Rates & Barrels - Opportunity Knocks, Even in April

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss the setback for Grayson Rodriguez and the fallout for the Orioles' rotation, the promotion of Luke Keaschall as the Twins deal with a few injuries on their depth chart, and weekend waiver pickups to consider with Ottoneu found and Rates & Barrels Senior Hot Dog Correspondent Niv Shah. Rundown 1:09 Grayson Rodriguez Has a Setback 10:34 Luke Keaschall Gets the Call to the Twins 16:57 Prospect of the Week 25:57 What's Driving the Interest in Tyler Mahle? 28:48 Matthew Liberatore: Post-Hype Sleeper? 30:48 Austin Hays: Underrated Pickup in Cincinnati; The Reds' Crowd 35:54: Behold...."The L.A. Dog"! 42:32 Jo Adell's Chances of a 2025 Breakout 47:38 Tanner Bibee's Early Struggles 49:50 A $1 Bet on Science 53:26 Other Weekend Waiver Targets to Consider Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social Follow Niv on Bluesky: @ottoneu.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Guest: Niv Shah Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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wherever you pod, we're there. What the rates and ferals. It is Friday, April 18th, Derek Van Riper, Inosaris here with you on this episode. Dig into some news from around the league, including some testing on the shoulder of Grayson Rodriguez. We'll talk about that and the impact of a longer absence for Rodriguez on an Orioles rotation that really needs him back. We've got some prospect of the week selections. We're going to have our senior hot dog correspondent

Niv Shah. He's also the founder of AutoNew. He will join us a little bit later in the show. We got a hot dog review on tap and some weekend waiver pickup advice. So we have tons of ground to cover, you know, and a mailbag question that's about as scientific and philosophical as any mailbag question I've ever seen on one of our rundowns. So we're definitely looking forward to that. If you'd like to join the conversation on Discord, you can do that with the link in the show description. That's the best place to send mailbag questions for the show as well.

Let's get into this with the Grayson Rodriguez news. He was supposed to throw a bullpen session on Thursday. Those plans were scrapped. And instead, he went for imaging on his shoulder. And the shoulder is not the reason Grayson Rodriguez was on the IELTS in the first place. They're calling it soreness for now, but until we have the results of the MRI, it's really more of a hold our breath and just hope that it's typical

ramping up soreness and not something worse But because Grayson Rodriguez dealt with a lat strain at the end of last season I think our minds immediately go to some sort of underlying problem still being there Yeah, it's not great. It's not great at all. It's tough on the Orioles. It's tough on anybody who has Grayson Rodriguez shares I think if you're in a redraft league, I mean, you might as well, I guess, wait for the information, but it doesn't look good. Doesn't look good. And now the Orioles who are, you know, playing fine, but kind of need better pitching if they want to get past the Red Sox and Yankees and. Kind of seems like I have a little bit of a missed opportunity there in terms of building a better rotation.

That could withstand depth problems like this, you know, the general manager came out, Michael, I came out and said, well, you know, this isn't something we planned for to have these guys on the shelf at the same time. And I, I would say that's something you should plan for. The injury history of Grayson Rodriguez is meaningful. I thought this was going to be the breakout year. I thought he was going to replace Corbin burns effectively. Clearly I have been wrong. I've underestimated just how much the past arm issues might

be impacting his current arm health. I think it's hard to take what Mike Elias was saying at face value. We never know. We never know what conversations they had with other free agents. We have a sense of what they offered Burns and how it wasn't what Burns wanted.

It wasn't nearly as good as the offer that he got from the Diamondbacks, right? But we don't know what rejected trade offers have gone through the Baltimore front office. We don't know the free agents they might have come in second on otherwise. Were they in on Blake Snell? Were they in on anybody else this off season that could have been a difference maker? Some of that stuff is just information that we'll never have a handle on. But I do think that's the one surprising part of their rebuilding effort is that they got so much right on the hitting side.

The question has been, will they develop enough quality pitching? And they do things well with pitching. They found some guys, they've had players that got better in that system, but it relatively speaking is the, it's the weakness of the organization. And it's hard, it's hard to get pitching when you don't have it.

It's expensive. We talk about Sandy Alcantara like three times a week. Where's Sandy gonna go? Where's this? And we've been trying to trade, pitching to Baltimore for I think three years now. And it just, it hasn't quite come together. And there's something about the style of running this team that I can,

you can see as soon as you draw up their, um, payroll page on Fangrass, the roster resource, it's immediately clear what the philosophy is. And of course, anybody listening probably knows right now, which is, you know, small deals for mid-level free agents, short as possible, keep the balance sheet clean for the long run, you know, develop from within, etc and if you look at just even next year's balance sheet the only guaranteed salary that they have. That's not an arbitration is Tyler O'Neill at sixteen point five million. And so you get it like and why is Tyler O'Neill like their acquisition because he's three and fifty and not you know two hundred million or seven hundred million or whatever it is. He's a mid-level piece that makes them better.

They did add more payroll than any other team year over year according to that story from a climates and fangraps. I don't know if that's where it all ended up, but they did, you know, sign Charlie Morton for 15 million in one year and Tomioka Sugano for 13 million. And, um, you know, uh, and the Tyler O'Neill deal. And I don't, I don't know exactly how they ended up with, uh, adding more payroll than other people we are over a year, but, uh, that was what the story said at the time.

And I think they might be making the wrong idea. I think that like you throw, you know, like Juan Soto on this or Corbin Burns, or, you know what I mean? Like if you take one shot at a long-term deal, then that makes sense. Um, I don't know what their representation is for Adley Rutchman and Gunnar Henderson and stuff, but, uh, they haven't done any long-term deals with their young guys either. So I wonder if it's just like an anti long-term deal team. And if that's the case, then they're never going to add a big free agent.

And they're always going to shop in this Charlie Morton territory, is it's fine but it's not working right now and it's it doesn't look very happy for the future right now so. I guess the good news is for Kate povich seems like he's got a rotation slot for as long as he wants it and I should have written them up today in my piece. I just ran out of time a little bit. I like Povich some, but I don't think he has the makings of an elite pitcher like Grayson Rodriguez. If Povich has an outpitch, it's his four seamer, which has 99 stuff plus. has an outpitch, it's his four seamer, which has 99 stuff plus. He has four pitches in the nineties and stuff plus and a fifth one that's at 86. So he does have a lot of pitches, but it's a little bit like Sugano where there's a lot of pitches, decent command, but what's the outpitch?

