Rates & Barrels - 2024 Hitter Takeaways

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss a few of their big-picture takeaways from the hitter pool in 2024 including a heavy dose of injuries in the early rounds, Atlanta's intense high-volume approach with playing time atop their roster, oatmeal that came through, and the benefits of waiting to fill in your outfield last season.  Rundown 1:51 An Unusual Year For Round 1 Bats? 7:58 Should the Braves Consider Load Management for Their Stars? 13:58 The Quality & Depth at Third Base is Running Away From First Base 18:27 Learning From Elly De La Cruz and Gunnar Henderson's 2024 Projections? 27:25 Zigging When Everyone Else Zagged Early: A Tough Early-Round Pocket w/Injuries 33:41 Did 'Oatmeal' Largely Pay Off For Us? 40:18 Juan Soto Underperformed His xSLG!? 43:30 Is DVR Tailing the Rays with Christopher Morel in 2025? 48:00 Waiting In the Outfield Worked Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. Welcome to Raids and Barrels, it's Wednesday, December 4th. Derek the Ripper, EnoSarris here with you. On this episode, we will attempt to condense what I think were seven or eight episodes last off season into one. It will either be our greatest or worst attempt at a magic trick of all time. We are reviewing hitters as a group from 2024. Yeah, nice light topic, nice small topic

to try to fit into about an hour or so. But we did all the playoff shows, didn't have time for the position reviews because position previews are much closer than you think since we're already in to the first week of December. So we're going to look back at a few bigger trends from the hitter pool. We're obviously not going to get to every single corner of the hitter pool, which leaves our mailbag wide open.

You can send questions through our discord using the link in the show description. You can also drop those to us via email ratesandbarrelsatgmail.com. We'll have some mailbag episodes before the end of the year as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Wednesday? It is going well.

I am overwhelmed by the task in front of us. It's going to be fun. We're going to crush it. At least I think we are. I'm confident in what we're going to do. So we're looking back at hitters who disappointed us, who surprised us in all directions, kind of focusing on each part of the player pool, because there were some odd things that happened in it. 2024.

I think the early trends were a little odd. I'm going to put some stuff on the screen if you're watching on YouTube, but if you look back at what was happening in the first round of this year's drafts, the Acuna injury, of course, just, you know, for a consensus one-one pick, terrible outcome, of course, for both him

for anybody who had him on their teams, understandable, but you see a surprising amount of underperformers relative to projections. And we were looking at the ATC projections for 2024 because that's sort of like a consolidation of many projection sets gives you a more consensus sort of opinion. And then we're looking at the actual earned values from the end of the season and just sorting by the difference. Bobby Witt Jr. was a big hit as someone that was going in that 2-3-4 range, but Julio, Corbin Carroll, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker, Fernando Tatis Jr., Freddie Freeman, six guys

in a row by ADP, all underperformed and were in the red relative to their projected output. A lot of injuries in that group, but not entirely the case top to bottom. I mean, Julio had a minor injury. Corbin Carroll had that really bad first half, uh, you know, to tease Tucker bets all missed some time. What do you make of that? Is this an outlier bad year or was there actually a way to possibly avoid some of the early round risks that people were looking right through back last winter?

I mean, I suppose on some level, this is an argument for, you know, a first round starting pitcher. If there's this much risk with the hitters, you know, like might as well throw a Corbin burns in there over some of those guys. I think that on some level, we have a weird mix of ascendant young guys who haven't reached that level of stardom where they're just a star every year, you know, for 10 years or seven years or whatever. So I do think who the order you guys and Corbin Carroll will get there.

It's just one of those years that you have early in your career before you kind of establish yourself. I think that happens to a lot of guys. That's one way of reading it, you know. And then a mix of those guys with injury and Kyle Tucker and some extent Fernando Tatis and Acuna for sure. And then you have a perfect storm of also some aging guys where Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, had the one good month as they pointed out on Discord and six months after it that weren't as good or five months after it that weren't as good.

So I got a bunch of different reasons. But one thing that I will point out, um, other than a CUNYU who, you know, that's just the picture, just the hitter equivalent of getting TJ, you know, it's just, you know, you lose them for the whole year. It's, it's even harder to predict than TJ and TJ is pretty hard to predict itself. So, you know, I think that when you just say that's just bad luck, I don't think it's bad process to take the best projected guy by far, you know, by, you know, almost $20 over the second guy, you know, to take him first. That doesn't make sense that that was bad

process. It was a hitter. You could do everything and then he was hurt. If you want to say that one, a guy who's had one ACL tear, you want to avoid him in the future? I don't know if I do that, but maybe you make a rule like that. The one thing I will say other than that though is all those guys Julio through Freeman, as bad as they were, you bought at least $12 of production from each of those guys. Julio, Corden, Betts, Tucker, Tatis, and Freeman. The worst you got was $12 out of those guys. So this is why we buy first round bets. Because the worst case scenario is still pretty good.

It's still not the thing that completely sunk your team. It's one step in the wrong direction, but you had to make other mistakes. If your team wasn't going to be good a year ago, I don't think the, the injuries are in any way really predictable as a group. I think this was mostly a, mostly a younger group. I mean, Julio, Carol, Tucker, Tatis, none of those guys are old. Yeah. Mookie is a little older.

Freddie's a little old, but Soto, Judge, Turner, Otani, the guys at the bottom of the run, there were big profits. Yeah. They were big profits. If you want to argue, oh, you should have taken Soto judge or Otani at the top. And that's what you should learn from this. You know, you could take Soto judge on Otani next year and they could be hurt. I mean, it's, you know, that's especially judge, you know, that's

why judge was 10th and not, you know, one of the first three picks. Now judge may yo-yo back into the first three picks and then maybe next year is one of those years where he has 450 plate appearances. Just take the guys that were at or near the top who fall into the back of the first round. That's the strategy. That's the actionable takeaway for 2025. That's all you have to do.

And you guys that are plus 15 or plus 20 over their projection. It's it, that's how the system that's every year is like that. Right. It's crazy though, how judge Soto Otani and Jose Ramirez were such good bets around the turn, it was a really good year, I guess, to be drafting late in the first round. You could have gotten two of those guys. Right.

But not being too late or being just a little off. I mean, if you took trade Turner, he missed some time with an injury, but that wasn't a horrible year, almost $22 in value returned around an injury. Like that's, you could kind of shrug that one off. There was a little bit of a pocket kind of early round two, middle round two, where a bunch of guys fell short. Matt Olson took a big step back. There were so many injuries in Atlanta.

The supporting cast was just a lot different this year than we anticipated it to be. And then Olson skills took a little bit of a backslide as well. So he's kind of interesting as a, what's the true talent level given that he did some things in 2023 that people weren't necessarily sure were repeatable skills, but he probably is a little bit better

than he just showed us, but now he's also the year older on top of that. I think he's kind of a trickier early round case where I could see some people being more cautious about just assuming it's coming all the way back to late first round, early second round value in 2025. I think we have to consider, at least consider this a possibility that the Braves strategy of playing their players every day is a bad one. And right now I'm pointing to the fact that Matt Olson, Austin Riley and Ozzy Albies and Ronald Lacuna were the biggest bus in the top 25 this year.

