[00:00:00] Speaker A: A lot of baseball talk on the show today. The MLB Draft is this weekend. We'll also talk with Jason Ratcliffe from 64 analytics about the Razorbacks portal class. Want to tell you our podcast is brought to you by Eglin's Best in Arkansas. Greatness starts early. Before the pads go on, before the crowd roars, the day begins at the breakfast table. Eglins Best delivers superior nutrition with more vitamin D and less saturated fat than ordinary eggs. You can start strong with Eglins Best. Better taste, better nutrition, Better, Better eggs. Also brought to you by Bentonville Glass. They've been serving their community since 1971. They're committed, professional and versatile. If you're looking for a quality leader in northwest Arkansas or looking for skilled craftsmanship, you can look no further than Bentonville Glass for all your glass market needs with the highest quality products. Come by and see them now at 507 South Main in Bentonville or online at bentonvilleglass.com Appreciate you joining us wherever you are. Maybe you're on our YouTube channel. We put these videos on Facebook and Twitter, an audio only version on Apple Podcast and spot.
You can find it by searching Whole Hog Sports.
Jason Ratcliffe is the founder of 64 Analytics. I was listening to a radio show, Jason, the other day they said where did the 64 analytics come from and how have they become like the site that everybody references when they're talking about portal rankings? I want to talk to you about this today. Appreciate you being here.
Just tell people a little bit about your site and how you guys came to be and maybe how you have carved your niche in, in this part of the year.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like you were listening to an SEC foes podcast there for a little bit. But yeah.
So back in 2021, a buddy of mine, actually, Andrew Hutcherson, I don't know, you know, you probably know Andrew of Best of Arkansas Sports. I believe he and I, we really enjoyed the draft and I was like, well, you know, I'm pretty good with numbers. Played baseball I like. I think it would be fun to kind of put something together. So I enjoy baseball and basketball. Both teams have 64 teams in their tournaments. So it just kind of seems like it worked well to call it like 64. I really like 538. For any of the older members of your audience out there, I'm in my upper 30s, so something I really enjoyed back in the day when they were more sports focused and so I was trying to do kind of an homage to that. So I just wanted a three letter acronym with a 64. And then I was like, well, analytics 64A just kind of rolled off the tongue.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: You guys explain to the listeners how you come up with your rankings because you, you really, you, you put a lot of thought. This is not just kind of saying, hey, this is the best player, you know, that passes the eye test. There's really a lot of, you know, analytics as you say that go into ranking these players, kind of explain the process and how a player gets his ranking.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So really we remove the eye test 100%.
So in essence, well, I guess 95%.
What we were trying to do was when you look at the portal, you have, you know, approximately 5,500 players who enter within about, you know, a two month time span. I say two months because D2, D3, they really start to jump in, you know, kind of more in that middle may, whereas d1 is more the beginning of June. Hopefully they'll fix this. But that's kind of for another discussion if you would like to discuss it.
And so the thought process was how do we streamline this chaotic sequence of 5,000 plus players going in at the same time? So we really wanted to use their data. So using their data, we rank players after every single game, every single at bat during the season. And because we're able to rank them kind of live when they enter the portal, we just utilize the information that's already within the database to provide an output of a standardization of where they're in the portal. So it's like, okay, well you were at Arkansas, you had you know, 50 innings pitched with this FIP, you know, etc. Etc. Over a three year time span.
I hate to bring up call in as a good example. It's like, okay, well we look at all three of years of his data. We say okay, where was he at? He's an SEC pitcher. And then we take that and we standardize it across the portal itself. So that way as soon as they go in, they get a ranking, the coaches are alerted at the individual, went into the portal of their ranking to just again streamline that process.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: So let's use AJ Avasco for, for an example. He's, he's Arkansas's highest rated transfer commit in your rankings. You've got him number 13, he's an outfielder from, from Kansas State. And we'll talk about the draft a little bit later in the show today.
