Ninety five miles an hour riding to his head. He hopped down the first with the lump on his face, and on the very next pitch he up and stole second face with greatst be He wasn't born, he hadn't done. Boy howdy, Welcome to prospect. Besides podcast, this is the nasally John c Riley's sounding voice of Nate Handy. A biologies for that only shake what your mama gave you. I am also coming off of a COVID stint,
so apologies. I hope you're able to bear with it, hope that I am able to bring you some content and some entertainment that makes it worth it. But yeah, so doing a podcast not something I have ever done before. It's a little unnatural, but I will do my best. And you know, if you're gonna get a little bit of a b side mentality about some dynasty prospects, you might have to endure feeling a little unnatural as well.
I figured it was only fair to give you a little bit of an introduction, even though it's dreadful for me to talk about myself like this. So I reached out on Twitter to some of my followers asking them to ask me some questions that might be useful to listeners. So let's get into it. Let's see at Jazz for Ball, Jamie asked, how long have you been playing fantasy? What kind of leagues do you play in? And are you any good at it? Great question. I think two thousand and six
was the first league I ever played in. Year after White Sax won the World Series, primarily just one league for most of that time, some good buddies, a unique twelve team points league, very wild pitching scoring. But I wanted to branch out. I wanted to go deeper into the player pool. I wanted to get more into prospects. So I found I took over a team and at thirty team points league, and that's when I started to get, you know, a little bit more serious about it, branched out
and you know, putting more money on the line. And I'm now currently in five to seven leagues. I guess the two thirty teen points leagues that I am commissioner of I'm in. I tailed three Sport, which is a sixteen team head to head I mean a twelve team head to head where it's fourteen team rodo what else? Oh, there's like a five year drafting whole thing, and then yeah, that long standing league which might be on its way out. Am I any good? I mean I wasn't for a really
long time. That longest standing league. I just wanted for the first time this last year. So it wasn't very good at that. But that league, you know, I think part of why I wasn't good because I was id take players I had no business take and I was just trying to be hip and cool or something, trying to be ahead of the you know, I was like two years ahead on a lot of guys in that league. But I think I've gotten much better since I've gotten more serious about it.
I played in a lot of like those fan Treks cash leagues for a while and did pretty well on that. I think overall, I think I'm either pretty even or have made money, if that's how you want to measure if you're you're good at fantasy or not. But I think my Dynasty game is on the up and up, and I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, things we're going to be discussing moving forward in
this podcast. So thanks that that was a great question. At sports m Therapy one two three, asked, how long have you been following prospects and what credentials do you have speaking about prospects? Who hard hair? Good question. I would say I have been paying attention to prospects since MLB pipeline was the thing. I don't know late nineties is that it, but I mean just glancing those over and reading them. When m ILB dot tv came to be, definitely got more into it. I mean, I'm I'm addicted.
That's my favorite sport to watch was minor league baseball, and I think that's where I might have some quote credentials. I'm not an expert, I am not a scout. I am an enthusiast who needs an outlet, someone to talk to, so to speak about what they've been watching all the time. Imagine watching what you think is the greatest movie you've ever seen, and no one else has seen it. That's what I kind of feel like. If I don't have some sort of content, I guess is the word to put
out there. So I hope that's our relationship writing at pitcher List. I have made some friends, some friends that are much more successful than I and in their endeavors like this, I have also I don't know. I'm in an online sense, have befriended a few people inside baseball, have conversations with them. And here's the cool part about that is even some dumb guy like me has brought some things to light and has made professional baseball people, professional
writers notice. Something baseball is is extremely large. It's a it's a endless universe. No one sees it all. I like to think of myself as maybe like maybe like a local news anchor or something like that, like like Carney Nebraska, whereas someone like the Welsh might be you know, he's like national. You know, he's like a he's like Crown Kite or's whatever. I don't even know if that analogy is correct. But we all have credentials
as baseball fans and you know something about prospects. That's what it's kind of interesting to me is, you know, we all watch Major League baseball and we all have, like, you know, very different opinions on who the best player is. But I mean it might be obvious now with a Tani, but you know what I'm saying, there's a lot seems to be a lot more opinions in Major League Baseball than there is a minor league baseball.
