Welcome to the fireside chat. Sit back, relax, and enjoy Paul Spor and Nick Pollock.

We've got to do a fireside chat. So Spor, would you like to take it away?

Let's crank up the fire, Nick, because like I said, I'm freezing, but it is great to talk to you.

This is kind of our return after an off season here. And so what better

way to get by the fire than to talk about some dudes? Let's talk some dudes. And let's talk last year's

breakouts. Because they're always an interesting player pool. And what do you do for the follow-up? How do you

treat them? The prices go way up.

You know, some guys go up higher than others, but the prices always go up and you have to

determine, is this somebody I can buy in on? Is this somebody we should fade? So we're going to go

through eight of the bigger breakouts from last year and determine where we're at right now.

Give some reasons why. Some of them have new

teams. Actually, just one of them has a new team. And it's a team down grade, if I can just be

honest about it. But we'll get to him momentarily. Let me see what I sent you. Okay, yeah. Actually,

we're starting with him. We're starting. Yeah, we are. So let's dive right in with Mr. You say Kukuchi.

Yeah.

Now, it was an interesting, kind of a tale of two seasons of a phrase we like to use in baseball

when a guy has like a bad first half, second half type situation.

It wasn't direct halves, but because he was traded from Toronto to Houston, at the deadline, you see those two clear cuts there.

And his time with Toronto was underwhelming because of the home runs, 475 ERA, but a 351 Sierra, 366, 5th, right?

There were underlying skills that said, hey, this guy is good, but he's teased and tantalized before.

When goes to Houston and they figured it out, the thing that Kukuchi believers have been saying for the last few years, this guy has talent, this guy can be a stud.

They figured it out.

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