Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 33 : Our Top Ten Closers

Transcript

Ep. 33 : Our Top Ten Closers · Cards & Categories

• 0:15
  Hello, and welcome everybuddy to episode thirty three of Cards and Categories. I
• 0:20
  am Mike Coolard here from Rasball, joined as always by my very good friend
• 0:24
  Jeremy Brewer, also from Rasball. How are you doing tonight? Jeremy doing
• 0:29
  fantastic in the freezing Midwest when it was seventy degrees yesterday twenty juries to get
• 0:34
  today, So I'm so glad we live in this location. But otherwise i'm
• 0:39
  here. I wish I was at spring training. It sounds a lot more
• 0:42
  fun there than where I'm at today. But how about you? Excited for
• 0:46
  spring training kicking off? Yeah, it's been a great time watching games go
• 0:50
  on down there. We also, we haven't recorded since last week, and
• 0:55
  we missed the entire discourse on the pants and the jerseys, which I mean,
• 1:00
  I guess we'll see them coming through on the cards, which will be
• 1:03
  interesting. That was like where I wanted to take it, but it's already
• 1:06
  like totally died back out. People are back to like analyzing pitches and stuff,
• 1:08
  and I'm a little bummed that we didn't get to put in our hot
• 1:12
  takes on any of the pants. So I don't do you have any hot
• 1:15
  takes on the pants from spring training. I don't have any hot takes on
• 1:19
  the pants. I just it feels hot pants on the takes hot pants takes.
• 1:26
  The only thing I could say is that the jerseys look like they were
• 1:27
  designed by a five year old. Well, I hate them when they came
• 1:32
  out. It's just I mean, and I can get over most of it.
• 1:36
  It's just, I mean, the names are so small, Like,
• 1:38
  I don't know what else to say. You look at the jersey and go,
• 1:42
  what is this? Like, I think jersey sales are gonna like tankly,
• 1:47
  everybody's gonna be buy in last year's jerseys. Chinese over import knockout jerseys.
• 1:52
  Sales will go up very significantly because they're gonna look better than what the
• 1:57
  actual jerseys are. Uh So, yeah, it kind of stinks that they
• 2:02
  I guess I can't be surprised in us to both that bad, considering we
• 2:07
  spend We've spent hours of our lives on this podcast denigrating fanatics, So it's
• 2:13
  it's only fitting that the rest of the world has caught up to us and
• 2:16
  now recognizes what we're dealing with in the fanatics behemoth. Yeah, I mean,
• 2:22
  it's hey quality control. They probably forgot some logo on them somewhere,
• 2:25
  you know who knows. Oh yeah, yeah, we good, good,
• 2:30
  good little piece of laying hints. But we'll get to that in a little
• 2:35
  bit exactly. It's also prime draft season as I am participating in the tg
• 2:44
  FBI right now, put on by Rhotographs Justin Mason, so I had a
• 2:49
  chance to be on his pot of palos over the weekend. I had a
• 2:51
  little bit of technical issues kicking off, so yeah, I've learned I might
• 2:55
  need to upgrade my specs just a little bit in terms of can't quite handle
• 3:00
  the video streaming. That's why we're an audio only medium right now. But
• 3:04
  if you get a chance, I would go check it out. I'll put
• 3:07
  it in the show notes too, so you can go back and see that
• 3:09
  stream and see me I was on a panel with our own beat on and
• 3:15
  yeah, we had a great time. So just Mason's also using that platform
• 3:20
  to raise money for his charitable cause of Fantasy Cares, so I'll also link
• 3:28
  to that too if you've got any sort of extra dollars lying around, maybe
• 3:32
  from last year's winnings. It's a great cause for where the entire Fantasy community
• 3:38
  comes together and Justin puts it together. So it was a really great honor
• 3:42
  to be a part of that. But I'm enjoying my TGFBI squad so far.
• 3:46
  It's out of the nine hole. It's really tough sledding and it's real
• 3:49
  fun getting back into draft season and slow drafts is real fantastic for agonizing over
• 3:53
  every pick constantly. I feel like the nine hole, like nine tens like
• 3:58
  the worst spot to be this year because there's all kinds of value for the
• 4:01
  verse, like seven eight depends on who goes from crazy with pitchers, and
• 4:05
  then it's kind of nice to be at the turn because you can do some
• 4:09
  really creative, fun things. But like nine to ten is just a terrible
• 4:12
  spot to be this year. Usually that's like five or six where it starts
• 4:15
  fall off, like it feels like it goes pretty deep, and then all
• 4:17
  of a sudden, this is like, well, I don't know what to
• 4:19
  do at this point. Yeah. No, I totally have been feeling that
• 4:23
  because you can't really build much momentum because you're so far away from the turn,
• 4:28
  so I keep getting sniped on guys that I want, and then on
• 4:31
  top of it, I've just been chasing stolen bases the way that we've discussed
• 4:35
  kind of over the winter here that if you miss out on that first crop
• 4:39
  of stolen bases, I ended up with Freddy Freeman out of the nine hole.
• 4:43
  You just have to keep taking stolen bases, in stolen bases and stolen
• 4:46
  bases to try to catch up with the likes of Bobby Wits and Ronald Lacunyez
• 4:51
  and just to like try to put yourself in a place to finish fourth or
• 4:55
  fifth in saves. It's a grind, but it's been a good challenge.
• 4:59
  I think, Hey, that's at least you've learned something. Whether you will
• 5:04
  apply it, it's a whole different question, but at least you've learned something
• 5:08
  absolutely. And we've also got our own Rasball Commenter Leagues coming up here soon,
• 5:13
  so I will also link to that trust runs that who is on our
• 5:15
  NL West preview a couple of weeks ago, so that gives you a chance
• 5:19
  to It's called the RCL stands for Rasball Commenter Leagues. Now that one of
• 5:26
  our acronyms to go a sagn off around our site. So if you are
• 5:30
  interested in joining, I'm actually drafting a team this Saturday afternoon on March second.
• 5:35
  We're recording this on February twenty eighth, so there's still a few slots
• 5:41
  open in that league. I don't brew. Are you running an RCL this
• 5:44
  year? You're gonna have an RCL challenge I have, I was did last
• 5:47
  year. I'm not going to have the time available to do it this year.
• 5:50
  I can barely actually hit the home leagues this year. So, got
• 5:55
  a few things that have come up in the day job. As we recorded
• 5:59
  late at night for for those of you are keeping track at home, we
• 6:02
  tend to we tend to be late night owls here on this podcast. Just
• 6:06
  just assume this our day job, and it's much more easier to get through.
• 6:10
  But both you and I have other responsibilities, so I have uh.
• 6:15
  I do not want to let let the readers down by having a fantastic draft
• 6:19
  and very poor in diseason management. Yeah, that's that's a good excuse.
• 6:24
  Pull your pull yourself out at the process so you're not crushing everybody. But
• 6:28
  yeah, I will also link to that in the show notes. So if
• 6:30
  you want to join a rasball commenter league, certainly come on over and join
• 6:33
  us. They'll be going on really the next month solid, so there's just
• 6:38
  about one every day, and it's a great opportunity to either play with rasball
• 6:44
  writers or to just practice your draft skills, stripping them up a little bit.
• 6:47
  All right, let's get to some news and notes of what's gone on.
• 6:51
  And also, since we last talked last week, we have Cody Belger
• 6:56
  returning to the Chicago Cubs on a I mean, it's impressive that people are
• 7:02
  still calling it a three year, eighty million dollar deal out there, because
• 7:05
  honestly, it's a one year, thirty million dollar deal, don't. I
• 7:10
  don't see how if he comes anywhere close to a decent season he doesn't opt
• 7:14
  out and try to go back on the open market, because I'm sure he
• 7:17
  could do better than two and fifty. And it's mostly just because I think
• 7:23
  the market responded to. Honestly, what my biggest qualm is with Cody Bellinger
• 7:28
  from a fantasy perspective, I don't necessarily like hate him, but somebody is
• 7:32
  always in love with him. But Cody Bellinger, I don't know who's going
• 7:38
  to show up this year between the slugging MVP from twenty nineteen when he hit
• 7:43
  forty seven Homers with the Dodgers, or if it's gonna be the Cody Bellinger
• 7:46
  who struggled with knee and shoulder injuries after the infamous kind of elbow tapped during
• 7:55
  the twenty twenty World Series and blew out his shoulder. That just the strikeout
• 8:00
  rate rocketed into the twenty six twenty seven percent range. Then came back last
• 8:03
  year at the Cubs, dropped the k rate but also dropped the hard contact.
• 8:09
  Got a little lucky too from a Babbitt perspective as well as I'll try
• 8:15
  to dig through this, but at some point over the summer, Fangrass ran
• 8:18
  an article where they showed how many just like weird bluep flies that Cody Bellinger
• 8:24
  was racking up in Wrigley Field between the wind and the sun and everything,
• 8:28
  and so there was a lot of luck baked into that profile last year.
• 8:31
  I guess we'll see where Cody Bellinger comes back in twenty twenty four and what
• 8:37
  level he plays to. But Brewte, can you make sense of who Cody
• 8:41
  Bellinger is and who might show up for the Cubs this year? Yeah?
• 8:46
  Can I know? Will I attempt? Yes, I'm with you. I
• 8:50
  think it's the ideal contract for him. It's I call it like, you
• 8:54
  know, the the Jason Hayward type contract where you get the opt out but
• 9:00
  if you're terrible, you made a lot of money. But I don't think
• 9:03
  he is who we saw last year. To your point, the luck metrics
• 9:07
  were up, I mean, but his quality of contact, I mean,
• 9:11
  his hard hit rate was, you know, by far the worst of his
• 9:13
  career. You know, he he did cut down the strikeouts, and so
• 9:20
  I don't know how much that played into it, where it's like, yeah,
• 9:24
  your hard hit rates down, but you are making more contact, so
• 9:26
  maybe you're getting you know, getting a few more hits, so it's kind
• 9:30
  of evening out. I don't I don't know, but it does concern me
• 9:33
  that his his walker rate didn't didn't really change. So it's not like he
• 9:37
  got better, like overall more selective at the plate. It just seems like
• 9:41
  he was making contact, but not much better contact, just maybe like a
• 9:45
  quantity of contact, which you know, maybe he got on base, but
• 9:50
  you know it's it's you know, his speed has wasn't really any different that
• 9:52
  had been his His power was really kind of in liign with it was the
• 10:00
  year it just looks like he's gonna be decent but not great is kind of
• 10:07
  the way I would look at it. There are enough warning signs that,
• 10:11
  you know, I think you as a fantasy uh drafter, you almost have
• 10:15
  to take your queue from the league to a point and say nobody else was
• 10:18
  really willing to invest long term contract in it that there's enough warning signs there
• 10:22
  for me. Now he is going in like the fifth, sixth round,
• 10:30
  so I think that there a lot of that's baked in. And to your
• 10:33
  point earlier with speed, Bellinger is a guy that can go twenty twenty and
• 10:37
  you know he's you know, coming off back to back seasons of having double
• 10:43
  digit homers, double digit steals. It's just a matter of do you believe
• 10:48
  the batting average, and I think it's probably overstated. He's probably more gonna
• 10:52
  be a two seventy two eighty hitter, and I think most of it's actually
• 10:56
  baked in. So I'm a little bit more willing to take a Cody Bellinger
• 11:00
  if if I've been with gone one with like reliable guys up front, right,
• 11:05
  if you have an early pick and you've you know, you pulled in
• 11:09
  a Kunya or you've pulled in Julio or something like that, and then you
• 11:11
  just stacked reliable guys after that, and your first big gamble is Cody Bellinger.
• 11:16
  I got no problem with that, but if you've taken another gamble earlier,
• 11:20
  I don't double up on Cody Bellinger. There's just too much risk,
• 11:24
  there, too much variability. He could win your league, he could lose
• 11:28
  your league. And that's not the kind of guy that I want to invest
• 11:31
  in too early. Yeah, and I think the price is going to start
• 11:35
  skyrocketing though. So he went in the third round in my TGFBI draft.
• 11:39
  I've seen him going in the third, fourth round and lots of other drafts.
• 11:43
  So well, let me update my draft data here because I was looking
• 11:46
  for the whole offseason. I look, I don't even know how much it's
• 11:52
  going to drop from there, Honestly, once he signed the deal. There's
• 11:58
  a lot of Cody Bellinger fans out there, and part of the problem is
• 12:03
  I think I'm just never going to end up with him based on I think
• 12:07
  his projections are pretty fair across the board, and the problem is that you're
• 12:13
  not gonna be paying like the price for that. You know, the bad
• 12:18
  ex projection for him, has him at twenty three homers, nineteen stone bases,
• 12:22
  upper seventies, lower eighties runs RBIs everybody's got him in like the two
• 12:28
  fifty five to two sixty five range, which honestly, I think that's all
• 12:33
  fair because what you're trying to do is bake in some blend of all the
• 12:39
  stats, and like that would be a better power and speed, a little
• 12:46
  bit less speed than he put up last year and a little less power act.
