Rates & Barrels - The 2010s: The Fantasy Baseball All-Decade Team

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Rundown2:51 Catchers4:29 First Basemen7:47 Second Basemen12:31 Shortstops14:24 Third Basemen17:13 Corner Infielders18:47 Middle Infielders20:32 Outfielders36:02 Trivia!38:10 Starters44:34 Relievers53:37 One-Hit WondersFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiperE-Mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Stay home and eat all of those Thanksgivinggiving leftovers and get your christmas shopping done early without leaving the house this year with game time the game time app is simple quick and easy to navigate download the game time app in the google play or app store and score last minute deals on tickets up to 60 off Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 55. This is a special installment of the show this week because it's part of the Athletics All-Decade Team Series. Look back at the last 10 years, 2010 to 2019. Hard to believe a whole decade is coming to a close here at the end of the year. So we're going to talk about our selections for the Fantasy Baseball All-Decade Team.

Some show-related news, of course, we are now available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much anywhere that you want to listen to this podcast in addition to the Athletic app. If you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast, please take the time to do that. It helps other people find it, so we greatly appreciate that. And if you listen to the show for the first time or you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels so we're going to put together a team of 14 hitters and nine pitchers eno has done some heavy lifting already getting some of the multi-year player earned values going back through most of this decade and that serves as a really good baseline for these selections uh one little

twist on the traditional positions. We're not putting two catchers in this lineup. We are putting one catcher in this lineup. That's hard enough to find one. Yeah, there's no reason to have two. We are making that change right now. It's our team, so we can do whatever we want with it. But I'm looking forward to this

because this is kind of a trip down memory lane for some of the best seasons we've seen over the last decade as well, aside from looking at some of the players who have returned the most value during that span yeah yeah and you know fittingly they were not going to do uh two catchers because the difference between the first catcher and the second catcher on this list is probably the biggest uh at least relatively uh to the position than any other position because you've got Buster Posey as the obvious guy. And he's got $125 worth of value from the Fangrass auction calculator going back to 2013. And second place is Yadier Molina with 90.

And JT Realmuto hasn't had the benefit of having the longest career yet, but he was third with 79. So, you know, they're all good catchers. And, you know, it's kind of funny to think of Posey as the best fantasy catcher, considering where he is in his career, like where he is in his fantasy career. Like he's not going to be played very often next year. He's not going to be played very often next year. He's not going to be drafted

very often next year. No, he's kind of a second catcher based on the early ADP, but his five-year peak during this decade, I would say it was 2012 to 2016. He had five of the ten best catcher seasons in terms of war during that span. Some 20 home run plus seasons, some years where he hit like 336 in 2012. So he was an asset really in four categories. Yadier Molina had two of the top four seasons. Jonathan Lucroy actually had the second best season for a catcher back in 2014. But yeah, Posey kind of the slam dunk option as the catcher. If there

were two, Yadier would be that guy, but there aren't two. It's just Buster Posey. But let's move over to first base, because I think this is where things get interesting, and they're interesting really throughout. Paul Goldschmidt, far and away, was the most valuable first baseman of the past decade. I didn't expect that to be the case. I thought Miguel Cabrera would actually be a lot closer to Goldie, but Cabrera came in, I think, like eighth of the calculations you made.

Now, some of those earlier decade seasons from Cabrera were among his peak seasons, so that would probably bring him up closer on the list, but it wouldn't have been enough to close the gap on Goldie. Yeah, I mean, Miguel Cabrera showed up with 90 auction dollars, and Paul Goldschmidt, there's only there's only one $200 batter in our sample. I guess you can probably guess who that is. And Goldschmidt is the other one that's the closest to 200, $197 worth of value.

I think a lot of those stolen bases in those seasons were big. stolen bases in those seasons were big. And I do think that probably, you know, you give Miguel Cabrera those three seasons from 2010 to 2012, when he averaged around 40 homers, and like a 335 average, and you get Miguel Cabrera, probably into second place, you know, right there with Freddie Freeman at about $150. But it is interesting to think that just having something that you do a little bit differently than the crowd, in this case Goldschmidt's stolen bases, is enough to separate you from Freddie Freeman,

Edwin Encarnacion, Anthony Rizzo types. And the Rizzo stole bases, I guess he just didn't really have that same combination of batting average and home runs and stolen bases that put Goldschmidt over the top. Yeah, when you look back at the earlier part of the decade, you still had some peak seasons from Albert Pujols mixed in there, too. How about a 42-homer, 14-steal season from Pujols where he had 312 back in 2010? He was So nasty. I mean, just the beginning of his career in St. Louis was something that really opened my eyes in terms of possibilities with great plate discipline, great contact, great power, and just doing it right as soon as he hit the major leagues. Just kept going. I really enjoyed those seasons. But, you know, with Goldschmidt and Buster Posey,

you kind of have two guys that are atop their positions that don't really act like the rest of their position. You know, Buster Posey had great batting average. And you might say, oh, well, catchers don't play as much. Well, Buster Posey actually played first base, you know, and DH'd in the times when he wasn't catching a lot so he actually had you know 600 620 plate appearance type seasons without that great batting average but his best asset was batting average and goldschmidt you know got a lot of his points with the stolen bases so you know i think that um it's a bit of an argument for being positionless with your value search is just be like hey you know these guys do things in great great. Don't worry so much about the shape of the production. Yeah. No, I think there's definitely a case to be made for that.

And there's a couple of guys that we'll talk about over the course of this show who have changed positions too. So even placing them gets a little bit tricky when you think about where they might play now versus where they played the most or where they played the best defensively at some point over the past 10 years. Let's move to second base though. Jose Altuve, kind of a runaway winner at the position. I mean, you tracked it as $181 earned since 2013, which just blows away the field. Now, similar to what we were just talking about with Miguel Cabrera, if you start taking the early decade performances of Robinson Cano, that gap closes. But even peak Robinson Cano didn't offer stolen bases, and that would always be the thing that kind of separates Altuve from Cano in my mind. Yeah. It's funny because Altuve had about $180 of value.

because Altuve had about $180 worth of value. And he could have had more value still because we didn't get his 2012 season where he stole 33 bases and hit 290. So there's some separation that happens there too. But one thing I love about Altuve is just that

Dee Gordon cracks the top six. So second base is a tough position. And Dee Gordon cracked the top six with a $60 worth of value which which he probably accrued, you know, in two or three seasons. And, but Altuve is like Dee Gordon, but good. Dee Gordon who can do other stuff. I mean, just his late season sort of power turn, I think, just belies the fact that he's a great hitter who had lots of different ways to be good. Tons of contact, tons of speed. And now he's adding value in a totally different way. But just, you know, that's the one thing I think when you're searching for speed, you're searching for a Jose Altuve.

