Rates & Barrels - 2022 First-Round Mulligans: Risers & Fallers

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss how the top of the draft board would look different today compared to the final ADP of 2022. How much would Vlad Jr. and Bo Bichette slide? Who would replace Walker Buehler in the Top 15 overall? And how much would Aaron Judge's injury history factor into his re-do ROS draft slot? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, June 2nd. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. If you're watching on YouTube, yes, I am in a different location. Yes, the camera angle is different and it does add 10 pounds. I'm excited, though. I'm excited we're doing this show, doing it from San Diego, actually. And I think I'm at a distance where Uncle Rico would think he could throw a football over Petco. I think that's about how close to Petco I am right now. Ah, the convention center. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

So on this episode, lots of ground to cover. We are going to talk about the 2022 first round and kind of have a redo. Talk about some players that maybe would have fallen out of the first round if we were drafting again today for the rest of the season. It's a good excuse to talk about some players that don't necessarily come up in the early months of the season. We'll talk about a few big risers who might join that first round status and even bump up into the top 40 or 50 overall

if they weren't previously there, thanks to the first two months that they have had. We're going to have a prospect of the week. We're going to have a few mailbag questions. And I think we're going to have a triumphant return of beer of the month as well. So a jam-packed show. I figured since we only got one this week, we got to make it count and get all the hits in there.

Play all the best segments. There was a request for a doggy update, doggy training update. I've had to separate the dogs for their morning walks in order to really get the training down because they do aggravate each other like a pair of little brothers and the one of the dogs is amazing right now he has been totally trained to whenever he sees a dog or a human or anything that makes him nervous he looks to me because he knows that he's getting a treat so he's now associated anything that looks at all scary with me like turning to me and getting a treat and so he iggy iggy pup

uh is really like i he even like let a really big dog walk by without being uh upset and then even made a slight move towards the butt so there was like almost normal dog behavior i was like oh my god did you almost sniff his butt i was like super over the moon the other one now we're not supposed to pick favorites with dogs and children so i will not speculate on why but the other one's not getting it. Buster Dog is not quite getting it. He keeps looking back at me for a treat when there is no reason to look back at me. And he still gets pretty rigid when he sees other dogs. The one thing I have noticed, it has gotten a little better. He does expect treats generally.

So I can, if there is sort of something happening where he is engaged with a dog, I can tell him to sit and he'll do it because he knows there's a treat because we're on a walk. So he's gotten better. It's a little bit better. But he's more at the meh stage, whereas Iggy is a new dog. Unfortunately, when you put them back together, it's the lowest common denominator. Right. Yeah, Iggy takes on the buster characteristics when they're together, right?

Whips them into a frenzy. I get it. Well, he's barking. I guess I should bark. Obviously, there's a threat. You've got to bark back. So I think that's still progress, though. Yeah.

And Iggy might be a little closer to meeting Hazel. Oh, for sure. It's gotten better. That's right. Maybe we could just take one. Right, one dog visit. We can get away with that. So let's get back to the 2022 first round,

take a look at some surprises and talk about some players that might be in that group because I do think the longer I played fantasy baseball, the more I wish we had drafts for the rest of the season that we're starting up right now or a month from now. And part of that exercise would be evaluating all the players again and appropriately adjusting them upwards and downwards. And if you go back to the first round back in April, last week of drafts, NFBC, ADP. I'll just run through the names so everyone has a quick refresher.

We've got Trey Turner in that one spot. Jose Ramirez, Juan Soto, Vlad Jr. and Bo Bichette rounding out the top five. Garrett Cole, Shohei Otani, Bryce Harper, Corbin Burns, and Kyle Tucker, 6-10. And then Rafael Devers, Mike Trout, Luis Robert, Mookie Betts, and Walker Bueller closing out the first round. Now, in that group, as I read those names, there were probably three names that got people's spidey senses tingling as a hmm not sure that player is a first rounder again maybe there's as many as four or five injuries of course can be a factor in something like that i just want to ask you of those names who who stands out to you who doesn't seem like they necessarily belong in that group

now even though they were pretty firmly in that group just two months ago? I'm going to take the easy one. Walker Bueller. Thanks for taking the low-hanging fruit. It's cheating. I'll take the guy who was last in the round. I'll take the least convincing guy in the first place. Sure.

Yeah. last round i'll take the least convincing guy in the first place sure yeah i just wanted to to highlight him really quickly because his uh stuff number has fallen off and you know he still is decent when it comes to that but it's much more decent these days than anything else. And, you know, the fastball itself is also being hit pretty hard. So he's, I think this is maybe a decent time to sell him in Dynasty Leagues and Keeper Leagues because I don't think he's necessarily a first rounder next year.

And I don't think he's, what's also just sort of a top top level thing i think this first round is pretty amazing for um how few like uber busts like really nobody here is costing you a championship no not necessarily i mean if you yes it would be better to have the 50 j Jose Ramirez than the $16 Juan Soto. Yes, that would be better. But still getting a $16 player in the first round, that's why we buy first rounders. It's like the worst case scenario, they're still end up being like a $30 player over the course of the year or a $20 player. So like, I don't think there's anybody here that's really, really costing you the season. I don't think there's anybody here that's really, really costing you the season.

Even if I had been maybe a little bit aggressive on Kyle Tucker as another name that could possibly fall out, I think two things. I think there's more left for Tucker to write. He seems to be kind of a slow starter. And if you look at the underlying things in terms of chase rates and barrel rates and contact rates, it's all good. And he stole eight bases, even though he doesn't have great speed. There's even a story on The Athletic about how he makes the most of his stolen base speed and steals bases. So, you know, I don't think Kyle Tucker is necessarily going to fall out. So I would say to you, do you think there's an obvious one? they're going to fall out so i would say to you do you think there's an obvious one because as bad as maybe soto vlad and bichette have been i'm not i'm not pushing them out of the first round dude

i don't think i would either maybe bow i mean we were we were kind of out on bow as a at his price at the beginning of the season but but he might be back in on him if he's back to being like a guy you get around the turn, you know? Right, and I think that's where he'd fall, right? So maybe he'd fall out of the first round, but he wouldn't fall past pick 18, 19, that range. So he'd be at least part-time first rounder, depending on who's in that position and how aggressive they wanted to be, because we're still talking about a five-category player. The underlying numbers upon last check-in were still good enough where there was no reason to think that what we saw throughout April

was going to continue through the next five months. I think he's shown some signs of life in recent weeks. I mean, this is a Jays offense. It's underperformed as a whole, too, though. This is a group that has not done what we expected, and that drags down some of that value. Yeah, they're chasing more than they usually do. And Bobichette also was hurt more than a lot of people.

