Rates & Barrels - 2025 Starting Pitcher Preview, Part 2

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Eno and DVR continue Pitcher Week with the second installment of the 2025 Starting Pitcher Preview! This episode focuses on the starting pitchers often drafted between Pick 100 and 200 overall in early fantasy baseball drafts. Which fallers from previous seasons offer the most rebound potential? Where should you take on injury risk in this group? And, is there any good oatmeal available for your pitching staff within these tiers? Rundown 2:47 ADP Tier 4a -- Freddy Peralta, Logan Webb & Max Fried 18:42 ADP Tier 4a (continued -- Joe Ryan, Tyler Glasnow, Grayson Rodriguez & Hunter Brown 37:47 ADP Tier 4a (continued) -- Sonny Gray, Shane McClanahan & Zac Gallen 49:18 ADP Tier 4b -- Carlos Rodón, Justin Steele, Spencer Strider, Bryan Woo, Jack Flaherty, Kodai Senga 1:11:40 ADP Tier 5a-- Jared Jones, Robbie Ray, Sandy Alcantara, Reynaldo López, Yusei Kikiuchi & Kevin Gausman 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 Share your Positional Rankings in the HiveMind Ranks for Starting Pitchers: https://forms.gle/QhdU1UimnejRG1bP6 Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Spotify, this is Javi. My biggest passion is music, and it's not just sounds and instruments. It's more than that to me. It's a world full of harmonies with chillers. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Hello, I'm Ian McIntosh and I'm the host of the Daily Football Briefing. What is the Daily Football Briefing? It's a special 10-minute daily show designed to bring you up to speed with the most important stories from across the football world. Except on Monday mornings when it's 15 minutes and we try to cram in the results, standings and stories from the top 10 leagues on the planet. Or at least the top 10 leagues I run on a football manager save. Follow this show today and you'll never miss another big story again, whether it's news that the Athletic has just broken. Arnstein what happened? News from outside the Premier League that other podcasts might ignore

that is a difficult one to explain so let's go bit by bit or it's Champions League week and you just need someone to put it all into context it's made for a very useful away point in a difficult game in a difficult week listen to the daily football briefing in 2025. It's out every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. rates and barrels Wednesday January 29th. Pitcher Week continues. Episode two in our three part starting and pitcher preview series. Smash the like button on this video if you're watching us on YouTube or leave us a nice rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Derek from Ryper, Enos Saris here with you today as always digging through. Pitchers going in the pick 100 to 200 range. I'm optimistic. I think we can cover a spread of 100 picks but these are important pictures. Guys that could make big leaps. Guys that could leave you very cold if they continue their decline in some cases. So it's an important group to be completely dialed into as draft season rolls on. Be sure to join our Discord. the Discord. You can find

a link to the Hivemind rankings. Submit your rankings for all the positions we've covered so far. The link for starting pitchers is also open. We're going to compile all of our listener feedback on those and send some rankings out to you. The listener supported rankings from the Raids and Barrels crew. So a lot of ground to cover with those if you haven't started them. And then of course we dig into Tier 4A as I'm calling it as we get started today. These tiers are so arbitrary. One little piece of news on yesterday that came out after yesterday's. Oh. Right, real quick.

You shared it with me. Oh, the Roki thing? Yeah, what was it? Roki Sasaki considered having Tommy John. Yeah, it is prior to his first season in Japan with Chibolode. I mean, that's a while ago. Masahiro Tanaka was supposed to have Tommy John and then didn't ever really. Or did he eventually? He eventually did, I think. But he pitched for a while without having it. If I remember correctly, Tanaka pitched with a grade 1 tear in his UCL, a known grade 1

tear for a very long time. And then at the point that happened, I thought maybe a lot of guys have a very small tear in their UCLs and if they haven't been imaged, we just don't know they have one there. Tanaka also doesn't throw 97s. Also that. I was really thinking about my Hunter Green versus Sasaki thing and thinking well, maybe I'm wrong You know, I had Sasaki higher in my rankings and stuff But if the over under on innings for Roki Sasaki who has pitched like a hundred

11 and 90 innings in the last two seasons in Japan if the over on our innings this year is 90 Then the over on our and on innings for hunter green. I think is like 140 So that's a that's a big difference. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming, sir. I don't know how this happened, but Freddy Peralta is the name on the screen. We cut off right at Freddy Peralta? How did that happen?

There's a lot of wiggle room in the order. If you ran this ADP report on a different day, you'd probably see different names on the screen. The reason you only see two names on the screen is because this tier, this ADP tier between pick 100 and pick 125 is large. There are 10 pitchers being smashed into that group of 25 picks, and there's a few relievers in there too.

Relievers will have to get their own episodes, we'll cover them later. But that group includes Freddie Peralta, Logan Webb, Max Free, Joe Ryan, Tyler Glasnow, Grayson Rodriguez, Hunter Brown, Sonny Gray, Shane McClanahan, Zach Gallen. You know, why are we drafting any pictures before Pick 100 if these 10 guys are all sitting on the board this far in? It is a great group and I think the answer is that I don't have

really robust innings projections for a lot of these guys Freddy Peralta 173 last year. He might be actually one of the more robust guys in this tier he seems to Alternate good and bad halves for some reason. I know that our buddy Nick Pollock has a theory that it has to do with his mechanics since he's so far out there as an extension and various oddities in his mechanics might lead to this.

But isn't that your experience with Freddie Peralta as a Brewer's fan? Yeah, the inconsistency in his command could be the result of his mechanics. I think that's a reasonable take on him. What I think is tricky with Freddie Peralta, I don't know if there's one more adjustment he can make, right, everyone remembers fastball Freddie when he debuted,

you know, it was like 80-20 fastballs to everything else. He's not that guy anymore. We've talked about that over the course of his time in the big leagues. He sits around 54% four seamer usage. And the four seamer at this stage is 94.3. League average for a righty is 94.7. So he's right around that area.

We're at the point in his career where any year could be the year that he loses a tick. Does he have enough with the other pitches? Do you like the slider, the change, and the curve enough? Any one of those pitches enough where you could say, maybe he could knock more foreseam usage down and throw something else instead? Because there's a loop in my head sometimes

of Freddie Peralta getting into difficult matchups where really good hitters can just foul off the fastball and make him work harder right like he gets great results he's a very good pitcher i just don't know if there's any more levels there like is what we've seen these last two seasons what we get if that's the case it's good it's fine it plays well right here and then we're just at the mercy of health and the v-low not coming down. I think if we get a healthy Peralta with the same fastball velocity as 2024, there's a lot of confidence in the projection being something right around what we've seen in 23 and 24. I think he is who he is

at this point and maybe that's why you know people want to go to somebody who maybe has more upside at this in this grouping. In the new Stuff Plus, you know, his fastball is above average, his slide is above average. His change is, you know, below average 90. But, you know, it's usable, especially for a guy who's so good with the fastball and slider. It's it's kind of like, oh, he they didn't they weren't expecting that pitch.

That sort of thing. Like literally a change up. And the curveball 96 stuff plus one 11 location plus, like maybe he could, you know, do more first pitch curve balls, the steel strikes, you know, kind of have some little wrinkles that kind of older pitchers do. But I don't see like a pitch that he should really ramp up usage for and change. Like even the slider at 104 Stuff Plus, you know, that's is above average in the new scaling.

That is a comfortably above average slider, but it's not, you know, a slider that's screams, hey, throw me more, you know, it's just a pretty good slider. So he's just pretty good across the board with, you know, and that's, that's Stuff Plus, especially at his age at 28 with his many innings under his belt 754 like you'd rather just look at his strikeout minus walk totals which are really strong to nearly elite so then

you you kind of question what is this true talent home run rate and it's been pretty pretty decent 1.4 1.35 the last two years, like he's going to give up some homers. And so I think that's just the package is like somebody guesses right on the fastball. They're going to hit a homer. He pitches in a park that allows some homers and he has, you know, some bouts of inconsistency with the command. So you're going to get a mid to high three ZRA, a lot of strikeouts.

He's good. If you took like a Logan Webb somewhere or you took Fromber with your first pick. He'd be a pretty good guy to pair with Fromber because he would add the strikeouts. Yeah, I do think the fact that you can get 200Ks in a season where he might throw 175 innings, we've seen that a couple of times,

that's nice to get from here. That's the category you have the most confidence in. The ERA could be tracking more into that high threes range, possibly into the four range at some point. I do think the quality of the Brewers defense is important here. The Brewers put a really nice defense on the field behind Freddie Peralta. That can help, but when you give them homers, that defense isn't going to help you. They can't go back there and pull them back. So I think he's fine at the price. Kind of has a little up arrow for me

as someone that I do like if I waited on pitching because I think he does a lot of things you need an SP2 to do and maybe starting to slip closer to an SP3 sort of price for some folks out there. I did take a look at a two year combined stats leaderboard for the 10 pitchers in this group. And I'm not at all surprised to see that Freddie Peralta leads this tier in strikeouts over the last two

seasons combined. Helped as a part of that 410Ks, next closest on the list is actually Sunny Gray at 386. So keep that in mind, the bulk can play nicely. Logan Webb goes in this group though too, so right there've got a which route do you want to go Logan Webb's not going to rack up strikeouts quite the same way because of the workhorse volume he makes up in makes up some of the deficiency in strikeout rate. How long does it work right because when you look at Logan Webb's profile you see that dwindling swinging strike rate it's dropped each of the last three seasons.

