Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball XX
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[15] Welcome to Rates and Barrels.
[16] It's Monday, February 24th.
[17] Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you on this episode.
[18] We take a look at some spring training news and notes.
[19] We got some injuries.
[20] We got guys that are back from injuries touching 99.
[21] That's pretty fun to see in the first outing back coming off of Tommy John surgery.
[22] We got some breakout hitters that Eno wrote about for The Athletic.
[23] We'll talk about his process and some of the players featured in that piece.
[24] During this episode, we'll also take a look at some tough hitter ranks as my hitter rankings are finally getting closer to being released.
[25] This week will be the week.
[26] It will happen this week.
[27] Guaranteed.
[28] As much as I can guarantee anything in my life at this point in time.
[29] I also got a few mailbag questions we're going to get to as well.
[30] How'd the weekend treat you, Eno?
[31] Pretty well.
[32] We had the BARF draft, the Bay Area Roto Fantasy draft where...
[33] I'm still sitting in Laura Michaels' spot.
[34] Rest in peace.
[35] I won it last year, so the pressure was on for the repeat.
[36] And they pushed pitchers up, and I was annoyed.
[37] Just as a sort of gauge, I like Ryan Pepio, and I've been getting him a lot as my third and fourth starter.
[38] In this league, he's my second starter.
[39] Ooh.
[40] Yeah.
[41] Okay.
[42] That's a little bit like the Tyler Malley SP1 maneuver I tried a couple seasons ago.
[43] Yeah.
[44] Wow.
[45] Yeah.
[46] So my hitting, it's almost like a mullet, I was saying.
[47] It's like my hitting is business in front.
[48] Pitching is YOLO in back.
[49] Yeah.
[50] How does the mullet approach relate to the YOLO yo -yo?
[51] It happens when you don't yo -yo.
[52] Sometimes you throw the yo -yo down, it just doesn't come back.
[53] That's right.
[54] And it was beer week, so after that, which it's a draft that starts out with shots.
[55] So at like 11, went out to beer week and had some East Coast beers, some Trillium.
[56] That was fun.
[57] And then went to a show, Le Savvy Fab, on Saturday night.
[58] So it was a long, long day.
[59] A lot of fun.
[60] Unfortunately, I have to report that the lead singer for Le Savvy Fab no longer has his fastball, as a friend said.
[61] The voice is not quite there anymore.
[62] But still a great night.
[63] Still a great day.
[64] It was still a fun show.
[65] Well, sounds like an eventful weekend all around.
[66] Yeah, you're getting Trillium out on the West Coast.
[67] It's a good weekend.
[68] I think you can say that everything went to script.
[69] Speaking of having a fastball, though, Sandy Alcantara was touching 99 during a scoreless inning against the Mets.
[70] I know you mentioned a few weeks ago on the show that, you know, touching any VLO band for a starter in spring training doesn't really matter if you're not going to sustain it over multiple inning appearances.
[71] But I'd put an asterisk next to that statement and say, if we're talking about someone coming off of Tommy John surgery and if it's just their first appearance where they're only going to go, you know, an inning or two anyway.
[72] This is only good news, that the stuff looks like it's back to where it was to pre -surgery levels.
[73] And I did see that our friend Craig Mish over at the Miami Herald reported that the Marlins have no workload restrictions on Sandy Alcantara.
[74] They're just going to let him go, which is kind of exciting as far as what he might do from a fantasy perspective goes and a little bit unnerving from the let's -see -if -his -arm -holds -up perspective.
[75] Yeah, Sandy...
[76] was maxing out at 99 in 2019 and 2020 and last year.
[77] So, you know, there was a stretch there from 21 to 23 where he's maxing out at 101.
[78] But to have him get back to that 99 max is great.
[79] I've got a couple places where I have shares of Sandy because I just thought he's kind of going like, do you have any, like, you know, would you rathers or ADP?
[80] He's kind of going.
[81] What is he going like as a SP4 or something?
[82] Yeah, that's what's been the more recent trend.
[83] Looking at the last seven days from the NFBC ADP, Sandy Alcantara's overall pick number up, 159.
[84] Min pick, 137.
[85] Max pick, 206.
[86] That min pick's going to come down.
[87] You come out touching 99 in your first spring appearance off TJ, and you get the extra bonus report of no restrictions, people are going to get increasingly excited as the spring goes on.
[88] I'm annoyed a lot of times when you draft early and then the injury information comes out or whatever.
[89] This is the flip side of that, where I got Sandy Alcantara as an SP6, I think, in my first draft.
[90] And that's going to look, I think, hopefully pretty good if he's healthy.
[91] I think you cannot still just say, oh, they have no restrictions for him, so I will project him into 180 innings because he used to be a workhorse.
[92] I think it's just tricky.
[93] you know he hasn't been pitching so it doesn't always have to be the arm the hamstring could hurt or the back or something you know it's like and they could find reasons if they're if they're terrible you know they could find reasons to give him like a long break around the all -star break And then ramp him back up slowly or whatever it is.
[94] Right.
[95] I think the ceiling is still lower than what it was pre -injury, as it should be.
[96] And if he gets to the ceiling, great, but you shouldn't be drafting him with that sort of expectation.
[97] If you're looking at Sandy Alcantara, the would -you -rathers, as we play a little game of ADP cliffhangers, expecting Sandy to move up.
[98] The next pitcher ahead of him right now is Jared Jones.
[99] So Sandy Alcantara versus Jared Jones for 2025.
[100] only who do you take i would take sandy uh you do start to have to do a little bit of math here where you're seeding strikeouts probably because of the workload not being over the top massive that was one way sandy got there in the past but yeah but even vintage strikeouts yeah yeah yeah because the way that sandy got to like 180 strikeouts was by pitching 210 innings right yeah it was bulk to get there right so okay so even so sandy versus jared jones i'm It's the good coin flip for me, but I think Jared Jones is also being underdrafted right now.
[101] Yeah, that's why it's hard for me. Going up one more spot, Sandy Alcantara versus Kodai Singa.
[102] Who would you rather have for 2025?
[103] I've got to move Sandy up in my rankings, I guess.
[104] He's going to move.
[105] Was he already ahead of Kodai Singa?
[106] Yes, he was already.
[107] No, he was even -ish with Kodai Singa.
[108] He's going to move ahead of Kodai Singa because they both got serious health issues.
[109] With Kodai, you're just like, did he fix it?
[110] What happened?
[111] Yeah, and we just didn't see that much of him late in the year coming back from that injury.
[112] So it's a similar situation.
[113] You're watching him this spring.
[114] If everything looks crisp, then he can move up on his own.
[115] But I think it's going to be a wait and see a little bit for me, a little bit longer at least with Kodai Senga.
[116] Next little group, Jack Flaherty versus Sandy Alcantara.
[117] I've got that comfortably in Sandy.
[118] I already had that.
[119] Yeah, well, not even the result of the weekend.
[120] You know, actually, I'm going to move Sandy pretty close to Jared Jones.
[121] So Jared Jones might still be ahead when I update the ranks.
[122] All right.
[123] How about all the names you said for the Would You Rathers?
[124] That's been Jared Jones.
[125] Brian Wu, I am in love with.
[126] Health concerns there too, right?
[127] That's the one thing that kind of holds him back.
[128] The earliest Brian Wu's gone in a draft in the last week, pick 119.
[129] So we're starting to get a little closer to that pick 100 mark, kind of seventh, eighth round where you may have to reach for your guy if you're looking in this particular group of pitchers.
[130] Last one for this exercise, Carlos Rodon versus Sandy Alcantara.
[131] Sandy Alcantara.
[132] Alright, so you like Sandy quite a bit.
[133] I'm going to move Sandy into the 40 -42 range somewhere.
[134] Sonny Gray is the healthy guy there, and Ronaldo Lopez, but maybe ahead of Shane McClanahan.
[135] All right, yeah, that puts them up closer to pick 120 by ADP.
[136] That's going to put them next to McClanahan.
[137] Strider goes in that range for now.
