Rates & Barrels - Robert's Rising Price & Shogo in Cincinnati

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Rundown1:42 Luis Robert's Rising ADP11:08 How Does Shogo Akiyama Fit in Cincinnati?20:33 The Nats Fill Several Roster Holes32:47 One Draft-and-Hold in the Books43:22 PT Concerns for Nate Lowe?49:00 Atlanta's Most Interesting Young Starters57:50 Adjusting For Different League FormatsFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail the show: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 60. It is January 7th, 2020. Sounds like a made-up date, but it is actually today's date. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris, and on this episode, we will discuss Luis Roberts' rising ADP, Shogo Akiyama's decision to sign with the Reds, the Nationals' recent flurry of activity, some of the fallout from a draft and hold league that I completed over the last couple of weeks, and a lot of other topics, as well as a few mailbag questions as well. We are available now on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much anywhere you want to listen to podcasts. So if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it,

we'd greatly appreciate a nice rating and review. And some of you might be listening to the show for the very first time. If that's the case, welcome. If you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Everything we do is included with a subscription. Happy New Year. You know, this is the first time we've spoke since the calendar

flipped to 2020. Happy New Year and good luck next week. You're up for an award? Yes, the FSGA awards are next week. I'm up for an award yes the FSGA awards are next week I'm up for podcast host of the year smoothest voice yes our artwork

is up for an award too so shout out to Stu from our design team for making us great artwork I'm glad that's getting recognized but yeah there's lots to cover on this episode I mean Luis Robert gets a big contract from the White Sox. The thing that I'm really excited about with that is we don't have to play the game.

We don't have to play the game of saying he's going to be up two weeks into the season or a month into the season. We're pretty confident now that he's going to be part of the opening day lineup and an everyday player on this team. But it does lead to a problem where everyone's really excited about Luis Robert and the ADP is going to start creeping up. I saw our friend Matt Modica put a tweet out over the weekend that Robert had jumped into the top 75, I think it was, in one of the drafts that he saw going down. The ADP was closer to 100 overall prior to this extension.

We're still talking about a guy who's 22 years old, has a decent amount of swing and miss in his game, and doesn't draw a lot of walks. And that kind of lines up to be like a Byron Buxton sort of tool set. But I think you got a lot more raw power already in the bat of Luis Roberts. That's one key difference for me. How do you see him kind of stacking up to other players who go inside the top 75 consistently if that's where the average draft position is going to fall? You know, I know that he's got the speed. You know, in 2019, he stole 36 bases across three levels. level so you know there's that speed is going to differentiate him between another player that came up last year that i think had just as much hype and was on the same team eloy jimenez and i bring

up eloy jimenez because he had a good year he had 31 homers he did not end up i think giving the value that people expected of him. A little bit of missed time, too, because of an injury. So that worked against Eloy last year. His ADP sits at 56 right now. Eloy's does. Yeah, Eloy's at 56. And I think the fantasy comp in that range, inside that top 75 overall,

that I would look to is Victor Robles. I think Victor Robles is maybe another guy that has a little less power than Luis Robert, but is a good reminder of how difficult it can still be. Even when you have a lot of success going through the minor leagues as Luis Robert did, Victor Robles was underwhelming in some ways last year, despite hitting 17 homers and stealing 28 bases. There were some times where things didn't look great. The final result ended up being just fine. And based on where he was going a year ago, I think he was at least a little bit, if not quite a bit, profitable.

How do you see full price on Robert holding up? Do you see anything better than the 17 homers and 28 steals we got from Victor Robles a year ago coming from Luis Robert in year one? I do, but the reason I brought up Eloy is because Eloy didn't really have strikeout rate problems in the minors.

At least we didn't think. So we thought he was going to come up and hit for contact and hit for power and hit for a good batting average. And he came up and hit for a 27% strikeout rate. So with Robert, I think that, yes, you're right, that the steals probably do put him in a better comparison with Victor Robles. But we know with Robert that there is a strikeout rate problem. And we know that it's worse than Victor Robles'.

We're looking at 17% swinging strike rate at AA last year, 21% swinging strike rate at AAA last year, a hit tool that got a 40 from Fangraphs. a hit tool that got a 40 from Fangraphs. So there's a good chance that Robert comes up and strikes out 30% of the time. And that's not in the projections. The projections say he's going to hit 270 with 27 homers and 25 stolen bases, that those projections are driving the ADP right now. And that's why people are drafting within the first top 100.

But if he strikes out 30% of the time, he's going to hit more like 240. And if he hits 240, is he going to get on base enough? Is he going to be at the top of the lineup? Is he going to be at the bottom of the lineup? Is he going to steal a lot? The stolen bases were inconsistent in terms of quantity that he took off at H-Level 2.

The speed is obviously there and someone on tv today said it was near billy hamilton-esque so i assume he's going to steal some bases but stone bases do depend on your place in the lineup a little bit so there's a there's a lot going into it and basically what i'm saying is yo yo, I'm out. Yeah, I'm definitely out if the price is going to push up into that top 75. I would have probably been in at the original price. And again, I'm referring to the current ADP around pick 100.

That's where he's been going. That's not where he's going to go. And he might even go up higher than the top 75. He might get closer to the top 60 or top 50 overall, depending on what happens between now and opening day. That lack of walks does become problematic because if he strikes out a lot more with that promotion, the OBP is low. This is a really good lineup. He could go from being a guy projected to lead off to begin the season to a guy who hits eighth or ninth for the bulk of it.

That could easily happen because that lineup is going to be a lot better this year than it has been in the last several years. And the White Sox have designs on going to the postseason, so they're not going to sit there and let a guy strike out 25% or 30% of the time with a 290 or 300 OBP and have that in their leadoff spot. They might keep playing him every day. I don't worry too much about the playing time unless he totally tanks, but his role in the

lineup, I think, is very fluid and there's a lot more downside there than people realize, at least in the short term. Yeah, and I'm trying to find an average draft position for Acuna, Ronald Acuna Jr., going into 2018

because Acuna was a better prospect with fewer warts, but the same sort of power and speed potential. And I found a piece here from Scott White saying that Acuna was going, when did he write this piece? February. So, okay. Right around now. And he was saying that he's going 137th. If Acuna went 137th, Robert should not go 75th.

Yeah, I buy that. And I think even as Acuna crept up, I remember drafting him around 100 or 110 in the FSWA draft that year. That was a reasonable price. And that was, again, a situation where Acuna did not have that contract. We knew we were going to have to wait at least a little while before getting him. And some of those questions have gone away.

Okay, I guess there's more playing time questions. There's some of that. We're still talking about the difference of about two weeks. I think we all, with the moves the White Sox were making, if this extension hadn't happened, we're still expecting Luis Robert to be up by mid-April. I mean, in order for you to... I mean, who are some other top 75 guys right now?

