Nine five miles an hour were riding two his head.
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First with the limp bonius face, and now on the very next pitch he up and stole second things with gradest he wasn't born, he had, yes, YOUNI born?
All right. Welcome to episode Esteban Lewisa of The Prospect B Sides Podcast, Episode forty eight. I am Nate handy with me as always the rook oh rook exclamation point.
Today, we're excited to be back, Nate. It's been way too long, man. I missed talking to you, hearing you on all these other podcasts, but you can make time to talk to little old me. I see how it is.
Man. I did not expect like a six week hiatus from recording with you, but so apologies for that. I've missed talking to you as well. Matt. But esb Wisa, you approve that's this desaturation number forty eight, right, yeah, yeah, I could.
He's b said enough he had.
One one nice like cy young caliber year. Yeah, white sucks. You know. I actually have a signed baseball from Esteban Ewisa. Really, I gotta be careful though, I can't be taking that thing through customs. I had no idea what might be inside of it?
He gives you from his personal stash.
I don't know. I don't know where it came from. I don't know what's inside of that. I don't know where mister Lewisa is these days. I think is he still in prison? I have no idea.
Well, I'm hopeful that the Braves number forty eight is going to make a bit of a comeback this year. Ian Anderson is such a key part of a couple of deep postseason runs and might be back from the dead from the proverbial fantasy wasteland.
So you know, I got that where I could use that. I could use return to that sort of form. But Noah, before man, the Cosmos news. Have you have you heard?
What is good?
Yeah? I mean the hered events revolving around the most of these days is just such an up and down, such a whirlwind. It was so positive feeling after all the UAP stuff, and now I don't know. It turns out twenty thirty two might be it for us. Huh.
We got to talk to some of our dynasty mates that are rebuilding for twenty thirty two and might need to recalibrate their competitive windows.
That's what I'm saying, like a DSL guy, like those might just be all out the window right now. Twenty thirty two might be the last year we get to play this game. Yeah, they say three point one percent chance, but they're not going to be able to observe it again or something like that until like another year from now. So, I mean, the way that it's been trending, the possibility has been like doubling from like every other day. So I hope that trend stops and we get better news than a year.
But the other thing to consider is that even if that goes up to one hundred percent gonna intersect Earth's orbit, it's still really small even Earth scale of things, it's a very small. So if it hits the ocean, like basically nothing is going to happen. The chances that it hits like something significant is way way smaller even than the chances that it hits Earth. So you know, just like keep that in context. It's I don't know, man, it's crazy we know about it this far in advance,
Like that's amazing. Science is incredible and the astrophysics of it all is incredible. But yeah, this is not high on my list of worries currently.
Oh, I'm orderline terrified. But it could be like the size of a minivan or something like it's going to hit my house for sure.
No, their current prediction, I think is like the Pacific. That's that's what they're saying.
O's yeah, all.
Right, well, which I mean, I don't know. I haven't seen all of your house, so like maybe your house is as big as the Pacific. But I'm guessing not.
No, no, definitely not. Well. We are in the middle of like draft season, right, I think I'm like legit snack dab right in the middle halfway through half of my off season. D You know, we don't get asked questions from listeners to too often, Matt, but a lot of them did reach out and want to know how we kind of prioritized our B side selections that we
were talking about this off season. And I think that's probably a good question, and I thought maybe we should, you know, try to answer that for some of our listeners.
I know, sounds great.
Yeah, I know last year we did like a bit of a competitive draft sort of thing, and I think we'll probably do the same sort of thing here tonight. You get aside I get aside and we'll kind of see how it all lines up at the end and crowned champion. But since we are in the middle of draft season, some of our B siders, Matt are like gaining popularity or at least upping their roster percentages. Right, we were picking all these guys the roster percentages back
in September. We're from not created in fan tracks yet to two percent. Right. Maybe a couple went a little bit over, like three percent, But for the most part, that was the demographic derange we were looking for. And now that we're you know, it's probably a lot more dynasty leagues are drafting now on fan track. This is roster percentage data. I don't it will change when a lot of redraft leagues get up and running, so I imagine a lot of these percentages will will come back down.
But I did put a list together mad of all of our B siders and where their roster percentages were sitting at. I don't know how much you've looked at that, but I think they're.
Just in the five minutes since since you sent it to me.
But you've looked at it, though, yes, you've looked at the yep.
Yeah, scrolling through.
No surprise to me who's on top. Nestor German is at fifteen percent right now. I know he was what zero percent when we first talked about him.
Yeah.
I have not been able to get him in any drafts he's been going before I had a chance to pull the trigger on him that. I don't know about you, but I've.
Gotten him a couple of times. Once did from last year as a waiver pickup, and once early in a draft.
So the Nestor German train seems to be picking up a little bit of speed. Second on the list. This was kind of surprising to me. But your Mariner's arm, Brandon Garcia is at thirteen percent.
Mm.
Threck me if I'm wrong here, But I think he's moving to the bullpen right like, that's that's where he's going to be.
I think the report that I saw was they're giving him the chance to make the Mariners out of camp in the bullpen. I did see something else that said they still think he might have a shot to be a starter long term, but they've done this before, kind of like said, hey, maybe you've got a shot to move to the pen, but we're going to keep the door open. They did this a bit with Matt Brash, where he was a starter in the miners. They said,
we love your stuff. You don't have a spot in the rotation, but you could earn a spot in the bullpen and then we'll reassess. And he was just so good in the pen that they like said you're going to stick in the pen. And then obviously TJ and all that. But anyway, I wonder if Brandon Garcia is going to have that same kind of optional path where
he starts as a reliever. Maybe maybe they don't think he's ready for the bullpen and they want to keep him developing as a starter and they send him back to double A or Triple A. But I guess we're going to see a lot of Brandon Garcia versus like some real minor leaguers in spring training, which is fun too.
Yeah. At the time, my Philly's arm is now with the Twins after the Rule five draft, Iberson Castillano is at twelve percent, your guy Lucas Browns at ten percent, Will Simpson's at ten percent, idol kemps at nine percent. I was surprised Juan Valera, who is probably at the bottom of my thirty arms.
That is a surprise to me too, is.
That eight percent? Yeah, Chad Patrick is that eight percent? R J. Shreks at eight percent, Tintawa seven, kind of the early seven, Jake Miller seven, kind of Benitez seven Yet, how do you say his first name? Yead here? Arianamo at seven percent, lizbel Diez at seven percent, Gusto at six, Darlin Saladine at six. Yeah. I won't go through the rest, but there's a good junk. There's probably about twenty more
arms that are above two percent right now. But I don't know if that's necessarily a true jump in popularity or the ratio of dynasty leagues to redraft leagues right now on fan t rex. Yeah, I don't know any any takeaways, there any surprises for you.
I think, like you said, Valera being at eight percent as a surprise to me. I think Chad Patrick is probably too low at eight percent, Like that's He's somebody that I think that could easily be twenty twenty five percent depending on how things shake out early this year. Jake Miller's another one that if any of the reports that we've seen are to be believed, he should be up there at fifteen right now with Nestor German, like that's he looks great and we obviously loved him coming
into this offseason. Yeah, a couple others that kind of surprised me a little bit, but not too much. I mean again, like you said, it's an odd time in the dynasty calendar where some you know, I think a lot of fypds and unowned prospect drafts are happening for our deeper leagues, but the redraft stuff hasn't picked up, so and a lot of these guys too, Like there's a good chance that some of them could move significantly
based on spring training news. You know, I saw down there that John rave is at one percent fine, but if he wins like the right field job for the Royals, like that's going to be ten percent minimum coming out of spring training. So some of these are make a lot of sense. And you know, we came into this doing a bit of prep for a mini draft between us, and I don't really think it's a surprise who has ended up at the top, like that group of ten or so at the top, Like that's probably the top
of our prep list. I don't know about you, but pretty close, it looks pretty similar to mine, with the exception of a couple of others.
I know, I chatted about this a little bit with Clegg and the Dynasty dugout discord, but I'm kind of surprised that Will Johnston is still only at two percent. Yeah, I kind of. I don't know. I don't think there's too much of a difference in a play between he and like a Jake Miller. I kind of kind of value both those guys similarly, Any surprises, any takeaways from from your drafts so far this season, anything on the first year player side or supplement prospects.
Okay, so let me get this out of the way first. I think fypds are a scam and I would trade my picks away in my fypds every single time. And there's a few reasons for this one.
We know way.
