Rates & Barrels - 2022 Relief Pitcher Review

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Eno and DVR begin their 2022 Positional Reviews series with relievers. As the top closer shuffle places, does it make sense to target top-end sources of saves? Will the implementation of the Pitch Clock prove particularly costly for older relievers? Which young risers will catch the most helium on the heels of productive 2022 seasons?  Rundown 1:24 Final Roster Adjustments 7:26 Lessons Learned from Josh Hader & Liam Hendriks 10:32 Re-Ordering the Top-End Options? 16:04 Treading Carefully Around the Back of the Top 100 23:40 Aiming for 70 Saves in 2023? 27:22 Role Uncertainty From the Third Tier 32:48 Draft-and-Hold v. Leagues w/Moves 39:13 Aging Curves on Relievers 45:23 Embracing (Or Not Fearing) Committees Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Try Tim's new Sweet Chili Chicken Loaded Wraps and Bowls today! Take your taste buds on an exciting new adventure for lunch or dinner with our delicious new Sweet Chili Sauce. It's time for Sweet Chili Chicken. It's time for Tim's. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, October 3rd. The season should be over today in our minds, but it is not. There are still three days worth of games. There is still one playoff spot.

worth of games there are still one playoff spot i think that is actually up for grabs and i feel like it is slipping away from my grasp every minute you know every single minute of every day i feel worse and worse about the brewers chances of playing in the postseason i have i have two two maybe i have three leagues that are gonna come down down to the last day. So that's my equivalent of your Brewers feeling. My main, which has the most money riding on it, goes from second to fourth every day in the back. And I'm just like, no! I'll take third at this point. I finally got clipped out of the money, I think, in my big auction.

I think I'm just far enough back now where I'm not going to catch the teams in cash. But I have other leagues where I'm being chased. So I'm just trying to hold on for a few more days and make it a pretty good season. So we'll see. I may have this regret. I chose to put... So I needed... I really need Ks, and it's like really close and wins and so i had two dollars left so i made two i made a copy of two transactions right where

it was like all the starters that would start and we're talking about louis varland was like the last name on and it was only like there was like three or four pitchers that i wanted to roster that had a start left in the season yeah not many so i put like i put four relievers i put four stars together and they made a copy of it uh for the second dollar right and then i was looking around i was like wow you know it's pretty close in homers and rvis too and i kind of like what michael massey's doing and so then i put michael massey on top of the second one and if i lose by if i get out of second by like one or two k's i'm going to be killing myself but of course like you know the last three days were also terrible because you know somebody like drew rasmussen you know it says he's scheduled to pitch against Boston on the last day.

No. No. No. I don't think that's happening. And I think it could happen to anybody. I've got John Heasley, and I'm like, well, he's a young guy. He needs the outing. But anything could happen between now and Wednesday

where they're just like, nah, he's got a blister. Like, nah, he's not feeling good. We're just going to do a bullpen game or something. I'm staring at this like the last three days being like, who of these guys is actually... Like Ken Waldachuk, probably going to start on the last day of the season. But maybe not. I think with someone like Waldachuk,

it's a little easier to determine whether or not he's hit a predetermined innings limit because if they weren't going to start him, what incentive did the A's have to hide that? Whereas a team that is trying to reset everything for the postseason or maybe it just has innings concerns about someone they're relying on. They might make a decision to go shorter with a start. I want you to throw, but you're going to throw two, you're going to throw three.

Rasmussen could just throw two innings. Just to keep the arm loose. He's not going to pitch again for a few more days, so just throw one. Throw one inning and throw your side session in a game. And then all my drafting holds, it's like, well, let me take out all these useful starters

and put in Merriweather and Griffin Jacks. Yeah. Because they're not pitching. So anyway, three leagues coming down to it where I can finish. If it all goes right, I could win two and finish second in the main. That's how close it is. If it all goes wrong, I could go third, second, fourth. Third, second, fourth.

Okay. That's still – That'd be pretty bad. That's a tough way to go out given where you're at right now. If you were climbing to those positions, I think you'd say it's a pretty good year. But if you slip to those positions, you'd be furious because you saw what could have been. Yeah. One of my leagues is funny because uh it we do

combine roto and head-to-head so in that one i'm jockeying for like anywhere from third to first i think it's still on the on the board but i'm also in the head-to-head finals and so it's actually really interesting because it makes it harder to do things like punt a stat right or like you know even this head-to-head matchup i'm so close in the roto uh that i don't need saves i could go to all holds lineup if i wanted but in my head-to-head matchup i need another save so it makes it makes it for interesting like sort of tactical decisions i i kind of like it it does require work like we actually have to have somebody with engineering, with programming skills,

because they're actually taking stats from the API from CBS and creating a Roto leaderboard for a dead league. That's the Pitchfork League. I like that one. Take fantasy baseball and make it more complicated. Yeah, right. Require more advanced skills to play. You need a programmer in your league.

What's wrong with me is that I'm like, that sounds pretty fun. And I know that the correct way to get more people to play this game is to go the other direction. Not those kind of barriers to entry. Oh, I'm sorry. You don't have a programmer in your league?

Well, you're just going to have to play 10-team head-to-head then. Yes. Good luck with that. Auctions with blindfolds on. 10-team head-to-head. No technology. Yeah, I mean, I'm sitting on a few leads right now. I think if the season ended right now, I'd win seven different leagues.

I don't think that's good. I mean, something's got to go. Enough of those are close enough where it could end up being four. That's better than me. I'm going to win like three or four. It's not been my best year, but my average finish, I think, is still going to be something like three out of 15. That's good.

