Rates & Barrels - Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the Dodgers, Chris Sale to the Braves & More Pitchers on the Move

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

DVR is joined by Todd Zola of Mastersball & RotoWire to discuss the flurry of activity that took place over the past two weeks including Yoshinobu Yamamoto's decision to sign with the Dodgers, the trade that sent Chris Sale to Atlanta, Vaughn Grissom's outlook in Boston, Lucas Giolito's rebound potential in Boston, and Frankie Montas' fresh start in Cincinnati.  Rundown 1:52 Yoshinobu Yamamoto the Dodgers 11:44 Chris Sale to the Braves 17:13 Assessing Atlanta's No. 5 Starter Job Battle 20:33 Vaughn Grissom's Outlook with the Red Sox 31:53 Would You Rather: Late MI v. Grissom Edition 38:45 Lucas Giolito's Rebound Chances in Boston 43:14 Frankie Montas to the Reds 48:10 Yuki Matsui Joins the Crowded Padres Bullpen 52:08 Another Look at the Four New Padres SP Candidates 1:01:37 Mitch Garver to the Mariners; Clear Path to Regular DH Duty? Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Todd on Twitter: @ToddZola e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Wednesday, January 3rd. Derek Van Ryper here with Todd Zola, one of my best friends in this industry. We worked together for a long time at Roto-Wire. Todd runs Masters Ball, still works at Roto-Wire. You hear him every Friday on that weekly pod that I used to do with him. It's Clay Link, I think, in that main chair most weeks now. And you've got XM shows that you're a part of, Todd. But thank you so much for joining me. You know what?

Talking to you, DVR, so far this is the best day of the year. It's early. It's only the third day of the year. Well, I mean, that means it's better than two. Better than the college football playoffs, which were pretty good, actually. So I'm honored. I'm glad I've reached that level. College football was never my huge thing, but I am not, not a fan, not a fan of the college football.

So, uh, the, the bar hasn't been set all that high as far as that goes, but, um, I wasn't hung over. I mean,

I haven't been hung over years, so it's not, one of the days isn't ruled out for that. But anyway, uh, it's always good to talk to you. Uh, looking forward to catching up with some ball and what's,

you know, outfilling him another commercial or something. He should be doing another commercial. It'd be great for him if he is, but I know he's actually got some vacation that he's using. So I think he's in Hawaii. So I'm pretty jealous. All right.

Okay. Okay. He's having another great day. Good. All right. That's usually how it goes for Eno. A lot has happened since we last recorded a pod. Our last episode was back on the 20th of December.

So we're going to catch everybody up on everything that's been going on while you may have been away at various holiday functions, New Year's parties, whatever it may have been. And a shocker, the Dodgers kept spending while people may have been away. Yoshinobu Yamamoto gets a 12-year, $325 million deal. And it's interesting because Eno wrote the piece a few weeks ago for the athletic breaking down his arsenal using stuff plus and i think this is one of those instances where stuff plus is particularly useful in that i feel like right now comparing leagues foreign leagues to major league baseball and trying to compare them to the broken minor leagues right now with all the different rule changes and automated balls and strikes. The old ways of projecting players coming into

major league baseball seem like they might not work as effectively, but having more granular data, how hard does he throw? How much spin and movement do his pitches have? How much induced vertical break? All those factors can give you a little more of an apples to apples comparison of what a guy brings to the table. We also had international competition recently. So we've seen Yamamoto in the world baseball classic. All this is a long way to say, if you didn't read Eno's article, here's the summary. By the raw numbers, Yamamoto projects to have a top 24 seam fastball, the best splitter in major league baseball, an elite curveball, a below average cutter,

can't have it all, an elite command, which if you just go off that, it sort of explains why we're talking about a guy who hasn't thrown a pitch in Major League Baseball getting $325 million. The numbers are amazing as far as what he did in Japan last year, right? A 176 to 28 K to BB, 116 ERA. Age is a huge factor in why he got this much money too. I look at this, Todd, and I wonder, is it possible to underrate someone simply because we haven't seen a lot of them in front of us, right? Because they've spent so much time dominating overseas. Right. You've got the whole crowd, you kind of alluded to it, but he hasn't thrown a pitch yet in MLB. Well, he's thrown plenty of pitches.

And as you suggest, there are now ways to gauge them, gauge the pitch itself. Of that arsenal, the one that catches my eye is best splitter in MLB. Yeah. Right? I'm sure you have talked about it with Eno and others. The toughest pitch for Major League batters to handle is the splitter. So when you have the best of the toughest pitch to handle, right there, that's enough for me. Right. I'm sold. So that alone. And then the top 24 seem, you know, when you do the translations, whoever one does them,

the Japanese, the foreign pitchers always seem to, even when you translate, man, they got to give up more homers than that. So for me, I have to always adjust the home run numbers. And this arsenal tells me don't go overboard. He's still going to keep the ball in the yard. It may not be whatever, you know be.3 homers per nine, but don't assume it's going to be over one. That was sort of my takeaway when I actually went to project Yamamoto. Now, Shoto Imanaga, he already gives up a lot of homers in Japan.

So now I'm a little concerned. Is he going to keep, you know, is that going to translate to the same rate? So I'm a little bit more concerned. But Yamamoto signs, so we're talking about him. I like the Dodgers' destination because don't you think they're better able to keep him on closer to a six every once a week schedule than some other teams may have tried with their young pitchers and Glass now and Buehler? It seems to be a great place to not force him for 32 or 33 starts. and the depth that they have,

if they want to employ a six-man rotation for prolonged stretches of time, or even just occasionally, just to make sure that they're not overworking anybody in this rotation, it certainly makes a lot of sense. I mean, you think about 2025 keeper dynasty purposes, once Shohei Otani's pitching again, too, if you have Otani plus Yamamoto,

plus the extension you gave Glass now, and you still have relatively young guys with the likes of Bobby Miller, Emmett Sheehan, Gavin Stone, now Walker Bueller's coming off his second Tommy John surgery, you have this really high ceiling rotation with elevated injury risk, right? Above average

injury risk for sure, just based on past histories. In the case of someone like Miller, we know when you sit close to your max velocity, that increases the risk of injury as well miller throws really hard so yeah i look at that group and think it makes a lot of sense it would be like one of the few things that would get me to dial back expectations just slightly but do you worry less about six-man rotations and skip starts now than you did 10 years ago, just given how much workloads around the league have changed. I mean, in weekly leagues, the value of a two-start week

is huge, and not having as many of those or even any of those, depending on how the schedule breaks for a certain amount of time, that can be a negative. But this bothered me more in the past. Have you moved on this as well, or is this still something that you really kind of ding pitchers for as far as a workload ceiling goes? I mean, you said 10 years. I mean, you could have asked me two years ago, and I think we've changed a bit. I'm only

expecting 165 to 170 innings, and that definitely probably means I'm not going to get Yamamoto because there'll be someone who just looks at those ratios and just assumes. I think there was only, I don't know, 30, maybe 40 pitchers that had more innings than that last year.

