Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 12 : 2023 Topps Update, Late Season Breakouts

Transcript

Ep. 12 : 2023 Topps Update, Late Season Breakouts · Cards & Categories

• 0:16
  Hello, and welcome everybody to episode twelve of Cards and Categories. I am
• 0:22
  Mike Coolard from Rasball here, joined as always by Jeremy Brewer from Razball.
• 0:28
  Jeremy, how are you doing on this fine Wednesday evening? I am doing
• 0:32
  just fine. Glad to be here, Glad to see the playoff races coming
• 0:36
  to a conclusion, some good, some bad for different teams. What is
• 0:42
  exciting into the season coming up here? So doing well and excited to see
• 0:46
  where this rest of this week leads us. Yeah, So I guess I
• 0:50
  should let everybody know. We're recording this on the night of September twenty seven,
• 0:55
  so that's when we're looking at these standings and literally like the Reds just
• 1:00
  lost. So the Reds are probably out of this race as they're falling back.
• 1:04
  And I don't know if fan graffs hays the updated playoff odds yet let
• 1:08
  me see the fresh refresh, but they were at thirteen point six percent when
• 1:15
  we started this conversation. I think they're going to go down. So I
• 1:19
  do want to focus on the NL wild Card though, because that has been
• 1:23
  the race that I've been most intrigued by watching this week. Between the Marlins.
• 1:29
  I mean, the Marlins are a really fun team. It's the twentieth
• 1:30
  anniversary of that two thousand and three teams, so there's a little bit of
• 1:36
  vibes going on there with just Marlin's nous and then the Cubs are. We're
• 1:42
  not going to give the Cubs a fair shake here on this pod, obviously
• 1:46
  between the two of us, as we haven't over the years. You're a
• 1:49
  Cardinals fan, I'm a Cardinals socks fan that I really relishing and watching the
• 1:56
  Cubs kind of blow this as last night, say, as Suzuki did drop
• 2:00
  an easy fly ball that would have really pretty much stealed at that game against
• 2:05
  the Braves, and the Braves came back and the Cubs were a six snupping
• 2:08
  lead. Cubs are up right now, but I'm really hoping that the Marlins
• 2:13
  pulled through. It should be a fun race here through this weekend though,
• 2:15
  as we got the Cubs finishing at Milwaukee, they have one more against the
• 2:21
  Braves tomorrow. The Marlins right now are playing the second game of a doubleheader
• 2:24
  against the Mets. They have another one against the Mets and then finish at
• 2:28
  Pittsburgh, so they've got a little bit of an easier March than the Cubs.
• 2:32
  And you know that the Brewers would love to keep the Cubs out of
• 2:35
  the playoffs. Yeah, you know that, you know, you know they
• 2:38
  would, So definitely, the schedule seems a favor of the Marlins there and
• 2:44
  the Cubs they're doing everything they can. Just tonight, I think they got
• 2:47
  they got the Braves have two on, nobody out and now by two here
• 2:52
  in the bottom of the seventh, So by the time that we're done with
• 2:54
  the pod here, we might have an update on how that that game goes.
• 2:58
  So I you know, as I look at it, I definitely have
• 3:00
  to say, you know, I know Chicago has a one game lead over
• 3:04
  over Miami, but I think there's a good chance that you know, even
• 3:09
  just tonight we get they end up being even after after tonight, unless the
• 3:15
  Cubs are able to hold on, which I just don't have a whole lot
• 3:19
  of faith with that team, with the UH with the way that they've they've
• 3:23
  operated lately, that they can't that they can hold on. But even if
• 3:27
  they do, the rest of the season really does seem to favor the Marlins,
• 3:30
  and I just I think they have some magic there in Miami. They
• 3:34
  haven't won for a while. I think the fans are into it, and
• 3:36
  I think they're gonna get a chance to just roll into the into the wild
• 3:38
  card here. So yeah, for the else, everything else is pretty pretty
• 3:44
  settled this point. You know, Arizona's very much looks like they're going to
• 3:49
  uh be in it. I mean, they're playoff odds or what ninety six
• 3:51
  percent at this point in time, and they had one more game against the
• 3:55
  White Sox tomorrow, so so that's like a guaranteed win, right. The
• 4:00
  White Sox look totally dead, so it'll be a pretty easy game for them.
• 4:04
  And then I actually didn't look who they finished against. I will pull
• 4:08
  that up. They finished against the Asstros. So that's an interesting little twist,
• 4:17
  is that you've got two teams really battling it out there between the Astros
• 4:23
  and the Diamondbacks, and that'll be an interesting series. I think over the
• 4:27
  weekend that lots of people will be tuning in for both races because that flips
• 4:30
  us and makes the segue easy. Actually that the other big race going on
• 4:35
  is the Al West, and I think again kind of like tabling Cincinnati and
• 4:42
  putting them away that like I think Texas has risen to the level where they're
• 4:46
  pretty secure in their Al West title that it would take a pretty big drop,
• 4:51
  and they are playing the Mariners this weekend, so it could happen as
• 4:55
  the Mariners fight back and are trying to make it into the playoffs. But
• 4:59
  it does look like the Ers are gonna end up being the odd team out
• 5:01
  and that could shift really quickly tonight with the Mariners and the Astros playing.
• 5:08
  It's been a fun series. I enjoyed the game Monday with Vinton's Justin Verlander
• 5:13
  going out there and doing his best to hold down the Mariners. It was
• 5:17
  a really masterful performance because he is working with diminished stuff, but he still
• 5:23
  got that ace quality to him, that pinpoint accuracy. He just grinded out
• 5:29
  the Mariners all Monday night, and then the Mirrors took the game last night
• 5:31
  on Tuesday nights. So it's been a good back and forth and I'm excited
• 5:35
  to watch that game after we get done in recording here. Yeah, I
• 5:40
  think that's probably is the race to watch because there's enough that can happen between
• 5:46
  those teams that it could throw somebody for really an upset at the end of
• 5:54
  the season year. You know, I personally am kind of rooting for the
• 5:57
  Mariners. I just think that they're fun to watch and there's a lot that
• 5:59
  can that can happen with them. But the Astros have looked it looked good.
• 6:03
  They've been solid, and you know, I think they just have a
• 6:05
  very well rounded team. Uh. You know, I think it's impressive of
• 6:11
  the Rangers after really struggling, we're able to kind of bounce back and you
• 6:15
  know, take that take. Looks like what they they're going to do is
• 6:16
  be able to take that division. There is a still a small chance that
• 6:19
  that that doesn't happen. But I think if if I was, if I
• 6:23
  was betting, I would say that the Rangers are pretty much gonna lock that
• 6:27
  one up. I think it's a you know, mid eighties percent chance based
• 6:30
  on fangraphs that they will clinch that division. And I think their scheduled the
• 6:34
  rest of the way, if if I recall was not too too terribly bad
• 6:41
  pulling up here, who does the Rangers have left? Yeah? I didn't
• 6:46
  pull it up either because I already kind of marked them as in and it's
• 6:49
  kind of it really stuck underneath me that like they pulled away with it over
• 6:54
  this past week. Part of it was the Astros just absolutely tanking against the
• 6:59
  Royals this past weekend and getting swept at home. Yeah, Kansas City.
• 7:03
  So we'll hint at that a little bit later because we're covering a few Kansasy
• 7:06
  players in our fantasy portion. But what a steam curve a weekend for the
• 7:11
  Astros. You've got the sketch up, yeah, because it could actually be
• 7:14
  the storyline they finished with four Seattle. Yeah, oh that's right. Yeah,
• 7:18
  you're just like we just would just we literally just covered this, so
• 7:24
  still strike that last five minutes from you remembering. But yeah, I mean
• 7:29
  just that the series there between you know, uh, Astros, Mariners,
• 7:33
  Rangers, you know, all have meaningful games left, meaningful games that other
• 7:40
  teams they're playing against want to win as well. So I think that that
• 7:43
  says a lot. It should makes for some really exciting series here. You
• 7:46
  know, if like I said, if i'm I'm if I'm betting, I'm
• 7:49
  picking the Astros to take in the AL and I actually would take the Marlins
• 7:53
  to take it in the NL and steak into the playoffs there and and you
• 7:57
  know, make some noise, but I'm curious for for you, is there
• 8:00
  anybody you know as you look at the teams that are going to the playoffs,
• 8:03
  do you think are just getting hot right at the right time that could
• 8:05
  really do some damage that we weren't expecting. It's been a little bit up
• 8:11
  and down, Like I don't know, with the first round buys for the
• 8:15
  first two seeds, Like I don't know, because that could help. You
• 8:20
  can get your eyes rested up, but you also kind of get them out
• 8:22
  of the rhythm. Baseball is the rhythm game, So being able to see
• 8:26
  the ball and just kind of be used to it, I think really does
• 8:31
  help teams more than buy weeks in the NFL, for example, where especially
• 8:35
  there it is a matter of who's injured the least a lot, and so
• 8:43
  I think right now it'll be interesting to see who rolls with momentum coming off
• 8:46
  this weekend. You know that, Like if the Mariners roll in after sweeping
• 8:50
  Texas and is just firing on all cylinders. I'm not counting on that given
• 8:56
  how their offenses looked, but it could happen. I could also see the
• 9:00
  same thing happen with like the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks have been able to get
• 9:03
  some momentum going by just crushing the White Sox this week and if they can
• 9:09
  do the same thing against the Astros this weekend, again, same sort of
• 9:13
  thing. You just kind of get on a little bit of role and the
• 9:16
  Diamondbacks to have enough pieces that they could be dangerous in the playoffs. But
• 9:22
  overall it does seem like it's the Braves or Dodgers playoff run to conquer that
• 9:30
  the al field. Everybody has their warts. That like, there's not anybody
• 9:37
  that looks like a Juggernaut in the NL. It's Braves or Dodgers and everybody
• 9:41
  else. I could maybe see an argument for the Phillies, but again,
• 9:45
  yeah, the Phillies have won six in a row, and you know,
• 9:46
  they've actually kind of gotten hot. They have a really, really talented team,
• 9:50
  and so they're the ones that, you know, if you look at
• 9:54
  somebody that might be able to put things together at the right time and have
• 9:56
  enough talent or just steamroll. I think the Phillies have that. But that
• 10:01
  wild card round is just so dangerous. You have to get out of that
• 10:05
  first before you can actually steamroll anything. Yeah, and oddly, the one
• 10:11
  thing I do worry about with the Phillies is their defense that like this is
• 10:16
  the time when defense really shines bright and can kind of nerves can get to
• 10:22
  people, and everybody's watching that. That is why I'm a little bit just
• 10:28
  not totally in on the Phillies, a little unsteady with them, but the
• 10:33
  Brave and part of it too is like the Braves and Dodgers are such beacons
• 10:37
  of almost perfect team building that I don't know if that just kind of also
• 10:43
  makes me look at these other teams and say, oh, they're not the
• 10:45
  Dodgers, They're not the Braves. They have a weakness because you don't see
• 10:48
  it in Atlanta or La. Yeah, then I think you look at the
• 10:52
  al and you know, you do have two teams there that have a good
• 10:56
  chance of finishing with one hundred wins between the Orioles and the and the Rays,
• 11:00
  and neither of those teams feels like the Braves of the Dodgers. But
• 11:05
  both of those teams are just very well rounded, don't have a lot of
• 11:07
  weakness type teams, and so they just play really good baseball, you know,
• 11:13
  and you know with with the race having h mcclanahand down, so you
• 11:18
  know their ace is not you know there for the playoff series, that's going
• 11:22
  to hurt them. You know, the Orioles do have some good pitching,
• 11:26
  but they don't have like that bulldog guy that seems like he's just gonna run
• 11:30
  away with it. I mean, they have some talent to there, don't
• 11:31
  get me wrong, but it's not like you have that clear number one cy
• 11:35
  young type starter who you're gonna hand the ball too. I go back to,
• 11:39
  like I'm gonna say, like a royal holiday in the playoffs, the
• 11:43
  kind of guy who's just like, well, we just need one picture today
• 11:46
  type of guy. And as long as our guys in the now, we
• 11:48
  need one, maybe two runs. Neither those teams right now feels like they're
• 11:52
  quite there with that, but they are so well rounded. Is as long
• 12:00
  as they're in you know, a longer series, I think that they look
• 12:05
  a lot better. Where it can be dangerous for them is you know,
• 12:07
  whichever one of them ends up, which it looks like Tampa Bay at this
• 12:11
  point, ends up in a wild card game. You know, a wildcard
• 12:13
  series, the best two out of three. It's a little a little dicey,
• 12:18
  and if you end up best two out of three, you know,
• 12:20
  and they're probably gonna be playing somebody that just got hot at the very end
• 12:24
  to get in, you know, so you end up going against uh,
• 12:28
  you know, Seattle or Houston or somebody like that that just got in and
• 12:33
  you have to face, you know, the their best picture. Man,
• 12:39
  it could get interested. Yeah, And I mean we didn't even talk about
• 12:43
  the Twins or the Blue Jays, who I think honestly could kind of fall
• 12:48
  into that secret category because the those teams do have good starting pitching that they
• 12:52
  can consolidate and move some of those dudes to the bullpen or pickyback, and
• 12:58
  just the right amount of mix intos of their bats to be able to catch
• 13:01
  fire and be able to do it. It's just I don't know if those
• 13:05
  teams haven't really produced much collectively in decades to be able to really incite any
• 13:11
  sort of faith in them. So I guess I'll believe it when I see
• 13:16
  it, But it is I know, I'm chalking up the jerseys in the
• 13:20
  fabric to the players, you know, and the histories in the past,
• 13:24
  But it does feel like that wait arrives on players shoulders once they put the
• 13:31
  Blue Jays and Twins hats on, and I don't know that Aura just kind
• 13:35
  of washes over it all. So I think they could do it. It'll
• 13:39
  just be interesting to see it happen because you're not totally used to it from
• 13:43
  those franchises at this point. Yeah, I think it's gonna take some you
• 13:46
  know, look as a team like the Twins, and you could actually you
• 13:50
  can see it happen, right, Bigley over had a great game, although
• 13:54
  the night I think it was just last night, and he you know,
• 13:56
  the guy actually was sitting on the miners not too long ago for workload and
• 14:01
  he was just dominance. He got Sonny Gray, who's you know, should
• 14:05
  be you know in uh, you know my opinion in the Cy Young discussion,
• 14:09
  probably not gonna fully be there, but maybe third. He might get
• 14:13
  third. Yeah, and so and then here's kind of Chris Paddock back.
