Rates & Barrels - The Biggest Chip

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

Get 40% off a subscription and to The Athletic and receive exclusive episodes of the show: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Rundown 3:58 Discounts on Voit & Other First-Base Thoughts15:37 Most Underrated Early-Round Pick?20:59 Modifying Position Eligibility Rules32:05 Deep Dynasty League Roster Strategy44:07 Prospect of the Week55:40 Loaded Keeper Options63:52  Holding Keepers Near Auction PriceFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiperShow E-Mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Eno-friendly technology, folks. The GameTime app is simple, quick, and easy to navigate. Download the GameTime app on Google Play or the App Store and score last-minute deals on tickets 60% off. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 54. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode we'll discuss our 2020 expectations for Luke Voigt the general problem of position eligibility and some proposed changes to make that run more smoothly in the future our preferred strategies for keeper and dynasty league depth basically how we want to structure the back end of our roster and very deep prospect leagues we'll also have our prospect of the to structure the back end of our roster in very deep prospect leagues. We'll also have our prospect of the week selections at the end of the hour. Beer of the week goes on hiatus until December, thanks to some illnesses that have fallen upon Eno and myself

over the last week or so. Some very big show-related news. You might be listening to us for the very first time as our show is now available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much anywhere that you want to listen to podcasts. We'll try to get it on some more platforms in the next few weeks. But if you're listening to this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take a moment to leave us a nice rating and review. We would greatly appreciate that.

And if you are a new listener who's not already subscribed to the athletic you can get 40 off a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels everything we do as a site is included with a subscription you know happy tuesday i imagine you've been doing the cough drop green tea you know routine that i've been on for the better part of the last week but how are things going otherwise oh all right i've been on for the better part of the last week, but how are things going otherwise? Oh, all right. I've been hitting it hard. I do the zinc lozenges, the coldies. Something starts with a V that I snort in my nose. In fact, because I have a little bit of bronchial asthma, I do a little bit of inhaler to kind of stay out in front of nasty bronchitis situation I can get into.

So basically, I spend a lot of money in the cold industrial complex. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I'm more of a Ludens guy myself, and I haven't snorted anything to make my cold go away. I don't know. If you're talking about Vicks Vapor Rub, I didn't know you were supposed to snort that. I thought that was supposed to go on the top of your chest, below the neck

area. Not sure. I haven't had it in a while, so I haven't read the directions, but if it's working for you, keep doing it. Tis the season. Yes. Disclaimer, do not it. Tis the season. Yes. Disclaimer, do not take our medical advice in any way whatsoever. Neither of us is a doctor.

We are not responsible for anything you do with any medicine at any time. I think that holds up in a court of law. Let's go on to our first topic. Let's talk about Luke Voigt for a moment. I think you were the one that drafted him in the pitcher list mock that we've been doing for a couple of weeks now. I got him in a draft at First Pitch Arizona back in October, and he's one of the guys that I'm definitely bringing down a little bit once I update my two early rankings here at some point between now and the end of the month. And most of it is just that you don't have to take him where I had him ranked. And I think it tends to be a bad thing when you have a commonly

skilled player ranked well ahead of the field. And part of the concern, I think, for a lot of people is that things really fell apart for Luke Voigt in the second half of 2019, but he was hurt. part for Luke Voigt in the second half of 2019, but he was hurt. And I wrote this on Twitter, the splits for Luke Voigt, you know, before the injury on June 28th and after the injury were pretty extreme. I mean, if you look back at what was happening with him, he was basically maintaining most of what we saw in 2018 before the injury. And once that injury hit, he was a totally different guy. So pre-injury, 280, 393, 509 for the slash line, 17 homers, 50 RBIs. That was in 349 plate appearances, K rate just over 25%, walking a ton, 14% walk rate. After the injury, 25%, walking a ton, 14% walk rate. After the injury, 228, 348, 368, so he lost a ton of power, four homers, just the 12 RBIs in 161 plate appearances. So that home run rate was basically

cut in half once you adjust for the differences in playing time, and the K rate jumped up to 32.3%. So obviously the injury was a factor, but how do you balance information like that? He had core muscle surgery after the season ended. How do you balance that with the difficulties that come from a skill set and from a player who kind of popped up late and could burn out quickly, even if injuries were the main reason for the second half struggles. Yeah. I mean,

I know that you, you pointed that out on Twitter and I am all on board with that sort of analysis because one thing that projection systems don't realize, and that's one thing that i you know might have been texting you about during this you know we're not supposed to have table talk so i might have i'm not i'm not admitting that i did uh but i might have been texting you about luke boyce projections uh during this this draft that we're in and one thing i said was you know like why are these projections so bad you know uh right now he's projected to hit 240 with 18 homers in you know 400 plus at bats next year that would be

like a 240 24 or something when he was on pace in 2018 uh to clobber something like 40 homers. And, you know, somebody replied saying, oh, he got figured out. And it's certainly possible because we're not dealing with the largest samples in any case, you know, across the board. But I did look at his game log. the board. But I did look at his game log and before June he faced Houston, Tampa twice, Boston twice, Cleveland twice. He faced some good

pitching staff. So I don't think it was that he faced bad teams early, uh, good teams early and bad teams, uh, the other way around bad teams early and good teams late. In fact, he ended the season facing Toronto, Detroit, uh, and Texas mostly in terms of, uh, uh, in terms of, uh, quality opponents. So I think instead what happened is he got hurt. Uh, you can see it in the exit velocity he had plus plus exit velocity in 18 93 miles an hour maybe that's not necessarily sustainable over the full course of the year but going into this year he had 91 92 early going he gets hurt it drops to 88 or so uh and the power drops so uh what i see is he got hurt we have a

diagnosis we have a date. We have the splits that show us that he was different before and after. We have the debate about how healthy he was before the postseason rosters were put together. And we have projections that can't see that he was playing hurt, that just see that his power went down and project him off of that. So I'm going to say he's great value going into next year, especially in on base percentage leagues where his walk rate will help mitigate his bad batting average. But you give me an over under on on home runs next year. It starts at 25. Yeah yeah i was gonna say 24 and a half would be my number and i think more of it comes from concerns about the depth the yankees have and how if things

were to go wrong for part of a season or if he gets hurt again yeah there's there's wally pip risk if he gets hurt and there's sort of the same thing that happened to Jesus Aguilar could happen to Luke Voigt. You know, you got this mashing, right-handed hitting first baseman who, if he's not quite himself, and they have a lefty who comes into the mix that is just crushing

the ball, he becomes a small side platoon guy, and on a team that good, he becomes kind of expendable. You just don't have the roster flexibility to make it all work. That's sort of the nightmare scenarios that you can think of, but I see more to like than to dislike when I break down the profile. Yeah, 100%. You can even just look at a quick split.

