Rates & Barrels - 2021 Disappointments, 2022 Bouncebacks: Hitter Edition

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss several hitters who underperformed expectations in 2021, but are primed for a big rebound in 2022.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, December 20th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saracen. On this episode, we are going to focus on the hitters who are most interested in seeing the calendar flip to 2022. We're just a couple of weeks away from the New Year's. We figured this was a really good time to look for the best possible bounce back candidates, because if you were doing early drafts, there are opportunities to get these players at considerable discounts some of these players might actually be pitfall players that cause problems so we're gonna look at some star

level guys some young players gonna take a look at some older guys that might be nearing the end of their career but also could provide some really nice super late options depending on the circumstances you know how's it going for you on this Monday? Good. Ready for the holidays. I hope everyone else is as well. I'm going to be down in San Diego after Christmas and before New Year's. So if you hear this in time, hit me up on Twitter.

And we'll go drinking somewhere. I'll do another North Park meetup. this in time, hit me up on Twitter. We'll go drinking somewhere. I'll do another North Park meetup. Seems like that's the norm in San Diego. You get at least one meetup in down there. Hopefully we can have a few in the Bay Area come after the new year as we figure out what works location-wise.

We've been scouting locations now for a few weeks. We continue to scout locations every opportunity we get. I have to scout more locations with Derek. We have to do live podcasts. Does it have to be at a brewery? Yes. I'm sorry, babe. It's in my contract.

Don't you guys want to go to a library and do a show or something? Do they have beer there? What about a coffee shop? Could you do a coffee shop? Do they have beer there? What about a coffee shop? Could you do a coffee shop? Do they have beer there? These are the important questions that we wrestle with. In Portland, all the coffee shops brew their own beer. I think I would really like that about Portland.

It's good to have the option, especially on the weekends. If you work there, you could just switch from coffee in the morning to beer in the afternoon. Start your shift, get caffeinated all day, hydrate a little bit in the afternoon, clock out, have a beer, call it a day. No, I meant like, you know, if you're writing at the— If you're writing there, yeah. That's a little extreme. But let's start at the top. Let's start with some of the star-level players that had disappointing 2021s. You went about this with a method,

which is always a good way to figure out just how bad a season was and how good the next one could be. So what was your method for trying to unearth some players that look like they're on the surface primed for a big bounce back season in 2022? Yeah, we will uncover a bit of a flaw in the method as we go through this, just when it comes to porting this over to fantasy. But my favorite real life stat is WRC+, which is weighted runs created. It basically takes all the events that a batter does and weights them correctly for how they would impact an offense. for how they would impact an offense.

So it's a little bit closer to like an OPS plus where it's adding up your bases, you're getting on base, you're slugging, and then adjusting for the park context. So I took last year's WRC plus, and then I took the steamer projected, and that's on Fangraphs, the steamer projected WRC Plus for next year. And I subtracted one from the other.

So basically, the biggest bounce back in baseball is going to be pretty obvious before I say the words. But drumroll, please. Cody Bellinger, come on down. He had a 48 WRC Plus last year, and he is projected next year, which is actually incorporating some of his downfall because he's had much better seasons than this in the past. He's projected for a 114 WRC Plus, where he would be 14% better than league next year. And that is the biggest difference in baseball last year.

So there's something really interesting that you pulled and putting on the screen. If you're watching us on YouTube, you can enjoy this graphic. If you're listening with your ears, we will describe the graphic to you and make it come to life that way. If you have a memory of Cody Bellinger in the 2020 playoffs, it's probably him doing the elbow five and hurting his shoulder, right?

And then for the rest of the postseason, it was kind of like, yeah, Bellinger might not be okay. And then he had surgery. And I think with bigger surgeries like that, a lot of times players are ready for the start of the season. They are healthy in terms

of the number of games played. The role is still there the way it is. And performance takes some time to catch up. We've seen this with shoulders, we've seen it with hips, we've seen it with back injuries, all sorts of major injuries do this. You pulled the rolling exit velocity chart

for Cody Bellinger, and I think you got it starting in June, ending at the end of the year. And it's exactly where it should be at the end of the year. And it's exactly where it should be at the end of the season. And it's nowhere close to where it would have been previously at the beginning in June. And I think health is a huge part of why Cody Bellinger underwhelmed us in the 2021 season. He just wasn't physically himself until probably the second half of the season. Yeah, I have a few notes on this

the reason that it starts uh later in the season is because i it's a rolling i think it's 40 balls in play i used uh so it has to it had to start after he had to have 40 balls before he you know before this rolling uh chart could start uh but yeah it's like well below 90 on average then he reaches a plateau around 90 for much of the season. But then by the end of the season, he looked like he was a little bit more healthy, was up to 91 average EV. And in the playoffs, that was even better. You know, average exit velocity is not something that has a lot of predictive power and it's not something you should use in a blanket way because somebody could hit a bunch of 48 mile per hour grounders and then a bunch of 120

mile per hour blasts and they would look the same as someone who just hit a bunch of balls 80 or whatever um and so average ev is not powerful um but uh a note on some other statistics that are relevant here his max ev was down um and i know there's uh some that uh have looked into the power of max ev and found it wanting um But I will say this about that. It is better to use 90th or 80th percentile than Max because Max can be a little bit fluky. That's something we've found in the numbers. Another thing is, and I hate to appeal to authority, but I know that teams use MaxEV and 85th percentile EV

