Is Robbie Ray this year's Cristopher Sanchez with Phil Dussault and Marc Winokur - NFBC Auction Podcast

Diving Deep into High-Stakes Auction Mechanics Welcome to the NFBC Auction Podcast. I'm here with Mark Winokur, obviously, and Phil do so I haven't seen you for a while, buddy. I'm looking forward to seeing you in Vegas, and it's good to see you. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Speaker 2 Good to see you. Speaker 1 Well, I, I had you for an hour or two, who knows who knows how long? So I'm, I'm not going to waste any time with you. I'm here to talk with Phil and we're going to spend the whole time talking about saves and whole leagues in head to head leagues. So are you down for that? Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm down for it. I spent like 2 hours prepping your 20 questions about both souls and head to head. So I'm ready all. Speaker 1 Right. Well, this is cool. We got people from three different countries. Barks from the USA, I'm from Canada and Phyllis from Quebec. Speaker 2 Some we just need some from out from someone from Alberta and we can we can make it 4. Speaker 1 Who's from Alberta? Big al is from Alberta. Shout out to Big Al. You don't know the the NFPC player. Speaker 2 Yeah, David Bone as well. Speaker 1 Oh, is he? I thought he was from. I thought he's from Ontario. Yeah, I think he was. He lived in Ontario at one point. I know that. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 So this episode, we're going to dive deep into the hidden mechanics of the high stakes options, why understanding timing, risk and market psychology can make or break your draft. We'll cover everything closure and catcher inflation trends as we've been talking about like crazy looking at the Oacs from 2025 to 2026 and see the distribution of dollars across those scarce commodities like relief pitchers and closures. And look at the timing tax, which was something we'll discuss that auctions imposed where $1.00 catcher isn't just one dollar decision. We'll dissect something called the silent hammer, which I sort of made-up a live auction tactic. Then we'll get into unpacking the March inflation and risk migration. So the March inflation that's that's good because it applies to like auctions or snake drafts. So like if you're don't do auctions and you do mains, this could be applicable to you too. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah helium why the middle of the pool is where the EE quietly dies. So those like the, the inflation guys, like Christopher Sanchez, in theory, EV goes to die with him, but it didn't. And then finally we're to look at is it better to target sleeper hitters or sleeper pitchers? And then we're actually going to talk about names. So like Yancy can actually TuneIn and, and, and have a podcast that could actually help them. So we're going to do real names and we're going to, we're going to play a game called who is this year's Robbie Ray and who is this year's Christopher Sanchez? So like Robbie Ray and SP6 who yields SP1 value and Christopher Sanchez and SP3 that yields also has P1 value. So sound good? Got a lot to get. Yeah, should have just scrapped that entire intro. But I know I got you fine. I know I've limited time with you feel, but I have to do a rant here. I know we, we have limited time, but it's, it's going to happen. Why Stuff+ Fails: A Critical Look at Pitcher Metrics Enoceras, our friend of the podcast tweets. 2021 to 2023. The league threw 10,000 more sweepers every year. Batters began to make better contact and swing decisions against the pitch because they were trained to see that movement. So we've, we've, we've refreshed stuff plus taking 2020 and 2021 out of the training data. So here's my response to this and you guys can chime in. Saying hitters got better against sweepers because they saw more sweepers isn't analysis, it's circular logic. People learn the thing because they saw the thing. Yes, that obviously the only reason, but the real problem is what comes next. Stuff Plus had to be retrained because hitters adapted. Allegedly. That's the Commission. That Stuff Plus isn't measuring pitch quality, it's measuring how unfamiliar a pitch currently is. Once hitters catch up, the model panics, tosses history, and moves the goal posts. We've seen this before. That's not refinement, that's a confession. They should have called stuff plus oopsie. And by this logic, any new pitch, any new pitch should just get a stuff plus bump, new grip, new shape, something hitters haven't seen before. Boom, elite stuff plus. Not because it's great, because hitters just are confused. And when and when the league adjusts, same pitch, same Velo, same movement, stuff plus says it's magically got worse so now history gets rewritten. Yesterday's elite pitch wasn't elite. Hitters were just dumb back then. Awesome metric. And here's the part that really nukes it. Stuff Plus can't incorporate sequencing, game situation count, leverage, hitter intent, or context. That's always been the defense. It measures pure quality in a vacuum. But now you know, saying hitter behavior and aggregate broke the model. So that's the exact thing Stuff Plus claims it doesn't need. This is a microcosm of why it's unusable in practice. Once a league context shifts, the metric collapses. So what is it? Is Stuff Plus context free quality or is it hostage to league wide learning curves Because it can't be both. Also, where is the proof that seeing more sweepers is is the reason the contact improved? None. No independent variable, no consideration who threw the sweepers or literally anything else. Maybe the league wide, maybe league wide swing plus improved. I don't know. Q the analytics applause. TJ Stats friend of mine Kerland calls it interesting because it captures recent trends. So does ERA last month. Kyle Body adds hitters adapt. Huge if true. This contributes fucking nothing but to be part of a conversation about how Stuff Plus is failing. John Pig sponsor the show. Check out his warehouse. He's the only one actually making sense. The metric has to rewrite the past every time hitters learn something and can't even handle sequencing their situation, that's reason enough to treat it, treat it as noise and just learn lean on other metrics. Stuff Plus didn't evolve here, it admitted its limits, so I know I had. Speaker 2 Something here, yeah. Yeah. So I when did stuff Plus came out like 4-5 years ago, I think two years ago I started testing it and then I noticed from one of, you know, spreadsheet compared to what was on fan graphs, like all the pitchers whose stuff Plus went up are all ones who did well in the ERA the previous year. I think it was like the Ryan Helsley or the Emmanuel class that you're like a couple of guys that sort of came out of nowhere. There's Stuff Plus like what up in the in the retrain? And as soon as I saw that I'm like, this is unusable. So I have my own form, my stuff Sierra formula that I built like 4 years ago. And when I test back, it's not as good as stuff plus I'm not retraining it. But moving forward, it's actually usable because it's like it's a set metric that looks at Vilo, that looks at movement, that looks how pitches work together and it's usable because it's not moving like I can. I don't have to retrain it. I know what it's adding to Sierra, to K percentage. It's adding specific things to that and it's actually usable. I don't have to retrain it like I know, I know what it The goal of it is to find pitchers who throw hard with movement, who have like a good difference between their change and their fastball. We have good pitches that work together and that could maybe break out because it has been reflected in their numbers. Do you think there's something is the goal do? Speaker 1 You think there's something that that I don't know what's exactly in stuff cluster, but do you think there's something that's in there that's making it reactive? Speaker 2 I think there's, I mean, there's something in that it's usable. Like honestly, if, if you, you should just use bot bot stuff on, on fan graphs because that one hasn't moved in like 4 years. It won't be retrained. The guy who did it is working for an MLB team or something like it's not going to move. So if you want like something that actually reflects the stuff, that one is good. How much does it add to what we actually know about a pitcher? It probably pans like with the sample size, like by like looking at like Kevin Gosman's bot stuff for stuffs here or whatever. You're not going to learn anything. Guys been pitching like 180 innings for however many years. Like you're not or anything. But for a young pitcher who's been around for a year, you want to know what there's breakout potential. I think bot stuff is usable. Speaker 1 So how much like I'm sure you've tested it, how much like how does that compare to say like xfip in terms of its correlation to things that we care about? Speaker 2 It's not done correlate nearly as well what it's going to add to it. Like if you use like I don't know, say 75% X fib and 25% like bot stuff or like a bot stuff converted to the ERA scale, it's probably going to be better using the 7525 or 8020, something like that. And it's probably different for different types of pictures depending on the sample we have of actual stats, but it does add something. Speaker 1 Interesting. So I think we're, I think we're pretty aligned here. Speaker 2 But the, but the stuff plus like constantly moving to mash ERA, like if you back, if you back that stuff plus right now add it to like Sierra to project next year's ERA. It's going to tell you to use like 60 to 70%, something crazy like that. I'm making up those numbers. But it's going to be something like that. That's unrealistic. It's looking back on something that's been trained on recent years, which is completely useless. Like you need to train something up to say 2023 and then test 2024-2025 based on something that you haven't retrained because otherwise you're just like, you're just over overfitting to the data, which is completely useless. Speaker 1 You think it overvalues relievers because it's just because of the sample size aspect of it and the fact that it doesn't take into account like sequencing and stuff like that, that like starters, like stuff starters need to do to be successful. Speaker 2 Like yeah, I think so. And I mean, I think it's over adjusted to like, I don't know what sample he used to kind of retrain, but like a Chapman's fastball jumping from like I think it was like an 85 or a 90 jumping to like a 110 or whatever. Like it's just even if you retrained and add one year of data like something can't move that much. Speaker 1 That makes sense. Mark, you got anything on this you want to say? Speaker 3 Yeah, I do work with predictive risk modeling in the child maltreatment prevention space. So these are these are models that are trained on certain outcomes in the child welfare system and to determine if the likelihood of a parent or parents to miss to maltreat their kids in the future. OK, So child welfare agencies use this information to make decisions on the type of response to an allegation of abuse or neglect and potential for services and and other supports for families, OK. And obviously the goal is make better decisions, have less kids, get maltreated, and then, you know, you could look at the actual results because we know what the model predicts and then we know for those predictions whether it happened or not. So they periodically retrain the model. However, its core remains intact and the the previous results are still valid and they are validated by the actual outcomes. And what Phil just said is you might be able to get a little more out of stuff. Plus his model which has shown results year over year is stable and he knows it's something he can count on and he's basing his decisions on that. It's not a moving target that every every year what we thought was reality is no longer reality. And decisions we may have made in the past based on this metric were poor decisions because it's not really capturing that construct that we think it's capturing. Last thing I would say is God bless Eno. Nobody in the fantasy space has ever done a better job of marketing than stuff Plus. It is, I mean, it's genius. No, and I'm being I'm being serious. That's a marketing genius that he made this metric and it's has such widespread at least awareness if not use. So that's hard to breakthrough this very crowded space and has something that actually, you know, everyone knows so. Speaker 1 The key to the marketing this thing was to make sure no one fucking understood it. That's the key. That's, that's the, that's the brilliance of it. And you know what my gut says, and I'm not as smart as you guys, but when it comes to stuff my gut says it's useless. That's just what my gut says. But like seeing that you're just going to, OK, we're just going to, there were so many sweepers and the hitters like did better against it. So it's I'm just going to take it out. And my reasoning is because I think hitters saw it more so they got better at hitting in it. But there's not that was that's completely unfounded. They can't they can't prove that it could have been a million different dependent variables or independent variable, whatever that could cause that to happen. It's just like it just lost all credibility with me in my opinion. Speaker 2 I think for fannies that you'll probably get like someone who told me something that is like the extra benefit I get for my crazy motto is marginal versus someone who would just use like Vilo and watch a guy pitch like 3 or 4 times and see if guy has two pitchers or five pitches. Like the basic stuff that we know like throw hard is good and throw with movement is good and have good results. I mean, it's like everything I get excited. I mean, for my own Sandy, I need to convert everything to a number. But other than that, like like when I say there's some benefits this stuff to like stuff models, I think it's more like the majority of it is about it's just about the wrong hard. Projecting Jac Caglianone: Upside, Risk, and Market Value Right, OK, let's get into our warm up segment. We did we tried this last time just taking one player and just look at the projections and and see and see what everyone thinks about it. See what if we think it's too light, too too heavy? I think this is also based on a friend of the friend of the podcast, Frank Amorante's tweet. I think he was talking about this guy. I think he was was he arguing with Gecko? I think he was about Jack Caglione, however you pronounce it. So the bat is way down on his average friend of the other friend of the show, Derek Cardi. But Oopsie and steamer like him a lot more obviously, like the metrics show he was quote UN quote, unlucky people were hanging their hat on the the fences are coming in. He's a sex pig with a prospect pedigree. The EV barrelers are there are there. He did have reverse splits in his like minor sample, but like the other side of it, playing time risk, ground balls, lineup, squat defense. I don't know. What are you? What are you? What are your what are your thoughts on him? Let's start with Phil. I think you're out on him. Speaker 2 Yeah, I am. I haven't projected for 16 home runs in 446 plate appearances and hit 248. So somewhere between bat and steamer, who's better in September? Not great. Like you can kind of squid and look at his college and minor league numbers and kind of see like a similar pattern to Nick Kurtz. The difference is Kurtz was able to hit Major League pitching right away and Jack wasn't. So, so how long? Like how long do the the Royals give him? Like last year they gave him what, like a month and 1/2 or something and then he went back to AAA and then came back up. He's sitting 200 again in April. Is he back to triple AI? Think that's a real possibility. He and being a lefty being on the Royals, I think they love platoons. So I mean, the crazy upside is what Nick Kurtz did last year, But I think the downside is just back to AAA in a drop in early May. And that's, that's not the kind of guy target usually. Speaker 1 Yeah, Mark, you haven't even done too many leagues yet, Mark. Speaker 3 No, no, he's he's. This is just getting me thinking just real quick, you know, I, I see a guy like him, he's going, you know, his AAB is five. I have him as maybe a, you know, I don't know, he's like a three and a half dollar player and pretty similar projections to what to what Phil just said. So there's a three $4.00 player right now. Maybe. But you know, why are people overpaying for him, right, Or at least it by, you know, it appears. So I need to do a deeper, I need to figure out a little strategy to deep dive some of these players that that's the case on because I typically just dismiss it and I shouldn't be. So I did. I did look in think Phil makes a compelling case. Yeah. I mean, clearly unlucky with Babbitt last year, you know, does have, you know, has some pedigree. You know, I think using the fences coming in as too much narrative, I don't think that you can just really hang your hat on that. I mean, for for $5 in the outfield, I think I can do substantially better with a guy that has no real risk of losing his. You know, we're going to the minors and has a little more track record now. Those $5 guys probably don't have $1015.00 upside that he maybe has. So, you know, whatever. I could see people, they like the name, you know, he's, you know, kind of a sex pig. So I don't, I don't, I don't see much of that optimism, but I don't think it's completely unwarrant. Speaker 1 Yeah, where do you where do you think he would go if he had 20 played appearances last year only and struck out every single time? But then you still had his twenty home runs and 300 played appearances in the minor leagues. Speaker 2 Only player, probably a little bit higher but not that much because people would freak out over the point if he if he didn't play at all. Speaker 1 OK, well, I'm exaggerating. OK, yeah, that's a better example. Yeah, you're you're a better post than me. So yeah, if he didn't play at all. But we knew, we figured out, but we knew he was going to start up in the in the main. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think you could argue like close the Wyatt Langford range. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's interesting. Speaker 2 Like fourth, fifth round, that's kind of where the like the the sex pigs with no Major League samples have been going. Speaker 3 Now you got me thinking about this more because this this is sometimes where I like to shop guys who were sex pigs. They came up, they failed. Now their prices cut by 75% and there's not much, you know, the cost is maybe reasonable for reasonable for the for the ceiling. I don't know. I mean, just that's the archetype of player that I, I might go for. I'm not saying him particularly. Speaker 1 How much, how? How long can they fail? Can they fail for years? Speaker 3 Oh no, no, no. Half a season, 10 at bats, he had that. You could fail for about that long. I think that's still small enough. Speaker 1 OK, so I think. Speaker 2 The thing with him is that we've seen so many prospects like that were can't miss guys that just were never able to hit Major League pitching like like Kaolnik, like Adele took him five years. Jackson Holiday, we haven't seen it yet. Just guys like that that really can't miss. They So like maybe he'll be good, but it could take him three years to figure out how to hit and the league's good. And even if he starts to hit for a month, then the league could adjust to him. Like that's the concern with him. And like, I get people being being interested in because he's sexy, but think Mark is kind of the same way where we don't feel like like we need to take a shot on the guy like that to win a league. Like I'm happy getting a dollar to value out of my $5 outfielder and doing that with 23 guys rather than taking five or six shots and being right once or twice, just having a bunch of holes to fill. Speaker 3 All year, especially because he doesn't offer any speed and the average is just going to be mid. So it's really a three category play you're going for. If I'm if I'm going to take that shot, it's going to be a guy who's going to give me something more scarce average and bags or bags and power. You know something else than just like a straight ahead Homer ribby run guy in the outfield. There's I just don't see the reason to to really do that. If you had a more interesting profile, then I could see at least the reward might be worth the risk, but I don't even see. So you get 25 homers instead of 16. There's 258080. It's 2:50. That's not that's not going to move the needle for you, really. Speaker 1 Well, if you talk to, if you talk to Bart Perry, he'll tell you he's gonna hit fifty home runs in the first, like the last three months of the year, potentially. Speaker 3 I want, I need Bart's projections. They seem very optimistic. I think I've got to add that. Speaker 1 Podcast last year, he's like, well, what before, like we were going to bid on him. He's like, what if he comes up and hits six home runs the first week? But I think I think you've alluded to something we're going to talk about later, Mark is scalability. And it's like he doesn't scale across like all the categories because like I said that you're good. We're going to get into that later. I'm not going to talk about what I think because we don't have enough time for me. It's going to I'm going to stick to you guys. No one cares about me relatively in this podcast. We're going to move on. I didn't even get to talk to Mark. You're now famous. You're like the podcast. You're like the new Doctor Dave of fantasy baseball. Speaker 3 Possible the auction. That's totally all. Speaker 1 At one time when Brody. Speaker 3 Went. Speaker 1 On Rob's podcast and it didn't, he sort of broke his streak of like of winning those diamond auctions. I hope that happens to you. I hope you start losing now because you're on all these podcasts, you're giving away all the secrets. It's like the Madden curse. I'm cursing you, Mark. You're getting the Madden Curse from the plot, like the the podcast Madden Curse and is and Maker's going to catch it from you too. Speaker 3 You know, honestly, it's weird that I love auctions this much, but I really actually do and it's fun to talk about and I just want to see it result in more people getting in. I think the first two Olacs I'm like, shit, people have definitely gotten better, so that's good. I mean, we need we need higher level of play here and maybe more people will jump in. That's. Speaker 1 We get a razz ball OLAC. They had one last year. I shouldn't talk shit because I don't. I don't think I cashed in it so I shouldn't talk shit but but we need one of those again. Speaker 3 It'll probably screw me though. I'm I'm fully prepared to fall on my face this year. But you know, we'll see. Still got a ways to go and. Season and we'll see how it plays out. Speaker 1 What would like instead of like raz? What would the razbal alac be? Tall like the Raz salary cap salary, The Raz cap? Speaker 3 Raz scam, Raz scam or something like that. Salary cap something. And yeah, raz cap, raz scam. I mean sorry Raz scam. Speaker 1 Okay, let's move on. No one cares about what I think about Jack Haglione. Reshaping Auctions: The Rise of Catcher and Closer Prices So let's move on closer and catcher inflation is quietly reshaping the 2026 auctions and Mark Winoker doesn't shut up about it. Total spend is total spend hasn't jumped much. So I have these charts that I made, but the distribution has. So if you look at the chart that I have here, like 2026 versus 2025 catchers, 7% versus 6% last year, closers 10% versus 9% last year. Total pitchers little bit heavier, 37 versus 35%, but it's a distribution. So more relievers are going over $20, more catching, more catchers hitting like the 10 to 13 range, the slope steeper. So if you look at like the catchers, I'm just looking now, it's like you got like 7 catchers that would have been more expensive than the second catcher line. So like Wilson Contreras was the second most expensive catcher in the auctions last year. You got 7 guys that are like at or more than that this year. So it's a huge, hugely sleep steep slope there. The question here is first on closers because catchers gonna is going to lead into the next segment catchers, the closers are the same thing. So last year we saw like Fairbanks, Chapman, Finnegan, Jansen, Estevez, all like emerge and they're all under $10. This year we have way fewer options in that like 10 to 20, sorry, 5 to $10 range, but we've got about half the inventory. So this year, do you have to be more precise like what changes in terms of strategy in terms of how we deal with these mid, mid tier pricing and you think it's going to change at all? Mark, you've talked about this a lot. So I want to hear Phil first because we've talked a lot about this. Speaker 2 Like it's, it's kind of random. I think it feels like it's just the first auction that kind of set the market because there's no reason for it really. Like in drafts, they're kind of going the same spots as last year. There seems to be about the same number of confirmed guys. Like it's it, there's just it's just weird. I think it's just how the market was kind of set initially in the first, first O lock or two. And then it's going to stay that way because the AU VS in the draft room. Like that's kind of the only reason I can find because like in terms of of players, if you compare to last year, like there aren't more confirmed guys trying to see if there's a good comp between this year and last year. But just like let's see. But like even just the top guys like Miller, Diaz going for more than than Class A last year, Class A was was locked in solid ratios, locked in 100% closer. Like there's no reason why there's five guys going for more than Class A did last year. And I think in DC's he was going roughly in the same range as the guys are going this or maybe Miller's and Diaz are going to be a bit earlier. But class was going earlier last year in DC then like Munoz, Duran, Kate Smith are all going, Yeah, I think it's just. Speaker 1 There's a lot of anchor bias or not bias. There's a lot of anchoring like those relax all all of the unrelated to closes. I will take my foot off the gas pedal in these early OLAX on players that I like because I don't, because I know that like if I'm to get an A bidding award for someone that I like, it's really going to affect the, the auction values throughout the rest of this year and all my drafts. So I'm really I'm cognizant being in those first auctions like I if you're, if you're one of two people going back and forth at the end of one guy, you, me, Zach, am I going to dictate the AAV of this player significantly? But I, I have seen Estevez, for example, he's showing at 15 here. He's gone 11 the last two auctions. So it is falling Abner, your rebates gone like 8 the last two auctions because like he hasn't there hasn't been a trade there yet. So you're seeing Dennis Santana was like 5 or 6. So these guys like recently like I am noticing like a huge shift going on and some of the mid, the mid tier guys are falling. Speaker 2 I think by the time we get to to Vegas with the with the auction championship, I think the guys that are used to auction know that like a top close are 2223 and you can kind of lock in like, I don't know, 161718 dollars for that spot. And you walk away with a solid like mid closer one. Cuz at these like there's how many guys going for like how many, how many relievers been going like in all the the OLAX, do you know? Speaker 1 Like how many different relievers are going? Speaker 2 No, like how many, how many of them have gone? Like I guess what's the average auction split like? Is it it must be like 6.52 point 5? Something like that? Speaker 1 Yeah, probably like 2 per. Speaker 3 Team. You mean like closer to? Speaker 2 Yeah, same. Counting down it seems to be like 2020, like close to 30 guys going for more than 3 bucks. So it has to be more than than the standard 72. Speaker 1 Yes, that's what it feels like. I haven't crunched those numbers, but it definitely feels like I've taken 3IN auctions before myself. So I think it it probably is that. How many, how many did you count? That's going for more than three, Phil. Speaker 2 I think for there's 28 going for more than three and like 30 going for two or more. So I'm guys saying the guys going for two or more have mostly gone in in all the the the auction portions of the. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think everyone from a Bray you I'm looking at everyone from a Bray you up goes in every single one like Vodnik usually goes. So I think Vodnik I've seen go in the reserves, but I I count it from a Bray you up is going in everyone. Speaker 2 OK, so I think like just quickly it's that looks like about 29 to 30. So it's kind of like a probably like a 6.7 to 7.3. But like in in the oxygen champions, it might typical build is 81 just because I don't like putting so much money on the on on closers and I'd rather build up with starting pitching. And I think a few people do it that way. I rarely see someone with three in the option championship. So I think that's just naturally I think price are going to come down because of the the bill that people use. But for me, like in a fab league, there's no reason to spend 35 or 40 bucks in my budget on on 2 closers at these prices, Last year's prices where you can get like one guy for 18 or 20 and then spec on like a $5 guy, maybe 7 or 8, I think it makes more sense. But at the new prices, I don't think it makes sense. I think people are going to realize that soon as you said, like they're kind of realizing it now. So I think those prices will probably like naturally drop a little bit soon. Speaker 1 I've I've spent up on closures more than I typically have and my reasoning and and I've been in like 8 oacs is personally I hate the reserve round relief pitch specs. I think they're all fucking dog shit right now and that's going to change when it comes time to have information. But like, I don't, I don't I don't want anything to do with Andrew Sal Frank. I don't want anyone. I don't want Will vest. I don't want Cole Sands, like none of these guys. So I'd rather respect on players and I think are going to be more useful to me. Speaker 2 Yeah, I get that. I guess the I guess most of the auctions I've done recently have been stand alone. So I'm happy with eight and one and specking in season. If it fails then then I just kind of semi pun saves, which I can't really do in a nolac. So I get it, but I don't know. Just like I know I for some I do it in drafts, but for some reason in auctions it feels more expensive. Like I know it's the same thing, but like it feels like when you're building a team sort of off AAV or whatever, like putting away 40 bucks of your budget. Whereas like taking another shot in in round 8 doesn't feel as expensive because I can like if there's in an auction, you can kind of allocate those extra 15 bucks to add like however you want. You can get like 7 upgrades for that 15 bucks in a draft. Like if there's just no one, I like it at pitching and hitting in, in round eight. I can just take a closer there and then the guy I would have taken round 8 is going to be there in round 9 and so on. So it doesn't feel like you're losing as much in drafts versus an auction where you can do whatever you want your money. So you feels like you're losing more by by getting that second closer. But I do get the overall competition where you kind of like if you don't like any specs, you just want to get the two floors and I'll have to blow a bunch of fab on specs, but. Speaker 1 That's a good, that's a good explanation. You're saying you can control your opportunity cost more in an auction? Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 So that's that's a really good explanation. So makes me want to not draft closers as much dropping the closures. You're paying for comfort now, like I took out I took Carlos Estevez for 11 bucks and I just paying you're just paying for comfort right now, whereas you can probably play play the fab game. Mark yeah. You got anything you want to add here? You want to talk about the Want to go move on to. Speaker 3 This. I'm happy to see your analysis, which I like. I like the side by side. Did you pull the AAV 2025 for the same time in the draft season or when did you pull? When is that from? Speaker 1 The AAV 2025 is all OLAX because now NFBC separates the ACS from the OLAX, so it's all the old action 2025. Speaker 3 The whole OK for the whole for the whole dress. Speaker 1 I can't. I don't. I didn't I. Speaker 3 Didn't pinpoint it to February whatever 5th. Speaker 1 So there's like whatever, 12 from 2026 and then there's like 80 something, I don't know, 60, whatever. Speaker 3 That helps because like I was just looking at Chapman last year, he was going for more than three later on in. Speaker 1 The black. Speaker 3 Season, but the point, the point stands and you know, the fact that the spend is up 1%, that's a pretty big jump. Same for catcher. So at least by over talking this of at least not lying, it's actually happening. So this is good to see. I think I totally agree with Phil's last point. Like if you spend the extra 12 bucks, 13 bucks, 15 bucks on your second closure, that money's gone. If you pick a closure in the eighth round, you got to pick in the ninth round like it's it's it's nowhere near as severe. So I totally agree with that. That's a good note. Thank you, Phil, for the midnight madness against Zach. I might use that. Speaker 1 I'm gonna use that too. I'm gonna use it against you. All right. Speaker 3 Let's go. So I think, I think Phil is a good analysis here in that this doesn't make sense and that's kind of what I've been implying or not flat out saying this makes no sense. It looks very similar to last year, about 20 really solid closers and 10 uncertain situations. That was pretty much the same as last year. A lot of the same pitchers, like a lot of, you know, usual suspects are there and all of a sudden they got this, this much better the next year. Zach, it's really your fault for doing all the auctions. You're the one anchoring these closure prices so we can. Speaker 1 I've been paying up for the closures, really sometimes, but I'm not, I'm not going hog wild here. Speaker 3 Yeah, I did just count fill my first OLAC. There were 32 relievers in the auctions. I think it's more 32. Maybe the 34 is my guess is where it where it's at, where it stands might be a slightly less of a split, but it is more than it is less than 7 two, which is the point. Now I've gone 7 two and eight one it I know if this makes any sense that has a good argument about the overall and that it's hard to win without saves or really any category. What if the overall is a smaller pool of teams 200 because last year my second overall team, I think I only had 50 saves and I was well down in that category. Now if I had more, I would have won the overall. So that would have been better. But you know, does that make a difference? If it's only 195 teams, you don't really have to go all out for that one category. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's true. I mean, my my first instinct looking at this, would you just go away more like I can't like to bring a specific example to my point. Getting that second closer is costing you see upgrading Hunter Brown to Tariq's Google or Paul schemes, like that's huge. That's huge. Speaker 1 When you put it that way, that makes you inclined to reach more. So my second question here are about is about catchers. Catchers this year would be like I said, there'd be 7 catchers this year that would be above the C, the C2 last year slopes, the slope is steeper. Does it make it more important, and this is a leading question into the next segment, Does it make it more important to stay out of dollar days for catchers this year? Speaker 2 Like I think every year catchers go up in AV because everyone says they're mispriced, then you have to get them in auctions or whatever. But there's still like I pull, I compared the ADPTAV and they're still going lower than they should. I think there's been correction for that over the last few years. But like for me personally, I'm I'm doing like in high stakes, I'm doing a mix of auctions in drafts. So based on how they're priced, if there's four catchers I like going over 10 bucks, it makes more sense for me to get them in auctions than it does in drafts. And if there's cheap catchers that I like, it makes more sense to get them in drafts than it does in auctions. Just the way they're priced relatively to one another's. That's how for me, it's just like building my My Portfolio based on that. As far as like someone just doing one auction staying out of dollar, I mean, if they, I think it just comes down to personal preference. But I think in terms of of pure value, I think you're right. I think if in auctions it's always made more sense to pay up for catchers, the the edge isn't as big as it used to be but it's still there. When I think to go back to my other point, how you can allocate the money however you want like getting a a Cal rally in an auction, you can allocate the rest of the money however you want in a draft. If you're taking your second round pick on rally and you say got school bullet 1st and getting close in the third, then you're in the fourth without much average and speed. That makes the build a lot different words in an auction can do whatever you want. Speaker 1 Makes sense. So Phil, who of all the values on the board for catcher, who is your favorite catcher at value? Just kidding. And we're not going to tell you you're not going to give away players just fucking with you guys. OK, let's move on the next segment. Hidden Costs: How Timing Creates a Suboptimal Auction Tax This is going to lead in. This is a lead in from the catcher. I want to talk about something that almost never gets discussed when we compare auctions to snake draft and that's timing. In a 30 team snake draft with two catchers, the worst catchers go like in rounds 28 to 30. They're replacement level guys like by definition and they cost you basically nothing in opportunity. But in an auction, every team has to buy their catcher during the auction phase, technically before the end of round or roster spot 23. Structurally you're spending around 23 capital spot on what is effectively around 28 player. I'm what I'm going to argue is that's negative EV, negative expected value. And this creates a hidden tax auctions imposed not in dollars, but in optionality. A $1.00 catcher isn't really a $1.00 decision. You're locking in dead production early than you would ever in a snake, so you're spending a roster spot early churn pressure, and a chance to speculate elsewhere. Locking in mistakes too early isn't about buying bad players, it's about committing roster spots and decision bandwidth to low ceiling outcomes before you have to. So I think that was pretty clear. So catcher is the most clear example of this that I could think of, but I think it'd be really cool if we could think of some other examples of it. What other, And now we hate this word mark, but archetypes that are quietly pulled forward in auctions and become suboptimal, not because of price, but because of timing. You know of any other archetypes? And, and if you want to use a catcher example or the other example that you could think of, are you like, there's really only three things you could do. You could pay more and make sure you get that player and you don't spend $1.00 or you can embrace the $1.00 know that you're that's a basically a replacement level and you're, you're embracing the turn or or three. Assume that the $1.00 is neutral. And that's, that's the only wrong thing because you can't assume that's neutral because it's not. So and also a lot there, but any other archetypes and what's sort of your strategy with this? Speaker 2 I don't know if Mark want to go for it. If you have any examples. I haven't done enough oxygen, so catchers, the ones that come to mind. So if we don't have anything else, we can use that. If Mark has a better example then we can we can switch to that. Nothing came to mind for me. Speaker 3 The other one you mentioned was was RP and I can't believe we're using archetype. It's like making one of throw up every time we see. I guess we'll just go with the bid right now. I find handcuff closers to be suboptimal. I did use that. We're all football players, so we can deal it. Yeah, You know, I, I just find that to be suboptimal. Like if I, I don't want someone else's handcuff in one of my 9 pitchers, like if I can get some guys and I know I, I agree, Zach, I, the first one, I had a spec pretty hard and it's pretty gross. I hate what I did, but so but you know, there are some handcuffs to be grabbed that might have a path to decent saves if the top guy goes down. I just don't see spending up in an auction on someone else's handcuff. And especially like Robert Suarez is going for $4.00. So you have to really, really think Iglesias. Speaker 2 I just threw up in my mouth when you said that. Speaker 3 I mean, now Brian Abreu is going for five. Now I know there are some injury concerns. That's a pretty big hedge. You're taking spending one of your precious 9 spots and spending 5 or $4.00 on a handcuff that you know could be worth literally, I mean, whatever. They're both highly skilled pitchers. You could use them, but not that, not at that price. So that's another one that comes to mind for me. Speaker 1 Phil, you don't like Suarez? Speaker 2 No, I mean, I think he's fine. I think I think in a think that might be a case of like value leaking into fab leaks. Like I think for me, there's no doubt Iglesias going to be, unless he totally sucks in spring training, he's going to be closer on opening day. And yes, it's possible that he blows up and by mid-May Suarez is the closer. But you're not going to hang out the Suarez for six weeks hoping that Iglesias starts sucking. Like you're going to drop in week two or three when you have a bunch of injuries in Iglesias it's 3 or 4 saves. So the bring you one I can understand more because if you're convinced that haters toast, I think there's a better chance to hit that I bring you close on opening day than Suarez. But I just don't see myself hanging out to Suarez in a fab league. And the DC, I get it like it's a long play. You can if you don't think Iglesias is that good, you can hope for 8 to 10 save some Suarez hoping that Iglesias blows up sooner or later. But in in a fabric I just don't get it. Speaker 1 Just Suarez would be just such a tough hold in a fab league. But I guess if you're dropped him, you're just going to hold him and like you don't think there's any chance that he's just like they paid him 45 mil and just he could. There was a non zero chance that Suarez is the closer of the game. We're just we're just missing the forest there. But probably not. Speaker 2 And thoughtful. It's pretty said, pretty much, said Iglesias. Is the closer. Speaker 1 Yeah, he did. Speaker 2 So, so to go back to your question, yeah, the one question I had is regarding the round 23 guys, like if the oxygen was, if we're oxygen 30 rounds and you have say like 270 budget, how much do the round 23 guys go for? Speaker 1 I never thought about that. That's a good question. Well, you're you have 10 extra bucks or seven extra players. Speaker 2 Like this Fred could be completely different, but like the difference in value between like around 23 and around 30, say we're auctioning everyone. I think it's like I would have thought like 2 or 3 bucks maybe, maybe 3 bucks. Speaker 1 At the most I would say. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So my point, my point is yes, like like spending a dollar or on a catcher 30 or a closer is, is is suboptimal because you're losing like a dollar in value, like you said, because if it was around 23 and we're auctioning everyone, the round 23 guy would go for an extra dollar or two compared to around 30 guys. So that's what you're losing. So if I'm building a team and I'll have like I'll have two catchers for at least like 5 bucks locked in because I don't want to lose that value. But like shit happens in auctions if there's a five $5 bargaining on and outfielder that I hadn't planned for, like getting that bargain, it's worth more than what I I'm losing by getting $1.00 catcher. So like that's not plan A, but stuff happens. And like I think you can pivot and it end up doing and if you're getting proper value elsewhere losing that like one dollar $2.00 by getting that round 23 guy isn't terrible. Speaker 1 I'll push back on you and you're talking about absolute values of players and I'm talking about if you look at the relative value. I just can't stomach paying one or two or even $1.00 more for Kaibu or Reese than. Your next Robbie Ray in round 24 that you didn't want to, that you didn't want to talk about. So you get you can get your Robbie Ray in round 24 in the first round of the reserves and can you stomach paying a dollar more for Kyber or reason him? That's absurd. Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. I agree. But what if you're if you're sitting there and say White Langford is at 19 and there's crickets in the room, Do you go to 20 even though you hadn't planned for it? And knowing that if you make that move, you have to sacrifice a William Contravers or whatever? Speaker 1 No, then I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't go to 20. Speaker 2 No. What if it was someone who actually liked? Other than Langford, Yeah. Speaker 4 It didn't want to be true. Speaker 1 Well, I just like, well, I just like interest more than Langford's. Like at their prices. Speaker 2 No, but like you know what I mean, just like two players that you you equally like 1 you can get like a $5 bargain on compared to the AAV at another position he wasn't planned for. But knowing that if if you like, I'll just stick to Langford. If you go to 20 on Langford, you have to cross off William Contreras and put in Cabaret Ruiz or whatever other $1.00 catcher you like. That's for me the debate where if I build, like if I have a plan going to an auction, I'll plan to spend on catchers. But you can get to a point in auction where you have to make that decision be like, OK, yeah, I'm willing to take that hit to get like a $20 white Langford that. Speaker 1 Makes sense I would do that I'm I'm a sucker for the deals yeah, I'm a sucker for the deals, especially because I'm doing like the volume that I am. So my next question here is do you consider got auctioning players like Kyber Ruiz, Robert Stevenson, which is like I I'll say my archetype. I think the the the shitty, you call it shitty, but like the RP2 specs worse than a brave. They're going in the auctions at times which are getting like those guys would be going definitely after round 23 like Colt Keith, Eden Miller, like some people are taking Eden Miller like these prospects in in the auction rounds, like you consider those failures because of their relative value in in a snake draft. I know you, I know you guys aren't going to be taking Aiden Miller. So get that on your head. You that's like your style, like a Robert Stevenson or a Colt Keith, like Kyber Rees. Is that a failure if you auction those players? Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it is like the one, the one time that comes to mind for me when it happened in auction, I think it was Carlos Santana who was like going ADP 380 or whatever, but I end up in the spot where I needed the corner and fielder and he was the best one on my board. And I just I had like a dollar guy at the end that I needed ACI and he happened to be the guy when I walked out of the auction. I was upset myself. Like no, I should have spent up two or three for another guy because taking Santana there is a failure. Like I know where. Speaker 1 Would it have come out of them? Like would you just have spent got a little bit cheaper somewhere else? It's hard to. It's hard to, yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, it might have been like like either price enforcing someone or just going like $2.00 too hot in a picture. What I where I shouldn't have something like that where it happened. I'm like, oh shit. Or a guy that I or yeah, I thought could go for good, I could get for two, end up going for three and I'm like, oh shit, there's no one left. So when I walked out of the auction, I thought it was a failure because we're like still focused in the auction. It just happened. You're pissed at yourself, but then like a month later you forget about it and like it. It doesn't matter. Speaker 1 In case you dropped him anyways. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. And I would have dropped it and the other Seattle would have wanted for 2 bucks. It would have been a drop anyway. So like by May we forget about all that stuff? Speaker 1 The robot pricing forces? I didn't know that. That's an interesting Intel. Do auctions force managers to lock in their worst players earlier than snakes? And if so, how should that influence your portfolio or your team construction? I think it's, I think we've, we've decided that's true. Like you, you have to lock in your worst, yeah, earlier for sure. But I guess how does that affect your how you, how you make your team? Speaker 2 I think for me, like the the biggest thing, like every, every time people talk about auctions like, oh, you can build whatever team you want. You can get whichever player you like, but like you, you, you probably have a better answer, but or you can confirm or deny what I'm saying. But if you're doing like 15 auctions, if I'm doing 15 drafts, I'll have like my, I don't know, like my 4050 favorite players and I can have like pretty high share percentage of all of them. Because you take them at AVP or run before and you end up with a bunch of them in an auction, like your four or five favorite guys, you can kind of lock them into your roster and say, I'm paying going like 3 bucks over AVM getting no matter what. But the guys that you like but don't love, like your say your favorite value is like 6 to 20. Like you're kind of depending on when they get called up in the auction. So maybe your idiot favorite guy gets called up, he's a dollar under AV and you're like, yeah, that's not a bad buy. I'll do it. And then by the time that you're one of the guys who like it's called up, I don't know, like an hour later you're like, oh, I don't have to spot or the money for him. So I think if you're doing multiple auctions, I think that's where it's going to like change your, your share of players. Like I'm, I've done 7 OC so far and the players I really like, I have like in 80% of leagues and the guys I sort of like are in 50% of leagues. I feel like that's kind of hard to do in an auction unless you're waiting, really waiting for you guys, but you're just always depending on when they get called up. And I think that changes the dynamics. And I think people like often come at an auction because they see the auction board at the end. They're like, oh, this. So so you see this guy, you should have done that instead of that. But it's like a flat picture when you're in the auction room and you're you're there, you're like, no, that's not like, like there's a story through the auction and looking at the board just doesn't tell you anything. Yeah, I'm. Speaker 3 Back. If you didn't see me, I got kicked off Unbelievable. Speaker 1 I saw that. Speaker 3 Oh, you got? Yeah. Anyway, sorry, I got. It's coming back. It's crazy or whatever. I just want to say to answer the question, Zach, is I think you should for there was last play, you know, for the, for the last players you spend up on two 3-4 dollars. Those should be positions or, or player profiles that you can't get in the reserve round, right? So you can get a platoon outfielder in the reserve round. So I'm not going to spend $2.00 on my last guy, you know, for, for 1/6 outfielder, I'll spend that extra dollar, let's say middle and I'm I'm just making up a position. But you get the point. Like I want to, I want a more scarce position or skills that in the auction, knowing that there's a chance that that those guys are less likely to find them in the reserve. And then you'll just pick up, you know, this, the whatever is left in the reserve and that'll be that'll be the guys you always spend a dollar on in the auction. So you didn't waste any unnecessary capital. So that's that's another answer. Speaker 1 I think I agree with what Phil said. And this my, my, my response to sort of two parts. I agree with Phil because like each auction is different and I'll take the, I'll take the values, which will in turn spit out a position or whatever position or category where I'm going to sort of be lighter on. And I'm going to end my auction. Say like if I spend up on an outfielder a couple extra bucks because it was a good value, I might be feeling a $1.00 catcher. I might be feeling down a $1.00. I might have my last couple $1.00 players as pitchers. It depends on how the auction goes. But to relate it to like where you want to deliberately like waste early capital for me, I think there is, I can think of three spots in in these auctions. 1 is catcher or you're you're buying like a Ruiz or Bailey or some fucking shit bag at at catcher. Number 2 is like mark when you go 81, mark just left, but there's back. If you're doing like an 8 one build and you're or if you have, if you have one closer and you're trying to like you've kicked the can on your RP2 and you're trying to and there's nothing left, then you're buying like Robert Stevenson and the Colorado White Sox, not White Sox anymore, but Colorado and Arizona, like all those dirtbags, like those guys you're pushing up. That's another situation where if you like only got 1 usable closure, another one in in these auctions, and this is just maybe for me, doing a lot of them and having experiences is corner infield. Corner infield is a spot where you can end up with someone like your Carlos Santana example, where you're going to end up with somebody that could easily be in the reserves like a Colt Keefe. Very good player that was in my OLAC yesterday and of cool Keith as his corner infielder Josh Bell. I've seen Nolan Chenule in the reserve rounds and I've also seen him in the auction. So that's a spot. People say that the the shortstop is or middle infield drops off really quick, but it does have a steep drop off. But there is still lots of players at the end of the auction that are like should never be reserves like a Mason win. Like he's like you can get him real cheap at the end and he's still like, fine. Speaker 2 So when you like plan for an auction, I know you don't really plan because you're doing so many and you kind of just know by now. But the way I've done in the past is if I'm like sort of like not pre building a team, just having like pockets of players, I'll often have like $10.00 for four hour field spots, knowing that there is like 12 guys I like and however the market plays, I can get someone. But if there's only one like $2.00 third baseman that you like, you're probably more likely to spend up for 1/3 baseman because you don't want to risk being at the end and someone else like that guy and he goes for four or five bucks or something. Is that like accurate? I think, I think middle and fielding outfielder probably deepest positions, most of us like multiple guys late. So you're kind of willing to go cheaper on those positions and spend up on on the CIS? Speaker 1 Yeah, and those are those are the positions that that you have many multiple, multiple paths to leverage in those middle infield and outfield because of speed, right. So you can find somebody that can fill your speed. Whereas if you're if you're if you're tracking your auction. And I what I've learned is I want to track my auction and I track my. I really just look at my home runs and stolen bases, to be honest. And that's what I really look at the most. And yeah, of course, like batting average batting, I want to make sure that my batting average tracks. But at the end of the auction, you can't fix your batting average for the most part, unless you're like putting a Band-Aid on it, like one of those band aids, like Arayas. That's like a special circumstance, but you're looking at your home runs, stolen bases. And if you're left with your just your corners, you're not going to be able to fill your speed. I just really, I really want to make sure that I get to like a point where what I've been trying to do lately with all these relax is get to a point where I've drafted 13 of my players and basically I'm like 10 home runs and ten stolen bases away from my targets with like one player left. And I can basically do whatever I want. Where I don't want to be is I don't want to be like have my third baseman left and, and potentially be like 150 stolen bases because and I'm just going to be like what I'm going to get like to Brian Hayes. Yeah, in the auction he actually fixes average and stolen base and home runs. He's A5 category player. All right, we're done with this. Unless Mark has anything to say. No. Speaker 3 We can move on. Busting Common Auction Myths: Batting Average, Aces, and Velo Games So now we're going to do a segment, myths versus realities. I don't know why did I do this section. Actually, I think it's actually pretty good. Why do why did I think to do this? Auctions are full of rules. Everyone repeats, but not all of them are true. So we're going to be busting myth. This is myth Buster, myth Busters for auctions. So myth #1 or maybe not a myth. You can't leave the auction week on batting average or whip. Mark, I'll start with you on that one. Because you're the whip. You're the whip, man. You are muted, Mark. Speaker 3 Sorry man, I would say myth you can't leave the auction week on batting average and reality, you can't leave the auction week on WHIP. Speaker 1 OK, Phil, what do you think? Speaker 2 I'm no for both. Like I think everything can be fixed in season. You can be like perceived to be week on on WHIP, but just allocate more of of of your fab on on pitching and you can kind of fix it. Everyone's going to end up with like Chevy to start streamers. If you know your week on WHIP, make sure you get you get more depth in the reserve rounds. And even if you get like a 1.3 out of those those reserves, someone's going to go to 1.5. So you're catching up in WHIP there. And I think it's kind of the same for batting. I think you just have like there's a limit to how weak, like you can have like projected 240 average, but like if you're slightly below average and you need to do a category, I think pretty much everything can be fixed in FAB in season. Like I think it's something like 40% of our bats are gonna come from FAB or like somewhere 30 to 40%. So you can you can fix it there as long as you're aware of it when the season starts. Speaker 1 How low can you go for batting average? How low are you comfortable being with your projection showing at the end of an auction? Like it's like your targets like what, 260? That's like a that's. Speaker 2 Good like the the main main of an average I think to be mid pack is like 255 if I'm at 2:54. But I'm very strong in home runs in stolen bases. I'm I'm OK with it. Speaker 1 OK, because I've, I've, I've really only started doing this this year and last year before that, I just fucking wind it. But I've been targeting the 260 and I, and I realized especially in the auctions, because all the good players go first, I want it like within like the first, like by the 1st break or when I have like 8 or 7 players, I need to be at like 268 because I know it's only going to fall from there. So that's what I'm targeting. And then I've had ones where like I just couldn't hold on and I, I got like Joe Adele and stuff like that and it fell to like 255. And I'm like, this is a failure in my mind because I'm, I'm just doing this and like 255 out of the auction, like I'm fucked. That's what that's that's my mindset. Speaker 3 I don't. I don't think you are. But if you are, then I am because that's my target. I mean, I'm looking at 2:56 and if I'm 254, I can live with that. I'm not thrilled, but. Speaker 2 It depends on the projections you're using though. Like the average because I think I'm I pulled up the main event, I think it's 202555 would have gotten you like 610 points. Speaker 1 Which is like 75th percentile. Speaker 2 Yeah, something like that. Speaker 3 Yeah, that's about right. Speaker 2 I, I adjust, I said 255 is the average because I adjusted based on my projections. My projections are a bit higher than that. So it like, it always depends on like if you're using Steam or bad or whatever, like another. But I'd be happy being, let's stick to percentiles. I'd be happy being 50th percentile and saying I'm gonna just, if I'm really strong everywhere else, I'll start 50th percentile and just be careful when I pick up layers to focus more on batting out. Not the guy can bump that up to like maybe get some luck in there and maybe just naturally bump it up to two 57258 or whatever. Speaker 1 Wow, that's crazy. So like 250, what do you say? 255 was 75th percentile, You said? Yeah, that that gave me a thought. So like people always just are sheep and like, oh, I have to use the 80th percentile. But I wonder if anyone's looked at the categories and said, what's the difference between the 80th and 70th percentile for these categories? And which which category is a category where I could lose the most stats and not lose What category can I move down 10 percentiles and go down a ton in those stats? Yeah. Speaker 2 And it's not a good point. No, Sir. No, go ahead. Speaker 3 I just say you made a good point on the ratio categories because people can get worse at those, right? So, and that's why if you're in the middle, you don't necessarily have to gain. You just have to not lose. You know, other people can go, you can pass people just by standing still there. Speaker 1 But you're racing against a theoretical number, you're not racing against reality. So you're still, you still need to get, yeah, people can lose ratios, but you still got to get to those targets either way, right? Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how they get there. You're still trying. You're still trying to get to the same of. Speaker 3 Course, of course, I'm just saying certain you're asking which statistics, you know, which categories would you be OK coming out at 70th percentile. That's that was my point was ratio at least average. I I'm too I'm too much of A ratio or for I'll. Speaker 1 Probably figure this out as we're talking. Speaker 3 What's that so? Speaker 1 Let's probably figured out the answer as we were talking right now. Speaker 2 No, I was just looking at like how many? It's the old the, the argument of the forum, which I always think is very stupid about the innings minimum, where people are complaining about like 1000 minimum innings saying to reach 1000. Say you have like 2 relievers throwing 65 innings, you're down to 870 for seven pitching spots. You need like 125 innings. Like, Oh, no pitcher throws 125, but it over the course of the season, you're picking up guys in five, you're using to start guys and all that stuff. And we end up at like 1300 innings and you might be drafting like 800 to 900 in. So in the end, like there's so much of, of our, of our fat production that comes our sort of our in season of our, of our overall stats that come from, from in season pickups that I'm I'm OK being average in, in certain categories as long as you're aware of it. And then you just adjust in season, like instead of picking up Reese Oskins in Week 2, you pick up a guy with like a 260 and he's going to be like eight home runs, a stolen basis. Like you just adjust based on what you need. Speaker 1 So my, my, my agenda here said you can just say yes or no. 5 minutes planned for this segment. We go through one of them. Speaker 3 They laughed at that. When I saw that, I'm like that's this is like a 15 minute segment. Speaker 1 OK, so next one, next one. And our friend Jason DuPont already proved this wrong when he won the ultimate or diamond auction or ultimate diamond auction, I think it was. You need an ace, IE spending at least $23 or more at least once on a pitcher starting pitcher out. Speaker 3 Yeah, that is a myth. Although I typically like to get one. I just did one. The last one I did I got Logan Webb for 22, so that is under and Maker infamously won the overall with I don't think any pitcher over 23. Speaker 2 Very interesting. It's this stupid question on Twitter, who's the who's the worst pitcher you're comfortable with as your SP1 and drafts? And then DuPont answers Cam Shitler, whatever. But I think it's just like you can even in drafts, you can wait until round 8 to draft your starting pitcher and just get 12 in a row like you can. Like there's a limit to how crazy you can get. Like the 23 bucks is nothing you can. Speaker 1 You can't. You wouldn't do like an Adam Magemi where you do like 14 headers and then Lucas Giolito and Walker Buehler in the rounds 15 and 16. Speaker 2 Not that extreme, but like I'm I'm willing to go like pretty extreme if usually more more pitching heavy, but think there's still a way to do it if you even if you wait a little bit. Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree. OK, next one. Velo games and Spring are just noise and there's a myth. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a myth. There's value to it. Speaker 1 Yeah, OK, Now we're moving. Now we're moving. OK Roll. This is a good one, Roll. Uncertainty makes pitcher, makes a pitcher undraftable in the auction rounds. So what would you I guess do we do we want to define the parameters there like? Speaker 2 Yeah. It's like, are we talking about like Mason Miller maybe being a starting? Speaker 1 Pitcher not like that. To put it in perspective, is Troy Melton now undraftable or unauctionable in the 23 rounds? Speaker 3 He is to me. Speaker 1 He is to me, Tim specifically, but I think that is the rule, like a golden rule. I guess there's someone else who who also would be an example. OK, here's another one. The Miami Marlins guys, the rookies, the prospects. What are the names? Why not Snelling? Well, let's call you Snelling. He's a better example. Is Snelling on? Is he on on optional? Probably you guys, because you guys are pussies. You don't drop him. Speaker 3 I see him in this one that I did. He got he went for $2.00. Speaker 1 And he went, he went in the the last one that I did too, to a good friend of the podcast, OK. Speaker 2 Everyone's a friend of this podcast. Speaker 3 I don't I would say it's a myth. I don't, I would say it's a myth if you want to take a shot. So for example, I spent a dollar on Volpe. OK, so he he is certainly uncertain right now. I just thought for my last dollar he looked like he had the most value. So I took them. Now I had obviously cover it in the reserve round. So I would say it's a myth, but I wouldn't do many more than one or you know, if I, if I was going to do it, maybe one or two. Speaker 1 Moderation X Pigs in moderation. Speaker 3 Here's an Andrew Painter for a dollar to the same guy who was Troy Melton for a dollar. Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know. I can't talk. I've probably done shit like that. So the last last one that we're going to ask if it's a myth, the auction is a 0 sum game. It always corrects itself by the end game. Speaker 2 Can you elaborate on that? Speaker 1 Oh. Speaker 2 For those for those of us in the room who didn't understand the question, can you clarify? Speaker 1 That fish. Fish just showed up. What's up? Speaker 4 What's up guys? How's it going? Speaker 1 What I mean by that is. Speaker 3 Can you explain the second part, Zach, 'cause I think we know what a 0 sum game is. I mean, it is. It's always $2.00 per. Speaker 1 Game if we're if we're seeing over if it's a hot room early and you're going to see over bids one every action has an equal and opposite reaction is basically internal option. Does that make sense? Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. OK. So I understand correctly. I think there's two ways and can go. One thing is if there's like for me, there's probably 50 to 60% of player pool that's kind of off limits like the I guess that's like half what Casey Shaw does. So the problem is if in the first hour all players are going under AV, but the guys are like aren't getting called up, yes, it's going to correct itself, but not the way I want it. So I need to adjust. I'll need to either call up the guys I like to get them out or buy someone I don't like quite as much because I know that's where the bargains are. Inflation is going to come and I can't just wait and wait for that. The other way it can go is this driver. When it's going it over AAV, yes, they'll correct itself, but you don't want to be the sucker left with $100 and everyone else has 30 bucks and there's just no more players to buy. So yes, in that case it's also going to correct itself. But the guy that you were planning to spend $10 on is going for 7 bucks and then you end up with 18 bucks left on your final $1.00 guy. So yes, it's a 0 sum game. Yes, it's going to correct itself by the end game. But I think these are two stereos where you need to adjust and you can't just like sit there and stick to your values. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, I think you do need to adjust in some aspects. And I think it is 0 sum game for the most part. But I don't think it's always a 0 sum game and it doesn't always correct yourself because I think you'll have situations where there's a hot room, there's a cold room. But then you'll also have situations where within the hotter and cold room, you sort of have a decision tree where, hey, you have hot room and then you have a hot room with players that are hoarding their money. And then a hot room where you have people spending, like multiple people spending. OK, it's fine. One person goes rogue. That's not really going to shake the needle, but remove the needle. But if you have multiple people doing that, you say you have multiple people going down to $110 before the auction breaks, like two or three of them, then that's going to that. That can make the whole thing sort of not a 0 sum game where they're out of money And and then the auction sort of never breaks because everyone's going to have too much money for the remaining players or the vice versa. People have several people have hoarded money and the deals never come. So and in that case, people could leave money on the table. People say two people leave doesn't happen often in the ACS, but in the Olacs you could have two people to live leave up to $20 on the table and that's makes it by definition not a 0 sum game. That's the same thing as like dealing with like two major injuries. Speaker 3 Yeah, it doesn't auto correct. You have to be involved in how it does correct. And you guys give a bunch of good examples of what you need to be thinking about. It's not, can't just sit there and assume it's all going to come back to you. You have to, you have to act and you have to diagnose what the action is. And once you do that, yeah, it'll come back to you. But it's it's not, it's not, it's not automatic. You have to, you have to initiate it or at least have an appropriate reaction to what's going on. Yeah. Adapting to Chaos: How Vegas Auctions Shift Player Values One of the things I sort of like to do is maybe because I'm not experiences you guys, but I like to spend like 100 to 120 bucks pretty early. Even though even if they're not players I love just kind of get money off the table, get four or five guys that I like that I'm OK with and then I feel it's easier to adjust to the room. No matter what everyone else does, if it's a cold room or a hot room, I have enough money off the table that I can kind of go either way and adjust. If there's bargains early I can spend and get down to 20 bucks. If everyone expensive I can lay back for an hour and then have more money left in everyone then just pick off my targets. Speaker 1 It's your team balanced in terms of like the distribution of your team. That makes sense. We got, we got a if it's going to be in the big fish segment at some point, we've got to talk to Phil about his AI automating so many. He's already done 7 OC. Who would have thought that? I've done 2 OCS and Phil 7 like I'm actually on strike from OCS because if fucking Mike Curlin's getting a beat OC and fucking Frank and Kev getting a beat OC and I don't get one, I'm on strike. I'm not doing any of your fucking OCS anymore. OK, Not that I need not that I need a free one, but I'm just it's it's a principle of the matter here. No more OCS for me. OK, next thing we're going to talk about this. OK, picture this. It's a live auction. Mark Cerebro and Phil du Cell are locked in in a bidding war over Ben Rice. They're inching the price up, each trying to get the other to blink. 2122, Next guy goes 232425. Jason Dupont's just sitting there quietly the whole time, just watching. The clock ticks down to the final seconds, and with 0 warning, DuPont slid in a bid. Slid in a bid with a loud but calm voice. He goes 26 instantly. Both freeze. Do they fight? Do they fall? No, who should, who should bid? We don't know what's going to go on. This is called the the silent hammer is what they call it or what I'm calling it. And it's there's not many edges in live auctions because the on lines we can, I can fuck around with a Max bid, but in a live auction, have you ever seen this happen guys? Maybe Mark's a good one to talk to 1st about this. And are there any other edges, like psychological edges you can use in a live auction? Sort of a fucking crappy question and a segment to waste here, but I thought it was kind of fun. Speaker 3 It's it's a strategy. I think it's fairly rare. I've seen it more in football auctions than baseball. Football you'll see a late arriver just out of nowhere and come in and steal it. That that I've seen use more there. I don't in baseball. I'm not sure why it's not. It seems it's, it could work, but usually the last two are the ones who are going to end up with the player. I'd say 90, you know, 8% of the times it, it's, it's a strategy, you know, listen, every any little edge. I think the larger point for me is how you bid is really important. You can end up, I mean, on average, everyone should kind of be getting, you know, 50% getting the guy they want just do the bidding. But that's not true. You can get a slight edge where you're winning that bid just based on how you are bidding. And that's just something that just takes a lot of time and, and practice and then just instinct because each auction is going to be different. You have to and each room is going to be different. So you have to, you know, know what would work, what wouldn't. So this is what is an interesting one. I might try this actually now I thought. Speaker 1 You mentioned it. Phil has experienced winning the auction overall when he wasn't even there. Rob the theater did was actually there. So Phil doesn't even know what Rob was. Speaker 3 Doing that's amazing, that's amazing and the funny. Speaker 2 Thing about that is that the first break, I think it was first to second break, Greg went up to Rob and said, do people realize that you're always calling out players that you want? As if it was like I was on Zoom and I was just and what happened in that auction is everyone was going under AV but none of the players I like were getting called out. And I'm like, I got to buy players now because the bargains are now there's going to be like 10% inflation coming later. And like I got to buy now, but no ones calling out players I want. So some of it was getting players I sort of liked. And the rest of the time was just every time it came around, I called a target and I just bid, which became the most obvious strategy, especially because I wasn't in the room and I'm sure other people, right? But sometimes you're like so focused in on auction, like Greg noticed it right away because he's auctioning. But if people are focused on our team, maybe even notice it or it just didn't care. But the whole time it was like I was coming out, I had like a team written in Word like that I wanted. I was calling them out like 1 by 1 basically as my turn came. Speaker 1 It's basically like you were doing like what Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't true Lies. And just like he, like, I'm gonna tell you the truth, I'm gonna, I'm gonna break your neck now. It's like you're not even trying to hide any trying to like hide any of your strategy. Speaker 2 Yeah, basically the dropping the bid at the final. I haven't I didn't like do the silent hammer like you said it, but I've done it before. I think I did it to DuPont two years ago was on on Hassan Kim. I knew he liked them and just to piss him off I waited till the last second just drop in a bid and like I didn't cuz it was the end of the auction. It was DuPont. It was funny. But like, if you do that early, you're just gonna piss on they're going to get you back at some point. And when it happens to you, it really sucks. So like I think this like the best strategy for the auction is kind of just like lay low and just do your own thing and don't attract attention and make sure that people people don't feel the need to price and force or. Speaker 1 Don't put a target on your back. Yeah, exactly. I never put a target on my back for anything, and I never piss anyone off in these live auctions. Oh. Speaker 3 My God, that yeah, that's a good one, Phil, because that just happened to me the other day with Geiss. I last second a bid on him and got him and then he did that to me every single time the rest of the auction. And I got the last laugh though, because I ended up getting Castro and Luis Garcia. And he he he texts me, he's like, I've been waiting for those guys for two hours. I thought that was freaking great. So we had, we had a good battle, but I brought it on myself. Like I especially friends, you're you're competing. This is hard, but like, don't piss your friend off because they'll come right back at you even harder. So yeah, I I got to keep that in mind. Speaker 2 The other part of your question, the other live edges, the one thing I did last in the the Dive in auction was like a really competitive room. I knew how to target my backgummy game with with Gecko, with DuPont, just kind of paying attention to what I was doing to a certain extent and what I spent some money pretty early and then I'd call out all my targets, but just slightly like like Ernie Clement was like between like a one and two dollar guy. So I'd call him out for $2.00 and everyone. So if you want to take a target away from me, you have to go for 3 bucks and if you did like Congrats to get him, you overpaid. So for my last like 7 or 8 players I called out, I'd just call him like just right above off, which for me was still a bargain, but just making if you want to take a target for me, you're going to have to overpay for him. And some of them did. But I still end up filling out my roster pretty quickly and getting guys I liked. Speaker 1 And suddenly you didn't have any any one dollar players. Speaker 2 There no, not really, but actually at the end I did, but it was like just like round 2223 guys, guys who are close to reserve runs if you call them out for a dollar, if you spent early, you can afford to do it. Like if someone wants them, you have to go for 2 bucks. I think that's what he ventures. If you if you spend early and you're fitting out the, if you're flying out the bot, the back end of your roster earlier than everyone, you can kind of direct, direct the bidding based on guys you're calling out. And because like it's like jumping up a guy from 2 to 3 bucks is a lot bigger than from 15 to 16. It seems like even though it's both $1.00. So you can kind of like make sure you get your targets by doing it that way. And if someone wants to overspend, I mean, you don't have like I wouldn't have like if, if, if I had 7 spots to fail, I had maybe 15 targets. So if if one of them gets over bid then someone overpaid and I'll just get the next one. Speaker 1 All right, so we got 2 segments left. One is how the OLAX evolve into the AC. So I like price inflation heading into Vegas, how the the board shifts. And then we're going to talk about sleepers, the one to three dollar players and if you should target hitters or pitchers or if it matters. And then we're going to get into the segment about who's the next, who's this year's Christopher Sanchez, who's this year's Robbie Ray? So that's what everyone's been listening for. We might do big fish before that, though. We might do the big fish segment before that. So fish's got it, we got it, we got it. We can't forget to talk about Phil and his AI lineup thing and that big fish segment too. So this now let's talk about OLAX evolving into the auction championships. Every auction is unique and you have to adapt, but you also have to adapt within an adaptation in Vegas because the market entirely shifts. Every auction's unique, but you also have to adapt to the room in these auctions. But in Vegas or in The Godfather games, you're adapting within an adaptation. The pricing aren't moving because players changed or people are. There's a hot or cold room. They're moving because Risk moved. Injured players and uncertain players lose value and the money has to go somewhere. Like we said, it's a 0 sum game. The money has to move somewhere and it usually flows on what my theory is. It usually flows into the middle of the player pool under the label of safety. Well, the challenge in Vegas is reacting to the chaos guys in the chaos and going in, you have to recognize a chaos already happened because usually in the auctions, chaos happens within the auctions. But when you go to Vegas, the chaos already happens. The market, you know the markets already going to change. So what you'll notice is structural chaos is different. Like like within an auction, like 1 sleeper gets nuked, a single manager over spends and does the stars and scrubs crazy build. Somebody buys 3 catchers, doesn't matter. Like you're not going to really change what you're doing, but like structural chaos is different. So like multiple hitters going 10% over AAV, like the SP2 market inflating in Vegas, like it always does, that's when you have to adjust and accept, accept that part just changes. So if the market is mispricing a few players, it's an opportunity within the draft. But if it's mispricing everything, you have to adapt. So my question is when you see structural chaos like a category inflation like pitching runs in Vegas, how do you decide when to stick to your plan and when you actually have to change your actual like budget ranges that you put that mark you want to start? Speaker 3 Yeah, I'll start really this is, this is important. If you're doing both online auctions and then live, there's got to be a shift. You have to be ready for it. And it's it's, it's not easy because you have some historical trends and you know, if you've done this for a while, there's usually some player types or positions that end up getting priced up a little bit in Vegas, what you're expecting. So one strategy is try to anticipate and adjust your plan before you go in. So you've already made the adjustment. If you're right, you're you're, you're fine and just keep going. If you're wrong, then you have to pivot. But if you don't guess or you don't anticipate you, you're going to be on the wrong foot to start. If it's more different than you were expecting or if your strategy hinges on something like for example, let's let's just say starting pitching, for example. So right now the top three are going for 40. OK, So you might, you might say, yeah, I, I don't want to pay that. So your, your strategy shifts, they got $26 guy or whatever 24, you know, $20 guy, whatever. So you get to the auction and it's 35 for school and kind of slow. So you you have to, you have to try to anticipate is it, is it going to go which direction it's going to go in? Use your previous knowledge. If you know someone in New Jersey, get the auction for us before you go to Vegas. That's