Welcome in Brendos to Leading Off.
The final week of Leading Off. That's right, I am your host, Chris Welsh. Joining me today is Andrew Seifer.
You can find him on Twitter at Andrew Underscore Seifer.
Me at is it the Welsh and Andrew? Not only is this the final week, this is your final show on Leading Off as you've been joining me for the last couple of months. How have the championship runs been going and is this going to be a tight race in the final week for that Rodo ship.
Well, I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'm feeling very sad about it being my final appearance on Leading Off for the season.
It's been a great ride.
I guess I'm metaphorically getting moved down to the batting order no longer leading Off. But yeah, the teams are going great. I'm I'm sort of in cruise control, honestly. In that home league I've talked about so much. I'm up twenty points now heading into the final week, so I've kind of just blown the competition out of the water. My friend was messaging me during our fantasy football draft and he's like, I still can't get over that run you made in August, so it's a nice time to be alive.
But I will miss being on the show.
Yeah, one hundred percent, Danas asked aw Man. No offseason as of this moment, not planned, but you guys can ask. You guys feel free to flood them with We want the Welsh, and we want the crew, the Peanuts and the cracker Jacks.
We want more. You just got to flood them and let him know.
But as far as I know, this is the final week and and coming up on Friday, but the final show, I have confirmed it. We have a celebrity joining us on Friday, mister Joe Pisa Pia is weak and he will be back for the final show. And another piece of news, it's his birthday today, so birthday, no, it'll be you know what. And I was thinking about this too. We should we should have had I should have talked to Wonky about this. What a great day this would have been to have a home run bonus. We really
it's not my contest, then the home run bonus. I thought it would have been really great if every day this week there was a bonus in this final run and today's bonus would have been double homers for any bald player that you pick that hits a home run today in honor of Joe Piezapia, who I think turned.
Sixty eight this year, so you know, hat tip to Joe.
He's closing in on retirement and his birthday is today, so make sure you shout him out and he will be back again with us on Friday, the old crew of me and Joe back in the saddle. So people asking I don't know who to hit up, So I mean I kind of do. But you can hit up all of the people over in the discord, all the main important people you want off season.
Feel free to ask.
But as of this moment, that Joe and I show on Friday should be the last one. But we don't need to focus on that.
Well, I knew I liked that Joe guy, and now I know why because my birthday's tomorrow. So sleebra's to stick together. Us hairless guys got to stick together. So happy birthday, Joe.
Happy birthday.
Man.
You could probably be his son. I think, what are you going to turn like thirty thirty.
One something right here in the ballpark, as they.
Said, yeah, and Joe's like, you know, it's like in the sixties, or something. Joe's not really, but you know we like to play like that. Yeah, Wonky, I could have decided that, but I should have thought of it earlier. I thought of it literally as I was talking with Joe yesterday. I was talking with him yesterday and we didn't talk about birthdays. I didn't know it was but it would have been. Uh, it would have been fun
to do that. Oh, and Wonkey says, you can email info address on Fantasy Pros if you'd like.
If you guys want some more off season.
I would love to do some more off season with Wonky, with Andrew and with.
The whole crew. But you know, we'll have to see. I think there's a lot of applicable stuff there.
But let's talk about the things that have got us here to our championships, or just the likes of baseball.
Albert Albert pooholes.
As Will Fare would have said, as as Harry Carey. Albert pool holes hom twice on Friday to become the fourth player to reach seven hundred homers in his career. And if I remember correctly, I believe.
He did it on Apple TV. Isn't that right? So nobody saw it? Nobody?
Why?
Only reason I did, by the way, is because I got a brand new phone like a month and a half ago and they threw Apple TV in as part of my new service.
So I have Apple TV. But I'm probably one of the like ninety.
Four people who care about baseball that had Apple TV and got to actually witness it. Not on a highlight reel, but he did it. He officially did it. Andrew and pool Holes is at seven hundred.
Yeah, so awesome.
