Rates & Barrels - Day 1 Draft Thoughts

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

Rundown8:09 Spencer Torkelson at 1.111:21 Heston Kjerstad at #2 & Draft Strategy17:50 The Red Sox and Nick Yorke at 17th Overall22:20 The Case for Max Meyer27:28 Austin Martin Lands in Toronto31:13 Reid Detmers and Projection35:11 All Nick Gonzales Does is Hit40:26 Garrett Crochet and the Chris Sale Comp49:02 Mets & Brewers Get Pleasant Surprises at 19 & 2056:02 Bryce Jarvis Goes to Arizona61:53 Carson Tucker and Preparing with Big Leaguers Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Register at lls.org slash bigclimb. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode 103. It is Thursday, June 11th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, the focus will be day one of the 2020 MLB Draft that, of course, started up on Wednesday night. So we're going to break down the overall happenings, some of the decisions that were made. We'll talk about the players from a real life and from a dynasty sort of perspective as we try and put the pieces together and build some profiles on who these players are and what they're expected to become in the years ahead. And, you know, before we started recording, you know, I think part of what made the draft feel good was just that it was the thing that was supposed to be happening this week. And in baseball, nothing that was supposed to happen this season has happened yet. So for four hours or so, things felt like they were in their right place, even though there are obviously some major flaws with the draft system itself. And it just felt good to see highlights and to see

the players getting selected, you know, celebrating with their families, because that was a shred of normalcy in what has become a very abnormal year and abnormal times. Yeah, yeah. And even then there was, you know, real life intruded, you know, we were there was uh comments on twitter about like you know who was doing social distancing right and um um you know they were everybody was zooming in basically um to to get their congratulations there was no none of that sort of in uh studio experience that they usually have where they they have like five or ten or fifteen first rounders that come to the studio and get interviewed right away but you know they did a pretty good job of dealing with that i think um you know they had some pre-packaged zoom meetings

basically some pre-packaged zoom interviews and they had some old footage of Harold running around at a Futures game harassing a lot of these players. That was pretty funny. ESPN's analysis, I thought, was honestly just maybe a little bit better. I think Kylie is really great and they had a good team around him. But MLB did a better job of packaging it and making it maybe slightly more of an event

and making it a little bit more fun, I think. It was a little bit more fun on MLB. I was trying to switch between the two, and I ended up settling on ESPN though myself. There's a couple weird things I noticed. Maybe it's because I work in content creation, but there was a point in which there was an interview happening. Austin Martin was being interviewed by his college coach, Tim Corbin at Vanderbilt. And they were talking to each other on the screen. This was on the MLB network feed.

And there wasn't a name on the graphic underneath either one of them, which seemed very odd from a production standpoint. Yeah, and I remember that actually very well because they were joking about names and i was like i was like oh wait the vanderbilt coach i know who it is it's something corbin what is it and like harold called him marty or something or or the player called him marty as if that's like maybe a nickname for him or something because in the end harold said like have you ever called him tim yeah there was also um well there there were a few weird things.

I was like, I don't get the joke. I don't get what's going on. Well, so it's kind of like if you want, and I understand why MLB's draft can never be quite the same as the NFL draft or the NBA draft. draft because we consume college football and college basketball in a way that is very different than the way that casual baseball fans consume college baseball and then you have high school players sprinkled in of course as well so that complicates things even further but you are developing you're developing the next level of star like that should begin on draft night you should be putting names to faces and making players as recognizable as possible and planting the seeds for you know the fans who

are tuning in like i mean for me to follow along and do that on my own sure i'm paying closer attention to what's happening on the screen than probably the average person watching tuning in and out right it just it just seemed kind of bizarre but it also seemed very much in line with some of the underlying failures of Major League Baseball to promote its stars. It doesn't even know how to begin the process of doing that on a night when literally 90% of the people watching don't even know who the people are who are involved. 90% of the people watching don't even know who the people are who are involved. Well, let's not get too down on them because I think that if you look at, you know, newscasts or,

you know, ESPN, which is very nicely produced, like, you know, you'll see, we're in the age of zoom right now. We're in the age of,

of seeing a lot of people that used to wear suits in T-shirts. You know what I mean? Definitely the production value across the board is down. Podcasts are the one place that we're like, yeah, we're still doing the same thing. We're still here in our shorts. the other thing I will say is that there's a bit of a fundamental aspect to draft to the MLB draft that's always going to make it a different occasion than the other sports which is just that you know you know past the first five you're not really guaranteed that any of them you know get into a major league game you know and if and if you're going to, if you're going to raise the bar and say

that any of these guys are going to like play significant amounts of baseball, um, you know, the percentages start dropping. So, uh, it's a little bit different, like in, in like football, I don't know. It's, it must have a lot to do with why the average career in football is like two and a half years or something, because they have this massive draft for the most part. And it seems like at least for the first, like three to six, um, the three to like three,

six rounds, like those guys all play like immediately. Yeah. Those guys all can have a role right away. Whereas nobody drafted last night would have a role. If there were games today, it's not like players would have signed last night would have a role if there were games today it's not like players would have signed last night gone to their team and been ready to play by friday like that's just not how it works that's not baseball it's it's a much more delayed gratification from a

fan perspective and from a player development perspective but again i and i'm i'm picking knits and i'm not going to keep going down that rabbit hole. I just found that to be particularly frustrating. But there was a lot of fun stuff happening and we're going to break these players down a bit along the way. Spencer Torkelson went first overall to the Tigers. Not really a surprise there. I think there were other options that they could have considered and it wouldn't have been considered ridiculous. It just seemed like Torkelson was the favorite for that role.

And my question to you, this is the same question I put to Emily Walden on Fantasy Baseball on 15 for Wednesday. If you had that pick, who's the player you like the absolute most in this draft class? most in this draft class it's just it's just a like a really uh high bar for success for a first baseman and especially a right-handed first baseman like to me put austin martin up against torkelson and it becomes like a a slightly hard choice for me. I know they announced Spencer Torquison as a third baseman, but it seems most likely that he's a right-handed first baseman. And that's a rare situation in terms of just existing as a starter in baseball and then having a pick that high be spent on them.

So, you know, he does have a 55 future hit tool by Fangraphs and 70 raw power, and that's the combo they're looking for. But they say 40 arm on Fangraphs. I don't know if this third base thing is going to work out for him. And he already moved off a third base in college, so it's like you usually, sometimes there's a college switch where you kind of go back against the grain, but usually

you kind of fall down the defensive spectrum. So it's just, it's all or nothing whereas Austin Martin is like, even if the 60 hit tool doesn't come around, or the 55 game power isn't there, he's played all over the diamond.

