Rates & Barrels - How We Would Improve the End of Fantasy Baseball Season

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss a few potential tweaks to the endgame of fantasy baseball season, which always brings a plethora of odd and challenging decisions. Plus, they look at the injury-hampered season of Rafael Devers, the second-half recovery from Eugenio Suárez, and the limited options available for the final week in draft-and-hold formats.  Rundown 3:53 Eno's H2H Lament 6:55 What Is the Ideal Endgame in Fantasy Baseball? 22:00 Rafael Devers' 2024 Season is Over 29:02 Eugenio Suárez's Massive Second Half 33:05 Staying Upright Until the End in Draft-and-Hold Leagues 42:05 Jonathan Aranda is Pulling Us Back in with a Nice September 51:59 Where the Money Went: Final Week Edition 54:32 Luke Weaver's Adjustments & 2025 Closer Outlook Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a new day. How can you make the most of it with your membership rewards points? Earn points on everyday purchases. Use them for that long-awaited vacation. Points never expire, so use them how you want. That's the powerful backing of American Express. On eligible cards, terms apply. Learn more at mx.ca. Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to

your Uber account today. The A&W Chicken and Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich is back all day long. For just $3.99, pick between the classic or spicy Chipotle Chicken and Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich is back all day long! For just $3.99, pick between the classic or spicy Chipotle Chicken & Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich. Start your mornings with juicy, savory deliciousness, only at A&W. Welcome to Ritz and Barrels, it is Monday, September 23rd, Derek Van Riper Inosaris here with you entering the final week of the 2024 season. We have some fantasy baseball championships that have already been decided, others running the full race all the way to the very last day of the season on Sunday.

So we're here to talk about what happened over the weekend, some big news items. We'll talk about the head to head format in particular, which has been very cruel to one Inosaris this year. Other than your head to head situation, you know, how was your weekend? Oh, it was good. We got a little kitty. We rescued a kitten. So now we're in full on zoo situation here at the house. You were already in 90% zoo before.

Yeah, we had dogs and cats and koi and thankfully we don't have any of those frogs anymore. That was a little over the top, but the kiddies very cute. Cause it's like six weeks old. So it's like this big and, uh, you know, there's already fights between the kids about who gets to hold it and so on and so forth. And actually underrated funniest part about this is that my wife wants to name it Katniss after the Hunger Games character. And my younger son wants to name him Kiseki, which means miracle in Japanese.

And so the two of them are doing this sort of passive-aggressive thing where they keep saying that Kat's name. It's different. And I don't know. They're at least they both sort of start with a K sound and maybe the kitty will get it. But it's a little schizophrenic. And I kind of want to tell them just to figure it out. But it is also funny to watch because they'll even do things like. And so and what should I do with Katniss?

And what should I do with Katniss? And what should I do with Kiseki? They're even like dropping the name in conversation to get back at each other. So, uh, yeah, that's what's going on here. That's it's fun. Uh, also shout out to my mom. Happy birthday, mom. If you're listening, I will call you later. And excited, bought my tickets to First Pitch.

And, you know, going to First Pitch Arizona to do a live podcast with you. And I'm going to do a Pitching Plus Stuff Plus update, big update that Max Bay keeps updating me out in our Slack. And it's pretty cool looking. There's he's doing some cool stuff. He's right now modeling batter swing and, and take by count. And he's trying to create a model that will predict swings by batters.

Very cool. Well, looking forward to that update. And also the whole conference, which you can attend. It's baseballhq.com. You'll see all the signage for First Pitch Arizona on their homepage. Sign up today. Make the trip. We'd love to see you out there at the live Rates and Barrels episode is scheduled for

I think Saturday morning. So that's really cool. I think we'll be on the main stage this year, which is even better. So looking forward to all of that. And it's just one of those times a year where if you are celebrating a fantasy championship or you just enjoyed the show all season, drop us a rating and review. It'd be a great time to do that. We appreciate the old five stars.

If you could do that wherever you listen to the show or smash the like button, if you're watching us on YouTube, as the young folks like to say, please tell me about your victories, because right now I have the ass. show or smash the like button if you're watching us on YouTube as the young folks like to say, please tell me about your victories. Cause right now I have the ass. I was in three head to head finals last week and I lost all three and to make it even worse. One of the, I think it makes it worse. One of the, or maybe it softens a little bit. One of my leagues splits into head to head and Roto and, uh, and there's a split prize pool and I won Roto by 30 points.

I have 170 points out of a possible. 180. I think it is pretty good. Like I am, I have the perfect team. I'm like first or second in every stat and there's like 18 categories or whatever it is, 16 categories. So, um, I feel pretty good about that league and I still lost in the head to head portion of it. And I feel so dumb.

I don't even know. And it's too weak head to head. So I don't even know. And it's two week head to head. So I can't even be like, it's just luck. Although there is still luck in two week increments. Still, still a little lucky with two week increments. Yep. I can blame myself. I was up against Robert Sanchez.

I've never won auto new and in auto new, if I had chosen Shane Baws over Pablo Lopez for their final starts, I would have beaten him. That's what came down to that one decision. And of course, by process you say, Pablo Lopez is a better pitcher, probably put him in, except this is points and home runs are terrible. And he was going to Fenway and some part of my brain was like, dude, he's going to give up a homer in Fenway. He was going to Fenway and some part of my brain was like, dude, he's going to give up a homer in Fenway. He's going to give up a homer.

Instead he gave up two to Tristan Casas. And he was a negative 15, whereas Baz was a plus 40. That 55 point swing, I lost by 50. Well, in your defense, Baz had given up a homer, I think in each of his previous like four starts. And he still hasn't been- That's sort of what his previous four starts, and he still hasn't been. That's sort of what I was looking at, yeah. He hasn't been elite Boz, even though he's been better

as the season's gone on. But he was home. He was home against the Jays. He was home, he was a lot better against home. Kind of a watered down Jays lineup too. I get it, I understand, but Lopez was probably the right process call, despite the outcome in this case. You could have just put all of this

into the void on our discord by the way. I did put some curse words in the void. Okay you did. That's what it's for. It's for spurts of anger that need to be released out into the world but contained in a place where they don't harm others. Yeah, exactly. I didn't think a long extended F word was the exact thing I needed to put on Twitter. So when it threw it is the void on discord. Fair enough. So here's the question I have for you about fantasy baseball and the end of the

season in general is like, what is the ideal end game? Let's start with head to head, right? I mean, two weeks does seem like a better approach than just a single week format. Like if you can make that adjustment or at least get in the ear of the person running your league and have that be the way your championship is structured, that seems pretty good. If you can split the prize pool between head to head matchups and Roto, that seems good. It seems like your league format is actually great

as far as finding the sweet spot to eliminate some of the luck and still keep the original head to head structure, at least the aspects of it that people like, still somewhat intact. Yeah, I don't mind. I like that league. It's also interesting.