What date did you say the injury was? June 28th. All right, so let's just take before and after. I'm going to, and this is really just brute force here, but I want to just look at his launch speed, his exit velocity before and after. I'm taking just a real quick average. Like I said, this is not the finest of tools here.

Like I said, this is not the finest of tools here. But his average exit velocity, including 18 and 19 before the injury, was 91 miles an hour. And his average afterwards, 90. So he went down a full tick, I would say. And that's a brute force mechanism there. So, you know, I would say that definitely the injury was a big part of it. I mean, his insides were hanging out. Yeah, that is actually what core muscle repair surgery basically amounts to. So I see a potential top 100 overall guy if he's healthy.

So definitely more in than scared. One thing I would say, though, that is more about this actual draft that we're in and more about how drafts work is that I put together a really good team. We're talking about, I think it's a really good team. We're talking about the speed and all the different players I have. And I've got Harper, Sale, Turner, Machado, Stanton, Real Muto. Like, I just feel like I did really well. But I didn't realize I was punting first base in the process. And by taking Real Muto right after him in quick succession,

Olsen, Goldschmidt, LeMayhew, and that was kind of the end of what I thought was really a set thing. I thought, okay, I'll get Hoskins later. But I realized I didn't have a second baseman so i took mike mustakis and that cost me hoskins and then all of a sudden i have not taken first baseman now i took luke voight in the 14th round a full five rounds after carlos santana who was the first baseman before uh the last first baseman taken before me so obviously i got some value out of punting first base but if luke void doesn't hit it becomes a little bit like the uh who's the

who's white um tyler white situation from last year where i did something similar ended up with tyler white and got screwed but you had a couple chances to find corner help that may have bailed you out. Christian Walker, who actually went four rounds later than where you took Voight in this particular mock, I think is similar in a lot of ways. Hits the ball very hard, right-handed first baseman. Probably some long-term concerns about how long he'll sustain being a quality middle-of-the-order bat.

If you're looking at those two side-by-side, you took Voight where you did for a reason. Does Walker belong in the same tier as Voight, or does Voight belong closer to the tier of those ninth-round first basemen like Carlos Santana and Yuli Gurriel and Reese Hoskins in this particular draft? You know, Voight just hits the ball so damn hard. And Walker's not bad in that regard, but let me just look at a quick leaderboard thing here for eggs of Austin Barrels, so Walker,

8% barrels, 91 average, Voight, 8% barrels, 90 average, and 91 when he's healthy. So actually, that's a really good one right there. You know, Voight's stadium is probably a little bit better. But, you know, I guess I could have waited another four rounds, I guess. But at that point, you start to get a little panicky and feel like you need to get one. Other guys that I could maybe take to do

what you're saying with Walker is maybe get two first basemen that could be similar. Daniel Murphy's still on the board. That's kind of amazing. And he was hurt. He couldn't even bend his finger for much of last year. We talked about that on the podcast. And

CJ Kroone is still there um but uh it gets a little dicey at the bottom eric dames depending on where he signs um yeah i could i could take a shot at nate lowe late but uh you know maybe first base is not the place to punt. Yeah, it's not a punt position, but I think there's enough there, though. I think there's, and CJ Krohn kind of fits into this second group with Voight and Christian Walker, where if I don't get a first baseman early, I'm not panicking. If I miss from that next group, then I'm panicking, because some of the really low-end options are extreme playing time risks or they could just fall off the face of the earth too

because they're probably 33 years old or older. There's a few ways it can go wrong. One other observation from this draft, and it's more of just a general early draft observation, Tommy Pham looks like one of the most underrated early round players yet again. He had the second lowest O-swing percentage among qualified hitters last year, 20%. Only Alex Bregman was lower. He was down two miles an hour with exit velocity, but he's still at 90.8.

And, you know, I'm looking at that and thinking, okay, he's still at 21 homers, had these nagging injuries. Maybe he's always one of those nagging injury guys. I know people are worried about the vision, but the vision issues don't seem like they're going to really be any more risky than any other player, injury-wise. It seems like he's just got that situation under control. 25 for 29 as a base stealer?

And he's got a really nice batting average floor if he's not chasing pitches outside the zone hits the ball as hard as he does and runs well he's a true five category player and yet here he is 63 overall in this mock like that's it's a steal god you know who i'm getting real vibes of it's kind of crazy shinsu chu oh peak chu yeah wow wow he's like really similar uh slightly too high ground ball rate you would think but that that leads him to sort of hit the ball super hard and get really nice batting average really nice batting averages on balls in play you know 2020 guy during the peak for a while and undervalued you know for a long time of course this is you know he's 31 and this is about the time that since you're to stop

stealing bases and became less undervalued and i think that's part of what people are worried about is that he'll stop stealing any moment but there's a little bit of um you know this is this is not numbers here for a second but one of the reasons that i really admire uh tommy fam is he has the biggest chip on his shoulder i I think, of any player I've ever met. I think he could probably tell you every player that was drafted above him. And he, like, you know, like this year he told me, you know, who's the GM over in St. Louis? Oh, John Mozelewicz?

Yeah, he said, Mozelewicz said I had an eye problem, and that's why he wouldn't give me a long-term deal. And here I am with my best reach rate of my career, not swinging a ball, only swinging at strikes. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And I think actually, you know, motor, I think I might have talked about this on here. Motor is the, I think the thing that is the hardest to define and the most important thing that we cannot define yet.

And one of the most important things that we could get from a scout. And it's part of makeup or whatever. But makeup is a really complicated thing to talk about because you could say Pham has bad makeup. In fact, a lot of people have said that. He's bad for the locker room. He's too egotistical. He's this or that and the other thing. But in one very important way, Pham has great makeup.

He has this huge chip on his shoulder, and he has a super high motor. And he is going to get the very most out of what he can out of the skill set he's got the time he's got in the big leagues he's so i don't think he's gonna stop stealing you know i think he's well aware of like a caught stealing what that value is but you know you don't see him stealing 25 times being caught 15 he's not like that he understands he actually understands fangraphs and has been a fan of mine since I've written about him on fangraphs.

