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As you've probably heard by now, we've teamed up with BedMGM this season. We'll be using BedMGM lines to make all of our picks and we'll have special offers for our listeners each week. If you haven't signed up for BedMGM yet, use Bonus Code the Athletic and you'll get a one-year subscription to the Athletic Plus up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager with BedMGM. Here's how it works. Download the BedMGM app and sign up using Bonus Code the Athletic. Make your first deposit of at least $10. Place your first bet on any game and claim your voucher for a one-year subscription to the Athletic. See BedMGM.com for terms. US promotional offers not available in DC, Mississippi, New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler available in the US. Call 8778-HOPENY or text HOPENY 467-369 in New York. Call 1-800-Next step in Arizona. 1-800-327-5050 in Massachusetts. 1-800-Bets off in Iowa. 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help in Michigan. 1-800-98100-23 in Puerto Rico. First bet offer for new customers only in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. Don't forget if you haven't signed up for BedMGM yet, use Bonus Code the Athletic and you'll get a one-year subscription to the Athletic plus up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager. With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price you thought you were paying magically skyrockets. With Mint Mobile, you'll never have to worry about gotchas ever again. When Mint Mobile says $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan, they mean it. No hidden fees, no upcharges. How great is it that Mint Mobile is straightforward. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at $15 a month. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number, along with all of your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/rates. That's mintmobile.com/rates. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com/rates. $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speeds slower above 40 GB on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Welcome to Race & Barrel's Thursday, June 27th. Derek Benreiper, you know, Sarah's here with you on this episode. We'll dig into some mid-season buy highs. As promised earlier in the week, we're going to have some more fun with that new fan graph player raider tool. You can use right off their page. Just go to the fantasy tab. Hit that link and you can have fun all afternoon with that. We're going to dig into some players. We're going to buy high. We're going to talk about choosing a direction how to not be the angels in your fantasy league because as we discussed on Tuesday, you don't really want to be the Anaheim angels right now. It's not a franchise that you want to model if you are playing fantasy baseball. We'll dig into some weekend waiver preview players as well. Some interesting names added to the pool kind of mushing together project prospect and the waiver preview this week. You know, how's it going for you on this Thursday? It's going great. Weekend approaches. Weekend approaches again, yeah. We're deep in the throwing program with my eldest. So today is a go to the little league park and do the full the whole thing. The big practice that we do. The big workout. Very nice. One of the fun things is in coaching, you know, they have this idea that you want to vary the implement. And so when we do a round of hitting practice, we start with this really weird looking thing. It's still pretty baseball-y because you kind of want to keep it baseball-y. You don't want to be jumping around playing basketball or whatever. Like it's supposed to be baseball-y but it's really strange. It's a ball that's on a string and you attach the string to the fence behind them. And then I pull the two strings apart and it sends the ball down the string. You know what I mean? Like can you imagine that? The reason I like it is that it flattens their swing out a little bit. If you have a really uppercut swing, you'll hit the string instead of the ball. Or you'll hit the ball in this way where it goes up and down instead of straight back to me. It kind of flattens out their swing. And a lot of kids end up having uppercut swings because when the coaches pitch to them, they pitch their six feet tall. And they pitch these crazy downward trajectory, like almost curve balls. And so a lot of little league kids end up with these uppercut swings. We start with that, then we do a little bit with this little rebar bat that's like this thin and he has to hit little little tiny balls that I throw at him. And then he has to hit with the wood bat, the like major league level wood bat that's super heavy. And then he gets to hit live batting practice that I have to pitch from regulation 50 feet away. I have to pitch as hard as I can to be as good as 12 year old. And he takes live batting practice off me. So it's all an exhausting but fun kind of thing because you're just you're trying to trick the brain into kind of reevaluating hitting at every different and every stop. I just think it's great that you have to use a day that's not a run day for you to do this workout because it sounds like it's a lot for you. We couldn't do it yesterday because I ran eight miles. Yeah, you can't do both on the same day. That's the downside of being on the wrong side of 40, right? That's the the cliff that I am rapidly approaching. And I'm not excited about it. I was talking about some mid season by highs that looking at the fan graphs, player, Raider. Every time I look at this thing, Gunnar Henderson moves up another spot. He's now third among all players for the entire season, approaching $50 in value, which look, we talked about Gunnar Henderson a few weeks ago as someone that maybe we somehow underrated even has a highly regarded prospect because I don't know if anybody thought future first rounder in fantasy is what we were looking at. But that's what he'd be. If you were doing a second chance draft in the next week or so, if you're doing a fourth of July, second half draft, something like that, I think Gunnar's going in the first round, even a 12 team league. And I think that's where he's headed for 2025 drafts as well. I have no knits to pick. I think he's the complete player. He's even reduced his strikeouts. That's really the only thing that you could have said about last year. And it's really, it's not just been like, oh, year over year, basically, he struck out a little bit too much when he started playing in the league. And then ever since then, it's been on a downward trajectory strikeout rate. So Gunnar is a complete player. You know, how many still misses will he have next year? Maybe he only gives you like 12 or 15 next year. You still base his age terribly. So even if he steals 20 this year is no, no lock for 20 next year. But if you basically back of the envelope him next year, the projections are going to say something like, you know, 280 35 homers and 15 stone bases. That's always good. There's always the possibility he will continue running more because he's still really young. I mean, he just turned, he'll turn 23 in two days. Yeah, there is