Ninety five miles an hour riding to his head. He hopped down the first
with the lump on his face, and on the very next pitch he up
and stole second face with greatst be He wasn't born, he hadn't done.
Boy howdy, Welcome to prospect. Besides podcast, this is the nasally John
c Riley's sounding voice of Nate Handy. A biologies for that only shake what
your mama gave you. I am also coming off of a COVID stint,
so apologies. I hope you're able to bear with it, hope that I
am able to bring you some content and some entertainment that makes it worth it.
But yeah, so doing a podcast not something I have ever done before.
It's a little unnatural, but I will do my best. And you
know, if you're gonna get a little bit of a b side mentality about
some dynasty prospects, you might have to endure feeling a little unnatural as well.
I figured it was only fair to give you a little bit of an
introduction, even though it's dreadful for me to talk about myself like this.
So I reached out on Twitter to some of my followers asking them to ask
me some questions that might be useful to listeners. So let's get into it.
Let's see at Jazz for Ball, Jamie asked, how long have you
been playing fantasy? What kind of leagues do you play in? And are
you any good at it? Great question. I think two thousand and six
was the first league I ever played in. Year after White Sax won the
World Series, primarily just one league for most of that time, some good
buddies, a unique twelve team points league, very wild pitching scoring. But
I wanted to branch out. I wanted to go deeper into the player pool.
I wanted to get more into prospects. So I found I took over
a team and at thirty team points league, and that's when I started to
get, you know, a little bit more serious about it, branched out
and you know, putting more money on the line. And I'm now currently
in five to seven leagues. I guess the two thirty teen points leagues that
I am commissioner of I'm in. I tailed three Sport, which is a
sixteen team head to head I mean a twelve team head to head where it's
fourteen team rodo what else? Oh, there's like a five year drafting whole
thing, and then yeah, that long standing league which might be on its
way out. Am I any good? I mean I wasn't for a really
long time. That longest standing league. I just wanted for the first time
this last year. So it wasn't very good at that. But that league,
you know, I think part of why I wasn't good because I was
id take players I had no business take and I was just trying to be
hip and cool or something, trying to be ahead of the you know,
I was like two years ahead on a lot of guys in that league.
But I think I've gotten much better since I've gotten more serious about it.
I played in a lot of like those fan Treks cash leagues for a while
and did pretty well on that. I think overall, I think I'm either
pretty even or have made money, if that's how you want to measure if
you're you're good at fantasy or not. But I think my Dynasty game is
on the up and up, and I think a lot of that has to
do with, you know, things we're going to be discussing moving forward in
this podcast. So thanks that that was a great question. At sports m
Therapy one two three, asked, how long have you been following prospects and
what credentials do you have speaking about prospects? Who hard hair? Good question.
I would say I have been paying attention to prospects since MLB pipeline was
the thing. I don't know late nineties is that it, but I mean
just glancing those over and reading them. When m ILB dot tv came to
be, definitely got more into it. I mean, I'm I'm addicted.
That's my favorite sport to watch was minor league baseball, and I think that's
where I might have some quote credentials. I'm not an expert, I am
not a scout. I am an enthusiast who needs an outlet, someone to
talk to, so to speak about what they've been watching all the time.
Imagine watching what you think is the greatest movie you've ever seen, and no
one else has seen it. That's what I kind of feel like. If
I don't have some sort of content, I guess is the word to put
out there. So I hope that's our relationship writing at pitcher List. I
have made some friends, some friends that are much more successful than I and
in their endeavors like this, I have also I don't know. I'm in
an online sense, have befriended a few people inside baseball, have conversations with
them. And here's the cool part about that is even some dumb guy like
me has brought some things to light and has made professional baseball people, professional
writers notice. Something baseball is is extremely large. It's a it's a endless
universe. No one sees it all. I like to think of myself as
maybe like maybe like a local news anchor or something like that, like like
Carney Nebraska, whereas someone like the Welsh might be you know, he's like
national. You know, he's like a he's like Crown Kite or's whatever.
I don't even know if that analogy is correct. But we all have credentials
as baseball fans and you know something about prospects. That's what it's kind of
interesting to me is, you know, we all watch Major League baseball and
we all have, like, you know, very different opinions on who the
best player is. But I mean it might be obvious now with a Tani,
but you know what I'm saying, there's a lot seems to be a
lot more opinions in Major League Baseball than there is a minor league baseball.
