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Hello everybody. Welcome to the cycle.

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I am Ryan warmly joined as

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always by Mike mayor. It is

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our weekly fantasy baseball podcast. I

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leave a positive review there

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week's episode. We're going to dive into

0:54

rounding the basis here in a second. I do

0:56

want to also let everybody know to stick around

0:58

for our guest segment today. We were joined by

1:01

Blake Meyer. He is a writer and contributor

1:03

for fantasy pros. He has been doing the

1:05

weekly planner. He does our waivers article. So

1:07

we're going to be talking to him about

1:09

some players to consider dropping. If you're adding

1:11

anybody off waivers and is it time to

1:13

move on from some of these names? So

1:15

we will get into that in the second

1:18

half of the show. As always, we start

1:20

with rounding the bases though. And first off,

1:22

what I want to ask about is, is

1:25

Dylan cease true fantasy ACE back. We

1:27

obviously saw what he did a couple

1:29

of years ago, when he really genuinely

1:31

was a true fantasy ACE two 20

1:33

ERA 14 wins, 227 strikeouts, one 11

1:35

whip. That

1:39

was in 2022. Last year. His

1:42

ERA was four, five, eight. He did still have

1:44

over 200 strikeouts. Whip was much higher as well

1:46

at one 42. So

1:49

as we entered this draft season, their

1:52

cease, the 2022 season looked

1:54

like the outlier right now here in 2024,

1:56

he's looking very good. Again,

2:00

he's three and one for the Padres. I would say

2:02

it's his first year with San Diego. He's three and

2:04

one, 182 ERA, 0.74 whip. He's

2:08

got 35 strikeouts in 29

2:11

and two-thirds innings. That's across five

2:13

starts just kind of, before

2:15

we dive into maybe any of the advanced

2:18

data, just hearing those numbers, seeing

2:20

that, you know, maybe it's now 2023

2:23

is looking maybe more like the Outlier, at least in the last

2:25

three years. Do you think that he

2:27

is back as a true fantasy ace? So I

2:29

think it's early, and I don't know that we

2:31

can say definitively that he's back as a true

2:33

fantasy ace. I was buying Dell

2:35

and Cease everywhere coming into the season. I was

2:38

not expecting him to be this good. I was

2:40

hoping, you mentioned 2022 being kind of the

2:43

breakout year, and then last year was a

2:45

down year, but we talked about him a few weeks ago,

2:47

and it was still a reason I

2:49

was very in on him is because the price had gone

2:51

down because of his four or five ERA last year. Four

2:54

or five, 4.58 ERA, that's a hard

2:56

one to say in order there last

2:58

season. But his expected numbers were

3:00

better, and he had over 200 strikeouts. And

3:03

as we've talked about, like that many strikeouts

3:05

in fantasy is so hard to

3:08

come by, especially from one picture like this. So

3:10

to be

3:12

determined, if he's a fantasy ace, I'm

3:14

not expecting him to be. I'm not expecting a sub two

3:16

ERA the rest of the way, but for

3:19

someone who bought low this draft season so

3:21

far, fantastic return on investment. I'm not expecting

3:23

a sub two ERA the rest of the

3:26

season. I am expecting quite honestly

3:28

to be a fantasy ace given how

3:31

many aces were losing right and left.

3:33

Like I think he will be one of the top guys

3:36

moving forward. I

3:39

mean, just even looking at the game logs, like

3:41

the worst start of the season was that very

3:43

first start in March against the Giants when he

3:46

gave up two earned runs in four and two

3:48

thirds inning. Every other start, two

3:50

runs in six innings, zero runs in six

3:52

innings, one run in six innings, one run

3:54

in seven innings, and every one of those

3:56

starts, he had at least seven strikeouts. He

3:58

doesn't have a double strike. double digit strikeout

4:00

game yet, but it's been 7, 7, 7, 8. So

4:03

he's been consistent, which is hard

4:05

to find right now. Uh,

4:08

you know, he's been giving you innings, which can be

4:10

hard to find. Uh, he's not hurt

4:12

yet, which you know, you could say that about literally

4:14

any pitcher, but I mean, he's been pitching

4:16

well, and it's not like the competition has been, you

4:19

know, he hasn't faced the white Sox,

4:21

he hasn't faced like the Marlins. It's

4:23

been the giants. It's been the Cubs.

4:25

It's been the Brewers. He did face

4:27

the Rockies. It was recent start. That's

4:29

the one like pretty, pretty terrible team

4:32

there. But, um, Hey,

4:34

I mean, he's been very good. He did have five

4:36

walks and that started against the Brewers again, kind of

4:38

just reading off the, uh, you know,

4:40

the game log stuff there a little bit more.

4:42

His, his, uh, expected ERA. I think I just

4:44

lost it. Yeah. It's a two nine five. So

4:47

it's obviously higher than what it is, but subs

4:49

three, you know, I might be rambling a

4:51

bit at this point. I just think he's going to be a good

4:53

pitcher and I was with you in draft season. I was very happy

4:55

to get him at the price he was going

4:57

at. Uh, and that looks all the better

4:59

now. Yeah, exactly. Um,

5:03

that whip the 0.74 whip or probably not going

5:05

to get that the rest of the year, especially

5:07

since last year, it was a double that. So,

5:09

and there's a little bit of luck there.

5:11

You know, you, you're talking about the expected numbers. They're all between

5:13

2.35 and like three and a half. I

5:16

think gum and indices. And if you told me I was going to

5:18

get, you know, like I said, those

5:20

200 strikeouts and just three and a

5:22

half ERA. Fantastic. That's exactly what I

5:24

was hoping for. Kind of splitting the difference between that 2022

5:26

and 2023 seasons. That's

5:28

exactly what I wanted. So so far, fantastic.

5:30

First month, there's a little bit of luck

5:32

there is bad, but it's real low. Average

5:34

against is very low, but as K percentages

5:37

is up. Swinging strike percentage is a

5:39

little bit up. Hard contact is down. So some of

5:41

it's kind of earned luck. So to

5:44

be determined if he's, if he's an ace, but like you said,

5:46

with the state of pitching, he's someone who's

5:48

made 30 or more stars in the last three seasons.

5:50

So, you know, coming into this year, you're going to

5:53

get those innings. You're going to get those strikeouts and

5:55

you give, get a decent ERA. He's someone you can

5:57

easily build your staff around. The strikeout rate is slightly

5:59

higher. than it was in that 2022

6:01

breakout, walk rate slightly lower than it

6:04

was in that season. The

6:07

barrel rate, he is giving up 12.1%

6:09

is his barrel percentage. It's been 6.2

6:11

in each of the last two

6:14

years. So that's almost double, but that

6:16

is the number that it's early and

6:18

could easily just be a small sample

6:20

size. The average

6:22

exit velocity that he's allowing is actually

6:24

a bit up as well. So

6:27

there's some degree of like

6:29

not concerned, but like, you know, you

6:32

maybe are a little hesitant to dive

6:34

all the way in. He's actually only

6:36

11th percentile amongst pitchers and

6:38

average exit velocity given up, but by

6:40

and large, it's again, given the state

6:43

of pitching, this is a pitcher that you are just

6:45

going to start every week and be very happy that

6:47

you got him at the price you did. I think,

6:49

I mean, you're certainly, I would expect double digit wins.

6:51

Again, I'm definitely expecting 200 plus

6:54

strikeouts again, assuming health. So if

6:56

you're going to give me like, like 14 ish

6:59

wins and 200 strikeouts and an ERA even

7:01

like under four, let alone under three, I'm

7:05

like, I'm super happy with that. So

7:07

I will call him an ace, even if

7:09

it's not like, you know, OSP one overall

7:11

type of type of ace. Speaking

7:14

of kind of aces and guys who have

7:16

been like very, very strong fantasy starters in

7:18

the past, just quickly, is max

7:20

free turning things around? I wanted to at least

7:22

mention him because he has been so, so

7:25

bad to start the year. And then

7:27

last night through a complete game

7:29

shot out. Now that was against easier competition

7:32

in the Marlins. But you

7:34

know, do you think, I don't know how much of

7:36

that game specifically you watched. Is there

7:38

anything that you saw either watching that game or in

7:41

the numbers that makes you think it

7:43

could be turning things around from this again, just

7:45

like horrific, horrifically slow start that he's had to

7:47

the season? Or was it just the case of

7:49

they faced the Marlins and a lot of people

7:52

are going to have pretty good games against the

7:54

Marlins? So probably, I mean, I'm,

7:56

you definitely can't discount the fact that

7:58

it was against the Marlins. because we're

8:00

not just talking about a bad opponent, we're talking

8:02

about a bottom three opponent and one of the

8:05

worst opponents in the last few years, you

8:07

know, they're off to a horrific start. They,

8:10

the White Sox and the A's, and

8:12

if you look at his numbers, he's

8:14

already had two starts against the Marlins and they're

8:17

really his only two good starts. His first start,

8:19

he got, he didn't make it out of the

8:21

first inning and then his

8:23

second start he got lit up by the Diamondbacks

8:25

and then his third start, quality start against the

8:27

Marlins and then his fourth start, decent

8:30

start against the Astros who are really, surprisingly,

8:32

really struggling, the Astros, we're not talking about

8:34

them, five innings, three runs and then

8:37

last night dominated the Marlins. I think that was

8:40

also a Maddox too, I think it was less,

8:42

fewer than 100 pitches. So

8:46

yeah, just, you

8:48

really want to see it because you, it would be

8:50

more concerning if he didn't dominate a, an

8:52

opponent like that, but you do have to say, okay,

8:55

this was the Marlins. That's a

8:57

good step in the right direction. We'll, we'll see

8:59

how it looks going forward. Yeah. I mean, I'd

9:01

like to reference my, you know, scoring and that

9:03

head-to-head points league just as kind of like an

9:05

all encompassing number for some of these and obviously

9:08

scoring, you know, numbers are different for every different

9:10

format, but to put a number to this, in

9:13

those two starts against the Marlins, he

9:16

has about 54, 54.8 fantasy points combined. On

9:22

the season, he has 36 fantasy points combined.

9:24

He's been negatives in that league in every

9:26

other start that didn't come against one of

9:28

the three worst teams of baseball. So I,

9:32

I guess like to,

9:34

to ask you for something

9:36

actionable after what we saw

9:38

last night, was that good enough that you would start

9:41

him again, if you had him? I mean, I'm not,

9:43

he's not a guy, he's too talented to drop, right?

9:45

But like, are you starting him or

9:47

is he still kind of riding the bench unless he's

9:49

facing the Marlins for you? So because

9:51

of how early it is, I don't know

9:53

that I roster him anywhere, but if I did,

9:56

because of kind of the track record

9:58

there, even though he's looked pretty bad earlier, I'm

10:00

probably just leaving him in my lineup regardless

10:02

because anyone I'm replacing him with I'm probably

10:04

rolling the dice anyway So I would start

10:06

him obviously if even if I did, you

10:08

know, I wouldn't bench him against the Marlins

10:10

regardless But even even against a tougher opponent

10:13

I'm probably still starting him unless he gets

10:15

blown up again and then we're probably talking

10:17

about benching him But yeah, not close to

10:19

dropping him and probably still starting him everywhere.

10:21

I did bench him this week in that

10:23

league It's it's a weekly lineup If not

10:25

a daily and I was like he's gotten

10:27

negatives three out of four starts And

10:30

I was like, I'm just not gonna play this game

10:32

until I see something different and it you

10:35

know came back to bite me So that's wonderful Let's

10:38

go to our next topic here The

10:40

sweat scale how much are we worrying about

10:43

some hitters? We had a similar discussion a couple of

10:45

weeks ago with some studs were off to release low

10:47

starts This is you know,

10:50

we're into a month

10:52

ish into the season, you know coming up close

10:54

to it so You

10:56

know we wanted to kind of circle back and

10:58

and look at some different names other than that

11:00

group we had initially talked about and Kind of

11:03

kind of touch on are we worried or not?

11:05

And then we can put a kind of one

11:07

to ten scale on it We can try and

11:09

give you guys some actional advice actionable advice on

11:11

if we think you should be selling on these

11:13

guys obviously, there's again on the on the

11:15

freed level of we're not dropping any of these guys, but

11:18

The first one that you had wanted to talk about was Raphael

11:20

Devers His average is

11:23

188 his OPS is 703.

11:25

He's got just two home

11:27

runs on the season Some

11:30

of his expected numbers are you know

11:33

better when you look at stat cast is expected sluggings 4

11:35

9 6 It's currently 375

11:39

Expected Wobba is 374 So,

11:42

you know, it's currently 323 So

11:44

there are some numbers that suggest, you know, maybe some

11:47

bad luck But there are also some bad numbers as

11:49

well. His hard hit rate is down Significantly

11:52

last year is 55.1 percent this

11:54

year 39 and a half. He

11:56

is walking a lot more I

11:58

don't know if as a Red Sox fan you've

12:00

noticed that you think maybe there's a shift

12:02

in approach that is maybe leading to, you

12:05

know, he's just not swinging as much and maybe

12:07

missing good pitches to hit. I don't know. Strikeout

12:10

rate is a little lower as well. The exit

12:12

velocity is down like four miles an hour on

12:15

average. So there's, like I

12:17

said, there's some good, but there's also a decent

12:19

amount of bad on a stat cash page. What

12:21

do you make of Devers and what's your concern

12:23

level? So my concern

12:25

level is middle of

12:28

the road to slightly elevated.

