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

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss several pitchers 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 27th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Final days of 2021, our very last Rates and Barrels of the 2021 calendar year. Eno, someone is in victory formation. I'm not sure it's us. So I think we're on the other side of a lopsided score in 2021. Lipping to the end. Well, it's two L's in a row I think 2020 and 2021 have to have to be L's overall for us even though I think from a podcast standpoint from personal standpoints they were probably fine and W's

relatively speaking but hey we're we're going up we're moving in the right direction if there's any San Diegans uh listening uh we can drown our SARS together a pure project on the 30th happy hour sort of five to seven ish I'm gonna have some space outdoors for just to make it a little bit easier on our guts and our stress levels and hopefully I'll see you there. And then in St. Louis, uh, we're having a meetup, uh,

January 13th. That is the Thursday before MLK weekend. We'll get to be at four hands, same deal, five to seven. However, I have a budget for that one. And so there will be free appetizers.

There will be, um, a, a card with a deal on it, uh, like a code for the athletics. So there will be an athletic deal involved. And Four Hands has told me dollar off pints. So come on down to Four Hands at 5 to 7 in St. Louis January 13th

because I'll be speaking at the World Pitting Congress, which there are still tickets available, too. That's going to be some real cool dork stuff. We're going to talk about developing pitching, analyzing pitching. I'm going to be on a panel with the director of R&D for the Pirates and Dr. Mike Son, who does a lot of work we've referenced here when it comes to uh how to deal with pitcher fatigue and injury so uh i'm gonna be also presenting what's not in stuff plus

and how that should shape our research and coaching going forward nice that should be great i'm imagining that the st louis gathering probably indoors in january St. Louis, sometimes you get a little warm in the winter. So you never know. You might get a patio opportunity. They showed me pictures of the space. I can't tell you that we're going to be outdoors. But it is upstairs in its own spot. And the ventilation looks good.

It's a really big spot. So I hope people come on by. Very cool. Well, we've got another rebound sort of episode. Last week, we talked about bounce back hitters. Certainly more we could have gotten to, but they're not all going to fit in one episode. Similar sort of approach this week, but we're going to focus on pitching. So all about pitchers, all about guys that really can't wait for the ball.

Is it just a ball? The ball to drop at the end of the year and for 2022 to begin? I don't, New Year's Eve is just not my thing. And I mean, I think it's your thing, but it's not my thing. Well, I like it, but I'm like constantly just disappointed by it.

I mean, I've had some really cool, like, you know, I've done fish like three or four times on New Year's. Some of those were cool. Madison Square Garden, Florida, Big Cypress. So, you know, some cool fish shows, some really cool house parties. I like going to a house party. I will have to say, though, that doing anything that involves money, you know, like getting in a cab, getting home, eating out, anything like that, it's bad.

I think it's a one location sort of thing. You don't want to hop around on a night like that. The thing that in recent years, back in Wisconsin, we did a few times was an all-night bowling sort of thing. Just get a bunch of friends, go bowling. They'll make a big spread. This place had the prime rib and a bunch of stuff, food that was out all night. It's kind of like a buffet.

And then just open bar for one flat rate. And you're just at one place and you're hanging with a bunch of friends. And that seems to be the way to go for me on New Year's when stuff like that happens i'm in i'm interested not like like the very worst thing you could do is go to time square i used to live near time square i used to live in hell's kitchen and we would just pass along like little tidbits we heard from people who went like oh man did you hear like he had to pee himself because he just wasn't going to make it to the bathroom? He knew that he wouldn't make it to the bathroom and that getting back to the spot where he was with the people he was with was going to be more of a hassle than peeing himself and dealing with that. Friends who like wore diapers just for that reason.

Wow. Yeah. wow uh yeah so i've never even considered going there on new year's and now i'm 100 out because i don't want to stand around a bunch of people peeing themselves and wearing diapers diaper parties are like people do that without the times square portion but i i've i've never done that i will not partake have done some really stupid things in my life, but that's a new level that I'm hoping to avoid forever. I think you could unlock the like expert, really expert level by doing like a Edward Forty Hands diaper party. Oh my God. Don't give people ideas. I'm glad that this podcast is not popular with college age people because I don't want to be connected to that idea. That is

just an awful idea, and I should bleep it out in production because that should never see the light of day. Let's get to the bounce-back pitchers. I think that's what people are actually here for. Let's not design these elaborate hell parties that people don't actually want to attend. design these elaborate hell parties that people don't actually want to attend. There are several pitchers within the top even 25 or so of my rankings, or at least within the top 40 that previously had spaces much higher. So that's where the beginning of this conversation is going to be. And we kind of compiled a list of guys we were going to talk about yesterday. I'm sure a few more names are going to pop up. But Aaron Nola is, I think, a little bit challenging because he has shown a lot of variance for an ace with the ratios.

I'm trying to figure out how much that is park-induced and how much of that are things out of his control and how much that should be held against him. and how much that should be held against him, right? Because at his absolute best, we see ratios that are elite of the elite. The.237 ERA, the.97 whip back in 2018. In a good year, you get like the.328,.108 that we got in the shortened season from Nola. But then you have these other swings where, I mean, in 2021, he popped an ERA at.463.

Tons of strikeouts. There was a home run issue. He's always had good control. So this seems to be kind of a surprisingly volatile, especially an ERA pitcher, but one that can rack up a ton of innings and with that, a ton of strikeouts. I've got him 10th in my ranking,

so it doesn't feel like it's that much of a fall for him. Are you skeptical of Nola based on what we saw in 2021? No, I don't think so. He was ninth in strikeouts minus walks, which is a really good metric. I mean, listen to the top 10. It's DeGrom, Burns, Scherzer, Rodon, Cole, Ray, Kershaw, Bieber, Nola, Peralta, Woodruff.

