Rates & Barrels - 2025 Second Base Preview

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Eno and DVR continue their 2025 Position Preview series at second base. Does Ketel Marte offer enough to target him as an early-round foundational piece? If you miss out on the other early options at the keystone, how long should you wait to address the position? Plus, which bounceback candidates and rookies make the most sense at a discount this year? Rundown 1:32 ADP Tier 1 -- Ketel Marte Stands Alone 5:48 ADP Tier 2 -- Jose Altuve, Ozzie Albies, Marcus Semien & Jordan Westburg 22:10 ADP Tier 3 -- Luis García Jr., Brice Turang & Luis Rengifo 34:15 ADP Tier 4 -- Bryson Stott, Luis Arraez, Andrés Giménez & Nico Hoerner 44:30 ADP Tier 5 -- Zack Gelof, Maikel Garcia, Gleyber Torres, Willi Castro, Colt Keith, Brendan Donovan, Brandon Lowe, Jackson Holliday & Jonathan India 1:01:52 -- Buying Into Jackson Holliday in Year 2? 1:11:57 -- The Late, Late Second Basemen of Interest 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 Second Base: https://forms.gle/dfNAs4yZm81EgMPy6 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's Tuesday, January 14th. Position preview season rolls along. Derek Van Riper, Eno Saris here with you on this episode.

We take a look at the second bass position. We close out the middle infield. We started off the series on Monday, the previous episode in this feed. Looking at short stops, tons of ground to cover again and second base is one of those positions that's kind of backloaded by ADP so a lot more conversation will happen lower in the pool for reasons that are basically how the playing time is distributed for a lot of teams. It's a shared position for some, it's not really a spot where you see a ton of prospects

unless they're moving off of shortstop or something because it's crowded. So interesting position to try and figure out. And a lot of ground to cover like always before we get into all of it, just a reminder, we will do the hive rankings for this position as well. So if you're in our Discord,

you'll see a link to fill those out, submit your own rankings. We're gonna compile all those to get a listener composite group that'll be open for probably about two weeks or so. It's a lot of time to get those in, but the sooner the better. And as always, we use NFBC ADP

to sort of structure the conversation, to give you an idea where these players have been going in drafts recently. You're right, here we go, you know. We're going right after it. Tier one at second base is literally one player. Cattell-Marte is the only second baseman in the top 30 overall. You might remember at shortstop we had five players, I believe, going in the first

two rounds. I think the question is pretty simple. Is it worth paying the premium for Cattell-Marte? If you look at the auction calculator and run a set of projections through there, I used the 15 team league, I ran the new oopsie projections in there, there are seven short stops projected to be worth $20 or more using a 260 budget. There are no second baseman projected to be worth $20 or more. Cattell-Marte comes in just under $18. So the highest ranked player at the position by those projections falls a little short of top end players at other positions.

We've seen this from him for a while in terms of core skills that looked like early round skills. He's just been riddled by a lot of injuries and I think that's made trusting him even more complicated than it should be, especially coming off a year in which he just showed a career best barrel rate. I think the power looks very real to me from Cattelmarte. I'm a little nervous about the injuries for Cattelmarte.

If you look at the projections for him, Steamer has 669 plate appearances. That is a number that Cattelmarte has never hit. Yeah. Even the more restrained depth charts have him at 637, which is a number he's only hit once in 2023. And you know, the last three years, 558, 650, 583, you think, okay, maybe he's going to go down for 15 days, you think, okay, maybe he's gonna go down for a 15 day, but Ketel Marte will be mostly good. Well, in 2022, he played 137 games and wasn't good. So I think he was playing through injuries

on some of that. And then the last two years, he's been great, but let's not forget 2021, where he had 374 plate appearances, or 2017, where he had 255 plate appearances. I mean there there have been years where he kind of like almost missed the whole year and so it makes me nervous. It makes me nervous. I don't think that the legs will be there that much anymore. You know asking for him to repeat a career year I think is asking for a lot so he's gonna regress he's not gonna give you much in

speed and the hamstrings he's 31 they could go they could go and he could be out for more than 15 days so I don't know Cattell Marte is not a name I'd circle I think it's important because as you'll notice from the rest of our conversation about second base. Like you'll have two paths in the wood, which is a get a good one because there aren't that many good ones or just get a guy near the end that is good enough. And. I'm kind of being pushed towards the get a guy because I don't want to get the first guy. Right. There's a flat spot a little bit later on where there's a bunch of eight to twelve dollar players and they're scattered pretty far into your draft so you can just Right, there's a flat spot a little bit later on where there's a bunch of eight to $12 players

and they're scattered pretty far into your draft so you can just wait it out and kind of wait until you're down to like two or three of them and choose the one you like the best. And I think that's a fine overall approach and you can get away with that. You know, if you could tell Marte where to fall, a round, it happens once in a while.

If he becomes a third rounder, there's probably a case for him there. But I think at full price, when you're looking at him alongside of Trey Turner, you're looking at him just after Jazz Chisholm, you're looking at him after Jackson Merrill, you're looking at him right around Ronald Acuna Jr., you've been coming off the second ACL tear,

or Austin Riley, or Rafael Devers, or Matt Olson, like I just feel so much better about that whole group. Give me Devers. You can go younger with more ceiling, and you can go more established with better health track records Right around him. I think that's the thing more stolen basis with a lot of those guys that you mentioned Yeah, so I think a really nice all-around player, but one at the market is bumped up Probably in part because of the scarcity at the position

I don't want to pay the premium in this instance because there are plenty of other players that I like a little bit more Tier two is interesting though if you don't want to go full Eno and go all the way down to the get a guy later, you do have some interesting options here. Jose Altube lives in this pick 50, 60, 70 range most drafts. Ozzy Albies is right there with him. Marcus Simeon and Jordan Westberg are also inside the top 100 in pretty much every draft that you're going to see. So this group of four brings quite a bit to the table.

They're the other early rounders. They're the other guys that are foundational pieces. We'll start with El Tuve. Do you think the spike in chase rate, oh, swing percentage that we saw last year, up to 39.6%, it was a career high, other than his debut all the way back in 2011. Is that a big warning sign for El Tuve

that we're finally hitting that point in his career where he's just not that guy anymore and maybe there's a little more batting average or just starting to creep into this profile even though he seems to get as much out of his skills as just about any player in the game at this stage of his career. I think of future Hall of Famer, but at 34 years old, you're just, you're just worried. I mean, the last time he missed significant time, Jose Altuve, was actually the broken hand from the

WBC, right? Yeah, from the WBC. Yeah, it's 90 games in 2023. I think that would have been it. Yeah, I think there was a broken hand of WBC So it hasn't been Hamstrings it hasn't been the back He still projected so nicely. I mean basically a plus batting average 2020 guy It just makes me nervous man. This makes me nervous. I could I could take him though It's what's his ADP? What's he up against? The L2v toss-ups, cross position.

I mean, if you pick 60 is about where he goes last 14 days. You're looking at Pete Alonso, you're looking at Adley Rutchman. You got another guy at his position we'll get to in a minute. Ozzy Albies, much younger as your positional comp. If you wanna be a little more aggressive

in terms of a young player, you can maybe get Wyatt Langford or James Wood in that range. Maybe it's more of a build-specific thing at that point. If you've got a little more risk, a slightly younger core, and you say, I kind of want the safer floor sort of projection, and I don't want to get caught in the fray playing the wait-at-second base game, I like Al Tuve. That's probably the good case. If you're a projections believer,

categorically he's like the best pick there, even of all the people you've said, because you get a top second baseman and you get one that does everything. That would be the best case for him. I think the thing I would wanna see if I was gonna take El Tuve there is Albi's off the board already.

I think if I'm choosing between the two, I like Ozzy Albi's more. We're talking about a guy that's only a year removed from popping 30 homers for the second time in his career. He just turned 28, so it doesn't feel like we're in that possible cliff phase where the mileage is catching up to him. It was a fractured wrist and a fractured toe last year,

kind of a combination of significant bad luck injuries. I do think there is an occupational hazard of sorts that comes with being a core player in Atlanta right now, where you just play every single day. We love it from the volume perspective. It can lead you to the top end of the player pool if you manage to stay healthy for all of it. But I do think it's at risk that comes along with it. But all things things considered I look at Ozzy Albies and think if I'm choosing between him and Altuve I'll take my chance on the much younger player here. I think there's also for me more confidence in the overall quality of Atlanta's lineup having just better injury luck as a group this year. It wasn't just Albies that missed time last year so there might just be a collective bounce back

across the board that makes those counting stats a bit better from Albies. Even though I think what you said about El Tuve, like a 2020 projection with a good average, there's not much to pull apart there. Like that's a really solid projection. I still think you're looking at a better ceiling for Albies with a pretty similar floor. Yeah, I mean, that's where I agree with you on the build. Maybe it is nice that the Braves didn't have a long postseason run. A little bit of rest for a bunch of guys that have been played a ton in the last couple of seasons.