And a couple years ago, it was like 70 or 80. Of course, they're not all good. But just the innings have come down in general, so the delta is a little bit have come down in general so the delta is a little bit less so but it it's weird it's like i'm i'm high on yamamoto as far as maybe numbers go but fantasy purposes i may not get him just because at least projection wise it's going to be down a couple of three starts from someone else who you right now you're going to draft him as your as your

sp1 if you will yeah i think that's the way he's being treated for sure yeah and to be honest um there's guys like logan webb who i i i headed the market on because if i'm taking a picture that early it's not going to be amamoto it's going to be someone like logan webb or i need to decide where i'm falling in max freed because i keep going around where innings more than, give him more, give him fewer, give more. And that could depend upon where I have him land. But the point being, yeah, I mean, I like to give analysis as if I'm in one league and one league only, and therefore I'm not going to get Yamamoto. But let's be honest, I'm not as many as I used to be, but I'm in more than one league.

Even if it's in a best ball scenario, I sure like to have a PC Yamamoto. I think it would be really disappointing if you had five teams to have zero Yamamoto. I guess that's what DFS is for, right? You can go in and build

lineups around any given day, scratch the itch that way. I think I'm in at the current price. I think I'm just wondering where I stop. I like the prices right a lot. It's kind of like the cliffhangers game where the guy's going over the mountain, the yodeler man.

He's going up and he's going up. You don't want to go too far. He falls off the mountain. I think if you say he's going gonna go at the end of round two beginning around three closer to pick 30 by the time we get to late march right as we know a lot of the drafts right now are that draft champions format draft champions are drafted hold there's no in-season pickups as you start to get to leagues that are higher stakes and have the in-season pickups we always see pitchers kind of make that creep up. And knowing that Yamamoto's a

dodger, right? That's a huge part of it too. That's going to drive the price up a little bit. There's always the possibility he comes out and just shoves in spring training. Another way that prices can jump on a player. So I think at the 3-4 turn, pick 45, where he's been going these last two weeks, no hesitation.

I'm comfortable taking him as my SP1. I might be a little more aggressive looking for my second and third starters because of the innings, but the skills, it's all there. Everything you could want in a potential SP1 other than 200 plus innings is there. And so few guys can offer 200 plus innings. I think this is a case where at least for now, the price is just about right on Yamamoto. Yeah, you mentioned draft champions, draft and hold. Because there's so much injuries, I'm not as concerned. I'm more apt to take the plunge in a draft champions than I would be in a league with Fab, etc. Now, I'm moving to the Tout Wars league that uses innings instead of wins and i may he may be downgraded

a little bit in that format for me i get a pull and because i i'm just i think any pitch needs to replace wins but i'm in the huge minority as far as that goes uh but yeah whatever it's it's i i'm not gonna quit a league because it stays in wins, although I should be quitting more leagues. But anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to when the early games are over, flipping on whenever he's pitching for the Dodgers and just watching that game, that's for sure. The Dodgers, the way they've rebuilt this rotation, they have quickly, if they weren't still at the top of the West Coast tune-ins, they've moved back to the top.

They've locked that up for the foreseeable future with the moves they have made this winter. Let's talk about Chris Sale for a bit. What a surprising deal. Chris Sale gets traded to Atlanta for Vaughn Grissom, and the Red Sox are sending some money along with Chris Sale to cover some of the money that's owed to him in 2024. There's a club option for 2025. Projecting workload, I think, is increasingly something that really separates you from the field. If you can do that accurately, and a lot of that's just being right or guessing right on injuries, that's a huge advantage. right or guessing right on injuries, that's a huge advantage. Now, the workload, if you look at the last five seasons,

throwing out 2020 because Sale had Tommy John that March, it wasn't even a full season anyway, 158 was the high watermark for innings. That was all the way back in the beginning of that window in 2018, which feels like a long, long time ago. So the first question with Sale is how do you even begin to project the workload for him given Tommy John a few years back, shoulder issues, everything that he has dealt with physically because it is a long list of injuries that have slowed him down. Right. Now, some of them are not exactly baseball. He'd fallen off a motorcycle or

whatever it was there. I forget exactly. Kind of try to wipe that out of my head. Some of them were self-induced, although that was during a rehab, and who knows exactly. And then he had other injuries that weren't arm-related. I don't know if he could have any more arm-related injuries and not have it just fall off. So I think you just have to be a little conservative. And again, it's a good landing spot for the trade because the Braves

are probably not going to have to sweat out making the playoffs. If they need to space sail out a bit to have them fresh for the stretch run, they can do that. I'm not even projecting 150 innings. You could go over 150 because, well, he's

had a little over 100 last year. Add 50. That's just kind of an arbitrary number that a lot of people use. But it's one of those things where if he's healthy, he'll pitch 30 games. If he's not, who knows? But I don't think you can responsibly project him for 30 games. responsibly project him for 30 games. I don't, I just, but what I do think is he's going to be a lot better than some people may realize

when he does pitch. He was pretty good last year. Had a couple of, you know, it sounds so, you know, cliche at this point, but he pitched into some bad luck and it inflated the numbers a bit. Skills wise, he's nowhere near where he was, but he's still pretty darn good. And he's always pitched in hitters' venues. So going to Atlanta isn't going to change that. It's a hitters'

venue. So I'm not all that concerned about that. So Sale is somebody I'm in on, just because it's further down the rankings, and I do think he's going to pitch well. in the rankings, and I do think he's going to pitch well. And when he's out, you can backfill, etc., etc., etc. So I do see me being in on the Chris Sale sweepstakes this year. And, you know, well, it's a Homer pick. Well, no, I think it's a – he's still a pretty good pick. I'm with you, though. I think Sale still showed enough skills-wise.

Even if he's 80% or 85% of the pitcher he was at his peak, that's still really good because this was a guy that had a case to be the best pitcher in baseball any given year back during that peak. Right now, the market's treating him... I think this is going to change again because a good team that makes smart decisions traded for him. I think he's going to creep up a little bit but the adp hasn't been bad it's been 182 is the overall pick the last 14 days 52nd among starting pitchers you're probably going to see that move up

i don't know three four rounds in the next couple of months that wouldn't be surprising at all as long as he's healthy if he's if he's more of a in a 15-team league, are you still in at the increased price? Because I'm with you. I'm in if the price doesn't change. I think it's a question of how much can he move up before I feel like the risk isn't quite worth it. Yeah, I think when he's on the mound, he'll pitch like an SP3. So if I'm comfortable, to me, it's kind of a loose definition, but I want my first three pitchers, I don't want to touch them all year. I mean, maybe, all right, maybe he goes to Colorado and I take him out. But my first three starting pitchers are just, you know, lock it and click it and lock it.

That's it. My fourth starting pitcher, I'll manage if I have to. Hopefully he's in more than he's out. But if sales on the mound, he's in. So he fits the SB3. Now it's just as he throws the number of innings. And like I said, you could backfill. Even if it's backfilling with your third closer that you speculate to get some saves that week

or just a one-start. I think we need to back off. Use a two-start guy. You kind of alluded to before as far as when we're talking about Yamamoto. 32 starts 27 26 and a half 27 weeks what you're going to build a strategy on five times a year maybe having two starts and maybe one of those isn't so good or etc so I I think that the whole nature of building a strategy around two-star guys is so 2018. Yeah, things change.

