Rates & Barrels - Another Closer Injury & Tough Pitcher Rankings

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Jhoan Duran's oblique injury and the short-term pecking order for saves for the Twins during his absence before discussing some of the most difficult pitchers (and groups of pitchers) to rank in 2024.  Rundown 1:15 Jhoan Duran: Headed to IL with Oblique Strain 5:25 Pitchers with Uncertain Health Situations (Eury Pérez, Gerrit Cole, Kyle Bradish) 13:26 Future Aces with Short MLB Track Records (Bobby Miller and Grayson Rodriguez) 29:01 Model Disagreement with Other Projections (Zac Gallen, Cole Ragans, Bailey Ober) 34:44 Non-Buzzy Veterans (Merrill Kelly, Chris Bassitt, Eduardo Rodriguez) Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes w/Trevor May! (next live show: 3/29) https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rains and Barrels, it's Tuesday, March 19th. At least this is the episode for Tuesday, March 19th. We're recording this late afternoon on a Monday, March 18th. So Derek VanRyper here with EnoSarris. This is the companion episode to our Monday episode. We're going to talk about some tough pitcher ranks. And I just saw before we started recording news that is new to us that we should talk about briefly before we get into those tough ranks.

Before we get to the news, a reminder, the discord is open. If you want to get into theer League, get in ASAP. It locks tonight, Tuesday night at 10 o'clock Eastern. The link is in the Discord. We're currently on League Six. We might be on League Seven by the time you hear this, but go to the Discord to sign up for our Listener League. No in-season maintenance.

Our friends at FanTracks had a very flexible format that we were able to put together thanks to the hard work of Jeff Good, Low Guppy in the discord say thank you to Jeff if you get a moment to do so The news I don't even have a bottom for if you're watching on YouTube Joe Underant's going to the IL with an oblique strain Another injury to the top of the closer pool. They're calling this a moderate oblique strain. But as we talked about on Monday, it's usually a four week sort of thing, even if it turns out to be a grade one sort of situation

because we live in an oblique game. As you said, the game is all twisting. The game is all movement. It's all torque. Oh my goodness. Is it Griffin Jack's time? I want to cycle through all my teams real quick and see how much exposure I have. Do that while you eat your sandwich after we're done recording.

That's not, that's not good on air work. Uh, Griffin Jacks. I think it's Griffin Jacks. It's just weird because he's a, he's a sweeper guy. So he's gonna have some trouble against the lefties. But there's not really another guy that's gonna step forward. I mean like Caleb Theobar throws left-handed. Maybe he'll steal some saves? And they'll just and Theobar is a sweeper guy too. So maybe they'll just have like this, this kind of platoon closer.

I got a name for you. Sorry, that was a weird face. Brock Stewart. Yeah, okay. Yes. I thought it might be Stewart. I was looking at the numbers. I did not realize how good Brock Stewart was

once he came back from all the injuries last year. 39 Ks against 11 walks, 27 and two thirds innings, a 0.65 ERA and a 108 whip. What did the stuff numbers say about Brock Stewart? I mean, he went, he, he skyrocketed, uh, VELO wise. I mean, this is a guy that even his, and this is a thing that I've noticed. So his first year converting to relieving, he, he had a 91.7 fastball velocity, you know, and then his second year relieving after starting his second year full time

relieving 97 mile an hour fastball velocity. So like roll change, and then like probably some training changes and just like, I think you need the off season a little bit. Like I think it's hard, uh, to do that, you know, on the fly. It's not like you're just like, oh, okay. I'm now going to throw 97 because I don't have to go to the third inning. Uh, Brock Stewart had a one 22 stuff plus and a 101 location plus. So absolutely capable of closing.

And I think does not have the platoon sort of situation that you have with Jackson Thielbar. So I think everybody just takes a step closer. And I think Stewart was going to be the setup guy. Thielbar and Jax are a platoon setup guy now. And Stewart, yeah, I think Stewart, I'm going to go with your, your call Stuart's the guy. Man, Caleb Theobar also going to the IELTS start the season. It's a hamstring injury for Caleb Theobar.

