Rates & Barrels - A Closer Look at Chase Rate & 'The Perfect Hitter'

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss broader aspects of O-Swing% (chase rate) and whether it's a skills flaw that can draw excessive negativity -- especially with younger players. Plus, they consider whether 'The Perfect Hitter' exists, and which current player has the best case for that title.  Rundown 1:07 Do the Circumstances Matter Around Chasing 4:54 Salvador Perez & Aging Hitters 10:26 O-Swing% Leaders in 2023 (High%) 17:58 Amed Rosario 21:14 The Best $20+ Hitter Season We Haven't Talked About 26:00 Luis Robert Jr.: Elite Skills w/Chase Concerns? 31:29 Bryce Harper's Recent Increase in O-Swing% 37:46 The 2023 Version of Juan Soto 39:30 Does 'The Perfect Hitter' Exist, and Who Is That Player? 47:06 Where is Vlad Jr.'s Power? 52:45 Did 'Gather As You Go' Work for Steals? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out these offers from our ad partners... HelloFresh: Go to hellofresh.com/50rates and use code 50rates for 50% off plus free shipping! LinkedIn: Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at LinkedIn.com/rates23 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, August 16th. Derek Van Riper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, I go down the rabbit hole. On this episode, I go down the rabbit hole. I started thinking more about O-swing percentage and how I feel about hitters who swing at pitches outside the zone. And I started to think that maybe I grade those players too harshly. The guys that chase, maybe I have too much of a dismissive attitude toward them being able to have prolonged success. And as a result, I don't have as many teams with luis robert

or randia rosarena on them right historically you look at some of those players who pop up near the top of that board and those are guys that i steer away from so we'll dig into why i may be a little too harsh on this group of players got a couple questions that came in and one about eloy jimenez one about vlad j Jr so we'll try to get to those on this episode as well but let's begin with the oh swing percentage we talk about this all the time sometimes we call it chase rate sometimes you call it reach rate all the same thing just the percentage of pitches that hitters I've stopped calling a reach rate by the way because that's confusing it'll come back I think it was like boog scum zombie was like

dude what is reach rate and and I was like what why is there confusion he's like is that like how often they get on base and i was like oh that's not what i'm talking about thank you for that now you've got a reason not to call it that that's that's good all right well swing percentage or chase rate so do the circumstances of your chase rate matter and there were a few different questions I was thinking about. I was wondering if chasing when you can hit maybe high fastballs or inside fastballs, if that is even a problem, right? Someone tries to beat you somewhere and you can actually beat them. You've got great bat speed.

You can handle those pitches and you can do some damage. So I did a search and Randy Rosarena is slugging 652 on all fastballs outside the zone in 2023. I went back three years. He's slugging 430 since 2021. So I think you can get a little noise in some of these splits because the number of pitches you see in those spots cuts things down fairly small. But it does take some aggression to hit for power and sometimes that power does come from outside his own like barely outside the zone you're also talking about like you know there's like a click that's like oh that's outside his own but is that outside

the hitting zone for or as a random maybe he can he's in in one of his hitting zones is still outside the zone he goes and gets the ball pulls it for a homer like we're going to tell him not to do that so you know there's there is that link between aggression and power and sometimes whiffing you know exactly and i was thinking too if you're not occasionally chasing some pitches that are outside the zone could you be too passive overall and end up taking a lot of called strikes on borderline pitches that are in the zone right you're looking for something perfect and because of that you not chasing, but you're also not swinging at strikes. You're taking a lot of called strikes.

That could be a potential problem baked into your approach as well. Then chasing with two strikes, protecting the edge of the strike zone, maybe that's another thing. It's not necessarily as bad. You get caught swinging at a pitch just outside the zone with two strikes, and you hit it, make contact with it. Not the worst thing in the world when a borderline call could have gone against you. That's pretty fringy, but just trying to find all those use cases for actually taking some swings outside the zone. Also, just aggressive hitters that hit for power and are athletic

and do all the other things. If you hyper-focus on any one aspect of a player, then you miss more well-rounded players. You miss players that do everything else. There's a lot of different ways to make the big leagues. My first one was like Brandon Phillips, where I was like, I don't like Brandon Phillips' approach at the plate. Well, guess what? He's actually super athletic and he's kind of a 30-30 guy. 30 guy so you just oh i'm not i'm not looking at his player page right now i forget exactly what his heights were at but you know like you're gonna you're gonna look the other way on power and speed just because you know his

plate approach isn't great you know let that make that a worry for the actuary actuarial scientists that have to like put together the the six-year deal you know it's we're not necessarily always signing six-year deals now we'll get to a caveat where dynasty i do think matters here but we'll let's let's run the real you know what i mean yeah exactly i think it's every player is going to be different what they can actually cover right just because the strike zone is here doesn't mean that certain players can't hit in spaces adjacent to it. So who you are and what you can do as a hitter should shape some of those swing decisions as well. Looking at the leaderboard for this year, focusing on the qualified hitters, number one in the league, not a surprise. This has been something this player has done for a long time.

Salvador Perez. He's got a 45.4% O-swing percentage. I looked at the Roto-Wire Earn dollars for a 15-team league, and he's a $9 player. That's actually tied for 6th among catchers this year, so this is still a player you'd want.

Sal does plenty of damage. He's 33 years old, and I think we've all been wondering if the wheels would fall off for him in his early 30s because the wear and tear of not just being a catcher, but being a large catcher who had ridiculous workloads back in the Ned Yost era of the Royals. And so far. I think it's fair to say. Salvador Perez has aged. Much better than many of us. Had anticipated. He's on pace for another low to mid 20s home run season.

