H&J 140 - Draft Prep Season

0:00From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy goal to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts, included with Prime, because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is... Well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today. What is up, Pinterest family? I'm Greth Ford, joined by Scott Chew. We're here talking hitters on Pinterest. It's another episode of hacks and jacks. Scott, we actually had some nice weather in upstate New York. Our things out in Michigan. Warm and rainy. Just got a little flood warning. No big deal. If you don't like the weather in March, just wait a minute, right? Just classic. Oh, well, what do you again do?

1:01The old fake spring coming at us. We hit 70 degrees today in Binghamton, and nobody knew what to do. People were going crazy. I have a 70-year-old house. So water from the sky is the pain of my existence. That sounds about right. Yeah, ours is creeping up there too. And if we can avoid, you know, between the melted snow and the rain and everything else, we're feeling a little damp as well. So. Oh, let's get into some hitters here. We've got a lot to talk about. It's draft season. And we'll baseball classic season. There's injury news. Lots to talk about here and news and notes. Let's jump right into our injury and we'll call it transactional news. I guess really the lead here is Jerks and Profar caught with PEDs for a second time in his career.

2:03Suspended 162 games that leaves the Atlanta outfield. Pretty thin. Obviously, Ronald O'Koonia, Michael Harris, and then Mikey Stremsky. There's really not a time outfield depth in Atlanta. What does the Profar suspension mean for fantasy managers? So it does a couple of things. Number one, I think it bumps a guy like Michael Harris up in the lineup. Just just a little bit, right? So like right now, he's projected bat seventh. If Aldi's or yes, Dremsky's slow, he can creep up there a little further. Just it's one more guy who is going to be in the top part of lineup that's not lower. Drake Baldwin now projected bat second. That's another big jump for him. More played appearances. Like he's also going to DH some, I think. Technically right now, Dominic Smith is the guy who looks like he's coming in that a guy who didn't have played appearances before. That looks like he might now.

3:03And we've seen Dominic Smith for what feels like an age. He's been around ever since he was with, you know, the Mets. There's always this like push where people like this guy could be really interesting. Right. They're always like, oh, yeah, he, you know, he has, you know, he has on base skills and whatever. He's never been interesting. All right. He was interesting in 2019 in 2020. And since then, even when given a full opportunity, he's never been interesting. So I don't think there's a whole lot of chance that they find someone else. I think guys like Jorge Mateo and Eli White will get more time here and there for Atlanta. But none of them are a really fancy relevant. The only real mover here is Micah Stremski's a little bit more interesting. I guess as like a back end outfielder, the skills still limit him quite a bit. Like he's, he's not a guy that I'm like, oh, you got to go pick him up.

4:04He's like a 15 in a 15 team league now. He's a lot more interesting. And you know, guys like Michael Harris and Ozzy Albies moved up the lineup just a little bit. I'm sure like 50 played appearances this year. Well, not even that would probably be more like 25 to 30, but they'll be there. Yeah, and Atlanta just seems cursed this preseason with all the injuries to their pitching staff, all the injuries. Well, the suspension now, the Braves are having a tough time this spring training. And we'll see how that translates to the regular season. We know that they were supposed to be one of the threats in the NLE East. And see if they can hang on to that. Speaking of the NLE East, we move over to Philadelphia, where another outfielder was caught with PEDs. Johan Rojas, the Phillies outfielder, 80 games suspension for PEDs. Does that open the door for Justin Crawford? And what else in Philly might that affect? It doesn't open the door for Justin Crawford because it was already open.

5:05I thought he was already there. Justin Crawford is definitely going to be the center. It's now just like super confirmed. Justin Crawford is the starting out center field there. He's going to bat night. He's got a bunch of speed. He should be pretty good for OBP and stolen bases. And I don't think you'll get a whole lot else. That's just not his game. The ground balls can be a little concerning for Justin Crawford. He hits a bunch of them and he had a bunch of them in the minors. So gets the major leagues. That's going to be a little bit of a concern. But he takes his walks, he'll get his steals, a bit of a rabbit there. That's for the rest of the roster, it really does very little. Brandon Marsh was already probably going to be a platoon guy. Didn't really matter. This team is just going to kind of keep moving on. I don't think in fantasy, we cared that much about Johann Rojas other than maybe he was in the way for Justin Crawford. And now he ain't. So that's about it for him. The corpses of Dylan Moore and Brian De La Cruz are there as depth bats in Philly.

6:06But I mean, that's pretty relevant for fantasy managers. Yeah, none of them have any real Justin Crawford only loses his role if he's really, really bad. Because I think he'll be good enough defensively and walk enough to justify as a number nine hitter with speed. Well, let's move on to Houston where shortstop Jeremy Pena has a finger injury. I think it was a sprain or something ligamental. Fractured, just fingertip. Fractured his finger. So Carlos Corea has taken reps at shortstop. Does this open a path for isok parades to get some at bats in Houston? Finally, maybe the only problem is there's like no timeline on this. Right. The timelines we do know are he might miss opening day. Right. So like maybe it opens up a week or two.

7:06It doesn't. So actually, you know, I will talk about it a little bit more later. I just updated my ranks and Jeremy Pena doesn't move. Even though he's potential to miss a week or two of opening day, he finished as a top 70 hitter last year with 125 games. Right. And I rank him 74th. So it's like, okay, well, take off 10 games off the top. And I think he's still he can still he's still very much be this same guy that I was expecting. So I'm not not super concerned. Again, we don't have any kind of timeline. If it does open up some time for isok parades, that's awesome. But I just don't know that it, you know, that it will. I think, you know, if you project Pena to hit the injured list, hit the I L to start the year. Then yes, parades steps into third base and probably hits right in the heart of the order, which is what we want anyway. So that can totally happen. And if that's the case, yeah, but it's short term, right?

8:09Because when Pena is back, he's an excellent defender. You saw parades real path is probably either he needs someone else probably has to get hurt more. Or this team has to have some kind of desire to put yard on Alvarez in the outfield. And I just don't think they do. Speaking of outfielders, Chandler Simpson, another rabbit. I know we talked about Justin Crawford being a little bit of a rabbit. Chandler Simpson hasn't seen the field in almost a week for the rays as they nurse what looks to be a hamstring injury for Simpson. And obviously hamstrings, you know, speaking from a football perspective, hamstrings tend to linger, especially for guys that are that are reliant on their speed. Is this something that concerns you as draft season creeps up on us? Not really. I think he's meant he meant he's meant to be getting into games. Again, I don't remember if he was in today or not, but this doesn't sound like a long term thing. This is more of just a hey, we don't want as you said, we don't want this to get any worse.

