Rates & Barrels - Aaron Nola Stays in Philly & November Non-Tender News

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss Aaron Nola's new deal to remain in Philadelphia, Lance Lynn's return to the Cardinals on a one-year pact, the posting of Yoshinobu Yamamoto ahead of his highly-anticipated foray into free agency, and the fallout from a non-tender deadline that led to a flurry of activity plus the potential end of Brandon Woodruff's time in Milwaukee.  Rundown 1:29 Aaron Nola Gets a New Seven-Year Deal to Stay in Philly 9:31 Lance Lynn (Back) to the Cardinals 13:43 Other Potential One-Year Deals for Free Agent Starting Pitchers 18:46 Reynaldo López: Stretching Out as Starter in Atlanta? 30:29 Yoshinobu Yamamoto: $200 Million Deal Coming? 39:22 Brandon Woodruff Non-Tendered by Brewers 43:05 Injured Pitchers to Target? 51:57 Other Movement Around the Non-Tender Deadline Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Holiday Special through 11/27/23! Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out this offer from our sponsor: Get 20% OFF with our code RATES at calderalab.com/RATES to unlock your youthful glow with Caldera + Lab! #teamcaldera Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Monday, November 20th, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We have moves in free agency, we've got moves that were forced by roster deadlines. We had the protection deadline for the Rule 5 draft. Players had to be added to the 40-man roster. We had the non-tender deadline. Those things tend to force action, so there's a ton to dig into on this episode. And, you know, I'm going to ask you, because I ask every episode on Mondays,

how was your weekend? It was good. what did i do that's like kind of how the answer usually goes there's like this this brief pause what did i do and then it comes back i don't really know i played played uh some board games with the kids. Spent some time with the kids. Saw a friend. Had a happy hour beer on Saturday with a friend. It was a pretty mellow weekend. Okay. That sounds about right.

That's what I did too. I stayed in and did very little. Yeah. Just the phase of life that I'm in right now. But I'm glad there's stuff happening in baseball because it makes me feel like time is, in fact, actually passing. We're not just stuck in stasis. Yeah, we're not just standing still. Even if players are staying in one place,

Aaron Nola staying with the Phillies on a seven-year deal, $172 million if you like to count money. I think we came into this topic a little bit on the 3-0 show last week, just looking at NOLA versus Snell on the top of this pitching market and kind of wondering if you had the choice, if years and dollars are similar, who's going to age better. You wrote about it after the signing a little bit, just explaining what NOLA brings to the table, why a seven-year deal at this dollar amount makes so much sense. And the big thing that I wonder about is the fastball velocity, right?

You pointed it out, down to 92.4, and he can lose only a little more off that before he has to push even harder on his secondaries. But his secondaries are good. His command's always been good. So all in all, this all like a good thing like he's staying in a familiar place we've talked about the park there's no real shift in fantasy value it's just a question of like keeper and dynasty and long-term view like how long do we get the best versions of Aaron Nola based on the other stuff he brings even with that fastball velocity drop I don't know I know one thing that one of my favorite graphs that I've seen is uh in a piece

by Bill Petty and Jeff Zimmerman on Fangraphs about aging starters and relievers and one of the things it shows is that uh a reliever is more wed to his fastball velocity. So as his fastball velocity drops, his strikeout rate declines almost in lockstep. Whereas if you look at a starting pitcher, the relationship between their fastball velocity and their strikeout rate is not as tightly tied together. And my theory for that is that starting pitchers have more command, have more pitches, for that is that starting pitchers have more command have more pitches and have more things they can do if you age for example uh fastball usage you'll see as a pitcher gets older they use the fastball less i mean it's sort of like the old pitcher trick is to like use all your all the secondaries right and so um i would have to think that that is a positive for Aaron Nola and possibly a negative for Blake Snell,

who has at times in the past been a two-pitch pitcher. However, with Blake Snell winning the Cy Young this year, I noticed something, which is that his slider had less drop than usual to begin the season. And so after my kid was interviewing him i i snuck in a couple questions and said you you're gonna win the cy young you didn't even have your slider for half the year and he said yeah it was crap uh and it said that that forced him to throw his curve and and change up more this year which is uh something that he's done more often. He did more often this season. So anyway,

long story short, I like Nola's command and width of arsenal. And I think those things will help him age. Okay. Even as he loses fastball, be them. Yeah. And it's a,

it's a big free agent chip off the board for teams that are looking for front of the line rotation help. And there are plenty of them. NOLA was probably pretty high on most lists, understandably so, given the limited alternatives available. But one thing that I thought was interesting is that we've talked about the park factors in Philly. And there have been times we've checked in partway through a season. And a partial season of park factors, as we've said many times, can be really noisy. You might think leaving Citizens Bank ballpark would have been assuredly a good thing if he had decided to go somewhere else in free agency.

So I want to look at the numbers and kind of look at what makes pitching there so difficult. The three-year rolling overall park factor is still 101 over at Baseball Savant. It's tied for eighth, but that's like right where it should be, right? But in the perfect world, every park would have a park factor of 100. The parks would all have the same sort of run environment. Oh, that's not a perfect world. Well,

it depends on who's making the world, I guess, in this case. What makes Philly tricky, of course, and it's always been this way, is the home run park factor. That's a 113. So 13% more home runs than an average ballpark for toughest in the league. So Great American Ballpark is worse. Dodger Stadium's worse.

