Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 11 : 2023 Allen & Ginter, Revisiting Picks

Transcript

Ep. 11 : 2023 Allen & Ginter, Revisiting Picks · Cards & Categories

• 0:15
  All right, hello and welcome everybody, two, Episode eleven of Cards and
• 0:19
  Categories. I am Mike cool Ard here from Rasbald, joined as always by
• 0:23
  Jeremy Brewer, also from Rasbald. Jeremy, how are you doing on this
• 0:27
  Wednesday evening? I am doing just fine, enjoying the very end of the
• 0:31
  baseball season, looking forward to some exciting playoffs and looking forward to the misery
• 0:38
  for my Cardinals ending for the season. Yeah, it's about time that they
• 0:43
  get things wracked up. And I mean the good news is since last week
• 0:46
  when we were wondering if Wayne Wright would get his two hundred win in his
• 0:51
  last two starts, He's gone out there and he's done it. I know
• 0:55
  that you were the one that was calling for him to really finish strong and
• 0:59
  to really bring home the hammer here, and he did like you couldn't have
• 1:04
  asked for anymore. I had a friend who was reaching out in a head
• 1:08
  league asking if he should roll the dice with WAYNEO this week, and I
• 1:14
  suggested, Yeah, you gotta go for it, because you knew that he
• 1:17
  was going to have one more these starts in the tank. Yeah. I
• 1:23
  will gloat. I will gladly gloat on this one that I mean I did.
• 1:26
  I think I called a complete game shutout for Wayne right first two hundred,
• 1:30
  because it's the only way that you know, the season can go at
• 1:33
  this point. The guy's running then array in the seventh. Clearly, it
• 1:38
  just has to be that way. That's the cardinal magic or whatever you want
• 1:40
  to call it. But yeah, seven innings, four hits, shut out,
• 1:45
  which is just, you know, crazy. I'm a little surprised that
• 1:49
  he only threw ninety three pitches. They didn't let him go go out for
• 1:52
  the eighth just because help more were that Cardinals bullpens then having a one a
• 1:56
  lead, and the fact that he was a relatively cruising It was Wayne right,
• 2:00
  He's cruising the getting some good groundballs here and there at this point in
• 2:05
  his career. But I thought they would either try to bring Hellsley for two
• 2:08
  or let him go the eighth, but they decided to hand it off to
• 2:15
  the bullpen and they made it through. So I was excited to see that.
• 2:20
  It's a milestone. It would have been nice to see him hit it
• 2:23
  last year and going for the sunset, but hey, he got it.
• 2:27
  Nothing like when you're two hundreds and lowered your ear right of seven four.
• 2:31
  Yeah, and I can't I can't blame Ali Marmo for pulling him out of
• 2:37
  the game. There it is, you're playing just a game of I'm not
• 2:43
  even like roulettecase Roulette like hits happened to little that with the barrel rates and
• 2:51
  hard hit rates that ed Wayne Wright's given up this year, again we emphasize
• 2:55
  them last episode, but the barrel rate he's given up on the year is
• 3:00
  eleven point one percent with a three eight point eight hard hit percent on the
• 3:04
  year. That that is absolutely absurd. That's MVP level. He's got a
• 3:12
  he's got a homer fly ball rate of about fourteen percent, which actually isn't
• 3:15
  a career worse. The rabbit ball in nineteen twenty nineteen was worse than that.
• 3:21
  But I think that's part of the reason he was pulled. You're just
• 3:23
  kind of you're waiting for the other shoe to drop as long as you have
• 3:27
  waynewright out there in the game. But ultimately with a two hundredth win,
• 3:32
  what do you think about Hall of Fame chances? I know it sounds really
• 3:35
  absurd, given especially where he has ended here, and you know, I
• 3:39
  just wanted to run the numbers real quick, because just to see how much
• 3:44
  he has raised his career earray just in this one year alone. Before this
• 3:50
  year it was three thirty eight. Now it's three fifty three. So this
• 3:53
  year alone has raised his ear ray point one eight. It was a really
• 3:58
  rough year, but he got to two hundredth win. What do you think
• 4:00
  in terms of Hall of Fame chances for and win right there? Brew?
• 4:03
  Yeah, I mean I want to I want to see it. I want
• 4:09
  it to happen. I don't think it's going to the only chances if he
• 4:15
  you know, we get a big boom and hitting for the next few years
• 4:18
  and uh, you know, we start to see pictures retiring and you know,
• 4:23
  one fifty becomes the new two fifty. Like there's an outside shot,
• 4:28
  there's an argument. I don't think there's an argument. People necessarily win and
• 4:34
  he it's yeah, it's a it's a tough call. But I don't see
• 4:40
  him getting getting into the Hall of Fame. How about you? How about
• 4:42
  you? I don't think he's going to get in on votes, but I
• 4:45
  think there's a decent chance he gets in on a committee sometime way down in
• 4:49
  the future, just because when they start reviewing this era of baseball. I
• 4:55
  think there'll be two few starting pictures in that you know, you'll have for
• 5:00
  Lander and Kershaw and Shurezer and you know a few others here and there.
• 5:05
  Obviously Sabathia and Grenky will be another tier. But I think they'll realize that
• 5:11
  the balance is out of whack for how many pictures should be in and he
• 5:15
  kind of gets in on like a kind of like a Harold Baines or Jim
• 5:20
  kat sort of way into just like at the very end, because you realize
• 5:25
  that there's no one else like in that peer group that like belongs with Adam
• 5:31
  Wayne Wright, and so he kind of becomes that person who gets put in
• 5:35
  by a committee sometime in the future. Yeah, I think it'd be interesting.
• 5:42
  I'm hoping for it, but I'm not. I'm not holding my breath
• 5:46
  at this point. No, and it did. It didn't really hurt that,
• 5:49
  Like, there are a couple of years that he got close to cy
• 5:51
  Young's it didn't quite pull it off. And if he had picked up a
• 5:55
  couple of those that would have really helped out as chances. I think overall,
• 5:59
  all right, So one other things that I want to start with here
• 6:01
  today was did you see the Stephen A. Smith segment talking about Showhyotani.
• 6:10
  I know Tani ends up having his surgery and so he's not going to pitch
• 6:15
  next year. The question is, did you see the Stephen A clip of
• 6:20
  what he's talked to how he talked about why Otani is not deserving of a
• 6:26
  five million dollars contract. Yes, I have, but I will let you
• 6:30
  summarize it for the listeners so that you can let them know what Stephen A.
• 6:34
  Smith was out here spouting. Yeah. So so basically you know it's
• 6:39
  Steven A. Smith, though he's trying to get clicks, he's trying to
• 6:41
  get listens, whatever it is. But his argument for why Showhyotani should not
• 6:46
  get a five million dollars contract more or less was well, he's not going
• 6:50
  to pitch next year, and the Angels suck and they don't get enough fans,
• 6:56
  and so clearly he doesn't deserve five hundred million dollars. Nothing about his
• 7:00
  performance, nothing about that, just solely, well, we don't know if
• 7:03
  he's gonna pitch next year and what it's going to look like after that,
• 7:06
  and the Angels were not been good. Clearly you can't win with a five
• 7:11
  hundred million dollar player, and he used, you know, the Dodgers as
• 7:15
  an example. He used the Braves. He's all these other teams and saying,
• 7:19
  well, they don't have five hundred billion dollar players, So you know
• 7:23
  that clearly shows you that you can't win with one. This argument was so
• 7:28
  flawed on so many levels, and I even just repeating the points, I
• 7:33
  feel I feel dumber doing it. So what's what's your what are your thoughts?
• 7:40
  What was there inny validity to the argument? I think what it is
• 7:45
  is Stephen N. A. Smith is stuck in a basketball brain where you
• 7:51
  correlate talent to overall winning levels. And so when you are Lebron or you
• 7:58
  are Chris Paul or some of the just all time great basketball players, and
• 8:03
  especially nowadays, when you go out and recruit all your favorite bench players and
• 8:07
  Buddy used to round out your team nowadays, that that does correlate. I
• 8:13
  think in terms of team winning percentage, ability to win the playoffs, ability
• 8:18
  to finish off NBA finals, that that argument works for the NBA because the
• 8:22
  individual players have a much greater ability to affect the game, affect every play
• 8:31
  as most to baseball, you have to wait for your batterers to come up
• 8:33
  every nine times. Pitchers can only pitch one every five days, and so
• 8:39
  you're it's a much bigger team sport that you have the opportunity to be a
• 8:46
  really fantastic player, the best player of all time, a generational talent,
• 8:50
  and just play on an absolutely turret of a team. You know. So
• 8:56
  I think that is maybe a little bit like just because he doesn't come to
• 9:01
  baseball with the baseball background usually, you know, he the NBA and basketball
• 9:07
  has been where Stephen A. Smith has made his money ultimately, and so
• 9:13
  when he's crossing over here, like, I think that's what breaks a little
• 9:16
  bit. I think it's also a little bit of like an ignorance of if
• 9:20
  you're not aware of how big baseball is and how big Otani is and you're
• 9:26
  not watching his starts, you're losing track of how just the international superstardom that
• 9:31
  he has with all the Japanese advertisements that are behind him when he pitches,
• 9:35
  all that additional revenue that comes in and being able to pull that all together,
• 9:41
  that it just is totally different from any other sport. Yeah, I
• 9:46
  think you're you're right if like if I look at it. There's like a
• 9:50
  sliver of truth what he was saying, like sliver we're talking like two percent
• 9:52
  here, which was Yeah, like the average team spending half a billion dollars
• 9:58
  on a player is not going to give them set them up for success.
• 10:03
  That doesn't mean that he is not worth it. It doesn't mean that because
• 10:07
  the Angels didn't win, that he hurt them. Like that argument only worked
• 10:11
  if he was making half a billion dollars on the Angels. So like,
• 10:15
  like I see where he was trying to go and what he was trying to
• 10:18
  say. But since he did it the Stephen A. Smith way, which
• 10:22
  was you know, over flamboyant, was what I will go with it,
• 10:26
  just it doesn't play. So I thought it was. It was interesting.
