Rates & Barrels - Opening Day is Here! Will Smith Signs a 10-Year Extension, Bold Predictions & Eno's Main Event Squad

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Happy Opening Day! Eno and DVR discuss Will Smith's 10-year extension with the Dodgers, good news for Jordan Romano, a tough break for Jordan Lawlar, and other news and notes as the 2024 MLB season gets underway in full. Plus, they break down a few Eno's bold predictions for the upcoming campaign, and discuss a few wrinkles from this year's Main Event of the NFBC. Rundown 3:42 Will Smith Signs 10-Year Extension w/Dodgers 8:26 Jordan Romano May Return Quickly From IL 9:26 Jordan Lawlar Out 8-10 Weeks Following Thumb Surgery 12:38 Other News & Notes (Jon Berti, Ronel Blanco, Marco Luciano) 29:08 Eno's 2024 Bold Predictions ($): https://theathletic.com/5351937 47:12 Unique Wrinkles of the NFBC's Main Event Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes w/Trevor May! (next live show: 3/29) Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Nate Taylor and I cover the Kansas City Chiefs for the Athletic. I love locker rooms after games. When I walk in that locker room, I have the eyes and ears of our subscribers. As a journalist, it's my duty to ask the hard questions and to get some true honesty from athletes and coaches. It's a real joy to cover football, to be a hunter and a gatherer of news, to get something that's revealing that you may not be able to see on television. I'm from Kansas City, so I've watched this team

my entire life, not knowing that this was gonna be my job. There are hundreds of my colleagues who care just as deeply about their teams and give our subscribers those details that they could not have gotten anywhere else. You can personalize the athletic. So the teams, leagues, and riders that you care about most are right there when you open it up.

The Athletic is now included along with everything the New York Times has to offer when you subscribe to the New York Times. You can find out more at nytimes.com slash athletic. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, March 28th. Happy opening day. It is the real opening day. Yeah, thumbs up. Got the thumbs up right away.

We're off to a fantastic start. All 30 teams were supposed to be in action today. We learned on Wednesday that a couple of games were going to be postponed to Friday because of weather. So no Brewers Mets, no Phillies Braves, at least for today. So hopefully we'll see more teams in action on Friday as a result. But anyway, we made it, barely.

After dozens of drafts combined between the two of us and live shows and team previews and position previews. Like it's here, it finally begins. I know, new data. New numbers. Talking about the same numbers for like months. It's a.

No, no, I like baseball. It's just not about numbers. No, it's just, yes, we've been pouring over the same figures We've been immersed in baseball. You know, in fact, right now, I'm pretty sure my UCL hurts from two things, throwing batting practice a lot, and two, holding my phone to look at baseball type stuff and Twitter type stuff

while at baseball games. You should use your non-throwing arm for that given the extra strain on your throwing arm. Then I don't think my thumb is as dexterous on that side or something. No, I don't know. And the phones now are so big. Get one of those Velcro straps,

just strap the phone to your other hand if your hand can't handle it. That'll look good. You're in dad mode anyway. That's right, why do I care about looking good? I've given up completely. You're gonna see decay in me that you never thought was possible. Like a little, like, a left forearm strap for my phone that just holds it there so I can like, you know Yeah, and if you drop it, it just dangles down next to your elbow, but it doesn't fall and break on the ground

It seems like a pretty good little invention. Oh my god. I mean, hey, I never thought that fanny packs would come back So I thought you know growing up fanny packs were like that is the dorkiest thing I've ever seen Are they back? I mean a lot of 90s stuff came back. So that makes sense. My wife is wearing them again, at least. Well, they're very practical if you have to hold a lot of things and don't want something, you know, over your arm or on your back. So there are tons of stuff in your pockets.

Yeah. Yeah, that too. Unless you want to wear cargo. See, cargo is going to come back. The fanny packs will come out and all your cargo pants and cargo shorts are gonna follow. Cargo and strap my phone to my wrist. Here we go. Best thing about living the cycle once is that you know what's coming the second time around.

Oh yeah. When I was choosing my shirt, I was like, flannel. You're back in a grunge phase. But it's fitted now. Because I'm an adult. Right. It's not the size of a tent This is not the flannel I used to have Well, I still have one of those

All right, literally well from seventh grade nice job. Glad you made it all the way from seven That's a it's a long shelf life for a shirt that shirt will have been with you longer than Will Smith will be with the Dodgers Even with Will Smith signing a 10-year 140 million dollar extension the numbers seemed a little weird like the number of years seemed a little long the number of dollars 30 million dollar signing bonus like a little low, but it's all it's all kind of just part of the Dodgers Unique financial structuring of all these deals It keeps the and the average annual value down, which has luxury tax implications. Presumably, it keeps Will Smith in Dodger blue for the rest of his career.

They could potentially trade him at some point, I guess. That's always a possibility. But it's interesting because I think we like him as maybe the best-hitting catcher in the game right now. There are plenty of other contenders. And I wonder how well he's going to age. He's 29 years old today. So happy 29th birthday to Will Smith,

who's never heard of rates and barrels and will probably never listen to it. But he looks like a player whose profile will age really well. It's sort of a question of what will they do with him defensively over a contract that long? Because we rarely see deals this long anyway, and we don't ever see them for catchers. And you begin the deal this way, but where do you play after year five or year six when

presumably someone much younger will be the starting catcher and maybe he's a part-time catcher and a part-time something else? I mean, I think he has the bat to do it. I mean, that's the fun part about him is that he's such a great defensive catcher. But you know, with yearly 10% barrel rates and you know, 16 to 18% strikeout rates and 11% walk rates, like that would be a good DH. You know, might be a little bit less power than other DHs. But if you if he could play first,

which I think he could probably hit that bump along the way, then I think he's got a lot of places he can play. One of the things that's also kind of amazing about this is that some of it's deferred. So what is the deal? Ken Rosenthal's story about this where Teoscar Hernandez had deferred money. And of course we know all about Sho Hotani's deferred money

but there's deferred money also $172 million of deferred money in Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman's deals. I had, there was this great number in here in this piece. $870 million in deferred money. And I think this piece came out before the Will Smith one where he's deferring like five million a year for a few years.

So, I mean, you're talking about almost $900 million in deferred money that they'll owe from 2028 to 2040. Are they just gonna sell the team? Right, in like 2027 before they have to start paying the deferrals? Yeah, like what we're seeing a little bit of the the chickens coming home to roost in Washington, I feel like, cause they did the same thing where they just hit a bunch

of deferred money. There's a lot of reasons to do it. One person pointed out that they are owned by an investment group. And so the idea that money has present value and future value, and those are different. I think maybe the idea is that they think they can beat the market, right? And like use the money they have now to like make more money to pay those people later. Yeah, I wonder what happens if they're wrong.