So he knows all about fangraphs. He knows all about how this value is calculated. He doesn't want to get caught, but he does want to steal bases because he cares. He wants to put up the best frigging numbers he can to show Maziliak he was an idiot. Yeah, and it helps his own bottom line too he's still a couple years away from free agency so every i'm sure this stuff comes up in arbitration you know so

i i think you know he's primarily undervalued and people focus perhaps too hard on the ground ball right when he unloads into one he still has 20 plus homer power and he's always talking to me about how he'd like to lift the ball more um you know i think there could be a season still where he tinkers and finds you know that 48 percent ground ball rate from 2018 uh but the hard hit rate and the contact rates of 2019 and he has another season where he hits 300 maybe hits 25 homers and steals 20 bases uh i think that that sort of season is still in him and the projections of 270 24 and 18 still super super valuable definitely undervalued guy yeah i mean a 12.1 percent projected walk rate career 12-2 he's been double digits every single year except for 2014 when he

only had two plate appearances, so that doesn't count. I mean, he's been drawing walks forever as a big league hitter. I really like Tommy Pham, especially where he's going. He'd go around earlier and he'd still seem undervalued to me. Just a broad question for you. I started thinking about this as the season came to an end. Every year I start going through and looking at position eligibility. And many leagues out there still use 20 games played the previous season to determine eligibility. And it leaves us with a bunch of UT only guys. And then some of the UT only guys are really odd because they maybe didn't come up until September or the near end of the year, and they kind of split their time between DH and a position in the field,

but they got a little more time at DH. And the old rotisserie book says that makes them a DH, so that's all you can do is use them in the UT spot, right? It's this kind of goofy thing that needs to change. And I just started wondering, how can we fix this? If we're not the commissioners of our league, we're at a point in the offseason where it's a good time to get in the ear of the commissioner and say,

hey, why don't we think about modifying our league rules a little bit so 10 games the previous year is the cutoff. Or in the case of a guy like Nick Solak, when he gets called up in September, let's use the minor league games played by position along with the limited defensive games played by position that he had from the big leagues.

Nick Solak being UT only doesn't make sense. He's a guy that could play all over and he happened to catch a few more starts at DH than at second or third base and that's not a negative thing. It's just random. Yeah. It's not a negative thing like it's just random yeah it's not there's no easy solution you know i do i actually like your your idea of throwing in the minor league stuff if you

did that solak would be an easy second base eligible guy there's a there's a wrinkle like that in al labor where you know i took advantage of it one year and i got matt duffy as a shortstop because matt duffy had played one inning the year before in rehab and it was that shortstop in the minor leagues um yeah there's a in in labor it's basically if they don't have enough games in the major leagues to decide. I guess that's the easy solution then. If they don't have enough games in the major leagues to decide, go to their minor league stuff. What's nice about that is that, I don't know, Otani didn't really pitch, so it doesn't really work for Otani.

But you can't think too hard about Otani. Shohei Otani is too weird of a player to worry about his pitching eligibility and how to save that. But let's say a pitcher comes back as a reliever or something, and he's not a starting pitcher until five games into the season or something, and you can't use him. In AutoNew, for example, you can't use a starter in the relief spot. If they're starting, you won't get points for them if you put them in the relief spot. So I think that something that could be useful there is the minor league thing again because that person would probably rehabbed as a starter and if you go back and use their minor league

stuff even if they came up to the big leagues and pitched five ten innings at the end of the season as a reliever you know they probably had a bulk of their innings as a starter so you could do something that's not only go back to the minor leagues, but also maybe we're like a percentage. So like, where were they, where do they play the most? You know, what's the 55%, you know, what's the biggest, what's the biggest portion of their, of their work. Um, and if that case, if you go back and you look, okay, this, this pitcher came off Tommy John, he was hurt most of the year. He rehabbed the minor leagues, uh, like AJ puck, like, you know, he rehabbed minor leagues as a starter for some point, and then he turned to reliever in the minor leagues,

and then he came to reliever in the major leagues. A.J. Puck should be eligible at starting pitching and relief pitching, in my estimation. And the minor league workaround might get to that. Yeah, and kind of going back to Nick Solak for a second, he had 83 games played at second base in the minors this year. So how does he not have second base eligibility everywhere? That's where he played the most in 2019. If he'd never been called up,

he'd be second base eligible. He'd be second and maybe outfield in some leagues because he played 25 in the outfield in the minors. I think most of the leagues I play in only count the primary position. It just seems like we've got some really outdated rules. Guys move around more now than they used to as well. When that book was written, guys played really one position for the most part.

Guys did not move around in that era nearly as much as they do now. Right, that's true. I guess I'd also be in favor of maybe relaxing it past 20. A lot of leagues are at 20. 20 just seems like a pretty large number, especially when you're talking about guys coming up in the second half of the season. pick up Nick Solak, you're going to want to play him at middle infield. That's where he's most playable. And that's where he'll give you the most value. And, you know, having to draft him at util, and then draft some other second baseman and wait until Solak becomes second base eligible is, you know, frankly, annoying and also not really in the spirit of the game, maybe? Yeah, it's like standing

in line to pick up a form you need, then having to fill out the form and then get back into a different line to turn the form in. Our position eligibility defaults are like DMV sort of procedures. Oh my god, yeah. I like that. That's pretty good. So we could fix this. I wanted to bring it up

on this show because it's the time of year there's not as much going on. It's the time you have to think about these things because you kind of forget about them once you get more excited about January, February, and March. You're getting into more drafts to get guys off of UT-only status. There are some guys who are UT-only. Nelson Cruz is only a DH. Chris Davis is only a DH. Can't help you there. Two were going to ask about the value of those guys, and I think that's something that's interesting to debate too

because I picked up Otani last year in labor, and I got him for like $6 or $7, and I got a 290 average 18 homers 12 stolen bases very nice but i didn't i couldn't it left me not able to bid on well i was mad for a second about not being able to bid on kendrys morales so that saved you from yourself. Thanks. Thanks. So Tommy, but you know, traditionally DH is one of the places that is a DH only players. That's a definite place to get value, but there are ways that you're costing yourself. There are things you can't do. You can't catch a falling star. Basically you can't catch a falling player that shouldn't be so cheap. You can't

