Rates & Barrels - The March Toward Opening Day

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Eno and DVR share a few show-related updates -- two live episodes on Mar. 27-28 at Barebottle Brewing Co. in San Francisco! -- and ask for feedback on a format option for the 2025 listener league before digging into a round of spring news and notes. Plus, they look at DVR's builds from last week's Tout Wars ('Solds and IP instead of Wins) and Mixed LABR draft where a conscious decision to lean into IL spots was made. The show wraps with a round of Monday Mailbag questions, including a question about zone contact rates and the belief in a Matt Wallner breakout. Rundown 0:24 Eno Brews Beer for Our Live Shows in San Francisco! 7:08 Sean Murphy's Injury & Opportunity for Drake Baldwin 10:21 Minor Injuries for Corbin Carroll & Gunnar Henderson? 15:42 Luis Gil: Awaiting MRI Results (Update: High-Grade Lat Strain) 18:27 Parker Meadows: Slowed by Nerve Issue in Right Arm 24:10 Jose Altuve's Move to Left Field 30:57 DVR's Injury-Risk Heavy Approach in Tout Wars 39:34 Another Pitching Risky Build in Mixed LABR 51:47 Value of Spring Training MaxEV? 54:34 Shohei Ohtani's Dollar Value in Daily Moves League 59:44 Matt Wallner's Sleeper Status & Low Z-Contact% Profiles Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the season to shop new styles, electronics, and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back? With Rakuten, you can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone, clothes, skin care, or a getaway, well, you can get cash back. So treat yourself, family and friends and book that holiday trip now. Start getting cash back today by joining Rakuten.

It's free and easy to use, and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R get the Rack-A-Ten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Hi, it's Alexa Weibel from New York Times Cooking.

We've got tons of easy weeknight recipes and today I'm making my five ingredient creamy miso pasta. You just take your starchy pasta water, whisk it together with a little bit of miso and butter until it's creamy. Add your noodles and a little bit of miso and butter until it's creamy, add your noodles and a little bit of cheese. Hmm, it's like a grown-up box of mac and cheese that feels like a restaurant quality dish. New York Times Cooking has you covered with

easy dishes for busy weeknights. You can find more at NYTCooking.com. Welcome to Rating Barreled, Monday March 3rd. Deriffenreiper, Enocerous, back from assignment. Where were you on Friday, Eno? I was at Bear Bottle in Bernal Heights in San Francisco, brewing a beer that you can have. If you come to our event at Bear Bottle Brewing Company, March 27th and March 28th, a two live rates and barrels for San

Francisco and the Bay Area with a beer called Kayakers Cove, which is a hopped up rice lager. I was looking for a kind of sessiony IPA feel. It's going to be Citra and Nelson and 5%. One of the working titles was Day Game. A day game crusher is the idea. So I went and was brewing with Lester Koga who's the co-founder of Bear Bottle. I had a great time. I was a kid in a candy store. You can actually hear the giggles on this video. We got evidence.

Yo. We got evidence. Oh my God. That's so much and I did a mistake here. It's okay, don't worry about it. We're gonna close it, it's gonna go in. Keep going, keep going. That too? Yep.

This is the rest of the citra? That's citra, yep. Yeah. There we go. I think you have to brew beer more often, man. You're happy doing the pod, but that's a different level. That was fun. The hops are so smelly. I don't know, it's just fun to do something with your hands.

I'm not that good with my hands, but this was something that... It's more like cooking almost. It's like putting together a recipe. So there's some other pictures, I think, floating around, maybe on blue sky or something where I'm like, you know, there's I've got a rake and I'm raking out spent grains and stuff. And so, you know, it's it was a fun day. And of course, while all this is happening, he's like running tasters with me and he's like, here's a here here's a lager taster and he had like six different types of lagers and it's great. Really looking forward to those live shows 430 start time March 27 and March 28th at Bare Bottled Brewing. There's multiple locations it's the

Cortland Avenue. We're working on guests but it's gonna be a wide variety of guests and we're gonna take Q&A's and there'll be trivia and probably some merch. That's the goal. We got some stuff in the works hoping to get it done on time for that show. Join our Discord because there's a lot going on in the Discord. We got some questions for people listening to the podcast. We are working on our 2025 listener league details. There's a listener league channel. Please jump in there. We are working on a possible format

with our friend Niv Shah over at Auto New and it's based on Niv's pick six game. So we wanna try this year is a possible group in pick six could be a daily entry sort of thing. Again, free, we're not gonna try and make it a monetized contest or anything like that, but it's a different format than last year, where last year we did the salary cap picker pick one time, run through the whole season.

We're looking at something with a little bit more variation for this year. One thing I like about it is, you know, the difficulty in having a listener league situation is that, you know, if we have a full league, it's more of an ass room everybody and only, you know, 12 or 15 or 20 of you, even if we made it a big league, could be in a league with us, you know, specifically, or else we're making, we're having tons of leagues and we already have enough leagues,

you know? So that's part of the reason why we did the way we did it last year. We realized that, you know, doing something like pick six would be more of a daily thing, but Niv is on the Discord and there could be some sort of tweaks he could make to the game to make it easier, something like an auto picker button where you pick when you can and the auto picker picks when you can't, something like that, like that. So there are different things we could talk about, but we just love the auto new platform for their dynasty leagues and Niv is a fan of the show. And we just thought that would be a great combination of way to have everybody take part that wants to take part and have this huge league.

We could, I mean, we could now that we're about to have merch, we could maybe make, uh, have there be some sort of, you know, who the Victor gets some, some merch or something, but, uh, more about bragging rights and staying with the discord community and talking about it. And, uh, I think last year was pretty fun. I think we still have to pay a debt from 2024 to the top 10 overall finishers in last year's listener league. So have your people, or you reach out to us, ratesandbarrels.gmail.com or connect with us on Discord. Let us know if you were in the top 10.

I'll try to dig up emails off of fan tracks from last year too. But if you can come to us, it'll be a little easier. We're going to organize the listener league that we discussed for the top 10 finishers, right? You know, and I'll be in that league. We'll set that up and try to find a date for that on the calendar, should be challenging since it's already the 3rd of March.

So my apologies for not getting that out sooner. Yeah, we're gonna get on that. My Monday to-do list, because it's March, it went from like two or three things, I felt like I had to get done to like 10. And I got a lot of stuff done, and I've got a lot of people helping me with stuff today too.

