Welcome to Rates and barrels. It is Tuesday, February 20th, Derek Van Riper here with Enoceris.

This is a team preview episode, and we pick things back up in America's division, the National League Central.

Three teams we're going to cover today, the Cardinals, the Cubs, and the Brewers.

So as you can imagine, I'm very excited for this episode. I'm excited for pretty much every episode we do, but this one, top of the scale, baby. This is your wheelhouse. This is where I want to be all the time. The other place I want to be is in the Rates and Barrels Discord. That's now open. Be sure to check the show description for the link if you haven't joined that already. Lots of great comments.

Oh, God. It's all right there for me. Oh, yeah. It's loading up.

I'm going to get in there today. Your mentions are piling up pretty big in there. Be sure to smash the like button on this video. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you haven't done so already, we have another live episode coming out on Friday, 1 o'clock Eastern, if you can join us

then on our YouTube page. But let's get into it. Let's start with the Cardinals. We're going to work

from the top to the middle of the division using the Picota win projections here. The Cardinals have

seven hitters projected to be average or better by WRC Plus, according

to the Bat X.

This is the strength of this team.

And one of those hitters is not Nolan Aronado, who has actually been a 100 or better in all

but two seasons in his career, his rookie season and 2020, which

basically doesn't count.

So they may have eight hitters that are actual above average hitters available to them in their

core group.

This is a very good lineup.

And the interesting thing about it from a fantasy perspective is there's actually a lot of value

here.

Paul Goldschmidt seems a little underdrafted. Nolan Arenado seems a little underdrafted. Wilson Contreras seems a little underdrafted. It's kind of a theme through the core veteran group, but also for the young players. A lot of times we see young players carry some extra inflation. I might look at Jordan Walker and say that that's a fair price because you're kind of buying a next step from him. But that's not necessarily the case for Nolan Gorman. That's not necessarily the case even for Lars Neutbar. And it's certainly not the case for Mason Wynn, who's got a very good chance to be the primary shortstop for the team this season. Yeah, I think the bad X might be a little low on Nolan Aronado.

That's the thing that was sort of ringing in my ears from your beginning description of the team.

You know, one of the things he really does or has done since going to drive line, going to the

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