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Speaker 3Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today. A podcast from CBS Sports. And first pitch, rushing deep left field. This is what I call walk the 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's up, and welcome in to Fantasy Baseball Today on Thursday, November 12th. I am Frank Sample, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Today on the show, it is our Outfield Recap Part 2. We left off with the top 10 outfielders on yesterday's episode. We're going to try and analyze the next 30 names. So 11 through 40, essentially. Throw them out there in groups of three and see how many we get to. We also had a signing, a closer signing.
Speaker 5Ooh. So we'll get to that in just a little bit. Just in time for my initial relief pitcher rankings to come out. Throw them out. No, no, no. I'm not saying that facetiously. Honestly, I had started writing the article when the news came out, and so I was able to adjust in time. So thank you to the Tigers. Thank you to Emilio Pagan. Oh, no. I just spoiled the news.
Speaker 4Well, we might as well just talk about it right now. Emilio Pagan signed with the Tigers on a one-year $11 million deal. And over the past two years with the Reds, he had 57 saves, 307 ERA,.96 whip, 21% K-minus walk rate. That looks pretty good. He is an extreme fly ball pitcher. Managed to get away with it in Cincinnati. Feels like Detroit is an even better place to try and achieve, to succeed with that skill set. So I don't know that he's definitely the closer, but I'm at least leaning that way. What do you guys think?
Speaker 5Yeah, I'm strongly leaning that way. Kenley Jansen is, of course, a free agent himself. And he didn't have to be. I think they, I think I'm remembering this right. I think they had an option on him, but they declined the option and ended up giving about that salary to Emilio Pagan. So I think they're, they're viewing this as an upgrade. And I don't know about you guys, but this was surprising as I went through, this surprised me as I went through my relief pitcher, did my kind of overview of the relief pitcher position, how good Pagan's numbers ended up being. Because he got off to a horrible start, not unexpectedly, very homer prone pitcher, pitching in Cincinnati. We kind of thought he got, he got away with it in 2025. And then maybe it came to a head early on, missed all that time with a hamstring injury. Except for the setback at one point as well. I think it was like one, one start, one appearance or something. Two appearances or, well, I don't know. I don't know exactly, but, but yeah, he was, he was basically gone for May and June. But he came back July 1st on, Pagan had a 180 ADRA and a whip below one. So finished strong. The final numbers ended up with a three 30 ADRA for the season and a one Oh three whip still probably to Homer prone to be a closer ideally in an ideal world, but that's going to be less of an issue in Detroit than it was in Cincinnati. One would think. And I, I, I, I can now up the total of pitchers who right now, I feel pretty confident. We'll be closing for somebody. I can up that total to 16 with this Pagan signing.
Speaker 6Yeah. Like he's 36. His velocity was down about a mile per hour. His stuff metrics were down. A lot of the skills indicators were worse in 2026 than they were in 2025. I think he's either a perfectly fine closer or he loses the job very quickly. I don't think this is like, it might be a situation like Henley Jansen where it just kind of, he's kind of in the job for the whole season, but there's always doubts. But I think the likeliest outcomes is either he's fine or it falls apart very quickly. And that's certainly nobody's going to draft him as if he's an elite closer, but if it works out, you're going to get a decent strikeout rate. You're going to get a very good whip. That's the one thing like his control is good. He, he generally keeps the Babbitt really low because he's such an extreme fly ball pitcher that, - Yeah. - Yeah. If it works out, he's going to be pretty good. It's just, I do think there's a lot of risk there and he's probably going to come very cheap as a result. And you know, if you want to wait for your second closer, I think Emilio Pagan's a pretty good target. -
Speaker 4Yeah. The early ADP for Pagan is 127. There's actually- - Okay, I know. - Yeah. I mean, that's, you know- - That's, yeah, I
Speaker 5mean, that's because there are so few relievers who anybody feels confident are getting saves right now.
Speaker 6But he wasn't, you know, a guaranteed closer before this. So, price isn't going to go lower. -
Speaker 4He wasn't. - There are three relievers going right next to each other. There's Riley O'Brien, Devin Williams, and Carlos Rodon. Nope. He is not a reliever. Emilio Pagan, Devin Williams, and Riley O'Brien. That's what I was going for there. How would you, how do you rank those three, Scott? -
Speaker 5I go Pagan, Williams, O'Brien. But I, when I said there's 16 relievers that I feel confident will be closers next year, Pagan is 15th of the 16 for me. That Devin Williams is 16th of the 16. I'm only quasi-confident with him. He'd be a total shock if the Mets pivoted to Kodai Senga since he looked okay in the role to end last season, and Williams has been bad two years in a row. But I suspect it'll be Williams to start out. O'Brien, O'Brien I do have in my initial top 20, but I'm kind of viewing him as a placeholder, just a de facto Cardinals closer. - Things got so- - So bad for him in the second half. - 12 earned runs in his final 13 appearances. And it's not like he was dominant before then. So I suspect the Cardinals are going to upgrade that role. I'm not counting O'Brien among the 16, but I've been wrong before. - He made the all-star team, didn't he? - Well, he led the NL and saved. -
Speaker 4Yeah. - He was really good in the first half, Riley O'Brien. - Yeah. - Yep. And then it all kind of crumbled down. - But there were all,
Speaker 6there were warning signs all along the way. -
Speaker 4Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So again, that is Emilio Pagan, one year, $11 million deal to the Tigers. The other news that we have isn't really, I mean, fantasy related, but we have award winners. We have a new manager. So the new reliever of the year awards, those went to Mason Miller in the National League and Louis Varland in the American League. Your comeback players of the year, Jordan Alvarez in the AL, Zach Wheeler in the NL, and then for the Cy Young, no surprise, Cam Schlittler and Jacob Miziorowski, both unanimous Cy Young award winners. There's, I can't imagine there is much hoopla going on compared to like the rookie of the year awards. -
Speaker 6I mean, I will say, I think, maybe it's a hot take, but I think Mason Miller and Louis Varland are two of the worst choices for reliever of the year ever. This is the first year of this award. That's, that's that dumb joke. - I think they're two of the best ever. -
Speaker 4Arguably. - Love it. Love it. Jordan Alvarez, AL Comeback Player of the Year. I have a feeling he's walking away with some more hardware very, very soon. And it sounds like the Astros are signing Brad Ausmus to be their manager, which feels a little uninspiring, I would say. -
Speaker 6I think a lot about the Astros organization right now is pretty uninspiring. This was a team that, look, I know people hate them, but they were at the forefront of a lot of, you know, the, the more advanced stuff going around baseball. Like this was a cutting edge team for a pretty long time. And it kind of seems in the wake of the sign stealing scandal, Jim Crane, the owner has taken on a more direct hand in operations. And boy, that is almost never a good thing. - It's just playing it as safe as he possibly can. - But it seems like they've just walked away from sabermetrics. Like Jeff Bagwell has a lot of say in that front office. He is by all accounts, not at all a particularly forward thinking person. And I kind of think the Astros should just blow it up and try to rebuild. But I don't have a lot of faith in, I mean, Jim Crane is currently the general manager of that team. I believe they haven't hired anyone, have they? Or no, they just hired someone a couple of days ago, right?