You're searching for a guy who's actually good and has speed and isn't just speed first. Because, you know, a guy like Malik Smith, we've talked about this before, can lose his job at any moment. The floor is zero, you know. Whereas a guy like Jose Altuve, the floor is, okay, so maybe he hits only 290 with 20 homers and five stolen bases next year. I mean, that's certainly a possible outcome for him next year. It'll still be pretty good. When you look at stolen base leaders from the past decade, Dee Gordon was first.

He stole 330 bases from 2010 to 2019. Rajai Davis was second. Billy Hamilton was third. Elvis Andrews was fourth. Jose Altuve was fifth. And Altuve has at least 40 points of batting average, I think, on everybody in that group, and more

on some of those guys, and then he's got power. He's got double, triple, or even quadruple the power, if not more than that for guys like Hamilton and Gordon. So that's a huge part of why of course he's there, and being on some very good Astros teams, that also took an excellent

player and propped up the counting stats even further. Right. But just to illustrate the point, two out of those five lost their full-time roles. You want to go searching for stolen bases, you don't want to end up with Billy Hamilton. Altuve had more home runs than Gordon, Davis, and Hamilton combined. That's nice. Way to sum up his value man he's been so good and just uh just amazing too like you know he hit in his first four seasons combined he hit uh see here 14 19 uh 21 homers he hit 31 homers last year I just didn't see that coming from Altuve at the beginning of his career. I just saw him as like a 10 homer, 40 steal

guy as sort of like the peak years and that extra power has been a very pleasant surprise. Brian Dozier being high on that list is just kind of a funny reminder of how quickly things can fall off at second base. He had a nice run. His five-year peak was full of 100-run seasons,

got up to 42 homers at his absolute height in 2016, got to 34 in 2017. What a season. Yeah, double-digit steals in six consecutive years. And for a long time it was, well, he has power and he has speed and he scores runs, but he doesn't hit for average. He even had a couple seasons, 268 and 271 in 2016 and 2017, where he was a true five-category player. Yeah, yeah, now he's returned.

Sometimes you look at players, you just see the bell curve. He came into this league hitting 230 with 20 homer power, and he's going to leave the league like that. He kind of became the J.R. Smith of the National 2019 World Series team as well, just always shirtless. That's kind of his main contribution to the championship team. I was wondering where you were going with that. I can't think of any other way in which those two guys are similar, but they both have an aversion to wearing shirts.

Oh, my God. All right, all right. Oh, you pulled it off. Achievement unlocked. Let's go to the shortstop spot, though, where Manny Machado checks in as the highest earning player, and this is one where if we want to put him at third base, then he might not be a starter.

So what led you to decide that Machado maybe belongs in the shortstop bucket? I think it was the fact that we're not running major league teams. We're running fantasy league teams. And any time you have the opportunity to play someone in a more difficult position, you do. You know, so that reflects probably where Machado was used a lot you know as shortstop because you could you know there were a lot of seasons where he played just enough shortstop and but wasn't really a shortstop anymore um that people took advantage of and put him in shortstop um you know and as much as you know right now is a great time for shortstops you still see

position scarcity show up in this a little bit. I mean, at the top of the first base crew, you've got five guys who have 100 points in the decade, $100 worth of value this decade. At the top shortstop, if you take Manny off, you only have Lindor with 100. Yeah, that's the list that really thins out. value this decade. At the top shortstop, if you take Manny off, you only have Lindor with 100. Yeah, that's the list that really thins out. I think a lot of times it's because younger, more athletic players who have defensive ability that has developed a lot faster than their

ability as a hitter is what drives teams to play players that spot. And a player like Francisco Lindor ends up being an exception. A guy that exceeds expectations development-wise in that facet is definitely an outlier. So I think it makes sense to put Machado at that shortstop spot because there is more depth at third base. It's something we would all do if we were building a roster and could leverage the times he's been eligible at that spot to our benefit. Staying on the left side of the infield, though, Nolan Arenado has been a monster. I mean, Coors helps, but it's fun to kind of think about what his career might be in a neutral environment. I think even if he had played just in a very typical place, middle-of-the-road offensive

environment, he'd still have a shot of being at the top of this list it'd be very close compared to josh donaldson and anthony rendon but i do think arenado's core skills are good enough for him to have a claim to the spot even if he hadn't played in colorado at this point yeah i think he would look a lot his curve would look a little bit more like the number two third baseman if he hadn't played in in cores uh josh donaldson is the number two third baseman he doesn't he doesn't usually have the nice batting averages nolan arenado and if you look at our arenado's away splits the power is legit you know he's averaged around 20 homers away from cores uh for five years now. So that part is real,

but he has more of a 260 type average away from home. He's still a really good hitter, so it's not at all just a Coors thing, but the difference between a 260 hitter who hits 35 homers a year and Nolan Aranato is the difference between Nolan Aranato and Josh Donaldson. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. A bulk of this production came in five years as opposed to seven from Aeronauto.

He's averaging 40 home runs a year over the last five years. That's just absurd. That doesn't even mention defense, which we don't care about for fantasy purposes, but obviously one of the best players of the decade all around. That translates just fine. Put him in any park that's going to play exactly the same on the infield josh donaldson does actually have the most valuable season from a third baseman this decade he had that year in 2015 with toronto 297 average 41 homers 122 runs and 123 rbis i mean those are coors s counting stats in part because Jay's offense was just loaded that year.

