Rates & Barrels - A Return to 'On the Clock' Status: Breakouts v. Rebounds, Joe Musgrove as an SP1 & Luis Robert Love

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Eno and DVR begin the 'On the Clock' phase of the year as another batch of slow drafts gets underway. They discuss how Draft & Hold formats modify their roster builds -- including a willingness to pay premiums for closers -- along with their thoughts about several early-rounders. Plus, they weigh the possibility of a step forward from Jazz Chisholm against the possibility of a rebound from Cody Bellinger or Christian Yelich, Joe Musgrove's bid for SP1 status, Aaron Ashby's Stuff+ shortcomings, and more.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at 33% off for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, January 5th, first episode of the pod for 2022. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will answer a wide variety of mailbag questions that have come in in the last couple of weeks. So lots of topics to get to. We have some valuation questions. We have a question about some guys that don't pop in this stuff plus model and why that might be the case we're going to talk a little bit about some early draft strategy stuff mostly looking at a few players in the early rounds that are either jumping up a little bit unexpectedly or a couple that are starting to fall a bit just some observations from an fbc 50 that i'm in right now looking at the overall ad ADP trends. Happy New Year to you.

How did the last couple of weeks treat you while we were off? It's weird. It's like I got to relearn everything. You have all these routines that you do. And then for two weeks, I just did nothing really. I mean, I ran a little. I went to San Diego and went to the, went to San Diego, um, and, uh, went to the zoo in the safari park down there and nothing too out of the ordinary shout out to everybody

who showed up to the meetup. Uh, it was, it was fairly raucous by the end. Uh, uh, we had a good time discussing all things Padres and fantasy baseball. Um, and we had a good little crew there at Pure Project. In fact, shout out to Pure Project. Hey, yeah, it's a nice treat for those of you watching on YouTube. Yeah, we got a nice couple of tables outside. And a shout out to my father-in-law,

who had to wake up in the middle of the night and let me in. Because I forgot where the key was. I had to hop the fence. I was stuck at a locked door. Did that set off an alarm or anything? No, but a couple days later uh he was installing some new security cameras he's like if you know after a few beers can get to the door safely this is not a safe perimeter yeah so uh i i i'm a security consultant. That's good.

That's good that you offer that service. It's one of the weak points in the defense. Fantastic. Well, some things that have been on my mind, obviously not redecorating. If you're watching on YouTube, the walls and crap behind me have remained pretty much unchanged. If you look very carefully,

that's a printer over my shoulder, my right shoulder, but it's in a reflection, so it's really confusing, especially with me looking into the camera and not knowing what side that really is. But right over here, we have four rolls of scotch tape. Yeah, we've got an excess coming out of Christmas, so if you need scotch tape, I am your guy, Eno. Let me know if you need to borrow or take a couple of rolls.

But actually, I had a friend who sent me a really nice picture to hang in the background. It's too nice to go in my background. It's going to end up in the living room. It's more of a housewarming gift for Steph and I for the move out here. So while that was a great gesture and intended to fix the problem behind me, we are still awaiting something else for that space. You're looking for more of a, it looks um maybe a closet door uh picture yeah closet door kind of pictured like you just need to recreate some of your old background on the closet door i

think i know i gave i gave the actual folding fake doors away because there was no way to get those out here and the stuff that was on those shelves is in a box by my feet so it's all here i just have to figure out what i'm gonna get like a bookshelf or something and i'll load that up eventually it'll get there so still not getting used to it i had some house shenanigans when i came home as well the switch uh that that takes the internet uh and gives it to the rest of our house uh just stopped working uh so i had to go get a new switch and then in one of the rooms, we have like a receiver

that like, you know, takes the Apple TV and takes everything and that just stopped working. So I feel like my house got hit by lightning or something. I was gone. It's very strange.

We were gone like six days, seven days. There was no lightning near us while you were gone? There was never lightning. It's not a thing here. It went like 30 degrees. It got cold, right? It did. I mean, it got cold for people here. Not cold for you. gone? I just never liked it. It's not a thing here. It went like 30 degrees. It got cold, right? It did.

I mean, it got cold for people here. Not cold for you. Yeah, I just kind of, well, I guess I'll throw on a sweatshirt. I guess I'll wear actual pants today instead of shorts. No, I have at least adapted. I don't wear shorts every day

like I did for the first three months that I lived here. You would fit in with a lot of Northern Californians. Slowly, slowly but surely. I am beginning to make an impact lived here. You would fit in with a lot of Northern Californians. Slowly, slowly but surely. I am beginning to make an impact around here. But we've reached the point of the year, with it being the new year,

where one or both of us is pretty much constantly on the clock now, from now until opening day, whenever the heck opening day ends up being. There's been a lot of interesting threads popping up. I think with fantasy football season ending, we're going to see even more people getting back into the fray, into the conversation.

So that's nice to see. Obviously the NFBC 50s, all the draft and hold stuff we've talked about, that's picking up as well. I'm in one right now. We're doing one as an under the radar crew, just to have some fodder for that show. That comes back next Tuesday, by the way.

So if you listen to both shows, good news, that's coming back as well. Do you have a preference for like the order of the types of uh of drafts that you're doing especially on nfbc do you'd like to start with draft and hold to really uh test your depth and not and and get a full knowledge of the entire player field uh before you start separating like who you actually want at the top for like a 15 team or whatever like a non-draft and hold yeah because i feel in a lot of ways i feel like draft and hold leagues and best ball leagues and the things that we can do now have replaced what mock drafts used to be like 10 years ago yeah might as well might as well put some skin in

the game if you're gonna mock draft anyway right. Right. And I just think the draft and whole element, not having to make in-season pickups, gives you more license to just keep piling up drafts. It's easy to set lineups a couple times a week. It's time-consuming to add more and more fab to the equation at a certain point. So I think there's also another thing to it is that those bottom guys that aren't being drafted, that you won't draft in 15 team leagues at the beginning. Now they're at the bottom, but you'll start to see some percolation, right? Like you'll start to see some guys that, you know, people are like, oh, oh, I drafted him

in like the 40th in my, you know, 50 round drafting hold. And then you'll, oh oh that's 35th oh now he's actually a good target for my bench in the 15 teamers and stuff you know like you start to like uh start to spot some players you're like oh i wish i had picked that guy you know and then you'd have to take him to 35th the next time then you have to take him to 30th and now he's he's a viable bench guy there's something kind of funny about when player prices change, either from the previous season to the current one or over the course of draft season. If you get in November, December, January, and you draft again, February, March,

and that movement you just described occurs, it's for some reason, even if you really like that player and even if you didn't, let's not say discover them, but let's just say you were among the first people to start drafting them and kind of bring some of the attention toward them it's funny how you start to abandon them at a certain point on on price reasons and it it's even like more intense when you're talking about a player like cedric mullins is probably the best example is from last year the people that loved cedric mullins last year it's a late round interesting flyer are to me almost less likely to have him as a top 30 guy in 2022 because you got the discount you you already you reap the benefits you you found all the value last year that he could

possibly bring and i think there's something psychologically difficult about paying full price when the price jumps that much for a player that you previously liked as much or more than anybody else I feel you really on the pitching side and I think that it's just because um you know uh people sort of think that I don't know pitching is such a it's such a cra a crapshoot. I love Jose Arquiti. I would never pick him. There's a certain point where I would never pick him because I just don't think he has... I don't think he's an ace.

