Rates & Barrels - A Promotion-Filled Weekend, Maximizing Development & Chasing the Second Tier

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss a promotion-filled weekend including the debuts of Hurston Waldrep, Adael Amador and Tyler Locklear, and the expected arrival of Carlos F. Rodriguez to the Milwaukee rotation this week. Plus, they look back at where the free-agent bids were directed over the weekend.  Rundown 2:41 Hurston Waldrep's Debut Against the Nationals 8:06 Adael Amador Joins the Rockies 16:37 Tyler Locklear's Short-Term Fit in Seattle 21:15 Carlos F. Rodriguez: On Track for Tuesday Debut 28:05 Is Player Development Too Narrowly Focused in Some Organizations? 37:02 Promotions by Necessity Rather Than Desire? 41:06 Freddy Peralta's Poor Outings & Connection to Velocity Drops 44:50 Heliot Ramos Joins the Shallow League Fray 49:13 Finding Value in Max Meyer, Jake Irvin, Simeon Woods Richardson, David Peterson and JP Sears 56:53 Chas McCormick: The Healthy Drop of the Week Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello guys, I'm Ioan Kimmolere, host of the Athletic FC podcast and I'm here to tell you about a mouth-watering summer of international football. The Copa America and European Championships kick off in mid-June and we're going to be covering both tournaments every step of the way. With the World Cup in the US just two years away, the Copa America is the US men's national teams chance to prove they can really compete with heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina, while England will be hoping to go one better than their agonising Euros final defeat last time out. So join me and the Athletics' unrivaled team of football reporters Monday to Friday as

we take you inside the biggest stories from the tournaments with more than a sprinkle of transfer talk on top as well. Just search the Athletic FC podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, June 10th. Derek the Ripper, Enosaris here with you. On this episode, we dig into a busy weekend of promotions. We had a few debuts. We've got an upcoming debut on Tuesday in the Brewers' Rotation. We'll talk about those recently promoted players.

We've got the question of our times from me this week. I put the question on the rundown. It's not from one of the listeners. Got a couple mailbag questions to squeeze in today as well. And as we do every Monday, we'll look at where the money went in fantasy leagues over the weekend, as well as a few players that were let go because that's sort of the back end news. Why are people getting cut? Well, usually it's because they're hurt or they got sent down. So, you know, we begin today with a plea to the listeners.

Join the discord. It's a lot of fun. Be active in the discord. It's a good place to hang out because the places we used to hang out and talk baseball are increasingly less fun by the day. I have a unique request. Please do not rate and review us today based on this podcast. I slept 34 hours this weekend and I am barely, I am death reincarnate right now. So just be, be, be easy on us today. I'm waiting for someone who's listened to the show since the very beginning. It's a short list of people that have been with us since 2019, but we appreciate you no matter when you came on board to start listening to the show.

There have been a handful, probably a half dozen shows over the years where illness or the breweries of San Diego or something in between have conspired upon you to make you sound much less than healthy. But you've gutted it out. Your track record of playing Hurt is even better than mine. So I appreciate that about you. I think the listeners appreciate that too, but I'm waiting for the rankings to drop. Eno's Flu Pods, basically, they would be like, I think your San Diego winter meetings one is my favorite one,

because you sounded like you got into a scooter accident on that trip, even though the scooter accident was on a different trip. Yeah, I think I started worse than this. Yeah. Yeah, that was your all time like really grinding through. I think we got 45 minutes in that day. So we'll see if we can get to that level. Plenty of content to get to, though. Let's start with Hurston Waldrop.

He debuted against Washington on Sunday. Kiba Ruiz got him for a big homer. And that was kind of the tale of the entire start. Kind of turned what could have been a good debut into a pretty ugly one in terms of ratios. Waldrop is interesting for a few reasons. One Spencer Schwalenbach also got knocked around in his debut last week so we think there could be an ongoing battle perhaps for that last spot in the Atlanta rotation. They could be a team that goes deeper at some point and uses six starters

if they want to. And Waldrop was pitching a lot better in the minors, mostly at double A but briefly at triple A before getting promoted. We talked about it last week. He had a couple of rough outings to begin the season and was turning in great ratios and tons of strikeouts in the time since. So even though the results weren't necessarily good, did you come away feeling decent about Hurst and Waldrop coming off of this debut against the Nats? I mean, the slider is good. I think that has been a big part of why he was so successful in the minor leagues, you know,

which you see is also pretty good Velo at 95-7. I did want to point out that I've seen some new research about the shelf. We've talked about the shelf, the Velo shelf before. And the Velo shelf, the newest research I've seen on the Velo shelf, and I forget now where I saw it, so apologies to whoever posted it, was that, you know, earlier when we were averaging around 92 mile an hour on the fastball, when you got to 94, that's where there was between sort of 90, 94, there was not that big of a difference in swing strike rate and home run rate loud on a fastball. When you got to 94, you started to go up. Well, that new shelf is 96.

So, yeah. So as fun as 95-7 is, you know, it's not above the shelf. It's basically within the confines of a normal, a normal fastball in today's league. And he has less drop, I mean less ride than average on his four-seam fastball and you know maybe the splitter is better than what the Stuff Plus model says. The splitters sometimes are hard on the model. It gave him a 90 for the splitter, but let's give him a hundred on that. Let's give him at least an average splitter, an above-average slider. The problem is the fastball. Seventy five stuff plus on the fastball. That's something that can become meaningful fast. And you can see it in the fact that he doesn't have much ride on the fastball

and the VELO is not above the shelf. And I think that combination of traits is why there's been some concern that Waldrop might be a high leverage reliever in the long run. You might not make it as a starter. We did only see three pitches between the four seamer, the splitter and the slider. Basically split the four seamer and the split evenly by usage though.

Through each of those pitches, about 40% of the time went to that slider just under 20% of the time. So maybe it's tweaking the mix. Maybe it's finding a fourth pitch over time. I think the delivery is one that some of the scouting scouting folks out there have cited as maybe being a problem as well. It's a little bit wacky,

not like head wacky, not like like not like cartoon wacky. Yeah, I think that was the description I saw on Waldrop before that that raised some concerns. We've seen guys get away with some pretty unusual deliveries. As long as the ball goes where it's supposed to go, how you get it there isn't necessarily that important, right? If it turns into a command problem where you're you're always missing into that left handed batter's box because you're falling off so hard.