• 10:30
  You know, I really still sit here and think that, you know,
• 10:31
  it might be the best if he can somehow uh signed a massive deal,
• 10:37
  but he's got an opt out after like year two, year, year three.
• 10:39
  I think that's really what he ends up doing. And it's not this
• 10:43
  the it's not about this contract. It's about the next one. If he
• 10:48
  can prove himself healthy for like you know, two more seasons on the mound
• 10:52
  when he gets back I think that's really where the payday comes. And frankly,
• 10:58
  you know, you wanna, like you go, only get the chance
• 11:01
  for really one big contract in your career that you're actually gonna play on the
• 11:05
  entire time. And if you sign that too early, then you come off
• 11:09
  of that contract in your mid thirties or like early late thirties. I think
• 11:15
  that that then you can't you know, extend that earning power into like your
• 11:20
  forties, which is like where some of these guys have really made their money
• 11:22
  by signing that contract that took you to forty forty two. So I think,
• 11:28
  you know, he's he's still young enough, he's got enough potential that
• 11:33
  he can play a few more years then signed the big contract and probably comes
• 11:37
  out ahead. Yeah, and even if you go to Stephen A. Smith's
• 11:43
  argument of you can't give this guy five hundred billion dollars because he's only give
• 11:48
  me a batter next year, I'm looking at the zips projected numbers from next
• 11:54
  year. I was gonna say projected projections, but that's not exactly a great
• 12:01
  term there. So if you look at that, Shohiotani is projected to have
• 12:05
  the eleventh highest offensive runs created, So that is, you know, the
• 12:13
  component from the offensive contributions that go into war. But so when you rank
• 12:20
  it by a straight war, he's further done the list at three point four,
• 12:22
  but that's because it's taking into account the defensive hit for him being a
• 12:28
  DH, there's a pretty good chance next year that he plays some outfield or
• 12:33
  first base. And I don't have anything to obviously go off of from being
• 12:39
  in the majors, but all reports were from when he was in Japan playing
• 12:43
  the outfield that he was a superlative defender, and so I don't see why
• 12:46
  he couldn't do what Bryce Harper is doing this year. And so there's a
• 12:50
  chance that you do get a little bit of defensive value out of him,
• 12:54
  and then that puts him right back into conversation of you know, some of
• 12:58
  the best all around batters in the game. I mean, you've got him
• 13:03
  sitting right here projected next to dudes like Ronald Lacuna, Junior, Jay Rod,
• 13:09
  Julio Rodriguez, Bryce Harper himself. So like those dudes have been in
• 13:15
  the conversation as well for five hundred billion dollar contracts as well as like Wan
• 13:18
  Soto and stuff. So even when you look at from that factor like that
• 13:24
  honestly like helps support it even more because if he's going to be projected as
• 13:28
  this elite bat that is, you know, three to four hundred million dollars
• 13:33
  by itself, if you're getting any pitching value, that is gravy on top.
• 13:37
  Yeah. I mean, if if you want to think about who you
• 13:41
  know, who you're in compared to you, I think Harper is actually really
• 13:43
  interesting comparison there for Atani if you like, just look at their bodies of
• 13:48
  work. And I'm not saying just all the numbers, just the buzz they
• 13:52
  create, the excitement with which they play, Like, that's a really good
• 13:56
  comp And what in Harper's contract, you know, he got thirteen years for
• 14:01
  a three hundred and thirty million and I'm pretty sure if I recall he left
• 14:03
  money on the table when when he did that. And then you go over
• 14:07
  to the pitching side, and if you want to compare like Shohey Tani to
• 14:13
  like Garrett Cole as far as again you know, big market, big name,
• 14:18
  big game pitcher can can bring it. Garrett Cole signed a three hundred
• 14:22
  and twenty four million dollar contract I think over a nine year period, so
• 14:26
  you'd get Garrett Cole and Bryce Harper together and one guy to take a one
• 14:31
  less roster spot. And so what does that mean? He gets a six
• 14:37
  hundred and fifty million dollar contract. They're like, there's a discount for being
• 14:41
  one guy. I mean there's like an injury risk discount because if you get
• 14:46
  well, even that he gets heard on the pitching, he's still hitting exactly,
• 14:48
  So I guess the doesn't fully flay through. Just don't break your leg.
• 14:52
  But yeah, it's it's it's actually seems like a discount if he's only
• 14:58
  signing for five hundred millions. So's it'll be very interesting to see where this
• 15:03
  all goes. I think this is the storyline of the offseason. I think
• 15:07
  it drives the entire free age of market, which will drive us nuts on
• 15:11
  this pot here because we're gonna be ready to talk about all the big deals.
• 15:13
  It's gonna be like, you know, Christmas, Eve, and nobody's
• 15:18
  signed yet because they're all way Rotani. Oh yeah, and it's gonna be
• 15:20
  like the most minuscule updates that you've ever imagined in terms of like who he's
• 15:26
  visiting and every one of his little moves. But I will say and here
• 15:31
  we go. Here's a professional segue right here, speaking of not catching minuscule
• 15:35
  details. Tops, we have to talk about this because it is lighting up
• 15:41
  the Twitter verse and it was on Reddit as well that there was I'll link
• 15:46
  to it obviously in the show notes, and we will as well to that
• 15:50
  stephen A. Smith Rank because I know that everyone wants to watch it after
• 15:54
  you got the cliff note version there from Brew. But anyways, I'll link
• 15:56
  to this. There is a picture online of two of the same refractor,
• 16:03
  of the super refractors coming out for Bowman Chrome on one of the hot prospects.
• 16:11
  Honestly, of the entire set. It's the Guardians new catcher that they
• 16:18
  signed during I believe the Jay two period this year. It's Victorious Tourists and
• 16:22
  so this was one of the guys that we actually highlighted a little bit last
• 16:25
  week. So it's a big card. I guess we'll see kind of what
• 16:30
  happens here, because you would have to think there's an official response from TOPS,
• 16:33
  but also to provide a little background if you're not aware, there should
• 16:37
  be only one super refractor out there of every card, and that's like this
• 16:42
  gold vinyl stamped. It just looks really incredible because it is a special one
• 16:48
  of one card. It should have been a huge chase card. Now there's
• 16:52
  apparently two, which then calls into question all the one of the ones out
• 16:59
  there a little bit. But the fact that we've only seen this happened once,
• 17:03
  I think supports that maybe it's one off. I just also want like
• 17:07
  the entire background story of like why did I'm sure they produce multiple and then
• 17:11
  like see which one came out the cleanest, possibly and then something happened in
• 17:17
  terms of disposing the other one. I don't know. So it's really crazy
• 17:22
  to see two one of ones pop out and brew I want to I want
• 17:26
  your take on this because this really could undermine lots of pieces of the industry
• 17:32
  overall. Yeah, it really could, because the scenario where you can end
• 17:36
  up with two superfrectors traditionally is that auto and a non auto. But if
• 17:40
  you look at these cards, they are identical. Usually with the Auto there's
• 17:44
  a spot, there's a clear spot for them to sign the card, and
• 17:48
  there's a different language on the card itself saying this is a certified TOPS autograph
• 17:52
  something like that, So clearly it is just an air I think I agree
• 17:56
  with you at this point, it seems to be the only one and so
• 18:00
  hopefully it doesn't undermine things. But TOPS has been known in the past,
• 18:04
  and I've seen it from a few players that when you sign your cards as
• 18:11
  a player, TOPS traditionally will send you your own rainbow of your cards.
• 18:18
  And so I wonder, I'm just throwing on the speculation out there, because
• 18:22
  you're right. My first way I went to, why the heck did you
• 18:25
  sprint two of these? And why did why who's going through that quality control?
• 18:30
  We've got an issue here. But I wonder if there's you know,
• 18:33
  it's one of those situations because there's there's much of this one of one,
• 18:37
  like there is more created, whether it's test runs, whatever, then maybe
• 18:41
  that's why if your printing plate one of ones. There's all these different scenarios.
• 18:45
  But I go back and I don't have an article that talks about anything
• 18:49
  like that. I've just seen post over the years of players after they sign
• 18:53
  talking about the how they get to keep a full rainbow of their car.
• 19:00
  And I wonder if Victor is Tourists is missing his superfractor from his personal collection,
• 19:08
  So, uh, yeah, it's it's frustrating. It does call things
• 19:12
  into to question. I remember what earlier this year is late last year where
• 19:18
  I think they had the same issue of some cards number now like out of
• 19:21
  ninety nine, where you had the same serial number, like forty two out
• 19:23
  of nine, two forty two out of ninety nine. This isn't the first
• 19:26
  time. It's just unfortunately happened with a superfractor of prospects first Bowman and uh,
• 19:34
  it's it's it might actually drive the value up. So I'm very torn
• 19:40
  of this because now they're not notoriety. It gets you know everybody, you
• 19:44
  know everybody. So two guys are gonna have this card, I'd be really
• 19:48
  entertaining. Somehow the same guy got both. And it's a story. It's
• 19:52
  a story. So it's unfortunate, it's it's frustrating, it's also tops,
• 19:57
  so I'm not terribly surprised. Yeah, and so, like I said,
• 20:02
  we'll see what happens in terms of any sort of response, keep everybody updated
• 20:07
  on that. But in the meantime, we've got a great show coming up.
• 20:10
  We've got a bunch of new releases. There's a really huge surprise that
• 20:15
  literally came out like an hour before we started recording that is going to make
• 20:18
  us real giddy about cards here over the next couple of months. And then
• 20:22
  after that we are going to get into the fantasy Fantasy discussion on re examining
• 20:29
  some of our old picks. So we've got a great show coming up of
• 20:33
  cards and categories. Stick around, Okay, welcome back everybody to the baseball
• 20:57
  card portion of cards and categories here. And this week we're going to highlight
• 21:03
  one of the new releases from TOPS twenty twenty three Tops Alan and Ginter Baseball.
• 21:08
  So we've been hinting at this one throughout the summer because it was supposed
• 21:12
  to be issued back in June or July and got pushed back a few times.
