Rates & Barrels - 2025 Starting Pitcher Preview, Part 3

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Eno and DVR continue Pitcher Week with the third installment of the 2025 Starting Pitcher Preview! This episode focuses on the starting pitchers often drafted between Pick 175 and 250 overall in early fantasy baseball drafts. Will some of last year's biggest surprises like Seth Lugo, Sean Manaea and Luis Gil follow-up with valuable encores in 2025? Injury risk and opportunities for discounts are plentiful throughout this group! Rundown 1:10 ADP Tier 5b -- Ryan Pepiot, Shane Baz, Brandon Pfaadt & Seth Lugo 22:42 ADP Tier 5b (continued) -- Sean Manaea, Cristopher Sánchez, Taj Bradley & Zach Eflin 37:47 ADP Tier 6a -- MacKenzie Gore, Nathan Eovaldi, Luis Gil, Nick Pivetta & Spencer Arrighetti 1:01:21 ADP Tier 6b -- Yu Darvish, José Berrios, Tanner Houck & Bowden Francis 1:16:33 ADP Tier 6b (continued) Brandon Woodruff, Clarke Schmidt, Ronel Blanco, Drew Rasmussen, Gavin Williams & Jesús Luzardo 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

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It's more than that to me. It's a world full of harmonies with chillers. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Pitcher Week continues. This is the third episode we have focused on starting pitching. Conversation will pick up in just a couple of minutes. Around that pick 175-200 marker. I was overly optimistic in part 2 of this series. I thought we could cover a little more ground than we did. A couple reminders before we get started. You can join our Discord with the link in the show description there. You can have a lot of conversations about fantasy baseball, different teams, the moves they're making or you can jump into the hive mind rankings channel

submit your rankings for our listener ranks those will be turned around probably in about two weeks or so a lot of responses come in all the positions we've talked about so far in this series are available for your submissions thanks to the many of you who have already taken the time to offer those up. Okay, preamble short today, you know, because we are behind. We continue in what we call the Tier 5B. Tiers just have no meaning anymore. They're just slices of players that we're looking at along the way.

It's another huge group. I think it's eight pitchers, Ryan Pepeo, Shane Baas, Brandon Fatt, Seth Lugo, Sean Maniah, Christopher Sanchez, Taj Bradley, and Zach Efflin. A very different group of pitchers offering some pretty different things along the way. But I love that Ryan Pepeo is first because you seem to really like Ryan Pepio quite a bit,

and I'm wondering just how long we're gonna see him living in this space just in front of Pic 200. First off, maybe the most interesting thing is the negative thing. As the king of wafflers, I have to start with the negative, I guess, even though I love him. And that is that the old park, Tropicana Field, the normal raised park, has a park factor for Stuff Plus.

It is the park that inflates Stuff Plus the most. We've been talking about why does Tampa have this park factor for strikeouts, and I think we've figured it out. It's not necessarily the lighting, it's not necessarily something to do temperature-wise because it is a dome. It's that the factors, I think it's the dome in that it's the perfect conditions. It's like being in the lab when you just.

Termin that your pitch wanted to have 18 inches of ride and this many, like it's perfectly set up to do exactly what you meant it to do. And so what you find is it's inflate stuff plus. So when you go back and look and you see that Tampa Bay Rays lead the league in stuff plus, that is A, because they select for it, B, because they train for it, they like coach for it, you know, they're rather aware of it,

but also C, because their park inflates it. And so all of their pitchers have had, you know, some pretty intense splits at times. I mean, we sawers have had, you know, some pretty intense splits at times. I mean, we saw Aaron Savali, you know, before he was traded to Milwaukee, he had these tremendous splits where he was completely usable at home and almost completely unusable on the road.

So that is a piece of information that should make you nervous about all raised pitchers next year because they will be moving to Steinbrenner Field where we don't know that necessarily the dimensions are going to be much friendlier but they'll be a little bit friendlier than the trop but they won't be inflating the the stuff plus I think and this is a little bit of a feeling out process but I think that Ryan Pepeo's stuff is good enough that it doesn't matter. And so I have prepared for you some Pepio propaganda. This is, oh, what is this now? I've made so

many boards now, I've forgotten. Oh, this is the lowest projected ERA. So PPERA is the, oopsie, lowest projected ERA for pitchers available after pick 150 by ADP. And you'll see Clay Holmes is at the top. I don't know how fair that is. It's really hard to model a transition from reliever to starter. Kumar Rocker is super exciting as a late pick. I think a question of innings is a viable one.

Brandon Woodruff does not have the input that he just had. I think it's thoracic outlet surgery, right? So he missed a whole year and it's coming back from a shoulder problem. He's actually kind of going a little bit higher than I would take him right now at 236. Ben Brown is a super exciting, but a sixth or seventh pitcher right now. Clark Schmidt is the guy who's ended up on a lot of my teams. Gavin Williams has ended up on a lot of my teams already so far, and Ryan Pepeo has ended up on a lot of my teams.

So right there is a beautiful one, two, three combo. You can put those three on your board and wait if you want. But as you can tell, Ryan Pepeo has the best stuff plus of the group other than Clark Schmidt, and he has a better inning situation than Clark Schmidt and he has a better innings situation than Clark Schmidt. He has a very similar ERA and K projection to Clark Schmidt. I think that park is whatever it's going to be. It's going to be better than Yankee Stadium. So even if Ryan Pepio drops two,

three points of Stuff Plus, he'll be around Gavin Williams territory and he has more innings than Gavin Williams. So I love that trio but Pepio to me has the most innings of the trio. Other guys on this list are Reese Olsen, Taj Bradley who has you know a command problem and maybe a breaking ball problem. David Festa who is a squarely a seven probably or a six starter. Jared Jones who we've already said we love and Louise Heal who I don't really have a bad word to say about so other than maybe the command. So this is a good list of pitchers this is a good way to sort I think but you have to

also remember the context of the team what you know where do they slot in the in the top five or they more top seven in their own team? Some park stuff and some injury stuff, and then generally what you think their innings are gonna be. And Pepio really checks all the boxes for this tier of pitcher. I got the sense that with the Rays pitching, it's just sort of a coincidence.

They were underpriced even before the disaster. The hurricane destroyed the trop and they had to move to Steinbrenner Field for the season. I looked at that group and I thought there's skills growth potential with most of them. Even the case of someone like Shane Baas, the stuff seemed like it was sort of coming back over the course of last season.

Initially didn't quite look like himself, but by the end of the year, and even by the results was really, really good. So you could start to tell yourself a story that this was a group that the market might have been missing. I think the margin is just smaller now because I think the main thing is yes, if the trop is playing like a pitching lab and boost strikeouts the way that it does, if you just lose strikeouts you have more balls in play. That alone, regardless of the dimensions of the park park is going to work against you a little bit

And then it's a question of like okay Is it average is it hitter friendly even at Steinbrenner field like how aggressively are we going to have to? Peel back on projections for the raised pitchers and then of course how much are we gonna adjust the hitters? I think that's gonna be an in-depth topic for another day probably by the time we get to that raise preview in a couple of weeks. But a lot to like here with Ryan Pepio, the control has improved to the point where I'm not worried about him walking the world. That was something that was more of a concern when he was breaking through with the Dodgers. I think we've seen a little bit of an improvement there that gives these comments. It's more like average sort of command. I think that can play just

fine. So I'm in at the price on Pepio. Shane Buz goes right next to him. I know with the new stuff plus numbers, there may have been some changes, but it looked like things were pretty good for Buz coming off of major injury last year. And the only thing we didn't have right away were strikeouts. So do you think we're going to get a strikeout rate that looks more like the parts of two seasons we saw him for in 21 and 22 when he was breaking in with Tampa Bay? 21.6% last year,

definitely a little bit of a disappointment, but first major innings coming off of major injury, I kinda wanna give him a pass for that. I really liked that he ended strong in terms of stuff. His old stuff, he had a 120 stuff plus to end the season, four starts and two of those are away so it wasn't all Tampa. His fastball was very comfortably above 100 which is a nice thing to have and both of his breaking balls.

His curve looks better than a slider generally which is a little weird but you know I think that was a good thing to end and then in terms of results he even ended well. I mean the last four starts he had 23 strikeouts and 24 and a third innings with four walks in a 2-5-9 ERA. That includes going to Boston twice and shutting down twice and Toronto and Philly so it's not you you know, super easy offenses. And again, away from home for two of those starts. So I like how he ended and I like, you know, the stuff generally, I think Boz should be considered

about as exciting as Pepio, except that I don't know that I give him as many innings. He had 79 last year in the major leagues. You have to add some minor league numbers to that. What did he do? I think it was 108 and two thirds last year. 108 and two thirds. Projector for 157, that seems a little aggressive.