Speaker 4Flores from like the Cardinals scouting department. Yeah, Ramon Flores.
Speaker 6Yeah, I don't have a lot of faith in the Astros these days.
Speaker 4Fair enough. Let's get into the Outfield Recap Part 2. And this is where they finished on the Fangraphs Player Rater. I'm going to skip over players that we spoke about on other podcasts. So it's not the exact order, not the exact number. But we will get deeper into the player pool here. And again, we left off with the top 10 yesterday. I'll throw these names at you in trios. 11, 12, and 13 this past season. We had Carson Benj, Andy Pahez, and O'Neal Cruz. Benj, very strong rookie. He went 20-20. He hit lefties well. He's really fast. The quality of contact is basically average, but theoretically could get better in his age 24 season. Pahez got off to a great start the first two months. Turned out to be unsustainable for him. Fractured his left hand late in the season. Kind of feels like you know what to expect. He's a really good defender. He's going to play every day. Kind of settling into that like 260 to 270, 25 homer, 15 steal kind of player there for Pahez. And O'Neal Cruz had the, full-on breakout, massive improvements against left-handed pitching. But he missed a lot of time with, I believe it was a fracture in his hand or his wrist. But the full season pace, 33 homers, 108 runs, 111 RBI, 50 steals. So just an awesome season. Wish we could have seen how it played out over a full season there for O'Neal Cruz. But three, I would say Pahez is, you know, kind of whatever. But Benj and O'Neal Cruz seem very, very interesting of this group.
Speaker 5Yeah. Yeah. Cruz is one of those I, I think I'm going to be reluctantly high on if that makes sense in that I'm always wary of a strikeout rate that high. But he does make the kind of high quality contact that can overcome it. And he did in two separate stints this year. Like it, I'd feel different if I were him. I'd feel different about it. I think if he missed all that time with a broken hand mid-season and then came back and was a shell of what he was before then, like, okay, he clearly lost all the momentum from that hot start and we can write it off as just a hot start. But that's not what happened. He came back from the broken hand and was even better, even more productive to close out the season. And cut the strikeout rate in the second half. Yeah. So, you know, 30 homer, 50 steal potential is, you know, is not something you can, is not something you can just hand wave away, you know? So I have him 13th in my outfield rankings for next year. I think that's where the early ADP is as well. So I'm right in line with that. There's going to be a compelling bust case for it, but for the cost, it's hard for, it's going to be hard for me to look past the upside.
Speaker 6Yeah. This is one with O'Neal Cruz that I think I rank him 13th as well. I also may call him a bust. It was good to see in a small sample size, the strikeout rate did improve as the season went on. It was down to 30% in the, after the all-star break. Man, the improvements against lefties feel like a house of cards though. Like, he struck out 52 times in 140 plate appearances against lefties. That is a 38% strikeout. I don't really care how hard you hit the ball. That's untenable. And so I think there's regression coming. But, like Scott said, he does have the skill set to overcome the strikeout issues. And that is something we are going to have to keep in mind with him. I think he remains as good as he was last season, an incredibly high variance player in part because we've just, we've seen so many partial seasons from him. You know, and we've seen so many different types of production from O'Neal Cruz that it's just, it's still hard entering his stage 28 season to know who he is. And so, I think that ranking is probably right. I have a hard time seeing myself drafting him there, but I can certainly see the appeal.
Speaker 4I agree completely with the improvements against left-handed pitching. He had an 847 OPS against him this year. But 37% K rate, 369 WOBA against lefties, 315 X WOBA. So, did overperform those expected metrics against lefties. But he has room to give up. Like, you don't expect him to hit 280. He can, if he gets worse against lefties and hits 250 while going 25-35, that would still pay off being a third-round pick. So, very interesting player still is O'Neal Cruz.
Speaker 6He had a 521 BAB up against lefties. That's crazy. That's wild.
Speaker 4Any quick thoughts here on Carson Bench? I mentioned, like, very, very good rookie season. Went 20-20. Made a good amount of contact this season. Doesn't hit the ball extremely hard, but he's fast. And, you know, he's still entering his age 24 season, so theoretically he could get better and, you know, hit the ball harder as he gets older. Theoretically, he could get better.
Speaker 5I'm not necessarily counting on him getting better, but I do think, I say that I say that while considering him to be more the guy we saw from May 1st on than what his full season numbers show, if that makes sense. So, from May 1st on, you know, you give him a pass for that first month, he was just breaking into the majors. But from May 1st on, Carson Bench hit 299 with an 820 OPS. So, like, he's a plus for batting average, I think, which makes sense in all fields approach. That also undermines the power potential, though. So, I think 2020, he can, he can, he can just barely scrape the surface there with those two. It's like a Shinsu Chu profile, if you remember him.
Speaker 6I think you could see some ceiling outcomes that look like 2026 Randy Orozarena. He went 2026, 26, 26. There were only, I believe, six players in baseball who went 25, 25. I think Carson Bench at the high end of his outcomes could get that. And I don't think that's what you should expect, but you can, you can get to some, like, top 20-ish overall finishes for him.
Speaker 4Yeah. I think the upside for Bench comes with, like, the counting stats. If he's hitting fourth behind Lindor and Soto, we could get some monster counting stats for him.
Speaker 5Yeah, I mean, Shinsu Chu was a very, a very good fantasy player. It's just, I don't see Carson Bench becoming, like, a second rounder someday. I guess it's more like he'll be in that round three defense. five range for, for most of his career. A five category contributor, but not necessarily a standout in anything for batting average, maybe in a good year for the Mets offense. Runs at RBI. He'll push triple digits in both of those.