[138] I'll get some news on Strider, though.
[139] Spencer Strider may return in time to make a Grapefruit League appearance, which is not necessarily something we thought a month ago.
[140] So there's another way you could see a guy just start taking off in a massive way.
[141] If that timeline looks like it's creeping up, and Strider might be pitching in big league games in, I don't know, late April?
[142] that would probably be about right if you're able to pitch at all in the Grapefruit League, then I think that ADP goes through the roof.
[143] I think they're just trying to have him in October, so they're intentionally just shoving everything kind of a month late, right?
[144] Could be.
[145] So if he gets into a Grapefruit League, that's like he's supposed to have gotten into a Grapefruit League this month, right?
[146] So if for a month now he gets into a Grapefruit League, then he's going to take...
[147] one inning in that one, three innings in the next one, or two innings in the next one, three, you know, so it'll stretch out that way.
[148] And, yeah, it's almost like mid -April, late April, yeah.
[149] The bad news on the pitching injury front continues to come from the Mets, where Sean Minaya is expected to join Frankie Montas on the IL to begin the season.
[150] It's an oblique strain.
[151] for Minaya and the depth.
[152] Some of the names we were intrigued by over the course of the winter, the depth will be tested for the Mets right off the cuff.
[153] There's always the possibility they bring Jose Quintana back again.
[154] I think that's kind of an automatic assumption is that they could just go out and do something along those lines.
[155] But Senga's healthy now.
[156] Clay Holmes went three, three perfect innings with three Ks through 34 pitches in his spring debut.
[157] So that went about as well as you could ask a spring debut to go for a guy moving back into the rotation from the bullpen.
[158] Showed all of his new pitches.
[159] He's got a kick change and a cutter and a four seam.
[160] So, you know, with the sweeper and the gyro slider, it's...
[161] you know, five, six pitches deep all of a sudden.
[162] So Senga and Holmes as your 1 -2 to begin the season looks pretty realistic.
[163] Then it probably just locks in some combination of David Peterson, Tyler McGill, and Griffin Canning with maybe like a Brandon Sprout or one of the other young guys possibly pushing for that opportunity.
[164] But I think the Mets were one of those teams that was hoping to use a six -man rotation to begin the season.
[165] It doesn't really look like they're going to have six.
[166] starters they want to use based on how things are tracking right now timetable is like a month probably at least yeah and and it might be worse for montas yeah looks like six to eight weeks for montas with that lat injury yeah and i'm looking at the free agent tracker and i thought andrew haney was a kind of a cool little snipe for the pirates.
[167] They're always trying to get one of these veterans just as insurance to keep Bubba down a little bit longer, I guess.
[168] If you want to be cynical, however you want to put it.
[169] But I think Haney's was one of the better stretch.
[170] reliever, short starter, whatever you want to call him at this point, that was available.
[171] What you got left is Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, Jose Quintana, and Spencer Turnbull is probably the top of the market right there.
[172] Quintana fan drafts rejected for 2 -24, but if he's been sitting out here this long, I think you can get him for 1 -8 or something, and maybe 1 -10.
[173] And that might be just what they need to do because I think you can, if they want to do the six -man, it might still make sense with Kodai.
[174] You know, throwing Quintana in there and pitching Griffin Canning is all right.
[175] I wonder if they're just going to be so injured all year that Griffin Canning just slips through and pitches a fair number of innings.
[176] He doesn't have any options.
[177] So whenever somebody's coming back, even if they have a roster crunch, they'll have to option out, you know, like a reliever.
[178] and use Canning in the pen or something.
[179] Otherwise, they're just going to lose him outright.
[180] So that makes me think that Canning is on this roster for the season.
[181] The name that you mentioned that I think is good from a skills perspective and just maybe more of an unknown from a health perspective is Spencer Turnbull.
[182] I mean, he had a lat injury during the playoffs.
[183] I think that kept him off the NLDS roster for the Phillies.
[184] By skills, you look and you say, wow, last year, 26 .1 % K rate.
[185] That was a career best.
[186] It came kind of split between a starter and relieving role in Philadelphia.
[187] That's more interesting than the other guys.
[188] When you say their names, I just hear bulk.
[189] Bulk matters.
[190] You do need guys to go out there every fifth day and start and chew up four, five, sometimes six innings.
[191] But maybe canning can do that for you too.
[192] It has to be somewhat better than sproat.
[193] And if you're going to a five -man, it has to be better than canning.
[194] I just keep looking at Turnbull as one of those guys that should land somewhere.
[195] I'm with you on the Heaney signing.
[196] It probably just makes Bailey Falter less important for the Pirates.
[197] That's a good thing, to just have Falter as more of a reliever than someone you're relying on every fifth day until you bring up the last of your early 2025 prospects.
[198] On the Mets, I always had McGill ahead of Canning and ahead of Blackburn on the depth chart in my head.
[199] You know, now it's Blackburn's in the mix too.
[200] So right now, I think if they do do a six man, then Blackburn is the six probably.
[201] But a guy that I'm excited about that we haven't mentioned much is Tyler McGill because, you know, he threw 78 innings last year through, but he must've thrown some of the minors, didn't he?
[202] Yeah.
[203] Okay.
[204] So he threw like 120 innings last year, threw 153 in 2023.
[205] So he can make it to 150 innings.
[206] And he's a little bit like canning.
[207] He doesn't have an option, so that's always a possibility.
[208] But he's a little bit like canning where I think he might just slip through the needle and you look up and you're like, oh, he pitched 145 innings in the major leagues this year.
[209] And they were good.
[210] Because in terms of a mix, Tyler McGill has an acceptable fastball, but he's also been mezzified where he throws a fastball, a cutter, and a sinker.
[211] And his slider is above average by Stuff Plus, and his split is above average by Stuff Plus.
[212] So even if the curve is just an amuse -bouche, a change of flavor, a called strike kind of pitch, it's a pretty big mix.
[213] And the command wasn't good by Location Plus last year, but he isn't a guy that got poor braids on command.
[214] I mean, his prospects, yeah, I guess he's 40 -45 by Fangrass.
[215] That's a long time ago.
[216] His walk rates haven't been terrible.
[217] Just a little bit of an improvement from him for command -wise.
[218] He's got the mix to succeed, and right now he's definitely got a rotation spot.
[219] So I would bump Miguel up your draft boards a little bit.
[220] Yeah, I think the various graphics you've made looking for pitchers that have multiple fastballs, good stuff, just looking for all those different filters, he comes up a lot as a very, very late.
[221] inexpensive on draft day sort of guy that's probably more important to the Mets because of these injuries, but it may have been more important to them all along than folks realize.
[222] And I noticed the rotowire player outlook highlighted this really well.
[223] McGill wasn't throwing that two -seamer until the end of June.
[224] So he came back from the minors and he started throwing it.
[225] And from that point on, he had a three ERA, a 118 whip, 42 Ks, 13 walks, and 39 innings over seven starts and one relief appearance.
[226] Just a different pitcher with that.
[227] It's crazy, too, because stuff says it's 113 stuff plus sinker.
[228] Like, it's suddenly his best fastball.
[229] You know, I think some of the old school pitching development was, like, you have to have a good four seam and you're going to spend, you're going to stay in the corner until you have one.
[230] And then I talked about this a little with Logan Webb where he gets to the big leagues and he's like, hey, that sinker's pretty good, dude.
[231] Yeah, just throw that.
[232] It's good.
[233] Just throw it.
[234] Yeah, I like Miguel a lot, and I think he's all the way through.
[235] If Canning does sneak through and get them a lot of innings this year, I'm not even sure that's a good thing.
[236] I don't know.
[237] You know, we played this game with DFAs and no options, right?
[238] And I talked about the Canario -Owen -Casey thing, where Canario was going to make the roster because he had no options.
[239] And then they just DFA'd him.
[240] They DFA'd him when they brought in Justin Turner.
[241] And I have to think that Canning kind of reminds me of that.
[242] It's right on the line.
[243] Like, if they signed Quintana, what's the percentage chance they just DFA Canning?