Yankee Stadium's worse. That's it. And then Citizens Bank Ballpark is right there. Ultimately, that's going to be part of the story with Nola too, is just avoiding damage via long ball since he's going to be pitching half his games for the next seven years in the same park he's been in for his whole career where homers are a major major problem yeah uh and that's why i would look past era in judging him um because he's played in front of maybe the worst worst defense of all time. I had a piece with Megan Montemaro about that. I think it was the 2019 team

or something. One of these teams, or maybe it was the 2021 one where you had a 463 ERA. Some of these teams have been the worst defensive teams of all time. And then you look at his home run rates. Most years over one last year was the worst of his career with almost one and a half per nine. That's, that's due to the park partially. I mean,

yes, it's due to his pitching, but that's one thing that's always bothered me about fielding independent pitching FIP, which is that, that it's the basis for Fangangraph's war and uh you know it doesn't have a sort of a park factor bit to it you know what i mean like it's just like oh yeah aaron only gave up 1.5 homers for nine those are all his fault and uh i don't quite see it that way although

if you're you know, playing fantasy or whatever, now it's baked in for the next seven years. So it's not. So Nola becomes one of these interesting players that, you know, puts up a lot of innings and is a solid high floor pitcher but may not be a high ceiling guy. high floor pitcher but may not be a high ceiling guy uh and that may be true uh in uh in in real life baseball too because if you think about it he did not get he got like a 25 million per year annual average annual value that is way short of the scherzer verlander kohl's of the world so he

did not he got more of a number two you know type contract but in length uh they rewarded his durability and all the innings he puts up and gave him a basically a top 10 contract of all time for a pitcher for you know so in terms of full value so that's kind of who he is he's like uh like maybe one of the best number twos. You know? Yeah. Like a real solid guy that they can depend on innings for. And that's important for them because, you know, I think it's easier to buy these pitchers that have higher ceilings but more question marks, like a Snell. Like I think it'll be a little bit less than Nola, actually.

And if you think of all the sort of 1-12 guys you can pick up, the 1-year 10 million, 1-year 12 million guys that every once in a while pop and have a great season, those are all out there. Buying durability matters, especially for a team that may lose Zach Wheeler soon. I think they just wanted to be like, hey, I think we're putting 180 innings down on the table every year. Yeah, I think that's a huge part of the appeal.

Take some of the wear and tear off your bullpen, even if you are talking about number two starter sort of skills. Obviously the kind of guy that's going to start opening day some years, depending on the health of Zach Wheeler or something. But I think in that rotation, the perfect number two starter to keep in the fold speaking of one year 10 million dollar guys Lance Lynn goes back to the Cardinals where you look at that St. Louis rotation right now this is probably not the only starting pitcher addition they could add as many as three reasonably there's probably going to be a strong push in that front office to get one of

the better potential frontline starters available. Lynn just gives them bulk, but Lynn's season last year was weird. And we talked about it, of course, when the Dodgers made that move to get him. One thing that you pointed out at the time was he was starting to make some adjustments with the White Sox before the trade, caught an easy stretch of schedule after the trade that made it look like the Dodgers had done some typical Dodger stuff, and then it kind of fell apart again at the end. The big number here, of course, 183 and two-thirds innings. That's what Lynn brought to the table in 2023.

And I think if you're the Cardinals, that's what you're hoping for, albeit with something closer to his career marks in terms of ERA and WIP, right? If you're getting a high threes, low four ERA for that volume of innings, you're probably pretty happy with Lin on a one-year deal. Yeah, I like this. I think maybe Severino is going to be my favorite one-year deal, and some news on him just to destroy your rundown. uh severino is throwing i know he's throwing a driveline so um and you know i i wrote him up because i i think his numbers uh were not as far his sort

of process numbers were not as far apace as as his outcomes so like lynn's on lynn on the other hand i think has just you know he's dropped some stuff he's 92-2 last year and at his peak he was 94-2 so um he's lost some velo he's he's not and in terms of like large arsenal guys he's not really that he's kind of like a fastball guy that has never really loved any of his secondaries you know and so i don't know how that'll age because you just if you're throwing everything hard you know he's cutter cutter fastball or sinker even last year even with the dodgers where he reduced some of that was still at 75 so 75 of his pitches go between 89 and 92. That's just weird.

I mean, there's not a lot of precedent for that. One thing I did notice was that he has the type of fastball in terms of spin efficiency that would lead itself to a good sweeper. And I noticed that he threw five sweepers last year. So it's just like five sweepers. That's a lot to dream on. He threw five of them. But him and Jack Flaherty are both guys that have the type of fastball you think could

throw a sweeper. Both have thrown a few sweepers in the past. I know Jack Flaherty wouldn't call it that. So don't ask him if he's thrown a sweeper both have thrown a few sweepers in the past i know jack flurry wouldn't call it that so don't ask him if he's thrown a sweeper but he's he's he you can see some of his sliders have gotten way more horizontal at times anyway that's just a little wrinkle where these are the types of pitchers that in real life and fantasy baseball you need to have on your roster you need to have one of these guys on your roster. And what you're doing is you're saying, worst case scenario, you're an up and down on the IL,

fifth starter, Corey Kluber near the end of his career. You're going to give us a 4-7 and you're going to, your record is going to be like 8-10 or something like that. But you're going to save our bullpen some, you're going to go deeper into games, and you're going to win us some games. You're just going to be meh. It's going to be okay. Or you have one of those seasons where these older guys, oh, I added this pitch or I did this or I tweaked something or I'm healthy again, whatever it is, where they can actually surprise. So I love the deal. I love any sort of one in 10 deals. I think Lynn is probably going to be like the second or third best of these one in 10 deals.

You know, I like, who do you like out of them? I like, like I said, Severino best. I think Flaherty may be least best. I don't know how much I'm buying into that one yeah who else fits into that group severino has stood out to me as a possible free agent bargain going back to the middle of 2023 when you looked at the stuff the velocity the pitch mix the model numbers you had like everything pointed to him turning it around and the the extent that he figured it out was like maybe two good starts at the end

of the year. And even that it's like, is that enough for me to really believe? I, I want to believe in Severino love that he's going to driveline too. I feel like that kind of a, that's a little extra boost that you threw in there. If you get like a little half tick of Velo or something,

I really feel like that's how close it is if you look at his velo it's not that far off when he was good you know it's like i i think it's just a little like a little tweak could get him back and and then you have to remember when you remember back to those park factors right you know both lynn and severino are going to improve their park factor situation greatly. You know, we know Lynn is cause he's going to St. Louis,

but we know Severino is cause he's leaving New York, you know? Yeah. So, uh, that's why I like those two, uh, other guys that we could consider in this group are Kyle Gibson, Hunjin Ryu,

uh, Wade Miley, Paxton, Martine Perez, Frankie Montas, Odorizzi, Wood, Miley, Paxton, Martin Perez, Frankie Montas, Odorizzi, Wood, Boyd, maybe Minaya. Gibson, Paxton. Paxton's just such an injury risk,