That's a good year. It's a good year. It's a good year. I would be happy with that. Any year that you set a points record by 6 points in a league that's been around since 1975, I guess I'll take it. Yeah, that's a good one.

Alright, well, the main focus of this episode is going to be Reliever Review because the season is almost over we're going to start the series now because if we didn't i think it would take until like january to finish it so the hope is that we'll be able to wrap this up in the next six or seven weeks preview right we put a p in front and then we go forward start all over again so relievers my my dumb way of thinking was they can't change that much in three days i mean hopefully everyone just stays healthy because i guess that's the one thing that would really

change our minds about even still from a value perspective it wouldn't change the season enough for it to matter we always take a look back kind of think about what was going on back during draft season if you go back to draft season, in this case, I was just looking at the first week of April because of the delayed start to the 2022 season. You might remember it was Josh Hader and Liam Hendricks as the big two. They were the consensus top two closers. They were often going around pick 30.

If we're talking about NFBC leagues, probably a little bit later than that. If we're talking more about Yahoo, CBS, ESPN type home leagues. Zero shares. Actually, I lie. in my main i have hater i picked him up two weeks ago on waivers so wow uh zero that's actually i mean i think that is a little bit illustrative illustrative illustrative of uh josh hater. That's the English pronunciation, right? I know, sorry. No, it's okay. I'll just...

Hader did not return value? He's pretty bad on the auction calculator. Hader was a $0 pitcher, according to the auction calculator. That's a big yikes for me dude and you know what what's funny is that his stuff is still pretty much there you know i'm i might have picked him if he'd slid to me anywhere but the command was legendarily bad this year it was i think we've wanted to know for a few weeks what did the end of the season look like and what will the postseason look like for Hayter. If he goes back to dominant looking self.

He's the one that actually there could be a lot of change to team now. Yeah. And the time we start doing the previews. Take a small sample of second half innings and tack on another small sample of postseason innings and draw a meaningful conclusion from that. Good luck. The best I can do is if you go back to September 7th, he's 5 for 5, I believe, in save chances during that span. 12 Ks in 8 and 2 thirds innings. Only one walk.

No homers allowed. That looks like hater. Yeah, it's command. I mean, he still doesn't have great command like he'll he'll be like trying to throw a pitch up and in and it'll end up out and you know out and up you know but i think he's either finding better places to miss or just getting you know refining the command just a little bit so right all of this is to say i've started to sketch out those 2023 rankings a little bit i I think Hayter is still going to be in what was previously the circle of trust, which is about eight to 10 closers that we wanted to have on our teams. That's the furthest he could fall. And there's a chance that he's still probably in that top five.

Fifth or something. Yeah. Fourth. fourth yeah the on the rough draft he's seventh right now but that's like seventh with an up arrow it still looks pretty good most of the guys in the top group are still going to be in or near the top group the order is just different i mean hendrix hendrix has done a lot since coming off the il to slowly push himself back up the board as well i I could look at Liam Hendricks right now and say that he has a case to probably be closer to, closer three off the board. He ended up in a relatively down year, seventh on the auction calculator.

However, when you look, and here's the auction calculator results. It was Klasse first, Helsley second, Edwin Diaz third, Daniel Bard fourth, Jordan Romano fifth, Kenley Jansen sixth, Liam Hendricks seventh. So there are guys ahead of him that I will not put ahead of him. I'm not, Kenley Jansen's, the shape of Kenley Jansen's season doesn't

leave me in a good spot with him. Daniel Bard still pitches in Colorado. So those two, at the very least, are going to go slot behind Hendricks. So I don't know. It's somewhat tempting when you look at it to be like, man, that's just the order. It's like Clase, Helsley, Diaz, Romano, Hendricks, Hader. Argue me off of that. I think you have toley Diaz Romano Hendricks hater like like argue me off of that you know I think you have to

put Diaz at the top of your closer rankings right now not because of the entrance video or the entrance music but because the strikeout rate is just on its own level and you're talking about a guy that has comparable control to the other guys in this group, even though it's slightly a higher walk rate than Hendricks and Presley, and it's a higher walk rate than Klasse. Just the best all-around closer right now based on skills. I was looking at your pitching model. Things look fine there, too. This group stacks up very similarly to each other across the board.

Klasse has better stuff plus and better location plus, so he ends up as a better pitching plus candidate than Edwin Diaz, but it's instructive to remember that stuff plus is trained against all outs where, you know,

fantasy is based on strikeouts. So Klasse's cutter is a an elite sort of run suppression pitch, but isn't necessarily one that returns as many strikeouts as Diaz will have. So, yeah, I mean, I can agree with that. I was speaking a little bit more generally of, like, what my top seven, who's in my top seven. Who's in it, yeah.

Yeah, I would agree. I think there's going to be some ordering concerns. Whereas, like, you know, like Helsley, how much do you worry about someone who's sort of come on the scene so quickly? His pitching plus, though, is very good. His stuff plus is very good. Romano's had some ups and downs. But, you know, going into the season,

I was always trying to get someone that you refer to the circle of trust. I was always trying to get like the last one of that. So going into the season in my drafts, I had a goal of getting as much Ryan Presley and Jordan Romano as I could. Yeah. And until Presley had that knee injury pop up, I was very much in on Presley. He was the guy I wanted the most. I think he's my most rostered pitcher across all my leagues this year. And that was with a late season move away from him and even backing off some of the top end closers because the prices kept ticking up even more

as we got closer to opening day. But Presley's velocity has come back a bit in the second half. So I think any lingering concerns we had through the first half about the Velo being down, those have been erased. And he's got the contract. I don't really see warts there. Even when his Velo was down, his stuff plus was decent because he's just got an amazing breaking ball. It's like why Rich Hill has just always still had pretty good stuff plus

because he's just a great breaking ball. So I think I believe in him. I do. I do think he's maybe last in the circle of trust this year. You know, maybe Hader and him are last in the top seven, eight. Because of, you know, just over over time time, relievers lose velocity and their performance is tied more to their velocity. So just having a season where he had a lost velocity, that worries me.

