Hello, everybody, Welcome into the cycle.
I am Ryan Warmley, joined as always by Mike may Or. We are talking fantasy baseball. I know this is a week of dynasty, rookie drafts, and football. Obviously, you know the fallout from the NFL Draft, Kentucky Derby's coming up, so a lot of stuff going on. But it is still the harder fantasy baseball season. So we are still here to round the bases with everybody, talk about some macro level topics. See what's been on our minds in regards to the baseball season as we enter the first
week of May here still obviously very early in the season. Mayor, how are you doing? We were talking before the episode. Not a ton of baseball watched in the last week.
Yeah, I've been watching a lot of numbers and reading a lot of data, But in terms of actually watching baseball, it's been a lot of catching whatever highlights I can, doing whatever research I can, and a lot of NFL Draft and Kentucky Derby and stuff on my ad.
Just one of those weeks, but we still got plenty of baseball stuff that we wanted to talk about.
At the very least, no guest week.
We're hoping to have guests next week, so we'll see if we can get that back next week. This week just the two of us, so hopefully a bit shorter of an episode.
Let's dive right in with Round the Bases up first.
Mike Trout obviously, a couple of days ago a somewhat surprising, you know, revelation that he was gonna have surgery due to an issue with his knee. So this, I guess I shouldn't say it's that surprising because it's Mike Trout, and it's telling that we might have predicted at the beginning of the season and even into the season, but surprising in that kind of came out of nowhere. So obviously the timeline for when he'll be back is still
someone in the air. Was playing amazingly well, was running again. You know, it was tied for the lead league in homers. Just looked really like vintage Mike Trout, and it was really really fun to watch. And there were a lot of folks who maybe had a bit of fomo for having not drafted him, and now they're not feeling that way anymore. So, you know, when you first saw the Trout surgery, you know what crossed your mind.
Well, I immediately thought, like, especially because of everything we just talked about, how busy we've been, just I just thought, what have I missed? Like when did this happen? Why does he need knee surgery? All of a sudden I didn't realize he like got hurt, and then all of a sudden, now he has a tournamentiscus. The only good thing there so far is he wasn't put on the
sixty day IL. Now. It was like ominous when they when the Angels first came out and said they hoped he would return this season, which is always just a brutal initial timeline to receive after an injury. But at least they didn't initially, you know, they didn't throw him right on that sixty day IL. He's on the ten day injured list. We still, like you said, don't have a ton information about you know how long this is
going to take. You know, from everything I understand, like the range of outcomes for recovering from him in this case is like pretty big. So it's almost like it could be like a month, but it could be like four months. We kind of don't really know right now.
Yeah, it's tough and you know, not all the like bad of all Dad was that encouraging from him this year? Like his hard hit rate was way down, He's only batting two twenty, but the loge angle was up. Obviously he was hitting home runs. And again just that he was running again was so exciting. He already had six stolen bases here in the first month of the season. Let's let's say, like, I don't know, six to eight weeks, just I'm throwing out a timeline. There's I have no
knowledge of that being the case. Let's let's let's say six to eight weeks he's back, like you know, late June. Are you going to be ranking him based on the player we saw in April at that point rest of the season or are you just like so burnt by the injuries that it's like, how can you justify any kind of optimism there?
I so kind of kind of two size one. You're burnt, and so you don't want to I mean, but like we were burnt coming into the season, so we were still being helpful. But also you have to wonder when he comes back, he's probably not going to run like he was running right this was already he was already running more than he had in the last four or five years. There's no way he's going to come back from this miscous injury and just go right back to stealing six bases every month, So you have to take
that into account too. I was actually surprised he was hitting two twenty. I was looking at that while you were talking, and I kept looking for a second source because I thought it was wrong. I was like, I would have guess three twenty, expect about at seven.
It's been a lot more just power speed than it's been you know, the contact, but the power speed has been so great and again so vintage Strout that it's been hard to uh, hard to complain about that. You know, this is a conversation for a longer day, maybe like an off season episode if we're lucky enough to be doing those.
In the winter.
But you know, just watching him, like he was emotional when he was talking with reporters, just it's hard not to think of him as one of the great what ifs if he could stay healthy. I mean, we're we're gonna be looking at the end of his career and he's gonna have five, maybe six hundred home runs and we're going to be thinking, man, he could have had eight hundred. You know, I think I saw somebody tweet
somebody to that same effect. But it's like truly pacing to have been one of the five or ten greatest baseball players ever. And you know, he's still going to be a walk in Hall of Famer who's going to get ninety plus percentage of the vote the first day he's eligible. But it's it's hard, it's hard to imagine. You know, it's similar to like the back half of
Griffy's career. I saw that comparison made to and just I don't really have a question for you in that regards, but just you know, the Hall of Fame stuff and his legacy really and even setting aside like the fact that he never gets to play the postseason because the team's always bad.
That's what I was gonna say, is that we've been robbed, like on both fens too, We've been robbed of the injuries, and we robbed in the postseason. And he's just like, you know, I remember talking to my friends five years or so ago, some of the especially someone my friends who don't watch baseball as much, and they asked, like, who's the best play. You know, is Mike Trout the best player of all time? And five years ago the answer was, I think he might be.
Like what I used to say to people is Mike Trout is the best person at playing baseball who has
ever lived? And that was like, you know, a half decade ago also, but just in this sense of like we always kind of like people get better at stuff over time, Like I always find it ridiculous, like, oh, it would be better, you know, babe Ruth whatever, Like no, like if you drop Mike Trout back in the nineteen hundreds, he's hitting two thousand home runs right, Like, it's you know, we get better over time, we get smarter over time, we know understand our bodies and the sport better, like
like Mike Trout prior to Otani, I would have told anybody was the best person at playing baseball. Shy of Barry Bonds when he's on steroids, who's ever lived?
So alleged?
Yes, I you know, let's wet. We don't need to kid ourselves.
Next tune in next week for the Barry Bonds.
Yeah, yeah, I would love an off season Barry Bonds just deep dive. Any entire episode could be us just reading the most hilarious stats like because there are you know, at least an hour's worth of them. Let's go to our next topic here, and speaking of outfielders on the Angels who have burnt us before, Joe Adele has been really hot, Lily, to let everyone know what the topic is, we're gonna sort of ask new and improved or fool's gold, and we're gona do one hitter and one pitcher.
Of the hitter that mayor wanted.
To talk about is Joe Adele, who has been on fire lately, has been really good this season. Four home runs, five stolen bases. He's also giving you a bit of power speed. He's batting to ninety his ops is over nine hundred. This is somebody who was both in real life and in fantasy considered an elite elite prospect primarily based on that athleticism. He was drafted with the tenth overall pick in twenty seventeen, and he's been near the tops of prospect rankings ever since then.
He has never really been able to do it at the big league level.
Though he has ranged from disappointing to more often than not downright bad at the big league level despite being too good for the miners.
So what say you?
Is he new and improved this year and you know, relatively young still he's only like twenty five or is it fools?
Gold?
First of what a segue about you, but just a classic tying two topics together, well done?
Why they pay me the bucks?
Yeah, I have a hard time with this one just because of what you said. We've been burned so many times. But he does look really good. And it's interesting to talk about someone who has a twenty six point five k rate twenty two point five percent k rate as someone who's drastically cut down on their strikeouts. But he has drastically cut down on his strike at last year was over forty exactly, and earlier in his career when he first came up with over.