12:30

Just because it's not only the numbers, he's also

12:33

like been banged up. He's dealt with a shoulder

12:35

injury, which could be impacting some of those, even

12:37

though I think it's the opposite shoulder. It's not

12:39

his lead shoulder, but maybe, you know

12:41

what, scratch that I'm not 100% sure what shoulder

12:43

it is. But with a hitter, you always, you're

12:45

always worried about the shoulder, especially if it's a

12:47

lead shoulder. But so he's dealt with

12:49

a shoulder injury, he's dealt with a knee injury. And the

12:52

real frustrating, if you're a fantasy manager, is even in and

12:54

out of the lineup. And so at a

12:56

certain point, you never want your guys to go on the

12:58

Andrew list, but a certain point, you're just kind of thinking,

13:01

if 10 days can 10 days,

13:04

two weeks can help this guy get right, just

13:06

sit him down, sit him down for a

13:09

couple of weeks, if we can get him back

13:11

healthy, because this whole like miss three days, then play

13:13

a day, then play two days, then miss a couple

13:15

of days, it's killing you

13:17

in weekly leagues. And

13:19

then obviously you've seen the numbers, you know, batting

13:23

average is terrible. The walk

13:25

percentage is up, I hadn't I knew it was up,

13:27

I didn't realize it was this this far up. And

13:29

I wonder if some of that is just

13:31

because the Red Sox don't have a very good lineup. And

13:34

there's probably just some opposition thinking there,

13:36

let's just not let Rafael Devers beat

13:38

us, especially now that Tristan Cassis is

13:40

going to be out to you know,

13:42

they don't have a ton of power in that lineup to begin with

13:44

now they have even less power. So there's

13:46

concern there that the lineup around him is not

13:49

great. injury concerns

13:51

and like you said, the bad, you know, the

13:53

hard hit data and still early,

13:55

you know, we're almost a month in, so it's not that early

13:57

anymore. It's not the last few weeks where we're talking about it

13:59

being very. You know, we have almost a month of data

14:01

now But with him we

14:03

only have 13 games of data because he's missed so many

14:05

games so he's someone who's hard

14:07

to figure out but the and we're

14:10

gonna talk about this with a couple of guys where the Injury

14:12

concern is almost as much You

14:15

know or bigger a concern as the you know

14:17

what the numbers look like He's facing a lot

14:19

more breaking balls this year for whatever that's worth

14:21

last year 24 percent of the time this

14:23

year 36.2 percent of

14:25

the time that's mostly coming out of the

14:27

number of fastballs He's seeing and he's performing

14:29

worse against them last year his expected Woba

14:31

against breaking stuff was 409 this

14:34

year 361 you know the

14:36

actual Woba is down by about 150

14:38

points on those so maybe that's a

14:41

little more extreme than it should be his whiff

14:43

rate on breaking balls is up about

14:46

6% so just interesting to note that he's

14:48

seeing breaking pitches more They

14:50

needed last year and that he's performing worse

14:52

against them that and the walk rate are

14:54

kind of the two biggest things that stand

14:56

out differences from last year other than he's

14:58

not hitting the Fastballs he's

15:01

not hitting the sorry. He's not hitting the fastballs

15:03

any better either He's almost just as bad against

15:05

against fastballs, so it's hard to even pin it

15:07

on that while off speed He's doing very well

15:09

against obviously pitches. Yeah, I just know not seeing

15:11

as many of those but Yeah,

15:14

I forget sorry if you answered this already. Did you put

15:16

a number like kind of skill one to ten what you

15:18

would? You know say your concern

15:20

level is I mean he's not somebody I Unless

15:24

you feel very differently than me. He's not somebody

15:26

that I think we would recommend like trying to

15:28

sell or anything like that Yeah,

15:30

I think it would be hard to sell because you'd be selling really

15:32

low I didn't answer the question

15:34

I kind of avoided it I probably about

15:36

a five and that's if not

15:39

for the injury concerns It would

15:41

be like a two or three because I wouldn't be

15:43

that concerned with the early numbers because I do think

15:45

he's an incredible hitter The

15:47

reason it's a five is because these

15:49

nagging injuries have me worried that he's

15:52

just not healthy and You know

15:54

not that we're at a Trevor story level where there's

15:56

where they're just said that maybe he won't come back

15:58

this season But yeah, it's It's concerning

16:00

enough that he's missing, because

16:03

he's not just like missing a day at a time where

16:05

they're like, let's give this guy a break. Sometimes he's missing

16:07

three days in a row. And that is worrying, especially

16:09

if they're not going to sit him down. You know, it's

16:11

what it would end. They're losing pitchers

16:13

and hitters by the day over there in Boston. So

16:15

they do need him. And so you do

16:17

kind of worry, are they, you know, if

16:20

they had a better lineup around him, would they sit him down

16:22

for, you know, a couple of weeks and they, well, it seems

16:24

like maybe they just can't afford to do that. Let's

16:27

move to Paul Goldschmidt here. We

16:30

often reference like, oh, his stat cast

16:32

page is really red or it's really

16:34

blue. His is very blue outside of

16:37

his sweet spot percentage, which is decently

16:39

high and his walk rate, which is

16:41

decently high. Basically the rest is all

16:44

like in the range of the bottom

16:46

quartile, like, you know, 25th percentile ish

16:48

amongst hitters in terms of expected Woba,

16:51

batting average, slugging, exit velocity, barrel rate,

16:53

hard hit rate, whiff rate, they're all

16:55

in that, that like mid twenties

16:57

range in terms of percentile. He's,

17:00

he's hitting 186. His OPS is

17:02

an abysmal 542. He

17:05

has his two home runs this season. Obviously

17:07

like getting up there in age, he's 36 now,

17:11

you know, into now the second half

17:13

of his thirties. This is a very,

17:16

very, very poor start to a season,

17:18

especially relative to the Paul Goldschmidt that

17:20

we have typically come to rely on.

17:22

The strikeout rate is up significantly. Last

17:24

year it was 23.4%. This

17:28

year it's 30 even. So

17:30

that is, you know, alarming the hard hit

17:32

rate. Again, I mentioned much lower. Last year

17:34

was over 50%. This year

17:36

it's just barely over 32%. I

17:40

would say I'm very concerned. My

17:42

concern level is much higher in Goldschmidt than it was for

17:45

Devers. Maybe there's something

17:47

in the numbers that has you less

17:49

concern than me, but given the age and

17:52

this data, like I don't really see

17:54

a strong case to expect a

17:56

bounce back here. I mean, a bounce back to a degree. I

17:58

don't think he's gonna bat the line. a little deMendoza line,

18:01

but he's not somebody I

18:03

would be trying to buy on the cheap. Yeah.

18:05

And he is someone I was buying on the

18:07

cheap come draft season, even though in the back

18:09

of my mind, I was always a little worried

18:11

about what you were saying about the age, because

18:13

if you look at last season, you still hit,

18:15

you know, if you look at the numbers overall,

18:17

still in a vacuum, a very solid season,

18:19

you know, over 80 runs scored, 80 RBI,

18:22

25 arm runs, bad at 268, that's

18:24

fine. The problem

18:27

is if you look at what he did the years before that

18:30

and the power just kind of, you know,

18:32

not that disappeared because 25 home runs, it's

18:34

nothing to sneeze at, but it

18:36

was the first year, not including

18:38

the COVID shortened year. And he didn't hit at least

18:41

30 home runs since 2016. And

18:43

when you do that at age 35, there

18:46

is some concern that this is not just a down

18:48

year, this is the cliff and it's the beginning of

18:51

the end. And there is a lot of

18:53

worry that we have reached the cliff. We've

18:55

reached the beginning of the end of Paul Goldschmidt. I

18:58

agree. I still think he's going to bounce back to

19:00

a degree. I just

19:02

don't know how much he's going to bounce back and

19:04

how much of this is just, he's

19:07

old now and he's not ancient. He's younger

19:09

than me. Um, he's still

19:11

36, but those

19:13

numbers are bad, like you said. And so it's when

19:16

you're bad coming off a down year and

19:18

you're getting up there in age, that all

19:20

starts to paint a, a scary picture that

19:22

like, this isn't just, you know,

19:24

a slow start, it, it

19:26

just is who you are now. He was born in

19:28

the eighties. So he feels ancient to me. Uh,

19:31

even though I only missed that by a couple

19:33

of years, but, uh, yeah,

19:35

I'm not that much younger than him, which is

19:37

a scary thought. Uh, yeah, I think, I

19:40

mean, it's too early to say like he's officially washed,

19:42

right? But like I'm, my concern level is

19:44

very high. First base is not

19:46

the strongest position. Where would you rank him

19:49

at first base rest of season? I

19:51

like, even with it not being a strong position, it's not

19:54

a spot. I'd be like pretty comfortable ranking him

19:57

highly. Yeah. That's a good question. I have

19:59

to look at my rank. rankings. Just

20:02

because it's so thin and because I have him in

20:04

a couple places, so I want him to be better.

20:06

So there's some kind of, you know, there's

20:08

some self fulfilling prophecy there where, you know, I

20:11

believe in the bounce back because I need him

20:13

to bounce back. But the

20:16

early numbers are bad. And let's

20:19

see, let's see where I have them. He's

20:21

seven in the expert consensus rankings on the

20:24

site for rest of season. Yeah, I'm gonna

20:26

have to go down. I haven't met 10

20:28

so far. And I'm gonna have to go

20:30

below that. And yeah, well, you know, I

20:33

still have Tristan Casas in the in the top

20:35

12. And that's gonna have to go down too,

20:37

because it sounds like he's gonna miss some time

20:40

and like not just a little bit of time.

20:42

Yeah. The problem is

20:44

that after him, there's not a whole lot. Yeah,

20:46

who is it that you look at? But you're like,

20:48

Oh, boy, I can't wait to move this guy up

20:50

instead. Yeah, there's the Andy Diaz, who is also

20:53

off to a really bad start. Not as bad,

20:55

but not great. And you know,

20:57

you kind of have a pretty clear ceiling

20:59

there with Andy Diaz. I really

21:01

like Christian and Carnación Strand. But again, not

21:03

up to a great start. I do like

21:05

his power potential. And he did,

21:07

you know, look like he's warming up recently.

21:10

Spencer Torkelson, I don't love that. He's

21:12

gonna have to be Josh Naylor has got to be,

21:15

you know, a top 10 first baseman for sure, given

21:17

what he's done over the last year. Where do you

21:19

have any past? Quentino ranked? So I

21:21

have been Vinnie past Quentino at 20. And

21:25

he probably has to go up. I like,

21:28

I like, there's a huge gap

21:30

between where you have him ranked and Goldschmidt. But

21:32

like, I would think it's even honestly, like depending

21:34

on the format or reasonable question of like, who

21:36

would I rather have this season? Like that is

21:38

the degree of my concern with

21:40

Goldschmidt. Do you think that's unreasonable? My

21:43

only thing with past Quentino is we haven't

21:45

ever seen it for a full season. He's

21:48

dealt with an injuries of his own. And

21:50

there's a lot

21:52

of projection there. You know, we're always projecting him to

21:54

take the next step. We've never actually seen it though.

21:56

And so I worry what the ceiling is there and

21:58

what we're gonna get. I wonder if

22:02

even a slightly washed Paul Goldschmidt still gives you

22:04

20 home runs. Maybe you don't get it 20

22:06

home runs or many bats quinino. And so that's,

22:08

I don't think it would be crazy to continue

22:10

to have Goldschmidt ahead of him. But I think

22:13

that's a type of guy that I would be

22:15

debating in my mind if I, who

22:17

I would want more. That's the

22:20

level to which I think Goldschmidt is falling off.

22:22

And I really like Paul Goldschmidt. So I hope

22:24

that I'm wrong. And he kind of bounces back

22:26

better than I expect him to. Let's go to

22:28

another hitter here, Corbin Carroll, who

22:31

was obviously going as a,

22:33

you know, first half of the first round,

22:35

back half of the first round type of

22:37

guy, depending on your league, not

22:40

the age of Paul Goldschmidt. He is very young.

22:43

He's 23, obviously, superstar season last year.

22:45

He does have eight stolen bases, just

22:47

one home run. He's hitting 213

22:49

on the season. His OPS is under 600. And

22:53

similar to Goldschmidt, in fact, even worse in a

22:55

lot of cases, the stack ass data, it does

22:58

not look good. His average exit velocity is 83.6

23:00

miles per hour. That's

23:02

third percentile on the season.

23:05

His hard hit rate is under 25%. Obviously,

23:09

like, you know, he's fast. He's going to give

23:12

you stolen bases when he's on. Strikeout

23:14

rate is down. But

23:17

a very poor start, particularly relative to

23:19

the draft capital. You almost certainly paid

23:21

to get him on your team. Yeah.

23:24

And he's another one with that

23:27

shoulder that there's a real

23:29

concern that has, you know, zapped a lot of

23:31

his power because we saw the breakout with 25

23:33

home runs last year. But we

23:35

also saw and have seen that he's been a different

23:38

player since he dealt with that shoulder injury. And that's

23:40

where I get concerned, especially because I have him in

23:42

a bunch of places. And I have him in the

23:44

keeper league where I, I sold at the trade deadline

23:46

last season and gave up some, you know, when

23:49

it looked like I wasn't going to win, I

23:51

gave up some pieces to get a affordable

23:53

curb and carol keeper. And

23:56

that's in that aforementioned league where I'm lacking power and I could,

23:58

you know, I could use more than one. Not that I

24:00

was banking on a ton of power from Corbin Carroll to

24:02

begin with, but when a guy goes 25 home

24:05

runs, 54 steals, you'd

24:07

like to bank on 20 plus home runs for

24:10

that guy the following, following year and maybe 30

24:12

plus deals, which would be a fantastic year. Again,

24:14

like you said, still has eight stolen bases. That's,

24:16

you know, that's helping keep him in, in my

24:18

lineup. Because if I was, if I, if he

24:20

was batting two 15 with one home run and

24:23

one stolen base, now we're, we're

24:25

talking about potentially sitting on my bench for a little while, but

24:28

the stolen, the stolen bases are keeping him

24:30

in there. Exo velocity, very

24:32

concerning. Hard hit percentage, very concerning.

24:35

Like you said, a lot of blue on a stack test

24:37

page and a few concerning

24:39

spots of extremely blue and he's

24:42

still walking, still stealing bases. So he's still going to do

24:44

that. Um, we're, we're

24:46

recording this on Wednesday this week and

24:49

he was batting seventh today. Don't love that. Don't

24:51

love to see that from the Dynamax, especially, you

24:53

know, they're not just like a team not trying

24:55

to win better. They're just trying to move, move

24:57

around. This is a team trying to compete and

24:59

win. And they said, Corbin, Kyle, you are in

25:01

the seven hole now. So don't love

25:04

that as a fantasy manager and as a

25:06

fan of Corbin, Carol. So

25:08

you really hope he can bounce back, but I am

25:10

worried about that shoulder. That is a

25:12

good note that we're recording early this week, just

25:14

so everybody knows since we typically tape this on

25:16

Thursday, that, uh, if anything happens on Wednesday night

25:18

or what have you, depending, I'm not sure when

25:21

exactly we'll get this released, but, uh, you know,

25:23

this is, this is a little bit earlier in

25:25

the week than usual because of the NFL draft,

25:28

you know, with Carol, he was in that

25:30

group of, there was a very clear

25:32

top nine outfielders in draft season and

25:34

a significant gap between the top nine

25:36

and everybody else. He was ranked fourth

25:38

ish in summer. I mean, you could

25:40

different rankings have different spots. That was

25:42

kind of a common place. I saw

25:45

him behind Acuna bets and maybe Julio

25:47

that's where he is in our rest

25:49

of season rankings currently on the site

25:51

with the consensus. Um, how

25:53

far down, if at all, are you moving

25:55

him, but I'm assuming still within that upper

25:58

nine or with somebody like, I mean, like. My trout,

26:00

obviously given the start that he's been on, would

26:02

you rather have him than Carol going forward

26:05

rest of the season? Is that an overreaction?