That's the top 11. Wheeler, 12. So it's like those are the best pitchers in baseball. He, of course, had the second worst home run rate in that grouping to Bieber. I don't think that there's a great comparison to Bieber, though. I think that Aaron Nola's knuckle curve, maybe there is a decent comparison. So let me just say this. For his career, Aaron Nola has knuckle curve, maybe there is a decent comparison. So let me just say this. For his career, Aaron Nola

has a strand rate of 74%. Last year was his worst year. So strand rate is like how often you leave your runners on base, right? And last year was the worst year of his career. He had a 66.8% strand rate.

And I just did the math, and I looked through. If you just replaced his strand rate last year with his career strand rate, his ERA would have been 388. Okay. Better. His career ERA is 368. So I think there's a little bit of a double-edged sword there, and it kind of happens every turn when I look at Nola.

So, like, if you look at his pitches, his velo went up last year, the ride on the foreseam went up, the changeup dropped more, his release point went up. Every pitch got better, except the sinker went from 89 to 79 stuff plus and was worse for him.

And so, I just wonder if he's a good whip, good strikeout, home run guy. We've seen a lot of those guys over the years. This isn't a totally new sort of profile. No. And so I just think that it is interesting to try and and and rank him i i mean i think he's a top like he's a top 20 pitcher as a lock for me right but when you start getting into the top 10 and you're talking about well here's a guy last year's true talent was 388 his projection is 36 era neither one of those really screams elite. You know what I mean? So it's kind of hard

to push him into the top five, for example, right? Or the top seven. So you had him, you said 10th? I had him 10th, but I think that's about where the list gets soft in the sense that you can, you make strong arguments for someone at 22 to be up at 10 and vice versa. I just think. Like what do you have right around him? Lucas Giolito right after him. I mean, that's in my mind, that feels like a fair toss up. Similar strikeout rates.

Giolito walks more guys. They both have a home run problem over the last two years. Giolito's ERA has been better by about three quarters of a run during that span, which I think is a big part of that's the park. But his projected ERA is worse. At least by Steamer. Now I've got stuff plus

in location plus columns in the rankings that I'm working on and it's just like, okay, Gialito's stuff's a little better. Nola's location is a little better. Those guys seem so similar. Maybe they're both a little better. Nola's location's a little better. That's enough. Those guys seem so similar. Maybe they're both a little overrated.

I have Freddy Peralta, one spot behind both of them, right behind Gialito. I think with Peralta, you're getting more Ks, but you're taking more walks. I'm curious to see if that home run rate stays as low as it's been for Freddy.

I mean, it's possible. It's possible that I'm underrating Freddy Peralta, which are words that I never thought I would say out loud. In terms of stuff and location, Freddy Peralta is the only one that has any red in him

in like the top 15 or 20 almost. Right, right. Just slightly below average, but just that faintest little shade of red with the conditional formatting. But then you're already starting to pick nits in in everybody else like robbie ray had slightly below average stuff and he's the next guy below freddie peralta on the list and this is this is my larger point i think

arinola is the dividing line he is a human over under in in in the sense that like, if I got, maybe it's Urias or Bieber, but I think actually, if I got Urias or Bieber, the guys you have ahead of him, as my ace, I wouldn't feel the need to jump back in and double tap aces or get someone quickly.

I would feel that I could maybe wait on my second pitcher and maybe grab Charlie Morton as an underrated guy later. You know what I mean? If I pick Nola, Giolito, Peralta, I think I might want to jump back in and get a second starting pitcher pretty quickly and pair them with, I don't know, the sale Al Alcantara, Flaherty types. So as an example of this, you have Nola a 10th and Chris Sale 14th. I did a kind of, I did a DC, a 15-team DC on an NFBC where we waited on starting pitching maybe a little bit too long.

We ended up Chris Sale as our ace, right? We jumped right back in and got you Darvish as quick as possible so I feel like right around Aaron Nola is where I'm like no I'm comfortable with my first pitcher and I can wait a little bit on this and get get one that I think has dropped as my second whereas if I had Nola I would feel a little bit more like, yeah, I need to pair him with someone. I need to go get Alcantara. I need to go get Sale or something and pair him with him. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I guess that I'm also looking at Nola and I'm looking at Walker Bueller, who I've got in the top five.

And I'm seeing some caution being exercised around Bler as an elite of the elite pitcher for reasons that I think are fair, but I, but just the fact that he kind of tailed off at the end. I mean, I think lower K rate than other elite of the elite pitchers. And that's, that's I think one of them,

if you use ERA indicators, the Sierra even is not that kind of Buehler compared to the other top end pitchers. He gets hit in the zone more often. Again, you have to pick knits at the top of the list. That's what you do. But I wonder if in the same ways that I look at Bueller and say, yeah, I see that, but I don't believe it. If I'm doing the opposite with Nola where I'm like, yeah, I see that he's done these great things before.

