Rates & Barrels - A Delayed Breakout, Taj Bradley's Demotion & In-Game Command Monitoring

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss the excellent start to 2023 for Jarred Kelenic, other young players who may be on the brink of breaking through after initial struggles at the big league-level, Jake McCarthy's demotion, the Rays' approach with Taj Bradley, monitoring command in-game, Pete Alonso's power binge, and the 2023 version of Charlie Morton.  Rundown 0:56 Jarred Kelenic's Year 3 Step Forward 6:27 Looking for Other Young Players Nearing Breakout 14:47 Jake McCarthy's Demotion = Alek Thomas' Extended Opportunity 18:26 An Attempt to Understand the Rays' Approach with Taj Bradley 31:32 What Are Teams Using to Monitor Command During Games? 40:44 Pete Alonso's Early Power Binge 50:32 The 2023 Version of Charlie Morton Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp (paid ad), Visit betterhelp.com/rates today to get 10% off your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we discuss Jared Kelnick putting it all together. Took a little longer than some people hoped, but we'll dig into what has helped Kelnick sort of find his stride here in 2023. his stride here in 2023. We'll talk about the still puzzling devotion of Taj Bradley and investigate whether there might be some bigger issues in play that go beyond Taj Bradley that maybe need to be ironed out. And we're going to take a look at some Velo improvers. Plus, we've got the debut of Tanner Bybee that's about to happen. The Guardians promoted one of their other pitching prospects from AA to AAA. Got a couple mailbag questions, so tons of ground to cover. You know that we begin today with Jared Kelnick, who is on exactly zero of my teams. And it's not because I didn't believe in Jared Kelnick, but it's because I just didn't think that the payoff was going to be a significant one this year. I thought a high strikeout, some power, some speed

in and out of the lineup because of the lefty factor, all those things. Okay, I'll just wait and see. I'll wait until he does put it together and then decide what I'm going to do with him at a higher price in 2024. So far through 21 games, that looks like a mistake. 342, 395, 726. How about seven homers and three steals? Three for three now as a base stealer this season. It really looks like everything is falling into place, and he's doing it with an improved K rate, 24.7%, the best strikeout rate we've seen from him in the parts of three seasons he's now been in Seattle.

Yeah, and what's kind of interesting to me is that there's not actually a large change in his swing rates you know in terms of like you know he swung 47 percent of the time before and he's swung swinging 46 percent of the time now he's swung 66 percent of the time it's at strikes before and he's swinging 66 percent of strikes now a little bit fewer swings at pitches outside the zone but like there's no like real big difference there and then you look at his pull rates there's some difference there and you know yes his his barrel rates uh are up but his uh you know he had good barrel rates are up, but he had good barrel rates before. So you're kind of looking at this and to me, almost, if you took the walk and strikeout rates

and you put them back in 2021 on his debut, you'd be like, yep, that's what we expected. And that kind of goes along with an interesting text interaction I had with somebody in the game where I sent this Rosenthal piece along of goes along with an interesting text interaction i had with somebody in the game where you know i sent this uh i sent this rosenthal piece along and um the person reacted saying you know i'm not sure uh you know there's probably some training that happened and there's the piece has some great stuff about you know how he trained uh how he changed his stance and how he changed his swing and stuff but this person said you know i i doubt there was as much training impact here as there

was a psychological one of a total reset you know he went to new people and he trusted the process again and part of the process was going to a sports psychologist and the two things that really stuck out to me were, Craig Wallenbrock in the story says, there is no perfect swing. He says that on day one. And the sports psychologist says, you cannot be the perfect player.

And that might be just as important as any of the mechanical things that Kellynch did, because Kellynch really was wearing it. You know, it reminded me a little bit of logan gilbert his first year up where just logan gilbert was a little bit more like uh like like he would come off the mound and just like uh like these shoulders would be down just be like oh no this is uh oh this is some poor body language and And then, but Kelly was the opposite. He was like the red ass who would be like punching the water cooler and like, you know,

like just, what was this expression you had about his bad? Grinding the bad into dust after a strikeout, right? I mean, you could see it. Watching the body language of players is something that Ian Kahn probably does better than anybody I know. That's kind of part of his training as an actor. He can read people really well. I find it hard to do, but on the extremes,

I can see when someone's pressing. Jared Kellnick you could see was pressing. Chris Sale, when he's punching water coolers and breaking TVs, he's not his best self above the shoulders when that's happening. It helps to have the right mindset. Yeah, well, I'm off of Sale because the Stuff Plus numbers are terrible, above the shoulders when that's happening it helps to have the right mindset yeah well i'm off the sale because the stuff plus the numbers are terrible but yeah but that's another reason

to kind of i don't know some guys then find that reset but you know um and uh and in fact there was i did a piece about how older players are better at coping and how that fits with some psychological research out there about how, um, you know, coping mechanisms are not bad and they're part of how we get happier as we get older because we just know, Oh,

I'm going into a funk. You know, this is one app. I know I can see this one coming. This is happening. This is happening. I'm going to go out in my garden. Yeah.

Yeah. You learn, you learn. Yeah. I'm going to call a friend my garden yeah yeah you learn you learn yeah i'm gonna call a friend and and go have beers you know like i need to i need to snap out of this and uh uh so he he the young players sometimes don't have that in their back they just don't have that that coping ability and that seems maybe as important as anything i don't i don't know how like obviously we have to bring this back to fantasy and like don't i don't know how obviously we have to bring this back to fantasy and like you know i don't know how to do that um in a way we're like oh the next

comic is you know one thing i did was just just sort the fangraphs leaderboard for under 24 with at least 400 played appearances since 2015 and then reverse sort it for you know wrc plus and at the very bottom you the very bottom you've got lewis brinson who i don't think uh you know is going to break out anytime soon but there's some names on here that just strike me as you know with a reset you know there's actually a couple names on here that are in the midst maybe of resetting uh one that stuck out with me is brandon marsh uh who has changed a lot of his swing metrics and a lot of the underlying stuff and seems to be in the middle of breaking out um after a pretty terrible beginning with the bat we've talked about spencer torkelson he's on this