There's going to be so much more floor on these other guys. But outfielders in that range, Tommy Pham has an ADP of 69. Like Pham is doing everything you want Luis Robert to do, and he's proven he can do it over several years now. Maybe Robert can hit a few more homers.

But maybe. Yeah, he might be the better player in the long run. I don't think there's a major problem arguing that. But I think in 2020 give me tommy fam every time yeah so that gives you an idea jorge soler in no speed tons of power kind of at the other end of that range around pick 80 maybe maybe there i would consider robert instead but yeah so there's kind of a one note guy but i'd go to a different position i think instead of saying i gotta force an outfielder here i just i don't know i'd take marcus simeon or maybe grab kirby yates to get to closer early or gary sanchez like there's a lot of players i like

better for different reasons in that range it is an interesting uh place though it is a it is around the shoot your shot moment in drafts where you've kind of taken the studs and you could take a pitcher, you could take a closer, or you could take a shot. So I guess that's why Robert has gone to that level. But there is, if there, you know, somewhere between Favre and Soler, I could see taking your shot but um you know taking your shot used to happen later there's kind of an inflation on on that on that moment yeah it happens with the high-end prospects i mean vlad jr a year ago

had a third round adp had to pay the premium for him. You mentioned Eloy before. The highest-end guys keep creeping up every single year. And guys that have even debuted and played a half season, the ADP on those players, Jordan Alvarez doing the exact same thing 10 years ago versus doing it last season, has a much higher ADP going to 2020 than he would have had going into 2010. It's the way people play now.

It's a totally different, more aggressive approach. Let's shift the focus over to Shogo Akiyama. I think he's the other guy that came up a couple times during Prospect of the Week segments. He was always kind of linked to Yoshii Tetsugo just because we knew those guys were going to come over to the big leagues in 2020, but he lands in Cincinnati and I don't think that was really on my radar when he posted. I didn't really think, okay, yeah, here comes Akiyama to Cincinnati. I didn't make that connection, in part because I felt like they were pretty well set in the outfield between Winker and Senzel.

Some of the depth guys they have, Aquino having some power last season when he came up and even though he struggled in september i thought he was going to be a regular for them and josh van meter filler and it just seemed like they were set as far as regular outfielders go how do you see shogo akiyama fitting in with the reds i do think they have a need at centerfield but i do also think it's interesting that they're gonna play him at center field because there are already whispers coming out of japan that he can't really play center field but compared to the other guys they have on that roster he's their center fielder and i feel like you know he's a leadoff type and i might move winker down in the order so i might go akiyama vado suarez

you know moose winker yeah it's a pretty left-handed lineup with the key players i mean oh i guess you have to do some lefty righty uh but yeah this is you know akiyama is another lefty but the thing is that he doesn't have much power so you don't really want him that far down in the order you want to take advantage of his on base percentage i think and put him in front of the the heavy the heavy hitters so you know i i think he'll be a guy who can hit 280 i looked at his davenport translations you know and then i tried to do basically a marcel projection which is just a simple projection that looks at three times last year, or was it five times last year's numbers, three times the year before, and two times the year before, divided by 10. And that's the underpinning of a lot of projection systems. Of course, they got a lot more advanced since then, but that's the basic idea of a projection system and i did that with his

davenport translations and i came up with a projection that basically had him hitting 306 with a 370 on baser soundage and a 430 slugging it's it's a fun player it's a good player in obp uh it's a player that might uh hit 15 homers and steal 15 bases it's basically adam eaton hit 15 homers and steal 15 bases, it's basically Adam Eaton. Yeah, not a bad player. I mean, a guy that if he's leading off especially, piles up a lot of runs, doesn't hurt you in any category, and pretty much helps you across the board.

Yeah, that's how I'd describe him. But I have seen projections. Jeff Erickson did a projection. I guess maybe it was Cincinnati in particular. He did a projection that had him down for 25 homers. And I don't know. I mean, with the ball these days, like Freddie Galvis is hitting 20 homers. Maybe Shogo Akiyama can hit 20 homers.

I wouldn't have thought that. But, of course, the ball requires a little calibration. If he does hit 20 homers, then he has the sort of requisite power that it takes, and then he becomes kind of a cheaper Tommy Pham. Yeah, that's the high end. But I do think that Adam Eaton sort of comp makes a lot of sense. I'm looking at the Zips projection, too. Fangraphs had a three-year Zips projection broken out, and they're right up at the signing.

That has him at 273, 331 OBP, 433 slug, 18 homers. Again, the park definitely pushes that up at the signing that has them at 273 331 obp 433 slug 18 homers again the park definitely what was that it's got them at 273 331 433 oh my god my my slugging percentage projection is 433 yeah see i mean like that that seems very reasonable and then the 10 steals like okay that's that's a little bit of everything. And as long as the playing time is there, and it seems like it will be, they sign him to a three-year deal. They're going to give him every chance to be a fixture in their lineup. He's their center fielder, I guess.

I mean, there's Senzel, too, but the way that their roster looks now, he's their center fielder? I mean, I'm skeptical of Aristides Aquino anyway. I think he was exposed in September. He took a long time to unlock that power. He repeated AA for a full season before kind of putting it together a year ago at AAA. So I look at him as a guy that I was already skeptical of,

and now I think there's a much clearer playing time concern that could emerge. A healthy Winker with Akiyama now on this roster and a healthy Senzel, those are probably your primary three outfielders, and Aquino is a guy that plays as a fourth outfielder plus. He's also the righty. And you mentioned how lefty heavy this lineup is. Maybe they try to leverage him as a guy that plays against lefties. Wicker had some bad splits.

I'm not as excited about Aquino. His ADP was 150 going into today. It's going to tank. That's coming way down. That's coming down at least 50 picks, probably 75 to 100, I would think. I'm not going anywhere near him inside the top 200. So it doesn't change much for me. I wasn't planning on that anyway.

But what about Akiyama? So if you think he's more of an Adam Eaton type player, the earliest he's been picked so far is 189. I think because we didn't know where he's going to play, his ADP to this point is almost useless. So if he settles in around pick 200 or even in the 175 range,

are you comfortable taking him there? Yeah, Eaton is a $10 player, basically a back-end top 100 outfielder. Does that fit what you're saying? Yeah, Eaton goes... Not top 100 outfielder,

sorry. Top 100 hitter. Back-end top 100 hitter, yes. Yeah, so it's pretty comparable to Eaton's price. He's just outside the top 200 overall, so yeah, I could see the park difference. That's the slight difference. Yeah, but Eaton... Eaton's in such an interesting spot, though, because projection systems always like him more than the draft does.

