How do the White Sox justify not starting Nick Madrigal from the first game of the season now that they’re starting the year in the month of Who Knows When and on the date of TBD? Such firmness with the MLB, huh? All you have to know about whether MLB owners are negotiating in good faith is they had the month of May to come up with a proposal and they submitted it to the players on May 26th. MLB owners negotiate like Kevin Spacey in Seven mixed with Robert Redford in Indecent Proposal. “You have 48 hours to come to the table or we will have Avisail Garcia screw your wife.” Well, whatever happens happens as they say say. Once baseball returns, it will come back with larger rosters. I’ve heard some describe this as taxi squads. The team will have, say, 30 men on the roster, but there will be another fifteen guys on a taxi squad who can be called up at any time for injuries. Nick Madrigal shouldn’t even be on the taxi squad. He should be on the MLB roster. Back, during Spring Training 1.0, we were expecting Madrigal to get called up around the end of May. Well, that came and went, huh? So, back to my original question, how do the White Sox suppress Madrigal from the majors now? To get Leury Garcia time at 2nd base, where he’s started eight total games since 2015? Don’t be daft. Madrigal is the starter at 2nd base, when the season starts, and I’ve begun drafting him, as such. Yes, I’m currently taking part in fantasy baseball drafts. I have a problem! So, what can we expect from Nick Madrigal in 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?
Franchy Cordero receives a value increase in a roundabout (not a rotary!) way due to the universal DH, because Wil Myers seems more likely to head to the DH spot now vs. sharing playing time with Franchy in right field. With Myers sharing DH duties (hehe, I said duties) with another red, white and blue flagger with no stars. Not Franchy, but parlez vous français…? How do you say in French, “What France hopes for in every World Cup tournament?” Ty France! That’s their GOOOOOOOOOAL! Sorry, when it comes to Ty France, I’m no Francophile. One thing Franchy Cordero and Ty France might have in common, besides being direct descendants of Robespierre, is they might be Quad-A players. You say Franchy, I say Ty France, let’s call the whole thing off like the French call off their military. But, if I’m being generous like the French with body odor, Ty France had no value prior to the universal DH, and now he’s at least worth a flyer for power — he had seven homers in 69 games (nice!), but hit .234 and we’re here to talk about Franchy, not France. Sorry, to misrepresent what I was baguette’ing at. Today, I’m donning a Franchy jersey, saying in my mirror, “I’m Franch dressing.” Don’t you relish me; that’s thousand island. So, what can we expect from Franchy Cordero for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?
Patreon Podcast: Very Special Guest Prospect Itch
May 25, 2020 | All Podcasts | 16 Commentsby: Grey
Sadly, we talk a lot about baseball this Patreon podcast. I know, I know, I KNOW! I’m sorry. You don’t pay us the very, very small amount of sixteen cents per day to hear about baseball. You want dong talk! Well, you’re not getting much of it this week. Less schlong, more baseball, that’s what I always say after reading that line off a bathroom stall. To discuss baseball, we welcome our very own prospect writer, Prospect Itch. During our spirited chat, we wrestle with some questions like: When will baseball return? What will it look like when it does return? And, perhaps most importantly, what will the fantasy baseball prospect rankings look like if — heaven forbid — there’s no baseball season?
Please, blog, may I have some more?I gave you a Wander Franco dart throw! Wheee! I slid a Alec Bohm dart throw in your DMs! Sexy! I alley-oop’d you a MacKenzie Gore dart throw — Horny time! — Monte Harrison — check! Tyler O’Neill? You best believe it! Kyle Lewis? Yum! Nate Pearson? *wearing a Canadian tuxedo* It was my pleasure. So, now the sexiest of the sexy, A.J. Pollock! Okay, he’s the most boring dart throw ever. He’s like the dart throw you make while reenacting a scene from Too Hot To Handle where you’re not touching anything. “Ooh, yeah, baby, how do you like that non-touching? You like that? You want more of nothing? Huh? You bad boy!” That’s me 70-something days into quarantine and slightly losing my mind. The great thing about Dodgers’ manager, Dave Roberts, okay, really the only good thing, besides his ability to steal one base so the country gets a free taco, he’s able to get a lot of players at-bats. Somehow, Roberts has always managed to get part-timers at-bats even when they didn’t have a job. Case in point, Enrique Hernandez had 460 plate appearances last year and Chris Taylor had 414. That’s with Taylor only starting 91 games, and