Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 31 : 2024 Topps Series One Release & NL Central Preview

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Ep. 31 : 2024 Topps Series One Release & NL Central Preview · Cards & Categories

• 0:16
  Hello, and welcome everybody to episode thirty one of Cards and Categories. I
• 0:20
  am Mike Coolard from Rasball, joined here as always by my very good friend
• 0:25
  Jeremy Brewer, also from Rasball. How are you doing tonight, Jeremy.
• 0:29
  I am doing just fine. Excited to be here, more excited for this
• 0:32
  pod that I have than for any of the other uh so we have done
• 0:36
  for some time, even though we've been having a blast recently. But I'm
• 0:39
  excited to give them some card news for a while. We haven't had as
• 0:42
  much of that recently. So doing well, Excited to be here. Yeah,
• 0:47
  we definitely fell into a little bit of the rut in between the valley
• 0:51
  of wrapping up the twenty twenty three cards. So though there's still one more
• 0:56
  series coming out next week, that's a twenty twenty three release, but they'll
• 0:59
  speak to soon. It might be more, There might be more. Yeah,
• 1:02
  I was kind of thinking of that as I said that. But this
• 1:04
  week one I almost a November. It's February fourteenth, Wednesday, we have
• 1:11
  the release of Top Series one, twenty twenty four, and that means that
• 1:17
  spring is just kind of around the corner, you know, the Super Bowls,
• 1:21
  over. Fantasy Baseball preview season is getting into high gear. All the
• 1:25
  projection systems are out. It's it's baseball season, baby, so I'm really
• 1:30
  excited. We've got pictures and catchers reporting here and we're recording this on February
• 1:37
  twelfth, Monday night. If you are listening to us for the first time
• 1:41
  on rasball dot com. As you can see, we are featured here this
• 1:44
  week on the homepage because it is the release of Top Series one. Welcome
• 1:49
  and we'll give you a little background on what we've been doing here. We've
• 1:52
  got a podcast that mixes really all of our favorite parts of baseball, so
• 1:57
  I think more so than anything else, it is is Jeremy and Ice podcast
• 2:00
  that we talk about what we love about baseball and that specifically relates to baseball
• 2:06
  cards and fantasy baseball. So that's the cards and that's the categories. Brew
• 2:12
  anyone anything that you want to let any new listeners out there know about us?
• 2:16
  Yeah, I think you know. You and I have been playing fantasy
• 2:19
  baseball together for a long time. Both of us were the prototypical pandemic returners
• 2:27
  to the card world, grew up collecting cards, trading them years and years
• 2:32
  ago, and both of us got back into cards really the last three four
• 2:38
  years and have been part of the ras Ball family for I'm losing track how
• 2:44
  long it's been for me, for maybe four or so, four or five
• 2:49
  years for myself, I know last year or two for you. But yeah,
• 2:54
  it's an opportunity to really dig in and it's a really fun intersection between
• 3:00
  cards and fantasy. They're regardless of the news, regardless of what's going on,
• 3:05
  there's impacts to those two two hobbies, and it's really really fun for
• 3:10
  us to get in there and share that with all of you. So if
• 3:14
  this is your first time joining in, buckle up, enjoy the ride.
• 3:19
  We're gonna have a blast and we hope you do too. Yeah, exactly,
• 3:23
  And if you get the opportunity, you can follow the podcast like the
• 3:28
  podcast on any podcast platform Spotify, Apple or sprekers where this is distributed through,
• 3:35
  So pick whatever works best for you. We appreciate any likes, comments
• 3:39
  and ratings there just helps us spread the pod and get it into different ears.
• 3:45
  And then if you're interested in any merchandise, you think that you really
• 3:49
  want some cards and categories merchandise after getting into this pod, we do have
• 3:53
  a link in the show notes that you can get some hats, some shirts,
• 3:58
  some mugs, so lots of ones. There's the baby Onesie as well,
• 4:02
  So yeah, I know we've got lots of friends that are, you
• 4:04
  know, really expanding their families in their immediate families. So the baby Onesie
• 4:13
  I thought might be a little fun. So if you've got anything that you're
• 4:15
  looking to, I mean, I guess Valentine's Day is probably too late.
• 4:19
  I can tell you it's too late based on some of the print runs on
• 4:21
  those products. So Easter we could get into Easter, which will pair up
• 4:29
  nicely with what something is included in Top Series one. We'll get to that
• 4:32
  in a little bit. But yeah. You can also find the pod on
• 4:39
  Twitter slash x at cards Categories. You can email the pod at cards Categories
• 4:43
  at gmail dot com. We are getting prime into Fantasy Baseball season. As
• 4:48
  I just said, we are wrapping up our preview series of each individual division.
• 4:55
  So we will be doing the Nlcentral, our probably favorite most kind of
• 5:00
  in depth knowledge division of any of them out there. Because if you aren't
• 5:04
  familiar with Brew and I he is a big Cardinals fan. I'm kind of
• 5:09
  like a Cardinals and Socks fan. We both grew up in Central Illinois,
• 5:13
  so that's where our fandom lies, and that's the baseball that we know.
• 5:19
  Yeah, and I think the fun part before we get there talking about Series
• 5:23
  one. Nothing better than Valentine's Day and a release of Top's first flagship product.
• 5:29
  I feel like there's some undertone there that we should be taking away.
• 5:32
  But I don't know about you. I probably will be in trouble if I'm
• 5:35
  ripping Pop Series one on Valentine's Day, So I'm not. I'm going to
• 5:41
  order it on Valentine's Day and rip it the next day. But I think
• 5:46
  it's an exciting, exciting time and Y're right. We were finishing up our
• 5:49
  last division run through. If you enjoy the run through today, go back.
• 5:54
  For the last five weeks, we've been bringing guests on to join us
• 5:59
  for all the divisions, talking through their expertise in those divisions. What it
• 6:02
  means for this year. I think you could get probably ten to fifteen different
• 6:08
  buy or sells each podcast that we've had over the last month and a half,
• 6:13
  so lots of content there and if you want to follow along also from
• 6:16
  a written perspective, I'm out there every weekend writing hitter profiles and or your
• 6:23
  top one hundred hitters on ras ball Cooley, you are over there doing the
• 6:27
  waiver wire. Waiver wire hasn't quite started yet, but that'll be going up
• 6:30
  here probably in a month or so. I don't know. Is there a
• 6:33
  waiver wire during spring training? No, I don't think so. I don't
• 6:36
  think. I don't know if I'll be going like right after. Maybe I'll
• 6:41
  just do like a Padres and Dodgers addition only for the first opening series in
• 6:46
  case like there's some big movements there. But I don't know I'll either be
• 6:50
  going that weekend or the weekend after, so I have to wait for actual
• 6:56
  kind of baseball to get going. It's a little tough to analyze waver works
• 7:00
  until everything out there is drafted. So we're getting prime INTI draft season.
• 7:03
  If you are looking for tools, you can check us out at rasball dot
• 7:08
  com. We've got all sorts of premium subscription items, including gray and Rudy
• 7:15
  sets of projections and all sorts of draft tools, all sorts of analysis to
• 7:18
  be able to help you through your season. I think we work with some
• 7:21
  of the best writers in the business, so they've got all sorts of insights
• 7:26
  that I learned something new just about every time I go to ras ball.
• 7:29
  So they've got deep analysis on either really upper tier level guys or deep analysis
• 7:36
  on some of the deepest prospects the itch can dig up. So join us
• 7:42
  along at rasball for your twenty twenty four season. But yeah, let's get
• 7:46
  into the big daddy here. Tops Series one twenty twenty four it's back.
• 7:50
  We've got a new design. If you want to check out some of our
• 7:54
  initial thoughts on the design, you can go back to our NL East preview
• 7:59
  and that was episode number twenty seven that came along with the news of Tops
• 8:05
  actually releasing the design for this set. I guess overall, I mean,
• 8:11
  I'm kind of negative on the overall design here. As we can see in
• 8:16
  the show notes, we got a link to the checklist and the details.
• 8:20
  This year kind of harkens back to the nineteen eighty six design. Correct,
• 8:24
  Am I getting it right? I think it's nineteen eighty nine, eighty five?
• 8:28
  Or no? No, the black and the white, Oh, the
• 8:31
  black and the white. Okay, yes, sorry, I was thinking the
• 8:33
  actual inserts, But yes, you were correct, So yes, that had
• 8:37
  a classic kind of very delineated black and white. These are sort of copying
• 8:43
  that with the gradiation on the border between the black and the white and then
• 8:50
  neon. I think is the theme here for twenty twenty four is We've got
• 8:56
  I can't I still can't see anything but comic sands when I see the team
• 9:00
  names on these cards with the neon, I get it what neon lights look
• 9:05
  like, but it looks like comic sands when you printed on a card to
• 9:07
  me. And the rest of the border is made up of neon as well.
• 9:11
  So I think it's a little bit of a different direction here from tops
• 9:16
  as the past few years have had all white borders, very clean design,
• 9:22
  and last year had the featured kind of headshot photo, so that was a
• 9:28
  little bit of like a callback to the past of the nineteen eighty three set.
• 9:33
  So we've got a lot of I think, new elements here where I'm
• 9:37
  trying to pinpoint. Other than obviously the eighty six design, it's kind of
• 9:41
  going in a new direction. And so Brew, I know that you were
• 9:45
  a little more favorable to the design than I am, But what do you
• 9:48
  like about it? Yeah, I was slightly more favorable and I'm even more
• 9:52
  favorable now the more time I've spent looking at it, and you know,
• 9:56
  the base what I like is we're trying something different, We're trying some different.
• 10:00
  It's unique. You know, it's gonna be twenty twenty four. But
• 10:03
  what I think it really has brought is and we'll get into the parallels here
• 10:07
  in a little bit, but as you look at the parallels, this card
• 10:11
  design has allowed Tops to really go after some really unique designs with the borders
• 10:16
  and with the parallels, and so you think back to some of those really
• 10:20
  awesome parallels that we've had in the past with the different color designs. The
• 10:22
  team matches things like that, and this design is allowing them the use of
• 10:28
  that border more creatively than they have in the past. So like the Independence
• 10:31
  Day parallels, if you've seen those, they look fantastic for the first time.
• 10:35
  And I don't know how many years, I mean what last year was
• 10:37
  just like a few stars and that was it as far as Independence Day,
• 10:41
  Like it is a full flag card, you know, with the image kind
• 10:46
  of last year on top of it. I'm loving what the flexibility that it
• 10:50
  has given Tops with those designs. So I'm liking it I'm excited about it.
• 10:54
  I do think these cards are gonna be fun to see, Like how
• 10:56
  do you tell the centering on these things? They're gonna be a little all
• 10:58
  over the place, but it should be a fun and i'd say polarizing design
• 11:07
  for folks. So I think you're gonna love to hate it. You're probably
• 11:09
  gonna be in between, but you can see where you and I are,
• 11:11
  well, there isn't in between. I really like it. I think is
• 11:15
  exciting. It might be one of those that is like when you decorate your
• 11:20
  house with a modern decorations and interior and then like ten years from now,
• 11:24
  you can look at it goes, why the hell did I ever do that?
• 11:28
  You know? That's that might be where I talk about this in ten
• 11:31
  years, But right now I think it's fun. Okay, Yeah, And
• 11:35
  I will say I do agree with you in terms of the parallels. Do
• 11:39
  look really sharp because they do drop the gradient border on the outside and it
• 11:43
  allows them to do I think. I don't know if they've like developed new
• 11:46
  ways of printing things, but some of these parallels are much more detailed than
• 11:52
  they've been in the past few years or honestly in the history of tops.
• 11:56
  I think that's one thing that I've really noted. I think it'll make things
• 12:00
  really fun if you're getting into ripping cards for the first time in a long
• 12:05
  time or first time ever. That that's gonna I think really jump out is
• 12:09
  seeing some of the different parallels that go along with the base. But at
• 12:15
  the same time, it also does make me a little sad for the base
• 12:18
  that you know, if people are appreciating the parallels and really chasing the parallels
• 12:22
  the way that they have been over the past few years, it obviously devalues
• 12:26
  the base. And I'm I'm just a simple man. I love all the
• 12:31
  baseball cards and no matter like from the junk backs era and everything that.
• 12:35
  Like, Yeah, I don't know, it's just something in me. I
• 12:37
  like to take care of each individual one. But like you said, we've
• 12:43
  got lots of parallels this year, so would you like to do the honors
• 12:46
  of This is a tradition here on the pod to run down all the different
• 12:50
  parallels because mostly Dahl it's a little bit of like a joke because some of
• 12:56
  these have gotten real ridiculous as Fanax has taken over tops and really turned up
• 13:01
  the printing presses as lots of consumers out there have come to the hobby since
• 13:07
  COVID. It's, you know, a good activity to I like it because
• 13:11
  it gets me away from screens. It like gives me a physical product to
• 13:16
  like have a hobby with. And so that's why I found it during COVID,
• 13:20
  and lots of other people I think are in the same boat. But
• 13:24
  it has increased demand and flooded a lot of cash into this space. But
• 13:28
  broom, how we're looking for these parallels and let's see how smoothly you can
• 13:33
  rattle them all off. Let's go for it. I was just counting the
• 13:37
  parallels and I'm not sure if this is even fair. So I'm not even
• 13:39
  counting like some of the variations. This is just the parallels on the base
• 13:43
  set, not ey of the variation sets, which I don't know how at
• 13:46
  the end of the day, a variation set is kind of parallels. So
• 13:50
  but we're talking like thirty plus. So we're gonna we're gonna try to get
• 13:52
  into this and I'm gonna see if I cannot mess it up. Because they
• 13:58
  are all across the board. They are come in different products, different packaging,
• 14:03
  there's exclusives to fanatics, websites. There's you know, exclusives to you
• 14:09
  know a certain type of blasters. There's exclusives all over this thing, which
• 14:13
  is I think part of the fun that that top Fanatics is trying to create.
• 14:18
  So without further ado, let's do this parallels, non numbered parallels.
• 14:24
  We have the Aqua parallel, which can only be found in the Fanatics blaster
• 14:28
  boxes. Gold foil can only be found in Hobby Jumbo packs. The eggs
• 14:35
  the Easter eggs here only in Holiday blasters, Rainbow foil Rabbit also in Holiday
• 14:41
  blasters. Royal blue is retail only generally the Walmart version, Silver crackle foil
• 14:50
  board only in superboxes if you are buying the superboxes. The true photo parallel.
• 14:56
  I'm sure we'll talk about this one a little bit. True photo pail
• 14:58
  is new this year. You got the yellow in the yellow foil, so
• 15:03
  it used to be yellow. Is only think you'd have in a hanger box
• 15:05
  like the generally the Walgreens hangars what it was known as. We've added a
• 15:11
  yellow foil in those hangar boxes as well. Then you get to the fun
• 15:15
  numbering gold out of twenty twenty four. We saw that one coming, after
• 15:20
  all, every other year, blue holofoil at nine ninety nine, purple holofoil
• 15:24
  at seven ninety nine, green crackle foil board at four ninety nine, orange
• 15:30
  crackle foil board at two ninety nine, red crackle foil board at one ninety
• 15:33
  nine. Then we got some of the good the oldies, but goodies.
• 15:37
  You've been just stock at ninety nine. Still there, Independence Day at seventy
• 15:41
  six. You're black at seventy three. Your Father's Day and Mother's Day out
• 15:45
  of fifties are both there for the blue and the pink. You also have
• 15:48
  your flowers out of fifty again for your holiday blasters, your yellow crackle foil
• 15:54
  board, it's coming out of those yellow hangar boxes. Your Memorial Day out
• 16:00
  of twenty five, you get your clear acetates out of ten. Those are
• 16:03
  only found on a hobby umbrellas. Again, your holiday blasters. These holiday
• 16:07
  blasters are going to be a blast, pun intended. And then your watering
• 16:14
  cans out of five. Can't have your your rabbits and your flower without your
• 16:21
  watering cans, I guess. Then your main chase out of the holiday blasters
• 16:26
  your birds. I don't know how birds play into this, but they're here.
• 16:33
  And then you're one of one platinum, and then you're one of one
• 16:37
  printing plates in black, cyam AGENTA, and yellow. Those are all your
• 16:41
  parallels. And then I'm gonna throw on top of it, you have your
• 16:45
  golden mirror parallels or image variations, and you also have your team color border
• 16:52
  variations as well. So in total, I think if you count all the
• 16:56
  printing plates as different versions, I believe we have a total of thirty five
• 17:03
  different parallels. So good luck chasing the rainbow of your favorite color or favorite
• 17:10
  color favorite you could do your favorite color. That might be just that might
• 17:11
  be easier, a lot of your flavorite players. So there's a lot there.
• 17:17
  I need to take a drink so you continue from here. I was
• 17:18
  going to say, I was going to offer you a little bit of a
• 17:21
  break now. And actually there's one that because I can see the list that
• 17:26
  you're reading on Beckett, they didn't even copy down one that they had from
• 17:30
  the top. The royal blue retail parallel is still around, which if you've
• 17:34
  been ripping tops of the past a couple of years, sometimes it's royal blue,
• 17:37
  sometimes it's navy blue. That the ink on that blue parallel can vary
• 17:42
  a lot, So that's another one to keep your eye out for. I
• 17:47
  have a couple of things I want to call out from what you were rattling
• 17:49
  off that stood out to me first, or all those goofy Easter parallels.
