Welcome to Rates and Burrell's Wednesday, February 5th, Derek Van Riper, Enoceris, and a special guest.

We got Keith Law here.

Senior baseball writer from the Athletic, good friend of the program. Keith, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. It is one of the absolute busiest times of the year for you. The top 100 just dropped. I have work to do.

Get stuff to do. You got top 20s rolling out for each organization. I think the entire American League is posted as the time of this

recording on Wednesday, so the National League soon. Yeah, I should probably start writing the National League at some point. Uh-oh. You get your keyboard fix, so now you can do it, right? This is true. This is true. I'm actually 60% done with the National League. I have six teams left. You got six teams left? Wow. yeah yeah card. Cardinals and then the NL West, which isn't running until Monday.

So I have a little time, but I want to get it done before my older stepdaughter's got a birthday party. And then the Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl on Sunday. So I want to get done before all of that. That's right. The Super Bowl's on Sunday. Yes, it is. Don't be writing on Sunday.

Probably want to keep Sunday free.

Huh.

Good to know.

Thank you for that reminder.

I actually forgot that game is on Sunday. Don't be writing on Sunday. Probably want to keep Sunday free. Huh. Good to know. Thank you for that reminder. I actually forgot that game was on Sunday. Yes, it is Sunday. Yeah. It's a state of my life right now. So we want to talk to you about rookies of interest for this year. Players that were very likely to debut at some point in 2025. Many of our listeners play fantasy baseball. Some play

long, long term formats, and we may get to a few questions about guys who are a few years away.

But I think for a lot of people, fantasy players are not, they want to know who's coming up this

year, who's going to make an impact. And this year's Golden Claw Award winner, number one

prospect in baseball on the updated list, is Roman Anthony.

And I think it makes a lot of sense to start right at the top because Roman Anthony and Christian Campbell, who's also inside your top 10, both of these guys should fit in the Red Sox lineup sooner rather than later.

With the people they already have on the depth chart, we've been wondering what the adjustments are, right? It was kind of easy to see David Hamilton there and say, okay, there's one guy you can push to the bench. But what's the other adjustment and then what kind of immediate impact are you expecting from the likes of Anthony and Campbell? So, you know, I'm of the opinion. and I don't know what the Red Sox front office is thinking specifically, but these are two guys who are, you make room. They are good enough prospects. They've clearly decided they're not trading these guys, right? They traded Kyle Teal. They traded Braden Montgomery. These are part of the guys they're obviously keeping. I'm sure the White Sox asked. And so you got to make room.

And to me, Anthony has played centerfield. I have always thought he'd be a better fit in, right? It sounds like he's better in centerfield than I thought he was going to be. I saw him, I think, two games last year, not enough to give you a real judgment. But the consensus I've heard is he'd be fine if you left him in center. I happen to think Saddam Rafael is one of the best center fielder's in baseball if they just put him there and let him play there and he's not their only center fielder. So to me it's just easy. Just slide Anthony to one corner or the other. He could play right. If you wanted to play left, obviously left in Boston is challenging. You could try that as well. He's a little bit of the easier one to fit.

Campbell's best position is probably second base. He has played some shortstop. I get wide ranging opinions on whether he could play shortstop. I think the consensus is he's just better off

at second base. He's also played the outfield. So you could try that as well, just the point

being to get his bat in the lineup. The thing I keep running into is what they really need is somebody who can play shortstop and be healthy. And they don't really have that, right? Trevor's story can play shortstop, but he's obviously been declining and gets hurt all the time. And Saddam and Raphael can nominally play shortstop, but he's just not good there. I'm pretty sure Stackast had a pretty, his OAA was pretty bad. And he's never looked like a shortstop to me. The moment I saw him in center field, I'm like, why are we doing anything else? Right. Like, you were born to play center field. So, you know, that's a long way of saying I'm not really sure, right? Because you can't play two second baseman and one shortstop.

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