Rates & Barrels - Back to the Draft Board!

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Rundown2:44 José Quintana Suffers Thumb Injury7:53 Pitcher List Mock Draft Observations11:33 Avoid Overpaying for Steals Early?15:53 Re-Examining Position Depth20:08 Choosing Your Weakness While Playing to Strengths28:49 Going Old and Boring in the Late Rounds36:35 What Happened to Teams That Waited for Pitching?47:18 Adjusting Values for Colorado Hitters & Pitchers?50:37 Speculating On Illness Is Terrible58:18 Prohibition Baseball in Palm Beach Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get a free 30-day trial to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 109. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It's Thursday, July 2nd. We are ahead of the 4th of July weekend, which is nice. It's going to be a little bit different this year. It's going to be staying at home for a lot of people, but still some time hopefully outside and maybe even enjoying a few nice beers along the way. And it brings the start of summer camp, as they're calling it in Major League Baseball.

I'm still not locked into that name, but frankly, among the things I care about, that's near the bottom of the list right now. So I'm not going to expend a lot of energy stressing out about that. How's it going for you on this Thursday? It's good. It's good. The wife has a four-day weekend, so hopefully she'll relieve some of the stress that she's had.

She's doing like three jobs at work. I'm going to go shopping today for grill stuff i might you know my grill is broken that seems like bad timing and the thing that's weird is it's like it's like normally when there's no gas the the you know the lighter still clicks it goes click click click you know and now the lighter's not clicking and it's so funny because my wife is always like that thing's so dirty and it's so dirty and i'm like whatever it's a grill you know like i clean it i try to clean it and then this time she was like it's not working because it's dirty and at first i was like you're wrong i know my grill and then she was like she she like paused for a second i mean she's like

well wasn't there like a lot of fire the last time you did it wasn't there like a lot of stuff falling down couldn't that just have clogged up the either the lighter or the gas part and i'm like yes so yeah that's on the to-do list for today after this podcast all right clean the grill well on this episode we got an injury update to get to we've got a few other il moves that are pretty unique i think to this 2020 season and we're going to talk about the pitcher list mock that we were a part of on wednesday talk about some of the things that really stood out to us, going through an actual draft again, which has been something we haven't done in three months. So kind of fun to get back into that and to see some of the things that have changed as everyone's adjusted to the shortened season, larger rosters, Universal DH, all the things

we've been talking about for the last few weeks, seeing how it played out in a draft was actually a lot of fun. Let's start with the injury updates we saw this one roll through just as we were about to start recording the cubs announced that jose quintana had surgery to repair a lacerated digital sensory nerve in his left thumb i think digital as in finger not digital like electronics. Oh my God. He's a robot. He's not a robot. He's a resume story program. In about two weeks, the injury actually occurred

while he was doing the dishes. And just thinking about your grill situation and day-to-day hazards of cooking and cleaning, a soapy sink full of water or dish bucket full of water actually is kind of dangerous, especially if you live with anyone and they might throw some things in that bucket. We've got a pretty good system at our house. If one of us puts a knife into the sink and it's full of soapy water and you can't really see the bottom we tell the other person that there is a very sharp knife in the sink of soapy water so that is my life tip to avoid a situation like what happened to jose quintana fortunately it's not worse but that

sounds like a pretty significant problem given that it's a left thumb injury for a left-handed pitcher and they had to actually go in and repair a nerve, it looks like. So the note actually says that he'll return to his throwing program in order to find out how bad it is and where he can go from there. So not good news. It is good news for Tyler Chatwood that was just a terrible framing I'm sorry, I'm sorry Jose Quintana I'm sorry that you're hurt

Tyler Chatwood now gets a little bit more solidified as a starter and Alec Mills I think would probably be their fifth starter if they needed one and I like Alec Mills so there's something there i don't have king tana very high up in my ranks i'm not sure he's going to make the top 100

yeah i think he probably falls he's probably the 75 to 80 range on my list as i've been making some changes probably falls back at the top 100, maybe even out completely. I think the tricky thing about rankings and projections for this season, and this has already come up on a few of our episodes, is just that a couple of weeks, even if you only miss two weeks, that's a huge deal. And you can't wait for everyone. You can't wait for prospects to get the opportunity.

You can't wait for injured players to come back. you can't wait for playing time to start falling the way you need it to with kind of speculative late darts so i just think you go from being a late round consideration to undraftable very easily and it could be a thumb injury it could be a hamstring it could be a quad you know it could be a hamstring, it could be a quad. It just leaves us in this quick decision-making position that ordinarily we're not really in. Yeah, and it is getting really crowded at the back end. It's something that's going to come up when we talk about the draft. But it's also something that came up in our roundtable that's going to come tomorrow. One of the questions was, who were some of the players that moved the furthest?

It was about moving people the furthest and some of the players that move the furthest it was about you know moving people the furthest and what types of players we move the furthest um and i was like i think it was in regards to the dh question in particular and i i kind of go back to what we talked about last show is that you're talking about 300 plate appearances here i don't think it's enough to make someone a must draft. Even Ioannis Thespidis is not necessarily a must draft. Like, I don't think he got drafted in this draft. So, did he? Control F.

No, he didn't get selected. He did not get selected. And so, I mean, it's a 12-team draft, and that's why he's probably in that sort of 12-15 range. But I will say, everyone, I think, is coalescing around a somewhat established early round strategy. You know what I mean? There were a lot of similarities and a lot of things that people were doing in the early rounds that I could understand. And it made a lot of sense. The back end was where people kind of did different things. And we can talk about that in a second, but it is the back end where we're going to have the

most trouble. You have to make decisions quickly about relievers, about starters, about prospects or Sam Hilliard types that you put on your bench, you're going to have to, because two weeks equals a month and a half, really. I'm just doing a simple three times. I know it's not quite that, but I need to do something simple rubric so I can be like, okay, it's been a week. It's been three weeks. Yeah, having that process in place, right? Just having a clear idea of this is what i'm looking

for this is how long i have to look for it and i don't see it i'm going to go ahead and make my changes let's talk about the mock first we'll kind of get to the other il moves a little bit later on i think people are pretty burnt out on that particular topic and it's understandable but it's still important enough we should definitely get to it but i think kind of looking at what teams were doing in this mock there's a few weird things that happened right up top mike trout fell to me with the fifth pick that was weird and it's based on the knowledge that his wife is expecting to give birth to their child during the season. And that Trout will, of course, spend time at home when that happens. And the uncertainty about how that's really going to work with him coming back to the team. Is he going to be on the paternity list and then on a restricted list for a little while and be gone for a couple of weeks?

