2026 Starting Pitcher Preview Part 2! Top-40 ADP, Sleepers, Breakouts & Busts (2/20 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

[MUSIC] Happy Cuckoo Maw Friday and welcome in. >> Some fantasy baseball today on February 20th, I am Frank Samphold, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Today on the show, it is our starting picture preview, part two. We will try and get through the top 40 starting pictures in ADP, and then we'll wrap up with some sleepers, breakouts, and busts. Let's get right into it. We'll pick up where we left off yesterday and back into starting picture ADP using fantasy pros average draft position, an aggregate of six different sources. So far, CBS, Yahoo, ESPN, NFBC, RT sports, and fan tracks as always, subject change. So let's get into the fifth round. We have Cole Reagan's with an ADP of 53, [SOUND] and Freddie Peralta with an ADP of 58. Cole Reagan's a tumultuous season for good old Cole boy, surface level numbers were awful, but the underlying metrics were elite 4.67 ERA, 250 FIP, 245X FIP, 252 Sierra, 14 Kper 9, 38% K rate. Among starting pictures with at least 60 innings pitch, he ranked first in K minus walk rate. But he only threw 61 and 2/3 innings due to a strained rotator cuff, and he has a history of arm troubles. So to me, this is the hardest picture to rank in fantasy baseball. I believe he is the biggest boomer bust option in the top 20 starting pictures. Maybe in the entire player pool. Scott, what do you think about Cole Reagan's? >> I love him. I think you're overstating the bust potential. Sure, he could get hurt like he did last year. But a lot of times with this sort of injury, the concern is that he never quite gets right, or it takes a long time for him to get right with a lot of setbacks along the way. And I think it should come as a relief to everybody for Cole Reagan's that he came back. He came back at the end of last year and looked every bit like the ace we knew. And those three starts, a 277 ERA, a.77 whip, a 15.2 K per nine. He was a monster. And really he was a monster prior to the injury too. The 467 ERA was probably the biggest fluke you'll find among all pitching stats across the league last year. Easiest way to demonstrate this, compared to that 467 ERA, a 2.63 XERA, a 2.50 whip. His 15.8% swinging strike rate. I believe it would have ranked first among qualifiers, if I remember the leaderboard correctly. Like that is his lead as it gets 14.3 K per nine across all 13 of his starts. I mean, he was a he was as good as we've ever seen him, but his season was obviously shortened by the injury. And then he didn't get enough time just for the correction and the ERA to play out. Based on where he's going in drafts, I don't think anybody's sleeping on him and they shun it. But just relative to you, it sounds like I don't find Cole Reagan's to be particularly hard to rank. I don't think his risk is, I'm not going to say he's, I'm not going to say he's, there are pictures within the first 12 we've covered that are less risky than Reagan's. But I don't think he's the riskiest either. Just two years ago, we saw him throw 186 in a third innings. So like we know he can do that question, that first question I was asking yesterday, can he do it? Yes, we saw Reagan's do it just two years ago. Reagan does have a history of arm trouble. That is a true statement. But it's worth actually going through what that arm trouble was, which is from 2018 to 2020, he didn't pitch at all. He had Tommy John surgery. It's unclear if like the procedure was botched or what, but while he was returning from Tommy John surgery, before he was actually pitching in games, I believe, he retore the ligament. It's not clear. I think it was just the surgery didn't take basically. So while he has had Tommy John surgery twice, it's not like he had the surgical graft pitched for a few years and then had to have another one like Shane McClanahan, for example. In Reagan's case, I think it is more fair to mostly just say he had one Tommy John surgery that had to be done twice, or at least one injury that had to be done twice. And it was a long time ago at this point. That was in 2018 and 2019. Since then, the shoulder injury last season was the first arm injury that he has dealt with. Now it was a rotator cuff strain that put him on the 60 day eye. I think it is absolutely something to be concerned about. But he came back from it and it didn't slow him down. He was dominant in the three starts he made after coming back. The stuff all looked incredible. I was like 22 strikeouts and 12 endings or something. He was remarkable after the injury. So one Scott said we've seen him do the thing, the ace thing, right? We've seen an A season from him. We have also seen him pitch after this injury and he was healthy and effective. That is not at all to say that there is no risk for Cole Regans in 2026. I think there is probably elevated risk of injury relative to the other pitches we've pitched as we talked about so far. But there's no performance risk as far as I'm concerned. Me neither. And so I don't worry about the skills at all. It's just the injury. If the baseline level of injury risk for any starting pitcher is like 35%, maybe his is 45% or 50%. I'm okay saying that. I think Hunter Brown collectively might have more risk because he also has whatever the baseline level of injury risk. Hunter Green, you mean? No, Hunter Brown. Okay. I bring him up because he has whatever the baseline level of injury risk, which is not nothing. Oh, I see. And we have performance questions about him. Logan Gilbert had a flexor strain last season that cost him about a month and a half. Brian Wu. Last year was really the first time we've seen him stay healthy. So while yes, there are things to be concerned about with Cole Regans. For me, it's just can he stay healthy? It's one. It's a binary question. He either stays healthy or he doesn't. If he stays healthy, I think he's going to be one of the five best pitchers in fantasy. He could be if he throws 180 innings, the SP one. The number one within his reign. Absolutely. A couple of quick follow ups his swinging strike rate would have ranked second among starting pitchers behind just Tarek Scubull. His K-Pernine rate would have been three more than anyone else with a hundred innings. So yes, I mean, this is how dominant Cole Regans is by getting back to the injury risk of the pitchers we've already talked about of the he's number 13 and 80 P of the top 12. I would say Hunter Green is a greater injury risk than him. I would say Jacob DeGrom is a greater injury risk than him. I would say Chris Sale is a greater injury risk than him. I'm right. I can sail fourth overall. I think it mostly just comes down to age for Chris Sale, but I actually don't think his injuries represent risk. I think the injury that Cole Regans had last year represents risk. I don't look at Chris Sale's injuries the past two years and think there's any risk there. Yeah. There's just the general risk of being 37. I think there's just a fundamental difference of how we look at it because among the top 15 starting pitchers, I do think Cole Regans has the highest risk of injuries. So I think it's just we look at it a little bit differently. And so you have a higher tolerance for what happened in last year, then yeah, you're probably going to wind up with him more than I am in drafts. And I already took him in two drafts. I just whenever I do it, I usually kind of make sure I have an SP one before him or back it up with with someone I think is safe, which nobody really is. Let's talk about Freddie Peralta who was traded to the Metzus off season coming off one of the best years of his career. 270 ERA 108 whip 204 strikeouts over 176 and two thirds innings his value end of season value when you look at his fantasy point scored and where he ranked on the player raider. It is boosted up by a career high 17 wins. So keep that in mind. A lot of his underlying metrics were very similar to previous years when his ERA was typically in the 3.6 to 3.8 range. He was helped out by an 85.5% left on base percentage career mark is 76% and a 243 bat bit career mark for him is 265. So Chris, I think Freddie Peralta is a good pitcher, but he just feels overvalued when fundamentally I don't think he's changed very much and his ADP last year was 112. Yeah, it would be overstating the case. I think a little bit to say he hasn't changed at all because there was a pitch makes change. I think he threw his curveball more last season. I would imagine the Mets might have some more changes. They are a tinkering team. But if you look at the skills indicators that we typically look at, strikeout rate was within a half a percentage point. Walk rate was within a half a percentage point. XERA 383 in 2024 342 last year, but 335 in 2023. That's all within the margin of error, I think. And then you look at the price and he was 112 in ADP last season. And now he's 65 at NFBC. He was 59 the year before. So 2024 or 2025 is kind of the outlier, but it's just kind of the thing where I'll buy the dip if it comes. I'm not going to buy the rise. So I think Peralta is fine. But he is like the platonic ideal of a kind of low end number two SP for fantasy who's being drafted as kind of a friend, SP one. And I just don't think he's worth that. So fine player, bad price, I think. Yeah, his ADP on fantasy pro's is as the SP 15. So if you play in a deeper league, it might be your SP one if you wait a little bit. So I don't mind them if he slips a little bit in drafts, but he typically doesn't. So if he's going to be a top 60 or top 70 pick, it's probably just not going to be for me with Friday, Peralta there. All right, before we hit our first break, make sure to like this video, smash that like button, subscribe if you haven't already. Drop a comment in the chat while we're live or after we're live and let us know who is your number one starting pitcher sleeper this season. Let us know in the comments. We appreciate it. Let's take that break. We'll be back right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball today. It's our starting pitcher preview part two and we'll continue on with ADP were into the sixth round with Joe Ryan ADP of 65 George Kirby at 67 Dylan C's at 70. So Joe Ryan with any pitcher, there are positives and negatives. So let's take a look for Ryan. The positives love the strike out rate 10.2 K. 928% K rate great control elite whip pitcher 1.06 whip for his career 22.8% K minus walk rate 4th best among qualified starting pitchers last year. The negatives, he is a heavy flyball pitcher and he had a really bad barrel rate against last year. So he is prone to home runs and some of these blow up starts at times. His swinging strike rate has been trending down over the past three seasons. He also struggled down the stretch and while he is good, he's never really delivered a work horse season. He hasn't thrown more than 171 innings and that's fine. I think it's 160 plus and two of the past three. He's more of an SP 2. That's fine, but we haven't seen like 180 plus out of Joe Ryan just yet. So it's got for you to the positives outweigh the negatives here in the sixth round. I mean, I'm lower on them than the consensus. So I guess the answer to that would be no. I'd be fine taking Joe Ryan as my number two or even as a very low in number one if I went super cheap at starting pitcher. I like that he excels in whip. I think that's the main category to prioritize. But I do think the perception of him exceeds the reality a little bit because he's probably going to be a negative for ERA, excuse me, definitely a positive for whip, but probably a negative for ERA because he's so vulnerable to the long ball. Last year the 342 mark was a career best. And I mean, you've already covered it, but the the the innings, he did reach 171 last year. Previous year was 135. You know, it is really four years where he's been a full time starting pitcher in only two of those years as he got into 150. So I think that's what you should expect between 150, 160 hasn't been a model of durability necessarily, but there hasn't been the major injury that that would make him a widely accepted injury risk. So that limited innings total cuts against his his high strike out rate a little bit. But I think it prevents him from from being a true anchor for your fantasy staff. I said he could serve suffice as a low in number one and he could, but obviously you're you're swimming upstream at that point, starting pitcher and are going to have to to load up on a lot of mid-round upside plays if that's if that's the role that Joe Ryan ends up filling for you. So I think we're what is he 15th 16th and 80p is that where we