WAF 227 - Labor Day Lessons Learned

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1:07part of the Pitcher List Podcast Network, with Van Burnett and Steve Giswelli. Welcome back everybody. It is Wins Above Fantasy Episode 227, Thursday, September 3rd, as this comes out. Record Wednesday night, Van Burnett joined as always by Steve Giswelli. Welcome to you, Die Hards, who are joining us in September. Hopefully your seasons are still well alive. I think last week I marked the end of my all important home week season and this week's Steve, I think we go ahead and put a nail in the coffin for both our seasons, which is ceremonious for the topic of tonight. We're talking Labor Day, Lessons Learned. We hope you guys geek out on this as much as we do because kind of the mission statement a waffer years in the running has been having some accountability and having a little bit of looking in the rear view and not just taking victory laps,

2:08but also looking at things that we might have missed where we can improve. Hey, but when we get stuff right, we also want to look at that too and see if we can learn year over year. So very fun show. I know Steve leading up to it. It's a long lead up because all the way back to April second show, episode 208, as we're now on episode 226. We said things all throughout the spring that were, oh, this would be a good show to come back to. We got to look at this later in the year and see how this stuff worked out. And this is the show exactly for that where we are going to hand pick five of our crystal ball episodes from April and early May and basically talk through what the hits were, what the misses were, and the bigger process, learnings, or what we might take into next year, either from a managing standpoint or from actually running Windsboat Fantasy as a podcast, Steve, because we might be like, oh, we got to circle that episode. Can't wait, man, a lot of fun.

3:08And now that we're both out, it feels appropriate. So how are you doing? How are you hanging in? It's good. I'm still, we were talking a little bit off air. I'm not in like that. I miss this yet mode, just because of how frustrating my team was all year. It was great sneaking in and making the playoffs and keeping that streak alive. I think I've made it every year, but one since 2014, something like that. Yeah, that's a good story. Yeah, I think I missed it like 2022. So I have a decent, decent one. Everything was going, everything was going against you. So that's fair. And so yeah, kind of the same for me, dude. We like, there's some bad beats like not so to get an injury, max, fire out for the season. Like when you know that it would take kind of a miracle to win it, at that point, it's kind of like, I'm gonna go down swinging, but put me out of my misery a little bit. It's actually funny. This is like the best year I've had elsewhere, other than my home league. I mean, second in my TGFBI league, not gonna win it because the person in first,

4:11overall, is in my league by like mile. So, you know, that would be a nice finish. I'm close to the money in my NFC, PC 50. And then two other smaller home leagues that I do, I'm bouncing back with the fourth between first and the road, or league that I do. And then in second and the other head to head, like keep your league that I'm in. So, you know, still can have a good overall year. And like two days ago, I literally turned off the underdog notifications with like all the lineup posts, you know, like that tweets it out. I'm like, actually, I still need this. Like, you know, I still, I can't just completely check out. You know, not a different second to you. That's impressive. I've landed in seventh purgatory for TGFBI. I think that was one of our new years of resolution. So good on you, Steve. So, thoughts and quick thoughts on the topic itself, Steve. And then we probably got about 10 minutes per of the five episodes to just dive in.

5:13So it's going to be a speed test for us tonight. That's right. I think that if anything, this is less so of us being right or wrong, which is important. But I think it's helped us develop good processes. And like a lot of these episodes are recurring topics because they've worked before, right? I think that's sort of the biggest thing that we take from this. We're not going to be 100% on our takes or even close to that. But at least we'll understand what the processes are. And like, why we talk about the guys we talk about when we do early season observations and why maybe there's some more signal than noise. At least that's the goal. Right. So if anything, it's a good start to like audit season. This is like the tax season of Waff, right? We'll go through our chalkboard picks and all that as the season comes to a wrap here. But we do come out throughout the year,

6:13like you say, for a lot of episodes and say, oh, we got to come back with it, come back and see how we did with this. We'll check in on these calls. So be true to our word here, which is good. Yeah, I think it was maybe our first year or two as we're now in like year six that we would say that a lot and never actually do it, other than the chalkboard episode. So it's nice that we're holding true to it. And it's also hard because there's so much stuff to talk about, right? Like the content sort of, or the idea sort of make themselves not like too hard to think of topics each week and we're not a daily show. So a lot of things go on and there's a lot of stuff to talk about as well. But yeah, it's good to come back to the episode. It's totally fair back to you. Yeah, and sometimes it takes three years in a row of saying every April we got to come back to this before you wake up to the reality of it. All right, so we'll dive in. And this is a little bit different of a format for the regular listeners. We, a lot of times we tend to have our minds made up

7:14on a player take or where we want to take the topic. We've kind of got the table set to look back on these, but there's going to be some freestyle on the fly. I mean, like our rundowns usually it's just like a list of 12 players, which is fine, but it's kind of, it's our bread and butter. This is totally different. Yeah, it is different. So we are jumping in the time machine. Way back to April 2nd when Spring was in the air. We were all were watching every single at bat. And it was, I think our first episode since the season had begun. And the show topic was what you should care about in one weekend and kind of looking basically at early season observations. Now for that, we were basically saying, as we do every year, that it's overreaction season and it's too quick to look at anything around surface stats or barrel rate as things haven't stabilized yet, basically. But the stuff that has the bigger denominator,

