Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 37 : Opening Day And Three Topps Releases

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Ep. 37 : Opening Day And Three Topps Releases · Cards & Categories

• 0:15
  Hello, and welcome everybody to episode thirty seven of Cards and Categories. I'm
• 0:20
  Mike Coolard from Rasball here, joined as always by my very good friend Jeremy
• 0:24
  Brewer, also from Rassball, and we're recording this on opening day. Eve.
• 0:30
  Are you how what's your excitement level right now? Jeremy, My excitement
• 0:34
  levels is seven And just because I can't, I need everybody else to put
• 0:40
  their players on the il Yeah, that is true, otherwise it'd be a
• 0:44
  ten. But I'm sitting here going I need to get my lineups in and
• 0:48
  I need to make cuts because nobody wants to put their players on the injured
• 0:51
  list. And as everybody knows, spring training decided to hurt everybody. And
• 0:57
  uh, if you're like me, like half my pitching staff's out or trying
• 1:00
  to figure things out. So I'm a seven because I can't have Opening Day
• 1:03
  come yet because I need my lineup set. But then once they're set,
• 1:07
  I'll be a ten. So I'm midway through. How about you? Are
• 1:10
  you with the ten? I mean, there's just gonna go to eleven.
• 1:12
  Yeah, it's gonna be tough to sleep tonight. And I also, I
• 1:17
  have faith in all of the fantasy websites out there being able to get their
• 1:21
  coding updated in terms of the teams flipping those transactions and pushing it through.
• 1:26
  If not, I know, I'm I've got lots of commission privileges and lots
• 1:32
  of our league, so I can force it anyway. But yeah, it
• 1:34
  is gonna be a blast tomorrow. I mean, I guess We've already got
• 1:38
  two rainouts, which is a little bit of a bummer, but that's what
• 1:42
  you get for not having any sort of domed stadium on the East Coast and
• 1:48
  some of these colder weather situations. But we should still have a pretty good
• 1:53
  slate of baseball tomorrow opening up. And yeah, I'm not even sure like
• 1:59
  which game I'm gonna be focused on the most, because on opening Day,
• 2:01
  I just love seeing it all. I love the pageantry of all of the
• 2:06
  intros of each team and going through like most of the teams also on MLB
• 2:12
  TV, like they'll show you the full intro so you can see them go
• 2:15
  through, all the bench coaches and some teams go like all the way through
• 2:19
  like social media people and stuff. It's a it can be quite the rockous
• 2:23
  time, and so I'm just excited for all of it. I'm just ready
• 2:27
  to mainline baseball, and especially today it was tough not having any spring training
• 2:31
  to watch. There weren't even any college games on that. It was a
• 2:35
  real it was like a baseball drought, like right after the All Star break
• 2:38
  when they take it away from you. So I'm pumped. Yeah, it's
• 2:43
  there. It's gonna be fun. I was just looking through the the the
• 2:46
  all the big names tomorrow taking them mound. It's just fun to see like
• 2:50
  everybody's ace and what they're gonna gonna bring to the season. Cuchet, Kyle
• 2:58
  Freeland, Yeah, I'll release there so it'll it'll be funny. And my
• 3:02
  Cardinals with Miles Michaelis. Yeah, so I miss southing Gray already. Yeah,
• 3:09
  it's gonna be a long couple of weeks waiting for Sunny Cray to make
• 3:13
  his way back to that rotation in Saint Louis. But don't worry. They
• 3:15
  have innings, yes hopefully. Okay, Well, we do have a great
• 3:22
  show kind of reviewing opening day tidbits here and there and getting into some news
• 3:28
  and notes first, and then after that we'll get into some of our ras
• 3:31
  ball staff picks, looking at who had some maybe of our favorite picks or
• 3:38
  least favorite picks. And then after that, we've got three new TOP sets
• 3:40
  that drop today as we're recording this on March twenty seventh, which I know
• 3:46
  we've been joking over the past couple of weeks. We were impressed that TOPS
• 3:50
  was going to get all out the door, but they did. I checked
• 3:53
  that all three of the sets were released, although we'll get into it,
• 3:55
  one of them not really released to the public, so pretty hard to get
• 4:00
  your hands on. But with that, we will dive right into the nudes
• 4:04
  and notes and transactions and injuries, and we'll start right off the bat with
• 4:10
  the biggest one that's still kind of hanging over Major League Baseball right now,
• 4:13
  and that is sho hey Otani with his interpreter Ipe Misahara being ebroiled in a
• 4:19
  gambling scandal that when we talked last week, it was really like it had
• 4:25
  just broken, like it was supported. So we didn't even really want to
• 4:29
  speculate too much because it was just so wild in terms of where all the
• 4:34
  stories had been and where they were going. So at this point, it
• 4:39
  does look like the story is that Ipe did steal these funds from show Hey
• 4:45
  that's what Otani said during a press conference yesterday. And I do generally believe
• 4:49
  that because that's it was a pretty strong warded statement in terms of stealing and
• 4:55
  misappropriation and just fraud. That for Otani to put those statements out into public
• 5:00
  like that, it's you've got to really have a lot of footing to stand
• 5:05
  on. And maybe we're all also a little conditioned from you know, some
• 5:09
  of the other leaders in this country, especially like not being held with their
• 5:13
  words. But I do feel like Otani probably will be here. But I
• 5:15
  think my biggest question for you brew before we get into you know a little
• 5:19
  bit of like that, but like what do you think this will do to
• 5:24
  a Tani season overall? And like, I mean, I guess where do
• 5:27
  you stand now that you've seen a little bit more of the story. Yeah,
• 5:30
  I mean, I I have to you know, I'm looking at with
• 5:33
  the with the rosy glasses here, and I have to say that I don't
• 5:36
  think Otani knew anything was going on. I don't think that it's it's unfortunate.
• 5:45
  I guess when you have that kind of money, you know, more
• 5:46
  and a half million dollars, just you know, just jump chains, just
• 5:49
  kind of slips away when you lost your wallet for the day type of thing.
• 5:54
  So I'm I generally kind of believe the story. I mean, it
• 5:59
  does. It does sound like you know, stolen funds, fraud, misappropriation,
• 6:01
  sounds like my kids having breakfast with each other. But it's it's it's
• 6:08
  it's unfortunate. I am hopeful and I do believe this is going to kind
• 6:12
  of blow over pretty gusharn quickly because I think Otani's come off pretty gush on
• 6:15
  incredible and it's going to be a storyline like simmering. But it's not.
• 6:20
  I don't think it's going to be. There's not like the There doesn't seem
• 6:27
  to be a big underlying tone that maybe Otani did something or questions of what
• 6:30
  did he do? Like it seems generally the baseball population is pulling for the
• 6:34
  guy and doesn't believe there was anything uh, you know, under under the
• 6:41
  under the covers here. So as far as his outlook for the season,
• 6:46
  I I I think I'm kind of glad that he's not pitching because I feel
• 6:49
  like your headspace, like hitting is a little different than pitching, and I
• 6:54
  think that gives him a chance to kind of go about his way and and
• 6:57
  still work his way into the to the dodge as well. This blows over.
• 7:00
  I don't think it really impacts his performance. At the end of the
• 7:03
  day, I'm not worried about him missing games because of this or anything.
• 7:08
  Maybe if you're trying to choose, but like you're trying to convince yourself not
• 7:11
  to draft Otani, like, sure you can use this, but I'm not.
• 7:15
  I'm not. It does not affect his value for me one way or
• 7:18
  the other. So maybe maybe I'm in the minority, But how about you,
• 7:21
  Where where do you sit? I think slightly so like I think I'm
• 7:28
  slightly discounting his value for this season, not because of like any lost time
• 7:33
  to suspension or anything, because as you said, I don't think there's anything
• 7:38
  coming down from MLB as they get into this investigation between the propensity for people
• 7:45
  when they steal money don't leave a great trail, and so I'm not surprised
• 7:48
  that Otani was caught off guard by this as well as like the more and
• 7:53
  more I hear about Otani and Epey's relationship overall, that it did seem like
• 8:00
  pay was a little bit more of like a manager personal assistant, so he
• 8:03
  had a lot of access to a lot of things, and once you get
• 8:05
  somebody with a gambling addiction into that sort of situation, it can spiral really
• 8:11
  fast. So that close relationship, though, is why I am worried about
• 8:16
  Otani, just mostly from like a mental health standpoint and looking for like people
• 8:22
  to trust. Like that's got to be really hard as Otani's working through just
• 8:26
  honestly, probably the shock and grief and loss of somebody so close to him
• 8:33
  doing this sort of trans you know, sort of transgression, and also how
• 8:37
  do you kind of create new bonds with people and trust them really well.
• 8:43
  So it's a lot to handle mentally and emotionally. That I mean, if
• 8:46
  there was anybody in sports that I think could handle it, Otani is amongst
• 8:52
  it, just because he really does seem focused on his craft and to be
• 8:56
  able to get to where he's gotten between being an elite hitter and an elite
• 9:01
  pitcher. The mental fortitude is just otherworldly, I would think. But I
• 9:07
  think because of that, I didn't see like any chances to take him in
• 9:13
  drafts over this past weekend, just because people who believed in him have really
• 9:16
  believed in him, and I didn't really have any great draft positions where he
• 9:20
  was on the board for me or I think even throughout draft season, I
• 9:24
  was a little like just one or two ranks lower on him than everybody else
• 9:28
  because I was usually just not looking for a util only guy as well as
• 9:35
  I'm still not totally sure like how he's gonna hit with the UCL injury,
• 9:39
  and you know, there's just enough questions where I felt comfortable going with other
• 9:43
  directions, and so if I do own him, I'm not. I don't
• 9:46
  think he's gonna be a regretful first round pick in the end, but I
• 9:52
  think I may be expecting somewhere like ninety to ninety five percent of the production
• 9:56
  I was gonna get out of him, and knowing that like it might need
• 10:01
  a little more work on my roster around the fringes, if I was really
• 10:05
  counting on a huge season from Otani. Yeah, I at the end of
• 10:09
  the day, like I said, I think this is one that if you
• 10:11
  if you are on the edge, this might say, Hey, it gives
• 10:13
  you a reason to look elsewhere. There's enough guys at that same range that
• 10:18
  you're going to be happy with what you get. So if you're concerned take
• 10:20
  something else. I Like I said, I'm not terribly concerned about it.
• 10:24
  If I'm getting a little discount on Otani and I'm getting ninety five percent of
• 10:26
  what I'm hoping for, I'm still really really happy with those Yeah exactly.
• 10:30
  I just I just hope this doesn't, you know, become the storyline of
• 10:33
  the season. There's so many other things you can tell you talking about.
• 10:35
  I hey, Will Smith just signed an extension with the Dodgers what an hour
• 10:41
  ago, and I got taken fully by a tweet that you know, said
• 10:48
  that he was getting paid you know, league minimum for ten years and defer
• 10:50
  the entire contract, and I like it was the Dodgers. It was so
• 10:54
  believable, Like why not? Like, I'm not shocked. So it's it's
• 11:01
  there's so many other storylines that I I hope we can focus on them and
• 11:07
  not we spend the entire season talking about Otani's gambling and interpreter. Yeah exactly.
• 11:13
  And Twitter's a dangerous place for those news reports nowadays. Man, you
• 11:16
  gotta watch out. Yeah, it's it was. It was very dangerous to
• 11:20
  don't don't be tweeting while U while parenting. That's not a good gut combination.
• 11:26
  Okay, so we actually have had a couple the signings, so actually
• 11:31
  more than a couple of handful, So let's dive right into those. The
• 11:35
  big one that came through yesterday was j D Martinez going to the Big Apple
• 11:39
  and joining the New York Mets, where he should be the full time DH.
• 11:45
  So rewind to me back in the n a least preview espounding on the
• 11:50
  virtues of DJ Stewart, you can throw those out the door, as DJ
• 11:54
  Stewart just lost his job to j D Martinez. But I'm not so sure
• 12:00
  about this landing spot for JD. It's just a tough park to hit in,
• 12:03
  and especially so late in spring training. I mean, I don't think
• 12:09
  he got any spring training in, so he's gonna, I would assume,
• 12:11
  be down in Port Saint Lucie at the Mets Complex hitting for a couple of
• 12:16
  weeks before he even hits the big league club. But what do you foresee
• 12:20
  JD Martinez doing in New York? Yeah, I'm kind of with you.