[244] Still pretty low.
[245] They gave him a free agent deal for $4 million.
[246] Not that you can't DFA a guy for $4 million, but if they're having all these depth, like, they sought him out.
[247] So I think he's a little bit safer.
[248] And he's been interesting before.
[249] Griffin Canning, you don't have to go back that far to find the career best strikeout rate.
[250] 2023, 25 .9 % K rate.
[251] Had a Sierra under four for the first and only time in his career.
[252] Now he's in a more pitcher -friendly environment with an organization that...
[253] Certainly knows how to make tweaks to pitching.
[254] So I'm not going to rule out the possibility of Griffin Canning being part of the solution there either.
[255] And this is a rotation group of depth guys that we will be targeting frequently in our leagues because it makes a lot of sense.
[256] Then I think Blackburn and Canning are safe and they may not actually sign another guy because Blackburn and Canning both don't have options.
[257] Holmes, Peterson, and Sanger are in.
[258] And then I think you just play, if you're going to go six -man, you play Miguel.
[259] Right.
[260] And if any of the veterans are bad or hurt, you can go to Sprout.
[261] Hey, speaking of sinkers, what do you think about Chris Bubich having a new sinker?
[262] Does that change your interest level in him as he's trying to compete for that number five starter spot in Kansas City?
[263] Well, the problem for me is just that he reminds me a lot of Brady Singer, where the fastball and slider are pretty good, but it's not a wide enough arsenal for me to be a really successful starting pitcher.
[264] And adding another fastball is cool, but still leaves him kind of short in my estimation.
[265] All right, good set.
[266] think he's adding that he's a lefty trying to throw something in on the hands of lefties that moves, that gets a little weak contact.
[267] That seems to be the...
[268] On righties, yeah.
[269] Yeah, so I just want something in the arsenal to add another option for that split.
[270] Yeah, trying not to get beat by the righties.
[271] But yeah, I'm more intrigued by Bubic, I think, than you are at this point.
[272] A few other news items to get to.
[273] Wyatt Langford currently being held up with a mild oblique strain.
[274] They had a five - to seven -day timetable for that return, and that was pre -weekend, so maybe we'll see him back by the end of this week.
[275] I had oblique...
[276] are one of those injuries.
[277] I lean more toward rounding up on the timetable.
[278] Hopefully it's the kind of thing they can just get calm down.
[279] But it is such a low number that you can round up and be like, okay, you'll be fine.
[280] Right.
[281] It should be fine for opening day if they don't keep making it worse.
[282] That's kind of where we're at on the calendar.
[283] Just give them the extra couple of days.
[284] Don't let this be a thing that lingers throughout the spring and then cost some time when the season starts.
[285] Basically where I would be worried in terms of being ready for the season is once it starts once the timetable and two weeks start two weeks for the before the season start overlapping because most hitters do tell me that they need two weeks to get their timing and we see even that hitters in general are behind pitchers in april maybe it's because of the weather because you know it's colder weather the ball doesn't go as far but for every reason hitters even do weird things like they don't swing as much in april Yeah, it just takes a little bit of time to get the feel, I think.
[286] So right now, White -Lanford, you could take the seven -day, and you could even double it in, say, 14 days, and he'll still have his two weeks to get ready for the season.
[287] Two full weeks plus of spring training games would be all he really needs to get that timing back and to get back up to speed.
[288] So yeah, just don't let this become a problem.
[289] into the regular season for Wyatt Langford.
[290] We're also keeping an eye on a biceps injury for Parker Meadows.
[291] He's going to have some further testing today.
[292] That's according to, I think, Chris McCoskey of Detroit News.
[293] But we'll see if this turns anything.
[294] It doesn't seem like a serious problem, but Parker Meadows, a guy that we both like, should the opportunity actually be there.
[295] I was poking around a little bit on him because I had the story that he was more aggressive in the second half, and that's why he broke out.
[296] But he had a really weird collection of things.
[297] So he had a 29 % hard hit rate and a 5 % barrel rate with a 500 slugging in the second half last year.
[298] And I'm like, that doesn't all line up right in my head.
[299] No, but that's all worse than what he's done in his overall body of work as a big leaguer, split over parts of two seasons, right?
[300] 7 .4 % for the barrel rate, 32 .3 % for the hard hit rate.
[301] I don't know, man. The one thing that bothers me is he's just not a guy who hits the ball that hard.
[302] No, it's not absurd, but it's also, it's not the weak contact either.
[303] It's like 15 to 18 home run power instead of 25 plus.
[304] But that's fine, he runs.
[305] That'll work itself out.
[306] It's not the, like, 6 -7 homer power either, probably, so it's probably fine.
[307] Just, like, knock down the ceiling a little bit.
[308] I think that's what that takeaway was for me when you brought up that issue for Parker Meadows.
[309] Last news item to pass along, Dustin May had a scoreless inning in his spring debut, and I think we've talked about this on the Dodgers preview before, and that was even right before they brought Kershaw back into the mix, but Kershaw's not coming back until sometime this summer, so it's all very complicated.
[310] What was your expectation for Dustin May in terms of early?
[311] early season usage.
[312] Is he actually part of this rotation as, uh, as it's currently designed?
[313] They said that we're going to go to a five man rotation until Otani comes back and then turn it to a six, but they still have Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobi Yamamoto in this, in this rotation.
[314] So I actually think that.
[315] Maybe it'll be a Dodgers quote unquote five man rotation where it's actually still a six man rotation.
[316] They're like, oh, today Tony's bitching, you know?
[317] So my expectation going into the season is actually that Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May both make the rotation.
[318] Dustin May has to make the team because he has no options and he's not at that DFA line, you know?
[319] So Dustin May is going to make the team for sure.
[320] And Tony Gonsolin has an option, but he's pitched fine in the major leagues.
[321] Like I just, I don't think that he's.
[322] in danger of losing his rotation spot.
[323] So I think Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May are both in this rotation.
[324] Maybe May is a long reliever, but I think he's above that line.
[325] And if I was the Dodgers, I would say, well, we'd planned on doing a five -man, but we really want to see what Dustin can do in the rotation and give him another try at it.
[326] Yeah, I do think the only thing that would make it more realistic for the Dodgers to use a five -man rotation is to do...
[327] have more off days kind of stacked up on the calendar early in the year so you just don't you don't run to those stretches where you go six consecutive days of the game very often and then you get to may june so dustin may is your sixth starter that you skip because of the off days and i mean that that's a that's that's a risk i've been taking some late shares of may i just took him in barf i think and one of the reasons that i did was because i think he was in the bench rounds and i thought We'll know something.
[328] We'll know in a couple weeks.
[329] We'll have a better idea of how he's going to be used.
[330] And then if that first free agency run I need a dropper, it could be Dustin May. It's fine.
[331] Right.
[332] Good enough to be used if he has the role you expect.
[333] Easy enough to cut if he doesn't.
[334] I think that's the way I would sum that up.
[335] And that's a good way to build out your bench if you're doing early drafts.
[336] Let's shift the focus over to a story you wrote for The Athletic looking for breakout hitters.
[337] principles all the time on the show, but the story is called Emily Breakout Candidates Young Hitters Ready to Step Up in 2025.
[338] And we're not going to read all the names or anything like that, but I'm...
[339] I'm going to pop a table up that was in here because it's a nice visual if you're watching us on YouTube.
[340] And you see a pretty interesting group of eight names on here.
[341] I love that Alec Thomas still continues to pop as someone that might have more in the tank as a hitter than we've seen so far.
[342] I look forward to, I think one of the commenters even said, I'm going to have Alec Thomas on my team for the eighth consecutive year, and maybe this will be the year.
[343] I'm guilty of that, too.
[344] I keep looking at it and saying, why not?
[345] And defensively, he does enough to earn playing time.
[346] And we've seen just these little glimmers of hope.
[347] This is more like NL only or draft and hold, whereas some of the other guys on this list are going to be rostered in 10 and 12 team mixed leagues.
