Rates & Barrels - Tigers Pitching, Max Scherzer's Injury & Putting a Bow on 2023

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss Eno's annual piece looking at the best pitches of 2023 before cleaning out their rundown refrigerator for the end of the year. With new additions to the Tigers' rotation and a clean bill of healthy for Casey Mize, which starters in Detroit are they targeting this draft season? Plus, can the Rangers weather a lengthy absence from Max Scherzer with their current group of pitchers? Will Brett Baty step up and take a the bulk of the playing time at third base following Ronny Mauricio's ACL injury, and what should we expect from Henry Davis at the plate in 2024? Rundown 1:00 Best Pitches of 2023 ($) https://theathletic.com/5146544 3:32 Casey Mize's Clean Bill of Health 7:36 Tarik Skubal's Impressive Projection and Early ADP 11:32 Kenta Maeda & Jack Flaherty Join Reese Olson, Sawyer Gipson-Long, and Matt Manning in the Rotation Picture Behind Skubal 22:29 Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Re-Ups with D-backs 28:17 Max Scherzer Undergoes Back Surgery 39:17 Ronny Mauricio Suffers a Torn ACL; Brett Baty time? 42:51 Endy Rodríguez Out for 2024; Henry Davis Back to Catcher? 49:15 The Pirates Make Several Additions 57:49 FOMO on Oneil Cruz in 2024? 1:02:54 Nick Senzel Gets a New Start in Washington Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow The Show on Twitter: @RatesAndBarrels e-mail: [e-mail] Check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Give the gift of The Athletic this Holiday Season! One-year gift subscriptions are just $19.99 at theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, December 20th, the 2023 finale of Rates and Barrels. On this episode, we've got a bunch of loose ends to tie up before the New Year's. You know what? People know this by now if they listen to the show. I like to clean everything out and start fresh every single year, right? Inbox zero. People know that about me. Cleanse. The cleanse, the purge. It has to happen before the end of the year. So all of the little bits of information we've had kind of rolling over on the rundown for the last couple of weeks, it's all just mushed together to make one show

to just cap it all off so we can all say, hey, 2023 was great, and now we're moving on to 2024. But it is the time of year where you drop your best pitches of the year. So best pitches of 2023 up on the athletic, the good,y and the nasty and i'm not kidding i spent about 10 minutes of show prep time watching the bobby miller four seamer and then a few more minutes watching the jordan hicks uh two seamer that was just ridiculous he basically turns luis arias into a top at the plate in that clip that you chose for the piece.

Yeah, it ended up being kind of subjective because I wanted to use Stuff Plus, but I didn't want it to be super theoretical, so I also got up the run value list. And when you have those two lists up, they don't port up exactly correctly all the time, so you end up making choices. I could have uh 100 percent uh maybe should have put kevin gossman splitter on there or kodai singa's ghost fork one thing that was interesting was that i also thought i could put shohi otani splitter on uh and i did put maeda uh joanne duran's and felix batista splitters on there so i don't think that like

joanne durans and felix bautista splitters on there so i don't think that like i didn't put great splitters on i just think that somehow there's like you know six elite splitters it's funny because there's not a lot of splitters the ones that are thrown are really good and i think the way to square this with nick pollock's hatred of splitters is that not many people can command their splitter. And so if you can command your splitter, if you can land the splitter in the zone, it's likely to be elite. And it's like some combination of command and stuff. And so, you know, I like do I think Felix Bautista's splitter is better than Kevin Gossman's splitter. I mean, it's like 92 and has like similar action you know i mean it's like it's super nasty it's not saying that i don't like kevin it's the whole like i like apples and why do you hate oranges you know exchange like if i could put them all on there i I would. Could I have put Gossman over Maeda?

Sure, but Maeda throws his splitter more than a third of the time, and he throws like 89 miles an hour, and he still gets whiffs on the splitters. Whereas Gossman's splitter is also partially good because of his fastball. I think this is all kind of interesting, though, because it fits into a bunch of different things on the rundown. So I'm going to shuffle things up. People don't know I'm shuffling things up, but I think we should talk about the Tigers for a minute. A lot of injury updates to get to

Casey Mize enters 2024 with a clean bill of health. And I wanted to talk about Mize right now because Casey Mize coming out of Auburn when he was 1-1 in his draft class, had an excellent splitter. And for reasons I have not seen, that's not a pitch that he's throwing frequently in the big leagues. And it's kind of strange. And perhaps there is a health-related issue that has limited the use of that pitch i don't think that's the case but i'm grasping at straws because when you have something that's that good and you stop using it and then your k rate lags the way casey mize's k rate has lagged at this point in his big league career it leaves us all wondering what's really in the box now that he's healthy again like what

can we say is his true talent baseline right now? And what kind of level can we possibly project him to if everything starts to fall back into place now that he's healthy again? Yeah, I mean, by stuff plus, the splitter has been one of his best pitches. And, you know, what's kind of ironic about a guy that came out of college with great velo and, you know, has at times averaged 96 plus on the fastball is that Mize's secondaries are good.

You know, they're better than his fastballs. better than his fastballs and so what i think that the actual lesson here with casey mize is that no matter how hard you throw shape matters and when you look at his foreseam it has below average ride but it doesn't supplement that with tail so now you're looking at that bobby miller thing and you love it and why do you love it it's because it has ride and tail and casey mize's foreseam has neither and then you look at his sinker and you're like well you know the sinker is okay but a sinkers allow more contact and b it's kind of you know close to average on the sinker too it's not a stroman-esque sinker where he's got you know four or five inches um more you know more drop than the average sinker it's it's just kind of a sinker and so that's why when you look at at stuff plus you see uh a high water mark of

94 95 for his fastballs and that's almost all due to the velo. And so shape always matters. That's something to learn for Paul Skeen's enthusiasts, I think. He has the velo. Yeah, he's got more buffer because he throws harder. It's true. It's true.

And Shohei Otani does not have plus plus movement on his fastballs and he has plus velo. There's a lot of room to succeed on velo. But Casey Mize at 96, the shape mattered even more. And so what I'm learning, what I want to hear from him coming out of surgery is as much about health as, did you work on the fastballs? you featuring a different fastball you're going more to a sinker based approach what's the deal uh what what's the deal with the fastballs what's the velo you know is going to matter too because if the shape hasn't

changed and he comes back at 94 95 i don't think i'm in you You go back to 2020, there was a cutter in there for a little while. Through that, almost 20% of the time, results weren't bad. I think it's one of those pitches that it's like, well, if the other fastballs aren't good, maybe going back to a cutter is something that Maez can try just to shake things up. If you don't get the velo up to the number you want,

at least you get some different movement on that pitch, and that could change up the profile. But this Tigers rotation, Maeda is also in it. So I'm glad you brought him up as far as the splitter and what he's been able to do. It's a group of mostly discounted pitchers. The real exception, of course, is Tarek Skubal. Tarek Skubal is the only expensive Tigers pitcher. Oh, but and like the projections on him are nutty nutty. Yeah, they really are. His ADP in December is inside the top,

nearly inside the top 50 overall. 53.8 is actually where he is right now. So he's going in the first four rounds of a 15-team draft. For some folks, that's an SP1. For others, it's an early SP2. It kind of depends on how you're building out the rotation. We love the park.