are? Yeah, 16 and I have him 20th. I think if you're going to whether we're talking about a number two or a really low in number one here, I would prioritize George Kirby and Kyle Bradish over him. I think they are better equipped to fill that role for you. But Joe Ryan is is not far behind them. One thing I'll point out with Joe Ryan, only six plus innings in 14 of 30 starts. So I would downgrade him a little bit in the head to head point league should have mentioned this with Friday, Paul, definitely downgrade Friday, Paul, and a head to head point league. He only went six innings six plus innings in 13 of 33 starts last year. That was tied for 41st among starting pitchers. So two names in a row here. I think better in a categories league for Freddie, Paul, you know, the strikeouts matter more. He doesn't go deep into his starts. And for Joe Ryan, that whip is much more meaningful in a categories league versus in a head to head point. Let's move on to George Kirby. It was a weird season. He had shoulder inflammation during spring training. That caused him to miss the first two months of the season. Once he was back, he wasn't exactly the same pitcher. He dropped the arm angle. He changed the pitch mix. Control wasn't as immaculate. Was that all because of coming back from that shoulder injury? I think it's possible. From a performance perspective, he did seem pretty similar. His first two starts back were rough. If you exclude those, I'm doing the, doing the Scott White thing right now. 368 ERA 114 whip, nearly 10 K per nine over his final 21 start. So pretty close to normal George Kirby type stuff there. I want to make sure he looks all right during spring training. He's I think a pitcher to watch. But overall, Chris, I like the discount that we're getting here. Just two years ago, his ADP was inside the top 40 overall picks. And I think we all thought he was overvalued then now that he's outside the top 60. I feel all right about buying the dip assuming he's healthy, of course. Yeah, I have him ranked 17. I think we're at SP 17. The order's a little different. I've got at least one guy that we haven't talked about yet. Low, we will very shortly ahead of him. But I think the thing for me with Kirby is I don't necessarily know how high the ceiling is here. Does George Kirby have the upside to be a 225 strikeout guy? Probably not. I don't really think so. And so you really need him to stand out in ERA and whip. He's never been in ERA standout. The whip is always very good. Even last season when he wasn't very good, 119 is fine. And it was 107 year before 104. Anything south of 111 is very good. So I think Kirby, I think where we are right now is clearly in the SP 2 range, which makes sense where at SP 17. But I don't think we're talking about pitchers that I really think have a very realistic chance of being SP ones. In Kirby's case, I think maybe you could get a low end SP one season, but it probably doesn't look a whole lot better than like what Jay could to grab dead last season, which is great. It's a really good player. But I don't like, I can see Dylan C's being the number three SP. I can't really see it with George Kirby. He would have to have just an outlier ERA year. But I think the things that help him, if unless you need, if you need to finish your point ahead, but I think the things that help him are whip standout because he's such a good control pitcher, workhorse. So obviously he had the shoulder injury early last year. The previous two years he was over 190. So on an obvious contender like the Mariners, that should lead to a good win total. The ERA is probably going to run a little high, but not anymore so than Joe Ryan or Freddie Peralta. I think we can obviously who is plenty useful last year, but 421 ERA, 119 with those were out of character. And I think we can just toss them out because he that shoulder, shoulder injury at the beginning of the injury just messed them up mechanically. You look at the arm angle. It was much lower last year than it had been previously. And I, after an offseason for rest, I think he's, I think he's going to get that right. I think he's going to come back looking more like the George Kirby we remember and shave. He as much as runoff as the ERA, at least 0.75, get that whip back below 110. And hopefully return to being the workhorse. That shoulder injury is really the only health issue that's come up for him. He did it. It was just a season opening IEL, he didn't have return trips to the IEL. The thing that Frank mentioned about watching him in spring, the thing specifically to watch is that arm angle. It dropped from 37 degrees to 29 degrees. And the splitter was never a super important pitch for George Kirby, but he basically stopped throwing it. And you could see him throughout the year if you watch the game logs experimenting with the splitter or the changeup that he had gone rid of a couple years ago and then tried to bring back that to me is the sign that George Kirby just wasn't right last season. But it's also possible that moving the arm angle down was a conscious decision, whether to make the fastball play up which worked or to try to keep him healthy. My guess is it was a response to the shoulder injury. Yeah. That he just couldn't throw as pain free with the higher arm angle that he had in the past. That's why I want to see it though. Because he comes out this spring and the arm angle is the same and he can't throw that splitter or changeup. Then I do wonder if he might just be the guy he was last year, which I don't think 421 ERA, but it was a 388 XERA. He got hit a lot harder. I think there could be just a lowering of the ceiling for Kirby if what we saw last year carries over. But that's not at all guaranteed. So Kirby has been the one guy that I've kind of every time I write about him, it's like I will let you know how I feel once we see him in spring training because I really don't know which version of George Kirby to expect right now. Speaking of spring training by the way, Friday, February 20th, we have spring games today. Today, later today. Wow. Yes, let's go. Yankees, first one, let's go to an end. The calendar feels so early this year. It is. I believe it's the earliest opening day ever. Not counting Japan or Australia or Korea. Well, I can tell. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I can definitely tell. I've been putting X days until opening day in the lead of every newsletter counting down to opening day. And every time it's a little bit of a jump scare for me. It's like 35 days. What? There should be at least three months until opening day. I'm not ready. But I will be. We'll talk about Dylan Cs and oh boy, coming off a huge let down of a season to 455 ERA 133 web. Still tons of strikeouts, but as somebody who rostered him in multiple spots last year, it was brutal. Now, I think it's very telling that early on in free agency, the blue jays came out, dropped the hammer, gave this guy $210 million over seven years. Seems like they clearly trust him. The whiffs. I'm not so sure about Dylan Cs. The whiffs were still amazing. His ERA peripherals were all under 3.6 and he has been incredibly durable. 32 plus starts five years in a row. Chris, I know that you've said this often you like to buy the dip on Cs when he's coming off a bad year. Last time he had a bad year, his ADP the next season was 105. Now it's around 70. I just, I wish we were getting more of a discount. I think everyone kind of knows the same things and is looking at the same thing. We're smarter and it's expected him to be better. And I think it's worth noting that the last time he had a bad season, he had a bad season. He had a 458 ERA and a 416 XERA. He just didn't pitch well in 2023. I don't think that's what we saw in 2025. He had a 455 ERA in 2025 so on the surface it looks very similar to 2023 but 346 XERA. And it's not so my way of looking at Dylan Cs is we have the one season where the peripherals were bad and the ERA was bad. We have another season where the ERA was bad and the peripherals were good. But it's not like we have this long track record of him under performing his peripherals where we can say, okay, clearly there's something that the peripherals are missing. I think he just had just rained into rotten luck last year in a way that I don't really think is likely to continue. The blue jays are a good team. Well I think if he pitches exactly like he did last year, he's going to have an ERA a run lower. Specifically when you refer to him having bad luck, this is something I've noticed about the on and on again off again pattern for Dylan Cs. So this past year, the past four years, ERA 455 347 458 220. The Babet the last four years 320 263 330 260. That is the strongest correlation I can see in his numbers is the bad years the Babet is high, the good years the Babet is low. He's going to a blue jays team that I mean it certainly has a strong infield defense. We're not sure about Okamoto at third, but the other three spots are very strong. Okamoto should be fine I would guess. I would think. But we it's hard to say to see him. The reason why I don't totally buy that explanation I'm giving is because he is a he's consistently a very good bad misser. And so you would think he would be a pitcher who is less susceptible to defense. So I don't know that it's just every other year he's had bad defense behind him, but it'll help. It'll help. The reason why I'm a little reluctant to buy him at this price is because when he's bad, he counter wrecks you in a categories league. Like the R.A. is bad. The whip is bad. You regret the day you drafted him because it's not just like I was a little underwhelming. Like George Kirby, yeah, that was me last year. I regretted every second of it. The R.A. was high, but the whip was still OK. And it's like I'm getting something out of this guy Dylan Cecey really weren't other than strikeouts I guess, but I feel more comfortable buying the discount in a point league, I think, actually, because obviously E.R.A. and whip aren't scored directly in that format. And as long as your guy is giving you consistent innings and a chance to win, he should be pretty useful. So there's less. You feel a worst case scenario for Dylan Cecey in a point. So you're still probably using him and feeling OK about it. The worst case scenario under categories league, it's like I got to get this guy out of here. And that's the sort of thing that you don't even know for sure. Like maybe he has a bad April. What does that mean? Does that mean he's going to have a bad May through September? No, not at all. And so it's the sort of thing you can only look at in retrospect and say, boy, it really ruined me having Dylan Cecey on my team because he never pulled out of this. So it's a commitment that could make or break your team, even at the reduced rate this year. It could make or break your team. And so I would need him to be discounted further, like you were saying, Frank, to take at least an account of Corey's league. I know we're not supposed to look at fantasy this way and we tell others not to do it. I mean, he just burned me so hard last year. I haven't been able to press draft, but that's just a me thing. That's like, you know, that's like a mental bias for me. So I might just miss out on a huge bounce back season from Dylan Cecey's. We are into the seventh round of ADP, Hazard Slozaro at 76, Frambarval does at 80 Kyle Brattishett, 80 Nick Pavella 81 and Blake's now at 82. But as we know, Blake's now is hurt. He's I don't even know if he's hurt. He's just being slow played and he's going to start the season on the I L. His NFBC ADP in February is 114 with a max pick of 189. So he is slipping in drafts and probably rightfully so we'll see. Let's talk about Lazardo. Interesting picture to evaluate. He was traded to the Phillies last off season, immediately changed the pitch mix, introduced a sweeper, which was awesome. The fastball velocity back up over 96 miles per hour, which seems to be a key number for him. The skills were awesome. Among qualified starters, he was seventh in swinging strike rate eighth in K minus walk rate. All of his eRA estimators were 3.40 or better. But he had back to back starts in late May where he was tipping his pitches. He allowed eight plus earned runs in each of those and obviously that inflated the surface level numbers also has a history of arm injury. So some of that volatility that you were talking about here, Chris, with that said, he is entering a contract year. So I lean by because of the skills. Scott, what do you think about Lazardo? Yeah, I have him higher than the consensus. So if you take away those two starts, which were among the worst starts any pitcher