So hopefully not a long-term one, but yeah, I just feel like I'm the bearer of bad news. And he's hurt too. And he's hurt too. You didn't mention Descolfani. He's actually going to the IELTS. Oh, I was going to mention Descolfani. I think that is interesting for one of our favorite

sleepers here on, uh, rates and barrels. Louis Varlin. Louis Varlin. Things are looking very good for Louis Varlin to get a window to start to begin the season. Yeah. And he's an exciting guy. He it's not a large arsenal, but it's really good fastball and kind of a cutterish gyroslider. So it shouldn't necessarily have platoon problems, which is why you kind of want these wider arsenals.

He might be a five and dive, but I think it'll be a good one. Yeah, I'm with you on Varlin, available super late as well. A follow up on Aaron Judge, by the way, he's projected to play on Wednesday. We'll see if that's still true by the time you hear the show on Tuesday, but that's the plan as it stands right now. He was a big topic for us at the beginning of Monday's show or in the middle of Monday's show. On to the meat and potatoes though of today's rundown. We're talking about tough run down. We're talking about tough pitching ranks and we have an unfortunate, perfect example playing out at the moment. We talked about the Yuri Perez injury, not knowing right now what imaging is revealing, not knowing just what the Marlins plan is. I think the former probably informs the

latter expecting everything to be done in a very cautious way. He's a tough rank and this happens every draft season. It happens with veteran pitchers that we really like. It happens with guys that could be the best pitcher in the pool, like Garrett Cole. It happened with Kyle Bradish at the beginning of spring training. We get to points in draft season where we have pitchers who are just in the unknown when it comes to their health situation and a draft goes off and you're left to confront the possibility they're easily the best pitcher in the queue.

So they're staring you right in the face for a couple of rounds longer than they should and you have to play that game of chicken with, oh, do I actually want to take the chance here? Do I want to throw the dart in round nine or 10 that maybe we're going to get good news and maybe it's just a little bit of soreness that doesn't have a tear and maybe I'll end up getting the guy that I really like and he's just going to miss the beginning part of the season instead of some random part in the middle or the end? That's possible, but it's a really hard game to play and it's really hard to put it on

paper. How do you handle Perez or even Garrett Cole, who we have a timetable for right now, as far as when he's likely to ramp up again. But we still don't know once he ramps up, he's going to feel good. Everything's going to go as smoothly as we'd like it to. I mean, I think the easiest answer, but it's too simple to not draft them, you know, leave that headache for somebody else.

The problem is that that opinion becomes pervasive, then that guy drops, drops, drops and drops. And at some point, he's got to be a value. And so figuring that out when you're doing ranks, especially when you're doing ranks for people with all sorts of different IELTS situations is just almost impossible. So I've just come up with this idea that I just basically put all the injury risks next to each other. I put all the, you know, the guys that are good, but we don't know how many innings we're going to get next to each other.

So Shane Baas and Nicola Dolo are near each other. You know, they're kind of in this grouping a little bit. But you know, you've got Carlos Radoan, Justin Verlander and, and Yuri Perez to some extent, in another bucket, you know, with with I think, Garrett Cole. And I also tried to put it up against like, what are you missing out on? So, you know, I put those guys around 50 because after 50, you're missing out on Seth Lugo or Mitch Keller. Would you rather pick an unknown quantity of Garrett Cole or Seth Lugo? Garrett Cole. Yeah, right. So so he has to be above that.

So, you know, that's that's the sort of would you rather but when you know, above that, you've got more like, would you rather, you know, Garrett Cole for four months or Bailey Ober for six. Those are the tougher questions. Sonny gray for five and a half or Brian Wu for six, you know, that's where I'm like man Well, Brian Wu could come in here and be lights out too, and he's not hurt right now You know, so that's that's where it gets really tough to rank those players One thought I had was you could take So take a player like Carlos Rodin who you don't project for a full season But he has very good skills like you have high expectations on a perning basis for what he might do. Where you rank someone like Rodin when he's healthy, expecting him to break, might be

something in the neighborhood of where you should lower someone like Garrett Cole to. Because Cole has a more established track record, but he's also hurt right now and could be hurt badly depending on how things progress. That's kind of like where the risk reward starts to make sense for me. I mean, I think when you look at Kyle Bradish right now, he is exactly what you described where the whole draft mark gets to a point where they say, ah, I just don't like what I see. Earliest he went in the four weekend NFBC main events was pick 340. Latest was 432.