Less about the first year players than we think we do, and there's some great lists out there, there's some great scouting out there. Teams are doing, I think, an even better job than they ever have at trying to sort the wheep from the chaff in the draft, and that's great and hat tip to the awesome work that the folks do at Baseball America, And you know, Chris obviously goes super deep into the FYPD lists, and there's a bunch of others really good, like Aaron Layton, the stuff
that he puts out TJ. Nestico, Like, there's a bunch of people that are doing really good, interesting work and trying to analyze this stuff. But as a dynasty baseball player, if my goal is to win, I think taking the FYPD picks is almost always the wrong choice, especially if you're in an unowned prospects an FYPD draft, I don't think dynasty owners appropriately value the extra information that you
have about the unowned prospects. This gives us two things. One, the valance, like the spread of risk is narrower even for a young guy who's just touching low A that you generally still have more looks and a better calibration of their talent even with two hundred and fifty low A plate appearances than you do from five hundred and fifty over three seasons in college. And I don't think we act like that in fypds. And I think this
is where we get in trouble. When you look at like the historical performance of the you know whatever, top hundred picks in a draft or in an FYPD dynasty ranking. I just think we see some of the hurting that happens in list making. We get excited about the possibility of what could be, but that risk is actually way bigger than we think, and the small sample performance of guys in their fifty plate appearances after the draft or that they didn't pitch, I don't think we do a
good enough job weighing that against real performance. Put my money where I'm matt mouth is here, Like I've in our thirty teamer that you and I are in. I traded away all five of my FYPD picks this year, and this is a deep thirty team league. This is a bunch of sharp owners. I don't think these people are bad at this, and by any means, there's a
lot of really sharp minds in there. But I think from a roster construction and risk to reward evaluation standpoint, you're almost always better going for the prospect that you know more about than the mystery box that could be. And the example I'll bring up here, and again no shade on my trade partner, they're super sharp in dynasty and I think made a lot of good moves in
this draft, a lot of good picks. But I traded my first overall pick, the twentieth overall pick in our FYPD and Tursou ornellis who I like, you know, maybe has a sh to play in the Big six year for Dylan Dingler and Chase my draft, and he took Carson Benge at that pick one twenty. And I think if you if you're the Mets and Carson Benge does what Chase my draft has done the last two years,
you're fucking thrilled. You're like, Wow, we crushed that pick at what at whatever he went like at seventeenth or whatever it was in this draft, we crushed that pick. That's incredible. That's like a small chance, like maybe that's an eightieth percentile outcome for him, maybe seventy p It's definitely above average when you look at like the return on investment for second half of the first round pick.
And my draft, while divisive, is considered a top one hundred prospect by a lot of outlets and certainly fantasy relevant ones, and the especially in a points league in that kind of format. Knowing your format, piece like to me, my drafts should have gone in the top five picks of this draft if people were like really ruthless about
this and tired about like performance only. So I don't know, and maybe I'm wrong, and maybe all of the computers and the performance that he's had is going to completely collapse because he can't hit the ball super hard. Totally a possibility. There is that risk that the jump from Triple A to major leagues is too much for him.
But I think this is indicative of we like the mystery box toys of the FYPD, and we should put a lot more stock in the performance and the tape that we see in pro ball, not what we see in college or underclass or in the perfect game stuff. So that's my like overall rant. That means that I generally lean pretty far away from taking any FYPD guys, you know, outside of like maybe the top couple, Like maybe I would take one of those really pretty boy guys at the very top of the draft. I don't know.
I'm never at that position to see. I think people would be well served to take a good look at like are you in it for the excitement of maybe hitting on the mystery box guy or should you just go for the guy that you know a bit more about. I don't know what's your feeling on this, Nate. You're in that same draft and you've made some trades for and moving back, So what do you think about that.
It's interesting because that league is pretty long standing, and you know, a lot of people have the opinion that this first year player draft or this first year player class is maybe not their favorites. But yet this was the first time in the show that all thirty first round picks were first year players. I think it says a couple of things. I do think you know, in the past there'd be an unrostered prospect. I was like, oh, this is easily a top ten guy for me. In
this draft, those those guys are getting rostered more and more. So, I think it's says a compliment to the league as a whole that the good prospects are getting rostered a lot more. But I think I agree with a lot of what you said there. I'm much more inclined to take a player that I know more about than I do less. I think that's at the core of what
you were kind of saying there. But I do also understand the Okay, I might know a lot about you know, I don't kempt, but how excited him I about his MLB, you know, potential and what his role might look like. And you know, depending on your roster and where you sit, maybe just taking a moonshot taking a guest on the guys is more up your alley, you know, or more of what you want to do. But I agree, I think there's a lot of you know, shoot, we do
the B side stuff, man. I think there's there's always some prospects out there that I value a lot more than some top one hundred guys. And I think that's kind of our whole point and what we're trying to share and discover who some of those guys might be.
Right, I was just going to say on that point, like there's something of the curse of knowledge here where because we pay so much more attention to guys that just really aren't getting rostered in many dynasty leagues at all. That the kind of knowledge base or like, I know of another ten prospects that I would happily roster on this league even after this thing finishes, and you know, I don't have space for all of them. And that
also plays into it too. Just I'm not looking at a list to tell me this is who's interesting, because we've got lists on lists, on lists that are a thousand prospects deep that we've evaluated, you know.
Yeah, just because you're ranting a little bit. So many times you hear somebody like, hey, I took Seth Halverson in my first year player draft. Can we call it something else because that wasn't a first year player draft if you drafted Seth Helverston. Yeah, yeah, you know, I do have a draft one league that's a true first year player nothing else. But I think the majority of the dynasty minor league draft. It's like a minor league
supplemental thing with first year player. So I don't have a good name for it.
But yeah, the off season.
A little confusing when people are off.
Season prospect draft. No, that's a good point too. I think the other point, and this is something that I think we chatted about last week. I was in another points league draft and again that's an international free agent and unknown prospects and FYPD guys, and that first round was absolutely hilarious to me because this league is very specific. It is to shallow. I mean relatively, it's like fourteen or fifteen teams something like that, so kind of a
shallow league. The roster limits are not super deep. I think it's like a was it thirty five roster or forty one total roster, so like max your minor leagues is like fifteen. So it's not very deep. And it's also a pretty different points format that is very very strikeout heavy penalty and pitching friendly. And everybody just went down the draft as if it was like you know, Chris Klegg's FYPD list. You know, Roki went first, makes sense, and then they just went like straight down the FYPD order.
Not an appropriate enough weight on the format that we're playing in, and some of that, like maybe you just draft like the top couple names because they're still going to fetch something in trade value. But for me, like I took Caleb Durban in the first round ahead of like a whole host of dudes that like Durbin is way behind and most like Fantasy list, but it's because
the guy's not going to cave very much. He's probably going to play decent amount this year, and he'll steal some bags, and all of those things are rewarded really well in this league, and I was like, most of my picks ended up being like that because I just don't think that a bunch of the other FYPD pretty boys fit that bill. A lot of them have strikeout concerns but decent power, and that's just not a thing
that really plays in this league. So my other point is like, you should care a lot about your format and that should absolutely change how you decide to draft.
Definitely, Like to your original point here, I think you can see it a lot when you know, what is it now at mid July or whatever, when folks will like update their prospect ranks, right, and they're now including this year's draftees. Right. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but been observing these things for a while now, and it feels like to me, when that happens, you'll get like a I don't know how many you'll get,
like ten to twenty MLB draft. E's like put in someone's top top one hundred, but then a lot of those guys end up falling out of it, right. And I think it's the same phenomenon that you're talking about, but it's the new name we don't know that this guy sucks yet, right, So I'm going to take a stab here, but I think that I thought it.
Was interesting that I thought it was interesting. In Eric Logenhingen's Top one hundred at Fangrafts this week, he mentioned and a couple of commentors noted, that there weren't a ton of the first year player from this past draft in his top one hundred. I think fewer than often get there, and some of that is maybe the relative weakness of the class, but some of that, too, I think is a reflection on when they've kind of been over enthusiastic on and put more weight on things that
have turned out to be a little bit unreliable. And you know, one of my favorite sources for additional context and information is Denzenborski and his zips, and he put out his zip's top one hundred, and he basically ignores the first year players because he's like, the high school and college data that we get is not predictive, and their draft position is not predictive or not strongly enough
predictive for me to include it in this sample. And I think that that represents a buying opportunity for most people that you can trade back ignore the top pretty boys like do kind of your own thing, and the opportunity cost is actually not that high. Like the bus rate is still super super high even for top five draft picks, and we just don't know. So I think that while teams and dynasty rankers and prospect rankers are definitely getting better, there are still such huge questions even
from some of the top SEC performers. I think that's still relevant, Like the Charlie Condon came into the draft and just crushed it last year, was kind of bad as a pro and now he's like in dropping out of the top twenty five, top thirty in some places that I've seen in fypds, because again, we really don't know until they hit and perform or don't in pro ball, and so why not take the remove at least some of that risk by seeing how somebody has done against against real professionals.
Yeah, that one true first year player draft that I'm in. It's five rounds. It's a fourteen team roto, I believe. But you have to drop anybody from your existing spec list if you want to house your first year player picks, right, So dude, I got like I got to the third round, I was like, I don't want any more of my picks. No one I'm gonna pick here is gonna boot somebody off my list. So I just kicked them down the road and got to pick next year or something like that.
But it's tricky. I think I get more and more picky, selective first year player players that I'll actually want to like, sort of draft and commit to, and there's less and less every year, I think. Yeah, but I'm also getting to see less and less of them now hit full season ball and MLB dot TV, so that might play into it as well.
