Howdy, and welcome to the Three True Outcomes podcast, presented by Baseball Perspectus.
I'm your host, Ian Leftcootz, and joining me as always are Ben
Murphy and Jared Weiss. And if you think that's quicker than usual, that's
because we have a lot of show to get to. We are going to
be talking about the scoresheet, mock draft, and we have some guests.
So I am going to turn it over to Jared now to take us through
the next few minutes. Two out an hour every many minutes it takes.
Yes, I got additional duties. I get upgraded from LV gaptain. This
is very exciting. Joining us from Connecticut. Please welcome Nate Stevens. Nate,
how are you. I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well.
Thanks, and we have more than one guests. This is super exciting.
Joining us from California. Please welcome John Army, John, how are
you? Hey? I'm doing dandy. Good to be here. Man.
That's exciting. That's a lot of energy. Yeah, John's got too much
energy. I'm on the correct coast where it's you know, still bright and
early uh not, you know, time to fall asleep. But what I
like about that most is that it's a podcast. But as you know,
everybody on these coast is tired all the time. That is my understanding.
So you accurately guess yes, um, but sorry, so go ahead.
So I guess we should introduce what is the scoresheet mock draft? Yes?
Boy, um, so I'll take that one. Take great question. Ian.
The scoresheet mock draft is a annual tradition, I don't know how many
years. If anyone here knows, feel free to jump in. UM led
by past guest and uh uh scoresheet uh man about town Brandy Barry Jones,
um, in which a number of scor sheet experts and and others and yeah
yeah, but mostly expert And we had a very good year this year.
I think our get together to kind of mock draft make December a little bit
better and also rag on each other for the picks that they have made.
UM. Just to start off with, like how to follow along with this
conversation. We'll try to make the conversation as easy as possible for you.
But if you want to get the results of the mock draft, we will
either probably leave them in the show notes. Yes, and if you can't
find it there you can go to groups dot Yahoo dot com. It turns
out you actually can't google it and type in score sheet mock draft, and
then you can get a little bit of the conversation. You can also go
to the mock draft league in scoreesheet, which is bl mock draft, and
then if you know the trick on how to get archive results, you can
get archive transactions. It's typing backslash archive backslash twenty eighteen into the transactions field.
It'll change your life, I promise. Okay, on with the show.
I think on Scorcia Talk, one of the most frequently asked questions is
where to get a clean copy of the mock Jeff slash me similar. So
I think let's just start off with what do you guys, how do you
guys find the mock Jeff useful in terms of real leagues? So obviously it's
fine, we all get together, we make jokes and we have a good
Jeff. But how do you all find or not find the mock Jeff to
be useful? I'll start with you Niate. Yeah, so I think it's
extremely useful from a benchmarking perspective. You know there's going to be outliers there's
going to be people that disagree, but it gives you a general sense of
you know, hey, there's twenty four people in the league. At least
one other owner values this player in this way, right, So you know
I use that a lot in trades in the offseason or early in the season.
You know, hey, this person went in this round. You know
this is pretty similar to this, so maybe we match up. So I'll
do a lot of that. And then the other thing is, you know,
I think you you do learn a lot. You know, I'm pretty
vocal in the group about picks, but I myself learned a ton. You
know. Paul gold Schmith's the one I always put out there that I had
not a lot of interest in him, and then Bill Sanders took him one
year and made a pretty compelling case and flipped a switch when all in on
Goldsmith got him in a couple of leagues. So you know, it's like
that. Every year there's at least one, if not a handful of players
that you kind of get a better sense of. And oh, maybe I'm
more interested now than I was before it started. And John I agree heavily
with date. Obviously, the Goldsmith thing is one that the Goldschmid type players,
the guys who somebody else picks, who you say, well, wait
a second, that doesn't look quite right to be that high, and then
you look at it you say, okay, well maybe I needed to prep
better. It. Also, it's a first chance, a first cut at
kind of prepping for a d figuring out where people go. Plus it's the
fun of getting to do a startup draft without committing yourself and ending up in
you know, twelve leagues at a time, So it does have that advantage.
My wife always points out when I tell her I'm doing a mock draft.
She points out that our other drafts are also not real. So this
is a fake, fake draft. But I enjoyed a great deal. I
enjoyed prepping ford I enjoy doing it. The fake fake draft is one of
my wife's favorite quips about the mock draft. Also, does she say that
about mock trials as well. No, because actual trials are real, our
drafts are not real. Trials are real, so a mock trial makes sense.
But mock draft is really a mock mock draft because obviously the fantasy leagues
when we draft from my trout, he does not come to our house and
play in the backyard fair American jurisprudence today. Um, So I want to
get it into the meat of the draft in a second. But first,
John and they you normally don't own a team together. But in the mock
draft you mocked. Did you mocked? You mocked? Yes? YEAHS co
owned the mock draft team. Um, whereas normally your separate entities team DdO
has found the joint experience to be rewarding, or at least that's what they
tell me to my face. But how did you find uh mocking together as
opposed to owning separate teams. I'll hit this one first. I think the
we've done this now for two years, and last year it was sort of
an accident, and this year we did it with malice aforethought, and I
think we learned something from year one to year two because we're both we both
have strong opinions. Uh, we're both uh, we both have strong personalities,
and uh, you know, we're both competitive in everything including fake fake
drafts. So we ended up having good conversations about a lot of players,
and I think we ended up trying to be a little more deferential in our
first draft, and we were a little stronger I think in this one in
finding the points where we were going to defer or not defer. And so
I felt like I felt like this year's draft coming out of it, I
was pretty happy with the results. And it's fun to talk to Nate because
you know, generally in NorCal obviously he's failed because he was behind me last
year, and he's behind me in our ranking system, and he's behind me
I think morally, intellectually and politically, and I do like to stress that
just this moment, while I have the chance, I should probably let Nate
talk at this point, Well, I really missed the opportunity a couple of
years ago when I won twice and three years and went to three straight World
Series. Really should have rubbed that in a little bit more when I had
the chance. Apparently I was up against this, but no, I mean
back to the draft. I mean, I agree with John. I mean
I think we definitely got better in the second year. I think the first
year was more of like, oh, well I don't really want to do
that, so but you know, go ahead. Uh, And this year,
um, we kind of just would like veto individual players like, hey,
we don't really have a lot of consensus on this guy. Let's not
let's not do that. Um, And you know, if I have a
guy first and you have a guy fifth, you know, especially in like
the mid or later rounds, like that's that's a lot of consensus. So,
um, we did that, and I think it. I think it
worked out better. You know, last year, at the time, I
didn't not like our draft, but I think in retrospect it was kind of
okay. You know, this year's draft, I feel a lot more confident
about coming out of it. Jared and Ian and I avoid that problem wherein
Ian is the only one that knows anything about anything, so we just do
whatever Ian says. I'm not sure I agree with that logic, but yeah,
no, I think there's I think there's an interesting aspect of like,
as people who have done this for a very long time, Like I like
working in teams, I don't. I don't know if I particularly would like
to run get a team solo personally, just I like discussing and dialectic.
