Rates & Barrels - Adjusting Future Expectations as the 2024 Season Winds Down

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Tyler Glasnow's sprained elbow -- and the likelihood that his 2024 season is now over. How much will Glasnow's risk-reward profile shift in the wake of another problematic ailment? Plus, is it time to re-evaluate Julio Rodríguez's status as an early first-round pick on the heels of a disappointing season in Year 3 with the Mariners, or does the ceiling he's flashes in his first two campaigns keep him in the conversation as a top-five pick in 2025?  Rundown 3:24 Tyler Glasnow's 2024 Season is Likely Over 10:52 Awaiting Francisco Lindor's MRI Results 13:33 Is It Time to Re-Assess Julio Rodríguez's Early First-Round Status? 26:56 Long-Term: Spencer Arrighetti v. Hayden Birdsong 34:39 Heliot Ramos' History-Making Homer at Oracle 40:51 Kumar Rocker and Jacob deGrom Fetch (Some) Big Bids Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Thursdays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. it's Monday, September 16th. Derek from Rhymer Enoceris here with you on this episode. We've got some key injuries to discuss. Tyler Glass now, Francisco Lindor, a couple players coming back, aside from guys going on the shelf here at the end of the season. Got some great questions from our Discord. We're going to try to answer one about Julio Rodriguez and whether we need to take a slight step back in some of our previous assessments of him.

Got a long term question about some pictures that people might be kicking around in keeper and dynasty leagues. And of course, as we do every Monday, we'll take a look at where the money went and some of the moves that we made with our teams this weekend as we make that final push trying to find cash positions, possibly championships in the final weeks of the season. You know, how was your weekend? Who won the fight? I have no idea. I genuinely do not know who won. It's Canelo. Canelo is a legend. And so, you know, and he always fights on like Mexican Independence Day and represents Mexico. And there was just no doubt in anybody's mind that he was going to win.

But it was still, it's still a good show. I had a good time. The, I did see one of the worst movies I've seen in recent times this weekend. There's, and I was thinking that there might actually be a sort of reason for it. So I think right now movies are bad because of the strike. I think this is the backlog. The previous writer's strike. This is the Gullcats. So yeah.

Yeah. I think I was like looking at it. The, I know, but it was a while ago, but movies take like six, seven, sometimes a year to make, you know? So we were like, we were looking at movies and my friend and I decided to go. Anyway, we saw the new Dave Bautista movie where it's killer's night or something It's you know, shoot him up kind of thing, but it was so bad. It was like AI made the movie I don't know like it had different ideas at different times

It was like very much crib together from other movies, but not in like a smart way But it's unlike we're gonna do this one thing that other action movies do but we're only gonna do it for about half the movie What what's going on here? That does sound like an AI-generated script based on my experiences to this point with AI for creative endeavors. Vaguely familiar. Like, vaguely familiar of things that have come before,

but not in a good way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds about right. Hopefully they straighten it all out, but yeah, I'll buy your assessment that maybe this is part of the post-strike world and we'll get past that bubble. Eventually. Here's my theory on why things coming out of Hollywood aren't that good. I think people that make decisions in Hollywood are less likely to take

chances now than ever before. I think they want certainty of profit. So they're going to take a big risk. Yeah. It's, it's usually going to be something we've already seen before getting remade as opposed to something new, getting a big budget. So I think you're gonna get a lot of rehash stuff, a lot of AI generated garbage for the next little while.

Support indie films, right? That's the way to go. Go to an art house next time, you know. If you can find them. You can find them. They're closing. Well, you got a better chance than I do, I think at this point. Let's get to some baseball news. You should know Tyler Glassnow season is likely over at Dave Roberts said over the weekend. Glassnow has a sprained right elbow, which is an injury that could

cost them time next year too, right? Depending on the severity of the sprain. I mean, if this requires surgery, that the leg is going to be Glassnow has a sprained right elbow, which is an injury that could cost him time next year too, right? Depending on the severity of the sprain, I mean, if this requires surgery, that those are unknowns at this point. But it's another key injury that puts the Dodgers in a questionable position for the quality of their rotation in the playoffs. I think as far as Glassnow himself goes, which will be the main focus for us on today's show, it's not going to do anything to eliminate the questions that we wrestled with throughout all of draft season about his durability, right? Because now the final tally is here.

It's 134 innings. It's the highest big league total of Glassnow's career. His only seasons where he's done better are the split seasons between the big leagues and the minors. And I think he had one complete minor league seasons where he's done better, or the split seasons between the big leagues and the minors. I think he had one complete minor league season where he threw more innings several years ago. But now we're talking about a guy who's already 30 years old.

And I've always been a supporter because I believed that the quality of the innings was worth the risk. It's one more significant notch on the ledger. And I don't know if the way people approach Glass now is gonna change enough to the point where he'd be undervalued. I think it's gonna be, if he's healthy,

like let's just say the sprain's small and he comes back through, has a relatively normal winter, I think people are gonna look at him in a similar light to the way they did in 2024. And that's gonna make it a little more difficult for me to jump back in after having him on a bunch of teams this season. Do we have an ADP on him? I'm looking at something that says 38.

From the auction calculator that does year to date. So I don't just don't know when that was or how representative of that is, but that's. Third round for fifteen teamers. The good news is that he was the he's the sixteenth best starting pitcher according to the auction calculator so far this year. Even with that missed time. Yeah, even with that missed time and somebody like Brian Wu, who only has 105 innings is is ahead of him. So there are ways to be super valuable.

Paul Skeens is the fourth best pitcher of the season with 120 innings. So you also have maybe nobody getting to 200 innings because I guess Logan Gilbert and Seth Lugo probably. But Tarek Skjubel is at 180 and you know with his history I bet you they shut him down. You'll be surprised he doesn't make his last two starts or something because he has the Cy Young in the bag in my opinion. Yeah, if you're if you're starting early this week, you could still get three more starts in so that would be the only path. If you're in the 180 range right now, that could be enough to get you there. You need three starts. But I don't think he's going to make his last one.

