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Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. This episode is brought to you by our good friends at NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. I'm sure by now you've all got back into your Sunday routines, but they could be even better. With NFL Sunday Ticket and YouTube TV, you get the most live NFL games all in one place every game, every Sunday, and you can even watch up to four different games at once with MultiView, one of my favorite inventions of this decade. It's exactly what you need to catch all the action. Make your Sundays more magical and also YouTube TV is great. I got it this year. It's awesome. Sign up now at youtube.com/bs device and content restrictions apply. Local and national games on YouTube TV and a FL Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital-only games. Welcome to rates of barrels to Friday August 2nd. Derek van Ruyper, you know, Sarah's here with you on this episode. We take a look at depth charts coming out of the trade deadline teams that mood players created some opportunities for new ones. It's kind of an extended version of our weekend waiver preview looking for hidden sources of value or direct sources of value for guys that simply got traded into more playing time. We've got a few of those to get to today as well, and we have a project prospect broad question to get to as we get rolling here in just a few minutes. If you have not joined the discord yet, that is the best place to send questions for the show. You can do that using the link in the show description. You know, how's it going for you on this Friday morning? It's good. Going to see Deadpool tonight. I'm going to the last few days of an art exhibit at SF MoMA that is the art of noise I think it is, but it's music. It's like music art, band art, like posters and actually some audio stuff. So I'm going with my dad who's been going to concerts for, I don't know, 70 or 60 years. Is there any podcast featured at this exhibit? Well, I'll see. I'll make a case for racing barrels up there. We could put the audio birthday card I made for you a few years ago. That was real art. That was amazing. We had the beer cap. It was a nice graphic made by our graphics team for an article. I think it was an article that you wrote. That was right with me in the beer cap. I took that and then I just put you singing underneath that. That was incredible. I should be saved forever and not just lost the time. But yeah, it's a man. It's been like three weeks rolled into one. There's the best way I get to describe it. So happy that it's Friday. I hope everybody out there is having a great week and has some chances to relax this weekend. Here's my question for you. A lot is being made about trade deadlines and how we don't really see top 100 prospects get moved anymore. And it makes me wonder if we should just care more about the prospects that get moved to deadline anyway, because it's a signal that Major League evaluators in front offices care about those players. Like so much of the focus is at the top of the list, understandably so. Those are the players that are most likely to be stars. But as you move to the back of a top 100, the hit rate changes a lot. Like if you look at the top 25 top 40 prospects, the hit rate and the the war generated by those players is going to be a lot higher than the guys in the bottom half of that list. So I guess this is another way of saying I'm not sure the difference between the 65th prospect on a top prospect list is that much the difference is that great between that player and the guy that'd be 140 of that player was ranked that far. And I know we have some people out there that rank more. Our friend James Anderson goes to 400. But a lot of publications stop at 100. So are we making too much of a big deal about the lack of top 100 prospects on the move and how much should we pay extra attention to the names that actually do get traded because they are being sought out by the organizations trading for them? Well, I think about that JJ Cooper finding that 80% of the prospects traded the deadline give up the make up make a less than a win of war at the major level. So I do think also of the sort of logarithmic way of the way that you can see value just plummet, you know, for prospects from top 10 prospects. My natural reaction, I think that's and this is what, you know, fans, the owners and the market has done is I will protect a top 10 prospect with my life. And I don't really care about the rest. So the unfortunate thing that has happened though, and this came up recently in a trade discussion where I was trying to sell a little in that devil's rejects leaves that I'm in where James Anderson is my co-owner. And we started up discussions and I said, well, you know, I would like George Lombard off your team. He's a shortstop prospect of the Yankees. I don't even think he's, oh, he's not, I don't think he's top 10. I'm not even sure he's top 20, but he might be top 50, you know. He took George Lombard off the table and offered me some other guys that were probably more like 100 to 150. And I just, I was like, I don't even know. I don't even want to keep talking. And so that was the end of it. And the response from their side was, well, I know I can't get anybody to even buy any prospects. I've got another owner who keeps trying to give me two like sort of top 20 prospects for junior Kevin Euro. And that's kind of interesting. Sometimes it gets close to me being like, you know, but roster spots are pretty, everyone in every league almost is trying to consolidate. Yeah, trying to get two quality for three or whatever it is. So I just, I just see the problem of, oh, well, you making me drop somebody that I might be able to keep otherwise. And I don't want to get off that logarithmic scale. I got a, I got a top five guy. I'm in the good spot. I want to, I want to stay there. I don't want to, I don't want to trade down off that, you know, into the other parts of the curve. Right. Well, I think the, the exercise in trying to accrue value and keep her in dynasty leagues is just figuring out which guys are going to at least move up the list high enough to become tradable, even if they are not going to be superstars. Right. Who can get from the back of the top 100 or outside the top 100 inside the top 40 or 50, where that, that is a range where at least you can move players, but you're right. It's hard to get people to take players that are further down on those lists. It's hard to do those combined trades too. Just try to pick them up because there's, there's always some sort of hype prospect that someone's talking about or someone you follow some account that's like, oh, this guy's, you know, Sebastian Walcott, you know, was like, was a bust, you know, two months ago. And now he's hitting 300 and looks like a legitimate prospect that that's probably, he's probably going to move himself 40 points, 40 places in the next, in some of the people's next rankings, you know, maybe even more. And so I would just say you, you just, you look around and maybe you get lucky on one of these hype ones, you pick up Sebastian Walcott because you saw a tweet and now you're, now you're in a good spot or you go shopping in, you know, a single day where you can just like, you can just do a sort and there are like always amazing lines in single A. It was like, just look through single A and say, what? This guy's hitting 350 with power and speed, you know. And you just, you pick up, you know, one or two of those guys and, you know, sometimes they, who was the, who was the big one for the brewers that I was excited about for a little bit? He was good in single A and then headbert Perez? Yeah, headbert Perez. Yeah, there's always a headbert Perez, you could pick up and then if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But you didn't trade an asset to get headbert Perez, you just, you just picked him up. Yeah, I mean, I think you're talking for position players, especially you're kind of fishing in the recent J2 signings who are playing in a full season league for the first time and doing well. That's sort of the, the criteria because those players usually young for the level and it's the first opportunity to see them in a longer sample. So that's, that's the opening data point that we care about for a lot of players. That's, that's the group that you're kind of honing in on for the most part. Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to, I'm not, well, there's this guy, Kevin McGonagall. Prospects report 45 future value, not on the top 100. ETA 2026, it's a CBA pick for the, for the Tigers. He's hitting 326, 407, 470 with power and speed, 9% strikeout rate, 12% walk rate. I don't know, Romeo Sanabria. I'm just sorting my WRC plus and saying names, you know, like, do a little bit of a research. Of course, Lazaro Montes is fifth best in a ball. And that's an actually name you might recognize. And the other thing you're going to see is that the value of these players can jump a little bit for lists that get updated throughout the year because as they get promoted, sometimes they hit a temporary wall that reduces some of the enthusiasm. It creates a lot of questions. Maybe there's a flaw with a certain pitch type and there's some uncertainty as to whether or not that adjustment will be made. I mean, I even think about it with Jason Dominguez, just the arc of Jason Dominguez this time. As a guy, he was like a cat miss guy. He was the next he was the he had a nickname. He was the Martian. He was going to be a number one prospect. I don't know if he ever got to number one. I don't know if he was ever anybody's number one, but he was in top 10s really, really young, mostly, you know, sight unseen based on the player he was at the time he signed as a teenager with the Yankees and like, cesspit as barbecued type stuff. Sure. And then there was the dip in 2022 when you know, didn't, it didn't look great because the strikeout rate was high and able and it just, people were wondering like, oh, no, is this a colossal bust? The power wasn't like no doubt. Or is this going to take longer too? Like that was the other part of it. Like the timing is always kind of important to try and figure out where these guys go. And I remember trading for Dominguez and getting him as a throw in in a keeper league that spring. It was just because I had a prospect spot open. The person I was trading with had to move somebody and I think by ranking, Dominguez might have been their worst prospect. That was it. It wasn't me saying he's definitely going to be good some day, but it's more like, hey, wait, everyone thought he was awesome a year ago or 18 months ago. So maybe I'll just take that flyer since it's May, a lock in half between May and this September. And if he's not good at the end of the year, sure, I'll cut him. But the difference between Dominguez and any other fringy top 100 prospect I would have filled that spot with, you know, like, how would I have known the difference other than things I was previously told about Jason Dominguez? Right. And you're on like on a rollercoaster ever since, so you're probably pretty excited about him now. It's been been a strange development, especially with the injury after I promoted him last year, holding him in the major league spot. He's actually stayed on the roster, which is, you know, but that's like, maybe that's an extreme outlier sort of example. But the other side of the opening question is, should we care a lot about the prospects that teams cling to? In the case of the Padres, right, they were aggressive, but they kept two prospects that you'll see on a lot of lists. You'll see Ethan Salas, teenage catcher, very high on some lists. I think he's inside Keith Law's top 10, even as of the men's mid season update. And that's with some struggles at double A, which makes sense given how young he is. And then Leo DeVries, who's just flying up list because he's in that group of players playing full season ball in the States for the first time this year, also as a teenager. And that is driving up his value right now. So perhaps the Padres unwillingness to trade him, at least for now, should be a pretty good indication to some of us that they see him as a guy that will be a special player that they will see as a future consensus top five or top 10 prospect that will be the guy you can't even trade for in fantasy. Like that's that sort of the vibe I get when a team holds on to a guy like that, but starts to trade everybody else like Robbie Snelling, who they traded to the Marlins, I think could do a little bit of the Dominguez thing where this is actually a relative by low point and the Marlins are going to look pretty sharp for getting him in that deal that sent Tanner Scott and Brian Hoeing to San Diego. But I think the fact that they held on the Leo DeVries in particular gives us an idea that they think he's special. You know, one thing that's interesting is that Salas has not played well at any level. We had a question about this in discord and I'll try to get the handle while we're talking, but the question was, have the Padres hacked age to level? And I think the question is driving at have they done something with how they promote players that has effectively inflated the value of their prospects in the eyes of other teams and their respective models, where you can look at Ethan Salas and say he reached double A last year and he's playing at high A as an 18 year old and youngest player in the league and he's already a major league ready defensive catcher and it's just a matter of the bat coming around and you can put all that into your system even with what he's done at the plate and it still spits out an amazing long-term value for a player like that. Is that hacking? Is that a strategy? Is that just their way of trying to get him to the big leagues faster? Like, what do you make of it? It could be possible that teams could be trying to do that. I mean, we joke about the angels and the angels just announced that they're promoting their prospect that they picked in the draft this year in the first round to double A already and seven of the 10 first picks in the draft have not even started playing baseball yet. Oh my goodness, he played two games. Christian Moore. Christian Moore, I saw the note that he holbered last night and I jokingly said, oh, he's getting promoted and here's Sam Blum saying they haven't seen that yet on his way. Christian Moore joined in the trash panda's after two games at high A. This also reminds me of the thing that I said about David Forst who he says we're doing player development at the major league level, right? The angels and the A's may have some of the worst player development in the big leagues. And so, you know, pushing your guys actually makes sense if you think you're you only have good coaches at the top levels in the major leagues, right? Well, might as well get them the better coaching with solace. It's just it is it does stand out to me that he has not played well offensively and yet they've moved him. And Robbie Snelling is a, you know, by stuff plus probably not a standout. I saw some stuff from Lance Brozdowski about how he has poor extension, poor velocity, poor ride, his breaking balls at 80 miles an hour, so on and so forth. You know, despite knowing all that, they've moved him and he is, I'm looking right now at double A and he is one of the few pitchers that is 21 or younger at that played at double A this year. So that does stand out those two. But I think it's one of those things where two examples make you think that there's a bigger trend going. This is just a simple thing. But I don't, I think it's sort of makes sense logically. I just said, okay, let me look at which organizations I took all of double A and I said, how many players do you have that are 21 or younger in double A? If you, if the Padres were doing this, they would have multiple guys, right? Right. They'd just be moving everybody along instead of, I think they're just moving certain players that they think they can get to the big leagues faster because they actually believe those guys belong on those curves. I don't think it says something or to trade them. So it could be something they do to pump up trade value of specific players that they, like their highest, I think it's just they take their highest value players and move them. Yeah, move them aggressively, see how they respond to it. And you know, the worst case scenario is that their age to level context still isn't terrible. The best case scenario is you're right and they're just they're good enough to go. They're like sort of Jackson Merrill, right? They moved him pretty aggressively. I think that's, I think that's it because I just did hitters 21 and under at double A, there are 43 of them and none of them with 50 played appearances or more and none of them play for the San Diego Padres. There's no quality filter on this. It's just are you 21 or not and a hitter and 50 played appearances. Minnesota has Emmanuel Rodriguez and Luke