He said, multiple seasons over forty percent strikeout.
Right, Yeah, and his and his you know, those were both kind of like smaller sample sizes, and then his biggest sample size in twenty twenty two was just under forty percent. So that's kind of been his biggest issue when he gets to this level is just cutting down the strikeouts. So so far he is cutting down on the strikeouts. The town of twenty six and a half. He's got the four home runs, five sole bases, so he's hit, he's hitting and running. He's cut down on
his swinging strike percentage. That's a career well right now. So that's a good sign for him. And you know, it's it's kind of like in that in between range where it's hard not to look at the data and get excited. But then you also have to remember, this is jo Adell, who has burned us four times before, at least four times just counting years if you count multiple call ups, probably more than four times, spending on how many times you picked them up.
I with his let me just quickly say, with his athleticism, like, we don't need the strikeout rate to be elite. We just need it to not be an outlier so bad. So even though it's still bad, you're talking about again, an uber athletic, twenty five year old, former top prospect. If everything else is looking really good, then as long as a strikeout rate is merely one of the league's worst and not one of the worst ever, then that's a huge improvement.
Yeah, there's an interesting thing in his data that I was intrigued by, but also like I don't want to say confused by, but it's something that I always kind of question, and it's that if you go on a site like fangraphs and you look at his hard hit data, that that those hard hit numbers are from Baseball Info solutions and they don't can they don't calculate hard hit
data the same way that Baseball Savant does. So if you look at a fan grass and you look at his hard his hard hit rate, it looks like it's up. And you look like throughout his careers between like the thirty one point nine percent twenty twenty two, it was a blow twenty five percent. Now it's at thirty five point six percent. Looks really good, like a like a good increase. If you look at Baseball Savant, it's a
drastically different story. His hard hit data for the last four years was between like thirty one and thirty nine, and this year it's a fifty three. So it's a much bigger jump. And so that's kind of like a difference in classification. But that's where you really see the jump and hard hit data, at least in terms of how they calculate it.
It's a great point and I tend to default to Baseball Savant, not based on any one factor or the other. I'm just on the site more often there, But that is a good point to keep in mind. I mean, I'm I'm on a stackcast page right now. It's it's interesting to consider, Like if you look at his career prior to this season, every single like stat you're listed on is either nothing like he's average, or it's blue, which is one of the worst in the league.
This year, it's a lot of red.
Like the expected data is really expected batting average, expecting, slugging expected whoaba, those are all like top three percent in the league. Obviously, the hard hit rate is really really high there too, Like we just mentioned, the only thing that was ever high before was the max exit velocity, which kind of makes sense. And you guy, you know he's very strong. Obviously, we know we can hit the
ball hard. It just doesn't do it enough. Everything else was always like very very poor, both like not just in terms of the results, but the actual battball data too. And now, I mean we were talking before the show. It's it's all dark red on that page outside of the the you know, K rate stuff. So I mean I don't know if you actually gave an official answer. If you had to pick one to the other, are you saying fools gold or new and improved. I'm gonna
say new and improved. But I also don't have him on any teams because I've been so burned by him in the past that I wasn't like rushing to pick him up when he started this hot streak.
Yeah, it's it's a small sample size, but you know, we are talking twenty four games, We're getting close to a month, so it's a bigger sample size. I feel like I can't give a different advanswer, like one way or another. I'd almost have to put it like on a scale of like one to ten, with like you know, ten being new and improved and one being fools gold. I would have to put it at like like I can't even answer, I don't know, like a five right in the middle.
This was your topic.
I was hoping to have a definitive answer. It's really impressive. I would I'm like right in the middle of like I'm you know, because like if you asked me two weeks ago, I would have just had one hundred percent fools gold, Like I'm out not interested. But but the longer this goes on, the more I'm going from from three to four to five, And now I'm I'm on the fence and intrigued and like wanting to lean in the new and improved direction.
Let's go to our picture here, Eric Fetti, And you know, this is something that's really been driven by the last few starts, right Like, if you look at as season long numbers, they are very good. It's a two sixty eer, thirty four and two thirds innings, thirty nine strikeouts, one oh seven whip that's across six starts, so it looks good for the year, but it looks superb recently. To start the year, it was, you know, two runs and four and two thirds innings, one run in five innings,
four runs in five innings. But then that's the first three starts. The last three zero runs in five and two thirds, one run in six innings, two runs.
In eight and a third.
He's getting better each time out and those three starts have five eleven and nine strikeouts respectively, just three walks across those three starts, all of which came in the same start. So he's been he's been truly excellent in the last three weeks. That's come against the Royals who have been really good this season, the Twins who are on a hot streak, and the Rays who are a good team. Not not that those are the three juggernaut offenses,
but those are three quality teams to varying degrees. So he's been he's been excellent lately, good throughout the course of the year. Is he fools gold or new and improved?
So with Eric Fetti, I he's again. I would have immediately like dismissed him as fools Gold just because of the track record of not being very good. But I'm extremely intrigued by what he's doing. And you know, he went over to Korea for a year, and as he's not the first pitcher we've seen go over to Korea and just kind of reinvent themselves and just kind of reset, rethink everything, get some different advice over there, attack hitters
a different way. And he's a completely different picture now. And that's what's most intriguing about Eric Betty. He he used to be like a sinker curveball, a little bit of a cutter pitcher who would sprinkle in the occasional changeup. He's completely overhauled his arsenal. He still throws the sinker, he throws a sweeper now, and now he throws a splitter, and so he's just completely revamped his whole approach, which is, you know, really intriguing. His sinker two years ago had
a you know, three oh seven batting average against. Now it's around two oh eight. But the sweeper is doing really well, and the splitter has a one to fifty four batting average against. So he's just reimagine. And you know, you know how much I love a pitch mix. I'm just a pitch mixed fiend, and so whenever someone overhauls their pitch mix, I'm all about it. And so, but
that's what's really interesting about it. He's still he used to throw a cutter, and he still throws a cutter about the same amount, but he's cut down in a sinker a little bit. He's ditched a curveball for a sweeper, and now he's like he's basically ditched the change up for a splitter that he throws a lot more than he ever threw his change up, and he's got really good results. And I'm intrigued.
Are you intrigued or are you spending real fab dollars to pick him up because he's still available in places from people who I think are hesitant to dive right in. And again, it's really only the last three starts that are carrying the bulk of this, So it's not like, oh, we've seen the entire first month of the season he's been dominant. It's been Hey, these are three amazing starts in a row. A lot of pitchers have the ability to have three good starts in a row.
Yeah, I'm I'm spending fab on him to pick him up just because pitching has kind of been all over the place. He's done some good things. His numbers in Korea last year were really good, like Cyon type numbers. He had one hundred eighty innings, two hundred and nine strikeouts, and an ERA of exactly two, with some expected numbers that were just slightly above two. Right now, his ERA is two point six and his expected numbers are higher.
His fIF is four. The other numbers are around three point two, so there's some aggression coming, but that's still really good, especially if you're getting more than a strikeout. Painting from Eric Fetty. I'm spending some fabot him I'm just in adding him in my leagues.
