Episode 22: MLB B-Side Arms and Things

Not five miles an hour riding to his head. You hop it down first with the lump bonius face, and on the very next pitch he up and stole second face with gretest be he wasn't born he had? Yes, all right. Welcome to episode twenty two of the Prospect B Sides podcast. I am Nate Handy joining me again the rook Matt, how are you. How's

it going, Nate? I'm happy, man. We're like, we're still in the bigs for another week at least, you know, they say, getting to the bigs is one thing, but sticking around are a few weeks in a row. I know, right, I kind of have a feeling it'll be short lived, though. I think we'll be getting sent back down

even maybe before the end of this episode. I least. If it was weird being in the majors and not talking about guys with an infinitesimal chance to make it out of the minor leagues, I know, right, like how to pronounce everyone's name really well and everything like it. It was odd. But last week, if you didn't listen, we we did some MLB B siding, talked about some dats that don't seem quite popular but might have some

fantasy utility for us in different formats and what have you. And we're going to do a little bit of the same tonight, but with some pictures. We plan on talking about a new toy that a friend of ours made for

us, and some interesting things that we took away from that. I wanted to mention last week we had talked about Miranda, right and then of course the twins signed Santana like the day that I think I finally got this thing edited in out, So like we had discussed discussed getting played, appearances might have gotten just as an infielder left the situation, they added another. So that adds another little wrinkle to the Miranda discussion. But I still have hope

also too. When we were talking about Jacob Myers Jake Myers, I had mentioned how I thought Quincy Hamilton might be the next guy up. I had totally forgotten Matt about our twenty twenty one Astros B side selection. Kind of the Corona is on, he's on the forty man, so I would put him as the next young outfielder that might get a look there if Myers can't take it. We know Corona plays a really good center field. So I

just wanted to mention those couple of things and correct myself there. But yeah, there was a trade this week between one of your favorite clubs and your favorite club. Well, I think we're kind of in there. We're kind of in the middle of like a separation, probably leading towards divorce sort of thing. Well, I was curious what your thoughts were on that one. I had a lot of thoughts about the Santos Burroa and Delo trade. It's the pick sixty nine trade, But that is a nice in that way.

I do think that Jerry and Justin for the Mariners to put on and Hollider, they've done a pretty good job putting a roster together with the ownership limitations

that were seemingly surprised imposed on them after the season this year. And while that is a huge bummer in and of itself, like having this incredible core of pictures Julio plus some other star quality major leaguers and an obviously flawed roster that you could throw some money at and turn into a perennial, you know, five year window kind of contender, it's a bummer that ownership didn't want to do that, and wanted to kind of cheap it out, but Jerry's

mostly done a pretty good job around the edges. And I do like this trade in the if they think that Santos is going to help them this year and next, they sold a little bit of future value to do that, right, Like the White Sox are gonna win this trade on net present war, right, Like, even though it's a five year contract, he's a reliever. Maybe he's good for a year or two, But this is like if Santos earns the Mariners five war over the next five years, Like,

that's probably pretty good. And I think that Barrowa has a chance to be exactly the same as Santos, Like that's a non zero chance. Deluxe is probably like a fringe fourth replacement platoon outfielder. It'll accrue some more. And then Pick sixty nine is like a pretty good pick, not just the pick itself, but the like million plus that it adds to their bonus pool. So all that said, for that to be a good pick, that implies

that the White Sox do something worthwhile with it. Though, well, setting that aside, you know they've got a new regime, right, maybe they'll the guy from the office in the Hall is going to do a better job. They do not have a new regime. I think that it's I like what it says about the Mariners actually do realize that they I've got a really good team and they are trying as best they can to put the best product on the field. And Santos is an interesting case in and of himself.

Is like a guy that was a fireballer reliever, a guy that, like I think I never would have liked as a prospect coming up, just because he had control issues and was a reliever, and those guys are so volatile. But it's interesting that his last year was so solid, you know, didn't give up any homers, and I think that that appears to be a skill of his. Kept the ball in the ground a lot, struck guys out quite well, and then, of course for him most importantly, kept

the walks down. And I don't know if you saw this or in any of the reporting about the trade, but Santos now projects as like one of the top three relievers in all of baseball, just he did so much in that one year and the computers seemed to be buying it. It's not like this was an overperformance sort of year that the computers aren't buying. The projection systems are saying zips especially, but all of them are buying him as a

mid threes er guy. And you know, striking out nine to ten batters an inning, limiting the locks, keeping the ball on the ground, that's impressive. That's a useful reliever if they're right. So I don't know. I think it was an interesting sort of trade. My initial reaction was skepticism, but the more I thought about it, I think it signals something good for the Mariners. And I do think that the White Sox got decent value too, Like I think they're going to win the surplus war calculations in this

trade. Yeah, I will admit it was a gets trade that I didn't think was really just super lame. I think the sentiment from the majority of Mariners fans that at least I have seen chat about it. I think you might have been putting a little bit of lipstick on a pig there, but I thought you made some really good points. We'll see, man, We're I finished. I completed my first first year player draft of the year in

the medical one. I think it went. I think, oh, I mean, we'll find out I got some guys that I had wanted, but my competitive juices this time of the year started started getting going. Man, we're a week into February. You know, I used to be a guy before basketball games listening to Rage against the Machine, and like, I start to feel that sort of like that angst this time of year. So that's

going on. And then our good friend mister Clegg, I don't know if you saw, put out a little tweet comparing or contrasting the Dodgers triple A rotation to the Rockies major league rotation, and man, I gotta tell you that to use a poke the bear analogy that felt like a little bit of a flaming bag of poop thrown into the den. There it got me going. I've issued a challenge to our friend. I'd like to podcast to fight him on this debate you. I don't know if you've seen this or aware

of this, but I need to look it up. I don't even remember who it was, but someone was trying to start up like this podcast where like some fantasy people call each other out have a little fun debate session. And I threw that out there the crisp I don't know if he wants to smoke Matt, well, well bring the smoke. What are you thinking here?

It sounds like you're landing on the side of your Colorado Rockies starting five, you're going to take them over the Dodgers triple A rotation there, Yes, I mean I don't I want to save I want to save my my fight for the ring. But yes, I do not agree with mister Clegg that the Doadger's triple triple A rotation is better than the Rockies Major league rotation, the point being that it's debatable, like that's says something about all right,

I don't know, I don't know. There are some guys in the Rockies rotation that are that are good for sure and have showed decent skills in the past. And of course pitching in Colorado is miserable. It's so hard to do that. One just hit, just just poked a lout of my bears, Matt, your prospect thing me feeling the need to defend the Rockies and all the bad narratives surrounding them. Like. I didn't mean to get

into this too much. I just wanted to put out here for eight listeners that I have issued a formal challenge to mister Gotlin has been thrown, so we shall see if he responds. Let's talk some pictures. Let's talk some MLB B side pitching. Matt and I'll I'll let you go first. What do you go for? Right? Again, I wasn't quite sure how deep

we wanted to go, and I kind of selected my guys that I wanted to talk about across the spectrum of fantasy of relevant pictures. There are a couple of guys that I wanted to touch on that are probably like twelve team mixed relevant, like really shallow leagues, and then a couple of them that are, you know, your deeper leagues you should consider someone as a streamer or maybe something a little more. And then a couple for our super deep

thirty team, like anybody with a pulse you should roster. I wanted to start a guy that I actually just took in an FYPD. When I was talking about this a little bit in the Dynasty Dugout discord, I mentioned that I was considering taking Steven Mattz with my first round pick, my only first round pick in my thirty team first year player draft. And again, it's not a true FYPD. As we talked about, it's more of a supplemental

draft. So this is where the first international project prospects, the free agents that come over from Japan and Korea, the first year players from last year's draft, and whoever's left in the waiver wire. They're all available. You can't pick them up and touch anybody in the off season, but this draft you're allowed to swoop them. And I had a kind of back after the first round pick that I had just traded for and sort of as a throw in to another deal. And as I was looking at the draft board,

you know, we'd done a lot of prospecting. We'd lined up a bunch of guys, have a huge, long queue, mostly of first year player draft guys, and the name that stuck out to me at the top of my board was Stephen Mattz. Like, if I'd picked fourth, I think