Dean Kramer is like this. A lot of pitches, decent command. What's the outpitch? Dean Kramer had a good year last year and has having a bad year this year. I think those types of pitchers are subs are, you know, they end up having a lot of variance here to year. Yeah, I think the other name that you're probably gonna see in the big leagues in the near future is Brandon Young.

He's a triple A right now. And I think he'd be able to make a start this weekend based on the last time he pitched at triple A. Last start there was April 12th, it's already April 18th, so theoretically if they wanna use him in the rotation this weekend, that is an option. I'm just curious, do you have AAA stuff numbers on Young? 17K is just two walks in 16 and a third inning so far

this year, so he's off to a nice start. Fan Crafts has a future value 45 on him. Looks like a good fastball, slightly even better curveball. Maybe average or better, actually better than average command, possibly an average change up. I'm actually kind of surprised looking at the pitch grades that it turns into a 45, but as we've learned, that's not, it's not add it up and then divide by five

kind of thing. It's a, what do you think the role is? What do you think all the other factors are built in there, but what have you seen from Brandon Young? And do you think maybe he could be at least as good as a povich type, if not something a little bit better? You know, it's funny. Yeah. His, his pitch type stuff plus adds up the same way. So if I told you he has a one 18 stuff plus on his curve ball, a one 15 stuff plus on his slider, one Oh five stuff plus on his change up a 101 stuff plus on his four seam and an

85 on his cutter. You would assume that he has a pretty good stuff plus, right? Like a one Oh seven probably. Yeah. How somehow this adds up to a one or two, I guess it's because he throws the four seam the most 66 for seamers thrown 50 change ups. So he throws the four seam the most 66 four seamers thrown 50 changeups So he throws the lower stuff plus pitches more No, there's something nice here in that at least the model likes the breaking balls in small samples

And it looks like he thinks of himself as a fastball changeup guy So if he's a fastball changeup guy his core and his breaking balls are actually okay Then he could be an exciting player. Looking back at the Keith Law profile from his top 20 Orioles list for 2025. Young is a potential fist starter with good feel for mixing his four pitches, but lacking the outpitch to be more than that, right? That explains like, why is he getting a 45 with everything

getting slightly higher grades it's just and a 102 stuff plus is like kind of right there yeah so there's your there's your temper the enthusiasm on Brandon Young but he banned it being important to this Orioles team because they're gonna have to find guys to help them get there if this Rodriguez absence does get extended longer effing down right now i now. I'm surprised the Orioles didn't plan a little more for this scenario because it's not just Rodriguez's injury history. Zach Eflin has had pretty extensive history of knee trouble of all things.

So he's missed a lot of time over the course of his career as well. Injuries biting the Minnesota Twins right now. Luke Keishel getting the call to the big leagues. A long time favorite of our buddy James Anderson and I imagine the guy that's still on your roster in Devils Rejects, I didn't check this morning but I assume Luke Keishel is a guy you're gonna be using in a league that deep as long as he's getting a little bit of run here for the Twins as

they've got Willie Castro dealing with an oblique injury, Matt Waller went on the IL with a hamstring strain earlier this week. It looks like Carlos Carraya is going to be okay. I think he made a late appearance on Wednesday after leaving early on Tuesday, but Kiesel is one of those prospects that puts up big numbers everywhere he goes. The question is probably power relative to hit tool. Like I think the average and OBP are going to be there pretty quickly, but how much in game power are you expecting from Kishel?

Yeah, that is the question mark because we really only have 58 of player appearances at AAA with a 106.9 max to being a 35% hard hit rate. So I would say we don't really know the underlying level of power here. And we also have that sort of dreaded 180 to 200 ISO with speed in the miners. That's kind of, we talked about that with Matt Shaw a little bit where it's, you're not sure if that those are leg doubles or not. Um, and, uh, without the exit velocity. So right now we still the question mark on the power. I really do like the combination of walk rate, strikeout rate and swinging strike rate.

This looks like somebody who can at least, I would say walk 10% of the time and keep the strikeout rate below league average, which means that the batting average shouldn't be bad. And the speed steals are there and the projection is actually pretty rosy on him with 330 OBPs and the kind of full season stats that would give you maybe 15 homers and 15 to 20 steals. So deeply yours I pick up I think you know the other question is always in sort of a redraft scenario like or when you a young guy comes up like this is is there a roadmap for him to stay up. I'm and I think it's interesting that he came up before Peyton Ealy's so like okay he's the next man up for this team is Is he going to be an up and down guy, depending on health? He could be. Julian right now has a 101 WRC plus has cut his strikeout rate so he could maybe stay up in a platoon. Um, but, uh, at some point Brooks Lee will be healthy and he's the switch hitter. Um, so I think reading the tea leaves, I think this could be a short-term situation. Yeah.

And I think you mentioned Peyton Eales. I think he's got the recovery from knee surgery slowing him down. He had some kind of cartilage problem in his knee. Otherwise, I think he would have got this opportunity first, if only because the role, despite those injuries, is not necessarily an everyday role yet. So I could see Keishel maybe being limited more to a small-sized platoon role initially,

getting his first taste of the big leagues, getting sent back down, and then maybe getting that prolonged opportunity later on this summer. That still seems likely. It is interesting though, the Twins offense has been rough to begin the season. I think it's an 82 WRC plus for them as a team. It's a 280 Woba. So it's even worse by Woba. It's tied for 25th, tied with the Rockies and Astros so far through these first three weeks and change. They've already done some work on it with sending Juan Miranda down. He had a toot plan thrown out on the base pass like a nincompoop toot plan and also maybe hurt his hand and so he's hurt and in AAA, which is just a terrible combo.

Um, and he also struck out a lot when he came up when the beginning of the season, which is just weird because that's the one, it's probably the one skill he has. It's not, not striking out. Um, and so that doesn't bode well for his future. Larnac and Walner, uh, Walner's playing about as well as we could have hoped. You know, getting that top end bavit by hitting the ball so hard and just staying afloat and being a decent guy out there. So I think Wallner wants the hamstring is fine, is back in there.

