Rates & Barrels - Second-chance leagues, Alek Manoah's debut, and El Mago's latest trick

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss second chance leagues, long-term struggling players they are interested in adding, a few others they're ready to move on from, Alek Manoah's impressive debut, El Mago's incredible baserunning in Pittsburgh, and elite advertising placement.  Rundown 2:03 Second-Chance Leagues 11:55 Big Movers: 'New Aces' 25:01 Tough Adjustments: Starting Pitchers 28:22 Biggest Non-Injury Busts So Far 49:34 Alek Manoah's Impressive Debut 58:55 El Mago's Greatest Trick Ever? 63:07 Ad Optimization Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Be sure to check out Topps Project 70. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will discuss the second chance leagues that are taking place over the weekend. The NFBC has several contests available, an opportunity to make things right if you're not happy with how your 2021 season is going, or to make more things go right if you're thrilled with how things are going right now. You can look at it that way too. We're going to talk about some players that have been disappointments so far, when to possibly admit defeat on some of those players,

and when to actually seek them out as possible rebound candidates. So hopefully those two things go hand in hand. Probably get a few other questions in there as well. Some pretty awesome stuff happening over the course of the week. Alec Manoa debuted, and Javi Baez had a play against the Pirates that might be the most fun play I've ever seen in a baseball game at any level so we'll get to that in just a little while how's it going for you on this Friday you know I have the ass sweet it's good to have that on a Friday. I made a weird ass decision to,

to do a juice cleanse. It's like 25 bucks for five or four juices in a, in a shot at the end. And I'm not supposed to have any food until dinner, sort of a half day cleanse. And all I want is food, but instead I get this lovely green juice. It's so great.

I love it. Well, you opted into a juice cleanse, so I can't say I feel that bad for you. I mean, this was elective. It's not like the doctor said you do it. You did it to yourself. You did. Yeah. Self-inflicted juice cleanse for Eno this time around.

But I want to start with the second chance leagues because the concept was unveiled a couple of years ago by the NFBC. I played in it that first year and it was pretty difficult to feel good about rankings two months in because the corrections you were making, especially on underperforming early rounders they felt like they were too much it seemed to me like we were we were only going to make mistakes on the early rounders if we didn't take them close to where they were previously going and i felt like at the other end you had guys that were popping in the first two months moving them up relatively speaking was easier for me not overpaying for them, but adjusting them upwards seemed like a thing I could do at a pretty reasonable, consistent level. Fortunately,

we have more tools now than we have had in the past. We have some auction calculators with rest of season projections in them, and that at least gives a baseline for where things should start if you're going to take the plunge and play in one of these leagues. Yeah, yeah. There is a difference between predicting what will happen in the next season and predicting what will happen within a season. There are stats that are useful within season that are less useful season to season. But, you know, we talk about those a lot, but, you know, stuff like barrel rate and reach rate, I think those things are more useful in season to kind of get a sense of where someone is. Something like average velocity, which doesn't have that much value.

I think it has some value in season just to give you a sense of their health and so on. And I think health is the biggest thing about season to season and in season. Like the one thing we know or we should know right now is who's healthy and who's not. And that should help clean up your draft board, really. Yeah. I was taking a look back at the top 20 in ADP, just looking at the main event drafts from mid-March to the end of March. And you kind of run through that list, like Acuna, he's healthy. Who would be in the top 20 still for drafts this weekend Acuna absolutely healthy and good DeGrom yeah definitely he had a ADP of two

back at that time in that format maybe he'd slide a little because of the the injury he was dealing with that knocked him out for a start last week but you know generally he's not fallen past about seven or eight in a draft Tatis healthy good Soto was hurt healthy now I think he's not fallen past about seven or eight in a draft. Tatis healthy, good. Soto was hurt healthy. Now I think he's still up there. You know, Garrett Cole still fine. Mookie Betts was the first player that I looked at and said, you know, he's not on the IL, but is he healthy? Yeah. Is he healthy? There's the back issue. Yeah. So I don't know how much would you Betts if you were drafting this weekend?

My first thought was he'd probably fall at least a 10 or 15 because there's a handful of guys that were in the top 20 who have been healthy and have played well that would probably creep up past him. And I don't know how many pop-up guys we'd have joining the first round just yet. But I think Betts would slide a little in these weekend's drafts. I think not to pull too far ahead in the rundown,

but I think I'd push Jose Ramirez ahead of him. I'd push Trey Turner ahead of him, Shane Bieber ahead of him. I haven't looked at Story's numbers recently. I don't have any shares for some reason. I think I've only got him in one league, and I never ever think about taking him out of the lineup, so I don't look at his stats that often. I just looked at him earlier this morning. Trevor Story is not having a typical Trevor Story year, and he's sort of making it work because he's running a lot.

He's got eight steals already in 50 games, so if he keeps that going, he'll get to mid-20s, which would be in line with the 18 and 19 numbers. He was on a really good pace in the shortened season, too. It's not a surprising development, but the power. He's a bit of a streaky hitter. He has bad times. The problem is, what if he has a bad streak in Colorado and then gets traded and has an okay streak somewhere else, but it's not aided the same way that it might be aided by Colorado.

I don't know. I think I'd rather have Betts over Story. I would at this point because if you're thinking about Story now, if he gets traded before July 31st, half of what's left is in Colorado. Half's not. And I think the half that he's in Colorado, we rag on the Rockies all the time. That's a bad supporting cast. They're a bottom five offense, even when you split team stats for home numbers. That's remarkable.

Wow, that's bad. Yeah, that's really bad. So the runs and RBIs that you normally get from all the players in that Rockies lineup just aren't there. You finally got Garrett Hampson, and this is what he did to your lineup. This is the price that we all had to pay for Garrett Hampson.

You finally got Tapia and Hampson to play, but it turns out they're not that great. You know what? I'm looking at this list, and it's easier to want to move pitchers ahead of bets because they're healthy, they're doing well. A pitcher like Nola or Max Scherzer is like, do you move them ahead of bets but then you're talking about like are you gonna have like five or six pitchers

ahead of mookie bets that seems weird to me right i mean i think we're what hitters are have joined the top yeah who actually has moved up as a hitter so far this season well that requires a trip to the the old earned value page and Yeah, where do you have that? What do you use for that? I use the rotowire tool for that one. And you can mess around with the percentage spent on batters, a couple different things there. But I just leave it at the default initially.

Vlad Jr. is probably the biggest mover in the early round guys, right? He's been the most valuable hitter so far. Vlad Jr. doesn't steal. I think I would rather have Betts rest of season. Oh, I don't know, man. Vlad Jr., I mean, everything seems to be pointing

to this being mostly sustainable. I know. It's just hard. He's moving out of Dunedin, and he had some really nice numbers in Dunedin. I think that's a fair debate. Isn't that Dunedin and he had some really nice numbers in Dunedin. So, I think that's a fair debate. Isn't that Dunedin? Don't ask me for the right pronunciation. Dunedin, I guess. Sorry.