the, you know, the thing where like sometimes your power hitter, you're like, don't, don't hurt yourself out there. Right. So that could keep him from being a, I don't know, 40 40 guy or something. But there's a lot of ways he can still be really good and kind of hold. So the reason I bring up Gunnar, though, is because if you're in a situation where somebody thinks, Hey, I can cash out right now, I'm happy to trade for Gunnar Henderson as a, a first round caliber player right now. I think he just fits into the conversation that way. The harder thing to do is to look at the top earning pitcher. I guess this is not available anywhere. I don't think you're getting him. I think whoever has him liked him when they drafted him in the late second round early third round and they're just happy that he's been even better than they could have hoped. It's a harder proposition doing this on the pitcher side where Ranger Suarez as the midway point of the season approaches is the top earning pitcher so far. Just over $35. I'm using the 12 team settings right now just for anybody who's like, Oh, I'm using 15. It's different. That's why I'm using the 12 team settings. He's doing this from outside the top 300 during draft season. And when you look at the other names that have really popped so far this season on the pitching side, it's been kind of a group of aces that you expected to be there interspersed with guys that have taken massive leaps Ranger from the pick 300 range to number one, right? Seth Lugo cranking out a ton of value being the fourth ranked starting pitcher right now. If you listen to the show, you know, talked about Seth Lugo a lot. Hopefully you reap the benefits of that. You know, Chris sale having a bounce back isn't as shocking as Lugo and Suarez being up there. But there were plenty of people that were ready to give up on Chris sale because it had been such a meandering road full of injuries in recent years. Tanner Hauck kind of taking that leap much like Ranger. He's the sixth rated pitcher so far on the season. You know, Wheeler and Gray and Burns in there and then Garrett Crochet, who I've admitted, I kind of laughed at the White Sox when they said they were gonna start him because I didn't think health wise it was even an option and it's gone incredibly well. So you got a bunch of names on here that are surprising. But Ranger still being here as the calendar nearly flips to July, that is still surprising to me. Even as somebody who looked at him six weeks ago and said, "Okay, he's probably better than I thought." I didn't think he would sustain this level for another six weeks. Yeah, I mean, there's something to the fact that, you know, he's got multiple fastballs. You know, he really does throw three fastballs and that's been something that can mess with pitching models and messes, definitely messes with hitters. You know, to each handedness, he can basically throw two different fastballs and he even throws the sinker sometimes to opposite handed guys. So that's three different fastballs that you kind of have to honor in the same range and the curve and I think the change has kind of taken a step forward this year and is a better pitch. I have to say that I don't buy this one as much. You know, you do have your guys in any given season that don't have great stuff that do put together good seasons. I don't know, I guess Andrew Abbott is not a good example, but Eduardo Rodriguez had a 3-3 ERA last year. Dane Dunning was in the same sort of stuff range, command forward, kind of multiple fastball guy. He had a 355 ERA last year. You know, I'm looking at Kyle Hendricks had a 374 last year. Michael Waka, multiple fastballs, great change up location over stuff. He had a 322 ERA last year. I mean, Braxton's Garrett's 362, Merrill Keller's 329, Wade Miley's 314. I just, this is where I kind of place him maybe on the upper end of that, but that's where I think he lives for me. I may be wrong. Looking back at the Raider from 2023, Zach Eflin was in the top five. The top five were Garrett Cole, Spencer Strider, Blake Snell, Zach Eflin, and Kyle Braddish. And Eflin, I think, is probably the most surprising name of that bunch. That, to me, is more of the ceiling, right, where it's close to a strikeout per inning for Ranger Suarez. He's probably not going up another level beyond that. It's fine. You can be a very good starting pitcher, especially if you're a high volume starting pitcher at a strikeout per inning. Last year for Eflin, it was a 350 ERA to 102 whips. So, you know, fine in ERA, excellent in whips, and 16 wins. And I think wins are one of the things, when you're looking at the player raider, you really have to be mindful of what's happening in that column. And it's more than that for Ranger, but the 10 wins are the thing that kind of jump him up from maybe being the seventh or eighth best fantasy starting pitcher to the number one spot. It may not change much in the next few years, you know? I mean, they're well set up. They're a pretty good team. Yeah, well set up right now. So, I do think he could slide a little bit over the course of the second half. Still be really good. Still be someone who's on a bunch of teams that probably cash this year because of where he was taken and just how good he has been. But then I think, you know, if I'm looking for air quotes undervalued pitchers, because they aren't winning as many games like Cole Reagan's, is 27th among pitchers in the player raider, with 120 Ks and 98 innings at 303 ERA, a 115 whip. And I think when you start looking at Reagan's versus some of the names ahead of him, even Ranger Suarez all the way at the top, I think a lot of people would say, yeah, I would take Reagan's over Suarez. I'd take Reagan's over Tanner Hock. I would take Reagan's over Sonny Gray, even in many cases. Maybe that's more of where the, the would you rather line is, but the big surprises in that top 10 are all guys you'd still probably put behind Cole Reagan's, even at the midway point of the season, if you're reracking for the rest of the year. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, Freddie Peralta's five wins are affecting his player raider, you know, where he is on the player raider. Fromber's win total probably has a little bit to do with that. But Logan Gilbert has been so great that even though he only has five wins, you know, he's kind of, he's still a $24 player. So wins is definitely a thing that you can circle and, and, you know, buy based on the peripherals and hope that the team improves around him, basically. Yeah, and the flip side of that is Gavin Stone, who's now in the top 20 in the player raider, because he's got nine wins. He's only got 70 strikeouts and 89 innings. We talked about the possibility of them maybe adding some Ks over the course of the year, still a decent swinging strike rate, at least one that's higher than the strikeout rate that Gavin Stone has put together to this point in the season. But it's a 273 right. That's a huge part of the ratios are good. A 112 whip still very good as well. Gavin Stone's tough though. Is Gavin Stone more like a Ranger Suarez in terms of his ceiling, or is there another level beyond that given that we haven't seen as much of Gavin Stone in