Run production is solid. Limited in part by the quality lineup around him. Not going to score a lot of runs. Because he doesn't run particularly well at this stage of his career. But this works for now. And I think this gets to the caveat you were you're pointing out earlier it's really difficult to rely on players moving into the twilight of their career who have this characteristic because i think this is one of the things that can lead an older player to have the bottom fall out really quickly in those last couple of seasons yeah i mean you can just look at uh

yeah strikeout right he used to be he had an 8.9 in this in 2012 uh and he used to be 12s and 14s and now it's you know 23s and 25s uh for strikeout right for sal p. If you look at his swinging strike, it was four and six and eight, and now it's 17%. So he's definitely approaching a year in which he may strike out 26, 27% of the time, may have a 220 average to go with what I assume will always be prodigious power. You know what I mean? But the closer he gets to a 220 average,

the closer he gets to every other catcher in the pool the nice thing that he did for so long was give you a 250 260 average along with that power which is pretty rare among catchers but you know i did a a different leaderboard where i just sorted by age and i have qualified hitters by age there are 19 players that are over 32 years old on fan graphs of those 19 players 12 of them have above average or better than average chase rates so 12 out of 19 have better than average chase rates 3 out of 19 have poor chase rates saldo or prez is one of them and just so you know who the other two are jose abreu is the other one and uh anthony rizzo is the third rizzo is complicated for the post-concussion symptoms that we talked about a few episodes ago, but

seeing the way Abreu was so good for so long, and then it sort of turned on a dime, maybe around this time last year, second half of 2022, sort of when the signs of decline first appeared for Jose Abreu, that sort of

validates the maybe I'll back off of Sal Perez, even if I'm not backing off younger players that are on this O-swing leaderboard going forward. Well, I mean, the other sort of mitigating circumstance here is Salvador Perez's position. Like I just said, if things go poorly for him next year he's probably still a top 10 12 catcher because he'll still hit 20 homers with that 220 average you know what i mean right so you know anthony rizzo i don't know if i'm buying the dip in other words jose brayu i'm not buying the dip because first base you have to do better than they're doing

and there are warning signs that say that maybe they have to do better than they're doing and there are warning signs that say that maybe they won't do better than they're doing going forward but there's a lot of players on this on the flip side where if you are older and you have a great uh chase rate then i i might consider buying you you know next year like if we're talking about drafts the next year paul goldschmidt uh you know 35 years old but 25 percent oh swing like that marcus simeon 32 years old but 13 strikeout any 20 chase rate i like that so uh george springer it's going to be a dip. You're going to be buying a dip next year. I'm in. 21% chase rate, 33 years old, 5-tool athlete. I'm buying the dip on those type of guys.

Yeah, I like that as a group and overall strategy that you can try and employ. Now, I think if you look at the leaderboards on fangraphs you may see different numbers than the ones i was putting out there i was using the stat cast leaderboard over at fangraphs new leaderboard pages over there by the way so you may see slightly different numbers on the player page depending on where you look but you know still what were some of the other sal perez we sort of saw sal perez name and went off on a whole tangent i mean you know who are the other guys that were you know yeah the rest of the top 10 eddie rosario 45.1 solid player like if you start five outfielders in your league

there's probably a place for him he's been a nine dollar player so far i'm not i'm not buying that one dude like how old is he uh 30 31 probably yeah that one makes me nervous dude i'm not buying that one, dude. Like, how old is he? 30, 31 probably. Yeah. Does that sound right? That one makes me nervous, dude. I'm not in. Yeah, 31. Turns 32 in September.

Javier Baez, we've talked about him for years as someone that we're just... The patron saint of this conversation. Well, and that's where it's kind of like... You also want to look at how much contact a player makes when they are swinging at pitches outside the zone. 51.9%, it's a lot less than Eddie Rosario by comparison. They both swing at pitches outside the zone at similar rates, but Eddie Rosario, 62.2% outside the zone contact rate. outside the zone contact rate. Baez, 51.9%. That runs pretty low. You see that when you watch Baez. He just takes full hacks at pitches that are oftentimes nowhere close.

Did you see the video where the catcher set up in the opposite batter's box? I did not see that. And he still whiffed. And then I forget who it was. Maybe Pitching Ninja overlaid the 50 cent yeah i saw that i did see the overlay 50 cent versus hobby yeah his first rude rude very rude the quintessential javier baez negative highlight that's been in my head forever is freddie peralta missed by four feet with a fastball up near baez's face and he swung at it.

And it was like, holy buckets. Like he was committed to swinging 30 seconds before that pitch was thrown. Like he just decided, I'm swinging at this pitch. I don't care where it is. I'm just letting it rip. And look, we know. We know that's what he's all about. The most complicated player on this list for me is actually Josh Naylor, because I didn't expect to see him here.

