Episode 21: Mudding MLB Style

Not five miles an hour riding to his head. You have it down first with the lump bonius face, and on the very next pitch he up and stole second face with greatest be He wasn't born, he had yes uniform. All right. Welcome to episode twenty one of the Prospect. Besides podcast, I am Nate Handy joining me is the rook a room? How are you, my friend? I am great, Nate. How are you good?

It's good to talk to you, man. I feel like it hasn't been that long, but it feels like it's been a minute since I've, you know, chatted with you. I was thinking the same thing, and maybe it was partly because we got to talk less since we had Chris on last week and we took a couple of extra days this week. But I was when I was sitting down to log in, I was like, oh, man, it's been a while. I was like, it's just last week. We talked about some good stuff. But yeah, I have to ask

at the outset, is my mic better? Today? I realized like my computer picked up the wrong mic and I sounded like shit the whole time. And you can hear my loud family in the other room it was bad. I didn't I didn't get any complaints, so a few few at least the content was okay, even if even if my end sounded shitty. We're getting like called up a little bit here, Matt. We're getting all to the show. We're gonna do some mutting, some B siding MLB style. Wow.

Yeah, see how this goes sort of the idea a few years ago. It was a little bit of an experiment put together a top one hundred list, an alternative to a top one hundred prospect list. Now, what I learned is that hundred of these types of players that we're going to talk about is far too too many. But the idea is was in dynasty leagues trying to value evaluate sort of I don't know, you might call them post

hype or sort of unexpected players getting MLB chances something like that. Right, the demographic is sort of post prospect to like, for a hitter less than seven hundred MLB played appearances for a picture. I don't know what I said at that three hundred, four hundred innings or something like that, because I think often, especially if you're like a rebuilding dynasty squad, I think there

can be a lot of value with these types of players. We'll talk about some things and try to give some perspective on that and some examples some young MLB bats that I think might still be on the up and up and have some major league opportunity in front of them. Does that make sense, Matt? Does that sound good to you? Does it sounds like an interesting challenge? I know when we talked about this initially, I wasn't quite sure just

how deep to go. So I do have a couple of kind of they sort of fit this bill, I'll say, but guys that I'm excited about and think should be maybe closer to top of mind as people are going into their redrafts, especially in deeper formats, or even a target in a deeper league as a throw in that we think might have some extra skills that are going underappreciated. And then and then of course I got my mutters on.

I went I went deep. Some of these guys that you hear their names and they give you that visceral shudder because they burned you three years ago and they're still kicking around and you're like, I couldn't possibly roster them again. Well, I found a couple of those guys that maybe maybe you should just reconsider. So it's a it's an interesting different take on our b siding exercise. My guy Aaron over in IL, I saw him a couple of days ago, and then I brought up a really good point. It's like the

day of the sleeper. I don't want to say that it's like over, but it's it's different now, like I think, and he had said, it's more about like avoiding in redraft leagues, avoiding the early round. Now it's more about avoiding the early round pick that doesn't return its value as opposed to finding that quote sleeper. You know, yeah, dynasty players, fantasy players. I think, like we said, we're getting smarter and there's more

coverage. And felt like for many years in redraft especially there'd be a ti Oscar Hernandez I'd come across. I don't know, Dominic Smith was a big sort of fine for me for one year someone like that. But those guys aren't getting I think tougher to find year to year. More people are valuing them. But nevertheless, dynasty redraft, I got some young major league players I want to talk about here. I wanted to just touch briefly, matt

On Jose Miranda. He's much more popular rostered in many more leagues than the other bats that I'm going to talk about. I looked at NFBC ADP for all these players. Man. I don't know if you pick up on this or notice this, but there is a big difference between ADP and ADP rank, and I don't think that gets communicated really well sometimes, like you know, go get player X or whatever is ady. He's not going drafted in NFBC leagues. He's his ADP is four to twenty or whatever or what does

it go up to four fifties? ADP is like four to seventy five, And okay, yeah, that's true, that's his average draft position, but he's ranked like three hundred and twenty five as far as a he is getting drafted, like you can't necessarily just wait for the last round to pick him up. I much prefer to look at ADP rank than actual ADP. That's a good point. I haven't thought about it like that, but you make a compelling argument. And so all these bats that I'm gonna talk about are

ADP ranked outside of four point fifty, which I think in NFBC. They're like standard fifteen team Roto is outside of draft range or something like that. But Jose Miranda, he is outside of that. He's not getting drafted very highly and interested in your opinion on him. He's rostered in thirty eight percent of fan tracks leagues. Take that for what it's worth. We got to

figure out. I don't have no idea how many of that, how much of that is redraft to dynasty with some perspective at the same rate as Chase excuse me, Chase Dolander, Roderick, Arius, Justin Crawford, Jacob Marci, Diego, Kartaiya Dalton, Russian, Nick York. And he's rostered less than to Kale Roby, your boy, JDP, Christian Scott, Chase, Petty Brock, Wilkin, Tommy Troy Brock, Porter, Kyle Hurton, Keaton

Win. That's kind of interesting to me. I don't know about you, Matt, but dynasty wise, I'd much rather have a share of Miranda than some of those guys at this juncture. Why why is that? You? You know, certainly some of those names are fades for me, but a lot of them are pretty interesting on the dynasty side, and one consideration that I think we'll touch on a few times in this conversation is once a prospect or a player exhausts their prospect eligibility, it can be tougher to justify rostering

them for a significant period of time. And our boy Miranda here is of course well over that with six hundred and thirty five played appearances already in the Major League. So why does Miranda still hold some value for you and interest even though he's maybe falling in the graces of the wider community, just kind of comparing some other young mlbers that might be kind of in the same boat as Miranda as far as just maybe not producing the way that you wanted to.

I do feel like dynasty owners, Miranda owners are sticking with it more so than that. And you're right, and you bring up a great point, very format dependent, right, You're in a you know, RAS thirty. I can't keep a bunch of bench mlbers that aren't going to produce for me right off the bat. Other leagues I can, right, other leagues that I can, so, of course, yeah, and that obviously plays

into the raster percentages. But Miranda, overall, I just still think there's a combo of hit and power, and I'm that sold can't work really well in the bigs. Digging around on him some I couldn't find anything obvious pointing towards him getting like pitched differently, or struggling with specific pitches or locations or things like trying to answer the question like it did MLB pitching figure him out

sort of thing. Yeah, I was on Savot looking at all the zone stuff, and not that I'm some great scholar at all that, but to me, I couldn't find anything pointing to anything like that. I think last year he just he didn't smash good pitches like he historically has. I think it just seemed like, and I watched a good bit of Miranda, just seemed like he wasn't squaring the ball up as well, not hitting it as

hard as he has in the past. I'm on the like he wasn't physically well in twenty twenty three train or perhaps he was struggling a little bit and then the physical stuff just really impeded him later on. I know the Twins might have kind of a crowded infield. Got a little bit less crowded with

your voice now, Yeah, but early August of twenty twenty one. Now, Miranda wasn't like an official B side selection, but he very much was a B side type in twenty twenty one, and I had gotten a bit vocal about him and watched three hundred of his plate appearances and shared some video and kept notes and all the bats and all that stuff, right, blah blah blah. But I thought this was kind of fun, Matt, if

you don't mind appeasing me. But you know, after you write that piece and all people are going to want to know, well, where do you rank him? Right? So I offered this up. Tell me what you think today. Two and a half years later. At that time, there was a lot of talk about like Jordan Walker, right, how good is Jordan Walker? He was just getting his pro career going. Would I rather

have a share of Miranda over Jordan Walker? I would take the risk of missing out on super elite Fantasy upside, which is very rare for a four category player to achieve. Anyways, and happened to the Miranda time machine. If Walker got to where Miranda is right now, we'd feel pretty good about that. So why not speed up the process? Is it close? Yes? What I advise it probably not, would I do it? Probably would I rather Miranda over Rushman, Spencer Toorklsin, Marco Luciano, Bobby Witt or

Jasin Dominguez. No way, I'm not that crazy. Would I rather him over Justin Fascu, Pedro Leone, Tristan Cassis, Herbert Perez, Josh Young, Jordan Grossens, Nick Gonzales, Josh Lowe, Helio Ramis, Ramos, Nick Prato, Michael Bush, Hunter, Bishop yep Am. I nervous about saying so with a few of these guys yet, but only a few.

Would I rather him over John Kenzie, Noel Or Elvis Martinez, Gabriel Moreno, without a doubt over Riley Green. No, but I would admire anyone with the intestinal fortitude to do so over Tyler Saderstrom, Zach Vien, Robert Hassel, Francisco Alvarez. I said, come on, how people can compare these things? Could mind you? These were guys just coming out of high school or teenagers at the time. It's beyond my brain. But I'll say

a few of them. I was really nervous when I wrote that, Matt, because this was the first time that I ever like we talked about a few episodes was kind of thing thinking that this guy way outside of the top one hundred was a better gamble than a lot of top one hundreds written now, I think some of those I'd much rather have Miranda over some of them I might have missed a little bit, like Gabriel Moreno or Tristan Cassas. But I wanted to say I wanted to bring that up because it falls in

line a little bit with their conversation from a few weeks ago. And I think it gives some perspective too, with some of these players that were going to talk about how do you evaluate how do you value a guy who's in the bigs getting an opportunity versus the top one hundred prospect, Like a lot of those names aren't really doing much for us two and a half years later

and have fallen way out of favor. Right, Maybe a lot of those names are though I would say either currently performing or the now fantasy studs. Right. You know, this is in the same context of Bobby Witt Junior and even Jordan Walker, who started the comparison with Jordan Roker just had his rookie year and it was better than Miranda's best season. He's backed up.