We don't get into that right now, but what if it collapses? What if they're wrong? I mean, what if the Sotani story goes in a certain direction? Yeah, a lot of what ifs, maybe for a different day. Yeah. No, but I think Will Smith is worth this. And I think that extending him to 38

also helps him with the CBT and keeps that number down and I would say this is team friendly. Yeah and I think the other way to look at it too is he's now signed I think for the same number of years as Otani. If Otani is not going to play the field and he remains mostly a DH that whole time then Will Smith would have to play first base or somewhere else defensively if he's not going to remain a catcher because you have those two guys locked up for a very long time. Eventually, Freddie Freeman won't be a Dodger after 2027. So we're still four years away from that point.

But other news to get to, some good news, Jordan Romano may only need a minimum stint on the IL. Things have been tracking this way since there was no structural damage detected when he had further testing done on his elbow. So if you're trying to invest in the Blue Jays bullpen in the short term that's exactly what it is. It's probably just a week or two of trying to find saves as opposed to a month plus which some people may have thought they were doing drafting over the last week or so. Yeah, Jimmy Garcia might still be an interesting pickup long term for saves and holds because Eric Swanson is out. But as I mentioned before, I like Chad Green there to possibly be the setup

man as well. So I think they can hold for it for two weeks and they'll be all right in terms of thinking about the Blue Jays as a whole. And then in terms of playing, if you took Romano, just don't drop him, I think. Just hold for a little bit. At least get some more news. Pretty easy hold at this point given it's a shorter timetable for his absence. A more difficult player to think about in redraft leagues is Jordan Lawler. He's going to miss eight to 10 weeks following thumb surgery, had a torn ligament in his thumb, suffered during a spring game. It's bad news because you're talking about

half a season potentially that's lost, depending on how long it takes him to get through the final stages of the rehab. So we may not see him in Arizona until the second half. Needs on the roster will also determine when exactly he shows up as well. But if we're in a typical mixed league redraft situation with small benches or normal sized benches,

I don't think you wanna try and hold Lawler all the way back to his eventual return, even though I think once we do see him this year, he can be an impact player for us. We're gonna have to jump. Yeah, one weird thing that happened though was that he was sent to the minor league camp before Blaise Alexander. And Blaise Alexander is a 24-year-old shortstop

that stuck with the Major League team longer and had an excellent spring, just a really flat-out excellent. The bat of all stats we do have, you know, is like a 60% hard hit rate or something. Shout out to the reader that pointed this out. I immediately went and picked up Blaise Alexander, dropping Josh Palacios in one of my deeper keeper leagues. Just because this opens a little bit of a window for Blaise who is, you know, at 24 has got no reason to be in the minor leagues anymore and may just use this window of opportunity. That said, the projections for Blaze are pretty boring.

It has a lot to do with his strikeout rate. He did more of an aggressive approach this spring where he didn't walk much, but he also didn't strike out as much. In the past, he's been ultra passive and has struck out a lot. So if that if he did toggle that switch and it's a good one for him, could be an interesting new blaze. And in for these next eight to 10 weeks, he may be the backup for per domo. Yeah, yeah, I think the results as he's moved through the miners have become a bit more interesting, a little bit like old for the level, but not way old for the level.

23 at AA and 22, 24 years old, of course, last year at AAA. It's only 73 games, but showed kind of double digit home run power. This spring, he was among the players running a lot more. Five for six as a base dealer, so really active on the base pass in addition to the adjusted approach at the plate. Probably an up and down guy, but for deep leagues especially, someone that could get more of an opportunity as a result of Lawler's injury. Now he's got two months to showcase himself at the major league level, probably.

Yep, might garner some interest from other clubs if he's not part of the long-term plan in Arizona. An obligatory update that I saw scroll by, Wander Franco placed on administrative leave through June 1st, so I expect that to be extended at some point between now and then. And I think we've talked about it a few times. Just given the circumstances, I don't think we're going to see Wanderfranco play ever again. Like it's just it's done. It's over.

But that's what they did on opening day. Placed them on administrative leave. Other odds and ends. Tell me if any of these things matter for deep leagues or otherwise. John Bertie is a Yankee now? It's weird. Is that like cost saving for the Marlins? Because he was to the Marlins kind of with DJ LaMejus for the Yankees and the Yankees were like, well, we lost DJ LaMejus so let's just pick up Bertie.

You know what I think it really was for the Marlins? I think it was wanting to keep some of the younger players around. Aha, yes. Brujjan and Xavier. Jonah Bride still on the depth chart. They had a few infielders that they decided they wanted. They traded for Nick Gordon a few weeks back. They wanted to keep Gordon on the roster, yeah.

It was probably the roster spot they wanted, yeah. Yeah, I think that's what it came down to. Birdie, AL only leagues, really, really deep mixed leagues as a streamer, I think would be the primary use case. And LeMahieu being out does create an opportunity. As Waldo Cabrera can play a little bit of third base, Osvaldo Perazza is hurt right now. So I think that's part of why they wanted to go out

and get another infielder that they could throw out there on a semi-regular basis. The Yankees off season is weird. Now Jordan Montgomery's just sitting there the whole time. And they're like, oh, D.J. LeMay was hurt. John Bertie, uh-uh, okay. I mean, they added Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo and Trent Grisham, which gave them

a completely rebuilt outfield. Like that alone, I feel like, was a pretty good offseason. Plus they added Stroman. I gave them a bold prediction of a top five offense. Yeah, I can see that. Healthy Rizzo, Torres in his walkie- year, Verdugo in that park, Ad Soto, step forward from Volpe, judge being judge. They also were fourth in barrel rate last year and like 25th in runs.

That's not usual. That does not usually happen. That is pretty surprising. I would say there is irrational pessimism around the Yankees right now. That's a good team that deserves to be viewed in a more optimistic light. Red Sox too, it's pretty amazing.

