Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 9 : Football Crossover Cards, Surprising Top 50 Pitchers

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Ep. 9 : Football Crossover Cards, Surprising Top 50 Pitchers · Cards & Categories

• 0:14
  Hello, and welcome everybody to episode number nine are Roger Merris episode of Cards
• 0:20
  and Categories. I'm Mike cool Art here from Rasball, and I'm joined as
• 0:24
  always by Jeremy Brewer, also from Rasball. Jeremy, how are you doing
• 0:28
  today? Doing very well as a fun day day of baseball as it seems
• 0:34
  to be a lot late at least, so I'm sure we have plenty to
• 0:36
  talk about and I'm excited to get into it, But first of all,
• 0:39
  how are you doing yourself? I'm doing great. It's it was a little
• 0:43
  bit more of a gloomy day here in Chicago, but I can't complain.
• 0:46
  We needed the rain and still recovering from my Labor Day weekend activities. So
• 0:52
  it's a great table to record. And like you said, there's a lot
• 0:55
  going on in baseball. We've got a lot of racist heating up. We've
• 0:58
  got a lot of our old face it's making the news. So I think
• 1:02
  that's where we'll well, where we will start is with some of our old
• 1:06
  favorites making the news. Because as much as I tried to stay away from
• 1:10
  them, Otani and the White Sox are kind of like a topic every week
• 1:14
  here, so I think we're going to start with the Otani news of especially
• 1:18
  did you see the picture of the stand in double for the Angels team photo
• 1:23
  day. Yes, I think that was fantastic and I really hope that guy
• 1:27
  got to keep the jersey. You know, What's what I was like.
• 1:33
  I was a major league player, I was Showutani for a day. That
• 1:37
  was not what he came to work for that day, And now he's a
• 1:40
  viral sensation stadium for a show. Hey Otani, and I don't know about
• 1:45
  you, but the whole like team photo looked like the gloomiest thing ever,
• 1:49
  which just matched the Angels to a t that nobody looked happy to be there
• 1:55
  except for maybe that guy to degree. So that was that was entertaining,
• 2:00
  and that one kind of lit up social media for a while for sure.
• 2:04
  Yeah, and it actually impressively. Anthony wren Dunn was there after. He's
• 2:07
  kind of been just being a stinker puss in the media. That's the only
• 2:13
  hit he's that all seasons. So yeah, of saying you know, no
• 2:16
  abla e glaze, which isn't even correct, it's a blow, but he
• 2:23
  has been avoiding taking media questions. Let's I get it. It's been a
• 2:25
  tough time and I'm sure he doesn't want to answer questions, but like,
• 2:29
  it doesn't take much to also be like I'm on the road recovery, YadA
• 2:32
  YadA. It doesn't take too much effort to go through that brigrama role.
• 2:38
  But back to the Otani stand in double, I was wondering so just because
• 2:43
  like he got there so fast, and if you don't know, I will
• 2:46
  link to this in the show page. But Otani did have a stand in
• 2:50
  double for his team photo for some reason, and it's guy that vaguely looks
• 2:54
  like Otani in a seventeen jersey, So I think they just probably found someone
• 2:59
  roughly the same height and sent him out there. But do you think this
• 3:01
  guy was like a teen employee or it is Anaheim and Orange County, so
• 3:07
  like it would have been very easy to contact like a actor or some sort
• 3:14
  of modeling agency to get somebody down there pretty quick for the stand in I'm
• 3:17
  just wondering, like was this person paid or honestly, we could probably have
• 3:22
  somebody do like an investigative like whole podcast like that would run six state episodes
• 3:27
  on this. Yeah, I'm actually trying to go through the news now.
• 3:30
  Because I'm I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that it was a staff member.
• 3:37
  It was okay, the confirmed yeah, and so I it's social media,
• 3:43
  so I don't know how everything on the internet's true, right, but
• 3:46
  I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it was a staff member and that he
• 3:51
  was simply the right height like and right body build. So it was just
• 3:54
  like, hey, we need you to be the the stand in for the
• 4:00
  day and simple enough walk around and backlek Otani and then move move forward.
• 4:05
  So, like I said, that's gonna be a fun day at work.
• 4:10
  That's not what he planned for. Maybe considering the camaraderie on the team,
• 4:15
  I'm sure it was a very grim photo as everyone's just kind of billing around
• 4:23
  and it's almost like a death photo. I don't know if you've ever seen
• 4:26
  those from like when photography was like first invented and people were real macab and
• 4:30
  wanted to be in photos with like the recently deceased loved ones, that it
• 4:36
  had that kind of vibe to it. This Angel season, and honestly,
• 4:41
  the franchise for Like the Foreseeable Future is in dire straits, so maybe it
• 4:46
  wasn't exactly the finest day at the office for him. Yeah, and so
• 4:49
  I did. I did find the quote. So it was put up by
• 4:53
  the Angels pr and as as we can expect from the Angels, it was
• 4:58
  very very clear U statement was to described the stand in as I quote,
• 5:02
  very tall in the front office name not to be discussed. It wouldn't it
• 5:08
  wouldn't be that hard to find him. But I mean, I guess it
• 5:11
  wouldn't be the hard because we all have a photo of this guy now,
• 5:15
  and I mean give them credit. There was actually a photo not of the
• 5:19
  actual team photo, but it him is like exiting the dugout from behind and
• 5:24
  if you don't look close enough, like it does like his body build is
• 5:27
  like Otani, so so give him credit. They even had video of him
• 5:31
  being like escorted through the bullpen, so you couldn't get additional photos of him
• 5:36
  because I think they realized the media was catching on and was taking these photos.
• 5:41
  So after the team photo, he was like ushered out of the stadium
• 5:44
  in a different direction. So nope, you know, I think that they
• 5:46
  realized the snap food that they had created classic that is classic Angels, And
• 5:53
  I mean the reason that Otani was probably missing there is. It was recently
• 5:57
  announced that he, like Poles, is a bleak of some sort in the
• 6:02
  batting practice. Nobody knows exactly quite what it was, but the video doesn't
• 6:06
  look good, and honestly, I'm kind of wondering if maybe Otani does pack
• 6:11
  it up and find somebody to do the surgery on his elbow. That was
• 6:15
  the other news that came out since last talk was that his agent went into
• 6:20
  a conference and told people that he needed a surgery or procedure of some sort
• 6:27
  on the UCL. That it's one of the best like things that people have
• 6:31
  ever seen in terms of UCL injuries, because apparently it didn't happen where his
• 6:34
  first time with John happened like it was, it was an isolated injury to
• 6:40
  the UCL. I guess is that it. Yeah. I mean, I'm
• 6:44
  no expert in the UCL surgeries here, but I feel like one tear or
• 6:50
  two tear, like, it doesn't really matter when you tear the thing or
• 6:54
  it's being torn, it's still not good. So and I mean, honestly,
• 6:59
  if I were I would also be saying whatever it takes to brush the
• 7:02
  value of that contract a little more and more. But I wouldn't be surprised
• 7:06
  by the next time we're talking that Otani is deciding to go underneath some surgery
• 7:13
  and try to work the Bryce Harper route into next year, playing some sort
• 7:16
  of dh in first base, and then Otani will focus on pitching later.
• 7:20
  I don't know like how much it will impact his rehab from the injury,
• 7:26
  as he's doing d ching and first spacing maybe, and so it will be
• 7:31
  interesting to just kind of see how this timeline all works out, Like you
• 7:34
  just kind of expect him to do it because he's done everything else so far.
• 7:39
  But I don't know. It does worry me that he's getting a second
• 7:42
  Tommy John And the one encouraging thing is that he is an otherworldly hitter.
• 7:46
  So I think as long as that is a facet of his game, that
• 7:51
  he's going to be a very hot commodity on the fregent market and just whatever
• 7:57
  MLB team wants him. Yeah, I do think it'll be interesting as this
• 8:01
  goes into the free agency. You know, this injury has to have cost
• 8:03
  him hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't think there's any question about that.
• 8:09
  What I am intrigued to see is if he looks to take a shorter
• 8:13
  term contract of say a two or three years, or maybe it's a four
• 8:20
  or five year deal with an opt out after two something like that, some
• 8:22
  structure that allows him to basically hit for the one year, pitch for the
• 8:28
  second to show that he's healthy, and then opt out to go after that
• 8:31
  massive payday. I think that that's more likely a design that they push for,
• 8:37
  and at the end of that, you know, they still have all
• 8:41
  the leverage. I know it's you know, he's hurt, but it's still
• 8:45
  probably one of the best talents out there, and you have to think that
• 8:48
  the team would love to at least get him in the fold, show him
• 8:52
  who they are, and if even if he does have an opt out,
• 8:54
  like they're just treating as they have the first negotiating rights in two years,
• 9:00
  actually going after him and capping their risk to a degree. So I still
• 9:05
  think that market's going to be incredibly robust, and I think you're also right
• 9:09
  that I would be very surprised if we see him the rest of the season.
• 9:13
  Who you know who we might see though, is Mike Trout is working
• 9:18
  his way back. Supposedly that news came out this week that he wants to
• 9:20
  play again this season, so we'll see how that goes. I mean,
• 9:24
  I actually do believe him, because at this point, Mike Trout is just
• 9:28
  kind of chasing numbers that he knows that all the games that he can get
• 9:33
  in, all the homers, all of the accumulated war all the hits are
• 9:37
  going towards Hall of Fame totals. So I wouldn't be surprised to see him
• 9:41
  actually come back and try to give it a go. But it is I
• 9:43
  admire the effort, but it is just kind of it's futile, Like it's
• 9:48
  a very sisificis. I can't ever say, Sisiphian, I got it,
• 9:52
  there we go. Sisiphis like just process watching Trout work his way, and
• 10:01
  especially he still has that back injury that is chronic, and so I'm surprised
• 10:05
  that he wants to risk it. But I do get it into the grand
• 10:07
  scheme of like risking his numbers overall, and I do hope that he is
• 10:11
  able to come back in some sort of healthy manner, because even if the
• 10:16
  Angels are terrible and just continue to suck for the rest of his career,
• 10:22
  at least it will be a joy to see what Mike Trout can do and
• 10:26
  kind of what sort of plateaus he can ultimately reach. Yeah, I'm with
• 10:31
  you. I think it just goes to who Trout is. He is going
• 10:35
  to be the one of the hardest workers there is, and he's going to
• 10:39
  play through everything just to give everything he's got. I don't think he's not
• 10:46
  motivated by the dollars as much. He's getting plenty. If I don't,
• 10:50
  don't worry, But you know, he wants to win. He wants to
• 10:52
  give it all, he wants to leave it on the field. In a
• 10:56
  weird way. He reminds me of King Grave Jr. Back in the day
• 10:58
  when he just gave it all the time and his body just couldn't couldn't hold
• 11:01
  out. And I hope that's not where Trout ends up going. I think
• 11:07
  that, you know, he has kind of I would say, scaled it
• 11:09
  back to a degree over the few years with the running and run into the
• 11:13
  wall and all those kind of things. But what really intrigues me about the
• 11:18
  offseason for Trout is to your point, I think he's gonna kind of come
• 11:22
  back, but he's for the first time. I don't know if it was
• 11:26
  really the first time, but the first time. I recall he's becoming vocal
• 11:30
  to a degree about the Angels and where they're going. I don't know if
• 11:35
  you caught the comments he had three or four days ago around uh this is
• 11:41
  right at the time Otani he was getting hurt and they left, you know,
• 11:45
  sent the rest of the team on waivers just for fun, and he
• 11:50
  indicated that he would be having conversations over the winter to really understand the direction
• 11:56
  of the team. And then when he was pressed on what do you quest
• 12:00
  of trade, he would decline to comment, which to me, the fact
• 12:05
  that you know, he's even putting himselves in that position to decline to comment
• 12:09
  says volumes for a player like him, because he is such a reserved player.
• 12:13
  He just wants to do the best. He wants to go out there
• 12:16
  and put, you know, show it on the field. He doesn't want
• 12:18
  to be in the media. That's that says to me that he really has
• 12:24
  questions about what the Angels are doing and where they're going, and he may
• 12:30
  be for the first time open to going somewhere else because I really think he
• 12:33
  was committed to building around himself and Showhatani and building a championship contender and that
• 12:39
  clearly is not going to happen. No, and that is I actually didn't
• 12:45
  see those comments, so that it is interesting and maybe it does frame why
• 12:48
  he is also making this comeback for the last week or two of the season
• 12:52
  to be able to prove what he still got left in the tank and show
• 12:56
  kind of what sort of star he can be going into the season. It
• 13:01
  will be interesting if his name is on the trade block, because that will
• 13:03
  make it kind of possibly the number two option for you have to think that
• 13:09
  it's going to be Yankees Dodgers really duking it out for Otani, and so
• 13:15
  like whoever loses that contest could be revisiting Anaheim there to maybe see if Mike
• 13:20
  Trout is available to be able to plug into their rosters, because they'll have
• 13:24
  already had the financial freedom that they were planning to put towards Otani and can
• 13:30
  kind of eat some of that Mike Trout contract and just kind of help the
• 13:35
  Angels out. Although the Angels we have, I mean, we have seen
• 13:37
  some teams pay down contracts to be able to get prospects back, as the
• 13:43
  Mets traded off Max Scherzer and made sure that they could get Luisa Una Luis
• 13:50
  Anhela Kunya back, So it's possible. Maybe Artie Marino says, hey,
• 13:54
  I was already going to pay these millions of dollars for trout. Anyway,
• 13:58
  Let's pay down half of it and see what sort of prospects we can get
• 14:01
  back to try to rebuild this system a little bit. I'd like to think
• 14:07
  that they as the thought process with my confidence is low at this point in
• 14:11
  time. It's I think it's one foot in at all times for the Angels
• 14:16
  and the other foot is very lost. You can't ever lose that approach with
• 14:20
  the Angels, and you did bring this up earlier. They're waiver wire transactions
• 14:24
  that happened, and so those have all settled most of the teams in Ohio,
• 14:28
  I mean both teams o in Ohio are the ones that got most of
• 14:31
  the players between the Guardians and the Reds. But I want to specifically talk
• 14:35
  about one of those Angels to Guardian transition guys, and that's Looks Giolito,
• 14:41
  mostly because here's the socks bend that I was talking about, Mostly because he
• 14:46
  set a record that hasn't been seen since eighteen ninety nine and eight dead Ball
• 14:54
  pre camera era has become like a favorite of mine recently in the immaculate grade
• 15:00
  tryin to remember dead ball players, and so Lucas throws back to that with
• 15:05
  tying the record from eighteen ninety nine. Bill McGee also did this allowed eight
• 15:11
  runs in a game for three different teams in the same season. Obviously,
• 15:16
  Lucas has done it with the White Sox, the Angels, and the Guardians
• 15:18
  with his first outing that was just a total disaster. The other night,
• 15:22
  McGee did it back in eighteen ninety nine for the Louisville Colonels, the Philadelphia
• 15:28
  Phillies and the Washington Senators. So two of those are actually kind of like
• 15:31
  real teams. The Senators changed into the Twins. I don't think I'll have
• 15:35
  to look it up, but I think the Colonels just are like a dead
• 15:37
  end. They just kind of didn't become anything. And then the Phillies and
• 15:41
  the Phillies. So that's for all you gritters out there. You should be
• 15:43
  able to use Bill McGee at Phillies Twins. And what a terrible disaster start
• 15:50
  for Lucas. I feel bad for him, but I'm glad that we got
• 15:54
  to see a goofy record like this because I can't even believe somebody else actually
• 15:58
  did that, and I wouldn't understand. This is how somebody in the in
• 16:02
  the dead ball area played for three different teams before like free agency, you
• 16:07
  know, trades just weren't the same thing like he was. Was he the
• 16:14
  you know, you're Edwin Jackson of the day. He just was good enough
• 16:17
  to pitch on the back end of any team and they let him go and
• 16:19
  he picked up the next day. Like what was it? I didn't know
• 16:23
  that you could play on three different teams in that era, let alone give
• 16:26
  up eighty That's how you did it. You give up eight runs and they're
• 16:30
  like, okay, well this didn't work out well. I mean back then
• 16:33
  too, like I mean, who knew if they had money to pay you,
• 16:37
  and like whether or not they were able to take you on the train
• 16:40
  to the next team, and so like the transactions, I'm sure we're goofy.