This is what I'm going to be writing about for tomorrow. He was hurt more than a lot of people by this ball because if you are an opposite field hitter, I got news for you, it's not good. It's not good with this ball. It can be okay for batting average, but it's not good for your power. And the reason is opposite for the five loss.

Like, I think it's something that we all kind of knew when we were watching 2019 happen. You're like, Oh, look at that oppo can of corn. No, that was a Homer.

And I, in fact had some, like, I was just like talking to somebody in the, in the, in a clubhouse. I don't even know who it was not a player but somebody who's like around a team and he's like oh i'm not gonna miss all the

opposite field homers so you know bo bichette opposite field fly ball hitter uh opposite field fly balls home runs for fly balls went from at their peak seven percent in 2019 to this year 3.5 so They cut in half. The opposite field homers have been cut in half. I think that's a really affected Bo. Bo can still be a really good hitter at 18-21 homers and 15 to 20 steals. That kind of player is still going to go in the first couple of rounds. Yeah, I think so.

I think the natural follow-up question I had is, is Bo Bichette from a speed perspective, is he actually a lot like Kyle Tucker where he's very efficient as a base dealer, but he's not necessarily a burner? He's 56 percentile in sprint speed. So does that bring us to some longer-term questions about how viable he is in that category? I guess that'd be the only other hole I can poke in the case for him to remain a late first rounder, which would be some skepticism about how long that speed's actually going to be there.

I didn't know that. 56 percentile? Now you pair this hand-in-hand with, have you seen how many times he's been caught this year? I'm going to guess four. Dude, not bad. He's taken off seven times, been caught three. That's not good. That's not going to earn you the green light going forward.

Mm-mm. No. And the K rate's up right now. What if he's a 260-20-10 player? Then you might actually slide into the third round. Who is somebody like that going into this year? 260-20-10 might even be a tick lower than that. I mean, geez, we were talking about Brian Reynolds a few weeks ago as someone that had significantly lower

expectations, and I feel like the numbers that came out for him weren't that much different. Lindor. That was a preseason Lindor projection. Lindor was not a second rounder. No, but here's the thing. Some of this could just be normal variance, right? We've talked about it with the rolling graphs. What if he has a hot August? What if the ball flies out better?

What if he does get it back up to 25 homers? Right, because I ran the Roto-Wire earned values for the season for 15 team mixed leagues, and Francisco Lindor is at $39. So based on what he's done so far, he's performed like a first rounder. He's been a first rounder before. Does that give us some sort of comfort, guidance, instruction as far as being patient with Bo Bichette or adjusting expectations with him? I mean, it's more of an open question than one I expect to have a clear cut answer to.

But I think he'd be on that list of players you'd be thinking about as a possible player at the one two turn if you were drafting today for the rest of the season, because the Mets offense has taken that leap. They've become one of the higher scoring teams in the league. And I think aside from that power-speed combo, you're now getting that extra juice in those other two categories from Lindor. You know, Lindor barrels less than Bobachet generally, but he also pulls his barrels.

He's a pull hitter. And pulled barrels outperform opposite field barrels. So I think I might rather Lindor than Bobachet. I knew it was coming. Now and next year. Is that possible? Is that dumb? I mean, Lindor's a little bit older. The park is not as nice. But he's also not...

He's 7 for 9 when it comes to base stealing. So I feel like he's a better bet to continue to get the green light. It's an interesting question at this point. Maybe we can throw that out there as a poll question after the show and see where the audience and the Twitter sphere as a whole are on that one. But it's much, much closer than anybody would have ever said back on draft day. I don't think there was anybody I saw or heard at that time saying, you know what, I'm going to wait on Bichette in the first round because Lindor four or five rounds later is going to be there. And I think he can be just as good, if not better. That was not out there. And Bo's not the only Blue Jay underperforming relative to the lofty expectations.

Vlad Jr., we had a mailbag question about him. Basically, it's just a question. Is there anything wrong in the underlying numbers? I don't think it was a panic email saying, I got to get rid of him. I feel like I should move him right now. It was more just the bounce back is coming, right? I mean, what do you see when you look at some of the underlying numbers from Vlad Jr.? I'm not very concerned. He's chasing a little bit more. And I do think it's actually just, I think it's pressing because I'm sure he sees himself as a leader on this lineup. He said

things like, I'm going for the triple crown, that sort of deal. Um, so if the team is not scoring runs, I feel like he might put it on himself to, to maybe swing a little bit extra and, and, and maybe, you know, drive that run in. Um,

I think that like a good week from the team could lessen that burden. I know this is psych speak, uh, and maybe it doesn't mean anything but i'm just saying like looking at the various things like yeah some of the ground balls came back but if you looked at last year um he was hitting fewer ground balls early and then over the course of the season was hitting ground balls again so i think that he just generally has a little bit lower launch angle. And maybe 48, we'll look back and say 48 homers was a product of Dunedin,

Buffalo, peak season, all that stuff. He never got back to 48. That's cool. I think he can still be a really good player not at 48. So, you know, I think he'll probably hit close to 300 with 25, at least more homers. So you'll get to the end of the season. He'll be at 275, 280 with 35, 37 homers. That's what you wanted, right? I mean, you weren't necessarily expecting 311 and 48 homers again. And I don't think I want to take the power ceiling and lower it just yet for Vlad Jr.