I made a bold prediction about the Red Sox rotation being top five in the American League East. And that's not, I mean, not in the American League East, in the American League East. And that's, yeah, American League East, that would not be a very bold prediction. Although it's a tough, it's a tough league. I mean, Red Sox fans are so down on that rotation

that like I got used to coming over this on trucks. And like, there was a lot of, a lot of pushback, but I mean, there's just a lot of pictures I like on that, on that team. Tanner Hauck with the cutter, you know, he's dominant against righties cutter Crawford Now has a 20 IVB on this fastball

Which makes him one of six pitchers in baseball that has 20 IVB along with Nick Pavetta And he has a 12 inch sweeper. So like I'd like cutter. I've always liked cutter We've talked about cutter on this pod before I like cutter. I've always liked cutter. We've talked about cutter on this pod before. They was throwing a hard slider and stopped throwing that fastball. He had a six or seven slugging against his four seam fastball and he stopped throwing it. So I think there's some good stuff in coming in Boston

that just got obscured by a lot of young pitchers trying to figure it out last year. And we've got a few more bold predictions coming here in just a few minutes. I got a couple that I want dig into from Eno's article. Nico Goodrum is a ray, which is kind of interesting. It would have been more interesting two or three years ago. I think this is just the result of having a couple of injuries. Taylor Walls, of course, has been hurt for a while,

and then Jonathan Aranda getting hurt late in the spring created a need for one more infielder. You know, why not just say, okay, Junior, let's go. What is going on here? Is it just to keep Junior cheaper for longer? Like what is happening? What does Nico Goodrum do? Like they have, is Wals, Wals is hurt I guess, huh?

Yes, he's hurt. And Rosario, maybe they don't want to play him at short. They have not been playing him at short. So another, I mean, Nico Goodrum- Is that a Basabe? I don't want to play him a short. They have not been playing him a short. So another, I mean, Beniko Goodrum. Instead of Basabe? I don't know. It's just one more name stacked onto a depth chart full of guys that we already sort of like

for different reasons. I've talked a lot about Richie Palacios. Curtis Mead is someone that can move around and play a few spots. So I don't see there's a lot of playing time for Goodrum. I'm kind of curious to see who eventually gets pushed off of the roster with his arrival. Cause it's going to cost someone something.

So Austin Shenton made the opening day roster. So maybe it's a quick stint for him before he ends up a triple A or. There's some weird like games people play with roster deadlines and what's happens like a week after. I think there's like a little bit of like inertia where like, oh, we decided who the roster is, we made our decisions. And so like for the next week or two, at least we're set, right?

And then there are other teams that are like, ooh, people think that their rosters are set. And so if I can just do something for a couple of days, then maybe I can sneak someone through waivers later and keep them in my organization. And I'm looking straight at you, Farhan Zaidi, because the Giants kept three catchers, and none of them are really that good. I mean, okay, Patrick Bailey is probably a really good catcher in real life, you know, not necessarily offensively. They kept Tom Murphy and Joey Bart. Why? Because if they drop Joey Bart, they put him on waivers before the season starts, somebody will just pick him up. Because you know the Rays would have. Didn't they just pull a trade for a catcher? Ben Roartveet.

Ben Roartveet. That was in the birdie trade? Yeah, I think that was a three-team trade, actually. So they got a catcher. You know the Rays, if Joey Bart was on waivers would have claimed him. And I think maybe now they say, well, we got Ben Wardvett. Do we want to lose Ben Wardvett to get Joey Bart? You know what I mean? So like, I swear Farhan is just like, we'll have three catchers for like three days.

This is the way organizations try to function because it's retaining as much talent as possible and playing within every last inch of the rules to get there, right? I thought the Brewers are going to try something similar with Eric Haas, but it looks like they're going to try and sneak in. They're not doing the three catcher one. No, he's not on the roster right now anyway. That one was a little bit more interesting because Gary Sanchez has enough bat to be the DH.

I am not playing Tom Murphy or Joey Bart at DH. Right. Or Patrick Bailey for that matter. Well, and I think because Bailey is such a great defender, you already have the elite glove guy. Sometimes that first backup is an all glove, we love how this guy handles the staff sort of player. If that guy is your starter, I don't know how you justify keeping the other two. It's

just hoping you have a better chance of sneaking them through waivers later. That's what I think it comes back to. Why do they sign Tom Murphy if they want to keep Joey Bart? In case someone gets hurt? You know, Farhan's been crazy about catchers. He traded Mauricio Dubon for Michael Papierski, who didn't end up being a catcher or wasn't a good enough hitter, and then he just released him two weeks later and then he lost him and he just lost Dubon for nothing, which maybe he was planning on doing anyway, but it was like he's been kind of furiously trying to put catchers in his system.

Cooper Hummel, he claims Blake Sable on the, on the rule five draft. He keeps Blake Sable on the roster all year long, which he was okay, I guess. And then he drops Blake Sable to the miners as soon as he can, because he is now acquired this guy that's in his organization because he rule five. And it's annoying. It's just stockpiling as much as you can. Are you more annoyed by all of that? Or are you more annoyed by Marco Luciano going to AAA?

I had a fairly up and down conversation with Andrew Baggerly where we were arguing our positions and we didn't agree with each other. He didn't quite convince me. His stance was more like, yeah, Marco Luciano's not ready with the glove or the bat and he hasn't played a lot. He deserves like a whole full year in AAA to just play every day and play all the time and not face basically the, you know, the what happens in the major leagues. I guess I see that.

But I just I see Marco Luciano's defense differently than other people. I guess I see Marco Luciano as having nice hands. I think he has good hands. I think he throws the ball away sometimes, but I think, you know, that's, it's a little bit like blocking with catchers. The guy misses it once and you're like, oh, that guy is terrible.

Gary Sanchez can't catch, you know. And you look at all the numbers and you're like, oh, Gary Sanchez is not that terrible, you know. The same way with Luciano. I feel like he throws the ball away, or ah, that guy can't be shortstop. It's like, well, yeah, he threw a ball away. I don't know. He has enough lateral quickness now to be a shortstop for the next five to six years, I think. And I don't know, I would just stick him in there. I think we know what Nick Omid is. I don't

he had a good spring, I guess. I don don't know I think the other improvements to the roster like getting Matt Chapman getting one more significant bat was enough of a lift where you didn't have to force it with Luciano and I think probably to the point that Andrew Baggierly made talking to you is Luciano Because of injuries has missed a lot of time But he also struck out well over 30% of the time at Triple-a and in the big leagues 35% or higher at both stops only 32 games You want to make sure that's ironed out. He was hitting the ball in the ground a ton too, so wasn't getting to the power

Was striking out way too much and you do have some defensive concerns. Maybe you don't have as much as others Give him a couple of months at Sacramento see if if the K-rate comes down, see if the defense is consistently where you want it, and then bring him up end of April, middle of May, whenever it's appropriate based on what's going on with the big league club. You're not going to get much out of Nick Ombed. As long as Nick Ombed plays a good defensive shortstop, that's about as much as the Giants can ask him for. There's a little bit of a change in organizational philosophy where the old Giants

had picked up old players that weren't that great defensively and tried to coach it up. These new Giants have really improved their defense. And with Nick Amund, Matt Chapman on the left side, that's a big upgrade in defense over last year. So see how that kind of filters through for their pitchers and and how that works if they have enough offense otherwise. Ever tried to break a bad habit and felt like you're climbing Everest and flip-flops?

