anyway. I like, I'm sorry. I was being more negative.

I like him a little. Yeah, how do you think he fits in in terms of role? How likely is it that he is beginning the year as a starter? And where do you start to go in terms of your expectations value-wise for him? So I will have to give Sung Min Kim a shout-out here. Sung Min Kim here. He had a thread on him that I'm going to rely on mostly for my analysis on here because Nick Martinez was in Japan.

And so apparently he pushed his fastball velocity up to 93 last year. So he was 90-poo when he left, but 93 is above average VLO, or at least average VLO. And then he also added a Vulcan change that has become his out pitch. Joining the John Gant Club. Uh-huh.

And I always think of Kyle Loesch. These are not the best comps you've ever heard in the world. No. But I think he can at least be a fifth starter. And if that Vulcan change actually has some good swinging strike ability to it, and he's 93, he could be an interesting...

I don't think I can put him in the top 100 based on this information but um in that 100 to 120 range where you're taking shots yeah i think so yeah he's i mean what does the padres depth chart look like right now he's probably got a inside track to the fifth starter spot initially, but then anytime someone looks good or is ready, he could be the first guy to accommodate them. I mean, must grow of Darvish Snell,

obviously safely in the variable. I think in the beginning of the year is two is when Clevenger, if he's a hundred percent good to go, which I think when is he could be. And then Chris Paddock, I started this early draft season excited about Paddock, and then he got the elbow injection. He's got a slight UCL tear.

Yeah, exactly. I just, I don't know. I never feel good about that injection being the be-all, end-all, and Paddock has work to do anyway. And I think that's part of the problem. Even if the injection works and keeps him healthy, it's keeping him from getting a third pitch that he's comfortable with this off season.

Then he still has the same flaw that he's had. Yeah. How much pitch design time does he have this off? So that's, so that's part of the issue. So I'm, I'm pretty pessimistic on, on Paddock right now,

after really thinking i was going to have a lot of paddock i've even got him on a couple of teams but i probably won't get him much more at least until the late part of draft season once we get some kind of more information some kind of look at him in spring and maybe if things are going well all that's to say musgrove darvish snell clevenger's probably good to go and then what do they do with denelson lamette i mean we went through this last draft season too i i don't know if you can rely on him as anything more than a part-time starter put him in the pen yeah i think they'll put him in the pen i think they have a need in the pen first of all and then second of all um he just seemed injured his stuff number was way down and uh if he didn't

like out of the mound he didn't really inspire much confidence so um you know without him they still have the five uh it'd be interesting to see if they try to keep him a little bit stretched out and he's middle relief or they try to keep him doing two or three innings because uh the depth behind nick martinez if paddock is actually hurt uh weathers and gore are the next ones and then you're waiting on Morahan to come back. So it actually gets pretty dicey back there. You may need Lemaitre as your 6 or 7 starter because Weathers needs to kind of do an overhaul on his pitch mix to get back.

He needs to go to a sinker-based approach and probably change his slider. Gore is maybe in the middle of that overhaul, and maybe he's more ready than he has been in the past, so maybe Gore can be your six. But then Lamette needs to be your seven, at least until Morahan or Paddock show better health. So if there's a way that they can kind of not make the decision on Lamette

as long as possible, I think that's what they'll do. Let's talk about the reliever addition the Padres made. Luis Garcia, who most recently pitched for the Cardinals in 2021 and pitched well. He got a couple of saves even late in the year, 324 ERA,.99 whip, 34 Ks, and 33 and a third innings. He got a two-year $7 million deal, and the Padres are on that pretty long list of teams where you'd say, who's the closer, or at least who's the main closer

if they want to go the committee route? It's, to me, just as likely to be Garcia as it is to be anybody else. I mean, I think the few things that I take into consideration when trying to project or guess at these things is past experience as a closer, which I think matters less and less to teams now,

year over year, than it ever has. Money, how much money are they paying someone? And then maybe stuff, like in terms of lefty-righty splits, but even still, you might have a team that says, yeah, that's our best reliever, so he's coming in the seventh here, he's coming in the eighth here, and today he's getting a save. I don't know if the Padres are going down that path. The Mariners we talked about last week, they seem to be going down that path.

Are you looking at any of the current relievers, either Garcia, Pomeranz, Pagan, anybody else they've got and saying, yeah, I actually think that guy is going to get most of the saves in San Diego? I think it's Luis Garcia. Drew Pomeranz is coming back from a surgery, and I don't think that we have necessarily more information. He had the surgery on August 14th, and there's different ideas about how long.

