Rates & Barrels - An Impressive Debut & Fun with xStats

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss the strong debut from D-backs pitcher Ryne Nelson before examining a few surprises on the xStats leaderboards including José Ramírez, Alex Bregman, Bo Bichette, Paul Goldschmidt, José Abreu, and much more. Rundown 4:06 Ryne Nelson’s Debut 8:10 xStats Recalibrated for 2022 12:16 Making Sense of José Ramírez's xStats 15:59 Alex Bregman’s Second-Half Rebound 21:27 Bo Bichette's Huge Monday; Slight Step Back in 2022 24:25 O-Swing% v. Great Hit Tools 30:59 What's Next For Paul Goldschmidt? 34:43 José Abreu's Lost Homers 42:21 Luis Patiño’s Two-Strike Approach 52:41 Too Many Lefty Bats in Shallow Leagues? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe for $1/mo for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we are going to discuss a few small happenings from the weekend. We've got a ton of great mailbag questions. One that really opened up a main topic for us today because earlier this year, we talked about XStats not being calibrated correctly and being basically useless, and that's not the case anymore. So we're actually going to take a look at some things going on with XStats that might have some future implications for us. We're going to answer a bunch of questions in the mailbag, which is kind of amazing because the email world that I have, as people know on this show, it's chaotic most of the time. Most of the emails are junk.

They're not emails from our listeners. And it's amazing I could find anything in there that's useful for the show when I get stuff like story on breakdancing, debuting as Olympic sport in 2024. So there's some breaking news for you. Yeehaw! Yes, I'm on way too many lists to be able to sort through my athletic email. It's a mess in there.

In case I said I would do something in that email and I haven't yet, it's just because the email is so far from net zero that I have given up. And you should probably just ping me again. I am rapidly approaching delete all emails again. It's way too soon to be doing that again because I just did it. Was that beginning of the season maybe?

It wasn't that long ago. Yeah, it's not good. Yes. I apologize for that. I promise when I do push that button next, I will come back with a new email address for the show that keeps our show email business separate from all of the breakdancing stuff

and all the other emails I never signed up for that I get because I have an athletic email address, which is just terrific. So email logistics aside, you know, how was your long weekend? Any big free agent splashes? Any actual splashes in a pool or anything? And we're in one of the places that was really, really hot, still hot actually for these next

few days. So I hope everybody out there is staying safe and cool if you're fighting the heat right now. I'm reading that today will be the hottest day ever recorded in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento regions. Yeah, that's not great we crossed over a hundred yesterday at our household uh by all the instruments that we have and uh so it was a pretty hot day we actually ran the air conditioning a little bit because we got to the point we couldn't take it the we did we went to a place called silliman aquatic center uh which has um some has like a lazy river and some a couple slides and it has one of those things one of those buckets that

fills up and then topples over you ever been to one of those wait is it a ride where you're in the bucket and then it throws you out or is it just spills on you it spills on you but it's like in the middle of this aquatic center there's a bucket it's filling up it's filling up and then it throws you out or is it just spills on you it spills on you but it's like in the middle of this aquatic center there's a bucket it's filling up it's filling up and then the bell rings and it topples over and sure so we did that for a while popular place i bet yesterday it was it was i'm wondering um the younger one was into it more into it and the older one wanted to go earlier so i have a feeling we may be uh hitting the upper age limit for that facility which means of course if we want to do a water park after that it's going to cost a lot more than 11 bucks there's going to be a lot more lines because it's going

to be one of those big ones right schlitterbahn or something like it i just figured you'd go to schlitterbahn because of your German heritage. No. We did cook some brats, though. Oh, okay. Well, hey, that's a nice weekend. I caught some of the debut of Ryan Nelson for the Diamondbacks. He looked good.

He looked real good. Velo seemed like 95, 96 with the fastball. Slider looked pretty good. Locations looked solid. I don't know if the Pitching Plus report is available for him yet, 95-96 with the fastball. Slider looked pretty good. Locations looked solid. I don't know if the pitching plus report is available for him yet, but I came away impressed, and I think I had pretty tempered expectations for him because he wasn't really part of our free agent plans going into the weekend.

Yeah, the one thing that I got from watching that, that I may not it may be right or may be wrong was I wonder how much of it was a good mesh of Nelson's skills and the Padres

weaknesses right now which the Padres are number one in not swinging at strikes since with this reconfigured lineup since the All-Star break. Not swinging at balls, I mean. And they are also last in swinging at strikes. So they've suddenly become the most patient team in baseball. And one thing that I saw Ryan Nelson do was strike out a lot of guys on fastballs. And they were well-located fastballs,

but a more aggressive team would have maybe liked those fastballs more. So I am going to wait for the report to give a full declaration of legitimacy for Ryan Nelson to miss, especially because the minor league strikeout and minus walk rates were up and down. He had some really good stops, and then at AAA he was below average, almost. Just thinking altitude-wise, Reno versus Denver, looks like Reno is at 4,500 feet, so I wonder how much strikeout rates and and breaking

stuff you know changes in reno and how how little we think about that compared to how much we think about at the big league level it's true and he does uh he did throw uh breaking balls nearly a quarter of the time um or more there's some really weird pitch-type stuff happening on some of these boards. But he threw a lot of fastballs, and two-thirds fastballs in that start, according to Pitch Info. And if that is the case, that makes him a weirdo. So that fastball better be really good. Looked pretty good watching him.