I just think the park is working so hard against him that he's unlikely to do it. He's more likely to me to slightly underperform expectations and deliver that high threes ERA than he is to crush and get us a 325 or something along those lines again. And I think Buehler's the opposite. And the only response I have, I mean, I think I largely agree with you. The only response i have i mean i think i largely agree with you uh the only response i have is that near the end of the season uh his sinker was regaining some of its sink so there is like an aaron nolan there where he has great sink on his uh sinker and he does have this better four seamer and the best change like i think there there could be some

really tiny tweaks where you know it all kind of comes together. But also, you look at your top 15, and him and Bieber are the only ones that returned less than $10 last year. So if someone pushed Peralta or Giolito ahead of him, I wouldn't yell. Same as the conversation last week with the hitters. I think you have the guys that were hurt, the guys that were hurt and missed time. That's Bieber. I would say

Darvish probably falls into the guys that were clearly hurt but not missing that much time as a result of it. Then performance tailed off. You have to untie that from aging aging and in 2020 season that was above expectations in a way that we didn't really lose that much velocity either so it's not like you point to something or stuff you know like his stuff plus numbers are excellent

top 15 and in among starters yeah so the two guys that i think i'm quite a bit higher than the room on right now at least least based on early ADPs. This could change. People do their research. They make their decisions, shift things around. You talk on your podcast. Podcasts happen. Well, they're groupthink, hive mind, like that kind of stuff happens.

DVR hype, collective hype. I don't think it's necessarily me persuading other people as much as it's just like, Hey, I got to look at Darvish again. DVR might have something he's right about. So I'm going to dig into it too. And people make their own decisions. I believe that I think I'm higher on Darvish and Charlie Morton than the field by quite a bit, because whereas they're clustered together as like back of the top 90

overall picks, which means they're late sixth rounders in 15 teamers. I've got them kind of pushed up with late fourth rounders. I've got them sitting next to Jack Flaherty, Logan Webb, I've got them ahead of Kevin Gossman. I just, I don't see, I don't

see what really separates those guys from Darvish and Morton. I think age is being like weighted way too heavily against both of them. And with Darvish and Morton. I think age is being like weighted way too heavily against both of them. And with Darvish. And it's not clear that age is a, is a huge big deal when it comes to establish starting pitchers. Yeah.

I'm just, I'm, I'm caring less and less about that as time goes on. And I think with Darvish, the Adam Wainwright, the Adam Wainwright rule, the Max Scherzer rule, the, you know, the, the Justin Verlander rule.

Yes, I know he blew out his elbow, but he's still a really good pitcher. I think the other thing that I'm having a hard time with with Darvish is for about a half season, he was extending what he did in 2020, right? Up through July 3rd, 265 ERA,.95 whip. And then the injury started to bite him a bit in the second half. Oh, yeah, something else happened around July 3rd, a 265 ERA.95 whip. And then the injury started to bite him a bit in the second half. Oh, yeah, something else happened around July 3rd, though, too.

Yeah, yeah, and I know he's got a billion pitches, and we can put him in that bucket. I mean, after they had that sticky stuff enforcement, his spin went down, and his stuff plus went from 113 before it to 110 after so he did take a hit there but the spin was actually back to normal

by the end of the season read that however you like and it was the location that took a big dive in July so I think you know he might be actually one of those people that benefited the most from the extra command that he got. Interesting way to break it all down.

I think that does make a lot of sense. The thing about Darvish that surprised me, the last two years' stats mushed together just to see how the guys stack up over the shortened season plus the season we just had, a 5.9% walk rate. It's lower than I would have guessed for Darvish. I think he has a reputation for having a greater walks issue from his past than he currently has.

I think the command problems show up in the home run rate. Right. But I think the park, I think being in San Diego, I mean, knowing how that park has played for years, the weather conditions there, even though it's become a little bit easier to hit home runs there because of changes around the ballpark. It's still cold. It's still damp and cold at night. It's still a good place to pitch. I just think there's a top 10 starter.

He's the kind of guy that I'm turning to in that scenario especially because it makes sense to me that he could come out and give us a 3-5 ERA, a really nice tidy whip, and plenty of strikeouts. I think there's slightly above average health risk, but not ridiculous health risk with Darvish overall. Yeah. I'm going to have to see. Work with Jeff Zimmerman again and get some red, yellow, green flags on health again. Oh, the flags, yes. He's definitely not a red flag for me.

I think he might be yellow, but the kind of yellow you'd put on sale... What would you put it on? Who else would you put a yellow on up here? Bieber or DeGrom might be a red. Bieber is almost more orange for me. I know he made it back. If you want to give me a distinction that's not red or yellow, I think Bieber could be the midpoint between high risk and medium risk.

Medium risk is where I probably would put Darvish, which is not abnormal for other pitchers. Charlie Morton is medium risk. I would say his injuries are a mix of, we talk about this a lot on the position player side, random crap, like getting blasted in the leg by comebackers and, you know, hip surgery from years ago and different things like that. So I just look at both of those guys and I'm like, if they were three or four years younger, wouldn't everyone like them more? And it's like, well, why do I care? They're still good. They're still doing all the things they need to do, or at least most of the things they need to do to be really good. Yeah, I mean, Yu Dar has a better

strikeout minus walk rate than the three guys ahead of him, Salon, Contra, and Flaherty. By that metric, he's really good. It is funny because his location plus recovered a little bit. In six of his last seven starts, he was above 100, so there was some recovery there in his spin rate and his location plus recovered a little bit. And six of his last seven starts was above 100. So there was some recovery there in his spin rate and his location plus.

And in those six starts, 31 innings, 38 strikeouts, 11 walks, but a 4.6 ERA because of a few homers. So it's kind of – he's got some similarities with arinola here you know where it's here's like here's two guys that have really good strikeout minus walk rates and home run issues and i think they're demonstrated home run rate issues it's not like a young guy who just came up and you're like oh you, I can look past. Do we have anybody up here? Shane Boz's two home runs per nine, right?

