MLB: Leading Off June 1st, 2022 (Ep. 522)

Insufferable. Let's play ball. Welcome in everybody to fantasy pros. This is leading Off, brought you by bet MGM, the King of sports folks. It's me, Joey p Joe Pi's apia with me, of course, is the Welsh, and it's you, all of our lovely peanuts and cracker jacks, hanging out talking baseball, looking at last night's action, talking about some of the most important things going on in Major League Baseball, fantasy wagering.

We do it all here and that's how we roll. Welsh.

It's great to see you, my friend. How is your holiday weekend? Because I didn't see it yesterday.

Oh, stupendous. Couldn't be better, couldn't be better for a wonderful holiday weekend.

I'm sensing some sarcasm in your voice.

Really are you? No?

No, I can't tell why, but it does feel like I've been uh not here forever. But it was since last Friday. I was off and then I am back. But I am back here for the next three days. I am excited about that.

Yeah, buddy, let's go.

And I don't know if you notice, I've been a little home run streak. I got the two from mister Alvarez. Oh, I got Matt Olsen last night. So that's three and two days.

Somebody's in double digits. Let's go. Let's go.

And Mike Mayor. I don't know what got into Mike Mayor. He decided to do a deep dive all of a sudden before the show. Right before the show, he starts sending me all of these reviews of the show.

But I don't know what the reviews are like.

He is cherry picking ones that basically say I like when Mike Mayor does things I don't like Joe Kizepia, He's the worst. Those kind of things right before the show. Not my confidence. I feel like a little bit. I feel like this is just me by Mike Mayor.

One hundred percent. Mayor's on something right now too. He's back at his old home run tricks. Just would like to point out I actually, late in the night worked on the sheet put a name up for the home run call. Oh guess what name I see under Mike Mayor this morning. Absolute villainry is going on from Mike

He I was gotta say, nice one.

Well, look, I mean, it doesn't get much better than Joe Pisapia is an insufferable d bag. I mean, that is about as good as it gets. I might make that my Twitter wallpaper. I think that's my favorite one. And if anybody out there, you know, think about this. We give you free content every day we work for I know, I put in hours before the show trying to figure out what we're going to talk about, what

I think it's gonna be this day. Like, look at this right here. This is a prime example. This is one hundred percent going to be with this day? Is Joe Drew like love? I love Drew's comment here. Now I know why Welsh is usually wearing a hat. You want to talk about it.

That's good natured fun now here in front of your face.

And I think that's okay.

Oh you know what, it's a it's it's a not itune reviews. But the bar has been set for today. Thank you all. Drew dead to me, d bad guy dead to me, and Mayor we know where to put our villainry at. We know who the deal is and somebody's got to be the bad guy.

Well, to be fair, we have over eleven hundred reviews, and one thousand and ninety of them are five stars.

So there you go.

Well, now you know what those ten, those ten read. It's hey, well I've got a really bad hairline. Joe's the dbat Mike Mayer signed.

All right, Yes, he does look like John Lackey. We all know he looks like John Lackey Welsh.

All right, let's get on.

I have many looks, many, many looks.

You have to have many.

You're so versatile. Let's get into the baseball here. Martin Perez can't be stopped, no matter what. Mike Mayor actually wrote a piece of him a Fantasy Pros yesterday. You get check out about how you should trade Martin Perez. He's not wrong when a guy's era is under two, I mean seven more shutout frames on Tuesday for Mark Team Perez. I'm telling you some contender is going to go after him in the next thirty days. I don't

I don't know.

Somebody's gonna have to go get this guy, and when they do, his stock will never be higher. So if you could wait another couple days or a couple of weeks, okay, if you want to sell him now, that's fine. Trey Turner extends is hitting Street to twenty three straight games. Matt Olsen exploded yesterday two doubles.

And a home run.

I am the slump breaker. Let's go baby. That's three home runs in two days for Joey p. We had Chaz McCool make a chazz picking up three hits in the win. There a big late hit two in the extra innings of Frankie Montas go seven strong innings, but he ended up losing that game to the Astros.

Christian Javier was not good last night.