had, in baseball all year and were obviously influenced by the pitch tipping issue, comes out to a 303 eRA 111 whip 10.6 K per nine, clearly an ace like performance. And that 303 eRA is more in line with the eRA estimators than where the eRA ended up because of the two. The two ruined starts. So I think we've seen a breakout here from Luzardo. It was a long time coming. There were a lot of injuries that delayed it. But I think it's happened now. And obviously he has a great support and cast. I'm not saying he's without risk, but I think the risk is mostly health related as opposed to performance related. So you guys are taking Hazus's Ardo ahead of Dylan Cs. I am. Yeah. I have Cs.1 spot higher. I think that's crazy. I think it's insane. Like I think Hazus, this is Ardo has exactly the same kind of performance risk concerns that Dylan Cs does. And he has basically zero track record of stringing together multiple healthy seasons in a row. Like, and we're talking like this is not like, oh, he fractured his rib or, you know, he did hurt his hand playing video games, I believe, was the, but like those darn kids. I don't think he got out of high school without getting Tommy John surgery. And then I think he had a shoulder issue as a prospect. Since he's gotten to the majors, he's got the fractured left hand. Be careful playing video games. It's not that serious. Don't smell any more controller. Shus respect for your controller. They're expensive now. Strangler forearm, tightness and left elbow, moved to the 60 day out with tightness and left elbow, and then a stress reaction in his back in 2024. He has never thrown more than 101 innings in consecutive seasons at any level. No, but two of the last three he's thrown two of the last three he's basically thrown 180. One of them was 178 and two. But okay, let's 180 basically two of the last three. That's pretty good. Dylan sees throws 32 starts every day. Yeah, Dylan sees has not missed a start. He has since like 2019 or so. He has to this point. We used to say that about Garrett Cole and Zach. Right, but come on. He's not a mean. Right, but we know Dylan sees. Yeah. If we know anything about injuries, we either know nothing about injuries and I'm open to that idea. Or we know Dylan sees has less injury. I think that's the reason that Hazus and Hazus are that does not mean Hazus and Hazus are to will get hurt and Dylan sees will not. But there is no formulation possible by which you could say Dylan sees and Hazus and Hazus and Hazus are to have comparable injury risk. I agree with that. I think the injury risk for every pitcher is high. I think Luzardo is probably higher. I think it's way higher. I think it's high for every pitcher. And so that that may just be a difference in evaluating pitchers. I think I don't think you can trust any pitcher to stay healthy. I don't either. Okay. I think you can trust Hazus, Luzardo a lot less than Dylan sees though. We said this with Cees before. I kind of feel this way about Luzardo. I like buying him when he's coming off the down season when he's coming off the hurt season. Like I was all over Luzardo last year. I drafted him everywhere. Now that you have to use the top 75 top 80 pick to get him, I'm I mean, there's a few guys in my top 20 rankings that I just a lot of times I just skip over like I just I let somebody else draft them. And I mean, if they fall to a certain point like yeah, and I need a pitcher, I'll take him. But you know, Cees has been one of those. Luzardo has been one. I think like Hunter Brown is another one that I mentioned yesterday. I just I don't I usually just skip over those guys. So look, they're all really talented. You can afford to be kind of pick and choosey about who you like. You know, you're you're most likely going to get a talented pitcher in the top 67 rounds. But yeah, typically Luzardo is someone that I have just skipped over. Serial bet Serial bet. Dylan C is versus Hazel's as Ardo. Let's go. Let's make it between you two innings. In innings. Oh, yeah. Who throws more innings? See, he won't do it. Not all of a sudden there's $8.69 to general Mills corporation and Scott's back in a world cost in New York. Holy cow. Really expensive. It is. It's like the one thing that's like. That's not true. We don't want to talk about rent, but at the grocery store. My gosh. Serial is bonkers expensive. Everything else. Not that much more expensive than like South Florida, actually. But first I don't know that you should. Serial ship to you. The serial tariffs or something are crazy. I'm like in New York City. It sounds like Chris might get some serial ship to him after the season. You lose his bet. If you want to say Luz, who has the better fantasy season overall? I'd be willing to say he's back in a way. He's back in a way. All right. Do we have a handshake agreement here or what? Two and a half minutes ago was everybody gets injured. And now now that there's $8. All right. But even if it's even if it's 51% to 49% and ceases favor, it's still a dumb bet to make a good deal. I'll give you Dylan C's minus 10 and a half innings. Dylan C's minus 10 and a half innings. Or versus Hazel's. Dylan C's has to throw 11 more innings than the guard out. Yeah. Hmm. I'll think about it. I like cinnamon toast. All right. We put the order. That's what I got for Frank in the serial bet I lost last year. Okay. Well, let's do respost. Yeah. But you know what? It was a different kind. It was like apple pie cinnamon toast crunch. It was interesting. Yeah. Don't mess with what works. It's a classic. Yeah, I wanted to try some different. It's like it was something that I would never buy myself, but I'll let Scott buy. I think it was out of print. So that ended up being like an eight dollar box of cereal, but that's fine. I did it for you, Frank. I knew. I knew. What were we talking about? Oh, I just wanted to make the point that we can get he we can get animated about our favorites here among this group, but I'm still probably just taking whichever last to me. You know, it's I'm not being that choosy about it. And I have Lazardo roughly where he's being drafted anyway. It's not like I'm totally out of Lazardo, but I agree with Frank. I'd rather not with Hazus Lazardo, I think. Let's move on to Frembreveldes who settled settled. So got a lot of money for a three year, $115 million deal with the Tigers this off season, even though he was looking for a much bigger contract like Logan Webb. He is one of the premier workhorses in the game, 190 plus innings in three of the past four years. He is streaky at times when he loses that curveball. We saw it in the second half last year. And he is a bit of a wild card. We all remember he pegged his catcher in the chest with a sinker last season. I do think being reunited with his former manager, AJ Hinch is something that can help kind of keep emotions and check. Hopefully that's, you know, I guess I'm kind of wish casting that, but I also like the landing spot. It's a good team. It's a good park. It's a great division to pitch in. So I like this price tag on frambervaldez. I've actually been winding up with a lot of them. I don't see huge difference between him and Logan Webb and frambervaldez is going 30 picks later right now. Yeah. If anything, framber has been historically a better bet for whip. That wasn't true last year. They were both pretty bad. But before last year, framber was usually sub 1.2, usually closer to 1.1. So I think him and Logan Webb are very, very similar. Webb may be a better bet for volume. There is like a five year age gap between them or four year age gap. Framber is 32. He's a little older than I think you might think. But I think the price is great. I like frambervaldez a lot. Yeah. Now I can get on board with that. I don't know why he's, I guess I know why he's being discounted so much, but I don't think it's rational. And early on, you could say, oh, it's because he hasn't signed yet, but I don't think it's changed much since he signed. It's gone down a little bit. Yeah, but it's not. I think I feel like we should be drafting frambervaldez basically like we always have. And I understand that ERA was higher last year, but not outside the expected range of outcomes for him. I understand he had a rough second half, but I think it's, you know, as somebody who was analyzing him on a granular level at the time, it seemed like he just lost the fuel for his curve ball, which he has a stretch most every year where that happens. As his career's gone on, he's become more reliant on that curve ball, which makes the highs higher and the lows lower. I mean, he gets double digit strike as pretty often now for also being an extreme ground ball pitcher. But when he loses the field for that pitch, it doesn't seem like he has as much to fall back on. I would have, I think if the season had played out another couple months, this would all be nobody would have that same skepticism because there would just be, it would have gotten diluted by him regaining the field for the curve ball and that ERA getting brought back down to size. It's very last start of the season, 10 strike out, seven innings, one run, the curve ball, he threw it more, it was great. He just ran out of calendar to get that ERA right. So I don't see evidence of real decline here. I think it was just a timing issue of when the bad stretch happened. And I think Fromba Valdez is a great value. Another one who, if I went really cheap at starting pitcher, I could make do with him as a budget ace. And he is someone Fromba Valdez who does get a boost in head to head points leagues. He also gets a boost in category leagues that have quality starts as a category. Points leagues move Fromba Valdez up a little bit and something to watch in spring or I guess let's see if there are any articles or quotes about this. Last off season, Robbie Ray learned his change up from Tarek's school. Fromba Valdez left the joining the pitching staff. He learns a change up from Tarek's school. That would be pretty cool. Let's talk about Kyle Bradish who was keyword was like the Ben Rice at starting pitcher this year. Almost everybody's pick to break out the season. He has made 14 starts combined over the past two seasons, 265 ERA 105 whip, 12.6 K. Pranine. He was incredible in his return last year, albeit a small sample. Last week in Bradish revealed that he expects to be on some sort of innings limit this season with an expectation of pitching in the playoffs. I guess the Orioles have to get to the playoffs first, but that could mean a six man rotation, skipping starts, spreading starts out. I don't think there's ever going to be a point where they just shut Kyle Bradish down or there's a phantom I else then, but they are going to kind of spread them out a little bit here. After hearing something like that, has your enthusiasm for Kyle Bradish waned at all? Did you plan to lower him in the rankings at all? Nope. No, hasn't waned at all. I think most pitchers are on some kind of innings limit. Not necessarily a strict number. Could be a fairly high number, but I think every pitcher is being monitored to some to create and make sure they don't throw a ridiculous number of innings that that, you know, compromises their long term success. What I'm imagining the sort of innings limit is applying to Bradish since we weren't given an exact number, you know, if they set 130 innings, then be a different story. But I'm imagining it being sort of like what the pirates did with Paul Schien's last year, where there were some starts where he could have gone seven dominant innings, but instead he went only five. And you know, he still got to 187 innings. I'm not expecting Bradish to throw 187 innings, but I never was. I think 170 or so is still along the lines of what I'm thinking. Maybe it's more like 165, but I think they will be Sion Caliber innings. And I mentioned pitchers who could serve as a budget ace in this range to me. Bradish is at the very top of the list because just looking at what he's done the last four years. And I'm imagining that there was a Tommy John surgery in there that that cost him a big chunk of time. But we're still looking at how many starts as a total 44 starts to 78 ERA 105 whip 10.1 Kper nine. And over the course of that time, the bat missing ability has gotten better and better to the point, you know, the six starts we saw him last year was 13.2 Kper nine. It would have led the majors if he had enough and he's to qualify. Though not if he and Cole Reagan's both had enough and he's to qualify. He's really good. And I don't I think the injury, the innings limit thing is being over over played. And if that makes him more affordable, great. I'm happy to just take advantage. Yeah, I