• 17:55
  That's what as hinting at at the top of the show when we were talking
• 17:59
  about a holiday coming up. So this parkens back to They just started this
• 18:03
  in twenty twenty three with the Update series. Update Series came out right around
• 18:07
  Halloween, so they had a bunch of black and orange parallels with ghosts and
• 18:15
  boo and all sorts of Halloween themed items that they ran in that. I
• 18:22
  think it was really popular. So I'm not sure if this thing's gonna go
• 18:25
  away that whenever a series two lines up, I would have to imagine maybe
• 18:30
  somewhere around the fourth so we might see a Fourth of July themed one,
• 18:34
  or I'm not even sure what other summer holidays they might use. So we'll
• 18:38
  see. We'll have to keep our eyes. I'm seeing firework cards, I'm
• 18:41
  seeing the hot dog cards. It's definitely Independence Day, Uncle Sabd cards,
• 18:48
  Mount Rushmore cards. There's gonna be some fun stuff, that's for sure,
• 18:52
  So we'll keep our eyes peeled for series two when that comes out. The
• 18:55
  other thing is gold foil has been something that I've chased the past few years
• 19:00
  because I think when it's all said and done within this era of collecting these
• 19:06
  modern cards, is that people don't realize how rare those gold foil insert cards
• 19:11
  are. That you'll see a lot of the rainbow foil cards and they're relatively
• 19:17
  common. You obviously have the standard gold parallel that is numbered to the year
• 19:22
  that it was released, but the gold foils are tough polls that I think
• 19:27
  last year there were only like six hundred and fifty total copies of each one.
• 19:32
  This year we're going to be looking at I have to imagine significantly fewer
• 19:37
  if they're only going to be in jumbos. So if you do enjoy collecting
• 19:41
  those gold foil parallels, it's going to get a little more difficult for you.
• 19:45
  But I think in the long run, because of their rarity, it's
• 19:48
  just going to add, I think to their value overall. It's just going
• 19:52
  to take a little time that it's been happening. I think a lot with
• 19:56
  nineties parallels of like the or gold Rush back in the day, and especially
• 20:03
  in lots of basketball and upper deck products. You have electric diamond, so
• 20:07
  those have become more and more popular that I could see something similar happening to
• 20:11
  the gold foils as people try to slowly but surely put those sets together.
• 20:15
  So I don't know if you saw it, but in the show notes,
• 20:18
  so I'm guessing you did see, but you just forgot. There is a
• 20:22
  breakdown of the projections on those gold l trying to look at the one at
• 20:29
  eight ninety nine, so we'll call it nine hundred for fun. It's a
• 20:33
  little bit larger then a little larger expect but still, you know, as
• 20:37
  you talk about there aren't cards numbered in the set up to nine ninety nine,
• 20:41
  it is more rare to get the gold foil than the nine ninety nine
• 20:45
  and a number of other ones in there, like the yellow foil. It's
• 20:49
  not two O five is what they're projecting. It's in you know, that's
• 20:52
  actually be a hard to find card, and I have a feeling there's gonna
• 20:56
  be a lot of yellow foils confused with gold foils because I don't know the
• 21:00
  difference. So that's quite a stark difference that you'll see within the set.
• 21:07
  Yeah, and then this year, like you said, we're bringing back the
• 21:11
  Gold Mirror short prints that they started in twenty twenty three, and I think
• 21:17
  it was just really popular because there was the bounty put out there by different
• 21:21
  breakers to collect an entire set of the Gold Mirror SSPs, and so that
• 21:27
  turned into a pretty big chase. The variation this year is that the back
• 21:33
  of the card, instead of being a white background, you know, when
• 21:34
  you're reading all the stats and all of the statistics from you know, where
• 21:41
  the players from, and a little bit of background and everything like that.
• 21:45
  Usually in this set it's going to be a white background, but that'll be
• 21:48
  gold on the Gold short Super short prints, so they'll be even easier to
• 21:52
  see. I actually I really like that. It reminds me of the orangish
• 21:56
  backs of TOPS cards in the mid to late eighties. Yeah. I think
• 22:03
  the Golden Mirror is a fun card. I like the fact that it is
• 22:10
  kind of a you know, image variation that you're going after and then yeah,
• 22:12
  it's something different on the back and you know you're talking. It's it's
• 22:18
  from a rarity perspective. There's probably one hundred thirty and forty of those cards
• 22:22
  for each player, So look at that it's like I read the notes two
• 22:32
  minutes ago, already forgot, but I just got my first gold mirror from
• 22:37
  twenty twenty three, you know, a week or two back, and love
• 22:41
  the cards. I think they're really unique and it's it's just another fun little
• 22:45
  thing to chase and add to the collection. So very very much a fun
• 22:51
  card. Yeah, and then we also have a few new introductions here in
• 22:56
  terms of parallels, and that is the true photo parallel, which essentially just
• 23:00
  drops the entire border off the front of the card, so it's just the
• 23:03
  picture, almost a little bit of like a stadium club field, which has
• 23:07
  been one of our favorite sets. So you're going to have instead of the
• 23:12
  gradient border on the standard card, they just totally get rid of that.
• 23:17
  It's just the picture. I think it'll be a really cool card to bring
• 23:22
  back because it harkens back to just a lot of vintage products that Tops used
• 23:27
  to run in terms of when it had like the full photo and was able
• 23:32
  to provide like a really good look at the player. You also have for
• 23:36
  the first time those team color parallels. So what those will be is the
• 23:41
  borders will printed with the team logos on them, and so I think those
• 23:47
  will be pretty big chases that I think lots of team collectors out there are
• 23:51
  going to be looking to add to their PCs, their personal collections with an
• 23:56
  entire set in the team parallel that lots of people already do that with the
• 24:00
  color parallels, and now this just adds another great chase for those team collectors.
• 24:06
  And I believe those are case hits, those colors, so they're gonna
• 24:10
  be tough. I was just looking out there on the great old site called
• 24:15
  eBay that auctions all these cards off. It really sets the market forum and
• 24:21
  even though released day is two days away, some things are already kind of
• 24:23
  leaking out there. Folks cut their hands on things early, and I just
• 24:27
  gotta quizz you down because it might as well. And I'm setting this up
• 24:30
  very easily for you. But there's been a few of these have sold.
• 24:34
  They're a little all over the place, but Spencer Schreider pretty big name in
• 24:41
  the card community and probably even bigger in the fantasy community because the pitchers get
• 24:47
  things for whatever reason in the card world. How much do you think his
• 24:51
  Team color variation super short print case hit Team Color Match sold for I own
• 25:03
  it could be just about anywhere. It could be way high or too low.
• 25:08
  Given that it is so early that like that's up on eBay even before
• 25:14
  the technical release date. I'm gonna go with three fifty, all right,
• 25:18
  I set you up too much. It's one twenty five. But still okay,
• 25:22
  it's still its case hits the case hits. You know, generally you're
• 25:25
  gonna talk about, you know, maybe ten or twenty bucks at the end
• 25:27
  of the day, and a lot of different products. So yeah, for
• 25:32
  a non rookie, you know, not future stars or anything like that,
• 25:34
  just your every day a starting pitcher, if you may, one twenty five.
• 25:40
  But yeah, you're actually right that the early bird gets the it's the
• 25:45
  cash, I think in this scenario and the other first the other new first
• 25:52
  time parallel we've got going on is the first card actually this year that it
• 25:56
  reminds me a lot of the Bowman like first edition or tops. First edition
• 26:03
  is often a product I don't know if they've had it for the past couple
• 26:06
  of years, but this will be similar to where I'm not sure if there's
• 26:11
  going to be anything on the back, because I was trying to look if
• 26:14
  there was any available. I haven't seen any polled yet on eBay. No,
• 26:18
  I haven't either, Okay, so, and actually it wasn't in the
• 26:21
  rundown of parallels that you described that. You know, there's so many parallels
• 26:26
  where you have missed a few in that huge rundown. But this will simply
• 26:30
  say right over the team logo and the design first card like a right around
• 26:34
  it. So it might be a little tough for people to pick up if
• 26:38
  it doesn't have other some sort of designation on the back. So I would
• 26:42
  certainly keep your eyes peeled for these first cards because I think they're going to
• 26:47
  be popular as well, and kind of akin to first editions that you might
• 26:51
  see for like I said, Bowman or Tops or it also happens a lot
• 26:55
  and like Magic and Pokemon cards. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I
• 27:00
  do wonder if because they have had the first edition last at least last year,
• 27:06
  if not the last two years of Tops where they have like that first
• 27:10
  release of first edition, I don't think they're doing that this year, so
• 27:12
  I think this might be their way to kind of build that into the set.
• 27:15
  So that'll be that'll be fun to see and to your point, actually
• 27:19
  be interesting to seek. We haven't seen really a full front and back of
• 27:25
  these cards. So again another variation that's not technically a parallel, but is
• 27:29
  a I don't know, I don't I can't follow all of it. So
• 27:33
  yeah, variation parallels like that, but it will be a part of the
• 27:36
  rainbow if you're going for it. So big thing to keep in mind.
• 27:40
  All right, let's get into some of the inserts that we got. And
• 27:42
  you mentioned it already early on, is that the main insert that they're going
• 27:48
  to use for that design is every year TOPS has like a main insert series
• 27:55
  that runs all the way through series one, Series two, update series so
• 28:00
  you can keep putting together the sets over and over. Is using a design
• 28:04
  from thirty five years ago, and this year that is from nineteen eighty nine.
• 28:08
  So that is the classic Griffy rookie from TOPS if you think about it,
• 28:15
  and that is typically the white border with the script name of the team,
• 28:21
  and then within like the swoosh of like the last letter that comes across,
• 28:25
  it'll have the name of the player on the front. I really love
• 28:27
  nineteen eighty nine as a design, so I'm really happy to see this as
• 28:33
  the insert series. I think it's gonna be really fun. And again,
• 28:37
  if you're ripping cards for the first time in a long time. I think
• 28:40
  it's gonna really remind you of some cards that you might have ripped back in
• 28:45
  the day, because just about everybody I think has seen a nineteen eighty nine
• 28:48
  Tops because they were printed so much. Like I'm sure that you know it
• 28:55
  might be pushing a print run of you know, two three million back in
• 28:59
  the day. That nineteen eighty Tops is a pretty well known set just because
• 29:03
  it's anywhere and everywhere on the cheap it is. And I do agree with
• 29:07
  you. I do like the design. The one thing I'm struggling with this
• 29:11
  year is the relics from the nineteen nineteen eighty nine They do not look good.
• 29:17
  I don't know if you had a chance to look at them. It
• 29:18
  looks like one of those jersey fusion cards where they like took a card off
• 29:22
  from Mark and just cut it out and then put it in there. Like
• 29:25
  it does not look like it belongs. There's a few that did a lot
• 29:29
  of bat relics this year, and those ones just are not playing well.
• 29:33
  There's a few that have like the jersey to be the team color match.
• 29:37
  Those ones are playing a little better, but in general man, they just
• 29:41
  it looks like you just butchered this card and threw a little piece of jersey
• 29:45
  in there and called it a day. And I'm just looking at the marketplace
• 29:48
  here, and usually you know your two days before release day. If you're
• 29:52
  getting relics out there, you're expecting what tempteen bucks something like that card to
• 29:56
  myke like five bucks, because you're there's this league of the first one of
• 30:00
  them, like looking like there's a few of them out here for like four
• 30:03
  bucks, like a try now, and they're just sitting there. I'm like,
• 30:07
  oh, first day, you know, or minus two days whatever it
• 30:11
  will be. And that's not not picking up steam there. So I think
• 30:15
  those nineteen eighty nine relics are going to be a little little rougher than than
• 30:21
  than hops expected. Yeah, And that is especially tough because if you are
• 30:25
  opening a hobby box, this is another product where they don't guarantee an autograph
• 30:30
  in just the base hobby box that is guarantees an auto or a relic,
• 30:36
  so it could be one of those game used relics, or player warn relics,
• 30:40
  or even just a fake medallion. So it is really tough if your
• 30:47
  one hit from that box is even if it's a game, use memorabilly relic
• 30:52
  if you're only getting a few bucks out of it like that, because right
• 30:55
  now hobby boxes are going right around eighty bucks, I think is what it
• 30:59
  is. So that's where they've kind of settled. The last few releases of
• 31:03
  Flagship and Jumbos are somewhere between. I've seen them from like one fifty one
• 31:08
  forty some places to one eighty and that depends a little bit on like the
• 31:14
  shipping and stuff. So those will get you a guaranteed auto and another relic
• 31:22
  or is it maybe two relics and two relics? Yeah, I think one
• 31:26
  is very likely to be your commander of relics. And actually they're the Home
• 31:30
  Sweet Home Stadium Medallion relics this year, which is actually pretty good looking.
• 31:33
  I kind of like, yeah for your being a fastored relics, which those
• 31:37
  are really hit or miss. Like there's some years that they've just knocked out
• 31:41
  of the park with like the hat logos and things like that have really really
• 31:45
  been good, and there's other years where you have like the big dinger of
• 31:48
  like a you know, looks like a metal piece that they've found off on
• 31:52
  the car park floor and just toss it in there. So I'm liking the
• 31:56
  home Sweet Home Stadium medallions this year. I think those will play really really
• 32:01
  well. I think so too. And then we've got a lot of the
• 32:06
  same inserts that we've seen for years and years now in Top Flagship. Between
• 32:10
  we've got the heavy Lumber inserts, which are short printed case hits that are
• 32:15
  actually printed on wood, so they're a really cool collector's card in terms of
• 32:22
  wanting that wood printed card. Then you've also got home Run Challenge inserts which
• 32:28
  you can use to put into tops dot com and pick days that that player
• 32:32
  might end up hitting a home run, and then if they do hit the
• 32:36
  home run, you end up getting parallel cards of that that Tops will send
• 32:38
  you a free card back. Then you've also got home field advantages back this
• 32:44
  year. It was last year was the first year of it and ripping off
• 32:46
  an old Panini set of Downtown, so they're bringing it back and honestly,
• 32:52
  it looks like the base sets maybe even less rare than it was before,
• 32:55
  but those legendary ones are really short printed and really hard to hit it.
• 33:00
  And we've also got the stars of it will be inserts back again, which
• 33:07
  is you know, one per pack of like everything, and so even though
• 33:12
  they're inserts, they're extremely high print run. You're gonna have more than half
• 33:16
  a million of each of those cards out in the market that you know,
• 33:20
  it's almost easier to put that set together than the base three hundred and fifty
• 33:24
  card set if you were just ripping cards. So it's a it's a funny
• 33:30
  insert because of that. And then you've also got the chrome version of all
• 33:34
  those stars of them will be You've got the chrome Mojo versions of all the
• 33:37
  nineteen eighty nine's again, so lots of similar things. But some of the
• 33:45
  new ones that we have for this year are the celebration of the kid King
• 33:50
  Griffy Junior inserts that I think especially because his rookie card came in that nine
• 33:55
  eighty nine set. That's why they chose him. A lot of or all
• 34:00
  those cards are in the eighty nine design and show different career highlights of him.
• 34:05
  They've had these four I'm trying to think of some of the recent people
• 34:09
  who have been a part of this series. It's been like Cody Bellinger has
• 34:13
  been one, Juan Soto has been one where they will just do an insert
• 34:17
  series that highlights a player's career. So I think this was going to be
• 34:22
  a really popular one given that Griffy's Rookie came in the eighty nine set originally,
• 34:28
  and all these cards will have that design, So I think this will
• 34:31
  be a fun new insert series of collecting these Griffis and everybody collects Griffy.
• 34:38
  Everybody collects Griffy, and you're right, this is probably gonna be one of
• 34:42
  the more collectible sets. I think people are going to want to put this
• 34:45
  one together, and it's gonna be relatively easy to do, so I think
• 34:47
  that'll be a fun one. They'll be there pretty easily to be found.
• 34:52
  Yeah. And then the other new inserts that they we have this year is
• 34:57
  the Blueprints, and this one a lot less excited about because literally Panini Prism
• 35:01
  had a Blueprints insert set in twenty twenty three Panini Prism. So it's just
• 35:09
  the weird kind of in house thing is Fanatics is taking licensing from Panini and
• 35:15
  copying it over to the Tops and they're not going to suit each other.
• 35:19
  As you know, Fanatics owns the entire card collecting industry, so I don't
• 35:24
  think this is the first nor last time. Well, it's definitely not the
• 35:28
  first, as I just said with home field advantage yet off downtown that we're
• 35:32
  gonna it's not the last time. I don't think we're going to see something
• 35:36
  like this from fanatics in terms of reshuffling and recycling designs. Yeah. The
• 35:42
  thing I do like is, you know, if you if you're more into
• 35:44
  wanting to have a license, you know they are cool in cards. So
• 35:47
  I'll give you that. It does kind of to your point. It's kind
• 35:51
  the same thing with the home field versus like come on, like it's really
• 35:53
  they're cool, but like, come on, we all see what you're doing
• 35:59
  here. Yeah. And then the other new sort of insert or chase card
• 36:05
  that we have in this year's product is these redemptions. So there are social
• 36:10
  media followback redemptions in the series. One product this year that we've seen this
• 36:15
  before in Big League, but it was just like specifically only for Mike Trout.
• 36:21
  It's I don't know how big this set is that I guess we'll kind
• 36:24
  of see as people start pulling lots of them. But the idea is that
• 36:29
  if you pull one of these redemptions, you would then get a code to
• 36:32
  redeem it on Tops dot Com and then that would have that player immediately like
• 36:37
  signaled so that they can follow you on your social media of choice, and
• 36:43
  so that'll be interesting. That'll be big for especially people who have those redemptions
• 36:49
  in their personal collections and really want to have a personal personal connection to that
• 36:54
  player. And the other redemption we have is this one is new. It's
• 36:59
  coming exclusively in the Fanatics boxes, the Finance Value boxes. I also don't
• 37:04
  think this is the first time that we're the last time that we're ever going
• 37:07
  to see this again, that it is the first time we're seeing it that
• 37:10
  now that Fanatics has really taken a hold of Tops since they bought them,
• 37:15
  we're starting to see Fanatics exclusive items. And I've even noticed in a lot
• 37:20
  of the advertising that Tops has been running on their social media campaigns, it's
• 37:25
  involving Fanatics a lot more so I think it's just going to build more and
• 37:30
  more. But this exclusive redemption is for autograph memorabilia, so they'll have inserts
• 37:37
  for being able to redeem that code for autograph balls, autograph jerseys, I'm
• 37:44
  guessing probably bats, all sorts of stuff that they might have in the Finax
• 37:47
  warehouse, the baseball's jerseys and one photo if I found the checklist. Really
• 37:52
  that's it. So if you get Miguel Cabrera, you get a photo brutal.