Is he going to have to come back and isolate? Those are questions that we're asking because of the pandemic and what's going on this year. And I think that to me was just kind of like a thing that I can't possibly know that. That's a thing we can guess at. We can try to figure it out. I don't think we want to totally dismiss the idea that he could miss more than a few days.

And obviously in a 60 game season missing three to five games is a bigger deal than it would be in 162 everybody gets that but at the end of the day i i don't know enough about how that situation is going to play out to pretend like i i don't want to take mike trout as a top three player and to get him at five just seemed like it was worth the risk yeah i i was i was wondering about that myself and i think it might be overrated because the concern about the um having a child because in in the past i've seen players take as little as one or two days off um i don't know and And in this case scenario, I think there'd be a lot of pressure on him to not take much more than that. Even more pressure than a regular season. So I kind of feel like he might miss a day or two, but so might any of the other guys in the top five. I mean,

we're talking about a day or two. I also wondered, I've seen some people talk about Christian Jelic as someone who might be streakier if you look at the top three Jelic, Acuna, and Bellinger these are the types of players that could hit 400 in two months

Cody Bellinger in fact hit 400 for the first two months of last season that's pretty awesome so is it possible that that um you know people are are throwing darts at the and it's not just darts like you're taking some nobody and making them first you're just saying you know of the top three or four bats in this league you know these are the streakier ones, so I'm going to try to take one of them. The floor is still very high.

Anyway, Betts and Trout going 5-6 definitely was interesting, I thought. Yeah, so the way this draft came together, thanks to our friends over at Pitcher List for building it all out, it was Yellow Chacuna Bellinger, 1-3. Garrett Cole went to jason collette at four that's what left me with trout at five then mookie betts went to clay link at six the back half of the round went to grom arenado francisco lindor went to you with the ninth pick trey turner fell to 10 max scherzer went 11 and then trevor story went to our host nick pollock at 12 so in the first round we didn didn't see starting pitching get jumped up.

We just saw a couple little twists and turns. Nothing that totally jumped off the page. I remember listening to the stream that was happening on Wednesday afternoon. And when Nick had Paul Sporer on, he was talking about Nolan Arenado and how people get way too hung up on the fact that Arenado doesn't steal bases but when you look at his year-over-year consistency in every other category he absolutely is a first round pick and that got me thinking about just stolen bases as a strategy because I didn't go crazy aggressive early with guys that run. I mean, my first four hitters, Trout, Baez, Hira, and Judge

in rounds one, four, five, and six. I think between Baez, Hira, and Judge, I might get a handful of steals, maybe a dozen, maybe 15 in a shortened season. But clearly, I was not prioritizing stolen bases, and I don't feel like that's really

a problem. I mean, I think if everybody else is chasing speed, not being aggressive with speed early might be the smart play. Yeah, but I was a little bit jealous of your speed situation compared to mine. Lindor, I didn't take him because of the speed. I took him because he's well-rounded, and I like to take five-category guys in the first round. Lindor and Trout are probably going to steal about the same, right?

Same-ish? Yeah, they're close. I mean, I would expect Lindor to get a few more. Yeah, okay. But then in a shortened season, that's maybe one or two more. And then I took Jordan Alvarez because I was saying, I just want the best bat here. And, you know, I think Jordan Alvarez, you know, could be comparable to Nolan Arenado in a couple of years in just terms of batting average homers every year.

And then I took Manny Machado because I saw a little weakness in third base, I saw a little bit of a drop-off, and I created a little mini-run where it went Machado, Donaldson, Bryant, Suarez. That was actually satisfying to me. I felt like I got the best third baseman out of that group. And then I took Anthony Rizzo because he fell to me, and then I said, oh, crap. I've got like

eight steals. I mean, it's eight steals. It's hard to talk about the season. I was like, I just don't have enough speed and I looked over at yours and I was like, you know, Hura, Baez, Trout, at least you were treading water better. And then I said, okay, I'm taking

Robles the next time it comes back to me. And then you took Robles. I think the Robles pick is interesting only because I've talked obsessively about him everywhere in the last three months. And generally, I don't think spending a top 75 pick on him in this season is necessarily a great idea. But I do think he kind of fits into this bucket of parachute players where if you need to go get that category, you need to go get steals, and you want to get them from a player whose playing time is really safe, that's what I think Robles brings. And he does bring projectable growth.

You see that in the Bat-X projection, growth. You see that in the bat X projection. You see that in most projections for him. Max exit velocity, his hard hit angle. Then I said, well, you know what? I want to get one good closer, so I got Chapman and on the way back, I was like, okay, I don't have an outfielder yet

and Robert makes sense, but I put Robert in a group with kane um and some other speed uh like some other speed offerings that i thought might be there on the way back so i took ozuna instead and then you took robert i was like god damn now i'm chasing steals. And, by the way, by the time I got down there, I didn't have a second baseman. And I missed out on Moustakas and LeMayhew around a turn where I thought, okay, I'll take Chapman here because I'll take Moustakas or LeMayhew on the way back. And they both got bing-binged.

So what I came out of this feeling was steals are a B, and second base is also a B. I think second base is top-heavy, and that was illustrated really well by Owen Poindexter a while back. It was in his piece that he wrote this winter for The Athletic.

But I think the depth options at second base are viable. It's not a total crap show. If you do wait, I just think you get a nice advantage over the rest of the league by prioritizing. The other thing that was really strange, though, is how much first base drops off, even in a 12-team team league and i think part of the reason for that is a lot of teams will platoon that spot and the more i think about a 60 game season the less i want to deal with guys that are going to sit against lefties right because you're losing maybe 15 to 20 starts depending on the matchups and how that falls so you're losing maybe a quarter or a third of the possible playing

time in those situations. And over 162, you know, those guys can be managed a bit differently. They can end up playing a bit more than expected because of injuries, but less time for that to play out. I just, I don't want to be stuck with those guys going four or five times a week instead of six or seven. And I kind of regret it because you were talking about that third baseman run machado donaldson bryant suarez that was in the fifth round of this 12 team league i took keston hira with my pick before that happened and the alternatives were machado donaldson bryant suarez those were all guys that i was kind of thinking about the reason i wanted here is because well yeah so mean, I sniped you,

and I think I got the Welsh, too. I think the Welsh was on the stream saying that he was going to take Hira, so the timing was fine on Hira. I think I expected at least one of those four, probably Suarez, to come back, but because of all the time off, especially... And you didn't even...

