Rates & Barrels - Eury Pérez, TJ Friedl, Josh Lowe Injury Updates & Tough Hitter Rankings

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss another busy weekend filled with injury news including elbow soreness for Eury Pérez, a fractured wrist for TJ Friedl, and an IL stint to begin 2024 for Josh Lowe. Plus, they dig into several tough hitter rankings as draft season heats up.  Rundown 2:58 Eury Pérez: Dealing with Sore Elbow 7:08 TJ Friedl: Out with Fractured Wrist 11:33: Josh Lowe: Will Open Season on IL 16:26 Kyle Manzardo: Sent to Minor League Camp 23:40 Corey Seager: May Be Ready for Opening Day? 28:29 Any Reason to Worry About Bryce Harper or Aaron Judge? 31:15 Tough Rankings: Luis Robert Jr. & Frequently Injured Early-Rounders 38:52 Oneil Cruz & Young Players Returning From Lengthy Absence 50:42 Luis Arraez & Categorically Imbalanced Players 56:04 Junior Caminero & Players We're Waiting For in 2024 Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes w/Trevor May! (next live show: 3/29) https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Eury Pérez Thumbnail Photo: Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Monday, March 18th. Derek Van Ruyper, Innosaris here with you on this episode. We get you caught up on some news and notes from around the league over the course of the weekend. A lot of injury information, unfortunately. It is that time of year. And then we dig into tough ranks on the hitter side. So we got two episodes, beginning of the week,

we have our tough ranks for hitters, we have our tough ranks for pitchers coming out on Tuesday. We'll be on planes on Tuesday. So if we say anything about someone who has suffered an injury in the last like 12 to 24 hours, that will be the reason why. So there's one disclaimer. We'll put one in the Tuesday episode itself. A lot of ground to cover though today. And a quick note. This is the last call for the listener league for 2024. Get the current link in the discord. We're currently on league six.

That means we have over 1000 entries so far. One per person please. Line up lock 10 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday for the whole season. No in season pickups, no in season moves. Shout out to our friends at FanTracks for having the customization options available for us to even put this together. And again, shout out to our friends at FanTracks for having the customization options available for us to even put this together.

And again, shout out to Jeff Good for doing the heavy lifting, making the cap, making the leagues, and answering a lot of questions in the Discord. So go to the Discord, get the link, sign up, and submit your lineup before 10 o'clock Eastern on Tuesday night to get in on the fun for the Listener League this season. If you're playing in a traditional league, you're the commissioner looking for a place to play. Check out fan tracks. Lots of options as far as customizations go.

Really deep player pool too if you play keeper or dynasty leagues. It's really nice of them to put that together. I have I've got a I've got a team. I didn't I didn't do any spreadsheets or calculators or anything special on this one. I just, I tried to be a little different than myself as well because trying to beat people who listened to me talk about baseball a lot. So I got to do something a little different. I got in your head when I poisoned the well last week.

You did, without even telling me what your plan was just by telling me, by pointing out the plan, the fact that everyone's gonna know my plan. It's Princess Bride Grade trickery, so I have tried to convince everybody listening to the show to do something different than what they want to do so I can do the exact thing that I wanna do and just walk right on up that

Leaderboard that is my plan. You'd like to think that wouldn't you? Which one has the poison in it We get to our news and notes here as we get started and we get some fresh ranks on the site by the way. Top 300 hitters, Eno's got updated pictures, we got all this stuff going for you as draft weekends continue to pick up. But news that is very important, Yuri Perez dealing with some elbow soreness right now. Initially it was like a couple of fingernail related problems he was dealing with that

were cutting his start short but he reported some elbow soreness coming out of his last outing and we're still kind of in this uncertain window as far as whether or not he's going to miss significant time or if it's going to be more like I don't know the Garrett Cole situation but it doesn't look great and I think when you consider that the Marlins had to find a way to manage his innings somewhat this year anyway knowing that he's got soreness, even if it's just inflammation and not the result of a tear, you could see pretty easily

how they would err on the side of caution now with the hope of making this problem go away and then have a cleaner runway once he's back to just let him work like a regular starter. Sort of desperate times in Miami, you know, with Braxton Garrett out as well and Sandy Alcantara out for the year. Like I think the manager was like, can you pitch for us tonight?

Oh, I'll actually talk about a couple guys in this rotation in tomorrow's podcast. And we'll talk about this situation, I think, in more depth. But it makes me think that Ryan Weathers is going to make the team. And there's some interesting stuff plus numbers for Ryan Weathers. It's the best I've ever seen his fastball. It's like 108 stuff plus on his fastball. That's really weird. He did get beat around in his last start, but he has 21 strikeouts and 18 innings.

I don't know. Put Ryan Weathers somewhere on your draft board, I guess. I would say the other name that gets a big bump in the short term is someone we already like. It's Max Meyer. He's seven scoreless in Grapefruit League play so far. And even if you have to manage his innings, you have to have enough quality arms out there

if you're the Marlins to just make your season matter. So you're going to have to put somebody out there who's good. You can't go to all the depth options. You can't go entirely NRIs to bridge the gap. So I'd give Meyer a nudge up in the rankings, kind of like Louis Hill situation in the Bronx, where it might not be a permanent spot all year. In Meyer's case, there's probably a better chance of him just sticking. And we've talked before about this team maybe being a good candidate to utilize a six man rotation. Maybe not at the beginning of the season, but at various points. So that's on

the table as well. But I think in the immediate future, Yuri Perez for these next couple of days, at least until we get more information, it's just sort of on the do not fly unless it's super late list for me. I just think there's a lot of reasons to be extra cautious with him. Yeah, I'm super angry that I have some team somewhere with an early Uri Prez, might even be TGFBI. I'm just mad he's hurt,

because I want to see a pitch. Also, funny, I've been texting you off and on, just random thoughts as I look through the box scores at night. That's right. You told me you were going to do that, and I forgot you were doing it, and you sent me a weird text last night, and now I remember why you did it. So thank you for reminding me, because I meant to ask you.

If you're looking on YouTube, you can see, I sent him a screen grab of the Marlins game, and you can see, look at who started the game. Blank, blank, three innings, three strikeouts, one walk. Blank. Don't you worry about Blank, let me worry about Blank. Yeah, and I just feel like that's an encapsulation of what it's like to be in Miami right now.