I think in Scooble's case, I've always liked the skills. We've seen just gaudy strikeout numbers coming through the minor leagues. That was part of the appeal all along. Seems to be finally healthy. I don't know if I want to be in at that price. That is just a really steep price for a guy that hasn't been able to do it over a full big league season yet. Yeah, and I've got some early health grades. I'm starting my pitching ranks,

and I got health grades from Jeff Zimmerman again. And how much of a health grade can you give somebody coming off surgery? He's got a D in Jeff Zimmerman's grades. And so I know that his projections make him like the fourth best pitcher by Steamer or fifth or something. But with a D health projection i'm gonna treat him a little bit more like a glass now okay i think that's fair i was i was thinking freddie peralta um not yeah you know similar just in terms of full seasons

yeah uh has a less of a projection by steamer um but a C. And then I'm also trying to fold in the PP ERA, the Stuff Plus-based projections, which for Scooble have him with a 3.64 ERA. So they're not as excited as the steamer projections. But that's a pretty good number. So, I mean, you have to remember like league average is four, three. So Scooble is still going to be in my top 20. I just can't imagine. Is he in your top 10?

I can't, I don't, I don't think I can put him on top 10. Fringy for me for top 10. It's weird. He falls into the category of a player. I like that someone else in the room or multiple someone else is in the room probably like a little more than i do yeah and that just means i miss out right if we're in an open player situation where you can bid on whoever you want an auction okay then dollars for dollars i might end up with scooble that's possible but i think in a snake situation i'm less likely to have him on my roster i think

the glass now comparison is interesting too because we talked about some of the Glassnow workload concerns. And if you go further back and look at the season that he split between AAA and the big leagues a little bit earlier in his career, you see more robust workloads. With Scooble, I don't think you quite find that when you go digging back through the old workloads, right? So you have that concern as well even if you go back to his college days this wasn't a guy that was logging triple digit innings during his college season so the the injury risk is elevated that d grade seems warranted even though he's a really exciting pitcher 149 is the high watermark, and he crossed 100 twice otherwise. 2019, he had 122.

2022, he had 117. Yeah. I'm very tolerant of pitching injury risk, but that's just a little bit too much for me, I think, based on where he's going right now. This is a Tigers rotation that's added both Maeda and Jack Flaherty this offseason. Maeda is the second most expensive Tigers pitcher, but he's going closer to pick 250. Given the park, given the floor of the skills that we have from Maeda, injury risk there,

of course, but in the 200 range, I'm not really worried as much about 150 innings as a possible ceiling for someone. What's your expectation for Maeda making the move to Comerica? I think it would be about league average. I'm tempted to pick him up in a place where I don't have to start him every time. There's some nice parks that he's going to. I'd love to start him in Cleveland. I'd love to start him in Detroit. I'd love to start him in Kansas City.

Would I love to start him in the cell? Against that team, especially early in the season, I have no problem with that. I mean, yeah, it's that team in particular, not the park, just not the park. How about in Minnesota? I don't know. In 15s, definitely.

In 12s, I'm looking at the alternatives. Yeah. The PPERA projection is 4-2-5 against a league average of 4-3, so he's better than league average. Definitely draftable, definitely holdable. I'm just not sure I'm going to start him every time. And we've got a steamer projection of 4-0-9 ERA.

And we've got basically the last two years somewhere around a 4-4 ERA. So it's definitely the strikeouts are still going to be there, I think, because he's got a wide arsenal. He's got that splitter. He's got that splitter. He's got just enough velocity on the fastball to continue it. But sometime over the course of the next two or three years, he might dip below 90 with the fastball.

And I could see a season where he has like a 1.6ers per nine or one eight you know and it just becomes kind of more untenable uh just in terms of era and home runs and the strikeouts aren't as valuable anymore yeah i think given the park i wouldn't be surprised if he cranked out a second best home run rate of his career at least second second best since 2016. Because that 2018 season with the Dodgers looks like an outlier. That was the only season he's been in the big leagues and had a home run rate under one per nine. His rookie season, air quotes, rookie season back in 2016 was very similar, 1.02.

If he were to get back in that range, that's huge. Every other year, he's had a bit of a home run problem. Yeah, being in Dodger Stadium and Target Field. So a slight improvement there seems likely a significant improvement is possible if he gets lucky and benefits from the park factors i think he's fine where he's going he's not a must have risk where there's risk in that fastball view though at that age i feel like yeah he's he's fine in this range but and you're and you've got 21 starts in two straight years. It's not like he's going to be healthy necessarily all year either.

I think it's really interesting that the Tigers are going this route similar to what the Giants have done in recent years. Of course, Scott Harris calling the shots in that front office comes from the Giants. It's just stacking a lot of arms in there. You know you're not going to have all of these guys healthy at any moment in time. But if you just have five of them healthy all the time, then you've got a formidable rotation. You've got enough to sort of get you through and stay competitive. I think if Scooble stays healthy all season, that's huge.

And if Reese Olsen stays healthy, that's pretty big too. I mean, I think he was pretty impressive for someone that wasn't necessarily a highly regarded prospect. He wasn't a complete pop-up guy either. I think what we saw from him in the minors in 2022 was really impressive. The strikeout rate really jumped off the page, struck out 33% of the batters he faced. But he more than held his own as a rookie last year, right? Just about a strikeout per inning, kept the walks in check. That was the concern with some of the numbers we saw in the upper levels of the minors. Occasionally, that walk rate would jump up a bit for Reece Olsen. He's going a little later than Maeda, and I think you're getting a similar floor, but you're getting a lot more ceiling. I think the only question comes down to if everybody is healthy at the beginning of the season, or more than five of these guys are healthy at the beginning of the season, who gets pushed out? Who ends up either in a bullpen role or who

potentially ends up going back to AAA just to wait for their opportunity to contribute in the rotation? Yeah. I have some love for Gibson Long too. There's eight starting pitchers. You want to buy into that park.