• 12:48
  But like you know, I just like I'm trying to figure out where
• 12:52
  his level is, and if that is his level, that kind of averaged
• 12:56
  out projection, there's no way you're I'm ever gonna end up with him because
• 13:01
  that's like almost the same projection as Lane Thomas. I feel like we love
• 13:07
  Lane Thomas on this podcast, but it back myself into it. Yeah,
• 13:11
  I know. The funny thing was Bellager like he actually could become a deal
• 13:13
  at the draft table because it just depends, like, again, you're in
• 13:18
  a league with eleven other managers in generally twelve team right, and if everybody's
• 13:22
  there, it's just like got the hesitancy doesn't want to go after him.
• 13:24
  He's the kind of guy that could fall, and then it doesn't take him
• 13:28
  falling too far for all of a sudden him to be actually really intriguing because
• 13:31
  that that batting line you talked about, and they're like, unlike Lane Thomas,
• 13:35
  there is actually more upside there. There's probably more downside too, but
• 13:39
  I think that that he is one of those he's like, you could start
• 13:41
  getting towards, you know, the back, you know, I don't know
• 13:46
  if we would call it round eight nine something like that, and if he's
• 13:48
  fallen that far, it's like, that's not a bad gamble at that point.
• 13:52
  But I have a feeling there's one in every draft that's only gonna bought
• 13:56
  in And here's your point, going to the third round, that's a that's
• 14:01
  a hefty price to pay for who knows what you get. Yeah, absolutely,
• 14:05
  Okay. So the other signing that we had over the past week is
• 14:09
  Tim Anderson signing with the Miami Marlins to be their starting shortstop. And last
• 14:15
  year was just a really, really brutal year for Tim Anderson. It did
• 14:20
  not ever get turned around after he sprained his knee in just about like the
• 14:26
  first week of the season. It was not a good looking sprain and Honestly,
• 14:30
  I was worried when it happened that like he might have torn something that
• 14:33
  happened on April tenth, and things just never really got into a gear for
• 14:37
  Tim Anderson. He had a career worst sixty WRC plus last year with only
• 14:43
  thirteen stolen bases in the era of like everybody steals thirteen bases now, and
• 14:52
  he also was going through a lot of personal stuff I know too, So
• 14:54
  it was just kind of a year that I think Tim Anderson and everyone else
• 14:58
  in Icago on the South Side would love to forget from the White Sox.
• 15:03
  So now that Tim Anderson's moving down to Miami, he should get a fresh
• 15:07
  shot. He's got a one year deal. I'm starting to like this landing
• 15:11
  spot for him, just because there was a lot going on in terms of
• 15:15
  injuries for him last year, and I think if you wipe that out,
• 15:20
  the projections are almost waiting it too much. I think because they're not they
• 15:24
  don't know that not only did he battle a knee injury, he battled a
• 15:28
  shoulder injury. I don't think the power is ever going to come back for
• 15:31
  Tim Anderson. That twenty eighteen season with the twenty home runs is just a
• 15:37
  total outlier that I don't think you're ever going to be able to count on
• 15:41
  more like eight to ten home runs from him. But I do really think
• 15:45
  that the stolen basis could come back for Tim Anderson because he's on a one
• 15:48
  year make good deal, And what's the best way to show that you're healthy
• 15:52
  and ready to get back into the swing of things more so than trying to
• 15:56
  go out there and swipe thirty plus bags. Yeah, I don't think it's
• 16:00
  for lack of effort. I just think it's for lack of skill that I
• 16:04
  just don't want to touch Tim Anderson. I think even super late, I'm
• 16:10
  just I'm just not investing. I think the issue I have with a guy
• 16:12
  like Tim Anderson late, and I think that's what you said earlier, is
• 16:15
  that he doesn't have the power is not going to be there. I don't
• 16:18
  think the power is coming back, and because of that, he's likely not
• 16:22
  going to be driving in runs. And yeah, he's like a poor man's
• 16:26
  Luise Ariahs. I mean that that is that fair? I don't. I
• 16:30
  mean, maybe that's the pushing a little too far. Maybe that's insulting Louise
• 16:33
  Ariahs a little too much. But you know, I his his sprints,
• 16:37
  his his speed. His sprint speed dropped to the modern half of the league
• 16:41
  last year. Uh. Some of that was probably injuries, to be fair,
• 16:45
  but he's on the wrong side of thirty. You know, he doesn't
• 16:48
  have a whole lot more chances. They're not not going to necessarily rely on
• 16:52
  him. So I'm looking at the projections and I'm honestly I'm taking the under
• 16:57
  his projections, like, I don't see him hitting, you know, if
• 17:00
  you if you use zips, use the bat like whatever you want to do.
• 17:03
  I don't see him hitting, you know, even getting close to you
• 17:07
  know, eight home runs or anything like that. Five eight home runs I
• 17:11
  think you have. I'm taking the the under on the steals. I just
• 17:14
  think he's I don't know that he's going to be able to recover from what
• 17:18
  he did, and he seems so lost last year that regardless of injuries,
• 17:22
  I really am worried that Tim Anderson is kind of done. The profile he
• 17:29
  has was so much reliant on really good contact, really good plate approach,
• 17:33
  and he's he's really regressed in that manner. And that's the one thing he's
• 17:38
  always had is a good plate approach and ability to get on base by just
• 17:44
  hitting singles, and if that doesn't come back, nothing else is coming with
• 17:48
  it. And that's a big if right right now in my mind. So
• 17:52
  I'm I'm just staying away from it. Does does not look to be worth
• 17:57
  spending my time. There's other upside guys probably the same point in drafts that
• 18:00
  I'd take, Okay, I mean I think that's fair. I mean,
• 18:06
  I don't think I'm looking for anything more than like a real late am I
• 18:11
  or even just kind of like a backup there because I think that is where
• 18:14
  he's going to go for a long time. But yeah, he's gone life
• 18:17
  share the mid three hundreds from ADP perspective, like he is free. It's
• 18:22
  just I look at you know, there's probably when you get to that point
• 18:25
  in the draft, you know there's probably other guys where I'm willing to take
• 18:29
  a dart throw and Tim Anderson, I feel like there's other higher upside maybe
• 18:33
  lower downside dart throws. I'm not I don't have a name for you,
• 18:37
  but it's just my gut feels that I've there's probably other other guys I'm willing
• 18:42
  to spend it. So I now that I say that. I'm gonna look
• 18:45
  here, let's just look at the ADP data. You know you're talking.
• 18:48
  He's going ahead of Austin Hayes, zach Nido, ty France, maybe Lawler,
• 18:56
  Alex kiroll Off, back out, honestly, because I'd much rather have
• 19:00
  like a zach Netto or taking that shot on Jordan Lawler instead of shot on
• 19:04
  Tim Manerson. So yeah, I've retracted a few of those statements, oh
• 19:07
  Tyler Black. So there's a lot of guys. I think That's what it
• 19:12
  comes down to, is I think there's a lot of better dart throws than
• 19:15
  Tim Anderson, and somebody else can take that dart throw. If I'm wrong
• 19:19
  and he hits two eighty and stills twenty bases with zero home runs and ten
• 19:23
  RBIs, I'm fine, that's fair, all right, Speaking of more underwhelming
• 19:30
  guys, let's the Detroit Tigers have signed Geo Orchella. I thought you were
• 19:37
  talking about the whole team. Oh yeah, I mean I do like what
• 19:41
  I like are praying together. Tigers are easy to make fun of just from
• 19:45
  the history they've had, but they they actually have a really exciting team this
• 19:48
  year exactly. So what's I think interesting about you Orchella is this should put
• 19:56
  him as the starting third basement because third base was kind of a black hole
• 20:00
  for the Tigers coming into spring training here. You know, it looked like
• 20:04
  maybe Matt Vierling would be there or I don't think Jace Young is going to
• 20:10
  be ready for them here out of the spring. So it does look like
• 20:12
  Colt Keith will take second base, and that left third base open. Also,
• 20:18
  justin Henry Lloy, another outfield corner prospect that the Tigers have, I
• 20:23
  don't think it's going to be ready. Slash might never see the infield dirt.
• 20:29
  So this is a spot where the Tigers had to shore up. And
• 20:33
  Jio Orcella was one of the last free agents kind of in this price range
• 20:37
  standing, you know, I made sense that that Detroit didn't want to go
• 20:42
  the Matt Chapman route, especially given all the people coming through their system.
• 20:47
  But I thought i'd bring this up just because last year Jio Orchella before he
• 20:52
  broke his hip. So I'll also table that because he was a pretty solid
• 21:00
  source of batting average as well as he was playing shortstop, third base,
• 21:06
  first base, and don't I don't think he quite got to second base,
• 21:08
  but like he was playing all over the infield for the Angels, which made
• 21:11
  him just like another interesting depth piece for fantasy, especially given you know he's
• 21:18
  historically had a pretty solid bat. He's had a one to fifteen WORC plus
• 21:22
  averaged over the past four years. That I just wanted to bring him up
• 21:26
  because I think in a similar vein, like, if you're looking for somebody
• 21:30
  super deep in, somebody to kind of help fill some gaps at the beginning
• 21:34
  of the season, I think you could do worse than Gee Orschella. All
• 21:38
  of this is also caveated by like, I really interested to see what he
• 21:41
  does in camp because I don't can't think of the last dude who had a
• 21:45
  broken hip and tried to come back. It's a very interesting injury, and
• 21:49
  I don't know kind of what the recovery timeline will look like for Geo Orchilla,
• 21:55
  So I will be interested in watching to see how the bat or how
• 21:59
  the ball comes off his bat here in the spring. Yeah, I think
• 22:02
  that's the right take on Juni or Shella. You know what I like about
• 22:07
  him is the positional flexibility, and I'm gonna say that the high floor,
• 22:11
  I don't know if it's really scared to say high floor, if the not
• 22:14
  too low floor. You know, guy is not gonna kill you in bad
• 22:18
  and average, he's not going to kill you in power. He's not going
• 22:21
  to kill you across the categories outside of steels. But you're not expecting that
• 22:23
  for this kind of guy. But what he's really really interesting for is nobody's
• 22:29
  gonna draft him. And he's the kind of guy that you can You can
• 22:32
  take a flyer, just like we talked about with with sim Anderson. You
• 22:34
  can take a flyer and a guy that you're like, hope gets a job
• 22:37
  out of spring training, or you're looking for the you know, a guy
• 22:41
  that might be battling for a job, maybe the second reliever in a bullpen
• 22:48
  that you hope ends up being the closure. Like you could take these gambles
• 22:51
  and then when you hit regular season and you just cut bait for whatever didn't
• 22:56
  work out, pick up Geo your Shella and just plug in at the bottom
• 22:59
  of your bench while you work the waiver wire, like he's that perfect guy
• 23:02
  that I don't watch you, but I've had a tendency in the past like
• 23:04
  pick a guy up every waiver wire period and that's the Jew. Or Chelle
• 23:07
  is like I pick him up at the end of the week just in case
• 23:11
  somebody gets hurt and I need to fill up a roster spot, so I
• 23:12
  don't go illegal, plug him in, drop him in the beginning league,
• 23:17
  pick him up later in the week again, like you cycle through a guy
• 23:19
  like that, just because he's he's slightly more than a warm body. And
• 23:26
  if you look at his WRC plus over over the last few years, it's
• 23:29
  like ninety seven one nineteen ninety two. Like he is league average, which
• 23:36
  means he's blow average from fantasy perspective, but he is, he's free,
• 23:40
  and so I think he's a guy you're gonna talk about in your Waiver Wire
• 23:42
  column throughout this year as maybe consider him if you need to plug a hole
• 23:48
  because whoever got hurt, and then drop him next week and then try somebody
• 23:52
  else and then pick him back up. Right, it's a it's the jew
• 23:55
  your cell cycle. Yeah, That's part of what I prob him up for
• 23:57
  too, is that Erschelle is probably going to be quite the mainstay as long
• 24:02
  as he's got a job with the Tigers, because there's probably some leaks.
• 24:07
  He probably he qualifies at shortstop as well. He got nine games there,
• 24:10
  yep, and he did have one game at second base. So I do
• 24:14
  remember when he cleared the shortstop threshold last year, Like it was a little
• 24:18
  bit of a bonanza on my waiver wire column because we put him at first,
• 24:23
  third, shortstop, and I mean that's a fantastic bench piece to have
• 24:27
  in a super deep league. You can't beat it. Yeah. I know
• 24:30
  when people talk about positional flexibility and drafts like, oh, don't draft positional
• 24:34
  flexibility, which I generally agree with, Like I do look for a little
• 24:38
  bit of that because you know, it gives you some some options. Like
• 24:41
  you know, we talked about a guy like Mookie Bets who early gives you
• 24:45
  some a few options. You don't have to decide what to do because if
• 24:48
  maybe come back around, there's a great second basement you can say, hey,
• 24:51
  I'll take him, you know, not put him in the middle infield.
