Rates & Barrels - 2025 First Base Preview

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Eno and DVR begin this episode with a few memories of the legendary Bob Uecker, who passed away Thursday at 90 years old.The position preview series continues at first base, where top-end production remains, and middle-round players to avoid are aplenty. Rundown 0:26 Remembering Bob Uecker 7:18 ADP Tier 1 -- Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bryce Harper, Freddie Freeman & Matt Olson 25:44 ADP Tier 2 -- Pete Alonso, Salvador Perez, Christian Walker & Josh Naylor 35:07 ADP Tier 3 -- Cody Bellinger, Vinnie Pasquantino, Spencer Steer, Jake Burger & Triston Casas 48:23 ADP Tier 4 -- Paul Goldschmidt, Luis Arraez, Michael Toglia & Yandy Díaz 1:01:07 ADP Tier 5 -- Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Ryan Mountcastle, Michael Busch, Nathaniel Lowe, Andrew Vaughn, Rhys Hoskins 1:21:16 -- The Late, Late First Basemen of Interest (Beyond Pick 300) Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Share your Positional Rankings in the HiveMind Ranks at First Base https://forms.gle/Sdcq2uyi6TaUREjY8 Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, I'm Ian McIntosh and I'm the host of the Daily Football Briefing. What is the Daily Football Briefing? It's a special 10 minute daily show designed to bring you up to speed with the most important stories from across the football world. Except on Monday mornings when it's 15 minutes and we try to cram in the results, standings and stories from the top 10 leagues on the planet. Or at least the top 10 leagues I run on a Football Manager save. Follow this show today and you'll never miss another big story again, whether it's

news that the Athletic has just broken. David Arnstein, what happened? News from outside the Premier League that other podcasts might ignore. That is a difficult one to explain, so let's go bit by bit. Or it's Champions League week and you just need someone to put it all into context. It's made for a very useful away point in a difficult game in a difficult week. Listen to the daily football briefing in 2025. It's out every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Thursday, January 16th, Derek VanRiper, Enosaris here with you, continuing the first base position preview but the start of today's episode is on hold as we learned of the passing of Bob Euker at the age of 90 years old, a legend in baseball

and just in the entertainment world overall, the voice of the Brewers no longer with us. I think of all the baseball memories I have that I wasn't watching on TV but I was listening, either just playing with my dog outside, going for a walk, driving in the car, going all the places where you can't quite take the screen with you. Bob's voice was there the entire time. He was the guy painting the picture, telling great stories, and basically just being a through line

to so many parts of our lives. If you grew up a Brewers fan, or even if you just grew up a baseball fan in more recent times, could just jump in on the broadcast, just a joy to listen to each and every day. And it's surreal to think that he's gone. It's a day that you knew as a fan could always come,

but you wished it would never happen. Yeah, it's a sad day. I was just listening to him call a game in Pittsburgh where the furries were in town. There's a furry convention in town and you know it's just an inning of work but it was it's really good if you can find it because one of the things I think it kind of shows about Bob is that he would be so funny and he'd be he'd be making fun of people or making fun of a situation or making fun, but Somehow it was never mean-spirited. It was never in a way where

You felt like he thought he was better than the people he was talking about. He never really punched down So he's talking about the furries and it's obviously not his thing. And I guess you could say he's making fun of the furries, but I think even people who were into that sort of thing might've found the jokes he was making were funny because they were kind of like, almost like office style jokes where he's making jokes about just what it must be like to interact

with all these costumes on and stuff. So it's like being sort of matter of fact and I don't know, there was something about him that was self-deprecating along with the humor that you never really felt like it was mean-spirited. So, just such a funny guy that, a lot of people know him from, you know, Major League and, you know, there was so much more to him than that.

But what's so cool about that is that, you know, it did really encapsulate who he was and it was the perfect movie and The perfect pairing for him You know what I mean? Like that movie was funny in the way that he is funny because you could say you're making fun of all these characters They're in the movie, right? They're all kind of ridiculous people But Bob and the movie I thought treated them with respect in a way So, you know, that's what's so cool about him for me is, you know, I'm a little bit further removed

and I didn't hear as much of the sort of day to day, but the comedic genius really stood out for me. Yeah, self-deprecating humor at the highest possible level. And Will Salmon has a great tribute written up today on the athletic and one of them, you could have once said, career highlights? I had two. I got an intentional walk from Sandy Koufax and I got out of a rundown against the Mets. I was just looking at his numbers and they were terrible. I mean, he was a pretty bad player.

Yeah, and he'll tell you. I mean, every story about his playing days had that sort of undertone on it, right? But I think that's what made it feel like he wasn't really ever punching down when he was just making jokes about other people, too. He was the butt of his own joke often. I think that's part of what made him so endearing. I think it's the kind of person that you kind of feel like you're friends with even if you've never met them. I feel like if you talk to a lot of people that listen to Yuke over the years, you'd say, it just felt like he was a friend, like he was part of my family, he was part of my life. And I think that's what makes it so hard when people like that are gone. You know, I think about the joy that I've had in this sport, around this sport, getting

to talk about it with you for several years now, doing fantasy baseball stuff at Rotowire for a long time. And I think if you say who influences you equal like Euker for sure. Bob Euker is a huge part of that and trying to make the show something people enjoy, knowing that we get to do something that a lot of people don't get to do and this is an escape. Like what we get to do is an escape for people. It's the thing that fills space in lives that might be otherwise chaotic.

I think that's like the joy that we get to experience and I think the incredibly wide range of people that he impacted just by being himself calling baseball games and having such a good time doing it it's impossible to imagine and I think we're gonna see some amazing tributes coming in but it's just never gonna be the same turning on the radio and listen to a Brewers game is never going to be the same but I'm happy that I have so many just great memories from so many different parts of my life. I mean, even living 2,000 miles away, right? I mean, I lived 10 minutes away from you and I could feel like I was still at home turning on a game even

when I was in a place that doesn't feel at all like Wisconsin, right? Northern California doesn't feel like Wisconsin, but you turn on a brewer's game and listen to you calling it and it feels like you're right there in the stadium. You can smell the brats while you're listening. That's the gift that Bob Euker had that he gave to all of us. And I think we're all gonna miss him a lot here in the years ahead. We're gonna move ahead though

with our first base preview today because I don't know what else to do, right? This, like I said, this is my escape. This is the kind of thing that helps me just kind of move ahead with my day and keep life rolling along. You can join our Discord. The link's in the show description. Share your favorite memories of Yucca in there. I think we'll see some people doing that too. There's more that I could even ever put into a podcast episode. People will be like, Derek, you're talking about stuff that happened 22 years ago when you were you were outside just just hanging out drinking beers.

We don't need to hear that story. But I think the discord is a good place for that. We also have our hive rankings. We'll put the link for first base in there. Thanks to all of you who have been participating in those so far. You could still go back. You could participate in those for all the episodes we've released so far. We've got shortstop, second base, third base already out so if you just jumped

into the feed for the first time today we have three other episodes like this one you can already go back and listen to. Alright let's get to the top tier at first base in terms of what it looks like kind of similar to the other corner kind of similar to third base and that you have a group of players inside the top 40 overall, mostly first and second rounders, one guy, Matt Olson, who slips a little bit and stretches this group out slightly.

We begin at the top though. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., you know, looks like a pretty firm first rounder again. We're back to a familiar place with Vlad. The projections love him. They see him as an easy top 10 player. He's going to come out about seventh or eighth in most projection sets when you run those through an auction calculator. I think my only real worry about Vlad's performance

is the quality of the Blue Jays lineup around him over the time that he's been there has slowly eroded. So is it more of the same as what we saw in 2024? He put up a great season with that supporting cast. Is the cast at least that good where he can continue to do what we just saw? Do you like him as a guy that you build around if you have one of those late first round positions or do you choose to go somewhere else

where you get better categorical balance, specifically getting more stolen bases. Yeah, he's a weird player for me because, you know, I think we've, this is like the third year in a row that we have had a projection for Vladimir Gryarov Jr. that outpaces everything he's done except for 2021. And I wonder if 2021 remains a sort of artifact in the system because in 2021,

I believe that was the year that they played a little bit in Dunedin and Buffalo. The Dunedin year. Yeah, I think that was 2021. That's the only year that he's hit more than 32 homers or 34 homers. Yeah, 32 homers. So since that year, he's hit 32, 26, and 30.