• 16:44
  There's no transaction history really for Bill McGee, because I don't think it'd
• 16:48
  be terribly reliable in eighteen ninety nine, but it is. I'm more impressed
• 16:52
  almost that he gave up the eight runs three times than the dead ball era
• 16:56
  that sometimes things can get wonky back then. I think they were probably out
• 17:02
  of it by then, But I know sometime in like the eighteen eighties eighteen
• 17:04
  seventies they finally got away from like pitching out of a literal box for like
• 17:10
  the pitchers mount. So like there's a lot of goofy stuff that happens in
• 17:15
  the stats back then. So Lucas, you and Bill McGee are kindred spirits.
• 17:19
  The other kindred spirit Lucas has from that game, though, is David
• 17:22
  Fry. I just kind of wanted to bring this up because this was one
• 17:25
  of the crazier performances I've ever seen from a position player pitching. David Fry
• 17:33
  is a first baseman catcher usually for the Guardians, and came in in relief
• 17:37
  for Lucas in that game eight four innings and ended up throwing sixty four pitches,
• 17:45
  which is impressive that the Twins didn't score more runs off of him than
• 17:49
  they did off of Lucas, considering Fry was just throwing in lollipops. Yeah,
• 17:56
  I saw a stat on his sixty four pitches. It since they put
• 18:00
  pitch Trekking in place that no other picture has ever thrown thirty pitchers pitches under
• 18:07
  sixty miles an hour, and David Fry through sixty four from that in that
• 18:12
  game. So that was literal batting practice, and it's one of those that
• 18:19
  I it's playing baseball myself. Way back in the day, I hated facing
• 18:26
  guys like this because it was such a change of pace for being a hitter
• 18:32
  that the guy looked like it should be absolute beatball, that it was almost
• 18:36
  impossible to hit at times because it was so slow. And if you actually
• 18:40
  look his line, he pitched better than Giolito did when he went Julieto lasted
• 18:45
  three three Indians, gave up nine runs, give up three home runs.
• 18:49
  Fry went four and he gave up seven and three home runs. And so
• 18:52
  now let's let's be frank. I don't know the extent that they were really
• 19:00
  dialing in against Fry. I mean, I'm the up there, I'm if
• 19:07
  I'm the from the going to make the what the twins were doing. If
• 19:11
  I'm facing that, I'm hitting all day. But there's some degree everybody's working
• 19:17
  on their swing or something against against Fry. So yeah, that was definitely
• 19:21
  entertaining. I wish I'd looked to see the last time a position player went
• 19:25
  four innings in a game, and I do wonder like if it's a little
• 19:30
  bit of he's throwing so slow it's hard to just tee it up. Because
• 19:36
  I think about Mookie Bets with this, especially when he was in the home
• 19:37
  run derby and struggled to hit home runs out this past All Star Break,
• 19:44
  because he just doesn't have that same sort of raw power the way that Julio
• 19:48
  and Flat Junior do. But on the season, Mookie's gonna shoot past forty
• 19:52
  homers here in the season. So there are a decent amount of guys that
• 19:57
  still need that velocity from the fast ball or just the mechanics that come from
• 20:03
  reacting to that fastball to be able to turn it around and pop it out
• 20:07
  of the park. So that might have had a factor, or just people
• 20:10
  also given it up, like the Twins I think are going to be able
• 20:12
  to coast that Ale Central Division now, so that might be a factor too.
• 20:17
  Don't want to go out there and swing too hard and hurt yourself.
• 20:19
  It's a good thing the trade leve over. Otherwise, I feel like the
• 20:22
  Texas Rangers will be trying to acquire David Fry here. They might that is
• 20:29
  in good stake, because the other thing that I think we should talk about
• 20:33
  is we talked about last week the AL West Race really heating up with the
• 20:37
  Mariners pushing themselves to the forefront, and I think since then the Astroists have
• 20:44
  asserted their dominance with as you reference there, that Rangers pitching staff and bullpen
• 20:49
  really melting down against Houston, especially maybe Vivaldi welcome back from the I L
• 20:55
  Bud like just absolutely shelled. I was all two hitting homers and his first
• 21:00
  three at bats, And it looks like this Astrois team is just going to
• 21:03
  steam roll their way right to another division title. And it looks like the
• 21:08
  Mariners will probably get a wild card and the Rangers might be done that they're
• 21:11
  just going to run out of steam down that stretch. The other race that
• 21:15
  I want to talk about, though, is the NL Wildcard race, because
• 21:18
  for how good the teams in the AL West Race are, the NL wildcard
• 21:22
  teams are all terrible, and so they it's like a race to the bottom
• 21:27
  almost. As you know, the Reds with their new outfielders and just like
• 21:34
  the entirely new team that they have on the infield, are hanging in there.
• 21:40
  The Marlins and the Marlins, and then you got the Giants hanging around
• 21:44
  with their platoon bats and it's just a strange race of teams that clearly do
• 21:51
  not belong in the playoffs, but are all vying for that third spot in
• 21:55
  the NL wild card. Yeah, I think it's the L Wildcards very interesting
• 22:00
  because as you look at the teams like there, I feel like there's a
• 22:03
  few key front runners and that it's it's like it's clearly the Braves and the
• 22:07
  Dodgers are the teams to beat in the NL. And then you look you
• 22:11
  know, the Brewers have been a decent team, the Phillies have been a
• 22:12
  decent team. Then you start to go down and you look at the Cubs
• 22:17
  in the Marlins and you're like, just doesn't like you watch them play,
• 22:21
  it just doesn't feel right. It just doesn't feel like they're scary whatsoever.
• 22:26
  If you get to the playoffs, Like, yeah, I get it that
• 22:29
  the Cubs have like found pitching somehow this year, but like not a single
• 22:33
  one of their pitchers really is scary, like dominant. It's like they seem
• 22:37
  to be it's like they've cloned Kyle Hendricks like four times and just throw them
• 22:42
  out there, and hey, I guess they might as well pick up David
• 22:48
  Fry. But the one that actually intrigues me the most actually too Arizona and
• 22:52
  Cincinnati, both of them only a half game out of that that last wild
• 23:00
  card spot. If I'm reading yep, reading it right here. And what's
• 23:06
  interesting, both of those teams have the upstart young talent. It looks like
• 23:10
  they're growing. The Reds, I know, we've talked about it multiple times
• 23:14
  before, with the youth that they have on that team. They've got Dela
• 23:18
  Cruz, They've got Strand, They've got Nopelle Marte Steer, right, the
• 23:22
  list goes on. They've got all this young talent coming up. They've got
• 23:27
  enough pitching to kind of get by. But the Diamondbacks also, you know,
• 23:33
  have some young talent. I don't know if you saw about an hour
• 23:36
  ago, they called up Jordan Lawler and so like they're clearly they're going they're
• 23:41
  going for and of the teams that I look at and they try to make
• 23:45
  it into that wild card, they can actually make some noise. I think
• 23:51
  the Diamondbacks are actually a little scary because they've got some they've got top end
• 23:53
  pitching. Was that gallon and they've got enough firepower they can get hot.
• 23:59
  Like, to me, that's what this you're looking for this wild card race
• 24:03
  is who's got enough topping pitching that they can win the wild card games and
• 24:08
  who is going to get hot at the right time so they can win the
• 24:11
  wild card and then steamroll through the division series. So I'm intrigued by by
• 24:17
  the Diamondbacks here. That could look like a terrible take in like a week
• 24:21
  or so, considering I think I've had takes on draft, you know,
• 24:25
  Tani first overall in recent weeks and a few other things that have not gone
• 24:30
  swimmingly. So I so I did forget about the diamond Backs, but I
• 24:37
  think they're my second favorite team for that third wild card spot. I'm already
• 24:40
  actually gonna like pencil Philly and Chicago into the first two spots well, which
• 24:45
  will actually be a really great series. I think like the all of the
• 24:48
  Pinstripes involved in the Kyle Shober story and the team matchups will just be They're
• 24:56
  very dynamic and entertaining team, so it's going to be a fun series.
• 25:02
  Although I we'll get to him actually a little bit later in one of our
• 25:06
  segments. But Justin Steele, I think, is in the race for the
• 25:08
  cy Young as we're talking on Wednesday night, and Spencer Strider's getting blown up
• 25:14
  by the Cardinals, and so nothing like hurting your cy Young chances by getting
• 25:18
  blown up by the Cardinals. Yeah, exactly. And so the Cubs I
• 25:23
  think are going to be an intriguing option. They've got a nice bullpen,
• 25:26
  they've got a really great lineup. I think that they're going to be scarier
• 25:30
  than people kind of have given them credit for down the stretch. Honestly,
• 25:34
  if anything, they might stumble over themselves, as David Ross is maybe like
• 25:40
  the worst manager I've ever seen, as I've kind of seen him move Christopher
• 25:44
  Morrell around and not play him and just some of the tactical decisions are just
• 25:48
  not there. So he might just really stumble over himself in the playoffs.
• 25:52
  But my team for that third world card spot is the one that's sending there
• 25:56
  right now. It's the Marlins, and I really would not want to play
• 26:00
  them. Obviously. You know that when they're in the playoffs is a wild
• 26:03
  card. They win the World Series, that's a foregone conclusion. And on
• 26:07
  top of it, when you're battling a staff that has Alkantara and Perez and
• 26:15
  Brexton, Garrett and even Johnny Quato, Like that is a crafty dude.
• 26:18
  You don't want to mess with the bullpens good. They do have good bats
• 26:22
  in the lineup with Bell and Burger and being able to string hits together in
• 26:27
  front of them with maybe Chisholm and Da La Cruz and Solaire is still down
• 26:33
  there. I mean, it's a very very dangerous team that like it's got
• 26:37
  a lot of pieces that almost remind me kind of of that Nationals team that
• 26:41
  ran to the World Series that you know, they can really condense that bullpen
• 26:45
  down to Tanner Scott and maybe David Robinson if he can get things back together
• 26:51
  and just like hone the team in to be able to barrel roll through the
• 26:56
  entire playoffs. You know, yeah, I think you know another interesting analogy
• 27:00
  is back when they won the World Series with you know, with Josh Beckett,
• 27:04
  Uh you'll lose Castillo one Pierre Like that feels like it has that feel
• 27:07
  of that team to a degree that they're just gonna get on the back of
• 27:11
  I feel like a Yuri Perez like there's just like unleash him during the playoffs
• 27:15
  type of thing and just say, yep, you're going eight and the handing
• 27:19
  over Tander Scott and we just we're gonna figure out a way. Like I
• 27:23
  just see it now. It's like John Birdie is going to score like the
• 27:26
  one run on like a bunt steel third sack fly they get one hit in
• 27:33
  the game type thing. So they have that feel that team that just figures
• 27:38
  out how to win. So I'm I'm there with you. Uh, And
• 27:42
  you know, if you actually look at them, they actually have a negative
• 27:45
  run differentials and so you know, let's say that's that's what it takes.
• 27:52
  So they do also have the hardest schedule down the stretch of any of those
• 27:56
  teams. They have a five twenty six strength of schedule, The Diamondbacks have
• 28:00
  a five oh five, Reds four ninety four, and then Giants four seventy
• 28:04
  eight, so that could be a factor here too. But yeah, we'll
• 28:10
  see. I think it's gonna be fun just because it's a lot of really
• 28:12
  goofy teams and broadcasts that I don't watch very often on MLB TV, so
• 28:17
  it'll be fun to tune in. Absolutely, it'll be it'll be fun as
• 28:19
  we go down the stretch here to see what chaos and shoes and I'm I
• 28:26
  think it's gonna be a fun fun September and fun beginning to the playoffs for
• 28:32
  the inevitable matchups we end up with having you know, the Braves and the
• 28:34
  Astros in the World Series, just Dodgers Astros or something like that, where
• 28:38
  all this fun goes for knots at the end when it's just the same same
• 28:42
  few teams. Yeah, or just as everybody at Fox once Marlin's twins,
• 28:52
  that's that's oh jeez. They nothing like bringing the big fan bases together.
• 28:56
  Yeah, so but yeah, speaking of fun, we've got a fun show
• 29:00
  lined up to Debty. So for our cards section, we're going to talk
• 29:03
  about football themed baseball cards. The NFL kicks off tomorrow when this pod will
• 29:10
  drop, and we're recording on the Wednesday night, so we thought it'd be
• 29:12
  a little fun to go through. There's just a long history of football themes
• 29:17
  making their way into baseball cards, so we'll run through some of our favorite
• 29:21
  cards in that history. And then after that for the fantasy the category section,
• 29:26
  we're going to go in and talk about Surprise Top fifty pitchers, So
• 29:30
  that's why I was hinting at Justin Steele there. But we've got some other
• 29:33
  names that will cover from the razzball Player Raider that they're the top fifty starting
• 29:38
  pitchers and guys who you were pretty much getting free for drafts that are producing
• 29:42
  for you this year. So stick around and we'll be right back. All
• 30:03
  right, Welcome back to cards and categories. And here's the cards section.
