A first look at the top of the 2026 rookie class.

That's what we're talking about today on stealing bananas.

I'm Ben Gretsch.

You can find the Stealing Signals newsletter at banggrash.

com with me as always is Sean Siegel. You can find the Stealing Signals newsletter at banggretsch.com with me as always is Sean Siegel.

You can find all of his great work over at Rodeviz. Over at Stealing Signals, for me, I'm still working through reactions to the 2025 season. I kind of go on a different timeline this time of year than most analysts who are focused on the rookies and looking forward. I like to really capture as much of my in-season research into my off-season work.

So like the weekly sealing signals write-ups and everything that I know before that stuff gets a little bit more noisy over the course of an off-season.

So I do some like deep dives on veterans and on macro stuff.

And I've been doing all that over at stealing signals. But I have not looked deep dives on on veterans and on macro stuff and I've been doing all

that over at stealing signals. I have not looked at the rookies a lot. Sean, you've been in the lab

with the guys at the rotoviz. You guys have the first edition of the rotoviz rookie guide out.

You're going to have the second post-combine one coming out soon. You've started to talk about, you had a show with column where you guys are talked about

Combine risers. You'll be doing some more stuff over at Rodevis overtime.

You guys always like to have guests on that help contextualize some of the raw data, which is

basically what I just described doing with the veterans as far as that stuff goes and love that. I mean, I think that is just such a massive edge that people in 2026 miss. Everybody wants shortcuts and AI and, oh, here's what the day, the analytic profile says. Here's what the data says. Here's what the film guys say. I'm just going to throw it all into a model and yada yada. You got to understand the nuances and the specifics of each profile. We talk about this every year. I always love that you break that stuff down in the rookie guide. Rodevus breaks it down so well in the rookie guide every year. We, Sean, often on bananas, talk, especially this time, like coming up next, we're going to be talking

about the free agents and a lot of that stuff. Again, I like, I focus more on a lot of the veteran

stuff and the macro level stuff this time of year, but felt like today would be a good show

to get a 30,000 foot view of the rookie class for this year. So for anyone who hasn't

really dug into the rookies yet, that's what you're going to get here. It's going to be,

for those of you that are like deep in the dynasty weeds, maybe a little bit more basic.

And I know a lot of people that are listening this time of year are much deeper in the weeds than I am at this point with the rookies.

I'm just trying to learn how to pronounce the names in that stuff right now.

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