And since that year, so he's hit 32, 26, and 30 in the last three years, his projections are for 34 and 35. That doesn't really make a lot of sense to me just on the face of it. Now I understand. You look at his max EVs, you look at his barrel rates, you look at his fly ball rates, you look at his pull rates, you look at just the fact. I mean he's an excellent hard hit guy. 55% like he hits the ball super hard. All the projection systems at this point have something like that in it. Oopsie has bat speed in it which is a little

bit different than the others and so it says 35 homers. So, you know, everyone loves the way he swings the bat so hard. But I want to put this out there. In the last four years, last year, he made $28 by the auction calculator. The year before was $16. 2022 was $24. And even the year 2021 that we love so much he made $33 He's now projected if you put oopsie in for $35 So he's projected to do something he's never done before which we keep doing So I don't know what it is But in my mind, you know, I'm always used to seeing Vladimir Jr. as the best guy available by the auction calculator and seeing the room pass on him and even myself pass on him. I don't think it's just stolen bases. There's something that like he hits the ball hard. Yes, but he's not a big barrel. It's a kind of a ground ball hard, you know thing So I don't I think we're giving him too many home runs every year

I think he's gonna hit 30 home runs next year and I don't think he's gonna be a $37 guy that said You know, the next guy is Bryce Harper who's predicted for 27. And so do I think he's better than Bryce Harper? Yes, I think he's better than Bryce Harper. He's a younger. He hits the ball harder, he's gonna have a better batting average. There's a lot of things that I think Flagler O'Donoghue does better. So he's still the number one guy. Just where his space is in the first round, I wouldn't just look at the auction calculator

and be like, okay. You know, what does it say? For overall batters, it says he's eighth. But his ADP is not eighth. Right, I think it's what you've described is actually reflected a little bit by the ADP is not 8th. Right, I think it's what you've described is actually reflected a little bit by the ADP, by the market up to this point. I think with Harper, I see a guy that's probably closer

to Vlad Jr. than the projections suggest, and I think it's maybe Vlad being, if he's a buck or two overpriced, and Harper being maybe like two or three bucks underpriced. The gap comes more from Harper still being elite than it comes from Vlad Jr. being slightly over projected if that makes sense. I think the concerns with Bryce Harper are health related at this point. Wrong side of 30.

It was a hamstring strain that put him on the IL last year. He played through wrist and elbow problems, had a pretty long power drought while doing that so the cost of playing through was just not being quite himself. He's 32 now, so the bat speed curve you've talked about is working against him. Time is working against him at this stage of his career. But if you want to start betting against that curve and analyzing it on an individual player basis,

Bryce Harper's swing is one that I would probably bet on as one that's still gonna hold up pretty well. It's one of the best swings I've ever seen in my life. So I'll bet on the curve holding off a little longer here with Bryce. The hard hit rate didn't slide and the ground ball rate actually went down last year even though the barrel rate fell. I think that again comes back to those wrist and elbow injuries that he was playing through. So I am actually really comfortable with Harper as kind of an early second rounder. If you're sitting there like pick seven, pick eight in the

first round, it comes back around to you in that middle position. Bryce is still sitting there. I'm not gonna talk you out of Bryce Harper there. I think he still has a really nice floor and a fringy like gets MVP votes sort of ceiling. I think people that are ready to write him off are writing him off a little bit too soon. His sprint speed did not drop very much last year despite the injury so I think he's a non-zero guy in the stolen base department and that can be important at the top here because you just want to maintain. We're talking about an average in 15 teamers of needing about 13 stolen bases

he's projected for 11. So you know that's pretty nice to get from a guy who could hit 35 homers and hit, you know, 290 next year. And I think it's all there for him. The strikeout rate is good. He hits the ball super hard. He, you know, he's on a really good team, so the runs in RBI should be great. Yeah, I have no problems taking Bryce Harper

in the second round. The rest of this group, I have no problems taking Bryce Harper in the second round. The rest of this group, you have Freddie Freeman who put on a show in the World Series on one foot. It still doesn't make sense to me. It's one of the more shocking performances, I think, relative to a player being clearly hurt that I've seen in baseball.

I think it will go down in history as one that we talk about for a long time because in the previous round, it didn't even look like Freeman was gonna be able to play and then he comes back and just goes on a home run binge and is the series MVP. He's 35 now, he had the loose bodies removed in December, likely going to be on time.

What does that mean? Loose bodies, it's like bone fragments and just extra hardware, not hardware, but extra stuff that's not supposed to be there. I've had an infraction in my thumb where the ligament pulled the bone off, right? And so he had, obviously a big sprained ankle means that there's a ligament damage there, right?

Yeah, that's what he was dealing with. And so Did he like get the are they bone fragments? These loose bodies could be cartilage too I guess loose bodies is not because I've seen I've seen it described as bone chips being removed before and It said loose bodies. So maybe it's bone and other Other stuff. The reason I bring it up is we're not doctors here, you know, I'm Dr. Nick.

I would say that the surgery makes me nervous. Okay, so most specifically, I'm gonna guess you're not looking to Freddie Freeman and saying the 23 for 24 mark on the base pass in 2023 is coming back. Long, bad past history. I think, you know, he's projected for 11 23 for 24 mark on the base pass in 2023 is coming back long, long gone past history. I think, you know, he's projected for 11. And I think that's, again, an artifact of that year. And I would, I would say it's more like, he'll go back to five. I

mean, he spent his years in Atlanta stealing three to three six, you know, that's what, you know, the earliest in Atlanta, that's what I would, I would go back to, I think he'll steal like five or six bases next year, which is not zero but You know he's not going to give you the stand. He's not going to give you the standard amount of homers you'd expect from first base so he's becoming a little bit more and more of a one note player in terms of fantasy, which is batting average. It's still okay in terms of the power. Got 22 homers last year, hit 29 the year before, and even hit 21 his first year with the Dodgers back in 2022. I do think the average projections often come in below the actual average Freddie Freeman hits for. I mean you were talking about how Vlad jr gets projected for a little more than he does on a regular basis. I think Freeman might

be slightly under projected relative to results on a regular basis in that category at the very least. But a lot of what Freddie Freeman's been able to do over the course of his career has also been maxed out by how healthy he's been. So this is relatively new for him to have something like this that we have to build into the projection. So given his age, given what he just had, it's hard to imagine him playing more than he did in 2024. So it's hard to add counting stats. It's difficult to say he'll steal more bases than the nine that he just had.

And I think it's even somewhat challenging to say that the power is going to bounce back above the 22 home runs. I think what you saw last year is probably a more reasonable expectation than the projections, which are only slightly more optimistic. The only category where I think Freddie Freeman might be better than the projections is batting average, and the batting average projections are great. You get 280, 287, that's solid.

If he does that, you're not upset. But I do see him as a guy that I'm probably passing on in this range. And it might not be For the next guy at the position, but I am finding myself Looking elsewhere right now when I'm looking at that part of the board I'm talking myself into almost anyone else and you've talked about second round being a spot where you want to get your first starting Pitcher if you don't start with skeins or something that makes sense to me

I'm just looking for a slightly younger player not coming off of surgery in round two. That's my main argument against Freeman at this point. He's projected to be a $20 player just for these contexts. I'd looked up all their values for the last four years just to see. He was a $17 player last year in his worst year in the last four years. And even in 2021, when he didn't hit that many homers, he was a $25 player. So he is really, really like sort of

metronomish. Yeah. And I think if he were to return top 50 overall value, that wouldn't be that surprising, but I don't want to draft a player at pick 25 or pick 30 expecting top 50 value I feel like I'm giving up a little bit right there and adding some injury risk on top of it Matt Olson is the last of the tier projections like Olson more than Freeman right now if you run those through an auction calculator It makes a lot of sense much like Freddie Freeman Olson has been extremely durable. Only Marcus Simeon and Vlad Jr. have more plate appearances in the last four years than Matt Olsen, 2,777 plate appearances. Freeman's fourth, by the way.

Stolen bases aren't happening from Olsen. You don't get those, but the power ceiling still looks pretty high. And a common refrain for me when I talk about Atlantis hitters, more Acuna than they had last year, more Albies than they had last year, probably more Austin Reilly than they had last year. All of those things should give Matt Olson a lift in runs and RBIs again, even if you're

looking at 2023 and saying that's not going to happen again. In 2023, Matt Olson scored 127 runs and drove in 139. So I'm being reasonable here, but I think you're probably at least splitting the difference between what Olson just did last season and what he did two years ago in those categories. And that's a nice little bounce back from what just happened last year.

The New York Knicks play everybody huge minutes. They are the Atlanta Braves of the NBA. And I do wonder, you know, there's fairly good research out there about the value of load management and how players play better if you give them regular rest. And I just wonder if some of this is catching up to Olsen, you know, three straight seasons now of 162 games in Oakland last year in 2021, 156. You know, it's a lot of play. My evidence for this is you can see this in his max CV. Last year, he had 113.9. That's almost a full two ticks lower than he had in the last three seasons before that. His barrel rate was the worst of his career since his rookie season.

His hard hit rate was the worst of the last three years. And we look at bat speed and over the course of the season last year, he was one of the biggest bat speed losers among first basemen. So I just wonder if there's either an underlying thing that's bothering him or some fatigue issues. He would, I've asked him about this, he would, he never says anything like that. He would, he would not, he would fight that, you know, that idea. But, you know, I also saw that there was a difference in the way he was pitched last year. They started throwing him low fastballs to confound his approach, which is generally

to swing hard at high fastballs and let low sliders go. So there's been a little bit of an adjustment by the league, and I think there might be some athletic aging going on. He's 30 years old. So I do think he should bounce back. I do think 30 is a little bit too early to say, oh I don't believe the projections, but it also wouldn't surprise me if he was more like 32 to 33 homers rather than the 37 that oopsie gives him. And if he's more like 33 homers then you know then

probably that difference between him and Freeman shrinks a little bit Yeah, I still prefer Olsen to Freeman though I think this is one of the spots where the market gets it a little bit wrong And if I were stuck choosing between them Olsen's the clear pick for me at this point Maybe that changes if Freeman has a pretty normal spring and absolutely looks like himself But at least as far as January 16th goes, it's Matt Olsen for me. And I'm not quite as worried about that decay happening right away as you are. I do think it's good to keep in mind, like, yes, that workload could have some long-term

consequences and maybe we'll see that in the form of IL time, which we normally do not see from Matt Olsen. We are science. And I think there is research about this stuff and I'm very surprised, especially for a team that has perennial playoff aspirations, that they don't think more about occasional, even occasional days off and aiming more for 150

or 155 games than 162 from the position players that are the most important parts of their core If you ask Tom Thibodeau or if you ask the Braves they they might say well We just want our best players on on the field at all times. Yeah, you know, they are our best players other teams are willing to basically punt games during the regular season This is how I read the NBA schedule in the regular season.