Speaker 4All right, let's take our first break. When we return, back into our Outfield Recap Part Two. We'll do that right
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Speaker 4and conditions. Welcome back, FBT, and we are recapping the outfield position. We're continuing on 14, 15, and 16. Here we have Corbin Carroll, Dillon Lyle, and Jack Caglione. Down season for Carroll. You kind of know kind of give him the benefit of the doubt. through the back injury we recently learned he was playing through an elbow injury as well he just had surgery for that in the offseason uh his bad second half looks unlucky if you dig in so i do expect a bounce back here for carol dale and lyle's first full season was a successful one he improved the bat speed and the pulled air rate he's very fast but he just doesn't run enough in terms of steals bad splits against lefties don't love that for dale and lyle um and then jack caglione got off to a slow start but then he took off from june 1st on hit 317 with 18 homers and a 914 ops and it's very easy to see him taking another step forward uh next season in fact the early steamer projections have caglione projected as a top 20 hitter for next season which is
Speaker 5yeah pretty awesome you're breaking your rule here frank because we talked about caglione at first base you're just you're so excited you you can't help but talk about him again did we maybe
Speaker 6we did i i will say just we can keep talking about him i i i don't even remember doing that i'm starting to get a little scared of jack hag's price for 2027 it just seems like everyone is going to give him credit for the breakout and look the breakout happened but he's going to get drafted as if he's already better than he has been and maybe he will be he's super young he's going to get better than he has been um i don't know like i i think the fact that he hit 290 last year is a huge benefit if he can do it again asking anyone to be a 361 babbit guy multiple seasons in a row is really tough we're kind of asking for another step forward with the power i like him a lot i just feel like a lot of people are going to love him and it's going to be hard for me to get quite there like he just the way people are talking and then he's going to be uh seeing those steamer projections i just feel like he's going to be top 15 at the position uh pretty quickly the early adp
Speaker 4has him inside the top 70 he's going just behind carson bench bryce harper and randy rosarena
Speaker 6yeah and he's seven picks behind michael harris at number 15 i think he's going to end up there i i don't think he's going to jump like kyle tucker although possibly but i think i think jack hag leone i i think he's going to there's going to be this is the floor of his price i would say where do you rank up in the outfield
Speaker 519 or 18 sorry i like early adp is 19 yeah so you're actually a little ahead of consensus yeah it's just if he starts
Speaker 6getting pushed up ahead of michael harris or bryce harper kyle tucker that's where i'm
Speaker 5i'm gonna struggle i do have him ahead of harris myself but i do i have him behind those other three in roto yeah i have harris okay i have harris 19th i have harper 15th i have rosa or tucker 16th rosarena 14th and i have kagli on their 17th and you know to make the case again for why he's so exciting i mean obviously the stack cast page is blood red but apart from that final four months kagli on at 317 with 18 homers and a 914 ops so i i think he's already 80 percent of what nick kurtz is and if he learns to elevate the ball a little better it's it's gonna be a small gap between the two i think corby
Speaker 4carol i i don't know if you guys have any thoughts on him again i expect a bit of a bounce back you give him the benefit of the doubt for the injury any thoughts here on dale and lyle who again finishes a top 15 top 20 outfielder it feels like there's still some meat left on the bone here if he can like he's a good enough athlete to run more he just
Speaker 6doesn't do it it can i think it can go both ways so i i think the counting stats shouldn't be as good as they were last year um that nationals line up they were what third in the in the majors and runs fourth in the majors and runs i don't really buy that and it did slow down a little bit as the season went on um he got 655 plate appearances that's a lot 81 runs 89 rbi that all feels a little high for the skill set i think he's good and i i do think there's room for the batting average to improve uh he only hit 246 last year with a 274 babbitt i i think you could see him hitting more like 275 and it should come with 20-ish homers and double-digit steals like it's a pretty good profile i don't know it feels like last season is closer to the ceiling than the floor for dale and lyle for sure um and luckily i don't think anybody's really buying him as if last year was real he's outfielder 34 in a piece so that that is where it's like you know i i unfortunately i think we're gonna pick on saddam rafael a lot this offseason because that's the one that stands out but even like i understand luke kieschel has second base eligibility and that that impacts it jake mccarthy cody bellinger chased a lotter all ahead of him some of those are fine but i don't think all of those guys should be going ahead of dale and lyle what were they uh luke kieschel saddam rafael jake mccarthy cody bellinger chased a lotter
Speaker 5i think the only one i have behind lyle is is rafael mm-hmm so i have i have lyle 35th so i'm pretty much right where the early consensus is i i agree that i think this past year was closer to the ceiling than the floor just because everything basically went right with the counting stats i know you say he's faster uh very inefficient base dealer though yeah i i don't i don't know that that matters to me of course we could see people make big gains in stolen bases but it's more of uh it's more of a it's more of a i i am on a mission to steal more this year than i'm fast enough to steal more so it's it's just gonna happen if i play enough it's that that's the weird thing about assessing stolen base potential is it's it's mostly a matter of intent which few things in sports especially in baseball are they just the skills just kind of manifest but that's not true of stolen bases and now we have uh a season and three quarters of day lyle showing he's just not that interested in running not very good at stealing bases so i'm i'm not i'm not going to project improvement there of course some coach could come along and fix them but i'm not going
Speaker 6to project that yep i agree i do just carmen carroll scares me a little bit uh because he's still like top 20 in adp i believe and i think he's a genuine batting average negative at this point uh he has been every season every full season of his career since that first one um and then the only only 21 steals i mean we need like a lot of confirmation that this this offseason that it was because of the back because if he's just like a 20 to 25 stolen base guy i'm not sure where he stands out probably runs because he's going to get on base a ton uh but he might you know if he's a 20 to 25 homer 20 to 25 steal guy that's a good player but that's kind of what we said about carson bench right like i think he's better than carson bench the physical tools are better but i don't know there's been a lot of weirdness in in carmen carroll's production over the
Speaker 5years i mean if the power and speed is only carson binge level then i don't know that he is better than carson binge because he's not the pleasant batting average as you were saying to me though it's okay if you're not going to attribute the massive steals decline to the back issue which he played through all year and if your back's hurting you're probably not going to be flopping down on the baseline very often that that sounds like a bad approach if you're not going to attribute it to that well would you attribute it to he still had 97th percentile sprint speed so it's not like he lost a stab
Speaker 6but he also still had 17 triples and 33 doubles so it is like why did that limit him in one way not the other i know that it's you're choosing to run
Speaker 5right he did i i just think and i remember what maryfield talked about this one year where he had a very bad um yeah i think they had like a really and they
Speaker 6had like a really the royals had a really bad season i think yeah i remember
Speaker 5this yeah and it was just like i i i don't quote me but the gist of it was it's not worth it like it hurts to steal bases like if it's if if there's not much to gain from it i'm not going to do it so if you're playing hurt no you know in the heat of the moment legging out a triple you kind of have to do that but stealing you could just choose not to do it and that's uh what i suspect happened with corbin carroll of course time will tell or maybe the back injury will linger that's a possibility too there there's there are definite concerns there but other than last year he'd basically been a very bankable first second round type so i'm going to continue to stick with that until i have a compelling reason not to 17 18
Speaker 4and 19 in the outfield we had brian reynolds chandler simpson and riley green reynolds had an awesome first half a rough second half but mostly looks unlucky during that second half i'd expect another productive typical brian reynolds type season chandler simpson was worth 14.1 dollars in the fangraphs player rater and here is the breakout the breakdown the distribution of that money 7.3 dollars in batting average 11 dollars in steals minus 6.1 dollars in rbi minus 1.2 in runs minus 7.9 dollars in home runs so productive player very unique unique skill set and team build that he needs to be on. And Riley Green changed his approach once again. He went back to being more patient. He cut down on the strikeouts. The power metrics remain very strong. I kind of feel like there's a big season somewhere in there for Riley Green, where if he just kind of blends all of these skill sets together, we can get a good batting average with 30 plus home runs. I wouldn't project that. I wouldn't expect it. But I think it's somewhere in the cards if he can ever just kind of get everything going on the same page.