• 12:24
  New York's one of the worst five ballparks to hit him, and you know,
• 12:31
  yes, he's gonna be hitting with probably I would expecting the middle of
• 12:33
  that lineup behind maybe behind Pete Alonzo, and so I think he's going to
• 12:37
  have some guys on base and he's still a you know, good hitter,
• 12:43
  but at the same time he's still Last year kind of was like a step
• 12:48
  back, Like twenty twenty two was a step back for Martinez. Last year,
• 12:50
  the numbers came back, but the underlying metrics didn't really get better.
• 12:56
  And part of it was he was hitting in the Dodgers lineup, and so
• 13:00
  if you look at things like under the covers, Yeah, he had thirty
• 13:03
  three homers, which is like thrilled guy scored sixty one runs at the same
• 13:07
  time that he hit, you know, thirty three homers, but he had
• 13:11
  one hundred three RBIs like that tells you he was getting a lot of help
• 13:13
  by that high scoring lineup. And he his for the last few years really,
• 13:18
  I mean, career wise, his baby it's been like really really favorable
• 13:22
  three thirties kind of range. But he struck out almost in a third of
• 13:26
  it bats last year, which was really really high for him. And so
• 13:30
  I think he I would say, got a little bit lucky last year to
• 13:33
  degrees, and he had a really really good situation and I think that we're
• 13:39
  going to see some regression here. I'm thinking low twenties homers and you know,
• 13:43
  if you can get a full season, which I'm not sure you can
• 13:46
  at his age, maybe seventy runs, maybe seventy five RBIs like I think
• 13:52
  we're we're at the end of jad Martinez being really, really valuable and making
• 13:58
  a big impact in this park is gonna hurt him as well. So I
• 14:01
  don't love this landing place for Dreda Martinez. I was already generally out just
• 14:05
  utility only player, and yeah, I'm I'm further out with Martinez at this
• 14:11
  point. I don't know if how much. Unless I'm getting free at the
• 14:15
  draft, I can plug him my utility because I planned the head that well,
• 14:18
  yeah, then I'm I'm just I'm passing. There's there are other guys
• 14:20
  probably in the regent. Why are just as interested in Jadie Martinez for me?
• 14:24
  Yeah, I think so. And what's funny is your your projection for
• 14:30
  him is like right in the smack middle of all the projections. I should
• 14:35
  you would have thought I was looking this, You're not kidding. Yeah,
• 14:39
  So, like the one thing that is strange with all the projections right now,
• 14:43
  and JD. Martinez is that they're all calling for like a two forty
• 14:48
  ish batting average, which he I mean, I'm throwing twenty twenty out the
• 14:52
  door when he hit two thirteen in Boston. But yeah, he's never really
• 14:56
  done that, and I can see where it's coming from just in terms of
• 14:58
  the strike rate really spiking last year, and you can see that it's kind
• 15:05
  of like one of those last moves that you have as a veteran is to
• 15:07
  really start selling out for the power. And you can see it in a
• 15:11
  stat cast that the actual batted ball metrics in terms of barrel rates, you
• 15:18
  know, slug on contact, all that stuff is beat red just like super
• 15:22
  bright red, while everything that involves discipline, a plate discipline in terms of
• 15:28
  pay percentage, walk percentage is blue. So I do think that, like
• 15:35
  what you said about JD is probably pretty spot on. And if you did
• 15:39
  draft Martinez at the end of a draft, I think that's great, like
• 15:43
  being able to plug him in and find a little bit of easy power.
• 15:46
  But yeah, not somebody I'm necessarily looking to go out and acquire because of
• 15:50
  the landing spot, but certainly a very cheap power source if you're looking for
• 15:54
  one on the waiver wire. Yeah, absolutely, so he's there, don't
• 16:00
  don't invest a whole lot more. Hey maybe maybe maybe we'll be wrong here,
• 16:04
  but this is a it's a good pickup for the Mets. It makes
• 16:07
  a lot of sense. But hey, we'll see what happens. Okay,
• 16:12
  Well, the other signing we have in this actually it happened last night right
• 16:18
  in the middle of our Rasball Experts League Draft and it came through and then
• 16:23
  Trust immediately took him in the draft because he saw the notice come through on
• 16:29
  MLB trade rumors, and that is Jordan Montgomery signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
• 16:33
  So he lands there on it's essentially going to be a one year deal because
• 16:37
  it's got a lot of vesting things for like a second year. But I
• 16:41
  just don't see how Jordan Montgomery doesn't want to go back out into the market,
• 16:45
  and this should slot him right into about, you know, the number
• 16:52
  two, number three starter behind Zach Gallon down there in Arizona, really taking
• 16:56
  over for Eduardo Rodriguez who was signed there over the summer. I do think
• 17:00
  that Montgomery is going to pitch right away, really, because he was working
• 17:07
  out a lot at the Boris camp and so you might see him skip the
• 17:11
  first week, but I think maybe you might get pretty much a full season
• 17:15
  on Jordan Montgomery, which is great considering how late he was going in drafts
• 17:18
  here over the past few weeks. Yeah, I tend to agree. I
• 17:22
  think, you know, I see him on the two or three week time
• 17:26
  period to get back. You know, I don't think they're gonna fully rush
• 17:29
  him in, but you know, I think that he'll be in there.
• 17:33
  The I have mixed emotions with this one as far as his actual like fantasy
• 17:37
  outlook, where like Ballpark actually is kind of a very neutral ballpark in a
• 17:42
  decent offense, And so that's that's okay. What I don't really like about
• 17:45
  it is it's the NL West. You gotta pitch in Colorado, you gotta
• 17:52
  face the Dodgers. Like there's enough like pitfalls here. Is just like,
• 17:57
  yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna sit him a little bit more than I was
• 18:00
  playing to and I have him drafted in a few spots. And you know
• 18:04
  the thing with Montgomery is like you're looking for just very much solid quality.
• 18:10
  He's not the strikeout artists, you know, He's you know, gonna keep
• 18:12
  the whip reasonable, He's gonna, you know, keep the ball generally on
• 18:17
  the ground. Like he's just pretty gushing good and really solid Indians. So
• 18:21
  I'm first of all, I'm shocked that he can get more money or get
• 18:22
  a bigger contract. I feel like they probably turned something down that he fully
• 18:26
  regrets now, like back in December. And also like it's a ridiculous contract
• 18:30
  because like how is not every other like team in the league trying to match
• 18:36
  it? But man, kudos to the d bas for getting Jordan Montgomery.
• 18:38
  Yeah, you feel like there's like, hey, do you think do you
• 18:41
  think we should get this guy a call? It's like, I mean,
• 18:44
  we could just throw a ton of money for one year, like he's not
• 18:48
  gonna take andim they call it and call him backs like yeah, they're like,
• 18:51
  look, crap, I didn't see that working. Like somebody called the
• 18:53
  owner. I need the money. Like once we see some of the fifth
• 18:59
  starters that are pitching for some of these teams in the third week of April
• 19:03
  between like injuries or they finally have to use that FI spot. Yeah,
• 19:06
  there's gonna be a lot of like fringy playoff teams that wish that they had
• 19:10
  Jordan Montgomery, and I do agree. I think it's a good landing spot.
• 19:12
  The ALE or the NL West is not an easy division, and you
• 19:18
  didn't even mention San Diego, Like San Diego's got a really stacked right handed
• 19:22
  lineup between Machado, Tatis and Bogarts was terrible bottom free. So yeah,
• 19:30
  I don't know how to average this and the boys out like as long as
• 19:33
  you get to the third and the sixth innings, like I don't know,
• 19:37
  yeah, be okay. And even San Francisco, Like I don't like throwing
• 19:41
  lefties against San Francisco unless it's in San Francisco because when they mix and match
• 19:48
  and get an al righty lineup together, it is they can do some damage,
• 19:52
  especially when they have Wilmar Flores, just like who had an outstanding year
• 19:56
  last year. I mean, part of it was because Flores was just shredding
• 20:00
  lefties all year. But I do think that if like I said, if
• 20:03
  you got Jordan Montgomery drafts, he was going so late that the production that
• 20:08
  you're going to get, even in Arizona, when he has to you have
• 20:11
  to throw him sometimes against the Dodgers and the Padres and the Giants it's gonna
• 20:15
  be solid production. So I think when you look up at the end of
• 20:18
  the year, you're going to be looking at something pretty in line with what
• 20:22
  he's done over the past two years. You know, something hovering around an
• 20:26
  eight K nine, like a three four ish ray and then like a whip,
• 20:32
  you know, around like one two. So I think the projections are
• 20:37
  a little bit heavy on the whip and little heavy on the k's, but
• 20:41
  I think, yeah, he's going to be a great third, fourth starter
• 20:45
  for any fantasy rotation. Yep. Absolutely, So Hey, I'm just glad
• 20:49
  he's signed. It's so disappointed as fantasy owners to be like, yeah,
• 20:53
  this guy and then you get stuck in this situation where you're waiting for logic
• 20:59
  to prevail and it doesn't. And so I'm just glad. Like I don't
• 21:03
  know how you feel, but looking at the free agency that are left out
• 21:07
  there, there's only really one in my mind that I'm sitting here going why
• 21:11
  isn't this guy signed? I really hope he signs because I think he's relevant,
• 21:15
  and that's for me. Its Toddy Vam. But beyond that, I
• 21:18
  and maybe I'm missing somebody really obvious. I just don't think that there's that
• 21:22
  many guys that really have an impact with Montgomery and then for me, a
• 21:26
  long step down to Fam that was worth worth chasing. Yeah, and Fam
• 21:33
  always kind of struck me as somebody who might sign halfway through the season anyway,
• 21:37
  because somebody's going to figure out they need an outfielder for a longer stretch
• 21:41
  and bring him in. Yeah. Absolutely, Okay, Well, taking Jordan
• 21:45
  Montgomery's rotation spot really down in Texas, is Michael Lorenzen signing down there with
• 21:52
  the Rangers and he should slot immediately into their rotation and then might be moved
• 21:56
  to the bullpen at the second half of the season as they get back Max
• 22:02
  Scherzer and Tyler Molly and I mean maybe eventually Jacob de Gram. I'm still
• 22:06
  not totally counting on it, but I think this is a pretty solid for
• 22:11
  solid landing spot for Michael Lorenzen, who threw a no hitter last year and
• 22:15
  found himself kind of bouncing in and out of the bullpen that I found him
• 22:19
  useful in deep leagues where you're just looking for decent innings. That for a
• 22:26
  long time he was hovering right around four with his era and ended the season
• 22:30
  at four point one to eight, but league average ERA was well above four,
• 22:36
  so he was coming in and giving stead yet steady innings. For that,
• 22:40
  the k's leave a little bit to be desired. But I think,
• 22:42
  especially like obviously if you're in an ale only like you're gonna drop a pretty
• 22:47
  decent CHUNKI your budget. I think to bring in Lorenzen just for the nice
• 22:52
  rotation spot and the wins. But I do think that he's got some usability,
• 22:56
  especially in fifteen team leagues and twelve team leagues, just because the Rangers
• 23:02
  have a great offense and it's a it's a nice spot to look for some
• 23:06
  wins out of Michael Lorenzen. Yeah, I struggled a little bit with this
• 23:10
  one with Lorenzen. You know, he he was dreadful down the stretch last
• 23:14
  year after he got trade to trade to Philadelphia. I mean, he was
• 23:19
  he was gassed after that no hitter. He was gassed, Like give it
• 23:22
  that. But like he he really ran into some some Homer trouble, which
• 23:27
  has you know, not really been inn is shoe over his career. But
• 23:33
  you know, he the last few years he's not really kept the ball on
• 23:37
  the ground as much as he can and he's going to Global Life Fields,
• 23:40
  which of parks last year number one and in homer factor, really Life was
• 23:47
  in twenty twenty three if you're looking at three year averages things like that,
• 23:49
  the fifth, sixth, seven, something like that. Sorry, they're not
• 23:52
  technically number one. We had in parkt a Stadio Alfredo Harp Park, I
• 24:00
  think like the one in Mexican, the one in Mexico. Yeah, yeah,
• 24:04
  so there's a whole six hundred and forty six played appearances there, so
• 24:07
  they're on the list. But yeah, it was worse than Great America Yankee
• 24:11
  Dodger. It was. It was the worst for for giving up homers by
• 24:17
  a decent margin. And so I worry a little bit about Lorenz and going
• 24:19
  there when he's started to show some more fly ball tendencies and maybe maybe it
• 24:25
  was just he was gas and he just he just kept leaving the ball up
• 24:29
  in the zone and it was getting hammered. But I'm I'm probably steering away
• 24:32
  from Lorenzo here, especially knowing that he's not a long term in that rotation.