But I think there's an interesting thing that you were kind of hitting on of
the difference between let's say, just like seating your territory and compromise and like
understanding where it's like, just because somebody has a strong opinion doesn't necessarily mean
that it's the right one. And it's like going into a one for you,
one for me scenario might not be ideal, but you know, I
think saying like, okay, we both have this person high you know,
I don't know. I wonder if you feel like consensus picks end up doing
better than the ones where you feel like you're more one of you is more
out on a limb. I think it's a question of expertise. I mean,
one of the mistakes LI was not getting Miles Nicholas, which we could
have done if I had listened to Nate. And one of the things NATA
has better expertise on foreign leagues. And so it's really a question of finding
the areas in which we're which we're likely to be better. And there's still
some room for deferring, but there should be a reason for that. And
if so, I think we found a better a better fit this year.
Yeah, And I think one thing you can say from that is that the
team that drafted Miles Michelis last year really understood teamwork the best. Sorry,
go ahead, so let's get into the draft a little bit maybe, And
I don't want to go through all the pixel or all our picks, but
I thought it might make sense to start with the first round. In our
first pixel, we were both in the top five. So first Mike trent
Win does any won't have any problems with that? Who you'd be out of
your mind not to pick Mike Trout. And it's a huge advantage to get
the one seed. Trout is different than everyone else. He's still better than
everybody else. He's gonna be better than everybody else. There's really not an
issue. I meant to ask this of the of the comments section, and
for those who are missing at the comment section, one of the best reasons
to subscribe, like and you can kind of go back to the Yahoo grip
and look through it. Um, what year do you think is the first
year that Mike Trout will not go number one in the mock draft? You
had to guess. I was trying to think, how, oh does he
know twenty eight? He's twenty eight? Yeah, Um, I'd give it
three years, yeah once once he's thirty one. Yeah, So I think
like one of like Son and one of those guys have going instead. Yeah,
I think it'll be an early twenties guy. And at that point you're
looking at eight, nine, ten years of differ rents. Yeah, someone
will weigh that more. I'm not saying that's right, but it's at least
colorable in a couple of years. Yeah, And I think you guys may
have staked a claim on which person you think might be the next one one.
We'll get their shadow, yeah in a second. But since we're here,
I think John, you have a point to lead you a little bit
about startup leagues and if you were, if you were starting a new one,
you wouldn't have randomly assigned picks, but you'd have some other system.
And I'm going to guess that has something to do with Mike Chad. In
any league, almost in any league you're in, if you do a standard
back and forth snake draft, the early round pick, the earlier picks are
going to have an advantage because remember one of the things Bill James taught us
is that baseball talent is the far end of a bell curve. It's not
a bell curve. So as you go up that I mean being ahead as
you go in lower rounds, being had an round is worth less than it
is at the very top. So you'd have to have you have to have
some kind of auction or some kind of distribution system if you want it to
be fair. If you don't want it to be fair, if you want
it to be lucked, and fine, but otherwise you have to have some
kind of distribution system, an auction system for not just pick one, but
I think other picks too. I think all the way down until people lose
interest, in which you either give up picks or you reduce picks down to
the end of the draft. If you're not doing that, then the trout
water is a huge, huge deal. I talked about that with Matt Houser,
who sort of won the quick and dirty way we calculated it, and
one of the advantages he had was that he had the chance to get trout.
One of the other advantages he had as he outdrafted everybody else and still
would have won even without that. But the h but it really is.
It's a huge thing. And so if you're if you're gonna run a league,
if you're gonna start, if you're gonna do a startup league, you
want to make sure you do that, especially if you have sophisticate an actor.
It's like I think we all are. Yeah, yeah, oh go
ahead, sorry sorry, um yeah. I think that's always the case,
which John said. I think it just Mike Trout being who he is exacerbates
that right now and not doing that just is a really big mistake, a
bigger mistake than usual. Not to cross sports, but it's like when LaDainian
Tomlinson was scoring like twenty to thirty touchdowns every year and he was like the
number one pick every single year and Fantasy football, and everyone just started throwing
their hands up and it's like, this is this massive advantage. So they
started doing like third round reversal and they tried to do some other things to
counteract that. That's that's who Mike Trout is, the Ladamian Thomlinson of baseball.
Oh as somebody who lives the Jets territory. That's really ominous. I
can't wait to reprobusted Mike Trout in a decade. No, I was just
going to add that we have been subject to this rule all twice now,
once in joining VP dork Coal and once this year in VP Kings. And
you can hear about that experience in an earlier podcast. Um, it's really
good, and it's really good for us because now we have Mike Trout.