Yeah, that's a possible silver lining. I think Sibian is similar to Althubé in that if you cover the age portion of the projection you'd be like oh I might consider him even over Albies you know 254 24 12 like that's probably gonna be you know very close to Albies I mean in terms of projections they're very similar but you have to incorporate the age so Simeon goes after Albies and I have no question about it, but he's like the biggest volume play there is Simeon and You know, we're always chasing plate appearances So why not get the guy who has for four straight years and actually if you take 2020 out? Six straight seasons has ended the season with a play appearance total. It starts with a seven. Yes

I mean that's elite durability at a time when look the game is just a physical grind to be able to do that six consecutive full seasons It's remarkable It's the kind of thing that you always want to have on your roster But it becomes increasingly difficult to trust it the further in you agree with it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's really rough. It can happen. It can happen because they don't have anyone pushing him for playing time. He's still in the middle of a seven year, 175 million dollar deal. There's four years left on Marcus Simeon's deal. So if he's healthy, he will play and make another run at extending that streak.

That's possible. I wonder if he's doing some bad speed training. Look at his max CV, it's going up. It's pretty interesting that that'd be going up in your mid 30s, but yeah, it's a way of trying to maintain power you had when you were younger. What we saw last year seems like a skills-based floor. If you said he's gonna get 700 played appearances again,

I'd be very surprised if the average and the pop and the speed went down from where it is. If he played that much and hit 230 something again with 18 homers and eight or less stolen bases, wouldn't that be kind of a weird outcome? Because a lot of the underlying numbers for Semyon are still right in line with his career norms.

I don't see rapid erosion in the underlying power numbers. The barrel rate is still right around 6%. It's been there three years in a row. Hard hit rate for his career, 34.8%. Last year, 35.2. He still looks like he has a lot of those foundational skills in place. Sometimes I look at a player's career, especially ones that have been played this long,

and you can almost see the bell curve. It's kind of amazing. Marcus Simeon's first year, full year, well, first year where he got a chance was in Chicago White Sox, 2014, 255 play appearances. His slash line that year was 234, 300, 372. His slash line last year was 237, 308, 391. And in between, oh man, you got some nice peak years.

Yeah, look at the strikeout rate though. If you had told me back in 2014 that 10 years into the future, Mark Gusemian's strikeout rate would almost be half of what it was when he got that first prolonged opportunity when he broke through. It's a little bit like the George Springer progression where when Springer was a prospect, he broke in,

he had a good bit of swing and miss. He thought, okay, strikeouts are probably always part of the profile, you know, low average, but power speed, okay, fine, that's all fine. That adjustment for Semi and overtime is pretty remarkable too, to see that continuing to go down in the macro trend. I mean, three consecutive seasons in Texas

where he's been 17% or lower in K percentage, that's really impressive. You also see some of the fallbacks, he has gone to a high pull flyball approach, reminiscent of Isak Paredes, Brian Dozier, there's been other guys have done this over time. What you will find is a low babbip on that. Despite the fact that he's cut all his strikeouts, he has a 283 career babbip and last year the 250 looks a little bit unlucky, but I wouldn't regress that all the way to 300 because this is the type of player he is.

You also maybe see some diminishing returns from, you know, the first time he kind of was this huge fly ball pull guy. You know, he had 45 homers in Toronto And I guess pitchers at some point can kind of see what you're doing and stop pitching you high and tight or wherever it is that you like to do, you like to pull those five balls. So it becomes a little bit harder to do that same strategy

and he's fallen off since then. But yeah, this is a really excellent player. And I think if he falls because people are reaching for much more fun younger guys, I can see taking him. My favorite second baseman is in this tier. Oh, well I don't think we've talked about him yet, have we? We have not. And I was doing some sorting to prepare for this and there were only two second baseman last year that were above average in barrel rate, hard hit rate, strikeout rate, and O swing. You know,

how much they chased on pitches outside the zone. There's only two. One was Cattell Marte and the other was Jordan Westberg. And I just love everything about him except a swing strike rate and even a swing strike rates not that bad Even if could tell Marte even if he will never strike out as as little as could tell Marte does Westberg does a lot of the same things I don't think Westberg gets enough credit for the quality of his batted balls and I have no idea why he's projected to have the plate appearances that he does. If you look on fan graphs Jordan Westberg is projected for 580 plate appearances by the depth

charts. I call BS. I don't know why they're low. If you have a guy who hits like this and you're like oh I don't know if he's gonna play a third, or you're gonna play a second, he's not gonna platoon. You're just a guy you put in the lineup. He's a right-hander for Epson Bibbles. You seem like you're angry about this. Trying not to, trying not to curse. Saving our producer, Brian Smitsum bleeps,

which is always nice, just a little extra work on the back end to add those in. Yeah, we're not supposed to curse anymore. Yeah no I mean I just I just I think you got to bump those those plate appearances up if you bump those plate appearances up you bump his projection up then he looks better than some of the guys who are ahead of him on the auction calculator because if you look on the auction calculator you say oh he's the 15th best second baseman. Nah.

I think the other thing that you should consider when questioning the Jordan Westberg plate appearance totals that you see projected, and I agree they're too low, we just saw with a crowded depth chart how the Orioles prioritized his playing time. And he spent some time on the IL, so that's where the missing playing time, the bulk of it came from, right? So how many days off do you think Jordan Westberg had while he was healthy? All season.

Eight, which is a very reasonable number. So you could say over a full healthy season, 10 to 12 is probably what they would have given him because he plays two positions and like you said, he hits the ball hard, he does a lot of things well. I believe in those core skills. I think because the playing time is light, tools like the auction calculator

are going to spit out a lower number, and I think that does hold Westberg back a little bit. The positional toss-up is Semian versus Westberg, older guy versus younger guy, much like the El Tuve Albies toss-up. I don't think it's Westberg by miles, but I do think it's a clear preference for me for Jordan Westburg. I think there's so many questions about Marcus Semyon's stolen

base contribution at this point that the edge that Semyon could have had in that category previously has been wiped away. And I want that quality of contact. I think if you're in an OBP league, Westburg does get dinged, Semyon would too. So you have to keep that in mind if you're in that format. But the chase rate's not awful, and 11.8% barrel rate's really good for the position. And the dual eligibility's nice too, he's eligible at third base as well, so you can take him at second, and depending on how the rest of your draft goes, maybe you end up with a few of those guys you like later that are available. Then you bump him over and play him on the corner, or play him at third. I think he hits enough to actually be a useful option at third too, so I do like Westberg where he's going.

I wouldn't draft him earlier than where he's going, but I think it absolutely makes sense if you're trying to do well at this position, at this price point, and I think this lineup, I think this Orioles lineup is getting a little bit of extra negativity as a result of what happened in the postseason. I think people are collectively a little down on the Orioles and I don't think they should be.

I think this is still a really good core that's going to put up big numbers as a group and I think Westbrook will reap the benefits of that. Just a real quick perusal of the historical since 1974 best seasons by a second baseman 34 years or older. It's a lot of steroid era people. I mean like Brett Boone is number one in 2003.

I haven't actually heard allegations specifically to that about Jeff Kent, but he's in that timeframe. Randy Velarde, that same timeframe. Randy Velarde. Lou Whitaker, you know, fourth best second based season ever. It's a lot of defense in there because offensively 279, 23 homers, four stolen bases. Just to give you a sense of where things are. Ian Kinsler in 2016 had 28 stolen bases, 14 stolen bases, 28 homers.

Like that's what you're hoping for from, you know, Altuve and Simeon is graceful aging. They both seem like they are capable of it. So I was expecting to pick this up and be like, oh, you know, the comps are bad, but the comps aren't bad. You know, I mean, Jose Altuve himself is on this list already.

Not surprised. Jed Lowry. Jed Lowry, 2018. 18th best second base season by war. 267, 23 homers in 2018. You should tell them that. 34 and older. Yeah, I will tell them that. This group's not bad.

I don't think it's a high priority must get someone here, but I do think the prices make some sense. I just like to flip the order. I like Albies more than El Tuve. I like Westburg more than Simeon. I don't think there's a hard avoid in the group. I think of the four, if you said who are you most likely to have no exposure to in the

course of draft season, it's probably Simeon. He's probably the one I would just miss on because there are some other guys in that pocket that have bigger categorical contributions at other at other positions that I think are higher ceiling players too So if I were to miss out on Westberg, I might not pivot to Simeon I might just go to a different position entirely and I might end up having the most of Westberg because of these four I'm tempted to say I'm gonna wait. It's like all four on the board, I'll wait a round. Oh, three are still on the board, I'm gonna wait another round. Two are still on the board.