Let's put Blank in, Blank's got five. Blank's got a healthy arm, Bl blanks gonna go out there and chew up some things for us today. Yeah, it is the sad state of things right now. Hopefully we get some good news on Yuri here in the near future. But that's where things stand at least at the time of this recording around 130 Eastern on Monday. Another big injury item that came through over the weekend TJ Friedle out with a fractured wrist. He's obviously going to be out through opening day. This is a three to four week window before he gets reassessed.

And I think that means he's probably out more like, I don't know, six to eight because it's going to take him some time to rehab. And if everything looks OK, it's going to be a lengthy rehab assignment to get his timing back at the plate. Kind of an important player for the Reds though too because for all the depth they have, Friedl is their best defensive option in center field. So they take a hit defensively, and while they've got a guy like Will Benson who can play more and at least be sort of interesting

for fantasy purposes, Friedl is more in this bucket of player that I just wanted to see because I was so skeptical of the power coming off of last year and nothing's changed as far as his opportunity. Still playing in the park that helped him get to 18 homers. Now we have this absence and an injury that even when he comes back you always worry about a wrist injury like this. If it's slow to heal, if there's still some lingering soreness, being something that can

really kind of sap production for a while once he's eventually off the IL. This and Shoulder are one of the worst for power production and he was kind of somebody that I had circled as, you know, being almost a kind of a tough rank because I just didn't know where his power level really is sits. 107 max EV and like a 4% bail rate for his career. Those are numbers that in Seattle might give you six homers and a, you know, a sub 100 ISO. How much is that park and inflated? We've seen for him more of like a 20 homerun pace as a Cincinnati Red, a lot of homers at home, not so many on the road.

So now there's even more uncertainty with regards to his TJ Friedl's power. When we get into the outfield discussion, I think Jake Fraley might play some center, at least by outs above average. What you see is Friedl was first, Stewart Fairchild was second, Jake Fraley was third, Will Benson was a minus in the outfield as were Senzel and Steer.

These are qualified attempts, but you kind of want to keep that qualifier on there for defensive stats, I feel like. I don't want to really talk about tiny ones. What we have seen, another thing that I texted you was like weird, you know, player eligibility. Jonathan India has played first base and left field. So I think he benefits a little bit from the Noel V. Marte and TJ Friedle situations where you can have Jamer Candelario, Kristen Encarnacion and Spencer Steer all playing and leaving a corner outfield or first base slot for Jonathan India still to play. And so I think India, at least to begin the season, may be very close to an everyday player. And that leaves, I believe,

Fraley being the lead contender for starting and center, Benson starting and right, Stuart Fairchild makes the team as the defensive replacement. Right. I think Fairchild could end up in a platoon too. They don't play Fraley a lot against lefties, so we could see Fairchild get those starts for really, really deep leagues out there. But this is one of those situations, I would say the Jonathan India playing time bump is kind of similar to what Whitmurray Field gets in Philly, where if you're trying to project playing time

for the first half of the season, it's closer to an everyday role. And once you look at July and beyond, maybe it's different then, but it could change 10 other ways between now and then, because more guys could be hurt. Like there's a number of reasons why he could continue, play, could just play well and end up playing more

in the second half than expected. So definitely opens up time for him. They're kind of like the six starter of a rotation, you know? You know, the fifth or sixth starter, we're like, they're gonna play and they're probably gonna get to, you know, 550, 600 played appearances maybe, but will I want them

all the way through? And will it be, you know, different paces at different times of the season? More news on the injury front. Josh Lowe will open the season on the IL with an oblique injury, not a total shock. I believe it was Christie Acker from the Tampa Bay Times who had a grade one oblique strain diagnosis. This is the kind of injury, like any soft tissue thing is one of those injuries that you can push it

and you run a slightly increased risk of it being a lingering problem with a setback, or you can shut down for a slightly longer period of time, make it go away, and then sort of come back and have a slightly better chance of not having a setback. So I do wonder, because of the depth the Rays have, if they will opt for a more cautious approach, and this will be a longer end of the timetable sort of recovery for Josh Lowe, in hopes that he can come back and just be the player he was last year from like May on.

Because I think obliques usually are more than the minimum as far as an IL stand. Usually they're closer to a month before they go away even at the lower end of the severity scale. It's interesting because it's an oblique game right now. Baseball is an oblique scheme. You're trying to turn your body fast. That's pretty much really important.

If you look at the research trunk rotation and bat speed trunk rotation and arm speed very high correlations that oblique is helping you turn your your trunk and and it's one of those ones. I think you got it perfectly I was talking to grant you about this one time you just have to wait and then at some point you have to try and if it hurts you have to stop and you have to wait you know so you know there you can feel good and you can be like well we waited long enough and then you try it and you're like dang you know so um it is that's i think why it takes so long is because you feel like oh we'll just wait longer so that we are. You don't feel it when you do it, but then you could still feel it anyway when we when we ramp you ramp you up. So I think the Rays death chart on fan graphs is hilarious. They literally have eight players with playing time at second base.

I don't I haven't seen many death charts like this. I mean, eight. and there's no joke, they could all play second base. We got Brandon Lau, Ahmed Rosario, Taylor Walls, Curtis Mead is playing second base in Spring. Jonathan Aranda's actually been playing more first base. Richie Palacios has played some second base. Jose Caballero is a middle infielder by trade.

He's like one of the few on here that would play a good second base. And then they put Isaac Paredes over there too. So just a ridiculous depth chart. Ah, Johnny De Luca and Richie Palacios now make the team. De Luca's hurt too though. Oh. Yeah, De Luca broke his hand.

He actually, I think he got hit by a pitch. So four to six weeks for him which I think when I look at their depth chart I mean Randy Rosarana locked in and left I think Jose's series pretty locked in in center. I think you're looking at right field now and that's probably like the Richie Palacios, Harold Ramirez or Ahmed Rosario sort of platoon. So I think Richie Palacios is going to play a lot with Josh Lowe out. I noticed on Mike Curlin's MLB playing time site that Jairo Ramirez might pick up outfield eligibility. I think he's got two or three starts this spring now

in the outfield. So that's definitely, they're already trying that out. And I think the Jonathan Aranda playing first base situation is a little bit of an admission that maybe Aranda is gonna be the DH. So the big boosts here are Aranda and Richie Palacios because you would have you've formed an opinion about Howard Ramirez anyway and I don't think this changes that opinion. No, no, use them selectively. He plays some, you know, he's better in some situations than others but the guys

