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Speaker 3Download today. Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. And first pitch. Watching deep left field, this is where the walk-a-walk. Got a fantasy question? Email fantasybaseball at cbsi.com. Get ready to win your league. Where fantasy becomes reality. Now, here's Frank, Scott, and Chris.
Speaker 4What did we learn this season? The Rays own the Yankees, that is for sure. Welcome in to Fantasy Baseball Today on Tuesday, October 6th. I am Frank Sample, joined by Scott White. Today on the show, we will discuss. Our 2026 lessons learned. How will they shape some 2027 philosophies? Perhaps some draft strategy as well. But we will start with some playoff updates. And I realize people might be listening to some of these podcasts at different times in the offseason, so it gets a little wonky. But I feel like we have to react in the moment, or at least I do, because what I just watched, Scott, was a complete embarrassment meltdown that I feel like I've seen 10 times in the past 10 years. With this Yankee team. And it was just a rough watch. I realize everyone else out there is just like reveling in this and absolutely loving the Yankees. Just completely crapped the bed here in October. But yeah, Game 2 just ended. They had the same number of errors as hits in the game. Four errors, four hits. And it is just incredibly, incredibly frustrating to watch as a fan. Just a complete and utter embarrassment. It just feels like the Yankees shouldn't even be on the same field as the Yankees. They shrivel up in these huge moments. And you would expect after what happened to the World Series a couple years ago where all the Dodgers players punked the Yankees and said all you got to do is put the ball in play and they'll mess up. They were right. And they continue to be right. It's like nothing is changing here, man. So the Rays are up 2-zip. And I don't have a lot of confidence. So that's where I'm at, Scott.
Speaker 5I feel like I'm doing New York talk radio right now. You just went off on a. A bunch of stuff I don't even know about. I think the Yankees are really good. I think the Rays are really good. And I think this is basically the ALCS. And so. Rays are up 2-0. I looked it up. Well, I just did a quick search on AI. So maybe AI is wrong, but it's seven times and the LDS has a team come back from down 2-0, including the Yankees in 2001 against the A's. Don't try to give me hope. I'm just, you know, it's never over. Meanwhile, the last time we talked, I was convinced my Braves were going to lose to the Phillies. And that obviously didn't happen. And now the series against the Dodgers is tied with Sale and Mally not having even pitched yet this series and them not having played a home game yet this series. So, you know, there's.
Speaker 4Feels pretty good. There's hope. There's hope for you. This game is going to be huge. I'm just saying, like, you know,
Speaker 5fortunes can turn around quickly, even in the playoffs. And Rays are tough, though. Rays got a lot of good. The Yankees have a lot of good pitching, too. But the Rays do. And that's. When in doubt, you give the side with pitching the edge, which is why you still have to give the Dodgers the edge in the Braves series. But, you know, there's a chance.
Speaker 4You know what? There's hope. The gamble paid off for the Braves not to start Chris Sale in game two, which I understand was a matchup. It was a massive decision, but on short rest. And they went out and won that game, and that series is tied 1-1. Game three, Chris Sale going up against Yamamoto. That could very well decide the series there between those two teams. And you're right. Like, the Yankees still have Freed and Carlos Rodon set up for games three and four. But, look, you just watch the Rays every year. They are just so buttoned up, and they put the ball in play, and they play good defense, and they run the bases right. It's like the Yankees are just the complete antithesis of all that.
Speaker 5When's the last time the Rays won the World Series? The World Series, Frank.
Speaker 4Well, they have, I was going to say, they have more, no, I don't think that's true either. I was going to say they have more World Series appearances than the Yankees do in the past, like, decade. But I don't, no, they've both been there once, right? In the past, I don't know, whatever it is. Anywho, it doesn't matter. Joe Rasmussen was awesome in game one.
Speaker 5The Rays twice in their history, right? And then the Yankees twice going back to 2009. So I think the Yankees, because the first time the Rays went wasn't in 2008, 2007.
Speaker 4Yeah, so they basically have the same number of World Series appearances in the past 20 years, let's call it, so. Yeah. Anywho, yeah, Drew Rasmussen in game one took a no-hitter into the eighth inning, so that was good, too. Looking around some of the other series, too, the White Sox kind of, I know you just said this feels like the ALCS, the Rays, and the Yankees, but the White Sox kind of have, like, this Team of Destiny thing going on right now, Scott. Like, they're coming through in the clutch. They're going with these, like, just crazy pitching strategy. We saw this with the Tigers either last year or two years ago, where they just throw a bunch of different relievers and guys all over the place, and it's working right now. I mean, if you're a Guardians fan, going to Chicago after having Messick and Gavin Williams pitching games one and two, it's a pretty rough go there. So we'll see what happens.
Speaker 5I mean, that's what teams have to do who don't have good rotations. That's, like, the Braves have two starters, really, that they're willing. To actually start in a playoff game. That's why you're getting these three-inning Ray Kerr starts and Dylan Dodd. Yeah. Like, there's just these piece it together with all the various bullpen arms going longer than they have all season. But yeah, it's worked well for the White Sox. I think the deeper you get into the playoffs, the harder that's going to be to do. Anything can happen. So I'm not going to sit here and guarantee that whoever wins this Rays-Yankees World Series, Rays-Yankees Series is going to the World Series. I obviously can't guarantee that. But whoever wins it should be the heavy favorites in the ALCS. I do feel comfortable saying that much.
Speaker 4On the other side, in the National League, Major League Baseball or the Brewers, somebody has to figure out what to do with, like, this rafter situation. It actually happened in the Rays-Yankees game here in game two as well, where Spencer Jones went off the rafters and it fell down. And I think it was Victor Mesa who just caught it. And it just, it's an out. But I guess the rules are what they are, right? Like, if someone hits the ball off the rafters, it's just, like, still in play. And we saw that come into play in game one of that series between the Brewers and the Padres. Ty France hit a moonshot, would look like it might have been a home run. I don't know if it definitely would have been a home run, but it was kind of trending that way. And it just hit off the rafters, came down, and Jack Turio caught the ball. And then in game two, speaking of Turio, I mean, he comes up, huge spot, bases loaded against Mason Miller. Go ahead, two-run singles. And just, like, two awesome stars of the game going head-to-head. Mason Miller, I mean, they overextended him, I think, a little bit. The six-out save, but, you know, obviously his control was waning there and Turio took advantage. But, yeah, it's going to be pretty hard for the Padres to come back from that. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it looks like we're dialed up for Brewers in the NLCS. And then we'll see what your Braves can do against the Dodgers, Scott. Any thoughts on the Brewers-Padres series?
Speaker 5That's probably the one I pick. The one I've paid the least attention to. It's been great.
Speaker 4It's two great games.
Speaker 5Yeah. They're up 2-0. The favorite is up 2-0. And so, you know, they head back to San Diego now. Maybe that gives the Padres a chance to get back in it. But, like, obviously the Brewers, a very strong team, and they have a very strong advantage now. So, probably the Brewers are going to the NLCS.
Speaker 4Yeah. And I think this is an interesting theme. And we were just talking about some of these White Sox relievers, openers, that they're just using them in different roles. I think relievers who could be starters for next season, I think it's a nice talking point to kind of just bring this back to fantasy because Hagen-Smith, Grant Taylor, and then for your Braves, what Didier Fuentes has done so far in Game 2 against the Dodgers, it was 3-2, 1 hit, 1 run, 3 strikeouts there. But he's basically been nails in the postseason. And he's been great all year. He's been great all year long as well. I think all three of these guys are really talented relievers. And it'll be interesting to see. I don't know for sure that all three will be starters next year. My guess is I would probably lean that way as of now. I think each of Hagen-Smith, Grant Taylor, and Fuentes could be in their respective rotations. But with what they've done in the postseason, the way they pitched in the regular season, I would be very excited about those guys as potential sleeper candidates as starting pitchers.