9:13So we're going to give him a little bit of time. My concerns with Chandler Simpson are much more about his actual ability, right? Like I get it, he hit 295 last season and he can steal a bunch of bases, but he's just so awful against left handed pitching that how like in fantasy. Okay, so we have this guy who can steal a base every other game, right? He stole a famously 104 bases and 110 games in 2024, right? So this guy with amazing speed and good average, that's two categories. But he only like, I don't see how he plays 120 games, right? This is a part time hitter for the race who already platoon guys. They're definitely going to platoon a guy who doesn't really seem to be able to hit left like same sided pitching. And, you know, it's a little harder to steal on lefties because they're staring at you at first base.

10:13So I don't think they have a ton of incentive to do that. That's why he doesn't rank higher. I think there was a dream that he would rank higher as like a true rabbit, but that storyline never plays out, right? Billy Hamilton, that storyline didn't play out, right? Oh, well, you got to take him early because you're going to win the stolen base category for you. Turns out when you're so bad at the other categories, nobody cares. Nobody really can't like if you were an everyday player and leading off for them, then maybe. But even then, I don't see how we'd ever lead off against, I don't see how Chandler Simpson would ever lead off against left handed pitching. I don't see, you know, and even against right handed pitching, I don't know if he'll lead off then either, right? This team has a couple of other guys who can play that role. Andy Diaz can do it. Gavin Lux is sort of a scrappy hitter. Jake Fraley has done that a little bit before earlier in his career. He's a guy who can take walks just because his average lab better.

11:13His OPP is not, right? Like Gavin Lux and the Andy Diaz are guys that can sport like a 350 OPP and up. Chandler Simpson can't. He just doesn't walk. So he's a tough guy. I'm not again, not so worried about the injury. I'm far more worried about the role. We'll talk about another outfielder who were way more hyped on who does steal bases, but also contributes to a lot more categories than that. And that's Arizona Diamondbacks, outfielder Corbin Carroll. He looks like he might make his great, or not a grapefruit league. Sorry, his, his Arizona spring training debut out in the cactus league. He's a guy, one of those hammy injuries that we talked about early in the year. It looks like he might not miss any time in the regular season if all things go well. That's a huge boost for anyone who got a draft discount on Corbin Carroll. Immediately after the hammy bone injury.

12:13And obviously he's a stud and we're very excited to see him hit and play for as many games he can this year. Yeah, and, you know, him and Francisco Lindor, two guys that had the hammy issues and no other issues, right? They're the ones where it's like, I didn't really move them in my ranks because until I get bad news, I'm not going to because the projected prognosis was they could be ready for opening day or at least opening week, right? Maybe they're not playing every single day right out of the gate. Maybe they miss a gamer too, but that doesn't change my rankings at all, right? That like 0.6% of their season, they might miss. I'm not, I'm just not that concerned about it. So the, I'm absolutely, if you haven't drafted yet, I think Corbin Carroll goes right back to where he was, you know, right on your, like I don't think his projection really should be changed. Like right now, some of the projections have them down to like 138 games, 140 games, although that might be fair, just because he also is dealt with other injuries before.

13:17But Corbin Carroll should go right back into your rankings where you thought. I think the only hammy bone guy that we're a little bit worried about would be Jackson Holiday, who is also progressing. He's not, it doesn't seem to be quite as far as Carroll. So Carroll is ready to get into spring training games. Jackson Holiday is not, but he is taking batting practice. He's, you know, head off a tee, things like that. I think what's killing me on Jackson holidays, why are we so much harder on his injury than the other two? I don't know that I've seen something that indicates he isn't so much worse of a position that projections have him at like 100 games. They've been missing 50 games. I haven't seen the evidence for that. I think the price has gone way, way, way too low. And I think he's just at the back end of my top 150 right now. There's risk for him, but it's not related to the injury. It's just related to him.

14:17You know, he had a rough second half last season. You finished, you know, barely, you know, he finished his hitter 124. So there was some issues there, but why is, I just don't understand why this price is so low. And why he keeps falling and falling in drafts. And I'm scooping him up solely. You and me both as one of the many Orioles fans that we have here on pitcher list. He's a guy that I'm targeting because I'm very excited about him this season. And it's a homer pick, but it's also I think a relatively sharp pick as well. Especially if he keeps getting a hammet bone discount. I'll happily scoop him up in drafts. Last transaction we'll talk about. And this could be completely irrelevant. Starling, Starling Marta signs with the royals in their outfield. Are you worried? Obviously, Starling Marta doesn't have much fantasy relevance. He won't have much fantasy relevance. But does this concern you at all for, you know,

15:18Kansas City's other outfielders, you know, Jack Cagley and own, Isaac Collins. Kyle Isbell is fantasy relevant also, but especially for Cagley known. Is this, is this something that you're worried about perhaps him losing at bats to the 37 year old Marta? Not, it's not because of Marta. Like Marta is a guy. If it wasn't Marta, it would have been Lane Thomas on the bench, right? Or Tyler Tolbert on the bench, or just any right handed guy that they decided would be, you know, that they'd be comfortable with in right field to hit against a lefty hit. Jack Cagley, known as issue is with it. It's it's all himself. He's going to lose playing time because of him and who he is and struggles against left handed pitching. I think this team would love for him to be the everyday guy. But out the gate, he might get, you know, the kid gloves on against tougher lefties. I think the royals definitely think that they can compete and what is frankly a weak division, right?

16:22So it's not as though they're just going to get just plug him in and see what happens. It's not like we're going anywhere. Like they might be the best team in this division, right? The guardians, tigers, royals, none of them jump off the page. So could it, Cagley, known as have, you know, platoon losses off the gate. Maybe, yeah, but not because of Starling Marta. Starling Marta is a pinch runner who's going to come in late in games. He's 37 years old. He hasn't, you know, he actually wasn't a terrible hitter last season when he played. He played 98 games or 112 WRC plus he doesn't run nearly like he used to in terms of stolen bases. But he can still hit for average. He doesn't strike out a ton. He's a perfectly capable back end outfielder like a team's fourth or fifth outfielder. And that's all he's going to be as again, Cagley, known as playing time is nothing to do with Marta and everything to do with his success against left handed pitching. Fair enough. We'll stay in the AL Central for one more note that came across my desk a little bit earlier this week.

17:26Kevin McGonagall survives the most recent wave of cuts in Detroit. He stays on the Major League roster at least for another few days or a week. What kind of optimism does that give you for him potentially making the Tigers opening day roster? So much, so much optimism. Kevin McGonagall might be this team starting shortstop. They don't have one, right? Who's it going to be? Havi? Like Matt Vierling? Like they don't have exact McHenry was the other guy. They don't have a shortstop. Kevin McGonagall is a short like to be fair, exact McHenry has played well when he was a shortstop. Nothing wrong with his defense and he can play a little bit. But this team wants McGonagall to be the guy. I think he very well could be the guy. He, you know, this is a top five overall prospect. I got to talk on the Detroit. Or yeah, I got to talk with some guys from Detroit, Evan Pets old beat writer.

