Rates & Barrels - What About the Minor Leaguers?

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

Rundown3:10 How Do Minor Leaguers Fit Into 2020 Proposals?14:14 Tommy John Surgery Honeymoon Period27:39 Does It Make Sense to Use Vickrey for FAAB?34:29 A Creative, Competitive Solution38:27 KBO Fantasy League Status Update46:36 The Beer Bracket is Ready! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get a free 90-day trial to The Athletic: theathletic.com/free90days Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode of Rates and Barrels is brought to you by Remarkably Remote, a new daily microcast from the experts at GoToMeeting, all about making work from home work for you. With indispensable intel on how to stay sane, motivated, and productive at home, we're here to help you in this brave new remote working world. Find us on smart speakers or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. You can also listen at gotomeeting.com slash tips. That's gotomeeting.com slash tips. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 87. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to discuss one of the scenarios

with the possibility of the 2020 season being played entirely in Arizona and or Florida. How minor leaguers are going to be handled is part of a question that really hasn't been addressed all that much. We're going to dive into some ways that that could happen. A lot of great mailbag questions that have been gathering over the last couple of weeks. We're going to work our way through those as well. How's it going for you on this Thursday? It's going well. It's going well.

It's my eldest eighth birthday today and so since we are the powers that be in this household right now we are the teachers and the cooks and the everything we declared uh no school today it's a national holiday if the nation is our house. I think that's fair. And so he just got a 2,500-piece Lego set followed by a 1,500-piece Lego set, and we're hoping that keeps him occupied for the day. I was going to ask you how far did that many pieces go in a set? How much time does that buy you as a parent? How much entertainment does that get you you as a parent how much entertainment

does that get you but a day per set or for both sets the two sets are supposed to be for like 10 year old and 16 year olds and um one of them is two feet tall it's a pirate ship that's two feet tall the other is in a ninjago temple he promised to have the ninjago temple done by six o'clock when we're calling uh the family members members to have a little happy birthday. But he seems happy, which is good because this could be a sad time for him. But he likes friends, but he's a little bit more of a quiet, shy, introspective reader, Lego-type guy. So I don't think that he's super sad that there's not like uh we're not teaming with children right now he's supposed to be at like a bouncy playground type one of

those places you go where you jump around and they serve you bad pizza but um he hasn't uh really said anything about that making him sad so um that's that to me is a happy thing yeah that's good i hope he has a great day i hope he enjoys the lego sets as well uh let's talk about the minor leaguers let's get into that for a bit because as i've thought through mlb's biodome proposals um i've thought about it from some just practical roster management perspectives that kind of led me to the minor league question. If there's not a normal minor league season, I mean, if there's no major league season in most major league cities, if it's only isolated to one or two areas, Arizona and or Florida, that means we're not going to have

baseball in Beloit and Appleton and the Quad Cities, right? We're not going to have baseball in Beloit and Appleton and the Quad Cities, right? We're not going to have baseball in Visalia, but it also means we're not going to have players playing who are ready to move up and fill in when players get hurt, which is where the expanded rosters comes from. I just wonder how much teams are going to want to expand rosters for the sake of continuing to develop some of their prospects you know if you have this sort of taxi squad on reserve comprised of your top prospects or most of your double a and triple a players who you feel are most ready to contribute something that looks more like a 40 man roster do you use those players in games against other teams taxi squad prospect type players right is there is there a

path for something like that to exist in these scenarios that's that's how this that's how i envision it i mean this is how i envision the whole thing happening i think it happens in arizona i think it happens like it does it is in korea with the the temperature testing i don't think it's a full quarantine. It wouldn't make any sense to have baseball under stricter rules than we have right now. Right now we have a voluntary shelter in place situation for most of us.

And if that's the situation, then so there's something more relaxed than this that's gonna be how baseball comes out. So I think it's gonna be the sort of thing where it's like, you know, we have recommendations. Please wear a mask. Please, please don't go very far. Please don't go to groups of more than 50 or more than 20 or whatever it is.

They'll have sort of recommendations. You'll be able to have your family there. You'll be able to play games and figure out some way to get to 8100 game schedule. play games and figure out some way to get to 8100 game schedule no nobody in the seats but still

you've got to be within 6 feet at first base so the game will be played the way the game is played normally and they're going to be in the clubhouse so they're going to be close to each other everyone gets tested for COVID going in. And then after that, everyone gets their temperature tested daily.