This is how I read the NBA schedule. I watch a lot of NBA. Yeah, yeah, it's okay. So that to me is the key difference between the two sports though, right? I mean, we've talked forever about the impact of any one player in baseball missing a game, not being available. Big, big difference in the NBA.

It is more of a punt in the NBA than it is in Major League Baseball. And also the postseason structures are different. So in the NBA there's no buys. Well there's the play-in stuff. There's the play-in stuff. There's the play-in stuff. Yeah, so one plays eight.

So there's no buys. So there's no real reason to, I guess home field advantage, home court advantage still matters but if you know you're gonna be one of the top three teams in the league, maybe sometimes it's rather, I'd rather have Jokic healthy for the playoffs than be the one seed when I can be the two seed and have Jokic healthy. You know, that sort of deal.

Bringing it back to baseball, I'd rather have teams say our max is 150 games than 162. Because I think the per game performance would be Better and that would offset the 12 games. They didn't play because of rest. That's my Hypothesis we are science and that would be almost you know a day off per week or every day I don't know. Yeah once every two weeks. They already have like sort of a day off So if you got the regular days off and you give them an extra day off, you can almost give them a day off every week. Which is amazing! Like, yes, they should probably get a day off every week.

Seems like a good idea, doesn't it? Like we do, right? We usually get two. Yeah, exactly. I use the New York Times Games app every single day. I love playing connections. With connections, I need to twist my brain to see the different categories.

I think I know this connection. Look, Bath is a city in England, Sandwich is a city in England, Reading is a city in England, and I'm gonna guess Derby is a city in England. I started Wordle 194 days ago and I haven't missed a day. The New York Times Games app has all the games right there. I absolutely love spelling bee. I always have to get genius.

I've seen you yell at it and say that should be a word. Totally should be a word. Sudoku is kind of my version of lifting heavy weights at the gym. At this point I'm probably more consistent with doing the crossword than brushing my teeth. When I can finish a hard puzzle without pins, I feel like the smartest person in the world. When I have to look up a clue to help me, I'm learning something new. It gives me joy every single day. Start playing in the New York Times Games app.

You can download it at nytimes.com slash games app. Let's move on to Tier 2, where we have a former Tier 1 verse baseman who could still be in that tier. I think he's very close. Pete Alonso is sort of floating around in a little spot of his own before you move further down to the likes of Salvador Perez who's still catcher eligible. We'll talk probably more about Sal on the catcher episode than we do today. Christian Walker and Josh Naylor who fall a little closer to that pick 90 range more often than not

I don't think anything's really changed with Pete Alonso, you know for several years I've looked at him right next to Matt Olsen and in projections and in my rankings I think this is actually a little bit of a discount if The most likely outcome today seems like a reunion with the Mets. That's fine, he's done everything he's done up to this point in his career, playing in a pitcher-friendly environment. He has that kind of power. Pete Alonso has never hit less than 34 home runs in a full season, and projections point to a little bit of a bounce back there.

There are scenarios in which he goes somewhere else and gets a park upgrade. I think that would only help as far as bumping up the projection so long as the supporting cast isn't terrible so Pete Alonso looks like a pretty solid target for me like if i'm not If i'm not building out of the early rounds not in the right position to have one of the guys from tier one I'm very content to take Pete Alonso at price right now You know, it is a little strange to have the one of the best Swinging strike rates of his career paired with one of the worst strikeout rates of his career

if you look at other people that have around a 9.7 percent swinging strike rate like he does they mostly have lower batting average I mean lower strikeouts. So Luis Garcia Jr. has a 9.7% swing strike rate. He had a 16% strikeout rate. Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bobby Witt Jr., Anthony Volpe. These are the guys that have similar swing strike rates and they all have better strikeout rates.

The only one, there's only one other cop that's near him that has worse strikeout rate, and that's Reese Hoskins. And I think Reese Hoskins, we'll talk about him a little bit more later, of course, but I think he's coming off a really strange season, given his injury, and I think with Pete Alonso, you could say, you know what, I think next year he's gonna have a better strikeout rate. That's what the projections say, I believe year he's going to have a better strikeout rate.

That's what the projections say. I believe in that. If he has a better strikeout rate, what he did do this year is kind of iron out what had been a very fly ball heavy approach. And that gave him one of the better babbits of his career, batting average on balls and play. And so, you know, I think it's pretty safe to say that he could hit 240 to 250 next year. And in fact, if he does strike out 22% of the time

and keep this new sort of bad ball mix, I think he could hit 255 even. That, you know, he had 271 in 2022, 262 in 2021. So like he has some of those years on there. If he hits 255 and hits 35 homers, you know, he could challenge Alonzo. One thing that's interesting about Pete Alonzo from looking at his past auction values, he has never been a $30 player, but he's also never been less than a $15 player.

So he's a weird combination of, yeah, he probably won't give you that 2019 when he had 260 with 53 homers. That was a crazy, that was a crazy ball anyway. I don't think he'll go back to those. I don't think he will end the season as the best first baseman, fancy first baseman. But he will probably end up the season as a top seven first baseman.

So you could buy floor with him in a way. I'd be surprised if he wasn't top seven at the position. I think he finishes top five at first base pretty easily with a shot as maybe being third. I think that's in the range of outcomes for him. So definitely in on Pete Alonso with this price probably still in even if he ends up moving up a little bit because of landing who knows in a more hitter friendly environment. I don't even know where that would be but move them up 10 spots and I'm still probably drafting Pete Alonso in 2020. He also represents in this tier, in this tier like I think he's closer to tier one than the rest of this tier. Yeah, like I

definitely prefer him over the other three in this tier. Yeah, he's only grouped here because of where the market treats him and I had to pick a side, but I think he was interesting in this group because he doesn't feel like he's falling down to this level yet. He still has, I think, a floor that's closer to the guys going ahead of him, and a ceiling that's not that far off from that bunch either. Salvador Perez, I think, you wouldn't really use him

at first base by design, but he plays tough. It's weird to talk about guys like this where you're just like, you would use them at catchers You just use them at catcher. So I think we're gonna keep them in the catcher preview 652 plate appearances last year though, so I don't know. Maybe there's a world where you do choose to do that I I don't I don't I don't play in a league where I want to do it that way, but it's impressive nonetheless the other two Christian Walker and Josh Naylor two guys that have been on the move this offseason,

Walker signing with the Astros as a free agent and Nailor getting traded to Arizona in a trade that sent Slade Chikoni back to Cleveland. I think Houston will suit Christian Walker very well, right? He's a right handed hitter who can pull the ball, hits the ball hard. handed hitter who can pull the ball, hits the ball hard, you have the Crawford boxes, and playing the projections chicken, as far as looking for the 240-ish, 30 homer sort of bats, that game gets ugly kinda quickly after Walker. So I think if you are really trying to make sure

you have that high power floor, good run production, you don't wanna take on injury and playing time risk that becomes even greater as you keep moving down this board. I see Walker as a really good option, fair at the price. Now, I don't see a strong case for Josh Naylor at the price. I think he came up yesterday on the third base preview only because he was there as a toss up to junior camin, and I thought that was an easy take Junior Caminero situation

I think it's an easy take Christian Walker over Naylor situation if that's what you see at one of your draft day forks in the road the main reason being Chase Field as we've said on the show a few times is Sneaky tough on left-handed power. The three-year rolling park factor from Statcast for Arizona's home park is a 76 park index that is the worst park in baseball for left-handed home runs. For context, Cleveland, not a great park for left-handed power, is closer to average, slightly below average, at a 96. And had that weird thing last year where they changed the dimensions and maybe made it more

of a friendly place than the park factors admit. Right. So the career year in power from Josh Naylor to me just seems really hard to repeat. Now I think the DVRs being too harsh argument could come from the batting average maybe bouncing back. There's a pretty big gap from the average we just saw from Naylor at 243 and what projections are suggesting at 266 and 269. That matters. That actually matters quite a bit for a guy that should be a fixture in an Arizona lineup

that was phenomenal last season. Yeah and I believe it because of the strikeout rate. It is one of the best combinations of power and strikeout rate. There are some other guys we'll get later that have lower or similar strikeout rates, but not the same power. And so, you know, I do think that there's a case to be made for Naylor. And I also, I've ended up with Naylor on teams. I ended up in Naylor on the current team I'm drafting. I did not pick him over Kemmy Nero, but in draft and holds, first base runs out pretty quickly. And I also like him better just by himself, like him better than the rest of the first baseman. And I think there's a little bit of a cliff after him where if

I'm taking somebody after him, I'm just waiting a long time and just getting the least acceptable guy. You know, this is, Naylor is one of the last people I'd be like sort of excited to get. Another thing I do want to say on the negative side, though, is that if you say that Jock Peterson did fine there in Arizona, well, Jock Peterson hit the ball four miles an hour harder, you know, his best ball last year, four miles an hour harder than Nailer did, and he had a 50 percent higher barrel rate. So Jock Peterson hits the ball harder than Josh Naylor. So we may see a return to the sort of 20 homer level that we saw from Naylor before, but

I think it will come hand in hand with a nice batting average, a 260 to 270 type batting average. So it's a slightly different package than you got from him last year, but I would say overall is one that still works and is one that is a cut above the rest of the options at first base. Yeah, I think Naylor is a good hitter who will have a completely different shaped season in 2025 than he had in 2024 for the reasons that we just outlined. So just adjust accordingly if you are going to make him a part of your build.