Kishill and Kalei Rosario. So, you know, that's three. That's probably, I'm just eyeballing it, but three out of 43, that's the most you're going to get probably. So maybe Minnesota is super aggressive. I don't know. I think there's probably a difference there where maybe some organizations are like, we move everybody along in a cohort almost, right? So I don't really want to take a top prospect and move them ahead of a performing guy that I took the draft class before because I don't want the performing guy who's in double A to be like, I just lost my job to that guy just because his draft pick was higher. I think that some organizations are like, if you perform, we will move you and we will give you opportunities. Some organizations are like, is it playing favorites? Well, there is a logistical component to making sure that you're developing players at the positions where you think they're going to play and contribute most efficiently in the big leagues too. And sometimes you have multiple guys that are short stops that you want to keep at shortstop. So that holds someone back or catchers like premium positions, especially this can happen. I know you can move somebody then move them back again, but I think that becomes kind of tricky if you think there's something they need to work on along the way and not getting those reps does potentially cost you something in the long run. You also have like, you know, you might have like a grand poly who's hitting 321 with a 141 WRC plus and double A in 2023. You look at the package and you look at the eggs of velocities and you know, maybe the players can't see that same analysis. And so they say, why would why would Ethan Salas be at the same level as grand poly or whatever? You know, that doesn't make any sense. But for the team, they're like, no, no, we're just as excited. We're even more excited really about Ethan Salas the grand poly because we are looking at more things than, you know, players might some players might even just be looking at batting average, you know, you know, we love talking stats here at the athletic. Here's one that's super simple to remember discover automatically doubles the cashback you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cashback match. That means with discover, you could turn $150 cashback to $300. That's right. You could put it towards some memorabilia you've had your eye on or treat yourself to a premium sports network. You earn and discover doubles. See terms at discover.com/creditcard. One other prospect question before we move on to the long weekend wafer preview, did you find as the dust cleared from this deadline? There were any prospects that you learned more about said, oh, this guy's actually really interesting. Despite not being a top 100 prospect, I'm interested in this in this guy now because I like last year, for me, it was to coa Robie that has not worked so far. Hell has been a factor. But that happens every year. You just come into some prospects that you hadn't seen a lot of yet or hadn't even seen really at all or hadn't read their scouting report before anybody interesting sort of unearthed himself to you at this. I guess Trey Sweeney kind of stuck out for me because he's playing shortstop. You know, he moved organizations and I don't even know what the trade was between the Yankees and Dodgers that got Trey Sweeney to LA. But he has a history of low strikeout rates. And right now, he's striking out more, but he's also hitting for more power. And there's a chance there that he could put the two things together and have like a 22 percent strikeout rate and an average ISO and speed. So if that is the case, you have a guy who could hit 260, 270 and be like a 2020 guy in the major leagues at shortstop. That's pretty good. He was a guy that I wasn't even on my radar before. So, you know, and now that he's in LA, there's also a note now that he's a tiger. Clear path for sure. And the Dodgers don't have shortstop figured out long term. Right. Yeah. In LA, he would have been interesting as a shortstop. But in Detroit, he's interesting as an infielder. There's multiple opportunities on that infield. The trade, by the way, I remember vaguely remember this trade when it happened. The one that sent Trey Sweeney to the Dodgers in the first place was the Victor Gonzalez and your beat Viva's trade. Because your beat Viva's was a guy that I was looking at last year doing some number scouting that I thought was kind of interesting in that Dodgers system. So they sent Viva's and Victor Gonzalez for Trey Sweeney. They got Sweeney back. Yeah. The Dodgers got Sweeney out of that deal. Interesting. And Sweetie's WRC+ this year is not good. But I still think that there's sort of under the hood stuff where it's like, you know, 109.9 max CV, 44 percent hard hit, you know, along with obvious speed and playing shortstop and a good walk rate and past good strikeout rates. There's like, he could be in the middle of an adjustment that could last him into another level. Like, you know, and he's also at Triple A. So it's like one of those things where it's going to happen or not. And you get to decide quickly. You know, I do hate sometimes getting a guy who's an A ball or double A, but super young, you know, like, like the whole Jason Dominguez thing, like, I might not have held on to him all the way through. There might have been too many opportunities to either trade him or I need that roster spot, or there's a veteran or whatever. You know, so, you know, with Trey Sweeney, you're going to be like, I'm going to know in the next year or two if this was worth my time. It won't take long to figure that out. And I think the names that I hadn't really seen a lot of prior to this deadline that people thought were a good value when the Phillies flipped them to the Angels. George Klassen, in particular, big fastball, big curveball, nice cutter. It's a command question. We see this a lot stuff across the board on multiple pitches looks legitimately good. And it's a question of whether or not he'll command it well enough to be a starter or if he ends up being a high leverage reliever. But I think a lot of people like Klassen and Samuel Aldegary left you to demonstrate a couple of evaluators suggest that that package was better than the one that the Padres sent in a Tanner Scott view. That would and that's that's where it's like the great like after 100, we don't always have a ranking to look at. Like those are only coming out at the beginning of the season or in the winter, especially a lot changes from February. I would certainly take Klassen over Snelling myself, just knowing what I know now about their stuff. But a year ago, I think it would have been a lot worse. Yeah, it would have been Snelling hands down. So it's just a question of like, okay, Snelling is this guy that he was so young for the level. The backstory on Snelling is he was a very like highly coveted football recruit to like a four star recruit to go play linebacker. So he's that kind of athlete. Yeah, so he's 20 right now. So he could still get bigger and stronger and change and work at some of those things that are currently holding his arsenal back. Like you have to kind of build that into your expectations and your projection for a player like that too. But I thought the angels, this is again, coming from people who know prospects a lot better than I do, did actually pretty well in that swap they made with the Phillies getting some pitchers that could be important to them in the long run. This is also, Klassen is also a win, I think, for Phillies player development. They've been trying to improve their pitching development from within for a while. And he was a six round pick that cost them $300,000 in the draft in 2023 to turn him into an asset that could bring them back. Carlos Estevas is pretty good. You're drafting pitchers out of the big 10 in the six round and turning them into guys you can trade for high leverage relievers. You're doing well as an organization. But curious to see how it works out for Klassen, especially with that move to Anaheim. Let's take a look at some of the big league opportunities created from this trade deadline. You featured some players in a story earlier this week. We'll talk about a few of those guys and we're going to take a spin through some of the depth charts that have the most going on right now. I think we should start with the Orioles because there's some stuff that's unrelated to deadline. Kobe Mayo is coming up because Jordan Westbrook is going on the IL with a broken