18:30About this team and how this works. And with McGonagall, the biggest thing is can he unlock the power at the big league level? Right. So he can hit fly balls. He can do all those things. But mostly he's like a line drive hitter. He's hit a bunch of them. I mean, right out of the gate, McGonagall is going to be a points league and OBP league guy. Like he should start for you because he walks a ton. He walks more than he strikes out. He's actually done that his entire major league career. Right. All the way back in the complex league back in 2023 when he was 18 years old. He was walking twice as much as he struck out. Right. Like he has truly hyper hyperbolic always, but he has one soda level plate discipline. That's the level of plate discipline. This guy is bringing to the table. Right. I mean, he just, he walks significantly more than he strikes out. What he doesn't have is that level of, I don't know if he has that level of home run power.

19:31Now, we did hit 19 home runs in 88 games last year. And the first caveat that I'll always make, even guys I like, he doesn't have a ton of time in AA. He's got more than like Cam Smith did last year, where he's got 206 played appearances in in AA, which is at least the upper minors. So McGonagall, you know, I do think right out of the gate, he could be 20 home runs, 10 steals with a decent average and a good OBP. I think that is absolutely reasonable. I think that the next time I update the ranks, he'll be in the top 150. But yeah, he's, he's got a little bit of speed. I know he can give you ratios right away. The question will be, how often can he get the ball in the air? This is something that up until last year he had really struggled with. So in the low minors, it was tons of line drives. And then last season as he moved to the upper minors, he was able to get the ball in the air just a little bit more. Comerica Park is big. Line drives aren't going to leave that park, right?

20:33He's going to have to get the ball in the air. That is hard to do against major league pitching. You tend to see guys hit more grounders. But for him, that might just be line drives, which will limit the home run power. But it'll help his ratios a ton. You should be very excited about Kevin McGonagall. This, this guy's an absolute stud. We talk more about Conor Griffin because Conor Griffin's like that one, one prospect who is probably like a slightly higher level of long term potential because he's got more power. But you know, if McGonagall opens the season with the Tigers, I think he's a rookie of the year contender for sure. If not the favorite until we know when Conor, or Conor Griffin has a chance to play. Beautiful. And that's Kevin McGonagall from the Detroit Tigers middle infielder. Is he listed? Is he eligible at shortstop right now or is he eligible at second base in most formats? I believe he's eligible at second base in most formats. Every league, like all these formats of a slightly different way they handle what to do.

21:33So actually, no, he should be shortstop out of the gate. That's what he played mostly in 2025. They'll probably only have that shortstop designation. And frankly, with the Tigers, I don't see him getting a different one. I'm just, I think they're hoping he just is the shortstop. Excellent. Well, like I said, Kevin McGonagall Detroit Tigers name to watch for certainly as spring training continues to roll. We'll take a quick break and we come back. We'll talk Scott's most updated hitters lists, including his positional rankings coming soon. For everyone who solves crime from their couch knows more about forensics than their own job and has trust issues with small town sheriffs. Amazon Music's millions of podcast episodes are calling. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts. Add free included with prime. Welcome back to hacks and jacks. I'm your host Brett Ford joined by senior analyst got to we're talking hitters on picture list. Scott, you published your top 300 hitters for 2026 in February.

22:36We're now creeping into March and you've got some movement in the list. Some guys that have fluctuated up and down. Let's talk some of the risers early on. Who have you got that's been creeping up your ranks? Yeah, so let's start with the guys who are in the top 150. The biggest mover is actually guy. We just got done talking about that's Jack Cagliinona. And so I want to put a little bit more of a positive spin. He's showing us a ton of power here so far in the spring. That's really promising like the the rank. I don't change at this point. I don't change my ranks much for spring training. Unless I think it's a roll change. And while it's possible Cagliinona will be platooned like we just talked about. I also now think there's about an equal chance that that doesn't last long. And that he can be a 130 140 game guy right now where it's only tough lefties. Right, but they don't take him out for every single left handed picture they see. Right ones that are vulnerable. I hope they leave him in.

23:37So that increased roll and just the power upside right. He struggled with a couple things last season when he hit the major leagues. But strikeouts weren't one of them. It wasn't that he couldn't make contact. In fact, he had a fine barrel rate as well. It's just that when he didn't barrel it, it wasn't good. Right. He had too many. I mean, just too many like too many ground balls, you know, 50% ground balls when he was in the majors last season. Again, because that's the same thing we were talking about with McGonagall where he was a 40 to 45% ground ball guy in the minors. And when he got to the majors, it turns to 50% because stuff that used to be line drives turn into ground balls. Right. That type of bad ball. The line drive. That's the one with the most volatility because the difference between a line drive and a fly ball and a line drive and a ground ball is incredibly little. You get to the majors. The pitches move more to you expect that ground ball rate to go up for a lot of hitters. And that line drive rate to come down. That's what we saw. But I do think he can make some adjustments and get back to something more more reasonable.

24:39And hey, look. If when Kegley and One has a breakout season, and I like to think that he will eventually when he does, that's a 30 home run bat. Now the question is what kind of 30 home run bat? Is it like a Spencer Torkelson 30 home run bat, which is valuable, but a bit flawed. Or is it like another level of player who can maybe hit for a higher average just and just rip the ball everywhere because he's not going to strike out as much as the guy like Spencer Torkelson. I don't know. That part we still have to see, but there is certainly upside here. And I love him at the back of my outfield in 12 teammates. Do you think he can make kind of that. That rapid ascension in the way that we saw maybe like Gunner Henderson from his cup of coffee to his rookie of the year season, where the Orioles kind of let him hit against lefties. And he actually had success where the previous narrative was he can't hit lefties. And then the Orioles didn't let him hit lefties. And then he couldn't hit lefties because he hadn't seen lefties.

25:40Do you think that's kind of what we're seeing with Kegley and One here in Kansas City? Maybe a little, but this is where understanding, I think some props. I'm not a huge prospect guy, but I do look at those grades a lot. And I think that's where you have to tell the difference. It's not just that Gunner Henderson was like a one dot one prospect, you know, best prospect in baseball. It's that he had a very advanced hit tool. And so with that advanced hit tool, these guys can make adjustments a lot better, right? They can start making more contact. Kegley and One does not have a great hit tool. It is below average to average at best. What he's got is power and a whole bunch of it, right? And so he's never going to walk a ton like he kind of could walk at, you know, like a 10% rate in the minors, but I don't think that'll ever be what he does in the majors. I think he'll always be like an average walk rate guy. But, you know, the reason he's exciting is because this dude has 12 battered balls in spring training. And the average x of velocity on those 12 battered balls is 98.8 miles an hour.

