Rates & Barrels - 3,000 Strikeouts for Scherzer & Attempting to Find the Next Corbin Burnes

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Max Scherzer's brush with perfection as he passed the 3,000-strikeout milestone, Scherzer's case to be the top pitcher off the board in 2022, and a few candidates to emerge as the next Corbin Burnes on the heels of a combined no-no from Burnes and Josh Hader over the weekend in Cleveland.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Get 50% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you on this Monday. It is September 13th, just a few weeks to go before we reach the postseason. On this episode, we will discuss Max Scherzer's achievement, a 3,000 strikeout career and counting after a near-perfect game against the Padres on Sunday. That was on the heels of Corbin Burns and Josh Hader combining for a no-hitter in Cleveland over the weekend. So we will try and find the next Corbin Burns because, you know, this one's cool,

but let's try and find the next one because that's a lot of fun. And we're going to get really angry about pulling the guy out of a no-hitter. We should get really mad about that. That's a different podcast. You're looking for a different podcast. I think you're looking for a podcast that doesn't normally talk about baseball,

that parachutes into talk about baseball for two minutes and then goes back to talking about football. I think that's where you're going to find that take most commonly. Maybe run by a Bayless. Yeah, some guy named Bayless. His brother's cool, though. I know. Actually, I thought of his brother's name first that's why

i just did it last day because i forgot which one is which for a second rick good skip bad that's right rick we watched uh i watched a ton of of uh of top chef back in the day and he was uh usually on the masters uh and uh looked like he made pretty good food. Oh yeah. I would eat it. I've never, I don't think I've been at a restaurant of his though. No, a lot of Chicago based stuff. Um,

I've had the, his Frontera grill, I think is the name of his restaurant. He has a torta stand in O'Hare. Oh, that's right. I have had that. The torta is really good.

The torta is good. It's a really good airport sandwich. it's a sandwich. Okay. Here's how I would describe it. It's a sandwich that I would go get anyway if it wasn't at the airport. That's how good it is, which is to me, high praise.

Don't usually find that there. Check that out if you get stuck in Terminal E, maybe, in O'Hare. I was actually on my way to San Francisco last time I had one, so it was pretty great. I think the churros that he made last time I saw him on TV, those have inspired me. I'm going to make some pumpkin churros now that it's fall, even though it doesn't feel like fall.

Pumpkin everything, yay. Do you like pumpkins? I'm fine, but then it's in the beer, and it's in the coffee, and it's in the tea. I mean, it's a bit much. A little bit of a takeover. You have pumpkin bagels, pumpkin cream cheese, pumpkin applesauce. No, stop. God, please.

Pumpkin pulled pork. Is that a real thing you just said? I could probably make a recipe for it. You probably could do that. You know who would make it? Our friend Jason Collette would make it. He loves everything pumpkin. He's probably already thrown some pumpkin spice into a pulled pork. That's true.

I've seen him doing some tweets about pumpkin beer. Because there's this whole thing in beer where there's seasonal creep uh and so uh you know it used to be that the pumpkin beers came out in actual fall um and now the oktoberfest beers are out in july and and the pumpkin beers are out in august and pumpkin beers are out in August. Yeah, you got to be first. It's sort of like releasing a print magazine for fantasy. You start off, you're like, well, we'd like to get all the signings and stuff right before spring training.

We'll release it when spring training begins. Then someone does it earlier and someone else does it earlier. Then all of a sudden, you're releasing your magazine before Christmas. Well, let's be first. let's be first and it's actually annoying the industry trend in that versus the industry trend of signing players later has combined uh just to annoy me i've had some angry januaries in years past as a result of print deadlines what print stuff is fun though it's's old, but it's fun. I would actually say I'd rather do it than not do it if I had the choice, which is a big commitment.

But hey. There's something cool too about edification, like sort of putting your takes down in a place that, you know, it's like chiseling it in stone kind of. Go back and look and be like, ooh. Yikes. You really liked Alan Webster, huh? Yeah, my memory is good for some of those and I'm not shy about bringing up,

oh yeah, I was totally wrong about that. But to have it all there to review is even better because you can find out how much worse you actually are than you even thought. But let's get to some positives things. We've got Max Scherzer hitting that 3000 strikeout milestone on sunday another great piece from brit about max on the athletics so be sure to check that out it was nearly a perfect game against the padres to scherzer's the 19th pitcher to reach that

career milestone it's got career best ratios for the season right now you know he's sitting with a 217 era and a 0.82. He's never been better in those categories over a full season. It's a contract year. It's a contract year and the dollars just keep ticking up. I doubt that's it, but it could be. I don't know. Yeah, I don't think it's that. I think that guy pitches like every single

pitch could lead him to a new contract because he just wants to destroy everyone and everything all the time. How about a.88 ERA? That quote about, there's a quote in that. I don't want to ruin it, because it's a reason enough to pay for The Athletic, I feel like, to read this quote about how competitive Max Reuser is. But I will tell you, I'm scared talking to him sometimes. I think everybody's a little scared to talk to him.