So our buddy J.H. doing some work in the background to help with the hive mind ranking So those should be out soon My top 300 hitters should actually be available to view on the athletic like Tuesday Maybe this Tuesday March 4th, maybe tomorrow. I think breakout pitchers for me and If you've been listening Not too many surprises Well, I mean why would that be the case? I took one of them with the first pick of my restocking draft

and the draft were not in the thing. We're now together and Devils rejects the twin team keeper league. And somebody reached out and said that was a very Eno pick. I was like, oh, I am who I am. Yeah, you shouldn't be a different person in your drafts than you are on the show or when you're writing. And that would be absolutely ridiculous. To get started with some baseball news you should know,

Sean Murphy had a bad weekend. You know he had a good weekend, I had a good weekend. Sean Murphy did not, he hit by a pitch on Friday. He's gonna miss four to six weeks with a fractured rib. Seems like he's just been in this sort of like two-year spiral of struggles at the plate plus injuries around all that. Could open the door for Drake Baldwin to be the opening day catcher because Atlanta's gonna make a difficult choice. I mean Chadwick Trump could be the veteran backup that just plays more. They've got I think Sandy Leone and Kurt Casale in camp. They could keep one of

those guys and send Baldwin back to triple-a but Baldwin pretty much looks ready and this makes me kind of nervous for Sean Murphy as someone that I think we've liked for most of draft season even though it could be a job share with Murphy and Baldwin both playing a lot the way that rosters built with Barca Lozuna there and then the signing of jerks and pro far they don't really have the luxury of using the DH spot to get a second catcher into the lineup the way they did back when it was Murphy and Travis Darnoe and Marcelo Zuna wasn't playing as well at that time, right? So I just look at the situation and go, hmm, maybe Sean Murphy's not quite the guy that I hoped he'd be if Baldwin comes in and just tears the cover off the ball for a couple of weeks to begin the season. But how do you see this one plan out? Dude, you know, the Braves should get some credit for player development.

They're not all huge signings or top draft picks. Drake Baldwin was the 16th pick for the third round. He had a $600,000 signing bonus and all he's done is hit. And he doesn't strike out and he walks and he hits for power 111.9 max EV, 53% hard hit at AAA last year. Yeah, man, I thought Murphy was a pretty good bounce back candidate for this year and I thought they might slow walk,

they might slow walk Drake Baldwin because they have Murphy under contract until 2028 but I don't know Things could be changing. So I would just knock Murphy down a little bit and I think the chalk here is He doesn't break camp. That's I think the conservative way of approaching this is that this doesn't usually happen. They don't usually just give a young catcher the keys to the team.

Especially if it's like, oh, Murphy will be back in a couple of weeks. Like, do you think that's what you do? Because I think you just limp along with the veterans. Even if it's the six week end of the timetable, you're talking about mid-April before Murphy is probably back in the lineup. So yeah, you're talking about maybe two to three weeks worth of regular season games where you get by with the backup. So yeah, if they have any doubts, if they want to make sure that Baldwin is definitely ready, they can go that route and send them back down. For what it's worth in the top 300 hitter rankings I mentioned earlier, I dropped Murphy about 30 spots and I didn't move Baldwin up yet because I think we need to see a little bit more and Get more confirmation more information from the front office about their plans before making the assumption that Baldwin's definitely the guy

But the path is opening up for him in Atlanta Corbin Carroll left a game this weekend. That was on Sunday with lower back tightness. He doesn't think it's serious This is one that I just wanted to flag in case it comes back around Because it could turn into something more like the Gunnar Henderson situation He's been dealing with some side tightness or oblique tightness making progress in his recovery though according to comments made by Brandon Hyde Orioles manager on Monday morning, so can I just point out something about Carol though? He has a 78% fly ball rate in spring training. In six games?

14 play appearances. Yeah, not even six games. Yeah, I just think it's hilarious. It could mean something because he definitely plays around with that ground ball, fly ball aspect. You know, when I talked to him about hitting, he talked a lot about, you know, the choices you make, that there's a given, the given a lot about the choices you make, that there's

a given a take. I think he was talking about how scoopy you're going to get or how flat you're going to get. At times, he's gotten really flat and cut himself off from the ability to hit for power. But if he's hitting 78% fly balls, he's been pretty scoopy right now. He's taking those low balls and taking them out. It's hard to get signal and noise is signal and all the noise that is spring training. And I think there's a lot of people that for the most part just want to not look at results

at all and not take part. And I've even heard people say, oh, you shouldn't look at, you know, spring pitch movements necessarily because, you know, we're finding out that according to Michael Rosen, you know, pitches move more in the grapefruit league than they do in the cactus league because the grapefruit league has humidity and that's good for movement. Pitchers play all the plays all over the time. And it's like, if it's okay, so I have to adjust my cactus league numbers and think, okay, this is, might be a half inch low, there's still signal in there.

You know, they're still doing something, you know, especially if the pitch mix is different. So if we're talking about spring training numbers that I care about, grandma fly balls actually on it. The grandma fly ball mix for hitters and pitchers to some extent, if there's a big difference, I will pay attention. K BB. Those are the things that I think matter the most. And then process stuff like bat speed.

Bat speed becomes sticky after three swings. Three swings, that's pretty good. So, and pitch velocity is very similar too. So, you can get a lot out of just the raw readings even if there might be some noise even in the raw readings. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And I think that we got some questions about a few spring metrics that we'll get to

a little bit later on in the show in our mailbag. I did see with the Gunner injury too, Vlad Sedler talked about this when he jumped in on Friday, there was the temporary in the best ball leagues and some of the high volume drafts, Gunner slid a couple of spots. This happens a lot in the spring because these day to day naggingging injuries most guys know enough to just

say okay I got to back off for a couple of days these games don't matter I'll be fine in a week don't want to turn this into a regular season problem and I think that always just opens the door for a quick buying opportunity where something a little bit different can happen in our drafts. I'm wondering if either one of the Carroll or Gunnar Henderson injuries are actionable to you. Because for now, I'm looking at both of them and saying there's enough time, there's enough runway for them to take whatever rest they need.

And if we're still talking about this two weeks from now, maybe we're tweaking the order at the top of the draft board. But at this point, I think both of these kind of fit more in the doing the right thing to not let it become more of a problem bucket. Yeah, I agree. The only thing that sort of bothers me is just the side, the obliques. If it turns into an actual oblique strain that can actually be weeks and we could start

pushing it a little bit. Happy TGFBI day, by the way. That is underway. I'm sitting in the 15th spot of my draft. Might even get to make my first two picks while we're potting because Ryan Bloomfield, good friend of ours, sitting right next to me in the queue before my first pick. So Bloom gets his pick then I get my two. Tatis is still there, Julio is still there, Jackson Churio is still there, and Tarek Skubal is still there. And I think my general vibe is to kick the can down the road with pitching and take

the best of the two bats that are still there. I agree, I took Judge with my first and I'm hoping to take a bat when it comes back to me, but there could be things that change in case, you know. I think Raphael Devers is an interesting draft right now. I did take him in barf, but with the shoulders hurting and all the kind of controversy about his position, I wonder, should I drop it? I mean, I'm not talking about dropping him rounds but should

I take him at the very beginning of the second round, you know? At the very end of the second round, the very beginning of the third or should I go in a different direction and get a pitcher? So everything looks pretty good with Judge in the first seat. Yeah, I think it's real nice to start with Aaron Judge. Ten dollar drop in the projections from Aaron Judge to the next player. Early parts of the draft order, definitely one of the more fun ways to start building out a team. Some news that's not as good as what we were talking about with Corbin Carroll and Gunnar