We seem to agree, and that's always been a little bit I don't know backwards to me in a way, because there's so much more unknown about these players that are still developing, and that's why it's become my favorite watching a I don't know Joey Estes twenty twenty one. The progression over the season was awesome. Young people are just more resilient and more capable of change than old,
krusty people like us, you know or me. I shouldn't call you old and rusty because I don't know who you are, So yeah, I don't know. We all have credentials if we watch I think pay attention to things. I think we all can all learn from each other. So thank you. That's a that's a great question. At Casey Casey ninety nine asked if I have access to data, I mean, no more than anybody else.
Get some backdoor savant stuff from a couple of the minor leagues. You know that some of the friends that I mentioned, we'll share some things with me, but I'm not a huge numbers guy. We'll get into a little bit more of that a little later here at Saddleback Jewels, asked me if I played baseball. Yeah, I mean little league and all that stuff, and I pitched up through my sophomore year of high school, where I yeah, regrettably. To be honest, I wish I could play literally now.
I kicked some fucking ass, gave it up to solely focus on some hoop dreams that I had until my very early twenties. And then I got back on the mound playing with some some ex college guys. I don't know how old was I thirty five when they did that. It didn't last very long. I lived too far away. I loved it, though. It was a lot of fun to get back up there. But but yeah, all right at cute in Jersey. Four six six asked me where do I Where do I live? And um do I watch games live? Well, I
live in Narnia. Basically, I live in Colorado at like ninety two hundred feet where the snow is here forever. But it's not too far from Denver. I mean, it's minor league baseball desert, so no. I got out to Grand Junction a few times, but when it contracted, Colorado lost all their minor league affiliates. It's unfortunately not but to be honest with you, I don't think i'd be very good at watching stuff live and being able
to share stuff like this. Then you know, there's definitely things that you won't be able to get. You know, I just watching video, But there's also a reason why. You know, some teams that are pretty much almost exclusive video, you can you can watch a lot more. You can slow things down. You don't know what that guy just through. I guess what I can pose it and rewind it. You can't really do that live. I think I would just be way too overstimulated and not very good at
that. But but yeah, I'm out here in Colorado. At ballgirl Kim asked me who my favorite team was. Well, I came to my baseball age, if you will, living in Chicago, So yeah, that's your answer. Hey, what's the station from the Cops game? Jerk off, am, Actually no one knows the station of the Cubs game. We care God bless us to everyone, and our last one is from at third base Carly. You must have played some sports. You look like a physically fit
man. Are you single? Well? At third base Carly, I am happily married, but thank you all right, So a B side prospect. What is that? What's that all about? What's that mean? I guess we'll just kind of do a little origin story about four years ago or so joined il Army. Highly recommend it. Get on in this league, dot Com, Patreon, look at their little different tiers of membership. Bogmin and the Welsh are great. They remember why we played fantasies. They have fun,
so much fun. And so I was a fan that joined up Covid Into the world came twenty twenty and I was at unemployed at home home with my kids for like a year, going stir crazy like a lot of us were. I've been dealing with Todd's all day talking ABC's tell them what sounds a cow makes. It's a move, motherfucker. I saw that picture list
was looking for a writer. I think Welsh put a good word in for me with Nick Bollock, and it took me on and one of my first assignments was to write five or six I think it was organization's top fifty prospect lists for Fantasy daunting task after no minor league season, not really being prepared the year prior, when maybe I was watching some of these guys that I would be writing about them, but did the best I could. I think
it came out all right. And you know, naturally, the biggest question, or one of the big questions you get from readers is which one of these guys on the bottom half of your list do you think you're gonna pop? And you know, that's that's a great question. That's kind of the
penultimate question with Fantasy. Who are the guys that I need to get to before everybody else, And that's going to be kind of the big focus of this podcast is those guys kind of on the fringe come you know, potential come ups and stuff like that, and players that I watch that I'm putting some bets down that might be and we have some success with that initial list. Tovar Grissom. I think jo Kenzino well was on that list, Raphaela.
But we'll get into we're gonna future episodes. I think we'll do division by division, little b side history and you know, picks for this season and stuff like that. But during that process of the first iteration of it, I threw the list of thirty names to my good buddy Matt Vogel, who's you know, baseball guy Dynasty. Good friend and I was like, Hey, what do you think about these guys? And he said, I don't know. Listen, it looks a little too B side for me.
