Rates & Barrels - 2021 Pleasant Surprises, Part 2

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Eno and DVR continue their pleasant surprises series by closing out the AL Central with Cleveland and Chicago, and digging through the AL East to discuss Carlos Rodón's renaissance, Cedric Mullins' run at a 30/30 season, Amed Rosario's long-term ceiling, and more. 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 presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek and Riper, you know, Sarah's here with you on this Wednesday. Just two days before we both eat a whole lot of crow about the St. Louis Cardinals and Brits prediction from a couple of weeks ago. So we've talked about how to cook a hat on this show. I think we're now we're going to work on how we're going to prepare that crow. My lean, unlike the hat, which I think should be prepared like kale chips, would be a low and slow method to make the crow as tender as possible. Yeah, make it a stew.

Yep. Stew you, Cardinals. Stew you. No, it's fine. They're a perfectly average team among two other, I guess, closer to average teams than we thought. We can talk about it on Friday, but there's news happening on all these teams.

The Reds, the Padres, the Mets. I think it's going to be scapegoat season, and it already has started in a lot of those places. Yeah, it started early this year, kind of like how you always see Christmas trees at Costco about a week earlier than you did the year before. Pumpkin beer in July. Yeah, all of that. That seasonal creep that's happening inside of baseball, too.

Scapegoat season creep, where you fire the pitching coach in August. Got to get out in front, you know? Yeah. But we're continuing our Pleasant Surprises series today. So we have a couple teams left in the AL Central. Before we go head first, let's go feet first. It's more comfortable. It's the way you go down a water slide.

You go feet first down a water slide. It's way safer. Yeah, I think you get kicked out of the water park if you go head first down the slide. AL East today as well. Let's close it out with the AL Central. We'll go to the Guardians, where I think it's usually going to be pitching that surprises us because they don't often surprise us with the development of hitters, at least not in the last few seasons.

And I do think it's fair to say that Cal Quantrill is probably their biggest surprise. He's their Savali of this season, maybe, if you want to kind of put him in that bucket. It's not as though he was bad in the shortened season. His ratios were actually very good, 225 ERA, 122 whip. But to see him do it over 140-plus innings this year gives you a lot of reasons to be excited. I know you've liked Quantrill for a long time,

and I think some people are saying, oh, wait a minute, Tristan McKenzie's second half's been really good. It's something I talked about with Nick Pollock on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball show last week, and it has been. I think the difference is people had expectations for McKenzie coming into the season that he could do some things at least close to what he's been doing in the second half, whereas Quantrill was more of an afterthought, more of the, hey, you can get this guy outside the top 400 overall, and maybe he's even more of like an early season waiver pickup if things break his way. So to see

him having that success is definitely a surprise, at least relative to draft season expectations. Yeah, I've traded shares away of Coantrel because I had so many, And there is still, for me, a question of how sustainable this is and what it'll look like next year. And that's mostly because none of his pitches wow you. And so he's kind of in that, you know, Hyunjin Ryu sort of place in the pitching spectrum

where it's good command of a lot of pitches. And I struggle with those because really it's a wide gap between Hyunjin Ryu and Tanner Roark, right? And Kyle Gibson. Look at even the career of Kyle Gibson, how he's had great seasons and he's had terrible seasons.

And then put that in the context of the fact that stuff is stickier year to year than location and command. And I think it sort of all comes together where it's rare to have reuse every year command. You know what I mean? There are a lot of other pitchers that have lots of pitches like Kyle Quantrill and then lose the command every other year. And I think, you know, Kyle Gibson is actually a pretty good map here, even though Kyle Gibson is more of a four seam slider guy. Quantrill is more of a sinker now cutter. He's this is part of the big breakout is he's changed the slider into a cutter and he's rediscovered his old pre-tommy john change-up so yes the change-up is an out pitch but it's the only one that really

scores above average by stuff and so you're left with a change-up and then a bunch of other pitches and will he have enough command next year to make the same sort of like i mean you could also just be as simple as be like, look at his FIP. It's 416. There's got to be some overreach here with Quantrill. I'm surprised you brought FIP back into this after the things you said about FIP in the recent past. Well, I mean, they just don't have Sierra on this team page I'm looking at.

So let me look at the Sierra. Anyway, I could give you his pitching plus. 454 on Sierra. Quantrill's pitching plus is 97.8. That even says below average. I do think that it's been a little bit better since he's

in the second half. The changeup has gotten better. I asked him what happened in Julyuly and he said i got good uh i i mean it's it's always good to have more pitches like this and it's like he could take a step forward with the cutter next year with the second year of using it um and and fewer sinkers even maybe you can bring back the foreseam a little bit as a swing and miss pitch now that everyone's looking for the sinker and the cutter. So there's an opportunity for him to be like a mid threes guy. But to some extent, I'm kind of more excited by, you know, the hitter transitions that we've seen. Franville Reyes really changed his reach rate. I think he was the second best change in

reach rate from the first half to the second half in baseball. And to do something like that suggests that he can add like a 10 to 12% walk rate along with his prodigious strikeout rate, but also his prodigious power so that makes him in fantasy more viable for a couple reasons obp leagues but also for runs in rbi and also just means that his playing time is more secure because he's a bad defender so he's going to be a dh sometimes outfielder and you really need to have a good OBP. You need to have that really good production at the plate to continue to get your playing time. So I guess people might have seen this coming from Fran Milreis.

So there's a whole pleasant surprise aspect. Surprise has to be in there. It's not like we're going to say that Jose Ramirez is a pleasant surprise. But a Fran Milreis that has a a stick that's 31 percent better than league average I think is a is at least a step forward and to some a pleasant surprise and maybe more important to this organization because now you've got Jose Ramirez Fran Milreis and uh Miles Strawn Ahmed Rosario I mean you're, you're still struggling to build a full lineup there. Yeah, Rosario has put together a solid season.