Speaker 5next season. yeah i think rightfully if that happens and i think it's very much an if right now but uh we've heard obviously all came up through the minors as starters and we've heard rumblings of that throughout this season and they were all dominant out of the bullpen i think hagan smith got the least attention because he wasn't up for the majority of the year like those others two were playing a prominent role in their bullpens but hagan smith 18 appearances one start this year 129 era 0.96 whip 13.2k per nine and this was a guy who had major control issues in the minors i mean even in that role was 5.1 walks per nine so that's that's something he's going to have to get a handle on to work as a starter but overall he dominated and we have seen in over the last couple of years he's been playing a prominent role in the bullpens over the last couple of years especially you put a dominant reliever in the starting role and it's it's tended to go well uh even for like griffin jacks this year i know there was some skepticism he would be able to to handle that transition but it went really well um and we've seen a lot
Speaker 4of those transitions in recent years actually turn out very well yeah
Speaker 5i'm trying to remember there were even bigger ones two years ago i guess chris boobitch was one went well he's had trouble staying healthy yeah
Speaker 4i feel like the first one recently in the past handful of years was like seth lugo did it and then it really just kind of became a trend uh
Speaker 5trying to remember michael king was another who did michael king yeah that's another one i can't remember ian seymour is kind
Speaker 4of in that mix but he's kind of been back sure yeah
Speaker 5i feel like there was somebody huge last year that we're just not thinking of uh but but that's plenty of examples as it is again i'd be
Speaker 4pretty excited the skills for all three of these guys again hagan smith grand taylor fuentes i probably would rank hagan smith the lowest of the three although he had the highest prospect pedigree just because of the control and some of those issues that we've seen so far in a very small sample uh but yeah the control for grand taylor and fuentes just looks better and the stuff plus numbers on all three guys just look really really good so well this
Speaker 5wasn't quite i got a few more examples here just scanning through my rankings he kind of he took a more circuitous route there but reed demmers yeah like it seems like if a team it feels like they have somebody who can be a great arm in a rotation they almost use the bullpen as like a finishing school you know like they're not quite there the talent is there but they just kind of need to to to put it all together and the bullpen helps them accomplish that for whatever reason i mean yeah another another example would be drew rasmussen for that matter it was going back a few years for him but uh seemed to do the trick peyton toly spent some time in the bullpen down the stretch last year not a long time but sometime yeah it's happened a lot i like
Speaker 4it again three names you need to know for next season hagan smith grand taylor and didier fuentes if you're watching us on youtube thank you for being here make sure to hit that like button and stay subscribed or if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and hit that bell icon so you don't miss any of our new videos and then we'll start to ramp things back up as we turn the calendar to the new year let's take a break and we'll be back right after this baseball season is in full swing and there's no better place to be than calci america's number one prediction market platform atlanta is currently trading at seven percent to win it all meaning a 100 trade pays out over 1200 with a win on calci you're trading against other people in a live market no house no odds makers and as the odds move you can buy in or out anytime throughout the postseason download the calci app and use code fan to get up to 500 in bonus credits when you trade 25 k-a-l-s-h-i calci trade on anything 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors calci products are not available in all jurisdictions prices values and available markets may differ from those mentioned for more information see calci.com
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Speaker 4welcome back fantasy baseball today we'll run through some news and notes and then we'll get to our lessons learned and how that might shape some strategy for next season but the latest news we usually get a bunch of you know once teams get eliminated from the playoffs we start to learn about okay what's this guy dealing with what's that guy dealing with and so we did get a bunch of red socks updates and garrett crochet is on track to have a fully healthy normal offseason apparently he could have returned soon but the red socks just really wanted to take a cautious approach with crochet who they've obviously given an extension and expected crochet that
Speaker 5was the guy that was the huge one that is the guy yes
Speaker 4yeah the bullpen to the transitioning from the bullpen to the rotation yeah yeah that was so this is good news scott i still have no idea where he should rank among starting pitchers for next season i think uh he probably has the widest range of outcomes right now yeah i think he's going to be the biggest pitcher in the world i think he's going to be the biggest pitcher in the world i think he's going to be the biggest pitcher in the world i think chris mentioned this if i think chris mentioned this if i think chris mentioned this if you wanted to rank him as like a top 15 you wanted to rank him as like a top 15 you wanted to rank him as like a top 15 starter i don't think that's crazy if you starter i don't think that's crazy if you starter i don't think that's crazy if you ranked him at like sp 35 i don't think ranked him at like sp 35 i don't think ranked him at like sp 35 i don't think that's crazy either for garrett crochet
Speaker 5that's crazy either for garrett crochet that's crazy either for garrett crochet i think there are enough good pitchers i think there are enough good pitchers i think there are enough good pitchers that people are going to be able to talk that people are going to be able to talk themselves out of crochet there isn't themselves out of crochet there isn't themselves out of crochet there isn't the desperation the desperation the desperation that uh maybe at other times in in that uh maybe at other times in in that uh maybe at other times in in the not so distant past there was for the not so distant past there was for the not so distant past there was for a a high-end pitcher a a high-end pitcher a a high-end pitcher i i think uh i think we'll see him i i think uh i think we'll see him i i think uh i think we'll see him drafted drafted drafted more from a a safe not sorry more from a a safe not sorry more from a a safe not sorry approach and that would put him closer approach and that would put him closer approach and that would put him closer to the to the closer to 30 probably in the rankings i closer to 30 probably in the rankings i closer to 30 probably in the rankings i haven't gotten around to actually haven't gotten around to actually haven't gotten around to actually ranking them but just ranking them but just ranking them but just just doing a little bit of counting in just doing a little bit of counting in just doing a little bit of counting in my head i think that's where it's going my head i think that's where it's going
Speaker 4my head i think that's where it's going to end up yeah i will point out though to end up yeah i will point out though to end up yeah i will point out though with crochet with crochet with crochet if you are an early drafter i would try if you are an early drafter i would try if you are an early drafter i would try to take advantage of any to take advantage of any massive discount you can now. I mean, if you're a really early drafter, if you're just crazy, if you start to draft in like December, January, things like that. But if we see him in spring training look anything like himself, I mean, that is somebody who's just going to completely skyrocket. So just keep that in mind with Garrett Crochet. Roman Anthony is not expected to require surgery on his injured right hand. Craig Breslow said the team is still gathering information as Anthony aggravated the injury and then some during the postseason. Remember, he was dealing with, there was like a wrist thing going on in the season and then there was a finger and then obviously those things got made even worse in the postseason. So it's concerning. I would say I want to find out more about this. I'd like to get a clean bill of health on Roman Anthony before I buy back in. I'm sure it's still going to be a pretty big cost on him. Aroldis Chapman passed his physical, which was the final hurdle needed for his $13 million player option to vest for 2027. So he'll be back with the Red Sox, likely as their closer. And Mickey Gasper, is expected to be sidelined four to six months after undergoing bicep surgery. We did get some Mariners updates as well. Cal Raleigh underwent debridement surgery on his AC joint in his left shoulder. He is expected to be fully recovered by the start of spring training. So I think that in conjunction with the oblique injury very easily could have explained this massive drop off for Cal Raleigh this past season. And I think maybe the same could be said for Josh Naylor, who underwent surgery to repair the triangular fibromyalgia, cartilage in his right wrist, whatever that is. He first hurt his wrist in early August, and then he went homerless in his final 41 games after the injury. Naylor also expected to be ready for spring training. Josh Naylor was also bad before his final 41 games. So I don't know that I buy that as much, but the Cal Raleigh thing, Scott, I mean, you have shoulder surgery and you had an oblique, feels like pretty good excuses for a bad season.
