Rates & Barrels - An Eye Toward 2024 & Protecting v. Chasing Leads

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss a few takeaways from the first seven rounds of the Too Early Meatball Draft -- including the myriad of great choices from the No. 3 spot on the first round, continuing to draft starting pitchers early if other teams try to wait, a potential rebound from Trea Turner, and Elly De La Cruz's push toward top-15 status for 2024. Plus, they discuss a few differences in how to approach protecting a lead at the end of the season compared to attempts to make up ground.  Link to Too Early Meatball Draft Board: https://twitter.com/deadpullhitter/status/1694203814910275867/photo/1 Rundown 1:20 The Top of the Board from the 'Too Early Meatball Draft' 6:47 Skills Growth From Fernando Tatis Jr. 10:31 Spencer Strider v. Elite Bats at Pick 3 14:54 A Smaller Circle of Trust for Closers in Early Draft Formats? 21:21 Freddie Freeman Keeps Getting Better 25:37 Chasing Power In The Current Run Environment 26:55 Elly De La Cruz's Push Toward Round 1 32:47 Interest in Re-Drafting at All-Star Break 38:07 What's Going On with Trea Turner? 43:08 Matt McLain's Great Rookie Season 51:17 How to Protect a Lead 60:35 Chasing a Lead Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at Nuts.com/rates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Wednesday, August 23rd, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we have some draft results for 2024 to look at. Thanks to Rob DiPietro from the Pole Hitter podcast. His too early meatball draft, which was new last year, came back for a second season.

Seven rounds already in the books. We'll talk about some things happening there because it's pretty fun to look to the future, even if you're still competing for this season. We're going to talk about some rest future, even if you're still competing for this season. We're going to talk about some rest of season strategy if you're protecting the lead and if you're trying to chase a lead. So a lot of ground to cover here.

Plenty of fun to have along the way. But I wanted to start with the draft that Rob put together. Because the early eye to next season, I'm always thinking about next season. Even though I'm enjoying the current one. It's fun to think about the future. You can dream on the future. The future could be so much better than the present. You can put so much hope in the future being

amazing. Don't look back at how many times you've been wrong about that. Just keep looking forward to that optimism. That's the way to a healthier lifestyle. I've got the board up on YouTube if anybody wants to see that instead of our faces. You can see the first seven round results that were tweeted. The interesting thing about next year, right?

As things stand today on August 23rd, barring injury, Acuna and Otani are probably the consensus one-two for most leagues. Now, this is an NFBC format it's draft champions in particular 50 rounds is what they end up drafting no in-season pickups but I think we've reached a point where even in weekly leagues where Otani's stats are not captured simultaneously right you have to choose hitter or pitcher each week in this format it's still at the point now where the value is so clear that that's where he's usually going to go. Things open up a ton after that. There are so many directions you could actually try to go from pick three through about pick eight. And I think the KDS, the Kentucky Derby style, like where do you want to be? It might be steered more toward the middle of the

round being optimal than it's been at any point that I've played in the last few years. I always feel like later in the round, if the early spots aren't good, it's the later part. This time it looks like the middle is going to be good because you see players like this particular draft with Strider

at three, Julio Rodriguez at four, Mookie Betts at five, Tatis at six, Bobby Witt Jr. at three Julio Rodriguez at four Mookie bets at five Tatis at six, Bobby Witt Jr. At seven, Freddie Freeman at eight. Right. And there's a ton of great players that obviously haven't even been taken

past that. So I just feel like that's a, that's a combination to choose from throughout that early part of the first round that is just loaded right now. Yeah, I would, I mean, I think I'd still like one. I mean, Acuna is just loaded right now yeah i would i mean i think i'd still like one

i mean acuna is just so tempting i think i'd start with one but you know right after one it may actually go to you know four you know five six seven i'd love i love being able to pick in there and what it allows you to do is have some flexibility, which is what we've talked about is the benefit of being in the middle. You have some flexibility on the way back to discover runs, see them, jump into a run, avoid a run, whatever it is you want to do. You get a bunch of information between your two picks. Whereas at one, you make your first pick and then you wait a long time

and you make two picks and you have no extra added information between your second and third picks. So there's something to be said for that flexibility. Plus, just the player pool in the middle. I love it. Julio Rodriguez, Mookie Betts for Tatis. I think if I was going after two, I would go Julio Rodriguez, Mookie Betts for Tatis. I think if I was going after two, I would go Julio Rodriguez, Tatis Jr., three and four. Am I pushing Mookie Betts that hard? Freddie Freeman is old.

How far does Jose Ramirez fall? Those are great questions. I might push Corbin carroll back up against fernando tatis i know he's had a bit of a second half slide but i just like his plate approach better than bobby witts um and i just want young in their prime power speed guys four through eight and i think you can do that just by going Julio Rodriguez, Fernando Tatis Jr., Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt and then stack up some veterans after that with Jose Ramirez, Mookie Betts and so on. So that's sort of how my first round would go. How much do you think the

recent struggles of Carroll can be linked to the problems he was having with his shoulder prior to the All-Star break? It seems like statistically the season has turned on a dime for him, whereas maybe by the middle of June, if you were doing this exercise, you would have been certain Corbin Carroll was in that top five based on how well he was playing, the power-speed combination that he was showing us. But if you look back to just July 1st, I think that shoulder injury first popped up again around then. 247, 331, 393, four homers during that span. Still running a lot, 14 steals. I think that's sort of like the floor skill that Corbin Carroll will have. Even if the power is sapped by the shoulder. He's going to run and run and run.

So you're at least getting that. Do you think this is the sort of thing that with an offseason, some rest, some strengthening, he comes back and he can put together a full season that looks like the start he was having in the first half? That's the hope i think and you know even past comparisons to like you know cody bellinger whatever shoulder injury what's gonna happen he's he's is he on the precipice of having that sort of injury or re-aggravating it and and having that sort of power decline or whatever i just look at the totality of what he's done this year and and it's so impressive. And to know that he did that while in pain at some points of the season, I just have to think that at 23, the arrow only points up. I know there's a little bit of injury risk.