26:07

Where are you placing him in that hierarchy

26:09

when he was so clearly in the non-Acunha

26:11

tier one going into draft season? So

26:14

I haven't dropped him too much yet. I had him as

26:16

four coming into season. I still have him around six or

26:19

seven. But I

26:21

do, when I do these rankings, I do

26:23

try not to overreact and try to wait

26:25

until we have like a full month of

26:28

sample before I start making significant moves.

26:30

And we're still about a week away from that. So I

26:33

want to wait till the first week of May before

26:36

I make any kind of drastic changes to my rankings.

26:38

I'm still tweaking every day based on performances, based on

26:40

injuries, based on everything that's happening in the news. I'm

26:43

still holding out hope that he just kind of turns

26:45

it around. But I've

26:48

already, you know, I think I had him at four

26:50

coming into the season. He's at

26:52

like five or six or seven now in that, you know,

26:54

you have to, you know, I'm going to have to bump

26:56

up on Soto given the stardius after the Yankees. But

27:01

yeah, it's not looking good for him to rise

27:03

my rankings, he's going to fall. But

27:06

again, those stolen bases are going to help as long as he can,

27:08

you know, because there's a world where

27:10

he just hits done home runs and get the

27:13

average back up and still steals 40 bases and

27:15

scores 100 runs. And that's still very valuable. So

27:17

we can't just write them off completely, but

27:19

the power is what we're concerned about. And right now the

27:21

average as well. Let's

27:24

go to Randy Orosarena, two

27:26

home runs. He does a four stolen bases, 154

27:28

average. OPS

27:31

is 453. So

27:33

obviously very, very bad. The

27:35

average exit velocity is 75th percentile. It's

27:37

over 90 miles per hour. A lot

27:39

of the other numbers are not that

27:42

good, you know, below 50th percentile in

27:44

terms of expected Wobba and his, you

27:46

know, his hard hit rate is

27:49

just above 50th. It's at 40.6%. Barrel

27:52

rate 45th percentile. His whiff percentage

27:55

is 11th percentile. So

27:57

he's chase rate is 73%. That's

28:01

a little bit of a difference there, but essentially, he

28:03

has been bad. Is

28:06

the May take away from that? Is he

28:08

somebody that you maybe have a higher degree

28:11

of concern about? His expected WOBBA is

28:13

like, his WOBBA is 212. It's

28:16

very, very bad. His expected WOBBA is only

28:18

289. It's like not good. It's

28:20

still under 300. You

28:23

know, strikeout rate is up over last year. It's up at 27.3%. I

28:28

would say that my concern

28:30

level on him is somewhere between

28:32

Goldschmidt and Carroll. Yeah.

28:37

I'm not as concerned about him because

28:39

I wasn't as high on him coming

28:41

in. Not that I'm down on him,

28:44

but I just think he has, you know, some warts as

28:46

a hitter. And he

28:48

just feels like someone who goes through these stretches

28:50

where he, you know, when he gets hot, he

28:53

is insanely hot, but he also gets cold.

28:55

He's kind of a roller coaster of a batter. And

28:58

so I really think unless

29:00

there's more about an injury that we don't know about,

29:03

I really think this is more of just like him

29:05

getting off to a slow start and that like, as

29:07

the spring and summer goes on, he's going to heat

29:09

up and be what he normally

29:11

is. So I'm still holding

29:14

out faith that we're dealing with

29:16

a slow start and a small sample size. And I, and you

29:18

know, like he, he's not going to hit 300. That's

29:20

just not who he is, but he's, he's probably not going to hit 154 either.

29:23

He's probably going to end up hitting around 250,

29:25

hitting 20 home runs, stealing

29:28

20 plus bases. And that's

29:30

what you drafted him as. And so he

29:32

already has two home runs, four stolen bases, still

29:35

on pace, you know, for 2020,

29:37

you just want the batting average up. You want him to cut down on the

29:39

strikeouts a little bit, get on base a little bit more. Obviously

29:42

you don't want to sub 300 Wilba. He'd

29:44

like that to be a lot higher. BAB at 194.

29:46

So he's getting a little bit of bad luck too. It's not all

29:48

earned bad luck. There's a little bit of bad luck. Darl

29:51

percentage way down, like you said, and swing strike percentage

29:53

up a little bit, not to repeat everything that you've

29:55

already said, but yeah, I, I really think this is

29:57

this. I think that's fair. I was with you

29:59

too. draft season where like he's

30:01

not somebody that I was like drafting in every

30:03

league because I loved the value or anything like

30:05

that. So it's not like

30:08

too harmful to me that he's starting

30:10

off slow, or

30:12

too, too surprising given, you

30:14

know, we've seen from him in the

30:16

past, he's lifting a ton on breaking

30:18

balls, 43.1%. Just to note

30:20

that let's move on to the last

30:22

hitter here, Eric Judge, obviously, somebody who

30:24

has been a fantasy super duper star

30:27

in the past, you know, even last

30:29

year, even though it was a step

30:31

down for 2022, still obviously, very, very

30:33

good hitter, OPS over 1000. This year,

30:35

not so much his average is 180.

30:37

His OPS is just 663. He's hit

30:39

three home runs, somebody

30:41

who has had injury stuff in

30:43

the past. Obviously, with Aaron

30:45

Judge, you know, the average exit velocity is

30:48

always gonna be super high. And so was

30:50

max exit velocity on the

30:52

season. A lot of the other numbers are

30:54

somewhat concerning, though, you know, the strikeout rate

30:56

is basically in line with what it was

30:58

last year, walk rate a little bit down

31:00

hard hit rate down significantly. And a

31:03

lot of the expected numbers are

31:06

down pretty significantly from last year

31:08

as well. That's batting average expected

31:10

slugging spec, Boba all way

31:13

down over what they were last year. He

31:17

is 31. I know he

31:19

got a later start to his career in terms of

31:21

the age. So you might think of him as a

31:23

little bit younger. There was actually a really interesting tweet

31:26

I saw making the rounds yesterday with a graph about

31:29

batter swing speed and just on average when it

31:31

tends to go down. And you

31:33

know, it fluctuated a bit in the early

31:35

years. And the degree to which

31:38

it goes down in the later years fluctuated

31:40

too. But like the big point that on

31:42

average it goes down is age 31. I'm

31:44

not saying that

31:46

Judge again is like washed or anything. But I

31:48

thought that was an interesting graph to have seen

31:51

and then turn around and be talking about a

31:53

guy who was struggling, you know,

31:55

in the first month of the season only still but at

31:57

age 31. Is

32:00

there anything specifically you've seen out of judge that

32:02

has you overly concerned or do

32:04

you think this is more just along the lines

32:06

of a slow start for a guy that we

32:08

can have pretty good faith will bounce back? Well,

32:12

real quick, I feel bad because you said

32:14

31 about five times in

32:16

that monologue turns 32 in two days. So

32:18

you still 31. I actually did this weekend.

32:21

I did not know when his birthday was. So that's

32:23

good to know. So

32:25

32 ancient and

32:28

ancient by the time people listen to this,

32:30

you might actually be 32 already. So right.

32:32

Yeah, that's true. 32 on Friday. So

32:35

if you listen to this on Friday, happy birthday, Aaron judge. Sorry,

32:38

we're talking about your post. Yeah,

32:42

I there's always a concern with. Sorry, there's

32:44

always a concern with him with injury just

32:47

because he's getting older, but also he's

32:49

enormous. He's just an enormous human being,

32:51

which was my concern going into that contract

32:53

with the Yankees. You were talking about a

32:55

guy who's six foot seven 275 plus pounds.

32:57

He's just a gargantuan human being. And

33:00

those players do not age gracefully.

33:03

And there's a lot of years to go still on that contract. But

33:07

again, don't know for sure if there is any

33:09

kind of injury, still small

33:11

sample size and he's another, you know, not

33:14

in the same realm of Randy or his

33:16

arena, but he's, you know, he can be

33:18

streaky. We've seen him go cold before and

33:20

then we've seen him ridiculously hot

33:22

and hit 62 home runs before. So he's

33:24

someone who can lock in and just go

33:26

bananas. But he's also someone who I

33:29

think just from a

33:32

kind of mechanic standpoint, because he is

33:34

so big and because, you know, he

33:37

not that he has like a big swing, he has a pretty compact

33:39

swing for his size. But he seems

33:41

like someone who always has to be very conscious

33:43

of his mechanics because things can easily go wrong

33:45

because of how big he is. And

33:47

I just feel like he's in a funk right now. And

33:50

he's going to get hot. It's going to warm up. And as long

33:52

as he stays healthy, he's going to go on a hot streak and

33:54

these numbers are going to be what they

33:56

normally are. So I'm

33:58

not overly concerned, but I do. who thinks it's just

34:00

a close start and a call for him. He

34:03

was also in that tier

34:05

of nine at the top of the

34:07

outfield rankings going into draft

34:10

season. Would you have him

34:12

at maybe the backend of that group of nine now?

34:14

Would you have him out of there? I mean, would

34:16

you rather have Mike Trout or Aaron Judge rest

34:19

the season? I think is an interesting question.

34:22

I mean, I know personally, there are

34:25

at least a handful of those outfielders in that

34:27

tier one that I would definitely rather

34:29

have than Judge. And that's only slightly

34:32

because of what we've seen this season,

34:34

you know, in terms

34:36

of the slow start. But I

34:39

think it's reasonable to ask about guys like Trout if

34:41

you'd rather have them over Judge. Yeah,

34:44

that's a really good question, especially because I always

34:48

seem like I'm down on Judge

34:50

because of the injury concerns. But

34:52

we're talking about Mike Trout. We're talking about the king

34:54

of injury concerns. So it's hard to kind of discount

34:57

one and not the other just because he's so much

34:59

bigger. But

35:02

Mike Trout is also running. So that kind of

35:04

closes that gap. I still think

35:07

pre-May, I

35:09

don't have Trout above Judge

35:12

just yet. But

35:14

I do have them kind of close in

35:16

the gap whereas Trout was probably in the

35:18

teens, maybe early 20s. Now

35:21

it's, you know, Aaron Judge is top 10 and maybe Mike

35:23

Trout is 12. Like the gap

35:25

is getting smaller. I

35:27

want to quickly run through some pictures in our

35:30

next topic here and basically just ask real

35:32

or not real for what we've

35:34

seen from them this season to

35:37

varying degrees, these names are guys

35:39

that have outperformed expectations. Some

35:42

of them have looked like absolute studs.

35:44

Others have just kind of been better

35:46

than expected. But

35:48

I want to kind of ask real or not real. And, you

35:51

know, when I ask that, obviously you understand this

35:53

but just so everybody else understands, I'm not asking

35:55

like, is this guy's ERA at,

35:57

you know, 120, going

35:59

to... stay there, but just is kind of

36:02

the development slash breakout

36:04

slash, you know, outperforming

36:06

expectations and looks like a

36:08

good draft day value. Is that, you

36:10

know, real when looking at these guys? Um,

36:13

so we'll go quickly through these, cause they're not necessarily stars.

36:15

I don't think we need to spend a ton of time

36:17

on Paul Blackburn is

36:20

one of them. Now it's interesting cause I put

36:22

his name in here before, uh, we saw his

36:24

start on Tuesday of this week, uh, against

36:26

the Yankees. I actually like specifically didn't pick

36:28

him up in a weekly league where I

36:31

was considering him as a two-star pitcher because

36:33

of his match-ups this week, uh, were

36:35

tough. Um, and obviously it

36:37

didn't go well against the Yankees. It wasn't

36:40

the worst start of all time. He did

36:42

go six innings, just five strikeouts, no walks,

36:44

but he did allow four earned runs in

36:46

that start. He allowed three earned runs against

36:48

the Cardinals in his last start. He had

36:50

not allowed a run in any of his

36:52

starts prior to that. So it may

36:55

be that wheels are coming off

36:57

a bit already here. And

36:59

that kind of answers our question for us. What

37:01

do you think about Paul Blackburn real or not

37:03

real? The overall numbers to start the season. Um,

37:06

which by the way, I will say is a two Oh three

37:08

ERA, uh, just 23 strikeouts and

37:10

31 innings and a 0.97 whip. So

37:14

it was funny when I saw you put Paul

37:16

Blackburn in the sheet, because if you listened to

37:18

leading off, this is someone I've teased Joe about

37:20

for, for years now. Um, because

37:23

he's done this before, not to this extent,

37:25

but he's gone on like some mini good

37:27

runs in the past. And Joe has

37:29

recommended, Oh, like pick him up until the wheels fall

37:31

off. And so now like whenever

37:34

Paul Blackburn does anything that's very good or

37:36

very bad, I just tagged Joe

37:38

on Twitter and just say, Hey, here's your boy.

37:41

Um, or anytime they bring them up on leading off,

37:43

I'm always right there in YouTube comments, Hey, Joe, there's

37:45

your boy, Paul Blackburn. Um, and

37:47

so I've really tried to hammer home the

37:49

fact that this is Joe piece of Pia's

37:51

favorite picture. So we'll

37:55

see. I don't necessarily buy into

37:57

this, uh, to be, to be completely.

