Speaker 1One of America's top true crime podcasts, 48 Hours, is back with a new season. This is not scripted, folks. This is real life. And so is the official after show podcast, Postmortem. Follow and listen to 48 Hours wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2Happy Kokomo Friday and welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today.
Speaker 3Live from the Roster Lords podcast room at First Pitch, Arizona. I am Frank Stamfel. He is Chris Towers. And we made it. One of the best weekends of the year. Chris, this is like Christmas for baseball fans.
Speaker 4How's everything going, man? We're here. Good. You stayed out a little later last night than I did.
Speaker 5We don't have to talk about that.
Speaker 4No, I had a crazy Thursday night, First Pitch, Arizona. I went to bed at 10, watched the Lord of the Rings, and fell asleep around 11.
Speaker 3Yeah, I texted you last night. I couldn't find you anywhere. I wound up out by the pool, as we always do these late nights. And yeah, Chris was like, oh, I'm going to call it. And I'm like, loser.
Speaker 4I'm a little bit of a loser, yeah.
Speaker 3It is a great time, as always. Again, thank you to Baseball HQ for hosting this fine event. Lots of things going on this weekend. We've got live podcasts. We're out watching baseball games. Went to an AFL game last night. Ty Peet had a couple hits. Stole a base. Triple. Triple off the wall. He's crushing the AFL right now.
Speaker 4It is one of those things, though, like if you're a hitter at the AFL and you're not doing well, that's actually a really bad thing. Because we're at elevation a little bit. It's like 900 feet. It's not Coors Field or anything. But we're at elevation. We're at elevation. We're at elevation. We're at elevation. We're at elevation. And also, like, they don't really send any good pitchers out to the AFL unless they're like, like, Harleen Susanna is here. I think he's rehabbing.
Speaker 3Even if they do, it's like the conditions that they're pitching in.
Speaker 4So that's the expectation. But it's good to see the handful of prospects who are out here. I mean, Dax Kilby, I think, is doing well. So it's good to see those guys doing well.
Speaker 3I'm happy you brought up Dax Kilby because I didn't want to do the Yankee Homer thing and just bring him up immediately. Oh, we didn't get to see him last night. I was heartbroken. We're out here like, hey, we get Dax Kilby against Ty Peet. Dax Kilby's not in the lineup. He was in the lineup last night. Oh, gosh, that was brutal. Today on the show, we are talking about the toughest players to rank for 2027. Subjective, but we put out a post on X the other day just asking what players people wanted to hear about. And so we've got eight different players we're going to talk about today. And if anyone has any disputes or you have any questions, we have an open mic if you want to come up and talk about a specific player that we're talking about.
Speaker 4That's not for the podcast audience. That's the people in person.
Speaker 3Yes, yes. I mean, I guess, yeah, I don't know how we would make that work. But maybe one day we'll have some kind of quote. Drop them in the comments. Yeah, yeah. We are live on YouTube as well. So anyone in the comments, feel free. Drop a chat.
Speaker 4I'm going to take my jacket off.
Speaker 3It's getting a little hot in here. It's too warm. I don't know why Chris is wearing a varsity jacket.
Speaker 4Come on, you got to sport the Kokomo Friday, the island thing. My beautiful vintage CBS sports baseball jacket.
Speaker 3That is pretty fire. Very pretty. That is pretty fire. They gave those out before I worked here. Anyway, let's get into the toughest players to rank for 2027. And we're going to start things off with Garrett Crochet, which. What do we do with Garrett Crochet? I mean, entering last season, he was preseason ADP, borderline first round pick. He was going at that turn, pick 12, 13. He was the third pick, the third starting pitcher in drafts last season. And coming off a massive year, right? With the Red Sox, his first year there, 259 ERA, 103 whip, 255 strikeouts. He was up over 200 innings as well. He was the sixth overall player last season. So it made sense why he was being drafted as a borderline first round pick. And then 2026. Happened, which was just the complete opposite. It was awful right away in spring training. The K's were way down in spring training. We know that he was battling velocity as well. And then the season started. It got even worse. He had an 11 run outing back in April. If you remember that it was against the twins. It's like everyone's losing their mind and rightfully so. The injuries that he dealt with this season. He had left shoulder inflammation in late April. And then a couple of setbacks in May. He did not return until the postseason. He made just one appearance. The good news there is that. The velocity was back up. He looked okay. The bad news is he gave up four earned runs without recording it out. But it was good to see that he was back and the velocity was there. But we're just left with so many questions heading into 2027. In an offseason where we're not going to get many answers. With the lockout once we get to December 1st. We're not going to be able to get any updates on players. There's no communication between teams and players. So whenever there's a spring training. Everyone's going to show up. And we're going to find out about all these offseason injuries. And updates and things like that.
Speaker 4I think a good example is Shane Bieber last year. Where he gets. I think he was fine in the playoffs right in 2024. He gets through it. And then in the offseason it's like December. I think there's stuff from the GM. Well he's not bouncing back the way we thought he would at the end of the season. So we're going to slow play him in the spring. And it was like that ended up being a real harbinger for what Shane Bieber's season was going to be like. So like we're not going to get those updates this year. We're not going to get like the various fan fests or whatever. Where GMs make their updates. So it's very scary for a player. Like Garrett Crochet. I'm looking at his baseball reference page. They have his stats going back to college to 2018. He has made more than six starts in a season twice since 2018. At any level. So college. The minors. The majors. And one of those seasons was kind of a partial season. Like he made 32 starts in 2023 or 2024. But we remember it was right around June, July. He starts throwing three innings per start basically. And so he's really in his entire life as a high-level pitcher. Has really gone through one season where he's been a real starter. And it was an incredible season. It was 259 ERA, over 200 innings. Everything you could want from an ace. But I think this is one thing that I do want to keep in mind. Because something you, Frank and I, or Scott and I have talked about this offseason so far is not worrying about risk with pitchers as much. And just. Every pitcher has risk, so we're just going to look for skills. Well, we did that with Garrett Crochet. Like I think Garrett Crochet is a really good example of a guy that we kind of threw the injury risk to the side after basically one full season. And it blew up in our faces. So I do think there is still some risk with that approach to starting pitchers where, yeah, everybody's got risk. Everybody's risk isn't the same, you know. And Crochet, I really have no idea what to do with him.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, that's why we're here to talk about these guys. Yeah. If you look at his innings from 2023 through 2026, 25, 146, 213, 30. So it's like, what do you even come up with as an innings projection for Garrett Crochet next season? We have absolutely no idea. And the problem specifically with Crochet is that we know he has the upside to be a top three starting pitcher in fantasy. He also has the injury risk to give us less than 50 innings, something he's done in two of the last four years. So I think a lot of people in. I think a lot of people in 2027 will be chasing the Mizzy Arowski, the Cam Schlittler, the Chase Burns, right? It's kind of like that mid-round breakout pitcher. Crochet isn't as young as those guys, but he does fit the profile in terms of someone who has that upside who's going to be drafted in probably, I don't know, rounds five through seven, something like that.