I would have also taken Steven Mattz behind the big three Asian imports. And when I said this in the dog A discord, someone was like, you play in a league where Steven Mattz is relevant and I was like, yeah, I mean a this is a thirty teen points league, so any pitcher that has a job, they're relevant and worth rostering for somebody. But b as the more I thought about it, like Stephen Mattz is better than that. He's actually in that tier of quite good pictures that are underrated, partly

because of injury concerns. And he started the year pretty poorly last year as well, and I think that has depressed his stock generally. But I wanted to talk just a touch about why Stephen Mattz is actually quite good. He's spent most of the last three years running a FIP of an almost identical three point seventy nine in twenty twenty one, three point seven eight in twenty twenty

two, and three point seven five in twenty twenty three. The bugaboo is that over the last two years he's barely thrown one hundred and fifty innings,

so like that's about half of a normal workload for a starter. And last year in particular, his first half was terrible, and then he turned it around after being demoted to the bullpen and pitched quite a bit better in the UH in the second half for six' five era in the first half and in the second half it was two point one six, and then he ended the season with a lat injury, so maybe that's another component to him being sort of underrated going into this year. But he's got a solid pitch mix

that I think he's got answers for lefties and righty's. He doesn't have appreciable splits assuming he comes into the spring showing some health. I think he's got a rotation spot on lock for the Cardinals, and they've got a good defense that's a pitcher's park, so both of those things helped him play up.

I just kind of buy the skills here. He limits walks, He gets a decent number of strikeouts in a small sample at the end of last year, and then in his full year in twenty twenty two, which again was also a bit of a partial season, he showed kind of a higher strikeout

upside that he's approached before. But he was up to ten strikeouts per nine in those two stretches, and I think that that reflects that his curveball and his change up are good pitches that he can get swinging strikes with that change up. He gets called strikes with the curveball, and his sinker plays really well like he can get card strikes on either side. Of the plate and those things are a little bit less sticky than the swinging strikes, but it's

these are plus pitches. And I think he's also upped his velocity a little bit in recent years. You know, he was a bit of a fireballer early on in his career and then the velocity has trended down. But I think his velocity on his two seamer was back up in the ninety five I've

ranged this year and that is pretty good. So Steven Mattz, I think, is someone that if you've got ail slots to burn, if you've got a kind of roster that can take a flyer on somebody who might spend some time in the injured list, I think Stephen Mattz is absolutely worth rostering again

a late draft pick in your mixed leagues. Certainly, I'm considering him in some NFBC formats in the later rounds because I just think the skills seem to still be there and health permitting, this could be a guy who runs you

a three to seven er, potentially better in front of the defense. If the defense takes a step forward for the Cardinals like it has in previous years, then this is just a ton of value in a guy that people are writing off that sixteen people pass seventeen people passed on in my thirty team mix league points, and I just think that is crazy when a guy has this kind of skills and the opportunity that's that's upside for somebody that is I think

under owned. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't think a Mats would have lasted that long in my thirty teen points similar drafts. I was surprised that he was still on the board. I mean, like I said, after Yamamoto, Imanaga and Lee, I think that's would have been fourth on my board, and especially in the way this format is set up, I just think he's thrilled to get him at pick eighteen or whatever it was before we came on. I think it had just come out a couple of hours ago.

But I was had Nick Pollock's top four hundred starting pitchers for this season. He's slid in Matt's one fifty seven, with the first line being I don't buy it. So interesting he is. He is also one of the folks out there that are not not in the Mats camp. But yeah, and in NFBCS he's going average draft position of three to seventy one or average draft rank of three seventy one. I think his average draft position around four eighty. So I mean again, this is like more tailored towards some upside

with a really late round pick for you or a deeper league. But I just think the skills are still there and Matt's is worth targeting. Yeah, No, I don't hate it. You know, Like we have talked about several times before, doing this sort of pitching B siding, there's a very different component to it than hitting. Right, I think it's it's much more we can see a very unpopular in fantasy arm go from obscurity to cy young

consideration. We don't necessarily see these types of bats jump from yeah or that sort of lack of popularity to almost winning MVPs. Right, Pitching is much more wild west. I mean, this is part of why pitching is so much better than hitting, because in a lot of ways, anything can happen, and a lot of things like we'll probably highlight with a few guys and I'm going to talk about like things change relatively quick. We're gonna stick with

the Cardinals. With my first guy here, I want to talk about Zach Thompson. Who got twenty six years old. He's got one hundred and one

career major league innings. He's rostered in twenty two percent of fan tracks leagues, which is less than Maddix Bruns, McCary who we know you Love, Cole Wilcox, Sam Bachman, Jose bo In Woods, Simeon Woods, Richardson six seventy four, ADP and NFBC currently labeled the Swingman's six starter ish by Fangrafts. He has forty seven major league appearances with ten starts. Nine of

those came last year. Zach Thompson is not without some pedigree. I believe he was a first round pick if I remember correctly, several years ago, and in kind of Cardinals fashion, maybe looked at by dynasty and fantasy owners.

Is kind of a boring guy, lacking that electricity and that big K upside That was so But I'm excited to see the rest of Zach Thompson's career here if you just look at er from the last couple of years his first two MLB seasons two point zero eight in his first thirty four innings twenty twenty two, four point four to eight. His next sixty six innings in twenty twenty three. If you're just looking at that surface sort of stuff, you

might not be getting the whole story here his whip too. His whip jumped from under one to one point four to two. But I think there were far more meaningful improvements or maintenance in areas in twenty twenty three than those drastic looking surface level changes. And I watched a decent amount of Thompson as a prospect, and he was always a little bit tricky for me because he didn't quite have the arsenal that got me too excited, and he never really had

the execution that got me too excited. Neither were really bad, but nothing really in either direction made me like really want to kind of get excited, right, But he simplified things in twenty twenty three, not using the sinker. Now it is good to little bit tricky because he throws a slider that's labeled a cutter. But I think that's like there's some play in there.

Sometimes it's more like a slutter. Sometimes he's throwing it more like a manipulates it a bit, I think so, I think so, But it gets kind of lumped up in stack cast as a cutter. I think he kind of ditched whatever side of that that stat cast was was calling more of a slider last year. By nature, He's really a four seam fastball curveball guy. Curveball was always kind of the more lauded. I think it got like sixties right as a prospect, but just from a production standpoint, now,

granted the usage was only seventeen percent. This manipulated slider slutter cutter probably his most productive pitch, definitely getting Chase, getting swinging strikes. His four seamer averaged ninety three point six, which is just a smidge velocity wise below MLB average used that about fifty four percent of the time. Curveball was twenty seven percent of time, And like I mentioned the cutter slutter thing, there's not really a change up in the arsenal. But you know a lot of times

you talk about like stuff plus models and those types of things. The big missing point, right is the relationship that the pitches have with one another, with which in my opinion, is a giant part of the puzzle of what makes a successful pitcher. But I think with Thompson there is I think good usage and pitch selection and sequencing with him, and there's several instances in pitching history where a guy is simply changing the sequencing totally changed the production of a

pitch. You know, I think we talked about Zach Graanke when prior, but the three offerings and the sort of stuff plus models are all around MLB average. He ran a twenty five point one k percentage, which is nicely above MLB average, which is twenty one point six percent for starters and above the reliever's average of twenty three point seven percent. His eight point seven percent walk rate is lower than the average relievers and just a had higher than the

average MLB starters. He runs a nice ground ball rate forty seven point one percent, and then like as a starter over his last ten appearances last last year, which is really his first go at getting to start in the bigs, you know, he ran like a four to three eight era over forty nine innings. He's struck out fifty one the only fourteen walks. Guy hit

a little bit, but nothing, nothing too crazy. He might feel kind of really vanilla at this juncture, but it might be like a vanilla with some chocolate syrup on top, Like we like the sum of all parts kind of guys, right, and he's got I think the weaponry weaponry here is fine. I think if there's just a little bit of elite in his execution in command, which you know, maybe that's just wishful thinking, but I

think he could he could be really good. You know, we talk about DL Hall types and Joe Boyles who have these astronomical walk rates and you know, execution questions, and we're always hoping on on better stuff there, improvements