go six outfielders or get three short stops because that's what the market is giving you. So you cut yourself off from being able to take some of the values that are out there in an auction, especially, but also even in the snake the the deeper the league the more you're cutting yourself off from you know strategy yeah i'm with you there i think that that discount on ut only players i mean it goes back several years now i just i think there's there's too much worry put into not having that flexibility. I think depending on the type of league you're in, you got to be a little more careful with it. In a very deep league, you're not going to find a great excess hitter to fill the UT spot like a mono league. Just get the UT

only guy who's discounted. I feel like you can do a little more in mixed leagues with that spot. But I have generally stopped worrying about filling the UT spot with an elite hitter. And whether that's Nelson Cruz or Shohei Otani at this point, I think Jordan Alvarez is also UT only in a lot of leagues going into 2020 as well. Those guys are at a level where I'm okay with it. I'll find the flexibility elsewhere. I'll find corner guys or outfielders or middle guys that can go somewhere else. And then I can kind of move pieces around within the lineup when someone gets hurt. And I don't really lose flexibility as the season goes along. When someone gets hurt, I still have the flexibility to play almost anybody off the bench because there's enough guys that can move around. And you do pick up more positions, of course, in season as well.

So wait, you're less likely to worry about filling your DH, your util spot with a DH only the deeper it gets or the shallower? Less worried about it in a deeper league because there's just not that many great hitters to go around you know like six out your six outfield situation is not great your third shortstop is not great you know you'd rather have the dh only guy for sure and again i'm not really that worried about it anyway but i would say if you are someone who is traditionally worried about it you shouldn't worry about it at all in an only league. Especially for that reason.

In an only league, yeah. Alvarez has 10 games started in the outfield. DH only and something like labor. I swear, the 20 seems like a lot. Use Jordan Alvarez as a reason to switch it to 10.

I know he's not a good defensive outfielder, but just don't have the constraints. He's not DH only. And maybe you could do it as a reason to switch it to 10. I know he's not a good defensive outfielder, but just don't have the constraints. He's not DH only. And maybe you could do it as a percentage again, right? So it's 10 games out of 87, so it would have been 20. It would have been very close to 20 if he'd had 162.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, he basically had a half season, and even in the minors, he played 29 games in the outfield in the minors. They were trying to give him reps out there. When do you philosophically own a position? I feel like if you play 30% of your games at a position, you own that position. Yeah, 30 is plenty.

30%? Maybe even 20. The only time you don't own the position really is when you're such a liability that you just never really get a chance to play it. When you don't even get to play the spot in interleague yeah then then you should be ut only one appearance is ridiculous because there are all sorts of weird things like when anthony rizzo was called a second baseman once because he he was too far shifted or whatever did he change gloves too or not did he keep the same glove on forget he changed gloves once and that was actually part of part of uh part of saying he was the second

baseman that day but you know one five that's a little bit low those are just those are just quirks sometimes but uh you know 20 that means that once a week you're playing this other position yeah man that's yours. Yeah, five appearances versus five starts, I think, are a big deal. If you wanted to use five starts from the previous season, that'd be okay. I think in-season, it gets a little trickier. But anyway, please, please, please, please address the position eligibility issues in your league. If you've been using 20, you've got to bring that threshold down. We've got a couple of questions from Joe in our mailbag this week.

The first is about deep minor league systems in dynasty leagues. Joe wants to know, is there a best way to approach building the back end of your roster, either by having more July 2 type signing guys or strong rookie league performers? What's the way to go as far as having those guys on the back of the roster versus leaving some spots for pop-up prospects that might emerge over the course of the spring or the early part of the season? And he's talking about a league where you might have 30 or possibly even 40 minor leaguers. I mean, that's a pretty big team. So that's big.

That's like the devil's rejects league you've talked about or the road of wire dynasty league that I play in. Like it's, it's a huge, huge league. How do you like to go about that? Like, do you, do you try to just swing for the fences and find the 17 year old, 18 year old guys that are just getting their first exposure in rookie league or just signed their first contract and hope to catch lightning in a bottle. Is that still a core belief for you, just hoping to get extremely valuable trade ships or maybe the occasional Acuna or Vlad Jr. player that just becomes such a rapid-rising star that they become a central building

block for your team? I think I would go young there. You know, I often say that I skew close to the major leagues, ready, you know, ready prospects, but that's what I want to do at the top of my prospect list. I would want to have Joe Adele rather than Wanda Franco in fantasy leagues because I'm going to find out about Joe Adele this year. We're talking about 1A and 2A, or 1A and 1B. I'd rather have the guy who's closer in that situation. At the top of the list, I want the guy who's closer, ready to be on my team, and ready to contribute. But the back end

of my list, I'd rather they're further away. And the reason that makes sense, I think, is that if I catch lightning in a bottle there, they're going to move up lists and they're going to have trade value for me. And they can become a trade piece for me quicker. So I'd rather have that sort of rookie ball, A ball, and maybe not so much rookie ball because they have to get through A ball before they really get on everybody's radars. But A ball, I really like.

Because if you get an A ball performer, he gets the high A and then he gets a taste of double A, all of a sudden he's on lists. And I do like the July 9 signings because they can move fast too sometimes. And what I want is to capture somebody before, like we picked up Robert Poisson before he was signed, as soon as we heard that he was going to sign for a big number. If you hear that someone's going to sign for a big number, put him on your team now. When he signs for a big number, he's going to have a big spike in value, trade value. If you're competitive, trade him then. That's when we traded him for Yandy Diaz

and Michael Chavis. If you're not competitive, hold on to him. Maybe he turns into a really big prospect for you, but he's going to have a change in value quickly. I'd rather have guys that are farther away, that have a higher ceiling, that might hit some sort of threshold soon that will change their value. Yeah, I'm looking at it the exact same way you are, I think, in most of my dynasty leagues. If I'm playing for a title right now, I might take a couple of those spots and take a chance on some guys that could help me this year instead. So maybe where you are at in the competitive cycle might dictate just how many of those spots. But just generally, if you're kind of near the middle and trying to move into the competitive lane, you are looking for the rapid growth prospects at the bottom as opposed to the solid regular types. I think this example may have come up on a show

back in May, I want to say it was. We were talking about Evan White. I talked about cutting him in a league like this because he was a college first baseman. He was up to AA this year, I think it was. He just wasn't really showing any signs of growth. And someone reached out and said, he's actually hurt. He's been playing with an injury. He's been out of the lineup. It's like, okay, so that's kind of interesting. So I cut him loose, kept an eye on him, got healthy. He went on a tear. He went crazy in the second half of the season. And if you look at double A with the bump up from high A last year, he actually increased his slugging percentage, just showed a lot more power, was hitting the ball in the air more.