Sure. Then you've got a problem. So, yeah, I do think it comes down to Waldrop versus Schwellenbach. Who do you trust more right now? If you were put in the position of the Atlanta front office where you had to decide which one's getting the ball every fifth day based on how they've started their respective big league careers, what we know about them, who do you have more faith in? I might block the trend here because because Waldrop had a lot of hype behind it but um, Sean Lovax fastball uh rated better. I'm gonna go with that. Taking the foundation, the fastball foundation of the two but curious to see how they manage this. In the biggest samples

Waldrot's numbers are not that impressive if you look in the minor leagues. I mean, the biggest sample we have in one place is this year in double A with a 40-49 innings. The ERA looks good but the whip 140 and then the strikeouts of walks is 22 percent and 7.9 percent. That's like league average. So I'm not sure that anything really leaps off the page except for a slider with Schwalbeck. There's also, I think, a wider arsenal that he could figure out. So a few more ways to make the adjustments quickly. There's a world where someone gets hurt in that rotation

and both of them have spots at some point in the upcoming second half or some point in the season. Let's move on from the Waldrop debut. Adel Amador is up, which is a big surprise. Brendan Rogers got hurt. So with the Brendan Rogers injury, opportunity knocked and Amador is actually playing really well at AA recently. I think that was a huge part of why he's actually getting this opportunity. Last 14 games at double a hitting three Oh five with a three 91 OBP seven homers seven for seven as a base dealer. He's a switch hitter.

He controls the zone really well. If you consider age to level and look at what he did, you know, at high a and single a last year, this is a player we'd be really excited about. Low strikeout rates. Good idea of the strike zone. Some power, some speed. And hey, gets to play half his games in Colorado. What's really hard to figure out is once Rogers is healthy in a couple of weeks, does Amador even have a chance of doing enough to stay up on the big league

roster or is this just a temporary opportunity for him because of that injury? Yeah. And there's also a question of, you know, there's a interesting prospect discussion right now. This Justin Crawford hit the ball on the ground a lot, but hit it hard. I can't I can't tell if that's what Armador has done because we don't really have bad ball vetoes down there. But what I can tell is he's hit the ball on the ground a lot and pulled it.

And so our own Keith Law had had Crawford rated pretty well because he hit the ball hard because of what he saw when he was scouting him. And and what we've seen this year for Justin Crawford is, you know, after 80% and 70% ground ball rates. Crawford has got to 59 and a half and that's that's like a step in the right direction. I still wonder if like he can ever get it to a point where he'd be a big leaguer cuz.

I don't think anybody really hit 60 percent of balls on the ground. Alvaro is coming from the sort of a 50 percent rate, but he's also pulling at a 50 percent rate. And so I just wonder, you know, I would like to have more research into like, like which types of players make that kind of leap, you know, and it's it's kind of hard to do that research because you're almost asking which stats have year to year stickiness, right? You could just say, well, you know, ground ball rates really sticky year to year. So not that many people change their ground ball rate. That's one way of answering it. But what I'm trying to say is give me a profile of player. what I'm trying to say is give me a profile of player like hits the ball hard but on the ground and tell me how many of those make that leap where they get into the air. And so you know I don't really I might have the tools to figure that out but I do think

if there's an intrepid listener they could they could figure that out for us. But if we look at poll leaders and then who hits the ground ball on the ground the most in the big leagues right now, we've got Danzby Swanson with a 50 50 poll ground ball rate. Orlando Arcea is pretty close. The the good outcome would be Cattell Marte. He's at 49 49. And in fact, there's some similarities here in terms of KBB ground ball rate position.

You know, Cattell Marte would be a great outcome for him. Tyra Estrada is actually in a similar place. So that's something that I wanted to list as a bad news item for Amador was the really high ground ball rate with the high poll rate. But there are some other players in the big leagues that have mirrored that approach. I was just looking at a fan graphs, minor league leaderboard split seasons, 200 or more played appearances at a level, just

sorting by ground ball rate going back to 2017. And he was using double A just to get a sense of like, okay, you get to this level, you still have the ball on the ground too much. Did you become a good big leaguer? I don't see anyone when you sort when you sort by ground ball rate, Nikki Lopez at least got to the big leagues and has had. And where's the cutoff? Like where do you start seeing big leaguers around 50?

I mean, because you're seeing some 60s and 70s at the top Yeah in the big leagues I think there's 150 qualified hitters right now for this season and like 22 of them have a ground ball rate equal or greater than 50% and no one's in the 60% range like the high 5556 is sort of where you top out. How's that to a 55.6? 55% in the minors gets you to like Alec Thomas, who could become an interesting big leaguer. So you still got to keep going from there. Julia Rodriguez, 54.5% in 2021 and double A. I mean, obviously has a lot of tools and. So 50% is 50% is not a death now, but where Crawford is this even like even with the improvement to get to 60, it's kinda, it's not very likely.

You really want to see like 50% is better. 55% kind of where that threshold of, oh, we don't know what you're going to be as a player. And Amador at high a had 55.9, but and then a double's first shot 59, but this year 49. So, you know, I mean, it's just important because if you're pulling those balls on the ground, it's so often that's an automatic out. And, you know, he's pulling the ball, you know, when he gets in the air that 32 percent of the time, that's that's when he starts to get some homers and stuff. So yeah, I'm intrigued by him. I like the contact. I like the plate skills in terms of plate skills. It's not too far from like types of stuff that you saw from Mookie Betts and the miners. You know, in terms of just really nice walk rates that are bigger a lot than a lot of levels than the strikeout rates. Really small swing strike rates so that that part's all good but in terms of his aggressiveness

on the pitches on which he swings his contact point is pretty far out in front and what we've seen with and that was in my piece on by lows that is something that you can change to some extent in terms of the contact point how far out in front of this that that does change your ground ball right. So for example right now dancy swanson so far out in front he's hitting ground balls on fastballs down the middle. And what that means is rolling over them is just so far out in front is kind of rolling over them. of rolling over them. So there's some give or take, but I wonder, like I wonder, I would love to see that research too, is where we take contact point and we move that around and we see a player's range in ground ball rates, right?