I think he's just showing us that the 2019 season he put together with the Mets, that's a reasonable level that he could stay at for a few years, right? Being a two, two and a half, maybe a three-win player if a few things break his way, that's sustainable, I think, given the down year from Francisco Lindor with the Mets. You could look at that trade and feel better about it now if you're Cleveland, but it's more about what you could have got prior to Lindor having the season that he just had, right? That's why that trade was a problem at the time, but it's encouraging, I would say, from Cleveland's perspective just to see Rosario getting back to that 19 level. With Reyes, I'm thinking about

the baseball forecaster because, of course, first pitch Arizona just around the horizon. And we're not that far away from the late year holidays. And that means we're not that far away from forecaster showing up. And I could see Fran meal Reyes having, you know, upside 45 home runs in his player box or something along those lines, because it is big, big raw power.

We've seen it for a few years now. And the rate at which he's hitting home runs right now is actually even above what we saw back in 2019 when he popped 37 in 150 games. But do you see anything left between Rosario and his ceiling? I don't see another level there. I see, you know, we talked about the Mariners pleasant surprises and the, you know, we talked about the Mariners pleasant surprises and the, you know,

the getting two and three win players and how that's really important to find those guys and trades. I don't see a four or five win season coming from Azario. Is there anything you see in his profile that makes you think there's more ceiling there? Like I know defensively, he's always been a good shortstop. So there was, there's always a belief that he could be a well above average regular because of that, right? An above average fielding grade, a great arm, good speed grades. He's supposed to have a better hit tool,

I think, than what he's shown so far. I don't know if he's a disappointment in that regard, but maybe he's just a slight underperformer for his career. He's still young enough. He's going to turn 26 in November where it's possible we haven't seen his best season, but I think his best season is probably more like three and a half more than like a five.

From a fantasy standpoint, I'm just looking at the max EV. He just had the best maximum exit velocity of his career at 111.5. Also, just generally over his career having a max EV around 110 most seasons suggests to me that he does sometimes hit the ball hard.

And then the big thing is just he hits too many grounders. But any small improvement from that in that grounder rate, I feel like he could turn some of those line drives into barrels. So I mean, if I have to put an absolute ceiling on it and and i think it's worth doing this because he's 26 years old he's been in the league he'll cost a certain amount of money in in fantasy and uh he's a certain he's established he's basically a league average player at least but he's 26 years old that's peak year so if there is going to be a peak, by the numbers, it should happen next year. So I could see 20% walk rate, 5% to 6% walk rate, 20% strikeout rate. That would be the best combination of those two in his career, but it would be in line with what he's done. I could see a 290 average.

a 290 average. You know, he's hit 287. We're talking about a peak year. I could see like a 330 OBP. And then I think here's the thing that I could actually see is league average power. And if he had league average power with those numbers, he would have a sort of a 450 slugging, I think. And he would maybe have a chance at like a 2015 season

or at least a 2010. That's pretty good. I mean and and for what it'll cost it kind of reminds me of those years that elvis andrews was a pretty good cheap player and then he had that one season that was pretty amazing um rosario's 12 for 12 is a base dealer this year and i do think it's important to see that spike in hard hit rate it's a matter of doing that damage with the ball in the air i think if you look back i mean you mentioned jose here and I do think it's important to see that spike in hard hit rate. It's a matter of doing that damage with the ball in the air. I think if you look back, I mean, you mentioned Jose Ramirez. I've looked at this profile before and Jose Ramirez was not expected to become this player. Nobody thought Jose Ramirez was a future star coming through Cleveland's organization. I think

what surprised me the most is that if you go back and look at when he first debuted in the big leagues, even what he was doing as a minor league player, he was hitting the ball on the ground a lot. And over time, he's become a guy that hits a ton of fly balls. That's been his norm for five plus seasons now, right? I wonder how much it matters that they've had a similar player, an infielder that has developed this way. They've had someone go down this path of finding the solution to hit the ball in the air more often. I'm thinking about it in the context of even Sal Perez

and the piece that Alec Lewis wrote about him. Sal Perez is old, and we thought we knew what he was, and he made changes to his swing and made adjustments. I guess all of that is my long way of saying, while I am not expecting a 4-5 sort of win ceiling from Rosario, I think he's probably a better player than people are giving him credit for. And, I mean, yes, Ramirez has better plate discipline and contact ability. But if you just look at max EV and barrel rate in 2016 for Jose Ram ramirez you get a near match for what ramirez just did 110.7 max ev 2.6 percent barrel rate for ramirez and uh for rosario uh where is he i've

just had him up boo anyway same thing just say just say same thing. So I don't know. I guess I need to be more open-minded about every player in some ways, just having more things they can do well. 1.11.5 max EV, 2.5% barrel rate for Zario. So even slightly better in terms of the max EV. Anyway, one thing that have uh noticed in some research is that 90th percentile exit velocity is a more powerful stat than max ev um it uh becomes stable in the first month of the season and uh i think i guess there's some fluke max evs right either because of the

maybe the technology or just every once in a while you you run into one um the 90th percentile uh becomes stable quicker and is still pretty powerful in terms of predicting uh raw power so um there's that for you i don't know anywhere who tracks it so you're welcome good luck also super super uneasy uh to do on your own all right so my my long-winded summary of rosario i don't think he gets to five win levels or anything like that but i think relative to what he's going to cost in 2022 there's a good chance he's undervalued again you do probably want to have him on your team because playing time is extremely secure lineup position is going to be good and he's undervalued again. You do probably want to have him on your team because playing time is extremely secure. Lineup position is going to be good, and he can do just about everything we need

in a typical 5x5 league. And one of the things that we're doing here is sort of anointing some pleasant surprises for this year, which I agree is probably Kyle Quantrill with an asterisk to Promo Race, and then thinking about who it could be next year. And for me, despite Ahmed Rosario being a very mild surprise this year i think uh the a potential pleasant surprise uh could be him next year yeah bit of a sidebar there but i think a fun one and

a good useful exercise to begin thinking about looking ahead to next season let's go to the white socks where i think you have to give, if we're giving out those little trophies we talked about in the last episode, if you're giving out a trophy, Carlos Rodon has to win that award. He was non-tendered last winter. No one had expectations for him coming into the season.