that maybe were on the bubble that now make the team are Aranda and Richie Palacios. Right, you kick the can further down the road with the Ramirez roster decision because of the DeLuca injury. I think that's the takeaway there. And I would say that the Josh Lowe situation, if you have a league that has IL spots,

he's still good enough to draft him and use a limited number of IL spots on a player like him. Oh I think he's good enough even in like a NFPC situation we only have seven bench spots come on. Exactly but. You got it but you can only have like one or two of those. That's the problem so I think you'll get a nice discount I think he is worth it but just make sure you're changing your plans as far as a prospect that you might stash that you wanted to have previously if you take Josh Lowe at the discount you probably aren't taking a shot like that later on in the draft and that shot might be on a former Ray or

at least it would have been on Kyle Manzardo the Guardian sent Manzardo to minor league camp tough one because you wonder like how long is this really gonna last how long is Kyle Manzardo to be playing in Columbus instead of in Cleveland? Yeah, I don't understand it necessarily. I wonder if it has something to do with different like options. Like there's so many times when like, there's just like a, Oh, this guy has options. this guy doesn't like that that could be going on

I see Manzardo had 24 played appearances Josh Nailor had 40 so they weren't quite playing him a ton but he was hitting 381 no homers but a fair amount of doubles I guess they just looked at this roster and said, Naylor is our first baseman and even if he platoons we're not going to have Manzardo up to platoon. And Devidos De Los Santos, Devison De Los Santos is a rule five pick that he has to be on the roster all year to make it through. He has been up and down, has had some good numbers in the minors, but was at 88 WRZ plus in AA last year. He's also 20 years old. So with the age at level, you know, work there, this is somebody that could be above average with the bat, be a terrible defender. But maybe he's the D.H.

ish and the guy who plays instead of Naylor against lefties. I saw him playing some third to. I think you probably just let Naylor play against everybody, don't you? And then De Los Santos is in a platoon with like Louriano at DH. Or like, so roster resource has it set up in a way that kind of makes sense for me. Yeah, like if Floriel is playing in the outfield

and I mean, it sort of depends on what you do with Miles Straw. If Miles Straw is on your roster still, he's playing center field for his defense. And then Floriel is kind of a floater Sometimes corner guy usually dh and he's a lefty So you'd sit him against lefties and let de los santos play there But this is the cost of having a rule five pick and trading for floreal

This is like they created a roster logjam that is putting pressure on guys that We definitely don't like as much long-term as we like manzardo And I it might even hurt him in the short term, too You know what this seems like this is like asset acquisition at all costs. You know it's like We just need to have more players get me more players and like so you get floreal. You know who? He's got to be out of options. Yeah, he's out of option He's out of options, and then you's out of options. Yeah, he's out of options. And then you get the real five rules on De Los Santos.

He's got to stay on their roster. So now you've got two spots on your roster. Oh, in the name of asset acquisition, we need to keep these two guys there because if we nurse them through the season, we'll have more assets in our organization. I get it, but I'm sorry. Kyle Manzardo is better than Davidos De Los

Santos, and I don't know that it's worth playing this game all year to get Davidos De Los Santos in there. And Florial was free for the entire league. He was put on waivers. Anybody could have claimed it, and nobody did. So now you've got a guide that nobody else wanted that you could have gotten at any time and you're gonna you're gonna do weird games to keep them on your roster. Uh like and then the Miles Straw thing like I'm not I'm not sure I like I think they should almost be sunk cost sorry I know we owe you five million a year or if it's not a sunk cost then at least make him your fourth outfielder and find some better situation center. Maybe that's the idea with Florial,

but I'm not sure he's better than straw. Man, I don't know, dude. There's something I don't like about this. This makes me shake my head. I don't like it. If you look at projections in the Batex, we've talked about is generally a little lighter on prospects than other projection systems. Cal Manzardo still by WRC plus the seventh best hitter projected for the Guardians. He actually likes Tyler Freeman quite a bit as a really like part time sort of player.

But between it's Jose Ramirez, Josh Naylor, Freeman, Andres Jimenez, Ramon Loriano, and Bo Naylor, and then Manzardo, which says a lot about this roster. For a team that really needs offense. Yeah, I just, I think this is silly. Wait, you didn't say Quan, did you? Quan's actually projected for the same WRC Plus as Manzardo, just does it kind of a different way. And there's also the possibility,

a distinct possibility that Manzardo's just better than his projection because he's been better than what he was at AAA last year and there's a lot going on. So I don't know, asset acquisition and retention at all costs seems like the plan here and it doesn't make them better right now and it might even hurt them a little bit in the long run too.

Basically pushing them towards an actual platoon, I don't even know if it works platoon wise. De La Santos is a righty I'm pretty sureatoon wise. De Los Santos is a righty, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Florio is a lefty. OK, so that's that's actually going to be like a de facto platoon for them. Like there's going to be De Los Santos, Florio and most of the league was like, no.

We need some good power to you, Cleveland. Yeah. I mean, they power to you Cleveland. Yeah. I mean, they're gonna have a pretty much a zero bat situation at short and center already. So you're gonna have a zero bat situation at short and center, and then you're adding a zero bat situation at DH of all places. I think they should be playing Brian Roquio

at shortstop too, but you know. Yeah, is it Gilbert Arias? That's what they've got on the top of the depth chart right now It doesn't it doesn't matter you could write it in however you want Let me see the playing times situation is going to Jose Tanya Tyler Freeman and then Rokio so Rokio is 31 played appearances Freeman has 31 Rokio is not playing well this spring

Freeman has 31, Roquio's not playing well this spring. How do you as an organization love middle and fielders as much as the Guardians and not have a slam dunk solution that plays high in the order every single day in your lineup, how do you mess that up? Because they make fake short stops. They make guys that are short stops in name and you have to be really careful when you're scouting them as another team because they're

Gonna sell you Tyler Freeman is a shortstop and nobody else thinks he's a shortstop Okay, fair enough. We'll we'll end the Guardians criticism We got a little They're okay, they're just they're just okay That's the truth. They're okay Onto some good news Cory Seeger actually could be ready for opening day Which a few weeks ago seemed impossible even if he doesn't make it I found when I was putting the rankings together that I was a little higher on Seeger than I expected to be Because there's some there are some Freddie Freeman like qualities in what he does instead of giving you

You know 10 15 bags He just gives you a little extra thump in terms of power back-to-back 33 home run seasons He did it last year with five hundred and thirty six plate appearances so when you start to look at Corey Seeger even when you bake in the Added injury risk that he brings given some of the major stuff He's dealt with in his career some of the soft, given some of the major stuff he's dealt with in his career, some of the soft tissue stuff, some of the bad luck stuff. I get that you don't project him like Freeman by volume, but I came to the conclusion that of early round picks,

people were maybe sidestepping Corey Seeger more than they should have in drafts. I think that might change, that might correct over these final couple of weeks, but this is really good news, even if he doesn't hit opening day, because it might not be a very lengthy absence once the season begins.

