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Speaker 1And first pitch, rushing 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. And just like that, the 2026 season is over. Welcome in to Fantasy Baseball Today, and welcome to the offseason. Here we are, Tuesday, September 29th. I am Frank Stample, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Today on the show, we will do a 2026 season recap, discuss how we did in our leagues. We'll go through some league leaders. I've got some league-wide trends I want to talk about, and we will finish up with a playoff preview. So, how do we do, guys? Any big wins? Scott, did you hold on to Tout Wars?
Speaker 3I held on to Tout Wars, yes. That was decided. Weeks ago, I have to say, I won by 12. Nice. Now, it is always a little bit humbling, maybe, or it really doesn't matter who wins. But it's when you look at what the winner did in his draft, in Tout Wars especially, 15-team Roto League, you know, the height of competition, one would think, to look and see how the winner put the team together, and to count up all the misses early on. You'd think, oh, my goodness, there's so little margin for error in a league this deep, competition this fierce. And so, I did that with myself, looking back at my Tout Wars team. Again, 15 teams. You know what my top three picks were in Tout Wars? My Tout Wars team that won by 12 Roto points, Ronald Acuna, Trey Turner, Manny Machado. Those were my top three picks. That's pretty good. Pretty good. That was, you know, that strong pick in round four. Where I really won it was in rounds five and six with Pete Crowe Armstrong and Jesus Lizardo. That'll do. But then you keep going. Round seven, Frambois Valdez. Round eight, Jose Altuve. Round nine, Josh Hader. That turned out to be good. Oh, yeah. Round 10, Carlos Estevez. So, by my count, I missed on six of my first 10 picks. But I had those two windfall-type picks in round five and six. And then in round 26, I took Parker Messick, which was also a windfall-type pick. So, I'm bringing it up mainly because you can make up for misses with a few windfall-type picks. Just a couple of them can really make the difference. And a lot of times in these leagues where there is so little margin for error, where everybody. is kind of equally good, that's what ends up deciding it. I've noticed. And I just find that interesting.
Speaker 4Yeah. I remember Mike Gianella wrote a piece a few years ago at Baseball Prospectus that talked about how most early round picks, like most first two or three round picks, are generally not profitable. You know, if you assume that you're going to win a game, you're going to sign a dollar value to. Sure, it would be hard for them to be. Yeah, like they're just. You're mostly hoping that you're not losing big with your early round picks, just because as much as we think we can predict all of this stuff, the actual order, you know, if you pick a guy 20th and he finishes 45th, I suppose that's a mild disappointment, but it's not going to ruin your season. And you're mostly looking to avoid, one, big disasters, but two, you're mostly. You need to. You need to hit on really big wins. You need really profitable picks, and that's what you got, obviously. Peeker Armstrong, you know, falling to the fourth round? Fifth round. Fifth round.
Speaker 3Fifth round, and that may seem insane. It's an OBP league. It's an OBP league, and I think. But he became a really good OBP league player this year. He became a good OBP guy instead of a bad OBP guy. But, like, that's an example of people being a little too sure of something, you know? And even if he was a bad OBP guy, for everything else he brought to the table, in a 15-team, five-outfielder league, should he fall to round five? Like, I get falling some, but.
Speaker 1That's where you always have to weigh that in an OBP league. It's like, how far does this supposed bad OBP player fall, even though, you know, he's still going to give you other. Like, we were probably expecting a 25-25 type season at a PCA, right? But maybe with, like, a sub-300 OBP, so, like, where does that fall? And in that league in particular, it fell to the fifth round, and obviously you were able to bank on that. But I think this was a good season, Scott, for what you're talking about, where I think a lot of people's early round picks fell short. We've talked about that a lot in the second half of the season. But it was a big year for just these big windfall picks. If you had a Mizzy Arowski in, like, round seven or eight, or a Cam Schlittler or someone like that, or a PCA earlier on, or even, like, a Parker Messick later on in drafts, it was like, it was a year for big win-type players.
Speaker 3Well, and it was a year where it didn't hurt as much to miss on your first round pick, because most people did. It took Ronald. It took Ronald Acuna. Someone else took Jose Ramirez, Kyle Tucker, Gare Crochet, et cetera. Cal Raleigh won the first round to somebody. But the other thing to keep in mind here is, I say they missed. I missed with all these picks. I missed with Acuna. I missed with Trey Turner and Manny Machado. It actually helped. You think there's less margin for error in a deeper league, but in a strange way, it kind of helped that this was a deeper league, because those, the misses weren't like those players disappeared and I got nothing from them.
Speaker 1They still played every day outside of Acuna.
Speaker 3They still got a lot of counting stats. Acuna, I think, still went 20-20, even with the timing.
Speaker 4I would guess he scored, like, 75, 80 runs.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think it was about 80 and 80. And Turner, I think Turner was. Only 61. Turner had a lot of counting stats. Machado had a lot of counting stats. Yeah, Turner scored, like, 95 runs.
Speaker 1Yeah. His runs and steals were still helpful.
Speaker 3So I wouldn't have gotten away with those three picks as much in a shallow league, ironically enough, because they would have been, just because the threshold for what's useful changes, they would have been more useless when in a 15-team roto league, they were still very useful, just not worth picks one, two, and three.
Speaker 4Yeah, I had a kind of similar situation in my Tout Wars league where I didn't win. I ended up making the playoffs, but I lost in the first round. And Chris is in the head-to-head points Tout Wars league. Just for reference. Which has roto lineups, 12 teams, 14 teams in that one, I think.
Speaker 1I think it's 12 teams, but yeah, it's roto lineups, so it goes deeper into the player pool.
Speaker 4My four most expensive players in that league were Jose Ramirez, Garrett Crochet, Gunnar Henderson, and Kyle Tucker. Not the four worst players you could have spent your money on in drafts this year, but not far off.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm going to guess he didn't have
Speaker 4Pete Cromshaw on that team. I didn't have Pete. I had James Wood. That helps. Honestly, I'm looking at my draft and like, I don't have a lot to point to. I guess Sandy Alcantara in a points league was a really good pick, but yeah, this was a team I had to kind of make it up on the fly because a lot of these dudes had Noel V. Marte, but you can still overcome some of that stuff and at least be competitive. I also had Cattell Marte, who wasn't terrible, but he wasn't great. So, yeah, it was. you can still make that up. And this year, especially it was easier to do it, but yeah, it's, it's tough to look back and see that I made the playoffs and was competitive, but just allocating that money a little differently. It could have gone a long way. Did you wind up winning any leagues, Chris? I won one NFC gladiator, which I feel like doesn't really count. Cause it's a no benches. You draft in like November draft.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. I remember you started that draft when we were at Nick Pollock's wedding, which is hilarious.
