Rates & Barrels - Salary Cap Draft Strategy + LABR Weekend Review

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Eno and DVR take a quick break from the Position Previews series to discuss Salary Cap Draft strategy in the wake of their AL- and NL-only LABR experience over the weekend.  Rundown - Choosing a Path: Stars & Scrubs v. Balanced Builds - Limited Pre-Determined Targets - When to Consider Overpaying For a Player Early - Eno's AL Pitching Build - Position Depth Is Key! - The Downside of a Cheap Infield - Our LABR Mid-Draft Missteps - Staying Organized Amidst Chaos - Stephen Strasburg: Forgotten Ace or Former Ace? - Mulligan Considerations Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, March 7th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we take a quick break from our position preview series and talk about salary cap drafts or auctions as they were formerly known. We just had AL and NL labor over the weekend that we were participating in.

There was a mixed event as well that was on Saturday. So we figured it'd be a good time to take a look back at different ways you could execute strategies in this format. And even if you don't play in a salary cap draft or an auction, I think this will still be insightful because we'll analyze some players along the way. We'll talk about roster construction in a way that hopefully is helpful in a variety of different formats.

You know, before we get rolling, how are things going for you on this Monday? It's good. I saw the Batman this weekend. The Batman. Yeah, it Batman this weekend. The Batman. Yeah, it's very beautiful. Very beautiful. Very long. Very long.

I was just thinking that, you know, if we get the worst of the outcomes with a longer lockout, we're going to have to come up with something else to talk about. I can't just keep it afloat with multiple episodes per week talking about a season that will begin later indefinitely, right? At some point, we have to get into movie reviews or pickleball tips or food or all of the above.

Obviously, beer could be a crutch for us. A sandwich episode, a beer episode, a pickleball episode. Yeah. a beer episode, a pickleball episode. Yeah, so if there is anything in particular that's not baseball that you think we should talk about or you'd at least enjoy hearing us talk about, maybe send us a tweet or an email and say, this would actually be a fun episode, non-baseball related, because honestly, I would like to have a few ideas stockpiled

given the current state of things. But fortunately, we still have some position previews to get to. We'll pick up on that series again later this week and plenty of time to get everything done. And even though it wasn't in person, which is always the best part of any draft, regardless of format, just seeing friends. We didn't get to do that again this year. It is fun to go through the process of playing against people you're familiar with and trying some new things, which I did. I think we both did, though. From an auction strategy perspective, I think there's really two broad approaches that people have.

There's stars and scrubs, and then there's a balanced approach. But even within each of those umbrellas, there's a lot of different things you could do that would actually shape what your final roster looks like i almost feel like those are just the beginning of several other strategies so i'm just curious when you're in a format like this where you can try and execute anything you want left to your own devices what is your optimal build when the entire player pool gets opened up to you the way that it does in an auction situation yeah i changed a little bit this year normally what i do is try to get the most affordable first round pick type talent you know take the guy that actually looks like the values of my sheet, take the $30

guy, take the $31 guy that actually looks right by my sheet instead of paying all the way to $40 for a star because my sheet very rarely has a $40 player in it. And so what I normally end up doing is like trying to load up on second, third, and back-end first-round types rather than buy at the front of the first round, if that makes sense. Instead of buying a top three player, I'm trying to get the 10th best player and the 12th best player and the 13th. You know what I'm saying? I'm trying to make that trade off. make that trade off and then I usually try to leave like two dollars for each budget spot in the back end instead of one dollar because I don't like one dollar players normally but something has changed a little bit there's more and more one dollar players that I find acceptable not

catchers one dollar catchers are the worst deal in in auction, unless you're in a mixed league. In a mixed league, maybe $1 catchers are fine, but in a monolig, a $1 catcher is probably not going to play. And so this year, I have more $1 players than I ever had, and I paid more for a player than I've ever played before. I paid $38 for Kyle Tucker, and I have three $1 players in Josh Naylor, Luis Gil, and Justin Dunn.

I'm just trying to change things up, man. I've been in this league too long. I haven't won it yet, and I'm tired of watching the best players go by just because I didn't want to put the extra dollar on them, and they didn't look right in my sheet. Yeah, it's one of the most difficult things about being in a salary cap draft is understanding when you should push extra dollars in and when you should be strict to your values. And

I'm not sure there's an easy way to learn that without going through the process a few times, and that's often going to lead you to some builds that you're not perfectly happy with. Even if you do well, you're going to find mistakes. I tried a more balanced build. I didn't have as many predetermined targets going into NL labor this weekend as I normally do. Ordinarily, I'll have three or four players or types of players, usually higher priced guys. And I say, I'm going to get a combination of these players. And I go out and do it within the first 30 minutes. And then I'm sitting there for two hours waiting for most of

the mid-tier players to go. And then I start to get back in once the $8, $9, $10 players start coming up a little bit later on. And I've had success playing that way, and I know you can win that way, but I think the people I see who win more consistently, especially in these deeper leagues, or the teams that at least are finishing near the top when they don't win, they're building more balanced teams. And I felt like looking at the player pool this year, so much of our focus has been

on closers and getting saves. And obviously we've kind of emerged from draft and hold season. Now we're moving into the part of the year where we're getting into drafts with our in-season moves. So I'm curious to see how people play it differently with the benefit of getting weekly waiver runs and having chances to make trades in a lot of leagues, if that's going to ease some of the pressure and lower the prices on closers. What I noticed, though, when I looked at the NL pool, and I really kind of had this stand out to me when you were doing the AL auction on Friday night, in the AL, the top-end closers, there's a cluster of them. You have Ryan Presley and Rysel Iglesias, and you have this

group of like three to four other guys that are all pretty close in value. In the NL, it's Josh Hader, and then a big drop before you get to Edwin Diaz and Giovanni Gallegos, and some guys that are good from a skills perspective, but I think are a lot more volatile than you'd like them to be for guys that people are going to spend $17, $18, $19 on potentially. So the only predetermined target I had for this year was Josh Hader. And even at a certain point, if he got up above the number he went for, I was probably out. I was at 25. If someone said 26, I was probably walking away and doing something different.