8:15which you've called out Steve, that tends to be the stuff we look at in a handful of these early season shows. So for this one, one weekend, it was really looking at bat speed changes for hitters. And then velocity gainers for pitchers or pitchers who added a pitch mix. And there's kind of a theme throughout our whole season, which I don't know about you, Steve, but it surprised me. I know he's in name that's easy to talk about, especially how loud the production's been this year. But PCA popped up in like three or four of our episodes early on. And he didn't really like light the world on fire from a result standpoint the way that he eventually did throughout the rest of the year. But PCA was a really big one. And then in name, we just talked about last week Liam Hicks, which he did have some loud production early on. But we assessed and basically said, this is encouraging that some of the swings of the bat speed

9:17had picked up. And for a guy like Liam Hicks, I was actually just a little sent into it in my car tonight, which is always funny. Like, let's go listen to ourselves from five months ago. Talking about how Liam Hicks was like a seller dweller on bat speed or like 20th percentile up to like 50th percentile. I were like, oh, well now at least he's middle of the road. And he's had three home runs as well. And what we ended up finding is Hicks wasn't this Cal Raleigh type of of Homer production, but the hit tool was great. So like, I think an early lesson for these just on the hitter side was that Michael Harris, another one, some of those bat speed gains. I think you're allowed to get excited about that. I know you can't look at it in a complete vacuum, but some of those name, and there were miss a little bit of misses there too. So you have to look at the process because I know a guy like Matt McClean was one that we were like, he let the world on fire with spring training, but then he started out ice cold. His bat speed was still up.

10:18So maybe you have to accept that you might hit on two and miss on one, but overall, I think first week April next year, I'm totally endorsing that as a helpful show, right? And I think you're maybe given us too much of a haircut or a discount on the PCA takes. He was on a lot of our early season run downs, and we liked a lot about that. And he was term memory loss. Drops or traded for very, very cheap early in the season because people were panicking after the bad second half and the slow start, right? He really did not pick up the pace until the middle of May, maybe even a little bit later. And there was a great article in the Wall Street Journal today, I think by Jimmy Diamond. I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal.

11:18I'll look it up when you riff here. But there were some adjustments he made to his stance that maybe we didn't pick up on, but there were some other things that we did. And I think we were carrying a torch when a lot of people were out on PCA because they combined the slow start with the concerns from the second half. So I'll give us some credit there. But yeah, overall, this is a list that I'm pretty much buying. The list, the seven names that we had was PCA, Liam Hicks, Matt McLean, Isaac Collins, Cam Smith, Michael Harris, and Jackson Barrel. It's really just like Matt McLean, Isaac Collins, and Cam Smith. And you know, Cam Smith and Matt McLean have been usable at points. Isaac Collins, we qualified that as an extremely deep league take, right? So overall, like if we were just looking at guys that were rostered, like every single one of these guys, we pretty much wanted. I know, Marl took a while, but it was still there. And I think our position was that, okay, he looks healthy now.

12:19And even during his poor production months overall, he was still providing homeers and speed. So I'd still tend to count that one as a W. And I think this is definitely going to be something that we look at early in the season next year. Yeah, and I think Marl is right there with PCA that it wasn't just the early bat speed, but it was also on the Bilo hitters because the bat speed was still there. Some of the bat at ball data was up there. So I think that's a lesson learned too, that it's, you know, bat speed might take a minute to come around. Yeah. And I think maybe we could sort of like, okay, is this guy healthy? Whoever we have a health concern with, like Jack Samarro, you know, come off an injury riddled year, swing the bat harder, great sign, right? Yeah. Yeah, we could, we could apply it to, you're better refined where we, where we, who we choose to look at in the Gainers list

13:21than not just necessarily look automatically, bat speed up, great, you know, there can be some sort of qualification and, you know, I test too, and human element that you could apply rather than just filtering a leaderboard, you know? Yep. Yeah, and I think it's a fair reminder and kind of the subtle victory lap that for how good PCA now has been on the season, right? 38 homers, 32 steals, a 280 batting average. Month of April, it was a 683 LPS, 237 batting average, even in May. People were panicking. People were panicking. Because the cost was still super high, and the second half was so bad last year. Yeah, and, but it was not just the bat speed, it was also the whiffs were down, I know it's jaces were up, but we were kind of citing that, you know, bat speed with elite athleticism, can afford to have some swing and miss in the game.

14:23And I think that still holds true. On the pitching side of this, let's look at some of the, some of the topics on this. So pretty much we had fastball velocity as its own group and Kodai Sango was a funny one now. I was like looking back at it at the time. Yeah, but Steve, I was cracking up, listening to it because I was basically like, all right, Steve, take your victory lap. You were ahead of the industry and you literally were like, I will not take a victory lap on April 2nd. It's a good sign that Sango is healthy. So you actually was a lower cost. And then he wasn't right. But I think that's the right idea. I do think it's still interesting that Dylan Seas, who ended up with an excellent, almost like Sai Young were the year in terms of the line, and Dustin May, who it took a little bit of bumps in the road, but he ended up having a, basically a miniature breakout year that they both had substantial Velo jumps in the first week.

