This fantasy baseball podcast episode, part of a series analyzing mid-round draft picks, focuses on pitchers selected between picks 100 and 200. The hosts express optimism for Spencer Strider, believing he can adapt and perform well even if not returning to his peak velocity post-surgery. Rookie Chase Burns is praised for his elite strikeout potential, reminiscent of Strider, though his innings may be limited. The analysis then contrasts two injury-prone veterans: Tyler Glasnow is considered a worthwhile risk at a discounted price due to his high per-inning production, while Brandon Woodruff, returning from major shoulder surgery with a revamped pitching style, is viewed with more skepticism. Finally, Sonny Gray's move to a less favorable ballpark and signs of aging lead the hosts to advise caution at his current draft cost, suggesting they would prefer other pitchers in this range. The overarching theme is balancing injury risk, proven performance, and potential upside when selecting pitchers in this tier.
[Music] Well, after "Aids and Barrels" Wednesday, February 4, Derrick Van Riper here with EnoSaris, it's our starting picture preview, part 2, because we are in the middle of picture week. This episode is going to focus on pictures that go between pick 100 and 200 in early NFBC drafts. We got through the first 26 pictures coming off the board in part 1 of this series. We think there are supposed to be three episodes like this, and quite honestly, there may be a fourth coming out next week based on the course we are on right now. I'm also starting to come down with a minor cold, so if I lose my voice, I will just hold up a card with a picture name on it and Eno will wax poetic and analyze that picture accordingly. We're going to go for as long as my voice works. Yeah, it is the season, right? Deda Winter, it was coming all along. We're going to pick things up right where we left off at that pick 100 mark. We're calling it 80PT or 3A. These guys go within 25 picks of each other. This group includes Spencer Strider, Chase Burns, Tyler Glass now, Brandon Woodruff, Sonny Gray, Kevin Gossman, and Emmett Sheehan starting at the very top. I think we may still have some disagreement about Spencer Strider that started bubbling up during our live show at first pitch Arizona back in November. I think projections for Strider are basically useless, not because I don't like projections, but I think when someone pitches and is coming back from a pretty significant injury, which Strider was coming off of internal brace surgery last season, it just doesn't get a good snapshot of what that player is going to do going forward with better health potentially, at least they can't really account for that. I can only tell you what happened based on diminished stuff and velocity, which was the case for Strider, but I think when you look back at the overall body of work and you consider that he was going from rehab to return, he had this stretch where he was pitching just non-stop for over a year basically. And he hit this wall in the second half and I think when I look at Strider, I see a guy that is going to make the adjustments if the velocity doesn't come back in a regular off season, there will be other adjustments to the arsenal mechanically, physically. There's going to be things he does differently where he's not going to be the same guy that relies so heavily on his fastball and his slider to be among the league's best strikeout pitchers. So it might look a little bit different, but the more I think about Strider and read about their situation with Jeremy Haffner being the pitching coach there and the way Striders talked about how his body felt last year, I just have this amazing level of optimism that he's going to get back to a much higher level than we saw in 2025. Even if he's not going to go all the way back to peak Strider again. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just the Velo that he lost. He also lost two inches of ride off his foreseam from before. He lost an inch of drop on the slider, despite the slider going slower, usually you get more drop when it's slower. There were some changes to the change up and the curve that they could be, those could be viable pitches long-term and there will just be pressure on him to throw those if he's just not as dominant with the main two. Does he have enough finesse to add those? I get some real Dylan Cs vibes with Spencer Strider where I feel like he's been trying to push these pitches for a while and hasn't really successfully found a non-fastball slider pitch. But I will say that there is a little bit of a difference between the two in terms of, I don't know, you said he's analytically minded. You know what I mean? Dylan Cs often talks to me about, "Ah, sometimes I gotta put the numbers away and just find the ferrite feel." Whereas Strider is trying to match feel with what the numbers are saying and maybe that makes me more optimistic about him. Looking at the model refresh, looking at the new projections, I probably had him a little bit low. 380 projection is not as bad as I thought. I could slide him maybe into the top 40 right now. I have him around 43-44. It's probably not going to get him drafted if you're using my rankings. But I think there's something here. I'm going back to last season. I had Strider on a few teams. One in a league where I had unlimited IEL spots. So I just loaded up on guys that were either coming off of injuries or we're going to miss part of the year with an injury. Strider had a 359 ERA and a 115 whip after his start July 18 against the Yankees. I think that's about when he started to hit that wall. And I think if you get to the stretch in early August, the brewers put five on them, the mets put eight on them, the white socks put seven on them. That was a three consecutive starts. That's sort of where that wall he's talked about. It seemed to hit. So I think he did have some opportunities to show us. He was making adjustments in September. Things looked a little better at the end of the season. So I'm in at price on Strider. I also say that knowing that this is absolutely the type of pitcher that if things are going well in spring, it will cost you more in March than it costs you in February. Right? ADP will go up for a player like this. So really intrigued by Spencer Strider at the current price and will remain intrigued if he looks good this spring. If you're looking for another great pitcher that has a crazy strikeout upside, I think Chase Burns actually reminds me a little bit of a young Strider. It was 109 in the third inning last season across four levels for the Reds. Took a really quick trip to the IL at the end of the year, which looked more like load management than they really troubling sort of arm injury. And in the last 10 seasons, only Spencer Strider has a higher K percentage among rookies working in starting pitcher rules. Right? So Burns was missing a ton of bats. It's a two-pitch mix very similar to we saw from Strider upon arrival. Top end velocity. We had that one really bad meltdown against the Reds socks that probably sticks out in people's minds where it was pretty clear that Burns had a tipping issue in that outing. So that bloated his ratios and a pretty limited sample with the Reds. I think he's like a firm, like a physical tipping issue. I mean, I just thought it's a global thing is what I was seeing. Okay. Interesting. Because when I was watching it, I just thought what if his, you know, his pitch arsenal so small that they were just jumping on fastball? Yeah, just locking on something. Yeah. Either way, it was believed to be part of the story. I think it's an interesting toss up a Nolan McLean who we sort of closed out part one of this series with because they have very different approaches. And you could look at Burns and say, hey, two electric pitches at the top of the arsenal might be enough to just rack up a ton of Ks. And that projection is just ridiculous from Upsi for Jay's Burns too. So it's hard to ignore when you can get him a radar on that pick 100 bark. I mean, there are four pitchers in my top 150 with a sub three ERA projection. And you're looking at them right now. And the other three go one two three in my rankings. It's pretty exciting to have a sub three ERA projection and be on the same list as Terrick School of Paul Schoen's and Gerr Kroche. Of course, I have those guys projected for 190 innings about on average. And I have Chase Burns with 139. And I don't even know. 139 is aggressive. It's just, it reflects the fact that to me, you know, last year I had 109 innings. And I think they're going to need him this year. I do wonder if they're going to play games with him like they did last year in terms of putting in the bullpen and stuff like that. But I think he'll clear 130 innings. If he clears 130 innings, he'll be a top 25 starting pitcher, you know, I think on quality. So it's not a good innings play, but it is a, you know, early hunter green early Spencer strider type package where it is just a great fastball with a great slider and no real command issues. I think the only command issue I could think of is he doesn't command to change up that well. And that's why it doesn't throw it as much. But, you know, over time, he should be able to, you know, harness that or a curve or something to put a little wrinkle on it. Maybe a sinker, maybe a cutter, maybe there's, you know, something, there'll be something he's working on in spring to expand the arsenal. But when you, when the beginning of your arsenal is this dominant, I think it's the kind of like closer for five or six innings type of package, but it's, it's great. Yeah. It's a fun, fun player to have on your rosters. Tyler Glass now goes in this range. The horrendous injury track record has finally brought the price down, which is great for me because I could maybe be disappointed again just at a lower price. I mean, I've been a glass now truth there for a long time. Now I can get a discount and maybe be wrong again. Still pumping pretty big K rates and offering good ratios around the IEL stints. It's just become really difficult to pencil in more than 130 innings in the past. I'd probably tell you 151.60 was my expectation at the high end because he was doing that, you know, way back in 2017. If you lump the triple A innings with the major league innings, that's how long ago I was. It was when Tyler Glass now was still spending time at triple A. The stuff drop is, is kind of interesting. Like we talked about it last year at the beginning of the year. He did not look like typical glass now, but re running the numbers sounds like things look a little bit better for glass now. Yeah. On the refresh yet a 101 stuff plus that's still down. But I'll