And I think it's because he's kind of a high floor, low ceiling guy. And then also, he's that everything does everything thing, which is good, but listen to the names that are around him. Michael Conforto, Ramon Laureano, Brian Reynolds. I mean, these are all guys that have more upside and are going to get drafted ahead of Adam Eaton. Yeah. Yeah. By a hundred picks or more in some cases, even though their dollar values in the auction calculator are nearly identical. It's an interesting thing. I'll just say this. I think I'd rather end

up with Adam Eaton because Adam Eaton's going to be super cheap. I think that there's going to be some hype around Akiyama that he may not deserve. It's fair. Yeah. I mean, if he cracks the 150 range in ADP, that's pretty high. And if you're getting eaten 50 picks later,

why not? If they're going to do very similar things, take the discount, do something else with that earlier pick where you would have had to take Akiyama. I'd put them on my board, maybe with Lorenzo Cain, and just wait until there's one left.

Cain is one of those guys, I watched him play pretty much every day last season. He was hurt for most of the year. And he tanked relative to what we'd seen in most of the previous five years. He's a four-plus win player

as much as a five or six win player during the previous five years. He falls down to one of the worst years of his career because he played through injuries, still won the gold glove, only had 18 steals only, which in this environment is pretty good, still hit 11 homers. And the average in a bad year where he was playing hurt

bottomed out at 260. Lorenzo Cain's a really good player. He's old enough where you probably can't expect much more than 20 steals. If you get more, it's a bonus. That's great. But he's going to hit for a better average than he did last year. They're probably going to give him occasional maintenance days, which might help him avoid some of those nagging injuries. I'm definitely in on Cain as a last year's disappointment sort of player

who's underpriced right now by the market. I'd probably have it, just because of sort of track record and stuff, I'd probably have it Kane, Akiyama, Eaton. But, you know, I don't see a real functional difference between the three. I mean, in terms of here's a guy who's going to hit 280 and ballpark 1515. That's what we're talking about. Yeah. And I think the little glimmer of a higher ceiling and speed category is probably what keeps Kane on top of that group for me.

And then the unknown when it comes to Akiyama's power, I think. And then Eaton is just the solid. He's oatmeal. Nobody likes oatmeal, but hey, it helps you poop. I have nothing to add to that. All right, let's talk about the Washington Nationals. They've gone on a depth signing frenzy in the last week or so. The Brewers kind of own December.

The Nationals are owning January. Starlin Castro has Drupal Cabrera, Eric Thames, Will Harris, and Dan Hudson are now all members of the Washington Nationals. I've seen some reports from Ken Rosenthal suggesting that the Nats are still interested in Josh Donaldson. We'll see if he ends up going back to Atlanta or how that plays out. But as I looked at these guys, the first thought I had was, I wonder what this really means for Carter Keboom. We probably can't answer that question in full until the Donaldson situation plays out. But I still like Carter Keboom for 2020 because I don't think he has a lot left to prove at AAA. And I guess even though the Nats are interested,

I don't really see them ending up with Donaldson. I see him ending up somewhere else. And they're going to have to lean on some combination of Keboom and Cabrera to pick up the playing time at third base vacated by Anthony Rendon. Yeah, these two moves seen in concert, you could say that they were like an effort to change the tone of negotiations with Josh Donaldson, perhaps, you know, maybe Donaldson's pushing for a fifth year, you know, and they definitely don't want to,

I don't think anybody wants to give him a fifth year. He's look how old he is. So, you know, I think that they could be doing this and saying, okay, you know, we don't like the way this is going,

or we're just going to do these. And if Donaldson asks about it, or reps say, no, no, we can keep talking. There's definitely still room. We can platoon Estrubel and Castro and be a better team for it. Castro is a right-hander. Estrubel is a switch hitter.

Estrubel is 34 years old himself. So, you know, and Howie Kendrick is 36 and a right-hander. So, you know, they have depth, and they could still put Donaldson in there, but they can also say to Donaldson, hey, if it takes a fifth year, you know, we'll just mix and match and make it happen. So I do think that this sort of smells like he's not going to go there.

And perhaps it's the Braves that make it happen then. You know, Austin Riley and Yohan Camargo currently project to be league average, you know, third baseman together. But by signing Donaldson, they can also add basically to depth in Atlanta by making Riley and Camargo more depth pieces than starting pieces so uh and and I think that lineup in Atlanta could use a second big bopper whereas maybe the Astros maybe the Astros maybe the Nationals kind of see this as a moment to retool and take a step back, let Soto and Victor Robles develop another year and then go onto the market next year

with something that looks like $30, $40, $50 million to spend. I think having a guy like Robles who was in the bottom third of the lineup for all or most of 2019, it's a really nice luxury to have because you assume he's going to get at least a little better, if not a lot better, from last year to this year. And he was already pretty good last year.

He could be a superstar right in the heart of the order with Juan Soto. That could happen. It's not unrealistic to me at all. So if that's how they have to let it play out, they're fine. They're going to be okay. Sure, they're a better team with Josh Donaldson than not getting him, but they have some guys

with a ton of growth potential who could collectively fill some of the void caused by that Rendon departure. Yeah. There's something to like about, you know, Castro and Estrubo Cabrera just been like fairly steady performers for a while

that both make contact, you know, have decent on-base percentages. You know, they're not great in the field, but I wouldn't label either a butcher yet. And the one, you know, the one thing that I could see happening is just one of these guys falling off. I mean, when you look at the way the projections work, Jeff Zimmer just had a piece out about how, you know, how stable our projections by age group. And he just found that by the time you get to about 32,

there are large drop-offs with respect to projections with hitters. So as Drew Will Cabrera being 34 and Howie Kendrick being 36, there's a little bit there where you can say, hey, they did play well last year, and the projections say they're going to be good again next year, but things happen. You know, crap happens when you're 34, 35, 36 as a player. So if that happens to them, and it could come in the form of injury or just drop off and play, maybe the power goes away, something like that, what you can do is make one of them Cabrera or Castro depth,

and here comes Keboom. And I kind of think that's likely. If they don't have Donaldson on this team, I still think that Carter Keboom is going to get like 400-plus played appearances. Yeah, he's got a 60-grade arm, so he has the arm to play third base. When they brought him up, when Trey Turner was hurt, he was playing shortstop. If they think he has the athleticism to play short. And there's also Trey Turner getting hurt, so there's a lot of different,

and he's done that a fair amount recently. So there's a lot of different ways for Keebem. He's the next guy up. Yeah, I'm in. The price is right around the $275 to $300 overall range, if it it slides at all because of the Cabrera and Castro additions, sign me up. I'm already interested in Key Boom. I love him in draft and hold. Love to put him on a bench in a 15-teamer or do one of those things in an only or a 15-teamer

where you draft him in a starting position but then you also draft you know a veteran like you could draft him ahead of Castro right and and draft Castro on your bench and have be starting Castro at the beginning of the season and and be hoping that Keboom comes up and what what I think Keboom can do when he comes up I know that his strikeout rate was bad when he came up, but his whiff rate wasn't. And I've seen enough of him live and then also in the stats to say that I think that he takes the situation, looks at it. He's 22. Every time he's done this before, he's come up to a big level and been young. The first time he's done it, he's been okay.

