Speaker 1: Ninety five miles an hour, riding to his head. He
Speaker 1: hopping down first with the lump bonius face, and on
Speaker 1: the very next pitch he up and stole second face
Speaker 1: with greatst speed. He wasn't born, he had yes uniforn.
Speaker 2: All right, Welcome to episode Birmingham Barons Michael Jordan forty
Speaker 2: five of the Prospect B Sides podcast. You didn't like that.
Speaker 3: That's a deep cut. I have no idea what you're
Speaker 3: talking about. But wow, MJ is Birmingham Baron's number one.
Speaker 3: That's what. Okay?
Speaker 2: Well, who else is forty five?
Speaker 3: I don't know, uh, Chadwick Trump or something? What?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, MJ. Anyways, welcome to the number.
Speaker 3: Everyone associates with.
Speaker 2: MJ.
Speaker 3: Forty five.
Speaker 2: Dude, Jordan could have been a major leader.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. His swing was jank, he was
Speaker 3: never gonna hit.
Speaker 2: Maybe as it was, but if she had started just
Speaker 2: playing bass or just stuck to baseball, I think he
Speaker 2: could have been. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's tall, like the tall guys, it's kind of
Speaker 3: hard to be good at baseball.
Speaker 2: Picky. Can't be too short, can't be too tall.
Speaker 3: It's like a but you could definitely be too short
Speaker 3: or short like I'm all about that. It's the tall guys,
Speaker 3: especially as a hitter, like there are just not many
Speaker 3: tall guys that really really end up like six six
Speaker 3: and above. I mean, and what was Jordan like? Six seven?
Speaker 2: Yeah, six six six five probably. Anyways, this intro has
Speaker 2: gotten really derailed, but uh, welcome to the podcast. It's
Speaker 2: been too long.
Speaker 3: It's been too long, addled by our time off and
Speaker 3: the cold air. We're talking muddy b siders though, so
Speaker 3: that's always a good night.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes we are. We are back after the holiday break,
Speaker 2: going division by division, picking out what zero to one
Speaker 2: to not created yet prospects from every org a, bat
Speaker 2: and arm that I don't know the rook and I
Speaker 2: kind of have a lik liking to for one reason
Speaker 2: or another, and that they might be undervalued, underappreciated in
Speaker 2: the Dynasty world, can maybe gain some utility or as
Speaker 2: you mentioned last time, that we just like them and
Speaker 2: want to talk about them.
Speaker 3: So some of those guys this week just guys that
Speaker 3: I like. I don't know how many of them are
Speaker 3: going to be good, but some guys that are pretty fun.
Speaker 3: In this week's episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and tonight we're doing the National League Central. I
Speaker 2: don't know as a whole how excited I am about this,
Speaker 2: but we'll talk about that.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: You have a good holiday, eat some bird and two
Speaker 2: of them things.
Speaker 3: Hit no bird for us this year. It's a first
Speaker 3: year in a long time that we didn't visit family
Speaker 3: or do a friends giving. Two kids by ourselves at home. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we eschewed the bird and we'll do I have a
Speaker 3: nice turkey on or for Christmas when we will have
Speaker 3: some family in town. But yeah, we just did some
Speaker 3: of our other traditional Thanksgiving dishes. We do this thing
Speaker 3: every year called pumpkins stuffed with everything good, and it's
Speaker 3: become our favorite dish every year Thanksgiving. Anyway, Like we
Speaker 3: were like, it's better than mashed potatoes and gravy, it's
Speaker 3: better than turkey, it's better than all the other sides.
Speaker 3: So we just made a couple of those and that
Speaker 3: was our Yeah, just quiet, quiet as quiet it can
Speaker 3: be with a two year old and a newborn in
Speaker 3: a house. But now we survived. It was fun. Had
Speaker 3: my son's birthday party here. So the house is as
Speaker 3: clean as it's ever been with at least since a
Speaker 3: two year old arrived. But yeah, it was a good,
Speaker 3: good holiday.
Speaker 2: I was yours, nice good man. I drink a lot
Speaker 2: of gin I haven't done a lot of in my life,
Speaker 2: but paid for the next day a little bit. But
Speaker 2: that was fun. And my sister in law, dude, man,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know the recipe of her
Speaker 2: marinate or whatever, but I got to give a shout
Speaker 2: to her, not that she would be listening at all,
Speaker 2: but she kills turkey, dude, like brings turkey to a
Speaker 2: whole other level.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: It's like the most flavorful, delicious, never eating turkey that
Speaker 2: tastes like this before thing. And I look forward to
Speaker 2: that every year. Thanks gonna be definitely my favorite holiday. Nice.
Speaker 3: You got to get that recipe and share it out
Speaker 3: with the people. We can do a live reading of
Speaker 3: your your turkey your in laws turkey recipe next episode.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know if they'll give it out.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know what the deal is there.
Speaker 2: I haven't cried, but any of who met, I don't
Speaker 2: know if a lot has happened in the baseball world
Speaker 2: per se since uh last.
Speaker 3: Freaking nothing, and everyone is so all up in arms
Speaker 3: about Juan Soto where he's gonna go, And I just like,
Speaker 3: have we talked about this that I don't think the
Speaker 3: signing news breaking thing is a real job, Like like
Speaker 3: I don't understand why people care or what the value is,
Speaker 3: Like why do you care? Why do you not wait
Speaker 3: thirty minutes later, two days later, ten days later, Like
Speaker 3: it just doesn't matter, you know, especially this time of
Speaker 3: the year. Like maybe if you're a mid draft and
Speaker 3: you like see somebody sign somewhere and it's a big
Speaker 3: change in value, like you care about that. But what
Speaker 3: degenerates are doing drafts right now? You know? So I
Speaker 3: the whole news breaking thing in basketball, baseball, football, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't understand it. It's really stupid to me.
Speaker 2: I don't know, need everything answered right now sort of mentality.
Speaker 2: I don't know. But we did have. As I mentioned
Speaker 2: before we started recording one of my B sides, Selections,
Speaker 2: has already switched teams. About a week after we recorded
Speaker 2: the Al West episode, Juan Mercedes elected free agency and
Speaker 2: signed with the Giants, which I think for whatever major
Speaker 2: league aspirations or possibilities there might be for him, Like
Speaker 2: that's probably a better avenue than trying to break in
Speaker 2: with the Mariners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe and interesting. I'm super curious how their for
Speaker 3: an office is gonna run things. The early signs are
Speaker 3: kind of baffling, Timmy, Like Buster Posey is the POBO
Speaker 3: and he's doing a bunch of really weird stuff, and
Speaker 3: our analytics departments all leaving, and he's like, RBIs are
Speaker 3: important again. And so I don't know if that bodes
Speaker 3: well for mister Mercedes development. But it's going to be interesting, yeah,
Speaker 3: to see what the Giants do.
Speaker 2: So maybe the baseball world was a bit quiet in
Speaker 2: news and exciting events and stuff, Matt. But I don't
Speaker 2: know if this has affected you like it has me.
Speaker 2: But I understand this is a baseball podcast, but I
Speaker 2: feel like I got to do my part to help
Speaker 2: make a shift here. But the second Congressional hearing on UAPs, Matt,
Speaker 2: did you watch this?
Speaker 3: Of course, not what I mean.
Speaker 2: We are amidst the unfolding, the unveiling of probably the
Speaker 2: most important shift in the human experience in our lifetimes, Matt,
Speaker 2: maybe ever, and starting to uncover the government cover up
Speaker 2: of information technologies intelligence far beyond our understanding, and it
Speaker 2: is happening that we are slowly getting cutting through the
Speaker 2: bureaucracy and starting to learn some things about other intelligence
Speaker 2: and what.
Speaker 3: Have you learned? What have you learned from this? I
Speaker 3: am so curious what the cover up and the new
Speaker 3: information is here.
Speaker 2: Well, let me just put on a different hat for
Speaker 2: a minute. Here. I mean, we have go we have
Speaker 2: government officials, high ranking government officials, admirals from the Navy,
Speaker 2: Folks who worked on secret reverse engineering programs trying to
Speaker 2: reverse the reverse engineer technologies that were recovered. Folks from
Speaker 2: NASA testifying under oath about I mean, they're like whistle blowing,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're wanting to cover up the hiding
Speaker 2: of information to cease and let science start exploring some
Speaker 2: of this stuff. I've learned that probably one of the
Speaker 2: big hurdles in that is defense contractors have bought probably
Speaker 2: rights to information. But these folks all believe there's definitely
Speaker 2: intelligence out there that isn't us. They testify as such,
Speaker 2: and that there are a retrieval program retrieving what I
Speaker 2: don't know, technologies that we don't have. But my point
Speaker 2: is like, why isn't this a big deal for folks? Am?
Speaker 2: I am I overreacting to this?
Speaker 3: Matt, are you on a Wednesday? Night in December wearing
Speaker 3: a tinfoil hat, a literal tinfoil hat, on a baseball
Speaker 3: podcast about obscure minor leaders. Are you making too big
Speaker 3: a deal about hearing that is a huge nothing burger?
Speaker 2: How can you say this is a nothing burger? There
Speaker 2: are I don't know if they're aliens, I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's us from the future. But how does this
Speaker 2: not make you feel happy? That doesn't this make me
Speaker 2: feel good? This is like the most hopeful news I've
Speaker 2: ever heard in my life. Like, maybe we don't kill
Speaker 2: ourselves because there's a lot of in the future.
Speaker 3: There there is a lot of unexplained intelligence. And I'm
Speaker 3: glad to hear that there's some intelligence out there, because
Speaker 3: there's not a lot on this podcast right now, and
Speaker 3: it's certainly not a lot on in Congress.
Speaker 2: Look, we're not the smartest, the smartest beings out there,
Speaker 2: Thank god, we are not it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course there are other beings out there. The
Speaker 3: universe is basically infinite, no worse, there are other things.
Speaker 2: Right, But I mean, I mean here very interested in
Speaker 2: our nuclear sites and bases and interfering with stuff there
Speaker 2: because maybe they don't want us to kill ourselves. I
Speaker 2: don't know. We are going to find out more though,
Speaker 2: but this is.
Speaker 3: You think you think the intro went off the rail.
Speaker 3: We're thirteen minutes in and you're you ain't be hearing.
Speaker 2: You got to watch it, man, you gotta watch it. Boy.
Speaker 2: This is great. You can because it's important and it's
Speaker 2: moving from heretical and tabloid realms to becoming legitimized. And
Speaker 2: I think that's I think that's fantastic. AnyWho. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 2: me to watch it before you before you judge my
Speaker 2: takes here, Matt, that's.
Speaker 3: Some that's some good stuff. That's got me good. That
Speaker 3: was good.
Speaker 2: AnyWho, Let's talk about some loser prospects. Let's start with
Speaker 2: the Cubs. I don't know how you felt digging on
Speaker 2: this organization, but as a whole, felt a little And
Speaker 2: I understand that I'm biased, so so maybe you can
Speaker 2: steer me right. But I did come away with a
Speaker 2: bat that a young bat that I I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's the top ten beside that for me this year.
Speaker 2: And that's Jose Escobar. Oh interesting, who's currently in September
Speaker 2: was rostered and zero percent of leagues I don't believe
Speaker 2: he's ranked on Pipeline. Nineteen year old second base, left field,
Speaker 2: left hand hitter listed at five ten national free agent
Speaker 2: from Venezuela. Last year, he spent what time forty seven
Speaker 2: games in the Complex three with Myrtle beach and A
Speaker 2: ball eighty four a ball played appearances. He hit four
Speaker 2: home runs, walked thirteen percent of the time, struck out
Speaker 2: twenty four percent of the time two oh nine three
Speaker 2: fifty seven four seventy eight slash and that small sample
Speaker 2: good enough for a one forty three WRC plus in
Speaker 2: that league. But Matt, I don't know if you've watched
Speaker 2: Escobar into him very much, but left handed stroke that
Speaker 2: I liked kind of a good bit reminds me of
Speaker 2: Pinango in a sense that.
Speaker 3: Like in they're both Cubs, in that they're.
Speaker 2: Both Cubs, but like it's probably going to be a
Speaker 2: pretty bat heavy profile. I think. I don't know if
Speaker 2: defense and like athleticism is really at the top of
Speaker 2: his assets here. I don't know. Maybe maybe you you
Speaker 2: thought differently.
Speaker 3: So I did watch quite a bit of Hotel Escobar,
Speaker 3: and I'm I'm happy to report that I'll begrudgingly co
Speaker 3: sign this one with you. But I think with a
Speaker 3: little bit less enthusiasm the guy that I really wanted
Speaker 3: to go for that will talk about in a bit.
Speaker 3: I think it's just like a little over our roster thresholds.
Speaker 3: But we're still gonna talk about the guy who I
Speaker 3: think is the most underrated guy in the system. But
Speaker 3: for Escobar, we're talking like eighty four played appearances in
Speaker 3: a ball at which he ran a twenty three point
Speaker 3: five percent home run to fly ball rate, whereas he
Speaker 3: hadn't cracked single digits in the last two years on
Speaker 3: the DSL and the complex. So while he did a
Speaker 3: really good job in a ball pulling his fly balls
Speaker 3: and getting some homers, and I watched all of those
Speaker 3: homers that were broadcast and they were good, like good
Speaker 3: pulled the ball, got it up in the air, and
Speaker 3: good things happened. But I'm a little skeptical that there's.