I was actually, yeah, I can't actually tell the story but uh yeah he i was pretty sure he was staring at me across the field one time and it turned out he was i think you told part of that story yeah i can't tell the whole part of that story but it was pretty hilarious yeah so i went up to i went up to another writer and was like, is Max, is he staring at me from over there? And his response was, it's Max Scherzer. He always looks like that. Speaking of pumpkins, if I carve a pumpkin this year,

maybe I can make a Max Scherzer pumpkin, like different colored candles. Two eyes. I like it. I think i'm gonna pull that led with the power of led you might be able to pull it off i was looking uh max scherzer kind of found himself in like around 2013 2014 so uh i just did a search over that time um and he leads he leads the league in in war since uh 2013 started uh 51 to Fangraph's War to Kershaw's 45, 46.

But it's just sort of amazing to me that he's had this, he has so much more volume because Kershaw and DeGrom and Sale are the next three, and he has like 250 more innings pitched than Kershaw over that time frame, and like 500 more innings than DeGrom. And 400 more than Sale. So he's really excellent and been excellent in bulk. A.280 ERA since 2013 started, 137 wins.

I mean, this is what a Hall of Famer looks like. Yeah, absolutely. A no-brainer in that regard. And a.88 ERA, a.67 whip, a 37.7% K rate, just a 2.6% walk rate since joining the Dodgers. He actually has accrued more fan graphs war with the Dodgers this season than he did with the Nats, even though he's pitched twice as many innings in D.C. than he has in L.A. so far. What a big game pitcher. Yeah, this is sort of like the only other acquisition. I mean, there's been plenty of big pitchers that have

moved over the last 15, 20 years, but this is similar, I think, to the impact that CeCe Sabathia had on the Brewers in terms of how amazingly good Scherzer has been. I think when you look at Scherzer as a free agent this offseason, yikes. I mean, for a pitcher his age might get a slightly longer deal than you'd expect. He's at least going to get a massive AAV because he's showing no signs at all of slowing down. And Al asked me on Fantasy Baseball in 15 for Monday, he said, is Scherzer going to maybe be the first pitcher off the board in some 2022 drafts? My

lean was no, only because of age. My answer was that we sort of discriminate against older players in our game. And even if he has on paper, everything you'd want from someone you would take as the first pitcher off the board, they'll look at the age column and say, yeah, I got to wait a little longer. I'm gonna put a couple of guys ahead of Scherzer.

He'll be top five, but he won't be number one among pitchers going into next season. There is that whole deal of like, you're not injury prone until you are. I've seen players that are like 600. We've talked about this before here where it's like you see players, five straight seasons of 600 plate appearances or 650 plate appearances. This guy is rock solid, right?

And that's sort of what you look like when you look at Max Serzo's lines, like all these 200s, right? 220 and just it looks like he's like super health dude. And that's sort of what you look like when you look at Max Serzo's lines. All these 200s, right? 220. It looks like he's a super health dude. But you can see that he's kind of fallen back. 2019 was 172 innings. He's had some stints for the back. This year, he'll probably end up at 170 innings again.

So it might be fair to project him for 170 innings next year, which will take some of the value off of him compared to a Garrett Cole projection, which will probably have 180, 190, 200 in it. So I think that'll be the source of the sort of projected difference between the two of them, because maybe by inning, uh, you would say that they were right neck and neck and maybe you take Scherzer over Cole by inning. Taking him in the first two rounds again, it's going to cost something early on. First 25 picks or so for sure. I can't see him falling any further than that, regardless of where he goes.

It's not going to go to a bad team. I think he'll be a first rounder, but it's a little bit of an iffy first rounder for me just because of the injury risk at a 37-year-old with all these innings. I think the injury risk is there. Think about Verlander, right? That's exactly the comp because Verlander finally crept up a little higher and it happened to be the year that he broke. Yeah. And Verlander seemed like a guy who would never get injured,

and then he did. But he had the same kind of deal where he had a couple seasons where he had some injuries. He had a surgery. He had a core surgery. He had some stuff, he had a surgery, he had a core surgery. He had some stuff, but he also seemed like he would age really well. And then he had that Tommy John.

I think he'll be a first rounder. I don't think he'll have a lot of shares. I do think on a per inning basis, he deserves to be a first rounder. But I also think that the top of pitching and the first round of hitting seem more volatile and uncertain to me than they have

in the past. It's because of a mess of injuries, right? I mean, Tatis' shoulder, Acuna's ACL, those two things plus DeGrom's uncertain health. Exactly. Mookie Betts coming off of an injury-impacted season. I think he's still a first-rounder, as I've said, I think on the Fantasy Baseball pod. Back end. Yeah, he'll still be in the top 10 of most leagues.

But then you're going to have some gun-shy owners at the back end of the first round, too, where they're like, well, didn't we just play this game with Christian Jelic and Cody Bellinger? You know, rock-solid mid-career veteran coming back off off injury years. Are we going to play that game again? So there will be some that might not take him.

I will take Mookie because I don't think that his injuries is disastrous for him. Although, is it a similar injury to Christian Jelic? It's a back thing, right? Back and hip? Yeah, it seems like it's lower for him. Okay. Just, again, I'm not treating these players, so I don't know. But anyway, Scherzer ahead of DeGrom for me because DeGrom, the injury risk is catastrophic.