• 37:57
  Otherwise, baseballs and jerseys, I think the chase here is gonna be
• 38:00
  a Hulu Rodriguez autographed jersey in Bobby Witt autograph jerseys are probably the biggest one.
• 38:07
  There's one uh player per team. But what's what's interesting, I say
• 38:12
  one per team. The Tigers actually have Riley Green and Spencer rhetorical send both
• 38:15
  on the baseball appears to be there is a showy Tani baseball. Uh.
• 38:21
  So there's some big ones. But then you hit some teams that have Hall
• 38:24
  of famers. It's one player per team. But you hit the Chicago White
• 38:30
  Sox Carlton Fisk, Yeah, you hit the Pittsburgh Pirates Bill Mazerowski. So
• 38:37
  you got a little bit uh of guys uh in there with like Rod Carew
• 38:43
  and others, and then you got all the big names of today, so
• 38:46
  you'll love the Dennis Acrasty is there with with the A's. So there's there's
• 38:50
  some fun ones. But yeah, it looks what we don't know is what's
• 38:53
  the what's I say, the run on those? How how rare is it
• 38:59
  going to be to get one of them? But I think that this is
• 39:01
  a really cool thing that they're trying to do. What's also interesting is it
• 39:06
  does add ten dollars to the cost of a value box, I believe,
• 39:09
  because I think they're gonna be twenty dollars this year from what I was seen,
• 39:13
  and these ones are thirty dollars on that same box. But they also
• 39:17
  are implying that they have an actually like extra two packs in the box.
• 39:22
  Whether that's true or not, I don't know. The one warning I'll give
• 39:25
  you if you are a rip on opening opening day, on release day kind
• 39:30
  of person here, these are not going to be actually released until the end
• 39:32
  of February. So these are coming out I believe, on the twenty ninth
• 39:37
  of February, and they will not ship before that. So if you're out
• 39:39
  there, you're making your pre order, you're going to go after these autographic
• 39:44
  memorabilias, you're going to be out another you know, three weeks before these
• 39:47
  things actually ship, probably in a month before they actually arrive on doorsteps.
• 39:52
  So fun product, but don't plan this if you want to rip right away.
• 39:55
  I wouldn't wait for the Fanatics exclusive value boxes to make it out.
• 40:01
  Yeah, and we'll see that. According to tops bb, which is a
• 40:07
  Twitter account that we used to be able to check some of the production runs
• 40:12
  and that's where we've been getting the numbers from, you know, those rainbow
• 40:16
  gold foils and things like that. He did tweet that from last week that
• 40:22
  it appears that those value boxes just don't have any other types of inserts or
• 40:27
  parallels other than the Aqua parallels that are exclusive to Fanatics. So that I
• 40:32
  did see that. Well, I can't sell in the description, but I
• 40:37
  just wasn't. I wasn't I say buying it. I was just like,
• 40:38
  no, there's no way right that they're literally just Aqua parallels and these redemptions
• 40:45
  and nothing else. I'm just wait, that's a tough cell. Yeah that
• 40:51
  I don't I don't know that. I guess we'll see that. Maybe that
• 40:54
  would also make it so that there's less of a concern to chase for opening
• 41:01
  day or yeah, the release date of those of that product. So that
• 41:07
  guy, I will say that that I did see I think on tops dot
• 41:12
  com or somewhere else with maybe was Fanatics even when they described like your hobby
• 41:17
  boxes and your Jumbo boxes, it said like each pack had one stars of
• 41:22
  them, will be insert thirty two base cards, like that was the description,
• 41:28
  And so like, I think that it's just in the way it's described,
• 41:30
  because you know, in a hobby, in a Jumbo, it's not
• 41:34
  literally like you get the start of m'll be guaranteed one per pack and literally
• 41:38
  all base cards, because you know it's promised that you get the the inserts
• 41:43
  and the autos and the relics and those. So I think it's I'm leaning
• 41:50
  towards that's just a poor wording on the Fanatics website. But hey, if
• 41:57
  I'm wrong, ouch, those those are going to be really really interesting for
• 42:00
  folks to be showing a little extra for the really pipe dream of pulling those
• 42:06
  memorabilia cards. Yeah, and it might also it's a little bit of if
• 42:09
  you don't have access to a retail environment to buy cards either at you know,
• 42:15
  like a Target or a Walmart is the biggest retailers where they can be
• 42:21
  found, but all sorts of other places like Barnes and Noble, best Buy
• 42:23
  and Meyer and anywhere in between that you can kind of it's really spread out
• 42:30
  that compared to where it's been, you know, maybe five six years ago.
• 42:34
  And then obviously you have hobby shops. But if you don't have access
• 42:37
  to any of that around you, then the best route to getting products might
• 42:42
  be through finatics dot com. And I think part of it, the reason
• 42:45
  that they have the extra price too, is all the pricing on Fanatics is
• 42:50
  a little goofy between like people having credit card offers to be able to get
• 42:54
  cash back at Fanatics and fin X like cash Bucks. That it's really the
• 43:00
  pricing on Finax can get real squishy, real fast, face it can.
• 43:05
  I was just looking because I was debating. I don't know about you,
• 43:08
  if you've bought anything yet, I've already pre ordered my one Jumbo to start
• 43:14
  with. We'll see where things land. But I was looking at the Fanatics
• 43:20
  and the numbers didn't really work out as it to rather lock some in and
• 43:25
  then wait. But you could go out somewhere and now there's deals to buy,
• 43:30
  you know, fifty dollars gift cards for forty dollars for Fanatics. Yeah,
• 43:35
  so you can go get thirty dollars off your Jumbo box if you want,
• 43:38
  just by buying the gift cards and applying them. I don't think it
• 43:42
  worked with the They did kind of a you know, not an auction,
• 43:46
  but a kind of buy into to say, hey, I want to get
• 43:51
  in the drop for these boxes, and you had to reput your credit card
• 43:53
  in there, so you couldn't use the gift cards or anything like that.
• 43:55
  But once that that drop takes place, I think then you'll be able to
• 44:00
  get in there and get some deals and get creative with your point of the
• 44:04
  cash back and things like that and cash It's it's a lot of funny math.
• 44:08
  But I do feel that Series one is real. I was happy with
• 44:15
  the price point it came in at. It seems like they didn't overswing this
• 44:22
  time around. Yeah, I think so too. And we were also put
• 44:25
  in the show notes the odds breakdown too to show people on top of calculating
• 44:32
  the print runs like tops production BB on Twitter will go and then calculate out
• 44:37
  what the cost is per a hit between like inserts or different parallels and so.
• 44:45
  Traditionally, the way that the twenty twenty three flagship was working is that
• 44:49
  the jumbo hobby boxes were the best bang for your buck. But it looks
• 44:54
  like it might flip this year where between either blasters or hangar hangers are back
• 45:00
  to being bangers. We discussed this a little bit also when the when the
• 45:07
  release of Tops twenty twenty four was announced, when we preview the in a
• 45:13
  leased and so, yeah, I'm excited because if you're not familiar with what
• 45:17
  a hanger box is, that is literally like the boxes that hang on the
• 45:22
  shelf at Target and Walmart, and they used to be loaded back in the
• 45:28
  twenty twenty and twenty twenty one releases. In twenty twenty two and twenty twenty
• 45:32
  three, Tops really ramped down how loaded they were in terms of the number
• 45:39
  of inserts and parallels and everything in them. But according to the math on
• 45:46
  some random dupe from Reddit, it appears that's real. Yeah. I should
• 45:53
  caveat it with that, I guess, but it does look like hanger boxes
• 45:57
  are going to be your best bang for your bucket and those I love that
• 46:00
  because it's a ten or twelve dollars hangar depending on like the time of the
• 46:07
  season, and you know what sort of sales are going on, and it's
• 46:12
  just a quick way to like be able to rip some baseball cards and if
• 46:19
  they're going to be loaded again this year. I've foreseen myself buying lots of
• 46:22
  hangers when I'm running and out in and out of targets and Walmart's doing errands.
• 46:28
  Yeah, I think that that that's the key right there. And I
• 46:30
  think that's what's interesting is that last year and a half, it's really the
• 46:34
  retail what's on on the shelves has been starting to sit and it's not really
• 46:37
  been exciting because it's just the the print runs have just been jumping up so
• 46:43
  significantly, and you can still you still there's still a value in the in
• 46:47
  the jumbos because you're guaranteed the auto and that's you know, autos are hard
• 46:53
  hard to come by. Guaranteed two relics so that one of them could be
• 46:58
  autoed again hard to come by. You also have the silver packs, which
• 47:01
  are only gonna be found in the jumbos or hobbies and again could be auto.
• 47:07
  So like there's still a really exciting part of the jumbos. But if
• 47:10
  you're chasing the parallels, the hangars are where it's going to be at and
• 47:15
  it does kind of excite because the price point, and I think the assumption
• 47:19
  is the price point's gonna be out around that twelve dollars point, which is
• 47:21
  kind of they've been nine ten, twelve dollars something like that for the last
• 47:24
  few years, and that's so much more accessible just to go, hey,
• 47:29
  I'm just gonna grab one one hangar, two hangers, rip those things open,
• 47:34
  and you're gonna you're gonna hit something. It's kind of what it's equating
• 47:37
  out to be. I didn't I wish somebody would have done the what's the
• 47:40
  what's the I'm gonna hit some number parallel odds versus odds for each parallel.
• 47:47
  But yeah, I'm liking. I'm liking coming back and seeing some retail value
• 47:52
  here. Yeah, me too. I think it's it's gonna be making a
• 47:54
  lot more fun. And that's what Lightship should be is a little bit more
• 47:58
  accessible to the max asses and be in retail environments so that people can get
• 48:02
  started on this sort of stuff. And it is, I will say.
• 48:06
  The nice thing is twenty twenty four does look to be a little lower in
• 48:09
  the print run than twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three, event that it
• 48:14
  looks like the print per each base card is a shade under nine hundred thousand
• 48:21
  for twenty twenty three that number was at two point or one point two million,
• 48:24
  and twenty twenty two it was at like nine hundred and seventy thousand,
• 48:30
  So there might be a little bit more value in just like the base sets,
• 48:34
  but it's still going to be I think a little tough because compared to
• 48:37
  you know, where like O Tani rookie cards were back in twenty eighteen according
• 48:43
  to tops b B you know, that set was just under three hundred and
• 48:47
  fifty thousand, So you can see how much interest has gotten into cards over
• 48:52
  time. So I think with that, let's get into some of the exciting
• 48:55
  rookies that we're going to be looking for in twenty twenty four Series one here.
• 49:00
  So obviously the big one is gonna be Elie de la Cruz. He's
• 49:05
  plastered all over all the advertising, and so lots of people are gonna be
• 49:10
  looking for L. E. J. Lacruz rookie cards and tucking them away
• 49:14
  from all the insert sets and all the parallels, and so I think that's
• 49:17
  gonna be the number one name. And I'm sure you're in the same boat,
• 49:22
  Bruce, So who if I mean, if you have a different number
• 49:25
  one, you can let me know. But if Ellie is your number one,
• 49:29
  who's your number two rookie that you're looking for out this series? Yeah?
• 49:32
  I think Ellie is a clear number one and number two gets I mean
• 49:37
  there's probably i'd say four guys. Yeah, I think that's I could argue
• 49:43
  for number two. But if i'm if, I'm if I'm picking one,
• 49:51
  just as health reasons is the reason I wouldn't go with somebody else, I'm
• 49:53
  gonna go with Evan Carter. I think Evan Carter is the guy. He
• 49:57
  had the big stage the World Series. I think he's the number two if
• 50:01
  it wasn't for health. I think Jason Domingaz would be the number two if
• 50:07
  he was expected to be healthy and playing, But I don't know that we
• 50:09
  can expect that by any means for this coming season. So I think that's
• 50:15
  going to hold his card values down to a degree. Yeah, I totally
• 50:20
  agree, especially being a Yankee, that Jason Dimingaz if he had been healthy,
• 50:23
  and just given how well he performed last year, things were really starting
• 50:29
  to come together for him. Even if he wasn't high in prospect risks,
• 50:32
  he was meeting the hype that surrounded all of his bowman first, and that
• 50:37
  would have been a huge boon to Tops if he had been coming in healthy
• 50:42
  to the season. But other hot rookies that we've got, it's kind of
• 50:45
  a pretty classic who's who in terms of what people are picking for, either
• 50:52
  like on the fantasy side, picks to click and develop, or these are
• 50:55
  you know, draft picks that have been coming through and rising prospect boards.
• 51:00
  You've got the likes of Henry Davis, Nolan Shanuel Saddan, Rafaela, Zach
• 51:07
  Geloff, Sal Frelich, Kurtis, Mead, aj Smith, Shaver, Andrew
• 51:12
  Abbott, Christian and Karnacion Strand, Ronnie Maurizio, Marco Luciano, Colton Kawser.
• 51:19
  So it's gonna be a pretty I think it's a strong rookie class overall,
• 51:22
  just because a lot of those guys there earlier in the careers, and
• 51:27
  I think a lot of them could have pretty good runs over the next decade
• 51:31
  or so with those teams and some high draft picks, and I think it'll
• 51:36
  be a fun set to invest in some of these guys and see where the
• 51:38
  careers go. Yeah, I think that's what's interesting is like Ellie is by
• 51:42
  far and away like the guy in this set. But but there is probably
• 51:49
  to your point, maybe like ten deep of guys who could develop and really
• 51:52
  be exciting. Whereas feel like some of your past like there's three guys that
• 51:57
  you're really after or something like that, and that felt pretty consistent over time,
• 52:00
  but this one feels like there's definitely some variability and you want to be
• 52:05
  careful with you if you're pulling some of those rookies, might want to hold
• 52:07
  on to some of them and see where those guys end up. Yeah,
• 52:13
  and of that list of names that I spouted off, only two of them
• 52:15
  are pictures. And so that's a big thing too, is that I think
• 52:20
  the past few years we've had lots of big picture debuts and pictures are just
• 52:25
  like they are in real life when it comes to baseball cards, that they
• 52:31
  are tough because of injuries, and injuries eat their careers alive. That I
• 52:37
  mean, you can already see the trajectory as I was thinking about this as
• 52:39
  Clayton Kershaw was re signing last week that you know, I'm not sure who
• 52:45
  after kind of like Clayton Kershaw and Verlander and sures here get into the Hall
• 52:49
  of Fame. Like who's going to be the next way behind them? Or
• 52:52
  thinking about this in relation to Corey Klueber retiring recently. You know, Klueber
• 52:55
  had two say Young's, and I don't even know if he's going to make
• 52:59
  it to a second ballot. Yeah, yeah, all themes. So you
• 53:02
  want hitters to be anchoring your Series one, series two collections to be able
• 53:09
  to provide that value going forward because pictures are are finicky and fickle and it's
• 53:15
  not the best place to invest. Yeah, you're not kidding. Uh,
• 53:20
  and the the card market really does not really underappreciates, uh, those pictures.
• 53:25
  So that's that's disappointing from a number of levels. But uh, there's
• 53:31
  some there's gonna be some fun with this group. That that's for sure.
• 53:35
  So hey, Series one exciting. Uh, it's it's fun to finally be
• 53:38
  here. To your point at the very top, this signals the start of
• 53:43
  baseball season. Pictures and catchers reporting Series one coming out, we are here.
• 53:49
  I don't know about that Super Bowl thing that was taking place. That's
• 53:51
  old news. We're not talking about that on this pod. Let's let's run
• 53:54
  forward into into baseball season. Yeah, I absolutely agree. So, like
• 54:00
  we said, series one is actually out today when we're posting this podcast,
• 54:05
  so you can go out to your Walmart, your targets, your local hobby
• 54:09
  shops, anywhere that you know of baseball cards. It should be on the
• 54:15
  shelves if it hasn't been bought out already, so you'll certainly see restocks because
• 54:21
  like we just said, you know, there's lots of the stuff out there,
• 54:22
  as there should be. It is flagship, so they want to they
• 54:27
  being TOPS and Finas, really want to make sure that it can get into
• 54:30
  as many hands as possible. So if you make any great polls or have
• 54:36
  any other questions about Tops twenty twenty four, certainly reach out to us at
• 54:40
  Cards Categories on x Slash Twitter. We'd love to retweet some great poles and
• 54:46
  we will be right back from the break getting into our category section doing the
• 54:52
  fantasy preview of the NL Central, So stick around all right. Welcome back
• 55:14
  from the break, everybody, and we are into the category section here talking
• 55:19
  fantasy baseball. It is the last week of our six week preview series,
• 55:23
  going division by division and analyzing our buy and sell from each team. We
• 55:30
  had a lot of guests join us through this preview series if you were one
• 55:34
  of our guests, we definitely appreciated it and had a great time chatting baseball
• 55:38
  with all sorts of people from RAS ball and outside. So I would encourage
• 55:44
  you to go back and give those shows a listen, just to check out
• 55:47
  a little flavor of what we're going to get into if you like what we've
• 55:51
  got coming up. So what we're going to do is we're going to go
• 55:54
  team by team alphabetically by city in the NL Central this week to provide a
• 56:00
  buy and sell each of us on each team. And this should be a
• 56:05
  great division because I think we've got deep roots in it in terms of watching
• 56:08
  lots of Cardinals baseball. But even still with that, I live in Chicago,
• 56:14
  so I can't avoid the Cubs, even though I have quite the disdain
• 56:17
  for them. So see a lot of in EL Central baseball. It's kind
• 56:21
  of in our veins and our blood. And so I'm hoping that we can
• 56:25
  get deep into some really random picks here tonight. Brew I think we will
• 56:30
  be able to do absolutely that. We'll probably start to stir some controversy up
• 56:34
  as well, based on some of the names I'm thinking about. So I'm
• 56:38
  I'm excited to get in there. And to your point, we have to
• 56:42
  start with the Cubs, because you want to go alphabetical, we do so
• 56:46
  just down just down the road, like five miles from me in the Windy
• 56:51
  City here. So we've got the Cubs, who, honestly, I don't
• 56:57
  know what they're doing. I think we even talked about this a little bit
• 57:00
  late last year that I'm not sure what this team's trying to do. It's
• 57:05
  almost turning into like a Midwestern Red Sox, where they're so focused on running
• 57:10
  the operations of the team that they're forgetting that they could just buy players and
• 57:15
  win baseball games. Because I thought that they were going to be deeper into
• 57:19
  the running for Yamamoto and Otani going into the offseason after they brought Council over
• 57:25
  from the Brewers, but they currently have picked up Imanaga and Cody Bellinger is
• 57:30
  still not on this roster. He might be, but I don't know.