I think maybe like 130 is a more conservative prediction for his numbers. And then like ATC likes him to a 393 ERA oopsie a 409 I'm a little surprised that's not better and steamer to a 425 right now I've got him you know in the sort of late 70s where it's where I put a lot of my sleepers so you know I don't I'm not speaking ill on him but I have Pepeo comfortably ahead of him. Right now I have Pepeo in the low 40s, so that's a pretty big difference. Yeah, it's 118 and two-thirds last year from Boz between the two levels.

I think 150 is possible. If they think McClanahan with zero innings last year recovering from TJ can get to 150, I bet they also think they can push Boz to 150 and still have something left in the tank if they're a playoff team. So yeah, that gap of 30 spots in the rankings seems pretty wide. I like Boz at this price. I could see myself ending up with more Boz than Pepio if you're going to keep hyping Pepio in these next few weeks. Yeah, yeah, there is my damn effect. But I've got 168 innings right now for Pepio and I'm going to put maybe like 141 for Boz.

I'll move Boz up a little bit. This is a little bit low for him. My first pass was a lot of using PPER8 to sort and a 409 is not super exciting, but I like him better than somebody we'll talk about later, Seth Lugo, who has a 405 projection. So he should at least be, Kumar Rocker has a beautiful 336 projection. And Bas is going to have more innings than that. So that may where he ends up around Clay Holmes, around Kumar Rocker in the 60s. Yeah.

When we get to Kumar Rocker, the question is going to be how much confidence do you have in that projection? Because it's a great looking projection for Rocker and it's aggressively ahead of some of the other systems that are out there right now. But we'll save that for a little later because Rocker does fall a bit compared to these names. Brandon Fott, plenty of innings coming through the Diamondback system. He's been a relatively young workhorse, I think, in an era where that's become more difficult to find. I think he just needs to find a better approach

against lefties if he's going to exceed, I don't know, the ceiling of what Nick Pivetta's done to this point in his career. I feel like as is, that's sort of like the best version of Brandon Fott that we're likely to get. We did see improvement though. The second half strikeout minus walk rate was 22.1%. That placed Vought 10th among 69 qualified pitchers.

Think that's gonna drum up some interest because all nine guys ahead of him are being drafted earlier. It's the type of thing you can do for a half season that gets you into breakout and sleeper type columns. But we did see some adjustments. He was starting to use more curveballs against lefties late in the year, so do you trust that Brandon Fah

has enough in the arsenal to correct that main split flaw we've seen from him? Well, I got something completely wrong, like two episodes ago. I'm here to apologize. Remember when I put up the velocity changers and I said, you know, people who are in this category you'd want to think that they were feeling good and weren't hurt?

The people who'd have, you know, gone up in velocity. Well, we've got a piece from Russell Carlton that just came out yesterday on baseball perspectives called Should We Overthrow? And in it, he looks through the math and he looks at people whose velocity spikes and then looks at their likelihood of hitting the 60-day IL right afterwards. And he says it's statistically significant that people that throw past their peak

and have a VELO surge end up on the 68AIL in the next season. So you're concerned about the slide you presented two days ago? Yeah, I guess I might be. I mean, he defined it as a surge past their regular sort of sitting spot. And Brandon Fott ended the season with 94-5.

For the season it was a 93-9 and for the season before it was 93-6. So I think this would qualify. You know, I wonder with Gallin, it was sort of like getting back to where he used to be. Maybe the true surger here is Logan Gilbert who, you know, went up to 97-7 from 95-6. You know, does it count when you're sort of just a little bit up? I don't know. He didn't like sort of show all of his math.

I'll give you an update on that, but that is the Velo sheet that I would maybe look through a different lens at now. I would try to maybe then compare the surging Velo, that's the second column, or the third column here, with their career VELO to see if they were more getting healthy again, or if they were surging past their regular VELO.

So that's something to think about a little bit. Fats VELO in September was better than usual, but generally he's been a workhorse, and his numbers in terms of injury percentile are great. He's got a 94th percentile injury number from Jeff Zermin. His projections are okay, 383 PPERA. I'm gonna give him 183 innings. So I think, you know, given where he's going,

like I don't really have a lot of guys who have 180 innings projected. The closest I have, I have Zach Gallen 174, a little bit ahead of that, Schwalbebach 177, you say Kikuchi right here 173, and then you hit a lot of people in the 130s and 150s after this. So he's like one of those last guys where you might get 180 innings. So that becomes really important in draft and holds, deeper leagues. In terms of upside, he's still young enough to have some upside and like you said, figure out that approach towards lefties. So

yeah, I have no problem taking a fall here. Yes, maybe some heightened injury risk because of that surge, but at this point, I would believe maybe the injury percentiles over the fact that he was slightly up in VELO over the course of his career in September. Yeah, I think we've talked about this for several draft seasons now, but among the reasons players move up over the course of draft season, it's further research done by people playing, right? It's good stories or good podcasting different bits of information making their way around and the other way I think is people who have increasingly been willing to take the time

to adjust playing time for themselves going through modifying playing time and realizing that if you were to give Brandon fought 175 innings instead of the 139 next to his line from Steamer, that it will have a massive impact on what's going to happen in something like the Fangraphs auction calculator or draft software. Yeah, I have him top 50 and that bulk is a big part of that. Yeah, I'm with you on this. So I do think he could move as people realize that the volume projection seems low. And if you fix it, it's going to nudge him up.

And players get so clustered together at this part of the pitching board anyway. It doesn't take much to move up. And I think that's a pretty significant volume boost that we'd be giving to thought. And it's deserved at this point. So definitely a guy that I like in this range and even someone I like if he gets a little more expensive this draft season. I feel like you've turned on Seth Lugo, man. I know it's a classic best season of your career

at age 34, not always the thing that you look at and go, well, that's coming back again. Maybe the Mets were a little quick to shift him into a bullpen role forever ago. It's a wide arsenal, it's a good home park, there are no workload ceilings. I guess, are you just out because the price is too high? What's your reason for being cautious about Lugo right now?

He's a type of pitcher that I want to have one of on every staff, and that is a pitcher off of this board, which is, I did a very simple sort, who has six pitches and non-terrible stuff? So 95 stuff plus and six pitches. That was the query, that's it. And of course, Zach Wheeler is on every good board, and so he's there.

And then Spencer Schwalbach has been on a lot of these good boards. Hunter Brown is on this board. Being on this board does not mean you are good, because Randy Vasquez is here. But Tyler Megil is here. Walker Bueller is now a big Arsenal guy. Max Fried is here. So there are some expensive pitchers on this list, but there's also Seth Lugo, Zach Efflin, Sonny Gray, Michael Walker, Hugh Darvish, Cade Povich, interestingly, and Nick Martinez. I've actually found so far in my drafting season

that Hugh Darvish is the name that ends up on my on my leagues. He has a decent K projection and ERA projection a little bit better than Lugo's actually. But really what it is about is I just don't want to pay high price for the lower guys on this. The Lugo, Eflin, Waka, Povich, Martinez, Darvish group. I just don't want to pay a high price for them. So I'd rather put them all in sort of a bag together and just rummage around to the bottom of the bag at some point in my draft and get one than to pay going freight for Seth Lugo, just because this type of pitcher is the type of pitcher that can break out and have a great season, but also can struggle a little bit. Maybe the locations aren't there. Maybe the league has figured them out to some extent. They just don't have the

overwhelming stuff that, you know, Wheeler is the top of this list because he does have the overwhelming stuff plus the six pitches, right? When you're down at the bottom of this list in terms of stuff plus, I think things can go sideways. And I looked at this when I looked at my mistakes from last year, and I had just as many mistakes. You know, I was like, Oh, Jameson Tyon, I should have ranked him higher. He's a Seth Lugo type, right? But then I looked at mistakes like Jordan Montgomery and Merrill Kelly and other guys, and I was like, wow, the difference between Jordan Montgomery and Merrill Kelly

and Seth Lugo and Jameson Tion is that there is no difference. They're all cautions. They're like, they're the ceiling and floor for the entire group. And when they're good, you feel like a genius. When they're bad, you feel like an idiot. And if they hit the middle, you're're fine because they're usually not that expensive but

I'm glad Eflin popped on this board because when I look at Eflin I just see a younger version of Lugo and he goes a few slots later I think it's interesting too Eflin still on a good team I know they're gonna tweak the fences again in Baltimore make it a little more difficult for pitchers again probably trying to find that sweet spot now fine whatever but Eflin has better command by the model better control in terms of the extreme walk rate better team i think the Orioles are better than the Royals still at this point even though the Royals continue to make efforts to get better and it's just funny to me that Eflin was kind of buzzy last year i don't think he really showed us anything new and he's a lot cheaper

So I kind of like the bargain here because I could see things playing out where Eflin is maybe even a little better than Lugo Because we care about wins and some other factors put them in a tier. I love queue management, right? If you like these guys put them in a tier and like wait and if you start to see one disappear Hopefully you still get one of the other guys you know. Q management love it. What are you doing with Sean Manaya though because in the space between Lugo and Athlon at the bottom he is one of three very interesting pitchers. Durability is relative as we say a lot. Sean Manaya is now 21st league wide in innings pitched since the start of 2021.