• 30:07
  Like I said before the break, we're going to talk about cards that have
• 30:10
  a little bit of a football twist, a football theme to them in honor
• 30:14
  of the NFL kicking off tomorrow. So there's been, you know, a
• 30:18
  little bit of a history through out both sports of some crossover players, and
• 30:25
  I think that's especially where I wanted to start some of the cards with that.
• 30:29
  I found some cards that are predating the two thousands, and brew found
• 30:33
  some cards that are post two thousand that I think, you know, they're
• 30:36
  just kind of fun cards that are emblematic of what football and baseball can crossover
• 30:42
  and b and they just also kind of make like a kind of funny almost
• 30:48
  I'm trying to count through how many we've gotten here, almost like a one
• 30:51
  sheet like collection that I know Beckett Magazine does this a lot, is that
• 30:56
  they'll run pieces where you do a one sheet collection of nine cards and you
• 31:00
  know, ranging from pennies to you know, twenty fifty bucks just to like
• 31:07
  get a player's favorite cards. And I think that's kind of like what I'm
• 31:11
  going for with this segment. It's just trying to get through some good baseball
• 31:15
  slash football cards that if you're looking for somewhere to start and have like a
• 31:19
  cool collection for your PC, your personal collection, this would be a great
• 31:25
  little spot because these cards would look grate together all on one binder page.
• 31:30
  Yeah, And I love the concept of the single binder page because it's always
• 31:34
  for anybody that collects cards. I think it's always a struggle of like what
• 31:38
  what do you do with your collection? Right? How do you show off
• 31:41
  your collection? Is it something to display? Is it something you get out
• 31:45
  to look at? Is the coffee table book? Like what is it that
• 31:48
  you'd use to play your collection? And one of the easiest things to do
• 31:52
  to your point, as that single page, that nine page view. You
• 31:56
  can mount it on the wall, a frame, you can put it in
• 32:00
  the in the book. You can you know, do so many different things
• 32:02
  because that that format. So it was kind of ironic that we ended up
• 32:05
  with roughly nine cards to run through. And how fun of a view would
• 32:10
  that be to have all these cards together with this interesting story that people probably
• 32:15
  don't realize the crossover that exists. So I'm looking forward to the segment.
• 32:21
  This is gonna be a fun one. Yeah, I agree. So we're
• 32:23
  gonna start, like I said, in the pre two thousands era and really
• 32:29
  the nineties, because before that, I mean, there just wasn't really quite
• 32:34
  the dynamics, dynamic art and just the really boundary pushing from especially upper deck
• 32:40
  when they came into the game in the nineteen eighty nine really push tops to
• 32:45
  find different ways to print cards and just really catch everybody's eyes and then from
• 32:52
  their doneris and Score caught up. So especially Score that we're going to go
• 32:57
  with. This is probably the most iconic card in this sort of category of
• 33:01
  baseball football crossover, and it's the nineteen ninety Bo Jackson number six ninety seven.
• 33:08
  It's just him shirtless with his football pads on, with his muscles off
• 33:15
  flexed, and people have probably seen this as a poster as well. Actually,
• 33:17
  I know one of my good friends in my freshman dorm had this as
• 33:22
  a poster on as well, which is a little strange in retrospect, but
• 33:27
  this is Bo Jackson in black and white. The back of the card simply
• 33:30
  says bow in blue and black, and I will we will obviously link to
• 33:36
  all these cards on the show notes so you can see them, because describing
• 33:38
  them is a little tough. But when this card came out in the early
• 33:43
  nineties, like this was the card after the Griffy Rookie card, So I'm
• 33:47
  sure that, like there are plenty of people listening to this pod that got
• 33:52
  ripped off on it as a kid, because you know, back in the
• 33:57
  day even you probably would pay somewhere between and fifty bucks for it, and
• 34:00
  everyone thought it was going to be like a card that really went down in
• 34:05
  history with the Grippy Card or something like a Kenseco Rookie or even the Bo
• 34:08
  Jackson Rookie. But as time has gone on this card, you know,
• 34:13
  you can find it in dollar bins, but you know trades usually somewhere between
• 34:16
  five and ten bucks, and it's not a very rare card, but it's
• 34:22
  a really fun card. Finding it in great shape is really tough. But
• 34:25
  I think it's almost like a must have for anybody that grew up in the
• 34:29
  eighties and nineties. Yeah, I think it's a fantastic card. And I
• 34:32
  think, you know, it goes back to what a freak athlete Bo Jackson
• 34:37
  wool was. He was just pure muscle. You know, his stats kind
• 34:44
  of ring true to like the sluggers of today. You know, he struck
• 34:47
  out like thirty percent of the time, like back in the eighties and nineties,
• 34:52
  which that wasn't like the thing then, right, And so this is
• 34:54
  like taking any you know, I lot of taking Kyle Schwarber and putting him
• 35:00
  in the eighties and all of a sudden, like he's this massive star just
• 35:02
  because of how different he is. And so, but it is a very
• 35:07
  iconic card, like that image the second you see it, like that's the
• 35:12
  Bou Jackson card, right, it's not. There are other Bou Jackson cards
• 35:15
  that are collectible, but like, this is the one. This is the
• 35:17
  card you have. And it's also so accessible for folks. To your point,
• 35:21
  it's like a five dollar card. If you want the card, you
• 35:22
  just gonna get the card. There's it's not out of reach by any means,
• 35:28
  and which kind of makes it fun because it's not it's not a rookie
• 35:31
  card. It's not anything like that that's really rare, uh per per se.
• 35:36
  But it's just a fun card. So I think it's a great,
• 35:38
  great pick to start us off in the crossover section here for between the NFL
• 35:44
  and MLB. Yeah, and the other one that we're going to cover is
• 35:49
  from nineteen ninety two. I think it's also really in the same vein as
• 35:52
  the Bou Jackson card. Like when you're talking about crossover stars, you've got
• 35:59
  both Jackson and the number two right behind him is Deon Sanders, playing both
• 36:05
  baseball and football in the early nineties, and even like I remember during some
• 36:09
  of the bravest postseason runs, like getting shuttled back and forth from games for
• 36:15
  when he was playing with the Cowboys and the Niners and the Falcons a little
• 36:17
  bit that like he would have to make all sorts of strange travel arrangements to
• 36:22
  be able to play in the in the MLB playoffs and then also as the
• 36:27
  regular season for the NFL kicked off. So this is another iconic card,
• 36:30
  So another one in the same vein as Bou Jackson. It is the nineteen
• 36:36
  ninety two Upper Deck SP three Dion Sanders with him fading from being a football
• 36:44
  player to a Braves player. And I think what also makes this such an
• 36:47
  implementic card is Upper Deck was the first company I believe that made these type
• 36:53
  of cards. That this is one of the reasons that nineteen ninety three Upper
• 36:58
  Deck is one of my favorites is because they have like these semi action shots
• 37:01
  where it's you know, three, four or five consecutive photos and they overlay
• 37:07
  them so that it looks like the player is moving. And they're doing that
• 37:09
  here with Dion as he's running with a football and also running and taking off
• 37:15
  from it looks like first base and like stopping oddly, like not actually going
• 37:19
  through with this steal. And it's really great to just see the action and
• 37:24
  the athleticism mission but any nineties kid also loves that it looks exactly like an
• 37:30
  Animors book and you can't beat that. Yeah, I think it even is
• 37:37
  more interesting now just because Dion's in the news again, you know, being
• 37:43
  the coach out there University of Colorado. They had a big upset this weekend.
• 37:47
  I even sold the article today about you know how Jerry Jones is going
• 37:52
  to come after him to coach the Cowboys. I don't buy that by by
• 37:55
  any means, but I think it actually has kind of growing in popularity recently.
• 38:01
  It feels like the cards kind of jumped in value, and this one
• 38:07
  actually does have a little bit of value, and I think part of it's
• 38:09
  because of Dion being in the news last few years. But a PSA ten
• 38:15
  of this card actually goes for like two hundred, two hundred fifty dollars,
• 38:19
  which I was surprised to see that, but I think, you know,
• 38:22
  he's kind of one of those generational talents, and he's a personality as well
• 38:27
  that that brings that extra value in a collectible card. So it's gonna be
• 38:32
  interesting to see how his continued coaching career impacts the value of cards. Like
• 38:39
  it doesn't feel like many coaches historically have impacted their own card values, especially
• 38:45
  if you think of baseball coaches here, they had their cards in the seventies
• 38:47
  and eighties, and then they became the coach. And you remember whence the
• 38:50
  coach, not as a player or even back in the day when you had
• 38:53
  coaches and players, you know, doing doing both. So yeah, this
• 38:58
  is this is a fun card for many different reasons. Yeah, And I
• 39:01
  wonder if the tens are so expensive that, like it's a little bit like
• 39:06
  the Griffy, the eighty nine Griffy getting graded. It's a really hard to
• 39:09
  get a good grade on the eighty nine Griffy because there's so many of them
• 39:14
  graded, and there's so many specifics between the centering and the scratches, and
• 39:20
  especially when they're grading that card they look at the hold the Upper Deck hologram
• 39:22
  on the back. I wonder if it's maybe the same with this Dion card.
• 39:25
  It's probably got a lot of submissions. But in case you don't want
• 39:29
  to show out the whole two fifty for the ten, it does trade in
• 39:31
  the five to ten dollar range. And again, just like the bo Jackson,
• 39:36
  I'm sure you can find in a dollar benn or two kind of buried
• 39:37
  in somewhere at a show. Yeah. Absolutely, all right, what do
• 39:42
  you got for us next? The next card is also from ninety two Upper
• 39:45
  Deck that ninety two Upper Deck really wanted to set the tone for us thirty
• 39:49
  one years ago in this podcast that this is actually the one that expired me
• 39:53
  from the get go, because I know this card as I've sorted through it
• 39:58
  many times and I've always been intrigued with it as a kid. It's nineteen
• 40:00
  ninety two upper deck number five ninety seven Mike Jeffcoat. He's a pitcher for
• 40:07
  the Texas Rangers. And in this photo he's just like tossing enough football around
• 40:12
  on the field pre warmups, and so he's just holding enough football in this
• 40:16
  baseball card. It's a nothing more than that, but it's I like it
• 40:21
  because as a kid, it was just really I think a little bit of
• 40:25
  like a step into starting to get into stadium club and getting into a little
• 40:30
  bit I would say, like almost like alternative ish cards, because like it's
• 40:36
  a little bit just a different bass card that we're seeing here from Mike Jeffcoat.
• 40:39
  So nothing special, but fits perfectly for this crossover of baseball football and
• 40:45
  it's always been a childhood favorite of mine because I've just known about this card's
• 40:52
  existence for a long long time. Yeah, and it's gonna be honest,
• 40:55
  I'm not a big Mike Jeff cot A fan or you know, his story
• 41:02
  ran by any means, and so it's it's a fun card. I was
• 41:06
  just looking up. He just retired a few years ago from coaching after all
• 41:09
  those years from the independent league. So hey, apparently that that card launched
• 41:16
  his long term professional coaching career. At least that's the story that I'm going
• 41:21
  with. I'm sure it has literally zero zero correlation to his performance, but
• 41:29
  that is a fun card, and it goes to show how many how fun
• 41:34
  it can be being a baseball player. Yeah, and if anybody needs it
• 41:37
  for future reference, Mike Jeff Coates teams for Immaculate Grid, Rangers, Guardians,
• 41:44
  Giants, Marlins. So that's a pretty good crossover, especially for a
• 41:49
  little lefty reliever in the late eighties early nineties. All Right, the next
• 41:53
  one, we're gonna go a little bit forward into nineteen ninety five Upper Debt
• 41:59
  Collectors Choice. If you go back to episode one when I talked about Upper
• 42:04
  Deck nineteen ninety three, you talked about Collector's Choice in there as well,
• 42:07
  that like, we love Collector's Choice, and so this one is I think
• 42:13
  especially funny because as any hardcore baseball fandos, Patrick Mahomes is not the first
• 42:21
  professional athlete in his Mahomes family. That his father Pat Mahomes pitched back in
• 42:27
  the nineties for the Twins and later for the Mets and bounced on Japan a
• 42:30
  little bit. But I picked a card from nineteen ninety five because that is
• 42:36
  Patrick Mahomes's birth year, so I thought this would be a fun one.
• 42:39
  It is the silver signature nineteen ninety five Collector's choice of Pat Mahomes, And
• 42:45
  I was looking at a lot of Pat Mahomes cards during the night nineteen eighty
• 42:50
  five. He was like always wearing a backwards hat like Griffy. He's got
• 42:53
  so many cards where he's just like the backwards hat guy. So this is
• 42:58
  a great card, Pat Mahomes sitting in the dugout wearing his warm ups with
• 43:02
  the backwards hat. If you get the silver signature, it's got his signature
• 43:06
  stamp right on the front. Just really great use of space on the card.
• 43:10
  And ironically there's a bat behind him, even though he was always a
• 43:15
  relief pitcher. So I'm going with this as a football baseball crossover and little
• 43:21
  Pat Mahomes there probably actually like that's taken during spring training in like, you
• 43:24
  know, Patrick Mahomes is on the way. It is funny the you know
• 43:30
  this card, and I'd say I'm going to venture to say most of Pat
• 43:35
  homes uh senior cards. I'm not sure if he goes by senior or not,
• 43:39
  but have essentially no interest in most of the card market until Patrick Mahomes
• 43:47
  became who he is and you know, the the star that he is out
• 43:52
  in Kansas City. And so it's actually, you know, funny to go
• 43:58
  back and look at the the cards and you know that you know, there's
• 44:01
  it's created a weird kind of cult collectors market where all of a sudden,
• 44:05
  all these Kansas City fans are now Pat Mahomes senior fans, and you know,
• 44:09
  somebody's been collecting these cards left and right. But it's just one of
• 44:14
  those fun little intricacies that that you see, and that just that crossover between
• 44:21
  father playing baseball, sun playing football, and you know, you have to
• 44:24
  think, you know, little Patrick was running around the field h later and
• 44:30
  Pat Mahomes's career and still somehow picked up football is what he wanted to do.