Yeah. Because you can almost optimize for a player, right? Like you have this much raw power, you have this much bad speed, this is where your contact point should be. That's probably what they're doing in hitting labs, right? They're trying to find that natural sweet spot because it's going to be different based on all those other factors that you were describing. And thinking about Amador in a different way,

when Michael Harris got promoted by the Braves a couple of seasons ago from AA, he was having more success at the level, like, start to finish that year. But Amador, it seems like, has been really unlucky on balls in play. It's pretty amazing. I mean, it's pretty remarkable to await a babbip. And then last year when he first got to double A 148, is that like double A knows how to defend him better? Is he hitting shifts or something?

I just don't know, man. I think it's just, it's just random. Unless I have an explanation. He played appearances by now of just a really small bad. If it's really weird. I mean, when you put it in tandem with the ground ball, right, you're like, is there something here like is he just pounding this ball, you know, to the to the poolside defender? Maybe, but I think there's at least a non-zero chance that Amador plays well enough despite

the leap, even though at a glance you wouldn't think he's ready for the big leagues. He could just play well enough and keep the spot. It might be a 10% chance, but it's a chance nonetheless. So I'm watching him carefully. I think in like 15 team redraft leagues, he might be better than the guy you have on the corner right now. That's a possibility. No guarantees that he sticks, but if he does,

there's a lot of ways for him to be valuable in Roto leagues, and I think that's what makes Amador so appealing. Let's talk about Tyler Locklear for a moment. He joins the Mariners as a result of a Thai France injury. I see Justin Henry Malloy on paper, but a guy that plays a little bit of first base, so maybe slightly more floor from a defensive perspective because it's not DH only. Is that a fair assessment of Locklear based on the number scouting techniques that you like to use?

I suppose so. The 111 that he's hit at AAA this year is further than anything or harder than anything. Malloy's hit at least by tracking that that opens my eyes a little bit hard hit rate 59% in AAA so far. It's possible he has a little bit more power than Malloy maybe. But the swing and miss looks pretty real. Maybe. But the swing and miss looks pretty real.

It's slightly less swing and miss in game, which I wonder, like, is that going to be something we see change dramatically? We've talked about how it's not always easy to just take the minor league strikeout rate and point to a number and say that's what's happening in the big leagues. And the ABS system is one of the many reasons why that's complicated. But I think it's I think it's possible that Tyler Locklear also could stick. This is a Mariners team that hasn't quite done what you want to do as a lineup. Right. Like you hit you stay. I think that's a pretty fair assessment of where they're at right now. Yeah, have we heard anything about the timeline for something like a hairline fracture in the foot? I think the location of the fracture makes a big difference. And the heel seems like it's a place where it hurts a lot and it could be a big deal.

I'm just guessing here, but I think I don't think this is a 10 day thing. No, it seems like a three to four week minimum. Yeah, that's what I would guess. So he's got some runway. If he's taking a job. I mean, I guess somebody could push Garver back to catching. Yeah, you'd end up just playing Garver less, which is a little weird because of the money they gave him.

But at the same time, if he's not hitting and you need that production, you're going to do what you have to do. I do it is Garver just doing the every other year thing. It's so weird. I think he's doing the, it's hard to hit in Seattle as a righty thing. Yeah. I mean, every other year things don't exist. That's just fantasy, but it's so weird. He went from 155 to 43 WRC plus to 139 to 98 to 138 to 89. And finally, just in the last seven days, maybe some hope on the horizon.

He's walked more than he's struck out. He's popped a couple of home runs, got like a 409 OBP during that span. But most the most of the macro views of how the season is going are still not great for Mitch Garver. I do think the question would be like, would they ever play Locklear in the outfield? And usually the only way you can figure that out is taking a quick look and seeing if they do it.

I think he's listed. He's got third base listed as a position from time in the minors played 23 games there. Played more there in college. So that seems a little far fetched as far as a place they'd play him often. But at the same time, like Josh Rojas isn't necessarily entrenched. We've talked about Dylan Moore is a guy that moves all over.

It's nice to see him playing a little extra. So, yeah, I mean, with Dominic Kanzo and Mettanegger in one of the corners, I think there and then Garver at D.H. I think there is a little bit of runway for him. The big thing that you want to watch, I think is how he converts Locklear converts swing strike rates into strikeout rates, because I could see with those swing and strike rates, I could see him being more of a 30% K guy. If he's a

30% K guy, then he just fits right in next to Garver and Kanzo and right now and I don't think necessarily separates himself. It's like a reverse Loper Fido. And it's on the right side, too, so that could lend him to being nudged into more of a small side platoon role. I would say his chances of sticking are maybe slightly higher than Amador, just because he's coming off of better numbers. The team is desperate for offense.

He's got more of a runway, I think, you know, with Brennan Rogers, it's like a hamstring. Yeah, it's a hamstring. So if I give Almodore sort of like a 10 to 15 percent chance I give Locklear like a 20 to 25 percent chance of sticking. Hello guys I'm Ioan Kimmolere, host of the Athletic FC podcast and I'm here to tell you about a mouth-watering summer of international football. The Copa America and European Championships kick off in mid-June and we're going to be covering both tournaments every step of the way. With the World Cup in the US just two years away, the Copa America is the US men's national team's chance to prove they can really compete with heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina,

while England will be hoping to go one better than their agonising Euros final defeat last time out. So join me and the Athletics unrivaled team of football reporters Monday to Friday as we take you inside the biggest stories from the tournaments with more than a sprinkle of transfer talk on top as well. Just search the Athletic FC podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from. Got one more upcoming debut to get to. This one is going to happen Tuesday. At least it's expected to happen Tuesday. Carlos F. Rodriguez, important to note the middle initial because Carlos D. Rodriguez is also in the Brewers organization. Carlos F. Rodriguez, a starting pitcher who is actually, I think, co-pitcher of the year

in the minors for the Brewers, along with Robert Gasser, who unfortunately is getting another opinion on his arm, seems to have some kind of UCL weakness as it's been described. It looks like it could be a long absence for him. Carlos Rodriguez does not have front front of the rotation stuff. But man, the Brewers seem to have a type. We're talking about a guy with six pitches, three different fastballs. The four seamer seems to be the one that's the most vulnerable, but he can sink it.