But we were we were big fans and like we were willing to spend for
the first pick um in both cases and some team other teams were not,
And I think being able to make that choice was really appealing to us.
Moving all the way down to the next pick um made by a tree of
charming and handsome gentleman. I think we had a discussion here, Um,
John Nada, I guess I'm curious to see what you guys think of our
pick of Francisco Lindor as number two overall. U were you hoping that he
would follow? Did you expect that he might? Were you happy we took
him? Yeah? I jn sou it was what I expected. Um.
I told John before the draft that I thought Lindor and Bets would go to
three in some order. Um. I don't have a huge preference between the
two, but I do think they are the right picks. I think,
you know, there's the exciting trio of baseball players that can't drink yet that
we'll get to in a minute. But I still think Lindor and Bets are
are worth it. They're both just so good right now, they're both still
very young, that they belong there. Yeah. I agree. I I
wasn't just convinced that Lindoor and Bets would go to three, but Nate was
right, and so it was. And there's good reason for Lindoor to be
number two. I mean, he solves a problem for you for for a
decade. He's really good. There's he's a completely sensible number two. And
anyway you have with think because we didn't land on the door right away,
there's some back and forth there. Yeah, so it's sort of, you
know, we were trying a thing, and we'll talk about our strategy a
little later, but we were thinking about kind of, I think, structuring
the question a little differently. So first we kind of just thoughted between Lindor
Bets and let's say Alex s Bregman I think was up there, Manny Machado
was up there, Jose Ramirez was up there and just deciding like essentially who
the best player is. And we kind of came to that same Lindoor Bets
conclusion. We had Soto Kunia and Flat Junior, which I guess we can
name them. They're not like Baltimore in a in a bucket and then you
know, arrange them in a certain way and then said like, okay,
now what team do we want, which is probably not exactly the way to
do it, like you should probably just line up players in terms of value,
But I think we were also thinking about like how much this would affect
our strategy, and you know, are the extra six years worth it?
So I'm happy with Lindoor. Obviously I would like him to not have gotten
hurt like two days into the draft to make us look good, but you
know we're getting in for the next ten years in this theoretical league. So
um yeah, I still no regrets. So Bet swin third, then Machado
and then Nat and John you guys had the fifth pick and took one Sodo
there. Um was there a lot of discussion there? How did you end
up on Soto? Well, uh, we had we there was some discussion
as to what we would do. I think we had we ended up with
our list being trout Lindor, and then because I was an agitator, h
Soto at three. But I am I'm absolutely I am not confident between Soda
Acuna and vlad which one of those guys is going to be the best out
of those. But man Soto had an age nineteen season that was just crazy.
Throw it an eight here. Yeah, yeah, I would say,
I'm like thirty four, thirty two, thirty two between the three of those.
I think the real answer is just yes, Like, if you can
get any of those guys in the top ten of a startup draft, you
just do it and say thank you and move on. Um, you know,
it'll be super fun to see which ends up the best. But I
don't. I wouldn't argue with anyone that picked those three in any order.
Yeah, well, I mean, certainly we have to take into account that
Vladimir Greer juniors own GM said that he was not a major league player in
the moment, So you know, we'll let that wigh in. But um,
well, let's let's have that discussion now since it has to happen every
mock draft. So like we're talking about Soto and Kun you win a lad
Win nine, We're why were prospects taken too early? Why when will his
madness end? Someone please make it stop? Blad of course is uh he
Blad, It's not a normal prospect. Um, he's not a normal human.
I think I think Nate as always said we're drafting prospects too high and
we should stop. Isn't that what you said, Nate? That's that's pretty
close. Yeah, it's our long natural nightmare. We have the argument.
We have the argument each year, and uh, Nate and I are trying
to I think there's the old saying, UM, build a man of fire
and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he'll be warm the rest of his life. And in this case, I
think we're ready to set the people on fire. Who keeps saying that the
prospects aren't are taken too early, Um, it just hasn't. It's not
true. Um, it's just not empirically true. Because if you hit on
one of these guys, if you drafted one Soto last year, um,
in anything other than the first fifteen picks, you're a huge winner for the
rest of your life. And if you look back at the old drafts,
I mean, if you take too low and round sixteen or round fifty and
these all these other picks. Now, sure a lot of them wash out,
but the goal is to end up with you know, three, four
or five baseline players wore studs, and at that point it gives you a
lot of room for error else Yeah, I think that's the key when you
think of it as trying to build a core and having those players have a
lot of time to develop into being part of that core. That's what makes
the difference for some people. I've heard a lot of people talk about like
the relative risk of the prospects also, and I think it's important to make
sure everybody's mindful of the relative risk of all the major leaguers. Also.
I think it's the other big counter argument that's easy to dismiss with a little
bit of evidence. Yeah, And I'm fully with you, Ben, I
say that all the time. I mean, you know, the way to
do it is like, Okay, show me your third through fifth round picks
for the last five years and show me how you never missed. Yeah.
Right, and then that quickly crumbles, right, because people's hit rates even
in the third or four fifth round are not very high. They're a lot
lower than you thing they are. I will say though, that I think
the mock's gotten a lot better. I think this was probably the best year
we've ever had in terms of evaluations. You know, the prospects to go
to early crowd was very very very small this year, which was good.
And I think our quality of drafter keeps going up, so I think it's
a better benchmark and really it's ever been, which is pretty great. Can
I ask a question of the group about that, because I think this came
up a little bit in some of the discussion that and so I'll just say,
like I'll preface this, like, my personal opinion is generally to agree
with what Nate said about the quality of the average participant in the mock draft
has gone up, and I think the mock draft benefits from that, and
so to all the people that are following it. But I think there was
some concern that there's maybe too much agreement, or maybe there will be a
point where there's too much agreement and that's not necessarily constructive at least that's like
the perspective that I heard. And I think if you wanted to carry that
a little bit further, and I'm not sure that this is what the person
was necessarily saying in starting the discussion, but if you want to carry that
a little bit further, you could run into some issues of groupthink or a
situation where the mock draft is not nearly as generally relevant and applicable to folks
unless they're sort of of that same mindset as the people who are doing the
mock draft. If you if you do get into that situation, do you
guys think that's a problem now going to be a problem in the future.