He's on the same ground as everybody else. You didn't even get Vlade on the way back, because Vlade went to right for you so there was five five third baseman went in the in the in 10 picks um yeah i see a little weakness the only weakness i see in your team is in the corners you ended up with yuli gary l yandy diaz miguel andy har are um and maybe braun plays some first or something but you know it's it's an underrated weakness i used to punt first base and just find a guy but more and more teams are punting first base and platooning and just finding guys and that means that because fantasy is always another level above um what the reallife teams are doing,

that means that the pool of really starting first baseman you want is shrinking. I'm not saying that I took Rizzo where I took him because I was worried about first base. I actually took him because he was valued in my auction values. I used ATC on the Fangraphs auction calculator. He was a $20 player, and we were picking $10 players. Yeah. Yeah, I like Rizzo quite a bit this year because everyday playing time, high batting average floor.

I think we've compared him maybe to like Freddie Freeman, like a cheaper version of Freddie Freeman, especially when you shorten up the season. I think they could end up being pretty similar in value. And Freeman goes in the second round. Rizzo goes fourth, fifth, sixth round of a lot of leagues. So I thought you got good value with that pick overall. Well, here's the other thing, though.

I think the other thing about this is there were a couple points where I thought about first base, and I just got kind of caught up in something else. I didn't have any saves yet in the 10th round. I have ken giles as a top five closer so i felt like i had to go ahead and take giles there to avoid getting completely pushed out on upper tier closers like the last you were the last person to pick a closer i feel like or one of the last there was kind of like that last hurrah you and spore it was giles

edwin diaz and brad hand with the last few picks of the 10th round. And then Nick Anderson went to Collette before I picked in the 11th. And then Kimbrel Neris followed that. But that was the last push. I am out on hand. I'm out on hand with Karinczak there and hand throwing 90, Pooh. I'm a little out on him. So I wanted to get above that.

So I got Chapman above that. And then I grabbed naris in the middle of that and this is this is where there is a segue here i think no matter how deep your draft is no matter what like who you're drafting against no matter what you're doing there's always a choice about where your weakness is going to be. You're always making choices that will create a weakness later. So when I took Jordan Alvarez, I did not take Quetel Marte or Jose Altuve. So I already kind of knew that I was in trouble because

Keston Hira was the only second baseman I really wanted and then there was Muncy and Moustakis later. Right. So I already knew that like the number of second base I wanted after taking it on Alvarez was going to be two or three. Right. Yeah. And I,

well, I think it leads you to a question of where are you most comfortable having that sort of risk or where do you feel like you're able to find the most value during the season? And some people find it streaming, starting pitchers. Some people can find it just in the pool of outfielders. It's different for everybody.

I think there are some structural things in the pool that make it impossible to find something. But there are some strengths you can have as someone playing your in-season management. You can have some strengths that are going to lead you to be better at filling some of those voids than others. Right. And I did struggle with that because I do think my strengths is starting pitching, but I feel my bench was starting pitching. Because I wanted to say that I think saves are obviously the thing that you can do the most in season.

No one will argue me off this position. I don't, I can't, no one will argue me off this position. You like, when you look at how many saves are drafted versus how many are accrued in the, over the season, you're talking about about 30% of the saves are drafted. That means. I agree. I agree with this. 70% of saves are out there. So.

Right. I'm not, I'm not going to fill my bench with relievers there were a couple people there was one person who took five straight relievers to end the thing and you know so one or one of them at least one isn't going to be a starter but you know he was like i'm going to put all my my darts on the bench. And I understand that, and it makes sense to me, but there are names that we didn't draft that will get saves. So what I wanted to do was, my two thoughts were, I'm going to create a weak,

I'm going to, when I took Yaron Alvarez, in my head I said, okay, there's going to be, I'm going to have a weakness at second, and I'm going to have a weakness at reliever. That's where, and I'm going to take my catcher late, but you know, in a 12 team league, I took Will Smith as the second to last catcher and I'm fine with that. I'm totally cool with that. So, but, so I was really focused on second and starting

pitching. And so I took Verlander Castillo as my, you know, these are my aces. I wanted to get two aces. I think I got them. I took Woodruff, Soroka as like two guys I really like in the middle. And then I took endgame pitchers mostly. And so I feel good about that decision. The second base decision I don't feel as good about, but this is what I used my bench for was because I knew I had a second base weakness. I took Lux and Madrigal. And I just felt like I have a little bit of a steals weakness

and I have a second base weakness. So let me just take two young guys that could bust out at the same position and sort of fill my bench that way. I thought I took Senzel too. Maybe there's a little chance he plays second uh there was that was my approach and so there was a already in the third round i'm creating weaknesses but i'm going to start thinking about them and uh and try to mitigate those weaknesses later on so i do have the for the reliever point i agree with what you're saying in terms of the number of saves that are available. Like there are a lot of undrafted saves out there. I think the problem or a counter argument

to relying on those saves is that there's no guarantee that you're going to find them when you're bidding up against several other teams that are in the same position. Right, you may be forced to overpay. So how do you want to handle that? I think this kind of goes back to decision trees and

how you want to structure your team. You can choose that weakness. If you feel like you're good at being a week ahead of closer turnover and you're going to throw a couple bucks at someone right before they get that opportunity in season and you think that's something you do well, go ahead.

Take your chances on this. I also think you don't necessarily need to draft three closers. Some people draft three. I tried to draft three in this particular league to stay out of that fray in theory. I mean, this is a mock. We're not playing it out. So behind Giles, I took Giovanni Gallegos and Will Smith,

but that cost me in the form of having to chase corner bats instead. Right. But look how it played out. I got kind of lucky, I think. I don't even like Yuli Gurriel that much, but he hits in a pretty prominent spot in a good lineup. I don't think they really have anyone there to push him. Yeah, he's not a platoon guy,

so he kind of fits the bill of just like guy who overachieved but boring filler guy that plays a lot and volume and lineup position are key but had i pushed up a first baseman into that range like there's a there's an empty spot where i took gallegos and will smith and sal perez i'm looking around to both sides there's no i don't think there's no first baseman in that group. There might be someone that plays multiple spots whose color sticker thing is a different color. I didn't really miss out on anything there and I was able to take a shot on

two guys that if both end up closing all season, that's a massive value gain. If only one ends up closing all the time and the other is just a dominant high leverage late inning guy that works out fine at that price as well so i just yeah i kind of felt like that was that was an okay way to go and then i got a little bit lucky with choosing the corner as my

weakness i think third base is probably where i made the bigger mistake as much as I like Yanni Diaz I do wonder does he fall into the platoon trap now maybe he was already in it potentially I like where he hits in the lineup I like his skills but was he going to get is he going to get platoon now that they have that extra little bit of depth so yeah and I took the different approach where I didn't take relievers there and I started taking my back end starters and filling out my outfield. So where you're taking Gallegos and Smith, I took Lorenzo Cain, Jose Urquidy, Lourdes Greal Jr., Nick Senzel, Nick Madrigal, Sam Hilliard. So that's what I was doing at that time. And I did not even take a third closer. And I kind of came to this realization when around the time I took Sam Hilliard and Will Smith, which is the 19th and 20th round.

