Toughest Players to Rank (5/29 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to Fantasy Baseball today. I am Chris Towers here with Scott White and cards on the table. Vibes are weird today. I'm in a different recording space. No Frank. We had only six games on the schedule. But we're going to talk about some fantasy baseball today on Fantasy Baseball. Today Scott and I are going to help each other with some rankings. The lemma is every week. We're sitting there on our own hours and hours spent just staring at rankings on your own. And then you come on the podcast and we talk about them and you're like, oh yeah, I didn't think about that. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to try to get some of our rankings set up here. And we focused on five players each that we've had some trouble ranking. But first, there were six games on the schedule. This might have been the most uneventful day of the baseball season so far, which is fine because we don't have Frank here to carry us on the podcast. But Scott, why don't you start us off with your, oh my goodness gracious player of the night. So I'm going to go with Davis Martin here who has continued an oh my goodness gracious kind of season. Yes. This time facing the twins. He allowed one run in six innings, two hits, five strikeouts, fourteen whiffs, which is something we're seeing more and more of from Davis Martin. Fourteen whiffs, multiple on five different pitches. Now it makes this start especially, especially interesting is not a strong enough word, but like eye opening, I guess, makes it especially eye opening for Davis Martin is his best pitch this year has been his slider. It's got a better than a 50% with rate has been awesome. Second best with rate among all sliders in baseball in the entire league behind only Mason Miller, who famously has a pretty good slider. It got zero whiffs in this one. Zero of the fourteen whiffs were on that slider. It didn't seem to be working for him. It had three less inches of drop. And so he threw it just six percent of the time. And yet he still had a great adding. He still got fourteen whiffs. It's looking better and better for Davis Martin. There was a lot of skepticism early on. I know you and I shared at Chris. But all of a sudden he is up to a 13% swinging strike rate on the year, which is terrific. He is walking for the year less than two walks per nine innings. Is he going to be a lead number? Yeah. He's down to a two ERA and a.99 whip. And there are still some confounding elements here. The expected ERA is 355 versus the two. I would take that. But then you look at the fit. It's 229. You look at the X-FIP. It's 284. I don't have to use that much anymore. X-ERA 355 again. That's the one that looks worse for Davis Martin. I've always felt like my experience working with this ERA estimators expected ERA. That's the stat cast driven number. It is the best at describing what's happened. But it's not any better at projecting what's going to happen. That is the research that I've done suggests the same. It correlates strongly with what a player has done, much more strongly than FIP even. But it doesn't necessarily predict. This is one of the weirdest things about all these advanced stats that we have. There's all this tunneling and everything. Whatever you want to get into, we have seam shifted weak and all this stuff that we have so much data about pitching. FIP, which is the dumbest, most basic kind of advanced stat possible. It's just literally home runs, strikeouts, and walks. It is 95% as predictive as anything else. It's the purist. I guess the purist measure of how a pitcher is doing with the things he can most control. When FIP came out, there wasn't any exit velocity data, which we now know, okay, a pitcher has some control over that too, how hard he gets hit. So in a way you could say FIP is outdated and maybe XERA is a more modern take on it. It just so happens that I feel like a lot of times FIP ends up being just as predictive or even more predicted than expected ERA. So expected ERA is the best at describing what's happened and it's the one further stoff from his ER. So that's just even more confounding for Davis Martin. What I tend to do with the ERA estimators and especially XERA and FIP is I kind of like find the midpoint between them and okay, that's what I'm expecting to be this guy to be going forward. So you find the midpoint between them. That's a high Tuesday, and again, a lot of the other numbers justify that. So I don't know, I'm starting to feel pretty good about Davis Martin, better late than never, I guess. Obviously he was scooped up a long time ago and I don't know how actionable any of this is anymore. I guess maybe just I don't see him as an obvious sell. I can't at this point. I mean sure he's not going to sustain a two ERA exactly, but I think he's going to be a valuable part of your pitching staff. Yeah, on the discussion that we're set to have about the toughest players to rank or the players we need the most help ranking, whatever we're going to call it, Davis Martin was one of my five picks and I, when I updated my rankings earlier this week, I had him 74, but that's too low. I get it. I understand. But here are the things that I'm struggling with when it comes to ranking this guy is one, he's 29 years old. And this is completely out of nowhere. There was nobody talking about Davis Martin as a breakout candidate coming into the season. The most that I've ever really seen any discussion of Davis Martin was like at the end of the 2024 season when he started to establish himself. I think he was like the first kickchanged guy in the majors or at least the first one talking about the kickchanged. So that was the most notable thing about Davis Martin up until 11 starts ago. Now we're at a point where he's made 11 starts. He's made like one bad start and then there was a start where he gave up three runs and five innings on and the first start of the season. Other than that, it's just been excellent. It's been like one, zero, two earned runs the entire time. And I just really struggle with it because he's 29 years old. There's no pedigree for this. There's no nothing in his track records suggest this was coming. And then when you look at these model based metrics, the ones that are looking at the movement profile and the release and all that, the physical characteristics of the pitch, that's where Davis Martin actually looks really mediocre. That's where he actually kind of looks like the same guy as last season. There is a, there's a stuff plus based ERA estimator on fan graphs. I don't know how predictive this is, but that one says 443 for Davis Martin last year, 416 this year. His stuff basically rates out as average. His command is much improved this season. That's the biggest thing, the locations of his pitches. That's really tenuous though. That's the one skill that I feel the least confident in over small sample sizes when it improves or gets worse. And so that's what I'm really bumping up against with Davis Martin, but it he's been so good for so long that it kind of feels silly to keep remaining skeptical of him. I had him 74 when I updated my rank earlier this week in looking more deeply into him this week. I probably have to move him into the top 50. But that is tough because like I'm looking at right around 50 and I've got there's the injured guys who are always tough Hunter Brown, Cole Reagan's I really genuinely have no idea at Rick Berra. Hunter Brown needs to move. Yeah, he's going to be back soon. But then you have like Connolly early Emerson Hancock will warn like those guys are all having really good breakout