Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 27 : NL East Preview With Adam MacKinnon

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Ep. 27 : NL East Preview With Adam MacKinnon · Cards & Categories

• 0:15
  Hello, and welcome to episode twenty seven of Cards and Categories. I am
• 0:21
  Mike Coolard from Rasball, joined here as always by my very good friend Jeremy
• 0:26
  Brewer, also from Rasball. Jeremy, are you still alive and unfrozen right
• 0:31
  now? Barely? And we finally got into single digits, if that's the
• 0:37
  thing, single negative digits? What was rough? Had some issues this weekend
• 0:42
  with the furnace, so we'll go for that fifty five degrees and my kids
• 0:47
  complaining about it, but otherwise we've survived unscathed and nice and warm and very
• 0:54
  surprisingly lack of snow for all the predictions of like a foot of snow,
• 0:58
  and at least Central Illinois seems to always miss us. So the one inch
• 1:03
  was not well received by the children for sledding. But how about you,
• 1:07
  Are you surviving? Are you saying unburied? Yeah? I mean at least
• 1:11
  they got like pure ice because it was so cold. But if you're also
• 1:15
  not aware of it out there, we are both firmly in the Midwest and
• 1:19
  we're battling zero degree temperatures for the past few days. I got out finally
• 1:23
  went a grocery shopping today. It was glorious the dog finally went out,
• 1:29
  and I'll tell you it's quite the invigorating feeling when in eighteen degree day feels
• 1:34
  like a heat wave. So welcome to the Midwest, everybody. But yeah,
• 1:38
  if anything, it just makes me look forward to the baseball season even
• 1:42
  more and more. We're getting closer and closer to the twenty twenty four Star
• 1:45
  of the Season coming in the third week of March. We have the second
• 1:51
  week of our preview series coming up. Here. We have Adam McKinnon joining
• 1:56
  us for the l East. He is a baseball writer and contributor, not
• 2:02
  really writing anywhere right now, but he has produced a children's book and he's
• 2:07
  just knows a lot about baseball. He's a seamhead just like us. So
• 2:12
  we've got a lot of great insights for the last coming up. But before
• 2:15
  we get into that, let's cover a little bit of fantasy news with the
• 2:20
  latest transactions that have happened over this past week. And we'll start with the
• 2:23
  biggest one right off the bat group, and that is Marcus Stroman finding a
• 2:28
  very odd fit in New York with the Yankees. That this is a team
• 2:32
  that Stroman has had, you know, various run ins with Brian Cashman over
• 2:40
  just weird Yankees nest over the past few years. And Marcus Stroman is a
• 2:46
  very outspoken personality, has a very interesting Twitter kind of presence and what's going
• 2:54
  on there. So it's gonna be I think, an interesting cultural mix between
• 3:00
  Marcus Stroman and the Yankees and the Bronx. But he should settle in as
• 3:05
  the number two starter behind Garrett Cole right now, and that makes him a
• 3:07
  pretty intriguing option, I think from a fantasy perspective, as we know,
• 3:12
  the Yankees always provide wins for us. But brew what do you think this
• 3:15
  means for Marcus Stroman's value overall and kind of where his ratios might end up
• 3:22
  settling now that he's joining the Yankees. Yeah, I think it's a really
• 3:27
  interesting move. I think that's a really great move by the Yankees because you
• 3:30
  know, they didn't pay as much as I thought. Actually, Stroman might
• 3:34
  end up pulling it in, especially him being kind of their backup option to
• 3:38
  all the guys they missed out on that they were hoping to bring in.
• 3:42
  So I think it's great. He's going to play well in Yankee Stadium.
• 3:45
  He's got the attitude to hold up. Well there, he's got the ground
• 3:49
  ball rate to really withstand you know, more of a homer friendly. I
• 3:52
  think it was a top five homer friendly stadium in the league. But from
• 3:58
  a fantasy perspective, I'm always fearful of guys that go to the Yankees just
• 4:04
  because of the helium. There's this unspoken helium that when you sign with the
• 4:09
  Yankees you are better than what you are, and it kind of tends to
• 4:14
  take a life of his own. Strohan is a guy that you know,
• 4:16
  the last time he struck out more than eight guys an inning, or sorry,
• 4:21
  eight guys a game, eight guys per nine. Never, he's not
• 4:26
  done it. And you know he hasn't done either. Yeah, not either.
• 4:32
  He not eight guys per inning that would be impressive or eight guys per
• 4:36
  nine. So I think he's one of those guys that he's he he's gonna
• 4:43
  get more hype than it's worth and it might push him a little bit more
• 4:46
  beyond the threshold of what he really is. From like a fancy perspective,
• 4:48
  he's maybe a four starter four five because of the the the downgrade you get
• 4:57
  in the strikeout department. He also has had a number of kind of health
• 5:00
  issues that he doesn't quite seem to be the workhorse that you know, you
• 5:05
  might hope that he is. Yeah, it is playing the Yankees with better
• 5:10
  team than what he's been on, gonna get into a few more wins probably,
• 5:14
  But overall, I think I'm probably out on Marcus Stroman, especially with
• 5:18
  him signing with New York. So that's where I'm at. How about you,
• 5:23
  what's your thoughts on Stroma here? Yeah, I think pretty similar that
• 5:27
  it's just a tough landing spot going to the Yankees, between just the pressure
• 5:31
  involved with that and kind of you never know how it's going to affect players.
• 5:36
  I mean, it could go really well, as we've seen with Garrett
• 5:39
  Cole, or it could kind of go really sideways, as we've seen with
• 5:43
  Carlos Rodan. And so I've never been too big on Marcus Stroman since he's
• 5:49
  really came up and hasn't been able to show that he's got a great strikeout
• 5:54
  rate that I think you and I are both very pro strikeout rate, and
• 5:58
  everybody is, but like I'm especially really sensitive to it because it's the quickest
• 6:03
  way to fall behind is not consistently starting guys who are producing nine ten k
• 6:13
  per nine because that's with the league average. It's just always climbing. So
• 6:17
  if you're not keeping pace, you're falling behind to strike out. It's really
• 6:20
  fast in Rotto and Marcus Stroman's a guy that can do that to you.
• 6:25
  I will say though, that with his Steamer projections, I think that the
• 6:30
  era is probably about spot on at four h three. He was at a
• 6:32
  three ninety five RA last year, so that's probably in the right area.
• 6:38
  I'm not totally sure where Steamer is getting the one three three whip from.
• 6:42
  He hasn't had a whip in the one three since twenty nineteen, and I
• 6:46
  think since twenty nineteen when he was on the Blue Jays and the Mets.
• 6:53
  Like he's just grown in terms of like mound presence and knowing how to pitch.
• 6:58
  Like there is just something about turning into kind of that chess master on
• 7:03
  the mound, and Stroman has proven that, I think a little bit more
• 7:08
  with the Cubs then I would have given him credit for before he visited Chicago.
• 7:13
  So hopefully he can bring a little bit that over to New York.
• 7:15
  And I mean, who knows, like this could be somebody that could maybe
• 7:19
  turn a corner and turn into a little bit more solid starting pitcher, because
• 7:24
  the Yankees do have a good pitching development system and produces pictures ad nauseum,
• 7:30
  as you can see in their trade for Juan Soto. But I think for
• 7:34
  now I'm probably going to be passing on Marcus Stroman, and if he does
• 7:39
  show some new skills or just finds that the Bronx is the place for him,
• 7:43
  I mean, there is a chance that I could be looking to pick
• 7:46
  him up and trade for him mid season just to maybe add some wins to
• 7:50
  my ledger. Yeah, I think you're right on the line there as well.
• 7:56
  It's going to be interesting. I'm just, more than anything, probably
• 7:58
  just excited to see Marcus Stroman pitch in New York. I think, if
• 8:01
  anything, it's just gonna be more of a spectacle and the emotions maybe ryan
• 8:07
  high. So I think that's the biggest news of all of this is Stroman
• 8:09
  pitching, and for the Yankees, we just could be fun. Yeah.
• 8:13
  Absolutely, And it was kind of a slower newsweek in terms of transactions because
• 8:18
  really the only other major kind of starting pitcher or even starting player transaction that
• 8:26
  we'll have to analyze from a fantasy perspective, was Jordan Hicks signing in San
• 8:31
  Francisco to a four year, forty four million dollar contract to be surprisingly a
• 8:37
  starter. So he's been a reliever for the most part with the Cardinals over
• 8:43
  the past few years and came up originally as a starter and the Cardinals tried
• 8:48
  him as the starter. It didn't work out too well, But you have
• 8:50
  to think that the reason that he wanted to go to San Francisco is because
• 8:56
  they told him he could start, and at the end of the day,
• 8:58
  it's not. It's kind of no skin off of the Giants back because they
• 9:03
  can always move him back into the bullpen if it doesn't work out in the
• 9:07
  starting rotation, which I'll be honest, I'm not sure it will. Like
• 9:11
  I just don't see how Jordan Hicks, with his velocity and his kind of
• 9:16
  history over the past couple of years of elbow problems and anything else that you
• 9:22
  can think of in the kinetic chain that results from throwing one hundred three miles
• 9:26
  an hour that can go wrong with your body seems to have happened to Jordan
• 9:28
  Hicks. So I don't know if he's going to be able to hold up
• 9:33
  as a starter. Brew do you think he can do it? I have
• 9:37
  no idea what the giants they're doing here. This one perplexes me beyond no
• 9:41
  end. The only thing that I can predict is that we're all reading the
• 9:48
  situation wrong. Because four years, forty four million, so eleven million a
• 9:52
  year for a back into the bullpen type guy to come in and really make
• 9:56
  some noise in today's game is pretty reasonable. And I'm just gonna say that
• 10:01
  they just threw in this clause about innings by the chance they decide later to
• 10:07
  change him too, because it doesn't make any sense. Jordan Hicks, he's
• 10:11
  he. I sn't known why he got four or forty four, Like maybe
• 10:15
  this is the cardinal Homer on me. But man, the guy is besides
• 10:18
  the velocity, he's never really been a lockdown reliever. He's had spurts of
• 10:24
  excitement where he shows like what he might become, but then the wheels fall
• 10:28
  off. He can't control where the ball's going. And even when he went
• 10:33
  to Toronto, his control maybe got a little better, but the strikeouts dropped
• 10:37
  off a cliff. He wasn't striking guys out the same. It's just for
• 10:41
  all the firepower that he brings. The results don't seem to follow as much
• 10:46
  as you would expect or hope. It feels like he's always trying just one
• 10:52
  step away from getting over the hump. So, like I said, I'm
• 10:56
  just gonna go with it. We're all reading this wrong. They signed him
• 10:58
  as a reliever. They put it SENTI in there just because in case that,
• 11:03
  you know, somewhere down the line, he gets put into a fireman
• 11:05
  roll because he just couldn't. They just ran out of starting pitchers. And
• 11:09
  then it makes a whole heck of a lot more sense, and he's setting
• 11:13
  up Camilo d'vaal there in San Francisco. Otherwise I'm out. I don't know
• 11:16
  what we're talking about. I mean, I can see a little bit of
• 11:20
  maybe what we're talking about with Steamer that they've got. They're also confused.
• 11:24
  They're giving him fifty games with fifteen starts, so in some sort of swingman
• 11:28
  role, maybe a la Sean Manaya did last year. And I will say
• 11:35
  that if Jordan Hicks starts moving into a follower role where he has an opener
• 11:41
  and he's working in maybe a two, three, four inning stint and is
• 11:46
  putting him self in position for wins, he's going to become extremely valuable a
• 11:50
  lah Ryan Yarborough a couple of years ago, where he's got the possibility of
• 11:54
  pushing mid teens wins. But until that happens, I am also out just
• 12:01
  because I don't think he can stand up to being a starter, and I
• 12:05
  don't think he's ever going to overtake Camillo Duval for the closer role and picking
• 12:11
  up those saves. So he's kind of stuck in between until he finds some
• 12:16
  sort of path to where the team really dictates that he's got some value.
• 12:22
  And then if he does end up in some situation where he is following an
• 12:26
  opener, I think he becomes an immediate ad and will become just from the
• 12:33
  wins alone. He could start really pushing like top fifty sixty starting pitcher value
• 12:39
  just because the strikeouts will be there. Like Steamer is calling for almost ten
• 12:43
  k per nine, and I think you can almost set and forget at about
• 12:48
  nine and a half K nine for Hicks. But it's just going to be
• 12:52
  a matter of whether or not he can actually get those wins to come along
• 12:56
  with him, because the whip's always going to be unsteady with the walks era
• 13:01
  A. I think well can fluctuate greatly because of just where it's at.
• 13:07
  But he can be on touch, he can be untouchable at times, so
• 13:11
  it could be a pretty solid ra And Yeah, like I said, the
• 13:15
  last piece is if he can bring those wins as somebody following an opener,
• 13:18
  because if he's just a regular starter, he's gonna be like a four and
• 13:22
  dive five and dive guy. Yeah. Absolutely, gree and I actually I
• 13:26
  love that calls of the follower because you're right, if he is the guy
• 13:30
  that's coming in a third and they're asking him to go from three to five
• 13:33
  or three to six, you know he's seeing the lineup one, one,
• 13:35
  one and a half two times at most. Yeah, I think that that
• 13:41
  actually gets really really interesting if they're trying to extend the game and you could
• 13:45
  see them trying to kind of pull that lever of like he we're planning to
• 13:50
  use him. We put a guy out there, he gets shelled, We
• 13:52
  keep him for the next day. Put a guy out there. We got
• 13:54
  a two run lead, We're gonna put Hicks in there. We're gonna try
• 13:58
  to extend it to the to our bolt it's a pretty good bullpen there in
• 14:01
  San Francisco, and they're just going to try to shorten the game to get
• 14:03
  to the bullpen. That's really intrigued strategy. And remember the contract that he
• 14:09
  has with those incentives wasn't all starts, it was on innings, So it
• 14:13
  is possible that there is a strategy there. So let's look back at this
• 14:16
  one later. And you might have stumbled upon something quite interesting there with Jordan
• 14:22
  Hicks. And I may have the spared the contract a little too quickly if
• 14:26
  that's the case. Yeah, And I might have walked myself into something there
• 14:30
  too, because that becomes then an intriguing dart throw. The deeper the league
• 14:33
  gets. I think if you're talking any standard twelve fifteen team league, you
• 14:39
  can safely leave Jordan Hicks for your waiver wire. But if you're in a
• 14:43
  best ball league and only league, I might take some dart throws at Jordan
• 14:48
  Hicks just on the possibility of that outcome happening, because it could be a
• 14:54
  pathway to picking up some easy strikeouts and then who knows, Like if you're
• 15:00
  in a standard five y five rodo wins are so hard to come by.
• 15:03
  If he can even honestly give you like eight wins. That would be a
• 15:07
  boon. Yeah, no, absolutely, So, Hey, short news week,
• 15:13
  but interesting things going on. Yeah. Well, and we also had
• 15:18
  some card news in terms of Tops twenty twenty four Series one design being released,
• 15:22
  but we'll discuss that with Adam after the break here as long with previewing
• 15:28
  the NL East where we go through each team, continuing our series that we
• 15:33
  started last week of buying and selling a player from each team and based on
• 15:39
  their fantasy value, ADP skills, YadA YadA, all that kind of good
• 15:45
  stuff. But we've got a great show coming up. Hope you stick around
• 15:48
  and we'll be back right after the break. All right, Welcome back from
• 16:10
  the break, and we are joined here in this segment by Adam McKennon,
• 16:14
  a baseball author and contributor. And I've been introduced to Adam via a home
• 16:19
  league that we are in and Adam has been a part of the league for
• 16:23
  twenty plus years, so I was happy to join the league. Adam,
• 16:29
  welcome aboard here to cards and categories. Thank you, happy to be here
• 16:32
  and happy to have you in the league. Yeah, and if you can
• 16:37
  let people know maybe a little bit of your background in terms of like,
• 16:40
  we brought you on here for our analyst preview because you are a Braves fan,
• 16:44
  So anything else that we should know about you kind of going into our
• 16:48
  conversation to set the table on any biases you might carry or anything like that.
• 16:53
  Sure, so I will tell you my credentials and credibility are way outdated.
• 17:00
  I wrote a book in twenty twenty Baseball for Kids, a Young Fans
• 17:06
  Guided History to guided tour to the history of the game. I don't remember
• 17:10
  the byeline, but it was cool, you know, it was good.
• 17:11
  It did well. I alsold Derek Jeters, so suck at Jeets, thank
• 17:15
  you. And I was a contributing author for Baseball Almanac called of the Pen.
• 17:22
  I have my own podcast, Romantic about Baseball for about two years that
• 17:29
  I co hosted with Jim Passon and him and I did you know, a
• 17:33
  lot of interviews with writers players. You know, it was fun, fun
• 17:38
  time. And in terms of biases, I'm a Braves fan that has followed
• 17:45
  Mark Lemke's my favorite players, and so that should explain the lineage there.
• 17:51
  And I've lived in the northern Delaware area, so I have a Braves fan
• 17:56
  among Phillies fans and have been for my entire life. So so, yeah,
• 18:03
  there's biases. I have many. That sounds dangerous. I'm impressed that
• 18:07
  you're still here standing with us, considering how many do you go? Mostly
• 18:12
  to Phillies games? Then yeah, I've been, so I've been to more
• 18:15
  Braves games than Phillies games. Of late. The new stadium in Atlanta was
• 18:21
  a lot easier to navigate than going to South Philly. But yes, I've
• 18:26
  been to I've been to all three Atlanta stadiums over my lifetime. My first
• 18:32
  game was the Veterans Stadium in nineteen ninety six, and I've been to Citizens
• 18:37
  Bank Park a bunch of times too. It's actually a really nice stadium,
• 18:40
  don't get me wrong, really nice stadium. Yeah, I agree, I've
• 18:42
  been to a game there. It's it's underrated. It's got a great view
• 18:45
  of the downtown. And it's just it's easy to get to too. I
• 18:49
  really like that. Yeah, it's easy. It's easy unless you drive.
• 18:53
  If you take the train, it's like it's it's super super easy driving.