I only had three or four more bench slots left when I'm making these decisions. And I looked at my reliever queue in the queue and I had like 15 relievers. And I was just like you know what five of these six of these seven is not going to even get drafted so I'm just going to pretend like those those are my first pickups I'm going to leave them out there and if I if someone goes on the DL or something happens or I want to drop one of these pitchers like I'll go get a reliever next and these are the types of players that didn't get drafted that I think could be closers

fairly soon. Trevor Rosenthal, who will never get drafted in any league, and is my last pick in some of my deepest leagues. But less than that, Jose Alvarado, Diego Castillo,

is my queue still open? That'd be pretty cool Michael Givens was not drafted Corey Knievel was not drafted Matt Barnes, Jordan Hicks So all those guys Are still out there And Michael Givens is ostensibly the closer To begin the year

If I wanted to make that move right now I could do it. And in the meantime, I got Spencer Turnbull, Austin Voth, Griffin Canning. And if Canning goes back down again, I'll go pick up Michael Gibbons. Now I have three closers. That was my thinking. But it is interesting to kind of think that your endgame could be decided by your third pick. Yeah, I mean, I kind of went old and boring for most of my reserve picks other than Andujar in the 19th,

and I think he's probably UT only in a lot of leagues to begin the season, so just keep that in mind. If you're going to draft him late, just look and see where he fits. This league has two utility spots. It doesn't have a corner and a middle. So that changed the thinking too. Just looking at the balance between 10 active hitter spots versus 9 active pitcher spots. That made me a little bit more aggressive with pitching early and in the middle than I would have been if we had a 14-9 split.

But I also, you know, Masahiro Tanaka, Garrett Richards, Gregory Polanco, Ryan Braun, that entire group of players is kind of old and boring at this point. Polanco is just more of an injury bounce back sort of consideration. But the thing that drew me to both Polanco and Braun, I guess there were two things. The first was the uncertainty about a trout absence, the health of Aaron Judge, who I took in the sixth. I mean, he's a pure problem player. I expect Robles and Luis Robert to be my third outfielder and my first utility constantly for the speed that I'm going to need from them. But I figure between Judge's risk and Trout's risk, I want to have a little bit more playing time in the outfield already at my disposal. And I thought with Polanco and Braun in particular, I mean, the universal DH is actually good for both in a weird way. Not because the Pirates are loaded and they weren't

going to play Polanco, but if they want to rest his shoulder, they can put him in the outfield half the time and DH him half the time and protect him a little bit. Both of those guys are going to have prominent spots in their respective lineups. So lineup position really started to look good to me as we were moving through the later rounds especially trying to looking for three four five hitters who might get a ton of playing time and even if the skills are a notch below where they used to be they're still at a level that plays pretty well in a 12 team format yeah and and those types of players are traditionally undervalued in most drafts that i see especially industry drafts because industry drafts there's a little bit of getting your guy you know and putting your stamp on that guy there was somebody who

tweeted about you know when you think of an analyst who's the name you think of and somebody said spencer turnbull for me so i said alex cobb thank you very much i said no i don't want that um and so to me like not to be too cynical but it also was fine for me to go turn bulb off canning at the end to be like hey i know someone's gonna look at this draft and look at eno saris and look at his late pitchers so hey guys these are my late pitchers you know uh these are the kinds of guys i like so uh you know that was part of it but then also i was thinking that um outfield is very interesting i chose at one point for outfield to be my weakness um i think marzell azuna as a number one is fine and him going to one of the better hitting parks he's ever played and i think i'm I'm sort of excited to see what he does this year.

But obviously, a starting outfield of Razuna, Kane, and Gurriel is a bit of a weakness. That's why I took Senzel and Hilliard later as sort of upside picks. But if you pick near the back end of the first round, you're very likely to be put in the position where outfield is your weakness. I'm just looking at the way this works because the top five outfielders, you know, Jelicic, Kunia, Bellinger, Trout, and Betts go in the very front of the first round, right? So that means if you're in the back end of the first round, you're not likely to pick an outfielder unless you're the team that gets Soto. And I considered Soto against Lindor, actually,

but he didn't get back to me as a second pick. So that means there's going to be a break, and there's a bit of a tear there after Soto, unless you really want to put Harper and Martinez there. But in this draft and in a lot of drafts, Harper and Martinez end up going to guys that took outfielders in the first round you know like going at the beginning part of the thing again and starling marty in the third starts going before you before i even got to it so i didn't even really have a choice

there was not there's only one choice of an outfielder that i was considering at my pick that i didn't take you know what i'm saying that That choice was Gordano Alvarez over George Springer, which I'm actually cool with. Given their ages, given what's going on, I'm cool with taking Gordano there. But that was the one time I could have maybe taken a first outfielder instead of Gordano Alvarez. Maybe you can poo-poo that pick. But other than that, there wasn't a time when I really had an outfielder that i that i that i was considering and it didn't take it it got to the eighth round where i had to be like you know

what i'm i'm gonna take ozuni here because it's getting a little ridiculous so i think that and if you look around the uh me uh casey bubba melchiorior, Pollock, and Sporer, if you look at the first 10 rounds, or the first eight rounds, so I took Ozuna last, Casey Bubba didn't have an outfielder by the eighth round. He's the guy that's picking after me in 10, right? Al Melchior only had Springer.

Nick Pollock had Soto and Meadows, and Sporer only had Laureano. So if you're picking in the back end of the first round, consider that outfield might be a weakness for you, which I'm totally fine with, and I think there's a lot of late-air outfielders that are exciting, but consider that and think about your end-game outfielders then.

I think playing in a league where you only have to use three active outfielders in the lineup makes that even more viable too like you can find three that play a lot that do almost anything like i think that's the thing i like about the outfield pool most years is that if you need some cheap late speed there's probably an older player like a lorenzo cane who provides that he went in the 13th round to you in this draft that kc bubba got byron buxton in the 13th and that's you know that's a little bit that was a little bit bad for me because I had the second base and outfield

problem so I took Lux and I had Mercado Kane and Buxton as targets and I was hoping to get two out of the three and I got one because Mercado went right after Lux and when I took Kane Buxton went right after him so that was a little bit annoying I'd hoped that Buxton would come back to me. I wonder if I'd taken Buxton if Kane would have come back to me. That might have been the better choice. Yeah, I do like that about outfield because imagine needing steals

from first base late. Not good to have that. Or needing a really big power option even from second base light because the second base sleepers are Lux, BGO, Arias, McMahon, Wong, Madrigal, Kingery, Solak. Nobody there is going to really move the needle power-wise.

