Rates & Barrels - A closer look at newish starting pitchers, the value of velocity, and the search for the next Jesse Winker

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss several newish pitchers of some interest to fantasy managers, the possibility of velocity being overrated for pitchers, the lofty rest-of-season projection for C.J. Cron, the search for the "next" Jesse Winker, finding balance with trade rules in long-term leagues, and more.  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 Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo: 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. Hey, thanks to Jerome Chang for making us an awesome intro for the show. It's cool to have a logo and some music now on video. It's not just me selling something and then going with the show. A little awkward. So Jerome's awesome. Love the intro. Going to keep adding more and more cool stuff here as we roll along. Derek Van Ryper here today with Eno Saris.

Bells and whistles. Oh, yes. Bells and whistles. Oh yes. Bells and whistles. More toys. More gadgets. More fart guns. Yeah. I've got mine ready.

If we need it. Yeah. I'm glad you still have that. Because I don't want to ask people who make cool things for a living. To make fart gun sounds easier for us to use. I feel like if you're going to resort to that level, you should have to actually reach for the toy and use it. I just want a little button on my computer that I can touch.

Can I just have a clip that does it? No. Use the prop. It's funny to use the prop. So hit that like button if you're watching us on YouTube. Thanks to all of you listening along on the podcast version of the show. On this episode, we're going to talk about some new-ish pitchers. Take a look

at their stuff and command numbers. Get a sense for what those guys might do as they get more and more experience here in the next few weeks. We have an email with the subject line, Freddy Peralta, greatest of all time. We are not talking about Freddy Peralta. It was just a clever trick used by one of our listeners to ask a question about velocity and whether or not velocity is overrated.

So we'll tackle that question. And we'll dig into some of the rest of season projections, the outliers, the guys that surprise us. We'll look at hitters mostly on today's show because CJ Krohn was the focus of a question. I think there's a couple other names that really stood out to me as I was looking at that list again, thinking about the second half of the season. You know, how was your weekend, by the way? I know you had some big plans, the interesting party you had planned for Saturday. How'd that go? It was good.

The fight was pretty good. In fact, it was strange. There was two fights on. ESPN had a fight in pay-per-view. So we, I think, you know, with all the the undercards we saw like six boxing matches it was pretty good um and uh good beer was had it was it was fun to see people and not have to run you know keep an eye out on the kids so yeah it was it was uh it was it was like after when some of my friends left we were like hey let's do let's do that again. Let's be adults.

Let's get our lives back. Yeah, let's get our lives back. I was messaging you on Saturday because Saturday is my cleanest day off most weeks. I don't have any shows that day. It's literally supposed to be a day where I don't work. It was the first day I had in a while where I was sitting there and I was fixing my schedule because my calendar has been a mess. No one cares about this, but I think this could actually help some people. And what was happening was over the course of the last year, especially, I kept

adjusting my schedule to accommodate everybody else with different recordings and things I work on. And it's good to be flexible to a point. At a certain point, it starts to work against you and your days start early and end late and you don't do enough with the time in between tasks and then you're just glued to your computer way more than you should be. So I had the take the schedule by the horns. My schedule has horns, it's a bull.

Take the schedule by the horns moment, get it all back configured. And now I have more time for activities like parties and being an adult, which it's so lame to say, oh, I had to clear out my schedule to make it a priority to go hang out with my friends. But I just had to find those pockets of time outside of, I've got Saturday. That doesn't work for most people. There are other times to hang out. Hey, you want to get a beer after work on Tuesday? You want to go to dinner on Thursday?

Now I can because I'm not a clown with my schedule anymore. So shout out to all the people who've helped me with that over the years. I finally, at age 36, think I might have a handle on my schedule. Schedule note I should pass along. Monday, Thursday, Friday this week for the show with the all-star break coming up, with the holiday next week, all sorts of different things. Schedule's going to be a little bit lighter. Two shows per week each of the next two weeks. Dates to be determined, especially all-star week because of travel and different things going on.

By the way, I'm jealous because as of right now, I don't think I'm going to make it to Denver for that wiffle ball game, but there will be more wiffle ball games in the future. I'm putting that out there for anybody who can't make it to Denver for that first one. Future gatherings will include wiffle ball now and forever. Yeah. Also on this Thursday. What's the date this Thursday? That's July 1st.

Yeah. This Thursday night, I'm going to North Park Brewing in San Diego. It's because you manage your schedule better than I used to. If you're listening and you're in San Diego, head on by. I think I'll just be there early evening. Happy hour time, 5 or 6 o'clock sometime in there. See you at North Bar Brewing. Nice.

I like the impromptu gatherings. Those are a lot of fun and I'm glad we're getting back to those. Let's get into some of these new ish pitchers that people were asking about. I think we got individual questions about Zach Thompson from more than one listener. And he was also part of an email from Tim that included a bunch of names. So we'll start with Zach Thompson, the rookie in Miami. Overall stuff and command numbers aren't necessarily eye-popping.

I saw 94.2 for stuff plus, but 99.6 for location plus. But there might be a little more to the story here. As you look more closely at the arsenal, did you come away somewhat confident that zach thompson could be at least a viable home streamer given that he makes half his starts in miami yeah one thing that uh stuck out to me and might make sense given his um inconsistent minor league command and homer numbers um is that i think he's probably kind of making the transition or have has made the transition to where the cutter is like his primary pitch um i looked over at brooks baseball and he's throwing the cutter when he's behind in the count

so it's definitely a thing that he uses for called strikes and for whiffs. And that's a good sign, I think, because his forcing fastball doesn't rate that well. And so the cutter, I think, has to be kind of a strike getter for him. The bad news is the curveball rates really poorly by stuff. And that's his secondary he trusts the most. So I don't know what to do with the fact that the changeup gets great stuff numbers, but he threw 10 of them, and he didn't even have a grade for it on fan graphs. And then the curveball gets an 85 stuff plus, and he's throwing a ton of them.

So there's obviously maybe a disconnect between how stuff plus sees the curveball and how maybe the Marlins see the curveball. Yeah, I think that's something you've mentioned in the past, that teams have their own way of measuring pitches on a similar scale. And there's also the philosophy of different organizations, which maybe was part of why Matt Manning was throwing so many fastballs to the Tigers, for instance. We don't really always know, A, the organizational philosophy. We can learn it over time or at least try and understand it over time. And B, we certainly don't know what's inside the black box for each of those teams as they're looking at I think at this point, probably on teams that are focusing on development rather than winning games every single night.

And so there may still be some aspect of this with Thompson where they're like, you know, he's got a good feel for the curveball or he needs that curveball. We're bringing the changeup along slowly, whatever it is. You know, like maybe the goal is to have him throw more change ups in the future and they do think it's an asset um and they just have to coach it out of him slowly because if he throws the change up and it gets hit for a homer one time um you know a lot of times a young pitcher can say like well i knew that pitch was no good. I'm not going to throw it. It shakes it off. The next five times the catcher puts it down and a couple games pass and it's gone. Yeah, the catcher stops putting it down because he knows the pitcher doesn't want to throw it.