And I think the problem, yes, is exactly that. It's what happens next with him because of the wear and tear on his arm, the injuries he's dealt with in his career, the fact that it's another arm injury slowing him down down the stretch. I just don't have a lot of optimism about how good his 2022 can be, even though I trust it from a skills standpoint. I just don't trust it at all from a health perspective,

and I wish I had more answers here. Yeah. Uh, if I took the name off of the stuff and location numbers or just, just the, off of the arsenal, I would be pretty excited about it. You know, one 10 stuff plus for everything, but it's just obviously, uh, a, a, a four seam fastball with good ride, a slider coming off of that. The four-seam fastball also, he has the ability, kind of Justin Verlander-esque, to start at a certain velocity and then start going into the tank to get more as the game goes on. And you'll often see him start the game at 94-ish and end with a few fastballs at 98. And that gives him, I even asked

him about this, it kind of gives him a variance on the four-seam. It almost gives him another pitch, which is the four-seam and then the four-seam, you know what I mean? Then the strikeout one, the 98. And then the changeup has matured into basically an average pitch more command of it now that he's kind of harnessed his delivery uh he uses the uh core velocity belt uh a lot he's been a big proponent of that and uh he's brought it to other pitchers on that staff but the thing about the belt is it's kind of this weird sort of resistance belt that the pitching coach holds onto while you, while you pitch is that if there's something off in your delivery with someone pulling at you, you're going to notice right away. Like it, it creates a stability going towards the plate in a way, um, by sort of letting you know

where you're off and where you need to focus and what muscles are lacking in strength or where your movement is not going straight to the home plate because the guy's pulling on you. But in any case, he's really streamlined his delivery. All that stuff I love, but I don't love hearing about shoulder issues late in the season. I don't love missing so much time as he has. I don't love the injury history.

And so I think projecting his innings next year is going to be real tough. Yeah, I'm just trying to come up with a reasonable range where people are going to be comfortable drafting him. I mean, if you think back to somebody we were really worried about from a health perspective that I think most people tend to like from a skills perspective, the first name that pops into my head from this season is Denelson Lumet. And the injury news on him, I think was probably,

it was probably more ominous. I think it was more ominous at the end of draft season. So if you were drafting in January or February, you felt okay about Lumet, but by the end of March, he was going, no good news, he was going around pick 128. I think of Lance McCullers as a guy that's been heard a lot, that people like, that every year for most of his career, it's been a question of how many innings.

But his spring news was better, right? Right. He was at 108 overall. So somewhere in the 100 to 125 range might be what it takes overall pick-wise to get him? Throw Shane Baz in there. Oh, boy. Where do I think Baz is going to go? I mean, the question is innings in the end.

I know it's for a different reason. Yeah, yeah. But the question is innings. That's what always happens. You get the veteran with major injury risk versus the young guy who's going to be handled with kid gloves. And it's like, which path do you want to take to reduce the innings? Rodon might only get to 130 innings this year.

140 maybe. Yeah. What would you give on Baz for innings next year? Thinking for a moment here. He's got... How many does he have this year? He's got... Show me the minor stats.

He's made one start. Okay. For this year, he's sitting at 78 and two-thirds between AA and AAA. I think they might let him get to 100. Five more. He's going to pitch into the postseason. Yeah. I mean, so are we saying 140, 150 for next year?

I think you might say, yeah, 130, 140 for all those guys. Isn't it weird that even though the Verducci effect was debunked, that we still kind of use those numbers in our heads for increasing workload? Well, like I said, Alex Anthopoulos once said,

we have no idea why we do the increases the way we do. We just do them because that's the way it's been done. Right. And that doesn't seem quite right. It seems like there should be some attempt to utilize science in the process. He has a different opinion about that now. That was a while back, that quote.

I bet you they're tracking these things. But, I mean, just look. One of the preeminent public research of injury risk was with the Rays, and there was this idea for a while that they were good at defending from injury. I don't think they are. At a glance, I would not hypothesize that they're good at that. I think that maybe the last couple of years has been a little bit different. This is also an interesting thing about the Rays.

They have a ton of injured relievers, right? And if you think about it, part of the reason why people give them relievers so often that end up being really good and why they have so many good relievers is because they give them off-to-injured relievers. Pete Fairbanks couldn't stay healthy in Texas. So, yeah, of course we'll give them to you for Solak, right? You know, and, you know, FireEisen couldn't stay healthy. Rasmussen, I think he's already had two TJs before they traded him. So they're like, yeah, yeah, you guys, you can have our oft-injured pitchers.

Give us Willie Adamas. And it seems like they may have lost the Willie Adamas trade. They've lost trades in the past. But here's the thing. IL is unlimited. Yeah, I mean, if you think you can rehab the players, bring them back, and they're going to be effective again, then you're fine. Once they come back, you've got that pitcher back more often than not. Even if your success rate's not 100%, if it's 65%,

you're right. Those are players you can just keep holding and holding and holding. Fairbanks is like 80% of what he was. Nick Anderson is like 50% of what he was. I think, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if Nick Anderson doesn't make the postseason roster, honestly. But anyway, that was a sidetrack. Where were we? Oh, the White Sox and Rodon. Yes, I think it'll be really hard to figure out

where to draft Rodon versus the Baz's of the world. Manoa, I think, has shown us enough bulk. And McCullers, not McCullers, McClanahan have showed us enough bulk that they are going to push into top 20 area. Yeah, I think that's possible for both. If they're not in that group,

they're not far from it so and then rodon baz i think i see them as sort of like uh 30 to 40 in there am i wrong people are gonna people gonna have really different uh ideas about where to draft rodon next year i think the board is going to be fun but also a mess because there's a lot of chaos still from 2020. Some carryover chaos, I think, and uncertainty with Manoa, right? I mean, he didn't get to pitch in games in 2020. So he's at 117 innings now. He's going to throw some more before the end of the season.

He's going to probably throw some in the playoffs if the Jays get there, of course. So if he gets to 140 total innings before this season's over, yeah, you're not really dinging him that much going into next season. You expect a 175 or a 180 from him, and our baseline high-end expectation for veterans isn't much higher than that. Yeah. Yeah, it just gets – when it's like 100 to to 120 it just gets easier to say i'd rather not pay retail um and so i bet you of the raise three baths uh patino and mcclanahan i may pay some retail for mcclanahan because i think the innings might be there i bet you i don't end up with baths because i'm not as sure about the innings.