I just think so much of the value of mock drafts, or now more recently, of course, with draft and holds and satellite leagues and all the different things out there where you can actually play it out, best balls, is to see what happens if I do this? What happens if I do that? What are my power options going to look like late if I go light on power, heavy on speed? What about the opposite? What if I wait on saves? What if I draft saves early early what if i go eight hitters in a row like you can kind of turn every single draft that you do into an experiment and you take that and kind of apply it to your your future leagues your more important drafts as you move through the process and i'm trying to pull some of the bigger changes here as i look at the results like what what seemed different to you in a broad sense about how players were treated in this mock do you think it was mostly a little extra premium on speed and maybe people being compared to a typical draft of 12 industry people being more aggressive with starting pitching there were teams that waited on pitching to be clear i mean bobby sylvester took

six hitters to start before getting kluber in I mean, Bobby Sylvester took six hitters to start before getting Kluber in the seventh. Yancey Eaton took six hitters before going Hader and Sonny Gray in seven and eight. There were plenty of different methods used. Nick Pollock's not going to take pitching very early. He went five hitters before Paddock in the sixth, which I thought was great value

for Paddock. Yeah, that was great for Paddock, yeah. I considered Paddock or Castillo in the fourth. Yeah, I thought about paddock in the fourth round as well and that was with clevenger and kershaw already on my team so i mean that seemed uh pretty aggressive so i didn't do it i would say that you can still see it in his staff this is the he he built the kind of staff that i used to build a lot when I was like, I can find late pitching. And it's fine, but his ace is Panic.

He's got Wheeler, Bumgarner, Gallin, Caleb Smith, Mitch Keller, Sean Minaya, Michael Kopech, Jordan Montgomery. He needs a lot of those guys to hit. You know what I mean? As much as I love him, and I like a lot of those players, if Zach Wheeler just kind of hums along at a 4-2 ERA

and blah blah blah, he doesn't really have a number two. If Madison Bumgarner doesn't take to the desert like maybe he could, then he really needs Gallin to step up. Caleb Smith throws 90-poo again or Mitch Keller doesn't really figure out the fastball. I don't like the Shamanaya

pick at all. I love Nick Pollock. I will say it again. I love Nick Pollock. I like the shamaniya pick at all i love nick pollock i will say it again i love nick pollock i hate the shamaniya pick um and uh jordan montgomery michael kopech like decent uh you know shots in the dark at the end but you you will suffer if you wait on pitching i think and this is the major change for me as a player over the years has been to invest more in top end starting pitching i know that injury is a risk, and I won't go as far as taking a starting pitcher in the first. So I didn't get Cole like Colette did,

or DeGrom like the Welsh did, or Scherzer like Melchior did, but I still got Verlander or Castillo because I think that top-end pitching is worth that investment. And that was something that did stick out to me. I think that everybody wanted to try and get two ac aces um yeah a lot of people 10 out of 12 teams i would say 10 out of 12 teams or at least 9 out of 12 teams had the 2a strategy so yeah and chris chris towers went flarity giolito glass now nola in rounds three through six he had the second pick so he went acuna rendon and then possibly four

aces like i mean i know we've expressed some concerns that you've had about lucas giolito on this show and glass now his injury history yeah but but if it goes right with three of the four he's in great shape he he kind of inspired me to take castillo where i took him because i like oh as i go one two three it goes one two three four well no he didn't inspire me to but i i was considering maybe a three ace approach and he kind of sniped me on glass now nola so um i did i was aware of that for for starting pitcher thing. But yeah, I would say generally, the starting pitcher early goes,

and then you kind of scroll down, and then sort of 10 through 15, which used to be where I started picking starting pitching rack when I started playing fantasy baseball, now 10 through 15 becomes a place to get your reliever and start shoring up weaknesses. So you see a lot of speed in 10 through 15. That's where Santana, you got Robles. You see a lot of closers.

And then, you know, if you didn't get a shortstop at the beginning, you start to see Anderson, Correa, Seager, Andrews, that sort of deal. So 10 through 15 becomes a kind of mid-round bat territory um and then people start jumping back into late pitching uh that that was the kind of uh rhythm that I found yeah there's some pretty nice pockets like just like we talked about with the run of third baseman late in round five, Machado, Donaldson, Bryant, Suarez group. Right through round nine, I was faced with a choice that was really hard to make. I thought there was a chance I could get both if I did it in this order. It didn't play out. I took James Paxton over Brandon Woodruff.

I have Woodruff ranked a little bit higher. I thought there was a chance that I could get greedy and maybe get Woodruff coming back through in the 10th, and you made sure that that didn't happen. So I guess that's payback. But you inspired a run. It's always kind of fun when you inspire a run, I think. I think it says something good. It says that you took a scarce resource,

and you got the best one. You timed the selection correctly, and you got the thing. And you made other people nervous. You took your preference from a group, and you got everybody else to kind of follow or sometimes it just happens to work out that way. But you basically got the guy you wanted

from a group that you have of similarly ranked players and then you're able to go ahead and because of all those other picks, something else you needed wasn't going off the board necessarily, right? Because the next four people all took starting pitchers there's four picks that didn't snipe a closer right yeah yeah i got my third baseman you guys can all take third baseman right but just yeah leave something a little bit better

that you might need for you at your next turn i really remember that paxton pick because my my perspective was i had to take ozuna because i was having the outfield problem. And I said, that's okay. I see Berrios as someone I want, Sonny Gray, Paxton, Lizardo, and Woodruff, and Montas as like those are pitchers I want. So it's fairly robust, right? I take Ozuna, and then Berrios goes three picks later. Gray goes three picks after that. And you take Paxton, and my nether region titan and i'm like oh come on baby come on it goes paxton lynn luzardo montas i'm like oh please give me that woodruff baby

and i did have woodruff uh above some of the like way above lance lynn um and above bauer and above some of the guys that got taken ahead of him so I was happy to get Woodruff and I think I did okay it's it's okay to also get at the end of a run if you think that you still got in that tier you know yeah I'm actually surprised that Lizardo didn't go a little earlier but this is not a group of all NFBC players it's a group of industry people so sometimes the the group think you see in one part of the community doesn't necessarily permeate the other. And Lizardo and Julio Urias were actually a little closer together than usual. I got Urias in the 11th.