Yeah, wish they would just film and showcase that dev league that they're doing or whatever they're calling it that uh, what's it called? What do they call it? I wanted to short season, but that's the Bridge League, that's right, Yeah.
Which is a ridiculous name to me. That's like my grandmother played in a Bridge league? Like what that's true?
My uncle plays in a Bridge league?
Yea? They should we draft it up here? Should we put some of our I don't know, I want to say money, but we're not betting anything, but some of our pride where our mouth is here?
What are we doing like we're taking five hitters five pitchers each and talking about him and try and spread them around this ownership list. Yeah.
Sure, sure, we broke down and got into all these players in previous episodes, so I don't I don't think I want to get like too too deep like we did there. If folks want to listen to his talk more about some of these players. I have all the players time stamped on the episodes and when we get into them. But yeah, I mean, I think we could briefly chat about them. You're supposedly the defending champ in this, so I guess I'll let you go first.
Okay, Well, I'm going to leave the number one guy on the board again because you like you identified him. He's kind of your guy, but a huge coas on on me, and I think in a vacuum I would take Nesser German here.
I would too. Let's just skip him. He's already getting popular. We're not going to take all right, that's like the most out of our list.
It really had a tough time breaking this down because I genuinely think my like the top ten arms that I drafted, I love them. I would be like thrilled in a thirty team or if this was my set of arms that I'm rostering, I'll go with Ben Shields as my first one. You know, we didn't mention him in the intro, and while I've raved about him on the show, I'm still not seeing a ton of people pick him in FYPDS. I picked him in two because I really really love what he's doing and think he's the real deal.
Only at right now, I know I.
Saw that on the list only three percent, and I think that is criminally underrated. Shoot, I'm forgetting where I saw this now, but it might have been the robo Scout Top one hundred Baseball America Dylan White's robo scout tool. It put Ben Shields as a top one hundred arm.
Right now, I fully agree this guy belongs in that like forty five plus to fifty tier of Like this guy in the next year could earn in a major league gaverage rotation spot and maybe he debuts and it's like a one point five war kind of guy or one war kind of guy and one hundred innings and at peak he's you know, a one seventy five kind of inning pitcher and is a kind of two point
two to three war starter. Like, I'm not saying this guy is going to be Paul Schemes or anything, but his depth of rotation, quality of stuff, the comps that I had on him to a bunch of Max freed pitches, but with additional pitches on top of that. It is no wonder to me that this dude just crushed the Eastern League this year, and I think he's gonna continue to rise in the ranks, and I'm really hope that the Yankees just PLoP him in Scranton and just see
what he does. I just think he is super talented left handed pitcher with a deep arsenal of quality pitches and velocity numbers aren't eye popping, but I think the shape and the pitchability and the command all are there and such the fastball itself plays up, and the depth of repertoire helps helps everything come together too. So Ben Shields is my would be my number one pick here and again I've put my money where my mouth is year.
I've got him in a bunch of leagues now, and even the leagues where I don't have him, I've tried to trade for him, sometimes unsuccessfully, sometimes successfully. So Shields is my guy here.
My only hesitation with Shields, And I've been sitting at the draft table thinking about him a few times as I and I just went with somebody else. Is the opportunity right now as things sit? How many innings is he going to get with the Yankees? Does it require that he moves, get traded whatever, So that has been a tiebreaker for me with him and a couple other guys this draft season.
Yeah, And to that point, I don't know how many innings he gets. I hard to put in a confident over under on it. The Yankees they're super rich as an organization, both in talent and in money. So if some of their pitchers don't pan out, you know, Rodan gets hurt, Free blows out his elbow in his first year of his contract, Like, they do have some other depth that I think they'd look at to fill things in.
You know, Will Warren notably probably ahead of him. I don't know if really anybody else is that much farther ahead. You know, he's not on the forty, So there's that. So I think that also this year, like if you really need the innings, this year is probably not his year. But just talent, like maybe he's eighth or ninth in their pecking order, and major league teams use like thirteen starters in the course of a year, and if somebody's
really good, they'll keep giving him run. I'm just saying, like, I don't think Brandon Lee Brandt and Alan Winan's and whatever thirty eight year old Carlos Carrasco have left are really that much of an impediment to Ben Shields ultimately getting innings. That's it's a fair tiebreaker to use to say, like, I need the innings this year, and I don't know if I'm going to get him from Shields, but I do re term that I'm pretty darn bullish on his his skills.
Yeah, I don't disagree with him as a pitcher as a player, valuing him at the top of our offseason work here. Yeah, draft season's fun because you get put to the fire and you have to make your choices and you find out who you like better than some others. So, at least my first handful here, I'm just going to kind of stick to what I learned and who I learned I liked the most out of our selections this year. First, I'm going to go with my guy, Ryan Gusto nice.
I think, you know, obviously he was supposed to debut last season. I don't know how much run he's going to get that fifth spot. I think it's kind of up for grabs at least right now in the Astros rotation. I'm not betting that he ends up breaking camp as their fifth starter, but I think a shot and a run is relatively quick here. And you know, like we talked about, I like him as a sum of all parts. I like him as a competitor as a person. Is he the flashiest sexiest picture on my list this year?
Probably not, But I think Major League's success is very much an outcome for Gusta. So I'll stick with him and go with him first.
Yeah, I like that one a lot. I don't think I have any shares. I have definitely asked after him as like a balancer in a couple of trades that haven't gone through, but like he's somebody that I keep targeting to. All right, let's go to the athlete side of things. I'll highlight my number one here. You know, Nate and I both identified a bunch of guys that
we were had in common that that we liked. The top of my list though, was Aaron Estrada, and again in our thirty teamer that we were just talking about, I traded for Estrata with what I thought was great price for my fifth round FIPD pick, which shows kind of how others view Estrata and I get it like he's on the smaller side. He's not. He's definitely overshadowed in the deep and highly talented Baltimore system. But Aerin Astrata just does so many things that I like, and
he's young and keeps performing even at advanced levels. His worst season was the last little kind of month of the season that he spent at High A this year, and he was still a league average hitter as a nineteen year old. The guys that were younger at that level or higher, that list is vanishingly short, and ones that did better than him is like two guys. It's like Sebastian Walcott and who's the other one, Walker Jenkins.
I guess like are the two that were younger than him went to the same level or higher and did better. So that to me, I do care a lot about h to level performance for a hitter. I think one of the things is he's just getting underrated for his size, and you know my feelings on that that if you're a performer, baller's gonna ball and I don't really care what your size is. So Aeron Estrada is my pick here is do a bit of everything, really talented as a youngster.
Nice personally. If you want to take him, whatever, But I'm going to skip over Iverson Castillano just because of the rule five thing makes a little hairy. I did draft him again, I have been rastering him. If you want to value him this year, it's got to be in a spot where you got to he's gonna be a nothing burger to that much relief pitcher for you for a season and then hope that in i don't know a year or two years, you get a starter
out of it. It's a good point, but I know there's a lot of formats that just make him that worth it. But I do like him in a sense just as much as done near anyway b side this year, but I'm not going to draft. I'm kind of split and torn here between one of my guys and one of your guys, So I'll just let my guy win the tiebreaker. Here and I'll go with RJ. Shrek nice. I don't know. I know he's a non roster invite this camp. Imagine he'll be getting a lot of decent
run and outfield. I remember when we talked about him. I think this is just a guy who's got a real shot to carve out an MLB job. He's you know, he might not put out put up the monster evs and stuff like that, but when it comes to like batted ball shape, he's just like kind of primo getting the most out of his batted balls. So RJ. Shrek, I think that was a great get by the blue Jays, and you know they I kind of feel like the blue Jays are it's kind of wide open there right now.
It feels like with a lot of their their farm, what's going on at the major league level, Like there could very well be a lot of jobs up for grabs, you know, next year or two and if they're going to be kind of a whole new front office and stuff might be in the cards. I don't know, but RJ Shrek my favorite B side bat this offseason.
So do you think Shrek can play center?
I know he has some I think I haven't watched enough defense to know for sure things. The gist that I get from it all is like he's probably passable and serviceable and could play there from time to time. There's probably not where you want him all.
Yeah, I feel like that. The Santander signing for muddles the to me looking at their roster, just an in terms of opportunity, looks like a lot of corner outfield guys. You know, class A is the fastest, but I don't think he's a very good center fielder. Lit Berfedo, Alan Roden, Stuart Baroa, like all of those guys are corner guys to me. And that's on top of George Springer who's not going anywhere and Santander who's now signed for a while.
And obviously there's some DH reps to go through too, but it's not like their infield is that freed up either. I actually, in one of my drafts, I hovered between RJ. Shrek and Alan Roaden, one of the other guys that's like Sue, similar kind of player, and I went Rodent just because the bat to ball skills for Roden, I think or a touch better.
I think he's probably had a Shrek in like the sort of pecking order right now too.