list um but some names that uh struck me as maybe wanting to um wanting wanting that reset or maybe in the midst of that reset scott kingery is hitting really well in the minor leagues joe adele is hitting really well in the minor leagues Alec Thomas I think I think needs it or maybe going through it right now and maybe one name I don't know if I can add the sort of psychological aspect to it I don't know that these guys are really struggling through it every day uh but i still have some love for luis garcia because his max ev is all right his barrel rates show potential he had a 7.5 last year if he could get that up to 8 or 9 or 10 like he could really break out because he has a lot of contact ability

so uh luis garcia is someone who you know right is still struggling, but not out of that window of where there could be a breakout. I'm looking back. It's a funny leaderboard because if you cut it off at age 24, you get some players who are no longer in this age range who used to struggle and are good now. Dansby Swanson, early in his career, over 1,000 plate appearances, had a 75 WRC plus in his early 20s.

And look at the player he became. Byron Buxton, 77. Yeah, and this just comes back to what I hear all the time when we're talking about prospects is that player development and prospect growth, it's not linear. But I think looking at Kelnick, it was the first time, the major leagues were the first time that he played baseball in his life, and it wasn't easy. He wasn't perfect for the first time in baseball, whereas most of his life prior to making it to the big leagues, he was the best player on the field. And he could do everything and anything he wanted to do on the field i feel like this is a thing that teams are much better at understanding today versus 20 years ago and even more so than longer like further into the further

the past you go the less sympathy you would have found around the game for players that if they were having any sort of mental struggles or coping issues, grab some pine meat. Right. The whole attitude towards this was very different a long time ago, and there's still plenty of room for improvement. You're 100% right. There's absolutely no reason to look at a list of young players who are underperforming and assume that that's the case with all of them, but it's certainly the kind of thing that teams should be prepared for as players reach whatever level it is. It might be AA for some guys.

It might be high A for some guys. It could be AAA for some guys. You're going to hit a wall eventually. Almost certainly. There are so few players who are just amazing until they're 35 years old and then start to decline that you should expect almost everyone to go through it. And some people handle it well on their own. They can figure it out. Some people don't.

It doesn't matter if you can't figure it on your own. It doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It just means there's something there that you need some assistance with. And it seems like, in Kelnick's case, it's unlocked. What's wild here, Joe Adele is a little younger than Jared Kelnick. And if I asked you, how many plate appearances in the big leagues does Joe Adele actually have so far? What would your guess be?

I'm not looking at it currently, but it has to be more than 400 because he made my list. He made the filter, yeah. But I would say not that many more. Maybe 440 or something. 557. That's not even a full season not even a full season and one thing I've always wondered about is

for the players that get to the big leagues as young as Adele did and as young as Kelnick did how much does that ruin our expectations for when to give up on them when to say oh the ceiling we thought they had isn't quite what it was like whatever the adjustment needs to be, he's age appropriate at AAA right now.

As a 24-year-old, right? He's not too old for AAA. He's age appropriate to debut this year. And he's already racked up all those plate appearances. Even though the results haven't been great, that experience is still worth something. This is the best production we've seen from him so far at AAA through 22 games this season. All of that should be exciting. And maybe that's just a way of asking, okay, so if we're going to lower the ceiling, how much do we really have to lower it when he's still 24 years old and

still, if he had never played in the big leagues as i've said many times before about certain players we'd probably be really excited about this profile yeah uh adele has a flaw uh that is pretty obvious and anytime you look at him it's a strikeout rate i did have an interesting conversation with someone who worked with Logan Ohapi after rookie and A ball. Logan Ohapi had a 28% strikeout rate. And after that, in 2020, he spent 2020 training for contact. and he came back with an 18% strikeout rate in high A and kept that low strikeout rate all the way through his rookie, his debut season in the majors. That fascinates me because I also heard recently that the Guardians, you know, train for contact.

Not only do they draft for contact, but that they train for contact. That makes sense because the Guardians lead the league in strikeout rate, you know, in terms of being good at it as batters. So, you know, I would be very interested if I heard that Joe Adele was working with someone new. You know, that's the sort of thing I'm looking to hear along with like the Jared Kelnick thing. It's like, you know, he's revamped, and if I saw a change in swing strike rate, I'd be interested. In terms of guys who are in the major leagues that don't seem to have as obvious a flaw that I think could still break out,

Alec Thomas is the name I really would like to highlight here. He has a 9% barrel rate, 110 max EV. It's not amazing max EV, so it's not amazing raw power, but if he can have a nine or ten percent barrel rate and you know live at 111 112 max ev that's definitely someone who can hit 25 homers in the season you know um if you got a guy who can hit 20 to 25 homers he obviously has speed he has he has pretty good contact you know and you know, the walk rates have gone up and down. There's a potential here for a guy who could hit 275 with a 330 OBP and like a 440 slugging,

you know, and if he does that, or like even a 420 slugging, if he does that, he's going to have 25 homers and 10 to 15 steals.'s a really valuable player so i don't know again some of this is close to what he's projected for so maybe you can't in most leagues go and get alec thomas for cheap but maybe you can maybe you can if this slump continues he's hitting 188 he has 224 for his career you know his his bad ball stats stats not amazing and uh if you're looking to sell in a dynasty league like he could be someone that you put together two or three veterans for because you're like hey this is a young guy who has speed has contact might have batted ball and like let me get him yeah and play is good defense too which as we talked about earlier in the week, can really sustain that playing time.

Yeah, and has survived at least the first round of cuts. Jake McCarthy was sent down. I know. He's made so many changes on that roster for the D-backs. And I love it because it means they're serious about contending. And they kept Alec Thomas up. Yeah, McCarthy down after 22 games. And they kept Alec Thomas up.