I think some of that performance too. So I would say, like a lot of the guys that you listed, even in that second section of ones that you would definitely take him over, or or that you wouldn't recommend it, but you probably personally would would try to make that bet. That's a set of players that I think was pretty solid, Like there's quite quite a lot of guys that still have a lot of dynasty value in there. Right Well, the guy the guys that I said that I would take him over

were Fascu, Pedro, Leon, Tristan Cassas. That's a mess. I don't like that one. Hebberd Perez. So you know, Fascu Leone Perez. I'm fine with Miranda over him right now. Josh On Nah, not a good call. Jordan Gross gross hands, Yeah, I'm not interested. Nick Gonzalez, not interested. Josh Low, We'll see Helio Ramos, No thanks, Nick Prato, no thanks, Michael Bush, we'll see Hunter Bishop No, John Kenzie Noel Yeah, yeah, Brelds Martinez na Mareno. That

was a bad call my part. But so it's like maybe half of that list who were to your point, those were hot names in twenty twenty one is a top one hundred, top fifty guys, right right, which one speaks to I think we should have a little bit of humility even when we talk about the top guys, like we aren't sure who's gonna like be an actual performer for fantasy teams. Again, separating that from your true on field talent where defense matters and all of that stuff. That's still a pretty good

hit rate of like about half of those guys. I think you could say Miranda has already returned more value than some of those are ever likely to. And I think you know, the part that I'm interested in is like what is it that you still see? Because I also have some opinions about Miranda, But I'm curious what it is you still see in kind of backing your your horse still a couple of years down the line. I just I've watched a lot of Miranda, So this isn't like I don't have like number weighing

stuff. Well, he doesn't strike out a lot, he makes a lot of contact. He makes a lot of good contact. I mean, I'm just talking about his career. I'm not talking about twenty twenty three per se. He's got power into all fields, just a very quality bet. I think there's a combination of hit and contact and power that you don't see every day. If you look at his rookie year, Like I was pretty happy

with his rookie year. He didn't start off blazing, but had he had a really hot six weeks from like August or like halfway through July to end of August or something of that. Then he tailed off a little bit. You look at his rookie year numbers. I don't think there's any any problems with that. I think a fairly popular, you know, sort of corner infield gamble, bench bat and redraft after last year. But of course it didn't go didn't go well in twenty twenty three. But like I was saying,

I think that's I'm calling it just kind of a waste year. I think injury was a big part of that. Like I said, I tried to dig around and find, you know, some things that pitchers may have adjusted towards him, and I couldn't really come up with anything. All in all, I think it was just he just didn't hit the ball as hard. He didn't make his quality of contact. Even I did break down and look at like you know, meatballs in the middle of the zone. He's

a fantastic first ball fastball hitter. If you're pitching against him, you don't you don't want to miss on a fastball the first pitch, because he will destroy it more times than that. And he wasn't last year. So I don't know how to explain that. I can't explain that I'd be buying Miranda if I could, if I didn't already have him everywhere. But of course your format matters. But what do you what do you got in mat What

are your Miranda opinions? He's the kind of bat that I generally am drawn to, both for some of the reasons that you said, Like he doesn't strike out very often, hits the ball reasonably hard, and has the sort of profile that I think sometimes can get under valued, sort of like Ty France before he became a popular breakout pick or Mark Canna, you know, without the without the smidge of speed, and not quite as good an OBP, but similar in that a little bit undervalued for what he does, which

is make contact well, hit the ball pretty hard. And the other thing that I like is that he's generally a pretty good his spray his launch angles are good, like he does a pretty good job keeping the ball off the ground, hitting line drives like he's an over twenty percent guy at every stop I think that he's ever been at and he'll hit some fly balls, and I like that both aesthetically. I think that kind of hitter is fun to watch. It was certainly the kind of hitter that I aspired to be when

I played, And I like that. And I'm with you that a lot of his performance last year was you can chalk it up to injury, a rough year that compounded on itself. My concern is that his path to playing time is going to be hard. Yeah, they just got rid of Polanco, but he's not suiting up at second base. He's first base, third

base only probably. I think at third base they've got some guy named Royce Lewis who decided that he's going to make good on his prospect pedigree last year, and I'm not sure that there's going to be a ton of at bats to go around here now. Also, I think the upside here is a

little bit limited. He hits the ball pretty hard, but it's not an exit velocity monster who's just playing time away from popping thirty homers like his upside, you know, really good year is probably going to be a twenty homer bat and at the corners like that's tough to stomach. I think I take the over well, I mean, health was standing. I think you can

pop more home runs than twenty. I don't know. I mean the only time that he had that kind of pace was in twenty twenty one, and looking kind of under the hood, his homer to flyball ratio was astronomical, something like that. Only someone like Aaron Judge could actually sixteen or Shoheo Tani who both hits the ball really freaking hard and hits the ball in the air.

That's not Miranda. Most of the time, his home run to flyball ratio is below ten percent, So I think even ten percent is probably generous for him. And so you just do some math and like, he's got to hit a lot of fly balls, more than he ever has. What was his fall his rookie year eleven percent? What was it the year before? Thirty percent? Okay, that's a lot, so I mean, and

he also had some babeb fortune in his rookie year. Again, I think he probably earned some of that certainly not to the extent that he had. He was running like three sixty three seventy babbups in his twenty twenty one year at double A and HI, so those are like pretty high and you obviously should progress those. And he was only a little bit on the positive side of the babet monster for his rookie year and then was obviously way on the

other side last year. But it also came with his highest ground ball rates ever. So I think that actually points to what you were saying, that maybe he is or was injured and that was impacting him and so something about his swing change in twenty twenty three. So I expect a bounce back personally, Like I'm with you on that. I just think the bounce back looks like a one oh five ish WRC plus at maybe third, maybe some first in limited playing time. And that's that's hard for me to be like really

excited about it. With the caveat that, if say Roy Lewis gets hurt, do they play Miranda there? Do they decide brooks Lee is ready? But I've also got Kyle Farmer who can play decent defense, and I don't know what they decide to do as far as giving at bats, so he's not like an injury away from four hundred plate appearances in the second latter two

thirds of the year. So that's the other part. That's like a lot of these guys that we you know, shared some names, like they're fun ones that if an injury happens in front of him, maybe something happens. But this is one that's like, I'm not sure the upside on it, you know. Yeah, that's frir, Like I understand his NFBC ADP, Like that makes sense, you know. I got to my guy, Luke plays a lot of that format, and I always ask him about the ends

of his drafts. He's told me, like his last pick, like take someone who just might be, you know, someone who gets hot in camp or might get some run right away, because you want somebody that you're gonna drop in something like that for me, or if you are in a thirty team or and like I think Miranda is a fantastic bench bat. But moving on from him, let's let's get let's get into some maybe even more questionable folks. What do you got? Man came about this a little bit differently

at least to start with, But I have a one, and I think might be an interesting segue from talking about Miranda, because this is just, I think one of the most fascinating players in all of baseball, and his NFBC Average Draft Physician rank is just eight seven picks behind Miranda's. It's the Big Masher Joey g mister Gallo newly of your Washington Nationals, and Joey Gallo has been a fascinating case for me four years. The three true outcome poster

boy. The man strikes out, walks, or hits a home run in basically every bat that he does. He has, I believe, on multiple occasions, hit more home runs than he's hit singles in a year. One two oh three years he has had more home runs than he's had singles, and two other years he was off by two. So the man is just

a monster. His eggs and velos are through the roof. He has probably the highest raw and game power that you can give in a game because he sells out for fly balls and he just absolutely scalds the ball when he makes contact. But one part of the three true outcomes is strikeouts, and our boy Joey is the strikeout king. It also walks a lot he's got a pretty good eye. His problems run from being able to make contact. It's not like he's chasing a ton. Even in his bad years, he's still

walking thirteen percent of the time, just a hair under. And in his good years he put up some crazy walk rates, like in the Juan Soto level eighteen percent, seventeen and a half percent, sixteen point seven percent, and even last year when even I couldn't really defend the season that he had

very well, he walked fourteen point five percent of the time. So there's a compelling eye here and incredible power that he gets to, which like I'm a big preacher of that, Like have you smoked the but you hit it into the ground? I kind of don't care, Like, all right, that's it doesn't do much for you unless you have something else to bring to the table. But Gallo is sort of the platonic ideal of the new analytic

driven OBP and power is the way to go in the game. But he clearly he shows why it's hard to make this work at the very very tail end of the bad part of the strikeout spectrum, because ah Man, the last four years have not been very good, starting in twenty twenty, he ran an eighty four WRC plus. That's not that good for corner outfield or he plays decent defense, but for our sake, like if you're hitting one

eighty one, that's not going to play in an NFBC format. His next year, twenty twenty one, he had that half of a season that was great for Texas, and then he got traded to the Yankees and was bad for the rest of that the way. He then was with the Yankees again for the first half of twenty twenty two and an eighty six WRC plush again with a one sixty batting average, and then last year it was barely better at a one seventy seven batting average. So batting average just sink terrible.

But I like picks like this late in a draft because it is bankable power. You want sort of high variants late in a draft like this so that ross we can make some moves. If your team had an injury to one of your studs that you like, you're an Austin Riley gets hurt and he was going to be your path to forty homers out of your corner slot or your third base slot, and he's hurt for part of the year, you're missing that production that you kind of banked and you've built your team around.

So having guys at the ends of the drafts that index towards a particular skill is undervalued, I think in a lot of these ways. And Joey Gallo, like at picks average draft pick ranks six ZHO four. That's a guy that you know you're gonna be able to plug in at your util slot or in favorable matchups and make up the at least some of the home runs that you might have expected to deal with in losing an Austin Riley. Gallo definitely not a prospect, not even a post type sleeper at this point. He's

years removed from the promise that he showed early on. He's probably not getting the full playing time in Washington, but I think he's going to play kind of a lot and that should lead to some gaudy home run in RBI totals, just know that it's going to come with a batting average sink. So Joey Gallo, I think is one that he's still a little bit I can't personally quit him, Like I keep coming back to this as a guy that I want on my bench in a deeper league, a guy that I might

play in a power focus league and just wear the striker. He's it. I think he's a great if you're in a daily league, A great bench guy, right, yep. He always playing today. It gets me a home run. I mean that can go a long way, and that's a lot like the next guy that I was going to talk about it think it could be similar. But before we move on, have you ever had the pleasure of owning Joey Gallo? I don't believe so, No, Yeah,

it is. It is a I have four years, like I just he's always like a last pick in the draft, like I'm going to shore up my homers because you know, runs, homers, and RBI are the highest correlated of the Rodo categories. And so I like that and some balls or something like that. I think it's the best balls I've taken them. Yeah, which I think he's nice for that format. Yeah, for sure. And a couple of the leagues that I plan really reward power. Even in

his crappy years, he's still an above replacement level guy. But I don't know. I'm super curious to see how it goes in Washington. It's not like Minnesota is a bad place for him. I don't think, like it's not like the park is really dependent on him, But it's more about playing time and can he rain in the strikeouts down to like thirty six percent instead