And if you had said at the start of his career that he was going to reach seven hundred home runs on Apple TV, people would have been very confused what you were talking about. But it's a wonderful world we live in with modern technology. I will say, you know, I feel like Albert pool Holes he's the true heir to the Hank Aaron legacy because a fun fact is that he never hit fifty home runs in a season, and neither did Hank Aaron, So you know, they were
just the models of consistency. Forty home runs every single year, over and over and over again to get to that milestone. It's a great milestone and it's a lesson for Aaron. Judge, don't cut it too close to the end, because the closer you get to the end, the more pressure there is to do it. So Poohols was wisely getting to his milestone early.
My favorite thing about all of this, too, is the internal stories of like the home runs of like you know, the one guy I think who caught seven hundred like immediately left the stadium and is being offered five hundred thousand to a million. I believe there was an auction price out there of a of a million. This is great story if everybody didn't see it about Mark McGuire's home run ball where the guy that caught it, they offered him all this stuff. Here's what I love about
this time of year because of getting these stories. And they were saying this story about how you know, they offered him like autograph, fat a ball, this, that and the other thing, and he agreed to all of it except his one other thing was he wanted to meet Mark McGuire and McGuire said no, of course, of course, and the guy ends up saying, okay, I'm not doing it and sells the ball for three million dollars, you know,
like a couple months later and made millions. And there's a lot of hostage negotiation stuff going on with these home runs with between Judge and Albert Poolhols, and I know we're currently in that with the with the pool holes seven hundred seven.
I got a pretty cool story about this too.
So my dad was actually at the game where Roger Marris hit his fifty fifth home run the year he hit sixty one, and his bat broke after he hit the home run and he handed it hit the bat boy handed the bat to my dad. So my dad has the bat that Roger Marris hit his fifty fifth home run with, and he has the box he kept
scoring that game. So we actually went back and looked to make sure it was the right game because he was like because he hit the fifty sixth and the fifty fifth both against Cleveland, so we're trying to make sure it was the fifty fifth. So we went back and watched the video and there's a there's a clip of Roger Merris running into the dugout, and we froze the YouTube and zoomed in and you can actually see my dad in the second row behind the dugout at the game.
So it's pretty got to authenticate that.
And that's your retirement plan, Yeah, right, which I had a retirement plan like that. That's definitely pretty nice. And then also it's all it's all enshrined in like this hilarious conversation about chord cutting and how this game could possibly you know, they could possibly do this on Apple TV. You've got also the complaining going on in the NFL about the NFL being on Amazon Prime in general and
maybe moving there. I don't think I think this is the tip of the iceberg into this, and I know over the last two years we've had it, it's a much bigger, different conversation.
But you know a lot of people.
Got pissed off about like the YouTube games and the Facebook games. We don't think we've seen anything yet. I don't think we're this is the smallest little thing we're in for. Because the chord cutting of streaming services purchasing more games and more games, it's going to get louder
and bigger and it's going to be more intense. And I think this is this is that little tip just to remind us, like, look at you've got a really big, big time you know, record breaking a baseball piece of history that is stuck behind a paywall that most people do not have. I think it's going to get worse. I think it's gonna get a lot worse for people. But again, that's a conversation for a whole nother day.
But congratulations to Albert Poolhols for doing it. We now don't have to have the stupid conversation of like, would he come back for a couple of games even though he said he would and blah blah blah.
We don't have to worry about it.
He did it. He doesn't really even care. Someone's going to be rich. I'm excited to see what the final bit of the numbers are and maybe he can attack on another too.
If he's even getting to play at this point.
If he hit the record, they might not, but you know what are they playing for this last week? Some other headline here pieces Ronald Acunya hit to go ahead RBI single also walked on Sunday as the Braves beat the Phillies eight to seven. I believe he had been out of the lineup for quite some time and it's going to be fascinating just to see where Acuna goes next season. But getting Acunya, hopefully for this back end of the week, is going to be a helpful piece
for everybody. Also, Mike Trout Homeward doubled twice walk and also score three times for the Angels, say crush the Twins ten to three on Sunday. And Mike Trout coming through in this back half of like five months or so with a little bit of production for any Roto Championships.