• 44:37
  All right, We got our last pre two thousands card here and so
• 44:40
  the other the third lesser known crossover athlete of the basketball or not basketball baseball
• 44:49
  football crossover players was Brian Jordan, who played for the Atlanta Falcons and then
• 44:55
  also the Cardinals and eventually the Braves. But he his nineteen ninety eight Tops
• 45:01
  Chrome card is super duper simple. It's just him in either a photo gallery
• 45:09
  or at spring training and they're simply taking a picture of it. Looks like
• 45:15
  he's hitting a football with his bat and like hits a baseball. So it's
• 45:20
  a great crossover use of the football and marketing to Brian Jordan being that crossover
• 45:25
  star. The funny thing I think is the one like the card is just
• 45:32
  a little goofy and Brian Jordan is absolutely yoked in this photo, but the
• 45:38
  back of it relays a story of how he injured his back at Disney World
• 45:45
  in the previous year or like felt it with his kid, and there's nothing
• 45:50
  mentioning that Brian Jordan plays football. So if you didn't actually know that,
• 45:57
  you would be looking at this card and just being like a little bit like
• 45:59
  the Jeff the Jeff Coote card, the You're just like, why is there
• 46:04
  a football on this card? It makes zero sense, And so it's really
• 46:07
  funny, like to the Testament of time, that they just have this there
• 46:14
  with no reference to Brian Jordan being a football player whatsoever. So I actually
• 46:19
  like the Refractor is a great card, so I'm going to link to that.
• 46:22
  It's a little bit pricier because those ninety eight fractors are hard to refractors
• 46:27
  are hard to track down that it'll run you somewhere between twenty thirty forty bucks,
• 46:32
  and I honestly couldn't even like there's maybe like one for sale right now
• 46:37
  on Ebays, So it's a hard card to get your hands on. Yeah,
• 46:42
  and I'm just stuck now on the story in the back of this card
• 46:45
  because I did not realize that. And that's one of the things I love
• 46:49
  about some of these older cards, Like I don't know who's the job,
• 46:53
  was just the interns job to like write up these little intros, because not
• 46:59
  only does it talk about him hurting himself in that Disney World with it with
• 47:04
  his son, that it also like just straight through insults him through his ability.
• 47:10
  Basically, I'm gonna get this if I read this, and so I
• 47:15
  said, let's just read it off, and so I'm gonna skip through,
• 47:16
  but basically talk about Disney World, and so it follows this and so a
• 47:21
  season the many predict would be Brian's breakthrough as a superstar became an agonizing exercise
• 47:28
  and futility. A return to form in nineteen ninety eight for Jordan would be
• 47:30
  well a Cinderella story, Like it just straight up says, you went to
• 47:36
  Disney World and hurt yourself. You're an idiot and you should have broken out,
• 47:39
  but because you hurt your back, you're a futile waste of time.
• 47:43
  Like it was like there was no qa on that on that quok going out
• 47:47
  there, so it was just purely an opinion piece. Had nothing to do
• 47:52
  with anything about his actual playing career. No, but if you also,
• 47:58
  like if you can't find that chromer fractor card for some they must have gotten
• 48:02
  Brian Jordan in some sort of photo studio with a football for all of his
• 48:08
  flamory shots. Tops did, because the nineteen ninety eight TOPS gallery card for
• 48:13
  Brian Jordan also features a football on the front of him catching it. No
• 48:17
  insults to him on the back, but the it's a little cheaper and it's
• 48:24
  ninety eight gallery was an ugly set for sure. I'm never really a gallery
• 48:29
  guy, but like ninety eight gallery is especially ugly. Well, the gallery
• 48:34
  came into their own eventually, but then they maybe left their own multiple times
• 48:38
  along the way. I remember and against being the Cardinals fan. Remember it
• 48:44
  was Jack Flaherty rookie card. They had to Koda Hudson pictured on it.
• 48:49
  It's just like it didn't even get the right guys on the photos. So
• 48:52
  gallery has always been a very interesting product. Speaking of to Coda Hudson,
• 48:57
  he just got the win for the Cardinals tonight. But so all right,
• 49:01
  so that wraps us for the pre two thousand cards, and so I'm going
• 49:06
  to kind of jump in here and talk about a few different kind of twist
• 49:12
  on the take here of football baseball crossover cards. The first one I want
• 49:15
  to talk about is from two thousand and three, and we're spend a lot
• 49:21
  of time at Upper Deck here, and Upper Deck actually put it a full
• 49:28
  card series out around what they called the City All Stars, and it was
• 49:32
  really about looking at the multiple teams in a single city of the major sports,
• 49:38
  and so you would have a card out there with the All Star from
• 49:45
  each of the teams. And so the one that kind of jumps to me
• 49:49
  at the first is probably the most popular in that series two thousand and three
• 49:54
  Upper Deck City All Stars, which was a game used patch card featuring Tom
• 50:00
  Brady, Paul Pierce, and Patro Martinez. I went for three sports.
• 50:05
  I know, I'm it was like extra credit on the pod notes. I
• 50:08
  think I get a day off next week for bringing basketball in. But you
• 50:14
  know that cards a few hundred dollars card. I don't personally understand. I
• 50:19
  know it's Tom Brady game used jersey as Padre Martin as Game News Jersey,
• 50:22
  Paul Pierce game yours jersey. Like that's there is something to be said.
• 50:27
  The specific one I found, you know, it was numbered out of two
• 50:29
  fifty. But it is just a very unique set that spans the multiple sports
• 50:36
  and for whoever you are, whatever your team generally is, assuming you're from
• 50:40
  one of the major cities that has multiple sports teams, there is a card
• 50:44
  out there from this set that that meets your you know, your team personally.
• 50:49
  As a very much purely baseball collector, I struggle with these cards because
• 50:53
  I don't tend to have football cards or basketball cards in my collection. And
• 50:57
  I get one of these cards, I don't know what to do with it.
• 51:00
  I just do not know what to do with it. It's just in
• 51:01
  the collection for like a few months, and then I have to get rid
• 51:04
  of it just because it's like, not nags at me. But that's that's
• 51:07
  a very you know, iconic card of some very iconic names. I'd venture
• 51:14
  to say, a Hall of Fame card for two thousand and three upper deck.
• 51:20
  Yeah, and you can't beat that. It's coming with three Hall of
• 51:22
  Famers, So that's what really makes it super special. I mean, I
• 51:25
  don't know how many of the other cards from that set boast three Hall of
• 51:30
  Famers, but I mean you've also got some pretty inner circle ones between Pedro
• 51:35
  and Tom Brady on this Uh no offense to Paul Piercy's great, but he's
• 51:38
  just not quite the inner circle guy that those two are. I think what's
• 51:43
  also really odd about this car is that they it's a Boston slash Foxborough City
• 51:47
  All Stars, which I don't Why can't it just be a Boston And then
• 51:52
  if you're actually referencing like real Foxborough, Massachusetts, that's not how you spell
• 51:58
  Foxborough massicitus. And so it's another great card that really slipped past some QA
• 52:06
  back in the day. So it's fun finding me. Yeah, it's a
• 52:09
  there's there's a number of interesting things that used to happen some of these car
• 52:14
  cards back in the day. You're you're absolutely absolutely right, all right.
• 52:19
  The next one I'm gonna pick up with a theme of baseball players on our
• 52:25
  full players on baseball cards. And next one we're going to talk about here
• 52:30
  is from a believe it just twenty ten. Uh And I'm very much a
• 52:35
  fan of of the Bowman sets and the first cards, and so we're gonna
• 52:38
  talk about the twenty ten first Bowman, Russell Wilson. And so for the
• 52:45
  folks that don't know, Russell Wilson was drafted and I believe subsequently traded at
• 52:52
  one point as well as a professional baseball player. So this is his first
• 52:58
  chrome card has the the fake signature in this set from twenty ten, and
• 53:07
  it's Russell Wilson in his Colorado Rockies jersey. I'm very curious, and I
• 53:13
  don't have the background this once you know the answer. But if this was
• 53:15
  photoshopped like back, you know, there's so many these days of you see
• 53:21
  the first Bowman cards, it's the first card in the jersey, and then
• 53:23
  you find a card of the player in college and it's the same image and
• 53:28
  all they've done is is flipped the jerseys. I don't know if the same
• 53:30
  thing applies here. I'm not sure that the that the tops have the technology
• 53:37
  working with the photoshop back in the day as much as that they do now,
• 53:39
  but it's uh, I think it is. If you the Colorado on
• 53:45
  the chest doesn't look right, yeah, and if you actually kind of try
• 53:47
  to look at the background, you have almost what's that classic like nice high
• 53:52
  school thence which is like the got the yellow top across it. So yeah,
• 53:59
  I I could be wrong, but it is a fun card and he
• 54:07
  you know, obviously has become a you know, fantastic football player following some
• 54:13
  harder times recently since he's moved over to the Broncos. But I think it's
• 54:17
  a fun card, and I know folks like to collect that, especially folks
• 54:22
  that are collectors of Russell Wilson from a football perspective. It's just kind of
• 54:27
  one of those unique fun cards that to have in the collection to say,
• 54:30
  hey, not only do I have his rookie card from from football, I've
• 54:35
  got his rookie baseball card. Yeah. And Russell Wilson, I mean he
• 54:39
  actually did play in the minors, which I don't know if everybody knows that
• 54:44
  he played two summers when he was still quarterback at NC State and Wisconsin,
• 54:51
  so he has stats on Baseball Reference and you for the actually like archific career,
• 54:59
  Like he was on the Rockies and they had the rights to him,
• 55:01
  and then eventually the Rangers took him in the Rule five Draft in twenty thirteen,
• 55:09
  so he came in and did spring training. So there's a nice little
• 55:13
  like pr boost for the Rangers after he joined their organization technically, and then
• 55:17
  in twenty eighteen, he was traded from the Rangers to the Yankees technically to
• 55:22
  wear a Yankees jersey in their minor league system. And it was like a
• 55:27
  lifelong dream of him being a Yankees fan, which I mean Russell Wilson would
• 55:30
  be a Yankees fan, but it's a it's a great crossover of like it
• 55:36
  would have been really fun to see him do it as a quarterback, and
• 55:38
  like I think he would have been probably like a second baseman in the majors
• 55:43
  as opposed to everyone else that we've discussed was an outfielder and cornerback for Jordan
• 55:52
  and Sanders, then running back obviously for Bo Jackson, So it would have
• 55:57
  been a little different flavor to see him actually pull that off well. Speaking
• 56:01
  of pictures that became uh ended up on football cards, next one we have
• 56:10
  to talk about here is Babe Ruth. So clearly at different as different time,
• 56:17
  but back in twenty sixteen, Leaf put out a set of Babe Ruth
• 56:23
  cards. It was just kind of a I don't know, random set.
• 56:27
  I don't know, didn't look in the whole background. But there's just one
• 56:30
  of those sets where there's thirty Babe Roof cards of him doing different things.
• 56:34
  And one of those cards was Babe Roof Ruth playing and a benefit football game,
• 56:39
  a charity game. You know, got the old style football helmet on
• 56:44
  and it looked like he was the I would venture to say he was the
• 56:47
  kicker for this benefit game, and I I think it's just it's one of
• 56:55
  those funny cards. There's not much a story to it. He never was
• 57:00
  a football player, so it's not like a true you know, crossover to
• 57:05
  to a degree, but it is just a funny card to think about and
• 57:09
  and see. And if you should look at the image that the kind of
• 57:14
  the concentration and paint on his face while making this kick is classic. I
• 57:20
  have to imagine this is taken after his playing days. Type of thing.
• 57:24
  Does not look like he's still in the best shape by any means, But
• 57:28
  it's just a fun, hilarious card. I've never been a big collector of
• 57:31
  uh, you know, more modern cards with your you know, hall of
• 57:36
  famers from back in the day, but this one's just fun, entertaining,
• 57:40
  uh And I think a great card for any Babe Ruth fan and just the
• 57:45
  uniqueness of him playing football. Yeah, and I think it looked really great
• 57:50
  on the one page collection that we're talking about, just because these other ones
• 57:55
  don't actually involve like I guess that Tom Brady won a little bit, doesn't.
• 58:00
  The rest of them don't involve actual like football action, so it's kind
• 58:05
  of funny to see it go the other way here a little bit with a
• 58:07
  baseball player playing football and have a strange circumstance. So adds a little bit
• 58:13
  of flavor to that collection. And super affordable. Should be able to get
• 58:15
  it for less than five bucks. Yeah, absolutely, all right, we
• 58:21
  are to our last card, and I was probably when I am most excited
• 58:23
  to talk about. I don't know why, honestly, but it just is
• 58:28
  a fun card. So for for folks that collect Panini cards, and especially
• 58:36
  in the football side, one of the very popular cards they have is is
• 58:39
  called their kaboom cards. It's I don't know what analogy to make too in
• 58:46
  baseball, but it's generally kind of a case hit type of card and very
• 58:53
  much what you're looking for, like your rookie quarterbacks things like that. That's
• 58:57
  where it holds a ton of value, those those types of cards. This
• 59:01
  one, specifically is the twenty eighteen Panini Tim Tebow Kaboom card, and it's
• 59:08
  with him playing for the New York Mets, and it's got him and Panini's
• 59:15
  not licensed, so you know, you can't actually see and so they're actually
• 59:19
  very creative. If you look at a lot of Panini cards, you have
• 59:22
  a lot more pictures of the backs of players because they're trying to hide that
• 59:27
  there's nothing on the front of the jersey. So it's got name, the
• 59:30
  number, and maybe you can kind of just see a side view of the
• 59:34
  half of the helmets. And that's kind of what this card is with Tebows
• 59:37
  him in the backswing of this card. And so I think this one's awesome
• 59:40
  because Tebo did have that kind of like cult following after he left left the
• 59:45
  NFL and he he actually you know, he played what four seasons in the
• 59:51
  miners and actually three three years in the miners starting at his at twenty nine
• 59:57
  years old, and he actually had when he was thirty years old, he
• 1:00:04
  had basically half season in Double A and he actually hit like two seventy three
• 1:00:08
  I had six bombs and was actually a decent hitter. But we all knew
• 1:00:14
  the whole time it was kind of a gag thing, like Tim Tebow was
• 1:00:16
  not at thirty years old going to revolutionize and become like a fixture for the
• 1:00:22
  Mets. But I am so disappointed that they did not capitalize. And it's
• 1:00:25
  like it's so New York Mets to have called him up when he was crushing
• 1:00:30
  it in Double A. It was all Babepp driven like it was. This
• 1:00:34
  was not who he was. And they got so much pr out of the
• 1:00:37
  spring training and things with that with them, but I'm so disappointed they did
• 1:00:40
  not call him up so that Tim Tebow had an official rookie card in baseball.