We'll talk about him a lot there as well. But, but how do you come up like what did he do at Kansas State. That gave him such a high ranking in your numbers here.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Well, first off, what you have to realize is the number of we'll just call power four. It's really even a power three, maybe even the Sun Belt is the fourth best conference. The number of individuals that go in from a conference within one of those three that have one to two to three years worth of starting data at high volume is generally pretty low. Frankly, it's one of the I guess not issues. But one of the things that has come from the portal itself is that the number of individuals who have multiple years worth of data at a good quality from a good school is pretty low. And so first off, you have a guy who's played for Kansas State for multiple years. He had a know 350 approximately average something and then near 1000 OPS, they get 8 home runs somewhere in that ballpark. So you're talking about a Power 4 player at a really good program that is producing at a high volume. So those are pretty few and far between. So that's kind of the first thing that you look at. And then eventually it's kind of like what is his pedigree. And so I was saying that we remove 95% of the eye test. We try to put in some subjectivity.
So like Kylie McDaniel came out with kind of his top 60 players in the portal associated with like their MLB draft. We, we add in some of that subjectivity when we can when it's publicly available. But really, again, we're trying to put as much objectivity in there as possible. So a guy like, you know, McGinnis or Zeb Allen who have like a high volume of data, they're not as highly ranked because it's like a Georgia State, Central Arkansas. But again, like you're talking about a power four, power three, whatever you want to call it, hitter at a very high level doing it. And so they're just not a lot of those. So that's why he was so highly ranked.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: You got Arkansas fifth right now behind lsu, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. This is like, this is like the SEC standings when you look at the top 10 or 11 on your site. I mean it's mostly SEC teams and that shouldn't surprise anybody given the, you know, the competitive nature of the conference. Arkansas, they've been one, they've been two in your rankings. They've fallen down here recently. I suspect that's because of, you know, some of the work that LSU and South Carolina in particular have done in the portal. Here in the last couple of weeks. Like, like what's the separation between these teams? Like, like, like between 1 and 5. How big of a gap do you think that is?
[00:07:12] Speaker B: It's not big at all. I mean it's, it's kind of one of the things like if Arkansas were to get a Cam Johnson, they may jump up to number one. I. So the way that we do it, it's kind of like in a sliding scale. So the way you have to think about it is we were trying to provide more value for the higher ranked players.
So the first in this and what I mean higher ranked is like within, like Avasco and McGinnis are the top two that we have rated for Arkansas in the class. So those are ranked at like 100% of the value. It's pretty simplistic formula.
It's a lot of simple formulas that when you merge them together and do it live, makes it complex. But it's just a lot of really simplistic formulas over many different areas. And so the top two get 100% of the value and then it reduces to like 95, then 85, then 65, then 35 and then like 7 and 8 only get, get 10 value. So ultimately like if you were to add in again like a Cam Johnson, you've effectively, you've increased the value of every single one of those top eight positions. So that's why like a Georgia and an LSU have risen. If you want to say quickly, it's because if they add like a top player at the top of the class, it in essence creates value at all eight spots. So that's why individuals, it's not like they're falling, like they haven't lost anybody, it's just that they're being jumped because individuals have taken players at a like a higher value, high caliber.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: For those wondering, Cam Johnson, he's a pitcher Transferred out of OU, started his career at LSU. He's ranked number seven in the 64 analytics rankings. He's also draft eligible. That's something that you have to take into consideration right now. I mean you think about Arkansas, I think three of the transfers that they've got committed are sophomore draft eligible. And then there's a number who are junior draft eligible too. Do your rankings change after the results of the draft coming this weekend?
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean you look at last year, Arkansas had a switch hitting shortstop. Grego I think was his name, if
[00:09:13] Speaker A: I don't from Ball State.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Yep. And then they also had a pitcher from Little Rock that went actually UDFA Undrafted free agent. So, yeah, it changes. So what it'll ultimately do is we'll remove those players from the commitments because in theory, like, they're not really portal players.