So you know, I don't think he's making it. So it's Lugo and Lugo and Gilbert that are that are you might have one guy with 200 innings or maybe two So if that's the case, would you look at if you look at the top 20 starting pitchers? Average an average amount of innings 100 green is is the 12th best with 143 innings And Jack Flaherty only has 151 innings. So You know, I would say just sort of eyeballing it the average of the top 20 producers among starting pitchers this year is like 160 innings.

And if you're Tyler Glass now and you're penciling in for 130, you're just, you're just willing to, you're just willing to take a little bit fewer innings there. It's just one of those situations. Need more info. I think in the early, early drafts, I'm going to be very careful because it's a lot of unknowns until we know he gets through some throwing without having to undergo some kind of surgery.

Yeah. Spray is a tear if he's if he's getting, you know, the internal brace or something. And like, I wonder if internal brace will get to the point where it's so good, where people will have like four or five of them over the course of their career. Yeah. How many internal braces can you have before they start to lose effectiveness? That's a sad question to think about. Not going to go down that road today, but I'm sure it's a question we will answer at

some point. But it's like everybody was right about Tyler Glass now, right? Yeah. The skeptics were right. The people who said he was worth it were right, you know, but the skeptics were right too. Everybody was right. It's the weirdest outcome. Yeah.

Top 20 pitcher. He's like, no, he was, he was worth it because you have to replace him. It was a bummer to not have him. And yeah, he broke the way the people that said he was going to break, you know, it happened that way. Um, scupled things a little bit interesting. I don't want to let that one just fly away. The Tigers took two or three from the Orioles over the weekend.

They're still hanging on the wild card race. That would make him actually make his last start for sure. Yeah, I think if they're still within reach, he'll start this Wednesday against the Royals. That could be a pivotal game, depending on how that three game series plays out. And then his last regular season start would be a week from Wednesday at home against the Rays. I think he makes that start if they're still mathematically alive, because it'd

be pretty weird to just shut them down to save five or six innings when you do have the possibility of sneaking into the playoffs there. They're bringing Reese Olsen back. He might start today against the Royals. They're bringing Reese Olsen back. He might start today against the Royals. And they didn't just say, hey, you had a good enough season. We're out. So they were like, no, we're we have an opener bullpen game situation. We'd rather have Reese Olsen. So they're they're still trying to win. It's kind of an AJ Hinch thing, though.

You can kind of feel that like, you know, we're gonna keep trying until they tell us we're done, you know? I think that's an AJ Hinch's nature from spending some time in Houston. That's fine, fine quality to have in a manager, but they did give Jackson Job a bump to AAA. First start there didn't go well. Woo hoo hoo, that would be spicy.

I thought they could just skip him. They had enough of a need, just bring him right up. Don't make a deal with ABS. And hey, we were right. Bryce Eldridge moving fast. Did you notice that? Yeah, he's been flying. Bryce Eldridge is in the triple A now. Well, part of that, too, I think some of the double A

double A seasons are over now. Oh, they wanted to get more. You want to you want to keep playing. Just keep bumping them up. Will he be the AFL for us? Very possible. I think I think they're grooming him for maybe making the team, dude. Is that crazy?

I think they just want to get more reps. So I think your AFL dream is more realistic than the opening daydream at the moment. But hey, anything is possible. Jackson Jobe this year will put together 70, 80, 86 innings. And in 2023, he's at 86 innings right now, Jackson Jobe. 2023, he had 56, 62, 68. So I don't think Jackson Jobe is going to pitch in the major leagues this year.

I think that they want to get him to like 90 or a hundred so that maybe next year he can pitch in the major leagues this year. I think that they will, they want to get them to like 90 or a hundred so that maybe next year he can pitch in the big leagues and maybe next year he'll have even a skeinzee in amount of innings. Shoot that 140 range. That's where we want guys to go is they try and stretch out on the fly. We're awaiting more information on an injury

about Francisco Lindor. He's set to have an MRI on his back. Apparently, he's been dealing with some back stuff recently. Lindor, I think, is just day to day until otherwise noted. It's always a bummer to have this injury lingering on a Monday. Hopefully, we get the results before lineups lock for the week, or at least for the first part of the week, because that's not a fun spot to be in if you're in a head-to-head playoff

or any sort of scenario where every single game still matters. Yeah, I mean, insert joke about, you know, hurt his back carrying the team. The he's been by far the best hitter over the last 30 days. Alonso and Viento, so they're as comfortably above average. And then Winker's been a real surprise, but there have been some low spots in that lineup as well. It's in a lineup that's been better than I expected though overall. I did. I did have somebody asking me if they should keep him at like a $35 auction price.

And I kind of, I kind of lean towards no. But he's been such a steady performer that maybe I'm wrong. I mean, what is your back of the envelope projection for a 31-year-old Francisco Lindor next year? Mm, 5% worse than what we had coming into this year. I mean, like not much. He's a few steals away from another 30, 30 season. So he's not showing massive signs of slowing down.

This is the best barrel rate we've ever seen from Lindor at 13.8%. So I think this is mostly real. I think because there's not a lot of swing and miss, there's not a ton of chase. It's a profile that should age pretty well as long as he holds up physically. I think the hard thing about it is Lindor already had a high ADP.

He was a firm second round pick in most 15 team leagues. I think his ADP in the online championship was like 24. Right. That's why I'm talking about like keeping him at cost. I'm seeing, you know, you know, does he, does he, is he going to be, should he be right there again? Or should he go up into the first round or whatever? I think there might be some leagues where he does move up five, 10 spots off of last year's ADP.

And I'm not sure I want to pay the increased price again, because it seems like there's only one direction things can go at this point. I just think he'll age gracefully. If the price is similar that I'm probably still in on Lindor. It's really tight in the early rounds. When someone moves up five, five or 10 spots, that can completely change whether or not I'm actually going to have that player. Yeah, we'll have a question about someone that might be moving down five or 10 spots in the first round. So let's get to that question. Perfect timing. We get this one from our discord and it kind of boils down to this.