seasons of their own Connolly early maybe less so because the control has been bad, but he's starting to look a lot better too lately. I think he's clearly the most hyped of those guys and so this is what I'm struggling with like Max Meyer I have in that same range and then I've got guys like Nick Lidolo and Sandy Alcantor who have been pretty bad, but I still have some hope for them. think there's plenty of upside. So it's it's really tough. Um, but I do think next time I update my rankings, I got to move Davis Martin, at least into the 50-ish discussion. And maybe that'll be too low. As you were talking, I just moved them into the top 50 and right among some of those players you were talking about, I have them. Uh, 46th now. Okay. In the ahead of Nick Lidolo. Uh, just behind Nick Lidolo, just ahead of Max Meyer. Okay. Uh, and I moved. So I moved Davis Martin ahead of Meyer, Will Warren, Ryan Weathers, pictures who appear to be having breakout seasons. But yeah, Davis Martin is having the best breakout. He might be the biggest breakout so far. And it's not like those three don't have their own concerns. You know, it would be different if they did. Uh, but with Davis Martin now missing bats like a high end picture, even when he doesn't have his best pitch. Yeah. It's getting harder to doubt it. All right. I am going to choose another apparent breakout, uh, as my, oh my goodness, pitcher the night. Let Spencer Ergeti, who limited the Texas Rangers to one-on-one over six innings, which actually raised his ERA for the season to one thirty two. Um, and this is a guy that we've had some excitement about over the years, including early on this season when he came off the I L and had 10 strikeouts in his first start and eight strikeouts in his third start. Uh, that, that eight strikeout start, I believe was also zero walks or one walk and it was like, uh-oh, Spencer Ergeti might be figuring it out. I'm going to say, uh-oh in the other way with Spencer Ergeti. He has not had more than five strikeouts in a start since that eight strikeout start on April 26th. The walks have been really, really bad prior to this start. Um, 21% strikeout rate is basically league average. I think it's 21.7% right on the average. Walk rate is like 13%. That's really, really bad. That's after only walking one in this start. Against a Rangers team that if you have been watching the pot or listening to the podcast the last few weeks, it's been pretty beatable over the past couple of weeks. Um, only three whiffs in this start on 94 total pitches all with the curveball. I don't know. The velocity was fine. Movement looked normal. Everything else looked okay. Well, I guess we'll take it on a night when he didn't have his best if you had him in your lineup, but I don't think this ends well for Spencer Ergeti with the way he's pitching right now. Yeah, honestly, that was my takeaway too. It was the most discouraged I've been about Spencer Ergeti. And I, I get why people may be banging their head against the wall and us saying that because his ERA rose to 134 on the year. And it's like why wouldn't you be thrilled with Ergeti? Anybody who has an ERA like that? Well, it's five walks per nine innings. Five. That's the starting point now down to only 8.2 strikeouts per nine. This swinging strikes even before the three whiffs start here was below average average at best. Um, and now he's not really getting the strikeouts to go with it. That 134 is 134 ERA is backed up by a 475 expected ERA. So in another case, I guess, I've expected ERA not being very descriptive, but the fifth is 370. The X-FIP is 489. Like there isn't as much discrepancy between those estimators as there is for Davis, Martin. And that just comes down to he has I think a 3% homerun to fly ball rate, which is nobody does that. Right. And he's a fly ball pitcher. He had been excelling in terms of giving up weak contact. So we entered this start 86.7 mile per hour average ex of velocity, which is great. It's gone up because it was 91 in this start. So it's probably over 87 now. It's still great. But so there may be something to the homerun prevention there. And if you can give up like generally, I prefer ground ball rate, pitchers with good ground ball rates to ones with good fly ball rates. But if you can give up weak fly balls, that is being better than a high ground ball rate. So like that is the one mark in ERA Gettys favor. But you would still expect expected ERA to account for that. Yes. And it's not factoring it in. It's still almost a five expected ERA. So I agree. There's some major warning signs here for ERA Gettys and he does strike me as a sell high candidate for sure. All right. We are going to take a quick break. But first, make sure you sign up for the FBT newsletter. If you're watching the podcast on YouTube, there's a little QR code floating above Scott's head that you can click on and get the FBT newsletter. It'll be outside. Oh, no, no. I thought I had it. No, you had it the first time. I did. I think so. I think I got to know. Oh, this is weird. This looks like you're doing the wrong way to me. I don't know. This is weird. All right. And make sure you listen white, even though, even though we share the same name and make sure you listen to and watch the FBT Express podcast that will be coming out on Saturday. Thanks, Saturday, Friday, whatever it comes out for the week 11. Start, sit, discussions, and Scott's week 11 preview content. And we'll be right back with fantasy baseball today right after this. Welcome back to fantasy baseball today. I'm Chris Towers here with Scott White. We are talking about some news and notes from Thursday and the first one. Oh, welcome, bit of news. Jared Jones will make his first start since 2024 on Friday against the twins. And he has looked awesome on his rehab assignment with a 289 year A and 24 strikeouts in 18.2 endings of work. His velocity has been up about a mile, a mile and a half per hour throughout his rehab assignment. This was a guy who was iffy, but certainly talented before he had elbow surgery. Remember, it is the internal brace procedure. And this is one of the biggest players coming back from the just internal brace surgery. We've seen Garrett Cole had the Tommy John with the internal brace. And show how Tony did as well. Spencer Strider had the internal brace. It has knocked on super well. Lucas Gileedo had the internal brace. He has lost a lot of velocity has not been as effective. So Jared Jones is an interesting test case for a guy with elite velocity in his early 20s coming back from this surgery. I am fascinated to see what it looks like. Scott, are you starting him? If you're in a daily line-up sleep. Probably not for the first start. Sure. It's not a crazy idea to do that, but I'd rather play it safe. The two starts evaded triple A. No problems with velocity there. It's actually up a little bit from he's only pitched for one season in the majors, Jared Jones. Some reason I thought he got part of a second season. No, he was a I think he like his elbow started barking and spring training and then as he was working his way back they were like, no, he's going to have surgery. So we drafted him for two seasons. I think so. Yeah, no, it's actually been up a little bit. So I think it's going to go well. But I would like to see the first start. Make sure he's he's ready to he's actually ready for this this challenge. And then if he is, I think he will be a fine play next week when he is scheduled to face the Astros. Yeah, that's that's a tough one. If he's just okay on Friday, that's going to be a tough call because the Astros lineup is I mean, it's not great overall, but