but it still looks like he's got that stuff, at least some version of it close to what he had before all the injuries where I don't want to close the door completely on him. But I think Kyle Gibson is probably kind of similar to Lance Lynn for me and just that I know I'm going to get innings most likely. And maybe he can feature one. He has five pitches. Maybe he can feature one pitch that he hasn't featured in a while and go on a run. You know what I mean? Maybe there's mean? Yeah. The frustrating thing is even with

the changes to the ballpark in Baltimore, the final results still weren't that good this year. It wasn't like he had a home run problem either. It's just sort of the extreme oatmeal. He's right up there with Lynn in terms of age. I don't know. I think of all

those names, Severino for sure. I can't quit James Paxton. I feel like when you're shopping in this bin, I guess it depends on which team you are though too. Do you have some guys that have been generally healthy where you need to catch some back end upside? Do you need innings or do you need upside? Yeah, because that would kind of choose

which bucket you would go and shop from. Paxton did get to 96 innings this past season k rate close to 25 he's he's really strange though he got his fastball velo back but he didn't get his uh cutter velo back and i asked him about that and he's like man f'd if i know he was like literally like i've been thinking about it i don't know why i got my fastball velo back but not my slider like why you know so uh i don't i don't know what's going on there but that's something to bet on which is like at least he has his fastball velo and like why couldn't he just throw a slider bit harder this year again you know he did it in the past so do you believe in wade miley all these

guys are like 35 and older. Severino's a lot younger than the rest, but Lynn's old, Miley's old, Gibson's old. I think you were smart to kind of make an upside versus innings distinction because I think Wade Miley, Martin Perez, even Granke, Gibson, these are guys that you buy if you have trouble even just rounding out a staff. I think you want one of those to have innings. I don't actually know where San Diego is. San Diego is in both. It needs both innings and then it needs upside because San Diego does have some really young pitchers that are near the top like nearly ready in the minors. They had the minor league pitcher

of the year last year in Snelling. So like they have some upside so they could get one guy for innings and one guy for upside and then if one of those guys is hurt, bring up the young guy, you know? But like a team like the Dodgers, where they have a ton of young guys that are optionable, wouldn't they rather have upside? Because if James Paxson is hurt, you know, they don't want to have, they don't want to run somebody out there just for innings every day.

You know? They would rather, if James Paxson's hurt, Em and Sheetan come on up. You know what I mean? Like they would rather sign somebody like that. So I do think that there's a distinction there where you have the kind of oatmeal bucket or the could be better than oatmeal,

but has crazy injury concerns, you know? Yeah, injury concerns, unfortunately, continue to follow Paxton around. But I think he's the other guy in that group that I'm still intrigued by. I cannot help myself, as we have learned over the years with the injury risk pitchers. Another pitching signing that just happened in the last hour or so. Ronaldo Lopez signs a three-year deal with the Braves.

My first thought was, okay, good bullpen gets even better. And then we saw a follow-up note from both of the scribes I was following on the Braves beat. Both David O'Brien from The Athletic and I think Justin Toscano from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying that Lopez is going to stretch out as a starter, at least going into spring training to give the Braves some options, which doesn't necessarily mean Lopez starts even a single game for Atlanta in 2024, but given the state of their rotation, some of the injuries they've been dealing with, it at least gives them a little more flexibility. I guess what it means is they might see Lopez as someone that can give them,

you know, 80 or 90 innings in more of a swing role, as opposed to someone that's going to be a 60 or 70 inning guy in that bridge with Jimenez, Minter and Iglesias in the late innings. I think it's a ridiculously deep pen. I think what will end up happening is that he builds up the ability

to go multiple innings by stretching out but doesn't enter the rotation. We've just seen a lot of variability from him even the last two times he started. One year, 3-9-1 ERA, but not really backed up by strikeouts minus walks. And then the next year, 538 era now uh what he did back then when he was a starter was he threw his change up more often that affected his command because i don't think he can command it all that well but what we saw

in a short stint with the uh with the with the guardians this year is a return to that changeup. And it really worked wonders for him. He was amazing for the Guardians with a 0 ERA in 11 innings pitched. Strikeout rate came down a little bit, but the changeup gave him some soft contact maybe. So if they think that he can go back to that change up become that pitcher again um and be like a high three zra guy for 150 innings then they will do that uh but i just for some reason i think you know it's what's it's four years now into relieving. Three years into relieving.

He was kind of hybrid in 2021. I kind of think three years into a process, you are that person now. And so I think he's a reliever. And what he'll do is be the bridge. If Strider has to come out in the fifth and Lopez and their bullpen was taxed or whatever then lopez can be the guy and goes to and gets them to the sixth or gets them to the seventh you know um and yeah you know none of the guys in the braves bullpen other than i love mentor none of them is like you know edwin diaz or whatever, but they've got Rice-O-Glaces, AJ Minter, Pierce Johnson, Joe Jimenez, Aaron Bummer, and now Reynaldo Lopez and Tyler Matzek. I mean, that's a really good

bullpen. It's really deep. And I think that sets you up for October where, you know, two of those guys are going to be hurt. One of those guys is going to be just inexplicably bad. And then you make sure that you still have four guys for the for the postseason even with all that depth you're like i'll still add one more reliever at the trade deadline probably because that's what people do they'll have to get a fifth reliever because that's what you have to do uh i was looking at this this split for ronaldo lopez i mean it doesn't really matter at this point i was trying to go further back to when he was a starter though to see how did he pitch the first time through the order

versus the second and third time through the order. Can you make a case for two- and three-inning usage more consistently? A lot of teams don't use relievers this way. But as good as this stuff was, and I know Ronaldo Lopez had reliever risk from the very beginning of his time in our world as a prospect. Because of the command. Because of the command. Because of the command.