• 24:53
  But late in drafts, positional flexibility is fantastic because he lets you take
• 24:59
  more fly, let's you do other things when you might be trying to fill
• 25:03
  up a backup of all the different positions in the infield. So give them
• 25:07
  like a guy or two like your shellow that you can just you know,
• 25:10
  have there just to let you take flyers love it. Yeah, absolutely,
• 25:15
  Okay, And another signing we've got that. Honestly, I don't think it's
• 25:19
  very fancy relevant. I just wanted to get your take on it as a
• 25:22
  Cardinals fan, And that is Brandon Crawford signing with the Cardinals this week.
• 25:26
  That I think he's there kind of like a Matt Carpenter role where he's going
• 25:30
  to be a semi coach, which, if anything, does kind of come
• 25:36
  out from a fantasy side. I think this might actually be a bit of
• 25:41
  a boost to Mason wins value possibly just having somebody like Brandon Crawford around to
• 25:47
  bounce questions off of learn any sorts of techniques at shortstop, just get acclimated
• 25:52
  to the big leagues and even you know, right after Brandon Crawford signed with
• 25:57
  the Cardinals, Mason Winn went right out there and went three for three and
• 26:02
  said that he was motivated a little bit of like a fire underneath him.
• 26:06
  So I think that's really great news for Mason Wynn. And yeah, how
• 26:11
  does it feel to have Brandon Crawford on the Cardinals. Yeah, I actually
• 26:15
  really like this iutan. I mean, and you know, from two aspects,
• 26:19
  I think he is a really easy guy to cheer for and to root
• 26:22
  for, like he you know, I you know, I played baseball for
• 26:26
  myself for a long time, and like I feel myself in the mold of
• 26:30
  Brandon Crawford, which is just not that good but a lot of efforts,
• 26:33
  and so you know, I love that about the guy. He's got that
• 26:37
  grit. I mean, I do think the Cardinals would kill any team in
• 26:41
  a twenty fourteen retro league, lance Lynn, you got Matt Carpenter, You've
• 26:48
  got Brandon Crawford, and yeah, I mean, jeez, Molina's probably just
• 26:53
  gonna be hanging out and he's you know, he could he could make it
• 26:56
  happen. So like that, I think they could really make that happen.
• 26:59
  But I do think, you know, they really are kind of leaning into
• 27:03
  this clubhouse culture and recognizing this so much Valdly that they they've had in the
• 27:07
  past. Whether it applies to all teams or not, it definitely plays applies
• 27:11
  in Saint Louis. And you're right, he's he's he's actually still a decent
• 27:18
  player. Yeah, he was had a down year last year, but he
• 27:21
  still has some good pop, like him and Carpenter off the bench like that
• 27:25
  that those two are dangerous pinch hitters if you put him in the right spots.
• 27:30
  So I do like it, and I do think it does. What's
• 27:33
  interesting is that like he is fully committed to a backup role, Like it
• 27:37
  seems like he knows what he's coming into. He's not like trying to push
• 27:41
  for a job. He's happy to be a backup, which could be really
• 27:45
  great for a lot of those young players to learn from a guy like brand
• 27:48
  Crawford, multiple World Series winner, Like yeah, there's a lot of good
• 27:52
  that can come from this, just from a pure team dynamics perspective. So
• 27:56
  I like it. I'm looking forward to to to Crawford in Redbird Red and
• 28:03
  luckily they don't have to, you know, shave his head or anything like
• 28:07
  going to the Yankees exactly. It does look really strange seeing him not in
• 28:11
  Giant's gear, but I think we'll acclimate it to it. All Right.
• 28:15
  Another piece of news that we had over the past week, and this one's
• 28:19
  a bummer. I think we could almost have like a wanh wanh want sound
• 28:25
  that we can or maybe even bring in Keeling for some ambulance chasers or something
• 28:29
  of like every week here in spring training, because I think this is going
• 28:33
  to be a theme as we record here throughout spring training. Another picture went
• 28:37
  down in CODE Senga having a bum shoulder that some sort of I'm not a
• 28:44
  doctor, so I'm not going to try to like explain what it is,
• 28:48
  but some sort of capsule within the shoulder is not looking hot. And so
• 28:55
  he's been given a PRP injection and is going to be shut down for three
• 29:00
  weeks. And he's in my TGFBI right now, just plummeting. I don't
• 29:07
  think anybody's gonna touch him. I'm not going to touch him in any drafts
• 29:11
  because just like cal Bradish, I know where this story is headed. That
• 29:17
  I just in terms of you're already looking at Senga being three weeks behind and
• 29:21
  injured going into this year, it just is probably not going to be a
• 29:26
  very fruitful year for the Mets overall. And I don't see how they push
• 29:30
  him really hard to get him back out when they've got him through twenty twenty
• 29:33
  seven. So I think they're really gonna nurse Senga along because this is not
• 29:38
  a contention year necessarily for the Mets, and they want to make sure that
• 29:42
  when they're ready for that, they've got Senga back on the mounds. So
• 29:47
  do you have any different take here on Senga's injury group, No, I
• 29:52
  unfortunately don't. It is a scary thing. You don't have anything going wrong
• 30:00
  your I think he's a shoulder right, yeah, right, shoulder too,
• 30:03
  so yeah, yeah, And that's the problem with the shoulder is once that
• 30:10
  starts to go, it's a it's a really long road back. Like yeah,
• 30:15
  that the elbow injury Timmy Johnson, like that is worse overall, but
• 30:18
  it's kind of a little bit more known more to find. Shoulders tend to
• 30:22
  be like I think I can play. I think I can, but you're
• 30:25
  usually just losing velocity, losing a little movement, and then the recovery from
• 30:30
  it is just a little bit more uncertain. So Singa's absolutely dropping in drafts.
• 30:34
  I think he was going like the thirtieth you know, Pitcher off the
• 30:37
  board overall, close to the top twenty starters, and he's, you know,
• 30:44
  just in the last week, he's you know, all the way down
• 30:47
  to somewhere in the like, you know, one fifty range something like that.
• 30:51
  Yeah, and it might even be lower than that. Now that I
• 30:53
  know that, I say it, Uh yeah, one eighty range as far
• 30:57
  as ADP. So he's dropped way off a cliff, and I think that's
• 31:02
  right, Like you have to avoid him. You can't put anything that The
• 31:06
  thing that you know, I wonder is you know he has a bigger workload
• 31:11
  than when he came over to the US, and did that play a role?
• 31:15
  Does it make you question anything about ya I'm a mooto or anybody else
• 31:18
  who's like, well, ban can they take the workload? You know,
• 31:22
  show how I came over and ended up having arm issues? Like is there
• 31:26
  Am I reading too much into it? Probably? But it is disappointed to
• 31:30
  see you guy that had so much potential, uh get get hurt? That
• 31:33
  The question it raises for me, and I'll pose it to you. If
• 31:37
  you're drafting early this this spring, you're and you know you and I have
• 31:41
  a draft coming up pretty pretty soon. Here, are you drafting pitching any
• 31:47
  different with an early draft than the late draft? I think so just a
• 31:52
  little bit. And it depends I think on auction versus snake. So so
• 32:00
  I've been noticing this a lot in my TGFBI draft that like, there's a
• 32:02
  lot of people taking pitching pretty early, and I'm not just because of what
• 32:07
  you're talking about, Like who knows, they're all injury risks across the board,
• 32:13
  because pitching is just really unnatural for the human body, and so it's
• 32:17
  almost a matter of when not if these guys are going to go down with
• 32:22
  an injury in their careers, and so I'm trying to avoid that and tiptoe
• 32:27
  around it a little bit earlier on because I think overall, I view pitching
• 32:34
  as like a ranking of who's throwing the best at that point in time,
• 32:39
  and really taking a pretty short term view, especially when I'm looking at my
• 32:45
  waiver wire column or just how I'm managing my rosters, because those projections that
• 32:50
  we're punching in from the beginning of the season here, it is vastly different
• 32:54
  from what you're going to get out of pitching. And so a lot of
• 32:57
  the pitchers that are out there, that's why you see them rise up draft
• 33:00
  boards, you know, like the Uri Perez Is, the Bobby Millers guys
• 33:05
  like that, they'll be much lower in the dollar values, like when you
• 33:09
  just take the raw dollar values because the innings aren't quite projected as high,
• 33:15
  and so that's something you do need to keep in mind when you're looking at
• 33:17
  those projection dollar values, is that a lot of those are volume based,
• 33:22
  but pitching is such a skills based thing that it's you've got to be analyzing
• 33:29
  that a little bit more rather than just the raw dollar values. With bats,
• 33:32
  I feel pretty good about using projections, and so that's part of it
• 33:36
  too. And so obviously when you get later into the spring, you know
• 33:40
  who's in rotations, you know who is injured, who isn't injured. So
• 33:45
  I will pay up for pitching a little bit more because I know I can
• 33:46
  build a staff that will at least take me through a month. Yeah,
• 33:51
  I think if I'm drafting early, especially in an auction draft, I'm I'm
• 33:58
  getting one or two guys early that historically have of health. Right, I'm
• 34:01
  grabbing like an Aaron Nola. You know somebody like that, who's Sonny Gray.
• 34:07
  I was trying to avoid it, but we both know I'm gonna auction
• 34:13
  draft. Don't even bother. I'm just gonna owe him. You can use
• 34:15
  it against me, I don't care. But then later I think that's where
• 34:20
  you start to load up on a you know this that maybe a third or
• 34:23
  fourth tier of starters and where everybody else is like invested on those high end
• 34:30
  but there's the risk is higher. You're gonna grab an extra arm or two
• 34:34
  in those early drafts to kind of protect yourselves. And something happens, you're
• 34:37
  like, I'm good to go. Whereas if you invested really high and high
• 34:40
  end pitching and then you had to fill out the rest of your hitting later,
• 34:44
  the back of your of your rotation is really gonna be thin, and
• 34:47
  you get one injury to an arm towards the top of your draft, and
• 34:52
  I mean you, all of a sudden, your guy that was like,
• 34:54
  ah, he might be my fourth started by I wish he was my sixth.
• 34:58
  All of a sudden your number really like that is not not what you
• 35:01
  want to have happened. So I think you have to kind of to your
• 35:04
  point, slow roll a little on the pitching and then load up a little
• 35:07
  bit more on the mid tier pitching so that you kind of protect yourself because
• 35:10
  if something something's gonna happen, and it happens to one of your mire mid
• 35:14
  tier guys and you got another one to plug in, just move on't it
• 35:17
  doesn't matter. It's gonna happen to everybody. Yeah, and if anything,
• 35:21
  it might honestly boost the high end guys a little bit for me because like
• 35:25
  guys like Strider and Cole early on and this injury overall too because Senge is
• 35:32
  taking a big chunk of strikeouts out of the player pool and it just makes
• 35:37
  Spencer Strider look even better and better in the first round there that he hasn't
• 35:42
  shown any of the Striders that he's the He's the big exception here, right,
• 35:45
  Yeah. He You know, if you get Strider, you can wait
• 35:49
  till you can really wait on starting pitching exactly because you don't have to worry
• 35:54
  about the crazy strikeouts. That's where you can fill in with some of those
• 35:57
  other guys. It's like really good ratio guy with a little upside. I
• 36:00
  think you're absolutely right. Strider is a big exception to this. I don't
• 36:04
  know Coal or anybody other at the top of the Burns. I'm not quite
• 36:07
  sure I'm that far on those guys, but Strider, I mean, especially
• 36:10
  with them adding a curveball, like man, you could hit with two pitches.
• 36:15
  Now you don't know what's coming with a third, that's great, and
• 36:17
  I still don't mind those upper end guys because again, they're just kind of
• 36:22
  work horses and they've gotten far enough in their careers. Between Coal and I
• 36:27
  mean this is famous last words too, I guess, but between and next
• 36:30
  week, yeah, coal and Burns where they've proven that they can provide a
• 36:34
  pretty good volume level. So it just creates a little more dependability. I
• 36:38
  guess people had this talk about uh, Sandy al Contra last year, but
• 36:43
  that's it's also kind of what we're talking about, Like you've got to really
• 36:46
  be choosy about who you're going to be writing with and like that. But
• 36:52
  those three are like the ones I feel pretty solid about, and after that
• 36:54
  it gets really murky. As we discussed last week. Yeah, okay,
• 37:00
  let's get into just a little bit of cards discussion because things are really quiet
• 37:04
  on the release front. I don't know if the printer impresslers are really backed
• 37:08
  up over at tops and fanatics, but the only releases that are on the
• 37:14
  schedule that our licensed products are twenty twenty three Bowman Inception coming out on three
• 37:20
  fifteen, and twenty twenty four Bowman Base coming out in early May. Still,
• 37:27
  so the big news that we have this week is I'm just laughing because
• 37:32
  like I last week, like was writing off saying, hey, there's no
• 37:38
  like super fractor like issues or anything like going on in this product. Little
• 37:44
  did I know there actually are, So if you haven't, if you haven't
• 37:47
  seen, we'll link to it. We when we did our rundown of Top
• 37:52
  Series one two weeks ago, we missed this parallel when we were doing the
• 37:58
  rundown because it just wasn't a great like list of like all the parallels,
• 38:04
  and the first card Parallel was one of the cards where I just wasn't sure
• 38:08
  where what it was and there wasn't much info out on there. We did
• 38:13
  discover that it was. It was a card that was supposed to have a
• 38:16
  little first card stamp on the logo and it was supposed to be the first
• 38:22
  one off the press, also one of one, so there's only one first
• 38:27
  card of every single one out there, and they totally biffed it. Tops
• 38:30
  biff this that the ones that are out in the wild don't have the first
• 38:36
  card emblem on them, They just have the one of one stamp on the
• 38:38
  back. So I've seen one Joe Muskrove one on Reddit came up because somebody
• 38:45
  was flipping through their base saw the one of one stamp on the back and
• 38:49
  didn't like know what was going on. And I think that's a little bit
• 38:52
  of how this was uncovered. So if you have been opening any TOPS series
• 38:57
  one twenty twenty four, maybe you go back through all these base cards and
• 39:00
  see if any of them have a one of one stamp on the back.
