Rates & Barrels - A few things we learned in 2020

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss some of their takeaways from the 60-game 2020 season -- including the need for making quicker decisions and their plans to increase the value placed on multi-position players in the future -- before answering a series of mailbag questions. Rundown4:57 Roster Churn & Quick Decisions9:56 Tony Gonsolin’s 2021 Outlook13:17 Increasing Weight on Multi-Position Players17:22 Projecting Jake Cronenworth in 202121:16 Revisiting 'Punting' Saves30:59 Adjusting to Universal DH36:03 Kyle Lewis as a Fringe Top-25 Hitter?46:40 Keston Hiura & Second-Base Depth Concerns54:08 Is Edwin Rios a 2021 Sleeper?59:20 Future Interest in Justin Dunn Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/month: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 142. It's Thursday, September 24th. We are moving through the final days of this 2020 MLB regular season on this episode we'll discuss things that we've learned this year and how applicable those things might be to future seasons as we try to build better rosters and win more fantasy championships down the road it's interesting to think about that when we're still pursuing some championships over the weekend we'll talk about a few interesting topics that came in via email, including an idea for a possible sign and trade type scenario. So that's a pretty fun thing to get to. Eno, before we get started, how's it going for you on this Thursday?

Going well. We're heading down the stretch and it's been a bad season for me fantasy-wise. I'd have to pull off something to win any leagues this year, and usually I win something like a third of my leagues. I am going to place top half in maybe half of them, and usually I place top half in three quarters. It's not terrible and you know i've i've i've found ways i've learned you know we're going to talk about that i've learned a little bit this year um but um i am just sort of hoping for a bit of a miracle in a couple leagues just so that i come away with some hardware yeah i need I need a little help in NL labor.

I think there are seven teams within eight points of first place, and I'm among them, but I'm kind of at the back of that group. So it could be a mid-pack finish, or it could be a surprising title on the last day of the season. So I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out. One thing I've noticed, the shortened season in mono leagues especially, the chances of being more clustered up in the standings and having the photo sort of finish, I think those odds are much greater because there's a lot less separation throughout the player pool

with distribution of stats being so much more even in a league like that. Tout Wars mixed. I'm trying to hold on to a lead there. Jeff Zimmerman is so pesky because you know he's looking at every possible angle every weekend. He's able to do the math and calculate where he needs to go and figure out how he's going to get there. So every day I look at those standings and I see that lead get a little bit smaller. I think that one's going to be really close going into the last day as well. Before we get into some things we learned this year, though, I think we should talk about the schedule for the show. So with the postseason getting underway next week,

we are going to have shows every weekday throughout the playoffs. It's going to be a lot of fun because it's going to be you, it's going to be me, it's going to be Britt, and we're going to be talking about what we're seeing on the field each and every day for these playoffs, which should be a lot of fun. It's going to be a slightly shorter format. So this change is something that we're doing only for October. We're going to get back to Fantasy Talk, of course, in November. But it's just awesome to have a platform to use to talk about the playoffs because we didn't really

have this set up for a year ago. So I'm just glad we're doing this yeah and i think we've been having fun with brit on fridays so we're going to kind of uh you know tighten that up and make it sort of a quick hitter every morning and uh just uh hang out and enjoy each other's company and your company and um you know just uh they kind of talk about the issues uh we may you may try to throw some numbers in there, but because there's not that much, I mean, I guess there's some DFS, but we're not necessarily a DFS show. Also, a lot of times, I've noticed this writing previews and stuff.

I don't want to say you want to throw the stats out, but it's the definition of a short sample, and it definitely becomes a little bit more like anything can happen. So focusing on perhaps the quality of a single pitch by one starter is not necessarily going to help you better understand how that game is going to end. There's always something exciting happening, though, in the postseason, and I always have this energy

where I want to talk about it. So we're going to record in the morning every weekday. Episodes will go out probably around lunchtime on the West Coast, I would kind of estimate, is about when they'll hit the feeds, hopefully a little earlier than that. But that's the plan at this point. So hopefully everyone here is excited to hear some more episodes

of Rates and Barrels throughout October. Instead of scaling down in October because there's not a lot of fantasy stuff, we're scaling up and shifting the focus to playoff baseball. So let's dig into some things that we learned this season, and there was a good piece by Jeff Zimmerman, naturally, over at Fangraphs, taking a look at some different things that were considered going into the shortened season. And I do think playing the league more like it's a fantasy football league was a general strategy that people were trying to be willing to cut bait when things weren't going well with skills or with roles and saying, you know what, even if this player turns it around on someone else's roster, I'm not holding on to an underperforming player for too long. I'm taking chances and being more aggressive. And I think as I look back at previous years, that's generally been a weakness

for me as a fantasy player is being too patient, being too stubborn, probably with guys that I expected to break out or guys who I expected to get an early season call up. I think the examples from last season, most prominently Kyle Tucker and Forrest Whitley. Obviously, Tucker has gone on to have a nice season here in 2020. But if you held on to him for most of 2019, you played short a roster spot. And that hurts, especially when you have multiple lineup changes per week and you start missing out on valuable at-bats and valuable playing time. So I think the roster churn and that more aggressive sort of approach, maybe you don't have to be as aggressive as you were in 2020. But I do think it's something you should be thinking a lot about keeping it as a skill going forward it's it's a tricky one for me and i know

that it is weakness for me as well and i think that comes from playing sort of dynasty and keeper leagues you you know there's a sort of year bad year phenomenon where in a dynasty or keeper league maybe you find a way to keep them on your bench because they still have value you know in the year where they figure things out again or they are healthy again and so you definitely don't want to just jettison a guy who you think will in the long term figure it out but there is the question of like you know will they figure out this year is there a nagging injury is there something going on i think in the case of a player that's not playing, you know, like a Tucker, it might be easier for me to be like, okay, I've learned this lesson. I'm not going to hold this guy hoping for him to get called up or whatever, whatever. Like there's no obvious reason that, you know, this,

there's no obvious reason that he'll be called up in the near future. And so I need that roster spot. I can understand that, but, you know, Jeff McNeil, uh, for example, even in this short season, you know, what's the, what's the split on him? He, uh, cause I, I was able to pick him up in a, in, in a keeper league, um, you know, for some rentals, but, league um you know for some rentals but uh you know in august he hit 258 with no homers um and uh given that he's old for how much experience he has and didn't maybe have a bunch of natural power or speed you could say wow this is a guy who's not hitting for average uh who all he does is hit for average. I'm going to move on. I mean, if you did that, maybe you lived, but you also missed a 4-0-3 September with four homers, 14 RBI, you know, and 12 runs. Like, that's a pretty useful line there. So,

there. So I like to try and use stat cast to see if someone is healthy and see if they're still hitting the ball like they used to. I like to use strikeout rate to see if there's a big change. I think that Yellich never really got going because you can look at his strikeout rate and see something's wrong there. You know, he's not, something's wrong in terms of strikeout rate and strikeout rate becomes kind of meaningful pretty quickly. I'm not saying that you should have just dropped him, I guess, but maybe when you saw three or four weeks into the season he had a 30% strikeout rate, maybe you could have traded him for decent value back then.