I mean, we're talking about a guy that still hits the ball very hard. He's running a hard hit rate above 50% for the third consecutive season. Great max power. Yeah, the essence of the raw power is all still there. I think, yeah, chasing a little bit, I can explain it to myself the way you explain it and be satisfied with that explanation. I don't know if our listeners are all just like, yeah, that makes sense. We're cool with that. But it does make sense to me that this is a team that had lofty expectations. They expected to contend for and win the AL East and

make a run at the World Series. And Vlad wanted to play at that MVP level. And I think when you do that, you can press a little bit. All that is to say, I think the big bounce back is coming. I see way more good than bad in his underlying profile. So for every bit of concern that you expressed about Boba Shett a few minutes ago and that he might not be a first rounder, an easy first rounder, I don't see it for Vlad either. And I think it's interesting that soto is kind of going

through some struggles of his own because they were the two they were the two mashers that don't really run soto runs some vlad doesn't run at all is there is there a lesson here to be learned about making sure you get steals in the first round i mean both both still because both still on that list of underperformers right i i don't think there is a lesson in this particular instance. How about this? Is there a lesson in ground ball hitters? Avoiding ground ball hitters? No, because if you'd done that, you would have missed out on Vlad last year.

Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, Soto, what's really wrong with his approach i i see nothing wrong with this his whole career has looked like slightly too many ground yeah slightly too many ground balls i would say but i mean it's but he's done this forever that's what he did last year too and the fact that he's only 23 there could be a year where he makes one more adjustment and starts hitting the ball in the air more often and all of a sudden he's got a 40 ground ball rate and then he's popping 50 homers like that is easily within range i think the soto question and the vlad junior question does point back to the ball though even though you don't expect them to hit the bulk of their home runs

to the opposite field how much has their overall performance been reduced because of the ball in those specific environments? I know Jason Stark wrote about it for the Phillies. Citizens Bank ballpark is playing completely differently right now. The humidor is the only explanation for that. We have to start looking at that in each ballpark to see just how much things have actually changed. We know we've talked about this topic so many times on our show that it is a significant part of why things are the way they are so far in 2022. And the better the player, the more likely I am to go to the ball and the humidor as the most likely explanation if we don't see massive shifts in O-swing percentage and K-rate spikes and ground ball rate spikes and the things that we're usually looking at yeah there's still that possibility that we have this just weird sliding thing where april is going to be worse than in years past because the humidor is putting water

into the balls and then august is going to be even more hitter friendly than it was in the past because the air is humid which leads to more homers and the ball will be drier relative to what it was in the past because the humidor will be pulling water out in august that's still a possibility and it's infuriating as all hell because it's not an easy thing to just explain on the radio real quickly you know it's not it doesn't make for a great sound bite it sounds it makes me sound like i'm trying to weasel out of a bad prediction or a bad piece that i wrote or you know what i mean like it it uh you know give it time is not something that people want to hear in fantasy or or when it comes to prognostication. So I see the process for Soto is about the same as it ever was.

In fact, second best fly ball rate of his career. So what's he doing wrong? I don't see it. If there's anything he's doing wrong, I currently do not see it. I would say the same probably holds true for Garrett Cole. I think part of the reason why Garrett Cole's earned value is down is because the wins haven't been there. He's only got four wins so far

this season on a team that wins all the time. ERA, WIP in line with last season. K rate still really good. Control is still solid. Home run rate is actually down from where it was last year. I see nothing at a glance that makes Garrett Cole look different now

than he looked a year ago. Yeah, I mean, top five starters by Stuff Plus right now. I don't know if you count Strider or not, but past Strider, you've got Hunter Green, one, Shohei Otani, two, Corbin Burns, three, and Garrett Cole, four. And of those guys, he's the only one, Corbin Burns. Corbin Burns and him are the only ones

that have above average locations. So there's not, I mean, from the model standpoint, there's nothing going on that's wrong with him. I don't know why he would lose wins i mean they could maybe take him out early uh because they have such a great bullpen they have guys like michael king and clark schmidt but i don't see him as a five and dive you know like he's not a guy who you're itching to get out of the game so So I just think the wins are awful. The wins are so hard. That's part of why I had, you know,

guys like Drew Rasmussen-Hive because I was like, yeah, he won't get as many wins, but nobody's getting wins. It's just so difficult to predict where they're going to come from. Look at the earned value for, like the only pitcher, because Otani is just a special case.

For his value, did you add hitter versus pitcher? Did you add hitter and pitcher? I actually don't think I did. That was only his hitter value. Okay. So then you look at the three pitchers that went in the first round, Garrett Cole, 17, Corbin Burns, $29 earned,

and Walker Bueller, $12 earned like I just continue to think that first round pitchers aren't worth it yeah I mean I think that's a reasonable conclusion I think the problem is you end up having to still address pitchers relatively early in this climate because scarcity becomes a major problem everyone generally is pushing pitching more than ever so even if you don't go in the first round, you got to correctly ID second, third, fourth round pitchers. Or you could try the Tyler Maley SP1. That's one of my worst teams, by the way,

if you cared about an update on that. That team was an eighth out of 15. It's, I think, of my NFC team. You're moving up in the world. Creeping up, but not feeling great about the strategy in that particular instance. But let's talk about some of the possible risers, rest of season first rounders who weren't there. I mean, Aaron Judge, I think, would be the easiest candidate to just move up there, right? Aaron Judge would be, if we were drafting today for the rest of the season, is he falling past pick 10?

I just wonder if it's a trap. It's just the health thing. It's like he has the great health season, moves in the first round, and then he doesn't have the great health season again. He could leave the Yankees too. Right, and will the stadium play as nicely? No, I mean, yeah, I think he's a first-rounder.

I'm not going to wish-wash you this one. He'd go up, and then that would be the first player up that bumps walker bueller out yeah walker bueller uh i think walker bueller boba shett and louise robert are the the three that i would think are the softest i think robert would actually have a chance to stay in though because if you look on a per game basis i know he lost some time to the covet il i think you had a hamstring strain or a quad or something. But 34 games, 6-6, 6 homers, 6 steals. I mean, you look at that pace, that's about a 30-30 pace or just underneath it with a good average.

Lower K rate than before. Really improved the strikeout rate again, yeah. Two things, though, that would give you some pause. O-swing percentage was already high. It's up again, 47.6%. And the ground ball rate, which wasn't previously an issue, up at 52.2% so far. And that doesn't seem like part of his true profile to me. That seems a little bit fluky over about 150 later years.