My God, that is beautiful. It really is. Six stolen bases with no caught stealings too. Just a little spice. A little something extra. I think people don't understand how much of an athlete he is. There's a lot of

looking at the way he talks about hitting and power and all that. There's a lot of he made himself into this or something, but he's a real athlete. I'm seeing it slow down a little bit now. The last couple of times I've seen him, the thing that stood out to me is that I feel like he's not as athletic as he used to be in terms of his movements. to me is that I feel like he's not as athletic as he used to be in terms of his movements. But at his peak, he was quite an athlete

with great hitting acumen to boot. Yeah, I'm totally with you there. As far as a corner selection goes, this one's really tough. I think you could make the case for Freddie Freeman. You could make the case for a lot of the other guys we talked about in the first base group. Edwin Encarnacion,

really good accumulator, and at his peak had that excellent play discipline too. He belongs in this conversation just based on what he's earned over the past decade. But when you do start to add in the early 2010s years from Miguel Cabrera, I think he edges out Freddie Freeman for the corner infield spot. Yeah. I mean, we do have those three seasons with nearly 120 homers to account for that aren't in

our sample. So I, I feel, uh, pretty like, you know, just guesstimating that kind of a hitter in today's game would still be worth,

you know, 25 to 30 bucks a season. So, yeah, especially with the average in the three328 or $344 range. He hit $344 in 2011, which is just bananas. If you add $90

to the $90, he'd have $180 and he'd be right behind Paul Goldschmidt. That's maybe pushing it. I'm sorry that the auction calculator doesn't go all the way back to 2010. We couldn't find values for those.

But I think that pushing Miguel Cabrera into the starting corner infield spot feels right. Well, the good news is when we do this for the 2020 to 2029 all-decade team, we probably will have dollar values that go back through the entire decade. So I'm looking forward to that 10 years from now. We can get that episode in the books. But let's slide over to that middle infield spot. This is also a little bit tricky because with that drop off from Altuve to Dozier, with the big drop off at shortstop behind Machado, there's not necessarily an obvious player there. You could go Cano if you wanted to, because again, those early 2010 seasons were

really special. Or you could kind of go more future-looking and get the guy that does everything. And my inclination is to do that and to put Francisco Lindor in that middle infield spot. Yeah, I think that feels appropriate. I mean, one of the things I wrote about once was that the seasons are arbitrary endpoints. And it was kind of a lark. And I understand that there's a long off season and that therefore there's a that's a good demarker to use seasons and so that's the way we work and i understand all that but when you do this kind of exercise you do

realize that that some of the things that we kind of cling to calling things decades that's kind of almost irrelevant. You know, it's, it's, you know, these, these players have these different careers that go in and out and it doesn't, you know, the decade, it doesn't matter where, you know what I mean? I don't know if I'm getting a cross, right? It's like we're seeing that like some guys are starting their careers in the middle of a decade and they're the ones that end up on these, on these lists because they, they played the most in the middle of a decade, and they're the ones that end up on these lists

because they played the most in the decade. But what happens if Lindor is great at the end of this decade and the beginning of next decade and is not on either decade's best-of list? Right. It's almost like you have to do the exercise every three to five years and take that snapshot over whatever, seven or ten years, whatever you decide that is,

that kind of captures everybody for a long enough window of time. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Let's move on to the outfield because the outfields obviously loaded full players, including the fantasy MVP of the past decade. It came out a little closer than I expected.

Once I saw the final numbers that you put together, I mean, Mike Trout, obviously the best player we've seen over the last 10 years, inner circle Hall of Famer already. We've probably run out of ways to describe how good he is. And most of this decade, I feel like we've spent time talking about how he's not appreciated enough or that he's even somehow kind of undervalued relative to what he's been able to accomplish to this point in his career the only knock against him which isn't even a knock against him it's more

of an achievement of someone else is that the absolute best season in the outfield not from a fantasy perspective but from a real value perspective of this decade actually came from mookie bets in 2018 but mike trow owns four of the five best seasons this decade among all outfielders. Yeah, right. And when you buy him in the first round, you're buying that floor. You're not necessarily saying that, you know, when you pay the most for Mike Trout, you're not necessarily saying, I think that Mike Trout is going to have the best fantasy value this year. You're saying he's definitely not going to be the worst. You're definitely not going to be even out of the top 10.

I'm buying that four out of five-ness, that quality, than as much as I'm buying the ceiling. So, yeah, Wright Trout has a great ceiling, a great floor, and that's how you get to the number one dollar value in our sample, $240 of fantasy value in this decade. And he didn't even play the whole decade. Yeah. And even the stuff that just before we were able to track was still excellent. 2012 was his second best war season. One of the two times he's been worth more than 10 wins above replacement.

Absolutely amazing what he has done to this point. So he was the easiest lock of all locks for putting this sort of team together. From there, there's a lot of interesting cases that can be made. And I think one of the guys that popped up a little higher than I expected was Charlie Blackman. And it's more because if you remember back to when Charlie Blackman was a prospect, he wasn't anything that was considered like a can't miss sort of guy. He was more of a top 100 filler prospect. I mean, he was a second rounder back in 2008, but I don't think anyone at that point in time looked at Charlie Blackman and would have said, oh yeah, this guy's going to be on an all-decade team, fantasy, real. That wasn't really going to be part of the conversation back at the time that Charlie Blackman was breaking into the league.

Yeah. I mean, he was supposed to have a hit tool and we'll see what else happens. And I've talked to him plenty of times about did he ever see himself hitting 37 homers. And he's like, oh, God, no. I could saw myself. He's very honestly, he'll be like, I saw myself hitting, you know, two ninety three hundred in the big leagues. But I never, never thought I would hit thirty seven homers. But he just sort of he's he's one of these hitters that's very cognizant of his spray patterns and like like joey vato um he attempts to have them look a certain way he

attempts to sort of hit the ball in a certain direction and by doing that the everything comes together so uh i think uh you know he's also way more intellectual about his hitting than people give him credit for um and i think he's done a really good about his hitting than people give him credit for. Um, and I think he's done a really good job getting the most out of his skillset. I mean, it's, it's amazing.