So when I wrote the articles, I tried to and I'm sure it was pretty corny but incorporated some music stuff involved, and so yeah, that's where where B side comes from. I'm sure Matt probably wants some sort of like naming rights or something like that. And then yeah, well there's a good pile of cash on your mom's nightstand, so why don't you just grab some
of that, Ladies and gentlemen, We got him. So last season, I was focusing on Prospect Pictures, doing a series picture list called Prospect Picture List and Review. I think that's what it was called. Series got cut short about midway through July because I lost any sort of internet service. It was kind of insane. But during that time, you know, some some folks reach out to me and we're you know, appreciating my work, which
was you know, awesome and felt great. Uh. Jeff Potts of Baseball America was one, and I've struck up a little prospecting friendship with him. James Anderson had me on his show that was you know, all nice and fun. I feel free to go back and check some of those out. But point being because I really want to try to maintain some of that feel with this podcast. And you know, when I first started, you know, producing some content, I really wanted to try to keep myself out of
it in a sense and just observe and report. I hope that I could maintain some of some of that feel. I really enjoyed doing that series, but the amount of hours were just insane, writing and editing, video watching. I have a job that I can watch a lot of stuff, work overnights at a hospital with a lot of time to fill. But to do that, I think it will be helpful, worthwhile to try to, i don't know, maybe convey to you what it is that I look for and
how I try to value some things of that nature. So I want to talk a little bit about one of the first pieces that I did at Picture List, which was called using NFBC ADP and MLB draft histories to make informed mistakes. I think that's what we called it. Sorry, but what we did was my guy, Colin Charles, wrangled historical NFBC ADP, DAD an MLB draft data and we put them together and tried to look at success rates
of different types of players fantasy wise. So the NFBC stuff it was ADP rank, So the highest that players drafted from MLB Draft two thousand and twenty fifteen reached inn. N FBC doesn't say anything about sustainability, how long they
may have been valued highly in a fantasy sense. And these are just kind of a few of the most interesting takeaways that I took to just keep me sort of in a very general sense what a prospect might be worth looking at, like college hitters, college arms, high school hitters, high school arms, top twenty pick in the MLB Draft, high school arm or hitter had one third of a US rate That means they did not make the big leagues
at all. College players were approximately ninety percent of them made the bigs. When you got to around the fiftieth pick of the MLB Draft, a third of the preps made the bigs, whereas over seventy five percent of college players did. When you got to about one hundredth pick, fourth of the preps made it two thirds of the college players. The time it took college players were approximately three years. Prep players were about four to five years to make
the big leagues. Now, since the condensing of the miners, I think it's pretty safe to say that that's speeding up. So do with that what you will. I would almost maybe want to shave a year off of that or half a year. During this point of MLB draft history, we saw prep arms taken in the top five picks, especially but early in the draft not find very much fantasy success. Prep arms selected post pick fifty reached the same fantasy heights as the big money prep arms. I think this seems to
be changing some though. Um, you know, just more technology, more knowledge. I think teams are getting better at avoiding those same sort of busts that they had. Can see it now with like, yeah, Andrew Painter, it's looking pretty insane. Um, I feel like they were there seemed to be like this chase to get like the next Clayton Kershaw. You know, it's a prep arm that just quickly ascended, you know, from from high school arm to fantasy stud for a very long time. I happened to
be on quite a Andrew Painter kick right now. I traded Luis Robert for Painter and twenty twenty four first round pick in the first year player draft. I don't know if that was smarter or not, but I did it. It's an easy answer. Then we looked at just kind of some top prospects top prospect list from that time, came up with might be the biggest takeaway
from it. You know, if if we can know how to value the cream of the crop, so to speak, I think everything else could just kind of cascade down and as you move out in the prospect world, what we might be able to kind of value these guys at. But kind of compared top five prospects from that time, the top five draft picks, and here is what we took away. So top five draft picks, the sample sizes of these are fairly small, so seventy nine of them over that time
span, twelve and a half percent of them. Ten of them became top ten fantasy players, twenty percent of them, Top twenty five, twenty six percent, Top fifty, thirty four percent, Top one hundred, fifty percent top two hundred, so roughly fifty fifty shot at getting the top two hundred player. Twenty two twenty three percent of them never got drafted in NFBC.