Yeah, And so I mean that's the thing though, is like, how are these guys going to get reps? I think this year it seems unlikely either of them will get a lot of run. Definitely think Shrek as a talent and his ability to get under a ball and hit it in the air no matter where it is, Like we talked about that, that's a fricking superpower and he's so good at it. Yeah, okay, let's go. Yeah, let's
go back over to arms. And I mentioned this at the outset, but Chad Patrick is my second one I want to highlight here.
That was my tie here.
Yeah, I just he popped on was at the zips list where he was top seventy five or something for him? Am I making that up now? I'm saying that I can't remember where I saw this or was that also the robo scout thing might have been that, Yeah, I think that was the robo Scout one as well. I don't think he was on the zip's top one hundred anyway.
I think that Patrick is another one that he just led the International League in strikeouts, and that is I think we underrate how difficult that is to do both in the combination of the sheer quantity of innings that you have to throw, which I love having a platform that says your actual starter quality pitcher that can last deep into a game and do it for a whole season.
It also showcases the way his arsenal actually plays and diving into the stat cast it's available in Triple A. Again, like Patrick showed that all of his arsenal is playable at the Triple A level, and especially that cutter first arsenal. Like I think he's he's adopted the kind of modern
fastball heavy approach sort of. I think maybe lance Lynn kind of pioneered this where he throws, you know, ninety percent fastballs, but it's actually three completely distinct shapes and it's actually three separate pitches and is kind of a nightmare for hitters to know which of these fast pitches and which direction they're going, And Patrick does that exceptionally well.
Also has a great change up. I mean, like, I just think that this arsenal is underrated because it's not ninety eight plus from alrighty, but we've seen that it's super effective. I think the numbers back that up and the visual evaluation does as well, and unlike some of these other picks, I do think there's a world in which he gets the opportunity to pitch significant innings this year, and I'm super excited to see it. So Chad Patrick's my other kind of top tier guy I wanted to highlight.
I think I've drafted him three times this off season, hoping to get some utility out of him right away this season. Right, I think that's very much on the table. Who do you think will get Who do you think gets a shot first, Logan Henderson or Chad Patrick Patrick?
I think, I mean he's just higher up in the pecking order. And look, I love Logan Henderson, you know it, everybody. I tried to yell about it so much last year, and were it not for his industry injury, I think Logan Henderson might be ahead in that pecking order. But just the amount of innings that Patrick threw and the platform that he gave him, Like, I think that they are going to see what Patrick has if they need
to fill in. I also love Casey Hunt in that same kind of like those three to me, or the three most exciting arms for the Brewers, and that is definitely shaded on Jacob Misrawski. You know, I would not be surprised to see those three in the Milwaukee rotation for a long time to come.
Yeah, my next one here's gonna be a young arm or young bat, and both of them. I don't know if we would sat down and done this a month ago or something like that, before my drafts, I probably wouldn't have these guys up here. But trying to stay true to what I did when I sat down at the draft table, right, And I'm kind of surprised that I ended up going with both these guys before a couple more advanced, older arms and bats. But let's go with I'm gonna go with Jose or being a.
Rays interesting interesting, like.
I've been sitting there with with like him at the top of my pitching que and Jake Miller and like Will Johnston some of your guys. And maybe it's because it's later in drafts or whatever it might be, or maybe it's situational to the team, but I've been taking the kind of the home run more of a home run swing and taking Urbina over those guys, So I feel like I gotta keep it real and do it here. So Jose, being a young arm in the raised system, I like the look of a lot. Has a really hard, firm,
good looking slider, good looking fastball. He's a young kid who went through like a crazy growth spurt last year or two years. Big frame, big frame that you can still fill out, I think, and uh yeah, just going for a bit of a boom here.
And so I know that there are a couple of other folks that like him. I think he's pretty high up in Chris Klegg's latest list, So you're you're far from alone on this one. I looked long and hard at him in one of my drafts because I, you know, you shouted him and we had talked about him, and I hadn't watched him much, and man, I like didn't see it, you know what I mean, Like it's this is just one of these guys that why can't he
punch anybody out if the stuff is so good? And yeah, he's young, but like even on the complex, he's punching out eight per nine and walking almost five per nine, and that's something.
He knows how to pitch very well. Play Yet yeah, I don't know.
I know we talked about that when we when we did the Al East episode.
But well, I mean, if you think about last year, Matt, you know, obviously I drafted arms in our thing, but I drafted a lot of the wrong ones, and a lot of the guys that I just had a little young guys that I had a little look at were the ones that blew up, like Gary Gale Hill and some others. So maybe it's dumb, but I don't want
to make that mistake again. So I'm going to go with the guy that I thought was the most exciting young teenage got down at a ball b sider for me this year, and that was Urbina.
Yeah all right, all right, go back over to the hitter side for me, and this is the guy that we both really really like. So no surprise, I'm gonna highlight Logan Wagner here. Logan Wagner is and other of these guys that I think has a ton of talent. He's basically done nothing but Rake when he's on the field. He just hasn't been on the field that much. And I don't know whether it's the like I just like seeing such that top tier performance, but he's in this
similar bucket to me. As an Emmanuel Rodriguez chased the latter like guys that have these incredible performance that they've showed when they've been on the field, but it's starting to get worrisome how little they're on the field. While my worry about him is twofold one that he keeps moving down the defensive spectrum. You know, he came in as a shortstop and it was third base, and I think now he's played some first and left and who knows if he's got a defensive home and so that
might put additional pressure on the bat. But I also worry that these injuries are like he is a little more injury prone and that might eat into his viability as a fantasy player as well. But watching him, I really struggled to pick knits with the swing, with the performance, and just to me, I feel like he is massively underrated. Still.
We were literally talking about it in the discord and then one of my buddies in the draft saw it and just took him, and I was totally plad I got taking in with one of my last picks because of course nobody's on him still, and he saw it and was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna take a look at Wagner. I was like, all right, yeah, fair, fair, so logan for me, he's a top tier B side bat. I would be shocked if he does not rise significantly in popularity this year.
Yeah, just stay on the field. But he's definitely there's a clump of young switch hitters that I am just like, have been enamored with and watching of late, and he's definitely at the top of that list. For me, I'll go with the batman that I was between last pick and again, I'm kind of surprised that I find myself going him over some of the older, more advanced bats that we talked about this offseason. But Liz Bell Diez, oh love that one. I just think I don't know.
I just liked the look of his technique and his swing so much. It's so easy and it's so simple, and he really turned it on the back half of last year as what eighteen year old and a ball. And maybe it's because in some spots I've been chasing after power a little bit more because I didn't. I was just feeling a little white there and my minor list. But yeah, I find myself I've popped him several times
in drafts last season. So Lizbell, Diaz will be my second hitter, third or third hitter, second second hitter.
Yeah, no, great pick. And he's somebody that I've been targeting in trades where I'm trying to consolidate or get a get a kind of young bat throw in that I think is a little underrated. But for all reasons you said, like he has got some real power as a young guy, and I think a decent hit tool too, Like it's nothing to sneeze at as an eighteen year old and full season ball to have an eighteen percent k rate, like, especially when it comes with significant power,
like that's pretty rare. So I'm I'm a big, big fan of his two. I think this is a great pick.
I think a lot of those spots where I've gotten him too, I've paired it with a PJ. Orlando pick. He's he's my most drafted first year player guy so far. And it's you know, obviously Orlando's left handed, Diaz is
right handed. But for me, I was chatting about this the other day, it's like, if I'm going to make a play like a power hitter, you know, a potential sixty seventy kind of guy or hope or dream I want to do that on a guy that I find to just be like mechanically and technique wise just super impressive.
And both of those guys are that to me. So I found myself like taking Orlando earlier in an FYP first year players slash supplemental and then like down the road just as like a little backup, like, yeah, I'll take DS too. I have a couple of young power guys to dream on.
Just on Orlando. I did see in Longen Higgins right up on him. I think he might have talked about him as a pic to click or maybe it was in the top one hundred chap that he did this week, but he noted something about the swing mechanics for Orlando that he's like really still almost unnaturally so and wondered if a pro program.
He's just standing there and just hitting monsters, dude.
And I wondered if a pro program gives him a little more rhythm, a little bit of like movement fluidity to the thing that I mean, he dropped down for a reason, right Like there are teams that were kind of scared off by the kind of what he showed because he came into the year the year as like in talks right up there with some of the top prep guys, right as like this might be a top five pick.
He's like forever been the number one prep guy from his class, and he's still I number one guy. And I just did like some back issues and was a little hurt and didn't have a super impressive senior year of high school, I guess, And I think that that's that's like people are questioning like his his athleticism or his speed, or his ability to stick in the outfield or something that. To me, that's like would you measure Jordan Alvarez the same way? Like that's not the ruler
to use for a guy like this. You're looking for power, that's you're looking for home runs. And I think he's a decent hitter too, where potentially can be a decent hitter too, And I just find him to be as just the biggest deal this year. He's going in like the pick thirty forty and to me, obviously different strokes for different folks, but to me, that's that's wild. I'm all over it.