Also, fastball shape. Personally good looked pretty good watching him also fastball shaped is that i think personally i think that's the hardest thing to scout with your eyes yeah and and the tv angles being different depending on which feed you look at i think adds another layer of difficulty to that it seemed like it had what people describe as good late life to me but hey that's just my untrained eye trying to make something out of nothing it is weird the padres are are that passive now you i mean like soto is soto so you knew that's coming with him but grisham is soto too just without the without the same power yeah i wonder if they're stumbling into a lineup configuration that is not ideal i mean i guess if you had assumed tatis would be back by

now he changes that because he is not quite like them in terms of how he approaches his plate appearances yeah eyeballing uh the numbers it does look like it is a good four seamer it has three more inches of ride than the average four seamer and that's at 95 miles an hour sitting. So that is a good sign. Yeah, and probably because of minor league numbers, the low K rate, the slightly higher-than-you'd-like walk rate, the inflated ERA, those are all things that people are going to use to temper their bidding on Ryan Nelson. So it could be a little bit of a late-season value here

if you scoop him up and end up using him. Got to watch the matchups of course given the circumstances let's move on to x stats x stats seem to be fixed now which is awesome because it means we can look at them with some sense of meaning and i always like to look at the difference between actual wobah and expected wobah Now you were telling me before we started recording, there's one really important thing that's actually missing from X WOBA that can significantly impact what that number looks like. Yes, I'm pretty sure of this and apologies to anybody that works on the stat if I'm wrong, but I've read through the both definitions and I remember this discussion from

before and I'm pretty sure this is correct spray angle is not an expected statistic so what they do have is launch angle so up down angle exit velocity um and uh they've added sprint speed as a as a as a factor in expected batting average so they do know how fast the runner is and so there are various things in there that what's really not in there. And it's kind of important is the spraying, which is the side to side pull versus push. Um, and,

uh, I could see a reason for not putting it in because, um, you, you don't know how the defenders are being, are defending you. So, um,

when you, if you put spray angle in without adjusting for where the defenders are being are defending you so um when you if you put spray angle in without adjusting for where the defenders are sitting then you might introduce noise right like you're you're you can't you'd be making an assumption uh however we can make this those kinds of assumptions from the outside looking in because they're generally true. And these are the assumptions you can make. One assumption is like Alex Bregman told me, when I'm going good, I hit low to the right and high to the left. And when I'm going wrong, it's the opposite.

It's low to the left and high to the right. He's a right-hander, so that means when he's going well, he's pulling the ball in the air and he's pushing the ball on the ground. And when he's not, he's doing the opposite. That's because pulled barrels do better than opposite field barrels because of the spin of the ball. And so these are kind of all things we've talked about on the show before, but they are really relevant when it comes to expected batting average

and expected slugging percentage statistics because if you take two guys that both have 10 barrels and one guy has pulled eight of them and the other guy has pulled two of them, they're going to have the same expected slugging percentage except one guy will have pulled eight of his barrels and the other guy will have pulled eight of his barrels the other guy will have pushed eight of his barrels and that would mean for a real difference in actual slugging percentage so um you know i think that's it's super relevant like if you do a uh a search for the highest percentage of pulled barrels you get somebody Matt Carpenter at the very top of your search. And a guy like Matt Carpenter, you know, is always going to, I mean, has often been

a guy where the X stats seem out of, out of wonk with what's actually happening in real life. So he's got a 727 slugging and an X slugging of 485. I'm not saying that either of those numbers is real. A 727 slugging is ridiculous. But I would assume that the X slugging on a guy who pulls almost every barrel he hits is going to be a little bit low. Yeah. It would not be accurately reflecting the way he's making the most of his barrels by pulling them. That makes sense. So if you're looking at expected slugging,

Jerickson Profar is another guy that the expected slugging is like a 360. His actual slugging is only 400. But I kind of believe the level of slugging he's come to because he's pulled 15 of the 17 barrels. So when he's going for it when he wants to hit it hard when he wants to hit it hard he hits it in the air and he pulls it uh so that's been good for him mitch hanager has pulled 12 out of 15 barrels bryson stott has pulled 10 out of 13 joey gallo 22 out of 29 and here's another young name vin Vinny Pascantino has pulled 12 of the 16.

I definitely tried to acquire him everywhere at the trade deadline and failed. Well, that's because everybody likes him for good reason. You know, who's kind of popping in a strange way on the x stats leaderboards is jose ramirez because if you sort by the difference between actual slugging and expected slugging ramirez at least among qualified hitters has the biggest gap going the wrong way that is to say he's exceeded his x slug by the greatest margin so far. That's a pretty interesting thing to look at because he didn't come up as one of those guys who was pulling a ton of the barrels, right? At least not in the first few names that you mentioned. Is he sort of high on that list?

Sort of high. Top third, 41 out of 150. Okay, that's pretty good. But I guess I'm trying to make sense of all this. I mean, the barrel rate rate even when he's been really good in past years has run a bit low in part because he doesn't strike out a lot so some of the some of the some of the underlying numbers on Ramirez can can nudge you away from him even though there's this great track record of easy 25 to 30 home run power sometimes more than that usually a good if not great batting

average still walking a ton still stealing bases he's 14 for 21 this year as a base stealer so not quite as efficient as he was a year ago so i don't know if there's anything that can really be drawn from that but i imagine it's the kind of thing people are going to look at a little more closely as we get closer to the offseason yeah i think he's just uh you know this is going to sound similar to the last thing in terms of um you know pulled barrels or whatever but not every fly ball is a barrel jose ramirez pulls all of his fly balls uh he has pulled the most fly balls in baseball this year. And so it's the same conversation, right? It's the pulled barrel versus, but it's, you know, he also just pulls every fly ball. So he'll hit homers off of things that aren't barrels, you know? So he's really

maximizing that same philosophy. and in terms of pulled fly balls it's it's all guys that make the most out of their power it's a it's an amazing list actually jose ramirez is number one in pulled fly balls marcus simeon is number two uh i've heard the the they sort of pulled down the line fly ball approach as the simian approach so um there's nolan arnado is third and he famously worked on adding bat speed and uh trying to pull barrels alex bregman the guy who always you know outproduces his expected slugging by pulling fly balls into the crawford boxes is fourth jake cronenworth mookie betts anthony santander bobby witt kyle tucker i mean it's a good list of hitters right pete alonzo christian walker a little bit more of the all or nothing

sluggers but mullins lindor uh rizzo wilmer flores corey seager this is a good list to be on um and i would i would assume that all that most of these guys guys have higher X slugging than slugging rates. No, lower X slugging than slugging rates. Alex Bregman is a good example of someone that often was outperforming the X stats. And he looks like he's finally healthy again, right? I mean, that was part of the story for him. Last season, throughout the first half of this year, I started to wonder if he just wasn't the same player anymore. If you look back, just going back to July 1st, 240 plate appearances now, 11 homers, he's walked more than he's struck out. It's a 161 WRC+. That is a big step back in the right direction after what was kind of a pretty bad past calendar year relative to his previous norm. So I think it's mostly health in Bregman's case.