He can cut it. He's got some breaking stuff. That's not bad. It seems like he's got a pretty good idea of how to use it. Look at the results at AA in 2023, 152 Ks, in 123 and two thirds innings, a sub three ERA, 110 whip. After a little bit of a bumpy start at AAA this year, he's reeled off a really impressive stretch there too,

kind of going back to May 4th, looking like someone that's deserved a promotion, 40 to nine strikeout to walk in 35 innings, sub three ERA, nice low whip. So kind of fits more to me, like from a how does he do it perspective into the Colin Ray, Tobias Myers mold than a future Freddie Peralta type where you're looking at him

as a 30 plus percent strikeout Ray guy. But man, the Brewers just keep finding a way to get by with a boatload of pitching injuries. This is happening because Ross, Gasser, Junis, and DL Hall are all in the IL right now. Yeah, I think what I see Rodriguez, one thing that the Braves starters did not have that Rodriguez does have, they do share maybe

a lack of fastball quality between the three of them. I mean, Waldrop and Rodriguez, Schwabach had a good foreseen. But the thing that Waldrop and Schwabach don't have is multiple fastballs. And I don't want to steal from a piece I'm working on with Jason Stark this week, but multiple fastballs is it's kind of a big deal. And the league has caught on to that. And the Brewers, as usual, are probably out in front of that. One of the things you see with Rodriguez is he threw

not equal amounts, but really close to equal amounts for Seamers, Cutters and Sinkers. And, you know, given that none of them is an above 100 stuff plus pitch, you could say, well, it's just a kitchen sink. But there's something about kitchen sink where you have three hard pitches. One thing you can do, and there's a piece by Robert Orr and Baseball Prospectus about this from Friday, which is you can just avoid throwing the wrong type of fastball to the wrong handedness at any time. So he can at least go forcing cutter to lefties and you can go cutter sinker to righties.

So you neutralize the platoon angle a little bit and that probably makes those fastballs play up in certain in terms of stuff plus. But then on top of that you just never can get comfortable sitting against him trying to pick a shape. I talked to Metanager about this and he said, you know, I don't really put the same swing on a four seamer and a sinker. And so if you, and I think this is a little bit of what's going on with Julio Rodriguez is they're playing inside, low and inside with him.

They're throwing him both four seamers and sinkers. And you put the four seam swing on the sinker low and inside, you just pound that in the ground. You put the sinker swing on the four seam low and inside, and you just hit a pop up, I think. It's almost as if there are ways for pitchers to change to change some of the outcomes on batting balls, like, like completely like the old dips theory.

You know, the more you see this type of approach work, the more you realize, oh, there's a way to be better than the sum of your parts because you have a way of making these things interact correctly. I think interaction effects are something that they're probably the teams are a little bit ahead of than us on the outside, because I've tried to put this into the model in different ways. I've talked about this, but it's kind of hard to do that. I think there's some other players we're going to talk about a little bit later

in the show that might be doing something similar to. And this is perhaps a group of pitchers that we're going to be more interested in in the immediate future. Right. So it doesn't jump off the page. It doesn't it doesn't usually bring a pitcher to the top 100 prospects list, but it works for a few different reasons. I mean, I do think that it's a little bit easier to evaluate a pitcher like, say, Kate Povich. It might be a little bit easier if he didn't have that cutter, because if he didn't have the cutter, you could say, oh, good slider, bad fastball. I'm not sure he has enough pitches to make that sort of thing work. But the cutter was a was a 125 stuff plus and the fastball was a 75. He threw 16% cutters and 49% fastballs. What if he plays with that ratio? What we've seen in

the minor leagues was weirdly he threw fewer foursiems in the minor leagues was weirdly he threw fewer four seams in the minor leagues I don't know why he would come up to the big leagues throwing 92 and and throw 49% fastballs unless he just didn't make it far enough into the game I'm out on Povich for now but if if you see a change in his cutter percentage that might change yes yeah I think the tricky thing about someone like Povich, the matchup's tough this week. So that doesn't help, but you have to, you almost have to take the chance in deeper leagues, at least, you know, keeper leagues, dynasty leagues, auto new. You have to take the chance before you get the proof, because if you wait for

proof, it's too expensive. Someone else jumps in, you're not just going to get them for a buck or two sneaking them through. Yeah, I have a, I have a variation on that theme for where the money went. That's that, that looks like, uh, was a little bit, I'll, I'll talk about that later, but yeah, definitely trying to say when other people were saying it for sure. So Carlos Rodriguez got me thinking a little bit just about all the different

places teams are finding talent. Now we've talked about it a little bit before where, especially pitching prospects, they just don't come from the same handful of places anymore. You can come from Juco's, you can come from Indieball, a lot of relievers seem to come from Indieball these days, at least for some clubs. You can come from a big college program. You can be developed as a high school player. Making the minor leagues smaller.

Yeah, some of that's happening there for sure. So there's created, there's these new avenues for players to go get some experience and come in and actually end up being big leaguers unexpectedly. And it makes me wonder, like every organization is different. But do you think in the broader sense, like player development still focuses on too few players. You get so concentrated on top prospects and the potentially elite players that you're not necessarily across the board looking at all the right places to find quality big leaguers.

I think Carlos Rodriguez was a sixth round pick. Right. So even if he's a big league starter for a couple of seasons, it's a pretty big win to find a guy like that and and get even a couple of seasons of starts out of him. And again, I think this varies a lot from org to org. But this seems like something that separates some of the better organizations in baseball from some of the weaker ones. Yeah, that's a tough question to answer.