So you're looking at like pick 380 for an ADP in those four drafts. Outside of the top 300, if you're telling me I've got a shot, let's say it's a one in four chance that Bradish is healthy once he comes back and he's the guy we expect him to be, at that price, I'll actually take that. It just falls back into our ongoing conversation about how many guys you're waiting on. He's the one you're waiting on, so you're not throwing the dart at Shane Baas and Kyle Bradish most likely in the same league unless you have IL spots.

If you have IL spots, you could play it a lot differently. So I think Bradish has fallen to the point now where I'm more comfortable rolling the dice on him where he goes than I will be on Yuri Perez until we have more information on Garrett Cole. Because there's still a significant ask on Garrett Cole right now. You're still not getting a ridiculous discount. Pick 160 was the ADP from those four drafts, 102 was the earliest, 206 was the latest. Yeah. And you know, there's beyond that, there's just the question of how do I learn this and ingest this process for players who are not yet injured,

you know, like what we're discussing here is injury risk. And of course, like people who are injured now are bigger injury risks than people who are not injured now. This is true. But you know, I did pull up a thing here. I wrote a piece about how Keith Meister was saying, you know, the sweeper is the problem. I don't know, man, my, my retaliation, my contribution to that story with Ken Rosenthal,

you know, about Keith Meister's comments that the power change and the sweeper were part of why, you know, we're having so many revisions on Tommy Johns and part of why the injury problem. And my pushback was no, it's the V lo. And I just thought, I'm going to do a simple leaderboard here. 80 innings last year. So that was pretty much gets rid of relievers, right? 80 innings last year sorted by fastball, Velo, Bobby Milter, healthy. Hunter Green was not healthy last year.

Sandy Alcontra, TJ, Yuri Perez hurt now. Grayson Rodriguez, Spencer Strider, pretty good. Shohiro Tani, Tommy John, Shane McClanahan, Tommy John. Jesus Sarsado healthy for now. Garrett Cole hurt. Cole Regansahan, Tommy John. Jesus Sarsado, healthy for now. Garrett Cole, hurt. Cole Regans, many, many times hurt. Luis Severino, hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt.

Tyler Glass now hurt. But coming back, I guess. Luis Castillo seems like in a healthy part of his career, but last year lost, in 2022 lost like a month or two. Edward Carrera, sore shoulder sore shoulder Luis L or tease Taj Bradley sure something I forget what it is George Kirby Luis Medina Josh Winkowski Johnny Brito, so it gets a little better after that But in the top ten, what do we have we had?

One to two TJs, and like four other, no, three TJs. In the top 10 in VELO last year, we had three Tommy John surgeries, and then another four guys that were hurt, and three guys that were healthy. Sweet. But again, are you gonna then say to yourself,

hey, I'm not gonna draft anybody with the plus V lo. Sorry, I'm not drafting Spencer Strider because he throws too hard. You're definitely not doing that. And I think the problem is there's some overlap. There's some guys that fall into multiple buckets and not multiple as in like. Oh, like they've been hurt.

They're also like multiple injuries. Like they, there's different, these are different guys. Some of them have been healthy most of their career. But I would also say Garrett Cole has been healthy most of his career. Right, he's avoided it for the most part. So that's great. But you can't just be like, well, I'm taking Spencer Strider.

Well, he's hot TJ. I'm taking Grayson Rodriguez. He's been healthy most of his career. Well, it's been a pretty short career, dude. Bobby Miller. Bobby Miller is a tough rank for another reason. He's not a tough rank because he throws hard. He's a tough rank because he has less than a full season

in the big leagues. And you don't know how he's going to hold up, and you don't know as teams see him a little more if they're gonna make some adjustments, and he's gonna go through one of those adjustment periods. This would also apply to Grayson Rodriguez. If Bobby Miller was at the top of that leaderboard for fast ball velocity, Grayson Rodriguez is like sixth.

Same kind of thing, we saw both of these guys have a lot of success last year. Rodriguez made the adjustments to his pitch mix and was just awesome in the second half of the year. So are you finding that as much as you like these guys, that they are really difficult to rank because there's still something we're missing with them as far as a level of confidence. You have to put them ahead of guys that have done it for a long time, that even do it with less stuff, right?