For sure. So, you know, I don't like Jack Flaherty as a pitcher. I just, the fastballs have just the weirdest shape and uh you know i i mentioned before that he could be a candidate for a sweeper and at times he's thrown you know a slider with 10 12 inches of sweep um but i just coming from his where he's come and you know having the discussions he's had with um with reporters about like velo and and shape of pitches and stuff like i just don't know how receptive he'd be to be like hey uh we think you're you'd be a great candidate for a sweeper he'd be like you know f that nonsense or like sweeper you know i have a slider you know um and uh i don't know maybe more maybe after the

struggles he's had he's he's more receptive now uh to to these things um but the sweeper's been around for a while and he hasn't really adopted it so maybe it's just not his thing uh it could be just mechanically not his thing too so So I don't want to forecast that in. I want to be like, oh, he's a great candidate for a sweeper. Let me just project him with a sweeper. He hasn't done that. Why would he do that? So I'm not necessarily buying on him.

And then the other guys that I like, each has their own issues. Like Reese Olsen has an elite slider, but the fastball shapes aren't great and the command has been really coming, touch and go Matt Manning seems to have three pitches and command but in terms of results have we

seen enough to believe him with that strikeout rate? I love Stuff Plus but am I going to 16% strikeout rate? I mean, I love stuff plus, but like, am I going to like, oh yeah, 16% strikeout rate. This is going to work. You know, and you know,

Sawyer Gibson Long has like no pedigree at all. Nobody knows who he is and nobody, or at least not, he was never highly rated among prospects. And I love his stuff plus um you know numbers he has uh you know a really small sample but elite you know fastball and change up uh stats by stuff plus i mean he might be the one that i actually buy on but it would have to be super cheap because i don't even know if he's in the rotation right now and you know there's plenty of people telling me you know like the fangraphs uh future value grade is 35 you know that you know team rank 29th best prospect by fangraphs on the tigers not not overall um so there's plenty of people who think he won't succeed. I don't want to take my stuff plus and bid $10 on Sawyer Gibson Long.

I don't think you'll have to. I think he's the kind of guy that in, say, AL Labor is $3 in the end game. Yeah, but in a 15-team league, I don't know if he's draftable considering that I think it goes Scooble, Flaherty, Olsen, Maeda, Manning with Mize ahead of Gibson Long as the first guy in. I mean, who's out if Mize is healthy? Olsen?

Probably has an option. Jeez, are we at the point where Jack Flaherty to the bullpen is a possibility? Yes. They need bullpen help. And what do the Orioles do? Oh, yeah. You could think of it that way.

Yeah. So anyway, Gibson Long is more of a draft and hold. If you have 15 starting pitchers on your roster, then you can have Sawyer Gibson on your roster. Yikes.

But it is a name to remember. 15 is a little bit much, because even in draft and holds, what do you have? You have like 13, 14. In draft and holds? Yeah. I think you're rostering closer to like 22 23 pitchers or starting pitcher oh i mean just total pitchers so it depends on how much you invest in closing starting pitchers like 15 yeah yeah if you're going to roster 12 to 15 starting

pitchers then gibson long is someone you could throw on there if you have to if it's like a you can't make any pickups all year, then Gibson Long is. But otherwise, I think Matt Manning is worth a look in terms of the pairing of results and stuff is there. But everybody else has pretty big red flags and also some upside considering their park and the fact that most of them are going to get a good run. The question I would ask A.J. Hinch or Scott Harris or anybody in the know with the Tigers is, are you going to run some tandems? Are you going to do things like we've seen the Giants do?

Say if you do have seven healthy starters, are you going to pair a couple of these guys together? like we've seen the Giants do, saying if you do have seven healthy starters, you're going to pair a couple of these guys together. You're going to see three and four inning outings from guys that maybe haven't missed enough bats, but could be more effective going through the lineup one time or twice as opposed to trying to push them through a third time. Mize coming off of surgery.

You don't know how many innings he has. You know, Flaherty. Flaherty's much better if his velo's over 94. So what if you tell Flaherty, we want three innings out of you, and Matt Manning's going to give us two or three. And, you know, because we don't know how many innings we have out of Mize. Sorry.

We don't know how many innings we have out of Mize anyway, so we're going to kind of pair you guys. Yeah, and that starts to break things down value-wise for us on the fantasy side. So it might be good for the Tigers, not necessarily as good for us trying to manage these guys. Yeah, I think it's Scooble and maeda are the only two that i can be like totally 100 draftable in every league yeah that's fair at this point let's move on to a few other things that have happened recently staying in one place lourdes gary l jr re-signing with

the diamondbacks not player that i'm normally excited about, but it's three years, $42 million, opt-out after year two, club option for 2027. Steamer only has 17 homers projected. I think there's a little too much of 2022 baked into that where we know he had an injury. It was a wrist injury for Gurriel. It sapped a ton of his power. I think if you look at the overall production, the barrel rates support more of a 20-plus home run guy. I think what we saw last season is actually repeatable. And just by dollar values, according to the Fangraphs auction calculator, 12-team league,

Gurriel was the 90th ranked hitter by dollar values. ADP right now at 234. Of course, he's going later than that. This is a volume game sometimes. You just got to find guys that play a lot. And the way that roster is constructed, I don't have any reason to believe that Gurriel is going to play less, especially coming into year one of a multi-year deal.

So he's a little bit oatmeal-y, but I think this actually is pretty good oatmeal because the batting average floor looks pretty solid too. Yeah, you know, there's also this like idea of, you know, don't sign anybody, don't sign anybody, uh, don't use anybody that's, that's, uh, signed a big deal recently. And I think that often, uh, is a great idea because you're talking about big deals being thrown out to, um, you know, 28, 29 year olds coming off of career seasons. Um, I don't know if 3 and 42 counts as a big deal uh in those uh in those systems um

and i don't know that necessarily last year was his peak season i mean by wrc plus 106 uh his peak season was 2020 or even 2022 with the the weird approach um you know had better numbers i mean it was like second worst season, actually. And so if you look at last year and you say, you know, that's not necessarily an outlier for his career in any way, then I think you can you can buy in. And there's just no excitement about him because he doesn't help you in any one stat in an obvious way. He's like one of those guys that hits average in every category. And so you think, oh, you know, I need power. Well, Lord is not going to help me there.