I mean, it's through the roof. Right. If you're saying 170 for Scherzer, are you going much higher than 140 or 150 with what you know right now about de grom no so he could slide out of the first round pretty easily it could end up being maybe uh back of the top 30 sort of pick yeah and the this whole idea that that the gm was saying that alderson was saying like he had a tear and it fixed itself that's how these things go i'm like i think that uh you're not being quite as upfront about what sort of ongoing risk there is to our future injury in this situation because the way i've heard it with regards to Masahiro Tanaka and Kenta Maeda was that they were basically

pitching with a small tear. You know, like, that didn't sound like, oh, it just fixed itself. Right? Like, did you ever hear that language about Maeda or Tanaka's? Remember, they were both pitching

with like a slight tear of the UCL, right? It's healed and it's no longer a problem. Maeda's fine now or Tanaka's fine now. I don i don't i don't i'd never heard that language about it i i'd rather be more precise and maybe we can get like an injury expert on here sometime to talk about these sort of things but um i'd be surprised if what i'm saying is i'd be surprised if it's all just in the rearview mirror for degron you know it's like don't worry about it it's fixed now i mean it'd be great if it is but i have a lot of doubts just in the organization certainly doesn't help we've said that time and

time again there's a lock lock solid finding that nothing predicts future injury as much as current injury yeah that's that's just been shown numbers wise so if you're not going to take scherzer first off the board, you're probably thinking about Garrett Cole or Walker Bueller, or maybe even Corbin Burns. I believe I saw on the top of dynasty pitcher rankings. I want to say it was an Eric Cross tweet. I'm sorry if I'm confusing people on Twitter. It was very late last night when I saw this. I just smiled because I saw Corbin Burns at the top of a list. That's the whole story. That's enough to make you smile. And then I just ran away.

Somebody's got him number one in Dynasty. I threw the phone down. That's good enough for me. I will go to sleep happy today. Corbin Burns combined with Josh Hader for a no-hitter against Cleveland over the weekend. It was obviously the right call to not let him finish it out. This is a team that wants to win the World Series.

They need Corbin Burns healthy to do that. If you're angry at Craig Council today, I'm really sorry. I can't help you. I'm not going to take your side on this one. I think what's really fun here is we've talked about the transformation of Burns, right? You go back a couple seasons ago, ERA and whip off the charts bad, a four seamer that was just brutal. You could say similar things about Lucas Giolito a few years ago too. And with Burns, we know the pitch mix changed a lot. The cutter has been huge for him. It's a really deep arsenal. He commands everything really well. Giolito is kind of a different path actually. You might

remember them more similarly in your head just because of how bad they were and how good they became. But I look back, 2018 Giolito was a couple of ticks below his current velo. Really wasn't striking many guys out. It wasn't like the guy that missed a ton of ticks below his current velo really wasn't striking many guys out it wasn't like the guy that missed a ton of bats that had bad ratios it was just a bad pitcher he walked too many guys he didn't strike a lot of guys out he had four pitches at that time and now he leans more heavily on three the ride on his four seam he lost the drop on his on his curveball and slider he just lost the pitch what made those pitches good so he's he's the hardest type like if we were sitting here to have a segment like finding the next giolito i think

that would be the hardest because he came back with different pitches you know and was like this is what you saw as a prospect and we're all like oh yeah this is what we saw as a prospect this pitch has ride now and this pitch has dropped now and i don't know why it didn't you know last year you were something's wrong with your mechanics that's going to be super hard for us to ever predict right because i'm going to predict this guy is going to be a totally different pitcher next year different pitches i think but i think the corbin burns one is a little bit easier because for two reasons and this actually, somebody came up, somebody was asking me this on Twitter. I thought it was an interesting question.

I wish I had the handle in front of me, but shout out to whoever asked this question. He said, you said that his home run rate was statistical noise, Corbin Burns' home run rate that year, right? It was the outlier. It was obvious. We know from research that stuff like home runs allowed and power allowed is the noisiest sort of set of statistics for a pitcher, right? So you're coming from a good statistical standpoint if you say Corbin Burns would have been better in 2019 just because you know of

statistics you know like his home run rate would have regressed but the person said well is that right because he had to change his whole pitch mix to get the better home run rate you know what i'm saying like he's he changed his true talent it's almost like the giolito example it's closer to the giolito example but in some ways like you have to look back even the year before that too and 0.95 home run rate in 38 innings in 2018 the sample is almost the same as the 49 innings but that's an argument for statistical regression there's the i think what's happening is both things are happening, right? And so it's really hard to pinpoint.

Some of it is statistical regression where it's just like his home run rate wasn't going to be that bad again. And so that came back. But then he also changed his true talent a little bit. And that's what's really hard about evaluating talent, I think, is sometimes they're making changes that actually change their true talent. about evaluating talent, I think, is sometimes they're making changes that actually change their true talent. And then they're also oscillating around that true talent in terms of

having good weeks and bad weeks and good years and bad years around that. I was just looking at Eric Hosmer's WOBA chart, and it is a wild ride. What brought you there? Have you realized? Well,

I was workshopping this tweet that I ultimately decided was too mean. It was the Padres' playoff chances. And then the next picture was that guy, Steve Sachs, taking his pants off in front of everybody. And then the third picture was Eric Hosmer's seasonal Woba. So instead of tweeting that, you just described the tweet on the podcast. Well, here it won't be as mean. I guess we're all friends here, and we know that Eno's intent was not to be mean. It was to be funny.

And ultimately, he decided it was too mean. So anyway, he goes up and down like a crazy man. Hosmer has really good seasons and really bad seasons. Just alternates them. So I guess, uh, draft Eric Hosmer next year. Anyway. Um, no, no, he's saying no. Important to have the YouTube going.