• 39:04
  Also, maybe report back, like if you've got them, because it seems
• 39:07
  like TOPS is working on a replacement for these, probably just gonna reprint almost
• 39:14
  all of them, just because once you find one and turn over to TOPS,
• 39:17
  I'm it's not that hard for them to fire up the printing press for
• 39:21
  three hundred and fiftyeth theset or whatever. It's just one of one's. But
• 39:24
  if it doesn't say first card on it and it's just got a random one
• 39:28
  of one stamp on the back, there's no way that there's just one of
• 39:30
  these each out in the wild, right, I don't I don't know how
• 39:36
  much do you believe it's actually the first card off the printing press. I
• 39:38
  mean, that's a different story. You know, there's a guy going on,
• 39:43
  give me one. I'll just when we get a set, I'll put
• 39:45
  them together or just stamp one to one. It's the first card, guys.
• 39:49
  Ha ha, it's there's not a chance in the world. But yeah,
• 39:53
  I think it's It's really interesting because what I'd like to know, and
• 39:59
  I don't know if if it's in the reddit thread ornight, like was the
• 40:01
  card backwards or not? Yeah, I was wondering that too, because if
• 40:06
  it wasn't backwards, oh my goodness, because none of these are gonna be
• 40:09
  found, Like, there's not a chance in the world. I you know,
• 40:13
  you know, I found myself double checking for the golden mirror, those
• 40:16
  types of things like do a quick shuffle through the back to see if there's
• 40:20
  a golden back or something like that. But looking where these are stamped is
• 40:23
  like the bottom right corner, Like it is like unless you were looking every
• 40:28
  single card in the back, you are not finding this. And I think
• 40:30
  what's also interesting is there's a whole nut. You know. It feels like
• 40:35
  we somehow like support tops and fanatics and screwing things up because now it's collectible,
• 40:43
  it's more valuable than any other one of one because they messed it up.
• 40:45
  I was just looking on eBay see any of things exist, and sure
• 40:50
  enough the right now forbid, there's a Wilson contraras first card one of one,
• 40:55
  there's three almost four days left. Is that two hundred dollars on bids
• 41:00
  and let's see if And then there was the Miami Marlins team card sold for
• 41:07
  like two fifty your best offer. So like they it's it's created its own
• 41:12
  market of these cards. And you know, I have to to wonder.
• 41:16
  You know that the Tops promised a that they would samp the card if you
• 41:20
  send it in and give you a credit. I don't know if that credit
• 41:23
  is how much how much they're giving you, but you have to think that
• 41:28
  people are are going to kind of play the system and try to like figure
• 41:31
  out how much they're gonna get. Do they trade it in or do is
• 41:34
  that more value because of the novelty that they screwed it up. It's I'm
• 41:38
  on Tops doing it again. It's amazing, Like I man, I'm I'm
• 41:45
  almost like just looking forward to every release. Now we can just have like
• 41:49
  a new talk about how they messed up the one of ones. Yeah,
• 41:52
  Like there's a part of me that hopes that, like there's like I'm waiting
• 41:55
  for the like the Netflix documentary that comes out on tops that talks about like
• 42:00
  the greatest marketing con of all time, how they strategically planned all of these
• 42:07
  flubs just to get that name in the market in this you know, constant
• 42:12
  talk about it and and whatnot, and how they spent basically nothing on marketing,
• 42:15
  but they kept screwing up the best cards, and all of a sudden,
• 42:20
  sales jumped, people were searching for them, going after these buybacks and
• 42:24
  redemptions and all those kind of things. I part of me just hopes that
• 42:28
  that's actually the case, because otherwise, like, how can you let this
• 42:30
  keep happening? How can it possibly keep happening if you're not trying to do
• 42:35
  it like you like I don't feel like if you're trying to even do this
• 42:37
  good. Yeah, that's it's impressive also that they just like realized that nobody
• 42:45
  actually ever saw like a card come off the press with the first card like
• 42:49
  stamp on it. That's kind of like you you had one job. Like
• 42:52
  there's guys like literally you had one job. Like And I watched a YouTube
• 42:58
  video recently of a tour of like the Leaf facility when somebody's going through and
• 43:01
  seeing kind of how that operated, Like everything was sorted so well, and
• 43:06
  they knew exactly where every card was, and it was all bundled with the
• 43:08
  inserts and the patch cards and all these things. And I'm like, of
• 43:14
  course, like you don't package a thing until all these specialty cards are printed,
• 43:19
  and then you go like, I don't I don't understand that there's nobody
• 43:23
  checking. At least there's gotta be two guys checking, right, like maybe
• 43:29
  football there's like two keys, right. So yeah, so I will link
• 43:34
  to the Joe Musgrove card and the announcement from Tops in the show notes,
• 43:38
  and yeah, we buried the lead again this week. I guess I didn't
• 43:43
  open with what we're gonna do for the category section, but you've probably figured
• 43:47
  it out because you've read the show description when you hit play on this podcast.
• 43:52
  And we're gonna go through closers this week. So last week we did
• 43:57
  a back and forth draft of our top ten starters, and this week we're
• 44:00
  going to do closers. So we were going to take a small break and
• 44:02
  when we come back, we'll do that draft. Stick around, all right,
• 44:22
  welcome back, everybody. We are going to get into the closer pool
• 44:27
  this week. So, like I said before the break, we're going to
• 44:30
  do a back and forth draft of our top ten closers and also just a
• 44:35
  little bit of banter afterwards in terms of some guys that we had that you
• 44:38
  know, might not have made the top ten draft or closers in waiting.
• 44:44
  It's always a volatile spot for Fantasy Baseball overall is trying to predict bullpens and
• 44:50
  save usage. That's why we love using sagnof over at Rasball saves anc gott
• 44:54
  no face and it's a pretty big portion of my waiver Wire column too,
• 45:00
  trying to map this all out and see what bullpens are looking like every week
• 45:05
  and what ups and downs are happening. I think it's become more and more
• 45:09
  difficult as teams have become smarter and smarter and realizing you don't necessarily need one
• 45:15
  closer and you can mix and match and play high leverage situations with your best
• 45:20
  relievers. But on top of it, it does feel like the closer pool
• 45:23
  is just kind of flattened out a lot more than has in the past.
• 45:28
  That if we'd been having this discussion last year, lots of closers between Edwin
• 45:32
  Diaz and Josh Hater at the top of the pool were being pushed into just
• 45:37
  about like the second and third round of drafts, which is absolutely absurd reflecting
• 45:43
  back on because I mean even at the time when it was going on,
• 45:45
  I couldn't quite believe it. And this year the first closer coming off of
• 45:51
  the board in NFBC drafts is either Edwin Diaz or Devin Williams. They both
• 45:55
  have roughly the same ADP and the mid four EASi ish, so I'm looking
• 46:00
  at datas as forty two and so you're usually getting them somewhere in like the
• 46:06
  third ish fourth ish round in drafts I've seen from TGFBI and other places that
• 46:12
  is usually about where a closer run happens for the first couple of years.
• 46:15
  So Brew is closers like maybe the greatest frustration for you, especially as a
• 46:22
  top one hundred hitter guy. Yeah, I think it's very fair. I
• 46:25
  hate pain for saves, but like the closer, the closure role is so
• 46:30
  fickle. There's probably I'm going to say half the team's closers that are worth
• 46:36
  investing in, So you're talking less than two per fantasy team, and so
• 46:40
  one of the greatest strategies I think. I think this year is getting three
• 46:47
  and just writing out that that category and not worrying about it while everybody else
• 46:52
  thinks around in the lower and ultimately gets killed by ratio guys. You know,
• 46:57
  as you're you're playing with a Carlos Estevez of the world. Sorry,
• 47:00
  he's not my top ten, but yeah, the closer pool is I'll call
• 47:06
  it dynamic is the word I'm gonna go with it because we can't say other
• 47:10
  things on the air. Yeah, So in this top ten, are you
• 47:15
  taking one? Are you double tapping or are you what's your strategy here?
• 47:21
  Yeah, I will say I'm I'm probably double tapping in my top ten,
• 47:27
  But I think that there's a few like I think when you get past the
• 47:30
  top I'm gonna say seven or eight guys, it opens up. Like there,
• 47:37
  it definitely opens up, and there you're gonna have a lot of volatility.
• 47:39
  And so there are a few guys that I like that are gonna go
• 47:42
  that are going a bit bit later that I probably I'd like to have one
• 47:45
  of the maybe top five guys, and then two that are probably in the
• 47:50
  fifteen to twenty ADP type range that I really like, that's probably how I'm
• 47:57
  I'm treating that, But that would probably give me two of my top ten
• 48:00
  based on a few guys that are going a little bit later than I think
• 48:01
  that they need to be. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah. And I'm usually
• 48:07
  more of like a one guy here than maybe like double tapping in like the
• 48:12
  the mid teens ish just to try to find that three and then hoping that
• 48:15
  I can at least walk away with two, and you know, if the
• 48:19
  third one comes through fruition, that's great. I also, like, I
• 48:22
  don't mind trying to play the game on waiver wires, blowing it on saves,
• 48:27
  just because I mean, you got to spend it on something. And
• 48:30
  I think bats and evaluating bats has become a lot more streamlined than it has
• 48:36
  in the past with all of the stat cast stata that we have and just
• 48:39
  people have access to roster resource and it's easy to map out playing time and
• 48:44
  stuff and find situations. So usually there's not too many significantly game changing bats
• 48:52
  that come through in the waiver wire anymore. So I'm okay with spending that
• 48:58
  cash on trying to figure out to start pitchers and closers throughout the year,
• 49:01
  just to try to find those. I just all right, But with that,
• 49:07
  let's get into the draft. I took the number one pick last week
• 49:09
  with the coin flip, so I figured I'd let you have it this week
• 49:13
  and I'll hand it over and see who year number one closer in this draft
• 49:16
  is. Yeah, And I think you said at the top there there's a
• 49:21
  handful of guys kind of in the same range from a closer perspective, so
• 49:27
  it makes it a little bit a little bit harder to go first overall,
• 49:30
  it's like, what are you what are you ultimately chasing? But for me,
• 49:36
  you're you're at the top. You're looking for guys that have really clear
• 49:40
  roles, decent enough offenses, and they've got the high k upside. That's
• 49:46
  what you're looking for. So first overall, going off the board will be
• 49:51
  Devin Williams is where I will go there in Milwaukee, he had a strong
• 49:57
  year last year. He did have a degree of baby of cluck, so
• 50:00
  I will fully own that he had about a one and a half e RA.
• 50:05
  It's probably more in the mid twos is really where it should be.
• 50:09
  But there's really nothing that you can go wrong with a guy that can pump
• 50:12
  in the mid nineties, is historically stroke struck out fourteen to fifteen guys per
• 50:16
  nine and has kept his era last two years under two a year before that
• 50:23
  two and a half, consistently going to probably be a mid thirties save kind
• 50:29
  of guy, and also a guy that does actually bring in a handful of
• 50:32
  wins because the Brewers are willing to use their closer in those situations in the
• 50:38
  tie ball games, which not all clubs are willing to do. So there's
• 50:42
  there's a lot to like about Williams kind of across the board, and he
• 50:47
  just there's just I mean, it's an edge over a few other guys for
• 50:51
  me. But yeah, I'm taking Devin Williams and I'm pretty happy with them.
• 50:55
  Yeah, I have no qualms. They would have been my number one
• 50:59
  off the board as well for the stuff that you listed, but also one
• 51:02
  of the greatest team situations of anybody on this top ten, because not only
• 51:07
  are looking for teams that are winning and competitive, but also teams that kind
• 51:15
  of like are threading that needle where like the offense isn't blowing people out and
• 51:20
  the pitching staff is okay. And that describes the Milwaukee Brewers as a nutshell.