Right. And in injuries were a huge factor in that. Olsen has played every single game in the regular season possible since joining Atlanta. I know that Albies and Acuna seem different than Olsen and Riley, but maybe they're not as different as what I'm suggesting. You know, like maybe Olsen and Riley are just not as good because they don't get some days off.

They're just, you know, it's not something they would admit to you know I know those guys pretty well actually they would never tell me you know Maybe they would but I you know, they would just say yeah every season is long You know and every season that you get fatigue at some point and that's no different if I take a day or two off season that you get fatigue at some point. And that's no different if I take a day or two off. However, you know, I think the science supports load management and it's not good for fans. And I'm not suggesting that every team should do it and that I love it, but, um,

I am just looking at these four players right now, just being like, Hmm, what is Atlanta known for playing their guys 162 when they can maximizing the value of the top end of that roster by making sure those guys play as much as possible. There could definitely be some negative effects of that. I mean, we saw other guys kind of play through stuff in this next group where you got Jordan Alvarez. I think he was pretty much what you expected to be minus $2 off projections. Really kind of negligible in the end.

I mean, yeah, if you pay $30 and you, you know, really kind of negligible in the end. I mean, yeah, if you pay $30 and you, you know, you get $30, you're happy. Yeah. You pay 32 for 30. That's fine. You're not getting hurt there. You mentioned Riley getting hurt. Harper was a little bit dinged up, but still got the 631 plate appearances. I think there's, there are still more very good seasons coming from Bryce Harper. So I don't really have any reservations about that. I don't think that's just typical aging. I think it's the slight down year within his reasonable range of outcomes.

I know, talking about a guy that's going to be what, 32? He's already 32. He's turned 32 in October. I still think the next few years are good. Makes me a little nervous, but the age makes me a little nervous. Plus, could you sort this by first base real quick? Oh, goodness. First base, one of the things I noticed going through all this,

first base was a bit of a disaster. And I think it's one of those things where it's going to be a problem a lot because it's a position that if you think about how teams build rosters, first baseman are generally not as athletic as guys that play on the left side of the infield. A lot of teams will platoon at those, at that position. Might be a place where you have an older guy. You get some older guys in there.

So I do think that the position carries kind of some hidden playing time risk and performance risk. And that's why you see a ton of red. Matt Olson fell short, Harper fell a little short, Pete Alonso had a down year. You know, Cody Bellinger, first base and outfield eligible going into the year. Wasn't as much of a bust as you might think, but I think projections were sort of reasonable for him coming off of a big year in 2023. Plus you'll notice if you're looking on YouTube that he was not recommended by necessarily, where ADP was higher than the ATC projected value.

Right. The projections were telling you he was an overpay on draft day and the projections were right about what he was worth. So he wasn't a colossal bus unless you paid the inflated price. But just generally there's a lot of red. Olsen, Harper, Alonzo, Ballinger, Smitley, Goldschmidt, even Christian Wachter with the injury, I guess. Otherwise I think he was pretty close Tristan Casas injury Spencer Torkelson

Just utter collapse So, you know, these are these are the top 12 first baseman by by ADP and there's two guys that were good That was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Spencer Steer. And Vladimir Guerrero Jr., I feel like we had a little bit of projections fatigue on that guy because the projections every year are like, this guy's amazing. And there's been a bunch of years where you're like, well, he wasn't as amazing as that.

And then on top of that, so you have two ways when you see something like this, you have two ways to react. One is I need to get a good first baseman next year because all of them are bad. Yeah, right. It's one way to think about it. But if you think about it that way, Spencer Steer could collapse a little bit. You know, uh, that was a good year for him, but a fair amount of it was tied up into like 20 steals. You know, does Spencer Steers, you know, steal 20 steals next year?

Does the sea sells by the seashore and so So So I think it'd be a bad idea to Target this position next year. I don't want to over learn a lot of these guys could bounce back but It seems like this is telling us, grab your first baseman as they come, especially look now at the bottom. You know, there's some, there's some values down here.

Josh Naylor was a good value. Vinnie Pascantino ended up being a good value. Uh, Alec Balm was a good value. Even Paredes with how bad he was in Chicago, Chicago afterwards ended up a value on the year. So and if you, and if you decided, you know, I'm just going to take Reese Hoskins or Nate Lowe you really late and just take what I can get. You didn't do that badly.

No, you did. Okay. And I think what I'm also looking at is for leagues that require a corner, which is most leagues, you're probably going to go ahead and take two third baseman because the third baseman are just better, better as a group, just flat out. I mean, you can do the same exercise here and just look at what that position returned. It's much, much better as a group. Oh my God.

From the top through the middle and everywhere. Like Jose Ramirez, Ellie did like Cruz, Gunnar, Henderson, Manny Machado, Alex Bregman, Spencer steer, you know, um, you know, these are all greens for, uh, what is it earned versus, uh, what projected payment Jake Berger, you know, despite, uh, my concerns about his strikeout rate coming back, did pretty well. And Alec Baum may not be the best hitter in the world, and there's some concern that he can repeat it if he gets traded. And there's definitely a bunch of rumors swirling around Alec Baum being traded. I don't know why, who, I don't know exactly what their plan is at third base if they trade him away, but he is one of their more tradable assets, I guess.

So if he does leave town that, you know, Philadelphia helps him a little bit. So Nolan Arnado could get a little bit of a park based bump if he leaves. Anyway, this is, this is pretty much a nice place to shop. Late was good. These, this is where you would have got your corners. You would have got Eugenio Suarez, Matt Chapman, Jordan Westberg. Those guys were available

usually outside the top 200 overall, and they turned in great season. Even Michael Garcia, most of what some people who had pie in the sky expectations had hoped, he beat the projections by a pretty healthy margin. The two guys clustered in there, Ryan McMahon, he was okay. Like kind of oatmeal-y if you took him in that spot, but he at least did enough

to give you the value you needed from that draft slot when he fell around injuries was okay. So I really thought third base like exceeded expectations as a group. Now where you're looking is also a warning sign that I think corner infield is something you have to target. We're in draft and hold season right now. Look at, just stay up a little bit because I think right where Tyler Black starts, I'm guessing that's around sort of like the 20th third baseman. And that's where if you're getting the last corner infielder and draft and hold, that's bad. You want to be buying your third corner infielder here.

No, your fourth first third corner. You want to be dry buying your fourth corner infielder here so that, you know, if it doesn't work out, it's he's on your bench anyway. You know, and this was a bad place to shop baby. The only win here is Colt Keith. We got Beatty, Black, Wilmer Flores, Chris Taylor, DJ LeMayhew. You know, none of these guys are regulars. You know, JD Davis, Anthony Rendon.