Oh, I need speed. Well, Lord is not going to help me there. Oh, and this is exactly the definition of oatmeal, right? Like if you look up the average 12 team um player in terms of offensive numbers they're probably going to hit 270 with 18 homers and seven steals and that's kind of what he's projected for so it's like you know why not just tread water like let's say you need power why not just tread water and not lose on power and not losing anything else and get go to the next pick and get somebody with power only on the next pick

yeah i mean i think it's it's a really nice profile it reminds me of things that ariel cohen said a couple years ago about alex verdugo helps you in just like every category eddie rosario is a favorite of his too. Yeah. I mean not the current version but like. Right. Year three of this deal might be a problem. I don't care. We're playing for 2024. We're talking about redraft leagues predominantly. I

think it's going to work just fine for Gurriel. Even year three. I mean you're talking about he'll be 33. He won't be like 38. And you're talking about a guy who makes contact and you know hits the ball reasonably hard and has like a 10 barrel rate like eight to ten percent barrel rate like what's the worst that he could look in year three it'll probably be like 250 with you know 15 homers like it still would be probably playable in a lot of leagues maybe not by then 12 team leagues yeah

i think the category where he actually lags a little bit is run scored relative to his playing time because of the obp and the walk rate obp being down a little bit and it even the the diamondbacks had a negative run differential last year i'm just here to tell you what i see things that happen i'm just observing things that's a I'm just observing things. That's a little surprising, but that helps drag it down a little bit. I'm curious to see what else they do with this lineup, if they're able to add a little bit more. They are talking about adding a DH,

which could cut into some of Lourdes' playing time, I guess. If they do so without turfing Jake McCarthy, yes, you could have an Alec Thomas, Lourdes Gurriel, Corbin Carroll outfield with this new DH, and Jake McCarthy's more of a fourth outfielder.

That's totally fine. But Lourdes' defense is not amazing. So, you could, if you're on the fence with Lourdes, you could sort of wait and see what the DH will be. If it's a great DH, if they get J.D. Martinez as one of the rumors, then I could see that cutting into Lourdes' playing time, not in terms of necessary starts,

but maybe the last played appearance of a game. I do think the defense is good enough. I mean, Oates above average had him at a plus two. Arm value on stack cast is solid, 89th percentile. He's had some bad defensive years on Fangra. Yeah, he's had some fluctuations, but you've also got good options to play next to him in center, which takes some of the range pressure off of him a little bit too.

So I think, I think he's pretty stable and the multi-year deal, especially makes me feel better about Gurriel than I have probably at any point in the last three seasons. Let's get to Max Scherzer. He had back surgery and he's going to be out until at least June, possibly July. I think there's a fair question to be asked just about like,

what do we expect him to do when he comes back anyway, even if he were not coming off of surgery. 28% K rate last year was the lowest he's had since 2014 and 82.7% zone contact percentage was the highest since 2011.

And he turns 40 in July. So we talked about this a little bit just in terms of guys that have had multiple arm injuries. This being a little bit different, but age makes it harder to recover from something like this. And we both play in a lot of leagues where there are no IL spots. So in those situations, it's kind of a no-fly zone. It's just too long of an absence and too many questions. In leagues that have IL spots, which plenty of our listeners play in,

yeah, you could probably justify it. Pitching's hard to find. And if you want to bet on a 40-year-old coming off back surgery to be good, well, Max Scherzer's a smarter bet than most 40-year-olds coming off a back surgery to get all the way back, right? He's going to push himself as hard as anyone does in rehab. There's no question about that.

I just have some hope from watching from the eye test. The main thing that was the problem for him wasn't necessarily shape of pitches or velo. I mean, his velo was down a little bit. The main problem for him was actually placing, like command of the breaking balls. He couldn't get them in the zone. He couldn't get them where he wanted to. And that screams like hamstring or back to me, like command when something's off like that. I think something that allows you to still throw the ball hard, but doesn't allow you to do

everything you want to do normally in your mechanics, you know? Um, so back or, or, or soft tissue, something that's what I thought was going on with him or just like leftovers from his injuries last year any case he could theoretically come back and do what he did last year but with a smaller home run rate I mean the park isn't necessarily one that gives up a ton of homers and if he comes back and is able to command his breaking balls better then theoretically uh he should be able to improve that home run rate he's never really had a home run problem before i mean he in 2020 had a small one but for his career it's 1.04

you know even in recent years like in 2022 is 0.81 in that nice park so you know i would say um he could actually beat the projections. The projections have him giving up a homerun a half per nine. I'm saying take the under on the projected innings pitched, which is 94, because he's 40

and trying to come off a back surgery, and take the under on the projected home runs per nine, because when he does come back, he should be able to command his breaking balls better. So I think he could between that give you 75 to 80 innings of a you know three six to three seven era uh with 10 strikeouts per night so absolutely someone that is stashable i have a lot of leagues where i have a lot of il stints. It's kind of some of them are like leftovers from COVID

where we just kept adding IL stints, IL slots. And in those leagues, I would absolutely want to have a stashable Scherzer. Yeah, so context matters in a big way as far as stashing Scherzer prices is going to fall quite a bit, of course, given the timetable. Yeah, an interesting situation

if you are a Rangers fan because Jacob deGrom is due back in the second half next year. You know? And you've got Scherzer due back in the second half next year, but you've got to somehow get to those guys. Right, yeah.

So it's like, okay. And they just added Tyler Malley on a two-year, $22 million deal. Oh, and he's not due back until the second half. Right, so DeGrom looking for August. Malley had his surgery in May of 2023, so the all-star break is probably the more realistic window for that. You could say a year, but it's usually a little longer,

13 to 14 months makes sense. You have all these starts great. So like you might have your ace for the first half and then you sort of tag team, you know, high five, in comes Scherzer or de Grom. I mean, I think they'll be okay overall, but there's also the function of narrative, right? Like let's say they are like,

well, we're going to have second half studs. Like, what if you, what if they just go out there and like, Owen White is our fifth starter. It's fine. We're going to skip him and we're going to make it. We're going to score a lot of runs. But what if they then fall behind?

And it's like, oh, like you guys went deep into October last year and you're all tired and you're all hurt and you're falling behind and the Astros're falling behind and the Astros are surging and the Mariners are surging you know does that narrative start to weigh or are they just like nah man like we just need to tread water until our studs come back so um I don't know if there is a psychological component there could be uh there is an actual games win and loss component when you don't actually have a fifth starter with a major league resume right now.

Price-wise here, kind of doing the same thing we did with the Tigers. We'll do this one a little quicker. Evaldi, around pick 200. I think we talked about him in our last episode as part of Would You Rather. Still in. It's up and down, but I'm still in, yeah. Fair price. John Gray in the 268 to 345 range in December.

That's pretty interesting to me. I'm in. I can get on board with that. Dane Dunning. Dunning and Andrew Heaney basically have the same pick range, 320 to 480 for Dunning. Could not be more opposite pitchers. Yeah, it's really strange. You really have to make a decision

about what you like about pitchers at that point. If you're picking between Dunning and Heaney, you either like guys with big arsenals in command or you like guys who have like an elite pitch. And then otherwise, and that's Haney's fastball. His secondaries, he's never really figured them out. And that's why he has the home run rate he does. But there couldn't be more different.