37:59

honest here, the one thing is he

38:01

seems to, he's one of

38:03

those guys that throws six pitches, which makes me nervous

38:05

a little bit. You know, I love Zach Efland. I

38:07

love Zach Efland's pitch mix. But

38:10

I do get concerned when the guy throws six pitches

38:12

and he throws all six of them at least 10%

38:14

of the time. So he's throwing all of these pitches

38:16

fairly often. He has really cut

38:18

down on his sinker, which, you

38:20

know, wasn't a great pitch for him in

38:23

the past. And so you kind of like to see

38:25

that. But in terms of like staying

38:27

power, I just, you know, I don't, I don't really

38:29

see it. And even if he is going

38:31

to be better, he's still on the

38:34

A's for now. Yeah. Those

38:36

first three starts, by the way, came against

38:38

the Guardians, the Tigers and the Nationals. So

38:40

as we early in the season, especially

38:43

when you're dealing with small sample sizes, I think

38:45

it's very worth noting stuff like that. And

38:47

then, you know, like I said, the last few

38:49

starts, four runs against Yankees, just three runs in

38:52

five and two thirds against the Cardinals, which isn't

38:54

even that great. But he also walked five in

38:56

that game. So I would

38:58

lean towards not real. I'm not, I'm not going to

39:01

actually sit on the fence. I'm going to say definitively,

39:03

I would say not real. Next

39:05

one. Next one's Jared Jones, who is

39:07

somebody that was definitely of interest to

39:09

folks, particularly in dynasty leagues coming into

39:12

this season. The the

39:14

swinging strike rate has always been really impressive,

39:16

his ability to induce whiffs and even just

39:18

like the strikeout rate itself, 34.8% this year.

39:20

So he has been very good in that

39:22

respect. 39 strikeouts in

39:27

29 innings, is a

39:29

279 ERA, and the 0.83 we

39:31

have. So Jones has been very good. I think

39:34

if you're talking in a keeper format or

39:36

a dynasty league, he's somebody that it's reasonable

39:38

to be very excited about. And I'm not

39:41

really questioning real or not real in terms

39:43

of is he a valuable pitcher in dynasty

39:45

to whatever degree pitchers can be valuable in

39:47

dynasty. I'm more

39:49

asking for this season. Is he real or not real

39:51

as a reasonably

39:54

high end starting pitcher, you

39:56

know, going through the rest of the season?

39:59

Obviously, You know, those 29 innings

40:01

came in five starts, so it's not

40:03

like he's consistently going deep into games.

40:05

He's young. The Pirates aren't really incentivized

40:08

to push him to his limit this

40:10

year. So I think there's

40:12

a real case to be made that by

40:14

the back half of the season, they'll be

40:16

skipping starts, maybe even considering shutting him down.

40:18

I think

40:21

he's really talented. I don't think

40:23

he's going to be one of the

40:25

best pitchers in baseball the entire season as a 22-year-old. So

40:29

I lean towards real but maybe not

40:31

sustainable. What do you think about that?

40:35

Yeah, so I've been thinking about this

40:37

one because he's also someone who

40:39

passes the eye test. You watch him, you

40:42

see the gifts on Twitter, you see the

40:44

highlights, you see what he does to Bryce

40:47

Terang with his slider and just sends him into the... He's

40:50

a real pitcher where you expect to see

40:53

him on pitching ninja. You're

40:55

going to see that clip later on. Yes,

40:58

exactly. I've had the same concerns. I've kind of

41:00

toyed with the idea of maybe he's a sell

41:02

high just because he looks so good and because

41:05

he's taken such a massive step forward. This

41:08

is a guy who had a 4.72 ERA and

41:10

AAA last year. How did he turn into this?

41:12

What has he done to turn into this pitcher?

41:14

And we don't really have enough data

41:18

to definitively say one way or another other

41:20

than the eye test and that his stuff

41:22

looks fantastic. The one

41:24

thing I've kind of hedged because my immediate

41:26

thought was what you said. I

41:29

don't know how many innings he's going to throw and

41:31

there's a chance he gets shut down late in the season which is especially

41:34

concerning if you play it head to head because you're just not going to

41:36

happen to the playoffs. He has thrown

41:38

at least 120 innings in two straight seasons now. So

41:40

there is a little bit of room there. So

41:43

between AA and AAA, he threw about

41:45

120 something innings and

41:48

then even in single A in 2022, he threw 122 and two-thirds innings. So

41:53

maybe you can get 130, 140. The Pirates have

41:55

already been very careful with him. You've

41:59

mentioned he hasn't got very deep into games. I think one

42:01

of those games, he threw five innings and it was 59

42:03

pitches and they pulled them. They were just like,

42:05

all right, we're good. Five innings. And

42:07

that's good and bad. It's obviously not great for

42:09

your counting stats and fantasy, but maybe that's the

42:11

way he pitches into August. And maybe if that's

42:14

the plan, maybe you

42:16

know, maybe there's something there. I don't know. And

42:18

might hurt his chances for wins. It's not hurting

42:20

his strikeouts. He's had at least seven strikeouts in

42:22

every start this season. So it's still, even if

42:24

he's not going deep into games, he's getting that.

42:26

He's an interesting guy in that his expected ERA

42:29

on stack cast is two nine

42:31

seven. His ERA is two seven nine. So

42:33

they're very close, even with him

42:35

kind of outperforming expectations to start the year.

42:37

So really, really fun to watch.

42:40

Like I said, I'll kind of lean towards real, but I'm

42:43

questioning how sustainable it is. At

42:45

least at least for 2024, not long

42:48

term, obviously would look very excited about

42:50

him. Spencer Turnbull, one

42:53

23 ERA, he's two and on the season,

42:56

22 strikeouts and 22 innings.

42:58

His whip is under one. He's made

43:00

four starts so far this year. His expected

43:03

ERA is much higher than his ERA, but

43:05

his ERA is so low that his expected

43:07

ERA is still under three, even being, you

43:10

know, more than double what is the ERA

43:13

is. Turnbull is 31. You know, this is unless

43:15

he's turning 32 soon, like Aaron judge,

43:17

I don't know when Turnbull's birthday is, but he's

43:20

31 right now. You're good. You're

43:22

good to September. Okay, excellent. Obviously

43:25

not somebody, you know, doesn't

43:28

have the pure stuff of a Jared Jones is

43:30

not, you know, something that we're

43:32

overly excited about in dynasty, like we might

43:34

be for Jones. But it's been good to

43:36

start the year. I know he's somebody

43:38

that Joey P has touted

43:40

on our social media accounts

43:43

as pickup, you know, worthy already

43:46

here early in the season, real or not

43:48

real this start for Spencer Turnbull. So

43:51

I'm really intrigued by Spencer Turnbull. My

43:53

my biggest concern is really not real

43:56

versus real and it's is he gonna

43:58

stick in the rotation and I feel

44:00

like we're at a point where the Phillies almost have

44:02

to because of how good the results have been. But

44:06

they do have Taiwan Walker coming back. And

44:08

they do have Zach Wheeler, Aaron Noah, Rangers

44:11

Suarez, the best pitcher in baseball, Rangers

44:13

Suarez, and Christopher Sanchez. So

44:16

where does he fit in? You would think

44:19

he should just be over Taiwan Walker, but the Phillies

44:21

gave Taiwan Walker a big contract and he's probably going

44:23

to be in that rotation. And they're almost at the

44:25

point where they're like, you know,

44:27

the Phillies are not hoping for Spencer Turnbull

44:29

to like turn back into a pumpkin, but

44:31

they're really kind of slow playing Taiwan Walker's,

44:34

you know, rehab. They're like, ah, do one

44:36

or two more starts in the minors and

44:38

we'll see how things are working. And then

44:40

Spencer Turnbull goes out and has another good start.

44:43

The one thing, and I think we talked about this

44:45

briefly a couple of weeks ago, is that

44:48

he's throwing a sweeper now. And his sweeper

44:50

is having really good results. It's got a batting average

44:52

below 100, 0.091

44:54

and an expected batting average of 0.194. And

44:57

I'm not 100% sure if it's just a brand

44:59

new sweeper or if it's just a reclassification

45:01

and a tweak of his slider. He is still

45:03

throwing a slider, at least according to Stadcast.

45:05

That could just be a classification thing. I

45:08

don't know for sure if he's actually throwing

45:10

both pitches, but at least,

45:12

you know, he is throwing a sweeper

45:15

now by definition and it's

45:17

doing really well. And so I like to see

45:19

a change like that and

45:21

something you can point to. And I think we've

45:23

talked about that before. So I don't know how real

45:25

he is, but I am intrigued at least in the

45:27

short term. Let's go

45:30

to Ranger Suarez. You just, you just referenced

45:32

best pitcher in baseball. And I

45:34

know we talked about him a decent amount last week, so we don't

45:36

need to spend a lot of time on him, but I wanted to

45:38

at least mention because he had another

45:40

really good start. Obviously last week we

45:43

were coming off that complete game shutout

45:45

against the Rockies. This week

45:47

we're coming off against the Reds, seven

45:49

innings, two hits, no runs again, one

45:52

walk, five strikeouts. So he

45:54

continues to be excellent. He

45:57

really had the one if he start

45:59

again. You know the Braves obviously we

46:01

have already talked about the teams he faced when

46:03

we talked about it last week and

46:05

I You know hilariously

46:08

misspoke Which I'm still thinking

46:10

about but he's been really

46:12

good for three straight games and he was also

46:14

good at least in one game before that so

46:16

I Mean you're

46:19

looking at what is it

46:21

22 straight innings without a run allowed,

46:23

you know He had eight strikeouts and

46:25

back-to-back games prior to this past outing

46:28

it was just five strikeouts but has

46:31

been has been Really

46:33

you can't say enough good things about how how he's looked

46:36

in the last few starts And the

46:38

stat cast data is pretty, you

46:40

know aligned with that, you

46:42

know, his expected ERA is under

46:44

two All of

46:47

his numbers are in you know, the

46:49

top 10% or better in the league so

46:52

not all but the majority

46:54

of them a stat cast are so I'm

46:58

not gonna ask you real or not real is he the best

47:00

pitcher in baseball? But real or not real is

47:02

he a very good fantasy

47:04

starter going forward or just a mirage early in

47:06

the season? In

47:08

between I think you know, you know my thoughts

47:10

I feel that he's just very solid and very

47:13

underrated in the fact that he's solid and if

47:15

you look at you know Talk about outliers last

47:17

year was not life for him. So

47:19

his ERA is 1.36 without looking Do

47:22

you know what his ERA was in 2021? I'm

47:24

gonna guess it's the same 1.36

47:27

so it's exactly the same

47:29

and similar Kind

47:32

of expected numbers do this. They're all slightly higher ground

47:35

ball rate significantly up and if you

47:37

look at in previous years, he

47:39

had a really high ground ball rates between like 51

47:41

59% and In

47:44

last last season his only you know, it

47:47

really is only down year the

47:49

last several years It was about it

47:51

was below 50% is at 48% which is still relatively

47:54

high ground ball percentage But for him that kind of

47:56

led to some bad results and that's why his ERA

47:58

was over 4 Um, and

48:01

so now he's back up over 59%. His

48:04

higher hit percentage is basically cut in half. And

48:06

again, we're talking about a small sample size, but

48:09

I don't think he's going to pitch to a 1.3 60 RA

48:11

again, even though he already did it over 106

48:13

innings in 2021, but I think you're

48:15

going to just get a solid picture of the rest of the

48:17

season, uh, as long as you say something. Last

48:20

picture here is Reed Garrett, which is

48:22

just a fun one and the surprising

48:24

one. And you know, that listener that

48:26

I've referenced a few times that is

48:28

occasionally DMS me about the show, uh,

48:30

I was at one

48:33

point recently was like, what is going

48:35

on with Reed Garrett? Like is this

48:37

thing real? Is he going to be an

48:39

opportunity for colds? Maybe

48:41

even the occasional save. He has one already. Obviously

48:43

we know Edmond Diaz is in that bullpen. So

48:45

there's not going to be a ton of

48:47

save opportunities barring something really unforeseen,

48:50

but, um, here we

48:52

three and oh, this season, uh, out of the

48:54

pen zero ERA is yet to allow a run,

48:56

uh, 21 strikeouts

48:59

in just 10 and two thirds innings.

49:01

So the strikeout rate has been obscene.

49:04

In fact, his K rate is a hundred

49:06

percentile, uh, on stack asset, 51.2%. His

49:09

lift rate is 45.9%. So

49:12

also quite high. All the expected numbers are

49:14

like top 5% in the league,

49:16

expected batting average top 1% expected slugging top 1%

49:19

Woba top 4% expected Woba top 1% is expected

49:23

ERA top 1% it's at 1.28. So

49:26

he's been awesome. What

49:28

something I really like to do when I'm

49:32

trying to build out my fantasy roster

49:34

early in the season is identify the,

49:36

the bullpen breakout guys. And

49:38

historically, I think one of the best ways to do

49:40

that is like just guys who

49:42

strike out a ton in, you know, a

49:44

small amount of innings and who also don't

49:47

walk too many guys is his walk, you

49:49

know, walk percentages, uh, is down a

49:51

little from last year, uh, again,

49:54

I'm kind of rambling a bit, but like, what do you make of

49:56

Reed Garrett? Is he worth a pickup given how

49:58

good he's looked or given the fact. that you will

50:00

pretty much always be blocked from getting saves in New

50:02

York. Is he not worth a pick up? I got

50:04

to be honest. I don't have all the thoughts about

50:06

Ray Garrett. I

50:10

knew who he was because of what he's doing. Not

50:13

really sure where this came from because he

50:16

is an ancient 31 years old. You

50:18

know, we like to talk about these really old 31 year olds.

50:22

And even if you look at if you just go to

50:24

like his stats, it's it's even hard

50:26

to look at his stats page because there's so

50:28

many stops in minor leagues along the way. And

50:30

just like you just basically just have to delete

50:32

those and look at the major league stats.

50:34

And what you're left with is some very

50:36

not good appearances in the major league level. The

50:40

one thing you know, you know, I like my favorite thing to do

50:42

is I look at the pitch mix. The one

50:44

thing is, despite having what seems to be a

50:46

really good fastball, last season, he threw it over

50:49

96 miles an hour. He's not

50:51

throwing it as much anymore. Well, last year, it

50:53

was his primary pitch over 32 percent of the

50:55

time. Now it's down around 12.9

50:57

percent of the time, which is kind

50:59

of what we were seeing when we

51:02

talked earlier near about those Red Sox starting pitchers

51:04

where they're just not throwing basketballs, they're just leaning

51:06

on their their off speed stuff. And

51:08

it looks like he's he's throwing a slider and a

51:10

sweeper. So he's not one who ditched one for the

51:12

other. He's kind of throwing both. And

51:15

so he's throwing a slider, sweeper and split

51:18

finger all more than a fourth seamer. And

51:20

he's also throwing a sinker. And it seems

51:22

like that sweeper is

51:25

his best pitch because it currently has a

51:27

point zero zero zero batting average. No one

51:29

has hit the sweeper yet this year. And

51:31

again, we're only talking about ten innings. So

51:33

extremely small sample size. But fun

51:36

story. I don't really know what to do with

51:38

this other than like, if you have them in

51:40

holds leagues, go for it. Like make them a

51:42

priority. You might already be rostered in holds leagues.

