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Some of the more interesting pickups from weekly fantasy leagues and we'll take a look at some players that were dropped going the other way in 12 team leagues. Plus we got a new tool that actually is not that new, we just didn't see it before today. One graphs now has a player raider, so we'll talk a little bit about some ways that we're going to be using that going forward as well. You know how's it going for you on this Monday? Doing great. I am older now. Yeah. How about that? Yeah. That's like definitely past the point of which you're like, "Yay birthday" and a little bit more like, "Hmm, that's a number." What do you got now? You got a good baseball number at least? Yeah. I wonder who has my... 44. That's my number 45. Yikes. 45. Prince Fielder I think might have been a 45. Nope. No, Prince was 28. Your baseball reference has a whole course to do. It's amazing. The best war with my numbers, Bob Gibson. There you go. Although he wore a lot of numbers, maybe. I know. Those are his years. Pedro Martinez, dude. 45. That's what I was thinking. I knew there was a 45 in there I remembered. Okay. I feel better. It's Pedro year. Papa Fielder, Cecil, War 45. Prince War 28. You think I would know that I watched more Prince than Cecil, but I did watch both. That's how old I am, I guess, but I want to quantify it that way. Yeah. 45. Great baseball number. So I think you've done well. This is a good year for you. Garrett Cole, is he still wearing it? Yeah. He's still wearing 45. That's cool. Yep. I wonder if he wears it because of Pedro. That would be surprising to me. Kind of cool. It's, you know, that's one of those things that I don't care about. You don't think a lot about Jersey numbers? I don't. I don't care. I don't know. It's like, I'm like, I don't know. And then there's like a whole bunch of trivia based on it and stuff. And I'm like, I have no idea what number Jersey, like, I only remember like Michael Jordan 23. It's like really legit. That's all I remember. I guess I remember Judge 99 because it's just like 99. Sure. But like, when the kids were choosing their uniform numbers recently or when they are choosing their uniform numbers, they'll like be like, did somebody wear this? And I'm like, probably. Do you want me to get that baseball reference page open real quick and tell them this one up kids? So the younger one who's really into swag has like chosen a lot of like double zero and like, he just, he's like, he's always choosing it for how it looks, you know, and then Felix, the older one has been more like, who did Buster Buster Posey had eight? I'll do eight. You know, it's like, so I've had to learn a little bit about it. But I've also told them guys on the, I can get my phone open if you want. Now that's a good way to go. It's a big deal of coaching in high school. That was, that was a big day. It was always done by seniority on the roster. So when I had the varsity kids, you know, the oldest varsity kids, the kids had been varsity longer. And so if I had a three year junior, they could pick before a first year senior on the roster because it was their number last year. You know about the monkey sphere, right? Monkey sphere. There's this idea that in monkey cultures, the new monkey that has just joined the group is the, at the lowest rung of seniority, no matter what his age is or what his size is. Oh, really? Yeah. That's the monkey sphere. So we, you ran, you ran things by the monkey sphere. Well, thinking a little bit more about myself. Yeah. That, that tracks. I like, I like how things, I like how like, you know, when the, when the new player joins the team and they're like, well, what number are you going to take? And then there is, I think a very similar kind of stature question of like, well, Juan Soto's coming to team. So sorry, reliever X, like, you know, you just got to give it to him. But then Juan comes in, it doesn't want to be a dick. So he'll be like, oh, well, hey, I'll give you this watch, you know, I'm getting paid 30 million dollars this year, I'm going to give you this little watch. Thank you. And then somebody writes a feel good story with like, and Juan Soto gave him a watch for his, you know, for his number. Wish I could be 22 again. Nice. Yeah. Good to push. 30 million dollars a year. Yeah. Let's get to some topics. We got a suspension incoming for Edwin Diaz because he was ejected for a sticky stuff inspection failure on Sunday night, a rough year continues to get worse for Edwin Diaz, you know, it's not quite the party hangout bounce back campaign that I had expected for Diaz coming into the year. ERA still just below five. The strikeout rate, while it's not at the astronomically high rates that we've seen at this peaks is still not terrible, just a shade below 35%. But the ups and downs continue and this is another down with a 10 game suspension looming. Yeah. I mean, the picture has looked fairly, fairly obviously like he had stuff on his hand and there's like a, I don't like doing this because it's like punitive and like, you know, like, I'm not trying to cast his versions on his game, but there's like a very obvious dip in spin rate on his fastball that happened during enforcement. And then there's a very obvious climb back to his old spin race. I'm just telling the story of the picture of the graphs that I'm looking at, you know. And then there's the images that head off the hand, so I don't know what to say in moments like this. I hope that he can come back and command the ball for him command of especially the slider, I think, is just as important as any spin rate benefits because he does not have good natural command. So it would suck to lose him for 10 days and then have him come back and not have that same grip and sort of go back to the struggle bunny that he kind of was at the beginning of the year. Maybe it kind of a lost year for Edwin Diaz. It's kind of hanging the precipice a little bit. But if he can come back and find other ways to grip the ball that are legal and refine his command, he did seem like he'd been doing better since he came back. Right back to the familiar faces of Adam out of you know, maybe you read Garrett, the closer by committee approach perhaps until Diaz returns from a suspension that I don't think is official yet, but is likely to be official by the time most people get to hear this pod. It's basically automatic and less required, unless the appeal is successful and I don't look at the sense this particular appeal is going to be successful based on what we've seen. I mean, it's such a subjective moment that I think there's just nothing to say. Because you can say I didn't have anything on it. And then they say, well, the umpires have full ability to enforce this stuff. So yeah, the report says you did. Right. So like what do we do now, you know? But I don't think it was Drew Smith, because you know, Drew Smith was kind of the deal was that he was the pitcher that was left over, you know, he was not used in the eighth. So he does have some interesting pitches, but and in decent stuff plus, but the Vilo is not there. He's not a Vilo guy. And I just feel like Vilo actually matters outside of stuff, you know, when it comes to, I mean, 94 seven, I guess is Vilo, but like for the reliever, that's barely above average. So yeah, I kind of, I think it'll be one guy that I'd like is Daniel Nunez dead Neil Nunez. But I don't think the usage suggests that he's about to step in. So I guess it's Reid Garrett. I think when you look at this bullpen, though, and consider