Yeah. Anyway. So, uh, we can try to find, uh, a, a Corbin Burns. can try to find a Corbin Burns. The trick though is we can do something like sort by worst ERAs and look for good strikeout minus walk rates. That's the sort of statistical way in, right? That's the like, you know, Corbin Burns regressed statistically and that's why he's better. But then what we'll be sort of taking a leap of faith on is which one of these players will also make the pitch mix change or the strategy change or improve a pitch that they have

and actually take that leap. Because there are going to be people on this list who have a 5 ERA right now and a good strikeout minus walk rate that don't conquer their home run issues and end up in the pen. Right? That's going to happen for some of these pitchers. So there is a leap of faith where we're going to take a leap of faith. So we can give you some names.

You had a name that jumped off this list for you, which is becoming one of your your guys it seems like early on yeah logan gilbert is probably the the young exciting pitcher that i would look at and say hmm everything's sort of in place here and you know you're looking at a sierra at 373 with an era at 510 that's the other way you can look at a sierra leaderboard just look at sierra versus era differences with gil, we've talked about it. It's a deep enough arsenal where he has a few ways to get hitters out.

He's missing plenty of bats. He's not walking guys. The core skills are all very good. The home run rate's a tick high right now. 1.32 homers per nine. Strand rate is low. Not in Burns territory, but 65.8% LOB percentage. That's actually really

low so yeah 70 the major league average is like 71 or 72 so he kind of does everything we want a young pitcher to do and i mentioned a few weeks ago i thought his adp was going to track into the 75 to 100 range overall i don't have the exact date that I made that statement on the podcast. I do know for a fact that Logan Gilbert has been hit several times since I made that statement, so it's going to probably prove me wrong. 5-1 ERA right now. I think he'll be a great...

I think he's just dropping and he'll be great. Here's this. I think I said it sometime around August 10th. So it's six starts now for Logan Gilbert since I said that. He's got a 27-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 28 innings. That's pretty good. 28 innings and six starts isn't very good.

But a 739 ERA during that span. Sexy time. Yeah. It's good. It's good for me. As someone who believes in Logan Gilbert, he used to get knocked around a few more times before the end of the season. Gilbert needs to get knocked around a few more times before the end of the season. And one of the names that pops on this is what I did was just sort by ERA and put K minus BB on the end.

So as I'm going down in ERA, I can see a lot of terrible strikeout minus walk rates, people that deserved their fate, Chi-Chi Gonzalez, Carlos Martinez. Sorry, I had to, you know, those are really low K-BBs. They probably deserve some of their ERA. Do you prefer Mean Eno or Meeno? Yeah, Meeno. How about Andrew Meeny? I wanted to mention Meeny as just an interesting case where here's a guy who's been doing this to us for years.

You know what I mean? Like for years we've looked at the strikeout minus walk rates, and for years we've said, man, he should be better than this. And for years he's given up a lot of homers. So he's, I guess, the cautionary tale. And then, you know, here's the name. Brubaker shows up on this list. I thought he had a really great early season i thought he showed kind of what he could be uh then he kind

of fell off and gave up a ton of homers has given up two homers per nine this year he i think he's still interesting but i i i think he's going to be like back end top 100 or like maybe like 120 for me in pitchers next year 110 to 120 as in kind of like a good nl only play deep league play but i don't think he's going to make my top 75 i i just think he doesn't quite have the stuff he has some okay command he has a large arsenal but i think he's uh he's missing uh just a little of bite, a little bit of ride. I think there could be – he's a location play, you know, and I just think that that can be iffy. Yeah, I think the Heaney one, I mean, there's a similar pitcher to Heaney on this list for me, Eduardo Rodriguez.

I keep waiting and waiting and waiting for Eduardo Rodriguez to have the year that he's good. He's probably, over the life of this podcast, which now spans almost three seasons, Eduardo Rodriguez might be our most discussed pitcher. And I think Mitch Keller has been the most asked about pitcher. And we've even not answered questions about Mitch Keller on a few occasions and answered a lot of them and i still keep coming back to keller as a just a general disappointment but erod this is erod's best year for k minus bb yeah erod looks really good in the underlying numbers right now and i think he just needs a change of scenery he's a free agent at the end of the season

probably not a guy that's going to cash in in a big way with a huge multi-year deal but you think about all the pitching needy teams out there that might want to take a chance on him at a relative discount absolutely would love to see him go somewhere that's a little more picture friendly for a lefty because i think that could go a long way end up in san diego or something san francisco is going to be looking probably to spend a little bit on starting rotation. I mean, yeah, that would be a big change. The name that I like, and this is a little bit faith casting. Well, I got two names on here. I'm going to claim two.

You can take somebody else. I'm taking Albert Alzalea and Chris Paddock off this list. I just think they have good foundations they have out pitches they have enough command they have enough velocity and they have enough other pitches that they've thrown in their career that there's a path forward you know what i mean like for me paddock going back to the cutter uh could be it um or uh or even doing a kevin gossman where he uh just lives above the zone he just lives above the plate and lives north south and throws his change up 50 of the time you know paddock has a couple ways out i think alzalee he has a really good slider fastball the slider fastball combo is pretty good and it's good enough to get him a lot of strikeouts i think he

just needs to improve the cutter of the change um and i think those are there for him possibly um so the those two pitchers uh will be on some of my rosters next year. Getting that third pitch working for Paddock has been a common refrain for him really since, even when things were going well when he entered the league, I think people said, for this to work forever, he needs that third pitch. I think the hardest thing to figure out from afar, it's probably easier if you're around a team, you get to ask a lot of questions, you get to see what guys are working on. How can you tell how willing a pitcher is to change?