26:44On average, it's a missile. All right, like he's got a max EV so far this spring of 120 miles an hour. That's ludicrous. Max x of velocity. That's like the, you know, if someone were to hit that in April, that might be the hardest hit ball for the entire month of April in the major leagues, right? Like that's Giancarlo Stanton O'Neil Cruz kind of power. So that's where the excitement comes from, but he doesn't have that kind of advanced hit tool. It may take some time where I don't think lefties will necessarily strike him out all the time. I do think lefties will cause him to hit the ball in the dirt a lot. Right? And that, that's going to be really frustrating because even, you know, even less season, the strikeout rate against lefties and righties was exactly the same. Right? And actually, he had, he had some OK numbers against lefties last year. He was bad all around. But I think they expect it to get better against righties. And they're not so sure against lefties.

27:45And the ground ball rate is where it was really different because you might look at the stat line for cagley and known a and say, well, well, he was actually better against lefties than righties is this, you know, he had a 36 WRC plus against righties and the 71 against lefties. So he was only normal bad against lefties. So why are you so worried about lefties? Because if you go and look at the bad and ball, like the bad and ball profile against righties is normal, right? 17, 17.9% line drive rate, 44.6% ground ball rate, 37.5% fly ball rate. That's fine. It's not great, but that's fine. Against lefties, it's a 63% ground ball rate. Like that's not workable because he ain't fast. Like he's not, he's not going to like beat these, you know, his, his infield hit rate is like 2%. But he's just, he's not going to beat these out. So you need him to get the ball in the air. And if he's not getting the ball in the air, he is a sandbag to your lineup. You are hoping that thing finds a hole. So with cagley and own a, I think that he can win that full-time role.

28:47He's just got to get the ball in the air against lefties because he's not going to strike out a bunch against him. Yeah, it's just massive, massive power. And I knew he had that, but I didn't know, again, only 12 battered balls. But my goodness, 98.8 miles an hour on those 12 battered balls, 120 point, that max exit velocity of 120.2. There are very few players in the major leagues who can do that in batting practice. Well, cagley and own it will be a guy that I certainly keep my eye on as a second-year breakout or really still rookie eligible, I believe. So certainly a guy in the heart of that Royals lineup to keep an eye on, especially looking for power in the middle parts of your draft. Anybody else rising up the ranks for you, Scott, maybe somebody who's performed well in the world baseball classic or, you know, nobody in general. If I was going to raise a guy up for the world baseball classic, it would be Jaren Jaren who's smacked three home runs so far, which is really cool.

29:49But also I'm not a huge believer in that. You know, I think some of the guys who rose up, Connor Griffin did rise up in the ranks. He rose up about 34 spots. Cagley and own a rose up 38 spots, Connor Griffin rose up 34 spots. Yeah, just again, he looks, he looks pretty legit. I think the pirates are going to what you give him a shot. There's some rules now that we have where if they win rookie of the year, basically, you can still kind of keep the control that you have. So he's one that that moved up quite a bit. Michael Harris rose 13 spots just again, because he's got a much more solid role now. I think they're going to jerk him around. If he has a slow start, which if you'll recall, he's always had like after his rookie season, it's been all super slow starts that turn into platoons and all other kind of ugliness. I don't even think Atlanta has the option to do that. So they're not. So that moved him up a little bit. Another guy who moved up a fair bit considering where he wasn't the ranks as James would.

30:50And part of that is just because I think I was too harsh on him. I know he's got these decision making problems, but I think he can work them out. And in spring training again, the results are bad. The plate discipline is fine so far. Right. And again, that can change a lot. It's 20, you know, it's 20 plate appearances. That's all we see. But I think this nationals teams a little scrapier than I thought it would be. I think James would, you know, he's going to be hitting second for them, I think. And you know, maybe I think really I was just too hard on him. And I had to remember for the first half of the season, I had this guy as a borderline top 10 hitter. Right. James would is his ceiling is like tier two. Right. Like his ceiling is first round guy, you know, starting next year. So he moved up. And that's where some, sometimes these ranks, people are like, well, nothing's really changed. I'm like, well, I've changed me, the human. Right. Like I've been in drafts and I find myself moving James would up.

31:51And I would start it to take him early. Like I took him in some mocks, I took him in a, you know, just a friend's league. And I was like, why, like then why do I rank him this way? Right. And that's something that's going to happen if you're doing mocks. One of the biggest things you get out of it is you have your ranks and you feel good about them. And then when it's time to pick, you don't follow them. And you ask yourself, why is it because I don't need that position? Is it because I don't need what that guy provides? Or is it like, I might actually like this guy more than I thought I did. Or maybe not as much as I thought I did. Well, you talk about spring training performances and how that can kind of weigh, not necessarily weigh on the way that you draft, but at least reveal some of the things you're looking for, like you said, with plate discipline with James Wood. Have there been any other observations you've made through spring training that have kind of popped off the page for you? Well, the first thing to mention is that for veterans, I do not care about their spring training numbers. And I think the guy to talk about theirs, Matt McLean, who is having just an unbelievable,

32:55he's having an unbelievable spring training. His OPS is like 1.7 something that I posted this on Twitter at some point last week. We've seen him be good for 25 that bats before, right? We've seen Matt McLean do that. I mean, he actually started last season. He hit like three home runs in the first week or something, right? Matt McLean, we know that's in there. The problem is that it doesn't come out nearly enough, right? So that's why I'm not so excited about Matt McLean and moving him up my ranks because I'm still concerned that long term, he's not going to perform. I think the guy who's a little bit more interesting, you know, at this point, what I'm looking at when I'm looking at these spring training stats, I'm like, who might be winning themselves a bigger role, right? Who might be solidifying a role for their team? So it's good to see Kobe Mayo come out and hit well in spring training, right? Because he's going to have an opportunity early in the season and maybe he's got, it's maybe it's a very strong opportunity, right? They won't mess with it. Maybe, you know, Mike Yostremsky has this opportunity to,

33:56he's got four home runs now in spring training and they have this open spot and they don't have a lot of competition period. But maybe they were thinking about pletuning him. But if it continues to hit well, Yostremsky in spring training, maybe they're like, well, maybe we just let him run, right? Because the other guys on the bench aren't that good. So that's an opportunity or, you know, just Nixon Garcia, the password for Pittsburgh. He's hitting well this postseason that, this spring training and while that doesn't necessarily, like I don't see him being a starter, you know, there's another young outfielder. I think they prefer to give a starting role to when he's ready for it. I do think it makes him, especially in deep leagues, interesting is a guy who is sort of like, gonna start at least with some platoon. And then maybe he does creep his way into some more played appearances, right? Especially if there's an injury. That's the only problem is that Brandon Lowe and Brian Reynolds and Marcelo Zuna, a DH and O'Neill Cruz in center, they're probably gonna lock down most of those at bats.