Henderson, or more scary at least than what we were talking about there. Louise Heal scheduled for an MRI on Saturday at the time we put the rundown together, at the time of this recording. I have not seen actual results from that yet. I did see a report from Stephanie Epstein from SI saying that it's unlikely Louise Heal is going to ready for opening day so that would put Marcus Stroman into that number five spot in the rotation if Heal is in fact unavailable. A wait and see at this point but they were talking about kind of being like an upper biceps sort of problem that caused him to cut a bullpen

short on Friday. He is nasty and just absolutely a C- health grade at this point. Yeah C- and falling unfortunately. Yeah what I had to 165 because he had 151 last year, but I'm gonna turf that down to maybe 132. It's so random. I just pick a last digit. Yeah, the ones place. Yep. Yeah, what is the ones place? Nobody think that I'm doing this that precisely that I can project it and he's pitched to the ones place But if he's more of a 130 guy, then he's gonna drop in my rankings despite having a pretty good projection I think I would have to put him maybe past Lodolo Who I have a similar in his projection on and a similar projection overall, right? Yeah, similarly that else gonna raise The doll is at least healthy now, right?

so maybe I'd have to move them all the way down to Yeah, similarly bad health grades. The Dola's at least healthy now, right? So maybe I'd have to move them all the way down to Lizardo, who I have with the 121. I would take Lizardo over Luis Heal, not even knowing the diagnosis right now. Do Rasmussen? Hmm, that's probably, until we know more, that's probably more of where I'm at for the toss up. And even that, it's like, well well Rasmussen's healthy today and Luis

Heal's not so I'd probably take Rasmussen. So this just turfed him like 35 points in the rankings. That's like the more realistic you're going to get a significant discount if you're drafting until we get an actual diagnosis and it could be a one that burns you pretty good too I don't know if I would even be that excited in leagues where you can't make moves because you may be some very bad news that we're going to get given the lag too. Usually if it's not that bad you get a pretty quick turnaround on yeah MRI came back clean just little incineration.

Yeah it's not good when you're like, it's been a couple days now. Yeah should be back in mid-April. If they haven't said that yet I'm not optimistic that it's going to be a short term thing for he'll hopefully we get some better news than anticipated. Here's an odd one. Parker Meadows has a nerve issue in his right arm. And I just saw from Cody Stevenhagen of the athletic that they have not ruled Meadows out for opening day. But just based on how things progressed with Garrett Cole last year too. Nerve stuff, you just have to wait. Sometimes it's a week or two,

sometimes it's four to six weeks. It just depends on when it calms down and when it becomes less of a problem. So Meadows is not currently participating in any baseball activities. And with that, I think opening day is probably more of a question mark than anyone has let on,

just based on how he's being handled right now. Yeah it's too bad and then you have these weird bad ball stats from last year but you also have the the five tool you know playing every day in centerfield, 20-20 upside for Parker Meadows that makes him so exciting I think to take in a lot of leagues. I would move him down a little bit in my rankings, but I think I... I don't know. You know, I think it's a little bit closer

to the kind of Gunnar Henderson situation where you're like, oh, I hope this doesn't get worse, and if I can wait till the last possible moment to make my decision on this and keep her leagues and stuff like that, you know, I would wait till the last possible moment to make my decision on this and keep her leagues and stuff like that You know, I would wait till the last possible moment because this you could get more news tomorrow I wouldn't necessarily turf him like 50 points in the rankings or anything No, I think if anything if we get an update It might be you know a month or something along those lines that longer range four to six weeks

Would it be similar to the Sean Murphy discount you knock him down 20 or 30 spots then but until you have that information you can just knock him down a little less and make sure you don't walk into a situation where you could be waiting on a player come opening day I also saw in that same piece and it was like a roster projection 2.0 that Cody put out there that maybe Trace Sweeney has to win his spot on the roster this spring I don't know what they're really doing there. Like are they trying to give Javier Baez one more look? What's the real thing that's holding them back from making that move to let Trey Sweeney

at least be the primary option at shortstop? Because they could platoon there, depending on how they wanna make the pieces fit elsewhere. Yeah, maybe it's just as simple as like not wanting to award a young player a position before he's actually earned it. You know, there's always kind of political and secondary concerns there where, you know, you also have Javier Baez on the big, you know, big deal and the veteran.

And so Trey Sweeney needs to kind of maybe prove that he's the shortstop over Baez for that to make sense in the clubhouse as well. You know what I mean? But there is an injury that we didn't mention. I think that does matter to this conversation, which is that Matt Vierling has a strained right rotator cuff and will not be ready for opening day. So that puts Jace Jung as maybe an everyday starter there, maybe with some short-slide platoon help from Zapp McKinstry. And if we are building a bench here.

Da da da da. Build a bench. We don't have Veerling in center anymore. So I, and maybe not even Meadows. So I think one one Seale Perez looks like a slightly better pick these days than before. But let's say Meadows is there for opening day and Veerling is not,

then your backup center fielder is probably Riley Green. And I think Justin Henry Malloy makes his team. And you go with Malloy as the fourth outfielder, Ibanez, McKinstry, and Dingler. Yeah, and you could even see McKinstry being, you know, platooned at one of those spots. They just, they have a lot of different options. Wait, wait, it can't be because I didn't I didn't say the loser Sweeney bias.

So McKinstry bias, a Torkelsens not making this team, dude. Yeah, doesn't look good. I think he was on the outside looking in and Cody's projection, too. So anyway, I think one of a bonyas and McKinstry make it. And then you take both guys and Sweeney. But maybe that's why they're saying you have to win it because we also need that roster slot for somebody else maybe. We just want to have a shortstop.

The other name that's in the mix is Jami Jones. He's there as an NRI right now. The old school angels and then Yankees maybe, second base prospect. Had a cup of coffee in Milwaukee at one point. Yeah. Angels and then Yankees maybe, second base prospect. Had a cup of coffee in Milwaukee at one point, yeah. Did he? Angels, Orioles, Brewers and Yankees. And Jumaid Jones has only played 69 big league games

over parts of four different seasons. I mean, when he's been up. I don't see it. Lot of swing and miss, 35.8% carry. And doesn't hit the ball hard for all that swing and miss. Right, I think that's the trade off that you generally have to make. swing and miss 35.8% hit the ball hard for all that swing and miss right I think that's the trade-off that you generally have to make it's not I mean thirty five point nine percent's not bad but also doesn't hasn't lifted it

enough right five point one percent barrel rates for his career is not gonna get the job done so if Jones were to make the team he'd be kind of a small side utility infield option I think they'd use them just to face lefties. He would make it ovary Banias, because Banias is 31 and not playing well in camp so far. 11 played appearances, sorry. Yeah, 11 played appearances. But I mean, at 31, with his skillset,

he even has an option, so that's amazing. It's the season to shop new styles, electronics, and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back? With Rakuten, you can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone,

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Start your shopping at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. One other news related item I saw report Jose Altuve left field remains the plan for now. And it made me wonder, should we be more excited about Brendan Rogers or somebody else that could end up taking the bulk of the playing time at second base? If the Astros stick to this plan, we've talked all winter about Houston's outfield depth being suspect and, you know, them being a fit for just about any sort of corner outfield that you could find. I think the Jurics and Profar signing with Atlanta was a little surprising because Houston said that they had a pretty clear need and could have fit a guy like that right in But you know who wins if l2 bays not playing second base Is there anybody left on the on the heap Alex for to go?