He's fourth at 42.3%. Pre-oblique injury was roughly a $20 player. That's going to sink a little bit with this lost time. So he's been good this year. So he's been good this year and he actually has the highest O contact percentage of anybody inside the top 10 other than Mauricio Dubon, who's a different type of player. So you have a younger guy who's shown pretty good judgment of the strike zone. This doesn't have a major problem with whiffs, who is pretty aggressive. And you've liked Naylor for a long time. you've liked Naylor for a long time I've liked Naylor for a long time it's been kind of a nice success story kind of seeing all the pieces come

together for him over the years does this give you any sort of pause about what 2024 might bring or do you think given his age and given his core skills this is a guy that justifiably expands his zone a little bit because he can go and get pitches in different areas i think you're right to bring up what their baseline contact rate is outside the zone because this is pretty high i mean you know he's you know i think the league can i put the league average up here yes the league average on contact outside the zone is 62 and he's at 72%. That's pretty good. And so when I say something like the reason why high chase rate players don't age that well

is that contact outside the zone ages precipitously after the age 30 might bring sort of all these conversations that we're having about this stat and this package of stats come together. You know what I'm saying? It's like you don't actually have to worry that hard until 30 and when you get to 30 you should be worrying based on a baseline of what sort of contact they were making outside the zone to begin with now javi baez was right in the middle of this because he had obviously terrible chase rates but then also poor contact rates on those chase on those pitches outside the zone

um you know when he made contact so when any of that started to fall off it was even worse it's the pablo sandoval package really um but there are pitchers players like sal perez who had high contact rates outside the zone and inside the zone to begin his career and so he had a higher baseline from which to age off of and so i think nailer you know and also one last thing for nailer is that he hasn't had really terrible chase rates every every year of his career every of his career now some of these are larger sample than others this is the biggest sample maybe this is his true talent but if his true talent is a little bit less um you know then it may be not as big a deal and then lastly he's 26 years old like i'm gonna file this way as something i have to worry about in three to four years i

think right problem long long term and keeper in dynasty leagues but not necessarily something that's going to have a negative impact on what he does for you in 2024 what about ezekiel tovar a very young player who pops up on this list i mentioned earlier starting to figure some things out i think if i remember correctly back at the beginning of the season you were a little less excited about tovar than a lot of other folks were. The numbers for the season are still somewhat underwhelming, right? 257, 291, 429 in a vacuum, not great, but he's lifting the ball enough. An 8.3% barrel rate is pretty good, especially for a guy that just turned 22 on the 1st of August. And if you took away some of his growing pains at the beginning of the season, that slash line

would look even better. So I'm curious if you have reassessed on Ezekiel Tovar. It's funny. From the first time I saw him, Chris Welsh reminded me of this on Project Prospect. The first time I saw him, I turned to Welsh and said, I don't like this guy. I still time i saw him i turned to welsh and said i don't like this guy uh i still uh he were closer to my my first assessment just because i would say this is obviously not the sal perez hit tool uh poor play discipline package he had an 18 well i guess that's too small sample to really report but he had double digit swinging strike rates in the minors in double a in 2022 he had a 15 swinging strike rate uh that's one of his biggest samples and then this year he has a 16

percent swinging strike rate so i just remain pessimistic that that strikeout rate is going to improve much i do know he's 22 and so the projections you you know, say 22%, 23%, 24% strikeout rates for Zico Tovar. I guess. I mean, if he gets to that, then he obviously has some natural ability to hit the ball hard. And he, you know, he does have athletic ability. He's going to steal you some bases. I don't know why. I also just don't want to assume.

I don't want to look at this line and assume he's going to get better. Yes, there are aging curves like this. But I remember, you know, the sort of Jeremy Pena thing where you look at his line and you say, oh, he's this age and he's done this so far and he's going to be better next year. I'm here to say that that's not true for every player. And I'm not sure how much better Tovar is going to get if he seems to have two foundational flaws, not just that he chases everything, but that he also doesn't make a lot of contact when he does.

So the tricky thing for me is that you look at the next player on the leaderboard, Ahmed Rosario, and you think about the player Rosario was supposed to be, how much he struck out when he entered the league, like Tovar, I think he broke in as a 21-year-old. The O-swing percentages have been same. Bad chase rates, some barrel rates that, you know, Tovar does I think he broke in as a 21-year-old. The O-swing percentages have been same. Some barrel rates that... You know, Tovar does hit the ball harder.

It does. So far. Quite a bit harder. So I think the starting point has a higher ceiling, but I still think you could look at a slightly better version of Ahmed Rosario for an offensive floor. The other thing that's pretty interesting is Toar has been a very good defensive shortstop. We know with players like this, when they go through prolonged slumps or if they just don't hit at the level their team expects them to,

more and more opportunities are there. So I think he's got a long runway to really get to whatever his true talent ceiling is. to really get to whatever his true talent ceiling is. Yeah, that's true. He also doesn't make as much contact as Rosario did. But I think the defense being better is important because it's cost Rosario plate appearances. If you look at his year-to-year numbers, he has crossed the 600 plate appearance threshold twice in his career.

And it's costing him plate appearances now. And it cost him a chance to stay in Cleveland and remain the shortstop. Defense is an important factor. Like we said on the Monday Rates and Barrels, it's not necessarily something that we use in fantasy leagues as much, but it is something we use to analysis. as errors. I don't love errors because people that are really good at defense get to more balls and have more errors and it's not always as negative a thing as they first appear. The stat is too subjective. It's like, take the... Oh, and did you see the article

by McCullough and I think Nesbitt? I didn't read it yet. Oh my gosh, there's this whole thing going on this year where errors are down for no good reason, and it has to do with how the official scores are communicating with each other and how they're being trained. Because it is so subjective, what you were saying, right?