Is it has anything to be concerned about. I'll take this one first.
No. I think part of it is, you know what the role of
the mock draft is, and I feel like there is like it is not
your draft. It is on some level to reflect group think. If it
works well, the same way that the top hundred prospects lists have probably converged
over time. You know, I think there's probably an element of group thing,
but it's also consensus from which you can work in your own opinions.
I also think probably whatever aspect of group think there is probably gets overwhelmed by
having more correct picks. You know, I don't think unless you are in
the draft, you know, I don't think it is as relevant like who
is taking who when I think just having them having the draft available as a
resource later probably just benefits from having a more consistent point of view that you
can then work off. Yeah, I would agree. I would say I'm
like nine anti that position. Maybe five percent worries about it a little bit,
But I mean I think group thinks a good thing when it's because you
have a bunch of super successful owners that are coming together and you know there's
certain strategies that work better than others over time. So um, I think
that's what you get here. Now, if you have a scenario where there's
a whole bunch of people that are doing really well, it's course she that
aren't in the mock or people use types of valuations or strategies that they do
and they're not there, then yeah, then you have a group think problem.
But I don't think that's the case today. I think we have a
super strong group that's very representative of the people doing well and where she and
I think the argument that argument is a little bit. Hey man, all
you people are going to operate as if the Earth is a sphere and you
don't. You're not gonna put anybody in here who's gonna tell us the Earth
is flat? Are we gonna really deal with this? Are we gonna deal
with this kind of groupthink where everybody's gonna think the same way. Everybody's forced
into the same model. Um, and I think that's uh so I have
as much I agree with everybody else. Follow up a question? Sorry,
go ahead, UM, so you someone mentioned the successful strategies that they're potentially
leading to what some people called groups think. Um, what are some strategies
that you al saw emerge in this mock? And um, you know that's
that's been born out of previous mocks as well. Uh yeah, I mean
I'll point out a few things. The one is draft young players. Um,
you know, there were not a lot of thirty plus players draft in
the first round. I'm not even sure if there was one this year.
Um, don't draft pictures in the first round. You know, there's the
Clayton Kershaws Jephson, which you can use for a number of years, but
other than that, you probably shouldn't be drafting a picture. No pictures went
in first round this year. So I think those are two good ways to
start your draft. If you can draft a twenty to twenty five year old
a really good hitter, um, that's a that's a good place to be.
So you're saying take it, David Price. Third, overall, it's
a bad plan. Yeah, uh, in in this year, yes,
a few years ago. Also, yes, do you guys think if Kershaw
had been healthy it would have been reasonable to see him middle of the first
round? Yeah, I mean second half, some twenty six year old,
super healthy, no worries about his arm or anything else. Kershaw, Yeah,
absolutely know, he gets an exception. He's that much better than everyone
else. But that Kershaw doesn't exist anymore. Right, He's older, he's
had problem staying healthy, he's hurt right now. Um so yeah, not
not anymore. Yeah. And I don't even think there's necessarily a consensus on
who the number one picture is. I don't like no one immediately springs to
mind for a continuing league, um, I would say, And this kind
of details into what our strategy was, because there was a there was an
aspect where we kind of saw the writing on the wall, and um,
a lot like we tended to draft the last few years pretty heavily in the
twenty two to twenty six year old range or twenty two to twenty seven.
And I think we were probably a little more dogmatic about it than the two
of you, who I think tend to jump around for value. If that's
and I'll let you guys respond to that, and I yeah, and I
think this year, like we just saw everybody filling that space, and I
don't know that we were like incredibly successful at it, but we ended up
going almost a little younger than usual, which is maybe not the right direction
all told. And we can talk about how successful that was later. But
you know, I think we tried to draft maybe even into the nineteen to
twenty two range a little more than we usually do, which is, you
know, we are not big prospect hounds in this league, just because I
think there are people who take that space better than us. But um,
with this kind of um, I want to say, like strong drafting,
it just became almost too hard to find equality twenty five year old by mid
round. And you know, for what we're trying to do, which is
probably generally it's to compete in M plus one year, we just found there
was more value like outside of that kind of type window. Sorry, yep,
everyone agrees, Um, well let's just move on more generically. UM,
were there any picks that sort out to you all that? Um you,
like Dorik I said, you didn't, like, feel free to tout
your own picks as well, if there's something you want to call out.
I think there ended up being value with the age with some of the older
guys. I thought, seeing Donaldson in the sixth round, Cane in the
eighth round, I mean, Lorenzo Kane's really good and with the format,
if you get a guy who's really good for a couple of years, uh,
you know, those are championships added. UM. On the younger side,
I really liked the pick up Washington's Luis Garcia, whose name is not
memorable. And then uh, uh Nate was on me. Uh Nate wanted
to draft Cabrian Hayes and we didn't quite reach a consensus. Uh, and
somebody drafted him then before we uh we would have. But you know,
now, Cobryan Hayes is just killing spring training. And I know there's a
lot of people saying spring training is meeting less. They are wrong. Um.
And the even in this very very very small sample size for Cabrian Hayes,
it is some useful information. So those are some of the picks I
I saw and uh and I think really provided uh you know, obvious good
value. There were a lot of reasonable value picks to be had because of
the focus on youth. Yeah, I had I had something of the similar,
and I was hinting at that I have I think your own Uh did
you take up? Were you the ones who took Joey Vado in around six?
Um? Sorry I should have that up, but I had Joey Vado
listed around six. I thought even Carlos Santana and Josea Breyu in round eleven.