I think Thompson for now is more of a 15-team mixed league sort of guy. I think in a shallow league it'd have to be a two-start week, maybe two home starts even, for me to push him into the mix the one thing about marlin's pitchers in general though is that they just they're like the highest quality streamers you know and they get you know if you think about it no other marlin's pitcher is a matchups play marlin starter maybe elisa hernandez when he comes out yeah well actually good question i got that on twitter earlier today pablo lopez was among the pitchers one of my followers was was wondering about and he's got at philly every down guy at this point. At Philly?

Anyway, my point is Zach Thompson becomes rosterable because he's a really high quality bench pitcher. Because you can just move him in and out based on matchups. He's absolutely the kind of guy who can win games or at least get you

nice ERAs in Florida. Yeah. I mean, I like pitchers that have command right away. It's always, always good. If you're looking on the wire and your choices are guys that are bad at everything or at least the guy that has command, obviously the guy with command has something he can build off of. And that probably describes this next guy very well.

Colby Allard actually above average command so far stuff is just not good the changeup is his best secondary and it's a pretty average pitch so I think he's pretty clearly just an innings eater but I wonder if because of the ballpark in Arlington the new park there are we looking at a similar setup to what we have in Miami now in Texas where sometimes just having a job in that rotation might be enough to make you at least useful at home.

Obviously, no one wants to throw mediocre pitchers or even average pitchers against the Astros right now. But the rest of the division, especially with no trout for the Angels, a lot of soft landing spots in the AL West. We talked about that all season. Texas is low-key, like one of those better places

to get good matchups for your pitchers right now. What do you see in that profile with Allard? I know he's really young and he used to have prospect pedigree, but I came away looking at it and saying, it's like he still doesn't have a great pitch to go out there and get hitters to swing and miss. Yeah, no single pitch is above average either by itself or compared to pitches but it's kind of like he has you know three or four average pitches um so i think on the nights when he has great

command he can win a game um his command plus is 101 so that fits in with location plus it's a guy who you know has a bunch of pitches and and can win on a given night but yeah i would want to do weaker offenses at home and if there is like a kind of florida texas thing then obviously the the texas one is not as nice because it's it's a not that same. And then B, you got the DH. Yep. I think a lot of these guys that we're going to talk about are matchups guys. So far, between these two, Thompson is the guy I would maybe graduate from that and be at least a bench guy. Right. guy right probably i think as we go through thompson versus this third guy bailey ober i

think is probably a pretty tough toss-up like i think the next guy we're going to talk about is probably the best of the entire bunch and the numbers make it really easy to see why but ober was on the receiving end of a chris young comp from a friend of mine he's tall throws a lot strikes and i when i look back at Chris Young's numbers, I always remember great ratios, and I always thought, well, he's doing that because he pitches in Petco, and that's the whole story with Chris Young.

And it really wasn't. The more I look back, he was a little better than I probably gave him credit for back in the day. So curious if you think that comp actually holds up with Ober and also curious if you like anything in the underlying pitch mix that he could start to play up a bit more to get that stuff number up a bit higher.

All right, hold on. I'm furiously getting Chris Young stats up. Because I thought he was always worse than I thought when I looked at his numbers. Hey, look at that. A career 3-9-5 ERA in 1,300 innings. Yeah, some good years. Some not great strikeout numbers.

Just the thing that was funny about him is he didn't really have a secondary pitch. Right, and the Ks went away over the course of his career. Early in his career in San Diego, 8 Ks per 9 pretty consistently back in an era where that was pretty good. By the end of his career, the ratios weren't awful. He was in the high fives, low six range, kind of like Wade Miley. That's what he became in his later years. That was the Chris Young that I was always kind of frustrated by. But early career, Chris Young was a pretty good pitcher.

Yeah. Yeah. But, um, any case, I could overdo that. Um, you know, the four-seam fastball, uh, is almost his best pitch. I mean, you know, it's a 96 stuff plus when you compare it to other four-seam fastballs. So, uh, that's about as good as any of his pitches. His changeup is average. His slider is average.

This curveball, this says he's not very good. Let me see what his command plus is. You don't have too much going for me. I think for me, Thompson's ahead of Ober. Ah, here's something interesting about over 117 command plus so just uh once you put the 117 command plus with that stuff number i still think i have thompson ahead just because the park matchup, all that stuff is better. But Ober, Ober's roster will do.

Like a 117 Command Plus is, let me get my rankings out there. There's very few people that have that. In my last rankings, 117 Command Plus is Zach Wheeler, DeGrom, Berrios, Pablo Lopez, Ryu. Ryu has a 118. You know, Greinke 118. So that's pretty good. Command plus. With the stuff plus number in, he kind of compares okay to Chris Paddock, 97 stuff plus, 116 command plus. Jt brew breaker 95 115 um who else do you compare well to alex wood and just a i think that's actually pretty good alex wood but you know in the nl in the al so uh i can't i still like thompson i think i think like I think Thompson would make my

95 through 100 and Ober should have been in the 100 to 110. That's pretty interesting. I was looking at the location plus number and that's quite a bit lower.

I was surprised that there's that much of a difference. I did put Ober 111. Hey, that's not bad. I actually had them in there. Yeah, they don't always track exactly correctly because and I wonder if there's some of a story here or something to kind of analyze at some point, but location plus is just do they put them in the right location um and command plus is do they do what we think he intended to do with the ball both have their flaws of course but in between there like one has a coaching effect right

like you could command the ball well but be told by your coaches to put them in bad places or like by the game plan or whatever or or maybe it's a like in a certain matchup you're um you're actually going for things that look like they're not good locations but against that player is a good location you know like down the broad street is actually an interesting location for some players. Like there's some players that just like, you know, take balls there a lot, you know? So, you know, I think command plus is superior in a lot of ways, but location plus tracks it so closely that, and they're in the same place. It's easier to use those sometimes,

but I believe that over has a excellent command because that, that lines up with uh his fangrass grades a 60 command grade uh walk rates of like somewhere around one per nine in the minor leagues and tiny little homer rates so um if you take the nicer view of his home run rate as the bat does. You get a 3.98, 1.16. Maybe I'm talking myself into over over Thompson, but they're fairly close. Yeah, I think they belong in the same group. Now, Sammy Long has come up a few times. I think we talked about him maybe when he first debuted because the minor league numbers really pop for him.