Speaker 2: Last one opposite field ways that I liked.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And some of the ones that he pulled
Speaker 3: I thought were like good process, it seemed like, but
Speaker 3: he's not a guy that's gonna run a teens homer
Speaker 3: to flyball rate. I think this is like some small
Speaker 3: sample noise for me and nineteen at a ball and
Speaker 3: a twenty four percent k rate, Like, okay, that's that
Speaker 3: might tick up a bit as he as he goes
Speaker 3: up levels. The reason to like him from my perspective
Speaker 3: was I thought he was pretty athletic in the box
Speaker 3: and seemed like he was trying to be intentional in
Speaker 3: pulling the ball and putting it in the air. And
Speaker 3: that's good, like as we've talked about ad nauseum, right,
Speaker 3: and he should have. I don't know if the exit
Speaker 3: velows were if we got much out of that, but
Speaker 3: if you got any reporting on.
Speaker 2: That, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It seemed like he squared up enough balls that I
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, there's some power here that it's worth following.
Speaker 3: But I'm not this is not like a oh Man,
Speaker 3: this is a next superstar in the making thing. For me,
Speaker 3: it seems like I want to see a lot more.
Speaker 2: I agree with that. I'm not saying that this is
Speaker 2: a lock stud, but for a young, unpopular bat, I
Speaker 2: think there's some stuff to like here and think there
Speaker 2: might be a chance ground ball rate of forty five
Speaker 2: forty six percent, which you know is probably not what
Speaker 2: we want to see necessarily, but for this system, that's
Speaker 2: kind of an outlier in a good way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's still like and thirty seven percent in
Speaker 3: the air, So he's sort of taking those ground balls
Speaker 3: in exchange for the line drives. But I don't know
Speaker 3: with the way that he swings it, like I kind
Speaker 3: of take that trade off, Like I don't think he's
Speaker 3: going to be a high babbit guy and a spray guy.
Speaker 3: He's like trying to hit some homers and that comes
Speaker 3: with some ground balls in his case.
Speaker 2: And I like the look of his swings, like it's
Speaker 2: fairly simple and clean and not a lot of moving parts,
Speaker 2: but still headn't but uh yeah, it wasn't super you know,
Speaker 2: into a lot of bats here and young Jose Escobar,
Speaker 2: let's see if it gets a little more popular, he
Speaker 2: has a little bit more success than the Lowers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I mean the CUB system as a whole
Speaker 3: is pretty good. I think in that Matt Shaw and
Speaker 3: moisse By Steros are both I think big leaguers comfortably
Speaker 3: with a chance for you know, all star or really
Speaker 3: good seasons mixed in there. Owen Casey, for me, is
Speaker 3: a little bit of a boomer bus, but I think
Speaker 3: he's a big league regular for sure. You know, a
Speaker 3: little higher strikeout profile, but I think the power is
Speaker 3: going to be legit. Kevin Alcantra, he's super athletic, maybe
Speaker 3: he's starting to pull everything together. I remain a little
Speaker 3: skeptical of him and his approach, but he's still pretty
Speaker 3: young and sniffed the majors this year and then kind
Speaker 3: of further down. But like some hype around your guys
Speaker 3: like Jefferson Rojas and Alex Canario is another guy who
Speaker 3: I quite like and thought he was gonna mash some
Speaker 3: homers in the show this year, but hasn't quite. I
Speaker 3: think injuries derailed him the last kind of year and
Speaker 3: a half or so. So they've got a lot of
Speaker 3: guys that I think are really good on the hitters side,
Speaker 3: but the most underappreciated. And James Triontos too, I think
Speaker 3: he gets underappreciated for what he does. He's another one
Speaker 3: that's way too for our exercise, but his contact and
Speaker 3: speed combo. I think he's done really, really well the
Speaker 3: last couple of years, and I think he'll be a
Speaker 3: useful big leaguer as well. So that's like a lot
Speaker 3: of prospects already that are real pretty good man.
Speaker 2: I'd rather talk about Aliens and Cubs pretty boys.
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about Jonathan Long then, who I don't
Speaker 3: know if you recall what his his ownership percentage was,
Speaker 3: and we've talked about mister Long before, no relation to
Speaker 3: Jeff Long. I don't think I think Jeff would have
Speaker 3: mentioned that.
Speaker 2: Oh, so Long was that two percent in September?
Speaker 3: Two percent okay, so pretty close to our thresholds and
Speaker 3: one would one hundred percent have been my pick if he.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just felt like we talked about him enough
Speaker 2: this year that that would have been kind of yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know we did.
Speaker 3: But I wanted to come circle back around and highlight
Speaker 3: that I really appreciate his patients at even advanced levels.
Speaker 3: You know, he made it up to double A this
Speaker 3: year and I think was really really good there and
Speaker 3: his ability to limit strikeouts. I mean, on the year,
Speaker 3: he ran out twenty point seven percent strikeout rate, which
Speaker 3: is quite good, especially given the fact that he popped
Speaker 3: seventeen homers and twenty one doubles in less than five
Speaker 3: hundred plate appearances on the Earth. So that's like those
Speaker 3: are pretty solid rates like that poortends some twenty five
Speaker 3: maybe plus homer power I think at peak not going
Speaker 3: to be one who's going to run a high babbit,
Speaker 3: But I think if he can raise his launch agle
Speaker 3: just a little bit more, this has been the thing
Speaker 3: with him that like it's a little like you mentioned
Speaker 3: in this system, touched to ground ball heavy, and he's
Speaker 3: got the juice and the contact skills to make the
Speaker 3: most of his flyballs. If he can just get a
Speaker 3: few more of those line drives into fly balls, there's
Speaker 3: a world in which he's a thirty plus homer bat
Speaker 3: with good on base and is a middle of a
Speaker 3: lineup Masher.
Speaker 2: Talking about his launch agle talking about him is lyft.
Speaker 2: He's kind of an extreme opposite field guy, right, Yes,
Speaker 2: thirty eight percent APO, So he's letting the ball travel
Speaker 2: on him quite a bit. And I don't think it's
Speaker 2: like you can't catch up the velocity or anything like that.
Speaker 2: I think it's an intentional approach to hitting. If you
Speaker 2: did start to hit the ball out in front more,
Speaker 2: wouldn't that lead to more fly balls just naturally the
Speaker 2: way that a swing path works.
Speaker 3: So it's a little bit counterintuitive. I think because we
Speaker 3: talk so much about the value of a pulled fly
Speaker 3: ball that we associate the two. But what actually happens
Speaker 3: with the swing path is that the more opposite field
Speaker 3: you go, the more likely it's going to be a flyball.
Speaker 3: So flyballs to the off gap, to the other way
Speaker 3: are much more common than flyballs to the poll side.
Speaker 3: Generally speaking, there are guys who like, if you got
Speaker 3: a really flat batpath, you know, Alex Bregman or esk Paratus,
Speaker 3: and you're really trying to get it out front, like
Speaker 3: you're really kind of selling out for that kind of
Speaker 3: pulled flyball. But mostly you see pulled balls are on
Speaker 3: the ground. And that is one thing that he does
Speaker 3: pretty well is that he's not a huge worm burner.
Speaker 3: He's just kind of a spray guy, right Like he'll
Speaker 3: go all over the place, and as you mentioned, his
Speaker 3: his propensity to go the other way I think does
Speaker 3: limit a little bit of you know, he's got the
Speaker 3: juice to leave the yard to center and the opposite field.
Speaker 3: But if he was more middle of the diamond, more
Speaker 3: like you know, Freddy Freeman esque, where it's all middle,
Speaker 3: it's all middle, maybe he would get some more of
Speaker 3: those homers too. So one thing you know, he wrote,
Speaker 3: he wrote a pretty high Babby in double A and
Speaker 3: a lot of that was on opposite fields, hits doubles
Speaker 3: and singles the other way. He's not a high babbit
Speaker 3: guy long term for me, maybe a slightly above average guy.
Speaker 3: But I do think that he's got a above average
Speaker 3: slightly above average babby skill and the power to hit
Speaker 3: homers to all fields. And at twenty two at double A, like,
Speaker 3: let's see him start the year keep crushing double A
Speaker 3: and make it up to triple A. And I mean,
Speaker 3: I think the Cubs have a real first basement on
Speaker 3: their hands here if he can keep showing this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, and I don't think enough people appreciate it,
Speaker 3: just how good his season was. And last bit for
Speaker 3: me on him is that he projects right now. Steamer
Speaker 3: thinks if they chucked him in the majors right now,
Speaker 3: he'd run a ninety nine WRC plus as a twenty
Speaker 3: two year old, and that's I guess age twenty three
Speaker 3: season upcoming. That's pretty good. That's a rare thing for
Speaker 3: one that young. That Steamer already thinks that he is
Speaker 3: a league average bat. Now he's got to be a
Speaker 3: bit better than that to really play at first base, obviously,
Speaker 3: but that to me says that in a year or
Speaker 3: two we might be looking at a guy that is
Speaker 3: a real contenders first baseman in the making.
Speaker 2: He had a really nice AFL season. I think that
Speaker 2: got him a little bit more attention, but not a
Speaker 2: bad pool there from the Cubs with their ninth round
Speaker 2: pick from last year. Really good season. Yep, So you
Speaker 2: and I were both calling Escobar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, officially okay, with a head nod towards long
Speaker 3: but yeah.
Speaker 2: Moving on to the Cub's arms, you're talking about a system.
Speaker 2: Most popular guys Kate Horton at fifty three percent rostered,
Speaker 2: then Caleb Killian at five, Brandon bird Cell at three,
Speaker 2: man Jason Wiggins at three, Cole Franklin at two, like
Speaker 2: it is. I don't know. The cubs pitching conveyor belt
Speaker 2: here has been pretty lackluster. I think for maybe a
Speaker 2: few years, getting down to the zero one percenters. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I guess maybe there were a few guys.
Speaker 2: I'm still a little bit interested in my pick from
Speaker 2: last year, Grant Kip, who has heard a lot this year.
Speaker 2: He was in the AFL some but I landed on
Speaker 2: an undrafted free agent.
Speaker 3: Well, hang on, before you get into your pick. You know,
Speaker 3: my boy, Jack Neely, Yankees b side from Yankees beside
Speaker 3: arm from last year, got traded into the system this
Speaker 3: year and kept doing his thing at the upper miners,
Speaker 3: just punching everybody out, kept the walks in check. I
Speaker 3: think he still looks like a late inning leverage reliever
Speaker 3: for them, and you know it's upper nineties. It's a
Speaker 3: hammer slider. He is a power writy that is going
Speaker 3: to slot in Nicoly at the back of our pen.
Speaker 3: I think next year, Like, I think he's a big
Speaker 3: league arm. I mean, he's on the forty two. So
Speaker 3: I think Neely is going to be a leverage reliever
Speaker 3: for the Cubs next year. Whether the Cubs are good
Speaker 3: and whether he's getting holds and stuff like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but Ne's Neelly's going to be in that pen. In
Speaker 3: my opinion.
Speaker 2: Seems like they might have a collection too of relievers
Speaker 2: with some open jobs and who's going to take it
Speaker 2: sort of thing. So yeah, the Cub's relief situation next
Speaker 2: year is I think interesting for dinas or for fantasy
Speaker 2: for sure. But yeah, man, I went with Nico Zeglin. Familiar, Yeah,
Speaker 2: right on. Forgive me, I don't remember who it was.
Speaker 2: But somebody was chatting about having seen him this year
Speaker 2: in the discord, and I had to just like chime
Speaker 2: in a little bit and be like, yeah, man, I agree.
Speaker 2: Of course he's older. He's twenty four, maybe he'll be
Speaker 2: twenty five at the start of the season. And he
Speaker 2: pitched just in a ball and High A this year
Speaker 2: a total of sixty six innings, so you know, perhaps
Speaker 2: he was a bit more of an advanced college arm
Speaker 2: from Long Beach State, and like, yeah, maybe he should
Speaker 2: be doing well in the lowers like this, but I
Speaker 2: don't know. Man, six ' four righty arsenal, Like I
Speaker 2: don't know the fastball I saw anywhere from like ninety
Speaker 2: to ninety six. He's got slider, curve, change up. You know,
Speaker 2: he's got the full starter's kit. I think there's he's
Speaker 2: a righty, but I think there is a little bit
Speaker 2: of I don't know, maybe a little bit of funk
Speaker 2: to his release, maybe a little bit of a lower
Speaker 2: lower release point, do you think, yeah, a little bit, yeah,
Speaker 2: And twenty seven and two thirds innings in High A
Speaker 2: point three three era point eight three, whip thirty one
Speaker 2: point four, strikeout percentage eight point six percent, walk rate
Speaker 2: swinging strike rate of sixteen point two percent. But I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, just video reviewing, I don't know a
Speaker 2: dozen guys from this system. Zegland was just kind of
Speaker 2: a no brainer for me that I that I liked
Speaker 2: the most is a long term potential. Maybe he gets
Speaker 2: to the bigs. Obviously it will depend on how it
Speaker 2: goes in the uppers. But you know, a full kit,
Speaker 2: decent enough stuff can execute it fairly well, Like, let's
Speaker 2: see what happens. I don't know, you Goozeglin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Deglin was fine. Seemed relievery to me, and in
Speaker 3: what way? Just I felt like that, you know, they
Speaker 3: were already using him in a reliever type of way.
Speaker 3: He's an undrafted free agent and that is old, like right,
Speaker 3: he's gonna be twenty five next year, and just sniffed
Speaker 3: Hi a uh So, you know, I looked at him
Speaker 3: a bit too, thinking like, oh, maybe they're just slow
Speaker 3: playing him after long year whatever it is. Ah, maybe, But.