Cool. Well, that's good, good upside bet for sure. Let's stay on the hitter side still and another guy that I've just being drawn to that I don't see it a lot of love is Ricardo Olivar. He's not someone that I've ended up in any of my supplemental drafts or off season drafts, but I've traded for him once and have asked after him a couple of times in places as a throw in or a balancer in trade.
I think he's another one that's getting a little bit underrated in that it's a pretty deep quality catching class in the minor leagues generally, Like people have been talking about how overall the talent might be down a bit, but I think the catching talent is pretty high. He catches and plays the outfield so has a bit of
that Swiss Army knife flexibility. But I think is a really, really good hitter and was really surprised to see Zips very very much agreed projected him if they plopped him down in the middle of Minnesota's lineup, that he thinks he would be a slightly better than league average bat right now, so one oh two WRC plus Steamer generally agrees that an eighty nine WRC plus and for twenty three year old that hasn't sniffed triple A yet, really just got a cup of coffee in double A. That
is a very very impressive translation. Finding myself drawn back to him, I think when I initially did my pref list, he was more around like nine or ten, but I kept asking after him in trades or having a high up on my queue in in drafts. So Ricardo Olivar to me is one that is super super underrated, and I would give him a long, long look and ask for him as a throwing in trade because you know, he's at what four percent now, like that's nothing at this point.
Yeah, I kind of had a feeling you take him here, I will go with I guess what is my third favorite B side that this last season in tin Tawa. Nice Im. It's snagging him a lot, as you know, extending hopefully extending my MLB bench in some spots. He's got eligibility at first base and second base out the gates.
You know, hopefully he's a guy who, you know, maybe he gets a shot as a little bit of a utility bench guy and he can like run with it a little bit, and maybe he's got some exciting offensive appeal. I think he's very strong. I know the evs aren't top of the scale, but as we talked about, our guy's choked up two inches on the bad every time he's up there and still lacing mine drafts everywhere and stuff.
But uh, yeah, I liked Allan. Hopefully I don't know how many PAS he might get this season, but I'm hoping for as many as possible.
Agreed with you, you know, coming in, Like we talked about this, he was one of my favorite bats coming in as well, a co sign from both of us, and still remains fairly high up on mine. But I found as I came into drafts, I kept pushing other people in front of him. And I think part of this was that I don't know if I had given enough weight to the offensive environments that he played in.
His home park is one of the most insane parks in all of baseball, and while the performance was undoubtedly great, he's done nothing but hit all throughout his minor league career. I think that Arizona's affiliates are almost to he all of them really really positive offensive environments. And when I saw the major league translation, so when Steamer and Zips came out, they were all projecting him pretty low and like low enough that it's not really playable even if
he was a plus defender up the middle. And I think he is a playable defender like second, third, laugh and can play first and right, like you could put him in kind of the four or five lower parts of the defensive spectrum and he'd be okay. He really needs his bat to carry him, and I'm not I think I wasn't in my evaluation putting enough weight on the offensive environment was looking a bit too much at
the surface stats for him. Still like him, and still think there's a path to playing time and to fantasy success, but the minor league kind of translations I think definitely dampen my enthusiasm for Tala just a bit. It's been hard now there's just a lot of ways to go. Looking at my list here, we talked a little bit about Brandon Garcia and Will Johnson. We were recording when we talked about Johnson, right, yeah, okay, So we've touched on those guys. You know, Big co sign on those dudes.
I think they're really good. Lucas Braun is up there for me. I think just every model that comes out like he gets noted as a guy that had an underrated season, And again I think there are likely to be some innings available for the Braves, And I don't really think it's clear whether Kristin Walderp or A. J. Smiths Shovor is better than Lucas Braun. They're certainly more
highly regarded. Maybe their top end outcomes are better, but I think Lucas Brown has been better in the minor leagues and I put a lot of weight into that. So he's one that I definitely would consider here. But I wanted to go like farther down the minor leagues here because a lot of the guys that I gravitate towards are in Triple A or Double A and nearer to the big leagues. But it's fun kind of sticking out those positions on some of the ones lower down
in the minor leagues. And so I was going to pick a couple of pick from a couple of A ball guys here, and when push came to chev, I didn't roster either of these guys in any of my fypds or a supplemental draft, just because proximity I think matters a lot you should play in for all of you guys too. But gotta shout Hose Gonzalez again. That guy. He turned in such an incredible season. I think the
stuff is sweet. He bends it well, he's got great command, just dominated hitters at low A for the Rangers, and well, the Rangers are kind of a stacked tom. They got a lot of arms that I'd say are ahead of him. He still has time to prove that what he did at a ball is going to succeed at the higher levels. I'm of the belief that it is definitely going to and it was pretty hard for me not to draft
him in a couple of places. The one team that I really really hovered over for a long time is a really competitive team, and I don't really have innings to spare at the major league level or the near major league level, So I'm trying to walk this line of like having some low really low in the minors upside shots with my old ass pitching staff and lineup in the major leagues. And so he was really tempting to me in that league, but I think I went
for a more seasoned arm. But I could see myself flipping on that, like in the first week, because I really almost took Kose Gonzalez. Gonzalez is my favorite A ball arm that isn't one of the very very tippy top pretty boys, and performance wise he was right up there with Sikora Susanna like any of the top A ball guys like Juse Gonzalez was right freaking there.
Ye, no, I agree. I think he's yeah, been at two percent still, you know at this junker maybe the best B side call from us this off season that isn't really getting much love in drafts. Maybe it's debatables, but one of them for sure. Yeah, all right, I am getting real sick of loser hitters named Jake Miller. I mean it's probably pretty maybe a yawner pick for us here, but yeah, Jake Miller, I'll go with, Yeah, should we just or should we just skip Jake Miller and I take.
Somebody talked about him a lot, and I co signed like I drafted him and with my first pick in one of my leagues too, So like.
I'll skip him. I like him just as much as you know any B side arm more or less. I gotta get Will Johnston on the list here. Several of my drafts that I ended. He's been the guy like that I would have taken next, so I haven't taken it yet, but he's been real close. But yeah, like I said, I know, as far as age and experience and level and production at the level, like he and Miller are basically the same guy, just very different pictures, you know, Like we talked about, I like Johnson's over
the top delivery, more over the top delivery. I like his arsenal. He was absolutely just destroying high at the end of his run there and then shout out pretty well as one taste of double A. So I think and at two percent still, I think, still not really getting the love.
I'm one of those two percent though I took him in one of those one of those drafts I would say, according to most people, way too early, but I was pumped to get him, like the third or fourth round something like that. So, and that's a league that you and I are going to talk about at some point, because with trades and offseason moves and the way that league works, you can be way over right up until opening day. I'm like twelve prospects over my limit. So I think you and I are going to talk about
helping me trim that roster down. You can talk me off the ledge on some of them, but Johnson firmly lower man on that list. I'm almost positive, so big co sign here. All right, there's a bunch of guys that I still want to talk about. Okay, I'll actually take one of Nate's guy's first here, Austin Overn. You and I have talked about a bit. I wasn't super familiar with his game before you took him in the
B side. I watched him a little bit, but like hadn't dived super deep, probably because my favorite B side guy was Aaron Estrada in the same organization. So I was like, no, I'm not going to pick anybody else. But I looked a little bit more into Baltimore's Austin Overn and was really impressed. He wasn't that good in college. He was also a football player, and so I think the reps there are he's like kind of undercook, but for that, he was really good in his pro debut.
The reports on his defense are that it's plus in center field, and he's shown that he can make that speed work on the bases as well. I'm again forgetting which projection system. I think it was Zips just loved him. And anytime you see those big time outliers like you take up with a bit of grain assault. Sometimes it's a small sample, but usually they regress the small sample performers pretty hard. So when you do get one like that,
I think you just pay a little more attention. And I went back and looked at the tape and I kind of I see, like the scouty view of it too, that he's fast, he's strong, he made decent contact with the baseball, and way underrated, especially for your rotor leagues. I think there are some leagues where I'd be a little skeptical about rostering him, But if stolen bases matter and average matters, I think he's like criminally underrated in the FYPD class and don't really understand why he's not
like in the top twenty or so. Again, huge air bars around this, But for fantasy purposes, man, I think he's he's a steal where he's going, so I think over and should get a lot more love than he's getting. And I did find myself rostering him in one place. We'll see if he sticks. He's one of the ones that might be on the cutlist. In that roster. But I was intrigued enough to see to pay special attention
in spring training and watch him a little closer. So Austin over and I was great pick Nate Handy.
Yes, I did see somebody got him in my RAS thirty draft. I saw maybe in like the middle of our supplemental and first year players back draft there. Yeah, he's at four percent, had some fans out there. I'm just I'm not going to take either of these two guys, but I'm gonna mention Will Simpson and Idol Camp. I would consider them right here at ten and nine percent. I think they're a little more popular, but that.
Both have been pretty consistently taken in my leagues. I think both have got Yeah.
I love yeah, Yeah. But I don't think that any bat that I go with for these next two picks here, I value that much less than those two, or maybe even more. But I think I am gonna go with maybe I'll hold off on a bath. Yeah. This is a I don't know, maybe a little bit risky because I don't know how often a minor league free agent pans out super well for you in fantasy. But I'm going to go with one Mercedes on the arm side.