Well, yeah, that was 13 innings, right. I mean, something like that for sure. We'll have another player that we'll talk about later that also has a home run issue. So the home run issue is just really interesting to me because it's not very useful in small samples. However, Nola and Darvish, Darvish is working on like a five or six year run of higher elevated home run issues, right? Aaron Nola, ever since the rabbit wall came around in 2019, has had his issues. rabbit wall came around in 2019 has had his issues um so at that point you can start to projection project them for higher home run rates and it does become a part of the discussion of

their value um so that's why they are where they are but uh another nice thing about home run rate if you look at uh darvish or you look at nola uh they have years where they pop right and they just get lucky on home runs and And then they're an ace. Yeah. So Nola and Darvish are very interesting to me as guys who are probably number twos, but could pop and be number ones. Yeah. I wonder if when this list sees the light of day, if Nola and Darvish will be closer

together than they are now, or if they'll remain slightly separated, but within the same tier. Because I would definitely say this is still the same tier regardless of how far apart they are within this group i think the other player that's interesting in this range though is jack flarity because he's in the missed time because of injury bucket we've seen some great performances in terms of ratios and there have been some questions about whether the skills fully back that up but i think that's answered by park factors and defense this is a Cardinals team that defensively is fantastic at taking balls in play and just turning them into outs. And I think I'm buying that as something they're going to own as a team again in 2022. healthy going into the season and we think he's more in that medium risk category in terms of injuries as opposed to high risk i'm i'm in i'm here for it i think he can be a 20 plus dollar

pitcher again pretty easily and i've got him sitting right there with darvish and morton yeah yeah and uh also another guy with demonstrated home run risk uh projected for 1.2 has had a 1.24 for his career. Last 120 innings combined 2021 and 2020 over 1.3. More like a 1.35 home run rate. Could be because he's kind of a two-pitch guy.

I've wondered, though, if my expectations for him have always been unfairly high. I think the reason why I've always had great 2019, even with the rabbit ball, two, seven,

five ERA or yeah. And I, I think the, the thing about it was I, I think, I think it was that, was it that year? It might've been 2018.

I think I had him as a rookie in 2018 when he broke through and won a league because of him too. I wonder if I've never been able to fully shake that. When I look at him, I look through the same lens that I look through everybody else's for skills, and then when I'm trying to separate guys that end up being nearly equal, I always err on the side of rounding up on Flaherty. If it's a bias for me because of past success.

Yeah, because he sticks out as not really belonging where he belongs by a lot of the metrics. Worst swinging strike rate other than, is it Urias? Yeah, worst swinging strike rate in the top 20. Worst K-BB other than Sandy Alcantara in the top 20. What is this? in the top 20. What is this?

Third worst, fourth worst stuff plus. Below average location plus. Yeah. Not a big ground ball guy. This is why people would say, well, ADP is not that helpful. Why would you put ADP alongside your rankings? Well, part of the reason I put it there is to go, huh, I like Darvish and Morton

pretty much the same as I like Flaherty. You pushed them. And there's a 30-pick difference. So if I'm sitting there at the end of round four, and there's a little pitcher run happening, and I see all three of those guys in the queue, and I think, I've got to wait a little while for my next turn, but I think these guys are pretty much equal,

I'm still pretty likely to pass on Flaherty in that scenario. Whereas if we're going dollar for dollar in an auction scenario, I like Flaherty better when I'm assuming more likely to throw that extra dollar. A balanced situation, right? Yeah. If the bidding is at 17 on all three of those guys, I'm more likely to say 18 on Flaherty. I think I don't know how to fully convey that other than maybe like writing a disclaimer at the top of the rankings and explain that. But that's like the part of team building and making decisions in the moment that no matter

how much we talk about what we think of players and how to play the game, I feel like that's the hardest thing to teach. It's like making the finite, the littlest adjustments, trying to play the room correctly. I did it during the Christmas-ish movie draft. I thought Britt was going to take Home Alone 2 with her two picks on the wheel. So I took that. And the timing was everything, right? Apparently, planes, trains, and automobiles is about Thanksgiving. So sorry.

Well, that's why we opened it up to a wider range of quarter four holidays. Well, the one thing that pops for me on ADP too, and I agree with you, but I've seen some Joe Musgrove hate out there, and I just wonder why. I don't see it. He's got an 80 ADP, and I could see taking him over Logan Webb, who has a 57 ADP. You've got them 19 and 20, and I totally agree with that. Logan Webb has the highest in-zone contact rate of anybody in the top 25, I think. Yes, and I think that's –

I know he's about ground balls, but Ks matter. I struggle with this one a lot. I think with Logan Webb, if you follow the projections, I've got him ranked a little too high. I'd rather give up a quarter run in projected ERA to get.06 whip back on the other side. I think that's a trade I'd err on the side of Musgrove with. I think it's also, what else do you use to break ties when you're looking at similarly skilled pitchers? What else comes to your mind? Does team quality come into your mind?

Does bullpen quality come into your mind? Does run support come into your mind? Those things have always – Park. I've always thought about all those things. And park. And parks. What are the parks?