Let's do this out there The interesting thing for me about this is maybe Shay Whitcomb She like a little bit. He's 26 it's not anything left for him to do in the minors. You know, it's pooper get off the potty time really. What's amazing is that in 2023, he hit 240 with 35 homers and 20 stolen bases and was below average by WRC plus.

It's just, it's amazing. And then last year as a 24 year old, 26 year old, he's old for the level. So you actually want to adjust his WRC plus down. He was 23% better than league average. But if you just ignore the age and the prospect pedigree, what he did last year was, was fairly amazing because he walked 11% of the time struck out 20% of time showed power and speed and If he can continue that kind of walk and strikeout rate levels, then he will be very interesting He already projects to be right around 90 WRC plus by most systems Although the bad X doesn't love him. And so that is probably the best projection if I look here at the bat X

No, let me not do the Bat-X because he doesn't like it. We're gonna do oopsie. We're doing the rosy colored glasses, all right? We're doing oopsie. And we do a WRC plus projection. And Whitcomb is 91, but who else can play his position? Brandon Rogers, 97 WRC plus projection.

And then Dubon is a 91. So if you want Dubon as a utility guy and whatever, Brendan Rodgers is hurt, it doesn't play that well this spring, Shay Wickham is on your radar. But I guess Brendan Rodgers is the favorite here. Yeah, by projection looks like he's at the best floor. And the question I've always had about Brendan Rodgers

is just like what kind of player is he outside of Colorado? At one point earlier in his career, I thought he could steal bases, but they didn't want him to run. And over time, he's lost a lot of speed. So now I don't think he could steal that many bases unless it's sort of like a Jesse Winker. No one expects it. I pick my spots really well and get you eight or 10 bags.

Maybe that's the best case scenario. But we've talked over the years about the difficulty of hitting in Colorado because of what it does when you go on the road, right? Pitches move differently at altitude versus everywhere else. And I think that makes it very hard to analyze what a player like Rodgers might do not having to make that fluctuation, make that adjustment on a week to week sort of basis. So I wonder, could the projections just be wrong, slightly wrong on Brendan Rodgers? I don't think he's a star, but would it surprise you that much if he was a league average batty? He makes contact at a pretty hard contact at a good rate. 42.6% for his career. Hits the ball on the ground a little bit too much, but what the Astros can find a thing to tweak. Yeah, it's interesting to see the WRC pluses and what people do. Zips, for example, basically just awards

Brendan Rodgers his career line. And that's a 106 WRC plus. So that's just strange, you know? But it could be what a hitter does, you know, leaving Colorado. What we've seen in the past is there've been actually some bargains on guys that have left. Dexter Fowler was decent after he left.

Matt Holliday was good after he left. You know, I think that the Troy Tula-Witzke situation had very little to do with quality of play. Just health, like, even the peaks for him in Colorado were just they were just beaten down by the injuries he dealt with. Yeah, so I think I think it's probably Rogers, but Shay Whitcomb is a kind of a draft and hold guy to circle, especially if Roger Rogers hasn't been very healthy.

You know, he's had a lot of hamstring issues. So he has if he pulls up with a hammy again, I think it's Whitcomb. Rodgers hasn't been very healthy, you know, he's had a lot of hamstring issues, so. If he pulls up with a hammy again, I think it's Whitcomb. More job battles to come later this week. If you have job battles you're particularly interested in, drop us a note in Discord, we'll be sure to get to those later on this week. Let's talk about some stuff we did recently.

I still can't believe last Tuesday I did two drafts, which is a young person's maneuver It's definitely not something that a man of 40 years old should be doing but fortunately I went to two shows in one day in Vegas when was that I Saw fish and then I saw eggie afterwards. That's right. I forgot that was the same day I thought that was the next day, you know one weekend sort of thing, but What that that's probably even worse than the trying to oh, yeah Yeah, my friend found me wandering around a McDonald's see we weren't wrong that

possible fifth sixth seventh iterations of Eno could have definitely got stuck in the sphere because the real version the original Was in a McDonald's. I was insisting that I had ordered six piece nuggets. And you had, they were like, there's no order here, sir. And I was like, and I was looked so sad. I was like, I just was like in the corner looking sad that they just gave me the nuggets. And then I checked the next day and I had not ordered any nuggets. There was no charge. Oh, And I had not ordered any nuggets. There's no charge. Oh Anyway, that's what happens if you try to go to two shows in your 40s

Well, I didn't end up in the corner of a Culver's demanding Pine of custard that I hadn't had actually ordered I just fell asleep when I was done because I was in the comforts of my At home, it's the difference between if I'd done these drafts in Vegas then yeah Maybe I would have been a child sad looking for nuggets or I would have been at Lotus's I am demanding a duck that I'd ordered like sir You'd order a duck you need to leave It's time for you to go whoa Innings pitched instead of W. Yeah, man. This this is pretty pretty fun the the TOWARDS solds draft as it's called 15 team mixed league

innings pitched in place of wins and then it's saves plus holds so Value of relievers gets squashed big time. It's my second year playing in the league. I did. Okay last year not great I wish I'd done better. I think Ray Flowers is the defending champion in this one and let's take a look at what I did. So the quirk to Tautenhorst. What did you do about the innings pitch thing? Did you throw it in the calculator? I did throw it in the auction calculator to see, but my mentality was that maybe people would be more aggressive than they should be with workhorse starters, like the good workhorse starters, not just boosting guys because they throw a lot of innings, but taking

the likes of Logan Webb and just saying, I want Logan Webb in this league. I don't want the more injury prone starters. So my thought was, I'll take the injury prone starters beyond getting an ace of all aces because in TOW wars you have unlimited IL spots and I think there's a there's a big difference in NFPC leagues we talk about all the time where there's no IL spots just your seven bench spots you got to

manage your injured guys with your backups accordingly and managing risk is very different there than it is in leagues have some IL spots or even other leagues that have the unlimited like TOW wars does so I'm wondering if I took on too much risk even for unlimited I.L. because as you can see, I drafted from the fourth position. Oh, O.B.P. is in for average for these leagues, too, just as more context.

But what is kind of cool, though, is that the workhorse starters didn't go into the first. So you managed to get what I have as the number one pitcher in in baseball this year in the middle of the second round. Right. So Paul Skeens fell to me. Scooblent ran one pick before. So that would have been 26th overall for Scooblent, 27th overall for Skeens. They fell more than I expected. Happy to take either one of them there. And as soon as Scoob went, I was like, I'm out. But then you took Blake Snell over Logan Webb, which. Yeah.

