Welcome to Rates and barrels presented by E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

Derek Van Riper here with a special guest, senior writer from The Athletic. Keith Law is here to discuss the 2025 MLB draft, maybe a little

other prospect talk beyond the draft, time permitting as well. Keith, thank you for joining me

in a stretch that it has got to be one of your absolute busiest of the year. How's everything

going for you? I'm exhausted, actually. Thanks for asking. Could fall asleep in the middle of the year. How's everything going for you? I'm exhausted, actually. Thanks for asking.

I fall asleep in the middle of the podcast. Yep, sure. Yesterday, I woke up in Atlanta to come home, right?

I don't stay for the All-Star game because I don't care. And so I wake up early because I had a flight. And I was trying to get home so I could do a bunch of writing. And then I had plans with my wife and went to the fish concert last night. I wake up, I jump in the shower. I can get enough sleep. I get out of the shower and there's a bunch of notifications on my phone that my flight has been canceled, flat canceled. And they've rebooked me on a flight that night to Chicago

overnight in Chicago and a 5 a.m. flight home the next morning. I was like, oh, we are not doing that.

I will drive home rather than do that. I ended up flying Atlanta to Tampa, 45-minute turnaround,

Tampa to Baltimore, rented a car to drive home, got here

in time to go to the concert, but as soon as you and I are done talking, I'm going to get in

the rental car, return to Philly, to go get my actual car, which is still waiting for me

at the Philly, yeah.

Oh, God.

Okay.

Now I now I feel another level of dedication to you staying with the commitment to join me on the show today. It sounds absolutely awful. I love to cancel the outright cancellation. And here, this is pretty much the same thing. You get to there tomorrow. And no, that's not the same thing. Does not count. Please consult me about my itinerary. I know people love to complain about airlines. And it's like very, like, I'm not blaming American. There was horrendous storms apparently in the mid-Atlantic. My guess is the plane never got there. You know, it's just my only complaint is like, oh, we're just going to book you. We're getting you there tomorrow is fine. I was like, that's not actually fine. Like, there's definitely other ways you could have maybe approached the situation after the cancellation, which weather, weather is weather. I get it. The plane is physically not in Atlanta. There's not a whole lot you can do. But they're, you know, especially up here in the northeast, there's a bunch of airports I could have flown it too that would have made this work. And they didn't.

Yeah, they just didn't.

So anyway, I'm home. I'm glad you're home. Glad you made it back. Glad we could have this conversation and have it now be on a cell phone from some airport. From an airport. That's not even close to where you want to be. Tampa. I flew to Tampa. I don't go to Florida unless I can absolutely, unless I can't avoid it. But I couldn't avoid it. That was the only other option. We've ever gone through Tampa's airport? No, one conference. I will say. The airport, the Tampa airport is pretty good. It's very easy to get around. It's easy in and out. I have no complaints at the Tampa Airport. Tampa the city, on the other hand, not my favorite. Okay. But I didn't have to leave the airport this time, so that was fine. All right. So it's a small victory. Yes. Let's get to some draft talk. It didn't go down quite the way people expected with that first overall pick. There's a little twist up top. Eli Willits, a name that might be familiar to Angels fans and, oh, I don't know, people

that played fantasy baseball around 2007 because his dad, Reggie Willits, played for the

Angels in that time, had 27 steals.

He was fifth in the AL rookie of year voting.

Yeah, I mean, that was the thing that he could do. So even if you didn't have him on your team, you probably saw him on your waiver wire at some point. But it's his son that went first overall to the nationals. And Eli Willits is the youngest first overall pick since Ken Griffey Jr. In 1987? Isn't that true? That little timid surprised me.

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