• 14:16
  You have Joe Ryan, who, for all the struggles this season, is
• 14:20
  still a great picture and so you could easily see them doing some damage and
• 14:26
  being one of those teams is just like I'm gonna get every ounce out of
• 14:28
  it. I'm gonna get my good start. I'm gonna use like two guys
• 14:31
  out of the bullpen. I'm gonna have to hit just two home runs and
• 14:35
  squeak out some wins. So yeah, all these teams are gonna get in
• 14:39
  there, have something to play for. They all could be dangerous, but
• 14:43
  it does feel like there's two teams in each league that clear far and away
• 14:48
  seemed to be the favorites. Yeah, exactly. And if we're talking about
• 14:52
  anniversary magic, it is also the thirty grand aniversary of the last Blue Jay's
• 14:56
  World Series victory, so maybe they've got a little bit of that mojo going
• 15:01
  too. So we'll see going forward. And the other thing I think we
• 15:05
  want to talk about is we talked about this a little bit last week,
• 15:11
  the controversy surrounding the uncovering of multiple superpractor one of the ones from Poeman Chrome.
• 15:16
  Well, it keeps happening, so I don't know. I know last
• 15:20
  week you brought up the theory that you know, there are sets produced for
• 15:26
  players and sets that go into the print run. I think that the more
• 15:31
  and more that come out that that's probably less and less of what happened.
• 15:35
  You can say I'm wrong. I'm just saying that you were throwing a theory.
• 15:41
  Yet there that like your hypothesis has been disproven or whatever. What's that
• 15:45
  scientific method? But Jogi Barrow said, I have not I have not failed.
• 15:50
  I just not a lot of different wiz didn't work. Okay, So
• 15:54
  I mean at this point, I'm starting to think that I think it also
• 15:58
  gives a little bit of an insight into how they produced some of these cards
• 16:02
  that I'm guessing for some of these low numbered parallels, they produced multiple versions
• 16:07
  of them and then send out the best ones and so something probably happened again,
• 16:12
  So this is my theory, and so yeah, you're right for putting
• 16:18
  this down at the beginning of our science experiment or whatever. My theory is
• 16:22
  that like they produced multiple and something happened where they just didn't discard them.
• 16:29
  But I don't know, like if I was also working at tops or any
• 16:34
  sort of production shop where you're dealing with exclusivity like this, like once you
• 16:38
  pick the one that's going to go into the packs, why not immediately destroy
• 16:44
  everything else? Like, I don't see how this happens, and so I'm
• 16:48
  curious to see how it all unfolds. And I don't know if we'll ever
• 16:52
  get an exact answer, But Brew, what are your thoughts on how this
• 16:56
  is going to affect Bowman Chrome, or just the larger card universe overall.
• 17:00
  Yeah, I think it's it's disappointing. It is. I think the easiest
• 17:04
  way to look at it that when it was like, you know, my
• 17:08
  theory at one off one card mistake, like it almost had a novelty to
• 17:12
  it. It's like, Yep, things happen, you know, it's the
• 17:15
  the Billy Ripken bat knob type of thing. Something something slipped through and it's
• 17:21
  got a little extra oop to the card value just because of what happened.
• 17:26
  And errors happen, right, errors do happen, But it feels like this
• 17:29
  is not just a small error. It looks like it's a more widespread air.
• 17:33
  And we're still very early in bowm and Chrome being opened, and so
• 17:38
  at this point there appears to be five different duplications of superfractors. If we've
• 17:44
  already had five of one of one duplications, there's more. There's definitely more
• 17:51
  coming. And when I thought was so interesting about this one, it was
• 17:56
  Jesu's galasee of the of the Dodgers. And basically what happened was that there
• 18:00
  was two cards that went up on eBay from what appeared to be very independent
• 18:07
  sellers and close enough timing together, and especially both both of them having authentic
• 18:12
  AUTHENTICITYY guarantees on them, they had to be shipped there, like the timing
• 18:17
  didn't work out that they could have possibly been the same card. And the
• 18:21
  first one sold for almost three thousand dollars, the second one sold for five
• 18:26
  hundred dollars. Because you've got to think about it. You're looking at this
• 18:30
  and going, what's this is a scam. There's you know, something going
• 18:33
  on here. It doesn't make sense. What really intrigues me? What happens
• 18:37
  when that second super fractor goes to the authentic their athenses I can't speak authentic
• 18:45
  goes to Beckett Authenticator. Yeah, that those people. What happens when the
• 18:49
  when the second card goes to go through the process, is it rejected as
• 18:55
  a as a duplicate as what happens there? So it's it's disappointing. It
• 19:02
  calls a lot of things into question for the way that Tops, especially now
• 19:06
  under Fanatics, is doing quality control and how something like this can happen,
• 19:11
  because yeah, when it happens on a card out of ninety nine or two
• 19:15
  ninety nine or something like that, it's like oh darn. But when it
• 19:19
  happens with the rarest of the rare card, the one collectible card haven't forbid,
• 19:25
  one of these guys becomes the next Mike Trout and it's the most sought
• 19:30
  after card, and there's two. It's it just really undermines the value of
• 19:36
  that card and the rarity that you're looking for. So disappointing. There will
• 19:42
  be more, at least ask my prediction this week and we'll talk. We
• 19:48
  talk more next week when there's only five that have ever been found. So
• 19:52
  you want to be funny if it's worth only five and you're wrong on that
• 19:56
  take too, I'm still I'm still writing high and my Adam Wade right two
• 20:00
  hundredth wim shut out game that prediction. The more and more it comes out
• 20:04
  about how how injured he has been and how he was just yea, he
• 20:08
  shaped the plow play. I'm gonna ride that one of the sunset for at
• 20:12
  least the next two three months, which a little bit of a sidebar that
• 20:15
  is insane, right, did you see the reports that like he wasn't topping
• 20:19
  out over sixty five and the pregame and I will link to it because I
• 20:23
  was reading about it in the Athletic this morning that he was not tapping out
• 20:29
  over sixty five in the pre game because he's been pitching with herniated discs and
• 20:33
  like misaligned ribs for a good portion now of the season. And so the
• 20:38
  way that they here's the thing that also plows my mind, is the way
• 20:42
  that they fixed him so that he could gut it out for that start.
• 20:45
  They just like taped him up. They like taped up his torso they just
• 20:49
  an easier tape On'm just like hold it together. He's got misaligned vertebrae and
• 20:56
  ribs that are like not in the right spot, and he's just like got
• 21:00
  tape. I mean, this sounds so much like a Beer League softball at
• 21:06
  this point, right. Yeah, he's just he's like, I think I
• 21:08
  can make it off the bench for this one, guys, you know,
• 21:11
  And yeah, it's just it's it's incredible what he was able to do with
• 21:17
  all that. So I'm glad he has the Swan song to get out there
• 21:18
  and finish it off. And I do hope he gets a pinch hit up
• 21:21
  here. It's here at the end of the season, which which is I
• 21:23
  know something Cardinals fans are begging for and what Ali Marmole said that he would
• 21:27
  do it if you know, if the Reds they're playing against are are in
• 21:34
  or out of the playoffs, that he does not want to affect the playoff
• 21:37
  race for a novelty penshit a bat for Adam Wayne Right. But the way
• 21:42
  things are looking that that should not be a problem because it looks like the
• 21:45
  Reds will will be out of this one. Well, I mean that's if
• 21:49
  dam Wayne Rights ribs are still in the right place, you know, if
• 21:53
  he still has to walk to the plate. But going back to Boom and
• 21:57
  Chrome, I've I don't know if I'm like totally. I know there's lots
• 22:03
  of people on especially the hobby Twitter and in the Reddit threads too, they're
• 22:08
  like very chicken little skies falling, like really significantly calling into question anything that
• 22:15
  has ever been produced over the past handful of years. But I think I'm
• 22:21
  a little bit more on the side of until I see otherwise, I'm isolating
• 22:26
  it to twenty twenty three Bowman Chrome, and it obviously has only happened in
• 22:30
  the prospects set so far, so there haven't been any one of ones that
• 22:34
  have been turned up that are from the regular base set, so you know,
• 22:40
  your typical major league players or any of the inserts or any of the
• 22:45
  autographs, and so it seems to be isolated to just the prospects set.
• 22:52
  And so I don't think I'm too worried about like the bigger ecosystem right now,
• 22:56
  but for sure, like if you were storing twenty twenty three chrome to
• 23:02
  have as an investment, where lots of people do keep sealed product as an
• 23:06
  investment, that is not a good plan anymore, because who knows how many
• 23:11
  double superrect fractors are out there, and so that those people I feel bad
• 23:18
  for, And like, if you're looking for stuff out of Bowman Chrome and
• 23:21
  like we're looking forward to this, I think it's going to be brutal for
• 23:25
  just this specific set, in this specific gear. But I will wait and
• 23:30
  see if it has permeated to other products, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised.
• 23:34
  But it's kind of crazy that so many of them have been found at
• 23:38
  this point because there are so many people that keep stuff sealed or just don't
• 23:44
  report what they are ripping, or don't sell on eBay. So it's a
• 23:48
  very I think it's very indicative that, like it has surfaced so quickly out
• 23:53
  of Bowman Chrome that it's probably maybe there's even more than two of some of
• 23:57
  these superpractors, like there's multiples. That's that's that's bold. That's bold.
• 24:04
  Yeah, but I'm with you. I don't I don't think it, you
• 24:07
  know, spells the end of tops or anything like that. It's you know
• 24:10
  it in any big organization corporation that has any issue with quality, you know
• 24:17
  that there's an awakening, and this is an awakening, is what it is.
• 24:21
  And it's gonna change things. It gonna change processes, They're gonna have
• 24:23
  sale face you know, fail safes on the production runs going forward of how
• 24:30
  super fractors get put in. They'll be printed differently. Like it will probably
• 24:33
  be good in the in the grand scheme of things for tops and for the
• 24:37
  hobby, it's just when you're in the middle of it, it doesn't quite
• 24:40
  feel right. Yeah, I totally agree. I can get that. And
• 24:44
  so with that we will wrap up our kind of opening segment here. We've
• 24:47
  got two great segments for today. So uh, speaking of new releases,
• 24:51
  we're gonna on the card side go over the release of twenty twenty three Tops
• 24:56
  Update, which is coming out on the eleventh, October eleventh, So we
• 25:02
  just wanted to get some of those details out because they are available. It's
• 25:06
  a bigger release, so the checklist came out appropriately and so we have the
• 25:11
  space to get that done before the playoffs hit here. And then for the
• 25:15
  fantasy section, we're going to talk about some late late season breakout players.