And then I bet you I have a lot of Patino shares because the ERA will be too high for some, but I see the underlying skills as being amazing. And him having as many innings as the other three possibly won't be as big a deal if you're paying top 50 or top 75 prices for Luis Patina. McClanahan versus Manoa feels like a cage match at first pitch Arizona waiting to happen, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. And I think I favor McClanahan, but I think it's worth a deeper dive than just sort of off the cuff.

Absolutely. The other name I think that's interesting for the White Sox, kind of turning the page on them, Dylan Cease. I mean, I think there were reasons to like Dylan Cease, but I didn't expect Dylan Cease to improve his walk rate quite this much. He's got the swinging strike rate up at 14.6%. The projections from the bat are actually better than what he's done so far, so there could still be one more small step forward for him.

But I would say even if you're a little disappointed by how the second half of 2021 has played out for him, you're overall pretty happy if you drafted Dylan Cease this season. And my nomination for Pleasant Surprise next year is pretty obvious. Jake Berger, baby. Come on down. He's already hit a ball 115. Yes, we're all into the burgers here.

Let's get to the AL East. This whole series was inspired by Cedric Mullins, if I'm honest. Think about it. I mean, a guy that... We've all been inspired by Cedric Mullins. We didn't talk much about him back during draft season, if we even mentioned him at all. It was kind of...

Justin Mason did, though. Yeah. In the group chat, he's a little insufferable about Cedric Mullins. But I didn't tell anybody to draft Cedric Mullins this year, and he's a home runaway from 30-30. And as we've said when checking in on him throughout the year, it doesn't really look fluky because he gave up switch hitting. He's got the K rate down at a very manageable level,

and 18.3% K rate is really good for a guy over his first full big league season. I know he's been in the big leagues for parts of three other years now. He walks. He's an efficient base stealer, so you don't expect the green lights to go away. It's a great place to hit. And we already saw that profile shift that we were hoping to see from Ahmed Rosario in the future where the ground ball rate ticked down this year. 38% ground ball rate from Mullins, right? So the things that he needed to do to maximize every possible aspect of his game, it all sort of came together at once in this breakout. And I think he's, of course, going to be the kind of guy that people are saying,

okay, how high does he go really? In talking to Todd Zola about this a few weeks ago, I think you can talk yourself into Mullins as a late first-round pick, and I don't think it's stupid. I think he actually belongs there. Just something about coming off a career year, older, older. He's coming off his peak year just in terms of age. Something will make me nervous but the nice thing about it is uh you'll have a high floor even if

he doesn't hit for as much power next year and that's a little bit where the projections disagree about you know does he have closer to average power or you know will the park inflate it a little bit more than that, he's going to have the speed. So sort of a back-of-the-envelope projection right now, even if I'm being pessimistic, is for a 260 season with 22 homers and what, 25 steals? Okay, so 22, 25, lower average, so 22-25 lower average, still probably a good number of runs, maybe not a lot of RBIs because of where he's at in the lineup,

but if you draft him top 15 overall and you get that result, do you fail to win your league because of it? I don't think that's the case. No, not at all. And in fact, with stolen bases, that's such a priority. I feel like it would be an asset for your team even at all. And in fact, with stolen bases, that's such a priority. I feel like it would be an asset for your team even at that. It's a little bit like a better outcome for Randy Orozarena's second year. Yeah, and I just think because Mullens was able to do it over a full season,

whereas Orozarena came up late last season and then did it in the playoffs, there's more belief in this being real. And understandably so. I love the swinging strike rate uh the same as it was in the minor leagues very nice and small i love the strikeout rate that's you know if anything's wrong in that line that i said it's probably the batting average because if you're going to strike out 18 of the time uh and have a modicum of power then 260 is a little bit low yeah yeah i think if you fall short

batting average-wise, it's because the K rate somehow ticked back up. Someone found holes in the approach or something if you didn't do well in that category. The home runs, if you look at the spray chart, it's all pull side.

Some to center, but all pull side sort of power. I don't know if you want to do a dingham for that i guess that could be part of where you say yeah 30 might not be something he does twice but if he gets fewer homers if some of those home runs are doubles some of them are singles some of them are fly outs whatever he might steal more bases like you could get a few extra steals if you if they turn into doubles or singles yeah it's true uh you know and then uh as for like being nervous about it being all in one location i don't know marcus simeon uh is like that this year brian dozier was like that for a while i could see it the magic running

out i guess at some point um in terms of that's if they're all in one place, that's sort of a very specific ball that you're hitting, right? You're turning on the inside pitch and hitting it down the line. Bregman, for example, had a very highly concentrated area of homers, right? He had a lot of his homers to the Crawford boxes. I always want to call it the crawfish boxes um yeah because they're delicious but he he's had a little bit of a downturn which might be injury or or maybe it's just that it's hard to repeat that thing over and over again because maybe the pitchers just won't give you the ball that produces that outcome right because they're like wow every

time we give him an inside fastball he turns on it and hits it in the crawford boxes let's stop giving him those inside fastballs so maybe that's maybe that's true for simeon you know simeon just told me in the at the all-star game that he's any on top of the four seam and that's why he can hit those for homers maybe people will start throwing him more sinkers uh maybe that's why he's pulling all these these these homers but i don't think it's enough for me to be like oh all of his homers to this one place so i'm not gonna i don't believe in his power you know yeah no i think it's a skill that he owns that even if it's not 30 home run pop it's good like a average ish home run power kind of as a floor. And I think the player you described statistically,

it's almost like what Trevor Story did this year. Story was lower on batting average at.247, a little lighter on speed, a little heavier on power, 23 homers, 19 steals,.247 average. If you draft Story in the first round, it hurt because you didn't get complete first-round value, but it didn't sink you to the point where you couldn't win, not even close. So