tend to think it is reasonable to assume that in a pitcher's first full healthy season back from Tommy John surgery, you can probably peg them to what they threw in their last healthy season before Tommy John surgery. So in your he parres his case, it was about 95 innings, right? About maybe 110 if you include the playoffs or the the minors, which is about what he threw in his previous season that he was healthy for for Sandy Alcanturay. It was 185 innings back from Tommy John surgery. Well, he got about 180. His last healthy season, Bradish's last healthy season was 168.2 innings. I think that's probably about what I expect. Maybe it's 160, maybe it's 175. I don't think if Kyle Bradish is healthy for 32 starts, it's going to be 150. This is not a drossumson situation. Probably I suppose I can't say for certain the Orioles might just take that tack with him, but I think it's really unlikely. So there will be a couple of disappointing starts. There will be some point in June where we're like, man, why didn't they let Kyle Bradish go longer? But I don't think the innings limit is going to be like a hard and fast rule. I think we're going to see Kyle Bradish used more or less like how Freddie Peralta or Joe Ryan or and I think he's going to be better than those two guys. So I actually do have him ranked ahead of Peralta a little bit behind Ryan. And if you are for some reason in a draft where everybody is using projections might create a buying opportunity for you on Kyle Bradish because he's projected for between 130 and 146 innings across all the projection systems. And that feels a little bit like, I mean, even with hearing this, I agree with you guys. I don't think he gets to 32 starts. I think they maybe skip him here and there, but maybe it's like 28 starts and 160 innings or whatever that might be. But when he pitches, I think he's going to be really, really good Kyle Bradish. You know what? Screw it. I'm moving Joe Ryan behind him too. Oh, right here, right here. Live on the podcast. I'm going to lie that for you in my head. Yeah. Let it just make sense. Yeah. No, no. All right. Let's move on to Nick Povetta who signed with the Padres last off season and he finally put it together. 287 ERA 0.99 Whip, 190 strikeouts over 181 and two thirds innings. He finished as the SP 13 and Roto SP 10 in fantasy points per game. When you dig in, his underlying numbers were actually a little worse than previous years. He's a fly ball pitcher, but even with that 235, Babib much lower than the rest of his career, he also allowed a lot of barrels, but avoided home runs and maybe pitching in Petco Park, that will just continue to be the case. Maybe he will just continue to have really good home run luck. I think the Babib probably comes up a little bit and there is some regression, but even with that, the price tag isn't egregious, but it's just a fade for me. Scott, how do you feel about Nick Povetta? Yeah, I have them as part of my busts this year, which isn't to say I want to draft them if he's the last pitcher available in this year. I've done drafts where he was and I've taken him as my number two and okay, I'm not so confident in any bust pick I make that I wouldn't accept obvious value, but I do think there is bottom-out potential here. He went from being one of the big underachievers and the ERA estimator for basically his entire career, certainly in more recent years, to being one of the biggest overachievers in ERA. So it was 287 as compared to a 4XERA as compared to a 385X fit. And a big reason for that is okay, he went to a more pitcher friendly environment finally was able to take on a true Starters workload finally. Wasn't as good of a bad miser as we had seen. He did not live up to our wildest imaginations for what he could be in this scenario. He masked it pretty well because that ERA was so good, but again, I think that was kind of fake. So I think he'll be a plus and whip. He might be a negative in ERA and the strike out rate, I don't really know what to expect. I don't know that he's clearly a plus in that anymore. And then there's a chance, he gives even more of it back than that scenario I laid out, which is why I haven't this potential bust. Pavez is pretty clearly the worst pitcher we've talked about so far, right? Yeah, that's probably fair. I think in terms of skill set and certainly track record, his track record is, I think, by far the worst of any pitcher we've talked about. I don't know, I rank him below his ADP, he's closer to 30 for me. I think he's okay, but I would not feel good about my pitching staff if Nick Pavez was my number two. Yeah. No, I think that's a good point that you bring up about Pavez's skill, right? There's a clear, it feels like a clear teardrop after the Joe Ryan's and Bradish's and I guess Luzardo's of the world down to someone like Nick Pavez here. Let's talk about Blake's nail. What do you have him in the same tier to just, you know, put all the cards on the table? But I would say if you consider him in an entirely different tier, you're definitely not going to draft Nick Pavez. All right, I am not drafted Nick Pavez. Yeah. Let's talk about Blake's nail as of February 16th. He's yet to throw off a mound as he's ramping up slowly after a deep postseason run, only made 11 starts in the regular season. But when he pitched, he pretty much looked like himself. Like most of the season, the two thirds of the season with a shoulder injury last year, and pitched through pain in the postseason and then they said he just felt fatigued. So they're the official line is they're just taking it easy with him, but I don't know. Like he's not going to be ready for opening day one way or the other. We already know that pretty, yeah, pretty confidently. We know he's thrown more than 130 innings twice in a 10 year MLB career. I can't touch him at anything like this price. Yeah, he's still in this, but I mentioned earlier, his ADP in February is like 115. But he's still a top 30 pitcher in top 30 SP in the month of February. I assume he's 39 among all pitchers. I think there are at least 10 starters ahead of him. Really power relievers ahead of him. So I'm guessing he's still top 30 SP maybe more recently. There the move has been even more dramatic. Let's let's look since the 10th. No, no, he's number 40 pitcher, number 119 in ADP overall. I haven't a 40 at SP. I have him, it's around 140th overall. So I still need a couple more rounds of discount. I get the upside case for Blake Snow. We just have a really long track record of him not hitting his upside very often. I think he'll probably be useful when he's on the mound, but even that's not a guarantee. Do we have a really, when you say we have a really long track record of him not meeting his upside? Yeah. On a perinning basis, we don't. He's been awesome the last four years. Yeah. Okay. The whole season. Yes. Yeah. I mean, you got to throw enough for. Yeah. If I look, if I get 125 innings from Blake Snow and he's the 40th pitcher off the board, I think that's probably fine. The problem is he's not the 40th pitcher off the board. He's more like 30th pitcher already. Even since knowing that he's not going to be ready for, I just, I don't know. He, everyone has been there for either the 2018 or 2023 seasons and he won them their league and that is why he gets this really wide benefit of the doubt relative to a pretty shoddy track record in terms of overall production. Like, this is a guy that has been in the majors for 10 seasons. He has been a top 30 SP at the end of the season twice. He is not going to be ready for opening day and he missed most of last season with a shoulder injury and he is a top 30 SP and ADP. I just like, I, you can say, yeah, but when he's on the mound, he's good. But like, there's lots of guys we can say that for and who don't get the benefit of the doubt that Blake snows us. And there is a, who is capable of getting, of doing what Blake snows does. Who is ranked outside the top 50. Chris Babitch. Carlos Rodon. Yeah, that's fair and I think he'll be back sooner than snows. So he's probably, probably going a little too late at this point. Maybe, maybe, Garacol. I have no idea. But you're naming other injured pitchers. Sure. Sure. Obviously, be top 20 if they weren't injured. Maybe. I don't know, Zach Galen, Jack Flierty, those guys have had good seasons recently. Yeah. But you wanted to expect them to do anything. But I mean, it smells actual percentages over the last four years, 276 ERA 117 with 11.8 Cape R9. But we know the experience of having him on your team is not actually as good as all that sounds. And like you say, Chris misses a lot of time. It's not just the 100 goes through these month long stretches where he's terrible too. Yeah, but he makes up for it. And he always obviously, but that's why I said the numbers are what they are. Right. But that's why I said the experience of having him on your team. It's like it's, it's, this is a tired argument that Chris and I have had. I think too many times over the last two years. And it's, I feel like it's kind of moot at the moment because we have no idea when he's going to pitch again. So I don't really want to draft him either. But he's still trying to get paid a little unfair because he's like a really good pitcher. He's really good. But I just, I have a long enough memory to where I know how the discussions actually go around Blake's now in season. And I have seen him dropped in leagues because of those poor stretches. So I just, I know that in practice, obviously, sure we can say that, but yeah, there's a lot of people listening to this podcast, not all of them. As we talk about all the time, have the patience or the track record to sit with it. It is also just really hard to look at your supposed ace with a 550 ERA in May, something that's happened three out of the last four years and say, it's fine. It's fine. He'll be fine by September. It's, that's true. It's hard to remember that in May though. He's also a bad whip pitcher. He is objectively bad in his career. He is a 122 whip pitcher. And it's not just that he's only pitched 130 innings twice in his career. He's only done that one time in the past seven seasons. There's just, yeah, there's no way. I'm starting my draft off. If I have a list of pitchers, I am crossing Blake's nail off the list before the draft starts. I'm not taking Blake's nail. Someone else can take this about the gram. I mean, come on. Jacob DeGrom just threw 170 innings and had a sub one whip. Blake's nail when he pitches, even when he pitches, he has a 122 whip. Yeah, he's had a sub 119 whip twice in his career. Okay, but it's been 117 over the last four years and the strike out rate is better than DeGrom. And the ERA is probably going to be better than DeGrom and the injury risk is not any worse. And again, this is like hypothetical territory we're getting into now because now is already injured. So we should obviously avoid them. I just don't get why you guys hate him so much. So he's really good. He is really good. For me, it's not that I hate him. It's that before this injury, he was a top 20 SP and 80 and he deserved to be because how many pitchers are really don't agree what he does? No, all right. We've got to move on. We're really asking him to do what he does. We got to move on. We're rehashing the same things. Let's take our final break. When we return back into ADP right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball today, starting pitcher ADP. We left off with snow, but we really left off with Nick Pavella. So after him, we dropped down about 20 picks to Yuri Perez will get to him in a second. There is one name in between. And that is Otani the pitcher. So we will quickly talk about him on Yahoo. There's two different players. The hitter Otani. There's the pitcher Otani. And there is a feature if you play in CBS commissioner leagues where you can make Otani two players as well. So might as well just talk about it now. And Otani the pitcher so unique to evaluate because he is still ridiculously talented on that side of the ball. We just have no clue what his workload is going to be. He made 14 starts last season and performed like an ace 287 ERA 104 whip nearly 12 K. 9 a 28% K minus walk rate 14% swinging strike rate projections all having for between 100 and 120 innings. I also just read earlier a quote from Dodgers GM Brandon goms. We are we're not going to put too much emphasis on the beginning of the season and we'll just make sure he's prepared for the long haul. So what are your expectations for pitcher Otani? Yeah, he's not pitching in the word baseball classic, I believe. Maybe they maybe they change that at some point, but right now I don't think we're