Horton Alvarez can really hurt you and he can, but they're they're like right in the middle in terms of runs scored. So I think it's I think it's fine. I think you're going to find I'm not going to I'm not going to worry about a matcher part from the Dodgers, Braves, Yankees. And I guess I have to say national since they technically lead the majors and runs scored. Still don't really understand that one. I absolutely don't understand that one. The Tigers place Kenley Jansen on the IL with pelvic inflammation. Will Will Vest and Kyle Finnegan both have closing experience? Do you have any sense of what this is going to be or? No, is your sense that it's there's going to be no closer? Probably no closer because that is AJ Hensh's MO and he had these same two pictures at least for the second half last year and they kind of split save chances Will Vest and Kyle Finnegan. Neither one of them has been good this year. No, I mean, I think Vest, Finnegan has a low ERA 175 ERA for Finnegan, but more walks than strikeouts. And the whip is almost as high as the ERA, which is never what you want us to know. No, so that seems and then Will Vest, I think he just gave a five runs the last time he pitched and just looked pretty shaky overall. So I don't know, edge Finnegan, I guess, but I think it's probably going to be mixing and matching until Jansen returns. I would guess so as well. The Dodgers are going to place Tiasco Hernandez on the IL and promote Ryan Ward from AAA for Friday's game. We were hoping it would be James Tibz, who has been phenomenal in his first taste of AAA. Do you think, do you think this is the path for Dalton Rush? Who I don't think has played the outfield yet as a major leak. No, he did out in the minors, but Dave Roberts, when he got called up last year, rushing Dave Roberts said, "Where do you, where just, he's just here to catch, that's it." He has played some first base since then, but no outfield, and I don't think that's going to change. What could change? I still think this injury for Teosker Hernandez presents an opportunity for James Tips. Sure. First of all, I don't think any transaction has officially happened yet, and the reports that Ryan Ward would be up came before James Tips, Homer, twice on Thursday. So he's still, you know, gaspedal to the floor, trying to make his case to join the team now that there actually isn't outfield opening for the Dodgers. I suspect they're not going to upend everything and go back on Ward, but you know, as Michael Scott once said, "Engaged ain't married." And even if Ward does spend some time on the Major League roster, they could quickly reverse that decision, you know, and call up tips. So this is the clearest path tips has had all year. It might depend how long Hernandez is out if they actually choose to try him out. I think Alex Call is what Dodgers B-Writers and Mv. loading is the one who will actually get the most playing time with Teosker Hernandez down, and that's not exciting. Just saying, keep an eye on tips. Engaged ain't married. Yeah. Ryan Ward has been productive in his myriad career, but he's an older prospect. I don't think there's much to get excited about there. Alex Call, I think we know what he is, and it's kind of just a defensive specialist. So not expecting much from those guys would hope that James Tibs gets the opportunity. Moving on, Justin Steele will not throw for a couple more weeks and has no timetable for his return from Alwell's surgery. His recovery has been rocky. This is actually another internal brace guy, I believe, who was tracking towards returning pretty quickly, and then there's been some setbacks lately. He was recently shut down. Even if he does clear to throw soon, we're probably looking at a multi-month process from that point. We might see Justin Steele at some point this season, but I do not think he's a particularly high priority stash candidate at this point, based on what we've seen. Tigers Manager AJ Hinch acknowledged he is not expecting Casey Meis to make his next start while dealing with a recurring groin injury. It's not yet clear if he's going to go on the IL, but something to keep an eye on. Max Scherzer will make a minor league rehab start Sunday at AAA, aiming to get up to 65 pitches if all goes well. He's expected to make a couple of starts before returning to the rotation, but the team is not guaranteeing anything with his timeline at this point. He's recovering from a forearm injury. I think it's very unlikely Max Scherzer makes an impact the rest of the way I would about you, Scott. No, it would probably spell the end for Spencer Miles as budding fantasy option, at least for the short term. Spencer Miles, the new front runner for most millennial named player in the majors. I don't know if you agree with that take. There's a lot of grasons out there. You know, I, someone pointed this out, I think up until like 2015 or whenever Jackson Coer made his major league debut, I think that was the first one. There had never been a major league player named Jackson's name. Now there's like nine of them. Well those aren't millennials though, right? Oh, Jackson holidays are millennial. No, Gen Z. Oh, oh, oh, sorry, so you said millennial. Yeah, I mean, well, frankly, there aren't many millennials left in major league baseball. We're, we're aging out of the, oh my god, I'm, I'm 37. I'd be like the fourth oldest player in baseball. I'm what they call a geriatric. I'm, I'm a geriatric millennial as well. So, you know, I saw Geratis and some of the younger ones. Yeah. Uh, yes. Is that the marker? I think so, yeah. Okay. Um, Frank some millennial and he's a younger like Frank would still, Frank would be like, oh, he's getting old. We can't, I don't know if you can draft him. He hasn't started slowing down yet, but you got to be careful with a, I think he's 30, 30s now, right? Yeah, he's like 33. He's got a 34. He's getting four. He's got a 34-time age baseball. He's, he's got his 10-5, right? Yeah. All right. Back to the news. I'm going to line up Thursday. He's a Gen Z. He might be like, Gen Alpha. He was out of the line up Thursday with forearm soreness, but he was available off the bench. As Merleyn Valdez was sent back to AAA on Thursday, he showed some pop, but didn't do enough as far as making contact, the force is way into a long-term role. Andrew Alvarez will be the book reliever for the Nationals on Friday. He's missed a lot of bats between AAA and the majors this season. I've seen some mild interest/excitement from him in the comments and chat. I don't really see much in the track record, but maybe he's figured something out this season. Glaber Torres and Cary Carpenter expected to begin a minor league rehab assignment this weekend. Ezekiel Durand was back in the lineup after leaving Wednesday's game with an illness. Nolan Chen Well is dealing with ankle tendonitis and is not sure how long he will miss, but it has been an issue for him going back to April. Jupalmer has returned from the aisle after missing the minimum amount of time on the aisle with elbow inflammation. Kendra's Rojas was scratched from Thursday. They start for the twins with elbow soreness, Simeon Woods Richardson took over for him and struggled. Steven Kwan was placed on the bereavement list and may miss this weekend series against the redsocks. Garrett Riddlock was placed on the aisle with left knee inflammation. The Blue J's placed Lening Sosa on the aisle Thursday with right wrist contusion while calling up in Field or Charles McAdoo Scott. You weren't on the podcast yesterday. Any interest in Charles McAdoo? I find him interesting. I have found him interesting in the past. To