By the way, this is nothing to do with Eric Fetty. I'm just looking up Dar. I just want to say because I'm very excited about it as an Oils fan. We were going to move on for the topic anyway. Kyle Bradish is making his debut today. I thought, if you asked me in March, is Kyle Brash gonna pick pitch this season? I would have bet all of my money that he doesn't like these just types of elbow injuries for pictures, like, they just don't have happy endings typically.
And in the first inning of this afternoon game against the Yankees, which is going on right now, he had increased velocity on his pitches and even more spin on his slider than he had last year. So new and improved Kyle Bradish just.
Well, if there's something that always ends well, it's elbows. So we've never seen that go poorly.
Yeah, just let me have this while he's having a decent outing and maybe he'll have a terrible adding and the game is still early, but all right, let's go to the next Let's go to the next topic here, more pitching talk. We took one breakout one bounce back and one player who's been a disappointment, and we're going to try and rank these three rest of season. Those players are the breakout is Nicolodola, the bounce back is Jack Flaherty, and the injured slash bad is Blake Snell,
who obviously signed very late in the process. So it was kind of an odd offseason, but coming off of a superb twenty twenty three. So how do you want to approach this? Do you want to give me your rankings and then see if I agree? Do you want to kind of talk it out first and then settle on a rankings, Because I think there are three interesting guys, I have a sense of how I would rank them, and I'm curious what you would say.
I think we can talk about it first, because what what led me to kind of think about all three of these pictures was when I was doing my rankings and I kind of like had all three and I was like moving pictures up and up and down on the expert platform on fantasports dot Com and just kind of seeing how I wanted to move things, and I had them all kind of close, and that's what led me to believe it was like, these are three really interesting pictures that I'm probably gonna have in the same
range for drastically different reasons. And so yeah, the nick Lodolo is the is the breakout. He's you know, a former top prospect, first round pick in twenty nineteen, you know, a top ten pick in twenty nineteen.
He was a first picture off the board that year.
Oh look at you Whatnotledge?
Well, that was the year the Oils had the number one pick, So I spent a lot of time focusing on that, and it was like there were sick elite bats at the top of the draft. And it hasn't really panned out that way. You know, it's really just Badly and Wit have been the only two elite guys. But I remember being like any of the six, like people are trying to justify or whatever. I mean, it was always gonna be Adly or Wit, but Lodola was the first one that wasn't a batter.
So that's etched into my memory.
Well there you go. I would have never guessed that. So he's a former kind of like top ten prospect, first pitcher of the board, as you said, and he went through the minor leagues at a pretty decent pace. He's still only twenty six years old. This is going to be his third season in the majors, even though
last year he only made seven starts. We saw the potential in twenty twenty two when he had a three point six six ERA, one hundred and thirty one strikeouts and one hundred and three innings, and so that's whenever won last year was saying this is the Nickelodollo year,
this is going to be the Nickelodola breakout. And of course we only got seven starts out of him, but now only four starts, but we've got twenty four innings, thirty one strikeouts, only six walks in a one point eight eighty ARRA and and he's looking really really good. He just struck out eleven batters. That's why he's really kind of jumping in rankings. He just struck out eleven batters ever seven things in his last start, and that from his first start ten strikeouts, but only ten strikeouts
combined and the two starts in between. But you know, you're just seeing the stuff there, and that's why everyone's excited about this breakout. Jack Flaherty looks really good, looks like he's kind of back. You know, he's kind of the veteran who has dealt with his own injuries, some shoulder stuff. He's kind of just not been the same
guy for really three of the last four years. And if you look at, you know, kind of his like career, you thought, if you just like asked me about like Jack Flaherty, like off the top of my head, I would have guessed, you have like three or four like great years as like kind of like an ace and then has I kind of fallen on hard times. But he's throughout his career have been all over the place a little bit. The shortened COVID year he wasn't great.
Twenty nineteen he was really good despite the despite the juice balls, two hundred and thirty one strikeouts that year, twenty two, twenty twenty three, and ERA between four and five, four point two five and then four point nine nine, and he's just kind of like not ever been that ace again. But and right now his ERA is still four, but he has fifty strikeouts of our thirty six innings, and all of his expected numbers are much lower than four.
And so you're really seeing kind of what he can be if he really is bouncing back, and if he can stay healthy, especially if he can continue all the revenge starts against the Cardinals, that would be perfect rest of season. If he could just have like thirty more starts against the Cardinals, that would be great. And then
Blake Snell is just Blake Snell. He's he's hurt. He just came came off that incredible year, but before that was you know, really good, slash great, but also you could always see like he should be better than he was, and now he's not. You know, he started this season late. When we did see him, he wasn't very good, and now he's hurt, and you kind of have to rank him in a certain way just because you know what
he did last season. But it's also like these are three kind of pictures going in different directions that are all going to be around the same center point of rankings, and it's it's you know, interesting comparisons. I talked too way too long, right there. You should have got.
It's all right. One interesting note on flarity.
Alex fast Pictureless, who's you know, Front of the Show, tweeted out he has the you know the CSW percentage the called strikes with with percentage for pictures, which is a stat that I quite enjoy following and kind of seeing who's ranking this leaderboards. April's CSW leader was Jack Flaherty thirty seven point seven percent. Next highest was Toreik Scooball at thirty three point seven percent, so a sizeable gap.
In fact, excuse me, the gap between.
Flarity at one and Scooball at two is bigger than the gap between Scooball at two and Corbyn Burns at ten. So Flarerty had an excellent month of April. Now that is I'm assuming largely helped by his most recent you know, his final start in April when he struck out fourteen guys in six and two thirds innings. Obviously that goes a long way. Bufflarity has been has been very good.
I actually picked him up early in a league and then I ended up dropping him after his you know, kind of bad I was like, oh, you know, I'll take a chance, and then oh, I didn't do so well, you know against the athletics, and then it was like, didn't do that, you know that That was like, I don't know the schedule coming up, so I dropped him. And of course now he's really good again, so that
panned out well. I will tell you for me, in terms of ranking these guys philosophically, even if you take the names away and just described these pictures, I am always leaning towards the breakout over the bounce back or the guy who's disappointed. Just philosophically with pitching especially, that's
where I'm drawn. I also really like what we've seen out of Lodolo specifically, so he would be my number one guy of these three, not buy a wide margin, but by a clear margin, like he is definitively the one I would go with. It's tougher for me because I've been burned by Flarity multiple times in the past,
both with injuries and underperforming. You know, He's not on the same level as like Joe Adell in terms of getting burned by but like, like I don't I don't need alo from getting burned by flarherity, but like I do maybe want to not go out in the sun for a couple of days. But having said that, like if a guy's been really bad and is hurt and is the oldest picture on this list, I'm probably always gonna rank that person last. So I don't know if that's kind of the chalky answer or not, I'm curious
how you have it. And again, Snell was like amazing last year, so I'm not like entirely writing him off. I wouldn't like go dropping him off your roster or anything, but I'm probably gonna go Lodolo, then Flaherty, then Snell. Would you disagree or go with the same order.