of forty one percent. I don't know, we'll see. I love him, I wish nothing the best, And I just as a side note, I really appreciated his honest answers and thoughtful self assessment of his time in New York, Like he owned up that it sucked getting booed and he hated the feeling of not being able to perform for the Yankees, and I just I appreciate that about a guy that'll he'll admit the challenges and own up to him and show some emotion about it. I've sort of rooted for an extra since

then. And also I think I've had him on a team for like six years. So yeah, this guy, this next guy I want to talk about. There's there's some similarity in that, Like Emmanuel Valdez is like a

he's like a home run specialist. But he was our twenty twenty two Going into twenty twenty two, Astros B side selection obviously he's with the Red Sox now also right in the same range, like in between Miranda and Gallo Is and Memmo. ADP rank for mine is just this last month. I don't know if you're looking at total, just this last month, he's ADP is six eighty seven with a minpick of four thirty eight and a max pick of

seven forty one. And he's rostered in nineteen percent of fan tracks. Leagues rostered less than Joel Incespides, DJ Hers, Jefferson, Rojas, Bedel Bruhan, Gen Carlos, Laura Connor, Prilot, Eric Brown, Lonnie White, and then future White Sox superstar Jacob Gonzales. By the way, did you see how dirty the White Sox did Jacob Gonzalez? Oh yeah, dude, what is what was that was so bad? Like I think he's for the trolling. I don't know. Somebody must have gone rogue because they had to

have known how bad that looked. Yeah, that was brutal. It's almost it's almost like they want to feed the hate. If you're listening, you haven't seen it. The White Sox Twitter account posted like the future is coming or like all this stuff, and then Jacob gonzeal and like his horrible stats from from last year and and a video of him grounding out to second. Yeah, like, yeah, that was the well, it was an RBI. It was an RBI, Matt. But AnyWho, So and Manuel Valdez,

he debuted last year. He got in one hundred and forty nine played appearances, so he just barely graduated prospect status. The role for this year is up in the air, right but I would say he's probably the way that it sits right now. I think at worst, he's probably their tenth bat. Von Grissom, another B sider back in the day, is gonna

probably play second. I think Valdez could be a great DH. He'll probably slot Yoshida in a DHA fair amount too, So that means Whiler a Bray you the other astra that came over in that trade is gonna play it. We'll see doll back maybe. I think they'll probably rotate that that slot. But I do think Valdez gets a bunch of those at bats for sure. Yeah, I think there's some PLAYD appearances coming for bell Does this year.

One hundred and forty nine played appearances. Last year, he had six home runs and he's still five bases last year, Like coming up in the minors, he was never a big base stealer. Five or six on a year was was probably his max. He doesn't walk too much five point four percent. He strike struck out twenty five percent of the time, which I think

that was pretty close to his minor league strikeout. Right. Yeah, he was like twenty to twenty two percent in the uppers, which is fine, especially if you're going to specialize in hitting home runs like our guy does here. I mean he was he was above average MLB production one o two WRC plus. Now that this is wild to me, and this is a great example of how there could be lies and stats and metrics. What do you think Bell does? His average exit velocity was last year? Last year?

I'm gonna say eighty seven eighty seven and a half, oh, which is pretty yes, which is yeah, pretty good? Guess which is U twenty eighth percentile? Right? Not great? Not great? What do you think is max CD was one thirteen one oh seven point one ninth percentile? Now, what do you think is flyball exivelocity? Was your tone makes me think it's lower one o two flyball exivelocity was ninety one point eight, which is ninety one, which is ninety one percentile. Then so he goes, yeah,

his average is twenty eighth percentile, his max is ninth percentile. But when he hits it in the air, he hits it harder than ninety one percent of hitters. It's interesting, right, I don't know if any other hitters to do that. I tried to look for some, but I didn't really see anything comparable to that. Interesting what the minor leagues. He came to be the mL or the Astros B side because he led their leather organization in home runs, and you know classic Astros farm system, they didn't have

any good prospects. Right. He hit twenty seven home runs between high and Double A in twenty twenty one. He hits the ball really hard when he hits it in the air, right, But of course, bit of the bugaboo is that he hit the ball on the ground too much, But that historically hasn't really been the case for him. In the uppers, it was like thirty two to thirty five percent ground ball, right, which is great.

He could probably pull the ball a bit more, at least according to his Triple A and Double a numbers, but end of the day, Emmanuel Veldez, I think there's still a lot to like about him offensively, of course, defensively having a home getting full run very much in question. But this sort of tier of player, this demographic, this lack of popularity, Like, I think there's still some meat on the bone here, I think, And like I said, I think it's super interesting. Like daily player.

Imagine he'd be cheap in dfs or whatever, which I want to play more of, but I just don't have don't have the time. I have never never been able to get into dfs personally. I do like this pick. I've been in this fan as well, might be because of you, like originally highlighting him in the astrosystem. He I do think last year was a bit of an anomaly on his batted ball profile in his first taste of MLB, and he still was a league average bat. I think there's a

little more upside in there. It's not crazy to see him getting a fair amount of playing time this year, whether he goes on a heater and they plug him into DH more often, an injury in their outfield and maybe they shuffle around some of those guys in Yoshida goes back to playing more left field.

I could see that happening. There's the thing I like about this one is that I think there are a lot of paths to seeing three hundred, four hundred, five hundred played appearances here, and especially if the Red Sox really as they kind of seem to be the worst team in the AL East, maybe things start to go south for them and they do want to see what all their young guys have as they sell off the like Trevor Story or somebody else, you know, like the previous adminished tration brought in. So

I like this one a lot. I think that this is a sneaky upside play is pretty hard to find this late in a draft. Just some of the batted ball stuff. There's a lot more to like than to dislike. Solid contact percentage, He's ninety first percentile barrel percentage, she was sixty ninth percentile. It's funny. I always kind of thought found him to be kind of aggressive watching him coming up in the miners, and his swing percentage is

below twenty eight percentile below MLB average. Doesn't swing out of the zone too much thirty one point two percent. I don't know there's nothing here that like glares to me red flags that like other than the you know, hit the ball on the ground too much, which, like we said, hasn't been historically. So yeah, and still and again that's something that we've talked about

before, but that is a pretty sticky skill. So when you see one season that is out of alignment of what he's done at every stop before that, I mean, what was his grundball rate last year, like ten percent higher than it had been at basically any stop before that, that's weird.

Like that doesn't happen, and very often so when it does, like you might mentally adjust back and say, like I think maybe he's a thirty nine percent thirty eight percent ground ball guy, and with the kind of power that he does display, especially on fly balls, like you could dream on the twenty five homers if he had full playing time. So I love this one. This is a great pick. And like, I don't know if you know much about this metric, Matt, but I'm trying to learn a little

bit more. But ideal plate appearance. What an ideal plate appearance is, yeah, Matt, So an ideal plate appearance is barrels plus solid solid contact plus flares and burners divided by total pas. I'd be lying of as I totally wrap my head around that. But he was eightieth percentile in his small well sample size, so at point being that that's from his major league sample. Yeah, yeah, oh interesting, Okay, this is a guy who's not a prospect anymore, was never a very popular prospect, but I think

MLB opportunity there for him and some fantasy appeal. I like it. Well, it just so happens. I didn't even look at the ADP the NFBC ADP sheet when I first was doing this exercise, but it just so happens that this is another guy that is right in this same range, just a

few picks down from in my mal Valdez is my next guy that I wanted to talk about. Twenty twenty one, I was just starting to get into the deep dynasty leagues. I had played keeper leagues for years and redraft leagues for years, but it was my first foray into a deep dynasty league, and one of my main rivals that year in this startup league that we did happened to draft a guy that at the time I had never heard of. I don't think he was ever on any prospect lists of note, nobody was

really that intrigued. He played for a team that wasn't on the up and up, especially at the time right after the coronavirus pandemic had wiped out a bunch of the minor league seasons at twenty twenty and delayed in twenty one. This guy just kind of came out of nowhere to me, appeared and then was my nemesis. Like he just kept performing and kept pushing my dynasty team for my main rival in my division. His name's a Kiel Badou. That

twenty twenty one season, his rookie year was really phenomenal. Hit two fifty nine, three thirty four, thirty six good for a one ow eight WRC plus that again came out of nowhere for Detroit, hit thirteen homers and had eighteen steals. The reason that this particularly galled me was this is the kind

of production that I love. My favorite builds for roto leagues is to have most of your guys be pretty good at everything, So like your twenty homer ten steel bats, that's like my whole rosters usually because those balanced category productions a provide you a good floor in all of the categories and you can see whose performance over and under who's over and under performing, and then you can plug in later in the season the sort of specialist bats like Joey Gallop like

I talked about before, and bad was doing that. He was doing providing like second round value and if you pro rated it out to a full season instead of his four hundred and sixty one played appearances that year. So I was like, this guy's magic. I need him, I want him, I gotta have him. So I drafted him in a like shallow keeper league that I'd had the next year, thinking he was gonna be a late round play that was gonna he wasn't probably gonna be quite as good as he was

before, and it all credited. He went from a one o eight WRC plus all the way down to sixty four, two oh four, two eighty nine, two sixty nine. The power dried up, he got caught a lot more on the bases, and it was just not pretty top to bottom. And then last year was a lot of the same. They still gave him quite a bit of run and he was better, but he was still

significantly below average, to the tune of eleven homers. And fourteen steels still some value, balanced categorical value, but not that magic flash in the pan of his rookie year. And I'm here to tell you I'm not giving up. I know the outfield situation in Detroit is a little bit crowded, and I think he's not even projected to be on their opening day twenty five man

roster. He still has options, and he's in the minor leagues. Obviously has blown past his prospect eligibility, but he's still just twenty five this coming season. I still believe there's balanced category production in here when he plays, and he's a good defender too, so I don't think they would hesitate to bring him up to plug a hole for injury, whether that's Riley Green or Parker Meadows. He can play center field still carry Carpenter Mark Can, I

think is their everyday left fielder right now. And Mark is a really versatile player, so he can move around as well. So I see a world where maybe the second half of the year comes and do gets called up to play center field, because maybe Parker Meadows doesn't adjust the way that people are sort of expecting and Badoo is crushing it in the minors after settling back down

into what I think is a really really talented player. So I love Badoo at this draft cost for both the fact that, like he's a guy that if there's an injury ahead of him, he might see all of the at back. It's unlikely that Detroit's going to go out and like spend a bunch of prospect capital to plug a hole in their outfield when they've got Badu sitting

there, who has performed before. Looking at his production, like the projection systems are maybe a little bit down on the batting average, but the speed is still there. There's still power there, And I don't think it's crazy to buy Zips, who's the high man on the Badoo production this year, and say that in two thirds playing time he could have eleven homers, fifteen or sixteen steals and two forty three three twenty three, three ninety nine.