I'm going to paraphrase it. Is it time to reassess Julio Rodriguez? And considering that there has been, I think, a limited amount of adjustments made this year, kind of a free swinging approach that we've seen where he's chased the entire time he's been in the big leagues. Julio Rodriguez has had a lot of success with the approach he's employing right now. The hard hit rates dipped a little bit to 45.4%. That's still good, even though it's lower than what he did each of the last two seasons.

Barrel rate's at 10%. There's been an injury this year, so you have to factor that in. But when you look at Julio being the same guy or a tick below the player he's been in his first two seasons, does that make you back off him as at least a top five overall sort of player, right? I mean, I think the reassessment here applies because if anyone moves up, someone has to move down and perhaps Julio falls to the back of round one as opposed to the early part of round one.

But how much of an adjustment are you making? Same kind of question you asked me about Lindor. Are you adjusting expectations for a guy who won't turn 24 until late December, but already has three full big league seasons under his belt and has a 28, 25, a 32, 37, and with a little power binge at the end of this season should have a shot at least another 2020 season in 2024.

Yeah, I, we, um, we, we, we had a discussion pre show about something, uh, that, and it inspired a reaction from you that I, um, I almost want to recreate somehow. Uh, so good because, good because there's a rust and Dodd piece up on the athletic about how Winsor replacement has changed MVP voting over the years and how we've gone all the way from something like Willie Mays leading the league in war for like 10 seasons and getting two MVPs out of it to a time when basically the leader in war for like 10 seasons and getting two MVPs out of it to a time when basically the leader in war wins the MVP.

And so he talks about, you know, how even the people who run the sites, because he has a quote from Meg Rowley at Fangraphs and Sean Forman, a baseball reference, talking about, Meg Rowley says that using just the leaderboards is an approach that assumes a precision that war doesn't have. And Sean Forman says, no one should view a half-win difference as definitive of who's more valuable. And then so Ras Anad goes to this researcher, Don Moore,

who studies biases in human decision-making. He says that the promise of war when it comes to voting could represent examples over precision bias. He says, human judgment tends to reduce the complexity of the world by zeroing in on a favorite measure or an interpretation or an explanatory theory. That leads us so easily to neglect the uncertainty and variability and imprecision.

And what did you say? It was so good. It's what we do on this podcast all the time. I feel like you just described my entire career in fantasy sports, trying to analyze baseball and for a long time, football, right? It is like you, you always are trying to find answers. Like what's going to happen? Why did this happen? Come up to a new set of information,

you determine that it's meaningful, and you start to hone so much in on the new information that you begin to dismiss other factors, right? That is exactly what that story highlights. That's what we try not to do on the show, to be more fair to ourselves, hopefully. we're trying to break those assumptions down, but we still have metrics that are crutch metrics. We still have certain things we'd like to see certain things. We don't. And I think that bias can start to hurt us in some instances. Now I think in the case of

Julio, like how, how specifically could we be blinded by some of the surface numbers? I would say, look, this guy's almost a six war player in his first two seasons. Yeah. Before age 24, like that's, that's a special player. Remember the age. I think, you know, the reason I thought of it in regards to this was you mentioned the barrel rate going down, the, the max of you hasn't gone to where it was before the hard hit rates, not there, you know, compared to where it was in the past. And so you could be tempted to say, oh, is he already losing bad speed or like,

you know, I think overanalyze necessarily those because what we've have seen from him and this is where I try to do something, it's almost like a magic eye. I'm staring at these fan graphs pages all the time, right? But I, you know, I almost want to just relax my eyes and like figure out a way to see through the numbers, see through the matrix. And I think in Julio Rodriguez's case, it's very simple. He's a streaky player that hit an injury in the middle of a hot streak. And so he wasn't able to make the most out of his hot streaks that he has in the first two years.

I think if you gave him back three weeks of injury and gave him the hottest three weeks that he had in the first two seasons, he would have the same season this year. You know, that's that's that's sort of vibes reporting plus plus, you know, Magic Eye fan graphs plus you know magic I fan graphs you know but I think that there's a lot of there's also a lot of research reasons that he is the way it's like he swings a little bit too much of pitches outside the zone and he has a slightly higher swing strike rate and strike out right and those types of players are volatile. But I think he also gets locked in in a way where he's making the most out of his prodigious strength. Great bat speed, you know, ability to run the bases. I mean, he is still a special player. I think he has an MVP season in him. And I think it may just be next year, you know. And so I will buy him, especially if there's a reduced price.

I am fully in on him and I'm fully in on him in a way that I cannot say that I was on Corbin Carroll. That Corbin Carroll was bad enough in terms of contact ability and all the stuff that I was doubting whether or not I would really pull the trigger on a by-law. And I was thinking about it in like Devil's rejects where we have, I would have to give up junior caminero and I, Ozzy Albies and you know what I mean? I'd have to give up really good players to, to even buy Corbin Carroll low. And I, I don't know if we had the really intestinal fortitude to really,

to do that, but I would, if Julio Rodriguez was somehow available in my league, I would give him, I would give them whatever they want, you know, more or less. I think this, the question came from Andrew B in our discord. And within the question, Andrew wrote with two isolated months where he was hot in that calendar year, it's been a full year from basically being disappointing. Oh, you know, that fits into the streakier nature of the profile.