I think that sort of disappointment in the range of outcomes, but not expecting it. I think maybe the more realistic, if people pump the brakes a bit, look where Kyle Tucker was going. He was just outside the top 30. Luis Robert was in the same range in terms of ADP. To me, that'd be the late part of where Mullens would go, but I think it's more likely the one-two turn where we see him going, at least by the time we get to the end of March. If you're looking for next year's pleasant surprise, this actually could be a nominee for this year

because Austin Hayes does have a.250 average, 21 homers, and four stolen bases this year. Justin Hayes does have a 250 average, 21 homers, and four stolen bases this year. But I do think there are a couple signs that he could be a little bit better next year. Because, one, I think he'll get the full year. I know his defensive numbers are negative this year on fan graphs, but by outs above average, he's an average outfielder. So I think that could toggle. We've talked about how he's been a center fielder in the past. I know that his walk rate is poor right now, but he's flashed better in the past. And I looked at his O-swing,

his reach rate on fan graphs that you can make a little chart of it over the season. And a lot of his problems reaching at pitches outside the zone started early when he came into the league this year. Got an opportunity and pressed, I think, right away at the beginning. And what you see is that came down, his reach rate came down, and his offense went up in the second half. You know, obviously the weather has something to do with that, the park and all that.

But the park should be the same next year. I would say his walk rate will be better. His defense will be better. He'll be in the lineup every day. If he strikes out 20% of the time and plays in Baltimore every day, I could see 30 homers, maybe even 10 steals with the full season. He supposedly has good speed. This is an asset, I think. This is going to be a guy that comes cheaper than he should. So Austin Hayes, even though he could be the surprise for this year, he's my likely surprise for next year. Yeah, without that Mullins breakout, I think Hayes would be getting a bit more attention,

definitely like the direction he's going in. Love that it's the career best O- oh swing percentage from him as well just because he can in fact do quite a bit of damage when he connects let's go to the yankees where i wonder if i know thinking about the forecaster again the baseball forecaster was in on jordan montgomery but not everybody was and i don't know if anyone expected jordan montgomery to be the yankees best starter after garrett cole nester cortez obviously is a candidate here too, is kind of a swingman who's gone on to do more than that, and it's been pretty valuable for the Yankees as well.

But I think you've got to give the nod to Jordan Montgomery. This has turned out to be a really nice season for him. Yeah, Nestor Cortez reminds me of Aaron Small. Just one of those guys that pops up for the Yankees, pitches well enough to take advantage of all the runs they score, and is kind of over his skis in year two. But Jordan Montgomery is a little different. I underrated him.

I probably could have ranked him higher. I think I had him in the late fifties, um, or maybe early sixties. And the, the reason for me is just that, uh, the stuff isn't amazing. It's just, I mean, you can watch it and see it. It doesn't, uh, it doesn't pop in terms of velocity or ride or drop. Uh, but it is a, it is an interesting angle. The breaking ball is a really good pitch. It's got that Chris Salish, like, really wide break. You know what I mean?

It's the kind of thing that can break from outside the batter's box to righties to their back foot and break the whole way. So that curveball is a really good pitch. And then he just has above average location on all of his pitches. So it's a really good curveball, an average changeup, below average fastballs, but he locates everything. And he legitimately throws five pitches. So he's in this uh in the kyle gibson montage but uh he sort of strikes me as a little bit closer to the ryu side than the rorak side

i feel like we have to make a graphic to put on the screen for youtube where it's like the good finesse deep arsenal guys and like ryu is the gold standard that you're trying to get to and Kyle Gibson is he the opposite end like that might be a little harsh on Gibson but he's certainly well here's a guy who told me he wanted to be Ryu which is Ross Stripling so I'm sorry to be rude to Ross Stripling but he has to be the other side and that you know to be honest Ross Stripling could be a good draft and hold guy next year because it's all about that year where he's healthy and the command comes back and he can push one or two of his pitches like a half grave you know forward then he can be good again because he has lots of pitches well and Stripling had a stretch before going on the IL where it looked like he had

figured some things out I think he was tipping pitches earlier this season. That was something that Caitlin McGrath talked about on one of the shows that she joined us on, geez, probably three months ago. It was right around the time he started to put it back together, and then the injury kind of messed that up for him. But I think there is still something there with Ross Stripling for deeper leagues. I don't know if we're getting excited about him in 10s and 12s

as someone we're drafting right away, but one healthy is usable. Deep ones. Let me see some other names that should be on this list. Aaron Savali should be up there with Ryu, I guess. Yeah, I mean, so we got Ryu. Cal Quantrill somewhere

around the middle, I feel like. Let's see. Quantrill would be more like here. Yeah. What are you doing? You're doing something on YouTube? I was trying, but it's not very effective

to just take a pen and just move it around the screen. It doesn't help anybody. So make actual graphics. We thought of this on the fly. Granky is in this. He's just, the stuff is down every year.

I think trying to rank Grankke next year would be really tough. Yeah. I mean, you're always getting a discount because he's old and all the usual Greinke discounts, but you're probably getting the best Zach Greinke discount yet in 2022. So do you take it? Do you say, here's Zach Greinke at pick 150. I'm interested.

Greinke's down to six strikeouts per nine with the worst whiff rate he's had since 2012. But I once wrote that Joey Votto was done. So what do I know? No, who's our pleasant surprise for next year for the Yankees? The Yankees are so hard because they're so combed over, dude. It's so like, you know, and so many stars. Like, my, you know, I guess my pleasant surprise next year is Gleyber Torres.

Right. I mean, I have to laugh while I'm saying it. Or like Luke Voigt because he'll come back from the dead. I doubt they signed Rizzo. So, I think Voigt has a place to play next year. Yeah. Maybe Tyon could be a pleasant surprise for them. As a bounce back?

Yeah, I mean, he hasn't been terrible this year. He would just have to take a slight bit step forward. Yeah, I've kind of given up on Davey Garcia as a starter, so I guess because expectations are low, he could be a pleasant surprise if he has a good offseason and puts some things back together, but I also put him maybe near the back end just because I just don't see them just plugging him in as a top five guy next year. That means he's a six or seven starter, whereas Baz and Patino and McClanahan are at least going to start the season with their clubs. Fair point. I do think he'll could end up spending more time in that Yankees

rotation than we might be penciling him in for right now. Cause he's looked good. The stuff looks really good. At least. Yeah. I really like him. Let's get over to the blue Jays. The whole team is kind of a pleasant surprise in the sense that everything's

clicking simultaneously. Like even if you like the core and I think most people like the core coming to the year, you didn't expect all of it to go right. And I would say if you're looking kind of in the underlying, like the lower, like second tier sorts of guy, like Marcus Simeon bouncing back is a surprise. It's a pleasant surprise.