• 18:57
  I don't always recommend the stake once of going to a Yankees game a Yankee
• 19:02
  stadium, and of a Phillies game stead at the Bank in the same day
• 19:06
  one time, and that was not why I'll just I'll just I'll just own
• 19:11
  that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, take the L on that one.
• 19:15
  Yeah, we're taking the taking the l especially when I showed up to the
• 19:17
  Phillies game and it was in a rain delay. All the efforts to show
• 19:19
  up to a rain delay. So I mean, yeah, they look close
• 19:23
  on a map, but what recommend well check the scale on that map.
• 19:29
  Yeah, it was wrong. That was okay, Well, I know we're
• 19:33
  gonna do NL East preview. But we also had some pretty big card news
• 19:37
  and Adam, I thought it'd be good for you to join in here given
• 19:41
  your history with the game and just introspection of baseball overall. So we had
• 19:47
  Series one twenty twenty four drop in terms of the design. It came out
• 19:52
  and the Tops showed us the Lie de la Cruz rookie card. I'll link
• 19:56
  to it obviously in the show notes that you can see what we're tal talking
• 20:00
  about. And I thought it was also kind of funny because when they first
• 20:03
  dropped it, I don't think I'll have access to it, but like the
• 20:08
  original Instagram story that Tops braught along with it made the cardboarder look so clunky,
• 20:14
  So it was really throwing off the reviews at first, and now that
• 20:18
  it's settled a little bit, we've got a design that looks to be based
• 20:22
  roughly on the nineteen eighty six design, which had the classic black at the
• 20:26
  top and white at the bottom. It's very famous for the Bo Jackson rookie
• 20:30
  card that's in that series as well as the jose Canseco Rookie card, and
• 20:37
  I think that's what it's trying to hargin back to. But it's also got
• 20:40
  a Neon design on it as well. So Brew, we've gone back to
• 20:45
  back and forth on this a little bit in terms of what we're thinking about
• 20:48
  the design. You can maybe hear it my voice where I'm headed. So
• 20:55
  any initial thoughts Brew on what we're looking at here for tops twenty twenty four.
• 21:00
  Yeah, I think that the twenty twenty four Series one design is gonna
• 21:03
  be an acquired taste for a lot of folks. I personally a kind of
• 21:08
  digging the design just for the fact that they tried something different. It wasn't
• 21:14
  just the same old, you know, white card stock, very symmetrical design.
• 21:18
  They are trying something different. I think it's gonna be really interesting to
• 21:21
  see if they print these things well, because the centering is gonna be a
• 21:25
  kind of a nightmare with that Neon design. But I like the fact that
• 21:29
  they're trying to go about something different. It feels like it's a I remember
• 21:32
  the last few years, it seems like each design like I can't remember what
• 21:34
  year it's from. It seems like they just all blend together. This one
• 21:37
  is distinctly twenty twenty four. You open a pack, you know what it
• 21:41
  is, and you know what you're getting. So I like that two degree.
• 21:45
  Yeah, it might feel after opening for a little bit of little hokey
• 21:48
  because the Neon type feel they are stretching things to a degree, But personally
• 21:53
  I like it. I think it's something new, unique. I like that
• 21:56
  they're trying something different and when outside the boxman design perspective little bit. But
• 22:02
  time will tell to see how long this one kind of last because it is
• 22:07
  trying something different. But did they go a little too far and get almost
• 22:10
  like the Big League type cards or something like that, where it's like we
• 22:14
  met next Series one with tops Fire and ended up in the middle with Neon.
• 22:18
  I don't know. So, like I said, I kind of like
• 22:22
  it. I think it's gonna be a fun set. It's I like it
• 22:23
  because it's different, not necessarily because design is amazing, But I'm kind of
• 22:27
  excited about this one. So go ahead, Devil's Advocate. I know this
• 22:32
  is not your favorite card design, probably for all the reasons I do actually
• 22:36
  like it. Yeah, I'm just trying to I'm getting my big old listed
• 22:41
  notes because I'm trying to determine where I'm going to start from in terms of
• 22:44
  what I dislike about this design, because I honestly my first reaction was just
• 22:49
  a giant peaker emoji. It looks awful and unfinished to me that I think
• 22:55
  you hit the nail on the head. Actually is it looks like Big League,
• 22:59
  and part of it is the Neon design. I don't mind the Neon
• 23:03
  design, but it's like it works better for an insert set or Big League,
• 23:10
  or just maybe a font that doesn't look like Comic Sands. I can't
• 23:14
  get over the big team names at the top with these Neon letterings that it
• 23:19
  just screams Comic Sands. It screams unprofessional to me as well as you kind
• 23:26
  of alluded to this in terms of the centering. The centering was gonna be
• 23:30
  tough with this border, and it has been for the past few years,
• 23:33
  I think, because it's been like the full white border. It's not been
• 23:37
  where the photo goes all the way to the edge of the card, like
• 23:41
  twenty twenty had half of the card doing that and twenty nineteen had a corner
• 23:45
  that would do that on the cards. But on top of it, those
• 23:49
  black corners at the top are gonna be so hard to get really nice gem
• 23:56
  cards out of packs. From that, the cuts on these are gonna be
• 24:00
  really difficult. We've seen some of the production runs already coming out in terms
• 24:04
  of coming through with the odds breakdowns, and Tops printed a lot of this
• 24:10
  set, as you could imagine it is flagship Series one, but last year
• 24:14
  had record setting print runs and I'm guessing this year will too. So when
• 24:18
  you're talking about that quality control, as we've already seen with lots of other
• 24:22
  areas in terms of Bowman Super Refractors and anything else, the quality control has
• 24:27
  been suffering at Tops, So I am really skeptical about what these are going
• 24:33
  to look like in terms of centering and getting just those nicked edges. And
• 24:38
  then lastly, like the fade. I can't get behind this like black on
• 24:44
  the top to white fade on the bottom because it just links the card look
• 24:48
  really top heavy and oblong, I don't mind the fade overall. Like I
• 24:52
  was looking through some cards today and twenty fifteen had a fade on it where
• 24:56
  it started like in that orangish red and then went up to like a raish
• 25:00
  white at the top. And that worked because it just centered the card and
• 25:04
  like brought a weight to it when you had that darker color on the bottom,
• 25:08
  And now that it's reversed, it's just not working for me. So
• 25:14
  I don't know like how long it takes to get the runway on these designs
• 25:18
  done, But you would think that it wouldn't have gotten out of like a
• 25:22
  workshop if I was sitting in it. Maybe, but Adam, we're throwing
• 25:26
  you here into the fire with some cards takes with us maybe here. Don't
• 25:33
  know if you have like a favorite tops design that you can harken back to,
• 25:37
  and maybe where do these compare for you? So my my card collecting
• 25:42
  experience goes back to the Don Russ, you know, the late eighties,
• 25:47
  like with the with the Stark Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh pirates like black and yellow low,
• 25:52
  you know, borders. So forgive me for nostalgia, but you know
• 25:57
  when I see these, like all right, So initially, first thing is
• 26:00
  it makes me think I'm a friggin old head because I'm like, I just
• 26:06
  lead in with that. And then if we look at these, but so
• 26:10
  I I don't I see two things immediately. I see Marvel and Taco Bell
• 26:18
  because like, for me, the sort of like I'm looking specifically like the
• 26:22
  Shaye leang Leers. Uh, you know a card that was posted on Twitter,
• 26:26
  like that's Shaye Lego Leers like a quad a like catcher and the dude
• 26:33
  looks like Captain America with like and I haven't seen Avengers, but like with
• 26:37
  the thor Hammer, like it's one of those things where like I think it,
• 26:42
  I think it's generally appealing and I can see how aesthetically this is for
• 26:47
  some for a non collector to see things like the fade that you were talking
• 26:52
  about. Like me, as a non collector, I look at that and
• 26:56
  I'm like, that looks like as I'll get out because I think what it
• 27:00
  does is it's sort of and you know plays into the whole superheroification of a
• 27:07
  lot of the younger players like Elie Dela Cruz and Ronald Kunya Junior and Juan
• 27:11
  Soto, a lot of these sort of you know, larger than life personalities.
• 27:17
  You give them this like slick background with this like really like highlighted font.
• 27:22
  It's got like sort of a yeah, sort of a very modern twist
• 27:29
  to a very modern look to it. So like for me, I would
• 27:32
  look at this and I'd be like, Oh, that's not the cars I
• 27:34
  grew up in, But that looks cool as hell, you know what I
• 27:37
  mean. No, I think that's fair, And I mean I think that
• 27:42
  is going to be where the push and pull is going to be from Tops
• 27:45
  in terms of trying to find new collectors and trying to draw people in and
• 27:52
  also keep the old heads that are in this really deep like Brew and Eye
• 27:59
  satisfied. So I do think that this is going to be an interesting print
• 28:03
  run because Brew, I'm going to go back to our resolutions pod that we
• 28:08
  had in terms of when I said I was only going to buy hobby boxes
• 28:12
  and stay away from retail. I'll link to this in the pod. But
• 28:17
  there's some odds breakdowns and if you're not familiar with it. For Tops cards,
• 28:22
  when they print retail, addition, in different sizes of boxes between like
• 28:27
  hangar packs or blaster boxes or major boxes, they also have the hobby boxes
• 28:36
  and then the jumbo hobby boxes, so they're all different sizes, and what
• 28:38
  it does is it creates different print runs and different odds on each different pack.
• 28:44
  In terms of saying, all right, here's the chances that you could
• 28:47
  pull this parallel of the card when we've been going through a lot of the
• 28:51
  refractors and other different parallels. That's what it's hearkening to. And so this
• 28:56
  year I was playing that Tops would keep up what they did last year in
• 29:03
  terms of the odds on Jumbo boxes were significant, significantly better on all Tops
• 29:07
  products across the board, and then hobby boxes were second best. And retail
• 29:12
  was a real dog last year that it cost a lot of money to be
• 29:15
  able to find any hits in retail. It looks like it might have flipped
• 29:18
  this year that jumbo boxes look to be the dogs and hangers are back to
• 29:25
  being bangers again. Hangers I have traditionally had really good odds and I've pulled
• 29:30
  really great stuff out of them. I might be ripping a lot of hangers
• 29:33
  because you'll see in the odds breakdown I put in the show notes, there's
• 29:38
  somebody on Reddit who goes through and kind of color grades your amounts to hit
• 29:44
  some of these products, and the hangers looked like the best off the bat.
• 29:48
  So Brew, I mean, what are you gonna do? Are you
• 29:49
  gonna be ripping hangers with me and breaking your resolution right away on series one?
• 29:56
  Yeah? Yeah, Well we both said we're gonna goin rip much many
• 30:00
  cards this year, and it's series one, so I'm probably gonna break it.
• 30:03
  It's for me. It's probably gonna whatever I get my hands on first
• 30:07
  is really what it's gonna come down to. I'm probably gonna find something ripped
• 30:11
  the first day it's out, first weekend, whatever it is, really go
• 30:15
  all in right then find some cool stuff, experience it myself for the first
• 30:19
  time, and then not touch it for like nine months. Uh. That
• 30:22
  is really where it's gonna come come down to, because you know, I
• 30:26
  expect the print runs are gonna be a little too high. Things would be
• 30:30
  a little too easy to find, and all the the fun of being the
• 30:34
  first one to find a certain insert set or a first card if somebody is
• 30:38
  going to quickly go by and the and the market for these cards is gonna
• 30:42
  drop pretty significantly, So I'm gonna I'm gonna probably jump on it right away
• 30:48
  and then uh not touch it. But uh, with that, it makes
• 30:51
  it really hard because hangars usually do not come out right away. They usually
• 30:56
  have at least a series one. They've usually had like a month lag to
• 31:00
  the hobby boxes, and so it's gonna make it a challenge there because the
• 31:06
  hobby box generally seems to be kind of one of the worst values out there,
• 31:11
  but it is actually a more intriguing price point because you know, you're
• 31:14
  gonna talk about maybe an eighty ninety dollars hobby box that you can grab versus
• 31:18
  a jumbo like one something like that. So all that said, I'm gonna
• 31:22
  rip something right away, probably gonna be something like a jumbous. It's be
• 31:26
  easiest to get in the hands on it and then I won't touch it from
• 31:30
  there. So excited looking forward to it, ready to go, but it'll
• 31:36
  probably be one of the few rips for me this year. Yeah, and
• 31:37
  actually rode Aware is missing an opportunity with that Hangars and Bangers shirt. I
• 31:45
  feel like you might be onto something there. I wish I could take credit
• 31:48
  for it. I mean, I can try to make a shirt for it
• 31:51
  for us, and but I didn't invent the phrase. It comes from Reddit,
• 31:55
  the Reddit thread of our Slash Baseball cards. That's like one of the
• 32:00
  main tropes as hangers are bangers, along with when any buddy posts the way
• 32:05
  Bogs card, you got to type r I P or do an R I
• 32:08
  P gift because there's like there's a there's a lot of layers that I'm not
• 32:14
  gonna do a thing, but yeah, I mean I'm thinking like ripping ribbon
• 32:16
  banger, rippin' hangars and talking bangers. That's like that's a that's a pod
• 32:22
  name somewhere. Yeah, we're a T shirt. We're gonna have to work
• 32:25
  shop, so we've recognize this. But we do have merchandise, and all
• 32:30
  the sales are probably held within this pod discussion right now. But our first
• 32:36
  attempt at a wonderful shirt that was off the cuff was our Chris Martin Pop
• 32:43
  twelve Alsa Young Finisher T shirt from earlier in the fall. I don't know
• 32:49
  that we've sold a single one, but it's still on sale, so it's
• 32:52
  still available if you're looking. Uh, it could be a one of one,
• 32:54
  is what I'm saying. Yeah, hey, Chris Martin, braves legend
• 32:59
  Chris Martin. Absolutely, it took a lot for me to get that through
• 33:02
  the filters on the website we run it on because of obviously cold place Chris
• 33:07
  Martin. They I had to really fiddle all round with the name of that
• 33:09
  shirt, but I got it. Never heard of him. Okay, Well,
• 33:15
  we will revisit series one here in a few weeks to get really into
• 33:22
  the checklist details and all the refractors. Because it's releasing on February fourteenth and
• 33:29
  pre sales. That's that's bad news. By the way, for all husbands
• 33:31
  out there, I'm sorry all husband's boyfriend's out there. Saferies one dropping on
• 33:37
  Valentine's Day is probably not the way to go. It's rude on top,
• 33:44
  it's rude. Or maybe it's smart marketing. You say, well, if
• 33:45
  you're buying cards, this wasn't your day to start with. I don't know.
• 33:49
  Yeah, Or when you're there at Target to like pick up the car
• 33:52
  the Valentine's card for your significant other, you walk past the cards a shopping
• 33:58
  that day. Anyways, it is so it does come out on Valentine's Day,
• 34:02
  and the pre order is up right now on tops dot com. So
• 34:06
  I'll link to all that information in the show notes. But yeah, now
• 34:09
  let's get into this category's discussion. As we scope the nlyas this week,
• 34:15
  we're going to dive into each team and each of us is going to pick
• 34:20
  one player that we're going to be buying from that team at their current draft
• 34:23
  price slash ADP or just think that there's more upside and helium in the player
• 34:29
  then there might be seeing in the market and we can pick the same players.
• 34:34
  So I think if we get some consensus that's not going to hurt us,
• 34:37
  that we can obviously know where our favorite players are at. And then
• 34:42
  if we also have consensus on the cell side, that's okay too. So
• 34:45
  we're going to sell a player as well in terms of looking at a situation
• 34:50
  of either ADP or the skills that we just don't like what the player offers
• 34:53
  for us from a fantasy perspective. Going into twenty twenty four, and if
• 34:59
  you're looking at any NFBC data, we've got more and more drafts every day,
• 35:02
  it's really pouring in. So we're going to be looking, I think
• 35:07
  specifically at ADP data since the beginning of January because that's going to give us
• 35:12
  a pretty good spread of players. But yeah, Adam, we will kick
• 35:15
  it off right from the top with your favorite Atlanta Braves. And I mean,
• 35:21
  I'm not going to make you discourage them as as much as maybe I
• 35:24
  did last week with my White Sox when we really just dog them Keelan and
• 35:29
  I. But the Braves are looking pretty good going into twenty twenty four,
• 35:32
  should be the odds on favorite for the division. They've retooled, they're looking
• 35:37
  amazing and looking to make another deep playoff run, just like they did a
• 35:43
  few years ago in the World Series. So, Adam, who you take
• 35:46
  in four year bye from the Atlanta Braves? Sure, yeah, there,
• 35:52
  you know it's it's it's always nice when you can run out your entire infield
• 35:59
  and a most your entire outfield and your DH for last year and still be
• 36:05
  one of the odds on, like you said, the odds on favorites to
• 36:08
  win not just win the division, but probably probably win it by some margin
• 36:14
  over another good team in Philadelphia. So the player that I'm buying is Sean
• 36:20
  Murphy. I think you know it is, and it is ADP when I
• 36:25
  checked it, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But was one eighteen
• 36:30
  seventh catcher off the board? You know you're in the same you know area
• 36:35
  as sal Perez, Jannier Diez and Wilson Wilson contraras a little bit further down
• 36:40
  the line. At the end of the day, catcher is a very hard
• 36:45
  position to get offense from. Everybody knows that. But the fact that you
• 36:51
  put someone with a pretty decent skill set he underperformed his expected stats by a
• 36:57
  pretty notable margin. Last year. He had a three sixty six WHOBA where
• 37:01
  his ex wOBA was almost four hundred, and you know, to support that
• 37:06
  with a two to eighty six babeb on top of that pretty interesting. I
• 37:10
  like the idea that he's gone from Oakland to Atlanta where there's definitely some improvement
• 37:17
  and coaching staff and uh, you know, approach at the plate. We
• 37:22
  see that not just with him, but with Matt Olsen as well. So
• 37:25
  you know, he his plate discipline took a step forward. He's hitting the
• 37:30
  ball harder. You know, when his hard hit rate goes up from thirty
• 37:35
  two to thirty two to thirty nine percent if you were to take this same
• 37:39
  skill set, and you know, you couple that with the fact that the
• 37:45
  Braves are going to be able to rest him at a pretty decent clip with
• 37:49
  Travis Darnell on the bench. A lot of teams, a lot of catchers
• 37:52
  are hurt by a competitive backup. In this case, I think it might
• 37:55
  help them. So ultimately, I I think I'm buying Sean Murphy and if
• 38:01
  he's falling that far in the draft. Nobody likes taking a catcher early.