• 21:18
  So the official release is technically going to be on September twenty second,
• 21:23
  which is this Friday, for recording on Wednesday the twentieth, and so I'll
• 21:29
  give a little bit of background on Allen and Ginter because I have hinted a
• 21:33
  few times on previous shows about how this is a great set. If you're
• 21:37
  looking to start somewhere for collecting, I suggest Allen and Ginter. It's a
• 21:41
  really fun one because it has lots of different inserts, lots of different goodies
• 21:48
  and we'll highlight some of those, But first I just kind of wanted to
• 21:52
  give a brief history of where Alan Ginter came from. Originally, it is
• 21:56
  a set that Tops started producing in two thousand and six, but before that,
• 22:00
  Alan and Ginter was a tobacco company back in the late eighteen hundreds.
• 22:04
  So that's where baseball cards originally came from. And if you've played the video
• 22:10
  game Red Dead Redemption two, there's like a collectibles piece of that game.
• 22:15
  It takes place around the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century,
• 22:22
  and so you're collecting these little cards from tobacco sets, and that's where baseball
• 22:26
  cards were founded. You know, that's where the classic T two O six
• 22:33
  Honus Wagner is from that everybody kind of knows about and has been sold for
• 22:37
  millions of dollars. And so Alan and Ginter was actually like a real set
• 22:41
  and you can still get these that people have collected lots of the old,
• 22:47
  super duper vintage Allen and Ginter sets, and so it's a fun one coming
• 22:52
  back because what Alan Ginter does, but this set is it harkens to some
• 22:56
  of the fun things that can go into collect You have your standard baseball cards,
• 23:02
  your standard baseball players in this set, but you've also got inserts of
• 23:07
  celebrities, regular cards of celebrities, celebrity autos, You've got inserts of just
• 23:11
  goofy animals and situations culturally. So Brew, I'm going to pass it over
• 23:17
  to you here. I've given a pretty wide overview of Alan and Ginter.
• 23:21
  I know that for you it's a fun rip and you're looking for some of
• 23:26
  those celebrity autos here and there to be able to move them for money.
• 23:30
  So who are we chasing this year for ripping Allen and Ginter and we're looking
• 23:33
  for some celebrity autos? Yeah, so, uh get Alan Ginter's always fun
• 23:38
  for the let's say the random, the random ones. So this year starting
• 23:45
  starting before I get to the autos, just so the I would say the
• 23:48
  random, exciting players. Most of them do have autos. You generally have
• 23:53
  a set of the big rookie names from the other sports. You know,
• 24:00
  you got CJ. Stroud, You've got Anthony Richardson, You've got oh,
• 24:07
  Bryce Young. I'm sure there's there's a few others out there, but the
• 24:11
  big one comes out of the basketball world, and I'm going to butcher the
• 24:15
  name, uh number one pick Victor women Yanna. I think that's about how
• 24:22
  I would say, yeah, yeah, Well I just kind of rushed through
• 24:25
  it, so if I messed it up, you couldn't hear it. It's
• 24:26
  one of those things like pronouncing athletes names. You have to hear him with
• 24:30
  so many times. I had explained to my son the other day he's opening
• 24:33
  nineteen nineties Collector's Choice because that's the quality that we go here. And he's
• 24:38
  like, I got Hose or Josie da Leone, or like that's Jose d
• 24:44
  Leon. He's like, that's not it's what be spelled with an age.
• 24:45
  I'm like, okay, we've got some teaching to do on the Dominican names
• 24:51
  for baseball. But I digress. But Victor when Bayonna is uh clearly going
• 24:57
  to be one of the biggest gets in the set. He does have a
• 25:04
  an auto and here he's got a frame mini auto that's uh Chase, And
• 25:11
  I haven't had a chance to look further to see if he has any any
• 25:15
  other autos. I don't believe he does. There's also autos of cut signatures
• 25:22
  where you get like Harry Houdini, and uh, Mark Twain, Rosa Parks.
• 25:26
  There's interesting. Those are all one of one autos. The other other
• 25:32
  interesting ones that I think are gonna be chase cards for a number of folks
• 25:36
  go out to sport of tennis. Raphael Nadal is in this set, and
• 25:41
  so he's definitely going to demand a premium just because there's not that many tennis
• 25:47
  cards, but he is one of the greatest tennis players that that there ever
• 25:52
  ever was. You're also going to get some interesting uh chases from guys like
• 25:57
  Robert Kraft. Uh. You also have an artist Ermsey in here, so
• 26:03
  those will be some fun ones to chase. And then the one that I
• 26:06
  think is going to be the most interesting and probably get a lot of folks
• 26:11
  going is Robert de Niro. I just I just think de Niro is for
• 26:15
  for whatever reason, people are going to chase his cards and they will enjoy.
• 26:22
  I haven't seen the card of him, and I don't actually believe there's
• 26:26
  an auto of de Niro unless I'm misreading the checklist. I think it's just
• 26:30
  basse, but I can only imagine the photo on that card. So uh.
• 26:37
  There are a number of non baseball autos. I think there's sixty one,
• 26:42
  uh the framed autos in this checklist, and always always a fun one
• 26:48
  to chase, and always one of those that gets underappreciated. I think in
• 26:52
  the card market, these are the ones that you find relics or autos or
• 26:57
  just different parallel in the dollar bins because people was like, I have no
• 27:03
  idea, I have no idea who Robert de Niro is, And I think
• 27:08
  you'll end up finding a few of those hidden throughout dollar bins and and uh,
• 27:14
  just grabbing fun. They're fun to having a collection, even if at
• 27:18
  the end of the day they don't have that much value. But they're a
• 27:21
  standard relic, at least from from what I remember on againter just within your
• 27:25
  everyday player three to five dollars card, nothing too exciting. A lot of
• 27:27
  the celebrities end up being ten to fifteen dollars cards just because there's a little
• 27:33
  extra something to the nostalgia of those cards. So really exciting to see all
• 27:37
  the big names in here. And I don't about you anybody specifically you're chasing
• 27:45
  or if I if I know you better, you are really interested in all
• 27:48
  the other inserts. Yeah, yeah, there's certainly lots, and you can
• 27:52
  see that once you're going through the information for the whole checklist here on Alan
• 27:56
  and Ginter, you can see all of names, hundreds, if not thousands
• 28:02
  of different cards, and so you can see all the inserts. And I
• 28:06
  guess we should have explained to Allen and Ginter a lot of the inserts are
• 28:10
  actually many. There are many tobacco cards which I looked up the size.
• 28:14
  It's technically seventeen sixteenths of an inch by twenty five eighths of an inch.
• 28:21
  That's the size of at least that's the size of what the T two O
• 28:25
  six cards were, and so I think that's what these are. So they're
• 28:29
  not your standard baseball card. They look I'm not even sure how to really
• 28:33
  describe them, but it is something that you need to see. They almost
• 28:37
  look like a little post it note or something that they're much smaller. And
• 28:41
  so that's what a lot of these autos are. Getting back to, some
• 28:45
  of the ones that I'm interested in from the non baseball player autos are first
• 28:52
  as Sarah Lang's from MLB. I think that's just really great. She has
• 28:57
  obviously a great campaign, as you diagnosed recently with als and has become a
• 29:03
  little bit like a mini celebrity within the stats community because she just comes up
• 29:08
  with the craziest stuff. She's like in Elias Sports Bureau all though herself she's
• 29:14
  got just one of the most fascinating baseball brains that I've ever kind of encountered
• 29:19
  in terms of what I've read and her podcast and stuff. So I'm interested
• 29:25
  to see that one as well as I think the other one that will do
• 29:29
  really well is that Thomas Ian Nicholas autograph. He's Henry Rodan Gartner from the
• 29:34
  Rookie of the Year movies, and so I know previously there was a sand
• 29:40
  Lot set in tops archives like what was that five six years ago or so,
• 29:45
  and so anything that has that nineties baseball movie nostalgia really will be a
• 29:52
  hot collector's item. So I think that one will be a big one.
• 29:56
  But getting into some of the inserts, I think this is where this is
• 30:02
  where Alan Ginter shines, I think, and what makes it a fascinating opening
• 30:07
  of the boxes with especially for people who are first getting into cards or have
• 30:14
  children. I think really love these. I think they're they're goofy as opposed
• 30:18
  to stupid. Some people they're stupid. But you've got all sorts of great
• 30:23
  inserts this year. You've got let's see what animals do we have going this
• 30:30
  year. We have a bunch of foods again. We have International Delights which
• 30:36
  is international foods. We have Fun in the Sun which is beach themed cards.
• 30:40
  We have the Metal Bennies again, which is a different type of card
• 30:47
  that they're actually metal and glass cards stained glass cards in Alan and ginter as
• 30:52
  well as woods, so you get different materials as well, which is really
• 30:55
  fun. There's a music set of a bunch of different musical instruments. There
• 31:00
  are only in is it called the insert. It's different stadiums and different things
• 31:06
  that you can only find those stadiums. You also have. I think this
• 31:10
  will be one of my favorites. And I think I'm gonna open smelling and
• 31:12
  get inter with my wife because she's gonna appreciate this is the dessert mini checklist
• 31:18
  is just a bunch of different desserts. So is that al with a falaffel
• 31:22
  on there? That is the that goes back to the other food one thing
• 31:26
  that was the International Delights minish the falafel and fish and chips. Yep.
• 31:30
  The Falafel one is one I think I'm gonna have to get. And then
• 31:36
  they've also got a Talented with Talent t a l O N with a bunch
• 31:42
  of birds, and so looking forward to that one. There's a uniform countdown
• 31:48
  insert which is going by uniform numbers and doing ten to one starting it one
• 31:56
  being Ozzie Smith and ten being too for Jones. And then you've got Wonders
• 32:00
  of the World mini insarch, which we'll just have different spots in different areas
• 32:06
  that are included. And then I think this I was trying to read.