be honest, I haven't come across him this year. So I'd have to pull up his numbers now. Pretty, pretty blah, performance. Yeah, it's like there at Triple A. A40 OPS, 250 batting average or some pop, but not a lot of raw power. See if the data looks any better. Yeah, pretty, pretty blah there too. Yeah, that was my reaction yesterday. That's what I wanted to, you know the prospects a little better than me. I wanted to make sure. And then MLB proposed a hard salary cap beginning at $245 million with a floor of $171 in their first round of negotiations with the Players Association. I just think the fact that they have both made an offer now seems like a good sign because I believe MLB waited months after receiving their offer last time. So hopefully we can get a little movement on this thing before, you know, let's say next January. I'd like to see them meet a few more times before the offseason. Hey, baseball's poppin, man. We're getting cool over here. Let's keep the money rolling. It's like it. Let's not be, let's not be knocking Gen Z here. There's a lot of incentive to get a deal done. It's safe. It's safe. Baseball is good business right now. There is too much money to lose to lose games. That has been my take for a while. But we'll see. All right. Scott, let's help each other with our rankings because we got some players. We're not sure what to do with. And some of them, I agree with your picks. So I'm glad you picked them and we'll start it off. Okay. There's a little Shane O Mack. Here comes the money. Yeah. Here we come. All that, you know, that whole thing. I don't have the, I don't have the drops. I, that's fine. You're going to knock them out. Yeah. So what is it about Shane O Mack that you find so confounding? Well, aside from like the everything about it, you know. I think he's good. He has 252 ERA. He has a 104 whip. Good. Good for him. He's gone six innings once. So it's kind of surprising. He has five wins. And if the trend continues, I don't think he's going to sustain a 15 win pace or thereabouts. So I expect even if the ERA and Whipper good, even if he continues to pitch well, it's not particularly functional for fantasy because the outings are so short. And by the way, he's not a guy who averages 10 and a half strikeouts per nine now. He's right at a strike out per inning. So he's. Tracker rates good, but not great. He's not with the kind of innings he's throwing. He's not really a plus in strikeouts. I don't think he's going to be a plus in wins. Obviously, the short outings, certain points leads to. He's not getting any quality starts or just the points that come from innings. So, you know, I feel like I feel like he does buy the way Shane McLeanahan is pitching. He deserves to rank higher than I have him, which is 42nd. But I mean, that's clearly way too low because Frank and I both have him at 41. Well, I'm glad we came come out in the same place, but it is a debate I have with myself every time. No, it's just a rank. It's just like, can we predict that he will start going deeper into games? Because that would change everything. If I could forecast, okay, he's gotten his feet wet this season. Now the raise are going to let him go to six innings with more consistency than, you know, I would factor that in to my rest of season rankings. I would move him up beyond. and into the top 40 maybe even higher, but I don't see any reason to believe that. - So I'll give you one reason. - Okay. - They're letting Drew Rasmussen do it this year. - After not the previous two. - But they didn't let him do it last year. And so that's, I feel very similar about Shane McClellan and as I did Drew Rasmussen last year, where this guy is obviously awesome or good. Let's say good. - Yeah. - There is also just clearly a limit on how valuable he can be for fantasy because he's only thrown 90 pitches twice and only 90 pitches. He has not gone above 90 pitches. That was Drew Rasmussen last year. Drew Rasmussen now is, I think he's thrown 90 plus pitches like six or seven times. They're giving him more or less a real starter's workload. McClellan and Han is not getting that. And so you can be efficient and get to six innings, but he's only done it the one time like you said. So yeah, it's, I think 40-ish is the right range, but it's like he is on any given, like the day he pitches, he is like the 25th best pitcher in baseball, but then he's getting extra time off every time. He's only pitched on four days rest twice. There's been one time he pitched on seven days rest, a couple times he's pitched on six days rest. So you're just not getting volume from him. That's the biggest thing. I think he's gonna be good. I think it's more like Drew Rasmussen who kind of stuck in the 35 to 40 range for me last season just because of the limitations. Why don't we move on to Miguel Vargas, a player you're having trouble figuring out. And I think I am as well. Yeah, so Miguel Vargas is the third best third baseman in Rotisserie leagues so far. He is the second best third baseman in points leagues. And we look at first base, he's top five in both formats there too. He's also a 230 hitter and has never been more than that as a major leaker. So I, what's actually changed for him? A few things have changed. He's walking a lot more. He's picked up the bat speed quite a bit. And actually not as big of a jump in exit velocity as you'd expect for a guy whose average bat speed has gone up three and a half miles per hour, but still it's a good sign that he's swinging harder and it hasn't affected his strikeout rate. Like I see how he's improved to this year. But a lot of it is tied. A lot of the success he's had is tied to the plate discipline jump and this new zeal he has for stealing bases. And I'm not confident that either of them will continue to quite the same extent. And if they do, then he's a 230 hitter with mod, I'm sorry, if they don't, if they don't continue, then he's a 230 hitter with, I think mod is popping the long run again, he's on pace for over 30 homers. So it, but just looking at the data, looking at the history I don't see him actually profiling as that. So I do see that he's an improved player. I do think he needs to rank within a range that has rostered everywhere of course, but I'm not convinced that what we're seeing from the Gal Vargas we can take a face value. It's probably the best way to sum it up. - I agree. It's one of those ones where when you look at, he's a 392 X-Wobba so far this season. And a lot of that is he's gone from a 10% walk rate, which is pretty good to a 15% walk rate, which is elite. And that's a big part of the improvement in X-Wobba, but it's not all of it because the X-Wobon contact has gone from 412 to, or 340 to 412, which is not elite, but it's very good. And you know, averages 370ish. So that's awesome. And his barrel rate has gone from 9.4%, which is above average to 15% borderline elite. And then you look at the component parts. And average X-Wobba is up from 89.7 to 90 miles per hour. Max EV, okay, that's up to 112.9. Launch angle, right in the same range, down a little bit. His infield, his pop up rate is actually up a little bit. His line drive rate is actually down a little bit. His pulled air rate is actually down ever so slightly. But that's all to say that most of the component parts of his game look identical to last season. I don't quite understand why the quality of contact in that regard has improved so much. And that's not to say it's not real. But it is hard to buy into something when you don't have a good explanation for why it's happening. And that makes me think that McGill Vargas is just running hot. And we'll see him