Speaker 2: I think there's there's a couple and this is obviously
Speaker 2: just all speculation from from our seats here, but I
Speaker 2: think there's a couple of different ways you can look
Speaker 2: at that sort of stuff, Like he's an undrafted free agent, right,
Speaker 2: there's with the condensing of the minor leagues, there's there's
Speaker 2: stress and more pressure. Like the teams will have a
Speaker 2: lot of guys that they want to get like three
Speaker 2: hundred developmental innings too, so for an undrafted guy to
Speaker 2: push guy another guy out and get those innings, that
Speaker 2: could be a thing. The strike throw, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: sixty nine percent a ball, sixty six percent on the year.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's I don't think there's any execution
Speaker 2: issues as far as can he start or not. I
Speaker 2: think there's there's arsenal there to do it. I think
Speaker 2: there's enough ways to attack different hitters. I'm just kind
Speaker 2: of leaning and wondering that like this was more about
Speaker 2: him just breaking through some guys that they maybe had
Speaker 2: some bigger plans for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't I don't disagree with that that part.
Speaker 3: And maybe he picks up where he left off in
Speaker 3: a full starter's workload at high A or or maybe
Speaker 3: even up into double A, like they're going to need something.
Speaker 3: You know, they're an interesting system as far as their arms,
Speaker 3: even their good ones like Horton, you know, older injury.
Speaker 3: How much is he going to pitch.
Speaker 2: I don't know. So I don't think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of good ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I don't at all like this is this
Speaker 3: system was really tough. Even like you said, the quote
Speaker 3: unquote pretty boy arms that are higher than our roster
Speaker 3: percentage limits. I don't really like.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, like I'm not saying I'm not rostering,
Speaker 2: I'm not drafting them fypds or anything like that. But
Speaker 2: watch and you know, I think I think he's got
Speaker 2: it in him to get to the uppers this year
Speaker 2: and maybe have some success. And if he's doing that
Speaker 2: at twenty five in maybe a weaker system, maybe he
Speaker 2: gets this. Maybe maybe he has a chance. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean I can't really talk in this
Speaker 3: system because the two guys that I liked along with
Speaker 3: Zeglin that I kind of was choosing between. If you
Speaker 3: smushed him together, I think he got a pretty good pitcher,
Speaker 3: but separately they both have some real issues. The two
Speaker 3: guys that I liked were Kenton Egbert and Juan Bellow.
Speaker 3: Bayo egg is also an under after free agent from
Speaker 3: last year from twenty twenty three who didn't pitch last
Speaker 3: year and then started sixteen games, twenty three total in
Speaker 3: a ball the whole year, ninety seven and two thirds innings,
Speaker 3: twenty six point five percent strike at rate, eight point
Speaker 3: one percent walk rate. You know, decent fIF decent average suppression.
Speaker 3: The issue was like, he's a funky, long levered guy
Speaker 3: with a good fastball. Like this fastball looks like it plays,
Speaker 3: it's he looks like he's got a little bit lower
Speaker 3: release point but good extension. It runs, it rides, and
Speaker 3: hitters really seemed to struggle with his fastball. But all
Speaker 3: of his OSCR pitches I didn't really like. I don't
Speaker 3: think any of them was all that good. Seeing him
Speaker 3: with the like try and get guys out, like I mean,
Speaker 3: decent strikeout rate, but a lot of it was on
Speaker 3: fastballs up that a ball hitters couldn't really hang, and
Speaker 3: he took advantage of that. And he's twenty two already
Speaker 3: in low A for the whole year. Like again, he's
Speaker 3: probably behind some guys organizationally, but he did enough to
Speaker 3: meet for me that I'm like, oh, that's an interesting
Speaker 3: ish guy, and he has a fast ball that I
Speaker 3: think is interesting. And the other guy, the guy that
Speaker 3: I'm actually gonna choose, I don't even feel good about it.
Speaker 3: Is Juan Bao Bao great offspeed. I thought his slider
Speaker 3: was good, movement profile really got guys all flummoxed, lefties, righties.
Speaker 3: I thought it was good. His curveball might have been
Speaker 3: even better. And he runs them in different velocity bands,
Speaker 3: so they're like clearly separate. And when he was throwing
Speaker 3: his off speed, guys really struggled to make contact and
Speaker 3: to hit the ball hard. But his fastball is eighty
Speaker 3: eight and it's not a like eighty eight with that,
Speaker 3: you know, I would defend you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like it's it's an eighty eight that's not getting whiffs,
Speaker 3: it's an eighty eight that's not getting grounders. No, no,
Speaker 3: not at all, or a red van scooter or a
Speaker 3: bunch of these other guys that we've like, I think
Speaker 3: eighty eight mile on air, Isaac Coffee and those kinds
Speaker 3: of fast can play when they're unique, when they have
Speaker 3: some funky traits to them. BeOS is not that. So
Speaker 3: like if you paired Kent and Egbert's fastball with Jean
Speaker 3: Beo's offspeed, that might be an interesting picture. Unfortunately, there
Speaker 3: are two different guys, and I'm gonna go with the
Speaker 3: one that spins it a bit. I don't feel good
Speaker 3: about it, though, and I really can't recommend either of
Speaker 3: these guys that much.
Speaker 2: We've talked about you talk about K minus BB percentage, right, Yep,
Speaker 2: you're familiar. You know. Do you know who Kyle Bland
Speaker 2: is pictureless?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I been wanting to mention this for what four
Speaker 2: episodes now, and I'm finally remembering too. But I was
Speaker 2: watching he and h forgive me, I don't remember who
Speaker 2: the other two folks were, but Pittreless he was just
Speaker 2: kind of talking about and I think maybe unveiling his
Speaker 2: projections for this upcoming season. I like Kyle because, of course,
Speaker 2: he's like a really smart numbers guy. I mean, he's
Speaker 2: like inventing metrics and stuff, right, it has tons of
Speaker 2: good information. But what I like about him is that
Speaker 2: he's really smart on that of things, but he also
Speaker 2: like contextualizes it and like makes it makes sense with baseball,
Speaker 2: and it hasn't been like baseball mine too. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna paraphrase and summarize yere, but long story short,
Speaker 2: he's talking about different metrics numbers and how he's including
Speaker 2: different things and his projections and maybe some other people
Speaker 2: aren't blah blah and all this stuff right, But then
Speaker 2: he also is like, but like, still K minus BB
Speaker 2: percentage might really just be more predictive than any of
Speaker 2: this as as simple you might think it is or whatever, Like,
Speaker 2: it really is one of the best predictive metrics out there,
Speaker 2: per Kyle Bland. And if he says that, I believe
Speaker 2: that Nico Zeglin K minus BB percentage this year twenty
Speaker 2: nine point one percent.
Speaker 3: That's pre period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but anywhoo, I thought you'd maybe like hearing that's
Speaker 2: from from Kyle Bland.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Nice when smart people agree with you. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: a big fan of K minus BB. And if a
Speaker 3: guy with great stuff isn't doing great on the K
Speaker 3: minus BB, I question and how good that stuff actually is.
Speaker 2: You know, So talking to aliens is out of bounds.
Speaker 2: But you like playing lego man with two different pitching
Speaker 2: prospects and trying to put them together. That's that's okay.
Speaker 2: You can do that.
Speaker 3: Now. Listen, if you're alien congressional aliens, we know how
Speaker 3: to do that. If you're if your alien congressional hearings,
Speaker 3: tell me that we can recreate one Bao and and
Speaker 3: uh Kent and Egbert in the aggregate. I like, now
Speaker 3: we're talking. Now you've got my attention.
Speaker 2: So BeO is your official pick? Right? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: so we got we got the Cubs out of the way.
Speaker 3: He's like, that's a bottom three b side them for me.
Speaker 2: Like, it's okay, fair enough, Matt the Saint Louis Cardinals.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, I don't know Matt as a whole.
Speaker 2: Just looking at these raster percentages. I wasn't like super
Speaker 2: into a bunch of dudes on either side. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know the bat that I landed on. This is
Speaker 2: a little bit different for me. But I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: with Ian Patrus, first year player, guy from Alabama when
Speaker 2: but he was rostered in zero percent of leagues in September.
Speaker 2: But I know he's getting a little bit of attention
Speaker 2: a little bit, folks. I think given Beck was kind
Speaker 2: of interested in him.
Speaker 3: Curious hat a hell of a debut, right, Like, that's
Speaker 3: one of the loudest debuts.
Speaker 2: He did twenty eight games after the draft, all in
Speaker 2: a ball one hundred and fifteen played appearances, no home runs,
Speaker 2: five stolen bases, pots caught once walked fifteen percent of
Speaker 2: the time, struck out only eight percent of the time
Speaker 2: three forty four, forty two four thirty three point zero
Speaker 2: eight nine ISO three eighty eight babip ground ball percentage
Speaker 2: of fifty two point five percent. Curious way smart people
Speaker 2: were interested, turned them on and watched him. He's left handed,
Speaker 2: corner outfield type. I don't know. He's listed at six
Speaker 2: foot I bet you he's not six foot tall, but
Speaker 2: a little strong, you know, looking what is he now?
Speaker 2: He's twenty not twenty one years old, or at least
Speaker 2: he was this last season, But I got I wasn't
Speaker 2: like super impressed. Man. I don't like I don't like
Speaker 2: the swing. It just seems like a worm burner, really
Speaker 2: kind of geared towards hitting ground balls. I think part
Speaker 2: of the reason why you don't see the slug or
Speaker 2: the ISO there or any home runs. I guess he
Speaker 2: had a couple of hard hit balls. A one hundred
Speaker 2: and ten one hundred and ten mile per hour single
Speaker 2: on ground ball, one hundred and eight mile per hour
Speaker 2: sharp line drive, one hundred and six mile per hour
Speaker 2: line drive, one hundred and four mile per hour ground ball.
Speaker 2: There's not loft in this swing. Now, there was a
Speaker 2: guy that we talked about last year, Richie Pealacios, who
Speaker 2: was I think very much kind of a ground ball hitter.
Speaker 2: I think the Cardinal's unlocked and may have helped him
Speaker 2: get some more loft in his swing or change that
Speaker 2: up some. I don't not saying that every Cardinal hitter
Speaker 2: now will be able to do that or they'll do
Speaker 2: that with him. But Patruce is probably bottom five six
Speaker 2: bat for me this year, and I kind of just
Speaker 2: didn't really like anybody else. But I'm like, hey, this
Speaker 2: guy's already getting a little popular. Like maybe I'll just
Speaker 2: kind of be a lame out and throw him out.
Speaker 3: Well that sounds pretty lame of you. Yeah, No, I
Speaker 3: I tend to agree. I watched a bit of Pertrus
Speaker 3: as well and think that he does have some swing
Speaker 3: loft issues, but good contact and that's interesting to me.
Speaker 3: And yeah, maybe there's walk.
Speaker 2: I don't even walk twice as much as he's struck out.
Speaker 2: You know, from Alabama to a ball, it's not everybody's
Speaker 2: doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So like, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: there's maybe maybe there's something here. I don't know, he's
Speaker 2: what they've they popped him in the twelfth round right
Speaker 2: for two hundred and fifty K. So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: The imp Patrus probably my waynst pick of the year.
Speaker 2: What do you got?
Speaker 3: I you know, the Cards system is interesting in that
Speaker 3: a lot of their dudes are are either in the
Speaker 3: BIGS or have been, so, you know, their Triple A affiliate.
Speaker 3: It's awesome. I don't know, Like when I flipped through
Speaker 3: him watching it, like that's a stacked International league lineup
Speaker 3: when they're rolling out there with Walker, Gorman, Luke and Baker,
Speaker 3: like that's that's a bunch of big league quality hitters
Speaker 3: in there. Victor Scott two for a lot of the year.
Speaker 3: But there's not a lot of like really exciting even
Speaker 3: pretty boy names. Farther down the list for me in
Speaker 3: the card system, a couple guys we've talked about before,
Speaker 3: Nathan Church and says our Preeto both are this like
Speaker 3: slappy contact forward, some speed profile that the Cardinals seem
Speaker 3: to really like. Brian Torres was another one that's kind
Speaker 3: of an older guy that is very slappy, stole a
Speaker 3: bunch of basses, but barely hit extra base hits. I
Speaker 3: guess he legged out a bunch of doubles. But guy
Speaker 3: had two homers in five hundred and twenty eight play
Speaker 3: appearances this year, and all three of those guys like,
Speaker 3: that's a fun profile. I like contact guys, think each
Speaker 3: of them brings something to the table. But I wasn't. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I couldn't quite bring myself to pick another light, small
Speaker 3: slap hitting guy. So I went with Matt Caperniac. You
Speaker 3: watch a bunch of Coperniac this year.
Speaker 2: I'm familiar. He was definitely a guy that I've watched
Speaker 2: the last few years. He uh was just added to
Speaker 2: the forty man too.
Speaker 3: He was, and I was encouraged to see that I
Speaker 3: had picked him before I'd seen that. But I had
Speaker 3: a guess that he might be just given both his level,
Speaker 3: you know, he was up in Triple A all year,
Speaker 3: led the International League in hits this year. Undrafted free
Speaker 3: agent from twenty twenty, but really worked his way through
Speaker 3: the system and mostly performed really well. Like the only
Speaker 3: couple of times he didn't immediately settle in as an
Speaker 3: above average bat was his first stint in a Double
Speaker 3: A in twenty twenty one, when he ran a ninety
Speaker 3: four WRC plus, and his first stint at triple A
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three when he ran a ninety seven
Speaker 3: WRC plus. So like, the guy's a good hitter everywhere
Speaker 3: he goes, Gonna be twenty seven next year. Probably is
Speaker 3: like injury insurance for some of their outfield in Saint
Speaker 3: Louis is my guests. But as I mentioned, he led
Speaker 3: the International League in hits. He has kind of a funky,
Speaker 3: flat swing, but he still has enough juice in there
Speaker 3: to leave the yard to the opposite field. He popped
Speaker 3: twenty homers this year, stole five bags, and I think
Speaker 3: that that's probably right. He steals have never really been
Speaker 3: a part of his game. He's kind of hovered in
Speaker 3: the high single digits for the most part in stops
Speaker 3: in the minor leagues. So not a burner by any means,
Speaker 3: but controls the strike zone well enough. You know, never
Speaker 3: has had high strikeout rates. Again, you watch him swing
Speaker 3: and you kind of see why. It's a flatish swing.