Speaker 6I want to talk about Simpson because I think he is simultaneously one of the hardest and easiest players to rank for 2026 because one, if you're on a point, so you probably can just ignore him, right? Like I just, he doesn't matter that much.
Speaker 4Unless you play in leagues where it's minus one point for a strikeout. Sure, yeah. He does get a boost there, but yeah.
Speaker 6In Roto, it's also kind of straightforward. If you take, I don't know, Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Schwarber with your first two picks, you probably need to bump Chandler Simpson way up your draft boards. If you take Pekor Armstrong and Julio Rodriguez, take them off your board. You're not drafting them under any circumstances because it's just, you do reach a point where too many steals are just redundant. Like the last thing you want is to win a category by like 40. Like that's actually bad. That's bad for your team. And so it's actually very straightforward with Chandler Simpson. If you reach the point in the draft where he's going, which is right now about 170th, if you get to 150 and you're like, oh no, I have nobody who can steal bases and I need batting average, take Chandler Simpson at 150. If you've got stolen bases, don't take him at 250. It's just not going to be worth having him in your lineup. I actually think he's very straightforward. At least he helps a lot in batting average.
Speaker 5Sure. That's one advantage he has over other category specialists to fit that description. Like Luis Arias, for instance, who's all batting average. He's a one category guy. Or like, you know, we used to say the same thing about Billy Hamilton. It's just, do you need steals or not? But he hit 250 every year. He would hit 250 and Chandler Simpson looks like a legit 300 hitter. So that, I could see a scenario, if you get a lot of steals, early and he falls for a while and it's like, well, I could use the boost in batting average and I'll figure out what to do with the steals excessly. I could see doing it. But you also are,
Speaker 6it's a real deficit. Like even if, even at 200, he's a legit deficit in runs and RBI.
Speaker 5So like, I'm totally with you in the overall approach where it's like, for Roto specifically, or any kind of categories league, I guess, it's my interest in Chandler Simpson is 100% tied to my roster construction and not just where he slots among outfielders.
Speaker 4What's scary about drafting or planning to draft Chandler Simpson is that if you kind of build your draft strategy around getting him and you miss, you're pretty much screwed.
Speaker 6You can't take him at ADP. That's the thing. You have to jump ADP because if there's someone else who's doing the same thing, you need to make sure you're beating them to him. So that's the other risk is that you can't wait for the player.
Speaker 4I almost might promote, if you want to draft Chandler Simpson, do it in an auction where you can kind of throw him out early and just kind of make sure that you get Chandler Simpson. Although there could be other people planning to do the same thing, then you get into like an early bidding war on Chandler Simpson. Then you have to change up your strategy on the fly. But if you want him on your team, you almost have to know that you're going to have him or else, it just kind of blows up. 20 through 22 in the outfield review, we had Julio Rodriguez, Juan Soto, and Willier Abreu. One of these things is not like the other. Julio, disappointing season, but he dealt with the concussion in July, which did not allow him to have that monster second half. If you look at his second half OPS, the first four years of his career, 937, 941, 818, 900. And then it was a 655 this past season. Juan Soto's steals came way back down to earth as we pretty much expected. But otherwise, he had a typical Soto season. He missed time with the calf injury, but his full season pace, still 39 homers, 92 runs, 99 RBI and 13 steals. And then Willier Abreu looks pretty similar three years in a row now. He did crush lefties as a lefty. So that's nice to see. You expect like a 250-ish batting average, 25 homers, good counting stats, a handful of steals. He's a rock solid high floor, you know, outfielder three type player for Abreu. But obviously Julio and Soto are in different stratospheres here. I think Soto is very clearly a first round pick. And to me, Julio is very clearly a second round pick now.
Speaker 5Yeah, I would agree. We were, we were denied the big second half from Julio Rodriguez that normally makes up for his not so great first half. He had a very typical first half, by the way, like the slaps. Slash line was almost perfectly in line with his career slash line in the first half, which wasn't very good. But, you know, he always makes up for it in the second half. There was a concussion that cost him a couple weeks right before the all-star break. And that's a long time to miss with the concussion. It suggests it was a pretty bad one. And he talked about being, still having some symptoms from it in the second half. So I think that explains why it was so bad. He's only 25 though. That's, that's really the clincher for me and how much of a pass I want to give Julio Rodriguez. He's still only 25 and was on a clear Hall of Fame track before this bad season.
Speaker 6So, and the two bad seasons for him in the past three, because it's been two disappointments in the past three now. It's still 44 combined homers and steals in those two seasons, despite missing some time in both. Remember 2024 was kind of the same thing where it was like he was just starting to take off, I think around July and he had that high ankle sprain that he only missed like a week, like a couple of weeks, but clearly wasn't the same guy after that. And so I'm sure some people are tired of us making excuses for Julio Rodriguez. And I do think, I tend to think the slow starter thing, I don't know if that's real, but it has happened often enough for him in every year that there's probably something there.
Speaker 5It's kind of a wonder he's made three all-star teams.
Speaker 6But I do remember, like this is going back a while, but I remember Adam LaRoche had a very similar thing early on in his career where he just could not hit early in the season and then would take off and have huge second halves. And then eventually that stopped and he just kind of became the same guy all year. And so that could happen for Julio. But if you believe that that is a real thing for his skill set, it introduces some risk because it means that anytime you have to make up ground, it means that anything that goes wrong is going to screw your whole season up. And so I think he's, the drop in his price is appropriate. But also if we're talking about Julio Rodriguez as a top five pick next season because he goes 30-30, would not be surprised at all.
Speaker 5I think the fact that he's now a second rounder accounts for the risk. Because a worst case scenario, you get a 2020 season. You get like a typical Randy Rosarena season in a worst case scenario from, Julio Rodriguez. I think I could live with that.
Speaker 4This feels like the right area to draft Julio Rodriguez now in the second round for those reasons that Chris mentioned, that risk that comes with if he doesn't have that monster second half. Even with that, he's still such a high floor player. He has gone 20-20 in each of his first five seasons. He's the only player in Major League history to do that.