different possibilities for the second half of the season, you know, more likely than not Diaz is still the guys got a big contract. They probably can't move that contract without eating a lot of money. We've talked about it before. Maybe they would be willing to do that depending on the prospect they could get back. It's probably a bullpen. We're not thinking about that often unless Diaz actually gets hurt again at some point. But I do think keeping an eye on those next options up will become more interesting after the trade deadline, because if the Mets were to slide away from contention in the next five weeks or so, a few of those veteran relievers would be gone. And then someone like Nunez could emerge in the event of a Diaz absence, right? Like, that's where the surprise could be. The twist could be later this season. Are we? Yeah. Are we so? But I will mention Nunez's leverage index when he's put into the game. This is on Fangarabs is GMLI. And that just says how important his played appearances were to the outcome of the game or how much leverage there was. Over the last two weeks has been third to Edwin Diaz and Sean Reed Foley. And though Sean Reed Foley does appear there when you go over two holds, Nunez has two holds to read Foley's one. So Nunez has been in the mix for setup. Just throwing that out there. A name to file away, depending on how things break for the Mets here in the next weeks. A little bit more like maybe he'll establish himself as the setup guy and then take it after. We'd suggested something like Edwin Diaz to the Reds, which I think something like this almost makes it more likely maybe that the Mets would want to eat some of that and get rid of him. Doesn't it? That's kind of the time. I might read it. So would it make it more likely the Reds want to acquire him? I think the Reds would want to acquire him if they were like, oh, we're not have to give up a big prospect and we're paying $30 million or $40 million for the next three years of Edwin Diaz. Like, you know, it's more of a question. Can we afford it or not? Because it will help our bullpen. I'd love it. A lot of good stories can be written off of it. Yeah. Right. The Diaz brothers, the Diaz brothers being in the same bullpen. That'd be fun. Let's get to Max Scherzer's return. He pitched five innings, five scoreless innings, struck out forward and walk anybody and got a win even though he threw 57 pitches. So very efficient return. I was looking at the pitch mix. Three most used pitches, the four seamers, the slider and the curve that chewed up about 85% of what he threw. A four seamer was used about half the time down a little bit from what we saw a year ago. 929 was the average on Sunday in the return. Scherzer averaged 93.7 on that pitch. Last year, slider, I think, was a little closer to its previous norm curveball down about 0.7 miles per hour, but not an alarming drop in Vilo. But overall, seemingly a pretty successful return for Scherzer, especially given how a few pitches he had to throw to get to those five frames. Yeah, I'm a little worried. I mean, you get a lot of signal in that first Vilo reading. Stuff was pretty far down. He's never been a stuff king. He's had to turn in some good seasons with lower stuff numbers just based on having a big mix and having a good command, but the worst stuff plus that we have on record for Scherzer was 98, and that game was 82. That's the worst seasonal stuff plus that we have. So he's pretty far from where he was, and 929 is not especially good. So it's just, if you're looking at him versus someone like Garrett Cole as like, okay, they prove they're healthy. Is this the time to buy Garrett Cole had a slightly larger drop in Vilo. But if you look at his stuff plus, it's still pretty good. It's not as standout as it was. Either one of them could get injured again. I mean, you'd rather buy Cole than Scherzer, even considering the price. Not even close. Even considering the price though, right? I think we're at the point with Scherzer and Verlander, given their ages, given the injuries they've dealt with recently, where they live outside of the top 40 among starting pitchers, at least as they are right now, right, with diminished stuff relative to what we've been accustomed to in the later part of their career. Could they rebound back into that range? Yeah, it's possible, but it's harder to bet on that given how old they are. It doesn't mean they're without value. It just means you can't, I don't think you can set and forget them. You can't just throw them in your lineup and never think twice about matchups anymore. I think that's more where we're at with those guys. But if you said the would you rather is Justin Steele versus Max Scherzer, like is that a fair question or is that a runaway for Steele? I think I'd still pretty likely take Steele, but I think you're zeroing in on it a little bit. Let me see where I had Steele in my last working ranks. I had Steele 40. Somebody else like Snell's around there, Seth Lugo, Seth Lugo or Max Scherzer? Max Scherzer maybe. Yeah? Yeah, so okay, so that's the right cluster, very rosterable, very usable, but just not an automatic. Yeah. Not bad, you'll take it. I had Verlander at 52nd. I think that was maybe right around the time he got hurt again. Yeah, I think you previously had him at about 36 based on the published list, so same tier. Yeah. Excited to have him back, even though it's not, you know, late career stud version of Max Scherzer. That's the, that's the summary for me. Dane Dunning gets bumped from the rotation, by the way, he's among the most dropped players as a result of Scherzer's return. 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But it's hard to build around pitching because this happens, but it seems like the Marlins pitching has had a ridiculously unlucky combination of injuries that have overlapped that's really dragged them down here in 2024 and going back to the middle of last season. What do they teach as an organization? Is there some length there? The one thing that they do teach, I think, is the power change. I know you have, I don't really necessarily agree with him, but I know you have Keith Meister bringing up the power change as a reason, pitchers are getting hurt more now. I would say that we might not know exactly what the power changes ramifications are on the elbow as directly measured or as like a grouping, like, oh, here's how healthy the power change guys were because it's a kind of a relatively new phenomenon. I mean, the charting of the power changes a little bit starts with Felix Hernandez, you know, and Zach Granky. So I don't know that we know the long-term health implications of the power change are, but everybody that everybody in the Marlins that threw that power change is gone is hurt. But they also did some acquiring of players with some tricky track records like the Rays. So like Jesus Rosardo has had injury concerns his whole career, right? Right. Yeah. He was definitely someone that had above average risk throughout his time in Oakland, but that was just built into the profile. He's had arm injuries in the past. This is just something different being a back problem, but Rogers has been hurt a lot over his career. And I think weather is being hurt. I would describe it a little bit more as he just started throwing as hard as he could to try and stay in the big leagues. I mean, he became a lever and like we mentioned that now he's throwing really hard and throw close to his max and and Lazardo was a little bit like that too. So it's like, you know, that's