• 25:18
  So there are guys who have kind of stuck underneath three drs is maybe you're
• 25:22
  looking at full season lines. We'll look at some of the guys that have
• 25:26
  really taken steps up here over the last month or two down the stretch and
• 25:32
  go over with their value, could be going forward for dynasties, or where
• 25:34
  we're going to take the next year. So stick around, we'll be right
• 25:37
  back. Welcome back, everybody. We are going to talk about the card
• 26:00
  section of cards and categories now. So we have twenty twenty three TOPS Update
• 26:04
  coming out in just a couple of weeks on October eleventh, so we wanted
• 26:10
  to give another overview of what's in the set, what to look for,
• 26:14
  and just kind of go back and forth a little bit on what we think
• 26:18
  about this set, because personally, for me, It's one of my favorite
• 26:22
  sets that comes out every year, that twenty twenty three TOPS Update. I
• 26:26
  don't know if it's also like because twenty eighteen Update was just so seminal with
• 26:33
  the release of or am I thinking of it wrong already? No, it
• 26:36
  was twenty three correct or twenty eight with Soto and Akenya, and you obviously
• 26:41
  had a few extra tany rookies buried in there. That actually that set is
• 26:48
  a little bit of kind of what spurred me into getting back into Baseball cards
• 26:51
  recently, because I felt just really like that I had missed the boat on
• 26:57
  getting any A Kunya or Soto rookies and being able to open them. So
• 27:02
  what I've always appreciated about TOPS Update is that there's usually a few dudes who
• 27:07
  pop every year and you can pick them up as it's really a much limited,
• 27:12
  more limited set of rookies out there that are in here. We've kind
• 27:18
  of hinted at a few of these guys being in a few sets now over
• 27:22
  the past few releases in terms of like Bowman Chrome, and I'm sure some
• 27:27
  of these guys will have stuff in Stadium Club. But what happens is if
• 27:32
  you're released into TOPS Update as your rookie card, you just have fewer of
• 27:37
  them out there compared to you know, and Series one, we had all
• 27:41
  sorts of really great rookies buried in there between Adlie and Gunner and Masataka Yoshida,
• 27:48
  and each of those guys has gotten rookie cards in every set that's come
• 27:52
  out in twenty twenty three since then. So if you're an Update, you're
• 27:56
  not necessarily in Some of the products may be like finest or a bunch of
• 28:00
  inserts, so there's just a smaller set of overall rookie cards from Update.
• 28:07
  That's kind of what it's for is to be able to, you know,
• 28:11
  cover some of the big rookies that pop but they don't want to put into
• 28:14
  Series one or and I'm guessing this is maybe the route that you're probably going
• 28:18
  to go down, Brew, because I know you're not as big of a
• 28:21
  fan of Update. Is that this also includes just a lot of random traded
• 28:26
  players and terrible rookies and random relievers and stuff to be able to round out
• 28:33
  what wasn't covered in Top series one and two. So you're not getting as
• 28:37
  many stars overall, but I really enjoy it for the rookies what do you.
• 28:42
  I don't want to put too many worse into your mouth. I'll let
• 28:45
  you speak for yourself. Yeah, but yeah, you're you're doing a good
• 28:48
  job of leading the witness here for sure. But yeah, Update is for
• 28:55
  me, it's a flagship products. So I always love, like all the
• 28:59
  flagship products. There's I have no problem with him in general. But to
• 29:03
  your point, Update it's kind of like a very top heavy, uh product.
• 29:08
  It's not well distributed as far as like rookies and the quality of rookies.
• 29:14
  To me, you're you're you have usually one or two guys, maybe
• 29:17
  three guys you're talking about, like that twenty eighteen set that you're really interested
• 29:21
  in, and then it's like who, Like who is this guy that we're
• 29:23
  talking about? You know, you're you're you're looking out there going, oh,
• 29:27
  yeah, I'm really looking for that Cody Bolton from Pittsburgh Pirate. It's
• 29:30
  like, no, I was not collecting for for that. And then you
• 29:34
  also have the rookie debut cards that are in there, which is like we
• 29:40
  want to call it a rookie card because you know, we we had two
• 29:45
  of them already the last two series one series twos, and we want to
• 29:48
  be able to claim to these rookie cards, but they're not really rookie cards,
• 29:52
  and so it's, you know, a card that you know hints to
• 29:55
  win the player actually debuted, what their major league debut was, uh,
• 29:59
  And so it's this kind quasi diet rookie card that I don't I think the
• 30:03
  hobby has not yet decided and probably never will, like are they rookies?
• 30:07
  Do we want them like rookies or is it not really a rookie. It's
• 30:11
  this very interesting dynamic on those cards. So I do not I'm not as
• 30:17
  intrigued in update for for some of those reasons. Like I said, it
• 30:23
  is still a good set. It's fun to go through, but the bottom
• 30:30
  end of the set to me is just it's less exciting than what you typically
• 30:36
  have in like a series one, where it feels like everything you open the
• 30:38
  others hope there's a name, right, there's a name, go after.
• 30:41
  So my two cents and I do look at, uh, this this rookie
• 30:48
  list here, and I do feel like it's pretty weak overall. And part
• 30:53
  of that I think it is the stronger players are generally pictures, which for
• 31:00
  a card perspective, pictures are treated like you know, last resort from a
• 31:03
  collecting perspective sometimes, which personally, if you have a picture that you love
• 31:08
  on your your home team, they're fun to collect because they're generally pretty cheap.
• 31:12
  But at the same point, they just don't seem to hold their value
• 31:18
  like like hitters do even when they're just a fantastic player. So this one
• 31:22
  does seem to be decently heavy in picture rookies as far as the big names.
• 31:29
  Yeah, and that is true. But I think what I do like
• 31:32
  about this is that the picture crop this year, it's just kind of like
• 31:36
  what actually happened in Fantasy, is that the picture crop coming through from a
• 31:38
  rookie perspective does seem to feel like a little bit of a cut above from
• 31:45
  what has come through in the past few years. So I think that's got
• 31:49
  me a little bit of excited because the other person I was thinking about from
• 31:53
  an update perspective was Jacob Degram. De Gram's rookie card was included in tops
• 31:57
  update, and so is Kershaws back in the day. Actually, so like
• 32:04
  you, there are really good update rookies. I just get buried into the
• 32:09
  back of this set sometimes and you know it takes years for it to play
• 32:14
  out, obviously, but I mean especially when you look at here's the list
• 32:17
  of really the top end pictures that are in this set, that it's not
• 32:22
  even their rookie debut cards, which I do agree with you. I actually
• 32:27
  I like them because it gives you, like a really cheap way to get
• 32:30
  into collecting rookie cards, but I don't think they're going to hold their value
• 32:34
  well. Also, when we link to the checklist in the show notes,
• 32:37
  Beckett's got a really good picture of the Corbyn Carrol tops Update rookie of the
• 32:43
  rookie debuts, so you can see that card and exactly what we're describing.
• 32:47
  But the picture lists for the rookies, this is just straight rookies. Some
• 32:52
  of them will have rookie debuts as well, but it includes Grayson Rodriguez,
• 32:58
  Uri Perez, Cole Reagans, which I listed off a couple of months ago,
• 33:02
  Bryce Miller, Bobby Miller, Mason Miller. So that's a pretty good
• 33:07
  set in terms of I mean, Mason Miller, I don't know if he's
• 33:12
  got much long term viability, but between Bryson, Bobby Miller and maybe even
• 33:17
  Cole I mean as well, oh yeah, Bradley. So there, you
• 33:24
  know, there is a decent number of You're right, the pitching crop is
• 33:29
  pretty strong in this, but I think the hitting crop, I mean,
• 33:34
  maybe it's just a personal preference, but I feel like there's one hitter worth
• 33:38
  chase in this. Maybe maybe you see more. But to me, as
• 33:42
  Matt McClain, I knew that a chase that you're gonna say that was gonna
• 33:47
  be. I was gonna be like, give me one guest. Yeah,
• 33:52
  So to me, he's he's he's the chase player. I know some of
• 33:54
  your other folks are going to say like Zach Needo or Gabriel Moreno or something
• 34:00
  like that, But to me, Edward Edward Julian from The Twins is another
• 34:07
  decent name there, one of your favorites, not a hitter, but Ben
• 34:10
  Joyce, yeah, is there from the Angels. So yeah, there are
• 34:15
  a lot of interesting right names. But I think that's where it is right
• 34:19
  now, where they're interesting names. They're not big names. They're not they're
• 34:22
  not the Julios of the world. They're not the Jordan Walkers of the world.
• 34:24
  They're not those guys that are really exciting and everybody's looking for or yeah,
• 34:31
  I mean, but I think Grayson and Yuri could get to that level.
• 34:35
  The other guy that I had noted was Nolan Jones on The Rockies.
• 34:38
  He previously had a rooky card on the on The Guardians, but this will
• 34:42
  be his Rockies one, so a little bit of like the rookie debut thing,
• 34:46
  but it actually just puts him in his fresh jersey, so that will
• 34:49
  be interesting. But yeah, the hitter crop is much weaker this year than
• 34:55
  it has been over the past couple of years. So like last year,
• 34:59
  as you meant, it had base Julio based Bobby Wit and so Update was
• 35:05
  really really strong last year, and so I think, yeah, I'll still
• 35:09
  enjoy opening it because of the pictures that are out there. And the other
• 35:14
  thing I really like about Update is it's always pretty cheap. That like,
• 35:19
  compared to the other flagship openings for series one. In series two, Update
• 35:23
  is usually just like a tick lower. I would say, it's like ninety
• 35:28
  five percent and like of like the pricing usually and so the hobby boxes,
• 35:34
  the Jumbo boxes especially are usually much cheaper. So yeah, they're quite a
• 35:38
  bit cheaper. Yeah, I was gonna say, actually, so like the
• 35:42
  the regular hobby boxes are maybe like ninety five percent of Series one in series
• 35:45
  two, but the jumbo boxes get significantly cheaper, because while the jumbo boxes
• 35:51
  for series one and two will usually run you like two fifty to three hundred,
• 35:57
  the jumbo boxes for Update are only around like one fifty to one eighty
• 36:00
  right now, and probably we'll dip a little bit, especially if the Grayson
• 36:07
  Rodriguez in your Perez cards get hit pretty early. Yeah, that's what that's
• 36:12
  the word I do have for this. That is, you look at it
• 36:15
  and we know they're overproducing right now to a degree. And if some of
• 36:19
  these big pictures don't pan out from the claims the world on Jim, the
• 36:22
  world don't take that step forward, this could be one of those ones where
• 36:24
  you can find a box of this for fifty bucks for the next five years,
• 36:29
  just because everybody's trying to get rid of twenty two early three Tops Update.
• 36:35
  The actual the hobby box when Tops did a pre order was only eighty
• 36:37
  dollars, so that was actually a pretty reasonable place to get in now.
• 36:43
  Granted you're only guaranteed a relict at worst, maybe an auto in that versus
• 36:51
  the jumbo where I think you're guaranteed an auto A and two relics. And
• 36:53
  then so if if you're asking me you're you're better off trying to get buy
• 36:58
  you know, three or four blaster boxes to try to come in because those
• 37:04
  come with a memorative relics usually. I think this year is a team logo
• 37:07
  Batnob relic. Haven't haven't seen that. I've been looking for photos of that
• 37:13
  to see what it looks like. And because sometimes those can be really cool.
• 37:15
  Sometimes the their their commemorative cards gonna be a little bit of a flop.
• 37:20
  So we'll have to see how those those ring in this year. Yeah,
• 37:23
  exactly. So that is the one part of the checklist that is missing.
• 37:29
  So it will be interesting to see what they look like, if anything.
• 37:32
  Like their kids love them so like I love handing them out at the
• 37:37
  card show just to get rid of them. That. I don't know what
• 37:38
  it is with kids in the manufactured relics, but they go bananas for them.