Excellent K rates, good results. And the stuff plus number is awesome, 109.7 so far. Location Plus at 103.7. I think of all the players we've talked about so far, I was looking at the individual pitches before we started recording, Sammy Long's curveball is the best pitch that anybody in this segment of the show offers. If you give any of these guys that pitch, that would change a lot about them. I think that kind of puts Long clearly

ahead of the rest of this group. Yeah, I mean, no matter how you look at Sammy Long, if it's stuff, command, results, projections, he's the easy best

player in this grouping. Just one thing that you can just look at is bad projections. 3-7-0, 1-2-4 with 10 strikeouts per nine. That's excellent. Everything, every command plus is above average. Stuff plus is well above average. Stuff plus is above average for three out of his four pitches. And yeah, there's a little bit of weakness in the fastball which i think certain teams will um you know exploit and get

to him i don't think he's a perfect pitcher but uh the one nice thing about long is i think he does have enough command on he has a 110 location plus on the curveball. I think he has enough command of that curveball. And from watching him, just sort of the eyeball test, he goes to the curveball sometimes when people are expecting fastball. He can go to the curveball to get a strike. So all around, yes, best pitcher in the grouping. I've always wondered if there's a way to quantify a pitcher's ability to be unpredictable.

And that's just basically counting the pitches, I think, a lot of times. But even within that, there's certain instances where there are guys that they might have three or four pitches, but they only trust one in a tight spot. And the opposing teams figure that out, right?

Is there any way that you think we could quantify that? It's a huge part of Stuff Plus. It's a huge hole, maybe, in the analysis is that people can change their Stuff Plus by changing their pitch mix, right? Or theoretically, you could have a guy like Denilson Lemaitre who just shows well in Stuff Plus

because he has two good pitches, but that means he only has two pitches, right so he'll he'll have a home run rate so you have to like when you aggregate the stuff plus you have to have some sort of idea of how many pitches he has I think um and it's not super easy one thing that can tell us that it's valuable is that Mitchell Lichtman once found that if you add another pitch at 10% rate, at more than a 10% rate, it doesn't matter how good the pitch is, your third time through the order penalty goes down, and you can pitch deeper into games. That right there is meaningful, right?

If you're trying to project innings and you're trying to make that link between how many pitches does someone have and the outcome. So maybe that's the thing. You count how many pitches they have over 10% and that's a meaningful sort of input into your model. It's just number of pitches. Yeah, I mean, I think that has to be the starting point. I'm hoping we'll get to a point eventually where we can drill down even further and kind of separate the guys that get happy with one pitch

as opposed to those who continue to use all their pitches in various situations, especially the tight spots in particular. Yeah, I agree with you. And that's something I've tried to look at, like the that like um a pitcher should be like 30 30 30 if they have three pitches in every count yeah you know and definitely it's something that um you know like tennar ork has said to me is like that's i need to use all my pitches to both guys with both hands and started using change up uh his change up to righties and his uh um breaking ball to

lefties i think and i have some quotes somewhere he was like yeah the reason is i have to use all my pitches at all times and i have to has to be like sort of 33 30 every time and that is a little bit harder to throw into the model as far as long goes though there might be some shallow leagues where he's still out there i I think he's actually rosterable, possibly even in 10-team leagues, but definitely in 12s, and I don't think we would say that about anybody else in this group other than

maybe Thompson and Ober in those right situations, but consistently rosterable in more shallow leagues, I think, is a way to look at Long at this point. The other name on this list, Bailey Falter. I haven't had a chance to see Falter pitch at all, so I'm relying entirely on numbers in this case. Not terrible stuff, but a tick below average. Location plus is really encouraging there. I'm so scared by the ballpark. I just want to be encouraged by everything before I take a chance on an unknown in Philly.

before I take a chance on an unknown in Philly. Yeah, it's a good point. There's a little faint evidence that it's bad for pitcher development in general. I think just to have a pitcher come up and have to deal with that. Just look at Spencer Howard. Spencer Howard has at least two good pitches and some potential and was thought of to be

one of the very best pitching prospects in baseball, right? Yeah. I mean, at least top 10, top 15 among pitching prospects. I mean, you've got much less than that for Bailey Falter. I don't think... Was he on any list that

were you aware of? I don't think I've ever really heard of him before he got called up. That's what I'm saying. I didn't want to say it because it's like, I haven't heard of a player. Oh, you idiot. He was third best prospect. It could be my fault that I haven't heard of him, but I was

surprised by him. It can be, but I'll own this for 2020. With no minor league season, you have to go back into the lower levels of the minors, which are even harder to track from 2019 and have that kind of memory. I've got an okay memory, but sorry. I didn't know who Bailey

Falter was prior to this season. My bad if you're bothered by that. If that has shattered the illusion, I'm very, very sorry. There's maybe more potential in Bailey Falter than almost anybody we've talked about. Really? At least by the Stuff Plus numbers. A 121 foreseam fastball by Stuff Plus, a 121 curveball, a 104 slider that would rival sam long's collection of pitches right now what's keeping the stuff plus number down is that he's throwing

a bad sinker a lot uh sometimes pitches you know sometimes a pitcher is like i have to throw the sinker because my slider works better off of it or whatever right um but you could see a slightly different version of this where he goes four seam curveball slider and all of a sudden he has like a 105 stuff plus or 110 i mean that's that's that potential is in him so the question originally came in from Tim. I think he was looking specifically for pitchers to stash away in deep keeper and dynasty leagues. Those leagues where no one's really available until they debut unexpectedly. These are the types of names that pop up in those leagues. The way you're describing Falter, that makes me think that maybe he's one of the more interesting stashes of the bunch. It could be a bumpy road getting there with the ballpark and these factors, but if he unlocks it and gets to the better pitches in that arsenal more consistently,

the payoff could be a pretty significant one. Yeah, the final piece here that's really interesting is he has a 110 command plus. We've been talking about these different groupings of skills and stuff. He's a little bit like bailey ober with like better potential stuff right really good command for pitch mix maybe potential to kind of change that mix up a little bit and be better so um yeah i think long term if we're talking about sort of keeper grouping and this year grouping i i mean this this i think falter and long are probably long is the best this year but falter gets a lot closer to long when you're

talking about long-term uh projections because isn't sammy long is like 27 too 25. long is yeah he's a little older and thompson i think is is the oldest in this entire bunch. Thompson's 27 already. So that was part of my concern when they called him up. He's the best matchups played this year if that's all you're looking for because you're going to get a lot of good matchups out of him. And Sammy Long's right there too, though, because he's got San Francisco home. So we've got a sort of long, over, falter Thompson grouping.

That's an Allard clearly last. Yeah, Allard clearly last. Maybe this guy can hang out with Colby Allard. Allard, of course, a former Brave. Kyle Muller, recently called up by Atlanta. Stuff plus the tick below average. Location plus well below average. Curious where the command comes in there

is there anything in the underlying numbers that you see with muller that gives you some reasons for optimism dude uh here's one where it tracks com roller's command plus is 87 that's below the dreaded reliever shelf uh of around 90 where it just becomes a lot less likely that you're a starting pitcher of course uh a player like dylan c scott from 87 to kind of 92 93 this year uh so it's not impossible to change your command often by changing your your pitching mix but um you know when you look through uh muller's groupings of pitchings i don't pitches i don't think that um there's such an obvious uh fix here i mean unless unless he just starts to believe in his change up more

and throws it more because that's the pitch that has like a good stuff rating and uh uh he only threw eight of however the location plus on the change up is 79 so i'm guessing that he just can't command it. There was always that with Carlos Rodon, where it's like his changeup does really well by stuff numbers, but he can't command it. So he doesn't throw it. And if you do,

if that's the case here with that changeup, then he's a guy with like two, okay, breaking balls and a below average fastball and poor command. So a multi-inning reliever. Bulk guy. I bet you, yeah. Maybe for Atlanta, he gets pressed into business this year because

Atlanta just lost Soroka for the year again. Retore it. That sucks, man. A, that sounds painful and B, you just feel awful that he went through the rehab the first time and now has to do it again. Yeah, it sucks for him. And is somebody else hurt there, too?