The only wins you have down here are guys that became regulars that weren't regulars to begin with. Michael Bush might have been a good pick. It might have been obvious that he was a good pick. Maybe that number changed over the course of March or whatever in terms of projections and stuff. But I continue to believe that corner infield is something that you should have circled

in your draft and hold when it comes to strategy. You should be able to feel good about corner infield. As bad as first base is Maybe that means giving a tiny little nudge to third base One thing you can do in the auction calculator fan graphs is you can actually nudge positions There's a little toggle and the auction calculator fan graphs that allows you to change the importance of positions And maybe what you do here is actually push third base up a notch, you know, so that they get that 20 cents that bumps them up a two or three spots in the rankings so that they catch your eye at the right time.

And you get the third baseman and you have a nice couple of third baseman and a late first baseman. And you are set and free before people are in the, you know, the break babies of the world again. You know, because you don't want to be shopping for an actual guy you want to start down there. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay?

Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. I switched it over to look at short stops for a bit. If you have the screen open, it's it's one of these things where you see, you know, the wit hit very early. Great. Lindor as a relatively boring early rounder coming through with an $11 profit.

That was a great season for him, and you're going to pay a little bit of a premium for that in 2025. But the Mets continue to add, I assume, this off season and that supporting cast was probably better than people realize. So aside from Lindor playing well, I think he had more going on around him that actually helped those counting stats a little bit as well. Where I think we should really focus at this position is Ellie De La Cruz and Gunnar Henderson, both were third base and shortstop eligible. But I think they're interesting because projections came out light on both of them. These are two players that if you are very strict to what projection projections advise you to do, you probably passed on at their respective prices in 2024,

and they were extremely profitable. So is there a future takeaway from this, or is this just a blip with two guys that are just really good players and they do it different ways, but they were great values where they were going in the early rounds? I have two slightly different lessons to learn from this.

Uh, one is that the LA de la Cruz is a playing time lesson. And I think shortstop is important in this way, which is we talk about this all the time. You play your shortstop. Most teams play their shortstop every day all the way through. And you know, the exception to that is when they stop being a shortstop. So they're old, you know, so maybe at some point Trey Turner has to move off or Corey Seeger has to move off and then they're maybe taking days off and platooning or whatever

it is. But that, I don't think they're quite there yet. But if you look at, you know, worst case scenario, you know, in terms of like CJ Abrams had a great beginning, but a bad end. He played every day until he was caught at the, at the casino, you know, and Beau Bichette, you know, as bad as he was, and he was hurt when he was not hurt. He played every day, you know? And so, um, you know, I think that if you looked at the LA daily cruise projections,

you saw that everyone was light on playing time. And if you bumped the playing time up to 600 or whatever it was, that he was actually gonna be a good pick. That was why I bought a lot of LA and profited off of it. So that's something I think you can do at shortstop in particular. I don't know who could be the person this year

that is like that. We're talking about. A possibly under projected shortstop that could be, I don't know if there's anyone in the pool at that position who's probably going to have a 70 or 80% playing time projection. Look at the ADP right now. I mean, you have court see scrolling through. Seeger that's just because of injuries. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have course. See, scrolling through Seeger. That's just because of injuries.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be late guys. It's going to be late guys that could be risers. Right? So maybe Jordan Lawler is an example, nowhere near the early rounds, but playing time projections on him are probably going to be light because

playing time projections for Iroldo Perdomo are probably going to be pretty high. So it's finding some disagreements in situations like that, where maybe are probably going to be pretty high. So it's finding some disagreements in situations like that, where maybe it's going to unearth itself as more of a later possible mid round value, depending on what happens between now and the time that draft season really heats up in March. Yeah.

I mean, I'm a little surprised that Jeremy Payne getting 621 plate appearances. I don't know why. Um, I, maybe the Astros just do load management with him, but that seems a little low compared to his compatriots. Xavier Edwards, 629. Why 629 when the guys at the top, Gunnar Henderson is getting 684? Do you think the Marlins are going to sit Xavier Edwards? They have no...

Dude, the Zips projections came out for the Marlins and they are below average at every position except for shortstop. So there's the one guy they should be playing every single day. I think Xavier Everett is going to play every day. That's more like 660. That's 40 played appearances. If you give him 40 played appearances, there's going to be some more goodness in there. So that's going to change his number.

I see that number as being a little bit wrong. And then sit down, Raffaella, like 49 494 plate appearances what is that all about I don't get that at all shortstop eligible not really a shortstop so he doesn't really fit exactly what we've been talking about but at the same time playing time is something that you should zero in on Jacob Wilson 490 why yeah he should be the everyday shortstop for the A's. That's actually a really good one. I think because, you know, he's not going to be expensive. He's going into new park.

Hey, I kind of like him sleeper. It's not Ellie Dilla Cruz level, but it's good because it costs you less. Yeah. I'm trying to look at other positions real quick to see if there's anything that catches my eye from a playing time might still be too light perspective. It's going to be younger players that broke through in the second half and projections are still saying, maybe not. What kind of projection for playing time does James would have right now?

I mean, Jordan Westberg still has a five 49. Yeah, that's cause they still got like crowded depth chart woods, got a six 33 plate appearance projection. So you're not going to probably not going to add a whole lot more to that. Hose and Miranda at five 27 is a little bit interesting. Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a subject for a future episode. The projections, the playing time projections we disagree with

because those are huge in terms of, of shifting value. And the other one with Gunnar, I think, let's say you have young, like ready to go upstart, you know, you're choosing between two, you know, first rounders. Can we go back to the overall? This is by 2024 ADP. So Gunnar was sitting there at the round two, round three turn of 15 team leagues last year. Wow. Okay. Well, he'll be, he'll be a first round of this year, but okay.

So this year, if you're, if you're going by steamer, you know, and you're looking around the turn. OK, Jackson Merrill is going 30 this year. Jackson Churio is going 20. Mm hmm. 641 played appearances for Merrill and 673 for Churio. I'm just looking for comparison sake, though, like they're they're a little bit quirky because they're they're not getting that particular thing, but they're still getting the massive jump in

terms of where they're going. Okay. I'm going to live it later. So here we go. O'Neill Cruz, uh, at 45, junior caminero at 50, Wyatt Langford at 48. I'm thinking that the lesson from Gunnar Henderson is if you're looking at those three, they're all going very near each other, that you should take the player that has the most defensive value.

If you think they're all equally likely to break out. Cause you're buying a safer playing time floor. That's the Gunnar Henderson thing. Yeah. Like you're, you're, you're, you're paying for a breakout. He hasn't done the things that you want him to do that you're paying for him to do yet. Um, and, and in this case, you know, white Langford, O'Neal Cruz, and, um, and

junior Cameron Arrow, you're maybe even Lawrence Butler who's in there. You know, you're paying for a full season of stuff you've seen in flashes from those guys right. And i think the lesson here would be actually. To bet on only a cruise out of all those because even if he's not sure stuff anymore he center field. What's what was on center fielder white like for center fielder your camera is a third baseman and. You know he's place for a team, maybe the 643 plate appearances he's projected for is too high.