a little bit more. There's more research behind that. Glenn Flysek has shown that the closer you throw to your personal max, the more stress you're putting on the elbow. So that's that tells a little bit of the story of Weathers and Lazardo, but yeah, I don't know that there's a lot of opportunity now, the second like the second grouping, the guys that are going to move into these these roles, I'm not that interested in any of them except for I am interested in Max Meyer. I think Max Meyer getting a chance is good, but Johnny Cheerinos, Sean Anderson, if they give 60 a chance, I'm Rotteri Munoz, mostly like two week streamers that they're both at home at best, you know, like I'm not that interested in most of the Meyer. I would put a little bit of bit on and put a little bit of interest behind once they announce it. It's just they seem like they're dragging their feet on that announcement for some reason. Well, you mentioned before Max Meyer's pitch mix has been different during his time in AAA when he comes back up to the big leagues is probably more just let's just get guys out. You know, we don't we don't care about developing the pitches as much change up while he's down there. And I doubt he's going to work that hard on the change up in the big leagues, but you still care about your your priorities shift with the move back up once he comes up and that Braxton Garrett injury, I mean, that's a left forearm flexor strain. That's not necessarily a quick return either. And that's a precursor to Tommy John, by the way, the kicker with Garrett too is like he's the more of the crafty, not a Max Vilo, you know, not a high end Vilo guy. Maybe it's close to his max, even though it's a low max. But you would think that Braxton Garrett and his approach would be more sustainable. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of that drew how can piece on down the farm suggesting that spin matters, although I don't know these necessary high spin, but he does have a good breaking ball that 83 mile not breaking ball. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you wouldn't think the guy sitting 90.7 is the one going down right now. I just bring it up because I know people are thinking about future strategies and saying maybe I'll be more careful about the amount of the last Garrett, my roster. I would say you'd be like, Oh, yeah, he's the load him. He's the gonna be healthy all year guy. He's the command guy, load him, picture friendly ballpark, home streamer and usually even get away with road starts. Yeah. The literally what I did with said Luca, I was like, yeah, most of the time I'll play him. The state of the depth chart with all these injuries, Trevor Rogers, Rodary Munoz. Yeah. Cheer in house. Kyle Tyler. You didn't even want to say these words. These are just, I mean, Kyle Tyler. Some of these guys are just like last chance saloon types. Kyle Tyler was at AA last year and was a starter all year, but had a 563 ERA and a 160 whip as a starter. Strike up her inning stuff. But it wasn't working. He was 26. So I mean, there's just, there's not a lot to get excited about. It's wild though. Cause stuff plus doesn't mind him. Now maybe there's a bit of a deep sleeper there if, but it's four innings, but still, it says he has a really good curveball and a pretty good cutter. Does he actually throw the cutter? He throws the cutter. Yeah. 50% of the time interesting. So he's a cutter curve guy where the other pitches aren't that great. And his strikeout rate in the majors is awful. I don't know. I could, I could see like in my 20 team or if I'm desperate for some, some, some arm that might do something, just picking up Cott Tyler and using him at home for a little bit and seeing if the stuff numbers are right, you know, but the prospects that you're waiting for, by the way, in Miami beyond Max Meyer, noble Meyer, who's just been bumped up a level somewhat recently. I think he's pitching at high a Beloit right now. He's 19. He's, he's in a lot of top 100 prospect with this. He will probably be an impact pitcher when he gets there, but we're not going to see him until late next season at the earliest. And they have no reason to start his clock and he's so young that no one's accusing them of anything, you know, no, no, but they also have Thomas White in that same rotation. He's their, by their other pitching prospect. It's a little further down most lists. So they got some guys, but it's not like the next wave is right there. It's more like getting these guys back from injuries. Yeah. Let's talk about the Yankees for a moment. Giancarlo Stanton, likely out for four weeks, he is down with a hamstring injury. And it's a rough timing because Jason Dominguez just went down for eight weeks with an oblique injury. This could have been the path for Dominguez to get some experience at the big league level. Instead, Dominguez is out until like mid August, potentially. So this is turning into a lost season for him. And I think outside of Yankees fans and the people that actually had Stanton on their rosters, his season has been largely underappreciated, getting 246 slugging 492 18 homers, 45 RBIs and 34 run scored in 69 games and being in that lineup certainly helps with the power still there. And the average hasn't meant as much of a drag as we've grown accustomed to in recent years. So this is actually a little more significant bolt of fantasy managers and to the Yankees that people might think on the surface. Bat speed is good. He's still got it, you know, and yeah, I saw something, I saw like a Mike Petriella appearance and it's like, you know, people have been really fascinated by the idea that like this bat speed list has bad players near the top or, you know, it doesn't explain everything. And, you know, there's great players, not great bad speed. But I think he said it best on the appearance I saw Mike Petriella said, in aggregate, swinging harder is better for for your offense. Sure. Yeah, I mean, this is the other part of Stanton though that we've that we've definitely seen was that you just you knew that if you were going to draft him, you'd have a you'd have a real hard choice at some point about, you know, keeping him or not, and you knew that it would either come due to like a real long slump at the beginning season where he's hitting 180 or something like this, where he's playing fine and then you have to decide what to do for four weeks. I think I might drop him just because it's a soft tissue injury in a place where he's gotten a lot of soft tissue injuries and what if it takes six weeks instead of four, you know? Yeah. Yeah, he's a drop in leagues with no aisle spots, but he's definitely someone you'll want to try and scoot back up once he gets closer to returning him in that there's clear, consistent everyday value in what he's been able to bring with the table. The longer term thing with Stanton, it's kind of interesting. The big contract he signed several years ago now with the Marlins runs through 2027 and he's sitting on 420 career homers, given the bat speed, given the quality of contact, given the amount of time left on his contract, I think he's got a pretty good shot of getting to 500, which is obviously a huge number for milestone purposes and not something we see that often. And yet I just feel like his legacy has been largely shaped and overshadowed by time spent on the aisle, which maybe is a little unfair relative to the full scope of his accomplishments as a big league player. Yeah, he was a really, really impressive player for eight or nine seasons. And