• 57:35
  We'll see where he ends up landing. The Cubs I think until they make
• 57:38
  another move or two are gonna be a little stuck. And Pakoda to thinks
• 57:43
  so too. They're right around an eighty one team, But who are you
• 57:45
  gonna go with for year By. From a fantasy perspective, here brew.
• 57:50
  Yeah, So starting out the Cubs, I'm going to go to their rotation,
• 57:54
  but I'm not going to stick to the major leagues. I'm in one
• 57:57
  of the minor leagues. I'm going with Cad Horton as my buy for the
• 58:01
  Cubs. He's their number two prospects last I looked, and really he has
• 58:07
  made minor league hitters just look foolish. As he's been coming up, you
• 58:12
  know, he's probably profiles is like a mid rotation starter with some strikeout upside.
• 58:16
  Control has been pretty decent, you know, maybe a little bit more
• 58:21
  to be desired. But I think the thing is he just hasn't seemed challenged
• 58:24
  at any level he's been at, and you know, I don't expect him
• 58:28
  to make the rotation out of out of spring training. This is more of
• 58:34
  kind of a watch and grab kind of success because at the end of the
• 58:37
  day, he's trying to push like Drew Smiley or Hayden was new ski out
• 58:42
  and I don't really think that's much of a much of a tall order for
• 58:46
  some guy with with Horton's capability. So I think the Cubs, given time
• 58:52
  at triple A. You know, he's going to get seven eight starts there
• 58:57
  over the first few months, and then by early summer, I think Kate
• 59:00
  Horton's up and making some noise for the Cubs, and I think he's gonna
• 59:04
  be one of the better arms in that rotation when he gets there. So
• 59:07
  he's relatively free at the draft table. Roughly pick five hundred is not being
• 59:14
  picked. So I like Kate Horton as I look at the Cubs coming into
• 59:20
  next year. Yeah, and it's maybe creeping up a little bit because I'm
• 59:24
  looking at ADP of NFVC from January fifteenth to our recording date here on February
• 59:31
  twelfth, and he's writsen a little bit. So he's four hundred and thirty
• 59:36
  seventh with the ADP of five thirty five because obviously he's not going every draft,
• 59:40
  but guy going two spots in front of him on that rank is Clayton
• 59:45
  Kershaw. That's kind of funny, But yeah, I think this is a
• 59:50
  great pick because you can also read between the lines of what I was saying
• 59:52
  about the Cubs is I think they're also standing pat a little bit because they
• 59:58
  do have a really fantastic farm system. You know, it's a top five
• 1:00:01
  farm system. They've got good arms, they've got good bats, and Kate
• 1:00:06
  Horton it doesn't take much for him to be able to start getting starts in
• 1:00:12
  this rotation between Kyle Hendricks has been, you know, not very effective or
• 1:00:17
  healthy for the past couple of years. You've got jameson Taian who's also in
• 1:00:22
  that boat, and so you're also looking at Jordan Wicks in front of him,
• 1:00:28
  you know, who knows exactly what he can bring with a change up
• 1:00:31
  first lefty. You know. So Kate Horton's got some electric stuff. I
• 1:00:36
  think this is a great pick that, like, Yeah, if you're looking
• 1:00:37
  for somebody that can come up and maybe light a little bit of a fire
• 1:00:42
  underneath your team in May or June, Kate Horton is amongst like the upper
• 1:00:47
  end of pitchers, I think you could be taking. Yeah, And I
• 1:00:51
  think you know the thing that you want to look for as a guy that
• 1:00:54
  you can keep an eye on. Right. I don't think you're drafted guy
• 1:00:58
  like Horton in the draft season here, but you're you're hoping for him to,
• 1:01:06
  you know, when you get an injury or something like that. He's
• 1:01:07
  the kind of guy that you're looking to to say, hey, I can
• 1:01:09
  fill a gap. You get your eye on the before somebody else. That's
• 1:01:13
  what you're going for. So yep, Horton's my buye. How about you?
• 1:01:15
  Who are you buying in the Windy City? Okay, Yeah, I'm
• 1:01:20
  actually taking a little bit of a similar route as you, but I'm I'm
• 1:01:23
  going even later in the draft here that I am going to go with somebody
• 1:01:28
  who has been going around pick six hundred in the data that is Matt Shaw.
• 1:01:35
  They're twenty twenty three first round pick. And part of it is I
• 1:01:39
  think if you read the tea leaves, they're going to give Matt Shaw a
• 1:01:44
  chance to compete for that third base job in the spring that I don't think
• 1:01:49
  they envision in Chicago that Nick Madrigal is the answer at third base as he's
• 1:01:53
  currently slotted and roster resource that I think they're looking for Matt Shaw to take
• 1:02:00
  over third base and run with it. He has had just really glowing reports
• 1:02:07
  all across the board from all sorts of scouts as he's been coming through the
• 1:02:14
  CUB system after getting drafted last year, that lots of industry resources were kind
• 1:02:20
  of surprised that he even fell to thirteen to the Cubs because he just seems
• 1:02:25
  to have a really good complete profile and you can see that in what he's
• 1:02:30
  put up. He came through Complex Ball, High A and Double A all
• 1:02:35
  last year and as a twenty one year old in Double A for fifteen games,
• 1:02:40
  you know, he held his own with a one twenty WRC plus.
• 1:02:43
  You know, it's not a huge sample size, but the k rate was
• 1:02:46
  reasonable. He doesn't walk very much, but that's because he has a good
• 1:02:51
  hit tool. And so yeah, if you're looking for a really late flash
• 1:02:55
  in the pan shortstop of like he reminds me a little bit of like Zach
• 1:03:00
  Netto maybe with a little bit more batting average and a tick less power,
• 1:03:06
  that that's the type of guy that you're looking for here in I mean,
• 1:03:08
  that's an easy, you know, fifteen team league starting shortstop and definitely am
• 1:03:14
  I. Yeah, I like Matt Shaw a lot. I think there's a
• 1:03:17
  lot to be said there that the question, just like with Horharton, is
• 1:03:21
  when when will the opportunity come. Yes, I don't see him breaking camp
• 1:03:25
  with with the Cubs either, but to your point, like they they're not
• 1:03:30
  that deep of the team. There's not that much standing in the way for
• 1:03:36
  them. It's not like they're gonna you know, really, you know,
• 1:03:38
  third base wasn't Michael Bush gonna be there? Morell. They're going to try
• 1:03:43
  to I think Morell they're gonna put in the outfield like I don't and Bushes
• 1:03:45
  I play first. I think it was Bush gonna play first. So you
• 1:03:47
  know, like, well, they're gonna bring Bellinger brack right, you know,
• 1:03:51
  I don't know, We'll see maybe. I mean it does like it
• 1:03:53
  blocks Pete Kerr Armstrong if you're bringing Bellinger back. And I'm I'll be honest,
• 1:03:59
  like I didn't want to sign Bellinger either. That like when he showed
• 1:04:01
  last year is not great. It's like, you know, it's like,
• 1:04:06
  yeah, if I just swing less hard and hit for less power, I
• 1:04:12
  can make more contact. But so like it's a I don't think anybody's buying
• 1:04:15
  into that from Bellinger, and so I don't know if the Cubs necessarily want
• 1:04:19
  him back. I do think that this would be a great landing spot for
• 1:04:24
  Matt Chapman in Chicago, but they haven't been connected to him at all,
• 1:04:28
  and I think part of it is because they want to run with the youth
• 1:04:31
  this year. Yeah, I think you're right that would be and there.
• 1:04:34
  Yeah, they they seem dedicated to to try to build kind of rebuild a
• 1:04:39
  core, and you know they're the success that they had a few years back
• 1:04:45
  was building a young core and then when they kind of matured, go buy
• 1:04:48
  the guys to make it happen. That's how they were successful. So I
• 1:04:50
  think they're going back to that mold that they've done before. Yeah, Okay,
• 1:04:55
  who are you going to go with for your cell in Chicago? Well,
• 1:04:58
  I'm sure that the Cubs faithful will not appreciate this or agree, but
• 1:05:02
  I am selling Nico Horner. Okay, Yeah, Nico Horner ADP in the
• 1:05:08
  late fifties. He is the thirty eighth hitter off the board. And I
• 1:05:15
  hate to make this comparison, but I think it's fair. We talked about
• 1:05:18
  Estuary Ruiz last week. That's Nico Horner in a nutshell. I mean,
• 1:05:24
  maybe not to the streams of Ruiz, but if you look at qualified hitters
• 1:05:29
  in twenty three, the top twenty leaders in stolen bases, there's one guy
• 1:05:33
  that didn't have double digit power, and that's Nico Horner. And you look
• 1:05:39
  at his powerbat tricks. He is the bottom two percent of the league in
• 1:05:43
  barrel rate, bottom ten percent next velocity. He doesn't hit the ball.
• 1:05:46
  He's a slap hitter. He's an average guy. He's got a decent hit
• 1:05:50
  tool, but he does not have power. And so without that, you're
• 1:05:54
  talking about a guy that might hit two seventy two eighty and he's gonna bet
• 1:05:58
  the top of the lineup. So he's not knocking a bunch of runs.
• 1:06:00
  So he maybe hits ten homers and hopefully steals his basis, but without those
• 1:06:05
  steals, he's really not much. And you're taking him very very early in
• 1:06:14
  the draft, and I'm not sure what the expectation there is is are you
• 1:06:17
  expecting that he's gonna hit twenty homers? I'm not sure what that extra piece
• 1:06:21
  is. When you look at the guys around him, you know, Matt
• 1:06:25
  McClain is the next guy off the board. I'm taking Matt McClain every day
• 1:06:29
  over Nico Horner. He's going before Mike Trout, he's going before Josh Lowe,
• 1:06:34
  all Goldschmith. Christian yellis like, are we are we really looking at
• 1:06:38
  the same guy here? I'm pretty sure this is Stephen Klawan playing in you
• 1:06:45
  know, playing in Wrigley, So wait ten, ten rounds and you can
• 1:06:50
  still get the same guy. And I'm selling Nico Horner hard. I've there's
• 1:06:58
  a few guys we talked through the day that I feel like I'm selling harder
• 1:07:00
  than we have almost this entire series, and Nico's definitely one of those guys.
• 1:07:03
  For me. Yeah, I agree with you. He's not my cell.
• 1:07:08
  But like every time that I'm scrolling through second base ADP data and I
• 1:07:13
  see Nico there, I kind of cringe because I'm just like oof. That
• 1:07:16
  is if you're looking. He was amazing last year. I will give you
• 1:07:20
  that he hit two eighty three. He gave you forty three stone bases,
• 1:07:24
  give you eight ninety eight runs. He also had a one o two WRC
• 1:07:29
  plus. Like we were just talking, this is a team with a loaded
• 1:07:31
  minor league system. Nico Horner doesn't walk very much. It's a seven point
• 1:07:36
  one percent clip that he walks at or did last year. You know,
• 1:07:41
  he's under seven percent on his career. So this isn't somebody who without David
• 1:07:47
  Ross around, is gonna be sniffing the top of the lineup. As much
• 1:07:51
  as I think he did. And so if he's not hitting first or second
• 1:07:57
  and those runs dry up, you are looking at a story where's with fifteen
• 1:08:01
  more points of batting average maybe, And so yeah, I totally agree that
• 1:08:05
  it's it's not a place you want to be playing because the stats line up
• 1:08:12
  for him just being a speed only guy when you just look at him underneath
• 1:08:15
  the hood. Yeah, like guy, I look at his twenty twenty two
• 1:08:17
  season and that feels about right. Ten homers, twenty steels, sixty runs,
• 1:08:23
  fifty five rbi exactly two eighty like that. That's it's it's nice as
• 1:08:29
  in your middle infielder, but he's not a top tier second baseman where he's
• 1:08:34
  going right now by any by any stretch. So I'm out, you can
• 1:08:39
  you can move on with Nico unless you want a guy has a hard hit
• 1:08:41
  rate of like twenty three percent. That's that should That should tell you all
• 1:08:45
  you need to know right there. Yeah, I agree. Okay, my
• 1:08:48
  cell is different though, Like I said, my cell is Justin Steele here.
• 1:08:53
  That don't get me wrong. I actually I love Justin Steele. I
• 1:08:56
  think he's a great pitcher and he only is a two pitch guy between the
• 1:09:01
  fastball slider. It's a lot like prime Robbie Ray, with like better control.
• 1:09:08
  Like at least Steele knows where it's going. He's maybe not throwing quite
• 1:09:11
  as hard as Robbie Ray was, but it's it works when a lefty has
• 1:09:15
  this arsenal putting it together. And I like him as a package, and
• 1:09:20
  I touted him all last year, but not at this current draft price.
• 1:09:25
  He's currently going right around one hundredth off the board, and part of it
• 1:09:30
  is like, here's the cluster of starting pitching going right behind him. It
• 1:09:36
  is Cole Reagan's, Dylan Cees, Joe Musgrove, Like that is not the
• 1:09:43
  type of tier that I think Justin Steele should be in with that two pits
• 1:09:45
  mix, two pitch mix. It's just it's a little riskier than I think
• 1:09:50
  people are giving credit for. He just also he doesn't quite have like the
• 1:09:56
  rich history of being able to do this year in and year out. The
• 1:10:00
  I mean, obviously Cole Reagan's doesn't either, but the strikeout upside is through
• 1:10:04
  the roof with Cole Reagan's, I don't think you're gonna get that out of
• 1:10:08
  Steal. I don't think you're gonna get more than the nine point one k
• 1:10:12
  per nine he gave you last year. And sure, yeah, it came
• 1:10:15
  with a really solid whip and a really solid ra But we just said Cody
• 1:10:18
  Bellinger might not be coming back. He might not be tracking down balls in
• 1:10:23
  the outfield. If they don't bring PCA up to play center field, that's
• 1:10:27
  not gonna help Justin Steel at all. And the other thing is, when
• 1:10:30
  you're a lefty with that fastball slider arsenal, it is razor thin. When
• 1:10:38
  this goes, it blows up real fast. I mean, just look at
• 1:10:42
  Robbie Ray. That's exactly what I'm saying. But usually when I was taking
• 1:10:45
  Robbie Ray and you know, rolling the dice in those seasons in Toronto,
• 1:10:50
  it was coming at a much later cost than this. And so I like
• 1:10:55
  Justin Steele. If you can get him like forty picks later, maybe,
• 1:10:58
  but if he's this tier, I'm I mean. I also love Joe Muscrove
• 1:11:02
  a lot that Joe Musgrove. There was a great rite up from Cool Whip
• 1:11:06
  on our site this past week that he's gonna be I think special this year.
• 1:11:12
  And there's just other pitchers in this range that I either like from a
• 1:11:15
  skills perspective, because they're going to give me more strikeouts, or they just
• 1:11:19
  give me a very solid floor from innings that Justin Steele's only provided once in
• 1:11:25
  his entire career so far. Yeah, I actually started to look at Steele
• 1:11:29
  as a potential buy, and then I backed off pretty gush darn hard when
• 1:11:32
  my stuff because you know me, I like the guys that can strike him
• 1:11:34
  out, like the guys to control in the ground balls, and he did
• 1:11:36
  all of that last year, and I'm like, man, this is this
• 1:11:39
  guy's a lot more worker than I thought. And you start to look on
• 1:11:42
  the covers and your point two pitch mix is like some guys that make that
• 1:11:45
  work, like Spencer Strider, you gotta have something extra to make it work.
• 1:11:49
  And Steel doesn't strike me as that kind of guy. The thing that
• 1:11:53
  really jumped out at me with Steel was the last time he had a walk
• 1:11:58
  per nine that was under three seven was five years ago. In the miners.
• 1:12:04
  He walked one point eight seven guys last year. Yeah, he really,
• 1:12:09
  I mean he was locked in. He was he was locked in.
• 1:12:12
  But like the number of times I feel like I've seen a pitcher have a
• 1:12:15
  career year because they kind of controlled things and then just went back to who
• 1:12:18
  they were and then we're like, oh my goodness, what happened. Like
• 1:12:21
  that's justin Steel. Like if he just regresses to like half of who he
• 1:12:27
  was, you are not going to be thrilled. Yeah, he's still gonna
• 1:12:29
  strike out one guy per any but you know, you can't get too excited
• 1:12:33
  about that whip. It's gonna it's already one point one to seven with that
• 1:12:36
  control. We're talking one point three whip. You know, we're talking that's
• 1:12:42
  you know, probably gonna be uh high thres low fours. There's to your
• 1:12:45
  point, I'm taking Tanner, Bibi or somebody else that's in that same range.
• 1:12:49
  There's a lot of other exciting guys there other than Steel. So yeah,
• 1:12:54
  I first started looking at I'm like, yeah, this is something that
• 1:12:56
  something to write home about, and it was just on the wrong side of
• 1:12:59
  the colum And part of it, too, is I'm looking at it now.
• 1:13:01
  He had a first strike percent in just sixty five percent that that doesn't
• 1:13:06
  I'm surprised that got away with it that long because people are just gonna start
• 1:13:10
  swinging on that first pitch. That's what that's what the off season does.