That's what I have, That's what I have them. I debated putting Flarerty ahead of Lodolo, mostly because when I'm thinking about ranking something about rest of the season rankings, and within his next two starts, Nicolodola will have thrown more innings and he threw last year, And so that's when I started to get nervous about how much value we're going to get the rest of the season, especially if you're in someone who's in a head to head league,
because depending on what they do here, you're not going to have him in you're in your head to head playoffs, which is something they consider.
You know that that's a great point, And to be perfectly honest, I've just been thinking about evaluating the pictures. I didn't really think about it from that perspective. I think that's a really valid point and to kind of take a step back and maybe you know, if you're in you know, not like some kind of keeper format where you want him long term, maybe it's a reason to consider selling on Lodolo.
Yep. That's uh, that's kind of what I was getting at. That's kind of where I'm at. And you know, I hate being kind of like that negative person who always thinks about that about young pictures, But whenever a young pictures breaking out, my first thing to do is to go to his page and see him an innings he through the year before and see what when when I should get out?
It's it's probably smart.
Right, Let's go to our last topic here, interrounding the bases. This was an article that you sent me, you know, from the Athletic last week about kind of reconsidering the title. The article is reconsidering the picture win criteria, and it essentially talks about like technically, like what goes into a picture being eligible for the win, how wins have changed over the years, and particularly how picture usage has changed over the years, and you know, people don't go as
long anymore. Should the rule only be four innings instead of five? So I have a pretty strong opinion about this that I held prior to you sharing this article. But this, you know, I thought was a good impetus to have a fun discussion about it. And I want to actually have room on this show for other rules changes ideas in the future, because I got a few
of them. But before I share kind of the stance I've always held, I'm curious, A what you thought of the article, and B you know what your stance is on pitture win rule.
So my not not to give a whole old man yells at cloud stance. But whenever I think about a rule change like this, I think about how it's going to change history and how it's going to change records, and I just hate if there's like a drastic rule change, we have to be like, oh, this is the most wins in a season before twenty twenty four, or like you know, kind of a thing when they change the wind roll down to two innings. And so that's that's
where I'm really hesitating. Like I'm on board with shortening the season, but not by a lot, like maybe we drop it down to like one hundred and fifty games, one hundred and forty five games, I'm leading off the other day, Joe was talking about dropping the season down to one hundred one games, and I was like, you're out of your mind. That's it's too few.
Yeah, four is what it used to be. Like, I understand that argument. What one oh one is absurd.
It's absurd, and it would just be like a new sport and like all the records would just be thrown out the window. It would just be like, oh, the most home runs since we cut the season by a third. So that's depending on how you changed the win criteria. I would have some thoughts about, like making it drastically different, because I I hate changing records and having to think
about historical records that way. I do think there's some just because the game has changed so much, there's some interesting, you know, things to discuss, especially because like they didn't even when they start first started counting like wins stuff. They didn't even really have bullpens. Like you just had your day to pitch and you just went out and I was your day, and either one or you lost.
And it's just not that way anymore. And now there's you know, the cheapy teams doing the opener, the opener and then the bulk reliever. And that's kind of you know, throwing wins into a whole new kind of category. There's the whole fantasy movement towards quality starts instead of instead of wins, and so it's a way.
I've seen people say that the definition of a quality start maybe should change, like, like there should be it shouldn't just be six innings, three runs. It should be a threshold of runs based on the number. So if you go five innings, then a quality start is allowing two runs. You go seven innings, a quality start is
allowing four runs. Those are just examples thrown out. I think you could quipal with the exact numbers, but I'd be more inclined with that than I would like just saying blanket quality start.
Yeah, and I've seen people saying shortened the quality start because people don't pitch that long anymore. Yeah, what are you so?
First of all, I firmly agree on the history. I'm in the exact same boat. I don't think it's biased because baseball was a sport I kind of fell in love with as a kid, and I loved reading about all the old stats and like, like, I think it's genuinely different in baseball than other sports in terms of how the numbers connect us to the past.
You know, excuse me, I.
Don't think about like like when Tom Brady said his records with quarterback, I didn't know what the number of all time passing yards was that he then broke, you know.
I I And same with basketball.
I Like I knew that Lebron was probably near the scoring record, and I knew that it was Kareem Abdul Jabbar that had the record. I didn't know the thirty eight thousand whatever whatever. In baseball, like you know not only what Hank Aaron's number was, but you also knew Babe Ruth's number. You also knew Willie Mays's number. Like growing up, it was like you didn't just notice like these guys in order were like really revered. Those numbers were revered as much as the players were. You know,
a single season records are the same. But it so I'm with you in the way that that stats and records connect baseball to its past, I think is different than any other sport, and I think that has to be a consideration with any decision you make now. Having said that, if they changed the win rule. I still don't think anybody's touching cy Young right, Like it's it's not like we're about to rewrite their record books if they were to change the win rule now, something like
changing the like the season is a different story. But uh, I'm on board with changing something like this. Here's what I would say, and it's what I've I've actually said for years and have never had a platform that people will listen to me, you know.
Make this case is I think wins should exist for pitchers.
They are the most important players in the field on that given day. But I think it should be a scorekeeper's decision. We allow official scorekeepers to make tons of judgment calls. Is this a hit? Is this an error? Why are we not allowing them to make what is like ninety five times out of one hundred, It's very obvious which pitcher contributed the most to the win. So for me, it's less about you need to go a certain number of innings, like four innings versus five innings.
That's not really that compelling of an argument to me. To me, it's the pitcher who goes six and two thirds and his team just doesn't score and he gets he comes out of the game, some reliever comes on to get that last out of the sixth, and then his team finally scores in the seventh, lever gets the win and not the starting pitcher. Why are we not allowing the official scorekeeper to say clearly the winning pitcher in this effort was the guy who went six and
two thirds, not the reliever who threw eight pitches. Those are the scenarios where I don't understand the argument against allowing us to just assign a win rather than having because of this defined rule and who happened to be on the mound when the offense that has nothing.
To do with you.
By the way, like the pitchers are not hitting anymore, why are we relying on them to determine when when you get the win? So for me, that would be the more intriguing option would be to say, hey, and you know what, if the starter gets shelled after three and every reliever goes one inning after that, and the team just happens to score fifteen runs so they win, you can say there's no win today, Like I don't see why the total wins on a pitching staff at the end of the year needs to add up to
this same number of wins as a seasons. Maybe the guy didn't earn it, And I think that we should give scorekeepers of luay to make those decisions. I've always felt very strongly about that. I have no illusions that this will ever happen, but that has been my stance for a while. Now I'm the one who's talking too long, and I'm curious your opinion.
I agree with that. While you were talking, I was thinking, what if we just gave no one a win and we just be mean about it and give But I think before we fix wins, we gotta fix holds, because man do I have some thoughts about how ghoest holts are. That can be for another day, but uh yeah, I could I could see that. What about what about wins fewer than five innings? What if someone goes like, for shout out of things, it doesn't go anymore, would you give him the win?
I think if you're talking under four, I wouldn't consider it. I think if you go like four and two thirds and they're good innings and no other picture goes more than an inning and you and you went like, it's it's hard for me to say you did.
A great job. If you didn't go five innings.
But I also I'm like trying to not let the fact that that's just what it's been my whole life have any bias in that thought, because like it's hard, it's hard to turn off the part of my brain that is always known you need to go five to get a win. So that one I'm more open to. If you want to say it has to stay five, Like, I'm open to that idea. To me, it's having been the last picture on the mound when your team happens to finally score. That's the one that I take real
significant issue with. If you want to say you need to go at least four, and then that's fine, if you were clearly kind of the best picture, I'm open to that.