We seem to agree, and that's always been a little bit I don't know
backwards to me in a way, because there's so much more unknown about these
players that are still developing, and that's why it's become my favorite watching a
I don't know Joey Estes twenty twenty one. The progression over the season was
awesome. Young people are just more resilient and more capable of change than old,
krusty people like us, you know or me. I shouldn't call you
old and rusty because I don't know who you are, So yeah, I
don't know. We all have credentials if we watch I think pay attention to
things. I think we all can all learn from each other. So thank
you. That's a that's a great question. At Casey Casey ninety nine asked
if I have access to data, I mean, no more than anybody else.
Get some backdoor savant stuff from a couple of the minor leagues. You
know that some of the friends that I mentioned, we'll share some things with
me, but I'm not a huge numbers guy. We'll get into a little
bit more of that a little later here at Saddleback Jewels, asked me if
I played baseball. Yeah, I mean little league and all that stuff,
and I pitched up through my sophomore year of high school, where I yeah,
regrettably. To be honest, I wish I could play literally now.
I kicked some fucking ass, gave it up to solely focus on some hoop
dreams that I had until my very early twenties. And then I got back
on the mound playing with some some ex college guys. I don't know how
old was I thirty five when they did that. It didn't last very long.
I lived too far away. I loved it, though. It was
a lot of fun to get back up there. But but yeah, all
right at cute in Jersey. Four six six asked me where do I Where
do I live? And um do I watch games live? Well, I
live in Narnia. Basically, I live in Colorado at like ninety two hundred
feet where the snow is here forever. But it's not too far from Denver.
I mean, it's minor league baseball desert, so no. I got
out to Grand Junction a few times, but when it contracted, Colorado lost
all their minor league affiliates. It's unfortunately not but to be honest with you,
I don't think i'd be very good at watching stuff live and being able
to share stuff like this. Then you know, there's definitely things that you
won't be able to get. You know, I just watching video, But
there's also a reason why. You know, some teams that are pretty much
almost exclusive video, you can you can watch a lot more. You can
slow things down. You don't know what that guy just through. I guess
what I can pose it and rewind it. You can't really do that live.
I think I would just be way too overstimulated and not very good at
that. But but yeah, I'm out here in Colorado. At ballgirl Kim
asked me who my favorite team was. Well, I came to my baseball
age, if you will, living in Chicago, So yeah, that's your
answer. Hey, what's the station from the Cops game? Jerk off,
am, Actually no one knows the station of the Cubs game. We care
God bless us to everyone, and our last one is from at third base
Carly. You must have played some sports. You look like a physically fit
man. Are you single? Well? At third base Carly, I am
happily married, but thank you all right, So a B side prospect.
What is that? What's that all about? What's that mean? I guess
we'll just kind of do a little origin story about four years ago or so
joined il Army. Highly recommend it. Get on in this league, dot
Com, Patreon, look at their little different tiers of membership. Bogmin and
the Welsh are great. They remember why we played fantasies. They have fun,
so much fun. And so I was a fan that joined up Covid
Into the world came twenty twenty and I was at unemployed at home home with
my kids for like a year, going stir crazy like a lot of us
were. I've been dealing with Todd's all day talking ABC's tell them what sounds
a cow makes. It's a move, motherfucker. I saw that picture list
was looking for a writer. I think Welsh put a good word in for
me with Nick Bollock, and it took me on and one of my first
assignments was to write five or six I think it was organization's top fifty prospect
lists for Fantasy daunting task after no minor league season, not really being prepared
the year prior, when maybe I was watching some of these guys that I
would be writing about them, but did the best I could. I think
it came out all right. And you know, naturally, the biggest question,
or one of the big questions you get from readers is which one of
these guys on the bottom half of your list do you think you're gonna pop?
And you know, that's that's a great question. That's kind of the
penultimate question with Fantasy. Who are the guys that I need to get to
before everybody else, And that's going to be kind of the big focus of
this podcast is those guys kind of on the fringe come you know, potential
come ups and stuff like that, and players that I watch that I'm putting
some bets down that might be and we have some success with that initial list.
Tovar Grissom. I think jo Kenzino well was on that list, Raphaela.
But we'll get into we're gonna future episodes. I think we'll do division
by division, little b side history and you know, picks for this season
and stuff like that. But during that process of the first iteration of it,
I threw the list of thirty names to my good buddy Matt Vogel,
who's you know, baseball guy Dynasty. Good friend and I was like,
Hey, what do you think about these guys? And he said, I
don't know. Listen, it looks a little too B side for me.