Brandon Woodruff is one of the few guys that I picked late, middle, and top. I was like, I'm going to follow this guy all the way to the top. But he just, he just showed more,

I think in terms of a velo command and, and, and strikeout rate, honestly, you kind of want to see that strikeout rate, follow the guy. So yeah, I really feel it on pitching.

You know, there'll be guys that I was in on last year. John means is the guy that actually comes to mind where, when he was free, I had tons of John Means. When he was a top 40 pick, a top 40 starting pitcher, I was like, he still has to pitch in Baltimore, right? Right. Most of the room for value profit was gone.

So it just became a lot less appealing to jump in in that spot. To answer the original question i i do like the draft and holds especially the 15 teamers the 12s are good too though just to figure out more paths to the different things that you're going to need right like the the exercise is making sure you're balanced across all the categories without in-season pickups you can't really punt a category because these leagues all have overall prizes. Even in the case of the NFBC 50s, there's only three overall prizes. There's a main event to the overall winner.

Then there's three online championship entries to second place and then one online championship entry for third place. But you still want to be in the running for that. So by not punting any categories, you give yourself at least a chance, even even if you're drafting this early of building a team that can get there i think it's it's a great way to say in a satellite league with no overall then you can punt because then it's the same all you're trying to do is win yeah then it's the same as nl labor or whatever any any standalone league that you play in where it's like well, strategy unfolded this way. I'm punting average or I'm punting saves or whatever it is. Punting a category is a whole other conversation for probably another day.

But the thing I like the most about draft and hold leagues this time of year, aside from digging into the very depths of the player pool and finding some of the guys that are either going to be late rounders, like fringe, like 25 to 30 round picks later, or even people were going to pick up later. I like trying to figure out where the weak spots are on the board. Positionally speaking, what are the shapes of the positions? What happens if I draft the front versus the back versus the middle? What happens if I get saves early? What happens if I don't get any saves early? What happens if I'm speed light? What happens if I'm saves early what happens if i don't get any saves early what happens if i'm speed light what happens if i'm power heavy you can go through all those exercises and i realize you know every draft is different but i do think putting yourself in that position

at least one time before you go into the drafts that count more helps you i think it makes you less likely to make a bad decision later when there are probably higher stakes. Yeah. It ties into that sort of round 30 through 40, those players. That's, that's what you're, you're finding out in the draft and holds and those deep picks, you're finding out like, where are there, where, where is their talent late? And where could I, you know, can I just, can I pass on outfielders? Can I just, you know, get two or three good outfielders and then cobble together outfielders late because there's a ton of outfielders? Can I just get two or three good outfielders and then cobble together outfielders late

because there's a ton of outfielders in the late rounds that I still like? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I think that you gain a lot of knowledge for the draft and holds early on. The other thing I was going to ask you about just draft and holds in general, do you have a core strategy that changes without the benefit of in-season pickup. So an example of this might be being more aggressive with starting pitching, because if you feel like as a player, your strength in season is streaming pitchers and picking up the two-start guys and finding guys in

season who weren't drafted to stick on your roster. If you believe that's a skill you have, that skill is not as much available to you if you don't have in-season pickups. So then maybe you have to push pitching a little earlier. Or is there anything else like that that you take into consideration when you're building a team for this format? Because it's not exactly the same. There's some people that go even more aggressive with closers, right? You don't get the chance to chase saves with that. That's where I was going to go.

I am a little bit more aggressive with saves and draft and hold than I would be normally. And it's not starting pitchers. Here's why. For me, I get 13 shots at it, maybe 14 shots at starting pitchers. That's the number I'm looking to get in a draft and hold for starting pitchers. And if you give me 13 shots at it,

I feel like I'm hoping i can get six or seven or nine of which two are like streamers you know two or three are streamers that's all you need you're you're aiming to get you know you're aiming to get six good starting pitchers over the course of the season you can't give me 13 shots i feel like like, yeah, I can do this, you know, especially since I have my darling, you know, long shots, you know, where I, oh man, I love, I love picking starting pitchers. The last three, four, you know, picks of the, of a draft and hold that I'm, I'm totally cool with leaving those out there. I'm always, I always have names where I'm like, that's fine. I still like this guy, this guy and this guy. But closers, yeah, there are names I like.

Like Jake Cousins. Here's a guy that Pitching Plus loves, Stuff Plus loves. There's a path to him getting saved. I mean, it's a tough one. Hater gets traded. Devin Williams gets hurt that exists there's that universe exists right i mean that's totally it's plausible haters getting to the near the end of his team control and and the brewers will do anything and then devin williams was not injured

right uh but you know just taking jake cousins and like giving him a whole roster spot just you don't want to do too much of that you know like and there are tons of guys like that um taylor taylor wells is that his name tyler wells walls tyler tyler tyler tyler wells is the reliever and taylor walls is the shortstop taylor wells is the guy i'm talking about uh you know there's guys uh there's a ton of guys that pop on my list uh in terms of uh pitching plus and pitching plus for relievers is is better than projections so it's like ah i love these guys these are the i love all these but you don't you don't want to have them on your

roster like because they're they're like five percent plays you know what i mean there's like a there's a real long shot and the like yeah okay you can maybe paper over uh some weeks where you're like i don't have a starting pitcher this week i'm just gonna put in my you know really good middle reliever that i that i spotted but that's that's not ideal that's that's not necessarily uh a league winning strategy it's something that you do in the worst case so I want two closers that I think are going to be closers all year. And then I'll take, I'll take about four to five shots. Uh, and those can be late because I feel like, you know, I have a good, I have a good method, but I still want those two good closers and I want them to be two good closers. Not, um, i don't know what's what's going

on in san diego pomerantz or like i don't he's healthy that's a shot you know what i'm saying like i think there's probably 10 or 12 uh bullpen situations right now that are just shots in the dark you're gonna take a shot at them that's fine i we all have to do it but that means you have to get two out of the top 12 yeah it's kind of funny that in draft and hold right now the things i'm thinking the most about early are saves and batting average like who am i what have i become well they're probably a close third very difficult and saves and draft and holds it's like i'm saying like you only get five shots at it you can you can't do that like hot pickup there will be tons of saves that are not used in your drafting hold right the threshold for winning the category is actually lower instead of having three roster spots worth of 30 save guys to win the category you can win it at 70 70 or 75 might be enough and i think that's where

so it was a yancey eaton tweet friend of the pod Yancey, had a tweet back the 29th of December. Here it is. Having done absolutely zero fantasy baseball research for the 2022 season, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the overall champions of most of the big NFPC leagues will have gotten there by not drafting a relief pitcher in the first three rounds. Now, I think that gets at something different than drafting a hole. I do think this is one of the key differences. I think some of the ADP we see now is unique to this format. So there's going to be some adjustments. I think you see Hayter and Liam Hendricks going in the first three rounds of a lot of drafts right now.