Andrew, Yeah, I mean he's a different player than he was in his peak. You know, he doesn't steal bases anymore, he doesn't hit three twenty anymore, but the power is absolutely still there as much as ever, maybe more than ever. So I wouldn't be surprised to see him continue that for a few more years where he's putting up forty home run seasons.
I wonder if this is gonna look reminiscent at all of like this is his version of this where you've
got the pitchers. Verlander's gone through this Kershaw Bumgarner where you are a certain type of player and then you can no longer do that thing anymore, and you really struggle with yourself in figuring out, well, I can't do this, You're still trying to be the old player, and then you find a way to work with where around it, and I know I'm dancing around it, but like Kershaw did that when he lost Villa, so he had to learn and he was having back issues, he had to
learn to be a different pitcher.
Verlander had that.
But then Verlander found his velocity again, which is really incredible at an older age. And the same thing I kind of wonder with Trout where in twenty nineteen, you know, he still stole double digit bases. He'd been coming off of three straight years of twenty or more stolen bases, and then you have the pandemic year that's mixed in with a broken year of injuries in twenty twenty one that I don't know if either one of those you could really be like, oh, he is trying to find
himself in a different way. He is trying to reinvent his game until this year because this is like the first full season he's had since the pandemic really took place that he's had to figure out how to be a different player.
And we've kind of taken him and broken him.
Apart because the guy's only still four bases from two thousand on four stolen bases from Mike Trout since two thousand he's had and I think just overall, yeah, twosand I'm sory, Yeah, two thousand would be that would be amazing.
He played in twenty eleven, twenty twenty, you've seen the strikeout rate go up because I think you're seeing him find you know, getting back onto being an impactful power hitter is the way he's got to do it, instead of being this five tool player that's also stealing basis.
That's just not part of his game anymore.
And we're going to have to come to terms that maybe if he can find health and he can get that going, he is going to be a plus plus four category player.
He just will not be five.
Yeah.
I mean, honestly, this is a pretty standard age curve that you see with hitters. I feel like the power is the thing that they can keep the longest. I mean we even saw that with Albert Poohols, right, the power maintained in those down years with the Angels. It was the other things that went away, you know. I mean, Trout is never going to be a batting average liability.
He's just too talented a hitter for that. But yeah, the strikeout rate of twenty eight percent, I mean, you're looking at a two eighty batting average like he's got this year, that's kind of the baseline expectation. I just find it interesting that pitchers actually seem to despite how much stress there is on the arm and how many injuries pitchers tend to have earlier in their careers. I do think we see more dominance from older pitchers than
we do from older hitters. It's just hitters have a more sort of graceful, gradual decline, whereas pitchers can fall off a cliff, then they can re emerge and be dominant again. It's sort of like capturing lightning in a bottle with pictures, whereas with hitters it's kind of more of a longer term trajectory.
Over on the In This League Fantasy Baseball podcast with Bagman and I, we are conducting a slow draft, early twenty twenty three draft, of course, and we're going to be breaking it down this week. Where do you think Trout should go and where do you think he went in ours?
I would say Trout it is probably like a third round player, maybe second if you want, but yeah, I mean he's probably a top fifty overall player in Rodo and he's got a very high floor. He's not risky in any way other than of course he did have some injuries, but generally speaking, I feel like he's kind of like the rich man's George Springer at this point.
I feel like, so maybe surprise you. It's a fifteen team roto mock draft ten. He went ten overall, so still maintaining that value.
It's all rich for me.
Yeah, I mean it is a little rich for me as well.
And actually he went two picks before my pick, and I still wouldn't have I don't think I would have taken him.
I ended up going with a Bobby wit junior.
But I think there's a lot of stolen base guys that are in there, but just interesting breakdown of like where his value is still perceived to where he's going to be drafted. He's literally almost being drafted in the same spot he was preseason. So this is this is why it's fascinating. And I think you can have Yeah, doctor Glenn says, you can have him in the first round he did go. I think he'll move further out as time goes on.
Another guy that went in.