there, but we don't really talk about these types too much. And what just a little bit of improvement can do, I don't know, just kind of in my opinion, if that happened here, I think you could be looking at an extremely valuable fantasy piece with a nice trunk of that counting stat k love. The biggest bugaboo with him is going to be limiting the hard contact, you know, which shocking. It's a huge issue for every pitcher in the majors. But you know, I think that could come with a

little bit more tightening of the screws. Wouldn't be the first guy to do such a thing on the back half of his twenties. I mean, we see guys. To me, the pitching prime is like thirty thirty one. I mean, we see Merril Kelly types get real tight and a lot more fantasy exciting, much older age than Thompson here. And I don't think I'm the only one out there who thinks Zach Thompson could get a little bit more

exciting. I think there's something to that. And one of the things I was thinking about as it related to Matt's as well, is that I expect the Cardinals defense is going to be better. It was rated pretty poorly last year. And whether it's a combination of Victor Scott coming up and playing center field, Jordan Walker getting better, a little bit less time of our buddy Alec Burlson out there. Even in Arnatto bounce back, I think Edmund plays

really good defense. There's room just to see the batted Balllock swing back. Our guys way here and Thompson and Matt's both might benefit from just that natural regression to the mean in a positive direction. His three pitches like all Hubber, They're all like thirty thirty one percent CSW, which is nice. He

gets average to above average chase on all three offerings. Like I don't know, he just lacks that super you know, maybe he's like a fifty command guy or fifty five guy, like if you could be like a sixty, to put it in scouting terms, I think he could be really good. I mean it wouldn't be the most radical change we've ever seen a picture make over one year, but at this price. I put out some I put out some Trey offers, some of my thirties and stuff. We know the

role is maybe questionable. I don't know if he's maybe he earns the fifth starter spot there. More likely he's probably going to be the next man up when someone gets hurt, and we know that that's gonna happen, mm hmm. And that what else you got for us? I wanted to give a shout to an old favorite of mine, under the radar guy who's coming back from injury. JT. Brewbaker, Brew Baker. I have dated brew Baker several times, all sorts of leads. Is he bad? Is he hurt?

I don't remember he's hurt. He had TJ in spring of last year

during spring training, missed all of twenty twenty three. Okay, but I was kind of on him as maybe a semi sneaky breakout guy going into twenty twenty three, so I was really bummed. I had him in an N only league and in a deeper dynasty league as somebody that I got essentially for

free. In both spots, he's a sinker slider guy primarily, but his curveball is sneaky pretty good, and he'll mix in a four seam and a change up, neither of which I think is particularly effective, but both show flashes, both just being a different look than his sinker slider primary approach, but also I think when he locates them well, they can play up fine enough. His four seam fastball is actually sort of interesting, and then it

gets a lot more horizontal run the average four seam. I have seen a bit of weak contact come off of that. Now, could they tweak it so that it maybe it was even more effective? Probably? But I like Rubaker overall. He's pretty good at maximizing that his portfolio, and he's been in the course over three hundred and fifteen and two thirds innings in his major league career, has run a twenty three percent strikeout rate and a sub eight

percent walk rate, so both better than average. I guess the rate's kind of like right about average, maybe just a Hairover for starters, but the walk rate is better than big league average and a solid fifteen point five percent K minus BB over his career. He also gets a decent number of grounders. You might like to see him get a few more. He's been right at forty four percent, and that's what he was in twenty twenty two.

But he looked pretty good in that spring training before he got hurt. And he's I think almost twelve months removed TJ, So he's ten months removed right now from TJ. Likely to be back in the middle like May I think is his estimated recovery timeline, and he's going nine to seventy five is his average draft rank in NFBCS. I'm sure you can get him for a song in your dynasty leagues. His average draft is seven hundred and forty nine, so very near the last picks in those drafts, and I like that in

a in that kind of format. He still the projections are a little bit soft on him. The bat hates him for some reason. Steamer's the high projection at a four or five three ARRA projection projections are projecting him to be worse than he's been over three hundred innings in his career, more walks, fewer strikeouts, and I just didn't see that coming out of him in the times when I had him and watched him. I just like it as an

injury bounce back that people have forgotten about. I don't think he's going to be crowded out of that Pittsburgh rotation. Pittsburgh does have some really nice minor league arms coming up, but I really don't see the need for them to push any of them. So, like I would be sort of surprised if we saw a lot of Paul Skins this year, I'd be surprised if we saw a lot of Jared Jones or some of the other upper Miners guys. So I think Brubaker is going to come back in May and get slotted right

back into that rotation. It's sort of a boring profile, but I think it plays. So brew Baker is one like, don't forget about him in your drafts. If you need a solid back end start throw, I think you could do worse. And as an injured throw in a trade, I definitely would be asking after burw Baker nice. I think brew Baker is very solid MLB B side arms selection. Yeah, I know that he's definitely helped some of my team's different formats too when he was healthy and he had some

decent little runs. My next guy. To be clear here, I had Ryan Feldner cueued up to talk about here well before this morning's events with mister

Cleig. But I want to talk about Ryan Feltner. And I know Colorado Pitcher could eliminate him from your consideration in different formats, and I understand all that. But we talked pitch for Oklahoma City. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't agree with that, but we talk We talked about making some changes. Right here's one that I think we got a little glimpse of. Feldner had a very scary injury. I don't know if you saw that, Matt, but he got a line drive back Adam and fractured his skull and

put him out from what May middle of May to end of September. He came back for two starts, which was nice to see him come back. I mean, it was a potentially life threatening situation. But Feldner's twenty seven years old. He's logged one hundred and forty seven career MLB innings over the last three seasons. He's currently rostered in five percent of leagues. I mean that, you know, that's that's less than some of our B sides,

less than Rockies pitching prospect Jordi Vargas. He's currently going to nfbc's ADP is seven to fifty one, currently labeled the fourth starter in the Rockies rotation by Fangrafts. I've seen you little blurbs and stuff that he'll be competing for a rotation job. I think Feldner's pretty solid rotation piece heading into the season for the Rockies. His thirty two MLB appearances, thirty one one of them have been starts. Twenty twenty two nineteen starts, twenty appearances, five eighty three

ERA one point four to one whip. You know, stuff that isn't going to help a lot of our fantasy leads. Here twenty twenty three started, he got eight starts in before the injury. Again big era, an even larger whip. Right. But and I heard Feldner talk about this too. It did seem to me and to him that there were some really positive changes

starting before the injury. He felt like he was on his way to a breakout season, and looking at some metrics you might see why he may have felt that he went from a thirty point four percent hard contact rate to nineteen point five percent, which that's that's top of the scale, that's ninety eight percentile. Home runs were an issue for him in twenty twenty two one point four to eight per nine, fifteen point four percent home run. The fly

ball rate. Well, the home run per nine dropped two point four to two, which is ninety eight percentile. The home run per fly ball dropped to five point one percent ninety ninth percentile. His weak contact went from four point three percent to seven point six. Hitters pulled the ball thirty six point one percent of the time against him. That's ninth percentile. Like in the good way right, home run the flyball right, that's an astronomy. It's

a fantastic five point one percent is ninety nine percentile. Ground ball rate ticked up a little bit, but I think it was more than like him coming up like sixty fourth percentile. Now his arsenal, he's heavy slider guy. Right, thirty one point four percent. Pitch that he used the most most performance wise, it's not that great. Gets some chase on it, but he doesn't get he doesn't get whiffs on it. Part of the reason why he threw it a lot is the for seamer, both by stuff plus metrics

and performance just wasn't very good. It was hard, it was firm. On the season, it averaged ninety four point eight miles per hour, but it's just not a very good shape. He coming into the season he felt like his sinker was his best pitch. The sinker is not his best pitch. He has since said that sort of moved on from that. And here's the exciting part, Matt and the change that happens. When he was hurt, he went worked out at the new Rockies pitching lab. Yes that's true,

the Rockies have a pitching lab now. And that fastball he came back with a couple more ticks on it. He hit ninety nine a few times, which he had never done before. It averaged let's see, so before the injury was looking at the game logs here, ninety four point one, ninety four, ninety four point four. He came back, it averaged ninety six ninety five and a half. Of course you got later in those those last few outings and he would dip back down to his previous velocity. I've

heard him talk about how he believes that those changes are real. He believes that they're going to hold. So long story short here, the biggest thing that was missing, I think from Feldner's arsenal was an effective fastball. And if you're a velocity purist, he already went from a hard fastball to now more top of the scale. He's been talking about changing his plan of attack to becoming more of a power pitcher. Now well, he put up great

numbers for fantasy purposes. I don't know. I doubt it. I had been stacked against him. Every bat at ball, whether it be on the ground, a line drive, or a fly ball in that park is in the bat at ball's favor. But we have a guy who's gonna be different, and I don't know, Let's see what it looks like and if it goes well, this is you know, an example of a pitcher making the

change relatively soon that could change a lot of outcomes production wise. Well, and again, not to harp on the defense, but I think the Rockies have the potential to have one of the better defenses in the game. Running out there, you know, Doyle is one of the best center fielders and best pure defenders just period out there. I think if you're looking at Tovar and McMahon and Rogers, like that's pretty good skill positions in the infield.