But Webb has to go to Colorado. So does Musgrove. They've got the same division. So they get the same difficulty of road matchups. They both have pitcher-friendly home parks, but I would still put Oracle as a more pitcher-friendly environment than Petco. Weirdly, Giants did well defensively,

but I would say, by my eyes, I would say that I would think the Padres are a better defensive team, but then Tatis is a little bit up and down in that regard, and that kind of matters, and Grisham a little bit up and down in that regard and that kind of matters so and grisham a little bit too but uh yeah uh i could see those soft factors uh favoring webb but i think largely i'm just agreeing with your ranking of it and wondering why his adp is so high um i'd i'd take musgrove over barrios who's got a 70 adp i. I think I'd take Musgrove over Gossman even with the new park

and division factors. I'd take Musgrove. I'd personally take Musgrove over Webb, but that's you have them 1920, like I said. I'd take Musgrove over Max Freed, who's a

70 ADP. I'd take Musgrove. Well, we'll talk about this guy later. I know this is supposed to be like a bounce back focus show. I know, I know. We have the ranks in front of us. But now we're like, we're in it. This is what happens.

This is why. Well, when you're evaluating bounce backs, you have to talk about them in context of the other pitchers, right? You have to talk about where you take Aaron Nola and what you would do if you took arinola because that helps people understand how much of a bounce back you think is coming yeah i mean musgrove i i do think carries the medium injury risk based on stuff that happened prior to him getting to san diego so that's one of the things that i would just point out is like the few like one of the few things I'm worried about with him is health. I think people are just overreacting to the shape of the season.

Probably. I mean, look at these. I'm going to get his season splits in front of me because I remember he kind of blew the doors off of the league in the first half, right? But I just don't think that people figure out pitchers, you know? 293 first half ERA, 347 second half ERA. 464 September ERA.

Like, which of these things do I not care about? It's the 464 September ERA. Hint, hint. But I think that shapes people. March 124 ERA. September 464 ERA. What was it for the year? Really, really good. Yeah, I mean, season ERA for Musgrove, what, 318?

Yeah. It's good. I'm all over that. Let's get to another bounce back guy that's a little lower in the rankings and going a little bit later. Well, a little bit later than some of the names we talked about, but not all of them, Luis Castillo.

And I know when we talk about ADP, we're talking about average draft position from the NFBC, and we know the NFBC, there's no trading, and any of those leagues, strikeouts just drive prices. And Luis Castillo generally will bring plenty of strikeouts. Even in a down year the strike the strikeout rate dipping for him to me is less troubling than it would be for other guys because the swinging strike rate was still really good like there's the ingredients for the

k rate to bounce back are still there so I'm not panicking you know projections I think have him for 210ks the steamer projections have 210ks and 192 innings i'm not really quabbling with that really he's always gonna have a really good ground ball rate because of his fastball and his changeup yeah and he deals with that park a lot better than a lot of pitchers do since we know great american ballpark boosts up home runs so what i really want to know is why are people so comfortable drafting Luis Castillo in the 70 range? I mean, it's ahead of Darvish, it's ahead of Morton, it's ahead of Musgrove by a little bit. It's ahead of Dylan Cease. It's ahead of Trevor Rogers and Shane McClanahan. I have all those guys ahead of Luis Castillo because I do think we're seeing some warts. And I guess the other related question is, if you see something like a decline in velocity over part of a season, even if it's a cold part of the season, how much does that matter to you in the long run? If the velocity comes back later, do you look at it and say, you know what? It was something with conditions or a minor injury that's not an issue anymore.

We can forget about it, or does it stay on the resume? Does it stay in the permanent record? It's interesting because he's had this issue before, and people have pointed to the cold months, and to me I'm like, okay, well that's a nice explanation, but it's

also going to be cold next year. Right. More likely than not, it will still be very cold in April and May in a lot of the places where he's going to pitch. So if you have to bake this in, then you have to bake this in next year. I mean, like I can tell the story that everyone is telling about Luis Castillo,

89 stuff. Plus in the first 11 starts after June one, when it got warm, one Oh three stuff, plus market improvement, mostly in the fastball where the velocity came up the change got better a little bit um but yeah so i can tell that story the same way everybody else is telling oh the warm weather velo better but i have to tell you man it's going to be cold again next year and

the thing that really leaps off the page for me is zero dollars earned last year by the rotowire auction calculator now when we're talking about you darvish bouncing back he gave you nine dollars last year you know um who are the who are the other when we talk about aaron nola bouncing back he gave you seven dollars right so i think in a way you can be like okay worst case scenario i get like a number three or four with my nola or darvish pick right i still get seven bucks back with castillo the worst case scenario is demonstrated zero right sp6 in 190 innings so it's not like zero because he got hurt. He pitched 190 innings and gave you $0. So I know you could have maybe played the game where you didn't play him as much early in season or traded for him mid-season and maybe got better, but that just leaps off the page.

The other thing that leaps off the page for me is that I know what you're saying about the strikeouts, but some function of that is bulk and the bulk projection right he's not a standout in strikeout rate like even where you have him ranked at 29th around him frankie montas 26.6 percent k rate to leo's cast he has 23.9 if you're talking about percentage uh alec manoa 27.7 shane mckinnon trevor drogers 28.5 like these people are dwarfing him Baz and Lynn behind him dwarfing him in strikeout rate and the thing that makes me nervous is he's changeup first he's changeup first

and changeups have the weakest relationship to overall strikeout rate so the quality of your changeup has the weakest relationship to your overall strikeout rate because changeups do give you weak contact. Now, that helps keep his home run for nine low, and it helps him manage his park, but it also reduces his strength in a category, the strikeout rate as a category.