and find it to have predictive power. And then lastly, Tom Tango has looked into this and said that if you look basically at the 40% hardest hit balls that a player hits, that that gives you the most information. Now, I wish that was on Savant. So sometimes I use Max EV as, you know, shorthand. But I did run 80th percentile EV over the course of the season for him. And it also was best in the playoffs and in the final month of the season. And there was a market difference where it went up by about five miles an hour. So I think those all tell the same story. Sometimes, you know, it's not the best stat in the world to use, but I think this tells the story of him getting better as the season goes

on. And you were going to compare him to some other, you know, veteran bounce backs. And I think there's enough information there in that post-season run and in that EV getting better that I like him better than some of the other bounce back names that we'll talk about. Let's compare him to Christian Jelic because I'm wearing a Brewer's hat and they compete for MVP awards at the same time. Their careers just seem like they're on such similar paths. The Jelic 2021, it was worse from a fantasy perspective than it was from a real-life perspective. The magnitude of his downslope was not nearly as bad as I would have expected it to be.

Because if you'd say, who's number two on the list if Bellinger's number one, my guess would have been Yelich. And he's not quite there. He's in a notable position on the projected WRC Plus versus last season's WRC Plus. His difference is, I think, 19, right? A 120 projection. He was a 101 in 2021, which if you had Christian Jelic in your team, if you picked him in the first round of a draft back in the spring, you wouldn't have guessed that.

So the question here is, what was going on with Jelic? Because we know Bellinger had shoulder surgery. What do you see in Jelic's profile that might give you either similar optimism to a Bellinger bounce back or maybe slightly less optimism given that the collapse wasn't as bad? We don't really have a clear explanation of what actually happened to him a year ago. Yeah, I mean, I think Jelic kept a lot of his game afloat with walks. So in OBP leagues, you know, he still had some value. But if you look at his power numbers and his hard hit rate over time, and there are some graphs at Fangraphs you can do this easily. He actually

in 2020 was already showing some slippage. There's kind of a straight line from early 2019 to late 2021 and that line goes down. And I just don't see any of that power rebound in Kristen Yelich's graphs.

And the other thing that I don't like about it is that we have this easy diagnosis for Bellinger. Like we have a thing to point to, and it is the kind of thing that time and rehab will do better in an off season where, you know, he can fully work out, will change things for Bellinger. While Jelic, I think the diagnosis is more squiggly. It's back, and it's maybe just there was that time where he was out, and they were just asking, would he come back? And if he came back, was it just a pain issue,

and would it just never go away? And so that makes me nervous, frankly, about his season next year is that back surgeries don't have good outcomes. You know, they're kind of 50 fifties. So even if he has the surgery and he's not having, it doesn't seem like he's having the surgery. We haven't heard anything about it.

So it might just be an issue the rest of his career. He may just not have the same power that he used to he followed that ball off his knee in september of 2019 so that led into his 2020 season which i think that was the easy sort of okay at 2020 it wasn't even a long enough season for him to get right he probably didn't feel like himself trying to prepare for the season that just that just didn't have the time to get back on. Yeah, it was easier to make that sort of – to write that story in your head. But now the numbers are just still – they're still going down. The thing that's kind of standing out too is he was reaching more, right? But that's not – this is not something I would expect Christian Jelic to do

because when I think of him as a hitter, I just think he's really disciplined and generally going to be locked in on pitches he can drive. It seems like maybe he got a little more aggressive trying to work his way out of the issue. Yeah. I don't know. In 2019, when he was good, his reach rate was higher than it was in 2020 and 2021.

But I think it's been more of a coping strategy. I think he can't hit for the same power, and so he's trying to give the team something. And so what he's giving them is walks and more disciplined approach. I would say that if my back hurt, it'd be less likely that I could contort myself to hit a very high fastball or a very low one. And I would say, okay, the best thing I can do now is just focus on middle-middle. I did have someone who is in player development point out to me that most of the damage is done middle-middle.

And that's why we talk so much on this podcast about reach rate and plate discipline. Because there are players that can do some damage on weird pitches, but that's not the norm. And the norm is that the damage is done middle-middle and that the players with the best plate discipline swing the most at middle-middle and also force the pitchers to kind of get closer to middle middle by not swinging at anything outside the zone. Yeah, that was sorry. That was more of a question to you than a statement about him reaching more looking at the numbers. You're right. 2019.