15:27Imanaga, you talked about health. He was on the list, Al Contra. And then there was, I guess when you look at some of the guys that we had listed for breaking ball velocity, where it was like Mike Burrow's, Kevin Gossman, Imanaga, maybe this exercise is a bit, I don't know if we can answer that. I don't know if we can answer that. Care was much about that. Right. And Libertor on the flip side of that, if you remember, he had that really strong spring. And I know he just talked about him on last episode as still doing interesting things. But his velocity did come down in April from where it was sitting in spring. And Libertor did not turn into some fantasy breakout. So I think basically speed wins early on to be like the last ball for fastball. For fastball and for bad speed. Yes. First week speed check is the idea. There we go. That's our, you got to show topic and a show name for that. Yeah, shooting radar. Let's go. So that is episode 208.

16:30I can scan to see if there's anything else. I mean, there were certainly misses in there. But I would just highlight for the pitch mix changes, like Sasaki, maybe that wasn't the adjustment, but that he was tweaking. I think that was a good sign. Sandy Alcatara overall. Another were some rough spots in April, May. And he got going really in the second half here. Kyle Harrison. Definitely it was a good call there too. Yeah. So I think worth noting, but velocity, it seems, is the primary. We could probably do a topic just on that, based on our sort of post-mortem analysis of that episode. Yeah. I like it. OK, so that was 208. So let's fast forward a week from then. A whole week and get to April 9th. At this point, it's like matchup week three. And our chat back in four steves, like, what do we want to talk about? It's got to be waiver wire, where this is the show, where

17:31it's like, if you add a guy who pops on April 9th, you are getting so much production throughout the rest of the season. The flip side is, of course, giving up on other players too early, which is always the challenge. But pulling up this episode log, I think one that jumps out, which was so deep in terms of the roster ship was Sean Burke, who was just 6% rostered. This was one that we had talked about in years past. We liked the extension. At the time, we thought the white socks were not going to be a playoff picture team. It was only early April. And we were kind of joking and laughing at who is in the rotation. They're going to need to get innings out of some of these guys. And Sean Burke is one that, if the strikeouts are truly a strike out per inning, it looked like he really had got the walk rate

18:31and check and looked super productive with the big frame and everything. He was a follower at the time as well. So Sean Burke was a good one there. For what it's worth on how he got on our radar, that was a guy who had some back of the baseball card production. And he was, we talked about how he was hyped up, heading into last season two. So maybe a little bit of a post-hype. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair because that would apply to Max Meyer, who was only 12% rostered at the time. And he was mid for those first couple outings. But the slider still looked great in terms of swing and miss. Control was troublesome. And that was one that we were like, OK, let's watch it. And then I know personally, Steve, it took like one more really good start before I jumped in, major bomber that Meyer got injured. Because before he got injured, he was looking like, honestly, a top 25 pitcher with the production he was bringing. Maybe even better.

19:32Yeah. It's unfortunate that he's hurt again. It's a neck though this time, which is a little bit better. I know that is connected and everything close to the arm and shoulder. And he's had that issues in the past. But he was something that I drafted because he looked somewhat better in spring. It took a bit. And it was just like getting used to that adjustment coming back from that major hip surgery. And it paid off. It's now just a question like, all right, is he ever going to be good enough to last the entire season? Because there are three-month stretches where Max Meyer pitches like a top 20 pitcher. He just does not have the long-gevity to do so. Yet he'll be discounted. I'll treat him like Chris Boobitch, right? I'll bank on his three-grade month's tall June until he either gets hurt or proves that he could do it for longer. So I still like Max Meyer for an extra year.

20:34Even he'll probably be discounted if he doesn't return this year, which doesn't look like he will. I do too. And broader than the player itself, I think, with Meyer, kind of like Burke, names that we liked in the past that were still young enough to make, like meaningful improvements. But Meyer had changes as well. Like his sweeper usage had jumped from 10% up to 25% or something crazy. And I think it's just a sign that even if the results don't look good, the swing and miss stuff looked good. So that's where I think some of those things early on, like pitch mix or swing and miss, can be more effective or still very like effective tools in there. What was Jordan Walker's Rossership percentage? I know it's not on the notes here, I don't know, if you listen then and we mentioned it. But I'm curious as to what that was on April 9th.

21:36I don't have it right in front of me, but what I want to go look at is, so okay, and in the March run of games, he already had homerd was hitting 294 with a 988. And so at this point, April, this would have been a full week of April after that, which was his eight home or month. I'm pretty sure Steve to be fair. Now we did talk about him in the off season, but I'm pretty sure how we positioned this was. All right, you're probably not going to be able to get Jordan Walker, but we got to start out by saying he looks like a priority ad. So I guess what's the lesson learned on Walker? Because he ended up being one of the hallmark early ads of the entire year. We did talk about him going to drive line in the off season. Like does this also fit into the post-type sleeper category? When a guy with that much underlying quality contact skill shows any stretch of results run, don't walk to add.

22:43If Cam Smith next year comes out and pulls five fly balls in the first week of the season. It's a sprint. Yeah, don't question it. Yeah, you know, who, you know, some of that we'll talk about. If Cal Raleigh, you know, he continues the hot scripts at these on in September and late August early next year, you know, put in a bump up around or something next year, right? Like Mark Viento's just like guy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, in a way, you got to remember where we're at with Jordan Walker. He was still playing, but it seemed like a guy who you were no longer. I mean, he wasn't, he probably wasn't projected for the, like, starting role, like for the most part, like that's how he was drafted, basically. Yeah, it was just because the Cardinals were in blowup mode. It's like, yeah, what, why not? We'll see, but I think a combination of drive line.