• 24:37
  They're looking for filler and gonna move him around like everybody else has throughout
• 24:42
  throughout his career. So I'm I'm steering clear of Lorenz and I understand the
• 24:48
  intrigue, but it's just not not my cup of tea. I'm you totally
• 24:53
  like, I cannot leave that Globe Life Park turned around on home runs so
• 24:59
  much. I mean even when you do the three year rolling, it's sixth.
• 25:03
  Yeah, it was the Angels are fifth, which is I kind of
• 25:08
  knew that. That's why I was touting like Brandon Drury early in the season,
• 25:12
  but wow, I didn't. Man, that's another one, along with
• 25:17
  like Coffin Stadium, where I've got to update the the priors because and I
• 25:21
  do wonder like what happened last year, because that is a substantial increase compared
• 25:26
  to where it's been. I wonder if they like change some of the interior
• 25:30
  walkways or what would have happened almost like an aerodynamic aerodynamics. Yeah, it's
• 25:37
  it's very very surprising. Or they were the batter's eye or something. Yeah,
• 25:45
  they were down like eight nine the lead before. So okay, well
• 25:49
  that is good to know. But I think that's going to be helpful for
• 25:52
  our next subject, and that is the rookie Wyatt Langford, fourth overall pick
• 25:57
  in last year's draft, has made the Rangers roster, and I mean coming
• 26:03
  off of that, when you're going to be playing what almost like sixty percent
• 26:07
  of his games between the Rangers Stadium and Angel Stadium, that I mean,
• 26:12
  I think this is going to be a chance for why at Langford to really
• 26:18
  put his stamp on the league that I don't even like totally know where the
• 26:23
  ceiling is. That will get into it a little bit with our staff picks
• 26:26
  in a little bit, but I didn't actually pick him as my ALE Rookie
• 26:30
  of the Year, And I mean, I don't know how I feel about
• 26:33
  it, because I think he's in line for just the ability to hit the
• 26:40
  ground running with some sort of like bonkers like thirty fifteen or even beyond that
• 26:45
  sort of season because he tore up the spring spring training and Langford just doesn't
• 26:52
  stop hitting wherever he goes. The eye is fantastic, the power's fantastic,
• 26:57
  the just played approach and swinger fantastic. That I I mean, I I've
• 27:06
  been talking kind of as we've been going through draft season about how Corbyn Carroll
• 27:11
  like was such a low pick last year and how big of a regret I
• 27:15
  think lots of us in the fantasy community missed on that. I think it's
• 27:18
  going to be possibly similar to White Langford, although he obviously moved up into
• 27:23
  like last night in our Rasball Experts League, I think he went sixtieth.
• 27:29
  Overall, he's been going in the mid sixties and picks on NFBC. So
• 27:32
  there's lots of other people that see this in Langford right now. Yeah,
• 27:36
  I think the only thing with Langford this uperates a little from Carrol's speed,
• 27:40
  you know, and so like, I think you have to caution a little
• 27:42
  bit. Whereas Carroll, like you yeah, heins I twenty twenty, you
• 27:45
  can now say, like, yeah, you know, if he if he
• 27:48
  does what he could his potential he could be, you know, top of
• 27:52
  the first round guy Langford. If he does what we're hoping he does,
• 27:55
  he's still probably a mid second round guy at best, because he's just not
• 28:00
  he doesn't have the speed, so he doesn't have that all around game,
• 28:03
  uh to break in unless he becomes Aaron Judge with health Like that's maybe it's
• 28:08
  a little a little aggressive there, uh to help hope that. But still
• 28:12
  he still looks like he's gonna be really really good. And I just looked
• 28:15
  it up what's better for hitters in globe life. Lefties are right, ees,
• 28:22
  it's right, he's yeah, so there you go. Yeah, I
• 28:27
  had to look it up, but you know, so there all the all
• 28:32
  the signs are pointing to to good things here, and I think, uh,
• 28:37
  things are gonna come together for for Langford here. I do hope he
• 28:40
  gets out of the gate strong and he doesn't have one of those uh you
• 28:44
  know, it takes a week or two for him to kind of figure things
• 28:47
  out. Then everybody's gonna come in and say, well, he wasn't ready
• 28:48
  and they should have led him with the miners, like uh, he the
• 28:52
  first cold streak he has, You're we're gonna hear all about it. But
• 28:55
  he looks like the real deal and he's just gonna get better. Yeah.
• 28:59
  And as a Langford owner in one of our keeper leagues, I also hope
• 29:03
  that he doesn't get out of the gate slowly, not only just for like
• 29:07
  my own fancy production, but because I'll be getting so many trade offers trying
• 29:11
  to quote unquote Bilow on him. It's just going to be a deluge of
• 29:15
  sorting through my emails of the trade offers, mostly from you. I think
• 29:18
  I would say, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna offer out a principle at
• 29:22
  this point one a day, I was gonna go from the bottom of my
• 29:26
  team all the way to the top and see where your threshold is. Yeah,
• 29:32
  okay, Well, on the other side of the coin of White Langford
• 29:36
  breaking out in the spring and making the roster, we have Jackson. How
• 29:38
  they have the Baltimore Orioles, who was optioned down to Triple A over the
• 29:45
  past week, and the Orioles official line is that he needs to go down
• 29:51
  and they were transitioning to him from shortstop third base over to second base,
• 29:56
  where he should fill in eventually for I don't I guess maybe he would push
• 30:02
  Westburg over to third because Ramon Urias is over at third right now and Jordan
• 30:06
  Westburg's at second. But it does strike me as strange, considering I have
• 30:12
  talked about on this podcast, I'm a little bit worried about the Orioles just
• 30:17
  because the bullpen and the rotation depth isn't quite there that you want to talk
• 30:22
  about somebody who need Jordan Montgomery and the Baltimore Orioles did because they're one injury
• 30:29
  away from Bruce Zimmerman throwing innings for them again. And what do you think
• 30:33
  this means for Holiday's eventual playing time this year? I mean, when do
• 30:38
  you think he finally gets the call up to the majors from Triple A.
• 30:42
  I mean, if this doesn't read s sign manipulation Chris Bryant back in the
• 30:47
  day type of thing, I don't know what does. And so I have
• 30:51
  to think. I mean, if you're gonna, if you're gonna send them
• 30:52
  down with the justification, it can't. It's not gonna be for two weeks.
• 30:56
  It's gonna be a month and a half. Two months is what I
• 31:00
  would expect. And so I think you're you're targeting probably late May or Jackson
• 31:04
  Holliday to kind of make it back into into game shape. And so I
• 31:10
  think that's you know, I wish it was earlier. I wish it was
• 31:14
  something that we could be talking about right now, but I think it's going
• 31:18
  to be that late May timeframe unless you're really seeing the Oriel scuffle, which
• 31:22
  actually might even give them a reason more reason to keep them down. So
• 31:26
  they're playing a dangerous game right now because that team, from a hitting perspective,
• 31:33
  they just they need to be jelling they need to be getting all those
• 31:36
  young guys coming together, and they were really good last year and they're to
• 31:40
  your point, their their depth is questionable. There. There's a lot of
• 31:45
  top and talent there, but you know, there's definitely some questions. Uh,
• 31:51
  when you have guys like Ryan O'Hearn as your projected first baseman or Hormone
• 31:56
  Uias as your projected third basement, like they're Jackson Holidays should be on the
• 32:00
  team, there's no question to me. Yeah, I do wonder a little
• 32:05
  bit if it is. I Meanest actually had a really great spring. I've
• 32:07
  been looking to pick him up on some leagues where I might need a second
• 32:12
  or third baseman that he can fill in. And honestly, he might get
• 32:15
  written about this weekend in my first Waiver Wire column that I do think that
• 32:20
  is part of it. But or the other thing is they just need to
• 32:22
  trade some of those guys away. That I am confounded by what Baltimore is
• 32:28
  doing because I think, I mean, this sort of play works in one
• 32:32
  of the central divisions, or worked when Mike Fast was with the Astros and
• 32:37
  the Ale West was a little bit weaker, But to do this in the
• 32:40
  Ale East, it's super cutthrown. I also just don't understand why they don't
• 32:45
  want to shot at that Ale Rookie of the Year award and the draft pick
• 32:49
  compensation, because there's a good chance, if you recall, Adley got sent
• 32:53
  down initially a little bit in his rookie year. The official line from the
• 32:58
  Oils when that happened was that he was battling an oblique strain, but Adley
• 33:05
  ended up finishing second in the Rookie of the Year voting anyway, and resulted
• 33:09
  in him getting that extra year of arbitration like arbitration locked off. So it's
• 33:15
  just like a weird move because that could be the needle that the Orioles thread
• 33:20
  again here for holiday. Yeah, and I still I'm thrilling just with the
• 33:23
  overall roster management in Baltimore. You look at some of the guys that they
• 33:27
  have down still on the farm and it's still pretty deep. But you know,
• 33:30
  you've got you know, Colton Kawser that they're projecting to be in the
• 33:34
  bench. You've got Kobe Mayo that's that's down there. You've got Connor Norby,
• 33:40
  like now Jackson Holliday, like there's Heston crestad like there's still a ton
• 33:46
  of talent down there, and why are you not just bringing up the best
• 33:51
  there? And then you need pitching. You got Carl Werben Burtons, go
• 33:55
  make another move like they could be making a real contender here, and I
• 34:00
  think there's squandering chance for sure. Yeah, I totally agree. So all
• 34:06
  right with that, let's move into I guess we're flipping the cards and categories
• 34:09
  discussion a little bit this week. Is this will count for our categories discussion
• 34:14
  going through the Rasball staff picks preview post that Matt Trusts put up this morning.
• 34:22
  So actually, no, no, no, Gray put it up this
• 34:23
  morning. Trust is our editor. He's the one that collected it all.
• 34:28
  So I will link to it in the show notes so that you can see
• 34:30
  all of our wonderful picks from all the Rasball people. And so yeah,
• 34:35
  let's get on the record also on this podcast going through what our picks were
• 34:37
  overall. So I'm gonna start with an l Rookie of the Year, and
• 34:42
  I mean, I think we can just run through each category and give a
• 34:45
  couple of sentences on why we picked each guy, and then also talk about
• 34:49
  what the ras Ball consensus pick was too for each of the big awards.
• 34:53
  Yeah, I think that's a good way to go. So he started,
• 34:55
  you'll start in, I'll workie the year. I think there's a big shock
• 35:00
  uh on this one, U Yoshinobu Yama Yamamoto, And it was him or
• 35:07
  Jackson Curio really is It's probably what it came down to. Yeah, and
• 35:09
  I don't think there was really any any question on this one, U Yama
• 35:14
  Moto. If he just does whatpe people expect him to do, or maybe
• 35:16
  eighty percent of what people expect him to do, he should be running away
• 35:20
  with this one. He I mean, we would be shocked with like eighteen
• 35:22
  wins, three zero e ra a one hundred and eighty strikeouts, like,
• 35:28
  just give him the give him the award. And that's why I picked.
• 35:32
  I believe you may have been a little different on this one. So I
• 35:36
  want to hear your your reasoning here, because I went with the consensus and
• 35:39
  I had no way to argue it as much as I like to go against
• 35:43
  the curve. So how about you, why did you go different? I
• 35:46
  zinked a little bit, Yeah, I went with Jackson Merril just mostly it
• 35:50
  was a little bit of a flag plant in terms of being bold and a
• 35:53
  little bit of a hot take that I've I've touted Jackson Merril a lot here
• 36:00
  podcast, and I really like him that especially. You know, if even
• 36:04
  if Yamamoto does have a really great season, there is a path where Jackson
• 36:07
  Merrel hits a ninetieth percentile income, plays pre solid center field defense, the
• 36:14
  Padres make the playoffs that you can see where the narrative can take it.