The floor for him at least is passable utility man. I would put the percentage likelihood that either plays Major League Baseball for more than three seasons, higher for Martin. Right. Well, there are more things he could do already

that big league teams have valued. Right? There's defensive value alone carries Martin to a lot of different things. So it's a funny exercise, I mean, because the Tigers just need position players. They just need anything, anyone, anything that can change their core in the long haul. I mean, Riley Green was probably their top-ranked prospect entering last night. When you look away from all the pitching they've built up. So it made sense that they were probably going to steer away from pitching.

And I don't think, I mean, I don't know if there was any pitcher that anybody was going to take at 1-1 in this draft class, even though there are some very interesting arms. Max Meyer was the first pitcher to go. He went third overall. But the first surprise, it didn't take long to see it, was with pick two, Heston Kersted goes to Baltimore. And I think on Keith Law's board, he was the 11th ranked player.

If you look at the list over at Fangraphs, he's the only one of those first few picks who isn't already a top 100 guy. I guess Max Myers outside their top 100 as well. But there was a bigger strategy in play, right? Teams have a goal of trying to save a little bit on the signing bonus slot recommendation and then trying to get a better player later on who they can then pay more than the recommended slot for. And it kind of seemed like with the Orioles,

things didn't end up playing out the way they had hoped. Yeah, I wonder if that was the case. I mean, the people were definitely projecting Heston further down, like to the Giants maybe. Even I'd seen him linked, and the Giants they picked 13th so that's a pretty big jump and the thought was we're gonna get this guy for cheaper than the 7.8 million dollar pick value the slot there uh and spend it on somebody in the next in the, what's it called, the competitive balance round, where they had the first pick as, at pick 30, and so the thought was that many people thought that

they were going to try and spend a little bit more on somebody of high school arm was the idea and nick bitsco and who was the other name um i forget i think maybe bitsco and abel yeah abel there was at least a chance that abel could have fallen i don't know abel it seemed like a lot of the mocks though was usually gone by like pick 22 23 a lot of the mocks, though, was usually gone by pick 22, 23 a lot of times. So he wasn't getting quite down to the competitive round. He went 15 to the Phillies here. So maybe it was Bitsko then, and Bitsko ended up going 24th to the Rays. So I wonder if there was a lot of consternation in the Orioles' dugout, the Orioles' front office when that happened.

Because they got Jordan Westbrook, which, you know, fine, college shortstop. But there's no need to go over pick value for Jordan Westbrook because, you know, he's a, he's a four year junior. Like, you know, he's ready to,

he's ready to come out, you know? Right. The kind of player that I would expect to see a team go over slot for would be maybe like a Dax Fulton. If you look at the report on him, he's a six, six high school lefty.

He had Tommy John. So had he not undergone Tommymmy john surgery uh fan graphs suggested you know 15 to 20 overall was where his true talent was if you take a player like that in round two you're gonna have to pay a lot more than recommended slot for a second round pick so that's that's the sort of thing you can do by spending less early. And not to jump around too much, but I think it can work for us to talk about this thing thematically. So right now we're talking about sort of slot, over slot, under slot, and trying to explain that. And I think it's better for us to kind of talk about the players

where that's relevant. So the one that really sticks out for me is Tyler Soderstrom, who also went above the Orioles second pick, but he represents the type of player that you'll have to go over slot to get. A high school position player that has a commit to a large school. Tyler Soderstrom is a son of a major leaguer, catcher who's committed to UCLA. Good baseball program at a time when, you know, of this 2.65 million that Sutterstone was supposed to get, he only gets, I forget what it was, like 100,000 or 200,000 and the rest is deferred. So, you know, even if you gave him slot, he might say, you know what? It's all deferred anyway. Do I want to choose between $100,000 now or UCLA? Maybe I'll take UCLA. And so what worries me about that pick is that

there's rumors that one team was going to try and punt the draft and pick players that they couldn't or wouldn't sign. They would make an offer that looked like it was enough of an offer in order to get the next pick next year when hopefully they had more money. And I just, I worry about that one for the A's because Tyler Soderstrom was mocked to go in the sort of 10-15 type range in a lot of mocks. He was thought of as a really good player that may even want more than his slot. And we know that the A's were not about to pay their minor leaguers. And there's a $2.7 million slot on Soderstrom. And in order to sign him, you have to go over slot to get him.

And, you know, having not wanted to, they did reverse course and are paying their minor leaguers, but the A's would have saved about $3 million in not paying those minor leaguers. So the numbers are too close for me. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not saying that I've heard this, you know, in particular, that the A's are the ones punting the draft. I've not heard that, and I'm not necessarily accusing them of that,

but I wonder if they pick Soderstrom and don't expect to offer him any more than $2.65 million, which is a slot, in which case, I think Soderstrom will go to college. Right, and they would then get that pick back in the first round next year. Which maybe there's a dual thing. Maybe it's we don't want to pay them money right now.

We don't think that there's anybody in this draft that's worth that money. And we think that next year will be better. And next year might be better. Next year might be a really great draft. Because anybody who could get out of this draft probably tried to get out of this draft. Yeah. You know, the player who I actually felt really bad when this happened, and it's weird to say you feel bad for a player selected 17th overall when the bonus recommended slot there is like 3.6 million,

bonus recommended slot there is like 3.6 million but nick york because the immediate reaction in the coverage was oh boston's the team that's punting they took a guy they have no intention of offering that much money to and i guess they i was tracking this kind of loosely i was mostly focusing on what's happening on the screen but it kind of sounded like the Red Sox were telling people, no, actually, we do like this guy. But did you ever kind of get a full understanding of why they took Nick York where they did? It's like, even if they were higher on him than most, this is a guy that on the fan graphs board was ranked 165th for this year's draft class. They took him at 17, i mean as fantasy players we're

all saying hey get your guy but in this case you know you could have got your guy probably in the third round with relative ease yeah yeah i don't uh i don't get it much um you know he's not even on the uh the sort of uh sortable board that they have for the draft at Fangraphs. He's 139th at MLB.com which can sometimes be exuberant about certain players, but not this one. I mean, I guess it's a hit tool

bet most of all, and maybe a bet that he can come off a second and be like a hit tool shortstop which would change his value. But nobody picks second baseman. At least nobody picks high school second baseman. I remember in high school, I was bad, and they put me at second base.