He's held his own. And then the second time he's done it he's been like he's been okay he's held his own and then the second time he's done it he's rocked it so i feel like you know he came up and he was not that good but it was 43 plate appearances 22 years old major leagues i think next time he's definitely going to come up and have a strikeout rate that matches his swing and strike rate so i think he's going to strike out around 20 20 to 23 percent um and i think he's gonna have like 20 homer power and you know five to ten stolen bases with a with a decent obp so that's a more a little bit more of a deep league player but it's a really fun one for certain formats yeah 15 teams and deeper for sure i think there's easily a path for him to be relevant in 12s this year i'd even take a chance on drafting

him into 12 i think the challenging thing in that type of league, it's something we've talked about before, is having the discipline to cut him loose if he does go to AAA for a few weeks to begin the season or if he's being used more like a super utility guy while the veterans soak up a little more

playing time to begin the season. That's what he's going to do. He's not necessarily going to be an easy cut. Yeah. Because you're going to want, you're going to say, oh, I'm going to hold on to him. But then 12-teamers, you kind of have to be fluid. But yeah, the K rates in the minors at most stops, right around 20%. I think the walk rate's been consistently good as well.

123 WRC plus is a 21-year-old AAA. Absolutely still interested in Carter key boom. You know, Eric Thames, we kind of know what he is. Big side platoon guide, low average,

decent OBP, cheap power. I don't think that changes a whole lot for him going to DC, looking at the bullpen and thinking about Sean Doolittle, how safe do you think he is as the closer? I mean, most of the risk I think with Doolittle tends to come from the injury history. Do you look at him as a guy who is actually a good target right now? as the closer i mean most of the risk i think with doolittle tends to come from the injury history

do you look at him as a guy who is actually a good target right now with an adp just outside the top 200 i kind of think hudson's gonna leave the the bullpen and saves and the reason i say that is you know a lot of times you have to look at usage. You know, I've sort of identified three main things for closers. It's usage, handedness,

velocity, and strike audience. It's four things, actually. And usage is the most important, and if you look at usage, the last usage, it was Hudson as a closer,

basically. Doolittle kind of lost his job in the postseason. I was surprised that it played out that way, and I think when it was only Harris joining the bullpen, I felt better about Doolittle, but now that it's Harris and Hudson, they have that extra depth. Maybe they play the matchups a bit more. Maybe it's a dreaded 15-15-10 sort of thing, or Hudson gets 20, Doolittle gets 15, Harris gets 5.

I could see it being a 2 or 3-headed monster as far as where the saves actually go, not necessarily by design, but because of the various injuries. Daniel Hudson, we talked about it when the Nats won the World Series, come back from multiple Tommy John surgeries, too. He's a guy that you feel really good good for but you also look at him and say i really hope he doesn't break down again because he's got a very scary injury history of his own yeah and they kind of they kind of split the different things where you know do little has the best projected strikeout rate but he's a left-hander daniel hudson has the best velocity

but he has the second best strikeout rate and the worst injury history but he's a left-hander. Daniel Hudson has the best velocity, but he has the second best strikeout rate and the worst injury history, but he's a righty. Will Harris kind of ends up, you know, I think third, where the velocity and the strikeout rate are good, but kind of second or third in most of the categories. So it's definitely Hudson and Doolittle and then Harris for me in that sort of order. And I think with the handedness and the velocity, I'm thinking Hudson is it. Also, Doolittle, you know, the reason the handedness is an important thing is that lefties, closers are lefties about half as often as you'd expect given the population of pitchers. And that may be changing in baseball because it used to be that you had lefty one-out guys. You had lefties

that came in just for matchups and with the three pitcher the three batter minimum you know who's to say that that will necessarily exist in the future although i will say that you can bring in a lefty to face a lefty or two if the any if you think the ending is going to end you know because that there's no three batter minimum after the ending. It's just within the ending. Any case, Doolittle is their only lefty unless Roy and his alias is in there too. But there's a kind of a big drop off between the two. So I have a feeling that they're going to go the way of a lot of the more advanced bullpens where Doolittle comes in.

If there's two lefties in the ninth inning and Hudson comes in, if there's not. Yeah, I could, I could see it playing out that way as well. comes in if there's two lefties in the ninth inning and Hudson comes in if there's not yeah I could I could see it playing out that way as well so definitely a case where I would like Sean Doolittle if I knew he had the job but I think this situation is murky enough with only the one other lefty in Elias even on the roster right now and they don't even have like a scrubby lefty we've never heard of on the depth chart it is all righties and then Ronis Elias. That's going to make Doolittle, I think,

a little more vulnerable to having to play the matchups late in games. Right, because you could have the seventh inning. People talk about, oh, sometimes the most important at-bats are in the seventh inning. True. One of those guys can be a lefty. Yeah. So you could have Doolittle throwing the most important innings

with the air quotes, but Hudson getting the saves. Let's talk about the draft and hold league that I was in. I started it when we were recording our last episode back on the 23rd of December. It wrapped up on Sunday. It's a fun format for anyone who hasn't played it. It's a 50-round draft. There are no in-season pickups, just weekly lineup changes.

Hitters and pitchers on Mondays, and then only hitters Friday to Sunday. So I kind of unintentionally stacked Yankees early. Garrett Cole, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Roldis Chapman. That happened. I don't feel bad about that at all because the Yankees score a lot of runs, and Garrett Cole's awesome. So no concern there. Chapman seems like kind of

by far and away the best reliever or best closer. I know there's Yates and there's some other guys, but it's Chapman. You just know he's the guy as long as he's healthy. Right. I think this is a question that came up. Must have been on Slack or something. Someone was

asking me about Josh Hader. They said, is Josh Hader really safe enough to be the first reliever drafted with Corey Knabel getting healthy and considering how the Brewers have used him in the past? I mean, he's different. 138 Ks last year.

You don't get that from a reliever normally. 75 and two-thirds innings. He's one of those few guys if he loses the job you'd still want on your team yeah you'd still use him i mean because the ratios sub three era each the last three seasons whip under one all three years he's been in the big leagues uh an amazing staff filler for even like a shallow mixed league but how many saves do you think he's really going to get like do you see can able kind of pushing Hayter back into a flexible role? Does he run into the same kind of problems?