But all of this is to say that I think it's almost a strategy that you have to choose the stars and scrubs versus balanced. It's a strategy to choose based on what's happening early. And what happened early in the case of the NL was that people were overspending on players that I thought should be going for 25 to 30. A lot of those players were going for 30 to 35. So because that happened, that pushed me on to the more balanced track. Whereas if I had bought a player to in the 25 to $30 range, I might've had a build that was more like what I've done in the past, right? So I do think you have to have a lot more flexibility in this format than you do in a typical snake draft,

lot more flexibility in this format than you do in a typical snake draft even though you've got a almost full group of players that you can choose from at any given time yeah the the difficult thing is and i'm not sure that any auction calculator approach will actually capture what happens in the room i think every calculator i've used, and I've used different ones, the number that it spits out for two things will not line up with what happens in your draft. The two things are top five bats and closers. I've never seen an auction calculator nail what those players go for in the auction. So that's where you're going to make your biggest decision, I think, in an auction, right? It's going to be, what do I do about closers? And what do I do about the top five players? Do I say, no thanks, all the top five players are going for $5 over the values.

I'm out on that. I want to keep my $5 for later because I can find a lot of value out of it later. And so I'll just get a second round pick, you know, I'll just get a couple $20 guys. Like you got Trent Grisham and, uh, who was your other $20 outfielder? Christian Yelich.

Yelich. And then Jesse Winker also. Yeah. So you're, I'm going to spread the love instead of going for the top ones. Um, that's defensible. Uh,

but I do think it leads to sometimes having too much money at the end, which is specifically what happened for you. But I just mean, in different levels, like I've, I've bought, like $10 Kevin Kiermaier's in the past, because I had too much money near the end. And, and I waited too long. And maybe that's only two or $3 over what I should have done. But you know, that's that meant2 or $3 over what I should have done, but that meant I had too much money. I quote-unquote left money on the table. What I tried to do differently this time was go get the guy I wanted.

So I got Kyle Tucker for $38. The thing that made me hurt was Mike Trout went for $30. So I could have gotten Mike Trout for $31 and had $7 more to move around my team however uh i think tucker is going to steal more bases um and that's another thing that i that i'm not sure the auction calculator is is valuing the same way as the market because stolen bases uh yes the auction calculator looks at the scarcity within the player pool and says okay this is this is worth this is worth this and you know i think the auction calculator understands

statistical scarcity uh in the categories but then there's also just what the market does which is pay more for stolen bases than the auction calculator says you know so you have to make your decision there and so what i what i when i saw the difference between tucker and trout and i just said i think tucker's gonna steal more bases he's a young guy like he barrels the ball he makes contact he has really good plate discipline everything's lined up he could have a monster season the floor is really high there's going to be more steals than trout i just went and got him you know i paid 38 it's probably it's more than was on my sheet. It's a mistake,

quote unquote. But this time, instead of being super disciplined and just staying on my values, and I think I would have ended up with... I wouldn't have even ended up with Luis Robert because he went over my number. I think if I had been really disciplined with my numbers, my number one player might have been like George Springer for 26 yeah I I've never built a team this way before in a league like this so the the results of a balanced team look so different because you're used to playing in mixed leagues where you have early round picks and you've got guys that would carry a 30 plus dollar evaluation multiple players like that and you've got guys that would carry a 30 plus dollar evaluation multiple players like that and you've got multiple high 20 guys in some of those builds depending on where you're

drafting and when you look down and you say i don't have anybody because the one dollar mixed league player is pretty good is like more way more decent yeah a one dollar mixed league player might go for eight to ten dollars in in nl or al only like Like Kyle Lewis. Kyle Lewis, maybe close to a $1 pick in mixed. He was six in ours. Willie Calhoun was seven. I think that's a good sort of jump. So yes, these values don't translate particularly well to the broader player pool.

But again, I think we can make this sort of helpful in just the sense of how we're thinking about solving the roster construction problem. If you're watching us on YouTube, we do have the screen up of the auction results. We'll look at the AL side from Eno's draft first. And if you have any questions, of course, as always, ask in the comments, fire us an email. We're happy to try and help with this because I know this is a format that more and more people are trying to play. And the learning curve is fairly steep, but it's a lot of fun to actually have this opportunity to play this way too.

You said you started off with Kyle Tucker, at least from a cost standpoint, at 38. I mean, I think what you ran into is a common problem. So if you see the room is either at or above projected values consistently for the first 20 or 30 minutes, when you're talking mostly about the very best players in the pool, you have to decide right away, okay, there's going to be some value late. Some of the players that I thought were going to go for $3 to $4, they're now $1 to $2 players. So you make that small adjustment. And you also have to decide, am I going to pay the extra couple of dollars for at least one player? I think if you're playing in a mixed league, aggressive spending is going to be even more common than it is in a league like this, than in a mono league. And I think you're going to be less likely to get punished

for aggressive spending. I think if you follow the room and you end up with one player at the top, that's two or $3 above your number, or maybe even a little bit more, I don't think it's going to hurt you that badly because you don't want to have a situation where there's no one to spend money on later. And that can happen in leagues this deep. It doesn't happen in mixed leagues. There's always going to be a good enough player in a mixed league to fill out the bottom of your roster. So if you had seven or eight $1 players in a mixed league, you're going to be fine. If you have seven or eight $1 players in an AL or NL only league, there's a very good chance you're going to come up light on playing time

and you're going to have a lot of problems all season as a result. Yeah, yeah. $1 bats are still, like, I'm happy with mine, Josh Naylor, but I wouldn't want more because the other $1 bats are Oscar Mercado, Jock Peterson, who isn't even signed yet. Who are some other $1? It's not good. Edward Olivares, who's being optioned as we speak.

Daz Cameron is a $1 player. player like one dollar bats are not a good deal and i can see that a lot of people here avoided the one dollar bat entirely like there's that i think those i think i just gave you the whole list of ramon urias who i i wanted for two but i didn't have the money anymore so yeah very very few few $1 bats are even worth rostering. So I think there's more $1 arms. And so my thinking process was, I'm going to find a $1 outfielder that I think will play. That's my Josh Naylor.

There are more values in the back end of the outfield pool. So I'm going to take one ace outfielder in Kyle Tucker, and then I'm going to spend the rest of my money on mid-round infielders and then come back and finish the outfield with Kepler, Brandon Marsh, Kyle Lewis, Chad Pinder, Josh Naylor. And I want to highlight the outfield strategy because I think there's a few things going on there. Outfielders, we were talking off air about how, you know,

let's say you're a corner infielder in a deep league situation. You're a corner infielder, but you might not be able to play third base that well. If you're a corner outfielder, I think you can play left and right, especially in a pinch. And it seems less differentiated than the infield stuff. I just believe that fourth outfielders in baseball play more often. If that's true, that means there's a whole extra crew of players that's more valuable in the outfield situation than the infield.