But he's still that guy. Like he's still going to have a blazing hot month or two next year. And one year he's going to have a blazing hot six months. It certainly seems possible. I think the interesting thing you have with Julio, if you look at some of the projections that are out there, we've talked about Zips having multiple years of projections into the future over at Fangraphs. Zips has Julio as a five war player

for each of the next two seasons. They got 2025 and 2026. Doing 30-30 in all three seasons. 30-30 with a slowly improving K-rate. So if you say, oh, how is he gonna get there? It's raising the batting average floor, still having that power speed combo. I think the things that you would be more worried about with Julio

would be supporting cast and the difficulty of hitting in that home park. He's already shown he can do a lot playing half his games there. But if the supporting cast can't make those adjustments and can't consistently get on base, then maybe he is a star player whose counting stats lag slightly compared to other elite players. But I think I'm pretty content to accept your explanation that the best part of his season

is exactly when he got hurt this year. The time where he would have made up some of that ground was spent on the IL. And there's no way to fully prove it. And then he came back without a rehab stint. Right, came back quickly. I mean, I would love to see, I'm sure it matters how long you were hurt. If you had a minimum IL stint, maybe it's not as impactful. If you have more than a minimum IL stint, coming back quickly seems more difficult, like skipping the rehab. But we've also talked about the rehab assignment being almost impossible as far as replicating

the quality of what you're gonna see in the big leagues anyway. But you could still try to get your timing back and hitters talk about it a week or two to get your timing back. But okay, so Julio, I'm looking back at mid-March ADP data, just looking at the Rotowire Online Championship. So NFPC 12-team format, Julio was third by ADP,

earliest pick two, latest pick eight, never fell further than eight. Makes perfect sense, right? Is he going to fall more than four or five spots? Like how many players, like Shohei Otani is going to go ahead of him like Otani was going 11th in that same window on average so Otani goes ahead of him Aaron Judge goes ahead of him probably Acuna's coming off the ACL so he was going ahead of it'll drop below Bobby Witt Jr. Will still go ahead of Julio

What other obvious hitters are you putting ahead of him right now? Is your Don Alvarez going ahead of him? Who are you guys this year is putting up this 72nd best offensive season. Yeah, so there's going to be a discount. I just think it's going to be a small one. And I think even a small discount is still worth taking. I mean, the first round is going to have judge Otani with Jose Ramirez, Juan Soto, Gunnar Henderson.

Ellie going to go ahead of Julio. That's where it starts to get interesting. Are you taking Ellie ahead of Julio? If you're sitting on like pick eight, pick nine. Uh, I think I'm taking Julio and thinking I'm getting 30 points of batting average and giving up some stolen bases. But you have a comfort level in finding those extra steals elsewhere. Yeah, I think I think I'm taking Julio really. That's where it gets really tough.

I think Lindor is after that. I think Guerrero because you know of his lack of steals and you know position is after that. Your own Alvarez lack of steals and position I think that's going to be the tough group there I think I might take your down over Julio because he's a metronome in terms of batting average and homers and power production And I could see somebody making the argument that Vlad belongs in that discussion and so you're taking the safety of Vlad and your Don and you're pushing Julio down to You know tenth overall and you know Julio and Ellie around the turn with the pitchers, you know and Julio and Ellie around the turn with the pitchers. It'd be a heck of a turn if you're in a 12 and they're both there. Yikes.

Oh, it'd be a great start to a roster. So it's always time to pull back and reassess players. There's never a problem asking a question about a player like this. Great question. I think it's actually better than just assuming everything's fine, draft them exactly where you would like that. That would be terrible.

Like don't do that. Don't take early round players and just assume it's all fine. No, yeah. I mean, like the poor stretches still matter. Yeah. And yeah, I'm not saying take him third overall and ignore what happened this year. Healthy Kyle Tucker,

which is more of a loaded question than it should be, but he only played 68 games this year. I mean, if we're doing a draft in Arizona in six weeks, are you taking Kyle Tucker for 2025 over Julio? I don't know, man. I want to know more about this like leg fracture and like, like how much of it is repetitive use and like, is it going to be something that's always going to bother him? And like, what's the impact on his stolen bases going forward? I think that matters. Yeah, I mean, or if it is even a situation where stealing bases makes a difference,

like, is it just a chronic wear and tear sort of thing where it doesn't actually matter if he runs more or less. I don't think we know the full story on this. You know, I think there's some people who think that, you know, it wasn't really well handled and it was misdiagnosed basically. Yeah, it's complicated too. I mean, Tucker will be a free agent after next season. So there's every incentive for him to try and get it right and then push himself out there for 150 plus games next year. But I can see Tucker versus Julio being a little bit of a tricky, tricky question to

answer just because of the uncertainty around this injury for Kyle Tucker. But thanks a lot for that question, Andrew B. We got a different kind of question, a long-term question about Hayden Birdsong versus Spencer Araghetti. And I kind of like questions like this because this is what you start to think about as the off season approaches, keeper season, where you're trying to decide last pitcher in who do I like between these two guys, or maybe you're even in a position right now where you can cut one, pick up the other because the league is just the right size where that's actually a possibility.

The stuff model loves Birdsong. It thinks Arigeti is just okay. This question came from a gilded age, by the way. So who's the better investment for the next three years? Betting on Birdsong learning a more complimentary pitch to go along with what he has currently, or betting that Arigeti can become more consistent with continued experience?

Yeah, it's tough. I mean, there's some language in there about, um, you know, would Bert's song be better, uh, using a different fastball, sinker, cutter. There is a chance that, like, he, like, irons out. The real problem is not only a dead zone shape on his fastball, but just, like, awful location of it.

I mean, 87 location plus on a fastball links up completely with what I've seen with my own eyes. And what prospect evaluators said about Hayden Birdsong was that he has poor command. They gave him a 40, 50 over at Fangraphs. But I bet you if he broke it out by pitch, it would be worse on the fastball. So, I mean, that's the real problem for him and I don't necessarily think that

Arrogate ease Problem is the same Location wise he's much closer to average And then stuff does not love his cutter, but it may be misdiagnosing it a little bit and I maybe misdiagnosing it a little bit. Um, and I think I'm going to go with Eric Getty because one of the things that I like is the strikeout rate is high and he has demonstrated this ability to strike out a lot of people and he's had

up and down walk totals Eric Getty has in the miners. And I think that there's some, um, approach count approach, you know, mixed approach that can get him with lower walk rates because his location plus is basically average. You know what I mean? So it's a, it's a question of, maybe, maybe he's Snellian and that he just won't give him cause he doesn't want to give up the homers or you know, maybe he's using a pitch. He's using a pitch.

He's using the fastball and counts to get back into counts and he actually has better command of the cutter. You know what I mean? There's something that he could figure out that is easier than telling Birdsong Hey, can you just control your fastball that you that you've never controlled? You know, so I think I like Eric better a little bit better than Birdsong. I think I like Birdsong a little bit more. They both have a couple of secondaries that get really high whiff rates. This is a great question because it's like asking what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

It's like this could turn, they could both be good, they could both be bus, they could both get a little better. A lot of ways it could go. Home park I think is a factor too. I mean I think Birdsong having Oracle as a home park makes me feel a little bit better. I think when we talked about Birdsong previously, the thing that I was okay with was that

the fastball is a problem in terms of Rive. It's more of a dead zone fastball. He's averaging 95.8 on it. He's got that extra tick. Yeah, he's still got a good V though, yeah. Yeah, he's got almost two ticks on the Four Seamer compared to Aragetti. So I think that gives him just a little bit more wiggle room.

Organizationally speaking, I think I trust the Astros a little bit more. So Park versus Organization might be a wash. Secondaries are pretty close to a wash. I think Velo's making the difference for me here, but. Interesting. I don't, do I want to live on the differences between these two guys? No, absolutely not.

So I think it's a great question. I mean, I think ideally in terms of team approach, you kind of, you have a little bit of A and a little bit of B, you know, in your approach to next season, you know. You can like, you know, I had this one legendary draft in devil's redress where I drafted Garrett Richards and Carlos Carrasco and Jake Arietta. After pick five fifty you know the year they all broke out and you know somebody asked me once like how did I do that and I was like there was different reasons for each of them. There was different reasons for each of them. You know, it was like, I drafted Garrett Richards because he threw 98.

That's literally the only reason I grabbed Garrett Richards, you know? And then I drafted Carlos Carrasco's kids, two good secondaries. So he's kind of like the Arragedi in this. Two good secondaries, probably can figure it out, you know? And I don't know who Jake Arrieta is. I don't know if he's necessarily Birdsong.

But Jake Arrieta had some bad command issues and then ironed them out while he's with the Cubs. So maybe Arrieta is kind of the bird song in this. And so you kind of try to get a bunch of each. I do, as an aside, just want to throw the idea out that I might have Landon Rupp on a couple of Sleeper lists next year. His stuff has stayed the same despite being stretched out, which is pretty amazing. He's a 105 stuff plus on the sinker and a 152 on the curve. And even if those go down a little bit,

that's enough to be a foundation, to be a starter. And I had a conversation with him when I was like, you know, your force seems no good. I didn't say that. But like, you know, the force seems not the best option against lefties. Your sinker is not the best option. Have you ever thought about a cutter? And he's like, yes. And that's what I'm going to work on in spring because I want to be in the rotation next year. And and I was like, that's something I like to hear when I

talked to Birdsong about his fastball command. He's like, oh, man, I know, I know I spray it. And he's like, I'm doing certain things, having certain cues, putting the heavy ball on the front glove, trying to, you know, trying to to iron that out. But Rup seemed a little bit more like have an action plan and be thinking about it already for next year. And like, so I don't know, I may have Roop slightly ahead of Birdsong

and even on the, when it comes to the Giants. Yeah, I'm looking back at Birdsong's minor league numbers, great strikeout rates, pretty much everywhere, above 30% everywhere, problems with control. I think that checks out. And I just wish we had seen more consistent dominance. It kind of seemed like once he got to a level and made the adjustments, he would dominate,

which is normal, but we didn't see it year over year, stop to stop. I mean, in terms of ERA, he's up and down. I mean, fours and fives and threes and twos. Yeah, it's pretty strange. The question also pointed the idea that I think you've mentioned before. You could possibly add a sinker.

If Birdsong throws a 95 mono or two seamer that he can throw up in the top of the zone and run it away from lefties running in on the hands of righties, then that changes everything too. But what if he just has just as poor command of the sinker and the cutter? Like what if it's more of a, just an overall problem rather than, you know, for Rup he's demonstrated command and if he has a cutter, he's probably going to

command it okay, you know? So, um, I don't know. All right. So your Rup over birdsong, are you Rup over Arigetti too? Yeah, maybe. That's a little spicy. I mean, I'm trying this one out. I'm throwing out the trial balloon.

Tell me I'm wrong. We'll see. I just think Rup's going to be on some of my sleeper list in the offseason. Fair enough. Now, since the Giants kind of came up here, how about Elliot Ramos as a right-handed hitter homering into McCovey Cove? Like that's impressive. First guy ever dude. I mean how often is it that a park has been open for 25 seasons and no one has done

something in it? You know? I mean I just on top of it you know Sam Miller you know has wrote a piece about like Willis happen and then and Kruko has been talking about it on the on the cast like Willis ever happened. And also, I think, you know, Elie Ramos going to be the guy who does it. And when you think about it, it made a total sense because Elie Ramos is, you know, a guy who hits the crap out of the ball to the opposite field. He just seems to have that swing path that that that would lead to it. So, you know, I like

I like Eli Ramos. I do wonder, like, you know, the difference between the times where he's up and down. I swear to God almost DFA or almost traded out of this organization. And this year, to some extent, has been he had like a 200 babbitt come before and now he has a 326 babbitt. You know, so I just wonder, you know, what will hit, what is this true talent bad and like you take a guy who can hit the ball hard to the opposite field and take some shots at pulling,

you take that guy and probably give him a pretty good bad, especially if he runs well and he runs pretty well. So you see some differences in the projected bad 313 from steamer, 323 from the bad ex That's the difference those ten points of the difference between 248 and 258 in the batting average, you know That's a fairly big difference for you know full season value. Are you gonna have a 240 guy or 260 guy next year? Otherwise, I think he'll hit 20 plus homers and steal, he might steal 10 plus bags next year.

That's a pretty good player. Is it fair to put him in Lawrence Butler territory? Would you rather have Lawrence Butler? I think I'd rather have Butler. I think there's another level in terms of stolen bases that we're getting from Butler right now. So that sits a little better with me. a few ways it can still go right. I mean, the quality of the contact is actually closer than you would think.

And Ramos hits the ball very hard, but Butler does too. 49.3% hard hit over 12% barrel rate. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little, a little more improvement that we've seen so far. I think the thing that we've probably mentioned with Ramos before, or at least about the Giants compared to some other organizations, is maybe just being more patient with him

this time around has also helped. He's always had these raw skills. He finally got like 400 plus played appearance. He finally got to not look over his shoulder the whole time. Yeah, they just let it happen, which is great. So I mean, long-term, I like Butler more than Ramos. It doesn't mean I don't like Ramos. I think the question for me is, is he a fifth outfielder in 15 team leagues,

the fifth outfielder in 12 team leagues again next year? Like, what's your what's your ideal scenario to have Ramos rostered in for 2025? Looks in the splits, he's handled fastballs and breaking balls well. One thing I always fear when we look at guys that break out is that they're doing the damage against one pitch type. Yeah, and the league's gonna solve them. They're gonna fill them up with breaking balls off speed,

something that doesn't work, but Ramos actually is pretty good against at least fastballs and breaking balls. That gives me some confidence that most of what he's doing right now is actually real. Yeah. And I think there's been a little bit of a, uh, a slump, you know,

that this Homer was kind of important for and I would like to see what happens the next couple of weeks because, um, you know, this has been his worst month, September. He's got a 45 WIC plus august one oh seven july one twenty june one sixty you know. So it is still fair sometimes to. Look at young player who has the shape and say you know i think it's a little different than who you guys where. He's done it a couple times you know he's had a couple seasons where he had worse months and then blinding hot months this is the first time we're seeing a role was play all the way through a season it's fair to wonder if. That june was just you know doing something different than the scouting report said and you know and capitalizing on that and then everyone sort of figured him out quote unquote. And so you know i think that risk would keep me from getting too superlative about him and pushing him too high.

But I would say I think he's definitely relevant in all leagues and a pretty good player. Yeah, I think if I had to guess ADP for Ramos, I'm going to say pick 200, give or take, is where he ends up. Kind of in the, has possibly one more level, but shaky enough situation in terms of park where you're not overpaying for it. I think Butler's going to go earlier. I think people are going to be really into Lawrence Butler because you see on his Statcast page, tons of red. Like the first eight lollipops are all

70th percentile or better. That's the kind of stuff that gets everybody excited. I mentioned the speed before. I think the batting average floor is higher with Lawrence Butler. I think people are going to start projecting more offensive output for A's players getting out of the Coliseum and moving into the triple A park in Sacramento. So there's going to be a little bit of helium put on players for that. So I can see Lawrence Butler maybe going 50 to 75 picks earlier in some rooms than Elliot Ramos.

So maybe cost ends up being a factor with these two players specifically, but that might actually be fair for Butler. Once you figure in cost, you know, I would find Ramos interesting if he was around 200 for sure. Yeah. It's my best guess. We'll see if I'm even close to right. Once we get a few more drafts in, in the books here in the fall, let's take a look at where the money went this weekend, because it was a weird week of fab. Mostly because of two pitchers for the Rangers. We talked a lot about Kumar rocker and Jacob de Grom last week, but they were.

If you had fab dollars left, they were the guys you were throwing that money at on the pitching side this week. So I'm just, I'm curious, like how did you, how did you tier things with your pitching bids this weekend with guys like that out there that would take most of whatever you had left for a bid? But then even guys like Tyler McGill,

who looks like he's pitching well again, or Joey Cantillo, who we talked about going to the weekend, or guys like Reese Olsen, who are coming back from the IL and might actually help. Reese Olsen could be just as good as Rocker or DeGrom for a handful of starts. That's not out of the question. It's only two or three starts that you're

looking at for what's left of the season. How did you cue everything up? Because I feel like I set my cues a little differently this weekend. I didn't have any money, man. I, so, you know, I put a Kumar rocker and, and when, when possible, Jake de Grom on all of my, uh, on all of my cues with like a nice little $4 out of a thousand next to their name. Um, and surprisingly won one. I got it.

I think Kumar rocker in my main event for, uh, like $2. So, um, but I did, um, I did have to start guys right below them for about the same price. And I just figured I would win the two-star guys and not win Kumar Rocker and That is sort of what happened. So I got As you mentioned Tyler McGill for three dollars in the in TGFBI I've got

Bobby Miller. I'm throwing him. He's a two-star guy Got him for a buck and in my main event Kumar rocker for three bucks and He's a tenoko so I also bought Edwin who said in our league because my some of my saves situations are pretty tight, so I think those guys are the closers who said on toaka are the closers in Florida for their respective teams. So I felt pretty good. I mean, it is one of those things where you don't want to,

I don't know that saving $40 to get Kumar Rocker for his last two starts is actually worth it. Those $40 two months ago, if they had won a bigger player, you would have had for two months, you know. So and especially being on the side of it, being like, oh, well, I wish I had forty dollars for Cromwell Rocker right now, but I got Tyler McGill for a two start. I'm pretty excited about that.

Yeah. So the situation I was in and why my bids were so weird, I had a couple of leagues this year where I got just shoved around in fab. Like every single week I was just short. I was not bidding correctly. It was not adjusting enough. And I think I had 178 out of a thousand left in TGFBI. So if you had $178 left. So you can do whatever you want.

There's two more fabs left and you look at what everybody else, there's a few other teams that had triple digit bids still in the league. You're like, well, you get to honor and respect that if you want these players. Yeah, you can go to 120 for de Grom, 150. Yeah. I mean, what do you only have one more?

They won 47 for de Grom. One, yeah, nice. And you got them. Runner up was 47. Like it's just, well, like saving the money doesn't matter. I have to get the player. That other person saved the money. Why do they want $50 for the last FAB period?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if they tried to chop it and get both guys. Cause that person also got rocker at 47. So they must've had DeGrom rocker just ordered that way or something. And anyway, it's, I had a couple of lists this time because of guys like DeGrom and rocker

and having a little extra money left where my, I did like bid twice on a player. Like I had different bid amounts in different lists. So that way, if I hit the full price bid at the top on the ground, I still had the cheap bid on rocker. I've done that more this year. You have a full price grid thing with my have hitters and pitchers on it, especially when you're running out of money.

You can't accidentally win like to like have a hitter queue and win the most expensive hitter and have a pitcher cue and win the most expensive pitcher and then be like, I have a dollar for the last month, you know? So we've done that as the season gets longer, you have a high price bid cue and then you have these other cues that are conditional off that for sure.

Yeah, so I ended up, I decided I preferred the Grom to Rocker, which was maybe some fatigue brain decision-making. The reason for me was that I think there's a, there's a non-zero chance that Rocker only makes one start because they'll say, ah, we're good. You've done enough. And he only went four and two thirds. So it's not like they're going to push Kumar Rocker into like the seventh and eighth innings. Right. And then there was this, the skills foundation,

like Jacob deGrom on his rehab assignment was showing the same kinds of skills that we've seen from deGrom throughout his career. So you're just hoping for five clean innings and a win, you know? Five innings, six or seven Ks and a win. That's all I'm looking for. Great ratios.

I, that was my reasoning. I thought the ratios would be a little better. Workloads would be close enough where it might not matter for the final turns these guys take. But the other guys we talked about going to the weekend like Jordan Wicks, inexpensive. I was happy to get him. I had a lot of injuries I had to replace.

Jordan Walker was an inexpensive ad this week and a 12 teamer. I feel good about that. Cause we talked about the difficulty of finding power at the end of the year. It's one of the things I think he will bring to the table. Jason Dominguez was out there in some leagues. Now we've had a few days to sort of see what the Yankees want to do with the playing time.

It's a little annoying, right? It's a little frustrating. It's it's no it's like Verdugo and and Dominguez, neither one of them is like really playing every day. That's been my, I'm looking right now. Five out of seven last week is how they used Dominguez, which is enough to pick him up, but not necessarily enough to play him over someone else who might start every single game for their team. Yeah, it's a little weird.

That lineup, man, I'm telling you, when you look at it right now, Torres seems like he's swinging the bat a little better lately. Chisholm being back from the IL, Stanton being healthy right now. So to judge in the two, three spots. Now you've got Dominguez, Volpi, Rizzo, and then whoever's catching. Like, that's a great lineup compared to what they were rolling out there earlier in the season. Yeah, I did some, you know, Jose Iglesias actually gets three lefties out of the next four games. I think, um, it's one of those rare times when like kind of a fringe

righty, uh, is a good start. Um, I, you know, uh, and I bought, I picked them up basically because, um, of the, with Lindor being hurt. I feel like Iglesias, he may not start short, but I think he'll play more, you know, because now you have Lindor and Jeff McNeil hurt. So Iglesias is kind of I think a starter almost. And, you know, I picked up also

I end up dropping Jace Young in that one. People were asking what the drops were. Jace Young is not playing every day. So that was enough for me to make that decision. I took up Charlie Blackman dropping Verdugo and I paid a dollar to get Blackman for four games, of course, before I drop him again. Did you get in to Hunter Goodman?

I wanted Hunter Goodman, but I didn't have enough money. He went for more money than I had. So Hunter Goodman, catcher eligible in cores for four days. That's, that's where you get at the end of the season where you're just like, that's better than what I've got. They've been catching him in the late part of the season. He's up to 17 games behind the plate, I think, for the season. So there's a good chance he's getting to 20 and he's catcher eligible for next year, if that happens.

So I'm watching that kind of closely. I guess the other bigger question is, is he going to hit enough to keep a job and take advantage of the situation? But compared to some of the other guys, the Rockies have broken in over the years. Like he's only 24. It's not like a Sam Hilliard or Sean Bouchard. Like there's at least a reason to think, yeah, this could actually be something if it all clicks. And you think of all the guys that like

were catching a little bit and they're like, oh, he could be a catcher. How many of them really stuck? Like think about Eric Haas. He's catching again, isn't he? Is he a brewer again? Yeah, he's a brewer. Yeah, it's a part-time catcher. It's very strange. There's not that many people like this because I think you want a good catcher. Like defensively.

I think they do that in part though because Gary Sanchez occasionally... There's another name. Yeah, both of those guys. So they have three catchers on the roster, but they only really want to start one of them. They just use them frequently as part of the DH mix so they can get away with the third one. And another Christian Betancourt is kind of in this list.

A little bit. He's kind of been floating about. I don't know. I tend to... Is Jake Rogers somebody that is converted to catching? I thought Rogers was always a catcher. I don't think he, I don't think he was a

converted catcher. I just, I, I'm a little, I'm a little, uh, skeptical that he ends up being the everyday catcher for the, uh, for the Rockies next year. But it is such a low investment. You could, you could probably just put them on a keeper. They just in case they go through spring.

They're like, yep, Hunter Goodman's are starting catcher. He's suddenly a worthwhile catcher in two catcher leagues. So yeah, that's sort of where I feel like the ceiling would be a catcher. Number 25, 15 team league, get a start to take the guy that plays half his games in Colorado. That's the extent to which I'm interested. But a funny name that people were actually a little excited about because it's the middle of September and finding catchers to replace

guys that either got sent down like Luis Camposano, who I was replacing in a bunch of spots or guys that aren't playing enough. It's hard to do. It's never fun to be in that position where you're chasing playing time behind the plate. Yeah, we we picked up Danny Jansen in our main event, and he had like five at bats last week and we're just like. OK, I guess we're just going to pick up another catcher. So we had a whole tree of one dollar catchers because we were like all these guys

played three times as much as Danny Jansen last week. I mean, what are we hoping to happen? You know, if he's playing five at plate appearances a week, we got to get somebody else in here, so. I don't even know who we got. So we've got somebody. Definition of somebody. Here's the question for you.

Reid Detmers is back for the Angels. Couple of nice starts, this first two turns back. Oh, we got Jake Rogers, there's a somebody. Oh, you got Jake Rogers back in there. See, it all comes back to Jake Rogers. So I know that recently, Fangraphs added the stuff by start to the game log. You can look at a game blog now and see how stuff fluctuates.

I think it's very helpful because you can get a sense of like, what's normal for a guy and what's a major change. Look at Shamanaya and you can see when he changed his arm slot. His fastball stuff plus completely changes. OK. So is the main application for you with this just spotting something that's different to then lead you to look at other data points like arm slot or other pitch

mix, all this stuff like that? I think it's just hard to know when you hear something like, oh, he changes arm slot or, oh, he changes grip. And you can kind of look at some places and be like, oh, the movement arm slot or oh he changes grip, you know You're and you can kind of look at some places big. Oh the movement is up or down It's hard to know a lot of times if these things are positives like think of Shamanai Oh, he dropped his slot. Like is that a good thing or a bad thing? He's not Chris sail So like just because he dropped a slot because he saw Chris sale doing it doesn't mean he turns into Chris sale

I mean he did have a really good stretch afterwards and maybe he is on that way, but at least you can go and you hear this thing and you can go to the log and be like, oh, it looks like it's pretty much a positive for him or maybe it's not a positive for him, you know, so that's it. I think it's a it's a good way to kind of sniff test these kind of adjustment things that we hear from beat writers and you know. Well, and you can glance up at the overall numbers and look at the individual pitches and go, oh, fastball has been a little bit worse than it has been for the season. That's the case for Detmers, even though the results have been good against the Dodgers and twins, slider has been a little bit better.

Right. So if they have a good couple of starts and you go and you look and there's no change, then you can kind of be like, you know, I don't know. It seemed like the underlying stuff is about the same. So maybe he just had a couple of good starts and that's it. You know, the slider by only a few points in the stuff plus model is actually. It's been as good as it's been all year. The last two starts, that's the only thing that's really different for me when I look in the locations, at least at the higher end of Detmers range.

But I don't think that the time at AAA like completely transformed him as a pitcher, at least come back with something that's so different that the best version of Reed Detmers rolls up in 2025 because of what happened in season in 2024. If that happens, it's because of new changes, new tweaks that are made between now and opening day next year. And sometimes you'll see like a change that has two things associated with one good and one bad. So Spencer Schwellenbach, you know, changed his, uh, changed his grip on his curve ball.

You can see that in one of my videos online and, um, it got harder, but it lost drop, you know? So you're like, well, you know, how do I weigh? It's a little bit like when we're talking about with war is like, if I don't have a framework, like stuff less can give you that framework to some extent where it's like, how do I weigh the lost movement with the added below? And then you look over at this and you say, oh yeah, his stuff loss on this curve ball has gone up. You know, it's been a good change for him overall. So, um, I think that's how you can use it a little bit. Uh,

I just want to throw out there a little bit, uh, thanks to the fan graphs team for, for doing that. I think that's a fun way to, to, to look at trends over time. Um, and, uh, you know, first pitch Arizona will be, Max May and I will be presenting some changes to the model that should be really exciting some added stuff that we can offer people. I also wanted to say good luck to everybody this is you know probably your your your finals week of your own. I'm in a couple finals right now and. right now and I wish you the best of luck. One little piece of strategy that's being used against me that I will gift to you.

It's very, it's a very small little thing, but it's kind of interesting in auto new, my opponent, Robert Sanchez traded for a ton of free agents auction money. At a time when the waiver wire was barren and I had, and he was a contender and I didn't quite get it. But now that I'm competing against him, I understand it. He's been blocking every little move I've been trying to make. I've tried to get, like I tried to stream caterment or which already hard and auto new where you have two day waiver processes and all this stuff. Um,

and he blocked me by winning Cater Montero $34 to my two So That's the thing to think about if you are head-to-head auto new or even just down the stretch in in regular roto auto new You know trading for free agency money something gives you the hammer in a way that you can kind of hammer some of the competitors As they come at you, even if you the hammer in a way that you can kind of hammer some of the competitors as they come at you, even if you're on top. So something to think about.

I also think that there's like kind of another way to frame it aside from blocking. It's also just making sure your depth is as good as possible. If you have guys that are banged up that may not come back this year, don't take the optimistic approach in a redraft situation of someone coming back for that one start because it might not even be a full start. You know, it may be three innings just to make sure.

I think that's the lesson from Glass now for redrafters for sure is like you can draft that guy and play him. But then when he goes down with an injury, you pretty much drop him because it's not the history hasn't been great that he's like, oh yeah, I just needed two weeks and I'm back it's more like oh oh oh the tall guy back thing that they brought up at the All-Star break that was kind of an obvious we're giving him a breather something's tweaked if this were important he'd pitch through it right that was an exception but if there's like a if there's like we're getting MRIs or something it's probably not

gonna be good news in Tyler Glass no yeah I'm with you there but yeah I'll echo that good luck as you try and complete these titles we're going to be here for these final couple of weeks and we've got playoff shows again this year they will not be live streams but they'll be up probably midday each day throughout the postseason breaking down the things we saw the previous day also looking ahead to that next day's games, trying to find some things that are detailed, but still very interesting. Think about some of the segments we've done with Trevor, like breaking things down in detail,

how I'd pitch this guy, those kinds of things on the big stage. So we're looking forward to doing that. If you got some ideas for things you like about playoff analysis, or something you think we could do better than other shows that are out there, send them to us via Discord.

We're always happy to take that feedback in there. Just drop them right on in the suggestion box channel. It's the best spot to do that. You can join the Discord with the link in the show description. If you'd like to get a subscription to the athletic, you can get that for $2 a month for the first year at athletic.com, slash rates and barrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris, find me at Derek VanRyper, find the pod at rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris, find me at Derek Van Riper, find the pod at Rates and Barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. College football is back like never before. I'm David Ubbin and I host Until Saturday, the athletics leveled up college football

podcast. Three times a week, you'll hear me and my co-host, fellow athletics senior writer Chris Finini and two time national champion Damian Harris embrace the sports new madness with you. We're also just going to have a ton of fun enjoying all the things that make college football great. Harris.