So I think that could be a slight lesson from the Gunnar Henderson doing well this year is, um, you know, he was going by ADP. He was going, um, you know, it's, you had a choice between Gunnar Henderson, Michael Harris, and C.J. Abrams. It's not very obvious that you should have chosen one or the other. Uh, but if you throw Royce Lewis in that mix, right? And let's say you were just, you're kind of, you were looking at Royce Lewis against, you know, against Michael Harris or something, the argument

I'm making is take Michael Harris. Because neither one of them was great this year, but. No, but you know, injuries are a major factor and we knew that was a risk going in with Royce Lewis. Think of defense sometimes think of it as a, maybe a tiebreaker or, you know, there's gotta be it's, it's does keep people on the, on the field. One thing that was weird in snake drafts this year was if you opted for pitching, pitching heavy strategies up top and you got

to that part of the board where everybody else was looking for their SP1s and SP2s and you were looking for bats, you ended up shopping in the Adolis Garcia, Randi Arroz Arena, Royce Lewis, Adley Rutchman, Nolan Jones, Bellinger, Nico Horner pocket, and it wasn't all bad, but the Lewis injuries, Nolan Jones' back was a problem pretty much all season, even when he wasn't missing time. You have to wonder if he was even healthy. I think what's interesting, though, is that both Garcia and Arroz Arena, despite their flaws, seemed like the safer guys you could have taken,

players that could touch at least four, maybe all five categories for you. They still got you $10, you know, so. They got you 10, but it just ended up being a really difficult spot to land on hitters unless you said, Hey, you know, I'm okay with Manny Machado DHing to start the year and not being completely healthy. I think the shape of Machado's season was pretty heavily backloaded. He got better as the year went on, as he got healthier. And I think there was some, some risk throughout last draft season that you

maybe wouldn't even get that guy at all at any point in 2024. So I'm glad he made it all the way back, but I think taking the leap to Machado out of that bucket was a lot harder last draft season than it seems like it was in hindsight. Just because we just talked about Royce Lewis and junior Kamenero in, in succession a little bit. Um, I thought it would be interesting to look at the biggest decline errs in, uh, sprint speed, uh, junior caminero number one.

Um, uh, and Royce Lewis, uh, the fifth biggest decline. A lot of these guys on here, uh here weren't fast and got even slower. I mean, Mike Ford is with the catchers now. Andrew McCutcheon came back to Earth, but that was post ACL surgery, right? And that might be part of what's going on with Royce Lewis. But there's also, I think, you know, a little bit of impending aging coming here, Eloy Jimenez. You know, if you're buying on a bounce back from him, it's possible that

the athleticism is waning and he always had like kind of a weird, um, athletic package of athleticism anywhere. Right? I mean, he's, he was a good hitter and at some point it seemed like you'd be a good defender and then he was the age and he's a dh of twenty seven. So i don't know that you know i am and is is a great bounce back candidate i'm not basing it just on this decline sprint speed alone but it does give us a little bit of a look into. Oh, maybe that Thleteism is not as good as we thought it was. And for the Rays to have Junior Kim and Yarrow Christopher Morel and Yandy Diaz in the top 10, and with Yandy being 32, you know, Yandy's always a projection darling.

He's a little bit like Vladimir Grigory Jr. where the projections always say bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. And this might be the first year where I say, you know, I don't know, you know, he's the two things we just talked about defensive value and here sprint speed suggests that he may not have all the playing time he's projected for. You know, this might be if he, on the other side of the playing time thing, we're talking about where you're like, wow, they're putting him down for six 50 in Tampa Bay at 32 at first base, you know, with declining foot speed.

And if you, and as much as I love Morales bad ball stats, you're taking a guy that did not play well in Tampa after the trade has not really given us an extended run of, of good play. And, um, even if we bet on his athleticism, you know, we're, we're asking something from declining athleticism. His wheels are already gone. Well, I think that's a, it's a good point. I think with, with Kevin Arrow in particular, you know, he spent so little time in the big leagues. I think it was like 43 games. It maybe it's a slightly smaller sample size blip as far as just not having,

having situations where he had to open it up. Situation this year too, right? And he, yeah, he had injuries that slowed him down at AAA. I think a lot of the guys in that list had some kind of leg injury. If it wasn't, you know, a major one, it was at least a quad or a hamstring or something, and then you wonder how much of that is just holding back when you're sprinting, as opposed to just going. One thing I have noticed though, is you don't really get it back.

Um, you know, if I look at the other side of, uh, of sprint speed, the pluses there's a couple, Jesse Winker got healthy. That was the back injury. Um, Jose Tanya, that's probably a sample issue. There's some catchers on the bottom here. There are, uh, you know, we had, how many people did we have losing? Yeah, we have 20 players losing at least one foot per second speed and another in 32 players losing point nine or more. And when you have gain, when you look at the gainers,

there are seven that gained one and 10 that gained 0.9. So just by looking at the, you know, just the raw numbers and not looking at the date, you know, the changes over year over year, I would assume that some of these guys that we just talked about will regain maybe a mile, but not all of them. Cause the numbers say that's, that's not what's going to happen.

And I would say that a lot of what happens in terms of the, you know, aging curse players is the athletic skills go away and the learned skills go up. They'd learn better plate discipline. They learn when to take their shots at the, at the, at the plate. They learn certain things about the game and those things get better, but their athleticism just wanes. And that's something we know from sprinters that they peak very early. You know, so this is not, this is a, not a great list to be on,

especially if you're young, you know, it's a little bit, it's a little bit concerning of a list for a junior can mirror to be on, especially if you're young. You know, it's a little bit, it's a little bit concerning of a list for Junior Ken Mier to be on. Thinking about a recurring theme on our show, Oatmeal, the older boring players, projections tend to like them. There is a certain point where you reach an age where those projections become less reliable.

That might be an explanation for the Paul Goldschmidt collapse, but this really like lands on guys like Brian Reynolds, Xander Bogart. It's kind of the beginning of the middle rounds and then moving down. Like did that group come through the way we expected to? For me, I would define that group as guys that maybe had projections that were two to three bucks above their ADP dollar value. And there were quite a few guys we liked in that bunch.

I mean, Gleyber Torres might've been a young version of oatmeal. Look at this. This is the oatmeal range right here. Rand, Brian Reynolds, Christian Walker, Gleyber Torres, Alex Bregman, Nolan Arnado, even Scott Castellanos. Like all these guys are green basically for buys, you know, versus ADP. Yep. None of them was a colossal bust.

So they fit the oatmeal. Like you bought, like all of them returned $10 value at least, you know, and all of them cost about $15. So that's not bad. I mean, we're just talking about first rounders that return 10, $12, you know? So, um, you know, Xander Bogarts was, uh, uh, maybe one of the biggest busts out of this Oak Oatmeal, uh, you know, tour that we're taking. He still gave you four bucks.

It was a massive injury though. It cost them a whole bunch of time. Yeah. It did. I think that it starts to fall apart a little bit at some age. Like George Springer might've, you might have thought was an oatmeal play, but he's old, you know, and I think at 32 is a bit of a cutoff. Oatmeal is like 29 to 32.

