Lading off starts right now. I am Chris Welsh. That is Andrew Sifter and we are here to talk to you about all the baseball happening. So the peanuts and cracker jacks. I am feeling a little bit better. I'm not looking any better. But Andrew, I'm glad to have you here your first Thursday episode.

Yeah, thanks for having me back again. It's fun to get my Thursday debut and I'm here in my parents attic in Massachusetts. You know, they say fantasy managers usually are living their parents basement, right? So I'm in the attic. I don't but I'm happy enough there. I forgot about that. Yeah, so yeah, you you're living the quintessential fantasy life right now in your parents attic or basement. Is that a bookshelf I see behind. Yeah, if you look in the corner over my other shoulder, you can maybe even see Albert Einstein. He's right.

And a bicycle there as well. So it's it's definitely got its attic vibes going. But is it haunted because that's the why I get from addicts. I get a little haunted vibe. Maybe so, maybe so. It depends how you feel about books, I guess. What scarier an attic or a basement. This is a great question. I think this is the ultimate question because I feel like an attic is more haunted, but a basement is just scarier. Yeah, I'm going basement because I feel like your chance of running into some sort of animal that you

don't want to see like a rat or something or some sort of bugs is a lot higher in that environment. Okay, I'd love to know chat. What do you think basement or attic? That's a good point. I hadn't thought about the animals. I was really thinking about Poltergeist, but that's where my brain goes to lots of baseball to cover. Let's get into the top stuff. Mariners George Kirby got to a rare feat by starting a game with 20 or starting 24 straight games with a strike, which I know it's kind of like a weird staff.

But it also just shows you how consistent he has been throughout the year. Also his teammate Julio Rodriguez got to the 2020 club. By the way, the futures odds on like pretty much everything, but rookie of the year is almost laughable at this point. It's Julio. It's a little bit of Adley and it's 3,500 for Bobby Witt on the other side, but getting back into it. George Kirby's only picked up five wins this year, but as a 332 ERA has a better X-Fip and almost.

10k per 9, 9.4, an elite walk per 9 at 1.2. And I'm going to tell you, be it a rookie or not. George Kirby is showing all the stuff he did as a prospect in that he's got all the command that made us love him. He's showing strikeouts. And he looks like he could be a big time viable. Maybe top 25 SP top 30 next year. What do you think about George Kirby rest of your. Oh, yeah, I'm totally on board. I honestly, this he's like, he's like Ronnie Dangerfield. He gets no respect.

I don't understand why his roster rates are so low. I wrote about this in my intro to my waiver wire piece of fancy pros two weeks ago. At that time, his roster rate was at 48% and Yahoo, and I couldn't believe it was that low. And I made him the top guy just for that reason. It's only 57% now, even after this great outing.

I like this is a guy who was like a top 30 prospect. All the like you said, all the peripherals back up the performance that he's done up to this point pitches in a good environment. Great control. Like you said, I mean, that walk rate really gives you a nice margin for error.

Even if you have some run into some bad bad luck in a start here or there. So yeah, I love this guy. And I don't understand why he's not like 80 90% roster.

This is why I've always loved about him. I've always been big on him and prospects. He almost has a four pitch repertoire of like double digits. His fastball has been sitting around 95. His slider. He's throwing 20% of the time. There's your wipeout strikeout pitch. He's throwing around 87. I mean, almost 88. You're closing in 90 is that elite slider territory as far as velocity goes.

And the curve ball has been on point. And you know, for a guy his age to be throwing and walk rate of only like one, you know, under one and a half. It's elite.

It's a lead that you don't see young pitchers do. And I think we don't give him enough kudos. And then obviously, you know, Julio Julio, but hitting the 2020 mark. I think they said the last

Mariner to do that was Mike Cameron, who actually coaches with the Mariners and works with them. The race manager Kevin Cash said that

Wanda Franco will not resume his minor league rehab assignment before next week. Franco suffered a setback with the surgically repaired right hand wrist while making a

rehab stand on Tuesday. And it is looking less and less likely that we're going to get him anytime soon, which begs the question. I know it's crazy.

How much do you need to hold on to Wanda Franco at this point? You know, he if he's not going to even resume anything until next week, that gets you into September.

Then he's going to have to get some games another weekend. Look how look at the lack of production he had before he got injured.

Andrew, do you think Wanda Franco's a must hold in any type of a redraft league right now?

I do not. I was sort of out on Franco even coming into the season. I mean, he's obviously a tremendous prospect. And he's got one of the best

hit tools we've seen from a young player in a really long time. So I think he's a great real life player. I think he still got some steps he needs to

take in his game before he it fully translates to fantasy. I mean, if he's not giving you that category juice in power and in speed,

then he's not really in a standard five by five league going to be as valuable in fantasy as he is in reality. And then you bring in a hand injury.

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