The first round of that many Machado hit his thirty first homer of the year, also walked as the Padres lost to the Rockies. Few other notes as were burning through. Nester Cortes had six scoreless innings. Very impressive outing against the Red Sox on Sunday night in New York at
four five with the two run homer. On Sunday as the Mets beat the A's thirteen to four match, Schuzer struck out seven walk nun allowed a loan run over six innings against the A's and Dray Jamison Diamondbacks with these young pitchers, dra Jamison didn't surrender a run over five hits in five and one thirds of an inning in a no decision against the Giants, Like incredibly impressive between what Ryan Nelson has maintained to do and what Dray Jamison is looking like right now. Probably back in
rotation guys that don't really mean much to you. You get one start out of Dre Jamison if you want this week. What I wanted to ask you real quick is next season, Pete Alonso or Paul Goldschmid, who's the top first baseman in your eyes?
Honestly, in a redraft format, I think you have to give the edge to gold Schmith. Just based on what he's done this season. I mean, it's just like Alonso. The thing about Alonso is he's he's kind of like Trout honestly at this you know, at this stage of Trout's career, he's a lot like Alonzo. He's decent batting average, but not going to excel there tons of power.
I would say Alonzo.
Has a little more power even than Trout, but not really much in the stolen bases category. So you're you're talking like a three category, three and a half category kind of a player, whereas, uh, with gold Schmidt, I mean, he's just done it all this year. So you know, certainly, like I could see the argument for Alonso just because like, if anything, he could even get a little bit better perhaps, and this has got to be the best we could see from gold Shmate at this year.
It'd be this whole Like, I don't want to buy last year's stats with Goldman, he didn't make it into the first runt of our mock, but he did go before pet Alan. So I think it's an interesting conversation to have with those guys that first base has gotten a little bit more stocked up and we actually have elite players where I feel like, I don't know, kind of like lack the eliteness. Maybe we would throw Freddy Freeman into that, and Freeman's not even going in the top two.
But it's a lot of Yeah, I think, I just truly I think, I like I had a point earlier in this season where I thought gold Schmidt was going to fall off and then he did so based on that, I'm not ready to just assume he's suddenly going to fall off next April.
Yeah.
Over on the injury front, Jeremy Paania cleared concussion protocol after having sustaining a head injury on Sunday. He's expected to be available on Tuesday. Short slight to games here on Monday. Dustin May was placed on the fifteen day IL. Dave Roberts stated that he could possibly be available out of the bullpen for the postseason if he's healthy enough. But for re Drafters, we know you have nothing to worry about. Edward Cabrera left Sunday start with a right
ankle sprain. No bueno if you're counting on him. Jesse Winker is removed from Sunday's game with a bruce left wrist, but fantasy owners wouldn't have known it outside of not getting an zero for four with two strikeout performance on their card for him. Cal Raley left Sunday's game after aggravating an existing thumb injury, and Wander Franco was removed from Sunday's game with a hand injury.
So no bueno. The injuries have stacked up for wander Franco. This is an interesting question.
You just put together your final Waiver wire pickup article which is over on Fantasy Pros, and I figure maybe if there's a few of these wee can answer these throughout the show. I would love to get your thoughts on a couple of the hitters. Well, let's do that first, a couple of hitters that you targeted as far as pickups for this final week. If you're going for most likely head to head is not playing. If you are, you're crazy. But Roto championships are on the line right now.
Who are a couple of the hitter pickups?
If someone is making some last desperation moves this week.
Yeah, so, as we talked about last week, Ezekiel Tovar has to be at the top of that list just with the potential that he has. But I will just caution that the Rockies just finished up their final home stand of the season, so you're going to be getting him on the road, I believe, against the Dodgers and Padres the last week, so not the same kind of hitting environments that he's going to enjoy next year. But I still think he can provide some instant speed.
He's got a.
Pretty good played approach for a player that's just coming up, and so I think he can hold his own in batting average.
And Steel's power still developing.