I'm triple slash, which for free basically the very last pick, even in a really deep redraft. That's that's pretty nice. So I'm rooting for him to recapture that flash in the pan. I think he still has the skills there, the opportunity, even though it's a not great ballpark to hit in. I think that bad could seize it. Doesn't he have just like awful splits. I thought I saw that once or something. I think they aren't great, but it's still I don't know, it's still probably too small a

sample to just like rite it up as as terrible. Yeah, that's I think that he's okay at both. That's that that's my recollection. But again I don't have that right in front of me. He was a Rule five selection, right, yeah, from the Twins. Yeah, yeah, he was pretty he was. He came out smoking. But you're still you're still believe, you're still bullish. All right, I'm gonna go with my next guy. Former another former B side selection twenty twenty one Giant selection, Casey

Schmidt. Nice Well, of course, debuted last year, got a decent run, had two hundred and seventy seven plate appearances in started off pretty hot, but it did not last. He hit two oh six with a two point fifty five on base percentage and slugged three twenty four for a WRC plus of fifty nine. Not great, Bob, but he's yeah, he's not getting drafted in NFBC. He's rostered in twenty percent of fan tracks leagues. Now, Mat, I get how in some formats what have you, But

there's some things here that are just just wrong. Man. He's rostered lesson Eduardo Quintaro. Who is Eduardo Quintaro, some seventeen sixteen year old Dominican nine Dodgers prospect. I mean, yeah, oh well, then he's gotta be he's really good. He's rostered less than Forrest Whitley, Martirollaike. He's rostered lesson Natro Orbitt, Vivas, Ricardo Cabrera, Christian Hernandez of the Cubs.

Your guy, Griff McGary, you, Maddox Bruns, Reese Hines, some pop up cub dude, who Hayden mcgeary, Jackson, Rutledge, Cole Wilcox. I'm not with that. Matt Casey Schmidt is like, so up my alley as a hitter what I like to see. But now it's time to mature a little bit, Casey. We've got to chase pitches less. Very ultra aggressive type of hitter, right, You love that kind of guy though

ultra aggressive and doesn't strike out too much. He just chases too much and doesn't make quite hard enough of contact yet s K percentage last year was twenty three and a half percent. That's fine, walked four point seven percent. He hits it in the air sixty second percentile. Ground balls average forty eight percentile. He pulls it forty one point four percent of the time. He could stand to pull that a little bit more. But tons of opposite field

eighty five percent tile. He definitely pulled the ball more in the uppers. In the miners is out of the zone. Swing percentage was forty one percent. That is not great. MLB average is thirty one percent. He's got decent contact skills. Just he's ninety fifth percentile swing percentage. You know who else is ninety fifth percentile swing percentage in the majors like Corey Sear is the really Yeah, his swing percentage was fifty five point one percent. Wow,

that surprises me. I guess he's very aggressive in the zone. That's his calling card, right right, that's the difference the right. He doesn't swing out of the zone, right right. You know, we're talking about sort of my prototype, the an ultimate, and he hits the ball way harder than than Schmidt. But my point is this sort of approach the hitting can can definitely can work. You know, Seedar is one of the best hitters in baseball if you don't chase right, but you get And it's not that

it's not that it led to an overwhelming amount of strikeouts for Schmidt. It's just that it led to a lot of bad contact. Hm. I'm not going to write off Schmidt yet after two hundred and some plate appearances. If you can get a bit more disciplined, I think. I think there's a decent amount of pop and average here. We know that he's fantastic defensively, shouldn't have problem getting every day run if he can settle down on the chase.

Like Scar strikes out sixteen percent of the time, Schmid was twenty four percent of the time. Yeah, it's an interesting profile, and like you said, the glove should help provide at least some floor and I think he's going to keep getting some opportunities for sure. You just know, I've got some skepticism about the ultra aggressive kind of hitters and major leaguer pitchers are just so good like they can they can exploit that. So it's and that's a

tough thing to change. That chase at the major league level is a tough ask of any young hitter. It's true, but Secar got better from when he was younger too. And I'm not like Schmidt is the next Seger. It's just Nate just said Schmidt is the next Cory Seeger. He chases less with two strikes, which is nice, but it's still like sixteenth percentile. But you know, we talked about like, well, he's twenty four years

old and twenty seven. The magical twenty seven year old season slash seven hundred to eight hundred plate appearances is probably kind of when we can say, all right, this is this is definitely who he is. Right, We're not close to that. So I'm on board with Schmidt for at least one more season. All Right, all right, I can see it, dude, Segars ninety fifth percentile home run, the fly ball, right, that guy's goody good. That's the to me that that's that's my kind of hitter.

Matt. I'm going to see his strike and I'm going to hit it hard. I don't I don't care what the count is. He's a freak. Yeah, he's so good, Schmidt, Like, are you skilled enough to be that good? Like you're you're gonna find out. It's like just like the bull approach to hitting. Yeah, he's he's so fun to watch too, Like just I'm gonna rarely swing out of the zone. When it's in the zone, I'm definitely gonna swing and I'm just gonna make a crapload of

contact. That's that's awesome. Yep. Cory Seger good. That's the hard hitting b side analysis that people come to work for. I think, Yeah, Corey Seeger top three shortstop in all of baseball. He's pretty good good, Like like, in comparison Schmid's home run, the fly ball rates seven point one percent. Yeah, and like some of that, some of that you can chalk up to ballpark. Some of that is noise always like it's a noisy stat. But it's still Corey Seeger is is. Uh, he's

earned the benefit of the doubt. He's pretty good at that. They hit the ball in the air of the same exact amount last year percentage was. Cory Seeger is one of those ones that, like I keep citing to some of the prospecting folks and I'm like, you want to see what a good batted ball profile looks like. For some of that's relatively aggressive it should look something like this one to one ground battle fly ball ratio. Like that's the

good stuff. And four out of the last five years that is exactly what Corey Seeger has done. Matt zip's projections. How come they always have everyone's like play it appearances and games way more than everybody else. So the way that ZIP says that, and I actually think this is a really useful thing to know and a really useful barometer. So what zip's baseline is doing is saying, irrespective of team context, irrespective of any other considerations, how often

should this player be playing? So that's why, like if you look at the ZIPS teams pages or if you're just looking on their zip's projection, what you're seeing is what dan Zeborski's computer says, this player, in a neutral environment, neutral team, where there's no playing time competition, this is the optimal rate for this player to play next year. Gotcha? And so then if you look at the ZIPS depth charts, that's using zips's ratios sort of

the underlying numbers and then applying the playing time consideration. So what roster resource case Martinez and people who put that together what they think the share or the apportionment of at bats to go around for that particular team. Zip says Schmidt for one hundred and twenty three games this year, ten home runs, not great ratios, Zip says Manuel vel does Zips likes him anue abouez. I think one hundred and fourteen games, sixteen home runs, six stolen bases,

that's pretty bullish. I think two fifty three, three, twenty two, four thirty six. Yeah, Zips isn't super confident in Schmidt going forward either, Like sometimes you see a kind of downer projection for this upcoming year, especially for a young guy just breaking in, but there's real upside down the line, and I don't think Zips is seeing that. He thinks that is kind of who he is. To have him as a league average hitter in one on one WRC plus, Yeah, and I think that might be peak

because in two years they're twenty twenty six. Projections that just came out have him as a seventy seven WRC plus player, one hundred and forty seventh on their projected shortstops in yah, Zip Zip your lips man. Well, since we're talking about the Zips sort of future forecasting, I'm gonna take a foray

out of the kind of B side territory and talk just briefly about a guy that kind of broke out last year, but I think is worth highlighting for this tool. So Danziborsi, every year after he finishes the team by team zips breaks down releases and he's the only one to do this to the public. He releases his three year projections so you can scroll through on fan tracks what his projection system thinks players are going to do next year twenty four,

twenty twenty five, and twenty twenty six. And I really like doing this to see who of these young guys that maybe aren't prospects anymore, or often are prospects, who are the ones that the computer is really buying and projects to keep getting better Because so much of the other projecting systems you see a snapshot, you see one year, and then even the folks that say they do multi year projections, like I think they're buying large less rigorous than what

the Zimborsi does. And so it's an awesome tool to look at, like, maybe this guy isn't going to be that good this year, but keep an eye on him, or try and trade for him this year. If you're in a league that trades because the upside is enormous and the computer already is expecting better. So there's a few of these guys that I highlighted to

at least mention. One of them is Jack Sowinski, and he's getting popped pretty high after his real breakout performance last year where he hit twenty six homers stole thirteen bags to the tune of a one to twelve WRC plus, kind of came out of nowhere. He was like a known prospect, that guy

sort of like power overhit, but nobody was really that excited about. And he hit well in his kind of half season sample in twenty twenty two, and then he backed it up and was basically just better across the board. Even last year strikeout rate ticked up a little bit over thirty percent, which you know is a sort of danger zone to me, but he's the kind of guy that has the power and played approach to make that work. I

thought this was really interesting. So he's going two hundred and thirty fourth in NFBCS. The actual average is a little different than that, but that's his like average rank, like the number we're using here, so pretty high, but Zips thinks that in a couple of years he's gonna be the fourteenth best outfielder. Now, again this was for just overall offensive production, and he

walks a lot and hits a lot of homers. So your average leagues, your your roto leagues that use average, you're gonna want to regress that a bit. But I was actually super surprised that it was so bullish. And he is still young. He's going into his age twenty five season, but that's projecting quite a bit of growth still, and it basically says to me that Zips is going to be projecting him as a thirty homer fifteen steel bat for the next like four years, five years maybe, and that's huge,

even if he's sort of a batting average risk with the strikeout rate. So he's one that, like I'll tell you, I've actively tried to trade for in a few leagues recently, and the cost is probably less than it should be given his really bright future. And I think some of this is sort of like he wasn't really a well regarded prospect and with the strikeout rate is worrisome, but everything else about the profile, especially in any kind of OBP

league, is going to crank homers. He's fast enough to steal bags. And I actually think the Pirates might have a cornerstone right field type here. That is, he's going to get six hundred plate appearances a year for the foreseeable future. Pretty bullish on him and Zips is two. That's one to like keep an eye out for. It's maybe not so much b siding, but it's like this guy might be an elite asset here pretty soon and people aren't respecting that. I guess like you can, you can get in a

little early. I know Jeff Ponce has long been a Sawinsky guy. Brought him up many years ago. To me, it was now look out for him, and he wasn't wrong. He was not He was not. Briefly about Jordan Diaz nice he made my list too, so that that's good right on our twenty twenty two A selection debuted the end of twenty twenty two, but last season he got in three hundred and forty four played appearances, hit

ten home runs, struck out twenty two percent of the time, walked five and a half percent of the time, one thirty one iso A three fifty eight slug A WRC plus of seventy nine s nota getting drafted in NFBC, and he's rostered in twenty percent of fan tracks leagues, which is less than Judd Fabian, less than Jose Rodriguez, less than a couple four of them of the White Sox one sorry Popeye, less than Blake Walters and JR.