the big leagues yet? The vertical movement on Gavin Stone's fastball is improving as he stays in the major leagues. I think, you know, sometimes who was it that was talking about this? Mark Katsay was talking about, you know, bringing Lawrence Butler up to the major leagues. And one of the things he said was, you know, we do player development at all stages, but one of the stages where we can do the most of the players, the big leagues. And so sometimes you find that you get to the big leagues and your best coaches are there. So Stone isn't going to necessarily finish off and get more vertical break in the minor leagues. If Mark Pryor has, you know, some ideas for him in the major leagues, that'll make it happen. So I see Stone is maybe possibly taking the next leap. I also wanted to say, you know, I just sorted by wins in this thing. And it is just sort of amazing. You have basically every player with more than seven wins is worth basically $10. The only place, the only person who doesn't have who has more than seven wins or seven wins or more that isn't worth $10 is Logan Allen, who has a 572 ERA and a 155 whip. But it is worth pointing out, how does he have eight wins with that ERA in that whip? And then you were just saying, you were saying Coleragans can't win? Seth Lugo has 10 wins. No, yeah, that's the thing. They're just so noisy. Like it, we know that. It's not it's not new, but I just think when you when you're trying to find in-season values and opportunities to leverage in trade, it's one of those areas where the in-season value has some sogginess, I'll call it, where you can kind of fudge things a little bit to your liking. And it's just it's an area that you have to pay attention to, even though we know the category is flawed. But it's interesting to the things that the player rateer really highlights is the run environment. So if you look at the sort of the way, you know, did sort by wins, you say, oh, Grayson Rodriguez, Carlos Rodon, okay, nine wins, sub four, ERA's, low one, two whips, strikeout per inning stuff. Okay, good. They're both below $10, which is a reflection, I think, of those ratios not being as good as we're accustomed to them being, right? If you go back, maybe three years, go back to like 2021, those are good or very good ratios. In this run environment, those are closer to average ratios for the slice of starting pitchers that are frequently used in fantasy. League wide, I realize they're better than league average. But when you narrow down the pool to the guys that are actually being used in a lot of 10 and 12 team leagues, it doesn't play up quite as much as we are accustomed to. The run environment kind of constantly going up and down is itself something that can be leveraged in fantasy sports. And just the knowledge of the fact that batting average is the lowest thing ever. My eldest in his first fantasy league basically punted batting average in a head to head league, because he was like, none of these guys have a good batting average. I'm like, yep. And so that's something that you can look at when you're buying a player is just, you know, a batting average that somebody might think is bad as ends up being okay, you know, if they under further reflection. And, you know, similar, you were just talking about with your aim with, I just have wins reverse sorted. And I'm like looking for some players that I, I think will win more teams more more games going forward that I think might be a sort of by lowish or not by lowish in that their arrays are bad. And so I they wouldn't show up on my by low list, the normal way I do it. But just sorting by wins reverse. Reese Olson only has two wins. Taj Bradley only has two wins. And like, you know, just when you're doing that and you're looking and you're trading with somebody, they might, you know, on some level, just look at the player raider on some level, you know, because there's always like that analysis, you can like look at, you know, that you can analyze the trade in Yahoo or whatever, you know, cut a Crawford having three wins sticks out for me. So, you know, those are three names that have had some up and down to their careers. And maybe the other owner just looks at the other fantasy manager just looks at the player raider and says, ah, yeah, I can trade this guy away. Yeah, definitely be that way. So we'll hold on to some more specifics, right? So I wanted to take the broad view and explain like what's kind of good and bad or what we probably should really use the tool more broadly. But who specifically stands out to you? Who you looking at and saying that player is more valuable than I expected. And I'm still going after them. We'll start on the hitter side, which hitters do you think are most intriguing as mid season by highs? Well, I have a trio of guys that when I look under the hood, I don't see signs of really extraneous good luck. Now, I'm going to say these names. And maybe you'll think, and there's no way I can get them, but that's the whole thing about by high is you never really know until you try, you know, and you are trying to buy someone that is doing well. So that's, that's what we're doing here. I've got Josh Naylor, Jackson Merrill, and Jordan Westbrook, as guys that are in the top 40, I believe in the player raider. And I don't really see any signs that what they're doing is unsustainable. In fact, with Josh Naylor, there's a really low batting average in balls and play that seems really out of place. And we're heading into the warmer part of the season in Cleveland. So, you know, I think if you can get them, there's no reason not to. And if it's, if the person who sells them thinks he's just a 240 hitter, I think you might see as much as 280, 285 going forward. That's the nicest thing about like a buy high is if there's elements of buy low in it, you know, with Jackson Merrill, I think it's hard to know exactly what his true talent power is this far into his career. And we've seen a little bit of a mini explosion recently in power. Maybe that keeps him from from being acquireable. But given, you know, 111.6 max CV, given, you know, the great contact rate and the power and speed combo, I would buy Jackson Merrill saying if only, if all I get going forward is 280, 10, 10, that's fine. Is there a chance there's a little bit more power there? I think so. And then Jordan Westbrook, he's the only one that I think has like a little bit of a negative in that his strikeout rate is starting to rise. And we talked a little bit about he has a really unique approach in that he's pretty aggressive. He chases a decent amount. And his swing strike rate is a little bit high. And he's that aggressiveness has served him to not strike out in the past. The strikeout rate is sort of starting to meet the swing strike rate. If you look at the rolling graph of strikeouts for Jordan Westbrook, but it is such a nice sort of balanced line of power and speed, then I think I'm still going to buy anyway. He's the one that has a little bit of a shade of probably possibly positive luck that may go the other direction going forward. Yeah, I could see a little bit of that. I had Westbrook on my list to you. I really like what he's done all season. It's been fortunately one of my