Josh Donaldson, I mean, we're talking about these old players, and he's been hitting really well lately. You know, he's had a ton of injuries over the recent years. He's thirty six years old now, but he's hitting in a great lineup with the Yankees, and he's swinging hop out right now. So as long as he's in the lineup, go. You gotta make sure he's in the lineup. But I
think he's a good plug and play option. And then Hunter Green on the pitching side, you know, he had some ups and downs earlier in the year, which is to be expected from a twenty three year old in his first major league season, but then he missed six weeks with a strange shoulder in August in early September, and ever since he's come.
Back, he's looked really, really good.
We know, he throws insane gas over he had the most one hundred mile per hour pitches in a game in the pitch tracking era recent outing, and he gets the Pirates tomorrow, so that's about as good as it gets.
Well, actually, funny enough, that was a question that we got from Ray made the finals.
Would you drop Pablo Lopez for Hunter Green?
A lot of positive Hunter Green talk in the chat going on right now as well.
I got to look at how Pablo Lopez is set up so he gets the nets. Yeah, I mean that's that's kind of a tough outing. I mean, he's mostly still maintained what he's doing, so you know, I would be happy to use Pablo Lopez in that start. But if it's a choice between the two, yeah, I think I might actually go with Green.
And if you guys got any other questions, feel free to drop them.
We might try to hit those at the end of the show. As far as this week and you crazy people, Doctor Glenn I got head to head championships in two leagues this week. Come on Welsh, No, come on you doctor Glenn. You guys playing head to head into the final. I just I'm so adamantly not a final week guy. It is different, of course, it's a different world of non forty mans.
I still just don't like it, but I get it. I get it. I'm just surprised. I think Gokard said the same thing.
I'm surprised you guys have a lot of these head to heads going to the final week.
But like Walky said, maybe it's like this I did thing.
Yeah, I did want to say in the column.
I also just talked a little bit of kind of broader advice, and it's just we have to remember at this point in the season the things we're looking for. I mean, we're looking for hitters who are literally on a hot streak right now. It doesn't matter how they've done all season. And we are looking for pitchers who have good spots starts lined up right now. It doesn't matter if they've had their ups and downs and been inconsistent over the course of the year.
So you know, it's really.
At this point saves and steals like those are things like that could just be freely sitting out there and can make a real difference, Like you can just pick a guy up and win a category. Those kind of players have extra value right now. So we really just have to simplify our approach at this point this season.
Yeah, it is a complete just break your mind and just cut and go as you need to. This is a fun fact in the from Jeremy Frank, who I've done a couple panels with Jeremy Frank before, like at Pitchcon and stuff.
He's a good guy.
MLB random Stats is a Twitter follow Albert Poolhol's average home run trot over the years has been tracked by stat Cast is twenty six seconds, so putting that over as full career, Jeremy Frank tweets that Pool also spent just over five hours of his life running the bases after hitting a home run, which is a phenomenal stack, phenomenal stack, five.
Hours of running.
What I'm looking for will be the one person on the internet that will do this, that will pull every single trot and all five hours of those trots.
And put it into one YouTube video. Oh yeah, it'll be there, you know, the Grand Opus.
It'll be the greatest thing that's ever five hours of Albert pool Holes Trots. I'm looking for someone tag me and tweet me when it actually happens.
That's very meta.
I feel like I'll just be like in a state of peace when I'm watching that.
I totally agree.
It's like, you know what you ever like put on YouTube, like they have those like looped music channels, and you just sit there and you like, that'll be it.
It'll just be like ever pool Boom just walk and you just go to sleep to five hours of pool Holes Trots. I think that.
I think that's incredible. I really Abso let's go over to some stat heroes here. Petlanz four for five with a homer five RBIs. We talked about him on Sunday. Stephen Kwan, who I've been just having a lot of conversation about Stephen Kwan and how bad it was to start or good it was, and then it just tabled off for so long, really quietly putting together the counting stats that we dreamed of that he could put together. And he, like I said, I think I said this
in the show last week. He's no longer a one category player. He's a three category player, which really makes him more serviceable and He had a combo meal over the week in a homer, two stolen bases, five RBI, going three for five with a couple of runs. Any thoughts on Kwan moving forward? I mean, this is one of those guys that hopefully preemptive moves.