Live on the internet, man. Devers? He's been up that way before so it's not totally shocking to see him there. I mean, I'm looking at Yahoo and Devers is's been up that way before so it's not totally shocking to see him there I mean look at Yahoo and Devers is top 10 Simeon is top 10 Chris Bryant

is top 10 Boba Shett's up there Adolis Garcia is top 10 but like he's a classic case I think he would be overdrafted in second chances leagues right I mean I think he's a good player and he's made some strides, but I think he's more likely to hit like two 30 going forward.

Right. I don't think as great as Adelise Garcia has been so far. Sorry. Again, another one. You're good. Adelise. It's all good.

I would not draft him within for a 15 team league, probably within the first seven rounds. I like him. I think he's a good, you can be a good player and not be in the first seven rounds of a 15-team draft. Because there's batting average downside. There is a scenario where the playing time starts to fade later in the year. If he goes into a really deep slump and some other things are happening,

he could lose his hold on everyday playing time. I think he probably will play every day the rest of the way, more likely than not, but he's probably not going to sustain the clip that he's been on to this point. That seems pretty much impossible. One of the easiest rubrics that you could have for second chance leagues is just to look at strikeout rate and batting average,

right? And just be like, does this person strike out 30% of the time or more and is his batting average over 280 easy regression candidate yeah so i think we could safely put vlad jr well inside the top 20 maybe even inside the top 10 because he's been the most valuable hitter by some measures to this point i think the case for xander bogarts is one that i saw todd zola made in his weekly piece over at rotowire.

The average has been there. He's running a little bit. The run production is good because the Red Sox lineup has really bounced back to being one of the better lineups in the league. And we talked about Bogarts, geez, I think maybe late last summer when we were trying to forecast early rounders for this season. And his numbers really jumped out to me then, too, as just being even better than I recalled. And he's just sustained that. So I think he's got a case to be at least a late first rounder, but definitely a top 20 guy.

Shoulder didn't seem to be a problem. Speaking of shoulders, Chris Bryant is right next to him. But, you know, generally, I'm a little suspicious of anybody hitting over 330 you know good rule I just don't I don't I doubt that there's going to be many people that end the season over 330 so when you see Castellanos and and Winker and even somebody like JD Martinez hitting for that well I kind of am like how much of their value so far has been in that batting average? Those guys don't steal.

There's one steal for the three of those guys. So how much has it been batting average? But, you know, of course the power is still good, and the power is a little bit more scarce this year. So I'm not saying they're bad players. I'm just saying that I wouldn't take any of those guys over Mookie Betts. I think the only real batter that we've come up with, back-end batter that I would consider over Mookie Betts is Guerrero.

I think I would probably take him over Betts. But that still leaves Betts as like a borderline first rounder or beginning of second round, depending on how many pitchers you want to put up there. Yeah, and I think the other thing we were looking at too, with the pitchers moving up, previously Lucas Giolito had a first round ADP. He would probably lose that over the weekend. I don't think that's going to happen. Scherzer probably does move up a little. Nola probably moves up a little. I think Brandon Woodruff and Tyler Glass now, along with Corbin Burns too,

those guys would all move up quite a bit. I don't know. Would any of those three crack the first round? I don't think it's impossible, but do you think they'd be kind of where guys like Buehler and those guys were going? Yeah, like would they take the spot of those guys and then those guys would move up? Is that how you see that likely going? It just seems like, I think it seems like, you know,

taking a pitcher in the first round is an even better bet mid-season. Right? Because they're healthy. I'd like to see some sort of research that looks into, like, how predictive in-season health is. You know what I mean?

But it seems like, you know, there's a fair amount of pitchers that we just lose in March. And then they just have a terrible season where they're trying to get back or, or they end up just losing the whole season. You know what I mean? And then there's guys that, you know, make it through the first two months healthy and just like,

just anecdotally from, and this is not with research, like seems like they just stay healthy the whole season. So I bet you, I bet you that, uh, that there's something there where you, you kind of want to take Max Scherzer

in the first round. Yeah, I would feel that pressure. The season projections from the bat say DeGrom, Cole, Bieber, Scherzer are all $22 guys. And on the bat side, the last $22 guy is Jose Ramirez. So they say those four plus six, seven, eight batters, that's 12 guys. What does Yelich have for a rest of season value? The bat rest of season has Otani right behind Jose Ramirez just as a batter. It's pretty fun.

Wow. That is exciting. Still has story right there after Ramirez and actually makes Castellanos a borderline first rounder. Yeah, Castellanos, when I was... The bat loves Castellanos. I traded for Castellanos a few weeks ago because of that aforementioned love.

I saw the numbers like, whoa, people might not be valuing him quite that high and if he does that that's a really impactful move that might not cost as much to get as i bet you it's a park factor thing cincinnati is just uh top of the charts for hitters yeah for sure uh yellich is probably the hitter in the back of the first round that could fall the furthest from this group he just i don't know, man. He just doesn't look right, which is. He's already getting dinged in the projections because he's moved beyond,

behind Story, Castellanos, Salvador Perez. Well, that's a two-catcher setting I got right now, so ignore that. Bo Bichette, Bryce Harper, Witt Merrifield. Witt Merrifield. Christian Yelich is behind Witt Merrifield right now in rest of season projections. Witt's got 14 steals so far, too. And I think with Jelic, the wild thing is that he has run a little bit in the games he's played.

He's 4 for 4 in 18 games. But his K rate's still up above 30%. And the power just... Power's way down. Ground ball rate's way up. I don't know if we're getting a bounce back soon or a little later or not at all this year. I have a really bad read on Jelic. I watch him a lot.

God, he's tanked. You know what we were talking about? I'm doing really well in all of my leagues that are not on the NFBC platform. You need a second chance. We were talking about reasons why, and I'm realizing right now, the reason why is I did a lot of leagues on NFBC that were Jelic-Buehler at the back end of the first round. Yeah, and that was a combo that,

if I was in the right position, I wanted that too. I thought it made tons of sense. I thought Jelic, because he hits the ball so hard, has so many ways to make value, that was going to make perfect sense. I mean, his max ex-avilo is still there. The barrel rate is okay, but it's not where it was before. I don't know.

I still think there's a chance. He just needs to get a healthy run in. I mean, he has 70 plate appearances on the year. I bet he is going to fall into at least the third round of the 15 teamers, though. And I would still, it's siren song, man. I would still go for it. I'd be very tempted at that reduced price. The K rate is a problem.

The K rate is a definite problem. I don't know what's going on with that. It almost feels like someone found a hole. Maybe. I'm trying to think back to the NLCS in 2019. Maybe something in that series was discovered.

I mean, that's the end of the amazing MVP season from Jelic. Let me see. Fastball rate has just tanked. Oh, and that's interesting. It's not four seamers. People stopped throwing him two seamers.

Hmm. He's a lefty. Maybe he's feasting on two-seamers a little bit. That just can't be everything, though. There's too many things he does well for that to be the whole solution to, oh, this is how you get him out. He won't hurt you anymore if you don't throw him this one pitch. No one ever tried that.