slow down at some point. It'll be more like a 20 to 25 homer pace. And it'll be, I don't know, I mean, right now he's on close to a 25 steel pace, which there's no track record for that at the major league level. He's pretty fast. 70% percent. He's 70% percent. That's percentile sprint speed. But yeah, it's weird. It's just he's a weird start to the season. Yeah, it's the sort of thing that he could just decide to stop running. He could get caught a couple times. And the team could be like, you got to stop doing that. Because he's nine and no. So far. Yeah. But it could change if he started getting caught. So anyway, I've moved him up to 10th at third base. This feels pretty easy to do. That's a head of Max Muncie, who's off to a nice start himself, but he's been banged up recently. He doesn't have the speed element there. He has the plate discipline, but of course Miguel Vargas is excelling at that himself for points leagues. So in both formats, I've moved Vargas ahead of Max Muncie, also Alex Bregman, who I wasn't high on to begin the year. And he's been pretty miserable so far. Also ahead of Colson Montgomery and Kazuma Okamoto, who performed pretty well this year, but they have even more glaring flaws than Vargas, I'd say. So 10th at third base feels pretty easy to do. Tempted to move him ahead of Boba Shett, who I've set up not worried about him. I'm starting to wonder. I could have included him in this segment, because I'm starting to wonder if maybe what was the injury last year? Can't remember it now. But the injury that sideline them for some-- The injury? Or groin? I can't. I think it was something within the-- Yeah. It was a pretty serious injury at the end of last year. Remember, kept them out until the World Series, and they had to play them out of position once he came back. Yeah, and I'm just wondering if he's still feeling the effects of that, and it's impacting him as a hitter. So I could get Miguel Vargas a little higher there, but 10th at third base. What's harder is first base. So I think I've moved Vargas as low-- sorry, let me say that differently. I think I've moved him as low as I can justify at third base. And I've moved him as high as I can justify him at first base, which is 13th, which puts him ahead of Michael Bush, Tyler Sotershrum, players who I believe in still, but they've been pretty bad so far. Wilson Contreras has been great. In fairness, Bush has been better in May. Bush has looked like himself in May. ahead of Oranda. And points, Liggs, I have him ahead of Moonitaqa Miracami, who we're going to talk about more later. Yeah. Yeah, it should surprise nobody that I have him much lower. I have in 20th. I'm much more skeptical about small sample size breakouts. But 20th at first base is still really high. That's still-- I think it's still in my overall. It's like a top 160 player. Something the first base is just a really good position. There's a lot of good players there. There isn't much differentiation between 13 and 20 at first base for me. Yeah. I'm just going to go with guys who have a little longer of a track record than Michael Vargas. We are going to take our second break. And then we're going to talk about Moonitaqa Miracami, because I still think he's weird. I still don't quite know what to make of him. We'll be right back after this. And we are back on Fantasy Baseball today. And we're talking about Moonitaqa Miracami. Michael Vargas' teammate, also a first basement, also of the Chicago light socks. And this is one for me that I'm just-- I don't know. If you wanted to make the case form as a top 10 first basement, I could see it. I could also, if he finished the rest of the way outside of the top 20, at the position, I really wouldn't be very surprised. There are just what I'm struggling with Moonitaqa Miracami is there is basically a single case of a player with contact skills this bad, mattering even a little bit for Fantasy. And that guy was Joey Gallow. And we've had this conversation-- I don't know, a dozen times already in the podcast. And maybe people are tired of hearing about it. And he keeps hitting. But the other thing is the plate discipline keeps getting worse. In April, he was hovering around a 30% strikeout rate. I think in May, it's closer to 40. Overall, it's up to 35, 36%. His overall contact rate is 61%. It's the fourth worst of any-- any qualifier over the past 15 seasons. And it's actually worse than it sounds because two of the three that were worse than him were in 2020, which was not a full season. So there's been one full season where a player in the past 15 has had a worse contact rate than when it's talking about Kami. Look, if he's just a 15-homer guy, nothing matters, right? If he's a 50-homer guy, then he's couch-roarber and everything is, right? That's just really hard to do. And there just aren't many 50-homer true talent level guys. There are like three of them. And so I think there is going to be a point where Munehtagra Murakami gets really cold. And people are going to be talking about dropping him and he's hitting 160 for a month. And I struggle to figure out how to rank a guy like that because I do think the cold streaks are going to be unbelievably bad. And I don't know how to rank that because it might just be as simple as you just take him out of your lineup and you just don't think about it. Okay, he's not hitting, we take him out of your lineup. But nobody actually, based on what the feedback we get for people, nobody actually plays that way. And people are like, if there's a guy on my bench who I can't start, I'm going to drop him. I know I'm oversimplifying him. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So that was a lot. A lot to react to. I guess I would say Murakami it's a profile I hate. I hate this profile. The profile where yes, in theory, the player could be really valuable for fantasy, but he has such a difficult time making contact that when it goes, it's going to go, it's going to, he's going to crash hard. And I've had a lot of success in 19 years of writing bust columns, picking this sort of profile as a bust. And it's worked out really well on the whole, but sometimes it makes me look really stupid. And right now, that's what's happening with Murakami. As far as where to rank him, I have him ranked, I think, pretty high. I have him 11th and 14th and points, obviously the strike out surging some points leagues. Which may not sound high to people given how he's performed so far, but the justification for ranking him lower, again, like we just talked about, first base has so many good options that I think we have a better idea what to expect. It's just the upside can't be what it's been for Murakami so far. So I'm with you in him being difficult to rank. I'm kind of just, ranking him where I do, I don't want to say it's just to save face because it's not just to save face. I don't really know what to expect from him going for it. I have major, major concerns still. And just how to quantify that in the rankings. I think I'm going to lean toward the upside and at least while he's delivering on it and put him ahead of the, you know, the Jonathan Oronda, Alec Burleson types. All right, let's move on. Let's move a little quicker on these next few. Herald of Prado is one you're struggling with. And I guess the question is, are you struggling with just completely bearing him in your rankings? Because there's really nothing positive to point to at this point right now. Yeah, so I think the players I'm struggling to rank the most are the ones that go against my priors and obviously Pradoimos, an example of that and you were with me on this Chris that we were pretty