I'm also open to saying there's still a.
Minimal threshold of five, but I feel less strongly about that one.
I want to I want to have more.
Of these rules conversations throughout the year, maybe is if we are struggling to come up with a topic, or maybe in the off season, because I have other ideas, including my all time favorite rules change idea that will never ever happen. But I have been telling people for like six years, and I think it's genius and I'll save.
That for a future episode.
So I have a good story about Box. I'm looking forward to telling Boxing.
Okay, I'm excited for that. So, by the way, that's like a good hopefully incentive for everybody to make sure they're subscribed to the show. And if you like this content, the best freeway to show your support and encourage more content like this, like those fun conversations is to leave a positive review at fantasypros dot com slash MLB review.
If you ask a question in your review, or if you just want to leave a comment about what you think the wins rule should be mayor and I will be sure to answer it in the following week's episode. All right, let's get into our waivers for the week. Who is your favorite waivers hitter?
So I realized as I was going through I kind of won some boring names this week, but it was also kind of a weird week, and I didn't want to just take too many chalky answers that are probably rostered in too many leagues, and so I went with an intriguing name when Seal Perez and it's because he's
still on the younger side. He's not like one of the former first round picks, but he's kind of he's worked his way through the miners and he's with the Tigers now and he's just continuing to earn playing time, and not only earn playing time, but earn his way
into the middle of the order. So as someone who wasn't playing every day, and then when he was playing mostly playing, you know, he was kind of like sprinkled all over the order, bat at eighth, seventh, sixth, but he's in it a couple of times ninth, but that was a pinch hit appearance. But now he's consistently batting third in the lineup for the Tigers, and that is where things get interesting, because you want someone hitting in the center of the lineup, even if it's the Tigers.
And so his minor league numbers are not gonna blow you away. He's not a huge power guy. He's a decent speed guy. He can steal twenty bases if he plays every day. He's always had a solid walk, right, He's always he's someone who gets on base, not a terrible strikeout, right, So he's a guy who gets on bass, makes makes good contact, he's not going to win you your league. At home runs, he's probably not gonna win you your league, and still in bases, but he's.
Pretty much like you're really making the same here.
Well, it depends on your league, and you know, he's not going to be someone you're targeting in one of those really shallow ESPN leagues, but in twelve twelve team in higher leagues, if you kind of need someone who's doing wrong right now, because I have a really good team in the league where all of my studs are just terrible right now, Like I have a really good roster and they're like Austin Riley, George Springer, Xander Boguards,
they're just all struggling right now. And so if you especially like in a five outfielder league, if you need someone who's going to do probably solid for a few weeks, he's free right now and you can just, you know, especially in the fifteen team league, pick him up immediately.
Twelve team leagues with like five outfielders, he's someone you could plug into your lineup and see if you can get some production for a few weeks and maybe, you know, maybe he sticks around and takes that next step and you can get a handful of home runs and twenty stele bases in a good batting average and also a good on base percentage if you're among those.
Yeah, I mean, I forget if you give the exact number, but only five percent rostered in YAHOO. So, like you said, he's very available, eligible at both second base and outfield, which is nice, just giving a little bit of flexibility.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I have a really strong opinion on went Sield Perez.
It's hard to yes.
I mean, he's only had fifty two career played appearances, so it's there's not a ton of track record to work from. But I think that's a good case, and particularly in deep leagues, I think he's, you know, somebody you know, willing to willing to be looked at in.
A league like that. I'm now pulling up my pick because I want to say yeah.
So, so I went with Sumy Jerkson Profar, who is rostered in fifty two percent of leagues in YAHOO, forty percent of leagues in ESPN. So less of a deep cut player obviously former number one overall prospect in baseball, but more of somebody who I think is just a little under owned. He has been really good this year. Actually, you know, his strikeout rate is just fifteen point four percent, that's down from last year. His walk rate is the highest of his career. You know, his hard hit rate
is up over forty percent. It was at thirty one last year, so it's it's the highest of his career. His expected batting average is three h four, that's you know, ninety third percent tile in baseball baseball. His ex wOBA is eighty fourth percentile.
You know.
Obviously he's in the outfield now, not an infield guy anymore. He's already thirty one, like he's big in the league forever.
You know.
Obviously he's got four home runs on the season, again, batting three forty two. I think he's somebody who will help you in batting average this season. I don't think that's a you know, a fluke.
You know.
Again, his expected batting average is over three hundred, so it's not quite a size three forty two.
But he's hitting the ball well.
And you know, I'm not expecting a huge home run total or a huge stole in base total. But I think he's a quality player in a quality lineup who is going to get opportunities. And again, it's less that I think he's going to be a league winner, but more like he's only barely over fifty percent rostered. I think that should be hired to sixty to seventy percent. I think there are leagues out there where he's not rostered, where he would be an improvement for someone. What do you think about profar.
So you think a guy who's a career two forty two hitter has been in the league for ten years is going to bat three hundred this year.
I didn't say I think it's going about three hundred. I said, I think it can help you in batting average. You don't need a bat three hundred to help people in batting average. I just think that the data is encouraging. I mean again, like he's his hard hit rate is up, he's he's hitting the ball better, his exit velocity is higher, he is you know, sweet spot rate is higher.
It's they're not like.
We're talking about waivers pick ups, right, Like, there's not gonna be a guy out there who's like one hundred percent hile across the board unless Ryan Orharan is available in your league. Like you're just not going to have those options out there, so you know you have to take to go with the bad. But I think he looks like a better hitter this year, and it's enough. Again, I'm not saying you should be one hundred percent rostered, but I'm picking him up if I need outfield help.
And I play in a lot of five outfielder leagues, and in most of those leagues, I'm guessing one of my outfielders is at least on the same level as Profar, if not worse like where Profar would be an improvement. I am not saying he's going to bat three hundred this season, but I think I think he's batting everyone better than it's been in the past.
I have an on record that you said he's gonna beat three hundred this year, and I'm going to play it back when you're done.
Now he has a hier picking him up, well.
I mean not if when Seal Perez is out there. Now, I think he has a he has a higher ceiling than someone like Wen Seal Perez. Obviously he's more rostered. He's another guy talking about you know this, the the theme of the episode being guys who have burned us in the past. I think jerks and Profar has burned everyone who's played fantasy baseball at once in their career, because he's been doing this for ten years, and he had a couple of years were, you know, way back
in twenty eighteen, we hit twenty home runs. He batted two fifty four, and you're like, oh, this is you know, this could be the beginning of the breakout. And then he kind of hit two twenty home runs again next year, but he bet at two eighteen and then he's just kind of been all over the place since then. And Yeah, it's it's intriguing that the batball data looks so good
even just looking at like the recent production. You look at like all his games one for four, two for four or two five, one for four, one for three, two for five, one for four, three four, four four, I feel I almost feel like I'm confidence saying he's never done that in his career before, having that many
hits in that many games. Yeah, so it's intriguing. I think he's going to come back down to earth a little bit, you know, just the law of large large numbers are not in his favor in terms of who he's been in his career. But I'll be interested to see if you know if they're if he's I haven't looked into him enough to know if he's made any real tangible changes to justify these improvements. But it's intriguing.