You didn't, I don't think they signed him. Yeah, I don't think they signed him expecting another MVP caliber season like he had in 2019, right? Like that was a level that we all assumed was a peak and would never be reached again so i mean i think you have to give him that award if uh if you're really just like honest about it but what else has surprised you on this team robbie ray not walking guys i mean we've talked about that a lot on this show i guess steven matt's just being more consistent.

Like that's not a thing I've ever expected. Yeah, you want to put the emphasis on pleasant rather than like rim rocking or, you know, rocket to the moon. I mean, Robbie Ray is, it's kind of weird to put the word pleasant on him. I mean, he is like one of the biggest surprises of the season, I would have to say. And not because, I mean, like, yes, the strikeout rate was always good, but the walk rate's never been this good, you know.

And to make that much of a jump in, you know, a season and a half or a season is amazing. Manoa, I don't think you can really, you know, put down as a surprise so much because there were so many prospect people that were super in on him. And they were right. So, you know robbie ray marcus simeon neither is a quote-unquote pleasant surprise it's uh more just a eye-popping surprise yeah flat out like outlier amazing transformation but like stephen matts i would say is the guy i

looked at i'm like wow that's that would be like kind of the word pleasant comes to mind because i would have thought uh fifth starter that loses his job halfway through the season. Yeah, I would have thought Ross Stripling would have had that spot over Matz at this point in the season. I really did think that would happen. And I'm a little surprised that they were able to make so much out of his collection of pitches. Absolutely. So a team that's a surprise, but fewer individual smaller ones. it's really just the big ones that come out and kind of say hey check this out like i'm a totally different player

now vlad jr becoming a triple crown candidate not out of the realm of possibility when we thought about him as a prospect and i think it was it was fairly common to say hey this guy's gonna have a big third year. We saw it from Rafael Devers. It takes a little time to click. It's going to click for Vlad. Well, it's clicked in every possible way. The Red Sox, another one that's kind of interesting because—

Wait, who's our present surprise next year? The future one for the Jays. We should get to that real quick too. This is another roster that's really kind of like top heavy in that it's a lot of veterans and established players. Maybe it could be like Merriweather, like being healthy all season and being a closer. Could be.

I think that's good. Thomas Hatch, there's still something there. He could step in. Ross Stripling could step into the rotation. Although, is Ross Stripling a free agent? I think he could be on a one-year deal. What does free agent 2023 mean? That means after.

It means after 2022. So he's got one more year. But it's his most expensive year, right? Yeah. But, you know, I would also say, like, there's a chance of somebody like Breivik Valera or Craig Biggio, kind of, not Craig, Cabin, coming back and being their second baseman and doing a good job. But I kind of, I wonder if this team will want to sign Simeon. You know, Simeon or Chris Bryant might make a lot of sense for this team because I just don't see a third baseman or a second base

like one of the other you could put Biggio at third you could put him at second he'd be probably your worst starter and that'd be fine I guess but to have Biggio there and also Espinel or Valera at the other position I think would weaken this offense and you'd have to your pitching would have to take a big step forward. So if they do spend money in the off season, I could see it really being on an infielder. Yeah. And they're obviously in that window where adding and adding and adding some

more makes sense because a lot of that core is still very young and inexpensive. Let's go to the Red Sox. Hunter Renfro, I think is in this pleasant surprise conversation. He's a little bit Adam Duvall-y to me. He's going to bounce around the league a few different teams, I bet, in the next few years.

Slightly better defensive value, I think. Yeah, slightly better. I wonder if any team would actually squeeze him into center field, though, the way that Duvall has been playing center field. That's such a strange thing that I never would have projected years ago for Duvall has been playing center field. That's such a strange thing that I never would have projected years ago for Duvall. That must be like the opener where it's just like, it's not something we wanted to do. It's something we have to do.

Yeah. He spent six years in the majors. I was surprised to hear that. I think I did see something about him playing center and I think I just didn't believe it. Six years in the majors before making an appearance there last year and then uh yeah 22 appearances in 2021 for adam duvall but hunter renfro uh really nice if you're in a deeper league i've got him in an al only league where he was like two bucks and i mean that's a huge win late in the auction to get a

player like that he's closing in on 100 rIs, probably going to finish close to 90 runs scored. Average hasn't been bad. Might hit 30 home runs. Not stunning because he was a high 20s home run guy in San Diego without 600 plate appearance seasons in the past too. So just nice to see him back because after it didn't work out in Tampa Bay, I think it was easy to wonder since that came on the heels of a down year in 2019 with the average in OBP being a tick down. It seemed like maybe he was just going to be a bench guy and not necessarily a regular anymore. Yeah, I also want to throw Enrique Hernandez out there. He managed to improve his strikeout rate at a time in his career where you might thought it would go the other way, especially since he had a little bit higher strikeout rate at a time in his career where you might have thought it would go the other way,

especially since he had a little bit higher strikeout rates when he was younger. He's going to have the second most homers of his career, might hit 20 this year, and basically are kind of repeating his 2018 peak season. So to do that in more bulk like he did this year and to possibly add more bulk next year when he doesn't miss time for a COVID-type situation. Yeah, definitely a good one there.

I didn't see that coming. I thought with more playing time, he'd be exposed, and he's been good. I've gotten a lot of use from him with the second base slash center field eligibility in a couple leagues too. It's a rare duo, and then he's a super strong player to put in because he can be a round league average against righties, but he's better against lefties.

And so he's eminently useful in a lot of different leagues. But in terms of who I think it could be next year, I mean, our love for Tanner Houck knows no bounds. And so I think nobody here listening to this would be surprised if Houck broke out next year. So I'm grasping straws. Maybe they re-sign Garrett Richards and he's suddenly the closer next year. Reliever Garrett Richards could be interesting.