• 32:09
  I couldn't quite tell if like the print run on this is limited, but
• 32:13
  the rarest of the Diamond Mini checklist. It has different events that are really
• 32:19
  rare in baseball, and I think it's really cool because it goes from the
• 32:22
  rarest to the most common. So you've got things like unecessitual play, you
• 32:28
  know, for home run games, hitting for a cycle, so on and
• 32:31
  so forth. So it's gonna be fun for insert junkies. Brew. I
• 32:38
  know that this isn't quite up your alley, but anything in their spark your
• 32:43
  interests other than the Valaffel card. The the Valaffel card does does spike my
• 32:49
  interest. Actually, the one that I'm intrigued by the most this year,
• 32:52
  and actually partially because it's a little bit larger set, is the World of
• 32:57
  Wonder. Minis just I love traveling, and I think it's really fun to
• 33:04
  kind of look through those I have a sun that loves to travel and see
• 33:07
  all different things about geography, and so I can just see the fun of
• 33:12
  collecting that and trying to figure out where these places are and what they mean,
• 33:16
  all those kind of things, and I just I can imagine that I'm
• 33:21
  gonna call the photography because it's more art on these cards. And you know,
• 33:24
  here's the Great Wall of China card, it's the taj Mahal card,
• 33:29
  you know, getting Petro out in Jordan. I think there's just some really
• 33:34
  unique cards. I'd just be a fun set to collect. It's not good,
• 33:37
  there's the price emissions low. Is not a whole lot. You know,
• 33:40
  there's gonna be plenty of them. This We all know this is gonna
• 33:43
  be overproduced, but it's it is kind of a fun set. So I'm
• 33:47
  interested in and potentially putting that set together. I think it'd just be a
• 33:52
  fun little chase. It's not just ten cards I can put together just by
• 33:55
  ripping a single box. I think I think it's one that might take a
• 33:59
  little work, but it'll be fun to see. Yeah, And I think
• 34:02
  overall I like the look at Allen and Ginter a lot this year too,
• 34:06
  compared to last year. Last year was a little boring to me, but
• 34:08
  this year it's got the different framed borders with kind of that banner running through
• 34:14
  it that gives that really old time tobacco card feel that just kind of it
• 34:19
  does give it a little more life than last year's was a little bland.
• 34:22
  It was just kind of like a faded, whitish border and it just didn't
• 34:28
  quite do it for me. So I'm looking forward to this set a lot
• 34:30
  more than Allen Ginter from last year. And one of the things that we
• 34:35
  didn't get a chance to talk about and I was looking through, like what's
• 34:37
  in every box for a hobby box Allen Ginter, and I think this was
• 34:40
  part of the fun of the set. Every hobby box has you get three
• 34:45
  autograph, relic, rip card or buyback cards, and we didn't hit the
• 34:50
  rip cards or rip card is a card with another card inside and the you
• 34:55
  don't know what you're gonna get. It could be an extremely rare card.
• 34:59
  It could just be an a regular base mini card. It could be anything.
• 35:02
  And there's this this kind of a gamble of do you rip the card
• 35:07
  because it might be, you know, a Showhyutani out of ten rip card
• 35:13
  which has extreme value, but inside might be an autograph one of one Showhyutani.
• 35:19
  It could be anybody you don't know. You might open it up and
• 35:21
  it's you know, Adam waynewright. It can come back to our intro and
• 35:24
  it wouldn't be a good one actually if it was something like I'm trying to
• 35:29
  see Michael Tolia. Yeah, so there the possibilities are end list, but
• 35:35
  beyond so the rip cards are I think are fun just another interesting part about
• 35:38
  the set. But also in a hobby box you get twenty four inserts,
• 35:43
  you get twenty four mini cards, and you also get a box loader and
• 35:45
  a foil parallel as well. So it's just this it's really a plethora of
• 35:52
  different things. Every pack you open, it's not just open you know,
• 35:54
  your tops Update hobby Box re Hero. You get like one relic card in
• 36:00
  five inserts that it feels like you're hoping for a numbered cards somewhere in there.
• 36:04
  So there is a lot of fun in those hobby boxes, and it's
• 36:08
  it's not that hard to define. I think it's just over one hundred dollars
• 36:13
  for a hobby box. Yeah, yeah, get they're overproduced, I'm sure,
• 36:16
  but and then traditionally you're not They're not gonna be one of those that
• 36:21
  you buy to flip this. It's just more about the fun of the hobby
• 36:24
  in this set, and I think that's what makes it so great. Yeah,
• 36:28
  I agree. And so, like we said, it's coming out on
• 36:31
  Friday, September twenty second. If you're looking to get a hobby box,
• 36:36
  you can hit up your local hobby stores, or it should also hit shelves
• 36:39
  at targets and walmarts that day as well in blasters, which won't quite have
• 36:45
  the same mix of cards, but can give you a little bit of like
• 36:47
  the taste of what that hobby boxes. I would also suggest, if you're
• 36:51
  opening this for the first time, make sure you're flipping your cards front and
• 36:54
  back on Alan and Ginter, because Alan and Ginter, like the old tobacco
• 37:00
  cards, has variations where the backs are different, so you can stumble upon
• 37:06
  that it's just really fun to sleuth through all your cards and figure out what's
• 37:09
  what out of here. I'll only get into box that I really love it.
• 37:14
  So with that, what other sets do we have coming out through?
• 37:17
  I hinted at a big one, and so I will continue. I will
• 37:22
  contain my squeals until you get to it, but let everybody know it's on
• 37:25
  the radar. Oh, we'll put that one last. But I've actually was
• 37:29
  exciting because there's a lot of sets coming out over the next month or so,
• 37:32
  really the next three weeks. First of all, we got started up
• 37:37
  with over the next two weeks we have some pretty high end sets, ones
• 37:39
  that I personally have not rips, but someday, somehow I will get the
• 37:45
  opportunity. But a week from now, we have Tops Definitive. If you
• 37:50
  haven't seen those very high end looking cards, you know, very large patches
• 37:54
  when they have a lot of autos. I think they actually have some of
• 37:58
  the metal border cards as well and those, so Tops Defendive is a very
• 38:01
  high end product. Also, about two weeks out we got Tops of Gilded
• 38:06
  Tops Guilded came out for the first time last year and it is very it's
• 38:09
  a kind of a redo of the chrome, which we have quite a few
• 38:14
  of those, but it is more of a gilded gold look of the cards
• 38:17
  and very it looks very nice, and you know they do go for a
• 38:23
  pretty penny. A lot of high end autos in that set, so TOPS
• 38:28
  Gilded is another high end set after that. I think we're about three weeks
• 38:32
  out from one of the flagships with TOPS Update. Uh, Tops Update coming
• 38:37
  out. I don't know about you. I look at the checklist. I
• 38:40
  missed the original initial pre sell the jumbos myself, and I just couldn't pull
• 38:45
  the trigger on the hobby boxes. When I looked at the checklist, I
• 38:49
  was expecting a few more bigger names, rookies. It was it was.
• 38:52
  It was like Matt McClain and nobody else. I think was the where where
• 38:55
  it landed. Maybe maybe I'm missing somebody. But Tops Update will be coming
• 39:00
  out here, I think on the eleventh of October. Yeah, there will
• 39:05
  be your Perez as well, and I do agree. I think the hobby
• 39:08
  boxes are a little underwhelming because you're only getting one relic or auto in there,
• 39:14
  as opposed to with a jumbo. Those are going for about one hundred
• 39:16
  and fifty bucks. But you get three relics and four autos, and I
• 39:22
  think the big ones especially is that like you still have some a year higher
• 39:27
  end autos from Jordan Walker and Masataka Yoshida and those types of guys have some
• 39:34
  pretty good ones as well as there's some good dual autos, and it's a
• 39:38
  little bit better auto list I thought overall than Series one or Series two.
• 39:45
  Yeah, so it's it's to me, I'm right there with you if if
• 39:47
  you can get the Jumbo, the price is actually not too bad. It's
• 39:51
  definitely to me worth ripping at least one of those, I'm not I couldn't
• 39:55
  say the same for the hobby Box. And then the ronically, I think
• 40:00
  it's the eighteenth of October. We have four sets coming out of that same
• 40:05
  day, and I'm gonna go in reverse order of my notes because once I
• 40:08
  get there, you're just not gonna be able to contain yourself. So we
• 40:12
  have pro debut coming out that that day. So that's a focus is on
• 40:15
  the miners and actually have a pretty fun set, very very affordable set,
• 40:22
  if I recall, usually like a fifty sixty dollars hobby Box, just very
• 40:25
  fun, easy rip Bowman inception is another newer product, usually some really good
• 40:32
  designs of again focusing on on prospects. We have the Tier one set.
• 40:38
  What's the set that I personally love? Uh, usually the very thick card
• 40:44
  stocks, usually especially on the autos, and usually very I'm gonna call it
• 40:50
  classic elegant designs. I'm not sure last time I used elegant when describing cards,
• 40:54
  But if you're gonna go there, it's Tier one. So I think
• 40:58
  that they have some great, great cards as well, So we'll talk about
• 41:00
  those more as we get closer. But the drum Roll one of the sets
• 41:06
  that we feared was going away this year some prior TOPS announcements, Stadium Club
• 41:13
  is coming out on ten eighteen, just announced by Tops, just just made
• 41:19
  it. I was actually looking at some of the list that list out the
• 41:22
  card releases for the year, and it was like you could tell its been
• 41:23
  insert is like everything's like twenty twenty three this way, it was like twenty
• 41:28
  three Stadium Club, like they just like inserted the last second because it just
• 41:30
  got announced, and I think folks thought that was gone and it actually would
• 41:36
  cause some heartburn because at least some of us that love collecting for collecting Stadium
• 41:40
  Club is like a must have set, so I'm I'm tossing this one up.
• 41:45
  I wish I had some great transition, but your soapbox is yours.
• 41:51
  Stadium Club is back for twenty twenty three. Mike, what do you think?
• 41:53
  I'm just very excited. I'm so like I I was really sad when
• 41:59
  they announced that this was going to go away, because I've expressed it's my
• 42:02
  favorite set. The photography is wonderful, and the card stocks usually pretty good,
• 42:07
  and the design looks okay. This year it's not my favorite, but
• 42:10
  I'll take it for what you get in terms of the quality of the photos.