It's the way it is. I think for me, as long as it doesn't get up above pick 140, 150, I'm on sale. I think back of the first 10 rounds is very reasonable for what he should do. Plenty of run support, good bullpen. With the addition of Sale, you look at the competition Atlanta has now for their fifth starter spot. Bryce Elder has to compete for his job.

Ronaldo Lopez, who they brought in pretty early this offseason, they insisted. Alex Anthopoulos said he's going to be given a chance to start. Doesn't mean he'll stay a starter all year. I could see him being more of a swing man where he's picking up two or three innings at a time or even being used the way the Orioles use someone like Tyler Wells that could be kind of interesting and they got a

couple of young guys we saw AJ Smith-Shavar last year I mean a surprising promotion given how little experience he had in the minor leagues but this is part of what this organization has started to do in recent years is promote aggressively if they see someone inside that they think is good enough to contribute they they don't hold back and that makes me think that Hurston Waldrop, who pitched, I think, at three different you have any favorites that you like out of that group of guys competing for the fifth starter spot who could end up in some combination in the rotation together at some point right uh that's what i just with the i'm with jeff erickson last weekend at serious xm and we differed in our rankings than bryce elder and my argument was well i mean i don't love him but he's gonna pitch for atlanta he's a really good streamer well you know that that conversation didn't age very well

oh maybe it did i think that of the names we mentioned i think there's still a couple other i don't know if you know is still there i forget at this point but there's still a couple of other you know possibilities you never know uh we didn't know spencer stride if we'd had this conversation two years ago we probably wouldn't have mentioned Strider. I mean, that's just what Atlanta does. But I think Smith-Shalver has a chance to win the job in the spring. But I think it's kind of like Elder is the fallback. And if Smith-Shalver really pitches well in the spring,

he could earn the job. I can easily see Smith-Shalver going down to Gwinnett for a little bit more seasoning. And like you alluded to, it's not going to take long before they need somebody else. So I think Elder may be in to begin the season. And either Smith-Shavar pitches so well he displaces him. But a sixth and maybe even seventh starter are going to be needed pretty frequently in Atlanta. are going to be needed pretty frequently in Atlanta.

I don't want – I mean, I'll take these guys in a draft champions format because depth is what matters. And I may draft them in a fab league with the, you know, intention and maybe not intention, but, you know, I'm not married to keeping them, and I'll get rid of them if it doesn't work out. But I think – I don't know. I think Meshavro – I think team Elder will both get double digit starts. I think Elder is more likely to hit 20, but I think they're both going to pitch. I think the tricky thing with Atlanta, in addition to their aggressiveness with the young players, is they seem pretty willing to move on quickly if they're not happy or if they see a better fit.

quickly if they're not happy or if they see a better fit. I think of Ian Anderson as someone where injuries were a little bit of a factor, but I mean, completely forgotten about after a really impressive stretch to begin his career. And even because it kind of applies to the guy going back the other way in this trade, Von Grissom heads back to Boston. And he's kind of a big winner as far as offseason moves go. And when you're projecting playing time, Vonom in atlanta looked like he'd be maybe a small side platoon partner in the outfield for jared kelnick and now that he's in boston he can play his natural position or his best position second base and potentially be an everyday guy for them not to mention being a right-handed hitter

going into boston having that that monster could just rope some singles and doubles off that monster and maybe be a really good source of batting average at the very least. I look at Grissom as a player who might be more valuable in reality than in fantasy just because he doesn't offer as much power and speed juice as we tend to look for. But if he's getting on base enough to be high in the order,

playing every day, and a good average keeps that OBP nice and high, that could end up being a nice source of average and runs in the middle late rounds. Yeah, I'm the guy who paid, I don't know, 17 for him in Tout Wars last year, even after he was announced he's not going to have the job. So you don't have to convince me. You know, whenever you hear, you you know his best position is second base you know you know you kind of want to hear he's a good shortstop but he has to move to second base

because of he's blocked you don't want to hear second base is his best position although all right now ron washington's the infield guru right i know he's no longer with atlanta but there were reports that washington wasn't you know didn't think he could last at second base, etc. I'm willing to give Grissom a spring with Dustin Pedroia to try to figure something out, make the best of his skills. And I think that, yo, that's sliding Washington. No, it's not sliding Washington at all. No, it's not slighting Washington at all. It's putting my hopes in one of the really, really good second basemen who seemed to do some positive with Jaron Duran last year.

So let's see if we could have the same sort of luck with Grissom. And the Red Sox have got a bunch of middle infielders. None of them are knocking on the door to take away the jobs of either Story or Grissom. It could open up a trade. But I think, like you said, I think next year, that's the keystone. That's the double play combo is Story and Grissom. And I can see Grissom heading up in the order against lefties and a little further down against righties. I think there can be a platoon within the lineup sort of thing.

So I keep looking off to my my adp list here as we're thinking about this story story's kind of interesting to me i've been so wrong about him i i thought i thought it was a good move for boston when they signed him there were a handful of the teams i thought could have used him i know he needed surgery or that was the the concern was the elbow at the time Moving him back to shortstop does seem somewhat risky, but it also kind of makes me think that they're comfortable seeing what happens for another season or two just because they've got that long term deal with them anyway. And I feel like he's somewhat forgotten about from a roster construction standpoint. He goes in the pick 170 range right now, these last two weeks. Is Trevor story still the same guy he was when the Red Sox acquired him in

terms of skills? I don't want to say he's the same guy that he was in Colorado because nobody hits the same way in Coors they do outside of Coors. But I think we've learned over time. There are some, there are some downsides to having to play in Colorado. Going on the road is actually pretty difficult. What have you seen in story around the injuries these last two seasons? Do you see enough there to look back at even 2021, which was a down year relative for him, and say, yeah, 251, 329, 471, that's still in there,

and with some pretty good speed, because even last season, he was 10 for 13 in 43 games as a base dealer. Yeah, I just wrote his profile for one of the 14 places I write profiles. I forget which it was. But you alluded to the defense. It was only 40 or so games. But, man, he looked very good defensively. The elbow surgery took care of the throwing.

He could throw the ball again. I don't think there's any doubt at all that he can handle shortstop from a defensive point of view. Now, the issue with evaluating Story as far as hitting goes is he wasn't so good in his last year in Colorado. So, at least, you know, relative to what he was doing previously in Colorado. So was he kind of, but he's too young to be declining, but it just kind of throws a wrench in there that, well,

you're going to keep saying, well, he wasn't so good as last year. You need to give him an injury pass for what's happened in Boston. I think anyway, we're kind of back to where we were coming out of Colorado in that, all right, he wasn't so good this past year. How is he going to translate? Is he going to knock doubles off the wall and keep the average up? So I actually think that his ADP is kind of aggressive

based upon what the injury passed and what he has been able to do. You mentioned the running. Maybe that's what's being propped up. i was kind of surprised when i you know i thought wow this is uh the market is not giving that much all right granted it was what first or second round with colorado the markets i don't think the market's discounting him all that much for how unproductive he's been over the past couple of years. I wonder at this point, if you were trying to rank, what does the market care most about in a hitter's profile? Does it boil down to things as simple as in 2023,

Trevor Story had a 9.7% barrel rate, and back when he was really good in Colorado, that's about what his barrel rate was. Is it just a few indicators like that that you look back and say, well, all he's doing is striking out more. He's missed a lot of time and he's striking out because he's missing time. So he still runs well. He's going to play every day. He still barrels the ball. I believe in Trevor's story. Is it actually that simple? Now that StatCast is there and the numbers are there, I'm an average exit velocity guy. And I'm more so I'm a component average exit velocity guy because, you know, ground balls, line drives, fly balls.