• 37:45
  This is something about having that really thick card stock. It's just like
• 37:47
  this, this is this means something. If if you can throw a card
• 37:50
  at somebody in it hurts like that means the value goes up. I like
• 37:55
  that I like that. All right, well, we're gonna get into our
• 38:00
  usual stick here. I'm going to run through all the parallels. It's actually
• 38:04
  pretty reasonable this time that compared to Bowman Chrome or tops Chrome, the parallels
• 38:12
  are let's see, we got two, four, six, eight, ten,
• 38:15
  twelve, fourteen, sixteen, and that I didn't split each of the
• 38:20
  printing plates into one but sixteen parallels, which isn't too bad. So on
• 38:24
  top of a regular bass card, you have rainbow foil then royal blue,
• 38:30
  gold, blue foil board, purple foil board, green foil board, orange
• 38:36
  foil board, red foil board, which I'm just gonna stop real quick because
• 38:43
  purple and blue are new there. That's not a pretty that's not a standard
• 38:46
  parallel usually for flagship that it's marked as retail only. So that'll be interesting
• 38:52
  to see and it gives I mean, for the Nolan Jones fans out there,
• 38:57
  a nice little purple foil board or a blue paralle well, if you're
• 39:00
  into a blue team, that'll be nice, a little good mix of just
• 39:05
  what you've been expecting from parallels in the past. All right, back to
• 39:09
  the list, we've got vintage stock, Independence Day parallels, Father's Day powder
• 39:15
  blue, Mother's Day, Hot Pink, Memorial Day, Camo. All those
• 39:20
  are standard does have been around for a long time as well as you're clear
• 39:24
  of tens, your platinum one of ones hopefully there's only one, and then
• 39:30
  each one of your printing plates, which is if you're not familiar with the
• 39:35
  printing plates, what they are is the actual image that is used to print
• 39:39
  the cards that they take that from, you know, the process. There's
• 39:44
  one of black, Cayenne, magenta, and yellow of these printing plates,
• 39:47
  so they're one of ones. Brew anything that really pops out there in terms
• 39:53
  of the parallels. Two things that pop out One, I have to make
• 39:57
  a correction. You mention in the purple and bluefoil boards. Are knew those
• 40:01
  those were around with Series two and so those I think it just came out
• 40:07
  with Series two. I don't see any Series one hanging around there, but
• 40:12
  an extension to get us more numbered cards. Uh. And but to your
• 40:16
  point, that's just for a few teams like the Mets and the Rockies.
• 40:20
  Getting the team color matches is going to is actually very fun. The other
• 40:25
  call out we're going to make, and maybe folks already knew this, but
• 40:30
  as you get into the inserts. There's a number of parallels within those,
• 40:35
  and most of those there's just like, you know, four or five,
• 40:37
  uh, numbered parallels for those. But I didn't realize that the blue parallels,
• 40:43
  because that's kind of an unnumbered parallel that we quite often get in these
• 40:46
  sets. That's kind of a powder blue, if you may call it,
• 40:50
  or a baby blue parallel. Those are limited to six hundred copies each.
• 40:52
  They're not numbered, but there are limited to six hundred copies each, and
• 40:57
  so I've always always when I see those, I'm like, Okay, how
• 40:59
  many of these are rare? Is this? And so it's what's interesting to
• 41:01
  me is that those are not numbered. Yet we have cards to seven ninety
• 41:06
  nine to nine ninety nine that are numbered, that are they are easier to
• 41:09
  find and just in retail only. So I think that's an interest tristing dynamic
• 41:15
  that you're colored numbered cards or more rare than your numbered cards. So yeah,
• 41:22
  and that is I do like that they put that out there. I
• 41:24
  think that it's always been hovering in that range, and but you've never been
• 41:30
  able to prove it. You've just been able to use it off of some
• 41:32
  people calculating print runs, which is like I'm noticing now too they don't have
• 41:37
  gold foil board, which I don't know if or like the gold foil,
• 41:42
  I don't know if that's not in this set or if it's just deluded in
• 41:45
  the checklist. A good point because that's kind of a standard in the Jumbo
• 41:51
  has been the gold foil, so we might have to update on that after.
• 41:55
  But it's the same thing with those gold foils because I like collecting those
• 42:00
  because technically they're really rare. They're usually somewhere hovering like in the two hundreds
• 42:07
  sometimes I guess it really ranges from like two hundreds to five hundreds, and
• 42:12
  some of those rookies that come in the gold foils over the years, the
• 42:16
  gold Rainbow foils have been I think they'll end up being really prized pieces of
• 42:24
  just top flagship going forward. So I like trying to hang onto those,
• 42:30
  and so we'll see if they're a part of update, but they're not listed
• 42:32
  in the checklist right now. Yeah, I think the only other thing that
• 42:35
  I'll really call out about update is just you know, looking at the what's
• 42:39
  been kind of released out is the tops black Gold cards. I've kind of
• 42:45
  been a fan of those in the past, and this year's design is really
• 42:47
  really slick, and they even have autos on them. I can't remember from
• 42:53
  the past if they've had autos on those. I'm sure there's sticker autos they
• 42:57
  have and they've been sticker and they are up and so I think those are
• 43:01
  those ones always seem to demand a premium, and there's a good reason for
• 43:06
  it. They are very very appealing cards, especially if you got a good
• 43:12
  load a color match or like a you know, a jersey with a little
• 43:15
  bit of black or gold on it really really pops. So I think those
• 43:19
  are gonna be some very sought after inserts. Yeah, I agree, and
• 43:23
  it is great to see them back that It's a design I'm never going to
• 43:28
  get tired of. It's a little bit like ninety three Finest that when they
• 43:32
  do the Finest flashbacks and they do the tops Black Goal they keep using like
• 43:37
  the ninety two, ninety three, ninety four sets because I love them,
• 43:42
  and like, I'm sure this is exactly why they do it is because people
• 43:45
  who are into collecting like us, love the nostalgia factor. So I can
• 43:50
  never say no to them. Yeah, absolutely, So, Yeah, it's
• 43:52
  it'll be a fun so I'm sure I'll rip a little bit of it,
• 43:54
  but yeah, I'm probably a little bit more down on update than and the
• 44:00
  broader market. That said, it's it's still gonna be a good rippet.
• 44:04
  It's still gonna be cheap and easy and accessible for folks. So it'll be
• 44:07
  fun to get out there and give it a shot and see if you can
• 44:10
  find a picture rookie. Yeah, I exactly get your Grace and Rodriguez Blue
• 44:15
  and purple parallels all stocked up. So that is coming out on October eleventh.
• 44:22
  We don't have anything else since last week that has been added to the
• 44:25
  schedules, So I think with that we will wrap up the cards segment here
• 44:30
  and we'll be back with the category segment talking about late season breakouts. Stick
• 44:36
  around, all right, Welcome back everybody to the category's portion of today's show.
• 44:57
  For the fantasy discussion, we're going to go for some late season breakouts.
• 45:00
  So I find that in the overall season sometimes you can lose track of
• 45:07
  guys who really shined on the stretch because if you're looking at a full year
• 45:12
  rankings, you can't really look at who has produced, you know, the
• 45:16
  most value and see, like what people have produced just recently. You know
• 45:22
  that like it gets buried in everyone else's full season productions. So I thought
• 45:28
  it'd be good for us to go through and call it some guys who have
• 45:30
  been really hot over the past month or two and has shown maybe a different
• 45:36
  level that I think that we're starting to believe in because you know, some
• 45:38
  of these rates is stabilized and some of the talent is stabilized, or you
• 45:43
  know, these are guys just kind of really starting to come into their own.
• 45:45
  So brew are you looking for these types of dudes down the stretch or
• 45:51
  is there any sort of way that you kind of like try to find them.
• 45:55
  Yeah, I mean I usually when I'm looking at you know, prepare
• 46:00
  for a season, I'm looking kind of at the full full pictures, and
• 46:02
  I'm looking at first half, second a half stats, and I'm looking at
• 46:07
  last month, month and a half who was September October time frame and trying
• 46:10
  to see, you know who who really seemed to make adjustments or just who
• 46:15
  got got lost in the shuffle. A lot of times these are younger guys
• 46:19
  that didn't have plain time, or maybe there's an injury holding them back,
• 46:22
  or uh, you know, they just were taking time to adjust the league,
• 46:27
  and so you're looking for like that hint of are they did they figure
• 46:30
  something out? Did they make a meaningful adjustment? And it is a paying
• 46:35
  off, And you're also trying to kind of look at the opposite side of
• 46:38
  things and seeing like, hey, Matt Chapman seems to be, you know,
• 46:42
  the greatest thing. That's like to slice bread every April and useless after
• 46:46
  that. Right, you don't want to be wavered by those early seasons guys
• 46:51
  that really take off and just taper and and don't really deliver at the end
• 46:55
  of the season. So a lot of folks seem to change their perspective of
• 47:00
  football at this point in the season, and to your point, their numbers
• 47:06
  can easily get and kind of get merged for the whole year and not tell
• 47:10
  the story of true growth and that these are the guys that you want to
• 47:15
  pick up in the draft next year for you know, a decent discount because
• 47:22
  folks just weren't looking. The big risk though, is that they're gonna get
• 47:27
  helium from folks like us over over the winter and they actually might end up
• 47:31
  costing more than they should. So it's always always a dangerous proposition. But
• 47:37
  most of these guys are gonna be all be owned at this point in the
• 47:39
  season, but for ever team in the playoffs races. But yeah, I
• 47:44
  love looking at the guys that made a late season contribution and really seem to
• 47:47
  figure things out and try to figure out is this real? Because those are
• 47:52
  great fines if you can find them. All right. Yeah, And with
• 47:55
  that, so I'll explain the methodology a little bit that it was super scientific.
• 48:01
  What we did is I didn't know we had a methodology. I need
• 48:05
  to go back to my notes. Yeah, there was a methodology and thankfully,
• 48:08
  well then, I mean, your picks just kind of lined up.
• 48:10
  Then the methodology was I went through the last thirty hitters or less thirty days
• 48:16
  of hitters and pictures on razzball dot com of just total value. I love
• 48:22
  using razball to be able to just pump out values real quick. Rudy's got
• 48:27
  a really great algorithm that does that for us, so we can reflect and
• 48:30
  see who was worth the most kind of dollars. It really puts it into
• 48:35
  perspective of where everyone's rinking. If you think about it. The typical standard
• 48:40
  rotis three two hundred and six dollar budget. So the first guy, I
• 48:45
  don't think we're going to go into any sort of super deep discussion because he
• 48:49
  comes up a lot. He's a fan favorite of mine and this pot overall
• 48:52
  it's Jake Burger from the Miami Marlins. So currently he is over the past
• 48:58
  thirty days, the fiftieth ranked hitter. He's produced fourteen dollars of value.
• 49:02
  And we during our Sleepers or like I don't was it Sleepers or some I
• 49:09
  don't remember the exact pod. This is really making great discourse right now,
• 49:14
  but we went over a breakout podcast and brought up Jake Burger one time that
• 49:21
  he was well on his way with Miami of just turning a corner. That
• 49:27
  you can tell that since leaving Chicago he has joined the Marlins, and Burger
• 49:32
  has slashed three thirteen, three sixty nine, five thirty four good for a
• 49:38
  one forty three w RC plus over one hundred and ninety five plate appearances.