Most numbers on a statcast page are either a career high or second best in his career. Like it's it's not just like one or two areas where he seems to have improved, it's it's largely across the board.
In terms of the balltball data.
And again, like very legitimate pedigree, was the number one overall prospect in baseball at won't point. Now that was over ten years ago, and he's older. You know, all that caveats you know are are worthy.
Who did the Orioles draft that year?
In the I he wasn't drafted, right, wasn't he an international? There you go, I assume.
He was the same question. Who did the Oriols draft?
He made his debut in twenty twelve, and that year the Oiols drafted Kevin Gossman fourth overall.
I will tell you that, but uh, I've lost my train of thought thanks to having to think about the Oriols draftics. Anyways, the goal that was Anyways.
Again, I'm not saying he's a superstar, but like, if these changes are real, I think you could be looking at like a two seventy maybe two eighty batting average if things go right, and twenty home runs again, if things go right. I think there's a spot for that in a lot of leagues, especially leagues with more than three outfielders.
That's my point.
I'm willing to make a bet with you right now that he doesn't hit two seventy this year. I don't really want to, but I don't know what's the bet.
I want to make that bet.
I'm not saying to blow your fab on him right now. I feel like I'm couching this with like a bunch of I'm not saying this. I'm not saying that.
I get you're taking a lot of heat from a guy who just recommended Wenzield Forrest.
It's a great point, it's great. I'm too much of a coward to take that bet. But I think I think it's I think it's, uh, let me, I'll phrase it like this. I think it's there's the percentage that that happens, that he beats two seventy five and has twenty plus home runs. Is high enough above zero percent that I think he's worth a pickup, is the way I would phrase it.
Let's go to our favorite pitchers here? Who is yours?
So we don't have to spend a lot of time on mind because we've already talked about him, and it's Eric Fetty. And the reason is because while I was researching him, I realized just how low his roster percentage was, and if I have to double check right now, I think it was around is less than fifty percent. He's available in almost sixty percent of Yahoo leagues, and I just think the early numbers are too good to leave him out there, especially in leagues A lot of leagues
you need pitching and you need pitching volume. He already went in a bunch of my leagues. I was a little too late in a few of my leagues, a little too late to the breakout. But we already talked about it earlier in the show. If you need a reminder, rewind at the beginning of the show, we talked about Eric Fetty. A wee can skip a head to years now.
I am going with a reliever and I want to let everybody know that the plan next week, and we need to see a schedule works out, is to do kind of a deep dive closer report where we kind of say, hey, we're over a month into the season, let's look at all the bullpens and kind of see where closers are trending. It's a difficult position to deal with in fantasy, so we'll kind of do the.
Legwork for you and hopefully you know we're able to do that.
Next week, we're going to kind of do a deeper dive there. I'm gonna pick a closer. I'm gonna go with James MacArthur of the Royals, who's been awesome this year. Outside of his first three outings, which were March thirtieth, April first, April third, we're now essentially a full month past the last time that he allowed a run. Since then, it's literally been zero earned runs every start he's got
at least in ending every start. Those have largely been save opportunities, and he has done really well in those. In most of those addings he has one or two strikeouts. You know, a couple of walks here and there, a couple of hits here and there, but he's been a good closer for the Royals. He's only twenty seven years old.
The Royals have been a good team, but they're not the type of dominant team that I expect to win a lot of games by more than three runs, which means I think this could be a perfect scenario of winning lots of games but winning them close enough that the closer gets a lot of work. He has fifteen strikeouts in thirteen to two thirds innings, seven saves already this season, one point one seven whip. I don't think he's going to be like a Tier one, elite level closer.
I think he's going to get a lot of saves though, and I think he's he's not going to kill you on the ratios in doing so, and I don't see a lot of I know it's a good bullpen in Kansas City, but I think he's going to continue to solidify himself just as the guy you know at the back end of that bullpen. So his his you know, roster percentage sixty six percent of Yahoo that's gone up
recently and twenty two percent ESPN. Finding saves is so hard that if they're worth anything in your league, like if you're in a rowal.
Whatever I think he should be.
I think he should be one hundred percent rostered in leagues where saves a irrelevant because I just think he is the Royals closer, and I think he's going to be an upper half of baseball closer, if not like a top eight guy.
Yeah, the only problem is that he might not be the best picture in that bullpen. John Shriver might be. I am at socks great.
I think he's been good enough that he's gonna need to be bad for a little while to lose the spot.
But again, he hasn't given up an earned a round in a month and he's been basically locking down every save in that timeframe, So I I don't I guess I don't know what the Royals would plan to do, but you know, long term, but I don't see them as a team that's looking like it got like an itchy trigger finger and looking to take him out and bring on somebody else just for the sake of Oh his ratios are slightly better, Like, I think MacArthur's been good enough and will continue to be good enough.
That he will have that role.
And closers are volatile, so maybe he's not you end up dropping him later in the season if it turns out that he's not actually that good. But right now, if you look like a clear closer for a decent team, I'm I think I think he needs to be rostered again everywhere where slaves are relevant.
Yeah, it's almost kind of interesting that he came away with the job just based on what they did in the offseason. They kind of brought in some competition for that role, and he just has taken it in so far as to him really well.
He was not on my radar as a likely closer before the season, but the first month was good enough that now I'm picking him up in a lot of places. All right, let's go to Builo's cell high and then we'll wrap up the show.
Who is your favorite buy Low?
So it's another boring one. It's going to be, you know, just a boring name. But he's another one who's available everywhere, and I think he's better than his early numbers. Show And it's Lars new Bar. I was gonna keep talking, but I realized I should probably say his name at some point. But it's Lars new Bar. He's someone I accidentally drafted in an auction league for one dollar. I nominated him for a dollar, hoping he would go and
I ended up with him on my roster. I still roster him, and he's someone, like I said, he's he's available everywhere, and if you need outfielders, you can probably either buy extremely low on him or get him for free. Because his early numbers are not good. He's only got one home run, he's batting one eighty five, he's only
got two stolen bases, and it's through eighteen games. But I really think he's better than this, and I think this is more He began the season on the injured list, and I think this is really someone who's just off to a slow start because of the beginning of the year on the injured list. I wrote him up on this week's Featured Pros on Fantasy Pros Are BI Low So High. Title is ten players to trade Now, and I wrote basically what I'm saying now, trying to remember
from memory. But it's really just that I think he's a lot better than this. His expected numbers that we always like to talk about on the show are all much better than this. I don't think he's going to go twenty twenty but I think he's going to give you. I think he's a good hitter who also gets on base a lot. He's going to hit. You know, despite these struggles, he's still hitting third and batting in the
middle of that lineup. It's a lineup that's really struggling, so no one's really pushing him out of that spot right now. And I do think the Cardinals as a whole are going to be better, and I do think he's going to be better. And I think he's someone who's gonna hit fifteen home runs and probably steal ten to fifteen bases with a solid average. And he's free
right now. Whereas you know, normally, if you have to draft that production, you have to spend a late round pick on it, or if you know you're getting that kind of production, especially for someone that hitting in the middle the lineup, you're gonna have to spend a little bit in a trade. But right now he's free, and that's why you know, I'll probably get a lot of heat if I drop him in my league in two weeks, but if it doesn't start to turn it around, I
need the roster spot. But right now, if you can kind of wait it out, I think he's gonna be a lot better than than what he is right now.