Speaker 3: He's definitely gearing up for contact. Has always run decent
Speaker 3: walk rates. This year was more league average ish, but
Speaker 3: still that's solid when you've got twenty homers in the
Speaker 3: bat there maca prettyek to me, is just like reminds
Speaker 3: me a little of Matt Krun last year when I
Speaker 3: was talking about guy who toiled in the minor leagues
Speaker 3: for a decent while. Has kind of an interesting story.
Speaker 3: He played for Great Britain in the World Baseball Classic
Speaker 3: last year. Because he was born in the UK, I
Speaker 3: think American family, I think military family maybe, But he
Speaker 3: went to a small school, undrafted free agent and then
Speaker 3: has basically just done nothing but hit and do pretty
Speaker 3: well and plays all three outfield positions. Seems like a
Speaker 3: passable centerfielder without being exceptional to me, but can definitely
Speaker 3: play the corners. And yeah, Matt Caperniac. I liked enough
Speaker 3: about the overall shape of his production that that seems
Speaker 3: like a big leaguer to me. And Steamer projects him
Speaker 3: as a ninety three WRC plus coming into the year,
Speaker 3: which is fine. You know, you don't really want to
Speaker 3: see that in left field or right field, and if
Speaker 3: he's playing center field for your team, it's probably not
Speaker 3: what you want to see. But as a serviceable backup
Speaker 3: that maybe he gets some run, maybe he does a
Speaker 3: touch better than that, I could see that playing. So
Speaker 3: Matt Caperniac is my B side pick and I don't
Speaker 3: feel awful about it. He's somebody that I might look
Speaker 3: for in some of my thirties where I need a
Speaker 3: bench insurance outfielder kind of thing, and he's free. He's
Speaker 3: zero percent.
Speaker 2: When I look, I dozed off. There were you talking
Speaker 2: about Matt Coperniac. Yeah, I'm just kidding. He's just boring
Speaker 2: that boring profile.
Speaker 3: Ye, boring guys who hit above average at every stop
Speaker 3: along the way and hummers and we'll stand back.
Speaker 2: He probably better, probably better call the mind. Mine was
Speaker 2: lame and yours is boring. But yeah, probably got a
Speaker 2: big lead shot coming. Otherwise they wouldn't adden to the forties.
Speaker 3: So that was my thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're probably smarter there than me. All right,
Speaker 2: who you got for a Cardinal arm here? Who'd you
Speaker 2: go with? Last year? I don't remember.
Speaker 3: Ian Bedell was my last year and he was okay. Yeah,
Speaker 3: some of the stuff took a little step back. I
Speaker 3: thought I wasn't quite as good. I still like him,
Speaker 3: and as you know, he's a Cardinals kind of depth
Speaker 3: arm where the strikeouts aren't going to be there, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't walk a ton, and I think the deal
Speaker 3: was still was Legit wasn't as cool.
Speaker 2: As wasn't as cool as mine, But yeah, not a
Speaker 2: bad pick.
Speaker 3: I'm fine not being cool. So there were two arms
Speaker 3: that I really liked in this system.
Speaker 2: This is a loaded This is kind of a loaded
Speaker 2: bitching farm.
Speaker 3: I think there's some fun guys in here. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know who you ended up with, but there
Speaker 3: were quite a few that I looked at as like, oh,
Speaker 3: that sort of an interesting guy, and there's something there.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't, I don't necessarily, I'm not just more
Speaker 2: like on the pretty boy side, like tink Kent's forty
Speaker 2: one percent, Quinn Matthews thirty percent, Roby twenty one percent,
Speaker 2: Duerpe nineteen percent.
Speaker 3: Give me Matthews over any of those three any day.
Speaker 2: Greevy nineteen percent, Grousepo fifteen percent, Robert seven percent, Clough
Speaker 2: and Stein is six percent. My guy from last year, Lynn,
Speaker 2: he's up to three percent. Yeah, there's a several two
Speaker 2: percent guys that were like in the lowers that are
Speaker 2: interesting to me. But yeah, a big difference from a
Speaker 2: year ago. I think when we bruise this system.
Speaker 3: I agree with that, and that, like, like you said,
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of guys in there that are quite
Speaker 3: interesting personally set like kind of settled in on two
Speaker 3: that you know, check me if I'm if I'm off here,
Speaker 3: because maybe one of them is a little more owned
Speaker 3: than is our usual rate. But the first one that
Speaker 3: I'll talk about is Juan Salas. You watch Solace this year?
Speaker 2: Yep, he was zero percent in September.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Solace is super fun. I love the huge
Speaker 3: leg kick that he's got. Have you seen that thing?
Speaker 2: Yep? He was definitely on my short list of three
Speaker 2: or four here, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, super fun leg kick. I thought his spa speed
Speaker 3: were really, really good. He had a great year a
Speaker 3: ball for the whole year, twenty two starts one hundred
Speaker 3: and what eleven innings, one hundred and thirteen innings, struck
Speaker 3: out one hundred and nineteen, walked only five point five percent.
Speaker 3: Like this guy goes after hitters, he really pounds the zone.
Speaker 3: He knows how to pitch. I like all of those things.
Speaker 3: My one issue for him is that his fastball was fine,
Speaker 3: but I kind of it's not like an elite angle
Speaker 3: or anything, and it's I think tops out at ninety four,
Speaker 3: so bordering on playable for alrighty, And I really like
Speaker 3: his changeup. His change up is super fun, threw it
Speaker 3: a lot, threw it in fun counts, and his curveball
Speaker 3: was as better of the breakers in my looks. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you felt that way as well. I
Speaker 3: thought he commanded that one pretty well and could get
Speaker 3: some whips with his curve. His slider was pretty mech
Speaker 3: to me. I don't know if you felt that way too,
Speaker 3: but that was the one that seemed like it had
Speaker 3: room for improvement. I almost wonder if he turned that
Speaker 3: into a bit more of a cutter, like, threw it
Speaker 3: a little harder, if he might have some more success.
Speaker 3: But one salce was super fun. I liked him a lot,
Speaker 3: and if if it wasn't for this other guy, I
Speaker 3: think I would have been pretty happy taking one sauce
Speaker 3: like I would have taken nim over. I think any
Speaker 3: picture we've talked about so far.
Speaker 2: You know I love young Mexican arms and Unsallas is
Speaker 2: that I think ultimately for me with him, it feels
Speaker 2: like a lot of the same from past, like young
Speaker 2: Mexican Arms that I liked that. I just don't know
Speaker 2: if the stuff is going to be enough. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I hear that. I feel like I want to bet
Speaker 2: on him getting better.
Speaker 3: I hear that for sure, And you know, as a
Speaker 3: twenty one year old in a ball it was it
Speaker 3: was a really good year, you know. But still that's
Speaker 3: a twenty one percent came min as b B, which
Speaker 3: is more quite good. And especially at a ball like
Speaker 3: you know, you want to see maybe a touch better
Speaker 3: or see that at an advance level like double A
Speaker 3: or triple A this.
Speaker 2: Day and age, you never know. Man. So there's a
Speaker 2: guy that we're going to talk about later than unbelievable
Speaker 2: jumps and just stuff this year.
Speaker 3: So I'm interested to hear hear that one the guy
Speaker 3: that I'm that I want to pick here, and you
Speaker 3: tell me if I'm off on my percentages. He was
Speaker 3: zero percent when I looked, But Darlin Saladein.
Speaker 2: He was he was two percent, and oh.
Speaker 3: Daggers, Daggers. Well, maybe I have to check down to
Speaker 3: Solace for my pick. But Saladin, Saladin was really exciting
Speaker 3: to me. I liked him quite a lot. The fastball
Speaker 3: has major league looking traits. To me, this is a
Speaker 3: Rule five eligible guy. I'm curious if somebody might try
Speaker 3: and pop him. He spent about half the year at
Speaker 3: low A and halfier at high so I'm thinking maybe
Speaker 3: they'll sneak him pass. And the other knock on Saladin
Speaker 3: is that he's a little shorter. I think he's like
Speaker 3: five ten maybe. But the fastball looked playable to me,
Speaker 3: and that is always a good place to start. There's
Speaker 3: a curve that he really likes, and he goes to
Speaker 3: a lot which I also quite liked, and then a
Speaker 3: slider or a cutter. I couldn't really tell. It kind
Speaker 3: of a harder breaker that I didn't see a ton
Speaker 3: of positive things out of, Like I thought it was
Speaker 3: like maybe below average at getting whiffs for a cutter
Speaker 3: slider thing. But then in an occasional change that I
Speaker 3: thought he could use more because it seemed like it
Speaker 3: played like he kept it below the zone one at
Speaker 3: that in particularly that I'm recalling where it was a
Speaker 3: three to two changeup that he shook two and dotted
Speaker 3: it just below the zone and got a whiff for
Speaker 3: the strikeout, which I thought was really nice. And I
Speaker 3: also liked his motion, like there's good flow to it's
Speaker 3: like easy. Everything about it is kind of easy and whippy.
Speaker 3: This isn't a smash the button go by this guy,
Speaker 3: Go try and acquire him. But I really liked what
Speaker 3: I saw. And you know, along these DSL guys that
Speaker 3: take a little bit to get going as arms, you know,
Speaker 3: he just doesn't have a ton of innings under his belt.
Speaker 3: He threw one hundred and twenty some innings and that
Speaker 3: like almost tripled his previous career high in the minor leagues,
Speaker 3: and he's still just at HI. Maybe someone tries to
Speaker 3: scoop him and stuffs him in a pen because they
Speaker 3: think he can be a reliever for a year or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I think he'll probably pass through the rule five
Speaker 3: pretty comfortably and get another year and see what he
Speaker 3: can do with the mid to uppers for Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: But Darlin Saladin is my guy for the cards.
Speaker 2: Pipeline had him fourteenth the last time I looked at
Speaker 2: other lists in their system. I like that call. I
Speaker 2: decided to go with another teenage armed Matt small sample
Speaker 2: look young infante. I don't know if you watch any
Speaker 2: of his well, he got in a total of thirteen
Speaker 2: point one innings thirteen and a third innings in a
Speaker 2: ball and not all that was broadcast. I'm not even
Speaker 2: sure exactly. Maybe half of those I watched, but he
Speaker 2: was nineteen this year, righty listed at six ' three
Speaker 2: from the Dominican his thirteen innings. I don't know, what
Speaker 2: do you do? It only struck out nineteen percent, twenty percent,
Speaker 2: struck out twenty eight percent in the complex, walked eleven
Speaker 2: and a half percent. Don't love that. Three strikes at
Speaker 2: fifty nine percent in a ball, but seventy percent on
Speaker 2: seventy percent on the complex. Small sample size, Matt, small
Speaker 2: sample size. This is UH turning on some video and
Speaker 2: getting a little bit on the edge of your seat,
Speaker 2: a little bit more excited than anybody else I watched
Speaker 2: down at this roster percentage. Well, he's a writing, he's
Speaker 2: got a little a little drop and drive a little
Speaker 2: bit lower release. I think to him maybe a little
Speaker 2: bit of an oddity to his whole delivery there. According
Speaker 2: to Savant, through four seamer sinker those what average about
Speaker 2: ninety three. But you see there's also something that touched
Speaker 2: ninety six. Ninety seven. Curveball was his most thrown secondary
Speaker 2: through that seventeen percent of the time. Again, this is
Speaker 2: this is a pretty small sample size. So there's a
Speaker 2: change up and there's a slider and I kind of
Speaker 2: thought all of the secondary the fastballs, all of the secondaries,
Speaker 2: and my little watch is like, especially for a teenager,
Speaker 2: seemed to be executed fairly decently. I thought like he was,
Speaker 2: he was pitching him mixing and I don't just really
Speaker 2: really caught me, really kind of impressed me for a kid.
Speaker 2: Last year, I went with a guy just kind of
Speaker 2: based on stuff and when that worked out, all right,
Speaker 2: I guess maybe not quite as much velocity here. I
Speaker 2: don't think he's touching one hundred, but I don't think
Speaker 2: that this kid has fully grown here. And yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, there could be a real starter year.
Speaker 2: I think there's plenty, plenty of time to let this develop.
Speaker 3: I like that change up you shared, that was thanks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he turned it over pretty well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of the breakers looking real nasty
Speaker 2: at times. Like I don't know, man, I was just
Speaker 2: I was into it six innings or whatever the hell
Speaker 2: it was. Got to be interested in what teenagers they
Speaker 2: decide to pull up and give some aall a ball.
Speaker 2: It looks too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fun little dice roll there. That's not when I
Speaker 3: watched Antio, So.
Speaker 2: I guess it's max fastball on the Savant was ninety
Speaker 2: six points three or whatever that's worth. Yeah, that'll play.
Speaker 2: You can live up there.
Speaker 3: I sure can't throw that hard.
Speaker 2: It's just always kind of interesting you watch some of
Speaker 2: these international teenagers come up and you're like, and then
Speaker 2: you get to you know, you get the juxtaposition. You
Speaker 2: get to look at I don't know, Ben Kundro when
Speaker 2: he was a teenager, you know, his first pro season,
Speaker 2: or Maddox Brounze or somebody like that, and you're just like, dude,
Speaker 2: this this kid that they signed for twenty k or
Speaker 2: whatever is like way better right now. So you know,
Speaker 2: if they were in the draft sort of thing, where
Speaker 2: would they get drafted? I don't know, but I was
Speaker 2: into this. Nice let's go to the Pirates Mac because
Speaker 2: the Pirates have the guy that I'm most into tonight.