It's something I struggle with. I always want to give a person more time. And I don't want to overlearn this particular thing next year. I don't think in a 162 game season next year in week two, I want to drop a top five round guy because he didn't start out, start out right. You know what I mean? Like I don't want to overlearn from a 60 game season in this particular arena.

Yeah. And I don't know if I ever would have been thinking about cutting someone quite as good as McNeil. I think you could maybe have talked yourself into it in like a 10 or a 12 team league, but any deeper than that, I feel like you're looking at waiver wire replacements who don't bring anything close ceiling-wise. I'm looking back at some of my drops from the season. I mean, the first week in TGFBI was easy because I had a bunch of guys who were either hurt or opted out. I had Chris Sale, Michael Kopech, Joe Ross,

and David Price as drops. It's kind of amazing. That team's actually got a chance to win its league too after losing all those guys right up top. I dropped Tony Gonsolin in week two, which clearly wasn't a good decision based on how things have played out, but

at the time, I'm looking back at the shape of his season. You would have held him for a bunch of zeros. Even if you'd held him the whole time, you would have held him for a bunch of zeros. He didn't start contributing regularly until August 12th. That was when he had the eight strikeouts against the Padres. And that was only four and two-thirds innings. But early in July or late July, beginning of the season, it was really difficult to justify holding on to him.

So you have to accept the fact you will make mistakes like that. While we're on Gonsolin, though, for a second, this is pretty interesting, what he's been able to do so far this year. The K rate is up from last season. He's basically cut the walk rate in half. The swinging strike rate actually supports the strikeouts that we're seeing. It's only 40 and two-thirds innings, and it's going to be probably just under 50.

Once he makes one more start, it's going to be a few postseason opportunities for him, most likely as well. What do you see from him looking ahead to 2021? Because the rest of season projections, projections especially were nowhere close to the amazing ratios that he's put up so far this year i i like him he's north south uh fairly good stuff not um he's sort of league average command um and uh you know i think that maybe the walk rate will be the biggest difference next year but he can survive a larger walk rate. And we still haven't seen him with a season with a league average Babbitt.

So I have a feeling that there's a chance he gets a little bit overdrafted next year. And it is interesting to me how hard he had to kind of push the door to open it. You know, it's surprising to me that he wasn't just in the rotation from the beginning of the year, given his track record so far. So I wonder if he'll get overdrafted next year. I mean, a projection for like a high three ZRA with the strikeout per inning these days is more closer to an average fantasy pitcher than it is to like a top 30.

Yeah, no, I think that's a pretty good point. I think people are also fully on board with the idea that the Dodgers managers are pitching about as well as anybody and they're going to maximize the success of someone. So if he's falling into that 150 to 200 range initially, he's going to move up to the early part of that range, maybe pick 150 as the sweet spot by the time we get into drafts in march worthwhile so pointing out uh 2018 125 125 innings or so 2019 80 innings or so 40 innings this year of course the innings thing is going

to be a real big question for i guess everybody. But I think a lot of times people will look back at their max and be like, okay, maybe that's why the Dodgers even treated him the way they did. He's kind of their new Maeda where he's going to start a bunch and look really great starting and then for some reason end up in the bullpen again. And I think I would project him for like 140 innings next year. Yeah, I think that's fair.

So yeah, a little bit of that Maeda stripling sort of vibe in terms of expected workload. Look, those guys are not cheap, even though they can return positive value. But as you start looking at some other things that you've learned from this year, multi-position eligibility is something we talked a little bit on Tuesday's show. I think even if your league doesn't make it a lot easier for guys to qualify at multiple positions, I am going to place a little extra weight on guys that I can play at multiple spots, especially if it's not two middle infield positions.

Second and short is nice, but second and third is better. Or second and outfield, or first and outfield, at least having more flexibility across the multi-position designations. That's the optimal sort of configuration in terms of being able to easily replace injured players or underperforming players on the fly. It's slightly more important than weekly leagues and daily leagues. I think in daily leagues,

you're, you have a little bit more flexibility in terms of picking somebody up in case somebody gets hurt. Um, but it's huge in weekly leagues. And there's a lot of weekly leagues where the setup is that you can change the hitter for Friday, um,

in case someone got hurt. So you don't get the full zero. And in that case, having a multi eligible guy on your roster is huge because then, oh, someone got hurt anywhere on your roster, you can move guys around and still have a full roster for the weekend. And I think it's just generally something that I will emphasize a little bit more. And I think about it this way, yes, maybe a dollar or two more, but also just think about it this way yes maybe a dollar or two more but also just think about it in preparation so you know in preparation for a draft a lot of times you will sort of highlight the different

players that you like and i think this actually goes from a perspective of building a real life team too you know you kind of think okay who's our shortstop like who who are the shortstops i want or as a team you say who's our shortstop right Who are the shortstops I want? Or as a team, you say, who's our shortstop? And then you kind of go through each of the positions. I think you just need to treat super utility as another position. If you want to be a really good team,

then you need to have a really good super utility guy. If you look at it, the Dodgers have always had Kike Hernandez, who's kind of almost the patron saint of it at this point. If you know if you look at his line he's got five eligibilities usually every year but think of the the uh padres training for jake cronenworth you know asking for jake cronenworth in that trade and a lot of people thought that was a throw in and maybe they got a little lucky that he's throwing he's showing so much power because he used to be kind of a less powerful um just a contact guy but one of the things that

they probably did like about him was he can play a lot of different positions he's played shortstop for them and um you know he ended up playing pretty much every day at second base but the team was better for having jake croninworth on it at the beginning of the season and the position that jay croninworth played at the beginning of the season was super utility and i think if you look at a lot of the better teams out there they do actually address this you know even the giants have almost made it a philosophy where like almost everybody's super utility you know like they go get donovan solano, Mauricio Dubon, you know, like, they're just like, Hey, we want guys who can play everywhere.