So, I don't know. His KBB is weak. I have him as a bounce back. I think he will bounce back, but I'm going to struggle with ranking him. And there's no way I put him above Joe Musgrove, like I just said. And I will struggle in that 21 through 29 range to kind of sort him. I may sort him a little higher than yours because Cease, bad ballpark bad command gossman you know

bad you know bad ballpark situation not just his home park but everywhere to and especially with his home run issues in the past so uh and then there's a bunch of young guys there that just have uh you know very few innings under their belt just to know exactly what their true talent is. That Rodgers, McClanahan, Manoa grouping averages about 100 innings. And as much as I think my Stuff Plus stuff can tell us about them, there's some inconsistent results there too in terms of Manoa's Stuff Plus is only 101.6 and Rodgers is only 102. So I roger's only 102 so i'm gonna i'm gonna struggle with ranking castillo that's the short story the thing about it for where i've got him

right now is it's more important for me to get them right based on auction dollar value sorts of preferences than snake draft preferences because where i've got them i'm not getting him like if if you're if you're looking at my ranks and building a team in a snake draft preferences because where I've got them, I'm not getting them. Like if, if you're, if you're looking at my ranks and building a team in a snake draft, you're probably not getting Luis Castillo unless you ended up in the, the hell scenario of drafting against 14 copies of me, which would suck.

Listen, every time I'm in NFBC and someone says something about me in the chat, I'm like, oh boy, he's got my rankings up. Yeah, well, that's – I guess it's a lesson to do more early drafts, huh? Yes. That's what I tell my wife. I've got to get out ahead of this.

Well, I think there's the advantage in having your homework done ahead of time and being ahead of the market before the groupthink and things start to take over. Let's move down a bit in the rankings and in A to P. It's a good headline here if you're watching on YouTube. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to write ooh, that Snell. I went with E-W with lots of Ws as the best way because oh, that Snell didn't seem right. That almost seemed more like we were impressed by what happened.

But less was more. We talked about it during the season. Once he got down to a shorter pitch mix, he actually had a lot more success late in the year. They added Ruben Niebla to be their pitching coach. And if you didn't have faith in Blake Snell figuring it out for himself, which I think you could probably talk yourself into anyway, it's hard to read players from afar. figuring it out for himself, which I think you could probably talk yourself into anyway. It's hard to read players from afar, but I didn't get the sense that Blake Snell was the kind of guy that was just going to be like, well, it's cool. I only got two pitches now, and I'm just going to live this way.

I kind of got the sense that that wasn't going to be fine with him over the course of the offseason. He's always talking about, you know, he loves his changeup. He's always talking about trying to improve his changeup. Yeah. To have it just go away completely is a little bit of a surprise. I mean, I always wanted him to throw it less because I don't think he commands it. But in the last, you know, two months of the season, he didn't throw it. Yeah.

So I'm looking at him, and I've got him 35th right now among starting pitchers. Very gettable in that range, I think. ADP, at last glance, was in the 130 range, so much later than everybody else we're talking about. Ranked near guys like Shane Boz, Justin Verlander, who I think will keep ticking up now that we know where he's pitching, and he seems to be pretty healthy going into whatever the start of the season looks like. Zach Gallin's in this range too.

Nathan Evaldi. These are all pitchers I like quite a bit. And guys like this being available in this range, at least for now, are among my strongest argument for why you wouldn't need to go overboard with pitching early. overboard with pitching early. You could actually go a little more aggressive with bats in the first six or seven rounds because you have guys in this group that very easily could return the value of someone that goes in the first four or five rounds among pitchers. I've now graphed his slider percentage against his walk percentage. Yeah. He ended the season with what, like a 13% walk rate? Yeah. Yeah. 12 and a percentage. Yeah. He ended the season with what? Like a 13% walk rate?

Yeah, yeah. Or 12 and a half. Yep. So he basically, once he started really using the slider a lot more, was more of an 11 and a 10. So it's not going to be a big strength of his. That's the only...

The only reason I bring it up is it's the only red on there. And one other thing I like about him as a bounce back is he did produce positive value last year. So at the very worst, you got something out of him. And I think

with the pitch mix... Pitch mix changes are very interesting to me. I think they're very sort of sticky and useful. They can change your stuff plus number. And I saw, was it, what's his handle? Cameron Pitching Bot? Pitching underscore bot? You know what that is?

Not off the top of my head. Anyway, he has a Stuff Plus model. And then he was saying that Stuff Plus changes because of pitch mix changes are stickier and stick better. So I think Snell is a good bounce back candidate. We have some guys here. So you have an ADP of 130 for him. Where would I take him?

Who are guys I would take him over that have lower ADPs? Pablo Lopez? Yeah. Yeah, I would do that. Yeah, Lopez goes a little earlier, but yeah, I would take Snell over Lopez. Ian Anderson? And you've got so far into my head with Ianan anderson that i don't even have my own thoughts about ian anderson i just have your thoughts about ian anderson no the the really interesting

the most interesting thing about ian anderson is he might be doing something with a change up that my model cannot capture yeah does your model does not like atlanta's pitching like i mean freed too no yeah no i don't mean that in like loves char. Yeah. I don't mean that in like the – Loves Charlie Morton. I don't mean that in the – your model is like the Keith Law of hating things. You know, Mike Fast is a very smart guy. The director of analytics there or director of R&D, I think. I'm not sure exactly what his title is.