I've been close to taking him in the deepest of my leagues, but have not yet with the thought that maybe I'll just see how it goes and I'll be at the top of my watch list. But you know, I came over from Seattle was just dominant his second half or whatever, jump to the k rate like freaking doubled from the first half. I don't really even know why, you know, like we talked about with the Giants and maybe their situation that there's a decent chance that he
gets a big league opportunity fairly soon. So yeah, I'll take a dice roll on one Mercedes.
All right, Well, I'll stick on the arms here, and I'll go with the guy that I took over Gonzales when I was kind of late FYPD supplemental draft picks, and I'll go with Logan Workmen. The Rays have a ton of arms and they tend to use them until they break, and that leaves lots of opportunity for folks, and I think Workmen is one that could step into that role as like for or five inning starter as
soon as this year. Those kinds of guys. I took him as the tiebreaker over Jose Gonzalz because that kind of shuttle performer can be really useful in this league, and especially if it's like mid season or late season and he's doing that. It's a bit of a kind of gaming my system kind of play, and I think that that's again drafting four your system and knowing your league rules is absolutely paramount. But I also believe in
the arm. I just think that again, he's another of these guys that performed at Triple A. Yes, the jump to from Triple A to the majors is challenging, but I also could see him being in shorter stints, an elite set up kind of guy logan workman. He's not the highest upside kind of pitcher, but he's one that I really believe in his talent and think that he could get a look with the big league squad soon.
He's not on the forty man and so maybe there's a couple other guys that are ahead of him, but he is eligible for the Rule five this year, so I think he's gonna get put on the forty man at some point. And the way that the Rays ripped through arms like I could see, I could see him getting some runs. So Logan Workmen is my pick here. Is not a super high upside kind of guy, but I think there's enough here to be interesting, and especially in those leagues where you need a lot of arm depth,
you know, thirty teen points leagues. Like I rostered him in Logan Workmen, you could do a lot worse than and as a flyer late in a draft, I was happy to grab.
Him nice the Workmen and Mercedes both at one percent right now.
So yeah, I wanted to pick someone lower down. Yeah, some people say we don't get muddy enough, you know, like we sometimes got to get real, real money for it.
All right, I will take my last arm here. And this is tough because there's there's like ten dudes that I think are all worthy of this last spot. I already ROSTEREDO in a couple of leagues, but he's been getting plucked in some kind of benitez. I think could could really blow up the popularity this year.
Both those guys got taken in in one of my drafts in the same round that I was like, Yeah, besides.
Same thing with Adrian Bajorkaz Nico Zeglein super interesting to me. I always nd these things with a giant shot, a big swing, and I'll go with my guy Wellington Arisenia all right, who is at zero percent still, which I don't push back against too much. But as we talked about, this is a guy with throws very hard. It's very a lot of movement on his cutter, big fastball, big frame,
and walks have been the major problem for him. But like we talked about, there wasn't a whole lot of a ball innings to watch, like a lot of guys that I kind of go with, and I didn't think it looked that all that awful to me, and impossible get some sort of like Justin Martinez vibes from him, not necessarily like totally one for one, but could go that kind of route and that sort of path very much.
Could just be a reliever. But maybe they start to give him some innings, and I think he's just the kind of guy that the stuff is overpowering enough, but if you can just throw strikes, he's gonna like put up some big K percentages and get more popular. And I saw I think long and Hagens has him as like fifteen on the Mets list. Oh nice, whatever that's worth, But it's you know, it's it's big stuff, gotta harness it sort of play. But Wellington Airsenia. I thought about him.
I thought about him in one draft. I was like, yeah, maybe just see how the first week goes, and if he's you know, walks a bunch of dudes, I don't I don't mind having some empty spec spots to the first couple of weeks or months of the mL MiLB season.
Yeah, that's a good point. And I in some of my drafts I skewed really for the teenager upside shots. You know. I went like Josh war Day's consolidations went for him in one im paired him with Johnny Level and they're both seventeen and we're not going to see anything from them for weeks of the season, so you know, those kinds of picks, like you know you're hanging on
to him for a long time. But I do agree like sometimes having those picks at the back of the roster to be like, okay, I need to turn this four a pop up, that's the startup.
But I did I use my last like five six spec picks on just like teenage bats. I was most anxious to see this year. It's a nice aspects in season, and so if they don't, don't. I'm not married to them, like I can truffle them, no problem. But if they come out of the gates swinging it real, well, we'll hang on to them. All right.
Let's go back to the bats here, and I'm going to talk about two guys and use them to illustrate part of this point about like knowing your format. So the two guys are Yader Arianamo and Nick Simio or Samilo. They could not be more different. I have been back to back on this preference list that we'd made. I guess one guy TAAs in between them, but it's Arianamo, Tawa and then Samilo, and those three guys really couldn't be more different. Taua is a bit of do everything,
play all over kind of guy. Arianamo is contact first up the middle, decent defense. Similo's first base only probably I think he's played other spots, but he really only looks playable at first and hits the absolute snot out of the ball. They're all pretty low ownership, I think, like Similo, I think is like one percent. Would you say.
Tawa was at tin Talas at seven percent.
And Aeronamas around seven percent too, right, Okay, so you know those two are maybe a little more owned. But in this league I had these one. Yeah, So in this league I had those three guys on my list. Again,
this is super late. I had the last three PICKXE of this draft, and I was like lining up who I wanted to take, and I went back and forth, and these guys were all on this list, and the format dictates Nick Similo was the pick by far slam dunk in this draft, even though he's the one percenter, even though my preference list has aeronamo on Taua above him. But this league is a K penalty league. But our K penalty is one point. You know how much how many points you get for one home run in this league?
Eight double it, that's the single one home run is sixteen points, and you know what, that's just for the home run. You also get a run in an RBI with it. So you know how many points you actually get for a home run twenty four twenty four points for a home run one minus one strikeout. So power fucking plays in this league. And that's what Samlo brings. And so because his profile, while you know, narrow path to the major leagues and the bar for him to
hit is going to be really high. I went with Similo, and yeah, because he's one percent, he's still in Double A, and he's a right handed first baseman. All of those things are working against him to make the major leagues
and be successful. But if he makes it in this format, he is for sure going to be a better performer than the other guys, And so I use that as a tiebreaker in this in this instance of just like, know your format, know why guys are ranked places, either for yourself or for other people, and use that to draft accordingly. So I'll highlight Samilo, but with a head nod towards Arianamo as well, whom in another league like Similo,
not even a consideration. But Arianamo, if he keeps doing what he does, he might be someone that I target in the off season list because his contact skills are so good.
All right, So for your hitters, I got Aaron Estrauta, Logan Wagner, Ricardo Olivar, Austin overn and Nick Simillo. Yep, okay, oh, I got to pick two more losers on two more loser bats here. Hmmm, I think'm gonna take one of your guys. I haven't drafted him yet, but I've been close a few times. You kind of sold me on Sevin Sebos that how you say it.
I say it Saban Sabaios, But I don't.
Know saving Sabaios. I'm gonna go with Saves. I think I think it's a you know, a thirty teamer only league. It's a It's a nice play because, like you talked about the likelihood of him being a major leaguer because of the glove, but we you noted how you know, I think he's the reputation was like a defensive contact first third baseman sort of, but think we're you at least you were wondering if there was a little bit more punch in the bat, and he was showing that
after his trade to the Giants. So yeah, I kind of you kind of sold me there. And you know, since you stole over and from me, I gotta steal one from you.
Only fair. Yeah, I like I like Sibios too. I think he's got a lot going from He's one I haven't rostered, but on my prefer list here he was top ten.
You know, he's five percent at the moment on fan tracks.
Nice nice. I do want to play in one of these leagues where it's just like an insane prospect pool. So you know, it's like each team in the thirty teamer rosters one hundred and fifty prospects or something like that, you literally have the entire minor league pool available or something like. I think that would be really really fun and.
Fun and no in season pickups. It's just all draft.
Yeah that I mean again more like the major leagues in the professional systems like that, I would certainly put more emphasis on the draft and on those throw ins and trades. I told you that I picked up out of the park baseball OTP and I have been playing that in like all of my spare time, you know, to scratch this fantasy baseball itch over the course of
the off season. It's super fun. Like, yeah, I get why people love this thing for us baseball siccos Yeah, I almost take as much as much enjoyment about managing my minor leagues and making these like trades for terrible prospects to see if there's something more in them than I do managing the major league roster. So that that tracks.
Given this podcast and my interest in playing in a you know sixty one hundred eight, one hundred and fifty minor league slot dynasty room, So we need to we need to make one of those, Nate, when we do our next startup. Well, it's going to be aggressive on the minor league rossers.
Yeah, and then what do we gotta love? You got to pick a picture and I got to pick a hitter.
Yeah, And there's some fun ones still here.
The pictures are so much more fun than the hitters right now on that and you can't deny that.