• 42:15
  So I'm really really excited. This is going to be a really fun
• 42:21
  time to rip it at during the playoffs, you know, and got some
• 42:24
  update, got some Stadium Club. I'm excited for October. Yeah. I
• 42:29
  been thinking we need to do a live rip on the pod, but then
• 42:31
  the lack of certain media such as a video or anything probably is not ideal
• 42:38
  for doing a live rip. You'll hear a lot of card rustling in the
• 42:44
  celebration every ten minutes so and just like looking at the goofiest cards just to
• 42:49
  like be like, look at all you can like see all the individual hairs
• 42:53
  in his mustache. That's the Spencer Strider card right there for you come in,
• 42:58
  Come in twenty twenty three Stadium. That's yeah, I hope that that's
• 43:01
  the short print is just his mustache. Lots of lots of big releases over
• 43:07
  the next three three four weeks. So really excited to get in there.
• 43:12
  I'm sure we're going to do a deep dive on Stadium Club when when Stadium
• 43:15
  Club comes out, because there will just be all kinds of different things to
• 43:19
  talk about with that. So very excited and it's it's shaping up to be
• 43:23
  a fun, fun fall for us here in the baseball card world. I
• 43:28
  couldn't agree more so with that. We'll close it out here on the Cards
• 43:30
  portion. We'll be back with the categories revisiting some of our preseason picks.
• 43:36
  Stick around, Okay, welcome back everybody to the Categories portion of today's show.
• 43:58
  And like I said, we're going to reexamined some of our preseason picks.
• 44:01
  So it's far enough in that we can look at some of the terrible
• 44:07
  predictions that we made at the beginning of the year. And I'll link to
• 44:10
  this obviously in the show notes, but you can find on razball dot com.
• 44:15
  Back in March, on the twenty eighth, Gray posted all the staff
• 44:22
  picks, and so I'm actually going to table all the awards. So we
• 44:28
  each individually picked the wards too, from Rookie of the Year, Cy Young
• 44:31
  and MVP because we'll maybe revisit that when the actual voting comes out. But
• 44:37
  we're gonna look at our overall fantasy picks, and so I'll just say some
• 44:44
  of them were rough. I'm also don't think that either of us were maybe
• 44:47
  the roughest boons on this list, as I'm seeing a few Miguel Vargases and
• 44:52
  Taylor Awards and some other pretty troublesome players that we're on this list. But
• 45:00
  hey, you got to put your stake in the ground and take a shot,
• 45:02
  and that's what we're doing here, is the analysts. So we want
• 45:07
  to go through and just kind of summarize some of our best picks, some
• 45:09
  of our worst picks, and chat in between any initial takes that you want
• 45:14
  to start with, Jeremy before we dive into it. Yeah, I think
• 45:17
  this is always one of my favorite parts of the year, is making those
• 45:21
  predictions because you can either go big or go home type of thing here.
• 45:25
  I don't like to play it safe in my predictions. There are certain ones
• 45:30
  that you know, hey, when we get to talk about the ALMVP later,
• 45:34
  there might have been a consensus pick that folks made. But generally,
• 45:38
  especially when we're talking about our fantasy sleepers, are bus the comeback players,
• 45:44
  most valuable players. It's always a little bit all over the board. It's
• 45:47
  really fun to just see where do we land, where your initial guts right
• 45:53
  or how far off were you? And I like to say, I look
• 45:58
  at our picks. I think we had some really good ones, and I
• 46:00
  think we had some bad ones. So I'm excited to get into it.
• 46:05
  So let's let's go where we started. Well, I'm going to start in
• 46:09
  mutual admiration of each other because I think our best pick together we made the
• 46:16
  same pick for comeback Player of the Year, and that was Ozzie Albi's.
• 46:21
  So at the beginning of the year, he was being drafted around ADP of
• 46:24
  forty eight in NFBC draft. So I ran it from it's a little generous.
• 46:30
  I ran it from October one, twenty twenty two or twenty twenty two
• 46:34
  to the end of March twenty twenty three, and so his overall ADP was
• 46:40
  forty eight. His current ranking on the raz ball Player Raider is twenty seven,
• 46:45
  so that's a good two rounds earlier. He's kind of a back of
• 46:50
  the second round player, which honestly is what I was thinking he would be.
• 46:54
  Like, I know that he was coming into the year. Ozzie Alby's
• 47:00
  was really just taking some heat from people for I think especially his WRC pluses
• 47:06
  over his career that you know, coming into the year, his best WRC
• 47:10
  plus for the year was a one sixteen and twenty nineteen the year of that
• 47:15
  juice ball and Ozzie Albi's. The thing of with him is the bad ball
• 47:21
  profile is never anything too special. You know, the hard hit percentage is
• 47:27
  middle of the road, the barrel percentage is the middle of the road.
• 47:30
  It's at eight point five percent this year. But what he does is he
• 47:34
  plays a ton in a high powered offense and just racks up stats because he
• 47:38
  both steals and hits homers. So Ozzie Albi's his line on the year is
• 47:44
  two sixty eight three twenty five, four ninety eight with thirty one homers twelve
• 47:49
  store on bases eighty six runs ninety eight RBIs I think we nailed this that
• 47:53
  like this is I know you're kind of splitting hairs in terms of a couple
• 47:58
  of rounds, but getting a second round pick value in the fourth round when
• 48:02
  it was somebody at a position Mike's second base or am I really huge out
• 48:07
  of Asi Alby's So brew is that kind of what you were thinking at the
• 48:10
  beginning of the year two? And is this what Ozzie Albi's is to you?
• 48:15
  Yeah? I think so that's that's where why I went with Alby's is
• 48:19
  to me, he's He's always been a little bit underrated as as a player.
• 48:22
  And I don't know what it is about Alby's maybe beat on the same
• 48:28
  team as some other bigger names. He I don't know that there's the personality
• 48:31
  like he he doesn't. It's kind of the Mic Trout effect me to do
• 48:35
  degree Albi's isn't front and the center of a lot of interviews and things like
• 48:39
  that. He's just kind of a more laid back guy. So I do
• 48:43
  think that he was to me a really good potential. And when you're talking
• 48:50
  about like return on draft value, you know it's a lot of times you're
• 48:54
  like, oh, the guy grabbed the twentieth round, he delivered tenth round
• 48:58
  value. That's basically what Alby's was doing. But he was doing it at
• 49:01
  the top of the draft, so you're able to give a pick and maybe
• 49:05
  the fifth round and get you know, arguably second round value. Like that's
• 49:09
  that's huge, that's really what you're going after. So I'm really I was
• 49:15
  really excited about what he did. Maybe it's because of the pick, but
• 49:20
  I think Albi's had a great year and then I think he's going to continue
• 49:22
  it. I think it was just a matter of getting healthy is what he
• 49:25
  needed to do. Yeah, I totally agree. And what's kind of crazy
• 49:30
  too, is I know this is blending a little bit of like our podcast
• 49:35
  segments, but I have been tucking away Ozzy Albie's cards because he came up
• 49:39
  so early at the age of twenty, he's got an outside shot at three
• 49:44
  thousand hits. Oddly that he's at eight hundred and twenty hits already at age
• 49:49
  twenty six. The last year last year from the injury and the COVID year
• 49:54
  are really going to hurt him in the long run. But he's gonna get
• 49:57
  close. I think if he plays out an entire career, that goes to
• 50:01
  his sporties. So just kind of a really strangely underrated player on one of
• 50:07
  the greatest teams ever this year. Yeah, I fully agree. I don't
• 50:10
  know that he's gonna gets three thousand, but like he is also the kind
• 50:14
  of guy that his profile plays for a long time. Yeah, you know
• 50:17
  he I don't want to say Joe Morgan esque, but to degree, I
• 50:23
  think that's actually a really interesting comp for him and Morgan played for a long
• 50:27
  time. So yeah, I think Alby said is going to be a good
• 50:31
  investment. And yeah, from a card perspective, I have a few of
• 50:36
  us squared away myself. So yeah, so let's get into some of our
• 50:39
  individual best picks. I will let you pick what you think was your best
• 50:45
  pick overall, ye, from your list of fantasy guys. Yeah, so
• 50:49
  I'm gonna gonna go with, you know, my most valuable fantasy picture.
• 50:53
  And I want to clarify what the category means, because I think this is
• 50:58
  always one of those that like his I holder, what does that mean?
• 51:00
  Uh? And why do you pick what you pick? For me? The
• 51:04
  most valuable fantasy pitcher? Most valuable fantasy hitter is really about getting the most
• 51:09
  value out of that individual pick who's returning the most, you know, dollars
• 51:15
  in production for the dollars you spent at auction or the pick at draft.
• 51:21
  So my most valuable fantasy pitcher pick in the preseason was Sonny Gray. Sonny
• 51:28
  Gray was going off the board UH pick two eighteen. He was the seventy
• 51:35
  ninth pitcher off the board if you look at the player Raider at this At
• 51:42
  this point in the season, he's the twenty third starting pitcher and he I
• 51:45
  think at one point was actually the top twenty starting pitchers. And so he's
• 51:50
  those guys just seems to reinvent himself every year, is his I'd say overall
• 51:55
  skill level decreases, his smarts increase, and so he really knows his stuff
• 52:00
  and he knows what he's doing with it. That's actually part of the reason
• 52:02
  I picked him. He seems like one of those guys that just continues to
• 52:06
  adapt and continues to be under value because he doesn't There's not like one thing
• 52:10
  that somebody Gray does great. There's not He does a lot of things really
• 52:16
  really well. And I tend to build fantasy teams on that kind of methodology.
• 52:22
  I don't need to be the best everything. I need to finish in
• 52:23
  the top three and then I generally gonna win the championship. Right That's You've
• 52:27
  played with me long enough, you know the way I approach things. But
• 52:31
  you know Gray, at this point in the season, he's got thirty starts.