Plus he's an old reliever and there's going to be some effect of the pitch clock, I believe. And I think that if there is a pitch clock effect, it's going to be mostly to older relievers. So all those combined, I think he's there is a pitch clock effect, it's going to be mostly to older relievers. So, you know, all those combined. I think he's still in the circle of trust, but he's right at the end. And I have to say, the end of the circle of trust is where seasons can be like you can lose your league. Like, I honestly, I kind of think that. Because if I look back at where the end of the circle of trust was

going into the season, just looking at this, for me, Kimbrel, Chapman, and Gallegos. So I liked Romano, and you're saying that he had sort of an 85 ADP going in? Yeah, about 85. Chapman, 82. Kimbrel, 88. Gallegos, 117. That was death, dude.

That was an awful place to live. And even though I plucked Lerano out of it, I feel good about that. I do have leagues where I missed Romano and ended up with Kimbrel and Gallegos, and that was no good. So, you know, it may be instructive once you find, like you're identifying your circle of trust going into the second season. It may be instructive to really hone in on the second-to-last guy so that you're not getting that Kimbrel situation or that Chapman situation,

especially with this tweak of going to a pitch clock and these older pitchers being slower. As bad or old as Chapman has been, do we think he's going to get better? Presley could be a Kimbrell or Chapman. You know what I mean? You're just talking about a guy. Kimbrell and Chapman still look good in the Stuff Plus model, right? But they're older. They've shown some weaknesses.

Is Presley the next Chapman or Kimbrell for next year? Always a chance. I think the age argument is the best possible argument you can make. He seems better. The skills difference too, though. I think about Chapman's always having issues with walks. He's always had that.

Kimbrell, in more recent years, has struggled with his command. Those guys had, but even though they had even higher strikeout ceilings, they did have a clearer downside when they were good. Whereas Presley

should age more gracefully, but you're right. The changing variable with the pitch clock is at least worth keeping on our minds. I expect them to be in my group of closers that I still want, especially if the price isn't higher than it was this year. If it actually comes down a little bit, I think that still is going to make a lot of sense. You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example.

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Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. Where now meets next. I keep looking at Rysel Iglesias and thinking what exactly did anyone do wrong by drafting him? This seems like a bad luck sort of outcome, that he was traded and went like a month without a save

before he got traded just because the Angels weren't creating save chances. I'm convinced that there's nothing wrong in your process if you were drafting Iglesias in that range throughout this draft season because skills-wise, he was still good. Didn't he get some value out of that? Yeah, he got a half season's worth. He got 17 saves. He got half as many saves as he had last season.

Strikeout rate was down just a little bit from a year ago. Skills are still very good. He's back in the top 20, it looks like. Which is disappointing given the extra amount you had to pay, but at the same time like he's hanging out with a lot of waiver wire closers like david robertson john duran and jorge lopez what are you gonna do take a look at some some guy that has the job and good skills on a good team that gets drafted in the top 75 overall and say oh there's a chance this team's gonna crater

and if they crater they might actually trade him we don't know like that that's, there's a chance this team's going to crater. And if they crater, they might actually trade him. We don't know. There's nothing actionable there, I guess, is what I keep coming back to. That's just tough break. And what I like about Iglesias is that he could easily be the closer in Atlanta next year. And one thing that we just learned, I think, a little bit from Chapman and Kimbrell, is that these older closers with poor command,

like it's pitching plus, I have to remind myself all the time because I'm so into stuff plus, it's pitching plus that does really well predicting how a reliever does, right? It is important to have command. And so if you look at Kimbrell, yeah, his stuff plus is still good.

His command is is actually above average is a little bit surprising uh but chapman is the real obvious one where his stuff plus is still top 10 in the league uh his location plus is 88.6 like i like there's nobody else as low as that you know and and even last year he wouldn't have had that. So other really high stuff, low location guys that people might depend on next year. Clay Holmes is pretty bad. Ryan Stanek is pretty bad.

Josh Hader has a 91 location plus. Maybe he's actually your next Aroldis Chapman. So it is instructive to sort of remember that command matters and that, especially with an older pitcher, they can't just outstuff their bad command at some point.

I think that's the story of Chapman, really. Right. And I think with Rysel Iglesias, we've talked about him before as a closer that doesn't have a prototypical closers arsenal, right? More pitches than most closers with fastball, slider, change all being used heavily. That, to me, gives him a softer landing as well. It's sort of like Presley.

I do think you're right to put Hayter and Chapman in the same bucket because of their command issues, because of their ceilings. They seem like they'd be on more similar paths to each other so but i still i still like the idea of identify a circle of trust five to seven pitchers that you like that you think are number one closers and will keep the job all year that of deal. And then don't buy the first two and don't buy the last two. That's, that's the, that's the one like caveat I've tried to put because I've been fairly successful with believers this year.