I don't want to say it's the same as Doolittle because they're different. Hayter can probably have slightly longer outings by comparison. I just think we have proof that Craig Council will manage his bullpen in a way where he doesn't care if Josh Hayter is getting the last three outs. He's going to use him when he needs him the most, and he handles his bullpen so well that there is some potential downside to taking Hader as the first closer off the board if you can't trade for more saves later on if you need them.

I think the Knievel issue is more of a second-half issue. Not that I think that Knievel will only pitch in the second half. I just don't think that he'll necessarily have the full spring in the same way as other people. And mostly teams have been pushing Tommy John Rehab to 13, 14 months because some of the numbers say that you have better outcomes if you push it that far. So if we do that, then Knable's getting into games maybe sometime in April,

but maybe it's May. And if he does that, then I don't think he just jumps in and is the closer right away. So I think he's fairly safe. Yeah, I think the first part of the season is a great call. At the very earliest, I don't think we're going to see Corey Knable before mid-April. I think an IL stint to begin the season is basically a certainty at this point, and then how long that IL stint is is a factor. Plus, when he comes back, you're going to have some days where he's not available initially.

Right, yeah, they're going to be tougher on that. Yeah, so you're going to go back to back days. They're going to be tougher on that. Yeah, so you're going to be a little more careful. So maybe that concern with Hayter is slightly overestimated right now. The thing that happened to me in this draft, it was right from the sixth spot, by the way. It went Cole, Judge, Sales Stanton, Pham, Correa, Chapman, Donaldson in the first eight rounds. Loved the foundation.

Things were falling into place. Got a lot of stuff I wanted as it went along. Shohei Otani was still there in round 11. So we're talking the 15-team league. That was pick 157? 156 is where I took him. And I got clarity on how exactly he can be used in NFBC leagues. He's going to be a swing player this

year. So you can change in between the UT spot and the pitcher spot from week to week. But if he starts off as your UT on Monday, he of course can't be moved to a pitcher spot for the weekend. He can only be moved to the bench if you don't want him in your lineup over the weekend. If he's a pitcher on Monday, he's locked in as a pitcher all week because you don't change your pitchers on Friday in those leagues. So I've heard some different opinions on this. Some people don't think he has that much value because he's not going to make two start weeks ever, or if he does, it's going to happen maybe once, like a Monday-Sunday thing in a perfect storm. I've heard that in best ball, because he's only going to start maybe

three to four games a week, potentially as a hitter, that he's not going to have enough big weeks to push into lineups. I just didn't have a good plan for him. It just seemed like he was much too talented to pass up at that price in round 11. And maybe this draft and hold format is one of those places where having that flexibility to move him around wherever i need him the most ends up being a relative sweet spot for you know using him throughout the year yeah i go back to that labor story where you know i had him as a pitcher for the first half of the year and then i ended up actually using him as a hitter in the second half of the year so there's in draft and hold I think there's more avenues where he can be useful to you maybe you get like I got down to my last pitchers where I was pitching Jorge Lopez in my draft and hold because I just

ran out of pitchers you know so just having a guy who's both a hitter and a pitcher gives you a slot on your draft and hold roster you're like he could come in and be my guy, and it won't be that bad. But when you're playing NFBC regular main event type stuff, I heard a lot from people saying, he's basically going to be a pitcher, and he's going to be a pitcher coming off of Tommy John, and he's never going to get the double thing,

and he's going too high for his skills as a pitcher. And a lot of this stuff I understand. I was about to say blah, blah, blah, but a lot of this stuff I understand. I stick by the fact that he's an elite talent on both sides of the ball. I love his stuff. I love how hard he hits the ball. I love where you drafted him.

And I think that there is one way to use him that is interesting for nfpc and for your draft and hold which is there's a high likelihood he's a weekend starter and if he's a weekend starter that means you could hit him monday through friday he's going to take you know maybe friday and saturday off uh and then you could have someone on your bench that hits for him over the weekends. Yeah, I mean, if you know the schedule, maybe you're going to get four games, three and four games in the early part of the week,

just like you would from anybody else. And you're getting that from a guy that on hitting talent, what is he, like a top 25 hitter? I mean, I think you compared him as a pure hitter to like a Christian Yelich type hitter. I mean, he's that good. He's really good. I mean, I think you compared him as a pure hitter to like a Christian Jelic type hitter. I mean, he's that good. He's really good. I mean, look at his career numbers. He's played 220 games now for the Angels in two seasons.

Shohei Otani's hit 40 home runs. He's stolen 22 bases. He's hitting.286 with a.351 OVP and a.532 slugging percentage. And I know playing time is huge. I understand the importance of playing time. And the machinations of how you have to move in your roster. But what if you could add three games of Jelic to two or three games of, I don't know, Ryan Reynolds,

or maybe you got to lower Aiton. If you Frankenstein that, you could get a first or second round talent out of two guys who took much later. Yeah. So I saw enough things that could go right that I sort of said, okay, I could see him being a problem player in leagues where you're making moves all the time. little bit more of an issue but if we get some sort of clarity on his schedule or if he's hitting more than we expect to begin the season because they're backing off some of his pitching workload early in the year you might get some surplus hitting value early on before he goes into that more like even sort of two-way player schedule yeah yeah what if he's hitting five or you know five days a week you know how much is that lost game

on average going to cost you? If he's hitting five games a week and he's just rehabbing his arm to begin the season basically or taking it slowly, then you get a month of a great hitter. And you get a month of a one-start pitcher. And then something happens to the rest of your roster and you just need him in one place or the other that's that's how it worked out for me in labor is that he was

a good player for me and i ended up using him both as a pitcher and a hitter and i had no regrets and drafted him again the next year just as a hitter so uh i feel like this is a one of those deals where you kind of get the elite talent i do there is like a give and play with like where you draft him. Like are you going to draft? Like you're not going to do that. It's almost like the Robert thing. You're not going to do that at pick 70. And pick 100 still feels pretty good, pretty high for that

because you're going to get at pick 100, you're going to get other guys who are going to be very good hitters and very good pitchers and going to be easier to use. But at pick 150, it starts to become, you're going to get other guys who are going to be very good hitters and very good pitchers and are going to be easier to use. But to pick 150, it starts to become, hey, this is the only guy here who's elite at anything. Yeah, it was Otani versus Buxton among hitters at that point. And there's a lot of risk with Buxton, too. What if you just get him and he's injured all year and you can't decide to drop or not because you don't have a DL slot or whatever?

That does sound like something I would do. Might have happened last year. Yeah, that's probably happened before. It's like, oh, Byron Buxton out six weeks. Well, no, I'll just wait this out. He'll be fine. And then he fouls the ball off his ankle in rehab and it's three or four more weeks.