If he was dropped, you were able to jump on. But are you going to be in on Kwan next year? Yeah?
I think so.
I think he's like one of those players that it will probably still be a little bit underrated, just because you know, when they say chicks dig the long ball, everyone digs the long ball, you know. So the fact that he's I mean, he has hit a couple this last week, so that's nice to see. Maybe over next season he could at least get in that ten to fifteen home runner, which would be a huge plus. But as we said on last week's show, even if he doesn't do that, I mean, the fact that he's now
stealing bases at a high clip. We know he's one of the better bets for batting average in all of baseball, and he's gonna score a lot of runs in that Guardians lineup.
So yeah, I mean, I.
Feel like he's one of those players that like people are not going to be excited to draft, but you're gonna look at the end of season where did they finish, And he's probably gonna sneak his way into the top one hundred or.
Something like that.
Those Guardians always have the guys, you know, like I don't get any type of w on this.
I mean, if there's anything I'm.
Really bad at, he's like the bold predictions because I'll just go off table and then if you look back on them, they just don't play like my home run one. But you know, like I just get like lost in those Guardians players, and you look at him and Rosario, who's one of my bold predictions. He's not gonna do the twenty twenty season, but he's just one of those guys like he has a like eleven homer, seventeen stolen bases, good batting average. He's actually kind of sneinky in you know,
putting together. You know, I think I was even hoping maybe a fifteen homer, twenty five stolen base. There's just so many bases to be stolen on that Teamjmenez.
And Kwan and Straw. That just gets me excited.
I'm probably always going to have some type of love for any of those players, and Kwan is going to be one of those next year where you know, the the adding in your rookie season of this type accounting stats leaves a lot out there that like what if, what if Stephen Kwan ended up being like a low key Whit Maryfield. I mean, statistically he almost looks better than Maryfield this year. Maryfield's home run totals not high
stolen base number. I think Kwan is now has more stolen bases than him that I wouldn't be surprised if we're valuing Kwan over Whit Maryfield into next year or something.
To consider some.
Other of these stat heroes, George Springer had two homers, Kyle Schwarber two bombs with his two four batting average or whatever it is. Mike Trout had a homer, as we mentioned, JD. Davis went four for five with a home run. Shout out to piece of PA. Brandon Drury two for five with a homer two RBIs actually just took him in our slow mock draft. Will Myers had a homer, and C. J. Abrams went three for four
with a couple stolen bases. In that regular playing time and Michael Massey with a homer, four our bi and two runs. Do you find yourself at all are you going to hold back on some of the rookie hype next year.
I was just thinking about that with CJ. Abrams. He's a fascinating case to talk about in the.
Offseason, but there are so many of these young players that are going to now be given the full reigns and so many of these players that are going to be thrust into it to the beginning of the year.
Do you think you're going to be.
A heavy buyer on rookie or sophomore ish type of seasons like the CJ. Abrams or paying for some of the rookies that are going to have high costs.
Well, I don't want to.
I don't want to overpay for them at the draft table, but I will definitely always be in on rookies because the plus the upside is so high. I mean, you can talk about all the rookies that failed this year, but you could also talk about Bobby with Junior or Julio Rodriguez Michael Harris. I mean those guys were legitimate league winning.
Type of stripers.
People forget st with Strider.
Yeah, exactly the rookie.
So yeah, yeah, So, I mean the upside is massive with these rookies. It's very common to see a few every year step right up and be you know, first round, second round talent producers right away. So yeah, maybe eighty percent of them are going to struggle and you just move on.
But that's I feel like that's the way.
To manage a fantasy baseball team is at least if you have bench spots to work with, you know, put guys on your bench that have that upside, and rookies are the guys that have that upside for sure.
Pitchers on the positive side, Christian Javier struck out eight over six, a lot of just guys that went six. Nister Cortes give up only one hit over six, striking out five, Dylan Cees a low strikeout total.
We're not used to that. Six innings, three walks, five strikeouts.
