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The 2024 Second-Half Rebound Draft, Jacob Wilson Comps & Weekly Waiver Targets

Eno and DVR host their first second-half rebound draft looking for players who have accrued negative value to this point (12-team, 5x5 leagues) with the best chances of turning things around in the second half. Plus, they consider comps for the recently promoted Jacob Wilson, Brooks Baldwin's opportunity with the White Sox, River Ryan's model-breaking arsenal, and a few names to consider on the waiver wire this weekend.

Rundown 1:31 Second-Half Rebound Draft: Luis Robert Jr. v. Gerrit Cole 4:50 Xander Bogaerts & Dansby Swanson 7:50 Blake Snell & Kevin Gausman 11:56 Josh Lowe & Bo Bichette 15:44 Lars Nootbaar & Hunter Brown 17:51 A Waffle to Yusei Kikuchi, the Case for Closers & Sean Murphy 23:01 Camilo Doval & Edwin Díaz 27:52 Project Prospect: Jacob Wilson Gets the Call 34:25 Brooks Baldwin's Opportunity in Chicago 39:30 River Ryan's Model-Breaking Stuff Numbers 47:14 Other Pitching Prospects to Consider Stashing 53:09 Injured Pitchers Nearing Return 58:12 The 12-Team Mixed League Outfield Puzzle 1:04:55 Future Saves: Time to Stash Ben Joyce & A.J. Puk?

Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Thursdays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels

Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duration:
1h 6m
Broadcast on:
19 Jul 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

Eno and DVR host their first second-half rebound draft looking for players who have accrued negative value to this point (12-team, 5x5 leagues) with the best chances of turning things around in the second half. Plus, they consider comps for the recently promoted Jacob Wilson, Brooks Baldwin's opportunity with the White Sox, River Ryan's model-breaking arsenal, and a few names to consider on the waiver wire this weekend.


Rundown

1:31 Second-Half Rebound Draft: Luis Robert Jr. v. Gerrit Cole

4:50 Xander Bogaerts & Dansby Swanson

7:50 Blake Snell & Kevin Gausman

11:56 Josh Lowe & Bo Bichette

15:44 Lars Nootbaar & Hunter Brown

17:51 A Waffle to Yusei Kikuchi, the Case for Closers & Sean Murphy

23:01 Camilo Doval & Edwin Díaz

27:52 Project Prospect: Jacob Wilson Gets the Call

34:25 Brooks Baldwin's Opportunity in Chicago

39:30 River Ryan's Model-Breaking Stuff Numbers

47:14 Other Pitching Prospects to Consider Stashing

53:09 Injured Pitchers Nearing Return

58:12 The 12-Team Mixed League Outfield Puzzle

1:04:55 Future Saves: Time to Stash Ben Joyce & A.J. Puk?


Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris

Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper

e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com


Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe

Join us on Thursdays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes!

Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels


Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris

Producer: Brian Smith

Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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, July 19th. Derek and Riper are either serious here with you on this episode. We have our 20/24 second half rebound draft. We're looking for players who had negative value through the first half of the season, drafting them, hoping to do better in the second half. Head-to-head me versus Eno scenario in this one. We got Project Prospect with a few players coming up, including Jacob Wilson for the A's, Brooks Baldwin for the White Sox, and River Ryan soon to join the Dodgers. Of course, we'll have our weekend waiver wire preview, so a lot to cover in there. Eno, how's it going for you on this Friday? It's going great. I'm about to leave for Seattle tomorrow, so I won't see you guys next week, but it'll be some much needed rest. Full House, four shows still coming anyway, even with Eno enjoying some time off. If you'd like to join us in the Discord, you can do that using the link in the show description. There's actually stuff in there like free tickets to a Pirates game, thanks to Eno. So you never know what you'll find in the Discord, so be sure to join if you haven't done so already. Let's get things started with this rebound draft. The main point of the exercise is for us to discuss some of the players that have underperformed at this point and explain why we think they're going to be better going forward. As I mentioned up top, the rules are pretty simple. We're looking at the fan graph's player raider, 12 team five by five, looking for players who had negative value and played at least one game in the big leagues prior to the all-star break. I think we're going to try to make this a seven round effort, and the rule is going to be you can't have more than four hitters or four pitchers. So it'll be three and four in some combination, no specific positional requirements because it doesn't quite work out to do it that way. And if we remember to do this, I'll try to put on the Google calendar. I'll tally it up at the end. We'll see, looking at the same auction calculator, when it puts the second half 2024 option up there, we'll see who accrued the most second half value. And since you're going on vacation, and since I made this up and didn't tell you other than just putting it on the rundown, I will let you have the first selection in our first second half rebound draft. And since I'm I'm just doing this on the fly with very little preparation, I'm going to take the name at the very top of the list. He's just staring at me. I'm gonna take Luis Robert, Jr. fair. I just feel like, you know, some part of it is lower babbop than usual, 290 babbop, 330 career. He gets that batting average up to 250, 260, like he should be able to, then the power and speed are there and he's healthy for now. I feel like a 260, you know, 12, 10 second half will get me what I need in this draft. Yeah, I'm pretty sure of the players that are in the red that qualify for this draft. Luis Robert by far earned the most last season. So I think that makes him a great, great general target. If you're looking to trade for a player that can make a big impact, even with the low, low quality, the supporting cast, he's done this before with similar talent around him. Maybe the white Sox bring up more prospects and mention Brooks Baldwin up top. Maybe we see Colson Montgomery at some point in the second half. Maybe they make a couple of trades, they end up getting a position player back that actually bolsters that group. Should they trade some pitching? It's a few different ways the lineup could actually be a little better, a healthy eloy. I know people are laughing as I say that. Maybe that helps boost things compared to where they were in the first half as well. So I think Luis Robert makes a lot of sense as the first pick for this. I'm going to take a picture first. I'm going to take Garrett Cole. We talked about him recently. Seems like the stuff is slowly coming back. Our main concern really is the lack of slider usage, right? But similar to Luis Robert, the thinking here is maybe I could sneak a 20 or 25 dollar half out of Garrett Cole. Everything is clicking for him now that he gets a few starts under his belt and he looks something like 80% of typical Garrett Cole. It will pay off nicely. We talked about him as a trade target before and he might be somewhat gettable if only because he was likely held. The people that had him had to figure out how to keep the pitching together without him and perhaps they did a good enough job to where Cole himself is still expendable in leagues that allow trading. So I'm hoping we get that $20 second half from Garrett Cole and I'm one of the people that tried to stash him in a league where I actually need him. So I'm living this one. I'm riding this one out in a place where it actually matters too. Nice. I had a tough decision between a favorite outfielder of mine. A couple of them that I'd like here but I'm going to go with some name value here. Xander Bogart's as my second hitter. I know he's coming off a shoulder injury but for the year his max EV, his barrel rate, his contact rates, they all line up pretty well. He did steal four bases in 200 plate appearances. So I think there's going to be power and steals. It may only end up being 280 with, I don't know, five or six homers and four or five steals. But it's one of those things where I think the lineup around him has gotten better with them while he's gone. Now, and if he is going to get hits, then that's what he's done when since he's gotten back, which I know it's like tiny sample, poor analysis, but he is a guy who's gotten hits in the past. So I'm seeing like good runs in RBI out of him on that Padres team. So after a season, a full draft season of Xander slander, I love that he ends up on your roster for our second half rebound draft. But we'd like that he went to drive line. He put in that extra work. He's trying to find ways to continue producing at a high level. And I liked him a lot as an early-ish round oatmeal pick back during draft season. So I think he ends up being a nice impactful piece for the Padres in the second half of the season. Nothing against that pick whatsoever. I'm going to take Danzbee Swanson as my first hitter. I think when I look at Danzbee Swanson, I look across the board, the slash lines disgusting. It's like as bad as it's ever been for him in the big leagues. The K rates up a little bit compared to last season, but he's not chasing more than he was a year ago. The barrel rate is still very good. 9.3%. I think he's been four consecutive seasons in the double digit range that 10 to 11% marker. Mostly the difference is hitting the ball in the ground. I think he's a key player for the Cubs, of course, being a part of an offense that needs to take a step forward, whether they add up the trade deadline or not, Danzbee Swanson is still going to be there. If they're going to make a run, he has to be a part of it. A little bit of kind of does everything in a typically good year, even if he's a slight drag on the batting average. But going into this season, I felt like Danzbee Swanson versus Willie Adamus was sort of a a coin flip where they were going in drafts. I usually took Adamus because he was going later, but now you're sort of getting that discount on Danzbee Swanson because the first half of the season has been underwhelming. Just nine homers, five steals so far. I think if you could just keep playing every day, second half ends up being just as good as the first half, even though there's a smaller number of games on the slate. This one's going to be interesting. I'm going to leave. I'm going to risk leaving that bat out there. I'm going to go with Blake Snell. My rankings are coming out early next week. Sorry. I had said that they might come out Friday, but it's just the snazzy kind of fun bits with my rankings this year as you've noticed the way that they format and all that just requires more people to get them out. If you know what I mean, just sort of in terms of structure and what's going on behind the scenes. It's also vacation season. A couple vacations didn't line up. You should get them next week. Anyway, just a sneak peek into where Snell is. I haven't struggled with him. It's been up and down a little bit. But one thing I noticed is that he's one of the few people with a positive stuff trend, like his stuff is up. He has a 3.5 ERA projection if he uses stuff. He has a 29% strikeout rate projection if you use stuff plus. I think a big part of the story has just been getting comfortable with his catcher, getting comfortable with his environments. The tone has changed a little bit. There was a little bit at one point where he was saying, "Oh, the Giants are just trying to get me back. It's blah, blah, blah, this, this, this, this, this. It's getting me back, getting me back." Most recently, I don't know if he's trying to rehab those quotes or whatever, but he has been much more positive about the organization and how he feels in it. Maybe they backed off of the rehab. Maybe they clarified some things with each other. Either way, I think he's primed for a, he's a great pitcher in a great park. Or at least a very above average pitcher in a great park. Yeah. I'm capable of, I think, just going red-hot for a