Freed's coming back this week. But I think there's still that sort of permanent open spot for the five spot in Atlanta, right? We've been trying some Bryce Wilson. Mueller could take that in a short-term thing. I think that next year you'd hope to have someone better in that spot. Yeah, I think that's been a little bit of an ongoing problem for Atlanta for the last couple of seasons now. They've certainly done a good job developing some of that young pitching.

Ian Anderson, Freed, who they traded for, of course, a couple of success stories, and complementing it well with a few free agent signings, just trying to round it out. Can't quite find that fifth guy in Atlanta. Maybe a team that goes out and adds one more pitcher at the deadline, too. I don't think we really mentioned them when we were talking about possible trades during the show on Friday.

Kyle Wright, for example, looks better through most of this. Most of the same metrics. Kyle Wright has a slightly better stuff plus and slightly better command plus, but actually they're both not that great, and so it's kind of actually similar. It's the same with Bryce Wilson still too, right? They can't get separation from each other.

Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't declare a favorite out of all those guys, except for Bryce Wilson has the best command, but the worst stuff. Then there was Tucker Davidson for a little while. That one, I think that would be my favorite, actually. He's hurt, though. They had left forearm inflammation out until mid-August, and that turned a lot worse than expected really quickly.

My comp for Bryce Wilson was Robert Gisellman. Do with that as you will. I think that's holding up at this point given the bumpy road. A bunch of pitches, but none were any good. He's trying.

He's trying. He's trying to do the right thing. Min know back on a monday though all right you know the email as i mentioned earlier came in with the subject line freddie peralta greatest of all time and well i'd love to talk about that for hours on end it could probably make a whole bonus episode out of how amazing I think Freddy Peralta has been this season. The question was actually about something else entirely. It was a good use of a previously suggested technique by me to get my attention from listener Keith. Keith read a recent piece from Michael Selfino of The Athletic on The Athletic and was wondering

if velocity is overrated because Selfino was looking at big velocity risers and fallers on four-seamers this year and taking a look at how results have changed in either direction for those pitchers. So the question was, is velocity overrated? Obviously, there's much more to pitching than velocity, but it is a big part of it, especially in today's game. The article was very interesting to me,

and you guys are the best with pitching stuff, so I figured I'd see if I could get your thoughts. Thanks, Keith. So what do you think here, Eno? Do you think there's a chance that Velocity has been overrated? Is being overrated? Yes and no. Sorry, I don't have an easy top

line answer on that one. The reason it's not being overrated is it still matters a lot if you look at fastballs that were thrown between 92 93 miles an hour and you don't do anything but just look at that velocity band uh the slugging on forcing fastballs between 92 and 93 this year is 500 uh the slugging on forcing fastballs between 94 and 95 which is above average velocity is 445 so you're basically going from everybody being chris bryant against you with 92 to 93 mile an hour fastball to everybody being andrew mccutcheon against you if you're 94 95 uh just to give context on that so it still matters matters a lot and um even in our piece that we did um with max bay um who will be moving on to a team

sadly uh which makes something like five straight analysts i've worked with being hired by team yeah i made the sad face because i had i had access to this black box this time and i'm i'm not always going to be that lucky so i I'm happy for Max. Yeah, well, the good news about that is that Stuff Plus, we are going to try and take that off his platter before he leaves us and turn it into some sort of app. So that's still a plan. And it has to be done this year because we're going to lose him. Anyway, when we were working on Stuff Plus,

he had the feature importance. And the first one is velocity differential um and then you get spin and movement differentials so um the the fact that spin and movement are so powerful still means a lot uh so movement means a lot however when you see something like velocity differential and you say, well, couldn't you just have like a super slow curveball and be like Granke? Where like, you know, you throw 90, but you have a 70 mile an hour curveball. Isn't that good enough? It is to some extent, but velocity differential on all your pitches is meaningful. So if you had a 90 mile an hour fastball and an 86 mile an hour slider and a 70 mile curveball, the slider, you know, would would would have some problems because you only had a 90 mile an hour fastball. Right. So velocity differential is actually fastball velocity.

You know what I mean? Like because fastball velocity creates the differential for everything else. Yeah. I mean, timing is what you're trying to throw off. It's all relative differences. Yeah, I mean, timing is what you're trying to throw off. It's all relative differences. So you see big league hitters hit home runs on 100-mile-an-hour fastballs sometimes. It's not just purely the velocity that makes those pitches great. I think we generally all understand that. So it matters how many pitches you have, right? That's the one hole, I think, in stuff losses, how many pitches you have.

Because you could have a guy, even even like Chapman sometimes gets taken deep, and he's adding a split finger this year just to mix things up. But you can have a guy like, I don't want to pick on anybody, but Michelle Baez, or is it Michael? I think it's Michael. Why would I say Michelle? I don't know. Anyway. You never know.

I always thought his name was Michael. Yes. Probably not Michelle. Michael Baez sometimes gives up homers and doesn't he have a tremendous fastball? That's why it's M-I-C-H-E-L.

Of course that's not Michelle, you idiot. Let me see. What do I have here? 96. I've seen him throw 100 and give up homers. I mean, I saw this. This one will stick out in my head forever because one of the most ridiculous home runs I've ever seen. I saw Kike Hernandez hit a 99-mile-an-hour Josh Hader fastball out that was above or at the top of the strike

zone because he was looking for it. It was before the pitch mix changes. I think it was two seasons ago, 2019 when he did it. He's starting to throw away more pitches. He's throwing change-ups. Yeah, because hitters were just sitting fastball. Anyway, so yeah.

Command, number of pitches, movement on the pitches, all tremendously important. And it's possible that we're seeing the effect of velocity matter less in today's game than before because average velocity has gone up so much that velocity is just what it requires to get here. You know, like, you can't be throwing 80 miles an hour and no matter what how good

your movement was you're probably not going to make it in the big leagues at 80 um so it requires to get to 93 but once you're in the big league big leagues is there that they might not be as much there may be other things that predict your success better than the fact that you throw 93.5 versus 92.6 or whatever yeah i, I mean, I think that's it's all a longer way of saying with more hitters, well, with hitters being more accustomed to seeing pitchers throwing that hard too,

it's not just that one trait anymore. That would have been something that made you stand out 15, 20 years ago. If you threw 100 in 1999, that was a really big deal even back then. You go further back in time, the further back you go, the more Velo alone would have popped like that. I remember being super excited to go to the park to see Joel Zumaia. I just remember, I'm going to see a hundred. I think that was probably the first time I saw a hundred in the park. I believe it. Yeah. It really wasn't that common just a decade ago.