I'll take the l on that one, but he did get a great performance from Adam Wainwright, who was my favorite secondary DK pitcher last night. Ten k's against the Padres, who could use him off as of help right now. We talked about it yesterday, Welsh. We talked about Will Myers not hitting, Trank Gresham not hitting. We brought up

Do you think that you were speculating that the Royals would move Benintendee.

I think that they Well, somebody at MLB network had in MLB dot com, excuse me, how to peace yesterday or over the weekend that I saw that I thought was intriguing, So I of course brought it into discussion of the show about here's five trades you know that would be interesting to make for teams right now, and one was Ben intending to the Padres, and I thought, you know what, having a guy with a four hundred ol VP would really help this team at the top

Yeah. No, I mean I think, like logically that makes sense. I don't think the Royal Ben and Tendi has been one of their best players, which is crazy.

Where are they going?

Built out team? Yeah, I mean, but I think they're still built. I think they still feel that they're in a contention spot to win because I've had so many guys that have underperformed from Carlos and Tan to mamy Wit being maybe specifically the one while Benintendi is held up. But I agree the Padres have to do something. They're the most, the most willing to move, and I'm surprised that these moves have not already been done because Grisham sucks.

I know the Nats just came out and said, everyone said, we're not trading one.

No, don't do it.

But I'll tell you what if you offered them Mackenzie, Gore, Abrams, whatever else like you mentioned there in that pile of prospects, man, that's quite a haul. You'd have to at least listen.

To that trade. If you're the Washington National, you're not going anywhere fast.

I love that Rizzo said, we're not trading like so no, like it's we don't even need to discuss this. It's not the move, it's not it's yeah, if they wanted to go Gore and Abrams and they're not going to, they're one hundred percent not going to. But I would love to see them go and attack and find a team that you know is a little bit middling and get like a big middle of the order piece, because that's what's struggling here. You know. Machada was great, come back Down.

I don't know, but that's the album. I mean.

Then boguards play shortstop, so I mean bringing in a piece like that, then you're gonna have to have to relegate tattoos to the outfit, which maybe is a good idea.

Maybe you want to do that anyway for them to be a little bit.

But this is why, this is why I've speculated that I wonder if you're gonna really look at a situation where trades are just gonna be silent. We're not gonna get a bunch of trades all the way up until the deadline, and the deadline could be a flurry because there's so many teams that are gonna feel that they're gonna be in it for you know, leading up to August. I have to imagine so many teams with the expanded playoffs, they're gonna go in. Diamondbacks would be a prime example.

Louis Castillo is going to be on that trade block pretty soon too, especially after another album like he had last night. Ten strikeouts over six scoreless innings. The sinker was topping out. I think I'm sorry. His fastball was topping out in ninety nine last night, So that's very high.

You've seen some of those guys actually pop back. They're doing some I cannot think of who the pitching coaches off the top of my mind, but they're doing some good stuff over there. Finally right now, because you've seen Hunter Green make that deserted change of throwing sliders more, throwing it more than his fastball, and he's finding success.

Now, we told you yesterday Gobo be proactive because Wander Franco was gonna go to the IL, and guess what, he went to the IL. So he tried to help you out there. We tried to tell you some guys you could add in the middle infield spot. Hopefully you did, because he's going to be out till at least what ten to fifteen days, depending on how long he's gonna be out there. A Nolan Gorman also is out again

And one Mariners fourteen.

We're talking to the two seventeen Astro twenty seventeen Astros with eleven. The Mets are third at ten and a half, along with the twenty nineteen Twins who were ten and a half, and the nineteen seventy one Giants at ten and a half. So that is some incredible elitist company. That Mariner team

It was a very passionate group of people. It was a very sensitive time.

But man, this is an unbelievable lead.

This offense just doesn't seem to quit.

It doesn't matter who they're plugging in their Welsh What do you make of this enormous lead right now that they just keep on piling on to this East which was supposed to be the Kuyper competitive division, It looks nothing like that.

Yeah, And what's interesting is that, you know the offense had had some stuttery points earlier. You know, it was kind of like Alonso and everybody else was just kind of slowly trekking their way up, and then lind Or has just started to pop off. Everybody ed whar to Escobar has gone. Everybody is startings to this is what they make an incredible player, and this is exactly what they needed to maintain with those rotation pieces hurting. But

No, it's just I mean, but we've been talking about this all the time, and this is the difference in a lot of offenses that we see nowadays in Major League Baseball.