hand. Jackson Holliday got recalled earlier this week and he already looked like a winner from this deadline with Connor Norby being included in a trade that sent Trevor Rogers back to the Orioles. Also somehow found room for Levon Soto. Every time they make a transaction I'm like how many players do they have like 30 people on the 26-man roster? Like what is happening? If somebody's not checking to make sure, no. I think Soto is probably going down when they officially promote Mayo maybe. Or Mateo? Where's Mateo? Or Mateo is on the 60-day IL. He's done done? Yeah, I think he's not done for the season. He's done until like the last week or so. Soto is taking the smallest part of Mateo's job, which is backup infielder. He's not going to figure in too much. I'm just looking at the depth chart now and it looks to me like Jackson Holliday's the second baseman. Yes, I think this is a nice runway for Jackson Holliday. As we've learned he does have to hit to stay up. They can send him back down if it doesn't work and go back to trying to save Rookie of the Year's status for 2025. It doesn't work out this time around. I guess it somewhat depends on Mayo because if Mayo hits and Holliday doesn't then Eureus can play second or third and just be like the worst offensive player on the team. Just that's fine with them. You know, okay we have one hole. You know what I mean? It's not even that bad. I think that's the deal there. So it's kind of Mayo versus Holliday for for a job maybe. They both can have a job. You know Eureus can be a backup too. But if we're going to build a bench, what's the bench? It'd be Eureus for one. So we're going to put Holliday Mayo as starters. We're going to put them in the starters. We're going to put and I'm going to put Loy Jimenez as a starter at DH. Okay, so then you're putting Ryan O'Haren on the bench? Who do you put on the bench that was starting? O'Haren. I'm going Causer, Mullins, Santander. And O'Haren is going to be a much used bench piece. So I'm putting him first on the bench. You know, I'm going to put Soto last on the bench. So we have two spots left Eureus and McCann. Ooh, what happened to Christad? Did Christad get hurt again? Why is he gone? This is what I'm saying. Oh, they optioned him. They're always optioning someone you think they don't have to option. That player used to be Kyle Stowers a lot too. Yeah, that's true. And Christad likes Stowers is 25, you know, on the ripening part of the scale. Probably a better he's a better player, I think, than the Stowers. But he's similar in that he strikes out a lot. Could be a three true outcomey guy, but he's run high babes just because of his spray chart and speed somewhat some speed. I don't know. Why is he run high babes? Yeah, it's interesting. He's might be a better player than Stowers. I'm not even 100% sure. Okay, so that's the deal. Christad is gone and Hern is the super sub. You're Hern and Eureus are the super subs. That's my bet personally that Eloy is basically a starter. Yeah, I mean, he's the eighth best hitter on the team by projections because they have so many. Does that include Christad that's now down and other people? I think Christad was below the 12. They have 12 guys by projection rest of season. You're using bat X rest of season Baltimore. How do you have that many? Jesus, they go 12 is Mayo is is 102. Christad is a 107, even though he didn't put Slater on this team. Slater would be one of the other bench guys. He's the other platoon out field option. We're still running out of 10. So it may be the Bonso does not on the team tomorrow. No, that could be the next move, but there's the backup shortstop, Jackson Holiday. Right. They can move yet teams that have the second base when they can play shortstop have the backup shortstop in the lineup and don't have to put one on the bench. If you take Westbrook out because he's hurt, Eloy is sixth best. He is a little bit worse than Hern though in terms of projections. So I could be wrong. A little bit of a jam there with Mount Castle or Hern and Eloy. I think there's like an unfair amount of negativity about Eloy's skills as a hitter that comes from the number of injuries he's dealt with and his lack of availability. I mean, I saw that clip every time I see a clip of a studio show just ragging on players in a way that seems a little unfair. It's always the White Sox crew. I don't know what's going on in the studio over there, but they they were they were just jubilant that Eloy Jimenez was gone as though he was the reason why their franchise has turned to what it is. Like, no, he's not the reason. He's been 14% better than League average as a hitter with average strikeout rate, slightly below average walk rate above average power, really good raw power, good barrel rate. I mean, he's a good hitter. Yeah, he's a good hitter. He can't play defense. That's fine. We like players that can do that that do it well. And I think once a team finally gets to the point where they stop having delusions about him being a left fielder, I think there's a chance that might keep him a little healthier. And maybe we'll actually see 30 home runs in the season because on a per like 600 at bats basis, he's a 30 home run power guy. That's what he's done to this point in his career. I have to point something out though. We have five people in our batch. We can't. You're really you're really upset about this. We can't, right? So it's it's a hern, Slater, Soto, and McCann, right? And Eureus. Eureus is that's right because we didn't put Mayo in there. So they do have the option. They're going to option Soto down. Soto is not going to be there. He's going back down. I mean, he's not as good as the other players. Right. Because Mayo's going in third. Eureus is going to the bench. Soto's going to the minors. So it's it's McCann, Eureus. Oh, hern. Soto is the corresponding move if they send holiday down because they'll just be like, we want to back up shortstop and we're going to play Mayo at second or Eureus in second. But they would bring Soto back if they don't keep holiday. Yeah, that's the I think that would be his path back out of the roster. Okay. All right, bench built successfully. Slater is only place centerfield against Rides. They didn't want to do Cowser there. Cowser is a full time left fielder. Sontanter is a full time right fielder. Eloy is going to lose some at bad stone. But I don't know that it's going to be a strict, lefty, oh, hern, righty, Eloy. And I wonder if you'll you'll suddenly see some weird, oh, hern or Eloy in the outfield situations. I think you'll see more, oh, hern out there. That's the expectation I would have looking at what those guys can do out there. The thought I had about the Orioles knowing that they added to this bullpen at the deadline to why are they rebuilding the Phillies 2023 bullpen? Kimbrel, Soto. Sorry, Anthony Dominguez. I got three of them. I mean, to me, the way I described it on Baltimore radio the other day was, I think Kimbrel Dominguez and Soto, I think Kano is an ideal set up man because his stuff lends itself a little bit more to ground balls and he'll allow contact. But you could bring him in with somebody on base, maybe get a double play. That sort of deal. You don't necessarily want him as your closer because then he might put somebody on base, you know what I mean? With the walk rate too, he could maybe create a situation out of nothing. So anyway, Kimbrel, Soto and Dominguez, I think all have the stuff to close. And I think what their bet is, one of these guys will have good command at the right time. None of them has great command. And when they don't have great command, they're not, you don't want them as your closer. That's what we've seen. So I think they're just betting that one of them has good enough command to be the closer at the right time. Yeah, good luck trying to land that plane though. I hope they've got a model for that. That'd be great. But I do also think that there are certain teams that have maybe more advanced modeling for command. And I did see some weird sort of swapping of relievers. The whole like Hunter Biggie goes to the Rays and then the Cubs trade for Nate Pearson. I'm like, are they the same guy? Is it Spider-Man mean? Like that does seem a little bit like Spider-Man mean. And maybe it was just, well, the Rays wanted Biggie and we wanted to have a high stuff guy like that. So we just gave them Biggie and thought we'd trade something lesser for Pearson. And so, you know, we do think it's Spider-Man mean or teams think that they have modeled command