I believe by ADP, Seager and Eli De La Cruz are like the players that you can get if you wait and don't get a starting pitcher in the first three rounds. Mm, he could get both. Hey, you could even get both, but... Get both. But there's a certain class of player, like, I think Michael Harris is sort of end of the second. You know, there's, and then there's a tough rank that we'll talk about later who's in this group. There's a certain class of player that you just don't end up with

if you take a starting pitcher in the first three rounds. And Seager is I think on that list. Another thing I texted you, I texted you. It's a new segment where we just put the phones up to the camera. The limits of the why not this guy later game. So the limits of the why not this that guy later game was inspired by why Ellie De La Cruz when you can get O'Neill De La Cruz later.

O'Neill De La Cruz. Yeah. Why not Ellie De La Cruz when you get O'Neill Cruz later? Because, well, you know, O'Neill Cruz is has some similarities to L.D., but O'Neill hurt his ankle. And so his spring, like his stolen base numbers are a question. Stolen base numbers are fairly sticky you know in spring so how often he takes off in spring does is somewhat indicative of what happens and O'Neill Cruz has one stolen base. That's a reason to take O'Neill Cruz that's why O'Neill Cruz goes later you. And then you could play the game where it's like, if not O'Neill Cruz, then, you know, why not this guy later? I don't know.

I don't have the name in front of you, but I saw somebody playing this and then they said, well, you can play this game with almost anybody. And Corey Seeger is like, well, why do I take a shortstop that can hit me 30 homers when I can get 30 homers later? And I won't be getting steals from shortstop. Well the 300 batting average is why. Because like the the amount of people that are projected to hit 290 with 30 homers is really really short. We have only seven guys in baseball projected to be to hit above 290 next season by the

bat X and of those seven guys one of them is Luis to hit above 290 next season by the bad X. And of those seven guys, one of them is Luis Arais and the other one's Freddie Freeman. I don't think they're hitting 30 homers. So there are only five guys in baseball that will hit 295 or better or 290 or better and hit 30 homers. And Corey Seeger is on that list. Oh, Vlad Guerrero is another guy you can get. He's on that list. He's another guy you can get if you wait on pitching a little bit. Right. If you trust the projection.

There is no, I will just get this later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. That's a really good point. There are certain combinations of skills that you can't, you can't steal later on, or you're very unlikely to be able to steal. That to me would be the better way to build a roster foundation. Get the things you can't get later early and find the other things

that are a little more variable in the middle rounds. Find the the 15 homer, 30 steel players that actually do live in the pick 100 to 175 range. You could take a few shots in there and do it. So, yeah, a lot to think about with Cory Seager, maybe ticking up boards again. If he stays in that round three range, love him in that spot.

I think that's just great value for an early round player that will be really, really good once he's back from this injury. The two guys ahead of Seager that are in the news that I think are fine are Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge. And they're in that cluster of guys you love to get late in round one, early in round two. If you're in a 12-team league, you could get both of those guys.

That's an amazing start. But you may also have choices like Jose Ramirez or Yaron Alvarez or guys who are not actively dealing with something. Harper's doing something. Harper's been slowed by backstiffness this spring. Old man disease. Yeah. And that's the thing. So Jason Stark wrote about it. And it's just more of like a hey, like he's kind of like absent

from the lineup when he would ordinarily be in the lineup. And he hasn't had imaging or anything done to our knowledge. So there's there's not like an elevated level of concern. But it is the point in Spring now, if you're not out there, we're getting close to that window where if you're not out there on the days you're supposed to be out there doing the things that you ordinarily would do, you might be more bothered by something than previously was let on.

So I'm not trying to create some kind of conspiracy with Harper or Judge. I'm more just bringing to the table as do you start to worry even with a player that you really like, that you really trust when we get to the second half of March and they're consistently absent. And Jason pointed out a couple of the games that they had recently for the Phillies were four hour bus rides. So if you have a minor anything, you're not getting on that bus. If you're Bryce Harper, like there's no chance the Phillies would do that. And with Aaron Judge,

he hasn't played a spring game since March 10th. He had some imaging done on his abdominal area and they keep pushing back some of the hitting stuff he's supposed to be doing. So are you worried about either one of Harper or Judge in light of the current news? Because we're at this point, we're drafting almost every day.

We gotta make these decisions on a day by day basis. The discount you get's not gonna be a lot. Generally you're gonna have to take them right around that one, two turn. Like middle of round two is the biggest discount you're gonna get based on what we know right now, but both of these players. I'm just a little bit less worried about Harper. I mean, he's been in games more recently.

There's a stat for you. He's played. He's played. The game's played. A new stat here. And then I think the thing that Judge is so interesting is that if you run the auction calculator, he almost always shows up as a top two player,

but that's with like 600 plate appearances. And I don't know if I want to segue so quickly, but, uh, I keep getting really close to saying this person's name. And so I know I'm supposed to say his name later on the rundown, but it gives me a little bit of this class of players. It's really tough to rank, which is the Louise Robert bucket. I think judge is getting close to that type of difficult rank where. We have research that suggests that projecting injury is something that

should just be mostly regressed to the mean. You know, it's like, it's not that injury risks aren't as bad as we think, you know, or that projecting injury is really, really tough and tougher than just looking at that guy and be like, well, that guy's injured all the time, you know, like it's not that easy. Also just tough to rank because you're in the midst always, it seems, of getting news updates about their health while you're drafting. And you're just like you're about to press the button on judging like maybe I should

do one more Google search before I press go on Judge Robert. You know, he's like, let me make sure he's healthy right now. And if you do that Google search, you're gonna be like, I don't know the judge is healthy right now. So he's just gonna keep dropping and dropping for me. And the risk versus reward for both, I think is almost top five player. I think you could say that about Robert. Like if Robert played 650 Play-Doh branches this year,

he could be a top five player. Even on that team? Yeah, cause you're thinking like runs and RBI. Yeah, just think of counting stats. Would the counting stats be there? I mean, and usually your top five players are also on good teams and like have the big runs and RBI. I present Bobby Witt Jr. though. They're both first-round players. Yeah, both first-round players that they're healthy all year and so the reward proposition is there but you know usually you're not taking that kind of a

risk in the first couple of rounds. I know we were just talking about games played in spring training. The other thing that Jason pointed out about Harper that I thought was kind of interesting is the home runs. Bryce Harper has not hit a home run this spring. And you might say, okay, whatever, who cares? It's 22 at bats.