stretch. We've seen them since we've ever pulled seasons before. He's a two-time Cy Young winner. I think if he's finally healthy, the shape of his season has been so unusual. The late signing, a couple of injuries, I could see Blake Snell settling in pitching really well and ending up being a big part of a Giants team that hangs around and at least causes some problems for other teams in the playoff race over the course of the second half. I've got a torn here looking at some of the pitchers that are available. We talked about Kevin Gossman on an episode recently and it doesn't look like a lot has changed, but at the same time, you know, if you say, "Okay, he's more of an SP2, SP3 now," that's still pretty good in the pool of players that we're looking at. I think you're generally going to get high volume of innings. You're going to get above average ratios because he throws so many innings. You're going to get a good number of Ks and that stuff all tends to pop in a player raider. So I'm going to somewhat reluctantly take Kevin Gossman. I don't think he brings the Blake Snell ceiling, but I think he also brings a lot more floor and I think it feels kind of right after kind of getting Garrett Cole for ceiling to go ahead and find the other guy that could finish the $20 pitcher in the second half, but sort of does it a slightly different way. I don't really want to take a currently injured guy, but there's one that's looking at me staring at me. That's the tricky part of this too, is timing the injuries because mistime in a partial season has a massive negative impact on value. Yeah, I'm going to pass on that, I guess. We've talked about this before, like injury optimism as the season goes on starts to fade, whereas like in March and April, you might hold a player for four to six weeks because the bulk of the season is still there. Once they come back, now we're at the point having passed the All-Star break where if you say someone's down four to six weeks, they become much more cuttable or in a situation like this, they almost become someone you would avoid. This is a gut play here. This is a gut play. Josh Lowe, I'm going to take Josh Lowe. There's not really a reason I can give you other than I think he's, you know, kind of an everyday guy on a team that doesn't always do that. I think there's more power in there and he's stealing bases and hitting for power. So I'm making my multi-category play against you, where I'm hoping to beat you and did we establish how the scoring goes? This is dollars, so it doesn't matter if you have balance between the categories. Oh, boo. That's going to beat you in the categories. No, but you know, just generally it's good. It's a good way to earn money is to have somebody who does everything. I mean, one thing that really surprised me, I guess this is this is my argument. Matt Chapman is my argument and this is why I was looking. I did a story today about All-Stars. They weren't All-Stars in the first half and Matt Chapman's name came up. He doesn't qualify for this. You know why? Because he's been the seventh best third baseman in baseball and fantasy baseball. Doesn't that surprise you? He's hit 230, but he's hit-- he's stolen seven bases and he's hit a bunch of-- he's hit like nine homers or said whatever it is, 10, 11, 12, whatever it is. Because he's done everything in all the categories, the batting average will fool you. And so in this case, Josh Lowe has only hit five homers, but he hasn't played a full season and the barrel rate looks great. The maxi beat doesn't, but it's not a full season yet. I'm into Josh Lowe. I like him as a player. We'll see what the true talent strikeout rate is. My pick depends a little bit on if he strikes out 28% or 33% going forward. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, we wondered about that with Lowe. Like where does that number settle in? But I think as the Rays potentially thin out the position player group a little bit, Lowe is someone they're going to probably rely on a lot regardless. But the chances of him being a max volume player start to go up if they move a position player or two and get a little bit younger after the trade deadline. So I think that's a pretty good call. Not much has changed for him. He's been gone a lot because of injury so far this season. I'm starting to look at some of the injured guys still doesn't feel quite right. I'll take a guy who's a little bit dinged up and probably be disappointed in myself later. But I liked Boba Shett a lot during draft season. Even if we were going to say his 20, 25, 80p or a second half, 80p would be in the 150 range. He's at least healthy, which is something we can't fully say about a lot of the guys we're thinking about right now. I don't know why the barrel rate's basically been cut in half this year. He still hits the ball hard. We know the approach being one that gets we sprays the ball over the place is not the ideal approach to consistently get to power. But I look at this and say, okay, you know, maybe it's going to be different than what I expected. Maybe it ends up being a good average in the second half. Projections have in the 270, even the low 280 range. Maybe it's that with the equivalent of 15-homer power and 10 to 12 steals kind of in a weird Matt Chapman sort of way where it's average and then a little bit everything else. I think Boba Shett might be sneaky, useful in a format like this. Maybe he can give me something similar to what you're expecting from Bogart's the kind of healthy thing I was talking about. It's that calf injury he was dealing with before the break. If that's actually behind him, then I think I'll come out okay with Boba Shett for these final two and a half months. All right, it's getting thinner. It's definitely getting thinner. I'm still leaving my injured guy out there. It is time for Lars new bar. Come on down. He should spell it with extra O's and extra A's even on top of the ones he's got. And he's got two of both already in the last name, so. Yeah, I'm going with him because the strikeout rate is good, the walk rate is good, the barrel rate is good, the max EV is good, he steals bases. It's all there for him. I do think he's struggling to find a way to pull the ball in the air with authority and not put everything on the ground, but he's a bit of a tinkerer that's aware of this that I think will maybe make that one adjustment to get past this. All right, I like that. All right, so Lars new bar, another guy that's missed a ton of time that just could stay healthy and maybe be the player you thought he was going to be back during draft season. Definitely makes a lot of sense. I'm going to take advantage of the format here. I'm going to take one more picture. Maybe I'll end up taking two. I'm going to take Hunter Brown. It's funny because if you run the playerator for a 15 team league, he's a slight positive. If you run it for a 12 team league, he's a slight negative, which makes him eligible for our purposes. But this is basically just buying into the adjustments that the sinker has become a really important pitch for him, just having that as a way to keep hitters more honest against the rest of his arsenal. So I think you're going to get lots of Ks, probably better ratios than we've seen for the season so far, something more in line with what he's done for the last six or so weeks. Hunter Brown just makes sense to me as someone that is healthier than the some of the other players I've taken so far to. I think as we kind of go with these last couple of picks, that's where a lot of the gambles are going to be. It's going to be on guys getting back sooner than expected or coming back and just being themselves for the final six or seven weeks that they're available. Yes. And two spots ahead of my rankings is Mackenzie Gore, who is actually protected for a little bit worse, but more strikeouts. I was looking to the strength of schedule to make a decision here. I hate to talk about a pitcher that's still on the board. This is a faux pas in most drafts, but you say Kukuchi is a guy that I like. Have him ranked. Where do I have him ranked? Where is Mr. Kukuchi? Wow. I have him ranked way higher. Okay. Can I change it? I'm taking you say Kukuchi. All right. You want to say Kukuchi instead of Gore? That's fine. I mean, he's projected for an ERA that's 20 points better than Mackenzie Gore's. The stuff is there. And I was going to say something about strengths of schedule. The Blue Jays have a poor strength of schedule. They have a bad one. They have a 506 regular strength of schedule on fan graphs. That's a five or six million percentage of gas they're facing and the nationals is 502. But I don't think Kukuchi will be a Blue Jay. And so I'm going to take a bet that he ends up somewhere better than the American League East because I just don't think the Blue Jays will trade him within their division. And almost every other division makes for easier competitors than the American League East. So you say Kukuchi, come on down. Solid pick for sure. I think we've talked about him as a good trade candidate for a few episodes now. It's probably going to happen unless the Jays nudge their way back into the buyer's group and it makes all the sense in the world. But he may be the best starting pitcher moved at the deadline this year. All right. So you've got two pitchers now with six players taken. So your last pick will end up being another pitcher to see a four and three. I mean, know