We're down to a 20.5% K rate. The same sort of strike rate he showed us two years ago. Is there an adjustment Logan Webb can bring us that will bring more Ks? Or is this just a volume play and guy that you really like a lot more if you already have strikeouts locked in with those first two starters? Might be surprising for someone of his ilk, but if you look in his statcast player profile,

you'll see this, oh, there's a cutter there. Throwing 1% over the course of his career. In fact, last year he threw it mostly only to Shohei Otani. It's got a pitch just for Otani. Yeah. But, you know, he's been mucking around with that slider. It's had different shapes over the course of his career, different VELOs. It's not that he, he's obviously a change up sinker guy who's, you know, he was miscast

when he first came up as a, as a four seam slider guys. They tried to make him, you know, be both guys, kind of like a Luis Castillo and doesn't quite have the feel for the four seamam and the slider that Luis Castillo has had. So he hasn't been able to add the strikeouts the same way. So he still relies on righties sort of batting into the ground and changeups with getting lifts from lefties. But he has such great feel for those pitches and such great ability to stay healthy and

stay on the field that I think it makes up for a lot of these problems. And I think there is upside in that, you know, that nation cutter. Does he develop that cutter and have two average breaking balls that he kind of plays off each other? Can he do that? They are different. I mean, the cutter is 91 and the slider is 84. So he's got a little bit of upside there. And even if he doesn't hit that upside, I think he's got such high floor in that Fromber way, 28 years old. And then I just also wanted to point out, where do you think the breakeven point is when you're deciding between a reliever and a starter in terms of strikeouts they might give you in a given week in NFC or just in a weekly format?

you in a given week in NFC or just in a weekly format? Where do you, like how many strikeouts do you think a reliever would give you in a given week and where do you need that starter to be over him? The relievers you'd actually use are gonna be mostly guys that have a 30% K-rate or higher and you're probably banking on what, two and a half, three appearances depending on the schedule most weeks for those guys, like every other day,

if they're gonna get used, maybe a tick lower than that so maybe five five four and a half something something around four and a half Or five okay well despite his low strikeout rate Logan Webb because he goes Into the game seventh inning ninth inning sixth inning because he did that he made five strikeouts in all but three six nine twelve fourteen of his starts so in more than half of his starts he had 33 starts so in 19 starts he had five or more strikeouts and if you if you add it to four strikeouts and say well he'll come within a whiff of that. He only had fewer than four strikeouts three times. So I think he battles a non-closer reliever,

because we're talking about sort of draft and hold and situations. If you take saves out of the picture and you're just like, how many strikeouts? I think he battles a reliever on any given week to a standstill in strikeouts, way more likely to give you wins, you know, and gives you bulk.

And so I think he's comfortably above that decision point. I think thinking about strikeouts per appearance, rather than strikeouts per batter sometimes makes sense in the weekly league. So that's my plea for considering Logan Webb, especially if you went a little risky with your ace. I think he's a great pairing with Crochet. He's a great pairing with de Grahm.

There's a way where you can go one-two in different directions. Peralta is the guy who covers up if you took Fromber, and Logan Webb is the guy who covers up if you took one of the risky strikeout guys. What's your overall take on Max Fried? I mean, I know when we talked about the New Deal, he signed with the Yankees. You weren't in love with that at the time we spoke about it at the winter meetings. But for 2025 only, this is a guy who's been a model breaker with what I think is pretty outstanding hit and home run suppression skills.

Now he gets the challenge of Yankee Stadium for his home starts. The workload typically falls in that 170 inning range. We did have an injury that knocked him down to 77 and two thirds in 2023. Expectations for Fried in year one in the Bronx. The stat cast park factors for home runs in Yankee Stadium, 119 and that's third in baseball for the Braves. Park factors for home runs in Yankee Stadium, 119. And that's third in baseball for the Braves, it's 105. And that's 11th in baseball. So he does have some experience with this.

But I do want to change this to right-handed batters to check that out because the home run park factor for right-handed batters, Yankee Stadium, they like it too. Second with a 120, Braves 12th 105, doesn't change very much. I was thinking maybe left-handers like the Yankee Stadium better

because of that it's a little bit short to that field. But turns out all hitters like Yankee Stadium. And one of the things I think that we figured out over some time with Fried, with respect to the modeling, is that maybe he was hiding throwing more fastballs than we thought. I think some of the models, you know, early on were saying he was a four seam guy and now we have him throwing 32% fastballs, 5% cutters, 16% sinkers. So he's become like a really wide arsenal guy He's really like forcing curveball when he first came up. So I think that's a big part of it

I think command is probably a big part of it maybe some of that touch and feel and and soft skill stuff because His strikeout rates are unimpressive at twenty three point nine percent strikeout rate is only a tick above average His walk rate is good six point.8% for his career, but his ERA, 3.07 for his career is really nice compared to like a Sierra for Max Fried of a 366. He has been a model beater no matter what model you look at, it's not just stuff.

And I'm just a little nervous about the park and I'm also nervous that that injury that he had in 2022 is a precursor for Tommy John. So I don't know. I kind of think he'll have it one year. I don't know what year will maybe this year. It won't be that big a deal in the Jeff Zimmerman injury factors. Max Fried has a 79th percentile injury risk. That's better than most of the Dodgers guys,

it's better than Cole, better than Chris Sale and Garry Crochet, but in this tier much worse than Logan Webb and Grayson Rodriguez and other types like that. So little bit of injury risk, a little bit of park risk. I right now have him comfortably ahead of this situation though. And I think he's a great pick right here. I have him 13th in my working ranks. Like maybe that's too aggressive because of the ADP. Maybe he should drop down to where Grayson is at 23rd, but that would still put him ahead of the ADP, I think. I don't have any problem at all with the current price, and I think the exercise is really at what point would you start to back off?

25 to 30 picks earlier, maybe? I mean, Frombrough Valdez versus Max Freed seems like a fair toss-up to me. Frombrough, I think, has the better health grade, but in terms of ratio, expectation, volume, team context, I think they're kinda close in a lot of ways. That's why I had Max Reed right behind Fromber. You know? See, I didn't even know that. I had the low volume Dodgers, right?

I mean, even with a ding for health grade, I still had a 162 innings pitch projection, which is better than any of the Dodgers, you know? Yeah, I think of the three we've got so far in this tier, definitely like Fried the most, but I think you can stack him up pretty comfortably against a few of the guys that are going ahead of him, and he holds up just fine,

despite the more difficult home park. Joe Ryan goes in this range. I can't figure out why people are drafting Bailey Ober ahead of him other than the grade 2 Terry's major strain that Joe Ryan was dealing with. It ended his season in early August. The good news here, he had an MRI that showed a complete resolution this offseason and he'd already thrown a few bullpen sessions as of a few days ago. So I don't know if that's a little bit behind where he'd normally be, but the early indications are that Joe Ryan's injury

from a year ago is one that is healed to the point where he may be just fine for the start of spring training. Yeah, it's a little bit of a pattern though. I'm surprised to see 85th percentile injury risk for him. Maybe it's because it hasn't been an arm injury. You know, I know that arm injuries are counted separately in Jeff Zimmerman's injury risk. I've got a three, five, three ERA projection, including his stuff plus

with the oopsie and a 27% strikeout rate. I haven't filled in the innings for him. 135 last year. What is your innings projection for Joe Ryan? I don't think it gets to 160 so he's more of a maybe a Justin Steele type where I have 158 Brian Wu 159 you think in there I think that's why he's getting pulled down to this group because those guys also have similar injury problems kind of weighing them down I think more of the the Bailey Ober thing things more just like Bailey over is getting way overdrafted and

Ryan probably does fit in this range I don't think I want to draft them at this price right now though. I want to see spring training I want to see him go through a handful of starts without any sort of setbacks I mean look the Terry's majors the back of the shoulder though is what's the new view though? Yeah, so I Believe in the skills. I'm just a little bit in the dark on the health to the point of hey Let's just see it play out for a little bit skills wise Turned out a 328 Sierra last year. It's the best we've seen yet from Joe Ryan has the built-in home run problem I don't think that's ever gonna go away That's just part of who he is, but he's done a great job limiting walks cut that walk rate each year

He's been in the big leagues so far So I like that a lot about Jill Ryan my comp for for Joe Ryan coming into this was Shota and I don't really see that much that happened in the first year to say oh, yeah He's nothing like Joe Ryan. You know what I mean and to have shot I go like way ahead of him You know is weird for me my projection for Joe Ryan is better know what I mean? And to have Shotai go like way ahead of him, you know, is weird for me. My projection for Joe Ryan is better than Shotai's. You know, I guess more innings for Shotai, but like, I have them both in like,

inside the top 40, so I'm not saying they're bad pitchers, but not necessarily where they're going. They both to me looked like strikeout for inning starters that won't walk a lot of guys, but are gonna give up a lot of dingers. So you're gonna just, hopefully they're just a little shot. Yeah, you know, kind of fastball splitter guys with inconsistent breaking balls, you know.