multiple teams hits so far. I hope it holds up to the second half. Underlying power numbers are still good, right? He's getting more hard contact than last year even. And I thought he was off to a nice start at 44.5%. He's up over 48% right now. Lifting the ball consistently, double digit barrel rate to go along with it. If the K rate comes up, I do think the walk rate may come up a little bit too. Maybe it's just being a little more selective. I mean, he used to walk a lot more in the mindset. Yeah, so that part of his game might help. That could create a few more opportunities to run if the power dips a little bit. So he has so many ways to be good. And of course, the Oreos lineup is still solid. Still lots of ways they're going to put runs on the board. So you're getting good run production, good RBI totals on top of all of that. So I think he's just a really nice all-round player at this point. And it still maybe has one more level in terms of ceiling. But even if he doesn't, the pace he's on right now would make him a pretty firm, like fourth or fifth rounder, I think in 15 team leagues. If we were redrafting today, and that's probably where he's headed again for next season as well, barring some kind of massive collapse. What about Jaren Duran? I think he's at 27.50 now, 12th hitter. I feel like I see more quality plays from him in center field because it's well, it's a highlight. If you're not watching games start to finish, they're not usually showing you that the blunders, the misplays. I've watched some games start to finish and definitely seen some blunders, but he has the physical tools to pull it off. So maybe on some level, it's just a little bit of coaching, a little bit of experience and just seeing the ball more in the outfield. Maybe he's just going to become a passable center fielder by just working at his flaws, basically. Yeah, I think that's what it seems like is happening again. The Red Sox not high on my viewing priority list, but what I've seen has been better than what we've seen in the past. So becoming more important on that side, playing a ton, and he's healthy. We were worried about, I think it was the toe coming into the season. That doesn't seem to be a problem. He's played 81 games so far. He's running, he's getting into the power, he's striking out a little bit less, really doing everything you want. And I think he's proving himself to be a really good source of batting average. Jaren Duran's projections are all more in like 260 range. I think the bad X is the highest at 271, but he's at 287 this year, 295 last year. So I think you're talking about something that might be plus in a category where it's hard to find someone who's plus. He's at least passable in the home run department. He's good in stolen bases and then there's the runs and RBIs you're getting on top of that. I think there's a chance that Jaren Duran still isn't being treated quite like an early round pick via trade. So maybe you're doing just fine, even though you're paying a lot more than you would have paid to get him five or six weeks ago. And what I like about his line, Jaren Duran's line, just like Josh Naylor is that there is a little whiff of upside here still. And that comes from the fact that he's hit a ball 113.1 miles an hour, but has only turned that into an 8% barrel rate. So the raw is there. And what I'm looking at is a 29% pull rate that's down from even where he started in the big leagues. Now, the higher pull rates did not turn into good batting lines for him. So maybe this is the best approach for him. I'm not trying to be his hitting coach. I'm just saying maybe just like with the outfield defense component, maybe as he matures, he knows when to take that shot and pull that ball and pull it in the air. And maybe he can add that to what's already a compelling existing baseline. So basically what I'm saying is Duran has a little bit of upside beyond what he's doing right now, which is what if he does what he's doing right now and adds power to it. Summer drinking season is long, which is why non-alcoholic beer is a great addition to your cooler. But what makes you reach for one and a beer over another? Is it great flavor, variety of styles, maybe just like a cool can? Well, no matter what you're looking for in a great non-alcoholic beer, the answer is always athletic. Great flavor, it's athletic. Award-winning styles, it's athletic. Huge variety, guess what? It's athletic. 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I had a few questions that I'm not sure I'm going after them, but I'm trying to decide if they make sense because of various characteristics about these players, but I mean, Bryce Terang. It's happening right before my eyes and I didn't see it coming. I just didn't. I didn't see another level from him. I actually thought at the time when the Brewers added Joey Ortiz, I thought Bryce Terang was in danger of losing playing time against lefties. He drops in the order in those spots, which is fine. You're still playing and sometimes it's only two played appearances anyway before they're into the bullpen. You might see a couple righties anyway, but he's getting to his power a little more. He's striking out less. And of course the speed's fantastic. I mean, Bryce Terang is on pace for 50 steals this year, as things are going right now. He has to hold something close to this massive jump in OBP for that to happen. But are we buying this? Is Bryce Terang the latest addition to the Andres Jimenez? Bryce and Stott has sung Kim bucket of players that gets to more power than expected, but also runs wild and maybe even is very good in batting average too, which also props up that value. Yeah, I think Kim, I'm glad you said his name. Kim kind of leaps off the page. I just sorted qualified batters by swing strike rate. Lisa Rice was of course number one. Yandy Diaz is number two. I don't really think he's a comp for either of those guys. Diaz hits the ball harder and arises. K-rate is a third of two ranks. So he's still unicorn. Then you get Mookie Betts, who is just his own man. Isaiah Kiner Follof. I always want to say Follof. You're just hungry. That's almost lunch time for you. I think the risk he's Follof actually. Yeah, Isaiah Kiner Follof. Better than Follof asks as we saw on the scoreboard. Like these four guys just live in his life. There's a risk. He's him. He does have more speed than Follof. So if you just gave Follof a 20 extra stolen bases right now, how much more value would it be? You know, right? It's a decent, it's a decent floor if that's, if that's who he is. If he's kind of Follof with speed, that's great. If he's Kim, you know, don't look too hard at Kim this year, think about Kim over a two or three years stint. I think he'd be very happy if Turin was like Kim on an average year. I'm not sure the power is there. So I'm going with Kiner Follof with speed, Brendan Donovan with speed. That's still a good player, but maybe not someone you're paying. You don't like Nico Horner. I do not like Nico Horner. Nico Horner has about the same swing strike rate as him. Yeah, I think with Nico, does Nico Horner have less power than Bryce Turang though? Nico Horner has hit the ball 110 miles an hour this year, but has a 