Speaker 3: Ooh interesting, okay, but I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let you go first. Let's go Pirates' Bats.
Speaker 2: I'll let you go first though.
Speaker 3: For the bats I, I don't know if we we
Speaker 3: mentioned him before, but Sammy Siani Sioni is not my choice,
Speaker 3: but like, I think this guy is likely to get
Speaker 3: taken in the Rule five because he seems like he
Speaker 3: can really play center field. His brother is a good
Speaker 3: center fielder in the card system, Mike, and they're you know,
Speaker 3: he didn't hit great at Double A this year, but
Speaker 3: he was really good at high A to start the year,
Speaker 3: and that got me intrigued enough I kind of followed
Speaker 3: him a little bit throughout the year. He's another one
Speaker 3: that I think is, you know, maybe a twelve homer
Speaker 3: bat in the BIGS, but like could have thirty some
Speaker 3: steals and play really good center field. Still some production,
Speaker 3: but I could see him getting popped. The guy I
Speaker 3: am gonna pick is someone else that I mentioned a
Speaker 3: little while back, Nick Simeo, Yeah, Samilo Samo You and
Speaker 3: I talked about him when I meant that he was
Speaker 3: having just a hell of a power run down in
Speaker 3: High Greenville, Greensboro, Greensboroboro, and in Greensboro. As you noted,
Speaker 3: they have a higher park factor anyway, especially for or
Speaker 3: especially for rightis, and that's worth noting. You know, overall
Speaker 3: it's like a slightly above average for hitters, but for
Speaker 3: righty's and especially for homers, it's it's quite high. And
Speaker 3: he was taking advantage of that. Right he was lifting
Speaker 3: and pulling.
Speaker 2: If you're hitting them the dead center there though I
Speaker 2: think it's legit.
Speaker 3: But see, that's the thing is he was doing that
Speaker 3: as well. What did I We were talking about somebody earlier, Escobar,
Speaker 3: I think for the Cubs, and I was skeptical of
Speaker 3: his homer and a flyball rate, and I was like,
Speaker 3: twenty three percent. Smeo had a thirty four point seven
Speaker 3: homer to flyball rate at Greensboro this year. So yeah,
Speaker 3: he probably didn't earn all of those homers, but the
Speaker 3: dude mashed seventeen of them two hundred and twenty played appearances.
Speaker 3: Seventeen and in two hundred and twenty played appearances is nutty. Now,
Speaker 3: of course, I'm not saying he's like the next coming
Speaker 3: of Joey Gallo or whatever, but there's real power here.
Speaker 3: You know. He's a big right right first base Mnata Rutgers.
Speaker 3: He's going to be twenty five this upcoming year and
Speaker 3: was more league average at a double A than really
Speaker 3: great and that should give you, I should give you
Speaker 3: some pause. Al Tuna's like a pretty neutral park, so
Speaker 3: you can't blame a ton of it on the park.
Speaker 3: I watched a lot of his double A games there
Speaker 3: for the curve. And the thing that I like about
Speaker 3: him that kind of sets him apart from some of
Speaker 3: the other right right kind of first baseman that you
Speaker 3: see around the minor leagues is I think his contact
Speaker 3: skills have actually improved as he's gone up levels. His
Speaker 3: swinging strike rate has gone down. He's I think, doing
Speaker 3: a pretty good job controlling the zone, walks in above
Speaker 3: average amount. And while Steamer is still skeptical of his
Speaker 3: strikeout rate, like project him as a slightly worse than
Speaker 3: average strikeout rate guy, and with the can I just
Speaker 3: okay OBP and power, I think there might be a
Speaker 3: tick better contact skills there than you see. I've seen
Speaker 3: him adjust pretty well. There was a really good at
Speaker 3: bad I saw late in the season in Double A,
Speaker 3: and he missed a slider like one one to go
Speaker 3: to a one two count like down and away, good pitch,
Speaker 3: and he swung and missed, and previously in that bat
Speaker 3: swung and miss at a fastball kind of up middle,
Speaker 3: but he adjusted, fouled off like four pitches, couple of sliders,
Speaker 3: couple of fastballs, and then Pitcher missed his spot and
Speaker 3: dude hit a nuke to center field like in Altuna
Speaker 3: like deep and has like that's just a really good
Speaker 3: at bat and I think demonstrated some of the Like
Speaker 3: you know, he ran an eight point five percent swinging
Speaker 3: strike rate in double A over you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty five played appearances, Like that's a decent sample
Speaker 3: for your swinging strike rate and that's plus and this
Speaker 3: guy also plus power, Like is he a forty homer
Speaker 3: bat like he was showing in Greensboro? No, but could
Speaker 3: he be thirty and could the strikeout rate help him
Speaker 3: get to that? Maybe he also was a flyball dude,
Speaker 3: which you know, I love for these power guys, Like
Speaker 3: he's going to get to his power and that didn't
Speaker 3: show up a ton in Altuna, but again it wasn't
Speaker 3: a huge sample size for the kind of home and
Speaker 3: a flyball rate to stabilize. So I think he's going
Speaker 3: to be a guy that is a corner masher and
Speaker 3: has has a real shot to be like a first
Speaker 3: baseman for the Pirates for a decent amount of time.
Speaker 3: Maybe not next year, but soon. You know, he's a
Speaker 3: really interesting corner power bat.
Speaker 2: To me, who is this who is this version of
Speaker 2: the Roough just loving on so many right handed first
Speaker 2: Basemen tonight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like that's you know, nobody else interesting
Speaker 3: in these systems, right, Well, I am.
Speaker 2: I don't't lie. I'm thrilled that you did not pick
Speaker 2: my guy because I thought for sure you were going
Speaker 2: to and I knew that you'd liked some Millo to
Speaker 2: some degree. But I'm going with a guy that you
Speaker 2: brought up this year, young eighteen year old Xio Plaz.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Platz is a great pick.
Speaker 2: I love him, dude. And I was trying to not
Speaker 2: pick any catchers this year, but I had I had
Speaker 2: to make this, make this call here, my man hits
Speaker 2: the ball hard, dude. Yeah, how this is probably a
Speaker 2: top ten guy for me. Maybe who I guy for
Speaker 2: the draft, I don't know. We'll see Rastered in September.
Speaker 2: Not on Pipeline's list. Last I saw Catcher. I think
Speaker 2: he did play a little bit of first base, right handed.
Speaker 2: Listed at five to eleven. I don't know if he's
Speaker 2: quite that tall from.
Speaker 3: VENEZUELA little fire hydrant guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Eight games in the complex
Speaker 2: this year. I don't know if that was rehab stuff
Speaker 2: for something. I don't know. Most of the year in
Speaker 2: a ball seventy six games, two hundred and eighty one
Speaker 2: played appearances. My man hit fifteen home runs. I swept
Speaker 2: the baby. He's not going to be stealing bases, walked
Speaker 2: eleven percent of the time. I'd strike out twenty nine
Speaker 2: percent of the time. Don't love to see that two
Speaker 2: seven three two four thirty eight slash two thirty one iso,
Speaker 2: and he ran a two thirty five babbit which was
Speaker 2: good enough for a one tow eight WRC plus hits
Speaker 2: it on the ground less than thirty five percent of
Speaker 2: the time, pulled the ball forty percent of the time.
Speaker 2: But mat to me, it's the compact, quick, powerful swing, dude.
Speaker 2: I pulled up his hardest hit balls this year. It's
Speaker 2: not necessarily the mile per hours that I like, but
Speaker 2: the results right. One hundred and twelve and a half
Speaker 2: mount so one hundred and thirteen off the bat home
Speaker 2: run was his hardest hit ball the year. One hundred
Speaker 2: and twelve. It was a ground out. One hundred and
Speaker 2: eleven was a double on a sharp line drive. One
Speaker 2: hundred and eleven line out, one hundred and eleven home run,
Speaker 2: one hundred and eleven line drive, one hundred and eleven
Speaker 2: line drive, one hundred and ten home run, his top
Speaker 2: what would be his ninetieth percentile one ball hit on
Speaker 2: the ground. He's hitting it hard and it's hardest hit
Speaker 2: balls are in the air. Obviously, catcher this young. Fantasy wise,
Speaker 2: I get hesitancy there. I get a guy who's striking
Speaker 2: out almost thirty percent. But mind you two, he's eighteen
Speaker 2: and this is what like a little over half of
Speaker 2: a season. Yeah, a ball like, I don't know, there's
Speaker 2: enough fump in this bat for him to be way
Speaker 2: more exciting to me than anybody else. Zero one percent
Speaker 2: with the Pirates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I'm a fan, and I think you
Speaker 3: nailed it. There's power, there's some patience, he gets the
Speaker 3: ball in the air. He's pretty fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was surprised you didn't take him, man, And
Speaker 2: I'll be dropping videos of my picks here on Twitter
Speaker 2: at pitching Specs so you can see what maybe some
Speaker 2: of the stuff that we're talking about here. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I was surprised. It just a strikeouts or you just
Speaker 2: like Samilo that much and us further along.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the strikeouts, and I think ended up
Speaker 3: sort of being kind of similar profile, right like that,
Speaker 3: I think Samila hits the ball harder and strikes out
Speaker 3: less at a higher level, Like you know, give me
Speaker 3: that reduction and risk. And I still haven't forgotten Plause
Speaker 3: for tricking me with his stupid DSL good numbers when
Speaker 3: I was going to take Bisio instead of him, and
Speaker 3: I took Plause and then two picks later Bisio goes.
Speaker 2: So maybe still there's history there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I mentioned that on the pot at
Speaker 3: one point, but I still have some hidden resentment towards Axial.
Speaker 3: But no, I think that's interesting. And like you mentioned
Speaker 3: this guy at eighteen, Yeah, that's you could see some
Speaker 3: progression here in a way that a lot of the
Speaker 3: guys we talked about. It's tough to do that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: he's got some stuff to like for sure.
Speaker 2: It's kind of fun to think about if he had
Speaker 2: played the whole season in the FSL with his home
Speaker 2: run total might have been because yeah, fifteen and seventy
Speaker 2: six FSL games is pretty freaking unheard of. What was it?
Speaker 2: I think the league leader was what twenty nineteen? If
Speaker 2: that so impressive power stuff there in my opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: with the Pirates arm Farm Matt pretty pretty right.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, this system is fucking stacked arms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just stucking at the top. Obviously, Skiings he's
Speaker 2: not a prospect anymore. But Bubba Chandler thirty eight percent,
Speaker 2: Cela medow Is twenty three percent, Braxton Ashcraft was eighteen,
Speaker 2: Thomas Harritt Harrington eighteen, Hunter Barcos seven, Xander Moomouth six,
Speaker 2: Mike Burrows, who I'm a big fan of, six percent,
Speaker 2: Carlson Reid four percent, Michael Kennedy two percent, Josh Hartle,
Speaker 2: who's the first year player guy right two percent.
Speaker 3: Was four percent. That's a bummer because I want to
Speaker 3: talk about him.
Speaker 2: And then I got to say and then you know
Speaker 2: my guy from last year, Erkulani, No, I still have
Speaker 2: some interest in him. But there was a know, I
Speaker 2: got four or five guys that were, you know, on
Speaker 2: my short list here with the Pirates. But if you're
Speaker 2: a Pirates fan, I think you got to feel pretty
Speaker 2: good about what they've been doing with some arms the
Speaker 2: last several years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and these are these are pretty boys that I
Speaker 3: think are actually really good, you know, with Tayler, Braxton Ashcraft,
Speaker 3: Thomas Harrington, Mike Burrows, Carlson Reedal. I'll talk a bit
Speaker 3: about like Salomatto. I think all of those guys are
Speaker 3: the real deal. Hunter Barco, it really impressed me this year.
Speaker 3: I was a bit skeptical, but he thought was pretty
Speaker 3: good this year too. This arm farm they got going
Speaker 3: here in Pittsburgh is really exciting. And you know, if
Speaker 3: i'm them, I'm probably trading a few of these guys
Speaker 3: to try and bolster their hitters because they're missing some
Speaker 3: pieces on the hitting side. But they, I think pretty
Speaker 3: quickly are going to have a rotation that can compete
Speaker 3: with freaking anybody. I mean, this is this is a
Speaker 3: good crop. Let me let me talk about Carlson read
Speaker 3: a bit because he was a new new one to
Speaker 3: me in diving into the system. And when I looked,
Speaker 3: I think he was one percent, but again I looked
Speaker 3: kind of late. This He is fun. I mean he's tall,
Speaker 3: six or four, lanky, long arms, long legs, gets down
Speaker 3: the mound. He's got a sinker, a slider, and a split.
Speaker 3: And I think when I was reading up on him
Speaker 3: doing some background, he mostly had been a reliever and
Speaker 3: people thought he was going to be a reliever, but
Speaker 3: Pittsburgh popped him in the fourth and we're like, we're
Speaker 3: gonna out of West Virginia, I think, and he's like,
Speaker 3: we're gonna try and make you a starter. But maybe
Speaker 3: Baseball America or somebody was like exciting stuff up to
Speaker 3: ninety nine. But it's two pitches, and really one of
Speaker 3: those isn't very good. I don't think that's true at all.