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Start the year off right with the good habit by going to tryfume.com slash barrels and getting the journey pack today. Fume is giving listeners of the show 10% off when they use the code barrels, to help make starting the good habit that much easier. Two other random odds and ends before we move on to some other things. Miguel Sano made the Angels. He's starting on opening day. He's their DH today. How surprising is that? I had the visions of that silly game I've got, which might be a fun off-season to play around with. If you could take Miguel Sano and mush him together with Nolan Chanuel, you would have maybe a Frank Thomas.

Yeah. But separately, I'm not interested in either of them. So you're not getting the middle point of all their best skills, you're taking all of their best player attributes. And putting them together. Putting them together, yeah. I was thinking like, what about Asturi Ruiz

plus Pete Alonso? Sure, I mean yeah, you can do all sorts of things if you're playing that game. I actually ran into a situation where Shanuel looked kind of interesting to me. I'm in an OBP AL only league, it's a keeper league. In the corner, it was pretty thin in general. And he actually had a decent spring,

popped a couple of homers. We saw him get on base at a 4-0-2 clip last year, even though he was rushed, which is pretty impressive, right? So you know, like core skills for that particular league, mono league, sure, let it happen. He also stole a couple of bases. We talked about the Angels being an active team on the base pass.

I don't know, there's just a handful of ways in deeper leagues where Nolan Chanuel might be a little more interesting. But the thing I wanna watch with him is the quality of contact through the first few weeks of the season. Is there significant improvement from all the standing? As you might remember, Sam Blum wrote the story about Nolan Shanuel standing all day long

three days a week throughout the offseason he must have gotten an Apple watch the difference between the Zips projection and the bad-ass projection is gotta be one of the bigger ones out there the Bat-X projects him for seven homers and Zips projects him for 18. Yeah. I love that. That's a big difference. I love that. I'm not gonna go as far to say that there's no Statcast and Zips.

Like I don't believe that. I know Dancin's Orsiwock works on it. Statcast has been out for a while. There's no way there's none in there. But that just shows that there's a different weighting. And the thing I would point back to and this may have come up previously, is the scouting grades, right?

Present game power, 30 over at Fangraphs. Future game power, 50. Raw power, 45. So it's in there as far as the scouting goes. So we have to buy into some of that, and if you have those other core skills to fall back on, you could do a lot worse in a super deep league. And 60% ground ball rate this spring. It's kind of amazing he had two homers. And if you have those other core skills to fall back on you could do a lot worse in a super deep league and

60% ground ball rate this spring. It's kind of amazing. He had two homers. Yeah Well anyway, if you do damage when you lift it you can find a way to work around that no 60% ground ball rate There's no way to really defend that Last interesting note. It's Renell Blanco getting a chance in the back of the rotation for the Astros while Justin Verlander's out. Verlander's absence probably isn't going to last that long. We're looking at a couple more weeks. He's trying to get stretched out to about 80-85 pitches before he comes back. So just a couple of turns for Blanco. But I think we have to be somewhat intrigued anytime the Astros have anyone breaking into their rotation. They've shown us time and time again, they can get a lot of mileage out of guys that

maybe didn't have a lot of appeal as prospects and Blanco's a little older than most of the guys that debut for them. He's 30. What I'm curious, is there anything in that pitch mix that intrigues you? There are some pretty good results from Blanco at AAA, given that he's been kind of an up and down guy for a couple of seasons now for this Astros team. You know what's funny is you look at these walk rates and they're not good but they are

not like Edward Cabrera. You know they're sort of 10 to 11, you know a little bit of 13 there but and some 12s but you know that's Edward Cabrera we're talking about like 14, 15, and 16% walk rates, right? And yet they may have similar command. We've got 30 command put on him by Fangraphs, and then Location Plus last year said that he located his four-seam fastball with a 92 Location Plus.

That is 30 command. And so I'm kind of amazed. They must be single, they must be using a single target with the catcher and finding I don't know miss patterns that work or really working on game day game day ideas where like his slider location plus is 99 so maybe you know just just enough sliders when he needs a strike Whatever it is 33% strikeout rate 7% walk right this spring you have my attention when I'll Blanco I

Just look to be playing deep enough leagues where Anybody needs to be considered in those leagues and there's always that possibility There's a little bit more in there and I think Blanco is worth monitoring here in these first few turns. Let's get to some bold predictions. You wrote them up for the athletic, the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. If you don't have a subscription already, we got to start with a team one first. You have the pirates finding their way in to the postseason. Defend yourself, sir.

into the postseason. Defend yourself, sir. I went with a bullet point list, but there's a lot of stuff that I like about this team. It's just, you know, we've talked about Hayes lifting the ball finally. We've talked about O'Neill Cruz. O'Neill Cruz has like three of the top or four of the top 15 tracked bat of all Xlocities this spring.

So he is just really murdering the ball. I know he's got some strikeout rate and platoon issues. Some say he's not a great defender, but with Hayes next to him, I feel like that's a little bit mitigated. I didn't even put this on the list, but Jared Triolo is a big line drive guy. I think he's got like a 30% line drive rate

in the minors in AAA and in the big leagues. That's like iffy, you know, it's really hard to kind of keep your balls in the line drive rates, but it lines up with his good hit tool grades. Jack Swinski struck out 20% of the time this spring. That's like the only thing he doesn't do well. Jared Jones was a top 10 spring plus plus string stuff plus guy and he made the roster. I even like but don't love I'm

not going to say this is like a big bullet point but I like the idea of spending in the sort of six to eight million dollar range you know on the on the free agent market to get guys like Martin Perez and Marco Gonzalez and you know, just even Eric Lauer because they won't block your guys if they come up.

If Quinn Priesters is just exploding onto the scene, you're gonna bring them up. Jared Jones, they didn't block Jared Jones, right? Jared Jones made the roster. So just getting like getting to replacement level in some of those places, I think is a big deal. I see a team that's better, you know, in a lot of ways. And what they are in is also in this interesting spot that like if you're a bad team, you try these

guys as starters for as long as you can. So Luis Ortiz and and Lorenzo Contreras. Those are guys that if you're a bad team, you're just like, there are starters, they're gonna be bad, we're gonna be bad, it's fine. When you see a team that's in this sort of area, take those guys and put them in the bullpen. That means a couple of things. It means they've got something else better coming, Paul Skeens, Jared Jones.