Speaker 4Yeah. And I, I, well, it's a good place to get fantasy advice. You know, I did win that one and I won a, a home Roto league. I made the playoffs in four out of my five points leagues. The one that I didn't was the Scott White dynasty league, which I just, I've, I've never been able to bring myself to hit a full rebuild cause I don't have the patience for that, but I feel okay about where my team's headed. I got some guys. And then Roto leagues were a real struggle for me this year. And it's, I'm going to spend a lot of time this off season looking into my pitching strategy because that was really where things went sideways for me. And I think part of the problem was I was really invested in kind of boring innings eaters types this year. Framboise Valdez, Sandy Alcantara, Sandy wasn't bad, especially in points leagues, but Roto, he was kind of replaceable for, for long stretches of the season. He ended up with like a close to a four ERA. And so I, I do think I'm going to have to reconsider my pitching strategy. I'm going to do a lot of research this off season to see it. It's gone really poorly the last two years for me, especially. And so one, I don't want to overreact to just having a couple of bad years, but also there might be something I'm missing. And part of it is, I feel like closers have just been, have just bedeviled me. And I've tried to avoid having to pay for them, but I haven't been able to make up for it. And I want to say I'm going to pay up for closer, but then like there were plenty of closers that if you paid up for them this year was a terrible idea. So I, I'm not sure if that's the right way, but I think one thing that I'm going to do is probably stop paying up for like boring veteran types and, you know, try to target true upside. But, I don't want to say that for sure until I see where the big hits and where the big misses are and, and whether, you know, like, does that look like the right strategy this year? Well, certainly camp Schlittler and, and Jacob Mizziarowski had historically great seasons. Was that true of the high upside? Like if you drafted Uri Perez instead, it doesn't look nearly as good. And he was going in the same range and draft. So I don't want to draw any strong, strong conclusions until I can really dig into the data and see where the pitching values are coming from and whether it's more than just a few outlier results. Cause I, what you don't want to do is chase outlier results.
Speaker 3No, I think though, if, if I could offer some insights into this, cause I, I did, I had like a really good year in pitching. I mean the towel, my towel was pitching staff, did well, even though I didn't take one until round six, Jesus Lizardo. And then my TGFBI, I finished second in my league. I finished 15th in the big contest in TGFBI. And that pitching staff was absurd, but you know, I could do the same process next year and not come away with pitching. Yeah. I think, I think what I have learned both with starting pitchers and with closers, and this is especially for deeper roto, leagues like the 15 teamer is recognizing the areas where you have multiple chances and trusting yourself to come through with enough of those chances. If that makes sense. Like for instance, going back to this towel wars team with the closers, the first closer I took with Josh Hader was Josh Hader in round nine. And people were concerned about injuries. It's time. So clearly it wasn't a safe pick, but okay. I knew there was a lot of upside there with Josh Hader. And then I went aggressively on waivers when new closer options would emerge. And I, I picked up Jacob Lats and I had a few other scattered saves from other relievers that I picked up and they didn't really stick, but I ended up being fine basically with those two. I finished pretty high in saves. I don't know, fourth or fifth in a 15 team league. And like I invested very little in closer. You know, and then on the starting pitching side, I think it was the same sort of weight situation in that TGFBI league with Jesus Lizardo. But that's, I really hammered pitching in that range of the draft. And I got like cam Schlittler and I got, uh, uh, trying to remember who else. I can't remember who off the top of my head, but I got, I got a few pitchers like that who ended up having great seasons and I probably didn't even need to get that many. So it was just recognizing the volatility of, of those positions and giving myself extra chances instead of putting it all in one basket, you know, and they, the chances I gave myself happened to work out at this time. It's, it's not going to happen every year. Well, yeah. Like understand that giving yourself more chances gives you a better chance of getting a good outcome, but there's no like guaranteed outcome with an asset that that's volatile. That is that volatile.
Speaker 4Yeah. And, and that, that's what I mean is that it's easy to look at what happened in the most recent season and try to draw conclusions from that. But every, if that worked, this game would be a lot easier. Yeah. Cause you just draft by last year's rankings and that's not ever how it works. And so the worst thing you can do is have a process that you feel good about that you research and then just abandon it because it doesn't work one year. In this case, it's gone. It's gone a little sideways for me two years in a row. And so I'm not necessarily saying I need to told wholeheartedly change my pitching approach, but you know, I, I know for myself, my weakness as a player is in season management. I I'm just a little too conservative when it comes to that kind of stuff. And you can overcome that. But specifically when it comes to closers, I do think part of what I need to do is be a little more aggressive about how I approach the closer position. In drafts, knowing that I'm not as good at making up for it in season as well.
Speaker 1Yeah. That's the exactly the point that I was going to make is that if you're, if you're not really on top of like being aggressive and adding closers or closer candidates, then it might make more sense for you to, you know, get at least one kind of elite tier reliever, maybe even two, just so like you don't have to worry about it, kind of tuck it away type thing. But you know,
Speaker 3you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, right. That's also the thing you might have drafted.
Speaker 4Like a lot of the high end relievers this year were terrible. Andres Munoz had a bad year. Edwin Diaz was a disaster. Yeah. You know, Pete Fairbanks was a little lower down, but he was terrible.
Speaker 3So. And that's why, like whether, whether it was a Jacob Latz or whether it was a Brian Baker or whether it was a Mason Montgomery or whether it was a Louis Varland or I could, I'm sure I could keep going. Those were players. You didn't have to invest any kind of money. You didn't have to invest any kind of draft pick in. and if you got them, they were just as good as the top closers drafted. Yeah. So that's the, the chance of a waiver wire closer, even in a deep league like that performing like a high dollar closer. I'm, I'm not sure there is, there's a greater possibility at that relief pitcher position, a far greater possibility of that happening than in any other position.
Speaker 1I will point out that although maybe, you know, some of those higher end names did not come through. It was actually a great closer season. We had 11 different names with 30 plus saves, which is the most since 2023. It's not like we've waited forever, but typically we have like eight or nine that give us 30 plus this year. 11 back in 2023, we had 12. So it was a pretty good season just when everything was said and done in terms of like elite closers and, and big saves totals this season. Not a guarantee that that will happen again next year, but at least for 2026, that was the case. I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but I wound up playing in 17 leagues total, which is just, there's a lot. A lot of those are all like a handful of them are draft and hold leagues where there's not much in season management. One of them is a score sheet league, which is like completely different, but one's the Scott white dynasty league where I wound up selling off a bunch of pieces as well. I won two leagues. I won NL labor, which is very meaningful. Just like given the history of how long that league has been around. So very, very excited to take that one down. And then the other one that I had was an, an FBC draft champions league that I drafted out at first pitch, Arizona last November. So both of the drafts I won, I actually drafted while I was in Arizona. So something about that desert hair really helped me out with these drafts. Also having Pete Crow Armstrong and Miguel Vargas on that draft back in November last year, that that definitely helped win that with the NL team. I just wanted to point out to your latest example of, Hey, if you're in the middle of the pack by mid season, just, Don't give up. because a lot can change still that like I basically lived in the middle of the pack for most of the season but I had Fernando Tatis Jr. on that team and obviously he went ballistic in the second half and especially in an NL only league that just matters so much more but I mean if you have you know proven stars not everyone's gonna show up but most of the times these proven talents you know come around eventually and so if you're middle of the pack or off to a rough start there's still a lot of time like this is the longest fantasy sport of any of the fantasy sports and there is a lot of time to to make up for you know maybe misfortunes earlier on in the season