And I think that's generally how my brain works. But when you look back at what Bryce Harper usually does in spring training, what things are happening in the spring when Bryce Harper goes out and is himself, he hit eight homers in spring training in 2022. He hit four the spring before that. He hit four in 10 games of spring before that. He always hits homers in spring training.

Again, could be something, could be nothing. That was the theme of what Jason put out there I'm like dang it. This is this is messing with my head. This is I Don't think it was completely designed for that, but I don't want to think about these sorts of things Yeah, that gets a little too result II with a launch angle to he's pounding the ball into the ground He doesn't normally do that. Let me see what I I've got here I did put up all the Bryce Harper 1.6 launch angle that was yeah that was in the stories like he's just hitting the ball on the ground like that thing you do when you're not feeling right but but

now hey I will go back to one of the the core tenets of your usage of rolling graphs and stat cast data. This goes all the way back to the first time you ever talked about it at first pitch, like five years ago. The Carlos Correa example of, here's the dip, here's where I didn't feel good. So you could have this, this can happen.

This can happen any time of year. Are we looking at something that's happening in February and March and reacting differently than if it was just happening in the middle of the season For a handful of days where it could have a 22 played appearance. I'm sure he does I'm sure he does He's human Yeah, I'm still leaning less worried also just like you know judge

Mentioned that the toe thing is just gonna be something he has to deal with his whole career. That to me, when I heard that I was like, yeah, that's just how injuries work. If you hurt yourself, like Mike Trout's back, he has to do extra work for his back forever. There's stuff that you pick up these chronic injuries or you have a devastating injury

and you have to treat your body differently post injury than you did pre injury and it doesn't really mean anything It just means you have to do more that means that's why previous injury also predicts future injury That's like one of the few things we've got So I just I don't know they do we have an injury for Harper is my question you know, is he actually hurt or is he just sore and Being rested because why would you push him right now? Yeah, and then we do have injury for judge is that a distinction? I mean having an MRI versus not having an MRI probably is worth something

Worried enough to get imaging this is the silly parsing that we have to do when we want to try and pick someone who's in this bucket, which makes them a tough rank. Where do you rank them? And then how, even if you rank them a certain way, is that really what you're gonna do in the draft? Because I've definitely spent at least three drafts where Luis Robert Jr. is the number one guy on my board,

I've found other things to do. I've been like, hmm, I'm just gonna take a picture here. Oh, I'll just take George Kirby instead. Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna kick that can down the street a little bit. And then somebody else gets Luis Robert and it's not your problem. Right, exactly.

And the difference here is that Robert's healthy right now. So the tough ranks aspect of Robert is the nagging stuff that he's dealt with and like look at his games played since 2021, 68, 98, 145. He's coming off the year where he mostly stayed healthy, had a knee injury late last year. That's not a problem for him anymore.

Now we have it, now we have that proof. Is this the high watermark or is this a sign of things to come? That's why it's a tough rank for Luis Robert right now because I'm with you by skills, by output, even on a bad team, he has first round talent. He possesses that. And how you rank first round talent with

Third or fourth round health concerns and a 12th round supporting cast That's tough Yeah, I thought that was generous 12th round And like again, I don't really care about his spring training results And like again, I don't really care about his spring training results. Interesting that he's been hitting a bunch of fly balls, but not too interested in all this in terms of results, other than the fact that he's got 36 plate appearances and seems to be playing regularly. It's weird that there's a bunch of people who have more spring training with plate appearances

on his team. Like Dominic Fletcher has 12, 14 more plate appearances. But they're really trying to figure out if Donnie Fletcher should be given that everyday starting role that he seems to have been given. And I think for Robert, they're just like, we just want you to be ready for the season. Like we want you healthy. We want to be careful with you now.

We know what you can do. We just want you to feel as healthy as you can feel on day one of the season and keep you as healthy as we can all season because any prayer we have of being even respectable for a brief period of time hinges on you being healthy and productive. Other tough ranks though, O'Neil Cruz, you mentioned him a little earlier and I think any player coming off of a big injury, any young player, he's not the only one that fits in this bucket

Like Vinny Pascuentino fits into this bucket and they're very different players in terms of what we expect from them when you have a Mostly lost season due to a major injury and you come back the next year and the projection still like you and the draft market Still likes you that's a really tough player to rank because You got to plant the flag, you gotta decide, am I in? Is this actually a player that's gonna go two or three rounds earlier in future seasons? Based on projections, there's a reason to be optimistic

about O'Neil Cruz, based on spring training. You mentioned the speed, he's got five homers. He's not stealing bases because you don't steal bases when you have to touch them all. You eliminate the possibility. Five spring training homers is like, this dude's feeling good, swinging the bat well, everything seems like it's pretty locked in right now.

I really love the walk rate especially because if you look at O'Neill Cruz's rookie season, the big question was, what's his plate discipline gonna look like? Is he really a viable bat if he's gonna walk 7% of the time and strike out 35% of the time? And what we saw in the rolling graphs for O'Neill Cruz was that over time, he made better decisions.

And he carried that into that very small sample at the beginning of last year and we saw an explosion in his walk rate and a real big reduction in the strikeout rate and To see him come back this spring and be walking 16% of the time and striking out 25% of the time Really makes me think that he's going to come back at the upper ends of his potential. He's also 25 years old so he's in the peak of his You know

I think the reason why peak in baseball is sort of a little bit hard to nail down and kind of between 25 and 28 is that your athletic skills are only going down So if you look at sprinters in the hundred yard dash or whatever, you know, it's at hundred meters hundred meters I mean does a hundred yard meters. Yeah, we yeah, we're not as like, American high school championships might be yards for some dumb reason, but the rest of the world is meters. And the difference between 100 meter and 100 yard dash is probably like,

it's pretty small. It's 30 centimeters, but anyway, if you look at the guys in 100 meters, they peak in their early 20s. That's a sort of physical peak. But baseball has all these learned skills, the strike zone, anticipation, what these pitchers are doing, all these shapes they're throwing at me, all these sort of learned skills.