And just to sort of check in around these guys larnac has been struggling but the strikeout rate is fine the maxi V is alright. You know he's kind of can go in and out a little bit so i think he'll be fine i don't know what the what's your solution for this offense like where are you are you circling? Are you saying we give up on, on France and move on? France is, you know, doing okay. I don't, what do you, do you have a thing you would, a move you would make for the twins? No, because I'm, I'm so patient and I believe in this group more than I probably should. Like I have the annual flaw of thinking the twins are as going to be as good as they

projected to be on paper. And I can't figure out why they fall short beyond injuries. We know injuries are part of their core. We talked a lot about it on their team preview, but. I don't see the obvious moves. I mean, Royce Lewis coming back eventually is going to help, right? They haven't played with him so far this season. Hopefully Walners hamstring strain is something that keeps him out just close to

the 10 day minimum as opposed to like a month long thing, because he does seem to be very important to them. Why do they have so many hamstrings? Try it. It's cold there, but like that shouldn't really. It's cold a lot of places. Strange. Yeah, it's just that.

It's probably just a coincidence. I mean, it's it's straight. It's definitely strange. No, I don't have a singular thing about this lineup that I'm like, yeah, you have to go fix that. But I do think there's a prospect of the week tie in here. So let's let's get prospect of the week in here nice and early today. I thought at one point going into the season that maybe we would see each of Luke Keishel, Walker Jenkins and Emmanuel Rodriguez

all in the big leagues together, probably August, right? Like a late season push. Either guys are hurt and they want to keep things afloat or things just haven't gone the way the twins expected. They're kind of in the middle. They end up being sellers of the deadline. They open up spots via trade. Either way, there were multiple paths for this to happen.

Still could happen. It's only April 18th. It's only been a few weeks. But Emmanuel Rodriguez kind of caught my eye in a bad way, usually prospect of the week where we're like, we're hyping people up. I think it's because we're just not seeing power from him at AAA yet. And he just turned 22 in February, he's age appropriate for the level.

But Rodriguez has been a very interesting profile throughout his entire time in the minors because he's the extreme walker ace, but you do get it with some swing and miss that ticks up at times. And so far, it's 11 walks, but 20 strikeouts in 60 played appearances through 13 games. So end of last year, beginning of this year, Emmanuel Rodriguez has now played 20 games in St. Paul. So he's got four extra base hits so far. That's what I'm worried about more so than the swing and miss.

I feel like he'll figure out the zone. The ABS system might be juicing up the strikeout rate just a little bit. I think if you give him a couple of months, he's going to make the adjustments and that aspect of his game is going to be fine. But where I'm genuinely curious is, is this going to be a below average contributor from a power perspective in the long run, given how light the power has been so far, one level removed from the big leagues. I'm going to take the positive side of this and say, you know, he's hit a ball,

114.6 last year, 113.6 this year. That suggests premium bat speed. The hard hit rate is good. And the ground ball rate that he has shown a AAA, I don't know that is, that that is a thing that is probably why you can hit the ball hard and not hit for power, but it's not something he's had a problem with his whole career. It's just cropped up this time. So I think it's probably just the latest book on him and we know that he has a good eye. So maybe at this point You know, he hasn't yet figured out what to do with this latest book but I think he's figured stuff out in the past and

I'm gonna say that I I believe in him as having better power than he's projected for which is around the average That seems wrong for somebody who has a you know, like a 114 115 max EV, there's very few people. I don't think there's any, uh, maybe Brian Hayes is, is, you know, a person that might have that kind of a max EV and have below average power, but it's very rare. So I'm going to bet on, I'm going to bet on the EVs here a little bit. Questions about Rodriguez by actual scouting grades are more on hit tool than power. Like, Fangraph has a 70 raw power grade on him, 50 game, future 60. So it just, it seems like kind of flipped. I'm probably just getting too wrapped up in the small sample and

thinking a lot about how he handles the zone and maybe worrying too much about the initial Ben Rice outcome from 2024 where maybe he's good at just driving pitches because he can work the count get a mistake that he can crush and he does his damage that way. Again just it seemed weird to me that for a guy that's supposed to have that much power it hasn't been there yet but it has only been 20 games split over two seasons and maybe the ankle injury from spring training has slowed him down a little bit to begin this season at triple-a and hey Maybe my pessimism is a window to go get a little bit of a discount Maybe he's more movable right now for somebody in your keeper or dynasty league as a result of this

Who's caught your eye? Maybe a more positive report from you since I was a little bit skeptical of what we saw from Rodriguez so far Well, I was trolling through the triple- Plus things. I noticed an interesting sort of anomaly, perhaps, which was that Michael Burroughs has a better AAA Stuff Plus than Bubba Chandler right now. Michael Burroughs, among pitchers with 150 pitches, is third in stuff plus behind Emiliano Teodo and Zebby Matthews. Boba Chandler is fine, he's fifth. Right behind Blake Tidwell, who we talked about on Tuesday. And somebody named Dugan Darnell. And so this isn't to say that Mike Burroughs has moved past Bubba Chandler, although Mike Burroughs did get a shot at the big leagues before Bubba Chandler.

But it is to say, don't forget about Mike Burroughs because when we kind of looked at the team context for the Pirates, I think we both kind of looked at the team context for the pirates, I think we both kind of agreed that there might be two, two slots here for, for pitchers. Um, you know, considering that Bailey Falter has a 491 ERA, and this is kind of who we thought he was when he was doing better last year and Carmen Lodzinski is doing all right in terms of process stats, has 100 stuff plus and 23% strike rate, 9.8% walk rate, pretty much exactly league average. I mean, 100 stuff plus, exactly league average K-minus BB, slightly better than average ground

ball rate. He should have a league average ERA somewhere in the low 4s, has an ERA at 6 though, and at some point may just run out of innings because he only had 50 innings last year. This seems like a kind of a short-term fix situation. And if it doesn't, if he keeps his 6 ERA up and they know that he was a reliever and the bullpen kind of needs some help, those are all ways that this could end up, um, you know, uh, making, making space. Now, Tom Sarington, um, you know, did get the last spot start and maybe he's the spot starter, but if it's a longterm switch, they could, uh, have Burroughs and Chandler take

over, uh, just wanted to look at the per pitch numbers and the, the thing that's exciting about Burrows is he's always had good secondaries last year, even when he came up, the stuff plus was good on his secondaries, wasn't great on his fastball right now in AAA, the fastball has good stuff plus as well. So if he gained a few ticks or changed shape or something while he was down there, then he would be more exciting going forward. All that is said, Bubba Chandler's strikeout rate is much more exciting than than Mike Burroughs. So I'm not saying that Mike Burroughs is more exciting than Bubba Chandler. Bubba Chandler is probably the number one pitching

prospect in the minors right now. I think what you're saying is that we're looking at Mike Burroughs maybe a more interesting deep league pickup if he does get an opportunity. He's on the 40 man like Braxton Ashcraft. So you probably have another three to four weeks before the pirates try to follow their script from the Paul Skeen's promotion

and then bring Bubba Chandler into the big leagues by the same fashion, right? So a lot could happen in the next month and maybe they'll decide to give Burrows a look before then. And like you said, room for those guys to coexist if the pirates wanna go that route. I guess that since their bullpen could use some help and Kahneman Mlodzinski has been a good bullpen piece

for him, the first move is Chandler for Mlodzinski. And then if Falter is still faltering Then you have a you have a choice to make there and I Don't know what you do with falter Because you can't really send him down You get the DFM if you don't like him as a longer driver, but the ERA stays near five He's been DFA him if you don't like him as a longer lever. Right. But if the ERA stays near five, he's been DFA'd before. Yeah, that could be the unfortunate outcome

for Bailey Falter. Well, now it's our pleasure to be joined by our senior hot dog correspondent and founder of AutoNew, Niv Shah, is back with us this week. Niv, how you doing today? Good, man. How are you guys? Doing great.