We, when we were trying to build this, was like, okay, well, we want to provide instantaneous value for what they're doing, but at the end of the day, if they don't make it to campus, like, that's not really part of your portal class. So, yeah, we remove them. We'll actually add in a pro name associated with their commitment. This is one thing we're trying to change because, again, because a lot of the coaches are asking, like, what's the risk in going after a junior who's potentially draft eligible now with the new 5 for 5, I think there's a lot more leverage for those individuals like zeb, like, like McGinnis, to come in and actually, like, have additional years.
So, like, each one of those individuals, if they theoretically only had one year left last year, now they have at least two, because not only are they going to have this year, but they're going to get a fifth year because of the new five for five rule.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that your rankings have been pretty predictive.
You know, if you look at the teams that have won the national championship, for instance, I mean, you look at last year, you had Oklahoma number 10 in your rankings. I'm going to look here real quick. What you had North Carolina. They're not in it, but they're also a team that like, 75% of their roster is built through the high school ranks. They're not a real strong portal team. You go back to 2025, LSU, they won the national championship the summer before. You had them ranked first. You had Arkansas ranked second. I think people who watched the College World Series that year would agree that Arkansas and LSU were the two best teams in the country going back to 2024. You had Tennessee fifth. You had A&M third. They played for the national championship.
I would think you feel pretty good about how, you know, there's certainly there are teams that they don't perform up to the level that people expect of them, but I would think you feel pretty good about how predictive these rankings have been able to be, at least in terms of the teams that get to Omaha.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so we, yeah, we have felt good, but we're, you know, it's always like, it's poetry in motion. I don't mean to kind of elevate it too much. It's more of like, we're always willing to adjust the formula, if we feel as though it needs to be. And frankly, we adjusted it a little bit because of like a North Carolina because they had a lot of quality within a minimal amount of quantity. So previously we did 100% for the first six and then we did 10% for seven and eight. And so because of that, teams that didn't have eight commitments, teams like in North Carolina, where they only had six or seven, it was just really hard for them to be in the top 25. Any team that didn't have that. So we were like, okay.
We were honestly, you know, thinking, how do we provide more value for teams that have smaller classes, like a Texas this year, like an LSU this year. Like LSU only has eight individual. I think Texas only has like seven. We still have them kind of, I think, like in the 15 range, somewhere in that. So we've really enjoyed the correlation.
Now there's always going to be like, we had South Carolina, I think, is the top five team last year, and they, they brought in a lot. And I think there's always going to be some hits and misses with the portal. But there's, there's absolutely a positive correlation with success and, and the top 10 of our classes. I mean, we had, if you were a top five class prior to last year, we had. That was our to. This year's our fourth. So prior to last year, you were, you were going to a super regional. So we've, we basically, if, if you're succeeding in the portal, you're succeeding on the field.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a good way to put it. You know, I mean, a couple of other examples I pointed out here, like you had Kentucky as a top 10 class the year before they went to the College World Series for the first time last year. You know, you mentioned that you had South Carolina highly ranked. Who could have guessed what was going to happen with Paul Monary and how that all went south this year? But you had Georgia number one. They were really good. Tennessee number two.
And not as good as maybe they've been in the past, but, you know, still a pretty good team. Mississippi State number three, Auburn number five. Alabama number six. Those were good teams this year.
So I want to talk to you. Jason, you grew up in Fayetteville.
You grew up, I think you said that you grew up going to Razorback baseball games. I wonder just what your thoughts are on the state of the program, because I'm sure you keep up with them quite a bit.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: So, so, fun fact, Dave Van Horn, his first house in Arkansas was my Old house. Okay. So I remember when he was hired from Nebraska, I was in like sixth or seventh grade, and he came out and I remember we had an agent that kind of came by a door and was like, hey, we have a coach that's just looking for a house. We saw yours, like, would you billing to put it on the market? So I remember we had a pitching mound in our backyard and he really enjoyed. So I remember we work with them now. And I told him, I was like, hey, you know, that little kid who was out there pitching, like, that was me. And I made him feel old. But yeah, I.