It's like the whole language is like, would somebody with normal effort have made the play? What is normal effort? There's a lot of interpretation there. And think about your most frustrating moments watching certain Olympic sports where judges do the scoring. You know, gymnastics, figure skating. Think about how annoying that is. Boxing. I like boxing. Boxing is just awful. Sometimes you're like some guy just totally wins the fight and there's one judge who sees it the other way and you're just like,

what fight were you watching? Yeah. Judging in sport for stats is not really what we want, but yeah, I mean, I appreciate that people play that way. And if you enjoy it, you know, more power to you play that way. Does Nick Castellanos have the the best 20 plus dollar season as a hitter that that we haven't talked about at all this year? I mean, he's just maybe it's because he's a bit oatmeal at this stage. Maybe it's because the numbers so far this year are almost what he's done for his career, right? High 270s average, slightly underwhelming OBPs at 316. His career is 325. He's slugging 467.

It's a nice bounce back from where he was last year. The K rate has ticked up again. So maybe we get to 30 home runs from Castellanos again, depending on how well he plays over the final month and a half. It'd be the second time in his career that he's done that. But we're starting to see a few more warts that are... This is around the borderline. He's not quite as

old as the guys we talked about earlier, but he has a lot of those negative characteristics. He's on the precipice. He's right there, right? You've got to make a call on it do you believe it's gonna work for one more year i am so out dude the whole thing i was just saying is oh contact goes off a cliff his oh contact already went off a cliff his career oh contact is this is i know we're mixing numbers and i'm sorry for that but this is uh on fan graphs league average 54 he has been

league average for the last sort of three four years before that he was only barely above league average and now he's at 47 it's the worst oh contact of his career it is the beginning of the decline it is not going to be as good for him next year. I would predict something like a 28%, 29%, 30% strikeout rate next year. Going to pair that with a 5% K rate, you're not going to get a 260 average. No. So you have a tumbling batting average and always slightly lower than expected OBP

because he doesn't walk a lot. That starts to ding his real-life value in a way where maybe they don't start taking away a lot of playing time next year because he's got three more seasons after this one still on the ledger. I would never give him that contract. This is exactly what we're talking about.

This is not the kind of player I give five years and $100 million to. I think it's important to make a distinction here. We're not in on Castellanos going into 2024 because the assumption, and I think this is a safe assumption to make a distinction here. We're not in on Castellanos going into 2024 because the assumption, and I think this is a safe assumption to make, his ADP compared to this year when he was a clear buy low is going to be a lot higher. He's going to go a lot earlier. I may not have been totally out on him this year. I didn't end up with any shares, but the price was close enough that I did consider him in drafts i'd try not to put guys it's this is the brandon phillips rule i try not to put guys

on do not draft list because of their chase rate you know i mean yeah but next year as the adp rises it's going to be a little bit close like i don't expect that i'll have any shares next year pick 118 was where he was going all the way back in March. I would imagine, as I look this up for the midseason drafts, maybe he went a little bit earlier than that back during the July drafts. Let's see here. Castellanos, only a little earlier, 109. So 10 spots, not a big deal. So it's possible he could end up on some of my teams for next year. But I think what you're going to find in that range that range especially you're always going to find players you like more

guys that have better underlying numbers who are coming off of a down year in 2023 that you're getting at a discount that you could see kind of popping back up closer to top 50 also yeah i think also top 100 like right around 100 picks a lot of times that's where you take your shot on a young guy that you think you're not going to spend on the Bobby Witt young guy, but you're going to try and get the guy right behind him. I don't know who that is next year. Let me look at a prospect board real quick. Who could be someone that could be up next year?

Like Jackson Churio, is that too early? That could be where he goes, I think, if we don't see him by the end of this season or if we did see him for a little while even. Jordan Lawler? Lawler, yeah. Yeah, that's possible. At least in the early part of draft season.

We're going to see a lot of three to four weeks of guys, especially hitters, in september i think so like a pete crowe armstrong if he comes up does something that some people like and something that other people don't like you could see pete crowe armstrong going at like 95 or something and i i might think that's a better deal than than castellanos just because the you know the ages and the the arrow the arrow markings on both of them yeah no i i could definitely see that especially in that range what about luis robert let's make the the robert part of the rates and barrels word cloud bigger yet again it's making a run at mitch keller he's gonna he's gonna take over the whole word cloud

eventually robert has the problem where he swings a lot of pitches out of the zone right eighth and They're going to run at Mitch Keller. He's going to take over the whole word cloud eventually. Robert has the problem where he swings a lot of pitches out of the zone, right? Eighth and O swing percentage. Also has the low outside the zone contact percentage. But he's a little bit younger, right? So it's not as concerning based on where he's at in his career. It has some of the Javier Baez aggression vibes. Baez's peak was good. That's the other part of this. Baez now, of course, is a shell of the player that he was a few years ago. Baez at 30 is very different than Baez at 25. Javier Baez's season in 2018, 34 homers, 21 steals,

111 RBIs, 101 runs, 293-26-554. You would take that all day long. That seems like an almost match for Luis's season this year. Right. So is that a, are you buying that as a fair comp?

And what does that mean for the shorter term future for a guy that just turned 26 the the cliff might not be here next season so is this what we get for a couple of years from luis robert i guess so the the the thing that i worry about uh 2020 really ruins this analysis here. So 2021 was a really good season from Baez. 2021 he was 29 years old. Right, that was a 31 homer

18 steal season, 265 319, 494 that was with a 33% K rate too. And I'm tempted to be like, well don't worry about it until I turn 30, but 2029 was last year and that was a bad year if you paid retail for that you got 238 17 homers and nine stolen bases maybe

it's above zero and was worth something but you paid a lot more than for that after that first season that 2021 season i wonder how much the change of scenery can factor into that you know like we talked about being being more aggressive anyway when you get the new contract that was something that may have been a concern last year because he took an already high o swing and nudges up even higher that was his career high to date but he's still he's still pressing because he's still there he struck out a lot less though he took his k rate from 33.6% down to 24.9% with a team and league change. And unfortunately, the hard contact went away across the board.