better. Because, you know, I think there's a public race right now to model command better in terms of what the things we're thinking about are release angles. So looking at a pitcher's angles out of the hand to predict command. But Max Bay had a recent little tweet about it where he said, you know, a point one degree change or one degree change in release angle is a foot at the plate. So you're trying to parse these release angles because you just think about the math of it, right? Like you're trying to throw this ball 60 feet. If you change it one one degree, of course, it's going to be a lot 60 feet away. So release angles are one way that people are doing at it. Alex Chamberlain has proposed that we should have a sort of broader look instead of looking at the nine segments of the strike zone, which should look in maybe, you know, fewer segments, whatever it is, you know, another way of thinking about it is perhaps we could look at these heat maps and look at their sort of tightness and just have like some sort of idea of the spray of a pitcher. Sure. Like the weight, the heaviness of the dot, like if it's actually like where you want to be or if it's a big splattery egg. Yeah, they're kind of all over the place. They don't have that consistency. Look at Hayden Bird songs, you know, forcing spray chart, if you want to be like, whoa, what is, what's that? But that's a little bit of a rorshark thing where you'd be like, well, how many clusters are there? Are there three clusters here that are tight or is it one spread, spread shots? So anyway, people are trying to race to model command better in the public space. I bet you some teams feel like they've had it sussed a little bit. Maybe the Orioles think, no, those are these guys commands. Fine, we'll take them. Yeah, that could be. That could definitely be this situation. I was thinking the AL East for a minute. The Ray is very active at the deadline. We saw a giant deluca get a day off on Tuesday after four straight starts. I hate them. I hate them. Has anything changed? It's not that I hate the Rays. It's I hate this depth chart. Every year, I'm trying to figure out their damn depth chart. I think all it's going to happen is for now, until they bring up junior Kamen Arrow, who they'll probably bring up at the end of the month or in early September, until then, Johnny Deluca and Richie Palacios can play more together and not share a spot. And I still don't know if splitting up means they even have full shares. They just have larger shares. And then once Kamen Arrow comes up through the trickle down because Palacios gets into the second base mix, I think everything falls in a way where they go back to Luca and Palacios go back sharing again. And then you're frustrated by both. So you have this little window until Kamen Arrow's up, where I think those are the two guys that play a little extra. There is an opportunity despite Deluca being a righty for him to sort of play into full time. But I was looking at his skills. And this is when I was writing this piece, I was like, do I have a thing for Deluca? I ended up just putting them all under Curtis under Junior Kamen Arrow because he was the most interesting name to me. Because when I look at Deluca, I'm like, okay, he has struck out less in the past. So he could maybe strike out less in the future. But the max EV doesn't give me a great sense of great raw power. The barrel rates aren't good. And they're playing him at center, which sort of gives me the clue that they like his defensive value, to some extent, which doesn't like speak well of him to me offensively. They have Jose Siri as a right, right handed plus defense center fielder. Yeah, they've been backing off his playing time a little bit. They have been and they've been playing Deluca there. So, but what I'm saying is, if somebody plays themselves into a full time or Kamen Arrow comes up, I kind of see Deluca as maybe the replacement for Siri. I don't know. Or he just loses his job to Siri because Siri has better defense. Because Siri is mostly versus lefty's center fielder. Anyway, this is a really hard one to figure out, I think. But the way that they're playing Christopher Merrell third in the lineup and they played him at second, they played him at DH, it seems to me like he was the centerpiece of a deal. They wanted him. They like him. He's hit homers. They're already tweeting about how much they love him as a person. And, you know, all this stuff. There's a real love fest from Merrell. I'm reading the vibes. I'm reading the usage. I'm reading the tools. And I'm saying Merrell is a full time starter at second and DH. I think that's right. And Lau is a second based DH, but we'll sit against lefties. He and he plays all the time. Josh Lowe plays all the time. I know he's sat against two lefties, but what do you think? How many platoons can you have? Right now, roster resource has low word, vet. Yeah, if you want a platoon, you're catcher, you can. You can four bench spots. You can get away with four. Yeah, it's not useful. Who cares? So they basically, they say a platoon with walls, but walls is the everyday shortstop. Right. And I think what gets complicated on the infield, too, is if you put Cam and Arrow in the mix, Caballero has to share with walls. They can't, they can't kind of spread out on the last night. I played him at shortstop. And he played him once against shortstop at shortstop against the leftie in the last week. And junior Cam and Arrow is not playing shortstop. This year, he's not a shortstop. He's just isn't. Like, so he's probably coming up. He's gonna play third and he's probably gonna come up because he's got some service time in early September, because they want him to be rookie of the year eligible in 2025. Like, it's not going to happen now. It's going to, they're going to might as well just wait for that. But at some point, they're going to have fewer holes in their lineup and walls, Siri, and to some extent, Caballero are holes in the lineup. Roar, vet might be able to hit a little bit, but that's, that's probably a fourth hole. So you got four holes in your lineup kind of often just go the defensive route at catcher, though. Like, they're one of the teams that I think cutting it down to three spots where you do that is that's too much. Like, you got to probably limit yourself to one or two. So maybe Caballero ends up taking back the shortstop job when Cam and Arrow comes up. That's a sort of level of intrigue where you want to watch and see if walls doesn't hit, like, can you really keep playing them? No, eventually you have to move on. And then, and then we didn't mention Carlson. Yeah. Who's the Twitter? Who could play better? What was the corresponding move on the roster to fit Carlson on it? Who they optioned down for that? They traded Sean Armstrong for him. They only have him. They have him for, they could have him for three more years. Yeah. So are we going to go ahead and put Dylan Carlson in the winner bucket? Is this good for him? No, he came off the bench, but he came off the bench against a righty to replace Palacios series out of options, by the way. So you're at the point now. He's 29. You've had to look at him for a couple of years. What are you? I think I think he's on fire. Yeah, I think I think it needs to be. So you probably let him go soon. It's too defensive forward. I mean, 89 WRC plus seems actually about his true talent. Like I said, I think there's too many holes. So yeah, I mean, it's they're they're sorting. They're going through a sorting through process. So somebody could play their way. I would just watch. That's what I said in my in my piece. Just watch like this next month, somebody is going to rise out of this crew and have an everyday job. And somebody is, you know, going to be released in the offseason. Well, good luck trying to figure it out. I mean, I think I think series going to get pushed off the roster. I think it's between Deluca and Carlson for me as far as which outfield there's going to pop in the center. Become more interesting. I think I might actually take Carlson, even though Deluca is getting the first crack if we're playing the long game here. Yeah, there's there's there's in his history in the major leagues, a good strikeout rate, but not great power, but some some better days with in-game power. So if you can sort of access his in-game power, that's that's what you need to see out of Carlson. Similar in bat speed to Johnny Deluca to is Dylan Carlson. They're both a little underwhelming kind of that light blue range 69, 70 mile per hour average bat speed. So we'll see if they add bat speed or if it's a pull approach or what they're able to do. Yeah, Carlson does maximize their value. No, I wonder if they try to get him to. That's something I have really I have no feel for that. Like, can you look at a guy that hasn't pulled the ball find something to look at and say, no, there's there's reason to believe he can do it. I did hear from a director of player development that it's maybe the most possible thing to change the two most possible. And I actually was talking at drive line. I was a drive line on vacation. I went to drive line on my vacation. Strongly family. You brought your family to drive line on vacation? I did. I mean, the boys are into baseball, so that's good boys got to throw in front of their miss their missed target thing to like to see their command. We have Edutronic video of them now. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, the younger one was like, I wanted to do more. The older one was like, can you get my edge or video? I want to see. But anyway, and I talked to the director of R&D at a drive line about this. I think the two most Jack Lambert, what up? The two most common things that you can change in coaching are this contact point attack angle. Contact point is out front. And the easiest, the cues that you might think of are go get it, let it travel. And then attack angle is sort of how much your kind of what your angle is to the ball. So that's a little bit like in the back, you might say, I want to be quick to the ball. And you might say, I want to chop wood just to like get to the zone quicker. Or you might say, I want to get to playing or whatever it is. You know, there are cues there that you can change attack angle. So I would say, yes, I would say that pull is something you can coach. And we've seen already that pull is something that's not that sticky, sticky, year to year is some other stuff and takes a long time to stabilize 200 balls in play versus barrel rate, which is 50. So I think there's something to that, which means, oh, that's something that people change and that they can coach and that is a little bit more. Within that, I was trying to discern if there's a group of players or a player type, it's more likely to be able to make that adjustment with the coaching than something that you know, just can't. They just something about their hands, their mechanics that does not really work. They have to change too much to actually get out in front and pull the ball more often. That's that's hilarious that you took your kids drive line on the family vacation. What's going on with Miguel Vargas? I thought Matt Thompson had a good question in the discord earlier this week. He was wondering if the problem is actually Vargas's swing. And I was looking into it, he's similar swing speed to TJ Friedle, who we look at and say, that power wouldn't play particularly well outside of Cincinnati, but doesn't matter, because he gets to play half of the games in Cincinnati. Vargas's swing is about a foot longer than Friedle's, even though the speed is the same. Then beyond the swing stuff, there's the question about defense, which it doesn't matter because the white Sox are just so broken right now, they can let Miguel Vargas learn, try to coach him up, play him wherever they want for a little while, and just let him play regardless of how bad the glove is. That was a luxury he was never going to have afforded to him with the Dodgers. So an obvious winner in terms of a playing time, but is he good? Is he actually going to hit? Is he going to take advantage of this in a way that makes him even medium sized league relevant or possibly even shallow league relevant? I don't know. I mean, the first highlight that went out on the Twitterverse was him boffing a ball. I mean, he literally had the ball in his glove and it bounced out of the pocket of his glove like 10 feet. So I did say in my thing that if he makes it, it's not going to be defensive value. It's not going to be base running value. It's going to be it's going to be patience and contact and just enough power. And I did do a bat speed swing length, swing strike comp because chance that he has a little bit of some natural ability, bat to ball ability, right? And I found the perfect comp. I think it actually works almost across the ward. Lord is Greal Jr. Okay, that's a if he's not a great defender, right? No, yeah, he's not a great defender. Every well, I think it varies quite a bit, but it might not be as bad as the Vargas downside defensively, but Greal also encapsulates maybe the upside of Vargas, you know, like a guy who's going to have a decent batting average and hit 18 homers. It's not bad. Didn't Greal have an all star year? So like, you know, Vargas could have one all star. I know that people, you know, then yeah, one all star doesn't sound like amazing, but shoot, that's a regular, you know, and that he might be the only regular that was created the deadline. That would be sad. That is, if that's all the other cops, I use bat speed swing length and swing strike. The only other comps were Josh Bell, who just, I think would have been better if he could have lifted the ball better. David Fry's on this list. David Fry actually has the exact same bat speed and swing length and a worse swing strike. Tai France is pretty close and Cody Bellinger. So there's a lot of different sort of ranges there. This is the, we're, we're beginning to use bat speed and swing length to kind of try to figure out comps, but none of those guys has no doubt power. The other part of the equation, and it's not really a known yet. I think people have a skeptical view and for good reason is do the White Sox have a coaching staff in place, so they have instruction in place to make players better, to improve skills, to do anything notable when they bring talent in. To get the upper reaches of these outcomes. Yeah, whether that they unlock it is a huge question. I think maybe there's a little more confidence on the pitching side than there is on the hitting side if you're trying to have some optimism about what the White Sox are putting together right now. Here's one that just bothers me. Hunter Strickland is getting safe chances instead of Ben Joyce. I don't think the last one. Yeah, blown safe Thursday, so that's probably just, you know, a week or two away from changing. I did notice though with the Mike Trout season ending injury, I think the Mickey Moniac and Joe Adele playing alongside each other in the outfield experiment. That gets two more months now. They don't have to platoon, so they can just let that ride for two more months and see if they, if they like what they see. That's a lot of swing and miss. Yeah, I saw Moniac Homer Thursday night though, in the game where Hunter Strickland came in and eventually blew the save. I noticed that Pedro Leon is going to get a bump on the roster for the Astros as a result of Joey Loperfido being gone. Another guy that's put up some good numbers old for the level. He actually was very similar to Joey Loperfido when I looked at it. Yeah, there's a slight problematic amount of swing and miss, but there's power, there's speed. Yeah, he's a little on the right side. Yeah, he's on the right side. So that makes playing time a little harder to come by, but not impossible. I don't know. I'm still intrigued by Pedro Leon. I don't know if there's anything actionable here. It's more of a watch list situation for me. I know you see a lot of A's games. Tyler Ferguson is getting saved chances because Mason Miller's her and then Lucas Airsegg got traded to the Royals is Tyler Ferguson good. If you're looking for some saves, is this a good place to go? I don't know that he's great, but I picked him up in a bunch of places because he is the only guy and I have no idea. I mean, Mason Miller hasn't shown himself to be a quick healer in the past. Ferguson has like a 106 stuff plus, which sounds fine, but it is among closers would be kind of lower end. He's also weird because he's got a four-pitch mix. So if you love rice like Lasius, I guess Tyler Ferguson is the closer for you. I think he's just competent in a bullpen that doesn't have a ton of competency. Now that they've traded away Airsegg and Miller is hurt. And so he's the guy that for now and it's not a team that's going to create a lot of save opportunities. But as tepid as that recommendation can be, I have followed it myself. Okay, yeah, useful, but not, not a must get in shallow leagues. I think probably the the too