Rates & Barrels - 2025 Third Base Preview

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Eno and DVR continue their 2025 Position Preview series at third base. If the early-round options end up on the rosters of your league mates, which alternatives beyond the top-tier have the best chance to post similar production? Which players should you stay away from at their early draft-day prices, and which late options have the best paths to exceed expectations this season? Rundown 1:40 ADP Tier 1 -- José Ramírez, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Austin Riley, Rafael Devers & Manny Machado 17:28 ADP Tier 2 -- Mark Vientos, Jordan Westburg, Junior Caminero 33:33 ADP Tier 3 -- Jake Burger, Royce Lewis, Matt Chapman, Alex Bregman, Luis Rengifo 43:04 ADP Tier 4 -- Eugenio Suárez, Alec Bohm, Isaac Paredes 53:06 ADP Tier 5 -- Maikel Garcia, Matt Shaw, Nolan Arenado, Josh Jung, (Willi Castro), Connor Norby, Ryan McMahon & Christopher Morel 1:05:33 -- The Late, Late Third 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 Third Base https://forms.gle/ppuuq3MmndRhijuG6 Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris 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 Raids and Barrels, it's Wednesday, January 15th. Position preview season continues. We make the move over to the left side to discuss third basement today.

Nice position, plenty of talent at the top, lots of quality players throughout the entire pool so a bunch of different ways you can attack this position. A lot going on in the Discord. Just want to throw it out there. The Hive rankings we've been talking about throughout this series are running. We'll have the link so you can submit your positional rankings for third base. After this episode goes live, you can get that in the Discord. There's a channel dedicated to the Hives too.

I put some goodies in there too. I put a bat speed risers and a top 25 starting pitchers stuff. New with the new stuff plus. So there's some stuff in there. Good to put some Easter eggs in there. Maybe not actual eggs and not actual candy, but you know, Easter eggs, like video game Easter eggs, I guess you'd call them. We'll have that stuff rolling out all the time.

The usual preamble short and sweet. We're using average draft position data from the National Fantasy Baseball Championship looking at the last 14 days just to put the players in some groups, giving us an idea of where these players are likely to go. No matter when you draft, these are mostly draft and hold leagues or leagues that don't have in the season pickups, but it sets up the conversation as far as how you want to approach different groups of players and make a strategy that will work for you on draft day.

So preamble complete. Let's begin with the elite third baseman. I find it funny that every one of these shows has to be manipulated just slightly to make everything fit the right way. In this case, I had to say elite third baseman because the ADP group stretches just outside the first two rounds. Jose Ramirez, a top five player by ADP, is kind of the runaway best third baseman right now, at least in terms of where he goes in drafts, and you have some second rounders like Jazz Chisholm Jr.

with possible second third rounders like Austin Riley, Rafael Devers and Manny Machado. And that last trio for the better part of the last few draft seasons is usually in round two. So I think there's a path for those guys to get nudged up based on all sorts of things that will happen between now and opening day, be that injuries, some changes in draft preferences, different things that will shake things up. But we start at the top with Jose Ramirez. The latest he ever goes is pick eight. If you get Jose Ramirez, pick eight in your draft and you're pretty happy.

What he just did last year, you know, in a Guardians lineup that was a league average lineup as a group is actually pretty remarkable. I mean, the power speed combination just continues to age exceptionally well for Jose Ramirez. I think the longer term questions about him have always been contact quality driven because of the lower barrel rates you see from him. I think there's always this creeping suspicion that the power could fall off.

But I think Jose Ramirez highlights something that's really important about barrel rate for guys that don't strike out a lot, and he's one of those guys. He's got a career 12% strikeout rate, which is truly amazing. Those guys tend to run lower barrel rates because balls in play are the denominator, right? So if you don't strike out, that's going to bring that number down. If you look at it this way way over the last three seasons combined, Jose Ramirez is 41st in total barrels. I think that's a more impressive way to think about guys that have low

strikeout rates. And if you take a look at, you know, max EV over the last three years, Jose Ramirez has a top 30 max exit velocity over the last three seasons, right? So there is plenty of power there. They just put up his best one ever this last season. Yeah, he's not showing any signs of losing power, but that one number that we get really fixated on sometimes just sort of plants that kernel of doubt. I mean, if you're looking for a skills flaw in Jose Ramirez, it's the one

we talked about with Jose El Tuve on the second base preview, we are seeing an increase in O swing percentage. He's chasing more pitches outside the zone. A 34.8% O swing percentage last year from Jose Ramirez was the worst of his career, but he hit 39 homers and stole 41 bases. He was phenomenal.

So it's picking knits in every way. If you're looking at him and saying, yeah, I don't think he's a, an early or mid first rounder anymore. I think everything you could possibly want in a first round bat is still there for Jose Ramirez, even as he moves into his age 32 season. Yeah. No notes really, except that, um, you know, I did see an aging curve for bat speed that I shared on blue sky from Tom Tango where bat speed stays

pretty constant until 31. And then it just goes, and so Jose Ramirez is in the part of his life. And I don't know how that'll manifest. Last year he had basically median bat speed for qualified hitters. I don't know how much of it has to do with bat speed. He has such a pull fly ball approach. We've seen Isaac Paredes you, you hit a lot of homers with terrible bat speed with that approach.

You know, you're trying to get the bat. It's a little bit less about bat speed and a little bit more about sort of length of swing. And I think guys that have the ability to pull fly balls often have short swings. You know, that means you might not get to the same bat speed because you're not, you don't have that long swing. You're not getting it out in front the same way. You're not, you know, you're not, you know, you're not have that long arc that you're

sort of describing with your bat. It's more of a pow, you know? and so I At the other hand we talked about with Marcus Simeon like maybe there are reduced Rewards for this kind of approach over time, but we haven't seen it from Ramirez and He adds that speed component 114 runs 118 RBI I kind of think that might come back a little bit.

The projections for the Cleveland offense from Zips and Steamer are not very rosy. And we do know that Cleveland kind of had a little bit of a surprise offense last year. So even with that reduction, he's obviously the number one third baseman. And it's just really nice to get a 30, 30 first baseman, 30, 30 third baseman. It's a tough position. You get a 30, 30 guy probably won't even hurt you in batting average. Every every sort of third or fourth year, he has a bad batting average. But even then, it's around average.

So, yeah, he's a great player. The where you get your bags from question is usually not third base, unless it's Ramirez or unless you find a player usually It's a multi-position third baseman that does it and that's the case with the second guy by ADP at this position jazz Chisholm, Jr you're paying a peak price for jazz coming off of a year in which he stayed healthy and Skills haven't really ever been the major question. Within the skills, I think how he handles lefties has been a multi-year concern. But it's really been more about injuries and lowering the K rate. We saw the K rate come down 24.5%. I think that's probably

even better than what some of the more optimistic folks out there would have tried to forecast for jazz. So we have got that kind of improvement. We still have good quality of contact, right? I think before the trade to the Yankees, barrel rate was about 10.7%. It was 7.6% after career 10.9% makes enough hard contact. He pulled the ball more with the Yankees, which is good. Pull it more because short porch, that's, it's going to be something that rewards him. So he gets this big. It's going to be something that rewards him. So he gets this big,

it's going to be good for him. Big park factors win for a full season. And as we talked about in a jazz versus Jaren Duran toss up a week or so ago, he also ran a lot more once he was with the Yankees. He was 18 for 20 in 46 games. So are you comfortable projecting more power because the park and even the possibility of more steals just because of how aggressive he was post trade in the Bronx? Yeah, I have no worries about him when he's on the field and how he's playing. The only worry I have for jazz, Chisholm Jr. Is the injury. I mean, we have an injury to his UCL that may become important at some point. In fact, I hadn't even put this together in my head yet. Maybe they won't get a second baseman and push jazz to third because, you know,

that might put more pressure on that UCL. Maybe by playing him at second, they preserve his arm longer. Maybe by playing him at second, they preserve his arm longer. Either way, I tend to think that this is the kind of injury that eventually needs surgery. I mean, just remember, we saw with Trevor's story a weakening arm, you know, that people said this is a problem, his elbow hurts, and eventually he got the surgery. I mean, I don't know that this is a one-to-one comparison that we can make, but I tend to, I tend to, if you, yeah, I tend to think that it's going to need surgery eventually. Maybe not this year,

but it's kind of like picking an injury prone pitcher that has real great upside. He's like the Tyler glass now of second baseman. Yeah. I mean, we don't do health grades for position players on the show the way we talk about them alongside your rankings on the pitching side. What take a three year played appearance leaderboard look at just jism juniors placement on it. Twelve hundred forty five regular season played appearances in the last three seasons combined rank some one hundred and sixty league wide Similar totals during that time, Jesse Winker, Jorge Polanco, and Reese Hoskins, who lost a full year to an ACL tear. So that's not good company. So I think that's the biggest knock.