I want to know that component in an uppercut swing tends to have a higher fly ball exit velocity just because the swing is on the same plane as the ball trajectory, which is always going down. So that's kind of my granular go-to, now that the information is sort of there. That's on fan graphs too, but generally on StatCast. So I'll look at the exit velocities and the hard hit rate and use those as kind of my, well, those were pretty good. And the expected numbers, they always get thrown off in Fenway because that wall kind of, you know,

what's expected in one park will happen differently in Fenway. So I don't, I know the expect, unless you're like Raphael Devers, who's been in the same park for X number of years, you know, over the three years and you can look at the trend. That's one thing. But moving into Fenway, you know, oh, look at Tyler O'Neal. I mean, it's really hard to tell what's going to happen there. But I don't know. I thought, I just, story, the batting average and the power, I think people may be expecting

a little bit too much. And if they think he's going to run, and that's why he's going to play, or that's why he's averaging the power, I think people may be expecting a little bit too much. And if they think he's going to run and that's why he's going to play or that's why he's being drafted high, that's fine because I think he is going to run. But I don't think he's guaranteed a hit in the top four of the order either. I don't know. I'd like to think the Red Sox are still a move or two away, but I don't know. He may be like Grissom, and maybe he cleans up against lefties

and is hit further down against righties. I think it's still a work in progress, but I think they'd like him to earn a top four spot. I think the thing that is somewhat encouraging to me, I like WRC Plus just to better contextualize how good a player is relative to the league. And even in 2022, a 100 WRC plus story was league average. It didn't seem like he was league average because he didn't meet expectations

and because the K rate jumped up as much as it did. Coming off of the injury, it was a mess. He had a 48 WRC plus. But I don't want to take what happened last season and weight it too much. I don't want to take what happened last season and weight it too much. I don't want to throw out more useful, what I think is more useful information than 43 games coming off of a major injury. So I'm okay where he's going right now. I'm not avoiding Trevor Story,

but he's not the must-target player that he was for me going into Fenway, going into 2022. I love Story two draft seasons ago. Last thoughts on Grissom. He is shortstop only to begin the season, pick up second base eligibility within a week or so. Earliest he's gone is pick 260. I think the overall is more like a 360 range, so not going to cost you a whole lot. Now that the playing time's opened up, he will move up in terms of ADP. What do you make of

Grissom? Is he someone you want in 15-team mixers? Do you go down as low as 12-team mixers if the lineup position breaks the way I suggested earlier, where he ends up being kind of high up in the order? Or is it going to be one of those cases where the way this team is built, they mix and match a lot, and Grissom moves up against lefties, but he drops against righties and ends up bottom third of the order on a semi-regular basis. Well, keeping in mind that that's not a bad place to be in the Red Sox in Fenway Park, some other teams maybe, but the lineup is still going to turn around and you're still going to get some run production down low. I'm interested. You mentioned shortstop. He'll have second base.

I think he's being probably drafted as a middle... Well, not as a middle infielder, but when you're sliding him at middle infield. He's probably your third middle infield that you're drafting, which is nice when he has second and short because now if either of the other two get

hurt, you don't have to look far for replacement. You can just use a middle to backfill so i think that's kind of a nice little boon i'm interested uh i i definitely am interested in grissom i you know i started higher on him than others and maybe i i can everybody goes up a bit maybe because i was still higher on him i continue to go up a bit um so i I do think I will be having some Von Grissom on some mixed league rosters. I haven't done one draft in the near future. But at this point, I mean, we've usually done a draft together,

but that league dissolved. I've only done one magazine mock and one, you know, air quote, real draft so far this year. I'm usually at least five. I am in the process of getting my hitter rankings all good to go. I'm making pitcher rankings too. I'm more worried about the hitter ones because I can just take enos if I want to have a working draft of pitcher rankings.

I just want to have a little more done before I start doing a draft champions. This is late for me too because, yeah, usually the league we used to do together, which, which folded, unfortunately it would start as the season was ending. It was the best way to just get ready for the start of the next season. A couple of toss-ups real quick. Von Grissom for 2024.

Von Grissom versus Jeff McNeil. Thinking again about middle infield sort of comps. Who would you rather have? I'm taking Grissom. At that point, I'm going for the upside, the category juice. And I'm hoping that I don't need to address batting average at that point. It's poor roster construction if you need Jeff McNeil. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think I'd expect a little more in the other categories from grissom so i'm with you on that one jorge palanco versus von grissom this is interesting because palanco last year you know he kept every time he came back into the lineup it's like i i just have a feeling he's going to get hurt again and he kind of did but what got lost is he played really well when he was healthy better than i thought when i ended up looking at the numbers at the end i think i'm still i think i'm still on grissom because at that point we're still you know you're not married you can you could you think you can replace a player of that ilk at that point so i think i'd still rather go for grissom you

probably have the guy in your roster as utility or multi-position anyway. So I'm going to go for the upside. I'm more of a safe early, take a chance late. I know that's in the majority, I think. But that's my general mindset. I think I would take Polanco. They do pretty different things. Big time power from Polanco.

Like a three year surge in barrel rate. I mean, he's been double digit since 2021. It surprised me. Like you said, I mean, I was unaware that he played as well as he did last year, Polanco. So there's definitely some pause there. It's one of those cases where I think both players are being underdrafted. So I'm happy to get either one of them where they're going. Grissom versus Brendan Donovan.

Donovan, okay. So I will always think of Brendan Donovan as an early season player that you talk about on a rundown or on a show because he's doing something really interesting at the exact right time. And he did it with some supporting skills changes where I think the ground ball rate had come down and he's getting a little more power right away at the beginning of the season and the immediate thought was, oh, hey,

Brendan Donovan took the best parts of his profile and fixed the bad parts and now he's Frankensteined himself into being a really good fantasy player. He carried that all the way to 11 homers and 5 steals in 95 games last year. It's still, to me, it's like a slash line that looks a

lot like something Grissom could do. 284, 365, to me, it's like a slash line that looks a lot like something Grissom could do. 284, 365, 422. But isn't Grissom just going to play a lot more than Brendan Donovan? Yeah, no, I think that's the difference. Yeah, Donovan kind of reminds me of Ty Wigington back in the day where you're doing projections. I don't know where he's going to get his 500 plate appearances. I just know that he is. Right?