My favorite bi Loo is because I had to talk about an oriel Grayson Rodriguez, who just went on IL, which I'm actually counting as a good thing because it means he's probably more affordable now than he's ever been. And the rumors around Baltimore are that it's there is some right shoulder inflammation and they want to be cautious and they'd rather be safe than sorry. They want him in October, not in May. But also that you know they're bringing back in John means they're bringing back in
Kyle Bradish that I already mentioned. There's an opportunity here to maybe get him a little rest as he is a young pitcher who's still building up his innings workload, and make.
Sure he's ready for October.
So as of now, and that is subject to change, because we were talking about a starting pitcher. As of now, I am not concerned about the IL stint that he just went on, and again, if anything, it makes it more affordable. You and I were actually chatting just was yesterday or earlier this week about Grayson Rodriguez, and you know the numbers if you just look at them as they are, are not gonna value thirty seven strikeouts in thirty four innings, a one forty one whip, a three
seven one ERA. This is not the guy that we were, you know, where he was going in drafts, that we were hoping to get. Having said that, he had one terrible start against the Angels and the Orioles bullpen has been very overworked early on. So when it was clear Grayson didn't have it in that start in LA, they kind of just let him wear it as long as they could, and so his numbers were really bad.
In that outing. He gave up seven earned runs in under five innings. He gave up like eleven hits.
I think it was it was a very poor outer his stats in the games not including that, and I know that in fantasy you don't get to just throw out the worst stat, but that it was an outlier. Compared to the rest of the season, He's been actually remarkably consistent this season. In the other five starts, he's four to zero with a two to twelve ERA, a one to twenty one whip, and thirty strikeouts in twenty
nine to two thirds innings. So as I said to you, you'd like a few more strikeouts and maybe fewer walks to get that whip down a little. But you're giving me an era and the low twos on a team that's gonna win a ton of games and at least a strikeout an inning. I'm taking that, and I'm very happy to do so. So this is as we talk about a lot kind of relative to price, right, I'm not saying go buy Grayson at any price if you can get them low, especially because of this injury and
because that start against the Angels was recent. I am very happy to buy a guy that I think, more often than not is going to give you six ish innings, six to eight strikeouts, one to two earned runs, and a pretty good chance a to win. And that's basically what he was for like sixteen straight starts dating back to last season prior to that blow up against the Angels.
So I think he's a really good value, even if.
He hasn't quite taken the leap into true ace level that we were hoping for. Do you think that's a fair case or am I being a homer?
I mean that was such an impassioned case. I don't think I could realistically argue back, I think you've already made your case. No, I think he's a good young arm. If you can buy low, you should.
Right, Let's go to our cell highs here. Who's your favorite?
So my cell high is really just an evergreen cell high for me. But he's just continuing to outperform his numbers, and just Jose Brios, I forget if we talked about him earlier on the show earlier in the season. We probably did, because I always feel like I'm selling high in Jose Brio's I was trying to He's another person I wrote up for that Bilo cell High article on the site this week, and I and I had the
same question when I was writing it. I was like, they, did I already write about this guy like a month ago? I probably did, but if not, I couldn't remember if I did. He's just continuing to down perform all of his numbers, and I just don't think he's as good and all of the numbers agree with me his he's got a one point four for era right now, and his gap from his era it was expected. The RAE one point four to four too, was expected. The array of almost five is the biggest gap in baseball among
qualifying pitchers, and also what an enormous gap. And he's he's got some interesting numbers, but he's like k percentages down, his swinger strike percentages down. He's getting more ground balls, which is helping him a lot. His hard hit percentage is up, and like they're not just up, but there are some of them. Some of those are like either
career lows or career highs in the wrong direction. And yet he still has a one point four four ERA despite all of that, despite only striking out thirty one batters in forty three and two thirds innings. And strikeouts are not everything. You know, we get a little carried away because of strikeouts, some fantasy, but the another reason that people like strikeouts is it limits your bad luck. And at some point, if you're not striking out bad as,
you're gonna start getting some more bad luck. And all of his expected numbers say that more bad luck is coming. He's got, like I said, a sub to sub one point five r A and all of his expected numbers are over four. That's just gotta that can't continue. It's gonna meet in the middle soon. And it's not just gonna jump to four point eight eight, it's gonna jump
to the twos and threes, which is still fine. But between the name value because people know the Jose Brios name and they look at the early numbers, it's just prime to sell high right now. And I have a question for you, which is a question when we write the art, when we write these blurbs for the article, we're supposed to always try to pitch who we think
or who we'd like to target in a trade. And I had a trade proposal lot that was gonna ask you about would you trade Jose Brios for Corby and Carroll right now?
I'm giving away Burrios getting Corbyn Carroll in like maybe a third of a second, I would say yes.
Well, I only asked that because of because people are panicking about corn Mac Carroll. But and how bad he's been.
I get why there might be panic with Carol. Obviously he's been. It's a rough start to the season. I've I mean talking about getting burned by guys. I've been burned by Barrios enough in the past. Like you said, kind of the expected data is not good. I I'm not gonna let one month change what was Where was Burrios going in drafts this year?
No idea, Like I don't know off the top.
Of my head, but like I'm guessing several dozen, you know, spots different in ADP. I'm not letting a month change that. For a guy with Carol's upside, I'd much rather have Carol.
That's fair. I'm seeing a lot of panic trade discussions.
And interesting maybe other people will disagree. I'd be curious to hear what the listeners think when they hear that question. For me, it's a no brainer.
Yeah, we kind of get carried away into thinking, you know, especially like I'm in a lot of industry leagues and in a lot of leagues, but like really sharp fantasy managers. But there are a lot of people who are brand new to fantasy baseball and still kind of in these more casual leagues and still learning their way. And there's a lot of discussions out there of just panic selling and stuff like this, and they just look at the immediate numbers and they want to do just a quick trade.
So I'm seeing offers like that go around in the discord.
My cell high is Jacob Young.
I think he's somebody you can sell high because A he's been you know, hot lately, and b the steals are really good. You know, he's got twelve stolen bases already this season. You know, his his batting average has gone up a lot in the last week, week and a half because he was on fire, you know, in that series against the Marlins.
Two hits, two hits, three hits, one hit.
You know, it's just it was just a really strong, you know, week or so, and he was stealing like multiple bases of game. It felt like in that series he is giving you nothing else, though, and I don't think he will give you anything else the rest of the sear He has zero home runs.
He's not even close to a home run.
If you look at his like spray chart on STA cast, his like farthest ball he's hit this year is a sharp line drive that like halfway to right field, Like there is just no power here. Uh and I and again, I wouldn't expect any to really develop. His exit velocity average EXI velosity's bottom three percent in the league. His launch angle is one point six degrees. It's just not good fast guy. He's gonna play a lot because of
the defense. And again he will get you steal. So if you were like completely desperate for steals, I can understand not moving, but I think because of those steals, because of the hot streaks, so the average is now over three hundred. I think he's movable and I would move him in a heartbeat. Do you have any strong opinions on Jacob Young?