What I do know is that every team generates reports for every player. So on some level, there is a action plan created for every player. And I think the problem is that like some of those plans have too much information with them. And so, you know, you might have a meeting with a player. You'll meet with every player in your organization and you have a meeting with the player and you give them this piece of paper. And it has like six bullet points on it.

And they tuned you out after two. And it has, you know, 14 stats on it. And they they're just like, man, I don't care about this. So, you know, they'll try to remember one or two of the things. They'll try to work on it. Then the gap between that and the actual coaching is probably where the focus on too few players happens because we know I've seen this and I'm not picking on the Rangers. I'm just sort of illustrating this. We saw with Mackenzie Gore too.

Jack Leiter and Mackenzie Gore were high value players in their organizations. High picks. A lot of and some struggles. You just see more coaches around them. You know, like I was literally at spring training and like Jack Leiter's throwing and his father's there and like the pitching, the pitching coordinators there and the pitching coaches there. You know, it's like, you know, the six round pick is probably throwing one thing over with nobody watching him looking at the thing. Or maybe there's some assistant watching him, you know. So the coaching aspect, they play it player development will tell you, no,

we have a plan for every player, but the plan is only as good as the implementation and the implementation, you run into biases in terms of who is the higher pick and who you, who you think has the higher ceiling. Um, which you can't say is a terrible idea because you want to focus on the places that might give you the most return. But yes, we definitely see people coming out of nowhere. We may see this less and less, the smaller the mile leagues are. But maybe the hope is more coaching could be like there's more teacher to pay to student ratio. If there's more, if there's fewer my leagues.

Yeah I mean I think that's one argument that makes a little bit of sense right if you do have smaller organizations then you would have more instruction on every player. I think it's also how you synthesize and communicate the information like giving everybody the same information is probably a bad approach from the beginning. We know people learn different ways. So yeah, you can overload some guys, you could give some guys a report and they could say, give me more. Yeah, so if you're not able to do that, that's a problem. Why are you talking in English? I don't mean it. I don't mean it versus Spanish, but like, why are you why are you talking in words? What would just give me a video of the guy that you want me to look like? You know, yeah. So, yeah, the. We're not we're not at the peak of player development. No, it seems like there's still a lot of opportunity, a lot of meat on the bone,

so to speak, as far as things that could be significantly changed. The related question is kind of a fantasy question, is do we focus too much on top end players? Not necessarily in our draft season coverage. We don't obsessively talk about players that are going in the first five rounds or first 10 rounds, but I think it's more of a prospect question. I think we do the same sort of thing. We're glued to the top end prospects.

Well, I got to have as many top 20, top 25 prospects as possible. And sometimes that means we're not paying enough attention to guys that are outside the top 50 or outside the top 100 or off the list completely. The next wave of players that will be in those positions comes from outside the list. And I think that's an opportunity as well. But even think about where the best pitchers in baseball right now, where they've come from. Looking at an ADP report from the end of this draft season, Spencer Strider was a fourth rounder out of Clemson. That wasn't an obvious this guy is going to be the best pitcher in baseball or the first fantasy pick off the board in a few years.

I know that was the covid year. I would say flip over to the batting side. I mean, I think the pitching side is all over the place. Yeah, you flip over to the batting side. I've got leaders last year in war. I think we saw Ronald Acuna Jr. coming or not. Some people saw it earlier. I'm not going to say I was the first on.

And I'm just saying he was a top prospect. Freddie Friedman has been around so long. I don't even remember. He was a first rounder. Mookie was one of the special, you know, Carson Sastuli Fringe five prospects that kind of jumped on jumped up on us. I think Matt Olson was a top prospect. Shota Tani sort of outside of that sphere.

I think Corey Seeger was a top prospect. Juan Soto kind of came up so quickly through the minors that he missed some lists. We didn't get any sort of prospect fatigue on Juan Soto because he moved so fast. Even Jordan Alvarez to some extent, it was like that. I mean, even though he was traded by one smart organization to another in a, in a very strange trade.

He sort of came on fast. Yeah. Simeon is like closest you have to like, I mean, he's not, what was his draft pick? I don't remember. Like Simeon a sixth round pick. And he was never really a top prospect and people questioned his inclusion in that trade. I think Simeon is probably the closest to your like pop-up You know Starting pitcher that that was on people's radars But he was the eighth place best player last year behind him yet Bobby Wood, Jr

William Contreras you who your regas Adley Richmond Francisco Lindor Corbin Carrollor, Corbin, Carol, Austin, Riley, and then the Andy Diaz, Kyle Tucker, Robert, J P Crawford, Gunnar Henderson. I mean, we're talking of the 20 17 we're top prospects. Yeah. So I think on the hitting side, it likes a little more sense. You kind of identify the talent fairly early on. They also give you so much information. They're also facing lots of different pitchers. Whereas I don't know, pitchers sometimes can just face, you know, they only face teams

every five days, so they don't necessarily always get the same diversity of who they're facing to get a sense of how good they actually are. Whereas a hitter, especially if they go through two or three levels, will face so many different pitchers that over time that you'll have to just assume they face some good pitchers in those numbers. You know what I mean? I think it makes a lot of sense on the hitting side, but you know, they're trying to figure things out on the pitching side.

We'll see from us, you know, I just, I just always want to get the stuff numbers. I just want to get the like movement numbers. I want to see what they're doing before I can buy all the way in, because I also do that going into this season. Some people in the Orioles organization had just an arm bruster ahead of Kate Povich and our bruster just really couldn't command the ball. And I think that was part of why Povich jumped ahead of him. But in the public sphere,

a lot of people had Povich ahead of arm brister and didn't really consider arm brister as part of it. Knowing that the Orioles kind of had an arm brister ahead and made me a little bit worried about, so what do they see in Povich that they're kind of slow walking him? And I would say generally the pitchers that we're getting now are more pitchers that we're getting out of need than desire. Is that a correct thing to say? Does that feel about right?