The model has been really great for that. And, you know, I think it's, it's going to be again, but, but you know, when I made the mistake of being like,

well, I'll just get this last, the last guy in my circle of trust, right? get this last guy in my circle of trust, right? Gallegos is in the circle of trust, right? No, he isn't. So I like this idea of trying to play the middle on that because I'm still not going to buy a closer in the second or third. Team intentions, I think, can still be pretty difficult to read.

I mean, I think until recently, Gallegos was still showing up and getting a decent number of saves, even though I think a lot of the saves he was getting in August were on the back of Helsley pitching in front of him. Helsley pitched twice. Helsley got the win.

Oh, Helsley got the eighth, yeah. And Gallegos ended up getting a save there. But I think seven of the last eight saves the Cardinals have generated have gone to Helsley in September. So that one might be tilting far enough in Helsley's favor where he ends up inside the circle, but maybe near that back end range. I thought Corey Knable from a skills perspective because he'd done it before

and because it looked like he was healthy a year ago. I actually thought that was a good fit in Philly. I thought he was a good second closer if you didn't get two out of the group initially back when I was trying to get two from that first eight to ten i thought taylor rogers actually made a lot of sense in san diego the home run issues he's been dealing with more recently or if it's surprising to me i'm not really i'm just not really sure how major league teams view him i think i'm i'm a little bit disoriented when it comes to understanding how he'll be used because the twins never really, they didn't always use him as a regular closer. The Padres did, but then the Padres were willing to trade him in the hater deal.

And then, of course, in Milwaukee, he ended up being a fallback option to Devin Williams after the trade. So I don't know if Rodgers hits free agency and gets scooped up and some team says, you're our guy, go get 30 saves. I think he's capable of it in the right circumstances. You're our guy. Go get 30 saves. I think he's capable of it in the right circumstances. I just don't know if I'm willing to take that chance, team unknown in the early part of the draft season. Yeah, I mean, he's played his way out of any sort of circle of trust.

He's at this point a guy that you pick up in the endgame because you think he might end up closing for the Pirates or closing for somebody where he gets picked up. I don't think he's second tier. But looking at that second tier, the thing that I think is just that's awful. And so I wanted to look real quickly at my leaderboard in the main for saves here. Dude, I got 58 saves saves that's good for sixth and this is a league where i kind of messed up like i think this is a league where i had gallegos or something um 77 is first place in saves and and and that's And that's not always instructive

because that's the one guy who bought Hendricks and bought three closers really high, right? Maybe it is. I'm not actually looking at the details. I like to look about second or third. If you can get second or third in every category, then you're going to win the league. Yeah, it's a good way to look at it.

69 is third and 70 is second. So I think 70 saves is your benchmark. Now think about this. Let's say you do do what I'm saying and you've got the front two, you're not going to get in the back two, and you're getting someone that's third to fifth. You're getting Ryan Helsley or you're getting who's going to's third to fifth. You're getting Ryan Helsley, or you're getting... Who's going to be third to fifth?

Maybe you get Hendricks again. You know, maybe you get... I mean, Presley would, I think, be at the back end. Yeah, let's say you just get Hendricks again, all right? You got the fourth best reliever on your board, and you got him in the fifth round or whatever. How many saves are you banking for? Are you thinking?

35, 40? Can you really project anyone for more than 30? Because even as great as Edwin Diaz has been on a team that's been battling for or holding on to first place most of the year? You just spent to get a good one, right? Yeah, you spent to get a good one. You're not skimping. Let's give you 35. That's half of the saves you need. Right. Well, if you get two

very good closers, you can get it from two. The odds of being right on both and getting them is hard. This is my argument. Don't get a second closer. Don't buy in that tier. Listen how bad this is. This is the closers twos, right?

Knievel, Rogers, Barlow. He's the good one. Barlow's pretty good. Soto, Kittredge, McGee, Doval, Barnes, Bednar, Trevino. Listen, what's your success rate there? It seems like it's less than 50%. We could count it. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

I mentioned 11, and I call the misses. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 out of 11 were misses. How many of those players did we like based on skills though yeah okay i ended up with some of those hits like you know i liked soto the best out of that group i you know doval was somebody i liked but i was a little bit nervous that they wouldn't give him saves all year i think a lot of people liked bednar i don't know why he came out so cheap if so many people liked him but people liked bednar i didn't really like any of those other guys but i did like, you know,

Kittredge had some good stuff plus numbers. Barnes always has okay stuff plus numbers. And I had, you know, I don't know if I had a share of Rodgers, but there wasn't a reason to hate Rodgers. It was just I don't like shopping in this tier is my overall point. You know what I mean?

And 7 out of 11, even if you think you can identify the 4, it's just not a good place to live. So you identify the 4 in the next group and then just wait forever. Because that doesn't seem like it's worth investment.

Like, what else went in the 150s? I'm sure there were some great position players and starting pitchers that went in the 150s. Well, you're not dealing great position players and starting pitchers that went in the 150s. You're not dealing with role uncertainty with position players in that group. You know the players that are being drafted there as hitters, unless

they are very young players or prospects, their playing time is not going to just disappear or the aspect of their playing time that makes them relevant to our game isn't going to just vanish. Yeah. I think I want to have one closer out of the top 75 picks,

and then I'm going to take 125 picks off from taking closers and then maybe jump in and do two. If I did that last year, I would get Ryan Presley or Jordan Romano, a lot of leagues like that. I would miss out on Bednar and Soto, which I had a lot of leagues that did have that. And then if I just started shopping at 200,

actually, I could get Bednar at 200. Maybe Soto falls to me he was 177 overall uh but I could maybe double tap and get I would get like Bednar and Barlow at 200 or Seawald 288 Seawald should we not be afraid of picking the best reliever in a crowded bullpen that would be part of the best argument for only taking one in the circle and let me back up even more like i am very hesitant to go top top shelf pick 25 pick 30 pick 35 for edwin diaz or class a or whoever ends up there i agree with you that you want to get at least one within this group of seven or eight that we like to try and have a clear 30 with good ratios and a good K rate. And then watching out in this 100 to 200 range totally makes sense. Landmine after landmine.