I think because of the health concerns of Ryan, if the price were somehow even, has not been the case so far, I do prefer Shota in this case, because we want more information. So Ryan's kind of a wait and see for me in this group, especially because the other three guys are all good. I'm so sorry, dude. I know we got a comment that I interrupt you. I'm sorry. I get excited, you know, like we're playing off each other. When it's going right, like I'm

just I'm just finishing your sentences. But I know it happens. Don't worry about it. That's okay. I just did it back a little bit just to show everybody it goes both ways. Yeah, I don't care. I love when the conversation is going, it's bing, bing, bing. And that's what we're going for. But I would say there are other names in this tier that I'm super excited about.

I think the next one, what's the next name? Cause I don't have the same ADP chart as you. I don't even know what dates you put in. Just to acknowledge, I do make a rundown that Eno has access to, and I do list the players in the order that they will be discussed in, so it's not a surprise. I just want to put that out there. I'm not surprising Eno at every turn with where we're going

throughout the entire Position Preview series. I try to put a roadmap out there. I kinda want you to guess who you think is next though because that's funny. It's loading. Oh, it's loading, of course. I think it's Grayson. It's not quite Grayson.

Ah. Who is it? But what I will say is this, it's Tyler Glass now. And if I'm going to subject myself to elevated injury risk, I will repeatedly do that in the case of Tyler Glass now because I cannot watch this guy pitch and come away with the conclusion there's anything less than top 5 talent on a per inning basis. I know the on a per inning basis is a huge modifier doing a big lift but it's true, it's legit. Of the players in this tier, last two seasons, strikeout minus walk percentage.

Who leads the group? Tyler Glasnow, 25.6%. Now the major unknown is Glasnow's health. The last thing I've seen anywhere on him is that he said his elbow was fully healed during an interview on Fall Territory in late October. The good news is we've heard nothing since then. The bad news is we've heard nothing since then. At that time, he said the plan was to throw twice a week instead of taking an extended

break. So, do we know how this winter has gone for glass now? Not yet. Do we probably get some updates on him when pitchers and catchers report in about two weeks? Yep, I'm guessing that's going to be one of the first questions a lot of the Dodgers beat writers are putting out there. Hey, what was your offseason like?

Did you throw twice a week? How did you feel? All those questions that players probably don't like to answer but have to answer when they're in that position. So, if I'm going to gamble on the low health grades, Tyler Glassnow at this price just seems like a huge bargain and he's in the group, it's a large group of players that as we do get positive reports from some of these guys,

ADP goes up, guaranteed. If he's pitching well, no setbacks, no problems this spring, there's absolutely no way you're getting Tyler Glass now after pick 100 in any drafts. It's just not gonna happen. He's gonna shoot up to the, maybe as high as like the Blake Snell range. Like pick 50 is actually possible

if he's completely healthy, all the V-Lows there throughout the spring. Thanks to a reader, we've got an AAP minus the relievers. And so he's going as the 31st starting pitcher, I believe. I don't know the timeframe on this one either, so like you said, it kinda goes up and it goes down. But 31st, he was the 23rd best starting pitcher last year in the short amount of innings that he had then.

I have brought that one up a couple times, but I just think that tells you what you can get from him. You can get top 20 from him. So the closer he gets to top 20 the more you have to be like you know and maybe back up off of it but right now he's going as the 30th best starting pitcher and he was 23rd last year and I think he can do a little better than he did last year. He had like a 3-4-9 ERA. He could definitely he's the kind of guy who could have like a 2-9 or like a 3 a three one in 130 innings. So I think the ceiling on these guys is more like 15 to 20.

That's why I have like a big injury tier from 15 to 20. Because I think that if you look at the top 10 pitchers every year, it's dominated by quantity because there are other guys, the guys who win Cy Youngs and stuff, right? They're the guys who have the two nine and 180 innings. So, you know, I think his ceiling is to be, you know, top 15 type player, back end top 15 type player, and he's going 30th. So we've talked about him a ton. So there's that he has developed some, he added a sinker last year, you know, it's, it's kind of fun. There, there is some upside to a guy who now throws four seam sinker curve

slider, you know, like what if he comes and now has a change up, you know? Well, one thing I also wanted to mention is the, I think the science suggests that full year throwing is not necessarily the problem because you want to keep up your fitness. It's competitive throwing. that is the difference. And so what maybe some people are suggesting is that people are attacking pitch design. We've talked about this on the show where some people, you know, like Joe Ryan says, oh, my change up, my splitter change is so different in the game than it is during practice

because because I don't have as much, I don't throw as hard and I don't have as much adrenaline, right? So some of the reaction has been like, well, I need to have as much adrenaline as possible and throw as hard as I can during pitch design so that it's the same when I do it later. And that is a fundamental tension maybe in the sport. But I would also suggest that maybe Tyler Glass now is not gonna be like, I need to throw as hard as I can

in December in my pitch design sequence. If he's talking about pitching, throwing twice a week, I think he's talking about throwing 60% effort twice a week just to keep his fitness up. pepper and Swiss pinwheel, starting at only $2.99 plus tax. Try one or try our full Tim's Deluxe lineup. Terms apply, prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada. It's time for Tim's. I use the New York Times Games app every single day. I love playing Connections.

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You can download it at nytimes.com slash games app. In the interviews I've seen from Glassnow, I get the sense that he's not, you know, listening to five finger death punch and trying to throw pitches through concrete walls in the off season. Not in December, no. If that's your vibe and that's how you get to the show

and that's what keeps you alive, great. Do you? But I don't think that's a glass nose mentality. It doesn't doesn't seem like who he is. And maybe it's good news that he's he's changing some aspect of his training program. It hasn't hurt the past training program. Exactly. It's fascinating. Didn't give him a ton of anything. Open up It can't hurt. The past training program, exactly. The past training program didn't give him a ton of innings. Open up a little bit more. But look, okay, last thought on lower volume,

high ceiling players in general. You have to consider that we're in a new era of pitching. Look at the innings totals of some of the Cy Young award winners in recent years, right? Chris Sale just won the NL Cy Young in 2024 with 177 and two-thirds innings. Scoob got the 192. In 2023, Cole got the 209. Blake Snell won it with 180 innings. In 2022, Justin Verlander won the AL Cy Young with 175 innings. Sandy Alcantara went to 228 and two-thirds that season. Might not see that again from anybody.

Robbie Ray in 2021. The main reason he won actually. Yeah, I mean volume, he was great and the volume just bumped up a level. Robbie Ray went to 193 and a third in 2021. Corbin Burns won in the NL with 167 that year. So, and again, the Cy Young's not everything, but you can be really good with less than that 200-inning workload we're accustomed to.

If you can tell yourself a reasonable story that a Dodgers pitcher or any of these guys that have dealt with some injuries can at least get to 170 and you think they have the skills to strike out 200-plus guys in 170 innings, I think you're in the Cy Young conversation if you have that, if you tick those boxes. And I think Tyler Glasnell, for me, maybe I'm delusional still ticks those boxes but I also think there could be another guy right next to him Grayson Rodriguez who probably doesn't get that sort of talk in most places outside of Baltimore if it even happens there I think Grayson Rodriguez could take off this year it's going to be really important as the Orioles are currently built

for him to stay healthy and do that. He was 117 and he was pitched last year around two injuries. Still just 25, but man, this is a guy who's arsenal across the board is just above average. He's got better than average command. I can't really give you anything I don't like about Grayson Rodriguez. We just need to see it over that 170 plus inning season

now in the big leagues and hopefully we get that ratios bump to go along with it. I'll try to come manufacture some shade, which is maybe his change up is better than his breaking balls. But then I did this and I found who has the most amount of pitchers pitches, single pitches in the new stuff and location plus that were

all above average in stuff and location. Grayson Rodriguez has four. His fastball, slider, curveball, and changer are all above average by stuff and location. Tarek Scoble has four. He also throws a fifth, a curve, that's at 99.99. So he was close to being number one on this list with five. Those are the only two with four that are above average at stuff and location across the board. Dylan Cease has three, his fastball slider and curve.

He throws a sweeper and change that didn't make my benchmarks. Bryce Miller has three, fastball sinker splitter. He also throws sweeper slider curve cutter that didn't make the benchmarks for whatever reason. There was a volume benchmark for this as well. Spencer Schwalbach has three, fastball, slider, curve, and then also throws cutter, splitter, sinker. And then Zach Wheeler has fastball, sinker, sweeper, and also throws curve, cutter, splitter.

So he is sitting with good, you know, comps in this regard. A big mix with stuff and command. He is change up first, but so was Teryx Koobel. So worked out pretty well for him. I think he has everything he needs. He can even bring back the cutter. Like you see with some of these other pitchers, they have pitches that don't make the grade but help them in some way or another. He was in too love with his cutter when he first came up, but if he brought that cutter back and it was more of a surprise pitch, I think it might actually help him. So he has the feel to add pitches.

He's done it already. He's also a very unique, a very rare type of pitcher that has a great change up and good breaking balls. There's a lot of pitchers that are more like Logan Webb who have a good change up and been fiddling around with their breaking balls. Kevin Gossman, been fiddling around with their breaking balls forever and haven't done it.