The station to station.

If we're not hitting home runs, we're not scoring offenses versus the do you have athleticism, do you have guys that can get on base, take an extra base, good base runners. All of those things do add up eventually, and then you have those guys to drive them in. And it's look, I'd like to see a little bit more of that style baseball played, and there are some teams that are playing it right now.

You know that'say to be one of them.

It's actually funny that you that you bring that up, because I was going through yesterday and I was just starting to, you know, piece together and look at stolen bases, particularly as a Diamondback fan speaking two thousand and one as a Diamondback fan, and some of the bottom teams, it's crazy frustrating the level of especially like not winning teams, how much they don't look to manufacture runs. And I found it interesting when I was going through and looking

It's not even stealing bases, it's going it's going from first to third. It's it's having moving runners over runners, but beating out an infield hit. Simple things like that. Having speed on a team. Speed matters. By the way, I saw this yesterday, it's a little trivia question I could throw off for everybody. Who is the current the current leader of active guys in stolen bases in Major League Baseball? Anybody got an idea? Drop in the chat

Go on to more things.

George Kirby picked up his first major league win last night.

Six shoutout innings.

Another picture we liked as a secondary arm on DK, so we did pretty good on DK last night. On the season twenty six innings, three forty six, a one point one five whip, a two point eight walk rate, a twenty five point nine k rate. Eric Cross tweeted all this our good friend Eric Cross from Fantasy pros fan Trax black Book. He says, top fifty pitcher rest of season? Do you agree with that? Is he a

He's in that range. I don't know if I would anoint him. I mean, it's fun after this start. He's had two starts. I believe it's two. This last one was great. By the way, I made this bet yesterday and I did it as a solo bet and place it. George Kirby's k prop was three and a half and he had eight. That'll go away.

He talked about it yesterday.

It's gonna be yeah, it's gonna be probably five and a half to maybe four and a half if you're lucky. But like two starts ago, people were ready to send him to the woodshed because he was he was allowing all this contact. He was he was getting beat up a little bit because all those pitches there weren't any more whiffs, and he was getting hit hard and the contact was getting hit hard, and you still see some

So the top fifty is not.

Fifty I think is right in that lane, and I think it's achievable.

Okay, I agree, but I also feel like when you go and you make it. And I'm not calling out Eric or anything. I just did a podcast, so Eric, that's all. But when you make a tweet specifically about a player and you put a number like it's top fifty sp I agree, that's not that big of a deal, but you've made it a big deal. You're making it this big marker. Hey, guys, he's this type of thing, and I think what that does for a lot of people.

Can give you name.

Would you rather have Alex Cobb or George Kirby?

I mean, I would be fine with Cobb had he was one of those guys. I think he had the MLB's worst to E RA in the first three innings of baseball there's been some unluckiness. I would go with Kirby. That's fine. What about I think I might go Sandoval. I mean, the upside is there with Kirby, but I think I might go Sandoval.

Yeah, I'm just those just kind of names are floating around there. The answer, by the way to the trivia question bis Arizigiza got it? Uh it is de Strange Gordon three hundred and thirty six stolen bases the Strange.

It's a good question too, by the way, with the ranks, I'm doing a rank update on in this league dot com for the Patreon and I'm updating my Redraft ranks every month, and I have to go back and do my next run of pitching, and it's going to be going on this in the next day. That's going to be an interesting one where I want to place him because I think there's some rookie pitch. I think an

I think Shane bozz I would take ahead of him right now, and just again I believe more in the race.

Now.

Look, the wonder Franco injury is a little concerning right now that offense is not that great to begin with. He was wander Franco for a couple weeks. Doesn't make me warm and fuzzy. But they're gonna have to do something. But I'm glad they put him on the eye out because he's clearly not right. Give him some time to get right.

And he says he was gonna be good by the way, like he says, he's already feeling good and right after the stint he should be right back up. So that's a possibly.

He'll be fine. He'll be fine, Everything's to be fine. Joe's tough.