bullish. I mean, part of it is because so many were bearish that it felt like, okay, there's a lot of profit to be had here just by buying the second round performer at face value and hoping he sustains 80% of that. Right now, the way it's played out for Pradoomo, he's looking like one of the biggest outlier seasons in Major League history because he's turned back into a pumpkin basically and looks useless, frankly. I think part of the reason I'm hanging on is because he's stealing at a pretty good clip. I don't even slow down though, it's only too little. It slowed down, yeah. But it's, you know, it's, he's still contributing in that area, still walking more than he strikes out. So if, if he can get the bat back, it still, it becomes a robust profile very quickly. But it's not there, I know. It's not. And so it's like, yeah, do we keep him in a range that justifies rostering him or do we just wash our hands of him, bury him, drop him outside at the top 20, a short stop and have that be that. I don't know, where do you have Pradoomo right now? I have, I anchor to my preseason expectations a lot more than, I think almost anyone else. So he's still 12 for me, it was a couple spots ahead of you. Yeah, I still have him in the top 15. Yeah, I like it. No, I like it. But it's another one where the skill set doesn't look that different. Like he's hitting the ball on the ground a lot more often. That's the biggest change, but he's still pulling the ball in the air a lot relative to the league average. He still makes a ton of contact. His quality of contact isn't significantly worse than it was last year in terms of the average exit velocity. So it, it feels like he's not that far off, but we have such a limited track record of success here that yeah, it does kind of make sense to, to start to bail. I want to look like that big of an improvement in those areas. Sure, that's fair. You know the overall stat line did. Yeah, I'm dropping a map set at the top 15 at least. That's perfectly reasonable. I wanted to get your thoughts on Jose Soriano because Scott, Frank and I talked about him yesterday. Obviously he had the six starts where he looked like the best pitcher in baseball. The last seven starts, he's got like a 573 ERA, the walk rate is back to being way up. And as always more skeptical about the first six starts than most, I don't want to just say he's turning back into the guy he has been forever though because I don't know if that's fair. But yeah, it's not. He's definitely different. I mean, last, his last start here on Wednesday, he got 19 whiffs. And it was mostly, a lot of them came on that splitter, which you didn't really have prior to this year. Nine of the, I'm sorry, 15 whiffs. Nine of them came on the splitter. So he is definitely a much better bat misser than he's ever been before Jose Soriano with the addition of that splitter and having a four-seam-root-appair with the sinker. Still a top five pitcher and ground ball, right? It's just the control is gonna bite him at times and it bit him three of his five starts in May. So I don't actually struggle to rank Jose Soriano because I think I resisted moving him into the ace range when a lot of people were ready to declare him an ace already. And so I have him. I actually, like I'm shocked, I have him higher than you and Frank do now. - No, that happened. - Yeah, I stopped around 40 if moving him up in my rankings. He is now climbed inside the top 40s, 38th, but that's more because others have dropped off. - Yeah, that's similar to what happened for me. And I still think it looks right, even with some of the bumps in May that's behind Parker Messick and Drew Rasmussen and Kyle Harrison. I think breakouts that strike me as higher upside but it's ahead of Ranger Suarez and Shane McClanahan. Trey Savage, we'll see how things go with him. He started to go deeper into games and I might like him more than Soriano. I can make that switch. But it seems about right to me just inside the top 40. I think he's a good close to must star pitcher Jose Soriano, but they're definitely still lost. - I think you probably just ride the ride, right? Like, don't over-react one way or the other. We're gonna do one more for each of us. Would you rather talk Casey Schmitt or Michael Harris? - Let's talk Michael Harris. - Okay, let's talk Michael Harris. So Michael Harris actually had a big game here on Thursday. He had his 13th home run. It kinda keeps doing that. - He kinda keeps having big games, batting averages over 300. - The problem with Michael Harris is the 21 strikeouts to one walk in the month of May. - So yes, his plate discipline is horrible that hasn't gotten any better this year. Other areas have gotten better. He's hitting the ball harder. great. Like I think he's probably a good hitter. I just think and that's been true for most of his career really with the exception of last year. He's been a good hitter. His first two years he hit over 290. But I think it's a better real-life profile than fantasy profile. For as good as he's been this year he's on pace for like 75 runs. It's always the issue with him. He doesn't, yeah. He's stolen just three bases even with Antoine Richardson. I mean that I'm gonna go ahead and call it. That was bust. There's been no sign of the Antoine Richardson for the rate of craves. Fair enough. So like he is and then the RBI the RBI are fine. Obviously the home run pace is good. But this is you know even lately he's been batting six in the line at more often than not. He started out eight there 90 could move down again once Drake Baldwin comes back. It's been very little of the season that the Braves have had both the Cunyan Baldwin. Their number one is one of two hitters. So like line up placement is an issue. Plate discipline is going to ensure between that the line up placement and the plate is blend the runs are gonna remain low no matter how well he performs. Absolutely. And since he's not much of a base dealer a lot is hinging on him being a true standout and batting average which he could be. But there's an in margin for error there and ranking a player at his absolute hottest. I think is always a mistake. So I have gotten Harris inside the top 20. And Rota are in points as well. Maybe in point. I mean part of the struggle here with ranking him is that he's one of the biggest differences between points and Rota. That is true. That wasn't what I was going to say though part of the biggest difference between. We're not to the boy where we could finish each other sentence is Chris sandwiches. So many of the other outfielders that you just default to being in that 15 to 20 range in the rankings have really underwhelmed so far. And like say a Suzuki and Riley Green and George Springer and Jackson Merrill and it's like. Okay I guess Harris needs to be a hat head of them just because he's performing right now but I don't necessarily trust that he's going to be better than them from today forward you know. It's a bounce back for season for Harris he's obviously more valuable today than when then on draft day. But I don't trust that he's as good as he looks right now. I am going to focus a my discussion final one on another Braves player who I'm boy I'm starting to to lose a lot of confidence in Austin Riley and I think a lot of how you feel about Austin Riley head headges on how you think about the slow starter narrative because I've bought into the idea that in 2024 what went wrong for Austin Riley is that he was playing through an oblique injury got off to a slow start was finally starting to figure it out around the midway point of the season and then it got hurt and there's kind of a similar