• 36:17
  And so I think, I mean, it's a pretty low chance. I'll
• 36:22
  even admit that Jackson Merrel takes home this award, but I just kind of
• 36:25
  want to plant that flag and say, hey, I really do believe in
• 36:30
  Jackson Merrel, that I believe that this is a bat that is just I
• 36:35
  mean, it's a fantastic bat. We saw it last week in Korea when
• 36:37
  Merrill laced just balls everywhere. And I think that there's a real good chance
• 36:44
  that Merrill becomes the cream of the crop from the bats in the NL this
• 36:49
  year. Well, I think what if you look at the other names in
• 36:52
  the conversation, just the picks that we had, Shota Imanaga, Jackson Surio,
• 36:58
  Dylan Cruz, Paul Stein's even though a Michael Bush call out there you
• 37:04
  know you, I'm not going to argue him over at al Moto, but
• 37:08
  you can easily argue him number two. And it is I think there's a
• 37:14
  little risk of taking a picture just because of of injury risk, right,
• 37:17
  And so it's it's not that hard to squint and see, you know,
• 37:22
  Meryll putting together a two eighty fifteen to fifteen season with good defense, you
• 37:27
  know, on a on a playoff team. Yeah, you might just kind
• 37:30
  of back into it without too much, so I don't think it's a crazy
• 37:34
  pick. But I still had to go with the alam Moto. Yeah,
• 37:39
  I totally hear you. I understand, all right. And then for a
• 37:44
  l Rookie of the Year, the consensus was who we just talked about.
• 37:46
  It was White Langford, who took home half of the votes from our staff,
• 37:51
  twelve out of the twenty four. And brew let everybody know who you
• 37:54
  went with for the Oh you switched it. You used to have Evan Carter
• 38:00
  and you switched to White Langford, didn't you? No, No, no,
• 38:02
  I never had Carter. No. Well, I thought about it.
• 38:07
  I thought about it, and I went with Langford. So as much as
• 38:13
  I kind of disparaged him early in the offseasoncause didn't think he's gonna make the
• 38:15
  team because I thought they were gonna try to play some service on manipulation.
• 38:20
  I was wrong, and so I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Yeah, the
• 38:24
  Rangers are a much more respectable organization for that. But the number two from
• 38:30
  our consistent consensus of the stack picks was Evan Carter, which is who I
• 38:35
  went with, and partly just because of the defense that I do think when
• 38:39
  it comes to a fantasy perspective, I think White Langford is going to blow
• 38:44
  Evan Carter how the water, just because the homers and the average and the
• 38:46
  counting stats are going to be fantastic. And although Evan Carter does steal bases,
• 38:52
  I just don't think the volume will be large enough to overtake Langford's messianic
• 38:58
  bat. But I do think that they're there's a decent chance Evan Carter outproduces
• 39:01
  why at Langford when it comes to war, and Evan Carter is a really
• 39:07
  great defensive player, and so that is I think where Evan Carter's path to
• 39:13
  winning this award comes from is that if he can outproduce Langford on war that
• 39:17
  he will take I think a decent chunk of the votes, just seeing that
• 39:22
  he provided good defensive value and was actually worth more in a total sense than
• 39:27
  Langford. Yeah, I think the consensus it's gonna go to Texas. I
• 39:31
  was gonna say, these guys, I'm pretty sure are gonna finish one too.
• 39:35
  It's just it will see, like how the season plays out, obviously.
• 39:38
  Yeah, I mean, and then there's the hope and Dart thrill for
• 39:42
  Jackson holiday. But I think if any if we're right and it's gonna be
• 39:45
  a little time for his up, that's that's just not gonna happen. Yeah,
• 39:47
  exactly, all right. The next one is the nl CY Young And
• 39:54
  I mean, do we even need to talk about this? I mean,
• 39:58
  if there's if there was a landslide all this voting, it was the nl
• 40:00
  SI Youngess was like, who's the best picture in baseball? Right now?
• 40:05
  Who? Who even had a rough year last year to for all you know,
• 40:08
  intensive purposes, and still was one of the best pictures in baseball.
• 40:13
  Looks like his arsenal, Like, you know, it's it's clearly Spencer Strider
• 40:19
  there. I don't think there's a discussion. We only had three different names
• 40:22
  even on the list. And it was Logan Webb and Tyler Glass. Now
• 40:24
  that even got called out here. And even though it just feels so far
• 40:30
  behind Spencer Strider for me, the only hope for anybody here is the Strider's
• 40:35
  not healthy. Like that to me, like, uh, even if he
• 40:39
  has his worst season of his career, he still strikes out two hundred and
• 40:43
  eighty guys and wins seventeen games. Yeah, I totally agree, And that
• 40:47
  was both of our votes as well as Yeah, the consensus nineteen to twenty
• 40:51
  four picks from our staff, so not even close. The al Cy Young
• 40:55
  though, was honestly the most varied I think out of any of the votes
• 41:00
  for our staff, and you can see why that. Like there, I
• 41:04
  don't think there is a really great front runner right now in the al Cy
• 41:07
  Young. The consensus from our staff had Corbyn Burns, but that was only
• 41:13
  seven out of the twenty four votes, so that was a pretty small chunk
• 41:15
  overall. You know, you're looking at a little less than a third of
• 41:20
  the overall votes. But we had a total of let me look at my
• 41:25
  slow sheet, twenty four eight votes. Yeah, but eight different people getting
• 41:30
  votes for al Say Young with you know, second place going to George Kirby
• 41:36
  who was my pick? And yeah, I will let you Brew go into
• 41:39
  a little bit on your pick. Who was Shane Bieber? Because I think
• 41:45
  you were the only Bieber guy. Let me check the list again. Cool
• 41:49
  also was a Beeber guy, So was one Baber. But I mean,
• 41:52
  yeah, I like I said, this field was wide open. But what
• 41:57
  makes you throw your weight behind Bieber here? Yeah? I think it really
• 42:00
  it comes down to. I mean, Bieber has always had the talents and
• 42:02
  he is a cy Young caliber pitcher, and he just he lost to Tick
• 42:07
  the last year or two, lost a little shape on his pitches, and
• 42:12
  he spent the off season really reworking things. Came in a spring, I
• 42:15
  think, up like two mile an hour on his fastball back to where he
• 42:20
  was. You know, He's always been that control artist, and those are
• 42:23
  like the kind of guys that can go I mean, and he can go
• 42:28
  deep into games. He can put up innians. Like when you're talking about
• 42:30
  a cy Young there's the workhorse element that really comes along with that, and
• 42:36
  I think Shane Bieber can be that workhorse. He's gonna put up a few
• 42:39
  shutouts here and there that are just gonna you know, ring to you know,
• 42:43
  ring to your Roy Holliday extent, if you may. I think there's
• 42:47
  a lot to like about Bieber and I just think that he's in for a
• 42:51
  really big rebound season. It's nothing against George Kirby or Treeck Scougle or Pablo
• 42:54
  Lopez, Like there's so many guys now that Garrett Cole got hurt, like
• 42:59
  I think would have been the one that you know, probably got a lot
• 43:01
  of these votes that he'd not been injured. But there's so much justification because
• 43:06
  everybody has like one wart in that next chier of pictures, there's like one
• 43:10
  question mark for them, and it's who overcomes that question mark. And to
• 43:15
  me, I think Bieber's already overcome that what he showed in the spring training
• 43:19
  that has veloscty me up. So that gave me the nod for Shane Bieber.
• 43:22
  But I'm thrilled to take any of these, any of these pictures on
• 43:27
  my team outside of Luis Castillo, by the way, Yeah exactly. Yeah,
• 43:30
  we will continue detegrating him whenever we get the chance. But yeah,
• 43:34
  I do think Bieber was I think a very savvy pick. He's looked electric
• 43:38
  all spring with the extra ticks on the fastball, and we talked about it
• 43:43
  even last week with the spring training previews. He was one of our callouts.
• 43:46
  And when he's working at that extra tick of velocity, it makes everything
• 43:52
  else work so much better. And I think that's what Bieber was struggling with,
• 43:55
  is he had been battling shoulder and elbow issues the past couple of years.
• 44:00
  He looks fully healthy. You can also see the narrative where I mean,
• 44:05
  I think the Guardians have a really good shot at the division that if
• 44:07
  he pulls through and you know, puts up sixteen seventeen eighteen wins and a
• 44:13
  solid season in terms of peripherals, that Bieber's got a really good shot.
• 44:19
  Yeah. And they're not going to be bee him at all, Like no,
• 44:21
  he absolutely his contract's good and that doesn't have that many years left here
• 44:23
  in Cleveland, so they're going to get everything they can out of that arm.
• 44:28
  Yeah. And I mean a lot of the things that I just said
• 44:30
  about Bieber in terms of narrative of winning the division and getting sixteen seventeen eighteen
• 44:36
  wins and really great ratios, I think applies to my pick George Kirby that
• 44:39
  I think especially this is going to be a twenty sixth year old season,
• 44:45
  that it's just going to be his third year in the league. That it
• 44:50
  takes a little while for young pitchers to learn the league and really master their
• 44:53
  craft. I think we really saw that last year with George Kirby moving his
• 44:58
  walk right below one per nine and so he if he can, especially like
• 45:02
  find a little bit of the strikeouts that he had in twenty twenty two when
• 45:07
  he was above nine k per nine. That I think same sort of thing
• 45:13
  out in Seattle with George Kirby. That, especially if the Mariners run to
• 45:16
  a division title and George Kirby is the one leading the charge, that I
• 45:21
  think I see that scenario playing out pretty easily in my mind. Yeah,
• 45:25
  and I like Kirby eating It's funny. I think we both picked these control
• 45:29
  artists that could be workhorse and if we just went a little more on the
• 45:31
  strikeout velocity, right, It's if Shane Bieber or George Kirby were copying somebody,
• 45:37
  it would be each other. Yeah, it's kind of true. Okay,
• 45:40
  Well, let's move on to the MVP Awards, and in the NL,
• 45:45
  we both went with the consensus, didn't we that the consensus was you
• 45:52
  did not. Actually I am incorrect, So I went with the consensus,
• 45:57
  which I think it's a pretty consensus of nine. Now, the twenty four
• 46:01
  of us went with Ronald Lacunya. He went forty seventy last year. He's
• 46:07
  like, if you've been doing any sort of fantasy drafts, I mean,
• 46:12
  I don't know what kind of values you were maybe kicking out on some of
• 46:14
  our leagues because he was kept. But like I mean even just like a
• 46:17
  standard twelve team five y five rot with like two hundred and sixty dollars budgets,
• 46:24
  like most of the auction values were like seventy bucks, which is unheard
• 46:30
  of. So yeah, I think Ronald Lacuna Junior it's his, it's his
• 46:34
  title to lose, and the Braves are really good. I don't even know
• 46:37
  if I need to do much more justification, but I'll pass it over to
• 46:39
  you to your pick. Yeah, and I think, you know this is
• 46:43
  kind of like you're Jackson Marrilyn. I'm planting a flag here with with Mookie
• 46:46
  Bets, you know. I yeah, it is, uh, it is
• 46:52
  Ronald Lacunya's to lose. But if there's one guy that I think can't threaten
• 46:58
  that it is Mookie bets. He is on the Dodgers. He is going
• 47:00
  to scare a ton of runs. He is playing a new position that he's
• 47:05
  trying to learn, and he is going to fill up his tat sheet all
• 47:09
  over the place. And I just I just see, you know, he's
• 47:13
  even hed already did in the Korea series right where he just kind of went
• 47:16
  off a little bit and then you looked at it's like, well, he
• 47:17
  didn't really go off, he just was Mookie. And so I'm not going
• 47:22
  to be shocked for him to score one hundred and fifty runs this year.
• 47:27
  He's not going to break the all time run record or anything like that,
• 47:29
  which is just insane number. If you've looked it up, I think one
• 47:32
  hundred and eighty nine in a single season. But back that's back in the
• 47:36
  one hundred years ago. But I think Mookie is one of those guys that
• 47:42
  easily, easily could you know, hit forty homers, steal twenty bases,
• 47:45
  score you know, one hundred and fifty runs, knocking one hundred and ten
• 47:52
  and it's in play shortstop for the Dodgers who are going on to win the
• 47:57
  World Series. Right, you can easily see that happen. I mean,
• 48:00
  in Acunya had a career year last year, like he went forty seventy,
• 48:06
  Like is he gonna do that again? Maybe like it's Ronald Cunya. Maybe
• 48:09
  maybe that was the minimum and maybe he's gonna go fifty eighty. I don't
• 48:13
  know, but I think that if you know, if there's a little regression
• 48:16
  for Acunya and that's pushed a little further, like it could happen. I
• 48:21
  still with you as probably a COUNI is to lose, but I'm I'm going
• 48:23
  out of the limb here and I'm like, yeah, I think this is
• 48:25
  the year that MOOKI, you know, kind of kind of steals this one
• 48:29
  away. Yeah. I mean, I think the other factor too is,
• 48:31
  I mean, voters just get fatigue voting for the same guy over and over.
