Welcome to Rates and barrels. It is Thursday, January 22nd, Derek Van Riper, Inosarius, here with you on this episode. We resume our

position preview series. We close out the infield today with first base. We've covered shortstop,

second base, third base, and catcher already. Plenty of position preview still to come. I think we

have four lined up in the outfield because we're going to put the UT players in with one of those episodes as well. A week's worth of outfielder. Pretty much a week's worth of outfielders. We'll get a head start on that the Friday episode to close out the week. We'll be installment one of the outfielders. So hopefully you're enjoying the series so far. If you're new, plenty to catch up on as you start binging over the weekend. Be sure to hit the like button on this video if you're watching on YouTube or drop us a nice rating and review if you're listening to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any platform that allows you to do so. We really appreciate that. You can join the Discord, too. The conversation continues after the show. The link for that is in the show description. All right, Eno, let's go right to it. First base, pretty clear cut position. I think the interesting thing about it is, you know, compared to shortstop, you made a comment kind of late in that episode that very few teams mix and match at shortstop. You don't really even platoon there.

It's just that you get stuck between two players sometimes. Maybe a young player doesn't work out

and some aging veteran that's glove first. And only a handful of teams are in that situation.

At first base, though, you'll see kind of a sharp decline in playing time somewhere around

the middle of this episode.

I've got a player exactly where it happens.

Yeah.

Everyday guys that can log 650 plus plate appearances for the first few tiers, and then

big side platoon risk, skills risk.

So I do think over time I've become a little more aggressive with making

sure I lock in good, safe options at this position. I used to be probably too cute for my own

good trying to get the late 25 homers that didn't bite me. And a lot of times those guys end up

sharing their job or just losing it outright. So we'll start at the very top as we do tier one at this position, the guys that go inside

the first two rounds, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Nick Kurtz and Pete Alonzo.

You got Vladi and Kurtz kind of going at the end of round one, beginning of round two,

looking at the NFBC ADP reports. So you're sitting there at that end of round one, beginning of round two, looking at the NFBC ADP reports.

So you're sitting there at that end of round one turn.

You're thinking about both of them.

And then of course, Alonzo goes five to seven picks after that.

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