And they've got some other good athletes to run out there in the outfield with Nolan Jones too. So I like that defense. And of course it's still impossible to play great defense in Colorado. It's the park is just way too

big and the ball just flies way too far. But I think those sorts of things help incrementally, and you might be surprised at the skills, especially on the road for some of those guys, some of these pictures, like you're saying, I could definitely see them playing up even more on the road. Yeah. I mean, well, for one, it can't get much worse than it did last year pitching wise, starting pitching wise for the Rockies.

I mean, if you can limit hard contact like that, not leat hitters, get out in front, and not give up home runs, I mean, you're going to give yourself the best chances that you can in chorus Field. So I don't know, I know, I'm a Rockies fan, but I'm kind of excited to see what this new look Feldner looks like and if one of these guys can put up some decent numbers, maybe decent enough

to help our fantasy leagues, you know, Feldner will be playable. Every starting pitcher is going to be, you know, potentially on the table in a thirty teamer thirtyeen points especially, so I don't know, we'll see, let's go to another kind of deeper league option. And especially I would say, probably not that interesting for your roto formats. But Wade Miley man,

he just keeps sticking around. Oh. I love that you brought up with Miley. I thought you might because he shares some things in common with your your boy Mark Burley. He's got a six pitch mix that he mixes pretty well. Three of those are his go to in his four seen fastball, his cutter, his most used pitch, and his change up. But he also mixes in a curveball occasionally, and a sinker and a slider, and his bread and butter for the last few years has been the cutter. It's

the pitch he throws the most. He has incredible command of It will come into righty's we'll backdoor it to lefties, front hip it to lefties like He's moved that pitch around and it is his primary weapon in getting hard content or getting inducing soft contact rather because he doesn't miss many bats. He never did even in his peak. Now he's solidly in the six strikeouts per nine, but he still can induce scround balls only six percent last year, but fifty

two percent the year before, which is plus plus. His velocity rebounded after an ugly stint with the Cubs in twenty twenty two, and you know it's ninety, but it's plays because he gets good movement and again has really good command. And I wonder if he underperformed in some of his strikeout metrics last year. He ran one of the lowest strikeout rates of his career last year

over one hundred and twenty innings with the Brewers. But I wonder if we're going to see that rebound positively a little bit next year, because I think his slider shape is slightly different than it has been in previous year and might actually be a pitch we're throwing more. So he still is going to lead with his cutter and change up and then mix that four seam fastball at the top of the zone and inside to both lefties. And righties to get soft

contact. But I think mixing in a few more sliders. I think currently he tends to throw that about seven or so percent of the time, and I wonder if he bumped that up to something like twelve or twelve to fifteen percent of the time, whether we might see an uptick in his swinging swinging strike rates and therefore strikeouts because it's a pitch that has more horizontal movement than average, and especially compared to his cutter, which doesn't move side to side.

It's much more of a downward shaped cutter. That's how he gets ground balls and soft contact. But mixing in something that sweeps a little bit more across the zone and out of the zone as hitters are thinking, oh, this is the cutter, and then it's the slider that is down in a way to a lefty, I wonder if he might be able to get a few more strikeouts with that. He saw quite a bit of success in limited

show of that slider. It was actually his best pitch I think by run value per one hundred in a yeah, it was almost a little more than fifty percent more valuable than his cutter. Now, obviously the cutter he threw way more and so you might put a little more trust in that. But I think it's sort of a hidden fourth pitch that he might lean on a

bit more next year. And add that to the fact that he's definitely going to get a lot of run in that Milwaukee rotation, especially after Burns got unceremoniously shipped out, and in your deeper leagues, that volume plays, and I think I'm just here to say that while I don't expect him to be a three one six, three one four er guy like he's been the last couple of years, I think it's worth noting the performance even though the strikeouts

aren't really going to be there. So you might get some quality volume here. Think for for one er over something like a hundred in thirty one hundred and fifty innings, and that's super useful. So don't write off Wade Miley just yet. I think there still is some pitch tweaking that he can do, and maybe that he's already started doing, and that that might lead to continued performance as he continues to get older, aging like a fine wine or

cheese. I guess that's better from Milwaukee. I'm always down for some Wade Miley love and what makes me love him even more is, I think probably his worst stretch of his career, he decided to use on the Cubs. He would love that. And this is how crazy thirty teen points leagues might be. In that but like Miley was, like, legit my ace in the thirty teen points League team for a good stretch last year and that team made the playoffs. Nice. You can't do it with such types in those

Is that the show? Is that the one that I'm in? No, because that that league's tough, like the pitching in that league. Man, I was running out there ready to start the year with Dean Kramer as my ace, and a lot of people love Dean Kramer. I like him, but I I was not really excited for him to be my ace. Right all right? I want to talk about a guy who I admit, after I have dug in on him here more, I traded him to mister Quagg in RAS thirty and I regret it now, well maybe I'll regret it.

But I want to talk about Johnny Burrito, who, as a prospect back

in twenty twenty one, was very much kind of like a B side ass guy, right, someone I knew nothing about turned on and I legit was kind of blown away and became very much a fan. But I was just too naive at the time. I just thought, Hey, I don't think this guy's stuff is good enough. But of course I love the execution in the command, right, Matt. So I'm like going, I don't think this. I don't know if this guy has the stuff for you know,

no one's really talking about him. You know, I'm not going to put him out there, right, which I no longer subscribed to such ideas. But Johnny Brito, it turns out, gets to the Major League and we get to know more about it, has like really good weapons, really good weapons. I knew he could kind of spin it. I knew he could spin it. I know East West game looked really good. He's really interested me in a lot of ways. So he's he's twenty five years old.

Last year was his first year in the bigs. We got in ninety in the third innings. He's rastered in thirty percent of leagues, which is less than Grisepho throwing Susannah barrierra, which is kind of wild to me. He's going like seven point fifty in NFBC Vangrass has him down in the Triple A currently labeled like the seventh sp but he's behind several names I don't think are

a lot to make the rotation there they happen behind. They have him behind right now, it's Musgrove, Darvish, King, Pedro Avila, Randy Vasquez, and then down in Triple A they got Adrian Morejean and then Brito. I know, yeah, he's gonna get some run. I think, yeah, yeah. I think they initially had him as like their long reliever on their point being, I think he's in the mix. I think he can win a job in the rotation. If not, maybe he's you know,

sitting as their long reliever. But there's gonna be some major league starts this season. Now the stuff like the stuff. Plus he's got a two seam well, I don't know if they call it a sinker. I think they call it a sinker, sinker, two seamer whatever. Now you could see that it's guy. They had some wicked life to it. But looking at PLV pictureless stuff plus model, they gave it a five point two, which is pretty off the charts for a two seane fastball. For a sinker that's

really high. I'm not the biggest stuff plus guy, it's measuring some tools in the vacuum, you know. Like we mentioned, there's there's a lot, a lot of other things I think in play that are more so or just as important, and I think Brito's a great, a great example of this. Like his curveball got a five point four to one his change up above average, which as a press his change was labeled a sixty. It was supposed to be his best pitch. The other pitches weren't graded out so

hot fifties and forty fives and things. He did get the sixty control and command grades. There's also a four seemer, but I think the four seamer is far and away, I think his worst pitch. But last year he used the two seemer thirty two percent of the time, change up twenty nine percent of the time, curveball twenty percent of the time, the four seemer seventeen percent of the time. He has some phlocity. His sinker averaged ninety

