Not five miles an hour riding too his head. He hopping down first with
the lumpbonius face, and on the very next pitch he up and stole second
face with gretest be he wasn't born, he had yes uniform. Welcome to
episode twenty three of the Prospect Besides podcast. I am your host Nate Handy,
joining me as always is Matt the Rook and joining us tonight the very
special guest Beck you might know him, is at upper Beck Dynasty. Dugout.
How are you, gentlemen? Excellent? So excited to have the Points
League genius on mister upper Beck, upper being your first name, right,
that's that's right, can go by yes, a grist name, upper last
name, surname Beck. Yeah, that's on the birth certificate. It's great
to be here, guys. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thanks
for coming. I've been super curious to ask you. So it's been about
thirty years since your big mainstream loser hit. What has been going on over
the last thirty years that you went from that to now the Prospect b Sides
podcast. Well, you know, they don't tell you this about the music
industry, but it only takes one and then you can coast for about thirty
years and eventually the money drives up and you end up on a podcast with
Nate and the rook Moving Up, Man Moving Up. Fantastic. This is
the second hit. We should be so lucky having you on. I mean,
you've been a busy guy over the past couple of weeks. You know,
posted excellent piece of work for US Points leaders in your Top one hundred,
and have done a bit of the podcast circuit as well. We are
thrilled that you have carved on some time to join us here on the B
sides. But why do you start by giving us a little bit of background,
like how'd you get into baseball, how'd you get into playing fantasy?
And you know, why did you start writing about it? Yeah? Well,
one, thank you for the praise that feels a little gratuitous. I
love baseball. I've loved baseball from a young age. It's funny. I
actually my dad had no interest in baseball, and when I started t ball,
he kind of like jumped off the deep end. He immediately became a
Brewer season ticket holder and we would go to just a ton of them every
year. He also gave them away for business and whatnot. But for me,
it started at a very early age, and then you know, my
dad kind of got into it through me, so it's always been kind of
a father son thing. I've been to probably three hundred something Brewers games,
kind of grew up in Miller Park, I will not call it an American
family field, and kept playing through high school. I decided not to pursue
that at a D two or D three level in college, and so it's
just been a lifelong passion. If I could choose how to spend any given
day, it would almost definitely be in a ballpark. That's why I love
the Arizona Fall League so much, because I get to do it three times
in one day every once in a while. Took a brief hiatus from baseball
while I was in college. I actually became, you know, the dreaded
fantasy football guy that is going to talk to you about their draft strategy in
econ one to one in some sweaty lecture hall, and then kind of boomeranged
right back to it. So I've been back in the swing, you know,
for five six years now, and decided, you know, I've got
all of these baseball and baseball adjacent thoughts bouncing around. They're a little deafening.
Let's get these down on papers so I don't go crazy nice now,
Beck, you're a cheesehead. Now, I too, have lived in Wisconsin.
I don't know if this is a northeast Wisconsin thing strictly or not,
but like, do you have a favorite supper club? Oh, that is
a very northern Wisconsin thing to ask. I don't. I've been to a
number of them. There's one just outside of Madison, Wisconsin. If the
name strikes me while we're doing the podcast, I'll just blurt it out.
Okay, right on. Now, I'm a huge I'm a huge supper club
guy. So I've spent some time in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but I can't
say I'm familiar with a supper club. What is that for US West coasties?
Essentially? And I don't know, it's it's been a minute, so
I've lived in Wisconsin, so maybe they've evolved a little bit. But I
think part of the whole the steak of a supper club is that there isn't
really anything that evolves. It's basically like a nineteen sixties style menu more or
less. So some classic you know, fair and then in Wisconsin, especially
in northeast, you'll have like a Friday fish fry special of some sort.
They're often darkly lit restaurants, not very very modern looking. I wouldn't say
padded arm rests on the bar is pretty much I don't know, maybe not
one hundred percent across the board's supper club feature, but part of it.
You come in, you sit at the bar, you have a couple of
drinks. While you're waiting, they usually will have some like cheese and crackers,
different fair like that out while you're waiting, You go in, you
eat your meal, you eat your your fish fry or your prime rib or
what have you. And then it's kind of customary to have a frozen alcoholic
beverage of some sort of grasshopper, brandy Alexander something like that. But yeah,
it's just kind of like your your Friday night, it's Saturday night,
fancy dinner and yeah, interesting, Okay, it's the height of class for
people who carry it like a point oh eight bac. It's true. It's
true, all right, that makes a lot of sense. My host dad,
when I lived in Minnesota and played there, he loved fishing on the
lakes, in the summertime and loved talking about the fish fry afterwards. And
you know, I've done like West coast fishing, river fishing, and deep
sea fishing. And then I come to Minnesota and we're up in these tiny
little lakes, you know, fishing for crappie and a little bit of walleye
maybe if if we get lucky, and then we come back with like thirty
of these little tiny crappies and then just fry them all up. And I'd
never done that, and all the Midwestern boys that we were with were like,
Oh, no, this is this is what we do everywhere. Yeah,
this is standard. I still it's been over twenty years since I've moved
to Colorado, and still every Friday night, I'm like, God, damn
it, I need a fish fry. Yeah, and that a fishing is
huge around here. I mean, there is kind of an ideological war between
Minnesota and Wisconsin on who actually has more lakes. It's proven Wisconsin, definitely,
I think. So the root of the argument is how the DNR in
each state actually defines a lake. In Minnesota, the definition of a lake
is much smaller than that of Wisconsin, and so officially recorded Minnesota has more
lakes, but their criteria is much less restrictive. They're cheaters, is what
that saying. Yeah, not in so many words, but yeah, I
love it. We're on a really niche fantasy baseball podcast and we're talking about
the ontological definitions of what constitutes a lake in between Wisconsin and Minnesota. This
is gold, boys gold that I've seen bar fights start. Oh yeah,
this is not This is the heated argument. It's serious business. Now.
What the challenge is is how do you segue from that to anything resembling fantasy
baseball. It's a bit of an impossible task. But you know what's also
an impossible task is coming up with coherent, useful rankings for points leagues.
And you're the points league guy, and personally, this has been my favorite
kinds of formats to play. You know, I started on the roto side,
classic categories, but I have been drawn to the more what I would
say, varied and interesting challenges posed by points leagues, like getting a Wisconsin
I and I'm min a Sultan to agree on the definition of a lake.
How do you put out rankings that make sense across all these different kinds of
points leagues that is one of life's great questions. I jumped into the whole
points league thing with a little bit of naivete about how varied that experience can
be, and so when I set out, we did some research on how
are the primary platforms for fantasy baseball different across their point scoring settings, and
how might that influence the way that you construct a team that also varies beyond
just the point scoring settings themselves, also varies across head to head or season
long points. Those kinds of things can have a big bearing on how you
might approach that particular problem. Eventually, I ended up running a poll and
saying like, Okay, if you're a points league person, where are you
spending most of your time, where is the majority of your leagues hosted?
And it ended up being pretty overwhelmingly fan tracks. It wasn't even a plurality,
it was a majority outright. Almost all of my work is tailored specifically
for fan tracks, and then once I've settled those ranks, I will adjust
them if I get questions from folks about, hey, I have this Yahoo
league or ESPN or god forbid, CBS, here's how I might translate those
things. But in general, there are some principles that you can pull forward
that I think are helpful. Shorthand, and now, Beck, do you
play in just strictly points leagues or do you play in other formats as well?
It is my preferred format, and it is also predominant format that I
play. I do have a league or two out there some stragglers that are
still cats or Roto. But if I'm joining any new leagues, unless it's
you know, something like TGFBI, I am probably playing a points format right
on. I tend to prefer points as well personally what I started playing many
years ago. Nont my two cents. I mean, we don't have to
get into this too much here. It's not like a debate to me.
But but things like Roto and categories is an extremely different game to me than
points. Roto had to have that sort of thing to me, that's more
of like a numbers game. That's more of like a stat game where points
now you can argue all day long how well they do it. But I
think a good points scoring system comes up with one single number to value a
player offensively, and it's more of a of a baseball game, if you
will, in my opinion. Anyways, sometimes you can tell talking to somebody
and I have friends like this, and this is and being judgmental, but
it's like, man, your your scope of what a good baseball player is
is very much with rotisserie style league lenses on my friend, I'm sorry,
but Jonathan VR is not that great of a player or was it or whatever?
Right, But like like you're saying, within points leagues, there's a
lot of different scoring. For me, the first first thing that I kind
of look at it at a points league is like, okay, what's the
difference between a stolen base and a home run? Points wise? You know,
roster size, league size, What what does the waiverpool look like?
I think is very important. What's what's the free replacement level player that you
can have producing? And then off of that, to me, all the
all the player values go off of how different that player can be, how
much better that player can be in relation to what's free out there? And
uh, and I know, Beck, I I'd asked you this. I
mean, this is probably a little while ago, probably when I, you
know, first discovered that you were stopped doing music and we're doing baseball stuff.
I was like, hey, man, in your top one hundred,
how many pictures do you put in that? Because I lean very heavy,
I'm going after pictures. I feel like if you can get a top tier
picture, that's such bigger advantage than getting the top toier hitter. So how
many pictures did you did you put in your top one hundred? We're going
to be pulling off the top of the head here, so bear with me.
But I think it was somewhere between twenty five and thirty. I know
if this was Nate's list, that number would probably be closer to an even
split fifty to fifty. I do think that you're right there is in most
points formats probably greater value and absolutely spiking on a prospect arm. At the
same time, translating a minor league picture into a rotation guy who's gonna throw
thirty starts a year is very difficult. I think that's more difficult than you
know, producing a top of the scale. Bat think that's fair. It's
back. I just double checked you and it was twenty seven, so right
down and nailed it. Yeah. I don't know if you saw this back,
but someone in the Dynasty dugout. I think yesterday was like, okay,
this guy in my points league is drafting all pitchers. Yeah, that
was going to work. But then when you started asking the guy about it,
sorted making a lot more sense to me. Right, they had only
like nine hitters in their starting lineup. It was like a twelve team league,
small benches. It's like, well, then that makes a ton of
sense to me that you because you would just pick up your average hitter for
nothing. So yeah, exactly, And I mean if it's if you're able
to just stack pitchers with two starts and essentially have a league average hitter on
the wire for free, that might make a little bit of sense. The
one thing that was weird about that, and just for context for everybody,
someone was in the discord talking about how they were fourteen rounds into a startup
draft and there was a team in their league that had drafted fourteen straight pitchers,
which is a little reminiscent of like the Angels in twenty twenty one,
where they just took twenty straight arms in the MLB draft, so a little
bit higher stakes. You know, Nate was poking and proud in a little
bit trying to understand, well, is this as crazy as it seems?
And as we learn more, it started you know, to feel a little
bit like a viable strategy or at least something worth trying. The only thing
that held me up was there was no trading in this league. It was
kind of a draft and hold, And so with that surplus, what are
you really doing? You know, there's not the ability to deal one a
way and improve around the margins of your team. But given the how relatively
shallow the starting lineup was for bats, made a little bit of sense to
me. Yeah, we've talked about this before too, Nate, with depending
on your format, if you aren't capped per week or per day in how
many starters you can run out there. Even if your porn's format really tries
to depress the value of pictures, it still can be an optimal strategy to
have no hitters on your bench. Just run the men out there of your
starting lineup, and if you've got a bunch of stud pictures that you can
roll through every single day. Like one of the leagues that I play in
is like that, and the points the highest point scorers are always hitters,
and it's like out of the top thirty, maybe three or pitchers, but
we don't have start caps, and so all of the good teams have their
full bench. Eight players on their bench are all starting pitchers that you just
run through, and so you want two three, four starters going a day,
and that's how you win your head to head matchups, not with you
know, Aaron Judge and a bunch of studs in your starting lineup. So
it's an interesting thing that your points format can really skew. It can be
really different based on how you set that up and what are the rules.