It's, you know, he's, this is a guy who was supposed to hit two 80 and hit 15 homers a year. Uh, then he's, he's turned that on its head. So yeah,

Blackman was, you know, once you look at the numbers, you're like, Oh yeah, he deserved to be here. 43 stolen bases in 2015, uh,

37 homers and 14 stolen bases in 27 that was 2017 43 stolen bases in 2015 anyway great career and you know then you get Mookie Betts who you I think you'd expect to be there and JD Martinez and Nelson Cruz as you know the DHs that last played in the outfield. It's an old man group, but of course it's going to be in some ways because we're talking about the entire decade. Yeah, I mean, JD and Cruz definitely belong on there. I think Cruz can pretty easily bump into a UT spot to make room for one more younger player on the list. Christian Jelic

belongs in this conversation. I know it's a really top-heavy production over the last two years, but he was a good player in Miami. It was just a matter of him kind of getting into a more hitter-friendly environment and unlocking even more power than I think even some of his biggest fans at the time would have expected. I mean, I didn't see him becoming an MVP-caliber player, but it seems strange to put together a group of your five best outfielder for the last 10 years and to have Christian Yelich fall just short. I think there's a couple of other guys that have a case, though, to be made. Maybe because he's had a longer window of top-end production, maybe he could bump Yellich from that last spot, but I think it's definitely worth bringing up.

Yeah, and his 2010, 11, and 12 have the shapes of maybe $25 season, so we might be undervaluing his production by $60, $70. be undervaluing his production by 60, 70 bucks. If we add that to him, he becomes the second or third best outfielder of the decade. Those seasons were good. He hit about 280 and averaged about 20 homers and 30 stolen bases a year for those three years. One of them being 2012 where he hit 327 with 20 stolen bases

and 31 homers that was that was a good year so yeah i i think mccutchen goes up there i also think it was really interesting to see that in their careers to date harper and yelich have basically had the same amount of fantasy value yeah, that was a pretty big surprise for me too. Harper, it's never been his fault. We probably talked about it at some point in the last year already, but he is always going to be judged based on the expectations that were put on him when he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a teenager and now more recently the $330 million contract.

Those two things forever will skew the judgment of what he actually is because what he was expected to be was basically the LeBron James of baseball, and he's not quite that. Mike Trout is that guy, but Bryce Harper's not, and he can't be. He probably never will be. Well, you know, I just, I wonder, I wonder sometimes what could have been with Bryce Harper. And that sounds bad because he's,

he's right there in our fantasy all decade team. But there's like, if you Frankenstein his seasons together, there's a season where he hits three 330 with 42 homers and 21 stolen bases you know yeah that exists that i actually just quoted numbers from a two-year span 2015 2016 if you just smush those two seasons together you'd have one of the better fantasy seasons of all time uh but he hasn't done it that way and so he's kind of settled in as like a low average, not quite Mike Cameron low, but like, you know, not too far from Mike Cameron, which is a weird, weird way to say it. And of course that's fantasy only in, in real baseball and OBP leagues, you know, uh, that, that patience really pays off for him. But, you know, a 240 season with 30 homers and 15 stolen bases is – I'm now going to look at Mike Cameron because I said that. I don't want to be an idiot and be like, oh, Mike Cameron never did that.

But I think you might be surprised at some of the great seasons Mike Cameron had. 239 with 25 homers and 31 steals. Yeah, a little more speed heavy game than harper i mean harper's got a few 30 home run seasons tacked on since that 42 home run year back in 2015 so i'm actually talking kind of like late career camera like padres mike cameron when he hit 270 20 homers and 20 stolen bases. Here's the question, though. This exercise, if you think about it, Bryce Harper's under contract through the next time we do this, assuming we're still doing a podcast 10 years from now.

Bryce Harper will still be a Philly. Right, we haven't just been roasted. He'll still have time left on his deal with the Phillies when the next decade ends. He's not going to run throughout the time that he's there. He's got 15 steals in 2019 in 18 attempts. He's going to run for a little while. He's got the OBP, has the big power. Is there any shot that if we're talking about the five best outfielders of the next decade that Bryce Harper is even in that conversation 10 years from now? That'd be amazing. It's 27.

I doubt it, but maybe he could do the kind of old man thing, Miguel Cabrera kind of situation where he puts up another. Miguel Cabrera, even in our sample, just starting in 2013, put up $90 of auction value. So if Harper did that again next 10 years, he'd be just outside the top 10 if the outfield shook out the same way.

You know, Justin Upton right now is the 10th best outfielder with like $100 of auction value. So that's not impossible. It's wild. So he's not really on the team though he's definitely in the conversation right now. I'd put Andrew McCutcheon on instead

of Bryce Harper. It's very close. Yeah, probably. Justin Upton's probably not getting a fair shake in this. I'm going to look at his numbers. I'm sure that he has a couple good seasons early on. Does everything too.

289, 31 homers and 21 stolen bases in 2011 for Upton. So, you know, Upton could be a little bit higher up too, but I think he'd ultimately still off the list. You know, he's one of those players that's been good and often underrated. And so if we bring, if we brought in price to this discussion, Upton may actually make it on this list because I feel like he's so boring that people just don't buy him.

They don't put him on their teams. But it's been really steady production. Yeah, at this point, I wonder if he still has anything left in the tank because injuries, the knee was a big problem for him in 2019, but the cost has never been lower. If you want to take a 2020 flyer on Justin Upton, you're not going to have to spend much to do it. His ADP has been about 10 NFBC drafts so far.

Justin Upton's ADP is going to be well outside the top 100. I'll get a number on that here in just a second. I don't think he got drafted in our pitcher list, Mark. Or if he did, it was the very end. If he did, yeah, it was the last. I think Sporer may have got him near the end, but 239 is his early NFBC ADP.

He's right there next to Ryan Braun in the old outfielders club. And the old club noted idiot took Harrison Bader. And that's exactly why people don't take Justin Upton and miss out because I'm thinking, well, I really like Harrison Bader's barrels. You know, I think, you know, next year he could. There's an outside chance he could put it all together and have power and speed and do maybe what Justin Upton did when he was younger. And I'm willing to take that shot. I'd rather take that shot, that upside shot on my bench. And so I'm not saying that I'm a total idiot.