story last year the problem is I went back and looked at his three great seasons which was 22 23 24 no 21 22 23 three great seasons for Austin right he was better in the second half and two of the three. I don't know if that's enough for me to say like he was still an 820 OPS guy for the most part in the first half of those two seasons I think one it was like 790 by the end of May and then he had a big June but that that's what I'm struggling with where it's okay if you believe that he's just a slow starter forever and that maybe that explains why last year in the year before went so poorly and maybe that explains why things have been so poor for him this year but when he was a slow starter before it was still really good it just wasn't great it was like 770 to 850 OPS rather than the 870 you get used to from us around I wonder if we've just started to see the decline phase from a guy who's 29 years old and he is a one-dimensional slug you know that when he was at his best he hit for a good batting average and was a good overall hitter but the skill set is just hit the ball hard and it overcomes bad plate discipline and and he doesn't do much else besides that as a hitter he doesn't really steal any bases thanks Antoine Richardson and so I just worry that we're in the decline phase we've given him a lot of credit for that three year run but now we're getting close to 30 and I'm not 100% sure that this is a guy who needs to be ranked as a top 12 third baseman I still rank him that way I still rank him eighth which is lower than you in Scott or you in Frank but still top 10 but I just boy I'm not sure about it it's it's a hard one that's and that ties into the Miguel Vargas one because that's another player that theoretically I can move behind Vargas at third base yeah it's like he's continued to hit the ball very hard but not quite as hard but not quite as hard and he's obviously still a prime age 29 so there shouldn't be decline there one thing we haven't talked about is his two biggest influences as a hitter the two of the biggest figures in his breakout well one was Kevin Sites or the Braves hitting coach until until last season who's with the Mariners now but the other is a private hitting coach you worked with Mike Brumley who who tragically died in the car accident in 2024 so I just wonder if Riley's become untethered as a hitter having no longer having those influences he can rely on because the timing kind of matches up with the struggles here yeah that's that's an interesting yeah I hadn't thought about that yeah yeah so I that that's more even more reason to wonder if he can climb out of this I'm willing to keep the faith I think through June at least maybe through the first half but if there aren't clear signs of improvement by then I think definitely it'll be time to to give up on Riley as a fantasy standout all right that is our players were struggling to rank or trying to help each other rank whatever one I call that segment moving on to I mean honestly there's really very little from Thursday's games talk about we'll talk about some pitchers who are widely available who pitched on Thursday and see if there's any interest in adding any of these guys Grayson Rodriguez had a decent start against the Tigers five innings one-on-one two hits two walks five strikeouts he got five whiffs with the four seamer average 96.2 that pitch still looks pretty good I just kind of don't have a lot of faith in anything else that he throws at this point only eight whiffs on 88 pitches total so three between his secondaries slider curveball and this one were different slider had more drop curveball got less distinct pitches but the velocities are starting to bleed together and I think that's the thing that I'm looking at here is his like change up is 83 his curveballs like 79 usually the sliders down to like 82 everything he throws is below average in velocity except for the four seamer and now you want some separation on your pitches but like 13 miles an hour separation between your change of the four seamer's a lot and you know 18 15 miles per hour between your four seamer and sliders a ton and so I just wonder if there's some just pitch design issues here where I think he's talented but I think the secondary just aren't there yet and I don't know if I have a lot of faith in the angels figuring that out I know Mike Maddox is a better pitching coach but I don't know yeah I don't know what to make of Grayson Rodriguez either it was a good start but it wasn't a start that really got me excited in terms of what I was seeing under the hood as you seem to be saying there was a time not too long ago where it was between shame bars and Grayson Rodriguez who was the best pitching prospect and that was years of build up like that and you know what they say there's no such thing as a pitching process there's no such thing as a pitching process man about to spend a lot of time injured so it it it makes sense why they've struggled this way but it's it's disappoint I mean we're taking obviously he just had a good start so like things could improve from here I just don't I don't see a clear path to it which is what I think you were also saying yeah Jack Flaredy's missing a ton of bats lately nine strikeouts and five and two thirds innings here but fell short of a quality start by now and he has 36 strikeouts to eight walks and 27 to third innings and may with a 626 ERA in that span that is pretty bad Chris Bassett good start one and Ronin six innings do you see anything here no not for bass it not so cool and Ray no Flaredy I'll I'll note like part of it him missing all these bats was used face in the angels part of it the top three pitches that missed all the bats up more than a mile per hour so So that might be something to build off of, but obviously not moving to pick up clarity based on this start. Alright, so pitching left overs, Chris sale, not his best start ever, but still pretty good. Two-hundred runs over five innings, eight strikeouts, top five starting pitcher. I have nothing to say here, do you? He, I think he was fired up to face the red socks, the team that kind of sold low on him. That doesn't sound like Chris sale. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would hold a grudge. His velocity was up on everything and I think it compromised his control, which is why he walked three and had to leave after five innings. But yeah, he's, he was my preseason pick for NLSI young and I guess you'd have to say Christopher Sanchez is the front runner, but sales right there. I think he's third. I'd say third. Skeen's in. Skeen's in a help his case today. And that, he had reshaked, he starts in a row, Paul. That was the defense in this one. I'm, I'm going to go ahead and call that one. He gave up one on run over five in a third innings, walked three strikeout ten. I think it was the defense. He missed a bunch of bats. Peyton, Toli. He was really good early in this start. I think it was three strikeouts in the first two innings. Need like 23 pitches to get through the first two innings or something. Then struggle with the command, only ended up going four and two thirds, two on run, seven strikeouts against the braves. Very tough matchup. Where are we out on Toli? 61-ERA, all the peripherals look very good. Do you think he's just a top 50 starting pitcher, top 40 starting pitcher? Yeah. So while we're talking rankings, I can tell you that I have Toli behind Jose Soriano ahead of Davis-Marin. I have him 43rd. Okay. I think he's good. I think he's still a work in progress. I remember that first start, the curve ball was a game changer for him. It is best with pitch for