Speaker 4And unlike those guys coming into 2026, at least, we have seen Garrett Crochet do the ace workload. Like we know he has the ace upside as a pitcher, but we also have seen him do. Through the 200 inning massive season. And so it's how do you weigh that versus he's coming off a season where he was bad and got hurt? I think where did I end up bringing him? I think you've got that in there. Yeah. 27. SP 27. I have no idea.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, that's why we're here. And so I pulled Scott's rankings as well. Scott has Crochet ranked at SP 23. I don't have rankings yet because I don't need rankings. I'm the host. And, you know, these guys have rankings right now. I will have. Rankings eventually. I haven't made it that far yet. Steamer projections are out. They have Garrett Crochet as the SP 6, which they are very often injury agnostic. They really just, you know, project based on skills and things like that. The early NFBC ADP, which is a very tiny sample size. We have maybe 18 to 20 drafts. Mr. Popular over here. Chris Towers. Wait, is Scott calling you? Remember we called Scott last year? Scott calling you. He's like, no, I want to be on the podcast. No, it's not Scott. All right. Well, we tried. The early NFBC ADP is SP 17, 66th overall for Garrett Crochet. So your ranking, 27. Scott's ranking, 23. Steamer projection, SP 6, ADP, SP 17. It's all over the place, which is what we're talking about.
Speaker 4That's why it makes it so tough. I do think one thing that his, again, very, very early ADP shows us, though, is there is a pretty big drop off, I think. Because you've got, you know. Loden Gilbert, Zach Wheeler, Peyton Tolley, Nolan McLean, Garrett Crochet. That's like SP, I think it's like 10 to 16 in the ADP. And then there's a little bit of a drop off to Cade Cavalli, about a round in the current ADP. Cade Cavalli, Parker Messick. That feels right. Like it does feel like Cade Cavalli would represent a drop from a Nolan McLean, Peyton Tolley kind, just because we're dealing with a limited sample size. He has an older, older breakout, I guess. Yeah. And so. - You're like 27 or 28 years old, right? 28. Yeah. So I think it's reasonable to be a little more skeptical of him compared to Tolley or McLean. Does Crochet fit in with the higher end of that group though? I can see ranking like the SP six steamer ranking. If you're just ranking based on skills, I think he's absolutely one of the six best pitchers in baseball.
Speaker 3Yeah. So I guess by a show of hands again, way too early, but SP 17 and ADP for Garrett Crochet, how many people would be willing to take the plunge there and press draft on Garrett Crochet's name? SP 17. Yeah, we got
Speaker 4about a quarter, maybe a third of the audience. Maybe. Okay. Yeah. Some people talk themselves. They're jumping in. So that feels like a good spot for him. I, you know, me having him at the SP 27. Okay. Well now I'm probably going to have to adjust because I don't think I want Garrett Crochet completely off my board. If we're talking about drafting targeting skills, there aren't many pitchers who have better skills than him. Like he limits hard contact. He's got good control. Gets a ton of strikeouts. Like he really is. If he's that guy from 2025, which is the other thing we have to keep in mind is he just basically missed an entire season with shoulder and then lat injuries. Can he come back? You know, we don't usually handle a massive workload, like the way the Red Sox wrote it. I think even just can the, are the, are we sure the skills are going to come back? Cause a lat injury, you don't really think of as like having long-term ramifications, but I do remember like it's all connected, man. I mean, yeah, the, the lat bone is connected to the shoulder bone. We all know that. Um, but no, I remember like Noah Syndergaard, I feel like a lat injury was kind of the start of things going sideways for him. So that's obviously a sample of one, but there is not a guarantee that Garrett Crochet just comes back as a superstar pitcher, even if he does stay
Speaker 3healthy. Yep. Let's stick with the Red Sox here and go over to Roman Anthony, who was the top prospect in baseball entering 2025. He delivered in AAA. He got called up slow start, but then he really came on strong. His final 55 games with the Red Sox in 2025, hit 329, seven homers, a 930 OPS, nearly 95 mile per hour, average EV, just elite stuff. Uh, he showed up with lots of hype entry, 2026, rightfully so his preseason ADP was 47. He was being drafted as the outfielder 16, but it was an injury plagued season for Anthony as well. Even when he played, he wasn't great. He hit 245, 735 OPS, still lots of ground balls. He hits the ball really hard. I mean, if he can ever consistently lift the ball, I mean, we could easily have a, you know, 35, 40 home run bat here with Roman Anthony. He dealt with back soreness early on in the season. Then it was really this wrist injury in may that they thought it was going to be a minimum of 10 days winds up missing a majority of the season. Come back, comes back very late. And then in game one of the wild card round against the Yankees, he felt discomfort in that hand again. And the Red Sox said that Anthony suffered additional damage to his wrist. And there wasn't, that wasn't there before. And after the season ended, they did say he's not going to have surgery. It's kind of just the rest and rehab. But another one where we're just left with a little bit of a history, but just left with so many questions in an off season where we won't have answers.
Speaker 4I do want to focus so that the Chris Coteo report from October 5th, Roman Anthony likely doesn't need surgery and rest is likely the best path to improvement. Craig Breslow says that's a lot of likely that's a lot of likelies for again, as we're talking about a situation where if he does end up needing surgery after December 2nd, let's say he takes two months off, starts working, starts swinging again, and suffers a setback again. If he does need surgery in December, we may not know at the time, you know, it depends on if his agent puts out, but like if the team isn't going to be able to communicate that we're not going to know. So like, yeah, that's, that's really scary is that there is a chance that whenever the lockout ends and, and players report, we get this update on Roman Anthony, that actually he did have surgery. It's not likely he likely doesn't need surgery, but that's not definitely doesn't need surgery. Right. And the fact that it, he got through it, that it kept being, he's trying to swing. Okay. The pain is still there. He's recovering. We like where he's going. He's going through rehab. He starts swinging. The pain comes back like that. That happened multiple times throughout this process. He gets back in a game. How many games he played in one?
Speaker 3No. And, uh, I think he returned to like late August. He actually played quite a bit.
Speaker 4So he played like the final month. Yeah. Gets to the playoffs, suffers a setback again. Yeah. The fact that he keeps coming back. Yeah. Like that's really like, it's just a situation where I'd almost prefer that there were a surge. There was a surgical repair for it because hopefully we could put it behind us where like, I think about like, I don't know if anybody really knows or cares about basketball in this crowd, but I think about Steph Curry is the guy I think about a lot with because early in his career, he had these recurring ankle injuries. They were never so serious that it was like, he needs surgery right now, but it just kept happening and kept happening. And finally he ends up having surgery and it stops being an issue. He becomes, you know, one of the best players of all time. I, I almost prefer that to, well, it's not serious enough to have surgery, but is it serious enough to keep becoming a problem? That that's my concern here.
Speaker 3Yeah. And, and a similar issue with Roman Anthony to Garrett crochet, not that Roman Anthony is as established as a Garrett crochet, but again, it's just the variance of what you can get. He has massive upside. We know that you see it in the freakish bat speed and exit velocities that he delivers. And he's only 22, 23 years old. So we know eventually we think he's going to be a stud bat. We just don't know exactly when that's going to happen, how healthy. He's going to be in 2027. Uh, Chris, I don't know if you know this, but you are the high guy on Roman
Speaker 4Anthony. So I think one thing that this reflects is some squishiness in the outfield rankings for me. Um, where you, you know, I, I feel like the high end is really high and there's decent depth to like the 40 ish range, but it's a little globby, you know, like I think once you get outside of like the top 12, top 15, I don't know if there's a ton separating guys at 30 versus guys 18. So, you know, I've had him at, at 18 or 17. It wouldn't take much to drop him to 25 and be in, in the range. And I, I do feel a little more comfortable when I'm in range with the consensus. On the other hand, Scott's almost as Scott's actually further from the consensus.