It's so strange that you have a guy make 65 starts between 2018 and 2019, and then you made eight starts in the shortened season in 2020 as well, and you just cut him down to those shorter one-inning bouts. We've talked about this several times in the show where it's like why don't you try to use the numbers between one and five just there are numbers between one and five maybe this stuff is good enough to get through the lineup one time consistently two and change maybe that's the way you want to go like what how is that how is having someone who does that any more difficult to manage workload wise in the bullpen than guys that just go one

or get four or five outs at a time like i just think there's like this misconception about a multi-inning reliever being a little harder to manage because he's not available for a few days after he goes like well you still got to manage your short relievers anyway so why not get more from the guy that can give you a little bit more and like i think increasingly teams have somebody you know whether it's the bullpen coach or um like an analyst in the front office that's mostly tasked with schedule yeah you know they have a fatigue model where they know you know when somebody has to be down they have everybody has like a red yellow you know green light sort of a deal with their just by health so if you're already doing that, then you just have to have an adjustment for two inning guys and be like, Oh yeah,

he did two innings. So he's red light for one day, you know, yellow light for, you know, on the second or third day, you know what I mean? So like they, that's easy. And then you have somebody in the front office who's like, you know, I have three options, you know, have three options you know i can option these guys three times and we want them all to be healthy in october so like i'm gonna do these options at different times there are people i think that just that's their job just like hey get my pitching staff through the year healthy in some way with all the options we have and and and manage the roster for me please so manage like these three roster spots please uh and so if that's the case then yeah renaldo lopez come and pitch two innings at a time for us you mentioned two guys that were in san francisco between sean benaiah and alex wood

in that group of free agents and you look at the way those guys were used. I mean, Alex Wood, 97 and two-thirds innings this season. It was 29 total appearances, 12 starts. 433 ERA, 143 whip. Wasn't his best season. But that usage compared to going short relief got more out of him. And Minaya, 117 and two-thirds, split over 37 appearances, 10 of which were starts. 444 ERA, 124 whip. You need buy-in.

You need the right guys. I think we do have some teams that are using these more flexible roles. So I just wonder if that's ultimately what we see out of Ronaldo Lopez. Something more like that as opposed to 60 again. Yeah, Junius. A third San Francisco starter or pitcher. 40 games appearances, four games started, 86 innings pitched.

That's a really weird line compared to where relievers were when he started his career. And what's funny is just in terms of war, that gave him a decent season, like a one-win season. That's pretty good for a reliever. So, you know, Jake Junis. One last thing, Jeff Samarza told me he had 85 innings out of the pen for the Cubs in 2011, I believe.

Yeah, 88 innings out of the pen. And he said, that's absolutely the most you can do as a reliever. And really, you need to kind of step back the next year because he said that's a bear. Now, that was in 2011, right? Yeah, so here's the question then do we have the same advanced you know concept of fatigue models and did we have the same you know like could he would he have had more days off in between his innings in in today's you know environment there's some evidence of that

it's pretty interesting because he came back the next year, worked as a starter and stayed pretty healthy. 174 and two thirds coming off that big reliever season. So he made 28 starts. ERA was under four. You know, the stuff was pretty good over a strikeout per inning. So he handled it fine from a physical standpoint, as far as like not breaking down after doing it.

And I wonder if you ever had a chance to ask a follow-up question, or maybe you did get to ask him this innings versus appearances was it the 88 innings or was it getting into 75 games that was the problem right if you take if you take the 88 innings and you put them into 50 games instead of 75 i feel like that's not asking nearly as much i think it is the coming back going all out into 40 games that's very different nearly as much. I think it is the coming back and going all out. Yeah, like Jake Junis only got into 40 games. That's very different. What was the innings total for Junis? 86.

Yeah. I think that's a huge difference because you're getting up, getting hot, getting your arm ready, and going in, especially in shorter bouts, you're going max effort. Yeah. Right? So I think with someone like Junis and the way he was used, maybe that's a little more sustainable.

If you're going to throw a pitcher that way out of the bullpen, it's more about the number of times they enter the game and have to go through that process than it is about the total volume of innings. Yeah. And I think buy-in is super interesting. is about the total volume of innings yeah and i think buy-in is super interesting um i don't want to uh violate the trust of any of these guys but i will say that i talked to all three of these guys extensively during this year and let me just say like the level of buy-in was not the same for each sure so uh and that's to say it kind of ran the gamut from, uh, enthusiastic, like this makes me more

marketable on the free agent market to, I don't know what I'm doing any given day and it sucks. So, you know, that's, uh, that's part of the parcel of the Gabe Kapler story and, and maybe a better communicator like Melvin could have, you know, gotten that buy-in or gotten a different reaction. Uh, so, you know, that that's, but buy could have, you know, gotten that buy-in or gotten a different reaction. So, you know, that's, but buy-in, you know, people are like, oh, we want to be like the Rays. Well, the Rays have this weird institutional buy-in, you know what I mean? Where it's like, anybody who encounters the Rays knows they are the Rays, you know, and knows what they're getting into. You get drafted by the Rays, You get sort of indoctrinated on the way up as a Ray. You're like, okay, yeah, yeah, I know.

I know. It's the Rays. Okay. But if you come to the Giants in the past, they've been a team that is a little bit more conventional. You'd be like, what? What? We're doing this Ray stuff here?

Dang it. I didn't sign up for that. I think it's really different when you're at the veteran eligible for free agency portion of your career, like the likes of Wood and Minaya and even Junis, I think are all at that stage now. Maybe Junis is still ARB. The Rays have done it so long with guys who are either pre-ARB or arbitration eligible, but they're not free agents. So they're earlier in their career. They don't really have a choice.

You've got to make the best of it, right? You don't want to be a squeaky wheel. You want to just figure out a way to get through it, stay healthy, perform well, and create that next big opportunity when the time actually rolls along. So I think that's part of the difference too, is seeing the Giants do it with those veterans

was a bit jarring, but I like when teams try and find other ways to make things work on their rosters. Let's talk about Yoshinobu Yamamoto for a moment. We saw some more news on Monday morning. He's officially posted. There's now a window of 45 days for him to find a deal with an MLB team, which seems imminent. It's going to happen by all accounts. It's just a question of who is that team and how much does he get? And what are we going to see from Yamamoto making the transition? We've talked so many times about the differences between the baseball in Japan versus the actual baseball we use in Major League Baseball.

So based on what you've seen, numbers you might have at your disposal, what is your outlook for Yamamoto now that his free agency window has officially opened it's evolving man it's evolving my my first read was you know that I had these stuff plus numbers that were better for Shota Imanaga than they were for Yamamoto and that maybe Yamamoto would be overvalued one thing I don't like is that I think we're heading towards like a 200 million dollar contract for Yamamoto and that just makes me a little bit nervous because with Aaron Nola at least you had results in America you know you had to do some park factors you know stuff but you didn't have to just ideate completely what he would be like in another league so and and like the ball change you know like he's going to be throwing a different ball and that you know that adds uh that adds a level of risk so i don't know

how comfortable i am at 200 million um i've also seen some analysis um that you know his splitter is does not have the same shape as it's a very kind of a sideways splitter whereas the best splitters in america tend to be very vertical um and so uh what if he comes over and the splitter doesn't work? The changeup in the splitter has been very much like a source of concern for pitchers coming over from Japan because the ball is different and people have added changeups when they come over here or subtracted changeups when they come over here a lot because of how different the ball is.