So when I wrote the articles, I tried to and I'm sure it was
pretty corny but incorporated some music stuff involved, and so yeah, that's where
where B side comes from. I'm sure Matt probably wants some sort of like
naming rights or something like that. And then yeah, well there's a good
pile of cash on your mom's nightstand, so why don't you just grab some
of that, Ladies and gentlemen, We got him. So last season,
I was focusing on Prospect Pictures, doing a series picture list called Prospect Picture
List and Review. I think that's what it was called. Series got cut
short about midway through July because I lost any sort of internet service. It
was kind of insane. But during that time, you know, some some
folks reach out to me and we're you know, appreciating my work, which
was you know, awesome and felt great. Uh. Jeff Potts of Baseball
America was one, and I've struck up a little prospecting friendship with him.
James Anderson had me on his show that was you know, all nice and
fun. I feel free to go back and check some of those out.
But point being because I really want to try to maintain some of that feel
with this podcast. And you know, when I first started, you know,
producing some content, I really wanted to try to keep myself out of
it in a sense and just observe and report. I hope that I could
maintain some of some of that feel. I really enjoyed doing that series,
but the amount of hours were just insane, writing and editing, video watching.
I have a job that I can watch a lot of stuff, work
overnights at a hospital with a lot of time to fill. But to do
that, I think it will be helpful, worthwhile to try to, i
don't know, maybe convey to you what it is that I look for and
how I try to value some things of that nature. So I want to
talk a little bit about one of the first pieces that I did at Picture
List, which was called using NFBC ADP and MLB draft histories to make informed
mistakes. I think that's what we called it. Sorry, but what we
did was my guy, Colin Charles, wrangled historical NFBC ADP, DAD an
MLB draft data and we put them together and tried to look at success rates
of different types of players fantasy wise. So the NFBC stuff it was ADP
rank, So the highest that players drafted from MLB Draft two thousand and twenty
fifteen reached inn. N FBC doesn't say anything about sustainability, how long they
may have been valued highly in a fantasy sense. And these are just kind
of a few of the most interesting takeaways that I took to just keep me
sort of in a very general sense what a prospect might be worth looking at,
like college hitters, college arms, high school hitters, high school arms,
top twenty pick in the MLB Draft, high school arm or hitter had
one third of a US rate That means they did not make the big leagues
at all. College players were approximately ninety percent of them made the bigs.
When you got to around the fiftieth pick of the MLB Draft, a third
of the preps made the bigs, whereas over seventy five percent of college players
did. When you got to about one hundredth pick, fourth of the preps
made it two thirds of the college players. The time it took college players
were approximately three years. Prep players were about four to five years to make
the big leagues. Now, since the condensing of the miners, I think
it's pretty safe to say that that's speeding up. So do with that what
you will. I would almost maybe want to shave a year off of that
or half a year. During this point of MLB draft history, we saw
prep arms taken in the top five picks, especially but early in the draft
not find very much fantasy success. Prep arms selected post pick fifty reached the
same fantasy heights as the big money prep arms. I think this seems to
be changing some though. Um, you know, just more technology, more
knowledge. I think teams are getting better at avoiding those same sort of busts
that they had. Can see it now with like, yeah, Andrew Painter,
it's looking pretty insane. Um, I feel like they were there seemed
to be like this chase to get like the next Clayton Kershaw. You know,
it's a prep arm that just quickly ascended, you know, from from
high school arm to fantasy stud for a very long time. I happened to
be on quite a Andrew Painter kick right now. I traded Luis Robert for
Painter and twenty twenty four first round pick in the first year player draft.
I don't know if that was smarter or not, but I did it.
It's an easy answer. Then we looked at just kind of some top prospects
top prospect list from that time, came up with might be the biggest takeaway
from it. You know, if if we can know how to value the
cream of the crop, so to speak, I think everything else could just
kind of cascade down and as you move out in the prospect world, what
we might be able to kind of value these guys at. But kind of
compared top five prospects from that time, the top five draft picks, and
here is what we took away. So top five draft picks, the sample
sizes of these are fairly small, so seventy nine of them over that time
span, twelve and a half percent of them. Ten of them became top
ten fantasy players, twenty percent of them, Top twenty five, twenty six
percent, Top fifty, thirty four percent, Top one hundred, fifty percent
top two hundred, so roughly fifty fifty shot at getting the top two hundred
player. Twenty two twenty three percent of them never got drafted in NFBC.
Now, the top five prospects, there was ninety five of them, and
granted over this time span, you're just talking MLB pipeline NBA, so I
know those aren't fantasy related, so you have to take that into accounts.