It's just changed for him in recent months. He mentioned, you know, some mechanical things that when we were talking about, you know, high and low, left and right, you know, he was talking about having found something. And that was in July. And he's had a 940 ops since we talked and uh 17 doubles and 10 homers and he's been uh one of the more improved bats in the second half in fact i did a little query it's uh it's going to my column but um uh i looked at most improved

wrc plus guys in the second half versus the first half. So, spoiler alert, Bregman's on there. Can you – I'm laughing already, so you can tell it's a funny result. But do you want to guess who was number one? Most improved WRC Plus. Oh, it's got to be someone who was bad in the first half. Jonathan Scope? That's why I'm laughing. No? That's why I'm laughing. No, that's why I'm laughing.

It's not. No, it's someone good. Judge? Yes. Aaron Judge had a 174 WRC plus in the first half and has had a 265 in the second half. Jeez. And so therefore is the number one most improved in the second half.

Therefore, he's the number one most improved in the second half. Just in case anybody wants to hear some other names off of that. Let me see if I can find it real quick. It goes Judge Lowe. So it's not really guys that were that bad in the first half, you know? Judge Lowe, Real Muto, who there's some stuff from Matt Gelb has written on it and some physical stuff they were doing on the MLB networks in terms of mechanics that he's cleaned up. But he's been a real, that's been a really huge for me

in a couple of places where I've had him as a keeper. I think it's been, he was right of that age and as a catcher where you might be like, Ooh, like, is this the beginning of the end for real Muno? And then he really turned it on. And he's such a physical specimen in terms of he's stolen 17 bases this year. You know,

I think it's his career high. And he also throws everybody out. He has the number one pop time in baseball as a catcher. So I, I went from in a couple months, thinking, ooh, maybe I should be trading Real Muto to I'm going to hold on to these shares. And I think, you know, if he's not drafted as the number one catcher next year,

then he's underrated. So Verdugo, I think, really rescued his season in the second half so far. And then Bregman's number five. Some other names that are interesting. Seth Brown coming into his own. Sean Murphy figuring it out a little bit. Tony Kemp in the Jonathan Scope category was really bad

and is now a little better. But look at this. Number 10, Jorge Mateo was a 72 wrc plus in the first half and a 122 in a second to sneak into the top 10 um but the next guy uh is interesting to another x that bo bichette um you know has a fairly large discrepancy between, no, Bobachet does something that maybe is not captured by expected batting average. So he has a 272 average and a 267 XBA. And so you'd think, okay, he's, that's who he is. He's a 260, 270 hitter. Well, I did a look at who hits their line drives and ground balls uh the other way which is another way of looking at this pull push question the spray angle question and boba shett is 13th in

the big leagues in going oppo on line drives and ground balls um which would, those would do better than expected because of the shift, because they make defenders play you straight up. And so other names on this list that might have skills that XBA is not capturing are Brendan Rogers, Miles Straw, DJ LeMayhew, Sheldon Noisy, Miles Straw, DJ LeMayhew, Sheldon Noisy, Corey Dickerson, Mr. Badball Hitter himself, Nick Allen. There's definitely some really light hitters up here. The top three are Gilberto Celestino, Terran Vavra of the Orioles, and Nick Allen. So I think those guys qualify as slap hitters. But maybe XBA isn't the best measure of their

abilities when it comes to putting up a good batting average. A guy like Nick Allen could still put up a good batting average even without much power. Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built in so you can

change the music. Oh, yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. So it was a big day for Beau Bichette in the double header on Monday against the Orioles.

Six for ten, three homers, seven RBIs. I mean, that was a massive, massive day for him that kind of changed a lot. He heard us writing his obituary. Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, still a month to go to finish the story for this season. Fair to say the stock is going to be down draft season 2023 compared to draft season for 2022, though, because the stolen bases haven't been there. He was 25 for 26 as a base dealer a year ago. He's 9 for 16 this year. Power's probably, even with the big binge and doubleheader, going to come up a little bit lighter. Run production should end up being a little bit lighter. Excuse me.

I think there's always a challenge of, for me at least, to draft someone in the early rounds with a low 300s range OBP. It's a 315 OBP so far this year for Boba Shett. This has never been something he's done particularly well. He's never been a big walker because he's always had a great hit tool.

He's always been able to put the ball in play and make things happen. I wonder if we're seeing a little bit of improvement though, in terms of his swing decisions, because his O swing is actually better than it's ever been, at least since his brief rookie season. 38.7% is an improvement, a pretty big improvement from where it was just a year ago at 42.5%. Yeah, and it's basically just been going down over the course of the season, debuted with a pretty high peak above 40%. And if you look at the rolling graphs for Beau Bichette, the plate discipline has been more around 30% to 35% in terms of chase rate. That's more like league average.

When you get over 40%, that's when you're in the bad group. And it hasn't had a full effect on his strikeout rate. I was hoping to see that his strikeout rate was going down. But his strikeout rate has been steadily above 20% all season. It has not really seen that much improvement. But not chasing does look like it's leading to some improvement in his production. I think it's also worth maybe even revisiting Michael Harris in the light of this. revisiting uh michael harris in the light of this uh because you know maybe you know i had some pushback on twitter and in a couple places of you know were we too harsh on a guy who's 21 years old

to to to make too much of a big deal out of that chase right um you know bo bichette is making improvements there ronald acuna jr is you know. has made improvements in that regard. He is young. He can make improvements. The question is just, you're buying him assuming he will make those improvements. You will probably have to pay a cost for Michael Harris that assumes that chase rate is not a problem. And I think with Bo Bichette, you're seeing, you know, and also to be frank, I think almost all the guys that you look at that are struggling, especially young guys, you can look at their chase rate.