29, 32 non-star. If we want to make it like a filter for it and try to find them without by without looking at their names, I would say 29 to 32, the projection is, you know, five to $12. Yeah. Is that oatmeal? You could tell Marte was probably a massive hit. I mean, like, look at that.

Like projection said to get them. Even if you didn't think he was gonna be a $30 player, if you thought, I'm getting 18 to 20 out of him, that wasn't a dumb thing to think based on what projections said and then where he was going. I just think it's fun when you get players like this right alongside someone like Jackson Chirio, the player debuting, sight unseen,

pie in the sky expectations, and they end up exceeding by similar margins. Ketel Marte was the better pick from a pure dollar value perspective, but projections often tell you not to go after the prospect that hasn't debuted yet in redraft leagues. So they're completely different approaches and yet they're both wildly profitable around the same point in the draft. I had a few shares of Churio and I, and Marte that I profited off of this year.

One thing that happened to me with Marte that I think there's a lesson there to be learned is, um, try to combat player fatigue. You know, you might've had Cattell Marte the years he was hurt, you know, and you might've had Xander Bogarts this past year and been like, then like i'm out you know that's it for me. Try not to do that because and her progress will be cheaper this year. I can tell my tail more expensive you kind of you have to battle in both directions you can't just be like now could tell marty is an MVP candidate every year. And i'm gonna take him in the second round you know i mean you have to kind of mentally do the regression the projections will do. Because you know zander bogart even though is a massive bad season he was hurt.

You know if the price drops far enough it's a good idea the other one with jackson sure is just another playing time one i just saw him having full playing time it was once he signed that deal. Once he signed that deal, I think that's another thing you can do is just if you if you notice someone signing a deal before they You know before they play before they debut they are more likely to just be plugged in and play all year because that team has cost certainty and They love something about that player and they're ready to put them in Yeah, that definitely gives you that added boost of confidence when you're looking at a guy that has no major league track record. The Ketel Marte thing is also interesting though because it was a career best barrel rate. And I don't know if we've seen a study on this yet.

How often does a career best barrel rate come at age 31? Ketel Marte is a lower strikeout rate player. He's never struck out 20% of the time in a season. He's showed increasing patience over time, right? Walk rate's gone from 8.3 to 9.9 to 10.9 to now 11.1%. Health is part of this though too, like he's had bad hamstrings. He has, and I think we've seen him hit the ball pretty hard consistently. I think he's over 40% in hard hit rate every year since 2019, even popped up to 48.4%

in 2021, which maybe was a little bit of a signal that something like this was more possible than we gave it credit for. But I'm not at all surprised to see on the year-to-year, uh, stat grid page over at FanGraphs that Ketel Marte was among those big barrel rate risers. Number one on that list, Kerry Carpenter, all the way up to 16.9%, that's 6.7 percentage points up from where he was in 2023. If I was going to try to guess who will retain more of their surges, I would say Kerry Carpenter because of age, because we didn't maybe know

what his true talent was before. You see, Ketel Marte's barrel rates were sort of in the 6 to 9% level before he jumps up to 12 this last year. If you're looking with us on YouTube, but just generally he had established some sort of level. And so I would regress his back down to nine or ten next year whereas Kerry Carpenter jumping from ten to sixteen point nine percent in barrel rate I might give him more of that next year I might if I was projecting him component by component

I might give him you know thirteen or fourteen percent barrel rate next year might regress him some because that's what you do every year. But Yeah, that's the carry carpenter sitting. There is nice I think Juan Soto is a fascinating case too as the second biggest barrel rate increase er He always was a guy that did barrel well, and then this year he joined the like The stratosphere and on top of that. Here's the weirdest part. Check this out This these are the biggest X slug underperformers

He was the biggest X slug under former by expected slugging on On baseball savant Juan Soto should have slugged 743 Geez man, there's a level of Juan Soto. I mean, he's so young. There's still, it's still possible. We haven't seen his best season. Maybe we just saw it, but it's possible

there's another year or two or a few like what he just did. That one jumps off the page. Is there an X slug component here that might not be factoring in park factors or anything like that? Is there any noise we should be mindful of or not even noise, but just other variables that are going to explain some of the differences. Like Salvador Perez playing half his games at Kaufman Stadium is on this list. Slugged 491, X slugs had 565.

Does the park keep him from getting to that X slug? Is that something we need to be mindful of? I mean, I think park factors are in there, but I think park factors that are sort of specific to the player's spray chart may not be. One thing we've found is that directional spray is not in these expected numbers. And the reason that is, is on any one given play,

it tells you a lot if you pulled the ball or not. However, if you talk about the player and you're summing up on the player, adding whether or not he pulled that ball does not make it more predictive. However, if you're looking at JD Martinez and you say, okay, the bat speed was still there. The expected slugging of 532, the actual 461. He's a sort of right center guy in, in city field where balls can sometimes die out specifically to that part of the field. Um, and that, and, and, and city field has these weird sort of wind based power factors, uh, I think that, that may have hurt him a little bit. Um, I would say the JD Martinez, you know, may have another year or two in him.

And maybe he'll be a really interesting, really, really cheap play next year depending on where he signs. When it comes to Sal Perez, I don't know, I just feel like he's a good bet for slugging every year and maybe this year he just slugged to the wrong parts of the park at certain times. There's some other ones on here. Patrick Bailey, 458 expected slugging. I don't know how much I believe that he's got to deal with triples out. He's got a very specific park that has these quirks to it. Um, and then there's some lost seasons on here, like Bo Bichette's on here. Christopher Morrell's on here, uh, Brandon Jewery.

So just to have two San Francisco giants on here and the Kansas City Royal and a New York Met makes me think that there, if even if park factors are considered wholesale, there may be sort of quirks to the parks and the, and these particular spray charts that have produced these outcomes. I don't think the Lamont Wade Jr. is a true talent for 85 slugging. You know, I just don't think that now doesn't seem like that's what he's all about, but you know, I think he could be a little underrated in very, very deep leagues if you see enough playing time for him.

Christopher Morrell pops up yet again. I think that starts to lead into some late dart mindset, but is it the inverse situation of Esauk Parades where the the Rays had a guy that could overperform his slug and was doing it in a place where it was possible to do it and they flip them and get a guy back, a positionless sort of player, at least for now, and Morrell who should, with time, make adjustments and maybe be more like that.

Now, not playing in the trop changes things a little bit, but I don't think playing at Steinbrenner Field this year is bad from a park factors perspective. Like I see, another thing I saw in that chart is just how hard Christopher Morrell swings, it's got bat speed at the Soto level. Like that's, that's, that's a really impressive underlying skill that says, gives you the little nudge of why do you believe in Christopher Morrell for late power? Well, there's a few reasons to believe in it.