This time of year? You mean just the guys that are getting promoted? Yeah. Yeah, because you were, you were chosen for your arsenal at the beginning of the season. If you, yeah, if you were chosen, you were beginning of season or two weeks in, like that's, that's when they, that's the ones they really wanted in their rotation. Now it's like, hey, we need you kid. Or in the case of someone like Waldrop,

maybe you had something you clearly needed to work on, but you know, with another season or half season, you could become that kind of pitcher. That's entirely possible as well. Yeah, I think it's more need-based right now. And I think we're in that, that cluster, that second wave of call ups, right? The guys that teams didn't expect to be rookie of the year candidates. These are the guys that get called up now because.

Reinforcements are necessary, and these options are slightly better than the veterans that are in the organization. The guys that are 26, 27, 28 or they're just the guys are hurt and they're coming out from view or hurt. I call I feel like these are fab killers. I'd see it a little differently. I think they can be kind of good if you're opportunistic. I think they cost less than top prospects

if they struggle initially. The problem is there's this perfect tension between struggling enough to remain affordable, but struggling too much to losing the job. Yeah, it's a fine line to walk. And it's very schedule dependent. And I mean, I think a lot of these guys are basically streamers.

If you want to pay streamer prices, then hey, I'm on board, but I'm seeing bigger numbers. It's interesting that Waldrop, you know, because of when he debuted, wasn't available in some leagues that ran fab over the weekend in leagues where he was available. I think he came up a little cheaper because of how that debut went down. If he comes through with five scoreless and seven K's, I think you pay a premium. I think you pay like double. I got him for 11% of my budget in a league where I was looking for one more pitcher. I know it's risky.

I've got the money. It's fine. But I think how much did you pay the first 111 out of a thousand spicy. So it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't like a massive hammer bit. I remember the year George Kirby came up in top wars, it was over 20% to go get him. And it wasn't just because of that. I paid a two, I think I paid two something for Taj Bradley when he came up.

Yeah, the top end prospects cost that much. That was a crime killer. Yeah, and I didn't think it would be. I thought Taj Bradley was a great call when he came up. Oh, did you see that he might have fixed his tipping? Well, that's wonderful. So you know he has the glove in front of his face when we were looking at it? He's doing it here now.

So maybe you could, maybe people were seeing things through the fingers of the gloves So you know he has the glove in front of his face when we were looking at it? He's doing it here now. Mmm. So maybe you could, maybe people were seeing things through the fingers of the gloves or maybe he was fanning the glove or something, but he's doing something differently now. Just the shape or the location, yeah. He had a good start. Seven strikeouts, one walk, one earned. So I'm back on the Taj Bradley train, baby. You're back in. Sierra still loves him. 325 Sierra against that 517 ERA, 118 whip so far

over a strikeout per inning. I mean, look, how many pitchers do you have that come up for their first hundred or so innings striking out 28% of the batters they face as starters? It's a short list. So you have to take chances on guys like this before it happens, because if he reels off a stretch of seven or eight starts, kind of like the Grayson Rodriguez second half, which was even bigger, it will cost you a fortune to try and trade for Taj Bradley. It'll become a bad idea because you'll be overpaying again. So I think we're living right in that sweet spot right now

where he's firmly on that list of players you'd be trading for on the pitching front if you're trying to win next year and you need someone that could leap up to be more of an SP2 or an SP3. There's still room, there's still time for Taj Bradley to put that together. We had a question in our mailbag from Jeff Good, Low Guppy in the Discord. Freddy Peralta's poor starts and connecting them to anything in particular, because as

Jeff pointed out, he's had a few against seemingly ordinary opponents, the most recent one being the Tigers over the weekend. And someone chimed in right away and said, it's Velo. And I looked at the chart to see like, yeah, what happens when Freddy Peralta's velocity on his fastball dips? Generally he gets hit, which is true of most pitchers, right?

But he had on his most recent start Saturday, had his lowest average foreseen velocity the entire season. He was at ninety two nine. And it was one of his worst starts of the year. Previous like close bad start against Houston a few weeks ago on May 17th. Second worst fastball velocity. So, yeah, I think there's a pretty strong link between your velocity and what happens to you.

And we know guys fluctuate even without injuries. There's a little bit of fluctuation. I guess the good news for him is that the 93 three against Houston was followed up by 94 eight. Yeah, for the season, he's still holding velocity similar to what he had in 2023. It's pretty rare, though, dude. Like usually when you see a 92, nine from a guy who averages 95, you're like, Oh, I know what's coming next on the news wire.

Have you ever looked at the game by game extension numbers on Savant? Oh, my God, was his extension off? Yeah, his extension was off both of the when his when his when his VLO goes down, his extension gets to the shorter end of his range. So I don't know, was that an injury or is that just a mechanical tweak that needs to be made? And he did this last year a couple of times too. 502, 2023, 93.9, 508, 23, 95.1. And I guess he just does this. That's so weird. Earlier you said the shelf used to be 94, right? Yeah. So if he's throwing 95 plus, that means he's,

that means some of those pitches are 96. Right. He lives right by that shelf. He's not the only guy that does this. There's plenty of other pictures that do. I think we started talking about this at the trade deadline last year with Jack Flaherty. It's pretty extreme in Flaherty's case. Yeah. But you know, with the, it's like this weird combination of extension and cross body. I know this because Nick Pollock's not a big fan of Freddie Perot. And he hates cross body pitchers. Like Jake Arietta had some similarities, at least in the cross body nature, and did not

have the longest career, even though he dedicated himself to prolonging his career, as he put it. It worked pretty well for a while. So, I mean, it's hard to say. It's like, would you just live with that? This is great. Like Keeper dynasty. If you're the Brewers, like I doubt the Brewers are going to assign Freddie Peralta to a long term extension. They did sign him to one. Let's get two club options these next two seasons. So your thinking would be they wouldn't extend them beyond 26, which he'll be 30 then anyway. They just keep doing those options and someone else signs him at 30. Yeah, right. And then they let they traded away burns and Woodruff got hurt.

Otherwise, I think he'd be someone else's big money SP one instead of an injury project for the Brewers to put back together. But yeah, I think it's, it's as simple as the fastball velocity with the struggles of Freddie Peralta and a handful of outing so far this season, let's get to a, where the money went, the 12 most added players from the 12 team RotoWire online championship. A few names really jump off the page.