Looking forward to a long weekend. It's going to be a busy weekend. It's a holiday weekend for us here in the States. But as you can see on the bottom of your screen, if you're watching on YouTube, we got baseball. We got hot dogs. We don't have apple pie yet, but we will soon. And of course, we have autumn news.

So kind of taking the old Chevy jingle and making it our own. We'll get that actually recorded in the near future. Get it together. And of course we have auto new so kind of taking the old Chevy jingle and making it our own We'll get that actually recorded in the new together get you a little intro jingle going there Let's start with some of the the most added players on auto new We do have a great hot dog to get to here in just a few minutes. I love the hot dog reviews so You sent over the most added and most auctioned players on auto new from the last seven days. And one name that really surprised me and he is actually on the block in my auto new

league right now is Tyler Malley. He is the most auctioned player on the platform right now. Yeah. What the heck's going on with Tyler Malley? Why is everyone like him all of a sudden? Man, I don't I don't have a great answer for that. It is a lot of times, you know, you're going to just sort of see auctions in your other leagues and you're going to be like, let's chase that. Let's like see something that's up.

And, you know, there is a lot of, especially with pitching, if you see something just a little bit, you're like, I need to clutch onto that. I need to jump it. And in auto new with the 40 man rosters, it ends up being a thing where you really you see something just a little bit, you're like, I need to clutch onto that. I need to jump it. And in auto new with the 40 man rosters, it ends up being a thing where, um, you really don't have time to sit around and wait for the second time through third time through, you may be just looking at what his next start is and you're like, Oh, I like what that looks like. But, um, I, what do you guys think about Tyler Molly?

Like I'm, I am befuddled. Yeah. I mean, he's, his VLO is up a little bit off of last year. And if you're kind of a K minus BB head, I think you're, you're into it right now. Um, because 28% strikeout rate and a 12% walk rate that is actually maybe should go down given his history. So, you know, that stuff all looks good, but I, you know, I'm more of a stuffist and I

think he's really fallen off since his heyday. I mean, when he was at his best, he was 94 miles an hour at the fastball. I think that's a pretty significant difference. 94 is around league average. 92 is considerably less. So I have not really participated in Mali mania. But I understand it. I think also another part of it, but from a roster management standpoint is that

like, you know, there are people who have Grayson Rodriguez who thought he was going to come back and, you know, they've got the bad news today or, you know, or getting the bad news about his, his there's like other players that have been hurt, you know, there's, and then maybe you have, you know, um, you know, somebody you thought was going to be good. And so it's around the time you start to be like, this guy thought is going to be good. I don't know. I think, I don't think he's going to be good.

And this guy I thought was going to be healthy is not, it's not healthy. So I would just say this is, this is the perfect time for people that are like, I need a starter right now. And it's also just chasing like, it's just hard to find starters. Like this is sort of what's left. Like it's not, um, you know, it's not like there are gems just waiting. They don't wait for you, right? Like they're.

Especially in auto new where like we were just talking about Bubba Chandler, like Bubba Chandler's owned and most. Yeah, he's gone, yeah. Long, long gone. And the other name that kind of caught my eye though is Matthew Libertor. Like, yeah, it is some of it's just, are you a starter? Are you safely a starter? Who do you match up with?

Do you pitch in a nice, nice park, maybe? Libertor though, I think has actually impressed me a little bit more than Mali. So Libertor is an interesting one because i actually started an auction for men and we won. I lost it so i was hoping that you know you would make me feel better about not being enough. I'm libra tour i don't i don't think he's an ace or anything yeah but i look at stuff plus stuff and you know it's fastballs looking way better this year. I am adjusting steel guy so i am looking for a starting pitcher and having a Libertor on the waiver wire. I was like, well, you know, he's been pretty successful. He will be pitching against NL Central Offenses, which you know, maybe that's good. And, you know, his his age curve is in the

right spot, like 25. It's like, oh, you know, he's maybe post-hype kind of guy. Decent Velo three, three fastballs. You know, they're all kind of average ish. His stuff plus numbers are above average, like good. Yeah. All right. So I'm not hearing man, if you did a good job dodging that bullet. No, no, I mean, there were some skills growth last year too.

The walk rate came down a little bit, not as far as it is down right now. He's walked one guy through 18 in the third innings, 18 Ks as well. Matchup wise too, if you're just playing streaming in other formats, it's at the Mets this weekend, it's okay for deeper leagues. And then he's home against the Brewers next week. I think they're still struggling enough with the bat. They have a few key guys struggling. Like, yeah, you can turn them loose in that start.

And home starts, like I'd probably use him in most of his home starts in St. Louis. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, there's enough that's changed. So yeah, that one maybe is one that got away from you a little bit NIV, not in a way that's going to ruin your year. I don't think, I don't think.

Justin steals an elbow is going to ruin my year way more than missing out. Yeah. I think that's,le's elbow is going to ruin my year way more than missing out on the tour. Yeah, I think that's probably fair. A couple other names that caught my eye, one on the position player side, Austin Hayes. He's back from the IL, three consecutive starts. I'm wondering if we all underrated Austin Hayes leaving the Mount Baltimore version of Orioles Park and ending up in Cincinnati, where he gets a major homer boost and maybe a clear runway to be a near everyday player, if not an everyday guy,

based on this usage so far. Yeah, I think the Reds sort of famously don't have outfielders, right? Like, they have a lot of infielders. They didn't have any outfielders. This was their big addition in the offseason. It does seem like he has a path to play. And yeah, I would love to have a Reds outfielder that plays every day in that ballpark. Great. Like that's as simple as it gets sometimes. Like he's available, go snag him. I don't think there's like a lot to think about there. Friedel and Fraley have been playing all right,

but I've been noticing that Blake Dunn is like their two hitter. He's a 26 year old right-hander that's projected to be a 78 WRC plus guy. So I was like, why is there, why is like done? You know what, what is happening here? Why is Blake done? There's number two hitter. This can't be right. And then maybe he was just keeping the seat warm for for Austin Hayes. I do you know Gavin Lux is kind of stuck in between a little bit now. He's not playing well enough, I think, to take the job from McLean. He's and if Hayes comes in as does three straight starts, I don't, I think Lux might be a utility player or their future third baseman.