And they put like a whole, they made like a whole package out of it. They had like Zoo Maya and like, you know, he hit 100 and they had like a whole video package on the big screen for him. And I've always wanted him to have like a long stretch of good seasons as a closer because it would have been a lot of fun if that had played out that way.

Thanks a lot for the question, Keith. I had a question come in about CJ Krohn's lofty rest-of-season projection. It comes from Sean. Sean writes, after hearing Derek talk about leaning into the Bat-OX, the Bat-X's WOBA rest-of-season projections. A lot of acronyms there. In search of value and arbitrage, I noticed how highly CJ Krohn is rated. 24th among hitters between Stanton and Bellinger with an acceptable 25-ish percent K rate.

In your opinion, is this indeed value or the dreaded Coors-related outlier? Among Rockies, only Story, Blackman, and McMahon appear in the top 100, but Krohn is tops among them. Are there any mitigating stats to look for to avoid leaning too hard into the ex-woba, or do you implicitly trust Cardi's methodology? Thanks again for the great work, all three of you do. Sean. I think the first thing that came to my mind, you know,

is knowing that the Bad X has all the stat cast numbers factored into it. Krohn is a barrel machine. He will pop in that system because he barrels a lot of balls. He's done that for years. Even as kind of an average batting average guy with a lower OBP, he's not your traditional high walk rate masher. He's really kind of that fringy, gets non-tendered type masher that when he runs good, he's really kind of that fringy, gets non-tendered type masher that when he runs good, he's really good.

When he gets cold, it becomes difficult to play him every day. So I was surprised a little bit by this number coming out this high. And I did wonder if it was a Coors-related twist on the projection. I think Krohn would be projected more favorably in the bat X than he would be in other systems anyway. But I think the Coors factor is adding an extra layer here. And because we're talking about a guy in Krohn who's almost certainly going to be traded in the next month, kind of figuring out where that number is going to drop in a more neutral or closer to average environment is probably an exercise worth pursuing because I don't think Krohn costs much in trades, relatively speaking, and go out and get him in most leagues without a lot of difficulty.

And you want to know just how good of a player are you getting back? Are you getting a top 25 guy back, or are you getting more of like a 50 to 75 range hitter back in the return? Yeah, it is funny to see the Bad X give him a 260 iso when you know like steamer gives him a 220 iso uh but if you kind of cross your eyes a little bit and look at all the projections at once like they actually tell a very similar story i think you know a guy who's going to hit 260 and has like 25 full season home run power. That's kind of what his past seasons have told us, right?

So there isn't that much variance in his career. And that suggests to me that he's, you know, even if he leaves Coors, he's going to be a 250 hitter with 25 homer power. Yeah, those are skills that I think he's pretty clearly owned for a little while. Not a good defender at first base, so that kind of factors into the real-life value. But I think there are enough contending teams of the whole at that position where he could actually still be an everyday guy, still be in a good lineup and possibly hold value close to that projection,

even though I wouldn't expect him to meet that level. I think he does fall a tick below that. Yeah. And I'm, and there is something to the idea that Coors is unique in that it has a road effect basically, like where you see a certain pitch mix at home and then you have to adjust to that.

And then you go on the road and you see a totally different pitch mix like and you have to adjust to that it's possible that cj corona has not taken the full advantage of the core's effect because he's still dealing with some of that like home away um nonsense um and and just dealing with the recovery times that are different in in and high altitude and stuff like that. But I would say this, that just look at his current numbers. And if they're valuable to you in your league, then buy because he's either going to do what he's doing right now, or he's going to do a slightly bit better. And I just I wouldn't depend on like a 270 average from him, which is what the bad x gives him because that's the thing i think that is most dependent on what happens at cores um and so if he gets traded out he's so i think

i would just depend on like sort of a 250 batting average from him but i don't know that any of this is um like easily uh put to uh test in any way or some sort of slogan where you can be like, yes, the Bad X is great, but with people that switch to cores, you don't believe it. I don't think there's a rubric here. I think sometimes

there's a huge difference to what you think of a player and what a projection system thinks of a player. You just have to poke around in the hood like we just did with Chrome. Just mean just looking at another rocky charlie blackman 359 projected well with the rest of the way i just don't think he's that guy anymore unfortunately it just seems like he's a decent player but not nearly like a top 40 top 50 type hitter is that that number really just to believe but i do think you get a little more of a lift from Coors than you should be getting on Crone right now.

And it's weird looking at his splits. He's been actually really good in Colorado and awful on the road. Just those adjustments getting outside of Coors seem to be wreaking some havoc on him. He's hitting 207 with a 324 OBP and a 293 slug on the road so far this season compared to 299, 385, 607 at home. I do like that he's walking more overall, though, too. That was one of the biggest knocks on him as a hitter.

Didn't take a lot of free passes. 11.7% walk rate overall this year is really good for him. The other players on the top of this list, I know we mentioned Jesse Winker last time we looked at these. on the top of this list. I know we mentioned Jesse Winker last time we looked at these. I still can't believe this, but he is projected above Christian Jelic now in terms of Woba for the rest of the season,

which to me, the exciting part of that is, holy crap, Jesse Winker is like an MVP caliber bat or he's tracking that way, which is really exciting. And I think a natural question for me when I see something like that is, let's try to find the next one like we always liked winker as a hit tool guy that was developing the power

all of it's coming together for him who could we be talking about maybe a year from now as having elevated himself up into this group of hitters somewhat unexpectedly, like a guy that definitely does damage, but doesn't do as much damage with power right now as he will in the future. Alex Verdugo, I think, is a guy that's previously come up as part of the conversation. Is there anybody else that's caught your eye lately, like a hit tool over power guy at the big league level that is a little bit young and could still take that last step? I did a search here where I've got players under 25. Let me open up the plate appearances. I have a qualified.