One of the, one of the things that did happen to Morel in Tampa was that his strikeout rate went up and his walk rate went down. There's something we know that the trop in particular does that we're pretty sure that Steinbrenner field won't do. So if he can, you know, his pre-trade strikeout to walk numbers, 11% and 25%, that'll work with a 76 mile an hour bat speed and you know a 12% barrel rate so if he goes back to those numbers in Steinbrenner field I would expect that the slugging goes up and I would expect that that batting average it you know gets up off of 199 there's no real reason for

a guy who has a 76 percent um you know 76 mile an hour bat speed hits the ball on the ground 46% of the time ball in the air 40% of the time pulls it 48 none of those numbers are so extreme he can be like oh he hits the ball in the air 55% of the time that's why he bats 199 oh he he strikes out 35% of the time that's why Christopher Morrell has a 199 batting average none of those things add up to a 199 batting average. The 220 babbip that he had with the Cubs makes no sense. And so I do think that Morrell could do something. His projection right now, 230, 17 homers, seven stolen bases.

That's going to be useful. He's going to have certain eligibility's depending on your league. But last year he played 21 games at second 70 games at third And 20 games in the outfield So you could in a draft and hold right now cover three positions with a guy with upside

Who's going to new ballpark that swings the bat really hard? three positions with a guy with upside who's going to new ballpark that swings the bat really hard. So I can't say that I'm out on him. The declining sprint speed is a little bit of a sign that like, Hey, don't maybe spend them up, you know, buy him where he's at. But no, you never know. The Cubs let him go for a reason. They, they decided it, it wasn't going to work. And he's, there's no defensive value.

And the Rays wanted him back as part of the deal for a reason too, though. Like they said, we'll, we'll take them back. We can make something out of him. I mean, I don't remember people being all that excited about Parade Ace when the Rays traded for him. Like it's just, it's not, I'm not trying to say the Rays are always right. And it's all magic. It's that their underlying skills with Morrell that are interesting that with any other team,

you say, okay, they thought they could fix them and let's see if they can. And the park factors being different, I think, are one thing that could help. Because the better swing decisions of the thing with Morrell, from the macro view of 2024, right? Chasing less outside the zone, down to a 29.7% O swing, striking only 26% of the time. Those are a couple of big things that went right in a year where a bunch of other stuff went wrong. And the fact that he's never really been

an efficient base dealer, even in an environment where stolen bases have been easier, like the sprint speed drop matters less to me because of who he is as a player. He hasn't shown himself to be an efficient base dealer anyway. So I just think it's a okay average cheap power play where the projection could come out

a little light playing time wise and you could be pretty happy with what you get in that pick 275, pick 300 range where he's living right now. As far as our late approaches, like after pick 200, what worked well this year? You know, we'll pop this, uh, pop this back up here just to kind of look through. Like what can you, what did you feel was good late? Outfielders?

Yeah. Outfield in particular, I thought was a great spot in terms of getting value. Outfield as a group just did well. And it seemed like the argument we were making on this show was that whether you needed power, speed, or even taking some shots on guys that might hit for average and just play a lot late, there was something that kind of fit every roster

in the outfield, categorically speaking, as you move through your draft. And I think the numbers kind of bore that out. I mean, you have, what you, what we're looking right now is, um, we're starting with Brandon Nemo, who's probably, you know, the 25th, 30th best, uh, outfielder, I mean, what's going, what's above him when you scroll real quick. Even these guys were late too. Go a little further back.

Chas McCormick, I think had an ADP around pick 150 last year. Yeah. McCormick Green, Jaren Duran, like those guys, they were the, the higher. Like, uh, upside targets for a lot of people in that range that people thought could maybe have breakouts and. And you, and you struck gold with Riley Green and Jaren Duran in there. And you, and you, and you struck pyrite with Chaz McCormick, Masataka Yoshida, James Outman, Christopher Morrell. So, um, and Lars Newt Barr to some extent.

So, you know, all those guys, it almost seems like if you're going to do outfield, it's a stars and scrubs approach. Early middle does not look that good because these guys all have flaws and we've all talked ourselves into, you that good because these guys all have flaws and we've all talked ourselves into, you know, buying these guys. Whereas you know, when you're up in the Jackson Shurio, Tasker, Hernandez, Anthony Santander bucket, that's that's still early, I think. But early middle seems to be a little bit of a problem there.

It's Tommy Edmond, Chas McCormick, that group, even TJ Friedle. Like these guys have question marks and you're buying them too high maybe. You know what I mean? And you're buying them probably in a lot of times because you have one outfielder and you're like, it's too late to have one outfielder. I need to have, or you have two outfielders and you're like, this is too late to have two outfielders. So I need to, I'm going to pick TJ Friedle now because I don't love him, but you know, he's power and speed and I need another outfielder. I think you could re you could sort of put that in your back pocket a little bit and be like, I'm fine.

Like now to go down past this group and do sort of late, late middle. That, that group, Nemo,wan, uh, Starling Marte to some extent, uh, Tyler O'Neill, Lourdes Guerrero Jr, Carrie Carpenter, uh, Taylor Ward. You could just hit those, that group part. And maybe this is just, you know, looking backwards and being like, oh yeah, you should have done this. That was obvious. But I think it actually makes sense from a being in the draft room sort of

standpoint where you're like, dang, like I need an outfield. Like you start staring at the place. You have the least players and you're like, I gotta take it. And I think without field, you can say, you know, if I take two or three of the worst starting regular starting everyday outfielders, I'll be okay Like they do they're decent. I think a lot of these players Collectively were not high priority players so either 80 peas were where they were and that just left the door open for a lot of small profits or at least guys that Were close to breaking even and you're totally fine

If that's what happens because a lot of guys even the guys that didn't have catastrophic injuries that might have been minus two minus three. Starling Martes hurt all the time. Newt Barr was a minus seven so that was a little bit more of a bigger miss. Carpenter missed time with an injury. When they were in they were better and then you were able to replace them and replacing outfielders is generally easier than replacing a lot of other things. At least I have always found that to be the case.

So if I'm, if I'm taking a little bit of injury risk in this part of my roster, I'm okay with that because the cost is low and replacement level is a little bit higher. Yeah. And when it gets to really late, now you're talking about guys like Chris Bryant was pretty obviously, you know, a risk for playing time. Whit Merrifield was a print whisper playing time. Jack Sawinski, you could talk yourself into him as a center fielder, but he was, he had

a really risky package of skills. Um, you know, I think Sal Freelick was a little bit risky himself and you know, is he a center fielder if he's not a center fielder, then it's a real contact based approach, but you will also see on the right hand column that ATC has all these guys as buys. So you have to be a little bit careful too. Like, I mean, yes, Brent Rooker, if you can always get Brent Rooker as the 170th outfielders, then like, you know, do that. Yes.