Also, he's in that place where, you know, how relevant is stuff plus when he's striking out 29% of the batter he's seeing. He's a veteran guy. He's, you know, we're not trying to outdo K- -BV and what he results on the field at this point. He's demonstrated who he is. And even Oopsy realizes that too, because with a 101 stuff plus, it gives him a 339 ERA projection. I've got him back in top 25, so I've got him a buy based on this ADP. Maybe that needs to drop, but I only gave him 129 ERA, so I'm not giving him more than, you know, any of the depth charts. In fact, I'm giving him fewer than the depth charts. So, you know, with as few ERAs as you do, we're still the 54th best pitcher. And I just, I have to, the difficulty is ranking for everybody. I mean, if you have IELSTINS, then a guy who was the 54th ranked pitcher for, you know, 90 innings, that slot on your team probably was a top 30 slot, you know, because you're going to fill that out with something. Now in NFBC, you know, maybe it's even less than the top 50-50 pitcher because, you know, the waiver wire is worse and you had to play games with him. I keep him on my roster or not. So I could see, I could see him being drafted as high as the sort of top 20 pitcher and as low as a top 40, top 50 pitcher, depending on your settings. But I'm still in. I think that the floor is around the 50th best starting pitcher. Maybe as I redo ranks, he'll drop a little bit. You know, like, just think about Tyler Glass now versus, you know, like Jacob Mizorowski, your Emmett Sheehan, guys we're going to talk about later. Are you necessarily taking the young guys for more innings? And if you're not necessarily taking the young guys for more innings, then the young guys compound innings risk with production risk just because we don't, we know more about Tyler Glass now, we know about the young guys. So I think it's appropriate to take him ahead of some of the young guys we're about to see. I think that is a good, good, an illustrator, but the tiebreaker would be because their workload expectations are very similar. I was surprised in prepping for today's show that Brandon Woodruff, despite having anterior capsule surgery and missing all of 2024, has thrown more innings over the last five years in the regular season than Glass now by 25. Like that blows my mind just because I mean, like a full law season with an injury that some guys just don't come back from and it's interesting that to the long road back Woodruff had a better strikeout rate and a better walk rate than Glass now did last year. That was a big surprise. Maybe one massive shoulder injury is a little scarier than the combination of things that Glass now has dealt with. That's kind of how I clock it in my head. I'm not sure if that's medically right or true. But that just happened right. Dr. Nick. Yeah, I just think one major surgery is worse than three or four different things. It's worse. But three or four different things being broken in your early 30s also doesn't seem great. These are the lesser of two bad situations, I think, is the way you're looking at it from a health perspective. All that is to say, the thing that became really important for Woodruff was that his command had to hold up and it did. His command was maybe even a little better than it was pre-entry. At least the eye test, I thought it was as good as it's ever been. That's huge for him. He's added a cutter. He's made the kinds of adjustments that you need to make in order to not have top shelf stuff, but still get something close to top shelf results. So I'm just curious if you see the similarities between Woodruff and Glass now in terms of perinning production being very good, but risk being heightened and whether you think Woodruff is also a fair or good buy in the same range as you do with Glass now at the discounted price. I have Woodruff 49, so I have him as a pass. Here's my thinking. Brandon Woodruff is a whole new pitcher. I don't know how relevant Old Woodruff is. For example, he doesn't throw his breaking balls anymore. If he breaks his breaking balls back next year and that was just an early injury rehab type deal, then maybe we could start to compare Woodruff to pre-surgery Woodruff. This is a totally new player. I was trying to think of a comp of a guy who throws 75% fastballs and a change-up. Just on that, I came up with Merrill Kelly and Chad Patrick, which I would not be super excited about as comps. Then I was like, "Oh, you know, he's a very different arm angle. Maybe I should throw arm angle into this." Then I found a pretty good comp in Luke Weaver. If you're looking at YouTube right now, these are pretty good comps in terms of arm angle, foreseem, cutter, change-up in a lot of the same places. Weaver doesn't have a sinker, so Woodruff's foreseam and sinker are a little bit different. Weaver's foreseam is sort of splits the difference. I'm not perfect comps, but it does just bring to mind that I think there's risk when you're looking at a pitch plot like this where there is nothing really in the bottom. There's nothing really that goes glove side. Everything goes arm side and everything is up. I don't know. I just think that there's. This is a recurring thing. I just said it. I'm going to say it again. If you're compounding injury risk with production risk, that's when I get nervous. If I have injury risk and otherwise you're great, I'm in. If I have production risk, but I think you're good for the endings, I can be in. If you do both, you're going to be lower on my rankings than you might expect. You're just not buying the 32.3% KR8 and 5.4% of walk rate. Projections are pointing you to 24% to 26% KR8 and 6.5% to 7.5% KR8. It's basically, which is still good. It's more of just. It's like a tier or two below where he's going if the projections are right. It's kind of like patch. Yeah, it's kind of actually like patching and coming a little bit like a forest year. Yeah. Man, I just. I'm going to link them together. I don't want them both on the same team, but if I'm shopping in this bin, I'm intrigued by both. I'm going to take on the risk of both on the same team at the same time because I might be chasing real hard on the way of a wire. Sunny Gray goes in this mix. It's a deep arsenal, but the sweeper is still a huge part of how he gets a lot of whiffs and he does get them on the curveball too. He returns to the ALE struggled years and years ago with the Yankees. It didn't seem like a great fit for him in New York at the time, but back to back seasons now with a sub 6% walk rate. I think that eases the burden of home run issues. Do you think you can hang on for another year? I mean, if you use Sierra, I know you're not a big Sierra guy. A lot of people like Sierra. 329 and 303 the last two seasons against ERA is a 428 and 384. Where do you think we are going from here with Sunny Gray as he's moving into those twilight years of his career? I mean, the sweeper I just put on my top 10 list for MLB now as one of the top 10 pitches in the game. I still believe in it and I think it's a great pitch. But everything else is now below average by stuff plus other than the sinker. The sinker is only there because he doesn't use the lot. I think he used it more because of the way stuff plus uses the fastest wall mix that people were expecting the sinker. Also, it doesn't really help him against lefties. The big thing I'm worried about actually beyond the fact that he's headed towards Charlie Morton and Wayne Wright's sort of territory with the great breaking ball aging pitcher that is fine, but it's not awesome, awesome for fantasy a lot of times. The other thing I'm really worried about is he's going from the 17th best park for lefties to the 2nd best park for lefties. I talked to him a lot about Sunday Gray about what happened when he was in New York and had a big piece that got aggregated and it was a whole deal. The focus of that piece was he was asked by the Yankees to throw his gyro slider in the zone because it was such a good pitch overall. They thought he could just throw it in the zone more often. He said, "Well, that pitch is just my curve ball thrown harder and when I throw it in the zone, it doesn't work." He was talking about coaching effects and their analytics maybe being a little bit off or not being a great fit for him, but I'm a little bit nervous about him in a big market because I've seen him at the biggest stage. I saw 40,000 people in Oakland chanting, "Sani, sonny!" When he was in the playoffs against Justin Verlander. It's not the stage that I'm worried about. It's that the underlying thing that happened in New York that is again true here is that the park was tough. That to me is the bigger concern. It's Boston and he struggled in New York because some guys just don't like New York for one reason or the other. It's the park factors, the difficulty of the matchups and yes, it's those factors that matter more. He had some good years and since then, I've been in the playoffs.