But Mike Fast is a really smart guy. And so I think it's possible that they are capturing some stuff that we do not have in this public model. With regards to Ian Anderson, I think it would have something to do with possibly arm speed or something unique about his high release point

and use of change up. There aren't a lot of people who throw a change up from his extreme over-the-top release point. I know I have release point in my model, but there could be some relationship between the way his arm looks coming from that release point and the quality of his changeup that we're just not capturing. And it's getting to the point now where he's demonstrated results on that changeup that far outweigh the grades that these pitching models put on it. So yeah, I think that one's a really tough one

to figure out. But the projections model, we're not the only ones having trouble with this. Look at the steamer projections for Ian Anderson. 407 ERA, 136 whip. Yeah, and I think when you have a lot of the inputs spread out on the table and then you have the projection next to them and you compare that to everybody else, you end up getting maybe too caught up in something that's being counted multiple times. carve out the pictures between Ian Anderson and Luis Castillo and I just look at the skills

and start thinking about general flaws, they're very similar pictures. It's hard to see 10 pictures between those two guys. Either Castillo's too high or Anderson's too low. They should be closer

together somehow. I'm not sure which direction that should be closer together somehow. And I'm not sure which direction that should be necessarily. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's also, uh, something weird that happens, um,

in drafts, I guess, right around 30. Uh, so you have Lance Lynn 30, right? And he's got a 59, uh,

or 60 ADP. Yeah. So I will have zero Lance Lynn at the current time. I'll probably just miss out. But the guys ahead of him, only Shane McClanahan has a number over 101, right? So, you know, in your top 30, the worst pitchers are being taken around 80 and 90, right?

Yeah. And then outside of your top 30, the best pitchers are being taken at like 120. There is like a shelf where I think people like abandon pitching for a few rounds and go after, I think, probably the last year's versions of Bryant and Altuve, which would be like Bellinger and Jelic this year. Those guys are kind of falling into that space between the SP2s and the SP3s.

Yeah. So there's that. The answer could be taking Cody Bellinger around early after our last podcast, if you buy that. podcast if you buy that. So that at 110, you'll have your pick of Snell, Ian Anderson, Pablo Lopez, Rodon.

If you identified somebody in there that you really want, if you pop them up to 110, you will get them. That's what's going to happen between now and March. Those guys that are great values in that range right now, in the 110 to 150 range among starting pitchers, they're going to close the gap.

That will certainly happen. As certain as anything with this sort of market can be. But I do think that shelf exists. I think that's a real thing. I think there is, because I think about it in terms of the way I draft. I'm like, oh yeah. You look at the rankings,

you're like, there's no top 30 pitchers left. I'm going to go take a hitter. This is where I think you have to very consciously plan around the market and get away from the patterns everybody else is in because you're more likely to get the players you actually want if you can break out of that pattern if you're kind of just following the waves of what's happening in the room you're much more likely to get sniped because you're you're cutting it too close on the players that you want at each

opportunity you're like oh usually this guy goes here so i'm gonna keep waiting i'm gonna keep waiting i don't know you went three picks before me yeah and yeah you don't want to be following the same patterns everybody else exactly and then i that's why i'm not that big on making sure i double tap pitchers in the first four rounds because every time i do that my team looks the same as everybody else's and i'm trying to get the same players at the same time as everybody else you know yeah uh i find that if I only come out of the first four rounds with one pitcher, there's a little bit of fire under my ass to get more pitchers because I'm a little behind.

However, I'm always kind of thinking about pitchers in my drafts, and so I find that I just have better hitters if I do that. But also looking at the sort of shelf thing uh i think there's an amazing thing that happens here between 30 and 33 and it is our next bounce back pitcher segue um lance lynn has an adp of 59.8 right now and Zach Gallin at 33 has an on your rankings has an ADP of 150. Yes, and the things that we've always loved

about Zach Gallin, command, deep pitch mix, the thing about Zach Gallin that I am really warming up to as well is that I didn't think the Diamondbacks were going to be as bad as they were in 2021. So there's like the just automatic rebound. The team bounce back.

A team bounce back where they just can't be that bad again. Plus, there's talent coming up. It's a team that's going to get better. They're going to bring some young players up. They're going to be. Alec Thomas, excited about him. Alec Thomas. We were talking about the NL West on the Athletic Baseball Show just a few days ago,

and Keith Law is all over Corbin Carroll actually making a debut this year too. So you bring up Carroll. You bring up Thomas. You play Dalton Varshow every day. Cattell Marte is healthy. Carson Kelly is not bad behind the plate. Maybe Seth Beer adds a little punch at first base. You add a free agent,

maybe along the way, like a mid tier guy. Suddenly that's a, that's a team that's getting a lot better. And I, I don't know why they signed Mark Melanson. Maybe, maybe they think they can hang around,

trade them, whatever. Anyway, all that, their philosophy generally actually, you know, that was a weird signing, but I think their philosophy generally is like,

let's try and be an 86 win team every year. Right. That's what I've seen from them playing playing the middle and part of playing the middle for them is that zach allen might be an ace like that's that's still a possibility and i think if you can get a guy who might be an ace at pick 150 and we're talking about him as a inside the top 50 guy this time next year you did really well like that's a great pick in that range i don't think he's going to stay at 150 i think he's he's definitely among the guys that will creep up in adp if his if his march adp isn't closer to 100 than to 150 i'd be surprised so you know be prepared for that if you really like

zag gallon you're probably going to have to move him up a couple of rounds from where he was going at the beginning of draft season i mean he's he you got him ranked uh a bunch of people who all have ADPs of about 30 or 40 lower than him. And his Stuff Plus and Location Plus are better than Blake Snow. Both his Stuff Plus and Location Plus are better than Blake Snow. Marcus Stroman, Logan Gilbert, Pablo Lopezan anderson lance mccullers um even carlos rodon no carlos rodon stuff plus is better anyway um there's a there's a model justification for that but also it's just uh it goes beyond that because if you kind of go to the pitch level um what i like about the the the stuff plus models it can give you an idea of what the arsenal looks like.