Sureser struck out seven, as we mentioned, And another one of those rookies that I actually also drafted him in our early redraft was Nicolodolo, who went six, struck out six, and has been a strikeout monster this entire year. He's
been really phenomenal on the zeros. Austin Riley went one for six yesterday with four strikeouts, Gonner Henderson oh for four with four ks, Still a little volatility there, Juli gariel O for five three k's, David Palta and Jose Ramirez both with three k's no hits over the weekend. On the pitcher bluch side killing you going into your final week if you had a few of these, and there's a few you would have had. Kyle Frielan couldn't get to the third inning, giving up seven earned runs.
JP Sears hopefully you weren't streaming six earn runs and three and two third.
Max Castillo gave.
Up six earned runs, Mike Clevenger four innings, eight hits, five earned runs only, while Allie struck out two, Dylan Bundy didn't get to the fourth, give up four earned runs, Charlie Morton six earned runs, and Adam Waynwright only got to the third, striking out one, walking three and giving up four earned runs. Did you get smashed by any of these guys going into this final week that you're trying to recover from?
I did not, Thankfully.
I had Clevenger for big chunks of this season, but I noticed that his strikeout rate had tailed off since before the injury, so I felt like that was kind of a warning sign, and when he started hitting some bumps in the road, I moved on from him pretty quickly, pretty proactively, And I'm glad that I did, because four of his last five starts have been really bad, so hopefully no one had them and had him in their
lineups at this point. And then Morton, I have to say, He's a guy I've always loved, always been very high on, but thankfully this year someone else drafted him before me, so I didn't have to suffer through it because he was great for three months in the summer, but the rest of his season has just been a total train wreck.
Go cars.
Maybe last thing I'd love to be in a draft room with Welsh where O'Neal Cruz is taken in the first round. Fun fact Oneal Cruz has not been taken in our early mock draft yet and we are in round ten right now, so just fun.
If you have exit velocity as a category.
One hundred percent, if Eve was, he would be a first round pick. If we were talking about how fast they throw the ball as an extra category, we you know what fan tracks is pretty customizable.
I want to do one of those next year.
I want to that would be fun.
I want to do a league of just ridiculously dumb stats. It'll be like exit velocity on hits, on throws, putouts.
It'll just be the dumb league.
It'll be the dumb fantasy baseball league with no actual ale launch sure launch angle. We'll do a lot of that stuff. Yeah, we'll ce sw will have it. Not that that's dumb, but we'll have that as not a actual, like you know, categorical type of thing accounting stat We'll just put all that fun stuff in there that everyone likes to site.
For Oneo Cruz love.
It, love it all right, home run calls, frindos, someone's going to be winning that. Fernando Tatis Jersey signed for Nano Tatis Junior sign Jersey and right now.
It is Cat Fox Cat Fox with fifty six.
Homers as we are tailing out. I'm assuming this goes not till Friday when we end, but probably till like Wednesday or whatever. October third is when this contest is going to go through. So if that is the case, someone will have to let me know. I won't be able to announce necessarily the winner, but currently Cat Fox got a Mike Trout.
Homer which puts them in the.
Lead over Elscow with fifty five, Helpless in Miami at fifty four high Kubby twenty sixteen at fifty three, de Blum and Go Cards got back on the board at fifty two, so very tight race. With a tiny bit over a week to go, we are within two homers of the top three, so anything can happen at any moment, and wonky hit okay till a regular season, so that's till next week with a wonky bonus in there. Final day will probably have a wonky bonus.
So it is all on the table for everybody. Friendos.
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Our sponsors use a promo code leading off and you are gonna get hooked up and I put some bets together today. And Andrew, I'm excited to see what you have to say about these. Of course, you know my drill. Total bases ks the top and then the top plus money play on both of those. Tristan Cosas is the number one play of the day according to the Betting pros algorithm. Projected at two total bases. The number today is only one. It's half, so you need one total base.