So like I know that's a tough part too, but you know, Incense and Adi he was 93 plus and now he's 92 minus so You know, it's just everything's gonna be a little bit harder in his third year in Cincinnati He had a 419 ERA and I could just see this being a kind of guy where the K minus BB for his whole career has been good But the home run rate is gradually increasing and I think that's just That's indicative of like you know players doing better when they guess right Yeah, that's a good way to put it, but I think I'd rather be a Year early on not having Sunday gray on my teams than a year too late Especially because this is not an inexpensive price point. I can find other guys I like throughout this tier throughout the next one and you know if he falls a little bit Maybe I'm in but at full price. I'm probably not drafting him at the current price. Yeah, we have not talked about players that I have ahead of him I have I have sunny gray and you know a little old man tier with Kevin Gosman Who's he's coming up next and you know Kevin Gosman was just great last year And I don't want to bespurch his name because I you know I love that he's taking this two-pitch mix so far That he's a 35 year old that just came off a 359 year ray and Pitched well all throughout the season, but there's still declining strikeout rates for him that you can see pretty easily Last year he arrested a little bit of velocity to decline and I just worried what happens if he's back to 94 What happens when he's 93 9 you know and? You know what we saw at the beginning of his career was Huge home run rates and that's where I think the risk is for Kevin Gosman is the Velo starts to drop and When they get a hold of his fastball. It's a home or more often I mean you actually see that in the projections all of the projections have him for a higher home run per 9 rate than he's had in his career higher than he's had in the last five years And I think that's probably aging curve stuff That's if I had to guess I would say it's aging curve stuff, but that's why they all have him for It's pretty close to consensus zips has a 377 year-ray for Gosman but Most of the rest of them having basically for a 4 year-ray in a 125 whip with league average strikeout rate that is just There are more exciting things I want to do with this this point in my draft because I've got two aces and I just don't know like pitcher oatmeal It can be exciting, but it can be it can work like Seth Lugo was my pitcher oatmeal, but I want to buy my pitcher oatmeal better I Think that's a good way to think about it I was informed in our discord that weird oatmeal is a Regano on oatmeal Which happened that was was a college this app Reach for the cinnamon got the oregano ate it anyway apparently it was a roommate of Not eating Sorry, I just would have made a new bowl and started over even in college or throwing like pepperoni and mozzarella cheese in there and turning it into like some kind of pizza oatmeal And that was good that probably wouldn't work either there might have been a oh class starts in five minutes Yeah, I gotta eat this like my last packet of oatmeal. I got to go Emmett sheen is in this group. He kind of fits more into the exciting Young pictures that could maybe take a huge huge step It's just so interesting because if you believe that the Dodgers are going to Patch it together with the top end guys missing time they need someone to hold that group together Sheen would be that someone or at least one of those someone's came back from hybrid Tommy John internal brace surgery It was really good after that lost 2024 K rate was above 30% 15% swing strike rate so it kind of looks like you can sustain a K rate like that or close to it Did it mostly with three pitches four seamers slider and change? What did you see from sheen because it wasn't even a hundred big league innings? It was a really nice line, but there's roll questions because you might get good results over a decent number of innings But it might just be kind of up and down in terms of how the usage works if they are in fact using a more As an extra guy as opposed to a fixture in their rotation Yeah, I'm mentally moving him down a little bit my rankings not that you're a wet blanket or anything, but There you know there is some innings risk here. I don't know if I I did have a 129 for him while the depth charts at fangir I've had 145 so I already thought there's some risk there innings wise But now that I'm looking at it's even worse than I thought because last year's 91 92 innings Was a career high? No actually in 2023 he had 120 between the big leagues and the little leagues so the Could you get to 150 off 120 before surgery? Yeah, I guess so But I'm I'm protecting for 130 and then there's this other risk again to think about compounding production with with it's not injury risk necessarily as innings risk here There's just a weird thing about him is that he I think he's just that he's a change up first righty And that's been a guy that I've avoided in the past. I don't know if it's a result of never paddock But if you look here at this table This is she hens stuff plus splits against right handers And normally I'm showing you oh opposite will it work and against right handers his foreseems around average His slider is below average actually for a fastball for a slider and his change up is supposedly his best pitch But he throws it you know as a sort of an afterthought Um the slider he's really interesting here because it's a 101 stuff plus which is below average for a slider 101 location plus Was all right 108 pitching plus which is fine at 191 x-wovo, which is amazing um, and so he's outperformed that pitch And again, I would also point to how much of this is based on locations. So his locations were really good uh against righties Did you know That Emmett sheen had 30 present 40 future command grades From fangrass. I did not know that I maybe you have seen it before but I did not commit it to memory Keith Law mentioned That he had reliever risk because of his command so um You know, so what if his slider is not as good next year because he doesn't command it as well And he's a fastball change up guy with an okay slider. I guess um The model here is Ryan Pepeo though so That's actually very Pepeo-esque. So I like Pepeo. Watch and I like sheen. I like sheen overall The the risk is the you know up and down What if he doesn't even start the season in the rotation because everyone's but healthy They want rokey Sasaki in the rotation they say um, you know What what is the rotation of everybody and this might be miraculous that everyone's healthy to start the season But if everyone's healthy it's y'all moto snow glass now Otani Sasaki And I guess sheen has the six I think he's either the five or the six I mean so he had he has a spot right now. I think there's more pressure if it's not working They've always got depth options They've got Robeski or Nack or someone else they can throw out there eventually river Ryan's healthy And maybe he's part of the equation later in the year. I mean just that's the that's the downside is they could change the role if they don't like what they're getting so I get why people are into him based on the underlying skills I just think there's a wide ride wide range of outcomes based on usage over the course I do have a little bit of a disappointment. I do have him as a general buy You know, even now I'm moving him down a little bit to the mid-30s He's ahead of a lot of the guys we talked about so so far The highest ranked guy we've talked about other than chase burns and talent glass now so Those are those are my buys so far in this tier All right, he knows in DVR skeptical More about shape of season as it wears on but definitely nice skills from sheen in 2025 Let's move over to the bottom part of tier three tier three B as we're calling it Nick Lidolo's ac wheeler Michael King Pablo Lopez Ryan Pepeo Gavin Williams cams slitler Drew Rasmussen Jacob Mizorowski and Robbie Ray Man, I feel like we're not gonna get much further than this tier on this episode We're gonna do our absolute best to make that happen Lidolo for the long-time believers who you know watch and listen to this show They were rewarded 156 and 2/3 innings last year a good enough K-rated 24.3 percent excellent walk rate Maybe the ceilings a little lower than we previously thought but just being healthy for a full season or most of a full season was a pretty big deal To near even mix of four pitches and three of them look pretty similar by shape the other doesn't really move the way you'd expect it to So it's a weird curveball just in terms of what hitters would typically expect from from that slot So I kind of think this works for Nick Lidolo. It's kind of funky and you know as long as he doesn't have some kind of massive drop-off in Velo or more health stuff I think you can at least return this type of value again in 2026 Yeah, I just wanted to just show people what you mean by a weird curve ball And I think that the the charts
on Savon are pretty cool. I mean, one thing that I wish that they were was that the movement, the average movement profile that sort of shaded numbers, the shaded spots on the pitch movement charts were arm angle adjusted. But one thing that you can see is if you put your cursor on the arm angle and the arm angle shows up in the chart, you can immediately see which pitches are surprises given that arm angle. And with this one, what you see is why doesn't that curve go further sideways? It's like a, it's almost like a slow gyroslide or something like it's really close to like kind of zero zero or surprisingly close to zero zero for a guy who has a 15 degree arm angle. When you see 15 degree arm angle, you think this guy's going to throw me a frisbee. This guy's going to throw me a sweeper. This guy's going to throw me something that's just sideways goes forever. And he throws something that kind of clips and doesn't go as far sideways as you think. So it's, it's a really interesting pitch. It stands out for me. And then just against all average curve balls, it's super weird too. You can see that on the chart as well. So I like Lidolo and you know, we shouldn't, the one thing that's hardest to do is just figure out, you know, what do we think now about his injury risk, about a guy who we used to think, oh, this is this guy's a huge injury risk. And then he kind of puts it all together and does, you know, gives you the, the volume we want. You know, do you just forget about the injury risk? You know, how much does a healthy year help you? You know, I don't know that the change ups that good either because it's looks exactly like a sinker, but it's only seven miles an hour slower. But I think with, with everything that he's shown on the field, the only, the only question for me is that injury component. I mean, we're talking about a little Dolo who before this year, his major league high was 115 innings. But to be fair, that year he threw another seven or so innings in the minors. So that's 120 innings. 2023 was a particularly bad year, 41 innings in all that year. So that's, that's what I'm circling. Is it, like, is it a 41 inning year? Is it 120 inning year or is 160 inning year? And there's a big difference there. You kind of hit the whammy sound if you get the 40 inning year. I mean, I think when you're looking at it compared to veterans who are aging gracefully, I would say that's why we described Kevin Gossman at this point, just turned 35 in January, a pitch deep into the postseason, logged a ton of innings. I think my question is about someone who's been a workhorse coming off the season like that at that age are not that different than a younger guy who's had a couple of freak injuries, right? It was like a stress reaction. I think it is leg that cost a little a lot of time in the 40-ish inning season that you mentioned. So I do think that's the sort of like general comparison you're making. Is are you, are you more comfortable with an aging guy that's been through it many, many times before or you're more comfortable with the younger starter that finally broke through and got it got away from all those health issues. Maybe it's again mixing and matching the risk of two of your nine starting pitchers have elevated injury risk. Maybe ones an old guy, maybe ones a younger guy and that's the smarter way to do it. I don't know if it's even necessary to distinct, like, to make a distinction between the two. But how do you, I mean, how do you navigate this tier so far without like with like with a real, because I know there's some who are like, I just don't take injury risk guys. So you're not taking strider. You're not taking burns. He was injured last year. You're not taking glass. Now you're not taking woodruff. I guess you could take sunny gray. Yeah. Sunny and gospel. I mean, gospel and gospel and gospel pitch through an injury I think in 2024, which is why he wasn't quite as good, right? So those would be the two guys that if you said, I'm worried about all the injuries. She and I mentioned the internal brace hybrid Tommy John from the cost of all time. Cutting yourself off of a lot of upside if you do that though. I mean, you're taking some pretty boring pitchers compared to some of the other guys are going here. Maybe that's the idea. Maybe that's good. I think personally, I like, I've said the yolo yo yo. So I wouldn't mind getting one of gray or gospel and or I'm sure there's there's going to be somebody in this next tier that that kind of fits alongside them along with the more exciting arm. Yeah. I mean, Zach Wheeler right now is going down here. I think this is an easy subject to change based on further updates that we get off of the course of spring training and when healthy top five type starting pitcher. I mean, he was still doing that even before the injuries came back to bite him. It was a right shoulder problem with a blood clot that was removed subsequently had surgery to treat veinous thoracic outlet syndrome. The less, less severe of the two versions of thoracic outlet syndrome that we see pictures deal with. So the similar is the male. If it's the if it's the nerve one, what happens is that you're like sort of you're just dealing with it over time and it just hurts, but it doesn't like stop your blood from pumping through. So like you you can kind of it can just get worse over time, right? Whereas with the blood with the blood one, like it's like a blood clot here. It's just like, oh god. And yeah, you're