Rates & Barrels - Tough Late-Season Decisions, Finding First Base Help & Throwing Too Many Strikes

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss a few challenging late-season decisions, how to potentially avoid the issues in the future, a disappointing 2022 from Jared Walsh, the search for help at first base, their latest installment of Prospect of the Week, pitching in the zone 'too much' and more.  Rundown -- Tough Late-Season Decisions -- How to Avoid Chasing Pitching in the Future -- Making the Difficult Drop -- Jared Walsh's 2022: What Went Wrong? -- Finding First Base Help -- Prospect of the Week -- More Info on Cade Cavalli -- Removing Bias Against Old Pitchers -- Pitching In the Zone Too Much? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe for $1/mo for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Try Tim's new Sweet Chili Chicken Loaded Wraps and Bowls today. Take your taste buds on an exciting new adventure for lunch or dinner with our delicious new Sweet Chili Sauce. It's time for Sweet Chili Chicken. It's time for Tim's. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Friday, August 26th. We're recording this on Thursday.

We're just spacing out the episodes a little bit because of the unusual schedule this week. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. A grab bag of topics. I hinted at the possibility of this on our last episode. We're going to talk about some tough late season decisions that we have to make with our rosters. In-season management this time of year is a little bit different, but it's also tricky for a multitude of reasons. We'll dig into some of those problems that we're currently experiencing and fighting against in our various leagues. We are going to have an installment of Prospect of the Week, which I know people are always excited about.

We're going to take a look at some possible help at the first base position, where we've had a few injuries recently and a few longer-term underperformers that you might finally be ready to move on from. We've got some mailbag questions to get to, and I think Eno found some interesting stuff about Cade Cavalli upon a little extra digging around since our last episode. So we begin with the tough late season decisions. What is giving you grief as you try and set your lineups each week on Mondays and Fridays, Eno? What are the most difficult things that you have to decide on as you round out a lineup?

The worst is when you have needs in diametrically opposed categories. So in one of my leagues, I could probably get three standing points if I went after Ks, and I could get three standing points if I went after saves. And that's probably the worst two categories to have needs in because they are opposed to one another you have a like especially in something like NFBC you have a you have a roster slot you can either go there closer that's going to get you fewer Ks or you can go to a starter that can get you more Ks but no saves and then on top of that on the wire there's nothing worse than trying to go for k's and saves i think at least in this part of the season looking at the streaming uh options out there

i've been really underwhelmed by streaming options this year i in fact willingly rostered tj zoik for this this week in two nfbc teams because i thought he'd be a two starter. Then on Monday, when I'm setting my lineups, he gets sent down and I get super mad that he got sent down because he's not a two starter anymore. Then I put in some other guys, Tywon Walker at New York, I don't think I used Bumgarner at Minnesota, but that sort of stuff where I'm like, all right, I got to use these other guys I wasn't think I used Bumgarner at Minnesota, but that sort of stuff where I'm like, all right, I got to use these other guys I wasn't planning on using. And then TJ Zoic comes back up,

and I'm actually mad that he comes back up because he's actually going to get a start. And then he gives up six runs, and I'm mad that I even cared about TJ Zoic. Yeah. So anyway, I am thinking about a little bit of a different uh strategy next year in nfbc in particular but this is relevant to people with short benches and sort of 15 team depth is that i want to have more of my bench be starting pitchers because i've realized that especially in the

deeper 15 teamers somebody like madison mumgarner who i did not want to start this week at minnesota i hope i didn't i don't think i did but uh but somebody like him is not available when you want to go find a streamer because he's on someone else's team as a team streamer option, as Paul Spohr puts it. Good old friend Paul Spohr at Sleeper the Bust calls it team streaming

because you don't play that guy every week, but you do leave him on your bench. You don't drop him all the way. He's not a full streamer. And so I would like to ideally come out of the draft with and i think also a bench reliever is is a poor uh poor proposition maybe out of the first week uh just to see if he gets anointed closer or not um you know in spring training uh but uh i think i would like to come

out of drafts with four out of my six bench slots being starting pitchers. It's a little bit of something that Derek Carty does at labor. If you've noticed, his entire reserve round bats in the roster construction was having amazing offense. This is in the NFPC Auction League, the big auction league I'm playing in this year. Doing great in the offensive categories. And what I failed to do was build the bench around that core roster correctly i had too much depth all season behind all my bats so i was never i was never losing playing time with my hitters but i think i was wasting production

on the bench because i had four hitters and three pitchers. And earlier in the season, when I was still trying to find saves, I was burning spots trying to get relievers that were going to get saves. So I probably only had one to two extra pitchers. And then one of my first two pitchers, Walker Bueller, suffered a seasoning injury. And I didn't have enough starting pitching to begin with. And then because my depth was missing. So you held him for a while to find out what the information was yeah

i think i made a pretty quick cut on him but okay but what what i ran into was that the the in-season problem you're describing the quality of the pitchers that are available most weeks for streaming purposes are pretty low there have been pitchers that have emerged on the wire but then you don't want to drop them sometimes then they end up on your team and you don't want to drop them after they have a good two weeks. Yeah. So I've never fully rallied from that part of the roster construction flaw, not taking enough depth pitchers up top and having to chase on the bottom of the roster with really mediocre arms.

It's reflected in my ratios. My ratios are terrible in that league. I have plenty of points I could make up if I could find good ratios. I'm having a hard time finding good ratios. Get bulk good ratios for the last month. Get great ERA and whip and close the gap on the teams that have like a 380 ERA.

Not like a middle reliever. That's not going to give you enough bulk. Not enough. So I might sit down today and figure out what exactly I would have to do to vault myself up a handful of points in the standings in both ratios categories just to see and i'll know how unrealistic it is maybe you could bench a bulk mediocre pitcher for a middle reliever and thereby take away the bulk bad and put in some small good. That was suggested by a friend of ours, I think, back in June, July.

He pointed out, he said, you know, you could really start throwing the bulk relievers who, if you look at the schedule and see the guys that didn't pitch over the weekend, you might get them twice in a week. You might be able to stream the bulk relievers for two appearances. One thing I've noticed about bulk relievers, though, they're not staying bulk relievers. Right. Keegan Aiken is a one-inning guy now. And Will Crowe is a one-inning guy now.

So who are the bulk relievers? Short list. I've mentioned Ronaldo Lopez a million times. Colin McHugh, Ronaldo Lopez. There aren't enough guys there. I think it's something you could do, but the process for finding those players is very granular and time-consuming, and you're still not optimizing the roster. You're still likely short in terms of innings in a typical week compared to what a starter can give you. You're capping yourself. Those bulk relievers can't be two-start pitchers. So they'll never get you 10 innings in a week.

So that's out. And they rarely become full-time starters because they usually used to be starters. And they're now bulk relievers because it's been proven they can't handle getting the lineup a third time. So all this is to say, like the corrective action here, if you feel like you've been chasing pitching all season or you're having tough pitching decisions to make, you means you don't have to have a backup corner and a backup middle and a backup outfielder and maybe even a backup catcher depending on who your catchers are i think there's some roster construction things you can can push toward that change the way you build that bench i think if you cheap out on catchers you're more likely to roster a third one i think if you pay up for catchers you're more likely to roster a third one i think if you pay

up for catchers you don't need to bother with a third one because the waiver wire is fine like if you're short for part of a week because one of your catchers got hurt midweek the zero compared to the waiver wire catcher in a two catcher 15 team league that's not going to hurt you that badly and you were getting a massive advantage in that spot. Might even be better on some of the catchers out there. Taking a zero. But I do agree with you. The multi-eligible is actually not just a thing for drafting a hole because you do, especially in weekly leagues, you do want to have backups on your roster

because it's awful if you get an injury on Tuesday at a position you don't have a backup and you take five days of zero at a position you don't have a backup and you take five days of zero at a position other than catcher that's really bad uh that's a lot of days you fall behind other teams and that's why it's nice to have the Friday uh change but if you don't have a backup on your roster you don't have someone you can you can put in midweek that's pretty specific to NFBC but I do think the deeper your league is the better it is to have multi-positional guys I know in my mono league in AL labor it's been really useful to have like Hunter Dozier who's a first baseman third baseman

outfielder I've I've moved him around a fair amount and And he plugged in at third when Moncada went out. And he's been very useful to me on that first place team. Even though Ian Kahn is just hanging around a little bit too much. Making me nervous. Don't like that. He's in your head. He's been in your head all week. A little bit less important in a 10-team league, right?

Because if you have an injury, especially if it's 10-team daily, if you have an injury, you can go get somebody. Yeah, for sure. So these late-season decisions when you're stuck between, you're still chasing saves and bulk, those can be particularly difficult because you have to choose. It's 6-3, it's 7-2 in terms of starters versus relievers. And how much will that cost you if the schedule's not giving you enough to start pitchers that week, that might be the thing that leads you to go with the extra starter.

If you have a lot of to start pitchers, maybe that affords you the flexibility, the extra reliever, but we end up with these decisions that are not easy. And I think they're what make the game fun, because there's not always a clear and obvious path forward. Sometimes you just have to choose similar or equal, near equal sorts of options. I think the funny example of late season management that is more of like an add-drop sort of thing is Phil Dussault tweeted about this. He dropped Josh Hader in the main event a 15 team league the nfbc main event this was actually in ian's league so i think ian and rob merschak were the duo that picked hater up on waivers over the weekend which is very layered but i think the the thing about choosing to drop a player like hater it has everything to do i think with where you're sitting in the standings and what your needs are. So I haven't seen Phil's particular standings in this league, but I can imagine being in a situation where maybe I'm just locked into my spot in saves or I can only gain a point or two in saves and I can't really lose much there.

So I'm going to push another starter in my lineup anyway. I'm going to go from seven and two to eight and one because wins and Ks have the greater potential growth for standings points. I think that almost can overwrite who you think the player is going to be for the better part of what's left of the season. We're talking about a month plus now. So with Hayter specifically, he gets this temporary demotion. He's probably going to get his job back before the end of the season. I would say it's more likely that he keeps it. Even if you believe that, if it takes a week or two for that to happen, he's not useful to you for a week or two. He's not getting you the one thing that he was supposed to be getting you the whole time. And someone else in that spot makes you better. So I can rationalize a decision like that, even though

it's really hard to bring yourself to the point where you drop a player that was either a really early pick or even someone that you still believe in. Yeah. The thing is, though, you have to stay afloat sometimes, you know, maybe he's just locked into saves. But for me, in my main, I'm actually second. I jumped up to second. It's really tight between me and third and fourth, and mostly third and fourth. So I could end up anywhere from second to fourth. I think first has got this wrapped up. I want a place in my first main ever,

and so I'm all aboard. I think I'm locked into K's, actually. It's 34 to the next one, and it's 22 to the one behind me, right? It's fairly locked in, right? Yeah. But wins are awful. Oh, my God. If I had four more wins, i would have four more standing points

and i would actually be leapfrogging some guys who i'm battling so it'd be even more than that and and i am but i'm only one save up on one of the guys behind me in saves like what do you do there because i i could easily be like okay screw the two starters right i don't need the k's i'm not going anywhere in the k's but i can't because of wins oh man so this week in that line in that league i did pick up tj zoik and i had a choice of madison bum garner at the white socks or uh or taiwan walker at the yankees because tj zoik didn't come through and uh i chose uh taiwan walker i think that was probably the right choice. But that's the sort of decision-making process I have to go through.

And I have Bednar on my bench. When Bednar comes back, I will have the choice between Bednar, Ian Kennedy, and one of the starters every week. And it's just going to be a feeling-out process, really. I think Bednar is probably the, over Ian Kennedy, probably the easy call for that spot once so i mean so it's really about ian kennedy versus my worst starter yeah that's what it comes down to sometimes and just being being right i mean the tj's like situation is just brutal though i have it's not a not a guy you want to have in the mix at all this time of year. Desperation, man.

This is what happens. But I also don't want to give short strife to the batting side. It's interesting that, for example, in this league, home runs. I need home runs. If I get three more home runs, I beat the guy who's in third right now. I take a point away from him and i gain a point really important three home runs need that the guy behind me is one home run guy behind me is three home runs so it's like we're all trying to get home runs i don't need stolen bases

i have 116 the guy behind is 109 the first guy is 1032 right i don't need stolen bases so you go over to your set lineup page you say okay i i don't need i don't need stolen bases. So you go over to your set lineup page and say, okay, I don't need stolen bases. I need home runs. And you've got Bryson Stott versus Mike Yastrzemski versus J.J. Bleda. And you're like, and this was earlier in the week. That might be easier for late in the week. But earlier in the week, the choice was Bryson Stott

at home against Cincinnati for four or J.J. Blede at Oakland for three. You're like, oh, well, Blede is a little bit more likely to hit homers, but not in Oakland. And I had Austin Hayes at home for three against the White Sox. I do, one last time, want to talk about the Ras ball tools are super useful because they not only project a value where you can say,

okay, the overall value of Stott at home for four against Cincinnati is much better than it is for Blede and Hayes and Jastrzemski for two at Detroit. But you can also look at component things and see how many homers you might be giving up in terms of projections, right? So it projected Bryson Stott for like 0.5 homers

or 0.2 homers and Bledet for like 0.3. And I'm like, well, you know, I'd rather take the overall goodness of Bryson Stott because, you know, there are other parts of the standings where I don't want to fall back, like in terms of, you know, runs in RBI and playing time, like RBI, I need three RBI to take a point away from somebody I'm battling with, you know? So all these things are interconnected and it's not always like, oh, just put in Blede and go all for the homers because, you know because you could get somewhere in homers.

Well, if I get that point in homers and lose a point in RBI, then I'm where I started. Hi, I'm playing that game in a few different places right now. But for me, it's been more on the pitching side than on the hitting side because my teams, when I had control, I was overdrafting hitting. And I don't like the way the endgame has played out for that as much as you'd like. I would like to have a little more balance or possibly try the other direction for the reasons that we mentioned. I feel like the bats you can find in season are a little better. They're a little more predictable. They're a little bit less terrible, seemingly, than some of the late season streaming pitchers.

We have some tools like Barrel Rate, where early in the season, you can see someone who's just barreling really well. Two or three weeks in, you can be like, well, we're almost there for Barrel Rate. I'm going to take a chance on this guy and find somebody. I feel like you can use stuff and Pitching kind of do that with pitchers uh but they're also very schedule dependent uh in a way that i think barrel rate is not as schedule dependent you know it's just like that guy's barreling it you know um whereas a guy who has like 100 pitching plus that's like average that's okay but against a bunch of bad opponents he'll look better than that and against a good opponent to look worse than that um the the other thing that i wanted to say is i don't think that

i'm being convinced that i want to take like two starting pitchers in the first two rounds or that i want to take five starting pitchers in those first seven rounds or something i'm not being convinced that i need to uh alter my strategy drastically in that regard but one more pitcher in the first five rounds maybe you know like try to come out with three in the first six or something or four in the first seven where it's just just one more piece of bite at the apple with early starting pitchers as opposed to late. Because there's usually also a fair amount of late bat sleepers that I like. And, you know, it's true for pitchers too, but I don't know. My pitching stabs are still not as good as I'd like them to be.

Yeah, living that in a league right now, that is very important to me, and it is frustrating to say the least. You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces, a message from the government of Canada. Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know, you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built in, so you can change the music.

Oh, yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. Let's move on to some other topics. How about Jared Walsh? I think there's a simple question to be asked with him. What went wrong and could we have seen this coming? Because at a glance, I can honestly say no, I did not see this coming. I had no real reservations about Jared Walsh as kind of a pick 100 to 130 range sort of a guy.

I think he was kind of a fringy top 10 first baseman by ADP and by most people's projections and expectations. But the K rate went up this year. The walk rate came down. The power has been sliced almost in half in terms of the home run output. 29 homers a year ago. He's at 15 right now through 118 games. And his season might be coming to a close due to an injury as well

because he has been diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome. So maybe this is all just injury. Maybe the injury is the explanation we were looking for. But were there any warning signs in the profile that pointed to a massive drop otherwise? You know, I suppose he did not have

uh great plate discipline stats he he's been sort of average-ish when it comes to chase rate um and that seems to be exacerbated in his 30 strikeout rage which of course could also be injury um but if he's making poor swing decisions uh the fact that his bail rate is down but it's comparable, his max EV is down but it's comparable, suggests that maybe if there's anything other than injury, it's poor plate discipline that has caused a little bit of this erosion. I don't know. Also, I guess there's a question of

how much track record do we really have? We had one season of good work and then 108 plate appearances of a good barrel rate from 2020. And between those, it felt like we could extrapolate that he'd be good the barrel rate was good but i wonder if the chase rate was a bit of a warning sign and then the last thing is he never had good splits you know he wasn't really playing against lefties because he had poor splits

against lefties now you want way more sample to believe in a thing like that but when you see a team sitting a guy against lefties when he was basically healthy all season in 2021 and only got 585 plate appearances i think that's a little bit of a yellow uh sign you know a yellow light so you get the yellow light on the usage and a yellow light on the chase rate but there's nothing here that when I look back, I say that's a red light. Yeah, that's how I've been looking at it with Walsh so far this year.

And again, maybe the injury is a big part of the explanation, but I do think that the first base, the first base breakouts, these unexpected, these kind of non-prospects that emerge to take over either a large side platoon role or possibly an everyday role.

I think Luke Voigt probably fits into this mold. Injuries really slowed him down. Rowdy to last. Rowdy is kind of like that. Jesus Aguilar a few years ago. It's not just all lefties or anything. It's some lefties. It's some righties.

They seem to be really fast peak players. There's something about this player type the athleticism the swing decisions some combination of those things or the tools as a whole that that lead these players to reach a quick peak where they're middle third of the order run producers for about two to three seasons at the high end most times and then it's a reasonably quick drop and i i think there's a you know you're you're right age was another yellow light that's what you're basically saying right i guess yeah it's the arrival yeah it's arriving at 25 like that's that's usually not going to also for very long not playing every day till 28 and i think you

know i think this is how i think of it and i might be wrong i've had some arguments with people where you know they've made some compelling counterarguments. So there's a curve, and I'm doing this on YouTube, but there's a curve of like an aging curve. You know, of like, this is how good you are. I was just watching that the other night. There's a curve with a peak of how good you are, right? And let's say there's a line here that's like starting every day in baseball. And let's say you start playing at 19 in baseball

and you start playing every day at 19. That means you have all this aging left and you're playing. And this is like the level of where playing, everyday playing is, right? But let's say you start playing at 29. I think this is like the level of where playing everyday playing is right but let's say you start playing at 29 i think you're this is your peak you're at your peak basically and every and your peak is just barely good enough to play every day isn't that what you're kind of saying

your peak is just barely good enough to play every day think of that with like brandon drury or you know any of these guys yeah late late 20s you You are peaking. You're only going to decline if you arrive in your late 20s. If you come in at least in your mid-20s, you might hit the peak or be at the peak for a little while and then eventually start tapering off. But like a 28, 29-year-old pop-up, you're basically, like by definition, you're post-peak. But let's say you're peaking, you're personally peaking, and you're personally peaking and you're personally peaking you're only going to get worse after that

and your personal peak was just good enough to be imagining regular and i and i i'm not trying to be rude to players like that's obviously a little bit rude uh but it's it's also a fact of life that if you do pick up some of these guys that have late peaks, um, you, you'll see like Whit Merrifield was a bit of a, a late call up that signed a, uh, signed a deal because he was like,

I think he saw, you hear his agent saw the writing on the wall. Like, you know, not necessarily someone who's going to play till he's 38. You know, you know who plays till he's 38? Albert Pujols.

Who's like up at 20. You know what I mean? That's who plays till 38. Uh, you know who plays till he's 38 Albert Pujols who's like up at 20 you know what I mean that's who plays till 38 uh you know these other guys are going to play till they're 31 32 so that's something to think about I think when you think about drafting Brandon Drury like next year like who who are the next Jared Walsh's I think Rowdy let me see how old he is yeah who are who are the next Jared Walsh's rowdy is 27 however uh this is the first year he will even put up one win above replacement so as much as you like rowdy you know now's the time to trade him in dynasty i think uh who are some other how would we find breakouts that are old let's just do

26 to 28 year old war leaderboard and just see if we can pick any out let's do 27 to 29 I think Ranjuri is one for sure

who's new on this is Tommy Edmund no he's new on this? Is Tommy Edmund? No, he's been playing for a while. Adolis Garcia. Ah, Adolis Garcia. It's one little sort of yellow light. I mean, there's a red light for Adolis Garcia, which is his play discipline.

The yellow light is late breakout. Yeah, I missed out on him this year for pretty much all of these reasons. Taylor Ward, dude. Oh, man. One on his own team. Another angel. Santiago Espinal?

Already showing some warts anyway. We're at the point in the season, though, where a lot of the players that we're talking about, they're emerging right now. Because if you were looking for first base help, it's mostly older players getting the chance for the first time a handful of exceptions i think that's actually another yellow light for him is his position because how do major league teams treat first base

highly replaceable yeah we're gonna find one so you know i think that's that's all useful but maybe um also useful for people listening and be to talk about some possible replacements i don't know um we talked a little bit about joey manassas on the fantasy what's that one called with uh al milky or the fantasy fantasy baseball podcast the athletic fantasy Podcast. Please remember that one. Tough one. You idiot. But we talked about Joey Menezes, and I was saying that he gives me Schwindel vibes,

which sounds like super negative, but remember Schwindel had a pretty good season last year. So I think Menezes is one of the better in-season pickups, but when you're talking about next year, he's exactly who we're talking about with Walsh, and even worse. He's got the same warts as Schwindel for next year. He's going to be a 31-year-old that has no plate discipline, makes a lot of contact, and may just regress just as bad as Swindell. So it's a backhanded compliment, but it's still a compliment because I think he could have a decent end of season.

And, you know, you may maybe – Manessis is owned in something like 10% of Yahoo! Leagues or something. So that's if you're in a deeper league. He's a pretty good option for deeper leagues. I hope this is an easy concept to understand, but I think when you're talking about second half pickups, you don't have to like the player in the long run. You don't have to believe that it's a profile

that sticks for next season because you're only playing for this one. Is he going to play for the Nationals? Will they keep playing him? Sure. Who's there to replace him? Teams that are playing out the string, especially when you're talking

about the positions that are not that important to the organization in the long run, they'll leave the door open for Joey Manese for the rest of the season. So I have no problem picking him up. If I need corner help,

even in a 12-team league, if the playing time is there, we think the power is good enough, the lineup position is better than it should be because the team's a mess that's fine for right now but if you're telling me at pick 250 for 2023 do you want joey menezes as your corner no i don't i didn't want frank schwindel i didn't i will lose to people who draft these players if these players are good for a full season. So I guess occasionally you do miss out on maybe an Aguilar or a Voight, or some players like that can come through and stick around longer than expected.

But this is generally the type of player that I'm very skeptical of, and I think it's for good reason. And you could just look at usage to gain some eye into what's going on here because I kind of think like a Lamont Wade Jr. who's available in as many leagues I think he's probably a better long-term asset right now he's hitting everything straight up in the air and maybe he has some adjustments to make but the walk rate the strikeout rate the power good. It's all mostly Babbitt. He's got an 050 Babbitt in the last two weeks. However, even if Lamont Wade Jr. is a little bit better of a real-life asset, he's had 35 plate appearances in the last two weeks. Manessis has had 52.

So if you pick up Wade, you're just leaving a lot of plate appearances out on the table. And I like Isaac Paredes, 35 plate appearances. I like Josh Naylor better than all of these guys. And if you're in a daily league and you're looking to replace Jared Walsh's production, Josh Naylor is a great pickup because you can maybe pair him with somebody else and get that production. He's actually better than Walsh has been this year. But 38 plate appearances. So really, in order to replace Walsh, been this year, you know, but 38 plate appearances. So really, you know, in order to replace Walsh, you got to have Josh Naylor and Isaac Paredes or Joey Manessis. Yeah. I think Naylor would be kind of your best Jared Walsh replacement of this group, a little bit younger

than a lot of the players we're talking about too. So more optimism there. I think El Jauris Montero is kind of interesting. He's one of the players the Rockies about too so more optimism there i think el joris montero is kind of interesting he's one of the players the rockies got back in the nolan arenado deal with the cardinals and you know the home road problems for the rockies are certainly going to be there for a young player i know the strikeout rate's a little high right now but we're talking about his first hundred career big league plate appearances and he's controlled the strike zone well enough in the upper levels of the minor leagues where i don't i don't have this expectation that el jerez montero has bad swing decisions like cooked in it might just be sort of pressing to start a career and

also when you're hitting 255 and you have five four homers it's not obvious yet to you that you're you know that it's not working you get a couple good results and you keep using the same approach but i actually think that's a good profile if you're looking for someone that could have been maybe added in a keeper league or could be easily traded for in a deep format right now i actually think montero is a good target yeah and you know i was looking week to week at the schedule, and I was like, oh man, the Rockies are on a 10-day schedule, a 10-day away game, away part of their schedule. This might not be the best time to pick him up. However, after this Mets thing this weekend, I think, he goes to

Cincinnati and Atlanta, which are not terrible places to be on the road. So if you're looking at a Sunday pickup, Montero for Monday after the Mets series should be super cheap. And if you're kind of doing this thing where you're threading pickups, I say put Montero on it. Maybe he's not your number one guy. If Naylor's out there, you start with Naylor. But by putting Montero on for a buck at the bottom, you can make things easier for you if you don't get Naylor. At least put him in the waiver claim bucket. Part of the reason we're looking for first base help, aside from someone like Walsh,

Vinny Pasquantino's hurt right now. Brandon Belt can't seem to shake the knee injury. Unfortunately, this might be nearing the end of the road for Belt, which is really kind of a sad way to see him go out. I saw that from Andrew Baggerly, and I don't know if I fully agree. I can't. It's tough when you look at the underlying numbers, and they're exactly the same as they've been for years. You know, he has a 12% walk rate for his career. He has a 12% walk

rate this year. He has a 24% strikeout rate for his career. He has a 27% this year. 11% swinging strike, 13%. You know, he has a 13% barrel rate this year. That would be the third best of his career. You know, all these things seem to suggest that he's okay. And then he has a slightly bad BABIP and he's been running like a 50% fly ball rate for a couple years now. And he's just not turning those barrels into homers as much this year. I don't know.

If I was another team that was looking for like an old dh uh next year on a one-year deal i might give brandon bell to another try this is the part of the calendar when i start saying oakland um to yeah the where where could this player go next year and find lots of playing time and and just a clear path to maybe bouncing back if health works in their favor. I hope for Belt's sake it does. I mean, it would be nice to see him continue to play because he seems to have core skills that are definitely good enough to produce, at least on the big side of a platoon.

I've been wondering if I should change my tune a little bit on the A's this year because they've undergone the process that they need to go through of sort of sorting through the veterans and trying out the young guys and seeing which pop-up guys are real. I no longer think that when I look out on the team, none of these players will be on the next good A's team. Because Nick Allen sometimes shows a little power. He's a little bit interesting. Shea Langeleers might be legit. He cut his strikeout rate again this year. And Seth Brown is not

necessarily a building block piece. And he's a 30, so he might not be around either but uh he is the type of guy that the uh that the a's find you know um so i i'm softening my stance a little bit that this is uh out of the norm for the a's this looks a little bit like 2015 when they were just trying to find find guys and give guys opportunity on the field so if that is the case and they start to invest a little bit more going forward then brandon belt at dh next year is a total possibility i think they've got maybe three players for the next good ace team in the lineup right now between murphy langoliers and loriano and it seems unlikely that that Murphy and Langoliers would both be there but and Laureano also seems like somebody they would yeah I don't know which way this is still a pretty pretty rough teardown I also think the Sean Murphy trade could bring them back quite a

bit more than what they got back for Matt Chapman though so maybe that maybe that helps kind of fix the situation too and they've got a lot riding on Gunnar Hoagland getting healthy, and so far the late stages of his rehab from Tommy John surgery are really encouraging. So if he comes back and flies up prospect lists and quickly becomes one of the best pitching prospects in the game, that would certainly help. They've got a pop-up in Jordan Diaz.

Is this a natural segue we're building towards? I think it is. Oh, gosh. We're so good at this. How did we do that? Did I mention Jordan Diaz as a previous prospect of the week? It's possible. I think we've talked about it before, but an intriguing combination of emerging power and good strikeout rate. The question is the power is just right on the cusp. When you have a 190 ISO in the minors, I'm just right on the cusp when you have like a 190 iso in the

minors i'm just like i don't know dude especially when it comes to the 52 percent ground ball rate it's like uh you know maybe he's just a a good spray hitter but i would know a lot more if i had his barrel rates i believe i did not use jordan diaz previously as prospect of the week. So I'm going to go ahead and make him my prospect of the week selection. I'm going to do it because he was one of the players that I, when I was digging through the A's system a few weeks ago, I was impressed. I was like,

this is, this is legit. This is a guy that can actually help them longterm. And Zach Geloff, I think is probably the better corner infield prospect. They're going to probably move those guys around to make the pieces fit. So I don't know how defensively it all works eventually. That's a problem that the A's can solve.

They got time to figure that out. No one really blocking them. No one really blocking anybody. And unless you're a catcher, there's a pretty clear path to the roster wherever you really need it to be. Yeah, but a really nice season at AA. Nice to see them getting a late-season look at AAA. And Jordan Diaz, probably a player that we're going to see in the big leagues

at some point by the middle of 2023. I don't think that's unrealistic based on what he's been able to accomplish. Yeah, and it's interesting to think about him versus Mark Vientos, versus Mark Vientos, you know, a guy that we've talked a little bit about that's on the Mets, you know, AAA roster right now. Vientos is a guy who walks more, strikes out more, and has more power. However, you know, he's striking out 28 to 30 percent of the time, and even if he translated that exactly to the big leagues um he has less defensive value than Diaz makes less contact and in my opinion like hard pressed to outperform Diaz especially when you're thinking about war versus uh you know just on the in just at the plate. But I think that's also meaningful because war is what will give Diaz

more playing time than Vientos. So I know that some people have Vientos high on their list, and I know I have a slight bias away from guys that strike out 30% of the time. And I saw Jarrett Seidler say some stuff on Twitter today about how the guys who strike out 30% in the major leagues did not strike out 30% in the minor leagues. They struck out 24% in the minor leagues. And the guys who strike out 30% in the minor leagues don't usually make it to the big leagues.

They're up and down guys if they get there at all. It's a very tough skills flaw to overcome. Looking at the hard hit numbers for Jordan Dia diaz 26.6 hard hit rate that's based on the sports info solutions number i know the rotowire player pages have that i don't know if there's any other places where you can easily access that so 26.6 context on that those are graded by hand so there's hard medium and soft but also like is that a good number it skews a little low but the reason i wouldn't panic is one it is scored by video or by scout so it's it's manual it's not just i mean pure like a stat cast sort of thing also age to level diaz is young right i mean he's 21 and he's now at triple a so when you're talking about a player that young, it's less of a problem.

He turned 22 a couple weeks ago, but he's been 21 for most of the season. His seasonal age is 21. Yeah, Vientos, just by comparison, Mark Vientos, 29.1% hard hit rate. So kind of similar. A tiny bit better, but not that much better. No, no.

It's mostly just that he's hitting his balls in the air, whereas Diaz is hitting his balls on the ground. Just for some other context, some guys who are really good in terms of hard hit rate based on how this is measured, Nolan Jones, 43.8% at AAA. I continue to like him. If his demotion makes him available in your dynasty league, I would try and buy him.

Corbin Carroll, 39.2% hard hit rate. Kelnick? Sexy. Kelnick, 38.3%. Yeah, yeah. Kelnick? I don't know. That's swing and miss, 39.2% hard hit rate. Kelnick. Sexy. Kelnick, 38.3%. Yeah, yeah. Kelnick. I don't know. That's swing and miss, man.

Nolan Gorman pre-promotion at 38.1%. Joe Adele, 38% for Joe Adele. And this is like per ball and play, not per play appearance. Right. Yeah. Spotted something. Yeah. So those are the higher end guys but you move through the list

you'll see plenty of guys that are in their late teens early 20s that are lower in the range but i still wouldn't consider that to be alarming i got a name for you to make a look up how about addison barger he is a 22 year old infielder in toronto in double a it got him at 30% for a hard hit rate. Okay, so better than Diaz and Vientos, but worse than the very upper echelon. I will buy it.

Addison Barger, I think, has a really fascinating backstory. I'll take him as my prospect of the week. He only has one write-up on fan graphs from 2019 from Aaron Langenhagen and Kylie McDaniel where it just says 40 hit tool 40 power bench bat then after that he got popped for PEDs and missed some time in 2019. Then he had a fully missed season in 2020 and nobody thought of him again.

When he came back in 2021, he hit for power, but he showed off that 40 hit tool with a 33% strikeout rate. People mostly still just wrote him off. Now at 22 years old, he has blown through high A and double A with the same WRC plus 150. He's showing off his power.

He's cut his strikeout rate. He's really improved his contact rate, his contact quality against right handers. He's a left hander that can play third. He, even in the right up from Langenhagen, has a plus arm. So I think he's going to stay at third. The strikeout rate is a little concerning, but I think he has enough power to make it work at 30%. And then I got a couple more pieces of interesting information that the swing decisions are still a little bit poor, but he crushes right handers and his batted ball velocities are basically elite for his level. You know, according to more track man-esque numbers and that he was asked for at the trade deadline and the team decided not to trade him. He's 40-man eligible.

He needs to be put on the 40-man next year. So he's on the fast track to going to Toronto, and it seems like the organization values him. So here's a guy that's coming out of nowhere that steals a few bags, hits homers, may not have the best batting average uh but even steamer projects a 244 batting average and above average bat at the major leagues right now uh and that's uh you know steamer's always going to be pessimistic i think yeah i think with barger too i mean being in an organization that looks like it's lined up for

some long-term success there's probably some big side platoon risk but at like it's lined up for some long-term success, there's probably some big-side platoon risk, but at least it's big-side platoon risk. At least it's big-side. Yeah, because if Toronto's really good, they may not want to call them up to play every day. They'll have maybe like an Espanol or somebody that can platoon with them. But I think there's still, you know,

even with Espinol's, you know, advancement this year and added power, you've seen that they're playing him less and that he's become a little bit more of a small-side platoon guy over the course of the season. So there is question of sort of what the long-term plan is with Espinel Merrifield and Chapman who's going to stick around who's going to go and where might Varger step in yeah but a nice name not someone that was on my radar at all when the season began so good poll for your prospect of the week selection we did talk about Cade Cavalli briefly on the last episode,

and you were able to find some more stuff numbers on Cavalli. So I'm curious to know what you dug up. Yeah, I remember that we actually ran, I forgot that he was at the Futures game last year. We had stuff numbers from the Futures game last year. It's a little bit small on YouTube, but if you look closely uh kate cavalli had the fourth best uh stuff plus on his four-seam fastball in that game and uh the only note of caution there is that reed detmers had a slightly better

four-seam fastball stuff plus in that game. They are airing it out in a short one-inning stint. This is basically almost max stuff plus for them. Reed Detmers now has a below average major league four-seam fastball stuff plus. So it's still possible Cade Cavalli does not have a great foreseam. He also does not show up as impressive in any other pitch group except for cutter. He had the best cutter in the game. So it's an interesting collection of pitches where it's possible to change up his below average. And is he going to be a foreseam cutter slider guy? Is he going to be able to pull that off?

So I think there's a fair amount of risk here, especially given his organization. But I did want to put him into context with some guys like Detmers, and who did he have better? He had a better cutter than Nicola Dolo. You see, I'm trying to... Eyeball! This is a weird, weird artistic segment of this show

that I didn't think we'd ever get to. His slider rated as about as good as Reed Detmer's slider. But that's interesting because that's also Reed Detmer's new old slider, if that makes sense. That was Reed Detmer's new slider that he has now turfed and gone back to his old slider if that makes sense that was reed detmer's new slider that he has now turfed and gone back to his old slider since so i think it almost seems a little more optimistic than we were based on concerns about command specifically with kade cavalli the good news is if you're thinking about picking him up in a redraft league you you get to watch the debut first. You get to see what it looks like. So that helps as well.

I think the glaring need for quality innings there gives him a nice job security floor. I think the innings from last season give him plenty of buffer to make it through September. So if he's pitching well, I don't think we're looking at a very early shutdown. I wouldn't treat Cavalli as much more than a matchup-dependent starter

from the jump. That's what I was going to say. But in September, those guys can pop, right? You get a few lineups that are playing for the future, and maybe they've got to the point where a handful of stars are missing because of injuries. When's he supposed to pitch? He pitches Friday.

So I'm going to look at the schedule. All right, so that's Reds at home. That's decent. If you first come first serve, I would use that. If I'm chasing starts in a first come first serve. A's at home. Use that. Next Thursday, I'd like that.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5. At Cardinals. Nope. Borderline. No. That's a no. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. At Phillies. Nope. That's an easy. That's a two-star week, isn't it? St. That's a no. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. At Phillies, nope. That's an easy. That's a two-star week, isn't it? St. Louis and Philly. Oh, so that might just be an avoid.

That's a tough two-starter. That's either an avoid or your ratios are banged up anyway. I get back on the horse for Marlins at National September 18th. So could be a good early pickup for that A's start, and then you're going to have to make a decision for the double tap if he stays up. And then I get back on the horse. I bet you I pick him up after he's been dropped after the two-start week

for the Marlins start. It's nice to know your own tendencies and have a plan seems like you got a pretty clear plan i also have no money left in my house so if he's gonna be a top pickup i'm not gonna get him i did blow some money on brett baity uh you know just as an update i lost joey vato in the main and uh i did use my final mini hammer on brett baity i like that he's making contact he does not chase that's good the max bv is good um i don't know that he's playing his way into everyday role so we're gonna probably have to go back out there with my pennies and see who i can pick up it's the most wonderful time of the year, trying to... Juan Yepes, please come back up.

Sneak players back onto your roster for a couple of bucks as you get through the last couple rounds of FAB. A couple mailbag questions to get to. This one comes from Isaac. How can I untrain myself to avoid older pitchers? In the rates and barrels parlance, I never end up with solid veteran oatmeal pitchers

because I have this notion that because they're older, they're more likely to miss time due to injury. I lean toward younger hitters as well, but I always sprinkle in a good share of Odie bats. Are there any benchmarks that either of you know of around velocity or command or even injuries that I can use to help me feel better about taking older arms? So what would you tell isaac anybody else out there that tends to avoid pitchers i'm assuming probably on the wrong side of 30 but especially the the 35 and over pitchers which has actually been a pretty decent group if you look at expectations like it seems like the market correction on those players leaves a good bit of room for profit i did find find last year, late last year,

that the ratio of older pitchers, which was over 33, to young pitchers under 24 was better than ever was in favor of the older ones. And I think that what's happening is that teams are just being cautious, breaking guys in as younger pitchers. And so you're seeing all these strategies like,

hey, we're going to start them out in the pen or he's gonna be a four inning guy, right? Like these three, four inning guys and think about the Rays, how they break starting pitchers in. So I think people are kind of slow walking it at the beginning and then near the end they don't care as much about innings anymore right they're not like oh we need to baby his arm right nobody cares wayne wright doesn't have a have a innings limit you know so uh they just uh they throw those guys out there and then also you've like sort of proven your abilities at a certain point when you're older and And the last thing I want to say is that stuff is not, people think Velo is stuff, but stuff is more than Velo.

And if you looked at stuff and Pitching Plus for Adam Wainwright, it was fairly bullish on him coming into the season. So I would just say, if you've got an older starting pitcher like a Corey Kluber or Adam Wainwright that looks good still by stuff plus I think a lot of times it's pitching plus and it's they still have command and a lot of pitches that's sort of where I'd look but I would just say an older starting pitcher like a Wainwright or a Kluber makes for a fine late inning late draft pickup and I've been trying to sprinkle those guys in late in my drafts all the time yeah I've been trying to sprinkle those guys in late in my

drafts all the time yeah i've been trying to get rid of the old but doesn't strike a lot of guys out bias that's that's i'm i'm so far away from wainwright each of these last couple of seasons that that's a blind spot for me that's the that's the part of this i struggle i didn't have a ton of shares but i did get i did i have have more than a few shares of Kluber, and I think he's comparable. Yeah, tracking in that direction. Thanks a lot. And I end up with some shares of Verlander even, too.

Verlander and Scherzer are just... But I wasn't afraid of Darvish either. I think there were people that didn't want Darvish, so I... I think the question is really more about injury risk, right? Mm-hmm. Scherzer has shown that. Verlander may be in his honeymoon phase. You've been

mostly healthy this year. I think he's been on the I.L. once. Pretty healthy group of older pitchers. You do want to mix your risk around. You wouldn't go all old. That would be weird. You'd probably have some moment where you just have five starting pitchers on the I.L. Do want to mix your risk around. If you, like, you wouldn't go all old, that would be weird. That would be very weird. Then you'd probably have some moment where you just have five starting pitchers on the IL, you know?

I do wonder if the time that an old pitcher loses to injury offsets any difference between how that pitcher is treated versus how the young pitcher is managed with kid gloves. Like, you're going to lose those innings either old guys because they got hurt or young guys because the teams are trying to keep them from getting hurt and they still get hurt anyway. I don't know. The reason we pick pitchers in the first five rounds

is because they're in that sweet spot where we think we can get 180 innings out of them. They'll be good and they won't get injured. Not old and not getting kid gloves treatment. Yeah, and then everyone on the other side says you pick those guys later. Be 27. That's the answer if you're a pitcher.

No, really, just do what you can to trust the numbers behind these players because they're legitimately good, even if they're not lighting up the radar gun quite the same way that they used to. Thanks for that question, Isaac. Just make age like one thing you look at a little bit later in the process you know hide that column maybe if you have to yeah right yeah oj writes in with a question that might seem odd at first blush is it actually a good thing to throw 24 strikes in a row sure you'll avoid walks and throw fewer

pitchers but don't you want batters chasing non-strikes if you're going to succeed long-term? Can any pitcher maintain sufficiently elite stuff to always be hitting in the zone? Hope you're avoiding pickleball injuries from OJ. I think this is inspired by George Kirby's outing on Wednesday, right? George Kirby was just filling the zone with strikes and that's kind of what George Kirby does, but is there something to this? Is there a point where you can actually be in the zone too much

even if your stuff is pretty good? Yeah. It's a philosophical question. I mean, the answer is yes, it's a bad thing if you have worse stuff than Kirby. Tyler Glassnow, you know, the big thing that happened with the Rays is he got one target and it was high in the zone

and he's throwing everything at that target. And so theoretically, everything he's trying to throw is in the zone. But he also has some of the best stuff in the big leagues. Like you could maybe, I think Spencer Strider would be the guy to to kind of watch like could spencer strider just hit one target for down the middle and and how would he do uh hunter green is the answer uh to what you're saying though hunter green has uh i think top five fastball stuff at least among starters he's uh got an excellent fastball and early on this season he was throwing a dead red down the middle and it wasn't working so there's that interplay of

stuff in command where yes in the zone uh but on the corners like kirby good in the zone, high stuff in the middle will hurt you eventually. As good as his fastball was, Hunter Green's, he was giving up homers. And then there's also the third caveat. I'm the king of waffles, therefore I will waffle. The third caveat is how many pitches do you have? If you are filling up the zone with three different pitch types, that's a lot different than Hunter Green throwing too many fastballs down the middle. So I think theoretically you can live with a high zone rate if you had three pitches and you had great command and you were throwing it to different parts of the zone. Yeah, because I mean, I'm looking at a zone contact percentage leaderboard. at a zone contact percentage leaderboard. And if you go down to 80 innings pitched,

just to kind of keep the relievers out of it, 128 pitchers qualify. George Kirby tied for 35th. That'd be tied for 35th. Highest or lowest? 35th lowest. Okay. So 25th percentile-ish, in a good way. And generally...

Like 75th percentile. Yeah, 75th percentile. Yeah, that's the correct way to use percentile ish in a good way and generally like 75th percentile yeah yeah 75th percentile yeah that's the correct way to use percentile i would say i would say stuff is or you know for for a starting pitcher is about average so he's overplaying his stuff by having great command there it is funny it's a funny list because they's mostly good pitchers. But do it by zone percentage. Just zone percentage? Who's in the zone the most? Oh, that's interesting. Old guy, old guy, struggling pitcher, then Kirby. Who do you think the two old guys are?

It's like Marco Gonzalez? Is that the struggling pitcher? He's not the struggling pitcher. Oh. Hmm. Is it Wainwright? It's not the struggling pitcher. Oh. Hmm. Is it Wainwright? It's not. It's Rich Hill at number one.

Oh, Rich Hill. Wow. Hugh Darvish at number two. Then Dylan Bundy. And then George Kirby. See, Hugh Darvish is interesting because he does not have good command, but he has a lot of pitch types. So he's throwing all of his pitch types towards his own.

Right. And if you have five, six, seven, eight, I don't know how many pitches you Darvish actually has at this point, a lot, hitters have to guess. Stuff's going to move late. You're going to avoid the barrel. Rich Hill is the Tyler Glassnow. I know it's weird to say that because Rich Hill throws like 88.

But Rich Hill is the Tyler Glassnow thing where it's like, I have a high stuff thing I'm just going to throw in the zone. I don't have any command yeah see there's some interesting names on this list because it goes Hill, Darvish, Bundy, Kirby Frambois, Valdez right tons of ground balls it's fine he needs to be in the zone Chris Bassett Brady Singer, Justin Steele

most of these guys have good command I think Sean Mania yeah I think this is mostly a good command list Julio Urias Logan Gilbert Shohei Otani Kyle Wright Joe Ryan, Noah Sindergaard

Otani is bad command and Darvish is bad command too but I think Otani is on the glass now one mostly just throw it towards zone you got high 90s stuff splitter comes off of it he throws more high sliders than anyone Mostly just throw it towards zone. You got high 90s stuff. Splitter comes off of it. He throws more high sliders than anyone. The other end of the leaderboard is kind of fun.

If you flip it upside down, who's in the zone the least? Jose Quintana is in the strike zone the least. I'm surprised that that works. That's not bad command. That's like I don't trust my stuff. I don't want to get hit. I'm just going to dance around the zone. Corbin Burns is number two. I think't want to get hit. I'm just going to dance around the zone. Corbin Burns is number two. I think that's bad command.

Zach Davies doesn't trust the stuff. Martin Perez. There's some soft officers who don't trust their stuff. Dylan Cease. That's bad command. Burns and Dylan Cease are the good pitchers that are not in the zone as often as everybody else.

David Peterson, Egan Anderson, Dane Dunning, Chris Flexen, Paul Blackburn. That's a lot of guys that you don't really want. Oh, it's the soft tossers who don't trust their stuff. Stuff, you know, command is confidence on some level. That's what a lot of pitchers will say. Ceason, there's a little bit of risk there with Ceason Burns where it's like,

what if hitters decided to take a really patient approach with those guys? I think the counter adjustment, if you had the ability to do it, if you're Corbin Burns, you'd throw more first pitch strikes. You'd go throw in first pitch cutters. Yeah, and Cease throws so many sliders now, you'd throw sliders in the in the zone i guess so that'd probably be their adjustment but uh thanks a lot for the question oj uh one last

email that came in was actually a follow-up response we had a league that was talking about locking teams out of making moves at the end of the season the non-contending the non-playoff teams so we have another listener who's in a keeper league. It's a head-to-head league. And what they decided to do was add a loser's bracket. So that way, everybody who wasn't in the playoffs could be in the loser's bracket, and they would be able to win back half of their entry fee. And that kept the league a lot more active throughout the entire second half.

As a head-to-head league, it kept teams trying in July and August when they might even drop off in a regular season matchup so that seems like a pretty pretty good workaround i really like that the other one that i uh that i've liked um my friend had a basketball league that we did where uh it's a graded pay in pay out scale uh so first place wins a bunch second place wins last third place wins but also third to last pays more and second to last pays more and last pays the most um and so you're fighting to stay out of the bottom because you don't want to pay more yeah no i do i'd like that i've got a league that i'm in that plays that way too where you pay a

penalty for being extra bad as long as you know people are good for the for the money that's that's a great way to set up a league also you could just you could kind of do the math where it ends up being the same where it's like uh okay if i'm if i'm fifth uh i don't pay an entry fee you know you could have a league where fifth place gets your money back yeah you could just collect all the money out front and then pay back everyone including the team that took well not the team that took last but you know just everyone gets paid back a little and then yeah yeah you can still take the money up front and just and do it that way in our league we did the more dangerous thing where we settled up at the end of the year that's dangerous because people can can leave it's just extra work for the

commissioner to track people down. I don't think for the overwhelming majority of people that play in a league together that know each other, I don't think it's that you have legitimate flight risks in your league. It's just more like a hassle to pester that one or two. Yeah, because the season's over. They're not thinking about it anymore. Yeah, they're just busy.

Leave me alone. The flip side of it was that you can actually make it sort of a payment from person to person. So last basically sends a check to first. Make the winner go collect the money from dead last. No, that's awful. Thank your commissioner. Consider tipping your commissioner if you get a long-term commissioner.

Tip your commissioner. You might as well. Send the commissioner coffee or beer or whatever it is they like because it's a thankless job. Thanks for that email, Dan. Lots of great questions today. Feel free to keep sending those in. Ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com is the email address. You can tweet at us.

Eno's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can also leave questions under this video on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Like this video if you're watching us there. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Like this video if you're watching us there. And as always, we appreciate any and all great reviews that you'd leave us for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other player or platform that allows you to rate and review the show.

That is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.