Even if it's not at the top of the leaderboard, that's still very good. Much like Seth Lugo, it's really the best complete season we've seen from him as a starter at an advanced age. Manaya spending more of his career as a starter than Lugo up to this point. And I think as you've mentioned on this show, right, It was the falling arm slot that seemed like it really kind of made Manaya's stuff play up even more over the course of 2024. We love the park. We love the team context.

Do we love the price on Sean Manaya in this range? Yeah, I mean, Stuff Plus said it was a great idea. He dropped down in mid-August and had a 127 stuff plus on his fastball afterwards because one of the revelations from stuff plus was the importance of your arm slot and the deception that it can provide. So that's a 127 in August. He had a 78 stuff plus on it the rest of the season. I don't know which one is

I guess the fastball or the sinker, you know, it's a really weird pitch anyway, but both numbers went up I mean the sinker went from 83 to 110. So whichever one is his actual fastball I'm not even sure what it is. It's kind of this weird kind of two-plane thing. That's not Not really a four-seam not really a sinker But either way this slot was really good for that the problem was his slider was still after the change was still an 87 stuff plus the change-up was a 65 so he doesn't really have a wide arsenal Even if he does throw more pitches than some people. The new Stuff Plus also liked him a little bit less, or liked him a little bit more, I guess,

95 for compared to 90 for the season. I don't have the start by start breakdowns in front of me right now for Sean Manaya, but a 397 projection is fine. He had 181 innings last year, so you're gonna give him innings. So he's kind of oatmeal me. I think he actually, even though he doesn't have that, like six pitches

and command comp to Eflin and and Lugo, I think he belongs in that tier because it really could go either way. I think that his home park and team are going to give him wins. So I think the worst case scenario for Naya is he's useful half the time. I think you do have to build in the expectation that you're using him mostly at home as one of a more reasonable outcomes for him. Like it's just, it's been such a strange path

for him to be this good. I mean we're a year removed now from a 444 ERA and a 124 whip with half of his games coming at Oracle. And we're two years removed from a 496 and a 130 in San Diego. Those are great. Like Sean Manaya has spent his career in pitcher friendly environments,

and despite that, has had some pretty bad ratios when it hasn't worked out. So I do see the risk kind of baked in here. I think he's fine with this price. I would agree with you that he fits a little more into the Lugo Eflin mold, maybe a few more Ks, but with a little more ratios risk. Not as exciting as Pepio and Banz, I don't think.

I mean, I know he had a three, four, seven last year, but I just, you know, he doesn't have the same stuff. He doesn't, he's not young like that. He's not, he's not coming up. He's more like a guy in a good situation You know, maybe get one of them Like so worried about my sister I was sick, but I'm here returning to W network and stack TV These people then who is that's what I want to know starring Kayleigh Cuoco and Chris Messina

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It's out every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. I brought up Brandon Fats second half K minus BB percentage from this season because I remember on our preview a year ago, we talked about Christopher Sanchez being really good in the second half with a 20.9% strikeout minus walk rate in the second half of 2023. It didn't carry all the way over into his full season as a starter, but it was still very good, right? 14.5%, nice job.

Didn't miss a ton of bats, right? It's more the result of having a low strike, so a low strikeout rate, 20.3%. Where do we go from here though? Because Christopher Sanchez does some very interesting things, he does get a lot of swinging strikes, he has to deal with a pretty difficult home park in Philly. Is he going to remain good or great

at hit and home run suppression? Because I think when I look at his profile, you see that ground ball tilt. It kind of looks like a profile that could skew that way, being a little better than average at limiting damage on balls in play and keeping the ball in the yard. I just don't know if there's like another level here

or if this is a younger than the oatmeal-y guys that's still gonna like end up in the oatmeal sort of results. Well, like I said earlier, I have him very close to Sandy Alcantara because I think the base skills are similar. I also have this board here of the best change-ups in the game, and you'll notice that it's not a board of the best pitchers in the game. Pepe O is on here, Bobby Miller is on here, Grayson Rodriguez is on here. Hayden Birdsong is on here.

Michael Walker has the best change up by stuff plus by new stuff plus in the big leagues among starters. Sanchez is right there by Fromber, who, you know, I think is pretty interesting. Fromber has the advantage maybe of being, of, I don't know, Fromber, I think, is the guy for him. Fromber with better command is a really good pitcher if that's what you think Christopher Sanchez is gonna be.

The velocity last year was new for Sanchez, I guess, 94-5, whereas Fromber has been sort of 94-95, right? And then Framber's sort of slider and cutters, you know, stuff that he's been playing around with, maybe a little bit more advanced than Sanchez's, but I think Framber is the guy. I think this is the starter package for Framber. He's 28 Sanchez is, so it's not maybe as young as you'd think, But I guess the park is a little bit harder on Sanchez. He hasn't quite had the K rates of Fromber. But I think a lot of the building blocks are there.

And I think the worst case scenario is he keeps the ball in the yard and is kind of like maybe what a Sandy Alcantara or a Fromber in Philadelphia would be, which is mid to high three ZRA, not great whip, not great strikeout rate. These are bad things. I'm making them sound bad, but I like him.

I got the sense you liked him, but yeah, that didn't come off as a go get him. Yeah, I mean, he's not the like four seam and two breaking balls and kills it on stuff plus, and is gonna have great strikeout rates, and you know, is a young guy, but I don't think he should be here. I think he can do 175 innings.

It's a little bit like Fatt. It's like, no, he's good, and there's a lot of innings here. Okay, so maybe under drafted by a couple of rounds at least, maybe belongs a tier up. I think that's a reasonable place to leave it feel good if you're getting him in this range how do you feel if you're looking at Taj Bradley in this range the Sierra came in at 369 last year but the ERA was 411 122 with projections point to a similar whip

and a slightly better ERA this time around plenty of missed bats a lot of inconsistency with the fastball in particular, right? That seems like the problem. And the more I look at Taj Bradley, the more I wonder if he needs to do something similar to what Hunter Brown did, add that two-seamer. And maybe that would be something that would reduce the usage of the four-seamer and give hitters, especially on the right side, something else to think about

that's gonna run in on their hands. I mean, if I could give him him anything it would be a slider. You know it's not that often that you have a guy in today's league that doesn't have a good slider. Like by the new stuff plus, Taj Bradley has a 107 stuff plus cutter, has a 108, 109 stuff plus fastball, 108 stuff plus splitter, and a 111 stuff plus curveball. So he supposedly has everything he needs, but the cutter doesn't work against righties the same way. Curveballs aren't really whiff pitches.

And so he really fell into this four seam splitter combination of which he doesn't have good command of either. So a slider would just be, if he could have it and command it, would just be a pitch he could throw in the zone for domination in the zone, as opposed to kind of dancing around it or being forced to throw his four seam in the zone. So it's a delicate, the reason he hasn't broken out so far is a delicate combination of, you know, needing an outpitch against righties that he can also throw in the zone and, and poor command. But the building blocks are all there. I still have him in the fifties,

so comfortably above this tier. And I think his upside is even beyond Pepio's because it's a little bit more dominating when when it's on and we've seen both of these parts from Bradley where he's he can be dominant. He can be amazing he's his debut was amazing and Then he just it can be terrible right now. I have him around Nicola. Dolo You know, it's like both of them have tantalizing talent with a couple of issues Both of them have tantalizing talent with a couple of issues. One other thing here, it's weird the four seamer gets such a good number in the model because opponents slugged 500 against it last year. They slugged 556 against it in 2023. And when you watch him, it just seems like he loses it sometimes. Like feel for it. And he throws it in the middle. Right. It just ends up. Yeah.

Where he's missing is just detrimental in every way with that pitch. But the other thing that came up, I think this was either you or Trevor that brought this up last season, is that there's not enough, of the pitches he throws most of the time, four seamer, splitter, cutter, I think 91% of the time it's one of those three pitches.

The range on that by average is 90.9 to 96.4. There's just nothing to throw off the timing of hitters, either, so I think that might be. That's right, everything's hard. The other thing he could use is just something else off speed, so yeah, the two-seamer would be a thing he could do, but that might not be the best thing he could do.