Because if you can't make in-season moves, and if you believe the quality of the hitters or the starting pitchers you're looking at in that range are pretty similar to the guys that are going to be there around or two or three rounds later you might as well lock in one of the handful of elite relievers with maximum job security so i think that that scarcity leaning into that scarcity i think it's actually a good idea where i think yancey's point is is more like when we get to the main event in march well you get in season moves there and i don't think you necessarily have to go get Hayter. Or Hendricks in the third or even the fourth round. To win there. But you do have to be.

Either good at finding those second tier guys. Or third tier guys that end up. Rising into consistent roles. Or you have to be really good at playing fab. Play to your strengths. But. I think all this comes back to. One simple belief. there are so many ways

to build a roster so many ways to actually win i just think you have to know like what is the cost of doing that can you do enough things right to offset the high opportunity cost of taking a hater or a hendrix yeah that early because the the fab cost is not only the fab dollars you're spending uh what it means to me is uh in order to be good at getting closers in fab and nfbc uh you actually need to devote a bench spot to a reliever it's very awkward it's very strange but what you need to do is buy the reliever for two dollars two weeks before he becomes closer And you need to hold him on your bench for a week or two. And you need to know when that shot is gone and you need to replace that $2 reliever with another one.

That's been how I've found success, is not spending hundreds of dollars on a newly minted closer that then loses the job the next week. It's been spending, you know, two to $20 on a guy that's behind maybe a shaky closer that, you know, hasn't lost his job yet. And then holding onto him for a couple of weeks. That's, that's where I found some success. So the equivalent of that in draft and hold, I don't really know what it is. I think it's to me, it's,

I don't really want to spend a third or fourth round pick on a closer. So what I ended up doing is trying to get like rice, L Iglesias and, uh, it was another like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think we had Presley and Iglesias in our, in our, uh, draft and hold that we did recently, but that's, those are the two names. Like if I could double tap those, even at nine or seven eight or something like i'd feel i'd feel better um and so i'd want i want two good ones that i think will actually close all

year that you know have some good evidence behind them some backing um before i i start taking shots but i don't necessarily in the top three rounds, I want to take an ace starting pitcher and two great bats. I think this also leads to a lot of questions to what kinds of pitchers are falling a little bit that could be SP1s. Who are either emerging pitchers that can make that leap or guys that maybe pitch to that level

but aren't being treated that way? pitchers that can make that leap or guys that maybe pitched to that level, but aren't being treated that way. I found that the bounce back SP ones are really interesting in that regard. And I have a piece coming out tomorrow on that about Nola and Darvish and two more names that I won't name because we have a paywall, I guess. Well, yeah.

I mean, you should save that. It's a good time to say you know we did we did that no we did that we did a little talk we did a little piece in the off season uh you know december 27th or so about about uh just taking nola's old strand rate his career strand rate and replacing it and giving him a 3.8 era basically uh based on his career strand rate versus his uh his strand rate last year so uh nola darvish sale are uh guys i like uh as secondary i i think going bat bat and getting two of those three uh if that's possible for you in a draft i think that's a that's a winning

strategy yeah i i'm comfortable building it out that way i i am comfortable taking hater or hendrix late in the third round of a 12 teamer by the way i just did it actually yesterday liam hendrix at 3 11 and then there's a little bit more uh pressure on getting top three to five talents in every in every at every position right yeah because i also, in addition to getting Hendricks, two rounds later, I took Ryan Presley, so I feel great about saves. I grabbed Will Smith

as the second catcher off the board in that league, which I don't normally get catchers that early either. Because the replacement value is so high. Yeah, so that was unusual. And then Charlie Morton is now my SP1 on that team, but I'm fine with that because I'm going to go aggressive in the next five rounds, probably getting three to four more starting pitchers behind Morton.

And then everyone's going to say, well, what about your offense? Well, I have a Tucker, Betts, Tim Anderson, Will Smith, Jazz Chisholm first five. Like I have a first five of guys that mostly do everything. Will Smith's the only guy doesn't really run on that group so i've got the results of your this is interesting i think this will be this will allow for a segue into our next topic uh what was the result of your discussion of uh jazz chisholm versus uh christian yelich and um cody ballinger on twitter today did you get any interesting feedback?

Because I've seen a lot of jazz. He's climbing up on draft boards. And sometimes where I see him, I say, that seems a little high for me because what was the second half batting average? It's a problem. I think I took him at 86th overall and i think it was it was the only pick i've made so far in this slow draft where i sort of had regrets quickly about it like usually i don't have a lot of regrets about the way i build a team i'm pretty confident what i'm doing even if i'm wrong like i end up finding out i'm wrong later but i

still feel good about it in the moment. Lovely. Good feeling. The, the jazz chisel thing that would inspire the tweet was like, how much more likely is this guy gets better with K rate with the ground ball rate, maybe coming down, you know, with the things that he needs to do to take that next step.

Is that more likely or just as likely as a yellow bounce back? And I'm talking 80 to 90 that was what i threw out there in the tweet 80 to 90 is he gonna be an mvp again probably not like it's hard to get to the mvp level but we're saying like 270 25 to 30 homers 10 steals and a bunch of runs scored in rbis right if yellich does that where he's gonna be worth more than jazz i think right he'd probably be a third rounder next year if he did that. Maybe even a little earlier because he's been an early first rounder before. Same kind of principles apply to Cody Bellinger.

We said before, they're always joined together. I think we talked about in the rebounds episode, Bellinger pops a little bit more as a more likely to bounce back bat, which makes some sense. But I guess what I love about building teams is these sorts of puzzles, and it's a future projection built into it. What are these things is the most likely,

and then beyond that, can you find similarly likely things that are going to happen later? Like the things you need Jazz Chisholm to do are probably true of guys that are going to go later that didn't already get as much playing time as he did. And that could also vault them up into top 50 overall status.

Right. I think with jazz, I'm okay where I got them. I think there were much safer things I could have done and maybe safer things I should have done. I had a great batting average foundation. I think he kind of pushes back against that a little bit, but I can, I could absorb it. Like it. So it he kind of pushes back against that a little bit, but I can,

I could absorb it. Like it's, it sort of made sense there. The speed's real, the power is still developing. There's enough there where I'm, I'm not angry about it, but if you said drafting that same spot,

you get the same foundation, how many times out of 10, are you taking jazz chisel them right there? Maybe it's five, maybe it's even three, and maybe it's a mix of other guys. Maybe it's a mix of Bellinger and Yelich for the other third of those entries. And then it's a pitcher.

Maybe it's just going with Jose Barrios or someone else in that spot to back up Morton in the other couple of turns. I find it fascinating what you're talking about in terms of what you're asking them to do. I think, so let's say there's a risk that someone was found out, right? There's a risk that any player that there was something that the league did in the second half or, you know, so for example, Cody Bellinger saw a lot more fastballs in the second half last year, Jeff Zimmerman had a tweet about this. So what you're asking him to do is two things.