going to see show Otani pitch in like a real game, possibly until the start of the season, which last year that's how they handled his rehab process. He threw some sim games on the side and then just debuted when he was ready and they will probably slow play this. I would guess he's not going to be particularly useful as a pitcher early on. I think he's going to be really good when he's on the mound because he always is. He has not had an ERA north of 331 in any season. It's just can you count on him for 120 innings that feels safe ish and they should be 120 really good innings. I I don't really know what to do with him. I have him at 22 in my rankings. That feels too high though, just for what he does as a pitcher, right? I don't really know. I don't know. I mean, he's going to be dominant with the ratios. It's just a volume question, right? He was so good over his last four starts once he got to pitching five plus innings with consistency and then into the playoffs. He is as as ace like as anybody as a pitcher, but he doesn't get the same volume for obvious reasons. It's only a relevant question even in the on the rare platform that does split him into two pitchers because if you're drafting, Otani, a combined player, flexibility to use him at D H or pitcher, you're always choosing D H, right? These I think we're going to I think we're starting to get into the pitchers with obvious innings concerns. It's not a one them, but just they're going to dominate when they do pitch. So I think this is probably the right range for Otani, the pitcher. Yeah, I think so too. I haven't ranked SP 21 and even if he gives you 120 innings, when he pitches, I think it's probably going to be top five SP production. He's not going to give you the innings on a per star basis, even if he's like a five and dive guy, he might give you, you know, seven or eight strikeouts per start and have really awesome ratio. So it's got to be the right context. But yeah, if you play in a league where he's two different players, I'm okay with taking him around this point as you're I mean, probably as like your SP three or as he's for. He's probably just Tyler Glassen, all right? Yeah, I almost brought up the name, but I know you guys are down on glass now. So I actually think he's actually think he's better skill wise in glass. He is better. He is better. Same idea where you know, it's probably just going to be 140 innings, but they're going to be I mean, I'd be thrilled if I got 140 innings out of Tyler Glass now. That would be a clear high. Yeah. All right. We move into the ninth round of ADP where we find Yuri Perez at 100, Noah McLean at 101, 20, gray 104 Kevin Cosmon, 104 Spencer Strider, 104 and Tyler Glass now, the aforementioned at 107. Yuri Perez, former top prospect, just he's only turning 23 in April. He is still a baby. He returned from Tommy John surgery in June of last year. He looked really good initially. He hit a snag. Then he finished strong. I think he's going to be a star at some point. I'm just not so sure that it happens this season. He still struggles with walks, gives up a lot of flyballs, hard contact, barrels, leads to home runs at times. I also don't really see him throwing more than 150 innings this season. This could blow up in my face, but I have been passing on Yuri Perez so far. I'd rather take my upside shots on these young pictures. I could get them, you know, 30 or 40 or 50 picks later. I'd rather just do it then. So Chris, you're the Marlins fan. What are you expecting from Yuri Perez? I can see 160 innings. He got to like 117 last year. You tend to think 45 to 50, jump for a young pitcher who's never gotten there is probably pretty reasonable. That's probably the ceiling and you can be a top 10 pitcher in 160 innings, but you've got to be elite pretty much everywhere. I think Yuri Perez has a pretty good chance of being elite everywhere though. He is not a finished product, but Yuri Perez is five days older than Andrew Painter who has not debuted in the majors yet. Yuri Perez is about 20 months younger than Nolan McLean, who everybody loves and thinks is a finished product and all that and he's super talented. I think there's a lot to like about him, some stuff to not like spoiler alert, but it's just to highlight how precocious Yuri Perez is and he has more than held his own at the major league level so far. He gives up a lot of fly balls. He doesn't give up that many home runs because he does not give up hard contact very often. He gets a lot of those weak fly balls. So what that does is you know 105 whip last season. I think he's going to be a whip standout. The controls are going to be good. He's going to get a lot of strikeouts. I think Yuri Perez needs some tweaks. The breaking balls especially, he's still trying to figure out. He was like experimenting with a sweeper. He's still got the curve on and slider. I think once he figures it out, Yuri Perez is going to have a top 10 season at some point. It might be 2026. I don't think that's the likeliest outcome, but I think he's fine at this price. I have him 20 second in my rankings. So I think it's also important to remember because he was worse last year than we saw as a rookie. But it's important to remember that coming back from Tommy John's or command is slower to come around and that can lead to some of these struggles. Last three starts for Yuri Perez last year were lights out. He looked more like he did in that rookie season. What everybody acknowledged, he was an up and coming ace. So I think I'm on the opposite side of you here, Frank, particularly somebody who likes to go cheap at starting pitcher and go for quantity in this range of the rankings instead of investing a lot at the top. The quantity I'm going after, I want them to have breakout ace potential. Like I think Kyle Brattish does and I think Yuri Perez is in the same category. I'm actually curious about what you said leading into this where you rather than drafting Yuri Perez here, go for one of the rookies, you know, a few rounds later. Does that just mean you're skipping this whole range of starting pitchers? Because I don't know who is more attractive in this range than Yuri Perez. I do typically skip this range of starting pitchers. Yeah. I do think like we've talked a little bit about the SP Deadzone idea. I think we're in it. I think this is where the interesting but unproven pitchers who we think have ace upside but we haven't seen them before or the guys who are kind of falling off but have a good track record. I think the last 10 or so that we've discussed has a little Deadzone vibe to me where I don't necessarily dislike all of them. I think I would like them all if they were a little cheaper and unfortunately they're not. That's how rankings work. I'm not saying I think Nick Lodolo should be ranked higher than the guys we're talking about but I like Nick Lodolo's price a little more and I don't think he's so much worse and that's just to be one random guy. I don't think he's so much worse than Freddie Peralta or Jesus' Ardo of Frambervaldez that it justifies what is a very significant price difference and I think that's how I feel about this whole tier. Yeah, that's typically why I skip this range is because I know I can get and that Nick Lodolo I don't know has this upside, same upside as these guys but I just like Nick Lodolo almost more. I almost rank him ahead of your repress so. No, I get that and as I brought up on part one of the starting picture preview, I don't necessarily think the second picture you draft you have to say this is my SB2 because I think we're in that wide range of any number of pictures here could perform like SB2. I guess just the way I like to put together my pitching staff, to me it's not an either or proposition. It's a both. Yeah, it's a both. More bite to the apple basically. Here's where I take Gary Perez and later on there's where I take Nick Lodolo or you know, Treyis Savage or whoever it is. And there's some opportunity cost to passing on this tier because the number of while we think there's not that much difference between this tier and the next tenor we're going to talk about or whatever. Every guy that you pass on means there's one fewer member of that tier. And if you want multiple bites at the apple, you might have to just hold your nose, spend that pick around 95 or 100 on a guy you'd rather spend it at 120. Knowing that you're also going to take Treyis Savage at 150 or Nick Lodolo probably later, I would guess. So I think he's somewhere around 140. Yeah, so around the same. Yeah. So I think it's just a fundamental difference of how we draft because I'm not looking to take multiple bites of that like young upside picture app. I'm usually just taking one of them. And so I'll take that tablet around. This range of like more definitively less than the hitters we've already gotten past when the pitchers, there's a lot more interchangeability. So that's why I do it the way I do it. But I know there's more than one way to win a league. Let's talk about no one McLean. Yippee-ki-yay, mother. All right. Let's get into it. 24 years old got called up late last season and he dominated in eight starts. 106 ERA 104 whip 10.7 K.P.9 with a 61% ground ball rate. He was awesome. Through 161 and 2/3 total innings between the miners and majors. So it feels like he's ready to handle a legit workload here. He's got nasty stuff, huge spin rates. With that said, I don't entirely trust the strikeouts based on his swinging strike rate. And lots of walks in the miners, I feel could make him a risk in the whip category. And I also just don't love the price when you could get, you know, I think comparable pitchers and canchletler and tray a savage, you know, 30 or 40 picks later sometimes. So I like the talent, but I don't like the price on no McLean. I'm with you. I'm with you. I think I might just prefer you savage straight up. Yeah, for me, it was like a 1a and 1b situation with those two. Right. They're close, but it's close and by 80p, it's nowhere close. So I don't really understand it. And honestly, I'm baffled by it because tray a savage was on a national stage and had huge moments on that national stage. And I thought everybody was going to be just enamored by him. And he would be one of those playoff risers in addition to having all the hype of the rookie and look at this incredible splitter in the arm angle. It's crazy. So I thought yes, savage would be the one who is elevated beyond all the rookie pitchers and price data, my range. I'm kind of grateful. That's not what's happened, but it's happened to McLean here instead. And you know, the the stringing strike rate for him, I understand he had 10.7k per nine and that's great. I don't think he's going to be a 10.7k per nine guy in the long run because he just doesn't have that kind of swing in this ability. It was a very ordinary swing strike rate. There are control issues that we saw during over the course of his time in the miners last year. Actually, the walk rate ended up pretty high, even in this one 13 whip in the miners is not that impressive. Right. Um, the walk rate ended up high even in it during his time in the majors. I can't seem to pull up my notes here. So I'm just going, just going off memory here or keeping it vague, but I know what I'm saying is in the right. He was he was at 3.9 walks per nine in triple A, 4.1 and double A. Yeah. So around four. So there's risks here. It's not like, yeah, he was great last year. Yeah, he has a lot of upside. I think he's my number three starting pitcher prospect. So, you know, McLean is good. I think he's going to have a good career. I think he's going to be more of a hunter brown type. Logan Web has been my go to comp. Yeah. Yeah. Web, frambervaldez, kind of that. I feel I don't want to sell short his ceiling because he's such a young pitcher like he could turn into anything, but it feels like his upside, what he can become is more like a really high in sp2 for fantasy. For me, it's just we are supposed to be smart enough to know that ERA doesn't really matter. And we're especially supposed to be smart enough to know that ERA and 48 innings really doesn't matter. Now, he had a good ERA in the miners. Jonah Tong had a better one. Trace Savage had a better one. It's not like he was such an outlier in the miners. But it's just why I'm a clean. Because the way I have the pitchers, that second year crop of pitchers is I have burns a little higher. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I feel like I might need to walk that back a little bit. But really? Oh. I thought we were the Burns brothers, Chris. I'm just I'm trying to be consistent. I think chase burns is the most talented of that. Yeah. Am I so sure he's the most talented that I want to rank him 15 spots ahead of them or 10 spots ahead of them at the starting picture? I'm not so sure given there are going to be injury innings limitations. There is some injury risk. He might not even be in the rotation. He is. I do not believe that for a second. That is like that feels like the biggest like. Yeah. Chase Burns has to compete for rotations, but sure with a better. Get ready for the compete. Get ready for a chance, man. Well, like I think red ladders like not totally uninteresting, but like they the same article mentioned Brandon Williamson. I think it's named Williamson. Come on, dude. I need to know. I need to know. I need to know. I need to know. I need to know. Is not competing with chase burns for rotations. But like, look, if chase, red ladder, who was a number of a first round pick, went to the same school as chase burns had a very good my college career. If he just beats chase burns out for a rotation spot, okay, I guess you'll eat your head. Brandon Williamson is not going to beat out chase burns in an open fair competition for a rotation spot. I think that report was total BS. I think chase burns is 95% guaranteed to be in a rotation. So I do have him a little bit ahead. I need to know if this is a legit route battle because I am putting together top 30 position battles this spring. I did not even Chris and I recorded an FBT express episode earlier and that was one of the battles we talked about. It's okay. I didn't put red's fifth starter on there because I just I don't think it's legit. I mean, it's probably not. I don't think it's real, but there is an MLB dot com article about it. Let's move on to sunny gray, who is now 36 years old, traded over to the red socks this off season. He is one of these guys that the underlying numbers and projections love. Now he still does a lot. Well, big strikeouts, great control. He's done 166 plus innings three years in a row, but his fastball velocity has been ticking down. It was 92.9 in 2023. It was down to 91.7 last year. And that pitch got demolished last season. He also struggled in the second half, 545 ERA 146 whip 15 home runs allowed over 13 starts. And this last part is completely anecdotal. And if you guys want to call me a hater, like totally feel free to do it. But his last full season in a big market was with the Yankees and he had a 490 ERA and a 150 whip. There were other things going on like they wanted to throw pitches. He didn't want to throw. I got to get that pitch design thing. I mean, I just I have questions of like, can he pitch in a big market? He's pitched in other places like whatever and he's been fine. But I don't I worry about the fastball. I worry about the way he ended the season. He's getting older. I said, this price just kind of really confuses me on sunny. I wouldn't. I'm with you. Yeah. This is the most confusing one so far because he's like he's just barely inside of my top 50, but just barely. Yeah. And here is his 80 p is sp 30 28. Yeah, that's that's really. It seems like a 36 year old in decline because you mentioned he lost velocity had a terrible second half. ERA's been bad the last two seasons. There's so many exciting pictures still available. Why why are you going after sunny gray here? I don't. He's going to the ELE's. He's got to face the Yankees. The Orioles, the blue chase. To me, his role should be veteran stop gap for your fantasy team. Like once all the exciting ones are gone, I just need some innings here. I'm going to take gray and hope we hope it goes better than it did last year. And that is not at all how he's being drafted. So I'm confused too. I've got like Chris Babitch and Mackenzie Gore ahead of him. I think I do too. I just like definitely Babitch. I think there's a chance sunny gray might not be good anymore. 388 XERA last season. He's going to be 36. Justin does have a good and deserved reputation with developing pictures. In this case, it's not developing sunny gray, but it might be making some things. But it just doesn't feel like there's a ton of upside to be worth chasing when there are so many interesting pictures left. When I was putting my rankings together, it was kind of like, I guess I've run out of guys I'm really interested in. So sure. I don't want to be gray, but I never going to be a target for me. That's where I put Louise Castillo too. It's just like, okay, this guy used to be good and I still trust him to throw innings, but I'm not sure he's good anymore. Yeah. And look, I don't want to completely disparage sunny gray because like the K-minus walk stuff is still really good. And he gets a lot of strikeouts, but I just I think there is ratio risk here. And I think there's a chance with that diminished fastball that maybe some of the strikeouts do come down with sunny gray. Let's talk about Kevin Galsman, nice bounce back season with a 359 ERA 106 whip just under a K per inning. He did that over 193 innings last season. And remember, he dealt with the shoulder injury in the spring of 2024. And I'm just wondering if maybe a year further remove from that, he was healthier. His pitches look better, his splitter performed much better last year, swinging strike rate, jumped back up to 12.6%. He's a proven workhorse. He's throwing 170 plus innings five years in a row. He's kind of a boring veteran. I guess like comparing him to sunny gray, maybe there's not a huge difference, but I expect the ratios to be better from Galsman. And I think he's a little bit better health wise and it's not like we have the velocity dip either here. So I don't mind Kevin Galsman. It's like a boring, if you just need like solid innings, SP3, SP4, I think it's fine. I'm really surprised as price is not higher actually. I think there's just because there's so many of these young pictures around him, you know, like sunny, higher than sunny gray. He was really good in the second half. Like the final three months of the season, Kevin Galsman really locked in and pitched really, really well. He's old, but again, sunny gray. I feel like we can't fall back on the sunny gray crutch too often, but he's this episode's Taylor Ward. Low hanging fruit. Yeah. I think Kevin Galsman's good. And you're contract year two, if you like that. There's some injury risk, but he's on a good team. He's been a consistent 180 to 190 innings guy. I think he's, if you're going to go with the boring veteran, I think Kevin Galsman's a great boring veteran to make your SP3. Yeah. And definitely somebody I like even more on points leagues. Yeah, I was going to make that exact point too. He does give solid innings per star and pretty good in quality starts as well there with Kevin Galsman. Let's talk about Spencer Shredder. Oh boy. How much time do we have first year back for internal brace surgery was a mixed one. So look, I've been really kind. I know. I know it's kind of say that his first 12 starts, 359 ERA, 115 whip, 10.9 K per nine. He looked really good. Those first 12 starts back. His next five 10 38 ERA 231 whip 8.3 K per nine. His final six on the surface, 250 ERA, but a 131 whip, 7.3 K per nine. His X fit was over five during that six star stretch. So his first 12 were good. His next 11 were bad. That's basically the facts there. His fastball is broken. It was down nearly two miles per hour. The IVB on that pitch was down to inches and it lost effectiveness from pre surgery. His slider was still really good, but now he's basically a one pitch pitcher. So he is the most obvious pitcher we need to watch in spring training more than anybody else. And I respect that he's like in a lab and he's trying to figure things out, but Scott, we either need to see improved fastball shape, velocity or a legitimate third pitch that is really good that he can go to. Yeah, I think that's fair. And look, the curveball that he didn't throw much got great results last year. So maybe it's that. Maybe it's bringing in more of that to play off the slider. He had himself has emphasized the importance of regaining that fastball shape, which I like to hear. I think he has a good grasp of what he needs to be successful. Good self-evaluator. He was kind of a self-made pitcher. He wasn't like some big prospect coming out of college. And he studied pitching mechanics and turned himself into this bat-missing monstrosity that he was throughout the minors and into the start of his career. And mostly because of that slider, he still missed bats at a great rate last year. 13.9% swing strike rate would have ranked seventh among qualifiers. But he did have a 445-year-a. He did have a 140-whip. He did give up some of the hardest contact of any pitcher. Something's got to change here. Spring, I agree. I actually, with your point about him being the pitcher to watch closest in spring training, I recently released my 25 biggest questions for 2026. Number two was his Spencer Strider salvageable. I think he is, but I expressed on the Valentine's Day episode that I know that's somewhat wishful thinking on my part because Spencer Strider at his best was more fun to watch than any pitcher I've ever seen before. I think he's really smart. I think he has a good grasp of what he needs and I'm just hoping that happens. But we won't really know until he takes the mound and I would say history is against him. Yeah, it's a little bit of blind faith, especially when his first live batting practice session, facing live hitters, is the one time, apparently, that the Trackman tech wasn't working at Braves camp? I'm not a conspiracy-minded person myself. I'm just saying the radar, my quote, the radar guns weren't working only for Spencer Strider's BP session. T-shirt, have people asking a lot of questions already answered by the T-shirt? I don't know. We got a seam in games. Hopefully they get the technical difficulties ironed out by the time the game start. But if we see a 95-minute hour average fast ball velocity out of Spencer Strider this spring, I'm probably out. I just, he can't not to say he can't be good there. But I need to be over at Spencer Strider's current price. I need to have overwhelming evidence that he's fixed to justify it and the problem is, if we get that evidence, he's not going to be the 105th player drafted, he's going to be the 70th player drafted. He's going to be a top 20 SP and ADP if he shows signs of life this spring. If people are this willing to make the blind faith leap on Spencer Strider with nothing, if we get anything, the price is just going to go way up. So that I just cannot see myself drafting Spencer Strider. If I do it, it will be because I went into a specific draft saying, this is the one I'm going to draft Spencer Strider in. I'm not optimistic. And for most people that only draft one or two teams, Chris, it's like, they don't have that luxury. They need to put together the best pitching staff they can for just that fantasy team. And maybe that includes Strider. I mean, I think there's a wide range of outcomes here where if he gets it back, I mean, he could go back to being like 80 to 90% of the pitcher that he was before. I mean, the low end is that he's just still broken and he's not usable for fantasy. I just want to point out one other thing. Even more closely than the velocity, I'm going to watch the induced vertical break on that fastball because I think that's the more important data point for Strider. They are somewhat related. So like I doubt they're very correlated. Yeah. He's going to be a see a big jump in induced vertical break and the velocities would be exactly the same. But that's the more important number for me. Let's talk about Tyler last now. Last year, limited to just 18 starts due to right shoulder inflammation. By now, we know he's never thrown more than 134 and a third innings in a major league season. And while the surface levels were still great when he pitched last season, we did see some skills decline. They had legitimately bad control. It was over four walks per nine in both the regular and the postseason. His swinging strike rate dropped from 13.8% to 11%. And look, I don't want to be accused of being a dodger hater or anything because we had the whole Blake smell discussion. But I just don't think glass now's injury risk is worth the likely 120 innings that you're going to get from him here. So he's typically just been a past for me in this range. I mean, we used to pay a lot more for those innings though. I just don't think the innings are going to be as good as they were before based on some of those skilled declines that we saw last season. It was easier to make that argument when his skills were really good. It's still a small sample size. He was so remarkably consistent before that that I'm like his walk