I mean, it's like, I don't know who's going to get hurt. I'm not taking any plate appearances away from anybody else, but I'm over projecting St. Louis because I know Donovan's going to play somewhere. So I think that the playing time is going to be there more so in a deeper mixed league. But I'm with you. We can't just assume grissom's

playing 160 there's there you know if you're looking at a a range of plausible outcomes struggles and get sent down or struggles and is in a platoon is a plausible outcome for sure but i think there's a lot more on the upside between trading for him, being sale. And to be honest, there's just not a whole lot there at second base to challenge. I mean, are you going to move Raffaella in from the outfield? I mean, there's just not a lot of competition. I expect the Red Sox will pick up some, you know, maybe they already have some kind of a utility guy,

but I don't think there's anybody to challenge Grissom. I just want to see Willier Abreu play a lot because I am more of a, let's just see what happens with the Red Sox. I don't have a rooting interest in it. So, you know, if it goes sideways, it doesn't hurt me. It has no impact on me whatsoever. I'm just a happy person regardless. Last one, Grissom versus J.P. Crawford.

J.P. Crawford was on the Factor Fluke. I don't know if they call it that anymore, but it was the panel I was on at first pitch this year. And Crawford went to driveline, added some oomph to the swing, and it was reflected in the numbers, right? We saw significant improvements for him in barrel and hard hit rate. Got to 19 homers, more than he hit in the previous three seasons combined. Doesn't steal a lot of bases.

Good OBP, so it could be high on the order for the Mariners again. So you could see solid average runs. Playing time looks safer, relatively speaking. The bottom probably doesn't drop out playing time-wise on J.P. Crawford, but Crawford versus Grissom for you as a toss-up for this year. That's interesting. Now, the driveline puts a bit of a wrench in the analysis. I've got expected, when I put my name in a little thing there that I used to profile

just so I had the numbers, if he was lucky in a certain category, and he was lucky both hits and home runs, it turns red. He's got a lot of red in his profile. But again, expected numbers are nice, but they're not verbatim. And I know they're supposed to take Safeco into effect, but even so, I'm not just throwing him out the window because expected he was supposed to hit 14 or 15 homers, and he hit 19.

But I'm not necessarily just discounting him. And same with hits. He got about five or six more hits than air quote he was supposed to. I think it comes down, well, the comparison heads up. I suppose I got 13 homers, three steals. To me, that's Grissom's floor. And Crawford has shown a little bit of injury health risk over the past couple years so I think I'm ahead I'm not against Crawford himself but again we're at that point in the draft where

I want the upside and I and I think and because Grissom is going to have second hand short that adds just a little bit more oomph to the equation. I think I'm still on Grissom there, but I'm not off of Crawford. Fair. Totally fair. So it gives you an idea of just where things likely stand with Grissom now that the situation has become a lot better for him playing time-wise with this move to Boston. Let's shift the focus over to the move the Red Sox made.

Lucas Giolito signed a two-year deal with the Red Sox made. Lucas Giolito signed a two-year deal with the Red Sox. He can opt out after 2024, so if he pitches really well, I think we're talking about him as probably a coveted free agent on the market sometime around this time next year. That's what you hope for, right? If your team signs a bounce-back candidate like Giolito, you

just want everything to go right. You want him to opt out. You want him to go get the Carlos Rodon big contract after he pitches for you right that's that's the goal it hasn't been a fun stretch for giolito these last two seasons the home run rate went through the roof i mean it was like really bad uh two full season eras that flirted with five these last two years. Pitching for three different teams probably didn't help. And I just wonder, when you look at the guy that we saw from 2019 to 2021, mid-threes ERAs, 110 whip or below, is he just gone? Is that just a thing of the past?

Or do you see enough signs and indicators within the profile that you could see a good bounce back from Giolito with this fresh start in Boston? I think the latter. Now, I mean, I don't think we see the Giolito that first year. The year after he was the worst pitcher, when he became one of the best, I don't know that we see that. I mean, you're probably an ex-Saris guy. I'm a Sierra guy as far as my expected pitching goes. You know, Sierra FIP more so than ex-FIP than FIP to me. And, you know, Sierra's been 3-7 to 4-2, which isn't great,

but it's still below league average, and it's still playable in fantasy. Now, I don't love streaming at fenway park because it is a a hitters park but i you mentioned the home runs i hope teams load up with left-handers against giolito because he doesn't really exhibit splits and i want lefties trying to hit home runs in fun way as opposed to righties you know i just uh at least at least at home it's a lot unless they really pull the ball it's it's a lot harder to hit a home run so i hope teams play the platoon game with giolito and try to take advantage i mean 41 homers last year and he really didn't express or display any splits exhibit splits he was

equally philanthropic to lefties and righties cautiously everybody elmer's against him yeah uh cautiously optimistic maybe i i have him almost kind of defining league average as far as era and whip goes but again you know in an al al al only that's playable you know a mixed league that's playable but you know you have to be careful with it and you know he you know what is what is ron chandler and hq say once you show a skill you have it you know once you show you don't have a skill you have that too so i think there's a little bit of a misleading a misleading statement but the point being uh there there there is a plausible outcome is a 3-7 ERA. It's within the realm, but so is 4-7. Yeah, I think that's where you can pretty easily understand

why he's going outside the top 200 overall. I don't think going to Boston is going to help his ADP. It may actually hurt it a little bit. I could see other people moving up and Giolito sort of falling because of other players becoming more interesting. I think people worry about the matchups in the AL East, even though with the park changes in Baltimore, the lineup is so much better.

You don't look at that as an easy matchup, even though it's not necessarily a park that you fear. The Rays always seem to find a way to mix and match and be tough. Going into Yankee Stadium, tough spot. Blue Jays, I know they took a step back last year, but they're still good and they could get better. They could bounce back in a positive way. So I just feel like compared to where he started last season, like being with the White Sox and having AL Central matchups to lean on where he liked all the parks and opponents for the most part.

This is a radically different starting point for him. Would love to see the positive stories about him a month from now that he shows up to spring training. He's up a tick. He's got a new pitch. All those things could matter. He's come back from worse in the past. So showing that ability in the past does mean something. But I do think he's more of like a fifth or sixth starting pitcher. Definitely not a set it and forget it type. Not somebody that I would see like shooting up the draft board and becoming a fixture in my lineup again. I think that'd be a very, very surprising outcome if things turned out that way for Lucas Giolito.

Let's talk about Frankie Montas. People seem to really like this move. The Reds get on the board with a pitcher. They've had a very busy offseason. We know pitching a great American ballpark is not ideal. It boosts home runs, but if it boosts home runs, usually other balls in play are not

rewarded as often. Field's smaller, less ground to cover. We've seen a little bit of Frankie Montas outside of Oakland. I'd be more nervous about this if we'd never seen him pitch outside of the Coliseum. I mean, you see him on the road, but he went through an eight-stretch start with the Yankees. Home run rate

jumped up a bit. That was post-trade in 2022. Came back, pitched I think one outing or something in 2023. But this is just a gamble on health as much as anything else. So I'm curious, seeing Montas at the end of last season, thinking about where he is. It's another risk

ward profile, a little bit like Giolito's, but it's injury more than skills loss. I think I'm more comfortable gambling on the injured guy than the guy that was seemingly healthy that fell off a cliff for two years. This one's tough.

Again, the performance is probably better than those of us with aging memories may remember. The last season was like a 4.05 ERA, but the expected numbers were a lot better. He pitched in a little bit of bad luck that year, had a little bit of a high BABIP. The strikeout rate was down. So I think that's going to be the key to me is the strikeouts were trending down.