And the knuckle curve is 118 Stuff Plus, so I'd call that borderline elite, but at least plus, right? The foreseam was 109. The changeup was 105. The slider was 103. And the cutter, 100. So I see a plus pitch and then four above-average pitches, average or above-average. The only thing that makes me worry is it's soft velo.

I mean, it really is. And it got a little softer at the end of the season, and the four-seam ended closer to 100-stuff-plus at the end of the season. So that's the only thing that makes me worry. I think that is an interesting worry because as a prospect coming up, people wondered about the VLO. If you have the benefit of waiting

until spring training and you hear he's touching 96, then I would jump him into the top 25, I think. I would get really excited. It's the only asterisk I have on the entire package is the fastball VLOG. Yeah, and, you know, we've seen plenty of guys add a couple ticks. He's young enough, especially, where it doesn't seem that far-fetched

that Zach Gallin would come out throwing harder. He had an injury last year. Yeah. You know, like, we don't know how that affected him. It was a very weird injury. He ended up still throwing through it i think he got basically i couldn't i couldn't figure this out but i think i think it's because he injured himself swinging so i think he like you know he like hurt his wrist swinging and there was like a small flat fracture that was non-displaced i think which is you don't need surgery and you don't even need a cast you're

just supposed to give it rest and he just felt it when he was throwing the curve ball. So I don't know what that means, but he had to throw the curve ball. So, uh, but I think that could, that could have led to some fatigue factors or, or just some injury over time. I don't know. I, I, I just wanted to bring up the fastball VLO. That's the only thing that might have me worried about him. One more pitcher to get to before we go. Sonny Gray. He is just outside my top 50, I think, for the first time probably in four or five years.

Maybe the post-Yankee stint bumped him out there temporarily. But usually he is one of those kind of steady eddy boring sp2 sp3s that i gravitate toward and i'm wondering if this is a good time to just let someone else get a possible value adp outside the top 150 overall i don't know i see a little bit of a home run problem i see kind of a mediocre walk rate and strikeouts are, are there for now, but I just wonder if the strikeout rate could start to tumble at this point in his career too.

So what do you think about Sonny Gray? Am I too low on him? Do you think you could actually pop and end up at least getting back up into the, the gallon Stroman back of the top 40 range, or do you see enough red flags to stay away? Well, you know, he, he still has that that that that um plus stuff number i mean he still has a 106 you know so but i think it's mostly because of the curveball um and so he he like has a little bit more similarities with like maybe an adam wainwright or a charlie morton

than you might expect does that make sense it's a pretty but he has the worst he has the worst park situation out of those three yeah and i i just think about the the last few years from adam wainwright and how bad it got for Wainwright before it came back around and became good again. And I think Cincinnati, there's so little room for error there because of the home run inflation that we see in that park.

A lot of contact in the zone for Sonny Gray, which I don't know if that's necessarily new, but that's the other skill that I worry about. It's like, well, he gets Ks, but he also gets hit in the zone a lot. It's very odd. Yeah, the zone contact is really high on the slider, and that's something that he talked about when he left New York

was that he can't really throw the slider in the zone. It becomes like a sort of a spinning pitch for him. And that was still true last year i mean here's a zone contact rate zone whiff rate on the slider was eight percent last year it was a zone whiff rate for the curveball is 24 you know zone riff rate on the four seam fastball which is like maybe his worst pitch it It is his worst pitch, was 17%. So the slider only really works for him outside of the zone. And in terms of plus pitches, it's really the sinker and the slider, but the slider doesn't really work in the zone that well. So it's an interesting combination of pitches,

but I have to say I believe in him more than you. I believe in him a little more than you. I would have him higher. I just look at that stuff. I look in him more than you. I believe in him a little more than you. I would have him higher. I just look at that stuff. I look at the strikeout rate. 27% is an excellent strikeout rate. If you put him among Gilbert, Lopez, and Ian Anderson at the back end of the 40,

he would have the best strikeout rate in that grouping. Yeah, I think the highest I could go just looking at stuff and location and guys ahead of him would be right behind Logan Gilbert. And then you're kind of choosing, do you want the young guy that could be tracking towards something much better?

Or do you want the old guy who's more likely to just bounce back to 12 to $15 status? And I, that probably depends on who you have on your roster already in a vacuum. I would prefer Gilbert, but that's a, that's as high as I could probably get with Sonny Gray right now.

I think I'll have him probably somewhere in that back end top 40. But I mean, hey, it's a 10 pitcher gap and it does get fuzzier after you leave 30 behind, which is why there's that shelf, right? But yeah, I think I'd have him a little higher. I believe in the sinker cutter curve combo I know the slider I just think he can spin it you know what I'm saying like I think he can spin it

and spin is one of the best things in terms of aging that's not something that I've necessarily been able to prove but it is something I've heard from team, from like coach coaching types and like team analysts. So, and if you look around at the guys who survived the longest, Rich Hill, Adam Wainwright, Charlie Morton types, they can spin it.

So I see a relationship there with, you know, three breaking balls. The sinker is still good. And the strikeout rate is still good. So I'm a believer. Well, we got to go. A few things before we go.

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