Speaker 5Yeah, it could be. I mean, Naylor especially, he had apparently been dealing with this since mid-June. And at that point, it looks like he had about, I don't know exactly, I don't have an exact date for when it started, but it looks like he had about eight home runs. Yeah, as of June 12th, he hit his eighth home run. So that was, with the season, what, about 40% over? And then afterward, he hit just two home runs the rest of the way.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's pretty massive.
Speaker 5Yeah, I think that goes a long way to explaining his bad season. Cal Raleigh, it's interesting. He actually had a, he surged to the finish line and there was a mechanical adjustment tied to that. He raised his hands to get to elevated fastballs better and it seemed to work. If you go on to cbssports.com, check out my latest article published. It's What You Missed After Football Started, where I break down, basically August and September of the season highlight the biggest, biggest developments across the league so that you can just, you know, whether or not, whether or not you tuned out when football started, you can just pour over everything that happened. A good little recap for you. It's long, but it's not as long as it would have been, obviously, if you were paying attention to the day-to-day in July and August. And I think it's worth doing because it's quite bullet point form. You're going to get a lot of facts in there, including just how good Cal Raleigh was at the end of last season. I think it was like, again, my browser's frozen, so I can't tell you, but it was like an OPS over a thousand over the last three weeks or something like that.
Speaker 4Moving past the Mariners, Byron Buxton had the stitches removed from his surgically repaired right hip last week and has begun the rehab process. He is expected to be ready for the start of spring training as well. Spencer Steer underwent successful surgery on his right wrist. He suffered a partial tear of the tendon sheath in his wrist in late July. He is expected to be fully recovered for spring training. I believe, Jake Berger had a similar surgery last off season and he was back in time for spring training and actually had a quietly solid season in like a Jake Berger way. So perhaps that could be some good news there for Spencer Steer.
Speaker 5Here you go. Cal Raleigh. Cal Raleigh final 32 games. So a lot longer than three weeks. 256 batting average, 10 homers, 935 OPS. Yeah, that's pretty Cal Raleigh like. Even before the surgery news on the shoulder.
Speaker 4Yep. And the Arizona Fall League is up and running. Some big names that are competing right now in the AFL. We have Sebastian Walcott of the Rangers, Eduardo Quintero of the Dodgers, Caleb Bonhamer of the White Sox, Arjun Namala of the Angels, who actually saw a homer here on Monday night. Aiden Miller of the Phillies, Zaheer Hope of the Tigers, Dax Kilby of the Yankees. I don't know how to pronounce this guy's name. I know that he is a prospect that is skyrocketing right now, but I could not find a clip of a reporter or a broadcaster saying his name anywhere on high bell on high bell Gomez.
Speaker 5Is that what it is? That's what I would guess.
Speaker 4Okay. So on high bell Gomez of the Royals, he's only 17 years old and he's in the Arizona Fall League. That is pretty interesting stuff. Bryce Rainer of the Tigers, Tate Southazine of the Braves, Zion Rose, who was the sixth overall pick by the Royals in this year's draft. So very interesting selection of players. The Royals sent out someone they just drafted and another who is only 17 years old. Harleen Susanna of the Nationals. He actually pitched over the weekend and his first pitch was 103 miles per hour. So he is a hard-throwing righty, a name to know. Demetrio Crisantis of the D-backs, Ty Pete of the Cardinals, Boston Smith of the Mariners, somebody I know you like, Scott. Nathan Flewelling of the Rays, Jet Williams and Braylon Payne from the Brewers, and Ike Irish from the Orioles. Last name here, Welbein Francisca of the Guardians, who has kind of fallen off a little bit as a prospect, but in his first game went five for five with a socket. So it's a nice little start there to the Arizona Fall League. And Chris and I will be out there in early November as part of First Pitch Arizona and really hope I get to see Dax Kilby. That's the one I want to check in on. But yeah, I'm sure we'll see a bunch of prospects while we're out there. All right, Scott, let's get into some of the lessons learned from this past season and how it might be, if at all, shaping any of your strategy for next season. So why don't you kick us off here, a lesson you learned this past season.
Speaker 5Okay, I don't know how many I was supposed to come up with.
Speaker 4I would say three, but, you know, we could just go as far as an hour will take us.
Speaker 5Yeah, Chris didn't join us for this one. So that gives us a little more time. Okay, so I'm going to say my first lesson learned here is, I could phrase it a few different ways. Discounts over opinions. Or you're not going to outsmart anyone anymore. Or. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, ever. Or take what's given to you. That's the general idea here. And I've talked about it before. The other one I've talked about is no intentional player strategy. That's kind of a riff on Heath Cummings' no intentional position strategy. Which is? Which shortened is? Nips. Nips, of course. Yeah, so. My favorite way to phrase it is you're not going to outsmart anyone anymore, though that's probably the least revealing way to phrase it. It's the idea that our ability to assess players, to assess how good they are, has kind of flattened. It's the data for evaluating players has come so far and says as much as I feel like it can, that. It's hard to get an edge that way anymore. Particularly when, if you're playing against people who really dig into the data, who really study this stuff, you're all going to kind of arrive at the same place on players. There's some room for disagreements, but it's, it's usually around things that it's, it's nor, it's nor, it's more like hunchy stuff. Like how much I think this guy's going to play. It's not, it's not purely how good, how talented is this player? Not literally, but for the most part. And so how do you get an edge that way? More often than not, I have found that if you disagree with the consensus on that, you're going to get burnt. You can't outsmart the consensus. So I think the best way to get an edge now is to just, instead of targeting your guys, instead of saying, okay, I'm going to take Kyle Bradish. And round four, because I think he's that good. You take whoever happens to slide because somebody else is going to jump in and grab some of their favorites. It, it always happens. Every draft is not exactly the same. And there will be a chain reaction that causes someone else to fall because of that. And that's the best way to gain that edge is to just always be willing to take the player who slides. And of course, the most obvious example from that this year is, is Pete Crow Armstrong. I was not his biggest fan by any stretch. And yet he ended up being my most drafted player because it happened so many times in drafts that he would just, he would just, uh, like pretty much the first half of round three and every draft I did, if I was, if I was drafting there, he was up, uh, nobody ever reached to take him earlier. A lot of times he would slide again toward the middle of round three. Instead of going early. And so I just kept taking them and it, it went really well, but it's hard to come up with a specific player example because it's not really that kind of advice. It's anyone, whoever it happens to, it's not going to be the same guy every draft. Right. Yeah. So that's, that's something I've talked about a little both heading into this year. And I think heading into last year too, but I think I'm going to lean more into it ever next year because for the most part, looking back at all my drafts, whenever I reached for one of my guys, instead of just accepting appropriate value or the discount that was available there, it didn't go well. And when I did accept the discount, it did.
Speaker 4So my followup is how far do you take it though? Because are you willing to draft a player? Like you, you vehemently don't like when you dug into the numbers, you were legitimately worried about that player. You said something similar to that about Pete Cromstrung, but I don't think that you were completely against drafting him. You just didn't, I did not. You had some opinions, you had some worries, but how far do you take it? Like if there's a player you legit do not want at all and he's like, whatever the cover boy for your busts article, are you still willing to take even that player if he falls like a round pass ADP or something like that? Like how far do you take that?