I think those are closer to what you guys tend to call tedious value
picks. But you know, I think there was just some value in older
players, and it kind of um made us with you know, when once
we had the once we kind of had made enough nineteen to twenty one year
old picks, it was too hard for us to pivot to like, um,
you know, going much older in the draft, because I don't think
we would have had the base with which to support that. But you saw,
almost like halfway through the draft that the talent was really dropping for teams
that were trying to compete in year one. So, if I may,
I think, if I put myself in the shoes of say, somebody who
is interested in the mock draft, but maybe it is I don't know,
somewhat ignorant, say, how would you reconcile the difference between saying prospects aren't
going too early, but also saying that there was value in the veterans later
on. There was value in some of the veterans later on, some of
the veterans. I think we're not great picks, but you and you know,
I talked about some of the values that I thought were there for some
of the prospects later and some of the values that were clearly there. I
mean, Donaldson and Kane shouldn't have dropped that far, but I don't think
Louis Scarcia should have dropped that far either, And Nate, you were right,
Kabrian Hayes probably shouldn't have dropped that far. Yeah, it's funny too
because most of my list is mostly young players. Still, even with the
enhanced focus on younger players, I think everyone on my list is under thirty
um in terms of pick that I like. You know, I like Donaldson
too. I think that's a good pick. Is it one of the ten
or twenty those picks in the draft? In my opinion, No, it's
not um, but it's a good one. I think in round six there's
a there's some value there. Well, where are some of the best picks.
Uh So Danny Jansen went in the fourth round. Um, that's gonna
be surprising to a lot of people, but I think it's absolutely appropriate.
Um he's the catcher two on my board. Um in all the baseball,
which is kind of crazy, but um, there's a lot to like there.
He's gonna get on base, He's gonna have herm some power. He's
young, catcher's terrible. Um, go get yourself and Danny Janson if you
can. Um. Ramo Loriano round eight. Um, you know, he
had pretty bad seventeen and was maybe the Astro's only mistake of the last few
years when they let him go after that. But he rebounded pretty big last
year, had the good forty some odd game debut. You know, guy
that can do it all. You know, strikeouts may limit him a little
bit, but looks power, speed, defense, kind of get it all
there. His arm is also kind of must watch TV. Doesn't really help
you a ton of score sheet, but a super fun player to watch and
root for a couple others. I hate to say our own picks, but
I can lump up together, so I'm going to do it. Padre's pictures.
So Chris Paddock went in round eight. Huge, huge, huge fan
of him. He is looked really good in spring training, not surely in
the results, just in his stuff and how he's approaching batters and some of
the silly swings he's getting looks really good. You know. An anecdote I
offered in a pretty competitive league. I offered Kyle Schwarber for Chris Paddock straight
up within the last week. Pattick went round eighth where we went around four
of the mock and I was easily rejected. So I think that's mostly about
Chris Paddock. He's really good, and I think in round eighth that's pretty
incredible. Um, who's the bus name? Yep, yep. That might
have been a trade that happened. And then the other Padre pitcher is Matt
Strom. He's probably my favorite pitcher picking this year. Ye we took him
around twelve. Everything is pointing in the right direction. Uh. You know,
he pitched last year coming off knee surgery. By his own admission,
he wasn't healthy until August. He still had a really good year. He
was kind of doing the opener thing late in the year and he was still
pitching really good. He had a twelve K to nine in the second half.
He has four pitches that graded above average last year by results. Yes,
he did that as a reliever, but still that's an incredible place to
start and bodes well for going to the rotation. He added a bunch of
weight and muscle this winter to help him get more durable for for being a
starting pitchers. So he's he's probably my favorite UM pitcher pick this year.
Yeah. I had both of them on my sheet about year best players.
I couldn't agree more. Matt Tron's looked just like outstanding this spring. Padres
remain a fun watch. Yeah, for sure. That's going to be a
super fun team pitching, hitting. They have a lot of young, exciting
guys. It'll be interesting to see how they they come together. A few
more U Chad Pinder Round fifteen doesn't have a starting gig. He's still gonna
get at least four hundred plate appearances. He's gonna play all over the place.
I had a pretty good year last year. Batted ball data was really
good. Um, I think you know the drafts I've looked at. He's
getting out of the fifteen, sixteenth round. I think that's an incredible pick
there. And so when I'd recommend Pete Alonzo speaking of good spring training performances,
particularly in bls L, first base is kind of loaded right now,
particularly for leagues that have been going for a while, so um, it's
a little harder to get excited there, but certainly in BL's. Um,
you know, this is the classic, you know, non sexy, righty,
righty first baseman that just keeps hitting and all of a sudden he's in
the big leagues and he's, you know, one of the twenty or thirty
best hitters in baseball, and you're like, oh, how'd that happen?
He never he never got a lot of hype, so he could be the
new Goldschmidt or Hoskins or you know, a whole bunch of guys that have
done that. So there's still some risk. You know, he's not the
most athletic guy, to put it kindly, but um, that bat looks
really good. And in round nine that was that was pretty good. And
then one more out I second to Hayes Hayes recommendation, and lastly round thirteen
v. Dal Brujon. At some point we're gonna stop underrating the little guys.
He is not big. He could hit the gym that would help add
some physicality, but he's also not very tall. But everything else. If
you like didn't know his height and weight and you looked at him as some
prospects, you would think he's a top ten prospect in baseball. You know,
has the hit tool, played, approach, discipline, defense, speeds,
makeups off the chart, scorting to everyone that talks to him. You
know, the power is not quite there, but he's young and still growing
and all that. He did have a kind of a mini late season breakout
in high a small fample, so maybe nothing, but he started to add
more power there. So another hitter that I think could be very good and
around thirteen, I think the tables are in your favor. Cool um Need
You had just mentioned about the Gloody first baseman. Did the mock jet reveal
anything to you all about positional scarcity? I know, at least in my
head, there was a running thread about how deep third base was this year.