So, um, that is something I want to learn. And so when I make my list next year and I have a list of late, uh, short stops and late second baseman or dollar second baseman guys, you know, targets, you know, I'm going to have a super utility target just so that most of my teams have one guy, at least that can get moved around a lot. Another reason, the way I learned this was playing best ball where, you know, having David Fletcher on my best ball team ended up being really, really useful because he's played everywhere on my team in different weeks. And, um, you know,

best ball, you don't actually choose where somebody plays, but it is really important to have multiple eligibility. And it is something that projection systems are not that great at picking up.

So it is worth putting a dollar or two on top of what the projection system says if you want to go get that one guy that can play all over. Yeah, I mean, looking at Cronenworth, if he gets a 10th game at shortstop,'ll likely qualify at first second and short so at least you got corner middle three different spots that you can use him at going into next season as a hitter he's really fascinating because he's shown a really low strikeout rate 14.9 thus far he draws

walks 9.9 walk rate he's He's a little old, of course, as a 26-year-old rookie, but there's pop, there's speed, there's a good eye, there's a lot of balls in play, and there's defensive versatility that can carry his playing time. What do you think a reasonable price slash ADP actually ends up being for Cronenworth as a guy that maybe doesn't have one spot to call his own every day, but plays enough all over the place to come very close to an everyday player's playing time in 2021. I mean, he has an 11% barrel rate. 10% is where I really take notice of your barrel rate. 9% is basically double league average. So, you know, he's got power

and his expected slugging is 100 points higher than his actual slugging. The expected numbers are a little bit broken. If you look at team XWOBA's, 29 teams are underperforming their XWOBA. Suggests to me that XWOBA is broken. So I'll take that X stat with a grain of salt. But at the same time, I like the barrel rate. I think the power is there. He stole some bases. He plays all over. I don't think it'd be crazy to take him in the top 150. Yeah, I think that's reasonable. I'm trying to come up with similar players we've seen in that range in recent years. So I just got a question, and it was for Keeper League, so of course that has some asterisks. But the question was, should we take Fletcher, Cronenworth,

David Fletcher, Cronenworth, or Ty France. I think Ty France is an easy third. But Cronenworth versus Fletcher, and I took a look at it, and I take Cronenworth over Fletcher. Yeah, more power ceiling, right? I think that's the big difference there. Okay, so here's a couple guys that were going around that 150, 175 range. Scott Kingery, he was second, third, and outfield

coming into the season. And I think even though it didn't work out, I think that's a good pick there. You could miss there and be fine. Ryan McMahon had first, second, and third eligibility. I mean, I think those are fair comps for Cronenworth's skill set. And Cronenworth looks a little bit better, honestly,

than those two guys even going into next year because Cronenworth has a better hold on a primary spot. Well, is that true? Kingery felt like he was going to either start in center or third, right? Yeah, and then they decided they liked him better at second, so they flipped Segura to third. But it looked like he had a spot to call his own. I would agree that that was the look. And I guess Kingery, but I think C think cronenworth better track record going in i mean fewer flaws

at least kingery at least had the strikeout rate flaw that we knew about going in yeah those are those are pretty metrics on jake cronenworth player page the only thing that you look at you're kind of like oh is the age you, being just a little older than a typical rookie. But opportunity is opportunity. And I think he has that now in San Diego. So I'll say like that 160 to 175 range out just outside of the first 10 rounds is probably where Cronenworth begins this draft season. And then perhaps if the Padres do something that makes things a little more crowded maybe he falls a little but I think I see more reasons to like him than to pass on him if that

ends up being what it takes to get him here next season let's talk about punting saves I want to know did you feel comfortable punting saves going into the shortened season? Did it change anything about your approach to that particular category, looking back at how you were building teams in July? Well, I did the worst thing in a few leagues, which I can't recommend to anybody. But I did a soft punt where I tried to get the last decent closer that I believed would hold his job all year. But in some cases um those closers ended up being hansel robles and hector naris so i guess i got what i deserved

i think that's the most difficult place to choose closers because yeah they're the guys that flash skills that are close enough to maybe see them in the upper tier eventually, but they don't usually have the track record to back it up. Or there's one major skills flaw. You might get elite strikeouts with an elite walk rate or something, and you can see it just unraveling very quickly for players like that but i liked robles a lot going into the season and he presented a unique challenge for us because he was among those relievers who've been in the league for a while who showed a pretty significant velocity bump last season and i was pretty willing to believe that he could keep it and i think that's part of why he didn't come back this year and turn in the season we expected he did not hold those velocity gains from 2019 into the shortened season in 2020 yes yeah yeah the velocity gains went away and i guess maybe that's a lesson about velocity pop-ups um and he was a lot worse with less velocity so that explains that hector narris i think, was a command question mark.

And in fact, he's kind of worked all the way back around to being, you know, one step out of being. He might be the closer. Like he might be one of those guys that if you've given him 162, he would have ended up with like 20 saves by the end of the year. Yeah, would have taken the had the job, lost the job, got the job back. Got it back. Sort of route to 18 saves where it was like, well, if you were there the whole time,

maybe you were disappointed. If you got him for round two when he kind of took the job back and locked it down, that was probably the better time to have him on your roster. I don't know what it was about Neris. I didn't draft him anywhere.

I understood why people liked him. I just couldn't talk myself into it. He was one of the guys that it was about Neres. I didn't draft him anywhere. I understood why people liked him. I just couldn't talk myself into it. He was one of the guys that I was steering away from in that range. Very much like LeClerc. Yes, very, very much like LeClerc. Big fastball, big split finger, no command. I keep looking at this, though, and I keep thinking, for saves in the future, it's either get in early

pay the premium for the guys that are really locked into the job or go cheap soft punt it as you said and throw a few darts if you get it right you at least have one closer if you miss you load it up and everything else like that soft punt thing gives you more resources to allocate toward building maybe the best offense in your league or to more effectively stream starters and chase two-star pitchers to max out wins at k's and a softer punt than the sort of narris robles situation because you know i've got this league called Barf where I took over for Laura Michaels a while back. And I didn't do too well in it. And I ended up with 15 saves, four and a half points out of 15, just right at the bottom there in saves.