You're asking him to be healthy and to do something about maybe high fastballs or fastballs in general, right? Okay. So those two things. With Jazz Chisholm, you're asking him to figure out the strikeout rate and to figure out the power, right? And in the second half last year, he did have the 228 average and the worst power, but he did have a 24.6 percent strikeout rate which is uh one of the better and he had some of the best months of his of his even his minor league career in terms of strikeout rate so yeah all these indicators back and forth with with christian you're looking for health and power right and and if you if you look at at christian's uh rolling

power rates you kind of see this peak in his mvp season that he's just dropped off of since so maybe that was just a peak right so these risks are are twofold for these players at this point that's what makes it so difficult you have the age uh for jazz as a positive factor uh and then for the other two uh for bellinger it's it's still a medium to positive factor for for christian it's two uh for bellinger it's it's still a medium to positive factor for for christian it's probably uh getting closer to a negative factor right and your fact and you're asking them each to uh other than jazz to get healthy uh to make some sort of adjustment um and to and to get back to to old levels or in jazz's case maybe a new level

um the the uncertainty is a little bit larger for jazz because you don't have the track record but the age is saying you're asking actually jazz to do a little bit less than those other two guys he is healthy already right you're not going to come out of major surgery right you're the age suggests uh that he should get better next year and you have some underlying data that that says that he could get better next year. And you have some underlying data that says that he could get better. So maybe jazz is the pick there. But it is interesting to think about what are the likelihoods? What are the percentage likelihoods around these things?

I tend to think that injury is a good one to bet on because I think we put the there's research out there for this, but I think we put the injury prone moniker on people too early. Um, I think that a full off season for Cody Bellinger, uh, where, where he didn't have the surgery, I think that could be everything he needs. He's young enough. Um, you know, I think maybe Cody Bellinger would be my pick there. Uh, but, uh, it is interesting to think that there's a range of outcomes for jazz's strikeout rate for his power uh for his health and that's true for cody and that's true for christian and so your personal taste is gonna be some uh some sense of risk around those different things right like if you'd taken uh who's a who's a maybe if you took tatis first

right in a weird way would that make you want to take jazz later because you tatis is an injury risk you don't want to take bellinger and yelich and have you know a bunch of injury risk in your first four picks yeah maybe there's there's some of that i mean i think when you look at the way good rosters are built, you have not only the categorical balance, but I think you do have a balance in the types of profiles of the players. Risk balance. You have some guys that could get a lot better.

You have some proven veterans who are very likely to hit their projection. You have that mix. I had that. I felt like I had kind of a boring team to that point. Tucker Betts, Hendricks, Tim Anderson, underrated, does everything well. I think the key that makes Tim Anderson underrated is that he's machine and batting average. And again, I'm really emphasizing that particular category. Presley, Will Smith, Charlie Morton, that's an older kind of boring build.

Maybe that was part of it. Yeah. It's kind of fun to fun to put jazz in that mix bobby witt jr went one pick before me and i just for in a non-keeper yeah non-keeper yeah wow well so then you you realize it's sort of like take your shot time i mean to me take a shot time is sort of eighth and ninth round but yeah this was the eighth round so it was oh okay yeah there you go so it's appropriate let's take your shot time but wit is well that's a shot i just think the way i'm

seeing draft boards come together i'm gonna have a couple of first rounders like i often do in mixed auctions and then there's gonna be a bunch of dudes that have adps and like rounds two through five that aren't any of my rosters and'm going to have a whole bunch of guys that go in rounds seven through nine on my auction teams. It's going to be whatever stars I can get at a fair price and then a bunch of early mid-rounders

that are just stacked up on my roster behind me. Just a little auction strategy, especially if they're deep, like NL only and AL only, I find that the dollars are bad values. Dollar second catchers are nothing. Dollar outfielders are just a shot in the dark. Dollar pitchers are likely to be gone off your roster in week two.

So what you're saying is have two $30 bats and then a bunch of tens and fifteens yeah ideally that's the that's the range i'm going to live in instead of going all the way up to like the 45 or 50 range for the top top guys probably not going to do that money to to get more middle middle round guys yeah i think i'm going to lean more and in the deep ones the deep auction yeah the depth is really important you're buying plate appearances and ip that's why that's why the dollar outfielder sucks and that's why the dollar pitcher sucks because yeah you're not getting your innings pitch you're not getting your your plate appearances looking at those responses to the the twitter version of the the jazz versus bellinger versus yellich it seemed like it was split more between Jazz and Bellinger a lot of concerns about

Yelich's back and that's still being a problem I get it and he's got that age factor right at least yeah Bellinger and Jazz are young right near their peaks yeah so that that seemed to be the more sort of consistent feel there like no one no one really seemed to want Yelich the most of that trio but they're pretty often I think going to end up close to each other especially in snake draft scenarios i think the guy that i i really struggled with and it was at the five six turn where i first thought about him if he'd been there at the seven eight turn i would have taken him is joe musgrove he ended up 7-3 in this particular draft, so eight picks before my turn where I got Morton. Is Joe Musgrove that much better than he was compared to the end of his time in Pittsburgh?

Did he take that much of a step forward? Great first half, had the no-hitter. Second half faded a little bit. The velo's up. He's got the cutter. Didn't have that working as much as he threw it last year. There were changes. I'm having a difficult time looking at Joe Musgrove and seeing the weight on an ace option that some people might see him. I know the forecaster box on him loves him.

Love what they do at Baseball HQ. That was bouncing around in my head too. I couldn't bring myself to either push him up a little or even pay full price. And I'm wondering if I'm missing something with Joe Musgrove. Oh, no,

I'm in love with him. I, I, I don't know. Uh, maybe a 12th, a 12 team. No,

no, not a, uh, maybe a fifth. Uh, I don't, I don't want him as my number one. Okay.

Um, but, but if I do, if it was like a Musgrove Darvish, I don't want him as my number one. Okay. But if I do, if it was like a Musgrove-Darvish double Padres double tap or something, Musgrove-Sale or something, I would consider him a back-end top ace and I would have to have some sort of mitigation strategy just because there is the risk that he drops down to like a 92.5 type V-Log

and that somehow is really important to him. But I do see a real change in swing strike rate, pitch mix, a little bit of pitch shape and outcomes in his last two seasons that I believe in. And the projections are really good. Projections are really good. The projections would have told me to take him ahead of Morton if they were both there.

And I think they had him easily as the best starting pitcher on the board at the time, based on Steamer, if I remember the dollar values correctly. So it's interesting that he's... Given their age and the fact that Morton's coming off that injury, which I don't think will affect him. I mean, he threw 95 when it was still broken, so I think he'll be fine. But I would have taken Musgrove over Morton, I think. Yeah, I didn't think I'd be getting the choice to do it. I mean, I would have taken him around earlier, so just something I have to file away for the future. All right, you see enough there to justify the increased price on him.

There was a hitter that went really early in this draft. Not that he doesn't deserve to be considered where he's going, but I've seen the early picks span into the first round. It's Luis Robert. He is 13th overall in this one. He's only a 12-teamer. I think he's gone as high as ninth in a draft in the last couple of weeks over at the NFBC.

I get it. There's power. There's speed. There's tantalizing ceiling. And I guess this kind of comes back to how much risk are you willing to take early? And then a question of, well, how much risk is there really given what he showed us over the course of last season? It was a pretty big step forward for him. Obviously, it's a lineup that we like and everybody's expecting a full complement of games this time around. He plays 140-plus games and even comes close to his projection.

The Steamer projection has him at a 285, 339, 507 line, 30 homers, and 14 steals. I mean, that is absolutely the kind of player that you'd think about as a late first rounder. Are you in on Luis Robert. At that increased price. It's. It's really interesting. The.