• 1:00:47
  That would have been so fantastic, just simply for us to discuss on
• 1:00:52
  this pod. So love the Tim Tebo Kaboom card. It is actually relatively
• 1:00:57
  sought after card. It actually goes for one hundred and fifty two dollars,
• 1:01:01
  and so I'm not sure if it's Mets fans, it's if it's uh Florida
• 1:01:07
  fans, I don't know who's who's going after those Tim Tebo cards still,
• 1:01:10
  but it's a it's a fun one. Yeah, it's probably the people who
• 1:01:14
  are entertained by this card the way that you are. So I was thinking,
• 1:01:17
  I was trying to think of an equivalent for tops for this, and
• 1:01:22
  I was gonna say home Field Advantage, which is also a copy of the
• 1:01:25
  Pennini Downtown. So it's kind of that sort of level of charm as well,
• 1:01:31
  that there is supposed to be something whimsical about it, and just like
• 1:01:36
  the design of the just radiating komboom and the way I'm sure it sparkles in
• 1:01:44
  real life, it's it's a it's just a piece of art. So I
• 1:01:47
  love it harkens back to the nineties, like those those uh what my son
• 1:01:52
  would call the shiny cards, and so definitely harkens back to that. So
• 1:01:58
  a lot of fun with the the segment of crossover baseball football cards as we
• 1:02:02
  as we look into the fantasy football season, just about to kick off for
• 1:02:07
  folks. So excited to see that kickoff about you. I have a single
• 1:02:12
  fantasy football team this year, and I think I should over half the draft.
• 1:02:15
  Impressive, Yeah, which is more than I did last year. So
• 1:02:21
  yeah, no, I've got quite a few and the actual Like like I
• 1:02:24
  said, you said, this was a really fun segment, so I'm glad
• 1:02:29
  that we got to do it. It's a little bit of a bummer.
• 1:02:31
  We'll probably only get to do it once unless somebody starts bringing out some more
• 1:02:35
  crossover cards. So it's not exactly an annual thing. But something that we
• 1:02:38
  do get to do all the time is updates on new releases. So I
• 1:02:43
  know you got us the latest news on releases, grew and if you want
• 1:02:47
  to rattle some off for the folks out there, yeah, so I'll rattle
• 1:02:52
  a few off here. I'm actually gonna go a reverse order a little bit
• 1:02:54
  of what's coming out because we talked last week about Pendium Aculate coming out,
• 1:03:00
  was originally scheduled to release actually today got pushed back a few days to to
• 1:03:06
  to uh uh Friday, So night eight for a Peninia Magaculate U that we
• 1:03:10
  also have next week, Bowman Chrome coming out, and then shortly thereafter we
• 1:03:15
  have Alan Ginter, which I know both of us love, and we'll spend
• 1:03:17
  some time we get there. The one that I do want to talk about
• 1:03:21
  just kind of sprung upon us. Uh, and you know, officially came
• 1:03:25
  out today, actually came out, I believe yesterday to a few Montgomery club
• 1:03:30
  member over at TOPS, which is where you kind of pay for a special
• 1:03:34
  membership to get first writes a number of sets and you get special sets yourself.
• 1:03:39
  I wouldn't know. I'm not a Montgomery club member, but TOPS Chrome
• 1:03:44
  sap Fire was announced. Kind of I feel like last minute, just all
• 1:03:49
  of a sudden, Hey, that's being being released. Uh, kind of
• 1:03:52
  I would say, lacking fanfare, and uh, it was actually released through
• 1:03:58
  I'm going to call it a blind draw, which is kind of unique for
• 1:04:02
  TOPS. I did not personally jump in there, but I debated it.
• 1:04:09
  And essentially you get a chance to basically sign up prepay for a box and
• 1:04:15
  if you are selected, then you're you're charged and you get the box set
• 1:04:18
  to you. So top scrom Sapphire just came out. I personally love Sapphire
• 1:04:24
  products. I've only ripped maybe one in my whole life because they are expensive.
• 1:04:30
  I think these these ones were two twenty something like that for a box,
• 1:04:34
  and it is rather an extensive set. And I know you and I
• 1:04:39
  were talking about this a little bit before we jumped on, and I'll let
• 1:04:43
  you kind of call out one of the biggest pieces of the set that kind
• 1:04:46
  of brings brings it down as far as value and what you're searching for.
• 1:04:50
  So I'm setting you up and see if you if you know what I'm laying
• 1:04:54
  down for you to pick it up. So yeah, it is that there's
• 1:04:56
  no autos in this, which is really strange. It's just all base and
• 1:05:00
  color. And the base is six hundred and sixty cards, So good luck
• 1:05:04
  finding your ad Lees and your Gunners and any other cool cards that you actually
• 1:05:11
  want, because you're definitely getting all Nationals Relievers in your box. So it's
• 1:05:15
  a tough set, tough one to pull. I love collecting it too,
• 1:05:18
  I love looking at them and dollar bins, but I let somebody else do
• 1:05:24
  the ripping of these and pick up the individual players that I want, just
• 1:05:28
  because it is it's a very large volume game to be able to make your
• 1:05:33
  money off of a very expensive set like this, and honestly, it's really
• 1:05:38
  tough to even do it at all. So the online release two probably boxed
• 1:05:44
  a lot of people out, and like you said, it was really really
• 1:05:46
  last minute. I only got an email for tops dot com for the first
• 1:05:50
  time yesterday. I'm also not a Montgomer Club member, so maybe they got
• 1:05:56
  some more for warning. But it's kind of crazy to have a really just
• 1:06:01
  sought after a set like this drop with such little notice. So I'm interested,
• 1:06:09
  like with the strategy is behind it that I wonder if there is,
• 1:06:12
  But it would be fun to like talk to a marketing manager or something from
• 1:06:16
  Tops if they would spill the secret sauce, but I'm not going to count
• 1:06:19
  on that. I think. The last thing I want to add about this
• 1:06:26
  is, uh as, I just look at them on the resale market now
• 1:06:29
  already being asked for you know, three hundred and three twenty there are thirty
• 1:06:32
  two cards in this box. Jeez, yeah, and so six hundred and
• 1:06:36
  sixty card set. That means you need twenty one boxes hoping for no doubles
• 1:06:40
  to get the set. And I mean each card in your box is if
• 1:06:45
  you're if you're just going kind of on the retail you know, we'll call
• 1:06:49
  it after tax value. You're playing like seven dollars a card to open this
• 1:06:56
  thing, and then that's it's a high end product. Don't get me wrong,
• 1:06:59
  it is, and it's it's usually a beautiful product, and I love
• 1:07:01
  it. But man, that is like you're not making unless you hit something
• 1:07:06
  crazy without having autos. It is going to be really hard to find the
• 1:07:12
  value in this product. So I think it's gonna be one of those people
• 1:07:15
  jump on jects as the name and they're gonna be kind of disappointed in it.
• 1:07:19
  It'll probably hold its value for like a sealed box next year the year
• 1:07:24
  after, right around that two hundred dollars range, But man, I wish
• 1:07:30
  they had the autos they did last year. So I'm very surprised they didn't.
• 1:07:32
  It feels like they just like, oh, I had a little extra
• 1:07:34
  time to squeeze this print, run in, let me get those out and
• 1:07:38
  box them up, which is very much Tops style to do something illogical behind
• 1:07:45
  the scene. So that's it for our updated news sets. Tops Chrome is
• 1:07:49
  out. Hopefully you get a chance to see some of those. But to
• 1:07:55
  your point, I think I'm gonna stick to the dollar bins on these ones
• 1:07:58
  once once the high cools down and I can get my back end Giovanni Diego's
• 1:08:03
  cards later. Yeah, or you're I'm trying to think of Chris Ratton.
• 1:08:09
  Chris Ratton's probably in that set six sixty so many I know. It's it's
• 1:08:13
  it's insane. Nothing like finding your point your national's middle relievers. That's that's
• 1:08:18
  gonna be where where they're at. Yeah, So that will wrap us up
• 1:08:23
  for the card section. With that news, we will get into the category
• 1:08:27
  section with some fantasy top fifty pitcher surprises coming up after the break here stick
• 1:08:32
  around, all right, Welcome back, everybody. Four some categories when we
• 1:08:51
  talk about some Fantasy foot fan almost at football there got football on the brain
• 1:08:56
  after the last segment Fantasy baseball, And so we're looking at surprise top fifty
• 1:09:01
  pitchers that you might have gotten pretty much free at your drafts come or this
• 1:09:06
  last spring, just to see what's under the hood a little bit, whether
• 1:09:10
  or not we're going to be drafting these guys next year on their market at
• 1:09:13
  prices and kind of what you can maybe expect from them going forward, just
• 1:09:17
  the way that we did last week kind of with hitters. So we've got
• 1:09:21
  a little bit of an odd pack. We've got seven guys to run through,
• 1:09:26
  and so I'll start with the first guy in our list, the third
• 1:09:30
  rank starting pitcher. I'll also caveat that this was from a couple of days
• 1:09:34
  ago because this will affect one of the guys that's coming up. But a
• 1:09:38
  couple of days ago, the number three ranked pitcher on our RAS ball player
• 1:09:42
  raid for the season was Justin Steel at number three. His NFBC ADP back
• 1:09:47
  in the spring was two ninety seven, so he was being drafted but at
• 1:09:53
  the very tail end of drafts, and he's been absolutely amazing as of late.
• 1:09:59
  I think he is push himself into the number one spot for the cy
• 1:10:01
  Young in the NL. He's just he's got sixteen wins versus three losses and
• 1:10:09
  he's been throwing just really really efficiently. That he's got a two fifty five
• 1:10:14
  r ray with a two ninety eight fifth, So he's not even running any
• 1:10:18
  sort of crazy babit related luck here. That this is just peer pitching stuff.
• 1:10:27
  I've watched a lot of his games and all he does is shove.
• 1:10:30
  That he's got this moxie on the mound that he just looks like he's not
• 1:10:33
  going to be hit that day, and this is maybe I'm also influenced a
• 1:10:38
  little bit by his career high twelve strikeout game from Labor Day the other day,
• 1:10:44
  but he's reminded me a lot of that Robbie Ray run to the cy
• 1:10:46
  Young from twenty twenty one. The one difference Yere is that I learned this
• 1:10:54
  today when I was listening to the Effectively Wild podcast. Robbie Ray's left on
• 1:10:59
  base rate in that Cite Young season was ninety point one percent, so there
• 1:11:02
  was a lot of luck involved. Steels is not there. It's a very
• 1:11:05
  normal seventy five point nine percent. So I really like justin Steel that like.
• 1:11:11
  I think going forward into next year, I would comfortably draft him,
• 1:11:15
  probably towards like the back end of top twenty pictures, maybe even like up
• 1:11:19
  towards like ten, depending on how many guys kind of fall down the stretch
• 1:11:25
  and what the market looks like. But he's been really dependable for a couple
• 1:11:29
  of seasons. Now, what do you think, Brup, Yeah, I
• 1:11:32
  think you're you're spot on here, because he to me, he's not a
• 1:11:35
  top five, top ten picture. He has a few red flags to know
• 1:11:40
  if you look at what he's done. What he did this year is exactly
• 1:11:43
  what he did last year, with one exception, his control was better.
• 1:11:46
  It was simply simply that. And if you actually look at his heat maps
• 1:11:53
  of where he throws his pitches and you compare last year to this year,
• 1:11:59
  it's it's nice and day like he actually knows where he's throwing the ball is
• 1:12:01
  I'm simply gonna put that. I think that's the difference this year is he's
• 1:12:05
  he's pitching versus last year he was throwing. And to your point, there's
• 1:12:09
  not luck metrics here, there's not anything else. And what's interesting is he's
• 1:12:15
  kind of bucking the trend. And there's a few guys out there doing it.
• 1:12:16
  We just talked about Spencer Stride earlier today that's doing this, which he
• 1:12:19
  is a two pitch pitcher. He is a fast, four seeing fastball slider
• 1:12:26
  pitcher. This year, he has thrown essentially five different pitches, according to
• 1:12:32
  Baseball Savant, and he has thrown his four seamer and slider roughly ninety seven
• 1:12:39
  percent of the time, and then he's randomly sprinkled in a sinker, change
• 1:12:43
  up, curveball. I'm pretty sure those were mistakes, they slipped of his
• 1:12:45
  hand, but he like, you know what's coming and he's just spotting it,
• 1:12:50
  so gosh darn well that you know he's he's he's making guys chase and
• 1:12:57
  he actually has an incredible if I recall pase rate as as a results,
• 1:13:01
  and that's what's really separating him this year from last year. Last year,
• 1:13:05
  a lot of his metrics were very, very similar. The one big difference
• 1:13:09
  is he's placing the ball where he wants to, and because of that,
• 1:13:13
  hitters are having to chase what he's pitching because he's putting it where he wants
• 1:13:17
  to. So he's able to play with the hitter. The only reason I
• 1:13:21
  look at him and go is he a top you know ten picture? And
• 1:13:24
  why I wouldn't put him there is his control has been so on point this
• 1:13:29
  year. That's it's it's gonna be hard to maintain that, and he has
• 1:13:32
  not historically shown that, and I don't I don't recall seeing a mechanical adjustment
• 1:13:40
  or anything like that that's really drove that. So I think he does likely
• 1:13:44
  regress in his control to a degree, but he's still going to be a
• 1:13:46
  very valuable picture. So I'm there with you, I probably won't own a
• 1:13:50
  whole lot of Justin steel shares. I think it partially just be the low
• 1:13:56
  nineties picture. I'm not sure I fully believe it control and it's not because
• 1:14:00
  I don't believe in him. I think somebody else is gonna believe in him
• 1:14:02
  more than I will. But I'm with you. I think back, you
• 1:14:05
  know, back into the top twenty pitchers is very reasonable for Justin Steele next
• 1:14:10
  year. And he really did come out of nowhere if you actually look at
• 1:14:14
  his twenty two year. But it's just he wasn't a big name coming up.
• 1:14:17
  He doesn't throw the ball hard, he's not striking everybody out like,
• 1:14:20
  there was nothing flashy about him unless you really just sat there and watched him.