• 48:37
  So it's so true if it's if I think their neck and neck,
• 48:40
  that there's a good possibility that Mookie starts stealing more votes just because voters want
• 48:46
  to go a different route, Okay, and then let's close it out with
• 48:52
  the al MVP. And this was another pretty wide open field. The consensus
• 48:58
  from our staff was one third of the people picking Juan Soto eight out of
• 49:02
  twenty four, but neither of us went that route, which is gonna make
• 49:07
  I think a little bit for a fun discussion here, I will toss it
• 49:09
  back over to you for your pick here. Brew. Yeah, So there
• 49:14
  was only one guy that picked this guy, and it was me, and
• 49:17
  I picked Adlie Rushman. And there's a few reasons for this. First of
• 49:22
  all, I didn't want to pick one Soto, no, But kidding aside,
• 49:28
  you know, I look at Adlei as one of those guys that's still
• 49:30
  coming into his own, But I think he can easily deliver a season where
• 49:36
  he hits you know, three hundred and three, ten thirty homers, He
• 49:39
  plays great defense, knocks in one hundred runs on an Orioles team that as
• 49:45
  much as we just kind of spares him in the opening two degree with some
• 49:47
  of the roster management, like definitely a upstart playoff team. They're a really
• 49:52
  good story. He's the cornerstone, Like there's so much good like story and
• 49:59
  excit. If he puts all together, which he has the talent to do,
• 50:02
  then I think that can overshadow a Jan Soto or a Jordan or a
• 50:09
  Kyle Tucker Julio or something like that, just because of the feel good story
• 50:15
  of it. That's not it's not voting on war or anything like that,
• 50:17
  which again, he will get a bump at because of the catcher position,
• 50:21
  so I think that will will help him. But I think it's one of
• 50:23
  those that it's not too hard to look at him and you know, when's
• 50:27
  the less catcher that won the MVP was at Joe Mauer back back in the
• 50:31
  day. Yeah. Uh, and we'n counts. But you know, I
• 50:38
  think that to me, I think Adley's got if he does what he has
• 50:42
  the potential to. I think there's a really good story here that people can
• 50:45
  get behind. So it's not the probably the likeliest pick, but I like
• 50:50
  the dark words here, So I'm sticking with Adlie. How about you?
• 50:52
  You probably picked somebody a little bit more logical, Yeah, I mean,
• 50:57
  although I think still a little bit out on a line. And I picked
• 51:00
  Bobby Witt Junior from the Royals just because, yeah, he's on the Royals.
• 51:05
  But again going back to that Guardian's discussion with Biab that the Ale Central
• 51:09
  is wide open, that the Royals could make a run at the division,
• 51:14
  but it's more so just and Bobby Whit Junior, going from his first year
• 51:20
  to a second year, made such a vast improvement in his ability to contact
• 51:24
  the ball in terms of not only just like Ie in plate discipline, cutting
• 51:30
  the strikeout rate, increasing the walk rate, but impacting the ball too.
• 51:34
  You know, he pushed the ISO much higher last year. He pushed the
• 51:37
  barrel rate up. He came into spring and his spring was everything you could
• 51:45
  have wanted to be because he smashed four homers, he hit three sixty and
• 51:52
  sure is the spring, but the big indicator is in fifty three plate appearance
• 51:55
  in the spring, he struck out four times. And if Bobby Witt stopped
• 51:59
  striking out, the league's in trouble man, because like this is and honestly,
• 52:04
  he might give Rond Lacuna like a run for the number one fantasy player
• 52:07
  overall, because then if he's not striking out, you're looking at a guy
• 52:10
  who could go forty fifty, forty sixty with one hundred plus RB, one
• 52:17
  hundred plus runs, hundred plus RBI. That I think that is probably what
• 52:22
  a peak Bobby Witt junior season looks like at shortstop. And I mean,
• 52:28
  I don't think it's too far off either this season or next season that I
• 52:30
  think there's a special special Bobby Wit junior season coming in the future. Yeah,
• 52:37
  And I the only thing I'll add with with Wit because I don't disagree
• 52:39
  with you, like you try to pick those guys that like, if they
• 52:42
  just put all the things together, that's the guy, right. Yeah,
• 52:45
  I'm surprised Bobby WIT's babe of the last two seasons has been two ninety five.
• 52:51
  Mm hmm. It feels like he's a guy that should be like three
• 52:52
  thirty and so, like, is he just had some some some poor luck
• 52:57
  here to a degree, and if he just gets a little good luck,
• 53:01
  man, things could be really really interesting. Even on the power perspective,
• 53:07
  like home run for flyball, he's thirteen point one percent, which is relatively
• 53:12
  you know, I don't say low, but like there's your power. Hitters
• 53:15
  are usually in the eighteen nineteen twenty percent. So if Wit just gets lucky
• 53:22
  with a few things, things look really interesting, not counting the actual progression
• 53:27
  in skill set. So I think I think you make a really valid point
• 53:30
  here that if of the guys to threaten a Kunya from a pure like the
• 53:36
  same profile perspective, it's wit the downfalls he plays for the Royals. Yeah,
• 53:40
  and that's just not You're not getting a lot of excitement on Kauflin Stadium,
• 53:45
  No, which I mean I think is eating up some of those homers
• 53:47
  and eating up that fly ball rate a little bit. But we need to
• 53:52
  look at the twenty twenty three park factors. Maybe Coffin Stadium is number two.
• 53:54
  It is, so I did dive in. So Kaufman's awful for homers,
• 53:59
  but it's the run environment is way up because of the big gaps and
• 54:02
  stuff. So a great triple spark. It is actually a great triple spark.
• 54:08
  Yeah. And Whent's hot too, so yeah. But we also you
• 54:13
  can look at the staff picks over at Rasball. We also outside of these
• 54:16
  bigger awards, we went through and picked some of our fantasy like picks to
• 54:22
  click is what I would say that, you know, we went through and
• 54:25
  did most valuable picture or hitter based on where they're being drafted, A sleeper,
• 54:30
  a bust, and a comeback player. So brew, was there one
• 54:36
  person from your fantasy side pick that you really wanted to highlight and kind of
• 54:40
  really again plant your flag and let everybody know that it's the one that you're
• 54:45
  really standing behind out of the ones that we selected. Well, as much
• 54:50
  as I want to go back to my Tommy fan discussion earlier and I need
• 54:53
  them to sign to come through as my most valuable you know, fantasy that
• 54:58
  would be helpful, that that really would you know, I'm gonna go back
• 55:01
  and plant my flag with Hunter Brown, you know, from a pitching perspective,
• 55:06
  a guy that consistently I was getting in drafts very late this year.
• 55:09
  And I'm gonna recap the conversation that we had when we did the Ale West
• 55:15
  preview, and then I talked about Hunter Brown as you look at him from
• 55:20
  a peer just stuff perspective, his arsenal, don't look at his his results
• 55:24
  or anything like that, just look at peer stuff because he has a pretty
• 55:28
  savvy strikeout pitcher. And we went and did the whole comparison of like who
• 55:32
  is similar to Hunter Brown based on velocity of movement, and the list was
• 55:37
  Garrett Cole, Tyler Glass, Now, Zach Gallon, Taz Bradley, and
• 55:42
  Zach Wheeler. There is not a better list of guys to comp with when
• 55:49
  you're talking about a young starter who's still trying to find his way and come
• 55:53
  through the league, and if his stuff looks like those guys, then there's
• 55:58
  a lot a lot to like about it. And so I think Hunter Brown
• 56:00
  is just a little bit away from figuring this thing out and he is going
• 56:05
  to be a top twenty pitcher that we're talking about next season. And so
• 56:08
  I might be going on a limb there, but I am so in on
• 56:12
  Hunter Brown. I think there's a lot to like about him. And again,
• 56:15
  he just doesn't cost anything when you're really really boiling things at the end
• 56:20
  of the draft. So Hunter Brown for me, how about you? Where's
• 56:24
  the one that you want to call out for our excitement picks here? I'm
• 56:29
  actually I'm going to stick in the same column, and it's somebody who I
• 56:32
  really started falling in love with late in draft season because he provided just a
• 56:38
  really great source of almost free strikeouts that like as a last pick in like
• 56:45
  a twelve teamer or a deep pick in a fifteen teamer. Sean and I
• 56:49
  have the Mets has. I mean, you couldn't have asked for a better
• 56:53
  situation for pitching, As we just touched with JD. Martinez that pitching in
• 56:59
  Queen with the Mets, it is a fantastic park to throw in, and
• 57:04
  even if he is a little bit of a flyball pitcher from time to time,
• 57:07
  great place for those flyballs to be contained, as well as a good
• 57:13
  solid defense behind him in the outfield with Nimo Marte and Bader that honestly,
• 57:19
  that's maybe one of the best defensive outfields in the league. That there aren't
• 57:22
  many fly balls are going to be dropping down. But on top of it
• 57:25
  all, Sean and Iyah looks like who he was in the second half of
• 57:30
  last year when he really found a groove with the Giants and bumped his strikeout
• 57:34
  rate up and started striking out you know, eleven twelve k P nine,
• 57:39
  that's what he did here in the spring. The swinging strike rate backs that
• 57:43
  up, the walks are down, The stuff looks great, and Sean and
• 57:47
  I is a big dude that like when everything's working, it is intimidating to
• 57:52
  watch him work on the mound because he's got a little bit like a CC
• 57:55
  Sabbathia presence and just commands the entire game. On top of it all,
• 58:00
  Sean and I also as an opt out after this year, so he's hungry,
• 58:02
  like he wants to go out there put a really big season up that.
• 58:07
  I think we're going to be talking a lot of great things about Sean
• 58:09
  and I are down the stretch and getting back to, you know where he
• 58:14
  was, like back in roughly like twenty twenty one, you know, when
• 58:19
  he was just a very solid number two fantasy starter. That for somebody who's
• 58:25
  been free and lots of drafts this season, I've been really digging Shohn Manyah.
• 58:31
  Yeah, I can't disagree. I know when we talked about that division,
• 58:34
  I talked about Manaia and also Louise av Reno because they were drive line
• 58:38
  kiddos this this winter, and Manaiah of the two of them, because he
• 58:45
  did finish the year so strong last year, and I think there was a
• 58:47
  little picks miss pitch mixed change with that, and it's exciting to see him
• 58:53
  doing it in the spring. I did not end up a share that many
• 58:57
  shared with him because I thought I was thinking the same thing. I think
• 58:59
  you nag them from me a few times, and so that's okay, But
• 59:04
  I'm right there with you. I think there's a lot to be said for
• 59:07
  Sean Manaia. He's gonna have the leash to run there in New York.
• 59:10
  Yeah, I absolutely agree, and a pretty solid bullpen behind him too.
• 59:14
  That like you shouldn't have to worry too much about the winds game blown.
• 59:20
  Okay, well, let's wrap up this section right now and take a little
• 59:22
  break. When we come back from the break, we're going to Top talk
• 59:25
  some new Tops releases that have come out just today on March twenty seventh,
• 59:30
  So stick around, all right, Welcome back from the break, everybody.