It's like Ks by batter. And like I said, it's like a 16 category thing, so, um, it w what happens when you have all those categories, it becomes hard to game it because if you, if you choose to be good somewhere, you're going to be bad somewhere, you know what I mean? Like it has average OBP and slugging in it. K's by batter and still has stolen basis. So if you're like, I want to go after stolen bases, you're going to have some bad OBP and, and, and slugging sometimes, you know.

So like you kind of just have to build a good team of good players and then, you know, two week increments reduces the luck, but allows for luck component. And then you have Roto to be like, who was good all year? And then you have a head to head who was maybe a little bit better. You know, maybe I made some poor decisions when it came to, you know, my bench and, and, and like, maybe I should have had some fleety speed guy that I could put in, you know, at the end of the week to try and win the category. So, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's elements of head to head that I do like, which is like, how do I construct this roster to beat your roster in one week, as opposed to just

accumulating stats all year. So that might be one of my favorite leagues. That's the pitchfork league that, um, I don't think anybody, maybe anybody's at pitchfork anymore, but, uh, uh, that's where it started. And, uh, it's got some fun people in it. I think, I think David Roth is still in it. And so, um, it's a good league and it's,'s like that setup because I think one of the things that's so difficult about head to head and the last the end game and stuff is the balance between luck and strategy is it's hard to nail exactly right. I think it's extra difficult because and this happens in all sports.

Extra difficult because, and this happens in all sports, teams have varying levels of things to play for, right? The completely eliminated teams are just trying to get to the final days without accruing any injuries that'll impact them in the future. So then you have guys like Eric Wagerman playing a lot for the Angels and then we're left to decide, oh hey, Eric Wagerman's playing a lot, he's got power, he's got speed, doesn't strike out a lot.

Maybe there's actually something here that can help us because it's a balanced Roto profile, even though he's been all over the level and doesn't really have any previous big league experience. Like that becomes kind of strange where you're literally letting the season, the final days play out with someone like that in your lineup.

And I'm not sure that's like necessarily the most satisfying end after spending entire winters and early springs prepping and planning and digging into the player pool to only have someone just randomly pop up at the end. That might not be the best part of fantasy baseball, but it's a part of fantasy baseball no less, regardless of the format that you play in.

Probably true of any sport, if you think of you were, you were bringing it up sort of third string running backs in week 16 and 15 when the other guys are being rested. I know from basketball that rotations, you know, in the last two weeks are pretty terrible. They're resting a lot of those guys because they really don't want like a sprained ankle, right? Going right into the playoffs. So I get it. And you can do things like, you know, take your finals and do like that's why my finals last week. And most of my leagues.

Yeah, that's what it seems like many head to head leagues have done. They have made the second to last week of the season. That's the one where the playoffs end. I don't think it's necessarily wrong. I think years ago, I was more adamant, especially on a Roto, we must run the entire race. We must run to the very last day of the season. And I think as my brain has hopefully continued to develop,

or at least I've become a more reasonable person with age, I've started to think, yeah, maybe it's okay to end the season a week before the regular season ends. Maybe that's okay because it gets so sloppy. It is interesting that you bring out Wagerman and what like the last two, three weeks of even a Roto season almost feel like head to head. Like they, they, they take on a, it take on a totally different, uh, sort of tone. Like I, I, I dropped my biggest dropper this week was Justin Verlander.

And like, I would never have dropped Justin Verlander if he was pitching like this and it was July. You know, I'd be like, well, there's stuff plus still decent. And like the, you know, like he can get it going, you know, like I'm just benching for a while, you know, no, not with three weeks to you know, like I'm just bench him for a while, you know, no, not with three weeks to go. And you just start looking to be like Justin Verlander Cleveland. Do I want to start Justin Verlander at Cleveland?

Like I can see maybe holding on to Justin Verlander for next year in a keeper league because you're not going to get any thing for him and like I said the stuff plus is still there the below at ninety four is not atrocious. You know the the command is still there you know. You could have a usable year next year I mean last year with a lot of the same metrics that he has right now in terms of below and stuff and K percentage, he had a 322 ERA. So I think the truth is somewhere between a 322 and a 555, even for a 41 year old Berlander. But all the stuff that I just said just goes out the window. You're like, do you want to start him at Cleveland next week? No. Goodbye.

I'd rather have Mitch Spence for a two, maybe a two start and may not even be a two start because Mitch Stentz will start the first one and then they might say for the last one, Oh, we're shutting them down. It's. Yep. You hit your limit. You're done bullpen game or we'll find some 27 year old and just put them on the roster for a day.

Eric Wagman, the Eric Wagman of pitching. We'll find it. We'll find him and we'll give him a slot. A start like a cup of coffee spot start, which is in and of itself is a cool story. But again, if you're trying to decide this 26 week season on the fate of that or the person who was supposed to start that day, and they don't because there's information we don't have about someone having an innings limit, then that's that's the part that gets a little bit frustrating.

Yeah. And that's not really skill, fantasy skill, right? It's that's that starts pushing it more into the lock. We're like, I don't know if I get a second start from Mitch Spence this week, is it luck or fancy skill? It almost might be luck that even get one, even though he's scheduled to be there that day. Some skill, some luck. I mean, you're reading schedule and you're using your brain to analyze how

many innings he's thrown before and how important he is to the organization. And trying to guess. I mean, it's an, it's an educated guess. But, but I mean, it also, you know, in this discussion we're having, it's like ideal is like define ideal, you know? And I, that's why I keep coming back to luck and skill is that the ideal game has elements of both. And I think that we, we each have our own sort of comfort with some sort of balance between luck and skill.

And that balance is different for each person because, um, some people love head to head, like I've talked crap on head to head in the past and, you know, and, and gotten yelled at for it, you know, and I get it. I mean, it's, you can in head to head, turn around your fortunes a little better, you know, cause you don't have all the ballast of all the bad days. You know, you can also reshape your team a little easier. And even if you're competitive in six out of 10 categories, that might be enough.

If you punt four out of 10 categories in a five by five league, I don't think you're usually going to finish in the money. But in a head to head league, that might be a way of taking a broken roster and making it competitive. Just being consistently good in the same six categories over and over.