So that's the deal. But what you're asking about now is the sort of secondary stuff, which is, I'm sorry to say secondary. For a minor league, it doesn't feel secondary. But it's the type of stuff that now I have players texting me about, which is like, what happens to me when I go on a rehab assignment? What happens with the minor leagues? What happens if I have to have a bereavement leave or I have to, I have to leave on emergency, like, you know, and I, to that last one, I would say, well, you're not, this isn't going to be a quarantine situation. You're not going to be sequestered.

I don't think that makes sense. But, you know, there will be some sort of, when you'll get tested, when you get back, you know, that sort of deal um and so uh we're it's going to be a weird reality but i think that there is room within this to imagine also a minor league situation so if we were just doing if we did arizona florida split i think there might actually be room to have the minor leaguers at the complex because if you think about the very beginning of spring training there are a ton of minor leaguers uh at the complex you know it's before they kind of bring out the sorting hat you know what i mean oh yeah like i did i did an interview with uh jason ochart which i still haven't transcribed because it's an hour freaking long and i don't have any time but um uh when after i did the interview with jason ochart i talked to three or four of his

minor league hitters. And all I did was walk over from the major league spring training camp to the minor league one. And there were just minor leaguers coming through and leaving as I was talking to them. So these facilities have the backfields. They do have a setup to handle the minor leagues. However, if you do an Arizona-only strategy, you can't fit all the teams in Arizona. But maybe you have a lighter schedule for the minor leagues where you split the minor leagues into Arizona and Florida. And you have maybe two or three levels instead of five or whatever it is. Fewer levels, fewer games.

of five or whatever it is, fewer levels, fewer games, try to house the minor leaguers either at the complex or near the complex and play what feels like intra-squad games. But maybe it's intra-squad sometimes, maybe it's your AA versus your AAA. Maybe sometimes you go play other people, maybe you're not really keeping score or in in the same way maybe you're just um allowing them to play to develop so they don't lose that development time they're still playing each other they're still playing baseball it's still high level baseball uh compared to san lot or or indie league or whatever it's still good baseball they're still developing uh but it's not going to be uh a season for record books, if you might say, or the records will be interesting looking and even worse than the Major League ones.

But my point is basically that these complexes that they play at in spring are pretty big, and they include a lot of things called the backfields, where there's always games going on. So I think if you just rethought the backfields, you could almost have like a double A game. If it's intra-squad most days and then sometimes between squads other days as maybe the restrictions get lighter, that's the sort of concept I have for the minor leagues. in which players can be paid so they're not sitting for months without making any money. You have a situation where players can train and build themselves up and continue to develop their skills and avoid long-term injuries that could arise from a prolonged shutdown.

I think that's a concern too, just as we are concerned about how big league pitchers and big league hitters are going to ramp up once spring training gets here. I think the concern is obviously greater for pitchers than for hitters for some of the reasons we've talked about forever. That same sort of question is lingering in the background. And yeah, it's not to say that the minor leaguers are less important. It's just sort of like a, hey, and what about this? And I'm glad that people are starting to think about it just a little bit.

I was also starting to think that maybe the Arizona Fall League becomes a more important part of the plan this year. It kind of felt like last year's Fall League was this sort of like, I don't know, like half-assed effort in some ways. Like the quality of the prospects wasn't good. And the vibe there was just kind of different compared to previous fall leagues that I've been to. But you have to look at something like that

as a development tool that may be more important now as well. Yeah, that's an interesting thing. One thing that was different about the fall league this year was the timing of it. They moved it up. Was it this year the first time? Yeah. Yeah, this was the first time they moved it up where it kind of like got closer to the end of the minor league season yeah and the the idea was that they didn't want prospects to have to go home

or go somewhere and then come back to the fall league they didn't want this sort of rest period in between um i think from the prospects point of view I caught a fair amount of grumbling that you know like I've had major leaguers that I saw in the fall league I suppose I can say his name, Brett Phillips who you know we had an interview for the

ages with him where we were just all laughing our asses off eventually you know just over the course of this interview and I told him I talked to him later and I said i love the fall league and he's like i hate the fall league and uh i think that you know shoving it up right against the end of the season just really uh exacerbates the whole point of the fall league in some circles is to make the the uh the season longer for prospects that haven't had like a 600 plate appearance season aren't ready for the rigors of a full major league season however from the prospect standpoint it's like oh god i play year round they want me to go