I think you're right that there is a pretty big drop or at least a series of questions about tier 3 That doesn't really exist with most of the group in tier 1 & 2 So this group includes Cody Bellinger who's also eligible in the outfield. Vinny Pasquettino Spencer Steer who also is eligible in the outfield. Vinny Pasquentino, Spencer Steer, who also is eligible in the outfield, and Tristan Casas. I have one guy in the group that I really like, more than most people, and I'm surprised he goes this low, but I think it's a health thing.

And then I have one other guy that I think is maybe an easy fallback to Naylor, right? So I think Vinny Pasquentino is sort of your next closest thing to Naylor. right? So I think Vinny Pasquentino is sort of your next closest thing to Naylor. My reason for thinking that is Vinny also has great plate skills. He squares the ball up a lot. The hard hit rate is more impressive than the barrel rate. And now he's further removed from shoulder surgery. So I could see Pasquentino getting that power up to the low 20, maybe mid-20 home run range, kind of exactly as we described it.

Very similar projection and type of skills, yeah. 270, one thing that I think is gonna be different is he's in a really bad lineup, and Arizona's lineup's gonna be better than that. Yeah, I think that's the separator for me right now, but I think they're very similar players. And maybe, maybe there's a little more to come with the barrels.

I just think Vinnie Pasquotino has a few factors outside of his control working against them is the park and it is the supporting cast Naylor only has the park the home park working against them right now I am NOT a fan of Cody Bellinger no you're out on Bellinger the park is a better fit to what he does which is he does pull fly balls and now he's a left-hander in a park that will augment those and so maybe he'll make me look foolish and hit I don't know 25 homers this year. He's not projected for anything like that.

He's projected well by oopsie 20 homers. I guess Steamer says 23. I mean I think the over under is probably around 23. Oopsie's a little bit low on him but but that's how I feel about him, true talent-wise. I think he's a true talent, you know, 250, 2010 guy. And I think drafting him here would be a little bit of an overdraft. He's not even a top 100 hitter

by the oopsie projections right now, running him through the auction calculator. Just hitters only, he comes out at 143 among hitters. That's surprising to me. I think I like him more than the projections do, but the problem is the market also likes him more than the projections do. Reasons for that, at least this is pure speculation,

why this might be happening, I think people are expecting the short porch to goose the home run total even though Bellinger is not a high barrel rate machine. I think you can see low to mid 20s power. You said 2010 is what you were expecting. I think other people might see more in the stolen base department. Here's my case for it.

Cody Bellinger is still 77th percentile in sprint speed. If I'm in a position with the Yankees and I'm looking at what just happened losing Juan Soto And then trying to recreate him in the aggregate You got to do some things a little differently right one thing you could do differently is give guys green lights on the base pass They were doing that with jazz when they had Soto. I think they could do it with Bellinger as well so I think 2010 might be the The lighter end of what I would expect. I think 25 and 20 might be the Homer speed combo or even 25 and 25 with health. Now

the with health part is where I don't want to go overboard projecting volume because this is probably a health grade B minus C plus. We had hybrids instead of pluses and minuses. If you were between spots, it was a BC. That was the... I don't think any other school does that. So that's a very, very Wisconsin thing. So Cody Ballinger's averaging right around 560 plate appearances a year since 2022.

So he's not getting 600, 650 year in and year out. I think he's one of those guys that has nagging injuries and stuff that pop up on him. The other thing that sort of points to his maybe waning athleticism, he was number one among first baseman in lost bat speed over the course of the season. So he lost two miles an hour.

And not only is that two miles an hour that, it's 1.9, but you know, he lost two miles an hour bat speed. It'd be one thing if he like hit the ball. He was at 75 went to 73. No, he was at below average bat speed and then went to basically some of the worst bat speed among the first baseman to give him a cop Nolan Shanuel who cannot hit the ball hard at all, had a 64.5 late in the season, and Cody Belanger had a 67.9. Average is like 71. So this is below average bat speed. It should produce below average power. Now, of course, Freddie Freeman has below average bat speed and

has produced what he's produced. And so there's not a one- one correlation, but it is below average power now, I believe. And you see some of the guys on this list that lost bat speed, you know, a lot of them are older. Tristan Walker's on this list. Freddie Freeman's on this list. Cody Bellinger's at the top. Reese Hoskins on the list. Matt Olson, as I previewed earlier, is on this list.

So I don't think it's good to be on this list. I think if you're a younger person that had an injury You know that could be something if you're also somebody who had elite bat speed and you just lost a little bit off a Kristen Walker went from 74 9 to 74 for I'm a little bit less worried about that than going from 69 8 to 67 9 So yes, Cody Bellinger is waning bat speed is part of why I don't like him. It's a fair reason to be concerned. I would also say the power metrics, being a little light, are fine so long as he keeps the K-rate down. He's done that for two seasons in a row.

I think I trust his strikeout rate more now than I have probably at any point in the last four years. Back-to-back seasons at 15.6% like maybe the hit tool or the approach has matured to the point where we're not gonna see the erratic spikes up into the mid and high 20s anymore that's part of the appeal to because I think this is going to suit him well Yankee State is going to suit him very well there's the few things you have to sort of talk yourself into if you're going to go after Bellinger

right around this pick 100 mark. So given what you just said, I imagine you've got at least Pascuantino ahead of him. What I'm trying to decide is if the best player of this tier is actually the lowest one by ADP. Tristan Kassus looks like a special bat to me. I find it strange that the Red Sox are talking about being willing to trade him. I realize that's got something to do with having to probably move Rafael Devers off of third base and needing to create a spot to do that.

Maybe Cassis does bring them back more in a trade than guys that haven't appeared in the big leagues yet, or they're more willing to trade him than guys who haven't appeared in the big leagues yet, and they'll still get enough back to make it worth their while. Strikeout rate jumped last year but he had an injury that limited him to 63 games. Basically Tristan Casas swung the bat so hard it looked like he was in a car accident according to the doctors that examined him like that's pretty weird right we talk about bat speed declining and maybe that's just normal like maybe maybe if you weren't declining in bat speed after 30 you'd be breaking yourself I think we're gonna have more and more of that guys that yeah it's like maxing out

your VLO we've talked about that for pictures right you're you're trying new training methods that are pushing the boundaries of what your body can do and then you run into problems like this but the reason I like Cassis he's 25% better than league average for his first 840 played appearances in the league that's a pretty good number for a guy that's still really kind of finding his footing at the big league level I'm not really buying that elevated K-rate as a long-term problem the only question I have is health I don't know what to do with injury like this because relatively speaking I feel like I haven't seen a lot of guys break in this particular way before.

Yeah, I mean, we have oblique injuries and we have sports hernias and we, you know, I think Donaldson had a few of these and the fast swingers will get oblique and hernia and cartilage and rib cartilage problems. And I think we might get more of these, but he is young and he you know got it right and I think there are things you can do about it like you know there are these sort of

water bag things that you do and these kind of logs that have water in them. Yeah Paul Skeens uses them. Yeah Paul Skeens uses them and what you what what those are teaching is not so much the acceleration portion of turning your body, it's the deceleration because the water all goes in the direction of your acceleration. It actually helps you decelerate because you have to stop that water. Just think about how water would work if you were twisting the water real quick. It would put pressure back on you, coming back know, after you kind of sent it flying. And so those water bags can be a way to teach your body to decelerate.

And decelerating is what lack of deceleration is leading to these injuries. A lot of times you think about it like if you can accelerate and decelerate. Well, that seems like a healthier way to to do things. It's I think accelerating into a kind of a brick wall sort of situation is the car crash. So I think there are things he can do about it. I think he's young enough to do something about it. And I like the hitting coaching up and down,

the Red Sox, he's 25. I don't wanna skip over Steer at all, because I think Steer is basically a baby Bellinger. You can wait around, you know, so I think you can actually put Bellinger and steer on the map, and if you wanna get some stolen bases from first base, I think they're roughly equivalent to me. They're both like 2015, 2020, like, you know,

you make it a good case that maybe Bellinger will steal more. They're both like not the greatest in terms of power, But Cassis is a way that you can jump into, you have a chance of jumping into the kind of Alonzo tier. And Olsen, we may be talking next year about Tristan Cassis as a Matt Olsen and Pete Alonso type where he's going to hit you 250 and 35 homers. Yeah. And he may even have a little bit of batting average upside with the green monster. He doesn't pull as much as other people. He has a kind of an all fields approach and he may even have a little bit of batting average upside with the green monster. He doesn't pull as much as other people. He has a kind of an all fields approach and he's the green monster helping him at home. So maybe a two sixty thirty five homer guy.