Hernandez starting at seven positions. Dave Roberts is the ultimate Dart Thrower, because he seems to label a bunch of darts with players’ names, then throw them at a lineup card. So what can we expect from A.J. Pollock for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?Takes a long inhale…Ah, is that baseball I’m smelling? It is, isn’t it? It is, it is! Honestly, I think it’s starting to smell like baseball. Sadly, MLB has a long list of regulations they’re going to institute in order to play games this year. Will it still be baseball even without the spitting and tobacco and clubhouse showering and towel-ass-slaps and celebrations involving hugging and touching and extended wet willies where players giggle then slap away their teammates’ hand and–Wait, did MLB ban baseball-related activities or reenacting the pool scenes from Y Tu Mama Tambien? So hard to say! “Hey, Skip, I was wondering if I could snap my towel on my teammate’s butt.” “Not this year, kid.” “Hmm…Can I watch the Oscar-winning film Moonlight?” “I will have to check the rules and regulations on that one.” Any hoo! Baseball sounds like it’s getting close, as I’ve been saying for the last six weeks. I’m not in the business of predictions but the world can only shut down completely for so long before the powers that be start exerting their, uh, power that, uh, be. Last year in 121 games and 376 ABs across two levels (Triple-A and MLB), Kevin Cron hit 44 homers. *smiles wide* Don’t mind if I do! On our Prospectonator, Cron is projected for 33 homers. Yelled like Fat Bastard, “Get in my lineup!” He has legitimately no chance of playing without the universal DH, but that seems a foregone conclusion now, so giddy + up = giddy up. It’s simple math, tee bee aitch. So, what can we expect from Kevin Cron for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?If you don’t sing Alec Bohm to Spoon’s You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb, you are a better person than me. If you sing Alec Bohm’s name to The Gap Band’s You Dropped A Bomb On Me, you are a much worse person than me. If you sing Alec Bohm to B.O.B. (Bombs over Baghdad), then we’re roughly the same person. Okay, now that we got those comparisons out of the way, let’s talk turkey. Much like the turkey that Phillies fans will throw at Alec Bohm if he fails to live up to his prospect hype. I’m not going to recount here the 1200 words that Prospector Hobbs wrote about Alec Bohm in this Blind Resume Challenge. It’s worth reading, if for no other reason than to see how well Hobbs wrote while wearing a blindfold. By the by, what kind of luck are we having that we add another prospect writer, because demand was at its peak in early 2020, and now we’re living through a pandemic and demand is at its nadir? If not for any luck, we’d have no luck. Wait, I said that wrong. A second prospect writer adds some perspective, and I think that helps, especially here, since I don’t think Prospect Itch and Prospector Hobbs necessarily love Bohm equally. If I may infer from digital words posted on Razzball, Hobbs seems to like Bohm better than Itch. Perhaps the major drawback for Itch and why he ranked him fairly low on his top 75 prospects for 2020 fantasy baseball was Bohm’s lack of glove, and, with no DH in the National League, it hinders him. Did someone say NL DH? Well, now we are talking! (Also, JKJ went over some thoughts about Alec Bohm in his Universal DH: NL East edition. Am I the last one in the world to talk about him? I dropped a Bohm on me, baby…) So, what can we expect from Alec Bohm for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?Allow me to demonstrate my feelings on Aristides Aquino over the last 12 months:
“Meh, he’s got some swing and miss tendencies, but I guess you can pick him up if your league is deep enough.”
“Wow, Tuffy Rhodes ain’t got nothing on this guy.”
“Yes, absolutely pick him up!”
“Oh em gee, Aristides Aquino is the greatest GOAT of all-time. I will now call him The GGOATOAT!”
“I want The GGOATOAT to have my babies.”
“Will I have baby GOATs with The GGOATOAT or Baby GGOATOATs?”
“Hmm…The GGOATOAT is starting to swing and miss a lot again. That could be a little bit of a concern.”
The preceding was the tides of my thoughts in only two months of his playing time. Then, this offseason:
“The GGOATOAT is going to be way overpriced, but I still do like him.”
“Wow, he’s not overpriced at all, I wonder if he’s worth a sleeper post?”
“Wait a second, he still has a starting job, right? I mean, this Shogo Akiyama signing won’t kill that, right? Right?! Answer me, Internal Monologue!”
“They signed The Greek God of Hard Contact?” Extremely worried, “Um, can Nick Castellanos play shortstop?”
“Sorry, Cinderfellas and five Cinderellas, I’m dropping Aristides Aquino way down in my rankings since he will never play in that crowded outfield.”