to winter ball after this you know it's like just can i have a break? And so there's a little bit of tiredness already built into it. The first time that we saw Mike Trout and Bryce Harper play at the Arizona Fall League, I feel like both were tired. Yeah, and I think in their cases, I don't believe they had any injuries the years they played in the Fall League, if I'm mistaken about that. I apologize. Some players are literally making up time because they were hurt and hurt and they want to get trout didn't look like trout no no and buster posey i think was another guy that didn't have a good fall league if i remember correctly i mean there's a lot of guys who are very good big league players who at that point in the year were just exhausted they didn't want to be there i could completely understand from the

perspective but you're right in this way, this could be a revitalization because I doubt any prospect is going to be exhausted after this season unless they do some crazy double, triple header nonsense. But I don't think they would do that in the minor leagues. It doesn't make any sense to do that in the minor leagues where the results don't count. You're not getting TV money in the same way. You know what I mean?

I think they can keep it easy on the prospects. And therefore, if Joe Adele doesn't play in the major leagues this year, then the fall league, even if it's a repeat for him, would be huge. Because it would be another 100 plate appearances or so, just to add on to what might only be 250, 300 plate appearances on the season for him. Yeah. So, yeah, I do think that it could lead to something. However, of course, there is the question of how seasonal this is and how much of a bounce back there will be in the fall, you know, when things get cooler.

Those are open questions. But I would like to see the AFL come back a little bit. It wasn't the best AFL experience I've had. No. It's still nice to get out when baseball is winding down. This year was the postseason. Normally, it's after the postseason and to still see some games in that setting especially.

But, yeah, the vibe for the first time in a long time, I just felt like it changed. So maybe that's part of the solution. I don't know. But I just think teams are going to want to find a way to continue developing at least their top prospects. They should continue developing anybody who's in their organization and paying anybody who's in their organization. We'll see what that solution is. Let's talk about some of these mailbag questions that have come in. We've been rolling them over week over week. One was a question about Tommy John surgeries.

This question came from Brett. He wrote, with the prevalence of Tommy John surgeries in today's game, should we give a bump to pitchers who are in the Tommy John honeymoon period? He includes Buehler, Paddock, Darvish, Wheeler as a few examples. So guys who've had Tommy John in the last few years but have been healthy for a couple of seasons since undergoing the procedure.

So what do you think about that? Anything different for you with guys who are a couple years removed from TJ? There is a honeymoon, that's true. My impression is that the rate of Tommy John surgery in baseball is down a little bit per year. We saw last year that it was down, it's down, uh, 15 was the peak, um, for combined major, major and minor league pitchers of nearly 150 surgeries in 2015.

And we're down year over year, every year since down to around 75. So almost halved it. And I think some of that is the improved research into workload, acute to chronic ratio is something I write about in some of my pieces. If you want to read about it, the last two pieces about training in the epidemic include some stuff about that. Also, we're getting better at MoCap, motion capture technology, where we're putting, we don't even have to put little dots on everybody,

but that's how people understand it, I think, best, is you put little dots on the guy and they pitch in front of a green screen and then you turn them into little bones basically into into uh graphics of bones and you can say things like oh his humorous is i don't know i i i'm getting out of my my league here but you know like you could say things about how the uh the bones and the ligaments and the structures are interacting. Then you can say, okay, if you follow these things, the stress is lessened on the elbow and so on and so forth. So I think we are actually doing some good when it comes to injuries.

However, the question is about the Tommy John honeymoon. And there is a piece by Jeff Zimmerman that suggests that there's something between 200 and 400 innings after the first Tommy John, that even if you are headed for a second Tommy John, you're safe in that period. The problem is there is also research that command is down in your first attempt back, buy somebody like Michael Pineda or Jameson Tyon, you know, that's like Michael Pineda last year or Jameson Tyon this year, where you're kind of hoping for 50 or 75 innings or they're just coming off of it, you never know if that surgery will hold. There's still a 15% failure rate in Tommy John 1, and it's more like 30% to 40% failure in Tommy John 2. So you don't really want to buy a guy right off of the Tommy John. But there is probably a safer period, which is the second year off of Tommy John. They're probably not going to get Tommy John and their ligament is healthy

and their command is there. So there is maybe something to that. I guess that would have been somebody like Chris Paddock last year. Yeah, I think it's that year one, like that first full year, not the partial year that I'm sometimes skeptical of more because of workload management. But the command thing has always been pretty interesting. We have seen that in the form of higher walk rates, which I know is more technically control as opposed to command. But even if the command metrics are kind of lining up with what we've seen in the past with those walk rates, that's definitely good supporting evidence to be a little more careful with those players. But of those guys that were mentioned by Brett, Buehler, Paddock, Darvish, Wheeler, I don't have any reservations about any of them. I mean, Wheeler was the kind of guy that I wanted him to go to a more neutral environment.