Stop throwing him two-seamers. All right, so third round in a 15-teamer is where we start to think about it with Jelic. That's the downgrade on him. Giolito would fall probably a similar amount, maybe even a little less, just because he is healthy right now, and I think that one blow-up on

that early day start in Boston, I mean, that meltdown was that could happen to anybody, right? Unus see sort of pattern to get ready for a game that early i i'm kind of giving him a pass on that i don't i wasn't in on him as a first rounder i didn't think he was out of place as a early second rounder though so i i'm not there's no victory lap for me here i just think he's probably a late second early third rounder if we're drafting right now. Let me take Boston out.

Oh, look at that. Without Boston, the last six starts, 316 ERA, 9.7 strikeouts per nine, 3.4 walks per nine, 1.5 homers per nine, though. It's still not. It's good, but it's not great. Vintage. Well, vintage. It's good but it's not great. Vintage. Well vintage. It's not like we

knew exactly what he was doing but I don't know. I yeah. I didn't think he was a first rounder and second round now yeah I guess so. Late second rounder I think.

Back of that tier would be okay. It is weird that there's like, you know, the pop-up. I just figured there'd be more pop-up hitters that we would consider in the second round. The second round seems like just an obvious place to take a pitcher. But then the first round was a great place to take a pitcher. I mean, I just, I'm looking at these names like Aaron Judge, I guess. Devers, yeah. Bo Bichette, okay, yeah.

But then after that, you know, am I going to take Tucker in the second round? Am I going to take Simeon in the second round? Am I going to take Bellinger in the second round? No, not with the health. I mean, Yelich versus Bellinger. Now that Bellinger's about to come back is probably pretty similar. Those guys just can't get away from each other.

Even on the way down? Yeah. They're always right next to each other. It's all about that MVP commercial, except now it's like LVP. I hope they're both good again. It's more fun when they're good. I think Bichette did have a case to be a first rounder because their speed to go with that power the average floor is really high i was

skeptical back in march because it was such a small track record but another 200 plate appearances of him being as good as he's been since arriving that adds quite a bit of confidence for me so i'm increasingly in on bichette like at the one two turn and the big thing i think is that he's taking off there was some question of just how much he would steal yeah because that team scoring more runs might not need to be as aggressive on the base pass but marcus simeon's been running too he's got eight steals so far this season i think he'd be be more of a third, fourth rounder, probably a fourth rounder for me. I don't think I'd want to take him any earlier than that.

Yeah, yeah. I like him. It's also just a tiny question of how much Dunedin is factoring into these offensive numbers because now they're going to Buffalo. Right, which is still more hitter-friendly than Rogers Center, but not as much of a boost as Dunedin. Yeah, like Bo Bichette

is hitting.248 away from home. Hmm. He has a 20% K rate at home and a 30% K rate on the road. That's wild. That's really strange. I mean, this is just early season single season splits. I'm not

reading into it too hard. But it does tell a larger story of, like, Dunedin was a real nice place for them. So for pitching risers, obviously the usual suspects are in there. Alec Manoa, number one. Yeah. We'll get to his debut in just a minute. Brandon Woodruff is tied for third in earned value among pitchers. Yeah, baby.

I know. It's great. I'll take a victory lap on that one. Even ahead of Corbin Burns. A few more innings for Woodruff because of the time that Burns missed on the IL. Oh, is he giving us enough innings? No way. No way.

How did he do it? How did he do it? He's a freaking horse. Look at him. He is a rather large human. What about Julio Urias? I mean, I mentioned Glassnow before, too. I think it's easy to talk yourself into Glassnow.

Two breaking balls now. Home run rate settling in. Like, Glassnow is doing everything he wants. Someone said that I had it too low, and I did, because one of my rankings came out before, like, the start before, like, right before he had a start where he showed us all the slider. As soon as I saw that slider, I was like, nope, up, up, up, up.

He could be an easy second rounder, I think, at this point. Yeah. Three pitches. Look at how he got to the ninth inning. Did he do a complete game? No. Did he pitch in the ninth inning? He definitely did eight against Kansas City. And, like, everyone's like, holy crap.

You know? The Rays let someone pitch into the eighth. Yeah. They let him pitch deeper into starts than people were acknowledging back during draft season. I tried to point that out. When he's completely healthy, he gets used like a normal starter or had been used like a normal starter in the past. We've got more proof of that now that we've seen two months worth of opportunities for him this season. Urias, I think, gets a big bump.

I think I prefer Glass now because there's more strikeout ceiling for the rest of the season. But I think Urias would probably be in that two, three turn conversation. I moved Urias into the top 15 of my last rankings yeah and yeah i think i think he's in the conversation uh with like nola i mean clarity maybe like yeah i have him right after clarity i think maybe before clarity i should maybe have him before clarity yeah and you mentioned before well the flarity is a really interesting case because and i got i got some pushback in a chat recently and i just it's i think it's really uh elusive elusive no it really elucidates that that's a word right i mean anyway maybe it brings forth some issues that are interesting. So his stuff number is basically average.

His command number is above average, but with an average stuff number and a K minus BB, that's is good, but it's not like top 25 good. People were like, why do you have him, you know, 14th? It doesn't he's a total outlier in your group there. you know, 14th. He's a total outlier in your group there. And I wanted to point out that Stuff Plus is park independent, right? And it's good to tease out the park effects,

but he's still going to be in that park. You know what I mean? He's still going to pitch half his games in that park. And he's still going to pitch in front of that defense that he's got. So I think that, you know, he still deserves that, even after front of that defense that he's got. So I think that he still deserves that, even after this little blow-up that he had recently. But, you know, and also I was like with Urias and Peralta right after Flaherty, I was like there was like that moment where I was like,

how hard am I going to push Urias and Peralta really? Like am I going to put them in my top ten? You know what I mean? Like it Seems ridiculous. Flaherty was the kind of a bit of a wall where it was like, okay, this is how far I can push a guy down that I liked in the preseason and who's pitching well, but the peripherals are a little bit iffy. The last little cluster of pitchers that I would find tough to value

in these second chance leagues, though, would be guys like John Means and Carlos Rodon. I mean, guys that don't... Yeah, the big jumpers, a little bit like Peralta. But they don't... For me, they just didn't have the peripherals to push them that hard. Right, and I know a no-hitter goes a long way

towards helping the ratios really pop over eight to 10 starts. But they're more than that. I mean, with Rodon, the stuff looks like early career Rodon, right? The three-pitch mix, the velo, the sliders back. All that stuff is good. With Means, you've been on him for a long time. He could end up in a better situation.

He could end up not having to pitch in the AL East anymore, not having to pitch half his games at Camden Yards. That's possible, but I wouldn't expect that. I wouldn't draft him as a fourth rounder or fifth rounder in a second chance league expecting those things to change. Someone who listens traded means for Nola. Whoa, that happened? Yeah.

Maybe there's other people in the package, but I was like, I don't even care. You don't have to tell me who else was in the package unless it was like Mookie Betts. Yeah. So I just find like those pop-up pitchers, the guys that we thought were okay early in the season or guys that maybe we previously liked as outside the top 50 guys that could get a little better. Those guys, when they pop up into the top 10, top 20 in earned value, I don't really want anything to do with them in this format because I think the price is simply going to become too high. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I have Rodon around 30.

I have Rodon around 30. Means at 50. I just think that Park, man, like if we're talking about Park factors, his stuff number is only okay. He has a great command, but he also is headed towards August in Baltimore, man. Yeah, not a place you really want to have pitchers throwing,

especially given the state of that division. You've got four pretty nasty offenses that he has to deal with in division right now too. So not many soft landing spots tread very carefully, but if you do play in one of these second chance leagues this weekend, let us know how it goes, because I think it's a really fun format. I think we take the best part of fantasy baseball season and we bring it back in this last week of May. We can bring it back again around the 4th of July and play a second half league. I think this is actually a kind of a future forward sort of fantasy idea that I'd like to see even more of.

And it may be missed the Chandler Park contest from a few years ago. I don't know if you played in that, but that was a salary cap monthly contest where Ron would change the prices every month and you could do a weekly lineup changes. And it was awesome. I hope a format like that comes back at some point in the not so distant future, because that was a lot of fun as well. All right. You know, part of the exercise of adjusting expectations, whether you're doing second chance drafts, trying to make trades, trying to make drop decisions, is figuring out when to admit defeat and when to actually seek out a rebound target. We had a question that came in. It came in from Eric. Here's the email. Who would you say are the biggest non-injury busts

or disappointments so far, and what's your outlook on them moving forward? Related to that is to me, one of the more challenging parts of the game is deciding when to move on from a player I was high on in March. I've made the mistake of dropping these types of players too early when they've been struggling, only to see them play like all-stars for someone else.

I've also made the mistake of stubbornly holding players while I watch waiver-wired gems go to other teams. In example, passing on Adelise Garcia because of my belief in Nick Senzel. Is there a particular point in the season when you determine, I was wrong, he stinks? Or are there obvious stats for hitters that you look at to determine

that he's not worth holding onto? Or is it more of a subjective, I've seen enough type thing? Thanks, and oh yeah, tell Eno to try the trooper beer. Okay. Not to tell me twice. No, it's in the name, it's in the name, rates and barrels. I look at barrel rate, I look at reach rate. Those are one of my

top two stats for in-season for hitters. If you look at Senzel, you'll see that he just doesn't hit the ball hard. And if you pair, I think I'll throw in strikeout rate because that's something that we were talking about with, you know, with the LH. And so if, if Senzel is not going to make a ton of contact, he's not going to make great contact. What are we doing here? Then he has to steal a lot of bases to make that whole thing work. He turns into a little bit more of Leotis Tavares or Oscar Mercado, like a

borderline play that you're rostering just for steals. So then you can sort of, if you change your appraisal of him, you can treat him that way. But there's another guy that comes up that I think of, Tommy Pham. Tommy Pham is elite in reach rate. And his barrel rate is fine.

And he's still stealing bases. And the one thing that he's just not doing is he's not performing on balls he hits off the sweet spot. He's not performing on barrels and not performing on those things. So I would say that's going to turn around. I think it's already started to turn around. And so Pham was one of my biggest buy lows, and I got him off the waiver wire in NFBC on one of my leagues. So I think Pham is somebody that I would bet in.

Senzel is somebody I wouldn't bet on going forward. Yeah, I think the Senzel versus Adelise question kind of wrapped in there. I'm not sure you were being too stubborn at the time that you had to make that move because we were talking about what being two, three weeks into the season. I don't know if that was enough to look at Senzel and say it's not happening just yet. I think that's a really, really difficult decision to make. I think if you make that sort of call, if you're in a 10-team league and Garcia wasn't picked up until the middle of May, you had that extra three weeks to get a look at him, extra three weeks to get a look at the players you're thinking about dropping.

Maybe after that amount of time, a month and a half, then maybe you'd have been too stubborn. In a lot of leagues, you don't have that luxury because it's deep enough where a player like that's going to get scooped up a lot sooner. Yeah, there's always the interaction between your leagues in particular settings, right? Because Eugenio Suarez, I believe in him to hit homers, but I also believe that he'll strike out a lot. So there were some questions from people like, I'm in a league that penalizes K's from batters. And I'm like, you know, how much value are you going to get from like a 190 batting average and 35 homers? Yeah. I remember that question.

Errors too. That league also punished errors. Oh, that's right. Yeah. That was a tough league, man. I think, I hope he drops Suarez because that's just going to be a tough year for him. And that's saying, holy cow, it's the worst possible league for Suarez right now.

It's also like, you know, it's irrelevant maybe with top 50 batters. Like I'm looking at Glibert Torres. Are you just going to drop Glibert Torres? No, I don't think so. Unless it's like a 10-team league. But even then, I think Torres is going to be okay. He may not be as good as we thought. That's something with Lindor. I'm going to adjust down my opinion of his power ceiling and think of him more as like a 20-25 homer hitter maybe now.

But, like, you're not dropping him. No, no. If he can still hit 260 with 25 homers and 10 steals, like, he's still going to have value. It's just not going to be a good first round value, you know?

So I think you really have to kind of, like, you have to really kind of go down further. You have to go down to, like, Lourdes Gurriel, right? Like sort of 110, 120, places where you could just drop somebody if they're not good. Alec Baum.

Moving on from players like that, it's possible in shallow leagues. Senzel was late enough in drafts where players in that range, that would also include his teammate who went off, Jesse Winker. Once you get outside the top 150, I find it's pretty easy to cut a player who's underperforming compared to players that go before that marker. I don't know why

that's the line, but it's the first 10 rounds of a 15-team league. Something about the first 10 rounds makes me want to hold the player, even if I lower my expectations. Andre Jimenez. 156, drop. Easy cut. Miguel Sano, if you really need the batting average, I think you're still right.

I mean, even though he's gone off, I think that batting average is going to suck all the time. Well, yeah. And I think with Sano, I guess the point I was trying to make a couple of weeks ago when I talked about him on the Athletic Baseball Show is is more that the twins know what he is at this point. He's not going to become a superstar. Like you, you look at him as a low average so-so OBP masher with negative defensive value. That's just what he is. Could be headed towards the Eddie Rosario treatment where at some point they decide he's too expensive and they just release him.

Right. And that doesn't mean he won't land somewhere else and just keep doing what he's been doing. I hope that wasn't implied previously, but I think that could lead him out of Minnesota, and then who knows? We'll see if he ends up in a more hitter-friendly environment or a less hitter-friendly environment. I guess that could shift things a bit for him too. But you mentioned Glaber.

Glaber is interesting because the numbers he's putting up right now, the slash line is so similar to what happened in the shortened season when the power disappeared. He's got a 344 slugging percentage right now. What the heck happened? I mean, even before the rabbit ball massive year against the Orioles in 2019, he had 38 home runs that year in total, but like 15 of them came against Baltimore. He had 24 homers as a 21-year-old back in 2018 and slugged 480. So there's still something that just seems off with Glaber. He never really had a standout barrel rate.