Yeah, I mean the one that I got to me was just Catcher
is awful. I mean, if you're not going to get one of the
first two or maybe a couple of the mid tier guys like the Tryst or
Grandall or something like that. After that, I mean, I might I'd
rather just wait till like round twenty and draft a couple of guys and have
a Franken starting catcher platoon. You're not going to be missing out on any
productivity by doing that. You know. There's not only there's not even a
lot of guys with like upside where you'd be like, hey, maybe this
guy's gonna be something. It's just a lot of people that you know,
are not going to be very good or just kind of be mediocres. So
catcher looks worse than I can remember it. Yeah, And one of the
things we see on the prospect it's Danny Jansen still qualifies as a prospect,
and he's like and so not even in some top one hundreds or he's eighty
seventh on place and you look at that. I mean, the guy right
now is Nate said, he's he's one of the top catchers in the league,
I mean right now. So when I see that on the on the
prospect, was I have some concerns because, as Nate said, Danny Jansen
is actually good and catching, not just for score sheet but in the major
leagues is weak. Obviously the major leagues. I think part of that is
that there's more of a more of a focus on some of the defensive things
that are out there, and so we end up seeing Jeff math Is still
having a job. Yeah, I will just echo that. I think I
saw Danny Jansen in the one hundred to one range in what I would call
a prominent minor league evaluators rankings. UM, and I thought that was crazy.
Um. And you know we saw only I was just counting. I
think only twenty catchers went in this draft. It's a twenty fourteen draft.
About half of them are rookies or people without position or you know, or
playing time one of that. It's willing test Todio. So can can I
can? I? Can I add an asterisk to the statement I made?
There is the Astudillo gambit, which is an exception I'm willing to allow.
Um, he does not go very high, but is actually interesting. UM.
I don't know how long that's gonna last, or if he's gonna ever
get playing time, but he's good. And I think the thing I said
in the mock was if you never strike out and batting average on balls and
play as a thing. That means you hit three hundred, right, um,
and and he does that. I mean it's a trick. It was
like two percent last year, three percent, So um, it doesn't take
much if you do that, and you have even a little bit of power
to become a pretty valuable catcher in this day and age. So I don't
know, he might make the team as like a utility guy slash third catcher.
He might come up later in the year. It's gonna still to be
determined as far as I know. But um, he's interesting, and I
think he's someone you'd like to have and just kind of treat him as a
prospect and see when he comes home. Yeah, you know. And it's
interesting because one of the actual few veteran catchers he went was Mitch Garver ahead
of him, so there and neither of them are actually starting catcher who did
not go. But it's just really fascinating. That's why we ended up taking
in the ninth round, we took Adlee Rushman. One of the things you
should know about this league is that you can take anyone, including you or
me, but please don't I'm not not I do not return sixteenth round value.
But I do think Adlee Rushman, who is by and large the consensus
number one, and I think has just again not that like playing like Fedom
or whatever matters, but he has been looking dynamite in the early college season.
Gangrass just to jump Fan Grafts just upgraded him to a sixty future Value
Prospects, which puts you solidly in the top twenty prospects of the game.
So yeah, it's not too early to jump on that bandwagon. He's He's
not a you know, Bryce Harper level one dot one when it comes to
the draft, but he is a solid Yes, this is the best player
in the draft coming. He's a lot different than everyone else in the draft.
Yeah, and I think there was some backtock at the time. I
think he was severely underdrafted because I think a lot of people are working for
a limited information in the college here, but there are also because there are
no good cashers. Yeah. Um, so, John, I wanted to
go back. You had brought up Malcolm Nuniez before. I know he had
a point there, But first, Ben, who is Malcolm juniaz Um to
see that author that wrote that really popular book, Yes, exactly, John,
Why should know who Malcolm Junia is. So Malcolm Junia is. It
was our sixteenth round pick. He was a slight statement pick. I thought
he was fifteenth round whatever, the last round is, sixteenth round the uh.
I thought he's value there. Um. But obviously in a real league
somebody might let him slip. Um. But basically what he did in rookie
league at the age of seventeen was to crush the ball entirely. He's sort
of a third baseman. Um. And here's the thing, like nobody had
heard of him, he'd had He's signed for I think four hundred grand,
which is not nothing, um. But when you have this kind of performance,
it's kind of massive, epic performance. It matters. Um. It's
it's an overwhelming performance, even in rookie ball. It's just you just don't
see people do this. Um. He had no ps of something like eleven
hundreds something ridiculous. And yeah, it's a it's the in a consummer league
which they keep adding teams and they have a thousand players in might not be
a thousand, but it's a lot of players, and so the quality is
slow. But you also have a seventeen year old who has just with real
power, and you shouldn't ignore that. And I think one of the things
that we see with some frequency is performance gets kind of ignored sometimes in on
some of these lists. Even now, you used to be much worse.
I think you want Malcolm Nunez. I think if you're in a league,
especially with unlimited rookies, nobody else is going to draft him. You can
probably draft him in the middle twenties. You're the only one listening to this
podcast, whoever you are, who does listen to this, and that's fair,
and you should go ahead and get get him. The performance is too
much of an outlier to ignore. And when you have things like that,
both Nate and I in season look at for supplemental picks, look at outlier
performances by minor league players, and you end up picking up some good players
by doing that. Yeah, some of them are flukes, but there are
some things you can do, like you know, home runs, if you
have a bunch of home runs. Yeah, maybe a little flukey, but
it's hard to hit a bunch of home runs if you don't have the ability
to hit home runs. So you really want to look at these kinds of
super outlier performances, even when they're in crappy leagues, even when they're even
if it's the Dominican Summer League and the guy is very young, and you're
gonna have a holding cause. So I think the lesson isn't just Malcolm Junia
is, but any of these things where you have some kind of you can't
ignore outlier performances. Yeah, and just just a correction there. His OPS
was actually twelve seventy. It was even better than eleven hundred and so,
you know, silly video game numbers, right, But I agree with John.