Speaker 4like hey Kyle Tucker got really hot right after I was eliminated from the Tout Wars playoffs
Speaker 1yes a little bit too too late there for for Kyle Tucker unfortunately a couple shout outs here as well I gotta mention some some winners in leagues that we played in the Memorial Magazine Auction League that we do. Greg Lathrop has won that league two years in a row and he has five of the past eight championships but we have to find a way to schedule that auction around Greg Lathrop and he will be on live next year so that we can bring him down with us it is much harder to auction live when you are on the air so we have to find a way to do that. We have to find a way to uh dethrone Greg Lathrop who won that league once again shout out to Jeremy Latsky in the Scott White Dynasty League back-to-back years winning the championship there 24 team head-to-head points Dynasty League I mean to do that two years in a row is very impressive is very very impressive so shout out to him I congrats I'm in a
Speaker 3few leagues with Jeremy Latsky and he he showed really well in all of them that's a good player yeah
Speaker 1yeah shout out to him uh congrats to our listener league champions Pedro Ardenas defeated Scott I'm sorry in our team head-to-head points listener league and John Greenstein took down Josh Lloyd the host of Locked On Fantasy Basketball in our 16 team for the people head-to-head categories league so congrats to both of those gentlemen for taking down the listener leagues uh big thank you big big thank you to everybody who supported the podcast and all of our content all season long we really do appreciate it all the kind messages that we're receiving on social media too like really really is meaningful and we appreciate all of it uh the best way to help us out is to subscribe if you want to is those five-star rating and reviews just like load up as many as you possibly can if you listen on Apple podcast or Spotify drop us a five-star rating leave a review about you know your your favorite part of this podcast the the part you enjoy most and our content schedule for the off season basically from now through the end of December two full-length podcasts per week will be live on Monday and Wednesday nights typically 10 11 p.m something like that maybe you will have kind of you know go live earlier in the day but that should be the expectation Monday and Wednesday nights will be live on YouTube the audio podcast will be in your feed Tuesday and Thursday mornings we will also have an FBT Express episode every Wednesday and Friday morning so Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday you will have some kind of content in your feed let's take a quick break winter return some news items then we'll talk some league leaders playoff predictions all that fun stuff we'll do that right after
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Speaker 1Welcome back in fantasy baseball, we have some news items here. Nothing major yet, but this is, you know, right after the season, we do start to learn about, oh, this player was playing through this thing and that thing, and oh, we didn't know about that. But Alex Bregman returned over the weekend, and he ended his year with a bang. We didn't know just based on, you know, having the facial fractures and everything. He went four for four with a double dong for RBI on Sunday. And man, those final numbers, huge second half. He really got things up to an awesome level here. 265.20. 28 homers, 92 runs, 93 RBI, an 819 OPS, hit over 300 with 19 homers and an OPS over a thousand in the second half of the season. So a big, big second half for Alex Bregman, who is healthy, healthy enough and should be in the lineup here in the wildcard series for the Chicago Cubs. Luis Arise, on the other hand, suffered an ankle injury last week. He will not be on the Phillies wildcard roster, unfortunately. And speaking of things that we're learning now after the season, Orioles manager Craig Albernaz said that Gunnar Henderson made adjustments to deal with a wrist injury that he suffered during the season. Henderson said that he had been dealing with the injury for about half the season. So that's kind of the first of the big, we thought maybe something was going on just based on how poorly he was playing, but we are getting confirmation now. But that's also just two years in a row where Gunnar Henderson has kind of blamed his bad season on injuries.
Speaker 4So I, I don't know. And I'm not saying that it's not because of injuries, but it's not like he was good in the first half of the season either.
Speaker 1Yeah, there was no half where you really looked around and you're like, oh, well, Gunnar Henderson was good early in.
Speaker 4He did have eight homers and four steals in April. He was only hitting 218 and you might say, well, that's bad, but he struck out 30% of the time in April as well. So yeah, I remember his launch angle was kind of not very good early on in the season.
Speaker 3Yeah, it seemed like he was too steep there. Yeah. So. I took it. I took it at the time as he was overcompensating for a bad home run season. Yeah. But obviously that narrative fell apart as his entire season did. I don't know. Somebody who was this young and starts out his career as well as Gunnar Henderson did. I mean, multiple years, what, three in a row where he was just great for fantasy. Even if I can't really explain what's gone wrong and maybe it's tied to health, I don't know. So, it supports that theory anyway, this report about his wrist. Even though you can't really pinpoint it though, it's like, you can't really write that guy off entirely. I'm not saying Gunnar Henderson deserves to be a second, third round pick next year, but if he slips much beyond that, I'm probably going to have to buy in.
Speaker 4Yeah, I don't have any kind of overall rankings, but I did publish like a very, very, very rough draft, top 12 and 36 and 48 for outfield and starting pitcher, but top 12 for the other positions. I went with Henderson at nine at shortstop, but I don't really, that is a very weak nine. And if you wanted to make the argument that he should be above Trey Turner, okay. I'm not going to really argue with that. Trey Turner was better this season though, so I.
Speaker 1Who are the other names you have ahead of Gunnar?
Speaker 4Well, Bobby Witt, Ellie De La Cruz, Connor Griffin, C.J. Abrams, Francisco Lindor, Zachary Netto, Kevin McGonigal, Trey Turner. Kevin McGonigal is a tough one to rank because he's eligible at two different positions. He's such a good player. And also for Roto, not yet a great player.
Speaker 1Not super impactful. He's really good in the points league.
Speaker 4But he's so young and so skilled that it just kind of feels like there's going to be a superstar breakout at some point there. And it's just, what does that look like? You know, it's a very Freddie Freeman. Profile to me. I think that's the best comp for him despite playing a different position. And so Freddie Freeman, yeah, it doesn't quite hit the ball is hard so like you know that pre-mvp caliber freddie freeman where he was like a 2025 homer guy but just consistently great batting averages i i think that's the kind of player i think kevin mcgonigal is but look if you wanted to argue that gunner henderson should be ranked above kevin mcgonigal because there's a more impactful upside there for fantasy i can see the case too but i could also see that if you wanted to put chairman pena ahead of gunner henderson after what he's done the last two seasons you
Speaker 3know frank does case for that so frank i agree with your ranking except maybe trey turner because trey turner seems so clearly to be on the decline to me that i'd be worried about another step back
Speaker 4next year i at least barring another step back i at least know what trey turner's good at gunner henderson wasn't really good yeah you know that's kind of the problem with him but i i don't think any lower than 10 really makes sense i don't really think any higher than like seven or eight
Speaker 3makes sense either so i just want to awkwardly correct the record because there's no way it's going to come up organically ronald de cunha did not have 80 runs in rbi this
Speaker 4no i i said it very quietly it was like
Speaker 361 yeah he went 2020 i was right about that but i overstated 115 games or something it was more like 60 60 yeah um yes i'm afraid to say the exit the number but something like that he missed a large chunk of the season yeah
Speaker 1cory seager could require minor offseason surgery for a bone spur in his elbow that he's dealt with for a few months even with that still had a really strong second half andres muñoz was placed in the aisle friday with right knee inflammation down season for him he ended up with 28 saves but a 424 era and a 122 whip josh young suffered a right hand fracture after getting hit by a pitch on friday the rangers wound up not making the playoffs but it is an unfortunate way for the season to end for josh young casey was placed in the aisle over the weekend with an ankle sprain he will miss the nl wild card series has been pretty bad since getting traded over to the padres i believe he's entering free agency as well so i think his free agency will be pretty interesting casey mines corbin burns went on the aisle over the weekend as well with a shoulder injury he said his shoulder was simply tired from all the uh rehab throwing he had to do to just try and make it back here and make an impact in september i'm gonna guess he's not opting out of his contract uh no no no no what does he have left like three years is it oh it's gotta be more
Speaker 4it wasn't like six 200 million when he signed or something like