[348] So we'll focus on some of the more shallow league targets of this bunch.
[349] And it's kind of funny to me that we were at the point in the Jason Dominguez arc to begin his career where I think the hype has finally settled in.
[350] at a manageable spot where it's appropriate.
[351] People are excited about what he might do as a hitter, but the expectation isn't that he's a shoo -in for rookie of the year honors and he's going to go 30 -30 this year for sure.
[352] There's things to like about him.
[353] The defense is still a little bit of a question mark, but it looks like the Yankees are finally positioned to just let it happen, just to let Jason Dominguez be a big part of their lineup.
[354] There's a lot of things he's shown us that he's done very well.
[355] up to this point in his professional career.
[356] Yeah, I think the Yankees actually coached this up pretty well.
[357] This came up in a piece that I did comparing the Yankees and Mets futures.
[358] And I found that, thanks to Lance Bronzowski, found out that the Yankees were number one in 95th percentile exit velocity last year in the minor leagues.
[359] And so I also know that they spent a lot of time on swing decisions.
[360] And Dominguez's 109 .3 on this chart doesn't actually tell the whole story because he only had 67 plate appearances in the major leagues.
[361] In the minor leagues, he had a 111 .6, so he was better there.
[362] So when I see this chart, I see a guy who hits the ball hard, has really good swing decisions, just a little bit worse than Tyler Soderstrom's swing decisions, and runs like the wind.
[363] The biggest flaw so far for him has maybe been K percentage and, you know, outfield defense.
[364] And I just can't believe that somebody with these skills that used to play center field can't handle left field, even in Yankee stadium where maybe it is harder than other left fields.
[365] I don't know, but I think he will iron out the defense and he'll, you know, he'll do enough where they're like, okay, he's going to run.
[366] He's going to be acid on the base pass.
[367] He's going to take some walks, and he's going to hit some rockets, and we'll just put him low in the order, and we'll just put him out there.
[368] I mean, that's been the risk with Yankee prospects is do they make it into the starting lineup, or do they have to go back down again and spend their time in the minors waiting?
[369] And I think he's at the point now where I look at that depth chart, and I say they're going to put him in all year.
[370] So I like him there.
[371] Tyler Soderstrom at the top, you know, he does everything right.
[372] And I was trying to look through what happened last year because he went down.
[373] I wanted to see what he did when he came back up.
[374] And I think he's just had a little bit of a hard time toggling his contact point out in front of the plate.
[375] Because if you look at his pull rates and his swing rates and stuff, he's somewhere where he can't decide how aggressive to be.
[376] And I think you've seen that with some of his fluctuating walk rates in the minor leagues.
[377] stops where it starts with seven and other stops where it starts with an 11.
[378] I think that generally when he came back up, he was more patient and I think it was good for him.
[379] and he's a guy who obviously has the top at bat speed.
[380] He hit a ball 113 .5 in 2023 in the minor leagues, 112 last year up here, 14 % barrel rate.
[381] And lastly, I just think that everybody's projecting him for a low Babbitt, but I don't see a 50 % fly ball rate.
[382] He is a little bit slow, but he doesn't pull outrageously.
[383] I don't think he's that easy to defend.
[384] So if you just give him 20 points of Babbitt, everybody's saying he's going to hit like...
[385] the 280 on batting average on balls in place out of Tyler Soderstrom.
[386] And I'm saying, what if that's a 300?
[387] Then he's like a 245, 250 hitter with 30 home run power.
[388] And a middle third of the lineup placement, too.
[389] I think he's a guy to circle.
[390] Yeah, no, he makes a lot of sense.
[391] When we were talking about the A's preview about a week or so ago, two weeks ago now, I looked at Soderstrom and was like, this is a guy that quietly did everything better.
[392] with more opportunity, had a wrist injury that cost him some time last year.
[393] And I think just missing that time has sort of...
[394] hidden how good that step forward was from Tyler Soderstrom.
[395] So nice to see him included in that piece.
[396] I know we talked about Jordan Walker during the Cardinals previews.
[397] We don't have to rehash him necessarily today either.
[398] Hunter Goodman popped in here, and I don't think we mentioned him during the Rockies previews, so I think we should talk about Hunter Goodman because the thing I've struggled with is figuring out how exactly he gets to enough playing time to make the leap from 15 -team leagues where you start two catchers to...
[399] you know, the more midsize, more commonly played formats out there.
[400] I mean, his bat and ball metrics are so good that even in 333 player appearances, oopsie says he's going to hit 244 with 18 homers, you know?
[401] And I kind of think that, I think WRC Press is a little bit broken for Colorado.
[402] We've talked about this in the past.
[403] It has to do with how they're pitched and whatever.
[404] But if you just sort by WOBA, Hunter Goodman is in.
[405] the circle of trust in terms of he's a, he's one of the top five hitters on this team, you know?
[406] And so I kind of think that it's one of those things where, you know, maybe you have like a seventh inning reliever behind a bad closer and you're just like, He's headed that direction.
[407] He's going to take a job.
[408] They're going to be like, oh, well, he hits the snot out of the ball.
[409] We don't actually have that many people who do that.
[410] So let's find a place for him on the field.
[411] They announced that he's catching twice a week.
[412] So you're right to be worried about that.
[413] I mean, that twice a week, you could end up with 200 plate appearances.
[414] So what you have to circle are Michael Toglia.
[415] a switch hitter at first base unfortunately but with a lot of strikeouts jordan beck in right field who we are excited about but who's and strikes out a little bit too much and then maybe chris bryant at dh yeah chris bryant i mean i think i saw one of the first first days of spring training gets drilled by a pitch by one of his own teammates he's okay but the video that was going around like you can't even make this stuff up I mean the guy just comes into camp First interview, he's like, yeah, I feel good.
[416] Steps out of the field, boom, gets drilled in the shoulder, and you're like, come on, man. That's how I felt, by the way, with Bobby Miller, because Bobby Miller gets up on the bump, and he's throwing a new sweeper, and it looks okay, but he can't find the strike zone, and he just gets smoked up on line drive, and it's like, oh, gosh, all right.
[417] Yeah, so I mean, I look at the situation as you described it.
[418] I'm like, okay, yeah, between Tolia, Beck, Nolan Jones, and Chris Bryant.
[419] You get first base, the two corner outfield spots, and DH.
[420] There's a mix of inexperience and injury risk.
[421] Tolia and Beck being inexperienced, and Jones and Bryant having missed a lot of time with injuries last year, and Bryant missing time in years prior to that too.
[422] There are a lot of paths for Goodman.
[423] It's just like...
[424] waiting to see which one it is.
[425] So maybe he's more of a watchless player in shallow leagues, but yeah, even with a small playing time projection, the power numbers are pretty convincing.
[426] So it's nice to see he's also making some good swing decisions here to support that big time power that he's shown really throughout his entire time in the minor leagues.
[427] One sort of issue I had with this list was that last year's list was not, I don't want to admit this in the story, but it was not super exciting.
[428] But you'll admit that on the podcast.
[429] Yeah, because we're among friends here.
[430] Who's reading your stuff?
[431] Those aren't friends?
[432] I don't know.
[433] I just didn't want to start the story with, oh, it was terrible last year.
[434] Yeah, this wasn't very good.
[435] But read this.
[436] Hit the smiley face.
[437] And share with friends.
[438] Here's the list from last year.
[439] Spencer Torkelson, Jack Sawinski, Nelson Velasquez, Christopher Morrell, Francisco Alvarez, MJ Melendez, of course, David Schneider, Noel V. Marte, Michael Garcia, and Eli De La Cruz.
[440] So a couple of things occurred to me was just at some point I could have a better weighting for this.
[441] And maybe each of the categories doesn't need to be weighted exactly 25%.
[442] Another one was that by focusing on barrel, I need more sample.
[443] I think hard hit comes through faster.
[444] And also, if you think about aging curves, players tend to lift the ball a little bit more as they age.
[445] It's just how the aging curves for ground balls go.