Guys.

We haven't done this in a while, but there was a moment last night. Jose quass Who what a crazy story this is. This is a pitcher for the Royals who came in last night pitched a scoreless enning of relief. This was a guy who was drafted many years ago as a position player, ended up getting converted to a pitcher. Things didn't work out. He ends up in the Mexican League. He starts pitching and dealing with another sort of the side arm delivery that starts working for him. He goes

Then he would come home.

And he would throw with his brother every single day, doing bullpen sessions. And he pitched in the major leagues last night. This is a kid from Brooklyn. So again, shout out to my people. I am from Brooklyn. We are very tough, we are insufferable in many many ways. Absolutely absolutely so. This was a great story. If you haven't seen it, go check it out. And good for Jose And that is a nice story. No matter what happens now, at least he got there and at least

Yeah, and this segment brought to you by FedEx.

That's rights to you by FedEx, new sponsor of the show.

A lot of people asking about Grayson Rodriguez.

I see a lot of that going on in the chat right now before we go on to the u STAT heroes and zeros. Do you have any inside information on any Grayson Rodriguez.

Potentially would say, you know what, I probably would take him. It is so hard. The hardest thing I think on the planet to do, especially in Redraft, is talk about taking a prospect over another guy that is in the majors right now, especially at Prospect with similar ish ceiling. I do believe Grayson will be up soon, like within the next two ish weeks. That's just my guess, and he him and Elie Rushman are like this and they are a great connection. It's a It would be a

Look who's in the chat, Welsh cousin, Donnie's in the chat. Strong, my cousin's in that chat.

Looking that us Brooklyn people always Donny is a made man in the chat. So chat treat this, ye, he is.

A made man in the chat and all over Brooklyn and Arizona as well.

You know, I forgot I got a made man. I might have. I might have some work for this made man to do, for some recent events of my life. I might have some people for him to go.

Yeah, some people go visit, make a couple of conversations.

Hit Jem, Donnie, I might have need you to make a couple of visits or two.

And if you think I'm insufferable, you ain't see nothing to him at the rest.

Of my family.

Oh my god, forget it. You should see what Christmas is like. All right, let's go to the stat.

Heroes and zeros.

Adam wayinwright brilliant ten K's Last Night, Seven Innings, No Earned Castilla. We talked about him in the ten K's. Martine Perez was great, Kirby was great, Blake Snell was pretty good. Six innings, six K's to earn. Jordan Montgomery had a gem last night against the Angels, four K, seven innings, strong, one earned running. Frankie Montass give up seven hits over seven innings, five k's, two earned. Lejandro Kirk was three for four with two home runs. My

That snuck up on me. I heard that last night when I was watching that game.

He's got that many. It wasn't that funny.

Ray Hard hit. I mean he I don't know.

There's some guys to sneak up on you anyway.

Well I should have gone and looked too, because I don't know how many twelve homer guys are not hitting two hundred in baseball right now. That obviously improved last night where he went three for four, but he got on base. Dude smacks and crushes the body. He's done this for a long time. You just got to be more consistent. But think about what he could do if he was hitting, you know, two fifty. He's hitting up ninety eight he was, and he's crushing all those homers.

Speaking underrated. Andrew Vaughn four for five, another home run. He's been underrated too.

You know the watch live.

I watched this hommer and live, But how much did you and I talk about Andrew Vaughn? And then he had like kind of an unceremonious beginning to his career, and now nobody cares about him.

I care. He's doing great. Jonathan Scope two.

For three with a dinger, Jose Travino hit a home run, Wilson Contreros two for four with a bomb as well, Max Kepler a good night to play three for four with three ribies, and Markana four for five. He's been a great pickup for the Met's all right, here's the stat. Zero is Patrick Corbin boy seven earned runs, twelve hits. It's over, it's done.

We picked up his eighth loss of the season. Think about that for a minute. I don't think. I don't believe. I don't think there's a eight win pitcher so far this season. He is one an eight well give given earned all eight of them. When he starts, you're gonna get a decision. He's not indecisive. You'll get a decision for Patrick Corbin. Just almost ninety percent of it tells us it's gonna be a loss. It's incredible.