I think we've talked about it before, it's one more thing that lands somewhere in the 84 range, maybe, would be the right sort of pitch, a slider, yes exactly like you said. Or slow the curveball you know. Yeah just something to throw off timing would be a really nice addition. So it seems like if you haven't taken a lot of shots like high risk high reward shots that could end up on your bench or even possibly get cut at some point if it's not going well

then Taj sort of fits into a build at this price point still things to like even Though it hasn't clicked for him yet. We move on to our next partial tier. This is tier 6a now We're going just outside the top 200 overall I want to focus on a group of five to get started in this group Mackenzie Gore, Nathan Evaldi, Luis Heal, Nick Pavetta and Spencer Arigetti Nathan Ivaldi, Luis Heal, Nick Pivetta, and Spencer Arigetti. Fun group to break down here. Gore got me thinking a lot about defense because when I looked at his basic skills,

I saw a better pitcher in 2024. Kept the K-rate up at 24.8 percent, nudged the walk rate down for the second year in a row, yielded less hard contact, kept the ball in the park more often, only brought the ratios down a little, and it was the ERA, the whip actually ticked up a little bit. It went from a 4-4-2 to a 390, and I thought, well, that's not really a great result, although Sierra sort of backed it up

as far as a 398 from Sierra goes, but Mackenzie Gore has pretty good stuff, and doesn't have terrible command and I thought okay maybe some bad stuff's happened to Mackenzie Gore on Paul's in play and sure enough yeah 340 Babbitt because the Nationals defense was bad last year. We talked about CJ Abrams being a minus 17 outs above average at short I thought it was interesting defensive runs saved wasn't nearly as bad It was actually a plus one on Abrams, but they had Nick Senzel

Jesse Winker Lane Thomas all guys who are gone Grading out as very bad defenders last year So just addition by subtraction not having those three guys on the field should help a little Not having those three guys on the field should help a little. Nats fans might be quick to point out James Wood didn't great out particularly well defensively. He of course will still be there and still very young so maybe he could get better. Just as Abrams could get better. Luis Garcia doesn't great out as a great defender either. So they do have some holdovers that don't offer a lot with the glove or haven't offered a lot with the glove so far.

But at least some of the brutal veterans they were trotting out there are no longer part of the equation in DC. You know, I'd look at the other teams that were both bottom five in OAA, you know, out to above average, the Statcast defense and then DRS, defensive run saved. They did have worse than average Babibs as teams. You can see the median Babib for the league last year was 288. Oakland had a 296. The White Sox had a 301. Washington had a 306. These were some of the worst Babibs in the league.

The only one that was on here that had a better than average Babib was Cincinnati for some reason. But I went through those teams and found notable pitchers. And Gore had a 340, like you said, he's just one of the worst offenders on this, Calvin Fochet as well. But other names that may have been hurt by their defenses are Mitch Spence, Garrett Crochet, Trevor Rogers, Graham Ashcraft, Joe Boyle, Mitch Keller,

Quinn Priester, Mitchell Parker, Nicola Dolo. So these are ones where you have to ask yourself, is the defense going to improve? And it could just be bad defenses and hurt them again. I think with crochet changing teams, you're excited about that. Maybe with Trevor Rogers at some point, I don't really feel it big time, but Joe Boyle did change teams. And then you have to think about changing personnel. I think Oakland Probably has some changing personnel. Jacob Wilson wasn't very healthy all that year last year

So that's a better shortstop situation. Gio Orchella is a good defensive third baseman. So I think that they could improve defensively I'm not gonna suggest though that the Nationals are gonna improve defensively That's the weird thing about it is Gore did hurt from it last year. And I think their infield defense is maybe not going to be any better than it was last year. Maybe their outfield defense will improve. Yeah, I mean, Jacob Young in center is phenomenal. So if he's out there, that helps the whole pitching staff.

So his playing time kind of matters a lot in this equation, especially for the more fly ball heavy pitchers. But I keep looking at Gore and wondering, is there one more level there? Projections actually are favorable. I mean, you see some 120s in the whip column. We've never seen anything better than a 140 from Mackenzie Gore over three years as a big leaguer.

So are you buying into just improvement based on the skills and the things that he's been doing to get better over his time in DC. He's a little bit like Bradley where, you know, I wish he I could bequeath on him as better secondary pitch, but it is nice to start with, you know, a good fastball like he has. And that's always going to make me, you know, kind of be in his corner to some extent. I do like him.

I think this is a great place to get him. I'm looking right now on Pitcher List because they've got a stat called V-Lock and M-Lock. And I'm trying to find it. It's how much they throw high in the zone. He has a problem where, you know, he wasn't throwing high in the zone enough and he's still, I think, should throw high in the zone enough and he still, I think, should throw

higher in the zone. Right now, he is high in the zone 34% of the time and there's no real improvement on that number over the course of his career. And I think that that number should be higher given the shape of his fastball. It has good ride. It's a surprising ride given his slot. That actually could be a way that he could improve his babbip because a high fast balls provide pop-ups and those have low babbips. Also they don't provide

grounders and so it is weird that we've heard that maybe his coaching staff wants him to throw low fastballs to you know have faster faster endings and get ground balls when they have a really, I think, objectively terrible infield defense. I think I would be like, hey, you don't have great gloves behind you, and there's some better gloves in the outfield. Let's get some fly balls and strikeouts out of this package.

So the more he does that, the better he can be. I think even throwing the high fastball more often will make his secondaries better, even if they aren't great just by shape and Velo and stuff. So I think there's a little bit more that can be unlocked here and I would say that command does hurt him a little bit but I think there's a little bit more to unlock here. I mean he when I talked to him he was talking about you know how many things he hasn't caught with Clayton Kershaw and he does in terms of fastball movement and Velo

You know, he looks a lot like a young Kershaw what he's missing is command and that slider he keeps trying to play with his breaking ball to get that Kershaw slider and Maybe he maybe he can find it. Yeah, he finds it that changes the ceiling a lot more but I think even with the restrictions of a bad infield defense or a likely bad infield defense you could see the projections being optimistic and actually being right in the case of Makenzie Gore. Nathan Ivaldi looks like a high 3 ZRA, low 1 2's whip, plenty of K's the question is just how many innings and I think the good news is the velocity seems like it's stabilized for him over the last three years,

kind of averaging 95 on the fastball year over year. Some fluctuations that he came up on one of your riser or faller boards that we talked about a couple of days ago, but is what you see what you get for Nathan Evaldi at this point? Let's see here. Six pitchers have met these conditions from 2021 to 2024, pitched at least 100 innings in each season,

had an ERA under four in each season, had a whip under 1.25 in each season. So there are six pitchers. Fromber, Corbin Burns, Kevin Gossman, Logan Webb, Zach Wheeler. And Nathan Evaldi. And Monsieur Evaldi. Yeah.

I didn't guess it. He had us trying to guess the six, and I guessed Fried and Justin Mason guessed Waka, and it was Nate Evaldi. I would say, though, that looking at just his inning totals is not the very best way to judge injury risk. He went from 109 to 144 to 170, but you can see the Velo is dragging, it's not where it used to be,

and we know he's, I think he's, is he a two-timey-john guy? Evaldy, ooh, is he two? I think he could be. I think he had one with Tampa really early on, before he even made it to the big leagues. Two-timey-john, Yeah, this is a quick search result. It's 2007 and 2016.

2016? Yeah, 2007 and 16. Oh yeah, because he missed all of 17. And it looks like arthroscopic surgery to remove a loose body in 2019. So I mean, really nice run of health since. And maybe he's found something mechanically and he's pretty boring but useful every year he kind of has

stretches where he's really good and everyone says oh you know oh my god and then he kind of has stretches where he's not as good you know and there's been a sort of a definite you know trend in his VLO where he kind of it's better at the beginning of season and worse at the end of the season so you know he's the kind of guy that you I think you draft for the first 50-75 innings of the season but if you're in head to head or best ball or something I don't know best ball I'd maybe be okay with him because he'd give you better weeks the beginning season then you know he's not there at the end of the season but I wouldn't necessarily draft him in like a head to head where like I'm like this is you know head to head American League only like he's going to be one of my

three best pitchers and then you're like crap you know it's the end of the season and he's throwing 93 again and I don't know if I want to even use him. So that's the only like negative I really have on him. All in all it's usually useful. Yeah that's the why do you get a discount on Nathan Evaldi. That's the why part right there. You mentioned Gossman being part of that group. We did get a follow up on Discord from AdamBL5.

We talked about Gossman at the end of the episode yesterday. He wanted to know why there was no mention of the shoulder injury that Gossman had last spring. I forgot about it because the workload was so big last year. He did fall during draft season, ended up becoming a discounted guy. And we don't have an answer to this, but it may have been a big reason why the strikeout rate dropped as much as it did.

I mentioned he dropped from a K rate above 30% down to like a 21% K rate last year. Well, certainly we mentioned the VELO drop, but it's really rare for a 34-year-old to get the VELO back, even if a shoulder injury was part of the reason why. Right, so just something to keep in mind.

There was an injury there. Maybe pitching through that is part of why the decline was as sharp as it was. Could be a little more bounce-back potential there with health. It's more of a, let's see what he looks like this spring. Where's the VELO? That would be the sort of thing I'm looking for

if I'm jumping back in on Gossman, but I appreciate that getting added to the Discord, because it was worth mentioning. 67 injury percent of all of these, so just to give you a sense of it's not always about innings. I still do have a 141 inning projection, which is okay for where he goes. He doesn't make the same case as like a FOT, you know, that you're going to get a bunch of innings out of him.

