Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - And we were, I was on the fence about this player
00:05 and you were actually adamant with your decisions.
00:07 Let's start there.
00:08 Hold or drop Spencer Torkelson.
00:10 - Well, look, it's, let me preface this.
00:14 You're in a 10 team league, it's okay.
00:17 You can drop him.
00:18 - You're in a four team league.
00:19 - You're in a four team, but context matters, right?
00:23 Like if you're, replacement value in a 10 team league
00:26 is very different in a 15 team league.
00:28 So Torkelson in a 12 team mixed league
00:30 is where we're really talking about Torkelson here.
00:32 - Correct.
00:33 - Like you could have already dropped Torkelson,
00:34 it's fine, I moved on from him.
00:35 But the thing to remember with Torkelson is this,
00:37 he pretty much did the same thing
00:39 for the first few weeks of the season last year
00:41 that he's doing this year.
00:42 So just to kind of bring that perspective,
00:44 I know he has zero home runs,
00:46 I understand he's at 218, I get it.
00:48 But if you go back and dial it back to April of 2023,
00:52 well, he had 206 in April of 2023.
00:55 19 of his 31 homers came after the all-star break, okay?
00:59 That's less than 81 games.
01:01 So I guess the point I'm making is,
01:04 we're a 24 year old guy.
01:06 I don't know if I'm ready to completely just say,
01:08 yeah, I'm gonna drop him to the wafer wire.
01:11 I think it might be fine to bench him, sure,
01:13 'cause he's killing your team, I get that.
01:15 But if you look at, some guys are very slow starters.
01:18 I remember Mark Teixeira historically every single year,
01:21 you could buy him in April,
01:22 'cause every single year he was terrible in April,
01:24 and then he was brilliant the rest of the way.
01:25 Now I'm not saying he's Mark Teixeira.
01:27 What I am saying is some guys have a pattern.
01:29 Julio Rodriguez has a pattern,
01:30 we've talked about it here on the show too.
01:32 Torkelson, still very young,
01:34 a guy that I don't see the Tigers going,
01:38 "Well, we're gonna send him back down,"
01:39 'cause that's not gonna really do much here for Torkelson
01:42 at this point in his career.
01:43 There's no one there to replace him.
01:44 The Tigers are not a team
01:45 that is a realistic contender this year.
01:48 So he's gonna work his way through it.
01:49 So I don't think he's in danger of losing his job.
01:51 It's not like a Jose Abreu situation,
01:53 who's an older veteran.
01:54 He's 24, they have a ton invested in him,
01:57 the draft capital they used to take him.
01:59 Maybe they rushed him developmentally a little bit.
02:01 Maybe he's not gonna be the player we thought he could be.
02:04 But regardless, to drop a guy that we know last year,
02:08 turned things around in big fashion,
02:10 and has a 30 home run ceiling,
02:12 I don't know if those are the kind of guys
02:13 we wanna drop to the waiver wire.
02:14 So again, in a 10-team league, I totally get it.
02:16 You wanna drop him for jerks and profile
02:18 because you're getting your butt kicked in the standings?
02:20 Okay, cool.
02:21 But at this point, I think in those 12-team mixers,
02:25 you're better off holding him.
02:26 Or even more intriguing, take him in a deal,
02:29 potentially somewhere else, as part of a package.
02:32 Take this little piece back and see what happens
02:33 over the next four or five weeks.
02:35 Another guy too, Matt, to talk about is Nolan Gorman.
02:37 Now this is one of your St. Louis Cardinals.
02:40 Now Nolan Gorman, on the other hand,
02:41 to me, there's guys on this 40-man roster
02:43 that could take his job.
02:44 To me, there's guys where I look at a guy
02:46 who's hitting under 200, who isn't all or nothing,
02:48 hitting a hitter.
02:49 I was never a big Nolan Gorman guy.
02:50 You know this, we've talked about it a million times.
02:52 Too much swing and miss for me.
02:54 Nolan Gorman is a guy that I feel comfortable
02:56 dropping and moving on from.
02:57 'Cause I think at some point,
02:58 the Cardinals might just do the same thing.
03:00 What's your take on Gorman right now?
03:02 Do you hold or drop?
03:03 - It's a drop for me in a short answer.
03:06 There's just too many moving pieces there in St. Louis.
03:09 It's just been uncharacteristically bad last season
03:12 and now this season.
03:13 So something has to change.
03:15 So yeah, I can definitely see that drop.
03:17 (upbeat music)
03:19 [MUSIC]