He ended up in a hitter-friendly environment. So Philadelphia was going to be a problem for him. But he also presents this unique problem I started thinking about in the auction I did last night where we don't know exactly how long the season is going to be, when it's going to happen, or where it's going to be played. And I wonder if Zach Wheeler is pitching in Florida all season instead of

pitching in Philadelphia, if he's the kind of guy who becomes more valuable because of the environments that change around him. Now, I know Wheeler specifically has talked about... But if it's Arizona... Well, right. If it's Arizona, it's different. And Wheeler has made a point to say

that he will be with his family for the birth of his child later on. I think it's this summer. So there's that kind of stuff too. That's why, I mean, they're people. They're people. We're not going to put them in a hotel and dance for us monkeys. Mike Trout's about to have his first child.

No, no. He's not going to miss that for you. You know what I mean? So that's why it's not quarantine that's why i don't think it's going to be a quarantine situation um and uh uh so i anyway uh but i think it is interesting when you think about lance mccullers and shohei otani who are uh did have their surgeries technically in 2018 but they had it so late in 2018 that they haven't pitched yet. So I'd rather, if I'm talking about safe people, maybe Michael Kopech. He's pitched. He had a surgery in 18.

I'm looking at some other MLBers. Johnny Cueto should be safe, but his stuff numbers were terrible when he came back. He did not look like Cueto of old. Garrett Richards should be quote-unquote safe, but it's Garrett Richards. I'm looking at 2018 surgeries. Jordan Montgomery, I think, is an interesting one. He should be safe. He had a little bit of a velo bump in the spring, and now he's going to be needed more than ever. So I think Jordan Montgomery is actually in that period a little bit of a velo bump in the spring and now he's going to be needed more than ever uh so i

think jordan montgomery is actually in that uh in that period where i would feel uh pretty safe about his uh surgery cory seager as a as a position player is interesting i don't we don't think we've studied uh i haven't seen anything that says that position players is really hurt at the plate due to Tommy John. But, you know, Corey Seager is consistently underrated. He's a plus-hit tool guy when you look at it with power. You know, there's still a great season left in Corey Seager, I think. Denilson Lemaitre had his surgery in 2018, so he should be fine. Tyvon Walker is an interesting one because he had a surgery in 2018,

but I wouldn't say that the health outcomes since have been great. And I'm running at the end of my list. I'm looking through John Rogale's. Rafael Montero is interesting. 2018, Tommy John, and now probably the the setup man to jose leclerc who's uh kind of a command risky closer yeah and look at how well he pitched last year when he came back a 34 to 5 strikeout to walk ratio 248 era 0.97 whip in 29 innings so he came back got through almost a half season i kind of forgot about rafaelo, if I'm being completely honest.

I thought Jolie Rodriguez was kind of interesting when they brought him in. I think he was in Japan for the last couple seasons. I thought Rodriguez might have been the next in line behind Leclerc, but I think it would be wise to at least consider Montero as one of your AL-only reserve options if you're looking for some hope for some late saves. Yeah, yeah. 2017 surgeries, I don't know. Will Smith seems pretty safe.

Yeah, I'm not worried about him at this point. In terms of health, yeah. Trevor May had his in 2017. Alex Reyes had his in 2017, but he kind of strikes me as a Garrett Richards type at this point. And that's it. I think if you're talking about you had surgery in 2016, by this time you probably are kind of close to being out of that 400-inning safe period.

Yeah, so definitely some interesting names, though, that came up there in the sense of Alex Reyes maybe just being a little forgotten about and being a couple years removed is a nice little sweet spot to think about. So hopefully that answered your question, Brett. Nate Diavaldi, 18-19-2016. He's already had two, though, right? That was the second, your question, Brett. Nate Diavaldi, 18, 19, 2016. He's already had two though, right? That was the second, I think, yeah.

I want to root for a guy like that because I think we, not you and I, but I think people in general, we all sort of underappreciate how difficult it is to rehab back from major surgery because these guys do it at such an astonishingly high rate. And I understand that the treatment and the care they receive is a big part of that. But there's a big mental hurdle and a lot of physical hurdles to leap over

as you get that recovery completed. And to do it twice and to keep going, that says a lot. And what does it say about the underlying mechanics or uh pitch selection or whatever it is that they had to have a second one you know what i mean yeah this wasn't the first one can be overuse in college or um as a kid uh you know some something there or maybe even bad mechanics that you fix fix upon your return from the first one. There are people who have a first one

and then have a pretty good career after that all the way through. But to have a first one and then come back from that and say, okay, we're going to be monitoring him, and we're going to be on top of this, and we're going to do this and do this and do this, and we change the mechanics and then have a second one. It's like, well, something's going on here. So this is what I think of.