you haven't done long term damage. You just sort of you went in there and you fixed a problem. So it's like scarier in the sense if you didn't catch it, you might have a like a major medical issue on your hands. But I think in terms of recovering as a baseball pitcher, the less severe of the two is probably the better way to to say it. But Matt Gell was on MLB network recently. And I thought it was interesting that he had an update on Wheeler that said he doesn't think we're going to be on the roster opening day, but it's going to be closer to April one to the June one. And if you had to take a guess, he thinks it'd be sometime around May 1st. And he also added some details about Wheeler's thing and Philly to do is rehab work with the teams medical staff throughout this off season. And they're kind of encouraged by what they've seen so far. So good signs to this point. And given the ceiling and given that it might only be a month instead of two or three, I do think you're going to see Wheeler creep up at least into the 100 to 125 range because one month off for a possible top five pitcher is a risk reward balance that I think a lot of players are willing to take even without the benefit of IEL spots. Yeah, you know, not starting the season on the roster is a bigger deal. The further down the rankings you go, this is a good enough pitcher where you could say, all right, you know, I won't get him for two or three weeks, but I'll be fine with him afterwards. The reason I'm not that interested again going back to the theme of compounding injury with reduction risk. And that seems weird to say about Wheeler because he's been such an excellent player. But, you know, when we say something like, well, Merrill Kelly, you know, came back by opening day after his thoracic outlet was also the good version. And Merrill Kelly's been fine since then. I just just like to point out that the first year that Merrill Kelly came back from thoracic outlet syndrome, he had his worst season of his career by ERA strikeout rate, velocity and, you know, his stuff was down for year over year. The only thing I can say is the projections mostly put all that in. Like if he plays with projections, he is going to play to one of his worst ERA, you know, strikeout velocity seasons of his career. And they still spit out basically like a three, four, three for zips, you know, the one, 13 whip. So, you know, if I'm saying, I'm not sure he's going to come back and be Wheeler. What if he's 80 or 90% Wheeler? Is that better than most of the guys on in this tier? Yeah, 80 or 90% of Wheeler still probably not that far off even from what glass nower would drift give you, right? I mean, I think that's the sort of like three player toss up that we're going to eventually be looking at. So if you're in an early draft and Wheeler's still sitting in the range where he's been going, haven't taken a lot of pitching injury risk. Maybe there's actually more of a case there that I thought there would be back in November. It's good. I just think of progressing well for him. I don't like taking guys, you know, like I don't like taking guys who aren't ready for the season. It's like the the Tommy John thing where it's like I'd rather the guy had Tommy John came back and showed me that he's ready that he's ready to be on the field before I take him again. Like I'm, it's going to be hard for me to take Garrett Cole and Joe Musgrove and pitches in leagues this year. And I know that Luis Garcia on the Astros is not as good a pitcher as those guys, but I took him in drafting holds last year thinking, hey, you super cheap, you know, you know, he'll make it back and he'll be ending sometime. Well, did anybody see what how many endings Luis Garcia gave anybody last year? None. Zero. So I, you know, there's too many things that can go wrong too over this time here. So if I'm drafting right now, I'm not taking Wheeler. And why might I take somebody like Michael King? Well, he came back and he pitched. I know he then had like a hamstring thing and he went back on the injury, but he also is not coming off a surgery. Like surgery is the other thing that I'd like to kind of avoid because, you know, you know, coming back from an injury where like your hamstring, we'll talk about Pablo Lopez in a second. Those are strains, you know, there's not a surgery involved. Michael King, yes, it was a nerve thing, but there was no surgery involved. So I just feel like, you know, the rest recovery and rehab, it could have, it's just a shape of a season. He could have come back if the season was a month longer, you know what I mean? It wasn't, it wasn't
that he needed to have a huge corrective surgery to figure this out. So I'm interested in Michael King and Pablo Lopez maybe more than Zach Weither and the guys I mentioned like Eric Cole and Joe Musgrove. It's just an interesting part of the draft because what you did previously will absolutely dictate your risk tolerance in this range but having a good plan for what to do if some of these guys slide more than you expect, I think it's going to be really important. My quick thought on King is that things actually work as bad as they could have been last year since he was dealing with injuries. The nerve problem in his shoulder was the scarier of the two things but he came back from that. Like at the order of the injuries also matters to me. If you had two injuries last year and the more serious one was the one you came back from and pitched again before something else came up to me, that's the better case scenario than minor injury come back and then bigger injury and we don't see you again. So that's relevant to both these guys. I mean, you know, like the King was the nerve thing that was so scary first and then it was like a hamstring knee thing or something and knee injury. Even he came back and you know I'm not as worried about that. And then Pablo Lopez, it was a great two teres major. That's like a big muscle in the shoulder. But it's still a muscle strain which I like. And then a bile forearm strain. I mean that could be a precursor of time. John Pablo Pesca. I'm talking about time. John this year. Yeah. Any time a forearm strain flexor string. Anything like that comes up. I mean, I thought nerve it was a nerve problem for Garrett Cole last year too though that I was too optimistic about that and it backfire not me in a couple of places too. I'm lucky other people had a similar approach because I would have had Garrett Cole everywhere if if I was alone in my optimism. So I it's a tough pocket because of the different types of injuries we're talking about. And that's why for me, Ryan Pepeo like kind of like rises versus a lot of these guys. Yeah. You're not answering health questions. I mean, Lopez, the last thing on Lopez real quick, just former president baseball operations Derek Falvi said in November that Lopez was fully healthy and scheduled for a normal off season. Like it's a good sign, but it's not as good as having seen him at the end of the year. Right. Right. They could go with what you said with Wheeler that can go look with a good spring. I can go up, but you can't like, you know, it is just a peer reviewed research fact that forearm strains are precursors to time johns. There's a sort of kinetic chain thing where that's part of the chain and it's it's pretty close to your elbow. It's not a great, not a great place to have a strain. So, you know, I do think that's that's worrisome. And what you got with Ryan Pepeo is like two years of really good health and no real health problems going back. And while he might feel oatmeal, I think there's some upside beyond what he's done so far. You know, it's I do think that I wonder what this is not we're going to and we're not going to answer this right now, but Ryan Pepeo is how old is he 28? He's let me just make sure 28. So he's 28 years old. Is he a 28 year old or is he a pitcher with 376 innings in the major leagues? Is there like a difference of teen those two things, right? Because you tell me, okay, this pitcher who has had two good seasons and he's coming off a season where he was the 41st best pitcher in fantasy baseball, you know, is also leaving a terrible home park that affected, you know, his pitches and affected his splits. Like I would say that he has upside to do better than that. Now the projection systems may see him as a 28 year old, right? And so maybe there's already some early aging happening here because most of the projections have him for fours low fours. The bat has a four five five. Oopsy again, because I use that not surprising 373 good stuff plus I did want to point out that, you know, if anybody's like, Oh, well, he had better ERA at home than on the road. So like, why would this change? I talked to Ryan Peppio about throwing his pitches, you know, in Trappocana or in the, it's time. I talked to Ryan Peppio about throwing his pitches in the, in the the Yankee Stadium, the Miner League Stadium they were using. And we've talked about this on rates and barrels all year where the Miner League stadiums have less of a wind, you know, what's it called like a like they're lower, they're lower structures. So the wind takes more, it has more of an impact on flyballs in those stadiums. But not only fly balls, Ryan Peppio said they would look up at the screen to see how their pitches were moving. And what we found is that stuff plus pitches stuff and stuff plus does best in domes. And that's because there's no crosswinds. It's basically a lab environment. Your pitches are doing what you expect them to do and you train them to do certain things. So your stuff plus is best in that. And that's part of why the rays have always had good stuff plus. Now, they also have an early stuff plus adopter as a team and they went and tried to get pitchers. They had good stuff plus. So it's about acquisitions, scouting, trading, developing and the park. So it's all of that. But look at Ryan Peppio splits a home in a way. Yes. Home he had a lower ERA home. He had a 1.7 homers per nine. And what he did was he really upped his strikeout rate because he was like, I need to strike everybody out because if I don't strike him out, I can get up a homer, right? It worked out all right for his ERA, but his home stuff. I looked at this. His home stuff was a 104 stuff plus and his away was 109. So I expect his stuff plus to be actually better next year. And I expect his results to be better. And I think he's going to, this is a field thing, but I think he's going to beat that three seven projection he has for the last two years. He has at least he did in 2024 when he was calling the top home. So I'm I'm expecting like a three five ERA with 26 27% strikeout rate from Brian Peppio. Like I think this is a feels a little bit to me like the third year of a position player, you know, who's playing regularly. I've been talking about that. I think this is this could be a takeoff plus worst case scenario. What does he give you? Like a three seven three eight with a 180 innings and a bunch of strikeouts like, you know, you're taking other guys where you'd you'd love to get them in innings in this in this tier. Yeah, I think when we were talking about waiting a little bit for oatmeal, this would be kind of part of that. I think Peppio is a lot more exciting to me than the gray or Gossman, some of the guys that go ahead of him. So he's a good reason not to take those guys at their price. If they all get lumped together because the older guys fall, then maybe it becomes a more difficult decision. But I don't know why the projections are pushing so hard on Peppio's ERA. I think sub four makes a lot of sense, especially with the move back of the trop. And I think you're right to call out the possibility of more case too. He doesn't have to do it to be good value, but you get you get that possibility baked in. So I'm all in on Peppio at the price. He's been a longtime favorite of yours, longtime favorite of mine. I wanted to get chances before they traded him to the raise. I thought the Dodgers were going to get him a shot in the back of that rotation. And he's getting that long run now with Tampa Bay. Former favorite of ours is in this group. Gavin Williams is living the dangerous life with too many walks. Ran a tidy Babbep 2504 last year that kept the ERA down at 306. We had a 127 whip. I think the latter is a better indicator of his true talent level. Then usually when you see a 127 whip, you're going to see an ERA that starts with a four. Maybe he can be a high three's guy. That's always possible. Part of the problem is that we're just not getting the swing and miss from Gavin Williams that we expected based on what he did in his run through the Guardians minor league system. I guess I have to spin this question a little bit differently thinking about the conversation we just had about Ryan Peppio. Could we get something to the effect of we've seen it for basically three seasons in the Bigles or two seasons worth of innings stretched over three years from Williams. Could we see that consolidation where maybe he's kind of found his floor and now he can start to add on to what he's done to this point. Yeah, I mean there's just a fundamentally underlying his numbers. There are there are numbers that aren't as exciting. Forget him. You know, like his K-Mines BB is worse, his Sierra is worse. These are predictive numbers. And just a note, you mentioned that the whip whip is a surprisingly predictive number. You know, our own John Leguesa wrote an article about how predictive whip is and whip was the first tool I ever used when I played fancy baseball and I started in the early 2000s. I just picked pictures with good whips that had bad air raised the year before. And you know, it's not a terrible way of looking at things. But the other thing is just like a his strike out minus walk rate. That is a super powerful number. It was below average last year. And I know that he throws a cutter and cutters do lead to lower babbips. So maybe that's why he has lower babbip. But even the projections kind of are catching on to that to some degree. You know, all the projections happen for like a 280-ish babbip. They're not giving him a 300 or whatever. So they're giving him that and they're still getting these high threes low fours, you know, ERA numbers. You know, just overall, I think the last thing is we're not, let's not forget Gavin Williams' history. And I think it, you know, reminds me a little little little little little, but maybe it's worse.