But I still like Buxton. Again, I was one of the few people that wanted him going into last season. I just think there's a ton there with the speed alone, but there's more for him to still kind of grow into skills-wise. We saw some flashes of that around yet another injury-shortened season a year ago. This draft really kind of hammered home the Nate Lowe situation. I drafted him, I think, in the 16th round, and I had immediate

regrets. I just started thinking about it. I'm like, oh, this is bad. You know, G-Man Choi's still there. Setsugo is really more of a DH than an outfielder. Like, it could go wrong playing time-wise for Nate Lowe pretty easily. I don't think it's a you-can't draft him sort of thing.

It's that I overdrafted him. He should be going probably four to five rounds later. You know, he shouldn't be going in the 16th round as that roster is currently constructed near, near the end of the, near the end of the draft. Maybe even,

uh, the one thing I would say about that is amazingly, well, I guess Tsutsugo is not in the Fangraph system. So you can just replace Lowe with Tsutsugo, probably, as the Fangraph's depth chart is. But I would say that, A, depth charts have, for the Rays in particular, have been very hard to figure out preseason. in particular have been very hard to figure out preseason. And B, when I asked someone I knew at the Rays about what was going on with Choi basically, and Tsutsugo and Lowe

and Diaz, they said basically, we're still working on this. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was another move before spring training and um in some ways I see Choi is the least of those three talents or four talents if you put Yandy, Choi, Lowe, and Zutsugo in a foursome, I would say Choi is last, which gives a little bit of daylight for Lowe. I want to be the best golfer of the four of those guys. Right, foursome.

Just want Yandy Diaz driving the cart just recklessly. I don't know. I'm just trying to picture it all in my head. No, but I think Choi, maybe this has come up on our show before, maybe it's something I've thought about and didn't talk about, I can't remember, but he's kind of like the last guy in even though he's atop the depth chart at

first base, and we've seen how the Rays have handled this spot in similar spots in the past. They do see a lot of corner guys that come through as very much replaceable, whereas Nate Lowe, being younger, having really good numbers at AAA last year, he had a 141 WRC+, tore up high in AA in 2018.

There's a much higher ceiling there. Like, G-Man Choi can be a good player, and Nate Lowe can be a better one, and the Rays can see that. And the Rays might say, hey, we got this surplus, let's turn G-Man Choi into another reliever or something. That could happen, and it could happen before pitchers and catchers even report to spring training.

Yeah, yeah. And I think Choi, I think amazingly, I think he has an option left. Does he? Oh, man, because I thought part of the reason he bounced around a couple years ago through a lot of good teams were interested in him and temporarily had him. Yeah, he is out of options.

Oh, he's out of options. Yeah, so that's where I think really good teams are always looking for that flexibility. So I think that's the kind of thing that does work against Choi as the Rays try to solve their depth puzzle in the next couple of weeks.

That's crazy. The Brewers and the Rays had him, and it's like, of course. He was a Yankee for a little while in 2017. Seemingly, these last few years have been great at finding bench players, fringe, 25-man roster players

who are really productive. They were all on him. The Rays had him and then lost him to the Brewers and then got him back from the Rays. Got him back from the Brewers. He's good enough to play. This is where the concern about Lowe comes from.

Lowe has options. If they don't get something they want for Choi, they can see how it plays out with choi for a bit and you know then low is just the tough cut that i don't want to make you know they're playing yandy diaz a third who i heard someone describe as the dhsdh and uh they're playing any diaz a third. They're playing Hunter Renfro righty in right. Tsutsugo may play in right some. I'm hoping so. I'm hoping it's a little bit like the

Abyssal Garcia thing where he's a better defender than people have been giving him credit for. And then he ends up being a little more versatile defensively than our initial impressions and reports would suggest. Right, and if he can play some outfield, that opens it up so that you could have Tsutsugo

and Choi and Diaz on the same team, but you're right. I think Lowe's still going to end up starting the season in the minor leagues unless there's that deal that might be on the horizon. But I think as a late guy, there's all these veterans ahead of him. Diaz gets hurt all the time. Lowe seems like the first guy up.

Yeah, it's just a matter of patience and then roster construction if you have him in a non-draft-and-hold format. If you have those limited bench spots, you don't always have the luxury of waiting it out even for great players. I'll remind everyone again, Kyle Tucker, Forrest Whitley, I had a lot of them last year. That was not the best use of limited bench spaces. This is probably the most Eno question on this entire outline for today's show, but it came up because I ended up with a couple of the Braves young starters. Which of the Braves young starters are you most interested in for 2020? And that group can include Bryce Wilson, Kyle Wright, Ian Anderson, other prospects that you think are close? How do you rank those guys against each other? Do any of them stand out to you as better darts than the others on that list? I don't have Ian Anderson's movement and velocity numbers.

All I know about him is he's low spin, which is a little bit weird given his strikeout rates and the fact he's a breaking ball guy. So I sort of shrug when it comes to Ian Anderson. He probably has the highest like baseball America type ranking of the group with like the highest high, highest peak. But in terms of the guys who have played so bryce wilson kyle wright tuki tucson and sean newcomb um there is an interesting thing that happens when you look through the numbers and what i've got that i'm really excited about are the stuff numbers uh uh from driveline and so they've done the same kind of research we've that we've done

in the public sphere um uh but i they've also buffeted it with you know real-time experiments in terms of guys they've had coming through uh throwing in front of the rapsodas and stuff so they can kind of combine it with experimental uh situations better than than a lot of us out here uh doing spreadsheet work can do uh so anyway i've got their stuff numbers and when you look something kind of comes out so You know, he throws 94, but come on, Bryce Wilson. No, he's in here. He spells with an S. Yes. Bryce Wilson's fastball rates as an 89 out of 100. And his changeup actually rates as his best pitch,

and his breaking balls are league average. That would surprise me, because he throws his breaking balls more, and he throws 94, but he has a straight fastball. So I think Bryce Wilson is last on my list. The one thing that separates him, though, is he has the best command plus numbers of this group. Second best command plus numbers, though, belong to Kyle Wright,

and Kyle Wright has a 92 fastball, which is also not amazing, but his breaking balls are 109 and 119. So he has plus breaking balls, and he has okay command. Newcomb has bottom 10 command. It's even worse than that, because if you look at command, bottom is almost all command plus here the bottom is almost all uh relievers so in terms of starters here the only starters that had a worst command plus last year than sean newcomb who was kind of a reliever i know but jordan yamamoto Joey Lucchese to Nilsson Lemaitre. So, fourth worst command. When you look at his stuff numbers, Newcomb, all of his pitches are above average and a couple of his pitches are plus.