• 49:44
  Down in Miami. He's popped nine homers and has twenty seven RBIs and runs,
• 49:49
  And so when you project that out, you can pretty much just about
• 49:52
  triple that because that's when he joined them at the beginning of August and you
• 49:59
  know, the months about sixth season or the seasons about six months long,
• 50:02
  and that's two months of production. So I mean that's like a thirty thirty
• 50:08
  or a thirty homer season with ninety runs and RBI. So again, like
• 50:14
  I think, I'll just emphasize again, Jake Burger can hit the snot out
• 50:16
  of the ball. It doesn't matter where he's playing. And it looks like
• 50:21
  the Marlins have refined his approach. He's cut his k rate significantly down in
• 50:25
  Miami. It's only twenty one percent since he's been with the Marlins, and
• 50:29
  that was always his biggest problem. So if he's being more selective, only
• 50:34
  focusing on pictures in the zone, Jake Burger has a really good chance to
• 50:37
  be a pretty just great value I think wherever you're going to get him,
• 50:43
  because if you can get you know, something like thirty homers, I think
• 50:46
  maybe more like eighty five ish runs in RBI and something like a two fifty
• 50:52
  ish batting average on the very low end, I mean, that's a huge
• 50:55
  value at third base. Yeah, I think you're on this him there,
• 51:00
  you know, and he I don't. I don't know if there's a good
• 51:02
  reason. Maybe it's because he you know, took a while to come out
• 51:07
  of the scenes, didn't have you know, crazy prospects stats and have you
• 51:10
  know, crazy pettigree. He just kind continued to kind of get better and
• 51:15
  better, and he just fit into that Masher perspective. But he kind of
• 51:20
  and this comp is probably not fair to either player, but I'm going to
• 51:23
  use it anyway. He kind of makes me think of Matt Olson in a
• 51:27
  way. Matt Olson early in his career was a absolute masher hit the but
• 51:31
  Jesus out of the ball, did not hit for average, and he really
• 51:37
  seemed like he's like, Okay, what's what's he gonna do? Is he
• 51:39
  gonna figure it out? And now Matt Olson seems to be more of a
• 51:43
  complete player and can hit for average, hits for power, you know how,
• 51:46
  definitely as a full run producer, and Burger seems to be showing some
• 51:51
  signs of that. And so I think that is a very interesting comp Now,
• 51:54
  do I expect Jake Burger to be Matt Olson, No, I do
• 51:58
  not, but I think that he has some of that similar early career trajectory
• 52:05
  where folks were like, I'm not sure he might just be a you know,
• 52:08
  thirty home run, two thirty hitter and that's all you get, so
• 52:13
  they were willing to invest in them. So I think Burger's interesting because that
• 52:19
  growth that you're that you're mentioning with the plate plate approach. There the patients
• 52:24
  that he's showing, and if he really is rounding into form and he can
• 52:30
  muster at two sixty two seventy average and hit thirty five home runs, that
• 52:34
  is incredibly valuable for our game. And I guess let's add this twist to
• 52:38
  it now too, because I just did say that he was worth Ultimately,
• 52:43
  over the past thirty days, he's been worth fourteen point two dollars according to
• 52:49
  the Player Raider. What do you think in twenty twenty four do you think
• 52:52
  he can approach fourteen dollars of value? Yeah, I really do. I
• 52:55
  think he can. He can approach fourteen dollars of value. I see him
• 53:00
  as a guy that's going to probably got an auction in the maybe ten dollars
• 53:05
  range, but I think, yeah, I think he can approach probably fifteen
• 53:10
  dollars in value unless he really does continue to improve his approach to the plate,
• 53:16
  which I think he then has a ceiling above that. So I think
• 53:20
  he's one of those ones that, as you're kidding later in the draft and
• 53:23
  you're looking for power because it frankly, if you look at the field for
• 53:27
  next year, it is all about speed at the top. I've been I've
• 53:30
  been working on my top one hundred twenty twenty four is going to come out
• 53:34
  this week on Rasball. I'm making a plug or anything, but it comes
• 53:37
  Sunday. That'll be out there. And it is astonishing how some players are
• 53:43
  falling down the rankings for next year because they aren't running. They're great hitters,
• 53:46
  they really are, but the i'll call it the Bobaschets of the world,
• 53:50
  Alex Bregman's, even the Wan Sotos that aren't running. It is so
• 53:54
  much harder to be that top you know, a few round hitter than they
• 53:58
  used to be. So when you get that mid tier, the guy like
• 54:01
  Jake Burger that has some upside on the average and it's not just going to
• 54:07
  drag you down, is really really intriguing. Yeah, I totally agree,
• 54:12
  and I also agree that like I think I think we're in lockstep in terms
• 54:15
  of like he can produce the fourteen dollars of value, but I don't think
• 54:19
  you're gonna have to pay fourteen dollars at the table for him in the spring.
• 54:22
  Yeah, I think what does the White Sox Marlins effect pick two teams
• 54:29
  that nobody's paying attention to despite the Marlins making a play for the playoffs here.
• 54:36
  I think he's also a great example of talking about what we opened with
• 54:38
  is when you mix it in the whole year, it looks terrible because Jake
• 54:42
  Burger's K percentage is closer to thirty than it is to twenty. But when
• 54:46
  you look at just the Marlins production, it's woo. It is really really
• 54:51
  tantalizing. So who do you have for your first guy? Brew? Yeah,
• 54:55
  so speaking of another guy that's that's tantalizing, I'm going with Royce Lewis
• 55:01
  uh for for the Twins. Looking at the last thirty days there in the
• 55:06
  on the raspball UH player Raider, he is the fourth overall hitter. Uh
• 55:13
  you know, twenty seven dollars production if you if you look at it for
• 55:17
  that that full season, And I think what I love too is it's Ronald
• 55:22
  Lekuney junior trade turner, Juan Soto, Royce Lewis, Matt Olison, which
• 55:30
  one of these doesn't belong. I feel like we're on a sesame street or
• 55:32
  something. Sorry that's showing my age, But I know Royce Lewis is one
• 55:39
  of those guys that he he really has come into his own over the last
• 55:45
  month. He's really battled injuries, had a hard time uh making it to
• 55:50
  uh spot where he can. He could actually play consistently, but if you
• 55:54
  look at say his his his Savant page, he doesn't have enough appearances to
• 56:00
  qualify, but you know he is in the probably top two thirds of expatting
• 56:07
  average X slugging average, ex of laws, the barrel percentages, and then
• 56:12
  a lot of his other metrics are really you know, middle of the league.
• 56:15
  And so that's a really strong profile of the guy that is, you
• 56:20
  know, average speed, average, plate discipline. But then he hits the
• 56:22
  ball incredibly hard and he actually hits for a decent average. And part of
• 56:28
  that is, you know, the just the profile that he has a really
• 56:31
  decent line drive profile and you know how hard hit crown ball profile, So
• 56:37
  that does tend to play up for your average and then just happen to get
• 56:42
  enough home runs over the fence and I know, you know, you're a
• 56:45
  big fan of the long ball. Here he's gone on a heater of Grand
• 56:50
  slams. If I recall, I did not look up the stats on but
• 56:52
  I'm pretty sure you're you're looking at those. So what's what have you seen
• 56:57
  with Lewis there in the in the long ball. Well, it's mostly he's
• 57:01
  gotten to so many so quickly. So he hit four Grand slams in an
• 57:06
  eighteen game span here over the last month or so, and so that is
• 57:13
  absolutely absurd. He is the fastest ever to four total Grand slams. It
• 57:17
  only took him two hundred and seventeen at bats total, and that hasn't been
• 57:22
  done in a season fewer than four hundred and fifty ever before. So it's
• 57:30
  just like you see, like I was looking at another list recently where like
• 57:34
  I think because he has five total on his career now, so like he
• 57:37
  has by far by like hundreds and hundreds fewer at bats than whoever else has
• 57:44
  five Grand slams. So it's been a crazy Grand slam tear, which obviously
• 57:49
  has boosted his value immensely over the past month. Yeah, I think that's
• 57:53
  the one downfall for him is you know, you can actually kind of see
• 57:58
  this coming. I actually wrote about him about, you know, three or
• 58:00
  four weeks ago as a good breakout comp compared a few other guys that had
• 58:04
  broken out this year. I think others should compareing to Matt McClain. If
• 58:07
  if I recall and if you actually look at his first half, he's had
• 58:14
  about as many games in the first half of the second half. He struggled
• 58:15
  in the first half, and you know, he was walking out three percent
• 58:21
  of the time, striking out twenty eight percent of the time, was not
• 58:23
  you know, really producing two terribly much, and then you know he got
• 58:28
  hurt. He didn't have a decent average. He was hitting three twenty six
• 58:32
  early in the season, but he also had a four twenty nine babe,
• 58:36
  so definitely looked like a lot of luck. The second half, though,
• 58:39
  his strikeouts are below twenty percent and he's walking at a twelve percent rate,
• 58:45
  and his w RC plus in the second half is one seventy one. The
• 58:50
  what he has going for him is that he just hasn't played that any games.
• 58:53
  He's only got thirty two games in the second half. He had twenty
• 58:55
  six and in the first half. So I think that there's a chance because
• 58:59
  he did qualify. He isn't gonna be on a lot of lists for awards
• 59:04
  or anything like that. I think he does kind of sneak out of the
• 59:07
  radar. To agree, I think that the fantasy community is gonna hype him
• 59:09
  up like crazy, to be honest, but I think that he there's a
• 59:14
  chance that he kind of sneaks behind everybody's radar and gets the draft value.
• 59:17
  And if I'm going to pick out a comp for Royce Lewis, I'm gonna
• 59:21
  I'm gonna go back because I've never been a really big Royce Lewis fan until
• 59:24
  I've started to look at him a little deeper and the guy he reminds me.
• 59:27
  I'm actually I'm gonna quiz you who who does Royce Lewis remind you of
• 59:31
  coming up as as a prospect and into his early playing days. Sleep for
• 59:37
  me a little bit of Carlos Correa, which is kind of crazy that their
• 59:39
  teammates. Well, that's not too far off where I was gonna go.
• 59:44
  I'm gonna go a player. I think it's I judge him a slightly better
• 59:46
  Francisco Lindor. Yeah, if you and especially if you look at their minor
• 59:51
  league track record, both of them incredibly high draft picks, really great pedigree,
• 59:57
  but and move through the miner's relatively quickly. Didn't never had a lot
• 1:00:00
  of games at a single stop. They never had a full season really almost
• 1:00:04
  any stop in the minors, and the power just didn't seem to be there.
• 1:00:07
  They're always hitting like five or six home runs and like sixty seventy games
• 1:00:10
  of the spot as they were just kind of growing into their their their bodies.
• 1:00:16
  And so you know, Lewis being a first overall pick, has the
• 1:00:21
  pedigree, and I think he's really growing into who it was. And then
• 1:00:24
  same thing Lindor did the same thing when he came out of the scene.
• 1:00:28
  He was a guy that was like, oh he might have ten fifteen homer
• 1:00:30
  power, twenty steals, hits, two ninety, and then he goes out
• 1:00:36
  in Jack's thirty home runs like two or three seasons in a row, and
• 1:00:38
  it's like, oh he's he is, uh, you know, an all
• 1:00:43
  Star. And so I think Lewis is built in that moat mold and he's
• 1:00:47
  one of those ones that I could see him taking leap next year and really
• 1:00:52
  being a true breakout candidate. Yeah, I agree, And I think the
• 1:00:55
  other intriguing thing with him is that he hasn't been running too much. That
• 1:01:00
  he only has I think it was six Tolen bases, Yeah, sixtlen bases
• 1:01:06
  on the season right now. But he does have a seventy third percentile sprint
• 1:01:10
  speed, and we know that he's coming off the double ACL injury in his
• 1:01:14
  right knee, so I wonder with another year underneath him going to next year,
• 1:01:19
  that maybe he bumps that up a little bit. You know, he
• 1:01:22
  did come through the miners with a really good speed rating and that was always
• 1:01:27
  a part of his game, So we'll see if that happens. The one
• 1:01:30
  thing is I'm just not sure how many shares I'll have with him, because
• 1:01:35
  I think, unlike Burger, people will be in on Royce Lewis and the
• 1:01:39
  mix of all those Grand Slams. So the RBI ratio that he put up
• 1:01:45
  this year is really skewed and the hype. I just don't know how many
• 1:01:50
  shares I'll get of him that I don't I think. What I'm also saying
• 1:01:54
  too is that he currently in the play Raider, as you said, has
• 1:01:58
  been worth twenty seven bucks over the past thirty days. I don't think he
• 1:02:04
  can he can like his ceiling is up there, but I think I would
• 1:02:07
  be more comfortable paying fifteen for him at the draft table. And I don't
• 1:02:12
  know. I think that it would be plenty of people that push you to
• 1:02:15
  twenty. Yeah, I'm I'm there with you. I think that he's gonna
• 1:02:19
  he's gonna be on the off season hype train for sure. I'm gonna be
• 1:02:22
  right there pushing it, and I think that's gonna be his downfall overall.
• 1:02:30
  So who else do you do? You got here? As uh, we
• 1:02:35
  we go through our our hitters, all right, So I'm gonna stick in
• 1:02:38
  the al Central another. I guess Jake Burger didn't quite count, but he
• 1:02:43
  was Al Central adjacent as a former White Sack. But I'm gonna go with
• 1:02:47
  Nelson Velasquez, who, over the past thirty days for the Royals as an
• 1:02:52
  outfielder has been worth sixteen point seven dollars. So a really great source of
• 1:02:57
  power is the big key here that I'm looking at everybody else around him,
• 1:03:02
  and he's really the only one in his range with double digit homers. Over
• 1:03:07
  the past thirty days, he's got ten homers and he's just absolutely been lighting
• 1:03:12
  it up since he arrived in Kansas City from Chicago at the trade deadline,
• 1:03:15
  which I think this could end up being a real staying on the Cubs ultimately
• 1:03:22
  trading Nelson Vlasquez for Jose Kuas because since arriving in Kansas City, this has
• 1:03:29
  been Nelson Vlasquez line. He's hit fourteen homers, over one hundred and thirty
• 1:03:35
  five plate appearances, hit slashing two thirty one three or four six twelve.
