00:00What are the, like, some of the names that you know of that people should get to know of, getting ready to make their mark in baseball when they're drafted?
00:12What is standing out to you at this point? Anything?
00:16Well, first of all, Ethan Holiday is one of these guys, Jackson Holiday's younger brother, who's going to be, if not one, but certainly one of the top three picks selected.
00:24Look, it's a really good class.
00:26Last year was the class that I was super excited about.
00:28And you could tell that it was a good class because you could see already, you have Nick Kurtz, you have Cam Smith, you have Chase Burns, you have Jack Caglione.
00:37They're all from that class last year.
00:40So that's just a small sample size of how good that class was.
00:43And we reviewed it.
00:43And I said, I think this is the best rookie class I've seen in a very long time.
00:46I kind of likened it to the old school.
00:49And you might appreciate this 1986 draft, which had Will Clark and Jose Canseco in it.
00:54And Bobby Bonilla and all these other guys who all became big time major league players.
00:58So I do believe that last year was special.
01:01You don't get that every single season.
01:03Right now, they're still kind of, you know, work through College World Series and all that fun stuff.
01:07So that deep dive will start to begin the next week or so for some of those names.
01:11But it is good that major league baseball is trying to make it more of a thing.
01:15I think fantasy managers will pay more attention to it because, as you can see, it's not just the dynasty leagues now.
01:20It's the redraft leagues.
01:21It's your drafting league this year.
01:23You got to know who was drafted last year because those kids might make an impact in 2026.
01:27So you really got to know these names more than ever before.
01:30It used to be in Stashham.
01:31Now you have to draft them early.
01:33You can't even, like, monitor them on the waiver wire.
01:35You have to, like, know who they are, be prepared to attack them early.
01:38Otherwise, you're left out in the cold.
01:40You see the impact that the young kids are making.
01:43You know, I mentioned Burns and Nick Kurtz, but also Jacob Zerowski, Jacob Wilson, all these young players.
01:47It's been quite a year, I think, for some of these younger talents that you've seen in MLB.
01:52How about how they don't spend much time in the minors anymore like they used to?
01:58Let's say going back a decade or more, two decades.
02:02You never heard of that, where a kid would get drafted and he would be in the show in four weeks.
02:09I mean, this guy Burns pitched about, what, three or four games in the minors and he's in the show already?
02:15Mizorowski, the same thing.
02:17Skeens came right in.
02:18He was drafted and started right away and started the all-star game.
02:22They don't spend time in the minors.
02:24No, and I think the reason you see that is they're getting much better instruction on the lower levels now, right?
02:30So college baseball has really blossomed.
02:32I mean, the college baseball that, you know, I grew up with, there were some powerhouse teams, you know, the Mississippis, you know, the Stanfords, some of those teams.
02:39But really, it's grown into a much bigger deal.
02:41But the instruction, the amount of baseball that these kids are playing, too, used to be a seasonal sport, right?
02:46You'd play different season stuff.
02:48Now these kids just play baseball, if that's their sport, 12 months out of the year.
02:52So the better instruction, the more baseball they're playing, the better competition you're getting at the high school levels, the better competition you're getting at the travel ball levels now, which is such a huge phenomenon.
03:03And I coach in travel league myself for flag football for my daughter, and I can tell you, it's an incredible thing to see.
03:10And some of it goes way over the line of where it should in terms of investment, in terms of what people should be doing and maybe not be doing with children.
03:18But if you're looking at why the Major League Baseball has changed so much and the less amount of time in this minor leagues that you're getting, it's a large in part due into more play, better instruction, and then much more competitive college games.
03:31Because then you're getting these kids who are, as you said, Paul Skeens, ready for the show in a couple months, basically.
03:37And that trend is not going away anytime soon.
03:40Also, the turnover of pitchers is so high because we have a whole generation of velocity guys who are throwers, who aren't pitchers, and that art form of pitching is getting lost.
03:50So the need for turnover, especially for young pitchers who throw hard, is just getting greater and greater.
03:55So that cycle is getting quicker and quicker to get these guys up because the other guys in front of them keep getting hurt.