Strikeout rate. I thought he would have the sort of 30% strikeout rate. He showed in his rookie season. And then last year's strikeout rate is 20.6. But in 300 plate appearances. And it seems to have had. An outside effect. O outsized effect on the steamer projection probably because strikeout rate is one of those things that supposedly

stabilizes uh quickly and so steamer's projecting him for 22 strikeout rate but he still has this really large swing strike rate and when i look at his uh what he did to to change. He didn't change the fact that he reaches at everything. He is a free swinging dude. In fact, he swung more often last year. And what he did was he swung more often at fastballs and sliders early in the count. So he became more aggressive in order to basically. And this is something I wrote about on fangraphs a while ago with josh hamilton um you know swing rate is not something that you just that there should be

one swing rate for everyone if you have bad plate skills or like a bad contact ability basically you should swing early you should swing often you should swing so that you make contact before you get to a two strike count and strike out. That was something that Hamilton figured out, but it doesn't long-term. It's still a bad strategy because your contact ability, like, especially on the switches outside the zone is just going to drop right so uh he did the right thing i think in being aggressive early that you hear people hunting fastball hunt hard right hunt hard early you know look for something good early as the pitchers are trying to establish the one thing that i didn't see is that pitchers did not change their strategy against him so they were still

throwing fastballs and breaking balls early in counts uh at the same rate as the league average and so i wonder if next year he's just going to see a ton more breaking balls early in counts it's interesting because if you look at the swing percentage leaderboard that just i set it down a little bit i set it down to 200 plate appearances to make sure that it's in there. Hans Alberto number one. Contact Meister. Williams Estadio number two. Contact Meister. Robert

number three. Yeah, not a contact Meister. But the rest of the top 10 is full of interesting top 20 even. Josh Fuentes out in Colorado. Jorge Alfaro who does not have plate discipline. And I think that's

the problematic comp for Luis. But there's good comps here too. Sal Perez coming off the best season of his career. Avi Garcia coming off the best season of his career. But Sal Perez makes more contact. What about like Tim Anderson and Bo Bichette here as two guys that are

in range? Because those are totally like Bo Bichette is also a good bad ball hitter. I think we're learning that he could just hit anything to any part of the park and hit it pretty hard. So like, I don't take, I take, one thing I was to say is I think I'll take all three of those guys from ages 24 to 27,

28. And I don't, I don't want him after that. Let's, let's, let's have some fun here. Hold on. Pablo Sandoval. Oh, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. Reach, swing, extraordinaire.

He is, he's 35 now. So his career really fell off. How's pablo sandoval younger than me 20 yeah right what is going on no in fact uh it actually fell off uh at 28 yeah 28 so his his career fell off after he turned 28 uh josh hamilton other swing meister extraordinaire he had that whole thing though well hamilton's aging curve doesn't count like it's just no outlier weird like you can't you can't look it is it's he's a free swinger that lost it. You can use him as a comp,

but I'm just saying the shape of Josh Hamilton's career doesn't... I know, but I think he just lost early stuff. I'm not talking about the accumulation. I'm just saying when did he drop off? It was age 31. Anyway, I think Hamilton is an interesting comp. So Anyway I think Hamilton is an interesting comp I mean

He had a really high swing strike rates He had really high Swing rates And he had really high reach rates And he was a Super athletic Center field type early on, and he didn't age well.

I think Hamilton is the comp here for Luis. I'm cool with those guys in the middle of their career. There is some risk of being found out by something a little bit quicker than other people, I think, by some sort of strategy on the pitcher's part, right? Like, what if everybody just started just, you know, first and second pitch, everything was bragging balls? Fair.

Maybe that'll be a tough obstacle for him to overcome. But in any case, it's more of a Dynasty and Keeper League concern because the tools are uh just as they say dripping i mean it's fun to watch him play and he just hits the ball hard runs hard like he does everything super hard swings hard yeah so i'm wondering if if the way to look at this is for guys that make consistently hard, hard contact, if an elevated swing rate is much less problematic for them. Either you make really hard contact or you make tons of contact. Yeah. Right?

If you're Hanser Alberto or you're Luis Roberto, be one of those guys. Don't be in the middle. Don't be Josh Fuentes. Don't be. Right? Yeah. I mean, I think Garcia for years would have been in the middle of this, though. No, I don't think you're underrating Fuentes.

I mean, Garcia to me is like theentes Garcia hits the ball Wicked hard dude He's in the top 20% of his barrel rate It's like he's in the middle results wise Oh oh But I'm just saying Fuentes is in the middle in terms of His strikeout rate is middling And his barrel rate Is

Not a barrel rate It's like I can't I am squinting to see it so yeah there's there's definitely different reasons why you should be an aggressive swinger and i think it's clearly reflected in the top of that leaderboard yeah so if i if i were fuentes i think i would if i was coaching for windows i think i would coach him to uh wait for his pitch swing hard it maybe that's in there i wouldn't want to know what his bat speed metrics were uh independent of his barrel metrics if he if he is a hard swinger then i would tell him to be more patient than he is if he's not then i not sure how to coach contact myself.

But I'm sure there are ways to. We could try. Ted Lowry had a pretty good thing where he sets up a tee at nine different points of contact in order to practice making contact at the nine at the zone. So he basically, in a in a way has like nine different swings yeah so get to each up and in down and in yeah yeah in middle yeah okay that makes sense that's that's about the only t-work i've ever heard of that i was like okay i'm into that that seems logical i love these like you know some of these things are just so crazy uh you know have someone

like two to three feet in front of you and off the side flip a ball at you I don't really know what that is supposed to do other than get you to repeat the mechanics of your swing it's not going to help you hit actual pitching but it could make your swing more consistent yeah maybe it's just about repetition yeah just just getting your body to do the same thing over and over and over again yeah because a flipper can can flip probably quicker than a machine can throw or anything right or even someone could probably a flip could maybe flip you balls quicker than you could put on the tee because you have to put stop but you pick up put on a tee you have to have someone to sort of flip flip flip flip flip

I still think getting those swings against something that is closer to the velo you have to hit the game would be a better use of your time but as you pointed out neither you nor I are hitting coaches so one of my favorite

ones one of my favorite drills that I heard from from Donnie Ecker. I love this one. Turn the machine up to 95 for sliders. And then ask the hitter to swing at 30%. I was looking at him. I was like, are you insane? Does anybody make any contact? He's like,

yeah, 10% of the time, 10, 15% of the time. I was like, that sounds awful. And he's like, well,

that's the point. I mean, the point is to fail. Interesting approach there too. So I mean, he had some good results, man. Yeah.

Not a thing that initially would have been like, yeah, let's try that. And like, huh, that does work. Interesting. Well, okay. So with Robert, like I had him, I had him outside my top 20 among hitters. So when you throw in pitchers, that probably puts them in the late part of round two of a 15 teamer, maybe the middle part around two.