I would just say that, you know, for Luis, I'm cool with him for a couple years. He also has a little bit more of the injury bug than Baez did. Yep. Baez was pretty durable at the beginning of his career. He's been pretty durable for his whole career, really. It's enough upside that I want in on that Homer-Stolen Base combination. I could see hanging around

for a couple years, but I think I'm always going to be the first one out on Luis Roberto Barrett. You're talking about a guy now that's probably a top 20 player by ADP for next season and creeping maybe to the 1-2 turn where he's going to pick 15-16.

That still makes me nervous with the injury part too. This is pretty interesting. Looking back at the couple of summer drafts that the NFBC had, Eli De La Cruz went, there were two drafts, he went 10-1 and he went 21-2, so that puts him right at the 1-2 turn, just two drafts. But Eli versus Robert for 2024 only,

that's kind of a fun toss-up. Ellie chases. Ellie chases, but not on the level. Not on the level with Luis. I don't think we're looking at the same sort of injury risk with Ellie. No. We are looking at a little bit of an added risk that the ground ball rate is the thing but i don't think it is a thing if you look at his chart for ground ball rate over the course of

season he's been sort of whittling away at it yeah yeah it's already headed in the right direction so i don't have a lot of concerns there i I think if you maybe decide right now, I'd probably take Luis Robert for next year only, but we got enough time to see that flip yet again. If Ellie just goes on a tear for six weeks. Especially if he goes on a little bit of a power tear, that tells us a little bit more about that ground ball rate. But yeah, the ground ball rate, after so many people made such a big deal out of it,

if you look at the graph on FanGraphs, it's just going straight down. And also, you can just look at its minor league numbers. The highest ground ball rate in hand to minors is 44%. I just don't think it's a problem. I don't think you see a lot of guys in the low to mid-40s with their ground ball rate coming through the minors who come to the big leagues and hit the ball on the ground 60% of the time. that just doesn't happen just the beginning it was just like how he's being pitched and you know he had to show enough adjustment to not swing it everything low in the zone basically you know yeah there was something else that caught my eye when i was

looking at what's happening outside the strike zone bryce harper going back to last season is way up in o-swing percentages. O-contact percentages were higher earlier in his career. Makes sense. You're younger, better play coverage, more athleticism. But even looking at last year versus this year, there's a pretty big gap between his results when he swings at pitches outside the zone. We're talking about a guy who's going to be 31 in October. I think a lot of people had a chance where he was available in keeper leagues to get him at a discount because of

the injury he was coming back from. So they have a slightly underpriced long-term keeper on their hands. I would be still ecstatic about having that, but where do we go from here with Bryce Harper and how much can we attribute the reduction in power also to just working his way back very quickly

from a significant injury. He was playing through that injury. It was Tommy John. It was known. It was known he needed elbow surgery for a good portion of last year. So when you're looking at 2022 and 2023, those are the outliers in terms of chase rate in his career. And in 2022, he was playing hurturt. In 2023, he's playing sort of rehabbing. I mean, he came back pretty fast from it. I'm willing

to trust that narrative a little bit because from 2015 to 2021, we have seven seasons where he was distinctly better than league average at chasing. It doesn't strike me as something that would evaporate on him. They turn off.

I think we're going to see some correction there. Maybe it's not all the way back to the lowest parts of what we saw from him in the middle of the last decade, but a low 30-32% swing percentage is probably where we're headed next year. of what we saw from him in the middle of the last decade, but a low, like a 30% to 32% O-swing percentage is probably where we're headed next year. Swinging less, it pitches out to the zone.

He's going to start doing more damage again. I think I'm going to have a lot of Bryce Harper next year. And look, he could get it all back before the end of the season, but if what is to come for the rest of this season looks like what we've seen so far, it's not going to dissuade me from being interested. Here's an interesting thing. A director of hitting for a major league team texted me about this.

And I forgot. I can't believe I didn't think of this. He asked me, do you think that, what are the hitters that you can come up with that have actually changed their true talent, sense of the strikes or discipline? And so I went through and I took the season to season leaderboard where I just looked at the people who had changed the most in the past. They have that season-to-season leaderboard at Fangraphs. And I looked at all the people who'd had major decreases in chase rates. So it's a very simple thing. And I had some names for him. While you're looking at it, one thing I've found using the season stat grid is you often see players improve or fall apart a little bit in a category, and then they get a lot of it back or give a lot of it back the next season.

A lot of what you see there is just normal variance within the range of a player set of skills. You can see certain things early in a career or at the beginning of the end of a career, rather, where you see like a shift and you're like, OK, this is a young player getting better. This makes sense because they got better and they held it for a few years. You see some of that and you see some guys that lose something in their 30s and it never really comes back. Right. You see that. But a lot of stuff in the middle is here's my higher end of my range.

Here's the lower end of my range. And I'm just going to ping pong, you know, two to four percentage points back and forth between those ranges in a lot of different metrics for the middle part of the career. Yes. And, but I think generally even these improvements feel ephemeral and don't stick. So I found that, I found some names for him and I'll give you the names, but I found some names for him and every name I had to put a question mark on, I was not sure of any of them. And mostly it's because either the improvement was recent or it didn't quite stick or it was early in their career. So if it's early in their career, maybe we just didn't know what their true talent was.