H No, I would gladly trade Jacob Young. I had a similar take on Bryce Terrang very early in the season. So far has proven me wrong and that the number still was still.
In fact, I didn't pick I didn't pick up Terrang in a league where I could use some speed, specifically because of our conversation on this show, and that is burning me so far.
For the record, I would still sell high on Bryce Terraing. Yeah, without question, so similar reasons. It's kind of like an Estuary Ree situation with Jacob Young unless I really need those steals. If someone comes looking for twelve steals, they can have them, no problem.
Okay, weekend excitement. What are we looking forward to this weekend? I'll go first. I really want to see if Max Freed is like truly kind of back to the Max Freed we knew in love before the season. Obviously, we talked last week about how his great outings had really come against the Marlins. He was good this week, not against the Marlins, so that was encouraging. He is now facing the Dodgers on Sunday, so clearly a step up.
And I think we'll probably tell us a lot about if the first few starts of the season were really just kind of a fluke slow start, or if the strong outings against the Marlins are the flukes.
I'm curious to see how he does on Sunday.
And the other thing I had written down is just Friday Night has some awesome starting pitcher matchups, or at the very least fascinating ones where I'm really interested to see how they turn out. And the ones I wrote down are Jordan Hicks versus Aaron Nola.
Hicks.
I guess had some some tightness in his side, but the way I from what I've seen and maybe I've missed it, they haven't been talking about it like he's gonna miss a start or anything. He's been good this year obviously in San Francisco. George Kirby versus Renelle Blanco, two guys who we have talked about a lot on this show who have been good in their own respective ways, particularly lately with Kirby, so I'm really excited for that one.
And then Dylan sees ver Zach Gallen. Just a couple of guys that.
Are you know, either aces or on the periphery of ases and you know from from where they were for the season or where they've been in the past. So those are just three really intriguing matchups and they're all Friday night, so I'm really excited to watch those.
What are you excited for this weekend?
I'm really interested to see Gavin Stone against the Braves on Friday, and it's for a number of reasons. One, I kind of can't figure out Gavin Stone and what he's gonna you know how I feel about it. And it feels like this could be a really pivotalbal pivotal, not pivotal.
I wasn't gonna say it, but it's just pivotal.
It's okay, you could have said something, a really pivotal start for him, because it just kind of feels like he's in this weird, weird zone and we have Walker Bmueller coming back. They're kind of, you know, potentially getting some pictures healthy and is he going to stick in the rotation long term, well, long term he probably will, as long as he doesn't completely employe. But like in the long term, in the sense of the season, is
he going to stick in the rotation? And it almost feels like if he gets lit up by the Braves, we could be training in the wrong direction. And if on the flip side, if he really shuts down the Braves lineup, he could further cement his kind of spot in this in this rotation. And so I have him in a keeper league, So I'm not going to drop him in a keeper league, but it just feels like an interesting start and I want to see how he
performed because I like Gavin Stone. I want to see him do well, and I you know, I do think highly of him as a as a pitcher and as a prospect. But it's an intriguing matchup, and of course against Charlie Morton, my guy. And then of course I want to see the best picture in baseball Ranger Suarez go up against Keaton Win some one we talked about last week, and I think that was pretty much it.
There's a lot of I do want to see Cooper Criswell for the Red Sox, kind of an intriguing name, has been pitching really well for them as they pieced together their rotation. He's kind of getting onto the fantasy landscape, you know, someone you should start to pay attention to, especially what they're doing with that rotation. And that's it. Other than Trace Schouoball and Ester Cortes, a couple of lefties.
Nester Cortez has been looking a lot better recently. I'm still not a huge believer in him, but maybe you are.
I don't know that I am, but we'll see. Let's let's go to our to start picture competition. I wanted to get your opinion on the last week's matchup because I joked about it the week before. I genuinely think this one is tougher and it's you can make the case either way. You had Pablo Lopez. He went one to oh nine innings, pitched eight hits, seven earned runs, three home runs, allowed, three walks. He did have fourteen strikeouts. Grayson Rodriguez, who we counted his Monday start again because.
He got pushed back. It was actually his better start against.
Came against the Yankees than that disaster against the Angels, one in one, ten innings pitched sixteen hits, allowed, seven earned runs, no home runs, allowed, four walks, ten strikeouts. I would give a slight lean toward Lopez that you know, I'm being honest here that I would give it slightly towards your guy. But I think it's an intriguing discussion because they were basically both not very good.
Basically both not very good. Your guy went one more inning, but he has a loss. He allowed twice as many hits, the same amount of earned runs, zero home runs against three. He walked one more batter, and he struck out four fewer batters.
So the interesting thing with the hits is that, again that kind of came in that Angels outing where he was kind of forced to wear it. And this is maybe philosophically something we need to decide when evaluating this competition. But do we want to give more credence to one good start and one bad start versus two mediocre starts?
I don't know.
Like I said, I would tend to lean slightly towards Pablo Lopez this week, but something to think about for the future. So is that does that sound fair to you? I mean, obviously it's your guy. I'm assuming you'll say it is.
Yeah, it seems fair to me. It's also you know, we're using like your league settings. I still don't know what these.
We're not using.
I didn't even say the fantasy points this time because I knew you would bring that up, so I did. We're not using the settings. That's just a catch all. Like he's like, for example, in this a lot. Well that's the thing, is like the fact that Grayson got a loss in his bad start and Lopez didn't like significant you know, drastically changes that. So I again, that's just sort of a catch all number. We're not using that as the determining factor. I will give the win
to Pablo Lopez this week. We're still waiting to see how Joe Ryan and ready for al to you this week, you know, like this current week that we're in for next week, I am going and I did not like a lot of the options here, so I am going with Emerson Hancock and he you know, it burned me in the past because I didnt actually end up getting the start against the athletics, but I and also they've
been hot lately. But I'm trying to go with my strategy of if I'm not sure who I want take a two start pitcher who's one of his starts against the Athletics.
It's also against the Twins, who've been playing well lately.
But I'm counting on that to come back to Earth a bit and you know, to some talent there. He hasn't been great this year, But I didn't love my option, so kind of taking a swing and trying to pick somebody that might have a surprisingly nice week.
Who do you got?
That is an interesting choice by you. I will agree with you there not one I would have made. But then again, every sing Hancock might not be here in a month, so you might not have the option to ever pick him again.
So I'm going with It's not a selection I made, happily to be clear.
Just to you know, keep up with what I did. For the rest of the show, I'm going to reuse a name we talked about earlier, and I'm going to go with Jack Flaherty, who's at the Cleveland Guardians and then verse home against the Houston Astros, who you would normally think it's a dangerous, kind of scary line of this.
Yeah, I think that's a good call, and I he'll probably do better than Hancock, but you know what, we're here to have fun.
We'll get out of there on that. Thank you everybody for tuning in.
Like I said, we're gonna try and to have a guest next week and we'll talk a little bit more about the closers next week, so be sure to stick around for that one.
For Mayor, I am Ryan Warmley. We will see everybody again in a week.
Thanks for listening to the Fantasy Pros Fantasy Baseball podcast.
Follow us on x, Instagram, and
TikTok at Fantasy Pros, and subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Fantasy Pros MLB