So kudos to Rodriguez to figuring out how to be good on both sides of the ball. I'm looking at Dylan Cease having a 105 stuff plus on that change up and I think it's the only pitch I watched last year that made me actually mad when I saw him throw it. It's so annoying. It's just not, I don't think it's a good pitch at all. It's not real.

I barely throw it. It's also a super small sample on change up. Like don't believe stuff plus on super small change up change ups. Yeah. He threw like 10 of them and they were like 50 miles an hour. One of them he threw made me, I just started swearing at the TV.

Like I just lost it. He called it an amuse-bouche. I got the, hey are you okay? I got one of those from the other room. I was like, yeah sorry, this guy just did a, this guy has other great pitches and he just did something annoying that it's like so annoying. Just don't do that That doesn't have any function. It's stupid Neither here nor there back to the rundown all I wrote next to hunter Brown's name was Edo's got this one So I know you love hunter Brown for a lot of reasons Why do you love hunter Brown and again?

How do you not just wait on pitching and just go bonkers once you get down to this tier? Because there are so many guys we like here. Yeah, actually, I think I shared this one with you. I'm not sure we used it in the last one. A Health Grades with above average stuff and above average location. There you go. We used it for Arenola, but it's also Hunter Brown. And good stuff, good location, great ERA projection from oopsie349, even better

than Nola's probably due to some park effect situations there, comparable K-BB to Aaron Nola, comparable A injury grade for him, and also Brown and Nola live four miles an hour off their max. We don't know if that matters, but it certainly makes me feel better about him. And Nolan Brown throw multiple fastballs, so it's not just one repetitive fastball motion over and over again. Schwalbach's right there with them. So a lot of Hunter Brown propaganda is Schwalbach propaganda. What I really like also about Hunter Brown is look at that innings total last year, 170 for Hunter Brown. I just feel like he's kind of a horse in the middle of the beginning of his career. And the only thing that people think is, oh, what about

the track record? I don't know. The thing that we loved about Hunter Brown before he had the track record was that all the process stats, like stuff loved him, right? He was one of those guys who was like, why does stuff love him so much? And location plus says he's around average and he can't figure it out. Well then he adds a sinker and it all clicks into place and now it makes sense. So now he has six pitches and three fastballs. He's a large mixed guy with stuff. I don't know.

I got nothing bad to say about him really. And I, I've been taking him. I just took him as my number two in a draft and hold because I was like, Hey, if I could sell you on somebody that has going to have a lot of innings and have ace like upside, would you like that? And I'm like, yes, I would like that. And Grayson went right before him and I said, I would have loved to take Grayson. I will take Hunter Brown as my second.

I think what also kind of makes the breakout look very good instead of great is that April was so bad before he made that adjustment and added that two seamer that could keep right. He's a lot more honest against them. He was droppable in just about every league. It was a real conversation. He had to have like people dropped him. Yeah. Ten team leagues, twelve, ten leagues, maybe even some fifteen team leagues. It looked really bad. It was like, oh boy, what what are the Astros going to do to fix this? They made they had to get. And it was like, oh boy, what are the Astros gonna do to fix this? They made, they had the adjustment. I think it was Alex Bregman that had a conversation

with him that gave him the idea. And it just, like May 1st on, most of the season, take out the first month of the season, Hunter Brown had a 251 ERA over 147 innings. He was over a strikeout per inning during that span. And it was like a 112 whip to go along with it. And you're getting that outside of the top 100 overall right now, that's incredible.

So another pitcher I really like, you really like. I don't think he's gonna stay at this current ADP but even as he moves up, you could move him up a couple rounds and I think he still holds up just fine against some of the other pitchers that we talked about at the end of our episode in part one. Last trio here from this group, Sonny Gray, probably an age-driven discount, he's 35 now.

It just seems like the nagging soft tissue injuries and back stuff kind of get him every once in a while, but there's still potential for what I think is going to be at least an average ERA, a good whip, probably 180 strikeouts. The sweeper's been huge for him, I think he got to nudge that strikeout rate up another level later in his career. But he's got three fastballs and two breaking balls.

Like so five pitches that get at least 13% usage. So it is a wide arsenal. It just seems like it's still working for Sonny Gray. You're just getting a little bit of like an age and injury risk discount. Yeah, you know, I do get some vibes of kind of late career Charlie Morton and, and Adam Wainwright. Though Sonny Gray has diversified better than him, he has more pitches than those guys.

What still stands out when I look at his numbers, the in the new stuff plus the sweeper is by far and away his best pitch. And that's why he's really pumped up the usage up to 20%. and it's even higher if you just look at handed, right handedness. So if he's facing a right hander right now, he's throwing the sweeper, you know, 25% of the time, the sinker 25% of the time, the cutter 25% of the time. So he's really those three pitches as you know, his primary approach and the sweeper 134 stuff plus the four seam 85 the sinker 105 so he hasn't dropped into the Charlie Morton Wainwright kind of bad fastball territory but he's close 86 on the cutter 84 on the curve that used to be his big

pitch 86 on the change in terms of stuff plus So really his best two pitches are the sinker and sweeper. So he can dominate righties. He has a little bit of a harder time against lefties where he just kind of throws everything at them. Four seamer 33, curve ball 20, throws a sweeper still 20, change up 13, cutter nine, sinker six. So I'd be a little bit worried about his approach against lefties over a while.

And then the last thing about Sunday gray, as he gets into this bad fastball level is also just he's avoided the big entry for the most part. But he, he seems to get nagging injuries. So if you'd look at his innings totals, he kind of hovers above 100, you know, which is good. But, um, you know, all the projections is like, Oh, 185 for sunny gray. He's an established guy. He can do that Well, he hasn't done 185 innings since 2015 Yeah, I think he's more like 150 160 is as far as expectations go which can be good compared to some of the guys

We've been talking about but he's neither a guy who's going to join the top He's neither a guy who's going to join the top Nor is he a guy that I can be like I'm getting 180 innings so it seems this is the higher end of His usefulness in terms of drafting like I would almost put a down arrow on him Yeah I do like him more than Joe Ryan as things sit today And I think you can build a staff if you're waiting you miss out on some of the higher ceiling guys You could build a deep league staff and say he's your one.

What if you get traded out of St. Louis? Ends up on a better team. If they're bad and they trade them, then better team context, even if it's a more difficult park potentially, that's always the possible downside, but usually those things kind of offset each other. So I'm fine with where he's going right now,

but I just would just feel kind of disappointed. Oh, I got a run of pitchers happened. I missed out on Glasnow, Grayson Rodriguez, and Hunter Brown, and I settle for Sonny Gray because I just want someone that doesn't feel great, even though I think the skills are still gonna hold on a bit longer. Shane McClanahan goes in here,

another two Tommy John surgery guy. I think Walker Bueller scared me pretty good a year ago in just how long it took him to really kind of find it. And even still, it happened so late. It's such a limited sample. I don't even go into this season with high expectations for Bueller. But as McClanahan goes, Eric Nian,

the Rays president of baseball operations said, they expect McClanahan to throw 150-ish innings so that workload should be there, at least comparable to a lot of other pitchers that we're thinking about here. How much does spring matter? Since we didn't see McClanahan at the end of last year, compared to even Jacob deGrom,

who got back for a small number of innings, we at least have some evidence that the stuff came back. With McClanahan, do you trust it if we see it in the buildup to the season? We talked about starters, sometimes it's one inning, two, three or four, and then five, and to the season, we talked about starters, sometimes it's one, anything, two, three, or four, and then five, and then the season starts. Do you need late spring stuff numbers from McClanahan

to even take the shot here, or was the stuff just so good before he got hurt that you're willing to take the gamble? Are they gonna install Hawkeye? It's time for Interfield? Was it already installed? I find this a little bit interesting because I think Velo is one thing

and some scout or somebody will have that, even if they don't have Hawkeye in there. But Velo is only one thing because Bueller came back with okay-ish Velo, but he didn't have the same movement that he had before. Well, but then there's the variable of sticky stuff enforcement and the timing of his injury too. Yeah, that was a really tough one for him.

But we also have this study from recently and I wonder if sticky stuff enforcement and the timing of his injury. And that was really tough one for him. But we also had this study from recently and I wonder if sticky stuff enforcement was a confounding factor in that study because they said that Ryde didn't come back as well after Tommy John. So that's it. I hadn't thought of that as a potential sort of fly in the ointment. But yes, spring matters because I like this type of player a lot more if they like de Grom through innings gave us stuff, gave us a peek under the hood, see how it looks. We don't have that for Shane and I don't even know that like, oh if somebody says he hit 97 today at Steinbrenner Field, I'd be like, okay, I mean, he hit 97, he used to sit 97.

And like, what's he gonna do his next start? And what does the movement look like? So this is too high for me for him. I'm not taking him here. I think it's more of a wait and see for me, even though I really liked Shane McClanahan before the injury. And again, it's a second Tommy John too,

so that adds that extra layer of risk. Eno's been trying to soft pedal Zach Galin to me in the Devil's Reject Dynasty League I recently joined. It's not gonna work if I also have to talk about him in the podcast. Why are you trying to dump Zach Galin to me in a trade? What's up with that? All right, I mean, yeah, it's going to hurt me.