I've. I've been growing up around the program. Went to all the, the camps back when it was a turf field and all that kind of fun stuff. So now George Coalfield. So grew up around the program.
I have watched way too many hours of Arkansas baseball. Basically, every time I talk to coaches, it's one of the first things I kind of lead off with. I'm like, hey, this is who I am. This is where I'm from. Yes, that means I enjoy Arkansas baseball, but don't worry, I'm completely objective. So it's been a real joy and I've loved growing up around the team and now working with them.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: What's your favorite Razorback baseball memory?
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Easy.
So Brady Tubes. Grand slam. And I want to say the regional probably back in like, 2005. 2004. 2004 against Wichita State. Was it okay? I was about to say this feels like it was a scripted thing, but I just, as soon as I was like, oh, that's an easy one. I was playing summer league travel ball. And that was back when we didn't have, you know, smartphones or anything. So we literally just had, like, it on the radio as I was kind of playing catch, getting ready for a game, and we were basically, I don't know, everyone had just assumed the game was over. And then Tubes caught up and he's. Toops isn't like a power hitter, but that was back with the juiced bats and he launched it over the left field wall and everyone went crazy. So that was definitely one of my highlights.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: It's amazing that for people who were not here or in Arkansas when that happened, it is so hard to describe to them how big of a deal that singular play was. It didn't win Arkansas the regional. They still had to win another game that night, you know, and certainly, you know, they had to go on and win in the super regional to get to Omaha. But that play, it was like Lighting a match to a wildfire in terms of what it did to the popularity of baseball in this state. And again, it is really hard, I think, for people who weren't here and could feel that. Could feel that momentum shift in the state of Arkansas. It's hard for them to understand.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you know, prior to Van Horn, like, there was obviously excellence, but I don't think there was like, Omaha excellence would maybe be the best way to put it. Like, and I think with Van Horn, it kind of brought this, like, okay, here's a guy that just went to Omaha and like, how can we, like, keep sustained. And it felt like to your point, it wasn't like, it was immediate success after that. Like, there were still some struggles. And he always did it via juco back then. But it was. It was just for someone who kind of grew up around the game, it was a lot of fun to see the program not only shining in a big moment, but shining kind of in the national stage.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it was just, you know, you don't get Razorback baseball on the radio maybe every game as fast as it happened. Like. Like during that time, you were lucky to maybe get 35 games on the radio a year. Not every game was on the radio and certainly not every game was on TV or streamed that was so far off from our imaginations. But. But Brady Tubes in that grand slam, it really did something to spark Razorback baseball. And it was that. That seems like anybody who watched it, Jason, that's. That's the play that they remember the most. That's the moment that they rem.
You do a great job at 64 Analytics. And we appreciate you being with us today. Mentioned earlier, the MLB draft is this weekend. It's going to happen over Saturday and Sunday. You know, the draft, it changes every year.
Big changes are coming to the draft in the future. As we talked about on this show previously, this year and next year, it's going to stay under the same format, potentially beginning with 2028. The owners at least want the draft to be 12 rounds. They want high school players not to be eligible for the draft.
They want college players to be eligible for the draft sooner. Lots of things have to be worked out with that collective bargaining agreement before the 2028 MLB Draft. But, you know, a lot of times it's on Sunday and then Monday or in the past, it's been three days. Now it's a Saturday, Sunday deal.
This is part of this new television agreement with Major League Baseball and NBC. And the way this is going to Work. I mean you gotta be. You gotta keep your head on a swivel if you want to watch this whole thing this weekend.
Okay, so stay with me. Picks one through 10, not rounds one through 10. Picks one through 10 are going to be on NBC and Peacock beginning Saturday at 12:30pm Central. There's going to be a kind of a pre game show of sorts beginning at noon. Picks 11 through 40 will be on MLB Network Saturday and then everything else will be aired on MLB.
Good luck finding all of this this weekend.