I don't, I don't really know what Lux's career looks like right now. And I thought the Lux acquisition was a curious one given again the Reds roster is so infield heavy it's so many infielders and like you really want Lux to give you a plus second base bat not like he's not a plus outfield bat like he's right yeah so that's kind of it was a curious addition. Austin Hayes, you know, that just seems to me like the Reds finally got around to realizing like we can't just convert all our infielders into left fielders and right fielders. Like we need to just get a guy who knows how to play the position. So to me it just seems like yeah, there's a path there in that he's an outfielder and the Reds

eventually gave in to whatever and we're like, you should probably have a couple of those. Yeah Yeah, I think Hayes was just overshadowed Lux has played third since Hayes has started Okay Yeah, that makes sense And so that's bad news for Candelario and Encarnacion strand one of those guys is going to lose their job when steer Plays the field, I think. Right. Yeah. The other odd piece of all that is Noel V Marte, who I mentioned earlier in the

week, I was bummed that didn't pick him up last weekend. He got optioned down 24 minutes, 24 hours later. I guess it's fine. He was playing a little bit, gets sent down. CES gets hurt. They bring him right back up. So now I'm like, okay, but you can kind of get the sense. Well, you've already shown that this is our first guy out.

Yeah, Noel V. Marte, you can just tell by the way they've managed him, how quickly they sent him to minor league camp in spring training, how quickly they sent him down after his promotion. He has to work his way back into the organization's good graces after the PED suspension and then the lost year, year ago. He's just, he's not going to be handed anything,

even though I think there might be more ceiling with him than just about any other hitter that we're talking about as part of this entire mix, trying to find time in the corners there. Yeah, Lux is the everyday third baseman now. It's, and then CS, you know, he's been disappointing and there's obviously an injury component to that. But if he comes back and everyone's healthy, uh, and he's still hitting like he's hitting, I think he gets optioned.

I mean, they have a lot of guys and a lot of guys that were a lot of promise. And, um, when you have a lot of guys, it's the sort of the same thing we were talking about earlier. You guys were talking about earlier, like somebody has to be on the outs and someone gets sent down and someone gets DFA'd. Like that's what happens. It's a tough business, I guess, like red situations. But I think Austin Hayes, yeah, I think that's, I don't think they brought him in to be a platoon.

And he's definitely somebody you can platoon in fantasy, where, you know, playing more often at home. Play him at home, playing his lefties on the road, maybe when you get the handed disadvantage, but then play somebody else when it doesn't work out that way. I think that's where the depth

and the daily moves of a new comes in perfectly for Hayes. Like he doesn't even have to be an everyday guy to be good in that format. But I think he might be good everywhere with the move into Cincinnati. Let's jump on a plane together with our taste buds, living vicariously through NIV and again, the culinary team over at Nationals Park.

The Dodgers visited recently and as part of the Taste of the Majors program, they have the LA dog, which is really interesting to me. This Dodger favorite is wrapped in smoked bacon and covered in grilled onions and peppers and pickled jalapenos. Now, off the cuff, this sounds delicious and looks like a very good hot dog. And I noticed there's already a pattern here.

You mentioned on the first installment of Taste of the Majors that they reuse a lot of ingredients. So I'm a little surprised the grilled onions and peppers came back here because I feel like they don't necessarily need them on a bacon wrapped dog that already has pickled jalapenos, right? So walk us through the LA dog. It doesn't seem very LA, but was it actually good? It was awesome. This was a good hot dog. It was, I sort of mentioned they really do like putting meat on meat. Bacon on a hot dog, it's great. I totally recommend it. It just adds a little that smokiness, that fattiness. It's just really tasty. The jalapenos were

an excellent addition. The peppers and onions, it just sort of felt like, well, we got some grilled peppers and onions around. But they tasted great. It gives off a real good smoky Southwest energy to it. And this one was not hard to put down. This one was a three biter, I think. This one was gone pretty quick. So thing that was this was gone. So I really like this hot dog and I think.

You know for me I think like when you add like the creaminess and cheese or some sort of like dressing or whatever that's where things sort of get a little arrived these hot dogs. But when you go with like, these are sausage toppings, like treat the hot dog, like a sausage, put a little bacon on it. Let's go. Sounds great. That's, that's my question is, you know, uh, this, these are fairly, uh, common all up and down the West coast. Like you said, Southwest, you know, you can go to Arizona and get a dog like that outside the park. You can go to LA, San Diego, San Francisco. When you leave the park in San Francisco, there are like 15 of these vendors

with these bacon wrapped hot dogs, just like assaulting you, just be like, you know, buy from me. You must eat this. Yeah. And one of the things they always have is like the can of mayo. Yeah, see, that's not, you don't need that. Can of mayo. You just add in like, oh.

That's what I'm starting, I look at it, and I'm like, oh, that's not, you don't need that. You're just adding like, oh. That's what I'm starting to look at. I'm like, oh, that's a lot, dude. Yeah, I mean, like, again, the bacon on the hot dog, you're really pushing it there, but it's one piece of bacon. It smells so delicious. And it smells really good. Every time I'm leaving and it's like 10, 30, 11, I'm like, no, I don't want to eat a hot dog right now, but it smells so good.

And the casing, like, regular hot dog casing is fine. You know, it's not Derek. You must be a sausage connoisseur. You know what a snap is, what a good casing is. Adding a little bacon to a regular hot dog casing like you're now turning it into a casing that you're maybe interested in. It's very good. Hey, texture and mouth feel matters with food, right?

That's what I'm saying. I'm like boil on Brooklyn nine nine, you know, like you need, you need to account for what this actually tastes like and how it feels when you're chewing it because it adds something to the experience. So I'm, I'm glad they got this one right. My son was eating a rice crispy bar and he was like, yeah, it's kind of boring. Like as a rice crispy breakfast bar, he's like, it's kind of boring. I was like, at least it's crunchy. And he's like, yeah, it's kind of boring. Like as a Rice Krispie breakfast bar, he's like, it's kind of boring. I was like, at least it's crunchy.