Because 2024 yet 76 endings and the reason why was elbow inflammation and it was multiple bounce of elbow inflammation. There were shutdowns and setbacks due to elbow inflammation and soreness and I'm just like, I don't know man, that just seems like a warning sign to me. You know, like this is a hard thrower who's had elbow problems. I get why people would still be a little bit interested but I think I like a few of the other options around this tier more than I like Williams at this point. I kind of want to see it happen. You can break out on someone else's roster I guess because I was trying to get that to happen in past years and it just hasn't happened yet. I like, when I take a sleeper that's like, oh, you know, it's got a stuff plus sleeper. I like to pick the stuff plus sleepers when like the other models agree a little bit too. It's really great when you get a guy where you're like, oh, stuff plus came on BB and Sierra. I'll say he's good. All right. I like that guy's a sleeper. I think when that happens, prices go up when all those answers agree everyone sees that goes, oh, good. We can be confident in this. So we should be more confident in this. Camp Schletler goes in this range. I think it's interesting that projections I'll call from a drop in K-Ray. He was at 27.6% in his debut at the Yankees. There's got him all the way down at 22.3 UPSY at 24.8. But strong strikeout rates in the upper levels. I mean, I think there's maybe whether it's a control issue or a willingness to issue a walk in order to temper homers. That's a conversation I've never had with Camp Schletler. So I'm not sure. But he hasn't had a walk in home or problem at the same time. So that's probably worth noting. Postseason run probably feeling a little bit of hype here too. It's kind of like the Emmett Sheen situation for me where I look and I think he's got a spot right now. Will you have a spot all year? What will the shape of Camp Schletler season look like? That's sort of like the head space on me when I look at him. Are you in on Schletler based on the injuries they're dealing with right now? Cold and Rodon are both down. So the early part of the season looks good. The trade for Ryan Weathers, but weathers had a really difficult time staying healthy. And even some of their depth guys like Heel and Schmidt have had major injuries cost them time too. So we're going to fall in Schletler. Yeah, I think that him versus Trey Savage is a really interesting, you know, and Jacob Mizorowski in them. But the one problem is that Camp Schletler does have one of the hardest home parks I've had in them. It is a tough park to come up in. And people take their lumps eventually in that park. I feel like, you know, just it took forever to get to the war and a lot of these guys have taken a long time to establish themselves in that park. And maybe Schletler has the best stuff out of any of them, but there is a disconnect between Camp Schletler's stuff and his results last year. It doesn't show immediately when you look at ERA, but look at this chart here. So his sweeper stuff plus was 136. Really great. This is even the refreshed one. So, you know, it's a hard sweeper. It's expected with rate based on its pitch characteristics was 36%. He got 11.8. So that's weird. Then his curve, also good stuff plus numbers, expected with 28.5%, he got 21.8. So he got his whiffs from his cutter and his foreseam and his sinker, even his cutter had an higher expected whiff rate than his actual whiff rate. The fastballs did better. But I wonder, okay, is that just like he came up and he developed the sinker over the course of the last year. And so it really surprised hitters, you know, it was against the, there was a new scouting report people had to come up with. Oh, he's got two fastballs now and they're both great. And so you have to really stay on top of that. And so he was like, oh, I've got two fastballs now. Don't worry about it. I don't need to throw the sweeper very much and he didn't. Maybe that's still in his pocket, right? And maybe the sweeper whiff rate will go up as he throws it more and gets more comfortable with it. Maybe the model's just wrong and his breaking balls aren't as good as the model thinks they are. But there is a slight disconnect there with the model and how many whiffs he's expected to get. I kind of lean towards the model just thinking, you know, he developed a sinker and then I think he's going to be a true five pitch pitcher going forward with power and not a terrible command. That sounds like a really good pitcher. Like, I think his ceiling is way better than Will Warren and Clark Schmidt's. I think his ceiling is this, you know, if like people ask me sometimes like, who could jump out of this tier and be like a top 25 top 15 pitcher next year? Cam Schletters on that list for sure. Yeah. And as I think about that depth chart, I think it's more currently broken. The Dodgers depth chart, which affords a longer runway early on for Schletter just getting going. He gets a whole lot by the time. It's just heard, right? I think they like him better than Warren Schmidt and Heel. Anyway, regardless of the health of everybody in that group too. So that's a good sign. So he's intriguing where he goes. I'm not sure I'm pushing him up a lot because of, you know, just the need to do it over a full season. But I think there's a lot of ways Cam Schletter can take that step forward as you highlighted there. Drew Rasmussen goes in this range. Three major elbow surgeries over the course of his time pitching. I think that goes all the way back to college, but he's so good on a peritting basis. He's got a sub three ERA in each of the last five seasons. You don't get a ton of case to go along with it. Low probability of, you know, 180 plus innings in a season to make up that difference in volume. But man, either way, if you're just looking for a great ratios play, Drew Rasmussen where he's going continues to deliver. Yeah, the model refresh wasn't super kind to him. He did lose some stuff plus in the refresh. I don't know why, but the model still loves his foreseam sweeper and sinker. You know, those are all 113, 114 stuff plus type pitches. It even likes to change up. I don't know why. And the cutter, you know, with the 99 stuff plus, you might think, well, that's not a great pitch. That's pretty good for a cutter. Plus it's one of his primary pitches. He throws it, he threw it 728 times against 819 for the foreseam. So when, you know, you throw something that hard that often, then you have to kind of clump it more together with the fastballs and to have a basically three fastballs that are above average by stuff plus that's what he's doing. And he's he's pairing it with a sweeper. And I think a curve could take a step forward next year because this is a guy with three breaking balls. It's coming off surgery. How many breaking balls do you throw during his, you know, rehab for a surgery? You know, did he get better feel for those pitches over the course of the season? You know, I don't know. I know there's a question in the discord and we're going to ask Jeff Zimmerman about this. That is there like a, like a honeymoon for TJ. Is there a grace period where you have the surgery and you're good for two to five seasons? And I hear that question and Jeff Zimmer in the past has suggested that that does exist. But I've also recently heard from them that he's taking that back and he doesn't think it exists anymore. So, you know, I would love to put that question to him and we will have Jeff Zimmerman on soon to talk about it as well as Jordan Rosalim to talk about Oopsy projections. So some of your questions about what goes into these projections and what's behind them will be answered. I would say that I put fewer innings down for Drew Rasmussen than the depth charts in my rankings. I put him down for 155 at the time. I think the depth charts had 171 down. I'm going to now actually manually right now in front of you make that 140. I still think, you know, he's a top 30 type pitcher. I think he needs to go, you know, because he's so excellent on a perennial basis. I think he needs to go work last now, snow, burns, you know, those type of guys go because yes, they may not give you time innings, but they may be innings that start with the year. I might start with the two. I'm just chuckling in my own head. I'm imagining you sitting on a stage with your laptop kind of like a piano player might at a concert just making changes to your projections and I'm like pop up on a screen and then just an auditorium full of people just like cheering as the numbers change. We'll try to brawl that up for you a little bit yesterday. Oh, thanks. I really appreciate that. Speaking of Brewers, well, at least a current one instead of a former one, Jacob Mizorowski, I really was the king of Milwaukee after three big league starts and the story had a few interesting chapters. People were mad that he was an all star. I get it. I think the all star game should be about fun at this point since what's the point otherwise. That's neither here nor there. There was a come backer to the shin in a start against the Cubs that may have impacted him a little bit in the second half. We saw what he could do in the postseason. 12 innings of two run ball against the Cubs and the Dodgers. The stuff is just absurd when he's got the command of it. And I think the two questions about Mizorowski are mostly command and workload related. The command still a work in progress. But the stuff is so good that I'm willing to say that's just see where this goes. I'll not worry about that part later. The workload was better than you'd think last year. 141 in a third innings between his time at AAA Nashville and his regular season