• 38:07
  But when you look at like real Muto and you know, if real Muto
• 38:10
  is your first catcher off the board, Okay, he had a very real
• 38:15
  Muto year last year, Will Smith is fine, Like he's good. You
• 38:20
  know, that's not to take anything away from Will Smith. But I think
• 38:22
  at the seventh catcher of the board, Sean Murphy is a massive value.
• 38:28
  Yeah. I think that's fair. And honestly, I think he's fallen even
• 38:30
  since whatever you were looking up, because he's slipped behind cal Raleigh and Wilson
• 38:37
  Contreras and he's going down next to Francisco Alvarez and Gabriel Marino, So I
• 38:44
  didn't. I kind of forgot that last year was also his first year in
• 38:46
  Atlanta, that you can usually count on a little bit of a bump as
• 38:52
  he moves forward in Atlanta, because you know, it takes a little time
• 38:57
  to learn the staff, and he got that new deal and everything. I
• 38:59
  think this is a good pick. I've kind of been overlooking Sean Murphy.
• 39:04
  Yeah, I really like as well, like my voices going right in there.
• 39:08
  But I think in the Will Smith range, you could even argue like
• 39:12
  that he could get up to that range without that much stretch, and he's
• 39:15
  going five six guys later. So I think that there's a lot of value
• 39:20
  we had there, just from the fact that he's in a fantastic lineup.
• 39:23
  He's to your point, he's gonna get some good rest and when he plays,
• 39:27
  he's gonna be good. He's always been a good catcher, and you
• 39:30
  put him in a good situation, he's gonna be better. So I'm actually
• 39:32
  very surprised to see him going down as low as he is. And this
• 39:37
  is I mean, this is a deeper catcher class than we've had in a
• 39:39
  long time. And I'm right there with you. Wait on catcher. I
• 39:44
  think it's a great, great move this year. There's a lot of guys.
• 39:46
  We just talked about bench of GARBV last week, and there's a lot
• 39:50
  of guys later that you can have, especially two catcher leagues, you know,
• 39:52
  wait around the turn, grab a guy like Murphy and another guy like
• 39:55
  Moreno or some jodah hin and there's there's a lot of good value there late.
• 40:00
  Maybe I'm arguing the same flavor of the of the concept of a deeper
• 40:04
  thing, but I think really the floor has just gone from abysmal to bad,
• 40:08
  you know what I mean. Maybe it's maybe I'm arguing the same point
• 40:13
  where it's it's deeper, but it really has like it used to be like
• 40:16
  if you didn't have anything by the fifth round, and I'm more used to
• 40:20
  auction drafts, but if you're it used to be catcher was like if you
• 40:24
  had a good catcher, it was a capable position, like you would keep
• 40:28
  that player because the field was so bad. But I think ultimately now the
• 40:34
  worst of the worst has become palatable, and that to me is the biggest
• 40:38
  difference. So probably the same point, but still, yeah, no,
• 40:43
  I think that's fair and I don't know, I guess we should have figured
• 40:46
  this out before. But do you want to do your cells well now,
• 40:50
  Adam, I think we'll just do them kind of, we'll do them together
• 40:53
  instead of each doing our buy and each doing our cell. If you want
• 40:57
  to do your cell now as well, sure, yeah, so my cell.
• 41:00
  And my daughter is gonna hate me for this because it's her favorite player.
• 41:05
  My cell is Ozzie Albi's in the same for sort of the inverse reasons
• 41:09
  that I like Sean Murphy. Some of this is gonna be old man eye
• 41:15
  test. There is nobody on the braves that puts together worse at bats than
• 41:20
  Azzi Alby's. He and some of it is so perplexing. So like,
• 41:27
  for example, his the switch hitting has I know it's got to We've got
• 41:31
  to walk away from the switch hitting at some point. This is a guy
• 41:35
  who bats one hundred and thirty points higher as a righty against lefties, and
• 41:40
  he's presentable against as righty. On righty, he very rarely does it,
• 41:45
  but from the left side he hits with marginally more power, but it's just
• 41:51
  marginal. His plate discipline, his plate approach is horrendous, most especially with
• 41:55
  two strikes. He gets beat by velocity up a lot. He's a fourteenth
• 42:02
  percent percentile chase rate. He just missed swings and misses way too much and
• 42:12
  doesn't walk enough or steal enough to justify the cost when you've got you know,
• 42:16
  obviously, you could spring for Mookie Bats at second base, you know,
• 42:21
  in the first round, and you know, call it and call it
• 42:22
  a day there. But you could also wait on, you know, Marcus
• 42:28
  Simeon for one more round. You could also wait for kateell Marte. And
• 42:32
  I just don't feel like you're getting anything, you know, anything that much
• 42:37
  worse. You know, Yeah, I do love Azzi Albi, so this
• 42:42
  one does hurt just because I love his accumulating stats and it's one of these
• 42:45
  guys where, yeah, I don't actually have him as one of my buys
• 42:50
  or selves, but I think this is a fair sell brew anything on as
• 42:55
  the Albis from you. I think for me it's I don't problem with Alby's
• 43:00
  as a player. I feel like he's gone from like overrated to underrated to
• 43:02
  overrated underrated to a degree, and I think what what I was surprised is
• 43:07
  just looking at his ADP, you know, going and basically the second round,
• 43:10
  Like if it wasn't maybe a year ago when you could get him so
• 43:14
  much later and he was being very underappreciated. I think the pensulum just swung
• 43:19
  too drastically on Albi's And I don't know if that's if that that's Albi's or
• 43:22
  if that's being in the Atlanta lineup that's kind of playing together. So I
• 43:27
  still like Albi's, but I think the atoms a really good point here.
• 43:30
  There's a lot of other options that you can wait on and be almost as
• 43:34
  happy and allocate your resources elsewhere. So I again not not on my list
• 43:38
  either, but I have expert here. Sorry. I think there's some helium
• 43:45
  though, because he's in a lot of every projected lineup that I've seen,
• 43:49
  he's second behind Acuna, and and like that wasn't the case. I mean,
• 43:53
  Snicker typically would bat him sixth or seventh for the longest time. So
• 43:59
  like, I don't know if that's like superficial helium or it's that sort of
• 44:02
  position scarcity perception that we have with second base and we've always had with second
• 44:07
  base. I don't there's some sort of perception that's ned to me not matching
• 44:14
  the reality here with him, and I love Ozzie. Like I said,
• 44:16
  he's my daughter's favorite player. It's the only thing keeping her from being a
• 44:20
  Phillies fan. But I can't I can't endorse him at that at a second
• 44:25
  round price tag. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. All right,
• 44:30
  brew who you got for your buy and sell from the braves here? Well,
• 44:34
  at the risk of any total judgment from the expert expert guest here,
• 44:38
  I'm gonna go with a bye that I a guy that I've always voice enjoyed,
• 44:44
  and I really think that you know, he's he's getting penalized from father
• 44:49
  time to degree and it's Charlie Morton. Charlie Morton going off, go off
• 44:53
  the board. You know. I think last I looked at like the sixty
• 44:57
  seventh starting pitcher, that's a number five or six starter guy struck out ten
• 45:02
  for nine last year. Is Velosty has been pretty consistent, that hasn't really
• 45:07
  dropped as he's aged. And really the only thing it hurt him last year,
• 45:12
  which it hurt him, was he just couldn't control like the walks.
• 45:15
  We're a big issue, but that's never really been a big issue for him
• 45:20
  overall. And so I have to think. First of all, the Braves
• 45:22
  dedicated what another twenty million to him, and so they clearly believe and give
• 45:27
  him an off season to work through the control. It's not that the pitches
• 45:30
  weren't good. It wasn't that he couldn't strike guys out. He just was
• 45:34
  having trouble controlling and keeping it in his zone. And for a guy that's
• 45:37
  that's not all really been a historical issue. I think he can correct it.
• 45:42
  And if he can correct that, he's a two or three starter that
• 45:45
  you're paying very very late prices for. So I'm gonna want a ton of
• 45:49
  Charlie Morton chairs just because he's, you know, it's the old guy that
• 45:52
  he's you know, it's too late now, it's you know, it's kind
• 45:57
  of the Nelson Cruz of pitchers to to go read that. You know,
• 46:00
  at some point the wheels will fall off, But I don't think twenty twenty
• 46:02
  four is the year that wheels fall off for Charlie Bourdon. So, like
• 46:07
  I said, I love myself from Charlie Morton. Yeah, I think that's
• 46:12
  a great pick. He was one of the guys I considered here for the
• 46:15
  bye as well. That what I like about it is. It's just late
• 46:20
  volume K's, Like it's really hard to find that volume of K's consistently where
• 46:24
  he's going in the draft. And let's also not forget that he came off
• 46:29
  of that broken leg last year, that he broke the in the twenty twenty
• 46:34
  two playoffs. So I'm hoping that this shows up in the splits and then
• 46:38
  we can see that like maybe he got better in the second half. But
• 46:40
  I don't think that did work. It was twenty one. It was it
• 46:45
  was a twenty one World Series. Okay, my bad. Then, yeah,
• 46:47
  I think it was Al Toovey. I think it was Al two ve
• 46:51
  hit a comebacker off his office. You are shit, Okay, well we
• 46:54
  can throw that out. I wasn't watching her. This is what I heard.
• 47:02
  But to your point, though, to your well, to your point,
• 47:07
  it is it is true, like he lives and dies by the breaking
• 47:09
  ball. And I think you know, because he's got that that just really
• 47:14
  wicked break on his curveball, which can get called kind of unfavorably, especially
• 47:20
  if he leaves it low in the zone and if he doesn't get swings and
• 47:23
  misses, that pitch lives and dies by swings and misses, and there is
• 47:28
  there's probably an adjustment among a lot of hitters because they're getting more used to
• 47:32
  seeing pitches like sweepers and things like that. And his his curveball almost looks
• 47:37
  like a sweeper before sweepers were cool, So we're a slider rather. So
• 47:44
  I do wonder if some of the walks will come down and with an adjustment
• 47:46
  to his pitch mix. Yeah, that's right where I'm at. I think
• 47:50
  it's one of those that mid season is hard to diagnose that and make that
• 47:53
  adjustment. But I think with an off season to work through things, I
• 47:58
  think that there's a lot of upside there. And again, you're not paying
• 48:00
  much at that price for him, and the worst that happens is you've got
• 48:05
  a high k guy that's gonna win a decent amount of games with that lineup.
• 48:08
  And Okay, his whip's a little off, you know, there's worse
• 48:13
  things to have. So he's Hunter Green with age, Green with age.
• 48:19
  So that's nice, Yeah, no kidding. So yeah, who's your cell?
• 48:24
  Yeah? So my cell? And I don't know if this is really
• 48:27
  a fair sell it because he's he's not going very high. I'm just I'm
• 48:30
  completely out it's Bryce Elder the other side of the rotation. Here. Bryce
• 48:35
  Elder to me, he's he's really scary for any staff that you have.
• 48:38
  I don't know that he know. I'm expecting he's gonna try to you should
• 48:42
  have that number five job. I'm not certain of that, Adam. You
• 48:45
  can correct me if if if I'm wrong. But his stuff just screams regression.
• 48:50
  You know, doesn't strike out guys. But you're gonna look at his
• 48:52
  record and see he's twelve and four. Last year he had e ra in
• 48:55
  the threes. It's like, Oh, he's a young guy who's a rookie.
• 48:59
  He's still figuring it out, so he's got growth to come. And
• 49:02
  really there's nothing that supports that. And I would I would be looking at
• 49:07
  him as the kind of guy that could really torpedo your staff if you're trying
• 49:10
  to bring him on and say, oh, I could just try to sneak
• 49:13
  a few wins things like that. He could easily blow up on you because
• 49:15
  he had a few fantastic months early in the season last year, and the
• 49:19
  last majority of that was he was just very lucky with ability to leave guys
• 49:24
  on base strand he got a lot of bat, of ball luck as well.
• 49:29
  So I'm out in Bryce Elder. I know that's going way down the
• 49:31
  draft board, but I just want to make sure that he's not on any
• 49:35
  teams that I have, even if he's free. I think that's yeah,
• 49:38
  yeah, now that's that's a good point. I mean with Elder, his
• 49:42
  whole profile is pitch to contact. He's kind of like Logan Web but not
• 49:46
  He's like Diet Logan Web in some ways. You're not gonna where does.
• 49:52
  He doesn't bring a lot of fantasy value. He's going to strike out seven
• 49:53
  per nine. He's not going to go as deep as Logan Web in the
• 49:58
  games, and he gets absolutely crushed if he leaves the ball anywhere, you
• 50:04
  know, belt high or above. He doesn't have the velocity to get it
• 50:07
  by you. And his keen pitch as a sinker, it's just not Yeah,
• 50:14
  I see some aggression. I think this is somebody who you could see
• 50:17
  maybe taking the shuttle a couple of times this season. Yeah, absolutely for
• 50:22
  sure. All right, cool, how about you? Who are you buying
• 50:25
  and selling from the esteemed braves? All right? So for my buye as
• 50:31
  soon as we saw his price, when we talked about the off season move
• 50:35
  when he joined the Braves, it was Jared Kellernick. So I don't know
• 50:38
  if I'm ever gonna quit Jared Kellnick. It's gonna take a long tail,
• 50:43
  I think for that to happen, because he's still so young. He's still
• 50:47
  only twenty four, and he's not going to turn twenty five till halfway through
• 50:52
  the summer. So this is a guy that I mean, there's plenty of
• 50:54
  guys like this that are still in Double A, Triple A working their way
• 50:59
  up. And he does have the swing and miss in his game. But
• 51:02
  look at what he produced last year in four hundred at bats, even with
• 51:06
  the injury with the Mariners, and that's a two fifty three three twenty seven,
• 51:10
  four to nineteen line with eleven homers and thirteen stone bases. That's not
• 51:15
  a bad little line for, you know, somebody who's being drafted as like
• 51:20
  a fourth ish outfielder, because you can see it in his price that he's
• 51:24
  going around players like Dalton Varshow, Taylor Ward, Lords, Guriel Jade Martinez,
• 51:30
  Eloy Darling Marte, and he's definitely got a ceiling that could be much
• 51:37
  higher than all those guys because of just his prospect pedigree. But what I
• 51:43
  also like is I'm not sure if there's a better organization he could have landed
• 51:46
  in that. I think part of the Brave success over these past stretch of
• 51:52
  years with Michael Harris, Ronald Lacuna, Albi's even bringing Matt Olson, is
• 51:59
  they've figured out how to develop hitters, and I think it just takes a
• 52:02
  little extra tutelage here for Kelnick to learn to, you know, look for
• 52:07
  his pitch. He's awful against off speed, but he should be hitting in
• 52:12
  the bottom of this Atlanta lineup and should be seeing plenty of fastballs because of
• 52:15
  that, because he's gonna have guys on base in front of him. They're
• 52:20
  not going to want to put kel Nick on base in front of a Kunya
• 52:22
  and Albi's that you know, they're going to challenge him and make him hit
• 52:25
  his way through the lineup. And again, Adam, you hinted at this
• 52:30
  with Ozzy Albi's that Snicker will shuffle his lineup around a little bit. And
• 52:36
  this is a guy who is thoughted right now to be seventh or eighth in
• 52:40
  the lineup, but if he gets hot, he could move up to fifth,
• 52:44
  six and watch out if that happens, because the RBIs could go through
• 52:47
  the roof. Yeah, it's gonna be hard to ever. Sorry, now
• 52:54
  I tend to agree with it. I mean, I obviously Nthopolis and the
• 52:59
  staff see some thing in him. You know, he was supposed to be.
• 53:01
  It was supposed to be sort of a strong side platoon with Vaughan Grissom,
• 53:05
  who got who got traded to the Red Sox in the cris sale deal.
• 53:09
  For me, I look at kill Nick and it's almost more of a
• 53:14
  mental upgrade in some ways because a lot of the swing and miss if you
• 53:17
  if you you know, dive into the pitch, the pitch data on it,
• 53:22
  a lot of it is impressing. It's a lot of him pressing to
• 53:25
  do something with the Mariners lineup that was largely in demic, and he was
• 53:30
  sort of tagged as the guy you know, you're you know, you're gonna
• 53:35
  bat in the center of the lineup towards the top. We need you to
• 53:38
  be a producer, uh for And that was where a lot of you know,
• 53:42
  his injury came from, you know, you know know, frustration,
• 53:45
  you know, whatever you want to call it. And I think that when
• 53:50
  you look at him in that profile in the bottom of a lineup that says,
• 53:55
  you don't have to be the guy we have like eight other of the
• 53:59
  guys like Chill and just hit. I think you may not. I could
• 54:05
  see a you know, a pretty good I don't think we'll see that in
• 54:09
  year one in Atlanta in terms of record, you know, uh, realizing
• 54:14
  that ceiling. But I mean, who's to say we can't see it?