• 1:13:13
  Like a guy like this breaks out and does something that you start, you
• 1:13:16
  know, other teams start looking at the covers, like what's the scouting importance
• 1:13:19
  is? Like he throws first pitch strikes and it's one of two pitches,
• 1:13:23
  set dead red fastball in the first pitch and crush it like he's gonna be
• 1:13:27
  in trouble next year. Yeah, okay, we will go over to Cincinnati.
• 1:13:32
  Now that is next alphabeticallely going down to the Reds, who I think
• 1:13:38
  we can almost say that just across the board, another just strange off season
• 1:13:42
  for an all Central team in terms of you know what, they had too
• 1:13:45
  many infielders, so they went and signed an infielder with their free agency money
• 1:13:49
  instead of sure who saw the job in the India to year extension coming.
• 1:13:56
  And so this team needed pitching on the back end of the rotation and in
• 1:14:01
  the bullpen. And I don't know where they think they're gonna get it,
• 1:14:04
  because again, this is a lot a team like the Cubs where they're gonna
• 1:14:09
  be right in the mix for the wild card and the division right around eighty
• 1:14:13
  wins, and I don't know, it's not the way I would have spent
• 1:14:15
  my money if I was them, But you know what, We'll let the
• 1:14:18
  Reds do what they want to do. So who are you gonna go with
• 1:14:21
  four year by in Cincinnati. Well, you did such a wonderful job of
• 1:14:26
  setting me up. I'm gonna buy a picture. Yes, so give me,
• 1:14:33
  give me all the shares of Nicolodolo. I love Nicolodolo. He is
• 1:14:40
  basically free eightyp like two point fifty. And you know, if you look
• 1:14:45
  at the guy that's got some pretty nasty stuff, it's Nicklodolo. Don't look
• 1:14:49
  at his twenty twenty three he only had a few starts, but you know,
• 1:14:51
  he is a guy that can rack up the strikeouts. He has decent
• 1:14:56
  control, and he relatively keeps the ball on the ground, which is almost
• 1:15:01
  the only way that you can survive and in Cincinnati. But he's also a
• 1:15:06
  guy that you know, has gone decently deep into games at times. He's
• 1:15:14
  got some strong fastball velocity, and you know, I think he's gonna be
• 1:15:17
  one of those guys that comes back and kind of actually, despite the injury,
• 1:15:24
  took advantage of that time off. And so with that stronger offense behind
• 1:15:28
  him, I see some wins coming. You know, at the two fifty
• 1:15:31
  ADP you're not expecting an ace. You're not looking for anything in that range.
• 1:15:36
  I mean, we're talking about the ninety fifth pitcher off the board.
• 1:15:43
  You know, you are talking about your last pitcher that you're relying on.
• 1:15:46
  I don't think there's other guys in this range that have the upside of Nicklodolo.
• 1:15:53
  Maybe an Emtt she Hand, but we just don't know if she Han's
• 1:15:56
  gonna even have a job after the Dodgers signed like fifteen starting pitchers this off
• 1:16:00
  season. So I'm really excited about holding out, waiting for a guy like
• 1:16:03
  a Londolo late in the draft and loading up on the potential because you know,
• 1:16:12
  yeah, he might have some issues, but he's never really had a
• 1:16:15
  performance issue. He's had a little injury issue, and now that he's he's
• 1:16:20
  healthy, we think, you know, I think there's good things to come.
• 1:16:25
  So I feel like this is countertuitive to buy a picture in American ball
• 1:16:29
  Park, but that's that's where I'm going. Yeah, yeah, I don't
• 1:16:32
  know if I can get behind this one. It's tough. It's i mean,
• 1:16:39
  roster resource doesn't have him in the rotation right now, which is kind
• 1:16:43
  of crazy, but I mean it doesn't take long to see his profile and
• 1:16:47
  he's never been healthy. That that is the question for Nickole. I'm breaking
• 1:16:51
  New Year's resolutions. Yeah, possibly here. I do like this. The
• 1:17:00
  stuff looks pretty solid and although it did step back last year in terms of
• 1:17:05
  the fastball v Loo and I mean the barrel percentages were rough. I mean,
• 1:17:11
  who knows how much he got thirty four rings last year, So I'm
• 1:17:14
  not cutting too much into that one. So I'm just looking at this as
• 1:17:17
  a coupon code for for a potential you know, number three. Yeah,
• 1:17:24
  I'll let you redeem it because I'm a lefty and great American ballpark with a
• 1:17:30
  walk. Problem is, it's a tough sled, so I don't. I
• 1:17:33
  wish him all the best, but yeah, I am not a Nick Lodolo.
• 1:17:39
  Man, I who are you buying? Because clearly you're not buying Nick
• 1:17:44
  Lodolo. So I'm expecting to see Andrew Abbott or some other starting pitcher from
• 1:17:48
  you. No, no, I'm not. I'm not doing pitching. I'm
• 1:17:51
  actually I'm going to go with the signing of the off season Heimer Cane Dalario
• 1:17:57
  just because you taking what Candelario really provided as a corner third base guy that
• 1:18:05
  you know. I think what he does really well in fantasy is he rounds
• 1:18:10
  out like the last kind of corner third base guy that you can get away
• 1:18:15
  with starting in like a twelve team league, because a lot of it is
• 1:18:17
  just like the consistency that he provides in terms of when he's in there,
• 1:18:21
  He's always going to be pacing for somewhere between fifteen to twenty homers and like
• 1:18:28
  seventy five ish runs an RBI with like a two to eighty average. That's
• 1:18:31
  just who he is. He's a little bit of a metronome. But now
• 1:18:34
  you elevate that by putting it in Cincinnati and giving him great American ballpark.
• 1:18:40
  He's going super late in drafts. You know, he's going down in like
• 1:18:45
  pick two tennish, you know, just after two hundreds. So if you
• 1:18:53
  are waiting for a corner or a third base, that's part of it too,
• 1:18:57
  is like I think he's also a good delineator in drafts to be like,
• 1:19:00
  all right, once Candelario goes, I know I'm in big time trouble.
• 1:19:04
  Like if I don't have my corner set by the time the Candelario is
• 1:19:09
  coming around on the board. You've got to tick Candelario because it really starts
• 1:19:13
  to fall off after that moment. So I think that along with you're putting
• 1:19:17
  him in Great American Ballpark. They gave him the money. I just don't
• 1:19:20
  see how they don't play him pretty much every day because of that that.
• 1:19:25
  I think they want him to be there to develop some of their young players,
• 1:19:30
  and Candelario, I think is going to be a lock for really an
• 1:19:35
  improved year overall. You know, and I think most of the outlets and
• 1:19:39
  most of the projections are calling for that across the board. You know,
• 1:19:42
  every projection I'm looking at a Fangress has them at twenty homers or above,
• 1:19:46
  and so honestly they might even be a little light on the batting average that
• 1:19:51
  it was brought down by just a tougher year two fifty one last year in
• 1:19:56
  two seventeen and twenty twenty two. But if he can especially get back to
• 1:20:00
  what he was putting up in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, I mean,
• 1:20:03
  I think can Dallario is going to be just like a nice steady eddie
• 1:20:08
  gives you some production late when you can't always count on that at that point
• 1:20:12
  in the draft. Yeah, Kendlar, he's a tough guy for me,
• 1:20:16
  because you're right, he's just he's steady, Eddie. He's more boring than
• 1:20:19
  Lane Thomas. There's just there's not a lot to excite you there, and
• 1:20:26
  it really, I think comes down to what you're wanting to do at that
• 1:20:28
  point in the draft, because there's a ton of guys around him that have
• 1:20:30
  like upside well and beyond what Candelario will ever have. You know, you
• 1:20:35
  can be going after, you know, a guy like Jackson Holliday, a
• 1:20:40
  guy like let's see Kerry Carpenter. You can go after Jared Kellenick Tyler O'Neil.
• 1:20:47
  There's a lot of guys in that range that have this crazy upside,
• 1:20:50
  but they have a bigger downside as well. And so I think if you're
• 1:20:55
  sitting there, then you've maybe punted on third base or first or something like
• 1:20:59
  that, and you're waiting in the area of the corner infield and you're just
• 1:21:02
  like, I just need some stability because you took some risk earlier. And
• 1:21:04
  I think I think Kendalario makes a lot of sense, I really hope,
• 1:21:09
  and that at that point in the draft. I'm not looking for stability,
• 1:21:13
  I'm looking for upside. Uh So that because of that, I probably won't
• 1:21:15
  own a lot of Candelario. But I think a point will taken that like,
• 1:21:18
  he's he's gonna he's going to a pretty good situation here, and he's
• 1:21:24
  not been in a good situation for some time. So I think that's at
• 1:21:28
  least intriguing, even though I will probably not own any shares of Candelario.
• 1:21:33
  Yeah, well, I mean I will say. The one thing is that
• 1:21:36
  you didn't mention any corners when you were rattling Dutah, because, I mean
• 1:21:42
  one of them that we talked about last week, actually Brandon Jury is like
• 1:21:45
  the next one to go. But then it's bleak after that. Ryan McMahon,
• 1:21:50
  Andrew Vaughan, mikel Garcia, Louise Rin Hifo Junior, Commonero, Like
• 1:21:56
  you're gonna take that risk, Ryan Mountcastle, Justin Turner, so like it.
• 1:22:02
  That is the line right there. I think after that it gets pretty
• 1:22:06
  grody. Yeah, it gets questionable. You gotta wait, You gotta wait
• 1:22:10
  a while and have some faith with your next leap. That's very very fair.
• 1:22:14
  Yeah, Okay, so who are you selling in Cincinnati. Well,
• 1:22:18
  this will be an interesting one because there's a chance that you and I are
• 1:22:21
  going to going to agree on this one because I think we both have talked
• 1:22:26
  about this before. But I am selling Ellie Dela Cruz. Okay, yeah,
• 1:22:30
  Ellie Dela Cruz number twenty four off the board. So he is a
• 1:22:34
  top two player, and let's let's be clear, he is extremely exciting,
• 1:22:42
  one of the most exciting players probably coming into the twenty twenty four season.
• 1:22:45
  You know, he could literally could deliver like a ten home or ten steel
• 1:22:49
  month, and so he's one of those guys that could just we can get
• 1:22:54
  out of as possible. You know, there is so the excitement makes sense,
• 1:22:59
  especial in the lineup in Cincinnati. You know. He It was funny
• 1:23:03
  I was looking at Savant page his sprint seed sprint speed is percentile one hundred,
• 1:23:12
  the fastest you know there you're always talking about. It was the ninetynineth
• 1:23:15
  percentile. That me, just one hundred. He's the guy, and so
• 1:23:18
  you know, and he's got top quarter league ex of velocity and hard hit
• 1:23:23
  rates, and that's it. That's where that's where it gets really scary.
• 1:23:28
  There are so many warning signs at that point, you know, he's,
• 1:23:32
  uh, there's ninety seven percent of the league. This streaks out less than
• 1:23:38
  Ellie tell a cruise and he doesn't walk a whole lot to pick that off.
• 1:23:43
  And that got worse as the season got on. His second half,
• 1:23:47
  he struck out in thirty six percent of plate appearances. And we're talking about
• 1:23:54
  a two thirty forty average with volatility type of guy. And you know,
• 1:24:00
  if you just look at a second half, he hit nine homers and he's
• 1:24:03
  still nineteen bases. He hit one n one with thirty six percent strike out
• 1:24:10
  rate. That is that is crazy, and that when he took the league
• 1:24:15
  by storm in the first half. You know, his baybit was for forty
• 1:24:19
  jeezu ye. I mean it's always gonna be high because of the speed,
• 1:24:24
  but like, yeah it is. But like I can go on a limb
• 1:24:28
  here and say, I would not be shocked if he was put sent down
• 1:24:31
  to the miners, Yeah, earlier in the year, if he if he
• 1:24:34
  still has some strike head issues and because and I'm not saying that I expect
• 1:24:40
  that, but I wouldn't be shocked. And if that's how we're talking about
• 1:24:43
  a guy being drafted the second round. Yeah, that's a massive risk that
• 1:24:48
  you could. It's it's one thing when your guy gets hurt in spring training
• 1:24:51
  or something like draft, you draft and be like, oh, whate was
• 1:24:55
  me when you guy you drafted to be your like hold the team down?
• 1:24:59
  Got since the It's like, yeah, you needed to read the tea leaves
• 1:25:03
  on this one. So I'd like Elie dela Cruz. I actually own them
• 1:25:06
  in a dynasty league, and oh, in a dynasty that's fantastic. And
• 1:25:10
  the funny thing is I shopped him and nobody was willing to actually pay much
• 1:25:14
  for him because I think there's a scared element to him, and so it
• 1:25:19
  feels wrong, but I think it's right. I'm selling Elie de la Cruz
• 1:25:25
  hard. Even though he could win your league, he could also lose your
• 1:25:30
  league for you pretty easily. Yeah. I think that's a great pick.
• 1:25:33
  And it is like, yeah, the risk is absurd that it's a lot
• 1:25:40
  like Adabo Mondasy too. That's why I almost went there. Yeah, I
• 1:25:44
  think that's what it reminds me of, like to a tee, And it's
• 1:25:48
  gonna be hard because like there are gonna be years I think where he's gonna
• 1:25:55
  win leagues because he's gonna be drafted too low. But it's like you can't
• 1:25:59
  know when it's gonna happen or what timeline is gonna happen in and you can
• 1:26:02
  just like the volatility is insane. It always has been as he's been coming
• 1:26:06
  through the miners as well. That baseball perspectives, his three comps are,
• 1:26:12
  they're all over the place. It's Chris Owings, Ahmed Rosario, and Javi
• 1:26:15
  Bayas. So like that shows you what sort of risk range that you're playing
• 1:26:21
  with here. Obviously, he's gonna have way more power than Owings or or
• 1:26:27
  Rosario ever had, and he's gonna be a little bit more in that bias
• 1:26:30
  camp, but he's got a whiff a lot to get to that power.
• 1:26:32
  And so it's, yeah, it's going to be a roller coaster ride that
• 1:26:36
  I'm gonna have a blast watching him. But in any re draft league,
• 1:26:43
  I can't stomach that that. I don't know if I can quite go out
• 1:26:45
  on that limb to be able to bring him home. You know what's what's
• 1:26:49
  interesting. I was looking at his his his home runs he hit last year,
• 1:26:55
  and you know one of the things that you look at on like baseball
• 1:26:59
  spa that do the like the doubters and the no doubters, and he was.
• 1:27:03
  He hit thirteen home runs, eight were no doubters and six were doubters.
• 1:27:14
  Like the math doesn't work up there, so something's off with their with
• 1:27:16
  their their's Uh that's fourteen, it's up. But like it like he was
• 1:27:23
  destroying the ball and like hitting a mile out but then like the others weren't
• 1:27:29
  quite making it there. So like it's just the volatility all over the profile
• 1:27:32
  is it's just it scares me, It really does. And uh, I
• 1:27:38
  think we're paying for like thirty games of last season and we're getting about like
• 1:27:43
  the seventy games at the end of the season that he had. Yeah,
• 1:27:47
  okay, well I had a different cell here even though I was down on
• 1:27:51
  Ellie. And this player is going inside the top one hundred, which I'm
• 1:27:56
  kind of surprised by. That's Spencer Steer, who quality fies currently on NFBC
• 1:28:02
  at first, third and outfield. But this is somebody who was really made
• 1:28:09
  by his environment around him last year in Great American Ballpark that you'll see this
• 1:28:14
  actually a lot in a lot of the Reds kind of stat lines that you
• 1:28:18
  know that they're playing pretty well, but like it's all surface level rodo and
• 1:28:25
  so like it's hard to actually get a read on what their true talent level
• 1:28:28
  is because he was only a one eighteen WRC plus even though he put up
• 1:28:32
  twenty three homers and fifteen storlem bases, and a lot of that is because
• 1:28:36
  the quality of the contact from Spencer Steer's bat is not great. And so
• 1:28:42
  if you're looking at a guy who's going to be at a corner and playing
• 1:28:45
  in your outfield and you're going to be spending a top one hundred pick on
• 1:28:48
  him, I want something a little bit better than a six point seven percent
• 1:28:54
  paril rate that he put up last year, only a thirty seven point one
• 1:28:57
  percent hard hit rate. And because of that, and we just talked about
• 1:29:00
  how many bats that this Reds team has around it, either on the active
• 1:29:06
  roster or coming through in the miners, that I think there's a lot more
• 1:29:12
  risk to Spencer Steer getting into a part time or bench roll then I think
• 1:29:18
  people are giving credit for because he walks and that's like his best plate skill
• 1:29:25
  that like he runs into balls and they go out because they're in great American
• 1:29:30
  ballpark but you just look at the Savant page. It's kind of blue and
• 1:29:34
  like this gross gray color. It just is not pleasing to your eye.
• 1:29:39
  So I'm not going to be buying Spencer Steer at that price, and it's
• 1:29:44
  people really buying into what he did last year without looking underneath the hood too
• 1:29:47
  much, as well as like I don't know where the fifteen steels came from,
• 1:29:51
  and I don't know if they're coming back, Like this is not a
• 1:29:54
  guy who stole more than five bases at any stop coming through the miners.
• 1:30:00
  All of the projection systems except for ZIPS have him in the single digits that
• 1:30:04
  I don't think you're gonna be getting fifteen steals out of Spencer Steer again,
• 1:30:09
  and the counting stats that go along with that from the homer and just runs
• 1:30:14
  an RBI. I think it's also at risks too. Yeah, I'm gonna
• 1:30:19
  disagree slightly with you because as I look at him, he's one of those
• 1:30:25
  players that does everything just well enough and nothing terrible, which means overall he's
• 1:30:31
  a really valuable player because he's the speed, like he's seventy seven sprints percentile
• 1:30:38
  sprint speed, so he can run and he's one of those. It seems
• 1:30:42
  like more of a heavy player that probably took advantage of the rules last year.
