D.J Short and Scott Pianowski debate Edwin Diaz's fantasy value, and whether it's worth using an early pick for the strikeout machine.

Video Transcript

- The thing with Diaz is just, you have the stomach to pay the freight on him ADP wise and give up your third or fourth best hitter, give up one of your top starting pitchers, I probably won't do that, but, man, any time somebody on your staff strikes out 17 guys per nine innings, I mean, he's got unbelievable stuff. The Mets could have the best roster, maybe the best pitching staff in the National League. So I don't think I'll write the ticket on Diaz, but I understand why people will.

- I think what's interesting about Diaz is, like, let's say you pick a starter who maybe doesn't have the monster strikeout rate. He kind of helps you balance that out and make up for it. So I think in certain situations-- I mean, Diaz is great and you'll feel good no matter what if you draft him, but, obviously, in certain situations it makes more sense than others. And with that--

- Remember Yahoo too-- the Yahoo standard league, right? Has a innings cap, and it's become a cap that a lot of fantasy teams won't even go near because the starters don't throw as many innings. So DJ makes a great point that we're in an era now-- the shape of baseball now, the strikeout rate-- it used to be with the closers, OK, how many saves does he get? You wouldn't even really think so much about their strikeouts, but because Diaz's strikeout rate is so removed from everybody else in this pool, he could allow you to maybe take some pitch to contact starting pitchers that you normally wouldn't want because you feel like Diaz is going to make up the strikeouts for you.

So that's a great point with the shape of baseball has changed. It's so much more reliever driven now. And so getting those 125 strikeouts from Diaz probably mean more than they might have 10 years ago.