23:43But honestly, like, Sean Berks a little different, because Max Meyer and Jordan Walker both came up with the expectation. And they were top. They could like the world right far. Yeah. And Sean Berks obviously nowhere near to that extent, but six foot six pitcher that, you know, seven feet of extension. And like he was on our radar prior to, I think in past year Steve, we've talked about lessons learned as like it's a young man's game, but it's kind of also like bet on the tools in a way. And especially if tools match up with a narrative of something they've tweaked or changed. But I think overall, like when you look at both of these episodes combined, right, where if you're just talking about the waiver relevant ones, that would be Dustin May. It would be maybe a little bit of Rocky Sasaki in the right league size. Granted, he had his ups and downs.

24:43Sean Berk, Jordan Walker, Max Meyer, like I think part of this story is still you want to be pretty twitchy on adding guys that have either like name or prospect, kind of great paired with Velo or Bat Speed or a notable change. Like I still think it's worth swinging and missing on three of those. Yeah. If you hit one because those are kind of league winners, right? Be aggressive early on. That's that's the mantra there. Yep. And it was a Jared Diamond at the Wall Street Journal wrote on PCA great article today on the stand. So adjustments that he had. So shout out there. That's good. Well, okay. So that is first two weeks of April, early season observations, the waiver show. We're going to take our first ad break and we'll be back with our next one, which is hitter changes that matter in early season. We'll be right back after the insurance isn't one size fits all.

25:45That's my driver's have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years now with the name your price tool. You tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Plus, to contribute to your your policy weight look, I understand you of what it's about. It's because your business might take you had to pay with your service boss today. It's more of land office strategy and you aren't carrying it. So maybe you can reject your service budget before start after you have the same. Third guess is that well now I have my boss. So you might be included in my interview? Okay, so Steve just scooting on down to episode 210 on April 16th. So this now mid April,

26:52but still not quite deep enough to get into like meaningful bad ball samples on barrel rate, anything like that. So we were looking at this might have been a stop sheet. Let me pull it through. Yeah, it was. It was. This was a great stop sheet where it was combining a handful of ingredients of chase rate swinging strike rate, bat speed, all overlaid, which honestly, what a great like topic. Let's just cement that as one that we got to pull in next year. Yeah, for sure. I mean, so because what things do you want, if everything we talked about on bat speed gets paired with plate discipline as it relates to swing strike and chase. So some of the names we talked about, which there are a lot of names on this show. But some some hits of misses. So the guys who were chasing less and had more contact were Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Tarrang, Riley Green, Louise Robert, who's out

27:56of a gig, Taylor Ward, then Willie Adamis, Matt McClain, Miguel Vargas was a really interesting one. I briefly listened to this episode, Steve, just prepping for the pod and popped over to the Vargas segment at the time of this episode. He was hitting 176 or something. And in our defense, it was like, man, he's built us up to let us down in the past, but he's only 26 years old. He could be a good like corner guy, right? He still got that in him. And we had no idea. He was about to we were even talking about like, who knows? He could get up to 20 home runs, there he is September 2nd, 29 homeers, 13 steals. So you got to take your victory laps there, but at the same time process wise, there are a handful of misses in here too. So that was one section. The next one was more power less swing and miss. So this had bat speed gains. And then the swing strike rate improving. Freddie

28:56Freeman, Mac, Mike Trout, Matt McClain again on their Brian Reynolds, Miguel Vargas, PCA, there he was, Lendor, who got injured kind of shortly after. So not a full fair crack. And then the next were junior came in arrow, Jackson Meryl, Colquith, Mark Vientos, Brent and Doyle came Smith, Hunter Goodman. So thoughts here, Steve, it's kind of a mixed bag. It almost feels like a 50 50 hit rate, but as a topic, it seems pretty iron clad on the stuff that you want to be looking at three weeks into the season, right? Yeah. And I mean, most 50 50 maybe, I mean, yeah, I guess Freddie Freeman's a little bit disappointed, Matt McClain. At the end of that then, but pretty much everywhere else like Lendor hurt Colquith, didn't really play much. Mark Vientos, I think I'm officially done with him. Goodman, Meryl, Caminaro, PCA, Vargas, even Brian Reynolds, like Trout had a bit of a bounce back.

29:56Like a lot of these guys had really, really good years. I think this is overall a pretty good process. Yeah, and I guess even, oh, I was looking at, yeah, Reynolds, I mean Reynolds had a bounce back comparison, but I mean, he definitely seems like father time has started to bounce him off of that like eight year stretch of being a 25 home or 280 guy, but it's just odd that other ones this early on, I guess it's just maybe a hot, hot streak when you look at, I don't know, you're not even looking that much data for like a Bretton Doyle. So maybe those are so. Yeah, maybe it's a little irrelevant. Yeah. Tighten up our sample size there, brought in our sample size. Yeah, for a guy like Colt Keith, I'm just kind of bouncing around. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of, that's been kind of middling for him being like a platoon guy, but you're right. I mean, a lot of them, if you remove kind of the injury frustrations, maybe these are good ones