I wanted to make also the argument for Brandon Marsh who, uh, barreled the ball really well in a short amount of time and stole bases. Um, the, the strikeout rate is a question mark, but he's had better strikeout rates in the past. I think Brandon Marsh, uh, has a better floor than Joe Adele and may get the first shot at most of the regular playing time. So I'm really big on Brandon Marsh, actually. Kyle Lewis barreled the ball really well, and the only question is health. And then Chad Pinder barreled the ball really well and is on the A's,

who are more likely to let players go than to add more players, I think. So I feel like Chad Pinder is a great late round American only American league only situation. And then Josh Naylor is just a bet that maybe he can take the first base job from Bobby Bradley who, who can't who can't make contact. So that was the thinking there. And mostly you'll, you'll see almost everywhere that barrels are my bias.

You know, Hunter Dozier, I got for corner infield. Nathan Lowe I got for first base. These are all guys who barrel the ball really well. Yeah, pretty consistently a part of the offense that you built. You get the German influence in there with Max Kepler, too, who's just a weird player.

The more you look at him, I mean, he doesn't strike out much, but he's a batting average liability has some power has some speed doesn't seem like he's going to lose his job so i think he'll end up being a pretty undervalued player in deeper leagues like this and you know at 15 maybe you end up getting 18 or 20 worth of value maybe you just break even but you need some guys like that i think he's very stable also format like this he really fit my general strategy if you've been listening my general strategy is to get my stolen bases uh a little at a time and there was some feedback uh on twitter that um that i wouldn't have enough stolen bases and i and i hear it because uh my major stolen base threat is Tucker and maybe Marsh if he gets the full role and then Ahmed

Rosario so you're like dude you do your light on steals however Nate Lowe stole eight bases he can steal five to ten Nick Solak stole five bases he can steal five to ten Juan Mankata is not going to be a zero there Jose Altuve is not going to be a zero there. Jose Altuve is not going to be a zero there. Hunter Dozier is not a zero. So I basically did the not a zero strategy. And Kepler fit because I think he actually will steal 10 plus. And that's what I needed. So when I added up, I get sort of around 80 to 85 steals. And I have a gentleman's agreement over some adult sodas about whether or not I hit 80 steals.

But it is kind of hard when you look at it you're like you're not gonna you have no steals guys but i i i think i got a handful at a time and 80 is enough to stay uh in the middle of pack in stolen bases in the model league um and uh maybe i can trade for or find some steals on the waiver wire as the season progresses. Also, I have Steven Kwan in reserves as sort of a handcuff to Josh Naylor, and he might steal some bases. Just trying to get just enough. The one big thing that you also have to do if you're in a monolig like this is just choose your warts, like where your warts are going to be.

You're not going to build the perfect team, so you're going to have to choose some places where you're just going to be you can't you're not going to build the perfect team so you're going to have to choose some places where you're just you're going to be like maybe it works out here yeah i mean i think this is a good squad that you put together i i think the the fact that you just don't have weakness in that group of hitters i think josh nailer is worth more than a dollar in a format like this that's probably just auction dynamics people didn't have anything left to spend by the time that Naylor came around. That's really encouraging. I think with pitching, for you to not spend up at the very top of the pool

makes a lot of sense. There was a surprising buy that Ian Kahn got Robbie Ray for $21. I think that was one of the few times all night where someone got a bargain, especially with a player over 20 dollars it felt like pricing in this room was very tight right up to the projection if not a tick above almost on every single player i felt like i had to basically go a dollar over my projection to get any player yeah because i was doing the the commentary with jeff Erickson and Eric Carabelle for the first pitch Florida group. And I think we said good value a total of three times in like four hours of watching this thing, which is, you know, it's a very, very tight room.

So I think you see a few bargains like that. But this is what a really competitive auction room will look like i think i had kyle lewis for 11 and bottom for six and that's like the biggest like projection like auction calculator value on my team yeah i mean i'm looking at the pitching side barrios at 22 that seems like full price cease at 18 romano at 17 shane mcclanahan at 15 i had mcclanahan higher than 15. So that was a value for me too. And then just to finish off the strategy here and talk about how you were talking about what do you do. I think what do you do with saves is important.

I like to get like $17 to $19 closer. I don't really want to spend $26 for the best one in the pool. So I was hoping to get a Rolls Chapman or Jordan Romano. A Rolls Chapman went to 19. I didn't put the dollar to go to 20. So I ended up with Jordan Romano. I wanted a Rolls Chapman, Jordan Romano, or Ryan Presley. Presley went for 20, so I wasn't going to go to 21.

I really thought about going to 20 to get Chapman, and instead I went to 17 to get Romano. That's where I try to spend is in the third to fifth best closer in the pool. Yeah, Emmanuel Classe also lumped in that group. He went for 20 in this room. It was just one of those things where I couldn't believe, compared to the NL, just how much of a drop-off there was. Part of that is Kenley Jansen still being a free agent.

And what they decided for this league, I know we've had at least one person email us and say, we can't move our draft back. We've got life stuff going on. We have to move forward now. What do you do with all these free agents? Labor decided to take the top 12 based on ADP and remove them from the auction pool.

And we're going to have a separate waiver run with free agent bidding for those players before the season begins. So, you know, probably five to seven players will end up in this pool, and then the rest will end up in the other. And that will open up some surprising players, sort of like the trade deadline does. And I'm really curious to see how that gets handled just from a bidding standpoint. Like how aggressive do you want to be this early?

Probably more aggressive than you'd be at the trade deadline, but then you have to be able to play light on fab the rest of the year. If you, if Trevor story signs in your league and you say, well, Trevor story is going to do everything for me. I'm going to throw a big chunk of fab at him. How well do you cope with everything else you did? I think if you were trying to get one of the high-end free agents

that ends up in the pool, you'd want to have a more balanced build right now because you're less likely to have massive holes to fill with the rest of your fab. I think the spread the risk and then pony up the fab is the right way to go compared to stars and scrubs and then ponying up fab because then you're going to have five to seven roster spots where you're not getting enough playing time and if you have any injury trouble at all with that core of stars you will miss you will have not nearly enough playing time and you just won't find you won't find replacements on the wire especially when you have limitations and what you can bid yeah i i think i think carlos redon will be a tough one for me i think i think he'll end up

in the american league and although i like barrios cease and mcclanahan patino at nine um is my next pitcher and it'd be really good to have maybe more uh innings there um so i'm a little bit weak on my fourth starting pitcher i had to you know like i said, I had to, you have warts. Fourth starting pitcher, I'm sure there's other people who have that wart. And Patino, I think the sky's the limit. It's just a question of innings. One thing I tried to do was use my reserves on starting pitchers, which I think is a good move.