Yeah, that's definitely the key question. I also have an update really quickly from, I just wanted to read the most important paragraph from the Russell Carlton piece. If a pitcher had a velocity spike in 2021 to 2022, what happened in 2023? And it says here that sure enough, when we take the slightly longer view, we see a significant association between VELO bumps

and trips to the 60-day IL and needing Tommy John surgery. These effects were independent of throwing really hard in general. That's interesting. So yeah, a jump from 91.5 to 93 is just as bad, seemingly, in this case, as like 96 to 97.5. But he doesn't tell me what a bump is. Well, we should dig into that more later. Yeah maybe I'll ask him. I'll ask him what a bump is.

Well who's next? Louise Heal. Is everyone just afraid of the 12% walk rate? Cowards. Cowards. It's great stuff. Even on the revamp didn't do anything to his numbers. He does have one of the worst projected walk rates.

I'm now looking up and down. We've got a PPBB of 11.4%. I can't find anybody higher. Here we go. Hayden Birdsong, 11.5. Wow. That's it. Oh, Joe Boyle, 16.1. DJ Herz, 12.3. I'm now off of my rankings and I still don't have a higher, ooh, ooh, who's this? 12.1, Nick Nastrini at 12.1.

So I guess that's a significant number there. Does that mean it's higher than Edward Cabrera? That can't be. Are you gonna go down that rabbit hole? 11.3 for Edward Cabrera. So no, hey, come on, it's irrelevant. I'm not3 for Edward Cabrera? So no, I hate come on. It's irrelevant I'm not just like bringing Edward Cabrera up for no reason. Luis. He'll has a higher Projected walk rate than Edward Cabrera. Come on. That means something

That's probably why people are staying away after what was ultimately a really good season for the Yankees last year a 350 ERA 119 whip 171 K's in a, and 151 and two thirds innings. I was wondering if he was just losing steam as the year rolled along a little bit. But it's a three pitch mix. He throws everything to hitters on both sides. It's, you know, it's a sinker slider change, I think, his heels mix.

And his Velo and movement comps, which we don't talk about these a lot, but Baseball Savant does throw those out there. They're just kind of like a one-liner, kind of mixed in on the page. Twenty twenty one drew Rasmussen, twenty twenty one Dylan Cease, twenty twenty one Logan Gilbert, twenty twenty one Ronaldo Lopez and twenty twenty one Luis Patino. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no started you with a reasonable expectation at Rasmussen, did the thing with Dylan Cease, where I was like, hey man, Dylan Cease really only had two pitches,

and those were the guys. That was Reynaldo, the reliever too. 2021, I think was the last time he was a starter, Reynaldo, right? And then it was a couple of years in the pen. So, early career logo to Gilbert, like, oh yeah, yeah, these are all reasons to be optimistic. Well, command, yes, your velocity and movement

might be the same as those guys, but your command is not the same as the good guys in that list. Even by command, like, Luis Heal has worse command than Dylan Cease, does he not? Yeah. They both walk a lot of guys. If you look at Luis Heal,

and everywhere he's ever pitched, every walk rate, everywhere he's ever been, is a double-digit walk rate. Now the key here is that Luis Heal rarely has home run trouble. And again, a 1.07 home run rate with Yankee Stadium for a home park is not bad. And he does strike a lot of guys out. And to a less extreme, right, we have this conversation about Blake Snell all the time. It's finally fading to the point where it's like

not as much of a big deal as it was earlier in his career, but does Luis Heal have the ability to sustain low babbips, right? It was a 237 last year. Projections are nudging him, actually to varying degrees, I don't know, like oopsie, 255. And then everything else, 271, 281, that's ATC at 271, Steamer at 281. Who's lying?

Who's right with Luis Heal? Yeah, I'm trying to look through some of the component stats here and figure out. If you are looking on the Google Doc, there are some stuff in there with the components that the Stuff Plus can spit out. And so, you know, expected pop-up rate based on Stuff Plus for Heal is very high. So he gets a lot of pop-ups.

Expected ground ball rate is pretty low, but that doesn't always have the same effect on your Bappa as you'd expect, because some grounders actually have a higher batting average than fly balls. But the expected swing strike rate is really high and that can actually be meaningful because I think there was a relationship found between strikeout rate and strand rate in Sierra. So there's a guy here that creates pop-ups and creates whiffs, and to some extent you can maybe believe

that he'll beat some of those peripherals, those kind of old school peripherals that we would use to regress him. I think that pop-up rate is really interesting. One, two, six pop-up rate. I'm looking at other guys that have better. Tyler Anderson has a really good one. Here's a guy.

JP Sears, another pop-up master. None of those guys can strike guys out like he can. And so I think that's really the answer here is, Hunter Green is another guy who gets pop-ups and strikeouts like Luis Hill. So I don't know, I think he can stuff his way through this. And like I said before, if you have a guy with the high stuff and you see the oopsie projection and they're different, stuff his way through this. And like I said before, if you have a guy with the high stuff

and you see the oopsie projection and they're different, it's gonna be because of Babap. And that's the case here with Luis Gil. And I believe he's more of a 369 ERA guy than a 420. Right, and maybe the answer's right in the middle. Maybe he's a 398, if that's in the exact middle, right? So right around a four, that might be it again it's gonna come down to how well he continues to manage homers in particular unless

he improves that walk rate we've seen a handful of guys over time take those double-digit walk rates the 12% and would at least whittle it down like 9 or 10 that would also make a pretty big difference I just don't think you can bank on it happening because of that long track record of struggling that way and because of the command numbers that you see on Luis Heal. Nick Piveta goes in this range. I think he's just still a free agent

because of the qualifying offer compensation attached, right? I mean, this is a guy that's probably gonna hit that threshold where you're giving up an earlier pick if you signed him to a multi-year deal. The biggest thing skills-wise that caught my eye with Piveta, a career-best 6.1% walk rate. And this is a guy, it's kind of like the opposite of Sean Manaya. His career has been spent in hitter-friendly environments between Philly and Boston. So what if a team like, I don't know, the Tigers were to swoop in and give Pavetta that multi-year contract

he's looking for? Like how much does the park shape your interest in Pavetta? It seems like at this price, even a hitter-friendly environment again could work because the whip's really good. And if he lands in a pitcher-friendly environment, you might be really happy at the discount you're getting right now. Yeah, I think that's the key for him.

He was hurt really hard by the Stuff Plus upgrade, but still has an above average stuff a 106 new stuff plus It was like 130 and before that but even at 106 like, you know He's a little bit better than Robbie Ray a little bit worse than Louise Heal But you know has better command than those guys the thing that you know, again You have these component stats that that it's spitting out like, oh, what's the expected home run rate? And he's pretty bad there. But if it ends with an S, that means it's predicted by stuff plus.

And if it ends with a P, it's predicted by pitching plus, just so if you're looking at the tops. There's one called XHR 100 percentile. So how many, how many, you know, homers are going to give up as a percentile, and Pavetta is in the 82nd percentile where high is bad. Right, yeah, so he's likely to give a lot of homers anywhere, but the park also, yeah. So if you send him to a good park, yeah,

if you send him to a better park for homers, that's what I'd wanna do. I think Pavetta, he should sign maybe a two-year deal with an opt-out that you know The first year is the 20 million that he lost you know and he can recover and and then leave without a without the quality The QO attached to him, but do you think he's gonna end up though real real quick? So like a snap call you think is a good fit. I love the Tigers as a no I think the Tigers is a great one

I mean you want you want a contender that I mean the Orioles could fifth. No, I think the Tigers is a great one. I mean, you want a contender that, I mean, the Orioles could be a good one too. I wouldn't say Pencils down on that Orioles rotation. The Blue Jays right now have Yarro Rodriguez as their fifth starter. I would put him on the Blue Jays. The Angels, I mean, the Nationals could always just be like a, hey, we'll build up your value

and maybe we'll trade you, you you, kind of place for him. The Angels have three Detmers, they might be running out of money a little bit and they bought some starters, but maybe the A's have more money left. They still haven't hit that floor, I believe, based on the math out there. Yeah, the Giants have Jordan Hicks as their fist starter,

but I think they're probably set with that. The Cubs got Matthew Boyd, he's their fist starter, and Colin Ray's their sixth starter, they might be set. So maybe if the Padres trade away Caesar King and get some salary relief or something, they could end up signing Pavetta as part of their like constantly moving cups philosophy of roster building.

I mean, look at the Cubs, the Cardinals, like both of those teams could use a boost. I just don't think the Cardinals are into spending right now. So that kind of rules them out. Spencer Arragedi is in this group. I think he's a little bit of proof of how you can have intriguing skills and then the ratios still get banged up

Maybe he's Luis heals downside. I did see they're similar in terms of the location plus numbers I don't really see like a must-have sleeper with our getty but I see kind of a useful depth starter that could take a step forward and Usually he doesn't have a homerun problem. You look back through his track record. So maybe we haven't seen this true talent baseline there Maybe we saw more of the adjustment phase numbers from him as far as the homers he was giving up last year. I guess who agrees with you? The component stats spit out by Stuff+.