the season. He doesn't seem to trust it entirely. He barely threw it in this start. There's still some things he's sorting out, but the talent is obvious. For the most part, he's delivered on his promise when he've played him, when he've used him in fantasy. Yeah. This one, he was kind of lefty-cam-slitler. The four-seamers-sinker and cutter were like 85 percent of the pitches. That was all of his whists. I think we're on those three pitches today. That was interesting. I think Peyton Toli is really good. Like you said, I think working progress is fair. Ronald Acunia had a good game. He had a sock in two shoes. I didn't want to note. Listener Chad wrote in to suggest Smash and Grab as an alternative to sock and shoe. It works. It doesn't work when there's two of each, though. Like a smash and two grabs. It doesn't really work. I think it works in general. That's a general rule. But he had a sock and two grabs. Doesn't really work. There are a couple of reasons I don't like it. One, it's not us. The second is Grab already means something in a baseball sense. It's a catch. It's there. Well, a snag is also a word for a catch. But when you said, "Great grab," it's a good catch. I heard it snatched and grabbed. I'm like, "Wait, what?" "Okay, grab you steal the base. Grab it. I get it." You're actually handerson, you pick it up. You got to do some mental gymnastics there. I'm with Perseverius in the chat. What's wrong with sock and shoe? I don't know why we have this constant, like, "Oh, sock and shoe is bad." I think sock and shoe is great. I like it. I'm a fan. I am staunchly pro sock and shoe. Frankly, pro both, too, of each. Never fun to just go with one. I mean, socks in the house isn't bad, but you don't want to wear them out in the soggy grass. No, not at all. Sorry, anyway, Ronald and Coonia. Just his third homer in 43 games this season. And only 24 in 138 games since the start of last season. And only 28 and 187 games since the start of 24. Is he still an elite power hitter? Any concerns about the lack of production here? Average exofelocity is like 89, which is down. I'm going to be honest. I don't really have any concerns. I still have him as a top 5 overall player in fantasy. I still have him as a top 3 out of fielder, I think. It's only two thirds of the sample of every other hitter because of the time Coonia missed with injury. And while the exofelocities are down, the bat speed is pretty normal. So I suspect I think it's just he hasn't. He hasn't been barreling up enough balls, which I think is just not locked in yet. Not locked in yet. Yeah. I mean, that the power looked easy on that grand slam today. So I think it's definitely still in there. I just think it's still there as well. Mike Trout went two for three with two RBI, two walks, one run. His only out was a hard hit liner to right field, I believe. He continues to look very, very good. Zacknetto, I had thought he was having a disappointing season. And he's been better lately and all of a sudden, the numbers just kind of look like they're supposed to. He went two for four today with a walk. He's in 233 batting average, always going to be a problem for Zacknetto. But he's still on close to a 3025 pace. So still pretty much having the season you were hoping for. Well, I think he wanted 20 additional points of batting average for where you were drafting him. Sure. But he hit like 240 last year, right? No. That wasn't more like 250. I think it was more like 250. This was one of my concerns about taking him that high though is that there was more volatility there in batting average. 257 is what he hit last year and 249 the year before. OK. Also, I worried about the counting stats apart from home runs and steals entering today. It was just a 72 RBI pace. Yeah. The runs were good. One on nine runs are good. Yeah. But RBI. Not so impressive there. So yeah, I mean, Zacknetto obviously must start, but I think he's been a little disappointing. All right. And then the call to the bullpen, there was only one save on Thursday among the six games. Louis Varlan got to save his eighth. I know there'd been a little consternation about his usage lately. I still think he's the closer here. It's just this is one of those situations where the closer is not just working the night then he worked the eighth inning, I think on Wednesday. That'll happen sometimes when if that's the the biggest moment of the game, that's when we've our little pitch, but he is going to get most of the saves for the Toronto Blue Jays. Until they decide to go away from it. And I know Jeff Hoffman's still missing a ton of bats. I still really don't trust it. Well, he's really started to emphasize the sliders since being removed from the closer role, which is what he said he was going to do in his training. That's how he's succeeded with the Phillies. And he's had a lot of success going back to that. But Varlan's had a ton of success too. So it just seems like there's no reason to check. I think Varlan is a better pitcher there. All right. And then to stream or not to stream for the weekend on Friday we've got I think there are some decent options. I like I think Zach Allen at Seattle is okay just because it's at Seattle. I think Louis Severino is doing some good stuff, but obviously it's a tough matchup versus the Yankees. Kai Wei Tang, Walbert Arania, Grant Holmes are all decent. I think my favorite three would be Galen, Steven Coleck at Texas and Louis Severino actually. Sure. I don't I don't love any of them, but I can't really argue against those as being the best three. All right. Let's go to Saturday where I don't really like many of the Saturday options. But I think Christian Scott versus Miami, if I thought they were going to let him go six innings in any world, I would be okay with it. But he's done. He's just not been pitching deep into games at all. Ben Brown at the Cardinals. Yeah, Ben. Yeah, I'm not sure if Ben Brown qualifies, but he's 71% right now. Okay. So he called. I don't know what Frankie's got off the desk, but so Ben Brown at the Cardinals is very good. Yeah. And then JT again, again, I wish it wasn't against the Yankees, but I like him more than any of the other pitchers here. Well, Mitch Keller against the twins. It's okay. It's okay. I don't know. I'm being honest. I think he's probably more. Yeah, he's 84% roster in CBS. I feel sorry. Yes, but if he's available in yours, he's a better streaming option than anyone on this any. Well, there are a lot of good pitchers going Saturday too. I'm sure just not available to pick up. And then Sunday, there are very few streaming options. Zabby Matthews at Pittsburgh is okay. Zach Latel revenge game against the raise. I don't really have any faith in it, but he's been pretty good lately. Tetsi Yamano, he just threw a no-hitter, but I didn't see much to be excited about there. You done with Janssen Junk, Chris? Yeah, I've imagined him yet. I wouldn't be surprised if Janssen Junk was good against the match, but a lot of that's, I think he's a decent pitcher in the matter of decent matchup. So sometimes that can come together and make for a good start, but I wouldn't say I'm expecting a good start from Janssen Junk there. Yes, this is rough on Sunday. I guess Zabby Matthews is my top choice, but not with a lot of confidence, especially since the Pirates are. Offense is still top five believe it or not. I do not believe it. Better believe it. It's true. All right, I'll try. And that's gonna do it for fantasy baseball today. We'll be back on Sunday to recap everything you need to know from the weekend. We'll talk some way where we're tough and a whole bunch more. See you then. Bye bye.