• 1:14:27
  So yeah, I actually very interested in Justin Steele. I think a
• 1:14:31
  lot of what you see is real. Yeah, And that's why I also
• 1:14:36
  kind of hearkened to the Robbie Ray name because he is Robbie Ray is also
• 1:14:41
  a fastball slider, and I think that's why people stayed away from Justin Steele's
• 1:14:45
  because when it goes, it goes like it does not work, and you
• 1:14:48
  can just watch Robbie Ray's career and see how that has marched along, to
• 1:14:54
  see kind of where I think Justin Steele will followt that, Like, if
• 1:14:57
  there's any sort of robbliness, a little bit of that control goes, I
• 1:15:00
  am pushing the eject button and trying to trade him immediately. But until then,
• 1:15:05
  I would say, ride the hot ride the hot hand and sorry,
• 1:15:12
  a little bit of a tongue twister there, all right. So the second
• 1:15:15
  guy that we've got lined up is Kyle Bradish or Bradish, I'm not totally
• 1:15:19
  sure, but I was gonna go with Bradish, so okay, like Bradish,
• 1:15:24
  it's like Radish. He's the twenty third ranked pitcher on our Player Raider.
• 1:15:30
  Was a three sixty one ADP back in the spring. So Bradish was
• 1:15:34
  again getting drafted a little bit here and there, but was pretty much like
• 1:15:38
  the last picture on lots of people's teams this year. The twenty third ranking
• 1:15:44
  is really held up by his ten wins and his great ratio stats. He's
• 1:15:48
  got a three h three r RA with a one eleven whip and I think
• 1:15:54
  that's probably who he is right now and going forward, is that like he's
• 1:15:59
  going to be a little bit lower strikeout guy. But he has great control
• 1:16:02
  of his pitches. And the thing that's really I think allowed him to step
• 1:16:06
  up to the next level is because this pitch mix is honestly about the same
• 1:16:12
  as it was last year. It's the one tick on the slider, Like
• 1:16:15
  it doesn't look like much, but going from eighty seven to eighty eight on
• 1:16:19
  the slider that makes a big difference in terms of timing. And you know,
• 1:16:25
  Serious has talked about this a lot on his podcast Rates and Barrels and
• 1:16:30
  also has written about this, that the faster that sliders get, and especially
• 1:16:34
  once they get over like the eighty six mile in our range, they just
• 1:16:38
  get progressively better. And so whatever tweaks Bradish made in the offseason to get
• 1:16:43
  that extra mile per hour and the slider has paid off handsomely for him,
• 1:16:45
  because last year he had a pitch value on it of two point three according
• 1:16:50
  to Fangrass, and this year it's up to nine point nine. So that's
• 1:16:55
  really driving a lot of the change in his overall arsenal. Actually, the
• 1:16:59
  curve balls got a sixteen point one, so his curveball has been sharp as
• 1:17:03
  well, so all the spin action that he's getting on these these breaking pitches
• 1:17:09
  has been really driving Bradish's value. I obviously love him pitching in front of
• 1:17:14
  Mount Baltimore or Baltimore, and that is great when you're pitching for a great
• 1:17:20
  team, and especially in a season when the Yankees are down. So I
• 1:17:25
  don't know if I'll be trapped in him in top twenty five pictures next year,
• 1:17:28
  but somewhere in like the back end of the top forty that like,
• 1:17:31
  certainly I could see Kyle Bradish making this way to some of my teams.
• 1:17:35
  Just looking for solid production next next year. Yeah, I'm right there with
• 1:17:41
  you. And as I look at his pitch makes I think that to me
• 1:17:43
  was actually the one thing that kind of stood out this year's He changed from
• 1:17:47
  a pitcher through the fastball almost forty five percent of the time. Last year
• 1:17:51
  that fastball, the four seam fastball, used to just twenty four percent.
• 1:17:55
  This year he has significantly a drop that he kept essentially the slide at the
• 1:18:00
  same point, but he's really up the usage of the curveball and the substantially
• 1:18:05
  the sinker. Last year, his sinker he threw barely at all, less
• 1:18:10
  than five percent at the time. This year it's almost twenty percent and that
• 1:18:14
  sinker the batting averaging, it's that sinker is two nine and that thing.
• 1:18:19
  And what's what that's doing is it's making his fastball, I think, play
• 1:18:23
  up to a degree as well. So I think that he has kind of,
• 1:18:27
  you know, adjusted what he is and his pitches haven't. I don't
• 1:18:30
  think haven't necessarily improved a whole lot, but the way that he's using them
• 1:18:34
  and the way that he's mixing them is better. So they're playing off each
• 1:18:38
  other better. So yeah, I don't have a whole lot to add to
• 1:18:42
  it. To what you said there, I agree he's one of those kind
• 1:18:45
  of like Justice Steel, but I think another level two of that. He's
• 1:18:48
  going to be a solid guy. He's not going to blow you around away
• 1:18:53
  with strikeouts with anything that He's just going to be generally average there. And
• 1:18:59
  he's got get a lot of groundballs, which you know, I love.
• 1:19:01
  So I think that bradish bradish British. We've got to figure that one out
• 1:19:06
  for next time. I think that he is going to probably be a hidden
• 1:19:13
  gym next year. I just don't think people are gonna believe what he's done,
• 1:19:16
  and he's not gotten the notoriety for it, So I think he's going
• 1:19:21
  to be a really good value next year because I think people are going to
• 1:19:24
  treat him like a top fifty pitcher, but in towards the back of the
• 1:19:29
  top fifty, and he's got the pedigreed perform you know, maybe ten twenty
• 1:19:33
  spots better than that. I don't I don't know that he fully does again
• 1:19:36
  this year what he did last year, or next year what he did this
• 1:19:40
  year. But I think he's got a heck of a lot of potential and
• 1:19:44
  I do like him. Yeah, And are you looking at Savant for I'm
• 1:19:49
  okay, So that's that I was looking at fan Grass for the pitch breakdown.
• 1:19:54
  So that's why the info is a little bit different because fan Grass matches
• 1:20:00
  cutter fastball sinker on the one yep Stine fastball, and so that is interesting
• 1:20:05
  that the changes within that fastball knicks have also driven a lot of as success.
• 1:20:11
  So it's great to see that, like there is a real tangible change
• 1:20:15
  and it's not again like steals like this that it's just not all luck driven,
• 1:20:21
  that there's actually a talent driven change here. And so that's why I
• 1:20:28
  think we both like those guys because now we're going to get into I think
• 1:20:32
  a couple where things are going to get a little dicey. So number thirty
• 1:20:36
  two on our Player Raider is Michael Waka, who had an ADP of four
• 1:20:43
  thirty two. Waca, Waca Waka. And this was the guy I was
• 1:20:47
  referring to that he kind of got shelled last night or actually today, my
• 1:20:53
  bad, so it's start today. He gave up three runs in four innings
• 1:20:57
  against the Phillies and just kind of looked a little bit more like the home
• 1:21:01
  run prone Waka that we've gotten used to over the past couple of years.
• 1:21:05
  And I think it's really indicative of the regression coming back for him because on
• 1:21:11
  the season he this doesn't include today's game, is two. He has a
• 1:21:17
  two eighty five RARA with a three eighty six FIP and so you can already
• 1:21:24
  see right off the bat that his fifth is running a whole run above his
• 1:21:28
  RRA. That indicates that there's a lot of luck going on, which is
• 1:21:31
  supported by a point nine two home run rate, which is his lowest one
• 1:21:39
  since twenty eighteen. And he's also got a two fifty four BABBIT which is,
• 1:21:45
  you know, well below the normal range. In the three hundreds range,
• 1:21:48
  So Waka has really been walking the tight rope and being able to figure
• 1:21:55
  out all season. The eleven wins is driving his value a lot too,
• 1:21:59
  so it's not hurting. He's like the only guy in the padres picking up
• 1:22:01
  wins. So I don't see Walker performing like this again next year, but
• 1:22:09
  I will say he goes through these stretches it seems like every year where he
• 1:22:13
  just finds something with the changeup and the fastball. And for him, the
• 1:22:18
  stretch occurred really from the beginning of May through mid August, a stretch of
• 1:22:26
  let me see twelve starts. He made through seventy point two innings with a
• 1:22:30
  one, one, five, yarra seven, nine, K nine, and
• 1:22:34
  that's when he picked up eight of his eleven wins. So he was figuring
• 1:22:39
  something out over the summer. And I think the magic is probably disappearing from
• 1:22:44
  him as his last two last three outings have been kind of rough again and
• 1:22:48
  he's turning back into the pumpkin that he normally is. Yeah, and I
• 1:22:53
  almost have zero to add on Michael Walker because I'm stay staying away with a
• 1:22:57
  ten foot poll yere. And to your point, you look at the luck
• 1:23:00
  metrics there's not like one that fully jumps out. It's just like every single
• 1:23:03
  one of them. There's a problem. Yeah, he should be given up
• 1:23:06
  more home runs. He should be getting up more hits on balls and play.
• 1:23:10
  He should be's you know, leaving uh, you know, guys on
• 1:23:14
  bases at a different rate. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe
• 1:23:16
  he's the guy that you can play against, you know, the teams that
• 1:23:19
  are struggling. Maybe you can play him against the Rockies at home, you
• 1:23:24
  know, the Cardinals, whoever is struggling. And like there's just no consistency
• 1:23:27
  even in those those matchup metrics, as you look like he's getting shelled when
• 1:23:31
  he gets shelled by you know, the Diamondbacks, and then then Brewers and
• 1:23:36
  the Rockies, and then he's blanking the Braves and he's blanking the Orioles and
• 1:23:44
  this is Seattle Like it's very it's inconsistent. So he's not even the guy
• 1:23:48
  that you want to pick up and go. When he stream matches matchups,
• 1:23:51
  it's like if he's on, he's on. If he's off, he's off,
• 1:23:54
  and it's kind of unpredictable. So I think you're absolutely right. It's
• 1:23:57
  that eleven wins that has really driven for him, and beyond that, there's
• 1:24:01
  not much to like here. I don't think I even want to own Waka
• 1:24:04
  as like a back end guy next year, like because I think I'm gonna
• 1:24:08
  misuse them, like I'm gonna look like, oh, look at that juicy
• 1:24:11
  matchup where he's facing the Rockies over in Petko and he's just gonna get lit
• 1:24:15
  up. And then he's gonna go out the next time facing you know,
• 1:24:17
  the Dodgers, and he's going to just shut them down. Like he's going
• 1:24:20
  to be one of the most frustrating pictures there is. So I want no
• 1:24:25
  part of Michael Waka in twenty twenty four. Yeah, I think it would
• 1:24:30
  be a very specific case. I'm not drafting him. But if he comes
• 1:24:32
  out in April and he's showing some of the stuff that really made him shine
• 1:24:36
  over the summer, where he's really working the changeup in fastball, in combination
• 1:24:42
  and fooling hitters, you can juice good stretches out of him. And especially
• 1:24:46
  like if he does have some home starts against like the Rockies and the Marlins
• 1:24:51
  and just a softer landing, that is when I would be interested to stream
• 1:24:57
  him. But that's it's gonna needs some production before I trust him. And
• 1:25:01
  so at that point, lots of times someone else is already beating me to
• 1:25:04
  him. But it's gonna he can round out your rotation and help you with
• 1:25:10
  some injuries if that ends up happening. So, all right, who do
• 1:25:15
  we got next? Yeah, the next guy is another stinker. I think,
• 1:25:19
  Well, I guess I shouldn't bias it that much, but it's another
• 1:25:23
  guy I'm really not interested in going into twenty four and really ever just because
• 1:25:30
  the wheels are already starting to fall off. It's the Braves All Star rookie
• 1:25:35
  Bryce Elder, who's the thirty ninth ranked pitcher right now in our rankings,
• 1:25:41
  a six fifty eight ADP back in the spring, so I think that's lower
• 1:25:45
  than anybody we even covered last week. So if you recall during the spring,
• 1:25:50
  there was a lot of names that were in the mix for that Braves
• 1:25:54
  fifth starter job, between Dylan Dodd and Jared Schuster and all sorts of guys
• 1:26:00
  at the Braves head hanging around the miners. Bryce Elder ended up being the
• 1:26:03
  guy who rose out of that group and march to like I said, an
• 1:26:09
  All Star appearance with a great first half that was driven on lots and lots
• 1:26:15
  of luck. He had a two ninety seven yarra and a four eleven whip
• 1:26:21
  or not whip fip four eleven whip would be crazy with the two nine seven
• 1:26:25
  yarra, so that would be impressive. And I mean, he was driving
• 1:26:30
  conversations about whether or not stat cast was broken because he has an all blue
• 1:26:34
  stat Cast page. He just doesn't throw it hard. He doesn't get strikeouts,
• 1:26:38
  he doesn't get whips. He's a groundball artist, and it's come back
• 1:26:42
  to bite him post All Star break as his post All Star break R has
• 1:26:45
  been four thirty eight with a four sixty five. The k rate is down
• 1:26:50
  to five sixty six per nine. The walk rate is three forty seven per
• 1:26:57
  nine. So his k rate and walk rate are are merging, which is
• 1:27:01
  never great. And so like I said, the tires are already starting to
• 1:27:06
  fall off that you know, he had stretches of in the second half.
• 1:27:12
  He's allowed five earned runs in three starts. He's allowed four earned runs in
• 1:27:15
  another start, and the walks are just increasing. So he's kind of fading
• 1:27:20
  as he's probably getting tired in this rookie year. But just being a groundball
• 1:27:26
  artist is not something that I really want. And this is a guy that,
• 1:27:30
  honestly, even if he was on Waverer wires next year, I'm not
• 1:27:33
  sure I'm touching him just because I don't want to risk somebody that allows the
• 1:27:39
  ball to get and play that much. Yeah. I actually owned a Bryce
• 1:27:43
  Elder shares in a few leagues early in the season, and I tried so
• 1:27:47
  hard to trade him, and I did the succeed in a few spots in
• 1:27:51
  like early May, because to your point, like his stat cast page was
• 1:27:55
  just pure blue, there's nothing good coming of it, generally from me.