Yeah, McCarthy down after 22 games. I know we talked about him on one of our outfield previews as someone that we weren't, at least at the ADP, we weren't really interested in because we could see some flaws. I didn't see this happening. I didn't see an April demotion back to AAA for Jake McCarthy. As crowded as that situation was, I just saw him maybe falling into more of a bench role. And instead, they're going to give him more volume at Reno, at least for a little while. But I don't really know who the beneficiary is. Is it Pavin Smith?

Who's playing in the outfield? No, he's playing first base, I think, right now. Is it one of the extra shortstops? Let's see here. 2023 right field, three innings. That's interesting. who is it then who am i missing here i've sorted by plate appearances for uh the d-backs alec thomas it's kind of a lot this year coming on or is he in the minors lewis has been been hurt already, right? He's in the IL. He's on the IL. What an illness.

He's played four games. Hasn't played since April 7th. Here's what they've done so far. Christian Walker plays pretty much every day. Al Thomas plays pretty much every day. Rojas plays pretty much every day. Carroll, max volume. Gurriel, max volume. They have five guys. Carroll, Gurriel, Thomas are almost

every day. Six guys that are almost every day. Moreno behind the plate is close to that. And Perdomo at short has been pretty close to that. And then everybody else. Longoria can't play the outfield, but I guess that's why Pavin Smith has three. So I think Pavin Smith might be the fourth outfielder. That's all I'm saying.

I'm looking for a fourth outfielder because they just demoted one. They're just using him as the big side platoon DH right now. Pavin Smith? Yep. Occasionally plays first base but first base in DH. So then does Rojas have any outfield on him? I don't think I've seen him out there yet. I think they play him

almost entirely at third. Yep, he's played only at third so far. At least for. Yep, he's played only at third so far. At least for starts. Maybe he started one game at second. Maybe Kyle Lewis is headed to his rehab, and then he can be DH slash fourth outfielder. With those legs, I worry he's not going to be much of an option

in the outfield. It's a little weird then, right? Who's their fourth outfielder? They got a few guys that could sneak out there. Gurriel plays out there sometimes. That's kind of part of it, right? They move a couple guys in out of the DH spot, so you get Gurriel and left. Corbin Carroll

plays left. I've had Gurriel as one of the three. Carroll, Gurriel, Thomas. So who's the fourth? We don't know yet. Cattell Marte playing out there? Nope. They just made this move. They haven't shown't know yet. Cattell Marte playing out there? Nope. They just made this move. They haven't shown us anything yet. I think they can use Smith out there. They just haven't done it yet.

They can use Marte out there. They just haven't done it yet. Yeah. Well, that's something to watch at least. Yeah. At the very least, it's a vote of confidence for Alec Thomas. It is. It absolutely is. Whoa, what are you listening to this for?

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family beach vacation a breeze and it felt a little like... Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western speaking of demotions this broke during the show on Tuesday Taj Bradley it's been 24 hours now option to AAA Durham if you are like me and you're like Eno and you spent a good chunk of your fab budget

to get Taj Bradley assuming that he was going to be up and up for good and contributing at a high level you were right about the second part you were just wrong at least for now about the first part and i've thought about this some more and it still doesn't make a lot of sense the the story about it that mark topkin wrote for the tampa bay times or the st petersburg times the paper down and down in in that area. It's pointing to this idea that the Rays are still trying to transition Taj Bradley from pitching on every sixth day to every fifth day, which is strange. They didn't have to do this with Shane McClanahan because in 2021,

when McClanahan debuted, he wasn't pitching in the minors. He was at the alternate site that year. Then he came up and joined the rotation and stayed up for good. I thought that they would just let him stay up like McClanahan did, but that's the one wrinkle that makes it a little bit different. If you look at

the schedule, it has been every six days for Bradley pitching so far this year. I'm just surprised there's not another way. Yanni Chirinos looks like he's going to get a chance, and he's finally healthy. It's good to see that. But when you think about the process of sending Bradley down and changing the schedule, how long can it take to get him working every fifth day? Clearly, they have to shuffle some things around at Durham and maybe do some bullpen games or mess around with things. If they want everyone else on an every six day schedule and Bradley is going to go every fifth, that's a small logistical thing to work around. But how long will it take

before they're comfortable throwing him every fifth day and bringing him back up to rejoin this rotation? I mean, it can't be that long. He threw like 55 pitches in his first start in the minors, and then he threw like 67 in the second, and then he threw 80s in the majors, right? Yeah, the workloads for Taj Bradley in those starts, even though they're all over five innings, like it was 78, 82, and 84 pitches? Like there was nothing concerning about that.

There's also a progression there. So even if you started that progression over from one, he should be back in two weeks. You know what I mean? Like even if five days from now he throws 55 pitches, which seems like that could be doable. That's what he did three weeks ago. You know what I mean?

So let's say he goes 55 pitches five days from now. Then in the next one, he goes 67. Then he's ready for the big leagues again. So that's what I'm hoping for. I have reached out to some people in the organization and my question was, is this sort of like a roster management thing? And the answer is not very helpful but uh yeah um so i'm trying to look at like their usage of relief pitchers and look at and look for a pattern and you know they're just really interesting because they have their major

league pitchers average around 80 pitches a year. Even Shane McClanahan had 88 in his last start. And Rasmussen even joked about it when I saw him in spring being like, yeah, you know when the hook is coming, so you got to be efficient. And I do think it's related to this finding that command kind of goes after 80 pitches. So they think they maximize their starting pitchers at around 80 to 90 pitches and and none of their pitches in the last week have gone over 94 that was rasmussen's last start uh then you look at them in the in the minors and they've got in the relief and they've

got you know fairbanks adam poche i don't know how to say that po It's Poche. Poche, Clevenger. Those guys are very much just, that's their A squad, relief squad of like 10 to 20. None of them have done more than 19 pitches in one outing. And they're also really avoiding back-to-backs. Definitely not doing any back-to-back-to-backs and then giving them multiple days rest

if they do the back-to-back. So that's their conventional bullpen. and then they have the hybrids kelly beaks chirinos fleming hem uh hembrie's an 18 pitch guy cooper criswell so they've got these guys in the in the that do 30 to 50 pitches i they just must not, and then here's the last wrinkle. You're limited even if your guy has an option, you're limited

to optioning him down to the minor leagues three times in one year. So, you pointed out that their bullpen is full of guys with options. Yeah. But let's say you're looking through the full year and you're saying, oh man, right now they're all well-rested.