And he's like, yeah, at least it's crunchy. Yeah, exactly. Like that's right, man. The experiential part of it. Like the taste is important. Next week, I'll be going to the park again. So hopefully I'll have reports for you guys. Orioles and Mets next week I

think so the Orioles one I'm very interested in I don't think I've been to an Orioles Nats game in Nats Park before and maybe the one time I've been I didn't get the hot dog so I'm really interested in what they are what you put some old day on it some old bay on it. There's going to be old bay on there for sure. Old bay is, see that's just, my stomach, I eat a lot of old bay. I live in the mid-Atlantic now, I eat a lot of old bay. My stomach turns at the idea of a hot dog with old bay.

Old bay, exactly. Just so much salt. But, you know, the quintessential Baltimore park food is pit beef, right? Like, in the way that like, you know, San Francisco's would be the garlic fries or whatever. Like, this is the, there's a pit beef, right? Like they like in the way that like, you know, San Francisco's would be the garlic fries or whatever. Like this is the there's a pit beef stand when you come in on Utah Street.

And, you know, always has a big line and it's like that's the quintessential Baltimore food. So what is the meaning? Pit beef is just like, you know, like a smoked. It's like a briskety thing or briskety kind of sandwich that they put horseradish and onions on and it's, it's raw. So they are, if they are honest to the, to the Baltimore food tradition, they might have horse radish. We've gone, we, this sounds so good to me that I've forgotten about the old Bay.

It sounds so good. So a boy can dream and we'll see what actually happens. I'm hoping to have some good reports for you guys from that one. Yeah, if they're lazy, it's Old Bay fried peppers and onions on a hot dog. No, fried peppers and onions seem like they're gonna be there for every hot dog.

I don't think we're getting away from fried peppers. How could you do it without fried peppers and onions? They're available. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. We look forward to catching up with you again soon. Always a pleasure, guys. Talk to you all soon. We have Shaw, senior hot dog correspondent here at Rates and Barrels and founder of Auto

New. Be sure to check it out, including our PICS6 group, 6PICS. I always flip that around. Which, congratulations on your win, Nick. 6PICS. Yeah, nice win. Good one this week. Got a clutch win a couple days ago and I'm hoping to turn that around. Which, congratulations on your win, Nick. Good win. Yeah, nice win. Good one this week. Got a clutch win a couple days ago and I'm hoping to turn it around.

I'm still like 45th in the Rates and Barrels group. There's some good scores in that group, man. I'm worse. I'm buried. I'm in the 70s right now. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm turning around.

Thursday, May 8th is McHappy Day when every menu item purchased at McDonald's helps support families with sick children. So you can feel the good that comes from doing good, just from ordering. So if I order a Big Mac, I'm helping. Yup. What about a McFlurry? 10-piece Chicken McNuggets and Apple Pie? You got it.

Every single order helps. Join us at McDonald's for McHappy Day on Thursday, May 8th. Do good, feel good. A portion of food and beverage sales will support RMHC chapters and local children's charities across Canada. All right, always fun catching up with Niv, finding out what they got at the ballpark at Nationals Park. I'm rooting for the pit beef version of that dog because I think that's going to be a great one if that's what they cook up at Nationals Park for that Orioles series. Let's get to a few mailbag questions here. First one from Long Ball, Larry,

wants our thoughts on a Joe Adell breakout, citing some of the underlying numbers being good. That was the case last year too. Plenty of bat speed, that's been the case here too. Good hard hit rate, expected numbers look good. The question's gonna come down to the K-rate. Do we think Joe Adell will cut the strikeout rate enough over time to become relevant in shallower leagues?

And is he a good buy low candidate in leagues where he's already rostered. I don't think so. I fall for this kind of, uh, collection of strengths a lot, but the thing that bothers me is not so much the K rate because you could have a walk, Matt Wallner situation here, right? Where he just hits this crap out of the ball, strikes out a little bit too much and, um, and finds his way to success anyway. But what you don't have from Adele is the high batting average on balls and play that Walliner has shown. So whatever it is about his mind drive mix or, you know, his, his, his ground

ball, fly ball mix, whatever it is about his battered balls, it's not producing, even though he has more legs than Walner. Um, it hasn't produced high babbups yet. And then the legs were what's going on with the stolen basis. If he's not going to steal bases, this is it. If he's not going to steal bases and he's not going to walk, you're putting all your bag, all your eggs in that Easter eggs, all your Easter eggs in that barrel rate basket, which is fine. Like I said, that's something I usually believe in, but it's one basket in the situation.

I wonder if the situation, the OVP has been a little low to start the year too, right? I mean, it wasn't great last season and he ran a little bit, But I wonder if it just situationally hasn't been there. There's been a base open ahead of him in the times he's been on base, just little things like that. That can happen over a smaller stretch. But to your point about speed, at least from a pure speed perspective,

there's something that's different so far. And maybe he hasn't had enough competitive runs for sprint speed to look good. Last season, Joe Adele was 86 percentile in sprint speed. Makes sense, young outfielder, sure. This season, 33rd percentile. So yeah, maybe there is something going on there physically. Maybe he had a nagging leg injury, ankle injury,

something that was under reported, something that you and I maybe are forgetting about right now. But I think there's still speed there. I think the other way I would think about the question is, if you do trade for Joe Adele in a shallow league especially, is he worth having on your bench? Because in a shallow league, bench spots are precious. I mean, you only have four or five bench spots

in a lot of those shallow leagues. Are you going to get enough of a payoff soon to where it's worth it? And that's where I'm not quite sure. He's's a right hander who plays in a neutral park. So it's not like you're like, oh, he's a Colorado outfielder. Worst case scenario, I play him at home when he has the handedness or whatever. You know? Yeah, yeah. I think the the ceiling, the best case scenario, if you said,

what's what's your pie in the sky? If it all were to click, what's going to happen to Joe Adele? Could he put together a peak similar to what we saw from Adelis Garcia? Is that in the range of outcomes? That didn't happen for Garcia until he was 28. And Adele, even though we've been talking about him forever, is still only 26, just turned 26 10 days ago.