• 52:35
  He's playing to get what two more starts just under a strikeout at inning,
• 52:40
  He's in the mid twos for for walks, he's a one point one
• 52:44
  seven whip, two point eight four e Rara. His his FIP is two
• 52:49
  point eight five right there. His x FIP is in the mid threes,
• 52:52
  so it was xcara. So there's there's been a little bit of luck,
• 52:55
  but overall he's really got lucky. In the home run category. He usually
• 53:00
  gives up some home runs and he's not give him up many at all this
• 53:05
  year. So I'm really excited about my Sonny Gray pick. I think there's
• 53:08
  at least one draft. I picked him up on the reserve round. Boy,
• 53:13
  it was it was fantastic. I got him for like a dollar in
• 53:15
  an auction. So now the rest of my picks and that team were absolutely
• 53:20
  terrible. So it didn't matter, but at least I got Sonny Gray.
• 53:22
  So yeah, and I know from just our history together, you've been infatuated
• 53:28
  with this man's it's like his rookie debut in twenty thirteen and I was too.
• 53:32
  And when he went to New York and Cincinnati, I think that really
• 53:39
  just correct his standing in my mind, because some of the stats that he
• 53:45
  was putting up. He just wasn't comfortable in New York and obviously that was
• 53:49
  not a great pitchers park. Same thing with Cincinnati that I think he was
• 53:52
  more comfortable pitching there, But you're never going to beat great American ballpark in
• 53:58
  the long run. And here it from the future. This is uh like
• 54:06
  a back to the future gotten his DeLorean. You know sometime maybe you're like
• 54:12
  bored during your holidays here in twenty twenty three, Jeremy Brewer is that back
• 54:16
  to the future and his DeLorean back in March. Here is the comment that
• 54:21
  is underneath most valuable fantasy picture in this article, why is everyone out on
• 54:25
  sunny Gray? Guy is being drafted outside the top sixty pictures after season where
• 54:30
  he posted a low threes ear array with a low one one whip and struck
• 54:34
  out a batter Perning. What gives that is just free profit, Jeremy Brewer.
• 54:38
  Look at that. It's it's like I wrote it myself. It's it's
• 54:45
  it's it's come true, like to the tea. That is the stats I
• 54:47
  just read off. He is that guy, yeah, And I don't I
• 54:52
  don't know why nobody treats him that way. And I think the thing is,
• 54:53
  I think that they're gonna it's gonna be the same thing next year.
• 54:57
  I don't know, it just seems that's the way things are gonna go.
• 54:59
  So I actually recall a league that you and I are, and I had
• 55:04
  Sonny Gray last last year. You see you called the trend, right,
• 55:07
  you called it. I have this kind of guy every year. I had
• 55:09
  him like twenty dollars in the draft, and I sent him back so I
• 55:12
  didn't have the budget. And then I was bidding them up in the preseason
• 55:16
  auction in the you know how sometimes the auction just ends when you had no
• 55:21
  expectation. I got him for like eight dollars in this you know, four
• 55:23
  hundred dollars budget league, and I was bidding him up. I didn't need
• 55:28
  the starting pitching. I already had enough guys. I was just bidding him
• 55:30
  up and then like it stopped him, Like did my computer glitch? Like
• 55:34
  what happened here? How did I get Sonny Gray for eight dollars? And
• 55:37
  apparently I was the only one that thought he was worth anything anywhere near to
• 55:39
  the mid teens because I've been trying to train them all off season to everybody,
• 55:44
  and nobody wanted them for twenty bucks, And I'm like, that makes
• 55:45
  no sense. Sonny Gray is a great picture. So apparently I was the
• 55:49
  only one that thought that that in that league. Yeah, and so for
• 55:54
  my win or like it's not as big as Anny Great, I will already
• 55:59
  say the bat that I think, out of between all of our picks,
• 56:02
  Sonny Gray was easily the biggest win for you, because yeah, you nailed
• 56:07
  it, you even with that comment, like you just called his season line.
• 56:10
  So mine is I had for most valuable Fantasy hitter lined up Ezekiel Tobar.
• 56:19
  So we talked about him in one of our earlier pods that I am
• 56:23
  just a really big Ezekiel Tobar guy. He's in Coors Field. He's a
• 56:29
  switchy bat, a switch bat. He's twenty two years old and actually he's
• 56:34
  just the right handed bat, my bat. I don't know why I have
• 56:37
  him as a switch hitter in my head, but he's played shortstop all year
• 56:42
  and he's played it to the tune of a positive nineteen point two defensive runs
• 56:49
  saved on I don't think it's defensive run saves, but defensive runs created on
• 56:53
  fan grass. Right now, the stats aren't they're whelming. I wouldn't say
• 57:00
  they're undwhelming or overwhelming. He hit two fifty five or is hitting two fifty
• 57:04
  five with the two eighty eight OBP for fifteen slug But the counting stats is
• 57:08
  really where Tovar comes through and can just kind of help pick it up for
• 57:14
  you that he picked up fifteen homers, eleven stone bases and is in the
• 57:19
  mid seventies on runs and RBI. So I think what I liked Tovar for
• 57:23
  was just being able to almost be like a set and forget am I and
• 57:30
  even above that using him has a streamer at m I just for his price.
• 57:34
  So back in the spring you were able to get him at pick two
• 57:38
  twenty seven in the NFBC ADPs, and his player radar right now is kicking
• 57:45
  out a one thirty nine. So he's been a much more valuable player than
• 57:51
  he was at draft day. You know, that's roughly eight rounds, eight
• 57:57
  to ten rounds of value that you picked up because he has played every day.
• 58:00
  And so that's what I liked about Tavar. And like I said,
• 58:05
  if you were able to like set up something where you could play him as
• 58:08
  your shortstopper, am I, when he was only playing at home, you
• 58:13
  would have ended up getting a line that is, let me, it's loading
• 58:19
  two eighty nine, three twenty nine with a four sixty two slug. That's
• 58:22
  a seven ninety ops. And he's put up seven of his homers at home,
• 58:30
  which is lower than away, which is weird. But he the batting
• 58:34
  average definitely boosts when he's at home. You know, that's a two eighty
• 58:37
  nine batting average. That's a pretty dependable shortstop, am I. I liked
• 58:40
  him for Dynasties because he's playing so much, he's learning how to fail,
• 58:45
  and so he's only twenty two. He's really young. I like Ezekiel Tovar
• 58:50
  now and into the future. I think he's one of those guys that like
• 58:54
  championshihip sort are not one in the first few rounds of drafts, at least
• 58:59
  in my opinion, they're lost. You like you lose fancy champions in the
• 59:01
  first few rounds or the or the high value dollar auction guys. That's where
• 59:06
  you lose fantasy the auctions. Let's talk about my worst pick in a second
• 59:09
  here. But but the guys like Ezekiel Tovar are the ones that win championships
• 59:16
  because you get him something great too. The guys that you get later the
• 59:21
  draft that have that upside. And if you look at Tavar's line, it's
• 59:23
  not that exciting, but it's very, very reliable for what you paid.
• 59:30
  And so I think that's what's so exciting about Ezekiel Tovar. So I think
• 59:32
  that's a great pick. I was nowhere near paying attention to Zekiel Tavar going
• 59:37
  into the season. So you got that one on me buy a mile nice?
• 59:42
  Yeah, So what do you have for another one of your best picks?
• 59:46
  Yeah? So my other one would be, uh my one of my
• 59:51
  bus So going into the season, I was very very low on a certain
• 59:58
  Michael Harris. Michael Harris was going in the first three rounds, actually the
• 1:00:04
  top of that the third round, and at this point in season and I
• 1:00:08
  know he's he's been banged up and not healthy, so there's a degree of
• 1:00:13
  all of all that. So I'm sure somebody out there's gonna be like,
• 1:00:15
  it's not fair. He didn't uh didn't pro rade his stats, but player
• 1:00:19
  Rader he's eighty nine overall. So he definitely has not delivered on the promise.
• 1:00:27
  Uh. And part of that is because he he had a very lucky
• 1:00:30
  uh year, his his rookie year, and so you know, he's still
• 1:00:37
  played well, you know, he's likely gonna end up at the twenty twenty
• 1:00:40
  season, he's gonna hit just under three hundred, but his his counting stats
• 1:00:47
  have not been where you would want them to be. Uh. You know,
• 1:00:51
  part of that's his his lineup placement. But it's like, okay,
• 1:00:57
  how could you be upset it goes twenty twenty hits almost three hundred. Uh.
• 1:01:01
  Well, when you when you draft him as almost the top of the
• 1:01:06
  third round, you're expecting, you know, not just those counting stats.
• 1:01:09
  You're expecting him to not have only sixty RBIs for the season. You're not
• 1:01:14
  expecting you're expecting him to score one hundred runs. He's likely going to go
• 1:01:17
  twenty twenty and score seventy five runs and not even sniff sixty RBIs So yeah,
• 1:01:23
  he's helping you. And actually this it feels like average twenty twenties average
• 1:01:28
  this year, Uh for for for players. Uh, if you're not getting
• 1:01:32
  across the board production, it really hurts you. So yeah, Michael Harris
• 1:01:38
  a bust. You look at his line, it still doesn't look like a
• 1:01:42
  bus. But I think because the hype and the healing he had going into
• 1:01:45
  the season, he was drafted above who he is. And and that's that's
• 1:01:51
  unfortunate because he still is a great player, and uh, it's you can
• 1:01:54
  still be a bust as as a great player. So Michael Harris, I
• 1:02:00
  think he's gonna probably be a fair value next year because I think people aren't
• 1:02:06
  going to have that rookie Oh he can become even more than what he was
• 1:02:10
  perspective, and so I think he's going to be a fair value next year
• 1:02:16
  and it'll market will correct itself. Yeah, but I don't know, Well,
• 1:02:22
  go ahead, I think it's possible. I mean I don't. I
• 1:02:24
  think he might get drafted around the same spot again because part of it is
• 1:02:30
  you go and you look at his savant page and it is red. It
• 1:02:35
  is a really great page. He sprays the ball all over, he squares
• 1:02:39
  the ball up. Sure, he chases and whiffs a little bit too much,
• 1:02:44
  but you know what, He's got the speed that you want him putting
• 1:02:46
  the ball in play, and he's got the power that you want him swinging
• 1:02:50
  the bat. And so because of that, I think people are going to
• 1:02:53
  talk themselves into drafting him pretty high. Again that I agree with you is
• 1:03:00
  a weird player because he is one of the best players in the league.