I think what you're kind of looking for in general across all positions, guys that can leap up a tier or possibly two, but usually it's like a one tier leap. It's not at all hard to tell yourself that Tristan Cassis could be a tier two guy in this conversation a year from now, because I think he was treated like one a year ago, with less experience, so he's already- I think it's more likely than anybody else in this tier.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. Because Steer, I like Steer, and he's in a good park, and he's a good hitter, but you know, he's not, I don't see the building blocks the same way as Cassas to jump up. One thing I noticed was steer the average is low last year. So I thought maybe XBA will be kind of the projections behind an XBA was only 10 points

higher at 235 than his actual average at 225. He was a really efficient efficient base dealer running more I mean, 22 for 25, I think was the final count for steer. And because the park I think that power floor is a little higher than it would be if he was anywhere else. Plays enough spots where I don't really think job loss is on the immediate horizon. He's kind of a pull fly ball guy if you wonder why

the ex batting manager wasn't better. Yeah, it just seems like he does enough things well to keep getting back to this point. I don't know how I feel about him in a keeper dynasty sense, but for Redraft, this seems okay where he's going. I do think lumping him with Bellinger makes some sense. I like Belly more than Steer, just to be clear on that.

And the other guy that gets into this group, if you think of him as a first baseman instead of a third baseman, is Jake Berger. We talked about him on the third base preview. I'm curious if you like Jake Berger more than any of the other four guys we've talked about in this group. Not really, but I do know that Oopsie has him as, what is it, the sixth best first baseman. I know. I have a hard time trusting that it's real though. Yeah, I'd rather have Caslas who's right behind him at seven. Yeah, I'd rather have Kassas who's right behind him at 7. Christian Walker's not that far away either, so I think Walker being ahead of Berger still

makes a lot of sense to me. I just think Berger might be someone I get shut out on completely this year unless he falls because I think there's a few guys in Tier 4 that might be close. Let's move on to Tier 4 where we have Paul Goldschmidt, Luis Arias, Michael Tolia, and Yandy Diaz. And- I'm out. You're just out on everybody.

This isn't even a trap. You're mostly out. You're just like, forget this. I don't want this, I don't want this. I'll make my individual cases for each, but the best thing I can say about this tier is that there are builds where these guys fit. That's what I'll say.

There are ways you could be building your roster where one of these guys would make sense. But generally, if you just ask me, do I want to say that one of these guys will have a good season or is a sleeper or somebody I'm targeting, no. What if I told you that Paul Goldschmidt in a down year only lost three homers from his previous season total when it was all said and done. He chased a little more, but he still hit the ball hard,

something Paul Goldschmidt's always done. He did, yeah. He gets a park boost going into Yankee Stadium. How much of a park boost? For a right-handed hitter, Yankee Stadium, 120, home run park factor, second only to Dodger Stadium. Where do you suppose Bush Stadium is at for right-handed power? Second worst. It's not quite second worst, but it is 93, so it's 22nd league wide. It's about eighth from the bottom,

ninth from the bottom, yeah. And the max EVs, the barrel rate's all right, and as a guy who tends to go to the opposite field, that short porch over there will treat him well. And that's why I wanted to say that there are builds, I just need him to fall. I need him to fall, I need to, you know, I need to be in a 12 teamer and get him

as the 12th first baseman sort of deal and have waited a long time. That's how I feel good about getting Paul Goltzschmidt because the comps on first baseman, his age, are terrible. They are and we've seen clips from guys that we really like over the years. I think Yankee Stadium Yankees were on the short list of teams where Goldschmidt could end up and I could still be somewhat interested. Now the I think the cross position comps would be important in this instance

because if you want a discount you must like other players at other spots instead. The ADP for the last 14 days is right around pick 164 overall for Paul Goldschmidt. So you're talking about the 11th round as the average in a 15 team league. Going outside of first base there are a couple of closers or I should say relievers because We don't know where Tanner Scott's going to play yet So you could be looking at maybe your second closer with Tanner Scott or David Bednar Do you like those options better than Goldschmidt if you don't have a second closer yet? No, that's fine Okay, so other positions would be outfield where you have Brandon Nimmo. We'll say Josh Lowe goes a little earlier.

Nick Castellanos, those guys are all there if you're looking at outfielders. Goldschmidt versus that group. I might take Lowe, but I mean generally you're five for six on me taking Goldschmidt over them I guess. All right, and then on the starting pitcher side, this is kind of interesting. This is where it's gonna get hard.

I bet you I'd take a starting pitcher over. I think you probably will probably will but back to back Sandy Alcantara and Kevin Gossman Go right around this range I took Pepeo and Sandy Alcantara as my fourth and fifth starting pitchers and my third and fourth starting pitchers Yeah, my third and fourth starting pitchers in this draft. I'm in right now. So those are guys I like all right And you're taking them over Goldschmidt, probably adding to your pitching staff instead, you're willing to kick the can down the road at corner and see what happens?

There's another guy on this list that I feel like is the least possible acceptable first baseman that I'll talk about in a second, but I did mention those cops, and I wanna say that in the last 15 seasons, there have only been 10 qualified seasons by a first baseman over 37 or 37 and older, right? So you know, one, two every three seasons, there's been, you know, two guys every three

seasons like this. Only one of them has hit more than 23 homers. And that was Joey Votto in 2021, his last great shining season. And we really only have five of them that have been above average hitters. That's Justin Turner twice. Carlos Santana once last year in a little bit of a crazy bounce. And then Uli Gurriel, his last good year. So that's what, when I say there are bad comps, they're bad comps.

Okay, you've given me reason to be a little more cautious about Gulltchman at price, but I'm not avoiding him. I'm thinking about it because if I'm in this situation. And like, it might be talking about a future Hall of Famer, like we're talking about Joey Vado, so like, you know, maybe it's unfair to compare him to Yuli Gurriel and Carlos Santana. Well, yeah, I think the quality of

contact and Paul Goldschmidt continues to be sneaky as a base dealer. He was 11 for 11 last year. He just picks his spots so he gives you the non-zero bags as well. I just think what he did last year is actually doable again in part because of the park and maybe the lineup around him is an upgrade over the 24 Cardinals so you get more runs and RBIs as well. Maybe I'm too optimistic about everybody right now but I think this is an upgrade for Paul Goldschmidt in this situation. Luis Arias talked about in the second base episode so we're not going to rehash that now. Michael Tolia, man, to each their own, if you want to draft Michael Tolia and we're playing

against each other, I am not going to be sad about it, man. I think it's partially that I just don't trust the Rockies to get things right. Part of it is that Michael Tolya lives in that strikeout rate range that scares me. It's above 30%, 32.1% to be exact. He's already 26 years old. I know he does bring you that long tail speed as well. He was 10 for 11 as a base dealer. I know he hits the ball really hard, does some things we like, but it is weird to see someone projected at Coors who hits the ball that hard projected for a high two 20s batting average. This is a major batting average risk despite the home park. Would you say there's a chance he gets better with the K-rate though because he's still only 730 played appearances into his big league career? Not really.

I mean, he had really high strikeout rates in the minor leagues too, and really high swinging strike rate with it. So I don't think Tolia is getting better in terms of strikeout rate. And one of the other reasons that, you know, he's a batting average risk is because he does hit a lot of fly balls so fly ball guy which is good for his power but not good for his batting average so even in Coors which is the main thing that Coors does is inflate batting average on balls and play he's only projected for a 280 282 batting average on balls and play usually league wide that's 300 or 295 or whatever

that's a sort of a pairing. I could see in a best ball situation, liking Michael Toglia better, because you just want like a white hot four or five weeks out of him, maybe, or maybe 12 weeks, but at home, he was the 235 hitter with a 761 OPS, and I'm sure he had some weeks at home

where he was just great. So, I mean, it's not saying anything super interesting to say that a Rocky would be interesting in baseball, but something to remember when you're talking about fringe Rockies, where you're like, oh, there's gonna be some weeks where Michael Togli has a top three first baseman in the league. I think the other thing I need to see

before I get as excited as other people are about Togli, and it's relative excitement, I mean, it's just that some people see him as a draftable, good corner because of the park, and I get it, Coors is Coors, but I'd like to see improvements against non-fastballs. He feasts on fastballs. Breaking and off-speed stuff were both problematic and teams kind of figured that out in the

second half of the season. He saw more off-speed stuff, saw more breaking stuff. Power went down in the second half. It was nine homers and 266 plate appearances, where he popped 16 in 192 plate appearances in the first half. So I think the book got around, average to go up to 235, so I gotta point that out as well. I just think there's some interesting stuff here.

Now, the other random, totally a question I have for you is last year, you hit those 25 homers, 17 came on the road. How weird is that? So does that give you a little more confidence that maybe things will be better? Coors' thing, I mean, other than the fact that it's easier for a ball to fly through the air

and so that will make balls go further in the air. But the other thing that does is inflate batting average in balls of play because it's a really big outfield. So I don't know, that doesn't surprise me too much. I usually look at Babbitt, home and away when I'm looking at course hitters, so. It's a strange profile.

I'm just not as into it. Well, you think that one's strange. How about a first baseman with no power? Let's talk about this guy. Yandy Diaz. So, you know, Yandy Diaz like perpetually projects well. He's a little bit like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the end of the first base rankings.