So here we have expected swing strike rate plus expected pop-up rate. Who's good at both? And Hunter Green is good at both. Like I said, Ryan Pepeo is good at both. Luis Heal is good at both, like I said. Ryan Pepeo is good at both. Luis Gil is good at both. I forgot he's on this list. Spencer Arrighetti is on this list.

And so you see XWIFT-S, that is WIFS projected by Stuff Plus. XPU is pop-ups projected by Stuff Plus. These are both like sort of top 25 in both. These are the guys that are top 25. both. These are the guys are top 25. Dylan Cease is on here, Jared Jones, Cole Regans is on this list. I mean, there isn't a bad picture on this list and Spencer Aragutty might be the worst.

Yes, you can see his location plus is bad, but it's better than Luis Heels. And I also have XHR 100 percentile. So Hunter Green is gonna get what the most homers on this list. That makes sense with the park as a factor But maybe also his four seam everybody else is 30th and below and Spencer Arrogati 18th percentile

Dylan sees had like a point eight home runs for nine last year and for his career has suppressed home runs and his seventh percentile Spencer Arrogati had like a one point four last year and his 18th percentile. Srensa Arrogati had like a 1.4 last year and his 18th percentile. So that's a big deal. It is not yet part of the OOPSIE projections, but we're working on some daily projections with Jordan where he's going to use these component stats that are spit out by Stuff Plus to do better DFS projections. And those projections are going to include specifically what does Stuff say about home run rates specifically, and let me use that to shape my home run projection.

So I bet you the Oopsie projection would be even lower if he had the time to include those. Because right now, Oopsie is still the low man on home runs per nine with 1.23, but with Stuff Plus predicting he should be 18th percentile for home runs, he should actually have like a.9 home run per nine projection. If you take away.3 homers per nine,

like you take away a homer every three games, like I think his ERA is gonna be under four. So he's actually kind of a sleeper candidate. You're gonna nudge him into the sleeper candidate status. I don't think he even has to get a lot better skills-wise to be useful in this range. Plus he's under predicted for innings, I think. They've got 141 for him, he was 145 last year. I think the Astros need him.

Yeah, at this point, I mean, Fromber, Hunter Brown, Arrogatti, Ranel Blanco, Garcia's not ready for opening day, McCull Garcia's not ready for opening day, McCullers isn't ready for opening day. Who is their fit starter right now? That's a question to be answered at some point. They don't seem like they wanna spend more money either. So, little bit of a mystery. The Astros.

But they're like right at like an apron. I think as much as they tried to make it, this is why I think Dana Brown came out and was like, yeah, Ryan Presley didn't like me. I think he's trying to take attention away from the fact that that was probably just a cost-cutting move. Like if you could have Ryan Presley, you'd rather have Ryan Presley.

But if they would rather have the 14 million, then. I don't get it. I mean, they could bring back Regman and get Pavetta and seemingly everybody would still be okay as far as ownership goes, but that's a choice. So they will continue to operate that way. All right, on to a new tier. That always feels good.

It feels like progress. It feels like this might be the last year of the day. We are so, we talked too much. Hey, you know what? I propose that we add another picture show later sometime. We'll have to figure out when. Maybe next week we'll have a bonus. Do we have a second?

I'll second. We have a second. Motion passes. We have a forum. Motion passes. There'll be a fourth episode focusing on starting pictures. I think we're still gonna do closers before we do the fourth starting picture episode.

We'll hash that out behind the scenes. But this last group we're gonna get to today, all smashed together in the pick 230 to 250 range. The reason these tiers are goofy is because they change all the time. You Darvish, Jose Barrios, Tanner Hauck, Bowden Francis, Brandon Woodruff, Clark Schmidt, Ronel Blanco, Drew Rasmussen, Gavin Williams, and Jesus Lizardo. Another group of pitchers that generally I actually like.

I want to shop in this range for at least one, possibly two starting pitchers in back-to-back rounds around this time. Let's begin with Darvish. One hundred and six pitchers have at least 300 innings pitched since the start of 2022. Darvish tied for 35th in ERA at 362. He's 28th in K-BB percentage, 50th in home run rate, 13th in whip. I will point out though,

a lot of the whip comes from the weight of a heavy workload in 2022 when he had a.95 in that category that was with a sub 5% walk rate. Darvish is still very good, you know, but at 38, durability increasingly gonna be a concern and it was personal matters that cost him a lot of time last year, so the innings count shouldn't be as bad as it was as far as injuries go.

It makes it look worse. It makes the injury side look worse, even though it's an unrelated issue that kept Darvish away. I do think it's just kind of like a, don't push him up. It's like, if he's still sitting there, this is fair value. But I don't think he's way under drafted. I think the risk is appropriately priced in. Yeah, like what do you think of like you Darvish

or Seth Lugo? Seth Lugo's gonna give me more innings, and I've got you Darvish for 141. I think Seth Lugo, I will take a bit of a reduction in any regression a little bit to like 186, but still more innings for Lugo, but possibly more quality for Darvish.

The projection is pretty similar, but more strikeouts for you, Darvish. You never know that, you know, you've seen this actually before, and this is a wonky science, just so you know. We tried to be good science here, but there is a little bit of a sort of every other year ish, uh, quality to, to Darvish and not in just the, what I'm saying, like ERA we've seen him have the injury he had last year before he got it fixed and he came back and he had a great season. So I'm like, I think it was 2018 with the Cubs.

He had like the elbow injury, he got it fixed. And the next year in 2019, he's pitched 178 and he's with 398. We've had this injury for him last year in 2023 with a four or five, six ERA. Last year he had a three 31 after he got it fixed and the missing time last year was not due to an elbow injury. So I think that sometimes the quantity catches up to Darvish and you see him regress a little bit after sort of higher quantity seasons and that's the bouncing the yo-yo effect that I'm talking about here

that is not scientific but last year he didn't pitch a lot and it wasn't because he was hurt. To some extent I think maybe the 141 that I have for him is low. He used to be kind of a workhorse and if he's coming out and feeling froggy and feeling good after last year, like he literally could throw 175 innings next year with like a 360 ERA, despite all the projections. Yeah, I'm fine with it. I just don't want to pay a premium for Darvish at this point. I've baked in the slow regression. I have an example of a team that I just drafted Darvish. It was in a draft and hold and I can tell you exactly when I got him because I think he was my last pick. I got him in round 17 with the third pick of a 15 team draft. So that is 258.

Yeah, it actually happened. So sure, no problem then. But I just, I don't think this is a typical, oh yeah, bump them up a few rounds and you're still getting a guy that should go inside the top 150. I don't think that's who you Darvish is anymore. The Sierra's clocked in right around four

each of the last two seasons. That's with half those starts coming in San Diego. So plan accordingly. I think he's more of a depth guy than a building block. What the heck do you make of Jose Barrios, by the way? Two seasons in a row now in Toronto with a three six era, a sub one to whip and plenty of volume. So even though the K rate dipped last year, one hundred fifty three Ks

actually isn't that bad, it just doesn't look good next to 192 and a third innings, he's had a home run problem forever, that hasn't gone away. I look at the same leader board, I was just talking about Darvish, the last three seasons from a skills perspective, Barrios is 67th in ERA, 67th in K-BP percentage, 57th in WIP and 70th in Sierra.

How is he doing it? I just don't see it. I can't justify drafting him right now. Yeah, the Stuff Plus update was not good to him. He's down to a 90 Stuff Plus. And despite being good in K minus BB, the one flaw that I think in K minus BB is this sort of suggestion that both

numbers are equally valuable. And you know, what he's done is keep the BB low, but the K is low too, you know, and that's kind of meaningful. Like it's really rare to have a 19.5% strikeout rate and have a 360 RA last year among pitchers with a hundred innings that had a strikeout rate and have a 360 RA last year among pitchers with a hundred innings that had a strikeout rate that low what you're talking about his compatriots in where he was Albert Suarez with he had a 370 RA but I think he got a little lucky Colin Ray is right next to him with a 429 Ben Lively you know Jose Quintana I mean some of these guys do have similar ERAs,

but that's who he should be living with, honestly, for me, is in the Tyler Anderson, Ben Lively, Colin Ray grouping, which I don't think a lot of people are taking Jose Barrios in that grouping. He had a similar strikeout rate to Patrick Corbin. Martin Perez. I just feel like this has turned meaner than it should. It was never the intent.

I have him at 100 right now because he had got a 4-3 projection with a 19.9% strikeout rate. Now, maybe that's too low, but that's where he deserves to be, according to my metrics. I'm trying to come up with an explanation. I mean, he does have a lower strikeout rate than Seth Lugo,

looking at the last three seasons, by a little bit. Lugo, 22.8%, Barrios, 20.9%, last three seasons combined. Zach Efflin, 22.6%, because we're talking about the similarities between those guys. Efflin with the lowest walk rate, Barrios, 6.5% walk rate, Lugo 6. Difference in ERA is almost a full run from Lugo during that span.