And my reasoning for doing that, and this, okay, here's the rotation. Paul Skeens in round two, Blake Snell in round four, Tyler Glasnow in round seven, Spencer Strider in round eight, Brian Wu in round 11. Otani is two players in this league. Otani the hitter, who went first overall to Ray Flowers. Otani the pitcher went in the 14th round to me.

And then I took Jurasmuson, Kumar Rocker, Aaron Savalli. Oh my God, dude. Tony Gonsolin and Casey Mize in 28 and 29. So, okay. You really leaned in. I mean, I love it though. The one thing I've been trying to do more of and learning from you is just having more aggressive strategies and leaning into certain parts of the pool.

Right. So let's go through a quick checklist. Who's healthy of my pitchers right now? And I'm not trying to jinx these guys. This is just going to be... Well, glass now. This is going to age terribly. Glass now pitched.

Glass now pitched. Just pitched. I watched them pitch yesterday on Sunday. He looked really good. Everything looked crisp, Filo looked good. He made some adjustments this off season. Everything seems to be fine. So Skeens is healthy, Snell's healthy,

Glass Snell's healthy. Strider's further along than we thought. Plus you get to stash him in whoever's hot in spring and you pick up a hot arm from whatever's happening. Yeah, I'm gonna use that depth a little bit. Wu's healthy right now. Otani's rehabbing still but he's already DHing in games. I mean, Homer's first plate appearance so.

Certain places have made this adjustment. Will you be allowed to IL him? That's a great question. I should have checked on that. But that's a pitcher card so I think I should. I think as a split player, he's not gonna be on IL from on Roto so I card, so I think I should think as a split player. Oh, no, he's not. He's not going to be on IELTS on Roto. So I don't think I think I have to use a bench spot.

Might hurt your bench a little bit. That might be why I got a little bit of a discount. But OK, Raspersons healthy right now. Rockers healthy right now. They're all healthy right now. So I know I know other than Strider, but he'll be slow played for reasons we understand. So I know that the amount of risk I took on is very high. But the reason why I did it is because I think on a per start basis, when they are in,

I think Snell and Glassnell and Strider and even Wu, they're going to work enough where the innings pitched, I'm not going to lag an innings pitched where it's going to go wrong for me is in the ratios if I have to lean too heavily on the waiver wire, right? That's where I'm going to have to get a lot of good ratios locked in early in the year before the injuries pile up because I'm going to be giving those ratios back the more I have to rely on the waiver wire. So that's where I think the risk comes in. The innings pitch category is actually not a concern for me.

I don't think you need to use the player squishing machine for Juan Soto, but Juan Soto plus Christopher Morel in an OBP league is a kind of a fun duo there. Yeah, yeah, it's a...the player squishing machine comes through again. So the bats I put around it, I mean, Soto in an OBP league from the four spot, Jackson Merrill in round three, Michael Harris in round five. I've taken Merrill in the second. Yeah, I felt like it worked out perfectly because I got the pitcher I wanted and then came back to a bat that I would have taken if that pitcher wasn't there.

So win win. Junior Kamenero in the sixth, Danzby Swanson in the ninth and then filling it out with you know, typical mid-round guys. I did feel like after about round 12, it turned into the absolute get your guys scenario because relievers were squashed so much. Everything was getting bumped up in the back half of the draft. My plan for relievers was to not spend anything.

Yeah, I spent nothing on relievers. Yeah, I got some. I got Orion Kirkering in the 24th. Oh, I love him. And Jeremiah Estrada in the 25th nice and I figured I'll just get more relievers off the wire once everything Guys out because you did take your chances on a Loi and maybe Adele and

But Kim Kim is an interesting stash in an unlimited IL situation, too So you kind of leaned into our other hitting side a little bit too. No, that's high sun Kim, but he might have made it a triple A. Well, we'll see. I think this is a good team. I don't know if it's the best team I've ever built. I think the flaws are sort of clear with some of the bottom half hitters. You know, Morrell, I like Morrell more than most in round 15. We talked about in my spicy hot take was 35 home runs this year. There's a lot of breakout potential between Morrell, Soderstrom, Joey Ortiz there. Yeah, Andrew Vaughn for some oatmeal spackle in there. I think Larnac solid, Joe Adell in the 23rd.

Not ideal for OVP, but for the power speed combo at the price I thought was good. So I mean, this to me is like a fair fun sort of roster that should at least contend. I don't know, I mean, I have Snell and Webb's, like, let me see, I'm just a straight up ranking. I do have some daylight between them. Yeah, how far apart do you have them? 14 and Logan Webb 25. Snell 13 and Logan Webb 25.

So that's, and in this one, they were separated by three. Yeah, they were close. And I think the only decision that I maybe would make differently, I thought I was gonna get a shot at Snell and Yamamoto. I thought there was a better chance of Yamamoto making it back just based on. So you think if maybe you're taking Yamamoto first,

he might've had Snell there waiting for you? Yeah, I think I've probably gonna only get one either way because if you think about it Ray who double tap pictures on the end with Yamamoto and Castillo probably gonna double tap somebody else somebody either would be Castillo in green Or Snell and Castillo and then green. Yeah, so I don't know if he would have made it back It may have been hunter green with Yamamoto instead, but that might be the one thing I'd tweak about the early parts. Yeah, the web didn't fall that much, and I think that's because of this format.

I think this format will always boost a workhorse, fringy SP1 type like that. It's interesting that some of the injury risks didn't take as much of a fall as I thought. I mean, de Grom in the fourth, Snell in the fourth, Glassnow in the seventh. I got some de Grom in the fourth, Snow in the fourth, Glassnow in the seventh. I got some de Grom the same day, man.

I leaned into it again a few hours later in labor. Labor is a regular five by five, so it's average in place of OBP again. It still wins instead of innings pitched. It's saves. It's two catcher. Two catcher. You're still digging for all the same kinds of things

I had the fifth pick in this one. It was pretty easy for the top five They ran off not in the exact order I expected but it was with Otani judge de la Cruz and that took Jose Ramirez With the fifth pick just because I wanted Floor and I wanted the coverage at third base something. I hadn't thought a lot about Good thirds kind of rough and I felt like that was enough base, something I hadn't thought a lot about. Third is not good. Third's kind of rough, and I felt like that was enough to say, there's great outfielders that I like

just about as much as Ramir is, but there's plenty of outfielders all over the board that do all sorts of different things. So I thought it was the best way to do it. Plus there's no other third baseman that's gonna give you power and speed like him. So you're kind of, in team building, you're ahead on speed.

Even if you're just treading water on speed, you're ahead on speed in a way because you're getting it from a place that doesn't traditionally provide it. So again, with the benefits of the IL spots and labor, I said I could take on some pitching risk. I wanted to wait a little longer on starting pitching. I crumb and glass now, dude, I love it.