Oh, look, it's just Westburg. That's kind of how I might approach the tier. Hi, it's Alexa Weibel from New York Times Cooking. We've got tons of easy weeknight recipes, and I'm gonna make two of my favorites for you today. For my five ingredient creamy miso pasta, you just take your starchy pasta water, whisk it together with a little bit of miso and butter

until it's creamy. Add your noodles and a little bit of cheese. Mmm, it's like a grown-up box of mac and cheese. An easy weeknight recipe that feels like a restaurant-quality dish. Next up, I'm making my vegetarian mushroom shawarma pitas. This recipe is just built for efficiency. You toss your mushrooms and red onion in your spices, throw them in the oven. By the time they're done, your

sauce is ready, you've chopped your cabbage, and you're ready to assemble. It feels crazy that something that tastes this complex and looks this colorful and beautiful is actually really easy to make and takes just 20 minutes of active time. It's just delicious. New York Times Cooking has you covered with easy dishes for busy weeknights. Find these recipes and more at nytecooking.com.

Smells so good. Let's move down to the next tier. This, this. Do not like. Yeah. This is a trap. I knew, okay. Yesterday I think your trap was a read

I did not agree with. You pushed back. I fought back on it, but the first thing I thought when I saw Luis Garcia Jr. and Bryce Terang and Luis Renefo was, this is a trap, because what I see with these three players, it's a trap, I picked them apart and looked carefully, I didn't see anything in terms of underlying skills,

job security, health grades. I didn't see anything that stood out compared to players in each of the next two tiers. There might be better players in the next two tiers. I think there's a very good chance. This may be the worst tier of players we talk about inside the top 200 at any position for the entire series. It would not surprise me in this case, but small.

So easy to just fixate on their flaws. In fact, the first thing I wanna do, actually here, is our first graphic. Let's throw up, this is the percentage of left-handers. So basically, these guys are platoon the most, right? So these are left-handed second baseman. How often do they see left-handers? So Luis Guaromi 10%. We're going to talk Gavin Lux later. I don't know. I think the Reds will probably do this also, but the Dodgers had the ability to never let Gavin Lux see a left-hander. I mean he saw 1900 pitches and he saw 190 from left-handers,

you know, so he's 10% lefty on lefty. He is a platoon guy. Edward Hullian, fourth-least. Nicky Lopez. Colt Keith is on this list. He's seventh. He only saw 17% lefty on lefty. Brandon Lau, who we know is in the platoon, right? So that's like sort of a baseline. Oh, that guy's a platoon guy, 17%. So 17% is a good idea of like, oh, that's platoon. Bryce Turing is on this list. Luis Garcia is on this list.

Do you know what Bryce Turing and Luis Garcia Jr. both have now? Guys that are right- handed to play their position that can take even more at-bats against lefties away. And given that Turing and Garcia Jr. both came off of decent seasons, the fact that they were already platoon at-bats, platoon bats at their position, should ring some alarm bells for you. It definitely does I think

the only Factor that makes to rang potentially different than Garcia is elite elite defense and We don't know for sure if to rang is gonna be the replacement for Willie Adam ace and move over and play shortstop He's certainly capable of it. They've got options, they've got Joey Ortiz. The last thing we talked about on the show was some comments that Pat Murphy made saying one of his thoughts or one of his preferences might be to leave Terang alone

and just move Joey Ortiz full-time to short instead of mixing and matching. But all those options are still on the table. There's nothing written in stone as far as how they're gonna handle it. So you have to wonder, does Tarang offer enough defensively to avoid a strict platoon? He's gonna sit against some lefties,

but look at what they were doing in September last year. They saw a good number of lefties. I think he sat twice all month. Started against one, two, three, started against like 10 out of the 12 lefties the Brewers saw down the stretch. He's gonna get buried in the bottom of the order though too. So even if he's playing,

it's gonna be hitting eighth or ninth. So you have to keep that in the calculations as well. I think the other part of Tarang's profile that kind of hurts is just, he doesn't have the Xavier Edwards batting average juice. At least he hasn't shown it so far. So if you're chasing him as a cheap steals target, 50 bags last year and 56 attempts.

We know the Brewers like to run. Tarang does it really well. I think you need to see at least another small step forward against Righty's for him to continue being a good enough five by five player to not be completely imbalanced. I think that's part of the problem. Players like this make sense like 50 to 75 picks later. You're giving up too much value somewhere else,

taking Bryce Terang where he's going right now. So I think that's my biggest argument against the whole tier really. And I think we talked about Ahmed Rosario joining the Nationals at the end of last week. I think Luis Garcia could be the guy that stands to lose the most playing time. They got a lot of lefties on that infield,

so Rosario could move all over the place. and last year was a breakout by any reasonable measure Luis Garcia jr. Had a great season last year career highs in every Roto category. He ran a lot more This is a guy that has a ton of experience at a young age He's over 1700 big league plate appearances before his 25th birthday And he's had a few up-and- down spurts that probably didn't have to happen, so it could even be more than that. I'm just worried he's gonna leak some playing time and come out a little bit light relative to other players

at other positions that you can get at this price point. Yeah, he has a 550 plate appearance projection that I agree with. Right, and I think you need a little more, or at least a better path to more to justify players like this in this range. There is obviously an inherent bias in using NFC ADP. And, you know, for us, the drafts that we're in right now are on NFC and these are

weekly lineups. So there's a little bit of an inherent bias for us into people that are not being platoon. We would rather have the play appearances, rather have someone who plays all week. But I would say this. Somebody was asking me about, you know, what should my first fantasy baseball league look like? And I said, do weekly. You're probably coming from football and you're probably not necessarily ready or willing to do the daily lineups for one hundred sixty two games.

You know, it's a slog, you know. So if you are in a weekly lineup, then you do care even in the 10 and 12 team leagues You do care about how much he's gonna play on a weekly basis, right? If you are in a daily league then Garcia is more interesting. However, even in those leagues I'd say you have limited amount of bench slots So yes, you can do fun things where you're like, oh I have Luis Garcia jr But I also have Xander Bogarts at short and I can mush him over, you know what I mean? Like I'm gonna platoon at second. You don't want to pick this high

You have a limited amount of bench slots to do that with you know, so you can't be like, oh well Yeah, the guy I took in the 120th pick I have a have to get also a guy in the bench to like make it worthwhile, you know So yeah, this is not a great tier. There's a fun fact though for Luis Garcia, Jr I don't know how many players had the coverall in the sense of they started a game at each of the nine spots in the batting Hoarder, but I started thinking about it when I was looking at the the real life aspect He's got a 318 LBP last year. that was a career best 302 for his career so far. And I'm just like, okay, like where does he fit in a lineup that keeps getting better

with a lot of other young players? Is he lower and lower and lower? Yeah, it's not much of a table setter. He did lead off a couple games into the year when CJ Abrams was suspended, but it was just the end of the season didn't matter. But he literally hit in all nine spots at some point last year so where he fits this year I think also probably rides on showing one more step forward at least against right-handed pitching and I just I'm I'm nervous about it. If you're just ranking the best hitters in this lineup, you might start him at fifth.

He would at least be fourth right now. You'd be, you'd get Abrams. I'm putting low above him, and I'm putting James Wood above him. You know, I don't think it's too hard of a stretch to say Dillon Cruz could become a better hitter than Luis Garcia Jr. this year. So now you're, now he's your fifth hitter, you know.

Each of those slots costs you I Forget what it is. It's like 10 played appearances over the course of season or more It starts to add up pretty quickly and he's a platoon guy on run who are in he fo you know He's a guy that I really liked as depth You know in draft and holds in the past couple seasons because he was available a couple positions He could hit for some homers, steal some bags. And then last year, he stole 24 bags under the Ron Washington administration. And that may continue because they've been an aggressive team on the base pass, but his barrel rate cratered and it's never actually been that good to begin

with. So I don't know how much I believe the power. I think it's probably sort of, you know, we're gonna top out around 15, 16 homers as it has in the past, even with more playing time. But you could convince me that here's a guy who can hit 260 with 15 homers and 20 bags. And that's not bad for where in this tier. I do think there's like some risk around him that has nothing to do with him, which is

that this is the last season he's under contract with the Angels. And we kind of know how the Angels season's gonna go, don't we? They're gonna start the season being like, yeah, we've got some new guys and we're trying to be competitive. And then they're gonna be selling at some point Am I being dystopian? I don't know I think that's I think that's being realistic and when they sell they're gonna sell Renhefo and will they sell Renhefo to a team that will start him or use him as he's been used in the past?