a little easier, although. Speaker 1 New York, it's not going to be online this year because there's only two auctions in Jersey. And now that they've separated the AAV from the ACAAV and the OLAC AAV, you're not going to have the big draft AAV available for Vegas. And it's like. Speaker 3 What's the war dog? Speaker 1 What's War Dog plus? Speaker 3 The dog post it, then you'll have it. So you'll be good. You'll be good to go. Yeah, no, but if you're playing it straight, then yeah. I think you just have to try to anticipate based on historical trends, maybe just based on what you're hearing on the ground and the discords, you know, who's starting to get hot at right at the end. You know, a lot of times what's going on online with the OCS remains, you know, that could also translate there. Even if you know that the Jersey or the New York numbers that that doesn't necessarily guarantee you're going to get in Vegas. I've seen plenty of times the New York number being more off than the OLAC number would have been. And sometimes I like switch to that for my AV and the file and that will be the wrong decision. So I don't know that's, that's kind of that's kind of how I think it through. But I think it's important to get it right and also do multiple auctions in Vegas and the first one goes goes FUBAR. You at least know for the next 1. So that's another option. Speaker 2 I think there's a few things here. So first thing the like Reagan's to Nolan McClain and you can throw in like Strider, Burns, Woodruff and glass. Now if they're healthy and I guess Snell, who's kind of in that range now, if they're healthy in spring, yes, there's gonna be injuries that are gonna like naturally shoot up those guys. But I think on top of that, there's something about when you're in a draft and you're by like around 7 or 8, people get insecure and they want more balance. They want to see like 3 or 4 hitters at least. Or is it an auction? Because you can have different builds. There's more people willing to spend up for that range then there would be in a draft because someone can be willing to get three or four of those guys in that range and then get a Tatis, get a Cal Rally and still be fine with hitting. Or you can there's because there's more options. I think that range of pitcher just shoots up naturally. So that for me that's part of the difference between the OLACS and the auction where there's kind of more thought that goes into different builds. Or is it an OLACS, someone just say I'm putting what is it like 150 bucks or whatever and I want judge on my team where I want Ohtani and then just kind of go from there. So that's one thing. The other thing like as far as adjusting like I think you can look back at auction championships and get a pretty good idea of what the pitcher hitter split is going to be and adjust your values based on that. The one thing, the one scenario where I'll adjust my values is if starting pitching is pushed up, because with hitting, I'm perfectly fine having 14 hitters at like $10. Like you can wait and there's so many hitters that you can with starting pitching, I think it's easier to have big, big phase and big targets. So there's fewer starting pitchers I'm interested in. So if all the starting pitchers are getting pushed up, I can't just wait since I'm going to get a bunch of seven to $8 guys. You can just can't. They'll start in pitching that way. So if starting pitching is pushed up, call out your favorite player and say I'm going to overpay compared to AV, but it's still going to be a value for me. And then you at least get one guy at least. Like for me, that's the one scenario or adjust where I'll just follow the market for starting pitching. And then the other part thing I wrote is for me there, there's a few different ways to do auction values and to build a strategy for an auction. I think that each room is going to be different based on how many of each are in the room. So there's the grab AV as if you're going to the supermarket and you're buying players off of that. You walk into the draft, you have a list of players who want I can get this guy for 40, this guy for 37 if I pay up for a dollar. So you have that kind of drafter who is kind of stuck the AV and it's just looking I like this guy for 40, I like this guy for 30 and I'm buying off of that. There's the fan grafts auction calculator guy who plugs in his projections or plugs in steam or whatever and the value spit out and Phantographs calculator hates top players and it loves the mid tier guys. So guys who use that, who build auction values that way are not going to spend on Google or honey skins, crochet, whoever. And we're going to get a bunch of 15 to $25, guys. Speaker 1 Sounds like Mark. Speaker 3 No, no, no, no, that does not sound like me. Because and it's not, it's not an auction calculator, but no, I mean, I, I, I love school ball right now at the price. I, I, I, I, I'm, I'm still interested. But by Jay Ram, he's way over. So no, I mean, Phil's right. That's the distribution you get. He's correct. That is the distribution. Yeah. If you look at my file, it's the top guys who are red and then the mid tier is all green. That's that's absolutely accurate. But you can't just, you can't just draft that way, auction that way. You have to, right. But he is correct. I mean, that's what you're going to. Speaker 1 Get is. I was. I was just. Speaker 2 Joking, if you, if you walk into an auction room and there's eight guys who use the fan graphs auction calculator, like you could get school for 37 or 38 if you're lucky. And then the, I don't know, like Reagan's could go for 26 because that's what like, I don't know, I'm making up those numbers, but maybe that's what the, the fan graph. So it depends on how many of each are in the room. And there's the the other way to do, which I kind of do it is I have my projections and I kind of match my values with the AV. So I kind of let the market decide what the top guys, the bottom guys are worth. And then I just make sure I get players that like compared to the market. But I, I kind of match my, my values to AV. So the top pitcher is worth, if I really love them, could be worth 42 or whatever, but I kind of match my values to that. And then separate to that, there's the other part where you can walk into a room and everyone's plan to spend 1:15 to 1:20 on pitching. And if that happens, then pitching shoots up and you could have the a planned ratio of what like 6040 or whatever and it could be historical number. You could walk into a room where everyone is planning to go 4445% in pitching and it's going to be priced up. And you have to realize that pretty quickly. So you kind of have those two components where there's the split and there's how people build their values. If you have of people looking to to go at 1:15 to 1:20 and then pitching is again, get priced up and just naturally just hit and what what the mix of people in the room is. And that's kind of what determines that the flow of each auction. Yep. Speaker 1 So I just wanted to give a lay of the land before we get into I got a lot to say on this too. Why Money Flows to Mid-Tier Pitchers in High-Stakes Auctions The label and was like what happened last year. I looked at the biggest gainers and the biggest fallers who lacks versus auction championships who lacks go from January through March, the $150.00 to $500 price point. The auction championship is a 1600 price point, which is basically mostly in Vegas that that it happens. I know it's online and in New Jersey too. But the biggest fallers, anything that anyone that fell by over $3 on average, the vast majority was injuries. So Kirby, Grayson, Gunner, Jerry Jones, Royce, that's Freeman, Mcclanahan, Francisco Alvarez, Sunny Gray had the scare all injured and the other people that are falling are the stats. Aaron Judge, Otani Tucker, Soto, those Bobby Witt, Jay Ram, those guys all also went $3 or more under their O lack value. So like I said, 0 sum game, where does it fall out? Well, that's a lot of it was the SP2 range for Sanchez was the poster boy, Robbie Ray was next. Pavetta, Ryan Weathers, Gavin Williams, Ivy Strider, Mackenzie Gore, they all moved up. So like all those guys pick up helium as a draft season goes on. And like like I said, the elite hitters like JoJo Tani moved down. On the surface this feels backwards, but auctions it's like I said, 0 sum game. So at a high level, why do we consistently see the mid tier pitchers gain helium from early AAV to March like and then the judge and Otani moved down. I know Phil, you've already sort of touched on this. What happened? So I think the risk has to live somewhere. So think about the NFC auction like a like a 0 sum poker game. Total value, total dollars are fixed market shifts. So where does the money go? So why don't the like you'd think it just goes to the elite players. You think the like the risk would just mitigate up to the elite players. But if the risk comes out of the pool, elite should get more expensive. But it doesn't happen because the the elite players are already priced in for like for certainty. So they all there, they already they already have health playing time in their ceilings and five category dominance. It's all priced in already. So instead what managers do is they quietly save a few dollars telling themselves they're spreading the risk. It's just like it's it's like it's psychology. It's not, it's not like it's not, it's they're not actually spreading the risk. It's just they just think they are basically the top players are already priced at full pop. So they they decide to shred. They decide to move the risk to the mid tier is what I'm is what I'm is what my theory is. So pitchers like like we talked about like Sanchez, Gavin Williams, Robbie Ray, That's the sweet spot to like where the money flows to. They're not elite. So like expectations can be flexible and they're not fragile. So like like it's not scary. It was just enough like optimism. So like when when March comes, you got velocity reports, roll confirmation, I guess not with those guys, but like beat writer shit and best shape of his life. None of this really makes him any better. It just it just gives it like less ambiguity. So we, I think there's less ambiguity, ambiguity. So we end up paying for that, I think is what why we end up shifting money into these players. They just become sex pigs because of like various reports and hype and people being sheep. Speaker 2 One thing though, like I think Sanchez kind of different Susavilo increase, but like say like Nick Pavetta, he was safer like technically like a starting pitcher was still healthy at the end. His break training is safer than he was at the start. Speaker 1 Do you think so? I didn't have him so I didn't think so, but I don't know what was he safer? Speaker 2 I just think like, say, like in the mid range, was it gonna be, I don't know, say there's 30 pitchers there. There's five that are gonna get hurt. So the 25 that are left who managed to survive spring training are safer than they were before. I know if people look at it that way, I think it's just like the money has to go somewhere. So it goes there. And I think it's more likely that the the money kind of flows there. Like you said. I think what you said with the top guys being kind of like already have a ceiling so they can't move. So the money has to go elsewhere. And because the hitter pitcher split changes by the time we get to Vegas, kind of ends up yeah. So it kind of ends up with their mid range. And then compared to like all the guys that you named like the injury guys, most of them were pitchers. So if you take money out of pitching there, you kind of throw a back and pitching. So it ends up being all those guys moving up their mid range pitchers. But I think it's kind of a mix of like a bunch of things, just money has to go to pitching because it went away from pitching, so it has to go back into pitching and then top guys are kind of locked in so it goes to mid range pitching. Speaker 1 So would you say like March, like the inflation we see in Vegas? It's not about like anyone getting better or worse. It's about like just shifting where you're wanting to pay for your risk. Well, like, things become more clear. Like we don't. We don't just shove it into players that feel safe and then pay for extra comfort. The edges in the auction is guessing. It's not like it's not guessing who is going to be more expensive. It's like asking yourself, is this price increase actually buying something like tangible scale or is it just like relief from what you think is now not less risky, but it really is the same. So what my theory kind of is, is just allocating those extra dollars to the mid tier. Like I get Christopher, Christopher Sanchez worked out last year, but it's negative EV because you're not really, you're not really buying anything tangible. You're just allocating risk to something that's not any less risky. Speaker 2 I think Sanchez is kind of different because. Speaker 1 I know you love Sanchez. I asked. I asked you to do this. You asked your business on the podcast. How much? How much were you shitting bricks when he had this forum thing at the beginning of last year? Speaker 2 A little bit, but I mean it's it. It all worked out so I forgot about it. It's only one, yeah. But like, I think I think he was kind of different because like anyone who used projections, like kind of knew from like December that he was mispriced and he was going to shoot up. But I think it's one of those things like the the thing you referred to about like OLAX, where you're not going to spend early on on those guys because you're doing a bunch of leagues and, you know, if you spend them, they're going to have to pay more for those guys later. So it's the same thing for me. If I'm doing CCS and OCS, I'm doing right now, the guys I'll love, I'll take that ADP, I'll get a 50% share of them. I don't have to pay up for them. Once I got to mains and they see people start to push up the guy and they'll reach by around or I'll reach by two or three in the diamond platinum to make sure I get them. So I think like he was the the prime example of a lot of a lot of people like sitting back and in waiting for him to move up. And like just like this year, everyone's talking about Cal Bradish, everyone knows he's going to move up. He's going to be more expensive once and he's going to move up compared to the other pitchers. Like everyone is sitting back on him because there's no need to reach for him now. So, but like if we take away him, Robbie Ray, who was Casey Chao's guy last year, like if we take with up 3 or 4 guys, like the rest of the guys moving up by two or three dollars, it's just kind of money flowing back into bitching to make up for the injured guys. Speaker 1 Basically it's the Phil DeSoto and and Casey Chao tax basically is like, I know you're, I know, like he's right. He's right here, Phil. He's like right here with me. But yeah, it is basically a sheep tax. We're looking, we're looking, we're looking at you Jimmy G with Robbie Ray, right. We'll get into that. But yeah, that's what it is. The one, the one thing that I don't I actually don't have an answer to. But like, why do the why does the money not flow into the bottom end? Because there aren't they're still considered like darts and risky. Like why, why are we seeing it go into, I don't know, I don't want to say any specific names, but like a $2.00 picture. Why don't the $2.00 turn into 5 instead the $10 turns into 15? Speaker 2 Well, because there's 135 pictures are going to go. So the bottom guys are going to go for a dollar and then the guy that goes for 2 is going to be relative to that guy. So it's like a specific rank that is there, which makes the top guys in the bottom guys locked in. The top guy is going to be around 40, the bottom guy is going to be at $1.00, like $2.00. A guy can go up to three maybe but like the the ends are kind of locked in so the money has to go in the middle I think. Speaker 1 No, that makes sense. So what have I missed here? I know I jumped around a lot. We had some questions written down. Make sure I yeah, I didn't prepare for something and I'm going to skip over it. But I know the one question that I don't want to skip over is Phil, you already said Bradish, who's like, I'm not saying you have to like this person, but who do you think the market's going to get a get a sheep tooth this, this this year and start moving on Fish, you can get into those too. Who do you think's going to? Who do you think's going to really move up? Fish doesn't talk. Maybe let him say a name or two year. Speaker 4 Yeah, I've just been chilling. I don't know who's going to move up. I mean, you already mentioned Bradish. I think he's an obvious 1. He already is moving up basically. I could see, I could see Jesus Lizardo move up quite a bit. And then I just think it's it's going to come down to what what people are doing in spring, right, I got. Speaker 1 Big people hasn't Phil. Speaker 4 Yeah, if we see Phil move somebody up, of course everybody's going to move them up. But yeah, no, I think that I think that that's the way it's going to be. And then it's going to be the usual picture starting pitchers getting pushed up. And it's one thing is about the starting pitchers, it's a lot of the, it's not just the top guys to get moved up. It's every every tier after that it gets moved up as well. But yeah, that's, that happens every year. That's normal. But yeah, as far as actual individual player, I would say he's just, and it's probably going to be because of me. Speaker 2 But the other one that stands out to me, I think he's Nolan McLean. I think with the with the New York Jazz being first, a lot of Mets fans and I think he's just hearing when you did that, that Mets pod, everyone being horned for him. I think it's going to move. And then there's the obvious guy, like the guys that said before, the Woodruff, the snail, the claws. Now, if they're healthy, they're going to move up. But I think those that's kind of like separate. I think McClain and Lazaro is another good one. Like McClain and Bradish just based on scales, I could see them just move up because of that. How? Speaker 1 Much You think Mcclain's going to go forward in the CLQ auction to guilds over under 19 1/2? Speaker 2 It's over. I was going to say 20 to 21. Speaker 1 OK, anyone else has any guesses? There they are. Anyone else have any players? They think you're going to be sheep boys. Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, again, I think there's two categories, right? There's the currently like like a Joe Musgrove, you know, if he looks healthy and good in the spring, he's going to bounce up. NOLA is, you know, going for like 6 bucks. And I'm not talking, I'm not talking 15, I'm saying 6 to 10. So I think there's a couple of guys that are everyone's holding back on that might be low, low double digits if they look good in spring. As far as like, yeah, the sheep boy, I think McClain is unfortunately right, because he is someone I can know. I was I'm interested in I'll I'll give one more the good the good news is Phil's here. So people just listening to his guys and I can just say mine. No one cares. But I'm going to say Chase Burns is another one I think could could move up a little bit come Vegas if he looks healthy and is is viewed those intact. I I think Chase Burns could move up some. Speaker 1 Yeah, we just don't have a lot of all the information is not there yet like now Glass now I just, I think I'm just done with glass now. I don't know, Like I think a lot, I think a lot of people are, I don't know it's right or not, but I think it's just like he's never pitched full compliment of innings. It's always seems to be hurt. It's just too, it's too much of A track record of just not, not. Speaker 3 Getting to be a little skill slippage last year too, unless that's just more but when I looked at. Speaker 1 Usually smells gonna rise a little. Speaker 3 Bit of skill slippage too. Speaker 1 Now might still be a value regardless because he's already falling like he was 12 bucks in the OLAC yesterday from like value of 1812. Yeah, that's. Speaker 3 Harsh. That seems like a harsh fall. I mean, I I got him for like 140 innings, so that's still in play. You never liked the innings to come off the board right away. That's less. Speaker 1 News, The news is kind of scary with him, but. Speaker 3 You. Speaker 1 Scare yourself into glass and you scare yourself. And just now who else do you talk to about Woodruff and all these guys that are Chase Burns? He had the like all these guys that had like the elbow shit at the end of the year. You scare you scare yourself into it and then the the price it gets priced in. Speaker 3 Here's the weirdest one to me. I'm curious, Phil, you think the same as Spencer Schwellenbach with the coming with the elbow. People are not hanging back on him. His his AAV is 17 so people are pretty horned for him and he's another one. And if he's dealing in the spring he's going to be 2324 I think all the way up from 17. I don't know what you think about him but I'm surprised he's been so high. I thought he would have been maybe 1314 to start and then then have the jump. He's already at 17. Speaker 2 Yeah, he's a completely fade, complete fade for me. Yeah, I think I like I was kind of trying to separate the the injury guys from from like skills guy for this. I think there's like I could go down the list of pictures and name 15 guys that could. If they're healthy and looking good in spring, they're going to shoot up based on that. And you're right, showing back is, is one of those guys like Striders, another one, a bunch of guys, guys who performed before. If they're healthy and looking good in spring, they're going to shoot up. Speaker 3 All right you want another one that's going to shoot up that's not an injury one like a real 1 sure dirty Perez here's another one who's going to shoot he. Speaker 1 Already is basically. Speaker 3 Well, he's at 17. I mean that I'm if I say I'm saying he's going to be 20, That's that's what I say shooting up is so. Speaker 2 I know Frank Amerente showed his draft board with them two days ago, so. Speaker 3 25, then 25 Forget it. Forget 2025. Speaker 1 Over. It's over then. Speaker 2 Wait, I have a cheap question for you. In your in your collection of draft boards, you knew who took Brian Torres to pick 57. Speaker 1 Ryan Torres at 570. OK, I don't, I don't have my I don't have my dossier this year. I just haven't done as many like you're talking DC's. Speaker 2 Yeah, cuz I went, I was on the road wire positive games and he asked me for, for that film prospect and been before I, I mentioned him, he I think he was taken in like 20 drafts and it had like half of those shares, all the pick 700. And since that pod, he's been taken, I want to say like 15 times, like 570-580-6590 five. That's. Speaker 1 All I'll tell you what it wasn't. Speaker 2 So if you can find now find the if you. Speaker 1 Can let's look at our draft boards right now. Who's taking Brian Ramos? Let's call him out. Are you in a bunch of drafts right now? Speaker 4 I'm in two drafts right now, yeah. Speaker 1 All right, let's find it. Let's shame them right now. I I haven't taken him. I've I've I'm only in, I'm in I'm in one right now That would be in the later rounds. I really have since you've done that pod, I might have done one DC like I'm I'm way behind in my drafts from what I used did what I had previous years. Speaker 2 So 570 was was on 2/2 days ago. So it's probably draft that's like in round 45 to to 50 right now. Speaker 1 So it has to be, like, really late. I wonder if somebody took it. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 4 So I'm in round 49 of 1 and he's still available. Speaker 2 OK, you can take him. Speaker 3 Take him. Speaker 4 I don't. I don't need anymore all fielders in this one. Speaker 1 It's this year's Peyton. Peyton Ely's. Speaker 2 Exactly. Speaker 1 I'm looking at my what was the last like? I'm looking for my latest completed draft. Speaker 2 It's not, it's not none of the like his men, his men in the ADP is still 669. So like all the the three early picks I mentioned are drafts are still ongoing. So probably, yeah, somewhere between around 40 and and 50. Speaker 1 He didn't go to the, he didn't go in the Raswell draft that was in this completed. Doesn't look like he went in a lot of these drafts unfortunately. Speaker 2 Too bad I'll keep asking around hopefully. Speaker 1 Yeah, we got to give. We got to give our the expert here. So what else we got? Speaker 4 Here. All right, all right. I got one. I got one. Yeah. Round 50, Sir. On Mike the Mouth Masato. Speaker 1 Hey, we don't we don't. This is like sharing draft boards for on streams. We're like, I'm just trying. We're just trying to get clicks and using his name. He's like now he's I don't want to cast Mike as an extra in our in our brand play here. But sorry, Mike, you know? Speaker 4 Flip it out. Speaker 1 Yeah, Mike Demouth was a key, the first casualty of this. But what a what a great, what a great person. Don't draft. And actually, he would have been, he would have been on my top five list of guesses for sure. All right, let's move on. Maximizing ROI: Why Sleeper Pitchers Outperform Hitters So Speaking of the money moving in the big drafts to pitching, let's talk about the like the late game, like the sleeper. I'll call them sleepers. But really what I'm referring to is like 1 to like $3, maybe four players. Well, I guess my theory is that targets sleeper pitchers because the ROI scales. I'm trying to summarize this quickly as kind as I can. So the ROI is scalable because all four categories except for saves, when you get a good pitcher, it's going to help you. All four categories. Hitters, not so much. They're basically category dependent. It's really hard to find a hitter that's going to get you all four or five categories. Even at Dallas Garcia, that one year, 2021 hit on him and he's still not a batting average guy. So I think just it's so scalable for the pitchers and there's other reasons too. But what do you, what do you, what do you guys? Speaker 2 Think I think the biggest thing is sleeper pitches are easier to find. Like if you dig deep on a guy you can talk yourself into like most guys going for a few bucks, whether it's a pitch mix, whether it's extra Vilo, whether it's a new pitching coach changing team, like there's a bunch of guys worse for hitters other than playing time. You can't really like talk yourself in too much. And yes, I got it. At least I can return value. But like he's probably like a Unicorn. Usually the guys that like take George Springer returned huge value. He was like a top what like a top ten fancy hitter, something crazy like that. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but like he was way up there, but like where is it going now? Like he's so based on where he's going now compared to where he finished last year, we're basically admitting they was mostly Bucks going pick pick 100. So like the rest of the value return were kind of admitting his luck or as a pitcher who returns like if a pitcher who was drafted where Springer went returned top five or top 10 value, the odds are he'd be going way earlier than than Springer is this year. So I think there's more component of like of projecting in guys of pitching guys returning value based on skills, whereas where's hitters like there's I think there's more luck involved. So when you're you're looking at the cheap pitchers, it's easier to talk yourself into more of those guys than it is for hitters. So and one more thing about that, like if I did some some kind of crazy analysis looking at the best NFBC players at drafting hitters, drafting pitchers in season hitting, any season pitching. And two of the best guys at drafting pitch at drafting hitters are ones who religiously follow projections. One of them was Jay-Z, the other guy was Rosenbloom. And both guys draft off of projections in somewhat different ways, but they kind of stick to projections. And they were middle of the pack for pitching. So I think that kind of shows that projections for hitting are pretty accurate. So it's kind of hard to have like a huge, did you go way off of that? Speaker 1 Did you factor out that $2500 option for Jay-Z? Speaker 4 Get him up there. Speaker 2 In terms of value, he did get 2. Very good. Speaker 1 Hitters. The best player to be drafting the drafting hitter in the NFPC is the guy that drafting Schwarber on the same team back-to-back. He's the best. That's. Speaker 3 Like $100.00 of value on those two pitch. Speaker 1 Right, and he follows projection. Speaker 2 So yeah, I think, I think it's easier to define sleeper pitchers. So that's why it's it's easier to talk yourself into spending four or five bucks on a on a one or two dollar guy. Whereas for for haters, like a lot of people kind of just follow projections and you might have like an anything thing on this guys going to play more than then he's going to get 550 against instead of 450. But that's not going to shoot up a guys value by by 5 bucks like it like it could for for a pitcher. Speaker 1 Makes sense, Mark, you have anything to say on this? Before we go into no, let's. Speaker 3 Keep it moving. Speaker 1 Tease the last segment that that's finding the next year is Christopher Sanchez and Robbie. Twitter Takes, NFBC Badges, and the Ed Gein Story Let's get into big fish in a small pond. Fish. You got a couple minutes here. What do you want to talk about? We got John Fish here. Thanks for waiting. Speaker 4 Yeah, okay, all right, so I got a few things, so let's get ready to do it. We're going to do the usual this week around Twitter TWAT. So does that like to? Speaker 1 Watch. Speaker 4 Shout out to AG for that one. So the first thing I want to get into is I want to talk about our good buddy Frank here. He's obviously a tweeting machine. I ran the numbers. First of all, shout out to Frank his his seven-year anniversary on Twitter of 2019. He was on since then, 187,100 tweets in seven years, it's 26,728 tweets a year, 2227 a month, 73 tweets a day. Shout out to Frank. He is going absolutely insane lately with tweeting out his picks. So if he's in the draft, he makes a pick, he tweets it out. It's very well spaced out. It's a it's a nice little little paragraph. That's what you want to call it about why he likes the guys. So obviously Frank is going to. He's not afraid to show his cards. I will show some respect for Frank because he does actually take all the guys he hypes up. He does that in football as well. So shout out to Frank for that. Zach, did you have anything you wanted to say on this? Speaker 1 No, I've missed my rant already so I don't have anything. Speaker 4 Continue. OK. All right, Frank. Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I just I wish I will say that like it would be nice to have a collage of like his tweets and his draft board. So you can take you can take his draft board of his 50 rounds and then each next each one of his picks you can, you can place the tweet. Somebody should do that. What about one of the one of our one, one of our, what do we call it Mark, our admin assistants. Speaker 3 An intern. Speaker 1 Yeah, an intern can do that. Can an intern take Frank's draft board and put all of his tweets next to it, make a nice collage and post it? Thank you. Speaker 4 All right, so I missed I missed your opening rant. Did you mention the analysts using an incorrect ADP? Speaker 1 No, my my, it was just stuff of stuff plus thing. Speaker 4 Oh, OK. All right. So and so Dave Funnel has recently been tweeting out incorrect ADP. This wasn't one or two times saying this has been like a yearly thing. I just don't understand what the difficulties. And it's not just David's doing this too hard. I've seen them multiple times, other people trying to get the DCADP. They don't know. They can't figure it out how to do it. And it's not hard. You just you just do the drop downs, you put the correct dates in, select the draft champions and that's the ADP you want to run and you hit submit and then that filters it out and then you can see everything. But it seems to be trouble, a lot of trouble for a lot of people, which is it's just interesting. It's it's all these people that are just trying to click bait and trying to do some engagement farming. But when it's incorrect information it gets called out. Shout out to the Dominator. Had to call him out not once but twice. I don't even remember what day was. I don't know today or yesterday, but that was great. It was in the same day. Two different tweets had to. Speaker 1 Call, yeah, it was getting real sloppy there. And I do want to say that it's one thing like if you, if you mess up the ADP when you're, when you're trying to say something and the ADP is like, sort of like a, like a, like a side piece of the information. But really the tweet is the only thing in the tweet is the ADP that you having that wrong is making the tweet completely irrelevant and not usable. It's not like it was like a, like a side note to what he was trying to say or trying to prove another point. The point is the ADP and it's just wrong. So. Speaker 2 I feel like I saw a conversation between you, Zach and him, like, yeah, a month and a half ago where you corrected me and said, oh, OK. And now he's still doing it, apparently. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, no, I actually when we were talking about that, I sent these guys the tweet where I it was like a Jorge, it was Jonathan India. And he's like his ADP was like 600 and something. And I'm like not impossible. And I'm like, you're just using all the D because what happens he uses he just takes the ADP like as is. But all the gladiators that are in the ADP assume that Jonathan India was drafted a pick like 751 because he wasn't making it in any of them. So it's calculated. The ADP is calculated almost. So Dave, you got to you got to filter the ADP by the right date and by the right contest. It's not rocket science. Funnel vision. Speaker 4 Yeah, you just got to. You got to take your time. Get it right before you hit submit. Speaker 1 Critical Critical Self Review Like Like a good admin assistant, you got to do a critical self review, review your own work and then submit it. Speaker 4 Yeah. All right. So the last thing I got is is it's not even on Twitter. This is the player badges thing on NFC, NFBCNFFC, all these things. This has got to get cleaned up. So basically it's just showing who plays a lot of contests. So if you have a badge with one star, it means you played in at least 500 contests. If you have a badge with two stars, it means you have played in 1000 contests. If you have a badge with a little trophy in the middle of it, it means you have won at least three contests with a payout of $1000 or more, or has won at least 5 contests with a cumulative total payout of 2500 or more. If there's a badge with a trophy and a star, it has played in at least 500 contests and has won at least three contests with a payout of $1000 or more, or has won at least 5 contests with a cumulative total payout of 2500 or more. And if you have a badge with a trophy and two stars, it means you played in 1000 contests with all the rest of the stuff. So first of all, I want to know who has the badge of the two stars without the trophy. That means they've played in 1000 contests and haven't won anything. So I want to know who that is. Speaker 1 I've seen at least one person with that. Speaker 2 You have. Speaker 1 Yep. Can you? Can you guess his name? His initial. Speaker 2 Did he put in the action? GI didn't. Speaker 3 PG was anybody. Speaker 1 Bad PPJI. Speaker 2 That's the point. There's no way. I'm pretty sure I saw him without a badge. Speaker 3 Won one of these big leagues at some point? No, no. Speaker 2 No, he's either no badge at all or maybe badge with star but no trophy. Speaker 1 Think about he does football, he does basketball. I think I'm pretty sure it counts everything, not just baseball. Speaker 3 The live events you should have to wear your badge that you have on the website. Speaker 1 I agree fish you got they got to make this like more relevant like the badges don't mean anything. Speaker 4 Yeah, they don't mean anything. It just means you play in a lot of contests, Like let's get someones that like have a certain badge with a win rate or a money, you know, attached to it. Speaker 3 Yeah. You know, when you go to like an academic conference, you have your name tag, they have all these ribbons that they put below like kind of sticky ribbon. So if you're, if you're a keynote speaker or you're presenting or whatever, so yeah, something like that where you just have like these whatever and then it's like 10 things like hanging down most $100,000 wins fills, you know, got like five of those or something. Speaker 1 Steve, Steve us, where he's going to be on this, he'll do something super, super awesome about that. Speaker 3 Can I just say one thing, we need a live big fish in the little pond segment. Speaker 1 Right, big fish in a small pond, not little pond. Speaker 3 Ball pond, you're right. You're. Speaker 1 Right, no a live 1 right? Speaker 3 Kickback straight. Speaker 1 Vegas. Yeah, in Vegas. OK, Why don't we do the Tommy John draft? Who's in the Are you guys in for the Tommy John draft this year? Speaker 3 No. Speaker 1 OK, we got to get Doctor Dave at least for the top. I'm out. Speaker 2 To drafted before 3:00 AM maybe? Speaker 1 We did before 3:00 AM, OK. Speaker 2 You can hold on. Speaker 4 I got, I just got one quick story. I teased it on the last couple of them. It's about my buddy Ed Gein. Phil, do you know who Ed Gein is? Speaker 2 I don't. Speaker 4 OK, Mark, you know Ed Gein is right of. Speaker 3 Course he's the psycho connection earlier, yeah. Speaker 4 Yeah, Yeah, that's right. That's right. OK. So, Phil, do you know who Jeffrey Dahmer is? Speaker 2 I don't know, not good with that stuff. Speaker 3 OK. Speaker 2 Just. Speaker 1 Ignore me. Speaker 2 All right. Speaker 4 Well, I just want, I just want to see because a lot of people know most people know who Jeffrey Dahmer is, but there's a lot of people who don't. I. Speaker 2 Feel like I've heard the name before but I can't. I can't. Speaker 4 OK so they're 2 serial killers from Wisconsin and I've been tired of Jeffrey Dahmer getting all the hype and Ed Gein not getting any hype. So I just got a quick story about about Ed Gein. So I grew up in the town, it's called Wisconsin Dells. It's about an hour north of Madison. Ed Gein is from Plainfield, WI, which is about an hour from The Dells. So, so I'm up with my parents one day and we're having some drinks, whatever. And my buddy who also lives in Madison, also from The Dells, having to be back in The Dells, he calls me, ask what I'm doing. I'm like, well, I'm over my parents having some drinks. All right, I'm going to stop over and have some drinks. It's like I got to go up to Westfield, which is about 1/2 hour from the Bells, because he started up a business where he sold advertising and had it in brochures. So he would stop at like a lot of the rest areas and distribute all the brochures and stuff like that. So I'm like, yeah, stop over. So he stops over. And then he's like, all right, after a while he's like, all right, I got to get going. So we're like, all right, well, why don't we go with you? And he's like, why would you want to go with? He's like, I'm like, well, let's go, let's go handle your stuff and let's go up and say hi to Ed. Because Ed Dean has been buried in the Plainfield Cemetery for a lot of years, obviously. So of course, my dad's like, all right, let's go, Deb. I'll get the van ready. We all get to cooler. We'll load up some drinks and we'll go. We pile in the van, We load up a cooler full of drinks. We all make a drink for the road. It's kind of frowned upon these days. But you know, this is 15 years ago. It was still frowned upon then. But it's just what we do. We pile in the van and we, we go to Westfield stops my buddy. It's all, you know, he's got to do his work. So we pull over the rest here. He distributes all of his brochures. And then we we continue on to playing field in Plainfield is just a tiny, tiny little town. We stop at a local bar, have a drink, you know, talk to him. Like, what are you guys doing? We told them a story. We're going to say hi to Ed. So we have a drink there. We get piled back in the van and we go to the cemetery and we went to go say hi to Ed. So it's interesting. First of all, there's no headstone because it got stolen constantly. So there's just no headstone anymore. So it's literally nothing. He's buried next to his mom. He had to go on YouTube to find exactly where to go, how to get there. So that's that's what we did. It was it was quite the trip, pretty stupid. But you know, it's, it's what we had to do that day to have a little fun. And I wanted to make sure my buddy didn't have to go to Westfield by himself. So we went past we that Westfield didn't care of. We went the playing field, said hi to Ed, made our way back. Speaker 1 To stretch good for our listeners, I think probably might have a lot of serial killers. So Serial killers has listeners too actually judging based off of some of the interactions they've had. So I'm sure they didn't do that, sorry. Speaker 4 So, Phil, you'll have to look. Just go ahead and Google Ed Dean and look at what he did. All kinds of weird shit. That's all I got, boys. I'm heading off. I'll let you guys finish up. And it's good seeing you, Mark. Phil, I'll see you guys in Vegas. Mark, I'm sure I'll see you again on a pod here in the next couple weeks or so. Speaker 2 Yeah, take care. See you soon. Speaker 1 Thanks, Mish. Predicting the Next Breakout SP1: Robbie Ray & Christopher Sanchez Game So next year is Christopher Sanchez and Robbie Ray. All the sheep have waited for this SP3 turning into an SP1. We got we got some names here. So OK, so I got to set this up. The game is warn so warning as in a warning torn horn or porn. So warn means like you don't like him. I don't you don't think he's going to be the next SP1 Torn means you're sort of indifferent Horn. You know what horn means your horn for him. That's good. And then I don't think I'll get this, but like, if he's actually like, if he's actually your guy, Phil, you got to say porn like he is next year's Christopher Sanchez and Robbie Ray. Like I hit a bullseye. I don't think I'll get it, but like, yeah, you. Speaker 2 Didn't send us the list for this, so this is going to be a surprise for. Speaker 1 Us well, I didn't OK, I thought I did OK, so I all we all we're doing is just to get like a a Warren torn Horner porn. So number one for the next year's Christopher Sanchez. This is an SP3 to an SP1 Jesus Lazardo. Speaker 2 Horn and sheep. Speaker 1 Mark. Speaker 3 I just want to say I to force myself for this because I I do have this in the agenda my I'm going to say at least one of each of the options across the six players. So I just want to announce that I'm forcing myself to take a stand just to go along with the game. So Lizardo is Horn. Speaker 1 OK, I'm going to be warned on that one. I'm going to go against the sheep. Next one, Kyle Bradish, if Fish is still here, if Fish can play this game, if he's still here, what would you say, Fish or sorry? Speaker 2 Phil, I was going to say another, another horny sheep. Speaker 1 Horny sheep, OK? Yep, Mark. Speaker 3 Torn. Speaker 1 Torn. I'm going to be torn on his price. I think based on his price I'll be. Speaker 3 Torn I am I am factoring in price. If it was just skill based I would have some different answers. Prices is is somewhere in the mix here. Speaker 1 Yeah, so you'd be money Horn, your money horn. All right, so next one is Sandy. It's too bad fish just left. Snee Alcantara, Mark Warren. I'm warned on him. I agree. Not into him. I did. I did just get him front. And they'll last a lot for $7.00, just because I totally didn't expect that. But I just I had my Max bid in and I got him for seven. I don't know I'm I'm worn on him. Next one is Emmett Sheehan porn. Speaker 3 Porn. Speaker 1 Porn oh marks now? Speaker 3 I I told you I was going to pick one of each. I was going to force myself to give the people all the options so he gets my porn rating. Speaker 1 OK, next one is Cam Shitler. Speaker 2 Porn torn. Speaker 1 Torn Robbie So it's ironic is Robbie Ray's this year's Christopher Sanchez because he's now A3SP3. Can you make the? Speaker 2 Comeback No, if you get it, I'll tell you, but no, I'm I'm torn on on Ray. Speaker 1 You're torn. Speaker 2 Yeah, torn. Speaker 3 I am warn, warn. Speaker 1 I'm warn, warn on him. Speaker 3 OK, next one. Were you even horn for anyone, Zach? Were you wore? Speaker 1 I was warned for a Sheen and I said. Speaker 3 Yeah, OK, Horn for a Sheen. Yeah. You know I love, I like to. Speaker 2 Concede this, but obviously Zach made the list. He's not going to put guys he's foreign for on this list. There's no. Speaker 1 Although she handed on this list for the prices I like she hand the best. Speaker 3 It's just I like to conceit of this, but it's hard to understand what we're saying because, you know, it's they're all pretty close together. So OK, so you you at least had one horn and that was she has. Speaker 1 Yes, OK. The next list is an SP6, like a dollar or two player that can go turn into an SP1 potentially. Next first one is Cody Ponce. Speaker 3 Barn is that with an H? Speaker 2 Warn. Speaker 1 Phil doesn't do Asians, so yeah, I knew that I. Speaker 3 Can't tell if you say warn or word. Speaker 2 I'm doing it on purpose. Speaker 1 What's up Mark? Did you? Speaker 3 I said Horn. Speaker 1 I'll do the middle one. What's torn? OK, the middle. Speaker 3 One What's four options? Speaker 1 Logan Henderson, one of the middle ones. Speaker 3 Horn. Speaker 1 Torn. I'm not putting anyone that I really love on these lists. Anyways, yeah. Speaker 3 Well, I told you I'm forcing myself to say porn. Speaker 1 This one I'm a warn on. I I want nothing to do with this guy but he but he does have some hype. It's Sean Manaya. I'm a warn on him. Speaker 2 I'm a torn. Speaker 3 I'm a torn. Speaker 2 I was somewhat not Horn, but there's there's too much hype so it's going to turn into a torn I think. Speaker 1 OK, Mike Burroughs. Speaker 2 Same thing. I'm torn. OK, could be Horn, but he's he's kind of moving up. He's going to keep moving up. So I'm torn. Speaker 1 OK, Jose Soriano. Speaker 2 Horn. Speaker 1 Horn. OK, Mark. Speaker 3 Warn. Speaker 1 Did I say, did I say what I was going to say for Burroughs? I'm torn, Soriano. I'm torn too. OK, the next one is. Speaker 2 You go Mark. Speaker 1 Phil doesn't want to say anything here. Is this your porn? Speaker 2 I'm not going to lie, I'm going to plead the 5th take. Speaker 1 This out. Speaker 2 I wasn't expecting that name. Speaker 1 Are you porn for this guy? Is this your? Is this? Speaker 2 Your. Speaker 4 What? Speaker 2 I'm so bad at this. You couldn't get this. You put it in there because you get, you guessed it. Speaker 1 OK, Mark, what do you? Speaker 2 Like, you know, you know me, you, you've seen my draft. Speaker 1 I've seen one of your drafts. I don't remember it. I don't even know if you took this guy in that draft. I I haven't. Like I said, I haven't been tracking the drafts as carefully as I was last year because I'm not in that many. Mark, what are you? What are you on this guy? Speaker 3 I am Horn. Speaker 1 I'm Horn too. This is my horn. I'm horning for one picture in each category that I'm horn for this guy as well so. Speaker 2 We got a guy. Congrats. Speaker 1 I'll bleep it out for you, Phil. Speaker 2 All right. Thanks. Speaker 1 Yeah, sorry, I wasn't expecting to get a bingo on this. I thought maybe, I thought, I thought I'd have a better chance of getting a bingo on the SP3 to an SP1, but I got the SP6. Very interesting my friend. Speaker 2 Well, the SP3, you put like 2 sheeps and then the bunch of guys that you know, I don't maybe Ray, but the other guys you know, I don't like, they're not my types of guys. Speaker 1 Yeah. Any, any other names you want to throw out here? Mark? I just threw those names together. It was honestly just a sort of random list. Speaker 3 How about that Enough. OK, I had one. Speaker 2 For I had one. Speaker 3 More for the. I had one more for. Speaker 1 Why don't you mark? Why don't you give your porn since Phil gave his porn for the the SP6, When you give your porn, you don't have to. You don't have to I, don't I. Speaker 3 Did you? Probably shouldn't. Logan Henderson. Speaker 1 Logan Henderson, That's a good one, I said. Speaker 3 Porn. OK, I have another one, but I don't know if we want to we want to say the name. Do you want to actually get another name out? Speaker 1 Here or do you want to make more work for me? I'm going to always have to search that name. I don't even know if it's going to be. I don't even know if that name is going to be like spelled correctly in the transcript. Speaker 3 I have OK, I have one. I have an S. Speaker 1 We're done. We're done. The pod. So this is this. We're in bonus time now. Yeah, two hours and 20 minutes. And by the time we I factor out all the, the software gets all the UMS and AWS out of it, we might be close to two hours. It might not even be that long of a pod. Once I bleep out everything too, it's going to save some time. Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's pretty good. Speaker 1 You want to do you want you got anything, Mark or no? Speaker 3 No, I'm good. Speaker 1 What a what a great ending to this podcast for everyone to listen to at all. The Mark said he was going to say a player's name and decided not to. And then we're going to believe about what Phil said. So I hope you enjoyed everyone. Thanks for thanks for your time. And I think this is a fucking nice podcast we've had here and hopefully everyone enjoyed it and they learned something and they can copy some pics. Speaker 2 Keep copying more pics. Speaker 3 We gave away a lot. We gave, you know, Phil. Phil was spitting some strategy. Speaker 1 There was a lot of stuff wrongly too helpful. Speaker 3 I would say, oh, it was really helpful. It was really good. Too much actually. There's a lot in there. Speaker 1 Helping, we still are. Speaker 3 We still being Are we still being recorded? Oh shit. Speaker 1 Yeah, we're still recording. Speaker 3 Yeah, all right, all right. Well, that was fun actually. Speaker 1 All right, boys, I'll let you guys go. But thanks for all for for coming on and Mark. Speaker 2 Thanks guys. Speaker 3 Shout out to Thanks. Thanks, Zach. Speaker 1 All right. All right, boys. I'll talk to you later. Thanks a lot.