I was wondering what the point was. I was like, you're not going to say this is, that's good. I think if you have, if you have a firm reason not to want jazz Chisholm junior on your team as an early second round pick, it's probably the concerns about the elbow that you outlined and other stuff that's put them on the aisle before it hasn't been always elbow stuff. It's been all sorts of different injuries that have slowed him down. So I really liked the talent.

I don't love the price might be someone I just miss out on because it's probably around or so earlier than I'm comfortable. And I think the thing that also works against jazz, even though the other guys in this tier do completely different things, Riley, Devers and Machado have better track records overall. All had injury concerns of different kinds over the course of 2024 Machado

was coming off of elbow surgery. So you got a discount and it turned out to be a discount worth taking. Rafael Devers played through problems with both of his shoulders still got up to 600 played appearances but had his lowest games played total in a full season since 2018. So again maybe the shoulders are fine after an off season, but you have that little bit of a concern. And then Austin Riley fractured his right hand in mid-August and he was probably one of those guys that underperformed in the first half and was just starting to put it back

together when he got hurt. Happens sometimes, right? You have that quiet half, second half turnaround happens, but then injury shuts it down. So if you look at Austin Riley, you see three year lows, four year lows, even in average OBP and slug. He just didn't have the kind of season we're accustomed to. So I'm curious if the presence of those three guys a little bit later and the depth of this position also kind of weighs in on not being as excited to target jazz so early.

I really like Riley endeavors and jazz going in the second round is usually where I'm thinking about my first pitcher, even if I don't get them there. And I want a health grades from both from anybody I pick in the first two rounds, maybe even the first three rounds, just because I don't want that to be the reason that I lost a huge high value pick. So Austin Riley Endeavor is going in the third round and having, you know, a virtual, you know, choice between those and maybe Manny Machado Machado all in the in the third round will probably let me pass jazz. I'm a little surprised that Riley's going ahead of Devers, but they are so similar that I would take either and Manny Machado was the one of the top 20 biggest bat speed increases in the second half. I think that it's just just goes to show how he had gotten healthy.

But yeah, I mean, you put the screenshot together of like Riley endeavors or. Spider-Man meaning this is crazy. The last three years are the same guy. They really are. I mean, 94 to 88 homers favor Riley. 282 to 272 average favors Devers. 341, 354 for OVPs for these two guys. The slugging percentage is within five points. Their WRC pluses are within one of each other. Max EVs,

115 and 116, slight edge to Riley. I was just looking at every possible angle and trying to find like what separates them. Devers has struck out a little less, I guess you could look at that and maybe say that makes Devers slightly better. That and I love that park. I mean, I think that park is, it's just a great place to hit. You could counter it though and say healthier Atlanta supporting cast this year probably helps Riley's run production more.

I mean, it's, it's basically to choose whichever one you want. There's not a strong and compelling case. Devers has had 25 more RBI over the last three years, though. Yeah, that's true. That's the lineup that usually scores runs. I prefer Devers by no's, but I agree with you that they look very similar. Do you do prefer both over Machado though? Because I actually think Machado, since he runs a little, might actually have a categorical edge over Riley endeavors right now.

The age is the one thing that kind of holds you back, right? Many Machado has been around forever. Yeah. 32. The one nice thing about Machado is that he'll play through injury. Um, you know, it's not always good for his stats and that's sort of an underlying thing, you know, under the numbers,

but he has a very high threshold for pain and he heals pretty quickly. So, you know, I do think that you can depend on him for, I would say 600 plate appearances. I mean, 2023 was one of his most injured years of his career and he had 600 and one played appearances and he played at DH with a, with a busted wing, you know, you know, into meaningless games. So, um, you know, I think, uh, you know, there's a lot to be said for him, but.

Yeah. In terms of ceiling, the younger guys have a higher ceiling. I don't think that he has that ceiling anymore. Do you think Devers and or Riley have MVP level ceilings? I think earlier in his career especially, I still saw that for Devers. You think that's still there for both?

Yeah, I do. There you go. So maybe there's your separator. The ceiling possibilities are a little greater because of the age difference. I had a little rolling graph thing for Austin Riley This is just his fly ball rights and it's Woba and you can see they map really well until the beginning of last season Generally when he lifts the ball, it's good. What happened at the beginning of last season was he was pulling the ball on the ground I know he was not pulling the ball

He was going the opposite way in the air. And if you, I wanted to put pull on here, but it just got too messy. But once you, once you align pull and fly balls, um, his world was always good. And, um, I think that's just a question of contact point. And I've been told by hitting coaches, um, both progressive and old school, that contact point is one of the easiest things to coach. Now I think it can go in and out, you know, you can lose it. It's called timing, you know? Um, but, um, I think that that's better than say if we looked at a graph and his bad speed

was just falling, you know? Right. And Riley still still in that age window before the sound effect you made earlier. I can't replicate it. You're the sound machine on the show. I use my words, use the sounds. It's how it goes, but it's a good tier overall. I do think the, the injury concerns with jazz are probably the biggest damper on this group as a whole. I don't have strong cases really against any of the other four where they go.

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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 NYTCooking.com. It smells so good. Moving into tier two, there's this huge gap. 40-50 picks before you get to the next few third base eligible players. Mark Vientos right around pick 80 or 85. Jordan Westberg, who we talked about yesterday on the second base preview, and Junior Caminero, one of the better young players breaking in who has just some absurd projections.

It doesn't matter which of the public facing systems you look at, they all like Junior Caminero a lot. Let's start with Mark Vientos, though. Really good quality of contact. It's top end power, it makes him interesting. And some of the projection systems you look at will spit out something that looks a lot like a Pete Alonso projection for Mark Vientos.

Didn't do it in a full season in terms of 600 plate appearances, but the paces he was on would have put him over 30 home runs had he been playing every day all season last year. Batting average lag is probably part of the reason why he's down here, right? 242 to 249 is the range and average. Oopsie's the lower of the projection systems on him right now, Steamer the high end,

but that's still a pretty low end outcome unless something changes, like a lower strikeout rate. I don't know if that's necessarily something I'm buying into for Vientos. I think there's a little more of a, what you see is what you get, but what you see is pretty good. The thing I'm wondering about, should we have concerns about Vientos if the Mets add significant

pieces to the depth chart, right? A reunion with Pete Alonso, a signing of Alex Bregman or possibly both of those things. Because Vientos shows more like a first base DH type than a third baseman. He had a minus six defensive run saved and a minus six outs above average at third base last year. That's definitely at that end of the icy blue indicators that you're like, oh, this isn't just slightly below average defense, this is trending toward very bad defense. So it could become a problem but when you think

about Alonso not being back right now and JD Martinez having only been there on a one-year deal the playing time at least on January 15th looks really safe for Marc Vientos right now. Yeah and I think they you know I think Stalino Marte should probably be a DH at this point. So he could be the DH for them right now. Mark Vientos is probably the first baseman for them right now. I think there are some concerns here. It's one of those things where I wonder, you know, in the past I would have made a bigger deal out of these things and been, you know, really worried about these things.

I think this is the kind of things that matter more when he's 30 than when he's 25, you know, if they signed Pete Alonzo, I think they start Mark Vientus at third and he's just not a great defender there. You know, but at 25, he won't be terrible just yet. So basically, I think he can fake third base for two or three years at least. There's other things like his swing in both of the seasons that he's played twenty, twenty three and twenty four. His his chase rate has gone up as the season has gone on. And, you know, that sort of threatens to describe someone that pitchers are maybe finding a hole. Right. And kind of, you know, that sort of threatens to describe someone that, uh, pitchers are maybe finding a hole, right? And kind of, you know, picking at it again, that's something I think matters

more when you start, when you turn 30 and you start losing the ability to make contact on pitches outside the zone when he's young, when he's 25, maybe they get him chasing, but maybe he also hits a Homer on a pitch that's three inches above the strike zone. You know what I mean? That's that's something he can do. So generally. These are the kind of things I worry about in terms of signing him to a long term deal if you're in those kinds of leagues or if you're the Mets and you're and you

want to like I might not sign Mark Vientos to a long extension, you know, the kind of let's buy out all your arb long extension, you know, the kind of, let's buy out all your RB years and, you know, two years beyond that. I'm not, I'd be a little hesitant, though most of those deals are good deals for the team. I might be a little bit hesitant because you might lock yourself into a DH with a 35% strikeout rate at some point.

You know what I mean? But for the next three, four years, I think those concerns are overblown. These, this is the type of player I have learned to embrace flaws in all, uh, just because the batted ball contact is so good. And when you have batted ball stats like that, that's what baseball teams are looking for. Yeah. That's what they're looking for.

They want that player on the field as much as possible. Uh, in the lineup as much as possible at least and so if it comes down to making starling marty a part-time player And the last year of his deal with the Mets and paying Vantos at DH I think they'll do that because Vientos is a better hitter at the plate Some comps going outside the position by ADP guys within, let's say 15 picks in either direction that kind of do similar things. Brent Rooker, who's UT only goes about 15 picks earlier than Vientos. Who would you rather have for 2025 only Rooker or Vientos? You're thinking a lot about it. Yeah. Okay. It's pretty close. I'll take Rooker because I do think he's going to add outfield eligibility.