Speaker 3Yeah. Scott has him defend himself here.
Speaker 4So I think we should focus on that.
Speaker 3Yeah. Scott outfielder 38 for Roman Anthony is where he has him and steamer projections have Anthony at outfielder 40.
Speaker 4Which that I think projections are, are going to be lower on him as a younger player who has been good. Like he's held his own as a young player. And so I think you can project moving forward, but better as a rookie takes a step back in year two. I think projections are probably just going to be a little softer on him anyway. Yeah. You know, the playing time projections and performance projections are going to be softer. So I get that. I think he's definitely gonna be drafted ahead of that, uh, projection.
Speaker 3Yeah. Top, top, top 40 outfielder. I mean, easily, but I mean, you see that in the early ADP, he's the outfielder 25 early on and his ADP is one 11.4. So he's not a top 100 pick anymore. Last year was top 50 pick. He's going just behind Byron Buxton and Zach Geloff just ahead of Cole Carrig and say a Suzuki.
Speaker 4So I will say, I, I would much rather have him than Geloff, but I think I'm just going to be, why do you hate Zach lower? Cause we've done this before. Like, I do feel like there's a little bit with Zach Geloff. I know we're not talking about him, but I do think there's a little bit of like amnesia of like, we did this with his rookie season, which was very similar production wise to what he did. I know there were, he did make massive improvements in the, in the credit in the plate discipline, especially, but it was still bad. And I think this Geloff is still a very, very high variance player. I think Roman Anthony is also a high variance player, but I think the baseline skill level is just a lot higher.
Speaker 3Yeah. And he is someone who profiles better. If we have any points leagues players out there, he's someone that profiles better as a awesome plate discipline. He walks so much. He's going to be better in like an OBP Roto format. I don't know that he's ever going to run a ton. I think he's a good enough athlete too, but we haven't really seen him run that much in the minors or the majors.
Speaker 4Yeah. I think you're, you're hoping this is too high, but like the Jordan Alvarez archetype where he's a, if all comes together, he's a, a true four category stud, but he's not going to be like Geloff. You're going to get more stolen bases.
Speaker 3I think, I think Anthony is a good enough athlete to give like 10 to 15 steals in like his peak season. But I just, I don't know that we're ever going to get much more than that. So show of hands again, outfielder 25 for Roman Anthony, ADP 111, just behind Byron Buxton and Geloff, just ahead of Cole Carrig and Seiya Suzuki. Would you guys be willing to take the plunge and draft Roman Anthony at that spot?
Speaker 4I think it's a little less optimistic than Gary Crochet, which is kind of surprising because Gary Crochet is more expensive and I think probably a bigger risk. Yeah. Bigger risk that you just get nothing out of him, I guess.
Speaker 3Again, for those live pitch, we have an open mic. So if you want to talk about any of these players, dispute any of these players, ask any questions about these players, feel free to hop on up. Next player is someone, I feel like we just talk about this guy every year when we're here and it's Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He followed up his historic post-season last year with an absolute stinker. Let me remind you of what he did in the playoffs. 18 games last season, hit 397, eight homers, nearly a 1300 OPS. Follows that up by hitting 260, nine homers, 790. Almost as many steals as homers for Vlad, which is not what we were expecting. And a sub 700 OPS. He did not hit his first home run at home this season until the final month of the season, which is just absolutely crazy stuff. The quality of contact came way down. He posted career lows in barrel rate, ex-Woba, ex-Wobacon. He, not a good look that it was like the first year of this massive 14 year, $500 million deal. On top of that. He signed it at
Speaker 4the beginning of 2025 and had a
Speaker 3I guess it's like in effect, but on top of that, like, that interview that he did where, you know, it was with like a Spanish reporter and it was like a very, you know, lax interview. He's sitting on a couch or whatever. So I like, maybe it's taken out of context, but the fact that he says something like, I got paid for what I did in the past, not what I'm expected to do in the future. It was just like a terrible look. And then the next day he walked back to comments. I think, you know, got a call from his pops and he's like, dude, you can't do that. Like, what are we doing? Uh, so just like the whole shape of the season and the way everything played out, the most likely outcome. And what we heard all year is that Vlad was playing through injury. He had a recurring back and hamstring injuries, uh, which felt like all season. He went on the concussion IL in August. Uh, if you take away one data point from this conversation about Vlad, here are his overall finishes in Roto since 2022, 36, 77, 13, 47, two 21, obviously the two 21 seasons as a top 30 player as outside of the season. The top 200. Yeah. This past season obviously is an outlier, but even like kind of all over the place, 36, 77, 13, 47, uh, that is an average of 78.8 and is at early ADP is 73.6. So it's the,
Speaker 4literally the cheapest Vladimir Guerrero has ever been. I looked through his rookie season was like 55th in ADP. Um, which didn't work. And there is a little bit of, I've talked a lot on the pod about like how, Blake Snell just has like this, a Blake spell on fantasy players where just, I've never seen a player get the benefit of the doubt that Blake Snell has gotten for a decade now where he's had two good seasons, basically like two seasons where he finished as a, I think he's only had two seasons as a top 30 starting pick.
Speaker 3He's only had two seasons where he's thrown more than 130 innings and both seasons he won.
Speaker 4Some of them he's had 130 really, really good innings. And I think you can argue that that's justified, but the point is, this is a guy who gets drafted as a top 20, top 15 starting pitcher most years and almost never actually delivers on that price. And Vladimir Guerrero, it's not quite as extreme, but like going into 2026, he had an okay season last year. He was a top 50 player who was being drafted as a top 20 player. I think in part because of the post-season he had, which there's a lesson there, you know, it's not nothing, but yeah, it's a much smaller sample size. But I do think this is a guy who clearly has impact. Side, but he's hit it so rarely that I do think there was a reckoning coming, even if he wasn't as bad as he was in 2026, just because we keep giving him the benefit out that this is definitely an impact bad, that this is one of the core pieces you have to build your team around. And he just really hasn't been that most of the time. He's pretty good.
Speaker 3We had that monster season, but that was when he was playing in multiple minor league ballparks.
Speaker 42023, I think 2024. Yeah. He was, he was a top 15 player. He was a really good player
Speaker 3that year, but it was, but we haven't really seen him break fantasy outside of that one season where he was playing in the minor league ballpark.
Speaker 4And the downside, as we've seen, is a pretty unimpactful player. So I, I think he should be a top 12 first baseman this year. I have him at 12 though. Yeah. And that's lower than the consensus.