All these things were going right. And the reason I bring this up is, like, you can afford to miss on a player like that. Like, I was able to get white back in that league for a low bid later on, but if someone else had scooped him up, I still don't think it'd be the end of the world. Because when I look at the scouting report, I see a future value 50 next to his name. And I don't think it's that difficult to find future value 50 players. And when you're looking at stashing away future J2 and AZL type guys like Joe asked about, you're hoping to get 60s and 65s. You're hoping to just cash in and hit it big and actually have these guys that are either making a big difference on your roster or who, as they get to high A, are shooting up prospect lists to the

point where they become top 50 prospects before they've even proven they can handle AA. That's kind of a sweet spot for trading prospects away. And I think you're just more likely to splash guys up into that range for trade chip purposes when you take that chance on the high-risk, high-reward player. Now, you might get Gilbert Lara from the Brewers signing class five years ago. That happens. You miss. You're going to miss in that range. Freudus Nova from the Astros looks like a miss. But when you hit, the payoff is maybe like a Marco Luciano type as of right now.

A guy you could trade for quite a bit in a dynasty league if you had him on your roster. Yeah, yeah. And if you hear a rumor, a lot of these these july 9 signings is it nine i don't know whatever these two j2 yeah j2 that's right uh the ninth is a good day too i don't want to be i don't want to denigrate the ninth uh but the second yes july 2nd those signings are set in stone now a lot of them so you know sometimes those those rumors come out and you'll and you'll hear them and to some people to some players those are too far away but you pick them up now and in july all of a sudden you have a trade ship yeah high risk it feels a little

dirty to pick up like a 15 year old butold, but hey, baseball's doing it. Yeah, it's the way the system works. If you've opened pickups, you can get those guys right away, do it. Otherwise, you can prioritize them. Even in the middle and later rounds of your draft, you can take a chance on a guy that isn't a top 150 prospect yet, but could be by the end of the year if everything goes well. I think that's generally where you want to take those chances. Now, I think there's also a sub-question here from Joe about the hitter to pitcher ratio. My approach in keeper and dynasty leagues is to

still go very heavy with hitters. I don't want to have a lot of pitching prospects. You can have a couple, take a couple of shots if you find really good high-risk, high-reward type guys. We're talking like big 6'5", big fastball, nasty breaking ball type guys, like Glasnaus and Thors, guys that have that sort of prospect profile at the beginning. I'll take the chance on that where the payoff could be an ace or a closer.

If the long-term scouting report points to more of a mid-rotation type starter i think you're taking on too much long-term risk given the way pitchers can break down on their way through the system to have the occasional situation like a bieber where you get a lot more out of that pitcher than expected right you don't want to be stuck with a lot of pitchers only to have a few of them break down and a few of them become just kind of mediocre guys. Look at the waiver wire in a deep dynasty league. There's passable pitching on the wire several times throughout the season. So you don't want to draft and hold on to what ends up being the same passable pitching that other owners are scooping up off the waiver wire.

ends up being the same passable pitching that other owners are scooping up off the waiver wire yeah i mean just to do a really obvious but simple exercise here is the 2017 fan graphs top 100 starting pitching prospects these are the very top this is the very best prospects you wanted alex reyes you wanted anderson espinoza yadier alvarez francis martez lucas giolito was the fifth best 19th overall in the top 100 and just think about how many times you could have gotten lucas giolito since you didn't have to you would never have held lucas g leto all the way to there michael kopeck cal quantrell tyler glass now reynaldo lopez jay groom riley pint i mean it's this is just like a graveyard brent honeywell robert gisellman colby allard j James Kaprelian, Jose De Leon, Mitch Keller, Jeff Hoffman.

I mean, those are all top 50. And we've got like two question marks, one hit, maybe two hits, two question marks, and 20 misses. Yeah, and of those misses, a lot of them were guys that broke down, and others were just guys that are good or on their way to becoming big leaguers, but they're not difference makers from a fantasy standpoint. And some may, actually. Some of the guys I'm putting question marks on may come back around,

like Cal Quantrill I still like. Brent Honeywell could get healthy. I have no idea what's going on with Anderson Espinosa. I'm just going to admit that. He's somewhere. He's doing something. But he could come back. That's one thing that I noticed is when I'm looking at the top starting pitching in the league, they're old.

And they took a while to get there. Even Jake DeGrom. A lot of these guys took a long time to get there. And you just don't want to really hold them through all those bumps. A lot of those guys are going to get dropped before they get picked up again. So the one thing that I've found, the one wrinkle I would say, is that there is a sort of competitive cycle situation there where right now in Devil's rejects i have you know like a top three three team top

three to five team i think in terms of the lineup is ready to go i have a bunch of pitchers and i found that i would like to have some starting pitching prospects on that team just in case they come up and hit maybe they would come up and be a reliever for me, but whatever it is, I want to have some of those guys there just because pitching, you just want quantity. And sometimes the closer you are to competitiveness, you might want some of that quantity on the pitching side in terms of prospects. So I might keep Dalton Jeffries this offseason,

even though I have no idea what his health situation is, how many innings he's going to get. But the athletics are going to protect him. They're going to be interested in using him. And he has like a 12 to 1 K to BB ratio. So I'm going to keep him around because I just need as much upside as possible on the pitching side because I've traded away pitching for so long.

We should probably put prospect of the weekend right now since it's on topic with this type of question. I'll go first. It's not a pitcher, shocker. It's an outfielder named Gilberto Jimenez. He's in the Red Sox organization, just 19 years old, turned 19 back in July. He's got an 80-grade speed, according to Fangraphs.