I'm going to do 150 plate appearances and see if anybody else. And I'm sorting reverse by strikeout rate. So the best strikeout rate guys that are under 25 and then looking at their ISOo and just sort of guessing who i think will be more i mean obviously soto is gonna hit for more power in the future uh tyler stevenson pops on this list 17 k rate 161 iso uh pavin smith is an interesting name uh in in arizona uh glaber torres uh you know could just be on some crazy huge oscillation switch and come back and hit 30 homers again uh jonathan india is on this list alex kirilov multiple reds in there kirilov his projections are already pretty strong for a guy with very

limited big league experience i was surprised by by that because people were asking me a lot of questions about lineups and if there was an ad drop, I think someone was asking if it should be Hira or Kirilov for the rest of the season. I was telling this person to stay on Kirilov because the projections are quite a bit better. Yeah, I've got a name for you and I just wish he played in a different park, but I've got a name. Dylan Carlson. That's the one I kind of like the best. I see hit tool. I see all fields power. I do see a really tough home park, though. But I could see him hitting 18 or so homers this year and then going next year and hitting like 27. I like that. I think that definitely makes a lot of sense too just based on the player he's expected to become

and the adjustments he's made so far. I'm impressed by what he's been able to do at his age. I think with Carlson, the thing I'd be looking at in this case, low K rate was a big part of it like you said are you looking for guys that are starting to show either a slight increase in exit

velocity or barrel rate maybe they haven't done the full leap yet but they're at least kind of tracking in the right direction like his barrel rate compared to last year again shortened season not even a full season for him is down a little bit 7% right now 9.2% last year again shortened season not even a full season for him is down a little bit seven percent right now nine point two percent last year but he is up a tick and a half just

in terms of average exit velocity like i think that's the sort of movement that could possibly foreshadow a bigger step down the road yeah the nice thing is uh you can actually put barrel and max ev and hard hit on your fan graphs leaderboards love that they have that let me take out base running i don't need that all right so i'm gonna just do this whole table again and uh i've got the they're under 25 and i'm sorting by strikeout rate but now i've got the the hard hit stuff going there um what so same list uh who's got the best uh hard hit maxi v barrel combination uh soto obviously we're like i was that was just sort of kidding joking putting that in there but uh austin hayes is a batter i didn't say uh that has the best uh barrel rate uh and max

ev combo um in this grouping another standout indias are pretty good. Wow, Jonathan India has hit a ball 110 this year. Kirilovs are the very best of the grouping we were talking about. Kirilov might be a monster, dude. He's showing some early career indicators that point to a very high ceiling. But Dylan Carlson is in that second grouping of guys I could see that could take off. Also, I don't know if you think that Kyle Tucker is hitting a lot of homers right now or not hitting a lot of homers right now, but if you think he's not hitting a lot of homers right now, I think he will hit a lot of homers. I kind of feel like he's already hitting a lot.

Yeah, right. He's going to have like 25 or so this year. I could see him getting to like 30, 35 though. All right. one more level coming from him yeah that'd be i mean that'd be huge look at the k rate down at 15.7 i love to see that that's 11 percent barrel rate 111 max cv like he hits the ball hard he makes a lot of contact still stealing bases like if you if you're gonna do one of those deals like where you you give a guy like three or four players and you just want to get one keeper back you're in like a keep five or something cal tucker is still somebody that's on my list yeah i think he was hard i mean because he was

already a top easy top 50 probably like top 30 top 35 type player in a lot of drafts going into 2021 you're not going to get discounts on him anywhere but he could be a future first rounder that you're not going to get discounts on him anywhere, but he could be a future first rounder that you're not quite paying first round value to get right now. I think that's the, that's the type of ceiling we'd be talking about. If he's a 35 home run guy and he's striking out less, that batting average is probably going to tick up above the two 60 range. He's already shown a nice floor though.

He's hit two 69, two 68 and two 65 going back to 2019. So if he goes up another level with that power, with the K rate down, it could be 282.90, maybe even a 300 type season with all that power and with some speed to go along with it. If he's hitting home runs like that, he's probably not running quite as much, but that's easily first round ceiling from a guy that earlier this year at one point looked like he was a little bit of a bust for 2021 i mean like the beginning of the season from tucker was kind of ugly yeah yeah um and um i just uh like he's across the board you know especially when you start throwing age in there he's just got all the skills you want to see for a big breakout. So, like, Tucker and Kirilov are one level.

Maybe with Kirilov. I think I'm not sure if Carlson belongs there, but maybe. Carlson's, like, sort of in there with that trio. And then the next group are more sort of long shots that could do it where you've got Tyler Stevenson, who has, like, a 107 max exibito, 7% bail rate, nice home park. Pavin Smith has bad stat cast numbers for the most part, but he does have the contact

rate. Josh Naylor, 18% strikeout rate, 150 ISO, 7% bail rate, 115 max EV. So that's an unfortunate injury for him but uh if you're in this position where you can just uh stash someone like hayes nailer uh or stevenson that's um i wouldn't necessarily go out and spend a lot to get them because they're the next winker or whatever but they do uh have some of the same skills yeah and i think hayes and stevenson relative to the other names we're talking about, you can very easily trade for those guys in long-term leagues.

If you're not going for it this year, even if you are, and you want to get interesting players back as part of a return, they would make a lot of sense. I mean, with Hayes, he's such a good defender that I think he can carry a lot of playing time that way and keep getting more and more opportunities to improve. Had a question come in about trading in leagues that I thought was really interesting. Kind of a question, kind of a rant.

This one came in from Matt. He writes, I'm not sure when it started, but it seems the industry as a whole has adopted a you should never veto a trade motto backed up by statements like everyone can manage how they want or you don't know how a trade will end up. I feel obligated to at least try to offer a counterpoint. What this ideology fails to realize is that the foundation that a league even sits on is a completely significant time and energy dedication over the course of multiple months across 10 or more people.

This time has no ROI when looked at in terms of money, family, etc. It is a pure labor of love. In many cases, this is true. Unfair trades signal that winning a relatively insignificant amount of money or a fake championship is more valuable than the significant time commitment

of 10 or more people. It decreases each manager's ability to have over the course of the year via lower levels of competitiveness as well as over an infinite time span if those managers decide the league is not worth the time commitment at all. I'm watching a league I've run for 10 to 15 years full because of a manager

who consistently puts winning above all else in this capacity. Should I reconsider how I spend my time or should we reconsider what we want to be as a fantasy community? Best Matt. I thought this was kind of interesting just because I know there are a lot of leagues out there that are not high-stakes leagues. It is your friends you've played with for a long time, or maybe it's your friends and some friends of friends, and you dedicate several hours to draft day. You dedicate maybe an hour a week managing the team in season, and all it takes is a couple of lopsided trades, and it just breaks everything for the rest of the season and possibly longer in a keeper league it's so easy to swing the balance over multiple years if you catch the right sort of bad deal what are your thoughts on this do you think we need to have a

better system maybe for evaluating trades in keeper leagues and and maybe not have the completely open let's not veto trades, let people decide for themselves. Because I can totally see the other side of the argument, but I've never really stopped to think about how much damage these trades do and whether or not it's just not worth having them at all in some cases. Yeah, I have a longtime basketball league where one owner has just amassed so much talent that this year I was just like, for the first time, thought, do we need to change the rules somehow? And, you know, my longest term baseball league has been helped by the fact that I haven't won. There was a while where I'd won eight years or so.

So they've gotten better and they've gotten I've slipped to second and third the last couple of years at times and it's head to head. So there is still an element of chance. I'm not sure if I'm answering the question.