If you push them up a little bit, I had them behind Mullins. I him behind freeman and machado i had him behind ozzy albies i had him behind rafael devers had him behind starling martay and i had him behind whit merrifield now i know compared to martay and merrifield there's more raw power there so there's there's an easy path to argue okay well if we really believe the speed's gonna be there then he should be ahead of those guys i think devers is a much better hitter i think i trust the floor with ozzy albies a lot more obviously machado and freeman have crazy long track records of being early rounders so different types of players all together i think the the player that I'm most wrong about compared to the market here is Cedric Mullins. It's almost like ADP has Mullins and Robert flipped compared to where I have them.

And I'm trying to figure out if that's me being wrong or the masses being wrong. I suppose it's, you know, you could see you're making sort of a steals based argument. Yeah, I think the the premium speed guys carry a little more value. And then I think the guys that we expect to run a little more consistently. Also carry more value. I don't think it's absurd that he's going in the first round, by the way. This isn't me saying I think he sucks and you shouldn't draft him. It's more of just like, whoa, people are taking him there.

I didn't have quite that high of a valuation on him. Me saying a guy should go mid-two, late-two, and everyone else going, nah, he's more of a one-two turn guy. We're not that far apart. But I kind of want to make sure that I'm not missing out on a guy that could be, if you're taking him at the one, two turn, you believe that he could be a possible top five overall guy. You have to think that's a possibility.

If you're taking him, is that within the range of outcomes? Yes. It's pretty exciting. I will take Luis over or Mullins. I would do so because we haven't seen a full season of stolen bases.

And the projections I think could be light on stolen bases. He had six in 296 and he had a major injury. Is that right? Yeah. Six stolen bases. No, the number is right. Six stolen bases. Oh, the number. Yeah.

So that was a major hip injury. You probably wouldn't be stealing a ton. I think there's a 30-30 season possibility out of him. Okay. You see early first round ceiling. That's fine. And then also, the projection is that he's just using the auction calculator fan graphs with the 15 team and the steamer projection. That makes him the 14th best bat right behind Harper Betts Trout and ahead of another name

we'll talk about in a second, maybe. But I absolutely believe he belongs there, even with my reservations for picking somebody with that kind of approach. But those reservations don't count for me as much when they're young and in the middle of their careers, the beginning of their primes. And I do think there's a possibility that the projections are light on the stolen bases.

And I have one last thing to say, which is that Vlad Sedler had an interesting tweet about the averages of his hitters. His first, I think it was first 10 to 13 hitters basically his starting lineup um and the average of his projections uh they were for a 270 batting average uh runs an rbi i don't know man sure well i don't even i don't really think maybe it's a

failing of mine but i don't really think about runs in RBI that much. Nine stolen bases. Nine stolen bases per slot? Yes. So if you're taking, if you're taking Soto, how about this? Jordan Alvarez is projected to be two after Luis Rivera.

If you take Jordan Alvarez, you are getting behind in the steals race, right? Yep. So even though Jordan Alvarez's auction value projection is for like $25 and Ced mullins is for 23 i could really see taking moments over alvarez just because i don't want to fall behind in steals especially not with my first pick you know what i mean well yeah so you're saying 10 per spot for the first you said 13 hitters yeah so if you take luis you're not falling behind in steals at the very

least no you know what i mean yeah you're not gonna get nine steals at the very least. No. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're not going to fall behind. You're going to get nine steals. As long as he's healthy, I guess is the question mark. But I don't think that's it. I think that was more just like a freak injury. So anyway, you're going to get your nine steals. You're not going to fall behind. So no matter what, you don't fall behind in steals. And there is, I think, an opportunity for a 30-20, 30-25 type season.

You know, it's pretty easy. If you just think about your first 13 hitters and you expect 10 steals and you draft guys that get you like zero or two, just like tally as you go. Like, oh, okay, I need 10 from this guy. Well, I only got zero. Add 10.

I could get 20 from somebody. 20 or 30, yeah. Right. I got 10 for the next guy. That's why I like to pick. You're picking for 20. That's why i love to pick yeah i want to pick as long as possible guys that have 8 to 12 stolen bases i just want to i

don't want any zeros i want to keep i want to keep that i want to keep that accruing because then i won't have to take two you know zero power guys at the end or something you know i won't have to take a bunch of shots at steals. I know that there's a lot of discourse around Milestraw, but I think maybe he'll be good enough to be fine. And if he is good enough to keep his job all year, he will definitely be worth

a lot in fantasy. But I want to avoid taking Milestraw type players. Because I don't think they keep their jobs that often. No. Fully agree with you. Could do it. If he does, then he's like a $30 player.

But the chances of him not keeping it are pretty high. And they're way higher. Mullins does not count like that. Right. He has enough power. He has enough defense. He's not going to lose his job. Was the other player you wanted to talk about, it raphael devers it was yeah because he's he's another one

of those guys where i i read the forecaster box i was like yep i'm on board he mashes he's an elite run producer middle of the order third base does fall off quite a bit uh something that ian was talking about just the other day he's like yeah it gets pretty ugly 12s not so much as 15s but it's sort of a priority position in the early rounds for a lot of people to make sure that you've got someone that you really like as a clear everyday great skills guy devers i think could be first round value wise and consistently falling in the early part of two middle part of two which you know if you're the if you're in a position where you end up taking a pitcher in

round one endeavors ends up being your first hitter other than being a little light on speed with your first bat that's fine he gets you a handful he probably gets you a half dozen bags so use the trick we just said like try to get 15 from the next one. And then just, you know, eventually it'll all level out. I mean, I think because he can be elite and average in homers and in runs and RBIs, it's okay that he's not going to do a whole lot in stolen bases because those other skills are so strong across the board.

Yeah. And I doubt he's going to be a full zero, you know, uh, if you get that five five you're only minus five right in your little in your note-taking device right i don't think he's going to be a minus a minus 10 uh that you got to mark down so um and then he has a lot of the same problems as luther does but they're not as they're not as great they're not as, they're not as great. They're not as, they're not as out there.

And I mean, his swing strike rate is, is lower. His strikeout rate is lower. His reach rate is lower. He's had improvement in the years for his, his reach rate. And there is a situation where, you know, at 26 next year, he could have a peak season. Peak season from him might look a lot like 2018, 2019, when he had 311 batting average, 32 homers and eight stolen bases and all the runs in RBI you could ever ask for. The only asterisk is, you know, that hand injury that really hurt him in the playoffs.

But that doesn't seem like it's big a deal. It was merely elbow inflammation and will not require surgery, Chris Cotillo of the Springfield Republican Reports. I mean, basically three consecutive years of full volume playing time, just turned 25 in October. Not really a batting average liability at all legit power good lineup around him i mean look at the runs and rbis both in 19 and 21 when you get the full seasons that that pops like triple digits in both of those categories is really nice to have and where's one of those guys he's almost like a third base version of Freddie Freeman.

Maybe a little bit of a dip in average compared to what you expect from Freeman. That profile, that player, sometimes struggles to crack the first round even though they can be perennial returners of first round value. Yeah.