I mean, not more fun. There are just more of them that I really like. I mean, the two I'm debating between here are Gabriel Reis and Connolly Early. I love both of them. Reis, I think is just a little farther away. He's been hidden by the way that Detroit has deployed him. So again he should be on people's watch list, like he's one of the guys that I'm most excited to see. A. Where does Detroit assign him?
And b how do they deploy him? Because he was injured, came back and then did a lot of his rehabbing appearances in relief, so he'd piggyback and do three, four or five innings in relief. And so if people are just scrolling through Fangraft's leaderboards, he wasn't a starter for a lot of them, and if your filters weren't right, you might have missed him. But he's definitely being developed as a starter and has three great pitches, so reyes like super exciting, but he's only done it in nable.
We haven't seen a lot of track record of performance. He's still pretty young, so I'm so excited to see him next year, but I'm instead gonna take Connelly early, who I see is already up to seven percent like and I think, as I mentioned, after I dove into him and I was just gobsmacked with how good he was. He's another one for me that I would not be shocked that he's like a number three starter over the next you know, five six years, like our legit major
league starter, just given the depth of repertoire. I think he manipulates the shape of his fastball, which is the thing that I love. And even though the velocity isn't there, I think the approach angle and the shape are plus maybe bordering on double. And I think that his secondaries make his fastball play up as even more so. I'm just way way in on Connolly Early, and unfortunately I've not been able to get him anywhere. Whoever rosters him
is excited about it, for sure. Yeah, and I've been bummed because I've, like you know, in trades, often don't ask for the guy that I want first, like or I'll ask for a major league piece and then negotiate from there and see if I can get the minor leaguers that I like offered in his balance or throw in some trade. I've not been able to pry Early away from anybody in my leagues yet, so but I'm super excited about him, and I'll take him as my last official draft arm here.
On several bets, I think you can make a good case for here, so some are yours too, Like I think Aaron Parker would be, yeah, an excellent choice here.
Yeah, we wrecked him for that, the guy that was asking about the super Deep league and it was an OPS league. And while Parker has contact concerns and wasn't that highly regarded coming out of the draft, like, his performance was so loud and hit the ball so fricking hard that if it clicks, that's that's impressive.
Tell me if I'm crazy here, But I'd have a hard time, Like if one of my beasts of Carson, McCusker and Parker is sitting here and I'm just like I want home runs, Like, I would just go with McCusker, right and get it over with, find out if there's ever gonna be any home runs in the majors from him or not? Right. So that would be a tough internal debate for me between those two if this was like a real draft here. But I think I'm gonna go with gotta go with my favorite minor leader, being
close to drafting him, but he's not popular. Nobody likes rack Reggio that much. After Clegg shared like some of his hard hit data stuff, it was it was way harder than I had anticipated. But I love Riggio. I think we're gonna see him in the bigs at some point, probably not with the Yankees, But how can you not like this guy. Man just plays the game so freaking hard.
He's super aggressive at the plate, not very big, but he can you can pack a punch, and I just I just love him as a player, and I think there is a big leaguer there, and who knows maybe this is the year that he puts up some gaudy numbers and gets some more attention.
But I like this pick. He's super fun. Like you said, his minor league highlights are incredible. He plays the game super hard, and according to very sane and calm Yankees Twitter, they think he should be the headliner in a Louis Robert trade. So maybe he's the Yanks Luis Robert and he'll be back on your favorite squad, the White Sox.
Oh God, I hope, I hope he should doesn't end up a White Sox. He does not deserve that. So it's real quick. We'll run down the rosters here. The Rooks five pitchers are Ben Shields, Chad Patrick, Jose Gonzalez, Logan Workman, and Kindery Early. Now, we did have some caveats. There are some that we like more than these from our list, but it's kind of obvious now at this point, so we just passed on those. I'm going with Ryan Gusteau,
Jose Urbina, Will Johnston, Jan Mercedes and Wellington Arisania. We picked some guys that are still not getting popular. So if you're looking for some more names in your deep leagues, maybe there's some arms hit her side. Rook went with Aaron Destrauda, Logan Wagner, love It, Ricardo Olivar, Austin Overne, Nick Samillo, and I went with r J. Shrek, lizbel Diaz, Tim Tawa, Saving Sebaos, and Rock Reggio. All right, Matt,
let's talk some first year players. I know, we love our B siders and our unrostered prospects, and we like to pluck those in our drafts here, but there are some first year players that I like, and I think you like. You talked about Austin Overn and apologies to listeners.
I really liked the first year player episode that we did last year, but we didn't do one like that this year, And in part because I don't know, Matt, my first year player research, you know, watch them a lot, just wasn't quite as intriguing to me as last year. And I didn't have like videos of a lot of guys that I thought were super interesting to share like I did last year on social media.
Well, what was the research that you did? I'm putting you on the spot here, but you looked into the availability, So who debuted after the draft? Right?
Like?
How many arms how many hitters and how that your hair from past years and our stupid Bridge League's kind of ruined our FYPD research, right, Yeah.
I think so? For me, Yeah, I think definitely. I know I don't have it in front of me, and I don't remember what the breakdown was, but we I was looking at that with Clegg and sharing some of the info, and I was just tackling all the late appearances and innings pitched, the number of draftees that got some full season run from like last year to this year. There was I think a few less players on both sides, but not by much. At least on the hitter side.
It wasn't by much. I think the pitchers were a little bit more signific as far as just number of players, but the played appearances and the innings pitched took a significant cut from last season, so that less innings and less at bats to watch these guys this year. And I think too, just the player pool, there weren't as many on the bat side as many guys that impressed
me as last as last year. You know we were talking about there wasn't really like Will Simpson or Jonathan Long types like we were getting into you know that really.
Maybe they were not getting suckered into the Trevor Warner of this year.
Then yeah, perhaps perhaps it's a good thing too. Like last year, I think I put out there and cut up videos what was like forty bats that caught my attention, you know, this year, I think there was maybe like twenty that I would have done something like that, similar to you know, but yeah, I don't know who you've been taking.
Well, we talked a little bit about this when we weren't recording, But I really haven't taken many first year players in these drafts because my drafts tend to be the supplemental version, not a strict FYPD. That doesn't mean like there are still some that late in the draft. I found myself gearing towards and playing a couple of different namesake type teams where you get one pick automatically just by virtue of your team. So I have a couple of shares of THEO Gillan because of that, not
because I liked him in particular. I'm just the Rays, and so I've got got a couple of THEO Gillen shares. As far as like names that I actually took, I took one share of Cole Mathis in a power focus league. That's Cubs supposed to see the third render, fourth render for them.
I believe third y.
I think that's right, just as like Upside power Bat. Watched a little bit of the tape. I think this was a Jeff Ponce he kind of stuffed in the Baseball America FYPD list and fit.
He took Mathis in a draft that was in with him in.
At first, I thought that was a Punce. I might have heard him talking about him on one of one of his podcasts too. Think he was a bit of a Punce target. And I, you know, targeted a bunch of these outfielders in like the late ranges in a draft, and A had trouble separating them from each other. So Zach Erhard for the Red Sox, Mike Sirota drafted by the Reds traded to the Dodgers, Carter Frederick Royals drafty,
Joseph Sullivan Astro's drafty. And there was one other in this group that I was looking at, Casey Sock for the White Sox. Those like five outfielders, I was like stacking them up with like the early first round or the mid to late first round guys of Caldwell, Tibbs, Honeycut, even Walt Schmidt and Bene, all of them sort of
different in some ways. But I was really struggling to see why people so preferred benj Walschmidt, TIBs to that to the lower grouping, And I ended up taking Joseph Sullivan because I think he hits the ball pretty hard, showed some good plate skills, like he could a walk, and the knock on him is maybe that he hits the ball in the ground a bit too much, but it seemed playable to me. It was like a forty
percent range in his first taste of pro ball. So I went with Sullivan and he was one of the kind of later round guys and intrigued by it, like he's showed some stuff. His left handed stroke looked pretty nice to me. So and that the Astros really do have a knack for taking guys that other people underrate and turning them into useful big leaders. So I wonder if they've done something like that targeting.
They like hard hit data guys.
So Sullivan's a guy that I've been I've been into.
He's curious to me. I have to say I know a ton about him, but I know he's getting lauded for for this, you know, potential power and stuff like that. But like, I think his home run high watermark in college was like fifteen, yeah.
Which is still decent. I mean, it's not like the crazy SEC numbers that some of the guys have put up, but in that grouping was better than Sock, who's like high water mark was like twelve or something and some of the other so there's some power in there. I don't think he hit one after he was drafted. I don't have his numbers in front of me, but I think. But he also didn't have a ton of played appearances either.
Right, Sarona, what's your take on? Serona? Don't I don't really have much of opinion. I haven't paid much attention.
So this was a little bit of like the Orlando deal for you. I think like he was talked about coming into this year as a mid major kind of cold weather performer that might sneak into the top ten with kind of what he had done as an underclassman, and then underwhelmed. I think, had some injuries, didn't perform quite as well. This I took him in one draft pretty late. This was my and i'll only fourteen teamer, so you know, plays like almost like a thirty teamer.