then I think when he got to New York, it was just it was kind of a combination of having a little bit of that maybe high maintenance body. You know, like just I don't know what I don't know how to describe it, but he's it's a great body. But in terms of like, you know, was he too big or like, did he not maintain it right? Was he not flexible enough? Whatever it was, he had soft tissue injuries, even when he was a guy that was at the top of his game. And then you add that to age and then a big market. I think it's a really toxic grouping and these people say like boomer Seisen was wrong about a lot of details where he said, you know, the Yankees got to stop signing people to these contracts when they're old and you're like, well, I didn't sign him and this sent inside when he was 25. So it wasn't the original deal that was necessarily the problem. It was acquiring him right when he was about to get old, you know, right as he was getting old. They got the worst parts of it, which, you know, that's that was a choice, but it's not not like they signed Stanton at 39 years old or whatever. So I do think he probably has, he's going to get all three of those seasons. I don't think they'll release him just because I yelled veterans like this. It's okay. You can kind of sneak them by on the aisle if he needs like a Phantom aisle to get right at some point. They'll do that. So I think you could give him 20 homers a year for the next three seasons. I think he's going to get there and then I think we're going to have some pretty interesting debates someday, hopefully five, six, seven years down the road when his career is over. We can talk a lot more about, you know, is this actually going to be a Hall of Fame player or is he going to be one of the, the near misses from this era? I think people right now would say near miss, no chance, but I think there's a way he could actually put that together. A good, good combination of factors he brought up though that have really shaped the perception about the player he is and off the cuff without looking this up. Who did the Yankees trade to get John Carlos Stanton? Do you remember any of the players off the top of your head that were in that deal with Cameron Maben in that trade? That was the Miguel Cabrera trade. Who did the Yankees trade for Stanton? I can't think of a single Yankee like prospect in the big leagues for the Marlins. You're correct about that. They did get one at the time current big leaguer, a guy that's no longer playing in the big leagues back in the rich in the deal. Oh, man, I can't remember. And the Marlins had that player for two years. Wow. I remember at one point, summing up like what they got for that outfield. It was bad. I mean, the yellow's trade was a bad trade, of course, too. They didn't do well in those two deals. Yeah. Who was it? Starlin Castro was the big one here. Oh, I liked it a little bit, but it was kind of after we decided he wasn't as good as maybe we thought he was. Yeah. And the prospects Jose Deverse and Jorge Guzman. So they basically just took the contract. There was a money dump. Yeah. It was clearly a money dump and the Yankees can afford it and any year in which the Yankees don't win a World Series, it really hasn't been Giancarlo Stanton's fault, even though, you know, boomerasiacin might think that. I think that the replacement now is Trent Grisham and J.D. Davis. You know, they do have probably enough defense. I think you can play judge and center still, you know, which means that maybe J.D. Davis plays more than just versus lefties, but it is a handedness, a platoon that could just go up by handedness where Grisham plays against righties and Davis plays against lefties. Yeah. See that working out that way, but Grisham, I haven't been playing him a lot so far this year. Uptick and playing time for him might not matter that much. I thought it would go better. I thought there was a chance he'd bounce back and at least for, you know, deeper leagues, like monoligs where you start five outfielders, he'd play enough and do enough with those played appearances to be useful for homers. He's like a pull fly ball hitter, you know, or pull hitter that hits fly ball sometimes. Like you'd figure that maybe he would like that short porch. I guess that my defense would be like, it's hard to get into a rhythm when you've only had 80 played appearances all season, and it's the late part of June. So maybe getting more regular run at least against some righties would help them get back on track, but they can shuffle things around in that outfield quite a bit. I mentioned up top that the fan graphs, a player raider, a new thing they'd put out there in May is available and there's a few different ways to use it. And it was the Stanton value on the season that I was most curious about in 12 team five by five leagues, Giancarlo Stanton who had an ADP outside the top 250 overall has actually been about a $15 player, $14.90 if you want to be specific. Down, down to the first decimal, you'd be really happy with what you got so far. If you took that flyer on Stanton late, but we started thinking about this from the negative perspective first, the early around disappointments, which early players are you looking at right now on June 24th and actually saying, you know what, I don't want the discount, like how high up into the early rounds you willing to go before you find a player and say, yeah, I just don't want this guy, I'm not even worried about the fact that I could get a 50% discount compared to draft day. I still don't think the bounce back is going to be good enough to make it work. I'm sorry to say this and I'm going to apologize to our listeners and maybe I should have moved faster on this, but I'm starting to feel this way about Corbin Carroll. Oh, you're getting to Corbin Carroll now. I know we've talked about him and I've said I think it'll be better and I think he's turning around and this and that, here's what really worries me that's been happening and it's going to be related to a player that is on pickups this week. Oh. He's sitting against lefties. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that. It was starting to happen. That's pretty strange. I do not like that because it just turns him in weekly leagues and even in daily leagues, it turns into somebody that you did you not like going to start every day. Like I'd at least want to pick somebody up on a budget that I'm like, at least I can start every day because the other guy that I was going to bring up that we haven't talked about as much, he's Aussie Albeys. And Albeys was the 19th player picked according to their ADP that they're using and he's been worth $8, 850 in a 12 team league which is one of the worst numbers around him. I mean, like Lindor who nobody thinks is having an amazing season is worth twice that and was picked right ahead of him. And then Bryce Harper who was picked three ahead of him is worth $34. You know what I mean? So like it's an outlier. You could say he's a buy low and the reason I don't think he's necessarily buy low is that just none of the markers that screamed to me that he'd be having bad luck are there. You know, like he's basically doing every Aussie Albeys is doing everything he's done always just a little bit worse. And there's no real reason to say, okay, he will do this more going forward. His max EV is down, but he's had other seasons where it was down worse than this. His barrel is down, but he's had other seasons where his barrel was, it wasn't any better than this, you know, his hard hit is