Ritchie. Diaz is a classic guy that like, if he hit the ball out in front and hit in the air and more, he'd probably be a pretty enticing fantasy git here. But he doesn't do that. He hits the ball hard, but into the grounds the field too much. But man, I will say though, I mean I watched him when he was like a twenty year old. The wats a good amount of him and he was just wearing out right center field, right just line drives, they're just peppering it.

He does pull the ball, I think more than he did back then. Yeah, when he was in the uppers, it was a pretty even split. Like at Triple A in twenty twenty two he was thirty one percent pull, thirty percent center, thirty seven percent OPO. Pretty similar in Double A as well, though he did have more pull when he was at the lower levels. All right there, you go, eyeballs lie sometimes yeah, but it wouldn't have been when you were watching him because it was all ricky

ball stuff. So by the time he was in full season ball, he pulled in a little bit more. By the time he's in high A, double A, triple A, he was he had some of that. I know, like coming up, you know people asking, well, well, the slap hitter is like, he hits the ball hard, he's sixty third percentile max CD seventy seven percentile average, Like he's got pop seeing him hit some pulled tanks, and you know he's got great contact skills. I don't

think he chases too much. Well, yeah, he chased quite a bit. He swung out of the zone forty one percent of the time last year. That's not great. But he doesn't strike out a ton. Do you think a guy like this can hit the ball out in front more? Do you think that's an adjustment that hitters can make. He's still quite young. It is an adjustment that people can make. And he's got a lot of the kind of fundamental tools that I don't know that you want to bat on.

He's a skilled defender. He hits the ball pretty hard, especially for his size, Like you know, people knock him verticizing, Like, I

don't care. He hits the ball plenty hard enough. It's just that he's trying to hit everything, and a little bit of selectivity might help, right, Like I think some of his problem because I watched him a decent bit last year in Triple A. In his MLB time, he gets caught chasing stuff that he has no business trying to hit a ball that's out of his own and often what you'll see is he'll hit that ball pretty hard, but those are the ones that are on the ground, or those are the ones

that he does hit soft or medium, and those are not productive balls. I wonder if in a different organization I might feel more bullish. But I don't know if Oakland has done much with this, like with this particular problem of helping to change someone's batted ball spray or their swing decisions, Like I can't think of anybody who they meaningfully changed a lot in the recent history. So usually pretty slow to either give credit or blame to an organization and have

that reflect on the player. Because there are lots of other places that Diaz could go and learn how to do that. But it does seem like this is not really a thing that is an organizational wide philosophy. Now, I would love for Diaz to get with someone like Brent Rooker, who does a lot of the things well that Diaz doesn't, and I think is cerebral enough to understand the difference. Maybe he can learn a little bit from somebody like that, because I do like a lot of the stuff that Diaz brings to

the table. I think there is potential here if he makes some of those meaningful changes. But as you know, a guy that hits the ball in the ground this much, he's got to have superlative barrel control and usually good plate discipline as well to make it work. And Diaz doesn't have either of those things. So you're asking him to do two things that are hard to change at the same time in an organization that doesn't make that a big priority.

I'm worried that it's never going to come together in that way. It's interesting to me, though, because like watching him like he never he didn't strike me as a guy who chased in the minors very often too. His K percentages were like fifteen percent jumped up to twenty four in the majors and

backed by good swinging strike rates. But I think that that's his issue, Like as a twenty two year old, Chase is not the same as Whiff, Right, It's just that he's swinging at stuff that he can't really damage, right, Like, that's that's his problem because he's a guy with good barrel control, good contact, good exit velocities, but bad swing decisions and bad barrel path So he's even when he's hitting those balls and hitting them hard,

they're going on the ground that at best is a single and often turns into an out. And that is just that kills you at the big league level when guys can really pick it. Organizations know where to pitch, you know where to position their fielders, and those ground balls that helped sustain three seventy three fifty babbitbs in the minor leagues turn into two fifty eight in the

major leagues. And again that's probably like even on the low side, like you would expect it to be a little bit better than that in the majors next year. But it's like you're asking him to change two kind of fundamental things about himself as a hitter, and that's a hard bet to make all right, we shall see. I think playing time opportunity is there for him this year. Yeah, yeah. And he's a fun he's a fun hitter. I do like a lack of a lot about him, and I'm rooting

for him. Maybe we can get at Brent Rooker on Twitter, he's active there and see if he can bring along our boy. It's interesting when you watch some of these guys. You know, obviously, like we said, he doesn't pull the ball, hits the ball in the air, but you know, folks be like, oh, no power. It's like, man, I was like drawn to him initially because he'd let the ball travel on him and he would lace line drives to right center field walls, and You're just like, no, no, no, no, this guy has pop.

It's just it's just not shaped right. I'm curious, and this is complete opposite in a lot of ways and a new Mariner. I'm curious, what do you think about dominic canzone because you want you want to talk about what I mean, his pool percentage fifty four point six percent, ninety ninth

percentile, his fly ball rate, flyball rate and the sixtieth percentile forty percent almost and you know his ground ball rate also just a hair above forty percent. Like I like that, Like Ken Zone is the kind of guy that I preach about, right, Like this is the he's optimizing. He's trying to hit homers. He hits the ball hard kind of though, but he chases even more than the other guys that we've been talking about. Yeah,

his O swing percentage was forty three percent. Yeah, that's too high, too high, And I think that's reflected in how people pitched him too. He saw a lot of off speed, but yet a K percentage that was quite low, seventeen point six percent. Yeah, but he ran I think slightly higher carrates in the miners than that. I think we can expect something above twenty in the upper In the uppers he was nineteen point two percent, twenty point three percent, thirteen point two percent. Never real bad, yeah,

yeah, definitely, never really bad. And I think that's partly due to to, like you said, his aggressiveness that he'll chase and he can't strike down if you don't get the two strikes right. And he's the kind of guy that I think is trying to hit the ball a lot. It

hits the ball pretty hard and hits the ball at good launch angles. I'm definitely personally colored by his time with the Mariners last year, where he was not good seventy nine WRC plus, chased at everything, hit some homers, but he was just like two fifty eight OBP is unplayable, that doesn't work. So my enthusiasm for him is definitely colored by that. Though he might be an interesting compliment in the outfield that they have now they're remade nickel red

paper clip traded outfield that Jerry and Justin Hollander put together. He might get protected. I don't know if his splits were bad in particular, but I think he might get the chance to succeed in slightly more favorable matchups With Mitch Hanniger in the fold now as well, they'll spell each other, I bet. I think they'll rotate in some of their younger guys in the outfield as

well. The semi vets, Hagrity and more will get some time out there spelling him, so they might ease him in a bit more and as a late power play. I like it. I like it, just know that it might come with some bad average years and certainly lower OBP as well. Talking about a Lefty who's and we're only he's only one hundred and eighty two played appearances into his major league career. Here he's another guy in Matt who flyball exit velocity ninety first percentile. Yeah, and you see it. You

see it watching him, like the way that he swings. He is really trying to hit fly balls and hit him hard. And I love that. I think that that's my favorite thing about about him, and I wish him well, not just because I'm a fan of the team, but it seems like he's tried to remake himself in that way, like I'm going to optimize who I am. You know, he's not a top of the scale exit dilo guy. It's plus I think. Yeah, I think it's plus exit

velo just across the board. But he's really trying to make the most of those fly balls and then, oh sorry, he's rastered in twenty four percent of leagues less. He's rastered less than Trey Sweeney and Landon Nat, the same as Cole Carrig and Justice big Bie. And I think it's like it's

a good point too. I probably in my teams where I'm competing, I'm probably not going to use a roster spot on can Zone this year because of the playing time concerns, because of some of the risks that we've highlighted. But if I'm a rebuilding team, I'm trying to concentrate my prospects to the highest possible prospects. So like, trade off my veterans and good players for those very tippy top, prettiest of pretty boys. But then my major league

roster is going to be filled with guys like this. Exactly if he does figure it out and does get full playing time and pops twenty five homers as a twenty six year old, I mean that's gold. Like either he's a contributing piece to your next team or competing team with an injury has an outfield need and they're like, wow, that can Zone is running with this job. Who has him? Oh, it's this team that I can actually line up with in trade. So I think that's part of the message here is

that your rebuilding roster should not be just minor leaguers. Absolutely should have this kind of guy. That was a total Yeah, that was the total premise of that top one hundred. I did like, if you're rebuilding, load up on these guys instead of your back of the top one hundred guys that you got to pay so much because in the aggregate you're probably going to get just as much or more production out of these types. Then you are fringy?

Are they everyday players still allowed to prove prospects and not just production but also utility? Like if you are rostering, who's who's a good example of this, Like I'm so good at for getting people once they're bad. I'm trying to think that's also a part of this. Who was the top one hundred guy like a year ago or two years ago, like back into the top one hundred that maybe people were after as a rebuilding team. You're trying

to collect all of the prospect capital that you can. You're paying for Cole Henry and that Liberator and Giraldo Perdomo. These guys are on the back half of top one hundreds from two years ago and have little to no value anymore. Even the ones that have made the majors have been like not very good.