“DID SOMEONE SAY UNIVERSAL DH?!” So, what can we expect from Aristides Aquino for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?So, I didn’t expect much from this Patreon podcast, but, honestly, waking up Lenny Dykstra mid-nap to hear him say Ron Darling sucks d**k, well…I have to be honest here, this podcast is in the pantheon of nonsense. So, we get Lenny Dykstra on the show, for, I don’t know, maybe 15 minutes. He’s in the middle of napping-slash-having sex and he’s also very, very angry with Ron Darling, but, other than that, it was a totally normal conversation where I say 1993 Phillies players names and Lenny says whether or not they did drugs with him. Ya know, standard stuff.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Did one of you em-effers say something bad about Austin Riley and/or good about Johan Camargo? Because if you did, you’re gonna have to answer to Bazooka and Cannon, which is what I call my biceps, as I point to them in a mirror, while wearing a burlap sack filled with limes, because if anything can kill Corona, it’s limes. I’m a genius! You know how hard players are gonna push back on a universal DH? Imagine a feather pushing against Paul Donald Wight II aka Big Show. Unless I’m misunderstanding what a Universal DH is. “A Universal DH sounds amazing! I always loved The Mummy franchise! Can Brendan Fraser be the DH for the Marlins?” That’s me misunderstanding a Universal DH. Why I say there will be no pushback on a Universal DH is because it means one more hitter getting stats, which is good for contracts. It’s an unmitigated win for players. With a universal (still playing with capping it every time or only sometimes; feels like it should be capped, because it’s such a big thing) DH (talk about a parenthetical interrupting the flow of a sentence, huh?), Austin Riley has to be at least near the top of the list of guys getting extra at-bats. Praise be, it’s gonna rain sexy time in Hot Atlanta! Or will it…Let’s take this sucker to ‘graph numero dos…So, what can we expect from Austin Riley in 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?This baseball season is going to be a bunch of fast rappers who somehow con people into thinking they’re impressive because they rap in double-time. Who will be an Overnight Celebrity? Could Anthony Santander be Twista? Spit some bars, Santander! *Santander scream-raps a bunch of gibberish, but because it’s fast it doesn’t sound awful* Yo, Anthony Santander in 162 games your bars were weak, but in a three-month season with 598 syllables in 55 seconds…Well, you kinda nasty, and nasty is good. After my Starlin Castro fantasy yesterday, can you see a theme? Wearing sweatpants every day isn’t a theme, that’s a lifestyle. Okay, there’s not one theme exactly, but Starlin Castro and Anthony Santander do share one similarity — they both are currently penciled in as a three-hole hitter. Something I’ve said before but not sure it’s got through your seven layers of brain crust to the inner core: If you only draft three-hole hitters, you can only go so wrong. They will get the most runs and RBIs on average, and, well, batting average will likely be okay, because there’s a reason they’re batting third. That reason? They’re likely not automatic outs. So, what can we expect from Anthony Santander for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?Manager Dave Martinez indicated Wednesday that Starlin Castro is the most likely candidate to open the season as the Nationals’ No. 3 hitter, Jesse Dougherty of The Washington Post reported on March 11th, 2020, which was approximately two and half years ago. You remember March of 2020, it lasted 365 days and was followed by a year of April and we’re now about halfway through a year of May, and I believe May is a leap year. So, roughly 800 days ago, Starlin Castro was penciled in as the Nats’ three-hole hitter, and that alone was reason to give him a closer look. David Wright in 2013 was the last three-hole hitter that wasn’t worth owning for counting stats (that I remember, and my memory is all over the map; I’ll remember thinking in the 6th grade The Peanut Butter Solution was someone with peanut butter in their underwear, so I tried to do a “Peanut Butter solution” rather than go to the bathroom, but I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday). For whatever reason, David Wright’s three-hole year in 2013 has stuck with me and he should’ve stuck it in his two-hole with a Peanut Butter Solution it was such crap. Wright’s 2013 runs and RBIs respectively were 63 and 58 (was in only 112 games, but still). Another crazy stat from that egregious lineup was Eric Young Jr. had 68 runs with a .254 average and 43 steals (so moving into scoring position and still no runs) and that was in 508 ABs! HA! What in the actual eff. Some of those leadoff at-bats came for the Rockies in Coors too, because he was traded to the Mets after 57 games. How is that line by Eric Young Jr. even possible? Mathematically, that Eric Young Jr. is the craziest line in the history of baseball, please prove me wrong, so I can stop thinking about it. Seriously, how does one steal 43 bags and only score 68 times! He also had 7 triples and two homers! Okay, moving on. So, what can we expect from Starlin Castro in 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?I wanna flap my gums about Monte Harrison all day, e’eryday. To me, he screams a guy who is much better for fantasy than he is in real life. I love those guys. Not coincidentally, I hate guys who are great in real life but terrible in fantasy. That’s nearly every catcher, which doesn’t help them. I’ve hated Buster Posey for nearly a decade thanks to the love he garners in real life. It’s so hard for me to not be contrarian that I almost immediately begin to dislike a guy when others start liking them. On the X-axis is my love and on the Y-axis is everyone’s love, and you can see when they overlap for just about everyone. Last year, around April, Gerrit Cole crossed streams. The top hitters run pretty much parallel along the Y-axis with my love and everyone else’s. Okay, legit way off course here, and veering back to Monte Harrison. These dart throws won’t exactly line up to their projections in my 2020 fantasy baseball rankings. Some of them aren’t even in my rankings; Monte is. He’s in the top 100 outfielders for 2020 fantasy baseball (barely), and he’s number 60 on Prospect Itch’s top 200 prospects for 2020 fantasy baseball. With these darts, I’m aiming for the ceiling. (Good for fantasy baseball, not great for actual darts.) If you want this in more plain English, I like these guys more than my rankings might show as last round sleepers in any league. Also, if we hear soon that baseball is returning for only 82 games vs. 100 games (as it is in my projections and rankings), I will make the necessary adjustments. My ear is to the ground, and baseball sounds like it’s getting close. What’s that, the ground has The Rona? How do I clean my ear now?! So, about Monte Harrison for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Please, blog, may I have some more?