30:59to be like by-laws as well, because for a guy, I think I can't even enter. Not the good minute, 100 good minute PCA. You know, Camino, you know, I, you know, I, did he got off to a little bit of a slow start, I think. Yeah, in the Marlota, right? Right. Now, I wanted to see, I know Camino era had a big April, but where did all those home runs like when we did this show, Camino era was sitting at four home, yeah, four homers. He had just gone back to back. So, I mean, I guess that was still at a time where like, you maybe could have gotten him cheaper than what we now know. Yeah, like a 900 OPS, 37 homer guy. So it's early in the season to be trading, but I think a lot of these were heads, and then a few outliers. So good, good show topic on this one as well. Let me look at

32:00season change. So that was April. Then we, we kind of fast forward because after that, Steve, we looked at barrel rate, which that one, that one is kind of an interesting one because a lot of those names were more just calling it where we talk about something more of like a descriptive. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think it's still worthy of talking about, but I don't know that those are as much like crystal ball ones. I mean, I would say, I would say barrel rate, it's probably pretty predictive. Like, you know, that's true. I mean, I guess I think it's fair. I know we didn't have it in the run there, but I think it's fair to run into it if we, if we want. That's why we do it, you know, barrel rate is more predictive of than a guy. So they did hit five home runs, right? If it was five home runs, that three just scraped the wall, right? It's almost less meaningful than someone that's running at 15% power rate after a 5% power rate that you're before, you know?

33:00Yeah, I guess honestly, it's one of the original like predictive ones. What I was thinking is I wonder how many of those their barrel rates were high because they were already on fire. Yeah. Yeah. South, I just pulled it up. I can, I can drop it because I know we're just kind of, kind of freestyle about drop this rundown in the, in the discord, but looking at episode 212 for barrel rate on April 30, which was right when we got to the point of like 50 battered balls in play. Like, South Stewart at that point was already, I see what you're saying. Like it's more of like validation in a sense. Like, all right, South Stewart's legit, you know, like that's, but there is kind of a mix of both. So McGonagall was another one that had a really loud start, but then you look right after McGonagall, we talked about Dylan Dingler, who at the time was hitting 247. And his barrel rate was super high. And he went on to have a 26 home or a year. Still, the

34:05batting average kind of held around there. Casey Schmidt was another one. I know we talked about before we started rolling. Maybe not the overall line that it looked like his first half was kind of capable of, but still a pretty productive year at like 21 homers. Like, you know, there was probably a five or six week stretch where Casey Schmidt was one of the best guys on my roster for a home. You're telling me. So interesting name. And he was one that at the time that that, I'm pretty sure he was like nine percent roster. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, just keep looking down this list. What's kind of interesting is Spencer Steer popped up on a ton of these shows. And he just kind of was ho-hum at the end of the day. I know he that's kind of the nature of the Spencer Steer experience. But yeah, some of these guys tend to be on here like Elliott Ramo. This is another one that it seems like he's always up on, you know, pitcher list, like leaderboards and swing acceleration and

35:12stuff. But maybe those some of those names again, like as Elliott Ramo's one, it's not quite, it doesn't quite come with the buzz of Jordan Walker in terms of the history, but he could be a one one that like if the bat speed gets even higher next year and he's got four homers in the first week, that might be like a don't wait till made to grab a guy like that. Yeah. I mean, like Spencer Steer to give like it's the best power rate of his career by like four points. It's the best hard hit rate of his career by like five points. You know, he despite having a 12% power rate is homeward to fly. We're already is just at 15%. Like he's having essentially the same years last year, but he's doing a lot more things better. Well, yeah, I guess to be to be fair to him. So pretty much the last three years Spencer Steer is averaged 21.5 home runs per season. That's been with an average of 152 games. Yeah. He's at 16 and 90. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So on a rate basis.

36:14Yeah. There you go. Yep. So yeah, Steer is kind of projecting out at one of his best like power outpits. So I think that's fair. And as a 28 year old, maybe we should seem like he'll be a great I think this is it's early talking, but this is a great deep. You know, this is going to be a he's put out outfield and where else is he put this season? He's put it first base. He's put it second base. Yeah, he's going to be an NFBC darling next year. Yeah, the other thing is in terms of like he sits against lefties every now and then it last year against lefties, a 229 average 727 OPS. And his share right now. He's on the ice. This year at 342 average against lefties with a 1062 OPS. So he's kind of weird, but then he's just been struggling versus varieties. Yeah, he's an interesting yeah. Interesting use case. But yeah, I guess to be fair, the the barrel show could have

37:18been on this rundown before we just chucked it on. Yeah, yeah. Should have been. Yeah, I think it's I think it's a fair topic to keep coming back to and it's totally valid. All right, so that was end of April. We get to May and now we are looking at by-lows on May 14th. So this was basically what you might say is kind of a hallmark episode for our calendar year, Steve. Yeah, because it's got probably the best data points on buying a dip versus trying to justify a player that's like on the extreme decline. But our lead-in was talking about like trade season, who to buy back on and naturally buy lows are going to be like bigger ticket names. So I guess give me the lesson learned because we let off with Fernando Tatis Jr.,