That was the highest swing of his entire career. I mean, that's bizarre. 30.6% 2021. He was at 22.8%, which was one of the lower seasons of his career. So, yeah, I don't know. There were there were a lot of instances. It felt like where he had pitches that were close that were called against him i have to do a search on that to see if that was extraordinarily high but even that wouldn't fully explain i think he wasn't power

i mean if you just look at hard hit rate on fangraphs over time it just it just goes straight down it's just a there's a little bit of a of a bounce in 2021 but it like the bounce brings him back to where he sat in 2020 and none of the bounces in 2021 bring him back to where he sat in 2019 these two guys are in basically the the same cluster for uh 2022 early drafts by the way bellinger going about 10 picks earlier in most drafts i will i would pay the picks i i am reasonably excited about balinger next year uh you know i would trade for him in in dynasties um you know the dude is 26 years old there's also an age difference right yeah he's 26 years old uh before this year he'd been uh doing really good things with his contact rate he's always had a

really good eye he does not have like a crazy swing and strike rate he's still running well he's got some positional versatility for you and he has a demonstrated level where I think the worst case scenario you know I see almost his projections as a bit of a floor because the projections don't see that he played through injury. So the projections see that, Oh, he had a really terrible season. So I'm going to project him for a two 43 batting average,

three, three 31 OBP, 27 homers and eight stolen bases. I mean, I'm not saying that's his literal floor. His literal floor is, Oh, he's,

he's a two 10 guy again. But I also see much more upside than that, where he can get back to like a 270 type level and 30 plus homers. So, and I think that's well within reach. At 26 years old, he could have another career season. So Bellinger is one of my favorite bounce. I think he is my favorite bounce back on this list.

The key difference for me is just the quality of the Dodgers lineup. Like I expect the Dodgers to score more runs than the Brewers as those teams are constructed. So runs and RBIs matter. Also easier to hit with runners on base. They can't do the same stuff shifting-wise if they have to cover first.

I think there's at least one more player that you found that I'd put in the same cluster, and that's Alex Bregman. And we've got a little more info on him in November. Yeah, that gross thing that he showed me on his hand. He had to have surgery on it. Yeah, he had wrist surgery back in early November. By all indications, he should be good to go when spring training begins,

whenever that happens to be. I think Bregman is a great floor player. And the debate is more about whether or not he still has the ceiling of a 41 homer guy. I mean, 2019, you're the rabbit ball. Hard to say that anyone's, if anyone's best year was 2019, that that was even a true talent ceiling. That may have been a ceiling with a little more added on because of the ball. But let's even look at 2018. That's kind of a max volume sort of situation, right?

705 played appearances that year. He popped 31 homers. He stole 10 bases. He hit 286. This is a guy that gets on base a lot, hits for a high average pretty much all the time, has shown power, even occasionally gives you just a little bit of speed. Can we write off 2021 as the wrist as the problem? And if we're doing that, how much of a bounce back are we getting? Could we get a season that mostly resembles that 2018 season again in 2022 i think it'd be better to expect a 2020 season uh you know uh paced out to a full season uh to pay for to at least pay for that sort

of thing and by a rate basis that's what his projections are for. Basically, a high OBP, better in OBP leagues, a 209 ISO in 2020, and a 215 projected ISO. So I would pay and expect a low 20s, a mid-20s home run total. Just because he's kind of, even in 18 and 19, when he hit all those homers, he kind of outperformed his barrel rates. And it's a little bit because he kind of did the Brian Dozier

where he just targeted one part of his home field and just hit a bunch of homers into those Crawford boxes. He's also, his approach is high and tight. Like he wants the ball high and tight. And what he's going to do is turn on those. So in terms of spray angle, he's going to make the most of his barrels because his barrels are pulled.

You know, he takes inside pitches and tomahawks them. So he is going to, you know, pulled barrels are better than opposite field barrels. So there's, you know, he'll make the most of it. So even if he has like a, you know, a 6% barrel rate last year, that's actually low for someone who might have 25, 26, 27 homers.

So I think that's already baked into the projections. So I don't like, if you gave me an over under, I'd set the over under at, you know, 25 and a half. Yeah, it does seem like there's just kind of a perfect marriage of approach and ballpark where he can he can make the most out of minute made and therefore exceed expectations come ahead of the projections. I mean, I think of the three guys we've talked about so far, Bregman goes even a couple picks ahead of Bellinger. On average, they're pretty much a toss-up at this point. I think Bregman is still the safest, to me, of these three players. Because he hasn't collapsed as much as Bellinger did in 2021.

And the skills, the K-rate, I mean, Christian Jelic, the K-rate came back down in 2021 compared to where it was in the shortened season. But there's a longer trend there of more strikeouts. Bregman hasn't reached that yet. Even Bellinger's had more swing and miss in his game than Bregman by a good margin throughout his time in the big leagues. I just think those plate skills age really well. I love that strikeout rate. Yeah. I love a little strikeout rate like that. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And even if you're not in an obp league you know you're gonna reap benefits from him scoring a bunch of runs um and just just having a good approach i think so i love alex bragman i think you know one thing that popped for me was that

in this list of bounce backs he had the highest wrc plus in the, like the highest last year, you know, WRC Plus in the top, like you have to go all the way down to 78 and Juan Soto. The 78th biggest bounce back projected is for Juan Soto. He did have that slow start before the what 200 wrc plus in the second half yeah he had a 163 and he's projected for a 169 is that right that's absurd here that's so good no no i think i look at the wrong numbers here he's what a diff is six yeah yeah yeah that's what it is so uh so by that point there's not really a i wouldn't call that much of a bounce back but anyway that tells you something about um about bregman i think that he had a 115 on wrc plus and he's projected for 139 like

that's pretty impressive actually um and so i think that is a reason for him to for him to stand out and uh yeah i think breregman's probably my second favorite bounce back. Let's take a look at some guys that were going in the middle early rounds and see if they have a bright future here. Because Gliber Torres, where on earth did his power go? I'm sure we talked about him a few times on this pod. We talked about him on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball show. We talked about him on the Athletic Baseball Show.