Andrew Haney had his in July of 2016, and I wouldn't say that he's safe health-wise. No. In a similar way. He's had enough other injuries that give me some pause. And I think in the right circumstances circumstances like i got him in the auction i was in last night sure but i just i i think you have to account for the increased likelihood that he's going to have a reduced workload in any season regardless of the length of that season uh if anybody wants to look just this is a really valuable list uh john rogale

If anybody wants to look, this is a really valuable list. John Rogel, I hope I'm saying his name right. It has a bunch of E's and O's in it. And if I said it in the German way, you'd laugh at me. Oh, well, then you should do that. I guess it would be Rogel. Rogel. Rogel.

Rogel. Anyway, it looks actually a little bit more Dutch than German but John Rogel is at MLB player analyst without the T MLB player analyst give him a follow I think I've either follow him or I've definitely seen his stuff before so I should circle back on that.

Yeah, he used to write more. The good thing is on his Twitter bio, there's a Google Doc that has every Tommy John surgery. So I know that Jeff Zimmerman has done a lot of research just using that. And it has like recovery dates and times. And you can just kind of do your own deep diving in there it's it's a really valuable database yeah that is a really good resource to have available but thanks a lot for the question brett i think that set us up for some good dialogue there top performers in business and sports often attribute their success to their morning routine whether it's waking up

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Is it having the highest bidder get the player equal to the amount of their bid or having the highest bidder get the player for one more dollar than the second highest bid, which Tout Wars used a few years ago? It's the Vickery system. It was developed by, I believe, a Nobel Prize winning economist. They're not Vickery anymore? They don't do it anymore.

I think people, including maybe myself, in a younger, less thoughtful version of myself, complained about it. And I think it was put to a vote at some point and it was ultimately removed from the league it's a little disappointing if somebody bid $89 for Jordan Alvarez which they did in I'm sorry I think someone schooled me on this I think it's Jordan Alvarez anyway somebody did that in labor this last year and I think it's a little disappointing if they then get him for $54 or whatever.

You committed that number. I like the economic principle a lot. I like the spirit of the rule. Of the vickery. I do like the idea. I think there almost needs to be some sort of all-in penalty.

You do get reckless with your bid. That's what I'm saying. If someone bids $89 on somebody, they should pay $89. Right. Out of $100. At the lower end of the scale, let's just say I bid $8 out of $100 or $80 out of $1 or 80 out of a thousand,

pick whatever thing your league uses and nobody else bids more than one or 10. Shouldn't I, in that case, I kind of feel like I shouldn't get dinged as much because I wasn't, I don't know. Like maybe you can, maybe you could take the magnitude or the difference between the first and

second bid and adjust the amount that you pay based on that. So in your Alvarez example, if the second highest bidder was 50, half the budget, and the high bid was 89, maybe you split the difference instead of going plus one. So you go 70 is the price. So there's an overbid penalty. Also, it's interesting to think,

what is the goal here? What is the goal? So it's called free agency auctioning, right? And so I guess ideal, quote unquote, would be that you all basically step to the table again every week. And everybody's up and somebody nominates a player and everybody bids on them just like as if it was a draft, right? If that's the case, that would be kind of fun although time consuming consuming the fun yeah the thing about it though then vickery actually is the best approximation of that because there's nobody that would if the bidding was at 40 would jump bid to 89 right yeah. Yeah, you'd limp up and maybe you'd get halfway.

Maybe you'd get to 70. I don't know. That blind bidding element of it, it's very different than the way players are actually auctioned. Yeah. So I guess the question is just think about your goals. Think about the overbidder, think about the small bids. Those do seem like slightly different situations.

