Fantasy Baseball Cram Session
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 875 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno and DVR provide their second-annual 'cram session' as the busiest weekend of fantasy baseball drafts is here. They discuss a few players they've avoided this season, tier drop-offs across several positions, how they're approaching the top rookies in redraft leagues, and more.
Rundown
1:35 Zack Wheeler Progressing Toward Minor League Game
5:17 DVR’s Plan in H2H Roto, Tout Wars Champions League
12:43 Grayson Rodriguez Dealing with ‘Dead Arm’
15:59 Trey Yesavage: Headed to the IL (Shoulder Impingement)
18:35 Carson Willams: Could Open Season as Starting Shortstop
20:24 Players We’ve Avoided This Draft Season
31:15 Finding the Tier Drops At Every Position
36:00 The Shape of First Base
39:25 The Long Tail at Second Base
42:32 Shortstop Still Has Plenty of Depth
46:29 Surprisingly Sharp Falls at Third Base
53:10 The Outfield: Using Care With Drafting Too Many Early?
1:00:34 Buying Any Rookie Position Players at Late-March Draft-Day Cost?
Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social
Follow DVR on Bluesky: @DVR.bsky.social
e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com
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Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
Editor: Jason Potere
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to rates and barrels. |
| 0:14.0 | It is Friday, March 20th. |
| 0:16.0 | Derek Van Riper here with Enos-Saris on the cusp of one of the biggest draft weekends of the year. |
| 0:22.4 | I've got my main event with our buddy J.H. |
| 0:25.4 | Late Friday night. |
| 0:26.9 | I think you have a main event coming up this weekend as well. |
| 0:30.5 | So the biggest drafts of all going down here in the next few days. |
| 0:34.4 | Today's episode is going to be our annual fantasy baseball cram session. |
| 0:38.5 | We hope you've been listening for the past several months. If you haven't, if you picked up |
| 0:42.0 | the show fairly recently, welcome. We'll try to get you caught up as best we can over the next |
| 0:46.5 | hour. So it'll give you some good ideas of what you may want to do with your roster construction |
| 0:51.0 | as draft day rapidly approaches. How's it going for you on this Friday? |
| 0:55.8 | It is good. I've got a weekend full, jam-packed full of events and things. |
| 1:00.5 | And I've got to be a judge at a robot thing on Saturday. |
| 1:05.5 | I've got to be the game-changer dad at the Little League on Saturday morning. |
| 1:11.7 | Ozo Motley show tonight, main event Sunday. |
| 1:15.7 | It's going to be a rocking weekend. |
| 1:18.2 | I will be trying to caffeinate as aggressively as possible to keep myself awake as the |
| 1:24.2 | family bug has made its way to me. |
| 1:26.4 | I thought I dodged it, man. |
| 1:46.2 | I felt so proud of myself. I was like, I made it, got through the gauntlet, get into opening day. No. I am inevitable. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened to me. But onward and upward. So some news as we get started here, Zach Wheeler is lined up to pitch in a minor league game on Monday. |
| 1:48.4 | Scheduled through about 40 pitches there. |
... |
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