And, um, we talked about his, his Babap comps and I'm pretty, pretty, uh, pretty happy with his Babap comps, broker Rooker actually hits the ball even harder than Vientos. How about one from behind the plate, Cal Raleigh versus Mark Vientus? I'm going to take Vientus. Okay. And one more, let's say a guy that was on our first preview, Willie Adames versus Mark Vientus.

I'm going to take Vientus. And that's probably in part because of the short stops that are available later too. That's also a factor, right? But if we were playing NL Labor or something, maybe it's different, maybe dollar for dollar, the preference of the Adamus, but in a snake situation based on what comes next, it's Vientos. Yeah. And Cal Raleigh is only there because the NFC is a two catcher league.

So for those of you who play in one catcher leagues, you might be surprised that they're even that close. Right. Yeah. The two catcher nature does boost up a lot of guys in those. And I try to, I try to sometimes ignore that a little bit. You know, like I generally know that in my value sheets and when I'm drafting, it's always going to push catchers to the top.

Like when I'm like making a cue, I'm always like, you know, oh gosh, you know, the calculator says I should take a catcher here. I feel like that's for the first five to 10 rounds, the calculator is always like, catcher, catcher, catcher, catcher. And I'm always like, ah, next round, next round, next round, because the rooms don't really reflect that.

Yeah. The rooms put less of a boost on catchers than the auction calculator does. If you're using the fan grass auction calculator, you either need to lower the weight in the actual settings or just be prepared, bump the catchers down as you go along. Otherwise, if you're sitting there at the turn at the end of round one, you're sitting there

like, do I take William Contreras with my second pick? Like, the option is great. Don't do that quite that early. That would be, I think, a pretty big tactical mistake. But I just thought the would you rather's on Vientos were kind of important to establish whether or not this is an appropriate price for him since he's kind of floating out here with not a lot of other third base options around him.

I think the way we talked about second base makes me believe that Jordan Westberg is more valuable to us in fantasy leagues filling the second base spot than he is third, even though you can use him at third if injuries and whatever else happens to your roster cause that to happen. Like you kind of go in putting them on your second base sheet instead, just because that's a better profile for that position right now. Now, Junior Caminero. Had the best max EV of third baseman last year.

Junior Caminero has some amazing bad ball stats, right? And I think what makes me excited is that we know young players don't always come up with the best projections. And at least in the case of Caminero, he's now appeared in the big leagues in two different seasons. It was only seven games back in 2023, 43 games once he got healthy last year. And man, like a 56.5% hard hit rate during his time at AAA Durham, 45.7% in the big leagues with an 11.8% barrel rate. So it wasn't like he was hitting the ball hard and hitting on the ground. He was actually getting to the barrel rates that we want too.

We know he's important to their lineup and you look at the projections and you see 262.29 homers from Steamer. You see a 271 with 33 homers from Oopsy. You want to meet in the middle and say 266.31? from Steamer. You see a 271 with 33 homers from Oopsie. You wanna meet in the middle and say 266.31? That's a really big projection for a guy that just turned 21 back in July. Are you that in on Junior Cam and Arrow?

Because this is the player type where I become a chicken on draft day a lot of times. I'm like, oh man, I need to see a little more, even though I like all the underlying skills, it feels like we're buying in at a very high level. I also worry that if we get to spring training and he's one of those guys that is on a tear in Florida and he gets four or five homers this spring,

that ADP is gonna jump to maybe even three rounds before you get to the highest stakes drafts at the end of draft season closer to opening day. I generally get very nervous about rookies that don't have a long track record. I get nervous about buying ceiling. Are we buying ceiling? Especially if they don't have speed, what are we buying here? Does he have to hit 280 with 30 homers to,

to make my investment worthwhile? Those things normally make me nervous, but I want to read to you the top 15 hitters by bat speed, uh, with at least 250 competitive swings. And I'm sorry, like, I feel like we should actually quote this more often, except that our fascination with barrels and maxi V is a fascination with bat speed.

So we have been true to our roots and I think we will fold in bat speed analysis as there is more analysis. We have to have year to year analysis, which we haven't had yet. Um, but Jimmy just read this list to you because of course, this is a list of entirely some of the best hitters in baseball that all have great power. And if they don't, if they aren't amazing hitters, they have an obvious sort of contact flaw. So number one, of course, everybody knows John Carlos Stanton.

Number two, O'Neal Cruz. Number three, John Kinski Noel. Number four, Kyle Schwabert. Number five, Jordan Walker. I'm still in Matt Wallner, junior cam and Yaro Aaron judge, Ronald Acuna, Jr. Joe Dell, Matt Chapman, Jordan Alvarez, Shohei Atani, Julio Rodriguez, Gunnar Henderson.

Come on. Tell me bats. Be doesn't mean anything. Come on. I think that list also reaffirmed the bats. He did a young man's game graph from earlier in the show. Totally. But you know, what's, what is cool about that list?

I just read you and you're like, well, you know, hey, uh, I'm based your big brain here. John Kinski Newell is not a good hitter. Um, and you're like, yes, he obviously has the flaw that I prefaced before the beginning of this, right? Guess what? Junior Kevin, you know, does not have that flaw. He does not have that flaw. You're talking about top 10 bad speed with better than average strikeout rate. So it's really exciting. And in fact,

he could hit two 80 with 35 homers. I mean, he has the underlying skill level for that. All right. So should Caminero be going ahead of Marc Vientos? No, because you have to buy the projections and hope for the 280. Okay. You buy the projections and for generally, although, you know, if you made me choose between Vientos and Caminero, which you didn't, I might choose Caminero because even the OOPSI projection 271, 33 homers, four steals versus Vantos, 242, 32 homers, zero steals.

I have a feeling that Caminero comes out on top of that. Yeah. The auction calculator with the OOPSI projections likes Caminero better on top of that. Yeah. The auction calculator with the oopsie projections likes Caminero better by like six bucks. So I think if I am shopping in this bin between those two, I'd rather have Caminero. I'm probably doing that on a very boring five round start, a lot of older, more established

players. And then I'm like, Hey, I need that ceiling. I need something fun. I need something that could be a first or second rounder. Cause Camin fun. I need something that could be a first or second rounder, because Kevin Arrow has the core skills you'd be looking for to be a Riley or a Devers or a Machado. He has the types of things you want to see in a player of his age that you could say, eventual ceiling could be AL MVP.

He does have that. Doesn't mean it's the ceiling right now, but what he is right now is still very good. Right now, what he's doing, where he's going, I've taken him around a lot of guys around him. Like I like Christian Walker, but I'm gonna take the young guy. You know, Walker is pretty old. You know, at some point the comps for old first baseman don't go in his favor. Matt McClain is going there. We talked about, you know, how many sort of underlying questions there are with him. Josh Naylor, a junior Cameron Yarrow, I think I'm taking Cameron Yarrow.

It's Cameron Yarrow, easily. Not even thinking twice about it. The starting pitchers that are going around him are non-elite starting pitchers. They are not guys I have in my top 15. You know, Aaron Nola, Luis Castillo, Spencer Schwalmbach, and Hunter Green are good pitchers, but they're already people I'm calling SP twos. I'm not taking an SB two over junior game in era. So right now,

I love where he's going. When, if he gets, you know, 10 points, 15 points of ADP juice, you know, I still might like him because you know, then he's going up against Marcus Simeon Bryce Miller say a Suzuki Willie Adamus. I'm still kind of taking him where when do I get nervous if you push him all the way? Up to God you could push him Dude, you could push him. Okay, if you up at 60 you get Ozzy Albies, Jose Altuve, Edwin Diaz, Pete Alonso, you know, just guys with longer track records. At that, at that point you're saying he's, I'm hoping for something that these guys have done before.

And even though Kamen Rider might do with a better average than a couple of those guys, you're passing on what looks like pretty good certainty for that possibility of something similar. I'm surprised to myself. I'm, I'm normally, you know, I'm an old and boring drafter, but you know, trying to, uh, you always got to like reinvestigate your priors and try to get better. And I am, uh, I'm excited about this. Pick the younger guys sometimes. Yeah, you have to, sometimes it does depend on the foundation. I think what I was looking at was, you know, I like Wyatt Langford, I like James Wood,

some of those guys that go late third, early fourth round. If I have one of those guys and maybe even another younger player that doesn't have a three or four year track record of being really good, but just more like a one or two, those might be situations where I say, yeah, all right, it's a little too young, a little too risky having this much kind of future projection on a redraft roster. That's probably my best excuse for saying I'm out on chemi-naro.

I think we got to play like an ADP helium game at some point in the mold of cliffhangers from the price is right with the yodeling. And that's kind of like where you keep going up and up and up and like, when is it too much? When is the price actually too much? Cause that's what you basically just did. And I think you're right.