Speaker 5That's a good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer for it yet. I would say my general answer is I am less invested in who I think is a bust than who is available to me at a value. So I will come up with a bust article. I have to, I have to, and I will do my best to highlight players that I think are overvalued. Uh, well, you know what? I'm not even sure that's true. That's not that generally, certainly. In the last five or six years, that hasn't even been how I've approached the bust article. It's been, who do I think has bottom out potential? Not just who. who I think is a little overvalued. But let's say, I think for example, James Wood. Oh wait, how right did that turn out to be in being in my bust article this past year? Not very right. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be that invested. I know I drafted a lot of players on my bust list from this year. And for the most part, those bust calls turned out to be bust themselves. So you just end up leaving too much value on the table. Now, it gets tricky because, again, since everybody kind of lands in the same place on every player, how do you even identify what a bust is? This kind of gets to the Pete Crow Armstrong example, because how did he consistently, fall to me? It's because a lot of other people had him as a bust. Right. And I don't think I actually included him in my bust article just because I already knew I was from drafts up to that point that I was going to end up having a decent amount of Pete Crow Armstrong. And I just didn't want to have to square that circle throughout draft season. But when you're trying to, I don't know, the whole concept of a bust right now, I would say, okay, let me just sum it up. Let me just sum it up with this. I think in the early rounds, of course, I am going to be a little more wary of certain players. But if the value is obvious, I'm just going to go for it. In the later rounds, I'll probably be more particular about players I target, because there's less consensus there anyway. Right. And it'll be different. But really with the early rounds, I'm probably just going to accept whatever value comes to me and let the team kind of build itself.
Speaker 4I think it says more about just the state of fantasy in general. And I don't think this is just particular to baseball. I think really football, baseball, basketball, it's like people are so smart now. And to your point, it's a lot of people are landing on the same conclusions on players. And so it's where do you find that edge? I struggle with something like this because every year I come on this exact podcast, Lessons Learned, and I need to remind myself and everybody to get your guys. Because to me, I get more frustrated throughout the course of a season when there's a player I really like or liked that is going off and he's not on my teams than if I draft players that fell to me that I didn't necessarily want and I just drafted them because they were a good value and it turns out they're bad, right? Like I get more frustrated by the former, just not having those guys on my team. You know, I had Sal Stewart on a few teams. I had Cam Schlittler on a few teams. I had Chase Burns on a few teams. But like these were guys that I really liked and I just get more frustrated at myself for not having them on like every team.
Speaker 5But isn't that kind of an emotional. Aren't you using your emotions to drive you in that case? Like I can relate because that was something I often felt too. And it's obviously a different experience if you only have a fantasy team or two every year. And you. It's hard not to get emotional in that case than when you're like us and you have 12, 15 fantasy teams and like a guy who's somebody who's on your team in this league is on somebody else's team in another league. And so how heavily can you root for anybody in that case, you know? So I get it. I get that there is an emotional draw there that's hard to resist. But I know that. In the days when I would get more emotional about that, it was because I was often righter than everybody else. I was more right about the players I singled out as this guy's going to be a breakout. This guy's going to have a huge season. And so if I didn't get it, it was like, well, my pick was someone else was being rewarded for that. And that was where it hurt. But that doesn't happen nearly as often anymore. So I can kind of let the emotional, part of it go. There's no better feeling emotionally than actually winning.
Speaker 4Yeah. Now, I totally get that point too. And I can admit that. I know that I definitely am the most emotional one here on the podcast just in terms of like on a night-to-night basis, you know, I kind of overreact at times and I let things like that affect me. And it does kind of get to me at times. But it's an interesting strategy and something you bring up for next season. And that'll bring me. That'll bring me to one of my lessons learned because I think it kind of ties in together pretty well here. And don't be afraid to try something new. So I won NL Labor this year, even though I didn't have a set plan of players that I wanted in the auction. And that is the first time I have ever showed up to an auction where I didn't have a plan A, plan B, plan C at every position. I normally go into every auction with that mindset. And I had all the auction values, you know, fan graphs, auction calculator, plug in all the settings, NL only leagues. Like I knew how much players were worth. It did help that I got to see the AL Labor auction the day before. So I kind of had an idea in my mind of like, okay, these players are comparable. Let's see how much they go for tomorrow. But that's the only way that I wound up with both Eli De La Cruz and Fernando Tatis Jr. on that team, Scott. Something I would have never done in previous years in an only league. To get two first round caliber bats, I would never do that. I usually always, you know, spread the wealth, but they went for way cheaper than they should. I think I got Tatis for like 31 and Eli for 33. And typically these are players that are like pushing $40, even in an NL only league. So yeah, I just kind of gobbled up the value wherever I could. And then, you know, I had some other lower end ideas of players that I wanted. Like if I need steals, go after Nassim Nunez for cheap, who I wound up getting on that team. But then just other guys that I was just kind of neutral on where, look, if the price was right, I think I got Brian Reynolds and he was fine. He had like a Brian Reynolds type year. But that strategy of just like kind of what you're saying, no intentional player strategy in the auction, just kind of grab the values where you can. That is something that was very uncomfortable for me. And even after the auction ended, I hated my team. I was like, oh my God, I hated the way that turned out. And I won the league. So yeah, maybe try something new.
Speaker 5But yeah, at the point about the auction, the more specific point you're making is something I've tried to change the past couple of years to, again, because I realized what used to work really well for me isn't working as well. And it's kind of along the same lines of what I was saying is the players you are specifically targeting is also what a lot of other people are specifically targeting. Because for the same reason, you probably decided to specifically target them. And so if you go in with that narrow of a focus, yes, it helps you stay disciplined in a certain respect. But if multiple people have gone into that auction targeting that specific player, it's going to be hard for all of them to stay that disciplined. Yeah. And then on the broader point, if you're not being afraid to try something new, I kind of did the same thing in the podcast. The original podcast league, the head-to-head points one, where I don't know if you remember, but two of my first three picks were starting pitchers. Now, one was Crochet. One was Sale. I'm not saying that's why I had a good season in that league, but I went to the semifinals, so clearly it didn't prevent me from having a good season.
Speaker 4And. No, you made it to the finals in that league, Scott.
Speaker 5No, not the head-to-head points one?
Speaker 4Yeah, you lost in the finals, yeah.
Speaker 5Even better. I made it to the finals. In the head-to-head points league, despite going against my usual head-to-head points strategy. You know, that's the more forgiving format for starting pitchers, so I like to load up on hitters, the hitters who really excel in that format in the early rounds. Just everyone else was doing it, so I kind of took what everyone else gave me, which was the starting pitchers, and it still turned out okay.
Speaker 4Yeah, I think in a way, it's kind of a humbling experience, right? Like, what we're talking about is that, you know, for years, we had something that worked, or we thought, and, you know, you want to be right about players, and we're still going to have player takes. I don't want people to listen to this specific episode and say, oh, wow, like, these guys are just, you know, they're not going to give opinions on players anymore. We're still going to have opinions, and we're going to tell you which players we like, don't like, who's overvalued, who's undervalued, things like that. I think perhaps this specific lesson learned in strategy is more so for, like, industry or expert-type leagues, but, I mean, in home leagues, people could know a lot as well, and so I think it could be transferable, but, yeah, I don't want people to. Yeah, you have to know your league. I don't want people to get the wrong idea. Like, we're still going to have tons of opinions on players and things like that, but. Yeah. Yeah, just basically gobbling up the value where you can and don't be afraid to try something different. So, a couple early lessons there. Let's take our.
Speaker 5Go ahead. If I could kind of tailor, since I was hemming and hawing around your question of what happens, how much you're going to avoid your busts in the early rounds, to a certain degree, that's baked into my rankings. I don't go overboard with it. but I downgrade the players I don't like a little bit. So it is going to be kind of a marriage between how much is this guy sliding in ADP versus how much is this guy sliding in my rankings. And that will help keep me honest in terms of not overvaluing a bust pick of mine. But again, the broad general takeaway is I'm going to be less tied to my specific bust picks than just how clear of a value is this guy in the draft.