Then again, in Roto, picking the categories that you're going to go after and streaming and the second half and changing is a little bit like head to head because you will actually start to punt some categories and be like, well, my batting average is not getting any better. I'm not getting any points there. So there are no matter what you're doing, there's elements of strategy, punting, luck, skill and player evaluation. Strategy punting luck skill and player evaluation I tend to like a lot of the keeper and dynasty leagues because I think that

Players are are generally who they are over larger if you give them larger timeframes, and I don't love Dropping Justin Verlander like that doesn't make sense to me like you're oh you're playing fancy baseball and you're dropping Justin Verlander, okay? That doesn't makes I do I understand it because I did it to me like you're telling oh you're playing fancy baseball and you're dropping Justin Berliner. Okay that doesn't make I do I understand it because I did it but I mean like you know in a keeper league you wouldn't because you probably have a little bit more value out of him still going forward. Yeah I'm in a keeper 16 team league where he was five bucks in the auction this year so he's five bucks as a keeper next year. He's probably one of my 15 keepers, almost certainly as of today anyway. Right. This feels more ideal, you know, to me.

Right. That he should be rostered and not just out there. I do think I enjoyed the end game in keeper and dynasty leagues more than in redraft though, because of players like that, if they do get cut, someone picks them up and it creates an opportunity. And it makes for, and that's another thing. A part of the ideal is hard decisions. Yeah. You know, something that, something that happens, I haven't missed, uh,

AL Labor was my AL only league and I ha I haven't missed that as much as I expected. What I loved about it was knowing every damn player in the American league down to like, we're talking, you got it. You got to know the 40 man rosters in the American league and, and probably some prospects who aren't on the 40 because you know, it's that deep of a league. And I did like that part, but what I didn't like is there are not that many hard decisions in the course of the year there. You know why? Unlimited IL, you know, and six, six man benches and as deep as heck. So every time you sort players, you're just looking at injury replacements that are playing this week.

It's like really all you're looking at. So there's never really like a, oh, like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to cut this guy. It's a, it's a big decision. No, it's just like, I'm going to pick up this guy to injury replace and that's it. I mean, the, the, the wire or I'm going to hold on to money for somebody coming from the national league, but that's, that's not, there's not really big decisions.

I think there's like two or three big waiver decisions in the whole year in an American league only in some American league only. So that wasn't ideal for me. I do like tough decisions and keeper leagues. Yeah. You have that where you're like, oh man, I really need a starter this week and I don't have any stars. I have to actually drop my $2 landing route just to get another star.

As you know, I mean, like there's stuff like that where you're like, this is actually a keeper, but I got to drop them because I, I just, I won't use them this week. Yeah. Verlander would be in that same position. If you were super competitive, you didn't want to start them at Cleveland. You have it in a keeper price. You might drop them to get somewhere. So I like hard decisions. I like a little bit of bet. You know, a thing about me is I like backgammon better than chess.

Really? Why? Part of it is because backgammon is a dice game and you can blame the dice. Oh, you just like having a scapegoat. Yeah. So in the context of my whining about my H2H losses, I'm just blaming the dice if you want to read

the underlying text there. That's what's happening. Yeah, you don't want to be accountable for getting beat. You want to have a reason. If something else you can blame. Blame the dice. That's fair. I mean, backgammon's fun.

I like backgammon, but most strategic people really prefer chess to backgammon. Maybe they're more accountable than you are. Maybe that's the difference. The A&W Chicken and Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich is back all day long. For just $3.99, pick between the classic or spicy Chipotle Chicken and Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich. Start your mornings with juicy, savory deliciousness only at A&W.

I do think kind of wrapped up in all of this, there's also similar to the Mono League, what's become more popular over time are the draft and hold leagues that we play a lot in the early part of draft season. Usually they'll start up in late October, early November, and they run up through at least February. I think they cut them off sometime in late February, early March, because they're usually on a slow draft clock and they're 50 rounds. Draft and hold, of course, build your team,

no in-season pickups. You have to know the player pool as well as you know it for a model league. We've talked about how it helps us prep for the leagues in which we're allowed to make moves because we're thinking a lot more about what those great end game shots are going to be, or even some of the players that we're going to pick up

in fab at various points in the season. We know more about them from researching them in that round 31 to 50 range. But thinking about the endgame play there, when you have no moves and you play until the very last day of the season, you start to get caught up in players getting shut down

because their teams are finally eliminated or those chronic injuries are finally eliminated or those chronic injuries are finally bad enough where it's not worth the risk anymore for the last week of the season. I have not really enjoyed the draft champions decisions for like the last month. I kind of think that format would definitely, of all the Roto formats especially, would lend itself, would benefit from cutting the season about two weeks shorter.

I'm not saying all the way up to Labor Day. I'm not saying we can't overlap football and baseball. Some people think that. Just make it the rabbit of fantasies that they get out there first and they're done first. Yeah. You know the format is a game of attrition. Like you're just battling against time

and just hoping that you have healthy enough options to even have choices at the end of attrition. Like you're just battling against time and hoping that you have healthy enough options to even have choices at the end of the season. There's so many IL notes on your draft champions by this point in the season. Like I don't have any decisions in pitching. In half of it, like I have three draft champions leagues. I went through the pitching decisions. It was just like, okay, one reliever or the other reliever?

Cause everybody else is hurting. Do I have nine healthy options? Do I even have nine arms? That's one of the areas where I would probably move the end date up in a Roto. Two weeks. I mean, not a lot. Like if the championship had been decided a week before this past Sunday, would we feel differently about the format?

No, it's still an extremely fun, challenging exercise. And maybe having a couple of leagues end early makes it more fun to sweat out the ones that you're trying to win with moves too. I don't know, maybe there's a hidden benefit in that for people that play in a bunch of leagues. But the other part of this is just looking at some of the players that are hurt right now, some actual news.

Like Rafael Devers is exactly the type of player I described where we know he's been banged up for a while But now that he's just done for the season. They actually have shut him down said problems with both shoulders He's not gonna have surgery. So that's good news. I think from a long-term perspective Now you're just one key player Shorter in situations like that sure in the leagues where you have the end game where you can cut them great you cut them It's weird, but you do because he's not coming back. You throw Spencer Horowitz or somebody in his corner and life goes on.