Pick 60 for sure. I'd just be passing. There's just too much quality there. I think the alternatives where he's going right now are guys that you can kind of talk yourself out of, especially Josh Naylor versus Camionero. That one, that one hits like I'm just looking at like, there's no way I would choose Naylor over Camionero at this point. So get them now while you can before the Helium comes in because I think there's gonna be some Helium here in these next

couple of months. Got a nice cluster or rate behind this group between pick 100 and pick 150. It includes Jake Berger who's also eligible at first base. Royce Lewis who could be moving to a new position, Matt Chapman, who put together a phenomenal season last year and then got the extension with the Giants, Alex Bregman, still at the time of this recording, we don't know where he's playing in 2025, and then Luis Renejizo's third base eligible. We talked about him a lot on the second base preview yesterday. So we'll focus more on this first four.

Jake Berger getting out of Miami seems like a pretty important thing for him to be interesting enough at this price to think about. If he was still a Marlin, I don't think it even consider it. But being part of this lineup in Texas, seeing the possibility that group maybe having a collective bounce back of sorts, talked about that with Atlanta as a possibility too, I think Berger could make sense at price in some builds, even if he's not necessarily a player I'm going out of my way to get. Yeah. I mean, the, the park factor change is good.

And you know, he's now kept the strikeout rate under 28% for two straight years. Um, which seems to suggest that whatever that adjustment was in terms of pitch selection or mechanical adjustment that it's sticking. He is kind of boring in that it's a little bit almost one note. He's going to hurt you a little bit in batting average and he's not necessarily projected to be a real boon and runs or RBI and he's not going to give you any stone bases. So he's a power. He's a power guy and he's kind of the guy that, you know, if you went a little light on power early, maybe you took like a Corbin Carroll with your first pick. Would he be like a good foil to curb Corbin Carroll?

Maybe in any case, if you're feeling a little light on power, Berger's fine. And there are questions with the rest of these guys. We weren't that big of fans of Ren Hefo in the second base situation. We know that Bregman is in the bat speed decline age, and he didn't start with plus plus bat speed to begin with. We don't know what park he's going to, you know, so that's,

that's a big question. Matt Chapman, you know, is a guy who ran a ton. We, and we've been talking about, do you run for the money? You know, did he, is that, was that like a contract thing is if he doesn't run the same amount and he's more of a two 50, you know, 25, five guy, like he's been for a while, would you take burger over that Chapman? I wouldn't even if I'm throwing the, the stolen bases back down to near zero for Chapman burgers, not going to run at all.

Like you said, at least we have no reason to believe he will. Even though Berger's not slow by sprint speed, Jake Berger actually is 65th percentile in sprint speed. So maybe the Rangers will get in his ear and say, hey, you could probably steal five or seven bases. Wouldn't pay for it, wouldn't expect it to happen. Just would be less shocked having seen where that slider is. The thing about Chapman that I like better, the simple real life difference in OBP.

There could be a 20 to 30 point gap in OBP between those two players. And I think that alone would offset any potential difference. If you thought the Rangers lineup was better than the Giants lineup, I probably wouldn't fight you on that. But I think Chapman is a better all around hitter. It's reflected in the real life metrics we look at all the time in this show, multiple seasons of high 20s home run, even pop 36 back in 2019,

in mostly difficult places to hit, right? Playing in Oakland and San Francisco. I know he had two years in Toronto where some kind of strange stuff's happened. They've made some changes. All this is to say, like, I think Matt Chapman is a very safe player. We know his glove and his contract keep him on the field every day. He's prominent in that lineup. Berger maybe could be bottom half of the order for the Rangers, could leak occasional playing

time if it's not going well. So I think Chapman straight up over Berger just makes sense to me, even with a significantly reduced expectation in bags. If I get 10 or 15 bags from Chapman, it's a bonus. I'm not drafting, respecting that though. Just to give you an idea of how this means tests, um, in a draft that I'm currently in, um, I ended up taking Logan Webb for my second starter over, uh, junior caminero, which now that we've talked about him,

I maybe I regret a little bit. However, I will point out that this is a draft and hold. There's a little bit of a bumping of pitcher talent generally because you don't have the wire to go to. So getting somebody with Logan Webb with his number of innings feels like pretty good there too. So I don't know that I hate that. I will point out that Royce Lewis went last of this group other than Ren Hewfill. So all those guys went before Royce Lewis and I get it because of the extreme injury concern

but I did a pairing of Westberg and Lewis and Then later Cronenworth and what I like about that is the multi eligibility of those three they can cover each other So if Royce Lewis goes out, there can be a period of time where I have Jake Cronenworth playing second, Jordan Westberg playing third, and Lewis on the bench when he's hurt. The perv sort of at bat, the bat of ball stats, what he can do when he's in is most exciting for Lewis. Lewis is the jazz chism of this tier. Oh, for sure. But at this point in the draft, I feel a little bit better about taking

the jazz chism of a tier. Yeah, and I think with Royce Lewis, when he was a prospect, the idea that he was going to offer five category production, and maybe even just lag and batting average would be good in power and speed, that seemed very likely.

Now, because of multiple ACL tears and, I think it was a hamstring or a quad that put them on the IL for a good chunk in 2024, risking it, and they've shown this with Byron Buxton before too, risking it by stealing bases even though stolen bases are easier to get now, seems like something the twins will continue to dial back. I mean, Royce Lewis did not have a stolen base in 2024. He wasn't caught stealing a base.

So that aspect of his game might be long gone. It's okay at third base to have that. That's fine. I think the health grade is even worse than jazz's because the major injuries have happened. Fortunately, he's made it back. We have basically a full season spread out over three years from Royce Lewis as a big league player to 152 games, 605 plate appearances. He's hit 33 homers, stolen six bases and seven attempts hit two 68 with a

three 27 OBP and a four 97 slug. That's his first 600 plate appearances. It's good. It's good. It's good. And it's a better strikeout rate than Chapman and Burger. Should be a better batting average than Chapman and Burger. Like the ceiling is obviously the best of this tier. Yeah.

I think if I'm like reordering them on the fly, Chapman's first in the group for me, because he's safe and I need a little bit of stability around here. I would still take Lewis over Berger in most cases. Again, if I got some injury risk already, then maybe I flip it. That's close enough. I think it's harder to decide where I stand on Bregman at the time of uncertainty, not

knowing where he's going to play, what kind of ballpark he's going to be in. I think Bregman is sort of like a Chapman in the sense of, he will play and play a lot no matter where he goes. So you're getting max volume playing time, he's important, good glove, all that. So I think he's safe in that way. Where I think he's uncertain is the power. And I'm not sure how much I trust his power approach, but I would say

Bregman's one of those guys a little bit like Jose Ramirez where it's a low K rate, therefore it's a low barrel rate and it's easy to try and write off his power, especially because it's now low to mid 20s home run power instead of the 31 and 41 we saw back in 18 and 19. It's still a really good profile. So I think Bregman is generally fine. We saw a huge increase in zone percentage for him. So we know the pitchers aren't scared of him anymore. And I just wonder at age, when Jesus was he 30?

He'll turn 31 at the end of March. Is it too early? Is it just a little early to ride him off? I get why he's priced down here. I don't think it's this massive bounce back to early round Alex Bregman days, but I think he's aging into that safe oatmeal bucket that we often find at tier three of most positions.

So I'm generally in at this price. If he goes to some place with a hitter friendly environment, I might be out because the price might go up too much. I mean, Chapman has the athletic skills and the playing time assurance. So I just prefer his, like in terms of like his sprint speed is better, his bat speed is better, you know,

like his defense is better. Like, like Chapman is the safest of this group and Lewis is the ceiling of this group. Bregman is just sort of in between. Which sometimes gets a little bit lost in the shuffle. It doesn't stand out. Well, he does everything still well enough to be good at this price point.

Just watch out if he ends up in a hitter-friendly environment because that could drive that ADP up quite a bit in the months ahead. Let's shift down to tier four. It is a small group between pick 150 and 200. Eugenio Suarez, who I think at some point last season, we wondered, is this the end finally? And then he had another one of his massive second halves to sort of say,

no, I still have plenty of power. I'm still a very productive hitter. He's in this group along with Alec Bohm and Isaac Paredes. Word cloud for Raids and Barrels history continues to grow. Like one of the top five players we've talked about time and time again. Although Billy Cook is coming for the title. You just got him in again. Billy Cook is not eligible at any of the three positions we've previewed so far.

And yet somehow this guy who's maybe not even going to make the pirates has been mentioned on each of the first three position previews. Imagine when we get to the outfield and first base. What is happening? You're just going to say Billy Cook in every episode now. Yeah, I'm just going to sneak him in. You know who I really like after picks 700, Billy Cook. I don't like Suarez.