That's when sometimes i think people will stop playing is like someone has put together a super team just by out efforting you winning a bunch of trades by a little bit and nobody vetoed them along the way and now he's got a team where you're just like, what's the point? I would say that I think the way to attack that is structurally with rules changes. It's a little bit like blaming the ball or whatever in baseball, you know, rather than like trying to do something structural. Now, I think they're getting to the point where they're going to try and do do something structural they're obviously already doing it with the sticky stuff and they're thinking about the mountain changes and stuff so kudos to them but i think that's what you have to do you have to act like the commissioner of your game your fantasy league like you need to have a strong

commissioner or at least the every everybody there needs to have buy-in as if they were the commissioner in terms of like this is what i want to see incentivized and this is what i my complaints of the league and this is you know we don't like we don't like streaming x bob wins every year because he just streams all the time well guess what that's pretty easy you go in there and you and you and you put a movement a cap a weekly movement cap or a month a season movement cap or whatever there's lots of different ways to you can put you know k9 in i don't know there's all sorts of different ways that you can attack that and you incentivize bob not to stream um i'm still not answering the question am i

it's it's i just don't like the feeling of like you think you can run these two teams better than those two people. I think, I think the thing that I rather change incentives above it so that people make better decisions or think about things differently than to attack each. It's like a symptom, right? Each like bad trade is just a symptom. Think about the causes of that and,

and change the rules rather than like take someone's trade away from them. Trades are so hard. I'm just like, if I got a trade through and then it got vetoed, I'd be like, ah! An hour lost. It took so long to get this trade. A literal full hour of work with the back and forth, the emails, the texts, the phone calls.

All hours, dude. I have trades that have taken years i just i do find i do find it frustrating when you know the like half the league or more is unable to keep up with another team because that team leverages trades better than other people do like anyone could go out and make those trades but i think there's's some. Maybe some internal discipline that some people have. When they play fantasy baseball. They don't want to rip people off. Like some people actually believe that.

They just say. I want to make a good deal for me. But it's cool if it's a good deal for you too. Other people say. I want to destroy you in this trade. And go destroy someone else in a trade. And have the best possible super team. There's differing mindsets I think.

In the way some people go about their trading in the first place. That's where I'm sort of talking about like everyone buy in and everyone have the commissioner mindset of your own league. Because in my 12 team dynasty that I've had for, I don't know, 15 years or something, that's how I feel. I don't want to rip everybody off because they're then more likely to leave right now and as commissioner I have to go find that replacement you know and plus it's that one's

not for money so it's just you know let's have a good time you know let me let me have Jose Urquidy because I think he's gonna be great but I'm gonna give you a good price for it. I guess to answer Matt's question, I don't think having trades without vetoes works for every league. I think you need to know the quality of the people you're playing against and how they view long-term value. I would start with some kind of veto system if my league were new and see if we could take it away over time. Because if you have a couple of managers in your league who are new or they just don't see it the way that the bulk of the league sees it, that can wreck the league quickly.

You still want to be friends at the end of this. You still want to have fun with this. It is more of a labor of love in most cases than it is a high stakes game like the high stakes arena is great but it's an outlier most people don't play that way and not surprisingly trades aren't really allowed in most high stakes situations right because of the possibility of collusion and it's totally understandable so rather than not have trades at all because i think it does create another path to make teams better in the long run and in the short term. It's good to have activity in the league throughout the season.

I would say have a veto system in place if you are fearful of horrible trades wrecking the league. And I think how you specifically make that, is it half the league, two-thirds of the league, whatever the cutoff is, how many people need to veto a trade? I think you can scale that accordingly based on how flexible you'd like to be. If you want it to be generally pretty flexible, okay, half the league says yes, it's a good trade. I don't know if you necessarily want to put that in the hands of the commissioner because I think that's another way to make people very salty. If you and I work out a trade, because I think that's another way to make people very salty. If you and I work out a trade, we think it's fair,

and it goes to the commissioner, and the commissioner by himself or herself can just say, nope, not happening. I don't think that necessarily works well in most leagues either. I did commissioner approval, and I told everybody I'd basically approve everything. So it was basically a no veto policy. Yeah. It's a bummer i matt i wouldn't reconsider how you spend your time i would i would say just try and and tweak a few things about the league talk to the long-term people that have been in it see what you can do that works for you guys

and and i actually like what you're saying that derek that like maybe it's not something i've thought about before it is it is another rule that you can use to incentivize play that you want right so I like how you're saying like in a if you're starting up a league maybe it makes sense to have that in place so that you can figure out like especially if it's if you're a bunch of strangers on the internet you may not know oh one of these kids is like a 12 year old you know he's like somebody's kid is in this league and uh makes a couple trades you're like whoa uh uh check out fan graphs dude like check out these projections um and and make it a teaching moment and maybe uh at the beginning you have uh vetoes and then maybe over time everyone sort of gets to a certain level of play and then you can remove

those videos. I hadn't really thought of kind of scaling back and maybe you can even sort of write that into the constitution or maybe this person, maybe for his league. Yeah. Let's, let's reintroduce vetoes and see if that changes gameplay. Yeah.

Hopefully that league stays together. Hopefully you can figure it all out, Matt, but I understand the frustration for sure in cases like that. One last question that came in for this episode. This one came from Will. Will writes that he has actually mentioned rates and barrels in a job interview, which I hope that got you the job and didn't automatically disqualify you for the position.

But glad we're making an impact in in the broader world out there so will is in a year two of an espn points league with a bunch of analyst work friends and they've begun discussing manually adding a point if a position player pitching gets checked for a foreign substance like harold castro or if a pitcher drops trow during a foreign substance check, a la Sergio Romo last week. The questions are, have either of you been in the league with similar point shenanigans? If so, what were they?

And finally, more so for Eno, is there anyone out there tracking the number of foreign substance checks per pitcher if they continue to perform these out in the open? To do the second question, I haven't seen any counters like that. I've seen people count a lot of stuff and maintain a lot of spreadsheets in the last few years, and I haven't seen anyone tracking that yet. The problem is it is not done out in the open. It seems that way because we get these clips. It's being done done between um it's being done in the in the commercial break so it isn't something

that somebody could with an mltv a tv account could just fire it up and watch all the games and count it yeah yeah you can't track it nearly as effectively as you'd like you would need in stadium feed stats has has stringers you know yeah so they get a different feed right oh yeah they're at the game. I think so. Or they have the sort of quad box thing because, for example, I know that Stats

for Command knows what the catcher is signaling every time. And that's not on MLB TV every time because you don't always get the good view of the catcher's crotch. So anyway... Yeah, good view of the catcher's crotch. So anyway. Yeah, good view, bad view. Depends on your perspective, I guess.

I always thought it was a little bit of a strange thing in baseball. It's like we all gather around and let's all gather in and closely stare at the catcher's crotch. Sports, a lot of weird stuff like that. Look at how every football play starts. It's kind of weird. That's right. I uh rugby this weekend right right by the butthole a lot a lot of hands in awkward places and rugby scrums oh i mean i've heard that they are brutal to each other and in water polo i heard that oh that's real bad the water they're like pulling your underwear off and grabbing your yeah a lot a lot of grabbing and clutching and kicking and things that happens in water polo ugly game below the water i'd play one game be like why did you

touch me there i'm out i'm done with this yeah see you guys later i'm not playing this ever again uh tracking weird things um like to me like people play with some things that i think are pretty weird like triples and complete games. Complete games, dude? Complete games, you might as well put no-hitter in there. No people do that. How many people are throwing complete games that aren't no-hitters these days? I haven't played in any leagues in the last 10 years that have ridiculous categories.