• 1:03:39
  So he's swinging for the fences. His k rate has been twenty eight percent.
• 1:03:45
  But he walks too. He's got a good eye. He has an
• 1:03:46
  eight percent walk rate. So I really liked Nelson Vlasquez for like, I
• 1:03:52
  mean, he reminds me so much Aforey Slaire and especially the comps of moving
• 1:03:57
  from the Cubs the Royals and all these homers that he's blasting. You can
• 1:04:01
  see on his Savant page two that like it's a little bit like Burger where
• 1:04:05
  you worry a little bit sometimes somebody ghost Kansas City. It's not a hitter's
• 1:04:10
  park. How well is his power going to play? You don't have to
• 1:04:13
  worry about that. With Vlaska's Velaska's is home run chart. They're just absolute
• 1:04:17
  mammoth blasts all across the board to left, center right, So the power
• 1:04:23
  was legit. I think the biggest key will be whether or not people can
• 1:04:30
  find a hole in his swing in the off season and see how prepared he
• 1:04:33
  is going into next season and whether he can adjust. But like there's a
• 1:04:38
  lot here that like honestly reminds me also a bit of a Dullis Guster,
• 1:04:42
  oh Dulas Garcia from the Rangers, where a Dallas Garcia this year has gotten
• 1:04:46
  a better eye, Like he's become a much better hitter, He's been able
• 1:04:50
  to increase the walk rate, and he isn't chasing as much. That if
• 1:04:55
  Nelson Vlaska's can spend some time learning in the same sort of school that whatever
• 1:05:00
  Garcia vis did over the offseason, like this could be a really solid corner
• 1:05:04
  outfielder where you're looking at you know, thirty five plus homers, you know,
• 1:05:10
  maybe a two forty two fifty batting average, but whof the power could
• 1:05:14
  be substantial. Yeah, I know that you're a big Vlaska's fan. I'm
• 1:05:18
  I'm maybe a little bit less. So I think that the profile is very
• 1:05:23
  volatile. He depends on big power and he's gonna probably have a season where
• 1:05:28
  he hits forty home runs and hits two sixty and he's the next best thing.
• 1:05:32
  And then the next year he's gonna hit twenty home runs because he struck
• 1:05:34
  out thirty five percent of the time and hit two twenty. I think that's
• 1:05:38
  the risk you take with somebody like this, and as long as you know
• 1:05:42
  that going in, that's fine. I think that that's the key here is.
• 1:05:45
  I don't think Velasquez is gonna have a ton of hype. I think
• 1:05:48
  he's gonna be looked as he got lucky. You know, he hits some
• 1:05:51
  homers. I think the powers real and I think you've convinced me of that.
• 1:05:57
  Look at what it is. But he strikes out a lot, and
• 1:06:00
  it's it's one of those that that that profile is just risky. It's and
• 1:06:05
  you know, he could easily find himself riding the pine if he goes on
• 1:06:10
  like a month long, you know, slump, and I think his profile
• 1:06:15
  is very streaky that that that could absolutely take place. Yeah. I mean
• 1:06:19
  conversely, though, will he be riding the pine in Kansas City? That's
• 1:06:23
  true. Flash that also maybe sometimes hurts, Like sometimes you get guys like
• 1:06:29
  this that just like with their way to tons and tons of plate appearances on
• 1:06:33
  bad teams, which can also be bad. So like that is certainly the
• 1:06:38
  risk, and I think it's a little bit. I have way more confidence
• 1:06:42
  than him than Jake Burger because the other way around, Jake Burger, I
• 1:06:46
  have way more confidence than than Vlaska is because Jake Burger has been able to
• 1:06:49
  cut that k rate so far in Miami, where Vlaskaz was always doing this
• 1:06:55
  and he's kind of continuing it, so I think. But I'm going to
• 1:06:59
  be shopping kind of in the same range at the draft table next year where
• 1:07:01
  I'd love to pick up Alaska's for five to ten dollars and hope that he
• 1:07:06
  can produce the fifteen. But knowing that, like the risk reward is much
• 1:07:12
  greater here than it is with Burger, that they bottom, the bottom can
• 1:07:16
  go below zero pretty quick on Vlaska as if he can't get the bat to
• 1:07:20
  the ball. Yeah, I think you're right. I would much rather have
• 1:07:25
  have have Burger on my team. But Vlaska is is one that you want
• 1:07:30
  to keep an eye on and pick him up, see how he's doing early
• 1:07:34
  in the season. Doesn't doesn't have one, doesn't have one. It takes,
• 1:07:38
  you can move on. Gotcha? All right? So who are you
• 1:07:41
  going with for your next pick? Next pick is another Uh, you know
• 1:07:45
  you're you're going deep sleeper. I'm going prospect pedigree here. I'm gonna jet
• 1:07:51
  grab Jordan Walker for the Cardinals here. Jordan Walker clearly a big prospect,
• 1:07:58
  pedigree, big guy if you've seen Walker in person, but he is a
• 1:08:01
  beast of a man. And you know, Walker's had i'd say, a
• 1:08:06
  kind of an under the radar season for a big prospect. He's just kind
• 1:08:11
  of been consistently getting better all year. And even as you look at the
• 1:08:15
  last thirty thirty days, it's not like he's jumping out substantially the last third
• 1:08:18
  days. He's played well, but he's not doing Nelson Valasquez things. He's
• 1:08:24
  not doing Royce Lewis things. So I think he's still is a little bit
• 1:08:27
  under the radar two degree. But what really interests me about Jordan Walker is
• 1:08:32
  that if you look at his lines between the first half and the second half,
• 1:08:38
  you know they are almost identical, and that sounds weird. Why is
• 1:08:44
  that? Why is that interesting? Now? He hit two eighty three in
• 1:08:45
  the first half, two seventy one on the second half. He had eight
• 1:08:47
  home runs in both halves. He's got twenty five RBIs in the first half,
• 1:08:51
  twenty three in the second half. It's like it's almost identical. But
• 1:08:57
  what's really interesting if you look behind the scenes at how he's been hitting the
• 1:09:01
  ball month over month, he has improved his fly balls, in his groundballs,
• 1:09:08
  He's trading off groundballs for line drives and fly balls. And he's just
• 1:09:14
  kind lucky in the first half with a much higher home run for a flyball
• 1:09:17
  rate h kind of twenty percent for the first half, and he's been much
• 1:09:20
  less lucky with the twelve percent in the second half. But his you know,
• 1:09:26
  his quality of contact is really kind of overall all been a better type
• 1:09:32
  of contact. Now. His hard hit rates kind of dropped from the second
• 1:09:36
  half to a degree as well. But he looks like he is just maturing
• 1:09:41
  as a hitter, and for a guy his size, you know, it's
• 1:09:45
  just a matter of time for him to kind of figure some things out.
• 1:09:48
  I think the other interesting thing about Jordan Walker is he has sneaky speed For
• 1:09:56
  a guy his size, he runs a lot more than you would think,
• 1:10:00
  So I think Jordan Walker is one of those guys, they could end up,
• 1:10:02
  you know, at his peak, kidding like two eighty with thirty home
• 1:10:05
  runs and fifteen steals something like that, and be really really exciting to watch.
• 1:10:11
  So I think Walker, because you know there's you're gonna look into this
• 1:10:15
  the hood and go, well, yeah, he's he's interesting. I don't
• 1:10:18
  think he's going to jump up as draft forards like a Royce Lewis would,
• 1:10:23
  and that might actually make him a better value next year. So how how
• 1:10:28
  do you feel? How do you think about Jordan Walker? I agree,
• 1:10:30
  and I am trying to set aside like the Cardinal's homerism here a little bit,
• 1:10:38
  but everything that I've seen since he's especially returned, like that's the split
• 1:10:44
  that I like looking at. You can see it right in his game blog
• 1:10:46
  of like where he got sent down to work on his defense or whatever in
• 1:10:50
  May, and that before that he was slugging only three ninety seven. Since
• 1:10:56
  then, he's been slugging four fifty eight. And so like you said,
• 1:10:59
  he's prey Restie been getting better. This is exactly what you like to see
• 1:11:02
  from a prospect of Jordan Walker's ilk, and especially with how terrible the Cardinals
• 1:11:09
  have been down the stretch as well as there were so many people that probably
• 1:11:13
  paid pretty decent money at the auction table in late drafts this year for Jordan
• 1:11:18
  Walker had that in their mind, remember the bust, and didn't pay attention
• 1:11:24
  to the progressive progress that he's been. You know, that's progressive progress.
• 1:11:29
  I'm gonna progressive progress. It's just like his development that's occurred over this year
• 1:11:35
  that it has been exactly what you wanted to see. And honestly, if
• 1:11:41
  the Cardinals had been better and he had been more in the lime, might
• 1:11:44
  I think people would be paying more attention. So over the last thirty days
• 1:11:48
  it hasn't been substantial, but he's been worth twelve bucks, which is about
• 1:11:53
  as much as Alec Boum, Tommy fam, Joan Moncada, Alex Bregman are
• 1:11:58
  right around him. So I think, honestly, like at the draft table,
• 1:12:02
  he might end up like in that team's range and I would go over
• 1:12:08
  honestly, because I think there is a lot here where you can see and
• 1:12:12
  say he can take the next step forward, he can steal for a few
• 1:12:15
  more bags. The vibes aren't going to be quite as bad in Saint Louis
• 1:12:19
  next year. Hopefully that like he has had this year to mature, and
• 1:12:25
  so like you're just hoping that he takes that next step to become a little
• 1:12:30
  bit of like the superstar in Saint Louis, to take over from Goldie and
• 1:12:33
  Ronado and make this his team, because if he does that, like I
• 1:12:36
  think the ceiling is really substantial to where like this guy could be looking at
• 1:12:43
  something. You know, like I love the batting average with Walker two that
• 1:12:46
  like, you know, he could hit two eighty to ninety. Next year
• 1:12:49
  was something like thirty homers, one hundred runs, hundred rbi and like ten
• 1:12:54
  steals. That's a really really nice season. It is. So yeah,
• 1:12:58
  I like Walker a lot here, and I completely agree. I think used
• 1:13:00
  to be under the radar. So I know we need to swing to pictures.
• 1:13:04
  But before we do, I just have to give a quick update in
• 1:13:06
  the games. I don't know if you're paying attention here. Let's see.
• 1:13:10
  Well, it's like we were talking earlier about, it's gonna be interesting how
• 1:13:15
  the how this night plays through, because we got the Cubs playing the Braves,
• 1:13:17
  we got the Marlins and the Mets. Well, uh, the Braves
• 1:13:21
  did just walk off against the Cubs. In the bottom of the tenth,
• 1:13:26
  Ronal Lacuna stole his seventieth base two set up the winning run in that game.
• 1:13:31
  And then at the same time, the Marlins just scored two to break
• 1:13:36
  the ties of the Mets going into the bottom of the ninth, and so
• 1:13:41
  assuming that they pull that through and finish that one up, we are going
• 1:13:45
  to have a tie between the Marlins and the Cubs in the wild cards standings
• 1:13:51
  here, and so it looks like, you know, things are firming up
• 1:13:56
  and playing through. I also believe that the Diamondbacks also won over the White
• 1:14:00
  Sox, so that, you know, really kind of yeah, I think
• 1:14:03
  we've covered up briefly earlier, so that you know, really the l wild
• 1:14:08
  Card is coming down to two teams at this point. So yeah, that's
• 1:14:12
  that's gonna be fun. I'm excited. But yeah, let's get into these
• 1:14:15
  pictures now, because some of these picture values have been absurd, and some
• 1:14:21
  of these have really I mean, I knew they were performing well, but
• 1:14:26
  when you kind of put them in context with the league around them, and
• 1:14:30
  I think pitching in our player raider does get a little bit boosted over a
• 1:14:35
  thirty days span, especially just because like you get crazy sample sizes. But
• 1:14:42
  the first picture that we have that has been producing crazy value over the past
• 1:14:45
  month is Tariq Scoobal, So I'm not sure it really popped out to me
• 1:14:50
  when I pulled up our leaderboards over the past three days. Twek school over
• 1:14:54
  the past three days has been worth forty two dollars as he's thrown let's see
• 1:15:00
  thirty two innings with forty four k's, one forty one ear ra and a
• 1:15:04
  point six nine whip over the past month. That's with four wins. The
• 1:15:09
  four wins are carrying a lot of weight in that value, but the ratios
• 1:15:14
  are certainly nothing to scoff at, and so Trig schoolbl has just really rounded
• 1:15:20
  into an absolute ace here this year as he's returned from his injury. He
• 1:15:27
  even if you're just looking at his regular full season nine, it's also absolutely
• 1:15:31
  absurd. In seventy six innings this year, he has an eleven K nine.