• 59:49
  We are going to get into some cards discussion here as we are recording on
• 59:53
  March twenty seventh, and Tops dropped three really big releases today. Well,
• 1:00:00
  I mean, I guess big is relative, but three releases in one day,
• 1:00:04
  one week for Tops is pretty impressive overall, especially considering we've gotten two
• 1:00:10
  more twenty twenty four products, which adds to I guess this will end up
• 1:00:15
  being like the second and third as we've got Tops Tribute coming out today and
• 1:00:22
  Tops big League coming out today that they should be available at hobby stores and
• 1:00:29
  Tops big League will be available at retail stores as well with blasters. But
• 1:00:34
  I want to start with the big guy that was released today, and that's
• 1:00:37
  twenty twenty three Tops Transcendent because I guess I never gave too much credence to
• 1:00:45
  what Tops Transcendent was as a product before until I really started getting to the
• 1:00:50
  details for the show. But for those of you not familiar with Tops Transcendent
• 1:00:54
  out there, it is the highest end product I think from Tops that I
• 1:01:00
  mean, maybe some people might argue Dynasty, but for Transcendent what you're looking
• 1:01:05
  at right now. I mentioned that the other two sets are available at hobby
• 1:01:08
  shops because Transcendent doesn't really work that way. There's only one hundred and ninety
• 1:01:15
  total boxes out there of Tops Transcendent, and in each box you get eighty
• 1:01:22
  four cards and it includes this whole list of stuff within the box. So
• 1:01:28
  Transcendent Icons Chrome packs of ten with four cards apiece, so that's forty of
• 1:01:34
  your cards. Tops Transcendent Icons Chrome Superfractors. You get one of those in
• 1:01:39
  every of your boxes, so you're guaranteed that's your first super fractor. You're
• 1:01:45
  guaranteed you get twenty gold framed autos, which I'm not sure if you've ever
• 1:01:50
  seen these out in the wild group, but the Transcendent gold framed autos are.
• 1:01:53
  They're fantastic. They're like some of the best autos you'll see out there.
• 1:01:59
  That's why I missed the gold label because it was like the knockoff of
• 1:02:02
  it was the Yeah, you get ten autograph patch cards, you get ten
• 1:02:07
  rookie showcase autographs or patch autographs. You get one nineteen fifty nine TOPS Superfractor
• 1:02:15
  autograph, one through the Year's autograph, one cut signature autograph, one jumbo
• 1:02:21
  patch relic autograph booklet, and then the big one is you get an invite
• 1:02:27
  to a special TOPS event with the box. And of those some of them,
• 1:02:34
  nine of them in total, are like you get a VIP inside the
• 1:02:37
  VIP area that like it just I've seen some of the stuff that has come
• 1:02:42
  through on social media that you get in there. It's just like bananas,
• 1:02:45
  just more more superfractors, exclusive autos, meet and greets that this is certainly
• 1:02:53
  the experience of a lifetime opening one of these boxes and comes with the price
• 1:02:57
  of a lifetime if you want one right now, gonna cost you a cool
• 1:03:00
  twenty five k online. But Brew, I mean, what do you think
• 1:03:05
  is this like after like digging into transcendent more today, Like it's kind of
• 1:03:10
  like maybe like a life goal to open one of these, it'd be really
• 1:03:14
  really dope. Yeah, it is like it, And I'd be really interested
• 1:03:19
  in the calculus of Tops Transcendent, you know, of like because what you
• 1:03:23
  went through there, Like there's a ton of stuff in Tops Transcendent, and
• 1:03:29
  because it is so difficult to actually acquire and get a hold of that for
• 1:03:35
  the average collector. There is a premium on every card that will come out
• 1:03:38
  of that box, just because that's the only way that you and I can
• 1:03:44
  get a hold of those cards. And so you know, I didn't do
• 1:03:46
  the math as you went through there, but you know, well, you
• 1:03:52
  got ten packs of four cards are forty cards, like I said, eighty
• 1:03:57
  four cards per box, and so I guess these are not all necessarily inclusive
• 1:04:00
  here, but eighty four cards box. But you're talking about twenty gold frame
• 1:04:04
  autographs. Yeah, Like you know, i'd probably argue, what one hundred
• 1:04:09
  dollars an autograph card. I don't know if that's more some of them,
• 1:04:15
  because a handful of those are gonna be one of one's or the they're really
• 1:04:19
  limited. Yeah, so you've got like two thousand dollars right there in cards,
• 1:04:25
  your rookie show, cross patch, your patch like you're easily looking at
• 1:04:30
  without big names at all here five to ten thousand dollars in just secondary market
• 1:04:36
  value, but just the basic cards here, and so even though it's twenty
• 1:04:42
  five K to get and those VIP events like tickets, like from what I
• 1:04:47
  understand, and I've never really tried to track one down, but those are
• 1:04:51
  worth a pretty penny as well, Like that's to some collectors, that is
• 1:04:56
  like the like the thing to try to go to. Maybe I'll try to
• 1:04:59
  look up see if I can find any recent sales on or pass sales on
• 1:05:04
  those those VIP tickets. But I think it's what's interesting is because it's so
• 1:05:10
  high end, like you are guaranteed some pretty significant value in this, and
• 1:05:14
  so yeah to your point life goal of opening one of those, like you
• 1:05:16
  can open it, and it's not like you're not out twenty five k,
• 1:05:19
  like you maybe out five K, which steals a lot of money. But
• 1:05:25
  I think that there's this is one of those like hobby top echelon things that
• 1:05:30
  one time you would just love to open that box or even being a break
• 1:05:34
  for it. But I'm sitting here, like what do you do if you're
• 1:05:38
  opening one of those boxes? Do you set like your entire day aside and
• 1:05:41
  open like one card every thirty minutes, like or one pack or how do
• 1:05:45
  you just savor that? Recognizing that I don't know about you. When I
• 1:05:48
  rip a box like thing's gone in no time, I'm not savoring it as
• 1:05:54
  much as I try. And I'm like, I'm ripping through a twenty five
• 1:05:56
  thousand dollars box and twenty minutes like, well there that so yeah, yeah,
• 1:06:02
  I mean certainly like a once in a lifetime like a retirement thing or
• 1:06:06
  something that like, yeah, I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure
• 1:06:10
  how i'd handle it, because like you might want to slow play it or
• 1:06:15
  I mean, obviously getting to some of those cards and seeing what you got
• 1:06:18
  is just got to be. It's just got to be so mind melting.
• 1:06:21
  Some of the products in there, and we haven't even mentioned like the Chase
• 1:06:27
  card in this set is incredible. The number one kind of I think card
• 1:06:31
  everyone's trying to look for in their box is a quad cut signature of the
• 1:06:38
  Beatles, So there's it's a one of one of John Ringo, George and
• 1:06:45
  Paul of all Autos, which is obviously huge considering that John Lennon and George
• 1:06:49
  Harrison are are deceased, so I don't even know if they've ever really produced
• 1:06:55
  any sort of card like this that I can recall in my lifetime, that
• 1:07:00
  that will be certainly the big one to bring home. And you would have
• 1:07:03
  to think that that's going to be like a six figure card at minimum.
• 1:07:09
  Yeah. Absolutely, that's a big old, big old card that you're going
• 1:07:15
  for there. That's if you pulled something like that, that's a retirement card,
• 1:07:21
  your retirement from your retirement like box, no kidding. And then it
• 1:07:29
  is like, it does blow my mind that there is such a huge base
• 1:07:32
  set with those chrome cards, because I mean, if you want to talk
• 1:07:36
  about maybe like the hardest set to ever put together, that would be it
• 1:07:42
  trying to chase down all those chrome cards from these transcendent boxes that I can't
• 1:07:46
  even imagine trying to pull it off. But I thought, I don't think
• 1:07:50
  anybody that's out there listening to this pod is probably obtaining one of these anytime
• 1:07:55
  soon, and I know we're not, but I thought it'd be fun to
• 1:07:59
  discuss it a little bit and see what all is in that box, because
• 1:08:02
  I mean, compared to lots of the things that we talk about with Tops
• 1:08:04
  of Finax. I mean, this is like one of the fun things.
• 1:08:08
  And like even if it is twenty five k that you got paid for it,
• 1:08:11
  like you get a really good value out of that considering what those eighty
• 1:08:15
  four cards are. Yeah, so Life Goal Rip Trop Tops transcendent on you
• 1:08:23
  know, release day, and then cry for the for a while after that.
• 1:08:30
  Exactly, Well, let's go to the other end of the scale,
• 1:08:33
  because we're gonna we just went from Tops's most expensive product. Too. They
• 1:08:41
  also put out I'm pretty sure this has got to be their cheapest product,
• 1:08:44
  right Tops, big League. Yeah, once we got rid of Opening Day,
• 1:08:46
  this is this is definitely it. This is Big League is the the
• 1:08:51
  cheapest product by far. Yeah. And so if you're out there looking for
• 1:08:56
  Big League even the retail blaster boxes, which for most sets is twenty five
• 1:09:01
  thirty thirty five dollars, Big League Blasters should only be twenty dollars at retail
• 1:09:06
  locations, So that already shows you the grade kind of below everything else.
• 1:09:12
  It is and good thing that you also called out Opening Day, because what
• 1:09:15
  they're actually have started to do with Big League Tops is they have combined what
• 1:09:23
  used to be Big League and Opening Day together because you have some of the
• 1:09:28
  Opening Day inserts that used to run that I used to love. So the
• 1:09:32
  big one is just the mascots. This is the one set where you do
• 1:09:38
  have a mascots collection in Big League when that used to be a part of
• 1:09:42
  Opening Day. And a part of that too is that Big League has always
• 1:09:46
  historically been a little bit more of a product for children. Just given the
• 1:09:51
  price point and the design and the colors, that is like a big standout
• 1:09:57
  piece for Big League since they've gotten rid of Opening Day and redesigned it is
• 1:10:01
  like going for big, spicy colors on not only the cards themselves, but
• 1:10:05
  also the inserts. And so I think this also harkens back a little bit
• 1:10:10
  too when we've discussed about other sorts of sets where if you're looking for a
• 1:10:15
  good starter set or something to gift to a kid, especially because here,
• 1:10:20
  not only are the blasters twenty dollars, but the hobby boxes are significantly cheaper
• 1:10:26
  at fifty dollars, so you get a good amount of hobby cards for fifty
• 1:10:30
  dollars. That this is you can't really beat a set like this in terms
• 1:10:34
  of an entry point and trying to get into car collecting and not feeling guilty.
• 1:10:40
  You know if a kid gets a hold of them and bangs up the
• 1:10:43
  corners on these cards. Yeah, I'm with you. I think it's you
• 1:10:46
  know, you're talking what about one hundred and fifty cards in a hobby box
• 1:10:53
  here for forty five to fifty bucks, Like that's as bad as good as
• 1:10:57
  you're gonna get. And you know, there's will is the opportunity for autographs.
• 1:11:01
  There's still some really cool inserts. You know, there's this is the
• 1:11:06
  one that we talked about one point. The social media follow back. Yes,
• 1:11:10
  inserts are in there, and so you've got I mean, I feel
• 1:11:14
  bad for the guy that pulls Alec Manoa as the social media followed back on
• 1:11:17
  the big checklist there, or Darryl Strawberry, Like there's some weird names on
• 1:11:21
  the oscars, Like what are you gonna do with an Oscar Cullus follow back?
• 1:11:27
  Yeah, I mean you're going from Jordan and Jordan Walker Chris Bryant with
• 1:11:31
  Alc Manoa, Jordan Westburg and Oscar Collis in a ten player checklist like man
• 1:11:39
  that maybe maybe these guys are great social media follows and I just don't know
• 1:11:43
  it, but again, those are some really crazy cool cards. You're talking
• 1:11:48
  literally ten cards, ten copies each of the one hundred total one and thirty
• 1:11:54
  five thousand hobby Hobby yeah packs, So that a good luck with with finding
• 1:12:01
  those ones. So but still there's this is a very fun product. Again
• 1:12:08
  for your entry entry level, you're gonna get a lot of cool, cool
• 1:12:12
  cards, you know. I think there was even this year there's the contest
• 1:12:17
  contest to become a Big leaguer and get your own card in the in the
• 1:12:23
  the the checklist, and a child named Rowan Watkins got that. So there's
• 1:12:28
  a thousand copies of his card baked into this. And I've already saw some
• 1:12:31
  photos online of people pulling the Rowan Watkins cards and that's again just such cool
• 1:12:39
  little things that they do with this set. That said, the part and
• 1:12:42
  you're probably not gonna get anything if you rip this, but the chance that
• 1:12:46
  for an intro product, the chance for a mega hit is still there,
• 1:12:50
  which is I think what makes it so so fun. Yeah, And I
• 1:12:55
  think especially just with the l rookie cards in this set too, that gives
• 1:13:00
  you a pretty good chance of hitting something pretty generous. And I mean even
• 1:13:03
  if you don't hit anything significant. I mean, your outlay for the initial
• 1:13:09
  spend is so insignificant that it reminds me a lot of actually what collector's choice
• 1:13:15
  used to be for upper Deck back in the mid nineties. And there's a
• 1:13:17
  reason why I think you and I opened a lot of that when you would
• 1:13:21
  go to Target to Walmart and be able to get those backs and boxes pretty
• 1:13:27
  cheap. That that's really what big League is here too. So like,
• 1:13:30
  even if you're not getting anything too significant in the packs, you can't really
• 1:13:33
  feel bad because like you do feel like you're actually getting your value for the
• 1:13:39
  cards that you paid for, because at the end of the day, even
• 1:13:43
  like any sort of base card, I don't feel too bad if you know
• 1:13:46
  the price that you're listening for the hobby box, it's like thirty cents a
• 1:13:50
  card. That's pretty that's reasonable in the end. Yeah, it isn't just
• 1:13:55
  for the pleasure in the front of ripping something open. You have to pay
• 1:13:59
  a hot funder bucks for hobby Box. So I think, yeah, big
• 1:14:01
  League and it's you know, at the end of the day, I actually
• 1:14:03
  personally liked Opening Day. Yes, I don't know why. I can't explain
• 1:14:10
  it. Some of the dugout peaks and things like that were just wonderful cards.