Some we've talked about before, so we're not going to get into great detail on those. But Elliott Ramos has started every game for the Giants since May 10th and is now. Hitting high in the batting order to play not just against lefties playing some center field, they sent Luis Bato down. I did not think Elliott Ramos was going to become shallow league relevant this year. I did not see that coming, but it's happening. And I'm curious as someone who sees him a lot. Do you think this is legit?

Do you think this is a guy that we liked as a prospect a few years ago? Working at it, working at it and finally getting the pieces to fit, because his opportunities have been much more up and down. And this is a guy that's had three different seasons in which he's appeared in the big leagues, but just crossed over the 200 plate appearance career threshold over the weekend. Yeah, you know, his zone minus chase rate is is above average, actually. He's somebody that's that's chased a little bit, been very aggressive in the past, but he's found this like really good mix of being aggressive in the zone and actually passive outside the zone, which surprises me,

given my previous looks at him. He's always had the bat speed. And that's evident in his maxi being his barrel rates. He's going to have swing and miss. And there's something about the passivity that can maybe turn some of those sort of called strike threes into strikeouts, you know? So he he's played with that toggle. Do I walk more and strike out more? Do I make more contact and walk less? That's that's the kind of dimension of his game. Do I walk more and strike out more? Do I make more contact and walk less?

That's that's the kind of dimension of his game that is the least solid for me. You know, they're just here. Put it another way. The number of people who strike out 30 percent of the time in the game is low. We have 10 players in the major leagues that are qualified for the batting title and have struck out 30% of the time. Now all of them hit the ball hard and in fact a lot of them are above average. In fact all of them are near average or above average except for Mitch Garver, Ellie De La Cruz, Giancarlo Stanton, Paul De Jong, O'Neill Cruz, Brent Rooker, Nolan Gorman, Michael Bush, and Will Benson.

Will Benson does not actually hit the ball that hard. It's a viable strategy. He looks like he's going to stick. The batting average is coming down. None of these guys has a good batting average. The best banger I have on here is Brett Rooker, who has a 367 BABIP. The average batting average of the top 10, just by eyeballing it, is about 220.

So if you can handle a 225 batting average from Heliot Ramos and I don't know, like 30 type homerun power, then he's your man. So he's playing centerfield, which is a bit of a surprise, but we have seen him steal some bases in the minors, not a ton. then he's your man. So he's playing center field, which is a bit of a surprise, but we have seen him steal some bases in the minors, not a ton, but I think he could run a little to go along with some power.

If it's a 240 average passable OBP, everyday playing time, I think that actually works, at least in weeks where they've got a full schedule. I don't know if Ramos is staying on the rosters that picked him up this weekend in 12 team leagues, he seems more like an on the roster, off the roster kind of player for me. I mean, yeah, because how often do you want to play him at home where it's like hard for him to hit homers?

Yeah, but he lives in the space where he's an above average player by rest of season projections, kind of in the Jesus Sanchez, Mitch Hanager territory, like just tumbling up and down on rosters over and over again. So I think that's what he is at this point. Yeah, I mean, 15 teamers streamers you want on your bench, you put like in 12 teamers, I think definitely a streamer where you kind of look at the schedule. Another place where he's a better fit than streaming is if you've decided to pump out an average

because not I mean like it's you know some of his productions have a 231 and some have a 250 so there's a little disagreement there but he just you'd be a lot safer if you didn't care about his batting average. Yeah if you're not that worried about losing some points in that category I think he's a better fit on a roster like that. A lot of pitchers that were part of this cluster. Now we told you about David Peterson two weeks ago, maybe or last week. Yeah, you mentioned him maybe being more interesting than we thought in the past. I was looking at his numbers. They were a little better than I remembered.

I think just by strikeout and walk rate, I looked at David Peterson's page and said, hey, that's a read Deppmer's player page. It's not. They're different pitchers, but. Yeah, he's got a wide arsenal. The big thing about him is whether he can command it because he's got multiple fastballs, good slider, good change up. I mean, you know, I think he's that at home guy.

Oh, have you seen what's Richardson's fastball velocity? I have not. Oh my goodness, I need to get it in front of me here real quick. It's pretty impressive. So he's gone from this year, he's gone from his lowest point was 9-2-0 on April 30th. And he's at 94 now. But in the 94 game against Pittsburgh, he was hitting 97, 98, I think. Nice. So that changes his prospects a little bit.

I think it means a little bit something for David Festa as well. But I know that Stuff Plus doesn't really love swimming towards Richardson, but he commands the ball well. And if that V lo keeps pushing, it's going to make everything better. That's the funny thing about V lo. It doesn't just make your fastball better. It makes everything better. It's good point. I think the group of pitchers that got picked up, Max Meyer got scooped up in a bunch of 12s, which is a little surprising. They got injuries in that rotation. so he's probably coming back. What's amazing

is I thought it was malpractice when they sent him down early in the season. Hasn't proven to be that at all. 675, ERA, 168 whip, and AAA. So his chances of sticking are going to hinge on him being a lot better than he was at AAA. You look at Meyer, who has easily the best stuff numbers of everybody in this group against guys like Jake Ervin, Woods Richardson, David Peterson, and JP Sears. Everybody else seems to have more job security, and the guy we haven't mentioned probably all season is Jake Ervin.

Two of his last three starts have been against Atlanta. He's gone 12 scoreless innings against them in those outings with a 64-14 strikeout to walk now on the season. It's below a strikeout per inning, but the results are great and he's working with basically a four seamer and a curveball as his primary pitches, but he also has a sinker and a cutter that he's throwing in there too. I know that those ratios, the 3-12 and the 312 and the 103 are nothing you or I would expect from him going forward.

But what did we miss with Jake Irvin? Why is it working so well for him? Three fastballs. That's the secret. Hmm. Seems like this little trend here. Yeah, I do think, I mean, first of all, it's hard, it's hard for the stuff model to decide, you know, how to define the pitcher if they have three fastballs.