Which is kind of a spackle roster spackle kind of you everywhere guy and another reason that they'll sell is that Christian Moore is their top prospect. You know, he's hitting tanks in the minor leagues. He's gonna come up at some point. Now that might just add another position eligibility, push Ren Ju-Fo somewhere else. It's not like the Angels have a ton of guys everywhere, you know, but it does behoove them to be trade Ren Ju-Fo and give Moore the shot. So you may get a guy who's a good starter for two thirds of the season, and then have to find other options at the end of the year. Maybe that's okay where this is.

I think it's a little bit early for having those kind of risks attached to your pick. It's a little early, but yet, of the three options in this group, I think if you said you gotta take one at their ADP, it's a horrible challenge. You just have to take one, you gotta build the rest of your team around that.

I think it's Renhevo because it just cost me less than the others. I think knowing that Anthony Rendon is atop the depth chart at third base, that kind of eases my concern about Christian Moore coming to nudge him off of second, Neto's injury to begin the season. I know they brought in Kevin Newman.

You could play Ren Heafo at short if you really wanted to, just to start the year, so that's a possibility. He already has eligibility at third base, so you get some roster flexibility too. I do think the Angels will continue to run, since Wash is still there. And I know the average getting up to 300 last year was probably kind of a fluky bad thing,

but it was a 12 homer, 48 steal pace for Ren Heafo when he got hurt, and that was probably a kind of a fluky bad thing, but it was a 12 homer 48 steel pace for Ren Heafel when he got hurt and that was within a wrist injury that he kind of tried to play through in the IL and then had season ending surgery for. He's been above average by WRC plus three years in a row. It's not really great buying guys after surgery. It depends on the specific nature of the surgery though, right? I mean, it's always a little bit weird. I think I'd like more information

in the sense of like just knowing he's completely on the same schedule as everybody else in the spring training. That would- Seeing him show up. That would help a little bit too. But, here's the big caveat. The problem, or the reason why I generally

wouldn't draft him is because I just don't see a lot of separation from Renhevo compared to the next cluster. It's like, well, again, there's other stuff that makes more sense. Let me look at this this next tier and see if I can find value there. You know, what's great about this tier, which is, you know, Bryson Stott, Luis Arais, Andre Cimenez and Nico Horner is. They're all very different.

And in this pick 150 to 200 range, they can put your build on the right track again. You know, like if you're, oh gosh, my batting average is sliding, you know, this is why I do like to have some sort of tracker. My tracker is really simple. I just put the projections into Excel and just like have a running have it against that average that I told you guys about the 260, 20, you know 12 average. I have that average running so I can be oh I'm falling behind in steals. I'm you know oh my batting average is falling you know.

If you do find that your batting average is falling what you can do is oh Luis Arais, one man spackle you know one man roster fix, you know. Andres Jimenez, I think, is your guy for steals. If Nico Horner is healthy, he's your guy for steals and batting average. So you know, and Stott can be, you know, like that too. So these guys can really right the ship if your build is going a certain direction. Yeah, and speaking to the similarities in some of the players in this group,

Jimenez's projection, we're using Upsie, 252 average, 12 homers, 30 steals. Bryson Stott, projection from the same projection system, 255, 12 homers, 29 steals. Whoa! They're very similar players. That's why they're clustered together. If you're looking for differences between them,

for me, maybe it's that, you had Stott earlier on the list of players that see a smaller share of time against lefties. I think the difference in lineup quality, Phillies versus Jays, is enough for me to nudge Stott as like my preference rankings wise. I think Nico Horner health permitting has a similar projection as well probably with a little more average. Yeah 269 average a little less power. Five homers, 27 steals. I think we've seen a little bit of categorical juice from Horner in the past

where you could say that stolen base projection might be light and that might help offset the differences in power between the three players. But I think he goes last in part because of the health, right, you get good health reports in spring training, maybe he closes the small gap between the trio. But I think you're basically fixing the same problem. I'm speed light, maybe I'm a little lighter, I'm heavier on RBIs than runs,

and I need an average that won't hurt me. I think each of those three players will do that. And then the outlier of the bunch is Luis Arias who continues to be an unusual build player every single year. I find that the formats in which I like Luis Arias are basically the less traditional formats. Like Roto great, yes, but I like him more in mono leagues. I like him more in draft and hold leagues. As far as like a 12 team league where I can make moves, I generally don't like Luis Arias in those types of leagues.

He seems like a guy that I always steer away from, even though yes, there's clear value and he helps you in batting average. I just feel like a lot of times he doesn't do enough in any of the other categories and that Doesn't work for how I like to have a roster Yeah, I had him in our new one year and was first in batting average by like 15 points I wasn't the only guy but like you know I was first in batting around by 15 points

And I was like 10th and homers and steals you're right, and it wasn't all I can't blame that all his fault But it's like he did not help my roster in ways. I've traded him I was like this is not helping or it's like your your brain on draft day didn't didn't like do the right Corrections, I don't think I can do it for some reason. Yes, there are tools that could help me But I'm just not wired to play with a little we sir I can help you because then you can see oh, I'm at 270 batting average and I only need 262. So I'm now going to like pick the Dalton Varshoes of the world or whatever, you know, like you

can kind of the tracker can help you a little bit, but it's true. We avoid these really low batting average guys on purpose and that sort of becomes ingrained and they don't even show up sometimes on the ADP list if you're in the draft room or they're not high. And then you also look like an idiot because, oh, you're picking that guy now? And you're like, yeah, because he fits what I need because I had Arias. I don't know. It's a little bit like the opposite of taking Kyle Schwaber. I know the auction calculator will spit out a certain value for Kyle Schwaber and Luis

Arias, but they can often push your build in uncomfortable directions. One nice thing about Arias is he's dropping in terms of how much it costs, and at this point you could use him as a reaction as opposed to something that changes what you do afterwards. So if you went Ellie first, I think Arias here makes sense.

Yeah, if you went Ellie and I think the key is also knowing like you're tracking high in power in the subsequent rounds in your hitter build and you say, oh, all right. Like I can undo the biggest damage in my first round pick here and not hurt myself because I did so well with the other seven or eight hitters I already have from a power perspective. You have to make sure you're running ahead in power

if you're gonna do this. So he's similar to Xavier Edwards as a speed correction play. It's all average though. And I like being able to at least get two categories. And I think in the case of Arias, you're hoping for a good run scored total. His OBPs are high enough where he's usually gonna be

high in the order. He's not a great base runner, but look at the run scored totals, right? 88 his last season with the twins, 71 his full season in Miami, and 83 last year split between Miami and San Diego. So at least it's pretty good in that category. It's light in RBIs. He did steal nine bases last year, so I wonder if he can keep picking his spots, but that was a career high by more than double.

So I don't love it, even though we outlined the case for it. It's a player you rely on only really in certain situations, as Luis Arias goes. I have a favorite in this tier. I just want to give him some love real quick. And it's a surprise to me because he has not been a guy that I've been picking a lot of in the past. But somehow his dropping price, his new team, and some particulars of his new team

make me interested in Andres Jimenez. Now, I think that what I like is, I was talking earlier about like 180 steals, a lot of steals. And you're gonna need multiple 30 steal guys, you know? So borderline, you know, like sort of baseline, you get 25 to 30 steals from Andres Jimenez next year. I believe in that. So the floor is there.

The reason that I'm kind of interested in is that we talk about like barrel rate. Oh, so he hit only 109 homers last year and he had a 2.8% barrel rate. He deserved only having the 9 homers. The power isn't there. But barrel rate itself can regress. And he had 5 and 6% barrel rates before when he was hitting 15 and 17 homers. So you could just bake in natural regression there and give him some of his power back.

And that's what the projections do. Oops, he has 12. Steamer has 13, whatever. There's a little bit more power than he had last year. And then the last bit is when they acquired him, the Blue Jays said, we see some things that he was doing when he had more power that he stopped doing last year. And so I liked that new voice idea, new batting coach, new voice.

And then the last bit is I look at the Blue Jays and, you know, yes, he's a lefty that could be platoon. But a he has elite second base defense. And I think they'll want that because Bo Bichette does not necessarily have elite shortstop defense. And I think he can maybe cover for him a little bit there and then on top of that I finally figured out the math. You have four bench spots that means you need five guys to play every day. You figured it out? I know it doesn't work exactly like that. No, no you really need five regulars. You kind of need five regulars. Dalton Varshow, Beau Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and to some extent George Springer. That's four.

Andres Jimenez might start all the time. You might need Davis Schneider in left field to platoon with Loprofito. You might need Wagner to help at third base or in right field when Springer needs a blow. Like DH seems like an amalgam of people. So there's a lot of places where you need energy. And to me having Bo and Andres up the middle seems like the plan. They acquired him right when the price went up on Andres Jimenez in terms of his extension. And they want him.