• 1:14:13
  Yeah, I'm gonna miss it tomorrow for Opening Day. Like that was
• 1:14:15
  my tradition during I started during the pandemic, was to open a box of
• 1:14:18
  opening day Baseball cards on Opening Day. So you got you gotta have to
• 1:14:24
  go switch over to big League. Actually so might not the not the same
• 1:14:29
  same ring to it, but it's very very true. So just it's just
• 1:14:34
  a fun thing. So I like, I like big League and it is
• 1:14:39
  the one product and it's kind of niche of that cheap, very accessible get
• 1:14:43
  a big hobby box. It takes me back to the days in the nineties
• 1:14:45
  when you could like go get a big hobby box of cards like thirty packs
• 1:14:50
  for like fifteen bucks at the store. How I yearn for those days and
• 1:14:56
  you could you rep it through a two hundred cards. It was just such
• 1:14:59
  a blast for such a cheap amount. That's that's what big League is.
• 1:15:02
  Yeah, really built the volume of your collection. I think the other thing
• 1:15:05
  that makes Big League a really good entry point is on top of like all
• 1:15:11
  the other sets that we've talked about, and especially twenty twenty four Series one,
• 1:15:15
  where we didn't even like get through the entire list of inserts because they
• 1:15:18
  either like were missing in the list like Beckett didn't know all the tops inserts,
• 1:15:24
  or people are still finding them pretty simple set up here for all the
• 1:15:29
  parallels as the base checklist is a little bit different from your standard sets where
• 1:15:36
  they actually I think it's a it's a little more akin to like Pokemon cards
• 1:15:42
  where you're based on the number or obviously you have this in heritage to where
• 1:15:48
  you have heritage high number. There are short prints, but Big League does
• 1:15:51
  progress where one through two hundred in this set are the commons and are mostly
• 1:15:59
  actually filled with kind of just more common players, although Atani is number one
• 1:16:03
  in this checklist, and then you kind of move up the scale of like
• 1:16:06
  how big of a star or how popular they are. So then the next
• 1:16:12
  set of cards. From two to one to two fifty is an uncommon rainbow
• 1:16:16
  foil, from two fifty one to two seventy five is a rare blue foil,
• 1:16:21
  to seventy six to three hundred is a super rare red foil, which
• 1:16:27
  is that's where the Elle card is. Ellie is number three hundred, so
• 1:16:30
  you also get that color match. I think this will actually be a pretty
• 1:16:33
  popular Ellie card because of that, between the rarity and it being as rookie
• 1:16:39
  and it being a red color match, and then you get legendary gold foil
• 1:16:43
  from three oh one to three ten. And then on top of each of
• 1:16:46
  those comments you're looking at just you're looking at a really short parallel list.
• 1:16:53
  You've only got four parallels outside of that base card. So you've got the
• 1:16:57
  electric orange foil paarallelll, a black foil parallel of twenty five, cracked ice
• 1:17:03
  parallel of ten, and then your foil fractor one of one parallels. So
• 1:17:10
  pretty easy to put together a rainbow here too, and just kind of also
• 1:17:15
  be able to build the set I think is a little bit more challenging because
• 1:17:19
  of those rareer cards. So it gives a little bit of like fun to
• 1:17:23
  people who are trying to build rainbows, build sets and chase different cards.
• 1:17:30
  Yeah, and quiz for you, just because you went there with Lli being
• 1:17:33
  a pretty collectible card, I was able to find one that's already sold on
• 1:17:38
  opening opening day on release DA here opening day, it's the same thing.
• 1:17:44
  What's your guess on that that Ellie three hundred card that red foil what do
• 1:17:51
  you think that went for? And again this is for everybody listening out here,
• 1:17:55
  this is not realistic. The first card sold is always ridiculous numbers.
• 1:17:59
  There's already multiple out there listed underneath this type of thing, but somebody has
• 1:18:03
  to me the first. So what's your number on a big League red foil
• 1:18:08
  Elle de la Cruz rookie card? And I should explain to I didn't explain
• 1:18:13
  the odds. So the odds on pulling one of these out of a hobby
• 1:18:15
  box is one in ninety one packs. It's actually the same for a blast
• 1:18:20
  it's like one in ninety So I don't even know if there's any variation between
• 1:18:24
  the hobby and retail packs on the league. Let's see, there's got to
• 1:18:30
  be a little bit. They're like slightly different, which doesn't help me because
• 1:18:34
  I don't think tops production BB the Twitter account put out a print run on
• 1:18:40
  the reds. I'm gonna say maybe like one hundred and twenty dollars right now,
• 1:18:47
  not a bad guess for one seventy nine. Okay, So I was
• 1:18:50
  in the ballpark. Yeah, I'll give you the ballpark, And as you
• 1:18:55
  look at things are out there now listed it's yet more and the lower hundreds
• 1:18:58
  things like that because I get the first one out there and undercut each other
• 1:19:02
  to the market. But yeah, it's you're right. I think that there's
• 1:19:05
  a ton of chase cards out there from all the like the social media follows
• 1:19:10
  and the you know, the you know, the big league kid that there's
• 1:19:15
  a lot of things like that, but that Ellie Crew is like the probably
• 1:19:17
  the most realistic chase card, yeah, for folks out there. So I
• 1:19:21
  wouldn't be surprised that that one in the long run, and also like settles
• 1:19:25
  in like the forty dollars range, just given how short printed it is and
• 1:19:30
  between set collectors and ELI collectors and color match collectors, that it sits in
• 1:19:36
  the middle of a lot of Venn diagrams, you know what I mean,
• 1:19:39
  And that it's a card can can keep its value pretty well. Yeah,
• 1:19:43
  and it's a really good looking card, Like I think that's the other thing
• 1:19:45
  about it is the color match and it's a good it's a good photo,
• 1:19:49
  it's you know, a good pose Like there's a lot to like of that
• 1:19:51
  card, and the design is pretty nice too, So you're right, there's
• 1:19:56
  it's it's gonna it's gonna hold some value long term. Yeah, And I
• 1:19:59
  know when Series one twenty twenty four was released, I called it a big
• 1:20:02
  League design. Oddly, I think that this is a better design than Series
• 1:20:08
  one on Big League, Like this big League design, Like if this had
• 1:20:11
  been the Series one design, I would have approved it. I don't know
• 1:20:16
  if I go there. Okay, I'll go on that one myself, but
• 1:20:21
  I think there's a very bad argument though. Yeah, exactly, Okay,
• 1:20:27
  Well we'll move on to We just had two back to back sets where we
• 1:20:31
  praised Tops and really didn't have anything two. Can we go three for three?
• 1:20:38
  Absolutely? Notes. We're gonna talk now about twenty twenty four Tops Tribute,
• 1:20:45
  mostly because I'm I don't mind Tops Tribute. It's not necessarily my favorite
• 1:20:49
  set, but I do pick up cards here and there, and I've always
• 1:20:54
  wanted to open some Tribute because usually the price point has been fairly reasonable.
• 1:20:58
  But this year, for or a hobby box, it is a hobby only
• 1:21:01
  product, so you're not gonna be able to find it retail locations like Target
• 1:21:05
  to Walmart's. You're looking at five hundred and twenty five dollars or a hobby
• 1:21:10
  box off of tops dot com right now, and that is right around the
• 1:21:14
  range where any other sort of pricing is coming in online right now. So
• 1:21:19
  within that actual box, you are getting three autographs and three memorabilia cards,
• 1:21:27
  so you are looking at, you know, six hits essentially. But wow,
• 1:21:32
  I mean the checklist in terms of the automate autographs and the memory of
• 1:21:38
  Bilia cards is a bit watered down, and so you're not looking at anything.
• 1:21:44
  I don't think super high end here. So for five twenty five,
• 1:21:46
  it's pretty pricey to get into a product like this. What do you think,
• 1:21:51
  brew have you ever opened any tribute or what's your interest level in this
• 1:21:57
  set? Yeah? I mean to your point there point it puts a damper
• 1:22:00
  on it. And personally, a tribute is one of those that I always
• 1:22:04
  confused with like triple threads, and it's just like I do with with with
• 1:22:09
  five Star and Tier one, like they're basically the same card. This year's
• 1:22:14
  set. Outside of one exception, it looks bad, like I'm just looking
• 1:22:19
  looking at the cards like they're all the designs are very gimmicky for such a
• 1:22:25
  high end set, and that's where what I really struggle with as you look
• 1:22:29
  through just the pictures that have been released of of tribute even the base cards
• 1:22:33
  there it's a very it's like, you know, the one I'm looking at
• 1:22:36
  here on on Beckett is Jackie Robinson. Do you have a juke box behind
• 1:22:43
  him? Like? It's kind of what the design looks like. I mean
• 1:22:45
  it's the girl of a Studa Baker exactly like. And I mean that's one
• 1:22:51
  of the better looking cards. Like there's have these pillars of the game autographs.
• 1:22:55
  It's just like guys standing in front of the Roman Coliseum. I don't
• 1:22:58
  know what's going on yet to like the George Do you like that George Brett
• 1:23:02
  one that's in an office? Yeah? Like what like again, how much
• 1:23:06
  more gimmicky? I wasn't sure if that was like a StarCraft cruiser or what
• 1:23:11
  like what that like was. But yeah, there's just a lot of weird
• 1:23:15
  cards. The one exception being I love these cards from the set every year
• 1:23:19
  is the STANP of Approval cards. I agree, And this is the one
• 1:23:25
  where you actually have a relic on the card, but it has the MLB
• 1:23:28
  authentication hologram also on the cards you can look up exactly which game date you
• 1:23:34
  know, sometimes even the event like what actually took place with that piece of
• 1:23:41
  memorabilia, and I think, what's so cool about this? And I I
• 1:23:45
  don't know this for a fact, but from some of the ones I've looked
• 1:23:46
  at in the past, I don't think TOPS thinks these through. And the
• 1:23:50
  card value sometimes come down to the actual relic in the card. And you'll
• 1:23:57
  go through and you'll be like looking and this and you'll pull a card like
• 1:24:00
  the guy hit three homers this day, or hit for the cycle, or
• 1:24:02
  hit his three thousands hit or something like somehow they just included it. I
• 1:24:06
  mean, probably not the three thousand hit, but like, it doesn't seem
• 1:24:12
  like they think through, like even you know, as they're doing parallels of
• 1:24:15
  that, they're not matching up the event to the parallel, like the rare
• 1:24:20
  rare cards get the more rare events. No, it's like you might pull
• 1:24:24
  one, it's like, hey, this is wrong a playoff game. That's
• 1:24:26
  kind of neat. So I always get a kick out of those cards,
• 1:24:29
  and they actually do look good outside of everything else in the set, those
• 1:24:32
  look a little bit better. So I generally really do like TOPS Tribute,
• 1:24:38
  but I am out on the design this year. I'm out on the price
• 1:24:41
  I'm gonna be picking up some stamp of approvals on the secondary market, and
• 1:24:45
  that's probably about it. Yeah, I totally agree. And even just like
• 1:24:49
  the base design, I feel like it hasn't changed significantly in years that like
• 1:24:55
  it's always kind of had a look similar to that Jackie Robinson car, and
• 1:25:00
  you would want something that just mixes it up a little bit. That even
• 1:25:03
  the typefaces all look very similar. And the other thing, the other like
• 1:25:09
  low key thing I don't really like about Tribute is that they're thicker cards.