This is a top-of-the-scale runner. Future 55 hit tool. I think it's a present 20, 25. It wasn't good when I looked, but this is a guy who played in the New York Penn League in 2019. Had a 158 WRC+. He's not expected to develop a lot of power. So far, hitting the ball on the ground like 60% of the time, but he's putting a lot of balls in play. 15% K rate, walks a little bit, 5% is not great, but it's not terrible. It could be a lot worse for a teenager

as well. Not surprisingly, he's already in the top 100 for James Anderson over at Roto-Wire. I think he's in the 80s right now. But Jimenez is the perfect example of a high-risk, high-reward player that you want to have on the bottom of your roster in deep dynasty leagues. He might be gone if you play in a league like the ones we're describing already. I know he's owned in RDI. But if you're looking for guys like that, you're probably looking in the 150 to 200 range on the list for someone that hasn't debuted yet, but maybe they signed in the summer of 2018, and they were maybe playing in the Dominican Summer League or something along those lines this past summer. So you don't have much of a statistical track record to go off of, but you're sort of just buying in based on some tools reports

and some what could go right sort of projections. Yeah, I think that one of the hardest things to do if you're a fade prospects guy is to build up speed. And that's what I've been in the past is stolen bases are a real weakness. Stolen bases age terribly, just hard to find in the league. And it's really hard to trade for an old dude that steals bases. And so I do gravitate towards prospects that have speed, even though it's a weird thing

because among the Baseball America tools, among the sort of research that we've done on which tools predict future outcomes best, which tools are the most predictive of future success, speed is the worst. Yeah, it's really risky. It's a conundrum. And that's the whole package or what seems like the whole

offensive package a couple things that i like about jimenez in particular the biggest thing really is that he switch hits so he might be the kind of guy if he can switch hit effectively he's an everyday player and i think the defensive grades in terms of his arm you know there's not like a juan pierre grade on his, with all due respect to Juan Pierre. I mean, you have to look at things like that, though, because if a guy is a defensive left fielder because of his arm, and he's only 160 pounds at age 19, and he's all speed, that's a problem. But a future 55 hit tool with a guy that walks a little bit already,

has at least an average arm, and has top of the scale speed, I'm kind of willing to see where that goes. Once he gets to a full season assignment in 2020, that'll probably be enough of a look to make a call at the end of next season. By this time next year, you'll probably have a pretty good feel for whether or not you want to keep a guy like Gilberto Jimenez on your roster for a few more years to wait for him. But you have to put yourself in a position for a player like that to have that big leap in value on your roster, to start getting close to that future hit tool grade or develop a little more power than expected. Those things can happen too. Just as much as they can go wrong, things can go right or go better than expected.

Yeah, and in all things given equal, it is better to have that speed on your team because stolen bases are so hard and you want to get them at the beginning of their career that way. My prospect of the week has some speed. He's a 55 runner according to fan graphs. And, uh,

he didn't steal any bases in the major leagues. He did play in the major leagues. I wanted to get a guy who's on the cusp of losing his prospect eligibility, just because I wanted to talk about this, uh, this sort of idea of fading prospects. And the reason that I trade prospects away for the most part, I,

you know, the motto is sort of prospects are for trading. Nico Horner, 55 runner, eight stolen bases in the minor leagues. I've been talking about him on this podcast forever. I love his combination of patience and contact. I've talked about him having sort of Mookie Betsy and potential, but he's always had a slightly higher ground ball rate than bets or a much higher ground ball rate.

When bets he could, he hasn't been able to really lift the ball until this year in double a for the Cubs. Uh, he had a much more even ground ball fly ball mix. And I thought, Hey, this is all coming together.

He's going to be a guy who comes to the major leagues leagues makes a lot of contact and hits for good power uh and he came to the major leagues and he was okay i mean he was fine and his projections are good this is a good outcome the the cubs are going to be happy with a league average major leaguer with a little bit of upside when it comes to power. That's going to be great. At 22 years old, when he grows into his power, he could be a three to four win. He could be an all-star type player. But for fantasy, it's going to look like a 280 batting average and 10 to 15 homers and five to 10 stolen bases. And that's just not that valuable. This is a top 50 prospect that, you know, had 50 future value and, you know, would have had trade value. You could have traded Nico Horner for a lot better

than what Nico Horner is going to give you. That's my point. Yeah, I'm looking at Nico Horner and some of the stat cast numbers on him from his limited time at the Cubs. And that was a desperation call up. I mean, Javi Baez was hurt. They got really thin in the middle infield. And yeah, he was ample. He was actually a nice pleasant surprise upon debut like relative to where i think he was at in his development but the underlying numbers kind of resemble nicky lopez for me and that's oh it's funny it's not great i mean like maybe it just means we're we're all like too quick to write off nicky lopez because he was part of Fabapalooza back in May. But there's a lot of blue ink on that Nicky Lopez page.

83.8 mile per hour exit velocity. Woof. 19.1% hard hit rate. You got X-Slug, Awoba, and Expo Bacon all in deep blue. And Nico Horner, 85.6 exit velocity 23.5 hard hit a lot of the similar characteristics without uh the speed upside of lopez even so yeah definite problems there really low launch angle too in the major leagues you saw a lot of ground balls the one asterisk is that he's been hurt so often and i I've got confirmation from a Cubs source on this,

that they saw better exit velocity numbers even before they had him in their system. So there is a chance that there's still some healing going on and some growing in terms of growing into the healthy body, that there could be better exit velocity coming in the future there could be we've seen from the double a 300 almost 300 plate appearances we see that there is a chance that he lifts the ball a little bit more but you know in terms of of comps out there i doubt doubt he gets the fly ball rate above, you know, 35% in the major leagues, and that's just going to limit his power outcome. I mean, yes, Christian Yellich has a 35% fly ball

rate, but there's a lot of other players that, around that level, that do not have the kind of power that he does. So, you know, 35% fly ball rate this year. You know, Brian Anderson, I think could be a similar player. You know, Colton Wong had that. I'm trying to look also for guys that didn't have necessarily plus plus exit velocity. But you know, Raphael Devers did too. So, you know, there's still a chance there that he gets healthy, hits the ball harder, and we see a little bit more out of him. But I think one of the things that happens is you remember the guys you traded away that turned into stars, and it hurts a lot. And so mostly people want to hoard their, their prospects

and, and you get that feeling, you know, like I was early on Ozzy Albies and I have, you know, shares of Ozzy Albies in every keeper league that I, that I, that I'm in. And it's kept me in keeper leagues just to be like, I want to see what I can get out of ozzy albies there's another level i promise um so i understand the feeling and i'm totally into it and that's cool that's why i'm in dynasty and keeper leagues it's it's all good but yeah don't cry too hard when you you make a good trade where you trade away like i i didn't want to trade tyler freeman i've been talking here about tyler freeman forever but i got trevor b Trevor Bauer and Colton Wong at a time when my team needed speed and needed another potential top-end starter.