Like some of it's an individual's willingness to change. Some of it's the organization and the game plan they give. But a lot of this can be on the individual player to go out and take the time to do some sort of offseason work with that pitch development to actually get to the point where they're going to throw a new pitch reliably in game situations when the next season rolls around it's there's a word for it i mean it's makeup right and it is the most impossible thing to scout and that's why you know that's why they'll ask writers before a trade you know like you know what what do you think of this player you know that's why scouts are you're going to be are always going to be important because they're trying to judge makeup it's also super

problematic because judging makeup comes from sort of a like does your culture line up with mine and i don't i don't mean that in just raw like you know latin american versus i mean like your culture that's also your work ethic how you express your work ethic um how you know are there guys that will just say yes yes boss and not care right and and then there'll be people that seem like they care too much and they're and they're and they're tinkering or they're angry or they're not coachable, quote unquote. But then they're Max Scherzer all of a sudden. You know what I mean? Because he's angry and he's, you know,

and maybe he probably told a pitching coach they didn't know what they were talking about at some point in his career. I bet you Max Scherzer said that to a pitching coach, you know, before. But is he coachable? Hell yeah. Did you hear in his thing afterwards, after the game, he said he thanked all the coaches because adding pitches to his arsenal, that's something he's told me plenty of times, adding pitches to his arsenal is so important that they really did a lot of the work.

And so that's, I don't have an answer for you. The one thing I would say statistically is I always find it interesting. I find it interesting if they try, if you see it. You know what I mean? I find it interesting that Paddock threw a cutter a little bit. I find it interesting that he's been working really hard on that curveball and you can see the curveball improve over time. I find it interesting that Albert Alzalea has a cutter,

has been kind of de-emphasizing the change and there's been this cutter that's kind of snuck out um you know in the past few starts those things are interesting because they say those are kind of little markers right little flashing markers like hey this guy is trying something like uh tarik scubal like you know what did i mess up his name no i mean tarik scubal but that's not why i was chuckling it was a good transition keep going yeah but uh you know if you're looking for a sign that uh he is coachable or has that good makeup or is striving to make the most out of what he's got um you can just look at his pitch mix this year and see, oh, wow, he turfed the split finger, added the sinker back in. He's trying everything he's got,

and it's a little different than someone whose pitch mix is remarkably unchanged through some struggles. Yeah, we had a question about Tarek Skubal from Nathan, and he just asked, how should we think about Tarek Skubal? He's consistently gotten Ks all year, and some of his peripherals seem pretty good, like K percentage in Sierra,

while others seem alarming. He points to the barrel percentage and hard hit percentage, which definitely are a concern. And the suggestion was maybe it's a function of pitching up in the zone i want to like him but should i and i think you still should like terry scooble because of the reasons eno's mentioning this is not a guy who's just sitting there doing the same thing over and over again and getting the horrible home run rate result i mean 31 homers this season

in like 130 innings is brutal. Clearly something has to change. But we just talked about a guy who has played his way into top pitcher on the board consideration, might win a Cy Young this year, who had a problem with a bad fastball, came back with a cutter, and obviously made a couple of changes too. But it's not like Scooble is without other weapons. I think he's got two good secondaries already between the slider and the change up so if he can fix the fastball problem it could go a really long way toward changing what his 2022 looks like yeah nice soft landing too in detroit

with that park that's always going to help a little bit uh surprising it hasn't helped so far on the home run right uh yeah and i see i see uh you know in scuba like i think there's a little bit of an allegory for what's happening around the league and what um we will see more of which is people going back to the sinker because there was i think this idea and i think to some extent i was right. So Anthony Discofani, who was his pitching coach in Cincinnati? He's really good. I mean, Brian Price was the manager. Did he talk about Derek Johnson? Yeah, Derek Johnson.

Derek Johnson kind of pointed out to Discofani, like, hey, you don't have a really good four-seamer, but no matter what, four- four seamers get more whiffs high in the zone right so there was just this like hey just pitch higher you know uh philosophy that came around and it's it's true to some extent but i think scoobles four seamers not good and i think if you do the high four seam approach you should do it rarer it should be like a secondary pitch it should be like a low slider you know like a thing you've set someone up for um and that you're you're going to in situations and you're trying to stay high higher highest because scooble

you you pointed this out to me his his fastball heat map has a lot of broad street on it. And so what my hope would be, if this works out for him, my hope would be that moving to the sinker allows him to stay out of that broad street, use the four seamer less. And he doesn't have to do a full thing where he comes back with a whole new fastball. He kind of did that already with the sinker so what i'm hoping is he emphasizes the sinker more and comes back throws the slider in some counts sometimes to get strikes throws the sinker and uses the four seamer more as a situational whiffs only high up in the zone kind of pitch and that would be the best way forward for him. He could do a lot of what he's doing now with 1.2 homers per nine next year. That would be partially statistical regression and partially changes happening in front of us.