Is the pattern in my brain just glitching? just glitching. If I look at Dane Dunning and say, no, I can't figure out how, how exactly he could get those results again, barring changes, right? It was a sub 20% K rate.

The walk rates fine, but it's not elite. And I don't know, like projections point to him being the same guy he was in 21 and 22. That makes sense to me. Is there something else beyond what i see watching him and seeing the numbers on fan graphs that i i should take into account it kind of reminds me of when uh i don't know again making it a brewer thing like adrian hauser

it's like an adrian hauser sort of skill set where for a little while it can work and then it usually goes back to not working particularly well. In Hauser's case, that was 2021. 322 ERA, 128 whip. That's as good as it gets. He's run ERAs over four in the two years since then. He's had a bad whip in the two years since then. That's kind of what I see when I look at Dane Dunning as another Adrian Hauser type and with less velo. Yeah, I mean, he had great success early in the season featuring uh the cutter

harder than he'd ever had and uh that's when he had the low strikeout rates and in april and may an era of 177 222 even in june 362 era um and that was on the back of some pretty insanely low strikeout rates. His K-9 started with five from May through June. That's not usually something that will go long term. And so in July, it all started to fall apart for Dane Dunning. And he had a five ERA. So then he went back to the slider. And in the second half, he featured his slider harder than he ever had before.

Despite being still a four-pitch guy or sometimes even throwing the curveball and being a five-pitch guy, he was throwing the slider 40% of the time by the end of the season. And his strikeout rate went up. And then if you look at K-9, his K-9 in August was 11.5. In September, it was 8. You know, but the home run rate went up. I guess he became more predictable as a pitcher. So if you wanted to be an optimist,

you could see someone that settles in where he's figured out how to use the cutter and the slider, and he settles in at like a 20% K rate and one homer per nine and is a usable player. But I don't think that you can really look at this whole thing and say he's going to have a 3-3 ERA next year. I think you could bet against a 4-5 ERA and say he's going to have a 3-3 ERA next year. I think you could bet against a 4-5 ERA and say he's going to be usable, but I think usable means more like a 4-4-3 ERA. Yeah, that's more in the range of what I'd be comfortable buying into with Dunning. I think most people see it that way just based on how discounted he is relative to what he did

last year. It's fine. You kept it moving. I think Haney's just going to be who he is and he's going to be he's going to have great starts and he's going to have poor starts and it's really hard to figure out. I mean a guy who has one elite pitch is

you know when the slider is feeling good he's good. It's running out of adjustments to make like we've we've gone through this enough times and i love the dude but i i don't think i'm buying and so it's so weirdly even though i kind of uh the younger version of haney i would bet on more because i'd be like oh bryce miller he'll figure out the secondaries right you know he's got todd bradley he'll figure out the secondaries, right? You know, he's got a... Todd Bradley, he'll figure out the secondaries. When they, you know, when they become Ty Walker, when they become Andrew Haney,

and years later, there's fastball still their best pitch and they haven't really figured out a great secondary. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to dream on this anymore. I think for me, it's like you look at the swinging strike rate and the zone contact percentage, both going that wrong direction in a big way in 2023 that's where i'm like okay like what you see is what you get on heaney that extra gear probably isn't there we can dream on a year ratios wise like what he did to dodgers in 2022 but i think you can get a quarter of the way there at best from where he was in 2023.

Maybe a high 3 ZRA and a high 120s whip is possible. At the price, I'm not out, but I'm not forcing it either. Let's talk about the Mets and a third base situation that is rapidly changing. Ronnie Mauricio suffered a torn ACL at Winter Ball. He was among the candidates to play third base, can play other spots in the infield as well. But a timetable for him, at least at the time of putting this on the rundown, was not clear.

I think once he has the surgery. Most likely going to miss the year. Most of the season or all of the season, very much the likely outcome here. It leaves behind Brett Beatty, probably as the big side platoon third baseman. And I still believe in Beatty because he hits the ball hard. The problem is Brett Beatty has to hit the ball in the air more.

That's been the story. When the power has lagged, that's been the reason why for him as he's made his move up toward the big leagues. And of course, there were defensive problems at third base as well. So I think the question is, can the defense improve enough where they're comfortable playing him when the bat isn't working? Or can the bat improve enough where they just say, we don't care about the defense because you're hitting

at your full capacity. You've reached your ceiling. Which of those things seems more likely to occur based on the information we have on Brett Beatty? I don't think we have enough information on Brett Beatty. So I'm going to go with the upside. 431 plate appearances.

You can say what you want about the barrel rate. The max EV is good. The strikeout rate is not great. The ground ball rate is bad. It's still 431 plate appearances for a 24-year-old. I'm willing to give him,

especially these Mets that have recalculated their window. This seems like a perfect year to be like, let's give Beatty all year. Why buy Matt Chapman and block him?

You know, why not just give Brett Beatty all year? Worst case scenario, by projections, he's around a league average guy. He doesn't learn to lift the ball, but he hits the ball hard, you know, plays a decent defense, and, you know, he's not necessarily a liability, but he's not a strength. Best case scenario is

he figures something out. I'm still going to bet on the upside for Beatty. In the internal competition, you could say Mark Vientos. We've mentioned him before. No glove. Bricks for hands. Same defensive problems. Probably worse defensive problems to start with.

That gives Beatty an edge against him. The fallback option as it stands right now is probably Joey Wendell. If Beatty doesn't hit and continues to struggle defensively, they're going to play Joey Wendell at third base. And that's not necessarily good as far as learning something that helps you in the future. Yeah, because Wendell was bought to replace Luis Guillerme and is supposed to be the backup around the infield. You know, because you have Mauricio, you get Beatty all year and then, you know, Mauricio, maybe he gets healthy late in the season. And if Beatty has been bad for four months, then five months, then that gives you an opportunity to say, OK, reset time for Beatty. And we're going to pick up Mauricio and we're going to give him a full month in the major leagues at third base. You know what I mean? So I think it's time to do some auditioning there.

