Welcome to Rates and Barrels episode number 75.

It's March 5th.

Derek Van Riper here with Enoseres. On this episode, we return to our

positional breakdown series, which we are nearing the end of. Catchers and utility only players are the

focus on this show. Before you turn off the podcast in the first 30 seconds, I promise we're going to

make this interesting. We're going to talk about utility only players first because they're a lot better than catchers. We'll wrap things up with the outfield on our show on Tuesday, possibly Tuesday and Thursday up next week, depending on how long that gets stretched out. It's a big pool of players, so it might take a lot of time to make our way through it. If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the time to give us a rating and review. We greatly appreciate it. Thanks to the many of you who've already done that. If you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, what are you waiting for? Get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Everything we write is included with a subscription.

All right, you know, there's an age-old question that plagues every walk of life.

And I'm beginning to worry that the question that will rage on for years in fantasy baseball

pertains to the original rules, which requires two catchers in the starting

lineup.

It only has one utility player.

And I have to ask, if the founding fathers were inventing fantasy baseball today, do you

really think they would start the lineup with two catchers?

Like, that just seems like a really dumb way to build something fun.

You know, maybe, I can't speak, you know, on Dan Okrent or, you know, the different people that put together the first, the first leagues, but maybe they

were thinking that it's like, kind of like the real life where you have two catchers, but

the thing that would be weird about that is that, you know, you don't have like a backup

shortstop, or is that M.I? It's kind of what M.I is. I mean, I understand what they were trying

to do, and I'm not trying to disparage Dan O'Krant and Glenn Wagner and the people that made this game that has turned into a livelihood for us. I'm not trying to cut them down. I think they made the game with the best of intentions, and a lot of things have held up really well. This is one of the things that simply has not. But yeah, I think they

were just trying to mimic the way a roster was built, of course. It was built for Bono Leagues.

I just think we're at this point. You know, we're more than 30 years into playing this game now.

Preserving that part of the original rules is not something I'm interested in doing. I am

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