• 1:30:45
  His home his power like it. He didn't get a home run for
• 1:30:49
  fly ball luck or anything like that. He hit the ball hard enough,
• 1:30:54
  like it in Gray Mirco. That's gonna play good lineup. He's gonna hit
• 1:30:58
  home runs RBI's you know his he didn't have baby pluck like his line last
• 1:31:02
  year doesn't look too unexpected. The thing is, are you are you paying
• 1:31:08
  for that line or you pain for growth? And I think to your point,
• 1:31:10
  I think they're paying for growth. So that's where I do agree with
• 1:31:13
  you, is I look at where he's going. I think he's the sixtieth
• 1:31:16
  roughly sixtieth hitter off the board. And you're talking and putting in front of
• 1:31:20
  guys like Josh Young, Xander Bogart's, Jordan Walker, George Springer, Spencer
• 1:31:26
  Torkulsen like there's a lot of a lot of other upside out there. Yeah,
• 1:31:30
  that I would be much more intrigued with. And if you're if you're
• 1:31:36
  taking steer there, it's probably because you you're looking for a little stability,
• 1:31:42
  positional flexibility, some things like that. If you went a little crazy earlier
• 1:31:45
  in the draft, so I'm not selling nearly as hard. I also think
• 1:31:50
  that there it's a little aggressive right now on on the ADP. Yeah.
• 1:31:57
  And part of it too is like if Josh Young is Sittney, they're staring
• 1:32:00
  in the face. I don't see how you go with Steer over Young,
• 1:32:03
  just because like, yeah, Young probably you know he could push forty homers
• 1:32:09
  for you. Yeah, exactly. That's the piece where it looks like it's
• 1:32:12
  like I don't really have as much problem with the line he has, but
• 1:32:15
  I feel like that line was maybe top seventy, top eighty hit or not
• 1:32:18
  top sixty. Yeah, we're just a little off. Yeah, I agree.
• 1:32:24
  It's a little bit like justin Steele too, where it's like I don't
• 1:32:27
  mind it too much, but I want it just to tick later. Yeah
• 1:32:30
  exactly. Okay, let's go to Milwaukee now to cover the brew crew again.
• 1:32:36
  Another off season that was kind of tough that Craig Council left and they
• 1:32:43
  just traded Corbin Burns. But I guess the future has arrived with Jackson Curio
• 1:32:47
  signing the extension here in the offseason, and that you would think should give
• 1:32:51
  him the spot in center to open the season. But we'll see that Tario
• 1:33:00
  need a little extra seasoning. But the oyster the world is his oyster,
• 1:33:03
  you know. So the Brewers, I think are gonna be writing the thick
• 1:33:09
  of all these divisional and wild card playoff spots too, just because they always
• 1:33:15
  kind of are. They've got like a little bit of like a raise feel
• 1:33:17
  to them, and they mix and match in lots of different areas, but
• 1:33:21
  also makes it tough for us fancy players on this team. So, brew
• 1:33:26
  who are you gonna go with for year by in Milwaukee? Yeah? There,
• 1:33:30
  you're right. I don't know if I'm quite as bullish with Woodruff being
• 1:33:33
  injured, Burn's being gone, like there's there's there's a lot of a lot
• 1:33:38
  of red flags here, and I don't know if the youth movements enough yet,
• 1:33:41
  but I'm gonna stick with the youth movement. And I'm I'm buying Tyler
• 1:33:44
  Black, you know, ADPs in the four hundred and so he's he's cheap,
• 1:33:48
  he's free, and you know, I don't know if he's gonna make
• 1:33:53
  the opening day roster, but I think he's got Joey Ortiz maybe sitting in
• 1:33:56
  front of him. It's like it's not a big hill to climb by by
• 1:33:59
  any means. And you know, he's the kind of guy that, like,
• 1:34:03
  I don't quite know who he is as you look at his numbers and
• 1:34:05
  the miners, he's kind of been all over the place, Like he shows
• 1:34:09
  that he could maybe pop thirty homers, he'd also steal fifty bases, Like
• 1:34:12
  I'm not sure. He doesn't seem like he's done at the same time,
• 1:34:15
  So I'm not quite sure you know who he's gonna be. But you know,
• 1:34:17
  as he's gone up through the miners, he's improved his play discipline.
• 1:34:20
  Last year in Triple A, he he has a stampling in almost forty games
• 1:34:25
  where he walked more than he struck out and the last few years he hasn't
• 1:34:29
  had a stop where he blow to seventy three. So you know, there's
• 1:34:33
  he's showing that he has little left to prove in the miners. And you
• 1:34:38
  know that for this kind of team that is expecting to try to compete maybe
• 1:34:43
  on the fringes with the wild card kind of kind of approach, I think
• 1:34:47
  that Black's the kind of guy that is gonna not get a ton of notoriety
• 1:34:50
  when he gets called up, but he's just going to slowly produce, slowly
• 1:34:55
  produced, and you're gonna look back and go, why didn't I Why weren't
• 1:34:58
  we investing in this guy? Because he'll of the sudden's gonna be like have
• 1:35:00
  a you know, twenty twenty year because he made it up in April and
• 1:35:05
  nobody's gonna see it coming because it didn't. He's he's not gonna be your
• 1:35:10
  up and down kind of guy. He's just study Eddie. And I'm really
• 1:35:15
  intrigued by by what I'm seeing from Tyler Black. So how about you?
• 1:35:18
  What are your feelings on mister Black there for the Brewers. Yeah, I
• 1:35:24
  love Tyler Black as well. That he's one of my sleeper kind of picks
• 1:35:28
  to click in all drafts, just because that stolen base potential is really intriguing
• 1:35:35
  with He's got just a good play approach and appears to play solid enough defense
• 1:35:42
  to be able to hold his own that especially if Milwaukee wants to compete for
• 1:35:45
  the division title, they're gonna have to get somebody out of or something out
• 1:35:49
  of somebody like Tyler Black, where they step in and just fill in the
• 1:35:55
  hole that has been left behind. And especially at the third base, like
• 1:35:58
  it's kind of joy or he's just slated to start there, but last year
• 1:36:02
  it was like a black hole with like Andrew Masteroni and it. We'll see
• 1:36:10
  what Milwaukee's able to coax out of that position here, but Tyler Black might
• 1:36:15
  be their best option if they want to keep winning. He might be able
• 1:36:18
  to come up and provide that boost for them. Yeah, I think so,
• 1:36:23
  So who are you buying? I'm also going to the minor leagues again
• 1:36:27
  in Chicago. I'm going with Robert Gasser here, and partly because I mean,
• 1:36:32
  if you like Justin Steele, why not wait on a lefty like Robert
• 1:36:38
  Gasser who is working with a little bit better arsenal. I don't think maybe
• 1:36:44
  the slighter fastball combo is like quite as sharp, but he's got four pitches,
• 1:36:48
  and you know they're all got forty five to sixty grades on them on
• 1:36:54
  Fangrass with lots of them, you know, settling in the fifties, he
• 1:36:58
  looked electric class year in Triple A. I I can't believe that the Brewers
• 1:37:00
  parked him at Triple A all year. He made twenty five starts down there
• 1:37:04
  with a K nine that was over eleven, a three seven nine year array
• 1:37:10
  and a whip that came to one twenty eight. So he is walking a
• 1:37:15
  few too many. Maybe they wanted him to work on his control, but
• 1:37:17
  like, I think he's ready to go, and he's one of the five
• 1:37:23
  best starters I think Milwaukee has. It's just like it after Freddy Perlta.
• 1:37:28
  It's a mess in the rotation between. I mean, Wade Miley has been
• 1:37:30
  solid and I like streaming him for starts here and there, but I mean
• 1:37:34
  he's thirty seven. You have Jacob Junis who hasn't been a full time starter
• 1:37:40
  in a long time. He got Colin Ray, who is Colin Ray?
• 1:37:45
  You're counting on dal Hall who was walking four or five guys per nine in
• 1:37:49
  the miners last year. That Robert Gasser's got a really great path to making
• 1:37:57
  the club out of camp and maybe pitching an entire year. Like if he
• 1:38:00
  breaks, can't beat steel Hall out the gate, Jake Junis isn't stretched out
• 1:38:05
  enough. Colin Ray is hurt that. There's a lot of ways for Robert
• 1:38:11
  Gasser to get a lot of starts through this Milwaukee team and be a part
• 1:38:15
  of that youth movement to carry them through the season. Yeah, I think
• 1:38:18
  you're right on there. There's not much standing in his way. Uh.
• 1:38:21
  The only caution I have with a guy like Gasser is he he does put
• 1:38:27
  the ball in the air quite a bit. Doing that Milwaukee is a risk,
• 1:38:30
  and so he's probably one of those guys you're gonna have to watch where
• 1:38:32
  you would start him. And he kind of selected that because he could have
• 1:38:36
  a kind of volatile profile because of that, and you know, the control
• 1:38:42
  is questionable as well. So there's some there's some red flags, but there's
• 1:38:46
  there's probably more red flags of the guys he's he's looking to replace, so
• 1:38:53
  you know, for the price of nothing. Uh, it's hard hard to
• 1:38:57
  argue with you on on on that one. Yeah, it's mostly like that's
• 1:39:00
  the way it is. Like it's free and if he's not up in Milwaukee
• 1:39:04
  or gets shelved in his first start, you can cut him and move on
• 1:39:08
  to the next picture. So the great last start throw, I think.
• 1:39:13
  Okay, So on there, let's let's let's go sell. Yeah, who
• 1:39:16
  you selling here? This is not deep analysis? On there, I'm selling
• 1:39:19
  Reee Hoskins. Okay, I I've he's got a year off. Nobody wanted
• 1:39:28
  him this way. I look at it. He's he's a low average power
• 1:39:33
  hitter. I get you, going to Milwaukee is a good spot from the
• 1:39:36
  land, but he's he's going inside the top two hundred picks. And I
• 1:39:43
  yet that's still you know, still late. But you can get Justin Turner
• 1:39:47
  later, that's more exciting. You can get jose A braw later. I'll
• 1:39:50
  take a Bray because it feels like there at least some average upside there and
• 1:39:56
  he's gonna be in a better lineup. There's just, you know, not
• 1:40:00
  much about Hoskins that even when he was healthy, before he got hurt,
• 1:40:03
  the profile was like all power and questionable elsewhere, kind of volatile, kind
• 1:40:10
  of a streaky hitter. And now with the Brewers, it seems like he's,
• 1:40:15
  you know, he's got to shake off a lot of rust and really
• 1:40:18
  re established himself. And I feel like we're paying for him as if he's
• 1:40:21
  already done that. That's kind of my struggle with Hoskins. It's the ADP
• 1:40:28
  feels like this should be almost free, and you're hoping he bounces back.
• 1:40:32
  We're paying like he's already bounced back, and that that's where I struggle with
• 1:40:38
  Hoskins. So I'm not looking at metrics, not looking anything else. Is
• 1:40:40
  like I just the look and feel. I think he needs to prove it
• 1:40:44
  before I'm willing to invest. So I'm selling Reese Hoskins for the brewers.
• 1:40:49
  Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. It's a long time off.
• 1:40:53
  I mean it was good that he was close to playing in the playoffs
• 1:40:57
  for the Phillies, so you know, he did a lot of rehab.
• 1:41:00
  But yeah, a new spot to land, and especially like that first base
• 1:41:06
  in Milwaukee, just the way that they cycle through guys and always ride the
• 1:41:11
  hot hand. It's a little more pressure than I think people give credit to
• 1:41:15
  it, and it just can wilt people here and there. But yeah,
• 1:41:18
  we'll see what that has in store for Reese Hoskins. All right, how
• 1:41:25
  about you? Who are you selling for the wonderful Milwaukee Brewers? Yeah,
• 1:41:30
  I mean, I won't lie. It was tough to find somebody, partly
• 1:41:34
  because we ran into this a couple of weeks ago with some of the teams
• 1:41:39
  where there's just not too many brewers being drafted very high. And so I
• 1:41:44
  mean this is a little bit of like a tepid cell. But salf Freylick.
• 1:41:47
  I just I don't get it, and maybe you can tell me what
• 1:41:51
  I'm missing in self Reylich. But like whenever I look at his stat cast
• 1:41:56
  and I look at his stat line, it's just like Stephen but even worse
• 1:42:00
  at the plate. I just I'm not quite sure why he's being drafted,
• 1:42:06
  like honestly, kind of like at all. He is going late in like
• 1:42:10
  the two nineties, but that's pretty desperate when you're also down there you've got,
• 1:42:16
  you know, guys like Will Benson Available, Jose Siri, Jake Frayley,
• 1:42:21
  even Austin Hayes and Tommy fam you know, guys that actually can provide
• 1:42:26
  some value on offense but self free, like can't impact the ball. That
• 1:42:32
  he's like Andrew Bennon Tendee but like, yeah, a little better in the
• 1:42:38
  field, way worse with the bat. That this isn't somebody that I think
• 1:42:41
  you can really count on for too much growth either. Just that like he's
• 1:42:45
  pretty well developed and everything that I've read about him, he doesn't really seem
• 1:42:49
  to have too much more power in that bat. And he can put the
• 1:42:54
  bat on the ball, but like he just can't impact it hard enough at
• 1:42:57
  the Major league level, I think to do my with it. And so
• 1:43:01
  even with that left handed bat, like I don't the two forty six average
• 1:43:09
  last year I think might not be too far off of where he's gonna end
• 1:43:12
  up being, because if you can't hit it through the infielders, you're not
• 1:43:16
  going to be able to get on base. And so along with that he
• 1:43:19
  does he is speedy, but you've got to be on base to be able
• 1:43:23
  to do that. He does have a good eye, but again he hasn't
• 1:43:26
  ever ran very much in the miners because he's a really supreme outfielder. And
• 1:43:31
  I think the reputation of how he plays baseball as a real life player,
• 1:43:38
  I think he's a better real life player because he can provide so much more
• 1:43:41
  defensive value and it's preceding him a little bit here. Yeah, I'm not
• 1:43:45
  going to argue with you on on self Raylick. The comp that comes to
• 1:43:49
  mind, ignoring positions and being a Cardinals fan Homer is Daniel Descalso. Really
• 1:43:56
  is that what Stas says? No, that's just what I think. That's
• 1:43:59
  just why opinion here, Like a guy that looks like it is like he's
• 1:44:02
  always just sticking around always just like good enough to be on the team,
• 1:44:08
  but not good enough to take off, but good enough to say, like,
• 1:44:11
  maybe there's a little bit more there, Like that's south Relick. There's
• 1:44:14
  just not much else there, but yet maybe there is, right, it's
• 1:44:18
  it's one of those guys. So I look at him the same same way,
• 1:44:20
  like there is not power, there's really you know, he can he
• 1:44:25
  can run, but he doesn't steal bases effectively necessarily, and so you're talking
• 1:44:30
  about kind of an empty average and not much much else. I feel like
• 1:44:34
  you insulted Stephen Kwan as much as I insulted Nico Horner earlier. So yeah,
• 1:44:41
  I have zero problem with Sally selling South Relick. I don't know that.
• 1:44:45
  I think I just looked right past him and I was like, wow,
• 1:44:49
  yeah, exactly whatever, So just like, yeah, there's so many
• 1:44:55
  like more interesting options, I think at that point, Okay, now we're
• 1:45:00
  gonna go to Pittsburgh, which, yeah, they're the Pirates. I don't
• 1:45:03
  know what to say. They haven't changed in thirty odd years. You know,
• 1:45:09
  they're still cheap and they're still kicking. So the Pirates are you have
• 1:45:15
  thought that, like coming into last year, I could have like I would
• 1:45:18
  have said that, Yeah, maybe Pirates would have had a pretty decent shot
• 1:45:23
  at being the twenty twenty four division champions, But I don't know if I
• 1:45:27
  see that that I think they're probably projected to finish in the basement. Again
• 1:45:31
  that again, the ownership there doesn't seem to want to surround some of these
• 1:45:35
  young players, and I think it's just going to be a little bit more
• 1:45:39
  of like what we always see from the Pirates. So with that note,
• 1:45:44
  Brew, who are you going to buy here in Pittsburgh? Well, what's
• 1:45:46
  interesting is you say that, but I think they have one of the clearest
• 1:45:49
  buys in clearest cells of this entire conversation, entire division. Maybe maybe that's
• 1:45:54
  just me, but like there are two guys where's just like I'm buying and
• 1:45:58
  I'm absolutely selling in this team. So from a buying perspective, I am
• 1:46:02
  buying key Brian Hayes for the Pirates ADP one seventy four, so he's readily
• 1:46:10
  available in the teams rounds. He's one of those guys that's always had the
• 1:46:15
  hit tools. Uh he's he's a great hit tool. He's probably a two
• 1:46:18
  seventy two eighty hitter and he always made hard contact, and he's improved his
• 1:46:27
  his strikeout rates under twenty percent. Like approach the plate, making hard contact,
• 1:46:31
  things like that. The you know he's not a speedster, but he's
• 1:46:35
  stole in thirty bases last two years combined, So again, a lot to
• 1:46:39
  like there. The biggest problem for him has been that he's doesn't hit the
• 1:46:43
  ball in the air, and so when he hits the ball extremely hard,
• 1:46:46
  he doesn't get anything to pay for it. He's been from twenty twenty to
• 1:46:51
  twenty twenty two, he was in a fly ball rate between twenty five thirty
• 1:46:55
  percent. Last year that jumped up to thirty nine percent. In the second
• 1:47:00
  half it was forty two percent. He's if that keeps up, and he's
• 1:47:05
  actually made a change at the to his approach at the plate, we're talking
• 1:47:10
  mid twenties homer power here for a guy that can hit for roughly decent average,
• 1:47:14
  can steal fifteen bases a year, and I get the count in stats
• 1:47:17
  at Pittsburgh, so maybe not as exciting there, but he's the seventeen third
• 1:47:23
  basemen going off the board. I can easily see him going you know,
• 1:47:25
  three or four spots higher in that and you know he plays gold glove defense,
• 1:47:30
  and so he's going to play every single day. He's going to have
• 1:47:33
  the volume there for you. So you know, it might be hard to
• 1:47:38
  buy a pirate, but if you're buying a pirate, you're buying keeper Ryan
• 1:47:42
  Hayes. Yeah. No, I think that's a great pick that all those
• 1:47:45
  reasons. I think he's a great sleeper coming into this year that I know
• 1:47:49
  he's on lots of sleeper lists like every year the past couple of years,
• 1:47:55
  just because this year is the year. Yeah, but like part of it
• 1:47:58
  is because of that change in a approach that you talked about that before he
• 1:48:01
  wasn't showing that, and even honestly with that, he hits it hard enough
• 1:48:05
  that like he's going to maintain a pretty decent batting average no matter what.