He is everywhere because it's puzzling. He's very young. He just turned 25 last week. And the power we saw in 2019, same caveat supply that we put on Bregman. Okay, sure. Maybe 38 home runs isn't the true ceiling for Torres. But what he did in 2018 as a rookie, he popped 24 homers that year in just 123 games. So that's a high 20s sort of expectation going forward.

He's hit 12 home runs over the past two seasons combined. Again, that's only 169 games. Where on earth did the power go? At least he's running a little bit to help keep his value somewhat afloat. The average has been down. The Ks, they're fine. 20% is fine. A 9.7% walk rate is good. That's a little more than he was walking the first two seasons of his career. What do you think 2022 holds for Gleyber Torres? seasons of his career. What do you think 2022 holds for Gleyber Torres? Like I'm still a Stan. I'm still, I'd still go for him. I love that again. I love the plate discipline. I like the, the, the strikeout rate. Um, and you know, there was a little bit of a

return in terms of barrel rate and in terms of max CV last year but if you look at hard hit rate he kind of fell off at one point and yes the barrel rates the last two years are are below what he used to be so in 28 2019 he had nine percent barrel rates in 2020 it fell to 3.7 percent and then last year was 7.8 percent i mean if you give him his career total, you know, and that bakes in that terrible 2020, his career total would be an 8% barrel rate. To me, that's above average. You know, like an average barrel rate is around 4.5% to 5%, depending on how you look at our median, right? So it's an above average barrel rate in a park that should sustain it. He should go back to Camden Yards and hit a couple, you a couple there. I think he should have at least league average power.

I think he should hit 23 to 26 homers next year. And if he does that and steals some bases, he's going to be a value probably at two positions. I wouldn't be surprised if he goes back to second base. There's a lot of value there i think uh i would i would draft him as an mi um especially if i chose a weak starting second baseman uh it'd be nice to have him to slot in after your other guy yeah and compared to the the stars that had disappointing 2021s again tor, Torres, I think, is just one notch below those sorts of guys in terms of where we were previously looking at him. He's outside the top 150 in early NFBC ADP.

There's an early pick of 124. I mean, even if you were going to do that, if you're going to jump in and set a new min pick on him at 120, that's the end of the eighth round of a 15 team and who are you putting him up against mi wise if you you jump them up where i think yeah in the 120s where would you be going who would be going against that puts them up against dj lemay hugh who also plays first and third i take torres man that puts them up against Cronenworth, who's eligible also at first, so first, second, short. I like Cronenworth. Yeah. I guess one thing that's interesting about him versus Cronenworth is age.

Yeah. Jake Cronenworth may have a better year in him, but he's 27, so he may have just seen his best. And I do think that Gleyber Torres' best is better than Cronenworth's 260, 21 homers and four stolen bases. Should have more stolen bases, should have more homers, could have more batting average.

So, I think I do take Torres over Cronenworth, but I understand that the floor, I think, for Cronenworth is better, so if somebody else took Cronenworth, I wouldn't complain. How about Gleyber versus dansby swanson so swanson is uh already also 27 uh he doesn't steal bases at the same rate but uh or at least projected he's for 10 and Vibra's for 14.

I think that's enough of a difference to matter. Swanson is a little bit like Cronenworth too, where it's just like, it'll be a safer production, right? I think it's safer. But Torres' strikeout rate is lower, and I think his power upside is higher.

The last one I can throw at you is willie adames because willie adames is also in this range yeah i really liked what adames did in milwaukee but you know he has such a high strikeout rate in his review mirror that you know i i know that there's a narrative there you know and uh you know i was writing up i was trying to put together a story about the trop and how it augments strikeout rates and how the lights affected adama so i talked to him about that and his you know his his uh strikeout rate with milwaukee was 25 which is a real improvement. But if there's any regression there and he goes back to sort of 27%, 28%, 29%, I'd rather have Torres. So I think the hardest decision for me

would be the floor versus ceiling with Swanson and Cronenworth versus Torres. Yeah, so that's the range. If you're going to push Gleiber up, he's going to go there. If you're going to go where he's been going and just wait it out and see if he's still there, then you're looking at Ty France and Brendan Rogers and Chris Taylor,

a bunch of other multi-position eligible guys. But Torres will be multi-position eligible because he's not playing shortstop every day in 2022. He's going to move back to second base, almost certainly. So you will have a little bit of positional flexibility. And it might be real fun to kind of of double tap cronenworth and torres there i think you bake in some floor and ceiling opportunity there you bake in a lot of positional versatility and those types of players i think are undervalued a lot of times not

necessarily by projections heads so projections heads will get how valuable they are but people who aren't running off projections will see that there's no impact in any one category. I liked Gene Segura last year a lot for the same kind of he's going to help you everywhere in every category. And that's the kind of stuff that Cronenworth and Torres

can do for you, even if they don't get to hit 30 homers. I should bring up another player who fits into this conversation perfectly, and that's Jeff McNeil, who goes even later. He's a fringe top 300 guy in terms of ADP, and I don't know if I ever expect the power to come all the way back for a little while. It looked like McNeil and DJ LeMayhew were sort of joined at the ADP hip because multi-positions and high batting averages. I mean, ADP hip because multi-positions and high batting averages.