somebody I like. I know I could. I could snipe you here. And I don't think that's the direction I want to go. So it looks like you're going to kind of get what you wanted here. I'm torn on the closers like a closer for a partial season could rely. I know there's some really good closers here. I was looking at all these closers. I mean, how do you even pick the let me just list them? So before you pick, we've got clay homes as a minus and 12 teamers Camilo Dovall, Edwin Diaz. I mean, if I were to rank closers for the rest of season, I think I'd rank all of them in the top five. I think I still like Diaz the most of the bunches even though this has been just a disaster year for him. We've seen stretches like this before and we've seen worse than this from him before. But what makes me nervous is they're not they haven't all been bad and yet they've all had negative value the way that this was calculated. So I'm just never nervous that you could get a fine season a fine half season from Dovall or Diaz and still not rate that well. Right. I think the exercise here would be of those teams, well, especially of the giants and Mets, which one's more likely to stay in the mix and be a buyer because you want to max out those saves. That's going to be the thing that drives the value in the playerator. And then with the Yankees, does Clay Holmes make it through the trade deadline, keeping the job or they upgrade that spot and make him a setup guy. Like that's the kind of lingering question as you look at those guys, but I'm going to pass on all of them for now and see if it moves you off of your Mackenzie Gore pick. Now we're just playing mind games. I want to take Royce Lewis, but I don't know when he's coming back. So I'm not going to do it. I was the guy I've been referencing is Tristan Cassis too. Yeah, I keep looking at Cassis. He must be close with Royce. He's just like, I don't know. I don't know where he is. That's a complete unknown. Cassis is like they said maybe back by the end of the month. Right. Cassis and Michael Harris are both on similar time tables. Harris will be probably early August. If he gets back by ADP, he was the best player eligible for this draft. I just as much as I like him long term, I don't think I want to squeeze him onto the roster here and put too much of an expectation on him for the second half of the season. So yes, I'm stalling a little bit. I want to do something really unconventional. I'm going to take Sean Murphy. I'm going to take a catcher, a guy who's healthy that I really liked. I think you know, catchers can pop a little bit in the player raiders and those formulas because they're the scarcity. But even without that, I was looking at last year what he did. He was about a $12 player and that was with a bad second half. And I think this is a bet on Murphy being more the player he was in the first half of 2023 than the player he was in the second half of that season. Because he's been hurt for most of this year, we don't really know which of those is true. But last year, the first season with Atlanta, Sean Murphy had a career high 15.8% barrel rate, kept the k-rate down like he usually does. It's a great lineup even without a kunya as far as run production goes. It's kind of a bet on more of the good things we've seen from Austin Riley lately, a possible bounce back from Madel. So it's kind of all of those things rolled into one, but also some belief that Sean Murphy is more of like a $15 player over a full season. So just hoping to get that over a half now that he's finally healthy again. I'm going to switch, switch doors. Matihal, yes, I know, I know I got it wrong earlier. I'm switching doors to Camilo Duval. The thinking here is that even if the Giants sell, they're not going to sell Duval, I'm pretty sure. So they could sell some relievers around him that make the relief core so good. But I kind of bet that with the flames that are under the GM's butt, perhaps, that they buy, or just sort of tepidly buy. I can't imagine spending all that money and knowing that your time as the leader of this team is limited and not going for it on some level. So the other part of this is yes, Camilo Duval's location plus isn't good. And yes, he's had some bad walk rates in the past, but there's been very few stops where his walk rate has been as bad as it is right now. And I could see that as just an easy thing for him to iron out going forward. The stuff is dominant. The things that we've found about save opportunities have been that team quality matters and team bullpen quality matters. And I think that's a sneaky, really good bullpen. The reason team bullpen quality matters is because they have to hand you the save opportunity. They have to keep the lead. You know, and I trust Ryan Walker. I trust Tyler Rogers. I trust that bullpen. Completely fair. Yeah, I think you're right about Farhan having that extra nudge to try and make this roster better rather than try to play for the future given the state of things in San Francisco right now. I am going to go ahead and take a closer. I'm going to take Edwin Diaz. I was hoping he'd make it there. I felt like the difference between the closers was so small that there was no reason to take one with that six pick. But I think the Mets hang around. I think they're just good enough. I think they can be a team that spends more on payroll the rest of the win. It makes player acquisition of the deadline affordable in terms of not giving up long term value. And I think that ultimately drives some value for guys like Diaz, and they're going to create tons of save chances in the second half. And I think we'll see something more typical for him. He's still missing a lot of bats. 33.6% K rate. Yeah, it's not the 50% we got a year ago. But it's still very good, right? Among closers, that's still going to be top and I would still probably nudge him closer that top five. We were reranking the position for the rest of the season. They are really set up for maybe a rental starter acquisition. Because the bullpen's fine. Buto has been been pretty good out of the bullpen. And Daniel Nunez is actually a kind of a stuff plus hero. So you're kind of putting together the pieces in the bullpen. The lineup, I think, looks strong and long. I mean, who's the big hole in this lineup? At this point, you know, it's Jeff McNeil. And at least he's going to put the ball and play for you, you know, even Harrison Bader has been playing above average. So the lineup looks long. It looks good. I think, you know, maybe Senga can come back and be a playoff starter for you. He's at least a top five guy. They've got, you know, Manaya and Severino look like top five guys. Peterson could be, I think I'd want to be upgrading on the Quintana spot. And I think you could do that in trade in a trade environment. Or you kind of push Quintana and Peterson into, you know, sort of six seventh areas or five six seven. So I think acquiring a rental starter, even like a Jack Flaherty, I think would make sense for them. Yeah. And I just, I don't think it's going to hurt them long term if they go after some players like that either. So I wouldn't be surprised at all. The Mets are fourth in Team WRC plus this season. Who had that on the, on the prediction? Yeah, that's been a revelation for them. And Alvarez is good. And so both those guys hit the ball super hard. And then Nemo is just an underrated player. I think people just don't understand. I think Nemo and Lindor are maybe some of the most underrated players in baseball. It's weird, but it's true. As far as how people look at those two guys in particular. So recapping our draft, you got Luis Robert, Xander Bogart, Blake Snell, Josh Lowe, Lars Noot Bar, Yusei Kikuchi, and Camilo Dovall with your seven picks. I took Garrett Cole, Dansby Swanson, Kevin Gossman, Boba Shett, Hunter Brown, Sean Murphy, and Edwin Diaz. Boba Shett plays me a little bit. I don't think, I don't think I saw his name. The same spreadsheet. I know, I know. I just, I didn't see his name on there. That's bad. But of course it's on there. I mean, he's been bad. He's been real. And I'm not, I'm not sure that it's like, you know, rock solid, but, you know, I think it was a good pick. Well, see how it plays out should be fun. You know, we love talking stats here at The Athletic. Here's one that's super simple to remember. Discover automatically doubles the cash back 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 cash back to $300. That's right. You could put it towards some memorabilia you've had dry on or treat yourself to a premium sports network. You earn and discover doubles. See terms at discover.com/creditcard. Let's move on to Project Prospect. We've got a new shortstop coming up for the A's, Jacob Wilson. And Jacob Wilson is a bit of a polarizing player because he's got questionable power, but seems to have a phenomenal hit tool. And how good are we? We're talking about a 3.3% strikeout rate during his brief time at AAA, 10.8% during his time at AA. And that sample is only 41 games combined between just the season. He played it a little bit at high A last year to being drafted. So the simple question is like, what are the reasonable comps for Jacob Wilson as a hitter as a tons of contact, questionable power sort of bat? I hate this, you know. Oh, nice, exciting player. And now here comes, you know, to poo poo it, he doesn't hit the ball hard. So if you look at his max CV and you look at his hard hit rates, I found comps in the major leagues, sort of plus or minus two, plus or minus three in terms of max CV and hard hit. So just around him. And the comps are up on the on the TV screen right now. It's Hose Al Tuve, who's an outlier. I don't know that you want to comp tell Tuve in terms of batted balls, you know, stuff. He's done a lot of things that made himself unique over the years. Bryce Turing, I think is actually the best comp for Jacob Wilson, which is, I know, I know, some people are going to get very angry about that comp. But I think it is a really good comp because they're defensive guys make a lot of contact. Don't hit the ball super hard. Justin Turner's on here. He's not a good comp because he's old. Cedric Mullins probably did. Oh, Jeff McNeil is like a low end comp is like probably like a, you know, what could happen in a bad way comp. And Max Schumann is that would be a terrible outcome for Jacob Wilson. But these are and Max Schumann has is a bubbly average this year. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm really, I know I'm rude, but I'm not trying to be rude. And Max Schumann also strikes out more. So if you break contact, right batting, I think to rank is the best comp for him. All right. So then to be like to ring as a fantasy player, you have to run. I mean, so far this season, Bryce Turing's been a $16 player about the player raider 12 team five by five. What happens if you take the dollars for stone base out? Oh, I'm sure it's bad. It's not terrible because he plays every day. He leads off a lot against righties. Like the average has been good. I just think a lot of pressure is put on that particular category with this profile. And the other way to get there, of course, is to be like a 300 plus hitter, which is hard to project for anybody because it's very hard to hit the big leagues right now too. It doesn't line up super well because Stephen Kwan hits the ball even softer than Jacob Wilson. But Stephen Kwan is, is, you know, in the range of outcomes for Jacob Wilson as well. Although Stephen Kwan has stolen 20 bases in both his professional seasons. And I don't know what Jacob Wilson will do in that category. Yeah. So far as a pro, and again, it's just scattered over a bunch of different levels, including the complex. Jacob Wilson is six, four, eight as a base dealer in what is about a half seasons work. It's like a meteoric rise. Yeah. And he's on base all the time. So there are chances because he creates them, fan graphs is a 55 grade on a speed. So from that standpoint, it seems like you could do it. It's really much of an unknown. So it's, you kind of think about redraft leagues, 15 teams, is that the cutoff right now for Wilson until we get more? I mean, no, I mean, it's so intriguing. I think you can pick him up anywhere. I just, I just, I don't, I wouldn't pick him up in like 10 and 12 days where you have to play him, or you're like, you play your bench a lot. But if you have that one spot on your bench where you, you're nursing along, yeah, where's that line? Who's, who's somebody like, Jeremy Peña? Like, it's always, it's always the Jeremy Peña line. Are you taking Jacob Wilson? Yeah, I'm taking one over. Yeah. Just because I can, they'll shallow the exact same. Yeah, just try something new. Yeah. All right. That's, that's probably a pretty good spot to just say. All right. Let's, Ngo? Like, Ngo versus Wilson? Are you holding Ngo? I mean, he's, he's better than Peña because he, you know, double digit homers and stolen bases. Like, there's some decent upside there still. It's almost like just reaching for the, the newest version. You know, there is somebody here later that I'm reaching for the newest version right after, you know, it's that name where he's looking at the, the other girl walking the other way. The hand's looking back. Yep. I'm keeping that up. Keeping Ngo. Well, this would be a harsh cut, but maybe something you would do at this point in the year. Nikko Horner versus Jacob Wilson. Oh, that's another comp for me for Jacob Wilson. So that's Spider-Man meme. It is. I think with the slightly lower rate of stealing bases or, I mean, actually pretty significantly lower rate of stealing bases for Horner, I could go for it. Okay. They're very similar. So what's the worst case scenario? You just get another Nikko Horner. That's sort of how I see it. Maybe you lose a few stolen bases. I think the worst case scenario would be Wilson moves so fast to the miners that he's overmatched in the big leagues and they send him back down. He's unusable and he becomes unusable. But if the goal is shooting for some ceiling and you just think Nikko Horner showing us that he's more of a floor guy anyway, then yeah, you take the new guy and see if you get something more. Jeremy Payne is probably out there for you if you messed up. You can go back to Payne yet at the end. Yeah. So all right. That gives us an idea of some guys you'd be thinking about dropping to upgrade to Jacob Wilson in those more shallow formats. Let's move on to another call up. Brooks Baldwin. Baldwin kind of looks like an underrated player, right? I haven't really heard a lot about him. He's in the White Sox system and I was reading some of the profiles and I thought it was interesting when I found the White Sox 2024 report over at Fangrafts, Eric Long and Hagen and Test Ruskin had him in the Bat 2 Ball sleepers category. So he wasn't even in like the actual ranked group, but they listed him as a versatile switch hitter with a sweet swing, right? I was like, okay, that's kind of good. That's kind of what we're looking for and someone that can play all over if he's not actually a shortstop or if they do bring up Colston Montgomery at some point. Baldwin can play one of the other vacant spots and stick around and maybe actually do something. We're talking about a guy who's been at least 20% better than league average at each stop since the start of last season. There's a little bit of power and there's pretty good efficiency as far as what he's done as a base stealer so far as well. It's more of a question of how quickly does Brooks Baldwin adjust making that big leap that everyone has to make facing big league pitching now? I do like this and this is important for Wilson as well that I do like the contact guys. I feel like there's a base level when they get up that at least they won't strike out 40% of the time and just go back down. And it is interesting that they love his Bat 2 Ball skills because there are some higher swing strike rates in lower minors for Baldwin. But that's a little bit more scout versus in stats. And then he comes to AAA and it's just 35 played appearances. He doesn't strike out at all but I don't think that's useful for this enterprise. So I think he's likely to strike out around 20% of the time. League average 21-22. I have no idea what you give me power and steel wise. So this is a deep league play for me for sure. All right so you're thinking more AL only league maybe 15 team league if you're really kind of just looking for something to hit in the middle infield. Like if you're talking NFC like put him on your tree but not at the top. All right similar to maybe like Angel Martinez came up for the Guardians recently. That's sort of the expectation. Angel would probably be ahead if I was thinking about picking up fires. Okay that gives us a sense of where Baldwin sort of fits. One thing that's cool about Baldwin is you mentioned this but he's played everywhere. In 2024 we've got 11 games in 15 games in the minors at second. So that's probably his primary position but he also had six games at third. 57 games at short. I guess maybe that's his primary position but he also played in the outfield 10 games and even de-aged ones. So I hesitate to give him short stop but I think I think he might play all over. Yeah I mean I think it's a question of what they want to do. If they think there's a chance that he's their long-term short stop they'll play him there. See how it looks and then decide later because they can move Montgomery. Paul De Young's not part of the long-term plan. They can move him to third. They added Nick Sanzel by the way after the Nats let him go. So Sanzel is going to play some second base. So the Nick Sanzel tour of the big leagues continues but why? Why? I don't know. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? He's 29 years old. He hasn't ever been above league average of the bat. He hasn't ever been an asset defensively. To be fair the Reds played him out of his natural position most the time he was there. What's his natural position? It's supposed to be third. They're going to play third. He played third. He played third for the Nats a lot. Yeah oh he's saying the Reds playing about it. Yeah the Reds the Reds begging him an outfielder was I don't know. This is a little bit more I test but the defensive stats somewhat agree with me like I thought he was a Talworth third baseman. Yeah well it's uh he just can't hit. It's got a 78 WRC+ and 1600 career plate appearances and I realized some of those have been coming off of injuries. He's dealt with Virgo. It hasn't been an easy path for Nick Sanzel but what are we clinging to at this point? I have no idea. Not even it's not even like oh he projects well. He projects to be worse than the average. The bad X does spin out a 93 WRC+ so maybe that's a slight upgrade but yeah it kind of feels like they're stuck on some old old old prospect reports at this point trying to give me a few glock ballman at all. It's just gonna make me angry. Let's uh let's try to make you happy. Let's talk about River Ryan for a second. Yeah that does make me happy. Yeah see as we suggested there's a path for him and Fabian Ardaia just reported a couple days ago they're gonna bring River Ryan up. It's not gonna be for this first series at least based on how the probable starters are listed. It sounds like they're gonna go Gavin Stone, Justin Roblesky and James Paxton for their first three out of the break. Paxton is hanging on for dear life. Buy a thread. So you've got Kershaw making progress and now River Ryan entering the mix and I think Ryan kind of fits into this other question we'll get to in a minute like of the pitchers that haven't debuted yet that are prospects that should come up this year. He's number one. He's number one for you and this would be a group that includes Jackson Job, Kate Horton, Misarowski. Like career-wise Job might be ahead of him because Job is also really nasty but I just I don't know exactly what what reason the Tigers would necessarily have to push Job's timeline you know. Yeah I think for Job it's more the Tigers get hot for a few weeks and then he becomes an upgrade they need to try and chase down a wild card. Or he comes up to replace Flaherty but I guess that could that could be a solution too because you want him to problem salt pigly hitters a bit because you have designs on being good next year. But do you want to keep him in case he gets rookie of the year so you want to keep him under 50 innings which actually is is doable. It's doable plus he missed some time this year with an injury so you could just shut him down early. He's got room. I think Jackson Job could probably just pitch every fifth day for the rest of the season without really being. Would he get over 50 innings? If he came up today yeah he would but if you bring him up. If he comes up August 1st or if he comes up yeah if he comes up after they cheered Jack Flaherty you'd be talking about sort of like nine-ish starts and you can just shut him down early. Right. Because you just be like you've made your made your innings. So you could just get 40 innings out of him. So what is 40 innings worth versus you know. It's a little bit like who's up now is my deal. You know. I think River Ryan's closer being up now. Well yeah yeah. There I've been talking about it. They're talking about him bringing him up. It's like that's the decider for me. The other part of this is I have seen stuff plus numbers on Joe and they're really exciting and scouts all love him and he looks there's there's there's a whiff of the ground about him. So that's that's how exciting he should be about Jackson Job. But River Ryan looks almost like a model breaker. I've got AAA stuff plus numbers for him. The pitch he throws the most are the fat the forcing fastball 122 stuff plus. So this nasty nasty fastball 117 on a cutter 132 on a slider. So even if that's a sweeper he's got the cutter. So you know he'll be fine. Sometimes I mentioned that because I don't always trust sweeper stuff losses all the way. I feel like the league is getting better at sweepers and so stuff plus you know every time we update it sweepers we'll get we'll get knocked down a little bit. But it doesn't stop there sinker 104 that's really high for a sinker curve 138 stuff plus change up 117. It's everything's a big mix. I think he'll come up and be like foreseen cutter slider. But the fact that the sinker curve and change all rate well gives him like that ability to be like oh I need to do more. You know what I mean? Like there's other tricks he has in his bag. It looks really good. This is supposed to be scaled to the major leagues. So this isn't like he's just got stuff that would dominate the minors. That's the whole point of stuff is this supposed to be scaled to the big leagues and he looks nasty. If they get Bueller back along with Kershaw and we'll assume Yamamoto still on the shelf like yeah who are their best five starters and they often go six. They may go six to keep everybody fresh. They quietly do it and they talked about that before. So glass now Kershaw Bueller stone Ryan and Knack and then he bump packs then and Roblesky and then once Yamamoto comes back then you know Ryan or Knack is bumped out if everyone's today's healthy. If you're in redrafts just treat this like who's up now who's pitching now. Because of this scenario that you just put out where it's like where does Ryan fit when everyone's healthy and because of the kind of what we went through with Job is like what are they thinking about timeline? How many innings do they want on the pitch? I don't know that stashing pitchers is a great idea in redraft leagues because you could just wait forever and they could be like and he's shut down you're like oh dang it. Yeah it's hard to get way out in front of these. I mean I think I ran the poll in the prospects channel on the discord and overwhelmingly Jackson Job is the preferred stash of the group River Ryan was not in the poll. I think it's because I look at Ryan as somebody who's already getting that bump so it's kind of like who's next? A couple other names I would want to add to that list is just maybe Braxton Ashcraft and Bubba Chandler. Bubba Chandler probably a little step ahead. Those are both pirates guys. I think in what's going to happen in Pittsburgh is if they buy or make a trade it'll be for somebody like a bat that has multiple user control like Taylor Ward then on the pitching side they will just DFA some guys so they'll just be like thank you Marco Gonzalez or Martine Perez or maybe even trade him away. Just send them to the angels to the tube just to fill a seat just to chew up yeah or maybe maybe some other contender just wants a spot starter you know it's like we need a guy for two weeks can you can we have Marco and they're like yeah given the sort of cash considerations or whatever it is you know so I think that that could be a place that Pittsburgh would be like well we'll just upgrade from within when it comes to it because it wouldn't make sense for them to you know trade for a rental starter or something that doesn't make any sense. Yeah I think my my quick argument against Kate Horton right now is that he's still coming back from a lat injury so if he comes back from that and starts pitching well then maybe stash him try to get a week or two ahead of the call up before it costs you a lot but I think if I were choosing from the group in the poll I like Mizarowski quite a bit because when we talked about the brewers a bit in passing on the show at Trevor on Thursday yeah like they have to do something in that rotation they're probably not going to go out and make another trade they already added Aaron Savali deal halls coming back as a starter but Mizarowski has done a great job cutting down on his walks you go back to his first start in June to span of seven outings now Jacob Mizarowski has only walked 10 hitters during that span and he's doing it with the electric bat missing stuff that we're accustomed to it's a 44 to 10 strikeout to walk ratio in 33 and a third innings I don't know if they have to necessarily let him see Nashville like couldn't they just jump him up from double A if they think he's got big league ready stuff I think you wouldn't want him to see ABS given some of the issues he's had with control you want to get him in front of a really good framer one thing that David four said recently about calling up Lawrence Butler again that was interesting was just you know we do a fair amount of our player development at the big league level I don't know if that's a good sign to hear that I think it you know you just come here from the A's who we know don't maybe invest as much as they should in mind of the coaches and you know some to some extent they're like well our best coaches are in the major leagues let's get them up there but I wonder even if you do invest in the mind leagues it's probably still true that your best coaches in the major leagues so maybe Mizorowski is like this is what this is how far he's going to get let's get him in front of our major league pitching coach and our best framer in our organization is probably going to be the starting catcher in the big leagues well I think the other reason I believe this is they were pretty quick to just move Abner Yerebe out of triple A and that was a little different because he's a reliever but he's wild and he's a little wild but yeah I mean I would not be surprised if Mizorowski ends up being the next Brewers prospect to get a look and it ends up having a really important role for them he's kind of at where he was innings wise last year he had about 70 innings last year he's at 72 now but we're seeing we're seeing some some pitchers kind of blast through any sort of numbers we had in mind for them and I think there could be a world two where they're a little bit careful with some of the usage and once they bring him up they go to a six man rotation yeah I think they could find a way to make that work and you go back and look at some of his previous totals I mean the college yeah he was another another guy from Crowder College I think Aaron Ashby was the other guy they got from that program 76 innings is final year in college with another one and two thirds in Carolina that year so yeah triple digits will be kind of uncharted territory from Mizorowski once he