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What's going on, everybody?

Welcome into Fantasy Pros.

This is the Fantasy Baseball podcast.

I'm your host, Joe O'Riko,

joined today by a very special guest.

Somebody that I've kind of known for a few years,

but it's only been through the DMs and the Twitter streets. It is James Chiano from Roto World and the MetS dot podcast. James, great to get you on the show finally. How the heck are you? Good, dude. I'm happy to have a nice long-haired, bearded Italian podcast. This is what I've recommended for years that we change the name of the show with Joe Pizapia being one of our main host. This is an Italian show. This is a pro Jack Caglio and Spencer Erigetti show. Sam Antanachi. We had a video on yesterday. This is an Italian fantasy pros podcast essentially today. Yeah, we love it. We love our Italian baseball players around here. But today,

we're not just going to focus on the Italians as much as I'd love to have an Italian-focused podcast.

We're going to talk some by lows and sell highs. It is early in the season, but there are

guys who are off to blazing hot starts, some guys who are freezing cold. And, you know, in a lot of

leagues, Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, people get itchy real quick. Before the first day of the season that even ended, people were messaging me, should I be trading Aaron Judge? You went 0 for 4. He had a bad world baseball classic. People want to be making trades as soon as they possibly can. So we'll try and highlight some guys that you should be targeting in the trade streets. And James, we're going to start with you here and Bubba Chandler, who is your first buy low, somebody that I really liked coming into the season. He's gotten off to a bit of a tough start, specifically with the command. What are you seeing that makes you want to invest in Bubba where you can right now? It's definitely, especially this time of year, trying to hold true to a lot of the things that we believed the entire winter. It's really hard to let months of preparation go by the wayside

with two or three appearances, four appearances for a starting pitcher, which is why I think we have a few starting pitchers that we're going to start that with here. But we've seen Bubba's command coming in and out a lot over the course of his time in the upper miners, and even last last year, his first stint with the Pirates, where it was very bad early in the season, AAA, got it

together in the middle of the season, got to the Pirates, it was tremendous. He walked like two or three batterers over his last 20-something innings when his ERA was sterling. A strike rate was still in the mid-20s. Again, it was basically a 3% walk rate. But right now, to begin the season,

specifically as four-seem fastball has not even a 26% strike rate, which is kind of unbelievable for a pitcher with Bubba Chandler's fastball, something that sits near 100 miles per hour, something that is truly devastating in the strike zone. This should be a pitch that he's basically demanding to get in the zone. But I made this analogy on Twitter and people kind of liked it. It's the kind of thing where it went semi-viral and I was praying Bubba could have seen it because it would have been funny. He's been pitching to me like if a monster energy drink spawned arms and legs where he gets so amped up and he's gritting his teeth and he's just like fastball high, fastball high. And those first couple starts, They were were just too high. So just deep breath by Bubba, bring it back down a little bit. Once that fastball's in the strike zone, I just don't see any way he's not effective. So it's really just that easy of effect to me. Yeah, I mean, he's a guy where I think some people saw the small sample size at the major leagues last year. and were some people thinking maybe he's a sub 5% walk rate maybe this is going to stick and it didn't seem likely now I don't think he's going to be anywhere close to what we've seen to this point the command has been the biggest problem 19% walk rate it's led to an incredibly high 157 whip but the skills are still intact that fastball is still phenomenal the

stuff gratings are intact the location grades are even still pretty good location plus at 101

considering his walk rate is something that i am still considering and also you know

Pittsburgh's become a little bit of a pitching factory over the last couple years i know you know

getting jared jones and paul skeins and your organization helps but uh Carmeninski, Braxton Ashcraft, this is an organization that I kind of trust more than I would have a couple years ago to make changes to Bubba here on the fly that will be able to help him. So I completely co-signed this. I am buying Bubba Chandler and holding him because I have even gotten some questions in shallow league should be dropping Bubba Chandler. I would not be doing so.

Even if it's like a 10-team league, I wouldn't be doing it.

I would still be holding on to Bubba Chandler. My first name here is Yuri Perez, a guy who's also gotten off to a little bit of a rough start to the season. But I think the skills are still intact. and this is a guy where he will just need a little bit of time to get his sea legs under him to start the season.

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