Welcome to Rates and barrels to Wednesday, January 17th, Derek Van Riper, here with Inoceris.

We continue our position preview series, which began with the previous episode.

We started with short stops today.

We move over to second base, staying in the middle infield, digging through a position that has some depth,

but the quality of those players tails off considerably once you get out past that pick 200,

pick 250 marker.

So as we do for all these episodes, we're going to look at NFBC ADP as a guide for where these players are going.

We're looking at the last seven days, all formats.

So if you hear a number and doesn't make sense, that's how we came up with that number.

If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to like this video. Drop us a comment if you have a question or if you just enjoyed something we said. Be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. And also leave us a nice rating and review. If you're listening to the podcast version of the show, we really appreciate it if you did that. So, you know, I know we do not have a lot of extra time based on how long the shortstop

preview was. Let's get right to it. Let's talk about the tier one options at second base, which now

includes Mookie Betz again. I feel like we've traveled back in time. And my argument would be

that Mookie Betz is more valuable at second base to us. As fantasy players, he's still eligible in the outfield, of course, since he played a little bit more out there in 20203.

But according to Dave Roberts at the winter meetings this year, Mookie is the everyday second basement for this Dodgers team now.

What he did at the plate in 2023 was pretty ridiculous.

It was the second best barrel rate of his career. The entire hitting profile on his stat cast page went red. And it looked like in 2022, there were some signs of normal aging in there, right? It was like, okay, Muky Betts is, you know, getting into that point in his career. Strike out right and a little bit up. Yeah, he's not Superman anymore.

No, he's still Superman, which is just crazy.

So it's interesting that the first skill that appears to be fading is actually the speed.

Stolen bases are the thing that have kind of tapered off in recent years, but he's still getting 10 plus every year. But this is really an ultimate average power and run production play,

especially with the quality of the lineup around him right now in Los Angeles.

Yeah, kudos to him.

You know, going up to drive line and doing bat speed, you know, work at 31 when, you know, even a bad season for you was like a, you know, near MVP season,

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