Maybe they had 100 played appearances in their rookie season, they had 300 in their second one, and then they got better. You know what I mean? There's a lot of that going on. So I got Adolis Garcia. Well, that's just this year. Right. Could it just be a peak season? it be i mean it could be that

he's been playing more and he's he's starting to see the ball better and maybe he's gotten better uh austin riley matt chapman had like a little like was worse his first couple years in the league and then just got better and i and i i think that might just be finding his true talent um tommy fam alex bregman i mean if you want to just kind of look through these guys and think if tell me if you think they actually changed their uh plate discipline because uh i'm not sure uh juan soto told me that he used to swing at pitches outside the zone until someone told him what his OPS was outside and inside the zone. And so he stopped, but that was like in a ball or something. So like, I can't, I don't have O swings back down there. I can't, I can't tell you he really, and really, I bet you, he already had a pretty good chase rate when someone told him that,

you know what I mean? Like there's no way that Watsoto was like, you know, chasing everything. And then someone's like, Hey dude, you shouldn't do do that. He's like, OK, I'll become the best non chaser in the league. You know, he's number one again among qualified players, too. So he's still fantastic in the swing percentage. I noticed something with Soto when I was getting ready for this episode. He's doing less damage with fastballs this year. I don't really know what to make of that just off the cuff, but that really stood out to me.

He's murdered fastballs in past years, and this year he's just human against them. I tend to think a lot of it, there's two things going on. His swing became more, and we're talking about Soto, right? His swing became more sort of flat with Kevin Long over time in Washington. That has some meaning here. And then also the ball stopped performing as well on opposite field barrels and fly balls at some point in his career. So those two things are meaningful.

But a flat swing should be good on high fastballs. So, I don't know. I don't know exactly what's going on there. I do know that I used to think Juan Soto was the perfect hitter. And I'm not as sure of it anymore. Well, okay. What about him more recently has

made you rethink that? The numbers against fastballs, by the way. He's hitting 267 with a 650 slug against four seamers this year. That's still good. It's just not the 312 or the 395 with a 662 or 722 slug that we've seen the previous years it's a it's a slight downturn so i'm not i'm not saying he's done or anything he's 24

it's amazing he's 24 years and he does all the things that you guys hear me talk about i love you know make contact don't chase you know all that stuff. What I'm trying to get my head around is just how much being able to vary your swing matters. So I just talked to Chaz McCormick, and there's a piece up today about how he's got this really closed swing. He lands closed, he's super closed, and he shoots balls the opposite way. And last year, 10 out of 14 of his homers were the opposite way. Now this year, all he's doing is standing a little bit more upright. And, uh, only I think, uh, five of his 15 homers are the opposite way. He's learned to pull the ball. And when I talked to him, he's like, it's just one swing. I've just found a way

to do it. But you know, you talk to Kyle schwarber he murdered low balls and he figured out how to hit high balls what i'm saying is that there's these and i'm not saying that kyle schwarber and chas mccormick are better hit than swan soda let me just say that i don't think anyone's going to draw that conclusion but it's good i just wanted to put that disclaimer out there real quick but what i'm saying is that like there's a skill here um bat path variability i don't know if it exists and if some people are good at it how i how we would define it it's it's i think jordan alvarez has it okay i think jordan alvarez can demolish a ball low can demolish a bell high can demolish a ball to the oppositearez can demolish a ball low, can demolish a ball high, can demolish a ball to the opposite field, can demolish the pull ball. He has a great sense of the zone.

If we're talking perfect hitters, I might be more in the Jordan Alvarez than Juan Soto camp right now. All right, so a couple things. Perfect hitters are only one? Can only one actually exist? That's the point. And the bat path, the bat path variability, isn't that just hit tool?

Isn't being able to do that like a function of hit tool. Do you think Juan Soto has a plus hit tool? Hmm. I would generally say yes. And if he doesn't, he's whatever, whatever your scouting scale is. You want to use the 20 to 80 scale? Then you'd say it's a 70 hit tool, but it's an 80i, which I realize is not a tool.

But if you were grading that on the 20 to 80 scale, obviously the lack of chasing, like not swinging at balls, like that's, no one's better than Juan Soto at that, right? Yeah. So if it were a 70 hit tool with an 80 eye, that's still incredible. And what's Joran Alvarez then? 70 hit tool, 70 eye, 70 power? Could he be 80 hit tool, 70 eye? They trade in that regard? could he be 80 hit tool 70i or they just they trade in that regard yeah maybe we're talking about the uh the relative importance of the different uh

skills i think that you know uh okay to me the if there is one perfect hitter in my lifetime i've seen him his name was barry bonds and what he had was 80 power, 80 hit tool, 80 eye. Man, peak Pujols was probably right there, though, too. It's so hard to erase

the more recent, older versions of Pujols that we saw that weren't that player anymore. But, what, for the first 10 years of his career, he was as good as anybody I've seen. Yeah. I guess, you know, just the early struggles for Juan Soto for me this year were eye-opening in that his flat swing is not good on pitches low in the zone.