• 1:28:00
  Like, as I'm looking at a player and trying to understand that, I'm
• 1:28:01
  jumping out and trying to read, like what are the beat writers saying about
• 1:28:04
  them? What was interesting Elders? Like they were talking him up like he
• 1:28:08
  was the next best thing at the time, and uh. And I had
• 1:28:13
  like a little buyer's remorse when I traded him, because I moved him early
• 1:28:15
  May and then he actually shoved through the rest best of May. It was
• 1:28:20
  just crazy. But once June hit, I know you looked at kind of
• 1:28:24
  post All Star break, you know, pre All Star Break, It all
• 1:28:28
  of June is the same thing as the post All Star break. It it's
• 1:28:32
  uncanny then the stats you read offers while I was looking at when you started
• 1:28:35
  in early June through the rest of the season, it's almost identical. The
• 1:28:40
  wheels fell off as soon as as it turned June. And the funny thing
• 1:28:45
  is he's still been lucky. He's been running a two fifty three babe IF
• 1:28:48
  during that time, and his home runs for a fly ball are only like
• 1:28:54
  eleven percent. Being unlucky would be like fifteen or twenty. So like his
• 1:29:00
  X five is over five. So he's actually been unlucky with how bad he's
• 1:29:04
  been recently. And so I'm actually he's sorry he's been lucky with how bad
• 1:29:11
  he's been. And so I'm sitting here going on, I want no part
• 1:29:15
  of this. I want to know part of what he was doing. Well,
• 1:29:17
  I just couldn't drop the guy because you looked at the stats. It's
• 1:29:20
  like, well, I can't. I need to claim some victory of flipping
• 1:29:25
  this guy. I don't think I got anything of value when I flipped him.
• 1:29:27
  But so, yeah, Bryce Elder, he had a dominant two months
• 1:29:32
  and that's probably gonna be the mount of it for majority of his career.
• 1:29:38
  Yeah, it's gonna be interesting because I'm he should hang on into the top
• 1:29:43
  forty pictures, which is usually a good delineation of where ten teamers in shallow
• 1:29:50
  leagues like ownership is. And I can't think of anybody that has finished in
• 1:29:57
  the top forty like this and like won't be sniffed in some fifteen team leagues
• 1:30:02
  next year, like I wouldn't be. Somebody will probably take him at the
• 1:30:06
  back end of the draft. But it's gonna be a little bit of like
• 1:30:09
  a game of chicken while you just kind of hang out things out there.
• 1:30:12
  Well, it's gonna be one of those like do the bravest even keep running
• 1:30:15
  them at that point, Like there's gonna be some point they're looking turlinggo,
• 1:30:19
  we got somebody else that could do this better exactly, Like he ends up
• 1:30:24
  in a competition spring training, he might even have a job with after to
• 1:30:28
  your point, may have a top fifty season and then be out of the
• 1:30:30
  job the next year. Yeah. So yeah, Bryce Selder, we are
• 1:30:35
  both two thumbs down on him, But this next guy is somebody I am
• 1:30:42
  two thumbs up on. As we explained in let Me, it was episode
• 1:30:46
  six that we talked about our Dynasty value gainers, and it's you say,
• 1:30:50
  Kikuchi, who was who's forty first in our player raider right now on the
• 1:30:58
  season in eighty five forty So I think so many people have been burned by
• 1:31:03
  Kokoochi in the past that they let him slip all the way to the back
• 1:31:06
  of drafts. He was totally free. But he's made the changes to show
• 1:31:13
  what I think he can be going forward, which is a really solid starting
• 1:31:15
  pitcher. I'm definitely drafting him in the next in the top forty next year.
• 1:31:20
  He's got a nine and a half K nine right now with a three
• 1:31:26
  sixty three year ray. It's he's got a four nineteen fit but a three
• 1:31:31
  eighty nine x FIP, so he's not getting super lucky. That like,
• 1:31:35
  he's maintaining his ratios pretty well and just showing that he's not being he's not
• 1:31:42
  counting on weird bounces and pop ups to get his work done. The thing
• 1:31:46
  that I like is just the cutting of the walk rate. He's in the
• 1:31:50
  strike zone a lot more. Last year his walk rate was five one nine
• 1:31:55
  and that's a little thrown off by he was in the bullpen. For a
• 1:32:00
  little bit, but this year he's cut that just about in a half.
• 1:32:03
  He's got a two point six three walk rate, and a lot like Bradish,
• 1:32:09
  he's mixed up the pitches a lot differently, So I like to see
• 1:32:12
  that as slider. It pushed from averaging eighty six and a half from last
• 1:32:15
  year, it's up to eighty eight point two this year. So that's right
• 1:32:18
  in that threshold I was talking about where a couple of miles per hour makes
• 1:32:21
  a huge difference. And if you recall from episode six, we really went
• 1:32:26
  into how his new curveball has made a big change to his overall arsenal and
• 1:32:30
  just given hitters a different look. So I think this is who Kakuchi is
• 1:32:34
  now, and so like I definitely want him as a top forty pitcher pitches
• 1:32:40
  for a really good team, and it's really a big win for the Blue
• 1:32:44
  Jays to have reworked his entire arsenal and get a solid picture out of him.
• 1:32:48
  Yeah, I think I'm probably a little more lukewarm on Kakuchi than you
• 1:32:54
  are. And I think this is historically You've loved Kokuchi since the day he
• 1:32:58
  had the Majors, and I you know, I look at him, and
• 1:33:02
  he when I look at pictures that have improved, I'm looking forward, did
• 1:33:06
  they change something? And to your point, he did, like he that
• 1:33:10
  curveball has been a revelation for him and that's really made an improvement where I'm
• 1:33:15
  struggling and as I look at all those metrics that say like is this real
• 1:33:21
  and it's kind of, uh, this this is a really bad comparison.
• 1:33:25
  But it's kind of got a Michael Walker feel for me, where there's not
• 1:33:30
  like one thing that jumps off the page that's like, oh, this is
• 1:33:32
  a problem. But you know, he's got a career best walk rate and
• 1:33:38
  so it's like, okay, there's probably a little regression in the walk rate.
• 1:33:41
  You know, he's got a career best left on base percentage, so
• 1:33:44
  there's probably a little regression in that. He's got the lowest ground ball rate
• 1:33:47
  of his career, which I to me that that that screams risk if he
• 1:33:53
  keeps putting more balls in the air. He has also not the lowest home
• 1:33:58
  run for fly ball rate of his career, but substantial lower than the last
• 1:34:00
  few years, maybe tied to the curveball. I'll give you that, but
• 1:34:03
  that has dropped suxstantially as well. His velossy hasn't changed a whole lot.
• 1:34:10
  So I look at it and go, a lot of things went right for
• 1:34:13
  him this year, and when all those things went together, is not one
• 1:34:15
  that kind of jumps out and goes, oh, you know, there's you
• 1:34:19
  do for regression. I'm sitting here going I'm worried that he takes a step
• 1:34:24
  back in a few little spots and then it shows up big time. And
• 1:34:28
  so I'm probably staying away from Kukuchi at the price point that he's gonna go.
• 1:34:32
  I still would take you see Kokuchi. I think there's value in him.
• 1:34:36
  I think somebody else is going to take him before I get there,
• 1:34:40
  Like yourself in the top forty. I see him more as a top fifty
• 1:34:45
  sixty pitcher of where he comes in. And I'm just not going to have
• 1:34:50
  as many shares as he goes into his thirty three three year old season.
• 1:34:56
  I just don't have a great feel. There's a little bit more gut to
• 1:35:00
  it than it is statistical analysis on this one. So I'm letting you take
• 1:35:05
  all the shares you want next year. There's your insider information for our drafts.
• 1:35:10
  You can have him that's fine. Yeah, I mean, I will
• 1:35:13
  say I think the I mean, the drop in the ground ball rate is
• 1:35:17
  something that usually portends danger, but what actually is is he's forcing more infield
• 1:35:24
  fly balls, like he's pitching so well. He's doubled his infield fly ball
• 1:35:30
  rate from five point two last year to ten percent ten point four, Like,
• 1:35:33
  that's exactly double. So that counts in your fly balls there, and
• 1:35:39
  you can see that it shows up in his hard hit percentage drop to last
• 1:35:43
  year, he gave up a forty one point one percent hard hit percentage.
• 1:35:45
  This year it's thirty four point four. So I actually like that's great with
• 1:35:50
  because the pop up is essentially a strikeout, it should be a free out,
• 1:35:55
  and so that's driving. I think that's why his ex fit is also
• 1:36:00
  lower than his fit, because he's just getting such poor contact because he's become
• 1:36:05
  a much better pitcher. I think that, like, honestly, the more
• 1:36:09
  and more look at it, like it's going to be hard for me,
• 1:36:12
  not like he's gonna start hovering and maybe like the twenty five ish range for
• 1:36:15
  me, just because like he's gone all season showing that he can do this.
• 1:36:20
  That I really like his Arsenal and he's just really done everything that I
• 1:36:26
  think he needed to to take that step this year, and that, folks,
• 1:36:30
  is why I do hitter profiles. Yeah, this is a little bit
• 1:36:39
  a little bit different mixing it up for you. So we'll move on to
• 1:36:42
  our six guy. It is Braxton Garrett from the Miami Marlins. He's the
• 1:36:45
  forty third ranked pitcher on our player Radar right now five O nine ADP,
• 1:36:50
  which was driven partly because he didn't have a spot in the rotation in the
• 1:36:57
  beginning of the season. Than quatos and jury and just all sorts of the
• 1:37:02
  way the cookie crumbles in terms of how things shook out in Miami gave Braxton
• 1:37:08
  Garrett a spot in the rotation and he's taken advantage of it to the fullest.
• 1:37:13
  He's put up a three eighty six arright supported by a three sixty seven
• 1:37:16
  fIF He's got eight wins on the season along with a whip of one one
• 1:37:24
  five, which is fantastic for him considering where it's been in the past.
• 1:37:29
  He's got a eight seven K nine, so he's lowered the K nine this
• 1:37:31
  year, but he's also lowered the walks from two four five to one four
• 1:37:36
  five walks for nine and so you can tell he's just maturing and turning into
• 1:37:42
  a better pitcher. He's still only twenty five years old, and I think
• 1:37:45
  this is probably where I like Braxton Garrett going forward, somewhere in the mid
• 1:37:51
  forties, the top fifty. This is probably, like I don't know if
• 1:37:58
  this will be a career season, but it's probably close to his ceiling because,
• 1:38:01
  like, I think he's got to make a trade off of being having
• 1:38:04
  control on his pitches and throwing at the speeds that he is. Right now,
• 1:38:11
  let me see if he's it seems like he has. He has taken
• 1:38:13
  a tick off of his fastball. I was gonna say, just from watching
• 1:38:15
  this year, you can tell last year he's hovering around ninety one point two.
• 1:38:19
  This year's ninety point five as he's increased the cutter usage too. So
• 1:38:25
  I think he's just rounding into a better pitcher he was. He's been around
• 1:38:29
  for a while, which it's kind of crazy as a twenty five year old,
• 1:38:32
  but it's just kind of the classic maturity of a lefty starter, I
• 1:38:38
  think. So I think you can count on him going forward to maintain levels
• 1:38:42
  around what he's done. But I don't know if I'm literally going to be
• 1:38:45
  boosting him the way that I just did with Kikuchi, because I'm not sure
• 1:38:49
  there's anything right now in his profile that shows to me that there's another gear
• 1:38:55
  right now. Yeah, he's just an interesting case study, I think in
• 1:39:00
  what do you look for in a picture? Because he has amazing control this
• 1:39:05
  year, he's getting good groundballs. Almost half of what he's doing is keeping
• 1:39:11
  on the ground and he's got a decent defense behind us that that pays off.
• 1:39:15
  What's and so when you look at all the other luck metrics, they
• 1:39:17
  don't nothing's jumping. But when you look at his hard hit rate, it
• 1:39:23
  is crazy scary. His hard hit rate is in the bottom six percentile of
• 1:39:28
  the league, and so he is getting crushed when when when context is being
• 1:39:33
  made, he has a good he has a good chase rate, things like
• 1:39:38
  that, but you know his line drive rates is higher than the league average,
• 1:39:44
  so he you know, he he's getting hit hard, but they're outs,
• 1:39:48
  and so there's something about that that just scares me to a degree.
• 1:39:53
  And there's nothing else like to your point like that, it jumps out.
• 1:39:56
  This is probably who he is. This might be a career year, he
• 1:40:00
  does seem like he's maturing, so I think that there's still some room for
• 1:40:02
  growth. But there I just can't get over the fact that, you know,
• 1:40:06
  outside of a few things that he does really really well, it's kind
• 1:40:10
  of like the batter who hits home runs, strikes out, and walks all
• 1:40:14
  the time, like the three true outcomes kind of guy. He's like the
• 1:40:17
  guy that gets in the chase, hit a groundball or hit a line drive
• 1:40:23
  at somebody, Like at some point the wheels Joey Gallows wheels are gonna fall
• 1:40:27
  off. And that's what I feel like with Brexton Garrett, and it's just
• 1:40:30
  a matter of when. And so he could be great next year and then
• 1:40:33
  in the middle of the season he's gonna fall apart. He scares me to
• 1:40:39
  a degree to own. I think there's gonna be some volatility to that.
• 1:40:43
  So I again, as we get to the back of this top fifty,
• 1:40:47
  I think there's guys that you're You're sitting here going what are the warning signs?
• 1:40:51
  Is this growth? Who's this career year? Is there something that can
• 1:40:55
  bring it back to me? Brexton, I don't see a whole lot more
• 1:40:58
  that he's gonna bring than what this year has, and so I would be
• 1:41:02
  temporary my expectations going forward. Yeah, no, I mean I think that's
• 1:41:06
  fair. The what's crazy is that, like and I did this speak that
• 1:41:12
  he's actually twenty six now it's this year twenty five season, because he turned
• 1:41:15
  twenty six just a month ago and he was drafted seventh overall. It's a
• 1:41:21
  high school prep arm in the twenty sixteen draft, the like the notoriously terrible
• 1:41:28
  twenty sixteen draft. Here's the top ten from twenty sixteen. It was Mickey
• 1:41:32
  Moniac number one, Nick Senzel number two, Ian Anderson number three, Riley
• 1:41:38
  Pint number four, Corey Ray number five, AJ Puck number six, Braxon
• 1:41:45
  Garrett number seven, Cal Quantrill number eight, nine, Matt Manning ten,
• 1:41:49
  Zach Collins, Like that is an awful for how and there's almost so much
• 1:41:56
  potential that you just lived. There was so much potential in those names.