Speaker 3: It's a nasty sinker. He will throw a four seamer
Speaker 3: as well. The slider is really good and he'll go
Speaker 3: to it a lot. And then the split was nasty,
Speaker 3: and that's new, I think. I don't think he had
Speaker 3: had that before. But it's pretty good. The one knock
Speaker 3: on him is that the walks trended a little higher
Speaker 3: than I like, you know, approaching that kind of twelve
Speaker 3: percent mark. That's really my no go. But there were
Speaker 3: a lot of outings where it was like one or
Speaker 3: two walks, and so I'm it seems like when he's
Speaker 3: got it, it works really well. His arm swing is
Speaker 3: a little long for my liking, like he gets kind
Speaker 3: of behind himself, and I think that that might be
Speaker 3: why he can sometimes lose it. But the pure stuff
Speaker 3: and execution of that stuff is up there for among
Speaker 3: the best arms in the system. Like I'll put him
Speaker 3: right up there against Solometto and Ashcraft and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe a half step behind Chandler for like stuff. And
Speaker 3: he's twenty one, gonna be twenty two. Made it up
Speaker 3: to double A this was this was like, I guess
Speaker 3: he made it up to high. Maybe he didn't quite
Speaker 3: make the double, but he was so exciting to me.
Speaker 3: I loved my watches of him, and I think he's
Speaker 3: he's a really fun one. But I'm going to try
Speaker 3: and get some shares of soon.
Speaker 2: I think I was watching him a little bit this season,
Speaker 2: but yeah, not a guy that I was like super
Speaker 2: tuned in on.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I got just super super jazz when when
Speaker 3: I was watching him, and I was just like, dude,
Speaker 3: why is nobody talking about him? But you know, I
Speaker 3: guess if he's four percent like some people are, some
Speaker 3: people are in.
Speaker 2: So yeah, would you go with?
Speaker 3: Well, I decided to go with Dominic s Paracchi.
Speaker 2: Coach guy.
Speaker 3: Yea nice, Yeah, yeah I'll do I'll do the short version.
Speaker 3: You can dive a little deeper. Like my TLDR on
Speaker 3: him is that he is a solid lefty with a
Speaker 3: really nice slider fastball combo, and I think there might
Speaker 3: be room for some additional growth in here. But I
Speaker 3: liked a lot of what he did. You know, he's
Speaker 3: a small college guy, late round pick. This is like
Speaker 3: our fodder year for B sides. But the walks ticked
Speaker 3: up a bit when he got up to double A,
Speaker 3: but I think the skills were still there and it
Speaker 3: was just a bit of a blip. And his era
Speaker 3: balloons too. But he's one that I think a savvy
Speaker 3: Dynasty person might target as a throw in in some trades,
Speaker 3: and that might be profitable really soon, as like a pitchability,
Speaker 3: solid stuff lefty that has a chance to be in
Speaker 3: a back end of a rotation. So I liked him
Speaker 3: quite a lot. I don't know, what did you like
Speaker 3: about Paracchi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Paraci got my attention this year when he
Speaker 2: was in Greensboro, because I mean, dude, he was fucking
Speaker 2: dominating there. He was dominating in greens Yeah, yeah, striking
Speaker 2: out twenty eight point two percent, walking six point six
Speaker 2: eer just over to a whip under one. But dude,
Speaker 2: the most impressive thing that he did there was zero
Speaker 2: home runs, not a one, not a one in Greensboro.
Speaker 2: That's that's pretty phenomenal. So he got my to I
Speaker 2: actually picked him up in a few spots, but then
Speaker 2: you know, promotion came to double A where he got
Speaker 2: in ten games, eight starts, forty one innings and kind
Speaker 2: of I mean, I don't know, cliche, but guy's doing
Speaker 2: really well in low A in the lowers, right, But like,
Speaker 2: is this stuff good enough to play in the uppers, right?
Speaker 2: That's a huge question, and I think Paracchi just kind
Speaker 2: of fell victim to that. You look at his arsenal,
Speaker 2: it's a low nineties fastball, right, a low eighties slider,
Speaker 2: mid eighties change, and I think all, like you said,
Speaker 2: there's a curve ball in there too, But I think
Speaker 2: all of it's just like bit and bit lacking a
Speaker 2: bit vanilla. I don't know if he was necessarily like
Speaker 2: executing his pitches any worse or anything like that. From yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't think so, no, no, no, I think it's
Speaker 2: just like really kind of a matter of like this
Speaker 2: new level, your stuff needs to be a little bit better.
Speaker 2: So that's my that's my hope with him. I like
Speaker 2: I like the frame six ' three, I like delivery,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, six four, like all that stuff. I like
Speaker 2: him as a picture, but it's I think it's just
Speaker 2: gonna require an uptick in Arsenal to really kind of
Speaker 2: take off and be good and be a more legit
Speaker 2: major league candidate. But again, Matt, like, I don't mind
Speaker 2: thinking that needs to happen with guys, because it happens
Speaker 2: with a lot of guys these days.
Speaker 3: And so much of the underlying things that he does
Speaker 3: are there already in my opinion, so that if the
Speaker 3: stuff does tick up a hair, now you're really like,
Speaker 3: it's it's a super exciting guy. So probably I'm I'm
Speaker 3: with you on I think that's a good guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think it's definitely a I don't raster
Speaker 2: him anymore in my leagues, but uh, you know, if
Speaker 2: it comes out on a ball he's got i don't know,
Speaker 2: another tick on the fas a sliders firm, or maybe
Speaker 2: he's throwing more of like a cutter thing or something whatever,
Speaker 2: if anything's taken up a little bit, looking a little
Speaker 2: bit more tougher on hitters in double A, like, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be quite interested. But yeah, Dominic Paracci, I probably
Speaker 2: in all my NL Central arms, man, I just kind
Speaker 2: of loosely kind of ranked them them all, and they're
Speaker 2: all my NL Central guys are just like all clumped
Speaker 2: up together. I don't know if there's anyone that I'm
Speaker 2: talking about tonight that I love significantly or like significantly
Speaker 2: more than any of the others on the arm side.
Speaker 3: Ooh, I'm interested to see these last couple that we
Speaker 3: talked about then, because there's yeah, I'm telling you, there's
Speaker 3: one guy I think is so good.
Speaker 2: Another note on Paracchi. One thing I noticed watching him.
Speaker 2: I'd be curious what Connor would maybe think about about this,
Speaker 2: But like he is kind of a fiery guy, you know.
Speaker 3: Like that, yeah, yeah, and he would have.
Speaker 2: Especially down in Greensboro, he'd have some just dominant stretches
Speaker 2: right where he strikes out like five out of six
Speaker 2: batters or whatever, right, get real pumped up about that.
Speaker 2: And he was like, I like, I wonder, I wonder
Speaker 2: about sort of like his psychology up there, because it
Speaker 2: seemed like it didn't happen often in Greensboro, but when
Speaker 2: things started to not really go his way, maybe there
Speaker 2: was a ground ball that got through or bloop single
Speaker 2: or something like that. Like I kind of felt like
Speaker 2: he like just kind of lost his moxy a little bit,
Speaker 2: and like that stuff kind of kind of bothered him
Speaker 2: and things started to like snowball on him in that way.
Speaker 2: I don't know, There's there's a few times where I
Speaker 2: was just like, well, well just just slow down, man,
Speaker 2: You got like a you got like another couple of innings.
Speaker 2: You got to finish this thing off. And I thought
Speaker 2: it was interesting because I think there were times where
Speaker 2: his velocity was like ticking up a little bit, maybe
Speaker 2: the fourth inning and stuff like that, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: that's interesting. But at the same time, I felt like
Speaker 2: he was weaker production wise and didn't pitch quite as
Speaker 2: well later in some of his starts.
Speaker 3: But well, as we like to preach, you know, velocity
Speaker 3: is and everything you hear that you stuff Yep.
Speaker 2: For sure, for sure. But yeah, needless to say, I'm
Speaker 2: interested there. Let's move on to the Reds, Matt. There
Speaker 2: might not be a difference between one side versus like,
Speaker 2: I'm not very I'm not very keen on my bat here,
Speaker 2: but I am really interested in my arm. So I
Speaker 2: want to start there. Okay, young Jose Montero, are you familiar?
Speaker 2: No right hander six ' two strong too, like dud
Speaker 2: Dude's got some muscle. These Venezuelan zero percent roster spent
Speaker 2: the whole season Florida State League twenty five games, sixteen starts,
Speaker 2: ninety six innings, three four seven ERA, A one point
Speaker 2: three eight whip, a K percentage of twenty one point
Speaker 2: seven percent, a walk percentage of eleven percent, which you know,
Speaker 2: neither of those are super appealing. Swinging strike grade of
Speaker 2: thirteen point one percent, three strikes at sixty two percent.
Speaker 2: But Matt, I went back and I watched some Montero
Speaker 2: from last season, and this is the guy who's fastball
Speaker 2: went from like eighty eight eighty seven to like maybe
Speaker 2: touching ninety to mid nineties on the regular this year.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Yeah, he added a lot of velocity there.
Speaker 2: I think the changeup was looking pretty freaking nasty, and
Speaker 2: I don't even think he was I don't even know
Speaker 2: if he was throwing one last year.
Speaker 3: He's got things looked really good in this video that
Speaker 3: you shared.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, he's got a firm hiaties slider, that commanding.
Speaker 2: That might be his biggest weakness right now. I really
Speaker 2: think there is an MLB caliber like tool set here.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting, like with the walks, is that they
Speaker 2: weren't a problem last couple of seasons and they really
Speaker 2: ticked up this year. I'm kind of wondering, just this
Speaker 2: guy's got a lot more juicier stuff that he's working with.
Speaker 2: Maybe some calibration hopefully that's that's the reason why the
Speaker 2: walks were higher. But there were some looks, there were
Speaker 2: some outings that I was just like, now, this is
Speaker 2: like a good developmental sort of like case study for
Speaker 2: the Reds here and this guy has really ticked up.
Speaker 2: What are they gonna do with this guy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the ground ball tendency too, That's that's somewhat interesting.
Speaker 2: He was doing, you know, kind of maybe some piggyback
Speaker 2: and stuff. I don't know. He pitched, he went five
Speaker 2: innings several times early in the season. Maybe he had
Speaker 2: some shorter outings that he was like good in down
Speaker 2: the stretch. Maybe his last start wasn't so great. But uh,
Speaker 2: I was just kind of wondering if they were they
Speaker 2: were ratching him down a little bit just pitch count wise,
Speaker 2: and who knows. I mean, he's still just an a ball.
Speaker 2: Maybe a little fairal relieving could very well, you know,
Speaker 2: be the future, but he's got a starter's kit and
Speaker 2: I don't know, man I was he might be just
Speaker 2: a smidge more interesting to me than the other four
Speaker 2: guys here, But like I said before, it's all pretty close.
Speaker 2: But Jose Montero and I'm interested. I'm excited to see
Speaker 2: what happens with his just I think across the board
Speaker 2: improved arsenal and if you can rain that in some
Speaker 2: might be a dude.
Speaker 3: Yeah interesting shout. He's not someone I watched much, but
Speaker 3: that little video you got me get me a little
Speaker 3: little intrigued. Yeah, right, doesn't look so bad, well my
Speaker 3: arm I Yeah, he's another one that has some real warts,
Speaker 3: but some other really interesting things. I'm gonna go with
Speaker 3: Nestor Laurent. Can you watching Nestor this year?
Speaker 2: I'm familiar? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: First the good. He had a top twenty five season
Speaker 3: by k mine. It's BB minimum ninety things I think
Speaker 3: as the minimum map, so you know, we're getting starters
Speaker 3: kind of workload. He was like twenty third or fourth,
Speaker 3: I think, with a twenty nine point seven percent strikeout
Speaker 3: rate and a seven point one percent walk rate, both
Speaker 3: quite good. The problems though, one He was twenty two
Speaker 3: at low A this year, where he spent most of
Speaker 3: the of the year, so that's like a little old,
Speaker 3: you know, he got a bump. His last couple of
Speaker 3: games were up in high but his dominating stretch in
Speaker 3: low A was a repeat from twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 3: he was pretty old for not like crazy old, but
Speaker 3: definitely old for the level for that being where he
Speaker 3: was all year. And I think the reason is because
Speaker 3: he's another guy with eighty eight to ninety one mile
Speaker 3: an hour fastball, and as a righty, that's tough to
Speaker 3: see that playing. He's Rule five eligible this year again,
Speaker 3: kind of rip and replace what I said earlier. I
Speaker 3: don't think he's getting picked, but I do think that
Speaker 3: he's somewhat interesting. As his change up is awesome. It
Speaker 3: really dives off the table. It was way too much
Speaker 3: for hitters at a ball. He ran like a seventeen
Speaker 3: point eight percent swinging strike rate. I think largely because
Speaker 3: he would go to his change up a lot and
Speaker 3: it really played off of his fastball. And then he's
Speaker 3: got a curveball that I thought was pretty good. He
Speaker 3: would spend that one below the zone as well. Command
Speaker 3: pretty solid too. He was throwing those pitches to different quadrants,
Speaker 3: missing below the zone when he intended to and hiding
Speaker 3: his fastball up in the zone when he needed to
Speaker 3: and made it work. I think he can do that
Speaker 3: at a ball, but I don't think there's the outlier
Speaker 3: traits for eighty eight to ninety one to play as
Speaker 3: he goes up higher. That's why I'm not that excited
Speaker 3: about him. Gave up like what one homer this year,
Speaker 3: which is pretty impressive throughout the whole year. Three over
Speaker 3: almost one hundred innings this year, so that's that's pretty good.
Speaker 3: But I think that's going to tick up if he's
Speaker 3: really just sitting eighty eight to ninety one. If the
Speaker 3: stuff does stick up tick up. Though, I really like
Speaker 3: the rest of what he has, so I thought there
Speaker 3: was plus to maybe double plus pitch in the change up.