down. He's had other seasons where his hard hit was worse. So just, you know, what he's doing now makes me sort of reevaluate all the other stuff he did in a worse light, you know, I'm like, oh, this Aussie Albeys was always there. Is how I feel when I look at his line. And so with Albeys at least, you could say, I'm trading for somebody that I can get. Maybe he's available. Sometimes trading is about what I can get. Can I get anything? And he might be a gettable and if he is gettable, at least he knows he's going to play every day. As opposed to like Corbin Carroll, we're like, I might have to sit against left now. Albeys is better against lefties and righties, but the, at least that's playing every day is that's a huge deal. I mean, that's what a lot of people are going after when they're just trying to stream bats and 15 team leagues would be. We're all, a lot of times we're just all looking for playing time. So if I'm going to buy one of these two that I don't really like as much anymore for this season, I still think Carroll's a pretty good buy for, for, you know, dynasty albies and albies might be a little bit worse of a buy for dynasty. But both of these guys are like, I don't really want to require them. At least albies will play every day. Yeah. I think you, you took a couple of names and Carroll and albies that are at least players that a lot of people would have wanted at one point recently. I think people gave up quickly on Niko Horner this year from relative to expectations. I have Niko Horner as a guy for me that I wasn't in love with the idea of paying full price for his profile during draft season, but there was one league labor, mixed labor where I had to do it or felt like I had to do it because I just built the batting average plus, plus some bases. You need to stone bases. I thought I was going to win average in steals with the foundation I put in place and he fit perfectly for that. And it's been, it's been kind of the double whammy because aside from the average being weirdly low, like that might be running as much and he lost his place atop the order. But kind of quickly, they just didn't, the Cubs haven't been using Niko Horner the same way this year. And I don't know what the reasoning is for that exactly. I haven't been able to hone in on that. There was a stretch where he let off like mid April to mid May kind of regularly and mostly until these last couple of days, he was hitting sixth, fifth and sixth a lot for the better part of the last six weeks. There is a numbers based idea for this, which is that a high contact player can be more useful in the sort of fifth slot because you've got guys on base more often and just trying to make something happen, right? That's the argument for it. You know, he's not, if you were a slugger and high contact, then you'd be like fourth or whatever, you know, and he's even hit some fourth. And if you were just a bad player, then you would hit like seventh, eighth and ninth or whatever six, seventh, eighth and ninth. So fifth is like this one place where it's like, oh, it's my last good hitter. If he had better OBP, he'd be at the top, you know, or if he was a better hitter overall, he'd be at the top. But his particular skill is good enough to put here and hopefully drive some people in. I do think that some of this is batting average on balls in play and he should get that batting average rest of season back to like a 275 to 80 level. He's pretty much demonstrated that for his career. So I'm going to give him a 280 average going forward, but I may not give him even the steals that the projection systems are giving him. I think he may only steal like 10 or 12 more, which means that you would come out of the season. Yeah, the 270, what he's already done, you'd come out of the season with like a 250 for Nico Horner with like six homers and, you know, 24 steals. It's not at all not going to feel good. Not at all what I was hoping for very, very frustrating player that I thought was actually kind of mostly floor. Like I didn't think there was going to be this big drop if I did. I wouldn't have anywhere near him even in that spot where it made sense from how I was building a team perspective. I was wondering too, if maybe, you know, he runs more when he is leading off, he still leads the Cubs in games in the lead off spot. It's just that Mike Talkman's been there more than I expected and Talkman gets on base, right? I mean, like there's, there's a case to just go ahead and use Talkman more often in that spot right now. Six for six when Horner leads off in 34 games as a base dealer. So maybe that lineup spot also dictates how much he runs because there are guys on base when he's, when he's hitting in the middle of the order. There are tendencies. Yeah. Yeah. There are tendencies. There are, you steal fewer bags the lower you go. There's some sort of bump sometimes in like the eighth spot in front of the pitcher or something. I don't know. Which is gone now. Which is from the, yeah, which is gone. So I, some of that research is a little bit old and has to do with pitcher lineups. But yeah, you kind of steal bases a little bit less as you go down the lineup. I remember this was a conversation with Tommy Edmond. And Tommy Edmond was starting to lose his lead off spot that you saw that, you know, his steel attempts would probably go down. I think we saw that. That's what happened with that. I do wonder when I'm looking at this, like I'm surprised by how bad Luis Robert, juniors and Boba Shet's numbers are today. Robert was out though with that hip injury. That's true. So you got that like 98 played appearances. You're like, okay, I understand the rest, you know. So this might be more specific to both. So when I do like bylaws or I'm looking at the, I usually open the player page right now without opening up the pair page, I'm looking at Boba Shet and wondering if you've played this much all season and you had this bad, is it possible just that you don't look at the peripherals and you don't, and you just do a kind of a smell test, like a kind of visceral reaction to say, nope, I don't want that this is a, this is a lost season. Because you might think Randy or Rosa Reyna's season has been bad, but he's been worth almost $10 more than Boba Shet. Happens when you go into the red bow deep into the red right now minus eight. I mean, I do know there's maybe a little bit of touch of gambler's fallacy here and you know, like of, you know, oh, he's due and like maybe you buy him and he gives you the like regular $20 pace going forward at the end of the year, he's worth $10 and you got the good part. That's totally all possible. But there's something about it being so bad that like, I'd rather buy like a Michael Harris who's been worth 10 cents just because his struggles have been not as bad, you know. So there's something kind of that leaps off the page, it's, it's maybe a question about no one Jones to it's like maybe, maybe there's, this might be a good study, it's like if you get to a certain point and you're this far negative and you've played, then you're not really a good buy low candidate just just because you've been that bad. I think there's something to it. Yeah, if it's in the bow side with the playing time, if it's more like Robert and more like Jones where half of the season almost has been lost injury, then I think it's kind of a different group altogether, yeah, you just have to have to look at it through a slightly different lens. I think the other player that kind of stands out to me, even though the value is good so far