Maybe you could argue you put him behind Bobby Witt, who hasn't really had that sort of asterisk. But in the same way that i see fernando tatis jr this season and say it's not his best season but to put that season together after a cracked wrist and a shoulder surgery like that's two surgeries and he had this season uh it's the word by low is overused and stuff and probably doesn't really you know work when you're talking about a first rounder uh but in this case i i get a little bit of for like by low vibes on tatis and carol where it's like those guys could be number one picks next year in 2025 you know what i mean so it's like you know why not get what could be a

number one like if you know how acuna say think there's so many parallels with acuna right acuna was you know third fourth fifth sixth in some drafts depending on how far back into draft season you went here he is a consensus one one less than a year later the injury parallels too you know like came back had a fine season but not too, you know, like came back, had a fine season, but not his best, you know, injury. There was an injury asterisk. You know, if you bet on him, you scored big. That's how I see Tatis and Corbin Carroll next year. Yeah, with Tatis too, you look at some of the underlying changes.

He's got a 12% barrel rate this season. That's the lowest we've seen from him in the four seasons he's been in San Diego, but 12% is still very good. It's not like he's pounding the ball on the ground at an alarming rate. There's nothing in the profile that says, oh, maybe he's still physically broken. He's striking out less than ever, 21.1%. That was part of the knock on him when he broke into the league, a bit of a free swinging approach. Maybe he's always going to have

high 20% K rates. Well, now he's got a low 20% K rate. So you could see all the pieces falling into place and the best version of Tatis still actually being in front of us. I think the combination of injuries probably gives him heightened risk for the next couple of seasons. I mean, the shoulder in particular. Yeah, it's fixed now. But that plus the risk plus knowing that he is an accident prone person due to his decision making that adds a heightened level of risk. Learn something. I mean, people learn as they get older.

Maybe. Yeah, it's possible and maybe depending on what happens in the final weeks of this season there's extra motivation up and down that roster to come back with most of the same core all the same core next year and deliver on the promise that everybody had for that team this year like that's that's all there too i think there's also some team context here where obviously the team is not performing as well as they wanted. And so sort of like some psychological aspect here where the team is not performing as well as they wanted the Padres. And Tatis is coming back and wanting to show everybody, you know, I wasn't a creation of steroids or whatever.

And the way that it's manifested is the the highest chase rate of his career um and i think that's something that is mostly uh sticky to a personal mean not to the league mean but like you know if he's demonstrated that he chases at about 30 of pitches outside the zone this year it's up at 36 i just tend to think the next year it'll be down to 30 again you know and that'll help i think that'll just sort of help infuse everything the walk rate will go back up uh the barrel rate will go out back up a little bit um and even this baseline that he's established like if he did what he did this year just did it again next year i can't imagine that you would feel you know that you were screwed

out of your mid-round first pick first round pick so i think it's pretty interesting when you look at the the top of the board that decision jenny butler made at pick three was spencer strider over all of those bats and i can't do that. Strider's going to probably get to, pretty easily, 180 regular season innings plus whatever he throws in the postseason. Pretty hefty increase over last year, but the results are still phenomenal. 38%

K rate for a starter. We just don't see stuff like that. The underlying metrics support it. We talked about how often he gets away with the misses in the heart of the zone with the fastball that still get him whiffs, which is just nuts. I don't think it's an anti-strider argument to pass on him there as much as it's saying the hitters are so good that

the gap between the first round hitters in the early part of the round is actually bigger. Like waiting on a hitter actually is a bigger drop off than waiting on a pitcher right now, because everybody seems to be waiting a little longer to start building their rotation, or this is a group of almost entirely good people that plays in NFPC and everyone plays NFPC leagues out of this.

Yeah. I mean the, the consolation prize for Strider is Cole. Yeah. Who's amazing and the consolation prize on you know missing out on julio rodriguez and trying to get a bat in the next round is like cory seager or i mean she got robert in the in second, which we've been talking about constantly about his risk, his reward, his abilities. I would much rather have Julio Rodriguez. I'd much rather have Tatis.

It's Julio Rodriguez and then the next starter that went was Corbin Burns in the third. It's basically, would you rather have Strider and Luis Robert or would you rather have Julio Rodriguez and Corbin Burns in this particular draft based on who's available? I would rather have Rodriguez and Burns for sure. Yeah, I think I would too, but it's not a bad alternative, right? Get your players. Well, and this is something that you have to consider the format. This is still a very specific format. the format this is still a very specific format and beyond just being a specific format doing a draft this early puts the attention or the the sort of the incentive on on floor maybe or on

especially among i think pitchers and closers and certain types of players, makes you want to take a sure thing. So I think with Strider, she's like, man, I got a sure thing at starting pitcher. All these other guys are going to have to take two or three starting pitchers to feel as sure about one of them. You know what I mean?

By taking Spencer Strider in the first i allow myself to then go bat bat which nobody only one other team did the team that got garrett cole went bat bat uh i don't love cory seager adoliz garcia as uh the bat bat combo but luisa robert and marcus simeon that's pretty good actually she could come out of that with 40 stolen bases and 50 homers yeah yeah and I think the the other part of the case for Strider would be that you see a pretty big gap between what Strider has returned so far this year and the next highest pitchers by most earned value calculators and auction calculators so unless you have a compelling reason to believe that any of those other pitchers by most earned value calculators and auction calculators. So unless you have a compelling reason to believe that any of those other pitchers in the field are going to close

the gap or that Strider is going to fall short of expectations next year, that would be your pro argument for Strider. I don't think it's a landslide combo. I think what Jenny did works. I think Julio versus Burns is probably what I would do as well. But if you were a few seats over and you didn't have the choice, right? If Strider fell to you at six and Julio wasn't there and you ended up with the different combo from a different spot, you'd probably be pretty happy with it. It's just when you have the choice, you have to pick. You have to decide who you actually want, like your preferred strategy. You can't just say, oh, I'll just take whoever falls.

At three, everyone's there. Yeah. Also interesting on that is when you look at James Anderson's draft, he was the one who took Julio Rodriguez. And I would hate normally the idea of taking Emmanuel Classe and David Bednar, having two of your first six picks be closers and maybe even two of your first seven being catchers. I mean, he went so kind of specific into these needs early on

where you're like, you you know i kind of hate that because you're like what like you're letting all these well-rounded players go uh you're you're behind on steals uh probably and um you know even though smith and murphy are great catchers you're not you're not getting they're not great hitters if you put them up against all other hitters you know what i mean they're not not on the same level as some of the other hitters that are going so i i hate that for a lot of formats but for this format he now has the rest of the draft with like he doesn't need to take a closer for the rest of the draft and taking a closer on august 23rd for next season is near

impossible i mean he could really just peace out on closers until the 20th round and then he's just taking flyers on you know interesting arms and in the meantime he's going to take a lot of interesting bats that are allowed that are out there because other people are now. Oh, my God, I don't have any closers. The bottom falling out on your middle round bats when you do early drafts, be that something this early or even just draft champion stuff throughout the fall, early part of the winter. It's so much it's so much more likely that a closer just gets bounced from save opportunities than it is for a hitter to fall completely out of playing time. The value drop is much greater when a closer loses his job compared to a hitter playing a bit less or ending up on a worse team. At least they're still useful.

And I think that makes a big difference in this format. So I'm with you. I think the circle of trust for closers, we call it in the spring. It's smaller this time of year in both Klasse and Bednar. It's even smaller if you're three months out of spring, four months out of the real normal early drafts. Those are guys that Klasse has got that extension. Bednar still got a few years before free agency.

If they were to get traded, they almost certainly would end up in a situation where they're still closing because it would take so much for any of their team to go get those guys. I think that makes a lot of sense as far as just basically having a shot to win a category with two picks in the first six rounds. There's not really any other

category that you're going to have a shot at winning with two picks that early. I think when you can't make moves, it's a gamble that's more worth taking. There's a ton to unpack here we're not going to go through this whole thing i think the the recommendation here if you want to look more toward the future more into this draft check out the pull hitter podcast rob's got an episode that

he put up today digging more into this he was in the room he was part of it so he could speak to his own strategy and some other things that were going on the broader thing i noticed that i think could be a bit of a trend, at least for draft champions, and maybe even into drafts through the spring, you do see the yellow brick roads that you're accustomed to for NFBC style leagues, but they've just shifted down a little bit. I was looking at the board from this draft a year ago, and there were 11 starting pitchers drafted in the first two rounds this time last year and one closer. This year, four starting pitchers in the first two rounds and two relievers.

It was Felix Bautista and Emmanuel Classe with the two relievers. Not a surprise to see Bautista in there. You start to see the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh round. That's where the heavy, heavy pitching seems to be so it looks like there's a little more of a i'm gonna wait on pitching more than i have the last couple of years mindset for a lot of people in this draft yeah i wonder if some of the pro offense rule changes have inserted doubt when it comes to you know some of the the this sort of top end but not top three type starting pitchers if you think about it. If you just think about the season that Sandy Alcantara had and think about the season

Corbin Burns had. He's been excellent now, but it was a tough early going. Then you add the injury component and to some extent i think that what they've done is is correct like i would rather be taking my starting pitchers you know in the third and fourth round and i like i like some of the the teams that have done that but to some extent i wonder if it's an overreaction to a change in the offensive run environment. Because theoretically, as offense goes up, the elite starting pitchers that somehow still manage to put up an ERA that starts at the two are even worth even more. Yeah. And I think I misspoke a little earlier. I forgot to hit the

generate button on the auction calculator. Strider is second among starting pitchers in earned value right now there's a big gap rest of season projections for the remaining time that's sort of interesting because that gives you a glimpse into what who's earned more value gossman gallon gallon yeah 14 wins yeah tiny era yeah more of more value in the ratios from gallon is what the difference and a slightly higher goes in the third and strider goes third i mean that that that goes that that goes to speak to the rest of season projections versus you know just taking what's happened yeah but the the rest of season projection that that's almost more of like a degrom versus the field sort of gap where you see oh it's a $10 difference between SP1 and SP2.

Yeah, so that's what Jenny Butler is looking at. Yeah, I think that could definitely pay off. Marcus Simeon, kind of part of that older group of players that it just seems like gets a little undervalued, even though he just keeps doing it. We have guys like that in the first round right now i mean in this particular draft freddie freeman went eighth overall this is the first time i feel like freddie freeman is being like fully and appropriately the first time that he has a uh shows some warts or something i bet i mean i he's 30, what, 33? He's 34 in the middle of September, yeah. Career high in steals.

Two years in a row he's done it. Like last year we all thought, okay, 13, that's about what he'll get with the new rules, maybe even a few less. No, no, he's on pace. He might get 20. He's 17 for 18 as a base stealer. He's hitting 332. And I wondered, you know, stolen bases bases everybody can get some right so the the totals you need to accumulate or higher we'll have targets and things that we'll talk about in the offseason

I wonder if batting average is that category where it's kind of like the elite pitcher thing you were saying before where the guys that can actually get separation and post an era in the threes there's a premium on them but what about these perennial great batting average players? The short list of guys Freddie Freeman plays every single day and he's hit 332 this year after hitting 325 last year. So you pair good power,

more speed than you'd expect, great counting stats because of the lineup, never getting days off and just great core skills. He's not showing signs of slowing down. If, if there are warts there,

they're invisible warts. Yeah. I mean, I want to see them. The only one I've got is 33. I don't, the, it seems like maybe he's going to be a good bet again.

And, and yes, batting average is up and you could say, well, that, you know, does that devalue a batting average first type player? But batting average is not up a ton.

I mean, league batting average last year was 243, and this year it's 249. We had higher batting averages in 16, 17, 19, and 15. So batting average is not you know uh up with the rocket you know it's still it's still under 250 and so freddie freeman is still going to represent a huge uh you know huge value there and yeah like i don't i don't see him chasing i don't see the barrel rate down. The max EV is down a little bit, but he's had years with 109s. The swing strike rate is still... He had this weird thing where he just improved his swing strike rate in 2020 and never looked back.

I don't know. I can't spot it necessarily. The interesting thing about that build, so Team 8 in this room, was Jason DuPont, who's an NFBC player that I think I've talked to once or twice, maybe in person over the years. But I like that it's Freeman up top, three aces potentially, Luis Castillo, Zach Gallen, Tyler Glass. Now, the reason I like that. Oh, the reason you like it is you took CJ Abrams. That's not it. I like it because I think when the room generally agrees on a construction type, let's wait on pitching, there's leverage in doing the other thing.

As long as you're not giving away value. I don't think Jason gave away value here. Tyler Glass now in the fourth, I don't think that's going to be happening in March. I think that's a benefit of drafting early. Take the chance on him now. We'll see. Glass now could go down with an injury again. If he goes through the rest of the season

and he's healthy and he keeps pitching the way he does, he'll go up. He could end up being the best of those three pitchers, but I just like between Castillo and Gallin, tons of innings, really nice floor for the ratios, and then you get the guy to round it out with Glass now. Good combination.

The C.J. Abrams combo with Jazz is pretty interesting. Yeah. Because that's a lot of, to me, there's some skills risk with C.J. Abrams still, even though I obviously like him. And then, of course, there's the health risk for Jazz, given all the time he's missed these last two seasons but he got back in on steals but he got extra bags so every draft is

pick the thing you're going to chase later when you're building a foundation paul seawald was the seventh rounder it's power yeah how do you feel about chasing power based on the environment we're in right now and based on how people seem to want to push hitters up a little bit more in the early rounds. Would you be comfortable chasing power? If you have Freddie Freeman as your first hitter, and elite average is part of what he brings, that gives you a little bit of buffer

if you don't get power that comes without the flaw of a low batting average, right? So you start to think through it. I wish I knew what the ball was going to do next year. That's just an asterisk that I think makes it hard to run a Major League Baseball team and run a fantasy team. The ball right now is livelier than it's been in the last two years, but nowhere near as lively as it was in 2019.

And so with that slightly livelier ball, yeah, sure, I i like it but what if it's a dead ball what if it's deader than last year um then he might run into some trouble i think the the funny thing about any draft at the end of the season is that it's the the most recency bias you can possibly have the the off season hasn't started, right? The full season hasn't even played out yet. And a player that missed some time, like Judge, who was an earlier first rounder, he's at the back of the first round. Young guys that are popping, Elie De La Cruz,

there was a shot he was going to go in the first. He went 18th overall. What he does in the next five and a half weeks is going to determine whether or not he keeps tracking up towards the first round or if he slides back a little bit from where he is right now. But Ellie is always fun to talk about. So let's let's just look at him for a second. He is exceeding a 20 homer 40 steel pace right now as a rookie through 64 games. This is really good, even even though as we know there could be some bumps along the way like if he's if he's doing this while making adjustments and figuring

some things out the peak could be just absurd he's gonna get a lot out of his batted balls because he hits them so dang hard so you are going to project him for a really hard high babbitt and as most rest of season projections have for ellie they've got him in the 340s basically that's going to help keep his batting average out of the 220s where most people reside if they strike out 34 percent of the time some of this we saw with a healthy young Tatis. I don't love a 7% walk rate and a 34% strikeout rate. If you look at his rolling charts, his K percentage has actually gone up over the course of the season, even as there's

good things in the rest of his numbers. He's got a chase rate that's kind of gone down over the course of the season. His ground ball rate has gone down over the course of the season. Those are really good signs, I think, for him sort of learning the zone, learning where he can attack, not hitting everything on the ground. Those are great. Strikeout rate has gone up, and that's where the risk is for me and i don't normally love a 7 and 34 but in this case you're also talking about a 21 year old that should have four years of improving that strikeout rate um and you never

know if you know next year could be the year that he just gets it down to 26% and just keeps it there for his peak. And that's the tantalizing aspect is if he did something like that, Elie de la Cruz could hit 280 with 30 homers and 50 stolen bases next year. Right. With dual eligibility. It's in his range. I went back and looked at the first half, basically, of Tatis' rookie season, and it's better. 28.5% K rate during the first half of his first season, 8.8% walk rate, a 164 WRC+.

Ellie is at like a 94 right now. right now. In the current version, there's a pretty big gap between Ellie's fantasy value and his real-life offensive value even though there's tons of things to like. Think of Witt. Witt had some

similar aspects. Could you take Bobby Witt with a sub-300 projected OBP in the first round? Yes, you could. People did it and they worked profit and and this year he got better yeah and that's the other part of this too is like it it's always hard to know you you can believe with a lot of reason what a player's ceiling is and be pretty right about it but it can just take longer than you want it to. I think the timing aspect of it is always hard to project and figure out.

Yeah. Yeah. When does Ellie take that jump? Is there, is there a time where he goes backwards? You know, is there a time where the league similarly figured them out? Now we have to have a bunch of pieces about what happened to Ellie de la

Cruz, you know, you know, there's all that, that aspect to him. What's your top line takeaway though? I feel like... Is it too high?

It feels appropriate based on how... Would you take him if you had that pick? What were your choices there? In this situation, you've got Eli De La Cruz, Corey Seager. He doesn't have a pitcher yet, so you've got Kevin Gossman and Luis Castillo. You've got the closers

Klaasen and Bautista. You've got Bryce Harper. I'm not taking a closer at 18. No. I might, if I took a hitter, he took Jordan Alvarez first, I might go with Gossman or Castillo. I like Jordan from the later first round position, though. I really do.

I think we've talked about him before as being one of the hitters that could be like Judge was a year ago, where it's just absurd everything. Judge minus the stolen bases. So maybe that pushed Fish towards taking someone with stolen bases there. Yeah, maybe. That's why I wouldn't take Corey Seager necessarily over Elida Cruz. You think Corey Seager might have some backing up of the power stats,

and then also he's not going to steal bases, and he has his own risk, which is injury. So definitely not. I don't even think i'm taking cory seagury went which was uh just at 19 a pick after elio cruz so i'm definitely not taking seeker over elio cruz yeah so the who who is the best alternative harper is probably the most tempting to me harper and gossman for me or harper and castillo Just Castillo is, you know, just an amazingly high floor pitcher, I feel like.

Yeah. Yeah. So these results are really fun to look at. Dig into them. Tweet at us. Let us know what you think. Listen to Rob's pod about it, too. Just dig even deeper.

I've had a chance to listen to it to get more of the, hey, what was it really like being in there? But love the concepts of these early drafts. And it's made me wonder, would you play, would most people want to play in a baseball league that redrafts maybe at the all-star break? I'm not saying redraft every month. I'm not saying redraft more than one extra time, but drafting is so fun and the season is so long and Roto in particular, you know, because of your own roster construction, maybe you had a flaw in your build, or maybe you had a couple of key injuries,

you can be lagging so much in a category or two that you really like your best possible finish really starts to take shape in the middle of the season where you're like, oh, I can maybe get my money back. I can take third, but I can't win. If you redrafted, if you didn't have enough saves, you couldn't catch anybody,

you're not going to find enough on the wire. If you had a redraft at the All-Star break, you could have four closers for the second half of the season. You could tweak your strategy a little bit more along the way, knowing that you have a chance to steer into the skid and make wholesale adjustments to your roster. Would you want to play in a format like that, Or do you prefer just running the marathon as it is? I don't know. There's something about it. I love it. And I hate it.

Because the reason I love it is, oh, drafting. You know the reaping, sowing meme? You know, drafting is the reaping. I mean, drafting is the sowing. And then the setting lineups every week is the reaping i mean drafting is the sowing and then the setting lineups every week is the reaping and so maybe if there were some added draft and holds uh through the the season where i didn't have to do any extra lineups that'd be good but i could see a thing where i'm like ah yay draft draft draft draft and then like in late august i'm like oh no i have to set 25 lineups this weekend.

Yeah, it's a management problem at a certain point. But I just think if there were a league designed to just basically hit reset at the all-star break, you don't keep anybody. You did what you did. You're winning, you're losing, you're middle of the pack. Whatever you are, it doesn't matter. You have no holdovers. What if it could replace leagues?

You got a first half league, it ends. And you just have a second half league. So then you don't start doing this thing where you're building up leagues and by the end of the season you have twice as many as when you started the season i'd rather try it as one league with a redraft component where the standings don't reset as opposed to two where it's a first half and a second half league one thing that i hate about ending it and let's say you had like a monthly league or it's a first half and a second half league. One thing that I hate about ending it, and let's say you had like a monthly league where it's just a month, what happens is it starts incentivizing people to really dig into the schedule. And I don't really enjoy that.

I mean, it's just, it's like comedy. It's a lot. You have to kind of, and then you have to maybe simulate all your results based on the actual schedule or whatever. And then you have to maybe simulate all your results based on the actual schedule or whatever. Then it'll really help people that have the deep, even machine learning, but modeling experience where they can just have a rest of season projection of this batter against that pitcher on this day because I've gamed out the whole schedule. Right. Yeah. And of course, the schedule has chaos and it won't turn out to be exactly that way but it still favors the people that can really model out every day

of a schedule like that yeah i don't want to make fantasy baseball require any more yeah quantitative chops that it already needs like i think i think we need to nudge it back the other direction to have broader appeal but i think, does Underdog do that a little bit where it's... Underdog does a few different things. They did a mid-season draft. Price points are pretty accessible. The mid-season draft was like seven bucks or something to play. It's best ball.

It's smaller rosters. The position eligibilities are even kind of lumped together. It's like pitcher, infield, outfield, utility, I think, are the four positions right so i don't i mean maybe that's too much of an adjustment for i'm considering myself an old timer now like i'm more traditional well that seems like it doesn't put as much pressure on modeling every single player there's going to be a fair amount of luck and so you can just be and there's not a huge buy-in so it's kind of like ah you know i'm gonna throw on seven bucks and have some fun just pick some guys at seven bucks and in a big field best ball i think you want to just do the most extreme

stack combos that you can do right you just you just want to try and basically thread the needle shoot the moon make it perfect like that's that's the goal because you're trying to just take the big prize down. You're not trying to win the smaller prizes, which that's a thing within the NFBC too. It's like you have to build in a way where you're going to play overall. If you're playing in the online championship, those are 12 team leagues. They're $350 entry fees, but you're trying to get the six-figure payout. So you still have to make sure you're thinking about playing against everybody else.

And that's where that leverage idea I was talking about earlier, where you do something a little bit different structurally than everybody else, it helps you in the overall contest, especially because a lot of other teams out there are going to have similar bids, similar builds relying on similar groups of players. But if you've got this completely different shape to your build and you're right you get separation you get you get separation of the field because of your leverage totally so a couple other things that are on my mind here uh we had a mailbag question about trey turner it was basically what's going

on with him his season has been pretty strange and I saw him go at the 1-2 turn of that draft, just for reference. As disappointing as this season has been, you're still talking about a potential late first round pick for next season. What do you see when you dig into the underlying numbers? We were looking before the show at the swing decision, specifically on pitches outside the zone and there's a there's a turning point right around the time he got that standing ovation from the home fans in philly where the the decisions got better and the results quickly

followed that's how it looks but i i've i've noticed that you know you can look at his his as chase rate and it hit on july 9th a peak a rolling peak of 44 and it was generally super high this early season and that that's associated with pressing but an interesting thing happens that's july 9th and it starts going into a nosedive uh that goes all the way into early august so in fact the improvement was already happening you know what i mean like oh yeah we're just fitting a narrative here this is exactly right you know that peak there you know that that that that july peak there before it goes down into the tank, that's, that's in July. So, uh, the, the, you know, I think in a way it could have just been validating where it's like, you know, uh, okay, they love me. Everything is fine.

My, my process has been better. And, uh, you know, from, from here I i've i've got somewhere to go so but you have to also think that just generally this early high you know three peak o swing thing that's happened here that's that is basically a higher longer stretch of chasing than he'd had you know in the last two years before that uh that's got to be pressing on a new team so to some extent i think tread turner is a good guy to buy back in on uh because he's had these much lower uh chase rates in the in the rest of his career um and i doubt that uh at 30 it's just turning on a dime like that i think that's more sort of psychological pressure and then the other thing you know, he's going to end up with around the same amount of steals this year than he had last year, despite the new rules,

and despite the fact that he's still the fifth fastest runner in baseball. So I kind of think that there's a chance that he steals more bags next year too. And then lastly, this is one of the better offensive environments for him so you know to take a barrel rate that's basically the same as he's always had and turn it into the worst iso he's had in five years despite being in philadelphia i know that philadelphia's played a little differently this year, but I can't find a reason as to why, although someone did mention that there's a new scoreboard. Any case, I would assume that power goes up because it's a good run environment

and his batted balls aren't worse than before, and chase rate goes down, which will improve his walk rate and his strikeout rate and his power, and that I think stolen base rate goes up next year. I think he's a good bet. I like that. You know, he's a... And it's like, you know, you talk about projected bounce backs.

They can be problematic at 32, 33, and 34. I don't know what to do with Giancarlo Stanton next year, you know, at his age. But we're talking about a 31-year-old who's super athletic. I'm buying the dip. Yeah, even with some of the struggles, he's on pace for a very similar home run total this year versus last. And that might be the category that slowly drips away for Trey Turner. Maybe the strikeout rate, you know,

maybe the strikeout rate will live above 20% going forward. His swinging strike rate has been slowly going up. Right. I mean, rest of season, average projections, the bad X is the high at 284. I think steamer is the low at 271. So maybe you're not looking at a batting title contender anymore. Maybe that's part of it too, a little less hard contact,

but it's not falling off a cliff. I do think on the mega deals, there is that internal pressure. This feels to me more like the season a few years back when Jose Ramirez just had a horrible first half and then he looked like himself in the second half and was himself again the following season. I think that's kind of what we're seeing with Trey Turner right now. So I like him as a good late round one, early round two option in leagues looking ahead to next season. The other player that I want to talk about today is not a player you see at the top of the draft board, but he sort of lives in the shadow of L.A. De La Cruz. It's Matt McClain.

Matt McClain is on base for a 25 homer, 20 steal season, and he's been up in the bigs for a half season's worth of games now. 83 games. This all looks pretty good from a Roto perspective, and if you're playing in an OBP league, I think you've got a better floor there because

if you're looking at those average projections, you see some pretty low numbers, 245 to 259. He's at 295. 229 from ATC. Yeah, ATC's got him all the way down at 229. But there's a couple things that could change. The swing and miss in his game could get better.

It's possible. He doesn't chase outside the zone a ton. He had lower swing strike rates than the Miners, yeah. Yeah, the Miners point to some better skills there. A little bit older rookie, though, so you're not going to get too much aging curve bonus there. No, but even if it's just knocking 3 percentage points off there, if it's a 25% K rate or a slight uptick in walks

that could give him more green lights on the base pass, the thing that I like is that the quality of the contact has been good. It's a good barrel rate, 10.3% barrel rate. All around, just a solid player that I think I was a little unsure of because of the flaws we saw at AA a year ago. I thought there might be a little more downside in this profile at the big league level, and he's proven me wrong so far. Al Melchior had an interesting piece where he kind of looked through the stat cast and tried to,

you know, parse through the stat cast on a secondary level and look at different indicators in different directions. And I think he was a little bit more positive on Spencer Steer and a little bit more negative on Matt McClain. You should read it and not have me just characterize the whole piece like that. But one thing that Melchior pointed out was that Matt McClain is not pulling the ball and not pulling the ball in the air as much as Steer. And that's something that can work, I think, in Cincinnati, can work I think in Cincinnati but does make you wonder what his road splits will look like in the future.

You take a guy like this with a 28% strikeout rate, a 35% pull rate, and a 10% barrel rate and you put him in New York you could have Tommy Pham. Tommy Pham with middle infield eligibility and yeah and i'm not saying it's bad but i'm just saying that like oppo oppo barrels are not as good as pulled barrels and so you you wouldn't expect a 393 babbit you expect like a 280 babbit you might have the atc line you know honestly yeah look at the spray chart of where he hits his homers i mean there's three You might have the ATC line, honestly. Yeah. Look at the spray chart of where he hits his homers.

I mean, there's three that he's pulled down the line to left. Everything else is to center and right. I guess you could say one to left center, but mostly back up the middle and oppo. Dead ball risk. Some dead ball risk. I think the park factor is pretty important there right because we know great american ballpark it's small it boosts homers if if matt mclean somehow if they decided he's the guy they're going to trade out of that crowd of infielders then maybe you have more

concerns but i think as long as he stays in cincinnati this looks like a good all-round how about the ryan mcmahon risk where sometimes you're not sure you want to play him on the road that was a little bit more early in the season for ryan mcmahon but it was still the thing we owned ryan mcmahon in the main and we were trying to find platoon partners for him sometimes when he was on the road and it hasn't i don't think come to that for mcclain this year uh he has a 287 average away from home uh his iso though drops to 146 uh on the road i think because mcclain can run and because he's got good enough plate skills and because you're not also dealing with the atmospheric conditions and like the road splits will be lighter in power but i think matt Matt McClain has a good enough approach.

And because of his speed, it's not going to be quite as harsh as the splits you see sometimes for guys like McMahon and the Colorado bats. Yeah. It's a fair point for power though, because 41 games home, 41 games away, 10 homers,

a great American ballpark for on the road that fits the type of hitter he's been so far so you know he's actually one of those guys that i think uh is a riskier bet in the way too early drafts and becomes a more solid bet if you can be on the other side of the winter meetings for example you know what i mean like right right you get the spring training you get the spring you can be like hey i'm gonna bank all the power at home and i'm gonna bank the stolen bases home and away and i'm gonna i'm gonna think it's gonna be more like a 260 plus average than a 230 average which i think that the 230 is pretty uh aggressive in the negative direction for me i mean this is a guy who's run high babbips he he sprays the ball and he plays in a great park. I think he's going to have a decent Babib and he's going to have more of a 250, 260 average at worst. So, you know, if it's spring training and he's playing in a Reds uniform, I have fewer concerns about him.

Here's the other split that I think I should bring to the table. If you look at the lefties versus righties and what Matt McLean has done so far, his K rate against righties is 30.5%. So that's same-handed pitching for Matt McClain. It's a 122 WRC plus though. Still walks, still gets to some power for a rookie. Not the end of the world. There should be more walks. He took a lot more walks than the minors.

Against lefties, it's 21.5 k rate 965 ops altogether so definitely better results with the platoon advantage not a big surprise but does the elevated k rate so far against same handed pitching worry you the same more or less than the power away from Great American Ballpark. I hadn't thought of the K rate against Sam Hannon pitching. It does worry me a little bit more just because, and this is another thing that you'll find out more in the spring, just because they now have Jonathan India coming back. They're playing Noel Vimarte. This is a really robust team positionally.

The good news, though, for McLean, from a how-the-pieces-fit-on-the-roster perspective right now, across that group of infielders, Votto, of course, is a lefty. Ellie's a switch hitter. Everybody else is a righty. Spears is a righty. else is a righty. Spears a righty, India's a righty. And also defense speaks probably in his favor compared to somebody like Christian Encarnacion on Strand,

maybe even against Nvalvi Marte. They played McLean at short even with Elie de la Cruz on the team, so defense will keep him in the lineup too. Look, I'm not watching the Reds every day. I have my hierarchy of viewing. I see the Reds a little bit, and every time I see the Reds, Matt McClain looks really good defensively at both spots they play him. He looks like a good defender.

So that could be something that really does keep his playing time above the level of some of the other guys there. But so much is going to change with this depth chart between now and opening day next year. So I'm with you on the timing as far as maybe wanting to wait through the winter drafts before you start to go after Matt McClain. Get some clarity on who is actually gone and who is actually still in Cincinnati.

A couple of big questions that I mentioned at the top of the show. We had one of our listeners reach out. Michael wanted to know, what do you do if you're a notorious tinkerer like Michael, constantly working the wire, trying to improve your team, when you have a big lead in a roto league? How do you handle protecting a lead? What types of things are you thinking about? You were in this situation just last year in labor, right?

Where you had a pretty big lead. I feel like in a mono league, it's almost harder to screw it up because you don't have so many options in a in a mixed league there's so many silly things you could try to do that could actually backfire but you're kind of gridlocked by the lack of available playing time in many cases in those mono leagues yeah i've made mistakes and in the main last year i made the mistake of reaching for a category i wasn't necessarily leading but i didn't think as much about what i could lose and thought too much about what i could gain so i think that sometimes uh can be a problem when i was so far out in labor i was just actually trying to win i i wasn't playing anymore against the other players.

I was just playing against the all-time record. And so I was actually just trying to get as many points as possible and was very aggressive even in categories where I could have just said, hey, I'm going to be more conservative and just win this thing. So I would say my general advice would be to look at the places where you are the weakest and work there and work defensively. So just look at the categories where people could take points from you, and especially people near the top of the leaderboard. So identify where they are in each of the categories and how close they are to you and be like, oh man, they could get me in's then you then you put a little bit more focus on k's maybe take that third closer out and put a starter in there or whatever it is like that yeah yeah i mean i think you you would also want to be careful if uh like if ratios or batting

average are close i think those are those are the trickier categories to figure out like oh i'm in the lead and there's three or four points i could lose an era and whip you really start thinking a lot about every pitching decision in that situation but i feel like in that situation you're just trying to play good pitchers like you're you're not you're not taking unnecessary risk in that case yeah you don't have to take down the necessary risk of playing like i'm bailey falter for you know two starts you don't have to do that don't do that yeah you can and then in that case you might put the fourth reliever in you know who's not necessarily a closer he might not get you a bunch of saves but he's definitely not gonna you know blow up in the

same way yeah yeah so i i think the the ratios can be the slippery part of that but i think the the general thing is to look at how people can make up ground on you and make sure you don't lose points that way because that's what everyone's looking at they're looking at your vulnerabilities they're looking at the easiest way to catch i'm gonna get a point off this guy that's exactly right um flipping it oh there's actually a beer of the week recommendation to the root beer recommendation. Parlor root beer. It's a great company from northeast Pennsylvania. The ship nationwide root beer, butterscotch root beer and great birch beer.

I like that. Nice. Nice. Give that a shot. My beer of the week is just a style. I've been finding Pils uh as a nice respite because one thing that i have found with as much as i like hazy ipas and as i like happy as generally they're getting pretty sweet they can be pretty sweet they are sweet in general and there's something where you just

like if you just have sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet it sweet, sweet, it's just like, it's too much. And Pilsners, you know, lagers are actually pretty sweet. I don't, you know, they have a kind of corn syrup sweetness to them. And Pilsners are one of the few beers out on the market that still have a little bit of crispness, you know, a little bit of bitterness to them. And I found it super refreshing this summer to mix in the Pilsners. Working through a particularly hot part of the calendar right now too, it sort of shifts the what do I want to have? Like that pickle

beer I had on the way back, moving back, that was great because it was 85 degrees and humid at like 9 o'clock at night. It was almost like a Gatorade but in a beer i thought the pickle actually worked really well but if you don't want to go to pickle beer i actually just had a door county trolley red lager it's a cherry it's a cherry beer yeah from

one barrel i thought that was really good yeah really enjoyed that so i think that was more on the sweet end a little more on the sweet end, but it was, it was balanced really well. Like sometimes the cherry beers can be like too tart on one end, or they can be too sweet. This one actually kind of hit the middle the way it's supposed to side. I liked it. I was surprised. I was looking at the untapped on it.

It's like a 3.6. I'm like, this is actually pretty good. I'd, I'd give it a thumbs up. I almost, I just want beer for a long time. I looked at untapped for everything. I'm like, I gotta, I gotta make up. I just want beer. For a long time, I looked at Untappd for everything.

I'm like, I got to make sure I'm not wasting beers. I don't want to buy bad beers. Now I just kind of want more like, is this good enough to try or not? Yes or no? Like zero or one? Is it good? Fine, I'll try it. And if I really like it, I'll go get it again because everything is like a one shot for me.

I was like, I just gave everybody everything that was good enough four stars. And if it was bad, like two, you know, like never. Right. I was like, I just gave everybody everything that was good enough, four stars, and if it was bad, like two, you know? Right. I was like, what's the difference? 3.5, 4.5, I don't know, man. Do I want this again or not? It's four if I want it again, two if I don't. Yeah, so that's the scale.

I mean, that's the same scale I'm talking about, basically. It's like, yes, yes again, no. And maybe there's a handful of beers that you'd say, that's just better than even the stuff that I really like. Yeah. Maybe there's some fives. Yeah. Your King Sue or whatever your favorite all-time beers are, they're in their special category.

But generally, it's like, would I get this again? Yes or no? And how often when you're having beers, there's so many other circumstances, who you have them with uh how cold is it uh the beer itself how cold is it around you how warm is it um you know what how much physical activity do you have uh i had an original pattern uh that'll be my beer of the week original pattern pilsner uh right before and after i jumped into the Yosemite, the river that runs through Yosemite, the creek. I think it's the Merced River that runs through the Yosemite Valley there. And before I jumped in, it was 80 degrees and I was hot.

And I was like, this is nice and refreshing. After I jumped in, I was shivering. nice and refreshing uh after i jumped in i was shivering and uh the beer was more about the fact that it was going to warm me up a little bit on the insides than than how crisp and refreshing it was so there was definitely a before and after there uh there's a a great video of uh me and my kids so one of my my youngest went in the water and he's like oh it's so cold and he was like prancing around but i was like well if he went in i have to go in yeah like i can't have i can't have the eight-year-old making me look bad or you know so so uh so then i jump in and there's video of me just being like how do i get out how do i get out so then when i come out the older one comes

i call the older one over and like no now you gotta go and he goes okay and so we set it up where i was gonna jump in and they were gonna jump in with me and i was like i'm gonna jump this way you jump that way you jump that way here we go on one two three there's video of me going one two three and jumping in And they don't jump in. And then the brothers start getting in each other. No, you go. You go. No, you go.

No, you go. And then they both sort of like pull each other into the water. Yeah, that's fun. That's what you want, right? And healing with the broken arm, too. Yeah, unfortunately, I think, I don't know if I gave the update. He did a fracture. It's a torus fracture. It's a very interesting one.

He doesn't have a full cast. And it's a fracture that only kids can get, really, because kids' bones are spongier. And so basically what happened is the sponginess fractured. So it's almost like a stress fracture or something. Like it fractured, you know, it got compressed. And so it's not happy inside the bone, but there's no actual like break.

It's sort of a compression fracture, if that makes sense. Prognosis is pretty decent. Four weeks in a splint. We can take the splint off and wash it and he's gonna meet the orthopedist and find out and they said he asked the one of the first questions yet can I still throw so we've got to figure out how to continue his throwing program while I just roll the baseball back to him catching hands okay yeah it's the catching hand. So, okay. It's the catching hands. That's fortunate.

Yeah, keep busy. Well, hopefully speedy recovery is on the horizon. It sounds like compared to the alternatives, it was reasonably good news given the circumstances. Opposite side, by the way, of protecting a lead, chasing a lead. It's like the inverse, right? You're counting the points you can get the easiest. it's like the inverse right you're counting you're counting the points you can get the easiest you have to be willing at this

point in the season if you haven't done so already looking at categories where you're not going to lose ground maybe give up on categories to shift from seven starting pitchers and two relievers to eight and one or nine and zero if you're trying to chase bulk you're trying to chase wins and K's and your ratios are banged up great

just throw your Bailey falters throw your unwanted twoters, throw, throw your, your unwanted to start pitchers out there. Because if you're just chasing the lead down, like what do you have to lose? I, yeah, I,

that's what I'm saying. I think my advice is generally just be as aggressive as possible and be aggressive in ways where you're like, Ooh, man, should I really not throw any closers? I can't, I could lose a point over here.

Well, think about it. How many points can you gain somewhere else? Can you really just lose one point somewhere, tank it basically, tank a category, and be like, man, if I just tank one point in saves and lose that one point, can I really get a bunch in Ks and wins? Are there five or six points over here and I lose one point here be willing to lose some points if it means you can

be aggressive in your roster somehow um and uh yeah that's that's really the only advice i can give the other the other is just that uh you should also maybe consider what's actually available to you uh on the wire what's available to you as a strategy. There's some leagues where I could decide in AL labor I want to stream pitchers. You're not going to find any. And I have four fab dollars left, so I don't even know how to do that. Yeah. I think you described a strategy that doesn't actually exist in that case.

The money doesn't quite line up with the availability of the players you need to actually do it but i think in a case like that you'd be looking at you know bulk relievers the middle relievers some players like that that go two or three innings at a time that might be your your best path to try and vulture relief wins and help your ratios that way because it's better than the short relief option so i think you do have to be a little more creative with the types of players that you can lean on when you're chasing a lead i would also say i'm more willing to stray away from an in-season or a rest of season projection oh yeah play the play the what could go right there that tim anderson projection any longer

being no no you're going for something just drop them you know like no you throw basabe out there you throw likeabe out there. You throw the unknowns. It doesn't matter. Even if we're worried about the ceiling on a player, just see what happens. Players can do pretty amazing. You could find yourself a Zach Galoff just by taking a chance on someone who has a job.

Aaron Small won 12 games for the Yankees with a 3-3 ERA and was never heard from again. Yeah. Did Aaron Small, how many other teams did Aaron Small play for that you can remember? You know, without looking it up,

do you remember him playing for any of the teams? He bounced around. Yeah, there we go. There's the year I'm talking about. 3-20 ERA and 10 wins, no losses. What a bright, shining season in an otherwise forgetful career. Yeah, this is a pretty good little Mecklenburg grid hack here. Aaron Small made appearances for the Jays, the Marlins, the A's,

the Diamondbacks, the Braves, the A's, the Diamondbacks, the Braves, and the Yankees. There's your low percentage name the next time some combo of those teams comes up. He's also a really strong example of why K-BB matters. Yes. Career 2.3 K-BB. 25 career wins, 10 of them came in that 2005 season it was over nine parts of nine big league seasons it was funny too he was saving games in 1997 for oakland

and somehow you know nearly 10 years later he pumps out 10 wins for the yankees what a lovely career. Hey, spent more time in the big leagues than I did. Yeah, 100%. Hat tip to Aaron Small. We are going to go. On our way out the door, a quick reminder, you can find us on Twitter. Eno's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper.

The podcast is at Rates and Barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.