Beeks is among the guys who are our volume guys. Beeks is the only guy who's done a back-to-back in the last seven days. Fleming did 35 and has gotten five days of rest since. Cooper Criswell did 55. He's got four days of rest since. Cooper Criswell did 55. He's got four days of rest since. Beeks had a little bit harder schedule, but Kevin Kelly pitched 28, got two days off, pitched 39.

So I would say maybe they're like, let's save our option on these guys until we've worked them harder, right? There's going to be a day where beaks you know throws 30 and then two days later we need him to throw 20 again and then we might i don't know if beaks has an option and then yeah then you'd have to option him down because you wouldn't be able to use him and you want to have someone that you could use a couple times exactly so you're like hey our pen's in good shape let's send br Bradley down. Our pen's going to be in worse shape soon,

so then we'll send a reliever down then. You have to think about, you have, yes, okay, all these guys have options, but we only can do it three times. So when in the season are we going to option Kevin Kelly? You know, like you're almost forecasting, projecting when you're optioning them. Right. Yeah, oh, yeah.

I'm sure this is is there are more layers to this for sure than than just the yeah we got to get him on a five-day schedule that's just what they said that's what was reported and that's what we're supposed to go with you could do that on the major league level if you have these 37 pitch guys you say okay you know in his next start bradley's going on five days rest but we going to get 60 pitches out of him at the major league level. You know, we're going to ask less of him. You know, isn't that the process? I don't have it handy because I don't know if I can even find this publicly, but Heath Hembree is this veteran that they had at Durham.

Maybe there was an opt out at the end of the month for Heath Hembree. So they had to put Heath Hembree on the roster before the end of the month. Because I'm like, why is Heath Hembree on the roster? He doesn't have options left. They added him on Tuesday. Again, this is just a guess. This is the end of the month because i'm like why is he hembree on the roster he doesn't have options left they added him on tuesday again this is just a guess this is the type of thing well you gotta add him and hembree was dealing and they they do stuff numbers so maybe they had great stuff numbers but hembree also has lost the plot in terms of he doesn't know where the plate is anymore so maybe they brought they brought him up to the major level to give him a stint

and then they're going to say, sorry, Hanbury, you can't find the plate. Thanks for trying it out with us. Yeah. I mean, look, there's any number of reasons that they could have done this this way. I'm holding Taj Bradley, same as I said yesterday. Going to wait a couple of weeks and see how this plays out. I think he showed us enough talent-wise.

You knew going into it, at least I think everyone knew, that workload wasn't going to be six or seven innings on a regular basis. It was going to be shorter starts. It wasn't going to be an innings horse or a wins horse or any of that. But it was fine so far. Three for three in terms of wins, great ratios, and more than a K per inning. If you're going to go short, that's perfect. Even had a bad inning in one of the starts and rallied. Yeah, he was doing everything he needed to do to justify

20-30% of the fab budgets that were thrown in his direction. Definitely a hold there. Yeah, definitely a hold there. My other thought on this too, though, is that if you and I don't know if it has anything to do with Bradley specifically, but I think the way the minor league schedule is built, Monday is a travel day now, right? This is good.

They've reduced travel in the minor leagues. You play the same team all week long for six straight games. And a lot of teams, I think, do use larger rotations in the minor leagues. But wouldn't you think for the sake of an arm care routine, you wouldn't want guys like Bradley working every sixth day? Wouldn't you want them to get into the habit of rest and recovery and between starts maintenance to be on that every fifth day schedule so you don't hit this extra last phase of development? Unless you've got some compelling research that shows at a younger age, the extra rest is more likely to give you a better long-term

health outcome. Even that seems like a study that would be pretty noisy. So isn't it just strange that the schedules don't sync up a little better with how big league rosters are managed? The Rays just have an entirely different philosophy where they're just like, we are cool with 80 pitches. So we actually want our major leaguers to get to the major leagues our minor leaguers to get to the major leagues with 80 pitches if they're a starter, right? I did remember that Kyle Bode took immense pride in the fact that his pitchers, his starting

pitchers with the Reds came to the major leagues ready to throw 100. And Hunter Green, literally 100 on the radar, but also 100 pitches. So, you know, there's this whole thing where you don't want to waste their bullets in the minors. Right.

They're doing that right now. They just set them back down. But you do want them to get to the big leagues and be ready to do what they... You know, there's also a real question in some organizations about when to start certain things. So if you've got a 16... I don't know if 16 is pushing it, but if you've got a 17-year-old in rookie ball, right, and you've got this organizational philosophy everybody who has an 85 percent uh you know uh spin efficiency we're going to teach them the sinker the cutter and the

sweeper that's something that the the the yankees and marlins are doing uh the yankees and mariners are doing teach everyone the sweeper especially if they're 85 percent uh spin efficiency and um do you want to do that with the 17 year old rookie ball or do you want to do that with the 17-year-old rookie ball? Or do you want to give a more generalized plan and allow that 17-year-old to possibly go in any direction? I think you'd want to leave the door open. Yeah. So if you want to leave the door open, then you're going to have less specialized instruction. You're just going to be like, hey, let's all swing you know let's all try to throw four seamers with ride and

let's all try to throw five pitches and that's uh so you're a little bit more just like let's see where you could be and then as you get older you start being sort of pushed specialized pushed towards certain roles oh you're a reliever now oh no you're a cutter sinker guy you know i mean like then you start specializing the instruction for them because you can also see the finish line and be like oh you're in double a and you can't find the zone it's interesting luis medina just came up for the for the uh for the A's and he's got a power fastball power breaking ball and a change up and terrible command like one of the worst location numbers in my triple A sample and terrible command grades terrible walk rates just terrible command and I think a different