38:20who's been one of like just the ultimate roller coasters this year. And I know you've been on the coasters. So talk about what we talked about on this episode and what kind of lesson learned you might take away from the the Tatis Jr. run that we had this year. So this is silly. But if you traded for Fernando Tatis on May 13th, you got an 868 OPS 298 average 19 homers in 21 stall on basis. I traded for Fernando Tatis on May 6th. So a week before that. So and look, to be fair, it was a struggle for most of May and even with June, like his June wasn't that great. Yeah. But at that time, at four home runs,

39:22at a two 45 bad average. So for me, here's the hard part, right? Because maybe his numbers weren't as bad right now. He was being buoyed by average and LBP. Like Vlad Jr. is also a similar call. The lesson is okay. You know what I was about to say is like, okay, a big name like that, you just told you knows and trade for him. The next two guys on our list are probably examples why and maybe Vlad Jr. why that may not not be the case. And there's still some downside. But you know, I also think for Vlad, there's been like on and off back injuries all year. Like he's talked about him like, you know, taking hundreds of swings. Like he's clearly not there mentally. But at the same time, the same thing was said about Tatis, right? Like him, he's talking working with Mani Machado out in the early season. Like Steven Susa getting snippy with the press,

40:27the Padres hitting coach, right? Him not him, you know, blaming the like not, you know, being clearly like upset when asked about when the Homer was coming. Like he didn't know when it would come, right? Like so some of those things apply too. So it's not as simple as just okay, yeah, just buy whatever superstar player is struggling in May. And it's also not going to be as bad as what the T-S was doing and have zero home runs through through Memorial Day. But well, part of your, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say part of your discussion for Tatis. The case for Tatis aside from just the it's Fernando Tatis. He's going to come around. Is he was still hitting balls. It's extremely hard. There was the singular issue of like launch angle in the batting stance and and all that was kind of weird. I think Gunner Gunner, you mentioned the next two names, which were Gunner Henderson and Calarali. I think Gunner is a really tough one

41:31to discern from Tatis because he was still hitting the hell out of the ball. He was still running on the base paths and still have like hitting rumors. Yeah. So if you would have told us at the time, you know, to both of these guys bounce back for the same reasons, we would have said, yes, Gunner's ended up just being like, okay. And the metrics have been just okay too, right? It's very much not a Gunner season. No, it's not at all. And last year you heard about the shoulder that that was hurt in spring, right? And they came back from you haven't heard anything about that just yet. Like, but his metrics last year with that shoulder injury, at least the average velocity in the hard hit rate were better, which is strange. And the bow rate is exactly the same. 8.6% last year for 46% tile, 7.1% this year for 46% tile. Like crazy. We need to look at something

42:32here. I'm going to go to Gunner's hard hit rate month over month. So yeah, it was better when we were looking at this. So that's what makes this hard. And it's a teaspoon different. It was literally that open stance that like every, you know, semi analyst was like, you know, go back to that, go back to that, go back to that. They finally went back to it. It worked. Yeah. Whereas with Gunner and Vlad, it's like, okay, is this just who they are now? I think Gunner Gunner is a deeper case, but to paint the example, we did the show mid May in April, Gunner Henderson's barrel per battered ball event was 11.4%. In May, 8.7%. In June, 3.4%. There's gotta be some sort of event. And it just stayed down there in single digits. So in our defense, a little bit, yeah. There was a collapse that came in after the show that maybe the symptoms were there.

43:38Now, if you flip to Cal Raleigh, the reason I brought that up is Cal Raleigh, we were trying to kind of justify it with no, no path at all. Like our rundown notes on Cal Raleigh being a bilow was the bat speed is down. He's chasing more, making more contact outside of the zone, which is a bad combo. Like, you don't want to burn your swings, reaching outside of the zone. So like, if your bilow case is basically bolstered by all things that are just like, yeah, you don't see how it could get better, but it's got to, right? Then I don't know if that means drop them. I mean, when in reality, outside of Cal Raleigh coming around a little bit, you actually would have been better going to a Liam Hicks or another catcher, but maybe you could try to trade some of those guys, you kind of go down with the ship on. Like, I remember thinking that with like, Raphael Devers, you know what I mean? But I do think there's a difference in the case

44:38for what that snapshot of Gunner and Linda or Gunner and Tatis was versus Cal Raleigh to be fair. Yeah, I mean, I'm in on Cal Raleigh next year. Like, there's not that much different than what he was doing the year before. Yeah, sure. Like the overall exit velocity and the the whiff rate that's slightly improved than the chase rate that's slightly improved last year is back down again, but still got good bat speed. Still got a great power rate. Like, I see I project him as a 220, 35 home or catcher next year. Yeah. I want to do one more, Steve, going to Ronald Acuna because he was another one at that at the time of the show that felt like, man, if you could, if you could get a manager who would be willing to sell low on Acuna, you're in great shape.

