Rates & Barrels - Describe Your Utopia

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

Rundown1:23 Josh Donaldson Lands in Minnesota9:40 What Will Atlanta Do at Third Base?22:00 Unexpected Cards-Rays Trade31:50 The Most Improved Team in 202040:42 Prospect of the Week55:20 Utopian Fantasy Baseball LeagueFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail the show: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 62. It is January 21st, 2020. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Starting this week, we are now back to our two-episode-per-week schedule. On this episode, we will discuss the impact of Josh Donaldson's move to the Twins, the mechanics of a possible Nolan Arenado trade, a surprising swap between the Rays and Cardinals, utopian fantasy baseball, and more. So lots to be excited about. And every Tuesday and Thursday,

we're going to have this episode up and ready for your afternoon commutes and dog walks. So whether you live on the East coast or the West coast, we'll have these episodes ready for you. We are available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much anywhere you want to listen to podcasts.

If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, we'd really appreciate a nice rating and review. And if you have friends who play fantasy baseball We'd really appreciate a nice rating and review. And if you have friends who play fantasy baseball, let them know about our show as well. Some of you might be listening to the show for the first time. If you are, welcome. If you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Everything we do is included with a subscription. But let's get started with Josh Donaldson.

He signs with the Twins. They were among the teams linked to him kind of from the beginning of his foray into free agency. And it's a big gift for the Twins because the net change is that CJ Krohn is gone. You know, Miguel Sano moves over to first base now. Donaldson comes in at third base. Donaldson's a better player than Krohn,

so the net gain could be maybe three or four wins, potentially, if Donaldson continues to play at a high level. And this comes from someone who has realized that he might like Josh Donaldson more than the market. The ADP and the NFBC was in the pick 100 range. Now that we know where he's going to play this season, I would expect it to jump 20, 25, maybe even 30 picks into that 70 to 80 range in the next few weeks. And to sort of take the temperature of everybody out there, I put a poll up earlier today. A lot of the third base when we talked about, I think on last week's episode, Chris

Bryant, Eugenio Suarez, Manny Machado, they're all clustered together around pick 55 or 60. So I put a poll out there. Who do you prefer between those three guys and Donaldson, assuming that Donaldson's price gets a lot closer? Donaldson came in as the low man, 16% of the responses this morning, 22% pick Bryant, 31% each for Suarez and Machado. So that's kind of where that 75 to 80 range future ADP estimate comes from. But how do you see Donaldson fitting in with the Twins? And how do you expect this Twins offense to stack up to the 2019 version, which was really good? Yeah, I mean, I think that they've done what they need to do

to sort of stave off regression. If there's anybody who takes a step back, you know, Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler had, you know had a career high in home runs. If any of those guys step back, they kind of regression-proof their offense by adding Donaldson. So I expect it to be about the same, if not maybe a little bit better. And there's really no reason, there's one big reason. If you just cover one number up on donaldson you're like oh love him he's the guy and if you look at something like the atc projections that are up at fangraphs now uh donaldson has the uh is right in the pack i mean they're all basically 19 third baseman

he like hit for the best exit velocity of his career, at least since we've tracked this publicly, since we've had those numbers. He had the best barrel rate of his career last year. He had the second best expected woe on contact.

Although I should just say woe bacon. It's our favorite stat here everyone loves bacon so everything is great except for that one number which is a huge number and terrible and it's a terrible number and although I'm not old 34 is old

I got an email from an intrepid listener saying you called Jose Altuve old he's going to play at 30 next year I'm sorry that's old and it gives me no pleasure to report this it doesn't make you feel any better calling someone younger than you old because that means you are also old but uh i mean what i've seen is the post the post-pedr the post steroids aging curves plus um i think what's happening now is better player development, more travel ball, more development of the younger age.

What happens is you hit the ground running in the major leagues, you establish a level, and there is almost not really, at least on an aggregate level, a step up. You basically hit the ground running and are born dying. And around 26, everything just starts going south. Just thinking back for a moment, yep, that's about when things started breaking down on me and I never had a peak like a professional athlete. So that checks out, at least on an anecdotal sort of level. But look, Donaldson still, even if he's not the 6 or 7 win player that checks out at least on an anecdotal sort of level but look donaldson still even if he's not the six or seven win player that he was at his peak in toronto he's

still probably a four or five win player so he's a very good player who i think will age pretty well he draws a ton of walks he's walked almost 15 of the time four years running now the k rate's been up above 20 three years in a row so I think that's kind of a normal baseline. But yeah, you look at the projections from ATC and Steamer, 34 to 36 home runs, 263 to 267 with the average. I think the health concerns we saw between 2017 and the really injury-ravaged 2018, those are legitimate. But at the same time, I think getting off that turf in Toronto probably reduced that a little bit. We saw him get up to 155 games last year in Atlanta, so I think his

injury risk, while it might be slightly elevated, it's not so much that I'm avoiding him by any stretch of the imagination at what I expect to be the inflated price, but this Twins offense is loaded. I mean, he was in a good offense in Atlanta. I think he goes to another one in Minnesota. You mentioned some possible regression candidates there. Someone, if not multiple someones, will take steps back there. That's inevitable. But there's guys that could take steps forward, too. I mean, Luis Urias is lined up to play a lot more this season.

And I know the home run power was not there from him last year. The scouting grades are very skeptical of that really ever being there just four homers from Arias in 366 plate appearances but he makes a ton of contact he draws walks he's going to be a regular catalyst in that lineup you have Cruz back you add Donaldson they have Sano there's plenty of power there are guys that get on base like they should be one of the better lineups in the american league which should drive those counting stats back up among the league's elite for the key players in this lineup unless he's not in the lineup because he's hurt right i mean the cool thing about the way the twins are built is that they don't care as much like i had

them pegged for signing rich Hill before they signed Rich Hill, because it's obvious they should sign Rich Hill, because they're now in the kind of team that expects to go somewhere in late September at least, and if not October. So if you expect to be around in August and October, you have to sign basically the high upside plays and hope they're healthy in September and October.