Yeah, it's kind of where they hide it in the fielder sometimes. Yeah, it suggests you don't have the arm. there's not as many great lefty hitters you know you don't have the arm you don't have the defense really and and nobody expects that much offense either from second base i mean there was that whole joke the old adage second baseman hits second but um i don't think uh that one is true anymore um any case uh, I think that the slot stuff and the, you know, who's going to, you know, these high schoolers that were picked and which one of them is going to actually sign with the major leagues and which one is going to go to college.

And, like, which of those teams wanted that is interesting. Because, you know, if you think about resources, though, Boston and the A's are very different. But on the other hand, the A's took a player that everybody would want. Right. So at least there you're kind of saying, hey, if we do get him for the amount, we're happy. And if we don't, that's an okay plan B that we've thought through.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I guess I hadn't even thought of the implication of the 100-plus ranking on Nick York and the idea that they might be the team that's tanking, that was punting the draft. I suppose the second and third rounds will help us you know understand that a little bit better if the if if someone who took a high schooler in the first round takes a another high schooler in the second round it kind of inches it closer to oh maybe they they don't expect to sign anyone this year you know um but um you know i think in the case of of kirstad and and the other thing that's like that's how we got into this whole discussion was about you know manipulating

slot and trying to get under and over um you know it points to the risk of of playing around with that you know what if uh what if you're punting the graph the Nick York says, yeah, I'll take that money, you know, and you have to offer them something, you know? What if they really didn't think Tyler Strowm is going to take the money because he's the son of a major leaguer, he's well off, he's going to UCLA, he doesn't need $2.65 million, he might make more next year, and Soderstrom says, nah, man, I want to get my major league career started.

Like, let's go. And the A's are like, oops. So, you know, punting might be like an idea they had, but in the end, you have to make an offer. So, and for Kirstad, like, you know, if they were doing it for a reason to set up something later, maybe they got screwed. The third pick for me was a major riser.

And I think I understand why. Max Meyer went to the Marlins, and a lot of the analysis focused on the fact that in terms of his fastball and slider, he's major league ready now, but I think that's obviously not a concern for the Marlins. They're not picking him to put him in the bullpen this year. Right, yeah, that's not the long-term home for someone you're taking at three. Right. What I think that the

major toggle here is that Meyer has great slider command. He has a great fastball and that's huge. Most of the guys that were picked in this top round top out 97 plus other than somebody we will analyze later. Max Meyer Most of the guys that were picked in this top round top out 97 plus, other than somebody we will analyze later.

But Max Meyer tops out at like 98, 99. I think he's even hit 100. And he has great slider command. And in a league where they're throwing fewer and fewer fastballs, I think slider command is huge. We know that the Indians prioritize slider command and their pick actually represents that to some extent. Not their first pick. Did they get another pick? Cleveland?

Tanner Burns. Tanner Burns has really good command um and i think um you know i saw a tweet from travis sochik about how it's harder maybe to teach command than it is to uh teach a tick or two get a tick or two from better arm care player balls that sort of thing shape the pitches that sort of thing um and tanner burns comes with great command so max meyer is like someone who comes with that command and a 98 mile an hour 100 mile an hour fastball so i think that's why he went third i don't think it has much to do um with his readiness necessarily and that's a conversation i've actually had uh with some draft procrastinators uh prognosticators

who were moving meyer up their board because of that side of command. Yeah, it was Meyer versus Asa Lacey, I think, for a lot of people. If you were taking a pitcher at three in that scenario, Lacey went fourth to the Royals. Thinking about what Lacey brings to the table, 6'4", lefty, pitched at Texas A&M. able 6'4 lefty, pitched at Texas A&M. Do you see less in terms of the current profile that gives you confidence, even if there's just as much long-term potential value here? Lacey looked good to me, but I just didn't see the –

just from – I'm not necessarily the greatest scout scout, but in terms of just the clips I've seen, I wouldn't necessarily say. I think he's a little bit more sort of power and good movement, but I certainly saw a bunch of sliders that people still swing over, and so maybe he meant to put them in the dirt, but I definitely saw a few more sliders in the dirt from Asa Glacey. And if you watch someone like Patrick Corbinbin you want to see you know premier slider command you watch patrick corbin they're not usually in the dirt it's usually three inches off the bottom corner off

the inside corner you know right a pitch that hitters will swing at you know i think good hitters are going to spit on sliders in the dirt. Yeah, Major League hitters. So I'm not saying that necessarily Ace of Lacey, like they won't swing over a slider or that he can't improve his command. I just think that, you know, one of the things that separates, there's two things that separate these two guys. One throws lefty, one throws righty. You might want to put Lacey higher than Meyer because he throws lefty, but Meyer has that slider command,

which I think he's a little bit better than Lacey's. Lacy also has a more projectable body, which to some teams matters, but when I looked at major league pitchers, I could not find much of a height effect. So maybe it matters with the transition from being a minor leaguer to a major leaguer. Maybe more tall pitchers make it because definitely the group of major league pitchers is taller than average or is fairly tall. I think the mean height is around 6'2", 6'3". And so Max Meyer is below that and Ace Lace is above that. But I think that there are definitely teams.

I did this piece on fan graphs. there are definitely teams you know i did this piece on fan graphs there are definitely teams that do not care and in fact i think look at a short pitcher as an arbitrage opportunity if you look at the number of pitches thrown by short pitchers versus tall pitchers the a's have the most pitches thrown by short pitchers and the phillies have the most pitches thrown by hot tall pitchers i did not uh did not know that had been studied i mean i knew teams had looked at i didn't realize that was something you'd written about i've been writing for a while it's been been around the block a couple of times uh but you know we both love this next pick though yeah i mean austin martin falling to the blue jays at five that's huge i mean for some people

this is the best player on the board i know keith law was among the people that had martin as the number one prospect in this class and as we were saying before i, there's so many ways that he can be a good big leaguer, and that means if it all clicks, he ends up being a great big leaguer. This is the pick that I think from a dynasty perspective, if you want to be kind of aggressive, like let's say you had the first pick in your dynasty draft, I think you could make a very strong case for austin martin now i realize that some of the concerns with spencer torkelson being a right-handed hitting first baseman if his comp is andrew vaughn that's a hell of a comp for fantasy but austin martin has that higher ceiling of maybe being a five category guy who plays up the middle. Yeah, I think so. I mean, his fan graphs, future values are pretty enticing to me. They only have him as a 45 field, which maybe,