Yeah, he's definitely been a little better since he's gone to the pen. I don't know. Who are we looking at christian arroyo like is he gonna take over a full-time job and he had a 108 wrc plus this year just not a lot of time i don't think so i wonder if the lost year in 2020 for minor leaguers and some guys having pretty disappointing 2021s is going to open up some former prospects or guys that are still on prospect lists but have fallen since last season. To have those guys be surprises. Could Jeter Downs be the guy that comes up and actually is a surprise?

The slash line is horrible at AAA. 182, 264, 330, but he's popped 14 home runs, and he's 17 for 20 as a base dealer. And that was only in 93 games so you know the power speed combo is there even though nothing else has been right for Jeter Downs so what are we talking about who they lose they lose Richards out of vino Schwarber has an option. It's mutual, though, so I kind of feel like they lose him. Enrique has another year. They lose Martin Perez, Christian Vasquez, unless they do the options. They lose Robles, Shaw, Santana.

They don't lose much. Iglesias? They don't lose much, do they? Oh, and Eduardo Rodriguez. So I would assume, actually, that if they spend money, they spend it on the pitching side. So you could play games here with what happens with this lineup. So who is the starting center fielder next year to begin the year?

I don't think it's Durant to begin the year. So I think it might be Enrique to begin the year. So that gives you Christian Arroyo a little bit of a chance to take over second base and if he doesn't then that gives you the opportunity for either either Jeter Downs or Durant Jaron Durant to come up and take over a starting spot right that's sort of how they're set up yeah and they could shuffle things around more if if Bobby Dahlbach's second half k-rate improvements, if those don't hold and he becomes a problem in the lineup, I guess they could shuffle things around again and play somebody over at first base instead of him.

I don't know if that's necessarily going to happen, but there's a little bit of built-in flexibility. It's probably part of the appeal of Quique Hernandez, right? You can play him all over the place, so then it gives you different paths to having some guys kind of surprise you and take over a spot, and then you can just go fill in somewhere else. So co-owners of next year's Pleasant Surprise will be the bounce backs from either Duran or Downs. We hedge our bets here. Yeah, I don't like to hedge quite like that,

but I do think if I had to pick one, Duran has shown us just a little more at AAA, so a little more confidence there. But I just would say don't forget about Jeter Downs. There was a lot going on with guys trying to get used to AAA pitching even again this year that we probably haven't talked enough about overall just yet. Garrett Whitlock in the bullpen, also a nice surprise for Boston.

Could be a closer. They do lose Barnes, don't they? They extended him. Oh, they extended Barnes. And then he hasn't really pitched well for most of the time since that extension. Yeah. I don't know if there's anything to it. It's just kind of the way things have fallen.

It's one of those things, man. Just one of those, you know that like couple that's always breaking up and getting back together again that's how i feel about that barnes and the red socks you can't ever say anything too bad about him because he he might be back next week yeah matt barnes seems like he's there for uh the long haul so i guess i don't really see the closer role as totally up for grabs. But if he struggles, then obviously they have to make a change at some point. I mean, he was losing save opportunities to Hansel Robles this year.

Right. That's what I'm saying. They probably want to reset and let him be the guy at first, but it doesn't mean he has the job all year. Last team to get to, the Rays. You know what? I'm just surprised more teams haven't copied their bullpen approach. We now have 13 Rays that have recorded a save this season,

and the leader for them, Diego Castillo, doesn't even play for them anymore. Yes. It's painful. I'm laughing because I don't want to cry. Why don't more teams just say, we don't have a closer look? Because they care about our fantasy teams. Yeah, they love our fantasy teams, don't want to cry. Why don't more teams just say, we don't have to close. Because they care about our fantasy teams. Yeah, they love our fantasy teams, don't they? No, I don't know, man.

I was not surprised by Shane McClanahan. I had a few shares of his going into the season and the stuff numbers were through the roof. I am surprised by Colin McHugh, but how surprised can I be by Colin McHugh if there's also Andrew Kittredge and who else? Who stepped forward?

Ryan Thompson and Dietrich Enns and Lewis Head or Louie. I don't know. I think you have to almost disqualify Rays relievers from any sort of pleasant surprise action you're going to pull. That's fair. I think the thing that was surprising to me about McClanahan is just that unlike Manoa,

I don't think there was quite as much hype around him. It's not like he was a ghost on prospect list, but I just think relative to the quality of the stuff that he has, as soon as we saw him debut, even before the stuff plus numbers came out, if you watch that, that outing, I think it was against Oakland.

They might've debuted against. It was like, holy cow. This guy has every possible weapon, premium VLO, a ton of movement. Like this is absolute filth. I think that was surprising,

the disconnect between where he was ranked on a lot of prospect lists and just how good he looked right away. But I also think the absence of a minor league season last year pretty much explains that entirely. Yeah, I don't know, man. I guess I'm the de facto Rays beat writer in the playoffs. That's coming for me. And so I saw him in the playoffs and it was all 100s. So I was pretty excited for him. I guess it's a little different to hit 100 in the playoffs as a reliever and then come back and there is

still the question of do you have enough pitches and do you have enough movement do you have enough command that's that's not all solved by just seeing 100 on the radar gun so yeah there were still questions to be answered but i i was i don't know i was fairly fairly confident about him um but i i struggle to anoint uh somebody else as an obvious uh pleasant surprise i mean we felt aust Austin Meadows would bounce back, and he did, but it wasn't in such a way that it could have won you some leagues, but I don't think so. I think he went for, like, a decent price, and he returned a decent value,

but it was just about what you paid for him probably on draft day. You almost have to go mike zanino on the pleasant surprise group for for hitters from the rays i mean he's done this before he's had he's had a four win season before in seattle had a 3.8 win season in seattle but his his range of outcomes is probably about as wide as any player that i've seen tick up or maybe brett ph Brett Phillips right next to him. They're kind of similar. Lots of hit and miss, good amount of play discipline,

some interesting skills, really low average. But people got some value out of them, and the Rays got a lot of value out of them. Yeah, 132 WRC plus for Zanino, 31 home runs. So yeah, if you drafted him as a second catcher at a cost of basically zero, you've been really happy with him. How about a surprise for next year?