Speaker 1that it's like five for 150 or something i could i could be way off i have no
Speaker 4idea let's see he's got four years oh
Speaker 1yeah six for 210
Speaker 4oh wow
Speaker 1yeah yeah he's got
Speaker 4four years and whoa i got a lot of money left 135 million yeah he's not off now yeah
Speaker 1kyle bradish will undergo surgery too today to repair a sports hernia he was dealing with it during his final three starts of the season he was pretty bad for more than three starts of the season so can't entirely blame that uh his his rough performance on the hernia jordan westberg will begin a hitting progression this week he underwent tommy john surgery in may but has a good chance to begin 2027 without limitations kirby yates is retiring from baseball nice little career there for him and no surprise but dan wilson will not be returning as the mariners manager here in 2027 let's jump around to some league leaders for this past season and see if we just have any uh takeaways overall and your batting average leader your batting champs jordan alvarez with a 316 mark in the american league and gabriel moreno up at 311 in the nl alvarez missed the al triple crown by one homer and seven rbi to go along with that massive batting average moreno just edged out luis arise was like by decimal points in the national league we had seven qualified hitters at 300 or better this season that included tj rumfield who led the national league in obp with a 390 mark he is the first rookie to lead his league in obp in 100 years
Speaker 4that's wow yeah what a weird stat 390 obp yeah i should
Speaker 3probably give him a hat tip to um waver wire pick up in that on that tower's team in obp league tj i mean
Speaker 1390 obp that's
Speaker 4pretty awesome if we had done a little uh a little feud on the nl obp leaders how many guesses do you think it would have taken us for us for us to get a top four of tj rumfield jake bowers james wood and gabriel moreno leading the nl and obp
Speaker 1probably a full podcast of just us discussing that to figure it out the obp leaderboards
Speaker 4are wild wilson contreras sixth mike trout seventh and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and tenth and eighth would not have guessed any of those
Speaker 3three yeah um i do want to give gabriel moreno some props here i didn't know he won the batting title but i knew he was obviously having a career season and part of it was the power production being better continuing a trend that began late last year of him elevating the ball better and i was hopeful that would happen i had gabriel moreno as a breakout candidate for this year it did happen and he basically performed like william contreras because it happened yeah i would say the biggest difference between the two now that we have a year plus of moreno doing this it feels pretty solid the biggest difference between the two of them now is that moreno this was the first time he played even 120 games in a year it's the second time he played even 100 games in a year so can't trust him to stay healthy like you can contreras um but he's i think he's my where do i have him ranked for next year since i've already done catcher seventh but great gabriel moreno is my seventh ranked catcher for next year you hate gabriel moreno oh do i i have him fifth i have him sixth in points leagues him fifth hmm so do you have him ahead of avon
Speaker 4herrera yeah i have him ahead of herrera
Speaker 3and dengler okay i have him behind those two yep yeah
Speaker 1i mean i could i could see both i had of dengler in points but yeah uh so as i mentioned we had seven qualified hitters at 300 or better this year last year we also had seven the year before that we also had seven so it feels like we've just kind of settled into this you know probably around seven hitters that you could expect to hit 300 or better that number was nine back in 2023 11 in 2024 uh excuse me 11 in 2022 and 14 in 2021 so obviously that number continues to trend down but if you watch baseball you're already knew that the home run champs the home run leaders co-leaders kyle schwarber and pico armstrong tied for the league lead at 45 home runs our loaded lowest home run champs since nelson cruz had 40 back in 2014 so we didn't have the gaudy high-end numbers you know previous years last year we had cow raleigh with the 60 we had some massive judge seasons mixed in there as well uh we had four different hitters with 50 plus home runs last year but where this season did out is we had eight hitters with 40 or more home runs that was the most since 2019 when we had 11 so
Speaker 3oh 2019 was the year too the juice ball year so even alex bregman was hitting 40 home runs then
Speaker 1we didn't get like the gaudy gaudy high-end numbers but the number of players that actually hit 40 or more was was pretty good this season i
Speaker 4i very nearly screwed this question up at trivia today and it would have been a real disaster for for my standing on the trivia squad it was who who tied for the major league lead home runs i knew kyle schwarber had 45 the clue the music clue was if it makes you happy by cheryl crow and i i thought it was junior caminero i'm gonna be honest i thought he had gotten there
Speaker 1imagine they just played scott's caminero song in the bar that would have been that would have that would have really thrown
Speaker 4occasionally they'll do a distraction song but now i i did get p car armstrong and kyle schwarber
Speaker 3thankfully so i want to comment on 2014 that this is the lowest home run champ since nelson cruz hit 40 in 2014 i thought this was the case i went back and checked 2014 was like the ultimate dry year for home runs in in my time following baseball only 11 players hit even 30 home runs wow that year lucas duda being one of them lucas
Speaker 1duda how about that you will find a theme here by the way the runs leader and the rbi leader also both the lowest since 2014 and i think that goes back to early round producers not producing like we expected them to so
Speaker 4because 2014 is since i started this job in 2011 2014 is the the worst home run season outside of 2020 it doesn't count uh there were 1400 more home runs hit around or 1300 more home runs hit around baseball this year
Speaker 3yeah like frank said there were a lot of 40 guys it wasn't again 2014 there were only 11 30 homer guys it was just yeah
Speaker 1not not at the high end if you look at the number of players that had 30 plus home runs this year it was 22 in 2025 that number was 33 and then in 2024 it was 23 so to me 2025 kind of looks like the outlier in recent years you know having around 20 25 hitters that produce 30 plus home runs and we also had a few that just missed it this year there were uh six different players that either had 28 or 29 home runs so it's look 30 just an arbitrary number that, you know, whatever, did you hit 30 home runs that we latch onto? But overall, it was still a pretty solid home run season all around. The run scored leader was Pete Crow Armstrong with 119. Again, our lowest run scored leader since Mike Trout in 2014. And I tweeted this number out. The second player in runs scored this year was Randy Rosarena. He led the American League with 113 runs scored. And it's incredible when you factor in the Mariners scored, they were 28th in runs as a team. They scored just 664 runs. Randy Rosarena had 113 of those. He accounted for 17% of the runs scored by the Mariners this season, which is just insane.
Speaker 4If Pete Crow Armstrong had scored 17% of the Cubs runs this year, he would have scored 146.
Speaker 1That would have been a lot. That's a lot. So just massive, massive contract year here for Randy Rosarena. We did have. 12 players with 100-plus runs scored. And that was the same number in both 2025 and 2024. So that seems pretty spot-on. 12 players with 100-plus runs scored each of the past three years. Your RBI leader was Alec Burleson, who led the league with 116. Pete Alonzo was second at 113. Sal Stewart, my man, finished third with 111 RBI. You guessed it, Burleson's 116. The lowest RBI leader since 2014. When Adrian Gonzalez also had 111. And I mentioned it already, but I just think the lack of, you know, Judge being healthy and just really the big high-end outcomes from the early round producers are why we didn't see these huge run in RBI totals this season.
Speaker 4Yeah, I mean, I think it's also fair to say that part of it is a lot of teams are putting their best hitters higher in the lineup. And, you know, that's a longer run trend, so I don't think that just explains 2026. But, you know, if P.K. Armstrong's hitting third all season, he might drive in 125 runs. Yeah. You know, and it just so happens that he hit leadoff instead. Or most of the season, he hit leadoff and then like sixth when he wasn't hitting leadoff, right?
Speaker 1And we've even seen some more slugger types moved up to leadoff in recent years. Kyle Schwarber, Ben Rice down the stretch was basically the leadoff man against righties for the Yankees, so.
Speaker 3To your point, Frank, there were more runs scored this year than last year, even with there being more more home runs being hit. Or was it just more 30-homer guys?
Speaker 1There were there were fewer home runs overall.
Speaker 3There was about the same number of home runs each year. Yeah, I think the home runs
Speaker 1total went down a little bit overall, but it wasn't.
Speaker 3But more runs were actually scored this year than last year. So it's not like offense was down on the whole. It was just distributed differently. As we've pointed out in various different ways. But yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point about the real RBI hogs being sidelined for much of the year.