And so that's what you do with Rich Hill. Rich Hill's surgery was a revision, not a full Tommy John. So the actual outcomes on revisions are pretty good. And it's not like a full 12 month thing. It's more of a like three to six month thing. So there is a chance. I saw somebody say it's it's touch and go if he ever pitches again i guess because he's so old but it's it's i would say

it's it's more likely that he pitches um and if he pitches and he pitches well then that's what was worth the money and i think for donaldson it's the same play where it's like if he plays three months for us every year but it happens to be you the last three months of the year, we'll take it. Because they can always move Sano back over to third. They have some working parts with Marwin Gonzalez and Luis Arias. So I like the way the twins are built, but there's still an asterisk for me for Donaldson. And since all those projections line up that way, and since we know from some recent work from Jeff Zimmerman that projections become less steady and reliable in the 30s, what I would say is it becomes a pick-em there. And with Bryant's shoulder and Suarez aged to some extent and then Donaldson's age, I know that ATC has Manny Machado like a dollar less, but I'm taking Manny Machado.

This is a similar conversation that we had before, but I'm going to take Manny Machado out of that group just because he's young and there's some evidence he deserved better last year based on his batted ball stats. I'm going to take Manny there again.

Yeah, probably the least risky of all four players in that group. I think that's a fair assessment. And if there is a 20-pick gap between them and you miss out on that first trio, no matter who you like best of that group, I think Donaldson's still a pretty good fallback option if you don't have a lot of injury risk.

But the other question that kind of comes into play here when you start to look at Donaldson leaving Atlanta is what are the Braves going to do with their lineup to fill a pretty big void? They could rely on young talent and call up a prospect at some point. You got Drew Waters and Christian Pache, maybe positioned to take on some larger roles at some point. I think they've been linked to Marcelo Zuna and Nick Castellanos, though, which would delay the prospects. That gets a little bit dicey as well. Austin Riley can move back in and play third base if they want to go that route. Maybe we see a lot of Johan Camargo. How do you think things play out in Atlanta as they look to replace Donaldson here in the weeks ahead? Yeah, it's all set up for them to trade, I think. You know, they could, if they zag where I think they're going to zig,

it's going to be they sign an outfielder and just live with Austin Riley. For what it's worth, Austin Riley and Camargo together are projected to be about league average. If you look at just third base, by the depth charts,

the Braves end up, well, actually, they end up 26th. That's kind of amazing. It's weird how war works that way. 1.7 war, but 26th. Usually you think of two wars average. But anyway, now you're talking decimal points. So they're within a decimal point or two of being kind of mediocre.

And that can work if you sign Ozuna or you sign Castellanos and you're just like, the rest of our lineup is going to be sweet, Riley's going to be young and cheap, and let's just go for it. And with Riley, I think there's a little bit of a bat speed sort of getting caught between, he even admitted it to where I talked to him once, being caught between sort of sitting fastball and sitting slider um and he kind of gets he gets kind of gets stuck in between but obviously when he's going right and guessing right um he has uh he has plenty of of power so

it's not um it's not the oomph that's missing so i i could see him making a tweak with his approach uh that could unlock a lot of it even just the projections have him as a league average bat with like a 250 average and 20 homers. So they can do that. But the thing that's cool about the Braves is they have so much pitching in terms of prospects. And pitching prospects don't work out that well, but the two teams that want to trade with them, with the Braves, the Cubs and the Rockies, both have had some issues developing their own pitching and would probably love to have

an infusion of young, controllable arms, you know, especially the Rockies who can't really sign arms except for in the bullpen. So I could see a deal that is built around i you know i think they could throw riley in um keep camargo for his versatility throw because i don't think camargo has that much of a trade value either so throw in riley as the as the bat centerpiece keep your really high upside guys like pache uh and waters in the outfield. And that's another thing about why sign an outfielder when you've got the most explosive young talent is in your outfield. So I think you take Riley, you combine him with Bryce Wilson and Ian Anderson, and you've

got yourself 80% of a deal, I think. Yeah, and maybe for a Nolan Arenado trade, perfect transition, by the way, good job getting that set up. Maybe the Braves line up as well as anybody because they can do the quantity thing without totally depleting their depth. I mean, the problem I think with Nolan Arenado

and trading him is something Craig Edwards wrote about at Fangraphs last week is that he has the opt-out after 2021. And two years from now, Arenado is going to be approaching his age 31 season. So it would make him about a year older than Anthony Rendon is right now. It's easy to imagine Arenado opting out because he's going to probably get a contract much like the one Rendon just got, if not one that's worth even a little bit more. So you're not necessarily locking him in for the rest of the contract he just signed in Colorado not that long ago. You're probably getting him for the next two seasons. So how do you see that package really coming together? I mean, I think that might be enough as described. It might be

Austin Riley and two of those young pitchers. It really could be plenty as far as the return goes for Colorado. I'd be surprised if there were teams out there willing to give more than that package to get him. Yeah. I mean, it's always, I think the trickiest thing that gets people the most riled up is a really good player that's paid really well,

you know, and there are people who say well there's not enough surplus on that contract you know to to to to give them a bunch of prospects but the problem is there's also a scarcity so if you're the braves right now it's austin riley chris bryant or nolan arenado that's it there's it's not like it's not a free market where you can be like, well, if I take Arenado, I have to pay $30 million. If I take this other guy, I pay $500,000. No, no, no. I mean, it is like that for the Braves, but one is way better than the other.

So if you're talking about stars, there's only a few stars. They're scarce, and so you have to pay up to get there. And the Rockies own them, you don't, you know? So, you know, there, if, if some crowds are going to say, oh, the Braves overpaid because they gave them all this surplus value by some projection calculator and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like they're going to be off a little bit because, oh, the Braves who are trying to win in the post season just got, you know, the second or, you know, one of the top three third basemen in baseball and uh and so that's worth it you know it's also worth it because it's it's non-linear like you know adding a little half one here and a half one here that's great but adding three or four wins

like the twins just did changes the entire complex like right now the braves are like three wins basically three or four wins behind the nationals with nolan arenado it's a pick-em almost it's probably a pick-em or even a situation that favors the braves i think you could definitely make that argument the the other wrinkle here just just thinking about how all these pieces come together i mean the surplus value you're talking about the braves have that already in two core pieces the contracts they signed with ozzy albies andves and Ronald Acuna give them so much surplus value they should take this on even with the risk of Arenado opting out because it might be the piece that puts them over the top and gets them that world series with this core I think you kind of just in order to do the math right you just kind of assume that he's gone after two years because

you can kind of do the same thing with Bryant right you got these two guys they can you can kind of do the same thing with Bryant, right? You got these two guys. You can get them for two years. You're probably one of the very few. How many people line up with the Cubs and the Rockies as well as the Braves? And who really needs a third baseman right now, right? The Twins took themselves off the market. I guess I would say probably the Dodgers because they can always move people around the dodgers are interesting the nationals are interesting if they want to trade key boom dodgers nationals braves maybe the rangers make frazier a backup but but the rangers don't really