Speaker 3What makes it tough as well is that first base is loaded this year. I mean, there's so much talent. There's real opportunity cost. Yeah. I mean, if you're looking at the high end, you've got Nick Kurtz, you've got Pete Alonso, you have Matt Olson, and then you drop down a little bit. There's going to be a popular breakout pick. Once again, we have Bryce Eldridge, who's going a little bit later on, who's going to be a popular breakout. You have veterans that have done it before. Wilson Contreras, Yandy Diaz no longer has first base eligibility. So keep that in mind for any of the sickos that are drafting too early right now. I am one of them. So I'm allowed to say that, um, you mentioned you have Vlad as your 12th ranked first baseman. Scott has him at number nine. Steamer has Vlad at number six, which I think makes sense. They always lean on like the three-year averages and obviously their bet on regression, which you should, you should bet on some level of regression for Vlad. Like he's not going to be a 700 OPS bat.
Speaker 4You do go through and it's like, well, that means he's got to be higher than one of Pete Alonso, Nick Kurtz, Sal Stewart, Ben Rice, Miguel Vargas, Matt Olson, Bryce Harper, Rafael Devers. Like he's got to be higher than at least I was counting. I think he has to be higher than at least three of those guys. Yeah. I think he's probably Stewart Rice and Vargas, if I had to guess.
Speaker 3No, it's not Rice, but it is Vargas. I know the Steamer,
Speaker 4projections on Vargas are not good right now. Yeah. Um, that's a lot of guys that he has to be better than that. He wasn't. And, you know, on a per game basis, he wasn't better than Kurtz in 2025. You know, Kurtz was the best hitter in baseball on a per game basis, arguably. So I think the first base nine where Scott has him, the that's where the ADP for NFBC, you know, 20 drafts or whatever. Yeah. I think that's more justifiable than, I couldn't imagine taking him at the, at the first, at the sixth first baseman where the
Speaker 3projections say. Yeah. So that ADP for Vlad again, he's the ninth first baseman off the board. 73.6 is the overall ADP. He's going four picks behind Jack Caglione. The hype on Cags is crazy. And I get it. I get it. I mean, he's going to end up being, I think a top 60 or top 50. And once people start plugging in his Steamer projections, Cags, I think is projected as like a top 20 hitter overall in baseball for next season. So there there's a lot of excitement for Caglione, and then it's three picks ahead of Rafael Devers. So Vlad sandwiched between Cags and Rafael Devers. Show of hands, how many people would be willing to buy in on Vlad Jr. at this suppressed cost heading into next season?
Speaker 4I think that's our lowest. There was only like eight. Yeah. Look, first base nine is fine. I think that I would personally rather have Rafael Devers. I know that's a guy that's on the opposite end of the getting the benefit of the doubt spectrum. I feel like there is just, everyone is waiting for the bottom to fall out. And so we've gotten the slow start two years in a row where people are like, that's it. Rafael Devers is done forever. And no, he ends up with, I think like 35 homers two years in a row.
Speaker 3And I was so upset at the end of the season that he got hurt because you know that he was going to get to 40 home runs. It would have been the first time he would have done it in his career. He would have set a career high and he would have been the first giant to hit 40 home runs since Barry Bonds, which I think would have been awesome.
Speaker 4Willie Adamas last year was the first giant to hit 30 since Barry Bonds. Which is an, a crazy stat.
Speaker 3Yeah. I love Devers the player too. I mean, he's, he's so fun to watch when he's locked in or like you saw he's healthy in the second half and he's just absolutely locked in and just destroying baseballs. But after the season, when I dug in on Devers, there's some scary stuff in there, you know, that underlying plate discipline is still really bad. It always is, but also he overplayed the expected stats.
Speaker 4I'm like, but also Vlad had nine home runs last year. Yeah. Like I, I get the concern about Rafael Devers. One of those guys had 35 and one of them had nine. One of them was really like, it's not like Devers was significantly worse than Vlad in 2025. If he was worse at all. Um, and then he was significantly better in 2026. Again, the benefit of the doubt that we give Vladimir Guerrero, we don't give to a lot of other guys. I get it because we have seen the upside. We have seen a 45 Homer season from him and we've seen a season where he hit, he hit like 320 or 311, something like that a couple of years ago. But yeah, the, the benefit of the doubt that he gets is a little bit confusing to me.
Speaker 3Let's move on to this next one and we're going to change it up. Let's raise our hands at the top of this player. Raise your hand if you've ever been burned by Gunnar Henderson. Yeah, that's a, that's two years in a row where, uh, the ADP has been very high on Gunnar Henderson and he has not come through another down season for Gunnar. His OPS and WRC plus three-year trend OPS 893, 787, 712 WRC plus 154, 120, 101. And that does coincide with his bat speed dropping one mile per hour each of those seasons. So I don't know if it's something physical that's going on the past two seasons, they've come out after the season and said that Gunnar Henderson was playing through injury. So perhaps that's an excuse, but do we have anything that shows that he's going to bounce back? We don't necessarily have anything in the data that shows that this year he hit 24 home runs. He only hit 225, the steals down from 30 to 10. And that felt more like an organizational thing with Craig Albernaz coming in as the Orioles manager, the Orioles ranked 25th in steals as a team. So they really just were not aggressive at all, which sucks for Gunnar Henderson's fantasy value. Because it really insulated him
Speaker 4from the bottom dropping out in
Speaker 32025. Yeah, that was the year before the power was down, but he had 30 steals that year. So that obviously helps. His average EV was down nearly three miles per hour this past season. I think he tried too hard early in the year to raise his launch angle. And I think maybe that got some things out of whack for him. And you brought this up to your credit, Chris. You're one of the people I hear in the industry bring this up all the time. Really has not been great since the second half of 2024, which was when he was having that crazy MVP type season. He was neck and neck with Aaron Judge at the halfway point in 2024. 95 games in the first half of 24. He hit 286 with 28 home runs and a 956 OPS, 297 ISO. In 376 games since, he has hit 253. With a 757 OPS and a 172 ISO. So it kind of feels like we had that stretch for Jose Ramirez earlier in his career, where it was the second half of one season, the first half of the next, where he kind of just looked like he was falling off the face of the earth, but then he bounced back. This has been going on longer for Gunnar Henderson, and I don't really know what we should
Speaker 4expect him to bounce back to. And we have a good explanation. Like Jose Ramirez was the same thing as Fernando Tatis in, was it 2019 you said? - I think it was second half of 2018. 18 first half 2019 it was the same thing that fernando tatis had wrong in the beginning of 2026 where his agent came out and was like yeah he was trying to beat the shift it sapped his power and he didn't beat the shift it was a totally self-defeating change just like fernando tatis gunner henderson at with the exception of the injuries that they've come out and talked about afterwards we don't have a good explanation for why this guy looks like a superstar at 23 and at 25 just looks like a guy like he was a three win player i think a 3.6 f4 player last season something like that which is a good player but you know there are trade discussions going on i have no idea how you value gunner henderson at this point he's got i think two years why would
Speaker 3they sell low that's so weird unless they think his stock is going to continue to drop yeah like
Speaker 4i think that would be a signal if the orioles trade him right now because i think the the prudent thing if you believe that this is still a superstar caliber player is hang on to him because they're they're not going to bottom out like the orioles still view themselves as a team that's going to contend in 2027 whether anybody agrees with them i think it's a different question but um it's i i think if you believe in that you hang on to him because this would be the worst time to try to trade him and the fact that they're potentially open to it i think does that there'd be there'd be a little bit of a signal there i mean maybe mike elias is just not very good at his job anymore um but for a while we loved what elias was doing right because they had all these young bats that were coming up and they were hitting and they've kind of everybody has stalled out or gone in the wrong direction on that team and so it is it raises some concerns about their just where they are as an organization in terms of their their ability to to get the most out of their bats but also just i think it would be i think it's a genuine question whether they should trade him and given where he was and and the stature like it looked like he was one of the the five or six best players in baseball at one point and so again i i kind of hope that the injuries are the explanation but but