You know, he wasn't on my radar for around sixteen. He was
a guy I had heard of and who put up good numbers, but you
know, it wasn't wasn't anywhere near my list at that point. But John
made the case, and UM ultimately is yeah, this this makes sense.
Um, it's an outlier performance and we should see how that goes. Yeah.
I feel actually pretty similarly. I think it less more scouting, less
performance. But about your fifteenth round pick Nolan Jones, Um like getting the
players who just dominate league, like on some level, you know, it's
right, it's something to work from, like right, you're you know,
I think there's this like that, don't scout the stat line line That just
infuriates me because it's used wrong all the time by everyone. Um, but
you know, if you know how to, if you know how to just
outlines and what matters, you know, it's information, and to throw out
information just to feel superior is seems silly to me. I think that's an
excellent point. I think that goes for yea, that goes for spring training
stats, which have demonstrable use. If we throw that out and say,
oh, they don't matter, it does matter. All these things matter.
The question is how much do they matter? Quantifying how much they matter and
then using that to make good decisions. Yeah, or drafting Lewis Brinson in
the first round because he get five home runs? Can we can we talk
about Nolan Jones for a second, because he's super interesting. He's a weird
prospect um if you haven't looked at him, you know he's made a few
top one hundreds towards the back. But you know, you don't find many
prospects that you know, add an appropriate level in you know, single A
or high A. You know, walk sixteen percent of the time, strike
out twenty five percent of the time and have a whole bunch of power that
rarely happens, particularly the walks. Um. So you know, there's I
think some concerns that you know, maybe the batspeet isn't there and uh,
you know he's gonna strike out a whole bunch and he's being too passive and
uh, he's got Jeremy Hermida disease back in the day where it's like you
need to swing the bat sometimes, So he may be that a little bit,
um, but you know, the raw indicators there are super good and
you know, at someone that's not going to cost you very much, is
it's pretty interesting also, um, because it's not going to come up again
in the world. I'm a Jeremy hermid The truth there and everyone needs to
know this. He had a nineps one year where he just like dominated in
the Major league and everyone forgets this and he's like just a massive bust.
No, he was like legitimately like haid Off for a year and just um,
Jared, I think you can agree with me on this because I think
you were at this game. We saw him once in spring training like the
single Like, I don't mean to turn this into a Bills in his pot,
but like the single lowest motor I have ever seen on the baseball time.
And maybe he was sick that day. I don't know. That was
like in retrospect, I was like, oh, that's a warning sign.
Now I understand. But he's not a prospectus, he's a major league bust.
They're different. How long is that eating away at you? Ian?
Oh? All the time? Just you know, it doesn't come up in
regular conversations of Um, well, I want to be respectful of everyone's time
as of us on the East Coast. Do have to go to sleep because
we're on these coasts? Um? Do you have any final thoughts about the
mock that um you wanted to make sure to get out there. John will
start with you. I think the thing that we haven't talked about a lot
is it's really fun. I have a great time doing it. I had
a great time to doing it alone, but I also had a really great
time doing it with Date. You know, we had the back and forth.
It's something in the off season you get to you also have really high
quality commentary from a variety of people. I do think we're at a just
an incredible group of drafts at this point. I mean really good drafters,
really sharp people, people with takes, and we've really, I've just had
a terrific time. It's a fun thing to do. If you're if you're
interested in doing it next year, you should. And if you're if you
like scoresheet enough to be here a listener to a podcast on it, then
heck, uh, this is a really fun thing to do. I recommend
everyone do it. Yeah, And I think the other benefit is that,
you know, though it's a mock draft and we don't play it out,
the truth eventually emerges, right, so uh, you know there's some good
natured ripping that happens. You know, if someone doesn't like a pick or
something like that, that that we'll get said, we're not all just polite
and everything's roses and sunshine, and you know, we've had people come back
and you know a couple of years later you do know, hey, this
pick up hand and it worked out and that's the fun part, right,
So you know, hey, if you go against the grain and something works
out, and you should come back and crow about it a little bit.
So I find it super fun. It's someone that's obnoxiously competitive, i'd probably
get a little bit too into it, But um, I really enjoy it,
and I think we got a great group of owners. Yeah, I
will echo what they say. Um, and you know again, I actually
think that is a really good point. Like, um, you know,
this year, I think, um, I was noticing a lot of beloved,
beloved former baseball Perspectus writer Joe Shehan and Jay Young Claus have a team
together. I was noticing a lot of their picks. Uh, kinde got
gagged up on a little bit. Um, But um, you know,
I do think there's an aspect where they ended up taking a lot of brewers
and padres, and the brewers and padres looked pretty terrific and the early going,
Um, you know, I think there's a place where they could come
back in three years and say, well, we were actually just right about
everybody. So take that. Um. But yeah, you know, I
think you also, I would say it's extremely fun to draft. But if
you you know, not everyone can do that. If you just want to
be in there on the conversation, just join the Yahoo group again. Groups
that Yahoo dot com and Google, you know, Google, Yeah, that's
exactly what you should do with it. Look for a mock draft in the
search bar and you can just sign up for the league and then just start
receiving the emails. And you know, even if you can't participate, we
get comments from people who aren't participating that are you know, rigorous and well
thought out and probably probably as signed that they should have our position. But
you know, I think the participants, the people who participate without drafting,
are just as valuable as those who are in the league itself. Yeah.
I was gonna mention that too, Ian, So I'm glad you said something.