1% barrel rate. Turang has only hit the ball 106.7, but has a 3% barrel rate. So there's a bit of a game versus raw situation here, but I personally would say that I think that Horner has a little more power than Turang. Yeah, they're pretty similar profiles actually. So that's the built-in warning for me. A little bit of dampening of your flame that's burning for Turang. Well, see, here's the thing though. The main thing I didn't like about Nico Horner during draft season was just the price. And Bryce Turang was a bargain, but if Bryce Turang is going into the Nico Horner 2020 480p range, then maybe we have a bit of a problem there if we don't see more raw power coming in the future. It doesn't look like it's there. That's why I was so skeptical, even though he's a great defender, I thought Turang would be good in the 75% of the played appearances he was getting. I was just worried about what was going to happen with the other 25% of the playing time. There is a little bit of a lesson here. I just sorted last year's song bases. And I'm looking at below average power with with stolen bases. Nico Horner was fifth. And this is qualified. So I'm sure let me make it. What do you think? 400? I'll make it 400. All right. So 400 stolen bases. Oh, yeah, that helps actually. So Estuary reads a second in stolen bases, the 0.091 ISO pass, right? Let's make a rule. Let's make a rule. One one of 50 ISO. Okay. Nico Horner, 100 ISO pass. Haseum Kim, 138 ISO pass. I got him nowhere. Willy Castro, 154 ISO. I say just pass. It's so close. Bryson Stott, 138 ISO pass. And that's our first pass that would have hurt us a little bit this year. Yeah, I think so. But how much? For having missed the landmines that we have so far, I would take losing Stott, right? Right. He's been nine bucks in a 12 team league. So almost breaking, even like a slight loss. Oh, yeah. Because you paid for him too. So there was a cost for Stott. So we so far have missed like four landmines and lost for it. One guy who was cost. Andres Menace, 147 ISO pass. That's, is he worth what he was, what he cost? Six bucks so far, no. I don't think he's worth at his cost. Tommy Edmond, 150 ISO pass. Whit, Maryfield, 110 ISO pass. Bryce Turang, 082 ISO was 24th in the big leagues in stone bases last year. He might be the guy who costs us the most so far. And I think the rule still stands. Tyros Strata, 145 ISO pass. Michael Garcia. Yeah. So where are we at on Garcia? He's at $15 in terms of what he's returned so far. So it's been good where you got him. It's been fine. He's probably been the guy who's cost us the most with this rule. Turang's been more valuable, I guess. Turang was the best profit like so far anyway, at least. Turang and Garcia are a little bit different than the other ones. In that, they cost the least. So if you make a rule that's like basically, they have to have league average power for me to buy them for stone bases, unless I can get them after like, do you have an ADP or something? Garcia, he was fringe top 200 and he got hot and moved up at the end of draft season. Let's just say outside the top 200 generally, or at least the first 10 rounds. There's a rule, there's a rule. They have to have league average power for me to buy their speed unless we're like past one pick 175. Oh, not pick 175. That's only hitters. No, yeah, you were overall. Overall. Past pick 175. So if we are past 10 to 15 rounds depending on the depth of your league, then you can start to be like, all right, this may not work out, but I'm going to take my shot at finding the next Turang or whatever. It's just making sure that you're not paying a premium for a somewhat discoverable skill set. We've talked about it in other contexts before. You wouldn't take a low average masher in the fourth or fifth or sixth round, generally speaking, if they didn't offer up something else, like they would need to be elite in terms of power and run production to offset the low average. Yeah, like I don't end up with Kyle Schwab or much either, you know. Right, even though the numbers would say, yeah, you can actually do okay with Schwab or here. It's like, well, I think I can find something pretty close later on. We will at some point talk about how there were some late power bats that people really liked from a barrel rate perspective, power perspective that have just not performed. I think Nelson Velasquez has joined Matt Walner in the 2024 Disappointments Club. It was inexpensive. It didn't ruin you. But if that was your, I'm going to get my power later plan. It hasn't really come together the way we've hoped. The pitching side of this is interesting too. I think Ronaldo Lopez comes up in a lot of these conversations because he's popping on the playerator. We don't know what's going to happen in the second half in terms of fatigue, but he's made it through full seasons as a starter before because the team is good because he looks pretty good. I've inclined to just lean into it and actually go get Ronaldo Lopez in leagues where I need pitching because I do think you have a more willing trade partner in those cases than you do with a lot of the hitters that have exceeded expectations because those hitters have become really important. But I think when you can, on both sides of a trade, see the potential downside. I think that's when there's still an opportunity to actually get something done. And Lopez, maybe he's a 10 or 12 other pitcher the rest of the way, but I don't think you're paying a lot more than that in terms of what you're giving up. Maybe you're sending a hitter in a one for one swap. Are you giving up a hitter that's, I don't know, like could you give him Tyler O'Neill for Ronaldo Lopez? Would that deal get done right now if that fit the needs of both sides? The thing that bugs me a little bit is just when you when we talk about when we think about innings limits and we think about guys who are going past where they've been in the past. A lot of the times we just worry about shutdowns or will they be removed from the rotation? Go to the bullpen. You know, we worry about sort of the one zero problem, which is the on off problem, either they're starter or they're not. There is a secondary problem, which is they could just fatigue in their current role. So they could leave him as a starting pitcher, and you could start to just see the Velo go down. We have not seen that yet. And in fact, right now, in his last, his two of his last three games have the best Velo of the season as a starter, 96 and 96 three against Baltimore and St. Louis. One thing we have seen though, that worries me and it's just this last game, four walks against five strikeouts against St. Louis. St. Louis is not necessarily one of the most disciplined teams. Maybe they swing a little bit less than other teams. What if we start to see more like that? More five strike out four walks performances in five or six innings. That would be a concern. But I think when you pull back and look at the game log prior to that four walks, one against Detroit and five innings, one against the Orioles and six, one against the Nat and six innings, two against the A's in six innings, you know, one, one, two, all the way back to May 7 against the Red Sox the last time you