i would say necessarily have the young talent anymore yeah i think the rangers would probably come up just a little bit short in terms of building it out packages right yeah the braves line up perfectly for both of those guys when they can actually pull it off they're at the time in their competitive cycle where it absolutely makes sense to push the chips in now you have to do it if you're alexanthopolis so you know we'll see if it gets done i just think what what a Nolan Arenado trade looks like is a team that has surplus young talent that doesn't really have room for, has to be willing to part with it. There's only a handful of teams that fit that description that also need a third baseman. Atlanta absolutely is one of them. I think once this situation plays out, once the Chris Bryant situation plays out, that's when we might finally see some movement as far as a Kyle Seeger trade goes as

well. I just don't really see him being in Seattle much longer. Some people didn't like that. I built a Seeger trade for Brewers. They didn't like some of the names I put in there. I don't think it matters who the actual name is. I just think Seeger is a decent mix, even for the Brewers still, but for anybody who loses uh in this uh it loses out on arenado or bryant uh there's still gonna be a seager i could i think all three are gonna happen like i put jacob nottingham and cory ray in it's like some people think they're good prospects i don't um so i just like these are just names. Here are some names. Trying to see what's-his-face is going to like is fool's gold, is a folly. What's his name?

Jerry DiPoto. Jerry DiPoto, yeah. He'll have some name that he wants. I don't think I can figure it out. Anyway, I think it makes a lot of sense for the Braves, and I think it'll happen. It makes a lot of sense for the Mariners to trade Seager. I think it'll happen.

These are the kinds of things you bet on, not huge three-way trades where things go here and here and here. Sometimes they happen, but rarely, rarely. One very quick offshoot of this arenado conversation if he were to get traded out of colorado i think there's some people that look at the home road splits and say oh he's just not the same guy outside of coors but we've learned over time that the challenges of leaving coors in season and coming back you know playing at altitude then going back and seeing pitches that don't move quite the same way that makes those home

road splits even more extreme a good recent example of course dj lemay he went to another hitter friendly ballpark but obviously had a lot of success last year with the yankees it's a longer list than that but how much would you ding arenado or if at all if he does get traded to atlanta and losesors Field for half his games? Not too much. I mean, as you alluded to, they see tons of fastballs at home and all the breaking balls don't move.

And they don't sleep that well. And then they go on the road and they sleep well, but they see a bunch of stuff that moves and they see fewer fastballs so there's just there's like constantly hard to and from what i've heard from arenado is he's constantly tinkering to kind of stave that off and to work against that he he'll fly in his hitting coaches at a if he's had a bad three or four games in a row um And so he's fanatical about his approach, and I think that he'll make it work for wherever he goes.

I would maybe say more of a 35 homer hitter than 40, but I think that other people are probably taking more, shaving more off the top than that. But he makes a lot of contact. He makes a lot of powerful contact. So even if you shave some points off the BABIP, it's not like his BABIP has been crazy good. So I could see him, he has a 302 career at BABIP.

How much regression are we going to throw in there? So I would say he's still like a 280-35 guy. So probably a mid-second round player then. If you pulled him down from an ADP of like 13 right now you might fall to the early 20s at most I mean again he stacks up so favorably to Rendon in so many ways that's kind of where I see him bottoming out ADP wise if something like that were to happen exactly yeah yeah and I would still choose I would still choose him over Rendon that's pretty interesting yeah they'd be yeah comparable, I think, for all those reasons.

Washington is a little bit sneaky, nice by stat cast. If you hit the ball hard and high in Washington, it's a good place for homers. Yeah, that was, again, I think you may have mentioned this a few episodes ago, but the Park Factors work that you were doing last offseason, the piece you wrote up going into 2019. That park, Nationals Park, and Dodger Stadium were the two that were much more hitter-friendly than I had realized. I had to kind of adjust my baselines accordingly for those two environments. Let's talk about a trade that actually did go down recently, a pretty unexpected one. Let's talk about a trade that actually did go down recently, a pretty unexpected one. The Tampa Bay Rays and St. Louis Cardinals hooked up on a deal. Randy Orozarena, Jose Martinez, and a Comp 50 overall guy on a lot of lists in Libertor,

the headliner in the deal. Arozarena was a player that I didn't really see getting a ton of playing time this year in St. Louis, and the same kind of holds up in Tampa Bay where things just keep getting more and more complicated because you have the DH spot, so Jose Martinez actually makes some sense for a decent amount of playing time, at least as a part-time player.

How do you see the pieces fitting in Tampa Bay? Because my snap reaction as I look at their depth chart is they're probably still not done. They're just trying to get all the pieces they really like at the right prices before they kind of lock in their 26-man roster in a couple months. Yes. I think one thing that you can tell is that they have a type on the hitting side. And what's interesting about Martinez and Orozarena

is that they're so similar in type to other players that they've taken and to each other. So they're like very Yandy Diazian, you know? And I think it actually extends to the entire type, which is they want players that hit the ball hard and maybe not in the best angles right now, but they think that they can coach better angles out of these players. And it's almost like the pitch velocity thing was that they want the raw hitting velocity

combined with a good strikeout rate. And I think basically if I was going to try and describe hit tool to somebody, that would be how I would do it statistically. tool to somebody that that would be how i would do it statistically i would say give me a team with a 15 strikeout rate and a 90 mile an hour exit velocity and i got a team that's gonna hit the daylight of the ball yeah i mean a rose arena i i didn't have on my radar at all going into last season he put up some just really good numbers at triple a a 151 WRC plus in 64 games, sub 20% K rate, 8.5% walk rate, 12 homers in those 64 games, 9 steals as well. He was caught seven times, so we'll see how many green lights he's getting at the top level. it could be a five category player if there's playing time and that's like the the clause that you have to add on every single bit of analysis almost top to bottom on this roster how many

players on the raised depth chart do you look at and say that guy is not going to be a 450 plate appearance guy he's actually going to get a chance to be a legitimate everyday player? Is that list Austin Meadows and literally nobody else? That depth chart is already giving me acid reflux. I think the one thing you have to focus on is that there aren't that many players on this team that can play defense. So I think Willie Adamas and when Kevin Kiermaier is healthy, Brandon Lau?