• 54:17
  Like A I could see more running. I could see like you know,
• 54:21
  it's not hard to you could squint and see a twenty twenty season, maybe
• 54:25
  a fifteen to twenty five season from Kelnick. And if you're drafting him as
• 54:30
  a fourth outfielder and there's a possibility you could get like one hundred and eighty
• 54:36
  one hundred and ninety runs RBI combined, I mean that's a pretty good ROI
• 54:45
  yeah, I think you're you're absolute right, quol Is. It's it's he's
• 54:47
  hard to quit and you look the swing, you look at the skill set,
• 54:52
  uh, and it it all looks good. It's all there. It's
• 54:54
  a matter of if and if it is mental, which a lot of it
• 54:59
  points to it is, is like if he can just have some patients,
• 55:01
  settle in and really work on his plate approach and just be patient, pick
• 55:07
  his right pitch he's got, He's got the talent. So I do like
• 55:12
  him as a flyer, you know, especially if you've if you've been kind
• 55:15
  of risk averse early in your draft and he's a guy that you're trying to
• 55:19
  put, you know, stack some guys late in the draft to try to
• 55:21
  be league winners, right, guys that might just hit. I think that
• 55:23
  there's a lot of me said there, and I really really am interested in
• 55:27
  him more in more of a keeper dynasty format as the guys you can kind
• 55:30
  of grab late, low cost, and if he gets a little bit of
• 55:34
  time under his belt, he just starts to develop a little bit in that
• 55:37
  lineup, he could be really interested interesting the next few years. Yeah,
• 55:42
  I think that's a really good point. All Right, I'm in a keeper
• 55:45
  format. I'm targeting him absolutely deadline as like a you know, if he's
• 55:49
  doing well, you target him as a centerpiece. If he's not doing well,
• 55:52
  you try to talk talk a fantasy manager into like a throw in with
• 55:57
  another detail. And I think you could profit pretty well from that. Yeah,
• 56:02
  definitely, all right for my cell I'm gonna take Max Freed for my
• 56:07
  cell. He's going sixty first, and it's just way too rich for my
• 56:14
  taste. This is a guy who only threw a total of seventy seven and
• 56:20
  two thirds innings last year because he was battling an elbow injury, slash flexer
• 56:27
  strain, and it's all the bad indicators that I think it's pretty obvious that
• 56:31
  there's something not quite right with his elbow, and they've been doing a pretty
• 56:37
  good job of staving off any sort of surgery. And for that price,
• 56:43
  you're looking at fourth fifth round, you need something that's a little bit more
• 56:46
  stable. And I think, especially when you're looking at where Freed is going
• 56:51
  in drafts, I'll be taking a lot of the pictures that come after him
• 56:54
  because of that that you know he's going right in front of Logan Webb,
• 56:58
  Blake Snell, Code, I Singa, Grayson Rodriguez, Logan Gilbert, and
• 57:02
  I think I'd rather have all those guys over Max Freed, just because they
• 57:07
  should be. I mean, obviously there's the possibility of any injury injury happening
• 57:15
  to a picture, but when you've got somebody like Max Fried who's only given
• 57:17
  you seventy seven innings last year and is coming off of just a worst of
• 57:23
  injury. I would rather find a different place for a picture in the fourth
• 57:28
  fifth round. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I may disagree
• 57:32
  with you a little bit on that. I think. I think what Max
• 57:37
  Freed is is he is expensive oatmeal to steal a term from Eno Saras if
• 57:45
  you look at him and his run, like, yeah, the seventy seven
• 57:49
  innings is concerning, as it is with any picture. But before that,
• 57:52
  one hundred and eighty five and a third twenty twenty one, one hundred and
• 57:55
  sixty five and a third twenty twenty fifty six innings at it, but it
• 58:00
  was twenty twenty who remembers uh, and then twenty nineteen one hundred and sixty
• 58:05
  five innings for a guy from his twenty five to twenty nine seasons. I
• 58:09
  like that consistency. Also, he's also a guy that like he's going to
• 58:15
  give you eight to nine k per nine, he's going to give you an
• 58:20
  era somewhere in the high two s low threes. And there's you know,
• 58:25
  he's going into his age thirty season contract year. There could be some incentive
• 58:30
  there. I agree, the price is probably a little I'm not going to
• 58:34
  be sad if I miss out on Max Freed. But at the same time,
• 58:37
  if I have given the high risk, high reward variance in pitchers,
• 58:43
  especially on the high end, if I don't get Garrett Cole, right,
• 58:47
  if I don't get like a super high end pitcher, and I get like
• 58:51
  one of the like a Blake Snell, like a high risk, high reward
• 58:54
  pitcher, and I need some oatmeal to kind of like even things out a
• 58:59
  little bit. You really can't do much better than Max Freed. Well,
• 59:05
  I have to jump on the train here with Adam. I love Max Freed,
• 59:10
  and Adam did a great job explaining why. And we've talked about this
• 59:15
  before on the pod, as was I look at pictures, I look at
• 59:17
  your ability to strike guys out. Can you keep the walks down? You
• 59:21
  get the ball on the ground, like, That's That's what I'm looking for
• 59:23
  in a picture. He does all those things fantastic. We also talked about
• 59:28
  our New Year's resolutions, and me was to avoid pictures with injury issues.
• 59:31
  And here I am already abusing any potential of that so old dog new trick
• 59:38
  or new dog old trick. I don't know what this is, but I
• 59:43
  think as I look at the names there, I'm actually almost the exact opposite
• 59:46
  of you, Cooley. I'm looking up the draft board and go in fraan
• 59:51
  er Valdez, Nope, give me Freed, Freddy Peralta, give me Freed,
• 59:54
  and I guess start to get to the Nola Scooble you Moto area before
• 59:59
  I'm like, okay, I'm not quite sure who I'm gonna take there,
• 1:00:01
  So I actually really like a mix Freed. Okay, I would take Freed
• 1:00:06
  over Nola. I know that's like hot take hot Take Central, but like,
• 1:00:09
  I know what I'm getting with Max Freed. There's like there's He's like
• 1:00:13
  a stalwart of consistency and Aaron Nola can give you. He'll give you like
• 1:00:17
  a bunch of innings. But like, you know, would you if I
• 1:00:22
  you know, do you want a bunch of raisins in your meatballs? Or
• 1:00:23
  do you want, like you know, the risk that there's none? You
• 1:00:25
  know, we just don't know. All right, Well, I'm fighting up
• 1:00:30
  against the tide tonight, so we'll see how the rest of this goes.
• 1:00:35
  We have only just begun, all right, Adam who you got for the
• 1:00:38
  Marlins for your buy and sell. Yes, okay, sorry, let me
• 1:00:44
  flip my page here. Okay, so my buy is you know, I'll
• 1:00:49
  be a pessimist. I'll start with the cell. My cell is Jesus Lozardo.
• 1:00:55
  So hazus Lozardo, Like, there's a red flat big enough, I'm
• 1:01:00
  gonna get it for a guy who first time through the order throws a one
• 1:01:06
  nine five ERA, the second time through the order throws a four to four
• 1:01:09
  eight, and then the third time through the order throws a five to one
• 1:01:13
  six, And you're tagged as the frontline starter for your team since Sandy Alcntra
• 1:01:20
  is out for the year. So this is a and by the way,
• 1:01:24
  you're a team that's squarely in the playoff race. So when you're a team
• 1:01:30
  that's squarely in the playoff race, you need your ace to go out and
• 1:01:32
  give you six innings every fifth day. It sounds a little bit old school,
• 1:01:38
  but this is the mentality in among baseball is that your ace is your
• 1:01:45
  win streak starter or you're losing streak stopper. And I personally I had Jesus
• 1:01:53
  Lozardo last year. I was super thrilled until about August and I and that's
• 1:02:00
  been his MO. So this isn't new information for the price in ADP.
• 1:02:06
  When I can look at people like Bobby Miller who are possibly going to be
• 1:02:10
  very load managed by the Dodgers, you know, this year, and he's
• 1:02:15
  going to be in the back end of that rotation. You could even look
• 1:02:17
  at Zach Eflin, Joe Ryan, Kyle Bradish, I think is somebody who's
• 1:02:22
  incredibly undervalued. So I think ultimately there are less riskier options. I know
• 1:02:31
  there's reasons to like, you know, to like LIZARDO, great stuff,
• 1:02:37
  great k numbers, but I mean he pitched one hundred and seventy eight and
• 1:02:40
  two thirds less innings. That's double from twenty twenty two. We've seen this
• 1:02:45
  movie before and it doesn't end well for anybody. So I'm selling Haesus LIZARDA.
• 1:02:52
  Okay, Yeah, I think he's going right in probably what I would
• 1:02:59
  consider his like right range. There's the nice thing about Hazlicardo though, is
• 1:03:04
  I don't think I've ever owned him, because every draft has a Hazu Slizzardo
• 1:03:07
  guy who will shoot him just way through them to the moon. In terms
• 1:03:12
  of like, especially in an auction like I've never even come close to owning
• 1:03:15
  Hazus Cincarto, so he's never Yeah, yeah, I consider why did that
• 1:03:22
  happen? Last year? In the auction I bit him up. I'm raising
• 1:03:28
  my hand for the audio people for the audio medium. Yeah, okay,
• 1:03:31
  yeah, I think that's fair. Now who you got for your buye though?
• 1:03:36
  I'm all right, So I'm buying Louise a Rise and I know it
• 1:03:40
  for kind of some similar reasons that Ozzy Albi's has all kinds of helium and
• 1:03:45
  this sort of like perception of position scarcity at the second base position that's just
• 1:03:51
  sort of inherent. We're I think we're overthinking it with Louise Arise and and
• 1:03:58
  a lot of the times the haters are over things it because yes, is
• 1:04:01
  he going to get a three sixty two babub next year? Probably not.
• 1:04:04
  I don't think anybody does, especially for a guy with as low as sprint
• 1:04:10
  speed and you know, not as much power as he has. But if
• 1:04:15
  I'm looking down the draft board and I'm seeing names like Tyro Estrada and Jonathan
• 1:04:19
  India nearby in ADP, and I need a second basement like Steamer has him
• 1:04:26
  as a three seventy three, seventeen, three seventy two, four thirty three
• 1:04:30
  triple slash with it. And that's with a three twenty nine BABEB, so
• 1:04:32
  a forty point regression or something like that. In BABEB, there's enough wiggle
• 1:04:41
  room for upside, and the floor is high enough that if we're looking at
• 1:04:47
  second, if you're looking for a low risk, high floor candidate, I
• 1:04:53
  feel like you can't do any better than Luis Rise at a position that you
• 1:04:58
  can kind of just set and forget. You know, he's gonna be bat
• 1:05:00
  at the top of that lineup every day. I just I don't see a
• 1:05:04
  reason not to take him. If that's how your draft is panning out,
• 1:05:09
  He's not gonna be my, you know, my first choice. But at
• 1:05:11
  the same time, if I miss out on Simeon, and I miss out
• 1:05:15
  on Albie's, and I miss out on all these other these other second basement,
• 1:05:18
  I'm just gonna wait for a Rise to come back to me. All
• 1:05:23
  right. This is a I'm gonna go a little out of order because he
• 1:05:26
  was actually my buy or my cell my bad, sorry, my sell.
• 1:05:30
  So I'm selling Louis the rice because of actually a little bit of like what
• 1:05:34
  you mentioned in terms of where he's going down in that part of the draft
• 1:05:39
  is I want to be throwing darts on guys who can really pick up homers
• 1:05:45
  and stolen bases and fill in a lot of like runs and RBI gaps.
• 1:05:48
  And that's the problem with wis the Rise I was. I loved him when
• 1:05:51
  he was in Minnesota and he added lots of value with being a plus provider
• 1:05:58
  in runs, but down in Miami without anybody to support him, he's slowly
• 1:06:04
  degrading value from you, not providing runs RBI to the rate of like what
• 1:06:10
  you're looking for, as well as the stolen bases in the home runs.
• 1:06:15
  He's an active negative, so he's really killing you, kind of silently but
• 1:06:21
  actively. And I felt this in a team last year where you could just
• 1:06:26
  like see everybody outstripping me in all the counting categories, and I was holding
• 1:06:30
  pretty well on batting average, but Luisa Rise was just costing me because he's
• 1:06:34
  sitting there and he's like he feels good because he's getting those knocks, but
• 1:06:40
  it's just not enough going on around him, and he doesn't hit for enough
• 1:06:43
  power individually to like put himself in scoring positions. So it just slowly strips
• 1:06:48
  away at all of your proto categories that this is gonna be the year that
• 1:06:53
  I finally quit Louisa Rise because of this. And it's like I get it
• 1:06:57
  in deeper leagues or keeper leagues where you have the ability to like build around
• 1:07:02
  him properly. But when I'm having to make like a middle of my draft
• 1:07:06
  decision on Luisa Rise in terms of where he's going in the ADP and his
• 1:07:12
  value for auctions, I would rather go a different avenue because I know Luisa
• 1:07:17
  Rice just creates more ends or more problems on the back end that I might
• 1:07:21
  not have prepared for when I was building before getting him. Yeah, I
• 1:07:27
  have to be the bandwagon jumper today because I just keep going on the coat
• 1:07:31
  tails which we're going. First, I had Louis Rise as my second cell
• 1:07:36
  in my notes, and so for all the same reasons Coolly that you just
• 1:07:42
  walked through. It's like if you look at him in a vacuum, he
• 1:07:45
  just causes all kinds of problems if you have your lineup constructed to bring him
• 1:07:49
  in, Like if you're like I'm gonna have Pete Alonzo, Kyle Schwarber,
• 1:07:54
  and you know, every single other batting everage draining power guy, you have
• 1:07:59
  to have loose Arise, but just in a vacuum because the heat, the
• 1:08:03
  damage he can do to those other categories, and it's like it's hard to
• 1:08:06
  recover if you don't have some other drastic guy opposite. There probably is some
• 1:08:12
  article we've got to write this spring about like creating the perfect fantasy monster combining
• 1:08:15
  some of these guys. But like that's like that an auction draftic could work,
• 1:08:19
  but I'm I'm generally out and the Rise just because of the one sided
• 1:08:25
  nature of his game, even though one side is you know, probably you
• 1:08:28
  know few standard deviations outside the mean in the batting average category, which is
• 1:08:33
  generally a hard category to really control, and he's pretty consistent. So I
• 1:08:38
  say that he wasn't my final cell, but guy that I'm generally trying to
• 1:08:42
  avoid at the draft table. So now we can have some some arguments here,
• 1:08:46
  So we're good. Yeah, so cool? How about you? How
• 1:08:49
  about you finish off? Who is your buy? Yeah? I'll go and
• 1:08:54
  finish off with even though the price is starting to creep up. I love
• 1:08:58
  Tanner Scott. Tanner. Scott closed out the year super strong for the Marlins
• 1:09:04
  down the stretch that I don't even know if I can explain like how good
• 1:09:11
  he was that, Like the saves were there, the strikeouts were there,
• 1:09:15
  the ra was there, and he's got the stuff to really be a sneaky
• 1:09:21
  guy who could come, you know, puts himself up into top five six
• 1:09:26
  closers when it's all said and done, because it's not really anyone on his
• 1:09:30
  coattails. Down in Miami, they've struggled with finding a guy to hold this
• 1:09:35
  role, and it looks like they found their long term solution at the closer
• 1:09:40
  role with Tanner Scott. His problem before when he was with the Orioles was
• 1:09:45
  walks and whatever magic that they work with the rest of their pitchers down in
• 1:09:48
  Miami, they used it on Tanner Scott and lowered that walk rate, cut
• 1:09:53
  it nearly in half. That I really like him as maybe like more of
• 1:09:59
  a like a second closer to put on my team. But I mean,
• 1:10:02
  if he has to be my first closer, I think he's got a really
• 1:10:06
  good chance to stick all year in that role. So I'm gonna make one
• 1:10:10
  point six percent. You don't think the six percent home run the fly ball
• 1:10:13
  ratio is is cause for concern, I would say that on the sixty point
• 1:10:20
  drop, I would say not as much, just because it's this stuff is
• 1:10:25
  so good, Like that's why the strikeouts are there, and that's why the
• 1:10:28
  walks were always there. Because he's throwing, you know, almost a hundred
• 1:10:32
  from the left side, and it's just it's a lot of gas and so
• 1:10:39
  with that, it's gonna be a little bit fluky. I think either way
• 1:10:41
  that you got to put the bat on the ball to be able to like
• 1:10:45
  get runs off of him, and to do that is easier said than done.
• 1:10:48
  So when you're striking out as many guys as he is, I'm not
• 1:10:51
  quite as worried about that kind of regression going on. There's two points on
• 1:10:58
  a make container Scott because he was my as well. We spend too we
• 1:11:02
  spend too much time together, is what this comes down to. But two
• 1:11:06
  things on Tanner Scott. One, his his draft position is probably going to
• 1:11:11
  arise because there is the potential that he is a trade candidate for the rest
• 1:11:16
  of the offseason. So his his ADP is going to be kind of held
• 1:11:20
  held down to degree. And then is the spring gets closer, it's going
• 1:11:24
  to rise. The second piece is if if you do nothing else, go
• 1:11:28
  to Baseball Savant and look up Tanner Scott and just admire how the red of
• 1:11:33
  that profile. I believe it's ninety nine, ninety one, ninety ninety seven,
• 1:11:38
  eighty nine percentiles across the board. The only thing that has a little
• 1:11:43
  issue is the walk to a degree. So he is just he's nasty.
• 1:11:47
  And if if those the gains in the in the control were real, then
• 1:11:51
  I'm loving Tanner Scott. I would take him as a number one closer.
• 1:11:57
  And if I knew he was going to be the closer next year on that
• 1:12:00
  team and what should be a pretty competitive division and pretty competitive team. So
• 1:12:04
  I love, I love Tanner Scott. This was I feel like, I'm
• 1:12:09
  not gonna have it participate here because you guys are taking all the all the
• 1:12:12
  all the fun calls, So well, yeah, who'ld you have for your
• 1:12:15
  cell? Then? Yeah, so so my cell. This this one for
• 1:12:19
  me was pretty easy. We got a two fifty hitter, thirty percent strikeout
• 1:12:24
  rages a rate, and he averages ninety three games this season for the last
• 1:12:27
  three years. Jazz Chisholm, He's just the risk is not worth reward.
• 1:12:31
  As the number forty hitter overall, Like, I get the the interest because
• 1:12:36
  of the potential. Guy can't stay on the field. He's got a high
• 1:12:40
  volatiletile profile, and he's not helping you in everything. Uh, he's helping
• 1:12:45
  you in a few categories. So but he's just exciting and young and fun
• 1:12:48
  to watch. So it's maybe a little cop out because of the injuries.