Maybe that's how he's making more contact is he's swinging at some pitches in his own zone and, you know, making not as great contact. Maybe. But I think he'd probably have a shot of staying up in that range even maybe he becomes a turn player one two turn guy where the adp is not top 15 but there are drafts where he's still going just as early as he was going before i don't think anyone's bumping paul goldschmidt up to the first round but he would go earlier for sure because he has been on fire and i think the cardinals offense is also a little bit better than I expected as a whole.

So those counting stats are going to be even better than some people might have projected. This guy, not Pete Alonzo at 42, but Manny Machado at $40 earned. He was already, I think I did take him in the first round in one of the late ones, or I just took him at the turn. But he was so close to the first round and then i i just think that like a shout out to consistency man you know what i mean like there's just something just kind of appealing about being like can i just book a like a 280 average 30 like you know 25 to 30 homers and 10 steals from a position that does get a little bit rough after the first few guys go in third base.

It's a sneaky, scarce kind of a position. I'm going to make my case for Manny and Judge in, and Walker, Bueller, and Boba shut out. It's fair. The Goldschmidt thing, for just a moment, he had a K rate up around 25%, even a tick above that his last season in Arizona. Kept it at 24.3% his first year in St. Louis, and has been at 20% or under

since the pandemic shortened 2020 season. So he's reversed the trend with his K rate. He's still stealing bases. He's 3-for-3 this season. He was 12-for-12 last season. Popped the 31 home runs a year ago on a similar power pace. And as I mentioned before, I think the runs and RBIs currently are tracking to be even a notch better than they were last year. They might be more like peak Goldschmidt, 110 runs and 115 to 120 RBIs if the current

production holds. And I realize he's not going to hit 353, 429, 625 all season long. But I think every draft season for about the last three or four, there have been people saying, yeah, Goldschmidt is boring. And I think we were among them. He's kind of oatmeal-y, like really good oatmeal, maybe oatmeal with walnuts and apples

and nice things added on top, but he's still oatmeal. I think he's proving us wrong. I think he's showing us that, no, I'm actually more of like a Hall of Famer, and you guys should stop doubting me because I'm in my mid-30s. And yet,

am I going to push a 35-year-old into the first round? Not in the first round, but still, think about where he was going. He wasn't even going in the first three rounds. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's

someone who deserves to go in the second round, probably. And might go in the third because of his age. Right. It's not easy to point at one little thing. One thing he's doing this year that he hasn't done in the past, and it can't be the reason why he's cut his K rate in St. Louis, but he's having the best year he's ever had against sliders.

And so I wonder if there's just something that happened in st louis with an approach change where sometimes maybe he just sits sliders and maybe he just kind of alternates between sitting fastball and sitting slider and it doesn't affect his bat speed he doesn't get you know he doesn't get too slow uh but then sometimes he can just really wallop a slider i don't know there seems to be like some sort of approach change there. Because it's not about swinging at balls. His chase rate didn't really change. There's a little bit of a change in his ground ball rate.

But the change in his ground ball rate came before the change in his strikeout rate. So I don't really see what exactly he's doing differently. rate so i don't really see what exactly he's doing differently but yeah it's now since the start of 2020 a 20 strikeout rate and that that does change things because he had a 300 batting average with a strikeout rate higher than that before uh so that means that maybe it's he's a little bit more viable as a 300 hitter uh for the next few seasons even as his stolen bases kind of go away a little bit. I think it closes the gap between Goldschmidt and Freddie Freeman. I think previously that was part of the categorical gap was, eh, we got some concerns about the Goldie average.

Freeman might even get you up to like 310 in a good year. Goldie could hit 260. It's more like a 10-point difference between those two guys. And here's a big difference between Goldie and Freeman is how much they pull the ball. And Freeman is going to be in my piece. He's an opposite field fly ball hitter. He's having some of the worst power numbers of his career. And I think these things are related with the the new ball humidor you know opposite field fly ball connection so um it might be that now freddie is more of a 20 homer hitter again like he was early in his career there's another would you rather almost like a lindor

bichette you know it's not not quite the same because the ages are different, but I think we're getting pretty close to, I'd rather have Goldschmidt over Freeman. I'd probably be a little more stubborn on that one and still want Freeman. But again, I think that gap is, is much smaller and it's a question well worth asking. I think the question I have about these players that are, you know,

previously opposite field hitters, part of that is a, is a skill and part of it's a choice too yeah you have the ability to take those outside pitches and drive them the other way so at a certain point if you're not being rewarded for doing that anymore can you make on the fly adjustments to pull the ball more often can Freeman do that can Bichette do that Can other players actually make that change relatively easily? Is that something that happens in season or is that something that happens more in the offseason? I think a change in approach can be done in season.

It's just a question of, am I looking to pull the ball or am I looking to let the ball travel? That seems like a toggle you can do pretty quickly. The one question I would ask is, if you're Freddie Friedman and you're hitting 295 and your team is doing really well and overall your WRC Plus is 41% better than league average, is there any reason to change? I mean, it's not like you care about someone's fantasy league. No, you already got your six-year deal.

You're signed for 2027. Your team's winning. So why would you mess with something right now again is your hitting coach even telling you to to mess with it you know and it's got the you have the lowest strikeout rate of his career like these he's covering the plate really well it's just uh it's not uh his best approach for power also get into that point where things are warming up quite a bit too the ball might start flying a little better for him. That could make up some of that ground.

But we have seen some pretty significant fluctuations in power. Go back to the year before the rabbit ball year. Freddie Freeman was 28 years old, played in every single game for Atlanta that season, and hit 23 home runs. 23 homers, yeah. In a great year. That could be his true talent, especially since the ball is pretty much 2017-2018 ball right now. They kind of pushed it to before the juice ball era.