Is that at least still in that range of higher end outcomes? Because the the high 20s K-rate is manageable. Five to seven percent walk rates most years from Garcia, other than 20, 23, when he got to 10.3 percent and hasn't been able to sustain that. Always a lot of hard contact. You know, like, is that possible? Yeah, I mean there's also Some he says some similarities to like a Paul DeYoung

In terms of K K's and BB's, you know Which hasn't worked out well, but he has better bat speed than DeYoung. So yeah, I could see a Dolis Garcia Season out of him He's had some left hip tightness this year, Adele has. That I think probably contributes to the loss of sprint speed. And so I just in a redraft, I don't know if this is going to be this year. I do have him in Devil's Rejects and I think I'll hold on to him through this because his projections, even with a 290, 300 OBP are still for 2010 season in the remaining 400 plate appearances they want to give him.

So that's still a lot of power and speed. And if he does get it together, this is the type of team that really needs him. They got rid of Mickey Moniac, you know, Taylor Ward is not playing that well. They need him. If he can be good, they'll play him every day. And that's not what's happening right now, but it could be what's happening in a week or two. Possible.

I think in shadow leagues, I'm going to be more careful. Deeper leagues, I think you would want to take a chance on this profile because there's still some ways it could go right. Thanks a lot for that question. Long ball, Larry. We've got a few questions on Discord. I think growing concern about Tanner Bybee, who's actually had two, I think two starts

where he hasn't allowed any earned runs and two where he's been knocked around pretty good. So the question came from ccpen999, how can we make sense of Tanner Bybee's struggles to this point? I can't, we tried to kind of go through it and look at things like arm slot and pitch mix. And all I can say is that his cutter last year had a two 35 slugging this year has a 1.1, one, one slugging.

And the cutter is his, you know, quote unquote slider. It says like gyro slider. It's his bread and butter is lost a mile per hour, but that doesn't seem like enough to explain why it has even a 985 X slugging so they are just killing that cutter and it's mostly left-handers who were doing it I will say that like the two pitches he kind of upped a little bit this year have been the sweeper and the sinker and neither of those is going to help him against left-handers. So maybe he's just more susceptible to damage from left-handers than we thought.

Maybe losing that 1 mile an hour VLO makes it more of a regular slider and not so much of a power gyro slider and so therefore makes it a little bit more susceptible to platoon splits. I don't really have an answer for you when I don't have an answer for you. I tend to kind of look at the players track record and say, it'll probably get back to normal here. Tough matchup next week. He does get the Yankees at home, but if you're in a position where someone else on your bench has an easier streaming

spot, or maybe there's a middling guy that is on your roster on the waiver wire that you can use for a two-star week, that might be the better way to go before leaning back into a hopeful rebound from Tanner Bybee here in the next few weeks. It's surprising to see the difference on that cutter in particular, how much damage is being done against that early on compared to how effective it was just a season ago. This next question is from Tier Zero Hero. Please help settle this dynasty league debate. In a keep forever league, I drafted Ted Williams frozen head for $1. I figured for a buck, why not bet on science?

Should this be allowed? Several teams argued that it will create a potential ship of Theseus style dilemma that the current bylaws are not prepared to address. So I am not a student of Greek mythology. I had to look this up. The ship of Theseus, it's also known as Theseus's paradox, it's thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object.

So there's a great example, I watched an eight minute video from a philosophy professor on YouTube and they use a wooden ship in the example instead of a person, which seems much more ethical and a better way to use the example. To tier zero heroes question, should this be allowed? No, I think you should only be allowed to draft complete living humans.

So I would say to avoid the possible headache, if we're all here, you know, 300 years from now and Ted Williams is brought back to life. Um, it's going to be a big fight on the internet when, when we get there, if we get there, just avoid that fight now and just drop the $1 Ted Williams. There'll be a fight at MLB. Well, yeah. Like should he be allowed to play?

Right. Yeah, there's that. And then what do you do with this player card? He does have like a 200 year gap on his player card and then he starts playing again. Is he the same person? I mean, that's the question. Right. Is he going to get is going to work 300 years from now when pitchers throw 175 miles an hour because they're half machine? Yeah, that's another one.

That's I don't know. I don't know if Ted Williams is going to hit one seventy five coming back from from this. These leagues with these leagues with the open universe do raise more moral quandaries on the fringes than they do in actuality. I mean in our league we do have people, you know, I think I was actually kind of interested in this Cuban player on, uh, on a team. I don't forget. It's not your team, but this is Cuban player. He's like a 16 year old that the Braves have signed that he hasn't played yet

anywhere. And I was like, or Nellis or something that's not or Nellis. What is it? Anyway, I was going to, I was going to trade for him. And then I was like, no, dude, this guy is nobody knows. You know, just might as well just pick the best little league player in my local little league. I think if you said, well, what would you do if I have a wide player pool? Any player in a professional league anywhere? Right. So you don't don't draft kids in high school.

Don't do that. Like if you're the commissioner, you can get in the year of the commissioner, cut off the boundary there. Let kids be kids and once they become pros, once they go to college at least, then go ahead and add them to your player pool and have that long-term speculation fun with it, right?

Like the completely open universe is too much for me. I, as a joke, have my son on my minor league and my minor league prospects is in one of my leagues. But it's not Devil's rejects, though, because those roster spots are so valuable. Yeah, this is one where we have more unlimited minor league spots. So it's just. All right. We get a couple of waiver names names. I'm going to throw at you.

We're going to go kind of rapid on these. Do you have any interest in Noel V Marte like 12 team leagues, 15 team leagues? He's back up. They recalled him again because they put CES on the IL. No, because I, because of the Lux thing that I discovered, they're playing. Yeah. You think it's still too crowded. Okay.

How about Ariel Amador? He is back up for the Rockies. You think it's still too crowded. Okay. How about Adiel Amador? He is back up for the Rockies. They put Tyler Freeman on the IL. Amador has started. They weren't even playing Freeman though. Oh, but they're just playing play Amador. There's playing Amador instead of Kyle Farmer, I guess. Yeah, that's too bad.

I have some Kyle Farmer shares out there. Uh, no, I like Amador and I actually could see him playing his way. Like they don't have any organizational loyalty to Tyro Estrada. Yeah, I thought you were going to say direction, but yes. You're right. What word is it going to be? And I was like, oh, you didn't say direction. He hasn't, it hasn't looked great from a contact standpoint, but that has been Amadores, one of his best, uh, foot forward.

So I don't, I think that's just a sort of shock of the new situation. Uh, I don't think it'll have a lot of power in it. Um, and, uh, speed wise, he's kind of reduced his how often he steals this year compared to last year when he had 35 steals 36 steals across two levels. So I think it's kind of a 240 ish hitter. If you give him a full season right now, I think you get 240 1020 1025. Yeah, it's not bad at all. He ends up sticking.