Get Brent Rooker at that price every single year, find the next Brent Rooker and you'll win. But look how much red is around Brent Rooker at that price every single year. Find the next Brent Rooker and you'll win. But look how much red is around Brent Rooker just before and ahead of him and behind him. M.J. Melendez, Nelson Velasquez, Brian Dillac-Cruz. Tommy Pham. It's just right there on our screen. Melendez and even Nelson Velasquez,

I think we liked both of those guys more than we liked Rooker. I know we talked about them more than we talked about Rooker throughout last winter and spring. And that's just, ah, it's like, why? What's really different about them? And how do we step on that rake again? And then Melendez, every conversation was, why isn't he better? I mean, they all strike out a little bit much, you know? Yeah, they all do. But what we should have just noticed is that Rooker had done more than either any of those guys had ever done.

In 2023, Rooker had 246 and 30 homers. Yeah. Velasquez never did that. Right. We were projecting a partial, like Melendez at least had the playing time before. Velasquez were like, he was so good at the end of the year. Like, yeah, Rooker was good for a whole year. And sometimes I think we just get too fixated on that, that possibility that six good

weeks or four good weeks can be a great season instead of saying a good or very good full season can be a better one. Yeah. There's a, there's a great story about that by Michael Rosen on fan graphs about Wyatt Langford and You know, it's a little bit maybe different with a young player that is his first year and the last six weeks are really good You know, I guess why Langford led all players in war in September or something and in war in September or something. And he was saying that there are adjustments you can see in his mechanics and his approach at the plate

and they fit with what him and his pitting coach were saying with the adjustments he wanted to make. You know, so, you know, Michael Rosen is talking himself into White Langford as like a huge breakout candidate for next year, but he's also walking that line where he's like, yeah, but it was only four weeks and like, we don't know that this is going to get better.

But he was supposed to be really good. So maybe it's happening. Yeah. Maybe, maybe that September is the equivalent of Jackson Churio's June, right? Where it's the beginning of something amazing. That's the story I like to tell myself. Yeah.

He brings that up, but he, he said that, you know, Churio did it earlier and had more of a full season that you believe in. And that's the thing we're just saying. Like if you're going to choose between Churio and Langford or next year, shouldn't you choose Churio? Well, at least in that case, there's a cost differentiation right now and how the early drafts are treating them, but seeing Rooker right there next to Melendez and Nelson Velasquez just makes me want to slap myself in the face and say, come on, man, like pay

attention. Look at what's happening with the playing time because that is very helpful. Michael Conforto is on your list right now. And what I'm going to posit here is that Michael Conforto, Jesus Sanchez, Ryan O'Hern, I'm leave William Rario out. That might've been a little bit of a breakout. Mickey Moniac, Matt Buehling, these are all showing as, and Dubon, they're all showing as values. If they get more expensive, I don't think they're values. You know? And I think that can be a little,

that's less controversial when you're talking about Marissa Dubon and Rhino Hearn, because you're like, and Mickey Moniac, you're like, those guys are, you know, like those guys are not necessarily regular players, you know, and, and you just got lucky. You see those late spikes, ADP versus hitter production right now in the, in the 600 ADP or whatever is that six 600, which is, which one's played appearance, which is an ADP.

Played appearances is a, is the Y axis. What is this plate appearance, which is an ADP? Plate appearances is the Y axis. ADP is the X axis. And I put this chart up that our buddy, J.H., who was on a couple episodes ago, put together, because I think all these guys were going right before that playing time cliff. And I think it's important that you're getting those

four, fifth, six outfielders. There's definitely a last chance saloon tied to the playing time projections. And I think that's why you see all these guys sort of clustered together. I mean, Brenton Doyle, holy smokes. But that doesn't mean they're equally likely to be a good players going forward. I mean, if you just think about what, what type of player Dubon is, like they needed him, but will they need him equally every year? And as he gets older and his back gets worse, you know,

and his glove gets worse, then he's less likely, like think of how Chris Taylor aged. I think that Mauricio Dubon may have a similar thing where he was a good, one of the best utility players when his glove and bat were good enough. But as those things start to go away, there is a cliff at some point, I think, where you're like, wow,

I don't wanna play you anywhere now. Like I wanted to barely play you anywhere, everywhere. You know, I don't want to play you anywhere now. Like I've wanted to barely play you anywhere everywhere. You know, now I don't want to play you anywhere. Um, where can Forto sits on this? I'm not entirely sure. I mean, people did point out that Conforto just had his best barrel rate since 2017, um, his best maxi V since before the shoulder surgery. Um, and, um, just really, uh, put together

some of the best underlying numbers he'd had in a while. But I'd like to point out that in the meantime, he's gotten old. He's 31 years old and we don't know right now what sort of situation, uh, he's signing into, you know, and so if he signs into a partial playing time situation, yes, he is a left-hander, but in weekly leagues, it's going to be harder to play him. And so he's just going to be a guy that really has a hard time rising above six outfielder status, you know? And so you might be buying a fifth outfielder that's actually a six outfielder.

That doesn't seem like a bad idea, but what if you bought two, six outfielders that could be, you know, everyday outfielders, you know, it could, it could rise above to fifth and fourth outfielders in a fantasy sense, you know what I mean? So I, I, I, I know that there's some good arrows from Michael Conforter, but the age is a big honking bad arrow. Yeah. I think you got to be careful.

I think in gotta be careful. I think in deeper draft and holds different than leagues with in season moves because I think he'll keep his job and I think the per plate appearance numbers will be fine. So I think in those formats I'm interested, but in leagues where I can make moves, I might be looking at Conforto

as more of an on again, off again sort of player that I would use as opposed to someone who I'm gonna just leave in there as my last outfielder on a week in week out basis because as you mentioned the playing time under 500 played appearances each of the last three seasons that he's been out there. That's with two different teams right. I think that's just sort of the way rosters are built around a player like that right now.

Hey Sue Sanchez playing a lot you know that's just the result of the depth chart around him and to get to be careful as that team eventually gets better. That maybe his playing time dries up, but he had little skills indicators for a long time that kept pointing to something better than what he had done being possible. So it's not a shocking late value. It's just one that you do want to be a little bit careful about buying fully into for a repeat because of all the years where he had that playing time and it didn't come through the way that it did in 2024. It is so weird that like he kind of he had his best season by war. He played the most. He had an eight probably his best season by fantasy because he had 18 homers and 16 steals Sanchez did. Probably a record for mentions on rates and barrels.

And, um, you know, hard hit, great barrel, great maxi be great 50% ground ball. I just, there's something about this. Like that was maybe your best season. Like he's 27, but sometimes too. And we, we said, oh, he's 27. He's, he's not too old yet. And this is a platform season. He's going to get better off of this. I'm not, I's 27, he's not too old yet. And this is a platform season. He's gonna get better off of this.

I'm not, I'm not sure. We're talking about 1500 plate appearances with a 99 WRC plus and poor defense. Like this is not a player to get super excited about. The number of mentions on rates and barrels in this coming year are going to go down. That is my, that is my metric. You do have a lot of control on that.

So there will, there will not be a betting line available. That is not a thing you can fire off bets on. I think JJ Bladay is kind of interesting because his breakout, his consolidation year was probably overshadowed by Lawrence Butler a little bit. And I think, you know, when you're looking at defense, you're saying, Hey, 157 games in center field. He's the center fielder. Do you trust the playing time to stick anywhere near that level?