Let's move over to another injury, this one in Pittsburgh. Andy Rodriguez is going to miss the 2024 season. He had surgery on his UCL and flexor tendon. This probably puts Henry Davis more firmly in the mix to catch throughout the season. I know there were media sessions with some of the members of the Pittsburgh front office during the winter meetings and at that time Ben Charrington said that Henry Davis will go into spring training preparing to be a catcher which I think that that comment preceded anyone knowing how bad Andy Rodriguez's injury was but it made sense anyway because there's still a long-term future where Henry Davis is at

least a semi-regular catcher, even if playing other positions is part of the equation for him. For Andy Rodriguez, this is a huge blow just because I like the skills a lot. I thought this could be a big step forward for him in 2024. I thought he's going to be a key part of this lineup. forward for him in 2024. I thought he was going to be a key part of this lineup. Keeper dynasty, sure, if you can stash him for the future, I'd love to see what happens in 2025 and beyond, but I'm curious if you're in on Henry Davis right now. He doesn't have catcher eligibility to begin the season. We've had a handful of players like this in recent years. You look at the quality of the contact he was making, had some power, handful of stolen bases. He was three for eight, though, as a base stealer at the big league level.

So green lights could be a little harder to come by in 2024 for him. But are you buying Davis's bat outside of being a catcher, or do you think he has to catch? I think Keith Law wrote about this. Keith believes that to be a regular, Henry Davis has to catch. I'm a little more optimistic about Davis's bat than Keith appears to be a regular, Henry Davis has to catch. I'm a little more optimistic about Davis' bat than Keith appears to be. Yeah. It's a

little bit of a weird bat path for me. I know that he doesn't have huge ground ball rates on his resume, but it's kind of a flattish bat path for me. A 7% bail rate 110 max EV

like it's possible to me those are his true talent numbers like I know I just said baby it's you know it's not I'm just saying it's possible I'm not saying that I believe those 100% if those are the truth then I don't know about the power and then you know the the

contact wasn't necessarily supreme but in terms of deep leagues next year and um seeing two catcher leagues and seeing if i could get something maybe even a dynasty if it's a two catcher dynasty like you know and for the pirates i think if there's a golden or silver lining to the situation is, you know, we get a chance for a year to see if Henry Davis can be our catcher, you know, and then, you know, then they could maybe have a trade situation where Henry Davis has proved himself as a catcher in the major leagues and Andy Rodriguez is coming back. Maybe you trade Henry Davis, Henry Davis for something somewhere else. I think that this can be a good thing for the Pirates.

It can be a good thing for Henry Davis. In terms of most fancy people or what I think of Henry Davis going forward, I think I lean a little bit more towards Keith's side of the picture. I think the harder part for me and why I'm a little more willing to leave the door open is just that he had left wrist problems, like multiple absences coming through the minors. I think that's maybe just stunted the development a little bit at the plate. We've seen flashes of it along the way where he's looked like a dominant player. His actual on-field results in the minors were pretty stellar. I mean, if you look at his WRC pluses, there's a lot of 200s and it's not a lot of sample,

but it is still like, well, when he was in, he trounced them. And even as a rookie, I think the plate skills look pretty solid. K-Rate wasn't through the roof, drew some walks. Didn't chase a ton. There's enough there to build off of. After all the injuries and the missed time, if that's what the debut looked like,

I want to see what year two or the first full season brings. Pick right now is outside the top 300. Again, he's outfield eligible to start the year so if you're going to use him as a second catcher you gotta wait probably a week or two to actually make that happen but this actually looks to me like a pretty good playing time situation for henry davis as a result of the unfortunate andy rodriguez injury you might be able to do play some i mean the thing that's dumb about let's say like um an nfbc

situation where you've got two catchers so you want to have two catchers you want to have as much playing time as possible and you and you want to sneak henry davis in as your second catcher then then you have to kind of stream catchers for the first two weeks you know because you can't play davis there or you have to pick three catchers, and nobody wants to pick three catchers. I think I'm okay with it. I think the reason I'd be okay with it as a third catcher, especially, is because it's a multi-eligible catcher. Having a catcher outfielder is pretty helpful.

Do you think he's going to hit enough to be... I don't think it's that helpful. I think mostly I just want to have two catchers, and I just put them in and leave them alone. I don't want to stream catchers. I don't want to think about catchers all year. I don't necessarily want to have two catchers and I just put them in and I leave them alone. I don't want to stream catchers. I don't want to think about catchers all year. I don't necessarily want to pay the premium and buy the most expensive catchers, you know, but I also don't want to be in the bottom bin for this.

Fair enough. The pirates have been busy in the last couple of weeks. Oh, I know. I was going to give them some love. It's an interesting depth chart to me it's sort of um it it screams of like like the bottom of our roster was pretty bad last year so we're gonna spend a little bit of money to make sure that we don't put below replacement players out there on the field anymore i think that's a good way to describe it

i think there's it's rude but like that's a good way to describe it. It's rude, but that's what Marco Gonzalez and Martin Perez and Edward Olivares are for me. These guys are not below replacement. Yeah. Do you think... The other part of Andy not being able to play this year is

the large share of playing time that would have presumably gone to Davis in the outfield could be there for Edward Olivares or someone else. He's a terrible defender. I extolled his virtues, Edward Olivares, on Twitter. I did point out that the defense was bad and people were like, it is atrocious. Some were saying, Rose fans were saying, it's the worst outfielder i've seen um and and some of the numbers actually line up with that it's weird though because he's fast you know so it's it's you know maybe the pirates think

there's something coachable there uh there's also right field in pittsburgh is fairly small i guess yep um so maybe they're like hey we're giving you a smaller patch of grass maybe i wonder if they knew about the indie stuff when they got all of ours maybe i mean it could just be a depth grab what happened with the royals flurry of activity adding a bunch of guys to the 40 man caused them to move a bunch of players in these smaller trades and like that that may have just been hey we can get a little bit better on the margins. That's the downside of the Royals buying, I guess. They had to lose some players, too. They obviously didn't value Olivera, so they could barely keep him up in Kansas City.

Yeah, so this is an odd take. I kind of like Jonathan Heasley. I think the Orioles could... Oh, that's another guy they lost, yeah. I think the Orioles could turn him into something. You know, he has three average pitches by Stuff Plus. Yeah, because I talked about him on the radio the year he got called up.