I mean, Jeff McNeil hit 311 or higher in each of his first three seasons. Average dropped 60 points from 2020 to 251. The power, I think it's more like 12 to 15 home run power when everything's going well. But if he's getting on base a lot and he's well above norm, if he's elite even in batting average, that lineup keeps improving as long as the playing time holds as basically every day. I think he fits really well where he's going in drafts right now. Yeah, and he's in projected bounce backs. Gleyber Torres is the 15th biggest projected bounce back

right behind Alex Bregman, and McNeil is 16th. So they are joined at the hip right there in another way. I don't like the McNeil pick as much because he was older. He's 29. He also does something that's very strange for his skill set, which is that he reaches a lot. And he did improve that a little bit last year.

It was the first year that he was better than average, basically, in reach rate. So this is a guy that does depend a little bit on out-of-zone contact. The good news is he makes a lot of contact, so it's worked so far. But out-of-zone contact doesn't age well. know he also isn't going to give you much power um so you know i think there's a floor here for next year where he hits does the same thing and that's just not going to be super valuable well if that happens even at the price i'd be a little disappointed but at the same time you could cut him and move on if you don't like what you see i mean this is just one of those players. I think he's a good bad ball hitter,

and I think that's part of why he reaches, but that also might prevent him from unlocking consistent power. Yeah, I mean, he's not the type of player that modern front offices are looking for. Bad reach rate, bad barrel rate, bad max EV, has no power, isn't a very good defender uh it's funny because i remember thinking you know oh uh and i love keith law so this isn't uh like a referendum on keith in any way but i remember keith had never really liked mcneil

mostly because he was so old coming up uh and I thought, well, that's not fair. He played golf. It wasn't the system that was keeping him down to be so old. It was just circumstances. And then when he had that 23-homer year, I was like, see, he's great. But I think the age matters. I think a lot of, I think the age matters. I think a lot of the flaws that Keith saw matter. And, you know, we'll do a pod about this.

But one of my favorite and least favorite things about baseball is the timeframe about being quote unquote right. It's just like you're right and then you're wrong and then maybe you're right again. It's awesome. So I think in this case, Keith was wrong and now he's right. Yeah. Right.

And I think even after that power season, he would have said, yeah, give this like two more years and see if you still think I'm wrong. Did he say that? I mean, I think that's what he would have said. yeah, give this like two more years and see if you still think I'm wrong. Did he say that? I mean, I think that's what he would have said. I'm fairly confident. And then today, you just point and you're like, scoreboard. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, he's wrong too because, I mean, he at least is a major leaguer, right?

And he at least has some value to his team um you know but uh you know last year was a 0.5 war uh over two-thirds of a season and next year he's projected to be uh in a little bit more than half a season a one-win guy basically a little bit more than one win so um you know i i think it's interesting to think about, like just for real life, to stand back for a second, putting yourself in a real life standpoint, because McNeil also has a risk that I don't think Laboratoris has. I think Laboratoris is going to be a starter for the Yankees next year.

You know, he may be over at second, but I think he's going to be a starter for the Yankees next year. McNeil right now is not projected to be a starter for the Mets, and it's kind of hard to make the argument unless you're just like, they're going to cut. Even if you cut Robinson Cano, there's enough players on that team where you'd be like, okay, probably starting if they cut Robinson Cano. Maybe a guy that gets traded.

I think that could easily be part of how he ends up with more playing time somewhere. that could easily be part of how he ends up with more playing time somewhere i mean we're all staring at jd davis and jeff mcneil and robinson cano and dominic smith and just being like you've got a bunch of dhs there uh and if there's no nldh it seems like pretty ripe for it for a trade smith would be a good first base reclamation project for the handful of teams that don't have that position sorted out or if they're platooning and just want to consolidate down to one roster spot. Yeah. Yeah, McNeil I think could fit a lot of different places.

There's enough defensive versatility where I could just see him getting added to a trade and ending up in another 600-plus plate appearance situation, even if you can't see it clearly with the Mets right now. Is there anybody else you'd put in this group, like that early middle round, guys that were top 100 picks in the last couple of years who aren't right now, who aren't young guys? We'll get to some young guys here in just a few minutes

that you'd look at and say, yes, I think this player who's 28, 29, 30 years old actually could still come back to previous levels or very close to it. All right, I'm going to say a name here. And I want to say that this is a little bit more of a deep league thing. I want to differentiate his name from the ones before. But I've always and still do have a little bit of love for Gregory Polanco. Whoa.