But as far as Devers, like in the big picture goes, I had him in a couple of leagues. He was banged up all year. And even in the first half when he was playing really well, Devers wasn't 100 percent healthy. So I look at him and I still see a guy that has a path first half when he was playing really well, Devers wasn't 100% healthy. So I look at him and I still see a guy that has a path to be an AL MVP. I think he's still young enough and still talented enough from a skills perspective to actually get on that level, especially when we think about another

wave of young talent joining that roster in Boston and giving him an even better supporting cast to help prop up, run an RBI totals around what should be consistent high twenties, but probably more like when he's healthy mid thirties home run power. I still think that's the player Devers is despite the health trouble this year. Yeah, he's, he's a tough one to, to prognosticate on. I mean, we do have this, uh, to just show that there was something going on in his shoulders. March through July he was hitting, he was swinging the bat 73 miles an hour plus and his fast swing was 35%,

bail rate 14%, hard hit 54%, you know, a slugging near 600. August through September he was swinging the bat two miles an hour slower, August of September he was swinging the bat two miles an hour slower. His fast swing percentage was half as much. His barrel rate went down to 10%. His hard hit went down to 49. And his slugging went down to 329. And so yes, definitely he's been somebody that's dealt with stuff over time. I think at 27 and having the fact that having the fact that he's still managed to get past

600 plate appearances in each of the last four years, you know, I don't want to rush to put any sort of injury prone tag on him. So I did two years ago, you know, bold predict an MVP for him or bold predict a 1000 OPS for him, which he has not really gotten that close to. Um, so I, I've shared your optimism about him and I do think that there could still be a monster season where he stays healthy all year. I also interested in this idea. Um, there's a quote from, uh, from his manager, from Alex Quora. Um, and uh, he said, this is what he said let me see here he

said this is from David Adler and he's quoting Alex Quora the bat speed you can see it he worked on a few things in the offseason one of those was to catch up with the fastball and then we got to a point that it did that he didn't teams they noticed it and they attacked him it was relentless so I'm hearing between the lines that maybe he did some bad speed training you know and so his bat speed was up and that was good one thing I know about that speed training from other people that I've talked to about it is to some extent you cannot do it, have to do it all year. So I don't know if, um, you know,

he didn't keep up with it or if the bad speed training did lead to some shoulder inflammation or the opposite, like if the shoulder inflammation prevented him from doing more bad, it could have been either way. Could it, could it got hurt from it? Could have been too hurt to do it. Hard to say. A team person I was talking with was a team analyst brought up the question of the stickiness of improvements from bat speed training. And they, and so they were basically wondering if, um,

you know, somebody like JP, JP Crawford, the JP Crawford's, uh, uh, swing speed was up and, um, you know, uh, if it would come back down again. And I, when I think what we're, we're trying to fill in the blanks here is like, you know, do some people do it for a little bit, get the gains and then don't keep up with it, you know, um, JP Crawford himself had some injury concerns. So are there injury concerns with it? I mean, there's been plenty of people who still think that, uh, you know, the weight of balls lead lead to, to, to injuries. So, um, you know,

I think, uh, I think there's a lot to say here. Uh, we don't have JP Crawford's bat speed before and after, you know, because we only have one year of it. So it's we can't really answer all these questions just yet. But it's intriguing to me because I generally am pro bat speed training. And I don't know how to file Devers year if it is has a bat speed training. I don't know how to process this, you know exactly But I still think that more bad speed is better And it does allow you to catch up to fastballs and he was having a good time with high fastballs when he was swinging fast

And then he had a hard time with it afterwards. So Still some unknowns here, but I think generally a 27 year old who's been as good as he is deserves to stay up there. I do, you know, would you rather Austin Reilly or Rafael Devers next year? God, forever linked. There are some players in this pool that will never get away from each other by ADP, by various comparisons. I, at this point, think I believe a little bit more in Devers. Like the magnitude of Riley's downturn this year was a little bit concerning. The underlying numbers still look good enough

where I don't think it's a runaway. I just think it's like, look at what Devers was able to do at less than 100%. It's still closer to his normal baseline. So slight, the slightest of edges to Devers was able to do at less than 100%. It's still closer to his normal baseline. So slight, the slightest of edges to Devers, but Austin Riley, I mean, how much of a discount do you think we're going to be getting on him next year? I feel like Devers is going to go for almost the exact same ADP and maybe Riley falls a half round or around, if not a tick more in some early drafts. And that might be a discount we're taking.

Yeah. at cost, it might be rally just if he's cheaper, but I think if I had to choose one or the other, I think I'm going to Devers. Yeah, it's still an interesting toss up though for those two players. By the way, I was looking at the player raider just to see like where did Devers finish this year among hitters, the new Fangrafts player raider

we've talked about all season, 31st among hitters, not bad, given how poor the second half was. One spot ahead of him, Eugenio Suarez. Do you recall our conversation about Suarez probably in June or early July? Where I thought he was toast. It looked over because there was as much swing and miss as we'd seen when he was bad.

He's 33. he's 33. He's 33. His Suarez his first half, 216, 302, 366 and 87 WRC plus, right? It looked like it was over. Blaze Alexander over him and. And then second half got the K rate down to 24.5% walked less, maybe just got more aggressive overall. 24.5% walked less, maybe just got more aggressive overall, but 314, 345, 624 for a 160 WRC plus. Suarez went from a guy that we thought was done who might have a club option

decline to a easy club option picked up and like, oh, do we have a few more chapters of Suarez as this great veteran corner bat that, I mean, this is actually even better than what we've seen for most of the last four years because the average is better. It's got a 257 average this season. He's been in the 230s and lower. That was in Cincinnati in 2021 when he hit 198. We've talked about the difficulties of being in Seattle.

Maybe it just took some time to adjust to a new environment again. But now I'm sitting here wondering if Suarez is actually going to be a nice, undervalued cornerback for next year, given the difficulty of finding power and given the quality of the Arizona lineup around him. Yeah, I'm super nervous about 34 year olds, so I'm going to probably not take too many shares, but that, of course, depends on cost. Did he even go in your, um, meatball draft? Oh, I wasn't in it, but let me, let's, I'm going to guess no. Did you, Hanio Swar. This is where, if Siri could tell me that I would have much more interaction with Siri. Like where,

where did you Hanio Suarez go in the meatball draft Siri and like for Siri to know what that is, to scan it, and to tell me would be wonderful. I don't see him. I see purple for the corners, for the third baseman. Nah, I don't see him on this board. That was 11 rounds. And what was the final third baseman that went?