like a college player that's played shortstop and center getting a 45 future field. I don't know. If was gonna toggle anything i would toggle that one and if i made that if you make that 50 then he's 60 future hit 55 future game power 50 future raw power 50 speed 50 field 45 arm you know uh maybe he just ends up at at second um or center or something but uh you know definitely has played all over and has a really nice balanced uh you know hit tool forward kind of uh package that i that i think is useful yeah i just i could see that profile blossoming into being a star so i'm definitely excited to see what austin martin ends up doing emerson hancock went at six uh i i don't have a lot on emerson hancock is there anything about him that uh that you really like

um yeah the one thing that's cool is that he was uh you know he's touching 97 um you know and the you know the reason he fell you know fell is always a relative term for people um i will note that mlb had him for um you know overall going into the draft, and so did Fangraphs, actually. And he ended up going sixth. That's not like a huge fall, but if there was a reason he fell, it's because late in the season,

he kind of fell off a little bit in velocity. But I think that a major league team a major league team that is that has good arm care protocols and has good development pitcher development and I do believe the Mariners are one of those teams they would love to get a player like that because if he's touching 97 you don't have to move the max much all you have to do is move his average to 95 which is about average in major league

baseball now is people sitting uh two two ticks away from their uh their max so if he can sit 95 96 hey man there's not a lot of people who are sitting 96 as starters. And so that puts them ahead of a lot of people. And I wanted to put that up against, and just so that we're talking thematically again, I want to just put that up against Reed Detmers, who went 10 to the Angels. Reed Detmers, according to Fangraphs, is topping out at 94. angels, Reed Detmer, according to Fangraphs, is topping out at 94. Now, you can get him to 92, maybe, and he has a good curveball, probably. You know, you watch those pitching ninja type stuff, and I think curveballs are actually fairly hard to evaluate from our angle on those things because curveballs look great you know but because they

have that nice big shape but what if it's easy to spot what if it's not high spin what if it's you know what i mean like i would rather know a little bit more about like the velocity of the curveball itself you know its average sitting velocity i would like to know about spin rate i'd like to know about its movement and i'd like to see those in numbers because you know a huge big curveball doesn't always work in the major leagues sometimes people see it coming and um so if you're not going to move reed detmers you know max velocity much then you're talking about a 92 mile an hour lefty with a good curveball maybe he's madison bum garner he's not somebody said clayton kershaw i'm like no clayton kershaw came into the league with much more velocity than that yeah that's man that's an un that's just it's unfair for just about anyone to take that

comp but to put that on the reed numbers is reckless on top of that like okay yeah uh maybe he's madison bumgarner clayton kershaw like that's a big mantle to put on him dude you're gonna like you're you're, you're going to, you're going to take a pick hoping it's one of those two. Why don't you take a pick that's from a broader class of people, you know, like, um, like look at high spin, uh, good breaking ball righties. There's like, there's like 10, 15, 20 of those, you know what I mean? like kind of you have to like think about the buckets a little bit um and uh and so i like the hancock pick more than i like the detmers pick even more than the four uh the four slots that separate them yeah i think when you're talking about a two pitch lefty right now

and the fastball is just you know good command but not really good at all for for velo you have to develop a change up or you do to find a way to start throwing harder and i think it's possible that both happen it's probably unlikely that both happen and it's hard to take that sort of leap at 10 but i think the comp that I heard during the coverage last night at MLB Network was from Carlos Collazo at Baseball America. I thought he comped Reid Detmers to Drew Pomerantz, which seemed like an actual comp that makes sense in terms of what he actually does

instead of just being like, well, he's left-handed, so it kind of looks like Clayton Kershaw. Yeah, right. In terms of slot, I don't think he looked much like Kershaw either. Yeah. I mean, with the big curveball, and you think about what happened when Pomerantz was a starter versus what happened once he

became a reliever, and it's a little easier to see the range of outcomes with a comp like that. And here's another thing. I guess 60 future command on detmers uh that could be uh kershawian but i think kershaw is more like 70 80 command um so anyway uh that was a thing that that stuck out to me about uh hancock and detmersmers in particular. The little run of picks in between those two guys, 7, 8, and 9. Nick Gonzalez, undersized second baseman from New Mexico State.

A walk-on at a program that's not a powerhouse program by any stretch. He went to the Pirates at 7. And then Robert Hassel III came in to the Padres at 8. I think most of the mocks I looked at had Zach Veen going in that spot. Veen ended up going at nine to the Rockies. So Nick Gonzalez is just interesting because he does not fit the profile either, right? It's similar to Max Meyer being an undersized starter who throws hard and has a great slider. Nick Gonzalez, all he does is hit.

And there are questions about the competition he faced and even just the park factors, the run environment in New Mexico, the altitude, right? Like that's a bit of a concern as well. What do you make of Gonzalez, though? I mean, do you think this ends up being a good pick for the Pirates? And do you like him as a guy that you could see as maybe being quick to the big leagues for dynasty purposes? Yeah, I mean, the thing that's probably exciting for the Pirates is that the hit tool looks pretty decent.

You know, it's kind of hard to look at those power numbers and translate them. You're right, because he did hit 12 homers in 16 games in the truncated 2020 season after hitting 16 in 55 games last year, Nick Gonzalez did. So his slugging percentage was 1.155. Nobody kind of hangs that kind of future on him. But in terms of strikeout rate, you're talking about an 11% strikeout rate,

which is fairly exciting. So, you know, middle infielder who can strike out, you know, 10% to 15% of the time and maybe put some good wood on the ball. Sounds like an Adam Frazier replacement, especially since he's short. I don't know. One thing I will say is that at his draft position,

being a hitter, being drafted as a shortstop, his chances of becoming a productive major leaguer are higher than the pitchers that were taken ahead of him. Yeah, I think that's very fair. And I think being a bit more polished, having success in the Cape Cod League with wood bats, I mean, I think that answers a few questions as well that you don't necessarily have answered yet from the high school players that were taken after him to like Hassel and in Veen. But Hassel over Veen was a surprise again, because every mock I looked at had Veen going earlier of those two. And they talked a lot about it on mlb network i mean how excited are you as a hitter when you land in in colorado i think there's a little bit of that that's it's obviously true because hitting in that park is fun but it comes with the downside of having to adjust the hitting on the road too so it's not just all sunshine and roses being drafted by the Rockies. But I thought Veen, just looking at the video,

he just looked like the kind of guy who's going to be an outstanding hitter for a long time at the big league level. As much as you can watch video and clips of a hitter and just see the ease of the swing and everything, it all looks like it's going to work as it pertains to yeah and there's parts of hassle's profile that are very hit or miss and i don't mean uh hit tool or strikeout rate or whatever he has a probably a better future hit tool possibility than veen but without the power uh necessarily and you know his game power might be average at best for hassle whereas veen looks like

he can have really good uh game and raw power um and more of hassle's excitement like more of his tools are kind of shifted towards tools that are not as correlated to future success in baseball if you know what i mean like uh Hassel is faster than Zach Veen. Who cares? Right. I think speed is nice, better than not having it. But if you're going to be missing a tool, there's a lot of ways to be a great player without speed. Robert Hassel has a better arm than Zach Veen.