51:45

Not sure how many saves is going to get unless that one gets

51:47

hurt. Good ratios

51:49

if you can use them for, you know, in a daily league

51:51

or something like that. But for

51:54

now, it just seems like a fun story. It seems like

51:56

someone who kind of figured something out, maybe a pitching coach

51:58

just said, hey, stop throwing that. know that

52:01

fast fastball because even though you throw it

52:03

fast, people are still hitting

52:05

it. So maybe lean on your other

52:07

stuff. And so far, so good. Last

52:09

topic here for round of the bases. And we can be

52:11

quick on this one. I posed a

52:14

question via a poll last night on

52:16

my Twitter account at Ryan

52:18

warmly on Twitter. That's warmly like how you dress

52:20

when it's cold outside. You've

52:23

never mentioned my Twitter on this on the show. No. And

52:25

in fact, I think that's the first time I've mentioned mine

52:28

as well. Follow Mike mayor at

52:30

Mike mayor actually didn't look it up. It's just

52:32

that Mike mayor, right? That's right. Okay,

52:34

as there's no, there's no fun little

52:37

thing like mine has of warmly. There's a

52:39

lot of people with my exact name. So

52:41

you got to be first on all these

52:43

new platforms. I had at Mike mayor back

52:45

in like 2009. And you know, there's

52:47

a lot of other Mike mayor that one of you know, we're

52:49

in some group chats together. Yeah. So

52:53

anyways, on my Twitter account at Ryan

52:55

warmly, I put I post this poll

52:57

of our umpires actually

52:59

getting worse. Or

53:02

do we just talk about it slash

53:04

notice it more now because we know

53:07

we have, you know, video

53:09

review and challenges in

53:11

the minor leagues as alternative options, let

53:13

alone, you know, the strike

53:16

zone overlays on every broadcast and

53:18

whatnot. And I kind

53:20

of just posted the poll because I was just curious. I

53:23

see this conversation seemingly every

53:25

day about look at this

53:27

egregious miss, not just by Angel Hernandez,

53:30

but by lots of umpires. And

53:32

it gets highlighted immediately when there's some terrible call.

53:34

And I've seen it a lot with the Orioles

53:36

this year. And this degree of bias there, I'm

53:38

sure but just in like, oh, Gunner

53:40

Henderson gets rung up with two runners on

53:42

base. And oh, immediately it

53:45

comes out on MLB game day. Look, this

53:47

pitch was, you know, a foot

53:49

outside or whatever it was. So

53:52

I wanted to ask and kind of see what people thought about it.

53:55

And it got some responses from some

53:57

of the guys at pitcher list. Alex fast replied

53:59

to it Chris towers from CBS shared his

54:01

opinion. So there seemed to be some degree of interest

54:03

in this conversation, which is why I wanted to bring

54:05

it up again. I don't think we need to do

54:07

a whole deep dive on it. But before I kind

54:09

of share what the results were, and what those guys

54:12

said, I'm wondering what you think about that question. I

54:15

don't know that they're getting worse. I think we're, we're

54:17

just noticing more. I think they've always been pretty bad.

54:20

And I'll tell you one of my pet peeves in

54:23

a second. But I think like you said, we

54:25

have pitch lays everywhere, we have stack cast everywhere.

54:27

And to a

54:29

certain degree, I can kind of empathize with them that like,

54:32

you know, sometimes we're talking about like half an inch or

54:34

an inch or two inches of a ball

54:36

going 100 miles an hour. And they

54:38

get it wrong. And you know, what happens? What's

54:42

a little bit more egregious is when you throw out a manager

54:44

because the fans said something that's a little bit more egregious when

54:46

that happens. And so

54:48

there is that would never happen. Yeah, never.

54:53

But uh, and that does really annoy me

54:55

when when

54:57

umpires kind of make themselves part of the show, my

55:00

big pet peeve that has been going on in baseball

55:02

for decades, maybe hundreds of

55:04

years is, and

55:06

I'm, you know, I'm hoping kind of the

55:08

robo lump revolution solve this is like

55:10

when you get a certain umpire and it's like, Oh,

55:12

he calls a low strike zone or he calls the

55:15

outside strikes. The strikes on is the

55:17

strikes. Now, we don't need to have your own unique

55:19

strikes on everyone has the same one. I don't know

55:21

why, like we have to do that all the time.

55:23

So that is my pet peeve. But overall,

55:25

I don't know that they're getting worse. I just think we're

55:27

noticing more. You know, I did

55:29

always say when I played baseball growing up

55:31

that I didn't really care what the

55:34

zone was as long as it was consistent called

55:36

for both teams. And then I if, hey,

55:38

if you're calling the low strike in the first inning, you

55:41

better be calling it in the in the seventh inning. I

55:44

feel differently about it, I guess, as a

55:46

fan watching than I did as a player,

55:48

where just knowing what I was getting into

55:50

was really beneficial. So

55:53

both both Alex and Chris,

55:57

when they responded pointed

55:59

out recently. One from

56:01

Pitcherless, actually, and the other one pointing out

56:03

a chart that

56:05

was posted to Reddit just yesterday. Umpires

56:08

are actually objectively, provably,

56:10

based on the data, getting more

56:12

accurate at calling balls and strikes

56:15

than ever. So

56:18

I found that to be really eye-opening, not that

56:21

I would have necessarily doubted that

56:23

if you told me, because most areas

56:26

of society, we get better as

56:28

we move along and have more information and

56:30

better training and whatnot. But

56:34

I think it's eye-opening relative to the conversations

56:36

I see on Twitter seemingly every

56:38

single night. I don't think

56:40

most fans would, A,

56:42

realize that, or B, maybe even believe it

56:45

that it's happening more and more. The calls

56:47

for robo-umps are louder and louder every

56:50

week, it feels like, but they are

56:52

getting better. Now, what was interesting about

56:54

one of these charts is

56:56

the top five most accurate umpires

56:58

are getting better. The overall is getting

57:00

better. Even the bottom five,

57:02

the floor is raising. Angel

57:05

Hernandez has his own line and is going down, so

57:07

he is getting worse. And

57:09

I do think the egregiousness of Hernandez

57:11

and some of these clips that you

57:13

see of these missed calls from him,

57:16

I think that

57:18

might skew things in people's minds. And

57:22

again, the instantaneous

57:25

ability to know the exact degree to

57:27

which these calls are egregious, I think,

57:30

colors it in the minds of most

57:32

fans because it's so apparent when the

57:34

miss is really bad. But

57:37

they are actually getting more accurate, and I found that to

57:39

be really fascinating. The poll,

57:41

by the way, was almost

57:44

exactly two-thirds of

57:46

folks saying that they think we just

57:48

notice it more and one-third saying that

57:50

they are actively actually getting

57:53

worse. But again, that's kind

57:56

of provably false based on the data.

57:58

That's great to hear, especially... you

58:00

know, Angel Hernandez is out there collecting

58:02

the page right here every day. Somebody

58:04

on the Reddit post said, okay, we have

58:06

the Mendoza line for haters, and now we

58:09

have the Hernandez line for umps,

58:12

because he does certainly stand out. All right,

58:14

let's jump into our segment with Blake Meyer.

58:16

We will be right back in just a

58:18

second. Welcome

58:20

back into the cycle. We are here

58:23

for our guest segment. Join today is

58:25

Blake Meyer. He is at Balakai. Is

58:27

that what you said? Balaki for his

58:31

block. I almost had it. That's

58:34

that's B U H H L

58:36

O C K A Y

58:39

E on Twitter. I

58:41

knew I was going to get it wrong. He I even asked

58:43

before the show and I still got

58:45

it wrong. So that's that's impressive by

58:48

me. Blake is a contributing writer, of

58:50

course, with fantasy prose, also at

58:53

pitcher list and with fake baseball podcast. So

58:55

he's all over the place. You could find

58:57

him there and also on

58:59

Twitter where I'm not going to pronounce it again. We

59:02

wanted to have him on to talk

59:04

about some players that we might be thinking

59:06

about dropping. I think it's that's always a

59:08

really interesting conversation, particularly when you get to

59:10

about a month into the season, everybody kind

59:13

of has a different timeframe, you know, in

59:15

their own leagues of when is

59:17

the right time to move on from guys. And we

59:19

talk a lot on the show about, you know, players

59:21

to pick up. In fact, we're going to do a

59:23

waiver segment with Blake, you know, at the end of

59:25

this segment. But who are you dropping to make room

59:27

for those guys that you're picking up off waivers that

59:29

doesn't get as discussed as much as the

59:31

guys that you're adding. So I wanted to really run through

59:33

a handful of names here that I think

59:35

are at least worth bringing up. And some of them

59:37

might be difficult to answer. Some of them

59:39

might be an easy yes, some of them might be an

59:41

easy no, but I want to at least ask the question

59:44

for a lot of these guys. So this is a list

59:46

that we kind of compiled together. We will jump right into

59:48

it here. And Blake, as the

59:50

guest, I'll start with you, Kenta Maeda. Are

59:52

we considering dropping him? Yeah, I'm all in

59:55

on dropping Kenta Maeda at this point. Every

59:57

year, it just kind of seems to the

1:00:00

hype of what could he be

1:00:02

coming into this season. We all remember what he

1:00:04

was a few years ago and he was actually

1:00:06

a legitimately good starter. And now

1:00:08

he just seems to be a guy that not

1:00:11

only gets hurt every year, but

1:00:13

can't stop giving up the long ball. And

1:00:16

when you've got a guy that's not going to get you

1:00:18

consistent innings every year, he's only pitched

1:00:20

barely over 100 innings the last two years. And

1:00:23

I mean, this year he's given up, I think

1:00:26

it's like a two and a half home runs

1:00:28

per nine, which is crazy. It's

1:00:31

just he's not consistent or

1:00:33

good enough for me to want him in

1:00:36

any league at this point. So I'm

1:00:38

all in on dropping Kenta Maeda. ERA

1:00:40

just under six. His whip is one,

1:00:42

three, seven. He's

1:00:44

gone 22 and two thirds innings, just 17

1:00:47

strikeouts in that time. 15

1:00:49

earned runs in that stretch. Mayor

1:00:51

Kenta Maeda dropping, holding, what if you see

1:00:54

him dropped, would you consider picking him up

1:00:56

and taking a flyer on him if you

1:00:58

have the room? It's league dependent for me.

1:01:00

And I actually included this name because I

1:01:03

asked about it on Twitter the other day, because I am

1:01:06

I have him in a league and I'm

1:01:08

just like, you know, struggling over the idea

1:01:10

of dropping him. And not just because I

1:01:12

got into that bidding war with Dan Harris, and I don't

1:01:15

want Dan to pick him up if I drop him. That

1:01:17

is a contributing factor, though. But

1:01:21

it is a league where like you need pitching volume.

1:01:23

And so it's that kind of league where I'm still

1:01:25

kind of holding on. I did bench him

1:01:27

this week and I didn't get his five shutout

1:01:29

innings against the A's. Not as

1:01:31

egregious as the pitcher you didn't start this week.

1:01:34

But at least it was a

1:01:36

bounce back start, you know, trying to get in the

1:01:38

right direction. There is injury concerns, performance concerns. I'm

1:01:41

still holding, unless it's a shallow league where

1:01:43

you don't have a ton of spots or

1:01:45

don't need a ton of pitching. But

1:01:48

in any kind of 12 man or more league where

1:01:50

you need pitching volume, I'm still holding out a little

1:01:52

bit longer, but I'm very close to drop. Yeah, Blake,

1:01:54

what mayor's referencing is I'm the dummy who sat Max

1:01:57

Fried this week because I was like, oh, he's been

1:01:59

terrible. And his only good

1:02:01

start was against the Marlins not even like caring

1:02:03

about the fact that it's hard this week is

1:02:05

also against the Marlins so that It

1:02:08

came back to bite me big time Let's

1:02:11

go to the next player to

1:02:13

drop O'Neill Cruz and mayor

1:02:16

I think you said somebody asked you this

1:02:18

on Twitter, right? Yeah, so I don't I

1:02:20

wouldn't even considered including him except that I

1:02:23

Saw him I saw mentioned in another drop

1:02:25

question that someone actually asked me should I

1:02:27

drop O'Neill Cruz? No, no, you should not

1:02:30

I don't care that he has 37 strikeouts Second

1:02:32

most in baseball among qualifying hitters. Well, that's

1:02:35

not great But no

1:02:37

the ceiling is still there the ceiling is still

1:02:39

incredible. Do not drop on it 237

1:02:42

average OPS is 638. He's got

1:02:44

three home runs two stolen bases

1:02:46

on the season Like mayor mentioned

1:02:48

the 37 strikeouts It

1:02:52

was interesting as his BAPF is 358

1:02:55

and that's you know only brought him up

1:02:57

to an average of 237 on the season

1:02:59

Blake What do you

1:03:01

think about O'Neill Cruz? And is this for

1:03:03

you also an easy no as I imagine

1:03:05

it probably a very easy no He's

1:03:08

too good too good of an

1:03:10

all-around player And I mean he struggled lately

1:03:12

But he's he's faced good pitching teams at

1:03:15

Philadelphia at the Mets at home

1:03:17

against Boston, Milwaukee I think

1:03:19

he just faced Freddie Freddie Peralta. So he

1:03:21

faced like actual legitimately good

1:03:23

pitching staffs which a lot of guys

1:03:25

struggle that and it's so early in

1:03:27

the year you can't drop O'Neill Cruz

1:03:31

Yeah, that's a unanimous across the board.

1:03:33

Don't even consider it. Do not drop

1:03:35

O'Neill Cruz The

1:03:37

next one Jackson holiday obviously near and dear to

1:03:40

my heart as an Orioles fan He did finally

1:03:42

get his second hit just last night. We're according

1:03:44

to the Wednesday. So Tuesday night He

1:03:46

got his second hit of the season There

1:03:48

was a graphic that the MLB account shared

1:03:51

on Tuesday of this week

1:03:53

as well That was showing kind of some of

1:03:55

the rough starts for some of you know, like

1:03:57

past Hall of Famers In fact multiple Orioles like

1:03:59

Cal Ripley and was like one for 25 to

1:04:01

start his career. Brooks Robinson was like two for

1:04:03

30. There's been a lot

1:04:05

of guys who have had slow starts. Jackson going into

1:04:07

last night, I believe was one for 30. So

1:04:10

after last night, he's something like two for 34, 35. I

1:04:15

am not dropping holiday, but if I'm

1:04:17

in a shallow league where there is

1:04:19

a really particularly enticing option that like,

1:04:21

oh, I have this injury elsewhere, I need to

1:04:24

pick him up, I'm willing to, but I'm not

1:04:26

like, okay, moving on, go find somebody he's at

1:04:28

the top of my cut list. Certainly like that.