Think about what you're trying to approximate. great at FAAB, I would rather it's Vickery because I find myself free and clear $10 sometimes when I'm just kicking myself or just the dollar short on somebody that I had been debating putting $1.02 on. But I will say that Vickery will probably inflate your fab uh submissions across the board yeah i mean the game theory aspect of it is well i can bid as much as i want as long as someone else doesn't do the same and go way over and then you know that's how you end up with a player that costs 85 percent of your budget so the question is almost fundamentally different to the player when they're playing when they're doing Vickery

because the question in Vickery is, what is the absolute maximum that you would pay? Yeah. And then the question in the other style is, what do you think this player is worth? And I kind of like answering the what do you think this player is worth question more i kind of like answering the what do you think this player is worth question more than how much am i willing to pay yeah i think so so i that's fundamentally

why i don't like vickery here but i don't think i'd be as opposed to it if i had a commissioner implement it as i would have been in the past. Like upon further review, I do like it as a way of trying to accomplish those means. Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe non-vickery is slightly better. But I tell you, I wish a lot of times after things were run, I wished it was victory. Yeah, you can't change it after the fact, unfortunately.

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while doing this show because I can appreciate the competitive spirit of the people involved. It's just the kind of thing that I think my friends growing up and I would do. If we were all still kind of as close as we were then, we might have landed on this. This email comes from Michael. It's a long email, but I feel like I should read pretty much all of it. He writes, Derek, I never ended up submitting a Project Goat entry. I had something else

come up and I thought you might find it entertaining. So I read the first line. I'm like, okay, yeah, we're all dealing with different things. I didn't expect this. Obviously, there isn't a whole lot to do right now. I have a text group with 11 friends from college. 12 of us have been in a fantasy football league since graduation 15

plus years ago. A few guys are in some fantasy baseball leagues with me as well someone in the group floated the idea that we all download a pedometer app on our phone and have a step competition we found one that seemed to work and everyone downloaded it we ran a tester day to make sure everything was running smooth the guys who were first and second on the test day became captains and drafted two teams. The challenge would be one week long, and it would be total team steps for the whole week. It all went downhill from there.

We failed to take into account that we're a bunch of competitive assholes with nothing to do. We started walking constantly. We split the text group into two team groups so we could talk strategy. We posted videos of us walking and giving psych-up speeches, as well as talking trash. We were up at 5 a.m. walking. We were out of us walking and giving psych-up speeches as well as talking trash. We were up at 5 a.m. walking. We were out till midnight walking. I spent last Sunday walking circles in my garage for four hours while it rained.

Guys ran in place in their living rooms for hours on end. We would load up backpacks with beers, snacks, cocktails, and extra battery packs lest we'd be caught with a dead phone slash pedometer miles from home. We ignored our wives and families and jobs if we still had them. It became a race of attrition with guys spending 10 plus hours a day on the move. Several guys walked a full marathon several days in a row. This is where it gets even better. I kept track of all of our data on a spreadsheet. Check out some of the

numbers that got posted. It ruined our life for a week and it was a disaster. Although we did get out and walk on a different... A spreadsheet! A spreadsheet! They went old school Roto and scored

this in a spreadsheet. Old old school Roto is pad and paper in a newspaper. But early 90s, hey, let's fire up Lotus and type in some stats. That's the level that they reached. It also concludes with a nice compliment about the show and Sleeper and the Bust, our friends over there. And a beer recommendation. Next time you're in Michigan, see if you can track down beers from Big Lake Brewery out of Holland.

They're small but growing and make better beer that rises above the glob, in my opinion. Lots of good hazy stuff. Thanks for the work, and take it easy. I think the subject line of the email was a very different kind of league. And it was when we were starting to get KBO requests and different things as we were trying to come up with new ways to play. But I never would have thought of that specific thing to be competitive about. But I love the structure.

And I kind of want to set up a walking league with staffers at the athletic. I kind of want to have a draft and really really get into this yeah yeah oh man that is hilarious dude i guess uh we haven't looked into enough fantasy random things i mean i did see i did see that bovada had some weather lines did anybody get into betting on the weather? Oh, yeah, Nando started a group for that, too. Our guy, Nando DeFino, one of our bosses. Well, apparently, like,

the weather report or the weather projections are not very good. That's what they tell me. You know, especially, like, more than a day out. But, I just, did you hear me that that was the um oh what i hear about uh getting the most out of your pedometer is yeah do you think anybody cheated like uh put their pedometer on their hamster or something? I should test it. I should actually clip my phone to Hazel's collar and just have her run around.

See how many extra miles you can get. That's another way to do it. Put the pedometers on the pets and see whose pets are the most active. Well, I'd win that one. My cats are pretty much outdoor cats right now, and they go pretty far to go kill their mice. You know what's great about it? Then they come back.

I don't know where they kill the mice. They bring the mice all the way back, and they decapitate and disembowel the rats and then leave just the head and the guts in a couple places in our house. Oh, yeah. I don't even know where the rest of the body goes. Like, do they eat it?