Do they come back up again? And you're right about the trend of parks that are hitter home run parks. Like Yankee Stadium plays neutral. I do think Gab plays a little bit positive for runs, though. He's not quite as much of a delta, so I'm a little concerned there. But I think that's kind of built in. I mean, the injury risk kind of swamps the park. I mean, there's already risk there.

The ADP is going to reflect it. So I don't know that we have to double ping him for the park as well. I think it's kind of baked in. I'm taking a chance, and it all gets rolled into that. Not really a huge home run concern to begin with. So, yeah, you're right. To me, it's about the health. And in the draft champions,

I'm not as apt to go after Montas because he's more likely to be a dead roster spot than in a fab league where, all right, when he's healthy, I have him, and either I put him on the IL or I drop him if he gets hurt. Good call on the park factor, by the way. A 114 run index for the StatCast park factor. That's a rolling three-year average, higher than it was a few years ago.

It used to be like a tick above average. That's well above average. That's third. Only Coors and Fenway over the last three seasons have boosted runs more than Great American Ballpark. That does hurt a little bit more than I thought. I think the price is so low. Yeah, it's built in.

You're getting enough of a discount. You can take the chance and mix and match them a little bit. I think it's weird to draft a guy and say, yeah, I'm going to use them always on the road and sometimes at home. But that might be what you do with Montas to begin the season just based on where things are at right now. There used to be, and credit Gene McCaffrey for this, there used to be a 5% change in skills between home and away, just intrinsic change in skills.

That's home field advantage. Now, a lot of that was umpires just favoring umpires favoring the home field pitcher it's gone down now that umpiring has been is being graded the the the mistakes or whatever the the the difference between home and away is not as much as it used to be i mean there's still comfort still comfort level, etc. But the umpire, the difference because of the favorable umpiring has kind of gone away. So there still is an advantage to pitching at home. But it's not by the numbers as much as it used to be. I remember reading a study, and it was a multi-sport study, the advantage of being at home.

It was similar to what Gene put out there. It was about a 5% edgeport study the the advantage of being at home yeah it was similar to what gene put out there is about a five percent edge just based on the calls you get and varied a little bit from sport to sport if i remember correctly i think basketball had the biggest advantage just the impact of basically the psychological impact as a human official not wanting to be hated by 10 or 20 000 people sitting around you like that's what it boiled down to and it was it was pretty fascinating. If you think about a ball game, yeah, there might be more people

there, but it's a little more passive in most ballparks compared to basketball games. It feels more laid back. I don't know. That plus the grading is probably a big factor in all that. Let's get to a couple more stories here. The Padres,

for all the money problems they have, they keep adding to the bullpen. Yuki Matsui signs a five-year deal with the Padres. I saw a note on Roto-Wire on Tuesday. This is from a story that Dennis Lynn of The Athletic wrote that it looks like, for now, Robert Suarez is actually the projected closer. Suarez actually got more money than Matsui a winter ago, like $46 million for five years. Matsui got $28 million. So I guess that makes some sense. But now we're seeing some rumors and rumblings that the Padres might not be done, that we could see Wusuk Goh actually signed coming out of the KBO.

So there's one more potential candidate that could enter the mix. So as you look at these, at least the two on the roster right now and the third possibly on the way, do you have a clear favorite that you'd be drafting for saves right now in that Padres bullpen? This time last year, I couldn't leave a draft without Suarez. I mean, I'm putting my flag on Suarez now. He could be the guy. I am, you know, the old, you know, to be, you know, cliche, but, you know, how many save ops are they going to get if they only have six position players? I know they'll make some moves. They'll bring some people in. But, you know, and that's just a good bullpen to be in, in general. You know what? I don't know.

I mean, I'm just, I don't, I know people shock when they hear, I mean, Eno gets into dugouts, but they're shocked when we hear that we do most of our work from our desks. We don't talk to a lot of players, at least not live. So I'm at the whim of the stories and trusting people that I know maybe have a little bit of an in with the Padres organization. I just I don't know. And like you said, the rotowire blip maybe gives the edge to go.

I don't know. I'm probably going to give Meech 30% of the saves for my projections, which means they're all in the speculative range for me. And I guess we'll see how things flesh out. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Matsui is 5'8". Yeah, yeah. Not very big. Lefty, left-handed.

Yeah. So like a 5'8 lefty closer would be unique. Billy Wagner. Yeah, not impossible, right? Like you could see something like that. I think one thing I've looked at for years is trying to understand what separates relievers in the eyes of teams that want

a dedicated closer. It seemed like money was one thing that would often be the tiebreaker. If you had similar skills, similar stuff, making more money was the thing. Part of that is if your saves are really heavily valued in arbitration, as we've talked about on the show over the years, and if you've got someone who's already making money and you can give them the saves, that means somebody else that's important in your bullpen in the sixth, seventh, or eighth inning, they're not getting those saves. They're not getting as much money in arbitration. cares about every single dollar quite that way, but it is something that you have to consider.

How much more have they invested in this guy versus the alternatives? Now, I think I'd go Suarez at this time. I don't think the cost is really an issue. I wonder how much the managerial changes matter as far as preferring one closer to a committee or if, you know, is this going to be one of those teams

that is a nightmare all season, even though they have good relievers? I think you could see it playing out that way. But I like Suarez. I think the stuff is filthy. I think he looks like a prototypical closer that you can mix and match with everybody else, play the matchups effectively.

They went through it with Josh Hader. It might not be 100% of the save ops going to one guy, but it could be 80% plus going to Suarez and scraps going to the other members of that bullpen. That would not be all that surprising. Let's talk about the other things happening with the Padres for a moment, though. You mentioned the lack of position players. We're going to focus on the starters behind the likes of Joe Musgrove

and Hugh Darvish, right? We talked about it when it happened. Big haul of pitchers coming over in the Juan Soto deal. Michael King, Randy Vasquez, Johnny Brito, Andrew Thorpe, the prospect who at some point in 2024 could see the big leagues. It wouldn't be all that surprising. Now that you've run the projections and had some time to let this trade sink in, do any of those guys pop?

King has been the trendy since the end of last season, the trendy one of the bunch. First off, I'm just curious, how good is your projection for Michael King? How many innings are you projecting Michael King for? I think that's a huge question with him as well.

Yeah, off the top of my head, if I recall, the market is a little more aggressive than I am. And it's, he was just so good for like seven starts, you know, and is that enough? And I know he picked up a couple of pitches and changed the arsenal. So there are some tangible explanations for the success,

but I mean, was he 29? He's not, not a spring chicken anymore. Um, you know, you're, I know that you're not that much over 29.

So it's like, Oh no. But, uh, I mean, I'm more than double 29, uh, at this point.

I got 10, I got 10 on 29 now. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, that's right. Sometimes I think people the same age they were than when I met him pretty much.

Yeah. So that's awesome. That means I'll be like 25 forever which is incredible Yeah no But anyway I'm now a Sexagenarian so I can double king and then Go in a little bit more but anyway I don't know I mean I have

140 innings which I mean it could be light it could be too much Just don't know. I mean, he did throw 104 last year. He had enough as a reliever, and I don't remember if he got in the playoffs or not, so we had a few more innings there. I mean, I probably am maybe a light. I probably should go plus 50 over what he did last year.