• 1:25:13
  They are forty point cards. So if you're not familiar with thickness of cards
• 1:25:16
  that your standard, like if you think about your standard baseball card, you
• 1:25:23
  know, like a just a regular tops that will be a twenty point thickness.
• 1:25:28
  You can correct me if I'm wrong too, because like a thirty point
• 1:25:30
  thirty point there we go. Yep, I knew it's somewhere in that range.
• 1:25:32
  And then chrome's a little bit thicker. It's usually like a thirty five
• 1:25:36
  ish point technically, but those will still fit in your standard just penny sleeves
• 1:25:43
  and you know those card protectors that you can pick up anywhere that if you're
• 1:25:47
  familiar with card collecting you'll know exactly like what we're talking about and the top
• 1:25:54
  loaders and everything. But with the thicker cards from Tribute. So it's a
• 1:25:57
  forty point card, I think it's easually like four year fifty requires you to
• 1:26:00
  get like an entire different set of yeah materials to be able to actually store
• 1:26:08
  the cards in like a hard container, and so it's just annoying. It
• 1:26:13
  just requires like an extra trip to going to the hobby store. And as
• 1:26:18
  you can tell, I don't have like my my points memorized on the thickness
• 1:26:21
  of the cards, so you got to like go in and like measure up
• 1:26:26
  like which ones it goes into correctly. And it's just like that extra level
• 1:26:30
  of annoyance. I'm only getting because I had my card out the other day
• 1:26:33
  that actually has the different thicknesses that tells you what you need to short on
• 1:26:38
  some toploaders, and I was trying to figure out what do I need for
• 1:26:41
  some of these cards that you're right like if you want to because these are
• 1:26:43
  nice cards and there's a little resll value in the base stuff because they are
• 1:26:45
  that thicker card is kind of neat, but to protect them, like you
• 1:26:51
  it's it's kind of like it's a lot of work to protect them. You
• 1:26:55
  can't just like throw them a standard top loader and move on with life.
• 1:26:59
  So that I did. I don't even think about that, but you're absolutely
• 1:27:02
  right that does play with tribute and only having eighteen eighteen cards for hobby eighteen
• 1:27:10
  yeah, yeah, eighteen cards for hobby. Like man like, it's you
• 1:27:15
  got to value your base cards at that point. Yeah, And I mean
• 1:27:17
  there are a decent number of people that I know that like do put this
• 1:27:23
  set together because it is one hundred cards set, it's a little bit more
• 1:27:26
  straightforward. You can find it at card shows and online in lots and stuff,
• 1:27:31
  so people do like to do that. I do also want to point
• 1:27:35
  out that this is also the first set with Yamamoto and Junghu Lee rookies that
• 1:27:44
  are short prints. I guess I should have checked the I didn't check the
• 1:27:46
  Big League to see if they were in there, but I don't believe they
• 1:27:49
  are. Oh no, Yamamoto is, but Jung Ho Lee is not.
• 1:27:56
  So the Yamamoto is. Actually it's a part of the commons. So if
• 1:28:00
  you want a Yamamoto rookie card, these are going to be your first two
• 1:28:02
  sets. To be able to start doing that with twenty twenty four Big League
• 1:28:08
  and twenty twenty four Tribute, But they're gonna be tough if you want one
• 1:28:11
  of the Tribute ones because they are really limited short prints that Honestly, it
• 1:28:15
  seems a little bit like they had Tribute printed and then once Yamamoto and Lee
• 1:28:20
  signed, they went back and printed them and like reinserted them. I guess
• 1:28:25
  with that factor too, hopefully they're actually in the set, unlike that some
• 1:28:29
  of those chrome short print parallels that we had a couple of years ago with
• 1:28:34
  Julio Rodriguez and the likes where they were just totally missing from the set.
• 1:28:39
  So this is like the one chance to start getting one of those cards.
• 1:28:44
  But other than that, I think I'm in the same boat as you that
• 1:28:47
  I'm passing on Tribute because of the price point. This is, like I
• 1:28:51
  said, if this had been more than like a three hundred dollars price point,
• 1:28:56
  It's been a set where I've always been tempted to open a box just
• 1:29:00
  because I never have, But yeah, at five hundred and twenty five dollars,
• 1:29:02
  I will pass and just go online to find a few stand up for
• 1:29:08
  approvals for my personal collection. I think you're right that that price point to
• 1:29:13
  me is that two ninety five something like that is where really where it should
• 1:29:15
  be. And if you look at the checklist for the memorabilia for the autos,
• 1:29:20
  like it's actually a pretty strong checklist. Don't get me wrong. You
• 1:29:24
  got your Gwinn Priesters and your you've got your you know who else see you
• 1:29:29
  guys as far as Austin Wells your you know interesting uh kind of second here,
• 1:29:34
  guys. But overall, like you are talking star after star after rookie
• 1:29:39
  after rookie that generally are going to be some pretty big names, and so
• 1:29:43
  you're generally what the autos you're hitting are really good collectible players. And so
• 1:29:48
  I think that's what makes it hard when you you've priced it so far hard
• 1:29:51
  of the market that you're not gonna even if you when you do pull those
• 1:29:57
  guys, like the money's not there, You're money is not there, Like
• 1:30:00
  they have really priced the market Outum, this one, that's for sure.
• 1:30:03
  Yeah. I Mean I've read plenty of Reddit accounts of people opening these boxes
• 1:30:09
  and like getting maybe like forty to fifty dollars worth of cards already, and
• 1:30:13
  so like it does. I think this is also what Tribute is morphed into.
• 1:30:18
  It's it's almost become like a breaker's only product. That I think what
• 1:30:25
  Tops and Fanatics are wanting people to really do is work through there their affiliated
• 1:30:31
  breakers that they have set up and give some sort of kickback to and get
• 1:30:35
  advertising dollars out of, and then wants you to buy into these breaks that
• 1:30:41
  give you, like even a worse bang for your buck. And honestly,
• 1:30:45
  it is just unsanctioned gambling. Like I think it's only a matter of time
• 1:30:49
  before there's some sort of regulations or it's just some sort of oversight that comes
• 1:30:55
  to these breaks, because I think there's it's just it's a really easy chance
• 1:31:00
  that I mean, and we've seen it this week with what gambling addiction can
• 1:31:05
  do to your life and the lives of people around you. That that's why
• 1:31:12
  this product especially is just it's leaving a bad taste in my mouth because it
• 1:31:15
  is involved with all the breakers, and I think it's only like a sign
• 1:31:21
  of where Fanatics and Tops is going to be taking these, like I would
• 1:31:26
  call them like upper middle tier products where things like Triple Threads I think will
• 1:31:31
  maybe fall into this going forward where you've got cool autographs, cool relics,
• 1:31:39
  stamp of rubal relics, like authenticated relics which is really hard to find nowadays
• 1:31:45
  that people want, but they're hidden behind this layer of working through the breakers
• 1:31:50
  to get to any of the cards that you want before they hit the secondary
• 1:31:55
  market. Yeah, it's just the paywall of car collecting at the end of
• 1:32:00
  the day. So it's it's it is. It's disappointing you when you look
• 1:32:05
  at it that way. So I you know, I'm not fully against breaking.
• 1:32:10
  I think it's one of those you have to be really you have to
• 1:32:12
  know your breaker and trust your breaker. I think there's there are a really
• 1:32:15
  number of great breakers out there, but you're right, that is really where
• 1:32:17
  a fanatics is taking the hobby and that's putt out of reach for a number
• 1:32:21
  of folks. And uh, it's it's a tough game to get into with
• 1:32:26
  breaking, and if you got to really know what you're doing and really be
• 1:32:30
  comfortable with if you're going to get to these products with getting absolutely nothing at
• 1:32:34
  the end of the day. Yeah, all right, Well, sorry derailed
• 1:32:39
  us a little bit there, but I think we've also kind of wrapped these
• 1:32:41
  sets up. If you want to look at some of the pictures that we
• 1:32:45
  were talking about, certainly look at the show notes. I've got everything linked
• 1:32:48
  there to go back to Beckett, and we've also got all the other information
• 1:32:53
  that we've discussed so far in the pod in the show notes, as well
• 1:32:58
  as some merch from Cards and Category. So going into the baseball season looking
• 1:33:01
  for a new hat, we got you. You can hit us up in
• 1:33:04
  the Cards and Categories team store and buy a nice little dad hat there.
• 1:33:10
  And if this is your first time checking out the pod, because it is
• 1:33:13
  opening day, I'm figuring that we're probably picking up a few extra people as
• 1:33:16
  we're getting really into prime fantasy baseball season, which is now that we've gotten
• 1:33:21
  through our drafts, we've got the first couple weeks of roster management coming up.
• 1:33:27
  And you can certainly reach out to Brew and I at ras ball to
• 1:33:31
  get any advice from us directly, but if you also can leave any ratings,
• 1:33:39
  reviews, comments wherever you're listening to these podcasts, we certainly appreciate it.
• 1:33:43
  It helps us find new audience members and rasball dot com if you can
• 1:33:47
  sign up for a subscription, if you can afford it, we would greatly
• 1:33:50
  appreciate it. Certainly helps us run the site and keeps us going as well
• 1:33:56
  as provides you lots of great tools. I was using Rudy's Draft war Room
• 1:34:01
  throughout draft season. I love Rudy's streaminators in terms of especially the pitching one.
• 1:34:08
  The pitching streaminator is extremely useful if you're trying to figure out who to
• 1:34:13
  pick up for a daily option for either DFS or a daily Fantasy stream option.
• 1:34:18
  Can't go wrong with that tool that always comes in handy. So yeah,
• 1:34:25
  brew let's wrap it up in full here. You can let people know
• 1:34:28
  where they can reach you on socials and elsewhere. Yep, you can find
• 1:34:32
  me on Twitter slash x at Jaybrewer one seven. Also hitting the regular season
• 1:34:39
  here over at rasball, I will be finishing up my top one hundred hitters
• 1:34:44
  and doing a little reshaking of what we I released over the last month here
• 1:34:48
  this coming weekend before we get into hitter profiles and start to look at up
• 1:34:53
  and coming guys that we want to talk about throughout the season. So find
• 1:34:56
  me over on the weekends at rass ball as well. How about you.
• 1:35:00
  Yep, you can find me on rasball dot com as well, and I'm
• 1:35:03
  finally writing again. So my first waiver wire collum will be up on Saturday,
• 1:35:09
  letting you know who you should be picking up depending on the depth of
• 1:35:13
  your leagues, as well as giving some strategies for working the waiver wires throughout
• 1:35:16
  the season. Certainly pop in with any direct questions you've got there. You
• 1:35:21
  can also reach me on Twitter slash x and at on Blue Sky at m
• 1:35:27
  cool seven, and you can reach the podcast on Twitter slash x at cards
• 1:35:32
  categories or email the podcast at cards Categories at gmail dot com. We really
• 1:35:40
  appreciate you sticking around and listen to our podcasts and checking us out. Have
• 1:35:44
  a wonderful opening day, I am man, I am so pomped now.
• 1:35:48
  It's uh, I mean it's not quite like less than twelve hours out,
• 1:35:54
  especially with those cancelations. That's a bummer. Those cancelations that they had tomorrow
• 1:35:57
  were like the noon games, So I don't think we've got anything on the
• 1:36:00
  docket till like Central. Yeah, yep, bummer. But yeah, your
• 1:36:05
  boy athlete I think is opening the season against the Angel Yeah. It's gonna
• 1:36:11
  be fun to watch. So yeah, I'm looking forward to gluing myself to
• 1:36:15
  my couch all weekend watching baseball and making some very drastic fantasy moves based on
• 1:36:21
  super small sample sizes. What about you, Yeah, I mean I've gotta
• 1:36:26
  start. I'll start day one. It's like who who had a hot day.
• 1:36:29
  Let's let's make some moves. I made a trade last night in one
• 1:36:31
  of our home leagues just because I can exactly so. But talk about small
• 1:36:38
  sample sizes, the spring training sample size is so yes, I'm excited.
• 1:36:43
  It is opening day tomorrow. Let's let's let's enjoy exactly so. Take care
• 1:36:47
  everyone, enjoy your opening day, and we'll see you, same time,
• 1:36:50
  same place next week. Bye b