Going back to what you were saying earlier, if Burns or if Scooble, we'll use him as the current example, if you gave Scooble 139 more innings and said, do the same stuff you did this time, most likely he wouldn't give up 31 home runs again. He'd give up 25 or something, right? Like there's a better baseline than that. So keep that in mind here as you're looking at a guy that could improve in both facets. He could get that rapid increase.

The Ks are there because the VLO is good and the secondaries are good. And I almost wonder if there's also some deception in the delivery to Scoobler, where hitters just don't see him very well, because he's piled up Ks everywhere. We talked about him in 2019, 179 Ks and 122 in two-thirds innings between high A and double A, just an alarming strikeout rate. And so far, that part of his game has translated about as well as you can expect. I just think the fact that he's not sitting idly by is really encouraging.

I also wonder what you think about Chris Federer as the pitching coach in Detroit. You look at Casey Mize. He's getting good results, but he's not missing a lot of bats. Is this an organization we trust to continue making the right adjustments to these young pitchers? They've got Mize with good results. They've got Matt Manning, I think, in a pretty rough spot right now.

Fixing Matt Manning looks like it might be a little more complicated than we would have thought just even a year ago. But I think generally the amount of change that we've seen Mize and Schuble undergo at the major league level speaks well of Federer's abilities. major league level speaks well of Federer's abilities. So I think we're and hopefully it's not just like cookie cutter. That was one complaint I've heard from pitchers in the past which is I hate pitching coaches. They only have one idea. There were definitely

old school pitching coaches that just had one idea like throw the cutter more, throw the sinker more. And I think the work with Mize and Skubal has been different enough that I could say, hey, I think, you know, because Mize actually kind of improved his foreseem and went away from the sinker, right? Yeah, and I think Mize, the strange thing about him is, like, he's not throwing his best pitch as much as we expected him to. Is that the I would guess the split finger.

I'm not looking at the splitter is, I believe, by far his best pitch from a scouting perspective. I haven't looked at the actual results on it recently, but that was one of the puzzling things about him. When I last looked at him is like, oh, he's not not leading in that pitch nearly as much as I would have thought. Yeah, I would have thought. Yeah. I don't know. I think he's good. I think that if you had three even really quality high, people I don't think realize this, that if you had three really high quality, three top 30 prospect starting pitchers like they had right uh you would expect

uh you'd expect one to work out really well uh one to maybe uh be a back-end starter and one to be a reliever so uh like we we can't just say oh he didn't fix matt Manning too. You know what I mean? Yeah, no. So, yeah, with Mize, I think there's a little bit of a command issue. I think the stuff is there. So I'm betting on Mize next year. I think he'll be better next year. He has, by the stuff model, he has three above average pitches by stuff. He just doesn't have any that are above average by location.

So I think he could really take another step forward. And it might not be that surprising, right? He just changed his pitch mix a lot. Maybe he's just not as comfortable with his new pitch mix in terms of the locations he needs to put these pitches. He could take a real step forward the second year. And the model, for what it's worth about Skubal, it says it's not really impressed with the stuff. However, a lot of that is the foreseam

which does not have good ride and does not have good wiggle and is only average velocity right now. 94 is average velocity. So the foreseam is not good. If he throws that foreseam less, his stuff number will go up.

So I think in Scooble and Mize, I see enough that I will have them in my top 75 probably or at least top 80, top 90. They will definitely be my top 100, and they will be on my teams. Yeah, I could see both in my top 75. I had to guess how that list is going to shape up. Maybe one falls too short.

Maybe back ends, kind of, yeah. But those are really interesting pitchers. I love the pitchers that I rank from like 70 to 80. I love those pitchers because they're so cheap. And by me putting them there, I've seen something that I think will take off. I think that my teams are littered with guys from that ranking every year. And since they didn't cost anything on draft day,

they're expendable in terms of your roster, and you don't have to stick around too long to find out. Yeah, you can be a little patient with them to bench them a little bit, you know, kind of wait and see what happens to the first couple weeks of the season if things aren't going well initially too at that price. Thanks a lot for that question about Tarek Skubal. Nathan, a couple more questions to get to on this episode. We got one from Russell, and he's a question about defensive metrics if he was going to put one defensive stat on his fan graphs dashboard as a shorthand for this guy plays good or bad defense what would that be uh i don't think you can do it on fan graphs uh i think my favorite stat is

outs above average um i just the the fact that it comes with starting position uh for the fielders i think puts it way ahead of every other metric and i know there's been some disagreement about uh how these things have tested and you know uh has outs above average been better for outfielders or infielders uh i don't know man i just think if you're starting with better data to begin with uh and i can't i can't really see an argument that um you're gonna get better results without starting position you know what i mean like like it's always gonna be better if you know where the fielder started because you're able to separate more things out what was the first step what was this what was positioning what positioning? What was the coaching? You know what I mean? If you don't have where the

fielders started, you're just guessing on half the stuff. Yeah, I think outs above average is where I look first and then I never look at that and go, oh, that means he's a great defender. That means he's a terrible defender, but it's a really good start into that conversation if you look at the leaderboard right now it's above average across all positions nick ahmed yeah great defender at shortstop nikki lopez francisco lindor matt chapman it's platinum glove winning third baseman right there michael taylor andrelton simmons harrison bader like that seems dead on across the board ryan mcmahon does well there i was thinking about defensive run saves maybe as a possible uh dashboard option i'm just trying to remember if you can actually put that onto your dashboard you can put almost everything on a fan graphs

dashboard they have drs should be because it's one of their stats you could put drs on there's defensive value uh which is uh basically the defensive component of war. That is kind of cool because it's all-encompassing and includes framing. Guess who's the top four? Sean Murphy, Real Muto, Omar Narvaez, and Jacob Stallings are the top four fielders in baseball according to that metric. I don't know about the sniff test on this one. Well, I don't think there's anything.