And you know, he projects again for 20 homers. Well, he's only hit 20 homers once in his career. Like are we forgetting who Yandy Diaz is? Like we're going to give him 20 homers next year just because he did it in 23.3 once. And so what I did was I wanted to see, you know, I've been referencing this, which we put up on on screen right now This is the last four years of auction value I did an average value and then I did a projected value just using Marcel

So it's like five times last year three times the year before two times the year before divided by ten It's just a really simple Projection in any case yet. He looks like he belongs and he's got a $10 projection. He's a backend guy. He's the only first baseman that goes outside of the top 200 in ADP. And so I'm willing to wait on him. And so that's my use case for him is like, oops, I didn't get a first baseman, Yandy Diaz.

But I do want to point out that 2023 was the only year where he was like a $20 guy. And if you look at 2024, $5. 2023, $21. 2022, $10 for the NDDS. 2021, $5. And so what I would say to you is, he's a $5 first baseman. I know this is really reductive analysis because it doesn't look at anything they do,

but I think he's more of a $5 first baseman than he is a 1010 or $20 one. And so I'm going to hopefully buy him somewhere. Everyone else has got their first baseman and they're not looking for a corner infielder for batting average or for whatever. They're looking for power. And so I sneakily go and get a guy who I think will hit 280 with like 12 homers next year. Yeah, and he falls sometimes too.

So even though the ADP clocks in just inside the top 200, oftentimes if you're chasing power or trying to do something else, you're looking for the next group and Yandhi kind of falls a little bit and you get a shot at getting that discount that Eno likes so much. I'm probably, I don't know,

I'm probably looking to more as like a Alec Bohm alternative. If you're thinking about Bohm as a corner option and you miss him, Yandy is kind of a decent replacement for that type of categorical production. Goes a few rounds later, so good fallback option at the corner if that fits your build, but not a target to build around. And yeah, even if you're like, oh, I'm looking for batting average for my first baseman, Luis Araya is there, he's going to do better for you. You know, like, like, Andy's looking a little more like a 280 guy.

So, and then there's always the risk that he falls into a platoon or loses playing time on that Tampa team or gets traded to somewhere where he's not, you know, the everyday starter and that risk gets larger as he gets older. So he fits some cases, but I would, he's another guy where I like him less than his projected number. Yeah, easy player to sidestep for me at the current price. There's a bit of a gap, so when Yandy falls,

it's probably gonna be in front of this gap as opposed to all the way into it, unless some of these guys start to move up. You get to down the 240 to 300 range before you get to your last cluster of first base but that group includes Christian and Karnaz, he owns Strand and Ryan Mountcastle, Michael Bush is down here, Nathaniel Lowe now a member of the Washington Nationals and then Andrew Vaughn and Reece Hoskins sort of round out the bottom part of this group.

There is also a player Colt, who will qualify at first base probably within the first week or so of the season, who kinda goes smack dab in the middle. He's second base eligible right now. We have a bug, a beat writer coming here in just a couple of minutes on Colt Keith, and I'll explain why I put Keith in this spot once we get there.

But Christian and Karnazion Strand, basically a completely lost season due to a fractured right wrist, now has some playing time questions in that he just seems to have to really earn the role again. I kind of think he's a fun toss up though with the guy going right next to him. Who do you like better out of Encarnacion Strand and Ryan Mountcastle? Because Mountcastle has four IL stints now in the last three years.

They are moving the fences back at Orioles Park, moving back as in moving them in slightly again so Mount Walthammar won't be quite so far away as a right-handed hitter that should help Mountcastle. Do you go with the older guy who's done it a few times but now has some injuries versus the younger guy who almost lost all of last season with an injury that has some intriguing numbers and a very nice home park as long as he's truly the everyday option for them between first base and DHV moves around a little bit. I think it depends a little bit on what game I'm playing. I think in best ball it's Cristian Encarnacion on strand like far and away.

In a draft and hold it gets a little bit harder because you can't go to a waiver wire to replace them. So I might go to Mountcastle because I feel like he'll more likely just be there all year You know and and there's not that much. I mean as a veteran although If there's any chance that I could replace CES if he's hurt or doesn't win the job. I want CES so another way is I think his ceiling is much higher and I want CES. So another way is I think his ceiling is much higher. And in fact, if you start thinking about the depth chart,

I think that Heston Kerstad represents a bigger threat to Mountcastle's time eventually than Tyler Stevenson or Heimer Candelario to Christina Cardenas-Dornian, if you think about it, in terms of contract status, age, upside. I think that's a fair statement. It has to be cursed, that looks like it has to play somewhere. That's just the simple takeaway I have on him.

So I get it, there's a lot of pressure on Mountcastle. He's gonna keep fighting for that playing time. Maybe they put him down in the minors again, but he's gonna put up great numbers in the minors again. And if Mountcastle's just kind of being blah or Hunter Dozier, is that right? Ryan O'Hern? Ryan O'Hern.

Those guys crossed up. Kansas City. I mean, yeah, I don't think they were at the same time, but they have both played for the Royals. Ryan O'Hern, Ryan O'Hern. Yeah, if Ryan O'Hern doesn't recapture some of that brilliance he had when he first got to Baltimore, he could be gone.

So there are other people in there that could open up time for Hessian Kristad, but I kind of see Montcastle as kind of slowly on his way out. I don't know, that's sort of a vibe check, rather than almost anything that's sort of, I'm not looking at his page right now, but that's how I feel about him. I think the reason why I'm not just reflexively

against drafting Mountcastle at this price though is that he's probably good enough to go start somewhere and then playing time wouldn't be a concern at all. There's enough weak first base in DH situations elsewhere where it would work out there for him, at least as far as being a 20 plus homer guy that gets to play every day if it doesn't work out with the Orioles. Michael Bush is a tough case I mean 20 of his 21 homers last year were

hit against righties he did have a hundred played appearances against lefties it was 467 against righties just for the sake of comparison and he kind of held his own. 103 WRC plus against lefties even in a small split it leaves the door open I would think for at least occasional duty against them again right that's good enough even if you don't want to push them all the way into he's the first baseman every single day duty I think the role that Bush had last year is renewable at this point do Do you trust it? Do you believe that we get more of the same from Bush

or possibly one more level in his second full season with the Cubs? CES is my pick in this tier for having the chance to jump out of this tier. I think he's my favorite pick in here. Bush, let's put up the comps. I looked at his comps by barrel rate, max EV, and strikeout rate, and this left me cold.

So if you just look at Bush's page and you see 11% barrel rate, that's slightly better than average. You look at a 109 max EV, you might say, well, maybe not that big a deal. He's getting to his game power. He's doing fine. You see that 29% strikeout rate, and you're like like, well the strikeout rate's up above the league now. Well, if you just

look at those three numbers and look at other players, you've got Josh Lowe who is not a good comp because he steals bases and plays in the outfield and he's just a different player and also coming off of what I believe is a low season for him. Davis Schneider? Reese Hoskins? Mike Jastremski? Travis Darnow? It's a little weird. It's a little weird. And so when you look at Bush's projections and say, man, they're projecting him to get another 120 you know, played appearances more than last year and hit the same amount of homers and only hit 235 I think you get you sort of get your reason why you get your reason why maybe the Dodgers were willing to trade him and you know you mentioned you know Mountcastle who's like about a double 112 WRC plus for his career

being fine at first base. I just, I didn't want to point out that, you know, first basemen are expected to have at least a 107 WRC plus. That's league average for first base. Michael Bush is projected for a 107 WRC plus. Right on that line. I think the one thing that Bush does better than anybody else on that slide,

or at least better than they did last year, is he walks more than anybody. 11.1% that's shade higher than Davis Schneider who as a righty is like a part-time player anyway and a little more than Reese Hoskins, also a righty but more of an everyday sort of guy. So I do think the difference in OBP compared to some of the other comps could make Bush slightly better, more valuable in real life and therefore keep that playing time up. But at 27 with his bad at ball stats, I just don't see that, I don't see that next level. Yeah, that's the part.

It's like, I don't know if we're getting more than last year, I think what we saw is probably, repeating that is probably more of like the best case scenario based on those core skills. Let's get the bug of Beat Rider real quick, because right in the middle of this group, if you said, I am not good enough At first base right now. I want some first base depth. I don't want to wait longer. I want some upside potential

I think Colt Keith brings that moving to first of all the CIMI to like, you know Like Colt Keith would be you know I like Jay I was just saying they come, come on over with the same idea, like great bench piece utility because can play first, second, CIMI, four positions, cover four positions for you. That's great. So I decided to bug a beat writer and reach out to Kote Stavehagen and I asked Kote, is there any reason we should project Colt Keith for an everyday role or will he continue to lose occasional starts against lefties even with his shift to first base? This question asked because Spencer Torkelson's still there, Torkelson is a righty so you

have a natural platoon partner there. A lot of moving parts on the Tigers roster. Here is the response from Cody. Colt Keith definitely projects for a close to everyday role but to the point of the question it is important to understand the Tigers mix and match through the lineup so often it is possible he occasionally doesn't start against a tough lefty. Even in those scenarios AJ Hinch would likely have Keith ready to enter mid-game against a right-handed reliever. We saw that in the postseason right? They're going to be aggressive off the bench if Keith doesn't start he's still going to play in

the game could still get multiple played appearances. Cody continues I was actually surprised to see Keith started only 16 games against left-handed starters last year because for the most part the Tigers have expressed a willingness to let Keith hit lefties. He had a 3.05 average versus lefties last year, though he only had one home run and a 7.18 OPS in 88 played appearances. They view him as the type of hitter who one day won't sit or be pinch hit for in left on left scenarios. How much Keith's position change will impact his playing time against lefties will be related

to who else the Tigers carry on the roster. If Spencer Torkelson or Justin Henry Malloy make the team that could take away playing time against lefties otherwise Andy Ibanez is the only other player likely to see time at first which could bode well for Keith so thank you to Cody Stevenhagen for playing along and offering up that breakdown I came away feeling pretty optimistic about my belief that it's not a strict platoon, it's only the toughest of lefties.