walked four. And the thing that Lopez is doing really, really well during that span, that entire game log I just went back through to May 7th, he's given up two home runs. They both came in the same start against the Nat. So even when he's walking a few guys, if he's not given up homers, we can live with that. But that is a huge source of noise in small samples. You know, the bat says 424 ERA 127 whip and a 1.13 home run per nine going forward, which is basically just in line with his career numbers. But it is funny to think of his career and be like, oh yeah, he's just going to be like his career numbers. Really? This guy, this guy has had very different years in his career. Oh, and he's had massive home run problems in the past, too. I mean, I realized 2019 there was, there are more forces working in cancer and all the Lopez that season, but 35 homers and 184 innings is bad, even in the context of what 2019 was at 25 and 188 two-thirds of the year before that. But it's those workloads that I'm like, you know what, he might just be fine. He's 30 years old. He knows what to do to get through a season as a starter. He made 65 starts in a span of two years between 18 and 19, and he's on a really good team the nationally. I mean, an elite team at the level they were last year, but still a very good one that should be a little better at the plate in the second half, provide more run support, and will continue to probably give better via trade, too. So like, you still put the up arrow next to Atlanta as far as team context goes. I do have one thing at my disposal updated stuff based projections from Jordan Rosenblum. And I just wanted to check what we got for Lopez, because the projections on fangaraffs range from 339 year eight of 420. Reynaldo Lopez 393 and a 25% strikeout rate. Funnily enough, there is nobody really in that range except for maybe ATC. So if you're looking at projections on fangaraffs, the stuff based projections agree most with ATC. That's a really credible picture. And I think that they the sort of the error variance might be towards being better than that. That's where I'm at. That's why I'm playing it that way with Reynaldo Lopez, but could be stepping on a new rake. As long as the new rake, we've approved it. It's okay. You can actually do that. This with Lopez, I'm okay with this with crochet. I have a little bit of a problem with trying to buy a crochet. Yeah, the extra outcomes on crochet, I think it's added weight on a shutdown or an injury. I feel like Lopez has a better, recent health track record. So you're not also worrying about that on top of different role and other things that can cause his value to just plummet. At the very least, I mean, to say very simply, Lopez has thrown 180 innings. I looked at Greg Crochet's line back all the way to college. The most he's ever thrown at 65. He's at 95. So crochet is just already in uncharted territory. And you know, for what's worth, I know that they're, you know, they're they're watching Louise Hill and, you know, they're going to figure things out, you know, the way they can. But, you know, as Louise Hill goes into uncharted territory for his innings, you are seeing a little bit more of a walk problem sprout up for him recently. It looks a little bit more like what we thought Louise Hill was as a prospect and what we thought his flaws were in that the walk rate is kind of exploding recently. And they may have to do with fatigue. I know that on a single game basis, fatigue has a lot to do with losing your command. And there's fatigue on a single game basis, and then there's fatigue that's sort of cumulative. And maybe he'll is hitting a little bit of cumulative fatigue. So in terms of buying high, I don't think I have Louise Hill on my list. 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 multi-view, 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 false Sunday ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital only games. Any other pictures though that are popping, we talked about a few just based on the win problems from earlier, right? Like that creates a few opportunities, but anybody else just thinking that you're kind of leaning into and saying, yeah, big number on the player raider, but I'm in. I'm buying it. Joe Ryan, it's only five wins. So if you, you know, one thing that's common to like my conversations about, uh, Naylor and Jeron Duran is that I like to buy, if I'm buying high, I'd like to have at least one little thing I'm circling that could go better, you know. So five wins for Joe Ryan on a good twin squad. Like, why doesn't he have eight or nine? You know, like, I don't see a reason. There's a great bullpen, decent offense. And then on top of that, Joe Ryan's Vilo is climbing and he added a sinker. That's what I talked to him about most recently. And so that gives him two fastballs, a gyro slide or a sweeper and a splitter. The closer he gets to being a full arsenal guy along with his bread and butter, which is that fastball and splitter, the better I like him. And, uh, and so I'm not necessarily saying he's going to have much better than a three, three ERA or a point nine, six whip going forward, but I think he could settle in around there and add more wins. Yeah. I think the, the tweak that sinker tweak is a big one for Joe Ryan, because home runs have been a problem when he's had those, those bad stretches. And I think having that different look with the fastball at different shape goes a long way towards possibly mitigating his biggest flaw. He goes so fastball up in the zone heavy, you know, that, you know, even through a high sinker, it would look different. Like if somebody was like, Oh, fastball high and zone. Here we go. And they put the, they put their four seam swing on it. They could get sought off or foul it off or whatever, free strike somehow, you know. Yeah, definitely. I like that Joe Ryan call. I thought he kind of stood out to me a little bit too. And I was scrolling through the player raider. We're going to save the, don't be like the angels. I think we talked enough about the angels on Tuesday, ragged on them enough as an organization will kind of bump that back to Monday. Some ideas for when you should actually be all in on a team and when you should look to the future. That's the main idea that we're going to get to probably on our Monday episode. Let's get to some weekend waiver preview names, because there's some interesting players out there this week. John Kenzie Noel comes up, debuts with the Guardian, smashes a homer. And the video of his teammates at triple A reacting was pretty cool to see that going around Twitter on Wednesday night. But I think Noel might be the kind of player that is a little underrated right now in prospect rankings because it didn't go great last year, even though there was power, he had 220 and I'm based at a 303 clip. There are defensive limitations that are very, very likely to put him at first base, maybe in a corner outfield spot, but this is really a first base sort of profile. This year's been a lot better at triple A Columbus, right? He's already popped to 18 homers, got a 359 OBP. How do we put into the right con, how to put into context when someone's dominating against this level of