is Peter Lanzo and there was a question in the discord actually earlier today about his, his batted ball stats, like his underlying stat cast numbers and wondering, you know, what's really going on there and it's still for the season, Peter Lanzo is in the 87 percentile in barrel percentage, so still very good. But if you do look back at 2023 when he had the wrist injury or even 2022 when he didn't, there was a lot more red. Like there was more consistency from him across the board and he was striking out a little bit less than he is now just 20.5%, it's not that bad, but it's not as good as it was two seasons ago. Hard hit rate a couple seasons ago was higher down to the 53rd percentile right now in terms of overall hard hit percentage, that's kind of a surprising turn in the wrong direction for Pete. So what do you think is really going on here? Yeah, it is funny, like if you just took the name off of it and just, you know, looked at the key peripherals that I like, actually, there's a lot to like, you know, the best swing strike rate of his career, you know, you say that the K rate is up, but it's better than him when he debuted when we thought maybe he'd be like a 27% strikeout rate guy. Yeah, 13% barrel rate, one 16 max EV for Peter Lonzo, like he's like he's kind of, you know, he can be a push hitter sometimes where he's hitting the ball out to right center. I believe when he won the hitting Derby, he was like hitting home run Derby pitches out to right center. Pete Lonzo was so like he can sometimes get a little right center, but he's not, I don't think that's what's hurting him, like a 44% pull rates, like fairly ideal. His hard hit rate has been higher in the past and his ground ball rate is higher now than it's been in the past. So there, there is something going on, but generally a lot of the pieces are still there. And I think for me, he's a buy though. You look at the track record so good, power wise, yeah, and the barrel rates not far from where he was like 13.2 right now for, for him, barrel rate 13.9 for his, for his career. It's like he's not not barreling it. I think if I would tell the story is that like, you know, he's looking for basically the high fastball, which you can actually tell when he steps to the plate, he does that little half swing and it's for a high fastball. And he's telling you, put it right here and pitchers are, you know, trying to throw him sliders in the zone and hello fastballs. And he's trying to fight it off a little bit, you know. That's what I see. That's the story I see. And I think given that, you know, he's still been 27% being a bit on the average, the floor is pretty good. Like if you just gave me what he was, what he's been doing for the rest of the season, you would still end up with 241 and like 35 homers. And I think he's going to narrow that gap with a couple of weeks in August where he's just white-hot and it's going to be more like 250-40. And then it would fit right in with the rest of his career. So do you seek out Alonzo before you seek out Matt Olson? If you're trading for them, it might take a little more to get Olson, but I think they're similar enough in draft day cost where you're probably talking about similar returns via trade. Yeah, that's why Pete Alonzo was taking seven picks later and has been worth more than Matt Olson. Matt Olson's strikeout rate is too high and his barrel rate is the worst of his career. His max CV is even down from the last three seasons. So there's something going on with Olson. I might actually go after Alonzo first, especially if he was slightly cheaper. Yeah, it's strange to see that just slight slight downturn in production from Olson right now. It's picking knits in a profile that's still fine where it is. It's just not what you were hoping for to see him sitting around $2.50, $3.30, $3.30, $4.35, somewhere in there. Just like Pete Alonzo. But I see a little bit more of an inkling of like, you know, if I was going to give one of them like a white hot two weeks, I might be Alonzo. Also that possibility of the trade too, yeah, Alonzo being traded somewhere, that'd be amazing. We're going to dig more into this tool going forward, but I just saw the post about it finally today, even though it's been there for almost two months now. I keep up DVR, try to keep up. You know, we love talking stats here at the athletic. Here's one that's super simple to remember, discover automatically doubles the cashback you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cashback match. That means with Discover, you could turn $150 cashback to $300. That's right. You could put it towards some memorabilia you've had your eye on or treat yourself to a premium sports network. You earn and discover doubles. See terms at discover.com/creditcard. 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 gotten 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 Sunday's more magical, and also, YouTube TV is great. I got it this year. It's awesome. Sign up now at youtube.com/bsdevice and content restrictions apply. Local and national games on YouTube TV, NFL Sunday Ticket for out-of-market games, excludes digital only games. Obliques can take a little longer than you'd like. It's a strained left oblique. So maybe three to four weeks, something in that range is kind of a good outcome if it gets back faster. I think you'll be worried about a setback. The money went to Chapman in League's Whipple Need Save. That makes sense. Ben Rice, who we talked about last week in conjunction with the Anthony Rizzo long-term stint on the IL and Spencer Turnbull was a popular pickup because we learned that Taiwan Walker has a finger injury and he's going to miss some time. Curious of some of the names we saw getting bigger bids, do you think any of these guys end up pulling in significant value for those who took the plunge over the weekend? I like Turnbull. I don't like his home parks situation amazingly, but I think I would call him sort of like a 60% starter. Did you start turning against the Braves in Philly? Probably not. No. I wouldn't start him on the road against Atlanta either, but losing a home start is always rough, but Philly's park still does that and to your point, Atlanta for the season sitting with a 102WRC+ I think if you split that down just to June you're going to see something a little bit better. But you also have Turnbull's actual schedule as it stands is at Detroit, at Chicago, at Atlanta, which I don't know, I would start him for that, and then verse Oakland. So basically three out of four and that's sort of where I have them, 75% starter. So I think that's a pretty good pickup for people that got him. Chapman, I'd like, but I think it's, there's not like this heel pitch so well that when Bednar comes back, Chapman is still the closer. So you're basically just buying a month of a closer. So whatever you think a closer is worth for a season, then you're buying, you should be spending one sixth of that or whatever. It also matters of course, like what your safe situation is and blah, blah, blah, blah. We ended up in main event getting Keegan Thompson for $5. We had put a $16 bed out of $1,000 or something on Chapman and he went for $37. So we just weren't really in to go all the way to the top there on Chapman. I got Stanek in a similar situation for around 16 bucks. Stanek could actually, I think maybe pitch his way into being closer all year. Man, they, I don't know what they're doing with Munoz. I don't know, I don't, I can't explain it. I think it's that Munoz is maybe a slightly better pitcher that