Speaker 3we're not going to get any updates
Speaker 4this offseason and now it's happened two years ago it's like one of those ones where it's like yeah i can i can see that as an explanation when it happens once two years in a row where we don't know that he's hurt throughout the season and then it comes out afterwards it just yeah is it an explanation is an excuse that i think it's a tough question to answer but i am certainly i think you can tell pretty pessimistic about gunner henderson at this point yeah
Speaker 3so your rank you have him as your ninth rank shortstop for next season scott has him at six steamer also has gunner henderson at six and then the early nfbc adp has him as the sixth shortstop being drafted uh right around 50th overall that's just behind kevin mcgonigal just ahead of zach netto also 15 picks ahead of francisco lindor the lindor hate i i don't know what's going on i want to hop into as many drafts as possible right now and just draft francisco lindor in the fifth and sixth round and just get it over with yeah like
Speaker 4getting lindor i know he only stole what two bases only attempted five last but he dealt with a calf injury all season so that's concerning he's 33 years old i'm pretty sure i wouldn't expect him
Speaker 3to get back to 30 but can we get 15 steals out of lindor i think so
Speaker 4and also henderson only stole 10 yeah so i i and i think we have a better explanation for why lindor only stole two than for why like henderson it just seems like that might be the organizational philosophy whereas lindor had a calf injury that makes perfect sense that he didn't steal as many bases so i would definitely rather have lindor i think i'd rather have jeremy pena um although that one's a little iffy i don't think he has the ceiling that gunner henderson does but yeah i that price feels way too high for gunner henderson yeah so
Speaker 3the adp again 50th overall just behind mcgonigal just ahead of zach netto and 15 picks ahead of francisco lindor how many people here would be willing to draft lindor in the second half of the season gunner henderson around 50th overall for next season
Speaker 4all right we only got two hands that time so that that one okay i think we're we're getting closer to to figuring it out yeah well
Speaker 3i don't know if anyone's going to want to draft this next player and that is kyle harrison the man was cruising to a breakout season with the brewers and then he had left forearm tightness which basically derailed his entire season 17 starts pre-injury 301 era 108 whip 24 percent minus walk rate 11 games after the injury only seven of those being starts he was so bad they moved into the bullpen 731 era 206 whip uh the k minus walk down to 15 percent and it did come with a drop in velocity as well as fastball velocity dropped about a mile per hour coming back from the injury which i think makes sense a big reason for his breakout earlier in the season was improved fastball shape the brewers race his arm angle last offseason which improved his spin efficiency it caused more reduced vertical break on that fastball uh which is that's the bread and butter for kyle harrison when he's going right it has to be because of the fastball and then obviously that slur can play off of that uh and as arm fatigue set in throughout the season his arm angle dropped uh and the rising action on his fastball decreased which again that kind of messed up his uh effectiveness when it was all said and done we got a 420 era and a 135 whip he's a career 432 era whip i'm like maybe this is just who kyle harrison is
Speaker 4yeah it's tough because that fastball is so unique with the two plane break that it gets and the way they were able to to harness that in the first half of the season it needs to be an outlier pitch because he's going to throw it 60 percent of the time and when it's on he was unhittable he was incredible he was one of the best pitchers in baseball for three months and i've never been a big believer in kyle harrison going back to his time as a prospect just because if you're going to be a 60 fastball guy that pitch like that that margin for error is so slim you can do it if you're cam schlittler you know like because that pitch was 100 miles yeah 99 with movement like and and he's got three of them kyle harrison's got one fat like he throws a occasional sinkers looks like he threw one cutter this year so that probably wasn't actually a cutter it was probably something else um if you're going to be that dependent on one pitch i just think it gives you a really slim margin for error and i think we saw that in action where you can make a case for kyle harrison as a top 20 starting pitcher you can make a case for him just not being in the top 60 even just being a a guy you draft in the bench rounds and i rank him higher than that i think as the offseason goes on i'm gonna talk myself out of him though what's interesting is
Speaker 3that there's actually it's a pretty narrow margin between your rank scott's rank and the steamer scott has harrison at sp 42 steamer has him at sp 45 the early adp has him at sp 54 so the market you know coming off you know the last that we saw of him was him being hurt not pitching in the postseason uh 54th starting pitcher right around pick 200 for kyle harrison and it's it's tough because we saw the upside earlier in the season but it's do you have to take the plunge there when there's so many other enticing starting pitcher sleepers always in that range you know 175 to 250 there's always so many interesting starting pitchers that come out of that range of the draft it's why do you have to take the shot on kyle harrison
Speaker 4you know so look let's look at the guys who are behind him because i think it is instructive jackson jobe we really haven't seen anything at the major league level he was good down the stretch um yeah the the whiff rate what was the whiff rate up because that was yeah i i have not been particularly impressed by him as someone who liked him as a prospect uh but then didier fuentes we don't know the difference between fuentes we don't know the role but i think if we knew he was a starter i think that ranking would go up quite a bit wabert arania i think that one's just crazy i think it's way too low what are we doing wabert arania is sp what is that 58 everybody jump in a draft right now and go take because like he okay the control is really bad but the the ability to limit hard contact the ability to miss bats like i think there's a really strong skill set for wabert arania i get he's an angel and that's probably part of it is just being skeptical of the angels but you're gonna bring in a new front office um okay at least he is ahead of jose soriano because that another guy who the spider-man meme it's you know jose soriano wabert arania but arania was good you know like that's so i i think arania is the clear one but then you've got like connelly early we don't know if he's healthy at all frambo valdez i guess i can just talk myself into kyle harris and having less wrong
Speaker 3with him it is kind of crazy i know frambo valdez was terrible this year and he he might just this might be like just the downturn in his career but it's kind of crazy for years seeing frambo valdez as like a top 50 pick and now he's down at like 220 but it happens to everybody
Speaker 4eventually i think that arise but yeah like i think that range wabert arania clearly i like more didier fuentes if he was in the rotation i would like more i'm skeptical he's going to be the closer i know that that's kind of uh a concern there i guess that range is fine
Speaker 3for kyle harris there's one that's going like 40 picks after him right now i don't know if he's going to be the right now andrew painter i absolutely love that yeah at 226 i think i'd
Speaker 4rather take that flyer on
Speaker 3he looks so much better once he got called up once he returned to the majors with the phillies and changed the pitch mix he looked really really good down the stretch so you could talk yourself into andrew painter i guess he kind of had the reverse kyle harris season harrison great in the first half painter much better in the second half but uh let's do it again show of hands how many people would be willing to take kyle harrison sp 54 adp right around 190 heading into next season
Speaker 4kyle harrison crickets we got a couple i i kind of did a half one we got one half one i i could talk myself into it but that's also because i'm coming from Ranking him higher, and so seeing the price, I'm like, okay, that price seems reasonable. But my ranking will probably lower towards his ADP at some point.