Speaker 6So it's a little weird that Corbin Carroll is like solidly ahead of Julio Rodriguez. He's five picks ahead. It's only one spot in outfield. But at that point in the draft, you know, 27 picks, 27 drafts in. But a five-pick difference is pretty significant. I think I could see the case for Carroll over Julio Rodriguez. I don't think it's clear. I actually rank Julio ahead of Corbin Carroll. I think the. I do too. I think it's just a little safer and a similar ceiling. So, if anything, Julio Rodriguez physical tools might be better as a hitter than Corbin Carroll. Like, I think there's more room for a truly elite. There's more red on the stat cast. Yeah, I think there's more room for a truly elite, elite offensive season.
Speaker 4So, yeah. I just don't know.
Speaker 6The baseball savant page, I should say.
Speaker 4I don't know if the ceiling. I don't know how high the ceiling really could be for Julio, just because I don't think his counting stats are ever going to get there because the team that he plays around and the fact that his plate discipline is as bad as it is. Like, his upside is he could go 30-30 on the highest end. Maybe it's like 35-35. But I just don't think the counting stats will ever get there. But again, really high floor. I think he's a very good second round.
Speaker 6He had a combined. He has two 200 RBI plus run seasons. Corbin Carroll has none.
Speaker 4Yeah. No, I hear the argument there. I'm just talking about other like first round caliber bats where you could see they have that upside to go like 120 RBI or like 120 runs scored, which I just don't think we could see that happening with Julio Rodriguez. Let's take our final break when we return back into the outfielders.
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Speaker 4Welcome back in Fantasy Baseball today and we are continuing on with Outfield Recap Part 2, trying to get through the top 40. Outfield Recap. Outfielders from this past season. 23, 24, and 25. We had Cody Bellinger, Joe Adele, and Chase DeLauder. Down season for Bellinger. He missed 25 games with a hamstring strain. I don't think he gets back to those contract year numbers from 2025. I think he's a high floor, 20-ish home runs, 15 steals. Usually misses some time with an injury as well. Joe Adele took a step back from his 2025. I was shocked that he got to 94 RBI with a 700 OPS. How did that happen? Those things just don't really line up for Joe Adele. The quality of contact came way down. He's a free agent this offseason. I think the contract he gets will tell you a lot. I think there's a lot of risk in the profile because he's a bad defender and he's much better against lefties. He could just wind up being a short side platoon player in the long run. Chase DeLauder finally stayed healthy. He had a strong rookie season. Very good bat-to-ball skills. There's some power. There's some speed. Great plate discipline. An ideal hit-to-head points player. When he returned from injury in June, he was great. The final 67 games hit 3-10, 9 homers, 9 steals, and 890 OPS. Will Chase DeLauder remain healthy moving forward? Nobody can answer that question. He's dealt with a lot of injuries. It was a very intriguing rookie season here for Chase DeLauder.
Speaker 5Yeah. I think Chase DeLauder is very good. It could be that he's better in real life than fantasy. In the long run, it's giving me those kind of vibes because low strikeout guy, I believe his line drive rate's very high. He is just like a professional hitter, but in a way that's going to prevent him from optimizing the power. I guess it's similar to Carson Binge, just without him. Without the expectation of 20-plus steals. Maybe just 90-95% of what Binge can do power-wise. It's very good, but it's more like third outfielder good, I think, with the upside of a second outfielder, possibly. But not an especially high ceiling for Chase DeLauder just because he's limited in what he could do. Still, good batting average. Good batting average guys at that point in the draft are something everybody wants. So I think he'll have his share of appreciators.
Speaker 4Chris, once you made that Michael Brantley cop for Chase DeLauder, I just can't get it out of my head. That just feels so perfect. I think Brantley
Speaker 6was like a 20-steal guy at his peak, and I don't think DeLauder's likely to be that, but there might be more raw pop. So the end result could be, you know, 25 homers, 15 steals in a high-end season for DeLauder. But the contact skills, I think he's just a really, really good hitter. And so those kind of guys could have a way of just kind of sneaking up on you a little bit, and like, you know, you get to the end of the season, and well, Chase DeLauder's hitting 295 with 25 homers, and all the run production that could come with that. I think that's within the realm of possibility. I think he's a really, really good player. And, you know, first-round upside, no. But top 40 player upside, yeah, I think that's there.
Speaker 4Yeah. Sounds like you were in agreement, Chris, on Joe Adele there when I was running through the numbers on him.
Speaker 6Yeah. I mean, look, incredible that he had, what, 94 RBI in consecutive seasons or 94-plus in consecutive seasons, but one came with 37 homers and one came with 23. So I do think. It's not. It's not impossible he gets back to that 2025 season. It feels very Jorge Soler-y in a lot of ways with the skill set. And Jorge Soler did have one more big season after we had kind of started writing him off, right? He had, yeah, that one year in Miami where he had 36 homers. Yeah. I could see something like that where he goes four years between big seasons, and so there will be some interest in Joe Adele because of that. And, look, he was useful last year. If what he was last year, if it's more like 85 RBI instead of 94, that's an okay fifth outfielder, I guess. But I'm not really expecting 35 homers from Joe Adele again. I want to stick up for Cody Bellinger here
Speaker 5because I'm seeing now I'm quite a bit higher on him than I was. I think the drop from 29 homers to 17 homers, part of it was he played 20 fewer games, but only 20 fewer games. That's a big drop, obviously, 29 to 17 homeruns. I don't think that had anything to do with his skills being diminished. I think it was just pure variance. He still hit the ball as hard, actually a little harder than the 29 homer season. He pulled the ball in the air about as much. I think 29, the 29 he gave us in 2025, is probably at the high end of what you should expect, but 17 is about. Not the lowest. And five of those 17 came in September. So you saw the variance play out within the season itself, but it wouldn't surprise me if Bellinger got back to 25 homers next year. If he's drafted outside the top 30 outfielders like he currently is, that would make him a steal.
Speaker 6You average it out and it's 23 homers over the past two seasons. That feels reasonable. That feels fair. I don't have a good argument. I can't point to a lot specific to say that he's. scares me. I just, I've never really trusted post-bounce back Cody Bellinger. So I guess acknowledging my bias there is what I would say, is that I just, I'm not going to be the one who drafts him, I think.
Speaker 4Outfielders 26, 27, and 28 were Kyle Tucker, Dominic Canzone, and Mike Trout. These names are all over the place here. First year of a mega deal strikes again for Kyle Tucker. Nothing glaring in the profile, but he just got a little worse in multiple areas. The bat speed down a little bit. The average EV down a little bit. The barrel rate was down. He was just terrible at home. A 592 OPS in Dodger Stadium this past season. Dom Canzone, fun player who got the chance to play every day, even against lefties. He performed really well against them. He hits the ball hard. He has strong expected stats. Could turn out to be a just useful four category player in fantasy. And Mike Trout stayed healthy for 142 games, his most since 2016. He did get. He hit the strikeout rate down. The power metrics are still very strong. He got off to a great start, but if you look from May on, he was actually pretty mid. So I think he could provide some value as like a third or fourth outfielder type, like whenever he's healthy, but much better in OEP and points leagues. Any thoughts here on an interesting group, Tucker, Canzone, and Trout?