And he truly is a three fastball, plus the platoon aspect that I mentioned. No, I think Irvin is decent. I wanted to add a note about Meyer real quick. What's fun now is if they were in AAA on fan graphs, you can see their pitch percentage. He had a 15% change up usage in the major leagues and 22% in the minors, 49% slider in the majors, 35% in the minors. So he obviously they went back down and said, work on your change up. And so I think that has a lot to do with why his numbers look the way they did.

I expect him to come back and be closer to 50 50 fastball slider. But if he, if he got anywhere with his change up in terms of locations and I expect him to come back and be closer to 50-50 fastball slider. But if he got anywhere with his change up in terms of locations and the model says that his locations on the change up were good, maybe he could at least locate some change ups well, even if they're not amazing shapes and make the most out of his slider by showing a different shape. So I think generally his fastball and slider are good enough to make him a good pitcher. And despite the numbers, this is working on something, I think. Yeah, I think it's an important bit of context to put behind the Max Meyer struggles.

And given all the injuries, maybe he pitches well enough to actually stick for good this time around. One other hitter that I didn't really mention before, Andrew Vaughn, last 30 days, 250, 313, 466, five homers, 13 runs, 13 RBIs. That's like mid to upper 20s home run power if you kind of stretch it over a full season with the run production you'd expect from a guy in the lineup every day. So for your deep leagues, Andrew Vaughn, maybe finally doing the things we hoped he would do at the very beginning of the season. He just he's weird because I like I picked I picked him up a couple of times just out of just sheer desperate need for somebody. And there was nothing that spoke well of him.

No, nothing looked good. Nothing looked good. And to this date, he still doesn't pull the ball enough for me. But what you can see in his rolling graphs is he's really changed his fly ball rate. He's at least putting the ball in the air more now, and that's allowing him to sometimes hit homers. I mean he was he was really not hitting homers. With his max EV I would be telling him to pull the ball more. I would be telling him to pull the ball 44 percent of the

time which he's never done. And I would take the associated strikeouts because he has good swing strike rate and I think he could hit 30 homers. I think he could hit 30 homers with a different organization if he would listen. I mean, maybe it's maybe it's maybe this is who he is and he doesn't want to change. I wish I knew more for sure on that, because that would give me a better guide for keeper and dynasty leagues to say, hey, you know, maybe this will be better in twenty twenty five. Maybe someone will go out and get them and unlock everything we liked about him going back to his time as a prospect. What I did in my leagues was what my main event, am I boasting or anyway, I'm excited

about this. my my results in my main event. Masataka Yoshida, 43 to 32 for Thai France, lost Thai France, sorry. But Yoshida is going on rehab. So this is like if he was back in the big leagues, I think it costs much more than 43. So I think this was good timing. Eloy Jimenez, thirty one to fifteen. That's riskier because he could come back and then go back down.

But he's on his way back. Harrison Bader, twenty to ten. Bader is just a decent player and we had a need. And I think that what I've seen just in my eyes is perhaps hitting, you know, a little bit more fly balls, a little bit more power. It hasn't turned into home runs yet, but he's he's always had that as a skill set. And then Jack Sawinski has a great has a great schedule this week. Not a lot of lefties. So I'm hoping he stays up for the whole week. So I took him as a streamer. The reason I bring this up also is because we dropped Chas McCormick, which is one of those few not injured drops.

You know, he just, you can see that he played Saturday and Sunday, but they played lefties. So we just didn't have enough information about how he would play. It almost seems like Trey Cabbage has moved ahead of him, which is bad, because if Tucker comes back, that might make Chas like a fifth outfielder. Yeah. They played Cabbage in right field Wednesday and Friday last week. And those were against right-handed starter. And they played Maurice you. That's post Tucker injury, right? Like Tucker was injured those games.

Yeah. Tucker's been out for, since Monday, I think it was the last time he was in the starting lineup. That's when we really got, we were like, oh God, I guess it's time to move on. That Tucker injury could be the thing that leaves the door open for McCormick in a part-time role to claw his way back. But yes, he is shaped up to be one of the biggest

disappointments for me this year, because I thought he was a slam dunk great value in the middle rounds where he was going and just has not worked out that way. Real quick before we sign off, just a quick look at the players that were dropped in a lot of places. I think it was mostly injured and option players because it was like Robert Gasser who was going to be down for a while regardless of what the

third opinion says. France who you dropped, Luis Matos, who got optioned, Ryan Weathers picked up a left index finger strain, kind of a bummer for him as someone who's having a breakout year. And Trevor Williams also pitching really well in that Nats rotation went down with a right flexor strain, so that could be a lengthy absence.

You know, Christian Javier as Tommy John, that's an easy cut for a lot of people, really disappointing. Tommy Pham was a surprising drop for me in 12s, I guess it's because you just need guys that can Christian Javier as Tommy John. That's an easy cut for a lot of people. It's really disappointing. Tommy Pham was a surprising drop for me in 12. I guess it's because you just need guys that can play and sometimes you can't wait a week. It sounds like he could be back relatively quickly from that ankle injury. And he was playing pretty well before he went on the I.L. So I imagine we'll be talking about Tommy Pham as a where the money went guy

soon enough getting back onto rosters. Yeah. Interesting that maybe some of the bat speed has dropped because his max TV is not there and he was even commenting on Twitter the other day about You know why when he does make solid contact it's not going as far So he was she's he's on to it. Yeah, well Maybe the new baseballs for the kid to come out in June. It's a joke. More on that soon. Yeah.

I can get out of bed. Well, you got out of bed long enough to get an hour long show done today. So I appreciate that because finding a last minute sub is never, never fun. And I think it's better when you and I are here, ideally on that note, just a reminder, you can get a subscription to the athletic checkout, you know, as by low piece, the athletic.com comm slash rates and barrels lots of other great content We've got some stuff we're gonna talk about with Britt the annual player survey came out today So we'll talk a lot about those results on our Tuesday episode. Hopefully, you know will be there

We'll see if you continue to recover or not That's up in the air at this point on Twitter, send him well wishes at you know, Sarah's find me at Derek from I breathe. You can find the pod at rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Hello guys, I'm Ioan Kimmolere, host of the Athletic FC podcast, and I'm here to tell you about a mouth-watering summer of

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