But I will have a big decision about whether or not I use a bunch of FAAB to get Carlos Rodon on this team. Yeah, that's a decision that maybe we get more injury information between now and the time that that actually occurs, and that guides how aggressive some of us are going to be. I'm going to pull up the NL board just for a few minutes and kind of walk through a few things that hit me. You were talking earlier about not wanting to fill too much in the outfield.

That's sort of what happened to me here. As you can see, Jelic, Winker, Grisham at 21, 20, and 20. Three players I like. They all make sense at the price. Jelic and Grisham can do a little bit of everything. I think Winker sneakily could be an NL MVP candidate this year because I think he can hit for average and the power uptick looks real to me. Playing time should be there. Run production should be there. If you said, we're going to fast forward a year, how much is Jesse Winker going for in the same room? And he said, 30 bucks. I would not be surprised by that. That was part of the appeal. He was definitely someone I thought about having in advance and ended up getting him when it all came together.

But where it started to bite me later, I couldn't pass up on the value of Michael Conforto, who was one of the eligible free agents. I think Conforto coming off a down year was discounted by a couple extra dollars on top of the free agent situation. Because if we knew Conforto were playing in the NL right now, he's easily a $15 player, probably more of an $18 player. So to get him for less than half of that is great. The problem was at that point in the auction for me to spend $7 on anyone,

I really needed someone who was going to run. So I ended up a little bit light in speed because I tacked a current free agent on who doesn't run into an outfield that already had Jesse Winker. And I think when you start looking at where stolen bases come from, so many of them come from the middle infield and the outfield that you really don't want to have more than one outfielder who doesn't run. You have to really think about that as part of your roster construction, no matter what you're doing. I like Corey Seager a lot in mixed leagues.

If you have Corey Seager as an early middle round guy, that's going to cost you something later. You're going to have to find a way to make up some steals somewhere else. So you just have to be really careful with the build. And that was one of the areas where being kind of agnostic about how the pieces fit came back to bite me later playing purely for value and not thinking enough about the very specific shape of the player pool that was probably a mistake for me even though in a vacuum conforte was a good value yeah but it's yeah it's and it also just i found the same thing where

i saw a bunch of outfielders go for like $1 less, which was like kind of a big deal in that one. I was like, oh man, or $2 less. Like these are some good values. But I think that the outfield just produces those. And I think you really want to keep two or three slots open for, you know, outfielders. Like for example, in TGFBI, which is snake uh so it's a little bit different but i just kept the outfield open outfield slots open at the end um and ended up

with the last three outfielders grossman nimmo and mcneil um as my last three outfielders and i took them all way behind adp um and you know way late in the draft they're like my three last bats that I bought you know and I feel pretty good about that so I just think that the outfield produces a lot of a lot of value and it's you just want to kind of keep that open as long as possible and just try to get the very best although I don't you know i have nothing against the top three that you got i like that so yeah it's just one of those problems that i knew it was a possible issue and then i ran into a little extra trouble with the conforto edition specifically and i think as you look at the infield that came together i mean i feel like i did fine with the catchers carson kelly at 10 travis darno at 8 if you're in acatcher league, you're just looking for a lot of playing time for guys that won't hurt you badly, and I think that describes Kelly and Darnot. They'd be among my two-catcher mixed-league targets as well.

Carson Kelly is my DGFBI catcher. playing time in the outfield and Kelly can have a three quarters playing time share and he's not a bad hitter. So he might actually hit a little high in the order too, because of the way that team is built right now. So those guys are fine. The optimal catcher strategy for me, and we'll talk about it more in our catcher preview. I'd like to get one high volume elite guy, especially in a salary cap situation where I can go get whatever I want. It's different in a snake because that opportunity cost is a lot different. Having to choose JT Real Muto or Will Smith compared to the other players going in that range. I feel like you're giving up a little bit more in those leagues, but you do have to

have your kind of ideal catcher strategy and then your fallback catcher strategy to avoid $1 Austin Barnes or dollar thomas nito because those guys just don't play enough unfortunately i think that's the that's the lesson there wasn't even a study that like the one dollar catcher is like the worst deal in the monolith really bad really i've i've lived it i've i've gone through it enough times i believe it to be true i think the other question that you have to start thinking about, too, though, is if you're playing with a cheap infield, as I did. Wilmer Flores at 12, Nick Ahmed at 5, Evan Longoria at 12, Gavin Lux at 13, J.D. Davis at 7, Nolan Gorman at 7. There's a lot of ways, playing time-wise, that could be a mess.

But I think those players, I mean, I think Longoria is a 450 to 500 plate appearance guy that on a per plate appearance basis is actually pretty good. He's a good accumulator at this point. The offense is better than we thought it was going to be a couple of years ago. So I'm comfortable with him. I think Flores is sort of just right. And then I have a lot now riding on Gavin Lux getting more than 400 plate appearances. There's definitely a scenario where he's just an extra guy and he starts three-ish times per week when everyone's healthy.

There's also a scenario where he takes a spot, claims it as his own. It goes well over 500 plate appearances. And I sort of need that to keep pace because I have so many semi-regulars sprinkled around this infield. Yeah, it's a dicey one. I'd like though that the Gorman is there. He may not start the season with the Cardinals, but I do think that he's a very good player and that he will finish the season with the Cardinals. And so I think with Jeff McNeil there and Wilmer Flores there, you have some guys that could add second base eligibility

and play in there. Also, with Wilmer Flores on the roster, you could just push Flores over to second and see what you can get at first base in the FAB portion. And then you actually might be a candidate, I think, for spending hard on a free agent once he signs. I think even going to like $80 for Freddie Freeman, it might feel like a Hail Mary,

but it might just be what this team needs. Yeah, I think I will have to be aggressive with anyone at that caliber who ends up in the NL pool. And I think the way I'm built right now, those infielders, a few of those guys can move around. McNeil already does have second base and outfield. Oh, he already has that. He has it, yeah. So he can move a little bit.