But eleven point six percent made top ten, twenty one point one percent,
top twenty five, thirty five percent, top fifty sixty four percent top one
hundred, which is, you know, double the rate of what a top
five draft pick was. Eighty seven percent became top two hundred, whereas you
know, only fifty percent of the top five draft picks did. The number
one draft pick overall MLB draft pick became top ten. Now is there's fifteen
of them, right, So five of the fifteen thirty three percent became top
ten assets, forty six point seven became at least top twenty five, fifty
three point three percent became top fifty sixty percent top one hundred, and seventy
three percent at least top two hundred. So a number one draft pick seemed
pretty safe, you know, relatively speaking, the safest. The number one
overall prospect became a top ten asset eighteen point eight percent of the time,
compared to thirty three percent of the time for the number one draft pick.
Thirty one percent, top twenty five or better, forty three percent top fifty
or better, eighty one percent top one hundred or better. They did better
becoming top one hundred compared to the number one draft pick, but not at
being super elite. It's a lot of number one. Has it ever occurred
to you that instead of you know, running around blaming me, you know,
given the nature of all this new shit, you know, this could
be a lot more complex. I mean, it's not just it might not
be just such a simple you know what in God's holy name are you blathering
about? I don't know. So at best, the best prospects in the
game we can count as being like now one in five are really going to
pan out for us fantasy wise, at least that's how it was historically.
I think, now what since like the vlad tiny tiny is different, but
Akunya, I don't know those classes. I think we've just seen a lot
of influx of young talent right now. Sometimes I wonder if that plays into
some of the overvaluing that I was seeing in my leagues of some of the
bigger prospects that you know, you start playing at that you start playing dynasty
at that time, and you're like, man, all these guys are all
these young guys are just gonna pop, and the previous fifteen years or so
it wasn't really so much like that. And breaking down the MLB draft a
little bit more, I think I've found a couple spots that we're kind of
sneaky good in a fantasy sense, Like college outfielders that were drafted fifty one
to one hundred, college pitchers drafted twenty one to fifty or paid like those
draft picks, you know, they did better than first round prep arms by
a significant amount, just fantasy success wise. Prep infielders drafted twenty one to
fifty, about eighteen percent of those became twelve team relevant. Prep outfielders drafted
fifty one to one hundred, about eight percent became twelve team relevant. And
then prep infielders drafted in that same range or paid like they were drafted in
that range, only seven percent became team relevant. So it was pretty apparent,
and you know, just an overall sense, college players were much more
productive, much safer. Now, all that being said, it's still imperative
to me that we you know, you got to evaluate every player, you
know, individually and they're not all going to fall under these same outcomes as
as their peers, their demographic peers, so to speak. When I was
working on this stuff, I reached out to people much smarter than me,
folks who work and investment and insurance fields, and you know, I'm completely
naive. I asked them, Hey, if I have, you know,
this investment, and it's a fifty percent chance at being this, a twenty
percent chance to be in this twenty percent chance to be in this, or
I have this investment that is you know, thirty percent, this, thirty
percent, that thirty whatever. Right, Um, is there a way to
like quantify which one's better? And you know that might sound like a really
stupid question, but I don't know math. People are wizards, morlocks and
things. I don't know, they do magical things. So I asked that
and the response always was, well, there's no way to, you know,
quantifiably say one is better than the other. It all depends on what
are your needs, what are you wanting to get out of it? And
so I sort of took that and thought about that a lot more. And
I have to say that that has really applied to me prospecting here, trying
to what do I want that I have to answer that question first before I
can decide how to value these prospects. So that's why a lot of ways,
I just have some trouble with numbers, certain numbers that I feel like
are trying to quantify unquantifiable things. And I'm not taking away the use of
these numbers. I think they can be useful for things. I think they're
just tools that I haven't found to be my main tools prospecting, like ranks,
because they're trying to which I understand is put a value on everybody relative
to each other. I want to know the value of the player relative to
what I'm seeking, if that makes sense. And some other numbers I have
problems with, or scouting grades, it's just not a language that I speak.
I don't pretend to understand. And you know, we're talking about developing
players. You know, Valley or whoever has got a whatever grade they put
on his curveball, Well, what was it at the end of the year.
Because especially when it comes to pitching grades, individual pitch grades, pitching
evolution is pitch evolution is crazy to me these days. Look at Gavin Stone
this last year, he went from an unremarkable changeup to arguably the best change
up in the minor leagues. And I know they'll have future grades and stuff
like that. I just I don't. It confuses me more than it helps
me. I guess it's a good way to put it. But ultimately my
biggest issue with numbers is that I was taught or picked up or learned or
I don't know, was imprinted on me in some way that numbers good research
should only lead to better questions, and I feel like when we used numbers
in the baseball world, it's always about this is my answer, this is
my number. I want to use the numbers to try to get better questions
answer things. That's where I really value getting eyes on players watching them.