they use in more important situations and Stanek is a guy that has such bad command that you don't want to bring him into a situation with people on base. So you kind of make Stanek the clean ending guy. Yeah, that makes sense for Stanek, given some of the things we've seen from him over his career. I think it's just weird he doesn't strike more guys out. That's the thing that continues to hold me back from being excited about Ryan Stanek. Looking at the usage for Keegan Thompson on Sunday. Oh, that was so annoying. Faced 11 batters, went two and a third. At least he did that early enough that we turfed our like $16 bid on Keegan Thompson. So you saved it. Yeah, I mean, I thought there was a point going into the weekend and he might be the latest option. And I think following Javier Assad into that game and pitching as long as he did is maybe a little indication from the Cubs like no, that's not quite our plan right now for Keegan Thompson. I think he could do it if they gave him the chance. What is the plan because I don't know who their closer is or I guess it's Naris, but I wouldn't want it to be Naris. They have the third worst fastball stuff plus in the bullpen in baseball. They don't really have an obvious guy stuff plus says that Tyson Miller is interesting but not great. And I don't know, maybe Ben Brown will come back off the high L and be a closer. I actually thought they would use Tyson Miller the way they used Keegan Thompson Sunday night when they claimed him off waivers. I thought he'd be a bridge guy in that bullpen. Anything could be subject to change pretty quickly given the needs the Cubs have. But yeah, he's done multiple multi any or things himself that I mean, that just tells you that he's not really kind of like a dominant Velo closer type, which they just don't have. They don't really have that many good relievers. Yeah, 45 pitches for Keegan Thompson on Sunday night. Yeah, not a lot of guys do that and they become a closer quickly. So keep that in mind, I guess, as we continue watching what the Cubs are trying to do in their late inning situations. Spencer Schwellenbach actually has a two star week this week. So I think that's what kind of pulled people and 12 team leagues in at St. Louis the first one that's actually happening today on Monday. He was available in TGFBI, the great family baseball invitation, which is a 15 team league on the NFC platform. And I was like, whoo, I'm pretty excited about him. And I like, you know, I was like, do my little, how much is too much? And like kind of was the guy, the guy going up the mountain that you referenced sometimes. Oh, the Yodler from. Yeah, the Yodler. I was like, whoo, that's too much, it's too high, it's too high. And I did some stupid ass thing like I was like, oh, $37. That'll get me Spencer Schwellenbach. And then the news came in 130, I lost 130 to like 37. I so I misplayed the situation before Hurston Waldrip got hurt. I was in a league where I dropped the low triple digits been on Waldrip because I said, I'm going to believe in Waldrip. I'm going to believe in these two pitches. This is going to work at maybe he'll, he'll be just a little bit better than Schwellenbach. And that'll, even though I like both, and that'll be the answer. And it wasn't because Waldrip got hit twice and hurt on my roster for my troubles. So I'm looking to see if I actually, I did get Schwellenbach though, much cheaper, I think I got him for 37, which is what I wanted him back, I wanted him for that. So maybe I saved it coming off this two start week, he's going to be home against the Phillies next week, that will be a start in which Spencer Schwellenbach is on my bench. So yeah, let's see, bar if I got a Stanek for 26 to 6 and Slade to Coney to on a pose. I had Jonathan Cannon, even though it was a really bad start from him, I had him on my list, maybe around Slade for like a buck. He went for 6, I do still think Cannon is like a low rent Michael King, which is a worthy, worthy, useful player and a lot of 15 teamers. That's a compliment, right? I got my auto low pose, 16 bucks, unopposed. I should have, yeah, I should have been mower, but I just- You were just really excited. You know, also I had an issue, let me see here, Von Grissom and Ryan McMahon has a really terrible schedule this week. So and I didn't have a second baseman, so I'm putting in auto low pose for four games over Ryan McMahon at Houston for two games in the beginning of the week. And I guess that probably wasn't worth 16 bucks, but it does give me an option to move on from Von Grissom. May just keep auto low-pays around as the backup MI instead of Von Grissom if we get any more bad news from Von Grissom or, you know, he comes back and he's playing boring. So I'm basically putting Von Grissom on notice with my auto low-pays acquisition. You should, only because Von Grissom started doing baseball activities two weeks ago and two, my knowledge has not played in a rehab game yet, so they're really bringing them along carefully. I don't know. What the hell is going on? Did you pick up in manual Valdez anywhere? He was the one right behind auto low-pays on the tree. Yeah. Maybe that would have made sense. They're on the same team, you know? With Valdez. I mean, it's just like, hey, like this is, this is his chance. We've talked about the prove it. Your window is open. It might be open for a few weeks. Do something with it. He's actually doing something with it. Some of the underlying numbers in terms of the quality of contact are actually really good and if Grissom just keeps taking longer than expected, the window stays open longer than expected. There was a lot of Ben Rice. Did you get any Ben Rice or did you just watch everybody else get Ben Rice? I watch other people get into Ben Rice. There weren't, I mean, my worst catcher that I could have dropped from him in the leagues would have made sense to do something like this was Cabaret Ruiz and I was just staring at Cabaret Ruiz and I was like, this is not a guy I'm dropping for, you know, six to eight weeks of Ben Rice. I have enough belief in Cabaret Ruiz to at least get the batting average out going for it. Yeah. It seemed like it was Ben Rice and Freddy Fermine were the two catchers people were trying to go out and add where they could, I mean, shake up in St. Louis because Yvonne Herrera got hurt and was already playing a little bit less but also Wilson Contreras is supposed to come back on Monday. So that was a guy that was rostered a lot of places coming back to take away playing time from someone we were using as a placeholder. But Fermine versus Ben Rice, the great question of our time says, which of these in season free agent pickups will end up being the more valuable second catcher? I mean, I think Rice's opportunity is good because it's the Yankees. But it's limited and by time whereas Fermine might have runway to make himself the catcher even with Perez like the aging and stuff. Yeah. Fermine now has been up basically for 120 games in the big leagues, mostly over the last two seasons, 13 homers in 30, 391 played appearances. He's 6% better than league average. It's nice. He's good defender too. So he's looking like a guy that can take some of that wear and tear off of Salvador Perez, which is nice for the royals to have that flexibility but also offer us something, at least in leagues that require two catchers. So I think that was part of the reason why he was a popular pickup. A lot of people out there had to replace injured catchers with, I think Luis Campusano hit the aisle with a minor