organization like if he's with the Yankees he'd be in their pen right now you know uh so there's all there's like this relationship between how the major league team needs and how old the player is and how how competitive the major league team is and how much upside you think they have so every organization has a little bit different secret sauce when it comes to that the rays uh it is a little bit weird to kind of i would say that i don't believe them at face value that this is all just about getting them on the five-day schedule because they have such a cohesive sort of meshing between their minors and majors right it's almost that's what a that's what a bad organization would actually be doing oh wait we didn't plan for this like oh yeah

oh oh shoot he can't just do six day all right like they that might be a thing he does while he's down he might go to a five day a week schedule or something while he's at durham but i don't think that is the reason they sent him down i'm not buying that at least yeah we had a question that actually comes into into play here it's a question about command it was emailed into us by jack jack wants to know are there tools that teams use during the game beyond eyeballs to monitor command how many pitches in a game situation does it take to know that command has declined thinking about this in the context of the rays you know using their starters a bit bit less than that 80 to 85 range for the most part.

That's maybe something they've noticed is that command wanes or health outcomes change. There might be some other factors in there too, but just for the command aspect of it, what are teams looking at within a start? I think even something like location Plus, which looks at locations, can tell us that generally command falls off at 80 pitches. So there's definitely teams that are aware of this sort of 80 pitch threshold. But I don't think they're actually looking at the pitcher-specific Location Plus because that's not found to be very sticky in small samples. What we do know is that Josh Kalk, who works with the Tw twins now, before he went in and worked with the Rays, one of the things he did was had an injury finder where he had a release point data

and velo data and movement data. And with those, he could say, oh, red flag, something's happening here. The release point's shaky, something's happening. And I did ask a major league GM once that if he could get, like, if he could get information to the dugout about, like, hey, pull this guy. Because it was like, you know, when everyone's getting pulled during no-hitter bids. Yep. And they said yes.

And so there can be communication between people who are monitoring this sort of stuff and the manager, because it's a little bit hard to be like in just like watching be like, oh, yeah, his release point dropped, you know, two inches on that one. But that might be meaningful in your model. So I think right now, if the question is like, are they monitoring command and taking people out when their command goes? I think that's an eye testing. But they are aware of the 80 pitch threshold in some organizations, and they probably also are aware of some mechanical changes in some situations. But with like, you know with Logan Webb last year, the release point was dropping. And I was like,

is this injury? What's going on here? Is anybody aware of this? And I did talk to somebody, and they were like, yeah. It's just a young pitcher throwing the most he'd ever thrown. Of course there was going to be some fatigue markers.

We just tried to ask him constantly how he's feeling. We tried to give him some extra days off in the September. We just tried to monitor it because if you never build a guy to 200 innings, you'll never get a guy to 200 innings. That's sort of the bigger problem I see with pitching development is we want guys to get to this level. Maybe it's even lower than 200 now. Maybe it's 175, 180, whatever. Whatever the number actually is, it just seems like the way we get there is more complicated than it needs to be in part because of logistics. Injuries are the great equalizer, the great disruptor in this case that just makes it hard to do exactly what you want, but

I think there's still some room for growth there. And all those markers, by the way, are only going to get better. Hawkeye just switched to 300 frame rate on its cameras. It used to have a worse frame rate than your iPhone.

And with 300 frame rate on 12 cameras, the hope is that it'll better delineate things. Like right now, it's not very good at the pelvis. Well, the pelvis is incredibly important. How the pelvis moves is incredibly important for hitters and pitchers. There might, in fact, be fatigue markers

in the pelvis. If we can better keep an eye on pitchers' pelvises. Let's put cameras on them and computers and turn them into little data points and not just stare in that direction. Yeah, right. Also, just be impossible with the eye to be like, Hmm, his pelvis moved three milliseconds slower that time. Right? Yeah. I mean,

it's a very precise motion capture, but yeah, you'd think about that as far as your mechanics, you know, flying open, just missing your target. That's going to come sometimes from rotational things like that. So,

uh, yeah, I'm sure there's, there's more to kill. I also think that the catcher, I mean, the catcher knows catchers, catchers are almost as good as computers back there.

I think when something's not right with a pitcher, they're going to see it before anybody else does because they get the best view. They're familiar with how everything moves and comes out of a pitcher's hand. That'd be the other factor for me. If I'm not sure, I'm asking my catcher, hey, what do you see right now?

We're watching Little League recently. our stud pitcher last night in the win um i could tell he was uh he was he was like you know doing some stuff and it's funny because the kids are like i feel i'm i feel like almost all the kids who are pitching like are hurting they're all hurt yeah because they're like every like after every pitch they're like're flexing their hand and doing weird things. And I'm like, oh, is he hurt? And so I was watching him, and he was doing some of the regular stuff. But then he kept adjusting his jersey on his shoulder. And I was like, coach, coach, you need to go talk to him.

And then three seconds later, he called for the coach. He's like, I did something to go talk to him. And then like three seconds later, he's like called for the coach. He's like, I did something to my shoulder, you know? Yeah. And so there is, I think you'll notice it. It's more hyper aware in the major leagues. As soon as a pitcher starts walking around the mound, doing something weird with his hand, someone pops out of the dugout.

Right, yeah. And it's usually a teammate, often a catcher that sees it. The hand, the handshakes, the little pattern between batters changes. There's so many body language things that they see each other. It's the major leagues.

Everyone's like so hyper-focused that like, like you'll be like, oh, is he flat? Oh, here comes the bitchy coach. We had a, an email follow-up from part of our conversation on Monday. This email came from Aaron.