There's a chance that you'll identify a couple of relievers that do go in that range that you actually like. And if they are there at the appropriate time, you can take them. This is a general outline of a strategy. This is not a rigid, you must do this this way. This is just a way to think about it. If you're waiting, I think you're probably taking two chances in what look like clear committees

on guys with good skills. So that would be the Paul Seawald types, right? You have to get two players like that because there's a chance that one gets a smaller share than expector, gets no share at all, and then you're left with just the one closer you have.

And if you're pushing 30 to 35 saves, you're probably sitting more like three to five standings points in the category, most likely, somewhere in that range. You're not at the bottom, but you're chasing on the wire throughout the season,

which is fine because if you do find one, you'll get mid-pack and you can still be okay mid-pack and how many how many do we find this year i mean from out of nowhere ryan helsley second best reliever yeah ryan helsley for sure best reliever fourth best reliever daniel bard clay holmes nine ninth is Evan Phillips but that's it's without the saves I'm not going to shop for that Felix Bautista

yeah out of nowhere did Devin Williams get drafted a lot I think Williams was drafted cut and then picked up after the trade right because you can't wait forever. Jason Adam, Alexis Diaz are $6 pitchers

with saves. Jorge Lopez was basically either free at the end of the draft or quickly an early season pickup. He was valuable for a while. So they happen. They emerge a lot, all the time. I think I like this idea of you know the perfect

bill in the perfect pen going like if i went back in time it would be romano uh at you know maybe i have to jump them a little bit to make sure i get them especially in this in this thing that we're talking about you said romano went 85 um that's sixth round. Yeah. And a 15 team or yeah, six round. Let's take, let's say I take them at the end of the fifth. So Romano at 75.

And then I don't jump Bednar or Soto. And I take one of them. I take Bednar or Soto at 205 or 215. Like Bednar's at 215. Right. And then, yeah, it's not a good place to shop like joe barlow robert suarez paul seawald uh bender who's bender anthony bender uh art warren if you shopped in there you got a half season from barlow and a full season from Seawall, but you also missed three times. So I would take one of those guys at 300.

So that's my general approach. David Robertson was actually a decent value late too. Yeah, Romano at 75. And this is not revisionist like, oh yeah, anybody can look back and create the perfect. That's literally what i was my plan was and there are teams where i kind of nailed that so um i want to i'm going to continue that sort of plan where it's like yeah identify a second closer you like buy one but don't buy one in the top 200. Just wait. Whoa, what are you listening to this for?

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for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. I do think there's also a difference. We're at that point in the year where if you play draft and hold, which, you know, those are leagues where you don't get to make in-season pickups, you do have to think about this a little bit differently, especially if you're drafting in the fall or the early part of the winter when there are players that haven't moved yet. You have an even smaller list of players where you kind of understand the role and the situation. So I think you go early and then you speculate

late and you hope to hit. And I think that's where Seawald and Devin Williams were particularly helpful because they still had value even if they weren't closing as often as they're closing right now. So there was another way they could be helpful in those leagues. I think that's... Like I've played some Griffin Jacks. Like in drafting holes. I just needed the innings. I needed some Ks, you know. Didn't end up as a closer, but yeah.

I do agree that maybe I'll take like a closer in the third round in drafting holes. Camilo DelVal for a second, just looking at this group because I'm looking at that cluster of mostly misses. I mean, Lansonanson we talked about me being dumb and in a league where I was just desperate caving in it was an important league where I should have just done something completely different had value somewhere else but you know Camilo Duval I think is a very good reliever I think there's still one more level he can reach

we did see the walk rate tick up a little bit from where it was last season. The K rate is down slightly, but the home run rate improved. And we know the ballpark is good. It seems like they're pretty comfortable using him as that guy. 27 saves to me is a pretty successful season, especially for someone as young as Deval is. So I wonder if he ends up being a good value. He has some crazy up and down over the course of the season and stuff plus i don't even get it in late august he was throwing up 77s and stuff plus f is going on how does that happen uh i do i do know one thing he started the season with lesser velo than the end of the season and stuff plus

really does like the last sort of six to seven appearances of the season where he's kind of living in the 140s for stuff plus uh just to give you a context emmanuel classe was 144 for the season so i do think that duval has uh classlike upside, and I think that's a good name to think of because he is a guy who throws like a 100-mile-an-hour cutter just like class A. It's a little bit worrisome to me that he threw his best velo at the end of the season and in context with beat writers and Gabe Kapler having an open conversation about maybe Duvall hadn't been prepared to throw his best stuff at the beginning of the season.

I don't know. But, you know, I love sort of trying to read between the lines and trying to learn from those sort of things and being like, oh, you know, he doesn't prepare well over the offseason. Yeah, well, he just saw the benefits of increasing his preparation and doing his arm care and just went from sitting like 97, 98 in the early season to sitting at 102 at the end of the season. Maybe he saw the benefits of this. Maybe he's actually learned something from this and he's going to come in next year ready to pump 100s from the beginning of the season. Maybe the communication in different aspects of just the relationship between player and organization

will evolve to the point where they have a better plan together that can be executed. Not that the Giants didn't give it up previously. That's sort of how Kapler put it. We both learned from the course of the season. Like, Duvall...