There's like some tension between how good your stuff is and not having the track record to fall back on. Cause a lot of times younger players have better stuff than old guys. Yeah. And one of the things that bothers me about stuff plus from a sort of modeling, a statistical standpoint is that there's so many relievers in the pool that you don't know how much of the predictive quality of the model comes from predicting

relievers. You know, uh, this is something that we've all struggled with as we've used this and like tried to, you know, use it to look at pitch starting pitchers is there are pitchers with bad stuff that do well at starting pitchers. It doesn't seem to be as predictive. I think that's what we're getting at is that for these young starting pitchers, we can look at them all and say, well, they have great stuff, so they're going to be good.

Except we also know that there have been the Graham Ashcrafts of the past that have had great stuff and not been great starting pitchers. Like we need them to be starting pitchers. We don't need them to be successful pitchers. The model needs them to be successful pitchers. So if they went to relieving or whatever, the model would be like, see, I was right. They were a good pitcher. But no, we need them to be starting pitchers. And so it's instructive to like, you know, look at Bobby Miller. He has 11% strikeout rate this spring. Grayson Rodriguez has a 13% strikeout rate. Now it's super early, but the fact that these guys have a combined 13, I think 11 strikeouts,

it's 11 strikeouts in 16 innings these guys have. And yet I'm as excited about them as any and I'm trying and I'm pushing them. But when do you stop pushing them? And they cost more than, you know, like Brian Wu mentions on the podcast up to two or three at this point. But like, oh, I'm excited about DL Hall and Bowden Francis. I have them, you know, right around a hundred, right? That you can feel like I'm going to push these guys because of what I see in the stuff, right?

And the, the opportunity cost is not as high and nobody will curse your name because they drafted Bowden Francis in the 25th round. It didn't work out, but the stakes are higher when it comes to somebody who's gonna you're gonna take in your third or fourth round and Bobby Mill and Grayson Rodriguez seem like they check all the boxes Grayson Rodriguez by more traditional projections is like a top 20 pitcher He's right there with Zach Galin and Freddie Peralta and Blake Snow You know for as an $18 pitcher by the bat. You know, it's he's he's he's ready to go.

But will he turn them all into strikeouts? Will he find the right arsenal? Will he will he do the little things that turn you from a good pitching prospect to a good starting pitcher in the big leagues? And I will say this. It's it seems to be taking forever. turn you from a good pitching prospect to a good starting pitcher in the big leagues. And I will say this, it seems to be taking forever. And I think there's some statistical evidence that it takes us longer and longer to produce a starting pitcher now.

We don't have like, remember Jose Fernandez came up and he's like 20 or whatever? And Ventura, you're not a Ventura, like they were young and they just stepped in and they were brilliant. You know, I feel like we don't have that story as much anymore. I don't know if it's the hitters are getting better or the offensive rules or what it is or the way that the way the pitchers are being treated in the minor leagues. They're coming up with 60 pitches. You know, if you look at the minor leagues,

the median pitches per appearance for a starter is like 60. So how are you going to teach him the finer points of, you know, getting through the lineup three times and, you know, showing them this pitch and not this pitch. If they only go 60, if they're only in 60 pitches in the minor leagues, They're just throwing as hard as they can and you know throwing their best stuff trying to make the machine go brr. You know They're just trying to make the stat cast look good so You know what we're seeing with Bobby Miller and Grayson Rodriguez is these are two young pitchers who have had the machines go brr

But they have to then you know figure out how to get the outs Yeah, I'm looking back, the last 10 seasons, if you cut it off at age 23 and set the minimum. You have very few pitchers, right? Yeah, minimum to 70 innings, like that opens up a few. If you go down to 21, there's hardly anybody since. And again, this goes back to 2014. There are 10 pitchers who have 70-year mornings

in the big leagues, age 21 or younger, going back the last 10 seasons. Michael Soroka, Roberto Ozuna, Lanspa Colters Jr., Julio Urias, Jaime Barrilla, Yuri Perez, Luis Patino, Jordan Hicks, Ryan Weathers, Jose Suarez. And that's a mixed bag. I mean, you didn't just lay him a bunch of stars.