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Speaker 3Let's go right back to those hands. And raise your hand if you've ever been burned by Kyle Tucker. Yeah, I think we almost got everybody in the room there. Pretty much. First year mega deal strikes again for Kyle Tucker. First season with the Dodgers was a rough one. He had 233, 17 homers, 12 steals, 715 OPS. He's another one like Gunner. You look at the OPS and the WRC plus the last three years. 993, 841, 715, 180, 136, 100. The quality of contact down a decent bit this past season. The average EV down a mile and a half this past year. And what really crushed him is just why was he so bad at home? His home road splits, Kyle Tucker. At home, he hit 196 with a 592 OPS. On the road, hit 269 with an 833 OPS. I mean, if he just did on the road what he did at home, he's basically still Kyle Tucker, right? I mean, that's like a mid-800s OPS bat. Some power, some speed, obviously, in the middle of that lineup. He's dealt with a lot of injuries, but he's only 30. I say only 30. I mean, this is, it's still kind of like the back end of the prime of his career. To his credit, he finished very strong in September, where he hit six home runs, a near 900 OPS. He put a lot more balls in the air. The fly ball rate was way up. So, it was a strong finish to a terrible season for Kyle Tucker, and maybe it's as easy as he was just terrible at home, and those numbers have to be better next year.
Speaker 4Especially because it's not like Dodger Stadium is a bad home park. It's a very good park for Kyle Tucker to hit in. That suggests, and I know there was some, like, kind of murmuring in the offseason about, you know, kind of, I don't know, off-field, I don't want to say that, but just like his, does he love baseball? Yeah, I guess that was the question, which I always think is kind of unfair. I guess I don't care if he loves baseball. He was really good at it for seven years before last year. I don't really think that matters, but he is, you know, only 30, but also 30. You know, like, that is the point where drop-off might have happened. I kind of think he's going to be fine. Maybe not. You know, I think 2024 really leveled up the expectations for Kyle Tucker. That was the year he walked, like, 17% of the time or something, and looked like, you know, legitimately, looked like one of the five best players in baseball that year. He's never quite been that good. He was always like a, you know, that the next year, 130 WRC+. That's more what Kyle Tucker's been throughout his career. He's always been a really good all-around player who doesn't necessarily excel anywhere. I think he goes back to that. Do I think he's a 30-30 guy? No. But my expectations are probably more like 25 homers, 15-ish steals. That would still be a valuable player. That's a really valuable player in that line. I mean, he scored 90 runs this season. While being terrible. Pretty bad for most of the year. So I do think all the reasons we were so high on him going into 2026, I think most of them are still there. Maybe he's not a superstar player. I think he's still a good hitter in a very good lineup.
Speaker 3Even if he's an 800 OPS bat in the middle of the Dodgers lineup, that's probably going to produce pretty well. Like, Andy Pahez is like an 800 OPS bat and had a great season.
Speaker 4Yeah, he had 95 RBI, something like that. Like, yeah, I think the counting stats with Kyle Tucker, especially, are where I still think he could be an absolute standout, even if he's just a pretty good hitter. So I'm betting on a bounce back. The ADP is also betting on a bounce back.
Speaker 3Yeah, this is another one where it's a very narrow range between you, Scott, and the early projections. You have him at outfielder 18. Scott has him at outfielder 16. The steamer projections, outfielder 18. The early ADP is outfielder 14, around pick 55th overall. He's 20 picks after O'Neal Cruz. Eight picks ahead of Randy Rosarena, Bryce Harper, Michael Harris, Carson Bench. Show of hands, around pick 55. Who would be willing to jump back in on Kyle Tucker this year?
Speaker 4We got a lot. I think that's everyone. Yeah. I think pretty much maybe one didn't, I think. But, yeah, I think it's just, like I said, even if he's not that good, but he's not as bad as he, like, there was a lot of discussions, you know, in the comments of the YouTube, like, you know, Kyle Tucker, biggest bust in fantasy. Not even close. Like, he was at least useful. He wasn't dragging your lineup down the way Vladimir Guerrero did. Yeah. And so, I think it's a lot easier to bet on 800 OPS. That would probably be the second worst for Kyle Tucker in the last, like, six seasons. And I still think he'd be a great fantasy player in that context. Eric, you got a comment or a question?
Speaker 3Oh, yeah. That was my next question, is, like, who would you rather go after? They're in that same range. Gunner versus Kyle Tucker. Who would you guys, like, I don't know. If you're in favor of Gunner, raise your hand.
Speaker 4Just put your hand up if you say Gunner. Nobody put their hands up. All right. And I think also part of that is just. Tucker versus Gunner. Everyone's going Tucker. You'd rather bet on the Dodgers and the Orioles. I think that's a big part of it.
Speaker 3I find that interesting, though, because, like, Gunner is still five years younger than Tucker. But, yeah, I guess it's tough. That is definitely a tough question. But, you know, two guys that were borderline first-round picks last year and obviously being drafted much lower heading into next season. Next up, we have Paul Skeens. What a fun season it was. What a fun season it was for Paul Skeens. He was finally human. Sub-2 ERA, sub-1 whip each of his first two seasons. Rookie of the Year, Cy Young Award winner. Those numbers go up to a 382 ERA, a 112 whip. Didn't completely sink you, but he wasn't the ace, one of the best pitchers in baseball like we saw in his first two seasons.
Speaker 4He was himself for two months, maybe two and a half months. And so a lot of the 382 ERA 1.2 whip or 1.12 whip, like, that does look pretty good. He was kind of dragging you down for half the season, though.
Speaker 3It was more than half the season. The first nine starts for Paul Skeens, 198 ERA, 0.63 whip. And that includes the disaster on opening day. Right. O'Neal Cruz, shout out to O'Neal Cruz, who dropped like three fly balls in that game. Final 23 starts. That is a large majority of the season. Final 23 starts, a 456 ERA, 131 whip for Paul Skeens. And it coincided with a dropout. And fastball velocity as the season went on. His fastball velo by month, 97.4, 97, 96.8, 96.5, 96.7, 96.6. And that's down overall from where he was previous years, where he was consistently up over 98. So now he's sitting 96, 97. There were some starts where he was like 95, 96.
Speaker 4And he never had great, like, I remember when he was coming out of college, the one knock on Paul Skeens was he didn't have great fastball shape. Shape, yep. And he overcame it by sitting 98. And you can see the margin for error there. Two miles per hour, like 96.5 miles per hour. That's, I've been watching baseball a long time. I remember when that was elite velocity. It's still pretty good. But you clearly saw how it affected his performance.
Speaker 3And with the fastball velocity going down, the spin rate also went down on that pitch. And there was an interesting tweet that came out mid-season when this was happening from John Bowman, who worked with the Blue Jays high performance department. He asked the Blue Jays when he started working there, what's the best indicator of injury? For a starting pitcher. And it was four seam fastball spin rate decrease over the course of a season or multiple seasons. So that's pretty scary. I mean, by all accounts, everything we heard from Paul Skeens was that he was completely healthy. Yeah. Kind of blamed it on like the WBC.
