Hello and welcome to episode one thousand five of the sleeper in the bus today is Tuesday, January 25th. I'm your host Paul Spore. Join this morning by Justin Mason Justin. Good morning.

Sir, I think I nailed the, I think I nailed the number right? It's one thousand five. It is one thousand five. It's, it's kind of hard to like come up with all the numbers. I was unsure of myself first. I get there and I, you could tell that the little, the little hesitation there. How are you doing? I know you're, you're recovering. You're in recovery mode. Yeah, I had a little bit of minor dental surgery stuff. I mean, I think it's considered surgery, but yeah, I was in Spain yesterday. Still potted for two hours last night. I do.

You know, nail man style. And the rain nor sleep nor snow nor mouse surgery. What are you doing your thing? I made my picks on the five six turn from the dentist chair. That's amazing. Yeah, that's awesome. I'll send you the picture. I literally like had like goggles on because they didn't want like any splash my eye or anything like that. Like that. That's so good. The dental bib and still made my picks taking Nick Cassiano's and Will Smith. Okay.

Which Will Smith? Oh, the picture. Okay. Closer. Yeah. Um, that's, that's really interesting. We're actually going to talk about Castiano's here and what we're doing today is the bad X and ATC are out. So for you, projection hounds get out there now. Those two and steamer. You got all three to look at. You can kind of mix and match. Do your thing. Today we're going to focus on the bad X down the line. We'll look at some ATC stuff.

Derek Carties. Excellent projection system. And we're going to look at some potential gems on their end. At least in relation to steamer. Some guys that bad X has at each position that are markedly higher than where steamer has them.

Which will then lead me into asking you if you agree. If you see, if you see what bad X is seeing or feeling more towards steamer or in some cases, you might just be plumb in between them.

So let's start. Let's start at catcher. Go ahead. Before we start, though. Can I guess because this is a question I posed last night. Okay. And obviously, it'd probably better for someone who like Derek Cartie or Ariel Cohen, who does.

Smart ear. You're saying. Yeah, exactly. Totally, totally, which, which is a smart person first, which, which gives me a time to do this.

Yeah, I can a little ticker at the bottom. So I love that. Except for the message is not great for. Yes, for those listening in audio.

I have a little ticker on the bottom of the screen going Paul is dumb. Don't listen to somebody found a new tool. Yeah, I love, I love recording live.

So my question is considering projections rely partially or a lot on past performance. Right. And we have the shirt in 2020 season.

And a 2021 season that isn't going to be normal because of the short and 2020 season.

Good point to how much are we or how worried are we that projection systems may take a little bit of time to catch up. Because I mean, I think we've seen some weird, especially from pitching the pitching side of things, we're, you know, guys, we're maybe limited in 2021 because the short 2022 season.

Like how seriously can we take projections for this year?

I will probably continue to take them as seriously as I've always done, which is to say, not to the top where I'm married to that number. I respect the work that goes into them.

I would actually go the other way. I feel like they're, I feel like they're bringing me back in line more. So I don't get too crazy about 2020.

Or even, you know, be careful a little bit on 2021 because you know, they're going to have plenty of 2019 in there. And we feel so far removed from that that I think it can make a countercase that they're the ones kind of bringing things maybe back in line. If people were getting a little bit too, you know, outside, taking outside's opinions from 21 and 20 and making it create a different projection. I could see if the 19 influences there enough plus the general.

Conservatism of projections, I feel like they might, they might actually have a measuring factor to kind of tamp things down. But I guess it probably player by player basis, right? Because what you said about the the innings management and the goofiness of these two seasons, there's going to be some cases where it's hard to do that.

And others where I think they will have a better case of doing that. Like if somebody didn't have a full 19 to kind of be that that measuring stick to pull things back.

Then then what do we do, right? And so we get into players like that bottom line. I'll go back to what I said at the very beginning, taking them as seriously as I as I've always done, which is they are part of the mix.

They've never been my full mix. They've never been something that I rely on exclusively. And I will continue to do that because I do agree with you that there is some extra volatility in them that even projections cannot account for in my opinion.

Yeah, I'm right there in kind of lockstep with you. So in this sense, I don't believe you're dumb or wrong. But yeah, I kind of I definitely am kind of shying away a little bit from really relying on projections. I definitely want to look at them and kind of see what I agree with, see what I disagree with. But you know, I just I wonder how much of the craziness from the last two seasons.

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