And I think they see him as a regular. I think the defense alone is very valuable. It's much like Bryce Terang, elite defender at second base. The key difference for me, Terang has struggled against lefties. Jimenez for his career has a 100 WRC plus against lefties. The platoon risk is very low

when you pair average production with the bat in that split over a multi-year snapshot with that glove. Terang doesn't have that level of offensive floor and that's where the difference in price gets me too. I'm just like, hey, yeah, Tarang might steal more bases but you probably have five to seven more homers from Jimenez. The possibility of even more than that,

they do make an adjustment. You don't need it at this rate but probably better counting stats too, likely higher in the lineup. I think there's the overall case there for Jimenez is strong. And you get the picks. Like you get to wait 50 picks or whatever.

But I also like that if you were to wait for Jimenez and then someone else gets you, you're not screwed. Like there's still another big cluster. There's four guys in this tier that are kind of similar like them. And you like the next tier. Moving on to tier five on YouTube, from Galov to India. You're like, oh, well, that's different.

Usually they list all the players. They don't fit. There's so many second basemen between pick 200 and 250. Galov sort of starts the group. You have Mikel Garcia, who's also third base eligible. Gleyber Torres. Gleyber now in Detroit. Willie Castor, who's eligible everywhere. You have Colt Keith, who's also third base eligible. Gleyber Torres. Gleyber now in Detroit. Willie Castro, who's eligible everywhere.

You have Colt Keith, who's gonna probably move to first base with Gleyber being in Detroit. Brendan Donovan, who can play a couple of spots. Brendan Lau, big side platoon guy. Jackson Holliday, if you do want the what could go right top end prospect, scratch that itch. I kinda like that idea in like a 10 teamer, just like take Jackson Holliday, and if it doesn't work out you just go to the

There'll be somebody on the one of these guys will be on the way a couple of these players likely the Castro Donovan types But worst case scenario you have someone that's okay and best case scenario you have Someone who's supposed to be a stud Figuring it out the second time around and one guy that I just like in this tier that I want to throw out there is Jake Cronenworth, multiple eligibility. He's on a deal that will not get dealt. Nobody is buying Jake Cronenworth on a seven year deal. So he's not going to get traded into a different situation.

And they're actually more likely to trade players around him away and make him more needed as a regular player. So Jake Cronenworth, as boring as a 260, 18, 5 collection of stats might seem to you, it's like one of the more solid floors, I think, in terms of his skill set, his age, and the team around him. There's no way that they're going to acquire more players that make him less important. Like he is super important because his contract is unmovable. Yeah, it's an interesting group though

because you do start to hit the platoon risk or the super utility risk here. There's a lot more of that in this entire group. Let's start with Galov though because I think Galov is probably immune from that for another year. He's a righty for one, so that helps. That helps him.

I think defensively, I think there's enough value there too. He's not a great, not like an elite defender, but I think he's a good defender, so you're not like worried about his glove. I know there were adjustments to his swing, there were questions about that even when he debuted and was so good. He hit the ground running in 2023,

he was a little less than a half season, hit 14 homers, stole 14 bases, had a 132 WRC plus and came back last year 17 homers 25 steals pretty light counting stats because he struck out 34.4 percent of the time and put together a 211 270 362 slash line. So you're buying him coming off of a pretty harsh follow-up to a really nice debut, thinking about some of the factors. We talked about the A's, moving out of the Coliseum into a more hitter-friendly environment in Sacramento, a team that's still very frugal and is unlikely to add a lot, and then looking at projections that will bury him because of his average and saying, hey, wait, it's 2020 with pretty good counting stats, so it's balanced.

Can you tell yourself a story with Zach Galoff that he could at least get the K rate back down to where it was as a rookie? And the projections kind of split the difference, but you have some proof, and the minor league K rates weren't horrible at a lot of his stops. Like I keep looking at him and thinking this is a really nice player in this group that

does a few more things. Everybody else that's in this tier leans a little more heavily with a different categorical balance. I think this team also needs him and they remember what a great beginning of the career he had and how they've got a little bit of a chance here for a Matt Chapman, Matt Olson type player that can be the young face of the franchise. That's what his promise was when he first debuted.

That's the kind of person and personality he can be. And I think they want that. So I think they're gonna play him every day and until it becomes obvious that he's not that And on top of that if you look at his first and second half splits, you'll say oh well You got a 650 ish OPS in the first half 613 in the second half the adjustments He was making didn't work But I think that's a little bit too results-based if you look at his strikeout rate

It went down in the second half if you look at his infield fly ballout rate, it went down in the second half. If you look at his infield fly ball rate, he cut it in half in the second half. And he pulled the ball more and he hit the ball harder. So, you know, these things are small sample to the fact that it's half a season, but, you know, his whole career is a little collection of small samples. And I think it points to at least being able to cut that strikeout rate to about 30%, like he had in the second half, and put together a little bit more of what he did in 2023 than he did in 2024.

If you give some of the batted ball quality that he had in 2023 to his 2024 line, he would have had a better season. So power, speed, and if you kept the batting average high, this is the kind of player that you get to pick later because you did so. You left that buffer in. Maybe you took an earlier catcher and you're not taking as much of a batting average sinkhole there.

You kind of avoided some of the lower average mashers along the way. Galov would make a ton of sense there. I think the average could be like a 240, 245. It could only hurt you slightly. It might not hurt you as badly as the projections are putting out there. Michael Garcia was really trendy throughout last draft season, and now he's a little cheaper than he was a year ago. Coming off a year, he slugged 332, went 37 for 39 as a base dealer and did still hit the ball hard a

good bit. 42.6% a nice hard hit rate but only a 3.7% barrel rate. That's pretty much the same thing we saw in 2023. Tons of hard hit balls but not a lot of hard hit balls in the air doing damage. Are we at the point now where what we see is what we get? I mean he's still young, he's going to turn 25 in March but it just seems like they're having a difficult time or he's having a difficult time making the adjustments to turn that hard contact into more damage. The park works against him a little bit but I'm just curious where you're at on Garcia right now because it's a little bit like the extreme Cabrion Hayes, third base, the second base helps being able to get him in the middle,

but if you use him as a third baseman, he doesn't do things that most third basemen do. Yeah, that's a good point. Also as like a reminder to buy what you see and what's projected rather than what you hope. You know, pay the cost buy what you see and what's projected rather than what you hope. You know, pay the cost for what you see and what's projected rather than what you hope will happen. That's the benefit you stand to reap.

And so I think with now his price being down, I just see him as a way to get 30 stolen bases with a decent average and nothing much more than that. So, you know, I do think he's a good example for why if you miss down on Andre Cimenez, there's Michael Garcia. You have a chance. Yeah. From a stolen base perspective, you're probably not getting the same amount of power. You are taking on more playing time risk because I would say with Michael Garcia, he's shown in the past like in 23 was a phenomenal defender by metrics 24 numbers didn't like him as much but when you get down to it a 69 WRC plus over a

full season teams are gonna start to find other guys they can play ahead of you yeah and it's not even where later to hand in this or whatever but you know then he could end up in a platoon with Massey at second base. Who's lefty. They brought in India too though. I don't really like India going into this ballpark. I know we have ways to project players in new ballparks. I know even Oopsy looks at his bat speed and his barrel rate and stuff like that

and gives him a higher slugging percentage than the other ones. I think Coffin is a place like I just remember talking to who was the third the big third base prospect that came up for the Royals and then had to go back down again. How long ago like Mustakis or like more recently? Before him. Before Mustakis? Yeah he was he was like the guy that won the championship with them.

But he was in left field. Alex Gordon. Alex Gordon. So I had a really interesting conversation with Alex Gordon. Where he's like, I came up and I thought I could hit for power in this park. And then it just hit me on my ass. And I realized I had to hit more line drives than fly balls. And you know, when I hear somebody, you know, Alex Gordon, that dealt with it for so long and had such a hard time with it. And I see Jonathan India coming from Cincinnati.

He's going to get hit in the nose, I think. You know what I mean? He's going to be like, what the hell is this? I think it's possible. But I also think Jonathan India, his approach as a hitter has always been a little more just like work the count hit too early than than trying to crush a lot of homers like I I can see that problem happening to a lot of players I almost think they acquired India believing he was a good fit for their park more than thinking his power was going to just come right over right I think the Royals accounted for that even though it makes life more difficult for him, for sure.

India to me is more of a bench guy. The last thing I just wanted to say also, a bench guy? Like a bench guy in fantasy. I don't really, and he only plays the one position, so he's not really a bench guy that I'm excited about. Well, I think he's gonna play, I think he's gonna play outfield as the other presence. Oh, okay, I think he's gonna join that.