The second part of the question was about whether any of these metrics are indexed like WRC plus or they just count. Like defensive run saves is just a straight count. Is it positive or negative? Outs above average is a bit of a component of average in there. Yeah. But for the most part just it's just a straight like this is this is it this is the value how about the rest of it let's do non-cadres michael a taylor trevor story nikki lopez matt

chapman miguel rojas kevin newman ryan mcmahon's pretty high up in there too jackie bradley jr i mean yeah it's wait that's DRS or what? I'm doing defensive value. Oh, yeah. I was on defensive value. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, okay, okay. Really?

I'm not seeing that. Are you not doing qualified? Do you do less? I am on zero for minimum plate appearances. Okay. That's probably cutting it too thin. You got to go like 100 okay yeah i did 200 and now bader is sneaking on but tons of catchers i don't know it's uh it's tough for me to say that

omar narvaez has more defensive value than uh trevor story or Matt Chapman? I think it's more just a flag of will this guy get a lot of playing time if he's not hitting? Will this guy lose playing time if he's not hitting? I think that's more or less what we're trying to have. I think defensive value does that. If that's the aim, then I think defensive value does it better than anything else right because these guys are all playing and they're

playing partially because of their defensive value like jacob stallings is playing because of his defensive value and if you were worried you know that some other part of his profile was crappy and you saw that he was good at defensive value the problem is it's also just accounting stats you have to look over and you have to know 15 is good. Right? But I do have one way that this might become more intuitive. That's the defensive value of war, right? So if you divide it by 10,

that's how many wins they get just off of defense. So that can actually make it more intuitive, right? So now I'm looking at Sean Murphy, and it says his defensive value is 19.4. That means he's getting two wins off of defense. He's going to stay in, right? They're going to play him. And I think it's also good

because if you look at Myles Straw, it says, okay, three DRS. What the hell does that mean? I don't know what that means. If I just have a three over there in the DRS column next to all these offensive stats, like that wouldn't be meaningful to me. However, 8.2 defensive value means he's worth a win basically on defense. That will make me look past whatever WRC plus. It's something I'm struggling with because, you know, Alex Chamberlain's

talking about Myles Straw and he's like, this is a win for people. Myles Straw's a win. And I think he pointed out Nicky Lopez and some other... Some part of me is like, ew, why are you touting these terrible hitters? And I have to find some sort of good process behind

this to find these guys. And so I think, yes, defensive value is a way to find the Myles Straws of the world. And probably the difference between Myles Straw and Oscar Mercado has a good deal to do with defense, maybe. Yeah, Straw grades out as a good defender. I think he was on the first page of the leaderboard. And Mercado was already starting to play left and right when he came up at times, right?

Mm-hmm. So anyway, defensive value could be good. I think maybe just throwing its DEF as a stat on fan graphs, you could throw that up on your dashboard and have one sort of number to look at. Just remember, divide by 10, and that's how many wins. Yeah, thanks a lot for that question, Russell. I mean, it matters because playing time can be lost or gained

as a result of being a good or bad defender. One more question here to get to from David. He writes, did Eno yell balk during Jake Cousins' motion with the rest of the Oracle Park crowd at the Tuesday Brewers-Giants game? No way DVR did. That leads to my question. Is there anything to a funky motion, not really an arm slot that contributes to a pitcher's stuff,

and how do you all feel about box in general? We'll take the first part of that question. Is there anything to a funky motion that contributes to a pitcher's stuff? 100%. Joe Ryan does not look that good in the Pitching Plus model, I'll tell you that. But one of the things he does is he leads with the elbow. And if you're watching on YouTube, Yuzmira Petit does this. So when the ball's coming out, basically the hitter sees elbow,

and then it pops up at the last minute. That's how he releases the ball. So he comes out elbow pointed and forearm back, and then it pops up at the last minute that's how he releases the ball so he comes out elbow pointed and and forearm back and then and then he pops up and that means that they can't pick up the release point but you know i that that's why i have used merpetit as a note of caution for joe ryan which is that joe ryan is doing excellent his first run through i think as people start to pick up that release point he may may not have as much success. And so he may end up as a kind of use Mero Petit because I think when you have a lot of funk like that, you're more likely to end up as a reliever because people will, by the third time they, if they pick up on that, whatever funk you have and can see through it or, or, or just

start to understand it, or I can't look at the the elbow i have to look at the spot and it'll just show up in the spot and i know where to look now once you start doing that you can hit them and so you use maripotete's third time through the order penalties are off the charts because this stuff is kind of mediocre but the first time you see it you're like oh god damn that elbow thing again you know uh and then the more times you see it the more times you do better the people who face you the most have had the most success against him i know that's batter versus pitcher data so i'm not i'm not basing my whole argument on that but i'm just saying it makes sense to me that you could have funk that would be better in one or two plate appearances that might go away the funk

the funk factor would go away in the third or fourth appearance against the pitcher in the same game. So it is hard to, I've seen various approaches. One approach that was pretty cool was somebody that was working within one of these independent labs was able to put a number on how long you could see the ball from home plate before it was released. So it's basically like how many contiguous seconds you could see the wide of the ball before it was released. And he was using that as a deception number, which I thought was pretty interesting. If I had the capabilities to do that, i would study that um because i do think there's something to that some guys you know hide the ball all the

way up like they pick it up behind their body you know um you know that's giolito started doing that um and then there's other guys who just showed the ball there's a guy nate jones or something he's got the most ridiculous delivery it the he takes the ball up, and you can see the ball the whole way. It only works because he throws like 99. Yeah, and it moves the time when he throws sliders too. Yeah, but it is weird. He's showing the ball the whole time. So anyway, yeah, I do think funk matters.