They eat the rest of it. You think? Yes, I think they're eating the rest of it. If there's no evidence of the rest of it in the house, that's the only place it could be going. I feed them twice a day. Well, they have the blood lust. I feed them twice a day.

Well, they have the blood lust. It's so weird to stumble on just a head and guts, I will tell you. It bugs my wife every time. And then, of course, she's like, it's too gross. You have to do it. And I'm like, oh, God, I find it gross too. And yet there you are cleaning it up. Anyway, so draft me first in my three cats that I can put pedometers

on. Yeah, in the cleaning up mouse parts league, Eno goes in the first round. Don't draft me in that one. You've got a lot of experience. That was a great email and a great idea. So if you're inspired to do something like that, let us know. He's at you

know saris on twitter i'm at derrick van riper it does remind me to give an update about the various fantasy other things um projects that we've got uh we haven't gotten that many uh round two of goat so um i don't know if we have different crowds that listen and read but I did present the the the final results and after we discussed them and I and I put the twist in there I know that some people have asked me to share the spreadsheet that I put in that that I put in that post for round two but my my wish is that you copy and paste that spreadsheet that I gave. We can't have people entering their information on that spreadsheet and then thinking they've submitted it because then somebody else will just enter over it. So we didn't find a good way for everyone to

just sort of enter it and then have it come to us. So what you should do is take the copy and paste that information into your own Google doc. Um, then, uh, write in your things and then send it back to us. Um, so I don't know if the process has been different. Feel free to email us and we can give you the spreadsheet again. Anybody who has a spreadsheet from the first time, all you have to do is look at the leaderboard, see your targets and send it in again um so you know uh that's a a that's a call for for more entries into goat 2 b uh i looked into korean fantasy it wasn't feasible with the the group that i'd put together uh in terms of the data wasn't clean enough. Um, and, uh, the, the, the, the time, the workload, it just didn't work for the people I'd put together. However, I, I wouldn't be surprised

if there were some KBO DFS games. Uh, it's a little bit rough on kind of five by five Roto people, uh, because there's only 12 teams, I think. Um, so whatever solution or 10 teams, whatever solution you come up with for Roto is going to be weird. It's going to have really small lineups or really small leagues. But DFS is certainly still possible and I will be writing a preview of the KBO

season with sleepers and players to watch for Friday. So watch out for that. And then on top of that, Japan looks like it's gonna open up soon and japanese baseball has 12 teams um and just makes the like roto a little bit more likely i am working with somebody um or i am consulting somebody who's doing the work uh who has done fantasy japanese baseball before and um i can't speak to exactly what the format would be,

but it sounds like it would have a very low entry fee, small prizes, maybe a slightly bigger overall prize, kind of NFBC-ish feeling, but maybe shorter lineups and smaller leagues. So maybe a 10-team league with no MI, CI, three outfielders, maybe six pitchers, that type of deal. So once that sort of is concretized, I will do a Japanese preview. And by the time we're doing that, I feel like we will have an update about baseball.

There is a news today that the PGA Golf Tour is planning to have events starting in mid-June. And so I'm hoping that means spring training for baseball starts somewhere around mid-June. And the baseball season starts around Independence Day. So, you know, I know that some people will say that's super hopeful, and some people will say, why do we have to wait that long? And this has become really politicized. And i'm currently inundated with data uh and graphs and uh studies um that i've that from both sides and i find it uh less conclusive than uh some of the narratives we see online so um i do think that it is possible um we have a baseball season this year and that it starts sometime in july You can't even estimate properly,

like how many beers I'm going to shotgun on the 4th of July. If the 4th of July, it's going to be the day that I turn into stone cold, Steve Austin. It's going to be incredible if that happens to be opening day. And I'm not like the guy that just bangs the table and gets real excited about the 4th of July. It's a nice day to hang out with family and friends and cook out and watch baseball, but my level of excitement for the day will be at an all-time high if that's when opening day turns out to be. A very important note from an email we previously acknowledged on the show.