And they're just, it's the yellow cluster, and even Mason Miller, right? I mean, Mason Miller in round four, DeGrom in five, Glassnow in six, but my thought was, I wanna win ratios. I want to dominate ratios. If I'm going to invest in pitching early at all, I wanna be phenomenal in ERA and WIP, and hopefully in Ks because of the volume, but on a per inning basis, at least I'll be phenomenal in ERA and whip and hopefully in K's because of the volume

But on a printing basis at least I'll be great in K's The thing I've landed on with relievers like why I won't draft Emanuel Clausé But I will draft Mason Miller if I'm drafting reliever in the first five rounds for four rounds especially I really want someone that can give me a shot at a hundred K's Mason Miller does that Emanuel Clausé doesn't so that's been my Reasoning for being... Part of why I've been on Duran is that I think he gives you that. Yeah, I like that extra juice and if I'm waiting for my pitching staff or I'm taking on the injury

risk the way I am, I need the extra Ks from my reliever. That's gonna be really important. You're uncovering a little bit of a flaw in the yOLO-YO-YO, which is that sometimes you shouldn't be concerned with pairing players like that. Sometimes you should just go all the way in. All the way, full, full YOLO. Sometimes it's just be full YOLO. Yeah. Wear the YOLO crown instead of the YOLO.

I mean, just in this league, so round one goes that way. So just in this league when you pick glass now you could have picked Hunter Brown there and that would have been more YOLO YOLO that would have been de Grom for upside Brown who projects pretty well but more for innings there I would have done that. So you would have gone the safe route you wouldn't have gone glass now. De Grom I would have gone de Grom Brown yeah. See and I think the reason I did it is because when you look at DeGrom and glass now you run through most calculators they're gonna come out as

top 10 pitchers so I got two top 10 pitchers without taking one in the first four rounds. Yeah but it's always about that innings pitch prediction. And then it comes back to again like if you if you trust your ability to either find late round pitching to supplement the group or to get the waiver wire guys that at least keep you afloat I think I do that well enough. I feel like I can take on that risk. I don't think, at least in most of the rooms I'm in, I don't think I get punished enough by the rest of the room

for taking on that risk. Maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe my hubris will come back to bite me later. But I think this can get the job done. And the hitting foundation was a little different. So with Jose Ramirez, the best bat for me, Bryce Harper fell to my pick in round two. I didn't really have any reservations about that.

I liked him a little more than Cattell Martell and Austin Riley, who went right after. I was thinking about O'Neal Cruz as a move him up sort of guy, and then Michael Harris, who I drafted earlier in the day, also would have made a lot of sense. But I just felt like Harper, tons of floor there. The fact that I got a second round pick

that doesn't run matters less because Jose Ramirez was the first round pick and I leaned into it a little bit more when my third round pick came around. William Contreras is on none of my teams so far. But I felt that there was a little bit of a gap where if I was trying to wait on pitching and I wasn't gonna take

Crochet who I could have could have taken there and would have fit the the risky bill I didn't really want Cole Regans didn't feel good about CJ Abrams. I just I wanted the floor I wanted to keep getting floor in place in case I waited even longer on pitching than I did You have good floor and I love you know getting William Contreras there. That's that's another thing that, you know, comes up, you know, when we're doing the auction calculator and you're in a two catcher league, you will always find that it produces catchers as like first round values. Yeah, and I'm not I'm not on board with that. But I do like getting as we seem to have like waited.

You still got the first catcher, you know, you still got the first catcher you know you still got the best catcher the guy who's probably going to play the most you know even adames i think that adames is a little bit floor over over ceiling round eight means that you took adames over mcclain no mcclain went just before that volpi and mcclain went before willie was falling a little bit i mean i felt like that was a little bit of a discount relative to the projections for Willy Adamus. And actually, I think there's a little bit of a tear drop there because after Adamus, it's Xavier Edwards, Xavier, Ezekiel Tovar,

Mason Nguyen, Jeremy Payne, you know, guys, I think you have more questions. You know, worst case scenario with Willy Adamus, he hurts a little bit in the power category, but he also just hits the ball really hard and he's a right-hander, and I think it's a little bit in the power category, but he also just hits the ball really hard and he's a right-hander, and I think it's a little bit easier to hit for power, you know, right-handed.

Because if you're left-handed, you can get that ball into the water like Barry Bonds, but A, that was Barry Bonds, and B, it's tight. You have to be one of those people that like pulls the ball along the line. You know, if you pull it to the power alleys, that's called triples alley. And that's where home runs die.

And probably Brandenbilt lost 35 homers, 40 homers over the course of his career over there. Oh, we have brewers related news says producer Brian. Uh oh, what's this? Share the news. Uh oh, I love it. I love it. Just a fan whose heart has been broken so many times. It's good news, dude. Jose Quintana, one year deal. I think that's probably because I've been

watching Mizorowski looks pretty wild. Looks like a reliever. Yeah, looks like it could be a reliever. Ashby has been wild himself and D.L. Hall is hurt. I bet you Woodruff doesn't start the season in the rotation. Yeah, I think that's sort of been the plan or the expectation. I think they also had, was it Thomas Pannon? One of the other depth guys they had

that people weren't that excited about. He got hurt in his last outing too, so they've been. They all have been. Little injuries have been chipping away. That's the most recent news right there. You know, that might've been their guy that we, we spackled it over, you know, for a while, while other guys get ready.

But you know, with this, I guess they were, they didn't really want to put Ashby right away, right in there right away, which is too bad. Cause I do have some shares of Ashby and I like his stuff, but the command is bad and the command being bad sometimes makes you think that the health isn't all the way there too and that's both of those things have been an issue for Ashby. I think it's the combination of a few things that led them to go ahead and make that move

to bring in a veteran for some more innings like Kintana. Glad it was good news and not bad news in this case. As far as the rotation here, I felt like I was a little more careful that I wasn't out worse Maybe maybe being so aggressive about over the day. You got Jared Jones. I like that. That's your I mean, it's some of the pitch in the 13th Gavin You'll always get your flowers about Pepe Oh for me. Yeah, of course Tobias Myers Trying to find that second closer, I went with Porter Hodge in the 22nd.