By the way, Wonkeye Penguin, I feel you're paying She said, I had Von everywhere last year and then figure Tony Lewuss was never gonna let him play me too, and I had no shares this year, and I pissed off about it. So yeah, pretty frustrating stuff there. Noah Cindergard also frustrating came back to New York City, not to the Mets Stadium yet but to the Yankees and five earned runs, no strikeouts. So he continues to be all

How about this one?

Oh for seven wa wow, three strikeouts, Trevor Story, oh for four with three strikeouts. If only there was somebody for the last week telling you it can't get any better than this. If you could sell Trevor Story for an overpay, go do it, because here comes, I mean here comes coming around again. This is what happens, is what he does.

He's tough too, because like he hit I think it was two twenty four if I remember quickly in April and we were like, you know, send him out, get him, pitchforks and fire this month or in May? Is now it to June? I forget In May the guy had nine ten homers. Incredible. We're like, oh my god, he's back. He had a worse batting average in May than he did in April.

It was worse, dude.

I keep telling everybody the strikeout rates the same. What happens when he stopped sitting home runs and stealing bases because you can't steal first.

His OBP was under three hundred.

Biggest cell of all time, biggest, maybe the biggest fantasy cell of the season.

I kept every week.

I did a video on here, on this very channel, sell Trevor's Story's basically the title of the video right here.

Subscribe to the channel.

Adlie Rutchman over four or three ks. JD Martinez over three with three g or show after a great night went the other way over four to three ks.

Vlad euro Junior over five to one k.

I did a video about him yesterday, just came out this morning. Look, I think this is your window in Dynasty, especially to buy Vladdie. Gladdy's gonna have a great career. And I think anybody right now is a little frustrated, and you don't usually get a window on this kind of player at all.

I think this is.

Your Dynasty window to buy Vladdie.

What do you think? Welsh?

Thousand percent?

I'm not.

I'm never an out on flat guy like in his rookie year, Everyone's like, this guy can't get the ball up in the air. What is going to happen here?

Da da da da da.

Nope, I'm always by and I'm always going to be I'll get right back in and actually uh. On the I Tail Baseball podcast coming up for tomorrow, we are going to debate Vlad in redraft versus There's a couple other popular first basemen that have been debated in there. And you know that question. I think I actually might have been cross or somebody had posed the question that that is the one.

I think about Alonso or Vlad. I guess, well, let's let's say Dynasty, who would you rather have?

Yeah, well, that is the question. That is the exact debate we're gonna do. And we're going to put a poll out there because if in that whole, like if you were to draft, now, who would you take in Dynasty? I'll still take Vlad. I'm not going to take Pete Alonzo over them in redraft. You know, I think there's there's a there's definite possibility that you could do that.

I mean, I don't we get the halfway point. We'll redraft the first round here on the show, We'll do that.

That's a fun I just don't know what would you take Alonso just hands down over Flat rest of season redraft.

I still think Vlad is the better overall hitter, but it's really tough because Alonso is getting it done right now. So that's that's the hot look in redraft. In redraft, I could see where maybe Ladd has a down year in dynasty, I still want Flat in redraft. I understand wanting to hold tight with Alonso because it's working, So why why muck with something that's.

Working and also is fine by me? And why move a crazy performing player that's maybe two rounds less than this other guy who's underperforming like that. It's not a trade you can make, it's not necessarily applicable, but it is fun to ask the question, like who would you rather have the rest of this sek.

Right, all right, there's the leaderboard to Bloom to Bloom to Bloom, it's the blum I like to call him to Blue Looms. I thought that was Jeff Jeff de Blum. Yes, you see the home run. The call that I make goes upward.

You see.

So the Niking of the North has eighteens, Bill I have after last night, I have twelve.

I believe, Holy Cow, I don't know where I'm at. I have no idea.

I don't know where you're at.

But I am at twelve and I am getting very dangerously close. Mike Mayor has fourteen. All I want to do in life is get ahead of Mike Mayor on that board first. At my only does he have in my entire life, He's got fourteen. I've got twelve. I can get two tonight from my guy.

We're tied. Let's go all.