Difference in WIP, almost a full.1. That's a big, big difference. But I'm wondering if Barrios has kind of quietly made himself this crafty, slightly wider arsenal. It's not six pitches, but it's clearly four, where he just has a way of doing enough to be effectively a good innings eater for the Blue Jays. Like a Charlie Morton. I don't, I mean, I don't even know if that's right either, because I think Morton's K rates were higher,

but the Jays are a good defensive team, right? And I think they got better with the addition of Andres Jimenez. They value defense, so it's kind of like the opposite of the national situation. It's like the extreme opposite of Mackenzie Gore. We're like, I don't get it. How does he beat the results like this?

I think the defense behind Jose Barrios is part of it, and I think maybe it's having some stuff that all kind of looks similar coming out of his hand. I don't have a full explanation right now, but it's weird. Best two year run in ground ball, right? Yeah, so I- So maybe he's sort of pitching to the defense a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's not even that different

than what he used to do though, man. It's just- It's not that different. No. I wanna kind of lean into this as more of like a, well maybe there's just something no one else will see and that'll be a reason to just go after Jose Piriose, but like why?

If he honestly like went 250 around you, Darvish, then I would have him on my list, but he doesn't really. It's just weird. And the other reason though is like, if I can't understand it, but I think I can give myself a reason to believe in several other pitchers in this tier, I'm at least going to choose based on what to believe in several other pitchers in this tier. I'm at least going to choose based on what I believe in rather than something I'm not

sure about. That's the other part of it. But further study on Jose Barrios seems necessary given what's happened the last two years relative to those underlying numbers. How about Tanner Hauck? Added 70 innings year over year, cut the walk rate, the K rate came down a little bit too, down to a 9.8% swing strike rate, so maybe the K rate's not coming back.

But I noticed something looking at Hauck. The ground ball rate ticked up again. And the projection isn't amazing, but he's on a good team with a pitching program that I think we largely trust in Boston. And I started to wonder, is Tanner Hauck turning into Logan Webb? Is he actually going down that path? Is he instead of being a guy that's going to try and strike out 30% of the

batters he faces which he probably just can't do he doesn't quite have the arsenal to do that at least against hitters on both sides maybe he's doing the next best thing killing worms logging a lot of innings and maybe he's one of those guys that can actually beat the projections the way Logan Webb was earlier in his career. Dominating righties and walking lefties and hoping to get a ground ball that erases the lefty. Yeah. Uh, there are still more righties than lefties,

and if you look at this, uh, like, pitch plot chart, you're right on. I mean, uh, on the left is Tanner Hauck, and on the right is Tanner Hauck, I mean Logan Welk. The difference is that Webb's change up, I think is a little bit better and you can see how there's more differential between Logan Webb's change up and his fastballs

than there is with Tanner Hauck. But Tanner Hauck's sweeper might be better. It gets more depth than Logan Webb's. But on the other hand, what I might like for Hauck, and this is something Tanner Hauck, but Tanner Hauck's sweeper might be better. It gets more depth than Logan Webb's. But on the other hand, what I might like for Hauck, and this is something he's tried, so I'm not sure, maybe it's not there for him, but you see the Logan Webb, when I talked about the cutter being a possibility for him

and the fore seam still being around, I don't know, Logan Webb has figured out how to mix those back in without depending on them. So maybe Tanner Howe can bring his four seam and cutter back and just use them as sort of surprise pitches in a way that people find a hard time, have a hard time game planning for it. And so they're like, they think it's gonna be the sinker

and then, oh, it's the four seam, rather than, oh, he throws four seams a lot in this count to lefties you know what I mean so like if he just sprinkles that four seam and cut her back in maybe he has the upside of a web. Yeah so I came away looking at what Tanner Hauck was doing with the new kind of refreshed view of what I expect from him I like him quite a bit at this price and I don't think anybody's crazy about him at this price so you may be able to get a lot of Tanner or how if you happen to agree. How about one of the guys that you liked as a pickup last year and talked about for maybe

even more than a season now, Bowden Francis. Look at this, a 330 ERA, a.93 whip, now he's up to a 288 for his career in the big leagues, it's 140 and two-thirds innings with a.9 whip. It's not with an absurd strikeout rate but very good control. Does have a home run problem but control is good enough to make that mostly solo shots. What's the next iteration of Bowden Francis? Is there one more level there? He's older than you'd expect for a guy that just broke through. He'll turn 29 in April. I think it's just really hard to put together other pieces to be a major league starting pitcher.

We've seen this. It's almost like catcher where they're in April. I think it's just really hard to put together other pieces to be a major league starting pitcher. We've seen this, it's almost like catcher where their debut, where their finally put together age, where their peak age is maybe later because of this phenomenon. But I mean, if he could get back some of that Velo that he lost, he was kind of more of a reliever in 2023 when he started through 94,

but if he could get to 93.5 or 94 and have average Velo, that might be nice. If he could get to 93.5 or 94 and have average VELO, that might be nice. If he could throw those breaking balls any harder, even without fastball velocity, the breaking balls are really slow. I think there could be something there. Everyone projects major regression for him

based on the fact that his strikeout rate is not amazing, his velocity is not amazing, and his BAPIPS were crazy tiny, 195 in 2023, 211 last year. Even Oopsy, who projects to the lowest batting average on balls and play for Bowden Francis, says 267, with a 425 ERA, and so right now I have him a little low, but I have to tell you, you know, there's something to Bowden Francis

that I don't know if the numbers are capturing correctly He added a splitter last year and if you look at new stuff plus it says it's around average But guess what it says it's better than Kevin Gossman's litter, you know by stuff plus which I'm not saying that's true I'm just saying that suggests to me that maybe stuff plus isn't that great with splitters, you know That suggested to me that maybe Stuff Plus isn't that great with splitters. And so I have a feeling he could be in this weird bucket that's like Tanner Howe could actually in a similar one. I think both of them will regress,

but I think it's possible they won't regress as much as the projections say they will. You know what I mean? If he has a three, six ERA with a one, one whip next year, he's going to beat his draft slot based on his projections. By a healthy margin, yeah. That would be regression, but also really good. And so, Bouton Francis is in a weird grouping of pitchers that I may just have to go with

feel in the rankings, or I'm just like, I don't know. I can't really tell you why, other than I think two soft breaking balls and a splitter and a fastball has good shape, and a guy with good command, I think he can breaking balls and a splitter and a fastball has good shape and a guy with good command I think he can put this together. I think he can actually do this Five more names to get to before we can go. Oh my god. We have 15 minutes each It's six Brandon Woodruff coming off of anterior capsule surgery in his shoulder. I already touched on this I can't I can't buy him at this. I mean, it's anterior capsule. It wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't thoracic surgery. He had Rennard syndrome that was causing

that numbness and tingling that's, which is a very, it's a very similar symptom that you get with thoracic, but it was an anterior capsule. But anterior capsule is bad. Anterior capsule is bad. The outcomes for other pitchers has not been good. He missed a whole season and we haven't seen him come back.

We haven't seen him post surgery. This is maybe one where spring training will change my opinion, but right now, I'm not drafting him. Almost like not drafting him. One of the only notable names I can find, a guy that's had that procedure and then come back to pitch well was,

I think Julio Urias had it in 2017. That was very, I mean, 20. But he was younger. Right, a lot of the guys that have it at this stage of their career, I think Johan Santana had it in 2017. That was very, I mean 20. But he was younger. Right, a lot of the guys that have it at this stage of their career, I think Johan Santana had it in his 30s. But he didn't really come back after that. But his stuff was already ticking down pre-surgery too.