Aaron just wanted to point out that Eric Langenhagen, who does the scouting grades over at Fangraphs, actually had a chat where he explained how he puts the hit tool grades on young players. And for younger players, the present hit tool grade doesn't mean the same thing as it does for players closer to major league baseball so i think eric said once the players get the double a that's the hit tool that he thinks the the player kind of has going forward but when you see an 18 year old like elijah green or guys that were just drafted um the 20 to 25 that you see it's it's a grade of

how they hit right now relative to their age. The future value. Then the future value is kind of your guide as to what they think it's going to be. A lot of greens, like a 20 present, future 40. A future 40 is not necessarily. A future 40 is not that good either. It's like a slay. It's the lower end of the acceptable or normal range that you see for a player.

A present value 25 guy wouldn't be able to play in the big leagues. No. But a present value 40 with no power can't play in the big leagues either. I think our point still stands, but yeah, it is interesting to sort of mesh that present value grade with their age. Think about it that way. Yeah. I have the full breakdown here. I'm just going to see if i can pull it up easily and nope it's gone again of course of course it's gone away there it is tools grade yeah teenager with poor or neutral feel to hit would be a 20 a teen with advanced feel to hit to 25

a college age hitter with poor or neutral feel to hit is a 30 an advanced college age bat is a 35 that's a little bit more regimented than i expected yeah hitters at double a and up get neutral field to hit is a 30. An advanced college age bat is a 35. That's a little bit more regimented than I expected. Yeah, hitters at double A and up get what I actually think their hit tool is. He's basically saying that a teenager out of high school wouldn't get better than a 40 present hit tool. Right.

Yeah. For example, Drew Jones, super polished high school hitter. What do you think Drew Jones has listed for his hit tool? He's got a current 20, but a future 55.

Jackson Holiday. Jackson Holiday, 25, future 60. Just know that when you see the 20s on teenagers, this guy's not going to hit that's not what that means but a 20 on a guy at double A

means this guy's not going to hit right right also in 2040 is different than a 2060 or 2560 yep so thanks for that email Aaron always good to clarify that it's very similar to what I sort of assumed is that those 20s and 25s weren't indicative of a major problem necessarily. They were more a reflection of where a player was in terms of his current development. to a tear so far and it's kind of just a general question he seems like he's getting better every year is there anything we missed in pete alonso earlier in his career or in recent years that

could have pointed to the player that he has become here at his peak uh awesome max evs you know paired with a reduction in strikeout rate over the course of his career. Yeah, that's the part that's, I think, the surprising part. I think most of us expected Pete Alonso to always be the kind of guy that would strike out 25% of the time. Because that's what he did his first two years in the big leagues. You know, for his age, it didn't seem like there was going to be that much more improvement. And he's managed to cut that down. The last two seasons, under 20%.

This year, he's back up in that 23-24% range right now, but he's popped 10 homers already. The power... What if Pete Alonso played in a more hitter-friendly ballpark? Would he just be a 50-home run guy every year? He's already done that once in that ballpark. I'd also want to highlight the fact that he has oppo power, which I think is part of why he's able to cut that strikeout rate, right?

It means he can do different things with different balls in different parts of the zone. He can take the ball where it's pitched. I'm trying to set up a on-the-fly next Pete Alonzo query. I'm just doing under 25 with a high K rate. Looking at their oppo. I want to throw their max EV in there.

I want a guy with great raw power and kind of high-ish strikeout rate. Let's see. Jordan Walker. I mean, Jordan Walker. Jordan Walker, why not? Here's a guy with oppo power, 26% strikeout rate, 114 max EV, decent barrel rate, you know. Nolan Gorman's on this list.

Here's a related question then. Brandon Marsh. If Walker comes up on one flag, what else could you use to help validate that hypothesis? Could you look at max EVs from a month of his career do we need a year's worth when when would you really start to feel solid about that comp from a power perspective for jordan walker well if you look at pete alonso's max evs they've been great like from day one so i think you can do it in one year yeah the other thing is that his swing strike rate is not aggressively bad alonso's right it's like league average yeah look at that again there's another pete alonso yeah

it's sort of 10 to 11 it was 12 in his first year so you could you could have someone that has like kind of a 12 swing strike rate but i don't think that, like Brandon Marsh, I just mentioned him in passing. Well, right now he's got an 8.5% swinging strike rate. Brandon Marsh, 36% oppo, 110 max EV. So not quite the same max EVs, but just a whiff of a chance there. Sorry, you're saying?

Jared Kalanick is here. No. But he's a pull guy he's a pull guy it's not quite the same I was trying to think about Alonzo compared to the other elite first baseman more specifically Vlad Jr.

and how we think about Vlad Jr. as kind of a top 10 player who's even been drafted earlier than that if you go back to 2021 Alonzo's got a slight edge in home runs. Vlad Jr., though, has a almost 30-point edge in batting average during that span. A few more steals for Vlad Jr. More line drive stroke for Vlad.

Yeah, I think there's a little more hit tool with Vlad. He's a little more dynamic as a hitter, which is not taking anything away from Alonzo. I think it's just giving you an idea of how unusual that level of power is with the ability to hit the ball all over the field. And Alonzo's not bad at that, but Vlad Jr.'s even better at it. I actually could see Nolan Gorman almost. So Nolan Gorman right now has a 12% whiff rate, which is what Alonso had early, right? He's a right-hander

too, right? Gorman's a lefty. He's got a 26% strikeout rate, and he goes to oppo field 26% of the time. Not a terrible comp. I wonder where Gunnar Henderson is going from here.

We sweated it out with him a little bit on Monday's show. Yeah. Well, I mean, listen, if you want to be worried about Gunnar Henderson, be worried about Gunnar Henderson. But, you know, 12% swing strike rate is the same swing strike rate that Pete Alonso had in his rookie year. You know what I mean? Of course, Gunnar Henderson is more patient, so maybe that 12% swing strike rate that Pete Alonso had in his rookie year. You know what I mean? Of course, Gunnar Henderson is more patient,

so maybe that 12% swing strike rate is turning into more Ks than it did for Alonso. But I'm not out on a Gunnar. I mean, a.354 OBP in your first 54 games, one-third of a big league season, that's not bad. Doing it with non-zero power, doing it without chasing, showing some barrel ability. This seems like it's going to work,

especially when you just mush together the end of last season with the beginning of this season. Give yourself a little more confidence and a more realistic expectation because you see results that are almost identical to rest of season projections.