I think it's the emphasis on stolen bases. Third base is not a thought of as being a positional value. But there's also, I think, growth potential here with him. Just in terms of that plate discipline, those plate discipline stats. Last year was his best walk year, walk rate year. And I think there could actually be maybe a slightly higher level where he reaches even a little bit less. And that, those are, those are skills that you learn over time and they peak around where he is. And this is going into his peak season. So I would, he's the kind of guy that I would just be super giddy about to get in the

second round. And in fact, he's the kind of guy that I would take in the second round and push my, and, and hope that there was a starting pitcher. He comes back to me in the third. You know what I mean? Okay, so if you had a hitter, Devers was still there

early mid round two. You'd be more inclined to take Devers and wait another turn to get that. Like a Betts Devers even if I had to go Betts Devers and this is totally plausible when it's out there. If I had to go Betts Deversvers, and this is totally plausible when it's out there. If I had to go Betts-Devers-Darvish-Sale,

my power is running out. But if I had to go Betts-Devers-Darvish-Sale, I'm into that, man. That's a fun beginning. I think between Betts and Devers, I'm not behind in stolen bases. I'm at pace. We had a few mailbag questions that came in,

so I feel like we should go ahead and take care of those because I'll admit this. I nuked the inbox at the end of the year. I realized I was never going to get it. That's a good way to get to zero. Yeah, I just couldn't catch up. I tried. Listen, if you sent us an email in the last six months

and I didn't respond and we didn't talk about it on the show. You got to try again. I would say there's a 99% chance that it was red and it was considered. It might have been on the rundown for months. And then it just fell and it just, look, it got too messy. Eventually, the room gets too messy. You get the garbage bag. Everything goes in the garbage bag and you got to start over. That's what happens. So my apologies. If you

asked a question and it wasn't answered and you'd still like it answered, please send it again. It is not a nuisance or a bother at all. I have regained control of the inbox. I cheated to get to inbox zero, but I got there. Damn it. I i said i was gonna get there and i made it so first question of the new year comes from loyal listener oj and it's a stuff plus question that you have partially discussed in the past oj writes i know stuff plus likes aaron ashby less than a bunch of us do so eno has been less favorable but last time you discussed him some other numbers seem surprisingly good even to eno he thinks might have been pitching plus in particular i wondered if there is a certain kind of pitcher who generally shows up poorly in stuff

plus but then succeeds anyway it seems like a jamie moyer type or a knuckleballer might also be elusive quick note from me i'm pretty sure anything any model that exists knuckleballer might also be elusive. Quick note from me, I'm pretty sure anything, any model that exists, knuckleballers don't count if there is one. But just the only rule with knuckleballers is that there are no rules that apply to knuckleballers. I look to see if there's another guy who shows up poorly, found Ian Anderson.

You know, explained recently that might be a function of release point. Does Ashby have some similarly flukish feature that skews his numbers? Is his release point as well? Does such a factor show up across multiple pitchers i really like the tool and just want to understand the numbers that thwart confirmation bias um yeah so yeah there's a lot in there. Aaron Ashby does better by pitching plus. And the reason that I, okay. The reason why I care about stuff plus more, a little bit more than pitching plus is that pitching that stuff plus is

more sticky year to year. So you could have someone pop in a given year because they commanded all their pitches well uh maybe a cole irvin type or something right where he popped in a given year but he doesn't actually have command that good because command is not a sticky year to year next year's command is not as good none of his stuff is there and so he's uh not as good um stuff stays stays with you to year uh somebody like you darvish um you know will still have the same stuff as he had last year probably and so you can bet on him to continue to have that same stuff and maybe his location will be better next year right uh ashby has a 93 stuff plus uh a 99 location plus and a 104 look pitching plus which doesn't

make any sense at first right how could he have below average stuff and below location and above average pitching here's the thing stuff plus location plus and pitching plus are three different models totally different models. Totally different models. Pitching Plus is not taking Stuff Plus and Location Plus and creating another number. So basically, Andy Ashby's arsenal fits better than the parts. Does that make sense? Yeah, the overall collection of what he does

works better than the individual pitches in isolation based on how the models calculate them. And to do this and not in the parlance of my model, but to do this in the parlance of old school or scouts or whatever, Andy Ashby has an out pitch. It's the changeup, 113 stuff. Andy Ashby has an out pitch it's the change up 113 stuff andy ashby has a command pitch that's not as fastball it's the slider he has a 103 location plus on the slider and he has good he has a good location on the sinker so what he is is a sinker slider change

up guy uh and he can use the change up for whiffs which which he does. He can use a slider for whiffs by using it in good locations. And then he can also use a slider for strikes and he can use the sinker for strikes and he can sinker for ground balls. So it all fits together pretty well. I do have a little bit more, I do have a little bit more. I might be a little bit more wary of Andy than of Ashby than other people.

Just because, you know, one above average pitch by stuff plus tells me he really only has one out pitch. And even if you count the slider as an out pitch because of the great location, uh, on the sinkery is 77 stuff. Plus 97 location. Plus, um, it seems like a, a bad fastball guy. So,

uh, in there should be an answer. So I wonder if that type of profile ends up being more floor than ceiling. And I feel like saying that then dismisses the idea that he could get better, which I'm not trying to do. I just wonder what that actually, like what that means for a range of outcomes, just because as,

as described, it's almost like another way. The other way scouts would say that is he just knows how to pitch well it's like well yeah the stuff all works together like knowing knowing how to pitch to me would be like having stuff that plays off each other really well changing location you know just working correctly surprising imposing hitters right just having that that few things you need to be successful without being the guy that when you you watch him you're like holy crap this guy's

untouchable and does does that necessarily mean that ceiling is lower or is it just another approach is it i don't have a plus stuff across the board but i have a great game plan and the stuff i do have works perfectly in concert and and maybe that's just as good as having a plus stuff across the board but a terrible mind for pitching or bad game planning or bad sequencing or not having maybe not having even average command right so close to average command so maybe you have a plus stuff but you have below average command and right? So he's close to average command. So maybe you have A plus stuff, but you have below average command. And that puts you in that reliever bubble,

depending on the number of pitches that you have. So maybe he avoids the reliever section with this profile and is kind of a successful number three starter with strikeouts. Maybe that's what this profile means. Never going to be the guy that we're talking about as an SP one, but consistently exceeds expectations. Kind of does. Maybe it does fit into the Ian Anderson group.

I don't know if Ian Anderson's ever going to be an SP one, but he's still good. Clearly still does a lot of things. Well, maybe that's the kind of picture Ashby ends up being too. Yeah. For Ian Anderson. I think there's some things that the change that we're missing on the changeup that advancements in data and tech will be able to catch in the future. So I did mention his release point, but there might be something to the angle of his arm, which can be measurable now with Hawkeye, and the speed of his arm that we're

missing. And there was a good piece by Justin Choi over at Fangraphs about the vertical angle of his pitches that comes in. Vertical angle by itself is not a metric that is in Stuff Plus. So there are going to be advances in Stuff Plus as we add this new data in about the shape of the pitcher's arms, and maybe there's more to do with the shape of the pitches. So that could not be captured. What you talk about having an arsenal that plays off itself, theoretically, the model should capture that because what you've got are the way that we do Stuff Plus and Pitching Plus, the pitches are defined off each other, right? So we are doing should capture that because what you've got are uh the way that we do stuff plus and pitching plus the pitches are defined off each other right so we are doing these things in um their own little sort of stratosphere and that should theoretically catch it but that does not catch some of the other