But it also means, hey, we're trying to compete now and Ronzi, you can't keep your fastball shape or velocity all season. So I can't, I can't put you in. You're in the bullpen and maybe he will be a great reliever because maybe he can keep that VELO up as a reliever. And Luis Ortiz, you can't command it enough and you have excellent stuff. Maybe it'll work better in the bullpen. So, you know, they're doing the things they have the things and they're doing the things that like teams that are maturing do and I just wanted to point out last year the Diamondbacks and The Rangers to or at least the Diamondbacks were

Projected for the same amount of wins as the Pirates are projected for right now. Yeah, the Orioles were the other team Orioles That's it 78 wins was their projection the Pirates are projected for right now. Yeah, the Orioles were the other team. Orioles, that's it. 78 wins was their projection, and the Pirates sitting there at 77. I think the interesting thing, when you look at the NL Central, is that the win total projection for the Cardinals, who Fangrass has at 83.4,

and the Pirates at 77.5, it's less than six wins, top to bottom. And the error bars are bigger than that. Right, in most of the divisions, there's a gap of six wins top to bottom and the error bars are bigger than that right and most of the divisions There's a gap of six wins between first and second because the Braves the Phillies Phillies are really good team projected for jeez It's like 13 fewer wins than the Braves the Diamondbacks a good team projected for almost 10 Fewer wins than the Dodgers like that's pretty surprising, right? So that's how tight the NL Central is in particular. Even the AL Central is not clustered quite like that.

It's six wins between the Twins and the Tigers. See if the Twins, Guardians of Tigers, more of a three-team race. Maybe the Royals can get in there. There are about nine games behind the Twins in the projection. Then the White Sox are in bad team land where it's just not happening. They were grouping all the teams in the projection then the White Sox are in bad team land where they're just it's just not happening

They were grouping all the teams in the league and their probabilities of making the playoffs the White Sox the A's The Nationals and the Rockies would be the four teams clearly in the bottom tier, right? Yeah, I'm taking the Pirates out of that You know pirates aren't part of the pirates in there and they're in a long shot here Like they're there like shot that could make it. Reds, Royals, Tigers, you know, right? Yeah, that's fair. I think it's also gonna hinge on what they do with the cluster of prospects they have

that are likely all gonna be at double A to start the year. Bubba Chandler, who had a late season promotion to Altoona last year, Anthony Silametto, and Thomas Harrington, who actually has a rotator cuff strain, so he's gonna be shut down for a few weeks. But some combination of those guys could make an impact later in the year as well, aside from Skeens and Jones

and the names that we know are closer to contributing. So they do have a lot of interesting depth within that group of prospects that could round up a little bit on that pitching. And I do think the position player core is slightly overlooked. Brian Reynolds is one of the most underrated players in the league right now. Oatmeal with honey. Oatmeal with honey.

Just just inside that top 100. So he couldn't be the captain of the oatmeal team, at least not this year. But you're right. You have potential star and Cruz, the growth of Hayes. You can tell yourself a story. I think that's actually a fun, bold prediction that is bold enough, but is kind of realistic when you start to break it down like that. So that's why I wanted to really dig into that one.

So one of these teams, if I could make a less bold prediction, it would be that one of the Reds, Pirates, Tigers, and Royals makes the postseason. That's way less bold, but it's basically, I just picked the Pirates, I did a thing about the Royals too, where it's just like, these are the types of teams where things gel a little bit faster than you think. I don't like to go negative on opening day, but who takes last in the NL Central if you have the Pirates getting a wild card? Don. Oh. Don't, don't even.

Nah. Don't even do this to Barrelman. I'm not gonna say it. Don't do it to Barrelman, man. He deserves better. I won't say it out loud, but I'm thinking it. I'm so disappointed in you right now. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Fine, let's talk about something we both like. Let's talk about Sean Murphy. Yeah. The bold prediction about Sean Murphy. Yeah. The bold prediction that Sean Murphy will be the best catcher in baseball. I love this call. I love it. I think he's gonna play more than he did last year.

Like you already have the core skills, both as a hitter and as a defensive catcher to be the position leader in war. I think he's absolutely capable of that if the playing time jumps up closer to the upper echelon of catchers again. Playing time is iffy because they have a really, really good backup. And that's what happened last year was I think there were some injuries and then people said the Georgia Heat, which I don't know, dude.

I think most baseball players who've spent their entire lives every summer out in the heat playing baseball are not bothered by the heat. That's sort of my guess. But the injury one I get, and that could happen anytime, it happens to catchers. And so I think a lot of in terms of like recency bias, or if you're a Braves fan, you might remember a lot of late last season when he was almost benched for TDA, right? Traz Darnoe was playing more than Sean Murphy was. Yeah, but TDA had a 685 OPS last season.

It was the second time in the last three seasons he's been under 700, and he's 35 with a ton of injuries, including multiple concussions on his resume. He's at the point in his career, you don't want to push him into the lineup any more than you have to. He's a 250 plate appearance player, if not a little less at this stage,

on that team especially. And then just the core skills for Sean Murphy are great. And I introduced a stat that Ben Clemens put together, which has some whimsy to it. It's whomps per whiff. Anybody who listens to Rates and Barrels knows about barrels and he put it he put barrels up against swinging strikes. It's smart and it apparently is more predictive than WRC plus which is interesting because Sam Murphy still had a 129 WRC plus last year and was a four win player. So, you know, he was really good last year

and yet he was top 10 in this whomps for whiff thing. So, you know, you're talking about a guy who barreled at 16% of the time. We just said Will Smith was a really good player and Sean Murphy does everything Will Smith does and in a lot of places better. You know, I think that Sean Murphy is sort of a ascendant. Another thing with last year is it was his first year with a new team. You know, this year I think that Sean Murphy is sort of an ascendant. Another thing with last year is it was

his first year with a new team. This year I think he's going to be an unquestioned leader in that clubhouse and on that team because the catcher is a normal place to look. And he is one of the most fastidious everyday planner types. He works really hard at the calling, the framing, all that bit, and yet is also just a really, really excellent hitter. So I could see all this coming together this year. Okay, I like that call. There's one more I wanna talk about,

there's 10 in the article, but we'll cap it at three for the purposes of the show. Vlad Jr. is the AL MVP. And you wrote this, like this wouldn't have been bold in the past, but I think it has become bold over time. I think the ceiling expectations for Vlad Jr. have come down a little bit. I think because he had two seasons since 2021

where he didn't play on that MVP level, people are now penciling him in as a very good hitter, but one that won't be in the running for an award like that. So why will 2024 be different? Because I think there's the version of Vlad Jr. that the projections will sell you based on his age and past performance.