And instead of rostering those guys, holding them in your lineups or in your minors until they debut and are middling, I think it's much more valuable for you to get the kinds of guys that Nate and I are highlighting and then trade them, like you can't trade to a contending team that back of

a top one hundred prospect in the middle of the season. You need those assets that you can take the gamble on their playing time, you can take the gamble on them improving their stock and their utility to the contending teams, and then take their future value from the contending teams because they're over a barrel. They're competing for a playoff spot for a championship, and they need that

incremental production to cover their injuries. And I know, having been in that situation, I've overpaid at the trade deadline and lived to regret it because I needed that present production from a team that had a bounce back candidate and could roster them, and they made out really well. Like one of my worst trades in for sure, that I've ever made was I in a thirty teamer traded for Tyler O'Neil when I had some outfield injuries and the owner smartly knew

that I had very few places that I could go for producing outfielders. That year, I think this was twenty twenty one, I sold Eduard Julian and Spencer Steer and Nick Nastrini in that deal. I think so like two guys who are now major league stars and basically since that deal have been better than Tyler O'Neil. But I needed to make that move, or thought I needed to make that move at the time because I needed Tyler O'Neil's production in twenty

twenty one and neither the other two were up yet. That's the kind of deal that rebuilding That's the kind of approach that really good rebuilding teams take. Not can I hoard all of the DSL, all of the Complex League, all of the A ball high upside prospects? Yeah, definitely, I agree. I think that's a lesson that a lot of new dynasty owners maybe learn the hard way. Do you know who's rostered at the same rate. Who

I think, just from a skills wise skills wise is far better than can Zone is Elec Burlison. Oh yeah, only roster in twenty four percent of leagues, So that's again, that's less than trace, ween I, Land and Knack. I know playing time concerns, but four hundred Major league played appearances for Burlison been below average. Hitter eighty five WRC plus over that time

has only hit two thirty seven ninety five. But I mean, we know that Burlison's Burlison's bat has been somewhat famous, I think coming up through college, and he was pretty good in the minors. I don't know, you think you still have some hope for Burleson. I think I think I do. Yeah, I do too. I like a lot of what he does, again is a low strikeout slugger, Like he's got some power and does

a good job avoiding strikeouts. I think I like a lot of guys that we've talked about here, he's one who doesn't optimize his batt ball profile and that's holding him back, especially since that he does have a harder, a tighter line to walk right with his defensive limitations, and this is one where the real world implication of that I think matter a little bit. But as a hitter, I think he's got a lot of a lot to really really like. He's not the most fit guy in the world, but he is

surprisingly way more athletic than you would think for his size. And I know I saw a little bit of best shape of your life season. But the Cardinals pretty much told him, if you're going to survive here, you have to be able to play the outfield. Evidently he's lost weight and all that stuff this season. There's some stuff like, you know, he doesn't pull the ball. He pulls the ball, fine, he doesn't hit it in the air enough or hasn't. But I think there's a lot of batted ball

stuff, in contact stuff in here that has taken steps forward. I think in swing decision stuff. You know, a lot of guys that I kind of dug into that was kind of you know, this roster raid and this demographic of major leaguer Like, there's a lot of stuff You're like, Okay, this is not getting better. This is not getting better. I can't make any sort of case why I might be interested in you still, at least from like a numbers standpoint, right, I think there's reason for some

optimism with Burlison. Still there's some you know, young guy Chase, it's not the worst that we've talked about. Chase is eighteen percentile O swing. It's not great. The zone contact stuff is you know, top of the chart. Contact percentage is top of the chart. Last year. Well, the projections kind of like him from a ratio standpoint to some extent, hitting two seventy three twenties obps for forty slug this year. You know, it's

above league average stuff. And to be honest, it's not crazy just to prefer him. Or see the scenario in which he's out hitting Brendan Donovan and Dylan Carlson and you know, probably can't play defense as well as Carlson,

and I think the organization likes Donovan a bit more. But I also see a path for Burlson to take their share, like to you know, get four hundred played appearances in a really good lineup, and again, he probably hit towards the back of that lineup, and it might be DH spelling out somebody in left field or something. But that's that's another one where they're are

some skills here. Maybe the slimming down helps him play defense a bit better, and maybe there's some positive knock on effects to his offense as well. Because you're more familiar with this, Matt, how bad is a fangrass defensive What run score is though you called it how bad is negative eleven point four very very bad, very bad, very bad, Okay, especially given his

playing time. So because it's accounting statistic like accruing eleven negative eleven point four defensive runs, so so bad minus eleven also like per inning basis, that's near the bottom of the scale for run value, and those things are noisy and they can change. But just for context, like minus eleven is very bad for a half season or so. I mean, his major league numbers have not been super We're hot, right, so what what in there?

How do how do these projection systems like okay, yeah, okay, this wasn't so great. This was twenty twenty two was pretty bad in a fifty three very small plate appearance sample, three hundred and forty seven. The next year wasn't too great. Blow But now this year, yeah, this year, we think he's going to be an above average hitter. Like what makes

that happen? In projections? I have annoided a couple of things one last year as using that as your baseline for what their future is going to be is pretty poor as a predictor because there's so much noise in any given year.

Even a solid sample like three hundred and forty seven plate appearances for the Cardinals last year, that's a decent sample, and so we know something about his skills and how they translate to the major leagues, But you look at some of the other things about his line and with you know, eighty ninety mile an hour average exit velocity one ten point six max. The guy ran a two sixty one babbit and that's with twenty two percent line drives and forty

one percent ground balls. Even for someone as slow as Barlson, that's unusual. So you would expect him probably to run a league average or slightly above, so you know, three hundred to three ten maybe, given all of the shape of his production. Even just doing that, you turn that eighty

nine WRC plus into probably league average. So like when I look at his production, I think a lot of the change, a lot of the difference between what his production was last year and what the projections say for next year. A lot of that delta I think is driven by his babbit. That's probably the biggest change. The other one would be that because he hits the ball hard and his bray like he does hit fly balls, you would expect

more homers than he had. So he only had an eight point two hummer per fly ball rate and in triple A the year before he ran seventeen point two. That's pretty high, So that's like higher than you might expect given his power production, but eight point two is really low. So just as a guess, I think it's going to be higher next year. And I'm not sure if they show that in any of the projection that doesn't look like they do, but I'm guessing that that's another piece of what some of the

projection systems are seeing. Is like, yeah, he's been pretty underwhelming in the major leagues. Even some of the minor league stuff is like more good than great, But the way that he's underperformed in the major leagues is sort of obvious, right, Like it's easy to see why you should expect better than he has been so far. Thanks. Sure, I wanted to touch on a couple of guys, but unfortunately they all have particular issues except one.

So I've got one of my best friends baseball fan played with him in college. He was all on the Kyle Lewis train, and he debuted for the Marriors and had that incredible run in twenty twenty and won the I guess it is like the end of twenty nineteen he was incredible, and then twenty twenty he was incredible rookie of the Year. There used to be a little bit of a Kyle Lewis Louis Robert debate in some circles that I was a

part of. Yeah, and Kyle Lewis is a guy that I really wanted to just throw my hat in for it, as like a guy who showed true power, like would hit fly balls and hit him hard and performed, and then it was just injuries, Like injuries just piled up and ruined a bunch of seasons for him. And if given a DH job or a part time left field, part time DH job, that he might be a really useful kind of late flyer bat. But he still doesn't have a job,

I don't think after giving a DFA by the Diamondbacks to offseason. And also, I mean I was like skeptical at the time, like I was the one saying he wasn't that good, even as he was just crushing to the tune of two years of one hundred and twenty seven plus WRC plus A lot of that was like, you know, unsustainable babbubs, unsustainable homer for homer per fly ball ratios, and he's got strikeout concerns and can't play defense anymore. There's a lot not to like about him, and the easiest one is

like, he doesn't have a job, nobody believes in him currently. But I wanted to give him a hat tip because there are some skills there that are hard to replicate, and he's that sort of classic post hype sleeper. Maybe he latches on somewhere, he's still just twenty eight. I don't know. I want to give the guy some credit. The other one that I really really wanted to argue for is Austin Meadows, but I think his mental health concerns have maybe his career might be over, like actually over. But

he's another one that I really loved the overall shape of the production. There was a little bit of speed, a lot of power, good obp, maybe a touch too much strikeout, but I was in. I thought that he was a really really fun hitter and a real talent and it's been a shame to see that fade away due to his real mental health concerns. And I think again, as a twenty eight year old, he might be just completely done. He doesn't have a contract, so that's a that's a bummer.

But like again, maybe a flyer in a deep league is if he catches on somewhere and has had some help and gets his mind right. But yeah, that's another one that I wanted to advocate for, but I couldn't couldn't bring myself to do it. So the one that I'm gonna go for is not much better, but shares a lot in common. He's twenty seven rather than twenty eight, has showed flashes of top of the scale power and real strikeout concerns. He might not have a job. Actually, no,

I'm looking it up. No, he doesn't have a job. He's a free agent, so also also a free agent always shares a lot and come

with these guys, it's kesten Hera. Oh he's not with anybody. Nope, So travel back, travel back to twenty nineteen with me. He debuts in the middle of the season and after torching the Triple A. Torching Triple A, he hit nineteen homers in two hundred and forty three plate appearances in Triple A. Came up in I think it was July with Milwaukee hit another

nineteen hommers. So the dude hit thirty eight homers in his first in like that, twenty nineteen season, struck out a lot, but still ran a one thirty nine WRC plus short season twenty twenty at the major league level, he played I think the full year with the Brewers and was underwhelming, like took a step back, struck out more, walked less, hit a few fewer homers, but still was fine. Thirteen hommers in two hundred and forty

six played appearances. That's still really good power. Then maybe didn't have quite as much Babbitt luck, but still was smoking the ball. And then he just keeped striking out more and more in Triple A in twenty twenty one, thirty three point five percent strikeout rate in the majors, in twenty twenty one,

thirty nine percent strikeout rate. Twenty twenty two, he goes back to Triple A again, where's his strikeout rate to twenty five percent gets two hundred and sixty six plate appearances in the major league's forty one point seven strikeout percent. That's Joey Gallo bad version level, and he doesn't quite have the power that Joey Gallo does. So tenable, then untenable, then unplayable, And in twenty twenty three he had just a cup of coffee on the complex.