Definitely, yeah, I mean rule number one for antacy any fantasy league is
understand your scoring settings and your format. A little shocking how often I go
into like two catcher leagues and people don't realize that and don't adjust the way
that they're constructing a team, or it's a five outfielder league and people are
just not catching on. And so it sounds very reductive. But the number
one thing you have to do as a fantasy player is understand the game that
you're playing. That even gets it. You know, one of the things
that we touched on before, or fan track standard points has one setup whether
you know what the value is for a stolen base versus a home run.
But you took a shot at setting up a points format too, and I
was curious, how did you go about that, What were some of the
things that went into that, and when you were trying to think about how
you want to set up the points in a league. Yeah, it was
an interesting experience. I feel very grateful to have had the ability to play
test some of the ideas that I had about what the ideal point scoring format
would be, you know, a baseball fantasy baseball utopia. It would,
in my opinion, a points format would replicate to the best of its ability,
the product on the field and how valuable players are in real baseball.
I don't think that's possible in rotisserie, just because you're highlighting you know,
ten categories five across hitting, five across pitching that may or may not have
any bearing on the actual outcome of a baseball game. And so I wanted
to start there to a degree. But what I was really focus on was
how do we create a league where the balance between hitting and pitching is as
optimal as it can be and there are as few kind of loopholes, for
lack of a better term, where you're rolling out three or four starting pitchers,
for example, you know your example previously and you would have to focus
on constructing a more full and complete team. So what did you land on?
How did you express that? Because you know, one of the formats
that I think a decent number of people play is the autnew points format on
Fangraphs, which tries to get a little bit of that with you know,
they I think, do contracts as well as express the point values as it
relates to the linear weights of WHOBA and things like that. But that's,
you know, maybe a little bit more in depth than some people want to
get into. So how did you take that same idea and then convert that
into a points format? I will say we primarily focused on the balance between
pitching and hitting, and the biggest part of that was pulling three or five
years of history oracle outputs and then running them through different point scoring settings to
ensure that, you know, for the top twenty five there was a relatively
even split between pitchers and hitters. The top fifty there is a relatively even
split. The standard deviation between the top player, you know, whatever of
whatever population or whatever position were relatively similar so that you don't have you know,
people cycling relief pitchers or starting pitchers or hoarding a ton of bench bats.
You have to kind of organically build each part of your roster with equal
care, or have a strategy right where it's like you might have a better
starting rotation and then you got to make do with your bats or vice versa,
which incidentally is the problem that many Major league teams have to go through.
Or you could just be the Rockies and just kind of not care,
just have good deer and just there you go. I mean, you don't
have to worry about park factor or a bad owner or anything like that.
Ideally quick tangent. Just while I'm on the rock, did you see Nate
the article on fangrafts today. No, Oh, my goodness, you're gonna
love it. It's a Michael Bauman special, who I think is their funniest
writer at the moment, and he took a crack at how he can make
this current version of the Rockies one hundred and seven win team with changing nothing,
and it's it is very funny. But also it just looks at the
futility of the exercise too, that it's like literally one in many billions of
chance, they all hit their ninetieth percent ale or better, and that gets
up to one hundred and seven wins, which is like anyway that it was.
It made me think of you when I was reading that one this afternoon.
I'm sure it did. I don't know if you did this back when
you started playing points leagues, but I mean, I think you're essentially trying
to come up with like a fantasy like war, right. I mean,
it's kind of impossible to get one metric that will just, you know,
measure the totality of the value of a player, But essentially I think that's
what you're trying to do with the scoring system, right. And the mistake
that I made in my early days of points was I mean, I guess
I didn't really realize it at the time, but I had some sort of
projection system. I was guessing what a player's production might be for the year,
translating that to the amount of points they would score. Me line those
up from the most to the least, and hey, that's how I'm gonna
draft my guys. Well, that fails to what's something we alluded to earlier,
but that fails to like measure the relation of that player to its position
and where you can use it and how the point values will drop as you
move down a list of hitters as opposed to pitchers, et cetera. I'm
a bit of a spreadsheet jockey in my professional life, and so one thing
I always recommend to people who are either starting with Fantasy Baseball and their first
foray is going to be a points league, or someone that is transitioning from
rotisserie, which is by far the most widely available format, play with projections.
Understand, you know, if I run whatever your favorite projection system is
through the scoring settings, how does everything shake out and how should that change
my draft strategy? And maybe the most important thing is find kind of the
cutoff of your player pool, how many players are going to be rostered,
and then start to calculate that above replacement value for every player that's going to
be rostered, and you can start to get a sense of like where might
there be positional scarcity and how might I need to prioritize different parts of my
team throughout a draft. And then you know that also holds true every year
when your league starts back up, I mean, dynasties kind of you know,
around the clock, but when you're you know, jumping back into waivers
are open again, calculate that again, update your projections, and really understand
the lay of the land in your league. I saw somebody asking about that
in the Dynasty Dugout discord the other day, and they had payed a couple
of us and we're asking for some input about some specific players, and as
like, well, you know what I would do is start with the Fangrafts
auction calculator. And if you don't want to build out your own full spreadsheet
and do the nitty gritty work that Beck's talking about, it's a great place
to start. And even if it doesn't have all of the categories or all
of the different points permutations that you need for your specific league, it is
a great sanity check to see what are the values do I need to think
differently about a player based on this particular point settings. And it's actually a
great segue into the exercise that I cooked up for us today that one of
us at least did some homework for. We're going to explore that topic a
little bit. So I play in a bunch of different points league's formats and
I love it both because of what Nate was talking about earlier that I think
there's something really fun about trying to distill the value from very different shapes of
production into one set of points one point total. And it's so different depending
on the league that you're playing in. It's not just rinse and repeat the
same five y five or six by six head to head categories. Leagues that
fantasy Baseball came from, there's a place for that, but points leagues and
the fact that they value things so differently, it kind of messes with your
head when you first do it, and you're like, wait, this player
is a top fifty player, No way, how can that possibly be?
He's like barely rosterble in the major leagues. And I think that that is
an interesting nuance that I think that even in the Dynasty dug At discord,
which people are pretty good about saying what their league type is and trying to
be upfront about their valuations, I think sometimes we underestimate how big the shifts
can be in valuing players. So what I did is I cooked up a
little exercise and excuse for us to talk about some sort of weird players that
their the shape of their production might not be recognized by the five by five
community as particularly noteworthy, but in certain points formats they might stand out.
So we've got three different kinds of points formats. The Beck points League,
which think of that as like this one is close to linear weights, so
players that are good in the major leagues generally are good in this format.
It's i would say, more true to their on field like real world value,
you know, accepting defense. Then there's a power focused format, which
is one of the ones that I play in, where the points are kind
of ridiculous. It's like power hitters reign supreme. Strikeouts basically don't matter,
and so people like even well, we'll get into that. There are some
interesting names that pop in that kind of a format. And then there's another
format which you see in various points leagues, which is really similar to one
that Nate and I play in, which is a strikeout penalty heavy league.
So this is where, yeah, you get points for all these other things,
but compared to the negative penalty from a strikeout, you really have to
pay attention to that case rate. And we'll share the kind of formats either
in the show description or somewhere on the social medias. I don't know how
that all works, but I think the ny can figure that out. But
we're going to talk about some different guys, different players at sort of your
top fifty level, your top two hundred bat that might play way up in
that particular league. And then somebody that's a deep league target, so five
hundred, four hundred plus in sort of NFBC draft lingo, but maybe it
is actually like a top two hundred or top two fifty bat. And then
we'll talk a little bit about some prospects and how that might change depending on
the kind of league that you're into, your your own personal valuation, and
how you might want to adjust how you look at appoints league's top one hundred
with your own league's lens in it does? Does that make sense? Makes
perfect sense to me? All right? Well, Beck, well you're the
guest, so we'll start with you, like thinking it from a top one
hundred NFBC kind of bat, you know, going routinely in that ADP,
but someone that might actually push for top twenty five, top twenty value given
your format. So we'll start with the Beck's format. Who's a name that
might jump out that is, you know, back end top one hundred NFBC
value, but sits maybe in your top twenty five for a Beck Points League
valuation. Sure neither of these maybe broach the top twenty five value. They
also both play up very significantly in a heavy K penalty format. Generally speaking,
they are much more valuable than where they go in roto formats. The
two names that I have in mind for the BES Points League is Stephen Kwan's
not going to strike out at all, great defender, he's a compiler.
He's going to, you know, get six hundred, six hundred and fifty
played appearances the top of Cleveland's lineup and is just as steady as they come.
There is a strikeout penalty in the Beck's Points League format, it's half
a point. That's pretty standard, but he plays way up there. And
again it's by virtue of he's not going to bleed points by way of strikeout.
He's going to be on base a lot, he's going to make a
ton of contact, he's going to compile. All of those things are extremely
valuable. And then maybe the second name, similar archetype or the same archetype
more or less is Luis Rise, who routinely goes outside the top one hundred,
but also routinely finishes around the fifty to seventy five mark in Fantrak Standard
and in this particular scoring setting in a very similar fashion, again not striking
out, getting on base a lot, making things happen with balls in play,
and compiling just a ton of play appearances. Those are both great call
outs and ones that pop on a Beck format and certainly on a strikeout heavy
penalty format as well. I'll jump in with a guy or two of mine
and then we'll toss it over to Nate. For me. One of these
guys that I think is consistently undervalued relative to a five x five format is
Alex Bregman. So he's another one that has underwhelming exsit velocities but really strong
plate discipline. You know, he limits strikeouts really really well, especially for
someone who is kind of selling out for the power that he has, so
trying to pull a lot of flyballs. That can lead to increased strikeout rates,
but for Alex Bregman it does not, and he puts up you know,
ninety to ninety five runs and RBIs twenty twenty five home runs every year,
and that translates to really strong production in a Beck type points league because
he limits the strikeouts so much so Bregman, to me, is one of
the classic archetypes of how does he keep doing this? How do you know?
He's sort of medium for a five x five format, even in his
best years, but for a points league format he is an exceptionally good hitter
and that translates really well. And then the other one that I wanted to
touch on was Xander Bogart's, who I think some maybe have slid him down
their dynasty boards or their prefless from his last couple of years, But you
look at the shape of his production, and even though some of the exit
velocities I think are trending the wrong way, he still provides a really really
great return. Given points league set up like bex where the strikeouts are limited,
he still has power. He's fleet enough of foot that he's going to
swipe a bag or two or fifteen. And I think that those across the
board production that can play up even more in a points league rather than someone
that maybe in your five x five is like a steals only kind of producer
or a home run only producer, whereas in a points format someone like Bogarts
or Regman, they are likely to return top thirty, top forty, value
and both are going, you know, after like about pick hundred in NFBCS.
So I think those are ones that, like they become kind of superstars
in a points league format, whereas they are undervalued in others. May you
got anybody? No? I mean, I think you guys kind of nailed
the bigger ones. Yeah, I don't. I don't know if I have
anyone. I want to say, is push his top twenty five that you
guys haven't mentioned? All right, Well, how about I don't go ahead
back about top twenty five. I'm just thinking as you were walking through Bregman
and Bogie, a couple of other names come to mind. One is Brian
Reynolds. Probably not thought of as an elite fantasy asset, plays very much
so up in points formats. He doesn't use his legs, a ton doesn't
strike out, A ton plays for the Pirates, So it's off and overlooked
and is again going to get a ton of played appearances, going to rack
up a lot of those counting stats, going to put twenty five balls in
the seats. One of my favorites to target right around pick one hundred.