This is why the Major League average fastball. You had it for varieties. What was it for varieties? I didn't do that. It was my memory should be better than this. I just saw it over 94. It is 94, seven. Jesus, because I did all starters. It was 93.9, according to Fangraph. So anyway, 94 is obviously a dividing line there. That's the average fastball. If you can, if you're

looking on on YouTube, you can see that Zach Galin in 2022 was comfortably above 94 for most of the months. In 2023, he was below 94 until the end of the year. And then 2024, he was well below 94 until the second half, until August or so. There are injuries confounding this. He's also talked about how long post-season run in 23 affected him at the beginning of 24. He did not have a long post-season run last year

and did not quite hit the same innings totals. And maybe that's a good thing. He does have a decently wide arsenal and he has good command. And I think he does have the soft skills that we don't necessarily always have ways to put numbers on. I mean, he seems like a pitcher to me,

if that makes sense to say on the Pitcher Podcast. It's day two of the starting pitcher preview. He seems like a pitcher to me. Wonderful. New Stuff Plus says he doesn't have a pitch over average. I could see Gallin being a bit of a model beater in the long run where even if it's not above average capital S stuff, it's wide enough arsenal with command where it all works. I'm a little surprised he had some trouble with walks in the second half last year. That was kind of a new sort of thing for him. I don't know if that's just coming off that injury, maybe having something mechanically

a little bit off. So you have to believe he's going to fix that if you're going to get in this year. What's a discounted price? If he were to give us 170 innings with last year's ratios, you're not going to be messed up taking him where he's going. I think it's now a question of does he bounce back to pre 2024 levels with the ratios and workloads? If he can do that, he ends up being a good value

So I'm not necessarily scared off given that there was a hamstring injury Hurting the V lo when the V lo was as bad as it was in the first part of last season. I Just think it's a question of is he post-peak. I did also notice That his home splits for his career now 298 home ERA at Chase Field 362 on the road. Gatlin doesn't get that many homers anyway, but we talked about it with Corbin Burns that Chase Field is really tough for left handed power. That helps a right handed pitcher like Gatlin that gets reflected a little bit in those numbers.

He has 12th in regular season innings over the last three seasons with 542. And basically anyone that goes ahead of him either has, everyone that's been to higher in innings that is, gets drafted earlier, unless they have a much lower strikeout rate. Guys like Miles Michaelis, even Chris Bassett, those guys go later. Yeah, he can, I think he can be an innings play. He seems pretty horse-ish.

Also, this is kind of fun. 2022, Zach Galin had a 254 ERA and a 332 Sierra. 332. To 2023, he had a 347 ERA, closer to that Sierra from the year before, but a 367 Sierra. In 2024, he had a 365 ERA, almost a direct match for the Sierra,

and a 385 Sierra. And the projections, 385. So maybe that makes sense. I like what you're saying about the park and I think that he's kind of a wide arsenal innings play at this point. And it's not a terrible guy here, especially since we're talking about declining

innings totals of guys around him. So he's like a little bit like almost on the Logan web ish spectrum where you're like no I need it I need a guy who's gonna give me 170 innings right maybe a slightly safer version of sunny gray in terms of what you're expecting so totally fine at the price but I think your your keeper and dynasty caution is warranted and I share it so I'm probably not going to trade now that gallon then I just turfed his value How many people from that league listen? No, that counts really good. He's really good for you

All right 49 minutes in we are into tier 4b we got through part of one tier I told you ten pictures was a lot to take a lot of time and We moved down more who's supposed to we supposed to do two more tiers after this. Oh boy. We make the rules. You know, if you want to leave the tree up until January, you can do that. Taylor Swift said it was okay. We could start choosing our favorites from that tier.

No, I don't think people want that. I think they want the full experience. So tier 4B starts with Carlos Rodan. That goes down to Justin Steele, Spencer Strider, Brian Wu, Jack Flaherty, and Kodai Senga. You're gonna notice the theme here, injury risk starts to creep up even more for this group with Rodin.

417 in the third innings over the last three regular seasons combined. That puts him 48th out of 106 qualified pitchers during that span. I think he definitely has a home run problem that's not going to be fixed as a long-term Yankee. But it looks like a nice SP3 for a lot of builds at this price point.

And 175 innings last year was actually the second highest total of his career. So I think that gives you kind of a sense of the longer term health concerns up against a more recent nudge to at least get that grade off of the D or F range wherever it would have come in previously. It's close though. It's still close. Yeah, it's still low. 65 percentile, 65th percentile for Jeff Zimmerman's injury risks that is comparable to Tyler Glass now at 65th.

That's pretty amazing. Chris Sale is 66. so behind Chris Sale tied with him, head of Nathan DeValdi is about on a tie with him. So yeah, he's an injury risk guy that has, you know, it's kind of sometimes hard to see injury risk guys like this, where you're like, oh, but he just came off a good season. You know, like you kind of like, sometimes you'll just look at last year's innings totals. Oh, 175, but, and even if you look at a four year snapshot, 132, 178, 64, 175 is not terrible, but it's the types of injuries.

It's been arm injuries, it's been back injuries, it's been kind of tough. And so I'm not projecting him for a ton of innings. I have in my written projections right now, 149. Another thing I'd like to point out is even though he is top 15 in stuff plus, the park is a difficult park and in particular, he's been home run, you know, susceptible. And you know, with the new stuff plus plus we have a way of looking at something that could be high stuff and good for whiffs, but also have a high expected

home run total. And so you see oopsie projects them for a 1.4 home run per nines. That's the highest of the projections. And so still a three, eight projection despite great strikeout rates. And I guess Freddie Peralta ask. Okay And I guess, Freddy Peralta-esque. Okay, left-handed Freddy Peralta, a few years older with some scarier injuries along the way. But if you're looking to paper over

maybe a strikeout issue from your first starter, he's not a bad place to look. In that first year with the Yankees, it was a forearm strain in spring training that turned into back and hamstring absences later. So at least it wasn't the arm all year, but given the elbow and shoulder stuff he's dealt with throughout his career, it's a wobbly long-term profile. And I say this as someone who is pretty comfortable taking on some pitching risks. So I'm probably going a different direction

here. Justin Steele, I think the question is, is he just underrated because he's not overpowering? We know he varies up the fastball and slider a little bit to try and make them function more like four pitches, even though it's two that he leans on pretty heavily. Low extension average chase below average swing and miss, but great results. So it's a bit of a mystery. Every time we talk about him, I feel like I'm, I'm learning something and still not even believing what I'm told about him.

Yeah, so I wanted to investigate that because someone even pointed out that we had the Marcel projection wrong and I was just like, it's at some point I decided that's what it was and I didn't reinvest it. You have to reinvestigate your prior. So I was like, oh yeah, Justin Steele varies his slider. And so I thought, let me look at some pitch plots. So I put up Justin Steele on the left here. That's his slider plot in the second half of last season.

And this is, you say, Kikuchi's slider pot in the second half of last season. I don't know. Does Steele's look a little bit more dispersed? Maybe, but do you look at Justin Steele's pitch plot on this page right now and say, oh yeah, that's two pitches versus Kikuchi's. Like, you know, Justin Steele's spread is like 10 inches in each direction and

Kikuchi's spread is like seven inches in each direction. I don't know. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh, if there was like a, you know, kind of two nodes, I mean, two clusters, I could be like, oh yeah, he has a harder one and then he has a softer one. I just see a big old spread. I don't know. I think the thing that maybe, you know,

maybe models are missing or whatever is look at the difference in fastballs between Kikuchi and him. And our model, even the new model says 90 stuff plus on the fastball, but that kind of fastball is weird. As you can see, it's almost zero horizontal movement. It's a cut ride fastball.

Most fastballs, because of the way you throw, when you throw hard, you pronate, and just anyone who's ever thrown hard, you know the ball kind of sails, you know? And so normally you have some arm side movement. He has almost no arm side movement. And I just think that there's, I think it's actually just something so distinct

about how his fastball and slider look kind of similar-ish. And I would say it's more about tunneling with him than necessarily having multiple pitches because I think we would see more defined clusters if you really had other pitches. I think we're pretty good. Like right now we're teasing out sweepers, gyro sliders, cutters, you know what I mean? Like we're teasing out more breaking balls than we ever have when it comes to classifications. We could classify one of these as a sweeper and one of them was a driver's slider

if that's what the number said and they don't say that. So I think it's just maybe tunneling and a weird fastball more than necessarily touch on the slider or whatever. I don't know if that's a satisfying answer, but it's still kind of like shrugging your shoulders and saying, I don't really know why he's good. No, I think it's one of those situations where I appreciate your effort,

but I'm still not convinced even though, but it's a me problem. The results, as I said before, are really good. The stuff we look at normally doesn't work. Like 24% strikeout rate, not good. But weird is good. If the fastball is weird and he locates it well, then weird is good.

And it's borne out in the results. I just dropped steel into a leaderboard But weird is good. If the fastball is weird and he locates it well, then weird is good. And it's borne out in the results. I just dropped Steele into a leaderboard with all the pitchers from the 4A tier and sorted by whip. Steele is fourth out of those 11 pitchers in whip over the last two seasons combined with a 114. That is very good. ERA, second only to Max Fried.