I mean, the problem could be strikes out so much they have to send him back down to AAA. Amador hasn't played that much at that level, so it's well within the range of outcomes. But if he's still on the roster through the weekend, starts all three games again this weekend, you're probably picking up at least in 15 team leagues. Anything with a keeper and dynasty component

might already be rostered, but definitely worth thinking about. There is a little bit of risk that like, you know, when Estrada is, and Freeman are healthy, you have Estrada farmer and Freeman, you would lose farmer or Estrada or Freeman if you, if you tried to send them down or whatever. Right. It's free. You can have an option.

Most of those guys, I mean, Freeman is probably the only one who can actually send down. So if everyone's healthy, it might be Estrada and Farmer that are in the big leagues and Freeman and Amador in the minor leagues. Uh, just because as you mentioned, Rockies and Direction. Rockies gonna rocky. How about Edgar Caro getting the look from the white socks? Two catcher leagues short term. But one thing that does suck is if you are in a two catcher league and you start

playing the carousel at catcher and you're like oh well he's better than what i have for the next couple weeks you like like playing the carousel with your second catcher in a two casual league could be bad it's not fun you kind of want to find someone that you can just plug in the rest of season and not think about that anymore so So as an example, OK, I'd rather hope that Andy Rodriguez can be my catcher all year. I do like Carol long term, though, I think he'll be good enough to be like a top 20 catcher, maybe even a top 15.

Pretty good numbers as he's moved through the levels and he's been young for the level everywhere he's played to. Yeah, I mean, there's some interesting things about it, but he also has Teal to to fight off and you know, so I guess he just gets the first shot. The other name that I'm seeing moving in a lot of leagues on the position player side is Cameron Meisner. So far this year, he started 14 out of 19 games for the Rays, getting a lot of run in center field. I just move up to the leadoff spot for Thursday's game against the Yankees 15.4% K rate on the young season.

Way better than what we're used to seeing from Cameron Meisner. So it's hard to know if that's going to be anywhere close to where things end up for him this season, but the playing time has been there at least for a big side platoon sort of role. So any interest in Meisner? Swinging strike rate stabilizes before strikeout rate and swing strike rate would be the best of his career at any level. So that's interesting and at 27 it's not unheard of to just have your peak season and this

be it you know I think that you know when Johnny Luca comes back there's a there's a chance that you know he just goes slots right back into center field and this is a short term thing for my Meisner but what Meisner does look like is maybe better than Mangum, Jake Mangum, who is older and yes, he's a switch hitter and he's playing well. But Meisner's ability to play centerfield might mean that he's the guy who sticks over Mangum. Also by age, a little bit more upside. So I could see it.

Like when you think everybody's healthy, when Josh Lowe is back, who, who sticks? Cause you got Josh Lowe and right Christopher Morell and left Johnny DeLuca and center, you get one more outfielder. You probably want him to be able to play center. So it might be Meisner that's next. But yeah, you could send Mangum down. Still has three options left. Even though he's old, you could send DeLuca down, he's still got options left. But he's playing well and was your opening

day center fielder so and DH seems to be increasingly taken up by Jonathan Aranda, at least against righties. So there's not a lot of room for all these guys that are up for now. So I'd call them short-term ads but Meisner might be the guy who sticks, albeit as a fourth outfielder once everybody is healthy. I'm happy for Jonathan Aranda. I'm sad for me because I wanted to believe the last three years and I just wasn't sure the playing time was there. I was among the people that got deeked by Eloy Jimenez landing there.

I thought Eloy was going to win this job and have the kind of start that Jonathan Aranda's had. 16.4% K rate, still making a ton of hard contact. An 18.2% barrel rate with a 59.1% hard hit rate underneath it. No, Jonathan Aranda's not gonna carry a 415 babbitt ball year but knock 100 points off that and he's still could be a 277, 343 plus power guy. Like that's, it's good.

Like Jonathan Arana looks like maybe he's planting the seeds for an actual big league sort of breakout this year. Yeah. The only caveat I have is that he doesn't seem to play much against lefties. So you in weekly leagues, you're going to have to deal with that. Yeah. Maybe you've got enough to still roster in weekly leagues, but he's the kind of guy where, oh, he's got two lefties this weekend.

I can't I can't start him this weekend. So there you go. Hopefully a little bit of help for you with lots of names to consider on the way of rewire this weekend. Quick heads up on our way out the door, the NFL draft is almost here and the athletic podcasting Network has you covered. On Wednesday, April 23, Diana Rossini will share all the info she's hearing the day before

the draft live on Scoop City's YouTube channel at 4 p.m. Eastern. Then on Thursday, the Athletic Football Show kicks off, a two-night live event. On night one, Robert Mays, Derek Klassen, Dane Bruegler, and Bruce Feldman break down all 32 first-round picks in real time. On night two, Robert, Derek,, Dane Bruegler and Bruce Feldman break down all 32 first round picks in real time. On night two, Robert, Derrick and Dane return to cover all the picks from rounds two and three.

You can watch the athletic football shows 2025 live NFL draft special on their YouTube page beginning at 7 30 Eastern on Thursday, April 24th and 6 30 Eastern on Friday, April 25th. I've watched that stream the last couple of years. They crush it on that stream. And it's such a calming compared to watching the ABC ESPN coverage. And I'm not just crapping on them because they're a competitor. It's so much more chill with good analysis as opposed to just loud highlights, here's some terrible things that happened to this player. And they're always like, and they're always like an an overall like, you know, crazy comps are like,

oh, he could be a Tom Brady. I guess I see Tom Brady in him. Highly recommended. If you have an interest in the NFL draft, check out those live shows that those guys are doing next week. Wriggler also puts together the Beast, which I is amazing. Like the he just he knows so much about each of these guys. The beast is if you want to, you want like to, to read something comprehensive about

the major NFL draft, like it is an amazing document that he puts together every year. It's just, so the depth of knowledge going into that is, is, is primo. So well, well done to them. And that sounds exciting. Yeah, definitely check that out next week. Uh, we are going to go on our way out the door. Just a reminder to you, you can join our discord, the link in the show description. You can find us on blue sky, you know, as you know, serious.beesky.social

IMDb. R. Beesky.social. I think Niv's on there as auto new.beesky.social. If you want to give the auto new account, a follow interact with NIV that way. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.

I figured for a buck. Why not bet on science? Bye!