45:46He had things that we were pointing to that were encouraging. And I guess, you know, maybe it's kind of like the Gunner thing is his hard hit percent in May was 53 percent. In June, it went down to 29 percent July 41. So, you know, maybe it was just he ended up struggling to a point that he wasn't struggling in mid May, but it's just a head scratcher to me. I mean, I guess there was in like the hamstring injury was sprinkled in there. So maybe you chalk it up to that. But it's just crazy to see such a down year for Acuna. I mean, he was kind of a league loser for a lot of guys that invested, right? Yeah, you're you're looking at one of them. It's hard with the injuries. Like, it's one thing like to have a year, like last year, it's like, all right, yeah, he was injured, but then he came back and he was Ronald Acuna. This year,

46:47he was injured and when he was on the field, he was not Ronald Acuna. You know, sure, the 13 homers and the 19 steals in the 378 play to parents is, you know, you want to give him in the full season 22 homers 30 steals. Yeah, that's okay, but that's not what you're hoping for from Ronald Acuna and also the fact of when does he play a full season. You know, it's tough. That being said, like, I think he'll be drafted. It'll be a precedent discount next year. He should be healthier. There's no world-based ball classic. He plays, even though he doesn't play a lot of major league games like he plays a ton of winter league ball, like I'm hoping that he doesn't do that. This offseason and sort of prioritizes being available, being on the field. And then we could see what happens, like, because his underlies, his metrics aren't,

47:52they're down, but they're not like, whoa, like is this the end for Ronald Acuna? Sort of down, right? As I try to load up his, his sub-ant page here, like it's not super bright red MVP Acuna, but it's still good, right? The bat speed still elite, the bow rate still really good. The hard hit rate still in there. Yeah, the K-rate is down from that MVP season, but it's still, you know, a palatable 24%, still walking, doesn't chase. Like, there's still a lot. Like, there's not much to improve for him to being all bright red in all the areas that we expect him to be. It's not like a Gunnar Henderson falloff, right? There's still a lot here. Handy dealt with the hamstring. Yeah, and with players like this, like, you see it with Tatees, right? It takes one of those superstar months, and then there you go, you have the bright red pages for the entire year, right? And when you're battling injuries and on and off and have a hamstring

48:57injury, go on the IL, come back, finally getting a groove, go on the IL, again with the same hamstring injury, like that's what leads to sort of lost seasons. Yeah, it's fair. You know, it's, maybe once every two years, we make a fantasy football reference, but with my draft last night, Steve, it feels like kind of a Christian McCaffrey. It's like there could be your out-and-out league winner one year, and you could guess wrong on the wrong here, but to quickly get through the rest of the by-laws, because it was just such an interesting show. The next one we talked about was PCA. So again, this is like the third instance in a row where we were saying improved bad heat and hard heat. We deserve credit. We deserve credit. Yeah, PCA, we're all over it. I wish personally I would have been a little more actually. You got traded in my league for, I think, Nico Horner. Yeah, I can imagine. But then a couple other ones, we marked that Boba Shat was the third

50:00un luckiest hitter at that point of the season through May. So in April, yeah, in April, he hit 260 and may hit 207, June 321, July 275, August 29th. So he still hasn't turned into like prime Boba Shat, but for what you were kind of, if you acquired him in the middle of May or the end of May, you got sort of what you expected from, from Boba Shat. And then one that I had thrown on and added in was Corey Seeger, who is another head scratcher of like, what do you make of it? The power never got there. Like his overall line is like, oh my gosh, 223 and 13 homers, but second half of the year, you had to wait because he was on the IEL for a while. But second half of the year is a 295 average and 837 OPS. So overall, I think the Bilow show, it's like, yeah, there might be a Cal Raleigh where you just kind of thrown your arms up and saying it has to get better,

51:03or a gunner where they continue to spiral down. But there's a lot on here that was like, you would have done a huge service to your team if you, if you reached out and grabbed these guys on May 15. Process was very good for these shows, you know, even if you did miss, you probably should try to acquire all of these guys. Yep. Okay, so we'll take our second ad break. We got one more bed after this and then broad lessons learned. We'll be right back after this. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's my driver's have enjoyed progressive's name your price tool for years now. With the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Insurance isn't one size fits

52:04all. That's my driver's have enjoyed progressive's name your price tool for years now. With the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. All right, so Steve, we've talked through a handful at this point. That was Bilo hitters and then the show right after that, we jumped to under the radar starting pitchers. So this was May 21st and looking at overall, it was basically looking at a handful of guys that were either producing well quietly like bigger names who were quietly productive or a handful of names that were just flying low and

53:06we felt like, you know, this point of the season mid May, it's already pretty picked over in terms of the waiver guys. So that was actually our working title for the show is waiver SPs in the wasteland. So some some funny names looking back on here because you got like Griffin jacks, Ben Brown, Zach Galen that we kind of acknowledged at the time was like, you know, I think he yet finally had one good start. Zebby was in there, Anthony Kay. So these were like super deep options in terms of what what to find. One that we did talk about was Troy Melton, Reed Depp Merz, those were ones that you would call hits, Drew Rasmussen who is like widely owned, but one that we were basically breaking down like just how good he's actually been. Handful of misses though as well Steve that admittedly they were super deep ones right when you're

54:09talking about an Anthony Kay, Brandon Sprout. What do we make of this kind of like I know it's a tough exercise of if you're looking at SPs that are like under 20% rostered with the with the exception of like you know Rasmussen that we mentioned. What can you can you ever find value with guys like those like I guess what do we what's our takeaway from how many of these low roster guys just didn't really turn out to be that effective. I think we are really digging. We are really dumps for diving here. And honestly like in Jackson Brown and even Kay and Rocco to an extent maybe later on for those two that's still provided deep league value. But for as nice it would be to find guys like Drew Anderson that was 1% roster at the time. So every Matthew is 26% rostered