But I felt like the NL portion was much shallower as I was stacking it up, like for those either play in deep NL or ale onlies. So I didn't love the pick, Like wasn't super enamored by Seroda or anything.
It's more that sometimes down draft year for a cold weather mid major guy has like outside impact, but maybe he bounces back in pro ball and shows the skills that I think were like pretty well rounded, like that he had some power, had some hit, had some speed, like kind of a do everything outfielder, and that the Dodgers also liked him in trade, and so that was maybe another appeal to authority here of like hey, if those smart guys liked him, maybe they're seeing the potential
to get back to that kind of skill set. So I don't know, I don't have a lot of conviction about this one, Like this is one that it was more, hey he slipped, maybe there was something going on and let's bet on a bounce back.
I already mentioned Orlando. I got him in every draft, but I could there was one that I just didn't have a high enough pick. I didn't pick the like the third round of a large league or something like that. Anytime I've had a real high pick and couldn't trade it, I took Chase Burns. I got two shares of Chase Burns. I've gotten Griffin Burkholder twice and I think way later than I imagined, like in the thirties, So I thought that was a good deal. I don't know if you watched late and.
I watched a bit of him, but he went pretty late in the show draft, didn't he like. I was a little surprised he wasn't taking it.
And again before yeah, I got one share of JD. Dix, good look and switch hitter from Wisconsin. I like quite a bit, and I do buy that if it were not for a shoulder injury his senior year high schools, that's a first round sort of talent. I do buy that narrative. You got to share Jared Thomas fairly late. I think that was in my true first year player draft. I think that was my last pick. Got a share of Trey Gregory Alford as the last pick in one
of these drafts. We've talked about him a little bit I think before right, but from out of here in Colorado, Yep. It was a fast riser his senior year high school. And you know, hopefully his developmental path can look something like Cayden Dana and get that trade value up there and I will send you and then by one league that we don't have prospect pickups in, which is really makes for a really fun draft too. Write I mean the first round we had Campbell and Made and stuff
like it makes for a loaded first round. But I'm just super interested in Conrad Cason, who I think what the Red Sox took in the eighth round if I remember right, highly rated prap player. I think Perfect Game has had him in their top ten. I think the tricky part with him is you don't really know what he's gonna be. He's drafted as a two way player. I had a big arm. The bat really came on
his senior year of high school. I kind of like the landing spot for a bat with the Red Sox these days with the stuff that they're doing increasing bat speed and things like that. But I thought, in this format, I think it was my last pick, it's going to force me to hang on to him right, can't drop him, can't pick anybody out. So I snagged the share there just I will be forced to be married to him
for a little while and see what happens. But like, I don't know, just an interesting guy, can throw hard, can run, can hit. I don't know. I'll see what happens.
Well, Cason made it into a real solid big leaguer in my In one of my OTP leagues, it was my he was my utility backup infielder for like his whole controllable seasons, and not because he wasn't good. I just ended up having like absolute studs all around the infield and he could play all for infield positions, so like anytime anybody needed a rest, he was the backup for everybody, and he was super useful, like really really
good player. So if OTP is to be believed, then there's a real shot that he's a big league regular.
Any first year of players that you have not gotten yet that you really wish that you had to share of, no, I.
Mean, like I like we talked about right at the after the draft last year, I think Bizana was the best guy you know, non Rokie division in the draft. I think that that's still true, you know, after all the cutting things up, after everything, I still think I like him the best. I will a little surprised that his strikeout rate ticked up to what it did, but everything else looked like the guy that I got to see live a couple of times, like that dude really
really can rake. So that was still be the guy that I would take first if it was just the true draft eligible guys. A couple other guys that I like. Oh the one other guy I didn't mention that I took late in a draft was Wyatt Sandford. He's seems somewhat divisive.
I know.
I asked Jeff Ponts about him in the Dynasty dug at Discord, and Jeff said that he just really didn't think the bat was going to be a carrying tool and maybe he sticks it short, maybe not. So I think he was down on him a bit for fantasy, just like weren't fantasy friendly tools there, and that might be true. I have only seen a bit of the high school tape that we've seen, but I know other folks have ranked him as like a top thirty ish kind of guy. So where I got him at like
ninety something. I was like, Okay, fine, I'll snag him there.
I got a few more drafts left, maybe it'll happen. But I would kind of like a share of Trey's Savage or yes and didche or however.
Yeah, he's one then I think looks interesting. I watched a bit of him. And the other one that I was gonna mention in the same breath was Hagan Smith. Like, I think Hagan Smith looks top here pitcher material to me, Like I love what he did in college, and so I think his slider is ridiculous. So I was a big fan of and I liked you Yes Savage as well.
But I feel like I just kind of one of our guys, like it's gonna have a lot of offerings, gonna mix it up, well, maybe some of all parts you know better sort of guy.
Yeah. I also the other the only other arm that I took was Ryan for Kucci. He said, Ryan for couci Astro's arm was injured. Good traits on the fastball and slider. I mean kind of was like Johnny right hinder to me, but then had TJ and fell and so maybe it's like actually first round talent and I just sit on him for a year and see if it comes back in a good development. Pitching organization didn't feel strongly about it. He's likely cutable for me at
some point. I actually, in that draft took him and then immediately regretted it because there were like four other guys that weren't on my Like I had farther down on my pref list and I was just on my phone doing something else. I was like, oh, yeah, he's near the top, Like we'll take an arm here, And in retrospect, wish I would have taken some other guys, but I ended up with a sheriff for Couccie, and
I'm intrigued. I'll also shout out again. I know we've talked about him before, but Nick Brink and Sam Sturr, my two buddies from University of Portland. Brink was the only of the two that got into a game last year, but it wasn't televised and it was a bad kind of like inning and two thirds or whatever. Outing But Brink, I just love his stuff and his pitch ability and his competitiveness, and he's a cerebral pitcher, but like he's still got a really great stuff. I think he's going
to be a fun one to watch this year. And Stir he's like, could be up to ninety eight ninety nine on the fastball, we'll see, you know, the protein might even unlock that that extra couple of ticks. Like it's impressive stuff and could be really a really good slider cutter combo too. So he's one that could be really really fun. The command isn't as good with Stir, but the arm talent or the like, the velocity and pitch shapes are maybe a touch better than Brink. But Brink,
I just think it's a fantastic pitcher. So I'd watch those two. I didn't draft either again, I think neither are rostered more than zero or one percent, but definitely put them on some watch lists and try and watch some of their early starts. If they're chopping up as advanced college arms. I could see both moving pretty quickly. And you like them both a lot. We've seen a lot of like pretty great pitchers come out of the West Coast Conference in the last few years and are
reigning alsy young winner. Just he's a Seattle you guy, so Northwest guy. So anyway, these kinds of college Armsnesser Jerman also Seattle you one of our very favorite B side arms. So I could see these guys following that in that footsteps because as far as like their performance in college goes, these guys were better than those guys.
So the one guy I haven't gotten the shareff yet that I would like to, but I'm not too stressed about it because nobody seems to be a fan. But uh, Devin Fitzgerald of the Rangers. I know mentioned him in the discord. But if there's like kind of a prep bat B sider for me, it would be him right now. I don't think he deserves to be a B sider, But like I said, if you want like a JD. Dick sort of switch hitter, athletic strong infield, I don't know, maybe you can stick a short stop. I don't think
fitzgerald is is much different of a play than JD. Dick's. Maybe a little bit smaller, But I know the Rangers liked him a lot and prioritized him and popped him in the fifth round and got him signed. And other than Dan being dickhead, Dan.
I was funny.
Else You're welcome, Yeah, you guys.
I was complicit in that one, and he specifically said, come on, let me snipe handy here, and I was like, all right, I mean whatever.
He likes to play us against each other like that, Yeah, all in good fun, all and good.
Yeah, I mean our other buddy, Maddy Backpack just took a pick in our in our the show draft. Do we want to rip that pick apart? And it was Harlan and Dodgers like fourth rounder Chase Harden.
He loves Dodgers, doesn't he?
Yeap who doesn't? They all turn out so well?
Yeah, hall of famers, all of them. All right, match, we wrap this one up.
Yeah, let's do it, all right? Chatting with you again, my dude, this was awesome.
Yeah, dude, Yeah, appreciate it. We'll call that episode forty eight of the Prospect B Side Podcast. You can follow me along on Twitter at Pitching Specs. You can follow me on Blue Sky at Muddy Looks. I know it's been a minute since I've dropped some videos and we've recorded and stuff like that, but I will say I
have not been lacking on my homework. Got some things in the works and just trying to compile some videos and we have to share that Hopefully I'll get to share that with folks at some point in the future here. But yeah, well I think we'll let Chicago Farmer take us out and be well, we'll talk to you next time.
Bye, bab miles an hour riding too is he You have them down first, but the.
Bone in his face, and on the very next pitch he up and stole second face with gradest speed. He wasn't born, but he had dird yes uniforn