Now, the top five prospects, there was ninety five of them, and granted over this time span, you're just talking MLB pipeline NBA, so I know those aren't fantasy related, so you have to take that into accounts. But eleven point six percent made top ten, twenty one point one percent, top twenty five, thirty five percent, top fifty sixty four percent top one hundred, which is, you know, double the rate of what a top five draft pick was. Eighty seven percent became top two hundred, whereas you
know, only fifty percent of the top five draft picks did. The number one draft pick overall MLB draft pick became top ten. Now is there's fifteen of them, right, So five of the fifteen thirty three percent became top ten assets, forty six point seven became at least top twenty five, fifty three point three percent became top fifty sixty percent top one hundred, and seventy three percent at least top two hundred. So a number one draft pick seemed
pretty safe, you know, relatively speaking, the safest. The number one overall prospect became a top ten asset eighteen point eight percent of the time, compared to thirty three percent of the time for the number one draft pick. Thirty one percent, top twenty five or better, forty three percent top fifty or better, eighty one percent top one hundred or better. They did better becoming top one hundred compared to the number one draft pick, but not at
being super elite. It's a lot of number one. Has it ever occurred to you that instead of you know, running around blaming me, you know, given the nature of all this new shit, you know, this could be a lot more complex. I mean, it's not just it might not be just such a simple you know what in God's holy name are you blathering
about? I don't know. So at best, the best prospects in the game we can count as being like now one in five are really going to pan out for us fantasy wise, at least that's how it was historically. I think, now what since like the vlad tiny tiny is different, but Akunya, I don't know those classes. I think we've just seen a lot
of influx of young talent right now. Sometimes I wonder if that plays into some of the overvaluing that I was seeing in my leagues of some of the bigger prospects that you know, you start playing at that you start playing dynasty at that time, and you're like, man, all these guys are all these young guys are just gonna pop, and the previous fifteen years or so
it wasn't really so much like that. And breaking down the MLB draft a little bit more, I think I've found a couple spots that we're kind of sneaky good in a fantasy sense, Like college outfielders that were drafted fifty one to one hundred, college pitchers drafted twenty one to fifty or paid like those draft picks, you know, they did better than first round prep arms by a significant amount, just fantasy success wise. Prep infielders drafted twenty one to
fifty, about eighteen percent of those became twelve team relevant. Prep outfielders drafted fifty one to one hundred, about eight percent became twelve team relevant. And then prep infielders drafted in that same range or paid like they were drafted in that range, only seven percent became team relevant. So it was pretty apparent, and you know, just an overall sense, college players were much more
productive, much safer. Now, all that being said, it's still imperative to me that we you know, you got to evaluate every player, you know, individually and they're not all going to fall under these same outcomes as as their peers, their demographic peers, so to speak. When I was working on this stuff, I reached out to people much smarter than me, folks who work and investment and insurance fields, and you know, I'm completely
naive. I asked them, Hey, if I have, you know, this investment, and it's a fifty percent chance at being this, a twenty percent chance to be in this twenty percent chance to be in this, or I have this investment that is you know, thirty percent, this, thirty percent, that thirty whatever. Right, Um, is there a way to like quantify which one's better? And you know that might sound like a really stupid question, but I don't know math. People are wizards, morlocks and
things. I don't know, they do magical things. So I asked that and the response always was, well, there's no way to, you know, quantifiably say one is better than the other. It all depends on what are your needs, what are you wanting to get out of it? And so I sort of took that and thought about that a lot more. And I have to say that that has really applied to me prospecting here, trying to what do I want that I have to answer that question first before I
can decide how to value these prospects. So that's why a lot of ways, I just have some trouble with numbers, certain numbers that I feel like are trying to quantify unquantifiable things. And I'm not taking away the use of these numbers. I think they can be useful for things. I think they're just tools that I haven't found to be my main tools prospecting, like ranks, because they're trying to which I understand is put a value on everybody relative
to each other. I want to know the value of the player relative to what I'm seeking, if that makes sense. And some other numbers I have problems with, or scouting grades, it's just not a language that I speak. I don't pretend to understand. And you know, we're talking about developing players. You know, Valley or whoever has got a whatever grade they put on his curveball, Well, what was it at the end of the year.
Because especially when it comes to pitching grades, individual pitch grades, pitching evolution is pitch evolution is crazy to me these days. Look at Gavin Stone this last year, he went from an unremarkable changeup to arguably the best change up in the minor leagues. And I know they'll have future grades and stuff like that. I just I don't. It confuses me more than it helps
me. I guess it's a good way to put it. But ultimately my biggest issue with numbers is that I was taught or picked up or learned or I don't know, was imprinted on me in some way that numbers good research should only lead to better questions, and I feel like when we used numbers in the baseball world, it's always about this is my answer, this is my number. I want to use the numbers to try to get better questions answer things. That's where I really value getting eyes on players watching them.