Day one is going to be rounds one through four. Day two is going to be rounds five through 20. A reminder like I always try to do, if a player is picked this weekend, it is a really strong indication that they're going to go pro. It doesn't always happen, but, but typically when players are picked, especially I think in the first 10 rounds, it's an indication that there's probably some sort of agreement that has been come to before that draft pick is made. These teams only have a very, you know, a smaller number of draft picks now relative to what they had in the old days when they were 40 and 50 rounds. And so they don't want to waste these draft picks on players who are going to be, you know, risk before the signing deadline.
So if a Razorback is taken this weekend, you can pretty well bet that he's going to go probably. It's not 100% sure. There certainly have been some exceptions to that rule in the past few years, but it's a pretty high percentage of players who get drafted who sign that pro contract. Arkansas has nine players in baseball America's top 500. That's the most of any team. Razorbacks always do well in the draft. I think last year they were tied for the most draft picks.
It tied the school record for the most draft picks last year. It's not going to be as many as they had last year. I don't think. They don't think. But they've got nine players in the top 500.
That does not count the players who have committed to transfer to Arkansas. We talked about AJ Avasco earlier from Kansas State. He's one of a number of players who are committed to Arkansas who are in the Baseball America top 500 too. I think when you take transfers and high school players and players from this year's razorback team, there's 17 of those who are in the top 500. And if you just take all draft eligible players, you know, like all juco players are eligible for the draft, all high school Players are eligible for the draft. There are sophomore draft eligible players from Division 1, and then anyone who is a junior or later in their career, they're eligible, too. If you take all of those players and you say the ones who are associated with Arkansas, whether they be a signee, a commitment or a player from this year's team, there's like 37 of them who are eligible for the draft. I've never seen anything like this. So there's a lot of players to monitor this weekend. Ryder Helfrich, he's going to be the first Razorback off the board. He's going to be the first Arkansas catcher to be taken in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft. Arkansas had two catchers taken in the second round previously, most recently James McCann in 2011.
Most of the mock drafts say Ryder Helf will be taken in the first 13 picks. Maybe he's a top 10 overall pick, but. But he's going to go really high. He's going to get a big signing bonus and he should be the first Razorback off the board. The second one to go off the board should be Hunter Dietz. The pitcher who had a great season this year. He was all sec.
He had that really good performance, I thought, against Kansas at the end of the season there in Lawrence. In fact, I was talking to Matt Hobbs about a week or two ago and I said I thought the sixth inning that he threw against Kansas really had to get the scouts attention because he was at 94 pitches and he struck out the side. The Kansas four, five, six hitters in 12 pitches. And I thought that that was a really impressive outing from him. He had 14 strikeouts that day.
The mock drafts are kind of all over on him, some say like mid first round. Some are more late first round, early second round. If he goes in the first round, it'll be the third year in a row that Arkansas has had a pitcher drafted in the first round. That hasn't happened in nearly a decade by a college baseball team. And what I think would make it really interesting is that he would be the third consecutive year with a homegrown pitcher. Hagan Smith in 2024, Gagewood last year, and now potentially deets this year. Guys who, they came into Arkansas as freshmen, they leave as juniors. You don't see that happen a whole lot anymore and certainly not in succession. Of course, Arkansas had Zach Root last year, who really grew up in the program, in his one year in the program.
But. But like Zach Root, that's what you see a lot of times getting Drafted out of these schools now as a player who maybe they cut their teeth for a year or two at a mid major and then they transfer to a larger school. Argosil's had a lot of success with these players who, you know, like Dietz and Wood and Hagan Smith who have come up through the program. So that's something to watch this weekend. Other day one players I think that are worth watching. Gabe Gackel, Ethan McIlvaine, Cam Kozel, they'll probably all go on day one. And then there's Carson Wiggins. That's the pitcher that, that's the player that we're all really interested to see what happens with him. I mean Wiggins, he could command a seven figure signing bonus right now. But you've heard Arkansas's coaches say that if he comes back next year, maybe he can multiply that by two, three times or more by being a Friday night starter. He throws 102. I don't know if he's throwing 102 since he's come back from the elbow injury. But he is a sophomore draft eligible. He has two years of leverage remaining. And so you know this is going to go Carson Wiggins way, one way or the other. He's either going to get paid right now or he's going to get paid later and potentially more later.