Speaker 6So Frank and I talked a lot about Tucker at F pass. So Scott, I'll let you talk about him.
Speaker 5We talked a lot about him yesterday on the show.
Speaker 6I guess, yeah. But I do want to. Trout, he is outfielder 50 in ADP. That feels a little disrespectful. I don't know. It's tough because the underlying numbers were still very good. 381 expected WOBA. 462 expected WOBA on contact is top 5% in baseball. He has underperformed his expected WOBA now four seasons in a row. And it's been about one year of 15 points. Otherwise, it's been 25 to 30 points, which is really significant. When it happens that many times in a row, there's probably some noise there or some signal there. And so he's probably not quite as good as the underlying numbers suggest, but the underlying numbers still look really good for Mike Trout. And I do think at outfield 50, like, come on, he's going behind Kyle Stowers. He's going behind. Behind Joe Adele? I will take Mike Trout ahead of Joe Adele, you know? It's an interesting range.
Speaker 5It feels very jumbled up right now. Well, yeah, that's what I was about to say. But have you had a chance to rank as deep as. Yeah. Where do you have Mike Trout? I have 36. I have 37. So I guess I'm with you on that.
Speaker 6Like, come on. We're really going to take Lawrence Butler, like, several rounds ahead of Mike Trout?
Speaker 5I'm not. But to Frank's point, this. It was a struggle. this range of the outfield. for me about i would say about about i'm going to give you exact numbers from 36 to 53 in my outfield rankings it's kind of a big shoulder shrug and trout is in that range at the top of that range but you know in that range where i you know i i could see why somebody would want to take lawrence butler over him or i could see why somebody would want to take um brian reynolds over him or uh or like i personally i would take trout over spencer jones or i could see why somebody would want to shoot the moon with one of those two young guys who have so much uh potential there for home runs and stolen bases but on the other end of the spectrum you know we've already breezed by nick canzone here he was 27th last year you're saying frank among outfielders they're 49th and 52nd for me respectively and it's not like i'm intentionally fading them because i don't believe they can do what they just did i think that's perfectly within their their range of possibilities it's just i kept finding more exciting players to slot ahead of them like those two uh young guys who i just mentioned walker jenkins another one lawrence butler who finished very strong kyle stowers who still showed a lot of power last year amid the injuries jacob marcy finished really strong last year uh and so it's like ultimately i'd rather take a shot on any of those players delivering their 80th percentile outcome than just settling for the adequate but not particularly impressive production that will your brave or a dominant canzone is going to provide
Speaker 6scott can i be realist for one second if i could
Speaker 5just make this last that kind of speaks to the depth of the outfield though where 36 to 53rd that comes pretty close to filling out uh even in a 12 team league even one with five outfield spots to fill that that comes pretty close to meeting everybody's outfield needs and i i think that means the position is pretty strong this year
Speaker 6um where do you rank cole carrague 30th interesting because he's 24th in adp right now where do you rank him 39 i think it might be like yeah i need to i think i know he's multi-eligible and that those guys always get a little boost um where do you have the shortstop uh i he has to be outside the top 12
Speaker 5uh 15 i'm 13 so it's it sounds like uh it it's it's it sounds like those correspond like they should if you have 39th and outfield 15th shortstop i'm 30th of the outfield 13th and shortstop he was a
Speaker 6player i liked less the more i looked into it i think but i'm sorry that that's a separate thing i just noticed that in the adp okay there are a
Speaker 4lot of interesting names in this 175 to 225 range just like that 50 pick adp group of just like brian reynolds i know he's boring but for him to go 175 just feels very low i think like one
Speaker 6165 to like 225 so that's about 60 picks and overall adp also represents about 20 picks of outfielder so that's just a really really heavy outfield range and i think there's going to be you know you just kind of take your take your pick of those guys and some of them are like multi-eligible guys like casey schmidt and cody clemon so i think we'll not go that high once multi-eligibility is factored in less because what we're talking about there is that we're not going to be able to go that high once multi-eligibility is factored in less because what we're talking about there is that we're not going to be able to go that high once multi-eligibility i think we kind of breezed past it a little bit but in the drafts that are happening right now you're mostly talking about best ball and you know no fab leagues and so having guys you can slot in multiple positions that's gonna that's gonna help their value in
Speaker 4drafts outfielders 29 through 31 we had sam antinacci who also has second base eligibility ronald acuna and brandon marsh so again a very weird group but antinacci impressive rookie season kind of looks like a profile i worry that he performed really bad against lefties and perhaps could be platooned as a result acuna probably the biggest wild card in the early rounds of drafts he has not played more than 107 games the past three years he was a letdown for most of 2026 he missed a lot of time and then he was just awesome for the final month of the season had an an ops near a thousand in his final 26 games and then brandon marsh i mean he was just great in the first three months completely fell off got a chance to play against lefties it started well you know what to expect it's a low floor player and brandon marsh not really all that interesting but uh yeah i think antinacci is a semi-interesting player and then acuna is just the biggest wild
Speaker 5card fantasy yeah he might be for what it's worth brandon marsh is my 99th ranked outfielder for next year so i i i think we can just more or less ignore him antinacci feels like i i don't know he he feels pretty blah to me to be perfectly honest like kind of like a bryson
Speaker 4stott nico horner type yeah
Speaker 5yeah i i i think he's aspiring to be nico horner that's probably i think a little more pop than nico horner but a little less batting average upside than nico horner but even horner we saw this past year how relying on batting average upside can come back to bite you it's just a high variance stat in general i will say
Speaker 6really really sneaky good player in an obp league keep that in mind if you're playing an obp league hit by pitches so much 29 hbps and 557 plate appearances last season um it's like he had a 370 on base percentage last year it's
Speaker 4like a young uh young anthony rizzo remember rizzo used to get hit with so many pitches i
Speaker 6mean derrick derrick dietrich who's that who's that other guy brandon guyer brandon guy i love that guy had like a six percent hit by pitch right for his career was kind of the only thing he did well as a major leaguer um that name
Speaker 5was on the tip of my tongue because there's a kid on my nine-year-old's little league team named guyer like that was his first
Speaker 6name no relation is he leaning in no he had
Speaker 5pretty good pop actually
Speaker 6antinachi i think it all it it mostly whatever ceiling is there i think comes down to whether he can hit lefties um because they did basically start benching him in the second half against that's going to be the case moving forward it's going to really make it hard for sam antinachi to have much upside and it might be the case that the ceiling looks a lot like what he did in 2025 which was a pretty good player borderline top 30 outfielder or top 30 outfielder 29 look at that uh but it's hard to see how he gets much better absent becoming a much better base stealer or something like that but i think he's a pretty good player i just don't know if the ceiling is going to be there if
Speaker 5he's going to get that opportunity so he's my 13th second baseman antinachi but that only comes out to 51 in the outfield yeah it sounds about right yeah yeah