• 1:12:55
  But I think jazz Chism is gonna have gonna go too high and too many
• 1:12:59
  drafts just because of what he could be, not what he actually is.
• 1:13:03
  He was my second cell. At some point we have to stop pontificating on
• 1:13:09
  the potential and just realize that, you know what, I think sometimes people
• 1:13:15
  lose sight of, especially when it comes to fantasy, and Jazzism is like
• 1:13:17
  the test case for this or patient zero is what I should say. He
• 1:13:24
  is just he at some point, like what people don't well, people that
• 1:13:30
  they don't always remember or they don't always understand, is that the type of
• 1:13:33
  injuries that you have, back injury, knee injury, these sorts of things,
• 1:13:39
  they never leave you like that feeling. As somebody who played baseball and
• 1:13:43
  hurt himself repeatedly, it never leaves you, you know, the first time.
• 1:13:49
  The next time you put weight on that knee, you know, it's
• 1:13:54
  going to cause you to pull up, you know, the front. And
• 1:13:58
  the next time that back tweaks when you swim, it's going to cause you
• 1:14:00
  to adjust your game. And we're and we keep pontificating on his potential and
• 1:14:05
  his ceiling, but I'm convinced he's not going to reach it because his injuries
• 1:14:11
  are constantly going to not hamper him, not just not being on the field,
• 1:14:14
  but how he plays on the field. Look at Ronald Acun you play
• 1:14:16
  right field, and tell me he's not thinking about his knee, you know,
• 1:14:21
  in that type of thing. So I think Chisholm is the same sort
• 1:14:25
  of deal where eventually we're going to run out of time for these injuries to
• 1:14:30
  not impact how he plays when he's on the field. God, I wash
• 1:14:33
  you, but my rotator cuff still hurts every time I write a fantasy article.
• 1:14:36
  So oh yeah, man, my mcl will never forgive me. Sorry,
• 1:14:44
  Cooley, I'm just you've got me on a fun day. No,
• 1:14:47
  no, no, you're good. I was gonna say too. I mean,
• 1:14:50
  Jazz is turning, he's twenty six, so I mean the prospect status
• 1:14:55
  is gone. He's also outfield only this year, so that's something to keep
• 1:15:00
  mind. He's not gonna have any m I second base shortstop because he is
• 1:15:04
  a center fielder now, which I think that him immediately injuring that toe while
• 1:15:10
  playing center field shows like why it's a really weird decision. But we'll let
• 1:15:15
  the Marlins cavernous center field out there too, exactly. Okay, let's move
• 1:15:19
  on to the Mets. So I think this is going to be honestly one
• 1:15:24
  of our more interesting ones because this there were all sorts of different ways to
• 1:15:30
  go with this team, as it's a team totally in flux between having like
• 1:15:34
  the mix of going for but taking a step back and not giving him the
• 1:15:40
  free agents this year. So it's going to be, I'll say, maybe
• 1:15:44
  an interesting year for the Mets. I mean, it's going to be fascinating
• 1:15:46
  watching them because they're going to be all over the place in that fan base.
• 1:15:51
  I love them, I love them to death, and they make a
• 1:15:54
  Twitter fun. Yeah, that may be the only fun thing about Twitter anymore.
• 1:15:58
  So, Adam, where are you going to go for a buy and
• 1:16:00
  sell here in New York? Sure? And honestly, in doing the prep
• 1:16:05
  for this this was the least interesting roster to make. I find absolutely nothing
• 1:16:11
  appealing and nothing disgusting about this roster I have. So anyway, that being
• 1:16:16
  said, my buy so my cell is CODI a Senga, which is an
• 1:16:24
  unpopular opinion I think. But as a Codae a Senga drafter. Last year
• 1:16:29
  I had him, I traded him at the deadline. I was convinced he
• 1:16:32
  couldn't keep it, so, you know, for shame on me. But
• 1:16:38
  again I look at this sort of like, you know, the the range
• 1:16:41
  of which he goes in. You know, I go back to Max Freed,
• 1:16:45
  I go back to you know, you look at Logan, Gilbert,
• 1:16:47
  Gregson, Rodriguez, Kyle Bradish. These are all the guys with flawed profiles,
• 1:16:51
  don't get me wrong. But at the same time, he left eighty
• 1:16:58
  percent of runners on base. It's not sustainable. He had eleven point six
• 1:17:02
  percent home run to flyball ratio. I mean, that's like right about average.
• 1:17:06
  But the thing is when you're when you live and die by a particular
• 1:17:12
  pitch. Now granted, his the ghost fork is like the best of its
• 1:17:16
  kind. I totally understand that, But at the same time, I don't
• 1:17:21
  eleven point six percent is a tough ratio to maintain his expected stats, and
• 1:17:28
  I go, I like expected stats a lot. His XCRA is nearly a
• 1:17:31
  run higher than his actually RA, and so you take a steamer has him
• 1:17:38
  at a three point seventy five ERA projected. You combine that with the other
• 1:17:42
  unfavorable metrics, and I just think that there's higher upside options like Rodriguez are
• 1:17:46
  Bradish, there's better like sort of oatmeally guys like Freed or Logan Web.
• 1:17:55
  There's just always kind of a better alternative out there. So I'm selling him
• 1:18:00
  if he drops, which he won't, but then fine, But at his
• 1:18:03
  current ADP and the current range he goes in, don't I don't see it
• 1:18:08
  personally, I'm selling Yeah. I think that's totally fair. Yeah, I
• 1:18:12
  mean it stands right out when you look at the FIP versus the RA from
• 1:18:15
  last year. And we talked a little bit about it last week with Imonagas
• 1:18:19
  ending with the Cubs that the Yamamoto coming over from LA has coming over to
• 1:18:27
  LA, I think is creating a little bit of an extra glow around Japanese
• 1:18:30
  pictures, and people are really overlooking that FIP with Senga in terms of where
• 1:18:34
  they're taking him right now. So I think that's a fair pick. Who
• 1:18:39
  should you have for your pie? Then I had the Polar Bear Pete Alonzo.
• 1:18:45
  So we talk about like a sustainability and things like that. I can't
• 1:18:50
  imagine too many hitters in Major League Baseball that could post a two oh seven
• 1:18:56
  BABEP and still somehow put up forty home runs, put up a decent OBP,
• 1:19:03
  Like they're gonna kill you in some you know, respects, but they're
• 1:19:06
  not Kyle Schwarp. So I like the babbit to sort of I guess progress.
• 1:19:15
  I like, I don't think he's gonna you know, babit at two
• 1:19:17
  oh seven. He had a lot more flyballs last year than he than he
• 1:19:21
  had previously. I think that's an aberration. He's also a trade candidate,
• 1:19:28
  so you know, if the Mets really are going into full rebuild and Steve
• 1:19:32
  Cohen's a little bit of a loose cannon, I could absolutely see the sort
• 1:19:35
  of and you know, David Stearns kind of put his mark on the franchise.
• 1:19:40
  You could you could trade him to another team and his counting stats immediately
• 1:19:45
  taken improvement. You know, the k RAI go went up a little bit,
• 1:19:49
  but it's still pretty palatable. Twenty two point nine percent is really not
• 1:19:54
  that bad when you look at you know, comparable options at first base towards
• 1:20:00
  the top of the draft board, and he's like a lock for nine to
• 1:20:02
  ten percent. Walkerry, I just don't I don't draw. I'm not putting
• 1:20:08
  any a lot of stock into the dropping next of Velocity or the babbep.
• 1:20:13
  I'm just I'm really just like looking at there's room to grow. And if
• 1:20:16
  you have a someone at the top of the draft board that you know,
• 1:20:21
  somebody's going in the second to third round and they have room to bust into
• 1:20:26
  that next tier, I think that's a pretty good, pretty good draft position.
• 1:20:30
  I think it's a pretty good bet. Yeah, I like that pick.
• 1:20:34
  So you say you like the pick, but I'm going to say he
• 1:20:36
  was my celf. Oh really OK, And he was my cell and and
• 1:20:41
  there's there's two reasons for it. And I can't actually disagree at him with
• 1:20:45
  most of your assessment of the stats. It's it's more and like knows this.
• 1:20:50
  I spent some time actually more analyzing like the psychology of the draft and
• 1:20:57
  the way the drafts flow and as you build the team rather than player at
• 1:21:00
  times. And uh with Alonso, he's one of those guys that early in
• 1:21:08
  the draft next this year, I was talking like, that's still twenty three.
• 1:21:12
  You need speed, you need speed, and you're not gonna get it
• 1:21:14
  from Pete A. Lonzo, And so I think you start to create an
• 1:21:15
  uphill battle for yourself in that draft position. Also, he's it's kind of
• 1:21:20
  like the Luis Ariah's argument. You know, he's a guy that is going
• 1:21:24
  to absolutely kill two a degree, not not Kyles Swarburg agreed, U.
• 1:21:30
  He could kill your average and he's going to hurt your speed. And so
• 1:21:33
  you've you've you charted your path and like the second or third round of what
• 1:21:38
  the rest of your draft has to be, and you've really pigeonholed that you
• 1:21:41
  have to now go and make sure you get speed and make sure you get
• 1:21:45
  average. And so because of that, I'm a little worried about it.
• 1:21:47
  It's not because of the skill set, because I think everything you said is
• 1:21:49
  right, Like it's I think it's a real skill set. You think he's
• 1:21:51
  a better than what he was last year. I just don't like investing in
• 1:21:56
  that type of profile. At that point in the draft. That kind of
• 1:22:00
  feels like at Piginonols. What I have to do the rest of the draft
• 1:22:04
  is like filling your utility spot when you have to, and you lose all
• 1:22:09
  your flexibility from a draft position because you have to draft. You can't draft
• 1:22:13
  a second catcher or whatever you want to be. So, uh, that's
• 1:22:15
  less analysis of the player, more about where he's going in the drafts and
• 1:22:19
  what that forces you to do. That's uh, whether it's a fair argument
• 1:22:25
  or not, but that's really the reason I avoid people on Zo. Yeah,
• 1:22:29
  I think it's fair, and I think you bring up some good points
• 1:22:31
  because that you do have to look at that side of it. I would,
• 1:22:35
  I would only and I swear I didn't come on to be contentious.
• 1:22:40
  But I'm curious if like, so, if Pete Alonzo with an two again,
• 1:22:45
  I go back to the babit, but two oh seven babit. If
• 1:22:46
  his babet was up towards like two forty, which is still extremely low,
• 1:22:50
  it would be like twenty bad. He had a two forty two and twenty
• 1:22:55
  twenty. Right, So let's say he batted two forty and his batting average
• 1:23:00
  is two forty, So its triple slash is closer to like, instead of
• 1:23:03
  two seventeen three eighteen five before, it's closer to like two forty two.
• 1:23:09
  Uh, you know, three thirty one, five, twenty five, five,
• 1:23:14
  forty somewhere in that range. Right, Is he really that much of
• 1:23:18
  a drain on your categories that you can't take him in that in that round
• 1:23:23
  for the stability of the forty home run output. Yeah, I think it's
• 1:23:27
  it's a very very value valid point. It's kind of how you want to
• 1:23:30
  build your teams and what you're focusing on early because because you're right, he's
• 1:23:35
  not a two seventeen hitter. There's there's really no way that that continues to
• 1:23:40
  happen. But Grant, I feel like I've said this about one John Carlos
• 1:23:43
  Stanton before, but you know, I, yeah, I feel like I
• 1:23:47
  feel like I've drafted like three years in a row saying that he's gonna win
• 1:23:51
  the league and the babe Babbit never never recovered. But yeah, you're absolutely
• 1:23:56
  right if you're talking about a guy's like, yeah, he's gonna hit two
• 1:23:59
  forty, he's gonna hit you fifty, and he's not gonna steal bases,
• 1:24:01
  but he's gonna, you know, double the home run production that I can
• 1:24:04
  expect from anybody else in this this point, I don't think that's a bad
• 1:24:08
  pick. It's like I said, for me, it's really comes down to
• 1:24:11
  how I like to build my teams. But that doesn't mean he's he's necessarily
• 1:24:14
  a bad pick. I get scared if he goes any higher than what he
• 1:24:16
  is right now, uh, because then you start to really really squeeze the
• 1:24:21
  ear options and hit those guys. I think the first first round next year,
• 1:24:25
  Like, if you don't hit, if you're not a twenty twenty guy,
• 1:24:28
  you can't talk of the first round next year. And I know we're
• 1:24:30
  talking the second round with with with Lonzo, so hey. I think last
• 1:24:34
  week we agreed with Keilan almost everything coolly. So this is fantastic context.
• 1:24:40
  That's what that's what we've signed up for. The listeners. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:24:44
  I was gonna just say yeah, good, good pick. Brew.
• 1:24:45
  I'm I'm also like, yeah, I feel like the Kombucha Girl meme,
• 1:24:49
  where like it's like, yeah, I had him, AS's a good pick,
• 1:24:53
  and I like Jeremy it's a good pick too, But it's like who
• 1:24:58
  you got for your buye Then we're going. I'm gonna have to go sell
• 1:25:01
  first when I come to the Mets for sure, because it feels like a
• 1:25:04
  very Mets thing to do. But who's your bye? Oh? I was
• 1:25:13
  too busy thinking that we were going on Adam. So where you're talking to
• 1:25:15
  Adam or me? You you gotta do your bye? Okay. I completely
• 1:25:20
  got distracted by the stats of Pete Alonzo off the side here, but my
• 1:25:26
  bye, And again this is not deep fantasy analysis. Is Sean Maniah Sean
• 1:25:32
  Manyah. If you look at his his numbers last year, since I think
• 1:25:39
  it was mid to late July, he ran out a two six one ear
• 1:25:43
  a. He struck struck out almost a guy per inning and was just a
• 1:25:48
  different picture than he was beginning of the season. Don't get me wrong,
• 1:25:53
  there are some baby pluck in there. There was left on base luck or
• 1:25:56
  some things like that. He was is realistically more of a mid three pitcher.
• 1:26:00
  But for the guy that's going off of the board at like one twenty
• 1:26:03
  starting pitcher, the guy that has that capability, and what really intrigues me
• 1:26:09
  is the drive line aspect of this. Sean and I has spent the last
• 1:26:13
  two off seasons at drive Line. He's been heasing up to ninety seven with
• 1:26:17
  his fastball for a guy that lives in the ninety one ninety two range,
• 1:26:23
  he seems to have really picked things up, and he's been rumored to be
• 1:26:26
  working on adding a splitter this offseason. So a guy that showed growth last
• 1:26:31
  season and it kind of was under the radar. You could argue it was
• 1:26:35
  San Francisco babeip things like that, But there's enough to like for the price
• 1:26:41
  of relatively free that if I'm looking to fill out the back of my staff
• 1:26:45
  with potential, I'm looking for guys that have shown that they're doing something different.
• 1:26:48
  They've tried to learn and try to change something. And I hate to
• 1:26:53
  say that there's something to the drive line aspect, seems like guys go there
• 1:26:56
  and come out that they learned something that I don't know why they couldn't learn
• 1:26:59
  somewhere else. I'll be Luis Everarino also was spending some time at drive Line
• 1:27:03
  as well, So it seems like the Mets are sending everybody, uh,
• 1:27:06
  just down the road. So I got Manaiah as as mine, but again
• 1:27:12
  more of a late round dart throw. I'm not taking him like top one
• 1:27:15
  hundred hit pictures by by any means. But a guy that's definitely got got
• 1:27:19
  my intrigue this offseason. Yeah, he was actually going to be like my
• 1:27:25
  second pick for buy that. I think that's a great pick. You just
• 1:27:29
  it's a lot like Senga, but the opposite. You'd look right at his
• 1:27:31
  peripherals. He did not get what he deserved in terms of luck last year,
• 1:27:36
  so hopefully he can turn it around in New York this year. Yeah.
• 1:27:42
  I like I like seeing I like seeing his his era, likes in
• 1:27:47
  his FIP and his ex expected era and FIP. I like to see there's
• 1:27:51
  a level out, so we're starting to see a little bit of that true
• 1:27:55
  talent pedigree and he's less subjective to the volatility of you know, maybe he
• 1:28:00
  got lucky, maybe he got unlucky. You know, you like to see
• 1:28:04
  those metrics level out so you get a better picture of the true talent.
• 1:28:08
  And I agree I like that pick, especially at that adp read on something.
• 1:28:15
  This is fantastic. Yeah, this is good work across the cooler.
• 1:28:17
  Don't don't let us down here with just a little Homer pick or something like
• 1:28:21
  that, because I just hear Charis Invader coming out of your mouth. Next.
• 1:28:26
  Okay, well, I'm gonna start with my cell because I think it's
• 1:28:30
  almost like too obvious. I'm surprised that you guys didn't pick him. And
• 1:28:34
  that's Starling Marte that I'm not sure if you've seen his price, but when
• 1:28:40
  we were talking about like Jared Kellernick and everybody, he's going right there in
• 1:28:43
  like third fourth outfielder consideration, and I don't know why he's gotten very old,
• 1:28:50
  and really what he's only provided over the past handful of years has been
• 1:28:57
  stolen bases. And last year he provided twenty four and about a half season,
• 1:29:01
  which is great, but like did everyone forget that, like he had
• 1:29:05
  a crazy abdomen core surgery and a growing problem too that we were just talking
• 1:29:14
  about how injuries can linger on players like Jazz Chisholm, that Starling Martez,
• 1:29:19
  a thirty five year old man that's dealing with some very serious muscle injuries that
• 1:29:25
  I don't just I just don't see him bouncing back. And you even saw
• 1:29:28
  it last year that even though he had the twenty four stolen bases, which
• 1:29:31
  would pro rate it out to about forty ish, you know, the batting
• 1:29:34
  average really dropped off a cliff with a low of two forty eight last year,
• 1:29:40
  and I just don't see any power really coming back for him, especially
• 1:29:45
  like I'm going to emphasize again, he had core muscle surgery, which is
• 1:29:48
  really really brutal on any sort of hitter in terms of trying to get that
• 1:29:55
  rotation going, and on top of it, he also struggled with a growin
• 1:29:59
  to end of seasons. So I just am not sure how he's being drafted
• 1:30:04
  up where he is, and it's a little bit more of like a legacy
• 1:30:06
  thing more than anything else where. I think people remember the good old days
• 1:30:12
  of when you were looking at somebody in Starling Marte who might be pushing like
• 1:30:16
  fifteen homers in mid forties still on basis for you along with like a two
• 1:30:20
  eighty to ninety average, and yeah, that was cool, but that was
• 1:30:24
  also like in twenty fourteen he was doing that. So I'm out on Starling
• 1:30:28
  Marte that I've been a long time believer and really loved what he's been able
• 1:30:31
  to provide, but the price is really really rich for what you're looking at,
• 1:30:38
  and when you're looking at somebody like Starling Marte, I would be hoping
• 1:30:41
  that it'd be somebody in consideration for more of like a bench spot. The
• 1:30:45
  way that we've kind of mentioned Andrew McCutchen over the offseason that I would almost
• 1:30:49
  rather have McCutcheon here because mccutcheen's been able to show a little more health than
• 1:30:55
  Marte has over the past year and has a little more oop from that bat.