So Tyler Freeman had to go. Yeah, there's definitely that moment of frustration when the breakout happens after you've traded the player away. But if you're addressing the needs correctly, it's worth it. It generally, it's the way to get over the top in keeper and dynasty leagues. One last thought on this, by the way, if you look at the future tools, I mean, you've got like a 60 hit tool, I think on Nico Horner, 45 power. Nicky Lopez, I want to say is 50 hit tool, maybe 55 and 30 power. That's a pretty

big difference in power. So yeah, I'm with you. I think there are reasons to believe that Nico Horner is going to tap into some power. I don't see any reason to believe that Nicky Lopez will tap into power whatsoever. Just wanted to put that out there. But when you look at players, you're like, oh man, what was that debut like? The perception of Nicky Lopez's debut is, I think, kind of accurate. It was pretty bad. And with Horner, it's like, oh, yeah, he came up and he had some home runs and he was really good. It was like, well, he was ample.

His future could be bright. But I think this could be a sweet spot to trade him, potentially, in long-term leagues. They could have very similar numbers next year. They could. I mean, they're projected both into that sort of 10-10 territory. And Lopez, I believe Lopez's speed, for sure. But the injuries that Horner's been dealing with

would also make things less favorable in his projection. So I think that's a good thing to keep in mind, too. I got a question here from Chandler. He's in a keeper league that's becoming a head-to-head categorical league. It was a head-to-head points and he's got a dilemma about who to keep. He's got three keeper spots and he already has Trout and Garrett Cole. So he's got one more he can use on Vlad Jr., Chris Bryant. Best hitter, best pitcher is a good place to start. Yes, that's a really good place to start. Vlad Jr., Chris Bryant, Austinant austin meadows or jeff mcneil

for that last spot it's crazy that jeff mcneil could be mentioned in the same breath as those other players um you know but long long term i don't think he belongs there even though his 2019 was was outstanding yeah uh this is an interesting one because i think if you go by pure numbers uh mcneil is maybe the choice oh no meadows is probably the choice yeah i think meadows meadows because he kind of does everything you know bryant probably not going to run a whole lot mcneil a little older already and could fall off somewhat quickly, but he's got it. I don't know. I think Jeff McNeil's got a skill set that generally leads to a pretty long career.

Really low K rate and getting a lot better. I'm surprised by this. What do you got? I just looked at the auction calculator and it doesn't have any of his settings in it, but Meadows is $12, McNeil is $12, andNeil is $12,

and Vlad Guerrero Jr., who was going to be my pick anyway, is $15. Yeah, so the projections probably still love Vlad because the age-to-level stuff he did before getting called up was amazing, and even though it was a disappointment relative to the loftiest expectations a hitting prospect really ever gets, he still had a good debut as a rookie. It just didn't come through at the early round fantasy pick sort of level that some people were hoping for. Yeah. You know, I've got a tweet here. This guy, Dan O'Coin, works at Driveline,

and he's someone that I really respect. And one of the things that's really cool about what he gets to do is he has hitters that he can sort of experiment on, and so he can create things like attack angle, which looks at how the bat is coming through the zone and um and the sort of you know whether a guy has an uppercut or not and the reason you can do that is they have you know the hitting technology there and they can relate sort of uh track man and and stack cast type outcomes to actual attack angles and so they can create a

model that relates outcomes to attack angles and they can train that on the major leaguers and create an attack angle and so what he had was a list of the best bat speed in in uh the big leagues and so he's got gary sanchez number one, Aaron Judge, number two, Joey Gallo, number three, Pete Alonzo, number four, and Vlad Guerrero, number five. Now, the reason I bring up attack angle here is that's the best bat speed. So Gary Sanchez has a 78, Vlad Guerrero has a 77 mile per hour. However, all the guys on the top bat speed on this list having a positive attack angle, except for Vlad Guerrero. And there's this tweet from Daniel O'Quinn saying,

Vladito likely has a negative attack angle, which is pretty unique for someone who swings the bat that fast. When I was dumb, I always thought this would be a limiting factor on his career. Now I drool over his 162 ISO while swinging down on the ball.

So I think what we're saying here is that we're a small tweak away from greatness on Vlad. And the exhibits that we have to show that are an already established high exit velocity, an already established good strikeout rate and hit tool. And you combine those two with a slight tweak to his attack angle, and you're going to have someone that could be like Pete Alonso with a better hit tool.

It's a scary player. That's a scary player. I think that's a very scary player. And I think that I'm willing to take the chance, given that Jeff McNeil is old and does not have these foundational things like bat speed and exit velocity. He's more of a one-tool guy, and it's elite.

That hit tool is elite. But I don't think that there's a lot else going on there. And Meadows, I think, is the second place uh finisher for me uh but given how we know about what we know about how stolen bases age uh i wouldn't expect meadows to necessarily steal 10 bases next year he's 24 he hit 33 homers uh you know i would expect him to do something like hit 30 homers and steal eight to nine bases next year so that seems like a much more that if that's what i'm risking i think i'm okay with that just another thought if you if you're loaded with keepers in a limited situation could definitely make a run at Acuna or Yelich or Mookie Betts. And to do it, you probably got

to give up Cole. But if you pair Cole with someone you weren't going to keep, and you end up going from best pitcher to a top five hitter who's probably ranked ahead of Cole in most systems and most formats, that's worth it, isn't it? Yeah, and I'm not sure that you have to give up Cole. I mean, if you're starting with Vlad Guerrero and Austin Meadows, that's pretty sexy. Especially if you're going after Yellich. For the right owner, that would work.