I know they brought in Presley, but Porter Hodge is better. It was likely to be better. I think that's more of a- I've been watching Presley this spring. I don't think he looks good. No, you're usually a Presley skeptic too, last couple years anyway. It's funny, because I loved him

when they got him from the twins. And so I have I was like in Devil's Rejects. I was an early Presley buyer and I have him. I still have him on my team to this day. But but now I just I see a declination declination. Yeah, just a decline in the stuff. And you just felt like he was nibbling he was letting people have make contact and he was walking guys in the spring and I hesitate to Make too much about the eye test but I've been trying to fold a little bit of eye test into my numbers because I think the best players do Use their eyes as well. Yeah I think you have to have a mix of that because you're going to see some

things that concern you or are good. You can see things in both directions before they show up in numbers that mean anything. So it's huge. I do have Ashby in the 28th round here. The thing I've liked about Ashby the entire time this spring is one that he's healthy. But two, like if he's not in the rotation, there's a chance he's high leverage in the bullpen and Trevor McGill is healthy now, but if McGill falters, then I think Ashby's pretty high

on the list of possible replacements. So that's been one of the reasons I keep throwing the dart at Ashby anyway. And this is an IL league, so you can stash Bradish at the beginning and have an open roster spot to do something with? Yep, my hope was that Bradish in the second half could maybe backfill some innings if the de Grom glass nail combo is not healthy later on, so easy to just throw him on the IL and

pick somebody else up coming out of the spring. But I feel like this is a little more balanced. First the Tau Wars one was like, yeah man, it's unlimited IL, and this was more like, it's unlimited IL, but you really like reign it in a little bit. More Gonsolin, lots of Gonsolin. Look at that Galov-Solaire-Holiday-Keith action there is pretty intense. I like that I think Solaire is under-projected that'll be reflected in those top 300 hitter rankings I think Galov's someone I traded for in Devil's Rejects It's just a longer term by low I mean, we've been trying to buy him. Yeah

We'll see how that plays out holidays really fairly priced right now because if it clicks for him Then we're talking about a guy that goes what top five rounds pretty easily next year and now you're getting him in the don't have Like a miners place to put him or anything. So you would be on your bench. Do you think you'd drop him if he doesn't make the opening day roster? Not right away. But if he's down for more than a couple of weeks, he's late enough where you could do that, though. OK, I don't I don't think you're going to be kicking yourself forever

if you cut your 16th round pick. Yeah. So I just try to I try not to take risks for opening day rosters in the first 10 rounds. Yeah. So I don't know. I just try to, I try not to take risks for opening day rosters in the first 10 rounds. Like if the first 10 rounds feels like I should come out with that with the core of my hitting group, you know, and the core of my pitching group

in a way where I'm not like, oh, guess he didn't make the roster, you know. After 15 in particular, I feel better about taking shots. At that point, I just, I'm not as clingy to those players, so I can live with it. So we'll see how this turns out. Pretty risky builds, especially in TOWARDS. It's either gonna be brilliant or it's gonna be terrible,

I think in both cases, given the way I stuck those three pictures together in rounds four through six in the nightcap during mixed labor. Let's get to some mailbag questions. You know, a lot of good ones piling up in our Discord. The first one from Max, is there any value to spring training max EVs?

It seems like it'd be easier to hit against pitchers that are still getting their feet under them, and we don't really keep track of batting practice EV. One thing I'll point out is BP very different in terms of the VLO that you're hitting, at least on field BPs. It's just not the same as what you're getting in a spring game, even if spring pitchers

are not as dialed in as regular season pitchers. Yeah, the sort of way to put it is that exit VELOs are five sixth hitter and one sixth pitcher, which is to say that pitchers do have an effect, but it's mostly about the hitter. So I think what you're actually getting with maxi V is bat speed. And so we just said that bat speed can become meaningful on an order of three to five swings. So I think that, yeah, I think spring training maxi V is interesting. Because basically you're back ending bat speed into the equation, and bat speed just tells you

how hard they can hit it, their upper ranges. It's all tied together, max EV, bat speed, that's the ticket. I do know that there are sometimes are misreadings, and that's why teams prefer the sort of 90th percentile or 95th percentile max EV, but it's not an easy calculation to do on your own. And it also suffers in really small samples.

So max EV is just a semi-clean, semi-interesting thing that I think has signal in it. Not maybe a ton, but especially if you're talking about a prospect who hasn't. like if Jackson Churio comes and hits and he hasn't hit a ball above 109, you know, in his, in AAA the year before, and he comes in the spring and hits a ball 112 or 113, you're like, yep, okay, I see it.

Right, stronger. Yeah. That is bad speed. Yeah. It's, yeah, there is value to it. I do think Max EV in general is something that could be accidentally overvalued in its importance. Especially if missing it, because it is one of those things

where it can just happen. You can't say, if you look at a whole season and you say, oh, he didn't hit the ball above 109, then I think you can start to say, he didn't hit the ball hard.9 then I think you can start to say he didn't hit the ball hard. Right I think that's a better usage of Max Evie in general. Thanks a lot for that question Max. Nice that Max asked us a question about Max Evie actually. Question here from Mitchell. Mitchell wants to know in a 10 or 12 team league that has daily lineups how much are you willing to spend on Otani in an auction format? Would a hundred innings from him

as a pitcher be enough to make $80 for a bid worth it? This is assuming a $260 budget. When you run the auction calculator, just as a frame of reference, you're going to get $50-ish with most settings on Otani as a hitter, and you're not going to find anything close to $30 for him as a pitcher. It's usually, let's see, 12 bucks. I did it for 12 teams with the bad X and it was combined. It was like 56 bucks. Right. And I don't know if that's still quite right,

because there's a value of the roster slot on some level. Yeah. And you're also It's definitely You're using other pitchers when no Tani's not pitching at the beginning of the year So it's not like you're just getting those innings you're getting Innings when he pitches and you're getting things from other guys when he doesn't in that roster spot I would be comfortable going past 60 but not past 65. I don't know if that sounds random but at 56 that's the, you know, that's what the

numbers say, you know. But 60 I could be like, no, I like what this does for my roster. 62, 63, I still maybe, maybe go there. But 65, 70, 80, I can't do it. What about the other way to think of it is just like, is it 15 to $20 more valuable than the next highest price player? Like, if the room's gonna spend 50 on Bobby Witt Jr.,

then do you just say, well, getting Ohtani plus his pitching stats is 15 or 20 dollars more than that and you say 65 or 70 is my cap because 50 is the cap for guys like Witt and Judge. What might be nice is if you throw somebody else first throw Bobby Witt first find out what that is and then go to 10 to 15 bucks above that. I think that's that's the smart way of doing it. Don't throw Otani first if you have the choice. Right, because then you may end up paying 30 dollars more for Otani and getting 15 dollars

for the extra value. And then Witt goes to 40. Witt goes to 40 or 45 or something, you're like oops. Yeah, I think this is a good measured way to think about it, but yeah, if you can try to get someone else out first, if someone doesn't just nominate Otani as the first player, then that gives you a better sense of how you want it.

But you could also look at what that league has done in the past. And that's an underrated thing. Sometimes I suggest to people is, there's a difference between Z scores in auction calculators. That's what the auction calculator fan graphs does. Z scores just sums up all the stats and looks at the difference from the mean

and gives the player the value of that stat without any sort of look at the standings. If you've been in a league that acts a certain way for a long time, you should use standing gains points, which is SGP. And SGP looks at what is a stolen base worth in the standings, which is a slightly different question, because it starts to get at league tendencies. Oh, our league doesn't value stolen bases even though it's a category that nobody in this league really cares about it.

You know what I mean? Or, you know, whatever. There's always stuff like that where, oh, this league pushes up pitchers, you know, that sort of deal. So you should look if you if you think Otani is going to go first, you should look at what previous top three bats have gone for in that league in specific and try not to spend much more than $10 more than that. I would say in a year where Otani doesn't have the limitations of the reduced innings projection, then maybe you are talking about an $80 player in a format like that.