Speaker 4All right, let's take our final break. When we return, we have more lessons learned from this past season right after this.
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Speaker 4Welcome back to Fantasy Baseball today. We're going through some lessons learned, how it might shape our strategy for next season. And Scott, I'll throw it back over to you. You started, your first lesson was about your nips. What's your second lesson?
Speaker 5I have a lot to say about this one. Saves are still one of the worst uses of draft capital. I feel like there's been a lot of pushback to this lately. And we'll get into why in a minute. But it is undoubtedly true. Just think through the logic of it all. Relief pitchers are extremely volatile because it's small samples. They have small arsenals where it wouldn't take much for the things to go wrong for them. Short track record usually, because they're so volatile, they fizzle out quickly. And so going into the year, unless it's a long-established dominant closer, and even sometimes then, you don't really know what's going to happen with them. The only relief pitchers in the closer role can contribute. And that role itself is volatile, not just how the pitchers perform, but how likely they are to stick in that role. If they lose that, they basically lose all of their value. When a relief pitcher flops, and isn't giving you saves, he's next to useless. When a new one enters the role, he can be just as good as some of the best. And there were tons of examples of that this year. Louis Varlin, Brian Baker, Mason Montgomery in the second half, Jacob Latz. I think I'm missing a couple of big ones. It happened so many times that this guy, you just plucked off the waiver wires, and it was like you invested in an early round reliever. Now, the reason why I think there's been some pushback to this in recent years is because there's a consumer-creator mismatch right now in the fantasy baseball space where most of the people who are creating the content, who are part of the big fantasy discussions, who are on podcasts like this one, they tend to play in a bunch of high-stakes leagues. How many is a bunch? Too many. However many it is, it's too many. And so what that encourages is if a team goes south, there's a lot of motivation there for them to just wash their hands of it. They might still go through the motions with it, but it doesn't hurt if a team flops. It's just one of many entries they have, and as long as a couple of those entries pan out, they're fine. That's what the average creator, the perspective they're approaching it from. The average consumer is approaching it from the perspective of, I play in a couple leagues, one, maybe two, with people I know, and this is how I'm invested in fantasy baseball this season. If a team gets buried in the standings, it's going to be miserable for me all year. I need to have something to play for. And so you can't. You can't quite approach it with this second place is the first loser mentality where being in first is all that matters. You want to be competitive so that the season is fun for you, right? So the people who are playing in the high stakes leagues, they're like, I just want to not have to worry about closers, grab the saves I need early, and if that guy happens to bust, well, I guess that team's just a bust. But I don't think the average user needs to approach it that way. And usually the average user just isn't playing in leagues so deep anyway, so that helps create more churn on the waiver wire for the upcoming closers.
Speaker 4And I think what also lends itself to this point is that there are so many different fantasy baseball league types, and each of them feels very different in terms of how you attack relievers and closers in those formats, right? So. In a typical Roto League, 12-team Roto League, I don't think you'll see these astronomical prices on relievers where, you know, you have Fab and things like that, but a lot of the draft boards and the content we hear and see in the winter months are like draft and hold leagues where there is no waiver wire and you have no choice but to. If you don't get your closers in the draft, then you're not getting saves. Like, that is your only way that you're going to do that. So I do think there is a little bit of a disconnect in. And again, this is very niche for, like, whatever. People who are paying attention to draft boards and NFBC ADP in the winter months, you're going to see relievers go really high in those formats. And that's because a lot of those leagues are, you know, draft and hold, where you don't have a waiver wire to pick them up. But then things just change very differently from, like, a home Roto League, a home head-to-head categories league with daily lineups where, you know, your mileage may vary on how many relievers you want on your team, how many relievers you can actually use on your team, how many closers versus, like, stoppers do you want on your team where you have guys that are just giving you ratios. And then in head-to-head points, it's a whole different thing because a lot of people are using sparps as their relievers and closers get devalued like crazy in that format. So it's. To that point, Scott, I think it even accentuates it even more because there are just so many different formats and so many different ways to play. And it feels like relievers are valued very different in all the different formats.
Speaker 5Yeah, they are. And the deeper. The deeper it is, the bigger the risk you take by going cheap on it in the draft. Yeah. And I'm never saying you should ignore it in the draft. I mean, in head-to-head points, you can kind of ignore it. But in anything else, I'm not saying you should ignore it. I'm just saying it's not something you should put a lot of draft capital in because it's very likely to be wasted draft capital on the front end. And B, it's the position where you can most likely make up for going cheap. Doesn't mean it's always going to happen. Right. But it's the. It's your best chance. If you're going to go cheap anywhere and make up for it by backfilling off the waiver wire, it's it relief pitcher. So, you know, obviously, I'm not saying that the people who play in a bunch of high-stakes leagues, they don't have good advice to offer. But you just have to remember when you're listening to it, unless you're also playing that way, their risk-reward calculus is a little bit skewed.
Speaker 4Yeah, and I don't want this to come off as any kind of like sour grapes for like, there's a high-stakes player listening to this because I think using high-stakes ADP just, in general, is like a really good starting point for like people diving back into fantasy baseball in January or February. Just looking at high-stakes ADP to get an idea of where players are going, I think generally is a good idea. And maybe not exactly just like the number next to a reliever and what draft pick they're going, but the order that the relievers are being drafted in. I think that almost matters more than where they're being drafted in those specific drafts. Looking at. I just, you know, put this together right now, but the top 10 closers. On the Fangraphs Player Rater this year, here's where they finished and here's where their ADP was preseason. So Mason Miller was the RP1. His ADP was 28. Kate Smith, RP2. His ADP was 40. Jacob Latz was the RP3. His ADP was 730. Louis Varlin, RP4. He was undrafted. He did not have an ADP. Brian Baker was the RP5. He was undrafted. Grant Taylor was the RP6. His ADP was outside the top 500. Mason Montgomery, RP7. 748 David Bednar was RP8 64 ADP, Josh Hader, RP9, 124 ADP, Yohan Duran, RP10, 41.8. So very wide range of where players were either drafted or picked up. It's basically like a 50% hit rate on the top 10 closers this past season. And I don't do many things right in fantasy, but the one thing I feel like I've done pretty well in recent years, in Roto Leagues in particular, is just the way that I've handled saves. I'm typically never the first person to draft a closer. I usually get one of the top-ish tier closers, like one of the top 8 to 10 names, and then I try to get someone that I feel pretty good about in the 11 to 20 range. It's very rudimentary, but it's actually worked pretty well. I typically, and I don't really fall behind in saves in any of the leagues that I play in. There will always be some outliers, but it typically works pretty well. It's like, get someone in the 7 to 10 range, an ADP, someone in the 11 to 20 range, and then just take some dart throws late, or play the waiver wire for your third reliever, and usually it turns out pretty well.
Speaker 5Yep. I think in deep leagues especially, that's the approach I like most.