• 1:15:38
  He has a one six walk per nine, so he's like walking people
• 1:15:43
  like a George Kirby rate. That's good for a two ninety five yarra.
• 1:15:46
  He's got seven wins in seven starts, or seven wins and fourteen starts for
• 1:15:51
  the Tigers of all teams, pitching to a two ninety five YARRA and a
• 1:15:57
  two fourteen FIP. So like, this is like Shane McClanahan, right,
• 1:16:04
  Like this is better. I think Shane McClanahan, Like it's it's unbelievable,
• 1:16:09
  and I mean there's there's gonna be fantasy owners myself included, kicking themselves because
• 1:16:13
  School took longer to return this year than a lot of folks expected early in
• 1:16:16
  season. So if you end up on a roster crunch, and I did
• 1:16:19
  myself, you might may have cut him early in the season just because you
• 1:16:24
  didn't have the spot for him. And that is definitely hurting. And if
• 1:16:28
  you haven't looked at his Baseball Savant page, it is red not it's not
• 1:16:31
  red and blue. It's it's like just red. He is. He has
• 1:16:36
  been unbelievable, uh this year and uh it's it's just it's something else.
• 1:16:43
  And so I love to re Schoogl. Uh if you look at all the
• 1:16:47
  big Tigers prospects that were coming up with Casey Mys, Matt Manning and the
• 1:16:51
  Schoogle, you know, the School kind of was was an afterthought for a
• 1:16:55
  while, and he has turned out to be the one that really has that
• 1:17:00
  a bulldog mentality and is he's valuable. I do think what's gonna be interesting
• 1:17:04
  is he's only pitched, you know, eighty some innings this year, and
• 1:17:09
  that might it's got a chance that he's going to slide under the radar to
• 1:17:12
  a degree, be like oh, it was just a small sample of size
• 1:17:15
  or something like that. Like I could see folks still being a little tempered
• 1:17:18
  at the draft table next year and not you know, if he had done
• 1:17:24
  this all year, his prices would be insane. I think, you know,
• 1:17:27
  he can still get him for maybe a little discount going into next year,
• 1:17:31
  unless the hype train gets lit away from us a little bit here.
• 1:17:34
  Yeah, I mean I guess when I'm also trying to gauge is like where
• 1:17:39
  is he gonna go in drafts? Like part of like what has made this
• 1:17:46
  really kind of like a confirming production level two is that he was a very
• 1:17:57
  hyped up sleeper going into last year before he got injured, and the prospect
• 1:18:01
  lists loved him, like I'm Fangraft's slapped a sixty future value on him,
• 1:18:06
  a seventy on his fastball, like he's got life to his pitches, which
• 1:18:11
  is totally evident in the K nine and in the walk per nine. That
• 1:18:16
  like, I'm trying to just place where do I put him, because he's
• 1:18:20
  been pitching over the past couple of months like a top five pitcher, and
• 1:18:27
  like if somebody came and said for a fantasy purposes, like oh't no,
• 1:18:32
  like top fifteen, I don't think I can disagree. Like I don't even
• 1:18:39
  know if I can move him down much further. So, like he produced
• 1:18:42
  forty two dollars worth of value over the past thirty days. I mean,
• 1:18:49
  am I going to be paying like thirty five dollars for retreat scoopl at the
• 1:18:53
  draft table next year? And am I kind of regret it? I don't
• 1:18:56
  think you are. That's the thing. I just don't think that's gonna be
• 1:18:59
  it. I think people arenna be like, you know, didn't do it
• 1:19:01
  for a full season. He's not going to show up on some leaderboards because
• 1:19:04
  he didn't qualify. I think that's he's gonna have an element that to him.
• 1:19:09
  So I think three school is gonna go in like the low twenties and
• 1:19:13
  he's gonna have ceiling because of that. So I do think Scooble is going
• 1:19:18
  to be a nice pickup. So I love I love that pick. And
• 1:19:21
  he's been just unbelievable. Yeah. And the other point that I didn't make
• 1:19:27
  that I was thinking about too, is that he pitches in such a brilliant
• 1:19:30
  Pictures Park that getting half your home starts in Detroit. I would hope that
• 1:19:35
  the Tigers are a little bit better next year, but he doesn't hasn't even
• 1:19:39
  needed a good Tigers team to win games. So when you're pitching the way
• 1:19:42
  he has been, Okay, Yeah, So who's your first pitch for our
• 1:19:47
  first pick for a picture here tonight, brew Yeah, first pitch? No,
• 1:19:53
  you just did it to me. First pick for a picture tonight is
• 1:19:58
  another guy that's really come on strong here and I need to look up his
• 1:20:02
  his values. You know, he Michael King. Uh, Michael King has
• 1:20:09
  returned about seventeen dollars in value in the last thirty days. And so he's
• 1:20:13
  riding the cusp of a top twenty pitcher and you know, no easy feat
• 1:20:20
  pitching in New York. And he has been lights out, just unbelievable what
• 1:20:27
  he has been able to do for that team. And you know, this
• 1:20:30
  is a guy that came from the bullpen, uh, just just a year
• 1:20:34
  ago, and actually earlier this season he was pitching out of the bullpen.
• 1:20:40
  But I want to I want to read you some some numbers on him.
• 1:20:43
  Here. We got eleven k per nine, high to walk per nine.
• 1:20:49
  We're talking about a dip in the mid twos. And those were his numbers
• 1:20:58
  last year as a reliever. They are nearly identical this year and his complete
• 1:21:03
  body of work, and so it's not like this came out of nowhere.
• 1:21:06
  His pits mix is as a three pitch mix, and so that can translate
• 1:21:11
  from a reliever to a starter. And if you actually look at his his
• 1:21:16
  splits, he has been better as a starter than he was actually as a
• 1:21:25
  reliever this year. So as a starter, he's got a one point four
• 1:21:30
  nine er. As a reliever, he was a little over three, and
• 1:21:34
  he's his strikeout rate is almost almost twelve and a half and his walk rate
• 1:21:45
  is actually dropped. And he's actually been unlucky with his baby being a three
• 1:21:49
  thirty three and so his fifth is one point six one. So Michael King
• 1:21:56
  looks like the real deal here, and I'm not seeing much in the profile
• 1:22:01
  that really really concerns me outside of he's gotten a little lucky with lack of
• 1:22:08
  home runs. He is a little bit more of a flyball pitcher and doing
• 1:22:14
  that in Yankee Stadium can be a little scary. And he's on his home
• 1:22:18
  run for flyball rates three percent as a starter this year. But he's just
• 1:22:24
  getting a lot of infield fly balls and you know, he's really limiting hard,
• 1:22:30
  hard contact. So Michael King looks really, really good. And I
• 1:22:36
  think that he's definitely gonna fly under the radar going to next year because it's
• 1:22:41
  you know, not you know, not been that many starts that he's really
• 1:22:45
  been able to get or Indians he's been able to get into his belt.
• 1:22:48
  He's only got thirty sixty years under his belt as a starter, uh this
• 1:22:51
  year. So I think people are gonna look at him as back of the
• 1:22:55
  rotation. Maybe he finds a spot or maybe he's just a reliever. I
• 1:22:59
  think he's gonna fly under the radar. Yeah. No, I mean,
• 1:23:01
  you expounded all the great qualities of what he's been doing. So I think,
• 1:23:06
  especially like when he put in a couple of weeks ago, that seven
• 1:23:11
  inning outing against the Blue Jays where he struck out thirteen and didn't walk any.
• 1:23:15
  It takes I benched him the Fantasy playoffs, by the way, cheating,
• 1:23:20
  Yes, that's when a pitcher, it doesn't. What I like about
• 1:23:27
  pitching is that once you do something like that, like that shows how elite
• 1:23:34
  of a level you have hit, because if you don't fluke into a game
• 1:23:40
  like that, honestly, of thirteen k's no walks in seven innings. That
• 1:23:45
  is just total dominance against major league hitting. The only concern that I have
• 1:23:49
  for Michael King is last year he ended the year by breaking his elbow,
• 1:23:56
  and that's what he came back to in this year. But he's it's the
• 1:24:00
  innings, and so it's just it's the innings. You know, he's been
• 1:24:03
  a reliever. They he was only at fifty one innings last year. He's
• 1:24:09
  been stretched out to one hundred and two thirds innings this year. How far
• 1:24:14
  can they push him next year? You know? So, Like I don't
• 1:24:16
  think they can really push him much past maybe one thirty one forty and so
• 1:24:21
  especially if they want to make a playoff run, maybe they even cap him
• 1:24:25
  at one twenty. And so that's the one thing kind of holding his value
• 1:24:29
  back, Like you said, he's been over the last thirty days worth seventeen
• 1:24:33
  bucks, which I think he could reach. But I again kind of like
• 1:24:40
  with the Burger Velaska's discussion, like I would be cool playing paying you know,
• 1:24:45
  five to ten bucks for Michael King at the draft table. But honestly,
• 1:24:48
  I think he might end up in the mid teens next year, as
• 1:24:54
  there's always the Yankees tax and people I think will notice this, and he's
• 1:24:58
  going to be very hyped up after this stretch he's had. Yeah, I
• 1:25:00
  agree, but it's guys like him that you can, you know, grab
• 1:25:04
  a few him and Burger. You can grab a few of them and you
• 1:25:08
  pay a little bit more. Like everybody's always looking for the one or two
• 1:25:11
  dollars guys they're just gonna break out. But sometimes the guys that just like
• 1:25:15
  I just feel a little bit more because you can see that upside right.
• 1:25:17
  King showed that he can do it and you he can be that dominant,
• 1:25:24
  So it'll be it'll be really interesting to see. You're right, I'm always
• 1:25:27
  a little bit more willing to risk it on the injury plight for a picture
• 1:25:31
  than than you are, and it comes back to bite me just as often.
• 1:25:35
  So that's okay. Anyway, who who do you have on your on
• 1:25:40
  your picture list here? So the next two I've got is I'm going right
• 1:25:44
  back to Detroit. And so this dude's actually sixth right now in value.
• 1:25:47
  Over the past month, he's been worth twenty six dollars and that is Resolson
• 1:25:51
  from the Tigers. So I think part of this is just the Tigers finally
• 1:25:59
  rounding into form with some of this just terrible, terrible stretch that they've been
• 1:26:03
  through and have honestly done, I think a decent job of drafting it just
• 1:26:09
  like hasn't quite all come together. But I think, along with Scooble,
• 1:26:14
  Resolson shows kind of that the better times are coming in Detroit and Resolson is
• 1:26:23
  been Walks have certainly been an issue for him, and you can see it
• 1:26:27
  when you look at like his in zone rates. It doesn't really pop on
• 1:26:30
  the total season in terms of his in zone but you can see it and
• 1:26:34
  stretches individually where he's throwing it in the zone less than forty percent of the
• 1:26:40
  time and is hovering more around like thirty five percent of the time, which
• 1:26:45
  is not great. But you know who it reminds me of. It's a
• 1:26:48
  right handed Blake Snell, that Blake Snell does the same thing where the movement
• 1:26:55
  on his pitches is so nasty, and you see it with Olsen two.
• 1:26:58
  He's got a wicked sinker two seamer and just a dirty, wipe out slider
• 1:27:04
  that it looks like it's in the zone for so long and players will swing
• 1:27:10
  right over the top of those pitches even though they're not in the zone.