and postseason innings with the brewers. So you see a 141, you're not really looking at a tight cap, at least not the kind of cap where you're losing large chunks of time. If he's healthy, he's gonna pitch a lot like a regular starter. Maybe it's more five innings starts because the days where the command's not there, he runs high pitch counts. Where do you fall on Miz? He's part of the exciting, it kind of starts at McLean and Burns, it kind of runs down to this part of the board. He's a savage as part of that too. How does Mizorowski stack up against the other young starters that we saw break through last season? - I like him better than she and I like him better than Slitler and I have him right behind Nolan McLean and Chase Burns. And I like this innings' progression to some degree. I mean, 71 in the third in 2023, 97 in the third in 2024, 123, it seems like a nice steady progression. It's like I have a 149 put down from this year. That would be either a minor kind of hamstring-y type injury or maybe just a, we'll send him down around the All-Star break and keep him stretched out, but not working as hard type deal where you just get him to 150 innings and you have him for the postseason. And I don't know. Am I worthy as fastball command is bad? I would be except that he throws a 94 on our Slider that he can command. He absolutely can command that. - And would I be worthy? - Yeah, and would I be worried that teams could lock in on the Slider and hit the Slider? - Yeah, except it's a 94 on our Slider. (laughs) It can't be that easy to hit. So I see a guy who will basically use the Slider as his regular pitch, the four seam as a whiff pitch, and then I think any sort of progression you can make with the curveball and change up, that's why we marches his way towards A-Stum. Absolute A-Stuff, a lot of comparisons here with Jake DeGrom, not with the command, I understand, but in terms of extension, hard Slider, good secondary pitches, amazing strikeout rates, the body to some extent, you know, like he, there's a reason that DeGrom is a comp for this guy. So I'm pretty much all men. I know that I have biases where I get in trouble sometimes with guys with low command, but he put up a 104 location plus. I don't think his commands are bad. - Yeah, I just think it kind of drops out on him sometimes, though, and then you're saying, oh man, you gotta find those mechanics, big fella. I do hope a full year, full off season of cheese curds and concrete mixers helps him get a few extra pounds on the frame if that's the goal, it's the easiest way to get it. He lives in the right place to pull that off. Not surprisingly, I like Mizorowski this year, and I think he's gonna be pretty important to this brewers team trying to stay atop the NL Central. Robbie Ray is the last of this tier, showed off his workhorse ability again last year. I mean, he had a TJ and bounced back in a pretty big way. You're still gonna get K's. I think he's kind of similar to Gossman, and it's weird that they're still in the same cohort 'cause they got almost identical contracts in the same off season going into 2022. The stuff is eroding a little bit for Robbie Ray. That happens as you move to your 30s. This just looks like your classic good old-fashioned oatmeal, and I tend to like my oatmeal in a place like San Francisco, where the home park is very kind. - Yeah, weirdly, he had almost the exact same ERA on the road as he had it on last year. Robbie Ray did, and you wouldn't think that about a guy pitched for the Giants, but you know, you did point out 14 of his 22 homers were allowed on the road. I wouldn't expect that split to continue. There was a couple things that I liked about what he did. He started to do some of the old player playbook, which was throw the change up more, throw the knuckle curve more, diversify, even though he knows, and we all know that his four-seam is his best pitch, I think that to some extent, his slider was overrated in the past, and this work to kind of diversify his secondaries was important for him in terms of lengthening's career. So I'm not sure that I love him in terms of, you know, what's the likelihood he beats a four-ERA? If you need your guy to beat a four-ERA, I'm not sure that you will do that on the season, if you need to pitch him all the time, I'm not sure you will do that. And then there are gonna be other pitchers that you can pitch half the time, that'll be available later, right? So if you think that, you know, you have to have somebody who has a below four-ERA, and the only way you can do that was pitch-ray, only at home, then you kind of had to mentally change his innings pitch for you to 90. - I think you're sitting him within the vision, just at the Dodgers, probably sitting him for his cooers starts, which is true of a lot of guys that go around this range. - And then-- - Do you plan against the Padres? - Yeah, in San Diego, I probably would. I mean, pitcher friendly park, lineup is good, not amazing. - Timebacks. - Yeah, I'm a mocha. - That could change over the course of the year. I wanna see what this version of that D-backs lineup looks like. So I'm probably-- - I'm thinking of you at 120, 130 innings out of it. - Yeah, I think it's not just a straight up, only at home situation. I think it's just used with a little bit of caution on the road right now with Ray and see how he adjust. So he's okay where he's going. There's a few guys that go in this next tier we're gonna get to, and I think he kind of fits in as part of that cluster, just fine. ADP tier four A, we're gonna get down to pick 175, and then we're gonna have to end this episode. So, oh my God, we have more pitches after that. There's a whole, yeah, I did the rundown just goes on forever. This group includes Nathan Evaldi, Bubba Chandler, Trey Sab, Tetsuya Yemi, Sandi Alcantra, McKenzie Gore, Luis Castillo, and Ranger Suarez, those last two, or the two I'm looking at and going. Yeah, Robbie raised a little bit more like those guys than some of the younger fireballers that we were talking about in the first two tiers today. Nathan Evaldi, a common thread on many good teams in 2025 because a 173 ERA in 0.85 whip over 130 innings when it doesn't cost you much, does a lot of good. He showed some really nice walk rates in the back half of his career, and I think unless you're buying a full rebound in K percentage, the projections are naturally gonna nudge him back to a mid to high three's ERA, and probably like a 118 to 120 whip. That's still really good on a perining basis. And actually, if you're copying that to the ratio expectations of Robbie Ray without the most difficult road starts in, they're probably pretty similar. And maybe you're not doing as much manipulation of Evaldi in your line. If it's more or just like letting him pitch when he's healthy, and I think it's also a little easier right now to be in the AL West than it is to be in the NL West as a non-daudger. Yeah, that park keeps playing more and more pitcher friendly, and I don't expect of 173 ERA or whatever, but he has been just excellent when he's been in. There's been over the course of his career, a real softening of the stuff in the second half, and you've seen his Velo drop in the second half. So I don't know what that means. I mean, I think in like a draft and hold, you wanna take Neade Evaldi and maybe pair him later with like a prospect where you're like, oh, I got Neade Evaldi for the first half and hopefully the prospect for the second half for something, you know? I just don't think that you, and usually he likes to, you know, he'll be ready for the start of the season. So, you know, I like that that he's ready to begin the season, but, you know, the innings for him, what do I have for him? And I think I probably, I have 148 for him, and that's just, I'm changed to that number right now. I'm gonna be 133. The crowd in the auditorium goes more. (laughing) Or they groan, they groan and sack this, because they wanna see the bigger total from Neade Evaldi. Yeah, and just the, the market is kind of cautiously pricing him up a little compared to last year, but relative to what he did, he still not as expensive as he'd expect because of all the injuries he's dealt with over the course of his career. It's a little like the McKenzie Gore second half fade problem, just in a guy we've seen the big leagues a lot longer. Bubba Chandler goes in here, and this time last year, I was under the impression that he might follow the pirate's timetable for the Paul Schien's promotion, where we'd see him mid-May, and I thought he was gonna be a big part of their potential push toward relevance last year. Think about it from the perspective of what you were saying earlier, when you have someone else that's in the lineup, when he's out, that spot was phenomenal. You probably-- it gets a little bit worse in his case, 'cause he was at a 173-ERA, right? So whatever you put in there afterwards, not only break the ERA. But it dings him for the mis time, and like even if you've got a 3-5 out of whoever else he got for the rest of the time, that's huge, that's huge. He was just so good for the price. He was probably about the 50th or 60th starting picture drafted in mostly, so total, total bargain. Let's talk about Bubba Chandler though for a minute. He seemed to me this time last year. I thought he was gonna be at the timetable.