1:04:30

What do you think mayor? Yeah,

1:04:33

I'm in a similar boat. It's a rough

1:04:35

beginning. It's not just the two for 35

1:04:37

or whatever it is. It's

1:04:41

a lot of strikeouts in there. Like he's not.

1:04:43

50% strikeout. Yeah,

1:04:45

I'm still holding, like you

1:04:47

said, the only

1:04:49

places where I'm considering dropping him are like

1:04:51

those ESPN leagues that we're in,

1:04:53

where it's really shallow. You don't have a ton

1:04:55

of Ross response. You can't afford in a

1:04:58

small roster league like that to just like take

1:05:00

those zeros week over week. So that's

1:05:02

the only kind of league where you just can't

1:05:04

wait for that kind of stuff. Outside

1:05:07

of anything deeper than that, I'm

1:05:10

still holding and just not looking at

1:05:13

the box go for a while. I will

1:05:15

say on holiday, I am, I think

1:05:17

lower than some of the other like

1:05:20

kind of much better prospect evaluators than

1:05:22

me on his power long-term.

1:05:25

And I think that will be reflected in

1:05:27

his home run numbers as a

1:05:29

rookie. I am not expecting like, you know, you'll see some

1:05:31

people say like, oh, I mean, this is a guy who

1:05:33

can develop into like 20 home run

1:05:35

power and he's got some speed. Maybe he's like

1:05:37

a 2020 guy, things are right. I

1:05:40

don't see that. Like I think the batting average like will

1:05:42

come this year. Like I think you've kind of figured out

1:05:44

major league pitching. There's a reason he was

1:05:46

consensus. There more prospect everywhere, but I don't think

1:05:48

he's somebody who's going to give you a lot of

1:05:50

power, even if he figures it out this year and

1:05:54

just kind of what we've seen to start this season as

1:05:56

sort of solidified that in my mind a bit. Blake, what

1:05:58

do you think about holiday? Are you considering? dropping

1:06:00

him obviously not in any kind of keeper format

1:06:02

but in redraft this season? I

1:06:07

mean no he's just a hold for me

1:06:09

now because the prospect pedigree is too good.

1:06:11

I can't drop him. One of my big

1:06:13

rules for dropping guys is I tend

1:06:16

to shy away from dropping guys that

1:06:18

I know will like immediately

1:06:21

get picked up by somebody else in the league

1:06:23

because if you drop somebody that is in that

1:06:25

category then it means that they

1:06:27

probably were too good for you to drop them to begin with.

1:06:29

I think holiday still falls into that category. I'm gonna bench

1:06:32

him for a little while until he can figure it

1:06:34

out because all those strikeouts

1:06:36

I enjoy points leagues so all those

1:06:38

strikeouts are killer in a points league

1:06:40

but yeah I'm not dropping him

1:06:42

but he's not starting for me right now either. Speaking

1:06:45

to his upside too like he only has two

1:06:47

hits on the season and he's walked twice and

1:06:50

he's hitting ninth in every game. He scored five

1:06:52

runs already that's how good this Orioles offense is

1:06:54

is that like even when he's barely getting on

1:06:56

base pretty much every time he gets on he's

1:06:59

coming around to score so if the average comes

1:07:01

around which again I think that will you'll still

1:07:03

get average runs I think some

1:07:05

steals in the second half of the

1:07:07

season so if you can hold him I certainly would be

1:07:10

hoping to do that. Blake let's

1:07:12

start with you on Nolan Jones are you

1:07:14

dropping him or considering it at

1:07:17

least? I just talked about him

1:07:19

on my podcast the other day. He's

1:07:21

firmly benched right now contemplating

1:07:24

dropping. I'm not dropping him though

1:07:26

only because the premium

1:07:28

you paid on drafting him. He

1:07:31

was still drafted too early for me to want

1:07:33

to drop now but I'm

1:07:36

so out on

1:07:38

starting him because early in the season he had

1:07:40

the struggles but they played so many games away

1:07:42

from Coors Field that you kind of just hoped

1:07:45

okay when he comes back to Coors Field things

1:07:47

will turn around. He came back to Coors Field

1:07:50

and nothing changed so

1:07:53

until I see some kind of sign of

1:07:55

life from him he's

1:07:57

a very nervous

1:08:00

hold. Uh, I, but

1:08:04

I mean, if it keeps going, I'm going to

1:08:06

consider dropping him. Yeah.

1:08:08

Mayor one home run to stolen bases batting

1:08:10

148. His OPS is 4 6 9. It's

1:08:15

that's like been pretty abysmal. And I was locked

1:08:17

up with Blake in terms of, oh, let's wait

1:08:19

till he gets back to course and then just

1:08:21

his not helps. What do you think about him?

1:08:25

I haven't met a pretty easy hold even even

1:08:27

without ugly it was just because we saw the

1:08:29

ceiling last year. We saw a guy back to

1:08:31

97 and go 2020 in only 106 games,

1:08:33

which tells you that there's a lot of potential there.

1:08:35

And so it's painful right now, but I still have

1:08:37

him as a whole. That's still too early to pull

1:08:39

the plug on him in pretty

1:08:42

much every league. And with what Blake said,

1:08:44

if you drop Nolan Jones in your league, someone's picking

1:08:46

him up. You know,

1:08:48

his, his roster percentage is below 90. I mean, it's at

1:08:50

88% in Yahoo. It's

1:08:53

58% ESPN, which is obviously like a lot

1:08:55

of shallow release and also Yahoo is first

1:08:57

base eligibility. But you

1:08:59

know, it's, it's not like it's at 100%. Like

1:09:02

there are people that are not finding room for

1:09:04

him on rosters. So I think

1:09:07

it's justifiable. But yeah, I'm with you in terms of

1:09:09

not wanting to drop him just yet. I need to

1:09:11

see more before he gets to that level. Mayor

1:09:15

Glaver Torres, are you dropping him? I'm

1:09:18

close. I'm close. I

1:09:21

don't want to because even though I'm

1:09:23

not the biggest Glaver Torres fan, he

1:09:27

still is in a good lineup in a

1:09:29

very small ballpark, even though he's a righty

1:09:31

in that ballpark. But no home runs through

1:09:33

24 games now. And

1:09:35

the other concerning thing is like, we've seen the

1:09:38

power disappear before. Obviously, we saw the explosion in

1:09:40

2019 with those bouncy balls. And

1:09:42

then we saw him the last few years still hit 24 or

1:09:44

more home run. So we see that he still has some power

1:09:46

even after, you know, a down 2020 and 2021. But now here

1:09:48

we are almost

1:09:52

month into the season. No home runs three stone

1:09:54

bases betting 186 with a 191

1:09:57

expected batting average. I'm

1:10:00

getting very close to dropping him even though

1:10:02

I would prefer not to. Another

1:10:05

guy with an OPS under 500,

1:10:08

Blake Glaver Torres, just to give

1:10:10

you the Ross percentage, also at 88% on Yahoo. He's

1:10:13

a bit higher on ESPN at 73%. Are

1:10:16

you considering dropping him? Yeah,

1:10:19

right back to, I mean, he's a

1:10:21

pretty close drop for me right now

1:10:23

too. Lowest zone contact

1:10:25

rate of his career so far. He

1:10:28

just can't hit anything. He's got like

1:10:30

a 32% whiff rate on fastballs of

1:10:32

all things. For a guy that was

1:10:35

traditionally so good at hitting fastballs, all of a sudden this

1:10:37

year he can't hit a fastball. He can't hit a breaking

1:10:39

ball or a change to save his life this year either.

1:10:41

But I always get a little more concerned when a guy

1:10:43

really struggles to hit fastballs. And

1:10:47

yeah, like Mike said, we've seen the

1:10:49

power in things kind of fluctuate in

1:10:51

the past. This might just not,

1:10:54

this might not be Glaver's year. And I

1:10:56

would rather trend more

1:10:58

towards dropping now

1:11:01

than holding out hope for too long into being

1:11:03

an off year. I'm

1:11:05

not dropping him just for the sake of doing it,

1:11:07

but I think he's definitely a drop candidate there. Again,

1:11:09

if there's a pickup I want to make, I'm

1:11:12

not, I'm not going to not

1:11:14

make that pickup just because Glaver Torres is

1:11:16

in the way. I'm willing

1:11:18

to move on from him if necessary. How

1:11:21

about one of the more fun guys to

1:11:23

talk about, you know, before the season, Wyatt

1:11:25

Langford, obviously he made the team for the

1:11:28

opening day roster. Great,

1:11:30

great hitter. You know, one of

1:11:32

the first picks in this elite draft class last year.

1:11:34

It looks like one of the best hitters in the

1:11:36

minors. A lot of

1:11:38

hope and you know, people love their

1:11:40

rookies. And you know, when he actually made the

1:11:42

opening day roster, there was just

1:11:45

a ton of excitement hasn't quite been there

1:11:47

yet. Again, similar

1:11:49

to Holiday, there's no chance anybody's moving

1:11:51

on from him in the keeper dynasty.

1:11:53

So we're specifically asking about redraft only,

1:11:56

but Blake in redraft, Wyatt Langford, obviously

1:11:58

with the, with the ring. Rangers, you

1:12:00

know, what are you doing? Um,

1:12:04

I'm holding for now. Uh, I,

1:12:07

I am in a 12 team

1:12:09

points league that

1:12:11

does three outfielders. Um, and

1:12:13

if that's your very specific format

1:12:15

type, uh, I do

1:12:17

lean more towards drop in that format, but

1:12:19

overall, uh, he's a hold for me just

1:12:22

cause the talent is there. Um,

1:12:24

I'm a Mariners fan. I lived through the

1:12:26

Julio Rodriguez getting called up and

1:12:29

he got the very similar,

1:12:31

uh, consistent call strikes

1:12:33

outside of his own, which really. Messed

1:12:35

with his head for a while. Langford's getting the same thing. It'll

1:12:38

all turn around. We've all seen the talent. We all saw

1:12:41

how well he did last year in the

1:12:43

minors. Uh, it'll come,

1:12:45

uh, he's a hold for

1:12:47

me, but in three outfielder leagues,

1:12:50

shallower three outfielder leagues. I understand if

1:12:52

you want to drop him in redraft mayor

1:12:55

Langford's batting 235, obviously no

1:12:58

home runs yet. Um, I

1:13:00

mean, if we're, if we're holding onto holiday, I

1:13:02

don't see any reason why the answer would be

1:13:04

different for Langford who's been not that

1:13:06

it's saying much, but better than holiday,

1:13:08

obviously. And kind of got a headstart

1:13:10

on getting his feet wet. So maybe the, you know,

1:13:13

the adjustment period shakes off a little sooner than it

1:13:15

did for holiday. And also just the healing is so

1:13:17

high. So I tend to agree with Blake on him

1:13:20

as a hold candidate. What do you think? Yeah,

1:13:23

he hasn't been as bad as

1:13:25

Jackson holiday, but he's been bad

1:13:27

for longer, which, um, uh, no

1:13:29

runs on basis as we talked

1:13:32

about. Um, and

1:13:35

a lot of, I don't have any

1:13:37

white Langford because he's, his

1:13:40

talk went to the moon during draft season.

1:13:42

And he, he became everyone's darling. Um,

1:13:45

and his ADP just got out of control. And so I

1:13:47

don't have him anywhere because I just didn't draft him early

1:13:49

enough. Um, so I, and I'm

1:13:51

happy that I don't have to consider

1:13:53

dropping him because I want to, I would want to drop

1:13:56

him. Um, and

1:13:58

it, there's no track record here. Like you. he

1:14:00

was just drafted last season and then he flew through

1:14:02

the minor leagues and we saw this, you know, this

1:14:04

incredible hitter. But what if he's just

1:14:06

not ready? You know, he's only he only played, you

1:14:09

know, 17 games at 20. Or

1:14:12

no, not even five games in AAA after

1:14:14

12 of dozen games in AA. Like,

1:14:17

he doesn't even have that much that that

1:14:19

many professional baseball games under his belt. So

1:14:22

it's entirely possible he's just not ready. And

1:14:24

so I don't want to

1:14:26

drop him because, you know, we've talked about

1:14:28

the potential there. But also, maybe I just want

1:14:30

to see if I can sell low and just

1:14:33

get out of the white Langford business and

1:14:35

see if someone's willing to give me something for him. So

1:14:38

I don't have to drop them. If you

1:14:40

had if you had both on your roster

1:14:42

and had to drop one, would you rather

1:14:44

rather drop holiday or like for? That's

1:14:47

a good question. When I first started talking,

1:14:49

I just assumed I wanted to keep Jackson

1:14:51

holiday. But now that I think about it,

1:14:53

I don't know.

1:14:56

There's also a decent, maybe not decent,

1:14:58

but there is a non zero chance that one or

1:15:00

both of these guys get sent down. So

1:15:02

that is a contributing factor here. Because then you

1:15:04

just, I almost feel like

1:15:06

I would want to sell low on both

1:15:08

of them and just see what I can

1:15:10

get. Because there's, there's as much a chance that

1:15:12

they turn it around as it is that they're good,

1:15:15

they get sent down, you get nothing for them. And

1:15:17

it's two teams that are like in win now mode.