It kind of suits you. kind of 240 350 406 17 to 20 homers 10 stolen bases yeah and you have that knowing that things could click and he could get a lot better at any time it could happen second half of the season it could happen in the last month of the season or like alonzo in year five you know i think think, to be fair to Alonzo, it's been just a progression. Yeah, and he was never bad. Never bad. I mean, he debuted with 53 homers.

It's kind of hard to take somebody... Yeah. I know we know more now about 2019 in hindsight than we knew at the time, but even in that environment, given that he did it in that park and he was a rookie, that seems like a season that maybe wasn't appreciated enough for what it really was.

53 home runs as a rookie. But otherwise, look at how nice his progression was since 2020. 120 WRC+, 133, 143, 151. Really steady player. Kind of a real baseball question though. Pete Alonzo, he's still at one more year of club control. There's got to be at least some

thought to an extension with the Mets. Oh my God. What kind of contract does Pete Alonzo end up getting just from a risk? How does his profile age? It's the real question. I don't care so much about the number of years and number of dollars as much as I want to know. Are we going to flash forward five years, seven years, maybe even 10 years and still be looking at Pete Alonso as a good power hitter?

Is he going to age like a Nelson Cruz? Because I imagine he'll be a DH for the bulk of his 30s, maybe at least the last half of his 30s. But I think based on how he has his approach right now, especially if his O-swing can stay, if he keeps the O-swing percentages down, that gives me a lot of confidence that he could do this for quite a while.

Yeah, it's interesting though that most of the other big contracts that are out there right now are not for first basemen. And one of the last sort of quote-unquote bust contracts was Albert Pujols. The most lucrative contracts right now

that are out there are Trout, Betts, Judge, Machado, Lindor tatis harper even harper starting in the outfielder yeah he has defensive values stanton's 325 is the high watermark for someone with less defensive value um but even he was an outfielder at the time i mean to get to a first baseman you got to get to miguel cabrera 248 in 2016 i think that might be he could probably beat that i don't know like 250 or something i just don't know if someone's giving him 300 million i think it's also quite more more for years like i how long how long do you want to believe everyone's stretching it because they just want they just

don't want it to be to come against our luxury tax. So 10 years, $300 million or something. $10 and $250, yeah. Yeah. But I think he's still going to be a pretty good hitter compared to a lot of other power hitting first basemen that I've seen in my lifetime. It looks like an approach that will age reasonably well for Pete Alonso. And that's not necessarily something I would have thought of him when he came into the league, coming up with his prospect profile.

He looked like old people skills. Like, you know, he's going to strike out a lot, walk a lot, have a low batting average, pull everything for homers. But, you know, he did catch my eye with the fact that he's hitting oppo homers in the home run derby. It's like not many, many people do that. Yeah, it's just showing off at this point. But as we've said, he was made for that.

Keto Lovato was made for the modern Home Run Derby. I've got one more question here to get to. This one comes from Braden, different Braden, not my son. He's not sending emails to the show yet, which won't take long. And I'm sure he'll have a lot of critiques for me as a host of this podcast. Braden would like to know

what's going on with Charlie Morton? You look at his early 2023 stuff numbers seem to indicate that he's just not quite the same guy that we've seen in recent years. You look at this overall body of work, and I'm paraphrasing the question, but the walk rate's up a little bit, 9.3%.

I think that's his highest walk rate since 2016. That was his one and only year in Philadelphia. The K rate's down at 20% right now. Even last year when things weren't going well, Charlie Morton had a 28.2% K rate. What's going on here is this just uh aging another year on charlie morton really taking its toll or do you think this is a correctable coming off of this five-star run where he's looked like a pitcher that's even a notch below where he was last year from a skills perspective i mean in terms of this stuff numbers the biggest drop off has been in his four-seam fastball

and it's not necessarily the most important thing for his arsenal because his sinker is still doing well and his curveball is amazing. But I think just generally over time, he's getting older and he's losing his best fastball. And in terms of how much he's using it this year, he's still using the four-seam 30% of the time. So any sort of sloughing off in how good quality that pitch is is going to affect everything.

He becomes closer and closer, like I said, to a Wainwright. But Wainwright was very useful into his older age, and Morton's fastball is way better than Wainwright's adipoo. So I think he may have high-ish whips he has for his career, but he remains a hold for me in all formats this year. Looking back at recent years, Charlie Morton has dabbled with a cutter, and it just hasn't been a good pitch for him.

At least by results it hasn't been a good pitch. I wonder if that might be one way he can stop the problems with his fastball if he does something else with it. What have I got on the grades? You can do a fun thing where you can do multiple seasons on fan graphs and you can just kind of see a person's progression over time. The cutter in 2021 for Morton was an above-average pitch. It remains a sort of 90 to 100 pitch.

So it's definitely a viable option. This year his stuff grade on the change up is better than it's ever been but that's a little finicky but you know generally he's not like he's not as kenta maeda got uh shelled again today uh he's not as bad as you know sometimes the overall stuff grades has a different story to tell than the per pitch stuff and so you might look at charlie martin's overall stuff grade of 113 and say oh he's got he's still got it and then you open it up and you're like well none of his hard pitches are over 95 stuff plus right at least he's not kentamada none of his hard stuff is like over 70 stuff plus so like you know whatever kentamade is overall stuff plus

rating is it's softer than the one for morton because morton still has a 95 stuff plus sinker and that's that's actually kind of average he's got to be down in terms of you know where you'd where you'd rank him now for rest of season and maybe he is on that that way and right trajectory eventually but i would i would say because of the velo as he is on that that Wainwright trajectory eventually. But I would I would say because of the velo, as you pointed out, that's the thing that gives me some hope

that you could still use them. I just think you have to be a little more careful about it. I think it's more instead of last year where I was throwing Charlie Morton out there against almost anybody

kind of waiting on that bounce back. I don't think I have that level of of flexibility with the matchups in which I'm comfortable starting him right now. Okay. Don't look at his game log. We're going to play the could you have avoided the landmines game. I'm going to predict a no on this one already.