He mostly just ignores them. He mostly just doesn't swing at them and if it gets a little bit hairy and people are really filling up the bottom of the zone he you know hits a couple singles and doubles the other way you know finds a way to battle on some of those pitches i think he actually you know sort of bends his back he doesn't really change maybe that and that might be bat path variability is how much you bend your back but like you know that because you are like changing the arc of your of your bat by like bending forward you know like you can just use your body to improve your hit tool i think um i just when i saw him struggling that way i was like he's a guy who's like the reverse of kyle schwalbert now he

can't be because he strikes out 20 of the the time, Schwalbe's like 30% of the time, so it can't be like that. But there was this time when I was like, man, Soto can't do anything on the lower third. What's, even now, I want to see this. I'm going to look at a heat map now and look

at run value. This is pretty interesting, man. You got me spinning thinking about the Jordan versus Juan Soto thing. Not that this isn't a fantasy relevant conversation necessarily, but I think when you look at the difference in just what they've done,

look at the home run output difference. Juan Soto has a 149 to 119 edge, but the difference in plate appearances is almost 1300 more plate appearances so if you equalize playing time clearly more home runs from Jordan Alvarez got a higher average better barrel rate Soto's edge is just not swinging at balls that's the biggest edge Jordan Alvarez lifts the ball more consistently. Juan Soto hits the ball on the ground too much for a hitter as dangerous

as he should be. That's the flat swing. Yeah. But then, okay, naturally, the question is, if we all catch on, and this is where it comes back to fantasy, you're making your early round decisions. You choose Jordan Alvarez Soto. It makes sense. There's enough statistical reasoning behind that.

That's the right call. You're looking for that 300 average, and you're giving him a 5-7 stolen bases back. But can we still look at everything Juan Soto has done, which is incredible. We're looking at two amazing players and looking at the differences. Is there still room for Juan Soto to get better if the swing is flat how much can he change that what what level of improvement is still there for him what if he gets a new hitting coach that gets through what if there's like that one wrinkle like you know he had a 41 percent ground ball rate the year he hit 34 homers in 2019

in Washington uh he had that stretch after the home run derby where his ground ball rate the year he hit 34 homers in 2019 in Washington. He had that stretch after the home run derby where his ground ball rate went down and he hit a bunch of homers. I forget what year was that he won the home run derby, 2021 maybe. The overall ground ball rate's not great, but I think he had that second half tear where he left the home run derby and hit a bunch of homers. He had a 47% ground ball rate just last year know the the pieces are there for him to put up a better season in Jordan especially given Jordan the state of Jordan Alvarez's knees and I think that's been something that's held Jordan back from a fantasy value perspective keeper leagues or redraft leagues it's the concern not knowing what's going to happen with his legs.

Generally, I think since that big chunk of lost time, he's been healthier than expected. Things are seemingly okay, which is really good news. I think with a new hitting coach, I think it's still possible that there's one

more level with Juan Soto. It's interesting too, because Vlad Guerrero is, is also someone who belongs in this conversation. You think about when he was coming up as a prospect, there were folks that would say it's 80 hit with 80 power. And you're like, that,

that doesn't happen. I know fan graphs had him at 65 with the future 70 hit and 80 raw, but there were people that thought it was 80-80. He's still 24. He's still showing 80 raw, I think. Definitely seeing the raw, but this has been a weird year for him. I started

looking into this earlier in the week, and we're going to talk to... Caitlin McGrath's going to join us on the 3-0 show tomorrow, so we'll talk about this in probably greater detail then. Where's the power this year from vlad jr at first i thought well he's got he's had a wrist injury and a knee injury and maybe that's where the power went right he's going to pace out to low to mid 20s home run total for the year lower average than expected though right for a guy that doesn't strike out a lot, you'd expect him to be closer to that 300 mark. He's at 264. It's the worst slugging percentage we've seen since his rookie year back in 2019. It feels like picking nits in

a player that is really, really good. Rest of season projections are still very, very bullish on him. The Bad X has him at 300, 376, 557. You would definitely want that. But he's been that player one time. That was in the year of the rabbit ball. Every other season we've seen Vladimir Guerrero Jr., he's looked a lot more like the guy he is in 2023 than the guy he was in 2021. than the guy he was in 2021. So thinking about him in the similar light to Soto and Jordan Alvarez, are we right to be a little disappointed given where expectations were and given the ceiling he's already established?

You being fair. I'm trying to be. It's a 172 ISO this year. Other than his rookie season, that's clearly the worst. I think probably the most normal season, here that's other than his rookie season that's clearly the worst i think i think the probably the most normal season if you just sort of average out his seasons the most the season that uh lines up most in sort of if you take his career average his career obp his career slugging his career iso and you add them all up and you sort of look across the most average season for him was 2022. Last year, right.

That's where the baseline should be in 2021. And I still believe in that. I still believe in that. He still hits the ball 117, 118. He still barrels the ball. His ground ball rate is not even the worst it's been. I think there's some aspect of the park is different for him. He's been struggling at home and they changed the they changed the walls um i i do wish he pulled more of his balls in the air uh and that's been something that he thinks about but then you know that he actually

has it in him because what did you see at the home run derby he said pitched me them high and tight all right and he took those balls and he pulled them in the air. Right. So there is a confluence of how you are pitched and what you can do. And does he need to, you know, revamp everything so he can pull the, the low and outside pitch that he's being thrown or whatever it is, uh, out, uh, in the air. I don't know, you know, maybe that's not that maybe that would mess him up and get him into 25 strikeout rate something he doesn't want to do you know so i i do think that if he there's just small tweaks he can make that he can get back to last year and it's not so far