Speaker 4Yeah. My next lesson here, Scott, is this, and you guys spoke on this last week, I think reshaping my pitching strategy and get back to focusing on skills for pitchers. It's another one that just kind of feels so obvious, but I think for whatever reason, I've kind of slipped. I've kind of got away from this somewhere along the way, and don't limit the upside shots that you take at starting pitchers. So I looked back through all my teams earlier today, and I just had too many teams with Frambois Valdez and Tanner Bybee and Merrill Kelly, right? It's just kind of accumulator types, where yeah, I know Valdez has done it for years, but he's a pitcher where his preseason ADP was SP20, he's not really a pitcher that's a big win, but it could have always wound up being a big loss for Valdez, just because he put so many balls in play, and there was a change of scenery, and just the way that he's dealt with kind of mental lapses pitching on the mound. Thinking about it now, I just don't really see how that pick was ever going to be a big win for Frambois Valdez, as like the SP20 and ADP. I looked where he finished last year, it was like SP38 or something like that. So it's, we didn't really get that, that big of a discount either. I also like names like Chase Burns, like Cam Schlittler, Trey is Savage, Bubba Chandler. We all like those guys. Those were like the obvious breakout candidates coming in. But I often said that I only wanted one of them on my teams to minimize risk. And I don't think that's the right way to approach it. And I know, again, you kind of mentioned this last week, but I think taking more shots on those potential for impact per inning, per start basis type pitchers is what we, what I need to get back to and really focusing on skills and just taking more shots on those guys rather than the kind of veteran inning eater accumulator types that like might pay off. But why wouldn't you just rather shoot for much more upside than like the mid to late round? So I got to get back to that.
Speaker 5Yeah. There may be a little revisionist history there with Frambois Valdez in particular because he seemed like a good value going into last year. We, you mentioned he wasn't amazing in 2025. Finished 38th, I guess, by the Roto Raider. I'm presuming that was mostly whipping ERA because he still had 13 wins and 187 strikeouts. But the previous couple of years, we had seen him as a top 12 type. So to get him around 20, it seemed like a good discount. But the broad point I think is something I've come around to too. And I tried to implement it. I think I implemented it well. I think I implemented it well this year where not going as far as Nick Pollock's stance of just not caring about durability at starting pitcher because it's a hopeless sort of calculation. I don't go all the way there, but I go most of the way there where it's predicting how many innings a pitcher is going to throw in a given year is not something you're going to do very often. So you might as well shoot for as much upside as you can, particularly if you tend to go cheap at starting pitcher like I do. You have to make up for some of your lack of investment there by taking bigger swings and taking more swings too. That's part of it because you know some of those swings are going to miss. And that's the harder part to pull off, particularly in deeper leagues because so many teams are picking that are going to miss. And that group of pitchers is going to run out faster. You can't grab as many as you want. But in a 12-team context, you can grab an awful lot of mid-round upside types. And that's usually where I like to live.
Speaker 4Yeah. I think a second part of this too is to not worry so much about role, but again, focusing on the skills because we had questions for the roles of each of these starting pitchers coming into the season. And it took a while for them to get a spot in the rotation, but we all knew, that they had upside. Parker Messick, Logan Henderson, Peyton Toley. And maybe it's, you know, I'm not saying you have to draft and hold on to them, but if you get any inclination that they're going to be in the rotation or there's a chance for them to be in the rotation, you have to pounce and you have to be ready to go. But those are three names in particular. I think they all finished as top 20 starting pitchers this year. And we had questions about the role coming into the season, but we knew that they were talented pitchers. So just really want to hammer that point home. Focus on those pitchers more in the mid to late rounds of the draft. And I will, at this point, mention Chris's. Chris wanted to be on today, but he was feeling under the weather. He did send his biggest lesson. Stop being afraid of innings limits for pitchers, which again, kind of overlaps with everything that we're talking about right now. And just really focusing on like per inning, per start impact and getting back to that.
Speaker 5All right, Scott, back over to you. Another lesson. All right. Your draft doesn't have to, and probably won't define your team. This is especially true in head to head, especially true in any league that that's on the shallower end in terms of how many players are drafted, which then makes for a more robust waiver wire. I went back and looked at both of my podcast league teams, which were head to head. There's a 12 teamer, the one I was referring to earlier, where I took pictures with two of my first three picks, but there's also a 16 teamer. So small lineups, but fairly large, I went back and looked at my drafts in both of those. I made it to the semifinals in the 12 teamer or the finals in the 12 teamer and the semifinals in the 16 teamer. So the result was good. It was like six of my picks panned out in the 12 teamer and seven of them in the 16 teamer. And the rest of the roster was just assembled on the waiver wire over the course of the year. So like, that's I, I think, I think people get in the mindset of, Oh, I have to, I have to really kill it in the draft. And, you know, they start comparing how every team drafted, how every team's draft turned out and, and get really up or down about how their season's going to go based on that. But it's just a starting point. It really is. And it's a whole season worth of putting this roster together. Uh, again, that's especially true in the shallower things, but I, I looked at some of my 15 teamers too, that tout wars. We, we talked about tout wars, how bad some of my earliest picks are. That's a 15 team or that I, I won the league. My first four picks were all pretty bad or three of the first six of the first 10 were pretty bad, but early in early on in the season, I picked up TJ rum field off waivers and an OBP league. I picked up Liam Hicks off waivers to be my second catcher. I picked up Jacob Lats off waivers. He obviously turned out, this was a league where I really got burned on saves. I drafted Josh Hader and Carlos Estevez and that was it. Hader turned out fine in the long run, but I wasn't getting saves early. I picked up Lats. That was huge. Uh, I picked up, um, I, those were probably the three bigs pickups, but I, but I know there were some others, AJ Ewing, that there were some others that helped me along the way. And, and I wouldn't have learned the league without a TGFBI. I finished second in that 15 teamer. Uh, my pitching, I ran away with all the pitching categories. Well, a lot of that was Taj Bradley. I picked up Peyton Toley off the waiver wire. I picked up Carlos Rodon. Eventually it took a while to pay off, but it did in the end, uh, Ian Seymour, you know, like it's, it's, it's a never ending process and like, you're not going to sink or swim with your draft necessarily.
Speaker 4I think this one also depends on what type of player you are and knowing yourself as a player, because I feel like if Chris were here and he has talked about this, that, his biggest struggle as a player is probably in season management and, you know, free agency and fab and things like that. So I, I think this particular lesson just depends on you as a player as well. Like I, I think you can miss on things in the draft as long as you are diligent and, you know, putting in the work and things like that on the waiver wire and things like just knowing yourself as a manager. So I think that's kind of a second part to build off of that. But, uh, you're right. I mean, I, I've gone to, you know, I mentioned first pitch Arizona last year. I went and somebody who won, I think it was Mike Mager who we had on in the last off season to help talk about auction strategy. And he won the auction overall. And I think like his highest price player was like, you're on Alvarez who barely played last year and he won the overall. Right. So like, no, like you can have a miss, a big miss in the draft and still perform really well. If you can gain excess value in other places. I think he wound up with like, you know, Cal Raleigh and a 60 home run season. So obviously, you know, that helps a lot of it, but yeah, you can miss on some pigs. Obviously you need some big wins the way that you got with like Pete Armstrong. But yeah, I do think that is a fair point there. My next lesson is getting back to minimizing risk early. So again, I looked through all my teams earlier today and I noticed that I had one or both of Kyle Tucker, Gunnar Henderson and Garrett crochet on three different teams. I also had a lot of Michael Garcia. I had a lot of Coleridge. Regan's I had those guys on at least three different teams. And some of those, there was a lot of overlap with those players as well. And I, you tell me Scott, if maybe this is revisionist history again, obviously we all liked Kyle Tucker coming in. Like specifically on this podcast, we were higher than the consensus on Tucker, but I think that there were risks there that we just kind of ignored. Right. And I know, look, first year make first year in the, of a mega deal in a new city. Like there are many times where that doesn't work. Out for a specific player. He also had, you know, injury problems in the past. So perhaps those things have just kind of added up for someone like Kyle Tucker. I'm not saying he was a massive risk, but there were some risks there that perhaps we, we just looked the other way. Gunnar, I was still very in on this year. I basically just took his injury excuse from 2025. And I was like, all right, he's going to bounce back to 2024 form. And that was never a guarantee. Part of this is also just like eliminating assumption with early round picks and just focusing on, on players who have done it year over year, who have had health year over year. And that's like Garrett crochet was one of my most drafted pitchers. And it was just because he was usually the one that lasted the longest of the big three. And he was the one that went cheapest of the big three in auctions. And so I, I was open to drafting one of those big three starting pitchers coming in and crochet. When you think about it, logically the big innings jumps year over year, the past couple of years, like I think that was a pretty obvious risk to Garcia. I liked his underlying skill set. He was not very proven at all. Cole Reagan's is someone that I was openly worried about, but I was just like, so enamored by the skills I had him as like an SP two and multiple leagues. But what you were just saying, Scott is you can miss on some of your picks early on. You can't miss on like, you know, your, your first three picks basically, or like four of your first six or something like that. And when I look back at the teams that did really poorly, it was like, I think I just took too much unnecessary risk early on in drafts.