Home against Miami. Easy start. Yeah. At San Diego. That was before Tatis came back from a suspension, and that ballpark, he might have been in. I would say in a 15-teamer, he was definitely in, and a 12, he may have still been in my lineup for that.

San Diego at home, does that change it? In Atlanta? Yeah. Slightly less likely to use him there, but still probably in. At Kansas City? In. At St. Louis? In.

Well, congratulations. You own all of his 2.76 ERA. Eh. What are you complaining about? I got the bad whip, too. He's got a 140 whip. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a category. The command is, the walks are up a little bit. He started the year, at least the last set of rankings you had on the site at the end of March, he was your 40th ranked starter. I'm guessing even with the injuries ahead of him, he still probably slips a little bit off of that, right? There's got to be a few guys that were behind him. Luis Garcia was behind him before. He'd probably take Luis Garcia over Charlie Morton for the rest of the season. Oh, I don't know. Luis Garcia's

a sneaky, bad fastball guy. He's really just going to the cutter more and becoming a junker, junker baller. Kind of glad in some long-term leagues I moved away from Luis Garcia during the winter. His dynasty value is below his this year value, I believe. For sure.

Joe Ryan. Whoa. Yeah, Joe Ryan. Joe Ryan's got to be a big stock-up guy based on what he's done this year value. For sure. Joe Ryan. Whoa. Yeah, Joe Ryan. Joe Ryan's got to be a big stock-up guy based on what he's done this year. Oh, so rankings are coming out this Friday. I won't be able to join the cast or chat because I'm headed down to LA. But the rankings this week that are coming out will have rest-of-season projections. Hey. From our

friend Jordan Rosenblum, and I think that'll be key to taking all this information and wrapping it up into a Gresham system to get a better idea of what rest of season ERA projections look like, and I will be really interested in the Charlie Morton number, because park factors

do play a factor, especially for a guy who pitches in a launching pad. I mean, it's not the launching pad, but it's one of them. It is a place that gives up more homers. You know who else is up this year? He had this range.

Pablo Lopez. He's way up. And, oh, oh, last second. Last second inclusion of the velo leaders the velo adding leaders last year to this year sean mania number one is from my column today sean mania number one he's still having trouble getting into games the giants are are playing games what are you doing why are you this way? I guess the Cardinals are

slug lefties pretty hard. Freddy Peralta, he's healthy. Yay, everyone party! Reed Detmers, we knew about. Pablo Lopez, the fourth biggest increase in fastball velo. Up to 95. Dean Kramer is on there.

I cut the list off here. The bonus for you podcast listeners, Wade Miley, Joey Wentz. I don't care really. Sorry. Michael Kopech, Nick Pavetta, Fram Vervaldis, and Hayden Wesnenski rounds out the top 10. So there you have it.

All right. New ranking is coming. If you want to see the new rankings, you will need a subscription to The Athletic, so you should get one for a dollar a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and pennies. Viral through three, six strikeouts,

one walk, one ball hit remotely well. He's going to be filthy, man. No fastball control. Interesting update. I think he was under-ranked on some prospect lists. And I'm sure with this start, it's not going to be reflected in the bidding. There's going to be splashy Taj Bradley-type bids on Bybee this weekend. Yeah.

It'll be tough because you just spent money on Logan Allen. No, Allen actually will only join the other pools this week too. Yeah. So you're going to have split money on Alan and Bybee. And then, you know, then there'll be all the podcasts all week, including ours. We've already done this. But, you know, we'll be talking about who will be starting in that.

And I continue to think that, as we said before, even with Savali and McKenzie, healthy Plesak and Quantrill uh are soft uh entries into that rotation and so I would say Bieber Savali McKenzie are in there and then you can still have Allen and uh and Bybee in there but it will get interesting when Savali McKenzie are both healthy they may get sent down again just because it's not like the Guardians are going to release Cal Quantrill. Plesak, I don't know. They could be done with him.

They could be. They could be done with him. I mean, he has options left, but he hasn't been that good. Maybe by sort of DFAing him, they could spur a low level trade with somebody. Yeah, I think it's more like that where they can option him down. He's got enough service time. He's got three years of service

time. He's got to be close to that threshold where he could refuse the assignment. Yeah, I don't know. Send him to the bullpen, see if he can throw a 94 again. Yeah, there's a few ways that could go. And Cody Morris maybe eventually gets healthy too. He could be a part of this.

But it almost looks like Morris, because of all the time he's missing, is going to have a hard time working like a regular starter. He's just going to be building back up. Yeah, they're going to use him probably in multiple inning stints out of the bullpen for a while, which makes it frustrating from a fantasy perspective, but could be really good for them as a glue guy that just comes in and mows down four or five, six hitters at a time. That could be a really nice addition for them.

Building a one to nothing team in Cleveland. Yeah, go get some more bats, please. Oh, I mean, it's that right field spot as always. And they tried. They tried to add Josh Bell. So far, he hasn't hit that much. He'll probably come back around. But there's still at least one bat too light compared to other playoff teams.

I'm about to cut Josh Bell in the audience. Bo Naylor. Promote Bo Naylor. He's tearing up AAA. Let Bo Naylor play. You leave my Mike Zanino alone. You're not relying on Mike Zanino? My one share in AL Labor?

No, I don't care that much. You're going to be okay. Let's let everyone have Bo Naylor available instead of you having Mike Zanino and AL Labor. On that note, we are going to sign off. If you get the time, give us a follow on YouTube. Be sure to hit the subscription button on the channel.

Hit the like button on this video. You can find Eno on Twitter, at Eno Saris. You can find me, at Derek Van Ryper. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.