triple A pitching that isn't very good. But this is a player that was highly regarded before 2023 for his bat and his ability to be a middle the impact power guy, middle the order impact power guy. Is this actually a sneaky pickup hiding right out there? I mean, the homer in the debut doesn't help, that's going to draw extra attention. But I think there's a chance that he can just carve out a spot and be a regular for the Guardians. We've talked about them for years needing more power and they've already taken the step forward this year as an organization. They're much better in that regard in the lineup already, but Noel might give them something they were hoping to get previously from Kyle Manzardo. Yeah, what is going on? Like, why is he up? Naylor is hurt, right? Well, I saw in the discord, Naylor has been out of the lineup recently. I didn't see the reason given if there's been an injury announced. I thought I was listening to their cast and he was banged up somehow. He's dealing with something. David Fry seems like he would be a great first baseman. He is playing PhDHC. That's what he's been playing. That would allow when everybody's healthy for Naylor to be the first baseman. Naylor's played some outfield. Is there an opportunity in the outfield? We've got Will Brennan playing well enough to keep his job probably? Tyler Freeman in the middle of losing his job. Daniel Schneemann is percolating. He has RF, RFC, well, PH, RF, CF, and 2B and CF. So Schneemann seems to be kind of going towards an outfield job. And then you got Kwan. Can Kwan play center? Can Kwan play center? I mean, probably. He played seven times in 2022. That was last. They don't use him there. But the number of players I see playing center field on other teams that I didn't think could play center field. I know how good Kwan is in left. I'm like, Tom, he found out in center for sure. Yeah. Do you think Elliot Ramos was going to play center field? I did not. I didn't. But I mean, they seem to have settled in Kwan in left. So Schneemann and Freeman are battling for center. Brennan seems to be a sconce. Naylor's a sconce. Fry is maybe CDH. I'm just trying to figure out if there's a real opportunity here. I'm not sure there is. I'm going to say I'm not in. You're not in. I'm not in. The big improvement for him was to become more aggressive and hit the ball before he struck out. He improved his swing strike rate from 15.2 to 14.1. Neither knows numbers is good. And so he's become kind of ultra aggressive. And that is good for his power. It's good for getting there before he strikes out. I don't know if that's good for a debut. I don't know if that's good for like pitchers might seem coming. Right. Oh, here's this ultra aggressive guy trying to pull the ball for power. You know, that seems like maybe it's going to be you could pitch to him. I'm not sure I see the long term opportunity. And I think the adjustment will take a while for him. I think they can because of the versatility of their roster, they can let them play for a few days see if they like what's happening and run with it if it works. I'm a little more optimistic about the ways they can do it because the Guardians are one of those teams. There's plenty of them around the league. They don't have that many high volume every day guys. They push the mixing and matching and defensive versatility about as much as anybody right now. Because you look through and you're like, OK, Stephen Kwan, he's there every day. Jose Ramirez. Yep. He's there every day when healthy Josh Naylor is pretty much there every day. You see him pretty much. And then is pretty much there every day and everybody else. Even David Fry, who we like plays a lot. He's a rookie. All right. Even our shorts. Even yeah, even Rokio doesn't play as much as you'd think. And Rokio plays a little more than you think because of his glove, I guess. He said three days off in the last two weeks. But I guess my point is I think they can. They've got enough guys that are in the bottom half of this lineup who don't play every day who can play multiple spots where if they really feel like they're getting a valuable contribution from someone they'd bring up, be that Noel, be that man Zardo a second time or whoever it is, or Snyman, they can play. Freeman has options. Snyman has options. They can even play around with the Constitution of their major league roster. Yeah. So I'm I'm watching closely over the weekend. I've got some Thursday fab. I'll bid. I'll take the chance. It's not going to be super expensive. It could pay off. And if it doesn't, you know, I'm not really that much worse off for because it's kind of the the meaty part of the roster that you're okay with. Like you're not messing with that to go get them. You're messing with those fringe guys that are always up and down and on and off our rosters. What about Pestan cursed dad? I think things will be different for him this time around. He's played two of three since getting back up. But it looks like maybe it's a big side platoon opportunity in left field with Austin Hayes. Like does that change anything for you in leagues where cursed dad's available? He's really interesting because the prospect group probably disagreed with themselves upon this one. You know, you're talking about age at level is 25. So you want to, you know, discount a lot of what he did. If you take a 24 year old at triple A with a 116 WRC plus as he was in 2023 with cursed dad, you're actually not super excited about that. That's kind of like right, the same, the right agent level with 16% bet on the average. It's not that great. This year, he comes back though. And even though he's old or old ish for the level, you know, 150 WRC plus and got to that power. People were like, is it real power? Is it not? I was really impressed by my looks at him in the fall league. It is weird that he has struck out 30% of the time so far in the major leagues, but it is only 58 played appearances. So I'm willing to say that's going to improve long winded way of saying, I don't know. I don't really know. You know, Cal Stowers is kind of interesting. They've they've cycled through him. Mayo would Norby like, Norby was up for a little bit. Now he's gone. It could happen or it couldn't. I will say, though, I see the opportunity because I don't think that they want to play Hayes a lot. And if the opportunity is there, it just takes a hot streak. So I would be I'd rather put money on Kirsten the Noelle. I think I'm probably going cursed that over Noelle where both are available because I think I trust the floor as a hitter more. But if I'm interested in Kirsten, I'm definitely putting Noelle on that same bid list. I think there's even there's shadow league power with both these players if it clicks in terms of playing time. So that's that's where I think they kind of belong in the same group. Looks like Luis Matos is back with the Giants. So you got to think about Matos perhaps in some deeper leagues. We got Joey Loperfido back in the pool again. So a lot of familiar names also kind of coming back around for their their second run of fab. And that's just sort of how it goes. But the pitching side is a little better than usual this week because I do have one hitter to