Down on the Farm Podcast

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we lead off with a discussion on the fantasy projectability of a triad of promoted prospects: Blaze Jordan (STL), Cooper Pratt (MIL), and Cole Carrigg (COL). We’re quite bullish on the former two prospects, but do their skill sets translate to fantasy productivity? We then discuss our recent cyborg projections article, and provide further insight on how and why we disagree with our modeling, and share our personal emphases in prospect evaluation. We close the pod by speaking on prospect-loaded teams that struggle to find MLB playing time for their young stars. Is this really a problem? And how do prospect-rich teams like the Dodgers find ways to remain elite while growing young hitting talent?

We hope you enjoy. Thanks, as always, to Laura van der Heijden for her stellar jingle work!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we open the mailbag to answer questions from our Substack subscribers and followers on X and Bluesky. We talk about walk rates, when and why they matter, and why we can’t transpose MLB free pass expectations onto minor league prospects. We then move on to our hindcasting strategies and discuss how we construct and improve our models. We conclude by talking about swing types and hitting profiles, and what types of swings we like to see given a player’s skillset. One size does not fit all!

We hope you enjoy. Thanks, as always, to Laura van der Heijden for her stellar jingle work!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we dive into the profiles of a pair of minor league breakouts: the newly promoted Jacob Gonzalez (CWS) and Triple-A destroying Seaver King (WAS). They’ve flourished as they’ve added power, turning uninspiring out-producing hitting profiles into RBI-hunting MLB-quality production. We then take a peek at two of our favorite older prospects on the cusp of the show to see if Abimelec Ortiz (WAS) or James Tibbs III (LAD) is worth your fantasy attention. Finally, we discuss the firing of the Giants’ third base coach, Hector Borg, and why third base coaches minimize mistakes to avoid criticism. We invoke our first-ever Down on the Farm piece on send decisions to argue that the numbers encourage a level of send/hold aggression that, under the current standard, would get coaches run out of town.

We hope you enjoy. Thanks, as always, to Laura van der Heijden for her stellar jingle work!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we look forward to the trade deadline and speculate which prospects may (and may not) be on the move. Will A. J. Preller make another unexpected move? We then reflect on our rankings audit article, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of FanGraphs’, MLB Pipeline’s, and Baseball America’s ranking systems. We finish by looking at some low-level, small-sample standouts who would make excellent fantasy adds for those in ultra-deep, 50+ prospect leagues.

We hope you enjoy. Thanks, as always, to Laura van der Heijden for her stellar jingle work!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we get into the Nationals’ Devin Fitz-Gerald’s red-hot power surge and why he’s flashing the same tools that made Kevin McGonigle a top Tigers bat in year one. We continue the Fitz-Gerald talk by discussing the Nationals/Rangers MacKenzie Gore swap, and what teams can do to nab gems deep in trades, as Washington did with Fitz-Gerald and Yeremy Cabrera. We finish by discussing a pair of 2025 draft standouts who are new to our model, and why their projections are in a current state of flux.

We hope you enjoy. Thanks, as always, to Laura van der Heijden for her stellar jingle work!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we discuss a pair of struggling prospects that we’ve been high on for years (Ryan Clifford (NYM) and Jadher Areinamo (TBR)) and why they’re far from cooked. We also look at an exciting pair of call-ups in Spencer Jones (NYY) and Ryan Waldschmidt (ARI) and why they’re outside shots to be immediate go-to fantasy options (in most leagues). We finish by discussing Andrew Baggarly’s piece outlining Buster Posey’s perspective on the “optics” of Patrick Bailey’s catching work amidst his trade to Cleveland, and why Posey’s priorities are divorced from the data.

We hope you enjoy. Thanks, as always, to Laura van der Heijden for her stellar jingle work!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we interview Brenton Del Chiaro, getting a boots-on-the-ground perspective on player development from one of the top prospecting organizations out there! We also go deeper into the Brewers’ dynamic duo of Luis Peña and Jesús Made, with Owen sharing his preliminary findings from hours of content coding swing video. We finish with projecting Bryce Eldridge’s (SFG) fantasy output this season, and how his playing time matters as much as his improved bat!

We hope you enjoy. Thanks to Brenton for joining us, and as always, to Laura van der Heijden for her stellar jingle work!

On this week’s version of the Down on the Farm Podcast, we take a look at the Red Sox’s Yophery Rodriguez and the Brewers’ Braylon Payne, and why we are excited about their power surges, especially with their strong contact skills. We also discuss how to handle high-potential Triple-A fantasy prospects when their path to regular playing time, and therefore fantasy point scoring potential, is blocked. We conclude with a conversation on team, player, and media-driven ABS discourse, and why players’ kangaroo court could unintentionally promote sub-optimal challenge behaviors. Jazz Chisholm’s big miss wasn’t quite so bad!

We hope you enjoy. We also want to give props to Laura van der Heijden for producing our new jingles. She’s a rare combo of 80-grade cello and 65-grade keyboard!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we take a look at Minnesota Twin Walker Jenkins’ early-season struggles and why his peripherals ease any concerns we have about his future. We also speak about fellow Twin Emmanuel Rodriguez, and if his excessive patience and big power can carry him at the dish, a pathway that the White Sox’s Munetaka Murakami has used to success thus far. Finally, we tease this week’s research article on slap-happy hitters, and why they’re undervalued and underappreciated relative to their big slugging peers.

We hope you enjoy. We also want to give props to Laura van der Heijden for producing our new jingles. She’s a rare combo of 80-grade cello and 65-grade keyboard!

This week on the Down on the Farm Podcast, we pay tribute to Jon Kemmer, a minor league stalwart and community builder from Max’s hometown who recently passed away. We then evaluate Triple-A’s exit velo standouts like Boston’s Mikey Romero and Pittsburgh’s Esmerlyn Valdez. We also get into why situations and leverage are king when considering ABS challenge behavior (and why we agree with John Smoltz, a rarity in the baseball data sphere), and discuss the complexities in choosing which rookies are solid vs. speculative pickups in redraft fantasy leagues.

We hope you enjoy!