He's Lau. Yeah, Nate Lau, Brandon Lau. Lau. Okay, Brandon Lau, Willie Adamas, Kevin Kiermaier are the players that have to play. And I guess Zunino, but you know how catchers are, so it doesn't matter. But those are the players that have to play. And I guess Zunino, but you know how catchers are, so it doesn't matter. But those are the players that have to play, I think.

First of all, you can't platoon at eight spots, even with the new roster slot. So you can't do that. And then secondly, like I said, defense. I think at the optimal places, they're going to go with the defenders. And so I think those guys will play. I mean, the thing is, you don't want to put Kevin Piermeier

in 600 plate appearance in pants either. And that means that there's a backup center fielder. So is that Meadows or is that a Rosareno? And that matters because a Rosareno might be in the minors unless he's the backup center fielder. He may have to be like it's just it's weird. He has nothing left to prove at that level, but it speaks to the depth that they put together. But that's where that conclusion of this can't be a finished product yet comes from for me.

Like I look at it and say the pieces like they're great. They've got a great team already. Where were they trying to upgrade? Like what spot would they actually want to consolidate i mean they didn't come up as a an arenado or chris bryant trade suitor that we talked about that a little while ago but theoretically they've got all the pieces too they got the best farm system in the game right now they have plenty of depth the big league level it seems like if they were going to increase

payroll they could go trade for just about anybody they want right now yeah and they did something for people that sort of ground and say well the rays won't do that i mean they did something that like that with morton right so they they are willing to have one or two players that are are in short-term expensive deals. They've shown that. So, you know, and they've shown the willingness to trade away top pitching prospects. But I don't know. For some reason, I don't know if they're going to do it. I feel like the Libertor deal was their big deal.

I think that Rosarena is, I think Martinez gets the first shot. And if he doesn't work out or if he's there for two years when he's cheap and then he's gone after that, Orozco takes over for him in that same sort of hitter role, you know? Or maybe Renfro gets too expensive and he's gone. But Orozco is like, I think, next wave. I think they bought, I think they made that trade because they're like, we get the hitter now that we want in Martinez and we also get a guy with two years of options that we can basically up and down him until we trade away Jose Martinez or these other people, right? I mean, they're always working in two-year increments.

So I think Rosario is next. This is my read on the situation. And you're looking at this Fangraphs depth chart, and Tsutsugo's not even on it. It looks crowded as it is, and Tsutsugo is not even on it it looks crowded as it is and Tsutsugo is not even on it so you have to take basically all the Nate Lowe at-bats and give them to Tsutsugo but that only gives you 32 percent of at-bats so where's Tsutsugo going that's why I think Arrozalino is going to be in the minor leagues I think Tsutsugo is an outfielder for them and it still brings us back to the open question of, is G-Man Choi going to get the Corey Dickerson, C.J. Crone treatment?

Is he going to be given the boot in some sort of upcoming trade? It's true. And if you want to say, well, they already tendered him, I think one of those, I think Dickerson, they just DFA'd him. They tendered him and then DFA'd him. Yeah, I believe that was the order for that. And it was very surprising at the time. You could give all the Choi at bats to Tsutsugo.

That's definitely a possibility since they're both left-handed and Choi was my comp that I came up with for Tsutsugo. But Tsutsugo probably has a little bit more upside beyond Choi and I think that's what they're betting on. That's why they went and got him. But it is hard to put Tsotsugo on this list right now without taking a decent player off that's that's more to your point about like you know how do you

fit sotsugo on here and not cut a really good player um and players get hurt players regress there's especially with martinez on this roster yeah it just just looks crowded even for a team that platoons a lot and prides itself on having great depth. So that was the big surprise. And they moved up in the draft too. I mean, they got the comp A pick. The Cardinals got the comp B pick. So more draft pool money.

It's just an interesting trade for a whole bunch of different reasons. We'll see if Libertor, who I think is now considered the Cardinals' best pitching prospect, if he's moved in some kind of subsequent deal or if he's going to stay and develop as a Cardinal over these next few seasons. But I want to talk about teams on the rise for a moment. Because it was about this time last year where it became clear to me and probably to a lot of other people that the Twins were a team poised to be a lot better than they were in 2018. And I have to admit, I watched the new blue hype

video that the Jays put out for their new uniform reveal on Saturday. I really need to do a better job of making plans on the weekend, so I'm not watching random uniform reveal videos. And I was a little excited about the Jays, thinking about the young talent they've got there, and the uniforms are fine, whatever. Their video was kind of ridiculous. If you didn't watch it, which would be like 99.9% of you, they had this montage from a bunch of different movies kind of cut in, including the iconic scene from Shawshank,

where Tim Robbins is just looking up at the sky and rain is pouring down. I'm like, wow, this is really intense. Like, what are we doing here? And then they're just like, we've got powder blue uniforms too. Yeah. So like 30 seconds later, the montage ends. There's a smoke machine going off. And there's four players on stage behind a very slowly rising garage door and then you see

Kevin Biggio and Randall Gritchick and Vlad Jr. just standing there holding bats like very uncomfortable with with all of this because it's just not a thing that players normally do but anyway they got me thinking about teams on the rise at least in their own minds and I started thinking like I haven't really picked my team for this year that I expect to be a lot better than last year. Have you come to that point yet where you found a team that was outside looking at the playoffs, maybe even below 500 that you could see with the tweaks they've made being a lot better in 2020 than they were in 2019? Yeah, it's always fun to try and do that. I always find that I'm like a year or two out in front. Like, I feel like I've been banging the Padres drum for so long

that I'm wrong. Even if they're good this year, like, I can't pick them again, can I? But I think the Padres and the White Sox have been, you know, on the way for a while. I've just mostly been out on the White Sox pitching. Finding Giolito was a big deal, though. Now we're starting to get to the guys I do like in COPEC. There's another one.

Dylan Cease. Yeah, Cease. I like those guys. The White Sox, I think, could take a big leap forward this year. The White Sox and the Padres, though, have been coming for a while. Who's next? Who's the next group? I think the Reds are in that White Sox-Padres group, but who's after them? I don't like the way the Tigers' talent is coming together. It's too much

pitching. I think it's too early to pick the Mariners, but the next group for me are the Mariners. Yeah, the Mariners in 2021, I think, are this team. It's almost harder to figure out who it is right now, though. There are several candidates. I think the White Sox have been that team for a lot of people, and I see them being a lot better. I don't think Cleveland is so much worse that it's going to be as easy as it was for the White Sox to make up a ton of

ground in one year as it was for the Twins to do it. I think having the Twins also be good already in addition to Cleveland makes the turnaround more of a two-year thing for the White Sox. Could they make the playoffs? Yeah, they could. They could probably be a wildcard team. I don't think they're quite good enough to win a division yet. But the White Sox have an easier road with that division than the Reds do with their division still, even with the Central softening, right? Even with that, yeah, because I think there are four good teams in the NL Central, and there are three in the AL Central, counting the White Sox. So yeah, I would agree with that. So it's the White Sox then.