And I felt pretty good about that. I saw a few Rage G chats from you while this was going on. Yeah, the Rage chats were Julio Urias, Luis Robert, and Keston Hira. Those are the times that I – and Robles, actually. So the Robles-Robert one really, really screwed me because that's where I was hoping to get an outfielder for me and some speed. But, yeah the the runs are really interesting um generally like if i was recommending to people i would say i think two aces early is good um i think getting an ace reliever is good um and then depending on the

depth of your league you know consider our different approaches to the back end of your relief squad and decide how you want. Endgame reliever and endgame weakness position are very important. We've even talked on this podcast

how I don't love Madrigal, but in this context he made too much sense. He's an easy cut if you don't like what's happening. If you don't like where he's hitting in the order, if he's Nicky Lopez-ing to start his career, I mean, there's a few ways to work around it. If Hilliard's not the DH,

you know, or not playing regularly enough for me, he's gone. My only fear with Hilliard, and I really like Sam Hilliard, is that Matt Kemp's going to be the platoon partner for him. I can't believe that. Why are the Rockies so rocky? Why do they go out and get an old-ass dude?

Just play the kids. They had to replace Mark Reynolds in some form, so they chose Matt Campbell. Another old dude. What was something that you just jogged free? While you recall that, the other thing I wanted to point out is, I took Aaron Judge in the sixth round,

which if you put an emoji next to every pick on my upcoming rankings, Judge would just be the shrug emoji because I don't know what to tell anybody with him. I don't think anybody outside of their medical staff really knows what's going on with his ribs and how many games he's going to play and how much risk there truly is there.

I just felt like in a 12-team league in the sixth round, that was a place where if I waste a pick in the sixth round of a 12-team league in the sixth round, that was a place where if I waste a pick in the sixth round of a 12-teamer, I'm pretty confident I can find quality players on the wire. I think you get to a high-stakes setting, you get to 15-team mixed leagues where the pool's not quite as nice on the waiver wire. I mean, obviously in an AL-only league, there's a number for every player. I don't think Aaron Judge ends up on my team in a deeper league especially. So this was kind of an exercise in, all right, I'm going to take him here. What happens with the rest of my team?

Do I feel okay about it? Ultimately, I think it worked out. Look how far he fell. I mean, you took him right after Nicholas Castellanos. That's okay with me. right after Nicholas Castellanos. That's okay with me. I mean, on true talent,

Gallo went around earlier. Yeah. We don't know. We don't know health. Stanton went around earlier. I thought Stanton in the fifth was actually good value too. That was a Yancey Eaton pick. But if Stanton's a good value in fifth

and Judge's great value in the sixth, I think I would have Judge ahead of Stanton. I think I have them currently ranked next to each other as I keep going through. Every time I open it up, I look at the outfield list. I stare at that, and I just kind of blink for 20 minutes thinking about it and click over to a different position. Leave the problem for me on the next day. Tomorrow, you.

You got this one. Yeah yeah it's like a bojack with his jury duty notice this is a problem for friday bojack and he that's that's how i treat the the erin judge ranking here's the thing that i got jogged loose i was staring at sam hilliard i wonder if rocky's players rocky's hitters are not as good of a value this year as they are in other years. And here's my reasoning. One, the NL West is a tough division. The centrals are the better divisions. So it's a tough division. Two, if you're only playing NL West and AL West, you've suddenly lost every other hitting park that you might play in. And in fact, other than Minute Maid and Dodger Stadium, you're playing in pitchers' parks.

It's true. When you're not home. And it's hard to go on the road in colorado anyway because of vmi and air density and a bunch of different things that we've just got the altitude of course i mean all those factors the ball just moves differently i don't think i have a three well two is probably good enough now so related point and i thought about this just from a simple shorter season high variance situation. Are you any more likely to take chances on Colorado's pitchers or even just Herman Marquez or John Gray, just a couple of the guys that you like? I mean, does that change any of your thinking?

I think I might push Herman Marquez a little bit. There's still two good breaking balls and a good fastball, and especially in daily leagues, the ability to maybe use him two-thirds of the time. You know, be judicious in the home starts. Try to do it against some weaker offenses. Or do it on a day when the opposing team just flew into Colorado. Maybe if it's early in the series.

That's pretty good. Things like that you could look for. Colder days in Colorado. Early in the season. Cold days, though. Like this season? I'm still like, it's starting out it's march baby no it's not march colorado is weird it could snow and maybe later in the season then

yeah september september snow storms expect the unexpected with denver weather and 2020 yeah you know we things come in threes and we had the murder hornets and coronavirus, so we haven't had the third. Why did I just say that? Why did I just say that out loud? So anyway, I expect something really weird weather-wise. Can the desert kick up a storm where scorpions are just airborne?

In the air. Dust storms with scorpions in them. Like a scorpion haboob? That's it. We've got it. That's our third thing. Sorry to put this on you in the desert. Sorry to people of Arizona and mostly in the Phoenix area.

I'm not wishing this upon you. I'm just hail, hail during an Anaheim game. Yeah. Wow. Wow. It's, it's,

it's scary when you think about it. Well, you know, this, this offers a bit of a national, natural, natural segue to the thing that we were talking about earlier in terms of, uh,

DL list. And because this year is so icky and gross of course uh talking about injury is going to be icky and gross and what we're starting to see now is that players teams are putting players on the il and not telling us why. And so we're left to infer the why. And it comes from an important place that I understand. So Marley Rivera helped release a statement from the league saying, because COVID-19 is not considered an employment-related injury, we will respect the privacy of the players who test positive

or are under evaluation and will defer to their wishes regarding public updates about their status. Without their voluntary permission, we will not disclose any related information. This means two things. One, not everyone on the COVID list is positive. They could just be being monitored for symptoms. And two, we won't know unless they offer that up to us and uh so that makes it really icky because now we're talking about people and testing positive possibly

like just to you know have an example and to know that this is happening right now, we know that, for example, the Blue Jays went over 60 on their roster and that they have people on the IL. So we know that some of them are the people that tested positive in camp and that possibly one of them is Brandon Drury because he was put on a 10-day DL. We know that the Phillies camp had a lot of people, and we can see that Scott Kingery and Hector Neris were on this list of people that were put on the 10-day DL, and we don't have a corresponding injury update,

so you can kind of put two and two together. I invite feedback. Actually, I want feedback from you as a listener because I feel so icky about this, but I also understand that we are supposed to do transaction analysis and that this is valuable information and not everyone has the time to go through the transactions page for every team. They may want to know about this. Is it okay for us to talk about this if we put enough of a caveat on it and say we don't know this for sure.