I would value him closer to top fifty, top sixty and then another one
that has been you know, pretty free for a while in terms of you
know, going outside the top one fifty. Max Munsey was also an excellent
Dynasty asset for a very long time. I'm still kind of buying the dip
on him, and plays really well in the Becks Points League and any Points
league, you know, for the most part. I won't speak for every
league because there are some strange ones out there, but generally speaking, Max
months he's been a good investment over the last four five years. Good good
shouts both. Royce Lewis seems like a guy who might produce top twenty five
ish that isn't isn't there yet in this format, right, Yeah. I
mean he's a guy that I think he showed quite a bit of the ceiling
last year. And I will say I've tried to acquire him recently because I've
got a couple of gaps for third basement. It just so happens in a
couple of my teams, and he appears near untouchable. So I don't know
if he's in that top one hundred anymore. He's he's i think closer to
at value these days, just you know, hit five Grand Slams in a
year and people apparently start paying attention fair enough. But let's let's talk in
one of those kind of funkier format formats, Nate, this format that I
put in there is very you know, the point scoring itself is skewed a
little bit higher. I guess I could have translated it down, so it
was more on a format with some of the other ones that we play.
But it's very, very power heavy. So for the listeners at home,
if you hit a home run, solo home run is sixteen points just one
solo home run, and a strikeout is minus one. So you can hit
a lot of homers or not even that many homers and strike out an absurd
amount of times and you're still not dipping into the negative. So with the
create this league, Jake Berger was a stud in this league, I tell
you that. So with that in mind, though, Nate, is there
anybody that pops to mind for you in that, like, you know,
call it top one hundred plus or minus thirty picks or something, but you
could see pushing top twenty five ish value this upcoming year. All right,
So someone who's kind of outside the top one hundred but might hit a shit
ton of home runs this year, So what you're saying, Yeah, yeah,
well, I mean there's I might just start with the Reds given their
ballparking what have you. But uh, I don't know, maybe not necessarily
a player that I that I that's my style. But in Canarcy on Strand
seems like a guy who I mean, if you hit enough home runs in
that league, like who were the top twenty five players in that league last
year? He seems like a guy who could hit enough home runs. Maybe
Berger could hit enough home runs. I don't know where Tristan Casa sits right
now, but he seems like you could hit enough hit for enough power to
be I don't know, Top twenty five might be pushing it, but yeah,
I don't know. I think of the three like that's that's probably the
one, and I think that could push top twenty five value with with a
full season of what he showed down the stretch last year, I think that's
a good shout. I'll turn over to Beck, who jumps out in a
power focused league like this, I mean, Kyle Swarber's kind of the classic
one, just a total windmill. Almost got to fifty last year. I
mean, he's still probably a top fifty guy in most point scoring formats simply
because of the power and the OBP kind of flour there, So not a
huge jump. I'd like sola I'd like Solaire there too, the large park
home run specialist. Do you think he's gonna hit thirty? Why not?
I mean, obviously health and why would that now be in him to do
It's got a thirty home run hitter in like twenty years since mister Barry Bonds.
Yeah really yeah, it started seventeen different left fielders and seventeen seasons without
a thirty plus home run back. He had a gob with the Royals,
he hit a lot with the Marlins. Yeah, a different air there and
what have you. But I don't think I mean, if there's somebody who's
going to do it, I think he's a good pick to be that guy.
Another name that comes to mind for that format for me is Nolan Gorman.
I think having that that's a good run at second base with, you
know, in a format where you're able to stomach some of that with feels
like a good shout. Maybe a little bit deeper. Someone like Matt Wallner
could be a very valuable outfielder despite him being a windmill for a very long
time, even as a minor leaguer. And I think he'll get a good
amount of run in Minnesota, so that might be a place where I'm trying
to hitch my wagon for a cheaper than true value price. We'll get into
the deep shots here here in a minute. Sticking in the kind of top
tier, a guy that I really like way above his current draft position is
Dansby Swanson. So Swanson has been, you know, knock on wood,
a pillar of health as well. I know that Nate loves talking about Cubs
and it hurts me as a Braves fan a little bit to see him in
that cubby blue instead of with the Braves. But Swanson, both as a
shortstop and one that has done a pretty good job optimizing for his power,
I think, is one that plays way up in this kind of format.
And when I was looking at my rankings and I think this is towards the
end of the season last year, I was like, man, Swanson continues
to produce in this kind of format because he gets a lot of his production
out of his home runs. But he's also one of those compilers and he's
on base a lot. He got I think six hundred and fifty played appearances
last year. He's played in one hundred and sixty games for like the last
three seasons. And doing that and showing that health as a skill and hitting
at the top of the a pretty good Cubs lineup is a good way to,
uh, to optimize for your your points leagues too. So Swanson,
even though he's like in the one twenties, I think for NFBCS, think
he's going to return like top thirty hitter value for this upcoming season, power
heavy focus league. So he's one if you've got you might knock on the
door and see if Swanson's available, if your leak rewards that kind of that
shape of production. I think your guy Ozuna is another one too. I
don't think we oh yeah mentioned him. Yeah, he's a good one for
sure, for sure, My guy Ozuna from the Braves your best friend.
That's such a good meme. That's it's so memorable. Well, we already
started diving into it a little bit, but let's let's go aroun deeper.
And we've already mentioned a couple of names I think from this tier. You
know, somebody that's like maybe a top two hundred, top two fifty bat
in a five x five league, but is firmly top one hundred or top
seventy five for you. And I'll kick it off just with the new Stephen
Kwan, we'll call him with Jung Huli, who like Stephen Kwan. I
think he's gonna have similar shape of production and that he's not going to strike
out a lot. He's not going to hit for a ton of power,
but isn't gonna cause a lot of negative points for your teams, and it
might take a little bit for him to adjust to the league. So this
again is like your prior shouldn't change very much with the first weeks of the
season, and that includes spring training. So if Lee struggles as you might
expect him to, because folks like Hassan Kim did the same in the transition
from the KBO to the MLB, you might want to keep an eye on
the Jung Huli owner and see if they are expressing frustration over the early production,
especially in a strikeout penalty heavy league, because that I have a feeling
that he's going to be a really, really strong asset that is currently going
you know about two hundred, you know, late first round in fypdes is
what I've seen, and in redrafts like late two hundreds or sorry, early
two hundreds, but in your strikeout heavy penalty formats, that might be a
really good target, especially if he scuffles out of the gate, because I
think he's going to look a lot like Stephen Kwan with maybe a couple more
homers and a little bit lower batting average at least to start, but any
very very similar production. So Joha Lee is one that I'm certainly targeting in
that mid tier range, and I'm hoping to acquire a share to maybe in
one of the leagues that we play in. Nate Beck, who you got
in this kind of mid tier range, like thinking about or a strikeout penalty
heavy format or a BEX league points league format that is in that kind of
two hundred ish range, but you think is firmly better than that. Yeah,
I really like the Jung Huli shout. That's a great one. The
name that I had in mind is going or I just checked going earlier than
two hundred. So if we need to get a deeper name, swing back
to me in a minute or two. But YONDI Diaz is one that is
kind of continuously undervalued across all points formats and only gets more valuable the steeper
your K penalty is. Hits the crap out of the ball is learning to
put the ball in the air more often, doesn't strike out. I like
that raised lineup even without a pretty notable you know, missing piece there,
and he goes later than he should all the time. And then maybe you
know another name that I like in K penalty formats that is going later is
Bryson Stott. He is projected for like a seventeen percent strikeout rate. Obviously,
as your penalty it gets a little bit higher, He's going to play
up even more simply because you're avoiding the loss of that point kind of broke
out a little bit last year. I like him as a cog in the
potent Phillies lineup, and you're gonna get him really cheap. He might also
carry multi positional eligibility in some formats, which is a nice bonus, nice
one. I'm a big DZ fan. I've got in a bunch of places,
Nate, who you got who you got in this kind of range for?
I mean, I know Beck will back me up here. But I
like seal Relick. I mean, this might be a little bit deeper than
the range we're talking about, but yes, this sort of scoring, let's
go. Yes, what is it about Frelick's production that speaks to you,
Nate? Well, you know he's pretty high contact, right, he's speedy.
I don't know how many bags do you think he's going to steal back?
Because I've gone back and forth between thinking that he could be like a
forty bag guy to yeah, maybe not so much. Yeah, I don't
know, And this is more conjecture on my part than it is anything else.
But the Brewers are feigning like they might move him all over the diamond.
He may not be as focused on swiping bags if he's trying to play
elite outfield defense and also pick up second base and third base duties. He
certainly has some straight line speed. He's shown a propensity to steal a bag
here and there. I think of him as more of a twenty solen based
guy. But at the same time, who knows what the rule changes his
second full year as a pro or as a big leaguer. I should say
maybe he is a little bit more comfortable swiping a bag and then the other
thing that's a little bit difficult is the Bruce have ANUE head coach. I
don't really know what his philosophy is going to be on stealing bases and how
aggressive they're going to be. So the range of outcomes for his kind of
stolen based output I think lives between like fifteen and thirty. Well, I
will say when when Pat Murphy coached against yours, truly their team stole a
lot of bases. That was a huge part of the ASU teams when he
was the head coach there. So I don't think he's had a big league
head coaching job before, right, He's a bench coach guy. Yeah,
So I mean maybe he'll revert to some of those roots when back when he
was the boss at ASU, it was just a lot of fun to watch.
I would be very pleased if that were the style of ball we were
playing with we my team and I if that was the style of ball we
were playing with such a young group of players, I would enjoy that a
lot. Just to better answer your question, Matt, just Janaire speaking,
the guy who's strikeouts aren't going to be shouldn't be that big of a deal.
He's going to put the ball in the play a lot, but he
just he doesn't have probably like the impact that makes him super enticing in your
rotisserie leagues and what have you. And how do folks say that he's a
very good pure hitter. But yeah, he's a very good pure here,
but I don't want him on my fantasy team, on my road road team
era, and he's a Hall of Famer. I think Frelic's a great one
and fits really well with that archetype that we're kind of hitting on here with
Lee and Kwan, and I dropped to these points in the fangrafts auction calculator
and Frelick it says in their redrafts are going to ninety one, but he's
ninety second overall as a hitter. So that is like huge value in this
kind of league. And so again it just speaks to you if you know
your format, you can get some real steals in here, and to go
even like deeper, like like our B side territory that I like, Richie
Pelacio's something like that too, as a potential real late round or waiver wire
type guy. It's very high either the show sheet, we've got another layer
deeper to go all right man in this same range for like power production,
I was surprised at how well our guy Ezekiel Tovar showed out. So this
is in that same kind of like going after pick two hundred, but for
power focused league. The thing that I think plays up for Tovar in that
kind of league is A He's going to get a lot of plate appearances like
that's still going to be a productive offense, and he's going to hit near
the top of it. And B his problem isn't hitting the ball, it's
that he tries to swing at everything and that can play up in this kind
of format. So even if it leads to a slightly elevated strikeout rate,
he still hits the ball reasonably hard. He is a good runner, and
I think plays up in some points leagues higher than you might expect given how
he had sort of an up and down early introduction to the major leagues.