I think participating comes in many forms, and certainly the folks that are
watching and thinking critically or even just shouting random insult set terrible picks definitely add
to the entertainment value. I have to tell myself that, because otherwise there's
no point for me. Nice thanks to sure um with that. If no
one has any further thoughts on the mac on the mock, John, what
was the best thing you saw this week? Oh? Man, I did
on the spot? I know, Man, I am uh is how I
feel every week, John, I don't let's see, I want to go
with I think. Oh, the best thing I saw this week was the
Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, The big team tournament. It was great. I
was rooting for Ken Jennings over Brad Rutter and I've got another half hour on
this old Jeopardy tournament. But it was great. Of course, the saddest
thing this week because Alex Trebeck's pancreatic cancer. But the but it was great
to watch the Jeopardy at its finest. They did a brilliantly run tournament and
it was a lot of fun to watch. Yeah, real a real validictory
for Alex Travac too, you know if this is if he's facing a battle,
like just a testament to thirty years of a great show. Yes,
yeah, what was so good about it, John, Not that I'm I'm
just so they what they did is they got all a bunch of former contestants.
They did had it in a tournament format. They had six teams of
three each, and they had a little bit of a complicated play into the
finals, and they got very entertaining people, uh you know, and and
these uh, these people who are really good at the game uh playing And
then they switched off from single Deputy to Double Jeopardy to Final Jeopardy, and
they showed you some of the thoughts and what their betting strategies were uh going
into it and so h and also, you know a lot of these people
are just you know, genuinely charming. Uh and so watching all this was
a good time. I think Buzzy Cohen, who got knocked out before the
finals, he started off saying, well, you know, we're gonna win
in a kind of cocky way, and then one of the other guys said,
well, you know, I'm just hoping to do well. I'm the
uh, I'm probably the worst player here except for Buzzy. And you know,
just the back and forth, the little throwdowns were a lot of fun.
Uh. And you know, you could see everybody was respectful of game,
respectful of each other, willing to throw lines out there. But uh,
you know, it's like the best of fantasy baseball. Um. You
know, I I insult Nate just because he's a bad person, but uh,
you know for the rest of you, obviously, I I insult you
probably for some other reasons that I'll be able to justify later. So it
was it was a good thing to watch. It was a lot of fun.
Cool. Um, well, Nate fammed for a while. Now hopefully
you've been able to come with something what was it. I don't know if
I can beat the Tribec Nod but um, and I don't know if this
is best, but certainly the most memorable. Uh. I was out in
Bozeman, Montana last week and they got three feet of snow and like three
days. It's just like snowed. It never stopped for three whole days.
And uh, if you've never been to Bozeman in the winter, um plows
you would think would be a thing that exists in vast quantities, but they're
not. And um. They also don't like put sand or salt down on
the roads or anything. Occasionally they'll do some gravel, but that's pretty rare
apparently from what I saw. And even when they do plow the roads,
then you don't do a very good job and don't do it very often.
Coming from the northeast, it was kind of startling. So we had this
drive to the airport at like four in the morning on our way back after
you know, the three plus days snowing, and there's snow everywhere, and
it looked like the day after Tomorrow. I mean it really did. There
were cars abandoned all over the place on the side of the road in the
middle of the highway. There was a couple cars on the road that were
like sliding through stoplights in front of us, and uh, it really felt
odd. I've never seen anything quite like that and also terrifying to even drive
fifteen minutes on back roads was was kind of crazy. Um So, yeah,
Bozeman as the Day after Tomorrow, I love The Day after Tomorrow.
If it's on TV, I have to watch it to its conclusion. It's
a word they watch for sure. Um I think we can just reserve that
best thing for our guests. And let's spinnery and there's anything you wanted to
get off your chests. Oh um, well, I'll just go with one
quick anecdote because I think it'll wrappen. And it's actually about baseball, because
I've been watching a lot of baseball this week. Um so, as as
I mentioned, been watching the Poddres a ton in the last couple of days.
Many Machado looks good. Hey, did you know Mani Machado was a
good player? Tared you should have watched it for a few years. Maybe
if you watched it more regularly, you would have been able to know that.
Um he was fine. But my favorite thing was. Um, there
was a game where Eric Hosmer came up to bat and uh, you know,
just for a moment, the sound dropped out. They were talking and
um, you know you can hear sounds from the stands pretty well in uh
when watching spring training broadcasts and in the distance you hear a fango let's see
that launch angle. And it just reminded me that hecklers are now smarter than
like I've ever been, and like I had to study now to be able
to heckle these players. So it's just a real huge, humbling experience.
And that's why that's the best thing I saw this week. That's awesome,
that's pretty good. I don't know how it took us this long to get
through a mock draft podcast before making fun of the Orioles. I'm stunned that
we lasted this song. Oh, I forgot to say. The best thing
I saw during the mock draft is that none of you knew this, but
we had a sided bet going about whether an Oriole would be drafted in like
a baby pool about when the first Oriole would be taken. Yeah, well
we posted about it after it had Well, that's true, that's true.
We because you know we couldn't get everybody in, but I did want everybody
in on the pool. Um and the I think what the first Orel was
taking with pick number was a two hundred fifty two. All I remembers that
I won. That's all I needed to know. How did you remember that?
Yes? It was Ryan Mountcastle pick two fifty two. By the way,
Ryan Mountcastle severe overdraft should not have been taken. Um, but um,
yeah, yes, I think we also drafted how many Orioles would be
taken, and I think Ben won that as well by taking the under.
Um. And what I love most about that and why was the best thing
I saw is that Jared who was an oriole man for your entire life,
when like, here's the most pessimistic thing I can come up with, and
then Ben just took the under twice and one. So let that be a
lesson to y'all. Okay, okay, all right, nice, I'll be
honest. I don't know how to wrap this up. You can you always
do it. Um, Nick John, thanks for coming on. We really
appreciate it, and we hope you'll be back at some point if you're willing
to, because sometimes our listeners want actual content and smart people actual smart people
helps too. Thanks for having us. It's always fun and happy to do
it again sometime we had a great time cool. Thanks so on behalf of
everyone else. Thanks for listening. And I don't know what the lex mine
is. I have a great Jack, have a great deal. Jarreny listens
every time. How do you do all right?