And so many of them, so many of them, I mean, Javier Baez is, you know, the whipping boy, but even young guys that have, that have had real trouble.

Raphael Devers has had an awful second half. He's sixth in chase rate. Some guys who are seeing early declines like Scope and Baez are on this list. Bo Bichette is 14th on this list for the year. Jesus Aguilar is on this list. And then it's not a silver bullet though because Bobby Wood Jr. is on this list um and then it's not a silver bullet though because Bobby Wood Jr. is on this list and we talked about how he had improved his and he was in a good spot Pete

Alonzo is 22nd in chase rate he's a very good hitter but it is something that I look at a lot and I was expecting to see uh Luis Robert on here but I think he just isn't qualified. Yeah, but I guess that's lost time keeping him off that list. It just seems like that's part of his approach. I think Rafael Devers is a good name to bring up here too. Yes, he's fourth.

He's fourth. I just adjusted and he's fourth in the league. The range for Devers, he broke in really young too, just like Harris did. He's 20 years old as a rookie back in 2017. The range has been 36% at the low end, which is actually when Devers first got to the big leagues. And at the high end, it's gone up as high as 42.3% in the shortened season in 2020.

And he's kind of close to that right now. I know this has been a strange stretch for him. As great as Alex Bregman has been, as those second half risers have been, Devers has been kind of heading more of the other direction in recent weeks. But it's still a really good line for the year. 291, 351, 534. That's basically exactly what he did last year with a slightly better batting average. So, I don't know.

I think you can live with an approach like that. If you do a lot of damage so far, Michael Harris does a lot of damage. He's got a better barrel rate than when Boba Shett broke into the league. It's got a better hard hit rate than when Boba Shett broke into the league. I think the thing that I need to see or want to see from Harris, aside from possibly lowering the O-swing percentage, is also hitting the ball in the air a little more often. That's the other part of the profile that for as early as he is going to go in drafts, that gives me just a little bit of pause. Yeah, and I was going to go a slightly different direction, the swing strike rate being around 15%. I think the people that are on this leaderboard that have success because the the

updated leaderboard and this is interesting because i had a qualified batter lean thing on there and that actually doesn't tell you the full story because there are a lot of people with with poor swing decisions that don't play enough to be qualified batters so uh when you take that off and you just make it a hundred plate appearance mine uh appearance minimum, Francisco Mejia is number one. Jorge Alfaro is number two. Edmundo Sosa is number three. Luis Robert is fourth. Oscar Gonzalez is fifth.

Jose Barrero is sixth. Javier Baez is seventh. It's not a good hitter list. And it becomes a little bit more obvious. But the thing that when there are guys that succeed with chase rates like this, a lot of times they have plus-plus hit tools. And I think that's where Luis Robert lives. I think that's also where Ozzy Alves, who's 14th on this list, lives. Salvador Perez is 16th on this list.

I think he has a plus-plus hit tool. Harold Ramirez is 19th on this list. I think he has almost only a hit tool. on this list, I think he has almost only a hit tool. Luis Garcia, who I think has like two walks on the year, is 20th on this list. I think he has a pretty good hit tool. Tim Anderson is 23rd. So when I look at Michael Harris, I want to know, are you going to go the slugger direction where you're going to have a higher strikeout rate, but you're going to do a lot of damage on every ball you put in play? Then I want more patience out of you, frankly. I want you to be more of a three-two outcome guy.

If you're going to be a hit tool guy, then maybe we can survive with the low walk rate, but then I want to see that swing strike rate go down. So there's just a couple little things here or there that make me think I'm not going to have that many shares of him even though he's a super exciting young player and he could he could clean up all these faults and i don't want to say he's not good he's definitely good i don't think that was ever implied it was more everyone's going to pay a lot draft wise to have michael harris in 2023 and because of that it might be difficult to roster him because of these underlying concerns if if it were 1998 and uh people didn't have fan graphs and

all the stuff we're looking at now you know story might be a little bit different with how harris is being treated yeah and what if you what if what if you know there's here's a little extra little Yeah, and what if you, what if, you know, here's an extra little thing to think about. What if these things are leading us astray and we're forgetting that he could improve, you know? And he actually is at a good price because everyone's got fan graphs and everyone can see his chase rate and his string strike rate. You know what I mean? And then he actually becomes a good bet where you're like, hey, the risk has been priced in, and I'm getting a young player that could improve and could have a superstar year next year.

Right, because we've seen good patience in the minors. We've seen better K rates. That could happen over time. We've seen better fly ball rates. All the things we're asking for in some form, it looks like he's done them before. He's done them sometimes, yeah. You can only do so much.

He's only been a pro since 2019. He got to the big leagues so quickly and handled every league very well. I mean, the high A numbers were just kind of good rather than exceptional. But again, age to level, an amazing player. I'm just thinking he's going to go inside the top 25 overall of a lot of drafts. And that's a big time price tag for any player. So we'll see. You know, just looking at that,

the difference between slugging and ex-slugging, of the highest guys, Jose Ramirez is a big pulled barrel guy. Nolan Arenado, who's fourth on the list, is a big pulled barrel guy. Mookie Betts was a pulled barrel guy. So, you know, Jose Altuve is a pulled barrel guy. Mookie Betts was a pulled barrel guy. So, you know, Jose Altuve is a pulled barrel guy. So I think that explains a fair amount of the top 10 in differences there.