Speaker 3: The curve ball was maybe average, the fastball was just
Speaker 3: way below average, and like off to see that working
Speaker 3: in the huppers. But I want to see it. I
Speaker 3: want to see him really get some run at high
Speaker 3: A and maybe double A next year and see if
Speaker 3: there is a real pitcher here. Otherwise it's probably just
Speaker 3: or depth because of the fastball playability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had laurent On, I don't know, final five
Speaker 2: or six here with the Reds. For me, the breaking
Speaker 2: ball game, I think is what I understand, the velocity stuff,
Speaker 2: what you're saying with the fastball. But to me it
Speaker 2: was like the breaking ball game just wasn't It kind
Speaker 2: of turned me off.
Speaker 3: But you didn't think as kurveball is any good. I
Speaker 3: thought it was kurball was solid.
Speaker 2: I mean to be honest at this point, what I
Speaker 2: watched some I don't really remember what it looks like. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean watched some in September. But my note here,
Speaker 2: my final note is fastball, change up guy. Breaking ball
Speaker 2: game is poop. Hard to read all that stuff on
Speaker 2: you know, just video. But we shall see. We shall
Speaker 2: see there. I mean the Reds man their arms, they're
Speaker 2: pretty boys there. They got some names, right, I mean
Speaker 2: Rhet Lauder fifty seven percent, Chase Petty twenty seven percent,
Speaker 2: former b Sadder. You only ag you are. It's thirteen
Speaker 2: percent of using the Biggs Ty Floyd Chase Burns of course,
Speaker 2: first year player, second pick in the draft, Connor Phillips,
Speaker 2: Line Richardson Adams Ronowski. I thought maybe you were gonna
Speaker 2: pick him, Matt, but he was two percent. I guess
Speaker 2: were you talking about him?
Speaker 3: I think I mentioned him before, but I'm not a
Speaker 3: huge Serwenhowski guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, but they got some they got some guys hererors
Speaker 2: all right. I was kind of at a loss when
Speaker 2: it came to bats here, Matt, I don't know again,
Speaker 2: So I just kind of went to my default, like
Speaker 2: some teenage hitter that I watched him in a ball
Speaker 2: that I was like, Hey, this guy kind of looks
Speaker 2: good sometimes. S Smith pineda nineteen year old corner outfielder,
Speaker 2: right handed, maybe about listed five to eleven. He's from Panama.
Speaker 2: Four hundred and twenty seven played appearances this year, nine
Speaker 2: home runs, nine stolen bases, walked twelve percent of the time,
Speaker 2: struck out twenty seven percent of the time. Not great.
Speaker 2: Slash line not great two thirteen, three, sixteen, three, forty six,
Speaker 2: one thirty four ISO two eighty Babbitt it was a
Speaker 2: ninety five WRC plus pulls the ball some. I felt like,
Speaker 2: maybe though that season line I don't think represents maybe
Speaker 2: kind of how good he was looking towards the end
Speaker 2: of the season as the season progressed. But in the
Speaker 2: savant sample hit a ball one hundred and ten miles
Speaker 2: per hour off of elizer Dishmy, which was a ground out,
Speaker 2: but I had some decent evs. I don't know, Matt,
Speaker 2: just a young guy. I thought maybe it wasn't nothing,
Speaker 2: that's all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't love.
Speaker 2: I really struggled dude, Like.
Speaker 3: I didn't love my red choices here either. On the
Speaker 3: bat side, you know, they've got some interesting dudes at
Speaker 3: the top end of this system of varying degrees. You know,
Speaker 3: Hector Rodriguez I thought had an interesting season, and I
Speaker 3: know some people really like him, Cam Collier, Sal Stewart,
Speaker 3: Sammy Steffera. Each of those guys is exciting in their
Speaker 3: own way.
Speaker 2: They guy like confidant and who's the other guy who
Speaker 2: hits the ball and believably fucking hard? Oh you talked
Speaker 2: about Aril Almonte Almonte. Yeah, those two guys were just
Speaker 2: one percent hit the ball, like, yeah, zillion miles per hour.
Speaker 2: But I don't think they're like legit.
Speaker 3: No, al Monte didn't do enough this year to like
Speaker 3: I was intrigued, but he didn't put it together. Maybe
Speaker 3: he will next year.
Speaker 2: But my guy from last year, Ethan O'Donnell, like, I
Speaker 2: guess he was alright for Kyle's guys stole thirty bags,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't nearly as good as.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was just gonna I was just gonna
Speaker 3: follow up and double tap that because I didn't like
Speaker 3: really anybody else like and nothing really new to say here.
Speaker 3: He wasn't as good as his short, small debut. I
Speaker 3: was hopeful that the Reds might unlock something because Virginia
Speaker 3: is in a great place to develop as a baseball player.
Speaker 3: I think that's been kind of proved out over the years,
Speaker 3: so maybe there's still some upside there. Like you said,
Speaker 3: it's it was some bags. It was I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe there's an approachier, but the strikeouts ticked up, and
Speaker 3: I don't love the profile personally, like he's pretty low
Speaker 3: down my bat list. But no, I thought it was
Speaker 3: a good pick by you last year, and I was
Speaker 3: going to give you some kudos and double tap this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I took him in a d aft
Speaker 2: I think like fourth or something. I've had a lot
Speaker 2: more hope there than it kind of turned out. But yep,
Speaker 2: you know, who knows, he's still what. He's only twenty
Speaker 2: two two, and he'll be a double next year. We'll see,
Speaker 2: we'll see but all right, so I'm going with uh
Speaker 2: some loser teenager. You're going with o'donald. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: let's move away. We got just one left right, just Milwaukee. Ooh,
Speaker 2: the Brewers. All right, man, let's start. Let's do the
Speaker 2: pitching side first. Okay, so they're pretty boys. They got
Speaker 2: Miserowski at forty eight percent. We've talked a lot about
Speaker 2: him and his future as a reliever. Robert Asser thirty
Speaker 2: eight percent. Guess you're still wait is guys, you're still
Speaker 2: with him? Okay? Uh? With Krowsky eighteen percent? Your boy
Speaker 2: Thatch was a great call last year. Logan Henderson's at
Speaker 2: twelve percent, Coas Rodriguez eleven percent, Josh Note eleven percent,
Speaker 2: Casey Hunt seven percent. Who is uh you know has
Speaker 2: definitely has his stand specially in the discord. Shane Smith
Speaker 2: is three percent, Bishop Letson was two percent, and then
Speaker 2: everyone else was like zero maybe two guys at one.
Speaker 2: But who did you go with? Matt?
Speaker 3: Okay, this is the guy I mentioned before that this
Speaker 3: is the most I think he's my number one beside
Speaker 3: arm this year. There's a couple that might challenge him
Speaker 3: for this, but like he was the one that I
Speaker 3: was like hell, yeah, okay, Chad Patrick, I'm so in Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he got added to the forty.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He spent the whole year at Triple A and kind
Speaker 3: of dominated. I mean he led the International League in
Speaker 3: strikeouts better than everybody else. Other some other guys had
Speaker 3: better strikeout rates and would have exceeded, like I think
Speaker 3: Bubba Chandler was like one behind him or something and
Speaker 3: through fewer innings. But man, Chad Patrick is real sexy
Speaker 3: as an arm to me, it's a cutter first approach,
Speaker 3: which I love, Like that's fun. Who wants to lead
Speaker 3: with the fastball when you can lead with a better
Speaker 3: pitch and it is good. He's got a four scene
Speaker 3: with plus ride and I think a decent release point,
Speaker 3: so I think it plays up from his like you know,
Speaker 3: ninety four or like ninety two to five kind of
Speaker 3: range on the four seamer, but it's like twenty four
Speaker 3: hundred RPMs, which is plus given that velocity, and a
Speaker 3: distinct two seamer that has a totally different shape and
Speaker 3: he uses it differently. He uses it into righty's and
Speaker 3: runs it away from lefties like he I mean, I
Speaker 3: love that, Like that's three hard pitches. That he pitches
Speaker 3: off primarily. He has three more pitches that he'll throw,
Speaker 3: his change up, his slider, and his occasional curveball. I
Speaker 3: think his slider is really nasty. He just doesn't really
Speaker 3: have great command of that pitch. His command of his
Speaker 3: other pitches is really good, but his command of his
Speaker 3: slider is not great. But nobody fucking hits it. He's
Speaker 3: got like a fifty percent with rate on that slider.
Speaker 3: He just you know, sometimes has a zone rate of
Speaker 3: like ten percent. Like I went through a bunch of
Speaker 3: his statcast data and every game it was like ten
Speaker 3: percent sliders. Four of them were in the zone and
Speaker 3: two got whiffs. The other ones they spound because like
Speaker 3: they weren't going to swing it at him. So you know,
Speaker 3: he's he's got a really really interesting arsenal. I think
Speaker 3: he should throw the slider more. But other than that,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm just like, this is a big league pitcher,
Speaker 3: and I think quite a good one. Like I could
Speaker 3: see him slotting in as their you know, number four
Speaker 3: or five starter and outperforming a bunch of guys in
Speaker 3: in the major leagues as a starter, and at b
Speaker 3: side levels of roster ownership. That's like, sound the alarm,
Speaker 3: go get this guy. He I think is going to
Speaker 3: be a good major league starter and not surprising that
Speaker 3: Milwaukee just like turned you know, he has been traded twice,
Speaker 3: has been around the league. Was a small school guy
Speaker 3: like he's you know, Perdue University, Northway, US. What the
Speaker 3: fuck even is I don't know, Like I watched a
Speaker 3: bunch of.
Speaker 2: Old videos Indiana somewhere.
Speaker 3: I watched a bunch of old videos of him from
Speaker 3: college and they're like working out in like a high
Speaker 3: school gym or something else, like he doing. But he is,
Speaker 3: he's so good. I'm I'm way way on Patrick.
Speaker 2: I think that I didn't see that he's okay.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately, in a couple of my deep leagues, he's
Speaker 3: already rostered by the sharpest guy in our league. Like
Speaker 3: he's this guy he's he's is so good at this
Speaker 3: And this is a classic pickup for my buddy Pat
Speaker 3: because he's Pat is really sharp and Chad Patrick, this
Speaker 3: is a great, great gift for him, just last little
Speaker 3: thing on him. So his last five starts in the
Speaker 3: International League were against Baltimore, you know, so like a
Speaker 3: bunch of those like baby Oh's had graduated but that
Speaker 3: was still a pretty good lineup the Cardinals, who are
Speaker 3: already talked about that triple A line up was quite good.
Speaker 3: A lot of major leaguers and major league talent in there.
Speaker 3: The Braves and the Marlins. They're they're fine whatever. The
Speaker 3: Braves twice and the Marlins twice. And in that run,
Speaker 3: the last five starts, he ran a thirty nine percent
Speaker 3: strikeout rate, five percent walk rate for a one eight
Speaker 3: eight fit. It was nasty to watch, and that included
Speaker 3: one like kind of shaky outing against the Braves. But
Speaker 3: he came back, you know, five days later against the
Speaker 3: same essentially the same lineup and went sticks one hit,
Speaker 3: one walk, eight punches against the lineup that had just
Speaker 3: tagged him for four runs the five days before. Like,
Speaker 3: this guy can fucking pitch and it is so nasty,
Speaker 3: Like this guy's How was this guy not more owned?
Speaker 3: Is my like question?
Speaker 2: Right? I think he get I think he gets the
Speaker 2: is older, Yeah a bunch for like, well, let's hey, guys,
Speaker 2: what's his velocity?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's like ninety two to five. It's
Speaker 3: not awful. And with the ride that he gets, like
Speaker 3: that pad fastball is really good.
Speaker 2: I don't know, the dynasty. They just kind of hate
Speaker 2: these guys sometimes that are dominating these second hardest level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was he was a fourth rounder, so
Speaker 3: like not nothing, and multiple organizations have wanted him in trades,
Speaker 3: so like, I don't know, he's basically been quite good
Speaker 3: all of the minor leagues. He was fucking awesome this
Speaker 3: year and he's you know, he's like going to be
Speaker 3: twenty six going into next year. But Steamer loves him.
Speaker 3: Four two three er projection from Steamer for a guy
Speaker 3: that hasn't been in the major leagues yet, Like that
Speaker 3: is so good. And you know some of that is
Speaker 3: because they think he might relieve some so that usually
Speaker 3: depressed it, like it brings down the era a bit.
Speaker 3: But but I think I also saw you know, Sarahs
Speaker 3: in his stuff model really liked him too. So yes, man,
Speaker 3: I'm telling you this guy is Chad Patrick. If he
Speaker 3: gets some run, and I'll tell you, like the Milwaukee
Speaker 3: starting pitching, I think they're gonna have some openings. You know,
Speaker 3: they're they got Peralta at the top, maybe woodruff shoulder is.
Speaker 2: They ain't gonna sign anybody, know that.
Speaker 3: They're not gonna sign anybody Tobias Myers was awesome, like
Speaker 3: great story for him making good and he's decent volley.
Speaker 3: I think I would prefer Patrick straight up. Aaron Ashby
Speaker 3: hurt all the time they had him in the pen.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're gonna start him again, Gasser hurt like he's
Speaker 3: not probably gonna be ready for the start of the year.
Speaker 3: And then of their you know, like their pretty boy arms,
Speaker 3: they've got some good ones, like you know, I love
Speaker 3: Logan Henderson, Carl Stroi, Reguez got a little bit of
Speaker 3: run this year. Patrick is a more complete pitcher than
Speaker 3: Henderson Henderson. I think the fastball change up combo is
Speaker 3: is elite, but his slider still isn't quite there. And
Speaker 3: he was obviously hurt for a decent check of last
Speaker 3: year too. But man, that that Patrick guy so in
Speaker 3: it is so good.