Yeah. I didn't see that one coming. But 10% barrel rate, 116 max velo, really bad reach rate, 29 years old. The rebuilding team gave up on him. Not clear where his role is. I'm not saying to draft him, but if he does end up signing with the team, I think he becomes a very late sort of DC play. Um, and if I were a team, I might consider, even if I was like a contender, like, like if I were the giants, I might consider, you know, uh, adding

him at least, uh, for spring training or something to see what was there because he still hits the ball hard, you know, and he, and he still has, he's had some good walk rates without the reach rates. So, you know, maybe there's something there that, uh, that can still be unlocked, or maybe it's just a sort of return to somewhere where he's been before. So I don't know. He's projected to bounce back from a 71 WRC plus to a 91. So I just wanted to put that in perspective. All right. But, yeah, I don't know.

There's, I guess, Michael Conforto counts. Yeah, I think Conforto could fit in this group. Max Kepler probably could fit in this group, if you believe. Lindor. Lindor is a little more like the first group of players we talked about. But I like Lindor this year because there are zero concerns about playing time. And he could be above average in every single category across the board. He still has that ability.

Even if he's not a first-round guy anymore, who cares? If he bounces back and he's a third- or fourth-round guy, you're happy with that. And for as bad as like – I'm actually surprised. I'm looking at his totals for the year right now, and I thought they were worse. By the end of the year, he had a. 248 average with 20 homers and 10 stolen bases like for all the belly aching that's a like whoever drafted him at least they didn't get like a zero value that's a positive value for for a fantasy right

that's he they returned. He returned dollars. Yeah, like in an auction, if he went for 30 and returned 15. He probably returned 5 or 10 or something, yeah. Yeah, you're not ruined because of that. You wish you got more, but that isn't the sole reason why you didn't win. It's actually surprising to me, though.

I think maybe because the final numbers aren't that bad, you're not getting as much of a discount on Lindor as I thought you might have been able to get back mid-season. Mid-season I thought pick 75, pick 80 was a possibility. He's right there inside the top 50. Just outside the top 10 among middle infield eligible

players, but easily inside the top 10 among shortstops at this point. One nice little rule of thumb that actually uh is working for me right now is that i like you a little bit better if you're on this projected bounce back list but your actual wrc plus was close to 100 right because there's some guys on here that were just so bad like jake it's like the jake bowers what where how did jake bowers come up like he overperformed his barrel iso thing situation but he still was bad right it was still bad yeah yeah he brought him up a little while a couple jake bowers is is fourth on this projected list because he's projected to go from 63 to 93 but

93 is also bad for like first baseman corner outfielder right so you know if you use the rule of thumb that these guys need to be close to 100 for you to like them here's the list of guys who are in the top you know 40 that actually had a projected bounce backs that actually had a wrc plus close to 100 and the list actually starts to sound like oh these are good players that i want alex breadman glider torresber Torres, Andrew Vaughn, who we'll talk about some young players in a second, Christian Jelic, Abraham Toro, Jorge Soler, DJ LeMayhew, Max Kepler, Yandy Diaz, Michael Conforto, Francisco Lindor, and Tommy Pham. Isn't that a pretty good list?

Not a very controversial group of players. I think most people could say, yeah, I'm in on those guys at steep discounts. Right, and they were good. They were okay players last year, and they're supposed to be better next year. I think that's a good place to go. If they go drop down to, like David Fletcher had a 70 WRC plus. Yeah, and supposedly he's going to go back to 89, but that's way more risky of a pick than I think people realize.

Yeah, I think, I don't know if you've mentioned Dominic Smith in that list, but I'm intrigued by Dominic Smith. I think another team should trade for him and give him regular run at first base and see what happens. But we got to get to the final group of players. So let's get to the breakouts on the horizon group, as I like to call them. Wish we had a sponsor that rhymed with horizon

for this segment, because that would be just perfect. Goals for 2022. I actually don't want sponsored sponsored segments like that ads are great gotta have ways to pay the bills but uh yeah we're not going to go that route jared kelnick came up among the players uh near the top of the list for biggest difference between 2021 wrc plus and the 2022 projection cody bellinger was the only guy that you'd really want to roster who was ahead of him.

The names in between those two, JBJ, Kevin Newman, David Bode, Jake Bowers, those are monolig guys, if that. Kelnick. Kelnick is like the first name that pops after Bellinger for sure. Kelnick makes sense for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean, I think this can apply to prospects that debuted in 2021 in general. Because the gap between AAA and the big leagues seems like it's as wide as it's ever been. It's hard to quantify that, but that seems to be a prevailing thought

among people around the game. The adjustments are harsh, but I think we saw Kelnick show signs late in the year of getting the plate discipline on track. He showed power. I mean, 14 homers in 93 games as a 21-year-old, that's a good power debut. Age is a really key number here. Ran a little bit. Yeah, I mean, he's so young.

Just turned 22 back in July. It makes a lot of sense. I think the cautionary tale for me, and these kind of the same way I've had Yelich and Bellinger stuck together in my head for a few years, the cautionary tale of how long it can take for a player to fully unlock potential is probably Dylan Carlson. Because Dylan Carlson followed up his 2020 debut with what I would say was a good season. 266, 343, 437. Brought the K rate down. Brought the walk rate up. 18 homers in 149

games. Almost a three-war player. It's not early round fantasy material. It's not this guy's a superstar today. But if Kelnick took a step like that, I'd still be really happy with what I had, especially based on where he's going in drafts. But it wouldn't be what everyone thought it would be, right? It'd be disappointing relative to the projection for him as a prospect, but it'd be a big step toward him getting there.