Okay, you're out on Suarez? I just, you know, when you get that, it's tempting when you have that, I don't like Suarez. Okay. You're out on Suarez. I just, you know, when you get that, it's tempting when you have that, like, it's such a, it's like kind of an offensive term. I'm a cat owner, but you know, like the, the, the bounce. Yeah, I don't. I've heard it for years and like, I don't, why, why are we doing that? Anyway, that's that I get a little bit of that from him.

I know it was a good second half, but you know, the, the, the, the, the, the arrows are in the wrong direction. 33. I'm not saying that 33 is a do not draft zone for me, but it's it's getting more and more like that. Like I, like, especially I see that bad speed thing and I'm like, Oh God, it's bad. It's bad. It's only going to be slower next year. You know? And at some point he won't have that Renaissance in the, in the half. And like, um, and to begin with, like, what's his ups, like his projection is for two 38 with 25 homers. Like,

I feel like I can do better and I can do better in this tier. I know that there are still some. Trade rumors surrounding Alec Baum and that he's not a perfect player and even at some points he was even platoon, which is back as a righty. He's so steady, Eddie, for me, and he's in the right age. He's 28. He makes good contact in terms of swinging strike rate and strikeout rate. Alec Bohm does. He'd steal non-zero bags. He's in a good park. He doesn't have great power, but if you put his max CB and barrel rate up against Bregman's or whatever,

it's, you know, it's better. So, you know, there could even be a slight adjustment where he gets back to that 20 homer level, um, in terms of, you terms of hitting more fly balls or hitting a little bit harder or whatever it may be. But I just find him to have a super high ceiling and I even think that he might be okay if even he gets traded. I mean, I wouldn't love it if he got traded like Seattle or something. Yeah.

Well, we don't want any hitters to get traded to Seattle given, given the fun house that T-Mobile has been. But given the risks surrounding him, like if you are risk averse, Bohm is your pick in this tier. Yeah. And Bohm, you know, first career, he's got 59 big league homers. He's at 33 at home, 26 on the road. And that's in like almost 140 fewer plate appearances. So he does get a lift in the home run department from Citizens Bank Ballpark,

which he has historically. I think you're just saying you'd rather have, you'd rather take 30 or 35 points of batting average in the projection than the 10 home runs from Suarez given the possibility that Suarez has one of those collapse seasons, like basically takes his first half and doesn't come out of it. Because at this age, it's more likely to happen. Or he hits 28 homers with a 210 average. Like that's possible for Suarez. It's like, you know, he's done stuff like that before. Yeah, 2021, I forget.

I remember there was a year he hurt his shoulder, and I think he played through it. So it may have been 21. Memories failing me right now. year he hurt his shoulder and I think he played through it. So it may have been 21, memories failing me right now, but that was a 198 average on 574 played appearances. He still hit the 31 homers, still drove in 79 runs and scored 71 runs, but you take a 190 over that much playing time and it's a big deal. So I understand your aversion to Suarez. And I think there are some similar

players that aren't quite as old that generally are safer, even though he did find a way to put it back together in the second half after we thought maybe it was the end in twenty twenty four. Parade is getting out of Wrigley Field as a home park seems significant. Right. I mean, it is the extreme flyball significant, right? I mean, it is the extreme fly ball pull approach and the Crawford boxes in Houston are likely going to serve him well. So projections have been, historically they've been light on Paredes. I feel like this is maybe the best projection we've seen for him yet coming out of Steamer, 245 with 25 homers 78 RBI's 83 runs scored

like there's there's more buy-in from the projections in part because if you go back to 2023 he popped 31 home runs that year and even the night I don't see yeah oopsie I get it like there's there's a little more going in there the look bat speed being one of the things oopsie considers we know parade ace doesn't have big bats speed but we've explained him enough times where we know the typical rules around projections might not actually apply as effectively here so what would you do with these numbers and how much do you trust parade ace getting back into a home park that should fit his strengths very well.

And also throw in the reminder. He turned 26 in February. He's not that old. Yeah, I'd like him if he's falling, you know, I think I actually prefer a bomb to him just because I feel more secure in bomb. But if radius falls behind bomb, that means he's falling in a draft. People don't like him and I wanted to talk for a second about the. Sort of psychology of a home park and you know this came up a little bit when I looked at the Red Sox numbers and discovered that their righties pull more than anybody in baseball and their lefties push the ball more than anybody in baseball.

than anybody in baseball and their lefties pushed the ball more than anybody in baseball. And I don't know if that's like, you know, the team is acquiring players like that or, and I don't think it actually is because you saw somebody like Tyler O'Neill pull the ball more when he got to Boston than when he was in St. Louis. I think it's actually the psychology of the green monster just sort of screaming at them. I mean, they're at the plate and they're like, look at that thing. Look how close it is. Doesn't look that far. Yeah. Yeah.

The old Vegas effect. Doesn't that, it's not that far. We can walk there. And I, I ask, I ask players about it and they're like, oh, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't change, you know, what I do for my home park, but let's look at Esau Parades rolling fly ball chart for last year. You see that big red line. That's his fly ball rate.

Guess where he went to Wrigley. Probably around the time it turns into the scariest roller coaster of all time. It's probably the time where he stopped hitting fly balls. And it's totally possible that the hitting coach told him, you know, your fly balls aren't going to do as well here or, or maybe he was conscious about it and said, you know, I, man, I need to hit fewer fly balls. There's not going to go out here. We know that Wrigley was one of the harder places actually did homers, um, you know, for, for, I forget if it's lefties and righties, but I know that, um,

Wrigley can be a tough place to hit homers. And, or there's just the psychology of getting to this park and being like, God, it's not the trop anymore, where it's like 310 down the line. And it changed and his Wobble went down with it. Now I think he'll get to Houston and see the Crawford boxes and say, Oh yeah, now I know that is, you know, like I, this feels comfortable to me. And I think the psychology of it will be that his fly ball rate goes back up to career norms. So my over-under for him, for homers is probably like 22, 23, which is above oopsie. I don't think I know where oopsie is coming from. I get it. It's really poor bat speed. It's the stuff we talked about, you know,

but I think the Crawford boxes are going to make it work for him. Just the way that it made it work for Bregman for a while. That's like the crux of a Midwest argument. I know where you're coming from, but. I'm just not gonna agree with you, but I'm not gonna fight you anymore on it. Like that's what you're basically saying, I think at this point.

I think the toss up then would be Parades versus Suarez in this group. You like bone the best of the bunch, but do you prefer Parades over Suarez? I'll take Parades over Suarez, yeah. Yeah, as far as the park fact is- I might take people in the next tier. I wanna bone the best of the bunch, but do you prefer. And I'll take, it's over Suarez. Yeah. As far as the park fact, I might take people in the next year.

I want to see what the next year is. Cause I might take them over Suarez. The next year is robust. I think the park factor thing I'll throw out there, the three year rolling right-handed park factors for homers, Wrigley came in at a 94, looking at baseball, Savant's numbers. And that's, And it made's, which has been renamed to

something is a one Oh five. So yeah, it's, it's as much of a Tampa, uh, Tampa, Tampa's a one Oh four. And so it's all, it's a lot like minute made. Yeah. In that regard. So then I think he just needs, he needs a little help. He's, he's a guy who's going to hit, you know,

350 fit 50 foot fly balls to the pool side. I mean, I think the other psychological, he needs a little help. He's, he's the guy who's going to hit, you know, 350, fit 50 foot fly balls to the pool side. I mean, I think the other psychological aspect of it is you go to Wrigley, you take batting practice, the wind's blowing in more often than it's blowing out. And the balls that you were yanking down the line that we're getting out are falling 15 feet short of the wall. And I wait a minute. That's, that's speaking to the sort of the, the psychology of it for sure.

And he has other things he can do, but they're way less valuable than when he pulls the ball in the air. He's not helpless up there. He's got a good idea of the strike contact. Yeah. He makes good contact. He can actually go the other way sometimes too. Like he has the ability, but you know, the highest value balls for him are those pull fly balls.

Yeah. Without question. Let's go down to five. I couldn't fit them all. Well, I take both of those names over Suarez. So there you go. Although Shaw, Matt Shaw, there is a fair amount of risk because he hasn't been even given the job yet, you know, in, in, in Chicago.

So it'd be, it takes a little bit of fortitude to pick Matt Shaw as you're starting third baseman. I think at this point, you're looking at corner infield though. You're looking at corner or even saying he's the UT or you're just, you're drafting your bench differently. If you're taking Shaw, where he's going, this group and does include Michael Garcia, who we talked about on our second base preview yesterday, uh, Shaw, Nolan Aronado don't know where he's playing yet in 2025 because of the

possibility of a trade. I'm guessing St. Louis. This is just the end in St. Louis. He just gets the ride out or or Yankee Stadium, which might be a nice one for him. In that case, if we were to say Nolan Aronado is a Yankee, we were to learn that he's going to move up to like the Eohanio Suarez ADP. I think so. That's like the automatic park factor lineup adjustment that would kick in. Josh Young is in this tier. Josh Young is in this tier. Willie Castro also in this tier.