There are plenty of center fielders that don't have great arms, and it's definitely a devalued tool in terms of across baseball. And then neither one of them actually is a lock to stay at centerfield, not in the same way that like a Pete Crow Armstrong. Most people think that he can definitely stay at center fangraphs hung a 70 future field on pete cromstrong they they put a 50 future field on veen and a 50 on on hassle so to me hassle is like he better be a center fielder whereas veen is like you know he's got a few few ways he can make it work maybe his bat is better and he's a he's a left fielder right fielder you know what i mean yeah yeah i don't think the arm is so bad either but it's like well if he doesn't move well enough to play center he's definitely going to left either so i i don't know i like

that pick a lot i just felt like the rockies kind of reap some of the benefits of a surprise or two that happened in the first eight picks being able to get Veen in that spot. Top performers in business and sports often attribute their success to their morning routine, whether it's waking up early, setting their goals for the day, exercise, or meditation. But not everyone has the time to do it all. With Hydrant, you can jumpstart your mornings. Hydrant creates flavored electrolyte packets you mix directly into your water to make hydrating your body easy and delicious. Each rapid hydration mix has the four essential electrolytes your body needs. Sodium,

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draft a lefty then somebody with a microphone has to say hey maybe he's chris sale and um lefty then somebody with a microphone has to say hey maybe he's chris sale and um just i really wish that that didn't happen um he only had one appearance in 2020 and the fan graphs report points out he touched 99 in there uh their comp was andrew miller which again seems more based in reality and not just dreaming on on a player's uh future but uh interesting too and part of that sale comp i think is that crochet did spend most of his college career coming on the bullpen so that naturally when you say okay they took this guy to 11 overall he's a 6-5 lefty he throws hard maybe he's a starter someday i understand where the sale comp comes from like i get it it's

just kind of a funny thing it's like you're probably setting everybody up to be a little bit disappointed and that is kind of a crappy way to start a player's career yeah and there were uh definitely people uh mad online about that pick um i don't know, 6'6", 218. There's a little bit of a height comp there too, I guess. Although, I wonder how many pounds Chris Sale weighed when he was drafted. I'm going to predict 40 pounds less than that. I mean, Chris Sale, if you told me he weighed 175 when he was drafted, I wouldn't push back on it, but I'd say, yeah, okay, maybe. Yeah.

Patrick Bailey jumping ahead to the Giants pick at, well, not to skip, Austin Hendrick to the reds at 12 was interesting. Some people would say, Oh, well, they just put together this whole, um, this whole, you know, pitching development program. Won't they take a picture? And I think I actually kind of think the opposite. I think what they're going to try and do in Cincinnati is dominate the $20,000 signings and use analytics and the driveline connections and the driveline brand, basically, to attract a lot of pitchers.

And there's an interesting piece by Dan Zimborski on FranGraphs about what kind of players, what kind of players, what kind of late players make the major leagues? You know what I mean? Like what kind of, he kind of, he did it in a fun way of being like, you know, what would, you know, what would the major leagues look like? Let's field an all-round, late-round team, basically, you know? But what stuck out to me was once you, you know, do something like 15th round plus, let's just look at that list.

What kind of people sign in the 15th round and are good? You've got Josh James, Josh Hader, Matt Strom, Mike Fiers, Zach Davies. It seems like a good group of players. If you look at the same group for hitters, you also have people like Zach Short, Mauricio Dubon, JT Riddle. It's pretty hit or miss. Trying to get a shortstop, that was even 10th round plus. Trying to get a shortstop in the 15th round, you get Zach Short. Try to get a second baseman, you get Dubon, Ty France. This is the kind of hitters you get later on. But pitchers, I feel like there's a lot of pop-up pitchers. And if you go 10th round plus, we were talking about the 5th round here,

you get Brandon Woodruff. If you go 5th round plus, you get Jacob deGrom, Kyle Hendricks, Matthew Boyd, Chris Paddock, Dallas Kike. These are really good pitchers, and we're talking about 5th round plus, you get Jacob deGrom, Kyle Hendricks, Matthew Boyd, Chris Paddock, Dallas Kike. These are really good pitchers, and we're talking about fifth round plus. So I think that the Reds are going to go out there and be like, we're going to dominate this fifth round plus, and we're going to put them into our pitch-shaping gas camp program, and they're going to come out the other end better for it.

So that's why I think they took a high school outfielder with their 12th pick. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And as you kind of look through some other picks in that range, Mick Abel ended up going at 15 to the Phillies. He's ceiling-wise in terms of the pitchers taken. I mean, the high school pitchers, like he was the number one high school pitcher in this draft for, I think, pretty much everybody. To see him at 15 is pretty interesting. I would imagine he's

going to sign at that level. Why wouldn't he? Yeah, I think so. But again, he probably has a commit. I wonder if you're a pitcher or a hitter, I wonder if you're Ed Howard, the shortstop that signed with the Cubs, or Mick Abel, the pitcher that signed with the Phillies, is there a big difference between...

I think there might be. I think a high school pitcher might jump at the money quicker than a high school hitter. I think it makes sense just based on injury, risk, and shelf life. Do you want to be developed by people who will take really good care of your arm, or would you like to run the risk that your college coach wants to win a College World Series and will just destroy your arm in the process like i i think you take the money in this case yeah so um so yeah i wonder if if abel is more likely to sign than howard um so i guess that puts the cubs in our in our pool of

possible punters and and there and there has been um you been some discussion about the Cubs' liquidity, having started the new TV station, not getting TV money this year and not getting money from the cash cow that is Wrigley and claiming poverty. It'd be funny if the Cubs were using Ed Howard as a way to punt. But I did want to point out Justin Foscue, college second baseman, a little bit different than a high school second baseman just because it's more projectable. You have college stats that are easy to sort out. And I wanted to point you to a cool link.