Like, ranking Duvall versus Presley. That'll be difficult. I mean, I think initially, at least, you're going to see... Duvall probably ends up somewhere in the Gallegos range, like outside the top 100 overall in ADP for the early part of draft season. But you could,

if we're talking about him now and the way you're talking about him as someone that throws that hard, that does have those similarities to Klasé, people are going to see that and understand that. And they're going to gradually become more and more confident in him.

He'll move up draft boards. He's going to get into the circle. And then you're going to have a decision probably not unlike the first time you had to really trust Jordan Romano where you say, okay, do we really believe that he's this good? Is it okay to pay the premium? Is it okay to use pick 80, pick 85, pick 90 on Camilo Duval

and pass on some of those really good hitters? I'm saying that maybe your circle of trust is eight, but Brian Presley and Josh Hader are at the bottom of the circle of trust, and maybe Duval is the guy you have to take ahead of those guys. Wow. Yeah. That is a decision I am not ready to make, which is

tough. Relievers, it's a hard MF in life, dude. Not only, I was looking at this for... Who's the lefty in Miami? I think we mentioned this before. Tanner Scott? No, it was the lefty that they just...

That just came out of nowhere-ish this year for them. I'll find him in a second. Steven Okert. Steven Okert is 31 years old he has been pitching in an organization since 2012 he has 135 major league innings he's a pretty good pitcher this year he oh they say that he was below replacement but i don't believe it. He struck out 29% of the batters he saw this year. Totally usable lefty. He will be a free agent in 2027.

Oh, yeah. He's got the... That's like a worse than Whit Merrifield situation. Oh, my God, dude. He's going to beield situation. Oh my God, dude. He's going to be a free agent in 2027, dude. I don't even know if he's going to get a free agent deal in his life. You know what I mean?

No, he should take an extension. At that point, he'd be 36 years old. You know, like, oh man. And,

and if you look at the, there's aging curves, Bill Petty has these excellent aging curves he did on pitching. And if you look at Velo for starting pitchers and relievers, I would like someone to rerun those. I would like to see more recent aging curves for VLO, given that we're in the weighted ball driveline era. I'd like to see if maybe pitchers hold onto their VLO longer.

But the way that it was is everybody around 26 years old just starts their VLO longer. But the way that it was is like everybody around 26 years old just starts losing VLO, you know? And for the starting pitchers, VLO just goes down, but strikeout rate doesn't go down as badly because they've got other pitches, they've got Moxie, they've got feel, you know? There's a...

Max Scherzer in my column today was just like yelling at me about how Stuff Plus doesn't have feel in it. And I'm like, well, it's sort of designed that way, but okay. And they managed to age okay. Relievers just see their strikeout rate die with their velo. So that's what I was sort of saying with the Ryan Presley thing. We saw the end.

We previewed the end. We previewed the end. That's what it's going to look like for him at the end of being a closer. Well, wait a minute. I got to push back a little bit. We've seen historically, now that we know that that's what happens to relievers, don't you think that we try and do things

differently with relievers going forward? Yeah. You mean like as a team in terms of developing them? Right, teams could say, wait a minute, okay, we know as velocity drops over time that relievers become a lot less effective quickly. So we want you to have multiple pitches? Do you start to work on those second and third pitches

more often with your relievers as velocity drops? I would like to see some... But I saw no evidence that... I looked recently and I saw no evidence that relievers these days have more pitches than relievers in the past. Which, yeah, to me, that's the thing you would want to change. You'd say, we want our relievers to have more pitches. Yeah, but if they have multiple pitches in command, then why aren't they starting? I think you want to give yourself a chance of salvaging something like aging better yeah even if you only have one pitch you really trust and

one that is just there to keep hitters from sitting entirely on that pitch that's where a lot of relievers are anecdotally i'm 100 with you and i i thought that i would find something because you think of like adam adovino adding a cutter, you know, uh, there's a lot of pictures that are just like, Oh, I needed to add something that was in between these two pitches, you know, to make it really work.

Um, but I don't, I, in terms of the numbers, I, you know, the, in terms of average number of pitches thrown over 10% of the time,

I couldn't find a difference between now and the past. So anyway, I, the way that I was going to make this relevant in terms of fantasy is that like, I will take Camilo Duvall over Ryan Presley. Okay. So anyway, the way that I was going to make this relevant in terms of fantasy is that like, I will take Camilo Duvall over Ryan Presley. Okay.

That's, that's, that's helium. I took Romano this year. I took Romano. I know it's helium, but you know, we have this model that tells us

how good people are in short samples. And we also have this fact of Velo just dropping as you get older. And then we have this third fact of, of the pitch clocks coming in and older pitchers being slower. This could be a

confluence of the year of the young closer. I like it. I like it as a... Not a great time to be Kenley Jansen. The slowest pitcher in baseball. I like this as a reason for sifting through some of these guys that are kind of clustered together.

Yes. I'm not going to say that I'm going to take Clay Holmes and make him number one. Is there another example? Or like Durant, especially since maybe they'd stretch him out or something. I'm not going to take the flavor of the month young guy and just put him all the way to the top. But if we're talking about

7th and 8th, I'm going to take the young guy and put him 7th. You know what I mean? And that's sort of what I was talking about. I think Duvall is going to end up being in that back end of circle of trust by the time we're drafting Mainz again next year.

I think that's how the market is going to treat him. If Helsley goes as the fifth best reliever next year, I want him. If he goes as the second best reliever in the second round or third round, I'll be like, okay, that's helium.