Because he's not well rated defensively at second base. And this outfield, when I looked at the biggest holes left on contenders, the Royals are actually projected to be in the top 15 by Fangrass War. Last year, they had the 27th best outfield by war. It's Hunter Renfro, Kyle Isbell, and MJ Nalendez right now. And Hunter Renfro is 32 and coming off two straight seasons

where he was below average offensively and defensively. In fact, if you add up his war for the last two seasons you get 0 get point three Kyle Isbell is gonna stay there because he's defensively good, right? MJ Melendez, I've touted so often and yet at some point you can't look at the process stats and and say what could be at 1600 played appearances in the MJ Melendez career. I feel like I can say I don't care as much about the can say, I don't care as much about the barrel rate anymore. I don't care as much about the Max EV. He is who he is. And who he is, is a guy who's been below replacement

for his career. So the corner outfields are the easiest places to change things. Maybe Massey goes out there and India stays a second. But I think Massey was rated fine defensively. Right, they need quality bats. They need guys that can at least be big side platoon guys that are solid for them.

And Massey does enough things well. This is a really bad lineup, dude. I know. I think the run they had in 2024, to me, is one of the more difficult ones to sustain. As impressive as it was, and as an organization, we talked about the interview J.J. Piccolo had on Starkville, and the changes they've made as an organization seemed real.

They do seem like a group that has done a lot to change their process for the better. I still look at them and say, wow, that's a pretty tough gap to close with the talent they've got right now, or it's a tough trick to pull off twice So I'm a little bad. Do you like on this team? You'd like wit you like, you know, but Perez is aging Pascantino Yeah, like I like Vinny. Yeah, I like him. But that's that's about it

That's two guys you like that are in their peak one guy that you'd liked but is old sounds fine And then and then India who like he's gonna be their lead off guy, I guess. Yeah, be an LBP machine. So you got four good hitters. And four good hitters can be enough if the other guys are okay, but the other guys are not okay. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna need some surprises.

You're gonna need either guys that haven't played in the big leagues yet to come up and hit right away, or second or third chance guys to have it click. I don't really see it either. Nick Lofton, 26 year old, had a 133 WRC plus in AAA last year. But when you're that old, you got to discount that number. He wasn't really that good in the minors. They've got Brendan Shoemake.

I mean, what you need is for Mikell Garcia to lift the ball with that hard hit rate. That would be nice, but also not expecting it. It'd be great if it happened, but not walking into the season expecting that to be the outcome. Wemer? Might play a lot. Great defensive center fielder, has some pop.

But it's a guy, it's players like that that need to surprise, I think, if they're going to be as good as they were in 2024. They're gonna get back to the postseason. It's gonna be a few surprises along the way. I think India could add outfield eligibility. I think he might hit 11 homers and steal 11 bags and hit 250, which just leaves me cold for you know for fantasy. But let's

think about this, Gleyber Torres has to take a one-year deal to try to go back to free agency next year and he goes into a much more difficult place to hit in Detroit. He needs to pull the ball because if he's gonna he's been doing this opposite field thing in opposite field right like that place where he's hitting into in Detroit is not a good place to hit opposite field fly balls I get the sense that if you had to Know kind of bet on something you haven't seen if you have to forecast a change of some kind You want the conditions to be such that the player has to go through? entire offseason like Gleyber is

with a chance to Do something new I Imagine if we're talking about it his agents have talked about it people around him have said okay What's our plan? How are we gonna get back? I got a pull the ball, right? How are we gonna get back to mid 20 even look at his you could even look at his career Just on Fang grass with him and be like hey Do you see your pull rate in the years that you hit homers? You used to pull the ball 44% of the time,

that's when you hit 38 homers, I know it was 2019. But, could we get back to pulling the ball 42% of the time and see what happens? Could we, and I realize that playing in Yankee Stadium helps, but could we look at the two seasons he just had in 22 and 23? 24 homers, 25 homers, 10 steals, 13 steals. Hit the ball hard.

Can we look at that and just say, okay, the hard hit rate comes back, we take a few homers away because Comerica's the home park now. Could we see 18 to 20 homers with double digit steals and nice counting stats because he's among the guys the Tigers count on in an everyday role? Like that doesn't seem ridiculous,

and I'm probably willing to find out at this price. He's still just 28, turned 28 in December. So I think comparing him to the post-Galop options in this group, comparing him to Michael Garcia, I like Labor Torres better. Compared to Willy Castro and Brendan Donovan, no question. Compared to even Brandon Lau, who the projections like, because he hits the ball really hard,

I like Torres, because Lau to me is still a pretty clear big side platoon guy. So he loses too much play. In a daily league, you might prefer Lau. Yeah, daily league where I can, you know. Nice new part. Auto new, some things like that, sure. Brandon Lau pops.

Like there are use cases for Lau, but I'm worried about him in weekly leagues a little bit, because of the health and the way that he's- The only thing about Torres is, what's the Torres ADP and what's the Cronenworth ADP? Cronenworth goes later. Cronenworth goes around pick 300. So he's like the late late second base group.

And Torres? Torres is more like pick 220. I think they have the same projection. And I think Torres still shows me enough at times where I think he's just better But I could see them ending up at the same point And I also don't want to play the I'm passing on Gleiber because of Croken worth I feel like that's cutting it too thin that's cutting the slice so thin you can't even see it

You actually can play that game like why take this guy when you can take this guy later You can play that all the way from the top of the rankings to the bottom. Well yeah, you could start with one red paper clip and end up with the moon, but if you had the moon and you keep trading it down, you do get the paper clip back going the other way. Somebody ended up with a paper clip. You don't want that to be you.

How about Jackson Holliday though? Okay, so Gleyber fine at the price. Jackson Holliday versus Colt Keith was actually something of a toss up, I think last year at this position Keith played all year in the big leagues Holliday very clearly didn't let's throw up our our graphic the same This is a fun the lefty one again or the other one the hard hit yeah so this is second half hard hit rate for second baseman and

Cattell-martez at the top of course because it's Cattell-martez And he he's always gonna be the top of the hard hit related board for second baseman and cattel martes at the top of course because it's cattel martes and he he's always going to be the top of the hard hit related board for second baseman gavin lux is second we know he's an extreme platoon risk but at least he was hitting the ball and swinging fast in the second half brandon lawis third we know he's like the barreer in this group. Jackson Holliday was fourth. It didn't lead to a total renaissance. He had an 87 WRC plus, 8.5% barrel rate, still had strikeout situations, but he was hitting the ball hard, so I like that. I also like that the upside here,

I don't think Lux will be an everyday player. I think he'll be platoon. We know Brandon Lowe will be platoon. We just made the argument player. I think he'll be platoon. We know Brandon Lowe will be platoon We just made the argument Luis Garcia jr. Will be platoon Brandon Rogers who's next on list does not have a job Davis Schneider is a platoon player small side platoon player. He's next on this Lenin Sosa I don't think is an everyday player. Jorge Polanco is 32 and doesn't have a job yet Michael Massey has already been being platooned Otto Lopez is

Maybe not an everyday player Jared triolo. I'm doing I'm going down the list Trio low. I don't know if he's an everyday player. He's kind of interesting and he hit the ball 39% hard 39% of time That's a little bit interesting Connor Norby is on here Then he gets simian Horowitz and Keith. And by the time you get to Keith, 36.4 is not necessarily that impressive. So Jackson Holliday is the guy on this list that could be an everyday player and has still star ceiling. And I think we saw a little bit of that with a 46% hard hit rate. That is pretty impressive for someone who otherwise had a depressing, terrible year.

Yeah, and if Jackson Holliday didn't play in the big leagues at all, I say this like every draft season about somebody, if Jackson Holliday hadn't played in the big leagues at all, the way we talk about him and think about him would be completely different. Because for the time he was at AAA last year, as a 20 year old, 73 games, he popped 10 homers, he stole 8 bases, he walked 21% of the time, and ran a 142 WRC+.

And because the first 60 games in the big leagues were not a top prospect that just hit the ground running, it creates that little bit of doubt. The projections spit out less than full-time playing time because it's a crowded depth chart, I understand it, but power, speed, an okay average, a very good OBP, and a K-rate that you can wrestle with as much as you want. 26.6% from Steam or 25.5% from Oopsy. There's so much hit you want. 26.6% from Steamer, 25.5% from Oopsie. There's so much hit tool here.