I tweeted about it, but the driveline guys put together a college war spreadsheet that you can sort and do different things with. 2020 is a terrible season and terrible short season, so I'm not going to kill Foscue too much for where he ranked on that board. But in 2019, uh, Foscue had, uh, basically 5.7 war, um, and was ranked right behind, uh, Heston Kierstad. Um, so, you know, he was in a, in a decent place, uh, not too far behind Aaron Zapato and Spencer Torkelson and Garrett Mitchell. So maybe the reason that he was picked ahead of Mitchell had to do with the fact that he can play the infield.

Maybe they wanted to get someone on the infield. Yeah, I mean, thanks to a few surprises. You mentioned, I think, Patrick Bailey to the Giants at 13. Foscue at 14 was a little bit of a surprise. I mean, I think he was a top 30 guy for people who rank prospects. But I keep thinking the Brewers and maybe even the Mets both ended up with better players than expected. Pete Crowe Armstrong went to the Mets at 19. Garrett Mitchell went to the Brewers at 20. It seemed like those were two guys that the scouting community really liked.

Mitchell, in particular, was expected to go earlier. One key difference, of course, to Crow Armstrong coming out of high school, longer path to the big leagues, of course. Garrett Mitchell coming out of UCLA, probably maybe only two years away and i think i think of the players who went in the the middle part of the round mitchell might be one of those guys that plays up quite a bit in keeper and dynasty leagues because of his proximity to becoming a big leaguer yeah yeah we haven't talked etas too much so maybe that's a good theme to kind of refocus on the draft here. But as a – let's see, he was born in 1998, so he's 21.28. But as a 21-year-old, he's going to be a little bit closer.

We talked about how close Max Meyer is. But also just in terms of skill set, being a center fielder, upping his floor, you may want to see more power. Mitchell only hit six homers in his entire college career. But also he only struck out 81 times uh so that is a why don't they just put rates on here man i mean i don't 18 strikeout rate it's not it's not amazing but it's it's it's pretty good um you know that so uh i think uh you know good hit tool good defense you know college age they'll move them fast is what i think yeah probably becomes the best prospect in the brewer system

along the way to passing bryce terang or hedbert perez uh which is the result of them having the worst farm system in the league. But he's a nice prospect in his own right, and I think they were fortunate to have the option of taking him in that spot. The 21 through 29 range, of course, the Astros did not make a selection last night, which still kind of makes me smile a little bit. I don't really know why that brings me joy, but it does. Jordan Walker was a guy that went a bit earlier than expected. He went 21st overall to the Cardinals.

It kind of sounds like he's leaning towards signing as opposing to following through on a previous commitment to Duke. So that's one of the surprises in that range. You mentioned Nick Bitsko in passing. He went 24th overall to the Rays. He's really interesting just because he's one of the youngest pitchers in the draft. And I believe he also kind of like sped up his high school graduating process a little bit. So that's why he's so young.

And this is a huge ceiling pick i mean there's plenty of ways it can go wrong for any high school player drafted but nick bitzko is if you if you like high ceiling pitchers and you want to take the what could go right angle let's say you're picking a little bit later in a dynasty scenario you might want to follow what the Rays did and take that chance. Yeah. You know, I wonder if he was sad about it at all. I mean, reclassifying to get into this draft when most other people wanted to get out. But he just thought that he was ready in terms of his own development, a bit of one of these studiers that kind of studies his own stuff. And then, you know, he kind of marketed himself a little bit. He had to, you know, put videos of himself up on social media and stuff like that in order to, uh, to get the word out because, uh, you know, as a high schooler, uh,

maybe, you know, maybe in Pennsylvania, he'd have been scouted, but you know, all the scouting budgets were, were slashed and stuff. So, uh, to some extent it's a victory for the kind of flat ground type stuff. Uh, flat ground is an app created by pitching Ninja, uh, where pitchers can kind of, um, you know, put up video of themselves and put up video of themselves and show what they've got. And some people see Bitsco as having benefited from that. It's such a great app because we've maybe alluded to this before, even if we haven't talked about it explicitly, but baseball is really becoming such an extreme pay-to-play sort of sport you know the

the means it takes to be on the showcase circuit are increasingly making the game less accessible to everyone and rob friedman what pitching ninja has done by putting that together it's a way for players to get eyes that wouldn't otherwise watch them on them and that's a huge thing to have that available so a tip of the cap to pitching ninja for for doing that and it's it is cool that that may have been a factor in bits go going 24th overall here's here's uh uh here's the the tweet that i have is that david adler says raised draft Nick Bitsko on why posting his Rapsodo data on social media might have helped his draft stock. Obviously, and this is the quote,

obviously I don't think anyone's putting a track man up in my high school field. So, you know, with the lack of the showcases, basically, that would have allowed people to get his spin rate, you know, he kind of advocated for himself, which is kind of a fun story.ated for himself which is uh kind of a fun story uh we talked about uh tyler stordestrom a lot to the a's um aaron zavato to the twins there was a fun graphic up on i think it might have been mlb network or espn i forget now that

uh basically had um their exit velocities uh Aaron Sabato and Nelson Cruz. Is that right? Yeah. I think I remember that, yes. And they were very similar. So, you know, you watch him, you can see it. It's all about hitting the ball real hard. It tends to be a good thing.

That's why you get him. Yeah. But 55 future hit, 35 present hit. about hitting the ball real hard. He tends to be a good thing. 55 future hit, 35 present hit. If he hits that 55 future hit, he'll be a very good hitter in baseball. If he sticks more towards the 40 side of the hit tool, he'll be a little bit more of an all-or-nothing slugger.

I accidentally flew by Bryce Jarvis by the way at 18 he was another one of those guys that as the the middle of the round was playing out you know that was kind of in the range of where he was expected to go the diamondbacks the team that selected him uh he's just a pretty interesting guy too because like a lot of college pitchers think he's fairly quick to the big leagues and uh yeah i just i thought I thought if the Brewers went pitching at 20, he'd be among those guys that was in the mix for them. So I'd looked at him a bit previously,

but I don't know. I think Jarvis, what kind of ceiling do you think Bryce Jarvis has? Yeah, I think that was a, that's a, that's cutting to the point of it. Because I did write a piece about how, how much work he did to get to where he is now. And,

um, he got his sitting velocity up from 89, 90 to 93, 94. Um, and, uh, that got him on the,

on the, uh, in the first round basically. Uh, but he also did pitch design sessions at driveline, um, you know, body design sessions with Eric Cressy, and has revamped his body.