Speaker 2: Nice. He shouldn't be one percent as many thirty team
Speaker 2: leagues that are out there and stuff like, you should
Speaker 2: not be one percent.
Speaker 3: And I'm telling you, like, if it looks like this,
Speaker 3: this is like a fourteen team, sixteen team, like this
Speaker 3: is an arm that is going to be useful, you know,
Speaker 3: like he might not be a start him every single
Speaker 3: time out kind of guy. But it's good.
Speaker 2: The Brewers they really like, They really value like stuff
Speaker 2: plus type models and the highbrow pitch characteristics types, and
Speaker 2: I think it's kind of their efficient, maybe cost friendly
Speaker 2: way of doing a lot of their pitch evaluation. So
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised that the guy that I landed on
Speaker 2: kind of fits that. I'm gonna go with Tate Coooner.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar. He was a twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three seventh round pick out of Louisville. He was
Speaker 2: mostly he was mostly a reliever in college, but I
Speaker 2: think he's on a bit of a starter track now.
Speaker 2: Like we like lefties that might have a little bit
Speaker 2: of a different arm angle. I think he's definitely got that.
Speaker 2: He's kind of, I don't know, three quarters side army,
Speaker 2: sort of more upright guy, a little different looking. He
Speaker 2: spent last season one hundred and four total innings, thirty
Speaker 2: five of those in double A and sixty eight of
Speaker 2: those in HYA. His K percentage went from twenty nine
Speaker 2: percent to twenty two percent. His walk rate is not great.
Speaker 2: Was that twelve percent went to fourteen percent. And we
Speaker 2: don't like that, Matt. This is not like our kind
Speaker 2: of guy, I don't think, But dude, I think the
Speaker 2: whole arsenal I think could be nasty as shit. He's
Speaker 2: no excuse me from that sort of different looking fastball.
Speaker 2: He gets that up there to the mid nineties on
Speaker 2: the regular. It's pretty good for a lefty. He's got
Speaker 2: a change up, He's got two different sliders, one that's
Speaker 2: more sweepy and one that's hard and firm that seems
Speaker 2: to be really tough on the hitters. I think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of upside in the arsenal all Brewers. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the strike throwing and the execution is what you want
Speaker 2: to see and has to improve if he's going to
Speaker 2: be a starter. But in watching him, like man, there
Speaker 2: are stretches where I'm just like, there's no way that
Speaker 2: this guy is walking eleven percent, like just flowing through
Speaker 2: like Montgomery. Dude starting off the game striking well, I
Speaker 2: guess that game. I think he started off striking out
Speaker 2: seven of the first nine hitters. The other two were walks,
Speaker 2: but like, dude, they were bogus walks.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't we don't have the greatest angle there,
Speaker 2: but I was just like, seriously, you're calling that a ball?
Speaker 2: Like they were a lot of close pitches, dude, and
Speaker 2: I kind of felt like it was kind of like
Speaker 2: that a lot. This is a guy that was just
Speaker 2: like all over the place and it was just like
Speaker 2: a lot of close misses. And you know, maybe still
Speaker 2: part of the progression of going from relieving to throwing
Speaker 2: some more innings. I don't know, but if there is
Speaker 2: an improvement in the execution, which is something that I
Speaker 2: don't like to bet on, I think this dude could
Speaker 2: really take off though. And he's interesting. I don't even
Speaker 2: think he made it on Clegg's Top fifty for the Brewers.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I thought was surprising. I bet you're the pitch.
Speaker 2: The stuff plus stuff is high on this guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Tay Kooner is already in the uppers.
Speaker 2: Let's see, let's see what happens here.
Speaker 3: No, I like I like this one, you know, even
Speaker 3: control concerns aside. He's an interesting arm. Let's see what
Speaker 3: the stuff does. And you know that the Brewers kind
Speaker 3: of they're they're happy to let that stuff play out,
Speaker 3: you know, and yeah, worry about the walks later.
Speaker 2: For sure, you know. Like I think I said at
Speaker 2: the discord today talking to Maddy backpack and like, if
Speaker 2: you got a lefty with like some unique basketball qualities
Speaker 2: and is getting up into the mid nineties, like I'm intrigued. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure, Milwaukee Brewers bats man, I'm going to uh
Speaker 2: go back in time a few years and bring back
Speaker 2: up and pick and select Ernesto Martinez Junior. It's a
Speaker 2: good pick who I liked when he was an a
Speaker 2: ball as kind of a unique profile in that he
Speaker 2: was a big guy, a big lefty. I don't know
Speaker 2: if he was primarily playing first base back then. I
Speaker 2: think he might have been. But steels, bags, hits home runs,
Speaker 2: and he can play center field, like he was actually
Speaker 2: playing some center field this year. I don't think that's
Speaker 2: where he like sticks. But I know the Brewers they
Speaker 2: signed him as a minor league free agent, re signed him,
Speaker 2: you know. And I saw a little article at that
Speaker 2: time last offseason where they were talking about how they
Speaker 2: still feel like there's big league upside here. I know
Speaker 2: a lot of his development, there was a lot of
Speaker 2: injuries early on in his career. The Brewers said, I
Speaker 2: think for a minute now kind of struggled with the
Speaker 2: first base position. Looking for some guys. Point is like,
Speaker 2: I think there is a legit opportunity for this guy
Speaker 2: to get a shot in the BIGGS. On the season
Speaker 2: all in Double A as a twenty five year old
Speaker 2: listed at six six, he one hundred and ten games,
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty seven played appearances, hit thirteen home runs,
Speaker 2: stole twenty bags, got caught five times, and I saw him.
Speaker 2: I know at least two of those were him getting
Speaker 2: caught trying to steal third, and I did see him
Speaker 2: steal third a few times. Walked nine percent of the time,
Speaker 2: struck out under seventeen percent of the time two eighty four,
Speaker 2: three sixty five, four sixty six, one eight to two
Speaker 2: ISO on a three twenty two babbit That was good
Speaker 2: for a one forty six WRC plus in the Southern League.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe probably more of like a line
Speaker 2: drive hitter, but he's got enough enough juice in the
Speaker 2: bat to hit some home runs. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: man just like kind of a different, I think, potential
Speaker 2: fantasy profile. If he does ever get any run, the
Speaker 2: guy could trip in some home runs and some steals,
Speaker 2: And that just was kind of big been a fan
Speaker 2: and dude's an all dream I think is still still
Speaker 2: alive here. And I really love a lot of the
Speaker 2: other bats a zero one percent. So I'm gonna bust
Speaker 2: out or Neesto Martinez Junior again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like Martinez Junior. He's a fun one to
Speaker 3: watch play. That's something that a lot of walking bats
Speaker 3: have in common that there just is something fun about that.
Speaker 3: And seeing a big guy like this move around as
Speaker 3: ethelically is as athletically as he does is a treat,
Speaker 3: you know, Like you see him stealing bags, it's it's
Speaker 3: it's like me saying something positive about Jose jos Way Depaula,
Speaker 3: like he's a big dude and loves to kind of
Speaker 3: steal bases and arnessa. Martinez has some of that as well.
Speaker 3: Like you noted, it's more of a line drive profile.
Speaker 3: He hits the ball pretty hard.
Speaker 2: It looks like to me, yeah, yeah, if he could.
Speaker 3: Lift it a little more like maybe this would be
Speaker 3: And I think did I include in the video.
Speaker 2: I think there was just an absolute fucking mammoth home
Speaker 2: run that he hit in the playoffs, Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: he did pull it, he did get it in there
Speaker 2: and do it. It was large.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, he's he's an exciting one. And I almost
Speaker 3: went with him. I think he's a fun pick and
Speaker 3: I co sign as well in that way. But I'm
Speaker 3: gonna end, as we often do, talking about a funny looking,
Speaker 3: tiny guy.
Speaker 2: With funny looking fella.
Speaker 3: Funny looking fella that we've already talked about him before,
Speaker 3: so I won't believer the point, but I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: with arganamo for my bat.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Okay.
Speaker 3: Just the best batwaggle in the miners. Like it's maybe
Speaker 3: more about aesthetics than his actual ability to be a
Speaker 3: major league baseball player, but he's just so fun, you know,
Speaker 3: plays all over the infield, second, short, third. It's he
Speaker 3: hit ten homers this year. That seemed high to me.
Speaker 3: I just don't think he's going to hit a ton.
Speaker 3: He stings the ball and hustles, so he racked up
Speaker 3: thirty doubles too, not a burner. But he's a smart
Speaker 3: base sealer and two bags. So I think that the
Speaker 3: play here is he's a decent defender, maybe plays up
Speaker 3: the middle, maybe gets to seven homers, but chips in
Speaker 3: a bunch of steals and a decent average to go
Speaker 3: with it. He's an interesting one, and that his swinging
Speaker 3: strike rate is more good. Like it's you know, nine
Speaker 3: point six percent at high A this year, which is
Speaker 3: is okay, but he only had an eleven percent strikeout rate,
Speaker 3: And it's partly because when he's got two strikes, dude
Speaker 3: chokes up like three inches up the bat and really
Speaker 3: shortens up his swing and makes a ton of contact
Speaker 3: with two strikes. And he's a fairly aggressive hitter too,
Speaker 3: like in the balls in the zone he's gonna swing.
Speaker 3: Still still walked seven percent of the time this year,
Speaker 3: which was an improvement for him over the last couple
Speaker 3: of years. I'm this is not like a huge This
Speaker 3: is not quote unquote one of my guys. This is
Speaker 3: he's not doesn't have Durban's speed or level of bath
Speaker 3: to ball, but he is in that same kind of vein,
Speaker 3: and I think those guys get underappreciated, especially in your
Speaker 3: roto leagues where you need some cheap steals or in
Speaker 3: your points leagues where you're really penalized for strikeouts. This
Speaker 3: is a guy that could could succeed in that way.
Speaker 3: He's still got a long way to go, but he's
Speaker 3: just so fun watch him hit. It's it's hilarious. Every
Speaker 3: single time.
Speaker 2: It was it was more wild. Last year he toned
Speaker 2: down it was.
Speaker 3: He toned it down a bit. Yeah, yeah, I know,
Speaker 3: we talked about it.
Speaker 2: So those Carolina Mudcats, all those weird hitters with the
Speaker 2: you know, they're weird ticks and things that they did,
Speaker 2: are starting to get you know, this year we're getting
Speaker 2: up to Wisconsin, right, and Wisconsin will wear those broughtworst
Speaker 2: uniforms fromtimes time. You know, they look like German whatever
Speaker 2: suspenders and all that stuff. And dude, I had a
Speaker 2: game on where it was like Arian Namo and uh
Speaker 2: Luke Adams who like Adams stilly running. They just have
Speaker 2: so many of these silly looking guys and I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe silly's mean, but you know, just just goofy looking, goofy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And they had all these goofy hitters in this line
Speaker 2: up wearing those goofy uniforms, and I was just like,
Speaker 2: what what's going on here? Man? This is this is
Speaker 2: quite the minor league view here. Yeah. Blow yeah. The Brewers, man,
Speaker 2: they don't shy away from. They don't mind if you've
Speaker 2: got a little goofiness in your game. Oh, Tayton Hall
Speaker 2: was was one.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, he's another one with a funny map. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you said nice things about Luke Adams. I like him.
Speaker 3: He's a good hitter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well because he freaking walks like forty percent of
Speaker 2: the time or whatever, and you're just so in love
Speaker 2: with that. Love it that walk in the first stuff?
Speaker 2: All right, man? I think does that cover it?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 2: Wow? Did it got some good alien talking there too?
Speaker 2: Talk about some turkeys next aliens they will up?
Speaker 3: Man, oh man, good stuff.
Speaker 2: You are you like a skeptic, like like do you
Speaker 2: are you in denial like the rest of the world
Speaker 2: seems to be on this matter.
Speaker 3: I guess I just have to watch the hearings and
Speaker 3: have the veil lifted from my eyes.
Speaker 2: So it was like, what are you saying if there
Speaker 2: was like some big giant government cover up and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of exactly what
Speaker 2: they're talking about, you know, I'm doing so I don't know,
Speaker 2: all right, man, just wild to me, like we're more
Speaker 2: interested in like senior citizen dating shows on ABC or whatever,
Speaker 2: then like maybe there's intelligence that can save us from ourselves.
Speaker 2: But whatever world would do that, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know if that's happening, But if somebody wants to save
Speaker 3: us from ourselves. That'd be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be some opier Matt. All right, so
Speaker 2: I'll do it for episode forty five of the Prospect
Speaker 2: B Sides podcast. Again. You can follow me along on
Speaker 2: Twitter at pitching Specs. I'll share some videos. I'm also
Speaker 2: on the I also started an account on what's it
Speaker 2: Blue Sky? Yeah, yeah, so if you're over there, I
Speaker 2: don't want Muddy Looks. That's the name. That's my name,
Speaker 2: Muddy Looks. I've just been posting links to the show
Speaker 2: over there. So far, I think I've made one post.
Speaker 2: But yeah, next week, well, who do we have left?
Speaker 2: We have the Al East left too. I'm excited for
Speaker 2: that one. And we've got the Ale Central A Central. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe you want to do Al East next week or
Speaker 2: next time? All right, Ale East next that has my
Speaker 2: favorite B sider of the year. It'll be well and
Speaker 2: uh we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 3: Sound schedule. Appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Five miles an hour riding too is Head. We have
Speaker 1: it down first, but the lumped on his face, and
Speaker 1: on the very next pitch he up and stole second
Speaker 1: face with gretest speed. He wasn't born he had the
Speaker 1: dirty Yes uniform,