• 1:03:04
  You can just see that on the Savant page. If he was anywhere else,
• 1:03:07
  he would be hitting first, second, third in the lineup. But
• 1:03:12
  as long as he's hitting in the nine hole for the Braves, his value
• 1:03:15
  is never gonna match up with his talent in terms of fantasy And so,
• 1:03:21
  I yeah, it's a tough dude, because it's like, yeah, I
• 1:03:22
  love Michael Harris, but yeah, when you're having to ratchet down the runs
• 1:03:29
  in the RBI to somewhere in the seventies and sixties, that really really hurts
• 1:03:35
  you at the beginning of the draft because you're looking for stalwarts that regularly give
• 1:03:39
  you ninety to one hundred in those categories and so if you're starting from behind,
• 1:03:44
  woof yeah, And I think that you actually make a good point here.
• 1:03:49
  I didn't realize how good his second half has been. Like I'm looking
• 1:03:52
  at the aggregate, but he hit three twenty eight and a second half,
• 1:03:54
  he has nine homers, nine stone bases, but he still has twenty seven
• 1:04:00
  runs about it in the entire second and a half, which barely beat the
• 1:04:04
  first half of twenty six. And so it's it's one of those that I
• 1:04:08
  sometimes like to look at players across all five categories in RHODO and so like,
• 1:04:12
  let's just plus and minuses right or degrees, Like I'd love to create
• 1:04:15
  the calculation to do uh the deviations from the mean, and look at how
• 1:04:19
  good they are across the categories. And nobody pays attention two runs in RBI
• 1:04:25
  because you just expect a good player being a good spot in light up to
• 1:04:28
  get them. And that's not Michael Harris, which is just it feels so
• 1:04:31
  wrong to your point. So I don't know, it's it's he's he's a
• 1:04:34
  tough, tough one. And as I say, now, I think I
• 1:04:36
  have to agree with you having that second half look as it did, and
• 1:04:41
  he really does still out the gate. I think people are like, oh,
• 1:04:44
  if he can just do that the whole season, Yeah, he might
• 1:04:46
  go twenty five twenty five, which you get is great, don't get me
• 1:04:48
  wrong, Like that's great, great production if you weren't being penalized with sixty
• 1:04:54
  RBIs and seventy runs, if you don't have to make that up. So
• 1:04:57
  all right, how about how about you let's give you give us one more
• 1:05:00
  that you are claiming as a win here. Yeah, and so this is
• 1:05:05
  I'm going to take it in the bus category just because I think the overall
• 1:05:11
  methodology worked, and that was everyone was so into your Don all draft season
• 1:05:17
  Jr. Don Alvarez of the Houston Astros h But I was out, and
• 1:05:24
  I've always been out because of his knees. This year he was coming in
• 1:05:28
  with an hand slash wrist injury and that sap some power, like you can
• 1:05:34
  tell in terms of he still has elite hard hit rates, elite barrel rates,
• 1:05:41
  but they're certain they dipped this year. He's, you know, added
• 1:05:44
  a year of another set of injuries in the spring. His hard hit percentage
• 1:05:48
  has dropped about eight points. His barrel rate has dropped about four points.
• 1:05:54
  His overall, ev has dropped two miles per hour on average, and you
• 1:06:00
  can see it coming through in the power stats. So he also has just
• 1:06:03
  not been on the field because he also had an oblique injury. And so
• 1:06:09
  when Jordan Alvarez was being drafted at the beginning of the year, it was
• 1:06:14
  round eleven twelve, so end of the first round. His overall player raider
• 1:06:19
  right now is sixty on our rasval player Raider. And so don't get me
• 1:06:24
  wrong in terms of like if you were just playing a peer rates like rates
• 1:06:30
  based league, your Don probably is like I would still probably maybe putting more
• 1:06:34
  in the second round as opposed to the first round. But your Don is
• 1:06:38
  never I don't think he's ever going to be healthy. Like this is kind
• 1:06:42
  of like a GM Carlos Stanton situation or any Aaron Judge. This is why
• 1:06:46
  you stay away from me and Judge. But like, Yourdan actually like doesn't
• 1:06:49
  have cartilage in his knees and has been perpetually hurt. I love the talent,
• 1:06:55
  I love the guy, but like I'm never gonna pay the draft day
• 1:06:58
  price on him because I just won't be willing to project him for more than
• 1:07:03
  like one hundred and fifteen games maybe going forward, like it's really tough.
• 1:07:08
  Yeah, And you go back to what we were talking about earlier about you
• 1:07:11
  losing your league in the first few rounds. That's that's a guy like you
• 1:07:15
  were done and I I've all over too. I love you were Don Swing,
• 1:07:18
  I love the power, I love the park. Like there's so much
• 1:07:20
  about him that just like you can dream if only he gets a full season,
• 1:07:26
  he just dhes. So it's going to be this year. The guy
• 1:07:29
  always gets hurt and so like if you're using a top I mean, you
• 1:07:32
  have to use a top two round pick on your down. If you have
• 1:07:36
  to do that and you miss half a season for the guy, it's not
• 1:07:41
  you were done that you got you got. I don't know you were Don
• 1:07:44
  plus replacement. I don't know who who would be. I'm thinking like Brad
• 1:07:49
  Miller is probably still out there somewhere playing. I mean, if you play
• 1:07:53
  it right, you get Lane Thomas. And that's what you tell yourself at
• 1:07:55
  the draft table that like you will find that Lane Thomas. But you know,
• 1:07:59
  whatever, you need l Thomas when somebody else falls apart exactly and everyone
• 1:08:02
  else in your league is looking for that Wayne Thomas or Tommy Fan that's trying
• 1:08:06
  to round out their outfield as well. That like, I think that strategy
• 1:08:10
  used to work a little bit more when just injuries. It's injuries just kind
• 1:08:15
  of guys played through it more. And so especially if you're in leagues where
• 1:08:19
  you have weekly lineups, you can't be taking a zero in terms of fat
• 1:08:24
  bats. So you're grinding out these injuries, and you know, if you're
• 1:08:28
  losing guys for longer stretches, you just everybody's trying to do that, you
• 1:08:31
  know. Yeah, And it seems that the fantasy community tends to look past
• 1:08:39
  the injuries until it's too late, and so there's one way to get get
• 1:08:43
  in front of things. And so speaking of looking past injuries and thinking you
• 1:08:47
  can see past them, I'm going to jump into our poor takes here,
• 1:08:51
  okay, because you have a great segue here mentioned Giancarlos Stanton and I at
• 1:08:59
  the beginning to see he's I had gian Carlos Stanton as my uh MVP in
• 1:09:04
  the hitter category Most Valuable Fantasy Hitter, and I owned him a lot of
• 1:09:10
  places and I definitely paid for it. And gian Carlos Stanton just look at
• 1:09:17
  his line. He's hitting a wonderful one ninety. He just can't believe it.
• 1:09:26
  He did hit, has hit twenty four home runs in only ninety six
• 1:09:28
  games, only managed forty three runs, fifty eight RBIs. He has not
• 1:09:32
  stolen a base, not not a surprise, and he struck out almost thirty
• 1:09:38
  percent of the time. And I think, what's what's interesting about Stanton if
• 1:09:43
  you actually look at like his savant page, he's still hitting the Jesus out
• 1:09:46
  of the ball, like it's still who who he is, but he's striking
• 1:09:51
  out more than he had been for a while. And his batting average just
• 1:09:57
  continues to fall off a cliff. And coming into the season, at least
• 1:10:00
  for me, as I looked back, like two years, he had an
• 1:10:03
  X batting average of two sixty two, and you know, he you know,
• 1:10:09
  he still did pretty decent for himself as far as the standard batting average
• 1:10:15
  that year he was hitting. He hit two seventy three, so oh great.
• 1:10:18
  Twenty twenty two came through and he had X batting average of two forty
• 1:10:23
  Like, oh, it dropped off a little bit. But his baby if
• 1:10:26
  if I recall was it was incredibly low. He had a baby ip in
• 1:10:30
  twenty twenty two of of two twenty seven when he when historically his last the
• 1:10:36
  four years prior had his worst baby, I was three twenty four. So
• 1:10:41
  it's just like it was just screaming positive regression, right, I know,
• 1:10:44
  positive regression is kind of an oxymoron twenty agree, but it was just screaming
• 1:10:48
  like, man, he's just gonna come back and so but he had fallen
• 1:10:51
  so far in value. I'm just like, come on, if he even
• 1:10:55
  hits two fifty and plays one hundred and twenty games, I get thirty home
• 1:10:59
  runs out of this guy. He's gonna hit in the middle of the Yankees
• 1:11:00
  lineup. There's value there. But his baby that this year was two hundred.
• 1:11:06
  It was even worse, and so he has really fallen our times.
• 1:11:12
  And the guy that does get injured all the time, you were kind of
• 1:11:15
  you're trying to kind of offset that be like, well, but he's almost
• 1:11:17
  free twenty degree years. You don't have to pay that much for him.
• 1:11:20
  You know, people are soured on him, is like, okay, here's
• 1:11:23
  the time to kind of get him. He got hurt and he was terrible.
• 1:11:26
  So I don't know what I was thinking. Hindsights twenty twenty maybe twenty
• 1:11:30
  ten, Jian Carlos dam was not the MVP, he might have been the
• 1:11:35
  LVP. Yeah, and I will say that like I was out on Jan
• 1:11:43
  Carlos Santon for a lot of the same reasons. I just went over with
• 1:11:45
  your don But obviously then you add in aging two that. But with that
• 1:11:51
  babbit, I see what you're talking about, and I do have to always
• 1:11:56
  remind myself that technically home runs count against your babbit. So like when you're
• 1:12:03
  hitting that many home runs of your percentage of like balls in play, like
• 1:12:10
  it drives your babit down if you're Gan Carlos Stanton. And then you can
• 1:12:14
  also just see as the power fades, you know, his hard hit percentage
• 1:12:17
  has gone In twenty pointy one, it was fifty five point six, then
• 1:12:23
  to fifty five or fifty two point one to forty eight point one. Barrel
• 1:12:27
  rate last year is nineteen percent, this year's fifteen point nine percent. You
• 1:12:31
  can see the average eggs of velocities go from ninety five to ninety three.