But even if they said, I'm not going to do Vlad Jr.r in meadows but i'll do it for cole in meadows i think you take that i think you you turn a player that you're not going to keep in meadows and garrett cole into christian yelich and then you hold yelich trout and vlad you might have held anyway yeah it's definitely that's the time when you have that close of a keeper decision on your hands i think that's the time when you have that close of a keeper decision on your hands i think that's the time to really try and over it sounds like overpaying but it's not there is no overpaying in these situations one other part of the question that came in with chandler it was a

question about the winter meetings and if there's going to be any sort of meetups so we'll have to kind of figure that out i won't be there but perhaps you will have a guy you're not going to be there i want to go but i am not going oh that's too bad i'm sorry to hear that it. I won't be there, but perhaps you will have a gathering. You're not going to be there? I want to go, but I am not going. Oh, that's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that. It's a bummer, but yeah, there's always 2020. San Diego's a great winter meetings city, though. Yes, and I'm thinking, I'm trying to put together something on the Sunday afternoon, early evening, before the winter meetings. I'm thinking North Park. And, you know, there's a, oh, there's a new place that I want to check out. I can count as my beer of the week,

although I'm not drinking it yet, is a place called Pure Project. And it's in Bankers Hill. So I'm thinking about something like Pure Project, Modern Times, and Hamilton's in in bankers hill so i'm thinking about something like pure project modern times and hamiltons as a kind of sunday afternoon descent into madness and uh that'll be uh how i start the winter meetings off which is of course stupid i should be you know working my phones or whatever other bs but it's San Diego, man. I'm going to do it. Yeah, well, you got that free time when you land. I mean, you're going to work really hard

for three straight days at the meetings. Those are exhausting days. As fun as they are, they are very tiring work days as well. That's true. I do like that Sunday kickoff. A lot of BSing. A lot of talking.

So details probably to come on Twitter on that and probably on this show as well. But it is in the works. One last question. This one comes from Gautam, I believe is the pronunciation. I really should have asked before putting the email in the rundown. Before you butchered it. Yeah, I know.

This is an auto-new question, but it's kind of a philosophy question about holding players at or near their market price. So the question is, I'm trying to devise a strategy best suited for this team. You sent us the link, but do I trade the high-priced guys like $50 Chris Bryant, $48 Manny Machado, $48 Paul Goldschmidt, $23 Matt Chapman, or try to hold as many as possible. What return should I be shooting for when trading one of the big bats or any of those big bats? And he points out weaknesses are outfield, second base, and catcher. So finding a general approach to attacking the my keepers are kind of at their inflated price or close to it already problem. How do you go about deciding what to do in those circumstances? In this particular situation with AutoNew, third base is overvalued.

Corner infield is overvalued. So I have a feeling that Bryant and Goldschmidt are not keepers at those prices. And he'll probably discover that quickly in trade discussions. And he may be able to get a lot more with 98. He may be able to get those two players back plus another player with $98. $48 Machado is a little bit harder because he's a shortstop. But I have a feeling that he may also not be a keeper. So I would shop those guys and see what the market says.

That's going to help you as much as people are annoying and tell you annoying things in trade negotiations. Sometimes you can kind of read between the tea leaves and say, wow, no one's really tickling on these guys. In auto-new in particular, there is a surplus value calculator that you can Google and find. A lot of people sort of use that as sacrosanct. So you'll find that people reject a lot of offers based on just that. And this is where I wanted to kind of talk about keeping it price or a little bit over is that I find that

the auction a lot of times is just full of guys coming off bad years. And, you know, that's not always the best place to shop. Sometimes guys coming off bad years are because they're old and done. So I feel like the auction is overvalued. And since you said you were in third place, uh, you may find that one of those guys, I kind of lean towards Machado cause he under, uh, he underproduced his barrels is something that, um, that, uh, Alex Chamberlain found. Um, you may, you may get a bounce back from him and he could be your shortstop. Um, and, uh, but the other guys, uh, you may find that holding Machado is a good idea because you're a third-place team going for first place,

and having a guy at his price is still valuable. This is kind of something that happens in the big leagues. People talk about, oh, you shouldn't trade for Cole Hamels because you have to pay him $20 million. Well, you also get Cole Hamels. There's only one Cole hamels available right so sometimes it's worth it to keep a guy you know at or maybe slightly over his thing if you're a competitive team that's ready to go for it and you know you don't necessarily want to put him back out of the market and let someone else buy them from you so i you know

goldschmidt uh after with his age and season uh bryant with his season and his and his position um i'm not so sure on but machado i know 48 is high but uh he's a short stop in in auto new and uh you know you'll have to kind of see what happens. Yeah, it is tricky, too, because you've got to think, I mean, those leagues being OBP leagues, that makes that category even safer, right? I mean, the fact that Goldschmidt walks a lot makes him less risky in that format. Bryant, there's such a high floor guys. If you're going to end up overpaying for risky bounce back types in the auction anyway versus overpaying for guys that are extremely likely to come close to making value there's a floor and ceiling conversation to have i think you gotta hold some floor there i mean i so i i'm not i'm not afraid of holding

salary in keeper leagues if i if i knew there's going to be a surprising amount of underpriced talent in an auction then maybe I'd be a little more aggressive about chopping some of the high-priced keepers. But in a situation like that, I wouldn't be too worried about dealing all of them. Maybe trade one just to have a little more flexibility. And of the three, I think Bryant, not because he's $2 more than the others, but I think Bryant's the one I'd be most likely to flip. Yeah, he probably has the most possible trade value at 27 years old, coming off a season with the best OBP possibly of the three,

and playing a position that's overvalued in Audinew. That would be a place that I would look to trade. Machado would be a place that I'd look to possibly keep, and Goldschmidt might be just a cut. Chapman, I think, might be just a keep. The best closer in the game at $23 is not too bad. If that's Matt Chapman, it's definitely a keep there, too. It doesn't say which Chapman.

I kind of assumed Matt because the question was about hitters. But that's a nice discount on Matt Chapman, isn't it? I assume the oldest. I assumed Matt because the question was about hitters. Oh. But that's a nice discount on Matt Chapman, isn't it? I'd hold him. Yeah, easy hold at 23. Maybe the most tradable of anybody in that group. Yeah, but I believe this power output. He's kind of a foundational type player for me.

And I think there could even be one you know, one little slight, you know, step forward for him even. Yeah. I'm totally with you on Matt Chapman. As I mentioned earlier, beer of the week returns in December, but if you've got questions for us to answer on a future episode, our new email address is rates and barrels at the athletic.com.

Any subject line you want that will still reach us. You don't have to do the old fantasy pods thing. So rates and barrels at the athleticletic.com. Any subject line you want, that will still reach us. You don't have to do the old fantasy pods thing. So ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. Be sure to keep an eye out on the baseball team podcast we produce here at The Athletic as November comes to a close. We've got some great episodes of those coming your way very soon.

Our next episode will post late next week, so no episode next Tuesday, but we will have an episode that comes up I think it's Friday is the actual post date for that. Hope everybody out there has a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

Enjoy the beer and the food and everything that you'll be having over the next week or so. Looking forward to catching up with you again after the holiday. Yeah, and it's time to be thankful, as in, thanks for listening..