That is fantastic. And then there's just the more recent version of what we've seen, is 26 32 homers the last two seasons 264 274 average good counting stats but not necessarily that that superstar sort of level the projection thing was interesting so I reached out to Derek Cardy and said you know like can you tell me what you projected him how many homers you projected for for the last few years and I was like I'm not I'm not like Derek I like Derek, I'm not gonna, I love you, I love the bat. I'm not, I'm not making fun of the bat. Like I just, this is an interesting one because he keeps getting

projected for more homers than he hits, right? So in 2022, it projected him for 42 homers and he hit 32. And then it comes off of that and it projects him for 35 homers the next year and he hits 26 So like his projection like no, no, he's gonna do this. He's gonna do this And then what Vlad does is like no, I'm not gonna do it So I think it is fair to kind of I think that's what the market is doing I mean like to be to be honest, like if you look at at NFC or ADP, you know

If you look at where he's being drafted and stuff, like he usually is a value where he's drafted according to projections. But the, I think the market is saying, Hey, you fooled me twice. You know, I'm not going to do this again. The one thing that under the hood that has actually changed is his launch angle. He has just slowly pushed his launch angle up over time. The best period for launching the ball in his career has been this spring plus the last two or three months of last season. That's a big part of it.

I mean, we've been staring at Vlad Aguilera saying, yeah, you can hit the ball 118, got it. Can you hit the ball in the air? And I see this happening a little bit from the home run derby. Remember Soto hits the ball on the ground a lot. And I see this happening a little bit from the home run derby. Remember Soto hits the ball on the ground a lot. Soto hits like 70% of his pulled balls on the ground.

And so he went to the home run derby and this is, I'm, hey, I'm wandering in a narrative. I've wandered past the data, I'm into narrative. But Soto like went to the home run derby and started lifting it and had one of his better power seasons, power half seasons after the home run derby and started lifting it and had one of his better power seasons, power half seasons after the home run derby that year. I could see something a little bit, because I was watching Vlad in the home run derby and be like, you're telling me this guy can't launch the ball?

I think he has the record for either number of homers in an entire derby or a number of homers in a round. Either way, yeah. When you watch it, you know that there is a, and I realize it's more like BP BP of course being in the home run Derby, but there is a ability to Repeatedly launch the ball in the way you want him to so how well does that translate to how he's pitched in games?

And how much of it is? Adjusting and not necessarily hitting pitches. He can hit that's been my my adjusting and not necessarily hitting pitches he can hit. That's been my my open ended question with Vlad for the last two seasons is, is he getting to pitches that, yes, he can hit and hit the opposite way for a single instead of possibly working the count a little bit more and getting into a situation where he's going to get something he's going to lift and drive. Is that the actual core problem or is it attack angle and swing or a combination of both? Like you could tweak even one of those things

and get a better result. You'll get both answers from different people. Like you've talked to a hitting coach, they will talk about an attack angle probably for him. But you know, if you just look at what he can do and if you look at what he did in that home run derby, he has a night door zone up and in. that's where he can lift the ball best. And so it could be just a question of approach.

Maybe just spit on more pitches that are low in, in the zone and risk getting into two strike counts in order to get another mistake up and in, you know, I was looking at like improbable pitches for the, for the craft with, with Nick. And you know, I saw Devin Williams has thrown three high and tight super changeups, whatever that thing is, screw balls, airbenders. He's through three high and tight airbenders to righties last year.

All of them were set up low and away. So if you're Vladdy facing, you know, you're basically waiting for mistakes that are up, you know? And I think he has such a good hit tool that he says, well, they're really trying to throw me down. They're really trying to throw me low and away and down because they know my nitrozone is up. Well, maybe risk a couple called strikes to get another chance at a ball that's up more than the pitcher wants. That's easier to change than it is to change his entire attack angle. Attack angle to me is a little bit like trying to change a pitcher's slot. It's going to take hard work. You've swung that way for a while, you know, and you've had success.

You like nearly won an MVP that way, you know. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So maybe you could just kind of shave away at the approach and just be like, hey, just wait a little bit more for that pitch up. Yeah, and we're still talking about a guy who's 25. He turned 25 12 days ago. So there could be three or four seasons that look a lot more like that first peak season in 2021.

That's entirely possible for Vlad Jr. So that's a fun pick as well. And I think as you wrote, the focus is on the Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, like the guys that have a little more year to year consistency. That's where most people's eyes are are fixed when we're looking for possible MVP winners. He's not a top five odds guy. And in fact, I looked at places where he wasn't a top ten odds guy for American League MVP. Yeah. So you want to. last year pick for AL MVP was Corey Seeger

second place You were right by process And if you if you read these the process is often just because I want them to be educational in some way and informative and entertaining the process is to is to try to highlight different stats. You know, and try to, I just basically troll through different leader boards and find interesting names and then make a bold prediction. Christopher Morel is top 50 in Seeger, that's surprising.

And he's also, you know, fifth best in max exit velocity among 25 and unders. Well, that's a pretty good combo. Let me just make him an all-star you know boom bull prediction all he has to do is hit enough to stay in the lineup despite his defense or get better defensively somewhere and then there's a couple ways he writes either he gets a little bit better defensively or he hits so much that they're just like yeah it doesn't

matter we'll just let it happen yeah But yeah, check out Eno's bold predictions piece up now at the athletic. Eno, let's talk about the biggest draft, like the one that your whole season kind of revolves around just because of what is at stake in it. You're in the NFBC main event this year. I'm not playing in it. I'm not playing in the equivalent auction this year either.

Simple reason, money is tight. That's the whole story for me. And I have a co-manager partially because money, it's a tough one. It's like, what is it, like a $1,400 entry or something? It's like $1,750 I think is what the final number was. $1,500 for the big auction. I didn't wanna say it.

I didn't wanna say it out loud. I'm too much of a control freak for the auction, especially to share the auction. And I'm better at auctions than snakes. So anyway, those are my reasons. I'm in some smaller stuff, but nothing like that this year. But what I've noticed over the years,

I played in the NFBC main event for several years back in the RotoWire days. I usually had a co-manager to do it too then, and it certainly helps to have the extra set of eyes, given how important every decision is, making sure you don't miss on lineup changes, going through the process, making sure you feel really good about the strategy,

having that extra voice that you trust, especially if you get into a situation where there's a run on something, your plan starts to unravel, it's a little easier to untangle it with another sharp mind working with you. So I highly recommend co-managers once you're you're into the high stakes world. Now these drafts are different. The biggest thing up top that you'll see if you compare NFBC main event ADPs to the rest of the NFVC's events and there's a lot of different league sizes and formats you're going to see starting pitching early on get pushed up a lot and this year in particular we also saw relievers get

jumped up a lot and I think it's a little bit jarring if you haven't played in it before and you don't really expect it because you're seeing names that are going a half round or a round or even more than that above their usual recent spots. So I'm just curious, as you've played in this for a couple of years now, how much do you tailor your strategy to knowing that's coming?