But Kodai Senga's ghost fork came over uh kodai senga has uh has worse stuff and worse command than yamamoto so uh you know it's a pretty wide arsenal it's decent numbers he's 25 uh so the age is good uh so there's a lot of reasons that people like him. And I don't want to go too far and be like, I'm just out on him. I'm just going to say that like 200 million is makes me nervous. Well, it's not my money. It makes me feel good.

The age difference is a huge part of it, right? I mean, because you're theoretically buying much closer to peak or at a player's peak window. Now, the results in Japan are ridiculous. Look at these over here, ERAs, man. Going all the way back to 2021, a 139. We've got a 168, a 116. That's in 193 innings in two of those seasons. 171. Man.

I mean, these are more eye-popping numbers than many prospects that we've seen come over from NPB. And I'm scolding myself a little bit. I noticed that Imanaka's K-BB numbers look better by strikeouts per nine and walks per nine but i i'm

so stupid the the reason that that strikeouts per nine and walks per nine is inferior to using strikeout percentage is that if you have a very low walks per nine it makes your strikeouts per nine lower it's just a math thing you know you're doing it per inning so if you don't walk as many people you don't mean that you don't have as many innings you know you don't have any chances to strike out guys you know like it's i don't really want to get into it but what strikeouts per nine is inferior to strikeout percentage it's by strikeout percentage yamato has a 27 strikeout rate and 27 strikeout rate would have been, he basically the same as Luis Castillo last year, who was eighth in the big leagues and

on qualified starters. So it's not like Spencer Strider strikeout rate, but Luis Castillo strikeout rate, that's pretty good. He's right there with Garrett Cole and Zach Wheeler. And in fact, could Zach Wheeler be an interesting comp where you've got a guy with lots of command, lots of different pitches, and oh, the stuff is pretty good too? So, you know, yeah, I don't want to be out on somebody like that, and especially not because I used K per nine

instead of strikeout percentage. So as we've discussed a few times, draft season starts earlier and earlier every year. We have volume. We have October and November drafts over at the NFPC that have happened. So we have a sense for what the rooms are starting to do with Yamamoto. Here's the would you rather cluster. It's a whole cluster of names, right?

Players going within three pitchers ahead of and after Yamamoto. We have Logan Gilbert, Kodai Senga, Grayson Rodriguez. Then you got Yamamoto, who's ADP for November only, sitting right around pick 73. A couple of closers that I'm going to skip. Then we've got Bobby Miller, Jesus Lizardo, and Zach Eflin. And there's a little bit of a drop on those backside names. Yamamoto's clustered a little more closely with the guys in front of them. That's what it's going to take as of right now.

And then when the money comes in and we know the team, I think that could also drive that ADP up further, right? If it's the Dodgers, the institutional trust in that organization that they would give a massive contract to someone and they know how to handle pitchers is going to make that price go up even further you also think about like park factors like if he goes to yankee stadium or philadelphia i'd like him a little bit less because like here's one statistical thing that's weird about him he had a 0.1 homers per nine last

year and that that sounds like a good thing, but there's nobody in America that has a point. Like, that's just not going to... He's not going to have a.1 home run per nine. That's not how it's going to work here. The best home run per nine was Sonny Gray with.4, and that's like an outlier season. And mostly guys are...

Second behind him was.73 Justin St justin steel you know what i mean like that's the 0.4 is an outlier so even if yamato is good he'll have like a 0.7 home runs per nine which is something he's never done in japan um and then if he's in yankee stadium or in philadelphia you'd just be like where is that actually going to land that number um i like him though that all that said all the i all the bad things i said about him i'm still it's i'm not paying him 200 million dollars in a fantasy league and among those names that you said like i think my favorite two names or three names are grayson rodriguez yoshi no yoshi yamamoto and uh and bobby miller Yamamoto and Bobby Miller. I just want to bet on upside there.

I want to bet on those are my three favorite guys in terms of just what their arsenals look like, what they could do. Those are three guys that could win a Cy Young next year in my estimation. Whereas some of the other names they're good, but they have injury concerns. Lizardo and Eflin. I've always been interested in Jesus Lizardo. I'm glad he was able to finally put it all together in a full season for Miami.

There's a lot of injury risk there. Zach Eflin, this is probably as good as it gets. The stuff isn't as good as the other guys. I don't know how you project home run rate for a guy coming in from a different league in general. That feels difficult in and of itself because there's so many different variables. But it's

not just this year where the home run rate's been really good. For his career in Japan in nearly a thousand innings, it's a.3 homers per nine for Yamamoto. He should, by any reasonable projection, be above average at suppressing homers even with the move to Major League Baseball. Would I buy him to be the best in the league among starters in home run rate?

Well, no, I wouldn't bet anyone for that. I would like to see it, but that's a really low home run rate over a ton of innings. I've never seen a.1 for a season. No, no, that just does not happen. So I'm with you, though, as far as that cluster goes. That's a great place to shop. If you're going to wait a little bit on pitching, maybe double tap within that group and you can get a lot of ceiling or get one earlier and then come

back and get your two and your three out of that kind of 25 to 35 range among pitchers overall i mentioned earlier we had some deadlines that forced action and the non-tender deadline was one of them brandon woodruff was probably the most notable name not tendered a contract for 2024. Reason being, Brandon Woodruff had shoulder surgery and with arbitration, he would have probably made something in the neighborhood of $11 or $12 million in 2024. So the

Brewers, you can kind of tell in the statement they released, Matt Arnold kind of outlined how difficult it was to make this call because Woodruff is someone that is really well-respected within the organization organization someone who's pitched very well for this team he's the all-time leader among starters in terms of ERA in franchise history but his time with the Brewers may be coming to an end because there are a lot of teams interested in signing him even if it's you know kind of a backloaded 2024 is mostly a rehab year let's see

what we get in 2025 sort of move and it doesn't sound like the brewers are necessarily willing to commit financially the way that a bigger market team might be comfortable committing what was the tyler glass now contract i feel like the glass now one was like5 million for the first year and $20 or so for the second one. I'm going to look that one up because that's probably a rough. It was $5 million for 2023 and then $25 million for 2024. Yeah. So, okay, $5 and $25. So, $15 million per, but just loaded heavily to the second year.