I think it's a little bit more of a reliever skill because I think its value goes away over time and then you have to rely on actually having some stuff you know who actually had a pretty nice career even though it was a pretty short career was josh cole mentor and he was like straight over the top i remember reading a story about him when he broke in with the d-backs in 2011 and he had this axe-throwing background. Before, it was a cool bar game, actually throwing axes. And then he threw his pitches like axes.

Yeah, I mean, it was as over-the-top as any pitcher I think I've ever seen. And the.338 ERA,.107 whip the first year, he had a sub-4 ERA every single year until his last year in the big leagues. But there's a lot to that. One thing that was really cool was he threw from such an over-the-top thing that his curveball had change-up movement. He had

what you call a reverse curveball, basically. So it almost looked like a screwball, right? Because it was a curveball coming from a righty, but he's righty, right? Yeah. He's so extreme over the top that it's was a curveball coming from a righty, but he's righty, right? Yeah. Yeah. He's so extreme over the top that it's like a curveball coming from a lefty. Like extreme overpronation. Yeah.

And so that was interesting. He also, though, I think had a fair amount of injury and also ended up in the pen and in between being kind of a three. I think in today's game, if he came up, he'd be somebody's

three inning guy. Oh, he'd be the race like he'd be on their Jalen Beeks type. Yeah, he'd be on the race and he'd be throwing that curveball 50% of the time and he'd pitch in three to four inning occurrences either before, after a follower or in the middle of the game.

So I do think that it helped his career, but ultimately it wasn't enough to make it even bigger of a career, if that makes any sense. By the way, I think for the first question, did Eno yell balk during Jake Cousins' motion with the rest of Oracle Park? No, only because Jake Cousins wasn't pitching for Arizona against Stanford 15 years ago or 20 years ago. When I used to yell things like that.

You're in your post-heckling era. Also, I have to tell you, I've read the rule book. read the rule book um i i don't think i could uh really explain the balk rule like i'm i'm just like yeah i have two thoughts either there are a crap ton more box than i ever called or there are no box so i don't i don't know which. It's one of those two. But I think every time a balk is called, everyone's like, what happened? Really? Yeah, was that? And then they slow it down and they zoom in. I'm like, there's one where the pitcher's hand like wiggled.

Yeah. Or like he opened his thigh a little bit. And it's like, no, that was a balk? I remember the balk got called recently. And the umpire comes running from third base going like this he's just moving his hands that's supposed to be the signal it's supposed to be like a like a milking a cow signal i don't know but then they then they like his hands moved when he was supposed to be yeah he was trying to say the hands move but like when they when they yeah when they slowed it down it was like the hands moved like a half an inch and i was like wow it wasn't anything that i think would have

messed with the hitter well and i i do feel like it's kind of like the old uh obscenity threshold test you know potter stewart yeah i know it when i see it no but i don't trust that i don't trust umpires that's how umpires apply it. They know it when they see it. When they call it, I'm like, nope, sorry. I think balks are mostly ridiculous. I think, yeah. I don't think that they... I think they could be cleaned up is another way of saying it.

Like maybe more well-defined and actually enforced. I mean, there's something weird about them. Like, here's this super technical, kind of hard to understand part of baseball that never really gets called, and then when it does get called, it can be hugely important. I think in this game, it was like the ninth inning.

The guy went from second to third. It's like, what? Because his hand jiggled a little? I think we're talking about the same play. I couldn't believe that was a call. It seemed totally ridiculous. Yeah. What was that?

It was, was it a dime? It was like a week ago. It wasn't that long ago. I was just like, I don't. Okay. Okay.

If you say so, that's what I, that's, that's my motto for box. If you say so, I can't really fight. Like if you're going to, if you're gonna if you're gonna tell me i know exactly what a balk is and they're called exactly right and as much as they should be i would say

if you say so sure why not yeah i think cleaning up the rule would probably be step one towards helping everybody understand it they are doing some work in the space, I would say, in that they are testing out new rules for lefties, the lefty pick-off move in the minor leagues, which I think is, that's the most ridiculous. If you know what a bach is,

tell me that you know exactly where that 45-degree line is between home plate and first base, where the lefty can hover in space over that and pretend he's going home but not cross the 45-degree line and throw it over to home. They're going to try and get rid of that. I think it's like any move home is the beginning of the delivery.

I think most of Chris Capuano's pick-offs were balks. Is he the one? There's some guys who just... He had an amazing pick-off move. The leg is just hovering in the air. Work to my benefit as a fan, but very skeptical that that really isn't a balk by most interpretations of the rules.

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