The Blue Jays are a fun team, and I love their core hitters. I thought they should have done a little bit more to add pitching, but they got Ryu. That was good. And they got Pearson coming. They could surprise, but it's just a hell of a division, man. I thought there were some interesting narratives being floated out there with the uh the alex cora firing and they may sell pieces like they've been linked to letting go of price and and but mookie all off season right that's been the really strange thing that's been kind of like intensifying at least from some of the red socks writers out

there in the last week or so then i'm thinking okay if the red socks really are going to trade away mookie bets or if we think things are going to unravel on them the rays are obviously very good the yankees are very good the jays could take a step forward this year i think the position player group is very good and and certainly projects or projects favorably on the right trajectory you add ryu to the top of the pitching staff but then you got like the the brewers kind of thing going on with chase anderson and shoemaker and roark and yamaguchi or thornton or k or whoever it is nate pearson's not far so you probably get some innings out of him this year we talked about the bullpen a few weeks ago it It's like, could they be that next team?

Maybe, but I still think I like the White Sox more than the Jays based on the changes made and where they're positioned right now. The other contender, I guess, for this for me was the Angels. They came up back at first pitch Arizona way back in the fall. You get a full, seemingly healthy year from Otani. It was before they added Rendon. You bring up Joe Adele. The question with them also comes back to pitching, though.

They just haven't been able to get that big upgrade they were looking for. It's Heaney, Teron, Canning, Bundy, Sandoval. They made a trade for Matt Andrees, Jaime Barilla. It's a lot of the usual suspects there. Canning and Otani, I think, have the ability to be aces. I'll throw that out there. They have ace

type ceiling. Haney does not. I think Haney's right where he is. I'm a little surprised the projections have him better next year than he's been ever. I can see it because at a strikeout rate, he's pitching higher in the zone more. I got it.

I understand the Haney love, but I don't think there's that much more left in him. But Canning and Otani have the kind of raw stuff that anybody, every team would want. It's not basically command forward yet, but I think Canningning slider command is good. So if those two guys become aces, then we're talking about why didn't we see this coming, I guess.

But both of them are probably limited in terms of how many innings they can do. So then it puts a lot of pressure on that bullpen to be good because in order to sort of rack up the wins to get to the postseason, need to win all the games where you know they're gonna have a six-man rotation they're gonna have to win patrick sandoval games they're gonna have to pitch they're gonna have to take uh dylan bundy out in the fourth you know with runners on because they don't want him to give up the home run that breaks breaks open the game so they're doing that sort of stuff then someone like matt andrease has to be really good, you know, because he's going to be a glue guy for them. And Justin Anderson, who throws the ball really hard, has no idea where it's going. He has to be he has to be good. And if those things also happen,

now you've got your, you know, one shining season that the Angels have been looking for. But I would at least I would say credit to the angels even though they didn't get coal and i thought that would have really you know brought the room together as as the dude would say um they do have the pieces that have the upside you just have to squint really hard or put those rose-colored glasses on but you know the in in these like standout years where everything goes right this is these are the things that happen you know uh when people win world series there's usually like a oh yeah that that pitcher that we thought could be an ace was a nice you know just laughing because garrett cole would be like a 324 million dollar rug

yeah more like the foundation but yeah i mean but you're right the the pieces are are there to where they could have a few of those like lower end glue guys you call them exceed expectation it comes down to health with those key players i mean if canning and otani what what combined innings total do you need from those two guys to buy into the narrative there the idea that the angels are a playoff team this year like at what point are you saying yeah okay they got 300 innings combined from otani and canning i think they at least are a wild card team in 2020 is there a certain number where you really believe that it's just too much to put on them in their situation like

if they did get 300 i'd feel like yeah they'd be really good team that would mean that those guys were healthy and they were pitching really well but i just i think that's unrealistic but if you got i think you got 250 um you know and you i think you need 250 from them and you need at least one other guy who throws like 180 200 right otherwise your bullpen is just toast they may have done that because between Tehran and Bundy like those are two guys that it might not be pretty but they do chew up a lot of them for for buying innings but in this case you know buying some credible innings means a lot because of the idea that you're going to have a six-man rotation and and have a have to stress your bullpen a lot to win games with some of the lesser-talented starting pitchers.

So buying those innings in the end might be what makes it work for them. If they get 250 from Otani and Canning and 400 from two out of three of Bundy, Haney, and Tehran, then now you're talking about a credible team, I think. Yeah, I mean, healthy Haney, also a big part of that too. I was surprised by his projections. They do seem a tad on the aggressive side. I like him.

I think he's a viable fourth starting pitcher, probably in most fantasy leagues. If you're thinking about guys that would be available maybe after pick 150, I think he's okay in that range. But I don't know if there's an ace level sort of upside. I think it's kind of like 23%, 25% K rate, decent walk rate, like high 3 ZRA, 120, 125 whip is probably what you're going to get from him. Yeah. And I think it's interesting.

I don't know. I'm looking at the rundown. I don't see prospect of the week, but this would be a decent time for it. Let's do it. Prospect of the week. It's here. But you can do it. It's not on the rundown.

Let's do it. Oh, this is why. This is why. This is why he should win some hardware. Come on, guys. He's now furiously looking for a prospect of the week, and I'm going to spring one on him and i'm just doing it because we didn't quite cover this part of the trade earlier uh but matthew liberatore liberatore liberatore yeah liberatore but there's an a in it all right

never mind liberatore other people know better than me. I will never say that I am the person to go to, the authority on pronunciations. Well, give it a German pronunciation. Huh? Give that name a German pronunciation. It doesn't fit. Libertore. That's almost Italian. All right.