And I did reach out to a talent evaluator and asked, is he peaking? If you're an organization, do you ever look at someone like this and say how much more can we do for him like he unlocked it himself almost he did the work already yeah and you know um his changeup is really good and it comps to tyler beatty's so you're like oh yeah maybe he's tyler beatty right now which is i think he's okay i think he has more command. It's okay. But it's just like sometimes you'd rather pick a guy like Emerson Hancock where you're like, oh, man, that dude can hit 97 and we're going to unlock the rest, you know, which has like weird implications for like what you should do

in high school and college. Maybe you should just, you know, make sure you hit 98 a couple times on the gun and then make everything else look like crap. Or make sure you flash plus on your pitches, but not all the time. I mean, it should be a mark of good instincts and just being a great worker to be able to do that without having someone look over your shoulder. The comp is Trevor Bauer, not because of the pitches and what they're doing, but because

talking to Bryce Jarvis was like talking to Trevor Bauer. That's what I felt. Bryce Jarvis literally said in the piece, I like pitch design sessions more than the game. That does sound like something Bauer would say. Right? He's like, the point is getting better. I love getting better. So I think that's the kind of mindset you want. You want to pair it with dominating the game,

but I'm sure Jarvis has that piece too, to some extent. I know Bauer does. But, you know, for example, the Diamondbacks don't seem to care about this whether or not they're peaking thing. They took both of their picks, Bryce Jarvis

and then in the comp round... I almost don't want to try this last name. Oh, now you're committed. Slade Ciccone? I think it's Ciccone, yeah. Ciccone. The double C is like a K, I think. Ciccone. Slade Ciccone? I think it's Ciccone, yeah. Ciccone. The double C is like a K, I think. Ciccone.

Slade Ciccone, both of them are driveline guys. Both of them up their draft stock tremendously by upping their velocity and shaping their pitches. And Diamondbacks say, sure, come on aboard. The Diamondbacks have a – someone asked me to name my top five in terms of pitching design to pitching development um and i think it went something like yankees astros dodgers as the triumvirate at the top and then i said the reds are threatening to join with their with their

revamping and i think the mariners there if i had a six that i wanted to put on there, it would be the Diamondbacks. They've done a lot of revamping with... Oh, man, who was the guy who came over from the Pirates? Dan Heron's done a lot at the Major League level, but they also have a good group in the minor leagues. I've researched this before. I'm sorry that I'm blanking on the names right now. It's the analytics guy, right? Yeah.

I remember the move and I'm blanking on the name. But also a guy that traveled with the team, so really good with players too. In any case, the Diamondbacks seem to not care too much about whether or not they're peaking, and maybe they are kind of deciding, let's get these guys to the major leagues sooner and pair them with what we got in the major leagues. And, you know, so I thought that was interesting about Jarvis. Even if he is, quote unquote, peaking, the peak looks pretty good.

is uh quote-unquote peaking the peak looks pretty good um he has a plus change up um and a really good spin um decent ride on the fastball uh and now good velocity and what they did at driveline was separate the breaking ball so now he throws a bit of a like a gyro cutter like a cutter that doesn't have much movement but but it's harder, like an 88 mile an hour cutter, 89 mile an hour cutter, and a bigger curveball that is more 12 to 6. So, you know, maybe the Dimebacks are like, hey, if we don't have to do a lot of work, we don't have to do a lot of work. That's great.

Let's do it. The other player I want to talk about, and obviously there's a few guys that went in the first round, there are a few guys that were in the comp A round who we're not going to get to in this episode. But I think he's interesting because of some of the things that were being said during the coverage. It's Carson Tucker. He's the younger brother of Cole Tucker. He was selected by Cleveland with the 23rd pick. And what I thought was kind of interesting is that because there's nothing happening right now,

is that because there's nothing happening right now, the suggestion during the MLB Network feed when they were talking about the Tucker pick was that being with his older brother, who ordinarily, of course, would be playing, probably for the Pirates right now if things were happening, being around him and other major leaguers might have been even more valuable, quite a bit more valuable,

than playing out his final high school season and i kind of thought about that it's like that actually does make some sense like the types of preparation like the knowing what you're supposed to be doing as a big league player and spending time doing that probably prepares you better for your start of your professional baseball career than you know that last push against competition that might not even be really nearly as good as it should be for your development. Yeah, probably in a lot better place

than somebody like a Brandon Nimmo. Yeah, the good comp for just the sake of like yeah being in wyoming and just being basically on a landlocked island with no baseball being played yeah um yeah and uh and interesting to think about what this last year this year of development will mean for these players uh there probably won't be a minor league season for them to step into, and not a single one of them will make a taxi squad because there's no way that, you know, I mean, the only one I could think of is maybe actually Garrett Mitchell making the Brewers squad as the last player, as the 50th man, if they have that sort of 50-man roster idea. And even then, I don't really think so. You know, what do they do with that last year development? Driveline just announced that they will let kids play for free at their new facility.

You know, and I think, you know, there are going to be these sort of unlicensed, unsanctioned, the sort of unlicensed, unsanctioned, but look the other way games that are being played around the U.S. because teams will want those players to continue to develop, but they won't be allowed to necessarily coach at the games. And they won't necessarily want their players there officially because they wouldn't want them to get injured. So, you know, you kind of take your own life into your own hands a little bit, but at the same time, a loss to your development is kind of big. So, well, it's a gray area that I'm going to cover some more and I'm interested in learning more about and talking to more people about I have some quotes in hand I think it's a worth thinking about worth thinking through but in the end it's a game that they want to play and what else they're going to do to some extent so I think we'll see some of those games popping up. One thing I wanted to do is think about these guys in the context of the larger group of prospects.

So where might these guys slot into a top 100? And I wonder if there are that many that would. So, for example, last year, Adler Rutschman, number one pick. Where does he rank right now at the end of the year? You know, top 10, top five, maybe. I mean, at Fangraphs, top five. So, you know, the number one pick, Torkelson, should be, you know, a top 10, top 15 type prospect right away. But after that, it kind of opens up. I mean, you know, number two

pick was Bobby Witt. He's 23rd on Fangraphs. Number three pick was Vaughn. I think they liked him. 37th. Uh-oh, we're already almost dropping out of the top 100. Bleday was fourth, Uh-oh, we're already almost dropping out of the top 100. Blede was fourth, not in the top 100. Oh, not in the top 50 at FanGraphs. Let's see if he's in the top. Yeah, he is. He's 51.