Speaker 4I will also just point out with regards to Alec Burleson. I don't think anybody needs me to say that he's probably not going to repeat this season ever again. He had a 731 OPS with the bases empty, despite a 228 ISO. He actually hit for a lot of power with the bases empty. With men on base, it was an 890 OPS, despite a 163 ISO. His BABIP with men on base was 375. And he hit for a lot of power with the bases empty. His BABIP with men in scoring position was 423.
Speaker 1I wonder, it would be interesting to look at his bat speed with runners on base versus off. Because I feel like he probably just shortens up to put the ball in play with runners on base.
Speaker 4And there is a lot of evidence, historically, that really high contact hitters, and he's not a Luis Arias or anything, but high contact guys with a little bit of pop do actually tend to perform better in those men on base slash men in scoring positions. Like, I think maybe the most underrated thing about Tony Gwynn is he's actually one of the, like, statistically best clutch hitters of all time. However you want to define that, runners in scoring position, high leverage situations, his numbers are, like, off the charts good. And Luis Arias has put up very good. It kind of makes sense, right? Like, in those high leverage situations, pitchers are hunting strikeouts more than anything. And so the ability to avoid strikeouts, can really matter. But I still think Alec Burleson is unlikely to have a 200-point difference between men on base, or men in scoring position, and the base is empty.
Speaker 3Oh, yes. It's unlikely he's going to have another 116 RBI season. I think you would say that for most players who have 116 RBI season, except for, you know, the Hall of Fame-bound types. But I don't know if he could do that. He couldn't hit more home runs in a season than the 26 he had this year. He actually underperformed his expected slug by about 50 points. Hit the ball very hard. Hurts that he struggles against lefties. Like, his splits against lefties and his splits at home are pretty bad. So, it may be that he'll continue to underperform the data because of that, Alec Burleson. But I do think it's. plausible that he'll be a 30-homer guy one of these years after finishing with 26 this year.
Speaker 1And we said this for years about Josh Naylor. It's your ability to put the ball in play and avoid strikeouts when you have runners on base. It's just naturally going to lead to more RBI for a player like that. And that was kind of my argument for Burleson coming into the season was that I just felt like it was like a Josh Naylor-esque skill set minus the 30 steals. Speaking of steals, that's right. Josh Naylor did it again! 30 steals! Two years! Two years in a row! He didn't do a single other thing. But he did give you 30 steals this past season. Your steal leader was good old Nassim Nunez, who led baseball with 49 steals. That is the same number as Jose Caballero did last year. Chandler Simpson was second with 46 steals. We had five players with 40 or more steals, just three last season. But we only had 16 with 30-plus steals. 21 last year, 24 the year before. I don't exactly love that trend. And one of the season-long trends that I have for later on is that since the new rules that kind of promoted steals, we had the huge blow-up. The next year, it went up a little bit. And then the next two years, it's actually dropped. Not a crazy amount, but it's kind of trending back down. So I just wonder if teams are just being smarter about throwing runners out, or teams are being more selective on when they're sending guys and things like that.
Speaker 4Well, you know, Simpson only ended up with 46 in what was, I mean, only 46 was the second-highest total in baseball. But, you know, given his speed and the fact that he stole 44 in 109 games the previous year and the fact that he was better this year, I think that's a mildly disappointing number. And I do think there's probably something to the idea that the Rays just don't really think it's worth the trouble for him to run as much as he could. The fact that he was, you know, 46 of 14, that's okay. That's above the kind of 77-ish percent break-even point. But it's not great for a guy who's supposed to be an elite base runner. So I think Simpson's actually weirdly one of the more fascinating players for 2027 just because I think depending on how your first three or four rounds go, you can justify him as a top 100 pick. Or you can justify just completely taking him off your board. You know? Like, if you take Kyle Schwarber in the second round, you might need to take Chandler Simpson fairly early on. But if you had Bobby Witt and Trey Turner in your first four picks, there's no way you can draft Chandler Simpson because he's just really good batting average, really good steals, and nothing else.
Speaker 1Yeah. And we will talk about him on the FBT Express episode. We have the five of the toughest players to rank as of now heading into next season. Let's take our final break. When we return, we'll move over to the league. We'll talk about the league leaders on the pitching side of things. And we'll get to that right after this. Baseball has always been a game of inches. Now it's also a game of seconds. T-Mobile and MLB have teamed up to bring ABS Challenge to all 29 ballparks across the U.S. This isn't a minor upgrade. This is the most significant new technology in the history of the sport. And it's powered by T-Mobile. With every pitch thrown, ABS Challenge uses real-time precision to verify the call, giving them the support they need. No delays, no guesswork, just accuracy at the speed the game demands. Thanks to ABS Challenge, T-Mobile is helping power the moments that define the game. When performance and reliability are non-negotiable, MLB turns to T-Mobile. That's not a coincidence. That's what happens when the most innovative network in the country powers the most data-driven sport in the world. T-Mobile powers MLB's most ambitious technology. And America's best network powers your connection to baseball. Home or away, every pitch, every game, every day. T-Mobile, it's better over here. Major League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Major League Baseball. Visit MLB.com. T-Mobile, best mobile network in the U.S. According to Ookla Speed Test, based on analysis by Ookla of Speed Test Intelligence data first half 2026. Ookla trademarks used under license and reprinted with permission.
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Speaker 1Welcome back in fantasy baseball. Today, we're taking a look at the league leaders from the 2026 season. On the pitching side, your wins leader, it was co-leaders. Sonny Gray and Christopher Sanchez, they were tied for 18 wins. Even more impressive for Sonny Gray when you consider he made just 29 starts compared to 33 for Christopher Sanchez. 18 wins and 29 starts, that is pretty great stuff there for Sonny Gray. We know pitchers don't have much say over whether or not they get a win, but he went deep into his starts consistently. He had a sub-3 ERA, just a really, really good season all around for Sonny Gray. Credit to him. We had 8 pitchers with 15 or more wins. That number was 7. Last year, it was 11 in 2024. It was 8 in 2023. It was 14 in 2022. So, the number of players with 15 or more wins is kind of all over the place. I think that's probably just to be expected for a kind of fluky stat like wins.
Speaker 4100%. Yeah. Wins kind of defy much analysis.
Speaker 1Yeah, fair enough. Strikeouts, your leader was Jacob Mizurowski with 252. Gavin Williams, a very close second with 240. 48 strikeouts. We had 13 pitchers with 200-plus strikeouts. It was 12 last year. It was 11 in 2024. 17 back in 2023, 11 in 2022. So, 2023, a bit of an outlier there, but basically between 11 and 13 pitchers with 200-plus strikeouts has been the expectation over the past five years. It seems pretty chalk. Is there any analysis on strikeouts leader or strikeout trends?
Speaker 3I mean, I guess what this and wins, I mean, I guess what this and wins, together tell me, because it's been, you say there's been some up and downs over the last five years. Okay, but it's been the same range. That would suggest to me pitcher usage is holding pretty steady. Yeah. After a big change not so long ago, it's kind of leveled out. And so that makes things a little bit more predictable. I mean, it remains. It's super volatile at pitcher. It's just, you know, there are a lot of things that can go very right or very wrong there, as we talked about at the top of the show. But at least that one aspect, it kind of goes back to your point, Chris, about not paying up for boring innings eaters. Like, they may not have as distinct an advantage as it seemed like they were trending toward having a few years back.
Speaker 4Well, and also, if something goes wrong for Jacob Mizorowski, you're still going to get elite production when he's right. You know, presumably. Obviously, you can't say that for sure. Take Max Freed, who had a good season when he was out there, but it was a pretty unimpactful season just because when he's out there, you get great ERA, great whip. You don't really get any strike. Like, he's not making up any ground in strikeouts. So that's part of the thought process. I did want to highlight Chase Burns was among the eight 15-win pitchers this year. Yeah. And Foster Griffin was as well, and Nick Martinez. And so, you know, the thought process would be, well, just take good pitchers on good teams and you'll get wins. And so, well, Chase Burns is good. Foster Griffin and Nick Martinez, I mean, they had good seasons.