55:11at the time. Brands Sprout 7% rostered at the time like it's hard. And you maybe you don't want to fit a square peg into a round hole a little bit here. But that being said you know Ben Brown, Jacks those are really really nice finds at the time. Mm-hmm just to kind of stream for a little while. Yeah something that a broader pitcher lesson learned for me was and I kind of want to pull up the player rater on pitchers because there were there were a few that one of my lessons learned was like moving on too soon from certain pitchers like I mean we just talked about Sean Burke I actually dropped him then he went off and some manager like dropped him prematurely when he had one bad start and I picked him back up which was helpful for me. But another one was like Kate Cavali. Yeah and I'm just wondering if part of the process like Foster Griffin was another one that we

56:17like talked about early in the season. I'm trying to find some of these guys and Milton like Milton was productive but were there any of those kind of mid season emerged as an excellent option that we just kind of missed from a season standpoint or was it just I mean pitching Cavali Cavali I think is a really good is a really good one. Just looking at like all pitchers. Ian Seymour popped up and had some yeah kind of up and down. I mean Eduardo Riez. I think maybe qualifies there. I don't know I guess my point is like in the past where there's it seems like there's a June July August like at least some pop-up pitchers that become really

57:20useful. Was there not that many this year right I mean Cavali is the really the biggest one to me. Right and even Cavali like I was I'm pretty sure I was rostering him in like May so when you get to like the mid later months it's just kind of hard. There's been some weird like Noah Cameron's had like a great run here. Yeah I guess some of the cardinals guys like Anderson. I think Logan Henderson may count for that. This is first start in May and then he came up for good in July. I would say Logan Henderson is a good one. Who else there. I think Taj, like this but some of the Taj Bradley has it up down season. It's been great recently you're right and it's sort of salvaged the season after not being roster ball. Nick Martinez is quietly been really good but it's been more of a year all year type of thing so I get your point that yeah there really hasn't been like oh these guys came up in May.

58:24Right and I just wonder if it's kind of the broader trend of the industry and we've talked about it that like we all know the pitchers yeah including a lot of our like leaguemates I'm not talking about like TGFBI I'm talking about like homely we all know the the pitchers sleepers as deep as like 250 300 so in a way in a way there's there's so much more work to be done in the first six weeks of the season with scrounging on pitchers or even in the draft room and maybe having a little bit more patience before you move on from one that looks truly effective. Like if somebody gives you signs of life like we talked about the game log process Cavali had like a 10 strike out game and then had another like really solid game and then there were a couple clunker middling stars and I bet I dropped him for same dude yeah some like flipping oh I'd love to grab this guy you know we're

59:29just like this guy makes me send you know the pirates you're who I don't know the the marlins today you know right and just what a stupid decision that was for me because then I was like oh my gosh she's been that good for the next two months and now I got to hear about how we got to take him seriously it's like a bona fide low threes here a guy so yeah I think you're popped up to 415 after a start against Minnesota on May 5th I think that's probably what it was because where was the game log in in the two games before that he had 10 strikeouts and 10 strikeout 10 strikeout so just because he you know he follows up to 10 strike out outings giving up three earned runs two earned runs and only has two or four strikeouts he's already demonstrated he's got that like big game ability and how much better of pitchers are you finding in May and June then somebody

1:00:30that's like a bird in the hand so yeah like just looking at necessarily one of our episodes but I think that's just like a broader lesson learned that guys who you believe in that you draft or even like our first our very first episode on of the playing season on April 2nd we had Dustin May there he got added a bunch he got dropped a bunch and then by the time we were in August we're like oh Dustin May is one of the more promising name now he's had his blowups with the brewers but there were some months in there where he was helping you way more than most guys on the wire mainly like yeah May June when he was well over a strikeout and innings sub four so yeah how to know just pitching is way harder on the way to the wire it is obviously so it is really is maybe you know K. Kavali doesn't go unrostored like I look to see okay when was he dropped in my homeland he was not like he was rostrum all year right then right rightfully yeah and then there's

1:01:37even like a Kyle Harrison right this obviously had a worst second half but he's in the first half was like vaulting managers up the up the standings and he was a name that probably would have been gone because where was his yeah his ADP was 432 but everybody knew the pitcher and then he was scooped up you know in the first week or so so I guess yeah not to be a broken record but I think all you you might learn most of the pitching landscape in the first six weeks before six weeks of the season that's lost the impist mids early in the season and then go from the clouds on it all right well good stuff any big picture takeaways as you look at this this whole list if before we wrap I think we have some pretty good pretty good topics you know like we said that we're not going to have every single take correct but I feel comfortable with with how we

1:02:39approach these episodes yeah which is which is which is nice and that's that's what we want to be doing yep I dig it all right well thank you guys for for tuning in and feel free to shoot us any feedback like we said this is fun to look back in the in the rear view even when it when it stings at times but plenty of good shows good hits and informs us for how we want to structure going in the next year but until then until next week good luck for those you guys who are still grinding Steve could look in tgfbi as you kind of close out although it seems like you got a ceiling there and yeah be on that I appreciate you guys joining us as always thanks for talking about these both yeah thanks for listening to September guys really appreciate it later insurance isn't one size fits all that's why drivers have enjoyed progressives

1:03:41name your price tool for years now with the name your price tool you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget so whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family they make it easy to see your options visit progressive dot com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law