long didn't listen. The only other closer that I think Nate Pearson will take the job eventually in in Chicago, especially if they start to trend out of the playoffs because then Hector Nares won't be there next year and it would behoove them to choose maybe between Mary Weather and Pearson for next year. I'm not even sure Mary Weather is under contract after this year. Would you rather stash AJ Puck or Nate Pearson? Puck is where now again? Arizona. Ooh, actually Puck, I think. Yeah, because there is Mary Weather for Pearson to battle with and Pearson came out and pitched two innings yesterday, which is not normally the hallmark of your future closer. The other guy that I do like is Calvin Fauche. I think he's the guy in Miami. They used him in the ninth in a win that wasn't a save opportunity. That's a very slight hint, but it was like sort of a, I think it was a four nothing game or five one or something like that. So I do think he is the closer there. So I guess I would go and he has great stuff. Fauche. Puck. Thompson got a save that Seewall was taken out of, but a lot of times that just means that Thompson was the guy that was ready. You know, it doesn't mean he's the next close. You used the guys you might have used already in that place. So Thompson might have been your fourth choice. So I guess I would go. Oh man, that's hard. Maybe Puck. They've been talking about making a change in Arizona, at least the writers have. So I'm going to go Fauche, Puck. No, Fauche, Joyce, Puck. Okay. And those are all relatively inexpensive editions in leagues where they're available. I don't think you have to go nuts with the fab budget on those. You mentioned Miami, Kyle Stowers, kind of in that Miguel Vargas mold of wide open playing time didn't have it before. A lot of swing and miss in the brief times we've seen him in the big leagues with the Orioles. But we've talked about this before when you're an up and down guy in particular, it's so hard to just get comfortable to make adjustments. And now he's going to have some window to do that. The projections are kind of just okay based on what we're seeing right now, kind of league average or even like 10% below. But I'm not sure when you have up and down guys like this for three years that that to me lends itself to a more noisy projection. What do you think about Stowers? Like if you're just filling a UT spot and Stowers and Vargas are both out there, who do you actually like better rest of season value wise? I'm going to take Vargas just because in fantasy, I think that strikeout rate has a little bit of outside importance because we're looking for batting average in most of our leagues. If you're not looking for batting average, it's still Vargas because he's going to have a better OBP. I mean, that's a weird thing about having these, oh, he's an OBP league guy. Well, no, if you still strike out 33% of the time, you're not going to have a great OBP either. So in terms of projections, Vargas has a 20 or 30 point jump on Stowers and OBP. So the only place where I would take pickstowers is if I just needed power and power alone and my batting average is already bottom of the league and I was punting batting average and just trying to get, trying to get power because there are some signs in there. He had a 1116 max EV in AAA last year. He does seem to get to barrels his in-game power. He has some really nice isolated numbers, isolated slugging numbers in the minors in the high 200s, 314 this year at AAA for Kyle Stowers. The in-game power seems to be there and he's going to get the burn, I think, because he is 26 years old, this is it. What are you waiting for? I mean, Brian De LaCrew is being gone, that's an everyday guy. You just swap him out one for one. You just let Stowers play, evaluate him for 50 games and have a better sense going to next season, how much you want to push him and learn about what he is over a full season a year from now. I think he's getting this season plus next season. They're going to give him basically 230 games or so to just go for it. One thing that is kind of flown on the radar for us at least, is I do think that Xavier Edwards is just the shortstop there now. I know his current line is super babbop inflated, but even if you deflate that babbop, I do think he's a brown to league average bat. And so I guess that'd be evaluating his defense over the next couple of months to see if he's their shortstop going forward. But I bet next year Edwards, Burger, Sanchez, and Stowers are in the lineup. And you start to see replacements, Davidus De Los Santos at first instead of Jonah Bride. That makes a lot of sense for me. Connor Norby at third over a manual. The option Norby. Just blam. I know you've got a little service times, you want to wait, whatever, play Connor Norby. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I just, I got mad when I saw that. Their evaluation period over the next two months is Emmanuel Rivera, Vidal Brujhan, Otto Lopez, and David Hensley. Those four guys are basically, I think, battling out for one infield spot because next year I do think De Los Santos, and I guess you could throw in Bride and make it two first and second. So first and second are open. Rivera's, you know, 28, and he's had a bunch of chances. I don't, I think he's a bench guy. Brujhan could take it. Lopez could take it. Hensley's 28. I don't know. I think all these guys, you know, second, third, and first, they're just, they're kind of trying to find if one of them is more of a utility guy that can keep maybe one of them as a starter. I do think Norby is going to take a job eventually from one of them. I want to see how Edwards handles Major League velocity over a larger sample because I think a player like that that controls the zone well but doesn't have a lot of power. That could be the, like, the big thing that he may not do well that could cause him to perform a lot low, much lower level than what he did pretty much everywhere he was in the minors. I mean, Xavier Edwards was above average every single stop except for Triple A the first time as a 22 year old. When he went back, he was 30% better than League average the following year. And Major League is the first time, but he doesn't strike out a lot. He draws walks. He's a great base stealer. So he brings a lot of fantasy value that way. I know I'll ask Max E.V. and barrower. Right, right. But if if you're not there to hit for power, if you're just going to play good defense in one of the middle infield spots, he can be a good defender at a middle infield spot. Actually, this profile can play. Even lower Max E.V. Yeah, so whatever, not a lot of power there, but he's running a lot. So I think if you're in a shallow league and you're trying to make up ground for bags, Edward is going to be high in the order and he's going to play a ton. He might actually be able to make an impact. Here's one in the N.L. East that is just like a low key winner. Grant Holmes is getting a chance to start right now for Atlanta. They didn't add a starter at the deadline. Max Freed could be back this weekend and whenever Lopez might not be hurt badly. But Grant Holmes looks like that next guy up along with Bryce Elder that this Atlanta team might have to rely on eight Ks, one earned five innings, no walks against the Brewers. Earlier this week, he's got two good breaking balls. There was a cutter got a four-seam really throws more than the cutter. I don't know why. And Grant Holmes is a fun story 2014 first rounder. He met me from the Dodgers. He's bounced through a couple of organizations with the A's for a long time. People were calling him Kenny Powers in the minor leagues. He's got the long curly hair. And here he is like getting chances to pitch on a really good team right now. The cutter might be new. It has been whirlwind path. 28 years old, three organizations as you mentioned, really pedestrian numbers until 2023 with Atlanta. I mean, his last year with Oakland, he had an eight ERA with a 14% strikeout rate and a 7%, 8% walk rate. So it's really out of nowhere so they must have made some big change with him, I feel like. And I don't really know what it is. It does make me a little bit suspicious on the craft with Nick Pollock. We went through their options and we like Schwellenbach the best. There was a debate between Holmes and Elder because Elder's stuff is in the midst of changing. He's one of the biggest, he's the second on my last rankings. Elder was the second biggest stuff increaseer. So I do think that between the two pitchers, Elder has an out