Vientos and Bregman back-to-back picks in the 10th round. Which I think I'd take them both all around. Right, but I think right below where the meatball drought ended 15 teams around 11 that's probably about where Suarez is going to go. Pick 175, 180. Not necessarily bad but having a much much better season than that I would have thought especially given the way the first half went down. A couple injury updates to pass along. We're waiting for some news on Jordan Alvarez having some imaging on his knee. It's not a flare up of the previous knee problems he dealt with. It's an injury that he suffered

sliding into a base over the weekend. So tough call for weekly leagues if we don't get the results of those MRIs. Good news, MRI, the good news would be they do play on Monday. So perhaps we will have at least an indication as far as in or out of the lineup on Monday if you're trying to decide If Alvarez should be in there, so that's more of a wait-and-see situation And we've been in a holding pattern with Francisco Lindor as well He's optimistic about returning before the end of the regular season But I think it's seven consecutive games now that he has missed with that back injury that's been slowing him down Yeah, you know and you know know, I think he'll be back

because they said he was doing baseball activities. They show him running on the field before. And so I think that he's, I think he'll contribute this week. That Yordan Alvarez is gonna be a really tough decision. It's gonna, you have to watch your lineups till the last second. And, you know, if he misses one day, you know,

that's a big, that's not that big a deal. But if he misses the whole week, that is a way bigger deal if you put him in for the whole week. So, yeah, good luck making that decision. You know, and then generally the role of, you know, health and, you know, what we're talking about with the draft champions,

I just thought there was a funny thing that we had a funny interaction because I was, you know, in our league, um, that we were in together, uh, that we just randomly, we didn't plan it, but, um, absolutely knucklehead maneuver getting into the same league. Let's so what we did. Uh, I, my, my tendency was to, uh, to blame, uh, injuries and information. And I was saying like, Oh, you know, my third DC is in second place. And that's the one I drafted latest had the most information for. And you're like, yeah, we all got more information.

You should have had more of a, of a, uh, you should have had more of a, uh, an edge early, you know, when you had more of a of a you should have had more of a an edge early, you know, when you had more information. So, you know, I was I was looking at it and, you know, yes, I have Shane Beaver on the on the IELTS 60, along with JP France, Patrick Sandoval, Kyle Bradish and Spencer Turnbull. So I did lose some players to injury. And that's that's, that's actually really typical I think of most draft champions.

I think what is more meaningful is that I changed my strategy a little bit over time. And you know, one of the, one of the guys that sort of sticks out for me is Joe Boyle. And you know, I took Joe Boyle in the 29th I took him right before JP Sears and I think that's bad process because the Joe Boyle I'm chasing you know upside when with that pick I should have been focused on just getting a player who's gonna pitch get innings get choices you know because the best thing you can do in your DC is have two or three starters on your bench that are healthy.

Like that, that is a really good situation for DC because then you start, you can be like, Oh, two starters and you know, you can really ha and you can avoid Colorado and you know, you can like, you can actually have some choices in the matter. And so that's why Joe Boyle is a bad pick. I also think a couple of rounds before that took a Lou Harris, Montero, and I was thinking, Oh, I need a third first baseman and I panicked and I thought oh Montero is the last third for first baseman I really want you know Behind him is just Carl Santana and Rowdy Talez. I don't really want those guys well

Dude, do you really want a Lou Harris Montero? And if you don't then he's just like Rowdy Talez and Carlos Santana and you can wait. And if I had just decided to wait, I could have gotten Ronaldo Lopez in the same round as Alejandro Montero. You know, and then this team would have been so much better off if I had gotten Ronaldo Lopez and JP Sears. Not because JP Sears is amazing, you know, but that would have given me more choices all year long

with pitching and I'm bottom shelf pitching there. So I guess my my sort of injury related format related plea. And I think this might be true to all formats, but is very important to DC's is attack the middle, attack the middle when it comes to pitching. Because you need a ton of pitchers and the end pitchers. Yes, I the team that's in second place. I picked Bowden Francis in like the 45th round and that has been amazing for me. But you can't count on that.

The final five pitchers you pick in D.C.'s are just total shots in the dark. No matter what you say. I know you can talk to me to your balloon face about how you had strategy and you all you pick the right guys and you're winning your DC because you picked the right guys. Yes, I get it. But there's it's really hard to nail that process. It's a lot of pitchers where you just shots in the dark. And so if you do a better job on pitchers, starting pitchers five through 10 than other

people, I think you win more DCs than anybody. And I think that's probably true in main events and other places too. Like I think it's true that it's almost more important what you do with your pitchers and your fifth through 10th best pitchers, starting pitchers than it is necessarily with your first couple. Because you're going to have bad injuries at the top. You know, yeah, you're going to have to cover some of your own injuries, but you're also how do you feel like you've played in the main event consistently now for what, four or five years in a row?

I've had a couple of years I haven't played in the main or the big auction. It wasn't easy two years ago and prior I played, I don't know, six or seven. I think I had like eight prior to this little break. I am finding even in the non high stakes leagues, 15 team leagues, it is hard to stream pitching, like to even just stream it, to just play the matchups. Everyone's doing it. Everyone wants to do it. So getting the bids right is very tough and roster management makes it tough. So the best defense you can play against streaming is having

enough pitching depth where you don't have to as often. You don't have, I mean, you're taking your shots on guys that might stick around on your roster because that could be worth it, but the on again, off again, trying to get that eighth, ninth pitcher in 15 team leagues, especially as tough. 12s are different. Let's see, to me, it's like a key difference that at some point, you know, I'll try to see if Vlad Sedler can come back on the pod because Vlad is great in all formats. But I think his self-described best is the 12 team RotoWire online championship.

And I have always found it hard to toggle back and forth between 15s and 12s because I get too clingy to a lot of players on my roster. But at least in 12s, there's a little bit of streaming room built in there. Fewer teams, so a little more churn on a week to week basis. I am finding in 15s, I want to avoid streaming if at all possible. Streaming is a bunch of guys broke, or I was wrong about a couple of guys and a bunch of guys broke. It is not the plan in a league that deep. Yeah. And, uh, you know, my main event, this is my third, actually, which is my third year. Um, we are, uh, we are fighting for third and, uh, we have the most pitching points

in the league. Um, and I guess we picked early pitchers, but we really weren't trying to. We picked two pitchers in the first 10 rounds, George Kirby and, uh, Joe Ryan. And those are good pitchers to pick. Um, but we didn't do a lot other than that. Two in the first 10 is actually a reduced investment in pitching. Sure. I think typically you're looking at four two in the first 10 is actually a reduced investment in pitching. Sure. I think typically you're looking at four starters in the first 10 rounds and at least one reliever

for most of those builds. So it ends up being 50-50 hitters and pitchers in the first 10 rounds. Yeah. And then we have the most pitching points. What happened was we hit the sort of Seth Lugo area really hard. And we had, I forget, I mean, we've,

another thing that I've gotten used to in this is that you're just, you it's really hard to see who your roster was all year because you're just moving guys, moving guys, moving guys, you know, like, you know, you're, you just gotta keep it going. That's, that's something that I think he, that, that somebody that like, like Vlad would say is you got to keep moving, you know, and uh, but you know, we ended up with trying to see who might've been Tanner, Halk, Seth Lugo. Um, I think we've lost some guys to injury,

but we ended up with a really good situation where we didn't have to stream because we had three pitch starting pitchers, healthy starting pitches on our bench. If you have three healthy starting pitchers on your bench, you can avoid bad matchups. You can stream two starters from your own bench, you know? And that's the ideal situation. I want to have basically my streamers be my bench. Yeah, that's that's ideal if everything goes really well. I want to have basically my streamers be my bench. Yeah. That's ideal if everything goes really well.