I have a very hard time looking at Jackson Holliday, thinking about all the things that people who analyze prospects said and wrote about him the last couple of years, and telling myself he's a complete bust already. Like that just seems insane to me to just be that quick to say, ah, they were wrong about Jackson Holliday think that's 21 still I think there's a really nice opportunity to get early round potential at a lower mid-round sort of price and I think the draft and hold I'm in

right now he's my ut right now he's just that he's just like my just my guy that I threw out there I'm like hey hey, this is probably going to be helpful at some point. Don't know when. I agree with what you said earlier. I think one of the ways to think about shadow leagues in particular is the later clusters find ceiling. If someone else were to take Jackson Holliday ahead of you and Zach Galov's already gone, I do think Colt Keith also has more growth potential. I mean I think there is a case to be made for Colt Keith that if they're going to play him at first base, they obviously like the bat. And as he spent time in the big leagues last year, we saw some adjustments. What, a 19.8% strikeout rate for a rookie that played all year, that's really good. Non-zero speed, who's seven for eight is a base dealer, I don't think he's a burner,

I don't think he's gonna get you to 20 bags, he doesn't have to. I think he's gonna be good in batting average, maybe even great in the long run, and I think he's got a lot of power. We didn't see it right away, he has only a 5.6% barrel rate, but he was a guy that ran a 40% hard hit rate

at AAA in 2023, 35% hard hit rate at triple a in 2023 35% hard hit rate in his debut and he's still so young I Think there's another level from Colt Keith But you do have to ask yourself the question of in the Tigers core Is he occasionally sitting against lefties or frequently sitting against lefties? We saw some evidence late in the year when every single game mattered, he was not a strict platoon player. He sat against some lefties, but he played against some lefties too. Well, yeah, I mean, what they were really doing

was trying to decide between Parker Meadows and Colt Keith as the strict platoon guy. And what ended up happening was they didn't strictly platoon either, and they kind of get both of them both chances. Kerry Carpenter ended up doing into a strict platoon. Colt Keith, I talked to him about his season late in the year and he talked about being domed up and so early in the season he was trying to pull everything because

you know I talked to him back in the Arizona Fall League too where at the Fall League we talked about are you adding you know you seem like a guy who can let the ball travel you know have good contact rates are you adding pull power to it and he said can let the ball travel, have good contact rates, are you adding pull power to it? And he said, yes, that's what I'm trying to do. That's what the organizational sort of directive towards for me is to try and pull the ball for power on top of this sort of good plate discipline and contact package. And so that's how he sort of added power and advanced through the minor leagues. So he got to the big leagues, he said, I'm going to pull the ball. Right. You look at his graph or his rolling average,

pulled the ball a lot, hit really poorly. Started going back to his regular, hey, let me find who I am. Let me remember who I am at my core. My core is let the ball travel, take walks, make contact, spray doubles. When he did that, his wub wub went up and he had a really good middle of the season.

What I like is that the pull came back. It didn't come back like it did at the very beginning. He was pulling the ball 60% of the time in his first 20 games. Like, that's intense. What he did at the end of the season was he started pulling around 40%. And I think that is, oh, he's meshing the two things.

So I think we saw a lot of sort of adjustments from Keith last year that will like kind of go over into the next season and you know I also think if you play the five regulars game with the Tigers you get in trouble real quick. Like you got Riley Green and Galiber Torres and you're done. That's your whole list of clear regulars right now for them? Yes. I know they're gonna to mix and match and it's not going to be strict with tunes and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like those are the two guys that I think will play every day.

And so I think Colt Keith can easily through offense play his way into an everyday role. I think you can, too. I think what's what's weird to me is that I think Winceal Perez is going to play less than any depth chart will lead you to believe. So you have to kind of build that in. I think Kerry Carpenter plays enough in the actual outfield where if Spencer Torkelson

hits he can coexist in the same lineup as Keith even if Keith is the first baseman. That's the main takeaway I have with the Tigers is like how do you make the pieces fit? I think Wensil's profiles as a back Oh, he's a nice backup player. I think Parker Meadows is probably closer like in the play him every day I think he showed some growth and Defensively offers a value fielder and shortstop you want that right? I don't think they have that short right now I think because of Baez and the contract Trey Sweeney will play a lot and then Baez will still play some so that might be They may be one of the few teams

that platoons at shortstop because of the unusual circumstances for as long as Baez is still on the roster. Their build a bench is gonna be really interesting, but we shouldn't spend too much time on it just to say, Colt Keith is interesting even if his platoon things. And I also wanted to say this, here are some players who were 21 or younger in their debuts and were bad. Robin Yaut.

We're going back a long way. Ozzy Guillen, Elvis Andrews, Carl Crawford, Edgar Renteria, Xander Bogarts, Harold Baines is a Hall of Famer so I guess I'll name him, but. Paul Molliter. It's a bunch of guys. When you're that young and you debut in the big leagues, it's a huge adjustment to make, and all we've heard people who analyze the minor leagues say for the last three years now. No, it's even worse now.

Is that the gap is wider than ever. So I'm always going to be patient with guys like Keith and Holliday, and there's even a gap in just how those guys guys were perceived and covered as prospects and how they've been ranked but there's a pretty wide gap there but like whatever age the level of context you've always thought about making your big league debut, I think you've got to keep making sure you're fine tuning that to adjust for just how difficult it is to hit in the big leagues right now. Beyond this group, the late late second baseman,

you've got a wide open group here, including names like Christopher Morrell and Jake Cronenworth. You've got a prospect in Christian Campbell who can play a bunch of spots. You have Jose Caballero as a multi-eligible position guy. Hyasung Kim in Los Angeles, playing more perhaps with Gavin Lux in Cincinnati. Lux himself is in this group although Lux now has a min pick of 190 in the last 14 days so I think

that ADP is already moving up even with some of the platoon risk we've talked about. Spencer Horowitz has dual eligibility. Tyro Estrada in Colorado is kind of interesting. Caleb Durbin could be part of the tumbling dryer full of options in Milwaukee at third base. Tyro Cronenworth are at the top for me. I wanted to point out that I think unless we're starting to hear that the Nolan Aronado trade rumors are dying down, I do think he could make some sense for the Yankees. But there may not be a big taste

for older players. They have D.J. LeMahieu still there and they may just feel like, we really want that energy. We'd rather have a Bregman or something. Like somebody like Goldschmidt. They signed Goldschmidt though, man. Maybe they would just want to take the Cardinals' corner from last year and bring them both over Anyway, I wanted to list it as a possibility because right now jazz Chisholm is listed as second baseman Diesel and may who's starting at third? I don't think that's gonna happen but I also wanted to point out that he'd been linked in rumors to both Jorge Polanco and

Brendan Rodgers and that they may go with the low-cost alternative, which is a one-year bounce back deal. That's the other thing. Paul Goldschmidt is old, but he's also a one-year bounce back deal. So if that's what they're looking for is not being sort of committed to someone long-term because they see somebody else coming in free agency the next couple of years or whatever it is or they just don't want to be locked into anybody, they could get Brendan Rogers or Jorge Planck on a one year deal. And those guys may not surpass Cronenwerth and Lux

and Tyra Estrada for me, but they would jump just right below them. They would be people I'd be interested in. Brendan Rodgers in the Yankee Stadium, with that lineup, I think would be interesting. Jorge Polanco would be interesting. He's a switch hitter. He may play, maybe play a lot.

Yeah, this group has a lot of fun names in it. I think Morrell, second and third base eligible, has been discussed a lot over the years on this show. Just getting a clean slate to begin the year in Tampa and still being a guy that's not gonna turn 26 until June, relatively young in terms of big league experience, does enough things well in terms of the quality of contact and did cut the K-rate last year where we could see kind of a consolidation year from him and it's not in the trop, it's at Steinbrenner Field too so less of a challenging home park

as a result of the unfortunate circumstances that have pushed the Rays out of the trop for this year but it's like, you can actually still find some ceiling here. I think the question for just about everybody that goes this late is where do you see the most playing time? Because a player like Spencer Horowitz has, I think the eighth best Woba projection

from Oopsie at second base, that should matter on a Pittsburgh team that needs to figure out who its core bats are. I bought him in auto-new, Spencer Horowitz, because of the projections and because the pirates don't really have above average hitters. He might get platoon,

but you know, the same exercise we went through with O'Neill Cruz, where we're like, wow, Billy Cook is listed as a platoon partner for like three different guys. You know, that goes for Horowitz too. It's like if Horowitz plays well enough, then they can find, they can put Cook somewhere else to platoon. And also, you know, Billy Cook, a 26 year old rookie,

you know, who's played 49 plate appearances in the big leagues leagues is not someone that you need to get into the lineup. You know? In fact, you'd be happy as hell if Horwitz played so well that you didn't need Cook in your in your lineup. So I think there's a chance that Horwitz gets that playing time. I think it's a he's a better pickup in daily leagues, but he's a decent late guy for sure. Especially since he'll give you corner infield and middle infield eligibility.