Again, it's kind of an arbitrary number, but even though the Raducci effect has been debunked, that plus 50 is still kind of the baseline that we use to, you know, all right, let's give him 50 more than he pitched, than he had last year. I mean, I've got him below, you know, 376 and 119 whipper are really good. You know, Petco Park helps. So I'm doing a pretty positive translation a lot of it's because he was really good king was as a reliever so if you just do the

formulaic projections the numbers could carry through and i even did the the rule of 17 where i don't know if this has been updated but i was i think on fan graphs a few years back where, I don't know if this has been updated, but I think on Fangraphs a few years back, that pitcher's skills declined by 17% when they moved into the rotation from the bullpen. So I'll just kind of

override my skills and add 17% and then project that. Even doing that with King, the numbers are favorable. But even given all that, I felt he was being drafted a little too high. But it's within that range where you can't go by your lists. At that point of the draft, I've got some secure pitching. I need to take some chances. So he's a guy to take a chance on, on which to take a chance.

Yeah. The, the cluster he's a part of right now, this is just outside of the top 60 pitchers overall includes closers. It's probably about 45 or so starters going ahead of him. You have Michael King with Chris Bassett and Jordan Montgomery just ahead of him. Safe and safe,

right? Yup. And you've got Merrill Kelly, Bailey Ober as the two behind him. Well, if I'm in the draft, Ober's not available. I mean, I may be too high on Ober,

but I don't understand at this point. Maybe it's because the Twins sent him down and used Dallas Keuchel instead last year. Maybe it's more of a Twins thing than it is an over thing, but I don't get it. I know he doesn't have the prospect pedigree,

but all he's done is pitch well over his, but that's kind of beside the point. Yeah, I mean, it's a cop-out, but it comes down to construction. If I have a Tarek Skubal as one of my first pitchers, I want a little safety at that spot. Then it's Bassett and Montgomery. If I have Logan Webb and Aaron Nola or a couple of safer guys, I'm taking a shot as early as my third or fourth starting pitcher.

I like that as a philosophy overall. Consider the amount of risk you've taken on to this point and adjust accordingly. I think the other number that is relevant to me with Michael King, I don't know how much other people care about it. I look back at the minor league workloads too. Because when a guy comes up and he's the sixth or seventh starter and he works out of the bullpen and we see a few years of up and down workloads the numbers start to get really skewed can we reasonably project the same volume of innings he threw as a 22 year old back in 2017 in the minors he threw 149 innings i mean michael king worked a pretty full minor league season right back then he went 122 and a third plus another geez he went more

than that he went like 160 in 2018 across three levels in the Yankees organization, right? And then you factor in like, well, 2020 is still in our five-year history, and that messed everything up. So I just wonder how much we can use past workloads as a more reasonable target for how much a team will let a guy go compared to the old Verducci approach of add 40, add 50 to what he did just last year. I mean, the numbers, Verducci numbers have been debunked as far as that goes, but I still think intuitively,

I mean, you're not going to add 100, and 10 isn't enough. So it just kind of works out to be in that range. Like I said, I've, so it just kind of, it kind of works out to be in that range. And I said, I've got, I've got 139, 140. So again, kind of alluded to it earlier, a projection should be the weighted average of all plausible outcomes. And he could get hurt. There are, there are reasons and there's a lot more area below 140 than there is above. So I think in general, people, you know, should you draft, in Chris Liss's terms, the 90th percentile projection? I think there are times to do that. But the actual, you know, people don't take chances on projections.

Good. That means that it's a good projection. You know, you don't. I want someone to go out on a limb and you know no well then you want to have them write a profile that says there's upside right you know i don't know you want that in the projection so yeah king is i'm not out i'm not out on king but i'm not going into draft saying all right i need to draft these 12 players and then draft Michael Kay. Did you see anything with the other pitchers that the Padres got in the Soto trade that jumped off the page? Anything with Vasquez, Brito, or Thorpe that made you think, hey, there's some deep league value here. There's some late round value we're targeting here,

or in the case of Thorpe, maybe there's a clearer need in San Diego now and he's going to move a little faster being in their organization as opposed to being with the Yankees. Yeah. I know that you have the luxury of having Keith law on your, on your team as it will. I, you know, and I know you still rely on James Anderson a bit from Roto-Wire. If James, you know, James has had Thorpe as, as premiering this year, debuting this year. So in a draft champions, when I'm into the, I just need a potential starting pitcher, Thorpe is definitely on my reserve list, deep reserve list as far as that goes.

Vasquez and Brito, Brito was one of those guys that, I mean, may have been a little bit hurt by Yankee Stadium in the lineups. I am curious to see how he translates in San Diego. Now, I know the Dodgers are tough. It's tough going into Colorado. It's not the best place, easiest division to pitch in. But I think I'm curious about Brito.

Vasquez, it was just pure number scouting. I don't even recall if I ever even saw him pitch. Not that me watching him on TV for three innings would matter, but I don't recall seeing Vasquez pitch at all. But Thorpe definitely in draft and hold. And Brito, yeah, in draft and hold as well, but earlier because I think he's going to pitch. Yeah, I think I'm warming up to Vasquez

because we've seen bigger strikeout numbers from him as he's moved to this system. Brito might be one of those guys that chews up a lot of innings for the Padres and is decent in terms of ratios, but lags a lot in strikeout rate. I do like that as a righty that gets just crushed by the platoon advantage at Yankee Stadium, that is no longer a concern. Big park factor swing for Johnny Brito. Becomes a lot more streamable, at least, in San Diego, even if he's not draftable in a lot of the formats people end up playing. I'm with you on Thorpe, though.

I think there's a ton to like there. The Padres aren't punting. Their window's still open. They're still a good team, even though they've had to cut costs and make a lot of significant adjustments. Let's stay on the West Coast. Let's get to one more topic here. Mitch Garver signed a two-year deal with the Mariners,

and this looks like a really good opportunity for him to just play a ton because they have a catcher. They've got Cal Raleigh. They don't need to let Garver be more than a backup catcher, and if he's mostly a DH or if even he's the everyday DH and they just let him hit, I think good things can happen. I think the only thing I'm somewhat lukewarm about is just the park. It's a difficult park to hit in for anybody, but especially for a righty. But Garver hits the ball really hard. He makes good swing decisions. The previous career

high in plate appearances was 359. And ordinarily I wouldn't project more than like 400 for him if a team was trying to catch him a lot. But I think you can push that number. I think you could see 500 plate appearances for Mitch Garver this year and he could do some pretty good things with him. Right. I got him in the mid, mid four hundreds,

but I think that easily could be low. And I mean, it may, I may even go up when I continue to review. Depends on what else Seattle may do. How much of a competition does he have for DH? I think he's a DH. No, you're right about Raleigh, too.

I mean, he's good offensively and defensively. So, not that Garber's that great defensively. But you may knock on wood. He picks up. Is he going to get 20 games? That's tough. I don't know if he gets 20 to be catcher next year. Maybe.