Because also, if you're one of those teams that might be in the luxury tax threshold, you don't want to jump yourself into their bracket by spreading the money evenly you can back that money to the second year of the deal and not pay as much of a penalty for them trade him before you actually pay him that 25 million or that too in the case of glass now i was thinking about it more though the woodruff and the oh yeah woodruff's not gonna pitch at all like they they got they got some some innings out of glass down 2023 woodruff i think i've heard 18 uh months uh you know so i doubt he pitches at all next year so yeah i think it'll be more like a 1 and 10 uh twice so like a 2 and 20 he was due 11 as in arbitration so what you're hoping is you get a $20 million pitcher for you know 15

$20 million pitcher in year 2 or a $30 million pitcher for $20 million over 2 years you know something like that maybe it's 2 and 15 something that where he at least recoups what he would have lost it's sad I mean it's sad when

you're headed towards free agency and you've been pitching well and you think you're going to take your team and yourself to financial and winning rewards and instead you get hurt in such a massive way that affects your bottom line. I just don't think there's any way he's going to actually make $11 million this year, and that's what was due to him in arbitration.

It's a brutal system for pitchers especially, given the higher likelihood of a catastrophic injury on that path to free agency. You think about, we had a mailbag question that kind of connects to Woodruff. It was from Michael. And this is the time the mailbag questions are best sent. Michael writes, as I was up at 5 a.m. feeding my infant son, my mind wandered, as it often does at those hours, into what I think would be an interesting topic for you to discuss. I know a lot of time is reviewing 2023 and saying what did we learn, but I think there's an interesting group of guys who made very little impact in 2023 who might be an interesting part of draft strategy in

2024. Injuries in pitching are a regular thing, but there seems to be a huge crop of former top prospects working their way back in 2024. So a few names that were in the email from Michael Max Meyer, Cade Cavalli, Casey Mize, Dustin May, Trevor Rogers, Tristan McKenzie, among the names that he threw at us via email.

The question is, which, if any, injured pitchers from 2023 are you trying to target in draft season now looking for value in 2024? And I bring this question up now because someone like Woodruff, who's kind of at the beginning of a lengthy rehab, he's not somebody that I want to stash away on rosters right now for fantasy purposes. In a real life situation, sure. Why not? I love what he brings to the table. But what pitching injuries are you more comfortable gambling on, especially in the early part of draft season? comfortable gambling on, especially in the early part of draft season, right? There's a lot that can happen good or bad between now and when pitchers and catchers report to spring training in February. So in some of these cases, we're getting updates like for Casey Mize, he's getting close to his normal off-season program. Okay. Well, so maybe in December,

he's back on track and he's totally fine by February. Others, we don't really have any updates yet because no one's been in contact with them from the media side. And we're just left to kind of guess as to where they're actually at in their various progressions. Yeah, I think I would be out on most of them because I would want, you know, even that little bit. You know when Frankie Montas in the last series of the year, like, pitched, got four outs? Mm-hmm. Like, some people might point to that and be like, what was the point of that? You know? And the point is, you've demonstrated, like, it's a little bit weird to say, but like, proof of life.

Yeah, my arm still works. I can get into the game and i can throw all the way back you know yeah noah simbergard did it a couple years ago and i i took that as a pretty big positive compared to the alternative of not being able to make it back so the only guy i think that had september innings on this list is tristan mckenzie yeah mckenenzie kind of stood out to me as one where even though we're talking about multiple years of significant injuries, I'm a little more comfortable, and I'm using the minor league history here. It was a lat injury a couple seasons ago that cost

a lot of time. I'm a little more comfortable with McKenzie than I am with a lot of the other names, and a lot of this comes down to relative, uh, Bart, right? Like how, how much has the room forgotten about these pictures?

Tristan McKenzie currently going outside the top 200 overall. I think that's fine in that range. I mean, you think about, I don't like that. He only threw 92 one when he came back, but yeah, at least he came back.

At least he came back. And who is it? Would you rather like outside of 200? You're what are you doing? Do you prep prospects and Charlie Morton versus Tristan McKenzie? Yeah. Take Morton. Andrew Abbott versus Tristan McKenzie.

Oh, see, I think I'm, uh, and that's a pretty extreme park situation difference and then abbott was not the same after his great beginning andrew abbott if if fantasy baseball is a track and mario kart andrew abbott is the banana peel that i hit every time going around the track i just i cannot get it right with Andrew Abbott.

You're going to not buy him when it was good to buy him, and you're going to buy him when it's not good to buy him. Yeah, there's players like this every year. You had an ERA over six in August and September combined. Whit Merrifield is the most prominent one. Didn't have, didn't have, didn't have, didn't have. Okay, fine, I'll believe in you. It wasn't good.

Oh, good. You went 0 for 5 five i was right all along yeah no i was i was wrong five times i wasn't i wasn't right i was over five in this in the particular instance i'm worried that andrew abbott on the pitching side is going to be someone like that it It's interesting that McKenzie and Mason Miller are on the same chunk of the screen for an AEP report. Mason Miller, filthy upon filthy stuff. We talked about that back when he debuted. I think it would matter for me if I had free agency in that league. Do I have a chance to replace Mason Miller if it doesn't work out? I might buy McKenzie over him in a draft and hold because in those you just need innings. Who has more innings in this coming season?

McKenzie or Mason Miller? I think McKenzie. I think you have to bet McKenzie because I think McKenzie threw more big league innings in 2022 than Mason Miller has thrown as a pro in two and a half years. It's all a scale. Tristan McKenzie has a scary injury history, but Mason Miller has a much scarier injury history. About as scary as it gets, yeah. Yeah, it's just the way it is.

I thought Max Meyer might get back at the very end of 2023. I was a little surprised that he didn't, and he's just buried right now. I think my general takeaway with the hurt-all-year guys is if you're going to draft them, especially early, draft and hold is a tough spot to do it. Limit yourself to literally one because it could just be a dead roster spot.

You have your injury guy, and might as well wait till one of the last five rounds. Right. I mean, Max Meyer going in the 600s in some drafts. Well, see, sometimes the ADP at the bottom gets a little chunky. The range is 356 to 473. You're not going to get burned there. Yeah, he's being picked as the last guy on the draft and holder.

One of the last guys. Yeah. Aaron Ashby, like he's hurt all year. You think about this Brewers team with the possible Burns trade, Woodruff gone. They need Ashby to be a starter. So the role is starter if he's healthy. But also, if you're down there picking near the end of a league, why not maybe take Mizorowski or Gasser instead because they're not hurt. Right. Take one of the guys that isn't broken that should end up in a more prominent role. I would generally err on that side just because it's so early. We just don't know.

Yes, you can be excited about that value, but I think these guys are going to be relatively undervalued even as you get more information. I don't think any of these pitchers, like Casey Myers, do you get the sense that anyone has sky-high expectations for Casey Myers anymore? It seems like they have faded to the point where if it's mid-rotation results for 140, 150 innings, then that's a pretty good outcome. The good news is it's Tommy John. It wasn't a shoulder surgery that Myers is coming back from. It's Tommy John. It wasn't a shoulder surgery that Mize is coming back from.

I don't know. I kind of just have this. I have a little bit of unreasonable hope because I've seen him change things up. He's gone all four seam, and he's developed a good slider. It went from a cutter to a slider. So he's changing things. And he came in with like he was supposed to be that splitter guy uh and he's never really used the splitter more than 20 of the time so um i i i still have some hope that like i don't know if it's going to be this year coming off injury but sometimes it is

you know because what was he doing coming off of injuries cleaning up his mechanics he gets to do as much pitch design as he wants you know he's he's spending a lot of time in a lab environment you know so he may come back and just be like hey i throw this now and this and this and i may look nothing jake odorizzi looks nothing like the guy who was drafted you know zach ranky looks nothing like the guy who was drafted some of the best pitchers in the world are nothing like the guys they were drafted so you know you know, I do like that he's, you know, tinkered with his stuff. And, like, I actually like his name more than, like, Cavalli or, you know. I think he's better.

It's a nice park. Yeah, he's better. And we've seen it for enough of, I mean, 150 innings in 2021. The Ks weren't there. But he didn't have any problems with walks. You know, got good results overall. There's enough there to build on. But I think for me, it's like for a guy that went 1-1, who doesn't throw that splitter as much as I thought he'd throw that splitter,

I don't know if the Ks are ever going to be there the way you'd ordinarily expect from someone with that pedigree. It might just be 23%, 24% K rate when it's all right. That's fine. 23-24% K rate when it's all right. That's fine. It ends up being a guy that if he does it over full seasons, we're talking about him as probably a pick 100-150 guy in the long run. Good outcome if that happens, but not necessarily frontline elite of the elite. We'll never talk about these guys if we don't talk about them now. Let me just run through these guys real quick. These are

the non-tender like adjacent small names that were forced to be moved around that's why we'll never yeah we'll talk about them until sleeper time in in march maybe but let's let's give them some love um we got nikki lopez mike soroka brayden shoemake, and Jared Sooster going to the White Sox. Vidal Brujan to the Marlins. Jake Bowers to the Brewers. Nick Anderson to the Royals. Toro, Abraham Torin, Miguel Andujar, friend of the show, Toro, to the A's. Scott Barlow to the Guardians.

Luis Urias to the Mariners. Kyle Wright to the Royals. Let's leave the guys who haven't signed with the team. We can talk about them when they do sign with the team, the non-ttenders these guys have roles somebody they were maybe close to being a non-tender but ended up on a team that wanted them so do you see any of these guys with an everyday role next year that you're interested in i mean as the roster is built right now jake bowers looks like the new rowdy telez because rowdy was among the players that got non-tendered. And big side platoon role playing time, he could be in the heart of an order in a park that boosts homers.

But I don't know if Jake Bowers getting to the power he was getting to in 2023, I don't know if that can happen with the strikeout rates we saw earlier in his career. I'm not sure he can do both of those things at the same time. 35%, yeah. Yeah, 35% is too high. And I don't know if we can Frankenstein the best of him together. But look at where he's been. It's the guy, everybody wants Jake Bowers, and then they don't want him enough to keep him. He's gone from the Rays to the Guardians to the Mariners to the Yankees and now the Brewers.

Five teams since 2018. I think he had some different organizations as a prospect. Yeah, the Padres originally brought him in back in 2013. Maybe Bowers because of the opportunity. I thought of all the moves. Mono leagues are not what people generally play. Listen to the show. Nicky Lopez going to the White Sox. Nicky Lopez is going to play a ton

because Nicky Lopez is a useful real life player. And I know they have an obsession in that front office with replicating the 2019 2020 Royals. Let's just that's what they're aiming for. And hey, they got a shortstop from that team. So, I mean, if playing time matters a lot on the Royals, too, didn't he? Yeah, I'm That's what they're aiming for. And hey, they got a shortstop from that team.

So, I mean, if playing time matters a lot in your league. He played on the Royals too, didn't he? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he played there. I think he worked there as a coach too, if memory serves me correct. He spent more time with the Royals than the White Sox. So, really odd. But I thought Lopez as part of that trade would play a lot. The thing about the White Sox, I actually like the concepts of bringing all these guys in, like Shoemake and Soroka.

They've added Luis Patino at the deadline. I'm not sure that any of them are good. I mean, they're kind of like the cast-offs of the teams. Can they make them good? Yeah, and there's no evidence that they have.

And they're basically taking... Their roster is in such shambles you know in terms of the 40-man roster that they're just basically taking all the guys that other teams might have non-tendered otherwise and they still have room so uh it's not a good sign for the state of organization like you imagine you're building a trade, and you start with Aaron Bummer, and you say, you know, we'll give you Mike Soroka. You know, some party's like, hmm, okay, that's not bad. But we need a little more.

Aaron Bummer's been a really good reliever. We need a little bit more. And then they start just adding names, and they're like, sure, let's put Shurik in. Sure, we'll put this other guy. Shurster? Yeah, sure.