It's always icky to talk about this, but perhaps this person has coronavirus. How do you want us to talk about it? I'm obviously searching for language when it comes to this. Yeah, I think we could simply report the news. This is something we've run into on Fantasy Baseball in 15. It's our news-based podcast that we run every weekday it's like you don't want to in one breath talk about players opting out or getting sick and then in the next breath analyze what that means in a 12 team mixed league because that doesn't seem right i mean just speaking very candidly to everybody i on the other hand it is our job to tell people what's going on with the

situation i think every conversation we have about fantasy baseball should come by now with the obvious caveat that in a year with a damn global pandemic we know this is not nearly as important as it would ordinarily be that that should go without saying, but I also realize some people tune in for the first time, and I appreciate that, and we just want to make it very clear, like, we don't like speculating on this. I think it is just a gross part of the job at this point. So, yeah, maybe it's just something as simple as saying,

hey, this team put a handful of players on the IL in the last few days it's undisclosed as to why and obviously we don't know when they're going to be back and that's just what it is we can do that we can do that but it is still sort of nudge nudge wink wink you know i mean it's like people understand the implications i guess we can do that that's that's that's fine though do we talk about it if the players talk about it like i think each individual player is going to have a different mindset i'm thinking about um the cubs pitching coach tommy hot if he came out and he was explaining how bad his symptoms were and having to isolate from his family his wife and his children right and he wanted to have

his story shared so people would realize hey look i under 40. I'm a pretty healthy person. And this messed me up. And this messed up my family. And I have the player. I want everyone to take it seriously. Some players are going to come out like that. Other players are going to say, this is a personal thing. I don't want to talk about it.

And I had the player that talked to me that didn't necessarily want his name out there. But he's not a young player. He's a veteran. But he had the four-week-week, this is pretty bad, I can't really get on a bike yet version. That'll be important for us to bring up. The difference between two and four weeks this season is pretty big. If you've got the 10 to 14 days and you're testing negative

and hop back out there version and you're telling us that, then that seems fair game. But I would say just generally we can report who's been put on the IL. And as a blanket statement, I would say that the average return time will be somewhere between two and four weeks. Right. I think there's kind of another related thought here too. I saw, I think it was Travis Sawchick had a tweet. He was looking at the number of tests that were done as the NBA tries to get players into the bubble, looking at the number of positive tests and just saying, hey, look, there's a positive test rate of, I think it was close to 3% for the number of players that went through that process. This might give us an idea of what to expect with baseball.

I mean, I think we're all just kind of looking at this trying to see if it's actually going to work, if it's actually safe. That's a huge part of this, too. It's not just like, oh, let's speculate on the situation. It's not like that at all. We don't want to do that. We're just trying to understand what is really taking place here. So we're all working through it. I would say that if the average for camps,

and this so far seems about average, if the average for camps is about three or four, at this point, I think it's still plausible to have a season because my assumptions are that those three or four are probably going to be at least the hitters at least and maybe maybe the pitchers are at least going to be playing early in the season right so they're not going to miss a huge portion of the season. And two, that there would hopefully be fewer positive tests as baseball brings these players into their arms and hopefully does some education as to best practices in their neighborhoods and what is expected out of them and how they can stay healthy best. their neighborhoods and what is expected out of them and how they can stay healthy best so i am alarmed uh at sort of five in philly um it sounded like three in toronto but there are other camps where it's fewer and if it sort of stays in that kind of three to five range i think it's

still plausible to have a season right and as we've said i'm not trying to be internally yes no no internally like internally they have to have some understanding of when they can't do this like right we don't know where the those boundaries are and that's so i mean that's fine that we don't at this point but um i guess one thing that made me kind of optimistic just reading brit garoli's piece which if you're listening to this show thursday afternoon you've probably seen this piece because everybody's been sharing it and retweeting it it's called prohibition baseball inside the biggest all-star game no one watched i think so eric cressy is a trainer and he had several big league players working out together

in palm beach i think at the time groups groups in Florida of 50 were allowed outdoors, if I remember correctly from the story. And this was a group of players. I mean, it included all sorts of different guys. Verlander, Scherzer, Kluber, Goldschmidt, Stanton, several other big leaguers as well. And I think the key is that they had to distance they had to be safe in order to not infect each other right it was it was a little bit of a an attempt to stay prepared to

play and maybe that should give us just a little bit of hope that you know working for each other trying to keep each other safe a group of players that is about the size of a team was able to do that in recent weeks like maybe that's a positive thing that you know gives us a little bit of hope that as more players come into the fold as health and safety are emphasized that it could be done correctly yeah yeah um and uh there was some there was some fun stuff that didn't make that uh piece because it was funny i i kind of ran to brit when i heard about that league and was like did you hear about this and she's like i'm already on it so uh you know she she deserves all the credit in the world for that that terrific piece uh one thing that um one little side thing that was kind of fun from that was I was speaking with Bryce Jarvis for my piece on him before the draft.

And he mentioned having a little session with Max Scherzer. And I think that's kind of one of the awesome little side notes to this kind of all-star gathering was that there were also college kids and minor league kids that were there um and just the learning process and what that people underwent i mean richard blier is a a really weird pitcher if you actually look at his pitch movements and stuff like he's a very strange reliever and the orioles are amazing at finding these really strange relievers but richard bler was talking about being able to step in against Paul Goldschmidt and ask him how things were going and like how he saw it and what he thought of it, his stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's feedback that you're not going to get normally. Yeah. So there was a lot of learning that happened there that was,

that was probably pretty exciting. And just the idea that it was happening in this Florida high school and they couldn't tell anybody because all these people would show up. I wonder if there was ever anybody that was just walking by that was like, yo, is that Justin Verlander? Is that Justin Verlander pitching to Gian John Carlos Stanton on a high school diamond? Imagine if you were just taking a jog, like if you lived there, or you were somehow affiliated with the school, and you're taking a jog around, and you heard a Stanton homer. Yeah. Like, you'd be like, what on earth?

Yes. Is that a gunshot? Yeah. earth yes it's a gunshot but yeah uh the uh yeah that must have been a fun a fun place to be uh eric cressy is uh a really smart interesting funny um you know top of his uh top of his craft uh trainer i guess you might call him um and, and, uh, but he also includes, uh, aspects of pitch, uh, pitch design. And, um, like I know that Bryce Jarvis's slider took a big leap forward while he was at Cressy's and that was after working with driveline. So, um, you know, uh, Cressy's a really cool guy and that, that, uh, that story is really good. You should check it

out for sure. And you've got a big beer piece that just went up as well yeah beer scouting beer scouting and it's funny because you know people in each market are coming back and saying like oh what about this and what about this what about this and i'm like yeah yeah i love those breweries i didn't mean to slide anybody um at some point when you're 30 cities and 200 breweries mentioned in, you're kind of like, it was 6,000 words. I'm like, I could have made this 10,000 words. Yeah, I could have added more. I don't mean to slight places like Four Hands or Narrow Gauge or all the other places that I didn't mention. And there were some interesting choices because I had to choose between making someone a can't miss and making someone a prospect