[446] So if you focus on hard hit over barrel with Young, it might be a good idea because they might be able to add that lift component to their hard hit and add power over time.
[447] I mean, that's what...
[448] the aging curve says they will do in the aggregate anyway, you know, so you're betting on the aggregate.
[449] And so I took barrel out and replaced it by hard hit in this rate.
[450] But I would just say that just generally, this group looks really exciting to me. And this year's list, I think, passes the sniff test a little better.
[451] It's like, or at least I'm just like, any effort like this is going to go in and out just based on the personnel.
[452] Maybe last year's list was pretty good.
[453] And maybe this year, they'll be better.
[454] Like Christopher Murrell could still could still kind of break out, you know, and just be like, oh, well, you're early, I guess.
[455] Alvarez got hurt.
[456] I still really like him.
[457] It still produced Alvarez and Eli de la Cruz.
[458] So, like, it still produced some guys.
[459] It's just, yeah.
[460] I think there's also some benefit to keeping an eye out for the...
[461] guys that have graduated from prospect status but still don't even have that much big league experience.
[462] I mean, like Soderstrom last year took the step forward.
[463] Jordan Walker in his rookie season showed us a lot that kept us excited.
[464] And Dylan Cruz, you know, we keep waiting for the version of the player we thought he was coming out of LSU to show up, but he's doing interesting things with the speed that we didn't necessarily expect coming out of that draft.
[465] I could have called it a post -hype sleepers article too.
[466] Like it's, you know, there's a lot of...
[467] used to be hype on that list.
[468] And then, of course, you get some more earlier rounders in here, too, with James Wood popping across the board on these metrics and Junior Camonero.
[469] And Camonero's in that rare group of young player that the projections also love.
[470] But that's not usually what you get with players that have as little time in the big leagues as Junior Camonero.
[471] Yeah.
[472] And I think he's, because he's not costing the sort of Bobby Witt second round prices, you know, before he played.
[473] I'm actually still in on it.
[474] I think third base gets really bad.
[475] And so I have circled Junior Caminero, Matt Chapman, and Alex Bregman.
[476] That's kind of where I want to be, worst case scenario.
[477] I know there are a lot more third basemen that come after that, but I don't really like a lot of them.
[478] I missed that cutoff in a league recently.
[479] I got Alec Boehm.
[480] I immediately took two more third basemen because I was like, this is not good.
[481] And I'm not saying that Ali Moham is bad.
[482] He really fell off in the second half last year.
[483] He was even being rested sometimes and not played.
[484] And even his upside is probably like 280 -18.
[485] Well, yeah, this is a good segue.
[486] I don't think you realized it at the time, but it was a perfect segue to something else we're going to talk about today, tough hitter rankings.
[487] You did read the rundown for once.
[488] It's okay.
[489] You know what?
[490] You're among friends.
[491] You didn't have to admit that you did or confess that you didn't.
[492] It's okay.
[493] So I did find that looking through, and I just took a look at ADP versus combined projections and just did a sort by both and said, okay.
[494] Who does the market like more or less than projections?
[495] I think those players often end up being our tough ranks and going through that process right now.
[496] Sure enough, it flagged a bunch of players that I was either much higher or much lower than the market on, so the chaos was apparent.
[497] But there's a lot of third basemen on that list.
[498] Matt Chapman is among...
[499] The players that projections really like, but the market is cautious.
[500] I don't know if it's an overcorrection because we as humans look at Matt Chapman stealing more bases at his age and say, that's not really a big part of his game, so I'm just going to lop off almost all of those stolen bases.
[501] I get it because he stole more bases, 15, stole more bases last year than he did in the rest of his big league career combined.
[502] So, yeah, maybe it's something to do with that, because, you know, you look at 15, you look at the projections, projections are going to be like, OK, a lot of last year, a little bit of the year before, a little bit of the year before.
[503] Right.
[504] And just, you know, not really consider his contract status or, you know, whatever it is, you know, and you get to 10, basically.
[505] And 10, if you need what we said was kind of like 12 and a half, 13.
[506] per roster slot 10 is one of those you know third base one of the few third baseman that actually keeps you afloat you know in stolen bases if you think it's really a three or four again like he had been in the past then he doesn't give you any help in stolen bases he's more like you know a Bregman type and Bregman is going from a park that was pretty good for him to a park that might be even better for him So you might be saying, well, if Bregman's a 280 hitter with the green monster, I think he could be something like that.
[507] 280, 25 -3, then I'm going to take him over Chapman if I think Chapman's only going to steal three or four bags.
[508] I felt like the market was underrating Bregman as well.
[509] I hew pretty closely to projections, but I have my quabbles.
[510] I find things in the projections that I don't.
[511] always agree with, specifically playing time.
[512] That's the case with Jordan Westberg.
[513] So you have those three guys all at this position where there's some disagreement.
[514] Royce Lewis, because of multiple ACL tears.
[515] I mean, projecting his playing time, good luck.
[516] Right.
[517] So that's where you get all these.
[518] I think part of what makes that position feel kind of terrible in the draft is that tension, that disagreement between what the market's doing and what the projections say you should be doing, and you're going to have to really kind of work through that and make sure that you have a good feel for what you really expect from that group.
[519] Even if Matt Chapman steals three or four bags, which he was doing in the three previous years before the 15, if he's going to do that with high 20s power and the huge volume of playing time he always gives you, To me, it's almost more like a Marcus Simeon sort of workload that Matt Chapman takes on, and I don't think that's properly priced in.
[520] I think that's the thing people are overlooking about Matt Chapman.
[521] They're overcorrecting for the speed, probably not being reliable, but they never seem to fully grasp just how good he is from a durability perspective and what that leads to as far as those really high RBI and run scored numbers that you get from him most years.
[522] Yeah, and I...
[523] don't love certain things about the way the batted balls are but i also have to admit that this is a great place for him to be for for his skill set i mean righty that pulls the ball like that and then you know i i think that there is um something about westberg that i i discovered recently alex fast texted me this and he said well Are you worried at all about Westberg's, what he did in two -strike counts or whatever?
[524] Westberg last year, where is he?
[525] Is this the opposite of Cody Bellinger, where he didn't have a two -strike approach, or he was really bad in those situations, whereas Bellinger two years ago, the narrative was, he figured it out with two strikes.
[526] We know that Westberg has a large swing strike rate, and that...
[527] he should have maybe had a higher strikeout rate.
[528] So I think he did have a good two -strike count.
[529] But with Cody Bellinger, so what he did was he hit 214 with a 386 slugging.
[530] And, you know, that doesn't sound great, but it's actually top 20 in the big leagues.
[531] In fact, it's the same slugging percentage on two strikes as Jordan Alvarez had.
[532] And so...
[533] I do think that might regress a little bit.
[534] And I do think his strikeout rate might regress a little bit.
[535] So it's not all fun and gravy on Westberg for me. And he's being taken right between some veterans that have...
[536] I think higher floors.
[537] Like what if Westbrook comes out and strikes out more like 24, 25 % of the time and goes down to a two, like the, the league slugging in two strike counts is like 200, right?
[538] So he goes back to a 200 slugging in two strike counts.
[539] And so then you might expect him to hit 245 with, you know, 15 homers and 10 steals.
[540] And then you might rather have those veterans that you, that you passed on for him.
[541] Maybe.
[542] I don't know, though.
[543] I keep looking at that projection for playing time and thinking it's just light.
[544] I mean, I know he was hurt last year, but I think Jordan Westberg was much closer to every single day in the lineup than sharing his job.
[545] And all the projection systems over at Fangraphs are under 600 plate appearances.
[546] I'd be surprised.
[547] He's not just about to go into the Ramon Urias role where he only faces lefties.
[548] So as a righty...
[549] Who passes that bar.
[550] You just figure everyday guy.
[551] I'm also surprised.
[552] Just as you look at the K rate.
[553] And say it's probably going up.
[554] I think the walk rate is probably going up too.
[555] If he's working counts deeper.
[556] I think he's got a pretty good idea of the strike zone.