Maybe he should be ready to begin the season, but even then, he is a left-hander, which teams go to left-handers a little bit less often than you'd expect in the closer role. And then on top of that, I think at this point it is fair to say that the team has chosen other options over Pomerantz a couple times now, signing Melanson to close over him. So I think this, I look back at that Melanson signing and say, they signed a guy, they had Pomerantz in the fold,

and they signed a guy, and that guy closed. So there is not really like this guy has experience in that pen. There's not, we were talking about this, there's not a lot of saves on the back of the baseball cards in this pen. But Luis Garcia changed from throwing a foreseam that he couldn't command to throwing that sinker more often in St. Louis, and I think that was perfect. I think that brought it all together,

and that made him a closer level arm, honestly. So it's all Luis Garcia for me. Yeah, basically was free in Draft and Holds. Probably still not going to jump up a ton without some sort of official announcement. I think there is an opportunity there. Worst case, for Draft and Hold,

we're going to do a separate episode at some point. Just talking about strategy, roster construction. You can live with a few short relievers who aren't closers because you're going to have weeks where you don't have enough starters available anyway, and you just want somebody out there who's going to help with the ratios, maybe steal a win.

San Diego should be good. He should be effective regardless of role. So I do think Luis Garcia is pretty easily draftable in San Diego even without any sort of confirmation of role. Yeah, if there's some news in spring where Pomerantz is healthy and stuff and Luis Garcia's stock starts going down, I think he becomes even more. So I think he'll be really affordable now. And then over the course of the offseason, people are like,

ooh, Luis Garcia, like him, like him, like him. He'll go up, he'll go up. Pomerantz news, go back down, hopefully. And there will be another buying cycle for Luis Garcia. But I'm not like, I'm not going to put him, you know, I think he's still in that back 10 of relievers.

Even if you kind of give him, yeah. Like, would you put him in your top 20? No, no, no. The earliest, the earliest you could draft him or where you could like kind of put him at

the high end. You could put him in the Lucas Sims, Dylan Floro sort of range where it's like, are they the guys? I'm pretty sure they're the closer. Yeah, like probably the guy. And then maybe you put him ahead of those two guys because you like the skills more. I like him better than those two guys. That's about where the line is.

That puts him back in the top 25. And Price right now, outside the top 500, going to jump up. Obviously going to shoot up probably 100, 150 picks. You can't get him like we got them in our draft and hold. Oh, you already have them? Unbelievable. Yeah, I got them in my draft and hold. No, that's the other one.

Nope. Nope. 738, baby. 738. He was our last pick. There was a 744 in there, too. Someone else got him a little later than you did even. We had him last pick, baby.

Well, hey, that could be a great last pick, which is why draft and hold is so fun, right? You take someone in round 50, and they end up having a significant role for you because you did it early. Something to pass the time, of course, during the great lockout of 2021 and 2022. We're all going to be looking for

something to do. Like I said before, it's restraint for me. It's like 50, 150 there. It starts to add up, so you just have to not go overboard. Oh, yeah. I'm going to be careful because I think I want to do a main this year. Are you doing a live one or are you doing one from home? My first one, I don't know.

I'm going to do one from home. Comforts of home are sneakily underrated. I mean, not that – like hanging out with a bunch of people that love fantasy baseball is always fun, as we know from first pitch and everything. It's also just useful to have – like I noticed this at AL Labor. I wish at AL Labor I had like three screens. You know what I mean? You want one screen that has the draft up

and what other people in the draft are doing. You want one screen that has your numbers up and you have one screen for last-minute searches or depth charts. Just have a depth chart screen up. This is why I use draft software. This is literally like the Rotowire draft software does all those things. That was not a planned commercial. commercial they didn't pay for that i worked there for a long

like it i don't it's as much as you can have in on one screen like if you can't bring three screens you need stuff that's quick within one and you can be offline too which i think was a bigger issue 10 years ago i think everywhere you go now you can pretty much get on some kind of network. But that's what I do, just because I want to have information ready just in case I need to check something out. And I highly recommend you check that out if you want to be more organized

with your drafts and auctions this year. But if you'd like to read what we have at The Athletic, 33% off the first year at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. Thanks to the many of you who signed up during the black Friday cyber Monday deal. You can find, you know, on Twitter at, you know, Sarah, as you can find me at Derek and Riper, drop us an email rates and barrels at the athletic.com. That is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.