• 51:24
  They should be scrapping in the in central again this year, looking you
• 51:29
  know somewhere wins in the mid eighties, and so a lot of those are
• 51:32
  going to be closer wins. The offense is not quite as high powered as
• 51:37
  it has been sometimes, and the pitching staff's a little weakened after Burns and
• 51:42
  Woodruff have left or gotten injured. So it's a great situation from that as
• 51:47
  well as I also look at the bridge to get from the starter to the
• 51:52
  closer, and the Brewers are just a pitching factory. They created Joel pie
• 51:59
  Am out of like thin air last year, and Trevor McGill really developed into
• 52:04
  a great reliever as well. As you still got Abner Rebay and Hobbie Miller
• 52:08
  there, Milner, Hobby Milner. So it's a great bullpen in front of
• 52:13
  him that shouldn't blow a lot of leads where Devin Williams can walk in,
• 52:17
  strike out the side with his nasty change up and call it a game for
• 52:22
  Milwaukee. Yeah, I think that it's a I would say no brainer,
• 52:25
  but I mean it's it really isn't. But there's there's a lot to like
• 52:29
  there with with Devin Williams. So, who are you going off the board
• 52:34
  with number two? I think I could call it I know who you love
• 52:38
  in the closer role, which is absolutely fine because he's my number three.
• 52:42
  But let's hear you say it. Yeah it's Edwin Diaz from the New York
• 52:45
  Meser. Yeah, I've always loved him. And mostly it's a strikeout volume
• 52:50
  thing, like the last not last well, yeah, last year obviously was
• 52:54
  a disaster after tearing that Pteller tendont in the WBC that in twenty twenty two.
• 53:00
  In twenty twenty when he gave you seventeen plus k nine, it really
• 53:06
  makes up a lot of ground. And so what I like to do early
• 53:10
  in drafts, especially if I haven't been able to take Spencer Strider or Garrett
• 53:15
  Cole and might have had to take a picture who is a little bit lighter
• 53:19
  on the strikeouts for my first picture, if you compare them with Edwin Diaz,
• 53:22
  you can get a little bit of that gain back in the strikeout category.
• 53:27
  So I mean you're looking at in twenty twenty two, he gave you
• 53:31
  over one hundred strikeouts out of your closer spot, which is phenomenal, And
• 53:37
  I think what makes him he would be my number two to Devin Williams.
• 53:40
  And so what makes him that is just the team situation we just went through,
• 53:45
  that the Mets should be quite not quite as good as the Brewers and
• 53:51
  a little tougher division as well as a little bit more of a dumpster fiery
• 53:57
  Mets bullpen in front of him. You know, it's just not quite as
• 54:00
  solid. And I don't count on the New York Mets to develop a new
• 54:04
  reliever if they need it out of thin air the way that the Brewers do.
• 54:07
  So Yeah, for all those reasons, I don't necessarily care about the
• 54:12
  saves count for Edwin Diaz as much because the other skills are just so superb
• 54:19
  and so sublime in terms of he should be giving you a whip at one
• 54:23
  or less, he should be giving you an eer at two or less.
• 54:28
  And I think a lot of those kind of like ups and downs that we've
• 54:30
  seen out of him in New York are behind him. That that twenty twenty
• 54:36
  two season was just so good and he maintained it all year. He looked
• 54:40
  great in the WBC last year. It's just a bummer that he had to
• 54:43
  sit the year out, And if anything, it might have saved his arm
• 54:45
  a little bit because it is a knee injury. It's not an injury I'm
• 54:50
  really too worried about because it was just a real fluke accident and he was
• 54:53
  honestly even close to getting back by the end of the season last year.
• 54:58
  Yeah, it's hard to argue. My only argument. You heard me,
• 55:01
  I said my number three, it is the injury. It's just if you're
• 55:06
  looking for a tiebreaker, to me, there's there are probably three closers in
• 55:09
  their own tier at the at the top right now, and I can make
• 55:14
  the argument for all of them. And so I'm going to use that injury
• 55:17
  as just what ticks him down. One level for me is just it's been
• 55:22
  a year since he's pitched. You know, it is a knee injury.
• 55:25
  Maybe that still impacts him the way he lands or whatnot. I don't know.
• 55:30
  So I'm using that kind of the crutch to say, I'll say,
• 55:34
  wait one spot on Edwin Diaz. Doesn't discount anything you said, because you're
• 55:37
  absolutely right on his upside and potential, and you look at his numbers,
• 55:43
  like if he if he was guaranteed healthy and I guarantee you get a full
• 55:46
  season at him. I think he's the number one. I don't think there's
• 55:51
  any argument there at all. But I'm just there's just a tinge of like
• 55:55
  I just don't know. And since I made that New Year's resolution to stay
• 56:00
  away from injury guys, I'll take him third instead of second. So I
• 56:04
  think that's fair because I think I know who your number three is, and
• 56:07
  honestly, I think you're splitting hairs between these top three that it's a pretty
• 56:12
  solid first year of this top three. It is, so yet number three
• 56:15
  is is Josh Hater. I don't think there's any argument there. The the
• 56:21
  you know, the thing with Hater probably outside of Diaz, one of the
• 56:24
  most dominant closers we've had in the last five years. And you know,
• 56:30
  he he does rack up the strikeouts that quite the unbelievable clip as well.
• 56:37
  You know, I don't know that he is quite there with with with ds,
• 56:42
  but he's consistently delivering you know, quality e ras and and I think
• 56:49
  last year was like a one three if I if I recall and his saved,
• 56:54
  we're down a little. That San Diego was just a little bit all
• 56:58
  over the place last year with him, but he you know, he's he's
• 57:04
  cleared one hundred strikeouts three three times in his career, and you know,
• 57:09
  he wasn't too far off. The last few years. His usage was just
• 57:13
  down a little bit. And again I don't just know if that's what San
• 57:16
  Diego. You just didn't know what they were doing. They weren't using it
• 57:19
  as much as you would expect. So I like also not willing to pitch
• 57:22
  more than an ending at at a time because it was like his walk hear.
• 57:25
  Yeah, But like I like the move to Houston, I think they'll
• 57:29
  use him more. The one drawback I do see is when we talk about
• 57:34
  guys are gonna, you know, get wins by pitching thy games or be
• 57:39
  thrust into the role because they don't have the sportscast. I mean, you
• 57:43
  got Ryan Presley there, and he is an absolute modified closer as well,
• 57:49
  and so I think that that's gonna take a few save chances away from Hater.
• 57:52
  I think it's gonna take a number of win chances away from Hater because
• 57:57
  they're gonna keep Hater for like, I know, I've got this situation.
• 58:00
  I want to lock that down and then we'll use use Presley and all those
• 58:04
  other tie situations are trying to put out a fire things like that, So
• 58:07
  I think that does take a little win potential out, maybe a few innings
• 58:12
  out for Hater, But we're splitting hairs at this point. Yeah, and
• 58:16
  Hater would be my number three overall. Just it's mostly it's about the walks.
• 58:22
  He's got a career walk rate that's over ten percent, and he did
• 58:28
  control the home runs more last year, but I think it's because he was
• 58:30
  also staying away from the zone a little more that the zone rate dropped a
• 58:36
  little bit and on top of it, the walk rate went up. But
• 58:39
  it's not anything detrimental in like the long term because he's not giving up those
• 58:45
  home runs. It will just grind on your whip a little bit more,
• 58:47
  but at the end of the day, we're also talking about guys who are
• 58:52
  giving you sixty to seventy innings that the one whip versus a one point one
• 58:57
  whip isn't going to really move the needle very much. So yeah, I
• 59:00
  think Josh Hader is a great choice here, and especially cutting that home run
• 59:05
  rate again last year and figuring out that problem that he had from twenty twenty
• 59:08
  two when he was giving up just the home rate. Home run rate spiked
• 59:14
  to one four almost one and a half, and it really fell apart for
• 59:17
  a little stretch there when he was traded from Milwaukee to San Diego and I
• 59:22
  struggle in twenty twenty two, but without those home runs, like Houston's a
• 59:28
  great spot in terms of winning ball club. And yeah, if he's not
• 59:30
  going to give up the home runs, don't have to worry about the Crawford
• 59:34
  boxes as much. So I think it should be a pretty solid number three
• 59:37
  pick. Well, we go into have the next tier. I think this
• 59:42
  is where it's really interesting. It's there's a lot of options. It can
• 59:45
  be all over the board. So who are you going with number four?
• 59:50
  I think, yeah, I don't it changes a lot, But I think
• 59:55
  today I'm going to go with Johan Duran. That it's a lot of like
• 1:00:00
  the similar stuff that we see between like Edwin Diaz. You know, just
• 1:00:07
  the strikeout rate can really be cranked up. I think here even the I
• 1:00:12
  mean I don't think he's ever going to touch like the sixteen seventeen like Edwin
• 1:00:15
  Diaz, but I think you could see Johan Duran crank up the twelve K
• 1:00:21
  nine to something more like a thirteen or fourteen, just because the stuff is
• 1:00:24
  filthy. You know, he's throwing it one hundred and one miles per an
• 1:00:28
  hour and just has this nasty splitter to go with it too. He's also
• 1:00:34
  an intimidating force on the mound that he's six' five two thirty. He's
• 1:00:37
  just this really huge, hulking guy, the way that kind of prime Kenley
• 1:00:40
  Jansen was, and you just know he's thrown flames straight at you. So
• 1:00:46
  another great team situation. I think the Twins are the favorites right now for
• 1:00:51
  the Ale Centrals. So also just like the Brewers, where you know,
• 1:00:55
  it's it's a Central Division, so the competition's a little bit lighter. But
• 1:01:00
  also the team around him is not quite like as good as the Astros or
• 1:01:07
  the Dodgers or anything like that, so he should be playing in a lot
• 1:01:09
  of tight games. Minnesota, I think, just like Milwaukee, has another
• 1:01:15
  fantastic bullpen setting him up between Brock Stewart, Griffin Jacks, Caleb Fielbar.
• 1:01:21
  He's got a lot of guys around it to help him. The one thing
• 1:01:24
  that I think keeps him in the next tier is just that the Twins have
• 1:01:29
  shown a willingness to put him in the highest leverage situation, and so you
• 1:01:34
  hope that he's going to get to thirty saves. But if he doesn't,
• 1:01:37
  I think that the ratios around it from E Ray and the low two's and
• 1:01:43
  a whip and you know, the one to one range should more than make
• 1:01:46
  up for it that because you're gonna just get enough strikeouts and just knowing that
• 1:01:51
  he's a solid force for you in the back of the bullpen. Yeah,
• 1:01:54
  I think you make a good points here. I had Duran as my number
• 1:01:58
  five was was not far off from from you, And I think from a
• 1:02:04
  a an ADP perspective, I think he's slightly lower down in the in that
• 1:02:08
  top ten if I recall, I think he's you know, n FBC,
• 1:02:14
  it's kind of six overall. If you look across other sites, uh he
• 1:02:16
  some of them having to going more seventh stuff like that. So you know
• 1:02:20
  we're a little higher on him. You're right. The the one concern is
• 1:02:23
  Roco bell Deli and what he decides to do at any point in time is
• 1:02:28
  only Roco will know. But he the guy that can throw with with that
• 1:02:32
  power. The you you have to think that if he just keeps developing because
• 1:02:38
  he's still so young. Uh, still trying to figure out what he's doing.
• 1:02:42
  I think he you know, he got lit up in spring training already.
• 1:02:45
  Uh, but that's I don't I don't care at all. Yeah,
• 1:02:47
  he's he's just going out there throwing, throwing straight fastballs, just trying to
• 1:02:52
  get a feel for things. That's absolutely fine. Uh. You know.
• 1:02:55
  The only piece that I'm a little leery with when we talk about Pitcher's injuries.
• 1:03:01
  He is really young. He is throwing really hard, like man Is.
• 1:03:06
  Is there at some point that things that that arm is gonna fall off
• 1:03:08
  and a little bit when we're willing to deal with that from a relief pitcher
• 1:03:13
  that I am with a starter, but there's there's this tinge of me on
• 1:03:15
  the back that goes man Is and can he hold up to that? And
• 1:03:20
  you know, I'm willing to take the gamble, So I don't really have
• 1:03:22
  any any qualms with with what you're doing there at number four. Awesome,
• 1:03:27
  So then who you can take a number five? Yeah, I'm gonna go
• 1:03:30
  a little bit further down the the adp here, and you know, somebody
• 1:03:36
  might call me crazy here, but I'm going with the most reliable team at
• 1:03:40
  losing. We're gonna go with the Pittsburgh Pirates and David Bednar. Yeah.
• 1:03:45
  I really like David Bednar, and it if he pitched for a different team,
• 1:03:51
  we would have already talked about him, There is no question about that.