But I could have had what's projected to be 240 batting average, 30 homers, and five stolen bases from Justin Upton. And he's pretty likely to hit that projection. I mean, he's so projectable. He's just done the same thing over and over again. So, you know, Justin Upton. And actually, I think it brings up an interesting thing, which is that we couldn't put ADP in this and get a true sort of value to price ratio kind of thing going on. So we could get a sense of like, for example, last year, Raphael Devers was worth $33.

And he had to be probably the number one fantasy player or player for fantasy for fantasy purposes given what his price was likely you know uh devers was probably you know a single digit guy in most auctions and late round flyer and you know there he is uh worth 33 at the end of the year in the top 10 or top five i think so uh that would have been nice to do but ultimately impossible but it also tells you something about like you know i've been drafting rafael devers for years in al labors it feels like and i got a minus 12 season for my efforts and a three dollar season for my efforts and then this year i didn't get him and he had the 33 So, you know, there's a weird thing where, and then Acuna was number one overall.

So you don't want to not jump at youth just because you're like, oh, I could get the Raphael Deaver's minus 12 season because you might also get Acuna's $39 season. But there is this sort of tension between jumping at youth and getting someone early in their career and doing it quickly versus overpaying for the hot young rookie that everyone wants. By the way, Ronald Acuna's season last season, 41 homers, 37 steals.

It reminded me a lot of Matt Kemp's 2011. I also forgot Matt Kemp hit.324 that year. He had 39 homers and 40 steals. So they both narrowly missed 40-40 seasons. But Matt Kemp's 2011 has to go down as one of the amazing fantasy seasons of the last decade that has actually been forgotten by a lot of people. Yeah, and I think that might have been a situation, too, where he might not have cost that much that year. I mean, he's coming off an okay season with a. 249 average and 28 homers and 19 stolen bases in 2010.

But with that low of a batting average, I think he was probably not a top two round pick the next year. I was writing then. I can't remember. I know that I probably faded Matt Kemp because I would have said, look at that. You know, he only had good batting averages when he had huge BABIPs, and he shouldn't have a huge BABIP again. Well, there he goes, 2011, 380 BABIP, 324 average. Then I learned that, you know, if you can spray it around and hit it hard, you know, you can run BAP-ups that high. So, you know, we've all learned a little over this decade.

Yeah, man, BAP-up was so important 10 years ago. Yeah. Now it is just kind of a little extra thing to look at that might tip you off to something in one direction or the other. One trivia question before we move on to the pitchers. There were three players who hit 300-plus home runs over the past decade. Who were they? Three players that had 300-plus home runs in the past decade?

Yep. Nelson Cruz? Yep. He had the most, 346. Mike Trout Narrow miss he was 5th at 285 Oh We'll give you 3 strikes he got 1 strike

Uh Miguel Cabrera Miguel Cabrera's no He's 8th 268 Shoot He got 2 strikes He was in trouble Edwin Encarnacion We already got two strikes. Ido's in trouble. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. Edwin Encarnacion.

Yep, 335. He was second. All right, one more for the win. Oh, no. I'm nervous. I'm nervous. This guy has the highest war of the three, if that helps in some way. It does a little bit. Is it Josh Donaldson?

It is not. It is John Carlos Stanton. Oh, Stanton, you idiot. Of course, it's Stanton. Stanton's projected for 52 home runs by steamer next year. I love that fact. He's pretty affordable this year, too. We may have said it a few episodes ago.

The years in which his prize dips are the years to buy. I think I had him, let me see, 2017. It's the empty ring box on my desk. In the FSTA League, he was like a third or fourth rounder that year, and he was a monster. So I'm definitely in on Stanton for 2020 at the reduced price. Let's move on to the pitching staff. And for the sake of this team, again,

we're going to shoot for six starters and three relievers. We'll obviously talk about some guys that are right on the cusp, and you can certainly argue them on retroactively if you really wanted to. He's at Eno Saris on Twitter. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. Two pretty clear-cut guys that are on here as aces, right? Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer. And I think at the top, we were talking about players that may have been close to earning as much as Mike Trout going back to 2013.

Surprisingly, it was those two guys, not hitters. It was Kershaw and Scherzer who were the closest to Trout in seven-year earned values. It's amazing to me that I kind of figured that pitchers would look in some like hitters, you know, that there would be some at the top and then you know it'd be fairly deep because you know where you have nine you have five different positions you need to get out of the hitting pool you only have two you need to get out of the pitching pool so i thought it would be fairly deep but you've got clayton kershaw and max scherzer at two as $200 players just like uh mike trout as the as the other $200 player so you've got the excellence at the top but by the time you get down to around 15, you're including guys like John Lester,

Kyle Hendricks, and Carlos Carrasco, who would not really fit on most of the positional leaderboards in terms of their auction value. So to me, like pitching really is like, you know, the reason why we faded is because there's so few guys that do it year in

year out uh but once you do get your hands on a max or mid-career like it's just as valuable as mike trout yeah it's it's pretty remarkable get 40 ish dollars on an annual basis from these guys at their peaks getting at least 30 most years before that. But they are the trout equivalent, I think, among pitchers. Now, there's a couple other guys that have had either really long runs of success over the past decade or peaks that have pushed up their value. Chris Sale is the latter. I mean, his peak seasons, when he's healthy and everything's working, he's as good as any pitcher we've seen over the last 10 years. And I think the thing we're worried about with him right now is that he's

had some arm trouble and the innings have gone down the last two seasons, but I think he definitely belongs probably as the third best pitcher on this list as like a per start sort of ACE, even if there's a couple of guys that have piled up more value over the last seven years. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, in terms of the shape, again, of missing out on the early ones, probably the ones that are being hurt the most are Zach Greinke,

who had, you know, a couple of good seasons with the Brewers there. We had a mid-three ZRA and would have added 16-15 win type seasons. He would have added some value there, but not a ton. He would have been an $8-$10 pitcher back then. But also probably Justin Verlander gets shortchanged a little bit because he was pitching uh really well uh early in the in the early in the decade i mean he had in 11 and 12 he had a season where he had about a 2-5 era with like 500 innings uh and uh 41 wins so i'm pretty comfortable moving verlander up a little bit and i think you know verlander and gr Granke probably are my 4-5 in this scenario.