And my closers right now are it's a weekly league. right now are um it's a weekly league so rowan wick uh jeremy jeffress uh anthony bass and ryan helsley i use the word closer colloquially um but uh you know that was a team where I think I had Robles and some other guys and I used four roster spots and a fair amount of FAB on this and I could have used it in other places and it just didn't work out maybe if my FABs had worked out better I mean Bass and Jeffress I didn't even spend that much money on them so I can't complain too much much. And I got like 14 saves. I only have 15 saves on the year. So I can't complain too much. That's what you're talking about.

It's throwing the darts, not spending too much. And I got four and a half points. And I didn't invest a lot. But the big mistake I was was taking Robles. I could have gotten Bass and Jeffress and Helsley and Wick or whatever with no Robles. And I could have taken a better starting pitcher there or something and Wick or whatever with no Robles and I could have taken a better starting pitcher there or something you know what I mean so don't don't do that I think I think the best thing that I'm going to do is what I do usually in labor which

is get one stud and then take a long time off because those middle tier closers are just not worth it and take one stud. So in, in ale labor this year, I took Liam Hendricks and, um, I am one, two, three, four,

five, six, exactly middle of the pack and saves. I have spent some resources on saves in season. I've spent some fab. I, you know, I,

I fab Peter Fairbanks. I fabbed, um, fair amount of those silly Mariners people. I fabbed Jesse Hahn for two bucks. Right now I've got Jesse Hahn, Gregory Soto, and Liam Hendricks going as my relievers. And they haven't given me a lot of saves. Liam Hendricks has 14 my team has 16 but my team has 16 because i did invest in in a big time closer at the top so i would suggest

the same get do stars and scrubs with your closers i know um everyone's suggesting do stars and scrubs with everything so then what do you take in the middle? But I would try and get one really good closer and then peace out for a while on closers. Yeah, I mean, it's a fair question to ask. If you're supposed to spend up early and you're supposed to control the endgame and have the Stars and Scrubs build,

not everybody can go 20-plus and then 5-under for all the players. Who do you take in the eighth round? Well, I'm looking at my best teams right now. And the two guys I had who were in the middle range, they were more than $5 but less than $20, Luke Voigt, that's been nice. He was $7. Byron Buxton was $9 in my mixed tout auction.

And Corey Seeger was $7. And the only reason those guys weren't $12 and $15 is because the room was using the stars and scrubs strategy. Like the $15 players went for $20 plus, and the guys that should have been like $ to 12 were going for seven or less. I think mid-round hitters are the way to go. I think Stars and Scroves makes a lot of sense with pitchers, and then mid-round hitters are good. Like on this team, this labor team, which is second or third, and it's probably going to end up second or third.

I got Lourdes Gurriel for $15. Heck yeah. You know what I mean? I have Nick Solak on the team. I got Hunter Dozier for $15. I'll take it. Sean Murphy, $11. I'll take it.

There's a lot of $10 players out there that are worth it. And a lot of mid-round bats that did well. and a lot of mid-round bats that did well. So I would suggest something where you take a couple starters and a closer in the first six rounds. That means you only have three hitters. It's going to be okay. Then you can take a bunch of hitters. Yeah, I feel more confident in my ability to find hitters

that will exceed expectations between pick 100 and pick 200, then I feel about my ability to completely nail the pitching in that range. I feel like I do fine with the 100 to 200 range pitchers. There are guys that make the leap in that group. I'm not as good at finding them as other people are. Well, I don't know. I think you'll just also find that one out of those two works out, right? So you'll take five pitchers in those 10 rounds, and you get just also find that one out of those two works out, right? So you'll

take, you know, take five pitchers in those 10 rounds and you get two or three pitchers out of it. I don't, you know, I try to find them and I think I do a good job finding them. And I also don't find them, you know, I also have failures in that, in that range. So I, I think, uh, you know, the mid round pitchers and also sometimes you'll find that a guy that you like, if you have a collection of guys that you like, let's say you like five mid-round pitchers, if you wait really long on those, you'll find one or two of them drop because you like a pitcher for different reasons than somebody else, right? So take a bunch of mid-round hitters and then take the dropper mid-round pitcher. You're just not as investing as much in a mid-round hitters and then take the dropper mid-round pitcher. You're just not investing as much in a mid-round pitcher. Yeah. So I think for me, the main takeaway here is I've punted saves before.

I don't have to punt it completely. You don't ignore it. You just spend less if you don't get the top-end closer or closers that you're comfortable with early on in your auction or your draft. Last thing, what did we learn this year? So roster churn to be more aggressive. Multi-eligible position players are more important than ever. Punting saves is actually viable. You just got to be a little more careful about how you do it.

Newly useful DH types. Guys that are finding more playing time than expected because of the universal DH, it leads us to an immediate question. Is it really here to stay? Are we going to have universal DH again in 2021? Because if we do, I think that opens up a lot more value yet again on the hitting side. Yeah, and Jeff Zimmerman made the point that people didn't react to it very well uh or quickly and um that is something that we may deal with i mean as as more calm as the world seems now and as

it seems like i don't think a lot of people are questioning whether or not we'll play baseball next year. There's still going to be a fair amount of stuff that gets figured out in the spring, I think. And if there is a big change in the rules in the spring, even something about playoffs, it could have some impact on, expanded playoffs could have an impact on fantasy you know, expanded playoffs could have an impact on fantasy. We'll have to try and figure it out on the show. But, you know, I would say

that if there is a big change in spring, that's a great time to draft. And I agree with Jeff Zimmerman that relying on the projection systems in those moments is a good idea. And that the people that draft a little bit more on feel and gut will be left behind as they struggle to make the sort of mathematical adjustment that it requires to deal with 500, 600 more plate appearances per team. Yeah, it's a big change to have a lot of guys who would have been maybe squeezed out of a start or two per week getting closer to that playing time max as a result of having that universal DH. I really do hope it's here to stay, though. I prefer it so much to the old NL rules.