• 1:03:55
  But that said, he saved thirty nine games last year. You was
• 1:04:00
  absolutely phenomenal. You know, his his last three years, he struck out
• 1:04:05
  eleven twelve and eleven guyser per nine, just rounding, and his his walk
• 1:04:13
  rate over the last four years has ranged from two point seventy nine to two
• 1:04:16
  point eight four, So it's a really big range there. He's consistent is
• 1:04:19
  all get out, and he's really controlled the long ball, and so I
• 1:04:26
  mean, we're talking about three straight years of just flat out consistency and he
• 1:04:31
  is the clear guy in that bullpen. The only only thing that you have
• 1:04:36
  to worry about is he does plan such a bad team that he could get
• 1:04:41
  traded midway through the year. But I'm you know, he's not gonna be
• 1:04:45
  a free agent till twenty twenty seven, so I think that they're gonna they're
• 1:04:50
  gonna hold him at least through this year as well. They haven't traded him
• 1:04:55
  yet, so I really like Bednar. I wish he was on a better
• 1:04:59
  team. The trade does give me a little little pause. But I think
• 1:05:02
  if you're trading for Bednar, you're trading for him to be your closer.
• 1:05:05
  You're not trading for him to be a a it's up guy. So yep,
• 1:05:12
  going David Bednar, tell me I'm crazy. I don't think it's crazy.
• 1:05:15
  I think he's not getting as much love as he should. I like
• 1:05:18
  him because, honestly, he might be the one guy that we're discussing that
• 1:05:24
  comes away with the most saves at the end of the day. Thirty nine
• 1:05:27
  saves is nothing to scoff at in today's day and age, and the Pirates
• 1:05:32
  are such a weird backwards organization that this is one of the ones that will
• 1:05:39
  use a closer all the time and just annoint somebody like David Bednar and let
• 1:05:43
  him run with it. I think it's also like it's a pretty classic what
• 1:05:47
  at least what I consider like a classic closers Arsenal in terms of he's got
• 1:05:50
  a fastball, curvefall, split finger, so it's like a it's like the
• 1:05:55
  old Cody Allen package. Cody Allen had like the same sort of put together
• 1:06:00
  you know, fastball, curveball and so and Mark Millanson a little bit,
• 1:06:03
  but with a cutter and he throws hard, he's consistent, he's got the
• 1:06:10
  presence. I don't I think, especially like if you're looking for a floor
• 1:06:15
  closers don't come with high floors typically. But Bednark is a safer pick I
• 1:06:20
  think than people are giving him credit for. And sure the strikeouts are maybe
• 1:06:26
  a little bit lower than some of these guys that we're talking about, but
• 1:06:29
  yeah, if you're getting guaranteed locked in thirty five saves, I don't know
• 1:06:33
  where else you're gonna find that. Yeah. So I'm I'm really happy with
• 1:06:38
  with Bednar and to the point where I think that he's in the guy that's
• 1:06:43
  going to go towards the back of the top ten. And as we talked
• 1:06:45
  about at the top, you know, I'm looking for one of my top
• 1:06:48
  five kind of guys and then going later. But that doesn't mean you're paying
• 1:06:53
  top five guy value. I think Bednar is the kind of guy that is
• 1:06:56
  a top five closer. You could look at that be pretty happy with that,
• 1:07:00
  but you're paying top ten prices on them. Yeah, I think so
• 1:07:02
  too. All Right, I'm going to go with another frustrating franchise for this
• 1:07:11
  for the next one, and that I'm going to take Pete Fairbanks from the
• 1:07:14
  Tampa Bay Rays for my sixth pick. That it just gets back to,
• 1:07:19
  sure, he has been injured. I think that's why his price is a
• 1:07:23
  little bit lower, but kind of like what we were talking about as we
• 1:07:28
  especially if we were taking like in later towards the draft and like or later
• 1:07:34
  towards the start of the season, where Pete Fairbanks has gotten through spring training
• 1:07:40
  without any injury problems, I might even move him up maybe to four because
• 1:07:45
  the strikeouts have been there throughout his entire career. He's averaged a twelve point
• 1:07:49
  nine K nine and even last year when he did have to go on the
• 1:07:55
  injured list for a little bit, he still ended up putting up forty five
• 1:07:57
  innings for you with twenty five saved in a two fifty eight year array.
• 1:08:01
  Like that's still really good work from a closer. And I just like his
• 1:08:06
  overall package that if you're talking about some of the nastiest stuff in this list,
• 1:08:11
  I think he's right up there in the first tier. It's just obviously
• 1:08:15
  the injury concerns, and so at this point I'm willing to roll the dice
• 1:08:19
  with Pete Fairbanks kind of in our closer rankings because the upside is pretty tremendous
• 1:08:27
  from where the strikeouts could take you. And if he's not getting the full
• 1:08:32
  line share of like this saves down in Tampa, if they're starting to mix
• 1:08:35
  a match and bring in, you know, other dudes around him, like
• 1:08:41
  Jason Adam to get a give Pete Fairbanks a break here and there, that
• 1:08:46
  that just gives you more wins. So it kind of it's a little bit
• 1:08:49
  of like the the Devin Williams, but with a little extra injury risk here.
• 1:08:56
  Yeah, I struggled with Pete Fairbanks. Frank really comes down like the
• 1:09:00
  it's the shame on me, you know, for me one, shame on
• 1:09:02
  me, for me twice, shame on you eight otherwise right now, Uh,
• 1:09:05
  don't don't look at that quote right on the No, we won't.
• 1:09:10
  It's okay, you know, I look at from the two strikes against Pete
• 1:09:14
  Fairbanks is the injury risk and he pitched for the race. And that's that's
• 1:09:19
  where I think it's tough for me, is that I I just I'm not
• 1:09:24
  sure that I can trust what they're gonna do. And if I'm I'm looking
• 1:09:27
  at my closer number one, I want to know that he's the closer and
• 1:09:31
  I feel like he should be. I feel like they say, is I
• 1:09:34
  just don't trust them. I got trust issues, I guess is what I'm
• 1:09:38
  getting at. And because of that, he's not anywhere near my top ten,
• 1:09:43
  not because of skill, not because of skill, just that there has
• 1:09:45
  those two knocks against him, and I just don't know that I want to
• 1:09:49
  go there. Yeah, generally it's one of those guys that you during the
• 1:09:54
  season. I'm going to look at him be like, man, I wish
• 1:09:56
  I had to say on my team, but I don't think I can anchor
• 1:09:59
  on him. That's that's my problem. That not nothing against the skill,
• 1:10:01
  it's the situation that's that's sorry, Pete. Yeah, No, I think
• 1:10:08
  we're going to run into this a lot over the back end of this top
• 1:10:12
  ten draft, because honestly, I think like from four to fifteen, you
• 1:10:16
  could give me an argument for just about anybody in that order, Like in
• 1:10:21
  terms of like who's going off the board. It's kind of a preference thing,
• 1:10:27
  and you're toggling injury risk and strike out upside and solid situations. So
• 1:10:35
  yeah, I think that we can get a lot of varying opinions here if
• 1:10:40
  we did a top ten just across all of sort of fantasy writers. You
• 1:10:44
  know, I think you're absolutely right, and I'm going to just amp that
• 1:10:47
  up. I will pick We'll pick my on here seven seven seven. And
• 1:10:53
  I'm even looking at the rankings that I that I had and I'm just like,
• 1:10:56
  I can't follow them. I just I can't. There's others, there's
• 1:11:00
  guys that I want to take, and I'm going to I actually got to
• 1:11:03
  see where where's this guy going? And and drafts I'm going to go with
• 1:11:10
  from an NFBC perspective, I'm going to going to the eighteenth clutter off the
• 1:11:15
  board as my pick seven with Tanner Scott. Oh wow, Okay, I
• 1:11:19
  thought I'd be able sneaking through later. Yeah, I have him later.
• 1:11:23
  But I look at it and just the skill. I look at the skill
• 1:11:29
  for Tanner Scott and there there's the there's the one question mark of the control
• 1:11:33
  is it what it was last year? But if it is what it was
• 1:11:38
  last year, Tanner Scott is just absolutely fantastic. You know, he's he's
• 1:11:44
  a guy that is gonna he actually brings you more innings. He pitched almost
• 1:11:48
  eighty innings last year. He's striking out twelve thirteen guys per nine, And
• 1:11:54
  I think if I recall, and I don't have the splits in front of
• 1:11:56
  me, but I think he got better as the season season. Ress.
• 1:12:00
  Yeah, so he in the second half, he had a one to five
• 1:12:03
  six ERA and his case ks went down to below eleven in that second half.
• 1:12:11
  But his control was was even better. You know, whip a point
• 1:12:15
  eighty seven. Uh he was. But then you look at like his his
• 1:12:18
  stat cast and it's just like blood red, Like the guy is just dominant.
• 1:12:24
  His stuff is just nasty. And I think I'm pretty confident that he's
• 1:12:29
  gonna have that full time job locked up, no questions about it. The
• 1:12:32
  Marlins, you know, they believe they're winning team. Do I believe it?
• 1:12:35
  I'm not quite sure, but that's fine. Like they're gonna be in
• 1:12:39
  a lot of close games, a lot of the think of it, and
• 1:12:42
  I think he's going to be a guy that gets wins and saves across the
• 1:12:45
  board. So I really really like Tanner. Scott I'm gonna own him in
• 1:12:49
  a lot of places, because again, I think there's absolute studs here that
• 1:12:56
  are going lower than they should be because some question marks and or going for
• 1:13:01
  I was a bad teams quote unquote, and so the bad narves, the
• 1:13:05
  Scotts, things like that. You can build an ace relief corps off these
• 1:13:09
  guys that be paying you know, definitely top fifteen prices. Scott's seventeen of
• 1:13:15
  the off the draft board. That's crazy. Yeah, I mean, honestly,
• 1:13:19
  I was gonna with my eighth pick coming up, I was thought I'd
• 1:13:24
  have to waffle about whether or not I was gonna take him. I love
• 1:13:27
  Tanner Scott as well too, because I think the walk rate drop is legit.
• 1:13:32
  Going down to Miami is really turned Tanner Scott around. And I don't
• 1:13:36
  know what sort of magic they're putting in the water down there in Miami to
• 1:13:42
  churn out all these pictures, but you can see it. His first strike
• 1:13:46
  rate jumped from a career average like in the mid fifties to sixty nine percent
• 1:13:53
  last year. That the Marlins had a plan with Tanner Scott to tell him
• 1:13:57
  to pound the zone with this stuff. It's absolutely filthy stuff. And so
• 1:14:02
  I think it's all about him just proactively getting that first strike and then staying
• 1:14:09
  in the strike zone that you can see. He also put up a career
• 1:14:12
  high zone percentage last year forty five percent, So he just got better at
• 1:14:16
  throwing strikes and that's when you got the stuff that Terren Scott has. Not
• 1:14:21
  many people are touching it in the zone anyway. So I think he's absolutely
• 1:14:27
  the guy in this top ten that I wouldn't be surprised that we do this
• 1:14:31
  this time next year, that he might be starting to sniff that upper tier
• 1:14:36
  up in and maybe even like passing Josh Hater is the best overall lefty.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah, I think you're right, And you know you talked about strikeouts earlier.
• 1:14:45
  He did strike out more than one hundred guys last year, so it's
• 1:14:51
  getting that out of a closer, especially a guy that's going between fifteen and
• 1:14:57
  twenty. Like, I think there's a ton to to love there. There
• 1:15:00
  were only I think two guys that were qualified closers last year that struck out
• 1:15:06
  more guys than Tanner Scott's Felix Patista and Matt Brash. Wow, And not
• 1:15:14
  to ruin anything, but Matt Brash might not be pitching this year, and
• 1:15:17
  I'm pretty sure Phillips Patista's not, So there's a lot of strikeout upside there
• 1:15:23
  from a volume perspective. Even though other guys might have a higher caper nine
• 1:15:28
  than Scott does, it seems like he's going to get the usage the more
• 1:15:32
  than others. Yeah, I totally agree. Okay, well, now I've
• 1:15:39
  got a little bit of a test done. What I want to do here.
• 1:15:47
  I think I'm gonna go with Evan Phillips here and number I thought you
• 1:15:50
  what I thought you might. I love him a lot. That he is
• 1:15:56
  got the lowest strikeout rate from what we've talked about so far, but the
• 1:16:00
  whip that he's put up in the past two years. He's thrown a hundred
• 1:16:04
  and twenty four innings to the tune of a point eight whip with the Dodgers
• 1:16:11
  over the past two years. It's absurd. And it's a little bit of
• 1:16:15
  like an Ie factor too. When you watch Evan Phillips pitch, everyone's uncomfortable
• 1:16:19
  in the box. It's just really fantastic stuff. And even if he's not
• 1:16:25
  getting the strikeouts that he is that some of the other guys we've talked about
• 1:16:29
  are getting. He's not giving up any hard contact, like it's really difficult
• 1:16:34
  to square up his stuff, and he's got the great ground ball rate,
• 1:16:38
  which you love, and he just is a really legitimate pitcher that he's gonna
• 1:16:45
  be in the back end of the bullpen for the Dodgers. I think there's
• 1:16:48
  a good chance that he just is the outright closer to let things work the
• 1:16:55
  best. He's got a lot of great arms in front of him, including
• 1:17:00
  Bruce ar Gradarole, but I think Bruce ar Graderole gives up too much contact
• 1:17:02
  to close. And you got Ryan Brasier there too, But I think they're
• 1:17:08
  gonna let Evan Phillips be the back of the bullpen guy. And even if
• 1:17:14
  he's not, then you're looking at somebody who's just getting high leverage work at
• 1:17:17
  a super ridiculously low whip better chance for wins. And so I love what
• 1:17:25
  I think Evan Phillips can give you for the entire season. Just also because
• 1:17:29
  he's not throwing quite as hard as everybody else that we've talked about, less
• 1:17:32
  chance of I think him blowing out quite as hard. So that also brings
• 1:17:38
  it up a little bit to speaking of like David Budner a little bit like
• 1:17:44
  higher floor. I think on Evan Phillips as much as you can have a
• 1:17:46
  high floor and a closer. Yeah, Phillips is a hard one with me.