back and it's he's 24 years old there's going to be another mvp or mvp light uh type season in him he's got two more years to this peak so i will buy next year where do you think he's gonna go do you have a second half uh he went at 11 overall and 17 overall in the two drafts from july i think he's probably more at the two three turn probably between pick 25 and 35 depending on who's in the room and no positional value no steals right uh that puts him and think about the way historically manny machado's adp fluctuates in the early rounds a down year for manny machado is a good year for a lot of players the same is going to be true of vlad jr and when those when those dips happen you have to take advantage i've been really excited to

get uh manny machado and i Machado. I don't know what year it was, but I was really excited to get Manny Machado in the third one year. I think I'd be really excited to get Vlad in the third, although it does make it hard. Could you go Yordan Alvarez? Who's going to be a borderline second round

starting pitcher next year? Borderline second round starting pitcher next year. Borderline second round starting pitcher. It's like a second round starting pitcher. Burns? Or Burns maybe? Yeah, maybe Burns. He's pitching well in the second half, maybe pushing his way back toward the first round.

You can maybe get him in the second. Maybe Gossman gets some helium or something. Let's say Burns. If you went Yordan, Burns, Vlad, on value you would have done well, but then you have to go crazy on stolen bases after that. Yeah, but everyone runs now, right? They're easier to find.

You need more of them. But I wonder if that's going to be a common thought. Oh, everybody ran, so I don't have to get steals early. And then people are going to go more aggressive with starters maybe relievers probably starting pitching and mashers that don't run as much because they're saying that's fine i'll get my steals later it's gonna be the first time in a long time people were comfortable saying that i generally did how did you do with we have a very similar

steal strategy which is sort of a little bit here a little bit there gather as you go I in most of my leagues I'm actually near the top of my leagues in stolen bases but I do have a couple where I'm sort of 12th and 13th and I guess it's just the

how things shake out you know but how are you feeling generally about your strategy of just getting a few stolen bases here and there and getting five tool guys? Has it worked out for you mostly? Generally, it has worked out. I'm winning steals at least in a couple different leagues. I think in places where I waited, there was one league where Estre Ruiz is on that team, third in contention for first for that category. There were a few different wrinkles I tried, and they all seemed to work okay.

You tried the Ruiz wrinkle after he was heavy on our preseason word class. I did that, though. I think that was only in the draft I did with Zola that started at the end of last season so it was like a really late flyer before before anything was known about his role for oh so you didn't spend the same right didn't spend the same but it was just sort of like yeah we may need some late bags let's try this and they so i don't know it's not hitting under ease quite the same way as paying what became a little higher price over the course of draft season but yeah it's more good than bad for sure with the get

mostly from multiple sources and try to have a more balanced approach my third place uh tga tgfbi league i have 123 steals and i and i'm fifth this is a 15 team league 123 steals and i'm fifth and uh my steals guys are oh i did andres jimenez uh but he might have been the one guy that i really targeted because my other uh steals guy that's on my team is Christian Yelich, uh, which I thought was more of a, you know, get a little bit here, get a little there, uh, Cabrian Hayes, Lars Nutbar, um, and Cattell Marte and Chris Taylor. And, you know, so I didn't know none of those is like oh you spent a lot for steals i don't think um and then i'll add that in uh free agency i picked up jaron duran and anthony volpe of course they've helped those totals uh but that's a little different than draft strategy you know what else i think is a little funny if you ended up with a kunya either you had the first pick an early pick

whatever it was wherever you got them or if it, either you had the first pick or an early pick, whatever it was, wherever you got them, or if it was a, you know, salary cap auction situation, go get another steals guy after. No, if you,

if you, if you were right about Acuna or you got Acuna, it just worked out where he was your first player. It's sort of like having judge a year ago where you're going to look at your final results. You may win your league, your likely cash. If everything else went pretty well are you good or did you just have a guy that that covered

your butt for a bunch of other things that you you know he he's been so amazing carrying you in multiple categories there's so much room for error when a player goes off the way acuna's gone off this year yeah you mean like what should you do next year or whatever? Well, yeah, I mean, when you look at the rest of that roster, you may have actually had a flawed stolen base strategy behind Acuna. You may have been short. Oh, in terms of papering over when you look back on something. He's got 55 bags.

You probably expected 30, 35, maybe 40, but you're plus 20. Yeah, what happens to your stolen base total and your points from stolen base totals if you give him what you expected? Yeah, you'd look, oh, actually, I'm fifth or seventh in the category. Okay, I didn't quite have enough. I mean, I think you have to really be careful about the amazing seasons that some players have.

If you cash in on that, that's great. That's awesome. That's only a good thing. But you can kind of they can paper over your mistake in a way where then you make a mistake the following year because you didn't have the guy that broke the league that year yeah i mean similar is you know christian yellow just having to give me 25 stolen bases if he gives me if i have more if i like 10 from him instead of 25 right now which is i don't know't know that I, I didn't expect 25.

I don't know if I expect a 10, but let me just, you know, whatever, you know, if that's, if that's what I had, if I had,

if I had 15 fewer stolen bases from Christian Yelich, uh, then I would be 10th. So in a similar way, like, you know, how well did my thing work out? Yeah. Yeah. Testing that in a year like this like, you know, how well did my thing work out?

Yeah. Testing that in a year like this with so many moving parts, I think is a bit more difficult than, uh, than it typically is, but plenty of time to do that as we do a lot of look back analysis later on in the season. And of course in the fall too. So we are going to call it a show for today. If you've got a question for a future episode, you can send those our way. Ratesandbarrels at gmail.com is the best way to send those in. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Riper. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, $2 a month gets you in the door at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.