gets there it's probably 125 130 is the number they're looking for they can get a lot of what's left from him in the big leagues I think pounce pounce if they if they tell you who they're calling him up and who he's facing and then just wait otherwise in most redraft situations and I'll only probably different you can afford to stash a guy like this and get nothing if it doesn't end up happening but I think it's going to happen he seems kind of important to them you mentioned not necessarily wanting to stash pitchers junior cam and arrow time has to be just around the corner right he's 43 percent rostered in the rotor wire online championship so if not now like it's going to cost you a fortune if you go to pick him up I just saw a note on rotor wire this morning that he's back from the minor league iL so give cam and arrow these next 10 14 days maybe to get his legs back under him coming off that quad injury think about the rays maybe trading a position player at the deadline and I think there's a very good chance we'll see cam and arrow for these final two months if the rays aren't going to pick up Brandon Lao's options and the acquiring team is not either these 10 million 11 million dollar options Brandon Lao could be a small trade that someone makes you know let me just help you from the left side on the infield hey that's pretty good you know here's a guy who can hit for some power maybe we'll give him a shot and like maybe he works with our coaching staff and we we do consider picking up the 10 million dollar option you know like would you rather Brandon Lao or Gavin Lux you know in a big at bat in September you know no no Lao I don't think I don't think the guy that is more likely to do some damage by a healthy margin want some homework here Gavin's not really given much of anything so you know if Brandon Lao's on the move that would be that wouldn't know nobody would bat an eye if Brandon Lao was traded at this point we've made the case that randy or rosarena would be a little bit more surprising one because they've got him for two more years after this but also given the rays it wouldn't even be that that surprising and then I thought yandy Diaz would be a really interesting acquisition for somebody so those are three guys i'm not saying all three and then i'm in rosario super cheap like what if you're dealing with a super cheap team that doesn't have any money but wants to upgrade somewhere you know there's got to be a contender that fits that bill there's a super cheap like the guardians or something to get almond rosarena back whatever you know what i mean like well he'd be a good bench player for a lot of teams yeah and he wouldn't cost any money he's his contract is super cheap so i'm not saying that all four of those guys are going to be on the move but i feel like the odds are one of them will be and as soon as that one person is gone there's that there's an opening i mean those are fairly regular players for these rays and so you just need one of them to be gone for junior kevin arrow to have an easy slot to come in up into yeah i mean he's clearly a big part of their future but i think he's going to be a big part of their present and they might do the thing where they give some players away in trades look to the future without trying to completely punt that's that's where i think the rays like to live like yeah maybe this isn't our year but we're not giving up completely kevin arrow helps them do that gives them some credibility you trade young dds internally you could say well we think kevin euro can hit as well as yandie dds because they're actually have some similarities in terms of bat speed and contact rates and stuff like that but kevin euro has more defensive value and is going to be ten million dollars cheaper next year so you kind of pat yourself on the back and say we just save ten million dollars and our current team stayed the same totally a raise move absolutely well let's talk about some players we might be looking at on the wave or wire this weekend there are some not like universally available pictures that are available in some places all returning from injuries in the near future so i'm going to roll through these just as like hey these guys could be available even though they're likely rostered kodai senga the least likely available of the bunch scheduled for one more rehab start this weekend for the Mets before he comes back from that shoulder triceps issue almost 90 rostered on cbs so we're really talking about just a handful of leagues where he might be able to get him but everybody else a little more available including Devin Williams he struck up the side on sunday in a rehab appearance at high a wisconsin it's not clear if he's going to make another rehab appearance at Nashville or anywhere else this weekend or if they're just going to activate him but i get the sense Devin Williams gets activated and he's the closer again and Trevor McGill slides right back into a set up role that works that works for everybody you know i think that makes sense yes even if you don't see him this weekend necessarily i think he's going to be an ad now or you're not going to get him sort of player Clayton Kershaw discussed a lot lately three scoreless last Saturday triple A ended up with 50 pitches because he threw extras in the bullpen so he's getting closer probably still another rehab start or two away from possibly rejoining that uh dodgers rotation mix that we talked about earlier 77 rostered on cbs seven percent rostered and wrote a wire online championship because unless uh and for injured players unless they were drafted they're not available he picked up until they're back in the pool so very few teams stashed him given that we didn't even know if Kershaw was going to make it back to pitch this year so that's kind of interesting that Kershaw will be a fab target in a couple of weeks in those leagues and could be openly available elsewhere Jeffrey Springs making good progress to 77 pitches at triple A on sunday not lined up as one of their probable for the weekend they're going to go efflin Bradley and Boz for those first three starts at Yankee stadium the Rays are in Toronto to begin next week so it's possible Springs gets activated for start next week as he's nearing the end of his rehab assignment and if you're looking further down the road Tyler mally he's only seven percent rostered on cbs and not rostered at all on the road a wire online championship he went two and a third in a rehab start this was the Arizona complex league he's moved around to three different levels they're probably just doing that thing where it's like keeping us close to the facilities keeping us close to where we want him as possible but a couple more turns for mally and he probably rejoins that Rangers rotation maybe by the start of August you're gonna have to help me a little bit on the 12 team vats because i've the only i'm only million one or two 12 team i mean three 12 team leagues but two or auto no so like the waiver wire is very different it's very deep it plays very deep and then the other one is also a dynasty so half the players that are on the waiver wire are protected in our minor leagues so it's it's not useful for me to look at that but i have lots of 15 team leagues and i would tell you that Matt walner is somebody i'm circling he's got the second best bat speed in the big leagues and playing time is a little bit unsure but the longer Royce Lewis is out the more he's going to play and i could see him kind of swim moving past Trevor larnack and maybe taking Trevor's job when's Royce Lewis is back so something to bet on there is real power i know the strikeout rate is bad he told me a little bit about the adjustments that he made in the minor leagues to kind of regain some of that contact ability this year and then another name that that i'm kind of circling other than you know Lawrence Butler and Justin Henry Malloy are just two guys that Lawrence Butler has had longer had good peripherals and you know i has a three-homer game that kind of got on everyone's got him into everyone's you know cue but he steals bases he has good bat-of-ball stats you know in some cases you know some of the flaws that Malloy has he shares but they both kind of strike out too much but one thing i've noticed with Malloy is that he is mashing against Lefty so if you have a daily lineup situation you could just make it easy on yourself and just play Malloy against Lefty's but the other thing is in the last month Malloy has struck out last he's gone from a 38% strikeout rate to a 27% strikeout rate you know between June and July and then the barrel rate is is coming up for for Malloy so just those two guys i want or three guys i wanted to put on your radar if you if you hadn't been i think they're mostly 15 team lane guys but of the three probably Butler has the chance to jump into 12 team league status yeah so i was looking at a bunch of outfielders kind of grouping them to say okay here's handful of guys that are already on a lot of rosters here's a handful of guys that are trending on to rosters and who do you like most out of this group pick give me three that you like out of the group and we'll put Matt Walner's in this group Colton Cowser Andy Pahase Lawrence Butler who you just mentioned Reese Hines who's been taken off lately Jake Myers Alex Verdugo and Haysu Sanchez because i feel like that group it ranges up to maybe 80 to 90 rostered in a