Fried's got a 304, Steele's got a 307. Oh, God. Fried, yeah. He's a little like7. Oh God, freed, yeah. He's a little like freed. Good command, weird fastball. Smack dab in the middle for K minus BB percentage. Actually tied with Zach Allen. They're tied at fifth, 18.7%.

So there's guys ahead of him, there's guys behind him, but right there, right down the middle. I think maybe, I would be surprised. I bet you the park helps him somehow. So you would suspect that you see a pretty big split. Statcast Park Factor for right handers for Wrigley. 21st, the 94 Park Factor. I think that might have a little something to do with it.

So he can keep righties in the park and you can dominate lefties. Yeah, the career splits though. Home, 322 ERA, road, 326. Oh, shut up. 386 slug on the road against the 342 at home. That's a little more slugging. A few more homers on the road. And actually more innings too, 215 innings on the road,

26 homers allowed, 268 and two thirds at home, 20 homers allowed. So yeah, the park helps a little, but it's also not all park, it's just a factor. And you can look past the models. I mean, I don't know if you're fully past the models. I mean, like a Sierra, 378 Sierra for his career against the 324 ERA, like Sierra should be

capturing a lot of this. Sierra cares about ground ball rates and is more sophisticated about strand rates and babbips than, you know, just FIP or something. So Sierra is a pretty good predictor and it performs pretty well on tests for having been around for a while. So Sierra's not picking up on it,

but we're getting to 484 innings. I mean, if he does it again this year with a really low threes ERA, then you can really throw it out there. And so that's, that's worth betting on, right? Like the projections that do care about all these peripherals, oopsie, 366 steamer, 356, like you're not hurting yourself if you get that. And then you might just get another 175 inning, 3.1 ERA guy, and then you've won. So there's upside baked into the prices based on the projection, and there's upsides there

that he's actually a weirdo. Hey, weird is good, as we say all the time. Spencer Strider goes in this range. That's another one where, you know, depending on when we see him next, and it already sounds like his season is not going to start on time by design. This is from comments Alex Anthopoulos made this off season.

But I think this is more just backloading the innings he can give them in hopes of just letting him roll once he's back. That's the read I made on this. But would you rather draft Strider coming off of the follow-up surgery that was an internal brace or Shane McClanahan coming off of the second TJ? Because I think they carry similar high-risk,

high-reward sort of profiles. The difference being Strider could be the first pitcher off the board. He's been that before by talent. So if the stuff is still there for Spencer Strider, the perning numbers could just be off the board, he's been that before by talent. So if the stuff is still there for Spencer Strider, the perning numbers could just be off the charts. It's just a big, big question for a guy that had the internal brace surgery and previously had

Tommy John in college, like all the way back in 2019. Yeah, I mean, where do you put Roki Sasaki, who didn't have the surgery, versus Strider, who had the surgery? You haven't seen Roki Sasaki's major league stuff yet. had the surgery versus Strider who had the surgery. You haven't seen Roki Sasaki's Major League stuff yet. I think you gotta put Strider ahead of Sasaki. And you're getting a huge bargain right now on where Strider's going.

Yeah, and I think Sasaki is overdrafted. I think that's where I'm landing on that. You have to think about it, like when I was talking about, again, just to bring up the Gunner thing, like how many questions do you have? Like I think you can kind of look at a picture and be like, how many questions do I have? If it's one question, if it's zero questions,

that's my top five, right? If it's one question, that can be top 20. If it's two questions, top 30, right? Like can it be that simple? And how many questions do we have about Spencer Strider? One. How many questions do we have about, like one?

How many innings? What other questions do we have about Aroki Sasaki? Two. I think we have two on Strider. Is the stuff going to be the same? Post stuff. Yeah, post surgery stuff is a question and then. Cause he didn't come back like Jacob.

Like, okay, so Jacob DeGrabub, the question is one, innings. So I think that's helping me sort of develop a theory of how to, because the hardest thing, I'm so jealous of Nick Pollock, he's just like, well, if they're injured, they're not on the rankings. And I'm like, okay. You still have to do the preseason rankings. He built that in a way to just make his life easier,

which kudos to him. Anytime you can take something in your life that would be just a total pain, and you're just like, you know what? I'm not gonna deal with this anymore. I'm gonna make a rule for myself, and it's gone. Yeah, but I think I'd rather have Strider than Shane McClanahan, although it sounds like

Shane McClanahan's aiming for more innings. Just because the president of baseball operations put a number out there in this instance, and Alex Anthopoulos didn't. It gives you this, I think, undeserved confidence in McClanahan that if that number wasn't out there, I bet you'd look at them almost identically in terms of workload expectations.

I'm starting to push, like right now as we're talking, I'm kind of, this is really helping me make my rankings actually. I'm starting to push Shane McClanahan, Spencer Strider, and Roki Sasaki together. And I think I have them behind some of the guys that we've been talking about here, like behind Hunter Brown, and behind Grayson Rodriguez,

right, like behind Freddie Peralta, because those guys have fewer questions. That's what I'm landing on. Still a lot of questions as we round out this group, including Brian Wu, 135 and a third innings across all levels last year. And that includes more like rehab work. Don't think he was actually down for the sake of skills, of course. 131 and two thirds in 2023. So we're starting to see a little bit of a pattern full seasons for Brian Wu look like a stretch. He's a guy that had internal brace in college. I think that was back in 2021.

We did see a couple of stops and starts last year. Forearm discomfort that he managed to work around. He was really good around the ailments. And the resume for the two seasons combined in the big leagues now, a 344 ERA, a 103 whip, 194 Ks, 44 walks, and 209 innings. This is the stuff that SP2s are made of from a skills perspective,

maybe with an up arrow to be something more, but that is a very questionable health grade, given that it was some arm-related stuff, some scares at the forearm, that slowed him down last year. Yeah, I mean, he's 83rd percentile in Jeff Zimmerman's, and I'm like, hey, dude, no, I don't know. And I've got a 159 projected for him right now.

And he has a 324 ERA projected by Oopsy. At least in my chart, I'm not, sometimes I think he might have an update. But anyway, like everything looks good, but I'm like, I don't know if I believe that 159 innings projection. And I don't know if I believe that 159 innings projection And I don't know if I believe that 83rd percentile health so right now He is sitting here like he belongs in this tier, but if you take the innings part off, you're like, what's he doing down here?

You know like by his ERA projection. He should maybe be in that Dodger tier in the late 15s, early 20s. Yeah, but I do think this entire group shares a good mix of similar short and long-term injury risk, and they're at different points in their careers too. You have major injuries, you have stuff that could be precursors to Tommy John, you have a brace surgery, you have missing parts of seasons for everybody.

So I think it kinda makes sense, like why the market has squeezed these players together. Because you could talk yourself into all of them exceeding expectations with good health. Because the skills are generally pretty solid across the board. So I think if you're into some of the other guys in the group, you're probably also into Brian Wu.

I think it's a matter of ordering them. Wu versus Rodin to me is actually a tough question. I think there's a chance Wu is better, straight up, and I think the innings totals could be almost identical between those two. So I think that's probably one thing I would do differently than the market, is I'd bump Brian Wu up within the tier.

Yeah, I've got Wu easily over Rodin. In fact, I have Wu hanging out just around Freddie Peralta even. And I think, you know, you could get enough of an ERA boost from Wu to make him worth more than the innings from Peralta, but maybe just behind Freddie Peralta. Jack Flaherty's in this group,

short and long term concerns. Just turning the best all around skills we've seen in his career, right? It was 310 Sierra. Yeah, but if you saw the velocity chart for Zach Gollum, put up the velocity chart for Jack Flaherty. This never looked good. It's worse.

It's definitely worse. Ugh. Well, and I think with Jack Flaherty, I mean, you think about what happened between 2019 and 2024. Those were two great seasons, but with four years of chaos just mashed in between injuries, ineffectiveness, you know, just everything that makes you worry about a pitcher. I was trying to come up with reasons to believe because I think you could find certain draft

rooms where Flaherty slides a little bit, especially since he's still a free agent right now. I'm trying to come up with reasons to believe because I think you could find certain draft rooms where Flaherty slides a little bit, especially since he's still a free agent right now. The longer this goes, the more the questions come up. Curveball's really good. It's also a very professional market that is rendering its opinion and giving us some clues, right?

Yeah, 100%. But I think he's got two really good breaking balls now. And I think the Dodgers would that curve ball so I that could give him a better second act than we would have expected this time last year because I can dial down that fastball usage a little bit for Jack Flaherty. I do think he's gonna be very park dependent again you know a reunion with the Tigers would make me feel better about him landing on another contending team in a much more difficult place to pitch. That would be the other thing that could nudge me into being more interested in Flaherty

at this price point is a picture friendly home Park again. Yeah, I wonder how much he can nudge the fastball usage down because he was throwing the slider 20 like for the full year. I know there's different splits, but he's throwing the slider for the full year. I know there's different splits, but he's throwing the slider 29% of the time last year and the curve 22, I don't know that. His slider doesn't appear to me to be good enough to be a pitch that he throws a half the time.