add to the list. I just looked at I'm one of my sorts in my 15 team leagues on NFC. He's just last seven days ABS, which was PA that's all right. Ramon Laryano is third on one of my list. It's playing a lot right now. He is playing a lot. The numbers aren't there. But he I will say this. He has never played in a home park as friendly to power as the one he's in now in Atlanta. I don't know how much that means. But the bad x says he can hit two forty four three sixteen four fourteen. If you extrapolate out their projections to full playing time. It looks like almost like ten ten. It's still deep deep leagues mostly for Laryano. But yeah, getting enough of an opportunity where I think short term could at least help you backfill. If you're looking for some playing time in that last spot that Atlanta improves over him at the deadline because they are a team that is aggressive at the deadline. Yeah, he's got a month to really show something with this club. Maybe even a little less if he slums hard enough. David Festa coming up for a debut on the pitching side. You've talked about him before as a project prospect of the week selection and everything looks really good in the underlying numbers. We have thirty five percent K rate this year at triple A. The only real flaw has been an increase in homers. We haven't seen David Festa give up homers like he has this year with Saint Paul. But he's coming up I think because Chris Patek is down right now. So I will always make the argument that Chris Patek just might not be that good. And if David Festa is good perhaps he can actually stick around for a little while. Yeah and the stuff plus numbers say he is good. He had similar stuff plus to Nick Lidolo in triple A just short of Bobby Miller. And the fun thing was that he you know there was a command blip for Festa at times in triple A last year he had a 17 percent walk rate. Maybe ABS related. This year his location plus was positive. So if you look at all the pictures that have above average stuff and locations in the minors this year it's Paul Skins, David and David Festa, Shane Boz, Wade Miley, Justin Verlander, Alec Marsh, Andrew Bash, Edward Cabrera, Slade Ciconi, and Tyler Alexander and Brian Wu and that's it and Christian Scott and Will Warren. So it's a good grip to be in. I mean there's there are all major leaguers almost you know like most of the guys I'm named are major leaguers or top prospects. So Festa belongs he's coming up. He's got a legit three-pitch mix fastball slider change up. It's a foreseen fastball with good shape. It's a hard gyro slider. That combination is resistant to platoon splits. Both the forcing fastball and the gyro slider don't move in a way that that makes him vulnerable to left-handers. And even if he is a little bit he's got that change up. So I'm pretty excited about this and I think that Paddick might be out you know. There felt like he was fighting for his starting spot for a while and I think he lost that fight. Yeah and you got Simeon Wood Richardson still pitching really well in the back of that rotation also. So maybe that's the ongoing competition for a spot as well. It's maybe three guys kind of pushing for those two spots in Minnesota. Paddick is down with right forearm fatigue. So it doesn't you know have like a structural concern at least right now but given his history of arm injuries especially they might be a little more careful with Paddick trying to get him back from the IL. Hayden Birdsong came up for the Giants. I just grabbed the screenshot of his pitch mix and a four-seamer change up slider curveball. I think all those secondary is actually graded loud as above average pitches. The model didn't like the four-seamer but he throws it pretty hard. It's probably ride-related. I was looking at the pitcherless player page that had about 15 inches of ride. So that's probably the the main issue. My question would be you know scouting grades over at Fangrafts had like a 60 on that fastball and like a 30 on the change up. The change up looked great. The fastball only by Velo looks great. Is this just a matter of maybe I don't know like how he was using it and then it looks looks good against lower level pitching. So you know that's part of the calculus. Like I'm wondering more about the change up in the fastball. Because I could imagine as a scout seeing that fastball and going okay this is a good fastball. He's locating it well. Good life. Okay but the change up graded out so well and didn't didn't get a good scouting grade. Yeah the thing about ride I'd be tempted to be like oh yeah you know they just they missed the fact that I've done a good ride but most scouts that I know that are worth their salt have like established relationships with track man. Yeah and they could probably see it too. They're behind the plate. They're better scouts than I am in terms of their eyes. You know they're in the behind the plate. They can see the hitters how they react to it. And then lastly there are a couple you know my early stat services that can give you some stuff like this. So maybe it's just a disagreement when it comes to you know what movement profiles work. I do believe that checking myself here but I do believe it was kind of two-planish movement. Do you have the horizontal on it? I'll touch to see if I can grab that real quick. I'm looking over here at Savant. I hate the fact that of course the Savant has different naming characters. I like different numbers like in terms of movement and stuff but they have him as below average ride and above average horizontal. 9.6 inches of horizontal I think on the forcing fastball. They have it as three inches above average. That's that's fairly significant. So maybe the scouts felt here's a two-plane kind of a rider of a pitch and the model just doesn't like it. I will say that I'm going to come down slightly on the more negative side. I watched most that start. His commands not very good. His commands not very good and the one thing he did do is he didn't get keyholed so even if he was in like a 2-0 count he would sometimes throw a breaking ball anyway or rely on his v-low or whatever it was but I'm going to put him sort of in the stream or bucket. Well it works in that park though. We'll see how it goes as far as the health of the other pitchers that could temporarily bump him back to the minors but I kind of came away with a little more of an optimistic long-term view if I'm playing in a keeper or dynasty situation. Autumn knew it might be worth trying to get him cheap, stash him away and just kind of see what happens over the second half of the season. There's a good starter kit here. Three good secondaries. That's pretty solid right. If you can improve the command or improve the fast ball or add a cutter there are some ways that Hayden Birdsong could be a really quality starter at some point down the road. We are going to go on our way out the door. A reminder you can get a subscription athletic for a dollar a month the first year at thefieldic.com/ratesandbarrelsfind. You know on Twitter @uniserisfindme @dericvanriperfindthepod @ratesandbarrels. We're back with you at 1 o'clock Eastern Friday on our YouTube channel. Thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]