• 1:48:09
  So I like that. And he struggled a little bit with health last year,
• 1:48:15
  but if you get a full healthy season out Cabrian Hayes this year,
• 1:48:19
  I mean he's like a lock for fifteen plus bags and going where he's at
• 1:48:24
  at third base, that's tough to come by. So it's like really great
• 1:48:28
  to pick that up late in the draft. And he's just he also reminds
• 1:48:31
  me of a guy. When you're watching him play, you just kind of
• 1:48:35
  see the perpetual growth. I think this happens a lot when you have guys
• 1:48:40
  who come up a little bit that are glove first. I see it a
• 1:48:45
  lot in to var too where and it just reminds me of Yadio Molina coming
• 1:48:48
  up, is that it takes a couple of years for these glove first guys
• 1:48:53
  to get their bearing set at the plate, and you're obviously adding COVID and
• 1:48:58
  everything else. That's kind of happened over the couple past couple of years.
• 1:49:00
  It wasn't exactly the smoothest prospect transition for Cabrian Hayes. That, Yeah,
• 1:49:06
  I think it's a it's a big year for him and third base is pretty
• 1:49:10
  shallow, so I like him to be able to climb up the ranks loot
• 1:49:14
  this year. Yep. So absolutely give me Hayes. I'll take him all
• 1:49:17
  day. Yea. How about you? Who are you buying from the pirates
• 1:49:20
  from the depths of the the draft board here? Yeah, And we talked
• 1:49:27
  about him when he resigned. Andrew McCutchen is going so late and he just
• 1:49:31
  like is so perfect for bench. Just like I think I'm going to just
• 1:49:38
  screen my support for him to the high heavens until, like, I mean,
• 1:49:42
  honestly, his ownership rates last year were still pretty high that I couldn't
• 1:49:45
  even like include him in waiver wirecolms a lot because his ownership percentages like really
• 1:49:50
  grew when he started getting a full time at bats at d H for the
• 1:49:55
  Pirates last year. And Andrew my Cutchen put up the sneakiest double digit homers
• 1:50:00
  and steels season I think that anybody did last year. So it came with
• 1:50:05
  a two fifty six batting average, which has been better than he was the
• 1:50:11
  previous three years. So I think he was revived by being home in Pittsburgh
• 1:50:15
  and just like really relishing being like a native son there, like in leading
• 1:50:24
  people through that organization and teaching them, you know, what it takes to
• 1:50:29
  play for the Pirates and trying to get them back to the playoffs. That
• 1:50:32
  I think you can almost copy and paste this season from last year. And
• 1:50:38
  that's even with like he was banged up and didn't get quite the fall of
• 1:50:42
  bats. You know, if he pushes that up to five hundred of bats,
• 1:50:45
  you might be looking at somebody going right now, I mean absolutely free
• 1:50:50
  you know, he's going five hundred and eighty six in the and the ADP
• 1:50:55
  rankings and an average pick of six seventy eight, so he's not even going
• 1:50:58
  in every draft. But yeah, if you're playing best ball in all only
• 1:51:01
  really deep leagues, and outfield can be a pain to try to find games.
• 1:51:09
  He's util only right now, but I think he will pick up outfield
• 1:51:12
  to get enough games. And so it can be a struggle sometimes because teams
• 1:51:16
  put so many platoons in the outfield. Now, if you're looking for at
• 1:51:21
  bats in weekly leagues, I think you can do way worse than somebody like
• 1:51:26
  Andrew McCutcheon, who can you know, maybe hit two sixty and give you
• 1:51:29
  like twelve and twelve. Yeah, I've got no argument for you here.
• 1:51:33
  It's when you when you try to buy a guy and you say you're buying
• 1:51:36
  them to put on your bench, the bar's pretty low, and so I
• 1:51:44
  think you're right because he is the guy that, like, when you have
• 1:51:45
  a bench piece, you're you're you're looking for a guy that's going to like
• 1:51:49
  hold you over, and he can hold you over in maybe you get lucky,
• 1:51:54
  you get a few counting stats out of it, right, that's that's
• 1:51:57
  what I like about McCutcheon. And yeah he's there. What's for didn't bring
• 1:52:00
  him back to some a bench, There's no they didn't do that. He
• 1:52:03
  is he gonna play every day, probably not every day, but he's he's
• 1:52:09
  still a solid player even as he's getting up in their age. So yeah,
• 1:52:12
  I have no problem with you going deep deep into the to the Pittsburgh
• 1:52:18
  Draft here for a bye. Yeah, okay, So then who is your
• 1:52:25
  your set in and forget it cell here set don't forget it. And people
• 1:52:29
  will hate this one. I will. I will own this because I've already
• 1:52:31
  had a few folks when I when I posted my top one hundred hitters at
• 1:52:35
  the end of the last season, and I did not include him. O'Neil
• 1:52:40
  Cruise. Okay, O'Neil Cruse. He is going off the board and pick
• 1:52:45
  seventy five. That is way way too high for a guy that played nine
• 1:52:51
  games last year. And you know, I've been seeing people talk about,
• 1:52:57
  like, well, you could go thirty thirty this year, Like what till
• 1:53:00
  you that? Like, yeah, he's got incredible talent like this Ellie's other
• 1:53:03
  Cruz Junior if you want to call it that you know, strikeout rate thirty
• 1:53:08
  four percent is his career strikeout rate, and you know that's against the league
• 1:53:12
  strikeout rate of like twenty three percent. Home run for fly ball rate twenty
• 1:53:15
  three percent against like the league average of thirteen percent. Like, he's he's
• 1:53:20
  strikeout a ton. When he hits in the air, he's they're going out
• 1:53:24
  more than probably should. And his his career ground ball rate nearly fifty percent.
• 1:53:31
  He doesn't He's the key Bryan Hayes of last year or two years ago.
• 1:53:35
  Right, He's he's caught. He's not getting the ball in the air
• 1:53:39
  like he needs to. You know, I'm not an expert, but that's
• 1:53:43
  usually loft helps when you're trying to hit it out. And so uh in
• 1:53:47
  his ex BA average for savot you know when he actually played was like to
• 1:53:54
  twenty. So I'm not shocked here for getting a guy hits like two twenty.
• 1:53:58
  Yeah, he's probably a fifteen homes, fifteen steals with injury concerns still
• 1:54:02
  hanging around, and we're talking about the seventh round ADP Hasan Kim Dolan,
• 1:54:10
  Ernando Tristan Casas, Like there's some a lot better options than expecting that cruise
• 1:54:16
  is going to come back. He's never really played that much at the major
• 1:54:19
  league level enough to really show it off. Yeah, I get he's exciting
• 1:54:25
  again Ellie de la Cruz style here. He's an exciting player to watch,
• 1:54:29
  But man, can things go wrong real fast for Cruise here? And I
• 1:54:32
  would not again, I would be shocked if we're looking at this guy going,
• 1:54:36
  oh, he has all the tools in the world, he just can't
• 1:54:39
  put it together. He's a better athlete than he has a player. So
• 1:54:43
  I'm selling out O'Neil Cruz all day and people will disagree. That was a
• 1:54:47
  That was a good progi and slip there almost telling him calling him Ellie there,
• 1:54:53
  because like, yeah, I think you can copy and paste a lot
• 1:54:56
  of the conversation that you had about Ellie to O'Neil that you can. Yeah,
• 1:55:01
  and it is. It was such a gruesome ankle injury last year too,
• 1:55:04
  that like I do want to see him play a little bit again,
• 1:55:11
  like the caveat here is again like Ellie, like in a dynasty keeper situation,
• 1:55:16
  like absolutely, like yeah, I will, I will take the bet
• 1:55:20
  on the talent and you know, keep this type of guy. But wow,
• 1:55:25
  Yeah, in a redraft league it's tough to take him where he's going
• 1:55:29
  because that is still some you're looking for some solid production. Guys going around
• 1:55:32
  him are like HASI on Kim Paul Goldschmidt, Like Yeah, there's guys around
• 1:55:40
  there that you know what you're getting and it's what you're winning O'Neil Cruz to
• 1:55:43
  be like that. I think that's the problem here is that you're paying for
• 1:55:45
  him to be what you want him to be. Yeah, when other guys
• 1:55:48
  there have already done it, and they've done it multiple times, like take
• 1:55:54
  him. I Yeah, that's that's really what bothers me here is that he
• 1:55:58
  is not a seventh rounder unless he really delivered on that promise and that's a
• 1:56:02
  big GIF. Yeah. I mean part of it is like you're still I
• 1:56:06
  think people are still enchanted by that September that he put up in twenty twenty
• 1:56:11
  two when he got full run and put up a one forty six w RC
• 1:56:15
  plus and it is really trippy every time you go and see the one twenty
• 1:56:20
  two point four Max ev on his page like yeah, what else my mind?
• 1:56:26
  But yeah, I agree that, Like it is a lot, and
• 1:56:30
  I maybe there are situations where you could build a team that you know you
• 1:56:33
  can eat that risk at that price, but you have to really be planning
• 1:56:39
  for it, and takes a lot of really careful pieces. And yeah,
• 1:56:44
  I mean, I think it's he's gonna if he takes off, he's obviously
• 1:56:47
  gonna win a lot of leagues. But if he struggles. And again another
• 1:56:51
  guy who I don't think, it's unheard of that he sees triple a time,
• 1:56:56
  So yeah, I don't. I mean, I think I'm a little
• 1:56:58
  less concerned with that than I for Ellie because I don't think the Pirates are
• 1:57:01
  thinking about stiffing the playoffs and so they're not as likely to be aggressive there.
• 1:57:08
  But yeah, you're right falls into that that ballpark as well. So
• 1:57:12
  how about you, who were you selling for the Pirates? Okay, so
• 1:57:14
  mine is Mitch Keller. So I mean, I I just can't put my
• 1:57:20
  finger on Mitch Keller's part of it. That it's just so hot and cold.
• 1:57:25
  And especially if you owned him in the first half last year and you
• 1:57:30
  got all that solid production when it looked like Mitch Keller was turning into an
• 1:57:32
  ace, maybe you're a little surprised to come back and see that he ultimately
• 1:57:39
  ended up hanging up having a four to twenty one era on the season after
• 1:57:44
  he started off, you know, so incredibly strong, where he had an
• 1:57:49
  er ray that was you know, I mean not even the era, like
• 1:57:54
  the actual pitching was fantastic too. The fifth was three three two in the
• 1:57:58
  first half, four fifty two in the second half, whip of one twelve
• 1:58:01
  in the first half, one forty four in the second half. And so
• 1:58:06
  because of that, like, I just don't think Mitch Keller is a good
• 1:58:11
  pitcher. Like every every piece of evidence that I've ever seen has told me
• 1:58:15
  that that, like he at this point is getting to his age twenty seven
• 1:58:20
  season and all, he's going to turn twenty eight this year. So like
• 1:58:27
  there, I just don't see it. It's a little bit like Copeck in
• 1:58:30
  Chicago. Obviously Copeck is way worse, but like Mitch Keller, I just
• 1:58:33
  don't see the entire profile ever coming together. And when you're looking at where
• 1:58:39
  he's going in drafts, he's currently going around pick one seventy five, and
• 1:58:46
  at that point, there's just like so many intriguing pictures that we've talked about
• 1:58:50
  in this series kind of in and out between, like Hunter Brown and Brian
• 1:58:56
  wou and Shane Basse and even Ivanaga like you darbish, Nathan Ovaldi, Like
• 1:59:03
  there's lots of just more interesting options when you're not counting on Just look at
• 1:59:11
  Mitch Keller has given us so many innings at this point and just done did
• 1:59:17
  Ley squat with them honestly, Like, he's just not been the player that
• 1:59:21
  I think anybody really expected to be. And I think the best thing that
• 1:59:27
  he might be able to provide for you is just strike out volume, because
• 1:59:30
  he put up one hundred and ninety innings and I think he's got the the
• 1:59:34
  build for it. But wow, it's tough to try to eat some of
• 1:59:39
  those really brutal outings that he's given you, and along with it that the
• 1:59:43
  whip just saturates any good work that you might get from those case, Yeah,
• 1:59:48
  I'm gonna argue with you just a little here. His second half was
• 1:59:54
  like bad luck upon bad luck upon bad luck. Yeah, he was not
• 1:59:57
  a great pitcher in the second half, but he he had home run for
• 2:00:00
  fly ball issues, he had baby issues, he had left on base issues
• 2:00:05
  like the like all the little things that you know, if he go right,
• 2:00:10
  you look awesome. They go wrong, you don't and like all of
• 2:00:13
  them went wrong, and so his I think his ex fIF and again,
• 2:00:16
  whether you wanted to believe x FIP or not, was only point three worse
• 2:00:21
  in the first half, the three fifty eight in the first half three eighty
• 2:00:25
  eight, and the second half. He wasn't that different of a guy.
• 2:00:28
  He had a similar strikeout and walk profile between the first and second half.
• 2:00:33
  He just gave up a lot more homers and uh, you know, guys
• 2:00:38
  scored when they didn't in the first half. So I'm a little bit more
• 2:00:42
  willing to take Keller, but I think your point still holds, Like there
• 2:00:45
  are other guys in that range that I'm willing to take. There's but there's
• 2:00:48
  also guys in that range that I would take Kellor over. And so I
• 2:00:51
  think, you know, he's he's in the fifty you know, he's the
• 2:00:55
  fifty to fifty guy there. He's fifty percent of the guys i'd take over
• 2:00:59
  him, fifty percent I take under And then I guess that these one to
• 2:01:01
  one hundred one percent somehow. But I'm okay with Mitch Keller. I think
• 2:01:09
  there is still continued growth there. I think there's something with being Pittsburg where
• 2:01:13
  it takes you like six years to figure out how to pitch, and then
• 2:01:16
  you really figure it out when you leave as really, you know, asked
• 2:01:19
  Charlie Morton. But I think that there's still something to be said. I
• 2:01:25
  think Keller's got a little bit more left of growth to come. Okay,
• 2:01:30
  all right, we're to our last team of all these previous thirty team.
• 2:01:35
  Here we go the Saint Louis Cardinals, and Wow, what a dog shit
• 2:01:41
  season last year. And the funny thing is the way we've talked about all
• 2:01:45
  these teams so far, like you look at their offseason and you're like,
• 2:01:48
  man, you brought in a land Sling and then Kyle Gibson and like Pinyan
• 2:01:51
  Middleton, like you didn't really do much you could be To the rest of
• 2:01:56
  the division, they were like fantastic. Oh yeah, I mean mostly because
• 2:01:59
  of the sunny great. I mean going out and signing an ace like that
• 2:02:02
  was what the team needed. I mean, they needed a couple of other
• 2:02:04
  pitchers, but I mean I'll let John Mizailac figure that out in May.
• 2:02:10
  And so yeah, I mean I think right now that the odds on favorite
• 2:02:15
  in pretty much all the projection systems because you've got gold Schmidt and Ronado should
• 2:02:19
  probably bounce back, and you would think that the vibes would improve too.
• 2:02:23
  That I think that dragged the team down a lot last year, and once
• 2:02:26
  it kind of really you know, the wheels started falling off, they just
• 2:02:30
  totally fell apart. That honestly, it's some of the worst baseball I've ever
• 2:02:33
  seen, not even just from like the Cardinals, but like, hands down,
• 2:02:38
  like all baseball of like some of the games that I watched it,
• 2:02:41
  it was so brutal watching them blow, you know, win after win after
• 2:02:45
  win. But yeah, they've also got some infusion of prospects coming through,
• 2:02:50
  as you know, Jordan walkersh's slate for an entire year, Mason Wins currently
• 2:02:56
  lined up to be the starting shortstop. And yeah, brew, who are
• 2:03:00
  you gonna go with for your buye in Saint Louis. I struggle with this
• 2:03:03
  one. I don't understand what's No, I don't struggle with with the picking
• 2:03:08
  it. Yeah, I don't understand why this is happening here because we are
• 2:03:13
  talking about a guy that was third in the Alsy Young voting, Sonny Gray.
• 2:03:21
  He's going off thirty, fifth starter off the board. He's this is
• 2:03:27
  like the perpetual. This is how you literally just like win all of our
• 2:03:30
  fantasy leagues. It's just because he like you take Sonny Gray and properly value
• 2:03:33
  him a decade. I don't understand what the problem is with Sunny Gray.
• 2:03:40
  I don't need that boring. Is he that boring? Like does he need
• 2:03:43
  to have like a TikTok go viral like to be exciting? Like, I
• 2:03:47
  don't know what it is. You know, he's he's good. He's actually
• 2:03:50
  improving his park factor going to Saint Louis and well and man, well you
• 2:03:59
  don't get the white socks, but you got the Pirate's like him. He
• 2:04:00
  was. You know, maybe I think you saw hard improving the vision.
• 2:04:03
  But like the last two seasons have been almost identical, like across the board,
• 2:04:11
  almost every metric that he that he has, and you know, so
• 2:04:15
  he's we're talking a guy that's gonna delivering e A in the low threes,
• 2:04:19
  maybe in the twos if you're if you look at what he did last year,
• 2:04:21
  He's gonna have a one to one or so whip. He's gonna strike
• 2:04:26
  out one guy per nine. He's gonna keep the ball on the ground.