642 played appearances for JJ Bleday, I think is a big, big part of why the season jumped as much as it did. Skills were better, right? He struck out less, slugged a career best 437 and now like all the other A's hitters is moving into a more hitter friendly environment. But are you looking at him more like a conforto for playing time? Yeah, cause I was about to say, I don't know that they have a better option. I know, I thought for a while that Lawrence Butler had the skills to do it, but I've watched them now in the outfield talk to people around the team and he's, he's going to be, I'm

not saying he's bad outfield. He's just not a center fielder. And so I'm saying, well, maybe Bladay is just the guy that they stick in center because they don't have any other options. We still have Asturia Ruiz kicking around. Interestingly, he has never really done that well by fielding metrics. I think that's one of the things where they've wanted that to happen and because of his speed, I can see it.

Maybe it's a platoon as far as the defense goes. Ruiz maybe gets those starts in center against lefties occasionally if they're just trying to find his bat in the lineup, but I don't know. Do you trust JJ Bleday's bat enough against lefties occasionally if they're just trying to find his bat in the lineup but I don't know like I do you trust JJ Bleday's bat enough against lefties to say yeah it's fine he can keep playing that's the other way to think about it like the defense might be okay or good enough but the slash line against lefties for JJ Bleday last season 216 266 448 at least had some power and a 25.6 k K rate isn't horrible. So it ended up being a league average, even slightly better by WRC plus,

but it's flimsy enough in a small sample to say that could go away if he were to struggle in those matchups. He might open the year as an everyday guy, but will he finish the year as an everyday guy? Yeah. And there is some give to this depth chart and Oakland. There's some, it's an interesting one. Especially for a team where the hitters are maybe going to, uh, and we'll

talk more about that, um, next week when we, when I have Brent Rooker on the program, but, um, you know, there's been some talk to Brent Rooker will play in the outfield, all these players might be headed towards a nicer place to hit. So they're going to be maybe some winners and losers in this, um, depth chart that matter for fantasy. And I'm just looking at this left field depth chart of Seth Brown, Miguel Andujar and Colby Thomas and saying, I don't, that's, that's the plan. And if that's not the plan and it's Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler,

you know, in the corners, then I could actually see Ruiz playing more because you're going to have a Rooker out in the outfield and that's a bit of a DH situation, so you may want to late in games, uh, move him or play him at DH more often and play Ruiz and Blede. But I'm, I'm just not sure that the projections bat wise for Brown, Andrew Haar and Thomas are worth a corner outfield situation. So you may talk yourself into Ruiz's defense is good enough. His projection, Ruiz's projection by steamers 99 WRC plus, if he actually plays a good center

field that's better than what Bladay did. And then you can say, okay, we're going to have a league average guy in Ruiz and center is gonna be league average the bat is the above average with the glove. What day is gonna be above average of the bat and be above average of the glove in left and rookers gonna be our dh and brown and your heart and you know there are backups. That's actually what i think is the most likely thing to happen. So Ruiz is back on our radar as a possible sleeper. At the very least, it's just a cheap speed dart because you're not drafting him right now. He's not going inside the top 500. So free free shot at playing time.

And if they're not going to use him, maybe some other team would be interested as a fourth outfielder semi-regular too. Like there's some reason to believe there's reason to like chase that. It's so hard to do a true review. And every time you do a review, you start going into a preview. Yeah, oh yeah, no, that's the problem. We were talking about late outfielders

and we just immediately started talking about next year. Well, no, we're thinking about the, even though we're looking back at what just happened. So, yeah, I think one of the big takeaways, though, for me, prioritizing the left side of the infield early, making sure I've got those positions covered and then the corners and the middles coming from third and short, that's probably a heavy, heavy priority for me. It was a priority last year, too, but seeing another year where first base lagged and then knowing that you've got those options

throughout the outfield that will play enough, will offer a lot. I didn't really get into the Brenton Doyle details. I think we talked about him right at the end of the season. I think the Brenton Doyle, what can you learn from what happened this year is elite defenders in center field are going to play. If you see elite defensive skills in center field available after pick 400,

generally that's a risk we're taking. If it doesn't work out, okay, you swing and miss no problem. If it hits and they play for 550, 600 played appearances or more, the counting stats alone are going to be good. And if they have some pretty good skills to put around it, like Doyle does, then you get a massive, massive profit. Here are some possible, for next year. That and I'm throwing these out.

We'll, when we get to their positions, we can, um, investigate them more thoroughly. I think one that I believe in full heartedly is Pete Carr. I'm strong as the center fielder in Chicago. I think I'm getting a bit of a lift on him, right? It was one pick one 50, I think is where you're probably looking at Pete Carrell Armstrong right now. He is going to cost you a little bit something, but I do think he just keeps that job. Um, here are some more if you're ones, Jacob young by out above average was the

second best defender in baseball last year. We know that they're bringing in outfielders and stuff. And we know that Jacob Young's. Offensive profile Lisa's offensive profile leaves us wanting. But if he's that defensively, they may want to have that between rookie outfielders. So maybe Young's playing time is safer. Michael Ciani in St. Louis was the seventh best defender

in baseball last year by outspout average. And I know they have Victor Scott and there's stuff that we'd like that Victor Scott does better, in st louis was the seventh best defender in baseball last year by out of average and. I know they have victor scott and there's stuff we like that victor scott does better but. Maybe see on the. You know jump past him on that on that on that list other guys that stand i think at the pulpy. You know is defense is gonna keep him. You know steady so. He's a he's a he's a good good sort of backend starting shortstop play, I think,

uh, with a little bit of upside offensively. We've talked about him a bunch. Um, Jake Myers, you know, 15th best defender and did, was it kind of a zero on offense, but, um, you know, he played all the time, joy or tease, uh, you know, where he plays is not for certain, but I think he's gonna play. Yeah, he can play enough spots where, regardless of who they add to the mix, he's still got a shot at a lot of playing time.

Yeah, so Dubon's still ranking highly there. Johnny DeLuca, 38th best defender by out-so-boof-average and a head of centerfielders like Michael Harris, Johan Rojas, Parker Meadows, Julio Rodriguez, Jake McCarthy. So maybe the reports that Johnny DeLuca is going to play centerfield in Tampa are more believable than people seem to be taking them at. I was trying to make it happen last year with cheap Johnny DeLuca on a bunch of rosters

and it didn't quite click so yeah I'm probably not giving up completely on that possibility. That's a good reason to hang on for one more year of Johnny DeLuca. We are going to go on our way out the door. Just a reminder you can find us on BlueSky. You can find Eno at enoserus.bsky.social. I'm ddr.bsky.social. You can join our discord using theky. You can find eno at enocerous.bsky.social. I'm dvr.bsky.social. You can join our Discord using the link

in the show description again. Drop us some questions through the Mailbag channel there or by dropping us an email ratesandbarrelsatgmail.com. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.