Speaker 1Foster Griffin also started the year on the Nationals. And the Nationals outperformed expectations,
Speaker 4but they were in a great team. And nobody thought they were going to win. Nobody thought the Rays were going to win, you know, 97 games or 95 games, whatever it ended up being. And so it's, and the Reds were really bad. And Chase Burns doesn't pitch deep in a game. So that's why I say wins kind of defy analysis. It's not, it's not that there's nothing there, but the error bars are extremely wide.
Speaker 3I wish those last few starts for Burns where they had him just work a couple innings, they had made, they had piggybacked him with some, someone else instead of having a Brandon Williamson following Burns, following Williamson, maybe he could have gotten to 18 wins. That would have been, that would have been really cool.
Speaker 1Honestly, if he didn't get limited there, he might've, he might've approached that number. He might've got there, right. If he just didn't get limited in September.
Speaker 3So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4He's an easy top for next season, right? Top what? Top 10 SP for next season, right? Chase Burns. 10 to 12. Yeah. Somewhere around. No, no limitations. The skillset is incredibly strong. Yeah. We don't have the track record. Of him throwing 180 innings. But as I'm saying, well, that's maybe that's what I wanted to get back to.
Speaker 3Cause I, I kind of started to buy into, I don't know how much Nick Pollock himself subscribes to this, but he was the first one that I heard put it quite this way that like, he doesn't even care. He doesn't, when, when drafting for fantasy, when ranking pitchers for the upcoming season, he does not factor in injury risk at all. And that takes it. A little further than I want to go, but I'm mostly there. And I mostly was coming into this year. I mean, max, the max freed example, the main reason you would have ranked them among the top 10 pitchers is because, well, you can trust he's, he's always going to go out there 170 plus innings. And then of course he doesn't. And, and that like no pitcher is safe, really. Some are a little safer than others maybe, but you can't think of any of them as safe.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think that's fair. Your ERA leader was Jacob Miziorowski. No surprise at 1.80. Cam Schlittler was second at 1.95. The last time we had two qualified starting pitchers with an ERA below two was 2018 with Jacob DeGrom and Blake Snell that season. And some other numbers here on ERA. We had 11 qualified starting pitchers with an ERA below three. Last year we had 12. The year before that it was nine. And then in 2023 it was just five and then in 2022 we had 19. So that was, yeah, runs were, runs scored were down. And, you know, 2022 was kind of like a dead ball year. So I think that's why the ERA numbers were so great in 2022 in particular. But yeah, I mean, the past two seasons at least have been pretty consistent in terms of like 11 or 12 qualified pitchers with an ERA below three. Trying to figure out exactly who those are going to be. Is a lot more difficult task, but that's typically the number we've wound up with the past couple of seasons. Your whip leader also, Jacob Miziorowski. He is awesome. He led with a 0.80 whip. Yamamoto was second at 0.87. We had five qualified starters with a whip under one. It was six last year. It was four in 2024. So that's another number where it feels like we're assuming the environment doesn't change, which you never know, like what batch of baseballs we're going to get. It's been pretty consistent the past three years. Four to six SP with a whip under one. So whip and ERA, just in terms of the high end, it feels like it's kind of settled in nicely the past couple of years.
Speaker 3Yeah. And we're thankful for it. Doesn't mean you know exactly who to target.
Speaker 1Yeah, it goes back to that. Yeah, the numbers that we wind up with seem pretty consistent. But yeah, just trying to figure out who exactly is going to do that is a different question. I mean, Yamamoto.
Speaker 3Yamamoto and Sale were two of the five this year. Rasmussen was probably a reasonable prediction as well. So it was really just Mizorowski and Schlittler. And I think Schlittler, I don't think that would have shocked anybody. Mizorowski is pretty surprising, but of course, the upside I don't think was lost on anyone. He just didn't seem like, well, I mean, he didn't really seem like he was going to be a guy who put nobody on base ever because he struggled with walks throughout his minor league career and his rookie season. So I guess that's the most surprising of the five.
Speaker 1I would have said the same thing for Cam, right? Like he had walk issues in the minors.
Speaker 4Not as bad as the Miz, but you
Speaker 1know, he wasn't known for control.
Speaker 4I mean, part of what's so tough about this whole conversation is you could not reasonably expect either Jacob Mizorowski or Cam Schlittler to become what they did. That's not to say nobody did expect that, but it was not reasonable to expect that given how dominant they were and how quickly it happened. Like these were pretty good pitchers last year who were pretty good prospects, but neither of these guys were, you know, a top five or top ten overall prospect. I don't think these guys were even top five or top ten starting pitcher prospects.
Speaker 1The Miz was a pretty high-ranked pitching prospect. Cam Schlittler definitely wasn't.
Speaker 3Yeah. And Schlittler, but obviously Schlittler put a very good first foot forward. I think it was widely accepted that Schlittler had ace upside. I think he had ace upside. Based on how he was drafted.
Speaker 4Once we saw it, but Mizorowski, this is throughout 2020, not a real season. This is the third best whip in at least the last 50 years.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean,.80.
Speaker 4I didn't realize it was that. Like Pedro Martinez in 2000 was.74. That's in 2000. For those of you who are younger, doing that in 2000, that's the greatest pitching season of all time. Nobody's ever going to beat it.
Speaker 1It's smack in the middle. Steroid era Justin
Speaker 4Verlander in 2019, I believe that's the year he won. No, that's not the year he won MVP. But.80 whip. And then Jacob Mazurowski in 2026,.80. That is wild.
Speaker 3I was putting together my fantasy baseball awards earlier for this year. And when I was picking out, let me see if I could find it. When I was picking out most valuable pitcher, I was deciding between Mazurowski and Cam Schlittler. But ultimately, it was whip. Because the difference there, okay, Cam Schlittler, a.92 whip. That's amazing. It's really good. But the difference between.92 and.80, they both just sound amazing. But okay, what would the difference between 1.02 and 1.14 be to me? It'd be pretty huge. So like that, as good. As good as Schlittler was with whip, as good of a whip as.92 is. Like.80 is just historic, as you say, Chris.
Speaker 4We also should not overlook Yoshinobu Yamamoto at.87. Yeah. And Drew Rasmussen at.91. Both just had bonkers seasons.
Speaker 1Your saves leader, again, this one was tied. Kate Smith and Brian Baker led the way with 41 saves each. Those were the only two with 40 or more saves. Last year, we had two. The year before that, we had. So you get the picture with 40-plus saves. This year, we did have 11 with 30 or more saves. That number was 8 in both 2025 and 2024. We did have 12 with 30 or more saves back in 2023. But overall, this was a very, very strong year for high-end closers. Some way, somehow. Not technically the ones that were drafted. Not the guys who were drafted. But the guys who broke out. Like just the way it ended up was it was a strong season.