Maybe it's 2015 ball. He had 18 homers that year. As someone with children, are you looking forward to explaining to your kids the different ball eras of baseball from this past decade? Is this something you're looking forward to someday this is my household dude they've already we've already been talking about it's already been discussed already been discussed i don't know i don't know if it all got through i mean they're 10 and 7 but uh i i bet you they'll surprise me with we'll be discussing something it'll be like but that was 2019 right dad i hope they're having intellectual debates

with their classmates about baseball and using the changing ball in their arguments that would that would crack me up if there was a group of kids 1987 was a juice ball. The other kid's like, 1987? Yeah. It sounds like a made-up year. That never happened. Some other quick movers here. Ty France came up a few weeks ago, still sitting at $32 for his earned value this season. I saw CJ Krohn at $37.

Obviously not a first-rounder, but someone that would go a bit earlier now than he did going into the season. I think he's among the players you'd say there's still pretty significant injury risk there. And there's also risk that he ends up getting traded. There's no guarantee that Colorado holds on to him all season. So that would change a lot about his offensive profile, not getting to play half his games at Coors Field anymore. But Tommy Edmonds, a guy that I think the draft market was relatively skeptical about, he would probably go earlier. Acuna being healthy. There's another name. He's nine for nine as a base dealer in 22 games. Is there any better sign that he feels confident

in his leg? He's going back into the first round. Yeah, now we got too many first rounders. We got to kick somebody else out. Yeah, Acuna's going back in there because the only question was, would he still be, I mean, yeah, he hasn't hit for power yet, but I don't see the opposite field problem with him. He's got fewer sample than, like, right? He's got fewer ABs than everybody else. His max EV is still where he wanted.

His barrel percentage is 16%, still very good. Like, I think he's going to go on a power tear. And the biggest question was, how many bases would he steal coming off of this? And he's answering that one. So I think Acuna goes back in the first round. I've got one more would you rather for you. I think Acuna is definitely a first rounder for drafting day for the rest of the season.

Arguably a top five player. I think you could see people pushing him that high. If you were looking at Luis Robert and Julio Rodriguez at the 1-2 turn, is there a case for Rodriguez that early, given how much he has been running and given how difficult it is to find steals and how quickly he's making adjustments? Because if you said predict his 2023 ADP on June 2nd of 2022, I would say Julio Rodriguez probably flirts with the top 15, probably ends up closer to like pick 20 or 25. But I think he's got that that huge green up arrow next to his name right now. Like I took him in my main and it's part of the reason why I'm I'm pushing into the top five in my main and have any chance at all.

So I'm super happy about that. O'Neal Cruz, please, please, please, please call up O'Neal Cruz. But I'm taking Luis Orobert because Orobert has cut the strikeout rate and has demonstrated more power. And you still got a 51% ground ball rate on Julio Rodriguez.

And yes, Luis has a similar one right now, but he hasn't always had that one. If he goes back to the 45, 40% ground ball rate days, then he's going to hit way more homers than Julio Rodriguez. Right now, the projections suggest that Julio will end with 18 homers and 30 steals. Oh, that's really nice. He's going to go in the top three rounds next year. But I think Robert goes before him. All right, so Judge Machado and Acuna are the three position players

that we're saying would jump in for sure. So three come off the bottom. Yeah. Who are your biggest pitcher earners? I think the biggest pitcher earners that aren't in there, that could be in there are Shane McClanahan at 30 and Justin Verlander at 29. And I think the thing that would only thing that's working against really

both of them, more specifically Verlander is it really seems like workload over the course of the season could become an issue. I, at the same time, it's not a lot of evidence of that, is there? There's a there, well, there is evidence that he's not quite lot of evidence of that is there there's uh there well there is

evidence that he's not quite who he used to be i mean you can just look at the swing strike rates look at his ride on his fastball so um i do think there is a chance remember what was kind of happening with him was like the home run rate was going up especially during the juice ball era that's why he was like one of the people who was most mad about it um i could see like if you look at zips they give him a 1.6 homer per nine for the rest of the season i don't know if that's too aggressive the bat gives him basically what he's doing 1.18 i kind of uh in between there i think he could actually the the home run rate could increase from where it is now. That would be something that would happen with lack of ride, right?

Because you would throw it high in the zone, and as the weather warms, those turn into homers. So just given the fact that he's 39, and I wouldn't take him in the first round. But Shane McClanahan, man, everything that I wanted him to do stuff-wise, he's done. He's added ride to his fastball. His fastball shape is better. The fastball velo is really good. There's nothing

he even increased the drop on his breaking balls. you know he's keeping uh that slider at 89 apparently there's a a thing from a driveline guy that was showing that uh if you throw a slider that's over 85 miles per hour it's almost hard to have a bad one um and so you know he throws a really hard slider has a really good curve has improved the shape on everything. And I asked him about it. And it was the simplest thing. It was funny, too, because they were locked out, right?

And they didn't have coaches. And I was like, so you threw in front of the machines and the coaches told you what numbers to look for? And he's like, no, it didn't strike me that he's that kind of guy. He's like, no, i just changed one cue i went from you know trying to throw with velo like trying to really muscle up and throw with arm speed and and throw it hard because he had the tommy johns and the velo didn't come back and then the velo finally came and so he'd been really obsessed with velo for so long. And he said, now that I kind of felt like the Velo was there, my cue was to spin it as well as I could,

to just to spin the ball as much as I could. And so I think he, just that one cue, improved his spin efficiency, improved the ride on his fastball and the drop on his curveballs. Like everything got better. And it was one little thing, one little change in the way he was thinking.

So one little change, one little change in the way he was thinking. One little change, Velo the same, command's pretty good, two breaking balls. I was a little bit nervous about the shape of the fastball and now I'm not. Shane McClanahan coming to the first round, please. We can give him

Buehler's spot directly to say he's picked 15 now. He's the pitcher you're taking at the 1-2 turn we still got too many hitters though yeah we still got too many hitters I mean Betts stays in I guess Tucker has to come out maybe Tucker is a second rounder Tucker and Bowe would both have to come out

and then Rivera has to come down just slightly it's the only way the math works as it stands right now. Sorry, guys. Acuna is a Hall of Fame-type talent. I'm sorry. I'm just glad he's healthy again.