• 2:04:29
  He's not gonna gonna walk many like and he's gonna probably he's gonna go relatively
• 2:04:33
  deep into games and get you some wins. Like I Again, it kinda
• 2:04:39
  is like the Hitter discussion of the guys that do everything just well enough,
• 2:04:42
  which means that they're actually really really good. That's Sonny Gray. He does
• 2:04:45
  everything everything just really just above average, and therefore he's really really good.
• 2:04:51
  Again, We're we're talking about a guy going ADP one four and I look
• 2:04:59
  at the guys around him, and you're, you know, talking about uh
• 2:05:02
  Walker Buehler, You're talking about Chris Bassett, Dylan Cees, just Steel,
• 2:05:09
  Joe Ryan, Like, why, I don't understand. We've we've been here
• 2:05:17
  before. Yeah, we're gonna be here again. I feel like we're gonna
• 2:05:20
  we're gonna submit our picks to click here for off season articles, and I'm
• 2:05:25
  just gonna copy and pastement from last year where I said Sonny Grey's gonna win
• 2:05:28
  leagues, and Sonny Gray's gonna win leagues. So there you have it.
• 2:05:32
  I love Sonny Gray. Yeah, And I mean I think part of it
• 2:05:36
  is everything you rowled up. The projection. I don't get the projections here
• 2:05:42
  like they make zero sense to me. I don't know if they're like integrating
• 2:05:46
  his twenty sixteen with Oakland when he had that five six nine ear ray or
• 2:05:50
  that awful New York season when he had a four to nine array and twenty
• 2:05:55
  eighteen into the projections too much, because in the past two years he has
• 2:06:00
  been steady eddy three hundred innings for the Twins at a two point nine year
• 2:06:04
  array, three point oh five whip that came or three point oh five fit
• 2:06:10
  sorry, and a whip that one fourteen. Like, so the projections are
• 2:06:16
  calling for, you know, an e array that's hovering around like three seven
• 2:06:23
  and a whip that's hovering around like one two two. That's why, Like,
• 2:06:27
  if you're setting your projections and just taking those raw values, it's not
• 2:06:32
  spitting out spent sunny gray correctly. And I know it. I don't see
• 2:06:38
  why you just don't like average this past two years in Minnesota and copy and
• 2:06:42
  paste into your projections. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Zips, for
• 2:06:46
  example, projects at seven point eight three k's for nine he hasn't. That's
• 2:06:50
  that few strikers for since twenty sixteen. Yeah, exactly, Like where where
• 2:06:57
  was the back sest on that one that should have hit all kinds of red
• 2:07:00
  flags. So yeah, I think I think you're right. That's probably there's
• 2:07:03
  a number of folks that just you know, drafts straight off of those,
• 2:07:08
  and that's that's gonna hurt you. You gotta look, there's some guys that
• 2:07:13
  the projections just don't make sense for. Apparently that's Sonny Gray. Maybe next
• 2:07:16
  year, Maybe next year's got the year. I will not draft Sunny Gray,
• 2:07:20
  but I'll take the share. She can be my number one. I'll
• 2:07:23
  take it. I'm happy with it. Yeah, Okay, I Sonny Gray
• 2:07:29
  is a great buy. But I'm going a different route here. I'm gonna
• 2:07:31
  go with Lars Nuppar. I'm shocked that he's going so late. He's going
• 2:07:35
  like pick two hundred. He's actually going like right down by our boy Stephen
• 2:07:40
  Kwan, And who knows Stephen Kwan is gonna have somebody call out in the
• 2:07:45
  NL Central Review. Just catching strays everywhere. But Laris Nuppart is a great
• 2:07:54
  hitter and like looked fantastic in the WBC. His ADP was way beyond this
• 2:08:00
  last year as people were buying into that hype train, and you Knowsarus has
• 2:08:03
  been a part of that too, because like you Knowsarus has loved all of
• 2:08:07
  his kind of qualities between what he's putting up in the stat cast and has
• 2:08:13
  like interviewed him and just likes the the soft like parts of his personality too.
• 2:08:20
  And I do too, Like I just don't know why people gave up
• 2:08:24
  on Lars Nupar so fast that he had an injury riddled season last year,
• 2:08:28
  and it shows in the overall production as well as like Tyler O'Neal's gone,
• 2:08:35
  Like Lars Nubar is starting every game next year and should be doing it at
• 2:08:39
  the top of the lineup. He walks a ton, so that's going to
• 2:08:43
  produce just so many runs which are really hard to come by. And I
• 2:08:48
  mean all the projection systems I think are a little bit light on the batting
• 2:08:52
  average too, because you could tell that Lars was turning into a better batter
• 2:08:58
  last year he hit two sixty one, but that was even coming with just
• 2:09:03
  like I said, marred with injuries. There were soft tissue injuries, core
• 2:09:05
  injuries like hamstring injuries, Like it was just a brutal year. And I
• 2:09:11
  think if Lars is healthy, you're gonna be looking at somebody. Honestly,
• 2:09:16
  he's probably gonna be pushing like an All Star team because even with all of
• 2:09:18
  those ups and downs last year, he still put up three point two more,
• 2:09:22
  gave you double digit homers, double digital bases. The RBI were light
• 2:09:28
  at forty six. But I think that this is gonna be Lars's year when
• 2:09:33
  he really rounds into things, and I'm taking the over on all his projections
• 2:09:37
  as well. That like, obviously there's some homerism here because I love Lars
• 2:09:41
  as a as a player, but like you can just see it when he's
• 2:09:46
  in the box plan that I think he's got an extra year And yeah,
• 2:09:50
  for a late like fourth fifth out fielder, I think he's gonna end up
• 2:09:54
  a lot of my teams because he's coming at such a low cost this yere.
• 2:10:00
  Yeah, and I was trying to find it quick that I couldn't,
• 2:10:01
  But I feel like Lars came off the bench a lot last year, and
• 2:10:05
  I think it's overstating his games played. So when you kind of look at
• 2:10:11
  the race stats and was like, oh, well he played one hundred and
• 2:10:13
  seventeen games and he went fourteen eleven, you know, and he didn't to
• 2:10:16
  your point, to knocking that many runs. Like he was a guy with
• 2:10:20
  that Cardinals outfield revolving door. There was always getting taken out at different times.
• 2:10:26
  He was bench hitting, all these kind of things that I think understates
• 2:10:31
  some of his numbers. And you know, he's just a again, a
• 2:10:35
  solid, strong hitter, and he seems like he's still learning and figuring things
• 2:10:41
  out. But he's he is going to be a starter. There is.
• 2:10:43
  I don't think there's any question that outfield is going to be Tommy Edmond,
• 2:10:46
  it's going to be Jordan Walker, it's gonna be Lars Nupardlan Carlson's on the
• 2:10:50
  outside looking at and O'Neil didn't have a spot, so that's why they got
• 2:10:52
  rid of him. So I think you're right, new Bar has got it
• 2:10:58
  is very interesting. He has so much hype last year and he I mean,
• 2:11:01
  yeah, did he completely differ, No, But did he do that
• 2:11:05
  much to damage it. No. So it's very interesting to see that he's
• 2:11:09
  not getting the hype this spring. Yeah, I totally agree. So,
• 2:11:15
  I mean it's only going to take like a little bit of a loud spring
• 2:11:18
  from him though, too, because like I think lots of people like them
• 2:11:22
  like him and if they start seeing some production, I think the prices will
• 2:11:24
  shoot through the roof again. So I think if you got early drafts,
• 2:11:28
  it's a great time to invest on him. Okay, onto these cells.
• 2:11:35
  So we're gonna disparage some cardinals here, So I'm gonna let you go first.
• 2:11:41
  Who you sung, Well, I'm going to go with the first cardinal
• 2:11:45
  off the board in the drafts, and that is Ryan. Hell's leath,
• 2:11:50
  Hell's bells. Love the guy, exciting to watch, but going to adp
• 2:11:56
  like one twenty three, I think it was somewhere there, forty seventh pitcher
• 2:12:01
  off the board. He's being drafted right at that the end of like those
• 2:12:07
  top tier closers, we got top tier maybe second tier closers, and I
• 2:12:11
  just I don't know that we can trust healthily to be healthy for the whole
• 2:12:16
  season. And that's really what this one comes down to, is that you
• 2:12:22
  know they're not gonna let him pitch on back to back days the vast majority
• 2:12:26
  of the season because of injury concerns. And they also Ali Marmle seems to
• 2:12:31
  abuse him and to try to go multiple innings randomly when we all know that
• 2:12:35
  does not work for Ryan Helsley. So I'm making in injury risk here and
• 2:12:41
  you might as well wait if you if you're looking for a closer, get
• 2:12:46
  Craig Kimberrel, get Clay Holmes. You know there's other guys that are you
• 2:12:52
  know that you can wait on and probably get similar results. You know,
• 2:12:58
  he is one of the last really true closers. But maybe jillse Alvarado's worth
• 2:13:03
  going after Philadelphia eighty picks later. Right, So I'm selling Hellesley just because
• 2:13:09
  the injury risk and the pitching I'm back to back days is just not there.
• 2:13:15
  He's gonn strike out a ton of guys, but he's probably capped somewhere
• 2:13:18
  in like the twenty to twenty five saves rather than the thirty to thirty five
• 2:13:20
  that we're probably drafting him for. Yeah, I agree that, Like,
• 2:13:24
  yeah, I'm just not you can. I'm always worried when I'm watching Hellsley
• 2:13:30
  pitch, Like I'm ready for him to blow out on every pitch. It
• 2:13:33
  just seems inevitable, and he's throwing so hard it just looks unnatural. That.
• 2:13:43
  Yeah, I like him as a as a closer, but like the
• 2:13:46
  price has gotten way too rich in draft recently, as like people are drafting
• 2:13:50
  the skills without kind of putting in painting everything around it. You know,
• 2:13:56
  all right, well, who are you selling? I took the easy way
• 2:14:00
  out and despare somebody through injury risk, So how about you. Mine is
• 2:14:03
  a little bit too, so I will I will take that. But my
• 2:14:07
  cell is Tommy Edmund here, So he's going a little bit in front of
• 2:14:11
  Lars snoopbar. He's going around like pick one seventy And part of it is
• 2:14:16
  like, yeah, I'm not sure about that wrist. That risk really bothered
• 2:14:20
  him last year. He had off season arthur'scoptic surgery on it, and that
• 2:14:26
  scares me, Like that is a The wrist is a real huge part of
• 2:14:30
  the kinec chain when you're hitting and when you already were starting with zero power,
• 2:14:33
  like Tommy Edmund, that's dangerous, Like you can see it right in
• 2:14:39
  the stat cast page. And obviously he played through a lot of that risk
• 2:14:41
  injury last year. But I mean in Arthur's gopic surgery like that, even
• 2:14:46
  in the off season, I don't know if that will be fully healed up,
• 2:14:50
  you know it just like that is it's a lot of bones and tendons
• 2:14:54
  and just little parts that go into that wrist as well. Is you know,
• 2:15:01
  he's starting to get older than I think people probably realize. You know,
• 2:15:03
  he's going to be pushing up to thirty. You know, it's going
• 2:15:07
  to turn twenty nine this year. He's also just really been struggling with the
• 2:15:13
  bat for a few years. He doesn't impact the ball very well, and
• 2:15:16
  he doesn't walk very much. He got the benefit of being able to hit
• 2:15:20
  at the top of the Cardinals lineup when they are just wasn't quite the talent
• 2:15:24
  level there is right now and in the lineup from like one to seven.
• 2:15:30
  That the emergence of newt Bar and Walker and bringing Wilson Contreres on board instead
• 2:15:35
  of YACHTI has just buried Edmond at the bottom of the lineup a little bit
• 2:15:39
  more. So you're not begin to be able to What boosted his value in
• 2:15:43
  the past was being able to you know, get eighty five plus runs and
• 2:15:48
  like, you know, the two seasons when he had ninety one ninety five
• 2:15:50
  runs, that was awesome. But even with the extended like everything to be
• 2:15:56
  able to increase stolen bases life next year he only stole twenty seven. All
• 2:16:01
  the projections are calling for less and he's Tommy Edmunds also like really on Razor's
• 2:16:07
  edge of just being like a defensive replacement. He's a supreme defender. But
• 2:16:13
  like you mentioned, like Dylan Carlson is still there. If Dylan Carlson can
• 2:16:16
  play this prospect pedigree, he might push Tommy Edmund's bat out of the lineup.
• 2:16:22
  And that's not going to say like Victor Scott is waiting in the wings
• 2:16:26
  and Tommy Edmund playing center field too. I'm also worried about just what that
• 2:16:31
  does to his overall fatigue level. It's a lot of ground to cover out
• 2:16:33
  there in Bush Stadium in the heat, and I think he's going to be
• 2:16:39
  really focused on the defense and trying to win, and that could come to
• 2:16:43
  the detriment of his offensive game. Yeah. Yeah, I think Edvonn's playing
• 2:16:48
  to end up in the lineup more often than not, even if he does
• 2:16:50
  struggle the outfield, just because the flexibility provides. But I think you're right,
• 2:16:54
  it's almost like the inverse with Newbar two degrees that I think people fall
• 2:16:58
  in love with the idea of tummy and you're paying a little bit more like
• 2:17:03
  it's not even that far off, but like maybe three four rounds later,
• 2:17:07
  and it's like, yeah, I really like this. You can steal thirty
• 2:17:09
  bases, maybe pop ten or fifteen home runs, positional flexibility, Like,
• 2:17:13
  there's a lot to like about that. So I'm not fully selling Edmund.
• 2:17:18
  But to your point, there's enough like warning signs. I'm like, I'm
• 2:17:22
  a little lukewarm on Edmund. I'm not gonna pose to have them on my
• 2:17:26
  team, but I'm cautious to invest too heavily and rely on it. Yeah,
• 2:17:33
  I think that's fair. I think that somewhere is where I'm up to.
• 2:17:37
  Okay, we did it. We covered all thirty teams, we got
• 2:17:41
  through the inn now Central, but we've saved the best for last because I
• 2:17:45
  think this is gonna be the most competitive division in the game that I honestly
• 2:17:50
  could listen to. You argue any of these teams winning the division. But
• 2:17:56
  who's your pick? Yeah, well, this is tough because is the logic
• 2:18:03
  in me in the heart say the same thing. I got to go with
• 2:18:05
  the Cardinals for this division, and I hate to say that's almost my process
• 2:18:09
  of elimination. I don't see the Pirates doing it. The Brewers, I
• 2:18:13
  think they're going to take a step back cause they subtracted just a little too
• 2:18:16
  much. The Reds, They're going to score a heck of a lot of
• 2:18:20
  runs. I just don't know if they're going to be able to keep any
• 2:18:22
  runs off the board. And then the Cubs, I still don't understand what
• 2:18:26
  they're doing. I think the Cubs will actually be a little bit better than
• 2:18:30
  we expect, and so I see it being a three or four team race
• 2:18:35
  outside of the Pirates. But I think the Cardinals are the most complete team
• 2:18:39
  and they did not as much as they could this offseason to close those holes
• 2:18:45
  better than everybody else. So that's where I'm going. I'm sticking with it
• 2:18:48
  even if it was a Homer pick. So how about you do. Yeah,
• 2:18:52
  I'm going to the same route even though it is the Homer pick.
• 2:18:54
  That where we stand right now, it's the most complete roster of anybody in
• 2:18:58
  the division, I think. But it's certainly not un like beatable. So
• 2:19:05
  like, there's a lot of really big free agents sitting out there, and
• 2:19:09
  the Cubs can easily afford them if they want to, Like they could use
• 2:19:13
  Snell and Bellinger and even Chapman, like we said, so this could flip
• 2:19:18
  pretty quick that you know, it only takes one of those signings and I
• 2:19:22
  would be saying that the Cubs would be the favorite. And you can also
• 2:19:26
  see the path for the Cubs that some of those guys that we talked about
• 2:19:30
  and Horton and Shaw and you know, some of those other prospects grow and
• 2:19:35
  carry them through. But yeah, right now where it's looking, I have
• 2:19:37
  to pick the Cardinals just because, yeah, they have the most complete roster,
• 2:19:41
  and that lineup is going to be if it's humming and you know what
• 2:19:46
  we saw last year was due to vibes and not just like straight old regression
• 2:19:52
  out of Aeronauto and gold Smith, then it's going to be one of the
• 2:19:56
  top, maybe like five lineups in the league that it's a it's pretty deep.
• 2:20:01
  Yeah, they they there were times last year when they looked fantastic and
• 2:20:05
  it's just a matter of can they extend those times in both gold Smith and
• 2:20:09
  aer Nado. Sounds like they've been putting crazy work in this offseason. I
• 2:20:13
  know Donovan and gold Smith had been seen at It wasn't driveline, it was
• 2:20:16
  another one of the camps that's known for producing hitters. So there's been a
• 2:20:22
  lot of work going on, and I think that that's gonna pay off.
• 2:20:24
  So uh, fun division to end with. Ironically, we ended with the
• 2:20:28
  Cardinals when we are both homer On on that aspect, so it'll be it'll
• 2:20:35
  be fun to watch. And if you stuck with us this long, we
• 2:20:37
  appreciate it because this has been a long and deep podcast, but it's been
• 2:20:43
  a blast. Yeah, exactly. So if you are new to the pod,
• 2:20:48
  like I said in the beginning, I really appreciate you checking us out
• 2:20:50
  and sticking around, and if you get the chance, subscribe like the pod
• 2:20:56
  where you can and listen to it. That we appreciate and welcome any and
• 2:21:01
  all feedback. So you know where to find us on socials that we spouted
• 2:21:05
  at the top, which is cards Categories at Twitter slash xcards categories at gmail
• 2:21:11
  dot com, and you can find everything that we've talked about in the show
• 2:21:15
  notes. So we try to do our best to keep track of all the
• 2:21:20
  show notes that especially given the cards discussion involves a lot of visual mediums that
• 2:21:24
  we like to give links to things, So check out the show notes.
• 2:21:28
  If you've got any questions, certainly reach out to us and thanks for sticking
• 2:21:31
  around. We'll see you, same time, same place next week.