Like do you lean into it and say, it's okay, we're gonna build a strategy around it, or do you say, it's okay, we're going to build a strategy around it? Or do you say, I think the group doing this might be as sharp as they are, leaving an advantage to playing it a little bit differently and not being as aggressive with pitching for this particular contest? Yeah, we made a plan. Basically, it was close to a hard punt of starting pitchers because we thought those starting pitchers had so much inflation and that there were so many questions after the top five. I think it's really, there's a top five starting pitchers and then the questions start.

I mean, I have Yamamoto in my top 10 and you're going to tell me there's no questions there. You know what I mean? Like Tyler Glass knows, like I think I have 10th or 11th, like the questions start quickly. And so, you know, we thought let's do so we made a plan together. It was to do one starting pitcher in the first 12 rounds. That was the plan. How's it go? Every plan is good to get punched in the mouth. Yeah, they got some Mike Tyson. Yeah, so we actually it was a little bit different.

I don't know what the expression is, but George Kirby fell in our laps. Yeah, I don't know if there's an expression for that. It's just a thing that happens. We couldn't, we were, we picked five in the first round. We didn't expect Kirby to be there coming back. So we were going to take Rafael Devers. And so we knew we had the choice between Betts and Julio Rodriguez. Julio was taken before us, so we took Betz. We took Betz

over Carroll. Just felt like Betz was super, super safe and would allow us some positional flexibility now with short second and outfield. That might be fun. That might be useful to us down in the draft later. And so we were expecting to take Devers on the way back. We took Kirby instead. And then there was the question, do we change what we're going to do and just have Kirby bear only pitch? Or do we take this unexpected boon and add to it? You know, take a strength and add to it. And what we ended up doing was taking Joe Ryan in the fourth to hopefully give us a good number two and then sticking with the plan after that. So we got Bettson Simeon along with Kirby Hader and Ryan the first five.

That actually looks like a pretty milk toast approach for the main event. Don't you think? Yeah. Two hitters, don't you think? Yeah. Two hitters, two pitchers and a closer. It's a pretty common start, I think. Yeah. It wasn't common. What we did next was not common.

And this is what we did next. And that's the fun part. This is where we were like, this is what we're gonna do that's different than everybody else. And nobody else did what we did. We took six straight bats and we took eight of the next nine were bats.

So we went William Contreras, Xander Bogart, Zach Gelof, Cabrion Hayes, Cedric Mullins, Chas McCormick, Aaron Savalli, Reese Hoskins, Tyler O'Neill. And what we did was we basically said, we think the blob begins earlier than you do. People are taking these Merrill Kelly's and Shane Bieber's and Carlos Rodones and Justin Steele's

and we're like, those are good pitchers, but we are creating a position player core that is across all of our positions and we think we won't touch them all year. We wanna get as many of those bats. We wanna have a position player core of 10 position players we don't touch. And then we'll be working the wire hard around that 10

and fitting guys in. And we want to leave some openings. Because last year we wanted to bid on Yanir Diaz, but we couldn't because we had two good catchers. So the way that we do this, we set this up so that we have basically one at every position that we're really strong about and we're flexible when it comes to what comes down the pipe. Then of course, when you do that, you create the need for the yellow brick road. And on NFC, pitchers are yellow. So

I love this because so we did this thing and I don't know if people notice in the room or they're just doing their own thing or whatever. Guess what our next picks were Kenta Maeda, Louis Varlin, Seth Lugo, Trevor Rogers, Shane Baas, Ty France, Tanner Hauck, Reynaldo Lopez, Daniel Hudson, Trevor McGill, Edward Cabrera and Brock Stewart. We just went yellow. And what we're trying to do there is we're trying to stay out of streamers.

We think all of these players are players you want to have on your roster as options. You might put them on your bench, or you might put them in your lineup, but you're not going to drop them totally. Daniel Hudson's the one we just bought him for the one win. We just bought him for one win. He's going to be ourpper That's all we did was Daniel Hudson. Give us a win Thank you. Bye because we could do that in retrospect Daniel Hudson got a win in Seoul in NFC You get credit for that which is kind of crazy, but we bought that win

We're we're 10th overall by the way. Hey because we had bets and Bogarts and Daniel Hudson's and Bogarts and Daniel Hudson. So we're gonna win it baby. But the idea was that these, all these pitchers are also all good options for week one. So for week one, we have seven starters and we have Brock Stewart and Josh Hader

or Trevor McGill and Josh Hader. And we knew we had seven good starts for week one. Week two, we'll see. we had seven good starts for week one. Week two, we'll see. Well, Joe Ryan is particularly interesting because he fits into that cluster of the pitchers just go earlier in this particular event, right? You're talking about a guy that carried an ADP

that was mostly around pick 90 for the first five months of draft season, had a little bit of a bump in the second half of March into the 80 range and then went and picked 65 in the mains. Like just a jump right there. And that's exactly where we got him, 65. Yeah, we saw it with Closers. So I mentioned Evan Phillips was probably the biggest riser

among Closers along with Andres Munoz. I think that was accelerated further by the injuries to Devin Williams, Joanne Duran, Jordan Romano all of that created this extra push that there was gonna be a lift anyway but instead of being 20 picks it was a lot more than that even compared to what we saw a month or so ago for those guys. Yeah you know one thing that I'm proud of is even if we had like a sort of milk toast could have been anybody's board top,

we did something that nobody else did. And that allowed us, you know, when we were doing the yellow brick road, we were like, oh yeah, Louis Varland, yeah, yeah, Trevor Raj. And we did a little of that, that yo-yo that I've been talking about, where you pair Louis Varland with Kenta Maeda,

you pair Seth Lugo with Shane Baaz. So we were kind of like pair floor with ceiling, floor ceiling, floor ceiling, floor ceiling. And it was really fun in that in that moment. Aaron Savalli was the one where I was like pounding the table a little bit. We cannot let Aaron Savalli go past us, you know. They came in Ryan Pepeo were right there. So Savali Hoskins O'Neal was a big influence from my side where I was like, I want those 30 homers from Hoskins, you know, I want to take a shot at a healthy O'Neal. He's not that healthy now. And my co-manager was like, he's not healthy now. And I'm like, he's still in line up at DH, baby. That's different.

He's not on the IEL. When your sheet, in terms of the ADP risers, you'll see a real obvious collection of guys that are just the closers all go up around because the closers are hurt. But there's some other interesting ones. O'Neill Cruz jumped a whole round, you know, when the mains started coming up.