34:56But just Nixon Garcia is showing enough to potentially find a way to make a bigger impact on this team. Well, we've talked about some spring training performers. We've talked about some guys that have risen up your list. Is there anybody else that you wanted to mention before we go to break? Yeah, you know, Brett, there is one more guy. But grudgingly, the dude keeps ending up on all my drafts. So he's moved himself into the top 150. And it's really freaking Castro. And it's not because there's been any change, like there's not been any like re-evaluation of his talent. I don't think I was wrong about what Willy Castro is. What I was wrong about is how useful that is when you're actually in a draft and you realize you've got a week, you know, I just in TGFBI realized I still needed an outfielder, a corner in fielder, and a middle in fielder. And in a deeply, it's like, oh crap. Willy Castro can be all of those things. I can take him and then see in the next few rounds.

35:58And we'll talk about draft strategy shortly. But it's like in the next few rounds, I don't have to reach up and grab. Oh, I have to go get a middle in fielder now. I have to go get an outfielder now. I can, let's see where the value kind of is for the rest of the draft. So it's annoyingly convenient to have Willy Castro later in the draft or to a lesser extent Jonathan India, who I think might benefit from the walls coming in a little bit in Kansas City. He's got a similar sort of eligibility. It just, it keeps happening and I hate myself for it. But also, I'm willing to admit that Willy Castro is more convenient than I originally assumed. Now, again, in a standard Yahoo League, which three outfield, no middle in field, no corner in field, just a two utility, he's not really going to have room. He's going to be a guy like maybe you draft him because you want just one bench hitter and he can cover a lot of ground. But when it comes to, you know, when it comes to those deeper leagues where you have that like those big rosters, being able to check off corner middle and outfield

37:02is a big deal and Willy Castro moved up a bit specifically for that reason. Yeah, Castro, you might scoff at this, but in my TGFBI draft, I didn't get Willy Castro because he went in the 16th round. And that's like three rounds, but I'm looking at other utility guys. Early Clement went in the 19th or three rounds later than Willy Castro. So I am in on Willy Castro. I have proclaimed my love for Willy Castro on several episodes of this podcast, but man, putting him up in the 16th round, is that price something you're willing to pay or is that too expensive? I am absolutely certain I know what happened. It's the same thing I just described. Somebody realized they had weaknesses at several positions and there's not a lot of guys that can cover all of those bases, so to speak. So, you know, he's not ever going to show up on like the biggest risers and fallers

38:06for like ADP differences and stuff like that. But he is a guy who again, you're just going to be like, hey, you know what? This might be kind of useful. He's a starter. He has very little competition. Again, it's, and it's been like a sort of a bit of a creep up. You know, like after he got his job in Colorado, he's kind of just slowly had his ADP kind of settle in. But yeah, it's, he's not, again, he's not special. His eligibility is, which is mean to kind of separate. Like he's not going to do something with the bat that we're like, oh my god, we're so happy to have this. It's, he's good enough to cover a lot of spots and deep leagues. I'm glad you're finally buying into Willie Castro makes my heart happy. I'm very excited to see him play in Colorado. We'll take a quick break when we come back. We'll talk draft strategy and different draft formats on hacks and jacks. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued? Wake up to Zepp Bound, tears appetite.

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40:10Taking Zepp Bound with a sulfonoluria or insulin may cause a little blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zeppbound.lily.com. Zepp Bound and its delivery device base in QuickPin are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and company. It's subsidiaries or affiliates. For everyone who solves crime from their couch knows more about forensics than their own job. And has trust issues with small town sheriffs. Amazon Music's millions of podcast episodes are calling. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts. Add free. Included with Prime. Welcome back to hacks and jacks. I'm your host Brett Ford, joined by Scott Chiu. Before we dive into drafts and drafts strategies, we need to talk about our live draft assistant here on Petrolist. The PL live draft assistant or LDA as you'll hear it referred to through the industry. Nick will call it that.

41:10The LDA is fully updated and ready for 2026. And we've completely overhauled it for your drafts. Think of it as having a personal scout and analyst of master strategist, a Nick Pollock, a Scott Chiu sitting right next to you as you draft. A lot of new features, a fully integrated PLV 2.0 projections. There's a more streamlined system of entering your picks. There's new player tags, which are awesome as you go through your prep. You can tag guys as sleepers, as targets, as your do not draft list. You can kind of preset things that way as you go through. It's a beautiful new system. And it's definitely something that if you're a PL plus or PL pro subscriber, you should absolutely be utilizing. Draft assistant is available with a PL pro subscription. If you want to support Petrolist at the highest level, lifetime subs are still open for a limited time. Dominate your draft with our live draft assistant. Use promo code podcast LDA 15 when you sign up.

42:13So a super exciting tool. And it helps you navigate through all kinds of different draft formats, Scott. And we're here to talk about kind of the nuance between those formats. Obviously you have your your roto leagues, your category leagues, your head to head category leagues. And then of course, head to head points. Let's start with roto. Let's talk about kind of the different draft strategies and things that you look for in a roto draft that might be different from your head to head categories league or your head to head points league. Let's start with five by five and then you kind of expand on that as we go. Yeah, so the big thing with roto that makes it different from the other formats is that all your stats matter for the entire season. Right. And all the head to head formats, you have a fresh slate every single week. Right. Roto, that's not the case. So it creates a little bit of tension that doesn't exist in the others where streaky, you know, streaky hitters matter less in roto.

43:13Because all you matter is that when it comes out through the wash, what does the number look like? Right. You don't care as much about the weekly ebb and flow. Right. You need to avoid, you know, on the pitching side, it's a little different because you need to avoid some of those creators because that point two innings, 90 runs, never comes off the ledger in roto. You're stuck with it the whole year. So it's a big deal. Whereas again, in a head to head league, you're like, well, that really sucked this week. We'll get them next week. Right. Like it doesn't matter anymore. That start no longer matters. It cannot ever hurt you again. And in roto, it stabs you in the kidney every single day up until the end of the season. So that's where you have to think about it a little bit. So with hitters, it usually works out the other way. You're like, you don't really care that Kyle Schwarber has two or three weeks consistently where he's terrible. You're like, just leave him in because I don't want to miss the good week. Right. Because I get to keep those numbers the whole time. I get to let it come out in the wash. Hitters can't blow you up negatively like pictures can in roto. So, you know, they can't, they can't lose you a week, right?