So, there's always this sort of, you're trying to figure out the relationship between stuff and command and these things matter. And that's why I'm going to take Wright, because he has probably the second best stuff and the second best command in the group. I keep looking at Sean Newcomb

and thinking he is going to be an excellent reliever on this team. A huge part of what they do. I know they spent a lot of money on Will Smith. Luke Jackson at times looked pretty good last year. They still have Shane Green. They got Chris Martin. They have Mark the Shark. But I think when you add Newcomb,

you go something like Newcomb, Jackson, Smith in some order at the end of games. That's really tough. I know, and it's crazy that Melanson is the reliever, but I mean, it's the closer there. But Green, if you limit him only to righties, has great numbers. It's only against lefties that he suffers.

So, you know, really I think it's going to be, yeah, I think, I mean, Martin is there, and then Darren O'Day is amazing. I think their starters are going to come out of the game in the fifth inning. Which with that group, they do have a few guys that you've already got arm injury concerns about.

I mean, Soroka, Freed being a younger starter, Fulte's had thoracic outlet. Fulte's secondaries are not great. So if you could get him for four innings throwing heat four and two-thirds or something, you might be happy with that. Yeah.

I do like what they've been able to accomplish, though, getting a lot of pitching that's major league ready in some capacities. All right, so you have Wright over Wilson and Wilson over Newcomb. Is that right? Something like that. If we're talking starters, I might have Newcomb last because I do think that that kind of poor command, the list of pitchers that I just listed for you are all guys that could be relievers in the next three years.

You know what I mean? Yeah. It seems like he has the most to overcome, whereas with Bryce Wilson, he's the youngest of those three guys. I think he's comparable in age to Ian Anderson. He can put those things together. He can change that pitch mix a little more easily. He could still add a little velo.

There are a lot of ways for Bryce Wilson to turn the corner. I think it takes more for Sean Newcomb to do that at this point. Yeah. Fangrass has Newcomb as the fifth starter, but it's just – it could be. It could be. I mean, all right so let's let's say among starters i'm gonna go right newcomb wilson um anderson and i just think that anderson there's no need to push it i mean i guess he could come and blow the doors off spring training but you know right and wilson pitched

well and everyone was excited about them and then they they they shat the bed last year. They did. So, you know, I wouldn't get too excited about any of these. In fact, my favorite starting pitcher on this team with regards to price is Max Freed. I think that people don't understand that he had like a top 50 strikeout minus walk rate last year. Not even top 50. I think it's like top 30 last year. And there's no real reason to think he can't do that again.

And there's some reason to think he could even improve his numbers a little bit. But he had the 25th best strikeout minus walk rate right there between Noah Syndergaard and Zach Wheeler and ahead of Aaron Nola. So Max Freed is my favorite starting pitcher on that team. I mean, Soroka is, but I think that Soroka's strikeout rate, being around league average, and the price that's going to go along with him, I may not end up with a lot of shares. Fulte has a bad slider, and then he has a good slider,

and it's hard to tell when each is going to happen. Hamels is an interesting pitcher that is probably going to be better than people think, but I also will always end up reaching for upside over him until late or in sort of the deepest of leagues kind of situation. And then if you're talking about a fifth starter for a team that has five young starters like this i think throwing the dart at newcomb wilson or right it is a dart and so you just have to be careful about you know how much you invest there yeah i went pretty late with wilson and right in draft and hold thinking hey one of them could win the job initially another starter get

hurt they could be in the rotation together like there's or them could win the job initially. Another starter could get hurt. They could be in the rotation together. Or if one gets the job and fails, the other one might be the replacement. It just happened to be cheap prices. But the max freed point is a really good one. I don't think people realize just how good that K-BB was. ADP in the NFBC League so far, just inside the top 150 overall. There's a lot of upside there but the floor is probably a lot better than than people think yeah let's get to a couple mailbag questions this one

is a good kind of broad question at least i adapted it to become a very broad question it comes from scott he writes how do you adjust your approach and your rankings when you're dealing with a points league instead of a rotisserie league. Most of the conversations we have on this show, we're talking about five by five leagues. A lot of people do play in points leagues. Scott was playing a draft and hold last year. And that particular league was set up where hits were worth one, homers were worth three, RBIs and runs were one each, steals were worth three, and then walks were worth one. And then for pitchers, it was minus 1.5 for an earned run,

plus 1.5 for every inning pitched, a three-point quality start bonus, six points for saves, one and a half points for a strikeout, three points for a win, and then minus 0.5 for a hit or a walk allowed. So you start to think about points leagues. At least I think of them like I want to run some kind of custom projection tool, right? We know a few different places out there have different tools that do this. I talk about the Fangraphs auction calculator. Sometimes you can play around, customize that quite a bit. Rotowire has draft software and some pages where you can punch in actual

point systems. What I do is actually, if I play a lot of rotisserie leagues and I have to play in a points league, I run projections for both side by side and just kind of look at some of the players that are much higher and much lower in one format versus the other because I think we still are in an era where you can go into a draft and not everybody in the room has necessarily come in with some custom rankings. They might have picked up a magazine. They might have picked up a cheat sheet somewhere that was geared towards five by five that doesn't capture some of the unique wrinkles that might be a part of a point system like the one that scout outlined for us yeah yeah the fan graphs auction calculator i think can be your friend here you can actually

input uh your own point system in there and i think from what i see all of them are in there um hits plus walks maybe not but um hits and walks are in there so you could you could you could get pretty close on the auction calculator and uh what i would do is run that and then you know if you know v lookup on excel you can kind of google it one thing you could do is just do what you're saying is is run it for your point system as close as you can get it, run it for a roto thing, and then compare the two. VLOOKUP says, hey, I've got Gary Sanchez here. Go find Gary Sanchez in the other spreadsheet and return the value from the other spreadsheet. That way you'll get the two values. You can compare the two and you can then sort for the differential and you'll

see, boom, oh, look, this is the type of player that's undervalued. And that'll give you kind of a cheat sheet for players that you can target, even if you don't kind of go dollar for dollar on the auction calculator. It'll give you a player list of, oh, these are... And what I think, looking at this, I would assume that bulk starters are the most valuable in there yeah i just ran this league through the the fan graphs tool which yeah you can you can cover all the stats pretty easily on that one and it looks similar at the very top cole sure server lander

de grom sale yes but how does it compare to the hitters? Are the pitchers perhaps more valuable than the hitters at the top? Let's see. It sorts them individually. The dollar values it spits out for pitchers are way higher. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Way higher. So you're going to be probably more aggressive

with pitching in this format. First round pick, Garrett Cole, Jacob deGrom. You might even go pitcher-pitcher in this format and then try to do bulk hitters. Yeah, because Cole, Scherzer, Verlander, and deGrom are above 30 among pitchers. And then just only Trout is above 30. Yelich is just below at 29.7. Acuna at 28.