But I think that's the part of the board that I want to play more aggressively in the future is that range you described. Basically the post-pick 200, like the 200 to 300 range, 200 to 350 range overall. That's where I think you can do really well in pitching. And hopefully that's something that as a show, we've helped people with, even if we haven't drafted enough players in that bucket,

we're at least identifying the right ones and helping people along that way. But man, it's tough. It's tough to stream right now because people are looking at the same tools to the same lens. They're analyzing matchups in a similar way. And everyone needs more pitching for the most part. So it's competitive bidding each and every week. So attack the middle.

That's another reason attack. Middle is like you'll come out of the, you know, come out of the draft with like two or three more starting pitches than you think you need, you know, and not have them all be like end game, like the last five rounds you pick pitching. Like, you know, I would sort of sneak all that up, you know, finish with flyer bats because there's, there are, you will discover bats over the course of the season on the wire in almost every format.

Oh, like, like this. Speaking of flyer bats, this is one I'm so frustrated right now because I have zero Jonathan Aranda. No Jonathan Aranda on my teams. I've had it in the past, but not now. Oh yeah, yes, exactly. And that, that is basically what I'm getting at. He's hitting cleanup right now, his final week plus now for the Rays.

He's homeward in three consecutive games coming out of the weekend. And for the season, he's been mostly up and down 124 WRC plus 23% K rate in the big leagues. He's one of those players. He's going to be, I think out of options next year, because this was his last option year this year. So the Rays are going to have to make a decision throughout the off season. Keep, trade, move on, whatever.

And then if they keep him, which I assume they will, they have to make a clearer decision on how they're going to use him. We're talking about a guy that has some defensive limitations, although he's one game away from getting to 20 at first base, which is great, because it keeps him out of the UT only bin for our draft purposes. But not a lot of games at second anymore.

That looks like that's pretty much done. If you're in a low threshold league, he's got five. So qualify there in some leagues with really low previous season thresholds. Now, from a skills perspective, we're dealing with a really small sample, but a 19.5% barrel rate, still a heavy ground ball rate too around it, which is a little bit weird. Six homers and 121 play appearances because of the three that he hit over the weekend. I'm starting to kind of fall back into the,

dang it, I like this guy for a reason and he's showing me just enough to be part of that end game cheap power bat strategy again going into next season. But I don't think that's bad. I think it's a if if cost remains reasonable, if it's a last five rounds pick round twenty five or later, I think it's OK to take a shot on Jonathan Aranda and know that if it doesn't work out, the playing time might not be there. Maybe it's a big side platoon role instead of an everyday role or something slightly

less because of his defensive limitations, then it's a move on. But would you agree that we're seeing enough in the small sample between the improved K rate and the great barrel rate to try and take that flyer one last time in 2025. Yeah, this is one of those ones, and it's probably true all the time, that the depth chart is your friend. So I also have the payroll chart open, because it's the Tampa Bay Rays.

And you've got Yandy Diaz with $10 million due to him next year and then Brandon low with ten point five million dollars which I thought. At some point I thought they might not pick that up I think they're gonna pick that up. If they pick that up those are two guys that play second first DH you know I think Brandon low can still play second a little bit. and first DH, you know, I think Brandon Lowe can still play second a little bit. Yandy Diaz is first. I just picked up Yandy Diaz's defensive page, minus three run value at first. So not really a good first baseman either. So I could see Yandy Diaz being the Tampa Bay Rays DH next year.

Brandon Lowe plays second. Jonathan Aranda plays first. Junior Cameron Aro plays third. And who am I missing? Where does Christopher Morel play? Or does he not play? He was already playing OF, oh and DH, he D. H. Yeah, I think there's a There's a bit of a problem because of Morrell at least as of right now

Because Morrell could platoon with Aranda between first base and D. H. Yandhi's a righty Lao is a lefty and I just I don't think second base really matters for Jonathan Aranda Like I think we can kind of safely say it's first base DH. That's what he is. You have to find a place for the other guys they still care about. Morrell sends the trade. Three homers in 43 games.

The slash line is worse. He's striking out more. Barrel rates down, hard hit rates down. It's a new environment. It's a tough place to hit. So some of that could could be a factor maybe they're working on some stuff where they're having them try to change something haven't seen anything suggesting that yet but it could be out there still projected to be by the bad X 110 wrc plus even the worst projection system as a hundred for him and zips right but at what point are we going to look at Christopher Morrell now that we're

1400 played appearances into his big league career and say he might be one of those players whose projections exceed what he's likely to do because he does some stat cast things well that the bat X will reward him for but he has other flaws that are not captured that will continue to be a problem. That's not even taking into account his defensive limitations, which can nuke his playing time very quickly, right? So I'm just wondering if Morel is one of, air quotes, those guys who will be projected at a level where people stay interested and he will perform at a level where we're continually

disappointed. 2023 might be the outlier. Like that's, that's the thing everyone's going to point to and say, no, look, the Rays have a great track record and look what he did in Chicago with the 26 homers, 247 is fine for an average. 2022 looks a lot like 2023. What's, I mean, both of those years are good. Both of them are good. 2023 is better though, because the power, it's 10 more mean, both those years are good. Both of them are good.

2023 is better though, because the power, it's 10 more homers in a similar number of play appearances. That's, he needs, he needs that extra gear. We look at barrel rates, we look at max TV a lot, we look at hard hit rates, and that's where Morrell shines. He's obviously, you know, he's kind of like the Nick Pavetta of hitters.

Right, yes, I mean, mean, this can happen, right? You have guys that are under-projected that consistently exceed, the lowdom guys, but then you have the over-projected guys that under-perform. I think this might be more of the latter. I think this might be a skilled guy that doesn't quite have enough to put it all together

and people might be chasing something that's just not there. The reason I'm not writing him off completely is just because we've seen the Rays take a whole bunch of different hitters and find ways to make them very productive. So it'd be foolish to say it can't happen, but I'm worrying that he's one of those guys. I mean, there could be an element of sort of Tyler Glass now, you know, Pittsburgh Tyler Glass now to him where it's like, he's one of those guys. I mean, there could be an element of sort of Tyler Glass now, you know, Pittsburgh Tyler Glass now to him, where it's like, he's all stuff and no refinement, and they can sort of maybe simplify the game plan or do something for him.