It will often bring to light things that numbers will not. And then the
inverse is correct too. Don't get me wrong. There are numbers that will
will tell me my eyes were full of me, and you know, obviously
the best way to do it is to use both to find your good questions.
But like a good example was one of my we'll talk about him a
little bit in the future, but jo Hendrick Pinango was off two killers start
this year, tapped into the power that he wants that we were hoping for.
He was on par with Saderstrom, if not better, and then he
just fell off a cliff statistically production wise. Why was that? What we
find out he's playing with an injury, right, Kate Cavallei, who I
mentioned previously, is curveball execution got so much better. People to have taken
some notice to that now, But they're also talking about it in a sense
of like usage, Well the usage went up. Well, yeah, the
usage went up because he finally could execute it and would throw it more.
You know, So just a lame example of putting some stuff together and players
stats tell you about the history of their production. More prospecting, especially b
siding, we want to look for the things that are going to bring change
in the future, that are going to be different in the future. How
we necessarily go about do that is? And I think evergoing process and and
just some generic thoughts about when I'm watching pictures and hitters. When I'm watching
pictures, I always think about this guy a cheat code guy or is he
more precision? Does this guy have just god given offerings that are gonna lead
to success or does this guy put the ball where he wants to at such
a higher clip than everybody else that that's going to lead to his success.
And then when you get the marriage of the two is when you get the
real the real studs, the real fins thinking about hitting. And I admit
I have much to learn, but I want to see very balanced guy.
I want to see, you know, good swing decisions and all that.
I want to see efficient strokes. I want to see a guy who's able
to catch the ball you know, behind him, directly, you know,
center to him and in front of him. Leads to all the fields.
Hitting Often guys who can just react to velocity, lean inside and they can
look away. I often think about a tweet out there were was don tape
of Chett talking about waft. Like I said, about catching the ball behind
you. So I'm more drawn to like aggressive young hitters who want to get
their swings in, guys who hit the ball the other way at a young
age already and then just kind of go from there. When it comes to
like power, I don't know. To me, it's more about the shape
of the home run, the nature of the home run, than it is
the quantity of them. But we I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more
about that as we move along, wrapping things up. I just wanted to
leave with a couple of rules, a couple of things to think about.
If we're gonna if you're gonna come along and do some B siding with me,
loosen up, accept some of the warts. We aren't contemplating a first
round pick. There are reasons that these guys are B sides. These guys
do pop. Look at an All Star game, Look at Paul Goldschmidt,
who was once I believe, an eighth round draft pick out of Texas State,
who just won an MVP. Don't overdo the age for level thing.
I think there's a really there's a lot of misc poor understanding of it right
now since the minor leagues have changed. Just saw Keith's law. Somebody posted
in the Prospect Prospect one room. Then he didn't did all of his production.
Casey Schmidt did all of his production when he was an a ball at
twenty three. Well that was a half year older. So don't overdo the
age for level thing. Understand that a lot of the style, a lot
of the players that were looking at are like you know, potentially edge of
roster guys, guys make forty man rosters all the time that are in fantasy
radars, and those guys do pop. Don't be afraid of the lack of
recognition by the fantasy world of a player that you might be into. Pull
the trigger sooner rather than later, especially if, especially if your league allows
for turning and burning prospect pickups, and you know understand your league format.
Try to understand the type of player that you want. And yeah, I
think I'll stop rambling here. Appreciate you joining me. I look forward to
getting into some of this stuff and actually talking about players. I think that'll
be a lot more exciting than this stuff. Going to try to drop an
episode every week every Monday, I think is the plan. Next week we
will do the NL West and we will talk about B sides. I am
watching from that division. Don't hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter if
you like at prospects No, that's not it. At Pitching Specs, we
have survived the first episode the Prospect B Sides. Thank you, and I
want to give big shout out again to Wells thanks for letting me do this.
And I also want to give a shout out to my good friend Chad
Staley, who's a successful musician and music guy. Hard working Americans, great
American taxi and Nighthawks. He's been involved in a lot of things, but
he was also involved with Chicago Farmer I'm a fan of and they both graciously
let me use the clip that brought us in and we'll bring us out.
Be well. Taught to you Monday, ninety five miles an hour riding to
his head. He hobbled down the first with the lump on his face,
and on the very next pitch he up and stole second face with greatst speed.
He wasn't born, but he had the daddy ass. Uniful