That's a little extreme. I think the decision that everyone has to make is, are you willing to take two from the group if you're not taking one from the very beginning? Are you comfortable using that fifth and sixth round picks or some combination like that? Oh, it was awful.

That worked really poorly for me. I think it's more of a wheel strategy. I get both picks together. I know exactly which two I'm going to get. I'm not to get. I'm not at the mercy of someone else messing it up. Still, we showed how bad that was to shop in that neighborhood. I think I did that once.

I even did that once where I lifted up Soto and did Bednar-Soto in the seventh and eighth round or something. Jump them was like a max. I might have been a max pick on Ben. You know? And like, like I still wouldn't recommend doing that. You know? No,

I'm more like saying Presley Duvall or some group up there where you didn't go all the way to the top, but you stayed two within that group. It's got to be the right position on the draft board to do it. But that that's still tempting. You're, you're still trying to like, you have all these like competing things that are in your head. You're still trying to, you have all these competing things in your head.

You're like, oh, I want to come out of five rounds with two starting pitchers. Okay, well, I want to double tap on the second level relievers. Wait, I just took four pitchers

in the first five rounds. Maybe that's the answer. Maybe it's one hitter and four pitchers. Yeah, Toby, Toby, Bachelor Toby's like, yeah.

Yeah, Dalton Daldon's like, take seven straight pitchers. Like, what are you taking any hitters for? Toby does really well with that sort of strategy. It's like, I don't know. There's like a, there's like a, I have like a, like some,

I'd be like trying to click the, my body would like, they'd be like, error, error. Cannot click. You're like, they'd be like, error, error. Cannot click. You're like, why? Just do it. So you mentioned earlier that we should consider embracing the committees. And I think there's kind of just a necessary evil here to do that.

Because if you look at year over year trends, I ran a simple search over at StatHead looking for number of 20 save pitchers in a season. This is going to shock absolutely no one. Last season, we only had 19 pitchers get to 20-plus saves. This year, we're sitting at 18 with three days left, so it's probably going to be pretty much the same number. I think there's a couple guys sitting right around that total. Is there some other number that's going up to claim that? Is the number of 10 saves relievers going up.

Right. This isn't just guys breaking. This is, you know. There has been analysis that there's fewer teams that are giving 95% of their chances to one player. Let's have a look. Let's run the same search with 10 or more saves in a season and see

what that trend looks like. The reason I think this is important, though, is because for years, I think the first thing we've wanted to do is avoid committees. Not just avoid it. It's a mess. We don't know who's going to get the job. If this is too expensive, don't bother because it could be a share. And the thing I've realized, the more we've seen this, is that a committee doesn't mean equal.

It doesn't mean three guys are splitting the shares three even ways. It's we use this guy three quarters of the time. We use the other guy about almost a quarter of the time. And then the last like 5% go to this third person. That's the way we use this committee. And it's like, okay, well, if you're getting the person who's getting three quarters of those chances, that's fine. That's still a committee, but that's still very usable. To answer your question about 10 save relievers, we're at 33 10 save relievers this season.

We had 39 a year ago. We had 37 back in 2019, 43, 40, 42. Yeah, this is pretty consistently the same for the last 15 years. Well, I mean, you look at some teams that are good teams that seem okay with doing bullpen pie committee. The Dodgers are currently doing it. The Yankees are currently doing it. Phillies have a timeshare.

The Dodgers made a trade. Well, they had Blake Trinan, so maybe they were going to do what they did with Kimbrel with Trinan. But the Dodgers should be a committee team in theory, and they weren't until Kimbrel failed them. Yeah. Even at the beginning of the season, I thought it would be a Trinan-Kimbrel committee.

That's a little bit confused by injury, though. But the Rays go in every year being a committee, but then at certain parts of the year, Pete Fairbanks was the closer. The Mariners looked like they were a committee going in, and they had a really great thing, and then Sewell became their primary closer, basically. So I think that, you know, embrace the committee to me means don't be afraid of it

and those are opportunities for you to pick the winner and you're still hoping that there's a winner. And then what's nice about that too is, you know, you've got this model that tells you the good pitchers, you've got projections, you've got this model that tells you the good pitchers. You've got projections. You've got certain things you can look for to find good pitchers. And there's like the Evan Phillips phenomenon, right?

Like phenomenon, which is like, you know, Evan Phillips ended up. Where did I say he ended up? He was top 10 among closers, wasn't he? Yes, top 10 among relievers. He was top 10 among closers, wasn't he? Yes, top 10 among relievers. But it's that whole, like, do I buy Chad Green ahead of the season just to, like, have great ratios and be a valuable reliever? And at the end of the season, oh, look, Chad Green was worth $10,

and you got him for $1. Like, we should buy Chad Green every year. The problem is that relievers are so volatile that even trying to buy Chad Green, maybe you bought Chad Green this year for $1. You're like, finally, okay, finally, I'm going to do the one where I just buy a guy who's a reliever. That's not going to get me saved, but he's going to be worth 10 bucks at the end of the season. You messed up. You can't always find the Chad Green. But when you buy into a closer situation, a closer committee situation, you might get just a really good reliever that only has five saves on the year, you know, and you might still get a lot of value out of it. So,