Yeah, and it is nice to have a few more batters to use, especially in the deep leagues. But, you know, you think about what you thought about Robinson Cano going into the season in terms of his playing time, what you might have thought about someone even like a Garrett Cooper, if he was going to be useful this season. Rowdy Tellez, I was tooting his horn all season. And I know that he plays in a league where they already had a DH, but it requires a little bit of a mindset change or just a math toggle, which is why you can just kind of use depth charts or the bat or whatever it is. Colin Moran, I think, wouldn't have had as much playing time this

year if if not for the dh and the in the nl um andrew mccutcheon ended up playing there a lot although you probably would have uh put him in those pants anyway but matt carpenter and we said that like matt carpenter and tommy edmund there might be a 50 50 chance that one of them isn't playing all year you know what i mean and then the dh dropped in you should have immediately um you know i guess drafted tommy edmund because although matt carpenter got a lot of at bats i don't know that anybody wanted that 182 average and four homers on their roster that was among the things that went wrong in one of my auctions he was a part of my stars and scrubs bill except that that playing time was safe the things that went wrong in one of my auctions. He was part of my Stars and Scrubs build, except that that playing time was safe.

And, man, that was a gift that just kept on hurting. Right process. Yeah. Right process. Wrong results. Yeah. Had a few missteps in the GDD, Gotham Diamond District League that I joined this year.

A rare auction miss for me. But, yeah, I do think the numbers are going to get that adjustment right than feel there's some things you kind of do with feel on draft day or in draft prep that's not one of them adjusting playing time for something like the universal dh something you want to leave to the actual projection systems because they're going to be a lot more precise with those changes talking about erectile dysfunction isn't easy. Usually it just gets brushed off or it's avoided altogether with excuses. But with Roman, it's easy to talk about it.

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international shipping fedex where now meets next all right you know let's get to a few mailbag questions as we discuss top 25 hitters for 2021 on last thursday's show We got a couple follow-up emails. This one comes from Levi. He wanted to know if we perhaps forgot Kyle Lewis and Keston Hira as we were putting that list, that group together. Those guys also didn't come up in our follow-up conversations about the next group. And I think they belong in the conversation with the next group beyond the top 25.

But with Hira in particular, we talked about him a few weeks ago. The biggest issue continues to be the high fastball. The strikeout rate is through the roof right now. I don't think it's always going to be there, but it's the kind of adjustment that it's going to take an offseason to make. I think the mechanics of his swing

need a little bit of refinement. He's kind of got the leg kick and the toe tap. So perhaps that's part of the reason he's not getting the bat into that part of the zone quickly enough. But I do think with Kyle Lewis, people are losing sight of just how much was expected of him when he was drafted, right? The injuries washed away some of those expectations. He was an 11th overall pick back in 2016, had a lot of power coming out of college. He's showing us a lot of growth in the shortened season, right? He's hitting the ball in the air more this season than he did during his brief debut at the Mariners at the end of last year.

The K rate's way down. He's walking a lot. And he's chipping in some steals, too. I mean, 11 homers, four steals, a 277, 378, 462 line. That slug actually seems a bit on the low side compared to where my longer term expectations would be for him so what do you make of what we've seen of kyle lewis in 2020 you know they're they're going in different directions and uh might be weird to say this but i think that um the risk for both of them is batting average.

And it's way more obvious when you're talking about Kesson Hira because he's hitting like 210 or whatever. And Kyle Lewis is hitting nearly 280. But at the same time, with a 28% strikeout rate from Kyle Lewis, 27, projected for 30, ran a 29 in AA, and has had some 30s in the minor leagues. I do think that a more sober projection for him next year might be a 240 or 250 batting average, which takes some of the value away, but if he's actually going to steal bases, and he has four against five

attempts this year, and he's going to stay healthy and steal bases. Uh, and I do think that the past injury, the injury stuff is, is a risk for him. Um, so between those two, I have a feeling he'll be overdrafted next year. And I benefited from four or five shares of this guy, uh, because he hits the ball so hard, but it's a little bit like Tony Gonsolin. I've got four or five shares of this guy because he hits the ball so hard but it's a little bit like Tony Gonsolin I've got four or five shares of Tony Gonsolin I've got four or five shares of Kyle Lewis and I think next year I'll have one share of either

because they'll zoom past due to recency bias they'll zoom past where I'm comfortable with them so if you tell me that next year where do you think he'll go? Because I have him sort of just squinting my eyes here literally and looking at his Fangraphs page and saying 250, 25 homers, 10 steals. That would put him, if that's sort of the projection, if that's what gets spit out when the first wave of projections comes out,

I think that carries him to a top 100 ADP, probably back at the top 100, somewhere in the 80 to 90 range, if I had to be a little more precise. But 80 to 100 is kind of the broader window of where I think Kyle Lewis could go. I think, again, that prospect pedigree and the fact that he's running a Kyle Lewis could go. I mean, I think again, that, that prospect pedigree and the fact that he's running a little bit on top of all that, the stack cast numbers look good.

That's one of the things that could really add a little extra juice to a young player's ADP. Yeah. Yeah. Let me see a little bit of a, would you rather, let's see here. I'm trying to pick up um so we're talking

100 to 150 i think he's going above that i think he's going to be more like the 80 to 100 range you may start a little outside the top 100 and creep up let's say would you rather alex verdugo or kyle lewis that's a nice toss up right off the top verdugo his verdugo showed you enough to where you're not worried about his back injury anymore i would say that um whatever injury risk alex verdugo has kyle lewis has about the same yeah multiple knee injuries versus Verdugo's back stuff. Looking good now in their sort of physical primes. I don't think Verdugo's going to run a whole lot more than he's running now either, so you're not getting a stolen base lift. You're getting a much higher batting average floor.

But the batting average is rarer and more valuable than the 20 to 25 homers. Yeah. Wow. I'm inclined to 25 homers. Yeah. Wow. I'm inclined to say Verdugo. I don't think Verdugo is going to go as high as Lewis, though. I don't think he's going to be way off, but I think price-wise, I think there's going to be more helium on Lewis

because I'm trying to get inside the minds of everybody else and think, okay, what do they care about? They care about barrel rate. They care about X- like okay what do they care about they care about barrel rate they care about x will bow they care about sprint speed they want to see little red dots all over the stack cast page like that's that's what drives people to be more aggressive with players right now verdugo has some of that but he has a lot less than lewis especially with the power metrics right you see a 34th percentile expo but even if that's broken if people are looking at that compared to where lewis is at they're going

to look at him and say i just don't know about that power he didn't run a ton in the minor leagues is he just a mostly batting average guy who's going to have too many ground balls is he gonna have to live on his batting average and where he's hitting in the batting order like i think that's a fair question to ask. If you give me a round, I might take Verdugo easily. Here's another one. Nick Castellanos. Castellanos over Lewis for me is the way to go.