Yeah. So now you're just looking for any bat. Yeah, because Lux is second and short. Flores is first, second, and third. I mean, there's a few ways to make that work. Basically, I can put Gorman on the bench because I assume he's at AAA to start the season and plug

in almost any infielder. Freddie Freeman would be ideal. Story might be better. If I don't get steals via trade, I need a little more speed. Yeah, a little bit. I counted up. I think I'm around 65-70 for you. Yes, that's about where I'm at too. And I think you want to at least be in the 80s because you can get lucky and get more

and you can obviously trade for more. You can find some on the wire. But I do think if I didn't trade for more or get story or something else, that would be the category where I'm easily the weakest. And I think it's important to address that as quickly as possible. I know Ian Conn and Jason Collette had a deal done by Sunday morning or midday Sunday already after finishing this draft on Friday. It's on brand for Ian for sure, but they both quickly realized how they had kind of opposite problems on their roster, and it's easier to balance that out before injuries and demotions and other chaos happen because i think the longer i've played in these really deep leagues the more i've realized

it's very difficult to line up for a big trade and get both teams what they need in the return it's so hard to find compatible rosters so right out of the draft i think it's easier to see everybody's flaws and it's easier to agree on values since you just went through the exercise number on it right there. The room just priced everybody for you. So the sooner you could make a move to fix that flaw is probably the easiest it can possibly be. did happen to you you i got a text from you in the middle of the draft about a single player um which is that that sort of there's the idea of i'm going i'm only going to spend what my value sheet says i'm not going to spend this much i might pull one dollar over i i think that too many people have a sense of false precision about exactly what the auction calculator is spitting out um in terms of their numbers and uh so i think I think it's okay sometimes to go a couple bucks over. And my example is I have Gleyber Torres ahead of Ahmed Rosario,

just generally for any league. They're both, I think, mixed league and a monolig important, both usable. They both, I think, will steal 12 to 15 bags this year. I think they'll both hit 10 plus homers. But the reason I'm betting on Gleyber Torres is he has a much better sense of the strike zone. So again, we're coming back to the same stats you always hear me talk about, but he has a much better sense of the strike zone reach rate is lower and he his barrel rate was higher so i think he's a better hitter than ahmed rosario labor torres went to 19 went to 20 and i didn't want to go to 21 because my value sheet said 1950 or something said 19 or 20 and i said i'm not going to go over right and i said well worst case scenario, I have Ahmed Rosario later, who's here for 18. Well, I got Ahmed Rosario for 20 because he got bid up to 19.

And my putting that extra dollar on, you know, was just one dollar. And I wasn't like, there's this thing that happens with bidding where you're just like, when you get that dollar in is a big deal. Like, oh, did you, if I put 20 on taurez i would have won him you know most likely yeah i didn't want to go to 21 but instead i got the inferior player for the 20 i think i'd rather have taurez for 21 you know so there's just like this weird this one dollar decision that can go either way and sometimes i think you just need to go get your player. I think I would rather just had Torres for 21. And the other time that it came up for me, and this is where it gets in the weeds a little bit for monoleagues,

but I think it's still instructive. So I wanted Luis Torres for $4, right, my second catcher. And, you know, I think he can steal that job. You know, I think there's a lot of sort of stuff in his statistical profile that has worked in different years. Like he's had good contact rates in some years and he's had good barrel rates in some years. And he hasn't put it all together yet. So I'm thinking that there's a chance he puts it all together. And that's why I wanted him. But if I put him out there at $1, somebody would have gone to $2, then I would have gone to $3,

and then somebody would have stolen him from me for $4 if they wanted to. And then I wouldn't have gone to $5 because I didn't want to. So I put Torrens out for $2, somebody went to $3, I went to $4, boom, I bought him. So there are these weird sort of dollar jumps

and these moments where, you know, am I going to save $2 so I can get all my $1 players for $2? And is that a good idea? Why do I want to get all my $1 players for $2? I should get my $1 players for $1, you know? So there's that plus one, you know, our auction values come out at plus 30 cents and plus 50 cents, you know, like our auction calculators have an extra decimal that our auctions don't. Right. And I know you can be rigid and never go over. I know that's kind of the way Larry Schechter plays, and that's brought him a lot of success. But I don't think that's necessarily the best way for everybody else to play, because I think doing that also requires knowing exactly what's going to happen later with the money, the little bits that you're saving, making sure you use that correctly.

And I think as someone who's less familiar with playing that way, that's the problem I ran into. The Rosario Torres thing, it happened to me in a loop where I kept waiting. I kept saying, okay, this guy's $2 over my bid. Am I going to go to three? I'm going to go down to three. I'm just going to let it go. I'm just going to be fine. I'm just going to say, I'll get the next guy. And I i'll get the next guy and that happened four or five times and suddenly there was no next guy three roster spots left and i think i had 29 to spend and there you know there weren't a lot of 10 players left so i'm like crap now i'm in trouble i did not spend this money i knew there was a point gene segura is the one that really got away from me when it happened.

I think Doug Dennis got him for 15. I knew I should have went 16. And what was your value sheet? I think I even had him at 16 or 17. But I think I got caught either. I don't know if I was looking at the pool real quick just to see what else there was. I just got really kind of caught up in the minutia of not overpaying. I was double checking to make sure I didn't go too high.