I think as he was rehabbing, but in Triple A again, he scald at the ball twenty three homers over three hundred and sixty seven plate appearances, a threeho eight three ninety five five sixty five triple slash, good for a one thirty seven WSC plus in the Eastern League and a manageable dare say like league average strikeout rate of twenty four point five percent, and the Brewers let him walk. Now, the Brewers do have quite a few outfielders. They

do generally shy away from this kind of a profile. It's not their favorite,

it seems from an organizational philosophy standpoint, the high strikeout, high homer output, it's not really their bugaboo. But it's weird. They didn't give him a job. I don't think he was, like, maybe he was an arb one at the time. This is gonna be his first arbitration year or something. Yeah, I think this would have been his first ar beer. He just elected free agency. They didn't tender him a contract. Nobody's picked him up, So I might be way out on a limb here.

It looked to me like the last couple of seasons he actually was raining in his his strikeout concerns, was still hitting the ball hard enough and in batted ball profile that was going to lead to a lot of home runs. And you know, he's not a defend he's not a good defender, and so that first base profile with this kind of power and strikeout concerns, like, yeah, that's not the thing in the most demand. But man, I just kind of was convinced that, like, somebody should give him a job.

Somebody should let him put up four and fifty played appearances this year and see what he can do. And I still think that that is likely true. And if they do, he's gonna hit twenty five homers. So he's another one that like more than the other guys I mentioned, I think he is likely to get a job from somebody, and if they give him some run, you know it's the Nationals or A's or somebody with a lot of playing time to go around. Like I could see him having a really solid

under the radar season that you know, people didn't see coming. But he's still a potent hitter even with the strikeouts. If that happens, no one but you saw that coming. Mat Yeah, he's you know, like down in the seven hundreds, I think in NFBC, So somebody's drafting him, Like, it's not nobody. Teams ten leagues have drafted guessing Hira, so

you know, it's not nobody. It's interesting though, right, there was a time you know that we're in first year player draft season that like Otani versus Kestenhira or yep, Ryce lewis, like which, how are you ordering

those at the top of your draft? Good remember that sometimes, I think, yeah, it is, And it's good to remember that for a present day context too, when you look at some of the high homer guys in the miners and you might dream on them, like, you know, Trey Cabbage, like he just got picked up by the Astros today, and he's a guy that's like this, like a lot of power, but a lot

of strikeouts, and maybe Houston can fix some of those issues. And I think I saw some chatter that maybe people are like now into Trey Cabbage, but Cabbage is like Heira, you know, and this guy comes basically free so thinking thinking about those other kinds of guys. And I heard the Baseball America guys talking about Colaso and somebody else was talking about some of the college first baseman with really big exit velocities, and they mentioned Kemp Alderman from last

year's draft. Is like huge exit velocity guy about big strikeouts, like and first base only like this is the profile, Like you got to hit a ton of homers for this profile to work, and with no defensive value, like teams do care about that. So it is a really really tight path you got to walk to make it work. And here is an example of that. Yeah, we didn't even met we had our first B side or get traded this year. Matto in that cabbage thing, right, Carlos Espinosa.

Oh, I didn't realize he was the return. Yeah he's off to the Angels. Great, Yeah, I know, right, goes from Houston to LA. Speaking of Houston, I wanted to talk about Jake Myers. We were talking about Canada hitter hit the ball in the air more, Can they pull it more? Here's the case of someone who's done that, and it's it's kind of wild to me too, if you're thinking about thirty teen leagues, we have Myers is the Astros starting center fielder at least to start

the season. They've said that and he's going to be at least early in the season, every day at centerfielder. And he's rostered in twelve percent of leagues, which is wild to me. You know who's rastered more than Jake Myers, Troy Johnson, Troy Johnston, Chase Midrid, Allen Linens, Jeter Downs. Uh, oh, rostered more than the Jake Myers. What was

it last season? Last couple of seasons. I have a couple of friends who are Astros fans and followed them closely, and I asked him, like you like more Myers and McCormick. It was always Myers, which is interesting. We saw, we saw what McCormick did last year, Right, McCormick did stuff last year that he had never done coming up in the minor leagues, hitting for power like he did. And I'm just a little bit curious looking at meyers batter ball stuff and contact things like it's all on the up

and up. He's six hundred and sixty four played appearances into his career, twenty seven years old. He's hit seventeen home runs, stolen ten bases.

Strikeout rate has been a touch under thirty, but uh, he improved his strikeout route, his strikeout rate eight points last year to a you know, doable twenty five point eight percent, while improving his walk rate by eight percent, which was almost as good as his best walk rate, which I believe was in twenty twenty one in Triple A. His fly ball percentage jumped to thirty eight point seven percent, which is the most that's been by a lot, uh not since I A ball, I think, and close to his

twenty twenty one Triple A numbers when he hit sixteen home runs in the PCL. Forty five percent pool raid has been the most since he was in Double A. I get like the evs aren't real high or anything like that, but they're trending up. And his fastball respectable ninety one miles per hour, which is above average. I mean, he's kind of average evs. But

and you know that that short porch. I'm just wondering, Uh, I don't know, are we going to see like a like a peak season here for mister Myers and he's gonna get full time run I mean, if I'm in a thirty teen league, and especially if you're if you play specific outfield like center field's tough, like I have no problem roster and Myers to play

some center field. It's an interesting shout, and a lot of what you're saying seems to suggest there might be a little bit more like Chaz last ye he had never hit more than fourteen home runs in the season, I don't think, and then he popped twenty two. Weird how the Astros can get that to happen. But like, just just an interesting guy to me that I think there are some things trending in the right direction. Yeah, that

that is interesting. I think obviously McCormick hits the ball a little bit harder, but it's not that much. Yeah, I wonder, Yeah, that might be you might be onto something there. That's an interesting. Astros always seem to have one of these guys to kind of do something like this too. I don't know. I'm just oneing. And Myers does play pretty good outfield, like that's yeah, that's what keeps him on the field too, Right, He's better than McCormick defensively, definitely, So I don't know.

It might be sneaky sneak here and nobody, nobody's on them if Myers is McCormick of twenty twenty four, Like I'm saying, it's gonna happen, but I wouldn't be surprised. You think they try and push one of their young outfitters Melting or lower Feto up And sure, I'm sure they'll. I'm sure they'll get some young guy some run at some point, but I kind of

think it's going to be Quincy Hamilton before those guys. So low Braffedo folks, I don't know if it's a week, two weeks, a month, he's kind of ahead of them, just up the ladder wise, and I think he's done enough to earn a shot, but just a look, you know, so I know La Brafito Mountain owners probably don't want to hear that, but that would just be ugh guest, at least for fantasy's sake. You'd kind of hope that Myers steals more like he's pretty fast, he plays

good defense, but I don't know he should have propencated a run. I might get a little more excited about it, but yeah, yeah, an interesting shout ATC's got him for one hundred games, two thirty five, three hundred OVP three eighty two. I mean nothing, nothing real exciting, nine home runs, six stolen bases, But I don't know. If it was much better than that, I wouldn't be that surprised. I also kind of find Kyle isbel a little bit interesting. Another potential starting every day outfielder.

I mean, that's how roster resource has it right now. Lefty twenty six years old. He's got six hundred and seventy four Major League played appearances. He's rostered in only sixteen percent of league's. He's rostered less than your guy, Chancel Luise. He's rastered less than Jordan Groshan's. He's rastered less than

Ace Lacey. Well was I can't miss step King, Oh, I know, I know as well as interesting to me because like I think there might be some good contact stuff with a little bit of a home run potential. Then maybe he hasn't quite fully blossomed. But he's hit the ball in the air more as a big leader, but it hasn't pulled it as much. He's got a plus hard hit percentage, he's got a ninety fifth percentile zone contact, but he's become more selective, has swung less and as he's done

that, like his his slug has has dropped. Like he's cut the k rates down a lot. But he's not doing as much damage. I'm kind of wondering, let my guy go here and see what happens. Stop trying to make him more of a Matt guy and make him more Let him be more of that he was earlier on in his career and in the minors when

he did more damage with the bat. Pretty good defensively, I think, as far as I can tell, So I don't know, it just kind of an interesting I'm not going to win you any leagues or anything like that, but if you're in a deeper league and you needed like a starting outfielder, see how spring goes and what have you. But kind of Isabel's still a little bit interesting to me, all right. He had some under the red Ar hype a couple of years ago and didn't quite pay off. So

this is a good reminder to watch this kind of guy. Another sort of similar one in the Kansas City system Tied Gentry, just on the prospect side. He had a lot of hype coming into this year, and I think had a rough first half of the year. But I still kind of buy what he's got as sort of like average production across the board that leads to production that's sort of greater than some of its parts. So Kansas City has

a couple interesting guys like that. Isbell's first introduction to Pro Bowl was only eighty three played appearances. But I mean, he's a guy who's caught his chase rate good chunk like eight percent since he was you know, first and to coming into the league. So I think with some seasoning, some guys can clean some of that up. I don't think that's craziness, all right. A lot of the guys that I've talked about so far tonight index toward

the power profile, certainly an exciting one. There's lots of guys that hit homers but strike out a ton and can't make that profile work for one reason or another. But there's still plenty that you can add late in a draft to, like I said, help make up for homers at the end of the year. But it's a little bit harder to make up steals, even

in the higher steel world in which we live now. So I wanted to highlight a couple of guys, one of which who I think is pretty well known, and the other of which I bet, even in your deep leagues probably is a non entity or potentially cheap to acquire. So the first guy that I wanted to touch on is Joey Cowboy, as we affectionately called him

at my Mariners group chat. Jose cabierro sly traded to the Tampa Bay Rays, is a pesky second base shortstop tight who has a preternatural feel for getting hit by pitches using the pitch clock, and also is a really good bass steeler. He doesn't have top of the skill speed, but he's very good

at actually swiping bases. Last year he was like twenty seventh in the Majors in steels in half of the playing time of most of the guys on this list a third like the only other guy with his few played appearances as him it had a similar rate of steals was Jake McCarthy, noted speedster. So he's another guy that I think flies under the radar a bit. Again, not a lot of thump there. He went from one questionable playing time situation