44:15Because you don't care about a week. You care about a season. So in, that's a big deal in roto. Also, it makes, it puts a lot more value on steels and ratios than you have in head to head category leagues. Because again, you have to keep that number for the entire season and then get your points based on what you have. It's not like I have to worry about how much my opponent is doing. It's that I have to be better than everybody in these categories. And so when you look at a five by five roto, stolen basis is 20% of your hitting value. But also doesn't really correlate with the other stats, right? Like, there's not very strong correlations between stolen base and anything else. It's like a little bit for runs, but these guys often like a lot of base dealers don't bat first, right? They bat like ninth. So they don't always score a ton of runs. And so it puts this heavy emphasis on stolen bases. And that's why when you listen to folks that talk a lot of NFBC, especially when there's an overall component. You, you listen to these guys, they will talk about stolen bases a lot.

45:18And in every draft, you'll hear them say, but where's the speed, right? Like friend of mine, Tim McLeod, who's been doing this a long time, great analyst. He'll be the first like in a draft, if, you know, when some, when we're doing like industry drafts, he, one of the first things I'll kind of ask about a team is like, where's the speed? How are they going to get the stolen bases? They're hard to get on the wire. It's easier than it used to be, but it's still difficult. And you're not going to accidentally win a week like you will and head to head. So with roto, you care about that. You also, you know, you do care about ratios because they're harder to rebuild than they're less fluky, right? Week to week cost worker can win you adding average for a week because he'll go a week and hit 600, right? He can do that. It's just all the other weeks where he doesn't, right? That'll never happen in roto. So in roto, you really care about these ratios a lot more because again, they stay with you the entire season. And so in roto, I'm much more likely likely to attack ratios earlier in the draft.

46:19They are really hard to get later. And when you, when they do appear later, it tends to be empty average, right? Think like Louisa Reyes. And that's not even late. Like you get after that, you start talking about like a chase my draw through in roto. It just doesn't carry a lot of value because they don't really do anything except hit, right? Which sounds like, well, you hit, isn't that good? Well, not when it's all singles, right? Like singles and doubles in roto don't really matter unless there's a bunch of dudes on base, right? Like it's not as important. So yeah, with roto, you're always playing the long game. It makes trades quite interesting, right? Like it's a lot more obvious what people's strengths and weaknesses are. Trades are probably easiest in roto, right? Because you can also make up the most ground. You can go from, you know, eighth to second, right? You can't always go from last to first. It's possible, but you can't always do that, but you can move a lot, right? Without having to do much in a head to head league, you have to win that category every week, right? It doesn't actually matter what category as you win.

47:20It doesn't really matter how you've got the points, right? In roto, it does. So in roto, you get this layer of strategy about like, okay, there's five of us who are all within 10 stolen bases of each other. And we've got two months to go, right? That, that's a lot of volatility, right? Because you can lose five of your standing points because they steal a few more bases than you do. It also gives you a reason to say like, okay, so how am I going to move up the rankings? I can literally just look at it and see like, okay, these are the categories where I have the most operatic that are the closest for me to move up, right? Like the distance between me and the next guy at home runs is insurmountable, right? I'm second he's first, but he's got all the power in the world. I'm never going to catch him. So I don't care about that anymore. Where are the categories I can catch, right? And that I won't lose points, right? If I'm, if I'm that guy that's first in home runs all the way up, let's say I'm first in stolen bases by like 40, which is just insane. You'd be like, oh, well, I mean, no one's going to catch me.

48:21I can trade all the speed. I can just trade it off and get stuff that I still need. So trades become a little more natural in roto. So anyway, in draft strategy, if it's a no trade league, you need to be balancing everything all the time. It is very roto with no trading is the hardest to deal with punting in draft, right? And just to be clear, when we talk about punting, we mean punting in the draft. We don't need punting all season necessarily, right? We mean punting in the draft, like saying, I'm going to get, I know this is not enough steals to win, but I can still go find those, right? Or I've got one closer. That is enough to put me in last place, but I'm willing to spend fab on it instead of draft resources to get the rest of my saves, especially in the 12 team league. That's super viable on a 15. It's a bit harder, but it can be done, right? So that's the other thing I would call out. I'll use roto to do it, but don't think of punting as I'm punting this on the season. You are punting it in the draft, right?

49:22And it means that you will probably spend your fabric sources to make up for it. But that's fine. That's a decision you can make. One that you'll probably make at some point in the middle-ish rounds, where you're like, hey, look, the cost of going to get more saves right now, and the hitting, I'm not going to be able to get if I do that, isn't worth it. I'd rather spend the fab. That's a totally viable thing, as long as you're thinking about it in that way. So with roto again, it's all about, it's how it's all season. It's more of a grind. It's avoiding on the pitching side, avoiding blowups, but more importantly, on the hitting side. Not sweating the slumps. You got to let them play through for the players that you know are good. And you can't just do the burn and churn as much because the more you keep missing, the more their bad stats pile up on you. And maybe the guy that you originally had that you believed in has turned it around by now. You just don't get the clean slate. But as we talk about head to head categories, which is just roto, but weekly against one person.

50:24The strategy changes immensely because what matters, there's two kinds of head to head category leagues. There's the ones where there's a single win and whoever gets the most categories gets the one win. Or you've got the much, much more common. You get a point for every category that you win. The other guy gets a point for every category that they, you know, that they win. And by the end, we see who has the most wins and who has the most losses. The biggest change from roto to head to head is punting no longer is just in draft. You can just punt on the whole season, right? Like stolen bases are incredibly flukey week to week. You hear me say it all the time, right? There are roughly 25 to 26 scoring periods in a season. Very few players average more than one a week. And even though they average more than one a week, there are plenty of weeks where they get one or zero. And then they have a week where they get four or five, right? So you can have a really strong team for stolen bases overall. And still lose that matchup a bunch of times because your guys didn't steal bases that week, right?