And that was a time where I was like, it did not matter. You should have just gotten the guy. It's easy to see how it would change. If on that roster, like if you take a look at my infield and you say, boy, this team would look a lot better if Gene Segura were on this roster instead of Nick Ahmed, right? And for $16 or $17 or even $18, that's what it took to get Segura,

I had that money. That money ended up going on Anthony Bender in the end where, yeah, sure, Anthony Bender might be a $5 to $7 pitcher in a format like this, probably a dollar guy in a mixed league who'd get you some saves, but I threw all my money on him because we have fab redemption. So leaving money on the table here

is even worse than just overpaying for anthony bender so when you look at the results and you go which means if bender gets hurt you get money back right i can get fab back which in this year might be really important because i'm gonna probably have to spend fab to get some infield help already in the past people who've had money left on the table have actually bought people they know are injured at least this way i got a player that will help me but i clearly had 10 more dollars to spend somewhere whether that was a couple of upgrades pushing an extra couple dollars in on dylan carlson field in field especially sagura would steal more than ahmed yeah sagura would have been it would have been good i'd have

more balance more playing time probably i think ahmed could lose his job in arizona you get traded you get up in a part-time role there's there's a lot of things that could go wrong so i guess the thing that makes me feel okay about the whole situation is that i i knew what the problem was when it was happening and i just couldn't quite bring myself i couldn't overpay for paven smith which i should have done because i could have overpaid for paven smith and still got Anthony Bender later. Like that, that's the lesson here. So part of the problem with playing away,

you don't normally play is that you can be in a slightly unfamiliar position and not know exactly when to push the extra chips in, when to say, screw it. I'm going to spend the extra couple of dollars. It doesn't matter at this point because there's no one else to spend it on. I didn't recognize that moment, the ways I should have, and it's going to cost me just a little bit.

Well, one thing that I think ports over to snake drafts and is interesting for mono or any kind of auction list is I think you should have two tabs with your player values if you have an Excel sheet or something. You should have two tabs. One tab should be sorted from the top, just values from the top. So regardless of position,

37, 36, 35, sorted by auction value. And that way you can see how many $20 players are left, just in a general sort of quality level. How much $20 players are left? How many $15 players are left? That a general sort of quality level how much $20 players are how many $15 players are left that sort of deal right so that you know the scarcity of quality of players in the second

tab you should have it i think sorted for position and then auction value because then you can go to your second tab and say like i did uh at one point and say, holy crap, Hunter Dozier and Carlos Santana are the last corner infielders I want on my team. That's all that's left. I don't really want the rest of them. And so I went to Dozier. I went to nine. I think he was nine in my values.

I just wanted to get Dozier, especially because he steals a couple bases, and Carlos Santana doesn't. So I did that to avoid miguel cabrera at four dollars uh bobby bradley at six ballers g-man choy at two dollars nick prado at one you know um so i i feel like i stayed off the bottom by doing that so i just wanted to offer that as like a potential uh sort of Excel strategy where you'd have these two tabs and you kind of alternate between looking at overall value and looking at with position value, because the with position value is going to be more and more important over the course of your draft as you be like, oh, I have to fill these places, you know? I completely agree.

And I think one area that I've changed preparation in the last couple of years is I started highlighting players. I use the Roto-Wire draft software to track the entire room as it's happening. And I've got these highlighted tiers. And I think I highlighted too many players. I think the visual cues I gave myself were actually a little bit misleading

where the shades of colors I chose. I don't actually want those two down at the bottom of that highlighted tier. It was i used i made the sheet too pretty i made the screen too pretty so you're like oh there's still players left exactly right i didn't do a good enough job making clear like there's a cliff there this is where you have to spend like that that was a small preparation error that you know i think is going to cost me quite a bit the pitching side in the nl was interesting, though, because in past years,

I've been a lot more aggressive with starting pitching. I definitely backed off the high-end starters. I felt like they were at least going to the numbers they should have been going to, so it wasn't like people were getting great values with most of that group. There might be a handful sprinkled in. My most expensive starter was Charlie Morton.

I think you and I have talked enough about Charlie Morton where I know that that can work just fine. I'm not having any doubts about that. But what I think is interesting about the NL pitching pool, and this certainly applies to playing in a mixed league this year, I wonder if the NL pitchers are being overpriced in general, even though all relative to each other. If ratios all go up in the NL only pool, it's not as big of a deal as if they jump up in the mix pool and sort of catch where their al counterparts are but i wonder if that's something people have not necessarily thought enough about in planning for this season is making sure they're

correcting for what are likely going to be higher eras and whips for the entire pool of nl pitchers i did check with derrick cardi on the subject and he said that the bat projections currently assume there will be an NLDH. So I know that for one projection system at least. We'll see. I do wonder how that works in a monoleague. Maybe just everyone's worse so everyone's the same. But it is something that won't actually affect the player pool uniformly. There are players that are good enough that it won't matter they have to strike one more batter out. They'll just strike them out.

Do you think Corbin Burns will really care that much about one more hitter? He will not. But there are people like maybe Alex Wood on your team, not to pick. Maybe Alex Wood or maybe Josiah Gray will have a lot more trouble with another hitter, another real hitter at the back end of the lineup. Maybe it's a terrible Galaxy brand idea, but I was wondering if the Five and Fly guys, Maybe it's a terrible Galaxy brand idea, but I was wondering if the five and fly guys,

the 19, 20, 21, 22 batters faced group, the guys that are out of the game a little earlier, if they get impacted the most, because they were probably only going through the lineup twice and maybe with a clean start to the last inning, trying to get through that third time or part of the third time. But if you make the lineup more difficult against them and they run into some more trouble, their value might actually take a hit and then if you pair that with the way the cba might change options where you know you're you're uh you might you're not able to option your relievers up

and down to to have as many you know four or five and dive guys um and you have to leave those guys in then maybe you start getting outsized eras from from some players that you're kind of surprised to see that from you know like uh you know is if chris paddock's era was already a little bit higher than you expect because he only has two pitches what happens if you have to leave him in five or six innings because your bullpen is taxed because you don't have the option strategy anymore and you know then he gives up another homer you know what i mean yeah maybe teams are a little likely to let a starter wear one on a bad day depending on what's going on with the rest of their pitchers i love rasmussen but like will are they gonna have to leave rasmussen in longer

because they can't option up and down in tampa all the time uh. Will that be good for Rasmussen? He's mostly a two-pitch guy. I wonder if we see a third and fourth pitch becoming more important as the CBA negotiates different rules. I think those are great questions to think about. Steven Strasburg ended up on my team at 10, and I feel like he's been very much ignored throughout this draft season. I don't know if you and I've even mentioned his name once since the end of last season. Of course, there's a big question. Is he even healthy? He was scheduled to start throwing back in November. I did just a

little bit of digging, turned up nothing so far that suggests that he's been limited or not going through a normal off season. And skills wise, I I guess the question is, like, two-parter. Like, one, do you think the skills are still intact? It's hard to know because we haven't seen a lot of them. And two, do you think the risk is really any greater with Strasburg if we're thinking about him and the injury he's coming back from versus guys like Sindergaard or even Severino who have made it back from Tommy John

but still kind of have this unknown workload ahead of them here in 2022. Yeah, it is bizarre. I know that from Jeff Zimmerman's research, that fastball velocity in a return from the IL is, is remarkably sticky. It becomes meaningful really fast. So like two or three starts and you,

and you know, the rest of season fastball velocity, but does that port over to the next season? Cause's the thing with strasburg is like what we saw from strasburg last year was clearly a lesser lesser pitcher and so i can show you that the stuff numbers are bad but i can also show you on my rankings that he's higher than i than he would be just based on his current his stuff numbers because there's this outside chance that he comes back healthy and all of a sudden you're seeing 94s on the gun again. I mean, he's had that in him.