• 1:17:51
  I maybe it's because he's got the most boring name. Again, let's
• 1:17:55
  talk about Lane Thomas. It's this just like there's not like a heat didn't
• 1:18:00
  have like this really excitement coming up, like he was this flamethrower or anything
• 1:18:02
  like that. He just seems to be a really really good pitcher. And
• 1:18:06
  again I think that there's he pitching for the Dodgers. The only like is
• 1:18:13
  the concern that they're gonna blow everybody out by too much. There won't be
• 1:18:15
  enough save opportunities, Like I don't know if that's if that's a thing.
• 1:18:19
  But he again, he's another guy going in the mid teens. He's like
• 1:18:21
  the thirteen fourteenth closure off the board and you look at it and go like
• 1:18:27
  why, like what's the concern here? You know, I was, I
• 1:18:30
  was playing with him, and I think that the concern there is like is
• 1:18:33
  he actually the guy? I don't feel like they ever actually anointed him last
• 1:18:38
  year, and but like who else is is it gonna be Graderal. I
• 1:18:41
  don't think it's gonna be Graderal. I don't know who else it would be.
• 1:18:44
  So I'm I'm a little lower in Phillips just because of that. There's
• 1:18:47
  like this, I don't know what it is that this holding him back,
• 1:18:50
  but I can't put a finger on it. So why why hold him back?
• 1:18:55
  And why wait on him? So I mean, take take a wait
• 1:18:59
  a little bit, go like Tanner, Scott Evan Phillips one two closers on
• 1:19:03
  your team. Man, you're gonna be really really happy. And he's not
• 1:19:06
  a slouch in the strikeouts either. He's he's pretty customers good. It's it's
• 1:19:11
  only ten per k for nine, so yeah, only ten? Yeah,
• 1:19:16
  Okay, you're up with number nine. All right, Well I'm gonna have
• 1:19:20
  to go back to maybe some some more expected fallow a DP. I'm gonna
• 1:19:26
  go with Emmanuel Clase plus A for the Guardians. You know he if it
• 1:19:33
  wasn't for last year, we'd be probably talking with uh with him in the
• 1:19:38
  top three or four. He last year, he just had a down year
• 1:19:44
  for his standards. His strikeouts were down. They were only eight k for
• 1:19:48
  nine after having back to back years of nine and a half but from a
• 1:19:55
  you know, his walk for nine was under two. He did have some
• 1:20:00
  really rough luck work luck for his career from a baby and left on base
• 1:20:03
  perspective, and but he still kept them all on the ground fifty five percent
• 1:20:09
  of the time, which was the worst of his career. So you know,
• 1:20:13
  he's still pumping up nearly one hundred miles an hour. Like, there's
• 1:20:18
  a lot to like here. The only thing, the only that kind of
• 1:20:20
  you know, blemish was this the strikeouts seemed to be down just a little
• 1:20:26
  bit. But otherwise I really think that there's a lot to like here,
• 1:20:30
  and you have to think with the off season that kind of bounces back.
• 1:20:33
  So at this point in the closers, I'm pretty happy with him. And
• 1:20:36
  there's you know, he's got two back back seasons of forty saves. You
• 1:20:45
  gotta really like that. So yes, this is probably one of the first
• 1:20:47
  place we're kind of deviating from the strikeouts, which could hurt you a little
• 1:20:50
  bit, but man, that the save up side, especially there in Cleveland,
• 1:20:57
  you know, there's no question he is the for them. So I'm
• 1:21:00
  going with a manual here and a little bit more risk, I think than
• 1:21:05
  some of the other guys we've talked about, but I think he picks backup
• 1:21:10
  where he's at with twenty one twenty two. Yeah, And I do think
• 1:21:15
  like this is where I would have taken him too. That all the flags
• 1:21:18
  that you're talking about are why I am fading a manual class A. That
• 1:21:25
  he also gave up the most contact he's ever given up in a seasons.
• 1:21:30
  He gave up the most hard contact he's ever given off in a season.
• 1:21:32
  And I do wonder if it's a little bit because he's really predictable. He
• 1:21:36
  only really throws like a cutter and a slider. They're both going the same
• 1:21:41
  direction. He's throwing that cutter seventy percent of the time. I would just
• 1:21:45
  wonder if people are starting to get a little bit used to it and knowing
• 1:21:48
  where it's going and reading it well. As well. As there's a manager
• 1:21:55
  change in Cleveland that Francona's not going to be there anymore, we don't know
• 1:21:58
  how Vote's going to run that bullpen. It's another solid bullpen, and he
• 1:22:02
  could mix and match a little bit more and try to keep a manual class
• 1:22:06
  A fresh class as pitch in the mid seventies in innings for the past two
• 1:22:13
  years that Francona wrote him pretty hard. So I think with all those concerns,
• 1:22:17
  that's why I've got him back here. I just don't think either of
• 1:22:19
  us are going to end up with him very much then, because he's going
• 1:22:24
  like the third fourth closer off the board. Because you also see those mid
• 1:22:28
  forty saves the past couple of years, and it's really hard to turn that
• 1:22:30
  down because, like we said, like some of these guys, the upsidees
• 1:22:35
  only like maybe twenty five or thirty saves, and so, yeah, I
• 1:22:40
  don't have anything against the manual class A. It's just like I'm kind of
• 1:22:44
  lining them up with the skills that I've got, and this is where I
• 1:22:46
  would rink them. Yeah, I think that that's the thing the other guys
• 1:22:49
  that I'd rather invest him because of some of the flags. But at a
• 1:22:55
  certain point, I mean, you can't deny the guy is a really good
• 1:22:58
  pitcher and a really good clothes but yeah, there's enough red flags like that
• 1:23:03
  you could see the wheels falling off and wouldn't be completely shocked. Yeah,
• 1:23:08
  exactly. Okay, Well, this one's tough because I'm not sure I really
• 1:23:15
  want anybody that bad, but I'm gonna have to like make a case for
• 1:23:18
  one of them. You know. It's like that situation where it's just like
• 1:23:21
  I'm gonna have to vouch that one of these guys is better than everybody else
• 1:23:27
  on the board, but not totally sure. I think when push comes to
• 1:23:32
  shove, I prefer Ryan Helsley here that and maybe I'll back into it because
• 1:23:41
  of like what I don't like about some of the other guys in consideration,
• 1:23:45
  then we can use that as a jumping point to some of those other arms
• 1:23:50
  for like Andre's Munos here. I just don't love the mix and match possibilities
• 1:23:56
  in Seattle that they've shown. Resk there too, Yeah, that too.
• 1:24:01
  In terms of Jordan Romano, it is risk injury. I do not like
• 1:24:04
  that back injury, and it really flared up last year. And I would
• 1:24:11
  rather roll the dice on Helsley because of the strikeout upsite that Helsley obviously has
• 1:24:15
  injury risk because he throws one hundred and five miles an hour and it looks
• 1:24:21
  high effort as all get out, but the rewards for what he's pumping out
• 1:24:29
  are there in the strikeouts. Camillo duval I think a lot of the stuff
• 1:24:32
  that we just said about Manual class A, you can almost copy and paste
• 1:24:36
  on Duval and even more so, like Duvall looked gassed at the end of
• 1:24:42
  last year. He was really falling apart. The best part about Devall's he
• 1:24:45
  pitched it on the West Coast and so you don't have to don't have to
• 1:24:47
  stand to watch it. Just wake up in the morning and just move on
• 1:24:50
  and just look at the stats at the end of the season and hope for
• 1:24:53
  the best. Yeah. And then I think the other leg up here for
• 1:24:57
  Ryan Helsley is it doesn't really look like anybody's coming for his job anytime soon.
• 1:25:02
  In Seattle or Saint Louis. Giovanni Gyagos looked awful in the closer role,
• 1:25:11
  like just melt underneath the pressure every time it was given to him.
• 1:25:14
  I think he's going to permanently be a seventh eighth inning setup guy. Jojo
• 1:25:19
  Romero got some time in the closer's role, but he's their high leverage lefty,
• 1:25:24
  and Jojo Romero that too. Yeah, and everybody else in that bullpen.
• 1:25:30
  I mean they're solid in terms of Andrew Kiddridge coming over and Keenan Martin
• 1:25:33
  being there. I really like what John King can bring to the table as
• 1:25:39
  well. Andre Plante is maybe one of the worst pitchers in baseball that I've
• 1:25:43
  seen, Like I do not like him in terms of what he offers,
• 1:25:45
  but it's a pretty solid bullpen and I don't see anybody else coming for this
• 1:25:49
  job in Saint Louis so until Ryan Helsley blows out like it's his. And
• 1:25:55
  because of that, I'm putting up in the top ten because skills wise,
• 1:26:00
  you can't argue with it. The fastball is electric, the slider bites and
• 1:26:04
  when it's all working, he really is in consideration for like, you know,
• 1:26:11
  being as good as Pete Fairbanks, but just I think you're compared to
• 1:26:15
  Pete Fairbanks because of the high effort. It's just a little bit more injury
• 1:26:18
  risk. Yeah, I think you're right. It's the injury risk with Elsley
• 1:26:23
  is is like, man, it feels like you can't You're not going to
• 1:26:27
  make it through a season without him being injured. It's just a matter how
• 1:26:30
  long he's on the shelf, is what I feel like with Helsley. You
• 1:26:32
  know, as I look at the other names that I would probably take above
• 1:26:36
  Helsley, I think the one you didn't mention that I'm surprised that neither of
• 1:26:42
  us took me in the top ten, as rayceil Iglesias puching there in Atlanta,
• 1:26:47
  like, well, you talk about just like steady Eddie and in a
• 1:26:50
  great lineup, you know, behind him, Like I feel like that's it
• 1:26:55
  feels like it should be top ten, but it's just not that exciting.
• 1:26:59
  And I'm on the the edge of the ball Romano. But yeah, Ellesley
• 1:27:08
  that the upside is definitely more than those guys. And so at this point
• 1:27:12
  you're kind of trying to pick the pick between like am I am I risking
• 1:27:15
  injury or am I risking the blow up with the guy didn't have the job,
• 1:27:18
  Like you're teetering on that point for sure. Yeah, And within Glaciers,
• 1:27:25
  I don't know what it is. I just can't quite get behind him,
• 1:27:28
  partly because we've seen him struggle at times over the past couple of years.
• 1:27:32
  He's had a barking shoulder here and there, and I guess I didn't
• 1:27:38
  even really realize like how steady heady he was last year. It just like
• 1:27:44
  I'm not totally sold on him being able to repeat it because the shoulder and
• 1:27:49
  I mean that might be like maybe the stacked bullpen in all the league,
• 1:27:56
  Like there's a lot of other closers in that bullpen between aj Mentor, Ronaldo
• 1:28:00
  Lopez, Joe him and as Pierce Johnson got saved last year for the Rockies,
• 1:28:05
  Tyler Matzix back Aaron Bummer that you could see it doesn't take much for
• 1:28:11
  Ryce Iglaciers to slip up. And even though he's been a solid like thirty
• 1:28:16
  plus save guy for the past few years, it doesn't take much for them,
• 1:28:20
  I think, to flip that switch and pull that rug out from underneath
• 1:28:24
  him. Oddly, Yeah, I think you look at both ways at the
• 1:28:28
  same time, like they don't need to like he he he's proven in the
• 1:28:31
  job. Like to that steady Eddie comment, like it's been how many years
• 1:28:36
  now, like seven years in a row he struck out more than ten per
• 1:28:40
  per nine. He's to have four years in a row with an ERA under
• 1:28:43
  three, and if you go back in another four years, he had one
• 1:28:47
  ERA over three during that four It's like it's just been steady as all get
• 1:28:50
  out. Yeah, but he's but he's always a little bit like as is
• 1:28:55
  the wheels and they come off like is it great, Like he's not the
• 1:28:58
  lights out, He's not you know, he's just really really solid. Well
• 1:29:01
  because of that, since they have so many other good arms, they don't
• 1:29:03
  need to worry about it. They just leave him in that role and do
• 1:29:05
  everything else around him. And the same opportunity he's there, you put him
• 1:29:10
  in, he's most likely this is converted move on. So I it just
• 1:29:14
  feel we're like this the one guy that feels like we either of us should
• 1:29:16
  have grabbed in the top ten. Yeah, but it just didn't seem to
• 1:29:20
  happen, So that that is interesting to me. But yeah, and then
• 1:29:26
  oddly, I think the next kind of person I have on the outside looking
• 1:29:30
  in at this group is Craig Kimberl. We talk him about him a lot,
• 1:29:33
  and that landings the landing spot is just too fantastic for me to pass
• 1:29:41
  up on him. Like I do love when you're talking about, uh,
• 1:29:44
  just the strategy, Like if I could get like, you know, one
• 1:29:47
  of those top tier guys and then do something like Craig Kimberl And even like
• 1:29:57
  Alexis Diaz we haven't talked about either. He's eighty, he is really high,
• 1:30:00
  but like his stuff looked real bad by the end of last year.