stuff you talk about in terms of game planning um you know there are uh possibly spin interactions between pitches that's not necessarily something that we have as a variable in there. So there may be something we're missing there in terms of spin interactions between the two pitches. And then lastly, you know, you could just look at his baseline stats for Ashby and poke some holes in his candidacy for ace-like behavior. Lots of walk rates over four. When he got to high A, his strikeout

rate plummeted for 65 innings in high A. He's got the full missing season where he went from high A to triple A. His ERAs were not outstanding, even though his strikeout rates were. So I think he's a very interesting player, but it's not a great park. He doesn't necessarily have a role to begin with. And his ground ball rates were all over the place. So it's kind of hard to tell. Is he going to be like a 60% ground ball guy with 10 10 strikeouts per nine then that's his path towards ace them um but if his

sinker really does have 70 or 80 stuff plus then i kind of doubt that uh that's going to continue for him um but uh the last thing that um there were other names, what were the other names that he brought up in terms of guys that stuff plus was low on or yes, similar players who seemed low, Pablo Lopez, Patrick Sandoval, Ranger Suarez, Justin Steele,

and Oscar Enoa. So let me take, you know, out of there. And one thing that I do see that's in common between those guys is just number of pitches. A lot of those guys have three or four sort of either representative pitches, pitches.

They throw a lot pitches that that was the one thing that you said, surprise the batter. You can sequence. Interestingly, if you have four or five pitches, right. Then we've talked about the hundred and Ryu kind of approach. Number of pitches is just a really hard thing. We haven't been able to put it in the model successfully in a way that improves the model. We can't just put it.

We've tried putting number of pitches in as a variable, right? And it didn't improve the model, but there is something there with the things you were talking about, knowing how to pitch, pitch ability, sequencing, surprising the batter. Number of pitches has to matter. But most often you get somebody popping in stuff plus like, like Waskeryary no actually my fit one of my favorite sleepers for next year is luis heel on the yankees he pops because he throws two pitches

he throws a fastball and slider and they have amazing stuff and he kind of did some of it in relief he could he could really fall off as a starter if he's still only throwing two pitches and the stuff plus drops because he's a starter and he's trying to go further. He doesn't seem to have that wide arsenal that Patrick Sandoval has. The gap between Patrick Sandoval and Luis Gil is they're opposites.

I think Gil... Both though, Sandoval could not have the stuff next year to be that good he could have four pitches he could be a Cole Irvin you know and then Luis Hill the risk is he's a reliever yeah but I think the difference is like Sandoval has an ADP of like pick 200 Hill doesn't go in the top 400

and when you see when you see guys like that like i'll take louise heels flaws at that price each and every day because you can afford to be wrong at that point okay well even in drafting the hold if he ends up being a reliever there might be a handful of weeks where you throw him in as a reliever or if he's their sixth or seventh starter when the opportunity opens up then he's good enough to be in your lineup those weeks. I mean, I just think your margin for error at that stage of the draft is pretty great.

But where Sandoval goes, you're passing up on some players that could be a lot better if you miss in that spot. Yeah, Sandoval is an interesting one. I've got him in Devil's Rejects with James Anderson and we disagree. I put him on the block. If anybody in Devil's Rejects with James Anderson and we disagree. I put him on the block.

If anybody from Devil's Rejects is asking if you made an interesting offer for Sandoval, you could inspire some arguments between me and James if you wanted to put a wedge between us. But yeah, Sandoval 97 stuff plus, 97 location plus,

97 pitching plus. Seems like a average ish starting pitcher do you like pablo lopez i'm a little surprised that he'd come up as lower than expected in the stuff plus model let's see what i've got here 99 uh stuff plus 105 location plus 102 pitching plus. Surprising to think that he might be more of a command base pitcher. I agree. There was some fluctuation in Pablo Lopez's stuff last year and in his career. There's been some velocity up and downs.

There's been some finicking. Finicking? Finicky? He's tweaking he's he's he's playing with the breaking ball oh yeah he's tweaking yeah he's yes he's tweaking things he's a change up first guy uh who has a great change up and i think the breaking balls i think the breaking balls could slot into place and he's a guy that could change some of his pitch mix to change his stuff plus generally i'm, I'm, I'm positive about Pablo Lopez.

I like it. I don't think the model is that negative on him either. A one Oh two pitching plus guy in, in Miami is now, if you go somewhere else that might change, it may change a little bit. Just a random toss up before we go, we'll save the rest of the questions for a future episode.

Good way to start off the new year. Keep piling up those questions to get back to a cluttered inbox. We'll make sure we get to them. Shane Boz is right there next to Pablo Lopez. Holy crap, the model couldn't love him more. I know. Even if you just watch those guys,

which one of those guys do you want to draft if the prize is equal? I want Boz. Your brain and your heart are just going to say, well, draft Shane Boz. He could be so good. The only question, I guess, is innings, huh? I guess.

But I think the injuries and stuff that Lopez has had, I don't feel like that's a runaway for Lopez necessarily. And what did Shane Bonds put together? He had a pretty full season last year. When you add up everything from all the levels, the workload was good. Let's see here.

78-81, but then he had some postseason. A little bit of postseason. Didn't he also pitch for Team USA too? Oh! Oh!

Team USA stats. Are those available? I'm at 83. I'm at 83. And then 2.2? Wow. Is that all you threw?

I guess so. Anyway, 85. 85's not a bad place to start. I think you can get to 120. I mean, 120? I could say they could push them to 120, 125. And then what's our innings projection

for Lopez like 150 at least so that's the difference it's a difference although he's never had 150 in a big league season yeah am I missing some

minor league stats here because 2019 120 innings 125 you got 145 back in 2017 oh and all the minors that's a long time ago and that's minor leagues so 120 is his tops

in 2019 125 is his tops wait now I'm back to past my innings predictions for both of them might be like 125 it's funny i mean the depth charts will spit out a higher number just because he's been in the big leagues and per start you know fine you expect him to go five plus every time out but i don't know if you necessarily want to pencil him in for 30 starts based on the track record that we've seen. It's a great time of year, isn't it? Yeah.

If it were for a lockout, things would be just amazing right now. They're okay anyway. We're going to make it through. We're going to find ways to keep things interesting throughout the upcoming month. I'm sure it means more draft and hold leagues. If you have questions about strategies for that format, for anything in general, again, keep the questions month. I'm sure it means more draft and hold leagues. If you have questions about strategies for that format, for anything in general, again,

keep the questions coming, even though I had to nuke the inbox and start over. We want to answer your questions. I saw a couple good ones that are in the new year, so we'll have to answer those. Yep. Get those locked and loaded for our next episode. By the way, two episodes per week throughout

January. We'll try to scale up the schedule once we get to February. All of that depends on lockouts and draft prep. Just need a little hope. Just need something. Get to the table, please. Yeah, at least for our sake,

just pretend like you're negotiating. Get the tweets to come in like, haven't met since Decembercember oh that's the worst oh come on what are you guys waiting for meantime if you want to read about all that stuff or read the piece the eno tease that comes out on thursday get a subscription to the athletic 33 percent off the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels on twitter he's at you know saris i'm at derrick van ry. The pod is at Rates and Barrels. If you've been watching us on YouTube, be sure to

barrel up on the like button, or if you haven't watched us on YouTube, go to our channel and hit the subscribe button. We'd really appreciate it if you took a few moments to do that. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.