Speaker 4Because I'm looking at the top 15. Closers drafted. And it was kind of a nightmare. Mason Miller, Kate Smith were great. David Bednar was good. Yohan Duran was good. He was very good. Very good, yeah. Why is he running so low? I guess he only threw 59 innings, but still. After that, boy. Aroldis Chapman was very good, but only 51 innings. Devin Williams was No. 6. Edwin Diaz was No. 2. Andres Munoz was No. 4. Daniel Palencia. Ryan Helsley. Jeff Hoffman. It was. Not a
Speaker 1great year in terms of ADP. In terms of profitability where you drafted them. But if you picked up some of these guys. I mean, just Baker and Lads and Louis Varlin. Just awesome, awesome seasons for those guys. I have a bunch of season-long trends as well. Just season-wide trends around baseball. I looked into league-wide batting average and BABIP. I mean, it's mostly just kind of settled in the past couple of years. So I don't think there's anything too much to take away there. I mentioned the conversation with steals earlier. Again, 2023, we had 3,503 steals. That was when they implemented the new rules. It went up to 3,617, but that has gone down each of the past two years. I mean, do you guys have any reason, any speculation for why the overall steals number is going down? Or is it just kind of a weird, fluky thing?
Speaker 3The drop. So I'll keep reading off the numbers. First year, 3,503. Second year, 3,617. Third year, 3,440. 3,289 this year. Like, that's a. What was it in 22 before the rules were instituted?
Speaker 1It was around like 2,400.
Speaker 3Yeah. Okay. So we're still way up from there, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Part of me is like blaming on Terry Francona because I know he cost the Reds specifically a lot of steals. But that wasn't a first-time thing this year. The Reds used to steal a ton of bases under David Bell.
Speaker 4It's actually all Juan Soto's fault.
Speaker 3It's all Juan Soto's fault. The 40. How big was the drop there?
Speaker 436 to 8, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a 6% drop from 2023. It's like a 9% drop from 2024. That's not nothing, but. If it drops down to around 3,000 next year, then it's like. Sure. And we haven't, you know, I think we thought that the impact of this might be some like 70 steal seasons. And was Acuna's before the rule change or after?
Speaker 3Yeah, 2023, it was the first year.
Speaker 4Okay, so it was the first year.
Speaker 1And then we had Otani, the 50. Yeah. That's something I thought about. It's like Otani not running anymore is actually kind of a big deal too.
Speaker 3Otani, Acuna. Well, yeah, but Otani, I guess, only stole like 20, 22 bases last year, I think. So that drop-off happened the year before. I was going to say, it's just between Otani and Soto. I don't know how much the difference is made up there. I mean, yeah. Getting like halfway there.
Speaker 4Well, yeah. Well, I mean, you just look at 2024 to now, just that was the Otani 50 steal season. Yeah. I mean, that's not nothing.
Speaker 1I think that was the Ellie season too, right? With like. Yeah, he got close to 60. Yeah, that year, 60, close to 63, something like that.
Speaker 3Hunter Henderson stole a lot fewer bases this year. Yeah. But it's Soto and it's Henderson.
Speaker 4I'm not saying there's nothing there, but it doesn't really change how I view the stolen base category. All that. Not much.
Speaker 3Yeah, I don't think so. I need to dig into it more. Like, I want to know how many 20 steal guys there were this year versus last year.
Speaker 4I would also guess that like one thing that's happening that I'm not sure we expected is there are still a lot of high-end steals guys who don't really matter for fantasy otherwise. And it's, you know, this is something I think we talk about occasionally. With the changes to how closers are used, where there are just a lot more wasted closers, wasted saves in this era than there were 10 years ago, let's say. There's a lot more saves that just nobody has on their roster. Who was it? The Diamondbacks, Cubs. Someone had 15 players get a save this year. It was the MLB record. Do you guys remember which team it was?
Speaker 1Was that this year or last year? It was this year. 15. I don't, yeah. Well, yeah, they had Paul Seawald and then.
Speaker 4Yeah, some team had 15 different players get a save. And like most of those saves were just nothing for fantasy. They basically didn't happen because they weren't on anyone's rosters. And so, you know, that's something that is, I think, happening a little bit with stolen bases. Where like, if you hadn't seen Nunez on your team, it was just because. Because you needed steals. He really didn't do anything else. There was a stretch where his batting
Speaker 3average was okay, but. I don't feel like it's as bad as it used to be, though. I feel like that problem was worse before the big increase in steals. I'm not saying those guys don't exist anymore.
Speaker 4There's only like three of them in the top 10 of steals. Because I think Estuario Ruiz, as much as we tried to make that happen occasionally, Jose Caballero and Nassim Nunez were really the only empty steals guys. And even Caballero at least had 14 homers.
Speaker 1Yeah. And Taylor Simpson. I mean, he is the ultimate like empty steals guy.
Speaker 3At least he gives you batting average, too. He's kind of Juan Pierre-like. Okay, so it was 45 with 20 steals this year versus 46 last year. And it was about 50 in 2024 and 2023. Back in 2022, before the big increase in steals, it was just 24. So it's still. Oh, yeah. It's still like way more than it used to be. 45 versus 50. Okay, there's a little bit of a drop off there, but it's still way better in terms of where it used to be.
Speaker 1And the scarcity remains, the hitting scarcity remains at batting average. And I think home runs. I think finding high-end home runs and high-end batting average is still harder to do than finding high-end steals in fantasy. Speaking of home runs, the home run to fly ball ratio has basically settled. In this nice range the past three years. Again, anyone at baseball listening to this, please do not change the baseball. We would really appreciate that. On the pitching side of things, league-wide ERA and WIP, you know, pretty normal the past, like normalized the past three seasons. That's in conjunction with like, you know, having a consistent baseball, consistent home run to fly ball rates and everything like that. The one thing that stood out, we had the highest walks per nine and highest walk percentage in a full season since 2009. And I have to just imagine that's like, ABS is to blame for that.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's something I would want to look into a little more closely because the number of changed calls with ABS is relatively low. But a 0.5 percentage point jump in walk rate from one season to the next is pretty significant. So it's weird that there was basically no impact on the strikeout rate. It was all the walk rate. Yeah. But I do think there's something to just the strike zone being called a little different. And that's the impact of that is going to hit different players in different ways. But it's probably not nothing. Yeah. I mean, that was what you saw when they were experimenting with the ABS systems in the minors. Remember, they used a ton of different types, you know, different dimensions of the different places where the ball passes the plate. And the primary. The primary result was walk rates went way up. So that's that is something if they go with a full ABS rather than just a challenge system. I think you would expect walk rates to trend up again.
Speaker 1If you look at innings in baseball this year, we had three with 200 plus. That is the same number as last year. It was four in 2024. So that number is not going up. The number of guys with 200 plus innings. If you look at 180 or more innings this year, we had 13 last year, 21 the year before that it was 21. And if I research this correctly, 13 pitchers with 180 plus innings is the lowest number in a full season in MLB history. So we know that innings are trending down, but I mean, even just at like the 180 level, it's becoming incredibly scarce. So just try and find 150 good innings from a really good pitcher.
Speaker 4Yeah, I mean, because you also just have 150 good innings is just more impactful. So in a world where nobody throws 220 innings. Yeah, the denominator is just smaller. So yeah, so that those 150 innings just matter more for your team because you're getting fewer overall innings.
Speaker 1Yep. All right, let's wrap up here. Some playoff predictions. Don't spend too much time on this, but in the AL the Rays and Guardians have the buy in the wildcard around the Astros host the White Sox. The Yankees host the Red Sox and in the NL, the Brewers and Dodgers have the buy in the wildcard around the Braves. Host the Phillies and the Padres host the Cubs. I will. I don't know if you guys have wildcard predictions or just a World Series prediction. I made both. But if you if you series by series, what do we got? What do we got?
Speaker 4I kind of default to whoever has the better pitching and. Boy, Braves Phillies is tough. I think the Phillies have the stronger pitching overall top to bottom. The Braves had the more. I mean, because the Braves have one great pitcher.
Speaker 3And but the Phillies have three.
Speaker 4Yeah. So I think well, two in like a quarter. Lozardo can give them some length.