• 1:27:13
  As well as I think a little bit like Blake Snow, Resolson's a little
• 1:27:16
  scared of like getting beat by major league hitters in the zone, so he's
• 1:27:21
  a little scared to come in and would rather issue the walk than issue a
• 1:27:27
  homer. So Resolson is a really intriguing arm for me, I think going
• 1:27:31
  forward, and I think compared to anyone else that we've talked on this list,
• 1:27:35
  because people will look at his season stat line and see the K rate
• 1:27:42
  that is below nine. For K nine, you know you've got a little
• 1:27:45
  bit of inflated walk rate at two point eight and just the overall fifth is
• 1:27:51
  only four. You know, it doesn't look terribly special. But I think
• 1:27:55
  this stretched down the past month or so, has shown what Resolsing can be.
• 1:28:00
  And I don't think it's certainly not the sixth overall picture in the pool.
• 1:28:04
  But listen, I think Resolsing can be a mid teens value picture next
• 1:28:10
  year, and especially picturing in AO Central. This is a guy that of
• 1:28:15
  everyone we've talked about, I think you could be picking up for five bucks
• 1:28:18
  or less at the draft unless some sort of hype train gets going. And
• 1:28:23
  I'm going to be picking up recent Resolsing at the end of drafts as much
• 1:28:28
  as I can for cheap dollar days. You know, Yeah, I'm I'm
• 1:28:33
  tentative on Resolsome. I think there's a lot of good things that you called
• 1:28:36
  out, and I do really target guys that have control. And I look
• 1:28:45
  at results and I question, is what he did this year real? And
• 1:28:50
  I look at his minor track record things like that, and I go,
• 1:28:55
  uh, I like your Black Snell comp where he could be off, he
• 1:28:58
  could be amazing. And I think that he's gonna have seasons where he walks
• 1:29:01
  five, five or nine and he's just dreadful, and he's gonna have stretches
• 1:29:05
  where he's just unbelievable. And so I think that's what you get with with
• 1:29:10
  Olsen. The thing is maybe some of it's maybe he's learned, maybe he's
• 1:29:14
  improved as he's got to the majors. You just don't know. It's it's
• 1:29:16
  hard to really know if he has. So I think it's interesting. I
• 1:29:19
  think you're right. He can pick him up for a few bucks and he's
• 1:29:23
  a good flyer. He's you know, the very end of your rotation,
• 1:29:26
  and he could surprise or you kind of loosened in May and you move on.
• 1:29:30
  It's it's the low price of a mission. Yeah. No, I
• 1:29:32
  totally agree, And I mean I think he will probably be ranked pretty high
• 1:29:38
  in like my own personal pitching rankings, just because of what he's shown.
• 1:29:42
  I've always been in on him as he's kind of come through the miners and
• 1:29:45
  has he's always been young for the levels, and it just like it looks
• 1:29:49
  good when you're watching it, it just takes it needs a little bit of
• 1:29:53
  honing. You can see all the raw talent there, but I like results
• 1:29:57
  in a lot. So brew wrap us up with the fourth picture here.
• 1:30:01
  Yeah, So I'm wrapping up with what I'm gonna say, is is my
• 1:30:04
  favorite one of this list. And I know that's saying something because of how
• 1:30:08
  good School's been, But I'm gonna go with out of Kansas City teammate of
• 1:30:14
  Nelson Vlaska and Cole Reagans. Cole Reagan's has been nothing short of dominant since
• 1:30:19
  coming over to Kansas City from Texas, you know, and that comes to
• 1:30:25
  down to a few things. One, he has seen a substantial uptick in
• 1:30:30
  velocity between the teams. You know, he's popping up night almost ninety seven
• 1:30:34
  now with Kansas City. He has also added a slider, uh since he
• 1:30:41
  came over to Kansas City, and that thing is nasty. It is if
• 1:30:44
  you watch Pitching Ninja all on Twitter, it is all over there. It
• 1:30:47
  is nearly impossible to hit, and he has been making it work. And
• 1:30:51
  so you know, since he came over to Kansas City, he's got about
• 1:30:55
  eleven k per nine uh low three walk per nine and he is running a
• 1:31:00
  two thirty four Yara with a two forty eight whip and three twenty one x
• 1:31:04
  FIP. So he is you know right there. It looks fantastic. He
• 1:31:09
  did have a kind of a blow up game in Toronto recently and if you
• 1:31:14
  actually watched the game, uh, he he was just completely cruising. And
• 1:31:18
  this happened to't actually two games to him in a row where so if you
• 1:31:21
  actually go back and look at some of the games that he had recently,
• 1:31:24
  he actually had a kind of blow game in Toronto and then another one shortly
• 1:31:28
  thereafter that I really kind of impacted his numbers and actually kind of tossed up
• 1:31:31
  his walk rates degree. In the Toronto game, he actually had some trouble
• 1:31:35
  with the mound where he actually caught his foot one or two times on the
• 1:31:40
  dirt and through I think three wild pitches almost in the same bat and gave
• 1:31:44
  a few runs left if you know, they were worried about his uh,
• 1:31:47
  if he was gonna be hurt, left the game. Reliever came in,
• 1:31:50
  gave up all the inherited runners and they scored same same thing kind of one
• 1:31:57
  or two games later, didn't have trouble with the mound, but kind of
• 1:32:00
  left and you know the seventh inning and reliever came in let all the run
• 1:32:04
  score and so you know, he had some unlucky results there from his bullpen
• 1:32:10
  letting him down. But he has It's just like then, like I said,
• 1:32:14
  nothing short of amazing sense for Kansas City, And you know, I
• 1:32:18
  think the fantasy community is going to be in on him. But he really
• 1:32:21
  made a true change in his repertoire and it is paying off big time in
• 1:32:27
  Kansas City. So I'm a big Cole Reagans fan. I think he is
• 1:32:30
  going to be undervalued next year and people, and he's gonna have the potential
• 1:32:35
  to deliver. I'm gonna want to live and say a top twenty starting in
• 1:32:39
  pitcher season. Okay, so yeah, you are in on him. I'm
• 1:32:44
  guessing that you're going over on the seventeen dollars he's been worth. I guess
• 1:32:48
  where do you compare him to Tweak Scooble. Are you taking Scooble or Reagan's
• 1:32:55
  next year? Yeah, I think it's gonna be a tough one, but
• 1:32:58
  I think, yeah, I think we have to say, at the same
• 1:33:00
  price, what who would who would I take? I think right now I
• 1:33:04
  would take Cole Reagan's. I think that he is just just I think his
• 1:33:10
  stuff is slightly nastier, and I think he has a little bit higher upside.
• 1:33:16
  But it's you can't I don't think you can go wrong. I do
• 1:33:20
  really like Scooble's control, which I think is a little bit better than than
• 1:33:26
  Reagans. But you know, I kind of see him as as one A,
• 1:33:30
  one B as guys that I would be targeting. YEA, how about
• 1:33:33
  you. I'm sure you're you're in school all on this one. I am.
• 1:33:38
  And so I'm also a little bit torn because so we're in the same
• 1:33:43
  Auto New League from fan Graphs. It's h dynasty that kind of represents and
• 1:33:49
  correlates with actual baseball rosters, with like forty men rosters. It's I think
• 1:33:56
  one of the best dynasty formats out there. We're in it together. One
• 1:34:00
  of my favorite things about Auto New is the amount of data that it tracks
• 1:34:03
  for you. One of those things is the date that it add you add
• 1:34:08
  people to your watch list, and so this just shows you how long I've
• 1:34:12
  been in Encole Reagan's I added him to my watch list in our Auto New
• 1:34:15
  League on August sixteenth, twenty seventeen. So I've always loved him and really
• 1:34:25
  liked him coming through the Texas system. He always had this pedigree in him.
• 1:34:30
  That's why I had him on the watch lists is that people who saw
• 1:34:33
  him really liked the stuff and liked his you know, six four frame with
• 1:34:41
  just the velocity that he could get. And so obviously the two Tommy John
• 1:34:45
  surgeries really slowed him down. And I think part of the reason I would
• 1:34:51
  prefer Scooble going forward is Scoople just has pitched more. And so like,
• 1:34:57
  I'm I know that Reagan's is twenty five, and like he's already had the
• 1:35:00
  two Tommy John's and looks pretty healthy now, but it does feel a little
• 1:35:04
  bit to me like I am worried when the other shoe drops that, like
• 1:35:09
  he just hasn't produced much volume. And then on top of it too,
• 1:35:13
  like this is very anecdotal, but like what did the Rangers see in him?
• 1:35:17
  Because I consider the Rangers a smarter organization than the Royals, and you
• 1:35:23
  just see how terrible the Royals have been in developing pitching, Like what did
• 1:35:27
  the Rangers see in kind of his kinetic chain that I think the Royals are
• 1:35:32
  overlooking, And so I think there's a reason the Rangers moved on from Reagans
• 1:35:38
  and like dealt him and didn't use him as a starter, like they were
• 1:35:41
  using him as a reliever. And maybe he just needed the change of scenery
• 1:35:45
  and like needed the opportunity. But I think because that like I like what
• 1:35:50
  Cole Reagans can do, but I think they're just going to be people at
• 1:35:55
  the table that are willing to pay more for him than me. So I
• 1:35:58
  would value him like in the fifteen to twenty dollars range, but I think
• 1:36:01
  he will go beyond twenty bucks and a lot of a lot of drafts because
• 1:36:06
  I think compared especially to Scooble and some of these other guys we've talked about,
• 1:36:11
  like people have noticed the Cole Reagan's train departing the station and have been
• 1:36:17
  in on it for a little bit that it was getting some fanfare and media,
• 1:36:20
  and so I think that will stick in people's brains a little bit more.
• 1:36:25
  Yeah, I think you're right there. It's kind of that was slightly
• 1:36:28
  more extended than some of these other guys were talking about, So that that
• 1:36:31
  will have an impact on his draft day value. You know, I think,
• 1:36:36
  you know, I have a tendency to when I'm building a pitching staff
• 1:36:40
  to really get you know, two three really really solid starters and then fill
• 1:36:45
  in with these types of guys that have that upside and just looking to you
• 1:36:49
  know, hit two or three of them and they can really make a roster.
• 1:36:55
  So I agree he's probably gonna go a little bit more than than i'd
• 1:37:00
  be thrilled with but I'm still going to have shares of Cole Reagans next year.
• 1:37:03
  No, And I think you just laid out actually a really great scenario
• 1:37:06
  to use him, especially if you because I know you're, like, you're
• 1:37:11
  a huge Sonny Gray guy. Like if you can pair him with like a
• 1:37:14
  Sonny Gray or just someone who is a one or two that is a little
• 1:37:18
  bit more dependable, like that, you know, Sonny Gray, Luis Castillo.
• 1:37:23
  I'm trying to look at just kind of other guys I would put in
• 1:37:26
  that Elk maybe even Kyle Bradish going forward, that like somebody that will give
• 1:37:30
  you a solid one hundred and sixty ish plus innings that that way you can
• 1:37:35
  mitigate a little bit of your risk with Reagans. That's a really great use
• 1:37:39
  scenario. Yeah, exactly, so excited about him, and I think he's
• 1:37:43
  probably the last one we have for today. Yeah, I agree, So
• 1:37:46
  we will wrap it up here. I am again Mike Coolard. You can
• 1:37:51
  find me on Twitter slash x at end cool seven. You can find the
• 1:37:56
  pod on Twitter slash x at cards Categories, and you can email the pod
• 1:38:01
  at cards Categories at gmail dot com. That's how you can reach me in
• 1:38:05
  the pod overall, brew let people know where they can find you. Yep,
• 1:38:10
  can find me over on Twitter slash x at Jaybrewer one seven. Also
• 1:38:15
  find me on rast Ball on Sundays. It'll you know, we're wrapping up
• 1:38:18
  the season, so I'll be out there on this Sunday with the top one
• 1:38:21
  hundred four twenty twenty four or hitters going into next season early early top one
• 1:38:28
  hundred lists, looking at what we can expect. So but after that will
• 1:38:32
  be be the off season and we'll be back at it as the off season
• 1:38:38
  picks up for twenty twenty four December. Jamiy time frame over at raz Ball.
• 1:38:42
  Yeah exactly. And so if you are listening to this podcast and whatever
• 1:38:46
  platform you're on, but especially Apple Podcasts and Spotify, if you can rate
• 1:38:51
  and review the pod, we would greatly appreciate it. It helps just boost
• 1:38:56
  the pod and get it into other people's ears, as well as just letting
• 1:39:00
  us know that you're enjoying what we're talking about. So thanks again everybody for
• 1:39:04
  listening, and we'll be back again next week. M