If you're buying that skill set, don't you want a multi-year track record with fewer health concerns? You're also getting a better supporting cast. Smaller strikeout rate.'re also getting a better supporting smaller strikeout rate better park way better supporting cast i mean red's lineup more likely to line up regress into like reprogress or whatever it is re positive regression towards a better batting average than negative regression away from a good batting average yeah i don't see that slash hit 274 for his career i doubt he's going to hit 226 next year no i mean he's on the long list of players with the inflated k rate this year and you look and you try to figure out why and there's just not a not an easy answer to that

question right now you could speculate a lot uh for me it's in-game video is going to be one of those things that people are going to hear a lot about that and that's in-game video is going to be one of those things that people are going to hear a lot about that and that's going to be thrown out there as something that was different that may have caused otherwise consistent good hitters to strike out a lot more and it could be something else like it could be any number of things he was fastballs of his career and most breaking balls of his career part of a common story there um i got a follow-up question on that we've talked about the schedule and how weird that's been this year and not seeing fewer teams do you think seeing fewer teams the scouting reports get a little more crisp when it comes to figuring guys

out but also just weird quirks of the schedule where let's say you like you aren't great against change-ups there's a lot of people aren't great against change-ups. There's a lot of people who aren't great against change-ups. There aren't that many great change-ups in the league. But let's say you are on the Pirates and you have to see friggin' Luis Castillo like a million times that year. For example, I see Castellanos is up to 12% curveballs. It's been a while since he had 10.6 in 2017,

but it's been a while since then. He hasn't been above 10%. Maybe he's just in a division with a lot of good curveballs. You know, you don't, the scouting report only goes to a certain extent, right? Like, let's say, like, you're not going to ask Trevor Bauer to throw his changeup a bunch against Nick, like his Castellanos, because Castellanos,

we wouldn't ask him to do that at all. But you know what I mean? Like you wouldn't ask Trevor Bauer to throw his changeup a lot against a guy who's not that great against changeups because Trevor Bauer's changeup is not that great. Right. Right. So there's an interaction between personnel and scouting report that matters. And this year that interaction is a little bit broken

and will be less broken next year well if we look at the price on castellanos this year just thinking about that versus lewis his adp was 70 he might go a little bit later 10 15 picks people gonna be scared off by the low average but i think they might have very similar adps yeah so that one definitely i could see being like real close similar types of output, too, would be expected from those two players. Let's see, one more for Kyle Lewis. Let's go Kyle Lewis or Eddie Rosario. I'm actually, you know, Rosario's 28 and not stealing bases anymore. If it is really a one-for-one choice,

what I have noticed is Rosario seems to go later and for less than he deserves to go. He's somehow become vanilla. I think people do focus on the fact that the batting average is meh, the steals are gone, and so they're not sure about him. And, you know, there have been years where he just had okay power, not necessarily better power. So if they are actually right next to each other, I think I will take Kai Lewis.

But I also have the feeling that they won't be next to each other. And Rosario will be under drafted again I actually think Rosario is going to be closer to Verdugo in price like a round or two later than Castellanos and Lewis for a lot of the same reasons blue ink on that stat cast page similar profiles I think with those two players as well so okay so we've got a good sense of Lewis not being in that top 50 overall, but probably being in the next 25 or so among hitters after the first 25. With Hira, he was going pretty high. ADP was 40, I think, in July.

Second base is my one personal asterisk. I will have probably a second base plan for all of my leagues next year. I know that the numbers you know aren't so sure that positions matter but second base is also where you put you don't put a top product like it's very rare here is a rare prospect at second base usually second baseman are people that we're going to play in other places and actually i don't think he's a second baseman long term either for what it's worth i i his defense is brutal defensive numbers don't love him yeah yeah but so here is the second base is kind of where you put someone so it would make sense actually that second base might not be as good of a place also i played second base so i know that's where you put your crappy player but

uh you know it is a place where you kind of put someone that you – like Cronenworth, right? Think about how the Padres are built. The Padres built – they went and got Trent Grisham for center field. And Tatis is their star. And they signed a third baseman. They signed a first baseman. And then they just said, okay, well, we've got Profar and Cronenworth and Brian Dozier. And one of these guys

will play second so um i want to have a second base plan next year and so that matters to me a little bit in terms of like the choice between here and lewis like i may just take here over lewis for positional value isal value is another way of saying it. Check this out real quick. Second base earned values over at Rotowire for this season. Three have earned more than $20. Brandon Lau, Whit Merrifield, DJ LeMayhew. They're at 28, 28, and 27, respectively.

They all have eligibility at other spots as well. Then there's a big drop. Chris Taylor is actually tied for third with Kevin Biggio. Then Robinson Cano, who's actually missed time with, I think it was a hamstring injury. And Hira is still in the top 10. Jerks and Profar is eighth. And then Gene Segura, Donovan Solano, and Wilmer Flores round out the top 11. How many of those were drafted as top 12 second basemen?

Like three? Four? Whit Merrifield was the only one who was really close to the top five, near the top of the board. LeMahieu was in the next five. And there's a bunch of non-drafted second. Like Solano was not drafted.

He's doing it a weird weird way to it and even lao was kind of like back end guy yeah lao was fringe top 200 right i mean he wasn't he wasn't i may have a fair amount of shares of lao and hero next year is what i is how i kind of see it i think hero's gonna fall if i had to try and figure out like what his ADP is going to look like, is he still in the top 100 overall? Like, is he actually in the Kyle Lewis range, even though they,

they do pretty different things. I think so. I mean, I, I'm giving them similar projections, a two 50 batting average for both, you know, and,

um, you know, I think I would give Hura more power. You know, 27 homers. I might give Hura more stolen bases, too, but I would give Hura a little bit more sort of collapse risk that he doesn't figure it out, you know? You know who he's kind of weirdly similar to as a hitter, and I think it's bizarre, is Gary Sanchez.