51:27And then it's a white clean slate. Whereas in roto, you're banking all those saves and head to head categories like it. Look, it's week to week. So you become much more flexible, especially with saves and steals, right? Number one with average with ratios. Batting average doesn't stabilize in anywhere close to a one week span, right? Batting average from week to week is insanely fluke, right? So I care about it a lot less, right? I don't, I don't actively avoid drafting batting average or OBP. But I care about it considerably less because it's really flukey. The other thing is saves and steals. So I'll talk a little bit less about saves because not our forte. But the first thing I do is I look at the other guys roster. I look at the other team I'm playing and saying, is it worth it to try to chase them in steals? Like, oh, they've got Chandler Simpson and all this and I've got like nobody. That's not worth it, right? But maybe it's a week where I'm like, hey, actually my guys are going to, you know,

52:28they're going to go play historically. They're going to spend like the white socks who just don't throw out runners. Like ever, everybody runs out of them or, you know, the old Matt's back in the day. And I'd be like, hey, you know what? Maybe my wire pickable be for a steals guy. I think I can catch them in steals because I'm going to have good opportunities and maybe they don't. Or maybe we were already kind of close and I'm like, oh, one more gives me the edge. So you do a lot more week to week managing because you can sort of queue up against your opponent. In the draft, you can also make the decision of, wow, everybody's pushing saves or steals way up. I'm just not going to do that because what if I can go, you know, I just, if I go seven and three every week, I'm the best team in this league, right? If I can go six and four every week, I'm probably making the playoffs, right? At least. So had to add categories, just a different strategy in that you can take some categories and be like, yeah, I just, I don't care about that as much and adjust your ranks accordingly. The ranks between those two really aren't that different except, again, it's specific categories. You can start saying like, I don't care about this category as much.

53:29So it's no longer as much of a penalty. So I'll push that guy up a little bit, right? Because it, it's not going to hurt me all the time. It's just, it's going to hurt me a week or two at a time. And the other is, you can just say like, I just don't care about this at all, right? I don't, I don't care about steals. That means Chandler Simpson's off my board, right? He's done do enough of anything else. I just don't care. Or, you know, really saves and steals are the only two you want to do it with. Now, in both of these formats, I want to talk a little bit about what happens when you start changing the categories. I was talking about five by five there. Once you start adding categories, so if you just replace average with OBP, make sure you understand the difference and what a good OBP is. I think this is something that gets left out where someone will say, oh, his OBP is better than his average. But is it still good, right? Or you'll say, oh, Luis Araya says a really good OBP. I should value. Actually, Luis Araya says much less valuable in OBP because his OBP is just like pretty good.

54:30It's, you know, it's a plus. But his batting average is like a triple plus, right? He doesn't walk that much. His high OBP is almost entirely driven by his batting average. So he loses him and a guy like Steve and Quon lose a bunch of value because they're not giving you all this extra value and batting average that they would have. They're giving you like a slight bump in OBP. It's almost like if they had. Think about if they only had a, you know, slightly above average batting average, how interesting would they be? Not that interesting. So make sure you understand how that jumps. It's generally you're looking in a 12 team league. You're probably looking. It's not a good OBP. So you're looking at like 340, right? You don't want to say guys a good OBP until it's like 340 and above. Whereas with batting average, it's like 270 and up. You'll say, okay, that's pretty good. 280. That means they're, that means they're boosting my average and upbringing it down. Again, an OBP, that number and a 12 team league is probably closer to like 340. Now, that's just when you swap a category, right?

55:31That's fairly easy to conceptualize. The other thing you need to know is that when you start adding categories, things start changing, right? So let's talk about home runs and stolen bases is a good example of this phenomenon. With home runs and a five by five league, a home run gives you a boost in four of the five categories, right? It's a hit. So that's average. It's a small boost to average, but it is a boost. It's a run. It's a home run. It's at least one RBI, right? So you get a boost in all those categories. So four of five, 80% of your score sheet is affected by a home run. When you go to six by six, it, you know, if it's just, if all you did was add OBP, then powers now it's still just as strong, right? It's still covering almost everything. But when you're starting out again, adding in categories like doubles, triples. You start adding in, you know, depending on the categories you add in, home runs become either more or less valuable. Like I was just talking to someone who has a league where they count doubles and triples that those are two categories and they don't count RBI, which means that's now,

56:36you took away a category that home runs are helping you in and you added two more that home runs don't contribute to. So now home run hitters are slightly less valuable than they were before. And guys who are mostly valuable because they hit home runs, they get a bigger hit, right? That'd be like the Kyle Schwarber's the world. They get a bigger hit because it's like, oh, I don't, like I don't care about his RBI, his RBI anymore. The home runs aren't quite as valuable because they're not boosting as many stats because home runs have strong correlations with the other stats. It's also possible and much more likely when it comes to power that your that you're adding categories that are just making home runs even more valuable, right? So when you start adding in like I've got home runs already on there and now I'm adding slug and OP or OPS, right? It's like, okay, so even more point. So if I'm using, you know, OPS instead of batting average, I'm actually double rewarding power, right? Because it was a slight boost to batting average, but no more of a batting average than any other hit.

57:38When you look at like an OPS, it's way better, right? You get a huge boost. So when you start bringing in some of those ratios, power becomes a lot more important. So try to understand if you're using a non-standard set of categories, try to understand how power matters because that will change how your rankings work a lot and use something like the live draft assistant or, you know, again, the auction calculator choice to understand how projections will move guys around and adjust your rankings accordingly. The other thing to understand is speed. Speed, power has the most correlation between the other standard categories, right? Because it directly impacts them. Stolen basis has the least correlation with the other categories as the least correlation with runs, RBI, batting average. It's like a little bit for runs and doesn't really correlate to anything else. So it's 20% of your ledger in a standard five by five. When you go six by six, it's like 17 something percent, right? It's like one sixth.

58:40It's 16%. I think you get to seven by seven. You're like 15%. You know, just less than that. You go to eight by eight. You're talking 12%. Speed becomes less and less important. It comes easier and easier to punt, right? Like why am I spending all these resources to boost what was 20? I'll do it for 20% of my scoring in a categories league. I'm not going to do it for 16, right? I'm not going to do it. Yeah, that's not nearly as valuable. Not because I can go get a home run and it counts towards way more stats, right? It's even more powers now way more important that speed, whereas before it was just mostly more important, right? So that's the dynamic that happens there when you start adding in categories. So so keep that in mind. And finally, I'll move to points and, you know, I know Brett, you're going to be working on a points column. I think, you know, one of the biggest things with points is you just have to stop caring. The biggest difference is in running categories, you absolutely care how your team is performing in each individual stat.

59:43And point says, I don't care how I get them, right? So generally speaking. And again, points leagues are each one of them is its own beautiful snowflake and everybody tweaks everything. But the biggest difference you'll find is you care a lot more in points about like doubles in total basis, right? Because you no longer get like two doubles is as good as a home run in points, right? Whereas in Roto and head head categories, two doubles is not as good as a home run, right? Because two doubles might not have led to any runs or RBI where a home run absolutely did. So like, I mean, it's not that different, but still it's really important to kind of understand that. I think the other thing that you do in points and that I often tell people and they ask me for advice and points. So I go, you know, how should I value these guys? Compare what a single and a stolen base is worth to a double, right? Compare what those two are because I think you'll find in a lot of cases it's about the same, right?