It's much more fun having him back out there doing his thing. Let's get to our prospect of the week selections. I'm going to kick it over to you first, who has caught your eye looking at the minor leagues here over the last week or so. Well, I was texting a contact about Kyle Harrison, and they were like, yeah, he's legit. He's ready, and he'll be up I don't know how soon. Nobody really wants to talk about that piece.

That's actually hard to get someone to admit. But they're like, he's a beast. And then they were like, but have you heard of Mason Black? And I had not myself and just perusing the numbers what was amazing was

he's given up seven earned runs for his minor league career. Now, it's only 40 in the third innings, but that's still pretty nice. That's an ERA that starts with one. Wicked high strikeout rates, a swing strike rate over 15% for his career in the minor leagues. He's given up one home run in those 40 innings. He's given up one home run in those 40 innings. He's killing it. I was looking at the Fangraph's grades,

and it looked like maybe he's a change-up guy. So I said, you know, but is he a change-up guy? Because those guys make me a little bit nervous. And he said, nope. The sweeper that everyone loves right now in baseball is his main off-speed. His fastball is up to 98, and it has carry and run, two things I like to hear.

Mason Black, put that in your ear hole. Prospect of the week from me. Mason Black, a good sleeper, a guy that I don't think is ranked on a lot of overall lists either. I've got a pitcher, Dax Fulton, in the Marlins system. The name might be a little familiar because he was a Tommy John high schooler that the Marlins took in the 2020 draft. They got him in the second round, and I think they signed him for an overslot bonus because he had other options. But he's a 6'7", 225-pound lefty, and he's finally fully healthy again. Pitched a bit at high A at the end of last season.

So far this year has a K rate just under 32%. Control is solid. Hasn't allowed a home run so far. There's big velo. There's better command than expected. And there's probably two quality secondary pitches on top of that fastball. So yet another pitcher in the Marlins system. And probably a guy that because of the pedigree and now that he's showing he's healthy is going to fly up prospect lists the longer the season goes on.

If he keeps pitching like this, maybe a guy that pops on some top 100 lists within the next few months. It's amazing how tall he is. I remember watching a roundtable with Eric Langenhagen at Arizona Fall League and saying, and this was when people were very excited about Sean Newcomb and him saying, you know, sometimes it takes, yeah, maybe he will figure it out, but sometimes it takes these really tall guys longer to kind of get their limbs all going in the right direction and like figure it out. So that just occurs to me when I hear these 6'7", but real interesting arm there. And an organization that's done a really good job developing pitching in recent years too.

So I think that gives me the extra little nudge of confidence that if I'm trying to make a trade in a dynasty league or looking to pick someone up and stash in dynasty league, it might actually be the kind of pickup that pays off in a big way. Yeah. Like I'm considering, uh, trading, uh, for Ezekiel Tobar and, um, in a, in an honor league where I'm just trading away a rental and, you know, just taking a shot at that guy. And I was like, you know, I don't know how i feel looks pretty good you know i'm into him he's we've talked about him on this podcast and i was like well you know at least he's gonna go to colorado probably you know like at least that's where he's gonna hit when he lands so even if it does take a little time to get going the the park will uh cover it i mean brandon

rogers just hit three homers. So I think I'm going to take that deal pretty soon. Yeah, Brandon Rodgers having a month and a couple of days, so it's good for him if you've been patient with Brandon Rodgers so far. Andy Andres, if you're listening, I will take that deal in a second. Maybe I have one little more

wrinkle to it. Always negotiating even through the actual pod itself we had a question from clinton come in about in-season strategy chasing or punting wins and he's just curious how we think about wins in a roto league clinton is currently 10th out of 15 teams and wins anchored by an ace corbin burns who has been awesome but only has three wins. In a situation like this, do you start chasing more starting pitcher volume with two-star pitchers, trade for pitchers on winning teams, or just say, well, regression of the mean should improve my win totals, thanks Clinton. This is actually one of the harder categories to manage because

if you're doing fine ERA and whip, you don't want to push the volume too hard. If you're doing fine era and whip you don't want to push the volume too hard if you're doing fine in strikeouts as well right if you're lagging in wins and strikeouts that's when i think you start to become a little more aggressive because you've got two categories where you're falling behind and you really can't afford to fall behind in two i think if you're looking at wins most leagues almost everything i'm in now, three or four wins is worth three or four standings points, if not more, because everything is so clustered together. So it really depends on how you're doing in the other volume pitching category. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way to figure that one out.

Wins are tough, but the other thing is positive regression should help. If you just look at last year, the top 30 pitchers by Fangraph's Windsor Rubber Replacement, especially if you just look at the top 15, so you're talking about Corbin Burns and his three wins,

the fewest amount of wins that anybody got was 12, Aaron Nola, but 14 with Corbin Burns himself, Sandy Alcantara, Nathan Evaldi, 13. So he should get to that sort of 12 to 14 level, which means you've got another 10 wins coming from Corbin Burns, most likely. and you know there's Julio Urias leading the way with 23 you would have figured he would have regressed in the wins category because that's just that's the outlier there

but if you're looking at your team and your top two pitchers and you think that they're top 20 pitchers and they have three or four wins I think as they say in French do small like you know it's it's it's cool wait be be patient uh the winds will just come as they

come in in weird bunches and it's a terrible it's a terrible uh category to to to to go after because uh you know there's two top 30 pitchers here. The Phillies guys, you know, one of them, Aaron Nola, got 12 wins. The other one, Zach Wheeler, got 17 wins. I don't even think that going to a certain team, you know, does that for you, figures it out for you. Yes, maybe getting away from Rays. So if you have any Raze that you can trade away,

maybe try to do that. But otherwise, most teams are acting about the same. Yeah, I think it's more about in-start workloads being where you want them to be. And as we were talking about Verlander earlier, his in-start workloads are fine. If his season workload comes up light, it's because he got hurt again

or because they've got some plan that we don't know about to manage him carefully. Just to keep him kind of healthy around the all-star break or something. But they obviously have plans on playing deep into October. He needs to be healthy and pitching well for them late in the year. That's where my little bit of concern comes from. But we mentioned it with Cole earlier. First place team, three wins, four wins. Corbin Burns, first place team, three wins.