six miles per hour. What I think Brita's biggest issue is so he's got these these nice looking tools or whatever, but it's kind of like I got a hammer and a chainsaw. They're not really like tools that go together all that well, Right, he's a two seam change up guy with velocities at ninety six and eighty eight. Like I don't know, there's there's some sort of like missing ingredient, I think, And I think that explains why his

very nice weapons. Folks they trace the change up, they don't really trace the other pictures. The swinging strike rate's pretty pedestrian. Other than the change up. His K percentage was nineteen point four. So I don't know what the Padres are gonna do with him. I don't really view the Padres as a team that maybe I don't think they have all the same sorts of resources

or pitching philosophies beliefs in some of the quote newer school stuff. I feel like they kind of just let pictures go and do their thing more so, but I don't know what do I know? But there's a sixty command guy here with really good weapons, and you know Matt that that is like that that's the two things that I don't want to see married. But they're just

not driving together yet in his young career. But Johnny Brito is extremely interesting to me, and I think there's plenty of stuff here to work with and be a successful major league pitcher and a successful fantasy pitcher. I like it. He's a guy I rostered in a thirty teamer I want to say last year, early last year, he was someone that I liked what he was showing in terms of inducing ground balls, limiting walks, and thought he had

a chance to be a depth starter. So I think he still is on that path with the padres and Brito's sinker with that sort of movement, that sort of teeth twenty eight point six CSW just doesn't really add up the change up twenty six percent CSW. So Meryl Kelly, I think, is who I was thinking of off the top of my head. Okay, he's a

sinker change guy and has some success with it. So you know, maybe if you want to dream on adding another pitch and the command tightening up just a bit, you could see Brito becoming a version of Meryl Kelly, and that's a big leaguer for a long time. It's more electricity with Brito, though, next guy we're going this is more like potential breakout into a top

tier arm. This is a guy who is getting drafted reasonably hot. You know this is I think his average position in NFBCS is two eighty three, so, you know, not up there, but pretty significantly better than anybody that we've talked about up to this point. But it's cutter Crawford. I generally think in my approach to fantasy baseball is that we individual analysts are dumber

than the projections. Like the projections already know all the information that we know and contextualize it better than we do, and the numbers that they spit out I tend to trust, especially in the projections that are an amalgamation of a bunch of different inputs, and so your ATC's or your fangraphs depth charts, I think that those remove a lot of risk from the equation, remove a lot of biases, and help place everything on a single scale that you can

you can use to help overcome your own biases and make better decisions going forward. But there are always guys, especially younger guys, that I think you can see glimpses into the kinds of significant leaps in performance that projections really struggle to deal with. This happens all the time. As we've talked about with pitchers, but I think it's interesting that the projection systems are so down relatively

speaking. On Cutter Crawford, after having a really good kind of first full year in the majors, he obviously debuted in twenty twenty two and got you know, quite a lot of run seventy seven and a third in twenty twenty two over twelve starts twenty one appearances, just a hair under nine strikeouts per nine and three point three eight walks per nine. But he had some bad luck and pitched to the tune of a five four to seven er and lost

his starting job early in the year. In twenty twenty three, ended up getting it back, obviously, injuries in that rotation and there were lots of opportunities for Boston in twenty twenty three, so he ended up starting twenty three games and got another eight out of the pen. Built up one hundred and twenty nine and a third innings last year and was very good. He had a three to three expected ERA according to stat Cast, a three eight FIP

very good. That's a plus starter, especially over almost one hundred and thirty innings, and ran a strong strikeout rate twenty five point six significantly above almost the standard deviation above average, and only six point eight walks six point eight per walk percentage good for an eighteen point eight K minus BB very good overall.

He also induced a few more ground balls than he had in his previous year, limited homers a bit, and got a little bit of babbit luck and maybe a touch of left on base sort of neutral left on base luck. So his luck factors were kind of some were positive, some more negative, somewhere in the middle, and he ran a four to zero four RA I watched bunch of his starts, though, and I think there's more here.

It might be that I caught some of his better starts. But watching the pitch mix, it seems to me that he has answers for lefties, he's got answers for righty's. His command seems good to me, and not just in the limiting walks kind of way. Using what is a pretty diverse pitch mix. He's got a four seam fastball that I think gets good spin. He throws it at the top of his own a decent amount and gets pop ups and fly balls, gets out that way. I think it has

good ride on it. He has a cutter as you might expect from someone named cutter Crawford, and that is a good pitch as well. I think it has more vertical drop and more horizontal drop than you would expect sort of an average cutter to have. According to statcast, he has a split finger that he throws a decent amount. I think the command of this one was the worst. He would throw this one and it would be way out of the zone some seriously non competitive pitches for his split finger, but it still

had some potential. It showed flashes. And then the pitch that I was most excited about was his sweeper. He threw didn't throw it very often, only six point seven percent of the time, but it was his single best pitch I think significantly. So he has a real feel for spotting this pitch. Some combination of the way that he threw it and the way he located it, he got really good results. I want to see him lean into that a bit more, maybe at the expense of his curveball, which I

think it's hit a bit more. I like the depth of his arsenal. I like that he has solid command of a lot of it. And I'm also maybe betting a little bit on the New Boston regime. Craig Breslo is a really smart pitching guru, and hiring Kyle Body is also usually a good idea. I think that having all of these different tools in the capable hands of those kinds of craftsmen, I am just solidly hammering the under on all

of these are projections from the pitch models. So Cutter Crawford, for me, as someone is like he's debuted, he showed some success, he showed some wartz. I'm seriously buying what he's selling and think that maybe the price it's underpriced. I'd say for what I think the potential could be here.

So Cutter Crawford for me is a huge buy. I again, he's going two eighty three in NFBCS around guys like Michael Waka, Injured, Mac Scherzer, lance Lynn Mackenzie, Gore, Edward Cabrera, and for my money, I'm taking him over all of those guys, and then some of the guys that are going just ahead of him, Seth Lugo, John Means, Rhys

Olsen, todg Bradley, Emmitt Shean. I don't know. I think I'm taking Cutter over all those guys with the possible exception of rhese Olsen, just because the park I think is quite a bit better and he has a lot of similar things to like about him too. All that to say, I just think that it's worth sometimes betting on a breakout for these guys that are like two and three years into their career, and for me, Cutter Crawford is one of those guys that I'm most excited about this year. Man.

I admittedly have not paid much attention to Crawford either coming up or in the majors. But you are not the only one who likes Cutter Crawford. Mister Pollock HadAM fifty five on his list. I gotta read that list. It sounds like he and I agree on a few guys. Yeah, there's a lot to read. I wanted to bring up Cody Bradford, who is like,

so not my kind of profile in that I don't really love lefties who can't spin it, and I think that's probably going to be Bradford's maybe biggest question mark or the inclusion of a third offering. But Cody Bradford, who had a fantastic, fantastic year last year in Triple A and the PCL which has nothing to shake a stick at. But last year with the Rangers, he got in twenty games, eight starts. He's twenty six years old, he logged fifty six innings last year, and he's rostered in ten percent of

fan tracks leagues Matt. That's less than Freddie Tarnick, Noah Cameron, fellow Ranger Mitch Bratt seven hundred and forty ADP in NFBC. Yeah, Fangrafts currently has him labeled as their fifth starter. Probably true with all the injuries that they've gotten that rotation. So some MLB opportunity I think is in front of Bradford here. But you know, he's kind of your kind of classic soft toss and lefty, and that his four seamer average ninety point four miles brower

last year. I don't think the fastball on the stuff plus models gets any great scores or anything like that. I don't think I've heard on a few occasions some much smarter pitching folk than I talked about some of its unique attributes.

Sometimes I think extension stuff gets way overblown, but I think he does have pretty good extensions, so maybe that helps the ninety miles per hour play up a little bit, but by far his most used pitch used pitch last year, fifty four and a half percent usage, you know, not too shabby. A ninety mile per hour fastball getting thirty thirty two percent CSW. I mean he's got execution on his side. It's probably his biggest weapon.