He strikes out even more than Gary Sanchez does. But you have this little premium position. He hits the ball hard, so you get home runs, but you're getting this kind of funky downside in the batting average that you shouldn't really be getting for a player like that. Obviously, Hero runs better than Sanchez and things, but I think that's sort of the risk profile that you shouldn't really be getting for a player like that obviously hero runs better than sanchez and things but i think that's sort of the risk profile that you're looking at you have more ceiling i think even though with hero because look at those before triple a he

he had like he was running 20 strikeout rates like if he unlocks something in the offseason and comes back and strikes out 24 of the time time, he's going to have a monster season. Right. Now we're looking at about a full season's worth of plate appearances in the big leagues for Hira, stretched out over the last two years. He's got a 32 home run, 12 stolen base total so far, a 267, 342, 515 line, and he's pulled it off with a 32.3% K rate thus far. I think the K rate has to go if he wants to keep the rest of that. Yeah, and then you get to the next level of this question. That's something I really want to write about and dig into a lot in the offseason is how much does your minor league K rate matter

when it comes to projecting your long-term K rate in the big leagues? Because I keep looking at those minor league numbers. For a guy with less than three years or less than two years. Right. I mean, there's going to be, there's a ton of different ways it can play out. Obviously, every hitter's unique. You can go through a major swing change. There's all sorts of reasons you could stagnate or get a lot better.

But you keep looking at Hira and you just want to tell yourself how could he possibly strike out this much? But guys in the minors where he was striking out a lot less, they don't throw high fastballs like that. High fastballs with command in high A, double A, how many guys have that?

I mean, if your flaw is something that you don't see in the minor leagues, it's really difficult to get a sense of whether or not you could correct to beat or overcome that flaw. But I see like little bits of progress when it comes to you know swinging less and reaching less and i don't know also you know this is just a thing that happens this is a thing that happens and it's a test for the future and it is maybe something that you may want to think about in terms of drafting for the future is a rookie coming off a great short sample season.

And here only did like 350 plate appearances may not have hit that point where the league found something out about them and they had to adjust back on it. Yeah, I think that's very true. I think it's true of pitchers too, who come up and, you know,

you get eight or 10 starts this year and you look pretty good. The league hasn't necessarily solved you quite yet. They're still going through that adjustment phase. They think of Paddock. There's this weird – I think one of the hardest things about modern fantasy baseball is this interaction between youth and track record and the fact that baseball as a whole is going towards youth. You're seeing more and more debuts every year.

You're seeing more and more share go to players on minimum salary. You're just seeing the average age go down. So it's a game of youth. It's a game that focuses on athleticism, and therefore you need the youth. It's all about velocity and bat speed, and these things are the purveyance of the youth. At the same time, you want to draft someone who's proven they can adjust back

and has done it before. So how high are you going to take Corbin Burns next year? How high are you going to take even a guy like Fran Brevaldiz? How high are you going to take these guys that haven't really done it year in and year out? Where are you going to take Aaron Savali next year? So, you know, I think these things are the hardest questions in baseball. Yeah, rookies in this season in particular, even more difficult to figure out. There's actually a rookie eligible player that someone asked about. Sean wrote us an email and and wrote what am i to make of edwin rios the service stats this year aren't exactly great but he is providing power he's dropped his k rate

this season as well i think he's sitting now with about a 125 wrc plus yeah he's at a 125 at 236 291 569 so a very power heavy skill set from Edwin Rios. He's popped up on low-volume stat-cast leaderboards for us at least once in the past coming into this season, and maybe even one time the year before that as well. Kind of seems like a guy that needs to trade more than anything else. I just don't know if the Dodgers are going to commit to giving him regular run, even if we do have the universal DH again next season. regular run even if we do have the universal dh again next season he's the lefty so it doesn't work uh exactly but jose martinez vibes i will say that he is i think he has moved ahead of like matt baity as someone who could be the dh next year if the National League has a DH next year.

He brings a lot more ceiling than Beatty. There's no doubt about that. So I think if you're looking at... He whoops the ball. He's whooping it again. 12% barrel rate. I like him for leagues like NL Labor. I like him for draft and hold.

I like him in very deep dynasty leagues just to see what happens as a late season sort of pickup and just hold up to the offseason and see if that opportunity arises but he graduates out of that group i think if if you know there's an nldh then he becomes a late round guy um a bench guy in 15 teamers i think he's an ideal guy that you could take you know very late in a 15 round thing and then if he doesn't end up being the dh he's a dropper in your first couple weeks yeah i think that's a fair description of where he's at he could hit 250 with 25 bonds for you that's not bad for an end game pick by the way uh it kind of you're like 250 25 homers like no that's actually really good where you're gonna get

edwin rios going into next season. Thanks a lot for the question, Sean. Next question here came from George. He writes, this is from about two weeks ago. Devin Williams looks like he could be a top-shelf relief pitcher. Yes, he does. He's kind of getting all the accolades for it now. I picked him up for $1.

My NL only keeper league uses saves plus holds divided by two. The league recently voted to increase salaries $2 before next season. Making my evil plan to nail down the bulk of my pitching staff for 2021 this season. More likely to work. Yeah, I mean, Devin Williams is a great pickup. If you picked him up cheap, he's definitely a staff filler. There's a non-zero chance he's getting saves next year too. I don't love the idea of some leagues you know, some leagues you have to sign a guy

for many years or like, you know, if we're talking real baseball, like I don't love, I don't think the Brewers will like offer him one of those like five-year deals or something, you know? Like I just say this because it's a screwball, I think.

And the history of health and screwballers is not a long one. No, it's not, but he's a great stash in those deeper leagues like that. So if you picked him up this year, it's found money at this point. He also has a question though about Luis Garcia. Should we be worried that Luis Garcia is not going to have a regular path to playing time in 2021? I look at him, I see a guy that they're

definitely committed to like luis garcia looks the part of a big leaguer so far this season why will he not have because who's somebody coming back because of kendrick or castro i think he's got that job i mean he seems to be doing um he's a free agent in 2022 so it's a two-year deal so i guess castro could be there but Kibum he seems you know Garcia seems to be a little bit ahead of Kibum and so you just move Castro to third or move Garcia to third

and I would say one of Kibum or Garcia is going to have a everyday role and that Garcia is ahead of Kibum for that right now. I agree I mean we just haven't seen that much from key boom yet this season either. And I know it's tough when playing time gets taken away as quickly as they've taken it away from him each of the last two seasons,

but so far it doesn't look good. There's probably just a, a buy low in principle on Carter key boom. But if I'm projecting who's going to play more garcia because of his defense i think is also a lot safer but also just to not to be like a wet blanket but like you know neither may be a fantasy asset next year i mean you should be more worried about garcia's lack of power right yeah garcia could just be a very empty plays every day sort of player in the early parts of his career he's so young he'll turn 21 in May of next year so the power could

be a couple years away from truly developing and if he's not stealing bases then you're looking at a guy who's average and runs are pretty much the only thing he's doing to provide value because he's going to get stuck maybe in the bottom third of the batting order. But as far as an NL-only league goes, I'm not really worried about how much Garcia is going to play in 2021. And then one more question on the AL side, Justin Dunn, one of the young starters who's had an opportunity in Seattle this season. What are your thoughts on Dunn as we look ahead the next season you know going into season um Dunn and Sheffield had both below average stuff and below average command um Dunn's command was lower than