But also something I think Nate has touched on before is that he's still so
young that this is a guy that we should expect some progression from, some
growth from the ink is not yet dry on the kind of player that Tovar
is going to be, and in this kind of a format. I think
he plays up quite a bit. I like Tovar in your points formats,
maybe even more than I do in your five x five formats, and I'm
a fan in that format too, but it's perhaps not in like the A
Beck kind of format or a strikeout heavy penalty format, because I still think
he has work to do on taking walks and limiting his strikeouts. But I
like the rest of what he does, and that's not insignificant in a power
focus league. So even though he's going around pick two hundred in ADP,
I think he could push top fifty value this year with just a tiny step
forward. So Tovar's a shout that I thought Nate would even appreciate, you
bet. The last one that I wanted to touch on in this kind of
top two hundred range is a guy that anybody who plays in OBP or points
league formats knows is a top performer is Brandon Nemo. And you don't get
points for sprinting down to first base, at least in any of the leagues
that I play in after taking a walk, But the man takes so many
walks he gets to do that sprint a lot, and you know, maybe
you can weasel that into your points formats updates. But Brandon Nimo, with
such an OBP focus format, he's turned himself into a hitter that hits for
enough power that he can really take advantage of the walks. He knows the
strike zone really really well, and it plays up huge in most points league
formats such that, like, I think he's firmly a top fifty hitter,
even though in a five x five format he's going around pick like one eighty
or something. So Nimo's another one that it almost doesn't matter your points league
formats. If there's any OBP bent at all, he's gonna play way way
up. All right, Beck, kick us off here. Top five hundred,
so five hundred plus or minus one hundred, you know, like in
that pretty deep range. But someone that you think is like twelve team relevant,
so top two hundred, top two fifty hitter in that kind of a
format, who you got for these deeper leagues, and you know, pick
a format and go from there. Yeah, I'm going to focus on power
first, just because I think that is where the most names are popping for
me. The first is going to be we're going to talk about more Cubs
Nate, so just beware. But the two headed monster that is Patrick Wisdom
and Christopher Morel. Less so Morell. I think there's a very loud contingent
of Christopher Morel fans, and I would imagine his ADP is not quite as
deep so as to qualify for this category. But Patrick Wisdom for sure always
been kind of a load to mid thirties strikeout guy, but a ton of
power. And so if you're being rewarded for that and you're not really being
penalized for strikeouts, I think that is a place where you could throw a
dart and you know, find yourself with a top two fifty player or someone
who is twelve team relevant at a shallower position. The other thing, you
know, that is maybe important to chat about here when we're getting into really
deep names who have obvious bats ball or played discipline issues, is that strikeouts
can be an existential threat to playing time. You've certainly seen that play out
with Patrick Wisdom throughout his career. At the same time, he's maybe an
injury or some some roster kerfuffle away from being a very relevant player, and
so as the season plays on, I'm not saying go out and roster Patrick
Wisdom in a twelve team format. But if you're going to take a stab,
you know, at the very end of fifty round draft and hold that
somehow has you know this format, that might be a good stab, or
you know, just pay attention to what's going on with the Cubs. There's
obviously Michael Bush might be in line for some starts at third base. Chris
Morel again, very similar player, a lot of swing and miss, a
lot of power there. But I think that's a place you could train your
attention. And then a deep name that I've actually run out in you know,
some twenty four or thirty team points formats at first base is Ryan Noda.
Similar issues with plate discipline and contact ability, but huge power on a
bad team. Sometimes you got to turn over some rocks to find what you're
looking for there, especially if you're in a very deep league. Ryan Noda
is a guy that I could see paying off pretty handsomely because nobody else is
looking there. Nobody else is looking in Oakland or wherever Oakland is headed for
that kind of production. Those are both so good back And I was going
to talk about not that you stole that from me. Yeah, our Wisdom
real quick before you saw two for them. I mean, I know it's
spring training and whatever, but maybe I just want to get them the most
aide. Well, I mean they pull them after two at bats anyways,
yeah, right now. But I thought that was kind of interesting. That's
definitely a good a good shout in this kind of a league, and Wisdom,
I think is a really interesting one. There was an article on fangrafts
today. Clearly I had some time after my meetings this afternoon I was reading
fangrafts. But Davey Andrews on Fangrafts just wrote a great article with the title
tromps per whiff per womps. Tromps per womps and those kinds of guys are
great for this format. The gist of the article was who gets the most
out of their balls that they really scaled so like a barrel plus basically.
And some of the names that pop in this list are really really interesting.
And Patrick Wisdom over the past four years has like a top three name on
this. When he hits a ball hard, when he really gets it on
the nails, it's a home run like so so often. I think those
are the kinds of guys that play up. One of my guys that I've
talked about on the show before and I can't quit is Joey Gallo, who
is right at the top of the trompiest swompers in all of Major League Baseball.
Joey Gallo is the epitome of this kind of league. He's gonna a
career batting average of one ninety seven, but he hits a crapload of homer's
and when it doesn't matter if you strike out two hundred times in this kind
of a format, like Joey gallow is going to be useful even if it's
us a bench bat who gets four hundred and fifty play appearances. He's got
first base outfield eligibility. It's not a profile without its flaws, but he's
certainly useful in a really, really power heavy focused format. So Joey Gallo
fits right in there with Wisdom and Noah as a big time power guys that
can be useful in deeper, deeper formats broader commentary on how to conjure up
you know names like this. Gallo is or has been, the poster boy,
poster man of three true outcomes baseball for a very long time. And
that's almost what you're looking for for undervalued players in a format like this is
who is going to walk a bunch, Who's going to trump a bunch?
As I understand it, that's to mean a very hard hit home run,
and who's going to strike out a bunch where it's not going to hurt you?
Absolutely, all right, Nate. These guys were like we've already talked
about, I think in in past episodes, like Ivan Herrera. I think
he'd be good a good catcher for the uh you know, the higher contact
ratio type stuff, doesn't strike out a bunch, power wise guy that we
talked about, but I mean Dominic Canzone. I think if he gets the
playing time he's got like Tobar, if he can cut down the chase a
little bit, I think he's got some big home run potential there. We've
we've talked about Richie Pelasios too. I don't know what the playing time is
going to be like there, but he's a really interesting bat to me.
High contact, might might be coming into hitting for some more power, might
be hitting the right shape to hit some home runs. Yeah, and then
and then nota was like I said, was kind of the other guys that
that kind of came to mind for me, one of the ones that came
to mind thinking more of the backpoint League or the more real life focus production
that I think rightly he's become a bit of a meme. But Anthony Rendon
intrigues me. The guy has shown solid plate skills and still has a bit
of power in the bat. He was hurt for all of last year more
or less, and most of the year before that, and doesn't really like
baseball and doesn't really want to be there, certainly doesn't want to answer any
questions from the media. But I still kind of buy the skills in the
bat. Think he's going to continue to be high double's decent homer source with
solid production. He's not going to strike out a ton, He's still going
to walk, you know, nine ten percent of the time, and that
really I think plays in your points league's formats, and especially given his lengthy
absences over the past couple of years. If you you know, knock on
wood and hope that those are behind him, and he's hitting behind Trout and
Shaneuel and Luis Rinhifo, I don't know who else is hitting at the top
of that lineup, but that's valuable and this deep, I mean, he's
going like after pick four hundred, I think, And in your dynasty leagues,
I bet your manager who owns same is willing to cut bait after his
just awful last couple of years. So that's one that I really like for
a Beck type format or something closer to fan Trek standards that I think,
even if you only get four hundred, four hundred and fifty plate appearances out
of him, the rate stat production is going to be pretty good. And
when he's not playing, he's probably on the IL and you just stash him
on the IL and plug it in with whatever you can pull off the wire.
And that I like too, And especially if you're in a league where
you've got a lot of aisle slots or unlimited aisle slots, I love going
after the injured players because you add the elite production to whatever you get off
the waiver wire and add that up and you're like, now you're looking at
instead of top four hundred, top three hundred, top two hundred player returns,
now you're looking at that actual lineup slot has earned you top one hundred
value over the course of the full year. So that's an underrated thing too,
is trying to optimize your lineup spot rather than just the player themselves.
And one way to do that is targeting oft injured stars. And I think
Rendon still has earned our trust in that way. And we'll we'll see how
this year goes. I mean, he could just not show up again for
most of the year, but I still like him at certainly your draft costs
or your dynasty acquisition costs for your competing teams here. If you're draft like
a power focus league right now, what we're trying to stick to, like
twelve teams, right I'd be really curious where Beef Goodman Hunter Goodman might be
available to pop in your draft. I feel like he'd be a great guy
in a league like that, if you could get him as a bench guy
just out of your draft, and then you know, if he doesn't make
the club out the gate or struggles where he's like, okay, cool,
now I got my easy drop for my first waiver way or whatever. With
the potential in there to I mean, we know he's led the miners and
home runs the last couple of years, like he's got it in him if
he just has to prove the lass final stake here absolutely, And another one
from the Rockies too is Blackman. Charlie Blackman, They're still going to play
him and plug him in at the top of the lineup again because the Rockies
have no idea what they're doing, like they're playing a thirty nine year old
DH in right field a lot of the times. But I'm just saying,
I'm saying the guy still, the guy still makes contact a decent amount,
He hits line drives. Playing him at home as part of a platoon for
your outfield, you can do worse across a lot of points formats. And
I've long been a fan of Charlie Blackman. He's been on tons of my
teams throughout the years, and I still think there's something of value there even
in your fifteen team leagues if you use him right and if you optimize him
for home starts and all of that. But I still think the shape of
production is going to be pretty solid for your most of your kinds of points
leagues. For points, yeah, that's a good call. And Matt,
just for the record, I don't think there was one young Rockies bath from
last year that I did not see praise Charlie Blackman for helping them last season.
So I love him. I love him. He's there's value in that,
and that is why my friend. Indeed, I've got a couple more
that came to mind while while you let's go, what do you got so
some power ones? And I was also, you know, I was helpful
to kind of flip through NFBC ADPs. Two that come to mind immediately for
kind of deeper picks that could pay far better value than they're going right now.
One is Gary Sanchez. He showed a lot of growth in the hitter
last year, is now in a much friendlier ballpark, is probably going to
split catching duties to some degree with William Contreras. He will also DH a
lot, and I really like him in Miller Park. He's going around pick
five hundred. I think I'm not sure quick Scan had him, you know,
between four and five hundred. Another one Adam Duval. He has been
super consistent in all points formats for a long time. Doesn't like to stay
on any given team, you know, over the last few years for longer
than a single season. But should you know, with enough playing time hit
you know, twenty five twenty eight home runs, and be very very cheap
to acquire. So he jumps to mind as well, all along the same
lines as Charlie Blackman or where were you previously? Rendon? Rendon reminded me
of this player, Justin Turner now with the Blue Jays. You know,
a guy who's just been chugging along in points formats for so long, doesn't
strike out very often, walks a fair bit, is going to run into
his fair amount of home runs. Maybe my concern for him this year is
there are so many young players vying for playing time at third base, and
who knows how Toronto is going to treat their DH. But with enough playing
time and kind of cobbling together guys with similar skill sets at the roster spot,
you know, focus more on the roster spot or the lineup spot,
then the name could be a good way to frankenstein your way into better production
than the draft cost. Absolutely, if your format likes to credit Ribby's RBI,
is I still like jose Bray you he was pretty good worse than last
year? Well, he was pretty good. I mean, so guy went
to a new team, had a few couple of rough months, but he
was pretty good after that. Yeah, he's certainly closed pretty well. It's
going to be a good offense. I mean, he's got a long track
record of lots of ribbies and he's pretty dirt cheap right now. Yes,
yes he is. He did also make my soul leave my body. I
was at a Twins Astros playoff game and I was actively making fun of Dusty
Baker for where he was hitting jose A Brew and then he sailed the ball
over my head in left field. So you know, that's the way it
goes. A classic complaining about Dusty and the team still wins every time.