Throws strikes at a high percentage. You know. It's kind of interesting a two pitch guy like this without a lot of velocity getting a twenty two percent k raid in the bigs. You know, his walk percentage is historically low. He was five percent last year. That's that's the top of the charts. Granted the fifty six innings. You know, as you might imagine, there is some hard contact there. Thirty one point two percent hard contact last year, which is not great, you know, scouting grade wise, this

is like a fifty five fastball low VLO. I mean, we've we've seen I don't know, maybe Tommy Romero a little bit. I don't think it's the you know what, he was right handed, right, I mean it's not the same, but like that, a low v low maybe tough to square up. Maybe you getting enough whiffs, but I don't know. Kind of just an interesting guy to me, not really my style. But I don't think I'm the only one who who thinks Cody Bradford might be kind of

a unique situation maybe somewhat unique success in the bigs. I love this shout this kind of guy, I think is so fascinating a low velocity. But I was kind of wondering that. And I'm no expert on this. I'm no pitch shape a pro changle expert and all that stuff, But I was kind of wondering if Bradford's fastball was one in which those models just don't really measure well, Like, are there some characteristics with it that are so different

that it doesn't pick up all that well. I mean, I've heard people talk about certain pitches like that before. Well, I do think there's something too. The farther out on the tail you are of the Bell curve, it's not linear, right, Like, if you're really far out on one edge, it's not a linear progression that it's that much x percent better.

So I think there's something to that that, like it can look, it can play up even if if there's something particularly unique about the shape or the trait, And for Bradford, it's certainly the extension is part of it. You know, his seven feet seven point three feet extension is in the ninety eighth percentile according to stat cast, and despite having way below average velocity even for a lefty, looking at that heat chart on stack cast, like he's

just pumping this thing down the middle. It's not it's not good command, it's control. It's like I'm throwing it in the middle of the plate and letting its spin and its extension play up. And so I think I like watching him last year. I was I thought he was kind of paint in some I mean maybe, but looking at the chart on stat cast, like by far, the high percentage is right in the heart, like not even

in the shadows. Maybe it has a slight tilt towards up in the zone a little bit, like there's some some of the heat markers up in the zone. But that's a lot of fastballs in the middle of the plate and he's still got good results on that. And I think that that speaks to the way his spin plays. I think he's an almost perfect active spin guy. So all of the spin that he gets on that pitch is imparted in the magnus force getting that backspin to make it seem like it drops less on

its way to the plate. Plus his extension, I think help it play up. So his fastballs are getting more pop ups, more fly balls, more soft contact. I was looking for this before, and it was right in front of me. But what do you think is strike percentage on the four seamer was last year? It looked pretty high. Seventy two percent,

seventy five and a half percent. That's that was really hot though, Like, yes, throwing this thing down the middle, Like I wonder if a little bit more command of that pitch, like up so that's not quite down the middle, whether that might just talking about, you know, be a starter. I do that fastball, that change up combo probably would do quite well against the righties, but I think I think the lefties he might need something else throw as a slider. It was fifteen and a half percent of

the time, I mean through twenty one curveballs too. But it doesn't seem like he likes throwing that pitch either. His curveball. This is actually one of the worst I've ever seen. His run value per one hundred pitches pretty good, is positive one, Like if you have one per one hundred, that's pretty good. His curveball minus twelve point two. So this thing just

got annihilated eight seventy five slug. That is so bad. That's interesting because I mean, if I'm reading these things right, his curveball got the best PLV grade out of any of his offerings. But I don't think that's really dude, what's that It got tattooed? So yeah LV or no. Yeah, that's a small sample. I mean it was only it was only twenty one of them on the air. And you're right, he had a really good year in h A. I do wonder if that's a guy that might

because that's a really really good line in Triple A around Rock. So I do wonder if he's an additional pitch away from being good. A guy who's

pretty good like that true active spin and a good change up. Though that means he's like a pronator, right, Like he's better at his wrist pronating over and so I think the breaking balls can be a little bit tougher to teach for those guys, you know, like think Bryce Miller or somebody or even Brian Wlu like those guys with really good pronation, good active spin on

their fastballs. I wonder what pitch might work for him to get him to have something maybe a little more east west, or a weapon against same handed batters. Well, when guys can't spin it real, well, what's the what's the pitch? It's a cutter, right, Yeah, and maybe that maybe that's the thing for him. I'm fascinated. This is a great shout, Nate. I'm really interested. I might see if I can get a

share on the cheap. Bradford's super interesting and like, hey, you velocity purest guys, how come this eighty nine mile per hour fastball right down the middle? People can't hit it? Yeah? Man, And I'm on that. I've started working on a study and an article that I'm going to write up. But we talked a little bit about it, and Bradford might be a great example to throw in there where I think velocity just gets so overrated as a measure of is a pitch effective or is a repertoire effective? And

I think we see this in prospect reports all the time. We see this in talking about big league performance of particular pitches like Hunter Green is so great because he can throw a fastball over one hundred miles an hour and isn't that so incredible? I remember I think it was the opening day start he had

had against the Braves two years ago. I think it was it. Maybe it wasn't open to get It was early in the year Green versus my Braves, and Green just chopped the Braves. But it was because he threw a ton of sliders, and his slider is really good. His fastball was still getting hit and it was outs and foul balls and stuff, but he wasn't getting whiffs with his fastball, even though it's over one hundred miles an hour,

Like you think, he threw like twenty fastballs over one hundred. And I felt this as a player too, that there were guys who could throw it ninety five ninety six that we were salivating over there fastball, like, yeah, throw that fastball, We're gonna crush it. Remember I can't remember the guy's name there was. He was the Friday night starter for Arizona State one of the years that I was there, and we got a great scouting report on him that he loved to throw his fastball up and in to righties.

He was a righty, and you know, it was like ninety five ninety six, but the thing was flat like it wasn't to us. It was not a special pitch. His offspeed pitches were really good and it's come in with solid But I hit a home run off of him and he because I knew what pitch he was gonna throw, and when he threw it, it just looked so fat, like it didn't move in an odd way.

Versus a guy like Preston Gimmet again old shout from the University of Arizona, who he threw from such a weird arm angle and had such weird spin even though he was like a ninety to ninety two guy in the fastball, that pitch was freaking impossible to hit, just the way that it moved. He had really good backspin and a super weird arm angle that was right over the top. He had great commands too, but those things were more important than

the six miles an hour in velocity separation between the two guys. And I think that that's like been sitting in my head for a long time and hearing guys talk about, like we talked about this a while back with Logan Henderson, how I'm so excited about the way his fastball plays, even though it averages ninety two, and we're talking about in the Dynasty that I got Discord, and somebody is poo pooing Henderson like I'd be way more interested if he

was throwing ninety five, but ninety two, like whatever. And then you look at a guy like Tristan McKenzie, who also averages about ninety two and has one of the best fastballs by run value in the major leagues, and it's like, Okay, we're missing something in this constant reflection or constant return to just talking about fastball velocity. And I think even Chris Clegg shared a chart about the expected whobar maybe the results of the whobba against fastballs of a

certain velocity. And it is true that the faster you throw, the lower weighted on base of the balls in play. However, I think that is more of a correlation, not a causation thing, because it is also true that as fastball velocity goes up, so too does induce vertical break and spin. So the more like the faster you're throwing all of the things equal, the more spin you're getting on the fastball, so the more it seems to

rise and fight gravity. And I think that that's the thing that's actually important about it. It's not that the pitch itself is faster, it's that the induced vertical break that you get is actually the thing that's important over a certain speed. I mean, I think these things break down both on the high and the very low ends. And I've been working on a study er aut this and i think that there's some truth to this, and I'm going to

write it up. But I think guys like Bradford and like Tristan McKenzie and like Logan Henderson, like some of the other b siders that we've talked about that maybe aren't velocity kings, their fastballs can still be plus to double plus and can be like great bets to be successful going forward. So I'm super

interested. This is another one to I'm excited to follow. Like you can see in some of Bradford's underlying stuff is when you throw ninety, it can be a good fastball and it can be hard to hit, but when it

is hit, it's kind of hit harder than higher velocity fastballs. And maybe but maybe that's the location piece of it, right, Like he's thrown a bunch of fastballs right down the middle, Like if those are better located because he didn't really have a homer problem in the miners, like double a eleven point eight percent homer for flyball, that's like a touch above average, and

then in the PCL five point nine percent homer for flyball. So again like probably some luck there, Like he's probably not a true talent five to nine homer or flyball ratio guy, especially with the number of fly balls he gets. It's a noisy stat. And so like, yeah, his basketball did get hit a bit in the majors, but I don't know it's there's enough year for it to be pretty interesting. I'd say JP Frantz is another guy that I had rostered in a super deep league when he was in the upper

miners. I think he was in like Triple A in twenty twenty one for the Astros, was having a lot of success. Nobody was really talking about him. He's I don't think it was on any prospect lists of note. And he had a really great twenty twenty one, striking out a lot of batters in the miners, limiting the walks decently well and getting ground balls too at a decent rate. I guess it was kind of up and down he's more of a flyball pitcher. But France had a pretty great, I mean,

debut year. Got called into action quite a lot for the Astros last year through one hundred and thirty six and a third innings and ran a three eight three ERA. It's another guy who writy with a below average velocity fastball in the ninety three miles an hour range, but and he throws it a fair amount, like that's his forcing fastball. He throws quite a bit.