Yeah, the Germans pronounce every letter. That's how I get myself in trouble, dude. I want to pronounce every letter. Yes, the Scherzer example. Anyway, let's not talk about Max. I'm only going to call him Max from now on, like we're friends. Andrew Haney is a high spin low slot pitcher and so it's taken him a long time to get where he is because

i like i don't think he i don't at some point the slot is kind of ingrained you're not it's really hard like like sonny gray was trying to change his hand position so he could throw a high spin like riding fastball because he's a high spin, like riding fastball because he's a high spin, low slot guy. And he said one out of every four times he could get a riding fastball. So that's your body has learned these ways of throwing. It's settled in. You know what I mean? You've thrown thousands of pitches in your life. And it's you can't just take a hey and be like, hey, why don't you throw from up here? But what you can do is over time say, Hey, you know, there's more whiffs high in the zone. I know you've been taught to throw low in the zone, but you've got kind of a high spin

fastball. So it doesn't sink as much as other people's sinkers. So let's try to creep up in zone. And as he's creeped up in the zone, his strikeout rate has gone up. And he's generally gotten better, even though he's given up more home runs as well, which is part of the risk. And why teams generally prefer sort of an over-the-top high spin guy, because there's more spin efficiency, more rides, so on and so forth. Anyway, I bring all this up because I wonder why the Rays traded Matthew Libertor. why the Rays traded Matthew Libertor. And one thing that sticks out for me as I go across, the good thing that sticks out is his age.

He's 20 years old and he's already a top pitching prospect. The bad thing that sticks out for me is that his RPM on the fastball, his spin rate, is by, according fangraphs 2000 which is uh lower than anybody on the first page of pitching prospects when you pull up the pitching prospects oh no so he's a low spin guy with a high spin breaking ball uh who tops out at 97 which is which is good but not um you know not the excellent like the the the high velocity people's top out even the high velocity starters top out at 100 100 plus um so you've got good but not excellent uh velocity and uh a bad spin rate on the fastball. It just combines to, to kind of create a picture that in my mind of somebody like Andrew Haney,

where do you remember how Andrew Haney got traded like eight times? Was it eight? I don't know. I just remember he got like, he got traded to the Marlins and he got traded to the, the angels, but on the way to the angels, I thought he got traded somewhere else, and it was like a three-team deal. Anyway, I worry that Libertor is going to struggle at first,

that he's going to have to find an identity. The identity is not waiting for him. You know what I mean? When you saw Cole coming up, you could say the identity is waiting for him he's a high spin guy with great breaking balls great breaking ball command i know when he when he's good i know what it's going to look like you know and i'm just not sure that i know what liberatore is going to look like when he's good like is he going to be a sinker breaking ball guy sure the cardinals love that kind of guy but then he might just be a lefty dakota hudson hmm that's that's not it's not really a player you'd be that excited about in a dynasty league that's for sure i mean dakota hudson was freely available in a 20 team dynasty

league i play in full of people who are much more knowledgeable prospects than i am you know this season so uh that would be a really disappointing outcome. But I think it's... And another thing from Dynasty Leagues, though, you'll trade, if you're trying to build, you'll trade a pitcher for a hitter any day of the week. Always. Every time. You know, Dynasty, I think Dynasty and knowledge

of sort of spin rates and stuff can inform the why did the Rays do this part of analysis. I think some people it's been missing a little bit mostly people have thought i think that the rays um missed the mark on that on that deal well and if you realize you missed that mark when a guy is still putting up would look like pretty good numbers at a ball and it holds up fine against the competition you're gonna be better off than if you wait until he gets up to say like double a and falls on his face in terms of what you're going to get for the return and if you can seek out some players you really like which they clearly did you know move up in a subsequent draft to take

another shot at it it starts to kind of come together so yeah maybe maybe the rays did see something there they just didn't think they could fix and or triple a where you have the major league ball ian anderson i think is someone that should be brought up when you're talking about matthew libertor low spin guy had better strikeout rates than libertor in the minor leagues and at the same levels um and then hit triple a got run over by freight train dude like he just he had like a nine what is he a seven era and now you know like everyone's like, what's wrong with Ian Anderson?

Only stuff that we already knew, which is that he's kind of a weird guy and that he's getting all these results with a really low spin rate. You can be really low, and then you're kind of a sinker guy. Sean Minaya has some of that going on. And you can find your identity. So maybe Matthew Libertor is going to. Sean Minaya has some of that going on. And you can find your identity. So maybe Matthew Libertor is going to be Sean Minaya. This is a good week for Prospect of the Week because there was a prospect I was tweeting about yesterday

who kind of fits into this conversation, Lewis Thorpe in the Twins organization. It's been a long time coming from him. I think he was a J2 signing back in 2012 out of Australia. He's had injuries that have slowed him down. He's 24 now. A lefty. Lower end for velocity. Very low end for spin.

I was looking it up as you were talking because I was like, I think my prospect fits. That's where that random uh-oh came from about three minutes ago. Lewis Thorpe last year during his time in the big leagues. 2017 for the spin on on the fastball not great you know that's the most liberator is yeah yeah so low 90s low spin fastball i think the question with thorpe that i would pose to you is can you get away with it if you have

three good secondary pitches because i think that's where thorpe has at least shown at higher levels he can still miss bats despite that low velocity. He throws a slider, a curve, and a changeup through each of those pitches at least 10% of the time with the Twins last year. What led me to him, by the way, was some leaderboard surfing I was doing yesterday over at Fangraphs. I was looking for pitchers who were 23 or younger last season at AAA with at least 50 innings pitched. I just wanted to see for younger pitchers who were at AAA dealing with the rabbit ball, who had a really good K minus BB percentage.

Of course, Zach Gallen was first in meeting that criteria. Mitch Keller was the other guy that came up on that board above 20%. And Lewis Thorpe was the third guy. So only three guys met that criteria criteria under 23, 50 innings or more triple a last season, 20% K minus BB or higher. So I started looking closer at Thorpe and I thought, wow, this is interesting. People really like Zach Gallen. People also like Mitch Keller as kind of a, a later round sort of pitching target,

but no one really talks about Lewis Thorpe. And rewind back to our twins conversation. They've got some issues in the rotation with the D-Mountain absence to begin the season and the Michael Pineda suspension. It's Barrios, it's Odorizzi, it's Homer Bailey, and then it's Randy Dobnik and Devin Smeltzer and Lewis Thorpe and Brewster Gratterall. Those four guys, Dobnik Smeltzer, Gratterall, and Thorpe, are probably competing for two spots in that rotation. And Thorpe, I don't know if he has much left to prove in the minor, so he might open the year in the rotation for a team that I think under Wes Johnson and with the changes they've made in the front office in recent years, they've become an organization that I trust with pitching development. Should I trust them in the case of Lewis Thorpe, however? You know, and we're talking about identities and possible future identities, and you know, done wrong, maybe you could call it comps, but I think it's still useful to point