But it's also regressed off of that. He had two years of 9% barrel rate, and now he's at 5%. So there has been some regression. I really like his combination of plate discipline and contact ability though. So maybe he's like zips with a 214 rest of season ISO.

That seems pie in the sky-ish. The bad X is more like 180, 190. Even that seems a little bit far off. But if he can do even the 180 ISO, that would be a 267 average going forward, 17 homers, 6 stolen bases.

I think he might be a buy low. Baltimore is coming. He's going to go to Baltimore in August. He might have a three homer series. Probably against John. He's going to go to Baltimore in August. He might have like a three homers series. Probably against John. He's going to have a three homer game against John Means. He's going to homer off him in the first, the third, and the fifth. It'll all come together.

The whole thing just fits perfectly back together. Don't you love it when you can just drop something on the floor and it shatters into a thousand pieces and then you can just glue it perfectly back together like that? With one series in August. That's all august politics just one great series in august i mean he's been a league average hitter for the better part of you know not quite a year but it's a it's almost a season's worth that's less than that's 83 games i i do see him as a buy low though because successful on three out of five stolen base attempts it's a little bit iffy but look at this team how on earth are they not going to play him every day yeah and even though the lineup isn't quite as good as we expected because of injuries it's still

a good lineup the park's still a great place to hit he doesn't have to be a barrel machine to be at least a 20 homer guy so you project that over two-thirds of a season that's about 14 to 15 homers with above average counting stats and a batting average that won't a season that's about 14 to 15 homers with above average counting stats and a batting average that won't hurt you that's still a really good floor i push back on that i think the batting numbers will help it should definitely help but i think he's i think he should have a good batting average i mean 243 is the lower bound like last year that that he can't go lower than that with these plate skills like they just it's impossible with that strikeout rate and that walk yeah i just don't yeah i don't see it so i think he's a he's a mild by low he's definitely not somebody i'm turfing no i think he's just he's just too hard far ahead of

that list uh too far ahead of that that ranking i think you're right about you know top 150 it's a lot easier to drop i don't know, Gary Sanchez. Yeah. Especially in a one catcher league. Two catcher league might be a little harder, but a one catcher league? Sure, you can make that move. I think I do, my eyes

circle a little bit around Mountcastle and Lux. Mountcastle's been brutal. But he's also had some good streaks, and I wonder how much is just we need some, like I said, home starts for him in warm weather, you know? Well, I think with Mount Castle, he has nothing left to prove in the minors. So by sending him back down,

you're probably not helping his long-term development at this point. You need to let him figure it out. Yeah, it'd be some sort of admission of not really believing in him. Right, which they shouldn't do that. 263 in May with three homers. Yeah, just step back in the right direction. I don't think he's an amazing player. I don't necessarily think he's someone you should target

in dynasties as a bylaw. I think he's just another one of these players that's okay for a while. Young oatmeal. Kind of. He's not going one of these players that's okay for a while. Young oatmeal. Kind of. He's not going to steal bases. He seems to be headed for a corner outfield first base situation. He has stolen three bases, but I don't think he's a guy who steals bases much.

I like Lux here in this conversation because he's exactly the type of player that I will be really stubborn about. This is my Nick Senzel. And for some reason, I'm just out. What do you not like in the profile? What concerns you the most? Terrible barrel rates and below average max EV. I just... I think he's Mount Casselian.

He just has better strikeout rate. So here's the... And a better position. Here's the kill shot supporting argument for you from me. 2019, which I looked at and said, Gavin Lux just did something at AAA that we don't see hitters do. He was 88% better than league average for 49 years.

Rabbit ball in the PCL. Right. Well, 88%, but it's context adjusted. 88% better with the ball everybody got to hit with. But I think what that did, I think that set some unfair power expectations i think that set some 30 plus home run expectations yeah if you don't look at if you don't look at that he looks more like a 150 iso guy yeah and if you gave him he's been young for the level wherever he's played

and we're still we're only 301 played appearances into the gavin lux experience the big league level so whereas with mountcastle you you see him as that young oatmeal, and I fully agree with that. Because Lux plays up the middle, and because he's been young for the level everywhere he's played, I think he will be afforded many more opportunities to play and figure it out.

And I don't think he's necessarily going to be a late bloomer. I think we're just seeing little flashes here and there of him starting to put it together with Corey Seager down. I don't know how comfortable he is at second base, so maybe he ends up in a corner outfield spot or something. But I think he can hit enough eventually to be there. I would look at Lux as a long-term buy. If you're not playing for this year in a keeper or dynasty league,

the window is open to actually go get him. You can actually make a move for him. I just had a really weird feeling too well i'm looking at his numbers and i'm like how different is he from glaber torres glaber sorry if that's how you say um he torres strikes out less and walks more and has a history of better barrel rates and a better maxi ex-avilo and some nice parks he gets to play in. So I do think all those things matter. I would buy Torres in a Dynasty League before I bought Lux, but the price might be higher on Torres too. I mean, the price should be higher on Torres.

He's got 1,000 more played appearances in the big leagues already, and they're only about a year apart in age. thousand more plate appearances in the big leagues already and they're only about a year apart in age torres is a question if there's actually still a question if lux is even like an average major leaguer yeah i mean that that's at least debatable with torres bad torres is an average hitter yeah and good torres is a well above average hitter so i do like both players i think lux in a shallow mixed league is a very tough player to make a decision on. If you had him in a 12-team league right now, would you consider dropping him? He's just out showing signs of life with two grand slams. Mm-hmm.

I think he's probably good to be a player. It's a little bit harder for me, too, because I just don't have any shares. I just didn't buy in. I didn't do it. It is easier to tell people to cut a player that you don't have any shares. I just didn't buy in. I didn't do it. It is easier to tell people to cut a player that you don't have to cut yourself. Just get rid of them. I don't have any to rein with, but you have something invested in.

Why don't you go punch that guy in the face? I didn't do it, but you should. I have no stakes here. I'm not the one who's going to get punched back and beat up. That's so weird. I'm not telling anybody to punch anybody in the face.

That's not what we're encouraging, but it's the same kind of thing. It's like, how did you go punch that guy? No, no thank you. I don't want to fight people. Here's just a random one, because this one I do have stakes in. I kind of just want your opinion.

Lorenzo Cain. Alright, so now we're talking about olds. 35 years old. I can call him that because I'm older than Lorenzo Cain. Don't worry. He stole four bases though, man. And the strikeout rate's not terrible. You're not buying him for a ton of homers.

I think you just got to hold on to him. So affordable in leagues with trading, like would cost almost nothing to get. Steals are so clustered. You need steals. I say you buy him. XBA is only 233, which is not amazing, but I think if he hits 233, he's projected for basically 260 and 270 or better. But even if he just hits 233 going forward, he'll have positive value. It won't be amazing, but he could also give you 10 steals and that might move you in a category. you in a cat in a category and let's say he's basically the guy we saw in 2019 he was below average in terms of wrc plus that year he had 260 with a 325 obp 11 homers 18 18 steals yeah so the

average doesn't hurt you the speed helps and the powers fine it's your last outfield he's not like a zero guy yeah yeah well so here's the other problem though with lorenzo kane part of what made him appealing a few years ago was the way the brewers putting runs on the board if we're concerned about yelich and we're concerned about hira and we don't see them getting upgrades before july i mean they got a dames but i'm saying like a big impact corner bat we don't see that happening you have to lower the ceiling for those counting stats. And the floor too. The floor is not quite as good.

He gets to hit higher in the order, but the quality of the production you're getting from him hitting high in that order is not what we would expect. And if Bradley ever gets it going, it could get a little crowded in that outfield and they're built to kind of rest guys. And so then you're talking about in a weekly league,

you'll have some weeks where you're like, do I want to play Lorenzo kane this week because how many times are you gonna play yeah because obby's gonna play a lot yelich is gonna play as much as his back lets him play kane is old right now bradley is just so terrible offensively that like kane's playing more. I was wondering about this. Bradley has been, at least in my mind, one of the more streaky players in the league. Right. Could he get hot and push Kane out to the bench more often?

Yep. And have we seen stretches as ugly as the one that he's gone through in the first two months before? Has he done this before? Boston fans are like, yeah, of course he's done this before. Oh man. But, you know, projection-wise, Bradley's only like a 90 WRC+.

He's fun to watch in the field. He's so good defensively. Do they take Kane out of the game with a lead? Trying to think if I've seen them do that yet. I think they would. Well, before Jelic was healthy, they would take out whoever was playing left, whether that was. And I think even now they might take out Jelic before they take out Kane

just because they're still kind of nursing him back, backwise, right? Yeah, depending on where they're at in the batting order. You know, if you're talking where they're at in the batting order. You know, if you're talking about, you're going to the ninth and Yelich just hit. So, you know, you're just trying to shut it down in that situation.

But then that doesn't cost Yelich an AAB, which. Right. That, that to me was a no brainer to possibly take Yelich out and just max out the quality of the defense. Cause it, it makes a difference.

Like it's, Yelich is okay defensively, and just max out the quality of the defense because it makes a difference. Jelic is okay defensively, but having Bradley and Kane out there together is just a cheat code. So I would say Kane is okay, but it's got to be more of like a 15-team league. I don't think you can go much more shallow than that and expect the speed to be there

because of the factors we're talking about. Playing time could dry up slightly. Lineup's not quite as good as we had hoped. But here's a guy. I'm just not even going to look at any advanced stats, and I'm just kind of going to do that blink, sort of close my eyes and just opine like I guess a lot of people do. Why am I throwing random people under the bus?

At least I didn't name anybody. Kyle Seeger. I'm not going to look at anything. If you're not getting what you want out of Kyle Seager, I think you can move on. He's just a guy. He hits homers. He has low batting average.

If you need better than that, you can move on. And his K rate kind of popped back to pretty shortened season levels too. So like last year when he was putting a lot of balls in play, that seemed a little more interesting. I know he pulls the ball a lot, hits a lot of fly balls. Oh, now you're going to make me call up his pair page. All right, all right. I'm looking at it right now because I liked him last year.

He's 33 too, so it's not like it's going to, you know, health and wealth and youth is going to make him better going forward. He's the kind of guy, though though that could end up playing third base in a more hitter friendly environment such as Milwaukee. So I mean he's a possibility there but I am surprised. The projections point to pretty consistently like

a 230, three teens ish OVP. The Bat X likes him relatively speaking. A 461 slug. So not a bad player but I would agree that in most mixed leagues, you could probably cut Kyle Seager if you're not happy there. The olds are always easier to cut, though. It's the Senzals and the Luxes and the guys that we saw on prospect lists

not that long ago and playing as some of the best players in the leagues they were in prior to getting promoted. Those guys are so hard to make a decision on. I think we're far enough into the season, and with Lux far enough into his career, that you can actually point to his Max Exavilo. I know that you're not supposed to use an absence of

a great Max Exavilo as against someone, and especially, it's a little bit rough on Lux because he's had three partial seasons, but you add up the three partial seasons now, and you've given him a fair amount of plate appearances and he's never hit a ball over 110. I just think that's meaningful. I am not as down on him as you are but I understand the need in redraft leagues, shallow redraft leagues

especially to possibly move on if a better option is out there. So hopefully that answers your question in some way, Eric. It was at least fun to dig into a few of those players for us. So we appreciate the question nonetheless. All right, Eno, we are moving on to some of the most fun things that have happened over the course of the last week. Let's begin with Alec Manoa. Shouldn't we have led with the most fun stuff?

Second chance leagues are fun. I don't know. All right. You know what? Everybody else, everybody else, every show on MLB Network, everything.

Let's do a lead with Alec Manoa. Well, the Javi Baez play trumped it in some cases too, which if it were me, if I were programming those shows, I would put Manoa first. Programming this show, I said, second chance leagues are actually a thing that people could enjoy on this long weekend. Let's get that out there because people might not know those exist. Alec Manoa was really good. And I mentioned earlier, it's not the Yankees

lineup that we expected going into the season, but this is why stuff plus and location plus and the numbers that you get on pitch quality also mean so much because it might not have mattered if that was the fully operational Death Star Yankees lineup. He probably would have carved up the A Yankees lineup because he looked great against the B b or c version yeah i posted his uh first his first strikeout which was a on a change up to odor and somebody said well it's not that hard to strike out a door i was like well did you see the second at bat the second strikeout he made judge look silly uh i think judge was expecting some sort of breaking ball back foot and he got 96 up and in uh and swung under that and then he swung over breaking ball so like the greatest thing about it was just how the every pitch looked good right

you know like um you know if you're looking at uh uh stuff plus for example i was and i was trying to be like okay i know the inner workings of stuff plus. Can I watch this and kind of decide if it's going to be good by Stuff Plus just by watching? And Ride is really hard to scout, but it is a little bit easier to scout Ride on a four seam if they also throw a two seam or a sinker. And so what you saw from Manoa was like, there was this sort of two plane fastball

that was obviously a sinker and then he would play off of that with something that looked like it kind of jumped off of that you know um so i was like i think these fastballs are good i think they're very good and i think fastball scouting is one of the hardest things actually because ride is just you can't see it i don't think i don't i mean it's something that you kind of maybe can see behind the plate better scouts who maybe see it well but like from the behind the pitcher view you're kind of watching the hitters reactions and stuff it's it's not as easy to see uh but when he has with the two fastballs like that i was really impressed and i was like this is going to look good by stuff top 10 fastball you have to kind of uh of push the thing down to 30 pitch minimum,

but top 10 fastball among starters, four seam by Stuff Plus. And I don't even know if that, that was like his third best pitch. Let me see here. I'm pulling it up right now. Alec Manoa, first best pitch is the slider, 140 Stuff Plus, four seam seam 126 stuff plus change up 105

stuff plus and the sinker uh which you know this model does not love sinkers the hundred is supposed to be average but uh fastballs like four seams the average is more like 95 and for sinkers the average is more like 90 so he has a 92.7 on his sinker i would say it's average or better which it's kind of amazing because watching you're like that's an awesome two seamer but i you know the league doesn't love two seamers the league is going away from them and uh i think they often look better than they are. So anyway, long story short, I didn't see anything that any problems. The only the only question I have is just how the Jays are going to handle him. And I think they need him to kind of just be a guy. Yeah, and I think the immediate question I have hearing the stuff plus numbers, Manoa versus Shane McClanahan. I mean, McClanahan was the other rookie pitcher who's come up and really popped with the entire arsenal. How do you compare them the rest of the way?

I know McClanahan was, what, inside your top 30 among starting pitchers last week when you updated your pitching rankings. So that has to be sort of a ballpark expectation for Manoa if we assume equal workloads. And I think Manoa's workload might be a little heavier, relatively speaking, because the Jays don't have the same bullpen depth luxury that the Rays have. So McClanahan can easily be pulled after five because the Rays could turn it over to four relievers. The Jays kind of need Manoa to go that sixth inning whenever possible just to make it a little bit less stressful on their pen might be interesting to see what that does to home run rate because amazingly manoa is basically projected to do the same thing that he just did strike out weight and walk rate it's just the difference is uh they're they're giving him more uh strikeouts and more home runs going forward if he's if he's forced to pitch in the six he might give up some home runs there. But that volume is offset by the fact that McClanahan's stuff is just a slightly bit better at every stop.

Curveball, 140. Slider, 130. Foreseam, 116. Ah, Manoa has the fastball on him. Change up 92. Okay, I would say Manoa actually profiles better. And McClanahan has actually had a little bit of a dip in stuff, plus as his slider has become more of a hard slider,

hard cutter type thing. But the slider bounced back in the last start. And so I'm hoping that that was just a little temporary blip. There is some risk with the young pitchers, and maybe I shouldn't have pushed McClanahan that hard, but I'd put Minnow in the top 40. I'd put McClanahan in the top 40. I think that's a reasonable place to go high end

for guys that appear to have legit great stuff. And for the guy who complained about, what is he going to show in the chat again? Be like, why did everybody talk about Shady MacLennan? And now he's the best. We did talk about Alec Manoa. I think we did in reference to the Shady MacLennan thing.

Do we have to come up with another one now? Like who's the next one? Oh, who's the next one? I don't know. You're going to run out at some point. I mean, yeah.

Patino coming back. I kind of want to know what Nick Lodolo's stuff actually looks like because his numbers have been dominant. He's a double A instead of triple A. He had some weird bad start where he walked five people, but other than that. How helpful would it be for you in keeper and dynasty leagues if you had stuff plus numbers on on prospects how amazing would that be god we we do have that that hack for that those minor leagues of park so i kind of want

to do it for those um you know i don't want to ask too much of max if max bay has done a great job with the stuff plus uh stuff that he's done so far. We're kind of stuck with that which would be incomplete because it would only be the pitchers that pitch in those parks versus a kind of really fun project where you want

to look into the predictiveness of Stuff Plus on a start-by-start level because there's that famous rob arthur piece where he showed the value of small changes in fastball velocity when it comes to you know start to start changes and that being predictive for the next start um that uh we if that's true then maybe stuff plus can be be predictive in that way. In which case, we'd really have something on our hands here.

You got a couple of really interesting paths to go down, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys do. Shout out to Max because that tool is a lot of fun to use. I'm glad that you've shared that with me. I can play around with that a little bit behind the scenes. We'll get it out to our listeners. I think it's just a question of what the format will be, where it will be, how much cleaning up we want to do. But you've seen the cards.

I'll continue to share the cards on Twitter. And if you ask me for a card, I can always share a card with you on Twitter. Yeah, so a very close comp right now just in terms of what we're seeing for Manoa and McClanahan as we set expectations for the rest of the season. The only question is innings, but like I've always said, and

has treated me fairly well this year in pitching, is just bet on talent, man. I think teams for the most part just want their best pitchers to pitch, and they'll find ways to do it. And I know that they're managing innings and this and that, but for the most part just want their best pitchers to pitch and they'll find ways to do it. And I know that they're managing innings and this and that, but for the most part, for all the hand-wringing about Shane McClanahan's

not throwing deep into games, he has two wins in his last three starts and the three straight five-inning starts. I know that's not six or seven, but crap, that's dinosaurs. You're not going to get that anymore, man. You got to make decisions pretty quickly in today's game, and that's what makes it both fun but also very challenging.

So I want to get to what's probably the play of the year, just in terms of pure wildness. So if you haven't seen it by now, I will describe it. Javier Baez with two outs against the Pirates hit a ground ball to third base. Routine ground ball. Of course, the ball was fielded cleanly, thrown to first base,

little off the bag, and Will Craig, not that Will Craig, but Will Craig. His brain melted into a puddle. He, I could totally understand how it happened. Not that Will Craig, but Will Craig. His brain melted into a puddle. I could totally understand how it happened. He got pulled off the bag toward Baez coming down the baseline.

Baez saw him and turned around and started to go back towards home plate, which if you're playing in the moment, if you're Will Craig, you're like, what's happening? I guess I'll tag out. What's happening here? He can't go any further than home. Right. He can't go back. He's going to run to the baseline.

He's going to be out. Again, there are two outs. This is forgotten because what's happening in front of you surprises you. He thinks Danny's over in his head. He thinks it's all over. He's like, oh, we're good. We're good. No problem.

I'll just go walk and touch them and then walk over to the dugout. Yeah, so there's a runner on second base when this sequence begins, Wilson Contreras. And Contreras goes from second to third while this begins. Decides to keep running. There's two outs. Continues running while Baez has Will Craig kind of stumbling down the first baseline, trying to tag him.

Contreras scores because Craig doesn't realize Contreras is going to score. Flips the ball home too late. just barely gets it in the tag. Never should have let go of that ball, man. Never should have let go of that ball. You could have stepped in the plate, and it would have all been over. So the amazing thing here, Baez is so close to home plate. He's in an umpire-like position on the first base side of home plate. He signals safe, which is my favorite thing about this entire sequence, like he's the umpire, and then takes off for first base side of home plate he signals safe which is my favorite thing about this entire

sequence like he's the umpire and then takes off for first he should have been running he shouldn't have done the the because he had to be safe because if he wasn't safe at first the run wouldn't have counted right all after all of that he could have been out could have still been out which would have been even more ridiculous than what happened so because the first baseman was near home plate where all this was going down, nobody was at first base. He still got him. Everyone's like, he still got him. The second baseman's not really paying attention.

They're all just like, this play's done. Have to cover first. Baez takes off after the run scores. Beats the throw down. To first. Ball goes into the outfield. Complete chaos. Baez ends up on second base after all this, which is just, I loved it because it was such a heads up play.

And then Rizzo is laughing so hard. It's amazing. I love it because it's something that very few players would even think to do in that situation. Most players would just say, ah, ground it out. Innings over, whatever. But Baez just did something different. And when you do something different, sometimes amazing things happen. He turned it into a snowball fight. It's a play that we're going to watch highlights of and laugh at probably for the next 50 years. There's also something that's really interesting about the best plays of all time or the most

interesting plays of all time and this play is there's a tinge of sadness to it you know i feel bad for will craig like he just he messed it up badly like there were there was like he's the butt of jokes like you know there are people being like oh what if will craig knew how to play first base. And like, it's just, and like when you're watching it, you kind of, you see like befuddlement, you know? And just, you just like, oh man, the gears are grinding on this one. It's just, there's a little bit of sadness. So it's got surprise and joy and ridiculousness and just a little tinge of sadness

when you consider the plight of young Mr. Craig. Hopefully, for the sake of Will Craig, he can do some other things in the field that he will be remembered for instead because – Hit some homers, dude. It's going to be a while before people forget that he was the guy that got deked by El Mago on that play. One other awesome thing that came in, I'm going to call this ad optimization. If you're watching on YouTube, this will carry a little more weight. One of our listeners, Bart, sent us a screenshot

and an email, and he said he was looking at SpiderTac online recently, trying to buy SpiderTac on Amazon, but he plays in his fantasy baseball league over on Yahoo. So he's on his phone, and he pops up in Trevor Bauer's player card, and it fires in the SpiderTac ad from Amazon. I mean, under Bauer's face. It is right under his headshot. It is just ridiculous.

It's like the most perfect screenshot. I mean... It's also my favorite thing. When you go to the Spire Attack thing, it's like, it's great for Cinderblock loading. Contractors love it. And then there's three comments that are like, it's great for pitching.

And then there's like three comments that are like, it's great for pitching. We know what this is really used for. I think I just love it even more because Bauer's got a smile on his headshot. So it's just a perfect accidental endorsement of the product. Oh, man. I was on the radio in St. Louis constantly yesterday because of giovanni gallegos incident where his hat was uh confiscated and uh just to give y'all the like sort of the snapshot of that i think most of y'all would know uh these things from reading or listening is just that um you know sunscreen and rosin does not give you the same performance enhancing aspect that something like spider tack does.

It's plus 30 RPM at most. And so what you see when you look at the video, you actually literally see Gallegos point to his forearm where he has sunscreen and point to the rosin when he talks to Joe West. And then Joe West says he said he just uses sunscreen and rosin, right? Um, which is really interesting because that is illegal. Technically by the book, you're creating a, a new substance that you're doctoring the ball with.

However, it doesn't have the same performance enhancing aspect. And so we actually saw Joe West look the other way. We, we, we killed Joe West all the time for other things. And some people were killing him for this, for being an um,

show thing, but he did not kick Gallegos out of the game. Right. Schilt got tossed. Well, I mean, and I have sympathy for Schilt because he's saying he's doing sunscreen and rosin. People are doing much worse. And everyone's doing this.

Are we really doing this? And I don't know if maybe he thought Gallegos was going to get kicked out, and that's why he was so mad. Or he's just mad that he felt that his player was getting talking he had to stand up for him um but i thought west did an okay job to just be like hey just take this hat off um and i don't know if like if he thought it was like super obvious or if somebody somebody asked him to or if he wanted to do what baseball said, what they want to do is research and find out how many people are doing sunscreen arousing, how many people are doing the crazy

stuff and how much they want to do. And they definitely don't want to start this fight in the year where the CBA is being done. So I think right now, this is all sort of fact finding mission. And it's a little bit of an unfortunate comparison, but it's a little bit like the Mitchell report time in baseball, where they're just trying to figure out how many people are doing this, how big of a deal it is. And maybe once we have a new CBA, we can go to work on this aspect of baseball. But if they do do something,

it's possible that they cut strikeouts with this. So I think, you know, overall, I, I know that was like a, a, a bad time maybe for some St.

Louis fans and they felt maybe attacked and stuff. But I thought actually people handled it fairly well, and Mike had a point. Mike Schill had a point. Joe West did not kick the guy out. He's just trying to kind of do what baseball has asked him to do, which is confiscate hats, confiscate balls, track this and gain more information.

So it also just, it also just points to how uneasy this is going to be because at some point they are going to turn on the suspensions, right? Maybe that's what they say. So after they do the fact finding, they're going to turn on suspensions and the first person is going to feel very targeted. You're going to feel like, oh, you just singled me out, but somebody has to get singled out in order to kind of scare the rest straight. Cause you're probably not going to catch every single person doing it. You're just trying to kind of broadcast the message

that this crap isn't going to fly anymore. Yeah, a lot there. First and foremost, I actually feel bad for Mike Schilt too. Mike Schilt was right. I feel bad for Gallegos too. I had some tweets about the subject. I really did not want to brand him as a cheater. a cheater. I think, you know, Southern Koreans and Rosin is fine. And,

and, and I think I've been consistent saying that I think everyone's doing something like that and there's people doing much worse. So. Yeah. So generally I, uh, you know, I support Mike Schilt getting thrown out of games in this case. He was right. I will admit it. Don't take that clip and use it out of context. Mike Schilt was right. I will admit it. Don't take that clip and use it out of context. Mike Schilt was right. I'm admitting it. I didn't know the – I didn't have the full story. When we were talking on Wednesday, it was just fresh.

We didn't know the sequence of what happened. I had some Cubs fans come onto some tweet threads and be like, I just support anything that throws Mike Schilt out of the game. See, yeah. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess, in some cases. Suddenly, I like Joe West. Little of that going on

for me, I guess, in that circumstance. And that was the game I think that Joe West broke the record. Yeah, it was the day after he was presented

with something from the San Diego Chicken, right? What did the chicken give him? Yeah. So, what a day for Joe West. Yeah,

big 24 hours for Joe. I'm going to be gone next week. Monday, of course, is Memorial Day, so there's no show on Monday, and we will have shows Wednesday and Friday. We can announce a guest host on Wednesday. We're going to go turn back time to the time when Paul Spohr and I used to broadcast on The Sleeper and the Bus.

So Paul Sporer will come in. It'll be funny. Maybe I'll just hand him the reins and be like, you're the host. Hey, guest, lead host. No, that's going to be great. It's a nice throwback to have you guys working together next week. So I'm looking forward to listening to that. I'm sure a lot of people out there are too.

Britt's on vacation. She's back the same week I come back. I'll be back on Monday the 7th. She'll be back on that Friday. I think you're going somewhere that week too. We're getting our R&R in right now. We'll be good up through the All-Star break and far into the second half, but it's good to get that

rest in when you can. Mix it up. Have some other voices on here. We don't normally do guests, so it'll be kind of a fun time. Yeah. It's a good time to do that. If you don't already have a subscription to the athletic, get one for three 99 a month at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. That includes rankings, articles, everything we do,

including maybe some bonus podcast content in the future too. So keep that in mind on Twitter. He is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can always email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

Have a safe and happy holiday weekend. And Eno and Paul are with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.