I would, I just, in terms of team structure and teams and salary and like who they have and where they're going, I see him as part of the outfield mix, I think. You look at his outs above average, yes, they are terrible everywhere, but they are less terrible in left field than almost anywhere else.

So, you know, I stick him in the corner outfield. You've got Josh Lowe playing the other corner outfield or center, and then you have the ongoing discussion of you know who's going to play center field for you with. Siri under contract and you know I guess Richie Palacios can be part of that conversation. And, you know, so there's some, you know, Dylan Carlson, I guess there's some discussion about like, I think who plays center, maybe if if Josh Lowe can play center, then it opens up an opening for around a DH. I think Caballero and Walls are just fighting for who's the starting shortstop and who's the utility guy. And Caminero's in Sconsta at third at this point. So I don't actually think this depth chart's

too hard to figure out. I feel pretty good about that. And I think the only real battle is for shortstop and center field to some extent. Yeah, it's sometimes this depth chart destroys us, but I think the player I'm a little worried about as far as Aranda goes is Morrell. And I can't quite figure out if and when Morrell's

gonna make some big adjustments. At off season, it's a long time to make those changes. So the same would apply to Carlson for what it's worth. Like Dylan Carlson could be a completely different hitter by opening day, depending on what the rays have him changing. Because he has been a different hitter in his history. He's had years where he barreled the ball and struck out more. And he's had years where he didn't strike out at all and he didn't barrel the ball at all.

We've seen a little wider range of outcomes so far. Hard hit rate in Tampa, right in line with his career norms, an improvement from where he was earlier in the year with the Cardinals, but kind of back to the average version of himself. So more to come, of course, on the raise always because there's constantly movement there. I'll have some more L-sharing, I'm sure it's next year.

I mean, I'll beat myself against that again. You just take that loss one more time maybe. I mean, look, it's not dumb. I just think I'm trying not to put too much stock into the contact quality in this instance because it seems like something's still not quite right. Let's take a look where the money went this weekend, which is a great reflection of the weirdness of your last opportunity to make tweaks.

We talked about Hunter Goodman a little bit, I think in passing a week ago in 12 teamers. He was scooped up in a lot of leagues where he was still available. Rockies are at home to start the week too. So that probably sealed the deal for anybody who was on the fence about him in more shallow formats. Always fun to get some injured guys back like Ozzy Albies and Jordan Westberg came off the IL this weekend. So they were popular ads in the leagues where they were available.

And then you look at the pitching names, Jack Kachanowitz. Sure, why not? Two starter, it was Kachanicz, Jonathan Cannon and Mitch Spence were the widely available sec two starters this week. I went with Spence and Cannon over Kocanowicz. You didn't take the guy with a nine point three percent K rate? No, no, no. You know me. That's what the end game is, man.

It's a perfect illustration of what we're dealing with. Even Canon, like 17% K-rate so far this year, it's ugly. So you went with Spence in that case? Do I think I'm gonna get a win? Yeah, right. What do you need? Do you want strikeouts? I would say that for Kutanowicz, too.

Yeah, it's not. You think you're gonna to get a win? The nice thing about Spence is why he's clearly the number one guy is that he pitches for a team that might actually get him a win. Landon Nack picked up again in a bunch of 12-teamers. Which is great for the first start, like we talked about last week. It's great for the first start and then he gets at Colorado as a second start. That's right.

Rocky's home all week because they close out with the Dodgers at Coors, which makes a bunch of things. I have like a black one pick up. I have Eric Wagerman picked up twice. One of the Razzwell projections say I should play Eric Wagerman over Brandon Nimmo at least Monday through Thursday because Wagerman's in Chicago against the White Sox. And that's one of those ones where I'm just like again, this is a just like the Pablo Lopez situation where I'm weighing my gut is kind of like Nemo. Like that's a big bright light series, right? Mets Braves.

Yeah, it's a huge one. And then think about it too. This is like the equivalent of the pitcher who's dealing is going to be facing the heart of the order a third time and the book says you should take them out, but your guts like, I think you can probably get through this three, four and five group one more time and you have to decide. Maybe it's really more of a coin flip than the actual numbers would tell you. So you have to make the choice and live with it and I think that's okay that's fun like that's that's what it should come down to. Put Boz in over Lopez. Yeah you're still living regrets there.

I'm really angry about that one. The void still open but I think one name that popped on the bottom of this list. We actually picked up Morell in our main event. You just can't quit him. But now that I said what I said. Well, we picked him up over Julian, who's just not playing. You and I both know that because I suggested

it might not work for Morell, he's gonna hit four homers this week. So you're welcome, everybody. I literally have him nowhere. So that tells you everything you need to know. Luke Weaver popped up on the bottom of this list again, which it's not a surprise that in 12s he's starting to get picked up

because he's been getting saves. And I think the bigger question with Weaver is long-term. Like this is a fantastic season, sub three ERA below one whip, over a hundred Ks now in 83 innings. It's a really heavy workload. Former starter, so maybe it's a little easier to put that kind of workload on your arm and come back and be fine the next year. But Luke Weaver is a completely different pitcher in this role at this stage of his

career than he's been in the past. I know you had a chance to talk to him recently and kind of just get a feel for some of the adjustments that he's been making. But this has the look of a true closer profile. Is this the answer for the Yankees in 2025? I think so, yes. And we managed to talk just about his change-up, which by movement metrics, it doesn't stand out,

but you get a little sense of why it's good here. He's improved it, you know, even metrically over the last few years. And we talked about that. But then also, there's a little bit in here about pronating that I think is fascinating. So here's just a little minute long interview with Luke Weaver about his pitches. All right, I'm here with Luke Weaver, and he's got a plus plus change up that's pretty awesome. Can you show us your grip on your change up? Yeah. So right here we got a, I do kind of a one seam.

So what I'll do is I'll have a traditional circle change grip and what I'll do is I'll get this finger on here and that's my guide. That's something that I'm ripping. This finger is just for support and just kind of slip off the side of the baseball So the goal is to then when I'm coming through the ball I'm trying to pronate and I'm trying to kick this ball and I'm trying to get this thing Spinning in a certain way in order for it to kill for great movement You added you killed a little bit of bird over the last couple years. So you've been fiddling with it

How did you what did you change? Um, with the fastball. Oh, I thought with the change, I thought you were getting more of that. Oh yeah, so I had a different grip. I was just getting behind the ball too much and then this was slipping out. So then that created a lot of rides. So I was essentially just trying to kick the ball and create more seam shift. And people were talking about, uh, so a pronator, everyone pronates when they have a fun release, but you pronate a little bit earlier. You were talking about... Yeah, natural pronator, not a sup on release, but you pronated a little bit earlier. You were talking about- Yeah, not a pronator, not a supinator.