Speaker 4uh yeah antinachi you mentioned bad against lefty 604 ops that was supported by stack cast as well 288 woba 291x woba against lefty so and he was also kind of bad defensively like no matter where he played so i i know we don't talk about defense too much but like you have to be in a above average hitter if you're not going to be good defensively to stay in the lineup so yeah yeah uh moving on here in the next three we have garrett mitchell javier senoja and ian hap garrett mitchell finally stayed healthy and he looked pretty good he's such an interesting collection of skills he hits the ball really hard he's really fast he's a great defender but he strikes out way too much and basically all of his hard contact is put on the ground so there's just like no optimization for fantasy unfortunately for garrett mitchell uh javier senoja second third and outfield eligible had a nice season had a chance to play a lot for the marlins hit for a great batting average 11 homers 11 steals with all those eligibilities he did overperform a lot but he also had a 22 pulled air rate so i think that accounts for some of the overperformance and then ian hap had a down year the uh strikeout rate jumped all the way up to nearly 30 he got off to a strong start in the first two months and then he slowed down uh pretty hard and then he was able to play a lot of games and then he was able to play a lot of games and then he was also terrible against lefties down the stretch and just wasn't playing against them 32 years old he's a free agent he's been linked to cincinnati that would be on the very good end of outcomes he's also been linked to the mariners so that would be very very bad for ian hap so um this is also a very interesting group take it wherever you guys want to go with it
Speaker 6so one of the panels i was on for first pitch arizona was there was a question who is this year's jordan walker and the honest answer is probably nobody and the even more honest answer is smith well and the more well that's the that's the answer multiple people came up with yeah and the even more honest answer is even if there is a next year's jordan walker by definition you're not going to be able to see it coming um and then cam smith is the obvious answer garrett mitchell has some of what you're looking for though just in terms of the physical tools are obviously there this dude hits the ball really really hard he is really really athletic he's a good enough defender that that could keep him in the lineup uh he's got some platoon issues and he's got the limited elevation i don't know what the right way to he doesn't elevate the ball the way he's supposed to or the way he could and so i i think it's unlikely garrett mitchell becomes much of a fantasy option but the physical tools are absolutely there he is 98th percentile on bat speed 96th percentile on hard hit rate 96th percentile on average ice velocity 98th percentile on sprint speed uh this is one that if he gets off to a really hot start next season there could be a big breakout there on the other hand he's 28 and he's never done it so you should very very skeptical that it's actually going to happen i mean
Speaker 5the the problem with the problem with uh seeing the glass half full on garrett mitchell is his issues are exactly what they were said to be from the day he was drafted and he's shown no improvement you know he failed to late in the first round despite those great tools because he's a worm burner and like he would have to completely remake his swing to change that and nobody believed he could and he hasn't and he's a you know he's a positive player for the it was a good draft pick for them ultimately but i don't i don't see much improvement yeah i mean for him in fantasy i only rank him i think 88th in the outfield for next year uh i i think we saw closer to the best scenario than the worst scenario for mitchell great same is true for sonoha the one thing i'll say for sonoha is among the players who you can start almost anywhere i think it'll be three positions outfield second third next year but so those triple eligible guys triple or more eligible he's probably my favorite because he has the clearest standout skill which is contact hitting but it it might be a stretch for him to go 10 10 again yeah i think he's not very good uh and then hap seems to be i think he's clearly on the decline as he enters the free agent market it'll be interesting to see what team makes a play for him and in what role i presume he'll be a starter to start out but i i think he's nearing the end of that phase of his career where a team's gonna slot him in the lineup every day and uh where did i end up putting hap probably higher in points leagues since bad batting average but decent obp guy um he ended up for me uh he's in the top 50 he's no he's in the top 60 57th
Speaker 4so no i'm i'm a little intrigued by just because he makes so much contact clearly has really good back control and improve that pulled air rate so it kind of gives you some hope that he can you know maintain 10 home runs and then he has 83rd percentile sprint speed and you look at his minor league numbers he had some big steel numbers in the minors too so i don't know that it's incredibly high ceiling and i don't even know like where the adp is but just as like a triple eligible guy i i'm moderately intrigued by by javier sonoha 35 36 and 37 we had ryan o'hearn teoscar hernandez and junghoo lee this is a pretty uninspiring trio i would say uh o'hearn his first season with the pirates was uh pretty good unfortunately missed time with injury he mostly just got off to a great start and then like slowed down as the season went on i do think he's a high floor type player if you play in a deeper type of league teoscar hernandez he's getting up there in age he's 34 years old i think very likely to be the quality of contact has kind of settled in the past two years i think he could still pop like 20 to 25 home runs but like joe adele it's like bad defender he was really good against lefties he was really bad against righties could he fall into a short side platoon it wouldn't surprise me and then junghoo lee he started off strong he faded as the season went on i think he's settled into what we expected which is like an okay batting average 10 10 type of guy uh not overly excited about any of these three ryan o'hearn teoscar hernandez and junghoo lee yeah i i think based
Speaker 5on what we saw at the end of the season from josue de paula it would be kind of bonkers for the dodgers to just stick with teoscar hernandez is their everyday left fielder next year like de paula needs he needs some at bats and he's not getting him a dh obviously i don't know maybe he'll be a trade ship for them this offseason maybe hernandez himself will be a trade ship but as things stand right now i i think he's going to i think those two are going to split time in some form or fashion maybe a strict platoon uh maybe not
Speaker 6you you know what's kind of scary about teoscar hernandez either if you're the dodgers or you're a team who tries to convince the dodgers to eat salary to trade for him he has a clause in his contract where he has this is the final guaranteed year of his contract he has a club option for 2028 and a conditional year of his contract and he has a clause in his contract where he has a conditional option for 2029 the way that works is if he spends 75 days on the il in 2027 that option becomes guaranteed for 2028 so if you like let's say you can i think he's owed 15 million for 2027 let's say the dodgers are willing to eat 10 million of that well yeah i'll take teoscar hernandez for five million dollars he's a 110 opr wrc plus bat even as the age that's good unless there's an injury and then all of a sudden you're on on the hook for his what age 37 season at 15 million with i think a six and a half million dollar buyout for 2029 so basically like a 20 million dollar contract that's pretty scary if you were thinking about trading for teoscar hernandez so that i started looking this up when i was thinking about jose de pala just like let's get teoscar out of here and it's like that's really tough to actually
Speaker 4do though i would never question the integrity of teoscar hernandez but if i were him i would just like run into the wall and get hurt on purpose i almost think
Speaker 5if any team were to acquire him they'd immediately like okay let's renegotiate this deal let's let's guarantee it for the next two years but at some lesser amount yeah