[557] We saw that really throughout his time in the minor leagues.
[558] So I don't think he's a true talent 4 .9 % walk rate guy either.
[559] So maybe you lose a little bit of average.
[560] But you gain some OBP.
[561] That could wash things out a little bit.
[562] More chances at first base.
[563] You know to take a stolen base.
[564] Yeah I ended up in the.
[565] It's still not quite published, but the...
[566] Almost done.
[567] My whole life.
[568] It's almost done.
[569] Jordan Westberg, not my actual life, but everything I'm working on in my life.
[570] I hope my life is not almost done.
[571] I had Westberg right next to Marcus Simeon.
[572] I think you could say, I like Simeon better because I know he's going to play more, and he's got the durability, and Westberg doesn't.
[573] The arrows are in way different directions on those careers, as much as I like Simeon.
[574] I want the guy that's got a 45 .6 % hard hit rate as a big leaguer.
[575] Give me that.
[576] And I think the speed for Marcus Semien has kind of trailed off to the point, too, where you're not getting the edge that you might have been getting from him in that category in the past either.
[577] So that's where I kind of settled in on Westbrook.
[578] Higher than the market, not in a ridiculously aggressive sort of way, but probably going to end up with more Westbrook than a lot of folks this year.
[579] I loved him last year.
[580] I still like him quite a bit this year.
[581] It's probably the main takeaway for me. A couple other tough projections.
[582] Randy Orozarena.
[583] Projections like him a lot.
[584] The market doesn't.
[585] And one of the things you have pointed out is that with time in T -Mobile, with the ballpark in Seattle, players tend to do better after spending a year there or even part of a year there, right?
[586] I think just getting through an adjustment window seems pretty important there.
[587] We talked about it at the time of the trade.
[588] When the Rays flipped Randy Rosarena to the Mariners, like, hey, maybe hitting in another difficult place to hit at the Trop will help him.
[589] He'll make the adjustments faster.
[590] And it was a mixed bag for Randy Rosarena post -trade.
[591] The slash line looked about the same.
[592] The K rate did go up to 28 .5 % at the end of the year.
[593] He wasn't running quite as much.
[594] Babbitt went up.
[595] He was hitting more grounders.
[596] I mean, it does sound like maybe he had a...
[597] a different kind of conversation with a hitting coach.
[598] Like there are definitely some strategy differences here.
[599] Yeah.
[600] And this is, I think one of the more consistent power speed combos by year over year that I think does it with a lot of waves over the course of the season.
[601] If you followed what happens in season with Randy Rosarena throughout his time in the big leagues, there's some pretty high highs.
[602] There's some pretty low lows.
[603] And at the end of the year, you look at the final numbers, you go, there's 20 plus homers.
[604] There's 20 plus deals, a lot of runs.
[605] Pretty good average prior to 2024.
[606] He was trending in the wrong direction just in terms of the average kind of sliding down every year.
[607] But still, it was a 219.
[608] It was a big departure from the sort of 250, 260s.
[609] Yeah, like 240, 250 seems more like where we're going, and projections are more like 230, 240.
[610] So even the projections might be a tad lighter, at least baking in further aging and further struggles.
[611] I find myself more on the side of the projections with the bounce back on a Rosarena than I do on the ADP.
[612] which is very cautious with him so far.
[613] Yeah, I'm thinking he's going to improve his second year in Seattle.
[614] He's going to see the ball better, figure out whatever that sun batter's eye effect is and at least have some strategies to cope with it.
[615] And I just generally find him in a place.
[616] I was taking – he's on my BARF team, which we can just throw up for a second.
[617] Oh, yeah, you got that board, yeah.
[618] So you can see where I took him.
[619] I went Gunner, Merrill, Devers to start.
[620] It was funny because I'd looked at ADP and I was like, I think I'm going to go Gunner, Merrill, Machado, Cole, Bautista.
[621] Devers fell to me and I said, well, this is exactly how I planned.
[622] That means I'm going to win, right?
[623] Then I went Will Smith, Brian Reynolds, Spencer Steer, and Rosarena.
[624] What I did figure out after I went Will Smith and Brian Reynolds was I had fallen behind in steals.
[625] So with my mind set, towards seals a little bit i went steer a rosarena bogarts so that means i took rosarena in the middle of the eighth ninth round which seems like a pretty good place to get a 240 2020 guy Yeah, it's more in line with what's been happening over the last seven days or so.
[626] Pick 135 right around the spot where you got him.
[627] Tends to be the average, but that's, to me, really good value.
[628] The market is giving you a pretty nice discount on a Rosarena.
[629] We saw the risk.
[630] It was on full display last year.
[631] That's a really nice foundation you built.
[632] And look, your strength especially is being able to find more pitching.
[633] It's one of your many strengths at playing this game.
[634] So I think leaning into that because of what the room did.
[635] That can't necessarily be a bad thing for you.
[636] Yeah, if you want to hear my pitching staff just by itself, you'll notice something.
[637] I've been touting Ryan Pepio and love him and usually have him as my three or four.
[638] But in this one, it goes Cole.
[639] Bautista Pepio is my second pitcher.
[640] Lovely.
[641] Luis Heal, Taj Bradley.
[642] I had to be like, okay, this is YOLO staff.
[643] Reese Olsen, Ranger Suarez, Brian Baio, Justin Verlander.
[644] Now we're on the bench.
[645] It's Tinoco, Bido.
[646] Sugano, Dustin May, and Casey Mize.
[647] With Sugano and May and Mize, it was like, I'm going to learn something this spring.
[648] Mize is throwing a new breaking ball.
[649] He had three Ks in two innings.
[650] If the K rate is up and the breaking balls look good, then I made a good choice.
[651] And with Sugano, it's...
[652] I want to see the K rate, too, because he didn't K that many people in Japan.
[653] And if it's only soft contact and worried with Mei, it's like, what's the role?
[654] So I predict right now that, like, you know, Tinoco, Mei, and Sugano are my first drops.
[655] But it's okay.
[656] It's fine.
[657] Those guys at the bottom don't make it to the end.
[658] I like that draft a lot, though, man. The earlier draft will also make the first fab.
[659] kind of loaded with some useful players that pop.
[660] So I think if you can find a pitcher or two you really like coming out of spring to help bolster that group, then you'll be in even better shape once the season begins.
[661] But love the advantages you got on the hitting side, building that out the way that you did.
[662] One other guy that I want to talk about in a little bit of detail is Jung -Hoo Lee.
[663] 37 games last year before his season ended due to injury.
[664] And I just wondered, did we get enough answers about...
[665] the type of hitter he will be against big league pitching to buy into the projections that are out there.
[666] Because I think the difficulty right now of figuring things out, players coming over from professional foreign leagues, is actually a little tricky.
[667] It's a high level of difficulty, I think.
[668] And we're going to go through this with Haesung Kim coming over to the Dodgers this year, too.
[669] I've wondered if stealing bases is easier in Major League Baseball than it is in the KBO because of the rules.
[670] That's one kind of quirk.
[671] And when we have the last two seasons have been cut short with injuries, like even the last season in the KBO being put into the system was only 86 games.
[672] I think that does some weird stuff to what this projection systems will spit out for Jung Ho Lee.
[673] If you take the most optimistic projection of all, it's from Oopsie.
[674] 13 homers, 13 steals, 271, 329, 401 by the slash line.
[675] It's the most optimistic by power and speed, but it's a little bit lighter than the other slash lines.
[676] So if you just take the projection systems you want, mix and match them, you could really get some pretty exciting numbers for Jung -Hoo Lee.
[677] So just based on the little bit we did see last season, 41 % hard hit rate.
[678] Kept the K -Ray under 10%, which is what he was doing in each of his last five seasons in the KBO.
[679] This looks like a profile that's going to work, and the only thing I see that's really jarringly different was a 47 % ground ball rate during his time in San Francisco when he was in the high 50s each of his last three seasons in Korea.
[680] That's the one thing I'm looking at and going, did he change something?
[681] Is the way he's being pitched different?