I missed this line on the air. This was a question from Bruce, I think, about the rosters and players who had been sent down. But one of the last lines of the email read, and Fleetwood Mac is not yacht rock. They are a genre unto themselves. That can't be true. There is no, literally,

is there any band that you would say is a genre unto themselves? I mean, like, Radiohead transcended genres and is of three or four different genres, but they're not a genre themselves. You could hate... You could legitimately, if you hate things,

hate music, you could hate some Radiohead albums and genuinely love other Radiohead albums, because their cross-genre efforts are so vast. Yeah, and there's got to be other people in the Fleetwood Mac space. The only person I can think of that may not have anyone that's like him

is Weird Al. Can you imagine being the number two, though in in the weird al genre like we've we've had weird al for 30 years now and yet like i i'm the lesser known joke music guy who opens for him does carrot top open for weird al oh my god someone's gonna to reply with a lesser known music company. Like Jack Black? Is Jack Black in the Weird Al space?

The Tenacious D project, I guess, is kind of Weird Al-ish. The closest you can get. Adam Sandler's old albums. Those are just comedy albums with a guitar. Oh gosh, we just came up with three people in space. There is no band that's a genre themselves. Clowns with guitars?

Is that the genre? I actually don't dislike any of those people I mentioned except for Carrot Top. He scares me. He's a clown without the clown paint. It's very strange when they clowned me and Carrot Top simultaneously. It depends on your look on it on MLB Network. What did they do?

They were interviewing Carrot Top when the winter meetings were in Vegas and they cut to a shot of you on the show. I think because of your hair. Yeah, and they said something like, who wore it better or something. I was like, you know, I get the weird Al thing all the time. So I'm cool with it.

I'm not offended at all. I think it's funny. I find him scary, though, in some way. I think it's like the obvious facial surgery or just the Vegas vibe. And also the comedy is weird. It's not necessarily my style of comedy. So the whole package to me is just very strange. And then he was obviously not enthused.

Yeah, I just don't get a good vibe from that guy. So that's why I look at him. I'm like, this is a clown not wearing the clown paint. And I don't like clowns very much. Yeah, my brother-in-law is definitely afraid of them. Yeah, I just don't like them. But I don't know. They're not for me.

They are for some people. We're not going to do Beer of the Week individual selections. But you have your bracket that's available now, right? Yes, that's a good way to do Beer of the Week. The Beer of the Week will be determined, and it'll be the beer to rule them all, basically, because I'm starting a 64-beer bracket. And the problem is I found some software that can automate a 32-beer bracket for me. So I have to get from 64 to 32. So what I'm doing is going

to Twitter to help boil down the 64 to 32. And, uh, the first four, um, match-ups I put out there already. Um, and this is the idea is grocery store beer. So we talk about beers on this show and I think it's probably frustrating some people to say, well, I can't get that beer. That beer has local distribution. Like I've talked about Humble C before. That beer is never available outside of Santa Cruz unless there's a global pandemic. So what I wanted to do was one of the first round matchups that I posted were Coors Light against Bud Light. Allagash White against uh Blue Moon um Lagunitas IPA against Goose IPA and uh the the hardest thing was

treading the line between like what is actually national available and what is not and so maybe Allagash White is only available in like 18 or 19 states. So maybe I messed that one up. The last one was the dark one was Old Rasputin against Deschutes Black Butte Porter. And those aren't going to be everywhere. But in California, I can get them at the Safeway. So if there is a bias, it's slightly towards what's in my grocery store. slightly towards what's in my grocery store. But I also think that judging from the votes so far, that the winner will be a beer that we all can get. Because there are a fair amount of votes,

like the Deschutes Blackbeard Porter got fewer votes so far, got about 20% fewer votes than the other three matchups um so i do think this will actually kind of work uh to set this up where uh at some point um you know bud light actually cores light is beating bud light so cores light will go up against uh cores light will have to defeat like pacifico takate at some point um and it'll have to maybe beat uh light IPA, but at some point, it'll have to go up against an IPA. I'm really interested to see what happens there. I'm not sure that I can predict it. Coors Light is a very popular beer. It is.

It was very popular for me at a much younger age. Yeah. The first round is interesting because I'm'm not doing seedings and i'm just like trying to put beer like beer against like beer up uh but uh i'm trying to keep it to like beers as long as possible but at some point when we get to the elite eight or so um we're going to start seeing beers go up against different styles and uh aside from the bracket of course support beer.com up and running more and more breweries added to that in the last week or so as well. So be sure to check that out for some local options that are available for pickup and, in some cases, even for delivery as well.

If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the time to do that. Tell your friends if you think they'd like the show as well. We do have a 90-day free trial available to The Athletic at theathletic.com slash free 90 days. If you're in a position to support the site with a paid subscription, you can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Thank you to all of you for listening, but also for supporting the site in these times and always. You can also reach us via email, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com

if you want to get in touch with us that way. Be sure to spell out and if you go that route. And on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.