Speaker 4whoever's training for him theoretically wants him on their team too and he's like a really good he's a really good club like people yeah even having him for two years yeah isn't terrible right like if you have him for two years and 20 million dollars like whatever it is um as you know a 750 ops you know 110 wrc like he's still fine uh and i do think it's very likely that teoscar hernandez is traded at some point this offseason uh the last three names we'll talk about here heriberto hernandez byron buxton and jaron duran hernandez very interesting player he kind of broke out he had 25 home runs a 755 ops good plate discipline great stack has data underperformed his expected stats spoke to a lot of people this weekend at first pitch arizona who liked heriberto hernandez so uh that is an interesting name byron buxton limited to just 93 games he was still great on a per game basis he battled a hip injury he wound up having surgery in september hopefully he's good to go for 2027 as usual we have absolutely no idea how many games we're going to get out of byron buxton but he's still very good when he plays and then jaron duran keeps trending down his ops the last three years 834 774 627 still provides power and speed great defender in left field another name where i'm pretty sure he gets traded finally this offseason i think there's a pretty wide range for jaron duran but i currently lean on the lower end i think the player that he's i don't know that he's like a 627 ops bat but i i don't think he's coming anywhere close to you know the player that he was in previous years
Speaker 6so yeah there was some just bad luck on batting average side 252 babbit for jaron duran on the other hand if he hit to his 237 xba that's still a pretty mediocre player i mean look 2020 is 2020 right so if he hits 240 and goes 2020 that's not the worst thing in the world um but i i don't think the high end upsides outcomes are there and you start to look at this is another one where he's probably just a corner outfielder and probably not a particularly
Speaker 4good one he graded out really good defensively this i i feel like in previous years he was a terrible defender and i know defensive which one you're looking at out above average he was fantastic
Speaker 6that cast really liked him i think fan graph version not closer to average um he also is like a 600 career ops against lefties and so this all kind of it's giving um like remember cedric mullins had the big breakout and then he kind of had a couple of seasons where he was still pretty good but the last couple it feels like that's where jaron duran is and i guess look i didn't realize cedric mullins went 17 and 22 in 2025 and then 15 and 21 in 2026 uh certainly didn't feel like that but yeah it feels like that's where jaron duran's headed where you can look at the end of the season and see pretty decent counting stats but he's not an everyday player he's a batting average drain i i think that's a possible outcome for jaron duran uh yeah i
Speaker 5have him 44th for next year so i'm not counting on a big bounce back but a little bit of one maybe 57th yeah herbert to herbert or hernan hernandez i don't know why i said his name like that herbert o hernandez um i don't know i'm i think he's pretty good you think he's pretty
Speaker 6good yeah i just want to pencil him in for my breakouts for next season i think like 20 25 15 batting average improves i think he basically got to 25 15 he has he has
Speaker 4the data to be a 30 plus
Speaker 5home run hitter but he's on let's see he's he's a bad obp right he was a
Speaker 610 walker right handed
Speaker 5yeah oh okay he he reached base at a 313 clip that's not very good obp no i
Speaker 4mean he his xba was a little bit higher so i mean theoretically it could have been like a 330 he hit he hit 220 in
Speaker 5the second half while striking out 29 percent of the time and he's again a low obp right-handed hitting corner man on a team with a lot of outfielders that they're looking to find playing time for and he did start basically every game over the final uh month and a half two months most of the second half let's say he he started with a lot of he he started basically every game but i i you know kyle stowers was injured a lot of that time griffin conine came on strong at the end uh obviously jacob marcy has center field locked down he had surgery though
Speaker 4marcy's not going to be ready for the start of next season i don't know when he's going to be back oh i didn't see that
Speaker 6yeah it was uh
Speaker 5elbow surgery right i think it was elbow i think in any case none of those other guys none of those guys are playing center field so they'll need to be playing center field so they'll need somebody else to play center field center field is occupied can canarella baby let's go canarella could be him yep but then it's like well if canarella sticks what happens when marcy comes back that's that's another outfield spot they'll have to carve out so i don't i don't it feels a little bit like fool's gold to me like yeah i see the red on the stack cast page i see he got to 25 homers but i also see a lot of variance in the profile sure i see a lot of i mean and i i don't know that the marlins are going to treat him like a building block it reminds me a little about how excited we were about brian de la cruz once
Speaker 6upon a time yeah no it's a similar i will say there was an interview with peter bendix on mlb.com's marlins beat uh newsletter today where one of the things they talked about was that the team really struggled against lefties they were very lefty heavy lineup in a lot of ways especially their power hitters were pretty much all lefty and so i think they're going to have to take a shot so that that's one thing that i think does help herberto is um that's just he kind of fills a niche that nobody else on the team does they don't really have a lot of right-handed pop but no i i agree he's definitely not a sure thing i like him for you know he's the 48th outfielder 200th overall on adp that feels like a good time to take
Speaker 5a shot yeah but i only have him 61st in my outfield rankings yeah i have him like conine more for instance i don't know where conine is but i
Speaker 4don't really buy 57 to 41 overall yeah yeah i've
Speaker 6got herberto 45th so i'm buying in a little more um but it's it's very similar to like mike trout where you're kind of hoping 25 and 15 i don't think it's it's a guarantee but i think it's a it's a like i'd rather do that than joe adele um i think i'd rather do that than lawrence butler but you know what i have i have
Speaker 5fernandez one spot ahead of joe adele so i'm with you on that i think it's so you agree a hundred percent don't don't see much to be excited about with adele but there are fernandez over him there
Speaker 6are certainly players behind herberto that like uh walker jenkins stands out especially as one that just i i think we're gonna get to walker jenkins being ahead of him i think he's gonna be five ish i have jenkins 18 spots um in the house reyna nimmo feels a little too low there 60 second um yeah there's a there's a few guys who are behind him that i think i'd rather have than ariberto but i i still like ariberto
Speaker 4yeah no scott i think you bring up good points and it's good to talk it through and get pulled all perspectives because if this was a player that all three of us were just in on like we we almost kind of like blind our eyes the downside but it it is good it's a fair reminder that there are a lot of mouths to feed in that outfield and he's never really done this before it's kind of like a one hit wonder but you know the stat cast data just jumps off the screen so uh yeah i think pretty interesting player i think ariberto hernandez uh i am currently penciling him in and for my breakouts 1.0 uh i'm pretty excited uh if you want to hear about some more outfielder rankings again we were looking back this was the past this is what happened last season we're looking forward on fbt express so if you want to hear about rankings you can listen to that and of course uh scott has an article on the website with his outfield rankings chris has an article with all of his rankings so make sure to check that out as well we are going to wrap there for scott and chris i am frank thanks as always for tuning in to fantasy baseball today we'll see you next week please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on apple or spotify and we will be back again next week bye-bye paramount podcasts
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