Sheffield's and I thought I saw enough in Sheffield secondaries to like Sheffield more um I'm gonna stick to that. I haven't seen enough improvement in Dunn's command to believe in him. So I don't. Even when he's pitched well, like 275 ERA in the last 30 days, but 17 walks in his last 19 and two-thirds innings. He just can't get away from those free passes, and it's hard to live on

that really hard to live on that so i'd be very careful with don i see him as more of like a reserve pick for al only leagues next year rather than someone you're going to throw a few bucks at in the end game yeah al streamer type you know could have some uh times where he's playing in like cold oakland or cold seattle and you know can you know have some times where he's playing in like cold Oakland or cold Seattle and, you know, can, you know, have some decent games. But I don't know that I would depend on him in any way. Yeah. So I think we're in agreement on Justin Dunn. Thanks a lot for the question, George. Last question we're going to get to today.

We talked about Trevor Bauer maybe signing this really unique one year deal worth 30 plus million dollars. one-year deal worth $30-plus million. Dan wrote us an email and was asking about the possibility of a sign-and-trade with the goal of getting prospects back in the return. So a team that isn't spending a lot on payroll, has room up against the luxury tax, would theoretically sign Bauer to that one-year $30-plus million contract and then immediately offer him to any team in the league in exchange for prospects. This would be an attempt to buy prospects, not totally unlike we saw the Giants do taking on Zach Cozart's deal to get Will Wilson from the Angels, right? So you absorb 10 plus million in payroll, but you get a first round pick along as part of that deal. So Dan wants to know, is this crazy or is this genius?

Well, first of all, as it's written, it's not possible. There is a rule in the CBA that requires that a player that signs with a new team has to stay with their new team until June 15th. So I do want to give credit though to this as an idea. I think that teams are always thinking about finding ways to buy prospects because baseball has limited spending on the draft and limited international spending. There any way that a team can figure out to buy a prospect outside of those two structures they will do because they want to gather these assets. That's why I think you've seen international spending went through the roof and then kind of came back to the fold a little bit. So I would say that

it's a good idea. It just wouldn't work exactly as you said. You would have to wait till June. And then there's more hurdles. I think you were kind of thinking about some of the other hurdles. Yeah, one thing that crossed my mind is we're not talking about a long-term deal with tens of millions of dollars on it. Since we're talking about an expiring contract, it would be interesting to see if the commissioner's office would actually approve that trade because cash moving in a deal has to be approved by the commissioner's office. We haven't seen anything quite like this before. So there's at least a chance that

it'd get rejected based on that. And then the other thing you have to start thinking about is you've got to wait till June. You're only getting Bauer for about four months. And even though you're not paying for Bauer for four months, he's still a rental. So how good of a prospect or how many quality prospects are you really going to be willing to give up for four months of a top 10, top 15, top 20 starting pitcher? I think that's kind of the other problem that you start to run into as well. And then there's the fact that they could have just spent the money and not given up the prospects which is really important to some teams right but i did want to point out that this has been done before in a few different ways the one that first came to mind was sending it was a hurt pitcher i forget who it was for Tukey Toussaint

to the D-backs or maybe they got a hurt pitcher along with that's what it was they got a hurt pitcher that was due money and the D-backs didn't want to spend that money didn't want to pay that money and so they sent Tukey Toussaint and a hurt pitcher

to the Braves it was Bronson Arroyo It was Bronson Arroyo. So it was Bronson Arroyo and Tukey for Phil Gosselin. Right. And Phil Gosselin was not a prospect at that point, really. He was just kind of like, and he wasn't even a very good utility player. So he was just kind of an extra guy, kind of maybe a 25th man of the best. So I would say that that one qualifiesifies there's also phil hughes

to the padres um phil hughes got traded to the padres along with some cash the twins did defray the salary a little bit hughes was hurt he wasn't going to pitch for the padres although they have him here in a padres uniform i think he did pitch for them a little bit because he had released in august that trade happened in think he did pitch for them a little bit because he got released in August. That trade happened in late May. But he was due a fair amount of money, and I think the Twins didn't really want to pay that. And the Padres got the 74th pick in the 2018 draft

and a minor league catcher named Honexson Villalobos. I'm taking my Duolingo, alright? Jeez. You know, somebody crushed you for your pronunciation of palatable on the last episode. What did I say? Palatable? Palatable. You know what happened?

I also went to England and lived there for two years and I have to tell you, man, things are weird there. What was it? The one that was really funny was Innovative. Oh, I haven't heard that one before. I've heard Aluminium from Top Gear. They're talking about the body of a car,

and I just think Aluminium is weird. You figured out who the 74th pick, though, was, right? Yeah, Grant Little, an outfielder, I I think from Texas Tech. He's been a little old for the level, hasn't shown any power yet. He's kind of like a fringe top 30 prospect in the org. It didn't work out. Yeah, they didn't crush it with that particular pick, but you know there

are players who go in that range who are impact players, so it's a shot worth taking. It's a little bit like the strategy that teams take when they sign young players to extensions you know sometimes you get the first evan longoria deal sometimes you get who is it jonathan singleton yeah and that was a lot less money even than some of those other deals yeah so you know i think teams are willing to do it if if they just offer if they just continually buy prospects for only money, they will eventually get one, and that one will pay for all the other efforts.

That's the idea. Paying Evan Longoria so little in the beginning of his career probably paid for any other missteps they made that were similar. Yeah, I think that's a really good point to make as well. Thanks a lot for the question, Dan. Lots of great questions have been coming in. So yeah, keep them coming. Ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. It's going to be more playoff-specific stuff, of course, for the next month.

But we can always sprinkle in good questions as they come about. On Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. And before we go. I should say if you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic. This is a good time to get one. Theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Get all of Eno's articles.

All the playoff coverage. All the early 2021 fantasy baseball stuff. That will start trickling out here in the weeks and months ahead. Plus of course fantasy football. And any other sports you're interested in as well. If you're enjoying our show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast we really appreciate it if you take a moment to do that takes a minute or two and it goes a long way to support the pod

that is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you on monday thanks for listening.