Right, here we go, Let's go. Bet MGM, the King of sports books. Bet ten dollars, win two hundred when you've been on any game, regardless of the outcome. Sign up today at betmgm dot com or download the betmgm app. Use the promo code the leading off one word leading off. I'm wearing a crown because that the King of sports books.

See it's a bit.

That's what I do every single day. I put the crown on Bogman laughs every time someone say that.

I mean, it's a great bit, it's a great.

But it's fun. I mean, you know, I'm the king.

I'm the King of insufferableness. That's what I am.

Today.

I saw bet mgm one and a half total bases minus one twenty on Jazz Chisholm in Colorado tonight.

I'll take that every day of the week.

I liked against the Phillies struggling, but this is I think a trap one the numbers eight and a half. You want to go the under on this one, Welsh or the over at eight and a half with the Phillies. I know the Phillies have been struggling. I think I feel like this one's a trap. I kind of feel like the under is the way to go tonight.

What do you think?

Uh?

You know when actually we were just talking about Rodon the other day. Redon is a crazy home split or split a home away split guy right now where he is absolutely dominant, like a two two era at home, but he's like four and a half or higher on the road. So I look at this and I go, eh, I would take the under. I'm not sure I make this bet. The understrikeout ones are tough. But if it is, is it really at eight and a half? Where is it at eight and a half? Is that? M?

Jim at MGM.

If I'm feeling loose and I'm wanting to make some bet, you know, because sometimes, you know, sometimes you're making bets and you're like, all right, we gotta get like we got a hammer down here, and sometimes feel a little bit loose and you like them. I actually do like this one eight and a half. I would take the under because away is not great for him and this is in Philly.

All right, we're running along today, so let's hammer these out. Aaron Judge one and a half two A plus one twelve at MGM. Also Kyle Wright five and a half k's against the Arizona Diamondbacks. I like the over on that it's minus one fifty two. It's a lot of juice, but I don't care. Well, what were the props that you had your eye on real quick before we go to DFS.

And theirs was under? By the way, I want to point out that one minus one fifty two is at use on the underd I're going to get over. Nope, I probably go over. The two I like the most is Robbie Ray strikeouts six and a half Baltimore and Copex strikeouts four and a half is against Blue Jays, though, But I don't necessarily always say to do this, but I put those two together in a little two strikeout parlay. Those are my two favorites. I think there's actually a

Speaking of Robbie Ray on DK nine and a half, K for him, but I'm all Nesser Cortez tonight ten point seven, pay for it, Just pay for it.

He's been so good to reach.

Schooble at ten point two is the pivot if you want to have one lineup with Cortes and one with somebody else, just in case, John Gray's just six point four tonight. Again, it's a six point four, so go get Cortes, go down to Gray Hope for the best, and then hopefully you can get a w there on FanDuel.

Keep it simple, go right for Cortes a ten point eight. Same thing.

If you want to differentiate in the tournament, go with Schooble a ten point five. If Cortes loses Tonight has a bad start, you have schoobl in the same lineup that goes off all of a sudden, you're in good standing. Like the Yankees. My favorite stack of the night. There really is a lot of value tonight on the DFS names in terms of guys in the lineup, So just get that picture right. For me today, I'm going with Raphael Devers for my home run. Call Welsh, who are you going with tonight?

Well, I told you I just got cherry picked. I made it before anybody else but Mike Marrige, you did care and he just put it on the board. I got Elson Cruz playing the true BVP. This is like that Jonathan Scope one from a couple of weeks ago. You look, there's one player that's dominant versus a picture. It's Nelson Cruz Tonight on Carrasco. That's who I picked and surprise, surprise, that's who Mike also picks, so guess I won't be but I'm not looking to jump him.

Spread the positivity, do something nice, leave a nice review of the show. Leading off, we're in Juny first, we're having fun, we're calling home runs. I'm wearing crowns. We're doing good work. And look we see the numbers. The numbers are growing. So we thank you for all for listening because you guys are just crushing it in terms of the downloads, the listens, the subscriptions were going on. I'm telling you, you guys are the best. We love you and we appreciate you being part of the show. So

We'll see you next time.

Kids wearing a hat tomorrow.

Yeah. The