Yeah, the only other one. What do you guys think about Jake Crounworth.
You think he's gonna bounce back. I mean, he's one that I
really liked him as a hitter for the past few years, but it does
seem like he's trending down. The infield has gotten so crowded in San Diego
that he's now playing first base. He still retains second base eligibility in most
places, I think, but he might not after this year if he's gonna
play first base all year. What do you guys think about him? He's
one that popped up for me. I've got him on I think one team
of mine and he's more of a bench bat. But is there hope for
a bounce back and some I think a return to form or is this a
continued trend where he might get pushed out by some of the young infielders in
San Diego. I think he might get pushed out. There are a lot
of promising that's there. His average exit velocity has been trending in the wrong
way for the last three years. That is kind of born true in his
home run to fly ball rate. I think it was something like six and
a half percent last year, just well below the league average of nine percent.
You know, to hold down a first base spot, whether that be
for the San Diego Padres or for my fantasy team, I do want a
little bit more from him. That said, you know, it's not a
disastrous profile. He's not going to strike out a bunch. You know,
he runs pretty league average strikeout rates. He also walks a fair bit,
so the you know, the foundation is there. I think it really just
comes down to is he going to hit the ball in the air enough and
hard enough? You know, in the air. I don't know that I'm
necessarily a believer there. Yeah, I think the only thing is he should
still run a significantly better than league average strikeout rate. I agree with you,
the rest of the production is trending the wrong direction. In San Diego
generally isn't a great place to hit, especially for hitters like him who don't
have quite the power of your Tatises or your Bogart's or Machado's. So I'm
nervous about this one. But he is a guy that might play up a
little bit in a points format versus a five x five for sure, where
he's probably not roster bowl in most leagues or is way for fodder. But
maybe there's something more in there. I don't know. He kind of seems
like should he should be like the mark the line, like, Okay,
I need to have my hitters on my roster just better than him. If
I need somebody, I'll get him, you know. Yeah, Yeah,
I mean he was I think projected by a couple of the projection systems for
right around one hundred WRC plus going for this upcoming season. So again,
I probably want more from that from your first base or your corner and field
position. To Beck's point, but yeah, just as like as as a
waiver wire point that might be a good line against which to judge the production
on your current roster. Yeah. Yeah, I will say around like one,
the majority of my leagues are deep leagues, so twenty teams or deeper,
usually deeper than twenty teams, And so I'm used to kind of peddling
in the Jake Croninworth neighborhood, and in twenty twenty one, I probably would
have given up something rather valuable to have that kind of production able to slot
in and out of my lineup. And so if he's able to get back
there, especially when we're talking about costs to acquire, it's it's not out
of the question that he has, you know, kind of a twenty twenty
twenty twenty one renaissance. Things just haven't been really trending in the right direction
for him. So Beck, you like twenty teamers or deeper. I currently
don't play in any twenty team leagues, but I will say my championship ratio
is highest in twenty team had to head categories. Wow, And dude,
I just played them like points leagues. I just straight up played them like
points leagues. And I was never the best team during the regular season,
But I get in as, like the sixth seed or something like that,
and I was just trying to gear it up to be firing at the right
time. And yeah, yeah, I don't know. I just always thought
it was funny. Got into it. I was just like, man,
I'm not sure how to play this. Just played it like a twelve team,
fifteen teen points league, and it were there. You go, gotta
get hot at the right time. Yeah. Right. One of my sixteen
team head to head leagues that I'm in, I have been a top four
team every single year that I've been in this league. It's like five years
or something been in the top four. And you get a buy in your
first round. So that's huge, right, Like that's one less matchup that
you're not rolling the dice on. Huge. But I always lose in that
second round to team like yours, Nate, it's like six or seventh.
It's coming in. Just happens to line up their starters. Nobody cares about
your wins in April, Dude, they don't mean shit. I know.
I know. At least that league pays out for the top four in the
regular seas and as well as the playoffs. I'm a fan of You got
to reward the good teams, not just the lucky ones like me. That's
I Actually, I don't think I would play in a head to head league
that didn't have some sort of regular season payout. There's just too much variance.
For you guys, big fans of the NBA's in season tournament as well.
I have no opinion. I have no idea what you're were talking about.
Yeah, not not a huge NBA guy. They do they do an
in season tournament now where it's like so they can sell more tickets jerseys.
I don't know. It's but the Lakers they're pretty amp. They're pretty amped
that they wanted this year. Those games were actually pretty fun. There wasn't,
you know, much of anything on the line except for prize money for
the players. But forwards the end of the tournament like it felt a little
bit like playoff basketball in the middle of the season. Interesting. All right,
Well, let's roll into the more interesting thing, at least to us
B siders, which is talking prospects. You know, anybody can go on
fangrafts and run the auction calculator and figure out some points stuff there. But
the real nuance, the real deep league players know, you got to do
this for your prospects too. Thankfully, Nate, we've got on Beck to
help us translate his top one hundred points league format for some of these different
variations that we might play. So we're going to do kind of the same
thing, maybe a bit quick hitter, and talk about some prospects that we
like, that are that we think should be a top ten valued prospect given
these different points leagues valuations. So same kind of thing like cream of the
crop, middle tier, like has value and you might you might like them
better given the format. And then some deeper names that we think should play
up given the format. Let's start with Beck format again and I'll kick us
off with a couple of names, and maybe we can talk about these two
guys and as you guys think of some other examples. I think for me,
when I was looking at what values kind of played up in closer to
real world value, you know, the high walks definitely played up. But
the thing that kept coming back to me was a lot of playing time.
And the two guys that I picked is like, I think these guys might
be top ten valued prospects in a Beck points leagues, if not right now,
really soon is Pete Crow Armstrong and Jet Williams, so neither guy.
I think they're both kind of in the fifties thirty to fifty for a lot
of people, but both to me scream as big points league value guys because
one, for PCA, I think he's gonna play six hundred plus played appearances
once he makes the major leagues. The glove is actually very very good,
one of the very best in the minors, and the rest of the shape
of his production is also solid. So I'm a little bit skeptical on the
power, a little bit skeptical on the hit tool. I think that his
fly balls might help those play up a little bit. But in your points
leagues, the steals and then the playing time I think are going to be
huge. And then I've been a big Jet Williams fan. I've been beating
this drum for a while. I was sold by the shape of his production
last year, the high walks, getting to his power and being able to
play and up the middle position. He's probably not a shortstop, but centerfield,
second base. He seems like a solid defender from my looks. I
think that these are guys that play way up in a points league versus a
categories league. But I think that might be a touch controversial. So what
do you guys think about those guys are? Do you have some better examples?
I'm going to start with Jet primarily because of a player we named earlier,
and this was actually a comment that you left while you were editing my
top one hundred is the things that Jet is going to have to be really
good at in order to be a top ten prospect are the same things that
Alex Bregman is really good at, which is pulling his fly balls in the
air. So seeing him his name on the rundown sheet after you know we've
already discussed Alex Bregman makes a ton of sense to me. I do think
that this kind of top ten potential also exists in Rotisseriy formats, where the
stolen bases are going to play way up. Maybe you know another argument in
his favor for something like fan Trak Standard or even a Becks points league,
which feels very weird coming out of my mouth, by the way, kind
of referring to it in the third person, But is that a stolen base
in fan Track Standard actually carries the same weight in terms of points scored as
a double. And so if you're thinking that Jet is primarily going to be
a doubles hitter who's going to pull his fly balls in the air to maximize
home run output, if you are projecting him to be a forty or fifty
stolen base kind of guy at the major league level, you're essentially tacking on
forty doubles. Now, again, you'd have to do that relative to you
know, whatever a replacement value stolen base figure is, but that's still excess
value to kind of root for. And then, if I'm reading this correctly
the points League, a stolen base is actually more valuable than a double.
Total bases are one point twenty five, two bags two point five, A
stolen base is three. Now, success rate matters here because a caught stealing
is minus one and a half. But regardless, if he's racking up,
you know, something like forty stolen bases getting caught, you know, on
twenty percent of his attempts, it's still surplus value in Jet's favor. And
so I like that shout. I think if he can do it again against
upper miners pitching and show that he's able to kind of hold the baton over
the canyon, and pull his fly balls, and that is a skill and
not incidental. Then I'm totally on board with with jet I wanted to touch
on that one in particular. Anyone else jumped to you for thinking like that
maybe is a little bit further down your rankings or that you're just particularly high
on. I know you thought deeply about this in your top one hundred,
but someone that might be in your top twenty, top twenty five that other
folks don't quite have as high and why that might work for you. I
think the maybe the poster child of this, and folks who are active in
the Dynasty dugout community are maybe a little bit tired of me beating this drum.
But Joey Ortiz comes to mind for similar reasons that you cited for PCA,
in that he is an elite infield defender with a lot of versatility.
He can play kind of all of the infield positions sans first base. In
Milwaukee, he's in a better park now and is ostensibly going to just compile.
He also hits the ball quite hard and doesn't strike out very often.
He made elite zone contact in twenty twenty three, while his eggs of velocities
jumped her over year, and so I'm a big fan. Kind of the
demerits or the detractors in his profile are going to be that he puts the
ball on the ground too often, and I think that's the direct result of
a little bit of an unsavory chase rate. He chased at like a thirty
three percent clip in twenty twenty three. And so if he's able to cut
down on that out of zone swing or perhaps make less contact when he's swinging
out of the zone, I think his launch angle wi naturally improve and that'll
help him play up. And again, you know, part of the driver
here is that he's going to be playing a lot because he's an excellent defender.
I like that one a lot. I'm a big Joey Ortiz fan.
Not too sizzling here. Like back, I think you gave both these guys
pretty high ranks in your points But like if you were to put Colson Montgomery
or Chased a louder like in the top ten already for points leagues, I
wouldn't argue against that. Agreed. They both landed in the fifteen to twenty
range For me Y, I think Colson might have been fourteen, and yeah,
I would have a hard time arguing with anybody that wanted to push them
as high as eight, nine or ten for similar reasons. You know,
a great plate discipline, ability to draw a walk, figure to project for
above average power at the major league level, chased a latter hit a home
run yesterday, like I was agast at it was majestic, And yeah,
I think they play well kind of in any points format, particularly the best
points league, where you know, drawing a walk or a hit by pitch
is twice as valuable as a strikeout is negative realize this until I looked at
a couple of my points leagues, that they value a stolen base the same
value as a home run. Now, granted, with a home run you
get a run and an RBI and all that other stuff added to it,
right, so it's not as valuable. But a guy like Bradfield, even
in point leagues, has become more interested in me. I mean, if
that guy steals a crab ton of bases and you're in a league like that,
he's going to be just as valuable as some of your power hitters.
Let's let's use that as a jump off to talk about the k penalty side
of things, because I also jotted Bradfield down for the next tier down.
Really am sorry I did no, but it's it's a great point somebody that
I think in those K penalty kinds of leagues at al Amador, I think
that's like a top five kind of prospect in those leagues. Jackson Merrill,
I think is another one that he's with the proximity, with the skills,
with the bat. I think he's one that is getting underrated in some points
leagues, but that next year down sort of the guys who are outside of
most top one hundreds, but I think should be firmly in a top one
hundred. Bradfield was the very first one I thought of. Nate. I
just was in an FYPD in a league that's kind of similar points to this
really heavy strikeout penalty. I didn't have any picks. I'd sold all my
early picks, so I wasn't getting your Colt Emerson's the elite talents, you
know, So I was having to play a little bit farther down the FYPD
ranks, and Bradfield was one of my very first targets. I think I
took Joindery Vargas first, Joiner Vargas first, and then Bradfield was my next
pick because he has like a two percent swinging strike rate last year, you
know, small sample one hundred plate appearances or something, but two percent was
insane. And he is absolutely incredible on the basis like if you if people
haven't watched him steal bases, I don't think there's a good comp for this
because even someone like Ruiz Estuary Ruiz, who who is a prolific base steeler,
he's not as good at it as Bradfield is. He might be as
fast or even faster, but Bradfield was insane in a ball and in high
A he would get on first because he's got great plate discipline too, tons
of walks, and then three pitches later he's on third. Like he would
bluff a steal and everyone would be all out of sorts, and then the
next pitch the pitcher would pull it down, it bounce and he was already
going and he'd have second base stolen. He's an exceptionally talented base steeler.