It will often bring to light things that numbers will not. And then the inverse is correct too. Don't get me wrong. There are numbers that will will tell me my eyes were full of me, and you know, obviously the best way to do it is to use both to find your good questions. But like a good example was one of my we'll talk about him a little bit in the future, but jo Hendrick Pinango was off two killers start this year, tapped into the power that he wants that we were hoping for.
He was on par with Saderstrom, if not better, and then he just fell off a cliff statistically production wise. Why was that? What we find out he's playing with an injury, right, Kate Cavallei, who I mentioned previously, is curveball execution got so much better. People to have taken some notice to that now, But they're also talking about it in a sense of like usage, Well the usage went up. Well, yeah, the usage went up because he finally could execute it and would throw it more.
You know, So just a lame example of putting some stuff together and players stats tell you about the history of their production. More prospecting, especially b siding, we want to look for the things that are going to bring change in the future, that are going to be different in the future. How we necessarily go about do that is? And I think evergoing process and and
just some generic thoughts about when I'm watching pictures and hitters. When I'm watching pictures, I always think about this guy a cheat code guy or is he more precision? Does this guy have just god given offerings that are gonna lead to success or does this guy put the ball where he wants to at such a higher clip than everybody else that that's going to lead to his success. And then when you get the marriage of the two is when you get the
real the real studs, the real fins thinking about hitting. And I admit I have much to learn, but I want to see very balanced guy. I want to see, you know, good swing decisions and all that. I want to see efficient strokes. I want to see a guy who's able to catch the ball you know, behind him, directly, you know, center to him and in front of him. Leads to all the fields. Hitting Often guys who can just react to velocity, lean inside and they can
look away. I often think about a tweet out there were was don tape of Chett talking about waft. Like I said, about catching the ball behind you. So I'm more drawn to like aggressive young hitters who want to get their swings in, guys who hit the ball the other way at a young age already and then just kind of go from there. When it comes to like power, I don't know. To me, it's more about the shape of the home run, the nature of the home run, than it is
the quantity of them. But we I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that as we move along, wrapping things up. I just wanted to leave with a couple of rules, a couple of things to think about. If we're gonna if you're gonna come along and do some B siding with me, loosen up, accept some of the warts. We aren't contemplating a first
round pick. There are reasons that these guys are B sides. These guys do pop. Look at an All Star game, Look at Paul Goldschmidt, who was once I believe, an eighth round draft pick out of Texas State, who just won an MVP. Don't overdo the age for level thing. I think there's a really there's a lot of misc poor understanding of it right now since the minor leagues have changed. Just saw Keith's law. Somebody posted in the Prospect Prospect one room. Then he didn't did all of his production.
Casey Schmidt did all of his production when he was an a ball at twenty three. Well that was a half year older. So don't overdo the age for level thing. Understand that a lot of the style, a lot of the players that were looking at are like you know, potentially edge of roster guys, guys make forty man rosters all the time that are in fantasy radars, and those guys do pop. Don't be afraid of the lack of
recognition by the fantasy world of a player that you might be into. Pull the trigger sooner rather than later, especially if, especially if your league allows for turning and burning prospect pickups, and you know understand your league format. Try to understand the type of player that you want. And yeah, I think I'll stop rambling here. Appreciate you joining me. I look forward to getting into some of this stuff and actually talking about players. I think that'll
be a lot more exciting than this stuff. Going to try to drop an episode every week every Monday, I think is the plan. Next week we will do the NL West and we will talk about B sides. I am watching from that division. Don't hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter if you like at prospects No, that's not it. At Pitching Specs, we have survived the first episode the Prospect B Sides. Thank you, and I want to give big shout out again to Wells thanks for letting me do this.
And I also want to give a shout out to my good friend Chad Staley, who's a successful musician and music guy. Hard working Americans, great American taxi and Nighthawks. He's been involved in a lot of things, but he was also involved with Chicago Farmer I'm a fan of and they both graciously let me use the clip that brought us in and we'll bring us out. Be well. Taught to you Monday, ninety five miles an hour riding to
his head. He hobbled down the first with the lump on his face, and on the very next pitch he up and stole second face with greatst speed. He wasn't born, but he had the daddy ass. Uniful