And it's all about health. So, Strasburg and Thor were very hard for me to rank because we did have actual numbers from their stuff. They weren't good. But they were in limited amounts of limited sample and also could have been affected by injury.

Like, for example, Thor didn't throw a single breaking ball. Of course, his stuff number is low. So, yeah, I think it's really tough. But I have seen some analysis that says that players returning from injury or players with the very heightened injury risk actually are good values a lot of times. And Strasburg going for 10 is like, I think that's really interesting that he goes for 10 and Tyler Magiel goes for 11. Well, Tyler Magiel could be good or could be bad, but there's that question and the health question. With Strasburg, it's like, if the health question is that he's good, then he's probably good. Yeah. I mean, he's barely pitched in two years, but I don't know.

Maybe this is the point in Strasburg's career, similar to what we saw with Justin Verlander with the core muscle repair surgery he had later in his time in Detroit. I mean, there's a point people thought Justin Verlander was done because he missed a lot of time with injuries, pitched more than Strasburg around that. But I think we, I know it's more likely that a pitcher that starts the break is just done. Then he's going to come back and be good. But he was so good before he broke. I'm willing to take that chance pretty much anywhere. And I just, I felt like we collectively all just forgotten how good Steven Strasburg is.

They need him. They're clearly a team that will give him the ball every fifth day so long as he's healthy. And if they have any chance of surprising teams this season, he's part of how they would get there because he could be a five-war pitcher again. It's not unthinkable, at least I don't think it's unthinkable, that Steven Strasburg could still be pretty useful. So just a surprising player in a few ways, because I don't think I've drafted him at all. And the more I've looked at him, like, why, why not? Like there's, there's no reason not to at the price in mixed leagues. He's almost free.

If you're wrong, you can drop them in a league like this. Maybe there's more risk because you need quality innings, but there was some cheap pitching available. I was surprised. Herman Marquez was only $4 in this league. Specifically, you can't take him out unless he's hurt or he gets sent down or he's released. He's obviously not going to get sent down. He's not going to get released. So it's just an injury that I'm possibly worried about. But I think a Coors pitcher like Marquez, who I know is going to get me a lot of Ks, even if the ratios aren't nearly as good as they would be if he pitched anywhere else, I kind of like him in this format because I can't screw it up. He just stays in. He's just in the lineup all the time. And I can't guess wrong on sitting him at Dodger Stadium and having him

deal or not knowing when to use McCures and when to sit him. It's almost like the NL only league makes Herman Marquez sort of a best ball player by default because you can't take him out. Yeah, for that reason, I like your Taiwan Walker $4 pick better. Oh, yeah. I really like that one. Walker should have been eight or nine,

and he came out so late that it was just a bargain. Yeah, I think that's a really good pick because it's good innings. It's a really good home park. I don't think there's a lot of times where you're just afraid. I'm not saying he won't blow up. He'll have some bad starts, I'm sure. But there are not times where you'd be like, oh my God, I wish I didn't have Walker in there. I know that German Marquez did better at home last year. I can't bet on something like that statistically to continue. It's happened for no other

pitcher, but it's going to happen for Herman Marquez. Alright, maybe. It's not even anything like that. I guess what I'm hoping for is I don't get rabbit ball ERA. If I get last year's ratios again with that many Ks, that is of value in this format. He's probably a $9-$10 pitcher,

so getting him at $4, I'm happy with that. Ks, that is of value in this format. He's probably a $9-$10 pitcher, so getting him at $4, I'm happy with that. I definitely like the Walker buy. Andrew Heaney at $7 is 100% just leaning into the Dodgers saying, if they like that guy, I should like that guy. That's kind of where I've been on him throughout this entire draft season, and

$7 doesn't seem too bad, given the injury risk that's been in play for him for the better part of the last three or so years yeah i i do think in model leagues it's uh worth getting above getting to that four and above level uh for your final pitchers um i mean i have louise heel for a buck but i'm actually hoping he gets sent down and i get to play with that roster spot either as a reliever or out there. Justin Dunn at a dollar is just an insane amount of risk. I mean, I know my model likes his breaking ball, but both his breaking balls, but, uh, you know, the, the, the projection numbers are not good.

The, the, the results on the field have not been good. So, uh, I, I, I may just end up cutting that one because I'm just too scared of even the first week. But yeah, $1 pitchers are, you'll end up with Justin Dunn. I think getting in that $4 range, Hermann Marquez and Tywon Walker is just so much better. In the AL, even in the $4 range, is Domingo Hermann. I'd rather have him than Justin Dunn. Yeah, I think when you look at auction results results you could always find a player at a similar price that you end up liking better and some of that is just the the benefit of not knowing what was going to happen next no i mean in this case it was this is what kyle tucker cost me because i would have rather have spent three to four dollars on the justin dunn slot

and had a better pitcher but going to 38 on 38 on Kyle Tucker literally cost me the difference between Tomingo Hermann and Justin Dunn. So, I'm just looking at the rosters kind of next to you. Randy Arrozarena went for 27 to Larry Schechter. Would you rather pay 28 for Arrozarena and then had 10 more to spread out on the bottom part of your pitching? I didn't, actually, because the Arrozarena one happened before Tucker, and I just didn't like that. I didn't like it.

I thought it was way over. For a guy that's a price enforcer and strict projection value, like, I don't know. Let me see if I have mine open. I think I had 23 down for Randy Rosarito. That was happening to me and a lot of players in that range in the NL where it was several dollars above what I expected, not just a buck or two. A buck or two doesn't bother me three four five dollars over and i just think in a mono i can't bring that uh early on the thing happened

and it led to the tucker thing because i was like if everyone's going to be like four dollars over then let me just go get cal tucker right and that's a decision you have to make at a certain point as those top tiers run out trout is the one dude that was my job for 30 gives me eight dollars and eight dollars from kyle tucker you know i yes i won't have as many steals but maybe then i can get um who who was a steals guy in the outfield uh that i had to go short i couldn't I couldn't stay up on. Maybe I could get... Hayes had some steals. Manny Margot for eight.