And the slider and curve actually, if you look at the pitch plots, they're fairly similar, but they do have a seven mile an hour gap. So it's almost like he's playing change up with the curve off the slider and kind of playing them off each other so i guess you could get to like sort of 35 yeah 30 33 33 33 and just throw all three of them i guess he could do that that's sort of what he was getting to with the with the dodgers but the reason i put out that velocity chart was just that his slugging percentage for his career

on fastballs 94 plus is 400, or 93 minus it's 500. So there's a fairly big difference between 400 slugging and 500 slugging. Yeah, I just wanna be real careful with Flaherty at this point, but I wouldn't completely cross him off my list if there's a little bit of a dip, because he's gonna sign somewhere, and there were some things he did last year that explain how

he took that step forward a few years later than some of us expected him to. Last one of this group Kodai Senga basically lost all of 2024 to injury. You know the growth he showed over his debut season with the Mets had him going about 50 picks earlier I believe it's time last year. So you're getting another injury discount if you have the room to take it. It was a shoulder capsule injury in the first half. He worked his way back from that,

hurt his calf once he got back. The park is great. The team keeps getting better. Those 20-23 skills are pretty enticing. Is this a good injury discount right now for Kodai Singa? I'm definitely taking him over Flaherty. Like that's an easy flip, but I think, I think I'm taking him over.

I don't have him in my ranks. He's missing? Yeah. Phew. Sheevis. I'm doing all sorts of work today. Yeah. Thank you for doing that.

You know, 31 years old, massive injury risk considering that he just pitched even with the post he included 10 innings last year. The projections putting 150 and 164 on there seems aggressive. So I'm going to give him maybe like a 130 innings projection to reflect what I think is pretty massive injury risk and then the projections 352 ERA from oopsie Considering how good his stuff can be but he's also More Kevin Gossman than Grayson Rodriguez in terms of that, you know He is a guy who has a really good Split from your change-up and has not really ever developed a good breaking ball. The cutter that he has is not good

It's just good enough to keep people off his fastball. So it's a decent group of skills. And maybe he only has one question because I think he has demonstrated that he has the stuff to succeed in major leagues. The one question is how many innings? Yeah, and if you do look back at what he's done looking at his last couple of seasons in Japan,

it was I think 111 and a third in 2021, 148 in 2022, that also helps you sort of lower the expectations even though we have the proof in 2023 that he can go further, the 166 and a third, the following year shoulder injury, you know, it's maybe a nudge back in that old direction. So keep that in mind too. I wonder if the Mets consider a six man rotation.

We don't need to go down that rabbit hole right now. We'll have to bring on Will Salmon or Tim Britton at some point to talk about that. It's just how good you think Tyler McGill is, right? It's another person I look at and I just have the upside down smiley emoji. I'm like, eh, could be good, maybe. I don't know.

This guy's good., that's good this guy's good good We're gonna get gonna do one more partial tier at least one more tier Jared Jones is really good look at this We got a board Is it the board choice the board choice the board at the board this is Above average stuff and above average location with a hundred innings last year. Yeah, Garrett Cole. I grandfathered him in 95. Postseason.

Throw the postseason in there. Min 95 innings pitch, sorry. Oh, love this group. Brian Wu, Spencer Schwalbeck, Joe Ryan, Grayson Rodriguez, Garrett Crochet, Zach Wheeler, Paul Skeens, Dylan Cease, Jose Sariano, Derek Scoobel, Nick Pivetta, although I really want to know about the park a little bit for him. That's one where I'm just waiting. Aaron Nola, Jared Jones, Garrett Cole, Ryan Pepeo, Cole Regans, Corbin Burns.

This is a list of really good pitchers. I don't even like if Nick Pavetta is the worst pitcher on your list. I get it. You could be like, oh, I don't know. I don't know stuff plus works. Nick Pavetta is not that good. That is pretty good and he's the worst pitcher on this list and he has the worst pre the array projection on this list like 397. So you know you can take him off this list if you want. You could say you could you could call this list one more time and say everybody with a 375 projection or less and Nick Paveda and Jose Soria are off of it.

And it's just a list of great pitchers with Jared Jones on it. It was an impressive debut. And I do think it's easy to get overshadowed when Paul Skeens shows up. But if you remember before Skeens came up, Jared Jones at the beginning of the year was phenomenal. The league, maybe the second time through, seeing his stuff again did better. The homers, I think, were as much the result of inexperience as they were, any sort of deficiency in his stuff. I know the model likes to change up.

It is really a fastball slider approach in year one from Jared Jones Jones but it looks like he might have the feel for a third pitch the command doesn't look bad either so I think of the pitchers we've talked about in this entire episode relative to price Jared Jones is the one I probably want the most at the current price Hunter Brown might be the only the guy that I'm like that price probably won't last I want to be in on that. If I had a combo of Brown from the previous tier and Jared Jones from this one, I'm feeling really good about what I'm doing in the middle rounds. I think you can look at a lot of different things. The Sierra 372 was better than the ERA 414 came out as BB 26.2, 7.7 K and BB.

Like, that's pretty good. And it was better early on. And then I think even on this podcast, I think we kind of elucidated some of the concerns was he was predictable. And we actually predicted like a Cody Bellinger home run thanks to Trevor May and, and our sleuthing, you know, on how to face Jared Jones. And so if he can just maybe, maybe he can do the Hunter Brown thing and add a sinker. The fact that he has four pitches suggests to me

that he has some feel for pitches beyond his fastball slider. He's thrown the curve and the change up more than Spencer Strider through his curve and change up in his first year. So I think that he'll find a way to mix in the curve and the change, and maybe even come to camp

with a cutter or sinker. I think we're gonna see a second act from Jared Jones. Yeah, easily the favorite of the tier. Not even close for me right now. This group includes Robbie Ray, Sandy Alcantara, Renella Lopez, Yusei Kikuchi, and Kevin Gossman at the back. For Robbie Ray, I see a lot of similarities between Ray and Carlos Rodan, actually. Safe for home park for Ray at the back. For Robbie Ray I see a lot of similarities between Ray and Carlos Rodin actually.

Safer home park for Ray at the expense of what I think is a pretty clearly lesser supporting cast. Low health grade right now because of his proximity to TJ. I wonder if the command might come back and we might see the 2021 and 2022 walk rates. We saw that improvement in Toronto from Robbie Ray where he got the walk rate down to a good level which I think early in his career seemed impossible. If he does that I think Ray ends up being kind of a nice old and boring sort of pick in this pocket. I'm missing him from my rankings too.

Jeez. So very strange. I wonder why. Some data set that I started with didn't have them in there. So I'm now looking at Robbie Ray's 53rd percent injury risk Code I think it was 67. So 53rd is it's a video game. It's worse than James Paxton's. Oh, come on. That's ridiculous

I'm just reporting the numbers, but again, it's the proximity. It's the proximity to the major injury, right? It's it's like the health bar in a video game It starts to go back up as you don't get killed by whatever's trying to kill you in the game I also just wonder I've seen that there is a Tommy John honeymoon if there was a Tommy John honeymoon he would be in it, but I've also seen people say that there is no Tommy John honeymoon. And so I would say that research is undefined, but I do sometimes wonder, like, I do have that part of my head. That's like,

is this guy just waiting to have a Tommy John? And so maybe it's better to just take somebody who already had it. And I kind of feel like with Rodin, you're waiting for the hammer to come down and with Ray you're like at least the hammer probably won't come down for the next two seasons so actually I'm not saying that I like Ray better than Rodin but he's going later and not taking Rodin allows you to take Ray later in a certain way when you're talking about the effect of injury risk

on your roster. I was just looking at a four year leaderboard and I was trying to come up with a way to make Robbie Ray look really good. Strikeout Ray? I was gonna use Sierra actually since 2021 and see just how high on that leaderboard Robbie Ray comes in, I gotta go to 400 innings pitched, I think that'll squeeze out the relievers

and limit it to starters. And there you go, boom. Number 11 in Sierra over the last four seasons combined, Robbie Ray, a 340 Sierra. The 10 guys that have better Sierras that go ahead of him, Garrett Cole, Mac Scherzer, Shohei Otani, Tarek Scoobel, Zach Wheeler, Corbin Burns, Aaron Nola, Logan Webb, Carlos Radon, and Clayton Kershaw.

And a lot more relevant than his stuff numbers. Your 1300 innings pitched into his career. Like I don't care about his stuff. He had a 33% strikeout rate last year. He's a worthy sleeper. Totally fine where he's going. Thumbs up from me on Robbie Ray. What are you doing with Sandy Alcantara right now?

He's two years away from free agency, counting this one of course, so 25 and 26 still a Marlin unless they trade him, also have a club option. I keep wondering if because of their rebuild situation, if he's pitching well to the first half, if we're talking about Sandy Alcantara as a trade target. I mean, pre-injury he was a workhorse with ace ratios, then had that sudden drop off in 2023,

still just 29 years old. What's next for Sandy? I've taken him because, you know, when we like look at the innings, a lot of times we looked at previous innings before the surgery and been like, oh, well, he used to do 200s, why can't, at some point he should be at least be able

to get back to the 200s? Right. And this guy was the guy who was doing two 20s. So I'm like, you know what? He could come back and do three quarters of what he's done before and be ahead of most people in any sense. Like I've been hand projecting innings and I have one 56 for him. And I honestly I could push that to 160 plus, I think, because he's just shown a capacity for innings.