Yeah. Paul Goldschmidt was second on that list. Goldschmidt was the subject of an email we received from Ben. Ben writes, after a brief browse through the StatCast leaderboards, I noticed that Goldschmidt has the largest difference between average and XBA, the StatCast leaderboards. I noticed that Goldschmidt has the largest difference between average and XBA, 331 to 262, slug and X slug, 617 to 497, and then WOBA to X WOBA, 440 to 372. After hearing your discussion about a possible draft market correction on Goldschmidt for next year, I wonder if these discrepancies will lead to regression and hurt those who buy high. So

what level of concern do you have about Goldschmidt, if any, in light of this? Paul Goldschmidt is J.P. Crawford on line drives and ground balls in that he sends a quarter of them to the opposite field. And he's Nolan Arenado when it comes to pulled barrels. So Paul Goldschmidt is doing exactly what you would do to make both of your expected stats unrepresentative of your true talent.

Hmm. And what's amazing to me, you know, as having watched his career is I love that he came in to the league with a opposite field approach. I mean, that was the first thing I ever heard about Paul Goldschmidt. You got to see this guy. He's covers the play well, and he's got real oppo power. power and you know i think over the years he's really uh changed his uh his ability to to pull balls in the air um i've been i've gotten i've tried to get him to talk about it but uh it's not something he's he talks about a lot but he will reference you know being taught to be a uh an opposite field guy coming up in like little league and stuff um so that's definitely the the base he comes from so i think that he can really do that where he can really send balls the opposite way and uh uh he can send balls the opposite way and then he can uh uh he can um uh the opposite way on the ground and he can pull the balls in the air.

I think he's a perfect hitter. Yeah, he's really good, as we've learned over time. I think even with the gaps and the way you're explaining them, I think helps ease any concerns people might have. Just look at where he still ranks anyway. The ex-slug at 501 is top 6% of the league. His actual Woba, top 1% of the league. X Woba, top 4% of the league. He's elite of the elite. Here's his pulled fly ball rate. This is pull percentage on fly balls. percentage on fly balls uh and when he broke into the league in 2011 18 percent and uh this year number one in his career 28 percent so uh he's in when he broke into the league he was sending

40 to 45 percent uh the opposite field and this year is 35 percent in the air so yeah he's he's a really good hitter and i and i do i do think that um you know 34 injury is going to be a risk but in terms of on-field production uh chase rate swing strike rate fly ball rate pull barrel barrel rate, all the things that we'd be looking at. He's just excellent at them. I would assume that next year is going to be another good year. Thanks a lot for that email, Ben. We've got an email from Andrew about another older first baseman, Jose Abreu.

Andrew writes, I was pretty shocked the other day to see Jose Abreu was leading the AL in hits, so I dug into his numbers, decided he's got a career low in pretty much every advanced metric for power. I was wondering if you know if this is a conscious change to put the ball in play and stay away from the three true outcomes, or if his power just got sapped and we're seeing what a good, pure hitter he is. I drafted him solely to get homers, so naturally he decides to hit none this season. So I've been looking at Abreu for a little while, and I've just had this

belief that the price is going to come down going into 2023 because he's an older player. The market tends to discount old players, especially if they lag in power. I still think there's a 25 to 30 home run bat here. I don't think we're seeing enough of a decline in the underlying power numbers to believe that the power has vanished. We're talking about a guy that still has a hard hit rate that's been flirting with 50% all season. The barrel rate is only a tick below where it was a year ago. It's still right in line with career norms at 9%. Max exit velo is down just a tick from where it was, but 113, he's still showing the high-end raw power you're looking for. Fewer Ks than ever, so maybe it is a slight adjustment on his part.

I still think Jose Abreu is really good. It's just kind of almost a surprisingly low power season from a guy that I thought had a narrow bar for what he was going to provide in any given season. This is, I think, amazing timing. And I'm just going to chalk it up to you being the king of the rundown. But like, Jose Abreu is the same guy as Paul Goldschmidt. The story I just told, if you went back like a year or two, you'd be like, oh yeah, he was talking about Jose Abreu. Opposite field hitter, really good at going the opposite way, learns how to pull the ball in the air, and breaks out.

That's the story of Jose Abreu in 2020 and 2019. And if you look at his pulled fly ball rates by season, 2020 was his best with a 26%. And in 2019, he had a 21%. Those are both pretty good for his career. This year, he's at 18%. He's doing a reverse Paul Goldschmidt where now he's not pulling the ball in the air at all.

And I have no idea why he would do that other than maybe he's being pitched a certain way. Maybe he proved that he could pull the ball in the air. And so now they're going back and pitching him more away because he proved that he could take that inside pitch and deposit it in the seats. Given that he's shown the same skills, very many of the same skills other than patience, as Paul Goldschmidt, you'd think that he could right the ship unless it's something physical.

And then again, he's at 35, and you'd expect some decline. I think, you know what? I think he'll be an interesting pick next year. I think he'll be an undervalued pick next year. Because I think people will chalk too much of this up to age when it might just

be sort of cat and mouse adjusting back and forth pitching type stuff. In which case, he's shown the ability to pull fly balls in the past. Why couldn't he do that again? I wonder if he'll still if he'll still be a member of the white socks next year he's a free agent i mean it doesn't seem like he wants to leave seems like a guy that it's been pretty happy there ever since

signing as an international free agent geez been a little while like almost 10 years ago but the white socks as a team have underwhelmed from a power perspective this year. And I realize they've dealt with a ton of injuries, but you go up and down their whole roster. Andrew Vaughn leads that team in home runs. He's got 15. 451 slug. A brave has got 14 homers, 452 slug. Luis Robert, 12 homers, 446 slugs. Only been 382 plate appearances. Eloy Jimenez has been hurt a ton. Nine homers and 228 plate appearances, 455 slug.

Moncada's power has disappeared. When Tim Anderson's been out there, less power than usual. Six homers, 395 slugging percentage. Grandal been hurt a lot. Four homers and 309 plate appearances, 272 slug. Is there an organizational problem here or a park factors problem or some combination of both on top of all the injuries? Because this is a surprisingly light team

from a power perspective, at least relative to my expectations. No, and it's fair. I've heard speculation that the humidor is to the wrong setting or that there's something wrong with the humidor in that field. This is pretty good evidence that there's nothing wrong there because the White Sox one-year power factor,

so not three-year rolling, just this year, is third in the big leagues behind the Rockies, the Reds, and then the White Sox. That lines up pretty well. I don't know why the Yankees are 12th. I think of the Yankees park as being up there. But, you know, that's what happens when you do one-year park factors. Put the three-year rolling park factor back on,

and you do home runs and the white socks are second so i just don't see that anything is that different this year i would chalk it up to um well within a breyou possible age possible you know being pitched a certain way um with some of the other guys some flaws in their approaches. For example Vaughn loves hitting opposite field barrels. I think he could hit for more power if he pulled his barrels. And then with Luis Robert we've been talking about I think poor decision making at the plate in terms of balls

and strikes. Tim Anderson injury. So I think poor decision-making at the plate in terms of balls and strikes. Tim Anderson injury. So I think it's one of those things where maybe some poor coaching, but probably just some poor luck and some injury luck combined to have it be down. I don't think it's a humidor. I don't want to blame the hitting coaches entirely. There's always noise up and down, and we haven't been able to prove that hitting coaches

can change something like slugging percentage. But I do also see that this team, the White Sox, have the worst plate discipline in baseball. You know? They have, you know, they have have they're basically tied with the tigers in terms of swinging outside the zone and they swing at strikes less than the tigers so i would say they have the worst discipline in baseball not ideal so yeah organizational philosophy something in the preparation a lot of possible explanations it's just strange mean, it's a 388 slugging

as a team for the White Sox, easily their lowest in the last five years. They were at 422 as a team a season ago. Pretty much the same core guys, right? Not any major changes

as far as who did it a year ago. But yeah, the ball changes, the way some of those guys get that power, all factors worth thinking about. But thanks a lot for that question, Andrew. Andrew also had a pitching question for us that I think is a fair one to throw out there. It's about Luis Patino.

He writes, I desperately want Patino to be the guy we thought he'd be, so I've been paying close attention to him, and I'm confused by one thing I'm hoping you can help me understand. It always seems like he has no trouble at all with his filthy stuff getting to two strikes, but he just can't put hitters away. Last night, he got to two strikes on 12 Red Sox. Four of their five hits were on two strikes, including a Verdugo blast. Of those 12, he only caved four hitters. For someone with such good stuff, what is going on with that?

Maybe it's a more general question that applies to other pitchers, but I particularly notice it with him. So is there a Patino specific thing or is it a broader problem that other young pitchers have encountered? I don't know. I think that's pretty eye-opening to have that many chances to punch a guy out and not actually only come away with four. So he said 12 two-strike outs, and he got four strikeouts. I think that's not ideal. One thing I realized when I'm looking at Patino's stuff numbers this year, they are down pretty big from last year, and they are actually not super impressive. It is nice to see a four-seam fastball that is above average by shape

and also by command. So the four-seam fastball is actually his best pitch. His slider has a 110 stuff plus and a 90 location plus. So he's not commanding it well. And a 110 stuff plus for a slider is, I mean, I don't want to call it average, but it's not standout. The best sliders have 140s and 150 stuff plus. So he's got, I would say, a good slider and a really good fastball

and then the other two pitches aren't very good. So I would assume that batters are just able to keyhole him to some extent. And even with two strikes, they know it's either going to be the high fastball or the slider that he can't command. Maybe they're just spitting on his breaking ball with two strikes. With Patino, is there enough good in the profile to still want to take chances on him late for next year, or is some of that growth potential fading just a little bit?

He's still so young. He's going to turn 23 in October. It's hard to look at him and say he's a finished product. He's missed so much time. That's also, I think, really hurt him over the past two years. Yeah. I almost want to give him a pass. And to me, I think I'm mostly just assuming that it's injury, that he's not as good because of injury now of course that becomes a scary factor when talking about next year what if he's just not going to be the same as he was when he debuted because injuries mount you know what i mean um but it also gives you a full off season of recovery um so uh it's just it's weird to me i think what's what

we're seeing is that um his best pitches is his fastball and sometimes when you look across the league that sounds like a good thing you're like oh yeah he's got a good fastball it's great that's what you need in this game but it's not always the greatest thing you know look how long it took freddie ferralta yeah i think actually that's kind of a name here look how long it took freddie ferralta to get right it may take you that long with luis patino which is equal parts hopeful and not hopeful right now is right am i gonna guess next year and guess wrong i think the key is next i think this year you can drop him if it's not if it's a redraft and you know you just want to play the matchups and he's just he's basically almost a streamer level i think at this level at this

at this talent level next year i think you can you can pick him up as a you know as a chance guy but i wouldn't want to spend money real money on him so you really just want to think about him more as a matchup starter for the indefinite future kind of into the beginning of next season see what happens with the arsenal and then be willing to be more interesting than a lot of other matchup starters like you know think about like a merrill kelly going coming into this year merrill kelly and luis patino going into next year right you know probably merrill kelly is a matchups guy he does not have the upside as Patino. So I'd rather draft Patino, get some stuff numbers, see where he's at. And if he's at the same place stuff-wise, I can go find myself a Merrill Kelly type. Here's a would-you-rather for you for next year.

Luis Patino or Braxton Garrett? Ooh. Yeah, that's a good one because braxton garrett uh has lower stuff numbers and just generally is uh has lower stuff but he has better command and he has a better command of a wider arsenal he has a match-up floor because home in miami you know you're gonna feel pretty good about that in the past i would have taken patino nine times out of ten um but the new me uh the greater appreciation of arsenal size and uh and command i'm gonna take braxton garrett he just looks like a starting pitcher to me patino has still has one

foot in the bullpen yeah that's that's possible. And we've seen guys that young go to the pen and then come back, so it's not a long-term, it's over for Patino if they go that route with him. I thought that was a pretty interesting combo to consider since Garrett did not have the same

hype that Luis Patino did coming into the season. And I realized I am part of the reason there was Luis Patino hype. I was creating it. I was talking and writing and doing things that. We are part of the hype machine. I've caused it. It's my fault.

I am sorry that I've been wrong so far. But yeah, I think maybe hitters just knowing what's coming or having a sense of what's coming has been a big part of the problem for Patino. So curious to see what happens with him over the course of the off season. Thanks a lot for those questions, Andrew. I got a follow up email here from Kurt. He pointed out that Nick Gordon, who we talked about probably about three or so weeks ago on the show, was previously dealing with the gastrointestinal issues during his minor league career, recently changed his diet. That was actually a story written by Aaron Gleeman, one of our twins writers here at The Athletic.

So I just appreciate Kurt passing that along because I had not actually seen that. And it's occasional stuff like this. Medical issues like that. I think Josh James' sleep apnea a few years ago was an interesting one that once they treated that, he got a lot better. We've had players get lasik in the

minor leagues they go from barely being able to hit at a level to being well above average at a level this information is really important this matters quite a bit rogers when it is a prospect or more recently as a prospect i think yeah i think eric hosmer was one of the first guys i can remember getting lasik as a prospect and it changed his fortunes at one point. The Gordon thing, I think it's tough because the more I look at him, the more I think he's a super sub. I don't think he's a everyday six to seven days a week sort of player, and I think he's probably, for a 15-team mixed league, maybe one of your bench options, but I think he's more of a 15 team mixed league maybe one of your bench options but I think he's more of a mono league player even with these improvements I'm making a small bet

in a few places that he's going to be a regular next year I just I like the barrel rate the chase rate is below average but there's a little bit of a hit tool about him. I like that he's filling out. I don't know. I think he could be like an average stick, slightly above average with the stick, and if he is slightly above average with the stick, I think the Twins will find a place for him to play.

I only think the playing time leak could be as a left-handed hitter maybe he ends up finding his way to the bench against lefties on a regular basis something like that and then maybe i mean maybe there's a question of defensive position but he's played every single one so i just think they'll find one for him versatility helps so it could just be one injury away all the time from ending up in a more prominent role, but definitely something that changes things with Nick Gordon, just knowing that his health's in a better place. I would like him to play around the league. He's got 14 starts at second base this year,

16 at short, and 53 in the outfield. If they could get him just a little bit more playing time in the middle infield, I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much. My fantasy team would like it. Because then he could be a guy, like we've been talking about, a bench bat and 15-teamers

that is eligible at a lot of different places. That would be a really nice place to pick up Nick Gordon because he might have a projection of like 275, 15, 15 next year. And if he was available at second and short and OF, my God, that'd be a beautiful guy to have on your bench. He'd back up three different positions, four different positions. So the way you're describing him that kind of seems like if you believe in the bat you're hoping for a josh rojas type player

yeah yeah it's a good player if he's less than that it just becomes really hard to roster him outside of the mono league and outside of the draft and hold universe yeah and as a josh rojas owner in 12 team leagues uh yeah 12 i would put 12-team leagues on there as a place where it's... Every time I make a cut, I'm like, is it time? But it's head-to-head, so I'm like, well, I can play them all over. I'm like, but do I want to? Well, this is a very relevant question leading into another question because the left-handed bats issue, as it was described by one of our listeners, Paul, is somewhat problematic. Here's the email.

I mostly play in head-to-head points or category-based leagues. This year, one of my teams is struggling because I have a bunch of left-handed bats, which do not play including Lux, Bellinger, and Nolan Gorman. This is the Dynasty League so lately these guys are not playing every day especially when it's a left-handed starter. We don't have deep benches so I don't have many players to sub in for them. I know certain teams like the platoon players like the Dodgers and Rays but I wonder if I should avoid having a team with a lot of left-handed batters in head-to-head formats. What do you think about this? He's afraid also that if he drops any of these players, they're going to get picked up,

and their trade value's low because the playing time's not there. So this is a real problem. If you're in a 12-team league, players like this who lose a share of that time and then occasionally go into some slumps that make it hard to even play them when they are going, they become difficult to roster. And I've got some similar issues.

The only difference is that I have a deep enough bench where now I just keep three or four guys on my bench. I think if you have three bench bats, you're probably okay. Because as long as they're not on the same team, right? Yeah, you guess. What's the likelihood that they all get lefties, you know? Yeah, that's true. So if you can manage to have three bench bats that cover all your lefty spots,

then that's okay. If your bench is even more limited than that, I don't know, man. You just got to – it's like one of those situations, again, where you're in a 12-team where you just got to – sometimes you got to drop a guy that you think is good. But I wouldn't necessarily pick up a right-hander though i would just i would think about what organization they play for as you have i think uh some organizations are more willing to let a guy you know struggle against lefties especially a rebuilding organization i would think about organizations

i wouldn't necessarily just pick up randall gritchuk because he's right-handed you know right i don't think it's a handedness thing I think it's just a usage thing that you have to be more mindful of with left-handed players on good teams in particular. And it's weird because Gavin Lux, what are you afraid of missing out on if you cut him in a 12-team league right now? Is there any evidence that there's going to be amazing September where the power all comes flooding in?

He's kind of got a nagging injury right now too. So this might be an okay time to actually let him go. With Bellinger, playing time has started to slip a little in the second half. Doesn't seem like he's really recovered. I could actually see a better case for holding Bellinger in a points league especially. Just because there might be a point system that evens out some of the things that he does well against the things that he doesn't do well the specifics of these three guys it is sort of interesting uh because they might be more droppable than their name

suggests um and to some extent you're you're thinking about future value, right? Because otherwise he sounds like he would drop them. And I think of the three, Lux might have the least future value because Gorman at least shows the quality of contact that you would expect from a guy who is going to be a future power threat. He already has a 190 ISO, so that's better than the average,

but he has a 14%o so that's around that's better than the average but he's a 14 percent bail rate and a good chase rate and i think a strikeout rate that hopefully will improve but that's what you're looking for is just improve the strikeout rate and become a star with lux you're asking him to improve his bail rate and max ev hit fewer ground balls steal more you know the the list seems a little bit longer because right now the projection for next year for gavin lux is going to be 260 uh 10 5 yeah he's doing it with uh a slightly better barrel rate still not chasing a lot of pitches outside the zone pretty efficient as a base dealer. He's a pretty good hitter. He just does not hit it hard.

He's got a 127 WRC+. That's another one of those lines that you look at and you're like, that's a 127? I mean, it's a 368 OBP. That's good. It's the 428 slug that doesn't feel like enough. It's either hit for more power or steal more bases. You have to do one of those

things to remain shallow league relevant or I'm stumbling back into my usual blind spot where I'm overlooking the really good floor batting average players that could score a lot of runs and do a little bit of everything else. Maybe it's just time to give up on Ballinger. You know, there was like a moment where things seemed to be getting better in the second half and I thought okay this is why I've been holding on to Bellinger because I'm in that league where I have those types

of players I have Muncy and Bellinger and I forget who else but I've got other guys that I have to keep subbing in like Rowdy Tellez I don't want to play him against lefties you know but I have got other guys that I have to keep subbing in, like Rowdy Tellez. I don't want to play him against lefties, but I have a deep enough bench. Bellinger's strikeout rate really took a tumble in the second half, but it's creeping back up again, over 25% in the last 50 games. You're sort of grasping at straws, I feel like, to kind of say that this is what Bellinger's going to get back.

I guess he's had more fly balls in the second half, but he's fallen off again. I think keep Gorman and Lux and turf Bellinger. I'm getting to that point myself with Bellinger and my 12-teamer. I might even just keep Gorman and let Lux go, too, in a shallow enough league. Because, I don't know, is he an everyday player for them or is he their Nick Gordon? 12-team leagues are not easy. I don't know. People seem to think they're easy.

They're not easy. These are tough decisions. They're not. They're definitely not easy because you still have to make difficult drop decisions. It seems like more difficult drop decisions than you do in a lot of other deeper formats. Thanks a lot for that question, Paul. One last question to get to. This one comes in from Pete.

Pete writes, some of us play in head-to-head leagues with playoffs. It can be cruel after a year-long grind to suffer a September injury or have a bat go silent at the wrong time, especially in leagues with one-week playoff formats like my 10-team redraft. For those of us in these kitchen sink formats

where the wire is active every day, are there any attainable bats you see that might be on the verge of coming to life i'm watching several injured players like vinnie pasquantino just took a flyer on jake mccarthy but all the high-end september call-ups are rostered any perhaps otherwise flawed bats out there with the potential to go nuts the next few weeks last year javi baez was dropped and I wrote him to the championship he's actually sitting on the wire right now love the show Pete Baez might actually be worth picking up because the thing about Baez is that he plays all the time like that's that's the difference for me in these types of leagues is figuring out who's playing more than they probably should be playing and taking advantage of those opportunities

because your counting stats are going to be a little more stable. And if you catch the right matchups, you just catch the right week, you can end up getting rewarded pretty handsomely for taking the right chances. Yeah, and the nice thing about head-to-head league and Javi Baez is you could be halfway through the week and your batting average is in the tank anyway.

And so you can use them as a chess piece where you're like, oh, okay, I'm going to take Steven Kwan out and put Javi Baez in. Very big category play. I think that's what I would look for is just one category upside. Look on the waiver wire for Bubba Thompson. Look on the waiver wire for Michael Toglia. Look on the waiver wire for anybody that might be useful for three games at the end of your week and might win you a championship.

Playing TJ Friedel based on matchupsups he's been tearing it up yeah i oh man i missed out on this one i i didn't do a deep dive in time and he was he was just picked up but you know 27 year old left-hander i do love all the contact uh and that's exactly the kind of player i'd pick up he was playing every day and making a bunch of contact. That's a great way to get batting average. Yeah, Gavin Sheets has been playing a lot. Middle third of the lineup for the White Sox. I was thinking about Sheets as a homer play because I do need some homers in places. The thing I was worried about is aren't those guys getting healthy and coming back?

Who's taking his job? Well, Eloy's there, and Luis Obrado's there, and AJ Pollock is playing well again. They could still play him. And Andrew Vaughn. I think it comes down to whether or not you believe that Pollock is an everyday player still, or if they will continue to mix and match or give Eloy the occasional days

off. Cause Eloy has been still banged up. This has just not been a healthy season for him at all. So between Jimenez and Pollock, is there enough room for sheets? Those guys are both righties sheets as a lefty. Is that enough to carry his playing time? vaughn's a righty so basically uh you just sit one of the righties all the time to get sheets in there against the lefty yeah yeah for yeah to get another lefty in

there against the righty yep so well i chose some other way i went in some other directions but um i like uh i like spencer steer uh and i think that they're gonna find a way to play him every day as well even though he's a right hander uh really good contact ability early on already hit the ball hard a couple times uh so So I, I, I went steer over sheets. Maybe I made a mistake. I think Riley green could still be interesting in shallow redraft leagues. I mean, he's playing a ton right now.

I think the batting average floor is higher than people realize. There's definitely some power, a little bit of speed. So I'd consider Riley green if you're looking for some help in the outfield. Yeah. The, I wonder about the strikeout rate. And he's only reaching or chasing more as the season goes on, and the strikeout rate doesn't show too much of a sign of coming down below 25%.

So some part of that makes me think there's a hole. percent so some some part of that makes me think there's there's a hole uh but his uh production is way up in the last 20 games um so i agree it would be kind of a lightning in a bottle thing where you can throw out any of your justifications you're just talking about a guy who has some talent level in an everyday uh here. Hopefully that helps. Handful of names there that might be available in some of those more shallow head-to-head or categorical formats that have daily moves with those weekly lineups.

It's all about maximizing playing time in leagues like that. That's at least my goal if I'm trying to find small upgrades up and down the roster. That is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. You can send us an email rates and barrels at the athletic.com. Leave us a comment under this video on YouTube. You can reach Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper.

If you don't have a subscription to the athletic, you can get one for a dollar a month for the first six months at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. It's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.