But I think he's another guy that has like decent spin on his fastball and has gotten solid results even given that it doesn't look like a It's certainly not a fastball that you watch and you're like, oh my god, I gotta see more of those. But I think he spins it pretty well and commands

it pretty well. He didn't get many strikeouts last year in his first big league season, excuse me, only seventeen point four percent K's last year, But I actually think there's more in the tank here, and I think he's gonna get more strikeouts, both on the back of the high spin fastball that he has, but he also has a solid five pitch mix, throws cutter,

a change up, a curveball, and a slider. I don't think any of them are bad, and that's like his curveball might be his worst pitch, but all the others to me are plus to maybe to average, And when you've got four average to plus pitches, that to me signals that there's a lot of upside there and there are gonna be outings and years where he can put it all together. So I'm not gonna say too much more than that, just that, Yeah, he didn't earn his three eight three

ERA last year. His FIP was almost a full run higher at four sixty six. His ex FIP was a full run higher at four eight. But I like the skills, and I think there's significantly more strikeout upside in here

than most rankers or projection systems are giving him credit for. Given the strikeout rates that he ran in the miners and the quality of the arsenal, he's another guy that the arsenal you might look at the velocity readings and look at the results and say like, eh, I don't know this is a depth starter, but I think there's a chance for more. This might be a solid kind of number three. And I used him as a depth piece and

a trade, and I gotta say I kind of regret it. I wish he was one of the back of the rotation arms in my thirty team or where I had him. Yeah, four forty six average draft position or average draft rank, right around Alex Cobb, Wade Miley, and Joe Boyle. So an interesting group there, and I think JP France to me, has the maybe the most upside of all of them. Although I guess if Joe Boyle actually figures out how to not walk fifteen percent of batter, maybe he

has more upside. But JP France is one worth filing away as a late dart throw. I'm curious. Did you trade for it's away when he was still a prospect or had he? Yeah, So let me ask you this. Have you regretted trading away some prospect bats or prospect arms? More bats? That's I'm opposite. I have I have traded away some arms that I wish now that I had, not way more so than bats. Yeah, best one for me here. This might be a little too wild for some

folks. Maybe not though, but I want to talk about Ben Lively. Oh, I like it nice, So then talk about Journeyman here, right?

I mean pull up his fangraft page and he's thirty one. He's thirty one. He signed as older. He signed away. Yeah, I know right. He signed a one year contract with the Guardians for seven hundred and fifty k after he got in what twelve starts with the Reds last year, Peer at nineteen games talking an ascension to the bigs and a trip to Korea coming back. You can look at all there's so many. There's so many, like just just surface. Yeah, yeah, there's different like sometimes you

walked a lot of guys. Sometimes he did and sometimes he struck. Like all that stuff. It's all over the place. Right, Let's I just kind of want to make it simple here. I watched Lively last year for his His first handful of starts were really really good, and most of his starts were pretty good. He had a blow up outing where he gave up thirteen runs they must have just hung him out to dry and then seven runs. But other than that, every other outing, I mean it was very

competitive. Did not put Zero's up put decent on the scoreboard. Fastball slider. The slider is his best pitch. I think he up the usage of it as the season progressed. He used it twenty three and a half percent of the time. His four seamer he used thirty two percent of the time. There was a sinker as well, so those were his three main offerings. He used the sinker twenty two percent of the time, change up, curveball, cutter thrown in, but whatever sliderduced well for seamer did not.

But what drew me to him, Matt was I just happened to throw on my case. I think his first start last year, maybe he was the second one, but my man was just painting the edges. Just everything was on the edge. Man. He left nothing over the middle of the plate. So that got me really interested. I was desperate in that league that I had mentioned, and I'm way overpaid for what I should pay for lively to help me out at the time. But I find it also interesting.

At least the plvs pictureless stuff plus stuff like his fastball got a pretty high mark. So take that fo Yeah, even though don't think Nick cares for it very much at all, but my interest here. He's currently listed as a swingman for Cleveland. He's rostered in four percent of leagues. You know, that's less than some of our b sides. He's not getting drafted. I'm one of those leagues. I'm a proud Ben Lively owner. I mean

those thirty teen leagues where you just need to get some arms. Yeah, but we have seen Cleveland take guys with less than out more fastballs or you might think are less than optimal, and help them. So I'm curious what will happen with Cleveland here? And is this a good fastball that isn't that hard? He throws it like ninety one, But is this a good shape? Is this a good fastball? And Cleveland's going to help him a little bit? I don't know, but with the command that I saw on stretches,

and I think maybe that might be just Lively's things. He can be really good for a little while and then he just kind of loses it. But the execution that I saw for him in that little stretch, I thought was could definitely play, and he had some good major league success. Nobody wants him just kind of to keep an eye. Just kind of an interesting guy in my opinion. Yeah, interesting. I was drawn in by the strikeout and walk ratios like that. He'd been fairly successful at getting whiffs and

limiting walks, but just was giving up all the home runs. I'd run a study on this a while back that generally speaking, you still want to trust the strikeout and walk ratios rather than the home run rates, because he ran a two point h three homer per nine rate last year, and like basically nobody ever has had success with that kind of home run rate. But it's also not very sticky, like it's not he wasn't He was in small park and had a fastball that I think was getting lit up. So,

like I said, maybe some improvements with the fastball. We got a bit of a different Ben Lively this year. I'm excited to see it. Nate, great, great picks. There are some fun ones in there. Yeah you too, Man. I love that you brought up Miley so R MLB B side arms, Steven Matt Zach Thompson, JT. Brubaker, Ryan Feltner, Wade Miley, Johnny Brito cutter Croft for Cody Bradford, JP Franz, Ben Lively right on, Matt. Some winners in there. Now, Matt,

let's talk about Reevon Scooter. You want to talk about can we can? We? Yes? Oh my god, I love him. So let me set this up a little bit here. So my guy Justin, who

hooks me up with some fantastic tools to help me watch baseball through the season, made us something that I love. On fangrafts, you can't look at a prospect pitcher right and get stuff broken down like first time through the order, second time through the order, et cetera. Right, So what Justin

did is he pulled from MiLB dot com. You can go to splits and it will it will break down prospect stats by inning right, first literal inning of the game, first inning, second inning, third inning, et cetera. But the problem is part of the problem is they don't update that. You can look at a guy who threw one hundred innings and they'll have like, oh, he pitched four innings in the second inning, Like, no, that's not correct. But Justin's wizard and they have all that stats behind

the scenes. So he pulled all that for me. So just in a literal sense, well, were all of the minor league picture stats in the first inn in the second inning, third inning, et cetera. Right, So then I got to playing with that, and what I did is I just split it first, second, third inning, fourth, fifth, sixth inning. What were all of the pitcher's stats and those two groups, and then I had to, like, I really spent a lot of time just

kind of like weeding up guys. Right, you've got piggybackers. You've got guys who don't come in until the fourth inning, so that's not going to be a great representation of their stats the first or second, third time through the order. There were guys that didn't go deep enough to really make any sort of difference to So after weeding all those guys out, I got my

spreadsheet. Here there were roughly three hundred guys. I thought we could maybe glean a little idea, a little look at how their their stats may may have gone as they got deeper into the games. Right, looked at nothing super fancy. Here, looked at er whip, strike percentage, wall percentage, K percentage, home run percentage, batting average against, ops against. Right, just stuff like that. So what is that? That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight categories?