I think the question for me with Tyro Estrada is actually more about how aggressively they're gonna promote Adele Amador. He debuted last year in part just because of injuries. I don't think they really looked at him and said, yeah, he's ready. He was just the guy that could gonna fit in that spot temporarily. But Tyro Estrada was not a bad

player for the Giants. Injuries last year ended up taking away some time. They move on. But double digit homers and back to back years in 22 and 23 with 20 plus steals, he's not an extreme barrel. But you put him in Coors for half of his games. Put anybody in Coors that can make some contact for half of their games, some power, some speed. I think he's gonna be an okay glue guy unless we see Amador as someone that's gonna just bang down the door and steal a job by the end of the season. Yeah, and they could play him every day until the trade deadline. Right, yeah, you could just get traded and end up being a part-time guy somewhere else,

but at this price, if that happens, it's not really gonna hurt you. I think he's one of the better picks down here. Heisei and Kim in LA is interesting, but the projection, and the projection is actually, you know, what we've got from Steamer is 97WRC+, but you remember Steamer is actually one of the more friendly to rookies

projections oopsie has a 77 wrc-plus that's a huge difference 217 285 339 from oopsie versus 279 324 374 from steamer wow and even with the better projection the the Jeff charts have him with 400 played appearances. I will point out that his biggest platoon partner at the position in Fangrass is Mookie Betts, who might be the shortstop. Right. That's why this is so goofy all the time with the Dodgers. Like, it's really good. I think they cleared the spot by trading Lux because they want Kim to play. Your choices are trusting the Dodgers front office and scouting department versus numbers in situations where the numbers are pretty unreliable. Which side are you on?

I just struggle with the fact that Betts was not a good defensive shortstop, and so I don't think he should be the shortstop, but Miguel Rojas is super old, and Edmund was already getting moved off a shortstop, so I don't think they have a shortstop. And Kim was moved off a shortstop like two, three years ago in Korea.

So. I think it bothers you more than it bothers the Dodgers. So you gotta learn to stop worrying and just love the way they're going about it. Well, if Betts is the shortstop, then Kim is the second baseman, I guess. That's what I'm saying. I mean, you could make that bet.

He bats left-handed, so he could lose time to Chris Taylor who you know they did they did the thing that I said they wouldn't do was trade Gavin Lux to keep Chris Taylor on their no no no they didn't no I refused to believe that and we're done we're done with this corner of their depth chart they were they're going away until they make another move or until the team preview no more Dodger talk it's no we're done well I had to bring up Hey Sam Kim he also has a 15 until they make another move or until the team preview. No more Dodger talk. No, we're done. Well, I had to bring out Hyesung Kim.

He also has a 15 stolen base projection, so he could be someone that if you were hurting on stolen bases. I love projections. I think we're going to look at the projections for Hyesung Kim and just scratch our heads after the season is over. I don't think he's a star. I don't think he's going to be amazing.

I just think the projections are just kind of broken in this instance. We do have some prospects here. We should talk really quickly about the two biggest prospects at second base in a long time. Travis Bizzana and Christian Robinson, or Christian Campbell. They're both really exciting.

Some places have Campbell as the number one prospect. You know, I just saw Jared Sider say on Blue Sky that he thought that Christian Campbell had less to work on than Roman Anthony. I'm working on a story about Christian Campbell, and there's some momentum that, you know, to begin opening day on the roster. I tend to bet against things like that. Deeper your league is the more you could crash out and lose you know by picking Campbell high and then he spends the majority of the season in the minor leagues where he's never no use to you. But I will say that David Hamilton profiles as a backup to me and Vaughn Grissom seems like a forgotten guy. And David Hamilton made may need a short stop

if Trevor Story, if and when Trevor Story gets hurt. So there is a road where Campbell ends up in the big leagues to begin the season, which changes a lot about how you would think about him. Travis Zana, I don't think has that same road. He only played an A ball last year. Right, and Christian Campbell moved fast. Like Christian Campbell started, played 40 games at high A

last year and ended up closing out the year with 19 games at Worcester after a long stint at double A. So I think with Bizanna, it's more like, if everything goes well with him, his- He could do something like that. His season looks, yeah. Where he kinda climbs. And maybe because he's a one-one guy,

they would say, say well he didn't get the high a experience already maybe like a late August you know the the Gunnar Carroll debut time is possible another guy who goes in this area as a possibility the guy they traded Nolan Jones for Juan Brito who isn't that great but he profiles as a Cleveland Guardian through and through. High walk rate, low strikeout rate, mediocre power, but was 13% better than the league average in AAA at 22 and doesn't seem to have to do much more in the minor leagues. He may start opening day as the second baseman in Cleveland.

The projections aren't super excited about that prospect. 230 average, six homers, four stone bases, and a third of a season. But the fact that he's closer to playing time, I think I might be, for just this year, I might prefer Juan Brito to Travis Buzana, just because I think they'll give him a long look at second base.

I do think I'm comfortable with Campbell at this price, even with the uncertainty though, because he's been phenomenal at multiple stops. He can play a bunch of other positions too. It kind of could fit in wherever they need somebody even if it's a brief return to triple-A to start the year. He has a 266-2020 projection. Woo! Christian Campbell. For pick 300 or later yeah I mean the thing that's gonna happen with Campbell as we get into spring training, if there's the helium around him

and reports that everything's going great, second base could become his. The more that happens, the more he mashes in the Grapefruit League, the more the price goes up. So this could be a winter special in terms of getting this sort of bargain and it could be pick 200 or earlier by the time we get to March.

It's entirely possible with a player like Christian Campbell. I'm with you on the Hamilton bench thing. I don't think he's that important and Caleb Durbin comes up here because he has second base eligibility. The Brewers have a spot at third base. It feels... He's right-handed. It feels like a... He could be the platoon partner for Turin. It could be that or if they like him, he could play the platoon partner for Turan. It could be that, or if they like him, he could play the way Ortiz played last year. There's a few ways it could work. I just don't think he's a player I have to have right now.

I think it's more of a wait and see because it's such a crowded situation. And you mentioned Christian Moore earlier. We know the Angels wanna move prospects fast. Oh yeah, that's an actual prospect. And he was hitting tanks. Yeah, it's such a small sample size Because they move guys so fast, but some of that's just kind of like where does he belong?

Like what what level is he being challenged at? What level will he start to learn something? I think that's a that's actually a common out of Tennessee, dude Like you're gonna come on SEC play high quality competition in college is like, okay What's appropriate for him double a seemed very appropriate and he handled it well so yeah I'm I wonder if you could like you could like that's an actual thing for project for anybody out there that might be interesting what is the SEC if it was in the minor league yeah what level would it be I if I had to guess I would just say it would come out to something between high and double

a little better than high a not quite as good as double a would be my best guess but I bet there are a bunch of people that have a better answer that are screaming right now in their cars and in their homes like no DVR it's not quite that good you're you're overshooting it there's just some really good players that come out of college that can handle double a right away like they now have pitching labs like major league teams do you know. They're also poaching guys Max Wiener Texas A&M got poached you know. They're paying him better than he was paid with the Mariners. Speaking of the Mariners

last name I'm gonna throw at you because we're just about out of time for today. I kind of like Ryan Bliss. I think he's the sort of player that on a team that doesn't always spend money when it should, I think Ryan Bliss might be kind of good. Nice OBPs in the minors, has some speed, has a lot of speed, has some power, super, super late. I mean, this is like after pick 400 at the earliest, ADPs in the 700 range? He goes undrafted sometimes? I don't know man, Ryan Bliss has spent a full year at AAA basically split over two seasons and he's hit 22 homers with 70 steals and like a 370 OBP at Tacoma. I know it's the PCL but It's PCL like if you combine those years he's basically league average.

And who's playing second base there? Yeah. That's my reasoning, super deep leagues. They also got Trader Jerry. Yeah, he's been quiet. I don't know what's going on with Trader Jerry. One thing I noticed when I was looking at this, because it did come up,

when I did the biggest holes piece, the Mariners were on it for first, second, third, and DH. That's not great. Which I was like, wow, you're doing really well in the other places if you're still a contender. Right. Yeah, you're outfield and your pitching looks good. Cole Young came up, and Cole Young is younger and was a shortstop, and I believe his OBP skills more than Bliss. If you believe in the power, that might be a separator. Also Bliss is maybe closer, but you know,

Cole Young spent 552 plate appearances in AA last year with a 119 WRC+. Might be a better defender, get on base more. My point is he's got competition, even among the young players that could play. They got multiple spots that you just outlined though, so I'm not worried about a little competition. Yeah, that's right.

They have several vacancies. So let's keep that light on. Let's see if that's a possibility. But more position previews to come. We move to the corners for our next two. We'll start at third base with our episode on Wednesday. Thanks to everybody who made it all the way through this episode.

Be sure to smash the like button on this video if you're still here and watching us on YouTube. Tell a friend it's a great time to jump in on the pod as we move through this series over the next couple of weeks. Be sure to join our discord with the link in the show description. Give us a follow on BlueSky. Eno is enoseris.bsky.social. IMDbR.bsky.social. That is gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Hey everyone, it's Robert Mase.

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.