And he could make all the changes in one off season and it could all happen at once. That's absolutely possible. But I think the projection from Steamer, at least to me, points more toward a Dylan Carlson-like year two for Kelnick than, hey, next year he's a top 20 player in drafts. Which is totally fine because right now his ADP is just outside the top 125 overall. right now is 80ps just outside the top 125 overall oh so you could do a corn you could do a uh calumet torres double tap oh you could just draft all the players on this episode and and just hope that this method is uh but did dylan carlson just just to to tell people uh what that sounds like with the if they don't have the numbers in front of them. Dylan Carlson last year hit.266 with 18 homers and two stolen bases,

was a decent on-base percentage with a.113 WRC+, and was a three-win player. So if he did all those things, his Major League team would be very happy with him. His fantasy teams would be less happy with him, but probably also returning positive value. I was looking at his 15-game rolling average stats on Fangraphs, and at the end of the season, he was in the midst of his best fly ball rate. He was in the midst of his best reach rate. He was in the midst of his second-best K-rate stretch,

and he was in the midst of his best weighted on base average stretch. So I think that you're right, that something was clicking for him late in that season in terms of seeing the ball, right swinging at the right balls that he could lift and making the most out of them and not striking out as much. So all those things are going to be super important for him next year. What's the bet again?

I don't want to eat the hat. Was it a K-rate bet? Or was it an ISO bet? OBP bet. OBP bet? Yeah. I think you're eating the hat on that one. The projected OBP is only for 307.

Yeah, but this is a long-term bet, right? Wasn't it a career or five years or something? Something like that, yeah. Get to pull that old audio. If anybody remembers, remind these two old men what the bet was so that we can make sure that Eno eats the hat. I think you're going to have to air fry the hat.

Initially, I thought it was going to be baked like kale chips. I'm not against him at all. No, no. It wasn't like that i was a little against uh spending a lot on him last year uh just because um you know i don't mind having especially in mono leagues or deeper leagues i don't mind having a guy you take a shot on um and goodness knows the guy i took a shot on a lot last year was joe adele but it cost me a lot less to take a shot on joe adele and i won a lot of those leagues, even though Joe Adele gave me nothing,

then it would have cost you last year to take a shot on Jared Kelnick. Yeah. So at price in redrafts, I'm comfortable with Kelnick. I think the problem could be that there are other players I also like in that range who might be a bit more safe. Yeah, do we have a would you rather? Oh, we always. We always have a would you rather? Oh, we always have a would you rather.

Locked and loaded. Austin Meadows versus Jared Kelnick for 2022 only. That's a heck of a comp right there too. Meadows is still in his peak age range. He's not too old yet. And I think he's had some health issues that could get right for him. I think he could have a better season

going forward. I think I would rather take the shot on Meadows there. I think Meadows has a bit of a batting average flaw that's going to be there. That 291 back in 2019 looks like an outlier, but I also don't know if

we're going to see something lower than 234. That seems like the absolute bottom. So if he's 270 in batting average, that could be the difference between the two players right there. It could just be that you're getting more average, comparable power, comparable run production, but I would probably lean Meadows there as well. Grisham, Trent Grisham versus Jared Kelnick.

Trent Grisham versus Jared Kelnick. I know this is Weasley, but in OBP leagues, I'll take Grisham. That is Weasley. That is Weasley. You should see. If you were watching on YouTube, you would see the scorn on your face right now. For the 3% of you playing in OBP leagues. Come on, man. Alright, alright.

I might take Kellanick here. I like Grisham a lot, but it is more for points in OBP leagues because I love that play discipline. I think that it's a little bit unclear where the power is going to rest for Grisham next year. I'm going to clarify my would-you-rathers going forward. With $1,800 of your own hard-earned money on the line

in an NFBC main event scenario, Jared Kelnick or Lourdes Gurriel Jr.? Oh, I'm going to take Kelnick because I think Lourdes is fine, but I don't think the upside's there anymore. Okay. How about this one? This is a player type preference thing.

Miles Straw versus Jared Kelnick. Are you taking Miles Straw in the top 150 overall again in a high stakes environment? Because you're throwing out trades. You have to get steals somewhere. I could see it being the crap. I don't have enough steals. He's the guy that I think will play every day because of his defense and I'll get the steals.

I don't want him. Yeah, but let's assume a balanced lineup to that date. Because you can't – once you start bringing in roster construction, then, you know. Yeah, it starts to tear everything apart. A reasonably balanced roster. Are you actually passing on Kelnick for strong? I would take Kelnick.

Good. And I know that these speed guys return, but value. But there's nothing that makes me more nervous than taking a guy that has no power and is all speed. They can lose their jobs very easily in many instances. It's just clear to me that regular baseball does not value those guys very much. So I don't want to build my fantasy team based on something that I don't think real baseball teams value that much. I think the Guardians love Miles Straw because of his salary, though. Well, they tried a reliever for him.

They'll play him. Who else are they going to play? If anybody plays better, they'll play them. Yeah, but you've seen that outfield. Who's going to play better? Zimmer? Maybe. Maybe.