• 1:42:00
  That's a terrible draft. It's it's a funny one to look at the other
• 1:42:04
  thing that's interesting. I think Garrett and I don't I get a kick out
• 1:42:08
  of Savant and when they compare him to similar pictures, the names that jump
• 1:42:13
  out, like it's just an interesting group. You've got comparisons to Alex Wood,
• 1:42:18
  Shane baz Carlos Carrasco, Kyle Bradish. Like it's this very odd group
• 1:42:27
  that I like, I don't Shane Bazz and Alex would do not seem like
• 1:42:31
  at all similar pictures to me. And so the fact that he's getting compared
• 1:42:38
  as the more similar pictures, it's just this really odd dynamic. I think
• 1:42:42
  that speaks the extremes of what's in his profile, as he's Alex Wood's a
• 1:42:46
  groundball picture and Shane Baz is is kind of a strikeout ours everybody's chasing like
• 1:42:50
  he's got the characteristics of both, and then he's ended up his fifth uh
• 1:42:56
  comp there was Keegan Akin and so he what what do you get when you
• 1:43:00
  marry Alex Wood and Shane Bazz apparently as Keegan Aiken. So it's it's just
• 1:43:04
  this really interesting dynamic of what what's he going to become? And it's under
• 1:43:09
  hard to predict. I like that Bradish is in that group because actually that
• 1:43:13
  is probably who Garrett is pretty similar too. But he's the problem is he's
• 1:43:17
  coming from the left side, so all the ritis are eating him up.
• 1:43:20
  And so that's really what divides the value between Bradish and Garrett going forward,
• 1:43:27
  I think, yeah, I think Bradish just has a little bit more subtle
• 1:43:29
  profile in the mass so I think he has a little bit more to work
• 1:43:33
  with Mott, more well rounded arsenal at the end of the day. So
• 1:43:40
  but yeah, the SAG of the twenty sixteen draft, our last guy also
• 1:43:45
  was drafted in twenty sixteen in the third round. He's forty six right now
• 1:43:48
  and our player Raider for pitchers. He was a three forty six ADP so
• 1:43:53
  wasn't free in the spring, but was drafted towards the end of drafts.
• 1:43:57
  And that's Aaron Sivali from the Tampa Bay Rays now and that's really the key
• 1:44:02
  since he's arrived in Tampa. Here's his line over thirty point two innings in
• 1:44:10
  six starts. He's got a three eighty two r A, but it's got
• 1:44:15
  a two to eight fIF he's boosted his case. He's never been a strikeout
• 1:44:18
  guy. He's always been a very low strikeout guy for the Guardians. His
• 1:44:24
  strikeout rate with the Rays right now, Savali is at ten point eight six
• 1:44:30
  over K nine. So the Rays have found something in the Safali profile and
• 1:44:34
  immediately when he was traded at the deadline, you knew the Rays were up
• 1:44:40
  to something with Safali because they traded Kyle Manzardo for him. Kyle Manzarto is
• 1:44:45
  a big first base prospect bat was probably I would guess, their number two
• 1:44:51
  prospect, probably behind Curtis Mead. I'm just I think struggling that off.
• 1:44:56
  And so he's got a lot of hype and for them to want to trade
• 1:45:00
  him away for somebody like Aaron Savali is really indicative of what they saw on
• 1:45:05
  his arsenals. So I mean, I think this will require maybe a little
• 1:45:10
  bit more wrap up at the end of the season just to like see the
• 1:45:13
  comparison of exactly with the Rays have changed in Sivali's profile and what they're making
• 1:45:18
  him do. But they have totally done the Rays makeover here, and I'm
• 1:45:24
  in that, like this is exactly what they've done with Zach Efflyn going into
• 1:45:29
  the year, that the Rays find guys with specific characteristics on their pitches and
• 1:45:34
  their spins that they like and they can tweak and use of their advantage.
• 1:45:39
  So Savali is going to be I think going pretty early next year because I
• 1:45:45
  think there's gonna be lots of people that see what they did with Ethlyn this
• 1:45:49
  year and how much they improved Efflen's overall profile, and just really dream on
• 1:45:55
  what he's put together in his thirty point two ending. So far, it's
• 1:46:00
  come with a one four seven walk per nine, So he's just become a
• 1:46:05
  really fantastic picture for the raise. I mean, this is a guy that,
• 1:46:11
  compared to everyone else on the list, I think Justin Steel is the
• 1:46:15
  only one that we've discussed tonight that I would want over him. I'm probably
• 1:46:19
  going to be drafting Aaron Sivali pretty high and some drafts next year and really
• 1:46:24
  trying to jump into get some value out of him. Yeah. I don't
• 1:46:29
  know if I'm as bullish as as you, but it's what what bothers me
• 1:46:34
  about savalis when I think of forward thinking pitching organizations, like the first one
• 1:46:42
  that comes to mind for me is Cleveland. Like maybe, I mean there's
• 1:46:45
  others in the you know, Houston's the mix, Tampa Bays in the mix
• 1:46:48
  that like that figure out how to get something and they develop pictures and they
• 1:46:53
  tweak him and and gets him out in Kansas City, apparently with Cole Reagan's
• 1:46:57
  has decided that they don't how to do this too exactly. But that's what
• 1:47:01
  what like oddly bothers me is like, what is it that they figured out
• 1:47:06
  that Cleveland couldn't figure out because he was not Frankly, he was not good.
• 1:47:13
  He had, yes, a good ear with Cleveland, but he's historically
• 1:47:16
  has not been great for them. They keep putting him up there, keep
• 1:47:19
  trying to get something out, and he keep letting them down. And so
• 1:47:23
  I don't understand what it is that they that they have changed about him in
• 1:47:30
  this you know, his profile. I just I'm not seeing that there's a
• 1:47:34
  big pitch mix change or anything like that. And so that's just, uh
• 1:47:40
  kind of kind of baffling. So I'm curious to see what the rest of
• 1:47:44
  this month holds and what where that goes, because to your point, like
• 1:47:48
  it looks real, he's actually been unlucky since he came to Tampa Bay.
• 1:47:54
  His baby bip was like three seventy or something like that. It was it
• 1:47:56
  was actually kind of high, and he's still shoving. So I actually the
• 1:48:03
  piece that so I guess some nervousness because of this Cleveland thing. That's just
• 1:48:08
  a personal issue. But the thing that we're I'm gonna disagree with you is
• 1:48:13
  I don't think he's gonna get the offseason Helium. I don't think so.
• 1:48:16
  You think so. I think because of his long history with Cleveland, and
• 1:48:20
  I think that Savali has done this in not a long enough time period.
• 1:48:27
  It's gonna like it's a month and a half kind of thing that if he
• 1:48:30
  continues the rest of the season, that people are gonna just look at the
• 1:48:33
  overall profile. See he got traded and he still doesn't strike out enough,
• 1:48:39
  guys like I think they're gonna kind of look not realize how good he was
• 1:48:43
  as the season wound down, because everybody's looking left at football for fantasy football
• 1:48:46
  season, and he was kind of running under the radar. So I think
• 1:48:49
  it's gonna be grouped a well, I know who Aaron Savali is and he's
• 1:48:53
  still that guy, and so I think he's gonna fall far farther than people
• 1:48:58
  do you expect. So that's that's a good disagreement. I think at the
• 1:49:02
  end of the day, there's something to be had here that I really want
• 1:49:09
  to know what it is. The Tampa Bay figured out, but I don't
• 1:49:13
  know. Yeah, And because I am I'm just like looking at every page
• 1:49:17
  on fangrass right now trying to find something like the slider usage is up a
• 1:49:21
  little bit, but it doesn't look like it's a different slider necessarily. Maybe
• 1:49:26
  there is a spin right thing, but the velocity is the same. And
• 1:49:30
  like you said, he's been unlucky if anything, with the race. He's
• 1:49:32
  got three seventy two babbit And yeah, I'm fine if people are going to
• 1:49:38
  ignore him, because zach Eflin was a really cheap option this year, and
• 1:49:44
  if Safali is cheap as well going in next year like that is a great
• 1:49:47
  way to anchor your rotation, especially if you are missing out in some amazing
• 1:49:53
  those top guys while you're going for hitters. At the beginning you were draft
• 1:49:57
  I guess the question is, do you think this sounds like this might be
• 1:50:00
  someone you actually end up with some shares, because if he starts slipping and
• 1:50:03
  he's drafted as a top forty, top fifty pitcher, like I think he
• 1:50:10
  could be more of like a top thirty ish pitcher, like maybe in like
• 1:50:14
  a Joe musgrovesh build, where like they ride him for innings, especially to
• 1:50:17
  stretch out their bullpen a little bit. Next year, so like he could
• 1:50:21
  bring some volume. It's not like he's super young, and so he's got
• 1:50:27
  the experience to be able to handle a starter's workload, And that just adds
• 1:50:31
  up over a year, especially when you're pitching for a good team like the
• 1:50:33
  Race. Yeah, I agree. I do think I end up with potentially
• 1:50:38
  some shares here. And you know, part of it goes to how I
• 1:50:41
  like to draft starting pitching, which I tend to want to get like the
• 1:50:45
  guys that I trust at the top, you know, guys that have high
• 1:50:49
  floors, high ceilings. You know who they can really anchor your staff with
• 1:50:56
  from a strikeout perspective, from a whip perspective, play on good teams go
• 1:51:00
  deep into games like that's the profile. I want a few guys like that
• 1:51:03
  to anchor my rotation. I generally do not want to miss with the messy
• 1:51:06
  metal. I do not want to get in there and be grabbing guys that
• 1:51:11
  like, is this gonna be the year, Like I'm Kyle Bradish probably gonna
• 1:51:15
  be touching you a whole lot, you know, uh Kkuchi, Like those
• 1:51:19
  kind of guys from like are they gonna make the adjustments? Is this the
• 1:51:23
  year? Like I didn't. I tend to then go to the to the
• 1:51:26
  back. I'm like, oh, I got three or four starters I trust,
• 1:51:29
  and then I load up on the guys at the back that are cast
• 1:51:31
  off. I've loved the Charlie Morton's over the year. You know, I'm
• 1:51:34
  a Sonny Gray guy. I think Savali could kind of fit into that,
• 1:51:39
  or the upstart guys that seem like they're, you know, figure something out
• 1:51:44
  of the last of the season. I mentioned Cole Reagan's earlier. I'm big
• 1:51:46
  Cole Reagans fan because it seems like he's really figured something now. And so
• 1:51:49
  I love to them pack the back of my rotation with like five, six,
• 1:51:54
  seven of those guys and be right, be right on half of them.
• 1:51:58
  And I'm very happy about that because you know, if you're doing an
• 1:52:00
  auction, you're buying all those guys for like a buck or two. If
• 1:52:03
  you're doing the draft, you're just going at the end of your drafts and
• 1:52:06
  just picking these these guys that have a chance because they're you know, they're
• 1:52:11
  the cast off for whatever reason. So yeah, Savali's an interesting one for
• 1:52:15
  us to finish on here. I think there's some potential there and I still
• 1:52:18
  don't know what they raised you're doing. Yeah, like I said, it'll
• 1:52:21
  be interesting to dig into that a little bit. And the other thing I
• 1:52:26
  was going to say that I like about Safali, and I think it goes
• 1:52:29
  a little bit to what you were speaking about, is that he doesn't blow
• 1:52:32
  up. Like I'm looking through his game logs from this year, the most
• 1:52:38
  the most runs he's allowed in any outing runs or earned runs is four.
• 1:52:44
  So like he's got one game of like two runs and three and two thirds
• 1:52:49
  and a game of four runs in five and two thirds and four and six.
• 1:52:55
  But like he does a good job of like not panicking and just letting
• 1:52:59
  things is implode, which is really great for your ratios and also for like
• 1:53:03
  when you're marching him out there against you know, I think he's going to
• 1:53:08
  be something you probably like don't play in Yankee Stadium. But like that also
• 1:53:12
  makes you feel good that he's gonna in the matchups that you're playing him in.
• 1:53:16
  It's not like what you're talking about with Waka, where like there is
• 1:53:19
  the potential that you're going to pitch him at home against the Rockies and he's
• 1:53:23
  gonna get bombed for eight or nine runs. That Safali keeps it tight and
• 1:53:27
  just like really is steady in that way. Yeah, I think to your
• 1:53:31
  point, I'm looking at his quasi blow ups, like when he's had him
• 1:53:35
  you know, when when he faces I'm going to call it a bad team.
• 1:53:40
  He he seems to capitalize when and I'm gonna throw the Cubs and as
• 1:53:44
  a bad team. Earlier in the season, they if it's the Cubs,
• 1:53:47
  the Royals, the White Sox. Yeah, he seemed like all of those
• 1:53:54
  teams he was putting up the stats he suspected. He struggled with the you
• 1:53:58
  know, with the Mariners, with the Brewer, he struggled a little bit
• 1:54:03
  with I think the Marlins a little bit to degree. And so it looks
• 1:54:09
  like he's kind of executed when he needs to Oakland. He you know,
• 1:54:13
  he cleaned up against Oakland. So he feels like he's one of those guys
• 1:54:15
  that he's not going to hurt you, which is really with a picture,
• 1:54:21
  what you're scared about is the guy that you run out there. It's like,
• 1:54:25
  oh, I just need a few extra Indians here there, and they
• 1:54:27
  all of a sudden go one and two thirds and go up seven runs,
• 1:54:30
  like that's that's the guy that kills you. You make one of those starts,
• 1:54:33
  you gotta be great for the rest of the month to overcome it.
• 1:54:39
  Yeah, I totally agree. So hopefully these seven guys give you some insights
• 1:54:45
  to wherever we are on pictures for this year and going into next year.
• 1:54:47
  So I appreciate you listening to this podcast. I am Mike cool Art from
• 1:54:54
  Razball. You can find me on Twitter slash x at m kool seven.
• 1:54:59
  Raz All is still running great promos for all sorts of fantasy football and baseball
• 1:55:04
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  Check us out. I'm on the weekends doing waiver wires. Brow Remind us
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  where we can find you on Twitter and on raz ball. Yeah over on
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  Twitter at Jay Brewer one seven. Find me at raz ball on the weekends
• 1:55:30
  doing the hitter profiles top one hundred hitters for the rest of the season.
• 1:55:32
  Hopefully you're still in it for your playoff race. I know a lot of
• 1:55:35
  head to head seasons started their playoffs this week and for those in the roto
• 1:55:41
  leagues coming down to the wire, got like three ish three or four weeks
• 1:55:45
  left to make that run, so hopefully you're still in it and taking advantage.
• 1:55:50
  It's gonna be a fun end of the season here. So cool,
• 1:55:54
  great, great chatting, looking forward to next week. Yeah, and if
• 1:55:58
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• 1:56:17
  Take care of everybody.