Speaker 4I thought that was so lame. I've said this on the podcast, but like the fact that he went out during the world baseball class and he was like, we're America, we beat everybody. And then he's like, oh, that's why I had a bet. Like, come on, dude, come on.
Speaker 3And he's searching. He's searching for answers. No, and I understand
Speaker 4that he's frustrated and like you're looking for why. But I just think that I thought that was such a lame thing to do.
Speaker 3I'm trying to find answers. Paul Skeens is trying to find answers. I just read an article recently about while he visited Japan recently, Paul Skeens, and while he was there, he underwent a full body assessment and had custom bedding and a pillow made just for him. Noting how important rest and recovery is for Shohei Otani. So Paul Skeens is trying anything, man. Like he's getting a full body assessment. He's getting a bed and pillows made specifically for his body so that he can sleep and rest and recover. And like, clearly he's trying to figure out why his velocity and spin rates went down throughout the season as well.
Speaker 4Yeah. I find all of these explanations unmoving, I will say. I would find it more. I would think it would make more sense if he was just not healthy. The fact that he, him and the team said he's fine. And, you know, there were some mechanical things that I know people were talking about. He wasn't getting, you know, as much cross body in his delivery. And that's a big deal for him because, you know, he does come at hitters from a weird angle and he looked a little more like a normal pitcher in that regard. He wasn't crossing his front foot over his back foot the same way and it changed the angle of his fastball. And so, you know, maybe there's, this mechanical tweak can make i think that's the better explanation than anything else but it's but
Speaker 3it's kind of the chicken or the egg it's like are his mechanics messed up because he's pitching hurt even though he says he's not but and there
Speaker 4is to a certain degree every pitcher is pitching hurt through in some way yeah and so it's about finding a way to pitch effectively despite that he couldn't do that this time it is look i i think you do learn as much from players when they're struggling as from when things are going really well because paul skeens was the best young pitcher since dwight gooden like the 40 years basically rookie of the year
Speaker 3cy young yeah start your
Speaker 4career it's as good as anybody has pitched at the beginning of their career and this is the first time going back to the air force academy high school where paul skeens has had any degree of things going wrong for him and so now we're gonna see we haven't seen the adjustment yet what does the adjustment look like that's what i'm fascinated to see but based on the early price people aren't that concerned
Speaker 3yeah i think there's gonna be a wide range of opinions for paul skeens heading into next year you have him as sp16 scott has him at sp12 steamer has paul skeens at sp8 the early nfbc adp sp6 31st overall just after christopher sancho which is just ahead of jesus lozardo and chris sale and i get it i mean you could tell me he bounces back to a you know mid twos sub three era you could tell me he makes one start and his arm falls off and that's the end of paul skeens which is here that's the
Speaker 4range of outcomes for every pitcher yeah that's part of the problem
Speaker 3elevated for him just based on the way his season played out show of hands paul skeens next year uh adp sp6 31st overall are you jumping back in about half okay you know more more
Speaker 4hands started to go up as as yeah it's look when you compare him to jesus lozardo and chris sale it does it doesn't feel as bad to make the bet on paul skeens because jesus lozardo has a very shaky track record chris sale two of the last three seasons have been remarkable he's been a signing finisher i think two of the last three and he won one of them uh the other one he dealt with injuries it was a fluky injury i think it was like he was fielding a bunt and broke a rib or something um but like he's had those kind of weird fluky injuries happen enough that maybe there's something there i can see it chris sales 38 you can see things going really wrong with jesus lozardo and chris sale even christopher sanchez had a really good year also had like a 120 whip like he was actively hurting you in whip in a roto and it hurts even more because he
Speaker 3does it over so many times so i think it's a really good volume right it's like 200 plus innings of a 119 whip hurts so
Speaker 4in that context i guess you can see how the skeens bet doesn't hurt quite so much but and the underlying
Speaker 3numbers like to his credit the underlying numbers for skeens are still very good the fip the xfip the xera the swinging strike rate was right in line with his career the fastball whiff rate was right in line with the career despite the velocity being down on that pitch so you could talk yourself very easily into skeens okay buying back in after a down year and a lot of the underlying metrics are still very good for paul skeens this one is it's a vibes thing man it's just the vibes and the velocity being down just
Speaker 4i wish i had a better it really just comes down to i if i had a better explanation for why he was bad i could then buy into him figuring out how to get back to it but this like just searching and it's like my bed was wrong and the world baseball like the two starts he made in the world baseball like i just i don't find it to be a very compelling explanation for why things are like this and i think it's a really good example of how things went so bad for him that like does he have an answer for how things get good again that i guess that's my the thing i'm bumping up against not pitching in the wbc uh we
Speaker 3are going to wrap up here with jordan walker when i put out that tweet asking people who are the toughest players to rank for next season jordan walker was far and away the name that i got most the toughest player just what do we do with him uh former top prospect finally had that big breakout season he hit 269 29 homers great counting stats right around 200 runs plus rbi 22 steals how did he do it he cut down the strikeouts he upped his launch angle he is an absolute freak athlete 100th percentile bat speed 91st percentile sprint speed uh but what makes it tough so tough to rank is that it did kind of fall off as the season went on the first two months were tremendous ops over 900 94.4 average ev the final four months 258 730 ops 91.6 average ev that's really dramatic he was dragged down by just a brutal september where it came out after the season that he was playing through a hip injury down the stretch which i think is a pretty good excuse for you see how bad his september was i'm opting to look at this one glass half full man like i i just want to bet on an elite prospect with elite tools just being really good and you look back at last year pca and james wood going in the third round of drafts people were scared about their second halves just bet on the elite prospects who have freakish tools and i think jordan walker fits that
Speaker 4mold there is um there's a degree of josh allen to to make another cross sports comp there's a degree of josh allen to like peter armstrong where i actually think it's unhelpful to compare anyone to those guys like you'll see every bad rookie quarterback they're like yeah but josh allen figuring out it's like that doesn't happen like josh allen is the and i think peter armstrong like the changes he made last year i do think there's an element of we probably shouldn't compare anyone to peter armstrong but and i do think one of the research pieces i need to get to in the next couple of weeks because i've referenced him multiple times i need to look up whether the breakout who doesn't run through the finish line whether that matters because i tend to think it does certainly i'd feel better about the guy who's great the whole season than the guy who falls and as we say all the time full season statistics are more predictive than partial season statistics and you're gonna drive yourself mad trying to figure out uh but the first 76 games are the real one and like that you should generally just take the full season so jordan walker had a really really good season the problem i'm bumping into is just okay he had a really bad september well he had a really bad three years before that you know like this was a guy who was the top prospect in baseball or number two when he debuted and failed like failed spectacularly got sent down multiple times and so yes september is the outlier for last season but it's in line with what he was doing beforehand and so that that's really tough especially because like you said the three months before that were good but not great it is a really good skill set though really strong tools the stolen bases going getting to 22 that's a big deal it like we said with gunner henderson when those steals go down you lose the insulation for for your when for when you inevitably slump or when you have a bad half a season if you can still still steal bases there's at least room for you to make up for that in some ways and so he does have that i think i'm mostly buying it i think not quite to the extent i mean he was a top 15 player overall i'm not going to rank him that high but i'm mostly buying in especially at his price i think his price is perfectly fair so far yeah