As long as they're pitching deep enough into games consistently to be in a position to win, that's all you're looking for. Both of those teams have great bullpens. I know the Yankees had a few injuries to a lot of their depth in the last couple of weeks, but the Brewers' A bullpen behind Corbin Burns, you're going to turn it

over to some combo of Boxberger, Williams, and Hader. That should be consistently good. Right. So I would just look at a lot of the in-start workload usage situations and make sure that there's not some kind of bad bullpen situation cratering a good pitcher. That'd be the only other thing I'm really looking for at a time like this. Got a question here from Perry.

And Perry is in a 30-team dynasty league. I've never played in a league quite that deep. Well, I played in a simulation league that was about that deep because we had huge minor league systems. But anyway, Jack Suwinski is a player that he's interested in that league. Pirates outfielder. And he's starting

to think he's almost playable. I mean, playable in a 30-team league is basically just having a job. So Perry points to the barrel rate being good and his rest of season projections calling for an improved walk rate. Is there a good tool that you can use to evaluate a player making the jump from double A? Because I think Christopher Murrell's in the same boat in Chicago, right? Where he also made the leap from AA straight to the big leagues and so far looks pretty interesting. Yeah, I think I don't make that much of a distinction

from where they're jumping from because AAA is kind of where you stick your extra guys. It's kind of where you stick your third center fielder and your fourth short stop and your your fourth catcher you know um so i don't i don't think that skipping triple a means as much as it might have in the past um but i just use the same tools as i always do look at the the uh chase rate and the barrel rate to to get a sense of their their sense of the zone and then their maybe their swing strike rate and their strikeout rate to get a sense of their ability to make contact i think swinsky's uh possible failing there is um is that contact

ability so i'm not sure that he's going to hit for a great average but you know looking at that chase rate where it is, it's at least average or a little bit better. And then looking at his history of walk rates in minor leagues, I would assume that the walk rate would come up, get him an OBP at least over 300 to pair with decent power. So I liked him better, for example, than the other Pirate call-up, Cal Mitchell. And so, you know, that's just kind of perusing their different skill sets and stats.

I'll take Sawinski. Yeah, I'm a lot like you, I think, in that I don't really worry about making the leap from double-A. I'm just looking at the core skills, I think. worry about making the leap from AA. I'm just looking at the core skills. I think Murrell is not only showing power and speed, but he's not swinging at a ton of pitches outside the zone. A 28.6% O-swing percentage

is really good for a guy seeing big league pitching for the first time. He's got a double digit walk rate. Plenty of opportunities for the Cubs right now too. The barrel rate is a little bit low, but with a max EV over 113 and 67 plate appearances, I'm going to give him more time to show that barrel rate,

especially with the 259 ISO in AA this year. Yeah, and the hard hit rate's not bad. 45.2% hard hit rate for Morel. I think he's more than holding his own right now. How much time that buys him? I mean, probably three or four weeks. He could have a massive slump and go back down or go see AAA for the first time.

That's entirely possible, but he's moved up. I put some NFC bids in on him. I've got a couple of shares where I was just like, there's enough here that's good. I think he's addable in all 15 team leagues. He's knocking on the door for 12 team leagues, especially if you just kind of need to get lucky on somebody, He's addable in all 15 team leagues. He's knocking on the door for 12 team leagues, especially if you need to get lucky on somebody,

especially with a little bit of speed. If you're looking to get lucky in a 12 team, would I drop a Joey Votto for him? I don't know. That's the kind of decision you're making in 12 team leagues. It always comes back to Votto. 12 is tough, but that he's leading off again, I think, is pretty interesting.

Votto? No, that's morale that he's leading off now. There was a really cool little tidbit going around Twitter today that he was about to step to the plate in a walk- a walk-off scenario yeah yeah it was 10th inning game against and he looked back at wilson contraris uh and wilson contraris that like said take a deep breath like just did he didn't say anything but he kind of was like breathe in take a deep breath and morel like like did exactly what he said did it took a deep breath walked to the plate and hit a walk-off sack fly. It was a veteran presence moment.

It's important to have that. Helps those young players along. Perry had one other question that I think is a little more of a broadly interesting question for people. He's got Shane Boz, Grayson Rodriguez, and Edward Cabrera either on the brink of returning from injury or on the brink of debuting in the case of Rodriguez or in the case of Cabrera had recently debuted. With Boz, like my expectations that he can be everything we hoped he could be at the end of last year. So I have no, unless we get some kind of indication that there's lost Velo or something, there's nothing has changed my expectations for Shane Boz. Rodriguez just got hurt.

He left to start with a lat strain. I think that's what they finally diagnosed him with. So it might be a bit longer before we get a chance to see him in the big leagues. But Edward Cabrera is kind of the wild card in all this. Oh, my God. Stuff's really good. 95-mile-an-hour change-up. That was ridiculous.

And it is a change-up. And it is a pure filth. By movement differential, it is a change-up. By movement differential, it is a change-up. Is it... I don't think the control issues we saw last year, because we hadn't really seen those in most of his stops in the minor leagues, I don't think that's really who he is as a player. I'm curious what pitching plus sees in terms of his ability to locate.

Yeah. I don't have yesterday's numbers in yet um but uh i do i always had him down as a guy that um was a good bet because he had the good command numbers i mean the good stuff numbers uh and location takes longer to stabilize so uh you know you kind of you kind of read between the lines and say here here's a guy with a low walk rate, good stuff, you know, and, you know, weird poor location numbers in a small sample last year. He was definitely a guy that, you know, I was like, that's a guy you want to bet on right there. So now he's up and he looks beautiful. The changeup is amazing because it's nice, 95 miles an hour. And so that's like a three to

four mile gap off his fastball. And you might say, well, that's just a sinker. Well, sinkers are more like one to two miles an hour gap. So it's a slightly bigger gap. But then you say, well, what if it's just like a power sinker and you say with just a a bigger gap well it has a 10 uh 10 inch vertical difference between uh his fastball and his change up um and that was in in cores so it could be it could be bigger than that the average vertical difference between a fastball and even a sinker a four seam and a sinker is is half that so it it did uh lead to some interesting discussion on Twitter about creating a new category especially over at BP where they have a sweeper category on their

PitchFX leaderboards so now they have a sweeper we have cutters and sliders and yet we only have basically change up and split finger and is there room for a new pitch designation and what should we call it?