You could see it being right around that number. It almost depends on if Raleigh goes on the IL for a stretch, then Garver gets to 20. I'm not rooting for that. It's just more of like, how does it happen? I guess we'll know. One thing that'll tip you off might be late in draft season, depending on whether they actually hold three catchers or not.

If it's just Raleigh and Garver, then that's a pretty good sign that they're going to get him to 20 games. Right, and I think he gets five in season eventually if he does lose it. But yeah, you kind of alluded to it in our little bit of an outline in that the Park translation knocked his... Some of his formulaic batting average projections are going to be low because they're strictly

Park factor driven and not everybody's affected linearly or proportionately. I actually overrode my initial projections of Garver thinking there's no way he's going to hit that low. I mean, he's not going to win the league batting average title,

but in the mid-240s is where I have him. He was 10, 15, 20 points below that strictly by park factor stuff, and you talk about the power. He's one of those guys that has, you know, it's been over 45% fly ball ball rate which indicates an uppercut swing if you got the uppercut swing and you hit the ball hard that means you hit fly balls hard and i'm not saying safe not safe go uh t-mobile isn't going to cost him any home runs but i think he's still got the power to to produce 20 something home runs if he does approach the 500 plate

appearances that we're hoping. Yeah, I think that's a great way of looking at it. I mean, I think the only part of his profile that really makes me think the average could be somewhat underwhelming is that he is a miserably slow runner. He was 13th percentile in sprint speed. And the reason, okay,

so the reason this is important is something that Eno has pointed out on the show before. Infielders can play you differently when you're that slow, right? They can play further back. When infielders play further back, they can take away a few more hits. Like, that's the main thing. The most extreme example of this, Albert Pujols, right? Like, late career Albert Pujols could not run.

You could play him far back. A lot of catchers are like this. And Gary Sanchez gets this treatment, too. Doesn't run well, play him back. A lot of catchers are like this. I think Gary Sanchez gets this treatment too. Doesn't run well, play him back. Average comes out lower than you expect. That's why you see, if you look at the XBA versus the BA leaderboard, look at that difference chart on StatCast at any given time over at Savant, you'll see a whole bunch of catchers who are underperforming

based on how hard they hit the ball and what they should be getting. Well, where they're played is a huge part of how they do that. But Garver, I liked him a lot as a potential DH signing going into the offseason. I would have liked to see him go to a more hitter-friendly environment. It could be worse, right? This isn't quite the same park it was back when Adrian Beltre's power got sapped years ago. Hey, that turned out pretty good for you though, right? Because that's what led him to Boston for that brief time.

Yeah. I mean, with Garver, if you start a league, 15 teams and one catching, he's kind of borderline for me. He's right around that 15, rating 15. You could go for the upside and he could be a top 15 catcher. I say this because DVR is known to favor one catcher leagues, but that's okay.

I like one. If I were the commissionary league, I don't want that responsibility. I'm on the side of what James Anderson did for the Roto-Wire Dynasty Invitational a few years ago. 15 teams, one catcher, two utility.

I think that's a more fun way to play. I just think it's a better game that way. I understand the merits of the two-catcher league. I think you're probably right on as far as the one-catcher league goes. I think there is a floor-upside conversation, because the guys that go ahead of them ADP-wise, Gabriel Moreno, Logan Ohapi, Bo Naylor, Mitch Garver is going to outperform at least one of those guys if not the entire group but you can dream on the potential of all of their guys a little bit more and some of it depends on your categorical needs as well depending on what you've got the rest of

your roster like Bo Naylor could be a lighter version of JT Real Muto, categorically speaking. Maybe the average is what lags, but that power-speed combo is so enticing. Garver doesn't have that. He just has that big-time power. It's a more prototypical good catcher profile that Garver has, but now that juice in playing time could actually... Top 10 catcher is still a possibility for me, so I think you're at least considering him in a single catcher league. If you decide to wait at the position,

he'd be, he'd be an argument in favor of not investing early because he might not be that far behind some of the top catchers from a power perspective, even though you have two 50 average is very much the, the likely sort of outcome for him. No, you're right. And as a right-handed batter,

I, again, he's not going to fall in the platoon, but you know, I don't think he's going to catch or play 160 games either. Todd, we've got a lot going on this draft season. You've got master's ball up and running,

and I just want to give you a chance to let everybody know, like, what do you have at master's ball? What do you got cooking up right now? What's available currently for people who subscribe? Yeah, I launched November 1st. We are preparing

for draft champions at this point. I mean, I'm not, let's be honest, most of my subscribers earlier are drafting NFBC, but it's not exclusively for NFBC. We'll start to get some people preparing for their keeper in Dynasty Leagues. But it's mostly a draft prep site with projections, profiles,

and a lot of tools to help you draft in. It's not Rotolab where it offers suggestions, but I've got some cool draft trackers for all the best ball leagues out there. I've become kind of a best ball fan. I mean, what are my two favorite things, drafting and doing nothing? Use that line as much as I can. Guy from Underdog even used it at the first pitch. But anyway, I say I'm cutting down leagues.

It's a lot of it because I'm playing a lot more best ball. But anyway, I'm also doing some work with Fendity Index. And the reason that's important, I think, to mention is part of what I'm doing then is writing a free article every week. So I'm not behind the firewall. So once a week, I'm posting some stuff on fantasyindex.com. And it's kind of fun because it's a chance to go back to my roots a little bit because I don't write about some of the basic stuff anymore. But that's kind of what I'm doing for Fantasy Index. So it's kind of fun to have a platform to go back and review. But with a 2024 twist.

Some of the stuff I wrote about 20 years ago. 2024 twist. Some of the stuff I wrote about 20 years ago, but you know, with, with, uh, you know, instead of looking at baseball infolutions,

subjective line drive rate, I get to, to, to mention stack cast and, and just describe that. So that's, that's been kind of fun. Uh,

nice little, uh, boon to my resume working with fantasy index. Very cool. And wrote a wire again, this season to wrote a wire again, this season to? Roto-Wire again this season too. Doing the show on Saturdays with Eric Halteman on MLB Network Radio. And I've been kind of told that we'll be back for the Fantasy Network once they make that

switch over to baseball after the Super Bowl. And still do my stuff for ESPN. Looking forward to launching the draft kit with ESPN coming out sometime this month. Awesome. Well, tons of great places to check out Todd's work. You can keep up with all of it on Twitter, at Todd

Zola. Todd, I appreciate all the time today and appreciate you stepping in for Eno. It's been a good time. I'm sorry I don't say balls that much. No one does. Eno is the league leader in saying balls based on that commercial that he put out there a couple months back. But that is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

On our way out the doors, the heads up, if you'd like a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for $2 a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That offer is good for the first year, so be sure to check that out if you don't have a subscription already. Draft kit launching, I think, around the time that the Super Bowl happens, based on the last note that I saw. We'll get an update on that shortly. Our

draft kit, the Rates and Barrels audio draft kit stuff, comes out, I think, picture weeks, two weeks from now? Two weeks from two days ago. Yeah, the 15th of January, I want to say. It's coming up quick. So get the 15th of january i want to say it's coming up quick so uh get excited for that but that's gonna do it for this episode of rates and barrels we're back with you next week Thank you.