Verlander's 2010, 2011, and 2012 are three of the top 26 seasons from starting pitchers in terms of war over the last decade. So odd cutoff point because 26 is where that 2011 season is. That's enough to put him in one of those six spots i don't think there's a whole lot of pushback on that uh the other guy who was really good actually a couple guys that were really good at the beginning of the decade they just didn't really time it right cliff lee was really strong at the early part of the decade i think he's got at least an honorable mention coming here like i don't know if he's necessarily on it uh grinky i

think does get bumped in. And then peak Felix Hernandez, too. I mean, that would be part of the early part of the decade as well. It fell off much worse than I thought it would for him. Didn't you kind of think when Felix was at his peak, even if he wasn't going to be that good

deep into his 30s the way Verlander and Scherzer were, didn't you kind of think he'd be one of those guys that was like a two, two-and-a-half win pitcher year in and year out until he turned like 40 years old? Yeah, I thought he could manage like a four ERA, you know, for a while. You know, he's just so wily, and he's got that great power change, and he's got a wide arsenal.

I guess it's just mostly injury, but, like, you know, Zach Greinke modeled his game after Felix Hernandez in a lot of ways. And Greinke's managed to keep it going longer. Maybe it's just a question of how great the command is. Maybe Greinke has super elite command and Felix just had okay command. But there's an alternate universe where felix hernandez aged ages like zach granke i mean they have both have power changes they both have a big loopy curveball they both have pretty good command they both throw any pitch any count

you know there's very similar arsenals um so i think you have a good point there makes me sad that he's not on this team but i did want to mention him on this episode. I think picking the last guy, I mean, if you put Kershaw and Scherzer and Sale and Verlander and Grinke in those first five starting spots, the last one comes down to Jacob deGrom or Corey Kluber or David Price or Steven Strasburg or Madison Bumgarner or Garrett Cole.

We're going to be leaving off some really good pitchers for one reason or another. Who do you kind of like best of those guys? Which group? I will count DeGrom, Kluber, Strasburg, Bumgarner, and Cole as the guys that are in contention for the last spot. Man, man. And it's so like, did they do it earlier, you know, or did they do it later?

We're missing three vintage Bumgarner seasons in our sample where he had an ERA of three and threw 500-plus innings and put together like 40 wins. So in terms of just a raw numbers thing bum garner probably should be adding you know another 50 of fantasy value and joining the top five um if we want to be strict about it but garrett cole you know may be one of these guys that's kind of like cliff lee like does a lot of it and you know at the end of one uh decade in the beginning of another and doesn't get on either list i mean it seems wrong to not put Garrett Cole in this group.

Yeah, my gut wants to just take one of the relievers and punt them off the roster and put Cole on. Get rid of them all, dude. I mean, the relievers is an amazing list where there's Kenley Jansen and a role as Chapman and then like a shrug face emoticon. I mean, literally, Mark Melanson ended up fifth on the sample. I was kind of surprised Craig Kimbrell didn't pop up high on that list.

I know he was brutal in 2019, but he was cranking out good ratios and tons of saves year over year throughout the decade. How is he not third in that group? How did he not end up in there? I think he's in there. I think we've got to have him as our – it's Jansen, Chapman, and Kimbrel, I think, as the clear-cut three best relievers of the decade, with a guy like Josh Hader falling into the coal bucket where he's probably going to split the peak over the end of this decade

and the beginning of the next one and not make either list, even though if you were trying to build the ultimate fantasy team, he'd probably be on there because you trust him to get more innings than a guy like Kimbrel, who's been used like a traditional closer pretty much every day of his big league career. I think I made a mistake. I just searched for Kimbrel on my thing, and he's not in there. I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with his injury status or something. He just didn't end up in my sample. I don't know why. I mean, Kimbrel's better than Roberto Asuna, Andrew Miller, Mark Balanson.

Josh Hader just hasn't done it for as many years. And I think that's the key thing with relievers is like, you know, who does it for so long? And even will Kenley Jansen do it again next year? Like, he makes me nervous as all hell. His ADP and Kimbrel's ADP in the early NFBC drafts are pretty much the same. They're in the 130 range. And if I had to pick one, it's Jansen, but I don't want to have either of them if I can help it.

Yeah. I think with relievers, you've got to play it the way the teams play it, which is you've got to pay for the underlying stats. You've got to pay for velocity. You've really got to watch velocity on relievers because their production is tied to their velocity way tighter than it is for starters. And when you start seeing Kenley Jansen's velocity numbers, I mean, you want to run the other way.

And Craig Kimbrell last year lost two ticks off his fastball. Now, that one I think is a little bit different because what if he had a regular offseason? A normal offseason to get right is totally possible. I don't know what his true talent velocity is right now. In any case, Kimbrell does I think belong on there. Kimbrell may not belong on your team next year. It's a harsh cliff sometimes,

even for a guy like that, who over 553 career innings now has a 208 ERA and a 0.95 whip. And obviously those numbers were better before 2019 happened. 14.6 Ks per nine. Just crazy. A 41.1% strikeout rate. That's amazing over a full 10-year run. Yeah.

And there's a funny thing that emerges when you look at this year to year, too, is just that relievers don't give you that much value in terms of overall fantasy value. Kirby Yates, last year, Josh Hader was the number one reliever by value, and it was $16. You know, that's, you know, what's a $16 hitter look like? Chris Bryant, Josh Donaldson last year, even Jose Ramirez was nearly $16. So, you know, I don't think, you know, I don't I think that you shouldn't necessarily spend a lot of money on it. Now, of course, buying Rose Chapman for twenty dollars is buying that floor and being like, I'm at least going to get ten dollars for this twenty dollars. But, you know, Kirby Yates, you can get fifteen dollars for one dollar with Kirby Yates.

get $15 for $1 with Kirby Yates. I just think the relievers are the place to go cheap and go with quantity and find the next Kirby Yates rather than pay $20 for $16 from Josh Hader. Or maybe take the discount on Edwin Diaz coming off of the troubling 2019. For sure, for sure. But yeah, the pitchers that just fell short, I mean, Strasburg not being on there. Injuries, I think, were a big part of it for him. He finished the decade on a high note and was a huge part of the Nats winning the World Series this year, but I think he's just on the outside looking in.