rate was kind of the only. Yeah, the swing you strike rate was down a little bit. He was out of it. But he was also pitching with a shoulder injury. He still had a 29% strike out rate. He still had two really good swing and miss pitches. I'm inclined to just give him the benefit of that out here and say, yeah, he's going to be very good when he's on the mound. It's just is it 130 innings this year? I hope so. Is it 90? Then he's not worth drafting there. And that's just kind of all it is. Yeah, I think I think he's probably appropriately now because I think he's in this range of pitchers that have a lot of upside, but a lot of questions. A lot most of them there are innings concerns among the questions. And so he's he's right there with them. It feels like there's a harder cap on what he could be. So I wanted to say I'm excited to draft Tyler Glass now in this range. But I think it's I think it's a fine range for him. And I have drafted him before because he lasted among it was among the latest in this group. I'm fine taking him then. I think you'll help your ratios, but obviously can't expect him to be there all season long. This range is just all landmines, isn't it? It depends on depends on how you look at it. All right. Well, let's talk about some more, I guess into the 10th round of 12 team leagues. Brandon Woodruff with an ADP of 113 Jacob Mizierowski, 115 chase burns at 116. So Brandon Woodruff accepted the one year qualifying offer to return to the brewers this off season. And one of the more improbable comebacks that you will see from a pitcher who had shoulder surgery. His fastball velocity was down nearly three miles per hour from the last time we saw him. But to his credit, reinvented himself, introduced this new cutter. And he was incredibly effective. His underlying skills were incredible. And I mean, just a surface level numbers were really good too. 11.6 K.P.9, the swinging strike rate right in line with the rest of his career. He only made 12 starts. I mean, that's kind of the problem here. And he ended the season on the aisle with a strained right lap muscle. I have no clue if he can stay healthy, but I was incredibly impressed by what he did last season. I was moved by what he did. Like I feel like this is an inspiring story that did not get it reported to the degree it did. Like a pitcher who is as fastball reliant as Woodruff is loses three miles per hour on that pitch. And it's better than he's ever been before. I legitimately mean that too. Strike out rate the best it's ever been. So we K.P.9 rate the best it's ever been. He looked as ace like as we've seen. And he used to be drafted like an ace every year. And he was always an injury risk then too. He usually want to take on a big ace workload, have some kind of injury that would interrupt it. So I think he's a bargain here. I'd feel a lot better about it if he didn't in last year with the Lat injury. So we haven't seen him come back from that. Are there any lingering effects? But he came back from a much more serious shoulder injury and looked as good as he did. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. And you know, playing off what Chris said before about all the landmines here. And I said it depends how you look at it. The way I look at it the way I like the reason why I like drafting somebody like Woodruff so much despite the obvious risks is because a lot of these pitchers to me. Yes, it could go wrong. It could go wrong in obvious ways, but they have stud potential still. And I think all the hitters at this point in the draft don't have stud potential. So yes, it could go wrong. And that's why I try to get a high quantity of these pitchers to help mitigate that risk. But if you're looking to improve your team's overall bottom line to distinguish yourself from the competition, I think you have to take some risk. And I think this is a great spot in the draft to do it because all the upside is there. Well, it's kind of run out within the hitter ranks. I think I'd rather make the bet on the risk of Brandon Woodruff than his teammate, the next guy we're going to talk about actually. Yeah, I agree. Let's do that. I do like targeting Brandon Woodruff, by the way, in a shower format because if he gets hurt, I mean, you could just drop him or whatever. But the deeper you go, obviously, the replacement value is as much worse. So 10 team league, 12 team points league, that's probably where I would want to take a shot on Brandon Woodruff. Let's talk about a seat teammate, Jacob Mizierowski. Because I'm the Miz and I'm awesome. He was awesome at times last season. He is a freak, Mizierowski. He's six foot seven, average 99 miles per hour on his fastball with 100th percentile extension. That thing gets on you fast. He has huge upside, but right now you are drafting stuff. You're not really drafting a pitcher. He still has questionable control and only completed six innings three times in 14 starts. Absolutely a chance that he just takes a huge step forward. But I would, again, I guess kind of like Yuri Pres earlier, I would take my upside shot on a more polished pitcher, which Chris, I don't know, I don't think Mizierowski is yet. I think he's a thrower and I think he throws really hard and he has some nice things about him. I don't think that he's anywhere close to a pitcher yet. Yeah, I want to be careful because I have been guilty of writing off the, I don't know, 30 grade command guys before and like you can find it. I think Sandy Alconters, a very good example of a guy who really figured that out, but he had terrible command early on his career. I think there are more misses than hits, but among those misses, Mizierowski has the best stuff. He might have the best stuff in baseball. It's just he's so far from being a finished product and it requires so much projection and so much growth to get him to being worth this kind of pick that I, I'm going to rank him here. I'm probably not going to draft him here. I think it's the way I'm going to put it. I get the appeal. I get the upside. He could be really good, but among the rookies in terms of where they're at and what I expect, I think he's the furthest away in terms of present day skills. And that's why I can't rank him here because there's still, we still haven't gotten deus average. We still haven't gotten to Cam Schletler who isn't exactly a rookie, but first full year coming up, we still haven't gotten to chase Burns for goodness sake. I think the likely a scenario for Jacob Mizierowski is he performs just this year, just looking at this year, is he has a very Mackenzie Gore like season and Mackenzie Gore is going what like 70 picks later. And by the way, Mackenzie Gore himself might take a step forward. He might be the one of the two who has the same issues that might take the step forward. Just to put it in perspective, because I know a lot of people, Jacob Mizierowski, he took the league by storm, made the all-star team after five stars. Flat on his face after that, over his final nine outings, 589 ERA, 150 Whip, went five innings, five innings in just three of those final nine starts. He was unusable in the second half. And that's why we sound so down on him now, the control issues that held back. And he held him back as a prospect came back in full force. And maybe he overcomes them. I would bet on him not though, based on what we saw in the second half. I would bet on him not in the immediate future. I think he also just like has some pitch design issues. His slider is a cutter. It's a 94-mile an hour cutter. He only got a 20% whiff rate with it. It actually got hit kind of hard last year surprisingly. His curveball misses more bats, but I think he would benefit from a slower version of the slider, something in like the 87-mile an hour range that's more of like a sweeper that truly misses bats. I think that could give him some consistency. But Mizierowski so far from a finished product, I'm ranking here just kind of out of fear of how good the stuff is more than anything. I mean, that's the thing. The stuff is tantalizing. We spoke about stuff plus yesterday, one 19 stuff plus on fan graphs for Mizierowski for some perspective. Last year among qualifiers, Garakrochet, Teryk Schubert, were the leaders, one 16. Mizierowski's stuff plus metric was better than those guys. So there's no doubt he has stuff. It's just can he pitch yet? But I want to emphasize, because sometimes I throw so much analysis that I think the main point gets lost and I see some of the comments and I feel like they're just not hearing me. The biggest issue with Mizierowski is we're not at a point in the pitcher pool yet where you just need to blindly gamble on upside. There's still too much that's still really good and more predictably good than Mizierowski is that why take the chance? The reward isn't worth the risk. Let's talk about chase burns. The pitcher Chris loves on Valentine's Day. Surface level numbers in the majors last year were bad, but huge strike out stuff. You guys gave out all the crazy stats. It was awesome. And he demolished the minors. 177 ERA.77 Whip last year, 12.1 K.P.R.9 down there. The questions that we have, he missed about a month last year with a strained right elbow flexor. I know Chris, he kind of speculated like, was it a real injury? I don't know. I guess we'll never know. We got up to 109 in a third inning. It's like, how much do they push him this year? Can you really get much more past 140 or 150? We talked about the spring training battle. I don't think it's a real battle, but I guess it is technically a question there. What are your expectations here for chase burns? He's going to be awesome. He's going to be really, really good. I think the only real concern I have is just trying to wrap my mind around the flexor strain because I talked about it on the players we love episode, but it was, they started talking, there's an MLB comm story about how they had a conversation about limiting his innings, but they didn't give any details. And then I think two days after that, he's shut down with the flexor strain. And then three days after that, he's throwing again. That doesn't really sound like, people, I'm seeing a lot of discussions on Twitter of like chase burns, huge injury risk. And like, yeah, he throws a hundred miles an hour. There's huge injury risk. I don't think there's significantly more injury risk with chase burns than any other pitcher who throws a hundred miles an hour. I don't think that like, I'm not going to say it was a hundred percent a phantom I else sent, but the timing makes me think that this was not an issue that they thought we got to get chase burns off amount right now, or his arms going to explode. It was a, yeah, he's a pitcher. We can find something in his arm. So we need to shut him down. We'll shut him down. That's my guess. It's just an educated guess, but at the very least, I think I'm moderately educated. So I think it works. You don't even have to, you know, accuse the reds of anything. Just he was throwing again three days later. It wasn't that serious. They wanted to have done that with them if it was and he came back and he pitched in a relief capacity, but it didn't come up again. So I don't think, yeah, I don't see him as an injury risk of any particular magnitude. I think obviously it's inherent to what he does for a living. I think he is, you know, we talked about this on the Valentine's Day episode. He made eight career starts and had more double, double digit strikeout efforts in those eight career starts than Paul Schienz has had in 53 or something like that. He's going to be a monster burns is as long as he gets the innings, but you could say that about any pitcher, the innings caveat at this range of the rankings. I definitely would prefer Chase Burns to check him. Is your ask you though? Yep. So let's ride up here with sleepers breakouts and bust at starting pitcher. We're looking inside of the top 280 P on our next preview episode. We'll go a little bit deeper. So outside the top 200, we'll talk about some sleepers and breakouts there as well. But guys, I cannot imagine an episode being over two hours. So please let's do this in like 10 or 12 minutes because that would just kill me if we actually got to a two hour episode. So Scott some sleepers at Starwick Chris Chris. Can we sleepers? I think we'll probably like snow for a little while longer. Yeah, I'm probably going to have to think that that would be really helpful. I'll edit some of that out of the audio. That'll help. Okay, sleepers Chris Boobitch for sure. I think he's one of the most obvious ones he missed a lot of time last season with a shoulder injury. I kind of it's one of those ones where they were going to