Then you should realize that they didn't care about any of those guys, and you just got all the guys that they would have non-tendered anyway. I do think Soroka is interesting. It's a good change-up. I just feel like maybe with some good health and also like could he have like a just a normal off season maybe where he's healthy when's the last time you think he had one like where he was able to just go through a completely normal progression for a winter i mean it wasn't yeah it maybe before 2019 when he had a pretty good season.

Yeah. So, yeah, so Soroka, I think, is somebody that you could put in with that Cavalli group that we were saying, somebody that you could take a shot on, something that I think the White Sox should take a shot on. So that was the part of the trade I liked. on so that was that that was the part of the trade i liked um you know toro and andahar you know and luis urias are interesting because um i made a joke about the mariners loving uh soft hitting uh soft hitting infielders that control the zone and my evidence for that i

think is pretty strong i got called on it, and I definitely had some discussions about this. But my evidence is Adam Frazier, Colton Wong. Adam Frazier, Colton Wong. You can almost even put France on there, but France used to hit the ball harder. Hey, he's going to driveline too. That's right. You could put Crawford on this list before this last year.

Yep. There's more names. Why am I not thinking of them all? But Toro, Toro himself, and now Luis Rios, who used to hit the ball hard but has stopped. Any case, I don't really think that like yeah luis here is he has a little bit more power upside he's also going to seattle now which is a terrible park right so it's like you're asking a lot of him to get healthy get his power back and demonstrate all

this in seattle so i'm not that interested um andy har, of those three, is the one who hits the ball the hardest. Yeah. He's going to a tough place to hit home runs too, of course, with the Oakland Coliseum, at least we think for 2024. Where the A's play after that is more of a mystery based on... If I was going to take any of these hitters on a Mono League, Nicky Lopez is number one. hitters on a monoleague.

Nicky Lopez is number one. Miguel Andujar is two. Vidal Brujan is two. Those are maybe the only three I'm actually interested in in monoleagues. I think Urias may have been hurt enough to have it impact his barrel rate in 23.

8-9% barrel rates the previous two seasons. That gives me some hope. The unfortunate situation right now is that it's probably a small-side platoon role where they're going to play Josh Rojas at second and use Arias mostly at second as the guy that plays against lefties. Yeah, did I put Rojas on my list? Because Rojas is on the list.

Now they can just smush Rojas and Arias together. Right, and if someone's hurt, then Arias can play some more against same-handed pitching. But I And if someone's hurt, then Urias can play some more against same-handed pitching. But I think if everyone's healthy, he's probably more of a small-side platoon player and backup, which is not ideal for role purposes. Brujan's interesting because it felt like

he never really had a clear path in Tampa Bay, right? There's at least an easier depth chart to break through in with the Marlins. But then there's also the question of, is he good? Is he good enough? He really doesn't hit the ball hard.

Right. It's not his game. We're talking about 186 batted balls now over parts of three seasons. Four barrels. 107 max EV. Yeah. If you're going to do that, your game has to be 15% K rate. Or even less. I mean, he did have some of those 12s and 13s in the minors.

So, you know, maybe a new hitting coach says, hey, can you just go hang out with Luis Arias and just be him? And we can trade Arias and you can just be our new Arias. The versatility could make him pretty helpful he's a switch hitter he can play a bunch of spots what's surprising is you look at like arm strength sprint speed outs above average he doesn't pop in any of those things he's kind of like below average everywhere in terms of tools not even sprint speed huh yeah i would have thought 70th 80th percentile in sprint speed just based on the player he was in the minors.

He was 36th percentile in sprint speed. Oh, you know, he has a fair amount in common with Luis Urias then. Luis Urias doesn't run well. Yeah, but Luis Urias, though... He doesn't play good defense. My observation of Luis Urias, though, is that he's not fast, but he's a smart base runner. He gets good reads makes good decisions on the base paths in the times i've watched him so at least he takes whatever raw speed he has and he makes the most

of it then maybe brujan does some of that like that could be i've seen less brujan than i've seen arias so uh i don't know i i think a lot of these guys, you're like, yeah, they were kind of non-tendered for a reason. As brutal as this kind of stretch is, like, hey, now you're unemployed. Join the free agent scrap heap. Good luck. And the other part is, where will they play?

With Lopez, you can be a little bit excited because there's probably going to be an opening. Maybe he's just going to be their shortstop, probably. Yeah. They don't have a shortstop whereas riedel brujan like if he can be a shortstop which i don't i don't think i think it's been a long time since being a shortstop then there's a chance because right now the depth chart in miami is jacob amaya john birdie vidal brujan xavier ed Edwards, and Jordan Groshans at short. That smells like opportunity to me,

but I don't know if Brujan's the one that wins that. They are looking at players in a very different way in that organization. Was this some of the old guard that was at odds with Kim Eng? Just wanting these slashers, these guys that would have played and been really good in the 70s and 80s? Don't hit the ball hard. None of those guys hit the ball hard. Yeah, and as far as shortstop goes, I don't think. None of them are traditional shortstops.

Edwards has moved off the position. Birdie was moved off the position. Brujan played some shortstop at Durham actually this season. Played 15 games there. So maybe they saw something they liked there. Maybe that's the opportunity then. Yeah. I'd be a little more

interested if I knew that was actually going to happen. So better path for him, but still a player whose skills I think are pretty questionable at this point. Good news is we've got other players to talk about for our next episode, so we've got plenty to roll over on the rundown. And thank you for that mailbag question, Michael. I know that was maybe a little bit of an underwhelming answer. Be super careful with the very injured pitchers,

because a lot of times they are still hurt when they come back, or they're not themselves. I think the idea of just getting one is important, especially in drafting holds where you're just like, get one. 50 rounds is a lot of spots. Don't get two. As soon as you get two,

you get into trouble where you're like, dang, I don't have an actual pitcher to put in my lineup this week. I know this from experience. You've lived this. Good news for the holiday here this week we've got a special offer one dollar a month we'll get you in the door for a subscription to athletic at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels be sure to get that if you don't have that already if you're watching us on youtube be sure to hit the like button if you're not watching us on youtube subscribe to our youtube channel if you haven't

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Or at least endures it. Or endure it, depending on the... We hope everyone has a good one, though, and we're back with you next week. Thanks for listening. Or at least endures it. Or endure it, depending on the... We hope everyone has a good one, though, and we're back with you next week. Thanks for listening. Thank you.