Plus his OBP skills I think are way underrated, and he's an incredible points
target just for those two things. Now he's never gonna hit for power,
like the just the swing the way it looks. But I think that because
he's so exceptionally good at the other things, he's someone that I think is
like a top fifty value depending on your format. So I definitely wanted to
highlight him, Nate, and that that was a good shout. He did
get some consideration for the top hundred when I was kind of starting in spreadsheet
for him, trying to figure out how exactly might I group these players into
tiers, and he was, you know, maybe in the top one fifty
ish, eventually fell out of consideration. But there is something to watching him
on defense and on the base paths that is, I think you said it
majestic. There are players like as sur Ruiz who steal a lot of basses
and it's exciting and it's very fun, but it's not necessarily beautiful in the
way that he is when he's on the base path. So Bradfield very fun
to watch. Also, you know, an elite defender. So if we're
going to stay on you know, the path of Hey Pca Joey Ortiz in
a similar mold, I think, you know, Bradfield might even play,
you know, in Baltimore sooner than people think, simply because the floor of
skills there is so so high. I'm not sure they have another true center
fielder like Beavers might be able to make it out there. I just I'm
not sure they've got anybody else that's like a slam dunk. This guy can
play centerfield, and I'm pretty sure Bradfield is that kind of guy. That's
another point, Like, yeah, it's crowded there in Baltimore, and even
some of the other guys in Baltimore that I really like, like you'r Matt
Corvas and some of the other guys. Some of those guys it might be
harder to find PT for. But an elite up the middle defender who has
really weird shaped production, give me that guy all day. I was just
going to say, the other guy I see on your sheet for the k
penalties, Matt Beck. Did Kevin McGonagall get any consideration for your top one
hundred points list? He did, Obviously, he did not make it cut.
He actually had some pretty sterling reviews by both Baseball America and Baseball Perspectus
as a guy who is pretty firmly hit over power. Some of that is
driven by his stature. But you know, when you're considering that the majority
of points formats do you have a K penalty fantrak standard does not. He
did get some consideration there as a pretty great bat to ball prep. And
again, you know, this is so thing, where do you want to
base a top one hundred case on good bats ball over a short sample post
draft and some kind of reviews from him as a prep as a good you
know, in zone contact bat you could certainly the physical tools don't overwhelm me
in the same way that some other preps do. And then you know,
I would also think about there were evaluators who were willing to put a seven
or an eight on Tamar Johnson's hit tool prior to the draft, and then
he ran like forty to forty five grade zone contact rates in the Florida State
League. And so all of that to say, kind of pinning down a
prep hit tool without much to go on in the way of professional data is
really difficult. And so McGonagall, you know, was probably a first draft
guy. When I have the whole list out to you know, maybe two
hundred bats and one hundred pitchers he was in there. I do think when
I expand these ranks out to two fifty, he'll feature, you know,
somewhere in the one to fifty range. But I was actually I was actually
just kind of kind of poking a little bit there. But and Joe,
but uh, he is definitely a guy who I think if you're if you're
a rod Oh player, I don't think you're going to understand how valuable he
can be in right totally. Maybe it's pretty, it's that's a that's a
pretty swing man, just so many things that my back ass looks for in
swings like he's got it. Well, what I'll say about you, Nate,
is that I appreciate that you watch all of these guys. There are
a lot of folks who, you know, may rely on what the fangrafts
page says about them. There's nothing wrong with that, But there is also
something to be said about seeing a player on the field and what they look
like while they're compiling, you know, the stat line and understanding you know
to what degree that may translate simply by the way they go about their business.
And so I do appreciate that you make a very earnest attempt to get
your eyes on all these guys look you as well. I've been a fan
of you cutting up some video lately and getting into that that's that's all.
Yeah, yeah, looking at all the stats, looking at all the matrics,
all that sort of stuff, and then just watching baseball, and in
a lot of ways, I kind of feel like, even if you're just
like strictly one, I think you can come to some pretty pretty dang good
conclusions about players either way. You know that whole discussion is not to say
that there's a right or a wrong way to do it. I do think
that you should be doing both, though there's both is the best, both
as the best. That's the new tagline, why not both? You know?
Funny line from a movie to me whatever. I was going to use
this as a springboard, though, to talk about a guy that I've barely
seen any video of. So he's one that I on the short list of
my top two or three folks that I'm most excited to see this year is
Robert Klas. He's someone that I've seen a little bit of Granny DSL footage
of some hype videos, and it's so hard to tell much from those because
anybody can look good and VP we I had one teammate in particular who put
on the most spectacular VP. He was absolutely incredible, majestic home runs.
Every single swing looked the part, you know, six to two, physically
imposing cut up. I think he's a personal trainer still, so he still
looks great. But he hit all these incredible home runs. But if the
pitch was not an eighty four mile an hour fastball, which we would see
like midweek bad pitchers, he could crush those guys. But if they threw
a change up, he was going to swing and miss. If it was
eighty eight or above, he was gonna wi. But it looked majestic in
batting practice. And so there's only so much that you can tell from those
kinds of looks. Now, Robert Klaus has put up some pretty impressive numbers
on the stat sheet. Had a very very good DSL line as a seventeen
year old, which matters at this age putting up you know, I think
it's like a one to fifty some WRC plus with a pretty solid shape or
production, not too many strikeouts, some good homers, stole some bags.
You look at that stat line and that checks a lot of boxes. But
the thing to me that is so exciting about him is Baseball America reported his
exit velocity, his ninetieth percentile exiblocity at one oh seven point two. That
is absolutely insane, Like it's so good that I actually can't really get my
head around it. And I feel like I've taken a little bit of a
crazy pill, like I did the red blue, red pill, blue pill
in the matrix and after I saw that number, and I was like,
a seventeen year old did that in professional baseball, like dsl's professional baseball.
That is wild. And for contexts, I wrote this up in the Dynasty
Got Discord the other day for context, that's the same ninetieth percentile exit velocity
that Juan Soto had last year. That's the same. That's better than a
bunch of guys that you think of as like power hitters, major leaguers,
grown ass men, and this kid did it as a seventeen year old.
Some of this might be some hot guns in the DSL. Some of this
might be small sample performance, and I want to see it against higher level
pitching. Some of the pitching in the DSL is notoriously pretty bad. At
the same time, Junior Cam and Arrow didn't do this Amidor didn't do this.
You Andrey Vargas didn't do this. Nobody has done this that I've seen
reported. When Baseball America went through like the best exit velocities at different age
levels, you had to get up to twenty one year old, twenty year
olds and junior cam and arrow to see somebody that hit the ball harder and
the ninetieth percent I'll exit velow than Callaus did. So I've got him here
in this power bat. Like the error bars are huge, there might be
some strikeout problems. I'm not sure what else we're going to get out of
this, and I have no idea even if that those evs are real,
but even the potential for that, how this guy is in a top one
hundred consideration for a lot of people, I don't really know, Like I
don't know what else you want to see from a DSL person to get that
kind of consideration. I'm betting that it's real or mostly real. And even
if it's like ninety five ninety percent real, this is a no doubt top
one hundred in consideration for a top twenty five bat next year. If he
does anything even remotely close to this state side, I love that shout.
I think, and I just wrote this in a piece for the Dynasty Dugout,
but one of the most profitable demographics to invest in, you know,
in terms of prospects, is the DSL standout that not very many people have
laid eyes on who have an outlier trait. I think I wrote this with
regards to well In Francisca of the Cleveland Guardians. I think that is overwhelmingly
true for Robert Klaus. You don't see a one hundred and seven ninetieth percentile
EGXIT velocity coming out of the DSL. You just don't see it. I'm
actually like, I'm racking my brain for anything close to that, and it's
I can't conjure anything up. Of course, of course the risk is massive,
but when you are the cost to get in is, you know,
like a top two hundred prospect. I think this is a place where you
can jump in kind of with both feet and without a parachute still find a
pretty soft landing. So he is one that I am immensely intrigued with.
But again I think the what's driving the delta between what he did in the
stat sheet, what his underlying numbers say, and the actual you know value
is that nobody's really seen him. You know, you can check out you
know, Instagram reels, you can find some you know, grainy cell phone
footage. Until we have you know, an infrastructure where DSL games are at
least recorded, you know, in some capacity and available for public consumption,
this is going to continue to be a trend. And so you know,
even outside of kind of the DSL guys who are getting propped up pretty heavily.
You know, you mentioned you took you Andrew Vargas in an FYPD recently,
kind of those players that live in a lot of one hundred to two
hundred ranges simply because rankers, writers, prospectors don't know what to do with
them because they have not seen them. That's a place I would be targeting
at this point in the calendar. They're kind of interesting because they don't have
like a complex lead. So all these guys are going to go straight from
the DSL to a ball, which is fun for us. We get to
see them quickly. We don't have that in between the year or whatever.
But sometimes I wonder if that's a bit of a detriment for some of these
players to maybe not have that little in between level, and it might be
that might be something to remember. Actually, if Klas does struggle next year
as an eighteen year old in full season ball, assuming they bring him stateside,
that might be another little buying opportunity here. You know, we'll see
it'll like desinated, don't. I don't think it was to the level of
Klas, but I think Bettencourt had some nice exi velocities for his age as
well too. It just turns out that Bettencourt just hits the ball really hard
into the ground all the freaking times. Yeah. Yeah, that's the other
thing Kalas doesn't. He's thirty seven percent flyball, thirty six percent groundball,
twenty six point five line drive, Like that is my like ideal, Like
you want to talk about ideal production, it's like thirty eight percent of flyball,
ground ball, and then twenty four percent line drives. Like that's the
best guys, the elite producers look like that, other than Akunya, who's
just super weird. But while we're on the topic, you're an excellent writer.
I would love to read a piece from you on like what is your
platonic ideal for a minor leaguer? Maybe even by age cohort, because I
know that you've done some research and writing in the past on how to project
players as a mature and so for selfish reasons, I would love to have
a longer form piece of content from you on that topic. I'll give you
my short answer without any of a detail behind it. But I like two
kind of competing views of hitters. I like hitters that are really boring,
so ones that have sort of even production, that do a little bit of
everything, but nothing is outstanding, because I think those people get underrated.
So if they've got a solid strikeout rate, a slightly above average walk rate,
okay, homers, but they'll swipe a bag or two. Like a
guy that I point to you is a friend of mine who embodies this a
bit as Mark Kanna. I think Mark Kannon is that kind of guy.
He's a little bit better on the obp side, but he does the rest
of the things well. He's not elite power, he's not elite speed,
but he gets some homers, gets some bags, and I think gets underrated
by a lot of people because it's even production across the board. And then
the other direction is I love weirdos. So someone that is just fully outlier
in one direction, even if it's a sort of bad direction for part of
their production, it's still I find that interesting and I think you can succeed
that way. And this is definitely true of pictures. Nate and I have
talked about that a lot. Being weird as a pitcher is how you are
good. And some of some of the quote unquote weird is like I throw
one hundred miles an hour right, like that's a rare skill. But I
also appreciate the super strange lefty that throws from way up the first baseline and
has great extension. And I'm talking about Bradford Nate because I watched most of
his start today and I was like, fuck, yeah, this guy's awesome.