1:00:45Or pretty close, like maybe it's three points for the single and the steal and two points for a double. In those cases, I don't care about speed at all. Like, it's way easier to find doubles than it is steals, right? So I'm going to go get the doubles and I'm going to attack guys who put the ball in play. I actually don't always want, you know, Kyle Schwarber is better, you know, can be very good in points. But he doesn't put a ton of balls in play. It's just very nice that every time he does, it leaves the yard. Other guys like these extreme power hitters who like, you know, have like a 10% walk rate of 30% strikeout rate, they can be very frustrating in points even if you don't have a strikeout penalty because they're not putting the ball in play. And all of their outs are sort of unproductive outs, whereas guys who were smacking the ball around the field, they have a better chance of driving runners. I'd rather have a guy with like a 5% walk rate and a 20% strikeout rate than a 10 and a 30, right? Even though like overall it's about same, I want those balls in play because they have a, they have a better,

1:01:45they matter more in points because they just keep base runners moving. So that's the biggest thing with points is the most important tool in points is a live draft assistant and auction calculator. Something that gives you an idea, the, you know, and use whatever, I love our projections, use whatever projections you want. Okay. Have a project, do not take my rankings into your points league draft. All right. If you do, you can do it for the blurbs to talk about what I think a guy's going to be like, but for God's sake, get a projection system and run your league scoring through it to find out what it, what players are worth what, right? And throw regular ADP right out the window points leagues just don't align to those. And so you can see you can take the concept if I think this player is going to get better. I think this player is going to struggle with this. It's going to struggle with that. But also just take the projections, use that as your baseline, use other rank, like you can use my rankings then to be like, well, Scott really likes this guy. He thinks he's going to take a step,

1:02:45you know, he thinks Riley Green's going to take a step forward on the strikeout. So maybe I can bump him up a little bit more because maybe this projection is a little too harsh on the strikeout rate. Do things like that. But start with the projection and plug in how your team, how your league does scoring and then see how it goes. That's sort of like obviously that's valuable in every format. It's way more valuable in points than it is everywhere else. Absolutely. I know we talked about the LDA quite a bit, you know, during this formatting talk. But that's one of my favorite things to use the LDA for as my points leagues, where I can take the values of each category, plug them in and have it spit out projected points based on the PLV projections. And that's huge for me as I draft prep because I can look and see, oh, you know, it's got Riley Green. He's projected to be, you know, outfield. He's ranked as outfielder 12, but based on these point projections, he's down here at outfielder 20. So he's a guy that I'm going to be avoiding in points drafts, you know, because of the strikeout penalty because when he puts the ball and play,

1:03:47he puts it out of the yard and doesn't really put it in play other than that. So the other thing you just have to do in a points league is understand the balance between pitching and hitting. That's the moat like apart from the projections, understanding the balance between pitching and hitting and a points league is absolutely critical because generally speaking in most points league, the all the highest scores are pitchers, right? But there's also a lot more of them and they all score a bunch of points. And you can stream pitchers, I mean, streaming pitchers and points is a must strategy. It used to be a niche thing. It is a must. Everybody streams pitchers and points. So just because they score more points, doesn't necessarily mean you should take all the pitchers first before you take the hitters because what you actually care about is that sort of that replacement level concept of how many more points does this guide make than the replacement level guy, right? Like a standard, like a volume, just like a boring old volume starter is not so interesting in points because it's like, I can stream that, right?

1:04:49I can get all that back when I can't like what's harder is maybe on the hitting side because, you know, once you start looking at bad hitters, you're like, oh, wow, these guys all strike out too much. They don't give me enough points. They're real sandbags, especially like catcher. Start going to the back of the catcher list and you're like, wow, these are dudes all hit 200. They're, you know, they're possibly negatives. That's something that's, that's really important to understand the balance between pitching and hitting and, you know, whether you need to load up, you know, in standard categories leagues, I've said it, you know, for several weeks now, load up on hitting early, right? Go get those hitters, those first five rounds. You can't, you can't, I don't think you can take three pitchers in the first five rounds right now. You've got to get some of the hitters that are in that range. But in a points league, it's all, it's totally different, right? Because it just depends, you know, if your league has a ton of bonuses for like quality start and innings and, you know, all that stuff, then go get the pitchers because those guys run out quick. The guys who throw six innings every time, they,

1:05:51they disappear instantly. So you've got to go get them, whereas, you know, I don't necessarily care that they get a quality start as much, right? Like it matters. It's probably a stat, but it's just the one stat, right? It's not worth more than all the other stats, whereas like a bonus for a quality start might be 10 points, right? Might be five points. It matters way more, right? Like it's literally worth more. So make sure you understand the balance is there. Beautiful. That does it for our formats discussion or draft strategies discussion. Make sure you check out my column. It'll be coming out. I believe on Fridays, it'll be talking about points leagues. We're juicing up our points leaks content. We're, we're increasing that this year based on a pitch realist user feedback. So we're taking what the fans have said. We're trying to act on it and improve the fan experience on pitch realist. That's what it's all about. Scott, a great episode. Good job. Talking us through a whole bunch of different stuff. I feel like we covered so much ground this week.

1:06:53Let the people know where they can find you and your work. Yeah, still on, still on Twitter at if the two fits. Still on blue skies, scotchew.pitchellist.com. And I just, I'm releasing the positional ranks as we speak. Now you already know them to an extent, because I have the top 300. What these will have is also it'll have a forward by our own eight shorts who should be on the pod next week. To talk about some hitting stuff, if we can still get them. And it'll also have a table at the bottom, much like Nick's ranks. It has a table. I will give you a table for each positional rank. They should be out in the next few days. So if you want something that you can copy and paste into your own spreadsheets, it'll be there for you. It won't be behind any kind of paywall. You'll be able to get those positional. Beautiful. You can find me. It's made that man on social media. I'm obviously in the Pitchellist discord. I'll be writing a weekly column on Pitchellist. I'll be here on hacks and jacks. Make sure to check out cubillist.com as well. It's the the fantasy football sister site of Pitchellist. I'll be contributing over there.

1:07:53Throughout the course of the year, helping Jay Felicia with some podcasts, as well as updating a top 25 free agents column as the offseason continues, which the fan. I don't know if you've kept an eye on the football news, Scott, but the free agent market is absolutely bananas. And it's not even the official start of the lead year yet. We've got canceled trades. I don't want to talk about it. I'm a huge Ravens fan, as you can see. And they just decided that Max Crosby wasn't healthy enough to be wearing purple on Sundays. So I'm still a little salty about it. But we'll see how the rest of the offseason progresses. Anyway, enough football talk. We'll get back to baseball on our next episode of hacks and jacks. Thanks for tuning in. See ya.

1:09:01Bye.