And I think the learned skills pretty much just go up as you and my evidence for this is your swing rate goes down pretty much over your career. Your swing rate just kind of just goes down. The aging curve for the swing rate is just down, you know? So that to me says that like, oh, that's learning the game. Those learn skills. So your learn skills are pretty much just always going up as you play more and more,

and your athleticism is going down. Well, he's showing us that his learn skills are there, and that the things that we saw him learn, that he actually learned them. That's what I'm seeing in the spring trainings for us of stats. The athleticism though, you know, and then everything that we're doing this,

we're basing this on small samples because that's all he's given us. And we try to look at like, oh, he hit the ball 122 miles per hour in 2022. And even last year, 116, like this guy hits the ball super hard, but what is his barrel rate gonna look like? What is his conversion between raw power

and game power gonna look like? So I have to admit, I don't like to look at spring training results, but those five homers also leap off the page for me. So I think this is a guy who can really hit like 250, 260 with 30 homers, but I think it might only be like 10 steals. Just thinking about that ankle and you know, how they slow walked him coming back off that ankle and they,

they didn't have him play, you know, in certain places where he could have played. Uh, I'm thinking they're going to be really careful with that ankle. I'm really not sure about the ankle. I think that's a safe assumption, but if he had three fewer homers, I wonder if he might have a few extra steals. I think it's really hard to get a sense of how much he would be running if things were playing out differently. I came in a little light on O'Neill Cruz relative to the field in the initial hitter rankings. It's got to be like

48th among hitters. I'm not not gonna get them if I keep them there. If I'm gonna actually have O'Neill Cruz. What's the would-you-rather proposition? Looking at the weekend, so the NFPC's main event drafts, the highest stakes, like big ones. There's some higher stakes ones that aren't like a big contest. This is one that has the overall component.

Four drafts over the weekend, so decent sample. Big old $1,750 entry fee. O'Neil Cruz, pick 54. Invested human beings. Yeah, people that have thought a little bit about what they might wanna do. 54 overall, range of 46 to 67. At 67, my ranking is gonna get him.

Fourth round. Fourth round. But now, so he's starting to live in the previous sort of like dead zone group of hitters where Royce Lewis is kind of in that range now, right? Similar type of player, we've seen some interesting things. These are really exciting young players that could be really, really good. They could even jump into first round talent.

Like that's how good Royce Lewis and O'Neil Cruz are. And when I landed on with Lewis, even though his injury history is even worse than Cruz's with the two ACL tears, is the skills are so solid across the board. He's a little bit better in terms of like contact and other things. Yeah, it was easy to jump when I was already pitcher pitcher. But you have to think about what you're going to do if you're balanced, if you're hitter pitcher, pitcher hitter, whatever combination up top and then something else in the third. And you're balanced, if you're hitter-pitcher, pitcher-hitter, whatever combination up top, and then something else in the third,

and you're saying, okay, I'm going best available. Because best available is less obvious. If you're choosing apples versus oranges, hitters versus pitchers, are you taking a first closer in Joanne Duran, are you taking Lewis or O'Neil Cruz? Are you taking a starter like a Grayson Rodriguez or a Max Fried, are you taking O'Neil Cruz? Are you taking a Randy Arroz Arena versus O'Neill Cruz?

Those are all, there's a lot of would you rather is kind of mashed together there, but that's, it's like an interchange on a highway. Like you have a lot of directions you can choose depending on what you've done up to that point. One thing that I am sort of solidifying is an approach to the closer, and I think I would take O'Neill, Cruz and Royce Lewis

over a top closer, you know, every day of the week. And the reasoning that I'm coming to is just that I think, you know, there's a game trends theory, which is just that closers are getting nastier and nastier up and down, you know, with pitch design and, you know, just the VLO that's there. I think that, you know, with pitch design and, you know, just the VELO that's there. I think that, you know, there's it's we're getting closer and closer to like at least 30 guys who throw 99 with great stuff in the big leagues. You know what I mean? And the closer we get to that,

the closer it is that like, okay, everybody's got one. Right. And if everybody's got one, then you just have to identify that guy. You know what I mean? And I'm not it's not there yet. You know, I don't think the Royals have that guy yet. They just sent down McMillan, the guy that we kind of liked in that in that role. You know, there are teams that don't have that necessarily. And the Rockies may never. I mean, there are a lot of reasons for that.

Yeah, not some of it being altitude and just what it does to pitches. So but the closer we get to that and I think we are, you know, traveling on that in that direction, the more that it makes sense to just take the next guy later rather than take the top guy there. And just think about the, the would you rather game or the, why not this guy later game? We need a name for that.

Well, it was draft this, not that. Yeah, we tried, we were trying some stuff out. It was, yeah. Take this, not that. But it's- Swinger spit. Yeah, so, so the, yeah. The, the, the, the game there, I think, actually is tighter

than it is with other things. Like I know why I take L.A. de Cruz over O'Neill Cruz. Like I'm pretty sure I know that. But why do I take Emmanuel Classe over Camila Duvall? I'm not as quite as sure of that. Okay, that's a good way to describe it. I could see that. I would say the, whatever this game's called, submissions via discord especially yeah have a chat I've get on

this one need a little need a little assistance here even though we're both supposed to use words professionally sometimes we still need help consult dictionaries thesaurus is friends whatever it might be I think the I'll wait for this guy I'll wait for this guy, I'll wait for this guy game has diminishing returns. It's like playing the one red paperclip game but in reverse. It's like starting with the speedboat and trading down from the speedboat. It's like you wait you had a chance something better and you passed on something better for the next thing and if you do that enough times you're

you're down to the paperclip. That's an extreme example. You're not going all the way to the paperclip. But if you think O'Neill Cruz is a foundational player and you'd like him at cost, I'm not gonna argue against this, you do have kind of an interesting, similarly profile player right there next to him.

I think Jazz Chisholm Jr. is actually a really good tools sort of comp for O'Neal Cruz. They both have health grade concerns. They both have some issues against lefties. They both should play a lot anyway. They both can hit the ball pretty hard. Cruz kind of in a higher, higher level. They both play premium defensive positions

where their team would rather they just play it every day. So even if they get buried in the lineup against lefties, they're probably gonna play against lefties. I think they both have growth potential still, even though, you know, Jazz has a little more big league experience at this point. So I would say that at least in the case of the, I'll just wait for someone else game,

you can kind of draw a line of, what are my backup options? And say, okay, at that point, I have to pivot to a different player type or something else in the range, because the next option after Jazz Chisholm is not actually like O'Neill Cruz at all. It's too much of a, it's a bad replica.