I think part of the problem is this is not a group of pitchers that has a lot to look back at and then Santana, you're going back to 2010 we're 15 years into the future like the rehab and surgery and all those things can be a lot better so I look I'm a guy who in my heart wants Brandon Woodruff to just come back and be an ace it's more of a question of how much injury is to take on I can you accept a guy on your roster who's not gonna be ready for the start of the season most likely all accounts are that he's throwing bullpens and tracking well, but they're gonna be careful with him

It's just it's a big unknown if he's gonna come back to 90% of the pitcher he was or 60% of the pitcher he was pretty big error bar I think given the the magnitude of the surgery So it's a lottery ticket cheap enough right now where I feel like if it doesn't work out and you cut them You didn't ruin your team by taking the chance on Brandon Woodruff. All right, Clark Schmidt goes in this range. Where do you fall on Clark Schmidt? I think we've talked about some changes he's made over time to become a more complete pitcher

that really support some of the skills growth we've seen with the K-Rate spiking to a career best 26.3% last year, only 85 and a third innings because of injuries yet again I got to think the Clark Schmidt health grade number is brutal That's the only real problem I have with him and I still have him pretty aggressive right now because with the oopsie It's a 356 projection with a 25 percent strikeout rate. So I really like that, but I have a 128 inning on him You know, he's 78th percentile by Jeff Zimmerman, but I would I think that's actually too high I think he should be more in the 60s or the high 60s low 70s heel has a 70 Modolo has a 73 his Clark Schmidt

That much better than the dolo maybe a little bit pretty similar risk I think for me as far as how much I worry about them. But I do think the skills grow with these very real and this ends up being a decent spot to take that chance on Clark Schmidt even with the concerns we've seen on the health front really throughout his career. It's been a wide, wide range of injuries that he has dealt with. How about Renell Blanco? He got a lot of attention early in the season, the no-hitter. 31 years old, this season that he just put together in 2024,

for his age especially, just came out of relative nowhere. I mean, the Astros had used them, I think, for 58 innings in the two seasons prior. 24 total appearances, only seven starts during that span. It was pretty good, right? It was a 10% walk rate with a near 25% K-rate, a sub-3 ERA, a 109 whip, decent home run rate. And we just talked about their depth chart a few minutes ago. Clearly a need for him to come back and be a workhorse in that rotation. You know, fastball velocity at 93.6, not amazing, but I think the changeup

is a nasty pitch for René Blanco. So what follows this incredible season? Projections are looking at this and saying, no way it comes back. So I think you're gonna find a lot of skeptics out there. But I think some of your analysis on Bowden Francis kind of holds up here where it's like, hey, wait a minute. He can fall part of the way back toward those projections and still beat the draft day price right now.

So should we be interested in Blanco despite projections that get close to nearly the mid-fours for the ERA? I think one of the big differences for me between Clark Schmidt, Bowden Francis, and Renal Blanco is just that Renal Blanco got a 30 prospects rating on his command, you know, from Fangraphs. And yes, that was a long time ago, but then after he got that 30, he regularly put up 10s, 11s, 12s, 13s when it came to walk rate and the minors.

And some of those, one of those 13s came in seasons where he was a reliever. So he should be showing better walk rates as a reliever than a starter. We don't have a long history of good walk rates and starting for him. And so I'm going to fall on the side of like, this is a guy that got kind of lucky-ish

when it comes to command on the breaking ball, which is not his best pitch, his best pitch is the change up. And he was also pretty predictable about where he put that breaking ball, which is maybe goes hand in hand. He's like, hey, this is the change up. And he's also pretty predictable about where he put that breaking ball, which is maybe goes hand in hand. He's like, Hey, this is the place I can put it. I'm going to keep putting it there. But I think that the combination of control or command that seems to go in and out, and then the fact that his slider is not his best pitch, I think that

slider is going to get hit more next year. So I don't have him very high. I would much rather have Blanco or Schmidt and I don't think I can make exactly the same case for him and I think command is really the sticky point for me. All right, you're either Francis or Schmidt than Blanco. You think the market has them right in this case, then the question is of the three guys that go right after him in this group, Drew Rasmussen, whose injury history

is both unfortunate to the extreme degree, but also kind of impressive that he's even made it back to the big leagues after all of this. You have him versus Gavin Williams and Jesus Lizardo. Are you taking Blanco over any of those guys or is he easily the last of the group? Rasmussen, man.

Like I made a joke once to Pete Fairbanks that maybe his body just can't contain his stuff. And that's how I feel about Rasmussen like he just throws so nasty. He's just so nasty I don't know how many innings he's gonna put up. I could see him being the closer. I don't know It's not two Tommy Johns for him. It's like three because he had like two in college It's and the college history is just really strange I have not been able to get really a straight answer from anybody about like what happened with those two Tommy Johns in college. So I guess I have him ahead of Blanco just because I

think the upside is great. And at this point, I might chase upside because I'm not even sure how many innings I'll get from any of these guys. But I might have Gavin Williams number one. And why are you a Gavin Williams believer now? Well, he did well in the revamp and his stuff plus went up to 105. And I think that fits with my sort of eyeball test of Gavin Williams stuff because he throws like 97 with a two-plane fastball and some hard breaking balls. So 105 stuff plus actually makes much more sense to me than 99. You know, below average stuff that makes much more sense to me than 99. You know, below average stuff that didn't make sense to me. I think the command is good. He has a 357

ERA projection. I do think that the innings total makes him hard to rank. Right now I have a pretty aggressive ranking on him but I only have 135 innings next to his name. So I'm moving him down maybe closer to Nicolodolo, but that's still top 60. So he doesn't deserve to be in this tier. Yeah, I like Williams a lot from this group. He got to 142 and a third innings in 2023 between double A, triple A and his big league debut.

As he mentioned, he throws hard. They could just let him go. They need, they need somebody like this pretty bad next to Bybee, you know? I mean, it would be a bold prediction to somebody like this pretty bad next to Bybee. I mean, would it be a bold prediction to say, even if you like Tanner Bybee, that Gavin Williams will be a more valuable pitcher this year, a more valuable fantasy pitcher than Tanner Bybee?

I mean, they have the exact same ERA projection by stuff. Yeah, I think that upper end velocity that Williams brings, you were worried about Bybee's fastball. You're not worried about Gavin Williams fastball. I think that upper end velocity that Williams brings, you were worried about Bybie's fastball. You're not worried about Gavin Williams fastball. So I think that's sort of a difference that could flip the order of those guys over the course of this season.

We close it out today with Jesus Lizardo out of the pitcher friendly confines of Miami, but into a better team context situation in Philly. The update we got earlier in the off season was encouraging, it felt like nothing happened health-wise, I think is what he said last year when he missed time with a back injury, so that is good. But this would also be a picture that I'd put

in the extreme high injury risk bucket. I mean, not far away from Clark Schmidt in terms of missing time with a variety of different things. When he's been out there, he's shown us a lot in terms of skills in recent years. I mean, a 30% K rate back in 2022 and a 28.1% to follow it up over 178 and two thirds innings with the Marlins in 2023. So we have that upper end swing and miss stuff that is in there, what do you think Philadelphia can add to the equation for Jesus Lazardo? The one thing that I like about going where he's going is that the Philadelphia Phillies have been really good

at coaching multiple fastball shapes out of one player. And Jesus Lazardo has a really boring fastball and he's been, it's not a good shape. The only thing that's good about it is Velo and last year was his worst Velo. So that I would generally be out on a player like this, but you know, he's thrown a cutter a couple of times in his career and he used to throw a sinker. I think the Phillies might be able to coax him back into three fastballs along with the slider and change. And that could just help him, I think, when it comes to home run rates, ground ball rates,

getting the most out of a fastball that doesn't have the same VELO anymore. And some of the things that he hasn't been that good at, I mean, he has a one, two, five home runs per nine, Lazzardo does for his career. And he's going into Philadelphia, you know, Citizens Bank Park, so you might expect him, that number to go up, and most of the projections do. But maybe he can counteract that regression with the three fastball shapes,

and that's something that the Phillies are good at. Caleb Cotham is one of the best pitching coaches in baseball, I think. And they have a really good pitching system where most of those guys come up like Rangers Suarez and company They come up with multiple fastballs. So that's one thing that I think is in his favor, but on the injury side Yeah, I mean I have I have him with a 75th percentile injury risk, you know, I'm gonna give him like a hundred and twenty one innings

I think for a three nine eight projection like it's it's kind of boring across the line I can't I don't have him really circled as a as a sleeper due to you know his talents and then I can't say that he's gonna give you a lot of innings either so I have him like right now in the 90s which is kind of where this tier should be I think. I feel like it's Tad low. I like them a little more than you do, I think. And it's having, the slider and change of both get whips and the fastball velocity for last year was in that 96 rain, 96.7 in 2023.

So if we attribute that down kind of hell. Gets that VLO back. I think we're gonna get some of it back. And then if the possibility of adding a cutter back in there or getting the sinker usage up is in there, there's a few tweaks you can still make that would, I think, more than offset the difference at Home Park. So I'm in on Lazardo at this price. I think maybe he's a little bit of a watch and see at the start of spring training just

to make sure everything's good on the health front, but this seems like a pretty good discount. Another one of those injury discounts that you have to at least consider at the current price. All right, we made it. it most the way through our rundown. We extended Arts and Crafts time by four hours today. We'll have another episode next week focusing on starting pitchers. We're going to get to closers on our next position preview, so a lot of ground for us to still cover in the next few episodes. You can join our Discord, fill up the Hybe Mine rankings.

Thanks to Brian Smith for producing this episode and not trolling me. Again, I think that's a two show streak, maybe a three show streak for Brian. It's hard to count. Everything is blurring together for us during this series, but it's been fun so far. You can find us on BlueSky, enos at enosaris.besky.social, mtbr.besky.social. If you're hearing this on Thursday or Friday, jump in to PitchCon. You can see all the links from Nick Pollack's social profile. It's for charity, for ALS, so be sure to jump in there.

Watch some great panels over the course of the end of the week and the weekend. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We'll be back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.