Hey, everybody.

Welcome to the Rotowire Fantasy Baseball podcast.

Jeff Erickson here.

Welcome to the show.

It is Thursday, July 30th, the day before the baseball, or July 29th, the day before

the baseball trade deadline, a lot to talk about.

I have, as my guest, the great Frank Stamphel from CBS Fantasy.

You can follow them on Twitter at Roto underscore Frank.

Frank, thanks for joining me today.

I don't think I've ever had you on before. No, this is awesome, man. I can scratch this off the

bucket list, Roto Wire podcast. I'm very excited to be here. And very excited that you just

referred to me as the great. I feel like in reverse here, the great Jeff Erickson.

Well, you know what, though? I mean, you get your big time. CBS is huge. You guys are doing great work there. You know, I had a, I did a podcast with Griffin Banger. He's leading the road to our online championship, the NFBC, the online championship, or he was at the time. I haven't checked the overall standings in the last week or so because i'm not near the top but anyhow he gave you guys a shout out says he listens to you

first thing every day uh you and scott and christ and chris towers and you guys do great work

yeah i appreciate it man it's it's a lot because we're putting out daily content so every

night we were talking beforehand here i'm on the east coast so we're waiting until after midnight we're going out daily content. So every night we were talking beforehand here. I'm on the East Coast. So we're waiting until after midnight. We're going live most nights. So it's a lot of late nights, but it's definitely fun. And it's, it's worth it, man. I've really enjoyed my time here at CBS. Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's, it's a busy week. We've got the trade deadline tomorrow. They pushed it up a day because they didn't want to have it on a Saturday.

So for all along, I was like, okay, 31st, 31st. No, it's tomorrow. So we've already had some big moves. The race got it started last week with Nelson Cruz. That was a big deal for them. Fit perfectly. of course he's a little banged up right now not in the line of the last two days but i didn't love him going i didn't love his landing spot for my selfish purposes but in terms of for the raise it was a pretty darn good fit yeah for sure they needed

another power bat in the middle of that lineup they are a pesky team and austin meadows just hit

another home run off of garret cole while we're recording this but, I think they needed another power bat in that lineup, Wander Franco. It has not lived up to expectations so far. And you could really say that for most prospects. But yeah, maybe he sits out a few more games Nelson Cruz does because we know that's what Tampa likes to do. They don't play everybody every single day. So I could see the playing time maybe taking a little bit of a step back, but the lineup around him is very good. I still think there will be a ton of run scoring opportunities for him. And it's a great division to hit in, too, Yankee Stadium, Camden, Fenway. So let's have healthy Nelson Cruz and then finish out these final two months pretty strong. Yeah, I love Nelson Cruz. Never lose money on Nelson Cruz. You know, you take him every year and he always

he always, he always chimes in. He's always worth it. It's great. Yeah, 41 years old and you look at

his stat cast page and it's like nothing ever happened. This is just who Nelson Cruz is. So I don't see anything in the underlying numbers that say that he's going to slow down. He looks like Nelson Cruz. I mean, he's getting up there. So I guess it's going to happen eventually or maybe not. Maybe he's just the next coming of David Ortiz. Maybe so. And now that's the thing is he has those old player skills that translate, I guess. You got a late start to his career, much like Ortiz, making up for lost time. Yeah, for sure. All right. More recent trades. It's been a very busy week. Yesterday, it kind of really got going in earnest, the A's of all, which was a little surprised, not that they didn't need him,

but that they actually pulled the trigger on it, went and got Starling Marte. They had to pay

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