out that there is an identity that I forgot about when I was talking about possible future identities for these players. I don't think Libertor fits it, but Thorpe might, which is Hyunjin Ryu and Zach Granke and Tanner Roark. I wanted to do different levels of quality, so I'm not saying they're all the same quality. My point is they all throw like five pitches, and they have command of all five, and it's really hard for a hitter to know what's coming,

which we've learned about in the news recently is a valuable skill for hitters. Yes. That would explain a lot of what's been happening in baseball the last few years. Yeah. So I think that's, that's the key. I, and in fact,

there's a little bit of me, you know, Thorpe versus Graterol is really interesting because Graterol has the velocity, but he also has poor spin. And he does not have command in the same way that Thorpe does. And he does not have a large arsenal in the same way Thorpe does. Last year, he threw two pitches 98% of the time. Gratterall did. I know he was in relief, but Thorpe pitched in relief too and threw all his pitches, even as a reliever. I think Thorpe is, if it does work out, it's like a Hunter Nru type thing where

he just has four pitches and he's going to dance around you until you look up and he's won the game. I guess Kyle Hendricks belongs on that list. Maybe Mike Soroka, where you just have great command, you have a lot of pitches, and you just keep people guessing. So Thorpe has a chance, and I don't think they're going to give Gratterall the fifth starter rule. So who's else is in there? Smeltzer,

uh, has good spin, but terrible velocity. Dobnik. Yeah. I think most people were putting Dominic in, but you know who Dobnik reminds me of Andrew Triggs. Oh,

I haven't, haven't heard Andrew Triggs' name in a while. They just normally, pitchers like that normally have really bad splits. Because what happens is, you know, he throws from the right side, and he drops down, the lefties can see that ball forever. So, wow, he had reverse splits last year. Oh, geez. That's not, not helping the narrative, dude. Oh, but look at this. They're, they're fake reverse splits. Don't look at results too hard. What happens to his strikeout rate versus lefties? He struck out 15% of batters

against righties, 24%. So he's better. He's better against righties. He just doesn't walk any lefties. It'd be interesting to see what his pitch mix is, but anyway, Dobnak, I think, is a low-ceiling guy. He might get the first crack at it, but I don't know. What do you think? That's two spots with a rotation that already has Homer Bailey penciled into one.

Yeah. Okay, so Dobnak, give him a spot, but I think Louis thorpe could be the twins fifth starter to begin the season oh they need domnack too okay yeah they need they need two out of those four guys i i have some concerns about gratterall that are health related but i just yeah the command is is definitely a concern thorpe to me seems a lot more polished and i just think when you take this organization and a guy with those tools, they're going to find a way to get as much out of him as pretty much any team in the league right

now. And that's encouraging for someone who doesn't really cost anything at all in draft and hold. He's probably a dollar days sort of guy, if not a reserve pick in AL only auctions, not knowing what the role is going to be. So I'm pretty interested in Lewis Thorpe, just given how low that price is. I'm out on Dobnak, by the way. Totally out? Yeah, pretty much. I'm looking at his numbers

and he's just a typical drop-down guy. And yes, he throws the change up more than most other guys that drop down like that and more than Triggs. But in terms of movement, it looks almost exactly like a sinker uh and it has like a six mile an hour differential so that's not a good change up and if you're not talking about a good change up now you're talking about getting by on

throwing a slider from that angle to to uh to lefties which has not traditionally been a good way to succeed you take take a flaw in his pitch mix and his movements and then you add in the fact that his projections are terrible. Probably not going to have a lot of shares of Dobnak. But Thorpe, I could see. There's a pathway to success for him with all those pitches. The projections are a little bit better. The whiff rates have been better.

It's not as obvious what his big flaw is other than velocity. Thorpe, I'm going to get some shares. He's going to make my top 150. Hey, alright. That's a successful prospect of the week dart then from my perspective. We've got a couple mailbag questions that I want to get to before we sign off on this episode. The first one is a good one for this time of year. It comes from Elliot. He's just curious about our ideal league types. What is our utopian fantasy baseball league in terms of things like number of teams, a draft versus an auction, keeper, dynasty, or redraft, and know categories that capture true value and weekly versus daily so just the the core structure of a league as you go through you know what is your ideal league setup well as a player who plays in a lot of leagues and my ideal setup is to have

a couple different ones um because if i'd prefer daily leagues in terms of gameplay but if all my leagues were daily i'd be in trouble so weekly leagues have become a thing that you'll see more weekly industry leagues too and i think that's to just help us not be setting lineups constantly every night which we're doing anyway but like doing more of it um so there's like an ideal sort of zoom out thing but then if you're talking about just what game do you like to play, I like daily, I like 5x5, and I like Roto.

Yeah, I'd prefer weekly to daily because of our schedules. I do like traditional 5x5 Roto, not because it captures player value in a way that's perfectly in sync with how teams value players. I know there are major flaws in it. The comp I've always gone to is Tecmo Super Bowl is my favorite

video game of all time. It's from 1991. It's almost 30 years old. Better football games have come out since then, but it still has enough to make it playable and fun. That's kind of how I feel about 5x5 with average in there instead of OBP. I know you can make awesome linear weight scoring systems, and AutoNew's got some ways that probably capture player value in a really real sort of way, but I like traditional 5x5 even with its flaws.

I prefer Redraft to Keeper and Dynasty, but I do like Keeper and Dynasty leagues. They're a lot of fun. I think I lean Keeper and Dynasty, yeah. I like Auer and Dynasty leagues. They're a lot of fun. I think I lean Keeper and Dynasty, yeah. I like auction leagues way better than snake drafts. It's not even close for me. Just the experience of it is amazing. It's a little bit harder to block off that time.

It's definitely a little bit longer, auctions are, but it's really exciting. And it allows for more ways to win that's one thing is like i don't want i don't like points league so much because i feel like someone figures out how to optimize the points and then they they just that's the way to win whereas with roto you can punt categories do this do that trade uh you know i feel like there's more ways to win and auction ups the number of ways to win even further because you don't have to you don't have to have a third round pick right it opens up a combination of players that you would never actually have a chance of getting in a snake

draft yeah exactly like you could you could have three aces. You can punt player populations. You can go hard on stars. You can do stars and scrubs, or you can try to get the middle. There's a lot of stuff to do in an auction, and I prefer those. I think my ideal number of teams would be 15 teams. The Tout Wars Mixed League Auction is probably my favorite overall format because it meets all this criteria. It does these OBPs instead of average, but fine.