And that comes down to more of like a, hey, that's like a preventative maintenance borderline, like let's just not run them into the ground. That's more of a, let's get them 140 starts and let's get them into those other 10 games against the tough lefty starter when a righty reliever matchup comes up. So I think the playing time for Keith could actually be more comparable to some of the guys in a tier or two ahead of him. Some of the guys in this group are going to lose time because they're either going to lose their job or because they're definitely going to share, right?

And I think there's a chance Keith is much more than that. And we did see some pretty good growth from him as a hitter like we talked about in the second base preview. I think theoretically, he has the type of approach at the plate that could lend itself to smaller platoon splits. If you think about it, Nate Lowe, who's another guy in this has almost zero platoon splits, you know, over the last three years. And he's a let it travel guy like Colt Keith. And I think what what happens is if you sort of let it travel,

you can go the other way with those outside pitches. So lefties are really trying to get you reaching, lefty on lefty. They're coming from a place that you can't see the ball that well if you're standing in the box as a lefty. And so I think that letting the ball travel means that you're gonna see it for longer and you can maybe have a little bit more.

You can take those outside pitches and fillet them into the outfield. And so I actually compared to Parker Meadows, who might be another guy that the Tigers are wondering if they're going to platoon. I'd like Colt Keith's approach a little bit better for platooning. And we did point out that at some point you need five regulars, and right now, this team has Glaver Torres, Riley Green, and a bunch of mix and match. So that's why you get into trouble with, you know,

he cannot be in a strict platoon. He will not, they don't have the personnel, or the ability, or the roster spots, to put Colt Keith into a strict platoon he will not there's they don't have the personnel or the ability or the roster spots to put Colt Keith into a strict into a strict platoon next year. Last question on Colt Keith both projection sets we see at Fangraphs right now Steamer and Oopsy project 15 homers that's with 525 and 546 plate appearances respectively over under 15 homers for Colt Keith. Over. Over by. Over on playing time and then just the chance that he figures out how to pull and push at the right time.

But over by two, three at least and possibly more. Yeah, possibly five plus. Okay, good. I feel good about seeking out Colt Keith as a player who will qualify at first in a build where I was very very liked on first I like him better than Andrew Vaughn I think I probably like him better than the Reese Hoskins What what was I imagining things was Reese Hoskins losing some playing time late last year? Oh it was

the you may remember, I was not happy with the exceedingly wide range of uses for Jake Bowers last year. That's what it was. Remember being, I was upset about that, right? Yeah. And, yeah, Hoskins, he had an injury in May. Yeah, there's a stint where he's on the aisle in May.

It wasn't a lot of lost time, just for context, right? In September, he sat out six starts. One of them was the very last day of the regular season. It was like once a week he wasn't in the lineup. So it wasn't heavy. It was just righty righty spots that they like something else. For me to notice and be annoyed you know just like. Yeah so in a six game week he was a five game player which is usually enough in 15 team leagues. It's just not

the shallow league Reese Hoskins we had earlier in his career but Hoskins versus Vaughn is kind of interesting if you're thinking about the Brewers depth and the way they have that roster built and Vaughn maybe being one of those guys that is on the short list of set it and forget it players for the White Sox. Do you think there was anything we saw from Andrew Vaughn later in the year that offers a glimpse of one more level of production or is this just a younger oatmeal-y player kind of stuck in a bad situation with the White Sox as far as supporting cast but a good situation for maxed out playing time. I showed Andrew on this chart where his production maps ridiculously tightly with his pull rate.

I mean, look at this. It's very like the lines are as tight as any one of these that I've looked at. Red is pull and blue is wubba And it's like if he's pulling the ball some he's hitting better see purple I showed him I showed him this and he was nonplussed. He did not care What do you do many people when you show them a chart in person have a similar reaction or do some people actually get? Excited about the charts. Oh, oh, yeah There's the nerds like there are nerds that get excited about the charts? Oh, oh yeah, there's the nerds.

There are nerds that get excited about it. Even when I showed Julio Rodriguez a chart like that, even if he didn't give me a very good answer, because he's good. I mean, your PR guy would say he's good. Right, right, right. Your writers say, god damn it, he said some stuff, but I don't think anything was useful. But I saw the twinkle in his eye, like he knew what I was showing him, you know? With Vaughn,

I just, I don't know, he's pretty tight with his father, and I would assume that he's had a lot of success with his approach. He's been a major leaguer. He was a first round pick, third overall. He was a first round pick third overall he was an amazing college player and If you just look at some surface level stats you say 253 you know 20 homer hitting guy every year. What's the problem here? It is also worth asking if he did become more of a pull hitter and if he went and got the ball What would his strikeout rate look like? Would he go down to a 220 hitter to

get to that 30 homerun level power, I would say, probably worth it. Probably worth it to get to those 10 extra homers because if you sum it all up, he's been below replacement and he's been 2% better than the average with the bat. Andrew Vaughn has for his major league career. It's not going anywhere. It may feel like it's doing fine, but this is not a profile that I think would be on high demand if he was a free agent today. If he was a free agent this year,

I think he would still be a free agent. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think the thing that would be more compelling is like yeah you did really well you were the third overall pick you got a big bonus and you get a big league salary and if you want to keep getting big league salaries by hitting free agency again and getting a multi-year deal you're gonna have to take some risks because being a league average guy at first base where you're not adding above average defense,

teams just aren't going to care. He even has the glove of a DH. Right. So you just have to do something else. And I think about first basemen that are lighter on power a lot. And Daniel Loews, the first guy that comes to mind, you look at the last three seasons combined, Loews hit 60 homers, Vaughn has hit 57. Loews played 20 some more games, but reasonably similar, right? Vaughn strikes out less, but he also walks a lot less. So there's a 50 point difference in OBP. And that's just talking about these guys as offensive players. So Lowe has a 127 WRC plus, Vaughn has a 104.

And then you had defense in the equation, Low's defense has been better. 104, I was just looking at his page, it's 102 I thought. I got a three year snapshot up, so that's. Oh, a three year snapshot, okay, okay. So if that's the bar, Low's even been like twice traded. Right, I mean like that's. And Low's even more an extreme opposite guy than Vaughn. But it works with his skill set, I guess.

In terms of he's walking more, and it's leading to at least OVPs. But Vaughn is stuck in between where, yeah, he pulls the ball a little bit more than Low, and so maybe he has a little bit more power than Low, but it's not giving him the OVPs he needs. Yeah, so I don't know, I could see, I could understand, like, hey, this has got me this far.

I could totally understand that. I could put myself in the shoes of the dad, could understand like, hey, this has got me this far. I could totally understand that. I could put myself in the shoes of the dad and be like, hey, look what we did. Like we worked really hard and this is what we've got. Great, go one step further. And to some extent, you know, Lowe is, Lowe is I think in a similar spot because I've had conversations with Lowe about this

and he's like, no, this is just what works for me. And I'm like, you know, you don't even wanna selectively pull and ever since I've talked to him about this, his pull rate has gone down. So yeah, I guess he doesn't wanna talk about that. Reese Hoskins, just the real quick takeaway. I think he's fine if you just need a cheap power boost, but I think we kinda highlighted it.

It's not quite the everyday role, at least it wasn't. Both those guys, Low and Vaughn are kinda like that. They're both kinda like that as far as more volume goes. But I think Hoskins has clearly offered more power over the course of his career still has more power We'll continue to offer more power It comes with some extra batting average risk the way the depth charts built right now Bowers is back on a non-roster Invite so he could be there so now it's Tyler black that could take time from now It's Tyler black and then the DH tuition because of theage coming off of back surgery could be a lot of yellage.

So that's where that pressure on playing time could come from. It's still there at price. On the positive side, you know, he's a year removed from the ACL surgery and so maybe some of that bat speed he lost comes back, you know, and he becomes more of a 30 homer, 230 guy, you know?

Right, but kind of an alternative to Eugenio Suarez as your corner infielder, right? Like you don't like Suarez 100 picks earlier. He's a little bit younger than Suarez, you know? That's my best argument for Reese Hoskins. It's not a must get, but it's a useful profile at the price. Dude, late first baseman, yikes,

your crying just scared me. This is really bad. I recommend you get your third first baseman and draft and holds like before this. Don't do this. Like if you can get Hoskins as your third first baseman, do it. I chose and he's in here, Tyler Soderstrom over Reese Hoskins. I sort of regret it. I think maybe Hoskins was a, was a more sure thing. But one

thing that I like about Tyler Soderstrom is that he represented more upside. Tyler Soderstrom hits the ball hard. He's been sort of getting to where he needs to go in terms of putting together the strikeout rate, the walk rate, the home run rate. He gets a new home park. And I don't think Nick Kurtz, he is exciting, and I don't think Nick Kurtz, he's exciting, but I don't think Nick Kurtz is here this year. You know, the big first base prospect for the A's. Could be. August maybe.