[682] Does that actually make any sense?
[683] Where are you at on Jung Ho Lee?
[684] Because I feel like we haven't talked a lot about him over the course of this winter.
[685] One thing that I heard in the scouting report was that, yes, he makes a ton of contact, but...
[686] He does pick his spots and turn and burn on things.
[687] And if you just look at his limited time spray chart, you will see some home runs to the pull side.
[688] You can also look at things like, okay, well, this profile is a lot like Stephen Kwan.
[689] Let me look at some bat speeds.
[690] Okay, Stephen Kwan has one -th percentile.
[691] One -th percentile bat.
[692] First percentile?
[693] 64 .6.
[694] Jung -Hoo Lee swings the bat six miles an hour faster than Stephen Kwan.
[695] i think that's kind of meaningful pretty because i yeah because you know otherwise i think they compare really well like in terms of squared up percentage this is squared up not like on results this is squared up based on where the ball hit the bat you know this is kind of a process thing he compares very well to Stephen Kwan.
[696] And in terms of whiff percentage and K -percentage, now we're talking about results, he profiles like a Stephen Kwan.
[697] So if you have a Stephen Kwan starter package plus six miles an hour bat speed, that's where you can start to be like, okay, yes, it's a worse park, so that's going to steal some.
[698] But what if he just hits 10 homers on the road and three at home?
[699] You know, that's a pretty easy way for him.
[700] I could, that I could believe on him to get to 13 homers.
[701] And if he's going to be 12 to 13 homers, then, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to get 19 to 20 homers per spot, but it's again, it's almost like that 10 with Chapman, right?
[702] If you get 13 homers from Stephen Kwan, then he doesn't hurt you as much in the power category as you might think he does, and he helps you a ton in batting average, and he keeps you afloat in stolen bases, he starts to become a really exciting player.
[703] If he hits you six home runs, he hurts you in a place almost as much as he might help you.
[704] So that might be why the market is saying they don't love him, but the projections have some reason to love him.
[705] Yeah, I'm definitely warming up to the possibility of Jung -Hoo Lee just being underrated in general, and that bat speed difference is much more than I would have guessed.
[706] I would have guessed within a mile or two per hour, just based on what you see on the back of the baseball card as far as strikeout rates and how they both approach their games.
[707] Interesting note here, producer Brian Smith dropping this one for us.
[708] Bob Melvin saying Lee could bat third this season, and he did bat third in the Cactus League opener.
[709] That would also kind of lean more into the, hey, he's got more power than people realize.
[710] That would make some sense.
[711] The other part of that would be, who else would they use in that spot based on the way that lineup is built too, right?
[712] Is it just the lack of clear, better alternatives?
[713] Bryce Eldridge isn't going to be there right away, but maybe Bryce Eldridge has a path to the heart of the order a little faster than expected too if Jung -ho Lee is getting that opportunity right now.
[714] Yeah, I think that Willie Damas is in the top, Matt Chapman's in the top, and then maybe Elliot Ramos.
[715] So that's your four best hitters.
[716] And there's going to be some sorting through process.
[717] Maybe they want Lee a little bit higher and Ramos' power behind him.
[718] That could be.
[719] But no matter what, what you want out of being at the top of this lineup is plate appearances.
[720] That's the number one thing.
[721] So if he's easy in the top three and it's easy the first, second, or third, then it almost doesn't matter.
[722] That's good news.
[723] He's going to get a lot of play appearances.
[724] Then health -wise, I think also position -wise, I know maybe Grant McRae, if you start to build a bench, Grant McRae might make this team, and he is a good defender.
[725] But offensively, this team needs every little ounce it can get.
[726] And so I just don't see them sitting Lee for McRae very often.
[727] That's more of a maybe.
[728] true backup outfielder situation, then I want Lee has the best combination of glove and offense at center field, and that's probably what I want in there as often as possible.
[729] Yeah, I'm going to be looking at Wilmer, one of Schmidt or Wisely, the backup catcher, and then McCray or Luis Matos probably getting the last spot to be the reserve outfielder.
[730] That build a bench is not fun.
[731] Yeah, it gets a little tough.
[732] Yeah.
[733] And just having Wilmer Flores and Gerard Encarnacion on the same team makes it hard.
[734] Because if you want them both to make the team, you start running out of slots.
[735] Because Gerard as a backup and then Murphy as a backup.
[736] Maybe Fitzgerald can play a backup short for you, but then you kind of want Wisely to make this team to play backup second, backup short.
[737] So that's three of your four.
[738] That means the fourth guy is either Matos or McRae, right?
[739] All right, we got one more segment to get to, just a few mailbag questions to knock out here.
[740] The first came from OrioleBird in our Discord.
[741] Which platoon players get a bump in daily leagues?
[742] A few in the question include Kerry Carpenter, Brandon Lau, Ryan O 'Hearn.
[743] Yeah, I would agree with all three of those.
[744] But who else are you bumping up in leagues with daily moves where you can take advantage of just way better than league average players in those splits?
[745] And the first guy that I think of right away is Jock Peterson, of course.
[746] Jock, yeah.
[747] I mean, that's the dude.
[748] But I'm reprising my lefty -lefty savant search to see what's going on here.
[749] What's going on?
[750] Oh, this is like a...
[751] Oh, and I want to get the bottom of it.
[752] So Oswald Cabrera.
[753] Trevor Larnock, the Trevor Larnock, Matt Walner crew.
[754] Yeah, they get a good bump.
[755] They're both really good against righties.
[756] Lamont Wade Jr., depending on the depth of your league, especially if it's an OVP league.
[757] Gavin Lux has been in this in the past, so I don't know what his new rule is going to be.
[758] I think that's a pretty good list of names.
[759] Yeah, I think the Jock Peterson one, people just forget.
[760] Josh Lowe.
[761] Low gets that pretty good bump too.
[762] Even if some of these guys, if they get playing time against lefties, you may not want them in the lineup against them, but they're so good against righties.
[763] You do want to go ahead and do that.
[764] Mullins?
[765] Yeah.
[766] How big were his splits last year?
[767] Because he didn't immediately pop into my head since he keeps the playing time.
[768] But he doesn't always.
[769] His playing time is way softer.
[770] In OPS or something?
[771] WRC+.
[772] What do you think his WRC +, was against righties?
[773] Against righties, I think he's probably like a 120.
[774] Yeah, 121.
[775] What do you think he was against lefties?
[776] Well, they started sitting him, so I'm guessing it was like an 85.
[777] 43.
[778] 43, yikes.
[779] Yeah, so Cedric Mullins is part of that conversation now for sure.
[780] But yeah, definitely one where you can pop up a leaderboard over at Fangraphs, split it down, and you'll see some names that jump off the page when you sort by WRC+.
[781] Look at silly Giants news.
[782] Tom Murphy hurt herniated disc.
[783] It says multiple weeks.
[784] That could be something that he doesn't make opening day.
[785] Sam Huff time.
[786] Sam Huff, yeah.
[787] Sam Huff gets into the build a bench conversation.
[788] For the Giants.
[789] This question is from MJ Logan.
[790] We were talking about Emmanuel Classé and being concerned about the number of innings he'd thrown year over year over year working in the back of that Guardians bullpen.
[791] MJ Logan was wondering if we track high leverage appearances instead of innings because of the possible difference for guys that come in sometimes in lower stakes situations.
[792] Maybe they cruise through two or three innings, but comparing that to a higher stress situation like finishing a game.
[793] Is that something you ever looked at before?
[794] There's a lot of confounding factors because if they are in a high leverage situation, they are throwing harder, right?
[795] Generally, yeah.
[796] And I think they throw harder even though they throw themselves in other ones.
[797] So yes, I would agree.
[798] I do remember John Smoltz telling me that he thought every inning in the playoffs was three innings in terms of stress on the arms.
[799] So we're trying to see if maybe the list becomes more predictive in terms of injury, if that's sort of the...
[800] Subtext here, maybe.
[801] I'm looking here at the last three years by high leverage only total batters faced.