injury, Gabriel Moreno went down the Herrera situation. So they seem like maybe a quarter of teams out there were trying to figure out catcher this weekend. Yeah, using the bad X and the auction calculator Fermine is 26th. I don't know if they have Rice County as a catcher on this, so I don't see him anywhere. The Ben Rice projection from the bad X, 232-305-395. I actually think he shows up a little higher than Freddie Fermine if you use that. I think we're all trying to get the next David Fry. I think that's what we're all thinking as we go after Ben Rice. You're killing me. Love it. 780p, six best catcher going forward. David Fry, by the way, since people are wondering that the new player raider, 40 first hitter in a 12-time five by five, number 41-17 dollars so far this year. He's been fantastic. I wish I could have found you that name. I found you some names. I did not find you David Fry. Definitely tough cuts for you. It looked like Joe Adele of all the players that dropped the usual suspects in terms of injuries and then Charlie Blackman with that Rocky's home stand being over and having a five-game week. He was a popular cut as well, but it was guys like Rizzo, Lazardo, Jose Soriano who's got an abdominal issue, Braxton Garrett, we talked about earlier, Bradish, those were your main cuts. But Joe Adele was the only heavily dropped player who was playing a ton and just not producing. I talk a lot more about Adele probably on a future episode, but did you have any cuts that sort of jumped off the page? Do you even though they weren't injured players? Not really. Yeah. James MacArthur, I guess. I saw somebody in Discord was like mad about my James MacArthur pick and I was like, "Dude, I mean, you got to do some saves and it didn't cost you anything, right? You didn't take my advice and go spend a lot of James MacArthur, so I feel like that's a median outcome for like, it's actually a pretty decent outcome maybe for that type of player who wasn't the closer in spring. But I don't know that he's the closer now. I don't know who the closer is now and I kept being on my bench and I was like, "I think I'm wasting this bench slot." So I ended up being like, "I want to have more high velocity. I want this to be a kind of a churn and burn spot. I need to get something out of this spot now. I can't wait anymore for James MacArthur." That's what I decided. I guess that was the toughest cut. Yeah. Add the royals to the list of teams that really need some more bullpen help. Everybody needs Tanner Scott. Everybody needs Tanner Scott. It seems like an exaggeration. Is there anybody else that could go? We'll talk about it a little bit more. I also picked up Reed Detner's in the main event, which I think we'll talk about. Reed Detner's more tomorrow, but as the trade down approaches we should identify. I have a piece this week about who might be traded and I think that the next idea would be a fancy piece being like, "Who might get an opportunity behind the guys who get traded?" But my eyes keep circling on Michael Copac. The reason why is not that he's been a dominant closer or anything, but that I know that teams value stuff models across the league. We've also seen a lot of teams for closers in particular, and it might be that clean inning thing we're talking about, being willing to take on pitchers that don't have great command if they have great stuff, especially in the bullpen in particular. When you get Michael Copac, you could tell yourself, "We get him for a few years, and we get him for this year and all of next year, and he's not going to be that expensive, and he could be at least our setup guy if not our closer." I think he would make a lot of bullpen better, and he has to be attainable. I don't know who would close after him, maybe leisure, maybe somebody else, maybe Brevia, but when you talk about available relievers, Michael Copac jumps to the top of my head. Yeah. I think we're always starting from the teams that have clearly punted this season and working from there. I think once we start getting into those glob teams that sink, then we're going to find a few more names that stand out. All the stuff that you see about the A's bullpen is would they trade Mason Miller if they're blown away? Sure, like any team will trade anybody if you overpay it enough, but Lucas Airsegg seems like someone they'd be more likely to trade, and you'd have that same benefit of multiple years of control. He'd have him for a long time, as long as he's good, you'd have him, and maybe you can still talk yourself into the possibility that as someone who was a position player for a long time has only really been pitching full time for what four seasons now, the Airsegg could still get a lot better and be an elite reliever for several years. I'd like to say that nobody's giving away a glaiver Torres for a reliever, but we had Cole Reagan's for a role as Chapman two years ago, so I do think, you know, selling a top of the line reliever, even if they don't necessarily have a lot of use control, can still get you something. But, you know, if anybody in Chicago is listening, you should probably trade Michael Copac and maybe even Garrett Crochet. Wow, the crochet thing is an even bigger so questionable. I think that's a fascinating, super complicated question. Yeah, Copac, I think you can pretty easily talk yourself into finding a suitable trade partner and moving on accordingly, but so many good teams or would look like good teams need those boosts in the bullpen. I do think what you get in the return could be pretty interesting because there won't be, I don't think there will be enough quality relievers to meet the demand of all the contending teams based on how things are shaping up with a little over a month ago before we get to the trade deadline. I think the biggest names in biggest teams in baseball, the most important teams in terms of record over the next few days and what will happen in the trade deadline, are probably the blue jays and the Mets. The Mets have been playing a little bit better recently. If they stay in the trade deadline, then there's a lot of players that come off the market. The blue jays have been not playing so well. There's seven games under in a very crowded division. They're getting inching closer and closer to being selling. Of course, the bullpen is not a great place to look for them because it's been so injured, but you'd have to think that Chad Green, Jimmy Garcia, and maybe even Romano, if they're healthy, could be available. Yeah. Even if we don't know what they're going to do about Boba Shat and Vallegarira, the blue jays are super fast anyway. The Mets, if they fell back, could offer a lot of players. Those are the two names, the two teams that I'm circling is what happens in the next month or so. The next three weeks may determine a lot about what happens in the trade deadline. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. A handful of other teams kind of floating in that exact same place right now. They could be on the obvious seller's list once we get to that late part of July. We are going to go on our way out the door. A reminder, you can get a subscription to the athletics should be a dollar a month right now at the athletic dot com slash rates and barrels. Our annual best deal we offer is up right now. You can find Eno on Twitter at Enosaris. You can find me at Derek van Riper find the pod at rates and barrels. Join our discord using the link in the show description. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. a lot. Bye. a lot. (upbeat music)