pitch that's better than any of them that Holmes has. But Holmes is your classic four pitch with slightly better command than Elder. So take your pick, man. I think it's really hard to figure that one out. Lopez is going to miss at least one start. It's been announced. And so I think they're battling each other. The schedule may have a lot to say about this right now. If I'm looking at the Braves schedule coming up. Here we go. We've got Schwellenbach, Holmes, Freed, Salem, Morton, Schwellenbach, Freed, Lopez. So Elder is not even in Colorado. At Colorado next weekend, they're at Coors. So if that Lopez spot stays open, it's not a spot where you're going to want to throw either one of those guys. Yeah. And Holmes even drops out of their rotation when they have Freed coming back. Yeah, Freed's supposed to be back on Sunday. So it may not matter for very long. I thought just the fact they didn't add more depth means those guys could get a few more chances. So we could be looking at them as streaming options down the stretch. One name to keep an eye on for pickup purposes if he's eligible. He hasn't pitched yet this season. Eduardo Rodriguez could make his season debut for the D-back. So just a yet another injury name coming back. Tyler Mally getting close to for what it's worth. If you're just scrambling looking for potentially useful starters, a lot of us are in that spot. At Cleveland, which I actually have found this year to be one of the hardest decisions. Yeah, then the park was playing differently and the lineup's been a little better than we expected all year long. So I think I would wait and see. And then his next one, Eduardo you guys would be versus Philly at home. So you may not play him until August 17th at Tampa Bay. Bake that into your expectation. Then if you are going to pick him up or bake that into your bid, especially don't go too aggressive. You can't use him for these first couple of starts. Just the schedule is a such a source of chaos. Jordan Montgomery who, you know, if they were both healthy, I'd probably take Eduardo Rodriguez. They're not my player type. Everybody listening knows that. But Jordan Montgomery gets at Pittsburgh, misses the Cleveland series, does get at versus Philly, but then gets versus Colorado in his next start. So Jordan Montgomery is two out of three starts over Eduardo Rodriguez. Let's go to the Giants real quick on our way out. You wrote about Hayden Birdsong and by trading Alex Cobb and moving Jordan Hicks to the bullpen recently, Hayden Birdsong gets more chances to start for this Giants team. And I love it. I mean, I think the knock on him is that the fastball does not grade well, but by velocity, it doesn't seem like it's a terrible fastball to have as a starting point, something to work with. Like he's been adding verticality to it. And that's, you know, I think, again, of how much player development happens to the major level, his curveball has added an inch of drop and his fastball is added an inch of ride. So he's changing a little in front of our eyes. The slider is the out pitch. It's the dominant pitch. It's a very, very good slider. So and then the park is going to help him. You know, I think Birdsong is a pickup in any league. Yeah, I think Birdsong is going to be one of the better final two month pickups on the pitching side, just because as you the park's huge for him, he's got good stuff to work with. But the park is such a soft landing spot because you want to use him for pretty much every home star just based on that. And then there's going to these road spots where you can probably use them too, because he misses in a bat. Yeah, the hitting depth chart in San Francisco is going to get a little jolt today where they're going to add Marcana. And they're adding Gerard and Carnacion, who has been on an absolute tear when it comes to power. And he's the rare player that has come out of Mexico to do something. I don't even have his Mexican leave numbers in front of him, but he also then just hit 10 homers and 146 played appearances in AAA for the Giants. So he's just on an absolute tear. 26 years old was poorly regarded prospect for Miami, but has really added a power dimension that makes the strikeout rate okay. You know, it's like a high strikeout rate guy that has become more patient and really access the power. Really nice top end exit velocities 113 nine. He's going to be put into this lineup, a lock with Marcana tomorrow. I think they're going to option Derek Hill. That gives them two righties on the bench. Marco Luciano is a righty who's listed as a starter at DH Wilmer Flores is not coming back. So one of these guys is just going to be a caddy at first base mostly from the Lamontway junior who never plays against righties. Maybe the other one can make Michael Confordo's sit against lefties. So Wade junior and a confordo will sit against lefties and Kanha and Girar and Canación will play. I don't know. I guess Marco Luciano's spot is the one that's open if Kanha or Ancanación like that they're battling for a full time spot. They'll all get playing time against lefties, but they're one of those guys will turn into a full time spot. I don't know. They can also platoon Michael Stremsky, I guess. So all three of them can just be small side, but I do think that with DH open with Jorge Salero of town, there is one spot that they can play for. If they play for the future, Luciano will get that job. If they play for the now, maybe Kanha, Girar somewhere in between. So that's something to watch, I guess. Yeah, and the other guy that's been really great for the Giants that we didn't talk about really much when he got like the opportunity a few weeks ago is Tyler Fitzgerald. Like he's gonna become the shortstop lately. What are we expecting from him? I mean, nine homers, seven steals, 301, 363, 602 line and 135 plate appearances. Very low to me in the sense that the upper level production has been good. It's just not. I don't think it was expected to come through at this sort of level in the big leagues. Yeah, he's toolsy. You know, he's got 99th level sprint speed. Arm strength is 31st percentile, but they are in a little bit of a beggar's can't be chooser situation when it comes to shortstop in San Francisco. I think he's over his head, 384 BAB of 30% strikeout rate, but I do think he's a toolsy guy who can run hard. I bet you he'll hit the ball hard and smoothness wise, he's a little bit smoother at shortstop than Luciano and I've been a big Luciano defender. So I think that Luciano will be better than him with the bat. You know, they both have shortstop eligibility. They both might play a lot. So I would pick Luciano for this year, but next year, Luciano will probably lose shortstop eligibility. Fitzgerald will still have it. I do think maybe true talent. We're talking about a guy is 240, 300 OBP for 20 slugging or something, maybe a 1515 guy or a 2020 guy. It is a 2020 guy, but there's also the chance he loses the shortstop job defensively and it's not a high OBP. So it's not going to be high in line up. So there are some things that aren't great about the package. He's definitely not like a 300 hit or anything, but he's a toolsy guy who's got getting an opportunity right now. I'm going to take Fitzgerald over Luciano for this season fantasy wise. I think beyond it, it'd be silly to have it in that order, but I think part of the reason Luciano still 371 slug at AAA. Come on, man, where's the power? I don't think he's going to steal a lot of bases either. It's really weird because he has a 50% hard rate, right? Like he hits the ball hard. He doesn't strike out at a gross rate. I think there's a chance that ends up being an okay category for him eventually where their average is actually an asset from Marco Luciano. I don't know what we're going to get in the short term though. So I think it's a little more of a wait and see for me, even though we've been excited about Marco Luciano for a long time. We are going to go very long episode today. Apologies to our producer Brian Smith for the extra work. We appreciate all the hard work he does on our edits. We had to clean up the trade deadline, still still some straggling little bits there. Yeah, and you know, wrote in detail about it too. So be sure to check that out, thematic.com/ratesbarrels $2 a month. It gets you in the door. If you don't have a subscription, find Eno on Twitter @Enosarris, find me @DarrickTheRiper. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Have a great weekend. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]