Speaker 5Yeah. I, I don't like, I don't like taking risk early either, but hindsight is 2020 and like who didn't get burned by their first round pick this year. The person who took Bobby wit, they were a little underwhelmed, I guess, but they didn't get burned. Okay. That's one, you know, obviously Paul skeins was a bust, not as bad as crochet crochet got hurt, but it wasn't pretty. Tarek Scooble missed a lot of time. Ronald Acuna wasn't very good. I mean, yeah.
Speaker 4And we've talked, we've talked a lot about this. I mean, perhaps it's something that's just unique to this season, but it was, yeah. Looking back,
Speaker 5I think you can, you can look at all of those guys and say, okay, I should have been more careful with Jose Ramirez, his age or Acuna having the, the two knee surgeries. But yeah, I don't know. I sure like Kyle Tucker, the people who were worried about the second half, injury with the Cubs ultimately were proven. Right. But I don't know that I would assess it any differently next time. Personally. I mean, you're free to, I don't think that was the biggest red flag necessarily among the first
Speaker 4rounders. Yeah. That, that first year of a mega deal in a new city, I know it's like kind of cliche, but a lot of times it really does not work out very well. You look at, you know, Kyle Tucker and Boba shed, but even bigger examples is like Francisco indoors for a season with the Mets. I know that was a trade, but then he signed the extension and like there was Bryce Harper. His first year was not very good. Trey Turner's first year was not very good. So that seems like one that, that actually happens more often than not. It's like that mega contract first year in a new city type thing.
Speaker 5Yeah. Which is kind of why I want to give Kyle Tucker a pass again, obviously not in round one,
Speaker 4but in round six. Sure. We'll see where that, that discount pops out. But yeah, I just really want to focus next year. Early rounds guys. Have who have done it multiple years over, who have had multiple healthy years over and over again. So and then, you know, you could take more risks as you get further into the draft mid to late rounds. Like I have no problem taking risks there, but just kind of minimizing that risk early on in drafts. I have a couple of their honorable mentions here, Scott. I don't know if you do, but if you want, we could just kind of like rapid fire, just rattles here.
Speaker 5Yeah. So some of mine are related to ones I've already said, don't be afraid to spend early. This is a fab specifically for leagues that use fab, which I think is the, the minority, but it's, it's a big enough minority. Don't be afraid to spend early. A lot of those guys that I picked up off waiver wires off the waiver wire early on, I wasn't totally sold on, but I knew that obviously early in the years when everybody's going to be spending the most and when they have the most, the longest span of time to make an impact to my team. And that in the second half of the year, the fab bids, we're going to be much, much lower because of all the money everybody spent. So, you know, I didn't go crazy spending $300 on a player. I didn't feel confident in, but I tried to spend enough to win them. If I thought I had a spot for them and a use for them, you know, Jacob Blatts, especially like I couldn't, I couldn't imagine him holding onto the closer role all year, much less him being that good in it. But I just went for it because I needed the saves and I spent the fab dollars it took and it worked out really well. I, that's, that's your best chance of that's where you're going to get the most wins off the waiver wires early in the season.
Speaker 4Yeah. I actually had a little bit of the opposite. One that I wrote down here was that I spent way too much fab early on the season and I just didn't have enough in the second half. Yeah. And that could just come back to like player evaluation and, and we talk about this a lot, but, and I'm not making excuses, but Sundays are really tough for us between like building the rundown and, um, recapping a whole weekend's worth of games and looking through all the games and putting our fab bids in. Like that's something that I, I struggle with. So like I can put more time into that, like earlier in the week and things, but I just noticed perhaps I was just bidding on the wrong players and I was just aggressive early on, but I just noticed the second half of the season, I did not have like any money for those prospects that were getting called up in, in like August and beyond. But here's the thing. It was frustrating. I didn't either.
Speaker 5Yeah. And I guess it was frustrating, but how much did you really lose? Like how, how much of an impact were they actually able to make versus what the TJ rum fields did early on?
Speaker 4Yeah. It always comes back to which players you actually won. Like I'm sure if I look back on the teams where I spent a lot of fab, it's like, I probably just didn't get good players, you know, like I, maybe I just spent on the wrong guys and that was like a me thing. That's something that I did wrong. Um, but I did pick up, like I was pretty aggressive in the first or second week of the season. I think I picked up Brian Baker and tout wars and uh, obviously like something like that turned out. Like I actually wound up trading him for Riley green just because I needed outfield help so bad. That trade probably happened in, I don't know, mid may or something. I was a little bit weary about like, Oh, is this Tampa guy going to hold onto the closer role year? He obviously did. And he turned out to have an amazing season and I need a lot of offensive help. Uh, I guess that can get into, um, my, my next lesson here is just to have patience because at like the midpoint of the season in NL labor, I was shopping Fernando Tatis Jr. To other teams for like just like two lower level assets. I think I offered at some point for like Ian Happ and Dale and Lyle, right? Just to get guys in an only league that are playing every day and should be solid. But if I did that, I probably wouldn't have won the league. So it's like have patience, you know, and that goes back to me as a player. Like I do kind of get emotional about things, something else. And like, look, maybe anybody would have made the same mistake, but I dropped Jake McCarthy in tout wars, which is a 15 team Roto league with five, five outfielder spots. I dropped him in, I think mid or late April, just cause like the playing time was weird. And the Rockies had a bunch of outfielders and stuff, but he turned out to be one of the biggest league winners in fantasy this season. So patience, patience is something that I would like to remind people of for next
Speaker 5season. I was laughing because one of the next one I have was kind of opposite of that. Okay. I think you're more right than this is, but I, I, I did. I recognize this year that there does come a point where it's okay to drop a struggling stud. When is that point? Well, first of all, I think it's more likely to come up in a head to head league, a league with fewer lineup spots to fill. But basically if you get to a point where you're happy enough with your replacement, I w I was thinking specifically Cal Raleigh. I drafted it. It was, I drafted him in too many leagues, unfortunately, and it would have been easy to just stick with him in my catcher spot and just hope he turned it around. But catcher being as deep as it is, I'd pick up a Liam Hicks in one league. I'd pick up a Gabriel Moreno or something. I got to a point where it's like, okay, Cal Raleigh's just taken up a spot on my bench. Let him go. He did finish strong, as I pointed out earlier in the show, but I didn't really miss him. It wasn't like this big disaster. And it was second half of the year by the time I did this. I held on a long time. But I'm sure people who had Vladimir Guerrero, first base being as deep as it is, eventually Vladimir Guerrero became just dead weight for them. Again, I'm talking shallower leagues. I don't think in the 15-team Roto Leagues you're talking about, I'd ever get to the point where I'm dropping Raleigh or Guerrero. And I still think it's a rare thing that you should do with a player that high end, but it's not unusual. It's unthinkable as long as you're really satisfied with the player, you have to replace them.
