Rates & Barrels - Spring Training Reactions and The Latest News

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Spring training is here and Eno and Welsh react to it all. How do the Padres pay everyone, who is on the outs? Pitch clock mania, stolen base numbers are up and lots of player reactions. Rundown 6:36 - Machado contract 15:20 - Pitch clock 25:24 - Spring training stolen base numbers 34:56 - Yordan Alvarez still not swinging a bat 38:51 - Suzuki oblique injury worries 40:55 - Masataka Yoshida NOT going to leadoff 44:01 - Sean Manaea velo uptick 46:43 - Nathan Eovaldi velo and moving up draft boards 49:03 - Joe Ryan's new sweeper 52:04 - Nolan Gorman's new approach 54:15 - Spring Training at-bat leaders 57:00 - Can we believe in Jarred Kelenic? 1:00:00 - Corbin Carroll's stolen base in first spring training at-bat Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Welsh on Twitter: @isitthewelsh e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Treat yourself to Tim's new Fudge Brownie Lattes, made with freshly ground espresso beans, frothy steamed or ice-chilled milk, and topped with marble chocolate curls. Now that's music to our ears. Available hot or iced, only at Tim's. Hello friends and welcome in. It is Rates and Barrels. I'm your host today, Chris Welsh. No DVR, but he's coming back soon. Sometime into the near future. Until then, you'll have to deal with me just a little bit extra. Joined as always by my great great friend Eno Saris.

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Eno, today we're going to do some news. It's been a little bit since we've caught up. Oh, yeah, a little bit of spring training going on. Quite a bit of things from performances to stuff changes to injuries and more. It's a lot of baseball right now, and it is a glorious time, my friend. Oh, my god did so much baseball the kids started uh little league and uh so i was coached by oh you know we just had lars nutbar on last week i was coached by lars nutbar's dad in how to coach my kid in pitching

so that was a fun little clinic charliet Barr came by for the National Pitching Association he's associated with Tom House and uh you know uh uh they they gave us some exercises the kids can do and one of the biggest things that I thought was really interesting was you should warm up to throw you should not throw to warm up and that is very different from what we'd heard in the past in coaching. You know, if you're doing a practice for little kids, almost always you say, go grab a ball, get out there and start tossing the ball around. That's how you start practice. And he was saying that that doesn't make sense. You should be warm. And, you know, he's got these like you're running around with your arms up in the air and you're flapping them around and you're doing all sorts of stuff but the idea is to basically

activate all your muscles before you start so like stretch and like i mean i bet little kids just love running around waving their hands my kid would love that so instead of picking up the ball and throwing it just kind of get moving get like moving the shoulders and stuff like that exactly yeah yeah like even one where you just run with your hands up in the air like this or one where you run in the hands going like this and one where you run you're like twisting while you're running all this stuff is to like activate your obliques activate your shoulders the kids have pretty weak rotator cuffs and shoulders so you want to get those warmed up you don't want to just pick up a ball and fling it and be like ow you know uh so uh i thought that

was pretty useful i thought that was pretty interesting um and so we're gonna try and incorporate i think the easiest it's funny when you do one of these and you're like man this is so different than what we've been doing in practice you know like this is like that's overwhelming how are we gonna and i'm like you know what bite off what you can chew make it real easy let's do this everyone take a lap before you throw let's just start with that you know and then we get more organized we can do you know laps with the the arms in the air or finish the lap with your arms up the air like this all right boom we that's better than we were yesterday you know that's actually really cool to know my kid uh is he's 10 years old he wants to really start

getting into baseball and he's a lefty he's actually ambidext know. My kid is 10 years old. He wants to really start getting into baseball, and he's a lefty. He's actually ambidextrous. He can do things with both hands. So I've always kind of told him. He doesn't understand the concept of it, but I'm like, hey, buddy. You're going to be mighty fine if we can get you rolling. Switch hitting, big lefty, whatever it is. I can't do it at all.

I cannot figure it out. Useless. Even when I'm talking to a left-handed pitcher i have to be like listen i'm gonna show you something but i have to do with my right hand because i can't even think like i can't even make the right motion with my left the only thing that's actually helped me is having a son who's a left i've had i've had to start doing some things in that motion to show him because he has a hard time conceptualizing when i do things righty but he just started to want to get into baseball and i'll start diving down there so there's a good tip

and oh yeah probably the coolest thing ever that you know can bring in like the new bar family and like another amazing people everyone's gonna have expectations of you though they're gonna be like all right so when are you gonna bring in shamanai to show us how to do this and when are you gonna bring in you know this next player when you're gonna bring in joey v to show us how to do this. And when are you going to bring in this next player? When are you going to bring in Joey Votto to talk to the kids about hitting? That's going to be the expectation of you. Yeah, I don't. I try to keep expectations low. I mean, it's just hard because it actually becomes so much baseball.

When I'm watching spring training and taking out of practice with one kid, and I take the other kid to his other practice, and they're talking about baseball baseball and we're watching it on TV and it's, and I'm writing about it. It's like, woo. When we were doing it in fall ball, I was like, this is a lot. And I, I can't believe my wife is, is cool with this. I had a similar thing. Um, I spent a Thursday, we're going to talk about it next week in an episode, but you know, my,

my days have just been at camps the whole time. I've been getting different videos and stuff I've been trying to share. And my day started off out of camp, coming home, recording, and then going out. I was invited to the Top Spot house. And Nando actually got me hooked up with it. And I got to go out there and see a bunch of players. Interviews were going on. Randy Johnson was out there doing photography for tops.

And I was actually able to interview Drew Jones with Arizona diamond backs. And I'm going to play some odd is some audio of it next week on an episode where we're going to be talking, I think about a first year player next week. So you can be on the lookout for that. But those days where your entire day is consumed with baseball, sometimes your head spins a little bit because every single day. day yeah well i'm all in yeah well it's it's funny to then like contrast that with and i hate to whine about uh work but uh to contrast that with like

people yelling at you on twitter that you don't love baseball because you think the pitch clock is fine it's just and and i like my hackles raised and i want to i want to argue it but there's no arguing with this there's no arguing there's no we're actually going to talk about that uh so like i can't hear you i'm trying to listen to charlie newt bar help me coach my kid i must and i just got off talking with lars yeah yeah i must hate it i hate baseball but i just talked to lars new bar i got charlie new bar here and we're going to be talking to other amazing players here soon. And do it at 588.

98% of my days are involved in baseball. Well, people listening, it might not be 98% of their day or anything like that, but there has been a lot of stuff that has gone on, and that's what we're going to talk about today. I think it was a really good decision. You know, we're talking about this, and we just play catch up on a lot of the big things, more so than anything else. With train, like officially starting only a couple

days ago, we are really getting to see some of the big practices that are lining up here. And there are some big changes. So we're going to talk about the biggest pieces of news down to even some of the really interesting performance based things. So that's, we're going to do on the episode today. And the biggest thing that came down was actually over on the Padres. I was going to that camp the day that Manny Machado, which was reported by Jeff Passan, Manny Machado did re-sign with the San Diego Padres on an 11-year, $350 million deal, which did not feel like it was going to happen. I was going to Padres camp that day. I walked in there, you know, and there were maybe 150 to 200 people lined up rare and to go. And I was like, today's not the day we're going to do the Padres because it was just chaotic there.

But it really seemed like, and a lot of people are everywhere. Assume Manny Machado was gone and people were lining him up with the Mets that he was going to get big money. I was also there the day he did the interview and the like wild outfit where he's like, I'm opting out. I'm opting out. And, you know, we're not doing anything. And it really seemed like it was in a bad spot, but they turned it around. People even thought that the Xander Bogart signing might have been like, you know, in anticipation of losing Machado. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not. And well, there's a a couple things with it, but somehow they've got endless, endless amounts of money. And I don't know how they're doing it.

You've got the Juan Soto situation that's out there, but they just signed Hugh Darvish. They got Xander Bogarts. They got Tatis. They've got a crew of players that are going to be playing until their 40s, and hopefully these guys will get going. So what are your thoughts on them even being able to secure this and Manny Machado ending

his career with the San Diego Padres? Do you like do you like these guys signing these deals like that are into their 40s pretty much for the Padres? Do you think this is a good idea for the Padres? Yeah, I mean, their estimated 2023 payroll is now 262 million. And for 2024 without arbitration, it's 169. But then you've got Soto there in arbitration, Jake Cronenworth in a second year, Grisham in a second year. So I would assume that you add another sort of 40 or 50 million dollars in arbitration, guys. So that gets you over $200 million

while also losing Luis Garcia, Adam Engel, Nelson Cruz, Blake Snell to free agency, and Josh Hader to free agency. So they're going to be at just about $10 million short of the luxury tax threshold and need a closer and another starting pitcher well did it was it also mentioned by the way that they are still planning to be at the forefront of the show hey otani sweeps takes next season or that does seem crazy to me i mean part of it maybe is putting the lie to that the fact that maybe other teams could be could be doing this too you know um that uh the teams could be spending more on payroll than they do um there's it's also fascinating

in light of the fact that bally's and you know a bunch of these tv contracts are uh you know bally's about to go belly up and and there's a couple other at&t and um and apple i think there's a couple that want to get out of their contracts so um you know there's there's uh a lot of tv money that's going to be exiting uh the industry uh pretty soon i do think long term uh teams will find a way to market directly their video directly to fans so then it could be the end of blackouts and also maybe a better arrangement financially for teams where they can be like we can make as much money as we can make off of our direct subscribers we can directly have a product that we sell to our subscribers our video right well like a padres like padres online padres tv online or something

like that where people yeah like an mlb tv but i, like an MLB TV, but I'm just a Padres. I just buy for the Padres. And I think that's where we're headed, and that might mean more money for teams. Then you put it into context with the fact that the Padres have come out of small market status and are not a luxury tax receiver anymore. So there's been a change in kind of their market status as it's defined by baseball. I can tell you on the backfields here, there is no team.

And I haven't gone to all of them, of course. And the Dodgers are their own animal. But there is no team I've been to that has bigger crowds than the Padres. And that rivals the Dodgers. And if you've ever been to spring training out here and you crowds than the Padres, and that rivals the Dodgers. And if you've ever been to spring training out here and you go to the backfield, you know the Dodgers is a zoo. It's an absolute zoo of people. That's the Padres now.

People are lining up in droves to go down there, new fans that are out there. But I will tell you this, you know, if the Padres start up a Patreon, I'm out on baseball. I'm out. If they start up a Patreon, that's going to be the direct-to-consumer stuff. They're like, oh, we got a Patreon. Come on, check it out. I'm out on all of that'm out. If they start with Patreon, that's going to be the direct-to-consumer stuff. They're like, yeah, we got a Patreon. Come on, check it out.

I'm out on all of that. But it's an interesting concept. Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, stretching out these deals has a little bit of a manipulating the luxury tax element to it

where it's like, okay, we would love to pay him $40 million for eight years or whatever, or, you know, whatever, like a shorter term. But if we spread it out to 10 and 11 years, we make the average annual value lower, and that would leave us under the luxury tax. I'd love to say that's what's going on in San Diego,

but that can't be what's going on in San Diego if they're going to be at the luxury tax next year, you know, just with their core. It's not meant to stay under the luxury tax. This is just spending, you know just with their core it's not it's not meant to stay under the luxury tax this is just spending you know this is just spending to get better and and to take on the dodgers so do you think at all when you look at this that um there's a lot of weirdness going around with fernando tatis do you think the signing of manny machado is a precursor to like something's got a break with this team and it's not darvish it's not xander bogarts it's now not manny machado it feels like it's going to come down to tatis or soto do you think with

maybe a little bit of a fractured relationship might be on the way out i you know in the past a deal like this was unmovable you know you know you're talking about these long, big deals. Like, remember how hard it was for the Marlins to trade away John Carlos Stanton? Yeah. In the middle of his long deal? Like, they basically had to just take whatever the Yankees would give them. Like, they weren't getting prospects. It was just like, here, take the contract. The Diamondbacks, Zach Granke's contract cost the Diamondbacks Paul Goldschmidt.

Because of the deal that they had put on Greinke, they were unable to afford Paul Goldschmidt and had to do that awful trade that they did. And, I mean, we even saw the Diamondbacks at one point get under a bat, and I just know about the Diamondbacks. They had to trade one of their top prospects with Bronson Arroyo to the Braves just to get rid of him. And they didn't even get anything back.

They're just like, here, we'll give you a prospect and give you this contract. So if you're the Padres, you're not attaching a prospect to Tatis to trade him away. So I figure basically it's Soto. I think they don't sign Soto to a long-term deal. It's just that he's a Boris guy.

He's not necessarily going to go out there and give them an extension, right? He wants to hit the open market. That's at least what he said. And we'll see if that actually happens. Right. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one.

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Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. But I kind of, I mean, I didn't think there would be three $30 million guys on one team, but I kind of doubt there's going to be four $30 million guys on one team. Pretty shocking. I think Soto, maybe they hold on to Soto as the guy that they can trade in season if they're having a bad year.

But if they are having a bad year after all this and don't make the playoffs, like, what point does the love affair between Seidler and Preller run out? Pretty soon. I think it can be cured

by the acquisition of Shohei Otani. If you continuously create excitement around the team, it's smoke and mirrors sometimes. You're like, hey, don't look over here. Watch my hand here. Don't look at my hand over here. That might be, unfortunately, what they become.

What happens if they lose in the first round? I'm fascinated by the Padres. It's just, if they lose in the first round, is that enough momentum to say, okay, we're still building something good here. I'll give you another $500 million for Shohei Otani. I think it's a possibility. It also could be a possibility that they break something up and that breakup might be a Tatis. I know those rumors have been flying. Not to be passive if you have any other comments on it, obviously, but the Padres were

also in the other big piece of news. There's two other things we're going to talk about here that we are finally seeing all of what is going to be the pitch clock and it's 15 seconds not no man on base 20 seconds with a man on base we had the first two violations and manny machado who we're actually talking about was the very first recipient of a called strike and i believe robbie ray was the very first recipient of a delay which which was a ball. We also saw a game end in a walk-off style where Cal Conley stepped out and was called strike and the game just ended, which is wild. And like you said, the internet is going crazy about it. I've experienced this quite a bit. I'm very indifferent and I'm probably, if you hate it, it's not going to be good for me because you're not going to like

me because it's worked. I've seen it work. It speeds up games. I like it, if you hate it, it's not going to be good for me because you're not going to like me because it's worked. I've seen it work. It speeds up games. I like it, but it definitely feels, I feel anxiety watching. I feel like pitchers in spring training are going really fast and it's screwing with stuff. So talk to me about what you've seen with the pitch clock and the adjustments for hitters and pitchers so far in spring training. I think there'll be an adjustment for people watching.

I think that baseball for a lot of people is something you put on. You do other things. I mean, honestly, it's like a podcast. It's like a podcast. Yeah. Or like, I mean, maybe it's just my life. Baseball is always on in my house. But when you have baseball always on and it's a slow paced game, you kind of you'll wash

the dishes and look up. Oh, someone hit a homer. You know what I mean? Like that's that's like that can be a sort of average game watching experience as i'm i'm watching while i'm cooking dinner right but i think the pitch clock baseball is more like no you got to watch this instead of like four hours of baseball is on while i'm doing things this is going to be two and a half hours of watch it of like actually watch it and baseball used to be a comedy and now it's going to be two and a half hours of watch it of like actually watch it. And baseball used to be a comedy and now it's more like a really intense drama.

Yeah. You got to pay attention. You got to pay attention. And, uh, and so I think that'll be an adjustment for some people. Some people I think are right, are right to react to that.

And that's totally fine for them. If they're, if they're most, if they're really angry about that, I'm surprised to see people think that they would just never watch baseball again because of the pitch clock. I've surprised to see people think that they would just never watch baseball again because of the pitch clock. I've seen a, there was a yes, no.

See, there was a, when we asked people, what are the biggest issues in the game? Pitch clock was number five or just pacing was number five. I agree with that. And 48% said that. So then there was all these people online being like, oh, 52% said it wasn't a big deal.'s like that's not actually how the poll worked the poll asked

is this you know is this one of the biggest issues in the game so the other 52 you don't know if they thought it was a little issue it wasn't an issue you know what i mean like it's they just didn't put it on the list in fact you should look at the ranked list and see oh they thought it was the fifth most important thing in the game and if you look at all the stuff above it, it's not stuff that baseball can do anything about unilaterally. It's all stuff like spending is out of control or tanking. Tanking is on there. Well, they tried to do something about tanking in the CBA.

It's very complicated to do anything about tanking. It requires getting the owners and players and Major League Baseball on the same page. That's very difficult. But pace of play is something they can actually do anything about tanking. It requires getting the owners and players and Major League Baseball on the same page. That's very difficult, but pace of play is something they can actually do something about. So they're trying to do something about it. It is something that people care about. Travis Sochik had a yes-no poll that was like, do you like it or

not? It was 80%. Last time I checked, it was 2,000 votes. It was 80%. People liked it. I think that people are just going to like it. I think that the early part, this part, it was always going to suck because there's just going to be people who have to get used to it.

And I think from watching, I haven't seen hard numbers on this yet, but from watching, it looks to me like the hitters are having a harder time than the pitchers. Well, there's a lot of adjustments in them getting back to the plate and getting rolling.

Pitchers don't have a lot of it. You have to be alert. The batter has to be alert to the pitcher in eight seconds. There's plenty of guys who will get their feet in and be swinging their bat but not looking at the pitcher. That's been the basic of what's happened. Also, people need to understand, it's not like the... Breaking news.

What do we got? Gavin Lux limping, cannot put pressure on his right foot. They're taking him off in a cart. Ooh, in a cart? His right knee, he couldn't put pressure on it, and they're taking him off, and he looks bad.

Oh, no. That's too bad because we just had the news of him adding six miles an hour of bat speed at driveline. And the uptick in speed, stolen base base attempts that dave roberts wanted him and miguel vargas to start doing oh you're freaking me out what's happening uh it's just a really awkward it's basically one of those like high ankle sprains that he's feeling all the way up to the knee i think oh can we not we can't is it one that's not good to watch i it was like i was like oh like no i can't definitely hurt it's not it's not like um the what is the is the naismith or whatever or like the the leg is like going

no no yeah it's not that it's not that bad but it looks bad i would i would guess like you know out like three to four weeks with a high ankle sprain chris taylor that would be chris taylor who would looks like he would probably fill in for that spot um if miguel vargas was a short it does mean milligan's vargas is probably on the team yeah oh yeah i think it's even more of a guarantee it just my brain got going thinking man what if miguel vargas is shortstop and they put mookie out at second base because they got guys like trace you know they got like trace thompson and james outland is that good defensive no no he's not they wouldn't do that that. But that would probably be something where Chris Taylor. I think Taylor's already done with shortstop, too.

So I think it just means more Miguel Rojas. Miguel Rojas, I think he left the game yesterday or today. He just came up limp and had something going on as well. Could this be a bad year for the Dodgers, dude? Well, we're talking about the Padres. This is a good thing for the Padres and their fans, if that were to happen. You freaked me out. you freaked me out.

You freaked me out. They just did the slow-mo, and I was like, meow. But we were talking about the clocks. I think that people will get used to the clocks. I don't think that it'll be a major problem for anybody. I am surprised that Kenley Jansen found out he's the slowest pitcher in baseball by watching MLB network in the, uh, in the clubhouse. And, uh, I've, I've been watching some of the Sox games. They've had a ton of violations in the Sox games. I kind of feel like the Sox didn't really prepare for this.

Okay. That's where I was. No one called Kenley Jansen and said, Hey, by the way, in your, in your off season throwing progressions, could you just have some clock on that? See, it's interesting you say that because what I was going to say was that people should also understand, I guess I can't speak to every single team, but you should understand that it's not like the guys stepped up to their first game on Friday, Saturday, and were like, all right, let's figure out this clock thing.

I think it seems like that for Boston. Maybe for Boston it was. That's probably not a big shock at this point but we didn't like i i reported i showed a showed a video during camp the previous week about nate ivaldi that they were working the rangers were on the clocks on the fields and they were also working with pitchcom and then you saw yeah and you saw the adjustments as well like max scherzer i think pitched today or yesterday and he had like the pitchcom device on his glove and he was just calling pitches yeah a lot of these guys are this is going to be the time period they're the older guys

that might be slower and the younger guys that you don't necessarily want calling their own games are just more used to the pitch con like more used to the pitch clock they're just they're more used to it so like yeah they're used to anybody like this is what i think is funny is like there's people being like oh it's terrible and i was like you haven't this is the first time you've seen it you haven't watched any college baseball or minor league baseball in the last five years like like i guess not yeah but it's been out there It's been coming for a long time and you could have, you could have checked it out. But I, I, I think it'll, it's, it's like a new, new, it's a shock of a new rule. That's a big deal. And I don't want to take that away from anybody. I don't want to take it away

from anybody. They hate it. That's fine. The only question I have with this for you, and we can go to the next big piece. And then the second half of this episode is going to really be about a lot of the news and spring training and stuff. And I know this is probably dicey because it's only been a couple days, and you're not at spring training. Have you heard from any players or any connections or anything that have made comments about this process yet? Is there anything getting out there? I know you have some good relationship with some guys, but is anybody complaining or just being like, this isn't a big deal? It's only been five days. Lars Neupahr interview did say that, that it would be harder maybe on

the hitters than the pitchers. Uh, and he was talking about it. It's going to be, it's going to be interesting for the hitters. And I think that's been proven to be true. Uh, we've seen Trevor may tweet, uh, about the, the Boston thing. He said, just like I dreamed about, uh, on the sandlot or whatever. So I think people really didn't like the game ending. And maybe there will be a tweak where they say it's off in the ninth inning. I mean, you know, why not? Just turn it off in the ninth inning. I don't know.

Well, it's not going to end like that, by the way, in season. We're not going to. Well, no, I guess. Yeah, it could. It could. But it's a very niche case. And it's also in the first week of doing it. So one thing that I was tweeting out was that in the beginning,

when they did these things in the minor leagues, there was two infractions a game, and then five weeks in with the new rules, there was an infraction every two games. So that's on the same level of delay of game penalties in football, which seems like a very similar thing. You know, delay of games been around for a while. They still mess it up.

So there's some expected number of just mess ups that just happening. And I don't think you can get it. And I think once it comes once every, every two games and the penalty is just a ball or a strike, I think we'll get over it. It's a doubt. We're going to get one of those game-ending situations again for a long time.

And that's how minor leagues and AFL, that's how it became. It became really a non-thing, and it will over time. It's just very much in our face. The other big thing that has been looming around that we're finally getting a little bit of data on, for better or for worse, or whatever you can take it as, are the stolen base numbers. And our friend Jason Collette, our mutual friend Jason Colletteette had a really interesting tweet and he cited you on it the tweet that you can check out follow him at jason collette was 2022 spring training steel attempts per game were 0.77

this year in 2023 they are 1.7 uh he cited you saying eno has mentioned teams run more in spring than regular season is it 1.07 or 1.7? Oh, 1.07. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's 1.07. And he said that you had mentioned that teams run more in spring than regular season. League attempts per rate last year were 0.68. So 0.78 was the spring training.

And then 0.68 was in season. He ends up breaking it down where you can see the differential, which is on average about, and we're just going to do an average here, you know, of about a 20% decrease from spring training to in season. But you're looking at a 0.09, which actually was what he put on his bar. So 0.07, 0.09, whatever it is, which would be the highest since 2012 of spring training numbers.

So if you take a 20% marker, you're looking at a pretty significant increase over last year, 20 to 30%, I think it was of a stolen base increase. That's what has been speculated. Yeah. And, and that's, uh, there's also a good model over a baseball prospectus where they, they kind of tried to model what happened in the minor leagues with these rule changes and they expected a 25% increase in stolen

bases too. That's a ton of stolen bases. However, if you think about it, a guy with four steals five. So it's not going to be that much on the player level. And even we started looking at who would affect the most.

And if you do go look at that Jason Collette thread on Twitter, there's some research on it where someone looked at types of players and who benefited the most. And it lined right up with what Stephen Vogt said, which is the top guys did not actually see that many more increases in stolen base attempts and weren't any more successful. But the guys who had a little bit of speed and weren't successful, didn't have great

success rates, did take off more and were more successful. So it means the most in these like small places where I think a guy who could steal four might actually steal six, which is a 50% increase. But the guy who steals 30 may not steal much more than 31 or 32. You know what I'm saying? So I do think on a percentage level, we're going to see it mostly out of these handful of steals, guys. We're going to see guys go from eight to ten and from six to eight and uh

that's great because that's my strategy and fantasy is always to load up on the guys who steal you 10 bags or whatever and i'm hoping all those guys steal you know 12 to 15 this year and and it makes my strategy uh just as good as just as viable as before i went back and looked at 2012 real quick uh the leader that year was Mike Trout with 49 steals. There was Everett Cabrera with 44. Last year, we didn't have anybody over 35, so we could have somebody over 40. And also

we had 28 guys with 20 steals in 2012. And last year, I think we had like 16. So there are going to be more guys with 20 steals there they're probably going to be some difference at the top but a lot of the difference will come with the guys who steal you know 5 to 12 backs so there were kind of two questions i had one was i i didn't see this in the data one interesting part about the end of collette's was essentially saying that

the uh that he had an exact number 25.2% improvement. It's essentially saying last year, there were just about 3,300 stolen base attempts and he's projecting 4,131 based off of what we're seeing early is that the only thing I haven't seen is, is there any difference in the success rate of stolen bases? Because it's one thing if they're stealing more, I'm curious if the success rate is changing because we have less pickoff attempts and we have shorter base path that we can say like, okay, 25% maybe only equates to, you know, two or one or two or something like that.

But what if the success rate has gone up? And then all of a sudden you're also looking at maybe an extra one or two, the percentage actually goes up because the success rate is better now with lower bases. That might be a little tiny quantifiable thing that might change, you know, those middle line guys to steal just a couple more bases. And back to what you said might get us back into a spot where 30 stolen base guys could become 40 this year. But I don't think I've seen anything like that. Well, Bradley Libros, uh, did some work. Uh, he's B L I B R O S. Um, and he, he, he's on that thread and he did some work where he did look at exactly that. Um, and he looked at stolen base, uh, success rates, uh,

before and after changes. Um, and he basically found, um, that, he basically found that the top guys became more successful. So they had a 78% success rate before and 84% after. Tom Tango thinks like 2% to 3% of that is just the base size. So that means that the throws over were a big part or more part of the extra success rate, the rules about throwing over and lead offs and stuff like that the uh low success baseline um went from 65 to 75 percent um so a larger raw difference and that's really big because the break even point for uh

stealing bases is 69%. That's why the middle guys will steal more relative than before because they're going to go from no-go to go, right? It's all scienced up. They've got it all figured out. So if they go from 65% to 75%, the Major League Baseball average in stolen bases success rate is 75%. So you just went from,

no, you shouldn't go, man. You're 65%. You're costing us runs. To, oh, yeah, you can go now. So going from no-go to go means a lot means more. And so their stolen bases went up

I think more than the high success rate guys. I will tell you It's a good piece. You should check it out. I want to check that out. Everybody should go check that out. It has the potential to be a game changer and can everybody think of one player that keeps jumping to my mind that really might

seal a lot of bases this year? We might talk about him in just a tiny bit if you can think of what I'm talking about. You kind of already talked about this. The other question I was going to ask you and then we're going to move on was like is any of this playing a role in changing anything about your fantasy takes for this year i mean you already said you kind of want those like middle line guys you're looking for those 10 stolen base guys to stack those players but when you talk about you know caught stealing rates and you talk about the stolen base rates in general, does it change anything whatsoever?

Or does it just more push your fantasy agenda for the year? I think we should change our targets because we're projecting a 25% increase in stolen bases, you know? And so if you used to, you know, target 80 stolen bases, you know, and that used to be good enough for me 80 is not leading the league in stolen bases in your league in a 15 team league but 80 is like being in the top 4 and the reason I did that was because I didn't want to spend so much on steals

and so I would just get enough to get to 80 and win home runs win RBI win all that other stuff and get fourth in stolen bases. That was always my aim. But if that's my aim in the past, then if 80 is the number I was looking for, then I should be looking for 100. And that is going to change some potential.

And if you'd like to get like 100 before, you should look for 125. Like I think you should change your target for stolen bases. If you're in, if you're drafting in any league. So there's not a player you're saying the overall target of what you're chasing for the, for the category. Yeah,

because we're going to have a really hard time as much as we just spent talking about modeling it and who's going to get the most out of it. And the thinking we can do, we're happy. It's good that they have to play it out. And some people are going to like, we were in that discussion, that fascinating discussion we had, you were talking about corbin carroll's you know raw

speed versus jordan lawler's knowledge on the on the field right you know if you're talking about jordan lawler maybe he's gonna get those throws over and play cat and mouse and like really zoom in on that and steal a lot more whereas corbin carroll's more just of a burner and he's not going to get those throws over and maybe he'll just steal what he would have stolen anyway whatever that number is so i mean that's it's going to come down to like the the actual player in each case but we know it's going to go up 25 right so you know the one thing you do know you don't know who's going to get them all but but you know that that you that there's going to be more. And so you have to get more. So I think that's the big takeaway.

Yeah. And Carol specifically, it's interesting because it's just about the caught stealing rate. That improving just is a better factor for the fastest player in baseball to be able to steal more bases. All right. That's a fascinating discussion. And then maybe down the line here, we'll have some more of some of those potential targets are going to be looking at as spring training kind of keeps evolving and we're seeing play players go. We got a lot of news and notes here. Maybe one of the biggest one from a player perspective was Jordan Alvarez, you know, Jordan Alvarez still not swinging a bat with a wrist injury. And that is concerning. I will tell you this. Two drafts I'm doing. I told you I went Ricky Bobby in TGFBI that just started up.

I'm, if you're not first, you're last. I'm tired of messing around. I'm not playing it safe. I did the same thing in tout. I've put a lot of baskets into the Jordan Alvarez bucket here. I've drafted him in both spots. He fell to 15 here because people are generally worried. This isn't the same injury that the leg stuff really worries me about him.

A little bit less worried about this. They're just letting him rest. It's kind of similar to DeGrom, but that's not a good sell. But it does highlight that he's like an old, young player. You know, like the knees aren't great. He looks almost like he's older than, you know, he looks older. I feel like, and he's big. So I think there's a little bit of injury risk here that we maybe not be properly.

So are you out? Are you out? Like he fell to 15 to me in TGFBI. Are you passing on Alvarez all day because of this? because he hasn't been swinging in the first week of spring training? Well, my projections said that Vlad Guerrero Jr. was, you know, three dollars clear of Alvarez. That was my first round pick in TGFBI. But I had, you know, in my queue, it was Vlad, you know, Alvarez. It was easy choice for me there, but what if it was one later? What if I had the next pick? And I'm choosing between Alvarez and, like, Betts.

I didn't even get that option. Alvarez, I would have taken Vlad. I would have easily taken Betts without question. Betts, I have at number seven overall this year, so I'm all over Betts. I wasn't given any of those options it was alvarez or lower tier players like burns or burns and carol uh or i'm sorry burns and cole and like rafael devers that was what i was dealing with and i felt i wanted to take the risk because yes there's injury concerns you got to take some shots especially in the tgfbi but i don't know if

it's worth at this point being like oh i really want him to drop If you want him to drop from 10 to 12 or something like that. But should he drop outside the top 20 because of this wrist issue? I don't know. The flip side of it is that he is the best hitter in baseball. I mean, he was the darling. In November, if I told you in November you could get Alvarez at 15, you'd have been like, shut up. Yeah. Because that's not going to happen.

So that's one of the big ones. We're all kind of patiently waiting. No real early signs. They haven't even, this is the maybe bigger worrisome thing. They haven't given us any deadline. Like, hey, he's going to start swinging this week or early next week,

he's going to get into a game. They're just very silent about it. And that is what is a little disconcerting. So beware if you've got some early drafts that are coming up that we are waiting for some news, but I have pulled the trigger because sometimes you will see this happen in spring training. There are small opportunities here and there that pop up for short periods of time where you get discounts on players. I might get burned. I feel like this is an opportunity for me. That's a good point. remember i got zach wheeler uh oh so low in the fourth or fifth last year because he just there was like the the news cycle

had been like oh he's hurt he's hurt he's behind he's behind he won't make opening day he won't make opening day and then the day before my draft he threw a bullpen and the velo was there and they were like yeah it's probably okay you know he going to make a start in three days or something. And I was like, bam, I want him. I got him in tout last year, tout auction. I got him for like 13 bucks because everyone was absolutely terrified about him. Yeah, there is a tendency to overreact.

I don't know. This note I'm saying says hand. Is it a hand or a wrist? I would just wish we had more knowledge. And I think in light of not having that knowledge, I would, I would still take it. Cubs had a couple injuries.

Say Suzuki undergoing further testing. He did this on Sunday. I believe he was going to have an MRI today. I did not hear as we're recording to somebody. I didn't hear what the news was. He was scratched, man. Yeah.

He was scratched from a start. And then also Justin Steele was scratched with a really, really really horrible – I hate to hear the word fatigue with any pitcher, but they said general arm fatigue. So are you more worried about the oblique with Suzuki than general arm fatigue with Justin Steele? Both of those are not good. The obliques are bad because this is such a rotational sport. And then the obliques are bad because this is such a rotational sport. And then the obliques are so tricky. I was talking to Granky about when he had it, and he said, I just have to, it's just if it hurts or not.

And I don't know if it hurts or not until I get up on the mound and try to throw. And then if it does hurt, I got to not throw for two weeks. And then I just have to try it again you know so uh coming back from an oblique sucks i i i think i would have to and then what you do want from suzuki is some stolen bases and that's not something you like that requires obliques too so like i feel i feel like i would knock suzuki down a couple couple spots because you know he also came to camp noticeably bigger it looks like he added 10 to 15 pounds of muscle or something like that i wonder if um you know the i mean it is blatantly to your eye that physical change might be playing a role like in the minor leagues that's

a pretty common thing when these guys go through these big body changes you'll see you know an 18 year old changes body to 20 like it's not uncommon to see guys go through struggles whether yeah they're learning their body that maybe suzuki going through a completely different routine adding that muscle played a little bit of a role in it but oblique is very concerning for a guy that i'm targeting all over the board yeah i really liked him before this i'm hoping for good news today uh yeah in the meantime you just have to wait for more news you know another piece of news this is not injury based and we're going to get to some stuff changes was um kora said alex kora said that masataka yoshida will not be the leadoff hitter for the boston red sox after everything that we were kind of sold on

that he will not but he will actually be more in the middle of the lineup. And I don't know if that changes much. Does that change anything for you with Yoshida? Because he was projected, most projection systems, one of the best hitters in baseball this year. The leadoff spot had a lot of people going like, hey, stolen base potential if you're leading off and runs. But now if he's going to be hitting closer to five or six maybe rbi's are there but that does seem like lesser of a stolen base spot and i've never really

believed he's going to be a big stolen base guy and this almost all but confirmed not that guys at five or six don't steal bases but i just feel like if they felt he's such an on base threat and he could steal you would want to put him at one or two in a lineup that's like really not that impressive but yoshida has also early on when he just signed he had said he never let off before he actually kind of wasn't caught he openly said he like wasn't comfortable with it but he'd do whatever the team does anything change for you with Yoshida coming out of the leadoff spot no I just think it's super super weird that in his first five plate appearances in the big leagues he struck out three times.

That just doesn't make any sense to me. He doesn't strike out. It's spring. There's a little bit more risk here than the projection systems are letting on. They don't have him projected with that many stolen bases so if you're using these projections in your auction calculator you're not going to be buying him for stolen

bases. I would say that I watched him and and he hit a real nice double, and it looked like he had a good power swing. And he didn't get all of it, and it went to the bottom of the wall. So I do think that I believe that he can hit 20 homers this year. So 20 homers, 280 average, those things I believe in. The stolen bases were never that big a part of his game. Now you put him in the middle, you get more RBIs and runs. It's still pretty similar. We also had one, I forgot one more injury, Reese Hoskins. Apparently underwent

off-season knee surgery in December. Don't like that. But the Phillies said he could be in action later this week. So kind of like the Miguel Vargas stuff, he had this little hairline fracture, but then he got back into game action. I think he went out and then he came back in. So I don't know if there's any, I'm not a big Reese Hoskins guy kind of in general because of the position. You can get Rowdy Tellez later who crushed and I saw him Brewers camp the other day.

So I don't know if you feel if that changes anything for you. I just don't like hearing a guy had knee surgery in December and it's like, yeah, in action later this week. Yeah, really? Are you sure? So are you a Reese Hoskins guy? Does this do anything for you?

It's to repair a meniscus. It's a relatively minor knee surgery as I understand it. And he's not a middle infielder. So do I think he can

hit 245 and hit 30 dongs this year? Yeah, I still think that. Okay. Going to some performance-based things here. There were some changes, or the stuff-based things. Shamanaya. Shamanaya apparently, fastball, jumped from sitting around 89 to 90, and he openly said this surprised him.

And I think he even like was like, are the clocks good here? That he was clocked in between 94 and 96 on the fastball. So this is right up your wheelhouse. What is Sean Mania with that bigger of a fastball to you? Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think this is another guy in the string of pitchers that the Giants have signed that had not done weighted balls before they signed with the Giants. The Giants go send them to do weighted balls and they reap the benefits. I mean, at least that's what happened with Alex Cobb and Alex Wood before. and Alex Wood before. So going to driveline really helped him.

One thing that I want to say here is that his max has been close to 96 in the past. Last year, his max in September was 95.7. Was he in the relief at that point? Anyway, even early in the season, it was 95. So what are you going to do when you come in for two innings? You're going to be closer to your max than usual. However, what do you do with weighted ball training? You allow yourself to sit closer to your max. That's actually part of the mechanism of, uh, of weighted balls, adding VLO. So, uh, I do think he will, uh, have a better sitting velocity than he did last year, but, um, I bet you he sits something like 92, 93, uh, during the regular season. And, And, you know, he's done that before. 2021, he was 91.6. So I'm saying, like, he'll sit this year 92.5 or something.

So this isn't a buy for you. No, it is. I mean, a whole tick is nice. But there is also research that finds that a tick in that range is not as useful as other places. He's also going to a nice park. So, you know, I could see him getting down back down to the years of, you know, three, six, three, eight ERA with a decent whip and a strikeout per inning. I don't think it makes him like an ace or anything, but that's that's a good makes him valuable where he's going.

I knocked him up in my ranks a little bit. I knocked him up. I pushed him up in the ranks a little bit. Samanaya. Not having a baby with Samanaya. It's a beautiful baby draft that we got out of Samanaya. How about this one? Nady Evaldi.

Fastball had decreased for four straight seasons prior to this year, but is up hitting 98 in his first spring start. I didn't have a gun when I saw him throw, but I had noted that, like, man, it felt like it was popping out of Nate Eovaldi. So four straight year decrease, but you're shooting 98. Kind of similar to what you said. You go in small innings.

You're going to kind of hit your peaks. Is there any excitement? I think the Rangers rotation is super sneaky, even though they're quietly older arms. And Martin Perez is maybe a little less than exciting, but I really like Andrew Haney this year. I think Nate Eovaldi is one of those players I kind of want to target late. Do you like that theoretical uptick in velocity?

Do you think it's the same thing with Minaya where it's like, well, you know, this is a one or two innings and he's really pumping it up. If he enters the season with 98 as his max, it would be the worst max that he'd entered the season with since his rookie season. Okay. So it would also be much better than the max Velo he was showing late last season. In September, his maximum fastball Velo was 95.7. And October was 96.4. So it would at least be bringing him back to the beginning of last season. And here's hoping that he can hit 100 before the season starts. But at 98, going back to the beginning of last season, I think is also important because he had a 3-3 ERA in the first

half last year and a 4-9 ERA in the second half. My model loves Nathan Eovaldi. And if he's closer to the first half version, then he's going to be better than all his projections and be maybe closer to other models are saying he's going to have a three eight to four era andRA. And I think if he's hitting 98 right now, that's possible for him. Okay. That's a good sign. A guy that got a lot of pub just like a week or so ago about big changes was Joe Ryan. And Joe Ryan in his first spring start kind of scrapped a few other pitches, and we saw a dose of this new split change and this new sweeper that he was throwing.

He ended up giving up two runs, though, in one and one-third of an inning. So, you know, we're trying out stuff. We're readjusting. Results weren't necessarily there. But Joe Ryan has been on a little bit of a balloon lately as he's rocketed up on some value. Are you buying into the Joe Ryan hype right now, especially after he's throwing? Like a lot of these guys will talk about like, I'm going to start throwing this, but the game action is a little bit different, similar to like what I talked about with Bryce Miller,

where the gyro is still a work in progress. But Joe Ryan just came right out the gates throwing some of the new stuff. Yeah, I pushed him higher on the revelation that he's throwing a sweeper uh his sweeper was much better uh stuff plus in the second half i think we talked about it uh on rates and barrels recently but i pushed him back up to 45 now uh he's right there with luis garcia and jeffrey springs and jordan montgomery i think that's a a group of interesting young arms in good parks with mid threes, mid to high threes, ERA projections. None of them is going to strike out 30 percent or really join the ace tier, I don't think. But the nice thing about Ryan, and this is actually probably different from any of those other guys that I just said,

Ryan's fastball is the best of those four guys. And Ryan's fastball has always been his best pitch. So if he does have a split finger that works and the sweeper we kind of know works from late season stuff plus, he probably has a little bit more upside than Jordan Montgomery, Luis Garcia, and Jeffrey Springs. You know, like those other guys

are pretty well formed at this point. With Joe Ryan, I was trying to pull this up here, his overall ADP probably change. I didn't do draft champions is 143. Do you think 143 and 237 with Nate and Evaldi is too big of a gap? Yeah, 100%. I have, I have them five apart in the rankings i'm a little aggressive on i guess i'm probably one of the high men on it i just i see that 339 projected era i do have a 145 innings total with him but i have him in a tier there with grayson rodriguez and alex cobb and

freddie peralta you know those are the four guys where you're taking on the injury, not injury necessarily, but innings risk. You're taking on innings risk there. But they could all perform really well, and if any of them throws 180 innings, they could be, you know, in it for the sigh. I mean, I don't know about that. It's true for Alex Cobb.

But Peralta, Rodriguez, and maybe even Evald, if he throws to like a 3-2 ERA in 180 innings, he could be in top 10 for the side. I like and I don't like that you're pumping up Evaldi because he's like my late draft guy. So I like that we're talking about him and the confirmations there, but he's probably going to move up

just a little bit in there. There were a couple others. I want to move on to more of the performance stuff, but we also saw kind of a new approach from Nolan Gorman with the Cardinals, who I read this really interesting article about how he was mashing early on, but pitchers adjusted and just

started attacking him high in the zone, and he wasn't able to readjust. Coach has talked to him about that. He worked, I think, with some tech stuff, and now he is starting to be able to spray balls all around, and he's been able to hit all fields, which is really big for him. And we also saw Nate Pearson,

the ghost of Nate. Well, just real quick on the Gorman thing, you know, you can do a simple heat map over at fan graphs. They've got heat mat tab. I've just got contact rate on all his pitches. And he has a 50% contact rates on the top,

top part of the zone. And he's 50% contact rates on the top part of the zone. And very obviously his heat map is he's a low and in hitter. And he likes inside and he likes low and inside. And so if he does, when you develop that hole out over the top of the plate, they just pick at it and pick at it and pick at it. And that's why you get a 16% whiff rate 33% strikeout rate if he can improve that strikeout rate at all he he becomes much more relevant uh for that team and then also the other question is just how he fits defensively i just don't know how i mean d8 i i've continuously look at the cardinals and just say there's a trade

waiting to happen i mean maybe it seems like gorman is the guy they're going to trade. They're not going to trade Walker. No, no, no, no. Of course not. But like, you could trade Yipez and put Gordon in there. I think Yipez and Carlson are potential players. And, you know, Dylan or Nolan Gorman is like 22 years old. So if they really still want to believe in that bat, especially that he took some of

that to the league that they wanted him to do. I bet he goes back to the minor leagues and they say work this do this swing in the minor leagues for a half season and see what we see where you are and then maybe he becomes a DH if they make a move here also

Nate Pearson showing off some good stuff multiple 100 mile per hour fastballs in there almost registered at 101 I know that got some people excited I still believe he's a reliever overall

but nice to see him throwing some some high heat in there you and I talked about this, and we only have so much more time. I did want to talk about a few of the performance things, but you want to talk about at-bat leaders because there was some really interesting spring at-bat leaders early on. The Royals, Rangers, Padres, and Mariners might have a little bit of an uptick because they started the first two games, but there were a couple guys that jumped out as as far as at bat leaders go. So what do you want to hit on that? Yeah, I just thought, uh, I just wanted to point out that, uh, it's just at bats alone are an

interesting indicator in the spring because the team is giving them a real look and they're making a priority to put them into the roster, uh know every day especially early yeah and uh and so i think it's instructive to see um like mark vientos uh tied for the lead in plate appearances jared kelnick uh right there with uh in the second group um you know jackson merrill peter armstrong uh there's a there those are the kind of uh young guys that are getting the chances. Nolan Jones leads the Rockies at bats. So those are all kind of names I'm looking for. And if you're looking for that Julio Rodriguez narrative in terms of making the team out of spring training, know, of making the team out of spring training.