And part of that is that the replacement level players in a 10-team league, especially really high, even at a 12, it's not that bad for the most part. So you can push the extra chips over that and still build a perfectly complete quality roster at the bottom with a lot of $1 players. With the dollar players, yeah. Right, so that has to be factored into. The more shallow leagues do open up that ceiling. If the average team has a number one bat

that costs them $45 and you go to 80, that means you're costing yourself like two or three $20 players or something. You're gonna have to really, the 20s go down to 15s, the 15s go down to 10s, the fives go down to ones. You gotta do a bunch of that to make up that money. Aggressiveness of the room matters in a big way, but thanks a lot for that question, Mitchell.

One more mailbag question for today. This is from Kiga Koyada or Kiga Koyota Koyada I don't know you know this this one's more your wheelhouse but the question here is can someone please explain to me how anyone could think that Matt Wallner is a potential sleeper when he has the eighth worst in-zone contact percentage among MLB batters with at least a hundred at-bats and that's only with 20% of his plate appearances coming against lefties. He's at 68.8% and most decent hitters seem to be in the 75% and up area.

So, Matt Wallner hits the ball really hard. That's the answer that was given on Discord and I agree with that, but the list of players that were as bad or worse in in-zone contact percentage as Matt Wallner is pretty bad. Estevan Floriel, Kyle McCann, Matt Thies, Cren McCrae, Jose Ciri, Joey Gallo, Will Benson, there's Matt Walner, JD Davis at the end of his career, Kevin Keirmeyer, Alex Jackson, Sam Hilliard, Gabriel Arias, Nolan Gorbun and Henry Davis, uh oh, two names I like at the very end and just over 70%

So how worried should you be about a zone contact? Percentage that low especially when you're talking about someone who makes well above average damage When they do connect you should be worried. This is definitely why Matt Walner It's also why he's a sleeper right and why is not he's just not, yeah, that's why he's cheap is not why he's not correctly valued by everybody or in everybody's best esteem. The other thing I would say is if you look over at these hitter aging curves, you can see the light green dashed line is Z contact.

Players generally improve their Z contact into the early 30s. The peak range is 32 to 33. So I think that has to do with pitch selection, you know? Learning the strike zone, learning what they're trying to do to you and being able to adjust back. So at 27, Matt Wallander can improve, and on this aging curve would improve one percentage point just based on the aging curve.

Then on top of that, I went and looked at the biggest improvers in zone contact rate last year, and this is why you try. You know, like Nolan Jones was on there. Brenton Doyle was second. That's why you like to get these guys, because if they do improve, you know, they're great, right? Michael Massey improved, Matt Chapman

was the fourth best improver. Bryce Harper, I think in particular, Bryce Harper's career is very interesting, because in 2016, he improved his zone contact rate by two percentage points. In 2017, he by two percentage points. In 2017 he lost two percentage points. In 2018 he lost seven percentage points of zone contact. 2019 he got one back. 2022 he got five points back. So there's a decent variation around

a mean where two or three points can make the difference in your season, right? And that seems to be some of the normal variation. Plus the aging curves would suggest that he could improve it just by aging and knowing the league better. And then lastly, you just, you're betting on the batter ball contact and hoping he puts it together. If he doesn't, you know, another thing is strikeout rates and zone contact rates become meaningful pretty quickly.

So if you look at it and he's worse than last year and his strikeout rate is worse than last year Then you can probably pull the plug pretty quickly, which is another thing you want in fantasy is a sleeper that it'll tell you early that They're still sleeping and you need to move on Well, yeah It makes the process a little easier to find some of the guys that are breaking out playing more and doing a little bit more with those opportunities in the early weeks of the season.

But I do look at the twins and I see what Matt or what Trevor Larnak did last year as maybe a glimmer of hope that sometimes a swing and miss can drop a lot in one season. But it's crazy because previously Trevor Larnak ran K-rates above 30% all of his time in the big leagues. Got it down to 22.3% last year with the Twins that was in his longest run as a big league player. He got to 400 plate appearances for the first time. Kept the barrel rate in the double digit range at 10.1% so still making a lot of hard contact lifting the ball enough and if you look at the underlying numbers there previously the zone contact rates you saw from Trevor Larnak

were in the 75 to 78% range, like 78.5 in 2023, all the way up to 86.7 in 2024. But I think that speaks to what you were just saying, is you do see some big fluctuations. A hitter can make an adjustment and actually do a lot more damage, and then the scouting report has to change, and it takes a little bit of time

for pitchers to find something else that works. And maybe it's an adjustment that splits the difference. Like maybe he's not a mid to high 70s zone contact percentage guy anymore, but it'd be surprising if Trevor Larnick didn't give some of that back based on what we know about how much these contact rates fluctuate from year to year. Yeah, yeah.

And just the one thing I was thinking about, in my bar fling, I took Asturio Ruiz and Noel Di Marte in my bench rounds, and I just find that type of player very easy to make the decision on. Are they playing? Are they playing? If Noel Di Marte is playing... Walter may actually be harder in a way, because he might be in a platoon.

And so he'll be a little bit behind everybody and getting sample. And so you'll be like, is he just striking out too much? Cause it's the early part of the season and you'll have to wait a little bit longer. So some ways not ideal. The most of the places I have, I like have Walner and devil rejects to the 20 team league where we picked them up off the wire, you know? And so he's, he's going in there for me but I do think if you're talking about 12 teamers I have him at the 12 team dynasty on my on my bench and I

Keep staring at that like that. I don't know. Is that a good use of that spot right there? Yeah, it's a tough call But a lot of people like Matt Walner for the simple fact that he hits the ball very very hard when he connects. If he gets even just a slight improvement in the contact rates then that could be the thing that helps him take off and pop 30 homers and be a nice contributor in that twins lineup. Alright thanks a lot for the great questions. Send those in to Discord. Use the mailbag channel and send those in. Yeah, get in Discord and tell us a little bit about what you think about the Pick Six group

or what we could do that involves everybody in a fun way. We want it to be as open as possible so as many people who wanna play can actually play and I think this is one of the better ways to do that. Format from last year work too, so we'll see how it all pans out here in the next week or so, make a decision, get it built, get it up and running in time for the early opener in Japan this year with the Cubs and Dodgers kicking us off here in, geez, just two weeks from Thursday, I think, is the opener.

Wow, that's coming up quick. Oh, and you know, for the events at the Bear B bottle, you know, just throwing that out there again, the 27th, 28th, 430, the 27th will be opening day for the Giants and away game at one. And we'll have that on and we'll be hanging out some. So, you know, you can come by and watch the Giants before we do our podcast. Yeah, they got beer, hot water, coffee,

all sorts of good beverages too. So lots of options for you there. Food trucks outside usually, yep. Delicious. Really looking forward to those live shows. Jump in the Discord though, the link is in the show description. You can find Eno on Blue Sky, enocerous.bsky.social, on dvr.bsky.social.

Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.