Speaker 4Yeah, knowing when to do it is just the hardest part. That's the hard part, yeah.
Speaker 5I have a story, too, about dropping Jack Caglione in the 16-team For the People League. I dropped him. He had a bad April and May. Not as big of an investment as a Raleigh or Guerrero, but still somebody I drafted to be one of my three outfielders in a 16-team league. I could have really used his power production the rest of the way.
Speaker 4Yeah, I think this specific talking point, patience, is more for those sleeper breakout types. And I get, like, you know, if you're bordering on a month or two where you're not getting anything from these guys, but reminding yourself that there was a reason why you liked this player to begin with and perhaps just sticking out a little bit long. I know in-season it's a little bit tougher when we're, like, talking about this every day and it's like we're getting questions all the time of can I drop this player, can I drop this player? But you like Jack Caglione for a reason. I like Jake McCarthy for a reason. And perhaps you just got to stick with that a little bit longer. My next one here is that I liked and drafted George Kirby in multiple leagues this season, but I didn't have a great reason for it. Basically, my reason was just that he was going later than previous years. And I thought that he was a discount. But I find that whenever I've done that in years past, it usually doesn't work well for that player, Scott. Like, instead of having a concrete reason, like a statistical skill-based reason of why I like this player, just, oh, in years past, George Kirby was, like, a third-round pick. Now we're getting him in the sixth or seventh. I'm going to draft that player. Like, I just noticed usually that doesn't turn out very well for me when I draft like that.
Speaker 5Well, yeah, probably. I'd probably agree that it's not the best reasoning when it's that early still. So George Kirby was still the 65th player drafted on average according to Fantasy Pros. So it's still an early-round pick. Yeah. There have been times, like, I remember making the same argument for Dansby Swanson a couple years ago where normally he's, like, the 100th pick and we're drafting him, like, 160 now. Okay, that late, I think that's reasoning enough. Particularly if you think it was just this outlier season he had, outlier bad season. Yeah. But obviously, you're expecting not as many of those picks to pan out. You really need your, what is that, round six, seven pick to, to pan out? I didn't do it. You don't need them to based on some of the other things we've said, but it hurts a lot more when he doesn't.
Speaker 4Right, right. Anything else you want to throw out there, Scott, before we wrap up? Just the, and this kind
Speaker 5of is overarching of all my lessons learned. Don't be too sure of anything. I don't know if it's just our social media culture. Everybody's got a hot take. Uh, wants to sound the smartest. Sounding the smartest doesn't win you leagues. And I mean, Pete Crow Armstrong, again, is the most obvious example of this. Nobody wanted to have to, I think, I feel like a lot of it is nobody wanted to have to defend taking Pete Crow Armstrong. So I don't, I don't want to look stupid. They're going to point out what his second half numbers were. And, and I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to, uh, you know, they're going to think I didn't know that or something. And it's like, no, it's fine. It's okay to take him even, even if, uh, even if a lot of people are going to make you feel bad about it. I think the most obvious example of this was Josh Hader, who I was talking about. And I got him in round 10 of a 15 team league. Everybody was so sure because he was dealing with a bulky elbow in spring training. His season was just going to go down the toilet. And so they let him go for this incredible value. And yet still. Nobody wanted to be the one to, to say they didn't, they, that they took Josh Hader at that incredible value. Cause it means they're stupid. They don't know that his elbows hurt or something. I don't know. Like, I feel like that's a big part of it. Uh, Isak Paredes was another example of this. Everyone was, Oh, sure. He wasn't going to get the at bats. And he went for, I think I got him for round 20 at a 15 team league. Insane. Um, Jacob Latz picking him up off the waiver wire when nobody, nobody thought he was going to get the at bats. Nobody thought he'd really work as a closer just because he got a couple saves and kind of contrary to the point I made about fab, not going all in on fab for the $300 pickup because I was so sure that this latest call up was going to be the savior. And then you blow that many fab dollars in one player. It's still likely not going to work out like you think it is. So just don't be too sure, you know, approach everything with some skepticism on both ends. Don't be too sure about how good a player is. Don't be too sure about how bad a player is, how hurt he's going to be, whatever. If the value is there, it's okay. You know, like accept the value and it may not work out, but you got them at a value. If it does work out, it's, it's going to be great.
Speaker 4Last one I'll wrap up with here is an oldie, but a goodie. And I'm pretty sure some people were calling me out for this last year and I should have paid more attention to it. So if you're listening this late into the podcast on Tuesday, October 6th. Please remind me again to not overreact to spring training stats because it's like every year. I think it's just like a, for me, it's like a mental thing. I'm just like so excited that baseball's back that I like, I'm just so excited by what I'm seeing that it's like affecting me. But I think in particular with the world baseball classic as well, everyone got so excited about like Vinny Pasquantino and Jack Caglione. And what like team Italy was doing in the world baseball classic. I remember, I mean, did Caglione.
Speaker 5Did Caglione not live up to it?
Speaker 4Uh, no, he mostly did slow, slow star. You might've dropped him, right? Some people might've dropped him. Um, but like Vinny P very clearly didn't. I wound up with him on a few teams. I still, I remember I started to draft Robbie Raymore just because he looked good in spring training. I'm like, what am I doing, man? Like, this is like a veteran guy. Like maybe he's just like, whatever. He's off to a good start in spring training. Remember the Matt McClain hype, the guy who led all of spring training with a 1540 OPS. That guy, that guy didn't have a very good time. Very good season. Actually look, look at the OPS leaders in spring training, Matt McClain, Max Muncy of the athletics, not the Dodgers, Dalton Varshow, Luke Kieschel, who, you know, took about two months for him to get going. Uh, Josh Smith of the Rangers, Jordan Lawler with the D backs, Matt Walner with the twins, Sal Stewart. That one worked. Troy Johnston with the Rockies, Ryan Ritter with the Rockies, Cole Young. Remember we were buying it to Cole Young. He was like pedestrian this year, but yeah, even like Jake Berger, Caleb Durbin, Jordan Beck down the list, like Matt Shaw, that guy didn't even have a place to play. TJ Romfield was pretty good. So like, all right, you could pick and choose. There was like one, two, three names there in the top 20, but like for the most part, man, it's spring training doesn't matter.
Speaker 5Yeah. The Josh Smith thing. I was, I was, uh, in preparation for this show. I was looking back through some of my drafts and I noticed Josh Smith on a couple of them. I was like, what? I had to refresh my memory. Oh yeah. He had that big spring and there was some talk about, yes. I, I, I think this is, there was that one year, what year it was, I think, was it 2021 where like so many of the, the pitchers who emerged in spring training did hit.
Speaker 4Yeah. That was like Robbie Ray, Carlos Rodon that year where they were doing something different and then they were both awesome.
Speaker 5And I think Trevor Rogers too, there were, there was, there was this, there was a handful of pitchers like that and, and so that kind of gave us this false confidence maybe that we've had. Been having to dial back ever since. I think it's fine if it's a late flyer on a player who is having a splashy spring. Um, I think that's fine, but you, you don't want to be, again, don't be too sure of anything. You don't want to be so confident that this is the bounce back year for Matt McLean because he's having a big spring that you make him your starting second baseman when you could have had somebody, uh, like an, I don't know, somebody much more proven than that. Ozzie Albies or Brandon Lowe or whoever.
Speaker 4Yeah. Remember his ADP was cut in half. Like his ADP went from 200 to 100 because of spring training. It was crazy stuff for, for Matt McLean. So I give everyone permission, not that you needed my permission anyway, but you can yell at me during spring training. If I start doing that again, we are going to wrap there for Scott. I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning into fantasy baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify, and we will be back again later this week. - Buh-bye! Paramount Podcasts
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