• 1:30:59
  Yeah, I agree with all of that. Is possible to be out
• 1:31:05
  if you were never in. I've always I've never been a big buyer of
• 1:31:12
  Marte from a fantasy standpoint. There was always someone that could do something kind
• 1:31:16
  of like it, but better, you know what I mean. And yeah,
• 1:31:20
  like Steamer projects him to be a league average hitter. I mean,
• 1:31:25
  okay, the dude had his like, you know, had his torso rebuilt,
• 1:31:30
  you know what I mean. And look, I mean, I don't
• 1:31:32
  know, if you're in your mid to late thirties and you're struggling with groin
• 1:31:34
  problems, the last thing you should be doing is playing professional sports. So
• 1:31:42
  I am way out on Marte. Let someone else have him. And if
• 1:31:46
  he, like, what's the ceiling does he give you, like, you
• 1:31:50
  know, a triple slash with a two three fours triple slash with like,
• 1:31:56
  I don't know, ten home runs and thirty twenty five thirty steals and that's
• 1:32:00
  your like ninetieth percentile. I'll come, I don't know. Yeah, I
• 1:32:05
  think you guys are right on. I actually was going into the season.
• 1:32:09
  I remember we actually talked about Martin in the pod a few months back about
• 1:32:13
  guys that we were actually slightly interested in going to the next season, and
• 1:32:15
  we talked about Marte the value he could be because we expected him to be
• 1:32:19
  going at like four or five hundred ADP and like expecting everybody to be out.
• 1:32:24
  It's like, then, if you're talking about a guy that you could
• 1:32:27
  see ten thirty into the draft, like at your bench and hoping he says
• 1:32:30
  how healthy, you're really kind of excited looking where he's going, Like that's
• 1:32:35
  already baked in. It's baked in, and there's other guys that are much
• 1:32:40
  more in driguing. So it's it's it's interesting that you know, he I
• 1:32:44
  was expecting him to be much more of a value on draft day, but
• 1:32:47
  for whatever reason, that's not the case. Yeah, exactly, Okay,
• 1:32:53
  and I'm gonna be digging super duper deep here for my bye and he is
• 1:32:59
  going average pick six hundred in the NFBC ADP data right now, and that
• 1:33:04
  is who is currently slotted to be the starting DH for the New York Mets,
• 1:33:10
  DJ Stewart. He's slotted to start right in the middle of that lineup,
• 1:33:15
  and there's a really good possibility that the Mets don't add here. So
• 1:33:20
  really this boils down to if you've ever been interested in Daniel Volgelbach, you
• 1:33:26
  should be buying DJ Stewart all day long, because he down the stretch it
• 1:33:31
  was very hot and cold, but his August was absolutely absurd that he was
• 1:33:35
  one of the best players in all of fantasy for August because he launched eight
• 1:33:40
  homers and the bad at ball data backs it up. All DJ Stewart has
• 1:33:45
  ever done is swing from the back of his heels and try to smack homers.
• 1:33:49
  So I really like him as a really deep late pick for power that
• 1:33:57
  you know, if you're looking, especially if you're looking at best ball leagues,
• 1:34:00
  I think he's a great pick there because he's going to have some hot
• 1:34:04
  weeks where he is going to get into your lineup and enter that lineup and
• 1:34:10
  you know, carry you for a little bit. But on top of it.
• 1:34:13
  You know, it's really tough to take dart throws down at pick six
• 1:34:15
  hundred and find anybody that's going to provide twenty five ish to thirty homers.
• 1:34:21
  And I don't think that the average is going to absolutely bottom out for you.
• 1:34:26
  You know, he has struggled with it over his career, but his
• 1:34:30
  slash line last year I think is right where he could be going forward.
• 1:34:32
  With a two forty four, three thirty three, five oh six, there
• 1:34:36
  was a one thirty WRC plus you pro rate the homers out, it would
• 1:34:41
  have been, you know, roughly mid thirties homers if you took his fifty
• 1:34:45
  eight games and stretched it all out. I really like if DJ Stewart can
• 1:34:49
  hold down this DH job and they still got it going into spring, like
• 1:34:55
  spring training and into the start of the season, all that is caveat it.
• 1:35:00
  All this discussion is CAVEATD on that because you know, the Mets could
• 1:35:03
  sign somebody tomorrow and DJ Stewart's totally out. But this is a guy when
• 1:35:08
  he is getting playing time, I'm always intrigued because it is just free power.
• 1:35:14
  Just don't let him hit against lefties, that's all. That's all.
• 1:35:16
  I was saying, because, uh no, no matter what he's doing,
• 1:35:19
  he can't do that. If you're if you're draft, if we're talking about
• 1:35:25
  the six hundreds and ADP, is there really any argument against it? Like
• 1:35:30
  that's uh yeah, how do you argue? Yeah? Sure, no,
• 1:35:32
  take Justin Upton instead, Like you know, how do you argue? I
• 1:35:36
  mean that is actually definition of mister irrelevant in the fantasy draft. Well that's
• 1:35:41
  round fifty. Yeah, he has been Justin Upton has been my mister irrelevant.
• 1:35:45
  It's a draft tradition in my league. I draft Justin Upton with my
• 1:35:48
  last pick every year since like twenty eighteen. He's he's aging out, I
• 1:35:55
  suggest, trying to his younger brother. Yeah, they's but yeah, I
• 1:36:00
  just wanted to call out DJ Steward give him some love because he really I
• 1:36:04
  think there's probably some teams that really can chalk up some of their fantasy trophies
• 1:36:10
  last year from when he went on that tear for the Mets in August.
• 1:36:13
  So I'm nominating in DJ Stewart first. Overall. When we get to the
• 1:36:15
  spring draft here, I'm pumped. Yep, gonna be two dollars player all
• 1:36:20
  across the board. Yeah, I'm nominated. When you're just make me sit
• 1:36:25
  there for thirty seconds and laugh when I when I use my utility spot,
• 1:36:29
  I'm locked the rest of the drafts. Okay, well, let's move on
• 1:36:32
  from New York down to Philadelphia like one Jeremy Brewer did on a fine afternoon
• 1:36:39
  day. Adam, who are you gonna pick for your buy and sell in
• 1:36:45
  Philadelphia just up the road from you? Sure? So I'm going to go
• 1:36:49
  on either end of the roster here, So I'm gonna sell Trey Turner.
• 1:36:55
  You know, when I checked ADP, you guys have the more accurate data
• 1:36:58
  than I do. He was the fourth shortstop off the board, roughly around
• 1:37:02
  ten and I am absolutely floored that we are still drafting Trey Turner in the
• 1:37:08
  first round. That is just boggling to me. Uh you know, he's
• 1:37:15
  just behind Chetees Junior. He is around Corey Seeger. You could wait till
• 1:37:19
  the second round and get lin d'Or for a guy with elite sprint speed,
• 1:37:27
  stolen bases are in a down. He's down in stolen bases in a year
• 1:37:30
  that like basically gift wrapped stolen bases for people like Trey Turner. His fly
• 1:37:39
  ball weight rate went up. His ground ball rate, you know, went
• 1:37:43
  down. Is his defense, he saw a sharp decline, And I get
• 1:37:49
  it, like some of that is adjustments and all of the well publicized issues
• 1:37:54
  that Tray Turner has had playing defense, but this is what he was.
• 1:37:58
  This isn't a guy that was a plus glove before. His average launch angle
• 1:38:03
  has increased every single year, but his hard hit rate has stayed insident.
• 1:38:10
  He's basically putting the ball in the air more, but it's not he's not
• 1:38:13
  hitting it necessarily any harder. For the price that you're going to pay for
• 1:38:18
  Trey Turner, you don't have to squint and see Dan sby Swanson. So
• 1:38:24
  for me, I'm passing. I am owning no Trey Turner shares. Not
• 1:38:30
  because I don't like him. I do like him. He seems like a
• 1:38:31
  nice enough guy. But I just think, like when you talk about the
• 1:38:39
  shortstop being it's I think it's actually kind of a fairly deep position depending on
• 1:38:43
  how you look at it. And am I really going to burn a first
• 1:38:45
  round pick on Trey Turner like hard pass? Yeah? I mean I can
• 1:38:54
  see some of the consistency did go out of his game last year until he
• 1:38:58
  got that standing Go and Philly and it was a little up and down.
• 1:39:00
  But I can see you just almost seething over there, Brew because this is
• 1:39:05
  maybe the resident Trey Turner Stan of all time. So I'll let you count
• 1:39:12
  a chance. I can't imagine that this is going to go over well with
• 1:39:15
  you. Well, we've argued enough as it is, and I know that
• 1:39:19
  this is actually I think I think Adam makes actually really good argument here because
• 1:39:23
  I do like Fred Turner. I think he has notoriously for the last few
• 1:39:28
  years underperformed his talent, which is that and I think what you're getting at
• 1:39:30
  is there is more there and he should be able to do more. The
• 1:39:35
  only thing I like with Turner this year is that if you're in a snake
• 1:39:41
  draft, he's a really intriguing guy to grab at the turn and pair with
• 1:39:47
  potentially another high speed guy and just lock that category up high speed, high
• 1:39:53
  average, and then you can just go bonkers with all the power the rest
• 1:39:57
  of the drafts. I think there's really interesting to play with him. But
• 1:40:00
  I think you're right like that. The expectation for Turner because of what we've
• 1:40:04
  seen him be able to do, is so high, and now he's gone
• 1:40:09
  from powerful lineup to powerful lineup and just not quite doing it as much as
• 1:40:14
  you would expect. So he is the eye test says more and the results
• 1:40:17
  say less. So I'm actually kind of okay with with Adam Sell here because
• 1:40:23
  I think that the realization is he's just not going to get there. It's
• 1:40:27
  it's kind of what we said with jazz Jazzism earlier, like use your evidence
• 1:40:30
  here, guys like look the last few years, like we expect something and
• 1:40:34
  it's not happening. I think if you've ever hired someone in your life,
• 1:40:38
  what they they say going to interview past performance is the most addictive of future.
• 1:40:44
  That's kind of what we got with with Trey. So I don't know
• 1:40:46
  that as I look through leaving the whole short stop class, there's anybe it
• 1:40:48
  really too much intrigues me. Even all the way through. There's just seems
• 1:40:51
  like a lot of land mines for where guys are going. But there's there's
• 1:40:57
  other options. So I'm not gonna fault anybody from taking Turner, and I
• 1:41:00
  probably will myself, but I think Adam you have a very valid argument here
• 1:41:05
  in Turner, and he's one of those you don't want to You don't want
• 1:41:09
  to burn your first round pick on something that that has these these concerns.
• 1:41:15
  Yeah, I how that? How that about that? For rebuttal Coolie,
• 1:41:19
  I'm a little bit speechless because I'm a little bit like I thought we were
• 1:41:23
  gonna have a really good dog right there. So but unfortunately we don't.
• 1:41:27
  So Adam will back to Louis Riah's. We can't. We can go right
• 1:41:31
  back to Miami if we want Adam? Who you picking for your buy in
• 1:41:35
  Philadelphia? Then okay. So I have run this by all of my Phillies
• 1:41:41
  fan family members and they all think I'm crazy, but I am absolutely by
• 1:41:46
  if my risk, I'm mister irrelevant will almost certainly be Christian Pashe. So
• 1:41:56
  he costs you nothing. You could realistically not even draft him in most leagues,
• 1:42:00
  and he'll still be available. Roster resource has him as the weak side
• 1:42:04
  platoon to Brandon Marsh, so he'll get some playing time and some looks early
• 1:42:10
  on. I'm betting on Johann Rojas on a contending team batting ninth, just
• 1:42:19
  not hacking it. The dude's batted broke ball profile is alarmingly bad, and
• 1:42:28
  if he falters and by the way, he's extremely young, he's never gotten
• 1:42:31
  a full time job at this level. If he goes, he's a plus
• 1:42:36
  glove, sure, But at the same time, if he falters, there's
• 1:42:41
  literally no one else on Philadelphia's roster that can play center field except Christian Pache.
• 1:42:47
  So the way I see this panning out is that Christian Pache could very
• 1:42:53
  well have the everyday center field job by May. And if we saw whatever
• 1:42:58
  we caught a glimpse of uh last year. His bat at ball profile isn't
• 1:43:03
  wasn't horrible last year. It made some big improvements because the big thing when
• 1:43:06
  he was in Atlanta was, you know, the kid couldn't feel like Andrew
• 1:43:12
  Jones, but I don't know he hits like Andrew Jones would if you played
• 1:43:15
  today. And so the thing is is that he the forty four point hit
• 1:43:21
  forty four point eight percent hard hit rate, the wall rate increased to ten
• 1:43:28
  point five percent. It's not a sexy profile. It's only ninety five played
• 1:43:31
  appearances here. But at the same time, he's also been subject to Atlanta.
• 1:43:39
  You know, as aggressive as they have been with Michael Harris and Nazi
• 1:43:43
  Albi's and all that they were equal, they were just as equally cautious with
• 1:43:46
  Christian Pasche bouncing him around the miners. He never played more than one hundred
• 1:43:51
  games at any level since he was eighteen, so if he my, I'm
• 1:43:57
  convinced that if he gets some regular playing time, he could play his way
• 1:44:00
  into He could hit his way into a league average bat and be a plus
• 1:44:03
  glove in the outfield, which if there was ever a sort of like filler
• 1:44:10
  player that Philadelphia needs, it's somebody that can play outfield competently and just hit
• 1:44:16
  well enough to not be a detractor. So I think Christian Page could be
• 1:44:23
  like an under the radar by June you could there could be a he could
• 1:44:30
  be a legitimate trade piece for you. Yeah, I think that's a very
• 1:44:36
  good call from a deep cut because I'm just I haven't looked at his profile
• 1:44:41
  a long time. And the nice thing is that Pache has added walks to
• 1:44:46
  his game, so he knows he struggles a little bit with the stick,
• 1:44:49
  so he's not swinging outside the zone as much he did earlier in his career
• 1:44:55
  and is taking those walks that this could be with that speed to a sneaky
• 1:45:00
  path to some late steals. So I think that's a great call, Adam.
• 1:45:05
  All right, Brew, it don't make my best call be a Phillies
• 1:45:09
  call. I mean if yeah, I love the deepest of the guys.
• 1:45:15
  So I mean, I just picked DJ Stewart. I'm gonna praise Christian pasche
• 1:45:18
  here. Brew, who are you gonna go with in Philadelphia for your buy
• 1:45:23
  and sell? Well, well, I'm gonna start with the cell side.
• 1:45:26
  And if there is a predictable cell for based on the conversation we've had so
• 1:45:30
  far with my picks, I think you guys can just call it now.
• 1:45:33
  I've sold Louise Riah's, I've sold Pete A Lonzo. Who am I selling
• 1:45:38
  in Philadelphia? Guys? Come on, this is this is clearly and not
• 1:45:41
  in an OBP league. Let me own that I'm selling Kyle Schwarber. I
• 1:45:46
  the same reason, same argument. I'm not gonna go too deep into it.
• 1:45:50
  Schwarber is the Adam Dune of today's er. The conversation with with Luisa
• 1:45:55
  rise and then lead to Kyle Schwarber. I mean we were there earlier.
• 1:46:00
  I like I said, he he's the true three outcomes player. He is
• 1:46:04
  fantastic to watch better real world in the fantasy in my book, So I'm
• 1:46:10
  selling each for where at kind of the fiftieth hitter. Overall, it's just
• 1:46:14
  a little too much damage to the light up for what you have to construct,
• 1:46:18
  and I just don't want to have to together that hill hold by drafting
• 1:46:23
  Luis Rias later to make up for it. So I'm selling upon myself.
• 1:46:28
  But I'm not even letting you guys react, because that one's just you knew
• 1:46:32
  it was coming. But from a by perspective, I am going to go
• 1:46:36
  a little deeper and going with O'Ryan Kirkeren. You know, I think his
• 1:46:43
  his little bit of rough postseason. It wasn't that bad, but he had
• 1:46:45
  a little bit rough postseason on the big stage last year has really helped hold
• 1:46:50
  the line on any intrigue with him. I think into the last season people
• 1:46:55
  are like, oh, he's the closer of the future, all these things,
• 1:46:57
  and they get to the postseason, had a little bit of walk troubles.
• 1:47:00
  It seemed like he was a little overwhelmed on the big stage. But
• 1:47:03
  this is a guy that can strike out thirteen fourteen, fifteen guys for nine,
• 1:47:11
  has decent control. You know, he's still young and figuring things out.
• 1:47:14
  But at the price of the your sixty fifth relief pitcher off the board
• 1:47:17
  going four hundred. Overall, I like this as a ratio upside play and
• 1:47:23
  a guy that in a bullpen that always seems to be in some type of
• 1:47:26
  disarray with what they're what they're trying to do. He could sneak his way
• 1:47:30
  into some saves later in the season. So I like Kirkereen for the just
• 1:47:34
  the pure upside that he can he can bring. And if he doesn't end
• 1:47:38
  up as a closer and he does just pad your strikeouts throughout the season,
• 1:47:43
  I'm unthrilled. Yeah, and I'll go ahead. I was just gonna say
• 1:47:50
  my only concern with him is that he is He's also, as Kyle Schwarber,
• 1:47:55
  is sort of the preer three outcomes player, which was a trend that
• 1:48:00
  emerged, and he's kind of like a residue of that in some ways.