I think Corey Kluber probably had the best case of the starters that didn't get one of those nine spots. If he took a reliever off, maybe he's the first one in. And it's easy to forget just how good he was because injuries really caught up to him and shortened up his 2019 season. Yeah, and that's the thing with pitchers in general, man, is just how difficult it is injury-wise. I do think it's interesting that you look at the top starters last year in terms of war or fantasy value, and so many of them are old.

And I just wonder if we haven't studied enough the idea that once you've proven that you're resistant to injury, that you're resistant to injury. Like it's a kind of injury as a skill, you know, I don't know. I struggle with that because on the other side, like I know that, you know, pitchers are hurt all the time,

you know, but maybe there's something about like, once you've proven that you're fairly injury free, you can be a starting pitcher into your mid thirties. It's just that there are so many that don't have that skill. I don't know. Yeah, or just the genetic benefit of UCL or a shoulder that doesn't tear.

It's amazing. I don't know. I'm just looking at this list of best seasons from the past decade. It's mostly names you'd expect. Mostly guys we've talked about. The late Roy Halladay was pitching at the end or beginning of this decade. He's, of course, high on the list. Second best season by a pitcher over the last 10 years. 2011, he was outstanding.

8.7 wins above replacement. Jacob deGrom actually had the most valuable season from a pitcher in 2018. It was an amazing 2018 season. How the Mets only pushed into 10 wins that year, we'll never know. I mean, I guess it's a trick that only the Mets can pull off, but there's some funny seasons on here. 2015, Jake Arrieta. People kind of are forgetting how good he was in the middle of the decade because injuries are starting to catch up to him. 2013, Matt Harvey. Back when Dark Knight Day was – Oh, yeah.

Harvey Day was a thing, and he was the Dark Knight. That was a lot of fun. Those days are long gone. The late Jose Fernandez, a guy you think about, what could he have been over the course of his career? How about 2014, Phil Hughes being on this list? Yes. Oh, my gosh.

Phil Hughes being on this list. Yes. Oh my gosh. He actually inspired my piece for this week, my written piece, in which I look at the decade's biggest one-hit wonders and

envision an alternate future where instead of those being fluke years, those are breakout years. I looked at Phil Hughes and got a projection for him coming off of that six win season, that 2014, that's the six war season. But I think he won like 16 games, had a 350 ERA, best strikeout rate of his career as a starter. And I kind of, I said, what happens if he, if that was a breakout instead of a fluke? I think injuries there are huge because he lost two ticks off his fastball the next year.

And then he started complaining about shoulder, and then he got thoracic outlet surgery. So I do think that injury was a big part of it there. And in fact, if he had maintained that talent level, the Twins' postseason history might be different. It could be. It could be very different. I mean, they have needed a starter during this time. And if he truly was, you know, I think maybe with that strikeout rate, he probably wasn't an ace. But if he was, you know, throwing 93, striking out, you know, 7 to8 batters per 9, not even walking 1 batter per 9, I think he would have been useful to some of those teams that lost to the Yankees

over and over again. You got me thinking about one-hit wonders on the music side from the past decade. I just fired up a nice little Google search stereo gum has an article on this of course from earlier this month this is a trip down memory lane for the last 10 years this is kind of like the how important we thought babbitt was but applied to music uh perhaps you remember cali swag district teach me how to dougie being a big deal back in 2010 dougie dude that was the first dab or whatever kind of was uh foster the peoples on here for pumped up kicks i feel like they had another career like that's not that's not fair they haven't had a hit as big as that song but

they're not one hit wonders where they just bop this this decade or is that if i dated myself you have dated yourself that might have been two decades ago. That might have been late 90s, dude. Crap. That's the ultimate one for me, though. Oh, that's the epitome of, in our lifetimes at least, yeah, that was the epitome of a one-hit wonder. Gautier is somebody that I used to know.

Man, you couldn't go anywhere in 2012 without hearing that terrible song. Oh, my gosh. Gautier has disappeared, thankfully. How about Psy, Gangnam Style, gone. That's long gone. 2012 was a bad year for music. What else we got?

The Harlem Shake, that took over in 2013. Did you ever get into a video with your friends or whoever just making a Harlem Shake video where you'd be in a place and everyone would just be chill and then you'd freak out for a few minutes and then you'd cut it together so it just looked like you were people

just sitting around and all of a sudden you were dancing around like crazy. Teams were doing that. There were major league teams that were having those videos and they would drive by in the bullpen cart and Mr. Met would be drinking a 40 know probably doing some kind of funny dance perhaps the dougie from earlier in the decade yeah i think about this and it looks ridiculous looking back and it looks like a waste of time and you're like oh why would people like be on trend to this why why do we

wear clothes like that why you know and it kind of seems like you kind of want to berate yourself but i think about this beer like i like i like different beer than i used to like and i guess i'm being trendy because i'm drinking a lot of hazy beers but if you give me you know a really malty really strong double ipa from that i used to like right now i I won't like it. Like my tastes have changed. And so I think it's okay. Like it's kind of like it was fun in the moment. You know what I mean? The Harlem Shake thing, it looks ridiculous now,

but it was fun in the moment. I remember those videos. I thought those were funny, you know? And, you know, you can kind of build up a little bit of relationship with people you don't even know because you're all like into this one thing. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. 100%. I don't know.

People call craft beer itself trendy. And I'm like, I don't even know what that means. Does that mean it's not good? like does that mean that like these friendships like these people i've met through craft beer that both share my enthusiasm for this thing that has recently come about or recently become more prominent those are devalued some because it's because it's more recent or it's trendy or something i don't have to sit around just drinking pilsners the rest of my life. Once again, I come to the end of a rant and I have no idea how to sum it up. Sometimes it's okay to get into a trend.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. I think you can look back at that stuff and laugh about it. Come on, if you were in a Harlem Shake video in 2013, you should play that and laugh at it. I mean, I look back at pictures of me in high school with dyed blonde hair. Look ridiculous. Totally ridiculous.