I think one thing you'll want to do is note that he ended up playing a lot last spring, you know, and in terms of leading how he did in terms of his team, he led the Mariners in plate appearances in spring training. Right. in spring training, right? So if you want somebody to kind of, you know, hit the ground running and make the team and be this one of these, like, Julio Rodriguez-type prospects, you want them on this AB leaderboard.

I don't see Walker here yet. It's early going. I don't, I'm not saying that Jordan Walker is not going to do this, but, you know, that these guys are on here is interesting to me. You have a lot of the guys who are battling for a spot. David Dahl is up there. So I think there's a possibility.

We were talking about Tatis. There's a role there. So there are some. Brandon Dixon is up there in plate appearances. Those are the guys fighting for the last two spots on the Padres roster. What's also interesting is the WBC comes into play here because there's a lot of players are going to be leaving. You and I, we spent, me and Ano spent a decent amount of time before the podcast talking

about the Padres in general, because A, you've got Tatis that's out for a month, which is an interesting wrinkle. Plus you've got them losing half their team to the WBC. They're going out there. So they have probably the biggest non-roster invitee that I've seen amount of players. And David Dahl was like number two as far as at-bats go, which might give him a little leg up as a possibility for it.

But I wanted to turn it back to Kelnick, which I think is really interesting. Because even though he has Major League time, Kelnick might be in a Julio Rodriguez situation this year. I would guess that Jared Kelnick will lead the Padres in at-bats. The Mariners. I'm sorry, the Mariners this spring training for a couple reasons. A, they're suffering injuries.

Taylor Trammell is missing time. B, you've got Teoscar Hernandez and Julio Rodriguez leaving, and this is the time. We also, we got the- Leaving for the WBC, yeah. WBC, yeah. We've got the whole for the wbc yeah wbc that we've got the whole like he let new people into his camp and sticky notes he's kind of had a different approach i saw him having an all fields approach in a couple bps and he had a phenomenal start to spring training that first game or second game two for three had two home runs the problem is is like

how are you going to weigh this because Because there's obviously the critical point. A friend, Rob Silver, put out a tweet where he's got like, you know, a sub 20% K rate and eight homers in spring training. And it's over 30 in the majors. And he's the next Mikel Franco. He tied with Julio Rodriguez for the plate appearances last year. And he had a 265 average, 559 slugging, three homers, and only nine strikeouts and 34 ABs, 37 ABs.

So, like, you know, he's done this before. Do you buy it, though? Do you buy it? I guess I'm interested because they need him. We were talking about this in the preview section over at the 3-0 show, he's probably one of the most pivotal players in his division in terms of a single player being so meaningful for his team because this team does not, it has Julio Rodriguez, yes. And I like Cal Rowley a little bit and Tasker Hernandez is still a good hitter, but it doesn't really have star hitters on the same levels.

You know, they have one star hitter, but it doesn't really have star hitters on the same levels. You know, they have one star hitter. And so they need the rest of the lineup to be a no holes lineup. And they have a big hole right now in left field. And if Kalanick can step forward, then you've got a, you've got a lineup that, you know, can do you damage from different spots in the lineup. It's longer. It's, and it means it's really meaningful because they have a really good pitching staff. So Kellnick is, is I think super pivotal for that team. So yeah, he's definitely going to lead, uh, in plate appearances for the Mariners. I just don't know how much to take away. The one thing I would say is usually strikeout rate in a small sample is somewhat you meaningful. Um, and there is signal in spring training, uh, information.

We know this from Dan Rosenheck's research about it, that your spring training OPS will actually affect your projection. It does actually improve your projection. So it is somewhat meaningful. It is a month of play. If you saw Jared Kellnick go off in April next year, you would think that was meaningful. If it was a whole month. So I will say this. I would love to see his strikeout rate and power numbers be good in this month. And if they were,

it would affect my appraisal of him a little bit. Only last thing I'd point out was in his very first at-bat in spring training, Corbin Carroll, he led off for the Diamondbacks. He hit a single and immediately stole second base stole it by a mile baby and of course i had to make a comment and of course i had to get the the sarcastic trolly stuff about my love for corbin carroll but i just want to point out that corbin carroll is going to steal 30 plus bases this year and he not only led off for that team, but he already looks good.

And he was a running, he was a running, you know, and you even said on this show, I want people to remember that, you know, you talk about volatility with rookies. There's a floor there.

There's a floor there with this guy that seems like no others. And it's already jumping up a underdog, a best ball drafts. He's jumped up from eighties to the 50s right now. Oh, no. Corbin Carroll's on a rocket, though, which is a problem. I liked him at 80, but 50 might be pushing it, dude. It's a little bit pushing it.

So maybe one of the guys that we can be encouraged about for spring training. Lots of other fun stuff to talk about. We'll have more notes. There were plenty of other interesting performances, even things we didn't get to. I want to talk about Reid Detmers, but we can do it on another episode tomorrow. We're going to actually talk about more pictures because, you know, and I on the project prospect,

we're going to talk about the pictures that you want to target prospects to target pictures for redraft. So maybe a little bit of Brandon, Brandon fought. Who's my favorite. We can talk about Grayson Rodriguez and quite a bit more. So make sure you tune into that Dynasty Prospect-based episode. Make sure you go to athletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Subscribe today.

Get access to the Pitching Plus Projections, the Draft Kit, my Dynasty Ranks. Two bucks a month will get you set up. It's a beautiful thing. And make sure you follow Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can follow me at IsItTheWelsh. That is all that we have for you, friends. Until next time, it's Rates and Barrels

and we will have fun with you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening.