Rates & Barrels - An eye toward future pitcher rankings, and quantifying the value of a hitting coach

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

Eno and DVR attempt to answer some long-term questions about their expectations for Kevin Gausman after his excellent 2021 campaign, Robbie Ray's hold on improved control, Shohei Ohtani's value as a pitcher next season, and provide ways to quantify the value of a hitting coach.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you on this Friday. It's Friday, August 20th. If we are your source of what day is it today or what is the date today, happy to help. Let's get into some topics today. You know, I've got a bunch of stuff on the rundown that I'm excited about. I'm always excited about the rundown. Wait a minute. If you're watching us on YouTube, Eno looks like the Cheshire Cat, and I don't know why. What's going on with you, Eno?

I'm faking it till I make it. I'm awake. This is how I wake up. I don't drink coffee. I'm not used to getting up early enough to make coffee for all my shows, which is really problematic because I kind of need it to be good at my job or at least competent at my job. So we'll see how this goes. An uncaffeinated version. But I did shower. So I think that's like the value. Half the battle? Half a coffee, yeah.

Half a coffee. I mean, a pot of coffee gets me a lot further than a shower, but a shower is probably like the first cup of coffee of the day. So I'll take that. And it's not smell-o-vision, but I'm sure everybody appreciates the extra effort, especially on YouTube. Clearly, I need a haircut and a shave, so the grooming is behind pace for where it should be at this

point, especially on the weekend. You've got to be cleaned up for the weekend. You're going to go to the beach and do something nice. I limp into the weekend. You just drag yourself to the weekend? I just drag myself to the weekend's doorstep, barely making it every week. You know, this is actually a thing that happened in any career that I've had since I've had about three so far. Is that no matter what, Friday, I always thought, you know, in school, Friday was like, oh, Friday, you know, like, let's go out, you know like in school friday was like oh friday you know like let's go out you know

and then as soon as i became a professional i was like friday let's let's go out no tomorrow let's save it for saturday that's kind of how it goes yeah i'm with you i mean i got another round of random furniture and things to build so that's's my weekend. That's your weekend. That's my weekend, building it all up. On this episode, we're going to talk about some starting pitching because on the last episode, we talked a lot about bats, especially just in the top 10. And we kind of wondered, who's the number one pitcher? We'll dig into that a little bit,

talk about some other guys who might be near the top of the board. But we're also going to talk about some players that have taken massive steps forward this season, try to figure out how much we trust those players to hold those skills gains going forward. A lot of great mailbag questions, as always, that we'll get to as well. But let's begin with our pitching conversation. There's an actual debate atop the board because of Jacob deGrom's injury, And I think Walker Bueller currently stands out to me as the most likely first pitcher off the board if we're looking ahead to 2022. But I think Garrett Cole is a candidate for that. I think Brandon Woodruff, who you mentioned as a possible option

last time out, he could be in the mix. Maybe Corbin Burns is in the conversation at least. He could be in the mix. Maybe Corbin Burns is in the conversation at least. Scherzer, Zach Wheeler, Jack Flaherty, probably not first off the board, but near the top of the group. So we're kind of pushing into this range. Maybe we've got five to ten names that definitely make sense as a group of guys who will be among the first off the board. Darvish, I think, will still be close to that if he's not a part of that group as well.

But as you kind of think about names that belong clearly in the conversation, one that I didn't immediately think of that I saw on the earned value calculator is Kevin Gossman. And he's a free agent this offseason. So where he goes this winter is going to guide some of this. But how much are we believing in this version of Kevin Gossman as something that we could get possibly in other ballparks and in the future? I mean, he's definitely one of those guys that has both stuff and command. And I think the only question mark, the only asterisk,

is that his arsenal is not wide, and it's not going to get any wider. But I've talked to him recently. I talked to his pitching coaches. I talked to his manager, working up a story about him. And some people say, like, oh, if you can command the slider to both sides of the plate, it's two pitches, right? And I think for him, what stands out is his command plus is 111 last year. It's 110 or something this year.

He's a guy who has great command and great stuff. It's not side to side, though. It's up and down, and I guess that works in the modern game. He has a changeup he'll throw that's above the strike zone and drops into it. Then he has a fastball that stays above the zone right and then he has a fastball that's in the zone and he has a fastball yeah you can do a change up that's at the top of the zone that drops further you know so like he just works up and down with both of them and when he really needs a whiff it's the splitter because that's just has the nastiest movement so um

i have to say like it's a little bit tyler glass now we but without the uh without the injury component and more command i mean how many who else is like this corbin but corbin didn't throw 97 no no not even close who who else is like this? Who's a two-pitch guy that went far? Lester? He had good command, but he didn't throw hard. Yeah, it was a premium velocity. And he sort of became a three- and four-pitch guy as he got older. Yeah, it's hard to get by with two pitches like that at the highest possible level.

You can be very good for a long time and make it work. Maybe we're not giving the change-up enough script, though. Let's say it's a three-pitch mix because people have two breaking balls, right? It wouldn't be that weird if a guy has two change-ups, right? No, it wouldn't be weird. All right, so he's a three-change-up. He's a three-pitch guy with command and stuff. I don't know.

The only thing is a homer problem sometimes because he up in the zone sometimes he loses a little bit of ride on the fastball and and things fall apart yeah i'm torn here because it's more risk than some of the other guys i mean bueller has like three breaking balls and throws you know throws hard and has you know high ride. Yeah, if the changeup, the second changeup and the slider, if those were 10%, 15% pitches, even if one of them were, that would go a really long way here just in terms of the usage. It's definitely a limiting factor for me. I think the changeup might be.

I think we misclassified a lot. But I'm going to try and look into that because he gave me some percentage, and I forget exactly what it was, but it's more than what we have. The splitter is ridiculous by results, by the way. Holy cow. I have not looked at this in a while. 109 batting average against, 156 slugging against, and a 141 Woba allowed on that pitch.

I mean, that is wild. All the damage is on the fastball. But, like, you know, okay, so Woodruff and Buehler are easy for me ahead of him. Clearly. He's had more pitches, younger,

I don't know. They have the same amount of sort of stuff in command. Buehler has more stuff than command, but this is good. This may come up a little bit more later, but stuff is stickier year to year than command. This is a recent thing that we found out while we were benchmarking. It is a little better to bet on stuff year to year.

Then if you find a a breakout and it's because they have good location like Robbie Ray this year, then you can bet on them because location becomes sticky within year really fast. Given that,

Gossman has good stuff, but Woodruff and Buehler have better stuff. I think the hardest thing for Gossman is where do you but Woodruff and Buehler have better stuff. Yeah, I think... Then I think the hardest thing for Gossman is where do you put him against the injured older guys? I think he kind of fits just behind that group for me, like the injured older guys. I mean, a healthy Clayton Kershaw, I think I'd still take over Gossman. It'd be close, but I think Gossman and Lance Lynn are bundled together. I'm looking at the Roto-Wire rankings right now

just because Clay Link does a great job leading that effort to keep those updated. And they're both just outside the top 10. That makes sense in my head, at least in terms of how I group players. But because he's got, okay, so here's the would you rather. Cole versus Gossman, obviously Cole, right?

Not even really a debate. Bueller, as you just mentioned, is clearly ahead of him. Woodruff's ahead of him. Corbin Burns is clearly ahead of him. Woodruff's ahead of him. Corbin Burns, clearly ahead of him. DeGrom. Is Giolito still up there? I think he's the name I didn't mention before

that most people might still have as a top 10 pitcher. I think I'd have them near each other. But I think I'd take Gossman over Giolito. Interesting, okay. So they'd be at least same tier. Giolito doesn't have good command. Aaron Nola? I'll take

Gossman over Nola because Gossman has more stuff. You might be a little higher on Gossman than most. What about Zach Wheeler who's having just an amazing season for the Phillies? Wheeler is back in top five for me now. When we're talking about drafts next spring,

Wheeler might be going at that 1-2 turn. Well, there's also this whole thing of NLDH. That just makes it kind of hard. Let's say, assuming NLDH, I go Cole, Buehler, DeGrom. And that's assuming DeGrom is entering draft season healthy. Right. I think DeGrom. I'm going to just take an N.A. on DeGrom right now.

I think we need more information. Cole, Buehler, Woodruff. No disagreement here. Because there's an NLDH. I think Cole has just done it for so long. He made it through the sticky stuff enforcement and came out the other side. He has a big pitch mix and they're all really good pitches. I think it's Cole, number one for me. Bueller also

has had an injury history. He hasn't even really settled down into his three breaking balls. His breaking balls are kind of in flux all the time. Anyway, but I'm not really talking crap on him because he's known as number two. Cole, Buehler, Woodruff.

The ones that are hard next are Burns. Burns is so good, man. It's ridiculous. Who else goes in that Burns group? Who am I missing? Let me get my ranks up. That'll help.

Yeah, get your ranks going too. I like we mentioned Darvish. He's clearly somewhere in here. Not that high up for me. Behind the Burns group. Oh, Scherzer. Yeah, Scherzer's still in here. Is he in the top group or is he in that second one?

I think he's after Burns. After Burns. After Burners. After Burns. Oyster Burns. afterburns afterburns afterburners afterburns i think uh scherzer gossman bieber scherzer i mean i need i need information on bees or two bieber too you're already thinking about beer uh bieber bieber is a ghost right now it feels like same situation as de grom like i i have no confidence about

what his actual availability for the start of the season and i think like let's say you're drafting right now i think you would push them all down because you they could have tj or whatever they could have surgery we still don't know like people sort of think Bieber's going to miss the whole season from what I hear from poking around the team. So what you've got is Cole. Why do I have Buehler so low in this ranking? It's weird. He lost a bunch of spin, which is pretty fascinating because he's still pitching really well.

The bat only projects him 17 going forward when I had him. I think he should be number two. No. I love Brandon Woodruff so much. I'm going to. Cole, Woodruff, Buehler, Wheeler. Cole, Woodruff, Buehler, Wheeler. Cole, Woodruff, Buehler, Burns, Wheeler.

Whew. Then what? Wide open. That's five? Yeah, that was five. That was a top five. Five. Okay, I'll put Scherzer in because he's pitching. He's not in that DeGrom category where we don't know what he's going to do.

He's a little bit of an injury risk, and he's older. So I'll put Scherzer six. And then I guess we start talking about Gossman, Rodon, Nola, and Gilito and Peralta maybe? Musgrove? And then Lynn? And Nola and a G Lito and Peralta, maybe Musgrove. That's. And then Lynn, that's a Nola.

That's where I'm, that's sort of my top 15. That is, that feels so messy. Not like your ranking specifically, but just the names that are getting in there. The funniest thing is I used to be able to get to like top 10 being like, bop, bop,

bop, bop. Like I did with the top five. Right. Like I just be like, yeah, this is the top 10 being like bop bop bop bop like i did with the top five right like i just be like yeah this is the top 10 uh i think i feel like i used to be able to do that for top 20 and then it was top 15 and then it was top 10 and now i'm like five we got five good pitchers and everybody else has question marks uh it's not a good trend uh because one day'll be like, well, we have Cole. We know who the best pitcher is, but we really don't know anything after that.

Yeah. I mean, that's what it's like when DeGrom's healthy. Yeah, that's very true. So we didn't really think about him because of our weekly league mindsets when we were first talking about top five overall players, but where does Otani go among pitchers for you? I mean, there's some leagues that split him into hitter and a pitcher,

but if you're just evaluating him solely based on what he brings as a pitcher, I feel like his workload as a pitcher relative to the other top starting pitchers, there's more of a discrepancy there than there is compared to his workload as a hitter compared to the other top hitters. We talked about that a little bit on Wednesday's show. He's down in playing time compared to the guys that play every single day, but he's not so far down in playing time where it's working that much against him. He's thrown 100 innings so far this season, 18 starts, 120 Ks, a 279 ERA, a 106 whip, still has some control issues, but those are actually getting a bit better.

I mean, look at his more recent body of work. He's got a 25-3 over his last 27 innings. So no walks in three of his last four starts. So it's really impressive to see that side of his game taking a step forward as well. If you're only ranking Otani as a pitcher, where in the ballpark do you think he'd end up? God, I hate this. I hate that this works out this way, but he

reminds me of a younger Hugh Darvish in that he has great stuff, but not great command. The command does itch at me a little bit. I just don't think what he's doing right now is what I would, like, you know,

project him anywhere close to next year. And the one nice thing, though, is that his location plus is not as bad as his command plus. His command plus is, like, 87 this year, which is below the kind of reliever shelf that we've talked about in the show. However, Max Bay was looking at benchmarking and validation for our model, and he said that when he used LocationPlus, when he switched out LocationPlus for CommandPlus, CommandPlus did not

add any information to our model. So basically, LocationPlus and CommandPlus are fairly interchangeable. It's possible that CommandPlus is stickier year to year than LocationPlus. We'd have to do that work still. But in any case, Shoyotani's LocationPlus is 96. So just slightly below average. He can locate the slider well, which is really important, we know. And he can locate the cutter well.

He just can't locate the foreseam that well or the curve. I don't know. That and the injury are enough for me to not put him in the top 10 or anything. I mean, how many innings is he going to give you? And then how will the bad command manifest itself in the future? Both fair questions. I guess the way I would try and look at Otani is if you're capping him around 140 or 150 innings,

where do the guys who we generally expect to fall in that range where do they go how far do they slide compared to the top pitchers and i guess the first name that always pops into my head when i think about 140 to 150 innings being the ceiling is rich hill oh no kershaw well kershaw now but i'm just saying like oh yeah year over like previously like previously kershaw was just you know he was kershaw he like previously Kershaw was just, you know, he was Kershaw. He's fine.

Kershaw now is probably more like that, but I just think, okay, how did we treat rich Hill as a guy that would give us really good ratios, plenty of strikeouts and just not as many innings, everybody else. And a lot of times rich Hill would fall, I think into the one 40, one 50 overall range.

Now I realize this is complicated so much by Otani specifically being a guy that's already hit 40 homers this season is probably going to steal 20 bases and in leagues where you can use them for both, it's totally different. But just as a pitcher, I think he's probably a fringe top 100 overall pick if you're just getting Otani the pitcher, even with all of those concerns, because there is still quite a bit of ceiling there. And I think I'm tempted to say that the way he's adjusted and adapted as a hitter and the progress he has made already just in a few years gives me some hope that he can continue to evolve as a pitcher. I'd be hesitant to declare Shohei Otani a finished product,

given what we've seen in his arc to this point in his career. Yes, and that's why you bet on stuff, and his stuff is so big. And he hasn't been, especially for him, right? It's not like he has been honing his craft as a pitcher full-time since he was 11. Like most of these guys, you know, he's been both. So he's been spending half the time on it.

So it's totally plausible that, uh, he could repeat next year by improving his command and being a little bit less lucky. Yeah. Um, so that's why you bet on stuff. I think I would just put him him i would like to hear this do you have your rotowire uh earned value calculator up i'd have it nearby okay so give me um kyle hendricks versus kyle hendricks 144 innings uh pretty close to the top uh 404 era yep so give me kyle hendricks uh versus see here somebody with like about 20 fewer innings but okay lance lynn okay lance lynn's worth 20 and kyle hendricks worth 7. The strikeout rates are pretty different though.

Yeah. Let's do another one. Luis Castillo. He has good strikeout rates, right? Yeah. The whip's really bad right now still for the season. Even though he's pitched better lately, he's got a 1-4-0-3 whip for the season. They've got

him at a $0 value for the whole year. Okay. How about whip for the season yeah they've got them at a zero dollar value for the whole year oh okay how about uh it's hard to find these compilers man well here's another way to look at it i mean just looking at otani compared to the other guys who are worth about the same otani's worth 13 as a pitcher and giolito's been worth 13 giolitoito's ERA is a run higher. He's thrown 41 more innings. He only has one more win. And he's got 41 more strikeouts on the season. So Otani's

got him beaten ratios by a healthy margin and has 40 fewer innings, 41 fewer innings, but has been worth the same amount. I think that's actually a decent place for Otani to live going forward. Giolito. They can be sort of, I think they can actually a decent place for Otani to live going forward. Giolito.

They can be sort of, I think they can be ranking buddies. Yeah, Jose Barrios is right there too. Well, there's a compiler. There's a bit of a meat and potatoes. Tyler Malley? Yeah, I was looking at Malley. I wouldn't put those guys. I may put Barrios up there,

but I think this is a grouping for me. And they're very different, but I think they belong together. Kershaw, Berrios, Otani, and Giolito, and maybe Darvish. That's like 13 through 16. I like that group a lot. That group makes me feel okay if I don't get one of my top end guys. I know.

And I know Ariel LaCone has done this research about getting two aces and the two secondary aces is not a great strategy. getting two aces and the two secondary aces is not a great strategy. But to me, I would love to pair one of the meat and potatoes guys in that group with one of the other guys, you know? Like a Berrios-Giolito combination would feel pretty good. Yeah, I think it would work. And this year it would have earned you what? Like two of the top 20 starting pitchers, right? Well, in this year, I mean, again, this has been a strange year.

So I'm trying to decide if the consistency of the old approaches isn't necessarily going to work. Like if the ways we typically build a roster might lead us astray because of what 2020 was and how that impacted 2021 no it's it's it's coming up in our benchmarking for uh for because hawkeye has only been around for two years and we have hawkeye things in stuff plus you know like observed spin axis and stuff that's in stuff plus but we only have two years to work with, right? And one of them was really short and the other one has a bunch of injury and had a sticky stuff enforcement in the middle of the year that changed people's stuff ratings.

So, yes, it is maybe important maybe not to overlearn during these times. not to overlearn during these times. But right now, in the face of more pitching injuries than we've ever had in the history of baseball, really, I think diversification of risk is better than double-tapping aces at the top. That's just how I feel. I don't want to spend that much resource on one position at the very top. And it's the how I feel. I don't want to spend that much resource on one position

at the very top. It's the most injured position. I'm going to win a league where Beaver was my number one pick. That's fine. I think you can still survive if you pick an ace up there. I didn't go Beaver

I didn't go to like two pitchers like what if i got on beaver bauer totally plausible sure that wouldn't have yeah that would have worked i mean that's a one-two turn combination that was a thing that would have fit on a lot of of boards like you could have done that not have won my league so no uh you know i just and that's that was a bad name it's just the one that popped in because he's it's in the news um but my point is uh like there's a lot of risk uh in in those pitchers and pitchers in particular right now so um i'm gonna take an ace uh and i'm going to uh try to maybe double tap in that various grouping, if it makes sense. I think we should talk about a few other pitchers that have cases to go much earlier than they would have gone in the past.

I mean, Robbie Ray. And I think it boils down to a pretty simple question. Does Robbie Ray own good control now? have we seen enough to say this is a different guy and we can trust him to be who we saw throughout 2021 as opposed to pulling the old Jekyll and Hyde and going back to the walk machine that he was prior to this season yeah I think he's a pretty good example of oh I did Ray and I keep getting all the rays no I want Robbie Ray there aren't that many rays okay it's command plus was 95 in 2020 and uh i think that it was very surprising to me when max came to me and said that stuff plus was more consistent year to year but but location plus was stabilized quicker and was just as important in pitching

plus in a given season. So I actually think that location, you know, command is the finickier one. You have your stuff basically year to year and command is the thing that comes and goes. And so I would say, no, I think Robbie Ray's a trap. I mean, he had a great year and, uh, the team, uh, gave him a great strategy, but even if you look at him, you know, in the stuff plus app over time uh you know he's lived near 100 and below uh location plus uh for you know like something like five of his starts so you know group those five together differently and uh you may we may have a different idea about his command so two pitch guy, uh, with massive walk rates in his past and,

uh, had a year where his location strategy popped. I just, I see him as a regression candidate, pretty hardcore. I think that makes sense, but I think it will be a, a fairly common take because there's such a long track record of him

struggling to avoid free passes. But it makes me wonder at the flip side, are you buying in for a Blake Snell bounce back? I mean, because we had three years of a low threes walk rate for Snell. He's had occasional home run rate issues, most specifically in the shortened season. This year, the walk rate has been just off the charts bad. shortened season. This year, the walk rate has been just off the charts bad. Is that who Snell is now, or is Snell a clear rebound candidate for you looking forward? I didn't mention that the other aspect of why location can vary so much year to year is coaching. I mean, location plus has to be affected by coaches. There's a game plan. They call certain locations.

And the average tenure of pitching and hitting coaches in baseball right now is somewhere around a year and a half. I think pitching coaches, some of them will last longer. Like Brent Strom is a one-man number changer. If you're just going to use average, he's going to push that number. But hitting coaches is a year and a half, and I would suspect that the median for pitching coaches is around the same. So I mention that because I think you could have maybe better strategies for Blake Snell.

It took him a really long time to put away the changeup that he was so in love with. And ever since he has, his stuff has gone up. And with a guy that has a league average four seam or better than average four seam, a league average curveball, or better than average four seam a league average curveball and a really great slider uh i think that a change in pitching coaches uh could do him uh some wonders in fact uh well i i i think he would agree with me something I might say. I think there is something he misses about Tampa. Yeah, it's kind of,

it's sort of like what it used to be with the Braves back in the 90s and early 2000s. It was, oh, the Braves got rid of a pitcher? Duck, it's not going to work. You know, I wonder how much of that was location strategy, you know, when you think about it? Because Leo Mazzoni was the low and away guy. You know, he was how much of that was location strategy, you know, when you think about it. Because Leo Mazzoni was the low and away guy. You know, he was all about low and away.

And of course, hitters over time started to develop swings that could hit low and away. And so I think at some point your magic runs out if you've got one trick in your bag and it's low and away. But imagine if you're being preached low and away and then you go to a new team and they say, let's do something else here or there. And maybe you struggle, and it's like, oh, see? Brave's magic. Well, maybe it was actually coaching.

Yeah, it's work inside. Well, I've been working low and away for four years, and now I'm working inside. Right, that's true. Like, now I'm going to ask you to do something. Oh, I just hit a bunch of batters. Crap. Yeah.

But we might have a little natural segue here. Zoom, zoom. We had a question come in about Team Location Plus. We are of one mind. Yes, it is very good here. The question, one mind, it helps that we're no longer

2,000 miles apart. I think that's part of this. This question came in from Peter. He writes, I had a question regarding Location location plus in the past i know you've spoken briefly about location plus being used to gain some insight on coaching such that teams with quality coaching will attack quality areas of the zone i was curious if you could sort by team location plus to see which teams have consistently over or underperformed due to where their pitchers are actually throwing slash missing. Yes, so I have it by pitch type. So it's a little bit messy and it's pitch type location and stuff.

One thing I want to point out as I see this is, holy crap, the Dodgers are about stuff. The Dodgers are number one in slider stuff number two in cutter stuff number two in sinker stuff number one in forcing fastball stuff uh and i can't see their logo on the curveball one but i think they're in the uh top pack um and uh they are they're league average and change up stuff but they're number one in change of location. So the Dodgers have bet heavily on stuff. That's that's something that pops when you look at this in terms of location stuff, location rankings. The Rays are number one in forcing fastball location plus.

So they're they're a big, high uh forcing uh team and they're doing a good job of it seems like it's kind of like moyer with slow slower slower the rays are high higher highest um the rays also have a really good cutter strategy only uh the pirates and brewers have a better cutter location plus um the rays uh have a have a top four or five slider location plus two so i would say the the rays are a top location plus team the giants have the second best four seam fastball location plus the second best change up plus uh uh location plus the third best curveball location plus um and the third best sinker change up uh location plus the only one where they're below the pack in location plus is uh slider and cutter weirdly but uh when i see that they are an 80 uh location plus on the cutter

it makes me think either they don't have a lot of cutter pitchers or they have a different strategy that just somehow goes against the norm. So the Giants pop for me too. Teams that are very bland, I would say the Padres show up as only having one pitch type that they are comfortably above average in location plus. That's the cutter. And they just don't pop in any way. They're kind of a middle of the road team. The Rockies have terrible location plus on almost all their pitch types.

They have the second worst four-seam fastball strategy. So second to the Royals. The Royals pop is having terrible location plus. their sinker change up forcing fastball and cutter are all among the worst in location plus

well interesting just kind of to point this little random thing out I'm looking at the war leaderboard and kind of looking at the team ERAs and everything and the Royals actual ERAs 489 FIPS 450 so they're underperforming on that simple metric too. So maybe there's some explanation there.

And what we've been saying on the show, that they've had a bunch of high picks that people had high expectations for that were kind of waiting around for them all to pop in the major leagues. Yeah. And I think the Dodgers, as great as they are, they're actually overperforming. They're fit so far. Not a big surprise to see that. Interesting you mentioned the Rockies, though, because they're mid-pack in terms of war,

but just because they're getting a lot of innings from their starters. Marquez has been good this year. John Gray's actually had a pretty good year, too. But I was expecting them to be buried in this team pitching war list. I thought they'd be fine. Some of those guys are also getting private coaching. Yeah, that's true. John Gray is definitely a driveline guy.

One thing that's popping as I'm looking here, the Brewers are all basically top three to five in stuff plus in every pitch type except for the changeup. And they're third in pitching wars and staff. And they have probably the best changeup in baseball. Yeah. Not surprising, I think, for the most part.

Those teams are popping the way they are based on the results and other things we've observed and learned about those teams. Yankees do actually pretty well in, you know, there's a quadrant thing, right? Where, like, if you're good in stuff and location plus, you're top right quadrant. And the Yankees are top right quadrant and every pitch type except for the cutter yeah not bad not bad at all there's a related question here i think because we're just talking about coaching here uh alan wrote in on wednesday's show you know said he thinks very highly of hugh quaddle bomb that's the mets hitting coach that may wonder how would one evaluate a hitting coach's value?

As a Guardians fan, I know that the fan base has been calling for the organization to fire Ty Van Berklio for years, but I don't know if he's good or if the hitters he has to work with are the problem. So I'm curious why Eno said that about Quattlebaum and whether he was basing that on conversations he's had with him or other factors. Thanks for the great content. Yes, so this is a thing that happens with coaching and with player development that we've talked about here.

A little bit of faith casting where you kind of, that was a thing that came up in a conversation that we had with Janice Scurio and Michael Aheado when they were on while you were traveling, we talked about how different our perception is of the player development systems in place in Chicago for the White Sox and the Mariners. And I have a personal bias that the Mariners seem to be doing a lot of things right and that the industry consensus is that the White Sox are behind the times. Now, these things shift, and the White Sox have been improving their processes and have been improving their data and tech,

and especially at the major league level, made a really big switch in going from Cooper to Katz on the pitching side. But I think that having're you know having known how backwards they were just two to three years ago even I would I would be surprised if the White Sox were a top 10 player development system however they put they give us all these great players right I mean like all these great players like especially guys just popped up Vaughn like all these guys are they're great. So is that major league coaching? Is that our biases?

It's not like Kellnick hit the ground running. I would say that I think that pitching in Seattle is maybe a little bit ahead of hitting. But Quattlebaum came from the Mariners, and so it may be just a bias of mine to think that he's good. I've also heard from people that I trust that he's a very good hitting coach. And it's the kind of stuff that I heard about Donnie Ecker before he took over in San Francisco. Now, what's happened in San Francisco? In Cincinnati, Donnie, I think, was assistant hitting coach and he got let go. In San Francisco, he's the number one hitting coach.

hitting coach and he got let go in san francisco he's the number one hitting coach and here is a place that you can kind of it's not perfect but it is the the stat that i would use to evaluate hitting coaches and that is reach rate um and the reason that i would use reach rate how often a batter swings outside the zone is for a few reasons. One, Pizza Cutter, Russell Carlton, did have a piece that said that hitting coaches can have an effect that you see in the numbers when it comes to swing and reach rates. So that's their major point of influence, is do I make my hitters a little bit more passive and they don't reach as much or do I make them more aggressive that's the kind of toggle the major toggle that you see in

the numbers that doesn't describe every relationship of course there are hitting coaches that come and change mechanics or do this or do that right but that's when you look at just numbers wise, what is their effect? This is their effect. So reach rate. The other thing is reach rate encapsulates planning, game planning, I think almost better than anything, right? How do I get my hitters to reach less? Well, I tell them what's coming

and I prepare them in a way that makes them feel good, right? And so about not swinging at balls. And then also the last thing is not swinging at balls is super important. In terms of let's see here. I'm going to use the pitch info. Play discipline. Oh, swing on fan graphs. Here are the teams that uh reached the least padres dodgers giants

yankees astros a's brewers i mean is there a bad team in there uh no no and so here's my bias uh the mets reach at the 11th most rate. So perhaps Quattlebaum is not getting through or is not doing as great a job as I expected. Perhaps there was some bias on my part in that comment that I made. But I would say that in terms of hitting coaching, those teams that I just mentioned are getting good hitting coaching.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting because I think it's something I've never really tried to quantify in the past. I think everybody always turns to the hitting coach and the pitching coach as the two scapegoats when things aren't going wrong. Teams not scoring runs, blame the hitting coach. Teams not preventing runs, blame the pitching coach. To a large extent

they're only as effective as the quality of the players they're working with but the job is to i think take a lot of information and synthesize it in a way where a lot of people who learn in different ways and think about the game in a few different ways can actually you know understand it and apply it and i think that's that's a challenge, right? It's, it's being a teacher. You're not teaching people how to hit. You're teaching them more about what is happening to them in a sequence. And some guys are going to learn that really well. Others aren't. And then it's going to depend on the quality of the teacher and what they do. And I don't know how you measure, can you measure improvement? Can you measure, you know, Oh, swing percentage over, could you take a group of players who were there with one hitting coach and measure that and say, okay, here's what they were doing.

And now here's what they're doing with this hitting coach. Yeah, you could do that. But the players also got older. So over time, you're going to probably reach a bit more. Reach less. You reach less over time. You swing less. As you get older, you swing less.

I've done that before though and i i wrote a piece um defending dave hudgens when he was fired by the mets because i said look if you look at their swing rates a lot of these guys did better had better swing uh choices uh with him than without him um and who picked him up at the Astros? And I know there's a whole thing there, and I guess he was there for that. I believe him when he says he didn't have a part in that. I also think he was a good hitting coach. He's now, I think, the bench coach in Toronto,

but he's also taken on hitting coaching duties there. So I think the world of him, and I hope that it is true that he wasn't part of that, and Toronto has a better than average reach rate, so interesting little side note. Here's some things that occurred to me while you were talking. Brandon Nimmo was put on this earth to walk. He has a celebration for his walks. And I talked to him about this recently, and he said that his dad, since he was like six or seven, would put colors on the ball and tell him to track the colors,

would tell him to yell out what pitch type it was when he threw it, would paint it a strike zone, and was all about controlling the zone. He had an older brother that went to Nebraska D1, and the two of them would train in this shed in Nebraska that he built out to basically mimic, to have the strike zone and have the mound. And he would actually get up really close to kind of make these decisions harder on Nimmo,

which is important because Nimmo wasn't playing high school baseball or travel baseball like the rest of the Major League Baseball players. He was playing some Legion ball and then practicing with his dad in the shed. But he trained all this stuff. And I asked him about what does he do now to hone that? Because he now has the fourth best reach rate in baseball. So what do you do now to do that? And he goes, well, I still do some of the drills that I used to do, but now I can go and ask Hugh, what's the extension on this pitcher and how much ride does he get on his fastball?

Because he said that those were two things that he added at the major league level that helped him understand how much the fastball was going to jump out of the zone at the top of the zone. So should he take that high foreseeing that looks like jump out of the zone at the top of the zone you know so should he take that high foreseeing that looks like it's in the zone uh because it's going to ride out of the zone um and then also he said just uh extension helps him understand how how quickly the ball is going to get upon him you know because 92 with low extension 92 with that with high extension the

ball coming coming out closer to you is different. Those are things. That's Hugh talking. That's Hugh talking, right? That's Hugh giving him information that he wants. And the other thing I thought of was Donnie Ecker coaches, Brandon Crawford, Buster Posey, and Brandon Belt, and Evan Longoria. These four guys have been around forever, right?

All four of them are showing either the best or top three reach rates of their career. And all four of them are super different people, like totally, totally different people. Buster Posey is an analytical red ass who is looking at the numbers and then he goes and takes a nap bat and he goes back and looks at the numbers and he wants information. He wants to bat and he goes back and looks at the numbers. And he wants information. He wants to know everything he can know. He's a catcher. You know, he's and he's he just wants to compete like nobody's business.

Brandon Belt is a mellow effing dude. Just a mellow dude. I asked about this. He's like, just just tell me what the guy has. Just tell me what the guy has. Just tell me what the guy has. That's all I want to know. Just tell me what he has. Maybe a little bit about the shapes.

That's it. Brandon Crawford is somewhere in between. Evan Longoria made fun of me for asking him about walks when he first came to San Francisco. Literally made fun of me to another writer. He's now...

Why? He has the best... I don't know. He's now, he has the best. I don't know. I, I probably said rate or ratio or something, you know, like I, I don't know. I don't remember.

Actually, I remember us talking about walks. I don't remember him being mad about it in the conversation, but he sort of derided me to another writer somehow. And I was like, well, come on, Evan.

But now he's got the best walk rate he's had in like five years and the best reach rate of his career so that to me is like okay the hitting coach is good this hitting coach is good i i think it's a little bit harder you maybe the very best and the very worst are kind of easy to spot and then it's a little bit harder in the middle right in in the middle i feel like results are just going to push you out the door if things aren't going well like because you don't have something standing out right yeah but you're also uh in the pecking order like that's the other thing i thought of when you said there you're hired to fire to be fired i mean nobody's around for very long they have one or two year tenures some some

guys make it past that and around for a long time but uh uh you're hired to be fired you're the first person in line of fire if the offense doesn't doesn't do what you're supposed to so any case uh if there are any intrepid listeners out there looking for a project i do think matched uh weighted weighted by by volume matched oh swing changes uh before and after a hitting coach is uh and swing swing and oh swing uh those are uh interesting ways to evaluate a hitting coach yeah just to put a bow on it i just think back to the pre willie ad Adames era in Milwaukee this season. I feel like there were a lot more calls for Andy Haynes to be relieved as the Brewers' hitting coach,

and since they've played really well since adding Adames, I feel like those calls have gone away. Crowdy comes over and does well. Adames comes over and does well. I mean, yeah, the Christian saga is just I think probably a physical one. Right. That doesn't seem like

Andy Haynes' fault. It seems like there's a little more going on there that we're still trying to figure out. There was some question at some point this year, like, if he would come back and play. Weird. Right? Just weird. Well... Right? He went back, maybe he went back on the dl for the back right it was a quick stint but i think everybody thought oh this this could be really bad because

he just came back right he had he came i'm sure he's one game i think before he went back he has to be in pain all right he's just not telling anybody right like that that's the only team knows they're just not gonna they're not really talking about it maybe it's the kind of thing you can't make it worse structurally by playing with it so they let him play and but he feels like poop but he doesn't feel well he's not gonna hit the ball nearly as hard as often as he did he's not gonna barrel it the same way i don't again this is pure speculation but i think it's it's easy to see how the the narrative around a team uh changes and then suddenly the the hitting coach or the pitching coach becomes a lot safer all of a sudden. I think Milwaukee is probably one example of that.

Thanks a lot for that question, Alan. A couple more pitching things we should get to before we go. Trevor Rogers, I think, is interesting for the future ADP watch, and I think about him kind of in the same sort of light that I was thinking about Logan Gilbert earlier this week. I mean, he's done everything we are looking for really in a young pitcher. Great results so far. He's been away from the team on the restricted list for like a personal matter. So we don't really know if he's coming back to pitch anytime soon. What he's done so far through 20 starts though has I think laid the groundwork for him to be.

Probably a top 20 top 25 pitcher. At least in terms of ADP. Maybe not in terms of rank. But I think based on how he's going to be treated. Going into next season. It's going to be a premium. To go out and get Trevor Rogers. Is there anything you see in his profile.

That would give you pause about going after him. If he ends up falling into that. Previously noted like 75 ish range. Where think logan gilbert's going to end up um if he's that cheap i have no qualms about taking him i have a feeling he won't be cheap at all i have a feeling he might be right after that G Alito grouping that we were talking about. You think he's going to get that high? Yeah. Um, it's interesting.

Some of the stuff plus updates we had, um, captured a little bit more of his stuff. And so he has one or two stuff, uh, one Oh one location, one Oh two pitching. Uh,

this is a comfortably above average pitcher, uh, in a great park. And I think I would rank him in the top 20. Wouldn't you kind of rank him right after that? Who would you rather have, Rodgers or Malley? I think I'd take Rodgers. Much safer place to pitch.

Yeah. Who would you rather have, Malley or Gilbert? Gilbert's a 103 stuff plus, 99 location, 104 pitching. Tyler Malley is similar, but maybe more command. Yeah, I think there's more command for Malley. If I remember what I've seen from the cards in the past, I think I'd go Gilbert there too, though. Malley is 101 stuff, 104 location, 103 pitching.

So pitching says, but it's sort of like our conversation. Gilbert's more stuff forward, and Malley's more locations forward. However, Malley's also shown this location ability for a lot of years. Yeah, I'm very confident in that ability for Malley. I think that's a very good would you rather. But I guess this one circles back around to what about Rodgers versus Gilbert? What do we do in that situation? We're going to rank the three.

Yeah. Let's just rank the three circling around I'm still thinking NLDH Rogers I'm going to go with Mally Gilbert there's just a little bit of a whiff

of risk around Gilbert for me in terms of regression second year regression and a possible difference in price tag in terms of regression, second-year regression, and a possible difference in price tag where I might be taking Malley at price versus Gilbert at price. I think I'm going to go Gilbert, Rogers, Malley.

But again, we're splitting hairs in august about 2022 value i don't think this is a i definitely like roger i like gilbert the most slamming the fist down and well i think you know uh putting the curveball away and finding a really useful change up uh at the major league level has been kind of huge for gilbert and it's, it's a little bit of a lesson in like, you know, these guys don't, uh, get to the major leagues as fully formed situations,

you know? Right. Yeah. Always, uh, tweaking and tweaking and tweaking again, uh, last name to throw at you for today,

Luis Garcia, the Astros pitcher that you've, I think liked for a long time. I believe he's been on your radar really since he first kind of popped up in the big leagues. Where do we go with his ADP? Does he kind of fit into this group or is he one more tier below the names that we

just mentioned? 1-11. No, see this is not. This is the wrong guy. There's two Luis Garcias in here. They both have good stuff. The other one must be a reliever. Split finger? Luis Garcia doesn't have a split finger.

No, but he's got a bunch of above average pitches. Who is the other Luis Garcia? Anyway. Which team does he play for? I'll figure that out while you get here. 4 stuff plus for Luis Garcia. 120 slider. 116 changeup.

103 cutter. 98 foreseam. 95 curveball. I mean, I love it. It's great stuff across the board. The location plus is above average. Three of his five pitches. Basically average for the other two.

I love him. I am in the tank. I will take him above all the guys we just mentioned. I guess him versus Rodgers is a little bit interesting. If there was no NLDH, Rodgers in Marlins

Park, you know, without a DH, maybe. I think the AL West is still going to be a reasonably easy division to pitch in next year, too. So that bodes really well. I think the A West is still going to be a reasonably easy division to pitch in next year too. So that, that bodes really well. A's may blow it up. You know,

that's sad. The parks are, there's three parks there that are nice to pitch in. And, and then he's got his home park, which is not amazing to pitch in, but it's his home park. So there's really no scary park in that division,

except for Anaheim has been playing a little bit hitter friendly recently well i'm on board with luis garcia being in the conversation with those other names i think he's proven you put him along those three i don't think he'll have any sort of restrictions on his workload next year i think i'd go gilbert garcia rogers gilbert malley love the love for gilbert yep i i again maybe i'm overhyping him maybe i'm i'm expecting too much because of the prospect pedigree but i've got gilbert at the top of that group i've got garcia second uh reliever luis garcia is a cardinal by the way there you go old cardinal 34 he has a good split finger apparently i would go uh yeah i would go rogers garcia like that's really i think there's some information we need to split those up but i would put those

two next to each other. He threw 108 and 8 109 in 2019. He's at 116 right now. They're keeping him closer to 5 I think right now as much as they can. He got to 6 a couple starts ago. A lot of 5s and 4 and 2 thirds

on the game log. He's got hit a couple times recently too. I bet you they keep him on schedule but they do some twos and threes and get javier in there yeah maybe i think they probably want to keep him fresh for the postseason too because he's an important arm for them how do you do that that's the hardest thing is you want to keep him stretched out so he's stretched out as a starter for the postseason but you don don't want to blow through the doors off of every previous thing. And you also want to keep him on schedule for maybe pitching 180 next year.

Yeah. I think you maybe skip a turn instead. Like if you taper him down, do you have enough time to taper him back up? Or what about a six man? You could try that. It's either to me, it's,

I don't like skipping because then it's just like a hole in the middle and they have to work back out of it what i i think i would lean towards either tandem uh with javier where you're kind of stretching them both out to like two and a half and then near the end of the season either javier takes over for odorizzi and odorizzi goes to the pen you know by getting people to like two and a half three you have some options if they ramp up or down from there i'm a little concerned about christian javier's walk rate being up this year 12.6 and the results have been great 284 era 113 whip 107 k's and 85 and two-thirds innings he's providing plenty of value in the role of the astros that

put him in i guess i'm concerned and that it gives me a lot of doubts about his chances of eventually moving back into a starting role. Yeah. It's something that popped in Command Plus. He always had sort of 90, sub 90 around there, Command Plus.

I'm pulling up the location. Location Plus is just slightly below average and says he can actually locate his slider uh decently uh but stuff plus is mostly all slider and then an average four seam average knuckle average change i still i'm still a pretty big fan and i think um he just has too much value for them as a starter for them to ignore that. Plus, he pitched enough innings this year to think about him as a starter next year. For sure. And I think that there's enough need that at the very worst going into next year,

he'll be their sixth starter. Yeah, and that's a good spot to be in, as we learned with Luis Garcia this draft season. All it takes is one injury. He was a sick starter coming into the season with a slightly different profile, like better command, but lots of pitches, good stuff. I mean, I think if Javier drops a lot in drafts next year, I'll have some shares, man. He's a great draft champions league guy. If you're going to play some draft and hold leagues, Javier is going to get innings.

Worst case scenario, he's the guy you slip in there when everyone else is injured and you just need some innings. Right. There could be some Ross Stripling type usage going on here. Good Ross Stripling type usage. He was actually pitching pretty well before he got hurt more recently.

Turning things around after a slow start. We're all looking for the next Ross Stripling. On Javier, we really are. Sorry. On Javier, is it interesting to you that his walk rate as a starter this year was actually lower than what it's been in the bullpen? I mean, he's just under four walks per nine as a starter. He's over five and a half as a reliever.

Let me see here. His mix has been mostly fastball slider, right? Yep. So he's slowed down the secondary pitches. So fastball slider, location plus, second worst location plus among his pitches is a forcing fastball. The lefties just, oh man, he walks lefties like crazy.

Seven walks per nine in his split against lefties. Only three walks per nine against righties. That's really interesting. We haven't done splits on stuff and location yet. And I think that could be instructive, maybe a year two type thing. The good news is this model, instead of changing, because I've worked with all these different modelers and they all get hired by the last four have been hired by teams.

And so every year feels like, oh, God, I've got to work with someone to build it all over again. This year, the good news is, even though Max Bay has been hired by a team, congratulations, Max. Yeah, congrats to Max, and thank you for all the hard work here. Yeah, for sure. Is that there's going to be a handoff. So I will have the model and i

will be looking uh for a modeler to work with uh on these sorts of questions because you know zach ranke said a long time ago to me and i it's something that most pitchers agree with with him about is that you have better command to your arm side so if you're a righty you better command pitching to a right-handed hitter? Yes. So I would guess that Javier is having a hard time pitching inside to lefties with the foresame. Seems like a very good hypothesis

based on what we've got there and probably merits a little further exploration, but that seems pretty correctable. If that's your flaw, you have stuff like Javier does, that seems like the kind of thing you could actually fix pretty easily. It's weird that it's exacerbated in a relief role,

but maybe the plan is more fastball slider, and when he was a starter, he would mix in more backfoot curveballs and steal strikes in different ways that he's just not doing as a reliever. Yeah, so interesting picture for sure. Definitely one that I still like for deeper leagues in 2022, even though that walk rate is up for the season,

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