I saw what he was doing in the model. I saw some of the results in the minors, and I know he was never a prospect. Jonathan Heasley is the very definition of a Lodum player. I'm going to more clearly define that in 2024. It's on my list of resolutions but basically never a highly regarded prospect no real model that like loves him to death i mean i can't say that stuff plus loves him no but also stuff plus would lead you to believe that era's

north of five probably aren't his true talent level either and then there's also the growing trust in the orioles being able to make some tweaks with pitchers and then there's also on top of that chris chris holt shout out like chris holt's gonna be uh get his hands in he's like yeah i just i there's probably a little more here than meets the eye it doesn't mean he's a starter it doesn't mean he's gonna be fantasy relevant anytime soon i'm curious to see how they use him. Maybe they'll use him in a Tyler Wells of two years ago sort of role where it's a couple innings at a time and he's just support behind the rotation. But I thought that was a kind of a sneaky pickup that the Orioles made as a result of the Royals recent roster purge. Pirates also brought back Andrew McCutcheon, which just feels

right. Martin Perez is now there in theutcheon, which just feels right. Martin Perez is now there in the rotation to help chew up some innings. We talked about that a couple weeks ago. They really needed some volume. Have you heard when McCutcheon can come back? I don't see a timetable. He's sitting on 299 career homers, though. I think getting number 300 in front of

the home fans at PNC Park is probably on the to-do list for some point in 2024. But that also crowds up the playing time situation for some of the depth outfielders because you presume that Kutch is going to be mostly a DH option for them.

We're going to spring training with an open mind. They're even talking about him playing the outfield, so it looks like he'll be ready for spring training. Yeah, you know, some of the guys they've found over the about him playing the outfield so it looks like he'll be ready for spring training um yeah uh you know and some of the guys they've found over the few past few years will slide into death roll death rolls uh depth rolls uh josh palacios um was not amazing last year but was replacement level ish um and he benefited uh from some like the Pittsburgh Pirates

updated their training methods at AAA to mimic what they do at the major leagues to something we've talked about with the Giants doing something similar so that players are just used to big league preparation and

the flow of the daily work and the types of training that they're doing by the time they get to the big leagues. So Palacios benefited from that. At 28, I don't know that he has a lot more upside, but as a lefty batting backup to Olivares, Swinsky, and Reynolds, backup to Oliveras, Swinski, and Reynolds. I do think he can be a decent fourth outfielder. Jiwon Bae was forced to start at times for them last year, and at 24, he may have some upside, but he hits the ball fairly softly and doesn't make up for that with a ton of contact. I think he's better cast as a backup himself. And now you've got Bay as the backup at two or three positions, I think. And so, you know, by signing guys like Martin Perez and Marco Gonzalez, trading for Edward Arley-Virus,

and then also combining that with some of the guys that got the benefit of playing time last year when they were bad in more depth roles. I mean, I think this looks like a decent team. There's a certain amount that depends on Rowdy Tellez being healthy again. They signed him to play first base, and Tellez said he was playing through injury a lot last year. said he was playing through injury a lot last year. We've seen him be as good as 10% bed in league average with 35 homers in 2022. If he can get anything back to that, then you've got, what have you got as your middle of your lineup? O'Neal Cruz, Brian Reynolds, Jack Sawinski,

Rowdy Tellez, and Cabrian Hayes. That's pretty good. You've brought up the bottom of your lineup with Oliveras, Henry Davis, the playing time and production and the improvement you've gotten from Bay and Palacios. Does this start to look like a team that maybe by true talent is closer to 500 and could get lucky and stay in the wildcard race i mean there's also a rumor that they're going after dylan cease if you put dylan cease on top

of that rotation with mitch keller i think this is absolutely a team that will play meaningful baseball into september am i wrong i think you would jump up to the top of the current tier if you add dylan cease like right now they're in the tier of teams that are not the a's nats and rockies by war right they're not they're out of the basement they're not the bottom they're not the very bottom they're not in the hope like the the 2024 hopeless tier they're not in that that's good that's a good place to start adding dylan sees kind of brings you to the top of that tier kind of puts you more like in the marlins tigers range war wise and then i think part of what makes a team like the pirates more interesting is that you can look at someone like davis or even obviously cruz fits into this too or even

leo verpigero and the young talent can come through. You could have a couple of guys break through, and instead of being two-win players, 2.8-win players like Cruz, they're three or four or five-win players. That's in the range of outcomes, I think, especially for Cruz and Davis. Maybe for Verpigero, it's more like getting two wins out of him. That ends up being a victory. That would be good. But also, I love Jared Jones.

We've talked about how much we love jared jones paul skeens is coming you know for all the weakness at the back end of that rotation they have guys coming um and they could accelerate those times tables if you know swinsky could have another step in him i think you you saw some really white hot moments from him if he could just become a little bit more consistent, you could see a real step forward from this whole offense. And then we haven't really even seen a full year of Cruz, you know,

at his best. So, you know, there, yeah, I think there's definitely some young players that could take a step forward and some interesting roster construction things going on there. So we got to talk about Ellie on the last episode

and the range for O'Neal Cruz, who I feel like in some ways was like the original Ellie in terms of just being this ridiculously tooled out, unique player that we were all like, hey, what's going to happen when this guy's in the big leagues? O'Neal Cruz is still going at pick 80 in December NFBC drafts. Range is pick 56 to pick 106. So pick 80, kind of early part of round six if we're talking about a 15-team draft.

Do you have the same feelings of this is a lot of talent and I don't want to miss out and I'm okay taking on the risk relative to cost because the payoff could actually be there do you feel that kind of way about O'Neill Cruz yeah and in fact after our discussion I was looking at the fact I'm starting my rankings now and I'm struggling to put together a list of aces that's longer than six or seven long. And so I may have to be out on Ellie because of just the pitcher conundrum we were talking about. Like, if I want one of those top seven pitchers, then I can't have Ellie too.

My consolation prize could be O'Neal. There's just as much sort of athleticism as there is with Ellie. There's a couple asterisks for O'Neal that there's just as much sort of athleticism as there is with Ellie. There's a couple asterisks for O'Neal, which is he's a lefty and not a switch hitter. And we've seen some really, really poor work against lefties. So I don't know if that's going to continue or, you know, what what's going to happen there. The other is, Ellie's younger. O'Neal is 25. But that's still young enough that there could be improvement. The third thing is a positive for O'Neal is he hasn't hit the ball on the ground

as much as Ellie at the major league level. And he's already shown more patience and shown a really big adjustment in terms of swing decisions. When you track the end of 2022 into 2023, it looks, when you look at 2022 and 2023,

it looks like, Oh, that's just a small sample thing. 2023 before he got hurt, you know, but if you actually track his swing decisions over time, you see that O'Neill Cruz made big adjustments late 2022 and took those, ported those over into 2023. So I think that he's a little bit more polished than Ellie with less upside and more established flaws.

It's an interesting package to take in round six, but at the projections, 250, 20, 20, that's a fine value. And I think that there's also the chance that some of those adjustments he made poured over and he's better than that. It got me thinking about Ellie being a switch hitter and O'Neal Cruz's struggles against lefties are well documented. Ellie, even as a switch hitter against lefties, struck out 40% of the time that he faced them last season. Well, O'Neal can... Oh, it's going to be right in the same neighborhood. It's almost 10 times.