Who do you like kind of buried on this roster? It might not even be a player they've acquired yet that ends up being the player we talk about a year from now because, yeah, why wouldn't it be? But is there anybody they've got in that system that you think is going to come up and surprise us next year? I was looking at Drew Rasmussen, and yeah, it's true that his numbers have returned a little bit to earth as a starter in terms of his velo,

and he's had to mix in a little bit more of the curveball, which is decidedly a third pitch for him as a starter. So, yeah, the most he's thrown the curveball has been the last five starts, and the lowest his stuff number has been has been the last five starts. All these things are not, you know, they make sense. However, like he's doing well enough as a starter and even if you kind of just take the average of his of his stuff since he's become a starter you'd still get above average uh you still have this uh really rock solid four seam

slider combination which are both above average by stuff in location and then the curveball is averaged by stuff he doesn't command it that well but it's a third pitch and um listen long story short i know that he's had like i think was it two tommy johns whatever but and they may not want to get a ton of innings out of him, I think he could surprise by just being a starter next year. And giving them 120 innings and them being pretty good. Sort of a 350 ERA type of pitcher.

So in the place of Ryan Yarbrough that I drafted this year, I will draft Drew Rasmussen next year. The other weird thing about the Rays because their farm system is so good, I feel like trying to call a prospect breakout for them also isn't necessarily a pleasant surprise. Josh Lowe being able to do everything we like in fantasy,

if he comes up and is a 2020 guy next year, is that really that much of a surprise, or is it just something that we kind of saw coming? I was tempted to say Vidal Brujan in the same way. Maybe his stock has fallen enough, but, you know, then some prospectors would yell at us. Yeah, I mean, those are good players that we've expected to be good players for a long time.

So finding the next one there is a little tricky. Like, we'll know sometime in December or January when the Rays make what looks like a pretty mild sort of trade, and we're like, wait a minute. This guy has some funk, or this guy is going to get a chance to do something he hasn't done before, and lo and behold, we'll see it play out just a few months later. How about a ceiling

for Wanda Franco next year? Breakout year. What is a breakout year? What if you did like a Vlad Guerrero type second level i mean he's already at 27 percent better than league average with a stick so i think it would all come from power right yeah are we saying 30 home runs is that a an actual ceiling that you're willing to consider for next year i mean mean, he's at 7 and 270.

So what's that? That's like maybe 18 and 620 or something. Mm-hmm. So if we're saying, if he just kind of did what he did this year, he would hit 280 with 18 homers and 10 stolen bases next year. The breakout is 300 with 30 yeah yeah 330 i'd i mean nobody wants to bet against wander but i don't think i'm quite ready to throw that he's sort of expectation on him

yeah he's beefier than expected we'll see i will you don't. Don't pay for 30, obviously. We should close with this. What do you think his early ADP is going to be? Because that draft to do with Zola, it's starting up really soon. I'm just kind of wondering, when is a reasonable time to think about drafting him and then where do we think most drafts are going to put him?

Well, he didn't steal a lot of bases in his first year, right? If he'd stolen even Brett Phillips' amount, like 10-14, I think it would go higher. But he did steal some and he just has excellent

plate approach and contact ability. I love that combination of walks and strikeouts. It's a little bit Mookie Betsy-ing, you know? And so I would love to take a shot at him. I'm trying to push it because it's not the type of player I would have pushed a lot in the past. I would have said, oh, they're too much healing.

But I think in the third? Is that crazy? Fourth? Third. Okay, so you're saying pick 40 to 50. Yeah. You're thinking like a 15-team league,

so pick 40 to 50. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, guys that went in that range, hitters that went in that range this year, just for reference, end of March.

Tim Anderson was in that range. Rafael Devers was in that range. Jose Abreu was in that range. But actually, Devers pre this year is a pretty good comp. Just a young player that's super exciting, has done some stuff, and

hasn't done it all. Vlad Jr. was two picks ahead of Devers, just ahead of Anderson, so he was in that cluster too. Back end of that group would have been down Aaron Judge, ADP of 50, Bregman, Nolan Arenado. What a great place to shop, huh?

Yeah, some pretty nice bats in there. Okay, well, I do think Franco actually belongs in that group. I think he's one of those types of players that you could take there where worst-case scenario, he gives you 18 homers and 8 to 10 stolen bases and a good average, and he's fine. He's your shortstop. That's a pretty good high floor, but then there is that chance he does the judge, Devers, you know, gives you that next level.

I wonder if we could use the Luis Robert ADP from 2021 as the ceiling ADP for Wander, just because the amount of time that Wander spent in the big leagues this year, 62 games, similar to the 2020 season. Robert, I think, had the fast start last year, then kind of went through an adjustment phase. Yeah, I think that makes it not quite the same helium, I think. But then Wander had the Vlad Jr. type of helium, so Vlad Jr.'s past ADPs might be a little bit more instructive, too. So I think 40 to 50 is probably not far off.

I think that's a good, reasonable expectation. If he's in that range, you can start to think about him. If someone takes him earlier, tip your cap and think about it for next time. And remember that in that 40 to 50 range, there'll probably be another young player that's super exciting that you'll want to pick. 40 to 50 seems like a good time to take one of your first reasoned leaps. You know, one of your like,

okay, worst case scenario, this guy's good, but this guy could be great. That's what we just had a list of those players, you know? Yeah, that's a really good way to think about it too. Kind of think about just the overall build from those first few rounds. If you don't have a lot of risk yet, you probably won't at that point.

You could go ahead and take that first shot with wander because the floor is incredibly high. As we've seen already here in his debut season, before we go, I just want to pass along. We've got a special offer right now, 50% off subscriptions to the athletic at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels.

Obviously this is a great time to get in with the playoffs just around the corner. So be sure to hit that link if you're interested in getting a subscription on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can always drop us an email rates and barrels at theathletic.com. We are halfway through this series. We will take a break on Friday's episode. Again, the crow is going in the slow cooker probably in about 12 hours or so because it's going to need a lot of time to simmer down and soften up for us after we kind of chuckled at the idea of the Cardinals getting back into the playoff race. Dibs on the eyeballs. Terrible. Terrible. All right. Well, that's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.