He qualifies everywhere and he's not super interesting. We'll talk about him at some point, but probably not today. Connor Norby, Ryan McMahon and actually Christopher Morrell is second and third base eligible. We talked about Morrell on the second base episode. So I opened this up to 275 just to get everybody in. Matt Shaw should be the primary option at third base for the Cubs at this point, right? What is there left for him to prove in the minors? That's all I'm throwing out there is like what more could

they want to see? It was only 35 games at AAA I guess, they could send him back there, but he was 42% better than league average. He didn't seem to have any problem with the ABS system. His K-rate barely went up. He still walked a lot. He was getting to his power. He was stealing bases. I mean, Matt Shaw looks like he's built to be a five by five monster. Tons of athleticism, improving lineup. I like him a lot where he's going. I think the only caveat is just making sure you have someone that is definitely playing in case they do send him back down for a brief stretch to begin this season. I guess my only concern is that the power, you know, I don't know.

I don't know exactly where it lands. Is it good power? Is it good enough? Is it above average? Is it power? That's the place that I land. I wanted to put some comps together. These are the double A players that were younger than 23. Um, and, uh, had a better, what is it that I did it by strikeout rate and ISO.

So you can see his isolated slugging at double A was similar to how you Lee, Samuel Basalo, the catcher from Baltimore, Abimalec Ortiz from Texas, Roman Anthony had a little bit better and Joe Mack from Miami. These guys had a little bit better ISOs, but those two, Roman Anthony and Joe Mack also had bigger strikeout rates. Um, you know, this, this group all did really well in the minor leagues. Basalo is, you know, a top prospect for, for most. I think a lot of these names are recognizable to people. This is a decent group to be at.

You also see that Shaw had the best speed out of any of them other than how you leave, so this is a good group to be in, but I also wanted to go back and look at at, you also see that Shaw had the best speed out of any of them other than how you lead. So this is a good group to be in, but I also wanted to go back and look at players like this, you know, three years ago. And I believe I gave you that list too. Jordan Walker, Miguel Vargas, Tristan Casas, Justin Foske and Parker Meadows. Is that right? That's the group that was like, uh, like him before. And you can see it's a missed bag. Like does he grow into more power like Tristan Casas? Does he have enough defense to not be Justin Fosku? I believe he has a better hit tool than Jordan Walker.

Miguel Vargas is just a basket case right now. I don't even know that we know what Miguel Vargas is yet. Uh, but he also has way better defense than Miguel Vargas, way better defense than Foscu, better defense than Walker. Parker Meadows is an interesting comp. If he ended up as a third base Parker Meadows, I think that wouldn't be unbelievable. Yeah.

I think for Shaw it'd be a huge outcome. I do think the thing that's interesting here is that Shaw's a right-handed hitter. So it's not a big side platoon, it's handle same-handed pitching or else. Like there's a little more boom bust potential on that. I don't get the sense looking at how he's done it in the upper levels especially

that he's going to have a problem. I don't, I just, I like this, I like this profile a lot. There are many ways for Matt Shaw to be good. His worst WRC plus than the miners was 120 in double A at 21 years old. Right. And every, every other stop has been over 140. And age to level, I mean, Shaw getting all the way up through AAA by age 22 is even, Bet Foske was older for the level and I think that the warning signs on him were probably a little clearer, but yeah, you're right.

It's a mixed bag as far as those comps go. I mean, Miguel Vargas, I've been really wrong about him. I thought the White Sox were right to get him in that trade. Maybe eventually they will be. been really wrong about him. I thought the white socks were right to get him in that trade. Maybe eventually they will be. Jordan Walker, as much as I like the quality of contact he makes, I can't explain to you what happened in 2024 to Jordan Walker. I just can't. I don't know why. All I can say is he's so young that I don't want to give up on him, at least in keeper and dynasty leagues, even though the redraft situation right now is dicey, just not knowing how all the pieces are gonna fit

on that depth chart. Yeah, yeah. My right-handed Parker Meadows is the best comp, really, now that I'm looking at all these players. If that happens, I think you'd be really happy with Matt Shaw just after pick 200. If Nolan Aronato is still a Cardinal, thinking about the back injuries

that really kind of started up for him late in 2023, is he good oatmeal available at a low price or has his stuff broken down to the point where you really don't want to take that chance? It was a career-worst 3.2% barrel rate, hard hit fell to 31.2%. Still kept the K rate nice and low, but just couldn't do damage the way we have seen in the past. And I think the projections have bounce backs to like 20 and 22 homers, but it's a step or two short of the 26, the 30 and the 34 that he hit

going back in those first three seasons with the cards. Yeah, I think he's going back in those first three seasons with the cards. Yeah, I think he's landed himself in, um, kind of these edge, these an edge case. Like he's a very specific, like I kind of want him maybe in NL only leagues, like an NL only auction, where nobody's excited about Nolan Arnado and I get him for, I haven't looked at values, but what if I got him for like seven or eight bucks? I thought 11 maybe for NLabor.

He's like, yeah, okay, it's Aronato, he's gonna probably give me 140, 145 games. He's been pretty healthy. It's not like a, I don't think it's the case of, is the Angels third base. Oh, it's not Rendon, it's not. It's not a Rendon situation. No, even with the back problems, Aronado's gone over

600 plate appearances each of the last two seasons. He's been as durable as any, he's like a Marcus Semyon at third base with a slightly lower total. I kinda wanna do my third third baseman. Okay, well that's fine. Or a second third baseman where your CI is a first base. All right. So, so like a fourth CI.

All that tells me is that you're not looking at him in 10 and 12 team leagues and saying, I can wait and get him as a corner and maybe eventually he's playing third for me. You've just kind of knocked him down to deeper leagues. One guy in this tier that's a little bit like, I think Shaw is, is an interesting case for the 10 and 12s, where you're just like, I'm picking him, I'm hoping he's good. And if he's not, I'll go to the waiver wire. And maybe somebody like Arnado is there on the waiver. Where, you know what I mean? Like, you know, I think that's, uh,

the other guy in this tier is Joey Ortiz in this tier. He's in the next tier. Okay. Well Ryan McMahon in this tier, um, you know, pops to me is like at least somebody that I could be like, I can use him at home. And he's not terrible on the road, but at least I can use it at home and I could pick another third baseman for my bench.

And you know, between the two of them, I can get somewhere. Yeah, Mac man I think is pure oatmeal, but not oatmeal I'm afraid of. I think he's a better player than he gets credit for. Maybe he gets lost just because the Rockies are the Rockies, but I Like Ryan McMahon quite a bit He ends up on a lot of my TV is fine. The barrel rate is pretty good

Like the quality of contact is pretty good. He has been striking out more recently But that's been you know with an effort to maybe pull a little bit more and get in the air a little bit more So, I don't know. I think he's fine. I'm a little bit intrigued by Josh Young still. I think it's a lot of injuries that have slowed him down to this point in his career. It's weird that both him and his brother had wrist injuries. Yeah, it's definitely strange.

I think part of what I see is the ability to continue lowering the K rate, right? Around the injuries last year, he did knock that down to 25%. If he could do that over a full season, some of the power that he's showing. Swinging strike rate was worse. It's, uh, it's a little bit weird. He's like, he's, he's a little bit Josh Hamilton as where he's just like, he's going to swing his way to contact before he strikes out, you know what I mean?

He's, he's a free swinger. I'm okay with that because I think he has enough power to get away with it. That's basically the reason why I keep buying and even though the health grade here is low, it's maybe not as low as the Royce Lewis, but it's not much better than a Royce Lewis health grade situation.

Connor Norby goes in this group too. Did the Marlins do well getting Connor Norby from the Orioles? Are they gonna be happy with what they get long term? The post trade numbers were actually pretty solid once he had a chance to just get some run. It's like the youngest prospect the Orioles traded away. Yeah, I mean, seven homers in 36 games after the trade picked up three steals as well.

He's really strange though, from a bad ball perspective. He chases a lot. No, he's a really strange player. First of all, he chases a ton and he strikes out a ton, but sometimes he walks a ton. He's demonstrated ISOs over 200. He's also demonstrated ISOs of 100, like 140 and lower. He has the max CV of a guy who has a 140 ISO, but possibly the barrel rates of a guy, you know, who could ISO 200,

his hard hit rates have been terrible. Terrible might be, I mean, they were, they were bad. They were bad in a couple of limited samples, but low to mid 30s, hard hit rates in the minors are not what you look for, but they were better. They were better in the big leagues, 38.3%, 35 games in the big leagues. It's not small sample with, you know,

right now we have a thousand plate appearances at AAA and he had like a 34% hard hit rate. It's not like a superstar potential, but there's no real push on his job. Prominent spot in the lineup. He might run bags. Yeah. You can run a little bit. He gets to the power enough. It's unusual, but I think it's fine at this price point. I don't think, I don't think you're paying for past prospect helium in any sort of way.