• 1:48:04
  O. Ryan Kirkring is kind of like the next wave of that with these
• 1:48:09
  pictures with low velocity and throw the sweeper like almost exclusively. I look at
• 1:48:15
  his splits and I am and I think you know, Sarah's has talked about
• 1:48:19
  this at length too, with the sweeper throwing the sweeper to opposite handed hitters
• 1:48:25
  is if you can't like if you it can be problematic. So my only
• 1:48:32
  concern with him is strictly that is this a guy that can you can just
• 1:48:38
  give an inning? Right? Can you give him an inning? It doesn't
• 1:48:42
  matter. Can you give him whatever, you know, a couple of innings.
• 1:48:45
  Can it be a bulk guy, can it be a closer. I
• 1:48:47
  just ultimately don't know how he fits. If he's going to almost eighty five
• 1:48:53
  percent of the time he's throwing a sweeper, and he's got some dangerous lineups
• 1:48:59
  with in his division. I know the balance schedule kind of take some of
• 1:49:02
  this out, but I think you could see somebody who, like you know,
• 1:49:05
  goes on a week where he faces Atlanta and then he faces New York
• 1:49:11
  and you know, he goes through these lefty heavy lineups and he just wrecks
• 1:49:15
  your ra over an extended period of time. That is the danger of relief
• 1:49:21
  pictures. Absolutely, So yeah, I think you yeah, yeah, And
• 1:49:30
  I mean I'll build on that a little bit because my cell was actually it's
• 1:49:32
  a little bit like what we did last week with Kansas City. I'm selling
• 1:49:35
  the entire bullpen here. I'm not trying to buy any saves out of this
• 1:49:41
  bullpen. That it's a great team and it was great with Craig Kimberl last
• 1:49:46
  year as a really sneaky spot to find some saves. But there's no one
• 1:49:53
  in this bullpen that I want to take any sort of shots on, because
• 1:49:57
  there's it could really just be any buddy at the end of the day.
• 1:50:00
  It could be Alvarado or Hoffman or Soto or Domingues or Strom or Kokering or
• 1:50:08
  Bell Lottie, all those dudes. You could tell me, you know,
• 1:50:13
  you could come back from the end of the twenty twenty fourth season and tell
• 1:50:16
  me any of those guys was leading save get Her on the Phillies, and
• 1:50:20
  I believe you. So there are a lot of talented arms. I just
• 1:50:25
  listened off there, and I do love Oryan Kirkering. If you're either in
• 1:50:30
  a dynasty keeper situation or if you are in a league that you're deep enough
• 1:50:35
  to need lots of strikeout volume from believers, that's where I like Kirkering and
• 1:50:41
  he would be like my favorite arm in this bullpen. But everyone else I'm
• 1:50:45
  just staying away from because I don't know who's gonna end up with the saves,
• 1:50:50
  and I will be dipping here, I think a lot for my Waiver
• 1:50:54
  Wire columns over the season as the new flavor of the week pops up as
• 1:50:59
  the reliever, and I probably will personally and like in my leagues, because
• 1:51:02
  I'll be trying to play that gambit along with whoever is you know, closing
• 1:51:09
  that week in Philadelphia. But you know, Jose Alvarado is currently slotted in
• 1:51:12
  is the closer on roster resource. But you can just see the track record.
• 1:51:15
  He's always had closer stuff. He can't keep the ball in the strike
• 1:51:20
  zone, walks too many, and he's just never been anointed to closer in
• 1:51:25
  Tampa or Philadelphia because they can't trust him. So if you could almost say
• 1:51:30
  that about every single reliever in this Phillies bullpen, it's it's kind of a
• 1:51:34
  great spot for Josh hader Land. But until there's not a clear cut closer
• 1:51:41
  here, I'm just running far away and I don't want to really try to
• 1:51:45
  predict any saves here. I completely agree, I think, and also like
• 1:51:50
  it's important to know that to understand the context of the entire division too.
• 1:51:55
  The NL East is an extremely stratified division. You know, it's the Braves
• 1:52:00
  by themselves, the Phillies by themselves, the Marlins by themselves, and then
• 1:52:03
  two basically rebuilding teams. The thing is is that the Phillies don't tell them
• 1:52:09
  that because they're going in their minds they've beaten the Braves twice in the NLDS.
• 1:52:14
  Trust me, I live that every day of my life. And when
• 1:52:18
  they believe they can catch the Braves. So I think they're gonna come out
• 1:52:23
  of the gate, especially in the early part of the season, and at
• 1:52:26
  the second Alvarado falters. You know, Kirk Ring is gonna come in.
• 1:52:30
  At the second that he falters, you know someone else is gonna They're there's
• 1:52:34
  not gonna be unless they signed Josh Hater or a bona fide closer there.
• 1:52:41
  They're going to view their leash as too short to give a guy development time.
• 1:52:46
  They're going to win, and if you've got the hot hand, we're
• 1:52:49
  gonna win with you. And then once your hand is not hot, we're
• 1:52:53
  gonna win with the next guy, because in their mind they can't give any
• 1:52:57
  ground to Atlanta in the division rates. I think that's a great point.
• 1:53:02
  I think you're absolutely right. It's one of those that if you're drafting a
• 1:53:05
  guy like per Kareem or anybody else for that matter, there, if you're
• 1:53:10
  drafting him for saves, it's it's not the way to go. If you're
• 1:53:14
  drafting him for ratios or you know the fact that you missed every other closer,
• 1:53:19
  then maybe you know there's something we had there. But it's like it's
• 1:53:23
  not as they're not the team that you going to try to say, I
• 1:53:26
  want somebody from this bullpen. It's you happen to it later in the draft
• 1:53:30
  and go, well, this is what I'm left with. I'm willing to
• 1:53:32
  bet he will go undrafted enough that you can wait and see. Yeah,
• 1:53:36
  that's very very good points. All right, Well, for my bye in
• 1:53:43
  Philadelphia, I'm going with Christopher Sanchez, who popped up as a starter last
• 1:53:47
  year, and it's mostly because I think Steamer is too low on him that
• 1:53:55
  if you're kicking out just straight values out of Steamer. I don't get where
• 1:54:00
  they're coming up with their ratios for him because he put up an eight seven
• 1:54:04
  K nine last year, which there are games that he was even well beyond
• 1:54:10
  that, but Steamers got him only for a seven point seven. They've also
• 1:54:15
  got him for three point two walks per nine when he walked less than one
• 1:54:19
  and a half less or per nine last season, and he didn't really even
• 1:54:25
  have great luck that you know, this isn't a guy who with his three
• 1:54:29
  four four RA last year, you would think that, you know, he
• 1:54:32
  was able to avoid home runs or you know, really put up on two
• 1:54:39
  home run to fly ball ratio exactly, not avoid home runs, not at
• 1:54:43
  all. So like, and that's what you're worried about in Philadelphia is that,
• 1:54:45
  like, hey, is this guy a legit picture? Because you can
• 1:54:50
  run into some homers there and Christopher Stanchez ran into them and still put up
• 1:54:55
  with three four four RA. He has really been working on his pitch mick.
• 1:55:00
  You can see it over his career. Where part of it, too,
• 1:55:03
  is is he's been transitioning more into a starter and out of the bullpen.
• 1:55:08
  He's been relying less on his fastball. He's been moving towards his slider
• 1:55:13
  and change up more, and he's got a really good slider that I think
• 1:55:16
  it's probably his best pitch and they've been really just tooling with that arsenal overall.
• 1:55:24
  And when you watched him pitch last year, he was building a Mountain
• 1:55:28
  presence as he went along that when he came up, he was kind of
• 1:55:31
  an up and down guy. But then once he started getting the starts regularly
• 1:55:34
  in Philadelphia, he really settled in and became comfortable between between Triple A and
• 1:55:41
  the majors. Last year he put up one hundred and fifty innings on the
• 1:55:45
  DOT. So I think this is a guy who's pretty stretched out and where
• 1:55:49
  he's going in draft is in like the Kenta Mayeta I at Sheehan range.
• 1:55:55
  So I like him down there and especially when you're talking about being on a
• 1:55:59
  team can provide wins. Christopher Sanchez has been a pretty solid picture since midway
• 1:56:04
  through twenty twenty three, and I'm hoping that he can keep it rolling going
• 1:56:09
  into twenty four. I only have I love that. I love everything you
• 1:56:14
  just said. I only have one thing that pops out of me is that
• 1:56:18
  his era and expected stats have gotten better. His exit velo has gone up,
• 1:56:27
  his barrel rate has gone up, his hard hit rate has gone up.
• 1:56:32
  So it could be just sample sized, like it very well could just
• 1:56:35
  be a sample sized thing. I totally get that. But it's either one
• 1:56:42
  of two things, and one is good, which means his market correcting and
• 1:56:45
  in a way where like he's just going to kind of like drift towards the
• 1:56:48
  mean a little bit more as his sample gets bigger, which makes sense.
• 1:56:54
  But the pessimist in me and the fact that he's a Philly leads me to
• 1:56:59
  believe that when I see they're hitting the ball there, your your sample size
• 1:57:06
  is getting bigger and there and your and you're sort of hard hit. They're
• 1:57:11
  hitting the ball harder off you the more they see you. That raises some
• 1:57:15
  concerns for me. But again, but to your point, though, that's
• 1:57:19
  one that's one you know, fly in the bowl of soup. Like everything
• 1:57:25
  else about it. You know, I point to a a guy who's gonna
• 1:57:30
  really really could impress for his ADP. Yeah, I think that the only
• 1:57:36
  thing that I've got against him, And again it's it's kind of kind of
• 1:57:40
  like Adam here, is that I have the ranger Surez vibes with with with
• 1:57:45
  Sanchez, the reliever turnstarter, things went really well at the beginning, and
• 1:57:49
  then he didn't. You know, swres didn't end up being terrible, but
• 1:57:54
  he just wasn't what you were hoping. Like that initial smaller samples showed and
• 1:58:00
  then you look at them, both of them like side by side, there's
• 1:58:01
  their numbers look pretty similarly, look like they could be the same guy,
• 1:58:05
  and you can get Rangers Sores one hundred and fifty picks later. So that
• 1:58:10
  that to means like it feels like the same scenario happening again, because I
• 1:58:14
  feel like I've had this conversation with Rangers Sores and then ended up going like,
• 1:58:18
  yeah, well, I guess it was small sample. They kind of
• 1:58:20
  figured them some things out, so I could just see easily ending up in
• 1:58:24
  that same spot. But that doesn't discount everything that you see that goes.
• 1:58:27
  But it's but maybe not maybe maybe it is real. Yeah, No,
• 1:58:30
  I think that is very fair in terms of like the Rangers sure as comparison.
• 1:58:34
  And I do think that Sures bounced back a little bit better towards the
• 1:58:41
  end of the season though, too. And That's what I've liked in Sanchez
• 1:58:44
  is that throughout last year, you know, he would take a few lumps
• 1:58:48
  from those homers and he bounced right back. So he just has a little
• 1:58:53
  bit of resilience see to him, and even though he's kind of new to
• 1:58:58
  the league, he's pretty well aged you know, he's twenty seven, he's
• 1:59:00
  been around a long time, so I think he's just I like him as
• 1:59:04
  just a pitcher, you know, he just he seems to have it.
• 1:59:10
  I get that. I get that. Yeah, all right, let's get
• 1:59:13
  to last and least team here in the NL East. Although you know what,
• 1:59:18
  maybe I wouldn't be surprised if the Mets give them a run for the
• 1:59:21
  money for last place here, and as they're up and coming, my big
• 1:59:25
  prediction, my big prediction is that the Nationals will not be the last place
• 1:59:30
  team in the least. There you go, we'll hear it here. First,
• 1:59:32
  we're moving on to the Washington Nationals and Adam, we're going to go
• 1:59:36
  over to you first for a buy and sell from this team. Okay,
• 1:59:41
  So I'll flip my thinking here and I'll be an optimist. You know,
• 1:59:45
  I'll give the Nationals a little bit of a lifeline here because you know,
• 1:59:49
  everyone gives a shit what I think the the I'm buying Josiah Gray. I
• 2:00:00
  and way in on Josiah Gray for his adp. He's like the hundredth plus
• 2:00:06
  pitcher off the board. He was you know, he had a prospect pedigree
• 2:00:11
  with Los Angeles. You know, he seemed like kind of the guy that
• 2:00:14
  was going to come up and help head the rotation at one point or another,
• 2:00:17
  completely fizzled out since he got to Washington. Now, he's also someone
• 2:00:24
  who has spent the better part of a year and a half completely retooling his
• 2:00:28
  arsenal. The dude I could throw a more effective fastball than Josiah Gray like
• 2:00:35
  he did, his fastball gets absolutely slaughtered, and he, to his absolute
• 2:00:44
  credit, completely revamped his arsenal. And you can almost see it playing out
• 2:00:49
  in real time if you look at his splits month by month last year.
• 2:00:54
  If you were to close your eyes and say, all right, here's a
• 2:00:57
  guy who pitched it two six seven era and March and April two eight nine,
• 2:01:01
  in May four two eight, in June three one three, in July,
• 2:01:06
  and in September October at two nine five, you would think like you'd
• 2:01:12
  think he's Codeia Singa. You would think he's, you know, like a
• 2:01:15
  mid tier pitcher. And if his you know, he if his k per
• 2:01:19
  nine was somewhere around ten or eleven, you'd think he was Spencer Strider.
• 2:01:24
  But no, this dude, You'll notice I left down August that's because he
• 2:01:27
  pitched to an eight point eight four ERA in August and completely tanked his ERA
• 2:01:31
  for the season. His whip is not pretty. It's in the one four
• 2:01:35
  six range. And if you go back and look at his game log,
• 2:01:39
  this guy was walking more than he was striking out at a at an epic
• 2:01:45
  rate. And I think what you're seeing here is the adjustment of his arsenal
• 2:01:51
  where he's getting away from the fastball. He's throwing the cutter now like,
• 2:01:56
  and he's really trying to work that in. And I think that you could
• 2:02:00
  see it with a full year, Like Stu, you had mentioned it early.
• 2:02:04
  Is r Brew you had mentioned it earlier, where you know, mid
• 2:02:10
  season is a tough time to make an adjustment. This dude like basically he
• 2:02:14
  basically put new floors in his house during a dinner party, and you know,
• 2:02:18
  so it's a very tough thing to do. I liked Josiah Gray to
• 2:02:24
  kind of come into a little bit of that prospect pedigree. And whether they
• 2:02:29
  trade him or not, I don't know, but I could definitely see him
• 2:02:32
  as a legit number three starter on a contending team Somewhere. I think the
• 2:02:39
  ceiling is way higher than people are giving credit for because this is a dude
• 2:02:44
  who clearly has the ability to remake himself and adjust to his opponents. I
• 2:02:49
  think I think this is go ahead. I really like the assessment there,
• 2:02:55
  and the pitch makes like as we talked about earlier, like when you see
• 2:03:00
  changes and results and you can find an actual change in the behavior, it's
• 2:03:05
  really exciting. And I think you can see that with Gray, how he'd
• 2:03:10
  actually learned something, made an adjustment and did it pay off every start.
• 2:03:15
  No, But to your point, it's the whole change in the tires.
• 2:03:17
  While the car's going, you know them things are gonna fall off a little
• 2:03:20
  bit here and there, and so it'll be really interesting to see see what
• 2:03:25
  he does. And like the gamble, the price to pay for that gamble
• 2:03:28
  is not much at all. Yeah, And I was gonna say a lot
• 2:03:32
  of the same things, and you can see it, like just the improvements
• 2:03:35
  he's making in terms of his ground ball rate and his home or fly ball
• 2:03:39
  rate over his career. That, Adam, that's a great insight into his
• 2:03:43
  August too. I didn't really realize that that. It's nice to see that
• 2:03:47
  reason for, you know, maybe some of his struggles and he's always had
• 2:03:50
  the prospect pedigree. It's good to see him maybe starting to finally put it
• 2:03:55
  together. So I think that's a solid, very late pick. Who are
• 2:03:58
  you gonna go? Then? With your cell here in Washington? My cell
• 2:04:04
  is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum a little bit. I'm
• 2:04:08
  selling Lane Thomas. I okay, I am, I am to brew.
• 2:04:13
  Are you as well? I'm buying Lane Thomas. No, you're not.
• 2:04:16
  No, okay, you contrarian. You Honestly I felt I felt like I'm
• 2:04:25
  the contrarian like going into this, but like man, when I was looking
• 2:04:29
  at Lane Thomas, I was thinking to myself, how does a guy kind
• 2:04:32
  of like the Trey Turner logic, like, how does a guy with ninety
• 2:04:35
  fourth percentile sprint speed only get twenty stolen bases over almost seven hundred plate appearances?
• 2:04:43
  Like that? Again, they literally changed the rules so that you could
• 2:04:49
  do this more often. You're capable of doing it, and you don't.
• 2:04:54
  So what that tells me is that either it's an organizational decision where we're not
• 2:05:00
  going to steal bases, or it's the player with the timody around or timidness
• 2:05:04
  around uh stealing. Either way, this guy has a plus plus skill of
• 2:05:12
  which he is not capitalizing on from a fantasy perspective. And to this point,
• 2:05:15
  when you go that long, it's either the player's decision which is not
• 2:05:20
  going to change, or it's an organizational decision that's damn sure not going to
• 2:05:24
  change. So when you look at the range that he goes in, I
• 2:05:30
  would rather have Christian Yelich, Brian Reynolds. You know, these ode meally
• 2:05:35
  high floor, modest power speed contributors. Their ratios won't to hurt you.
• 2:05:42
  They're kind of the supporting cast. If you drafted, like you know,
• 2:05:46
  Ronald Lacuna in the first round, then these are the guys you backfill behind
• 2:05:51
  him to kind of like, you know, give death behind it. They
• 2:05:55
  shouldn't be your first or second out of you shouldn't be your first outfielder.