That used to work before the Jerseys were bad themselves. But it's that kind of thinking where it's like, okay, or they always say with, if you cloned yourself, each clone gets worse. It's the same kind of thing. And then you've got the Eno that just keeps walking into the wall. 11th Eno is so lost at the Phish concert right now.

Just keeps walking into a wall. The concert ended three days ago and he's just bumping into a wall up near the stage. So let's go get 11th Eno. But that's my point. Like just, if you're gonna play the I'll wait, I'll wait game, draw the big red line on the cheat sheet, highlight it, whatever you do, have the signal up at this point. I have to do it a different way. I can't get 30-30 from the next guy I wait for. I have to do 25 and 5 and then I have to find the inverse player that fits a little bit later on because those types of players exist and pair well together.

And I think that's what I mean when I say you have to be willing, you have to be able to build a good team when you don't get your guys. There's something I said on Joe Orico's pod last week. Like you just have to be ready for it because we all like a lot of the same players. It's kind of a simple fact of how this game works.

Yeah, it was an interesting thing. You have to have like multiple options. You know, can't get fixated on one guy. Just saying what you just said another way. Like I was just thinking about my TGFBI draft where I started a little bit batting average poor. You know, there was a big reaction to that. But I had highlighted, you know, like five guys who were going to help me in batting

average that I could get at some point. And I was, I got, I got a little fixated on Luis Arais at one point I was like oh he would be really fit by my draft right now but then I just got Masataka Yoshida and I felt like I did the same thing you know I highlighted my like five guys that I that I thought I wanted and I got one of them just try not to back yourself into a corner is another way of putting it. Oh, is Luis Arias a tough ranks for us too? I think he's a tough rank for me because I wrote a little bit about this

in our recap for the athletic. I think ranking players is hard because the decisions you have to make are not necessarily just taking the best player off the list. I would argue that Arias is particularly tough because up through the first 10, maybe the first 15 rounds,

you can rank players that way and you can kind of draft off that. And then from there, you have to have a lot more like reason for choosing each player when you do. Like my example was middle infielders that play, like veterans like Tim Anderson and Ahmed Rosario are hard to rank against Jordan Lawler and even Jordan Westberg where playing time

at least upfront might not be there. So it's like, if you need playing time, you take the old time. The old time versus upside, yeah. Arias is tough because I think he's more valuable when you build the right sort of team for him. He's more valuable for my low batting average approach, you know, that I can, yes, thumbs up, I agree.

He's more valuable for my low batting average approach where I can sandwich him together with Tatis and Elie de la Cruz and Lindor who gave me the power and speed right he's not that valuable if you kept your batting average up you know like what's the value if your batting averages right now is like 270, 275 after five rounds or six rounds you do do not need Luis Arias. You have a good batting average and you might be number one in your league in batting average. There is no extra points beyond that in most leagues. You know, they're, yeah, I guess points leagues and you know, they're different, but like in most categorical leagues, there's no extra

bonus for, you know, being 20 points above in batting average out of everybody. So, yeah, Luis Arias is a tough rank because he's perfect for some teams and useless for other teams. Right, the concept is, it's actually, if you ever play batgammon, it's called wastage. It's when you roll and you don't even need everything you rolled, so you don't take, like winning the category by miles is actually kind of bad in the grand scheme of things

because it probably means you didn't allocate draft day or in season resources properly and you likely underperformed somewhere else. Exact same concept. So I think you have to be careful with that with any imbalanced player. It doesn't mean those players aren't good. Estherie Ruiz is the speed example of this.

Everyone keeps saying he could steal 70 bases or he could lose his job. I agree with that assessment. I think that's the proper assessment of what could happen to him this year. But also, even if he just plays all year, you need about 24 homers or so per lineup slot in 15 team leagues and it only goes up in lower leagues

and you're going to maybe get six from him. So you have to beat the homers projections in other slots by 18. Right. Assuming some of the adjustments that he's making haven't completely paid off, right? He's trying to hit the ball harder. He's trying to hit for more power, yeah. Yeah, we'll see if it actually works. Think about this, like let's say you just wanted to smush two players together and be like, Astoria Reeves plus, right? There's no player like that.

At least not by projections. The highest projected home run total is Aaron Judges with 45, which I don't believe. And then Kyle Schroer with 42 and Matt Olsen with 40. So even if you've smushed Matt Olsen together with the story of Reeves, you're still light on power. It's trickier because a lot of the high end power guys

go so early. I think you'd have to get down to like the Anthony Santander, Jorge Soler, Marcelo Zuna. You'd probably have to take three of those almost. You know what I mean? Like you'd have to take two or three of those guys

because you're not, yeah. Like Matt Ol those almost you know I mean like you'd have to take two or three of those guys because You're not yeah like Matt Olsen. You can't be like I'm gonna take Matt Olsen now to set up the Asturias pick later No, you're just taking Matt Olsen because he's great The way I've been using players like this for the last couple of years saying if something went wrong early Then they become players I target. But in a vacuum they're not necessarily players I want because I hopefully have just balanced things out better than needing to take that shot and try to get the high ceiling in bags or the extra average to carry me. I think Arise is a nice player.

He pops in the oxygen calculator the way you'd expect him to but I just think it's a little bit weird when you get so much value from that batting average category in particular. Other tough player group, I put Junior Kamenero kind of at the top. It's the guys that we're wondering, how long are we waiting? I find it really, really difficult. When I'm looking at rankings, I see Junior Kamenero down kind of in that Colt, Keith, Jordan, Westberg, young players, very different situations right now. Keith looks like maybe close to an everyday guy.