I think you're getting a discount because he's a Marlin. I think he has a pretty good use as a third baseman in driving holds where you're like, I took some boring ones. I need someone who has like, might break out a little bit. Yeah, I think that's a good description of Connor Norvey. Should break out the mics that sit on the table instead of the hanging mics for the late late

third baseman we're intrigued by, late night talk here. This group has a huge list of names in it. Jose Caballero qualifies there, Jamer Candelario, Joey Ortiz who might be moving to everyday shortstop duty for the Brewers. He starts as a third baseman to begin the year. Noel V. Marte, kind of a mystery box player coming off of a PED suspension and some injury woes in 2024. Cabrion Hayes goes way out here after pick 300, longtime favorite on our show, someone that

we think could put the pieces together. Who intrigues you as you move beyond pick 275 at the third base position? Because this would generally be bench options, not necessarily guys you're drafting and immediately saying, this is my corner infielder. Maybe at the higher end, you're looking at someone that you're throwing in as a UT type or rotating in for matchups. Well, I'm really big into Joey Ortiz because I think he could become a multi-eligible guy with power and speed and just a real nice roster spackle. I do have this weird thing that caught my eye, the bat speed. This is his ability to pull the ball went down as the season went down, his wubba went down and then also he's on this list of bat speed fallers where he's the biggest bat speed

follower at third base now Devers had an injury Ortiz had a neck injury I don't know what Viento's situation was But these the biggest five followers are Ortiz Devers Viento's burger and Morrell Morrell actually had elite bat speed early and we saw a little bit from Morrell and Kauser and a couple of elite bat speed people where they dropped their bat speed a little bit and it might have been on purpose because these are guys who strike out a lot and there is a relationship between

bat speed and contact rate. So maybe Morrell was doing it on purpose swinging a little bit softer or just a little bit more free and easy, you might say, in order to try and make more contact. I don't know that I'm equally worried about each of these players, but with Jorio T's, I think he, if he doesn't hit the ball hard, then if he becomes like a 250, 10, 10 guy, which is in the range of possibilities,

then I'm a little bit less interested in you know what I mean? And this bat so this bat speed thing was a little bit worrisome but wasn't there a Joey Ortiz neck injury? Trying to remember all the bumps and bruises from the second half of last season this is this is where this is an unpaid advertisement for my friends over at RotoWire where I like to just go back through either the second half player updates or glance over at the outlooks. They don't have the neck injury that you're referring to in the player outlook. Here it says Joe Ortiz placed on the 10 day injury list,

right? Retracted July 2 with neck inflammation, neck inflammation. You don't see a lot of neck inflammation. I don't know what that means. So maybe there are other people that watch this team a lot that remember how that happened. Like, did it follow a collision of some kind? It was neck soreness originally, neck problems. Yeah, you kind of go back to June. It started to remove from a neck injury, removal.

So I mean, if he's like, let's say he recovers his early bat speed and he gets back to a 74 mile an hour bat And that's pretty good and a 70 more So for me for my an hour bat with 20% strikeout rate should produce 15 to 20 homers I think now, you know The upside for him is then like a 260 average 20 homers and 15 stolen bases now that sounds a lot better That sounds like a starter average 20 homers and 15 stolen bases. Now that sounds a lot better. That sounds like a starter on your team. So the nice thing about it is where he's going,

you pick him as a bench guy and maybe he starts for you. And that's a nice place. But if he starts getting more helium or has a great spring, he may price himself out of sort of sleeper status for me. But right now I like him where he is. Yeah, plays a little more in those deeper formats Probably more of like a watchlist guy if you're in a 12 team league, but definitely makes a lot of sense in 15 teamers I think he could be a good bench like for 30 round drafts where you have a seven-man bench

It could be good because he covers middle and corner once he qualifies at short I know Keith Laws liked him for a long time too when you look at some of the upper level minor league numbers There's good power there. I don't think he's just a 10-10 guy. I think there's more than that. I did find, I didn't see it happen. If it happened the sixth inning of a game last season, there's a good chance I was caught in bedtime routine and I didn't see it.

Yeah, missed a lot of six through eight innings. Fifth through seventh, I think were the real trouble innings last summer. I hope with a year, another year of child development, maybe it's a different window that I get to see this year. He ran into a tarp chasing a pop-up in June and that's eventually the neck soreness, inflammation that cost him time. That's just that strange injury, but you'd imagine like some tightness or weakness here, probably causing some problems with that bat speed.

I would guess as we get more information on bat speed, we are going to find that it reveals either the severity of injuries that we already know about or points to something that we can ask about. We saw this with the exit velocity charts when that was new too. You could start asking players, hey, I noticed this dipped around here, what was going on? Oh yeah, I rolled my ankle. Oh yeah, okay, you rolled your ankle. That explains why this dipped. So there you go. He ran into a tarp in late June. Um, so I'm with the unjoey Ortiz. Yeah. Speaking of playing through injury and affecting your projections, a cabrion haze, uh, add that one to the word cloud.

I'm burgeoning cabrion haze cabrion haze, grind, haze, grind. Oh wow. I'm just pumping it up. Shove back. No, no, he's back in. Cause I just mentioned. I wasn't just an incredible drain of resources, it would be kind of fun to actually create a word cloud out of her. Uh, but the Cabrion Hayes where he's going, uh, I just took him in my last draft as my third, third baseman. Um, and I, I thought he was a pretty good pairing with Royce Lewis, where I

think Cabrion Hayes, you know, he's younger. He's more, I know the health grade isn't great on both, but Cabrinha's, I'm hoping he got the back thing figured out. He was even stole some bases last year while he was dealing with it. And I'm hoping he comes in, steals a few bags from you while Royce Lewis is hurt. So, uh, this is comfortably kind of like backend draft and hold, uh, mono league territory, but no, I'll be Marta.

Um, as much as we have talked some crap on him on the show, I think, you know, the opportunity is there for him. The park is there for him. You've been a little bit more positive than I have. And in fact, when I realized what his price was, I was like, Oh, well, actually I kind of like him at that price. Yeah. Like as much as I could.

Yeah. Right. Last year it was absurd. Like there was, there was a level of expectation that seemed to be a reach and it, we didn't get to find out if it was even right because of the PD and it just being wrong because of the PD suspension, but nobody really could have known that was going to happen. I think it's a nice late dart because if it doesn't work out,

it's an easy drop in leagues with moves, even in draft and hold, he's gonna play, I would think, at least half of the season in the big leagues, even if he's an up and down guy, because they need to see if he's part of their long-term core. And there's a few ways he can be good. I continue to bring this up.

I'm surprised at how much he runs, and he's so young that I'm not worried about that disappearing anytime soon. This is a guy that's trying to sort of make amends with surprised at how much he runs. And he's so young that I'm not worried about that disappearing anytime soon. This is a guy that's trying to sort of make amends with the organization and show his value. So I think he'll continue to be pretty aggressive on the base pass when he gets those opportunities relative to previously light expectations.

Kobe Mayo is like the, one of the prospects. You're like, man, if you knew he was gonna play, sure. It's just a open question. I just have a hard time with that depth chart saying, you know, there's a lot of playing time for Kobe Mayo. I kind of see Kobe Mayo entering the Heston Kirstad part of his career where he's up and he plays and then he's down when somebody is filthy again, because um, we've already seen that Jackson Holliday is going to get the first shot.

And we, when we saw some, some interesting signs onto the hood for Jackson holiday, uh, and even if Jackson holiday, you know, goes back down, there's still the chance they, you know, cobble together third base with Urias and somebody, you know? So there are too many ways for this team to not use Kobe Mayo for me to feel that comfortable taking him. I, I like another guy and like, yes, in terms of upside, I may like Kobe Mayo over the guy I'm about to mention but in terms of depth charts I like Jose Miranda a little better from the depth chart

point of view because when we looked at who gets platooned you know the most at second base Edward Julian was in there So Julian is not going to see many lefties even if he does play some first base You know with Royce Lewis at third and cause Grant short Brooks Lee is going to be needed in different places and with Buxton playing some CF and some DH You know there may be some DH numbers available. All that is to say is that Miranda by the depth charts has 550 plate appearances in him

and a nice 268 average and 15 to 16 homers. So that's a pretty maybe oatmeal-y kind of situation, but you know, oatmeal at this point in the draft tastes really exciting. Well, yeah, it's deep, deep leagues. It's more mono league and draft and hold centric. I don't know if there's enough ceiling to be excited, even in a typical 15-team league where you have cuts.

I don't know, dude. He's a guy who strikes out 16% of the time and has non-zero power. If he starts going on a 22, 25 homer pace, they're gonna just give him one of these jobs. They can give him first base. They could. I think what's tricky is figuring out, you know, if Royce Lewis is healthy,

which is a big if, if Carlos Correa is healthy, which is a slightly smaller if. Then it's a little more crowded because I think they heard, they want to play Brooks Lee somewhere and then you have Miranda and Edward Julian to them. Julian's the lefty, then he could be on the big side of the platoon. I could see it like being fine, but I could also see a lot of scenarios where it's just a lighter share of playing time

than you want. It's late enough where it's not gonna burn you if you end up being wrong about this. Jose Tena, man. I think there is a starter. Yes! Yeah, that's the guy. I was about to say, there is a starter. Yes. Yeah, that's the guy. I was about to say, there is a starter on this list.