1:15:19

So there's no incentive to let them figure it out

1:15:21

at the majors if it really is becoming clear that

1:15:23

they're not doing that. Next

1:15:26

guy up Brandon fat. Mayor, what

1:15:28

do you think? I have never

1:15:30

been in the branded Brandon thought business

1:15:32

and I'm not going to start

1:15:34

now. And so he's, he's a

1:15:36

drop for me unless you're in a league

1:15:38

similar to Ken Tamayeta, where you need the

1:15:41

pitching volume, then I'm

1:15:43

okay holding on. But in most cases, I'm

1:15:45

I'm not a huge fan. I've never really

1:15:47

seen the appeal. And so he's

1:15:49

a drop for me. What do you think, Blake? Yeah,

1:15:51

drop for me too. And I sure in like a 15

1:15:53

team league, I'm pretty

1:15:56

out on Brandon, Brandon fought his

1:15:58

numbers are just. average

1:16:00

to below average and there's nothing there

1:16:02

that really excites me. So yeah, I'm

1:16:04

out on thought. Yeah, 497 ERA, 117

1:16:06

whip, 27 strikeouts and 29 innings, you know, 1-1 record. Yeah,

1:16:14

I mean like in the right league, I might be willing

1:16:16

to hold on him as a flyer, but

1:16:20

I think it's becoming more apparent that he's a

1:16:22

pretty okay drop candidate if you

1:16:24

need one. Nick Castellanos, Blake, what do you think

1:16:27

about him? Another one that I

1:16:29

just talked about the other day on my podcast, he

1:16:32

falls into that category of you likely used

1:16:34

like a 10th round pick on him. So

1:16:37

you're going to be real uncomfortable dropping

1:16:39

him. But this version of

1:16:41

Nick Castellanos, so close to the 2022 version,

1:16:45

and Nick Castellanos to hit 13 home

1:16:47

runs that it scares me. He's

1:16:51

doing a lot of things that should be

1:16:53

good. He's pulling fly balls at like a

1:16:55

13% clip, which is way better than league

1:16:58

average, but his average exit velocity on a

1:17:00

fly ball is only 85 miles

1:17:02

an hour, which is terrible.

1:17:05

He's hitting fewer line drives than normal,

1:17:08

making less contacts than normal. It's

1:17:11

just, there's not a lot of

1:17:13

excitement there. And with that

1:17:15

new stack cast data coming out of hitters, bat

1:17:17

speed declining over the age of, I think it

1:17:19

was 31. This

1:17:22

might just be with him being 32. This might

1:17:24

just be who he is now. And so I,

1:17:28

I trend more towards dropping Nick Castellanos again,

1:17:30

unless you're in like a 15 or

1:17:32

20 team crazy deep league. I think

1:17:34

you could probably find better rest of

1:17:37

season options. Yeah,

1:17:39

we, we actually mentioned that, uh, earlier in

1:17:41

the show that age 31 and we were,

1:17:44

not that he's a drop candidate, but when we were talking about Aaron

1:17:46

judge, you know, about the

1:17:48

front 32 that I thought that that was really

1:17:50

interesting. I thought he knew

1:17:53

Blake's a professional. He wasn't even on the show

1:17:55

yet. And he still referenced something we just talked

1:17:57

about. Natural.

1:18:00

natural doing my job there.

1:18:02

Yeah, mayor Nick

1:18:04

Castellanos, drop candidate for you? I

1:18:08

agree that it scares

1:18:10

me how similar this looks to 2022 because

1:18:12

it looks really bad and it looks a lot like 2022. And

1:18:15

in some cases it looks worse than 2022. I

1:18:19

don't know, I can pull the trigger on drop

1:18:21

again, just because we already talked

1:18:23

about the deficit of power in

1:18:26

kind of fantasy baseball or real baseball. And

1:18:29

I kind of, you know, if I drafted Nick Castellanos

1:18:31

based on how I build teams, I drafted him for

1:18:33

that power. That being said, I'm very close to dropping

1:18:35

him. And he's again, someone that I'm gonna see if

1:18:38

maybe I can sell low, maybe I can swap

1:18:40

him for a struggling pitcher that

1:18:42

someone wants to, you know, get out of. And

1:18:45

I just kind of like, you know, maybe I

1:18:48

swap a struggling Castellanos for someone else's struggling

1:18:50

that I might believe a little bit more

1:18:52

in. Last one here, I wanted to bring

1:18:55

up Lane Thomas. He might not be droppable

1:18:57

simply because he has 11 steals, which

1:19:00

is most leagues you're gonna need

1:19:02

that. But he's been bad in

1:19:04

pretty much every other area and is now

1:19:06

on the IL of course. So Mayor Lane

1:19:09

Thomas, worth considering dropping even with the speed?

1:19:12

Only if you're in a league where you can't

1:19:14

stash him because he's hurt. If

1:19:17

you have an IL spot, easy keep. And if you have

1:19:19

a bench spot, fairly easy keep.

1:19:21

Just because I was never as high on him,

1:19:23

like I don't, I think 2023 at the end

1:19:25

of the day is

1:19:27

gonna be the outlier of his career. I don't think we're

1:19:30

ever gonna see that year again from him. So

1:19:32

I wasn't in on those numbers this year, but

1:19:35

11 steals and 22 games. Even

1:19:38

with the explosion of stolen bases where, you know, a

1:19:40

few years ago, that would be incredible. And you would

1:19:42

just be, you know, no chance you dropped

1:19:44

him. Now you can kind of find steals everywhere,

1:19:46

but still that's an impressive rate to

1:19:49

the point that I would want to hold onto him if I

1:19:51

drafted him. But, you know, if I need

1:19:53

the roster spot, I'm just gonna pull the trigger. I'll find

1:19:55

those two steal somewhere else. Honestly, most

1:19:57

of my league's, my IL spots

1:19:59

are. Like it's just, isn't that

1:20:01

kind of a season? So like, if you do have

1:20:03

this space, then yeah, just throw them on your IL.

1:20:06

But if not, like, if you're anything like me, don't

1:20:08

have this space. I think that's when it becomes a

1:20:10

question. Uh, Blake again, 11 steals. Are

1:20:14

you willing to move on from that if needed? He's

1:20:16

a hold for me, just cause there are, I mean,

1:20:18

there's some things I like. I like that he's making

1:20:20

94% zone contact. I like

1:20:22

these got a 23% line drive rate, things like

1:20:24

that. I think we'll bring his Baba and his

1:20:26

average up over time. He doesn't have that elite

1:20:28

speed at the 11 steals. So he's

1:20:30

a hold for me for now. Uh,

1:20:34

but like Mike said, if you can't stash him, he's

1:20:36

on the IL. It's going to be out for a

1:20:38

while. You could probably find a productive player somewhere else.

1:20:40

So I'm not sure people are clamoring to pick

1:20:42

up Lane Thomas right now. So we just

1:20:44

talked about the guys to consider dropping. Who do we

1:20:47

want to pick up? We're going to go to our

1:20:49

waivers segment here. Blake, of course,

1:20:51

contributes to our, you know, waivers coverage on the

1:20:53

site every week. So we thought that was a

1:20:55

natural fit to include him in this discussion. Uh,

1:20:58

Blake as the guests, we will start with you. Who

1:21:00

is your favorite hitter to pick up? My favorite hitter

1:21:02

to pick up right now is William from the red

1:21:04

Sox. Uh, they have already

1:21:06

committed to him being in the lineup every day

1:21:09

against righties for the rest of the year, which

1:21:11

I think is huge. Uh, he's

1:21:13

been batting cleanup lately and towards the top

1:21:15

of the lineup. I think it's hit second

1:21:17

and third recently as well. Uh, and he's

1:21:19

producing, which is big to

1:21:22

home runs for stolen bases already walking

1:21:24

almost 15% while

1:21:26

playing consistently. And he has legitimate

1:21:28

power. Like his 90th EV

1:21:32

right now is like 106.2 miles an hour, which is almost two miles

1:21:34

an hour higher than league average. So he has legitimate

1:21:37

power. Um, and a guy that can hit

1:21:39

the ball that hard, walk the high of a rate. I don't

1:21:41

even care if he strikes that a little bit too much. Um,

1:21:44

he's only owned in like 12% of

1:21:46

Yahoo leagues. So there's a lot of value

1:21:48

there for him. Yeah, I was

1:21:50

going to mention he's very available. 11% is

1:21:52

what we're showing them on fantasy bros for

1:21:55

his Yahoo roster percentage,

1:21:58

uh, 3% in ESPN. So I definitely. Definitely

1:22:00

very available in a lot

1:22:02

of leagues. What do you think about that suggestion, Mayor? So

1:22:06

I'm a Red Sox fan. So I've watched

1:22:08

a lot of Willy O'Ruebriu. I've never really

1:22:10

seen it with him. But I think

1:22:13

he's right. I think Blake's right that there is a little

1:22:15

bit of something there. And the other thing with

1:22:18

his situation with the Red Sox is that they have

1:22:20

no one else in that lineup to replace him. And

1:22:23

they have no one else in the 40-man roster to

1:22:25

replace him. They don't have your famous Orioles farm system.

1:22:27

There's no one coming. There's no one coming to take

1:22:29

his job. And

1:22:31

so he's going to continue, like

1:22:34

Blake said, being in the lineup against riders. Because

1:22:36

they're so devastated with injuries, he's been moving up

1:22:38

in the lineup. And this is

1:22:40

a guy that in 28 games last year batted 316. And

1:22:43

so there could be

1:22:45

something there. And he's a power speed combo

1:22:47

guy. And he's essentially

1:22:49

free right now, especially since he's

1:22:53

probably going to fly a little under the radar and waivers, at

1:22:56

least for another week. So he's someone you can

1:22:58

probably get, especially if it's a fab league where you have to spend

1:23:00

a lot of money, you could probably get him pretty cheap before

1:23:03

his roster percentage starts to go up a little bit. Mayor,

1:23:05

who's your favorite hitter to pick up right now? So

1:23:07

I will go with Heston Kierstad. So

1:23:10

I cheated in pick two because they're both

1:23:12

kind of dark roads. Heston Kierstad could be

1:23:15

the sexy one this week. He's going to be the one

1:23:17

that a lot of people, if you have waivers around this

1:23:19

weekend, he's going to be one that goes for either the

1:23:22

top waiver priority or

1:23:24

whoever bids the most in fab. And

1:23:26

the other one is Joey Leoprofido.

1:23:29

And he's someone who is not called

1:23:31

up yet. He's still in AAA. But

1:23:35

the Astros are struggling big time right now.

1:23:38

And it's really they're pitching that struggling.

1:23:40

But they also have some hitters like Jose Breu,

1:23:43

who is not doing too great right now. And

1:23:45

I don't even know if I'm saying his name right,

1:23:47

because I've actually never heard it said out loud. It

1:23:49

could be Loper Fido. I assume it's Loper Fido. But

1:23:53

it's Joey Leoprofido. And

1:23:56

he has 10 home runs in 20 games in AAA

1:23:58

already this season. And it comes with a lot

1:24:00

of strikeouts. He seems like he's going to be a guy who strikes out

1:24:02

a lot. But if you, if you

1:24:05

need power, the Astros

1:24:07

could call him up soon and Chas McCormick

1:24:09

doesn't have a firm hold on that outfield

1:24:11

job. Well, Proffito can play first

1:24:13

base. Jose Breo looks like a ghost and

1:24:17

they can only just, you know, we saw it last year

1:24:19

where he had that atrocious start to the season, Jose Breo,

1:24:21

and then he kind of turned it on and had a

1:24:23

strong start. I don't know that that's happening again. And

1:24:25

I don't know that they can wait for it

1:24:27

to happen again. And if, if they're not going

1:24:29

to find pitching to turn around for the, you

1:24:31

know, the Astros, then they're just going to have

1:24:34

to improve that lineup some, some, some, uh, in

1:24:36

some way. And low Proffito could be someone who

1:24:38

does it. And then Heston Keir said, we

1:24:40

kind of know the Orioles have an incredibly deep

1:24:42

lineup. The trouble for him is going to be,

1:24:44

is he going to find his fondant lineup?

1:24:47

Is he, is he going to find everyday playing time? We've

1:24:50

seen that before with the Orioles. Sometimes,

1:24:52

you know, you just play your way onto the

1:24:54

field like Colton Kouser did. And

1:24:57

so there's a chance he did too, because he was incredible in

1:24:59

the minors and he really doesn't have anything left to prove down

1:25:01

there. And they called him up. Hopefully they

1:25:03

play him and you know, you get

1:25:05

the speed power combo there too. Yeah.

1:25:08

Part of the problem with Keir said, by the way,

1:25:10

that would be a difficult name to pronounce if you

1:25:12

didn't know that one beforehand too, uh, with

1:25:15

that silent J. But, uh, part of

1:25:17

the problem with your set is that like Ryan

1:25:19

O'Hern and Ryan Mountcastle are hitting so

1:25:21

well. And obviously Colton Kouser

1:25:23

has been this huge breakout and Santander has

1:25:26

this track record that yeah, there's like just

1:25:28

not even with Austin Hayes going on the

1:25:30

IL, which is what prompted this move. There's

1:25:33

still not really that many options.

1:25:35

And also the Orioles are so

1:25:38

lefty heavy in their lineup that when they

1:25:40

face lefties, like they're already forced to hit

1:25:42

a bunch. Like if they have anybody that

1:25:44

they can avoid hitting against the lefty, who

1:25:46

is the lefty that's young, like a cure,

1:25:48

sad, like a holiday. We're seeing that actually

1:25:50

in today's lineup. Um, they're, I

1:25:53

think they're going to avoid that. So I

1:25:55

would be worried about our bats there. Uh,

1:25:57

quickly, Blake, do you have a favorite between those two guys

1:25:59

that may. suggested? Short-term

1:26:01

maybe Keirstad. Long-term I think La

1:26:04

Profito just because I think he'll if

1:26:06

slash when he gets called up

1:26:09

he'll have less in his way

1:26:11

towards consistent production. Keirstad

1:26:13

like they're loaded in Baltimore. I don't even

1:26:16

know how to getting all those guys at

1:26:18

bats right now. So just adding Keirstad into

1:26:20

that as well it kind of muddies things

1:26:22

up. But he is already up so in

1:26:24

the short term I think he's going to play enough to

1:26:26

have value now. Long-term I like La Profito. We

1:26:28

got to get Blake out of here so we'll go quickly

1:26:31

on our favorite pictures this week. Blake who's your favorite arm?

1:26:34

Keaton Wynn is my favorite arm. He's

1:26:37

been one of my favorite arms for the

1:26:39

last couple weeks. I think he's very underrated. He's

1:26:42

seventh in baseball and ground ball rate right now.