It is minus one sixty five at bet mgm for Tristan Cosas of the Boston Red Sox going up against Baltimore. The plus money play is Travis Darnault with Atlanta. It is one and a half total basis. He's projected at too, but it's paying you plus money on bet mgm at plus one fifteen. That was the number one plus money total base play that I found on betting pros prop cheat sheet, the Pitching Ones. This one was almost a plus money play. Luis Severino going up against Toronto projected
at almost six strikeouts. The number is only four and a half and it's minus one oh six on FanDuel, so it's practically even money and the plus money play because there's not a whole lot of options.
Today.
You did get one Kevin Gossman, who is six and a half on the strikeouts projected at six sevens, which really tight. But it's going up against the Yankees and it's plus one ten on bet MGM. So MGM is giving you the big plays as far as everything goes, the best lines that you can find. So Cassas, Darnault, Severino, Gossman, anything you like out of these?
Andrew Well, I really like the Severino one.
I think that he he should be able to cruise past that so I and that's almost even money. I think that's a really solid bet. I'm tempted by the Darnault one as well. The problem is we need to see if he's actually in the lineup today because he's been in the lineup the last four games in a row, so there's a chance that he sits for this game. But if he doesn't, he's swinging a hop at lately, and you know he's facing a Corey Abbot, so it's a good opportunity for him.
Yeah, and yeah, the char will be back.
I'm going to bring the tier back on Wednesday for Walkee and then I'm going to bring it back on Friday with Joe.
What you guys have for Friday, which is why we.
Should flood the stream if you have the potential of the Crown, the King, and I guess the Queen, the Tiara and the Crown in one place together, which you have not seen. So that is going to be on the docket for Friday for sure. DFS. It's such a short slate of stuff. You know, there's obviously some implied runs.
Pittsburgh actually might be kind of interesting to go with today, but you guys can kind of fin through that and that leads us finally to the home run calls, And this is your final final home run call of the year.
So what do you got for us?
Well, I'm going to go with my favorite pickup of the year and that's Michael Harris. So Michael Harris going against Corey Abbott. You know, if I wanted to go, I feel like the Braids are going to score a lot of runs in that game. It'd be easy to go with Riley, He's the biggest power bat.
In their lineup.
But I'm going I'm going with my boy, Michael Harris, who's made me a happy fantasy manager this season.
Go Cards, Come well, I mean, you know, we're good here. We like this tire.
We like to have fun, my friend, and it'll be fun with Joe and I. I wonder who Joe's home run call is going to be. By the way, it's going to be Aaron Judge like it is today, I'm not going to go with there and Judge, I'm actually go with the guy you just said. I'm gonna go with Austin wrighty. I actually would have liked Michael Harris. I don't want to jump on yours, So I'm gonna go with Michael Harris on I'm sorry with Austin Rightley, as you go with Michael Harris will stay in the
same game. Wonkey has got Adley Rutschman, and Mike Mayer is going with Raphael Devers.
And just if I.
Had just gotten before it, we probably could have had that bald bonus. But maybe we can get a bald bonus on Friday. That would be kind of fun in the whole thing of it. Andrew, you did a fantastic job this season. I don't know obviously if there was you know, there's more shows in the playoffs or something, maybe we'll get more of you. But but the regular season goes. This was the final show. I really enjoyed doing these shows with you and all these episodes, and
I think everybody did as well. You can find them on Twitter at Andrew Underscore Cipher. Any last things to plug, my friend.
Just go check out that Waiver Wire article. It'll give you a whole bunch of names.
It's even got some names for deeper leagues as well, so if you just look on the baseball page, you're sure to find it on Fantasy pros to give you a few names to get in your lineup and take home that Champ.
And Chip do it.
Find me on Twitter at is it the Welsh and friends, we've got the Bubba in the house tomorrow, Casey Bubba's hanging with me. We will be back same time on Tuesday, not the Tiara and the Crown.
But it'll be the Bubba and the Welsh and then we'll have the Crown and the Tiara on Friday. Happy birthday to Joe.
Go and shoot him at text and let him know until next time. Friends, we'll talk to you again tomorrow. Right here, and leading off for Andrew, I'm Welsh.
Goodbye. Go in those ships, Go in those things. When two things