and you're spending less. Yeah. I think that's the key is if you're getting these guys well outside the top 200 overall, there's plenty of value that could be had there. I think the problem with Kittredge, he got hurt. That's random. You can't control that. Players are going to get hurt. The problem with Kittredge is that he wasn't quite that cheap. He was more of a pick 150 guy, and that extra three or four rounds makes a pretty big difference. So while if he'd been healthy and got his 20 saves, I would have been really happy to get him where I got him in that auction or eight, ten bucks. Yeah, I don't really want to buy into a committee with my second closer, right? Yeah, I think it was just a little bit too early i think this is generally where you

want to be with your third if you can be otherwise you do have to take two shots in and hope that you're you're good at this because it's very i'm also not taking two shots into the same bullpen uh i guess uh if it's like my final my final pick. We're talking about like real deep my last pick because there is the last 10 picks of your draft, you might have one or two of those guys that make it to the end of the season with you. Right? So if you're talking about

a 25th round pick and it's like oh, I took Andres Munoz ahead, like I took Paul Seawald, let me just take Andres Munoz here or something. I forget who it was that we all thought would fight for saves there. Ken Giles was in there. Yeah. Because he's coming back with an injury.

If you had taken Paul Seawald as your third closer, it'd be okay to take Ken Giles in one of your last three picks. You know, maybe even last five picks. Because a couple weeks in, you're like, well, now I can drop Ken Giles for a streamer or whatever. Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. Obviously, we're going to look at these players in the preview in greater detail too.

So if we didn't talk about a particular reliever that intrigued you this year or intrigues you next year, don't worry. There will be a time for that. Especially a lot of these waiver wire helium guys. Like, you know, Clay Holmes is going to be an interesting discussion in terms of looking

forward. Should he be in that circle of stress? And yeah, but the is easier, I think, because there's a clearer pattern of usage and the Yankees make things complicated. What if he ends,

what if he ends the season with knee surgery? How much does that matter? Because you could just replace the words Camilo Duval with Felix Bautista earlier too, which now has made our circle of trust nine deep, which makes me think Hader and Presley are not in the circle of trust. You really want to kick

those guys out. Just saying. Yeah, well, I hate you someone multiple someones will disappoint us so trying to figure out who they are is better than just being disappointed by them and walking right into the traps but if i wait it like it it to me the the best my best approaches this year was getting jordan romano in like the sixth round, fifth round. Sixth round.

I think mostly sixth round. Jordan Romano in the sixth is what I want to repeat. Jordan Romano in the sixth, that sounds to me like Camilo Duval or Felix Batista in the sixth. It's just, you know, it's all lining up in that same way. It's a young guy, small sample. My metrics love him. Seems like he's got the job.

He's not going to drop in Velo next year, unless it's from 101 to 100 for Felix Batista. He'll be all right at 100. I think it's still going to be good. I think it's still going to be good. I think it's still going to be swing and miss stuff, if that's what happens. A couple emails to get to real quick on our way out.

This one comes from Rob. Rob wanted to know, do teams have a professional pinch runner role? They were looking at ways the Mets could make room on the roster when they promoted Francisco Alvarez, and they started talking about Terrence Gore. 43 career stolen bases and 80 played appearances. I think he has like seven rings.

I'm not even kidding. No. No hold on seven how many world series rings does terence gore have he doesn't have more than two it auto completed for me you've searched this defense it's recency bias because he has one in 2020 and 2021 so like it does feel like he's had them forever that's ridiculous That was pretty good. Seven. Two. It's two. So how many teams have players like this? The thing about professional pinch runners is this. Nobody has them during the course of the season, but they all want them in October.

So, you know, Billy Hamilton ends up, like, bouncing around, DFA-ed, released, signs on, minor league. And the reason is Billy Hamilton is your Terrence Gore right now, is your other option at a Terrence Gore. But nobody really wants to play him during the season in terms of where the job is like winning every day. They want him for one play in October, the Dave Roberts play. You know what I mean?

Like they want that moment. him for one play in October. The Dave Roberts play. They want that moment. It becomes a little bit more valuable in the way you construct your roster for the postseason where there's more rest days and more things you can finagle. They do have

professional pinch runners. They do exist. They mostly only exist in October. Rob trying to be your friend comes up with, maybe this is what a story Ruiz can become with a smiley emoji. Sorry. That's a, wouldn't that make you mad? Yeah. Yes. Okay. It would make me very mad. All right. I don't know if, uh, if I'm that down on his stories, but maybe. Thanks, Rob. Thanks for the email.

Thanks, dude. I really appreciate that. Multiple emails in trying to clarify a point from our last episode. Kenny G plays the soprano saxophone. So thank you to Duncan and James for following up on that. It was a sax, but not the big one. It's not the big one. It's the little one, the little sax.

It's called the soprano sax. Let's proceed with the proper nomenclature of the saxophone. Not the little one? Not the little sax. He plays the little sax. Plays the little sax. Like, no. That's not what Kenny G plays. It's a sopr little sax. He plays the little sax. Plays the little sax. Like, no. That's not what Kenny G plays.

It's a soprano sax. So again, thank you to Duncan and James for clarifying that. I really do apologize to the multiple jazz. It sounds like professionals that chimed in. I do like that we have multiple jazz professionals listening to this. So, love you guys. I guess tin whistle based on your description, so we clearly

need all the help that we can get for something like this. Not the clarinet. No. So, if you've got questions for a future episode, especially if they are review-focused, that's where we're headed for these next several weeks. You can send those our way.

Rates and barrels at the athletic.com is the email address. You can find, you know, on Twitter at, you know, Sarah's you can find me at Derek van Riper. If you'd like a subscription to the athletic and you don't have one already dollar a month for the first six months that can't be around much longer,

get it at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. It's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you next week. Thanks for listening.