The way you can see it is you kind of just think about it. Quality starts and wins are worth three. They're worth three each. So like a good outing from a pitcher can get you six points. For a hitter to get six points, you'd have to hit a home run and steal a base.

Yeah. That particular scoring system, it may be by design to make pitchers more valuable. Sometimes it's an accident. Sometimes a commission sets up a points league, and they think they've got something that's really close to 5x5, and it's just not.

If you take your 5x5 mindset in, you end up not getting enough pitching or not leveraging the scoring system to your advantage. Maybe the whole room fails to capitalize, but you can capitalize on that and end up with a much better roster by using a custom tool like that before you go in. But I do like to compare them side by side because I'm hardwired for 5x5. That's the overwhelming majority of leagues I play are 5x5 Roto. I do the same thing, though, if a category switch happens.

Like, Tout Wars uses OBP instead of average. So I run average projections. I run OBP projections. And I just sort of highlight players that move up a lot or down a lot. Like, I know who some of those players are off the top of my head. But you just want to make sure that you're not paying for something that isn't there or that you're overlooking a player because they're you know they're a big walker that has a low obp those players swing quite a bit in value yeah yeah but uh yeah definitely for any draft try to have a set of rankings try to find a place where you can at least get as close as possible to your settings and and you know it's an auction calculator you may not be doing an auction

but it still sorts the players in order you know yeah definitely we got another question here this comes in from james he's starting up a new dynasty league shooting for an 8-12 team league 36 player rosters 25 keepers each year so a very large portion of the roster will be kept. He's going to use OBP and it's going to be a head-to-head categories league, fab once a week, and it's going to be a snake draft. So no auction. So he writes, assuming it's going to be a 10 team league, in what round should the first minor leaguer be drafted and who should it be? So if you're starting a dynasty league or a keeper league from scratch, you know, when do you start taking the elite prospects in that format? You don't know. Um, I mean, it's, it's a 10-team league, and it should be pretty easy season to season to find 25 keepers that are major leaguers.

When I'm competitive, and we keep 28, when I'm competitive, it's hard for me to keep a minor leaguer. I'm keeping Sam Hilliard this year, and that might be the only one. And he's a major leaguer. So I would say later than the other people drafting. Because I think you can still get you know a very exciting player um a 60 value 60 future value type player uh a royce lewis joe adele or you know maybe just a step below Brendan Rodgers, Christian Robinson in Arizona.

Or let's say you have to go down to Elliot Ramos or Alex Kirilov, 50 value players. Those are still really fun bats that are close, in many cases, close to the major leagues and should be available after Joe Adele goes. So the first one should be Joe Adele, I think. Royce Lewis should be up there. I guess Wander Franco should be, but it's going to take a while for he's up there.

So those immediately come to mind. I'm sure I'm missing somebody that you can fill in, but I might miss those guys and take more major leaguers and be competitive in the first year if I can take like an Alex Kirilov like five rounds later. is an entirely different world. I mean, the way I would play it for a 20-team league, I would be more willing to follow the path of something I've seen Tom Trudeau do before where he's just hammering prospects the entire time. Like if you're picking in the back of the first round in a 20-team league that's starting up right now, you consider Wander Franco and Julio Rodriguez with your first two picks.

And you just go heavy, heavy with the high upside, elite of the elite prospects. Because even if they fall short of expectations, the odds of them flopping completely and being useless in a 20-team league are pretty low. And you can build a core of players that are all future top 50 to top 100 guys by just going after the players who are a couple years away. Now, in a 10-team league, the threshold for being good enough to be in the active lineup is so high.

And the replacement level on the waiver wire, even when rosters are deep, is so much higher than what you're going to get in a 20-team league. You don't have to do that. You don't have to play for the long-term future to have that core in place. Yeah, a player like Sam Hilliard, who you mentioned, probably wouldn't have been owned in the league that James is describing going into last season. Sam Hilliard would have been a pickup on the waiver wire either when he was going nuts in the minors or even when he was called up. So that difference is enough to where it changes the way you want to play it. I think you can be competitive a lot quicker

even after you have to tear it down temporarily in a league that's a lot smaller, in part because replacement levels are so much higher on the wire, but also because there's half as many teams that you're competing against as well. Yeah, I'm trying to find the 2015 list for Baseball America. Just wanted to throw some actual names on there, but I'm having a little bit of trouble.

Yeah, we'll track it down. I mean, the thing you can, to answer James' question, I wouldn't think about it before the third or fourth round at the absolute earliest. If you get to the third or fourth round and you're still sitting there and none of those prospects have been taken, okay. Maybe a guy like Luis Robert, we talked about

him earlier in the show, maybe you jump him up because you're getting immediate value and long-term value. You could do something like that and take a few shots and still have the guy that helps you now that also adds more value later. But you certainly don't have to be as aggressive with those young players

in that smaller, air quotes, smaller dynasty or keeper format. Yeah, and I think the thing that would be most radically different for me is not so much when a first minor leaguer is taken, but when the first 30-year-old is taken. I would really try to get 25 to 27-year-olds. Try to stay on the lower part of the aging curve?

Once you get to be 32 in these types of leagues, your trade value is nil. It is crazy how quickly that dries up. And I think that age does hit sooner in a more shallow dynasty league. I think you're going to have more teams willing to take that chance. Max Scherzer is a very difficult player to figure out in a 10-team dynasty league, especially. Where would you take Max Scherzer in that format? If I'm playing for now, I'm probably not that worried about it because I think I can replace him a lot easier, but his trade value is going to be a lot lower than it probably should

be. Yeah. I mean, imagine trying to trade Joey Votto right now. Yeah. He's not going to bring back anything in a trade. Even in an OBP 10-team dynasty league, he's almost worthless because there are questions about power. There's questions about how elite even his best categories are going to be. I traded him before last season in a 12-team dynasty that's similar to this, and I got sort of minor league protected, so they weren't on my major league roster, Kristen Stewart and Ian Anderson.

It's not very exciting. Wow. Yeah, that's not much. But it's probably more than I could get now. Yeah, I think you timed it right because you would probably get worse offers now by comparison. But thank you for that question, James.

Yeah, the shallow keeper and shallow dynasty leagues, those are a different animal. You've got to have a pretty different mindset, I think, to be really successful in those formats. I prefer those deeper leagues, but I understand a lot of people, you can only find nine close friends who want to play in a long-term keeper baseball league. That is a real challenge.

No beer of the week this week, but I think beer of the week will return on next week's episode. As always, if you want to send us a question, you can do that. Ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com is the email address. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you next week. Thanks for listening.