Westberg, maybe close to an everyday guy. I think Jackson Churio is the center fielder. Isn't that the vibe you're getting out of camp? He's playing center fielder every day. I think he's the guy. I do, I think Churio's, I think he avoids this conversation. You're only hedging bets because

because that's the smart thing to do. I'm trying to add a little bit more vibes reporting to my ovre. The vibes reporting I'm getting is he's making the TVs at Center Reel. My heart could be smashed into a million pieces. So I am preparing myself to not have it broken into quite so many pieces. Westberg is playing a lot though. Westberg, you know, in terms of play appearances in the spring, he's playing a lot. I think, I mean, he's making the team. But you're right, there's certain, like, slightly different

groupings where, like, making the team and playing or not even making the team. Kevin Minero's not making the team. Kyle Manzardo is not making the team is the most likely thing. They are maybe more exciting if they play every day than Jordan Westberg. Jordan Westberg is making the team, but how much is he playing? So it's like this little slider you've got where one is upside and one is playing time. And then for every player in this group, it's just they're in weird spots. What if I told you that Junior Kamenero was a better player at AA at the same age

as Jackson Churio last season? Would you buy that takeaway? I mean, Churio went 22 homers, 43 steals. He's very good. I'd buy it at the plate. Right. But the difference in fantasy values the speed. Like, that's the huge, huge part of Churio's game

that Caminero doesn't have. If we had a good wins above replacement for them, I would say that Churio's is probably better. Okay. It's close enough to entertain it as Kemonero's a special player. Yeah. That's what makes this hard.

He's not just a prospect. He looks like he is an elite prospect. And waiting on an elite prospect, I think, is different than waiting on a good one. And that is a subjective evaluation. That's why it's so damn hard. He's also interesting because he's in this bucket of like, we are so hype focused and we like we love to like assign number one prospects, you know, and it was like, you

know, it was cheerio, but now it's Langford, you know, oh, but maybe it's Jackson Holiday. But what happened to Junior Cameron Yarrow? People were talking about him as a number one prospect just a little bit No, he's yesterday's news. We've moved on. We've gotten we've got better players now Yeah, Kevin, er, oh is an interesting spot if he if it was a different team than the Rays I'm like I'd be advocating right now for like hey hey, he's the sneaky, way late, throw that dart. Maybe he'll make his way onto this team because of the low injury. Maybe there's a little bit of an opening now.

But it's the Rays, man, and I have no idea what they're gonna do. I think the question would be, how long is the built-in, I'm gonna hold this guy window for if you're going to take the late flyer. Just going back to that same weekend, handful of main event drafts, early pick was 288,

late was 429. 429 is almost your last pick. Like that's, it's like 28th round, 29th round. I mean, I kind of love him there, but the still the proposition is you're gonna keep him on your roster like it's just that you know almost It's almost irrelevant where you take him once you've made the decision that you think he's worth a bench spot when you only have seven bench spots

Unless you want to go the route of just cutting him as soon as you can't keep him Okay, if you're good at that, some people aren't. I don't know if I am. I think that's something I still have to get better at. Saying, oh, I've got this spot for now and now I'm gonna let him go. And I know someone else might get him, but I just had him in case someone got hurt

and they called him up in the first week or two of the season before the roster got tight. At this price, you can do that. But I think what makes it tough to rank him and to give advice about him is, I think he's a lot better than where I have him ranked. But because of the uncertainty about when he's going to play, I don't know where to fit him in, in the overall picture.

There's a really stupid little, very specific NFC thing you could do with Kevin Harrow. You could draft him with your last pick, cut him, And then you know that he's been drafted in your league and he's on the free agency wire, whereas other people might think he wasn't drafted, might forget he was drafted and think he's part of fabapalooza at some point. Right. And they have to wait for him to come up and then you can just search for him in the player grouping, find him two weeks ahead of when you think he's going to come up and then you can just search for him in the player grouping find him

You know two weeks ahead of when you think he's gonna come up and get him back on your roster later How rostered he is will dictate how well you can hide him? And I think he'll be rostered enough where it won't be easy to hide him But players like this can be hidden that way because yeah to have been drafted means they'll be eligible to picked up before Coming out of the minor league. So I think that's really interesting. That's how some people got Elie de la Cruz last year for like five bucks in free agency. It's gotta be a week early.

Yeah, they just did it a week early because they looked for him in the end. So that's something, if you play NFC, you should probably identify some list of the top prospects and then maybe every week just do a search, just to see who's actually in your player pool. Because the way it works, some player pools, some settings out there, some leagues, the player doesn't appear in the player pool till they've played, unless they've been drafted.

So that's what we're talking about here. But yeah, I think generally this is a tough group to rank. It's a little bit like on the pitching side when you're trying to rank somebody like Shane Boz. Yeah, Shane Boz I think is a perfect one where it's just like, this guy is nasty, nasty, and he's going to be good when he's in there, but when is he going to come up? And pretty sure he's going to come up, but can I massage the spot until he gets up? I think that's a great comparison just looking across to the pitcher side. And again, you can really only stash one in a lot of the NFBC style leagues, but a lot of other leagues too.

Some leagues have smaller benches than the NFBC does. Some leagues have five-man benches. Some leagues have no benches. It's crazy. That's a little extreme. There are a few other groups of hitters that are tough to rank. I think we'll save those for a future episode to avoid this one being a mega pod. We're gonna have our tough ranks for pitchers

on our episode on Tuesday. If that somehow comes up short time-wise, we'll get to a few more tough ranking hitters, but I think we'll have to come back around to a few other groups. We're also heading towards a bit of a pitcher-hitter split maybe for our live pods in New York this week.

If you haven't heard yet, live pods at other half, we're going to put on the Seoul games around three and just have a meet and greet before start settling down at six. The pods will be at six 30. Those are Wednesday and Thursday at other half at the Domino location in Williamsburg. So the Williamsburg Domino location and the sandwich, which I think we're heading towards naming Bulgogi Bomb is so good. I want to eat it now. And there's a special beer and it'll be a lot of fun.

We have special guests, Nick Pollock on Wednesday and Mike Petriello on Thursday. Yeah, if you can take a guess, the pitcher centric episode will likely be the Wednesday episode and the hitter centric episode will likely be the Thursday episode for pretty good reasons. Be sure to check out the craft too.

That's the Eno Pollock pod that's dropping each and every week too. That's when you wanna get into the rotation.'s dropping each and every week, too That's a that's one you want to get into the rotation Be sure to check out the discord listener league link as we said earlier got to get in now We're on to league six as of right now Ten wow we passed a thousand over a thousand ten o'clock PM Eastern Tuesday night is when it locks for the entire season you won't be able to submit your lineup after that so get in ASAP.

There's no lineup setting. It's almost like a gladiator is the type of league where you just, there's no bench. You just pick a starting lineup and you just plug it in the computer and somebody wins in the end of the year. Yeah, hard to beat that. Low maintenance, just one more league.

Absolutely fine to do it because you'll have it all buttoned up by the time you go to sleep on Tuesday night. So that's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.