and not every brewery kind of easily finds their way into one of those two categories. Like I put Grimm in there from New York and I know Grimm is established and they're not really a top prospect. So that was a stretch. But New York in general seemed like a very robust market where most of the places that were hot have become so big that it was hard to find a true prospect so uh you know not like in la there's a place i mentioned called three chiefs that has a two and a half barrel system uh just a tiny system that uh all they do is turn out like imperial stouts with like crazy adjuncts in them and they have like two hour lines every time they do a release like that's a true prospect and i i'm proud of finding out about them uh but at the same time like i had to kind of

i had a mode for this piece and i had to kind of shoehorn everybody into it and the other piece i've got up today is a really fun one about where all the minor leaguers are going to play and my recommendation is to maybe just skip to the middle if you don't care about minor leaguers in general because there's a guy in there ryan dunn from the reds who struck out 37 of the people he saw in high a last year uh that was uh now playing in his local adult league uh and i just can't imagine like going to my local adult league and stepping in the box and being like so who's this guy again oh yeah he's in high a for the reds here comes comes 93 with a hammer. Ah, crud. I mean, just imagine the times playing sports.

I'm sure just about everybody who's played even just adult recreational sports has crossed paths with someone who used to be a really good athlete and still obviously is. That might even be just like, oh, this guy played D1 college soccer, and he's 48 years old now, but he's the best player on the field still. And you're just like, oh, this guy played D1 college soccer and he's 48 years old now, but he's the best player on the field still. And you're just like, what? That's how far the pros is from normal adult league, right? But now, and the sheer numbers are kind of impressive. There's like basically 7,000 minor leaguers that need to play somewhere. And I haven't even counted the college players. So you're talking about, what do you think we're talking about?

Like 15, 20,000 kids looking for a place to play? It's going to be bad, I think. Or good. Like maybe if you can get a spot in your local adult league, go check it out. You might be up against a D1 guy. Yeah, it's going to be fun to get mowed down and just completely destroyed

by players better than you. It'll be like a once-in-a-lifetime sort of experience. I guess I'm a little concerned and we've talked about pitching before, just with pitchers not having a place to play. I've been openly wondering how much less valuable, or maybe

it's comparable, how much does it hurt to have to throw on the side compared to getting game innings in terms of workload and in terms of preventing future injuries i think there's going to be a totally like wide range of what guys are able to do to kind of protect their own health in the long run yeah and i did not put that in the piece because it was starting to get long too and i didn't want to put 8,000 10,000 words on the athletic on one day but the a piece that didn't make that was me talking to Kyle Bode about what it was who it was worse for it was worse for pitchers or hitters and he in fact brought up Ryan Dunn and he brought up

Reese Hines and he brought up Reese Hines as a guy that was drafted fairly high I think fifth sixth round pick went to high high A, did okay, hurt his hammy, didn't play the rest of the season. And so now you're talking about him having 30 or 40 plate appearances for two years if he doesn't play this year. And in fact, Kyle said it was more important for the position players to play. He thought that they needed the development more. He said that basically a pitcher can get more out of training. And maybe this is his bias. He said, I'm as far on the training side as anybody can be.

I do think pitchers and hitters both need to play. But I think a pitcher can get more out of a training session, probably because, and I think he said this in this way too, they can dictate the action when they're playing. So if you're a pitcher and you've spent a year training where you've perfected your curveball and you've perfected your changeup and you've perfected your slider as much as you can in the training session, there are things you'll learn when you start playing again, but you will also maybe be ahead of the hitter who's just been taking swings off

of a machine. Yeah, that's a great point. You really can't simulate that as a hitter. Even with some of the best technology, it's just going to fall short. Not to mention defense, right? How do you practice defense on a high level except for have people hitting 95-mile-an-hour grounders at you? Yeah. It's not pepper. Iers at you yeah it's not pepper i'll tell you it's not pepper pepper is not pepper is not gonna be the same as playing can you i mean just one last thought can you imagine being on the field for for bp

and and just standing out at short and you'd probably want to stand with your heels on the grass as much time as you can. Just think about how much faster the typical ball hit to the left side of the infield in batting practice would be compared to most of what you've seen in your life playing baseball at various levels. Oh, man. I remember we were trying to decide for our softball team who would play third base because almost everyone's right-handed,

and there are some shots down to third base. And it came down to me or this woman who had played D1 softball, and I was like, you? Please, you? And she lost a tooth at one point. Yeah, the bad hops. Like the unmanicured infields. Like the extra dry problem and the unevenness.

I've seen people take the bad hops above the eye, too. We were lucky. We had an ER doc on that team who could get all the stuff to stitch the guy up. Save him a trip to the emergency room. He's like, you'll be okay. Stitch him up on the field? Took care of him on the bleachers, got him off the field, and stitched him up.

He's like, yeah, we saved you a trip to the ER. I mean, there's some crazy stuff that happens out there. I want no business of playing the left side of the infield in slow-pitch softball. I don't think I want to stand in there against a higher guy. No. My reaction time is not good enough i might seek out the local adult league just to see if it's happening here too i'm pretty good like right center fielder in uh slow pitch softball that's that's where i belong as a slow guy that you know can track the ball reasonably well but shouldn't have to do it more than once or twice.

I got to end up in the same position as I played when I last played baseball. When I played softball, I played second and right. That's where you stick your... You don't stick a stud there. They're hiding this. I play a little first base. I'm a big target over there, which is fine.

But yeah, when the lefties come up, usually it seems like the lefties who play slow-pitch softball are all guys that just mash the crap out of the ball yeah so it's the same kind of thing where i'm just like all right i'm i'm playing way deeper than i should because i don't want a bad hop to end me today like that is that is my goal is to not not just get owned by the ball and scorched yeah Yeah, everyone's like, what's wrong with you? Why are you playing back so far? It's like, you don't understand. I do not have good reflexes.

I should not be standing here. This is not a good place for me to be at this point. So yeah, keep an eye on your local leagues. You might find some minor leaguers just getting some work in this summer in places where those leagues are actually happening. I hope everybody out there has a safe and happy 4th of July weekend. Check out Eno's piece. Lots of beer recommendations in that. Plenty of beer recommendations on this show

if you scroll back through the archives, of course. I think I mentioned Bodum from Half Acre in Chicago. I'll have a few of those. Probably have a few Fantasy Factories from Carbon 4 with me this weekend. And good luck to you, Eno, as you try to get that grill up and running. Oh, man. That has jumped to the top of my list suddenly. That's about lunchtime for you anyway. Give Eno a follow on Twitter at Eno Saris. Find me at Derek Van Ryper.

You can get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. You can email us, ratesandbaric at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. You can email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. As promised, we're going to get to rankings. We've got new rankings coming out very soon, so our Tuesday episode will really start to dive into those extensively. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.