That K rate, 40.2%, is almost 10 times his walk rate against left-handed pitching. It's 4 and 40 almost? Yeah, it's 4.1%. O'Neal's got to beat against lefties for his career. 8% walk rate, not bad. 51.6 strikeout rate. I think we need to control our FOMO.

I think we really do. Is that just good enough for you to be totally out? No, because I don't want to live my life that way. I don't want to take the worst thing about a player and be like, no, never. There's only 122 plate appearances in a lifetime against lefties. I don't care that lefties turn these guys into Jorge Alfaro

at the plate. It doesn't matter. Because there's other things they do. You can't completely throw it out. Sometimes the more you peel back the onion, the more you cry. That's an amazing number, dude. 51%. It's not great. Oh, my God.

It's not great. I think the part of Ellie's profile that drives the price as high as it does, like the bags were just ridiculous. Like, yes, O'Neal Cruz can also run, but Ellie's stolen base rates were off the charts. Granted, different rules. Will O'Neal steal 20 on the ankle? Yeah, also a fair question. Will they take that risk? I think, do you use

spring training in this instance? Jason Collette had that great presentation at first pitch about looking at the run rates in spring training and projecting on that. Especially for a guy that's coming off an injury like O'Neal Cruz. If you see him attempt four or five steals in Grapefruit League play. That would be meaningful to me.

That would matter, right? So maybe you kind of need to see it before you can trust it. I also worry that if O'Neal Cruz tears the cover off the ball for a few weeks in Florida, we're talking about a more expensive player in March because that's just how it works. That's true. Here's one. Here's a possible resolution opportunity for me.

Should I finally give up on Nick Senzel? He has a fresh start with the Nationals, gets to play a natural position. Going to be their everyday third baseman, it sounds like. The problem is... Every day? Sorry. Rude. That was rude.

The man wants to play every day. That's right. I'm not... I couldn't resist. So even if you want to be an optimist about someone who's had some pretty bad luck health-wise, he's got a career 4.8% barrel rate. He has zero partial seasons where he's been league average against same-handed pitching. So righty on righty for his career, Nick Senzel, 219, 288, 330.

That was playing half his games at Great American Ballpark. So you've got some questionable power skills with a sub-5% barrel rate, a ghastly injury history, but a wide open runway for playing time. So in deep leagues, this is a deep league question. You're not doing this in a 12-team league. This is a guy that's more of a wait-and-see for any sort of shallow format. Are you intrigued enough by the possibility of 500 played appearances? And I feel like that's a big number already,

but it's at least possible for him with the Nats and going back to a natural position. Nick Senzel had to move to the outfield, and that can wreak some havoc on a player, especially playing center field. In an NL-only situation, I might go to $5 or something. And the reason is he's got dual eligibility outfield third base. So that's CI, 3B, and in some leagues, I mean, he played six games at second, so some leagues may add a bunch more.

It can be a player that is overlooked in NL only, for sure. Because, again, it's not exciting in any case and it's not gonna be great for your batting average and you're probably thinking it you know 28 is like is there really much there and and i don't think anybody's gonna buy him thinking you know oh he's gonna finally crank out that 2020 season we've been all waiting for um but you can get a lot of value out of somebody that can be your backup third baseman or be at ci or be your fifth outfielder you know to to carry a backup ci in your outfield um who has the chance at every day at bats is useful that there's some that might be worth a dollar i don't know what that's worth it's worth something more than whatever your projection says if your projection says he's worth three dollars

go to four because you will have a in an nl only situation a backup on your roster and hey for what it's worth these top 400 plate appearances in the big leagues twice so 500 is not that outlandish when you put them on a less crowded depth chart. I think for deeper leagues... And only 400... Your fifth outfielder is going to get 400 plate appearances. If you're lucky. Yeah, right. It could be worse.

You did well if you got that much from the fifth outfielder slot in a mono league. So yeah, I'm in for the deeper formats. I guess that would include draft and holds as well. I actually think the categorical contribution that might tick up a little bit, I think the average could be a little better than what we've seen in recent years. I think he could be more of a 250 guy, maybe splitting hairs. He hasn't had a 300 babbit since his rookie year. But he runs well.

I guess he does pull the ball a lot. I wonder if getting out of Cincinnati, he'll try to pull the ball a little less, try to spray it more because he's not going to hit as many home runs there. I don't know. Could serve him, depending on how good that approach ends up being. I just like the low K rate, too, is something that is a nice core skill for Nick Senzel to fall back on. I hope it works out for him because

I have tried many, many times to make this work on my rosters. I apologize for the quip. Yeah. We did have a question via email about Roki Sasaki and the deadline for him to have been posted passed, so it didn't happen. So thanks to Andrew for sending that question.

It didn't seem like it was going to happen. There was a brief moment where there was a report coming out of Japan that he wanted to be posted, but the team did not oblige in that instance. I do think it makes it more likely he gets posted next season. So that's interesting for Dynasty Keeper Leagues. know could be somebody you pick in a first year draft if he's available to you you know it could be someone you uh you trade for this year with their owner being depressed that he didn't get posted or whatever um i think it does make it more likely he gets traded he gets

posted next year yeah that timetable could be moved up quite a bit compared to where it was back when Sasaki entered those keeper and dynasty leagues a few years ago. We've got a lot coming up here in 2024 before we go. We've always had big ambitions, and we've got some things in the works. We can't talk about them yet because they're not signed, sealed, and delivered, but we're hoping to continue growing this show. We appreciate everybody who's listened throughout the season, shared the show, rated it, reviewed it, watched us on YouTube,

listened to us, told their friends. Always feel free to send us questions, ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. We're still on the dregs of Twitter, at Derek Van Ryper, at Eno Saris. You can always drop us a note there. At ratesandbarrels is the way to find the show. We hope everybody has a very safe and happy holiday season. We're going to take a little bit of time off. Eno gets a little vacation to start the new year,

but I've got a couple of special guests lined up. You're on the big island. You have to. You're on the big island in early January. Give me a holler. You've got family there. I mean, you don't need an excuse to go. Do give me a holler, because then that gives me an excuse to leave.

He needs a couple of temporary escapes. I need to go to Ola Brewing. But yeah, it's been another great year on the show. It's been great working with you again this year, Eno. Looking forward to what we can do in 2024. Yeah, I'm really excited. It's going to be fun. And thanks for everything, man.

It's been a really great year. This year has been bonkers. Another cross-country move. Became a dad. I think 2024 will be a little more settled for me from a personal perspective. That is my hope. That is the one thing that I am hoping for in the upcoming year. But again, have a great and happy holiday season.

We appreciate all of you. We are back with you in two weeks. Thanks for listening.