So like, I think he got as many whiffs as how who was
he pitching against today? He's pitching against somebody really good Yamamoto. Yeah,
that's who he's going against today, And and he got as many whiffs as
Yamamoto did. I was like, damn, Like, let's go Cody.
So I love those weirdos too, and that that's true on the hitting side.
What should we be looking for sort of what is that platonic ideal.
Yeah, I like that a lot. When you said you like weird pitchers,
particularly lefties that throw down the first baseline and have great extension, I
was ready to say in unison with you, Cooper Jerpy, and then out
came Cody Bradford. Jerpy's another one that people were kind of down on him
because the villa was down. The thing I was down on him was that
his command was bad. But his command was not bad in college, and
I saw him at Oregon State and I really liked him. I thought,
this is a very interesting arm that I think is going to have some success,
definitely like a major leaguer. But then the command was bad and the
villa was down a bit. But seeing the vilo up a bit this year,
I mean, if he's sitting at ninety two and everything else is so
outlier, nobody's going to hit that fastball, and if nobody's hitting the fastball,
all the other things play up. I mean, I'm a fan of
that kind of that kind of an arm for sure. Yeah, Yeah,
totally another one that jumps to mind, just as like a spring training velo
jump. Human Lynn, I don't know if you were a human Linn guy
previously but him sitting ninety two to ninety four after being like an eighty nine
ninety guy last year super interesting, especially with the performance that he had last
year. Another one along that line that I really liked a couple of years
ago, and then the Vilo jump happened and it hasn't quite all click.
But I was watching today is Joey Kintillo. So same thing. When he
was in the low miners. He was throwing topping out it like ninety ninety
one, but was getting a ton of strikeouts because he's got that good extension,
great ride in his fastball, and he's a lefty and all of those
things were helping his miners' numbers pop. But everyone was like, this isn't
a guy because he doesn't throw hard, And you know, I hate that,
just as like the end of the conversation drives me absolutely insane. It's
another that's one of the articles that I'm close to finishing. But Cantillo hasn't
been able to put it together because he did have decent command, and as
the velocity jumped for him, he's now like routinely in the mid to upper
nineties. I think he's like ninety six or something. Today and his walk
rates have really gone way up, and even today, like he had a
bunch of non competitive pitches. When he's in the zone, it looks great,
but his command really has taken a step back with that, So I
hope that isn't the case with someone like Lynn or another one that we've talked
about a little bit is Will Dion, who has dominated the low miners at
eighty nine. Like, the guy can't crack ninety, but the numbers are
incredible, and it's because of all of the other things about his fastball,
the vertical approach, angle, the spin that he gets, the deception and
extension that he gets, all our standard deviation are better than the average,
and that makes the pitch play up even though the velocity isn't good. And
if he gets a tick or two, then you're talking about Clayton Kershaw like
no kidding, like actually Clayton Kershaw level deception. So he's He's not Clayton
Kershaw yet, but he's one that I really want to see if he can
get to drive line or tread and get a tick or two of extra velocity
because everything else looks so good to me. Are you in on Joey Cantillo
as a big league arm this year. I think roster resource has him in
the Guardian's rotation. I've got some shares. I'm not confident about it,
and that's mostly the command related thing. I think the pitches are still good,
but he sits in that range of he's going to get some innings.
I think they're going to be ugly. He's not going to go deep into
starts. And if it doesn't go well, do they downshift him into the
long relief role or shuttle him back to triple A Like I want to.
I want him to succeed because I've been on him for a while, but
it's been a frustrating ride just because I'm not sure the command is there.
And even watching today, like he gave a great he's a great guy,
like super smart. His interview after his outing today was really interesting worth listening
to. Sure, but he talked about how he's like trying to command the
different pitch shapes, and you saw when he would go to his slider,
like he would just flip it out of his hand and it would miss way
armside and it's like that's not the place you want to miss with that pitch.
And he had a couple of wild pitch kurveballs that he just spiked.
He's got so much potential, but at least in this look today, I'm
not especially encouraged, and so my prior of like, he's probably going to
be a high walk, inefficient guy, which is disappointing as an outcome when
I was like, I thought this was a command guy, kind of under
the radar lefty, and instead he's more of a power pitcher who might end
up in the back end of a bullpen, which is still fine. You
know, he's a good pitcher, but I had hopes for him being a
starter, and I'm not sure he's there yet. Yeah, the forecasting players
is so hard. I like, how do you how do you anticipate something
like that from a guy like Cantillo, who you know, was ostensibly at
one point a command guy, and as he developed into more velocity and more
movement, you know, is the prognostication for him has totally changed. Nate,
I was going to kick it over to you because one of the things
that we've talked about recently is that tool that your your buddy put together in
how does how often do pictures make it past the third inning, which in
the minor leagues, like that's a decent test of is this guy considered a
starter and how does their production hold up after that point? And Nate's pulled
a bunch of guys that who are top one hundred worthy. For a lot
of people whose production just tanks after the third inning, you might want to
look on those pitchers a bit more skeptically than someone that can withstand the times
for the order penalty. It's a progression, right, Just because he struggled
once one season with that doesn't mean that's forever. But you know, there's
lots of different formulas that can make it work, right, especially with pitching
and projection systems for the upcoming year, they're all kind of on Cantillo.
They're pretty The lowest projection system projects him for a four to four era as
a starter next year in limited time. Like they're not saying he's going to
open the year in the rotation or anything, but four to four is really
really good projection for a minor leaguer. For context, I think there are
like three off the top of my head that I can think of, and
minor leaguers that get that kind of projection and they haven't yet debuted, and
this is like better than Kate Horton, better than Jackson Job. I mean
it's like that for context, this is up there with the best pitchers in
the minor leagues. I just personally remain a little bit skeptical about how useful
it's going to be. If he continues to run a four and a half
to five walk rate per nine, I would say Cantillo last inning three,
four, six or excuse me, four or five six. A lot of
these were better, except the it looks like his command gets looser, walks
more strikes out more whip was a little bit higher through less percentage of strikes.
That makes sense. I kind of forgot that Logan Allen existed altogether.
That is to say, Kintillo is projected to start in triple A, with
the Guardian's rotation being rounded out by Logan Allen and Gavin Williams they have at
the five there. I don't know how much you can really rely on the
health of Shane Bieber and Triest and Mackenzie for a full season at this point,
but Kintilla will not likely start in the rotation for Cleveland. Yeah,
I do think he's going to see some starts in Cleveland this year, though,
Yeah, we'll see. He's one that I've liked for a long time,
so I'm hopeful much longer than your thirty minutes. We kept back way
longer than his thirty minutes, and we talked a bunch about pictures. The
whole point of this I was only talk about we were talking about and you
reserved the last twenty minutes for pictures. That's the kind of guy you are.
No, I would never do something like that. I wanted to ask
you. I wanted to ask you real quick. So your top one hundred
points list? Was your was your big off season project? You did some
fantastic write ups, lengthy in depth, looked at a lot of real players.
This question is it doesn't It isn't just strictly about players. It can
be it can be whatever you want about your process about I don't know anything,
But what was the biggest your biggest takeaway from doing that project? What
did you learn doing that? What would you say was the number one thing
you learned. There's a number of things. One is that one hundred is
not a natural cutoff. There are a number of players between like fifty and
one hundred and seventy five that all you know, in some order probably could
have fit in a top one hundred. I think the drop off from definitely
you know, a major leaguer to maybe a major leaguer happens a good major
leaguer happens earlier in a prospect list than most dynasty players treat it. I
think simply because you you'll have like a dynasty ranking and then a prospect ranking
broken out, you kind of conflate top one hundred prospect with you know,
that's got to be a valuable or in the top one hundred. There's a
glob there's a glob of players from like you know, sixty or seventy five
out another one hundred that all got serious consideration for that. So that's maybe
thing number one is that any top one hundred could really be a top one
fifty without any real degradation to skill, and you know, at some point
it becomes personal preference. The second thing is I learned a lot about what
I care about, kind of maybe counter to Matt's point, and I think
there's some merit here where if you do everything pretty well and maybe nothing outstanding,
the likelihood that you are a solid big league ballplayer is maybe higher than
your perceived value simply because you don't jump out in any regard. I have
a really hard time with those players because there's less for me to grab onto.
You know, I can't say, look, this guy hits the ball
really hard and if everything clicks right, maybe that translates to something like twenty
five thirty home runs, or this guy is an elite defender with some speed
and is certainly going to be in the lineup every day. On that basis
alone. Those guys that you know are maybe fives across the board and you're
hoping that the sum of their parts, that they are greater than the sum
of their parts, are tricky for me to nail down, and I kind
of shy away from them. Do you have a platonic ideal of that kind
of guy in your head? Just thinking about who maybe was just outside the
top one hundred, But you're like, it's just because he's a bunch of
fives. Yeah, Maybe the two guys that were in the top one hundred
that I think most embody this, the highest ranked one that comes to mind
is probably Curtis Mead, where he's just a good hitter that hits good,
and he's not necessarily flashy. But I think, you know, if it's
a fifty five on the hit tool and maybe a fifty five on the power
and he's gonna have multiple position eligibility, I don't really care so much that
the raiser are going to jerk him around. That's just a player that I
want, And a lot of that comes down to watching the film and seeing
a player that is better than the some of his parts and then the other,
which I think is like truly fives across the board. But does one
thing particularly well? Is Thomas A jayc That's actually who I was thinking of
too. That's fantastic. I put him about as high as I could defend.
And what he does really well is he hits the ball. He maximizes
his bad and ball output with good angles. He pulls his flyballs in the
air. I am becoming more and more accustomed to the idea that that is
a skill. You can call that the esak Parates effect. But you know,
he's another one where I struggle with what to do with him because I
think he is a regular. I don't know if he's like a first division
regular. He might be a second division regular, But I think he's going
to play a lot, and I think that pulling your fly balls is a
skill. The thesis statement there is I learned a lot about what I care
about with certain prospects. Beck it sounds to me with this last case here,
that you kind of like young hitting prospects that swing the battle lot because
I feel like Sagasi's development was part of being pretty aggressive. Yeah, for
sure. You know, I also wonder a little bit, you know,
with him, there was some hitter friendly environments going on as well. He
played in the Texas League in both organizations he was in, which is funny,
and so you know there may be some of that too. It's a
long way of saying like, these are our players that I like because I've
watched them and I can see how maybe this production comes together and is better
than all of the tools in their belt. But the ground beneath me feels
a little unsteady. At the same time, I tend to prioritize players that
I think there's a cohort of Dynasty players who will say I'm not interested in
rostering a prospect who might be in above average regular. I only want to
roster players that have you know, one hundredth percentile outcome. That is an
MVP, you know, and so guys that have that kind of potential I
placed pretty high, even if there is a rather stark flaw. The two
that come to mind, and I know Matt is a fan of one or
both of them, Old Rodriguez and Spencer Jones. I look at those guys
and what they're able to do from a power perspective, and it's staggering to
me. Both of them have you know, a little bit of in zone
with Emmanuel Riguez comes to mind. Nate specifically with your comment, because I
like him a lot, and he does not he refuses to swing the bat,
and so you know, I find myself gravitating towards these guys that have
a true carrying tool. And if there's more than that, then excellent.