So that means, show me that thing where you're showing, like you're pronating into release. Yeah, so it's kind of coming through like this, where most people might be here and then going, I'm kind of turning all the way. So then it's kicking the ball, and kind of like Devin Williams, there's just a lot of side axis that's coming with it.

You master at it, but that's the idea of that kicking. Thank you. Yeah, you got it. So, it, but that's the idea of that kicking. Thank you. Yeah, you got so, you know, there's that there's an important point like even on a curveball where people talk about supinating and being on the sort of on the index side of the ball, like on the on the outside of the ball, that even when you're throwing a curveball at the the way that your arm protects the way you throw, if you slow it down, you'll see you actually pronate at the end.

You kind of turn that curve ball over. And that's actually why it's important in fact to hold it the way you do, because you kind of turn it over at the end. But when you saw with him is he's turning, he's pronating earlier. And that I think that is, we were talking about pronating, supinating. That that's important part of the discussion is everybody pronates but the pronators kind of earlier.

I'm not makes it hard for them to turn over a curve ball. Right cuz are already pronating as they go and they don't have that like i'm superman super name then pronating you know like they're they're kind of like i'm pronating going into it. So he's never had a good breaking ball. And the the stuff that we other stuff we talked about that wasn't on the video was that he changes grip a little bit to get more spin efficiency and ride out his fastball. So that's his fastballs better. It's also throwing a lot harder. And then lastly, his cutter, he's kind of dialed in a cutter where, you know, it's it's in good shape.

It's probably the best as cutters ever been. It's the first time his cutters registers above average by stuff plus. So now he's got three pitches plus like, you know, a really strong change up out of a closer is kind of rare ish. So that might be kind of that speak well to him, you know, like, this guy's a little different and I don't normally like change up first guys but when you have velo and ride like he does now I think he's going to be the closer for them next year and there's also some subtext that why did the other teams that he was with never do this and he is not uncoachable like I've been talking to him for a long time and one of the things that he said early on was he bought a rap

Soto and asked the rap Soto people what he should be doing and that that's sort of like alarm bells for me It's like why are you asking the rap Soto people even if for one point as guesswork? And I'm like it's not supposed to be you got to the Yankees that wasn't guesswork They were like hey, let's do this do this do this and this. And you were good. So there are still some teams where a player goes there, and there's a plan. And it's not guesswork. And there are still some teams where it's a little bit more guesswork.

So I think the Yankees pitching development is in a decent spot. And I think Luke Waiver is our closer next year. He's under contract next year for $2 and 1 half million. Clay Holmes is gone. If they're going to sign Soto, they may not I think Luke Weaver is our closer next year. He's under contract next year for two and a half million dollars. Clay Holmes is gone. You know, if they're going to sign Soto, they may not sign the best reliever on the market. They may just, you know, try to piece together a good bullpen.

So I think I think we've as a close next year, I think he's a good, a good pickup and a good guy to have for next year. I mean, he's going to finish this year, with a 30% K rate backed by a 15% swinging strike rate. He's got the three pitches. He's messed around with a knuckle curve. He threw it like 11% of the time last year. I think he's thrown 17 of them total this year.

But I do think the feel for spin, the feel for pitching is definitely something Weaver has, the curiosity. Like all of those things are good boxes to tick. And I wonder if the combination of the way his four seamer and changeup interact with each other, if it actually does enable each pitch to be a little more effective, like if they're like a well balanced combination, having a third thing to work off of them

is particularly helpful. Like he doesn't need the Bradish slider, he just needs a good slider. You need something that's okay. He needs either the curve or the cutter, I think will be okay enough that in the context of his fastball and change will be good. I think it's almost certainly still high leverage.

Is there a non-zero chance that he'd go back to starting again if needed though? I mean, he threw enough innings this year where he could be another one of our Ronaldo Lopez, AJ puck experiments in the spring in the right situation too. Like I think that's hard to rule out. The thing that really stands out to me is not the change in movement on his cutter, but the change in Vilo because he's at 91.3 on the cutter this year. And that's the first time, like I said, that his cutter has really

registered this well. What happens if you know the cutter goes down to a 95 stuff plus cutter? Is that enough? You know right now stuff less as curve is 92. So that would make him a two pitch pitcher with kind of man breaking balls. I just don't. I don't know. Is there somebody like that? It's like it's Gossman ask, I guess.

Yeah, maybe that could be. I mean, he's not that old. Luke Weaver is only 31. Not that old to get it back as a as another role. Anyway, I just there's a lot of ways for him to be good. I think that's the like a really good DC pick, I think, because it's like it's going to be, you know, 80 to 100 innings, depending on what his role is. They're probably gonna be good innings.

He's gonna be in the major leagues. 2.5 million dollar salary, you know? Yeah, I wonder in early drafts where he's going to go. That's a fun question that we'll get to get an answer to, hopefully, in the next couple of months, you know, as we move through the start of draft and hold season. So, a lot of ground covered today. It's weird the last week of the season, but hopefully we had some fun along the way.

If you'd like to subscribe to the athletic, you can do that at the athletic dot com slash rates and barrels. We've got a big breakdown on the Tuesday show this week. We're going to take a look at the biggest flaw and some strengths, but the biggest flaw that you might be worried about with each playoff team. So we'll dig into that on the Tuesday episode with Britt. And we won't be having a live stream on Thursday. You know, there's a puns of reasons, not least of which is I'll be at the last A's game

that day during the day. And then for the last one of the season, how about we get some, uh, feedback on discord about the format of that last, uh, that last regular season podcast? I mean, some of you may want some information for the weekend and still be in it and want to care about, should we talk about streamers for the weekend? Um, I think another couple of things that could be interesting are, is looking back at our biggest wins and losses like a biggest

In terms of takes like our biggest guys we'd like that were that were good and guys that we'd like that were bad You know, would you like us to focus on one of those like what happened with the misses what happened with the wins? You know that sort of deal So go into the discord and and let us know what you would like most out of that format of that last episode because it's yours. It's the end of the season. Whoever's still with us gets to decide really. Yeah. I mean, if you're still listening every day in September, we really appreciate you because

you're the diehards, but we appreciate everybody throughout the year. Let us know on Discord. You can get into the Discord with the link in the show description. If you're not already in there, that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. College football is back like never before. I'm David Ubbin and I host Untill Saturday, the athletics leveled up college football

podcast. Three times a week you'll hear me and my co-host, fellow athletics senior writer Chris Finini, and two-time national champion Damien Harris embrace the sport's new madness with you. We're also just going to have a ton of fun enjoying all the things that make college football great. Check out the brand new one till Saturday, every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday this fall. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.