• 1:12:38
  And as you're just losing velocity and strength off of fly balls, like the
• 1:12:43
  babbit just keeps driving lower and lower because he can't get it like off the
• 1:12:46
  wall, you know, and so yeah, Jan Carlos Stanton like, it's
• 1:12:51
  kind of sad. I think he's got an outside shots sticking around to get
• 1:12:56
  to five hundred homers. But it is just the bummer the way that his
• 1:13:00
  thirties are playing out, It really is. It is disappointing, you know,
• 1:13:03
  and it seems that he he was such a good player for so long
• 1:13:10
  and it felt like he, you know, had an opportunity to really be
• 1:13:15
  you know, to your point, hit five hundred, six hundred home runs
• 1:13:18
  and be just a amazing power hitter that we talked about for a long time,
• 1:13:25
  and just the inability to stay healthy and I and I really think that
• 1:13:29
  that's been the downfall because he I mean, he's only thirty three, and
• 1:13:31
  so you know, if he had stayed healthy, you have to think he's
• 1:13:35
  still got a lot left in the tank at thirty three. But I think
• 1:13:38
  he's just been so warm down. He's had so many lower body injuries that
• 1:13:42
  it's just starting to zap his power. And he's still powerful, he's just
• 1:13:46
  it's just not the same that it once was. So I don't know,
• 1:13:49
  So Juan Carlos Staton, I'll take the l on that one. Where where
• 1:13:54
  is your l in your preseason predictions? Mine is the Los Angeles Angels of
• 1:14:00
  Anaheim. I believed in them, which was a very poor decision. I
• 1:14:03
  will stop doing that. That's I think we can just end the segment right
• 1:14:08
  there. You believe the Angels, that's enough said. As especially their pitching
• 1:14:15
  rotation really let me down because my sleeper that I had was Ben Joyce,
• 1:14:18
  and I should have known better than to trust a dude with one hundred and
• 1:14:23
  five mile an hour fastball. Obviously he blew out got injured. With Tommy
• 1:14:27
  John, I thought there was a good chance that Ben Joyce at the beginning
• 1:14:30
  of the year would be closing, you know, very soon in Anaheim because
• 1:14:34
  I had zero faith in Carlos Estevez and it just seemed that like the Angels
• 1:14:41
  were going to push all their chips in, which they did, and I
• 1:14:44
  just kind of saw that going a little differently, let's just say. And
• 1:14:47
  so Ben Joyce definitely an l there because of that injury, and I think
• 1:14:54
  the lesson for me to learn there is I just gotta be really careful with
• 1:14:58
  to throw one up five. So that's it's a pretty easy lesson there.
• 1:15:03
  The other one is readebt Verse. I had him is my infatuation. I've
• 1:15:09
  been into readebt Verse for quite some time in terms of like him coming up
• 1:15:15
  through Louisville and being taken early by the Angels, and obviously that no hitter
• 1:15:20
  that he threw was really impressive. But I don't even know like where to
• 1:15:25
  start with him, Like I don't know if it's just the malaise of playing
• 1:15:29
  Gananaheim. His strikeouts are up this year. They were eight and a half
• 1:15:32
  per eight and a half per nine last year. They're over ten this year.
• 1:15:39
  All reports are because that is from a new slider that redebt Verse has
• 1:15:44
  been throwing, so he retold that he's got a really nice arsenal. But
• 1:15:47
  you can see what's really killed him is the increase in home runs. He
• 1:15:50
  last year only allowed point nine home runs per nine and that's up to one
• 1:15:55
  point two. His babbit is up fifty points from last year, and that's
• 1:16:00
  just because the Angels are terrible. I think that it's a pretty awful team
• 1:16:04
  behind him, as well as the changes in the shift restrictions. And I
• 1:16:10
  don't know, like I don't know where Redebtmors goes from here because it's got
• 1:16:16
  a lot of like early Robbie Ray vibes that like, I've been into this
• 1:16:25
  type of guy so many times between you know, Robbie Ray and old Chris
• 1:16:31
  Sale and especially when they're left handed, and it just looks so gorgeous that
• 1:16:36
  I think I really want to quit Redebtmos because I don't want to be there
• 1:16:42
  for all the ups and downs going forward. But I know he will figure
• 1:16:45
  it out one day and have just some crazy season. I just might have
• 1:16:48
  to understand that I'm going to miss out on that because somebody will get a
• 1:16:55
  hold of him, retool things, really get him in the right spots,
• 1:16:59
  get him focused, be on a good team, and he's gonna have like
• 1:17:01
  and Cy Young competing season. But I just don't know when it comes,
• 1:17:06
  and I don't know if I'm here to play with that roller coaster anymore.
• 1:17:10
  Three debts. Yeah, I think your Robbie Ray comparisons is really right,
• 1:17:14
  because there's actually guys that I tend to stay away with, stay away from
• 1:17:17
  the potential so high, but the town side is so low. It's You're
• 1:17:23
  right, there's easy to dream on those guys, and they they're gonna click
• 1:17:28
  sometime and I look at those when those guys click, I'm just glad somebody
• 1:17:32
  else had it because they're gonna overinvest next year when he falls apart. So
• 1:17:38
  read reads is a tough one. I want to go back to Ben Joyce
• 1:17:42
  though for a second, because I think you said, Ben Joyce, what
• 1:17:45
  was the injury you said that Ben Joyce had on this season? I believe
• 1:17:49
  it's a UCLA Tommy John because Ben Joyce is back in the major leagues.
• 1:17:54
  What he's He's had three outings in September with the Angels. He's given up
• 1:18:02
  zero runs and struck out four guys, walked three. So I'm this is
• 1:18:08
  the correction during the segment rather than wow. So I just I was looking
• 1:18:15
  at one of his pitching Ninjo's because he's pumping one on one throw with his
• 1:18:20
  his sliders again, So you maybe there's still a chance, maybe he closes
• 1:18:26
  out the like the last game of the season and you can claim victory me
• 1:18:30
  and b Yeah, then I will take that victory lap if it comes around.
• 1:18:32
  But yeah, he is back. That is how far the Angels like
• 1:18:36
  have slipped off my radar, just because once he went to that sixty day
• 1:18:41
  d l move over back in July, I thought he was done, but
• 1:18:46
  yeah, he just only had older naritis. And I also will not be
• 1:18:51
  taking that victory lap, probably because I've seen how this plays out many many
• 1:18:57
  times with pictures. So yeah, I think what I said he still strings
• 1:19:01
  true though. Yeah, to be fair, I think that he was diagnosed
• 1:19:04
  with a likely UCL injury. Yeah, singly in his hand like everything read
• 1:19:09
  Tommy John. And then to your point, he just kind of fell off
• 1:19:12
  the radar in the sixty sixty day. I l so, but Ben Joyce's
• 1:19:16
  back publicly heat at least for the next week. Well, and I mean,
• 1:19:19
  if you are seeing a pitching ninja where he is throwing one oh one,
• 1:19:26
  I guess that's what he was sitting at at the beginning of the year.
• 1:19:29
  But he's still down like in when he was debuting his fastball velocity stat
• 1:19:34
  at one oh one up to one oh nine, and it hasn't gotten above
• 1:19:40
  one hundred. I don't like that. Yeah, I think he's been averages
• 1:19:44
  fastball right at one hundred coming back, but that was almost two ticks two
• 1:19:47
  miles hour lower than he was in June, So you're right now it could
• 1:19:55
  be building back up because he hasn't pitched at all for a few months here.
• 1:19:59
  But it's yeah, definitely high risk. He reads of one of those
• 1:20:04
  guys that is going to try to make it back without going through Tommy John
• 1:20:11
  just to get like three games in the next season and need Tommy John exactly.
• 1:20:15
  All right, Well, with that, I think we can wrap it
• 1:20:17
  up. So if you have listened to all of our takes here and gone
• 1:20:21
  back and seeing all of our predictions from the beginning of the year, if
• 1:20:25
  you think that there was something that we've missed, you can hit us up
• 1:20:29
  on Twitter at cards Categories or email the pod at cards Categories at gmail dot
• 1:20:33
  com. You can find me Mike cool Ard on razball dot com on the
• 1:20:38
  weekends. I've got one last Waiver Wire article this weekend, so we will
• 1:20:43
  round out and kind of cap up the season, and you can find me
• 1:20:46
  on x slash Twitter at m kool seven brew Remind the people where they can
• 1:20:51
  find you. Yep, can find me on Twitter Jay Brewer one seven and
• 1:20:57
  find me on the weekends as well over at razall hitter profiles top one hundreds.
• 1:21:01
  I also probably have one more posts for the for the baseball season where
• 1:21:04
  we're looking at the top one hundred for twenty twenty four, probably in about
• 1:21:10
  a week and a half here, because that's gonna that that list is going
• 1:21:13
  to take some time to get right, and I'm going to guarantee it is
• 1:21:16
  right this time around. Well, now we know you've all. We've got
• 1:21:21
  an updated for Ben Joyce, so get that going. Yeah, exactly,
• 1:21:27
  So all right, Prue, thanks again for joining us, And if you
• 1:21:30
  are looking for subscriptions to razball dot com, certainly head there. You can
• 1:21:35
  get them for about seven bucks a month, and cheaper if you go for
• 1:21:39
  an entire season. Obviously baseball is winding down, but when we get into
• 1:21:44
  the offseason, you'll be able to get all sorts of great rankings from Rudy
• 1:21:47
  and Gray and predictions going forward, as well as obviously fantasy football is going
• 1:21:53
  strong. So I've been pretty terrible at it, but I know some people
• 1:21:57
  have been good at it. Maybe I should have used more of razballs projections
• 1:22:00
  out there. If you've got any questions, like I said, you can
• 1:22:03
  hook hit us up at cards categories on Twitter and we will see you next
• 1:22:09
  week. Take care, everybody,