have to limit his innings at some point anyway. They were already talking about shutting him down. So could he have come back? I don't know, but I'm he's so cheap that I don't think it matters that he has injury. SP 64 as the. No, SP 64 197 overall to 18.7 over the last 10 days at NFBC. He's just so cheap and I think the skill set was so strong last year. So Chris. I passed an easy one. I passed it off to Chris because I didn't think I was allowed to say Chris Boobitch because he's being drafted so late. Okay. Yeah, he's the top 200. He is a fantasy pros ADP. Not NFBC. Joe love screw is not right. Joe. My other two my other two are outside the top two. Scott next time next time you got to go first got Joe Muscov 242. I thought I wasn't allowed to pick ones going this late. You can't actually Joe Muscov is outside the top 200. Yeah, I can't pick him. I can't pick Joe Parker Messicks. We'll talk about those guys tomorrow. Spoiler alert McKenzie Gore. Yes. Who maybe more of a breakout, but he was I believe the only starting pitcher last season with four different pitches that had an above average with rate. There is huge bat missing bat missing potential. We've seen it in action for months at a time before he inevitably falls apart. Now he's getting I think an organizational upgrade a park upgrade a supporting cast upgrade every kind of upgrade possible. I think there's a real chance McKenzie Gore finally emerges as a top 24 SP this year. A great the ADP for McKenzie Gore interestingly enough. I know in the NFBC it's around 200, but on fantasy pros it's 151 as the SP 47. So it is what's having ranked. Yeah, yeah. It takes some of I guess the profit potential out of it, but I have him as a breakout. So he was a name that I was going to mention for all the reasons that you did it. Like we've seen all the flashes of stardom from McKenzie Gore. He's done it, you know, first halves of seasons and then completely fell apart. Just hoping that the change of scenery, the Rangers have done pretty good job with pitching the past couple of years and it's just a really, really good environment. It's a much better defense. And we know the skills are there. It's like he has he had a four different pitches. With a whiff rate over 35%. It's insane stuff. Somebody did email us. I want to. I don't know if I have it in front of me, but someone did email us about the, yeah, Matt emailed about the importance of pitching coaches, changing teams. The Rangers did lose. Mike Maddox would have been their pitching coach for a while. So wanted to throw that out there, but I'm not going to hold that against McKenzie Gore, especially because he's NFBC leagues 183 over the past 10 days. So very cheap there. So if that's the price, especially, I think McKenzie Gore is an easy pick. All right, Scott sleepers, sniff that, sniff that. I just want to emphasize with Chris Boobitch that I don't believe his ADP, frankly, because every draft I've been a part of, he goes 80 picks earlier than that. So I love him and I think he's undervalued, but I have yet to see direct evidence of him being undervalued. I didn't write about this guy as a sleeper and it's kind of an awkward one, but Trevor Rogers, like I can't call him a breakout, obviously, after what he just did, but I just think people are sleeping on. It's the Jurkson Profile situation from last year where I think the natural response is, I don't believe Trevor Rogers, a 181 ERA and.90 whip. Well, I don't either, because if I did, he'd be a top 12 pitcher. I don't know why we can't even draft them in the top 45. To me, he's around 30th, which I don't know exactly where to put him, but that's the point where I see the risk increasing in the pitcher pool to a point that, okay, I can justify the risk of taking Trevor Rogers coming off a 181 ERA and 18 starts. The loss he was better last year, the control was better. It makes sense that he was better. This much better? No, but add two runs to the ERA. He's still worth drafting there. Yeah. Yeah, I would say, yeah, I would agree with that. I guess I'll put, you could call this guy a break up, but I'll put Bubba Chandler in this group just because I think relative to the other rookie pitchers, he's being slept on. He is the number one pitching prospect to me. I had to both use Savage and McLean. Obviously, he didn't get as much time in the majors and he had that really frustrating stretch in the minors that prevented him from getting called up earlier. But I think it was, I mean, we have evidence of him saying he was frustrated and that contributed to his struggles. Once he got to the majors, those control issues were gone. He was granted tiny sample, but he was maybe the best control pitcher in baseball. He walked four in 31 and a third innings and showed huge bat missing potential. Just looked dominant. Just looked like he's ready for this opportunity. He's going to get it for the pirates. I don't. it's. wanna be a shock to anybody if he's the rookie of the year and the NL outperforming all of these rookie pitchers and yet he's going latest among them, I think. I'd be just as happy with him as you Savage or even McLean. Trevor Rogers is ADP-SP48 at 154 and Bubba Chandler, SP 51 at 165. Just for some perspective, yes, he is going about 40 picks after Cam Schletler and Treyis Savage. Who themselves are going like 40 picks after McLean, right? Yeah, because an FBC Chandler and your Savage are back to back at least. Yeah, they are in fantasy pros too, but they're at 127 and then Chandler is down at 165. So it's pretty big drop down to him. Sleeper here for me. I'm just going to quickly mention Nick Ladolo. I spoke about him on the Valentine's Day episode, player I love this season. I feel like the breakout just happened, but people are just not really treating him like it happened. So I trust what he did last year. He got even better in the second half. There were more whiffs there. He tweaked the pitch mix and he dealt with some injuries, but it's been some lower like stuff and blisters. It hasn't been arm related. So I think if we get a full season, like 170 plus innings out of Nick Ladolo, people will just realize how good he is and we're potentially talking about him as like a top 20 starting pitcher draft in next season. So let's move on to breakouts. We guys have anybody left to talk about? Yeah, I mean chase burns, Yuri Perez. Take your pick. Yeah, Ryan Peppio is one we have not mentioned who I like it a lot. I like the move back to Trappecana especially because his fastball will play even better there and it's a very good pitch to begin with, but I think we could see a drop down to like the low threes for Ryan Peppio with a bunch of strikeouts. And then I'll put the homer hat on. Sandy Alcantra. I think he figured it out in the second half. He had a 313 ERA. The strikeout rate was back up to like 22%. He's never going to be an elite strikeout pitcher, but he doesn't need to be. I think Sandy's as good a bet as basically anyone to lead the league in innings. He threw 174 in his first season back from Tommy John's surgery. And I think they're mostly going to be very good innings. Final eight starts for Sandy 268 ERA.86 whip. Almost a strikeout per inning. 362 Fib 327 X Fib he looked pretty close to the pitcher that he was before the surgery over those final eight starts. ADP on those guys by the way, Sandy is at SP, let's see, SP 50 at 159 overall Ryan Peppio SP 44 at 144. So it's got any breakouts. Yeah, sure. Emmett Shean is a breakout. His final six appearances last year. Three of which lasted seven innings. So it's not like the Dodgers were being super careful with his workload. Three of his last six seven innings. One 111 ERA.62 whip 12.5 K per nine. His swing strike rate in those six appearances was 19%, which has only been done by Spencer Schreider if that we have records for over a full season. Obviously, this was just a six appearance sample. But still, premium, premium bat missing ability for Emmett Shean with the Dodgers rotation already. See in some injury losses. I feel more secure in the fact that she is going to be a fixture there. And I think I'm excited to draft them. They'll manage his innings too, but he'll start a lot. And I'm also going to say Gavin Williams here, who just doesn't seem to be getting enough credit for the strides he made last year. Where I get it 127 whip to go along with the 306 ERA. But looked a lot better in the second half. And specifically in terms of control, 218 ERA 105 whip 10 K per nine. The strike rate went from 61% to 66%. This way you strike rate from 11% to 14%. And report came out. Just today, he explained that he made a mechanical change from the first half to the second half that helped him to have so much better command. It was kind of the position he put his hands to start his delivery. I think I think the breakthrough actually happened last year, but it was a truncated one. And so people aren't really buying into it yet. But you should get him. The breakouts here for me, two names we haven't mentioned yet. But when I look at my expectation for all the young pitchers versus price, the ones that I like the most are Camselitler and Traiyah Savage, where they're being drafted right now, which is right around 130. Camselitler got called up last season. Took him a little bit of time to get going, but his final line starts 223 ERA 0.99 whip, 11.2 K per nine. He threw the eight shutout innings with 12 strikeouts against the red socks and the playoffs. You know, there are some questions, lots of walks, high whip in the minors as well. So it's similar to Nolomacleen, but you're getting him 30 picks later than where McLeen is going. And Traiyah Savage, I mean, it feels like the proof is in the pudding, right? We all just saw what he did, right? When you consider where he started last year in A-Ball and making it all the way up to the majors and pitching in the World Series, the way that he did. If you look at all nine of the starts he made, once he got called up, you know, end of the regular season and postseason combined 346 ERA 118 whip 12 K per nine, also right around four walks per nine. So similar problem, I think for all these guys, McLeen and Schlitler, even Bubba Chandler struggled with walks in the minors, like, keep that in mind. Like they could have higher whips. They could struggle with walks, but all have incredible stuff, including Traiyah Savage. So for me, it's Schlitler and Traiyah Savage that I like the most at cost right now. I assume their pitchers we already talked about, but any names we need to save any for tomorrow busts? No. No, okay. Yeah, there's a couple of later guys I have that I just, I'm not going to touch like Roki Sasaki and Shane Bieber. I just at their prices, even at their prices, I don't think the upside is actually there. Among the pitchers we talked about Nick Pavella is a bust for me. Nolan McLeen is a bust for me just because I don't like where he's being drafted. And Jacob Mizorowski, I think, is a clear bust for me. The one we haven't talked about yet is Robbie Ray. I think he may be done. He had a great first half looked like after a bunch of injury plague season. He had regained his form, picked up that Terrick Scoobal, change up. Things were looking great. But then his final 12 starts a 554 ERA, a 145 whip, even worse, his swinging strike rate went from 13.1% to 11.6%. And the command was so bad that he, he failed to go the minimum for a win in five of those 12 starts. So he was pretty useless in the second half, getting up there in years, a lot of mileage on an arm that struggled to stay healthy. I think Robbie Ray, unless it's, unless it's really cheap, I'm out on him. Three pitchers we talked about today, just pretty much stay ways for me. Spencer Strider, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glass now. Lastly, Scott, are you taking the cereal bet we need to know before we wrap up the show? It's Dylan C's minus 10 and a half innings versus Hazel Suzardo. Sure, I'll take with the innings, the innings handicap there. Yeah, I'll do it. All right, I'm going to put it on my calendar for the last day of the season. Just do it, do it, remind me. Yeah. All right, we're going to wrap there for Scott and Chris. We went over two hours. I was, so I was watching. I was trying to get through. I was watching you watch the clock. Scott was talking about Robbie Ray, and I could tell you he was like, oh, it's running up, running up, running up. Nope, nope, we didn't get there. All right, we didn't get there. For Scott and Chris, I am Frank. Thanks for always tuning into Fade to see baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Happlers. Spotify and we will be back again next week. Bye-bye. [MUSIC PLAYING]