When are we going to fall out? Let me see. Lodolo is probably. Josh Jung? Josh Jung. It starts to fall apart there. And that's the eighth pick the eighth pick so it's likely and and i see these you know i have these leagues where you can own anybody and i see that my uh co-owner um picked up some players that might be drafted on the second day and i'm like okay you know like uh

not would not necessarily be on my radar uh right away so in terms of this draft like i'd see torkelston curistad maybe i mean there was that reach factor um meyer lacy martin i think uh Meyer, Lacey, Martin I think definitely a top 100 but if you talk about Nick Gonzalez Robert Hassel Zach Veen not guaranteed to be a top 100

Fangraphs does drop a top 100 number on their 2020 grid and they put 7 7 in the top 110 they must number them down a little seven. Seven in the top 110. They must number them down a little further. So six in the top 100. Torkelson, Lacey, Martin, all inside the top 50.

They have Hancock at 75. Veen at 80. Nick Gonzalez at 86. And then Kersted at 110. And I would, not to accuse anyone of anything, especially without doing better research, but I do think that generally we have a bit of a recency bias

with prospects. Yeah. Or like a youth bias. Like we're biased to the shiny new toy, whatever the name is for that one. And so we're going to slot these guys in. I think there's going to be another reckoning by the end of next year where you know of course some guys come up that were

further below and some guys fall off uh but in terms of staying power um you know at the end of next year at the end of this year even i mean how are we going to move guys up and down too yeah the causes for moving minor league players up and down this year even i mean how are we going to move guys up and down too yeah the causes for moving minor league players up and down this year are going to be very much reduced but the other thing i would i would point out and we've talked about it a little bit i think we talked about it on the jordan alvarez getting promoted episode a little over a year ago now writing about prospects scouting prospects and then ranking prospects. Those are among the most difficult jobs that people have in the baseball community.

And then on top of all that, a lot of rankings are not for fantasy leagues. They're for real life value and implications and those sorts of projections, right? So that's where our friend James Anderson and the rankings that he does over at Roto wire, those are fantasy prospect rankings and those are different. And I would say like one thing that would immediately stand out to me is that CJ Abrams is his 10th ranked overall prospect. And you know where you find CJ Abrams on a real projection prospect list is almost always going to be a lot lower.

Or at least until Abrams gets closer to the big leagues and shows a lot of the things that mean more from a real context. It's going to take that to happen before that gap closes. Yeah, and I think about that a little bit with, say, Joey Bart. closes. Yeah, and I think about that a little bit with, say, Joey Bart, a top five prospect in real life rankings. No, not top five, top 10. Top 10 prospect in real life rankings. There's enough swing and miss already in his game where he might just be a guy who hits like 240 with you know 15 to 18 homers not bad but like from a fantasy perspective you're not really getting any of that blocking game calling you know any of that so i i tend to like um you know think of uh that as a and then also like um back end uh pitchers that might be useful on

the back end or swing starters um you know i would wait that the upside a lot more in a fantasy uh than any sort of polish um does that ring a bell with you with any pitchers? Maybe like Ian Anderson, who comes in at 44 on fan graphs. I'm not convinced that he has the makings of a top-end pitcher, but he has a lot of pitches and decent enough command that he could probably be a back-end pitcher. You know what I mean? Right. I would say the counter to that would be the opposite end of the argument.

It would be like I would rather stash Ethan Hankins, just to throw a name out there, of someone I actually have in a dynasty league. And just looking at where James actually has him on his rankings, he is Hankins in the 120s. He has Ian Anderson in the 150 range. On fan graphs, it's a little bit closer. 53 for Tariq Skubal over 44 for Ian Anderson. But I'd much rather have Tariq Skubal in fantasy because dude just hit 100 and has remade himself and has certain plus pitches. Whereas with Ian Anderson, I'm just worried that those low spin curveballs are not going to work in the major leagues. Yeah, I think those are good examples of just how different the approach can be and how much more important it is for us as fantasy players to have high strikeout potential too.

I mean, I think that's a huge deal. It does look like Ian Anderson has that though, to be fair, because of some of his strikeout rates. But to some extent, I don't know that I believe them because of the spin rates. When he got to AAA, they dropped, and he gave up a ton of homers. Can he survive the rabbit ball, too, is another question. We'll see. I think Ian Anderson is actually a really fascinating test case. We'll see how he works out.

By the way, if you are interested in some more prospect talk, specifically with someone who ranks prospects, James Anderson is the guest on tomorrow's episode of the Athletic Fantasy Baseball Podcast. I'm sure we'll ask him some questions about his process

and we'll dive a bit more into, you know, how we might want to prioritize the players taken, uh, both on Wednesday night and even early on, or even throughout the evening on Thursday as well. I mean,

it's still four more rounds to go on Thursday, which I'm pretty pumped about. Yep. And, I've got a piece coming out tomorrow about, um, yep and uh i've got a piece coming out tomorrow about um the legitimacy of a 50 game season versus an 80 game season um and i was surprised to find out just as a teaser there's a fairly large difference and i'm not just talking about like 30 games Like, in terms of what you know about the quality of a team,

you know a lot, lot more. And there's, in fact, an inflection point right around 80. So I'll be dropping that tomorrow. And enjoy the next round of the draft. If you're going to go that deep, just know that you may not be even in the top 200 by the time the second round ends. Yeah, definitely keep that in mind as you're thinking about the keeper and dynasty implications of things as they play out this evening. If you're enjoying our show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take a moment to do that.

We would greatly appreciate that. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get get 40 off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels as always you can reach us via email rates and barrels at theathletic.com if you got questions for us spell out the word and if you go the email route and you can find you know on twitter at you know saris i'm at derrick van riper admittedly there are a few emails that have been sent my way in the last few days i've not been able to get to them yet things have been hectic here so There's a really good one asking about different questions about command and stuff, and I'm eager to get to that. I think we may get to that email in the context of a pitcher rank discussion

because it just seems it's too on the nose nose for um how i see pitching and and how i analyze pitching so whoever sent that the list of questions about uh command stuff uh we will answer those um and if you're impatient ping me again i can give you some answers now uh but because i i think we will go to the pitching ranks in like a week or two when hopefully we've got some spring training going and a season to point to. Yeah, that's on the horizon for us. And we're going to try and wrap up our divisional series as well in the next couple of episodes. So hopefully there's a lot more to talk about beyond those episodes. Certainly some good questions in there.

And a few people have reached out about breaking into the industry and looking for some feedback. I'm going to respond. I'm going to reach out. I'm going to do my best to help. Unfortunately, after I put out that call, that offer, we had some layoffs at The Athletic and we've been kind of scrambling to just keep things running smoothly throughout the audio team. So just a heads up. I see it. I hear it. I'm here to help you. It's just going to take me

a little longer than I anticipated. So my apologies for not being as immediately responsive to that as I thought I would have been when I put that out there. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Have a great weekend.

We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.