typical 12 team league but those are guys you have to start thinking about dropping if you're going to add this shiny new toys the Hines Butler walner types so is anyone stand out to you is clearly like yeah i want that guy i want those guys out of that group yeah i was going to say Verdugo but he's um he's minus projection in a 12 team league for the about our uh but this is a three outfielder tel team league that's that's a little bit small yeah that default so it's frustrating Verdugo now on projections 74th outfield are actually just around replacement that is surprising me i was gonna i was gonna pick him as just my safe veteran that i'll keep around Jake Myers has the same projection oh that is very interesting in 12 team leagues with five outfielders Jake Myers and Alex Verdugo are below replacement that opens me up to say whatever i want who do you have dude butler walner who else walner causer pahace butler hines Myers Verdugo and Sanchez let me go off script you a little bit haysu Sanchez is projected to have the same kind of minus one dollar value as those other guys but as i uncovered in a piece today he has actually been working very digital diligently on his biggest flaw which is his ground ball rate it has been improving with every week the rolling ground ball rate is really eye opening if he can lift the ball at all he has a swing that has the same bat speed and swing length as bobbywood junior i'm not saying he's bobbywood junior don't put that in the paper but what i am saying is that uh the biggest deal was he used to have a 65% ground ball rate it's down to 47 and we're seeing some of the power come back with it you know i could just see like a really good second half you know which would be you know a 260 homers a 260 batting average with 10-11 homers you know with a little bit of speed so if he's projected by more sober projections to be in this group i'm going to take him he's going to have the best batting average of anybody in here not named Verdugo to yeah i think the two that stand out to me are Sanchez and Myers and it's been there recently Sanchez you know that power as you mentioned he's been a top 40 outfield there in the last 30 days so that plays in a ton of leagues so like Myers is kind of nice balanced production thumbs up probably the first for me out of this group Sanchez that made the surprising number two everybody else is where it's like wide open Colton Cowser and Alex Verdugo have been brutal lately i think both could be in danger of losing career wise i love Cowser still i think this is part of his you know finding adjustments he's obviously has some swing and miss in this game so he needs to figure out how pitchers are pitching in but i'd still really like him long term because it's such a great i power speed the glove is good enough for him to still play in center so Cowser is a good i would say a buy in dynasty leagues if you can use this bad stretch to buy him i would buy him yeah actually i think i have previously suggested the Cowser might not have as much defensive value as Cedric Mullins and as someone on a discord pointed out it's not necessarily the case i mean he's in play defensively yeah he's been playing there a little bit this year it's more of i don't know it's more of the yeah can he cut down that swing and miss can he actually get rid of that because the the production's been light really going back to may as we talked about i think earlier in this week so i think that that's where it's like what do you need right now and maybe you're playing the schedule in a 12 team league with the others i mean Reese Hines is probably the most tempting of the alternatives because the start has just been ridiculous but there's probably the highest ceiling and the lowest floor if we're trying to estimate that for a player out of this bunch yeah and totally somebody that maybe you can ride the wave now but career wise i would be a much more negative on you know that kind of strikeout rate i just get the vibes the Aristides Aquino vibes so Lord's Butler let me just give a little case for him as having you know best or second best ceiling on this group is just that his strikeout rate has oscillated hardcore around a swing strike rate that's been much more steady for the one's butler so what that tells me is just and this and there's some eye test here too because i see a fair amount of them it's just he gets wrapped up you know like pitchers just like play with him and i think the more he sees pitchers doing that majorly pitchers doing that the more he's gonna be like oh no no i know what you're doing you're doing this or are you doing this i've seen this before you know i know what's going on here you know so you know the true talent ability to make contact is not that bad you know 12.8% winning strike rate for his career with 11s and the minors that could produce anywhere from a 24 to 30% strikeout rate and what i'm saying is if you figure something out in terms of how people are approaching him you start you start getting closer to that 25 24% strikeout rate that might be attainable for him now you got a guy with power and speed you know hits the ball hard there's a chance there's like a 10% chance that he could be like a 25 25 guy with a 250 average yeah i like butler especially in long-term leagues where you're just kind of hey what could go right what could i do here that might actually help me in the second half of the season but also could help me in 2025 i think he profiles really well there maybe Jesus Sanchez still does too uh given some of the things you mentioned that he's improving upon here in recent weeks one more part of the weekend waiver preview i think this is kind of your window if you are trying to find future saves coming out of the trade deadline this would be the weekend to do it it'll be less expensive now than it will be the next couple of weekends Ben Joyce looking good really since coming back looking at the numbers for him 15 to 5 strikeout to walk in 14 and a third innings no earned runs allowed since june 14th only 10 rostered in cbs leagues 25 rostered in the rotoire online championship big stuff numbers too on the fastball and the slider and that sinker that he added has been solid too so you got three pitches now decent command for a reliever with a 97 location plus Carlos Estebes seems like one of the absolute most likely relievers to be moved this one it just jumps off the page but it's kind of now if you want to discount and later if you want to pay a premium for Ben Joyce yeah uh in out of new i've already added him in both my leagues just i got him snuck him in for a dollar just looking ahead at the schedule i like the the new sinker spelinker situation that Joyce is throwing and he just seems like the really obvious solution for them once they trade Carlos Estebes and there's no reason for them to keep him around as a rental i got a question in a chat today about that and so i just wanted to list out the names that i put in the chat Joyce was number one puck was number two i don't know that these next three have rankings but John Brebia Nate Pearson and Robert Garcia were some names i wanted to throw on there feel like Finnegan's gone Garcia's got three holds you know in recent play and the best stuff numbers in that pen Nate Pearson just looks like a closer round you know he's got the stuff of it he's the big guy he throws real hard i feel like Jimmy Garcia and you know Jordan Romano and Chad Green could all be traded or hurt you know so yeah that puts Nate Pearson in the mix on some level and then John Brebia is not exciting i'd like Jordan Leisure stuff better but they've been up and down with Jordan Leisure he hasn't really been used in any sort of high leverage the results haven't been great that pen might be a sort of no thanks if they trade Michael Copang yeah i tend to think that's where i'm going with the white socks in the second half they're so bad they're not creating that many opportunities i think the Nat sort of jumped out as that third team i was looking at i'm glad you called out Robert Garcia i think he's the only lefty they've gotten their pen right now but guess what Sean do little is big part of their coaching staff Sean do little lefty the clothes i don't think they care in the second half of the season how much are they like oh what if we don't have a second lefty how many games are we gonna win here it's gonna be more like now we just sold for we're bit we're billing for next year we can get a lefty in the off season if we need one right super deep watch list sort of name though that just came up and washed an aimless willing hand want to see what he brings to the table with a little more time he's got one inning just pitched i think in the last game before the break against the brewers but maybe there's your long long time oh yeah throws hard so we'll see they can find something there with aimless willing hand not an endorsement to pick him up just the name to put on the radar for the long term absolutely we're gonna go if you want to check out enos updated rankings and they drop next week you're gonna want to get a subscription to do that via the dot com slash rates and barrels we'll give you the best possible deal on that you can find you know on twitter at enocera so you can find me at derrick and riper bond pod at rates and barrels that's gonna do it for this episode rates and barrels back with you on monday thanks for listening [BLANK_AUDIO]