Right, eight different stats, And Matt, your man Reedvon Scooter was far and way the best looking dude here, Like, i' man, this is this is insane to me. Okay, So those like eight categories or whatever, there were fourteen pitchers who improved in all eight of those in the third, fourth, and sixth innings of their starts, right, Reedvon Scooter Jackson, Wolf, Trent Baker, Dustin Say Signs, Jacob Miller, your Man, Kaiwa Tang, Josh Stephen, Tyson, Guerrero, Cooper Jerpe. But

mind you, there's a pretty small sample size there. Surprisingly to me, rouber sealinis my B side. Also surprising to me, my Blue Jays B side, Ryan Jennings, Luis Devers, John Klein, and another B side Matt Gilbert Diez RVs. Was bar and way the most improved statistically, like this guy in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings, which he went that deep in a lot of his games, right, Yeah, he was one of the top innings pitch this year, one hundred and ft three,

right exactly. And so I broke it down like this too. So in innings one through six, like forty five point three percent of his innings were the third, fourth or sixth inning. That's a very high percent, way higher than a lot of a lot of dudes here, right, His era from the front half to the back half three point six zero to two point three four. His whip went from one four to eight to point nine. His strike percentage increased from sixty four point nine percent to sixty six point seven

percent. His walk rate went from seven percent to five percent. His k rate went from twenty five percent to twenty seven percent. The home run percentage, I guess stayed the same. It went up by very marginal, marginal amount. I just rounded it to whole percentage points. And then his batting

average against dropped almost one hundred points from two nine one ninety seven. That was the most substantial difference out of any picture across the board that we looked at, And I found that kind of fascinating that from your looks of our vs. Why do you think he was able to do that? I think it gets to the depth and quality of the repertoire. You know some of this when we were talking about this, as we were diving into some of

these results over the past couple of weeks. I hypothesize that some of this is noise. Like some of these guys, it's going to be it's it's luck in some capacity. But I also think one of the commonalities of some of the guys that were listed was that they do have deeper repertoires that they

can make it more times through the order and still surprise batters consistently. And I feel that that's the way that Van Scooter approaches a lineup, like he has stuff that I think plays really well, irrespective of the hate that it's gotten from some quarters on the evaluation of the particulars of his pitch mix.

But I think that the combination of the way he locates it, and that the release points, the shapes, and the way that he locates all of his pitches play together to make each app bad against him look pretty different even if it's your third or fourth time seeing him. So this is one of the reasons why he was so exciting to me as I was watching him and

watching him this past year and evaluating his tools and tang. It's interesting that he's another one that popped on this list because he's another one that I was like, this arsenal has depth, it has quality, and it just seems really difficult to hit against him, doesn't matter if you've seen him a bunch of times. And I like that and the fact that both of them pitch deep into games and have the innings built up. I think they're both really

exciting pitchers. You know, like you said, a lot of this this is harry and noisy. I don't know what you want to take away from it, right, but you know we talk about and we like guys who can actually go deep into games, right, be a starter. So maybe this gives us some insight into into that with some of these arms like Tang right, only thirty three percent of his innings we're in the fourth, fifth and six, right, Yeah, because he has lots of challenge getting that

deep in games because of his walk issues. Right, and you talk about how there's attacks when you get deeper in his games, Right, you should be easier to hit as pitchers see you more often, right, But also too, like you have to account for there are games where you don't get to the fourth, fifth and six innings because you got blue up early. Right, So that's going to affect things like your era and whip and whatever. Maybe the most interesting thing on all of this was whose percentage of innings

was we're in the fourth, fifth and six. That might be just the most interesting part of it. I don't know. I do want to highlight a few guys here and a few things that they did. Wilmer Flores is a guy who I found really interesting. I know he didn't have a really great year, but I thought a combination of stuff and execution in twenty twenty two was really good. He kind of fell off a little bit, but there were some nice signs here, and I think he had some outings where

he just got gave up a lot of runs early. But he was a guy that when he did go deeper into the games was was pretty good and arguably better my guy CJ. Culpepper nat thirty six percent of his innings were in the fourth, fifth, and six. It accounted for thirty and two thirds innings on the season. Guess howbody earned runs he gave up then? Zero? Nada. I know you shared this with me already, and that's impressive. Nada. I mean, that might just be a good stretcher or

whatever, but nobody does that. Nobody did that. Some pictures who seemed to lose some substantial cagews deeper into starts, like my guy Dylan Ray dropped ten percent over a pretty decent sample size. Your guy Isaac Coffee dropped ten percent, Jack Lighter dropped nine percent, Juan Corilla dropped nine percent. Yarro Eriarte dropped nine percent. But like interesting, yeah, only I mean only

thirty two percent of his innings were were there. But Trace McDermott dropped seven percent, Frank Mazokato dropped seven percent, Kyder Montero dropped six percent, Luis Perrellis dropped six percent. To Ko Roby dropped six percent, Jordan Wick dropped six percent. Zebie Matthews dropped six percent. That was a little interesting. That is interesting. Cole Wilcox walk percentage dumped quite a bit eight percent.

Ike Buxton walk percentage went up six percent later and starts tink Hence walk percentage went up four percent. Well were his strikeout rates down four percent already? Not high rate? Right? Yeah, that was kind of interesting. Higher ops allowed to Mitch Bratt's batting average guns swim up over what one hundred and seventeen points. Joe Rock gave up a lot more hits Dylan Rey as well, which makes a lot of sense to me. Can Dana, So I

don't know, kind of some fun. So can your boy get us these data for previous years, because I think we could have some fun using ubility if it is directionally projection affected, you know, probably because my proxy for This is just like do they throw innings. If you're throwing innings, you're having some success. This is interesting although they are small samples, but I think the things that you're calling out mat in are their case going up or

down? Are their walks going up er down? Like? Those are the things that are stickiest in smaller samples and are also more predictive of just overall skill. So I wonder if we can break this out a little bit more granularly for some of the guys over the past, like say three or four years before, and see where they land in the major leagues if it helps

us with breakouts. Like you know, a guy that I'm curious about is someone like Reed debt Meers, who really ran some pristine lines in the minors, and it's taken his lumps a bit in pro ball up to this point. He's had some success, but also had some growing pains too, And I wonder whether it's it tells us anything more about his like underlying depth of repertoire. This is a log of the history of twenty twenty three minor leagues. I'm not going to take it as too much more than that, but

you know, maybe maybe there's some signs here. Maybe there's some breadcrumbs of some things we might want to pay more attention to. I don't know, Hey, and anything that confirms my bias that tin kNs is actually stink. Hence, I think good Leod Matt Jackson job first, second, and third innings forty three in a third innings total there he walked three percent of batters, right, and then four when he went four or five six, which was twenty and two thirds, his walk percentage was zero. Yeah, he's

fun. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Strike guys out and don't walk them. Yeah, good starting point. Strike them out at like thirty three percent or whatever it was and walk them at like two and a half percent. That'll probably play. Yeah, I think I think it should. I hope he stays healthy. I hope that back thing isn't isn't a concern, because I'm quite excited about watching him and the bigs. So, I don't know, Matt, you got anything else he wanted to talk about or

should we rather? I don't think so. I mean, that was quite the wide ranging conversation. You know. We talked about minor leaguers, fringe major leaguers, some potential stars. I mean, we were all over the place today right out. Well, there's some muddy arm stuff. I think we're well, we got sent back down to the minors. That so shure. We'll have to work along anyway, Nate, we'll have to work on some things. Maybe we can get back up to the biggs later. But

yeah, I don't know. I don't know what we're gonna talk about next week. We'll figure it out. But hopefully there's there's some deep arms that might help you in some leagues at least short term or what have you. Spot start stream. I don't know, but I think we'll let Chicago Farmer take us out. Matt be well, talk to you next time. See Yu ritten to his head. He hop him down the first with the lump bone in his face, and on the very next pitch he up in stove

second face with greatest speed. He wasn't born. He had the dirdy. Yes, Ni Borne