Anyway, Kellnick over Straw for both of us. I mean, you're right. You're right. You're right. Last one, Jared Kellnick or Alex Verdugo? Verdugo.

That is a really strong floor. I think we saw with, you know, like Lord's Goriel has a kind of a similar-ish floor, but we saw much more up and down with him.

Whereas Verdugo is just very solid. Very, you know, he's just there. Always going to give you that batting average. So my verdict here is that Kelnick is going in a reasonable spot, but it's not a must-draft sort of spot either. Like there's plenty of other options. But he will be more palatable than some of the options there. So he will be on some of my teams, I think. That was just in the outfield, too.

There's other players with positions around that range that might be interesting, too. But we'll move on to some more names here. Similar to him, I think, is Andrew Vaughn. Vaughn's in that in the top 25 in terms of bounce backs. It's almost

a misnomer to put him in something that you'd call a bounce back, right? It's more of like a bounce forward or a step forward. Yeah, bounce forward. Yeah, it's a breakout on the horizon. I felt like at the beginning when I said all rebounds, that was a little bit unfair to the young players who are still on their way.

It was funny because I remember writing a piece about this once and Vlad Guerrero Jr. was popping in it. And I was like, well, this is a flaw in my method. The other flaw in my method, so this is one flaw in the method, and the other flaw in my method is that it's based on WRC+, as you've heard us sort of talk through, and we're not all in OBP leagues. And that matters for Andrew Vaughn because I do think

one of the big sources of his projected improvement will be in the OBP category. But I also, you know, I think he was one of the very few to take a hundred mile an hour fastball and go oppo uh tank with it um i think the 15 homers uh was better than his projection going into the season and was uh was a really good sign that he was able to to hang basically at least the league average power at the big league level. And I thought that the plate discipline was there, even if the walk rate didn't quite show it. I think his reach rate was pretty good. And then just actually,

and this is not a numbers-based argument, just watching his ABs, I was very impressed with his approach. Yeah. He looks like a guy that's going to do a ton of damage in the middle of lineups for a long time, and more about what he was doing as a rookie is good than bad, similar to the Carlson stuff I was talking about before. It didn't necessarily jump off the page fantasy-wise, but with the position switch, all the stuff we've talked about before,

I like what we saw from Vaughn already, and there's plenty of room for him to continue going forward. The last couple of names I'm just going to throw out there, kind of rapid fire, I think Alec Boehm sort of pops here. He's the cheapest of these last three guys. I'm going to mention Gavin Lux, Longer Road,

because he's been up and down a few times, been around for a couple of years. I'm still intrigued by him because there could be plenty of opportunity there. I mean, Max Muncy is already saying health-wise he's not quite right. Lux can play all over the place. They started playing him in center field. That's encouraging. And Cabrian Hayes, I think we talked about him maybe right at the end of the season

as a young player that we thought was still going to be in a great place heading into 2022. He had an injury in 2021. Clearly, it's not a great lineup right now in Pittsburgh as they're going through their rebuild. It could get a little bit better, right? Think about O'Neal Cruz, a couple other guys that are going to be a part of the equation here this season. As long as his wrist is healthy when spring training begins, because the hit tool has always been good,

and because there's zero concern about the volume of playing time, Brian Hayes should take a volume-based step forward, but he could also take a skills-based step forward too. Yeah, I love the swinging strike rate, really low swinging strike rate, great hit tool. I love the max EV over a 111, so the raw power is there. He's got to unlock some more more of it um you know went from a nine percent barrel rate to a five percent barrel rate but uh you know if he ends up halfway

in between uh those two with a seven percent barrel rate and a great hit tool and some speed that's when you're talking about that's why this projection is for like a 270 type batting average with 18 homers and 12 stolen bases which is worth paying for because uh the upside is all in the powers the power and the batting average uh and the you know the floor there seems uh like a guy's gonna play every day and uh at least do 10 10 or 15 15 you know i think i think there's no way he doesn't return above zero fancy value next year. And so the range there is like you're going to pay $5 to $10, and you're either going to get back $2 to $3,

or you could get back like $25 on this guy. I think there's some roto profile similarities to Alex Verdugo with what you can sort of pencil in for Hayes, and that's a nice player to have because you're just getting a little bit of everything at a very good point in the draft. Again, right around pick more upside than Verdugo because less of a track record and younger.

Yeah. Yeah. And lineup placement should be consistently good for Hayes as well. So lots to like with that profile that is going to wrap it up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Wait, we didn't talk about the one we couldn't classify, the one who could not be classified. Oh, Victor Robles? Paul DeYoung. Oh, Paul DeYoung. You know what, though? Let's just keep it going. We mentioned Paul DeYoung on this one. We mentioned Paul DeYoung in an earlier episode of the Athletic Baseball Show. And so let's just see. Maybe Paul DeYoung on this one. We mentioned Paul DeYoung in an earlier episode of the Athletic Baseball Show.

Let's just see. Maybe Paul DeYoung is the new Rich Hill. Maybe just let's try to shove Paul DeYoung in every podcast going forward. See if we can do it. Doable. Challenge accepted. I can make that happen. Give us a follow on Twitter. He's at

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We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.