• 1:30:05
  But Clay Holmes, I like to but like a Clay Holmes yep, Craig
• 1:30:10
  Kimberl where you just you're almost buying the team in the role more than anything
• 1:30:14
  else, which happens a lot more with closers. You know that you just
• 1:30:17
  want to pick the best team and you know that the saves will come.
• 1:30:20
  That ratios and other things kind of be damned because I'm trying to get those
• 1:30:27
  thirty saves. So I think that's where you start picking a little bit more
• 1:30:31
  towards teams here and trying to avoid anything with the Oakland bullpen, you know,
• 1:30:38
  anything involving like the Washington bullpen, and just trying to find guys that
• 1:30:44
  maybe even if their skills aren't quite up to snuff, with these top ten
• 1:30:47
  guys, they could put up top ten saves totals for you. Yeah,
• 1:30:53
  I think you're absolutely right. There's there there really is an interesting group than
• 1:30:58
  the teams there that like, if you could get a few of those guys,
• 1:31:00
  you could be really really happy with what you have and I don't think
• 1:31:03
  you have to worry about your your closure situation all year, And so there
• 1:31:09
  is a little bit of shopping at the thrift store on closures this year,
• 1:31:15
  where it just seems like the market is down on some guys that it doesn't
• 1:31:17
  they don't need to be. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think part of
• 1:31:21
  it too is when you come back around for that first run of waiver wire
• 1:31:28
  pickups and fab that there's a lot of bullpens that are not sorted out that
• 1:31:31
  I think we're going to be fruitful in terms of you don't have anything sorted
• 1:31:38
  out in Kansas City or San Diego right now, and I think both of
• 1:31:41
  those teams will be, you know, hovering just on wild card contention,
• 1:31:45
  and those usually are the types of teams that produce lots of saves. I
• 1:31:48
  mean, just like at David Bednar last year. And so I'm also interested
• 1:31:53
  to see what happens in the White Sox bullpen, just because I do think
• 1:31:57
  that if they give that job to Brebia, he's got the skill set to
• 1:32:00
  really run with it. It's not going to be a large volume of saves,
• 1:32:03
  but you're looking at something that could just be there as a closer,
• 1:32:10
  really cheap, you know, the way that Trevor May was a lot last
• 1:32:13
  year. And you're just also Philadelphia is unsettled right now. To Josel,
• 1:32:18
  Varuda is the leader in the clubhouse, but another good team where you could
• 1:32:23
  see somebody really rising to the top early on in the season and then maybe
• 1:32:28
  go out in the waiver wire and pick them up. So we look at
• 1:32:34
  the look at the guys kind of you know past you know, if you
• 1:32:36
  if you're if you're taking a dart throw on guys past twenty that's twenty five.
• 1:32:44
  Who's the Who's the one guy that you're looking to? Say, you
• 1:32:46
  know, everybody's drafted their closers and you're like, I want to I want
• 1:32:49
  to grab one more guy that's really gonna put me over the over the edge
• 1:32:53
  from a relief pitcher closer perspective, Who's the Who's the guy that you're really
• 1:32:58
  zeroing in on after the clear run of closures is over. I'm gonna sound
• 1:33:06
  like such a hypocrite. It's Jennier Cano. Just in case the Greig Kimberl
• 1:33:13
  experiment doesn't work, that his ADP is still wonky because it's heavily weighted by
• 1:33:19
  before Craig Kimberl's signing draftings, but after Kimberl came into Baltimore, Canoe's overall,
• 1:33:29
  like ADP really has start to sink a lot, and he's really fallen
• 1:33:33
  a lot on rankings. I'm looking at like the Fangrass rankings right here,
• 1:33:38
  he is thirty seventh behind like Chris Martin and a world as Chapman. And
• 1:33:43
  so I think if you are looking for the one setup guy who could walk
• 1:33:47
  into like the best situation possible, it would be Cano. And he was
• 1:33:53
  so magical and electric last year that I don't think he's gonna have any issues
• 1:33:58
  walking in. And he even provided some good ratio work for you last year,
• 1:34:03
  and so it's a good dart throw. I think when I'm looking past
• 1:34:08
  like all the closers going and like I'm trying to get into that first wave
• 1:34:12
  of setup guys that is waiting for the job to clear out in front of
• 1:34:15
  him. That especially, Yeah, if I'm going to be buying Kimberl shares,
• 1:34:18
  I think you've got to take Cano. If you're taking any Kimberl shares
• 1:34:21
  just to handcuff yourself, what about you? What's your choice? Yeah,
• 1:34:27
  I you probably probably could see this one coming. But I love Robert Stevenson,
• 1:34:32
  Okay, Yeah, looking at him like he's in a lot of the
• 1:34:35
  rankings, he's just outside the top thirty because Carlos estiv is just inside the
• 1:34:42
  top thirty. Yeah, like you're trying to figure out who's the closer.
• 1:34:45
  Like I just look at the skills there and I think he is just he
• 1:34:48
  figures something out last year, or say the race figure something out and told
• 1:34:51
  him what to do last year, and he's just who was lights out.
• 1:34:57
  You talk about a guy that can easily strike out a guys in a season
• 1:35:01
  of the relief role, it's Stevenson. And so I think he's one of
• 1:35:04
  those that you know, he could easily end up with fifteen saves, ten
• 1:35:10
  wins or some I guess the Angels. Maybe not ten wins, Yeah,
• 1:35:14
  maybe, Yeah. But like I think that there's a lot to like there,
• 1:35:17
  and he's one of those ratios are gonna be fantastic. Like you draft
• 1:35:21
  him and he ended up not for whatever reason, not getting that close role,
• 1:35:25
  You're still really really happy with everything he delivers. So I like Stevenson.
• 1:35:29
  He's a guy I'm gonna target a lot. I think, Yeah,
• 1:35:30
  that's a great choice. And I do think that this is the year I
• 1:35:34
  target just more setup men overall, just to We've talked about this a lot
• 1:35:39
  over the offseason, that you're getting less and less out of your starting pitching
• 1:35:43
  every year, and so finding somebody like a Stevenson who is going to give
• 1:35:47
  you some really great ratios over seventy five ish innings, I think that's a
• 1:35:54
  great play to plug and play when you've got starters that don't have great matchups
• 1:35:58
  or starters who just aren't pulling their weight. And I think last year teams
• 1:36:04
  really tore through their minor leaguers trying to bring arms up and find guys,
• 1:36:09
  and so I think this year could be just a little thinner from the overall
• 1:36:14
  pitching perspective, and another year of the pitch clock wearing guys down. So
• 1:36:18
  I think relievers could be just a more important piece of the fancy game here
• 1:36:23
  in twenty twenty four than it has been really since the dawn of artiss Rey
• 1:36:28
  League baseball. Well that's a good, good one, since a don Or
• 1:36:34
  Tissory League baseball. Yeah, yeah, Any any other guys that you want
• 1:36:39
  to call out that you'd be kind of watching later, just as flyers or
• 1:36:43
  anything like that, just in the same vein, or is that kind of
• 1:36:46
  at that point, Waiver wire material do your shopping at the five and dimes?
• 1:36:50
  Well, yeah, I mean I think a little bit with like injuries
• 1:36:54
  that have already hit this pool in terms of you mentioned Matt Brash going down,
• 1:36:58
  So I think that should boost Gregory Santos on boards a little bit because
• 1:37:02
  of a little bit of that what we just talked about with what we don't
• 1:37:06
  like about Andres Munos. That if the Cloud's part in terms of like injuries
• 1:37:12
  or performance or whatever, Gregory Santos could be walking into thirty saves there in
• 1:37:16
  Seattle, Great dart throw. I also if I'm watching how he went in
• 1:37:23
  for an MRI on his back this week, but that's Yuki mat Suy from
• 1:37:27
  the Padres. His stuff has looked really awesome out of the gate, and
• 1:37:30
  so not only for like a closer role, but you know, if they
• 1:37:35
  do use Yuki mat Sui in some sort of different role where maybe he is
• 1:37:41
  going more than an inning, you could be looking at a guy that is
• 1:37:45
  going to give you a really nice strikeout volume. Because the stuff is pretty
• 1:37:47
  filthy coming off of Yuki mat Sue's hand, and so I'm interested to watch
• 1:37:51
  how his back shapes up over the next couple of weeks. What about you.
• 1:37:57
  Yeah, I think one guy that I'm I'm and I don't he's fair
• 1:38:00
  to call him or reliever. I'm really interested in the A. J.
• 1:38:02
  Puck. I'm really interested to see Miami. Looks like they're going to try
• 1:38:08
  to give him a chance as a starter. But he's he's really been fantastic
• 1:38:12
  last years, so you know, he's he his velocity has been up.
• 1:38:16
  He seems like he's just figuring out how to pitch and the pedigree is there.
• 1:38:19
  You know, he's kind of like, uh, you know, I
• 1:38:23
  want to be Josh Hater type type thing. And so I think that Puck's
• 1:38:27
  one of those guys that, regardless of the role he goes in, he's
• 1:38:30
  probably gonna have some type of intrigue and value and you know, yeah,
• 1:38:34
  he's he's not gonna be the closer. I love Tanner Scott. I also
• 1:38:39
  love uh Andrew Nardi there well, yep, there's there's a lot to like
• 1:38:45
  there. But I think he's the kind of guy that could really kind of
• 1:38:48
  settle into an opener role or a follower role and and really gets here some
• 1:38:53
  really fun volume that you don't don't kind of expect he's a guy that's really
• 1:39:00
  get through the line of one maybe two times really well. So he's he's
• 1:39:04
  he's a reliever, but I'm not sure where he will else play land,
• 1:39:08
  But I'm gonna be paying really close attention to as you puck this spring.
• 1:39:12
  Yeah. Absolutely, I think that the closer pool is going to take a
• 1:39:14
  lot of work just throughout the year because it is so flat in the middles
• 1:39:18
  that it's lots of opportunities to zig and zag, and obviously injury and poor
• 1:39:24
  performance is going to turn over a lot of these jobs. So I'm kind
• 1:39:28
  of excited for what the reliever pool is going to turn into because there's lots
• 1:39:32
  of just really interesting arms littered all throughout the league right now. I think
• 1:39:36
  it's also going to give us really great fodder for personally for my Waiver Wire
• 1:39:42
  articles and here on the pod as we kind of talk about new closer stepping
• 1:39:45
  up throughout the season. Absolutely hate this was a blast. Closures are so
• 1:39:50
  entertaining and there is not a right answer, that's for sure, No,
• 1:39:55
  not at all. So yeah, if you think you have one, though,
• 1:39:58
  and you want to correct on our top ten, you can reach out
• 1:40:00
  to the pod on Twitter at Cards Categories or email the pod at Cards Categories
• 1:40:06
  at gmail dot com. And brew remind everybody where they can find you.
• 1:40:11
  Yep, you can find me over ex Twitter, Jay Brewer one seven.
• 1:40:15
  Also can find me on the weekends doing your hitter profiles top one hundred hitters
• 1:40:19
  for the season over on rasball. Yeah, and you can find me on
• 1:40:25
  Twitter slash x and blue Sky at mcool seven. And you'll be able to
• 1:40:30
  find me on rasball starting at the beginning of the season when I do start
• 1:40:34
  pumping out those waiver wire reports, and then obviously every week here on the
• 1:40:38
  Cards and Categories podcast. If you want to get any gear for the upcoming
• 1:40:44
  baseball season, we've got some hats, some T shirts, maybe not winter
• 1:40:47
  hats, although who knows, given the wild swings we're having here in the
• 1:40:50
  Midwest, maybe you'll need a winter hat. Again. You can find it
• 1:40:55
  out in our show notes. We got all sorts of swag and gear down
• 1:40:59
  there. Check out rasball dot com for all sorts of subscriptions to help you
• 1:41:02
  through your draft season. Rudy's War Room, I think has been getting a
• 1:41:05
  lot of use to have all of us writers and it's a great tool that
• 1:41:11
  just helps you plan and map your way through drafts. And yeah, we
• 1:41:15
  will be back again, same time, same place, next week here on
• 1:41:19
  cards and categories. Thanks for joining us and sticking around. See you