When I first started playing fantasy baseball, I'm sure I played in a league that was like 10x10. Doubles were a head-to-head roto counting stat. Triples were a head-to-head roto counting stat. Caught stealing. Triples are disappearing though. It's a rough one to use. Yeah, it's been a long time since I played any of those.

I've never played in a league that rewards anything just totally outlandish. Players getting ejected from a game or players eating food when they run over by the fans for a foul ball. You could do that, but to me it just adds an element of fun randomness that is too random for my liking. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's been a while, but I used to actually play fantasy hockey. It's been a while, but I used to actually play fantasy hockey. And if I remember correctly, one of the standard categories in most hockey leagues is penalty minutes.

Yes, which is weird because many of the players who score are not players who spend a lot of time in the penalty box. So then you kind of need to balance it. It's like some sort of defensive goon guy stat. Is that they're trying to give value to some defensive guys or something? Yeah, or you need the pest. You need the pest that can also score 20 goals in a season because then he gives you that categorical balance. I think some guy, is it Sean Avery or something? Sean Avery.

Was a guy who always had tons of penalty minutes and enough assists and goals. I think I remember rostering him a fair amount but yeah reporting penalty minutes in the hockey league is pretty bad like in baseball suspension days days suspended i don't know if hector santiago teaches us anything it's that when these rule enforcements change and things like this happen, the first person suspended is always Hector Santiago or Alex Sanchez, the clubby in the Angels clubhouse. You know, it's not, you know, it's not any of the big names that that could have gone down. But to be fair, I've seen some pretty big names on this spin rate dropper list.

So it could just be that all the big names were like, yep, I'm not getting caught for this. Could be. I mean, there was a story about Santiago. He said just rosin and sweat in his glove, and they took his glove away, and they're checking it out. So we'll see what those tests reveal. But yeah, keeping an eye on that story and you're right i mean alex sanchez was the first person i think popped for peds when that became a big testing thing back in the mid 2000s i think

was when they put that into effect and he was a speed over power guy like not the kind of guy you would have assumed to be taking any sort of ped because he wasn't your prototypical bulky power hitter in santiago you're like this guy's not throwing particularly hard like why why would why would we assume that he's doing anything it's just it's very strange and that always works out. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, uh, the, the link there that I hadn't thought of before you, you were just talking about it with PDs.

Like I think some of the richer ones didn't get caught because they had, they had paid scientists, you know, to stay ahead of the testing process. Right. Um, that had to have happened. Yeah.

It has to be happening right now. There's there, like the number of people using steroids and baseball is not zero. testing process right um that had to have happened yeah it has to be happening right now there's there like the number of people using steroids in baseball is not zero yeah but we like to think no one gets caught anymore but it's like you know the major things they're using is not zero doesn't that mean that your your your testing and your enforcement is piss poor realistically like if you can't catch the cheaters are you even are they even trying though well they catch like they they always catch like two or three minor leaguers a year or something but but yeah that says to me like oh once they get to the big leagues they get the big league money

and they know where to go um so i don't know i wonder if there's some sort of parallel here because uh bauer trevor bauer did give a really interesting interview during the game on sunday night where he talked about all these different topics and i think that he mostly aligned with the stuff i've been saying in reporting so there there wasn't anything that our readers would be too too surprised by but he uh did mention that he thinks that uh enforcement is kind of a little bit laughable i forget exactly what his way of describing it was but he was he was sort of getting at the fact that like they it's rote they do the same thing they look at the hat they look at the belt they look at the

glove like maybe if you're rich enough and maybe maybe it wasn't teams that had a chemist maybe it was like a pitcher that paid a chemist to come up with something. You could probably ask your chemist to come up with a good place to put that that wasn't your hat or your glove or your belt. Well, yeah, I mean, I think you could ask a lot of scientists where to hide a substance, but the chemist is going to give you the substance that's least likely to harm you while you put it on some random part of your body and to make it the tacky, extra sticky stuff. You just went out there and just covered it in spider tack

and called it your new sunscreen. It's just sunscreen. A, it'd be hilarious because it's caramel colored. And then B, when you tried to get that off. Oh, gross.

So bad. I have to rip every arm hair out. Remember the Lake Erie midges in Jabba Chamberlain a few years ago in Cleveland? Oh, yeah. Imagine those things hovering around a pitcher covered in spider tack and the bugs getting stuck on the guy too. There's so many fun ways this could play out. I hope we're that lucky. Oh my god. We should just have a high level

independent league that does the exact opposite of everything that baseball does. It's just like, hey, if you're bored of playing for those other independent leagues, come to this one where we encourage the craziest sticky stuff usage. We have three cans out by the mound. They got the charcuterie board out there.

That's what you want. Basically, you take Bob Ross's palette and just cover it in sticky stuff. And the play-by-play announcer is like, ooh, look at that. He went to the Vaseline on the thumb and the spider tack on the fingers. I think what is coming is this. I was thinking about spider tack this weekend because among the many fun things I did as a grown-up

with a little bit of time off on Saturday is I was watching Cornhole on TV. I was watching rugby. As one does. Yes, so I went from NBA playoffs. You were watching rugby, and it finished, and the next thing that came on was watching rugby. As one does. Yes, so I went from NBA playoffs. You were watching rugby, and it finished, and the next thing that came on was Cornhole.

Here's what I watched this weekend. ESPN Ocho. My wife was a gymnast up into the beginning part of college, so she loves gymnastics. Obviously, big deal with Summer Olympics coming up. The U.S. trials were this weekend. I think the track and field was on too. So we had the gymnastics trials on.

Then we had Bucks Hawks on. Then we had the rugby championship, which was old. It was obviously like 10 o'clock at night, and this was a replay. It was awesome. It was really fun to watch, even though I understood about a third of what was happening. This was my first time ever watching 11 v. 11 rugby. And then cornhole was on, And I changed the channel and Cornhole was on a different channel. And then Axe

Throwing was on. Which is crazy. Just crazy to see these bar games getting this much coverage. But Cornhole having two TV deals, I'm excited about that. And it makes me excited about the future of Pickleball too because I think it's going to get there. I'm telling you guys. Pickleball. It's already big

just behind the scenes. It's going to be there. I'm telling you guys. Pickleball. It's already big just behind the scenes. It's going to be on the scene real soon. Speaking of on the scene, if you would like to get a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for $3.99 a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. All the baseball coverage, all the coverage we do for all the sports, all for one low price. It's a great deal. Again, theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

On Twitter, he is at Eno Saris. I am at derrick van riper you can drop us a line via email rates and barrels at the athletic.com that is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you on thursday thanks for listening.