It is Monday morning, everybody.

Did it a little different than Sunday night, but same people coming at you.

Jeff Erickson, Scott Jensen, all talk of baseball on the Rotowire Fantasy Baseball podcast starting next.

Happy Monday morning, everybody, a little bit different than normal.

Welcome to the Roadwire Fancy Baseball podcast.

I'm Scott Jensen.

Join, as always, on this version of the podcast by Jeff Erickson.

Jeff, it's been a couple of weeks since I spoke to you virtually, but we did have dinner this weekend, which was, which is really fun. But how are you? Doing well. Yeah, it was fun doing the steak dinner on Friday. It was good doing that. Chris List was in usual form. We had a couple of drafts, a football draft and a baseball draft. So that was good at the dinner. So that was fun. I'm excited. Our Reds have called, uh, called, uh, called up, Christian and Carnaccio and Strand. Yep. They had a really tough weekend against the Brewers. Brewer, I'm not, I got to say, I'm not surprised. The same thing kind of happened two years ago. Or they had a wrap around home and away series with the Brewers, uh, surrounding the All Star break and it went similarly badly. So, you know, I like that they're trying to do something about it, though, add some offense. We'll see how it gets it all to fit into the lineup, though. Yeah, baseball is such a long season. You're going to have some downs for sure, but that was a tough time to get down, just the team right behind you, too.

So, yeah, the Reds have slipped in the second place, but, you know, still in a good spot as we, we enter the second half of the season here.

Yeah, Corbyn Burns was nasty against them.

I wonder if he looked, he looked the most back he's been all year.

That was about the best he's looked.

But speaking of standings, the AL East is wild right now, Jeff.

The, the J's, the Orioles, and the Red Sox have all won eight of ten, moving the Yankees,

who still are somehow like five or six games over, but in the last place, tie with the Red Sox.

The Reyes, who had that unbelievable start now have a one game lead in the East.

This is an unbelievable division of baseball. It's stacked. And we knew it all along. I mean, we, we've said it all long, but it, you know, the Red Sox really kind of stepped it up, too, because they were at one point, like a game over 500. We were talking about maybe, you know, them being sellers at the deadline. and I think the opposite is now more likely.

Now, there's still nine games out, no. talking about maybe, you know, them being sellers at the deadline. And I think the opposite is now more likely.

Uh, now there's still nine games out in the division, but I mean, it's, it's just loaded. I, you know, you look at this here. The Orioles and the Js are already in as wild card teams right now, but they can't rest.

Uh, Orioles, I mean, the Orioles are looking pretty good. There're six games over the pack. But, yeah, really impressive. And the fact is, you got the Astros still hanging in the wild card race. They're the third wild card, too. I mean, this is, I'd say the American League is ridiculous right now. Well, the American League West and East. Yeah, the Central is still muddling along there. But yeah, Boston and New York are only two games out of the playoffs right now. It's wild that we're at July 17th and all five of the East teams within two games of the playoffs. It's definitely crazy. We're going to have all the playoff teams from the east and the west. You mentioned the Astros. There are three games back of the Rangers. Rangers still hanging in there really well. I want to ask you, like, we're two weeks away from the trade deadline. As we look at your kind of fantasy leagues, did you find yourself kind of thinking about adding people who might get impacted by the deadline? Did you hold on to someone who you think might slide into a job? I was back and forth with Giovanni Gallegos this week. I think that, you know, the Cardinals, we wouldn't have guessed they'd be sellers at the start of the year by any means, especially in the NL Central. But they're 11 and a half out. They're 13 games under 500. You know, they've got a lot of teams in their way, too. It's not just one or two teams there. They're in last place.

I held a lot of Gagos because I think they may trade their closer. And, you know, when that happens, maybe Gagos says, maybe they trade Gagos too. I don't know. But it probably would have been a drop for me, but I think I'm going to wait a couple of weeks and see how the situation kind of clears itself out. So a similar sort of mindset. I declined to trade for Jordan Hicks. Okay. Because first of all, we don't know how much job security really has. The way Ollie Marmal has used that bullpen the last year and a half, hard to really say that he's a capital C closer. Right. And he's probably going to get dealt.

That's what I mean, they've kind of used him as the capital C closer. Hellsley's been out. We don't know what happens. He comes back. But you're right. I think that I mean, who else do you? I mean, we're looking at the, the Mets and the Cardinals are the two like surprising ones. Do you think they're both sellers at the deadline? yeah i mean it's there's going to be one time team that surprises us as a seller and one team that surprises this as a buyer.

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