An Eye Toward 2024 & Protecting v. Chasing Leads
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 875 Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2023
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno and DVR discuss a few takeaways from the first seven rounds of the Too Early Meatball Draft -- including the myriad of great choices from the No. 3 spot on the first round, continuing to draft starting pitchers early if other teams try to wait, a potential rebound from Trea Turner, and Elly De La Cruz's push toward top-15 status for 2024. Plus, they discuss a few differences in how to approach protecting a lead at the end of the season compared to attempts to make up ground.
Link to Too Early Meatball Draft Board: https://twitter.com/deadpullhitter/status/1694203814910275867/photo/1
Rundown
1:20 The Top of the Board from the 'Too Early Meatball Draft'
6:47 Skills Growth From Fernando Tatis Jr.
10:31 Spencer Strider v. Elite Bats at Pick 3
14:54 A Smaller Circle of Trust for Closers in Early Draft Formats?
21:21 Freddie Freeman Keeps Getting Better
25:37 Chasing Power In The Current Run Environment
26:55 Elly De La Cruz's Push Toward Round 1
32:47 Interest in Re-Drafting at All-Star Break
38:07 What's Going On with Trea Turner?
43:08 Matt McLain's Great Rookie Season
51:17 How to Protect a Lead
60:35 Chasing a Lead
Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris
Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Wednesday, August 23rd, Derek Van Riper, here with Enosaris. |
| 0:20.2 | On this episode, we have some draft results for 2024 to look at, thanks to Rob DiPietro from the Pull Hitter podcast, his two early meatball draft, which was new last year. |
| 0:34.0 | It came back for a second season. |
| 0:36.2 | Seven rounds already in the books. We'll talk about |
| 0:38.7 | some things happening there because it's pretty fun to look to the future, even if you're |
| 0:43.4 | still competing for this season. We're going to talk about some rest of season strategy if you're |
| 0:48.0 | protecting the lead and if you're trying to chase a lead. So a lot of ground to cover here. |
| 0:53.2 | Plenty of fun to have along the way. But I wanted to start with the draft that Rob put together because the early eye to next season, like I'm always thinking about next season, even though I'm enjoying the current one. It's fun to think about the future. You can dream on the future. The future could be so much better than the present, right? You can put so much hope in the future being amazing. And don't look back at how many times you've been wrong about |
| 1:15.3 | that. Just keep looking forward with that optimism. That's the way to a healthier lifestyle. |
| 1:20.7 | I've got the board up on YouTube if anybody wants to see that instead of our faces. You can see |
| 1:25.1 | the first seven round results that were tweeted. |
| 1:28.7 | The interesting thing about next year, right, as things stand today on August 23rd, barring injury, |
| 1:37.7 | Akunya and Otani are probably the consensus one-two for most leagues. Now, this is an NFBC format. |
| 1:45.4 | It's draft champions in particular. |
| 1:47.0 | 50 rounds is what they end up drafting. |
| 1:48.9 | No in-season pickups. |
| 1:50.6 | But I think we've reached a point where even in weekly leagues where Otani's stats are not captured simultaneously, right? |
| 1:57.4 | You have to choose hitter or pitcher each week in this format it's still at the point now |
| 2:03.7 | where the value is so clear that that's where he's usually going to go things open up a ton |
| 2:11.1 | after that there are so many directions you could actually try to go from pick three through about pick |
| 2:17.1 | eight and i think the kds the kansas the kentucky derby style like where do you could actually try to go from pick three through about pick eight. |
| 2:22.1 | And I think the KDS, the Kentucky Derby style, like where do you want to be? |
... |
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