Speaker 3Yeah, they're calling him just an opener for game one after he pitched an inning Sunday. So, you know, he's probably not going to take on a typical starters workload.
Speaker 1I think it's just like one to two innings. And then they said Andrew Painter is going to follow him.
Speaker 3So that is kind of that's pretty common anyway in the playoffs. Unless you've got a high end pitcher who's just cruising it. And you get a lot of early hooks in the playoffs.
Speaker 4I would lean towards the Phillies. They also just kind of have I don't know how much this matters, but they do seem to tend to play above their talent level in the playoffs. They've had a lot of success there, even though they've fallen short ultimately. So I just think I would give the Phillies the edge. But I think the Braves are the more talented team top to bottom.
Speaker 3I actually don't think the Braves are the more talented team top to bottom. I think I think they're playing with house money and have been. And since they got off to that hot start this year, I didn't pick them to make the playoffs or win the division. And I still look compare the Phillies roster to theirs. I mean, a lot of it is the starting rotation that sets the Phillies apart. But I don't think there's a huge difference in lineup quality. And like the Braves finished with a high team ERA. It's a lot of fake stuff like Marty Perez and Bryce Elder having an ERA below four. And Tyler Malley's ERA below two. Yeah, like a lot. Pitchers I don't really believe in contributed to that. So I guess credit to Jeremy Hefner. But I don't I don't know that that's going to carry them in a playoff series.
Speaker 4Yes, I'll give Phillies the edge there. White Sox Astros. Dude, I don't know. I think neither of these teams is any good at all. I'll go with the White Sox for the vibes. I want to see Mutataka Murakami celebrating more. Oh, that was an incredible postgame interview after they clinched it.
Speaker 1One of the best champagne showers I've ever seen.
Speaker 4He just. Seems like a delightful dude. So I'll give the White Sox the edge there just because like nobody wants to see this version of the Astros. Unless Jordan Alvarez wants to go like Carlos Beltran mode and like have an all-timer postseason, which he's totally capable of.
Speaker 1If I put on my boomer hat, I think I would say the Astros have the World Series pedigree and all that stuff. So how many of those guys were around? Altuve? Was Peña
Speaker 4even around for that?
Speaker 1I don't know. I think Peña was on. Yeah, Peña was on the team where they beat the Phillies. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Peña was on that team. Alvarez was on that team. So some of those guys, like, yeah, it's not like we don't have the core still. For the wild card, I have the Braves over the Phillies. I think the Braves line up top to bottom is just and the Phillies line up in September was absolutely atrocious. And their bullpen has kind of. No, the Phillies kind of have the
Speaker 4Phillies kind of have two good hitters right now. It's it's pretty rough.
Speaker 1I have the Astros over the White Sox. I think the other two series to me. Those feel like more. More of coin flips like the Yankees, Red Sox and Padres Cubs. I think I think it's a complete coin flip between those two. I'll go Yankees and Padres, but I really don't know between those two.
Speaker 4I'll go Yankees, Padres, Yankees over Red Sox just because I think they match up like every starting pitcher matchup is on is on the Yankees side. It's Schlittler versus
Speaker 1Schlittler versus totally freed versus Sonny Gray and Garrett Cole versus Rangers Suarez.
Speaker 4Yeah, I think it's not huge edges. I think Schlittler versus totally might be the biggest one, but I think you give the Yankees the edge across the board. Rodon could pitch eight really good innings and relief in this series. So that's that Yankees line. It was pretty bad in the second half. I think there were 14th in the in the AL and WRC plus in the second half.
Speaker 1They're just bad without judgment. Yeah, and that's what I get. That's up in the air. We don't even know if judges going to be on the roster. I still don't know. But he he took batting practice on the field on Monday, so I have no idea.
Speaker 4Far be it for me to but he like, is he really going to be playing right field after just getting some batting practice?
Speaker 1But you could make the argument for him to DH against against lefties because they're not going to play Luis Garcia. But then you need Goldschmidt in there, too. Yeah, no, it's just like a hitter situation. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Scott Wildcards. My rice catch.
Speaker 4That would be wild.
Speaker 3Break it out in the playoffs. Yeah, no downside to that whatsoever. I mean, I kind of hate making playoffs for short series. Best of the best of this best of the best of three series. Yeah, it just feels like a role. It's a crapshoot, but playoffs anyway. But the shorter the series gets, the worse it gets. Yeah, I mean, I think the Yankees are the better team, so I'll take them over. The Red Sox. I'll take the Phillies over the Braves. I'll take the. I think I'll take the Cubs over the Padres, though. Their pitching seems pretty weak. I know. I'm a son of the Padres. I know they've been getting away with it, but.
Speaker 1And just like their bullpen is so awesome. If you just get like five or five good innings from Michael King, just kind of let the relievers close it out.
Speaker 4The Cubs just don't have good pitching at all. Like not like because I think the Padres don't have good starting pitching either. I honestly I might take the Cubs. Right. Rotation over the Padres rotation.
Speaker 3The Cubs finished a distant first and run scored because the Nationals fell off a little bit. Yeah. So. The lineup is good.
Speaker 1Their defense is top notch, too.
Speaker 3But
Speaker 1is there a hitting
Speaker 3going to scrape out enough against? I don't know. Like that. That to me seems like the series with. Well, I guess Phillies over Braves is an upset, so I can't say the best chance for an upset would be Padres over Cubs. But I think I think there are. I think the two. In L Series have a lot more upset potential. Let's just put it that way, but I'll go ahead and say the Cubs, because I think they're just a
Speaker 1better team and World Series pick. My preseason prediction was Dodgers over the Mariners, so one of those teams will not be in the World Series, but I'm going pretty chalk. Look, the Dodgers are the they're the top of the mountain. They're the kings of baseball until proven otherwise. And so I will go Dodgers over Rays in the World Series.
Speaker 4I mean, it just feels so wide, like more wide open going into the postseason than I can ever remember. I think the American
Speaker 1League is wide open. I think the NL really comes out to like the Dodgers versus Brewers.
Speaker 3But
Speaker 4well, yeah, I think it'll be annoying
Speaker 3if an AL team wins the World Series, just like the Guardians have a bye. What was their winning percentage? 520. Did they get to 500?
Speaker 1The Yankees finished with a better record than anybody on the other side of the AL bracket, which is just. Yeah, it's. Um.
Speaker 4I mean, look, the Dodgers, the best team, they're they're super vulnerable, though, but a high end talent tends to win out in the postseason, so.
Speaker 1Scooble, Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Glass now.
Speaker 4Yeah, it's just the offense kind of feels. That part is vulnerable. Pretty iffy. That I will give you. If Shohei Shohei is as bad as he was for the last month and a half of the season and his host, Josue DiPaola, have we found out? Like, I don't know how you make it work. We haven't found out yet. But yeah. Like the Miz versus the Miz versus
Speaker 1that Dodgers lineup is going to be.
Speaker 4But yeah, top end talent wins out. I think the Dodgers clearly have more of it than any other team in baseball. So I will unfortunately pick the Dodgers and root against them the whole time while doing so, although I don't want the Brewers to win either. They should have traded for Terrick Scooble. I don't want them to be rewarded for that.
Speaker 1They lose to Terrick Scooble in a game seven.
Speaker 4Chris, all of that, that that would be the irony. Some measure of karmic justice. for continually punting on, yeah.
Speaker 3Scott, World Series? I'm with you. Dodgers over race.
Speaker 1All right. We are going to wrap there for Scott and Chris. I am Frank. Thanks, as always, for tuning in to Fantasy Baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. And we'll be back again later this week.
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