But why did I do it? That was the peak of Eminem, of course. Frosted tips, baby. And frosted tips were cool for a while. But yeah, man, I have regrets. We all do. But some of the stuff is just having fun. Just trying something new and different. And sometimes it doesn't stick. Sometimes it does. I think craft beer is hanging around, kind of like candy, right? If in the 1920s, you had candy skeptics walking around saying, this candy trend is going to fade. You'd be sitting there just eating your candy like, whatever, dude. I'm going to enjoy these gummy bears. These are awesome. These are pretty good.

These Reese's peanut butter cups that are brand new, they're not going away. They're going to make chocolate and peanut butter together forever. Well, we have to talk to the person who came up with Peeps, but yeah. Otherwise, I'm with you. Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking with that, but you can't win them all. I love that Howard Bender has every Easter has a thing where he eats like 40 peeps. I know, a peep-a-palooza? I'm like, I don't even want one.

No. You're going to eat 40 of those? I don't even want one. No, no. He every year has a closer and closer brush with death eating all the peeps, no. He, every year, has a closer and closer brush with death eating all the peeps, too. I'm amazed that he keeps on doing it. At least it's not the

Taco Bell taco challenge or whatever. We're not even going to discuss that. I wonder what the calorie difference is, actually. Pretty comparable, I bet. Well, you never know with sugar. The tacos should be more, but the sodium from the tacos is going to be just off the charts

of the sugar and the peeps. Both things, not good for you. No. We found an example of trends not worth jumping on. There's a small, small percentage of trends that should be ignored. And Peepapalooza is one, and the taco challenge is one. Tacos are great. Just don't eat 70 of them in one sitting.

Right. Oh, my God. Every July 4th, I just find that hot dog eating. I think it's so disgusting. It turns my stomach. It keeps getting worse. I don't know how it gets worse, but they somehow get more gross with it. One year, some guy vomited and he had to eat his vomit and they had to talk about how he had to eat what he vomited or he wouldn't get credit for it.

Yeah. See, I think that's when you just tap out. You say, you know what? I wanted to do this, but my body said I couldn't, so I'm not going to. You just walk away. Yeah. How did we get here? I don't know how we got there, but if we missed anybody,

if there's players that you feel like absolutely belong on the all-decade fantasy baseball team, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. You can also tweet at us. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. Just a heads up, we've got lots of all decade teams coming up on a bunch of our podcasts,

our team specific shows. I did the Brewers one with Aaron Gleeman, so that's going to be out as well. So keep an eye on the baseball team feeds as well. Lots of good stuff coming there. And of course, the winter meetings, hot stove season, all just around the corner.

So lots of content coming your way here at the athletic you know have a great thanksgiving i hope i hope you enjoy a reasonable amount of turkey and i mean a lot but not just not don't eat like a whole turkey by yourself you know as part of especially since i have to drive home jesus all that trip to van full turkey there's definitely gonna be like three people asleep on the couch after dinner we're eating at like two or three so i i get the double header i have the the turkey dinner at my family's house and then i go to my in my in-law's house after that you do two in one day they're close enough where we can do two and somehow by some some miracle my family has always eaten early

and my wife's family always eats at a traditional dinner time. So it works out perfectly. Well, other than for your waistline. Well, yeah, other than for that. But a couple days out of the year where I don't really worry at all. The good news is, and here's a hot take, a hot food take, it's not really a great food day. You're not actually a big fan of turkey? No, not really.

I spatchcocked it recently, and I did some sous-viding, and you can get the texture right, but I prefer chicken and duck and other pieces of poultry, even if they're all cooked correctly. So, you know, the pies are good. I'm having a big fight with everybody on Twitter. I put some fantasy football rankings up for Thanksgiving Day, and I included side dish and pie rankings. And I included some beer recommendations, too.

But the surest way to piss everybody off is to rank their pie near the bottom of your list. Yes. People do get really angry about pie. Very defensive about pie. Somebody called me out because I wrote next to the side dish rankings. I put

stuffing or dressing. I don't care what you call it. I put that first. I made a note. Please do not cook in carcass. Don't cook things you're going to eat inside the carcass of something else. That is not a good way to prepare food. I don't care if that's the tradition.

It's wrong. Don't do it. And someone said, I can't take you seriously. You don't make the stuffing inside the bird? It's like, well, no, I don't want it. I don't want the death from the inside. There's a classic Simpsons line where Homer is at a fancy restaurant.

He says, I'll take your most expensive item stuffed with your second most expensive item. Lobsters stuffed with tacos. Check. That's pretty good. If you can find it, though, pies like uh like they're kind of like like fluffy like i would say almost like a custard consistency i don't i don't know how many places even make them but there's this norwegian restaurant which i don't even know if other places in the country have norwegian restaurants there's one by me they make pies they have sour

cream pies sour cream blackberry pie is the best pie i've ever had everyone's like what the hell is that i'm like i'm just telling you what i what i want it it's amazing it's so good it sounds weird but it's really good i gotta find that yeah like i mean it's it's worth i would i would say like a one hour drive each way to pick one up if you can find some place that'll do it what what pie faction was the most angry the pumpkin pie people got really mad because i accidentally left pumpkin pie off the list and i put a 10th out of 13 ahead of only lemon meringue peach and strawberry rhubarb which are all pretty lousy pies i do not like pumpkin that much but my family they're they're insatiable for it my wife said it's like flan

i'm like well it's not flan. I'm like, well, it's not flan. Tastes worse than flan. Flan tastes good. But I guess the texture, I get it. But I don't know. I'm like a pecan and apple are at the top of my list. Yeah, man. My top three, sour cream, blackberry, if you could find it.

Pecan and apple. There you go. Like a non-psychotic person. A very reasonable person. There's nothing wrong with these rankings. Pumpkin pie is bad. That's my hot take for this episode. Oh, you can put that on all of our gravestones, though.

There's nothing wrong with these rankings. there's nothing wrong with these rankings. I think on that note, it's time to go. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. We're back on the regular schedule for next week. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening..