Rates & Barrels - Weekend Roster Decisions & Waiver Wire Considerations

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss the recent struggles of Royce Lewis, Jorge Polanco's cool down in May following a torrid start to the season, comps for Parker Meadows now that he's returned from the IL, Ronny Mauricio's path to short-term playing time with Mark Vientos on the IL expectations for Eury Pérez as he returns from Tommy John surgery, and other weekend waiver-wire and roster decisions to consider, before checking in with Senior Hot Dog Correspondent Niv Shah about two recent 'Taste of the Majors' adventures at Nationals Park.Rundown2:17 News & Notes: Kyle Tucker, Francisco Lindor, Josh Naylor, Brandon Woodruff, and Shane Bieber12:48 Hitters of Interest for Jac Caglianone Week14:39 Royce Lewis & Matt McLain Falling Off Shallow League Rosters20:09 Parker Meadows Comps From ATC25:33 Cole Young and Jacob Melton as Deep League Targets?28:31 Eury Pérez's Upcoming Return & Shallow League Movers33:59 Lance McCullers: Will Approach With Limited Fastballs Work?47:57 Senior Hot Dog Correspondent Niv Shah Joins the Show!1:01:20 A Chicago Hot Dog at Nationals Park Isn't a Chicago Dog At All1:18:15 Deeper League Pitchers on the RadarFollow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.socialFollow Niv on Bluesky: @ottoneu.come-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Friday, June 6th, Derek Van Ryn, or Enosaris here with you on this episode. We'll get you ready for weekend waiver pickups. We're going to continue with our new format, looking at players at in various roster rates trying to determine which routes you should choose. Lots of different options out there. Some really intriguing names actually starting to get dropped off of shallow league rosters. So we'll spend some time on those players. There is some baseball news you should know.

So we'll get to that in just a couple of minutes as well. And we have hot dogs of the world, taste of the majors. Niv Shah joins us later on in the show with a double header, two dog reviews coming up a little bit later on today. So we're looking forward to that. You know, you went to the ballpark yesterday and you weren't working.

How was it? It was good. I mean, the dog I had wasn't great, but we don't need a full review of that. When you don't grill it quite enough and it's just not, it doesn't pot, like the skin doesn't, isn't like, you know, like kind of crunchy. No snap. Yeah.

It didn't snap. I had a bratwurst that didn't snap and I was kind of like, it's a little soft. When it gets a little soft, it's just like, ah. Yep. That's a boiled it but didn't get it on the grill long enough situation. Yeah, exactly. Other than that, great. It was a perfect day.

My dad came out and it was a day in the yard with the boys. The weather was perfect. It was a good game all the way through. And afterwards we went to the mall and did an escape room and had some mall food and extended the day a little bit. It was an exhausting, long, exhausting day. But they're super happy to start their summer vacation that way. Now they're on screens for a little bit, but I'm going to kick them off later on screens during the recording to keep things nice and quiet.

Totally understandable. As I mentioned, the top some baseball news, you should should know Kyle Tucker was back in the lineup on Thursday. So just nice to see that that didn't turn into a IELTS stint for him. He went on for a couple of walks. Nothing actionable there. Just good news if you want to throw him back into your lineup for the weekend. Probably the best news of all was actually that Francisco Lindor should be able to avoid the IELTS, according to Will Salmon of the athletic Lindor suffered a fractured toe after

getting hit by a pitch by Tony Gonsolin earlier this week and as soon as I saw the first day-to-day update on that I thought oh this is gonna immediately turn into at least a short IL stint or maybe it'll cut some of his chances to steal bases and that's still a possibility you know maybe you take it a little bit easy relatively speaking take take some of his chances to steal bases. And that's still a possibility. Maybe you take it a little bit easy, relatively speaking. Take take some of that risk of aggravation out in the short term. But all in all, it kind of seems like Lindor is going to be able to manage this and play through it. You know, he's been such an amazingly consistent player.

I'm just looking at what he's done since he's come into the league. And he's just such a consistent player. I'm just looking at what he's done since he's come into the league and he's just such a consistent player. I mean, not necessarily on like a month to month level, you know? Like, we usually have these streaks where people are like, what's wrong with the door, you know? But when you look up at the end of the year, he just always posts. I do wonder if maybe the seasonal total this year for steals will be a little bit lighter than it's been in this stolen based rules era. Maybe he'll only get to like 20, 25, 20. I wouldn't be surprised if it was only like 20, if he really took a rest on the stealing.

This type of thing just hurts. You know, it just hurts. He'll be able to play through it, but it hurts. Yeah, that would be my expectation as well. Projections have him, I think between 14 and 16 the rest of the way. That'd get him to 27 so I wouldn't expect much more than that especially in the context of this ailment. Josh Naylor left early on Thursday. Apparently he's been playing through hand and shoulder injuries. That was learned by Nick Picoro of the Arizona Republic a little bit earlier this week. And Naylor's one of those guys I have absolutely nowhere,

you know, I'm not rooting against him. I just realized every time I read a note about him, like, yeah, this guy doesn't impact my life at all. If he does something good, it's bad for my teams. If he's not playing well, it ends up being good for my teams. So far this season, 12 by 12 player raider, five by five leagues, Josh Nayailer is the 59th ranked player, including pitchers. Like that's pretty amazing, given what we observed about Chase

Field and left handed power, right? That park suppresses left handed homers in a big way. Josh Nailer producing in year one in Arizona. Yeah, I mean, he cut down on a strikeout rate. And there's an accompanying cut down on swing strike rate, although it's pretty minor. And he's stealing bases. He has nine stolen bases this year. His career high is 10 in the season. So I think that's how he's keeping that afloat,

along with the batting average. I would have to say that people that have Naylor are probably a little disappointed with the power output. The bat speed is down a little bit. Barrel rate is down a little bit. As you say, the park doesn't help. He's projected right now to get to about 20 homers maybe. And I actually think that that might be his true talent. If you look at before, he was kind of like a low 20s homer guy. Then he had that big outburst of homers last year in Cleveland where the park factor

was really weird last year. I think this is who he is. I think he's kind of a 20 and 10 guy. Which is really, again, the 10 is the surprising part. Maybe it ends up being a little bit more in that category with nine steals in the bank already. The thing about Naylor that I probably underrated throughout the draft season,

I think he's rarely going to hurt you an average. Like last year at 243, that wasn't necessarily bad, but that to me felt like the lower end of his outcomes, especially for a guy that consistently carries like a mid-teen strikeout rate. He's got that down to 12.9% so far this year. I look at him as a pretty solid, balanced player overall. It's kind of like the the profile we hoped Alex Verdugo was going to have a few years ago. I think that's what a typical

Josh Naylor season is going to look like where you're getting just about average or better production all the way across the board and that Arizona lineup as we know is really solid top to bottom. It had an eruption in the ninth inning against Atlanta on Thursday to steal a game against the Braves which was a pretty wild finish but Naylor, yeah, doing it a different way so far and the only thing I'm looking at in the underlying numbers that would give me a little bit of pause about the power is that the ground ball rate has ticked back up to some of his earlier career numbers. He's at 49.3%. The last two seasons he was at 46.8 and 42.7%.

So just wanna see what he's able to do with that. If he's able to lift the ball a little more consistently, he'll still probably get to that 20 home run total over the course of the year, as long as these injuries are not part of the problem. Two players with rehab assignments that have been put on pause. Brandon Woodruff yet again, after getting hit in the elbow,

the pitching elbow by a comebacker, fortunately the diagnosis right now is a contusion. But Brandon Woodruff's road back from the anterior capsule surgery has had a whole bunch of extra bumps as he's tried to get through these last couple of rehab outings at AAA. You've talked about the stuff not being as crisp

as it was pre-surgery, which is not a surprise given the extent of what he had done. Anterior capsule is a big, big deal, but there's still no timetable for him to get back out there because for now, the contusion, the swelling around his elbow is just gonna keep him sidelined. The stuff numbers in the minors for Woodruff suggest that the only above average pitch he really has is the sweeper, which he throws the least.

And we also sometimes kind of gaze askance at stuff plus numbers for sweepers. So the change up 101, I guess that's that counts too. But the most salient number is that the fastballs for Woodruff for me are probably not coming back to where they were before. 90 stuff plus on the sinker, 84 on the fore seam. And it's weird, the results have been pretty good. But he's also, you know, you know, 16 of those innings came in A-ball where he's a man among boys. And then in AAA, decent results. But I also wonder why 9 starts and 38 innings in the minor leagues. That suggests to me that something is not quite right. A couple of outings cut short by injury,

but then also just being built up really from a spring training workload perspective. And they had to bring him along really carefully because of the timetable for all of this. What do the location numbers look like for Patrice? It doesn't take nine starts in spring training. Well, no, but it's because he got hit and stopped with the ankle injury.

The ankle injury stopped him the first time and he had to start it up again. So it's just, it's been a really bizarre progression. Location looks okay, except for the fastball. 91 location on the fastball. Sinker though 104 location, everything else above average location. So he's struggling to land the fastball on the curveball. That's not great. Not great. We'll see where it goes from here, but for now, the return of Brandon Woodruff remains on hold.

Shane Bieber was actually scratched from a scheduled rehab start that was scheduled for today due to soreness. He was going to pitch a double A Akron, had some soreness after throwing a bullpen session on Tuesday, and now he's going to check in with Dr. Keith Meister, a guy whose name keeps getting bigger in the rates and barrels word cloud. And I don't like it, not because I have any sort of personal beef with Dr. Meister, but because it means we're talking about pitching injuries a lot. I don't like it one bit. I wonder where the line is. We talk a little bit about liking somebody a little bit better on return from surgery if they've demonstrated their health at some point, right? And Bieber this year has thrown two and a third innings in the Complex League. So I would suggest

to you that that is not the line. No, that's not the line, no. However, I want to bring up Yuri Perez because I believe he's really close to the line, wherever that line is. Because Yuri Perez has thrown 22 innings and 8 starts. I guess, yeah, what am I saying? Like the Woodruff thing? It's the way they had to build him up. It's just the timetable. You can't hold that against him. Yeah, okay, I get it. I get it. Yuri Prest somehow is much closer to having demonstrated that he's ready. And that he's, you know, somebody you can bet upon. You know what I mean?

That's the line. Somewhere between 2.1 innings and 22.2 innings in the minor leagues. I mean, we've talked about it with guys that come back at the end of the regular season from an injury, make even a couple of starts. Jacob deGrom didn't have full deGrom workloads late last year, but looked enough like himself where I felt like we could make a read on the pitcher we thought he would be this year, an educated guess, some kind of reasonable prediction. So yeah I think it is a relatively low number but yeah Bieber cruising through one outing in the Complex League I would agree not quite enough to say yep he's back and of course

there's not really enough data for an outing like that at least data available to us so hopefully it ends up just being some soreness, could be a case of a veteran wanting to make sure everything's okay. Hopefully it's not a setback, but we will know soon enough. Let's talk about some bats of interest. I mean, Jack Keglione week in NFPC formats where he wasn't stashed, like he's going to command some massive, massive bids.

But if you're in a 12 team or you're in the online championship and you're looking at Kaglione versus Max Muncie Let's say you're just trying to find a utility guy. You're just trying to find the best available source of power That's kind of an interesting toss-up because in some ways the year one expectation for Jack Caglione by projection probably isn't that far off from projection for Max Muncie if you slip over to Max Muncie's page you get over to Max Muncie's page,

you get a 220 average and a 430 slugging. So projections always favor the veteran. So maybe it's not surprising that the slugging is higher for Max Muncie. The upside is obviously higher for Jack. So I would put a higher bid on him. But in that 12 team situation where you're looking at all these guys and you can put Ryan O'Hern

on your pickup tree or whatever it's called, if your waterfall. If Ryan O'Hern is on that waterfall and Kyle Stowers is on that waterfall and maybe even Adolius Garcia is on that waterfall, then I think that you should reduce the top number on Caglione to some extent because you have a bunch of other options that may even be better. They're projected to be better, you know, and you may give yourself some more flexibility down the line by picking up O'Hern over Caglione. It might be the right move. Yeah, I think that group of under 80% hitters is pretty interesting. The Fallers especially, like Matt McClain is starting to slip a little bit. Christian Campbell, I think, in some shallow redraft leagues

starting to fall off of some rosters because people are getting a little bit impatient and Royce Lewis also starting to fall too. Down to 75% rostered in CBS and I was surprised. I mean, I thought a healthy Royce Lewis was going to be a very productive player. I guess it's easy to forget that around all the injuries he still doesn't have a ton of big league experience I mean you add it all up and now we're just over a full season's worth of major league games 692 career plate appearances 34 homers 6 steals a 252 314 462 line in the overall body of work, but so far this year Royce Lewis hitting 139 with a 218 OBP and a 215 slug. It just makes me think that he's trying to play through some kind of injury

still. I think he's just pressing. You know, he famously said he doesn't he doesn't slump. And then he went on the most massive slump ever. I had a real quick image here that I just think if you look at Royce Lewis's rolling chase percentage and what he's doing at the plate, they almost always go in opposite directions. So if he's not chasing, he's doing well. If he is chasing, he's doing poorly. He has been chasing to begin this year, but most recently that has come back down. He is chasing less. And if you look at his rolling Woba, it is on its way

up. So I believe that he's about to figure this out and I would pick him up. The other interesting guy, I did look at Matt McClain because he also feels like, oh, you know, maybe we overvalued him after 2023 and this is what he actually is. But I looked at barrel hard-hit Maxi V comps for his isolated slugging both in 2023 and 2024. And so in 2023, he had a 216 ISO and a 385 BABIP. That was over his skis. His comps had a 182 ISO for Matt McClain versus 216 and his comp BABIP was 303 versus 385. So this year, he's not quite barreling as well, but he's hitting it harder, same Max

CV. His comps have changed a little bit. His comp ISO is 164. His projected ISO is 184 and his actual ISO is 122. So you can say, maybe he doesn't have as much power as he's projected to have, but he has more power than he's showing right now. His current BAP is 229, his comp is 307.

So he's better than what he is now. Maybe he isn't as good as we thought he was after 2023, but he's better than what he is now. And he's better than what should be available on JornWire. So I don't know. The thing that's so hard about this is I'm like, these guys should be all owned. I look at this list, I'm like, what are you doing? How is O'Hern on the waiver wire? How is McLean on the waiver? So I know that people are making difficult decisions. So even if I have to decide between people

who are on this list, I'm gonna take Matt McLean over Christian Campbell, you know, because Christian Campbell is in the midst of a freshmen slump, you know? I would rather have the guy who's kind of taken these ups and downs in the past. What other decisions am I making here? I guess I'd take Doyle over Garcia just because he's younger. I think he's more likely to steal more. I would take Ryan O'Hern over Miguel Vargas and Jorge Polanco, you know, because I

think Ryan O'Hern is a slugger. He knows what he's doing. What about Polanco versus McClain? I mean, McClan is 11 for 11 as a base dealer. He's getting to some power. Yeah, the slash line is bad right now, but just as we are worried about the weather having a negative impact on Andrew Abbott, at least some negative impact as the summer months roll along,

I imagine that very same impact will be a positive development for McLean on the power perspective, on top of getting further away from the injuries that sidelined him for all of last year. Jorge Polanco was on fire to begin the season, cooled off a lot in May. The combination of the two months still looks good overall, right? 10 homers in 49 games, a 253 average is fine for RotoLeague, OVP is a little light at 300, but he's slashed the K rate down to 13.5%. And we've never seen Jorge Polanco carry a hard hit rate like this 48.9% in that code category, second best barrel rate of his career.

What do you make of the uneven, but overall still positive first 50 ish games from Jorge Polanco relative to the likes of McClain and some of the other guys? I don't know. I keep looking at age 31 and I look at that age, 31, and I look at that ballpark. I'm a little surprised about how streaky Polanco has been. I don't really have an analytical reason for this, but he makes me more nervous

than a lot of the other guys on this list. Yeah, hey, you got your reason. It's just trying to put your finger on it, but the injuries, I mean, that's a pretty big part of the story for Jorge Polanco. Just hard to read Yeah, you have a Seattle Park risk with him. You have an age risk given injury risk with him You know, those are all quantifiable things. I think that's what it is for me I like the core skills these shown enough power over enough years where I believe that's gonna be there I just might come with a lower average in OVP than you would want.

So he's down 14% in roster rate over the last week, down to 62%. Could be useful in some places. I want to ask you about Parker Meadows. He is back and with Meadows return, Javier Baez's playing time looks like it's going to dip a little bit. So interest in Baez is falling accordingly. What's the expectation for Parker Meadows now that he's healthy again? I put together a comp list here of Parker Meadows

These are players that are projected to have less than a 750 OPS More than a 240 average and more than nine homers and 12 stolen bases I think this is an interesting list because it's not a whole list of slam dunks But I think these people should be owned in all these Cedric Mullins, Jeremy Pena, Jason Dominguez, TJ Friedle, Tommy Edmonds, CJ Abrams, Brenton Doyle, P. Crowe Armstrong, Luce Robert Jr., Josh Lomatt, McLean, right? Like this is like at least 80% rostered in most leagues. So right there you say, oh, he's 40% rostered and he's in a group where they're all 80% rostered. Okay, he's a pickup.

That's an amazing list. And we're gonna have to spend more time on a future episode talking about PCA being right next to Brenton Doyle. Yeah, that's right. Some of these comps for PCA, I think, would make Cubs fans very upset. And I know there's been some chatter

about how early Pete Crow Armstrong would be drafted if we were redrafting today or what his 2026 ADP might look like. And I don't think anybody would bucket him with this group of players as far as where they would expect him to go. So it could be a relative peak or at least a near term peak if you want to cash in Pete Crowe Armstrong in a long-term league even though the future

still looks like it's pretty bright. Going a little further down the list for some lower rostered guys, Ronnie Mauricio finally back after a long long recovery from a torn ACL. Just nice to see him back on the field kind of in the similar vein to McCullers getting back from all of his arm injuries. Mauricio actually held his place on Keith Law's prospect list for a while after he got hurt, which to me kind of says there's a lot of tools and things to be excited about. What do you think about his playing time outlook for this Mets club and another guy that's just knocking off a lot of rust, having not seen

big league pitching in basically two years? I don't know what it is. What's he going to play? Is he pushing McNeil to the outfield? He's been playing so far at second base in the minors and he played at third base. It's a Vientos thing. Vientos is hurt. Vientos is on the IL. Yeah, I would assume this is a short term situation and I would just rather use it as more of a look-see, gather information.

Maybe you are in a super deep league where just anybody who's going to play every day, he probably might play every day as the third baseman while Vientos is out, but it's like a two week thing. So it's a churn and burn situation for me. In his tier, I'd much rather have one of the Jesus Sanchez, Trevor Larnak, Matt Wallner group. Matt Wallner hits the ball super hard. It should give you a lot of power. Larnak is more of a balance line, a little bit better batting average. And Jesus Sanchez gives you a little bit of speed. The only problem with all three is

they are a little bit difficult to own in weekly leagues. All three of them are going to lose playing time against lefties at certain times. And so what would be nice is maybe to have two of them on your roster and just hope to avoid as many lefties as possible by switching them out for each other in weekly leagues in a situation like that. Yeah, those weekly formats are a little tricky for players that are clearly big side platoon guys. The other thought I have though, I'm Mauricio if you're in a keeper dynasty league, I mean, I held him in devil's rejects with our buddy JH. And the reason I wanted to wait it out is because I think there's the possibility

of a five category player, more likely four, like it could be a slightly low average or slightly low OBP. And the steals have kind of gone down through the injuries. A little bit, but I mean, he came back in nine games at AAA, four for five as a base dealer, he had a 564 OVP, so he had a lot of chances to run, but he popped three homers in that brief time at that level. I think the fact that he was already running at this point, like taking the long road back, I think that bodes pretty

well and he's young enough. I mean, he's still only 24. Yeah. An ACL tear in your late 20s is a lot different than an ACL tear in your early 20s. So I'm kind of optimistic that Ronnie Mauricio could pop up on a board much like your Parker Meadows comps at some point. Guys that have kind of like 2020 tools and maybe a little bit of overall like not as good as downside. But yeah, yeah.

It's the question will be, is it good enough? Is he good enough defensively? Does he fit on this roster well enough when everybody's healthy to get the playing time that a lot of other guys get? That's going to be what determines it. He's also going to have to hit the ball super hard to hit his way to an OPP. If that makes any sense, there are players that can hit their way to a decent OPP. I think if somebody maybe like a coming year, all right right where they have like a five or six percent walk rate

but they still get to a 320 OVP just by running like a 320 Babbitt you know. That'll be Mauricio's way to a decent OVP if he has one. Second base has been hot garbage too and Mauricio is at least eligible there so it could be a bit of help for deeper leagues. Last two hitters I want to throw at you from the lowest possible roster rates under 20% on CBS Cole Young up for the Mariners and Jacob Melton if you're looking for some outfield help 9% rostered right now we know Jordan Alvarez has a more serious injury than was first reported so the window is pretty open for someone to claim a lot of playing time in that Houston outfield mix.

Melton can play some center field, also missed some time this year with injuries of his own back in groin injuries, so we didn't get a full look at him at AAA Sugarland, but I think Melton's kind of interesting in 15-team leagues, especially if we see him play consistently over the course this weekend. Yeah, And what I just need from him is to stop swinging and missing. It's been pretty rough. There was the game on the 4th of June where he struck out every single time. I do think that'll calm down. It was nice to see him come back the very next day,

be in the lineup. Maybe, you. Maybe that helps him just be like, okay, I just had maybe the worst game of my career. I went 0-3 or three strikeouts and they put me back in the lineup. And that day he had two hits and two RBI and a stolen base and that's maybe he calmed those jitters a little bit and we'll see some better production going forward. I've been on record as to saying that I like a lot of his skills. He has a little bit more power than you might expect. He could combine that with power and speed. Offensively, he's, I think, a superior ceiling guy than Jake Myers, but Jake Myers' defense will keep him on the field. Myers is still good enough to play and make an impact. As far as Young goes, five straight starts since getting the call just over a week ago now.

So a lot of playing time opportunity at second base for him in that Seattle lineup for now, starting off stuck in that bottom third. Yeah, I'm worried, you know, Jeff Ponce thought that he could maybe hit for average. I'm a little worried that the stick is so light that he won't necessarily hit for average. But in the deepest league situations, he's got to be owned just because it looks like they're giving him, you know, at least the three, four weeks to look at this job. You know, maybe maybe Ryan Bliss comes back and takes the job back or whatever it is.

But I think that the way that they're using the way they're playing him is just, hey, here's a shot. Here's we're giving you a shot. You could take this job. Young was a first rounder out of high school in 2022 and he's already up. That's pretty fast track to the big leagues. He's done it with really good plate skills.

He's shown speed at a lot of stops, getting to a little more power this year too. Jeff was great by the way, last week. I thought he was a great guest to have on, does great work over at Baseball America. And he's among the many people I owe a thank you to for stepping in while I was out. Hey, I'm Robert Vinlo and I'm from New York Times Games

and I'm here talking to people about Wordle and the Wordle Archive. Do you all play Wordle? I play it every day. Alright, I have something exciting to show you. Okay. This is new. It's the Wordle Archive. What? Oh, okay. That's awesome.

So now you can play every Wordle that has ever existed. There's like a thousand puzzles. What day would you pick? Let's go back to my birthday. My first guest is going to be birth, because it's my birthday. What made you guys do an archive? It's one of our most requested features. A bunch of our other games have archives. Like the crossword puzzle? Yeah, exactly like the crossword. You know you can catch up if you missed

one which is pretty cool. Wordle Archive. Oh cool! Now you can do yesterday's Wordle if you missed it. Thanks so much for coming by and talking to us and playing. New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wordle Archive. Find out more at nytimes.com slash games. My default word is always bread. Why? I like bread. I was surprised looking at the CBS roster rates today. Your repair has only 78% rostered. There must be some leagues, I'm playing at least one,

where you can't add players that are on the IL, so unless he was drafted and stashed, you have to wait until he comes back to actually pick him up. But he's in this bunch. So here's the bunch. We'll start with the biggest group of pitchers. The pitchers just under 80% or near that 80% roster rate. You're looking at Yuri Perez against guys like Lance McCullers, Jack Leiter, Sandy Alcantara is starting to dip in terms of his roster rates, Walker Bueller, Clark Schmidt, Noah Cameron if you're looking for someone kind of rising going the other way. And you might even be balancing all of those names against somebody like Jesus Lazardo, who has just been crushed in his last two outings. A combined 20 earned runs his last two times out after he allowed just 16 runs in his first 11 starts. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that. If you look at his VELO, which is I think he's really VELO dependent,

it's been there. He's been 96.8, 96.5 in the last two games. So pretty good. That's right around normal Velo for him. If you look at it as movement patterns, not real, not a lot of difference except maybe the sinker a little bit more erratic and I can't really, I don't see a pattern there otherwise. And so I would just assume that it had something to do with a game blip in location. If you look at his location plus for the year, the last two were the, he really struggled to locate his fastball and it hasn't been a problem all year. So I'm going to

shrug it off. You know, I'm going to say it's just one of those things. People will run into it every once in a while. It's just a little bug and He'll write the ship. That's that's how I feel about him because the stuff is mostly consistent the sinker is a little up and down but It's the location that stands out and that that actually makes me feel good and and so Luzzardo for me doesn't belong on this list I think you shouldn't be dropped. And the other name that I'm still gonna ride or die with is Saniel Contra. I'm gonna take those two names off that list and say, give me those two and I'll be happy. I know it looks bad. And the bad news for Saniel Contra

is I think the slider is gone. I think the slider is never coming back. And this is something that came up on the craft with Nick Pollock, But I looked at all the people who improved their slider location numbers by at least 20 points Which is what? Saniel Contra would need to do to get his slider usable because he has a 70 location plus on the slider, right? He cannot like locate the slider and the only other people that have ever done it there's only been two players that have ever done it and Both players stop throwing the slider. That's how they got that's how they got around it. It was like Blake Snell, you know, when he stopped throwing the slider

and and Tanner Bybee when he changed the shape of all of his breaking balls and basically stopped throwing that version. So I think San Alcantara is not really ever going to throw that slider again. Why do I think this is good news? Well, in the last start, he leaned into the curve, which actually has okay location plus, has okay stuff plus. He leaned into the sinker, which has been valuable for him. And there's been some signs of life. I know it was also the Rockies on the road.

So it was about the best that the situation could be But I picked up Saniel Contra in one league where he was dropped and I would be I'm using him basically as a team streamer where I'll use him in good situations at home and And avoid him on the rest until he kind of shows something better, right? I mean at least at a minimum that plays in a lot of formats and you look at the overall body of work this season before that outing against the Rockies, six innings, two earned, four Ks, just one walk. The earned run out, each outing before that, at San Diego, six, at the Angels, five, home against the Rays, four earned. Road against the White Sox, four earned.

Home against the Dodgers, five earned. Road against the Dodgers, seven earned. I mean, it's been just a miserable stretch for Sandy. So to see basically making a layup, that's at least a nudge in the right direction. I wonder if that's just gonna be a blueprint in the sense of, okay, we can work this way. We can use this arsenal and still get a lot of guys

out and still be really good even if we're not quite, you know, Cy Young Sandy at this point. That would still be a really big outcome and there's probably still enough time between now and the trade deadline where if they can find something that works for these next seven or eight starts, the interest in him as a trade target will probably tick back up. I don't think it's going to take a lot for teams to say, all right, this, this works again, we're interested in getting an upgrade in our rotation. So still time for the Marlins, still time for Sandy.

I could see those shallow leaguers getting impatient and seeing some names that are at least pretty interesting in that group. You know, you have some tough decisions to make. We haven't talked about Lance McCullers really at all on this show and just the fact that he got back from injury at all I think is remarkable. Like I thought maybe we had seen Lance McCullers on the big league mound for the last time

just given the length of his absence. So he's back out there and I don't have pie in the sky sort of expectations from a colors. He's got a career 351 ERA and a 126 whip. If those were his ratios, the rest of the way, that'd be to me like one of the best case scenarios for results given that he didn't pitch in 23 or 24, given that he's still going to walk guys and given that he is giving up some hard contact early on so far, too, like I'm a little I'm still a little worried about him having to knock some more rust off here

in the weeks and even months ahead. I don't trust him. I didn't even rank him as high as his projections suggest I should in the rankings. He was a little bit lower than his projections. And the reason why is that he's throwing fewer fastballs than like, I looked back and there's only like two or maybe two seasons of a qualified starting pitcher throwing fewer fastballs. You know, throwing a smaller fastball rate. That's making me nervous. You know, it just makes me nervous that people are going to sit slider and then that's going to take take away the efficacy of his best pitches, you know. And when I see that hard hit rate and when I see that home

run rate, which is out of whack with what he's done in the past, I know that, you know, my brain says, hey, the home run rates are really noisy. He should regress to his personal mean, you know. but my heart says they're sitting slider dude, you know, and that might be different than when he's done in the past. It's really just a record few amounts of fastballs. And, you know, the other guys on the list that don't that didn't throw fastballs were not super heartening, you know, it wasn't, there was Logan Gilbert this year. That was the best pitcher in the 10 around him. And yes, that list is skewed towards now

because there are more and more pitchers that are throwing fewer fastballs. But another guy on the list that sort of reminds me is sort of Tanner Hauck was on that list of very few fastballs, lots of sliders. And I think that that sort of risk of maybe a decent stretch but also just a terrible collapse sits there for McCullers. There's a few reasons of rooting for him. One, the long injury. Two, McCullers was on

the receiving end of death threats soon after returning from the IL. Just a horrible situation, apparently from an inebriated and frustrated better, which is just disgusting. And he's managed to, despite the stress from all of that, continue to put the pieces back together. Last two starts, kind of doing the... We talked about Jacob deGrom with Trevor yesterday and you're like, well, deGrom hasn't looked the same the last two start, last two outings. McCullar's last two outings, he's gone six innings both times out it was six scoreless against the Pirates with

seven K's in one walk and it was six against the A's with three earned but 12 K's in the start before that so it's a little bit unconventional but I think he might have good enough stuff to still make it work I think the typical Lance McCullers start is gonna be more in that five inning range, maybe five innings with five or six Ks. So I think he will be getting deep enough into games to be eligible for wins. The Astros bullpen, high quality bullpen,

capable of protecting leads. I think maybe you're looking at slightly inflated ratios with good Ks and higher than average win probabilities for a guy that pitches as deep into his starts as McCullers will on occasion. So I kind of I kind of like him in deeper leagues. What did he do in those two two starts that was different? Completely turfed the four seam just did not even throw one.

Right. And eventually you're right. Like I think the way hitters are going to approach that will be different. Yeah, it is a little different than a ten or half because he does have multiple curveball, multiple breaking balls. Right. And he does have a good change up. So it's just it's just remarkable to see someone you're like, oh, this guy's throwing 20 percent fastballs.

Like, I don't know. I don't trust it. But, you know, on that list, you know, oh, actually, just as a side, I did have something weird happen this last week or somebody said some rude stuff on social media and then apologized afterwards. And I was like, wow, and they were like, yeah, I'd been drinking all day.

Yeah, like it happens. I mean, like in terms of like a more base sort of situation like the McCullers threats are inexcusable But being rude to someone it happens. I've been rude to people you just have to acknowledge it and apologize and do better Oh, yeah, shout out to that person that was there was I was like, hey man, this is thank you This doesn't happen very often. Yeah, it's very kind to own up to that mistake So nice to hear that. So of this rest of this list though, you know, I, you know, the Yuri Perez. So Sandy is a soft second for me, right? But Yuri's one. Yeah. Like I was looking at Yuri. I was like, if I'm ranking these guys,

I think it's Jesus, Yuri, Sandy, and then around McCullers. I think I'm putting Clark Schmidt above McCullers. Schmidt over McCullers, I think both have low health grades, but Schmidt's not quite as low of a health grade as McCullers, given, yeah, if that makes sense. A little bit of stuff returning, I believe, for Clark Schmidt, at least in terms of his Clark Schmidt, at least in terms of his, his VELO is at least up from when he started. And his cutter, the first couple of starts was like 91. Now he's comfortably 93. I also just like that he's figured out his, you know, the cutter is his primary fastball now and he can use that

and he shows, demonstrates good command of it. And I think he's settling into what he is I think he is a little risky at times because of he's going to be facing a lot of tough opponents in tough parks You know, but other than that, like I think he's a pretty solid pitcher the rest I might take a pass on all of them. I might just say Walker Bueller Jack Leiter Noah Cameron Thank you for your service. Yeah, you got to tread pretty carefully, I think, with that group as a whole. And Cameron, you know, the results are great.

One of seven era since May 1st. But you're talking about what? A 17 percent strikeout rate. I mean, that's just not going to fly in most leagues. And with lighter a four eighty five Sierra and a 91 mile an hour fastball. Right. And lighter since May 1st is a 6.2% K minus BB percentage. It's the lowest of the seven guys that have pitched

that are in this group. I mean, I have a fair amount of shares. I have a main event share. And so I'm like just I'm riding this up and down. It's crazy that the stuff has just been really good. The Stuff Plus has been really good all year and the Location Plus is not good, it's really bad. And I think that's what's just robbing him of efficacy.

But then you switch over to the results dashboard and you're like, every time you want to drop Jack Lighter, he throws a gem. You're just like, what? What do I do? He just thrown two gems in a row and yet he still hasn't been in our active roster. He's been on our bench the whole time. I don't know. I don't know what to do with them. Last two starts though, would you want to point to some change that's easily identifiable? I think it's maybe the most balanced mix he's thrown all year in terms of fastballs and sinkers and sliders and curves. There's nothing that stands out in terms of velocity or stuff. You know, the location plus in the last two games, 94, 99. Maybe that's if he can settle there, he'd be usable.

But I just it's maddening. Maddening is the word maddening indeed. And it just it looks like the exact profile of someone we would be talking about as a certain regression candidate. If this were built up over a larger share of innings, we're like, come on, this is like some Andrew Abbott stuff, but it's even worse underlying numbers. Like the sub 20% K rate for the season, above 10% walk rate. I guess the big difference is the home run to fly ball compared to every stop Jack Leiter has had as a pro is better.

He's down to a 7.9% home run to fly ball rate. If you look at all of his minor league stops, it's like 12.5% was the previous best at AA all the way back in 2022. And that's the change up in the sinker that he's added this year at the major league level. If you've neutralized the home run a little bit, that accounts for some of it.

And oopsie says 414 ERA 132 whip, by far the most optimistic of the public facing projections. Can you at least get comfortable with that sort of expectation? Right now he's putting up a 348 and a 116. So it's still be a reasonable crash, but not unusable if he actually hits that projection and you're able to use him carefully at home and in favorable matchups like that. That's me is sort of the tagline for Jack lighter right now is he's not a he's not a crockpot pitcher. You're not just throwing him in there and leaving him in there. You're just going to be a little more careful. There's probably some places where you could have avoided some bad outings.

I mean, he had more walks than strikeouts at Boston. I don't think he would have started him at Boston, but he also had more walks than strikeouts at San Francisco. And in terms of walks and strikeouts, at least his best game this season has been at Cincinnati. So he's varied. His strikeout rate has varied from game to game from 38% in that Cincinnati game to 8% against Seattle and his walk rate has varied from 0% to 25%. So it's just all over the place. I think the best use case that I can come up with Jack Leiter is throw in in a keeper league deal. Because someone can talk themselves into him getting better. Extra spice, you know, I could be on either side of it.

I could trade lighter because it's pretty volatile and if I need something better for this year then I'll do it. I could accept lighter because if I was rebuilding I'd be like, hey, at least the stuff plus and the great games show you the upside that is there. At some point we should try and put together a list of the 10 most tradeable players. Guys that you would, just like lighter guys you would trade for, the guys you'd actually be okay trading away to.

Because then we'll see if we're... It's an interesting list of players. I feel good enough about this player to add him to my team. But I feel confident enough he's not a superstar to go ahead and flip him away to get something that helps me more. Yeah, it's a hard list because the list of players we're all comfortable trading away, I mean that's a long one. You know, the list of players that we all are comfortable trading for is a long one too, but the kind of, you know, the...

The Venn diagram. The Venn diagram. It's not, it's not not does not have a huge sliver in the middle. I don't think it does. So finding 10 players will be a challenge. This next list that you've got pitchers under 60 percent rostered includes Mick Abel, Zach Lattell, Ryan Yarborough, Jose Soriano, Jeffrey Springs, Eric Fetty. I would love to treat any of these guys as kind of a start by start basis. If I had to roster a guy, it would probably be Mick Abel.

I just really like, you know, the stuff under the hood, the results have been good. But he also, like, I don't, he has probably, like, who knows how long his shelf life is? Like, how long is he going to be on this fillies, in this fillies rotation? And the rest, I find you're living on the edge with most of these guys. Ryan Yarbrough, though, has changed both his sinker and his change up, which is a thing the Yankees do. And I think he's probably a little bit more, what did you call it? Croc potty? Yeah, croc potty. I mean, that almost sounds like a different product, but a croc pot pitcher. Set it and forget it.

Oh, croc potty sounds like it's a, yeah, that's right. Anyway, if it was a set it and forget it guy in here, it might be Yarborough or Soriano just because I know Soriano is volatile to an extent, but with the sinker, you know, I think that he's OK. Like he'll be OK. Yarborough will be OK. But they're deep league guys. And in terms of upside, the only one I really want is is Mick Abel. I think that's a good overall take. I think it's time to bring on our senior hot dog correspondent, Niv Shah. Niv is here and this is going to be perhaps the most loaded segment we have had so far because there are two full dog reviews coming up here in just a few minutes. Niv, thank you so much for making time for us again today. Thanks for having me guys.

I'm a little nervous about today, I'm going to be honest, but the hot dog side of things at least. We'll get to it. We'll get to the hot dogs in just a couple of minutes, but I want to talk about some players that are being frequently added. Most auctioned players on AutoNew in the last week or so. Lots of auctions running right now. Lance McCullers Jr. We were just talking about him a couple of minutes ago. The most auctioned player right now. And Ryan Yarbrough, as Eno just mentioned, with some changes for the Yankees. I mean, an old dog can learn new tricks, apparently. I kind of thought Ryan Yarbrough was a what you see is what you get at this point, but he's getting an opportunity on a good team.

We've seen him run nice ratios in the past. And it's more I think it's more a commentary on just how bad pitching injuries have been and how anybody with a pulse on a good team that could give you something is going to be of interest in auto new and really everywhere. Yeah, I mean, you're you're a noted never paddock. Yeah, we were talking about it just before coming on. Like, Yarborough is just like, it makes sense, but the fact that it makes sense is upsetting. Yeah, it makes sense, but it's tough. It's just not inspiring, right? But, you know, it's hard to be inspired at this part of the year until like until you start seeing prospects start coming up later in the year, whatever. Pitching is what it is right now. There's at least one prospect on there,

Jonah Tong getting some love in Autumn New. And I think my question for you about Tong and pitchers that are similar is like, what does your roster situation typically look like when you're stashing a guy like this? Like how often are you adding a prospect at AA if you're also contending? And how much of your roster do you allocate

to players like that? It's a larger roster, you're always trying to balance winning now and playing for the future even in those situations, but are you doing something like that if you're contending right now in most circumstances? I think in Auto New you probably are not, which isn't, I mean, it doesn't sound logical because

you do have, like you mentioned, 40-man rosters a little bit deeper, but it turns out it's nicer to have platoon depth or yeah, just the ability for like absorbing a day off from a, from a starter for you rather than like, and hitting your game caps becomes really important in AutoNu because especially in the points format, which is the most popular one, if you don't have 162 games at second base, for example, you're leaving points on the table. That's just the fact of the matter. So is it better to have a backup middle infielder or a double A pitcher? Well, if you're really trying to optimize your points output or optimize your overall like statistical output of your team It's better to have that backup middle infielder

I would guess Jonah Tong is getting a little bit of love obviously he is pitching really well right now but he's getting a little bit of love from teams that are you know post Memorial Day sort of thinking like it might be time to like Gather up whatever is around because the other thing about auto new is that, you know, we'll add players as soon as they sign with their major league teams out of the draft. And that's sort of like an early July thing. And what you want to do is sort of figure out where you are sitting in

terms of your budget and your minor league system, such as it is, if you are. Looking to rebuild ahead of when those auctions start because first rounders there's a lot of hype for them because you know they're covered on TV that you get a lot of press about them so everyone knows their names. Some of them have just come off being on ESPN for two straight weeks to the college world series and everything so there's a ton of hype and you really need to know like what is your farm want to look what do you want your farm to look like as you get into like August, September, maybe late trades or thinking about next year? So I think like, you know, now is the time to grab ascendant, double A, triple A guys that are like, you know, maybe you want top 100 at the beginning of the year, but maybe you could break into it now. Those midseason updates are starting to roll out from a lot of places and then the updates

I think over time become even more frequent but I think a lot of outlets have some fresh ranks up and Tong's definitely a riser. He's got a 202 ERA, a 102 with 83 Ks in 49 innings at AA. That's absurd. Yeah, ridiculous. So that'll get a lot of attention. But I think if you are trying to be competitive, you're probably hoping someone else takes that Jonathan,

you probably aren't dating. Kyle Teal's a guy that people are gonna be thinking a lot about. He's on that most auction list right now. Should be up for the White Sox soon. Eight homers and seven steals in 50 games at AAA. Nice to have a catcher that can do everything. Keeping the K rate manageable at 25.4%. He also walks a ton too so you've seen some really

nice OBPs from him throughout his time in the Red Sox system before he was traded this winter. Given the way catchers work in auto-new, you have two slots, you don't have to use them all the time, you still get the same cap of 162 games. So what does that do for a player like Teal? Because I find in traditional rotisserie leagues, the young catchers breaking through are really frustrating players to roster when their playing time ends up being 30 to 50% of a share.

Like their teams want them to play enough, but they don't always trust them with game calling and all the things that they want from a catcher. So do these guys fit better in auto new given the way the roster is built? Yeah, I think they do. One of the big things in auto new and most formats you have to catcher slots. And the main reason we still have those two catcher slots is because if you don't have them, it becomes almost impossible to hit your game caps. And like I mentioned earlier, in points leagues, especially hitting your game caps really important. Kyle Teal, it's a great example of, you know, if you're like 21, 22, you probably are not going to come in and start four games or five games a week.

He can be your supplemental catcher with a more traditional catcher. So the way to think about it is someone more like, well, I guess less like, like an Adley Rushman or less like who we talked about in the past, like a Soderstrom or a Rice where those guys play every day. But if you can, if you have more of a traditional catcher that like Kaber Ruiz, for example, who generally won't play on a day game after a night game and generally won't be slotted into DH, sometimes you will game and generally won't be slotted into DH. Sometimes he will, but generally won't be. Kyle Teal can be like a great complement to that because he'll be picking up those extra games.

And, you know, so you're not giving up, you're giving, you're not giving up overall production. You are getting like a nice complement. And then next year, if, you know, if he does well this year, next year year you're looking at a nice starting catcher Like you've solved starting catcher for next year. I think in a more traditional league He's more of a stash right like he's more of a more traditional keeper league. You're like, okay I'll snag him or you could be like, oh man Maybe the White Sox maybe the White Sox will throw Kyle Teal out there six days a week cuz like why not? What else do they got going on? So you can look at it that way

But but I think in auto new, he can fit even in a competitive team, he can fit really well. I think we gotta get to the hot dog reviews. There's a lot at stake. There's a lot to talk about, and there are two hot dogs, and the second one is gonna be a conversation.

We're gonna have to have a conversation. I think the first one's a little bit of a mess here And I'm gonna ask you know the first question about this So the San Francisco dog was the first of the two dogs for this week and the description Healthy, maybe not with this beef frank top with herb mayonnaise piled high with a savory vegetable slaw You know I'm into this one. We called it to a certain extent too like you know There's a garlic aioli on there Yeah, we got that part, right? But why why slaw cuz they're trying to just have a healthy thing and they think coleslaw is healthy got vegetables in it

I'll give you guys a quick note on this one the slaw While described maybe terribly in that sign. It was like a quick pickle situation. Oh really crunchy So a lot of good texture not not soggy not overly wet. Yeah, not wet. That's the only way this works If I had this in the seventh inning, I might have been like that's a wet hot dog I didn't love that but I had it before the game started and I thought it was simple It was understated and it was like, you know, it felt refreshing now. What does that do with San Francisco? I mean it has Like this idea of what like other people think San Francisco is

You know, I think that's the most interesting thing about these hot dogs and it's like worth saying explicitly like this isn't a San Francisco dog. It's what the Washington Nationals think of San Francisco, right? Maybe this one specific person. Yes, right. Maybe that one guy like, you know, what you could do is you could say well, you know, I'm gonna reach out to 29 other people in Major League Baseball and be like, what do you guys think your hot dog would be? But that's not what this is. So it's like, it's sort of like through a lens and I really enjoy that part of it, right?

It's like, it's steeped with like an attitude of like, what does Washington DC, which is like this mid Atlantic, not quite New York, but surely down for some East Coast bias. Think about. And the labor tax points to that direction, right? You know, like, yeah, yeah. Healthy. No.

Do you think everyone is a vegetarian in San Francisco? You put this on a hot dog like let's move. I'm just thinking, I didn't see that much slaw in the two years I was in the Bay Area, like it's Like it's not a frequently served side out there. They're just not doing that. But I'm glad that it wasn't wet because a wet hot dog will make all of us sad. No one wants that. The words in the description make you think is going to be like,

you know, picnic coleslaw that you, you know, you would think of at a barbecue or something. Yeah. But in like culinary terms, slaw is like can be a lot of things. Chopping those vegetables in that way. Right. So we had a good crunch. I always like throwing also like this against like what would we do like we who know San Francisco, what would we do? I think I'd probably go Asian somehow. I mean, it's a very Asian city. It is a very Asian city. I would definitely just lean into the garlic. Like there's tons of this. Just put some garlic fries on top of it or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Garlic fries on the dog. Yeah. This is a little price on the dog. So this sounds like a general like a winner. Like you would get this again. Like if you went to two games in the same series, you'd go back and get the dog again. It's not like top five or something. Well, no, if I was in charge of like the culinary situation at Nationals Park, I would just be like, here is another hot dog. Like, it wouldn't be like, yeah, it's just like this thing worked.

It worked. It was a start there. It worked. So that's important because, you know, we've had some of these that didn't work. Like, you know, I've I learned the barrier for a little bit. It is not a barrier food. It is what an uninformed East Coast bias person San Francisco is like. And like, that's just what it is. And I like that about this experiment that they're doing at Nats Park.

I think that's a fun part of it because it's like so silly. Like, you know, honestly, how serious can we take any of this? But it's like it's very fun. Well, the next one people might take seriously. Yeah, people are going to get very upset about this. So we have a Chicago dog or the Nats Carp take on one. It looks so terrible. What? It is the ugliest hot dog you've presented us so far this season.

But it does have the Poppy bun, like you said. It did have the poppy bun. What I like about this hot dog is that a good Chicago dog, and I've only had a couple, is very beautiful. And like you said, this is clearly well arranged and very properly put together, composed, and it still looks so dumb. It's just so silly looking. Obviously, like, you know, tomatoes in general, It looks so dumb. What? It's just so silly looking.

Obviously, like, you know, tomatoes, in general, tomatoes are a high variance food, so they're not going to get us the best tomatoes. They don't look like the best tomatoes. Even the pickles don't look like the best pickles. And the jalapenos don't look like good jalapenos. No. They all look like they a three days old So underneath the help, you know, there is chopped onion and just the regular Heinz relish Yeah, I could see a little bit of that onion peeking through and then there is mustard down there. So look I have some ideas and I Would like to go first Derek because I think you're you know, no offense, but I think Derek is probably the expert here I think you're, you know, no offense, but I think Derek is probably the expert here on the Chicago dog.

Yeah. So I was there with a couple of Cubs fans and we were talking a little bit about like what they got right, what they get wrong. I'll say first off, just so everyone knows how this is colored, all of us liked it. Oh, okay. It tasted good. It was fun to eat. Again, it is like a cartoon filter of what an East Coast person thinks a Chicago dog is. But we liked it. The things it presented well,

I thought was that like, you know, Chicago dogs have a bunch of crap on them. This had a bunch of stuff on it. It's very busy. It was clearly like it was dragged through the garden as my friend said with the relish and everything. You know, it's piled high with toppings. It's good. The poppy seed bun also good. A couple of notes that I mentioned, obviously jalapenos. Like that's going to be the headline. Like, does that immediately make this a non-qualified Chicago dog?

Because the Chicago dog does not normally have jalapenos on. Does not know. It has something called the sport pepper, right? Yes. What is a sport pepper? I think what they were trying to do with the jalapeno is they were trying to replicate a sport pepper without buying a pepper that they would have to try to reuse some other way and not have any other use for. Because it is a little bit spicy, but it's a long skinny pepper.

It's almost like to me, like a pepperoncini. Like if you think about sliced pepperoncini, it's a little bit like that, but it's a long skinny pepper. It's almost like, to me, like a pepperoncini. Like if you think about sliced pepperoncini, it's a little bit like that, but it's a skinnier pepper. And then of course the bright green neon relish, like that's also on the Chicago dog usually. What color is the sport pepper? It's actually kind of a light green color, I think. It's a similar color to a pepperoncini, right?

Yeah, it looks a lot like a pepperoncini, but just a long, skinny pepper. But so you're trying to bring the heat of that and you understand why they're doing that. The relish is traditional relish and not the bright green relish, which I guess there's a distinction there. I mean, just me making that face and asking that question makes me really concerned that some Chicago people are going to show up at my house and be like, man, what are you talking about? Obviously, this is a really different. that some Chicago people are gonna show up at my house and be like, man, what are you talking about? Obviously, this is a really different... The one thing, you know, Derek, you're right that they didn't want to buy the sport pepper, but they did buy the poppy seed buns.

And I think that deserves some credit. This is a little complicated, but there's two stands that make these hot dogs in the stadium. One of them always drills the buns. It's just an automatic thing they do. So this was a grilled bun, which I know is wrong. You're making a bad face. Why? Why is that a bad thing? It's just heating up the bun.

Yeah, I thought it was nice and my buddy next to me was just like, it's too crunchy. And I'm like- Yeah, the crunch comes from other things on a Chicago dog, it doesn't need to come from the bun. That's- Oh. I'm like, I'm not from Chicago I am steeped in the Midwest I have a lot of sausage like it's one more thing real quick right the tomatoes on the Chicago dog fine that's what that's your thing people from Chicago among all the people

have met are the most aggressive don't put ketchup on your hot dog people ever. And then go to culinary school. What is ketchup made from? It's amazing how aggressive people are about ketchup specifically in Chicago. Yeah, it's weird. Then they were like, we're going to put like on mediocre to me. Yeah, we're going to put a bad chunk me. Yeah, we're gonna put a bad No, so now okay look so I don't want I don't want this to turn into now we're bashing this Oh, yeah

I feel like we could go down that path and then the other note I got Derek and we mentioned this was that the hot Dog was a little big. So can you talk to me a little bit about like the actual like hot dog was? You know a thick hot dog. It actual like hot dog was, you know, a thick hot dog. It was like a proper Hebrew national quarter pound. Is the Chicago dog supposed to be like a skinny long dog? Well, things just start falling off really quick. Yeah, you just got to have more room in the bun.

They use a smaller dog there, smaller Frank for the Chicago dog. It's just the way it goes and celery salt too, right? No celery salt on this thing. No celery salt. Yeah, which that feels like that was that could have been addressed you gotta have that somewhere in the stadium you don't want to buy a bunch of sport pepper I get that I don't know what a sport pepper is other than to read literally a dog use celery salt that's I'm of two minds one mind is like look I have lived in Chicago briefly I have not really from Chicago in any kind

of real sense as an adult I have only had a couple of these I know most the rules they broke You know the bun being steamed and the hot dog being smaller were new to me But I know what the toppings need to be to get a proper. I don't know where this was going like I on one hand I'm like kudos to you guys for trying to do a Chicago dog When you know, we just talked about San Francisco dog and it's just like unmoored and unconnected from the region. But on the other hand, like, what if you just did something unmoored

and unconnected from the region and just for like really goofy? We're not going to make everybody happy. You were never going to nail this one. Yeah, people were going to be mad no matter what they did. I think that was that was the main takeaway for me. But yeah, if you're going to put a salad on top of a hot dog, you can

use a smaller dog. That's the the main rule as far as getting that to work. There's a bonus hot dog review. I had some hot dogs recently. Love it. The Mr. Baseball's famous Franks.

It's surprising I had not eaten these previously because they've been around for a while using girls out out of Milwaukee had a Bob Uecker supported hot dog and they still make them, which is great. I love that. Yeah, I love that. It's beautiful. So for me, like a basic hot dog at home,

like a Hebrew national dog, throw that on the grill. It's going to turn out pretty good. Throw whatever toppings you want on it. Yeah, put ketchup on it if you want. I'm not going to yell at you, like Make it taste however you want it to taste. Good job. These were very similar to Hebrew nationals in terms of quality, maybe slightly better seasoning. The one thing that I don't understand about some hot dogs, and perhaps this is actually a cooking method thing and not an actual hot dog thing. You ever notice sometimes hot dogs

like bubble up and they get kind of like a funky tech, like it's not a bad texture necessarily, but there's like little pockets of air in the casing or something. That's my only complaint. Aesthetically these just looked a little odd because they had some of that bubbling going on. That might be a heat problem. I think it might be a heat problem because my grill was like flames that day. I got to clean my grill. I do feel you on that because the aesthetics of the hot dog like

This is proof. I've had too many hot dogs because of you guys this year But one thing I've noticed is the gnats dogs pretty nice char on them I maybe I should do a plain one next time just so you guys can see the baseline that we're working with here because They got a nice char on them. They're generally aesthetically pleasing. They're big for a $5 $6 base hot dog at a ballpark. It's pretty good. So I think they deserve a little bit of credit for that too, which is a weird thing to say. But I mean, you guys have been to ballparks with bad hot dogs, right? Like you ever think about getting a hot dog at Giants, like at

a Giants stadium? Oh, I just, you weren't here for it, but I just gave a review of a Giants hot dog I got yesterday that was awful. Wasn't it a brat? I got a bratwurst and they didn't leave it on the grill long enough. So the casing wasn't snappy. And they gave me they didn't toast the bun and they gave me onions and peppers. And then they gave me this brat that didn't have a snappiness to it.

Any resistance. So just the whole thing was just like a big old mush. It's like you just take a bite and you're like, what? Yeah, like if I'm going to Giant's Park and you know, I'm hoping to go to Giant's Park in a couple weeks, I think I would just get garlic fries. Just a quick recommendation. Right. You get the garlic fries if you want to do the thing that everyone does. Right. And they're they're pretty decent. The other thing that's worth the line is probably the crab sandwich, which is just a bunch of butter and a bunch of crab. And then the sort of underrated thing, there's a couple there's there's an Aji Poke thing over by First Base.

Since I'm at the park so often, I'm like, today I'm going to be healthy. I'm going to get some Aji Poke. It's actually healthy, as for the whole thing came from on that San Francisco dog. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's not. Well, let's be glad they put the Aji Poke on top of the hot dog. Although I might take one bite of that. The other one is just they have these Japanese fried chicken sandwiches and they're just really, really, really well done.

Just an idea. And this is not what this is. But I wonder if it would be fun to do the exact opposite of what this is and basically bring in like a celebrity chef from each of these cities and like turn it into a thing where you're like, oh, you know, I don't know. There are certain chefs that are associated with certain cities. I don't know who would be for Chicago, but you know, basically have like a big chef that's like like and you'd get people waiting in line you'd get people coming to that game for that chef for that reason and you know they could be there for like an hour and then they're their dog that they made could be there for the whole series and

It would be sort of high-level. Maybe it had maybe you can even charge like 25 bucks for it You know, what if the guy at Nats Park who gets to make these calls which you know he's they're having fun this is clearly not this is not what I'm suggesting this is just sort of a fun little thing they're doing yeah but this is joyful thing that they're doing like it's fun it's like it's it has to be because they are doing different things for each thing and that's that's fun you know we've gone from a Chicago with a garden on it all the way back to that Orioles dog with like that two pounds So like you know they're having fun with it. I think you just you just do something like hey

I'm gonna call up the guy at the Giants. I'm gonna call up the guy at the Dodgers I'm gonna call up the guy at the Royal or in between our two ideas Yeah, but I think that's like an attainable idea because these guys, you know, 30 teams. This is a small club. We talk about this all the time. So like you can do this, but I also really do enjoy that. This is just some, some like three or four dudes at Nat's culinary. Just being like, I hope it's like they're sitting in a room and they're like, uh, here's who's coming up in the next two weeks.

Go no bad ideas. I imagine that seven show a smoky room Guys we're gonna put on the dog this week Yeah, it's like a the Simpsons bit about how they picked the president Well, you were going to pop elected there for a second DVR. What was your idea there? So my idea was that you could take a place that maybe needs a little juice. Let's say Anaheim, right? Anaheim could use a little juice,

but its proximity to Los Angeles gives it easy access to celebrities, right? So let's say the Cubs are visiting the Angels for an interleague series, and you could have a celebrity who would represent a city. Oh, that's good, I like that. So let's say we get Jeremy Allen white out there firing up some dogs and You know like that

Whatever Jeremy Allen wise has to put on the dog and maybe he knows exactly what a Chicago dog Maybe he knows maybe he doesn't And he drops the line. He's like that's fire chef. Like he just you know, he does the pretty cool Just two minutes two minutes of video on Twitter, on X or whatever. And it's just like, boom, go. Now you guys want to go to the angels game. This is the kind of stuff they do in the minor leagues. I mean, the Washington, there's a Washington minor league team that actually had a famous chef come in. I remember

this. There was a big presentation and people were waiting in line outside for like hours before the game started because they had like a crazy Chef you do the full. So that's so fun. I love it I think some of these major league teams need to bring some of that minor league energy in terms of ideas Yeah, I mean look the Nats are the Nats. I feel like this is what they're doing. Like it's good You know, we we have will it float up on the Jumbotron just like or they just like the witch trials No, like last year local grocery store sponsored it and they just threw produce in a bucket and it almost floats because

Produces fruit. Yeah, it's amazing. It was so good Just take a giant head of cabbage and throw it into a bucket And this is the thing they do on the jumbotron or something they do it in between any Yeah, it's like one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life. It's just like and the answer is always But I'm still excited. I still want to see you throw this thing. You're like baby one day Wow Does it oh it all floats, man. It's just like, yeah, yeah, you're in. That's what I'm saying.

You're hooked. You're going to see something. You'll be like, surely this is the one. Surely, surely we have found a piece of fruit or vegetable that will not float. And it's just like the best part about it is the production value of it, because it's just some intern in their backyard and a folding table and did like 20 of them in one day and then they do it once a week it's so good and like you know and they do the hot dog and they do the and they have

the presidents with the big heads it's it's fun that's the stuff you have to do when when you are unwilling to produce starting pitching. Got to be good at distractions. That's the way to go. Yeah. Or, you know, Mackenzie Gore pitches once every five days. So it's pretty fun. Yeah. The other four days, you got to bring it. So I'm out of town for the next couple, but I might have some fun stuff from the road for you guys in a couple of weeks.

Well, we're looking forward to that, and if we appreciate your time and your insight, as always, 30 minutes of hot dog reviews. Well we had like five minutes of ice ball in there but that's what people are here for but yeah, safe travels Niv, we'll catch up with you again in a couple weeks. Thanks guys, see you soon. It's our senior hot dog correspondent Niv Shah, he's also the founder of AutoNu, bringing you even closer to the hot dogs that you can't get at the ballparks near you. All right you know, let's get to a few more pitchers, getting down a little further,

some guys that might be more widely available, under 40% rostered right now. We're gonna include the under 20% in this group too. One of your favorites, Edward Cabrera, still sitting down there. Chad Patrick for the Brewers, under 40%, getting great results. I don't know how he's getting away with it, but he's getting away with it. Some lower rostered guys like Sawyer

Gibson Long who just came back from a couple of big injuries, Charlie Morton back in the rotation and then the likes of Slade Tocconi and Quinn Priest are kind of working in a bulk role right now. So anybody out of that group the below 40% that you think stands out to have a little more juice that could be viable for at least a few starts. Edward Cabrera dropped his arm slot, changed his pitch low 40% that you think stands out to have a little more juice that could be viable for at least a few starts. Kite Edward Cabrera dropped his arm slot, changed his pitch mix, and is in the midst of the best five game stretch of command in his career.

So I pick him off of this list. But you have to be careful with this type of analysis because Charlie Morton is throwing a kick change. How far do you want to push this kind of analysis because Charlie Morton is throwing a kick change. How far do you want to push this kind of analysis? I love Charlie Morton, but he's not the next guy I take. The next two guys I take off this list are Chad Patrick and Sawyer Gibson Long. Long does some interesting things, but he didn't go deep into that situation. So I'm going to actually leave him down there unless I really need him because him, like Priesterester interesting pitcher, sinker, not the ideal fastball shapes and not the ideal rolls where both of them might be used in these weird three to four inning rolls

where it's gonna be hard to know exactly when he's starting and if he'll get you that W. So Chad Patrick is being used more like a regular starting pitcher and he keeps throwing harder He's now up to 94 plus and he is a little bit Lance Linney in that He basically throws a bunch of fastballs different kinds of fastballs But I don't think Milwaukee is a scary park anymore Sometimes I used to put it in my head as like a hitters park It doesn't really seem to be playing that way. And so I like the Brewers in terms of getting the most out of their pitchers.

And, you know, he seems to have good game plans for what he has. So Patrick and Cabrera are my picks off this list. Yeah, Chad Patrick, I thought was of the Patrick versus Priesters toss up from like a month plus ago, I thought Patrick was more likely to end up in the bulk role that Priester is in now and then more likely to get bumped off the roster. I think I said at the time I felt like Priester was more likely to be this year's Tobias Myers. So far it's been Patrick. Priester has pitched better recently in that adjusted role. DL Hall went in front of him I think last time out and then Priester came in for five against the Phillies and was really good

So we'll have to see how this continues to evolve but that the thing about their pitching they continue to find optimal usage for just about everybody That's the part that makes like leaning on guys that might have wobbly skills. It makes it more viable I don't mean to make it so stark because they're there skills makes it more viable. I don't mean to make it so stark because they're there. Patrick's the risk to in terms of game log. You can see he failed to crack five innings in three out of his last six starts. But there are those six start, you know, those six inning starts in there as well.

So you go six against the Phillies with six strikeouts and zero walks and two earned. And you got my attention. The nice thing about the Brewers is like, yes, you might get a start where you don't get you don't get the five and you get the you don't get the W, but they also got him unscathed out of Boston. You know what I mean? Like would you take four and two thirds scoreless against Boston or would you take five and two thirds with like four earned and the win?

They are the extra runs the damage the ratios worth that win. Would you take five and two thirds with like four earned and the win? They are the extra runs, the damage, the ratios worth that win. Probably not at this point in the season. And that's why the wins are such a frustrating category because the that sweet spot, that third time through the order ends up being critically important for a lot of those backend starters. You're maximizing ratios, but you're reducing or even eliminating the chances of a W with that sort of approach. They're careful with him, but he's also not as good.

We've seen some other guys like a David Festa who couldn't crack 20 and Patrick has had 27 batters faced, 23 multiple times, 26. So I think they've got some rubric where maybe there's certain lineups where he just matches up well against them or there's a certain efficiencies at or something that they that they like where they let him go a little bit longer. Open up a big enough lead, let them keep going, save your bullpen, maybe a fewer lefties in a lineup, you can let them go a little bit more. I'm sure there's a few different factors like that to consider. One reliever question for you, kind of a reliever ladder, like a

closer re-rack sort of thing, like Reissel Iglesias was part of that meltdown against Arizona on Thursday. Tanner Scott's had a couple of meltdowns. Camilo Deval's got the job back. We've talked about Daniel Palencia as maybe the favorite for the Cubs to get some saves. And then Will Vest has been ticking up in roster rates.

I think he's in the 70% range now on CBS. As those five guys go, how would you stack them up? I mean, I assume in most leagues, Iglesias and Scott are still held, but they're not 100% rosters. There could be some shallow formats where people have moved on and tried to find upgrades. Yeah, there's almost like a little bit of a

would you rather, where I'm gonna take Scott over Glacius. That's like one sort of tier. In that next tier of Deval, Palencia and Vest, I think I'm actually taking Palencia out of all of them. And it has a little bit to do with what is the alternative. We've already seen Bob Melvin go to Randy Rodriguez, who has superior numbers in a lot of categories to Camila Deval. So is that a game that's like headed long term? I don't think it's short term. I don't think it is Randy Rodriguez

right now. I think Deval gets the next save opportunity, right? But I do think that Randy Rodriguez may be headed towards that job. Will Vest I like, but it's not a very stuff heavy approach. And it's also not in a bullpen that has really anointed one closer and gone with it. It's kind of a, you know, a committee type situation. So that's why I'm reaching for Palencia because I don't think that there's necessarily anybody else that's really challenging him that hardcore for that job. I think that they are the type of place that would like to anoint one closer and I think they're gonna go with it. So that's, I'm re-ranking all those guys. Robert Garcia might go last, you know,

you've got the, you've enlisted as part of this whole thing. I am still interested in him. In deeper leagues, he should be owned and it could be a situation where he just finally becomes the closer there. It's just as a lefty, it's a little bit less likely maybe. Yeah, Garcia versus even Will Vest probably has a smaller

gap than you would expect based on how different their roster rates are right now. That was what was surprising to me, so I still have some interest in Garcia as well. All right, long episode today. Couple notes on the way out the door. You can join our Discord with the link in the show description.

She made it all the way to the end of this show. Thank you. That's awesome. Be sure to rate and review the podcast anywhere you listen. Hit the like button. If you're watching us on YouTube, you can find Eno on Blue Sky, enoserus.beescott.social, imdvr.beescott.social.

Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this massive episode together. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. What is a sport pepper?