Yeah, but only August if Soda Storm sucks, and at that point I'm not playing him anyway. Right, right, right. Well, part of the problem with the position, as we've talked about over the years, first base prospects are generally rare. You mentioned Nick Kurtz's one. Bryce Eldridge in San Francisco,

I think could be more of an August guy. We've talked about him previously as someone that they could have maybe pushed under the roster sooner if they felt he was ready. If Farhan Zaydi was still heading it up. Yeah, that's right. It is a big deal. And then being in that position of saying,

I gotta do everything I can to try and keep this going in the right direction. Now I feel like it is a big deal. And then being in that position of saying, I gotta do everything I can to try and keep this going in the right direction, now I feel like it's a little different with the Buster takeover. I could see it being, I could see Eldridge coming up in August, I could see that happening. I would have said, you know, June, July, after the sort of Super 2 deadline, and I think that's still a possibility because of the way

that he just tore through the minors last year. But he only had 75 plate appearances at AA and AAA combined. And Buster did come out and say, Buster Posey, the new GM for the Giants, did come out and say that they were literally gonna be, advance people slower. That's one of the things he said.

Yeah, we'll take our time a little bit more. So if you factor that in and look at how little time Eldridge was able to spend above high A, then you can pretty easily talk yourself into a half season plus in the upper levels of the minors. And even Jack Keagley and Owen, who just got drafted by the Royals sixth overall last summer out of Florida,

made his pro debut at high A, has 29 games there. It wasn't great. It was fine It was 96 WRC plus and then went under the Arizona Fall League I would imagine he spends most if not all of this season between double a and triple a and then we're talking about him more In 2026 unless he just goes Bonkers with production this year in the minors, right? So the prospects aren't really there it's really kind of sifting through this group of veterans that have had varying levels of success

and have a lot of really flimsy holds on the role. I mean, I think earlier in the group, you get guys like Jay Cronenworth, like he's gonna play a lot. I'm not really worried about his playing time. Even Luke Railey, a top of the depth chart, big side platoon guy Doing pretty decent things as a I like him guys very athletic

If you don't I don't know if you notice but the bat speed is good The sprint speed is good the batted ball stats are good. It's just not he's not like he's not a great weekly player But I could see him being a good best ball good drafted because he can give you five category goodness at his best. Right, so he'll still play enough to be useful in really deep leagues. I just don't know if he's gonna crack mixed leagues as more than a streamer when the schedule's packed full of righties.

You mentioned Soderstrom already. Jim or Candelario versus like Josh Bell and Carlos Santana, you could see pretty big plate appearance numbers for him. I think when the Nats signed Bell, you said there was a chance he'd just swing his way out of a job because threshold to be a DH is reasonably high and the contract's pretty small. Yeah, and the Nationals just signed Franci Cordero to a minor league. I just say his name that way because it's a fun name to say and also he hits the ball super hard but you know we're talking about DH and they've got Juan Yepez, Jose Tena, Brady House, you know Alex

Call you know they've got guys coming up through here oh even Andres Chaparro they've got guys that may lose out on a defensive position that they may just stick over there. And I think Bell at 32, it's been below average work for a first baseman DH for two straight seasons now. And it's a lot to kind of be like, if only he lifted the ball, I think at this point, you're kind of like, he is who he is. And he's just a kind of a part-time guy for most teams or a backup plan if Christian Walker gets hurt you know that's how the market treated him. One guy down here that has a little more upside than the boring veterans you're mentioning is Davison De Los Santos, 21 year old

in Miami where he might get full rain and he hits the ball super hard. He hit the ball 116 miles an hour in the minor leagues last year, has hit the ball over 40 hard over 40% of the time. He will strike out but I think he could be a prototypical DH first baseman type slugger, does not play defense well, hit 40 home runs in the minor leagues last year in double A and triple A combined and is just on a team that is starved for power. So Davy Son De Los Santos will be up against the guys like Griffin Konine and Kyle Stowers and Jonah Bride and Matt Mervis.

He's the guy who hits the ball harder than all of them. And so I'm going to bet on him a little bit. I should hopefully have a couple shares of his. We do have some breaking news here too. Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh, breaking news, breaking news, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. The Mets have signed Jesse Winker, which Andy Martino of S and Y suggests

that means they may not sign Pete Alonso. That's awesome. I really hope that's what that means for the Mets. I hope they are like yeah Yeah, this is just talking in the in the This is just this is just you know talking through the media. I would delete that tweet I would actually delete that I wrote if you if you'd written it I don't even I don't know Andy, but I would advise Andy to delete that because I don't think that's true This isn't like in a you're not doing your job sort of way like it's just such a bizarre. Oh speculation like nah, man That's I don't think they're related just

talking to the talking to the the the you know It's like it's you're just negotiating through the press. Cause I mean, Winker doesn't play first. It's kind of a bizarre idea. And like, what did he sign? Like what's the number for Winker? It's, yeah, we signed this guy for one and 10. So we can't sign you, Pete Alonzo. Sorry. Yeah. Don't we use the money? Don't think it works that way with the Mets right now. So if you, you want Pete Alonzo to go back to the Metsets I don't think Jesse Winker being there actually matters despite what the report suggests

I think this is slightly bad for Jesse Winker's playing time actually I know this is an outfield situation But you know the news came through so I think he's in a in some sort of platoon with Starling Marte at I think he's in some sort of platoon with Starling Marte at DH. Yeah, at least he's a lefty, so that's good for him. And career high in plate appearances is 547, so he often has the combination of bad luck and injury woes that keep him. Oh yeah, one year and eight million.

Yeah, sorry, we don't have enough money for you, Pete. I mean Everyone knows what they're all about. So it's not It just it wouldn't faze you at all if you were reppin reppin Pete Alonzo, he's like, oh doesn't this that actually doesn't matter. So yeah Whatever. What's your best offer? Come on. Let's let's keep talking. Just gonna go on continuing to live my life I'm with you though Davis and de los santos I mean I like what he brings to the table more than bride more than all those other options and there's first base and DH they can Play some combination of two of them pick your two favorite will probably do that during the Marlins preview in a few weeks

Jamer to me just looks like more of a Mono League draft and hold guy at this point You know, they gave him a decent amount of money in Cincinnati, he's inconsistent enough. If he's bad Jamer again, it's weird. He's like every other year, he's like 10, 15% better than league average, then he's like 15% worse. Based on that system, the numerology here, he's supposed to be good this year.

So if you're into that, go that route. But also the other numerology is like, if they're getting to the end of 2025 and you know they have him under contract for 15 million the next year I do think that that's an acceptable sunk cost and If they're you know, they'd rather try a young guy and they want the roster spot, you know They could manufacture an injury or something. But do you think Spencer Horowitz hits enough to be a useful deep league first baseman? Look at his projections, people. They're actually really fun, especially in daily leagues.

Third best pirate. Third best pirate, and when we played the, you know, how do we keep Billy Cook off of the field game? I knew it was coming. If he's the third best pirate, he may actually just play every day. So I think Horwitz is better than most of the people we just talked about. Are you as excited about Carlos Santana as the Guardians were by bringing him back from the same, like in an adjacent transaction to trading away Josh Naylor?

No, no. That is, that was like one of those two cute by half moves where you're just like, oh, and we've got a guy who's projected to be just about the same as Josh Naylor. But dudes, do you remember he's 38 years old? Come on. He's going to go back to the last four years before last year when he was below average with the bat and oh, fine, like a good defensive guy

who kinds of gets on base some like what I think they're just planning on Manzardo like taking it from him at some point sure that's a that could be the plan last Gavin asked you about Spencer Torkelson where is he on opening day what kind of role does he bounce back somewhere else does he put the pieces together in Detroit like is he worth a late flyer? Because he's basically free right now. Yeah, he has one more minor league option. I think he'll start the season in the minors.

That is not what you were hoping for. Yeah, coming off that 31 homer season in 2023. Like opening 2025 in Toledo would be a rough, rough outcome. But as your fourth first base bench draft. Do we have to build a bench real quick? Build a bench real quick? Nah, we'll save it. We'll save it for the Tigers preview

because what we need to know is if they're gonna add any more free agents. It's hard to see how they fit, but if they were to be the team that swoops in and gets like Alex Bregman or something, that changes a lot about how the pieces all come together. So we'll save that for our Tigers preview. Alonzo would be interesting.

Yeah, but the cult key thing and it just I don't think that's going to quite fit. But you never know. We're going to go on our way out the door. Reminder, you can find us on Blue Sky. You know, is that you know, Sarah's got a social on the art piece. God, it's social. It's episode four of our twenty 2025 position previews. Barring some big breaking news like a Roki Sasaki signing, we'll have a fifth installment from this series

coming up on Friday. So that's going to do it for this episode of Raids and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Hey everyone, it's Robert Mays. The NFL playoffs are here, and we've got you covered on the Athletic Football Show. For wild card weekend all the way through Super Bowl 59, my co-host Derek Klassen and I will guide you through every game, matchup, and big time performance on the way to one team lifting the Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans. Catch the Athletic Football Show wherever you listen to podcasts.