Manny Margot for eight. Yeah, I could have used him. Jaron Duren for five. I could have used an extra buck there. Kyle Isbell for three is kind of interesting for a league this deep. Yeah. And then Myles Straw for 22.

I think the value sheet had him at like 21, 22. So I could have gone to 23 there if I had an extra buck. And would Trout and Straw be a better combo than Tucker and Kepler? Maybe. That's such a funny thing because I do think the Trout injury risk is real. That's such a, it's a funny thing because I do think the trout injury risk is real. Like that's, that's the problem. It's not the K rate going up. We talked about him in part one of the outfield preview.

I think pairing him with Straw is the right way to think about making a really good two-player combo. But Straw has just that, that weird skills risk where you say oh so much of this production is coming out of this one category so in the event that you know he gets a hamstring injury or quad injury or something that just slows him down then you're yeah you're screwed on steals and it's so hard to replace it like i i do think as opposed to players that are overloaded in the category i do like more balanced profiles like if i was going to pay for a overloaded in the category i do like more balanced profiles like if i was going to pay for a top player in the nl pool it was trey turner because he does everything i'm less likely to pay for starling marte right now even though he does hit for good

average he's a little light on power heavy on steals i don't necessarily want players that tilt that way in leagues this deep because it's very difficult to replace that loss production. Whereas in a mixed league, I don't have concerns that are quite like that. I'm a little more willing to have those players. I still built my TGFBI the same way, you know. Goldschmidt, Simeon, Swanson, Mankata, Lowe, Torres, Betts, Jelic, Grossman, Nimmo, McNeil. Like, there's not a steals-only guy in there. A lot to look through as you're looking at the results.

No, I don't like Anthony Bender as much as the $18 bid would lead you to believe. Yes, if I do happen to win the league somehow, I will probably purchase an Anthony Bender jersey, even though there's no cash payout for first place in this league. But I think I would owe it to myself. At least a jersey, right? You'd have to at least get an Anthony Bender jersey given the way this played out.

If I win, I'm getting a Hunter Dozier jersey, I think. I think there's things to like. He had an injury, and it affected him at the plate. There's a piece by Alec Lewis about it that's pretty good. And so I'm hoping that without that injury, he can get back to what he barrels the ball well and steals bases. And if he doesn't do that, then I'm looking for a CI and I'm looking at Josh Naylor or Chad Pinder

and hoping they get CI eligibility or going big in the free agency draft, which I didn't really want to do either. So it'll be a Hunter Dozier jersey. But if I do really win, I think it'll be somewhere between Dozier, Brandon Marsh, Kyle Lewis, Chad Pinder, and Luis Patino. I think that those are my sort of key young players that need to be a little bit better yeah maybe it's a card instead of uh if it's a good player like a really good player buying the card is nice because then you've got that extra investment for later i don't know if an anthony bender uh autographed psa 10 is

gonna matter yeah like a 2022 kyle tucker would be a good card yeah it wouldn't cost much oh and the last thing i just wanted this is really really in the weeds. But just a really quick thing about reserves in labor, they have this thing that like, you, you can only put people on your bench, if they're in the minors, or you bought them for $0 at the at the auction, if you bought them in the reserve part of the auction. So I don't buy relievers in that part, because the reliever is either going to be a closer, which Yeah, okay, you've got a closer in the reserves, that's great. You're super happy. However, he's going to give you no use otherwise because you're not going to put him in your lineup. I got very little use out of my relievers last year, and I was so happy to preserve them.

So I think the best use in these formats is for starting pitching because you can basically stream a guy, you know? So I ended up with, uh, uh, who is it? I ended up with, where's my team here? Uh, I ended up with Yanni Chirinos, who's coming back from injury, but you know, could factor in Michael King, who the stuff plus really likes and kind of pairs up with Louise Hill. pretty interestingly uh glenn otto uh who by all accounts by the model looks like an average pitcher in a good park and then tommy romero who's just that was just a kind of my prospect pick but uh and then i i use andy abaniez to to uh to portion off with nick solak hope that one of the two of them gets a regular gig for the Rangers.

And then Steven Kwong with Josh Naylor. So basically handcuffed a couple of situations there. And I think handcuffs and starting pitcher are best use of your reserves in monoligues. Yeah, I wanted to play against some injury concerns that I had. I think the way I built my pitching staff on a relative budget leaves me vulnerable to IL time, so I made sure I got a few starters. Mitch White was my first reserve pick. I think there's just plenty of innings for him this year.

I think Bailey Falter could have a multi-inning role, maybe back-end starter opportunity in Philly. And then Miguel Yajure, who we've talked a lot about before, I think he's got a clear path in Pittsburgh. If he's healthy, he should be one of their top five starters sooner rather than later. And then there's Caleb Killian, who was pitching really well in the minors for the Cubs last year.

Had a good fall league as well. We had some questions about him. I think come in maybe a few weeks ago. There should probably be opportunity in that rotation. What's blocking him? And I think they're one of those teams that once we get out of the lockout, maybe there's another free agent signing coming because you don't add Marcus Stroman by

himself on a three-year deal. I don't think they add anything at this point. It's a bat maybe. Maybe it's Trevor Story. We've put Trevor Story on every team now. Trevor Story has been signed to every team and Tommy Pham has been added to the A's like 11 times.

It's an incredible record that will never, ever be shattered. But hopefully, even if you don't play in formats like this, hopefully the conversation was enjoyable. And if it wasn't, thanks for listening to the end of the show anyway. If you'd like to come back next time, it'll be a focus on late outfielders. We're going to get the UT players in there too. So we'll have some Shohei Otani talk in there. We'll have some Fran Milreis talk,

some Nelson Cruz. Got to make sure we get those UT players a little bit of love, even though there aren't that many of them in the pool going into this season. If you've got other questions, you can email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com on Twitter.

He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Gets you a subscription for a dollar a month for the first six months. It's a really good deal. So be sure to get that. And as always, if you want to comment on this video on YouTube, we really appreciate that too. We'll be sure to check those for any questions and ideas that are thrown out there as well. So that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.