that they use for skins. Bring him up in May, get his innings into big leagues, slow plan at first, and he wobbled at Triple A, you know, 148 Whip that delayed the promotion until the late second half. Got to 131 in the third innings, which I think is important when you're thinking about forecasting his workload. The walk rate was weirdly good during his brief time in Pittsburgh, 3.2%. I don't think he's a plus plus command control guy that's going to run the lowest walk rate in the league. No one expects that. But given that the pirates are clearly making that all-in push towards getting a wild card spot this year and in their way at least, he should break as a regular part of the rotation, right? And coming off of 131 and a third last year, 160 innings seems like a reasonable built-in expectation. The question is, just how good would those innings be if you're buying into a steady workload from Chandler at the big league level? Yeah, you know, Boba Chandler came up in our discussion with Keith Law and so many might have noticed that I said something about stuffless not liking his breaking and I was wrong. But Keith, you know, there's a, I was directionally right, I'll call it, because Keith pointed out that he always thought that Boba's change of was better than his breaking balls and he should split his breaking balls. And I'm throwing up a chart right now that speaks to that issue, which is that, you know, Boba was predicted to have a 37% Whip rate on his change up based on his pitch characteristics and he had a 40%. That's fine. His four seamers predicted to have a 25% and had a 31%. That's fine. His slider was predicted to have a 49% Whip rate and had a 23% Whip rate. And his curve was predicted to have a 44% Whip rate and had a 9% Whip rate. And they slugged his curve ball. And I think we won't see it again, though the model is okay on it. I agree with what Keith was saying. The movement is just not that different from the slider. It's just a slower version of the slider. So I think he'll be forcing change up slider. I think the real question will be, will he, you know, will he get all that he can get out of that slider? Will that slider turn into a real weapon against Rites? And, you know, I do, I think this matters because there are more Rites than lefties. You know, why would, you know, like we used to talk about does this picture have a change up? Does this picture have a change of why is he know, like does this picture have a breaking ball of a sudden? But I, you know, you still have two times as many Rites as lefties to face. So you really want to be able to dominate Rites. The last three stars for Boba Chandler were just amazing against the Nationals, Athletics and Braves. He put together 20 strikeouts, zero walks and two earned runs in 16 and two thirds innings. I mean, just a masterful way to finish the season. And I think that represents his upside. So I don't have any problem with taking them here. And, you know, even if my ranking for Chandler is a little bit weaker, I have him, you know, back into the top 50. If you are in a 10 or 12 team league, then you push those guys up and you push the Kevin Gossman types down. There's definite helium potential though, too. If he comes into Florida and just tears up spring training, isn't walking anybody strikes out more than a batter per inning, like that, that momentum is going to be there. And I'll close the gap on some of the other young starters that are in this group. But I think you could say this is a FOMO yo yo opportunity where if you miss out on the earlier guys that we talked about, if you miss out on Burns, McClain, Mr. Rousky, she and you still want to have someone that could have crazy growth potential. Chandler still ticks those boxes. So, especially if he stays down here, I think that's a great backup plan to have. Try to savage is down here right now to a match. Actually, surprise he doesn't go a little bit earlier because we saw what he could do at the end of last season, especially in the playoffs. Not a ton of innings, but enough where we were all hyper focused on it to, to like look at it and say this could be really interesting. It's a really high arm angle, right? Slider moves in on same handed hitters. The splitter is filthy when it's on. We saw a day in the playoffs where that splitter wasn't on and he had to cope with it. So that's sort of the like, what could go wrong? To me, a fourth pitch or improved command would go a really long way here. 150-ish innings seems reasonable. The Jays are loaded up with depth in a way where they can cover some gaps for Trey's savage, however they see fit. So that's kind of interesting to me just in terms of a workload cap that might be a hair lower than some of the other young starters we've talked about, but coming out of the impressive run at the end of last season in the playoffs, where do you fall now on Trey's savage? I ended up putting him right behind some of the other young guys. I have him behind she and I have him behind Mizorowski. Right now, I have him slightly ahead of Slitler just because that park that I mentioned and because she and his projected for a 30% I mean, the savage is projected for a 29% 30% type strikeout rate. So I love that about him. I love the strikeouts. I want the strikeouts. I want guys to strike guys out. But there really is no comp for your savage Slider. It's really weird. If you limit people to high arm angles and then you look for arm side movement off of this high arm angle, you get three and three and point four inches of arm side movement for your savage, one inch of arm side movement for Brock Burke and point three for Robbie Ray. And then on top of that, Robbie Ray and Brock Burke are more like 47, 48 degree arm angles. And Trey's savage is like 62. I mean, this is the one the most extreme arm angles in baseball. I think it'll run for a long time. I actually do think that the comp here is Tim Litzcomb. I think this will be something that'll be amazing and awesome for a short amount of time. And it will cause it will cause him injury risk at some point. Yeah, it's working so far for Trey's savage. But like I said, I'm surprised he's available now in this pocket and not going up in that McLean burns sort of range given what sort of right most. I haven't taught I'm like 32 right now. Well, knowing that and knowing that people are still starting to dive into their prep, like there's a very good chance that he's savage makes that sort of leap. I know you liked Tetsuya Imai before he signed in Houston. That doesn't mean you don't like him because he landed in Houston, but the price changed. Once he had a team, once we knew for sure that he was headed to the contract also as a big signifier as to how the how the the league values this individual is. Yes. So you look at Imai right now and the innings in his final four years in Japan 59 and two thirds, 133, 173 to third, 163 and two thirds. Really not bad, but some injuries in there that you would be mindful of. So you're probably not saying 180 plus because he has done that in the last four years. So the Astros probably aren't going to push him quite that hard. But in terms of the park fit and the stuff, you know, what do you think year one brings for Imai? I think he's going to be good, man. You know, there are some issues with the possible dead zone on the four seamer, but it is a two plane four seamer. So it's kind of one of those pitches that has aspects of a four seamer has aspects of a two seamer to it. And I think it's not, I don't think it's quite dead zoni. So I'm going to give him a little bit of a Luis Castillo in Cincinnati vibe. You know, I think that he's a competitor that has a really good split finger and has a he has the trayous average weird reverse slider as well. So I think that people will have a real hard time with him at first. Now will it last forever? I don't know. The strikeout rates in Japan went from pedestrian in Japan to above average. They're not the types of strikeout rates that you saw from Masahiro Tonaco. Any came over or I mean, actually, it's not too bad. It's closer to Masahiro Tonaco than it is to like you, Darvish and some of the top end strikeout rate guys before they came over. So I just expect him to have a high floor to be a competitor. I sent him to beat these projections. Yeah. So maybe a little more of an established veteran type because of his previous experience as a pro in Japan. With a wrinkle of like people haven't seen this, you know, it's going to be like a low slot guy with with a little bit of ride and a little bit of tail with a great splitter off it and then a reverse backup slider. Like that's there's not really a great comp for this. There's not you can not really a guy you can circle be like, Oh, it's going to look like this. So I think that's going to be hard on batters. 2026 only Ryan Peppio or Tetsuya I might have taken Peppio. Okay. But I want to find it. But someone else we like for like kind of similar, similar expectations. My would you rather is Emy versus Gossman. I've Emy right after strider in ahead of sunny Gray. They're like, that's a little bit of a tear over like they're going to give me a little bit of a little bit of a tear over like that. So I think there's some upside here with the endings. There's more upside above them. So I think he's going to be a pretty good pitcher. I think I've said it a handful of times too. So I'll just make the broader point. Spring training in my experience has a greater impact on how we look at pitchers so that's also going to be a factor in this like to the moon is like a possibility for a guy
that go throughout this episode if spring looks good enough. Like that's actually something you have to keep in mind too. If you listen to this in February and you're drafted and until March, things can change a lot with this group in particular. Sandiel Contra, man, I took the bait last year. It looked good in the spring too. I think by the modeling, looking at similar information is good. Not all spring information is good. Not all great spring results lead to great things in the regular season. I thought he looked enough like himself where we were getting a good discount. If you kept waiting and thinking things were clicking in season, you left him in your lineup all year. You got a 536 ERA and a 127 whip over 174 and 2/3 innings. I hate to break it to you, but you also didn't get a ton of case for that many innings either because he had a 19.1% strikeout rate after surgery. And it dipped before surgery too. One of the way Sandiel used to get there in the past was just absurd workloads and I don't think the Marlins have any hesitation about pushing him. He's down to it. So a pretty big workload for coming right off the surgery. They just let it rip. They got one year before a club option that they would likely pick up. He's still a trade candidate. Is it going to be good? How many sub 20% K-rate guys are you drafting before pick 200 goes by? Yeah, let me handle that one real quick. In the second half of the season, he finally got the command of a slider back. You can see that in Sandiel country's location plus numbers on a slide. You can see it on the usage numbers on a slider. He started actually using a slider in the second half. And I think he just generally got the command back on his breaking balls as things went on. In August and September, he had a usable ERA and he had a 23% strikeout rate. So I'm going to give him that 23% strikeout rate and I'm going to give him 180 innings. And I think it's going to be a pretty good ERA too. So it's not the greatest package to have in a league with innings caps or anything like that. But I can't point to a season where I think he can do this exactly. But in 2022, he had a 23% strikeout rate. I think he can do that. I don't know if he's going to have a 22080 ERA again. So I'm going to go with like, and I know this is going beyond the projections here, but I'm going to go with like a three six-ish ERA, a 23% strikeout rate and a return to form and then a trade. Okay. Well, that's not bad at this price. I think I just, I'm going to want to see the slider again this spring. Make sure it's still there. I think I'm just going to let him go by for these next few weeks. If it gets more expensive because it looks so good, then we'll reevaluate accordingly. But I like that you're optimistic about him because it really seemed like he was fighting it for most the last season. And I think maybe you can just feeling