There was a question, a follow-up question in our Discord that I think makes a little bit of sense to bring in here. I can't open Discord at the moment because it'll crash my computer in the middle of the show. It's not great. But Jose Tena, being a lefty, infield full of lefties, we wondered who loses time to Ahmed Rosario?

Is it Luis Garcia at second base? Is it Tana? Is it both? I mean, Rosario could play occasionally at second, occasionally at third, and they can kind of pick their spots, and both Garcia and Tana could lose some time. That's one way this could go down. Do you think Garcia did enough second half of last season to at least push Rosario more into platoon status with Tana to begin 2025. Could you see it being something that changes over the course of the year? But initially we're looking at Tana on our weekly leagues and saying, dang it, they've got three lefties coming up this week.

I can't use them because he's only going to start three out of the six games they're going to play. Yeah. Just from a number standpoint, if you have Luis Garcia projected as oops, he does for a one 11 WRC plus, and he obtained a projector for an 89 WRC plus, you know, you would sort of impute some ranges around that for what you'd expect for same handed versus opposite handed. Right. for same-handed versus opposite-handed, right? So you'd expect Tanya to be maybe a 95 to 100 WRC plus guy

against righties, and then Ahmed Rezary is projected as a 94 WRC plus guy, right? So he would probably be better against lefties than Tanya would be against lefties. So just using the projections, you would say that's the most likely outcome. But I did wanna also point out that Tanya is on this chart of, um, second half hard to hit rate.

Yeah. I knew we had one more, one more to dust off. And this is the third baseman by second half hard hit rate. Of course, Riley Chapman Machado who got healthier. Uh, Devers are at the top. Berger. There's Suarez. So, I mean, if you can completely disagree with me and say he got his bat speed back and everything looked good. Viento Suarez ahead of Vientos, but just by percentage points is interesting.

And there's Tanya, which is kind of surprising. And of course, my Maxi V, you can tell that tanya's in a different class there there's a maxi v shelf there where when i talked between riley and vientos all those guys can hit the ball 111 or harder with soares being the worst and most of those guys hitting 113 or harder tanya hit the ball 109.4 in the second half and he belongs in the second tier the second tier is tanya emmanuel revera jazz chisholm, Alex Bregman, who got a little bit froggy here in the second half. Alec Bohm, who's almost as a match for Bregman except in terms of barrel rate. Junior Cameron Yarrow down there who has the very bold max EV but not quite hard hit rate. Michael Garcia and Ramon Urius. I wanted to point out one

thing. The bottom of this list, Ramon Uririas, 43% hard hit. When we did this for second half, second baseman, the bottom was 36. So third baseman hit the ball harder. You're required to hit the ball harder, but at the very least Tanya in the second half last year was hitting the ball at an average rate among third baseman. Basically, like he, he showed enough power to be a third baseman I think I'd circle Tanya as a guy that could play his way into full playing time I mean, I don't think a team like the Nationals is Trying to make plans for the long term with Ahmed Rosario. That's that's like hey

We'll have him around and if we're competitive then we want him them. And if we're not competitive, then we DFA him or ship him. Right. The key with Ahmed Rosario for his career, he's 20% better than league average against lefties. They're going to play him against lefties. They have four left-handed starting infielders. Easy to just take somebody out. That's, that's the main role, but he's also for his career

below average against righties. He's an 84 WRC plus against righties. So unless they saw something more recently that he has changed, I don't think he's a threat to an everyday role. I think he's just a good veteran bench player on a team with a lot of inexperience. And ideally they're playing all of those lefties as much as they possibly can. And maybe if Tana shows he can handle lefties exceeds projections, you're right. Maybe he ends up just keeping that job all season. So that's the situation with the Nats. And yeah, I'm with you. Jose Tana kind of interesting. Miguel Vargas not interesting for me anymore. He goes in this bucket. I feel sad. I really

feel sad for Miguel Vargas because I thought he was going to be a good big league hitter. It's a little bit like the Royce Lewis. He's been up in the big leagues for parts of three years and he's given us about a full year of plate appearances. I think Vargas's opportunities short of the post trade window were always a little more up and down and like, whereas like Lewis when he's healthy plays Vargas was always like, does he fit? Is someone else hurt? How do we do this? That one kind of Frankenstein year, the year's worth the plate appearances from Vargas

career. 591 plate appearances, 13 homers, seven steals, 22% care rate. Not bad. 11% walk rate. Not bad. But a 175, 273, 312 slash line. It's just weird to get so little out of those plate skills, isn't it? It really is. I mean, and he, last year he hit the ball 110.8. So that's at least sort of major league level, 5.7% barrel late for his career. So like, those aren't numbers that should produce great power. There are numbers that should produce more than 13 homers per season.

I would suggest 22% strikeout rate for his career, 11% walk rate. You know, the chase rate is great. Like I think there's actually enough in those components stats for me in the deepest of leagues to take a shot. But, um, I did want to point out that there are three names that are in a similar situation in terms of there'd have to be a deep, deep situation. I'm taking a shot in the dark and I like them a little better, which is Jace

young, Brett Beatty and Juan Moncada. Now the difference between young Beatty and Moncada and Vargas is that something has to change a little bit for young Beatty and Moncada and Vargas is that something has to change a little bit for young Beatty and Moncada for them to even be in Miguel Vargas's position in terms of opportunity. Right. Yeah. The Tigers young needs to play his way.

The young needs to play his way past like a couple of players. Like he's, he's on the depth chart, but he's in a very crowded part of the tiger's depth chart. So he needs to, he needs to shove guys like Veerling off of his position, which is possible. Brett Beatty needs to be traded or, or not for the Mets not to sign Alonzo. Right. That would be important because then the Vientos plays first,

Beatty gets another shot at third as part of a competition. And Juan Mccada needs to be signed. Right. But they're all going very late. And I think when Mercada is someone I'm looking at in round 40 of a draft and hold right now, and I get the sense that there are enough second division teams, as we like to call them, that just need a third basement where they're going to say, you know, he's not that old.

And we have seen some above like kind of above two war type seasons that are standoff, stand out on the page as recently as 2021 3.7 war right a lot of injuries have slowed him down so I think you could probably talk yourself into Munkata if you're just your team like the Marlins you're like hey like why don't I'm not saying the Brewers are a second division team but well they'd be like they're probably one of the better teams that could, that could consider it. And it'd be such a small deal. If he doesn't work, he's a bench guy. It doesn't work. You DFA him. Like they just, he's in that point of his career a lot sooner than many of us would have

expected. It'll turn 30. I don't even think, you know, the athletics don't seem done and like, you know, Gio Aricella, they did sign, so maybe they're out, but you know, he could fit there. Like, you know. If it gets down to minor league invite, the Mariners would be loved to give him a minor league invite. I mean, I think any team, at that point, then it's just like he's competing for a bench job and maybe he's a third base, second base backup or something. And if that's the outcome, that opens up a few more interesting possibilities.

I suppose I would put Vargas about even with Munkatov because Munkatov doesn't have a job yet. But Beatty and Young have some skills that are interesting and just need more of an opportunity. Right now Beatty is supposedly at the top of that depth chart, but it's just not what I believe. You know what I mean? Like I just don't, I don't think these Mets are going into the season with Brett Beatty planning for 504 plate appearances from Brett Beatty as the depth charts suggest. It's, I can't, I'm not blaming the depth charts. They don't have anybody else to put there.

They can't put somebody that's a free agent or somebody else on it. But like, I just, I don't think that's what's going to happen. Although if it did happen, they haven't projected for 18 homers and a 23 it, but like, I just, I don't think that's what's going to happen. Although if it did happen, they haven't projected for 18 homers and a two 38 average, like, you know, worst things that happen. That depth chart is not at least that corner of the depth chart is not a magnet yet.

It is a dry erase marker. Exactly. Yeah. It's still a working. Not in sharpie. So that is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We covered a lot of ground again today. that is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We covered a lot of ground again today.

We move over to first base for our next preview. Before we go, a reminder, jump in the Discord. A lot of good conversation happening there. You could submit your Hive rankings for the third base position. We'll have the link in the show description and we'll post it in our Discord channel for the Hive ranks. A lot of fun, a lot of good responses coming in so far too. We're looking forward to getting those compiled and finding some surprises along the way. in our Discord channel for the hive ranks. A lot of fun, a lot of good responses coming in so far too.

We're looking forward to getting those compiled and finding some surprises along the way. You can find Eno on bluesky at enoserus.bsky.social. I am dvr.bsky.social. We are back with you on Thursday. 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. From 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.