[802] Alexis Diaz, number one.
[803] Kyle Finnegan, Jordan Romano, David Bednar, Emmanuel Classe, Kenley Jansen, Camilo Duvall.
[804] Oh, this is split seasons.
[805] I'm re -updating that.
[806] So it's the last three seasons, not split by season.
[807] I was like, why is Romano on here twice?
[808] Twice the man. Anyway, yes, Class A, 420 over the last three years.
[809] Number one.
[810] Finnegan, second.
[811] Tanner Scott, Kenley Jansen, Camilo Duvall, Josh Hader, David Bednar, Clay Holmes, Jordan Romano, Devin Williams.
[812] So, I don't know.
[813] That has been mostly healthy.
[814] Should I do this like 18 to 19 or 17 to 19 and see if it's any better?
[815] Yeah, maybe a quick historical look back to see if anyone's broken down or not.
[816] All right, so leading in high leverage innings from 2017 through 2019.
[817] Of course, we're going to be like, oh, well, 2020, everyone hurt.
[818] Blake Trainon was number one.
[819] Edwin Diaz, still good.
[820] Alex Colomay sort of fell apart.
[821] Brad Hand fell apart quick.
[822] Felipe Vasquez, let's not talk about him.
[823] Kenley Jansen, Tony Watson.
[824] Rysel Iglesias still ticking.
[825] Archie Bradley fell off pretty quickly.
[826] Roberto Osuna.
[827] That must be near the end of his career anyway.
[828] A lot of these guys, though, I mean, relievers just burn out anyway.
[829] Osuna was the...
[830] Yeah, okay.
[831] Finding all sorts of skeletons in the closet.
[832] Yeah, geez.
[833] Stick them back in there.
[834] Hector Neris, Wade Davis, Cody Allen, Craig Stammen, Taylor Rodgers.
[835] I don't know.
[836] It's the same as the last list to me where it's like, yeah, some guys got injured.
[837] Some guys are fine.
[838] I don't know.
[839] I think it might merit further exploration, just something to think about in a different way.
[840] Because all relievers, I just feel like if you look at any reliever leaderboard, you'll just find a bunch of guys that are out of baseball because they blew up their shoulder, their elbow.
[841] I could have sorted that list with anything, and it would have been the same.
[842] Some guys were hurt.
[843] Some guys were still good.
[844] Some guys who were just good for a year or two.
[845] I mean, the tough thing about it is they're out there sometimes for 12 pitches.
[846] So high leverage or not.
[847] If I give you 12 pitches to show me what you got, you're probably throwing as hard as you can.
[848] It's probably high leverage for you in your head.
[849] You know what I mean?
[850] Yeah, not wanting to get sent down, right?
[851] Yeah, exactly.
[852] Even for the guys that are pitching in the fifth or sixth inning, that's going to happen.
[853] So that's a good question, MJ Logan.
[854] We appreciate it.
[855] If we give a better answer at some point, we'll come back around to it.
[856] This one comes from Burnsy, wants to use the Fangraphs auction calculator.
[857] I was kind of wondering if we could explain how the position priority section works and how it impacts the dollars for each player.
[858] And I wanted to ask you about this because I think you were at Fangraphs when that tool was introduced.
[859] always wondered how much those toggles matter oh yes but things have changed and so i went back to check and get the exact inner workings on this and and asked my my source over at fan graphs and so what happens is this position priority is not like we're going to change the whole list to like i thought it might be oh we're going to give the position adjustment like an extra 10 cents if you say first base over third base right it's not that what it is is on the multi -position players which position will you play them at?
[860] Oh, okay.
[861] So why that matters, maybe it'll start clicking for you a little bit.
[862] Why that matters is because everything is relative to the field.
[863] So if you say that, oh, third base sucks this year, I'm going to play every first base, third base guy over in third base, then you can't have the guy in two places at one time.
[864] So you start judging the third base.
[865] based on all the guys that have third base eligibility over first base or whatever.
[866] So it has to do with the group that you're comparing them to.
[867] So in this instance, then, if you're looking at it and you're saying, I think the weights on catchers are too high.
[868] I always felt like the auction calculator is pretty aggressive with how much it nudges up catchers.
[869] You got to make an adjustment manually.
[870] You got to go through and knock a couple bucks off yourself.
[871] Yeah, putting catcher down low is not going to change much.
[872] Like Salvador Perez.
[873] It'd be weird.
[874] I guess you would take Salvador Perez out of the catcher market and put him in first base if you put catcher all the way at the bottom.
[875] But it wouldn't change a lot.
[876] Good question, Bernsie.
[877] I think that's a good one because I think many of us were under the impression that by reordering those, you might be actually manipulating those weights, and that's not what's happening with that particular tool.
[878] Just pretend you had an Enrique Hernandez, you know, and where would you play him?
[879] You know.
[880] If he had like all nine eligibilities, where would you play him?
[881] And just like sort of that way.
[882] All right.
[883] We got one more question here.
[884] This one came in from Jack.
[885] How much of a change in arm angle is meaningful?
[886] I think Jack's out in Angels camp and noticed that Kyle Hendricks arm angles keep dropping about 2 % each of the last three years.
[887] So how significant is that kind of drop?
[888] Oh, I think of a lot of things when I hear that.
[889] First, I think injury.
[890] One thing that you'll see with players, and there is some statistical backing to this, is just that they're trying to find a slot that doesn't hurt.
[891] And so pitchers, over time, their arm slots do generally drop.
[892] So there's an aging curve for arm slot, actually.
[893] The other thing that I think of is that it can make a lot of difference for your pitches.
[894] And in some cases, it can make your pitches better or it can make them worse.
[895] In fact, if Clay Holmes' arm slot is dropping, it's going to make his pitches worse because then he'll be more predictable.
[896] Something that Hayter kind of goes through sometimes.
[897] As Hayter's arm slot goes up, it's not good for him because it starts looking more like a four -seamer arm slot.
[898] So arm slap does mean a lot.
[899] And then lastly, the last thing I'll say is that I've had some pitching coach, you know, pitching people, people in the industry reach out to me and tell me that.
[900] that something like what shaman i did last year could be a precursor to injury so a big change in arm slot can be a precursor to injury and i think that makes sense because generally your body has made these adaptations to pitch a certain way and that just means in terms of the large muscle groupings the way your muscles fire the way your body works it's like i'm going to produce the arm coming through in this way right if you change that in a big way then all of a sudden maybe the oblique goes i mean we're seeing shaman i hurt right and i'm not trying to draw a direct line between the two, but it's like, you know, that's something that somebody immediately reached out to me when everyone's like, oh my God, Shamanaya is Chris Sale now.
[901] And they were like, is he?
[902] Or is he playing as Chris Sale for a little bit?
[903] And then his body's going to be like, ow, you know, we're not actually, don't normally do this.
[904] So I think generally it's, again, it's a wishy -washy answer.
[905] I'm always like this, but I would say that I would lean towards bad news.
[906] Okay.
[907] And even just a couple of degrees, like one to two degrees.
[908] Like multiple years like that.
[909] Either he's hurt or he's a precursor to hurt.
[910] The only thing that could maybe help him is it gives him more movement in a way that he likes and it does work for him.
[911] But that's something that Stuff can answer.
[912] And Stuff tells you with Kyle Hendricks, probably not that good.
[913] Yeah, in that case, that just feels like cumulative wear and tear trying to find something that works.
[914] You just think about all the...
[915] all like the scar tissue and stuff that would build up in your arm from years and years of pitching, you're probably going to change a little bit over time.
[916] That's what that seems like for Kyle Hendricks.
[917] Thanks a lot for that question, Jack.
[918] If you've got questions for a future episode, you can send them to us through our Discord, use the mailbag channel, or drop us an email, ratesandbarrels at gmail .com.
[919] We'll crack open that inbox again here in the near future.
[920] You can find Eno on blue sky, enoceros .bsky .social, imdbr .bsky .social.
[921] Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together.
[922] That is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.
[923] We're back with you on Tuesday.