And I think that's just, you know, I think there's a little bit of the like, well, I'm not gonna take Ellie. That's a bad deal. I'll take O'Neill later, you know. You know, Blake Snell went up a whole round, just lack of uncertainty. You know, also the difference between Blake Snell went up a whole round, just lack of uncertainty. Also the difference between Blake Snell signing in New York versus signing in San Francisco I think is probably worth about a

round. Wyatt Langford went up almost three rounds because he made the team. Dylan Cease went up. Do you think that Dylan Cease going from the White Sox to the Padres should have gone up a round and a half? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's a good park and a better team. Yeah, higher higher win probability and I just think a safer floor on the ratios, even though we know with the walks the whip could be a little bit of a problem for Dylan Cease. But I agree with that kind of bump on him. The guys that were dropping right you pitching coming up, which hitters come down old and boring typically Paul Gulch bit was down like 20 picks in the mains compared to where he was going I thought that was

a pretty good opportunity for anybody that was looking at him but then Kyle Schwabr was another big faller that I just can't get on board with man I just haven't been building teams with Schwabr in them he is just hard he's an over draft season player for me I think I've built 12 teams this year and he's not on any of them. It's one of those things where a projection system is just gonna look at the value of the player and they're not going to look at how difficult they are to build around.

Kyle Schwaber is a great punt batting average guy. You could almost decide to do the punt batting average because you know that opens up Kyle Schwaber for you. And it opens up a bunch of players, honestly. But, I don't know. Like as much as, one reason I'm proud of this main event for us is that we tried something that is basically punting.

And I think that the nice thing about punting is it's so hard to be good at everything. That punting allows you to gain advantages in other places. It's just so hard to do when you're in the room. Like you've been wired to try and build a nice well-rounded team. And then you're like, nope, I'm just gonna build a team that has a 225 batting average.

You're like, how am I gonna win with this? Well, yeah, the overall component, any contest with an overall prize, like completely committing to a punt is basically saying I'm. Could I win the $200,000? Like you could. If I have 220 batting average. But you have to crush everything else.

And I think that puts a lot of pressure on everything else going right. That a lot of people are unwilling to take that risk. I think it's more of the, which category am I going to be 50 or 60 percentile in and then which ones are going to be my more dominant ones and that's where steals or saves becomes the one that you might be a little lighter and say well I know I'm lighter in that category coming out of the draft I'll take my shots in early season fab if I don't find the category

by a certain point in the season then I'll just be content and not continue pushing resources at it, right? There's a few ways you can soft punt or just plan to be weaker in a category without giving it away. That's the wording that I was looking for. I was gonna say soft punt. And I think the nice thing about soft punt is

we had this during COVID, we had this competition, what was it called? The greatest team of all time? Project GOAT. Project GOAT, that's right. And the person that won it and the people that were nearest the top, I forget who the pitcher was. It was some reliever that got like 12 or 15 wins along with like 25 saves. And it was not the most, it was like kind of an innocuous season. I mean, it's not, it wasn't one that you're like,

oh, that's one for the ages, but all the winners had him. And the reason was that was their only closer. And in an overall, and so this is important for our current contest that we have, it's on the Discord, but you know, it's shut down now. But a lot of you guys joined it.

I did a soft punt in a similar way for that one because we have, what do we have, like 1200 people playing it? Yeah, a lot of entries. If you're up against 1200 people, a full punt means you get a zero in that category. But a soft punt could mean 300. It could mean all those points of where all the people did a hard punt. So my soft punt strategy, and that one was James MacArthur. I had one reliever.

I spent $1 on relief and I just want, if James MacArthur can get me five saves, heck, if he can get me two, I'm gonna jump above. If he can get me to I'm gonna jump above a lot of people. So I think the soft punt is the way to go you get off of the ground of the full punt. And so in this one, the soft punt was second catcher Patrick Bailey is our second catcher. I got him in the third to last round. Our soft punt is starting pitching, really, honestly. Like, we have those two at the top and then we waited forever.

And our soft punt is second reliever. Because we have Tyler Magill and Brock Stewart and it's just like, those were like, waiver wire pickup type players, you know. It's like, who you might have picked up in week one. And one of the reasons I like that one a lot is I feel good about Josh Hader. And then I feel like I can get another closer on the wire if you give me six months, you know, hopefully two months or something, you know, maybe even Meg Gill or Stewart, you know, so like, I think you need to I think you do need to find places where you're going

to soft punt. And those were the places we identified also I would say corner infield is a soft punt for us I would love Ty France we've got him JD Davis and Ty France are like corner infield util we feel like if somebody popped up on the wire this week we could pick him up you know I mean like we could it wouldn't matter we'd fit him somewhere even if it's like Yannier Diaz and we want to keep Patrick Bailey, we could put him at UTIL for a little bit and decide later. Having that roster flexibility built in is super helpful because you don't know where the best pickups

are going to come from. This is the best hitter. If I can't fit that hitter in, someone else is probably gonna get them because I'm not gonna bid enough or I'm gonna bid up and then I gotta have someone who's too good on the bench. That's not a situation you want either. I did play an online championship,

where I had to think, okay, how do I build this team in a way that differentiates itself from the pool? I did it really early. I did the thing where I waited on pitching too, but I decided to go with Austin Riley and Raphael Devers in rounds two and three. It was a combination that I didn't expect to draft.

Someone there is cursing your name. Somebody who wanted a good third baseman is cursing your name. But I thought about it, I said, you know, of all the teams that are in this contest, like who else put those two guys together? You very rarely take two corners in the first three picks and two with the same eligibility.

I mean, that's pretty unusual. Keith Law picked Riley for MVP. The problem with MVPs on those teams, unless you do what Acuna just did, it's just like you get overshadowed by the other guys in that lineup. That's why it's so hard to pick a Braves player or a Dodgers player to win the MVP.

That's the problem I have in trying to decide on who it's going to be. But Austin Riley, I've noticed all draft season for as early as he goes and as good as he is, he doesn't get discussed all that much. But yeah, we'll dig into some more strategy related things, of course, at various points. And the early part of the season, as we've said for a few weeks, a very difficult time to talk about baseball only because you're looking at tiny sample sizes.

So we'll talk about what matters in those samples next week, what actually moves the needle in these early days of the season. We have regular predictions, the non-bold variety coming on Friday on the live stream with Trevor May, one o'clock Eastern on our YouTube page. Change-ups, change-ups, change-ups. And change-ups, which are fading a little bit. They're not as popular as they used to be and they are fading. They're usually fading, literally. But I still love change-ups. A really good change-up, I still enjoy it. So beautiful. Yeah, so we got some nice clips lined up for the live stream on Friday.

But that's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Enjoy opening day, we're back with you Friday. Thanks for listening.