Razorback fans certainly want to see him come back for another year. But you know, million and a half, $2 million, he could probably command something like that right now. That would be very difficult, I would think to turn down. And so Carson Wiggins really is the player that I think is the most, the one that bears the most watching this weekend. And he's the most intriguing from, from a Razorback standpoint. Transfers to watch. These are the ones who are draft eligible. AJ Avasco mentioned him from Kansas State, he's an outfielder. Michael Malky, a pitcher from Cal Baptist and Manny Marin, a shortstop from Tennessee. They're all sophomore draft eligible. So now with this five year legislation, they all have multiple years of draft leverage. Remaining juniors who have committed to Arkansas who are draft eligible. Ben Cleary, a shortstop from Santa Clara. Dawson Bryce, an infielder from Charlotte. Wills McGinnis, an infielder from Georgia State. You heard Jason mention earlier Zeb Allen, the outfielder from UCA and right handed pitcher, Chris Diaz of Florida Gulf Coast. He is also eligible for this year's draft. A couple of high school players I think that bear watching are Javorski Lane, an outfielder from the Dallas area. His dad was a really good running back at Texas A and M many years ago. And Judah Ota is an outfielder from Honolulu, part of that Arkansas, Hawaii pipeline they've got going on. Both of them are top 100 overall high school prospects for this year's draft. I think if you look at where they are in the baseball America, you know, 500, which takes everybody, high school players, juco players, division one. I think they're more like in the 2, 300 range where they're ranked, which would mean that they would be probably day two picks. But I think they could be day one picks if their money is right with these teams. And that's really what dictates day one of the draft. It's all about the money. It's about everybody's got a pool of money and it's about making those numbers work with those 10, 12, 13 picks that you might get in the first 10 rounds, depending on how many competitive balance picks you get as well. So those are some of the players worth watching. I say this every year there are going to be draft surprises. There always are. Whether it be a player who maybe you didn't see going, probably who's going to end up going pro, or maybe a player who you thought was going to go pro and maybe they come back. Look what happened with Parker Coyle last year. He got drafted and he came back to Arkansas. So it's going to be a busy weekend. We're going to cover it all on our
[email protected] we'll have MLB Draft coverage all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and then we'll come back next week and have a podcast kind of looking back at what happened in the draft and how that will help form our opinion about the Razorbacks roster in 2027. This is with so many draft eligible players, you're looking at a thing where Arkansas, they could be really stacked next year or, you know, they could be scrambling after the draft and have to go backfield a position or two if the right combination of players are taken. So this is, it's a very pivotal weekend for Razorback baseball, this MLB Draft. And again, we'll have all that coverage on our
[email protected] I want to mention that the UA hall of Honor was announced for 2026 yesterday. This is a really good class. By the way, you got a lot of players who I think are some of the best, you know, ever at their positions in Razorback sports. Jason Peters and Tony Bua from football, Ronnie Brewer from basketball, Brett eibner, the great two way baseball player for the Razorbacks from 2008-10. Bud still was a golfer at Arkansas in the 1990s, won an SEC title. Tina Sute was a pole vaulter, an All American, the first Bowerman finalist that Arkansas ever had. And then Heather Schlichman was Heather Schlichman. Scharf now was a really good pitcher for Arkansas early in the softball program's history. And then Dave England will be inducted posthumously. He was the longtime razorbike basketball trainer.
He died last year. So these, these are all some, some really big names in Razorback sports. They're going to go into the hall of honor on September 25th over here at the Walton Arts center in Fayetteville. They're going to be recognized on the field at Razorback Stadium. On the day of the Tulsa football game in September, we got a lot of coverage at our website. Baseball. We've got these Arkansas freshman profiles on football team. Ethan Westerman's doing a series right now on the women's basketball newcomers. So it's summer, but we're staying
[email protected] we hope to see you there or on our podcast next week. Have a good weekend, everybody.