Speaker 3and that price for jordan walker he's currently the 12th outfielder being drafted 33.5% of the time he's been drafted and he's been drafted for the last five years so consistent third round pick right where
Speaker 4pca and james wood yeah it's eerily similar i
Speaker 3think we just all decided i totally put him there i totally get what you're saying about pca i think james wood might even be a better comp just because body size they're both just gargantuan human
Speaker 4beings the strengths and limitations for both of them are very similar the biggest difference
Speaker 3though james wood has a great eye at the plate and he's very patient jordan walker does chase a lot of pitches and that's where you look pca made massive improvements in that way but can you project that right that was that was not something we saw coming for pca we thought okay maybe he could improve his plate discipline a little bit alex bregman coming in they were talking about
Speaker 4that you could see maybe him going from the worst in baseball to the 15th worst in baseball he ends up becoming like a legitimately really good plate discipline guy in a way that you just can't you
Speaker 3can't project that for jordan walker you hope that it happens and maybe he can get a little bit better in terms of cutting down on that chase rate that's the one thing that scares me a little bit about jordan walker is that is he going to be prone to being a shrieky player because he's chasing a lot of pitches i think there's going to be some of that yeah you have him ranked as your outfielder 12 scott has him at outfielder 12 steamer projections outfielder 16 again the adp 12th outfielder right after jackson merrill and ahead of oneo cruz which is a pretty interesting range show ends jordan walker adp 33.5 third round pick how many people here are willing to take jordan walker with that pick less very few
Speaker 4very few all right interesting
Speaker 3yeah yeah because i felt
Speaker 4a lot for being skeptical about jordan walker last season like throughout the season every time he'd come up i'd be like i'm not so sure we should buy in 100 i don't know no i guess question comment jordan walker so the questions about the home run derby and whether that affected him i usually bring
Speaker 3this stuff up just to troll chris because he always he's like oh yeah just blame it on the
Speaker 4home run derby the so like i think like for the for those of you who are old enough to remember his performance he also just had a really good second or first half in a way that he never had before he had never been that i think he had like 24 homers at the all-star break or something that was not the kind of hitter Bobby Abreu was and so I feel like that was at least the first time I remember the home run derby messing people up being a narrative and I think what it's kind of like the Madden curse if you had a good enough season to be on the cover of Madden you probably just had the best season of your career and what that means is that the Madden curse doesn't actually exist it's just regression to the mean I think that's usually what you see I'm not going to say it never happens but like guys are doing batting practice every day they're trying to hit home runs during batting practice as well like I get the idea behind it I just I don't think historically that the the data supports the home run derby being a real thing especially once you start comparing yeah most guys do perform worse in the second half than the first half after they perform in the home run derby that's usually because their first half was
Speaker 3just better yeah so I especially for me I think that's a good thing I think that's a good thing I think that's a good thing for someone like Jordan Walker who's never done it before so the most likely outcome is that he was always going to regress a little bit at least in
Speaker 4the second half so I I can't say there's definitely nothing there but my my strong lean is that the home run derby doesn't really matter and just in Jordan Walker's case the season that he had was the season that he had and I think trying to parse you know the first half was real the second half was real I think you can you can lose yourself I think that's a that's a way to get lost in the second half of the season I think that's a way to get lost in the in the forest or whatever the idiom is all right
Speaker 3those are the eight players very tough players to rank for 2027 we do have an open mic anybody want to make your FBT debut hop on up yeah let's go grab that mic last year I got the Ben Rice question yeah yeah um I guess my question is more first off what's your name and where are
Speaker 6you from uh Jonathan from Orlando
Speaker 3talking
Speaker 6to the mic from Orlando hello John yeah nice to meet you guys what's up man um so my question is my draft strategy the past few years I'm like a four-time champ which feels good all right generally been like we have a big keeper league so it's like I hold on to mainly my position players because I feel like it's scarcer to have good hitters like in the past few years you guys talk about like you know pitching um rookies generally come on strong hitting so I guess my question is the last few years I've been investing in my keepers and my hitters getting my one through nine solid then pitching is a lower priority borderline streamers but the last few years I've kind of shafted me because um like I don't know pitching hasn't been good and then Kyle Tucker had a down year Jose Ramirez had a down year so how do you guys I guess my question how do you guys alter like your draft strategy based on like the pitching hitting ebbs and flows and like should I change my strategy I think
Speaker 3one thing that you brought up there and this was really unique to 2026 is that so many of the early round hitters were just so bad this past season not in a way that I think is like predictive or that we should expect moving forward if you look at previous years and I know you did work on this Chris it's just you know you've been doing a lot of work on this the return on investment that you usually get in the first round hitters or first couple rounds is usually the best bet that you can make and this past season it was like the worst it's been in a decade or the past
Speaker 4five years yeah um so in in world war one right here we go in world war one there were still very early on they were doing like cavalry charges in world war one before they realized that oh no that's really bad to do when machine guns are on the battlefield and I say that to say you don't want to get caught fighting the last war like the things that change that the things that went wrong last season are probably going to be unique to last season and every season is going to be different you want to look at larger trends and the larger trends are that investments in hitters generally return better than investments in pitchers just because early round investments yeah early but I think every point in the draft pitchers are going to be the problem is you have to have pitchers so you you have to draft them but generally speaking hitters are going to be more predictable than pitchers pitchers there's just so much more that can go wrong for them just not just injuries which we all know but like Paul Skeens was apparently healthy and was just terrible for months so that does happen with hitters and obviously I think you know last year's hitter group I think in the early rounds was probably older than we're used to and so maybe there was just a little more inherent volatility you mentioned someone like Jose Ramirez yeah 32 33 so many
Speaker 3injuries too it was like Judge got hurt
Speaker 4yeah Jay Ram got hurt and but I think as a general rule if you have to choose between investing in hitters and investing in pitchers it's going to be better in the long run to invest in hitters even if it maybe didn't work out last season
Speaker 6so you still believe in the what's that one
Speaker 4song pitching can wait yeah
Speaker 3so yeah yeah and I like Scott is someone who talks about this a lot in that there's a lot of variability in pitching from year to year so the way he attacks it is just through volume of in the middle rounds let me take as many upside breakout shots as humanly possible that you know within reason in the middle rounds and just hope you hit on enough
Speaker 4of those you're gonna have to you're gonna have to survive attrition at pitcher yeah no matter what
Speaker 3your approach is um and I know Nick Pollock talks about this a lot too there are so many pitchers every year that are outside the top 200 drafted or picked up earlier in the season that can help you win I mean you look at guys like Cade Cavalli or even a Braxton Ashcraft who was great for most of the season or in season Sean Burke or Justin Robleski who were just guys you picked up that had these awesome stretches for my nemesis Eduardo Rodriguez your favorite this year's uh Martin Perez right who's next year's Martin Perez might be Martin Perez again pitching for the Braves again just keeps doing it thank you for the question man appreciate it anybody else want to hop up all right that's it we are gonna wrap there for Chris and our producer James Gale I am Frank thank you all for being here live and to the millions tuning in at home we'll be back again next week if you watch the podcast stay with me now three two one bye
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