to another. Even though shortstop apparently is his for at least the start of the year. I don't think Taylor Walls is going to be out all the year. And in Carson Williams and a Selba Spasave, there's a couple of guys coming up behind that might push him for playing time. So it's not like this is going to be a sixty seal guy because he's going to lock into six hundred plate appearances next year. But I think he's going to keep

this kind of steel rate and because that's a part of his game. He that's just how he plays is he's fast, and he wants to accrue every little bit of value that he can. So Jose Cabierro is another guy that I think is being underdrafted a little bit, maybe partly because I'm looking at overall draft position and it might have ticked up since the trade and since the news that he's at least going to start I think the year as the Rays

starting shortstop. But he's one to pencil in later on in your drafts as somebody who might contribute in a couple of categories, not power, and he may not have a full time job, but the Yeah, he was one that I had on my list here too. This is a guy who like literally barely late or like what four years mm hm. His minor league track record was very little. I remember watching a broadcast of the Mariners and they were talking about how they always really liked his skill set, he just couldn't

stay on the field. We're talking like two hundred and fifty played appearances since like COVID before the major leagues last year. Yeah, so like in part, I'm like, man, how much do we really know about this who this guy is as a hitter as a whole. But yeah, I mean I think you're you're super right about the stolen bases, and I think playing time there and we know what happens when the Rays get their hands on some of these types, they whether it be a platoon situation or what have you,

kind of optimize their production. His exsitveilos as a whole are below average. He's a little bit in that Essak Prete's mold where he pulls the absolute piss out of the fly balls that he hits, just pulls them down the line like, and he hits quite a few fly balls. He has a little bit less power, I think than Pretis. But I also think he was a little unlucky with the homers last year, both playing in seatle and I just baseline was a little bit unlucky to only run a five percent home

run to flyball ratio. I don't think it's crazy to expect that to be close to ten percent next year, and that could mean the difference between five homers and twelve in not full playing time. So he's another one like the Power, might play a little bit better than you think if it all breaks right for him. So just with a little bit of flyball walk he might he might hit some more home than you think too, just a testament to

the guy's skill set. He played in fifty two games the COVID break the COVID nine season, then walked into the major leagues and was a ninety six WRC plus guy. And to be fair, a lot of that was a really great start to his season, and he did tail off significantly towards the end of the year as the league adjusted to him. But I also think some of that was just some bad luck catching up with him as well, And he's probably in between those two things. So I just really like him.

He's a fun player to watch, and those twelve Tampa fans that exists, you're going to enjoy his game style. I think he's somebody that makes you like him just with the way he plays, and he's somebody that I enjoyed watching for the Mariners last year. Yeah, that's a good calu, all right. And the other guy, funnally has a much longer track record than Caballero did. But I've just never heard anybody talk about this guy.

And he's he's going into his age thirty one season. So like again, this is not a prospect of any stripe die Ron Blanco. Can you even name what team he plays for? The Royals? Nailed it. Nate's a deep league guy, he knows. But this skill set, this is somebody that I came across in one of my medium deep leagues when I really needed some stolen bases. Part way through the year I'd lost one of my main stolen based threat. Blanco was getting some run over the summer for the Royals.

Ended up right behind Cabairo I think, at twenty eighth overall in steels last season in even less playing time. So the guy had one hundred and thirty eight played appearances and stole twenty four bases in TRIPLEA, where he spent most of the year. In two hundred and eight plate appearances, he's still forty seven bases. That's top of the scale in stealing skill. I'd say the guys that led the major leagues last year or minor leagues last year,

Chandler Simpson and Victor Scott. They I think were ninety five and ninety four respectively, or ninety six and ninety five, something like that. But in like five hundred some plate appearances, in way less than half of the plate appearances, he got to half of their steel total. This is a real skill for Blanco. He is I think, not even that good of a defender. I mean, it's maybe above average defender in the outfield, not

any power to speak of or to write home about. He hit fourteen homers in twenty twenty two and that was his high water mark, so it's not nothing. I don't know. I think just because he's thirty going on thirty one that nobody cares. But this in roto leagues, especially deeper leagues, how are you not excited about this? It's not like the Royals are. I have a fully stacked you know, sent them and forget him trio of

vutfielders out there. I kind of think Blanco's gonna get another three hundred plate appearances next year. Maybe maybe not quite that many, but I don't think it would be crazy to see it, and if he did, like probably another thirty forty seals. So Blanco's another one again, deep league roto focused because you're not going to get a whole lot else out of the profile. But I was so impressed with the production, and as a as a category

specialist, he's somebody. He's a name to file away. Talking about the Rays New Rays. Richie Pelacios is kind of interesting to me. Mm hmmm

hm. Drafted in the third round by the Guardians, kind of a classic Cleveland sort of hitter, and then of course he was with the Cardinals and then they did it again. They traded an outfielder away. But Placios ninety

seven percentile in strikeouts in a good way. It's lots of ground balls, but he also puts it in the air slightly above league average, and he popped more home runs than he had ever before in twenty twenty three, hit six and he did that with like a plus twenty percent home run to fly ball rate, which is probably unsustainable considering like his hard hit rate is bottom

of the barrel. This five sixteen slug far exceeded is minor league anything he did in the minors, and he ran like a two thirty four babbit. It's very passive. It doesn't really like walk a lot. It's only two hundred and twenty five played appearances into his major league career, and like what roster resource has him like platooning right now? Chance for some playing time? Okay, man, he was like ninety one WRC plus last year. I

don't know eye contact. I'm not going to strike out. I don't think he's gonna steal a ton of bases, but maybe maybe he's gonna do a little bit more damage to the meets that eye. I haven't watched a ton of plus, but I do think that there's a real hitter here, both in giving the Rays credence in they're pretty good at picking these guys and pretty good at maximizing, so they're going to put them in situations to succeed, and some decent components here, I would say for fantasy, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure, like it's going to be a big boost in any one particular category. So it's not like you can count on him to chip in steels or chip in homers or even average. I'm not sure he's going to run super high averages or on base clips. But he's he's an interesting hitter, and I like him like slab hitter, but but like that or something. I don't know. His max cvs six percentile, his average is twenty fifth percentile, and then his flyball ev is seventy fourth percentile. The

Rays do like that, right, like optimize your flyballs. Yeah, I mean this strikeout rate last year was ten point eight percent. Maybe a really high contact, good eye guy who's kind of learned how to hit for a little bit of power. I don't know. It's kind of interesting, yeah, definitely. I don't know. I wasn't a big like Stuart Fairchild guy when he was a prospect and he was like a second round pick, but kind of maybe a little interesting obp and speed guy hits too many ground balls,

and another guy doesn't necessarily hit the ball like real hard or anything like that, but he's got a good like home run to fly ball rate. Just kind of wondering if there's maybe a little bit of a of a sneaky sort of like power speed chipping combo here eighty six percentile solid contact, fifty one percentile barrels. He doesn't make like a lot of weak contact. I

don't know. I just wonder if we're just like maybe a smidge off of like some calibration here of him maybe being a little bit more excited, Like strikehouts were always kind of like a big thing for me. He's good defensively. His kra was as high as thirty eight percent in the miners, but he's cut them way down to be fair. His high k rates were mostly in small samples. Was more. Yeah, he was more like mid to low twenties guy for most of his minor league career. Oh okay, his

exivelocity stuff isn't real great. But if we if you maximize it like you can't, like we've seen, you know, fifteen twenty home run types guys that hit the ball this this weekly, if you will, like some of the stuff with Fairchild is a little bit like Tyro Estrada who hit fourteen home runs last year. I think he hit the ball even like softer than Fairchild in that ballpark. Fangraft says him is potentially platuning as well, maybe a

little bit of an interesting guy, who could you know. I know that they are kind of jammed up in the infield and talking about playing steer in the outfield and stuff like, you know, if they want some more defense on some days, like a fairchild is probably their guy. And some chipping counting stats that could be a little interesting. I could see it digging around. Not a guy that I paid a lot of attention to before, but Josh H. Smith of the Rangers, now I know we're now talking about

guys that are rostered less than some of our b sides, Matt. But smith Man, he now, I know playing time with the Rangers is going to be tough to get on the field. Fangrafts as him as like a bench guy. But there's some interesting looking contact skills with a guy who's like

maximizing probably what he has home run wise, talking like seventy eight percentile zone contact. Guy who doesn't chase eighty six percentile chase his exit velocities, I mean thirty third percentile, thirty second forty nine percent. So, but he pulls the ball at a forty seven percent clip, hits it in the air thirty six point six percent of the time, which is sixty six percentile. Maybe a decent little hitter here, and he plays all over the infield.

Kind of an interesting bad He's not very old hasn't played a whole lot in the bigs. I don't know, maybe just a guy who was like, oh, I think you might be better than than I thought you were. All right, Well, that's Matt and I getting dirty in the bigs or trying to. I don't know. Hopefully we maybe touched on a few guys that might be helpful in some of your leagues. We talk out loud and talk some of these guys out, you know how it is. Every season

there's somebody that quote comes from nowhere and improves. But these are some guys that I think aren't aren't quite totally written off, still have some potential make some improvements, have made some improvements a little off from more exciting production in the majors. Absolutely, I don't know what we're going to talk about next time. I actually, man, I kind of want to talk about some pitching. We can do that. We've we've talked about my hitters for a

little bit. Yeah, there's there's some arms that are similar like this as far as age and lack of popularity, and you know, arms were probably I mean, they're always more exciting, but the potential of taking the potential for taking a big jump might be there more so for for some arms and some bats. But we also got a new toy that I've been playing a lot with. I don't know if you have been, but maybe we'll talk

about some of that next time too, maybe. Yeah, I mean I figured you want to because Reedvon Scooter is a damn star there and what are you looking at? It's pretty impressive, man. But there. You can follow me along on Twitter at Pitching Specs, catch Matt in the Dynasty, dugout Discord chatting away and we're getting closer to the season, Matt, I can't wait, talking about so close. Yeah, finally start to get into some some drafts, some dispersal drafts, some fypds like oh, we're so

close. All right, Well, let Chicago Farmer take us out. We'll talk to you next time. Do well. Peace. It was an hour riding to his head. You have it down first with the lump boneyus face, and on the very next pitch he up and stole second face with greatst speed. He wasn't born. He had the dirty Yes uniform.