A splinker? Not that. A sync up? No. I think probably the best one is just power change. I think of those three options, I like power change the best. That sounds pretty simple as far as explaining what it actually is and why it's so different. Yeah, I think the hybrid words, we don't want any more hybrid words jammed in there.

It's like all the baseball nicknames, A-Rod, E-Rod, B-Rod, C-Rod. Enough rods. Yeah. Enough rods. Inanimate rod. Thanks for those questions, Perry. One more item to get to. It's time for beer of the month.

You're in San Diego. I'm in San Diego. So I'm going to need some guidance. You know, I'm downtown. Gas lamp that area. I got access to the good stuff, I think, around here. slant that area. I got access to the good stuff, I think, around here. But I did have a recommendation closer to home, air quotes, off screen. Home is temporarily, at least. It's the Bay Area. And there was a really good brewery that I stumbled into this week in San Carlos,

so kind of a mid-peninsula place. And it blue oak brewing and they had a little bit of everything they had a they had a barrel aged belgian that my father-in-law really liked i didn't try that one they had some good hazies but what i really liked was temporal displacement and i would say in terms of like a comp it's it's probably close to like an alvarado street quality place like i thought the beer was at that sort of level it's like definitely worth the stop and i made another stop just the the day before that because i've been on vacation for a few days at hapas brewing and they have multiple locations i think their main brewery is in san jose and they have a second location a tap room in los gatos i was at at the smaller one in Los Gatos. I would say

that's worth a stop if you're in the area as well. The thing that they both do, both of these breweries did, they've got hard seltzers on tap. I think we talked about this maybe, I don't know, a month or a month ago. Last time we had beer of the month, which was probably like six months ago, it's, I think, increasingly important for breweries to have some alternatives available for people who don't necessarily like beer. Like, I realize that you go to a brewery for beer, but not everyone in your group is excited about beer. My wife likes this hard seltzer thing.

Yeah. So, they had like a blackberry hard seltzer, I think, at Hoppus. They had a watermelon lime one at blue oak and those were both really good i just the and they also had a non-alcoholic hop water at hop us i'd never actually seen that anywhere before so i think that was basically like a seltzer that would have some qualities i think it's even called hop water something but the lagunitas has one that's really good and that that's packaged and sent around So if you're looking for a non-alcoholic brew, that's actually, I like that better than non-alcoholic beers because it's almost something different. It gives you the sense of beer, but it

doesn't make you think, well, this is not as good as the real thing because it's not the real thing. It's something else. It's hop water. Yeah. And I thought the hop water was just a really good idea because it's like, you know, you want to have a DD, right? You can't always get a ride from Lyft, Uber, whatever, wherever you're going. You can't always walk back to where you're going, but your driver might want to have something not plain water. So hop water, I think is a really good way to offer up something different. for anybody that is visiting Stanford or on the peninsula and they want the best beer experience they can have, I think I've got one for you, including Blue Oak. I think you can, uh, without incurring too much cost. And in fact, uh, by using the train, um, I believe you can hit all of these with varying degrees of ease, uh, because the train, it depends on the stops and stuff. But you could go to Blue Oak Brewing and Ale Arsenal in San Carlos. And in fact, Ale Arsenal is right next to the Refuge, which has amazing pastrami sandwiches. So if you wanted to eat there and

then drink at Ale Arsenal, you do well. Ale Arsenal has beers to go which is fun then you can stop by the best beer bar on the peninsula gourmet house stat and that's in redwood city uh just uh you know a few miles down uh uh the the street from there uh and they've got beers to go they usually have cellar maker to go so you could hit up basically the best beer bar and uh best brewery in the uh in the peninsula uh within uh two stops on the train there um or a pretty easy uh uber situation depending on on where you're staying and where you're living but uh that's uh kind of a cool little beer corridor there uh that you've uh uncovered my yeah my beer of uh the month i was looking through uh my pictures and um the honorable mentions uh go to other half 11 pounds which i had on the beach the other day

um and showed up because of the firestone walker invitational so other half and trillium the other uh the nelson dry hop fort point uh those two uh were in town because of uh the uh the the firestone walker invitational also the the best beer festival that I've ever been to. And I've been to the big ones, the one in Colorado. I've been to a lot of beer festivals. I'm kind of out on them. It's kind of annoying. Very crowded.

Very drunk people. Lines. But the Firestone Walker Invitational is cool because it's invitational. It's not like, oh, hey, this brewery owned by Anheuser-Benz can give us $15,000 for a

corner booth or whatever. They're like, no, we want other half because we like their beers. We want this because we like their beers. They have excellent, excellent beers. i would say it's the best uh beer festival and it might be this weekend but any case the winner i i could tell i love beer uh the winner uh is one that my mother sent me hi mom uh she sent me this great one church music music from the Shop Beer Company in Arizona. And I believe you mentioned that was in Tempe.

And it was just a really good hazy. And from a place that does not necessarily always register nationally for sure. And even in Arizona, I think most peopleoenix as uh the spot for great beer and might even uh put flagstaff at second place because of um some of the great breweries up there uh tower road is is one of my favorites uh but yeah shop beer company uh church music thanks mom beer of the month yeah if your mom is sending you beer uh your life is pretty not something i predicted no i did not predict no no but it is fine yeah she was just like i really like this beer i'm gonna send it to you i'm like yes thank you

well we have to go and i have to take care of a few San Diego business related matters. I'm going to go to the bar and enjoy some of these delicious beers in just a couple of hours. But I've produced this podcast, then go do that. You can walk to Half Door, Lost Abbey, the church one that I was at that's so great. And get a quick Uber to North Park and Pure Project and you're getting most of the best beer

in San Diego. It's a good spot to be, but if you're enjoying this podcast on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, we'd greatly appreciate that. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to this channel. On Twitter, you can find Eno at EnoSeries. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper.

That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.