It's fine. I can live with that adjustment. I like the 15-team league for the mixed leagues, though, because I think it just gives you a pretty competitive waiver wire every single week. There's enough talent out there where if you really need something, there are players available, but you don't get easy shots at players that are league winning players. And there's a lot of other owners out there that are looking at the same pool you are. So your chances of winning that player go down a little

bit. So I like a good competitive waiver wire throughout the season as well. But like you, you know, I mean, I just like in the way I set up the multiple leagues I play in, I want each of my leagues to bring something a little bit different. You know, I want a 12 team snake draft and a 15 team snake draft and a 15 team auction. Like if I'm going to keep adding leagues, it has to fill some sort of void of being a unique challenge compared to the other leagues. I want an AL-only league. I want an NL-only league because that way I'm looking at the player pool

from all different angles. And if I only could play one, it'd be a 15-team mixed league auction. Fortunately, I can play in 8 to 10 maybe every year without getting totally run down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's definitely something that I try to think about when I'm putting my leagues together.

If you have too many auto new leagues, as much as I love auto new, there's a certain ask up front in terms of the auction and the auction length. And March is, I'm traveling to industry things and to spring training. And this year I have to go to Florida and Arizona.

So, you know, just days in March where I can do an auction and my wife won't kill me are in short reserve. There is a home life balance that has to exist with work. Yeah, 20 straight nights of drafts and auctions from home and then being gone on the weekends would be pretty rough for the home life. spend a few minutes explaining NFBC and some of the other big leagues that are out there. Right now, he plays in a couple of recreational keeper leagues, and he's interested in the NFBC or something similar, but just doesn't know where to begin. So there's a lot of different things you can do through the NFBC. I've played it for, I think, seven or eight years now. There are live in-person snake drafts, there are live in-person auctions, and there are online options. So you don't have to travel to Vegas or New York or Chicago in March

to play. And you don't necessarily have to have a massive bankroll to play either. I mean, there's a whole variety of different price points. The online championship that they run is a 12-team snake draft format. It's 350 entry fee i think the top prize in each 12 team league is something like 1400 a good chunk of your entry fee of course goes into overall prizes as well so you have that uh all the leagues kind of playing against each other thing going on where you know if you do really well not only in your league you're playing against everybody else and all the other 12 team online championship leagues you could win a very large payout doing that so and then for gameplay when you if you're in that situation um you might want to take more quote-unquote risks uh because

you know if you think that you're there's a there's a n NFBC in general, there's a lot of focus on how good you are at FAAB, how good you are at picking up – deciding how much to spend on weekly pickups and who to pick up. So if you think you're going to be okay at that, then you really want to take some risks in the draft where if the things turn out well, then you end up beating not only the other 11 in your league, but all the other players. You really want to shoot for the moon if you want to turn your 50 into the biggest amount that you can. And so that means doing weird strategies, maybe getting three aces in the first four rounds, doing weird strategies, maybe getting three aces in the first four rounds, or, you know,

punting completely on relievers because you think you can FAB your way to saves, or, you know, just there's different strategies there to kind of shoot the moon. And if you're coming from a dynasty keeper aspect, it might be identifying, you know, the players, the young players that are going to play from day one and drafting those a couple rounds earlier than the consensus. So you have your own set of skills you're going to bring to the table and you're going to have to learn it. I wouldn't jump in on the deep end with 1,300 right away trying to get into the main event or whatever. I would do one of the $50 leagues, get to know the format, get to know FAB, maybe count that $50 as lost before you even play the year.

Just be like, this year I'm going to learn the format. But it's a fun format, and if you are really good, you can consistently win some money. The rake is fairly fairly high i would say compared to like if you were comparing it to like betting and stuff there's you know um you know betting may have better numbers if you're just about making money uh but the nfbc playing format is is a good one i like it right the site is very well run the payouts are fast and there's a lot of fees licensing fees to be in states to be legal that they have to pay.

So you do have to be mindful of the fact that, yeah, you're not getting a 100% payout when you play with your friends, but they have operating costs they have to cover. Live events, like having space in the Bellagio, cost money. You've got to pay for that. So tons of price points. No trading is the other big thing about those leagues. So if you are dominating your home leagues because you're a good trader, you tend to just dominate because you win those deals and that's how you improve your roster. You're going to have a different sort of challenge facing you in any of the NFBC leagues. It is cool, though, like that online championship I was mentioning.

It's $1,400 if you win your mentioning. It's $1,400 if you win your league. It's $125,000 if you win the overall prize, if you have the best team in all the online championships. But without trading, you do, like Eno said, you've got to be pretty aggressive. You've got to have something that really makes your team pop. You need some categorical balance, though. Like the punting a category strategy, you're giving up a chance of winning the overall prize. You're almost mathematically ensuring you will not win an overall championship you think that's true even for saves i think it is i think you still have to be have to have some saves you have to have some saves even if you have an fab strategy

you have to have some saves on your roster yeah i mean like you could get lucky and find a bunch in the first month somehow and then have those guys all year, but I think you're chasing all season long and probably not competing for an overall that way. And you're also tanking money that you could have been using on other things, just like spending way too much on saves. Exactly, yeah. So they do a great job running those contests.

Greg Ambrosius, Tom Kastanik, Derek Butcher are good guys. They run a great league. Be sure to check it out. It's like nfbc.shgn.com I think is the just Google NFBC, National Fantasy Baseball Championship. That'll bring you to the right place.

Beer of the Week, as we mentioned on our last episode, that's going to become Beer of the Month. I think we're going to do that on the last Thursday episode of every month. Looking at the calendar, that would be next week, to become beer of the month. I think we're going to do that on the last Thursday episode of every month. So looking at the calendar, that would be next week, Thursday. So beer of the month will be the, the new segment that closes out each month gives us time to try some stuff and to, uh,

actually take more detailed notes and maybe provide even better recommendations that are more widely available. Been trying some sour IPAs. I might go that direction in my beer of the month. Yeah, sour IPAs are pretty funky, but they're pretty good. So I'm curious to see if you land on one of those. As always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com.

Subject line can be anything you want. The email is going to reach us either way. So ratesandbarrelsat barrels at the athletic.com. Lots of other great pods that we're launching recently here at the athletic, by the way, if you're getting into college basketball with March madness, only about six weeks away, check out bracket madness with Brian Bennett and Michael Beller. We've got lots of other great baseball shows as well.

Team shows are about to ramp up. So be sure to check those out. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you on thursday thanks for listening