• 2:05:59
  But they're excellent role players. And you know, you could even play to
• 2:06:02
  the Jordan Walker ceiling or the George Springer, you know, hoping he reclaims
• 2:06:08
  some form. Ultimately, I think there's better options than a guy who pulls
• 2:06:14
  the ball more than half the time on the ground, whose walk grade dropped
• 2:06:18
  five percent last year. I don't know why Steamer likes it to increase,
• 2:06:24
  but I mean a five percent walk grate is indicative of a plate approach,
• 2:06:30
  and it's just of a poor plate approach, and it's asking to be babit
• 2:06:33
  down to oblivion. And I just I don't see he's it's like all the
• 2:06:39
  risk but very little of the reward. Yeah, And that's a lot of
• 2:06:44
  why he's myself as well that it's it's a lot of like what you could
• 2:06:46
  buy around here, and I would much rather try and take Jordan Walker on
• 2:06:50
  the upswing. And part of it too is I think Laye Thomas snuck up
• 2:06:56
  on a lot of people last year that even when he was producing last year,
• 2:07:00
  Lane Thomas really wasn't getting the accolades. And I think now that people
• 2:07:06
  have seen him around the league, he's going to be challenged a little bit
• 2:07:11
  more. And just he put up a career year, he's never going to
• 2:07:15
  touch the heights where he got to last year. And I think even the
• 2:07:19
  sole on bases will step back, the Homers will step back. It's just
• 2:07:24
  it's Lane Thomas. That's the other thing too, I can't quite get over
• 2:07:28
  is that it was so out of nowhere, and I think the most nondescript
• 2:07:33
  white guy based player name, a baseball player name you could it might be.
• 2:07:38
  And so it's just I can't believe that he's going in the top one
• 2:07:43
  hundred right now in ADP that I'm I'm on board with Lane Thomas being you
• 2:07:49
  know, maybe like an upper teens homers and stolen bases guy, and that'd
• 2:07:54
  be great if you could pay for it later, but oh boy, a
• 2:07:57
  top one hundred pick for Lane Thomas is absolutely absurd on this team right now.
• 2:08:03
  So, Brew, what do you like about Lane Thomas and why is
• 2:08:05
  he here? By yeah, And it's uh, again, this is not
• 2:08:09
  gonna be deep analysis on this one, and it comes from the kind of
• 2:08:13
  the reason that you guys ended on, which is Lane Thomas is the most
• 2:08:18
  boring guy out there and his You look at his profile and it's like,
• 2:08:22
  I don't, I don't get it, and I but he's done that consistently,
• 2:08:28
  Like consistently, he's overperformed what it seems like he should be doing.
• 2:08:33
  And for a guy that you could easily just look at and go, hey,
• 2:08:37
  yeah, he might be a twenty five to fifteen guy with a two
• 2:08:41
  sixty to sixty five average, Like it's pretty solid, it's pretty it's nondescript,
• 2:08:48
  it's boring, and when there's nothing else in Washington that really excites me,
• 2:08:52
  he ensd up being my bye for the fact that I think folks are
• 2:08:56
  gonna go like they're going to overanalyze and sell him because all these other metrics
• 2:09:01
  say that he shouldn't be doing it, but he just consistently continues to outperform
• 2:09:05
  what those metrics are. So I'm just kind of looking at that and going,
• 2:09:07
  if he's done it a few times, like follow me. If I
• 2:09:11
  don't go there. That said, I probably would take George Springer over him.
• 2:09:16
  I probably would take Jordan Walker over him. Literally. I think picking
• 2:09:20
  from the bottom of the barrel Washington is why I looked at Lane Thomas and
• 2:09:22
  like, yeah, well I would buy Lane Thomas relatively speaking. I think
• 2:09:28
  the other you know, he's gonna probably drop as people analyze and spend time
• 2:09:31
  looking at him, where I'm like, I'm kind of okay with him at
• 2:09:35
  that price. I think again, talk to me for me more about the
• 2:09:37
  Nationals than anything else. It could age. This could age pretty well,
• 2:09:41
  actually, because if he shows up to spring training in bats like in triple
• 2:09:46
  slashes, like two twenty two, ninety three, three thirty. Then everyone's
• 2:09:50
  in their right minds just gonna be like, look at the metrics said this
• 2:09:54
  was gonna happen. So and he could drop like a like a stone.
• 2:10:00
  Yeah, I could age pretty well. Actually, if he were to drop
• 2:10:03
  down to like into the two into the you know, two hundreds, I
• 2:10:07
  could see him going way down there. He could be like bench pat type
• 2:10:11
  material because nobody cares about Washington, no offense. Yeah, so I know,
• 2:10:16
  like one of them, you know, And so like I could really
• 2:10:22
  see, I could really see him just dropping like a stone into that range
• 2:10:28
  and giving and justifying, you know, a twenty five fifteen guy with the
• 2:10:33
  yellow OBP. Yeah, and I think that he's also and I I don't
• 2:10:39
  have the data pulled up right now, but I have to think he's one
• 2:10:41
  of those guys with a very wide range in the draft. He there's gonna
• 2:10:46
  be guys in early that you know, they discovered him, and they're gonna
• 2:10:50
  be like, he's my guy. And then there's gonna be the folks that
• 2:10:52
  just like looking across the board, the whole league is just out on the
• 2:10:54
  guy and you can get him late. So it'll it'll be very interesting.
• 2:10:58
  I think Layne Thomas he can be a polarizing player for sure, for such
• 2:11:03
  a boring and descript white guy. Yeah, and I think you you're very
• 2:11:07
  right. His spread is crazy, mostly because you're never gonna guess what his
• 2:11:13
  high ADP is you. I don't think we want. I don't think we
• 2:11:16
  want to know after this discussion. Thirty six. Somebody took him thirty six.
• 2:11:20
  Who was it, Mike Rizzo's fantasy league? I don't know. Somebody
• 2:11:24
  took him thirty six to the in an NBC league. Yeah, that's insane.
• 2:11:31
  Brew. Who are you gonna go with for your cell in Washington?
• 2:11:35
  Yeah, my cell and people will disagree with this one as well. So
• 2:11:39
  I know I'm living on the edge of cj Abrams. C J Abrams twentieth
• 2:11:43
  hitter overall, he fully owned he could be amazing. But I'm getting Alberto
• 2:11:50
  Alberto Mondesy vibes all over the place with CJ Abrams of like, the skill
• 2:11:56
  set's exciting, it could be this, but man, the guy doesn't walk.
• 2:12:01
  He strikes out a ton. He's just got this volatile profile that for
• 2:12:07
  going that high in the draft, there's just a million other guys that I
• 2:12:11
  would rather take from a safety perspective than rely on. Like the last month
• 2:12:16
  month or so last season, he was phenomenal, and I think that just
• 2:12:22
  carried into the offseason of like, man, this look this guy could be.
• 2:12:26
  I know he carried guys of fantasy championships and like head to head leagues
• 2:12:30
  because I used him and won a championship doing it, and like, I
• 2:12:33
  think that the helium kind of kind of goes past, and I just I
• 2:12:37
  see the range of outcomes with cj Abrams. It could like I could be
• 2:12:41
  completely wrong, and I'm fully okay with that. On cj Abrams. He
• 2:12:46
  was my second sell, so I I validate everything you said. Like if
• 2:12:50
  there was ever a classic case of like the hype machine, like getting a
• 2:12:58
  it's almost like you know what cj Abrams says. It's like, I'm a
• 2:13:01
  big analogies guy. Cj Abrams is like a really really good trailer for a
• 2:13:07
  movie and it's like, oh man, this movie, this trailer looks this
• 2:13:11
  movie looks dope. And then you know, you go to like another movie
• 2:13:13
  and you get like a ten minute sneak preview right and it's like, oh
• 2:13:18
  man, this movie is gonna be amazing, and then you show up to
• 2:13:20
  the movie and it's like what wait what you recasted? Like two of the
• 2:13:26
  people Like I feel like the more you look at CJ. Abram, the
• 2:13:31
  less you look at CJ. Abrams, it's like, oh, this dude,
• 2:13:33
  he is him. And then the little bit more you look, it's
• 2:13:37
  like, Okay, this dude could be pretty good, but a lot of
• 2:13:39
  things have to break right. And then the further out you go is like,
• 2:13:41
  this is absolutely this is Aldeberto Mondess Yeah, yeah, that's what was
• 2:13:46
  scaring me to death. I'm like, I looked at the profile like it's
• 2:13:48
  not I mean, Mondsey was like like you should, and I we're on
• 2:13:54
  a rasball podcast here, so we have to own that. Gray was one
• 2:13:58
  of the biggest Mondsee support orders ever out there. And I'm pretty sure at
• 2:14:01
  least in my like first or second year writing, like I put him as
• 2:14:05
  my biggest sell and I'm like, agree, I'm get fired for this.
• 2:14:09
  But Mondesy like it was so drastic. It's not as drastic with Abrams.
• 2:14:15
  Mondessey was so drastic plus the injury risk, but yeah, Abrams is a
• 2:14:20
  guy that man for the price you maybe double the price, and I'm before
• 2:14:24
  I'm starting to buy. Yeah, I think that's totally fair that the helium
• 2:14:28
  has gotten very, very extensive for C. J. Abrams. Okay,
• 2:14:35
  so my cell we already know is Lane Thomas. So I'm gonna end us
• 2:14:39
  here with my buy who's another pretty deep cut. But I'm really surprised he's
• 2:14:45
  going to slate, and that is Stone Garrett who should be slated for a
• 2:14:50
  full time role in Washington. He really excelled last year when he took over
• 2:14:56
  the left field role for the Nationals and then and broke his leg unfortunately,
• 2:15:01
  and that really kind of killed any sort of steam that he had going.
• 2:15:07
  And I think it's also it's really funny in the NFBC ADP data right now
• 2:15:13
  Gavin Stone and Stone Garrett are literally going right next to each other five seventeen
• 2:15:16
  and five eighteen, So Stone Garrett is pretty much free. But I think
• 2:15:22
  he's a really fantastic pick for a fifth outfielder. And you can just see
• 2:15:26
  it in his career line that he's gotten one hundred and sixteen games in the
• 2:15:31
  majors now between Arizona and Washington and Slash two seventy one, three thirty five
• 2:15:37
  four forty seven with thirteen homers in six stolen bases that I think you could
• 2:15:43
  even see more stolen bases here out of his profile. He's got great power,
• 2:15:48
  great speed that he's just one of those kind of classically tools the players,
• 2:15:54
  and especially if you're looking for somebody late in the draft room that you
• 2:16:00
  can put on your bench or maybe use as a fifth outfielder that has an
• 2:16:03
  outside chance of putting up like a twenty fifteen season. Stone Garrett is probably
• 2:16:09
  my pick out of literally in the entire player pool, because he's just flying
• 2:16:15
  underneath the radar and you look at the bench in Washington and just the bats
• 2:16:20
  that are surrounding him. I don't think there's really much of a chance that
• 2:16:26
  Stone Garrett loses his job unless he performs really really poorly. That there's not,
• 2:16:31
  you know, a prospect coming up to get his job. He's not
• 2:16:35
  even really gonna He's slated right now, and Rouster resource to bat fifth in
• 2:16:39
  the Nationals lineup, and the guys behind him are just total doodo. You
• 2:16:46
  know, you got Luis Garcia, Nick Senzel, Jaco Lew, Victor Roblace.
• 2:16:52
  None of those guys is a better hitter. Than Stone Garrett is,
• 2:16:56
  so Stone Garrett should cement himself right into the middle of that nation whilst line
• 2:17:00
  up, I think all summer and he's going to be a pretty solid accumulator
• 2:17:03
  at the end of the day. Any or any level of the miners is
• 2:17:07
  Stone Garrett played in where he played in at least one hundred games, he
• 2:17:13
  put up at least a you know, like for example, double digit steals
• 2:17:20
  and home runs every level along the way, And so I think, you
• 2:17:24
  know, he's also someone that's gone to it through a couple of different organizations,
• 2:17:28
  a couple you know, move bounce between rookie and low a and hia,
• 2:17:33
  you know, and a lot. But anytime he gets the at bats,
• 2:17:37
  he seems to take advantage of it. I think that's a great,
• 2:17:39
  great pick for a player that probably very few if anyone's going to be watching.
• 2:17:45
  I have to agree. I was actually thinking that kind of the same
• 2:17:48
  thing as like as you were as you were walking through him. He's one
• 2:17:50
  of those almost kind of gave me Alan Craig vibes to the degree of the
• 2:17:54
  older rookie. The comparison stops there with the age, but is but uh,
• 2:18:01
  it's like, well, is anybody gonna give him the shot. He
• 2:18:05
  seems like they never what nobody wants to give it into. You're on this
• 2:18:07
  terrible team, It's like, well, who else am I going to give
• 2:18:09
  it to? There? There's a lot of intrigue with gear I actually liked
• 2:18:13
  him last year and he just you know, but he didn't seem to want
• 2:18:16
  to get the playing time, and nobody want to invest, but they don't
• 2:18:20
  have anything else to do. So yeah, there, I think we said
• 2:18:24
  earlier with somebody else that like, but you don't even have to draft them,
• 2:18:26
  Like you could literally just watch him and wait for an injury and pick
• 2:18:31
  him up and nobody's gonna be the wiser. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay,
• 2:18:35
  Well that wraps up our nlast preview here. I guess we'll also tap it
• 2:18:41
  off with any spicy picks for the division here. Anybody think it's not going
• 2:18:46
  to be the Braves the most interesting, sorry, the least interesting. Best
• 2:18:52
  quality baseball in all of MLB will be played in the Nalyst. I just
• 2:18:58
  I don't see. I don't don't see how you get this is the most
• 2:19:03
  stratified division I think I've ever seen. Washington, New York don't matter.
• 2:19:07
  Sorry, you don't. The Marlins are squarely in the playoff hunt and will
• 2:19:15
  be. I just don't see how they're not. The Phillies are a ninety
• 2:19:18
  four win team, ninety two to ninety four win team that are squarely going
• 2:19:24
  to get the wild card spot. And the Braves are a hundred to one
• 2:19:30
  hundred and ten win team that are going to win the division running away.
• 2:19:37
  All right, I don't how do you pick any There's no argument, There's
• 2:19:43
  no argument there. The argument is who's going to be last? Is it
• 2:19:48
  going to be the Mets with the National Like that's the only discussion in the
• 2:19:50
  division? Yeah, I guess Yeah, there's my spicy pick. I think
• 2:19:54
  the Mets. I think the Mets are going to sell the deadline and they're
• 2:19:58
  going to be creating out a double A team and just losing very METSI in
• 2:20:03
  fashion, they're gonna sell j Stewart. That's the only thing. No,
• 2:20:11
  or maybe he'll be the only thing left the trade. I would be more
• 2:20:18
  surprised if they don't trade pe Alonzo than if they Yep, absolutely all right,
• 2:20:26
  Well, Adam, thanks again for joining us on this pod. We
• 2:20:28
  really enjoyed having you on and your expertise that you provided for us in the
• 2:20:35
  NL East as well as spice it up a little bit with the arguments and
• 2:20:39
  keeping us going. So you want to remind everybody out there where they can
• 2:20:43
  find you and connect with you if they want to. Sure, if you
• 2:20:48
  have nothing better to do, I'm at Adam C mac A eighty A M
• 2:20:52
  C m A A c K on X until that, until that boat burns.
• 2:21:00
  It's way through the doc and then I don't know, I'll find some
• 2:21:01
  other social media platform. But yeah, you can follow me there awesome,
• 2:21:09
  and you can find me on Twitter slash x at in cool seven. Same
• 2:21:13
  thing for Blue Sky. You can find the pod on Twitter slash x at
• 2:21:20
  cards categories and you can also email the pod at cards categories at gmail dot
• 2:21:26
  com. Brew Where can we find your work? And Top one hundred here
• 2:21:31
  should be coming out soon, right yep? So yeah, you can find
• 2:21:33
  me over on x, Twitter whatever we're calling it these days, Jay Brewer
• 2:21:37
  one seven, And you are absolutely right. This weekend we start to drop
• 2:21:41
  a discussion of the hitter profiles, and I'm probably gonna be following along with
• 2:21:46
  our series here and doing a little bit deeper diving some of the guys that
• 2:21:50
  we've talked about in these pods over on the weekend, so you can find
• 2:21:54
  me on every Sunday until the season begins, deep diving on the hitters and
• 2:22:01
  here in about a month or so start going through the top one hundred hitters
• 2:22:03
  for the twenty twenty four seasons. So ras ball is often running with your
• 2:22:09
  off season coverage. If you have missed the start of that season, you
• 2:22:13
  better get on it now. Yeah, exactly. And if you want to
• 2:22:18
  get any great info for your drafts coming up here for twenty twenty four,
• 2:22:22
  ras ball subscriptions are available and give you great insights and tools in terms of
• 2:22:28
  draft information values. Sleeper picks all sorts of projections from Rudy and rankings from
• 2:22:37
  Gray that I think especially what I leverage the most throughout the season is the
• 2:22:43
  daily actual like projected stats, where Rudy's algorithm really picks up a lot of
• 2:22:50
  the nuances in terms of matchups and teams and everything. That it's a really
• 2:22:54
  great tool, and especially if you're looking at any sorts of pitcher streaming options
• 2:23:00
  rasball dot com getting a subscription there, we'll give you all the insights and
• 2:23:03
  tools that you need. So we really appreciate you sticking around here on the
• 2:23:09
  pod with us and Adam. Like I said, thanks for coming on and
• 2:23:13
  we really loved having you on. We'll look to have you on in the
• 2:23:16
  future, look forward to it. Thank you awesome and twelve of our listeners
• 2:23:22
  out there, make sure that you rate, review comment on wherever you listen
• 2:23:26
  to this pod so that we can get this pod into more listeners and more
• 2:23:33
  ears in the future. Thanks for sticking around this week and we'll see you
• 2:23:37
  same time, same place next week. Bye, everybody.