good again having the confidence in that slider. It's the last thing that came back for him that could be the key that unlocks it all again for San Diego Contra. And McKenzie Gore was heavily discussed after his trade to Texas on this show. But in case you didn't hear that episode, I think the couple takeaways I have are the defense should be better because the Nats defense is horrible. The park is playing more picture friendly. So that should help. There's risk in the whip because he's always walked guys. McKenzie Gore just below a 10% walk rate for his career at 9.7%. It's interesting to me that projections are all saying career best whip on the horizon. Because it's just like, okay, it's kind of by a lot too, right? I think it's like in the one two range from all the projection systems. I mean, he has a one three five. Yeah, one three five last year and the projections are for like one two four one two three. Yeah, it's it's really interesting. So like I think the team context and the past pedigrees of prospect. Those are the reasons why the price keeps ticking up right now. And I can understand why that's going to deliver some some safer floor. But man, like do you think it's all going to click in year one in Texas from McKenzie Gore? I mean, he is surging right now in ADP. I looked at just since the trade and he's moved into the top 50 starting pictures since the trade. And I had him, you know, at 70 something. I'm moving him up mentally now and now that I, you know, have now that I'm looking at further, like, yeah, does he look decent next to a 10 or by B or, you know, a Luis Castillo or Gavin Williams. We're talking about, you know, three eights on their projections, more strike out rates for McKenzie Gore than some of those guys. So I think back in top 50s, actually, the market's pretty good at this. You know, they're doing a good job here. But you know, the second half fades for me on McKenzie Gore are a bit of an issue. Also when I look at the arsenal, I see a good fastball. And I'm not sure I see anything else. Is that great? Robbie Ray has made a great career with a similar package, right? Where it's a great fastball, not that great secondary's good strike out rates, not that great command, you know, could there be, and Robbie Ray took like a big leap forward at one point in his career. So this could, this be the McKenzie Gore greatly forward that puts him in that kind of Robbie Ray territory totally could be. I don't, I guess I don't, I don't have like a, I don't have like a great reason to circle that I'm not really targeting McKenzie Gore. It feels a little bit like the markets, more excited than I am. Yeah, man, I think we share that current read on Gore, but we'll see where things are at in spring. See if you bring something new to the table as he gets underway in Arizona with the Rangers. Louise Castillo feels like we're flirting with a cliff here, three year low and K% at 21.7 percent. Another year with a good walk rate, though, tons of innings, picture friendly home park. He's making it work for now to 60 ERA last season at T-Mobile 471 on the road. Next to a 356 Wobba from opposing hitters on the road. I think he has to fall from here for me to be interested. Do you glue him in with the same tier as the, the Gossmann Ray type? So do you think there's actually a break before you get to Castillo? Remember I'm low on Gossmann's. Yeah, no, but I, I, are you, but are you putting them together or do you think this is another year older in the, in the most boring tier ever? Oh my goodness. So after Tatsuya Imi, this is what my rankings are. I mean, Strider represents upside to he doesn't count. So I'll, I'll do go after Strider. After Strider, it goes Gossmann, Gray, Gavin Williams, Louise Castillo, Tanner Bobby, Brandon Woodruff, Kate Horton, Shane Bieber, Carlos Rodone, Sandial Contra, Robbie Ray, Aaron Nola, boom, oatmeal. That's my oatmeal tier. I'm okay with all those guys. I'll take one. I'll generally just, this is the type of thing that I do in my drafts where I'll be like, you know what? I need a high innings veteran, you know? And then I'll put five of those guys in my queue. And when I get down to two or three guys in my queue, I take one. Okay. I think that's the use case because just like Robbie Ray, Luis Castillo is eminently usable at home still. And, you know, I would be very careful with using them on the road, especially in Sacramento but, you know, possibly use them in Houston. I would use them in Anaheim, I think. Maybe at Texas. I'm like, I'm using them at Houston. I'm using them at Texas and Anaheim at least. Yeah, I think we're probably more like 65% overall usage on Castillo. I think it's a little too early to take a picture like that for me. So I will quietly walk away and I'm blown away that Brandon Woodruff is in there. Tear for you, but we will fight about that later. The route, I don't remember really root for you to be wrong about stuff, but I feel like I'm going to make an exception in this instance. Last picture for today, a ranger suarez. I don't think I heard his name when you rattle off that pocket. He hasn't reached 160 regular season innings in the majors before, but he keeps hitters guessing even though that velocity is just, you know, okay. And he's lived on that shelf for a little while, had a little bit of a dip last year that was concerning too. I just wonder if this is a profile that will have a hard time at Fenway. Then I think he spent his whole career in Philly. He had to tough place the pitch too and he's managed to make it work. I never get it right with ranger suarez. I think on the hitter side a few years ago, I had the same problem with Whitmerfield. So I am removing myself from the situation. What should people do with ranger suarez at this price? Yeah, I have a ranked 57. So I'm sure that's sure that's going to go well. Oh, yeah, they're going to get a lot to love for that. And there was immediately somebody in the first few comments, besmirching me for my suarez ranking. But I have a 4 plus ERA projection. He is actually one of the highest. EMI is the highest 4 plus ERA projection. So that could just context there. The other highest 4 plus ERA projections for me are Sandy, Alcantra, Robby Ray, Aranola and Ranger suarez. So they go in that order. They're veterans that could maybe be better than that. They give you innings. And so that's why I put them. I am, you know, I do actually hue pretty close to my projections. And you know, there was a time when Jeff Zimmerman in his book The Process looked at the different publicly available picture rankings and found mine to be the best. But I think it's partially because I'm looking at the projections when I'm ranking, you know, like I'm using the projections to rank.
So in some ways, you could all, I don't know, maybe just putting oopsie in the auction calculator beats me, but I'm also trying to use some of my intuition. And my intuition with Suarez is, you know, it's the worst fastball velocity of his career last year. He's never thrown 160 innings as in a season. None of his pitches are above average by stuff plus. And he showed the worst ground ballerator his career. I don't see the markers going in the right direction. And he's kind of overperformed those markers in the past. The only thing that I like is that the new park suppresses righty homers versus his old park. But you know what it does? Increases everything else. You really have a bad homer problem anyway. Like that's, yeah. I think is the, what do you think it's more doubles because of the beer and monster, you know, and sing? Yeah, that could, that could work against them, right? Just more, more traffic as a result of that. I think you think you got to keep in mind a 338 ERA for his career is excellent. A 127 whip is pretty average, right? So if you are chasing him for one ratio, you just got to realize you need someone else that kind of does the opposite thing to counterweight that accordingly. But the whip thing is a, is a secret killer for ground ball guys. You know, that's the, that is one thing. That is actually one of the reasons why a vintage Sandial Contra was, was kind of interesting because he was able to do, you know, what he did with, with really good whips when he was at his best. Now that may not be the case. And so anytime you're like, oh, why is this like lower ERA guy here in your rankings? A lot of times it's, well, he's a ground ball guy. He's going to have a higher whip. He's not going to have the same strike out. In some ways, Ranger Suarez should have been a load of guy years ago. And he just for some reason, doesn't quite click for me. I just can't, I can't figure him out. So stick to Eno's analysis as it pertains to Ranger Suarez because I am always wrong about him. We are going to go. Good news is I think we just got a fourth episode of starting pictures at him to our sleep. Yeah. I don't know if that means we talk too much or what exactly the problem is. So if you're excited about that, drop us a note in the discord. The conversation continues there. The link for that's in the show description. By the way, if you haven't joined that already, if you made it all the way to the end of this episode, thanks for listening all the way through. Be sure to leave us a nice rating review or hit the like button on this video on YouTube. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The episode analyzes fantasy baseball pitchers drafted between picks 100-200, focusing on their injury recoveries, pitch arsenals, and projected performance.
Spencer Strider is discussed optimistically despite recent surgery, with expectations he'll adjust his pitching style if his top velocity doesn't fully return.
Chase Burns is highlighted as a high-strikeout rookie with a dominant two-pitch mix, drawing comparisons to a young Strider, though with workload concerns.
Tyler Glasnow and Brandon Woodruff are evaluated as high-risk, high-reward picks due to significant injury histories, with Glasnow viewed more favorably for his proven performance per inning.
Sonny Gray's move to a hitter-friendly park and aging profile raise concerns about a potential decline, making him a cautious selection at his current draft price.
Summary:
This fantasy baseball podcast episode, part of a series analyzing mid-round draft picks, focuses on pitchers selected between picks 100 and 200. The hosts express optimism for Spencer Strider, believing he can adapt and perform well even if not returning to his peak velocity post-surgery. Rookie Chase Burns is praised for his elite strikeout potential, reminiscent of Strider, though his innings may be limited.
The analysis then contrasts two injury-prone veterans: Tyler Glasnow is considered a worthwhile risk at a discounted price due to his high per-inning production, while Brandon Woodruff, returning from major shoulder surgery with a revamped pitching style, is viewed with more skepticism. Finally, Sonny Gray's move to a less favorable ballpark and signs of aging lead the hosts to advise caution at his current draft cost, suggesting they would prefer other pitchers in this range. The overarching theme is balancing injury risk, proven performance, and potential upside when selecting pitchers in this tier.
FAQs
This episode focuses on players being drafted between picks 100 and 200 in early NFBC drafts, continuing from part 1 which covered the first 26 picks.
Spencer Strider is recovering from internal brace surgery, and while projections are challenging, there is optimism he will adjust his arsenal and return to a higher performance level than in 2025, even if not at his peak.
Chase Burns has a dominant two-pitch mix with high strikeout rates, similar to a young Spencer Strider, and projects as a top pitcher if he can clear around 130 innings, despite some command concerns with his change-up.
Tyler Glasnow offers strong strikeout rates and ratios but comes with significant injury risk, making it difficult to project more than 130 innings, though he can provide elite production when healthy.
Brandon Woodruff, like Glasnow, has injury concerns but showed improved command post-surgery. However, he is now a different pitcher with a revised arsenal, adding production risk to his injury risk.
Sonny Gray's move to a hitter-friendly park in Boston raises concerns about home run rates, and his aging profile with declining velocity may lead to reduced effectiveness, making him a risky pick at his current price.
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