I'm going to stuff you weigh up a list, but I struggle with the
players that are maybe fives across the board. It's interesting though, Like you
know, you play in deeper leagues, and I totally understand the like you
know, I call it like superstar hunting. There's some formats in some leagues,
but that's all I'm going to do. Yep. But then there's others
where it's like if you're playing like a thirty team where maybe even the twenty,
it's like I got to get something out of my draft picks, like
there is more of a realistic baseball organization type thing there is. I can't
just strike out on all these big swings. I got to get something out
of this. You're totally right. A lot of this is format dependent,
of course, like I would value someone like trying to pull another name that
I haven't already said, maybe like a Luis Laura where and this is a
guy who would play well in a K penalty league, but who I think
is an interesting dart throw for bat to ball as a leading tool without you
know, maybe something that I think could make him an MVP. Those guys
become more intriguing to me in my thirty team league where I have to constantly
refuel this team with minor leaguers or I'm going to fall out of contention pretty
quickly. One guy that you did put in the back area, I think
he was in maybe the late eighties or nineties for you, was Graham Paully.
And he's another one that I think his shape of production looks like maybe
the contact skills or a tick above average that might be the only plus,
like fifty five maybe sixty there. Everything else seems like fifties or around his
skill set. But he's a guy that I end up gravitating towards two as
one that I think the combination of all of those things together, that he's
got a little bit of power, he's got decent to maybe slightly better than
decent contact. He'll swipe some bags. I really like grand Polly. I've
found myself staring at him in a bunch of fypds lately and come away with
him in a couple of them because I'm like, I actually think this guy's
a regular, and whether he's a first division regular, whether it's going to
take some more seasoning, he needs to do something more, But I am
kind of sold on him as like an example of that five So maybe one
tool is a little bit better than that, but that I feel pretty confident
in those, and I like him as a Matt You do you stare at
Graham Paulie in the same fashion you stare at Colt Emerson's photoshopped by photos.
Well, one of those is for my private time, and the other is
for my fantasy baseball time, so it's different. It's different. I and
I did this when I was on Welsh's show. I don't want to do
too many callbacks to that, but I had a moment on his show where
I realized, you know, if I'm going to have James Wood at thirteen
or whatever I had him at, why is Spencer Jones at thirty? That
feels like a disconnect that I have not reconciled. I feel similarly about Thomas
to Jay Z and Grand Paully. Grand Polly was a player that I gravitated
towards because I got to see him at the AFL and he didn't necessarily wow
with performance out there. He's a player I think that the production has,
you know, born out that he is maybe an above average hitter with maybe
above average power, and everything else is maybe average or fringe average. But
he looks like there's more. He is rather physically impressive, and I don't
think he's done developing yet. I don't think that's a controversial stance to have
for somebody that has not yet played in MLB. But he's one where I
look at him and I think there's more in the tank. So even if
it's fifty five, fifty five and then fives across the board, I think
there's potential for more. Yet, I really like Grandpaully. He's super fun
to watch. I like it. I just got a couple of shares,
so I'm hopeful for more. I wonder what his playing time will look like
this year. They have an interesting roster construction in San Diego. They do,
and have they played him in any odd spots because they're playing maryl in
the center field and left field. Has Polly gotten any time out there.
I'm actually a little curious if they'll Because we spent some time talking about Jake
Croninworth. I almost wonder if he's not like a rip chord option at first
base. One thing I did find with Grand Polly he pinched ran on Monday
and then took the field at first base for Jake Croninworth. So interesting.
Maybe maybe something to watch there as the season wears on. We talked about
this at the outset too, and it is definitely over reaction season in every
direction. But it's so hard not to. I have so many shares of
Joe Musgrove and the guy has gotten like zero outs in two outings already,
and it's like gave me a headache. When I saw a second outing,
I was like immediately stressed and like, listen, do I need to be
stressed about Joe Muskrove on a global level? No? Do I need to
be stressed about it for my fantasy teams? Like also no, Like there's
a lot of time, a lot of things that can happen. You should
be you should change your opinions about players very slowly at this time of year.
But it's hard not to when you're like, oh my god, Spencer
Jones hit a ford in se many foot home run like he's the best player
ever. Joe Muscrove hasn't gotten it out in a week, Like, oh
my god, he's terrible. You know, It's it's hard not to really
like trying to cipher through and like, what what do you think is a
real substantial thing to pay attention to him? What isn't one thing I wanted
to ask you, Matt was because I know you're not a huge fan of
him, I don't think, but to me, Casey Miz throwing as hard
as he has been is super interesting to me. Well, and the pitch
shaped change too, I mean, I'm kinda interested, you know. I
think Detroit's a great place to pitch. I actually like a lot of their
pitchers, and I wonder if they're doing something right there in terms of the
development. I don't know, I don't know what's going on there. Beck,
what do you say? You got any thoughts on myz? I mean,
I was really excited for him coming out of college, and it's pretty
astounding how quickly the kind of glut of pitching talent that the Tigers went out
and drafted in the you know, the late teens, if I'm allowed to
call it that, it's only twenty twenty four, kind of fell apart,
you know, him and Matt Manning, and they invested a lot of draft
capital there. I want Casey Mize to be great, but I'm also trying
to do, you know, what Matt is doing. Kind of take it
as it comes. If he keeps looking fantastic, I want to be slow
to change my opinion, but I loved him out of the draft, and
this feels like, you know, I don't want to overreact, but it
feels like maybe realizing a dream for Casey Mice. One thing that I think
is good about spring training. If we're paying attention, there's a lot of
examples and a lot of highlights, and a lot of things that you will
see where it's like stuff changes stuff and progress, and it can progress differently
than a guy's ability to execute pitches, Like it's much more coachable. And
I think you see that vividly during spring training. You know, maybe some
of these velocity gains or sharper pitches don't last over the long haul or what
have you. Yeah, And with pitching in particular, that's where like you
might try and change your mind a little bit faster, Like if a pitch
shape is different, if someone is up a couple ticks, those things tend
to matter and tend to stick, like it's usually the product of something that
they have changed with effort and intention, And when they do that, it
often does lead to production changes in season. As we've talked about before,
Nate, like pitchers can change so freaking fast. Then if you aren't paying
attention really closely, you can miss those guys. So I would say,
like, nice current events, man, pitching these current events Like that's that's
why I tried to do that Prospect Pitching review list and on a weekly basis,
what's new, what's new with this guy? Especially some of those levels
and some of those ages, like there are things that can change pretty rapidly,
or there are just guys who are just humming along doing the same exact
thing for several years. Well, and that's what I do on the Statcast
leaderboards during spring training is I mostly just look at the pictures and see what's
the delta from their twenty twenty three. So I see is spin changing,
is the shape of the pitch change velocity, and that you know, the
results don't don't really matter. It can hurt your feelings and make you stressed.
As I said about mister Joe Musgrove figured it out, can hurt their
value on the trade table. It can, but generally it has to be
such outlier performance for the results to actually signal any kind of change. You
know that people have looked at this time and time again. Strikeouts for hitters,
strikeouts for pictures like that might signal a small change in your underlying estimate
as to their true talent level, but you mostly should ignore the results.
But looking at some of the component pieces, has the quote unquote stuff changed
That can signal something like because it can change fast, and it can be
a sticky improvement or degradation too, and that's something to keep an eye out
for. You know. It's it's funny, Matt. Every episode you just
talk, you say out loud, pitching is so much better than hitting,
and you just can't come around to it. Man, when you're just gonna
accept this better? No, I okay, I have a lot of thoughts
here. I think pitching is more fun to scout. I think it is
like they're hitting to some degree, feels more mechanical because the inputs and outputs
of evaluation. I think if there's there's almost more of a rubric for it.
But pitching, Nate, you're an artist. I think there's an art
to it that we're still figuring out how to quantify. And actually a point
I wanted to make them. You know, it's it's best shape of our
life season for people getting takes off on Twitter as well as, like Matt,
to your point, kind of the two things to look out for are
jumps in velocity and material changes to arsenals and stuff. And I've seen some
people talk about jumps in velocity on like a one inning outing or a two
inning outing. I don't really care as much about that if I wanted to
shove say Casey myes and the pen and say, look, he throws ninety
eight. Now that's great, but he's still got to go five innings as
a starter. So you know, you can more or less disregards his first
time out, his velocities up in the first inning. You know, he's
thrown fifteen pitches. And then you know, on the I think you said
it correctly, on arsenal changes or developing a new pitch, is production is
going to change. We don't know if that's good or bad. Necessarily,
it's something to take note of. But like you know, Bryce Miller adding
a splitter probably good. He could use another weapon. I don't know if
that's necessarily going to be a good pitch for him over the course of an
entire regular season, right, And I don't know if he has a good
grasp on how to deploy it in real game situations. And so, yes,
it's notable and something you know that I want to give my attention to.
At the same time, it's really hard to say, hey, this
portends good things for any given picture. For SURELL said well said yeah,
and you know, just and there's a whole other level too. Like Matt
and I have talked about, it's like, how do you use it?
How well do you use it? Do you know when to use it?
Switch the order that you use it, and it might work well. You
know, a ninety nine mile per hour fastball and a nice chainsaw, you
know, in a vacuum. We're both very nice tools, but if you
got them in the wrong hands, they're useless or somewhat useless. Be should
we get you out of here? I have to leave you with one thing.
So I recently moved from Rochester, Minnesota back to Minneapolis after like a
two and a half year hiatus, and we bought a house. I realize
over the course of the episode that there is a supper club like less than
two miles from me. I'm going to keep the name of the supper club
to myself, simply because I don't feel like doxing myself. I will let
the two of you know. Actually, Matt, maybe this is more important
for you. You can look it up. You can take, you know,
a swing through some of the pictures and you'll understand the vibe. It's
right on a lake. We have not yet been patrons of the supper club,
but I am excited for a summer night out on the patio. Oh,
I'm so jealous. It's been like a more than a decade now since
I've been back to Minnesota to visit my friends out there. I need to
make a summer trip out and see. I've never been to target Field.
I've only been to the Metrodome. You. I love target Field a little
bit biased because you know, the Twins are my al team, but it's
a it's a great ballpark. I recommend you getting out, and I would
love to catch a game if you're ever in the area. Well, when
we make our millions with our podcasts, I going to suggest this earlier that
we, you know, set up shopping the Dominican for part of the year,
you know, a couple of months. We'll rent it out the rest
of the time. But then we'll just hang out at major League games.
Here you go, when money's not an object. That's man. Thank you
so much for your time. Anything else you wanna you wanna tell folks about
Beck Yeah, we've covered a lot here. My Top one hundred is out.
It's one hundred and ten pages long. Matt helped me edit it.
So you know, to some degree, I'm still indebted to him, Nate,
I'm indebted to you for inviting me on the pod. This has been
a great time. For those of you who are still listening and are still
interested in future work that I may have going on. You can find me
on Twitter. Almost everything that I write ends up on that platform anyway.
Otherwise, check out the Dynasty dugout. It's the Dynasty dugout dot com.
Chris just went full time. I'm sure anybody listening to this is already intimately
acquainted with Chris or otherwise acquainted with Chris. He just went full time.
He's putting out a ton of work on the site, So recommend checking it
out, if not for anything that I happen to type up for Chris's work
right on. Thank you awesome having you back. This was great, This
was fantastic. I would do this again. Let's we'll have you back for
sure. I can't. I can't wait until the season starts and I got
some like undrafted picture that like just totally blew me away and I get to
get to talk about him. Yeah, yeah, that'll be great. Let's
uh, let's have Chicago Farmer take this out. Be well, and we'll
talk to you next time later. Take care of guys within an hour.
Riding to his head, he hop him down the first with the lump bone
in his face, and on the very next pitch he up in stove second
face with greatst speed. He wasn't born. He had the dirty Yes uniform.