And now do they rethink that because he's coming off surgery and maybe that led to this also his projection using stuff plus is not super exciting. Three seven 70 RA and he's never been a great strikeout rate guy. So you kind of have to be careful with who you pair him with. You don't want to put Sandy Alcontra on the same team as Logan Webb, I don't think. But I have him right behind Christopher Sanchez, not to speak outside of tier, because Sanchez is healthy, has a similar projection, similar strikeout rate problem, similar pitcher. Honestly, I think Christopher Sanchez and Sandy Alcontra are very similar pitchers. But I still have Sandy in my top 50 for starting pitchers

and a guy who has like a 3-7 ERA projection and might give me 160-170 innings and not give up homers and be really useful at home and maybe I set him in some road starts. I think he's going in an okay place. I have made the case to myself to pick him up. Most likely by this point in my draft, I've already found some risky starters that I like more. So that's why I don't really have them anywhere yet. I could see maybe having a more boring build, more health grade A, and then Sandy's still sitting there taking that chance.

But I do think his K totals were very volume dependent, and I can see a world in which the Marlins are a little more careful if they do view him as a player they want to trade. Maybe in game volume too. Right some of those restrictions. Just keep them to five or six. Could be there. Ronaldo Lopez goes in here and you know I couldn't have imagined a better return starting for him I thought it was possible he'd be a good back end starter he turned in ridiculous ratios, a 199 ERA, a 111 whip in 135 and two thirds innings, basically free in drafts last year. And if

you had him in your lineup all year, you were very, very happy. It did seem like maybe a fatigue related arm injury slowed him down in the second half though, that could be just from bumping that workload back up. Projections pushing back into that high three slow force ERA range with kind of an average whip. I just get the feeling with Ronaldo Lopez most people are gonna look at him the same way and say there's no chance of getting close to last year's ratios and he's being overdrafted right now so then he starts to fall and he's atop the queue in a lot of drafts and eventually if he sits there long enough maybe there's a good price. I just think here I'm not taking him.

I like everybody around him a little bit more. I think I need like a 40 to 60 pick discount before I'm gonna look at him and see better comps for my expectations for him for this year. I'm ranked 53rd right now, Jack Flaherty, 52nd. And people who we haven't talked about yet ahead of them. Yeah, so I think we're basically out on Lopez. It's amazing.

Think about how different this is in the era of projections. You know, before projections, you would look at a guy, two seven, six, ERA three, two seven and 20, 23, one 99 last year. Like I feel like in another era of fantasy baseball, he's like a top 10 pick. Yeah. In, uh, in like 2003? Maybe, I mean, I'm not trying to denigrate. No, no, it's just different. That's me, I was playing in 2002.

Different inputs, different, different, yeah. I think that's partially why when I was playing baseball in 2003, in 2002, I didn't take starting pitchers until the 10th round, because I think we were pretty bad at projecting them. We didn't have a great sense of how to get a handle on how widely they can oscillate from year to year. You do look at the Atlanta rotation right now.

Sale at the top, Strider coming off the injury, Schwellenbach being a really important guy for them. They've been quiet on the free agent and trade front as far as the pitching goes. So Lopez and Grant Holmes are I think really? Important they got their depth guys like Ian Anderson Smith Schaver elder Waldrop maybe but this is one of their more expensive rosters in a while and then it projects pretty well Like it still projects like top top three or four

So they're kind of like me and I don't know where I like I did my work last year like I put this roster together for a reason Like me and Otonio where I like, I did my work last year. Like I put this roster together for a reason. So I tend to avoid spending too much on the draft because I think of it as free agency in a weird way. The draft and Otonio because all the good players are kept like in baseball, right? And so we're all going to go in there and spend too much on those leftovers. That is how it goes. So I prefer to build as long as possible through trade

and like last year's free agency, like in season free agency and stuff, like just trying to sell during season and do a lot of your work before it gets to the draft. Just a little bit of odd or new talk there. Two players in five minutes, you say Kikuchi. I think it's a safe bet to remain a top 50 starting pitcher, but where is the ceiling?

I think we might be looking at him a little differently after what he did during his time in Houston. It was only 10 starts but 76 Ks against 14 walks, a 270 ERA, a.93 whip. He's never been close to that in a full season. How much, if any, of the things we saw from Kikuchi in Houston can go along with him to Anaheim. I mean, a lot of it was just pitch mix change.

And then, you know, he threw a slider to a different location. He was trying to throw his slider back foot, and it's a gyro slider, which means it's a bullet tight slider, and it's 88 miles an hour. So he just changed it to throwing it to the outside corner. And since it doesn't have much sideways movement,

it doesn't leak into the center of the zone. And he can kind of get called strikes on the low outside corner. And it all worked way better that way. And he also stopped throwing his curve ball, which he can't command that well. That allowed him to throw the change up a little bit more because he can't command that well either.

But it's a pitch mix change. I think that's good enough. Now, maybe pitch mix changes have like a little short-term bump while, you know, people, advanced scouts, you know, don't have the book on it or the hitters haven't seen this kikuchi. And so maybe in this, you know, in this coming season we find, you know, decreasing returns. And so I don't think he's going to have like a 2-7 ERA like he did in Houston. When I see pitch mix changes behind a fundamental change in his strikeout minus walk rate change and a lot of these underlying numbers change for Kikuchi, then I tend to believe in them a little bit more.

So and I don't think that's something that necessarily he just goes to Anaheim and forgets he did. You know, like he may not have great coaches in Anaheim and he can still remember what happened in Houston. Right. And even if the org as a whole fall short, doesn't mean there are all bad coaches throughout either, like there's always a possibility you find someone he's working with that is like, Hey, this, this was working really well for you. Let's keep doing it. Like that's shouldn't be that hard to see given the way it changed for Kikuchi a year ago, last picture of the day show, Kevin Gossman 13th, the

innings pitched since the start of 2022. Very heavy dependence on 2 pitches even though he throws 4. It seems like that is coming back to bite him. Probably the biggest strikeout rate drop of any qualified starter last year going from 31.1% to 21.4% that is a massive massive drop off. Can we get some kind of bounce back? Can we get to a 24 or 25% K rate at least? Because Sierra points to ratios that are probably

gonna come in closer to a high threes ERA and maybe a middling sort of whip. But if Gossman is a workhorse still and gets some of the Ks back, I feel like he might be okay as a boring pick here. Kind of as a fallback to Robbie Ray. I kind of think he can do what he did last year, like a four ERA,

and you know, near four ERA, and you know, with volume. I just wanted to know what that's worth, you know? Let me see what it was worth last year. So, Gossman last year was the 56th best pitcher. So, how much value is there in drafting a guy 56th and getting a 56th return? It's okay.

And I think that includes relievers, so that's actually probably like 40th among starting pitchers last year. Yeah, I set the starting pitcher filter out 48th is what I'm seeing right now, 10 bucks in a five by five league. I don't know. You know, that's not how people work in drafts.

They're not like, oh, I'd really like to just get what I draft here. You know, they're like, no, give me Jared Jones. Yeah, it does feel more like a break even situation now with Gosman where it's fine, but the deeper the league, maybe the better off you are. I think if you're in a 10 or a 12 team league, you're probably not seeing enough ceiling there anymore

to want to make that pick. Yes, by the way, that values for 15 teams. So yeah, I think in a 10 and 12, you're losing a little bit there. And then AL only, like it's actually, it flips over to being like maybe a good idea. Cause you could maybe, like, could you get them for five bucks in an AL only, you know,

like maybe 10 bucks? It might be a good idea. Probably more like 10. I think that's the more likely range if you're thinking about it. Some of those AL onlys, you just have to get 900 innings together, you know? If you just got 200 innings or 180 from one guy, like that has a lot of value.

Yeah, definitely specific to your league. And then I think specific to your build, like if you were a little bit risky early on, Gossman might be a guy that you put in there to be like, oh, I need some innings. I was a little bit light on innings in this build. And especially in draft and hold, we're like, you need guys with innings.

You described Arenola that way, I think at the end of day one, and Gospin kind of doing that for the day two guys like oh I needed to push back in the direction of innings and just being a competent okay ratios play that's sort of how I look at Gospin for this group of pitchers that we talked about in part two. I call it the YOLO YOYO. You got a YOLO sometimes, you know, Gare Crochet, and then you got a YOYO, Aaron Nola. I feel like that doesn't make a lot of sense. But I don't have time right now to debunk it.

All right. I'm gonna think about them, I'm gonna write YOLO, YOYO on them. Yeah, put it on a sticky note. This mysterious sticky note. What's the other sticky note you got up there that That's doesn't make any sense hot dogs hot dogs I don't know hot dogs are not new but right next to that one It's on there yolo yo yo and hot dogs not a new you'll find out what that is at a later date. We have to go Join the discord the link is in the show description get those high mind rankings in if you can you can find you know

I'm blue sky. You know Sarah stop, IMDVR.Bsky.social. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back here with you with part three on Thursday. Oh, and I've got a piece up right now on parody, and I've judged it four different ways, and I think baseball looks right in line with football and basketball, but read it for yourself if you'd like.

It's up on the Athletic right now. Thanks for listening. Great job kicking the horn's up on the Athletic right now. Thanks for listening. Great job kicking the hornet's nest on the way out the door.