1:26:45

Last year the ground ball percent

1:26:47

leaders were some of the best pitchers in

1:26:49

baseball. Cindy Alcantara, friend of all those guys

1:26:51

like that Logan Webb and Keaton

1:26:54

Wynn he has that nasty splitter. They

1:26:56

throw really hard for a splitter and

1:26:59

it's doing the job and he's not blow

1:27:01

you away with strikeout numbers. But

1:27:04

for me when I'm looking at pitchers to

1:27:06

pick up off of waivers it's

1:27:08

always important to not chase wins because that will

1:27:10

kill you. Chase quality starts

1:27:12

and then just hope that you get wins

1:27:14

off of that and I think Keaton Wynn

1:27:16

is a great source of quality starts for

1:27:19

the rest of the season. Mayor what do

1:27:21

you think about Wynn? I think he's not

1:27:23

quite in that Ranger

1:27:25

Suarez level that we talked about earlier where I just

1:27:27

think he's like really solid but he's kind of

1:27:29

emerged you know heading in that direction where he's

1:27:31

not going to be like super flashy or sexy

1:27:34

but maybe he just turns in to be kind

1:27:36

of a quality arm who gives you you know

1:27:39

innings and not a ton of strikeouts but

1:27:41

enough strikeouts to be viable. I do like

1:27:43

that he keeps the you know the ball

1:27:45

on the ground which is similar to what

1:27:47

we talked about Ranger Suarez which is kind

1:27:49

of how that jumped out to

1:27:51

me for the comparison. So don't love

1:27:54

a Keaton Wynn but I'm okay with a

1:27:56

Keaton Wynn. I like how Blake said don't

1:27:58

chase wins but we're gonna chase. when

1:28:00

singular in this case Mayor

1:28:05

I'm 10 that yeah, exactly mayor

1:28:07

wrap us up here with your favorite pitcher

1:28:11

Mine is I don't know these my favorite

1:28:13

pitcher, but he's the pitcher I'm going with

1:28:15

says in this show Mayor's

1:28:17

favorite pitcher. So you

1:28:19

know as we've established last week, I'm Ron

1:28:21

Burgundy and we'll read what's inside That's

1:28:24

true. That is a good point. So Zach Zach

1:28:26

Lattelle is the name I'm going with this week

1:28:29

You know, I like my raised pitchers. I

1:28:32

did promise not to talk about him every week I don't think I

1:28:34

talked about him too much the last week way before so we're diving

1:28:36

back in a little bit But he

1:28:38

stuck out to me because he's widely available

1:28:41

Despite the strong start he's off to he's only rostered

1:28:43

in 44% of the other leagues and 22% of ESPN

1:28:45

leagues So

1:28:49

he's a guy you can find a lot of

1:28:51

leagues all to a strong start 3.33 Are

1:28:53

a 27 innings 29 strikeouts all is

1:28:56

expected area numbers are pretty similar K

1:28:59

percentage is up swinging strike percentages up

1:29:02

hard contact is down Lots

1:29:04

of likes so far for a guy who's pretty widely

1:29:06

available and it looks like you've got a bonus option

1:29:09

here as well Oh, yeah The

1:29:11

bonus option and this is really only for

1:29:13

deep leagues and it's Quinn Priest her and

1:29:15

it's because he has two starts and they're

1:29:17

against the Oakland A's and

1:29:19

the Colorado Rockies and I

1:29:21

wouldn't go nuts adding him because who knows

1:29:23

what he's gonna be and his

1:29:25

early numbers are not great, but

1:29:29

To start the year in triple-a 13 2 third

1:29:31

innings and 20 strikeouts of a 3.95 era So

1:29:34

there is some stuff potential there don't

1:29:37

know where you're gonna get But if you are in

1:29:39

a deep league where you need some volume He

1:29:42

has get two stars against you very bad teams He's

1:29:45

also not like a nobody

1:29:47

like non-prospect. He's Like

1:29:49

has been highly rated at times in

1:29:52

the Pirates organization as around

1:29:54

how to go young pitcher. Yeah Like

1:29:57

what do you think about just quickly both? his

1:30:00

favorite pitcher and then also his deeply captioned

1:30:02

I Like

1:30:06

I like Littel I

1:30:08

think he's a good ad I like that he changed himself

1:30:10

from a Slider

1:30:12

forcing guy to a slider splitter

1:30:14

guy. I like that a lot

1:30:17

and it's been fairly successful, too. So seeing

1:30:20

guys make like tangible pitch repertoire

1:30:22

changes and usage range in rate

1:30:26

Usage Changes and all of

1:30:28

that and see it actually put up good numbers as

1:30:30

nice You got a K minus walk rate over 20%

1:30:33

which anything over 17% for me is great So

1:30:36

getting a guy almost 21% is awesome and

1:30:39

Preaster. I like him for the

1:30:41

same reasons the only three teams That

1:30:44

I feel super confident about starting waiver wire

1:30:47

guys against our Oakland Colorado and the horrible

1:30:49

Chicago White Sox and he just happens to

1:30:51

play two of them in the same week,

1:30:53

so There's value there in

1:30:55

that. Yeah, cannot beat that. All right, we will let

1:30:58

Blake go. Thank you so much for giving us the

1:31:00

time I'm sure we'll have you on again later in

1:31:02

the season as well to find some new topics to

1:31:04

hit on but thank you again For giving us the

1:31:06

time for Blake and mayor we will

1:31:09

step away and mayor and I will be right back on the

1:31:11

other side Thank you

1:31:13

again to Blake for joining us on

1:31:15

this episode of the cycle We really

1:31:17

appreciate him coming on talking about some

1:31:19

players drop and also giving

1:31:21

out his waivers Suggestions so again appreciate

1:31:23

him joining us this week We're gonna

1:31:25

try and get more writers on the

1:31:27

show and kind of introduce our audience

1:31:30

to some of the contributors on

1:31:32

the site and guys that you might also just know elsewhere

1:31:34

and be interested in hearing from and So

1:31:36

we're gonna try and do that more throughout the season.

1:31:38

So I hope you guys enjoyed that one Let's get

1:31:40

into wrapping up the show here with our weekend excitement

1:31:42

as always Some of the

1:31:44

ones that I I wrote down here the

1:31:47

Yankees Brewers series I just think that's a

1:31:49

good exciting series a couple good

1:31:51

teams fun ones show to Imanaga versus

1:31:53

cutter Crawford on Friday Very fun pitching

1:31:55

matchup given how those guys have started

1:31:57

the season so excited for that I

1:32:00

did write Ray Rangers Suarez continues to be the best

1:32:02

pitcher in baseball because he's got to start this weekend

1:32:05

I'm curious to see how he can keep it up

1:32:07

and then Pablo Lopez vs. Reed Detmers. Detmers obviously

1:32:10

looking really good this season On

1:32:12

Sunday is another fun pitching matchup. What are

1:32:14

you excited for this weekend? So I'm excited

1:32:16

to see my boy Zach Gaslin versus the

1:32:19

worst I think still line up in baseball

1:32:21

They do have Eloy Jimenez back, but

1:32:23

still Zach Gaslin versus the White Sox Um

1:32:27

Continuing his path bounce back

1:32:29

to the Cy Young. I Want

1:32:31

to see Zach Galen versus George Kirby specifically the George

1:32:34

Kirby side of that. I have a lot of Zach

1:32:36

Gallant I don't have any George Kirby We did see

1:32:38

George Kirby kind of take a step in the right

1:32:40

direction And so I want to

1:32:42

see was that like a one-time kind of bounce back

1:32:44

or is he really turning things around? I literally

1:32:47

I literally saw him take that step because

1:32:49

I was at that game against the Rockies

1:32:51

on Sunday and As

1:32:54

somebody who does roster Kirby I was

1:32:56

watching very keenly and was disappointed that

1:32:58

even though he gave up no runs He

1:33:00

could not get the quality start for me Terrific,

1:33:02

then I also want to see Paul Blackburn getting

1:33:05

lit up by the Orioles Not that I want

1:33:07

to see you happy, but I do want to

1:33:09

see some Paul Blackburn

1:33:12

You know, I want to see Joe unhappy is what

1:33:14

is what I really saying But you

1:33:16

also kind of want to see me happy right like to

1:33:18

a degree. I mean we are friends with your workers Sure.

1:33:21

I mean you have enough going on, you know,

1:33:23

you got enough Orioles things to feel good about

1:33:25

you Don't need to pick on Paul Blackburn. Come

1:33:27

I have sat through so much Orioles crap not

1:33:30

only in my lifetime But specifically the last half

1:33:32

decade that it's like one and a half good

1:33:34

seasons and people are already like I'm tired of

1:33:36

the Orioles They have so many good prospects. Yeah,

1:33:38

we earned it We sat through

1:33:40

so many years terrible this outside of

1:33:43

a blip in the early 2010s. It's

1:33:45

it's uh, It you know,

1:33:47

we've earned this there. There anybody who's

1:33:50

a lifelong Orioles fan like please gloat

1:33:52

and be excited and be happy and

1:33:54

celebrate as much as you can because

1:33:58

You know, this is a long time coming Please

1:34:00

sign a petition to move that wall back

1:34:02

in please. Yeah Alright

1:34:05

season long to start pitcher competition we

1:34:09

have a problem because Well,

1:34:12

first of all, we have a couple of problems number one we

1:34:15

need to decide who won last week Eric or

1:34:17

to me You

1:34:19

know, Aaron Nola did better but

1:34:21

but cutter Crawford gave up fewer

1:34:23

earned runs No, it was better in

1:34:26

every other category. I'm not sure how we want to

1:34:29

Evaluate that one. What do you think looks

1:34:31

like 39 to 27 point nine to me? I

1:34:34

also don't know how your league does this I

1:34:38

was gonna say that's just a catch-all that you

1:34:40

you were very clear that you didn't want to use

1:34:42

my league's fantasy scoring I never said that I said

1:34:44

I don't know what they are No,

1:34:47

I advise I would like to make the case Crawford

1:34:49

did have a lower era this week Nola and

1:34:52

they both won one game Whatever

1:34:54

that matters Nola did go a couple more innings

1:34:56

and had more strikeouts and he had you know

1:34:58

Once you were walked so and he thought he

1:35:00

had a bad he alright He is also quite

1:35:02

low three earned runs and 15 to third inning

1:35:05

So I I would have fun to make the

1:35:07

case for myself, but I think it probably goes

1:35:09

to you for week two Aaron Nola, I will

1:35:11

give it to you Yeah,

1:35:14

the other problem is this

1:35:16

week and I slack you about this already

1:35:18

when we put this together last week Grayson

1:35:21

Rodriguez was scheduled for two starts They

1:35:23

now pushed him back by a day because

1:35:25

they want him to pitch in the Yankees

1:35:27

series starting Monday So I'm not sure how

1:35:29

we Changed

1:35:32

things up in that situation I obviously wouldn't

1:35:34

have picked Grayson if I knew he was

1:35:36

facing the Yankees instead of the athletics My

1:35:38

whole reason for picking him was oh to

1:35:41

start victory facing the haze I'm open to

1:35:43

ideas of how you want to approach this

1:35:46

I already slack to you my response

1:35:49

I think we just I think we should just

1:35:51

make this week null and void And

1:35:54

I don't say that just because Grayson got

1:35:56

shelled last night in his first start of

1:35:58

the week I mean you're you Your my

1:36:00

original proposal was automatic loss for you,

1:36:02

which I still put at number one

1:36:04

on the list of options Your

1:36:07

second one was to just count

1:36:09

his start Monday against the Yankees

1:36:11

also fine with that I prefer number one,

1:36:13

but also five of number two. I actually

1:36:15

have no idea how Pablo Lopez did in

1:36:17

his car I assume he did fine But

1:36:20

I haven't actually done worse than Grayson who

1:36:22

gave up seven runs and it was basically

1:36:24

the worst start of his career I

1:36:27

think probably the fairest is it's

1:36:30

it sucks for me, but to

1:36:32

take the Monday start and Obviously

1:36:35

is against a much more difficult opponent than I anticipated

1:36:38

That's just bad luck. I think but I think that's

1:36:40

the fairest thing. I enjoyed will be 32 years old

1:36:42

by then Yeah, maybe

1:36:44

that'll be good for for Grayson. So alright, so

1:36:46

we'll see how that goes Obviously,

1:36:49

we'll have those results for next week. Currently. We're tied.

1:36:51

We've each won one week of this

1:36:53

matchup I would have to believe

1:36:56

that unless Pablo Lopez was terrible that mayor

1:36:58

will take the lead here and then Lastly

1:37:00

just to make our picks for this week I've

1:37:02

got Joe Ryan at the white Sox first the

1:37:05

red Sox who do you have? So this was

1:37:07

an interesting week looking at two-star pitchers just because

1:37:09

there weren't a lot of great matchups I was

1:37:12

kind of scrolling through I really did not like

1:37:14

any of the options So

1:37:16

I'm going with Freddy Peralta going up against

1:37:18

like two matches I don't love going up

1:37:20

against the Rays and the Cubs and that's

1:37:22

mostly because I was scrolling through on fanny's

1:37:24

pros Looking at protector two-star pitchers

1:37:27

and I didn't really love a lot of what

1:37:29

I was seeing and he seemed like even

1:37:31

though he's got Two tough two tough matchups. He's

1:37:33

kind of the best pitcher going against those tough

1:37:35

matchups because it was There was not

1:37:38

a whole lot out there and Walker Bueller is coming back

1:37:40

But I don't know that I want to sign up for

1:37:42

two Walker Bueller stars right out of the gate especially when

1:37:44

I'm trying to get a win against you you

1:37:47

already had Joe Ryan and You

1:37:50

know looking I Considered Christopher

1:37:52

Sanchez going up against the Angels and the Giants.

1:37:54

I didn't love that matchup that I was you

1:37:56

know We kind of you know things

1:37:58

can go wrong in any moment Christopher Sanchez.

1:38:01

I do have a,

1:38:03

it looks like I deleted it

1:38:05

on the sheet, or maybe you deleted it on me. I

1:38:08

did have a deeper league pick. You know

1:38:10

what? No, I already talked about him, so

1:38:13

no need to go through him. But

1:38:16

yeah, the guy we already mentioned. Yep.

1:38:18

Yeah. Like you said, it was a really

1:38:20

rough week for picking a two-start pitcher. And

1:38:22

I was like, Joe Ryan is

1:38:25

a talented enough pitcher and he's got a

1:38:27

good couple of matchups, so I'll just take

1:38:29

it and run. And hopefully he does better

1:38:31

than Grayson did this last week. All right,

1:38:33

we'll get out of there on that. Thank

1:38:35

you everybody for tuning in again. Another long

1:38:37

episode here, but we appreciate everybody sticking around

1:38:39

till the end. Thank you again to Blake

1:38:41

for joining us, or Mayer, who

1:38:43

is at Mike Mayer on Twitter. I'm Ryan

1:38:45

Warmly. We'll see you again next time.

1:38:48

Thanks for listening to the Fantasy

1:38:50

Pros Fantasy Baseball podcast. Follow us