No, and a few of those guys didn't have, they just had to, there were some of those who were just had to be pressed into service because they had to be, you know, Ria Suarez, Weathers, those guys didn't have expectations like that. McCullers was a big name prospect. Give me a hundred, go to 23. Fine. Go to 23 and give me a hundred innings. I want to only starters. A hundred innings. I want to only starters. A hundred innings.

Soroka, McCullers, Arias and Barreira. That's it. It's hard. It's hard to get innings that quickly in your career. I think maybe part of this, I mean having a lost 2020 within this window is part of it. They're just blowing out more when they're younger slowing things down. That's probably a factor as well.

But it could be some of this coaching aspect. Like imagine if like, I'm a, I'm a mind league pitching coach and like, you know, the organization has told me and I've worked for progressive organization, like a, a, a, a, a, one with a good player development, right? And they, they told me here are the, here are our key, what is it?

Key performance indicators. Here are KPIs. Yeah, I'm a pitching coach and you say, here are our key, what is it? Key performance indicators. Here are KPIs. Yeah, I'm a pitching coach and you say here are KPIs. We love stuff plus we want all your pitchers stuff pluses to go up. You know, we love this. We love strikeouts. Strikeouts minus walks. Okay? And then you're the pitching coach and you go okay, I can do the stuff plus one. I'll just you know throw your breaking ball harder or get to sweep on that thing. Mike Petriologist came out with a thing with the minor league stat.

You can do some minor league stat cast searching. And he just did like how many sliders have 12 inches of sweep, like by percentage. How many sliders have by, you know, by organization or whatever. And it was like the Yankeeses number one in sliders of sweep. Yeah, but they're not like churning out amazing starting pitchers. But that can happen if you're like in a sort of a KPI environment, because you're like, well, I know there are stuff plus. So I know that they love sweep.

And so I'm just going to coach up all these guys to throw sweepers. And that's what they did. But they did. They turn out a bunch of starting pitchers. We'll see Luis Hill and Anna and Warren or we'll warn of the guys were watching this year, but there's that sort of, you can have a KPI based and that's smart player development. It's good because you know why it's good is because then I can evaluate you as a coach.

I told you what numbers I'm evaluating you on and I can fire you if you don't make those numbers. That's good because it's at least something, a framework we can agree on, right? These are the things we care about. If you can't move the needle on the things we care about, then I'm sorry, I got to get another coach in here, right? But you can game, you can sort of, you can game the system. You could just coach to the system, coach to the KPIs.

Almost too much, I feel like. And then produce guys who come to the major leagues and tell me like Clark Schmidt, which is, I can't just throw my best stuff plus pitches over and over again. Like there's a little bit more to starting pitching than that. And that's, I mean, I just, I think there, there could be something there where there's the way that we're, we think of good player development is not necessarily turning out good starters. It's turning out pitchers with good pitches,

which is not the same thing as good starting pitchers. I also wonder if there's a problem with the non linear aspect of player development on hitting and the pitching side where you don't have groups of players that can test each other well enough. Aligning a player's skills at the proper level and then finding enough other players who can actually push them to fix their flaws. How many good hitters is Will Warren pitching to in AAA? Right, it's not Will Warren's fault.

Right. And there's politics too. You've got to put Will Warren at AAA if you want Clayton Beater to make double like there's like you have to like you Have to do things according to like the way The you know the way that they were drafted and their first rounders and stuff Like there is such a thing as failing upwards at the minor leagues Sure, where you're just like oh, I was the number one draft pick and you know They have another guy a 17 year old they're excited about they need room for him here

So I guess i'm the shortstop for the triple A team now, but no one's that excited about it, you know? So yeah, sorry. So yeah, Will Warren, you know, who's he facing? Well, yeah, so, and that's been something that I know Keith Law talked about a lot on the Olympic baseball show, the last couple of years, he'd say the gap, it seems like it's wider to me than it's ever been

between triple A and the big leagues. But if every level is just not as good or as deep as it's been in the past, because different organizations are also on different timelines for players, you're just getting a mixed bag. Like you're getting good competition, but you're not getting consistently great competition that's age appropriate or skill level appropriate because everybody's just playing from different spots. I think that's one of the hardest things

about player development is that you, even if, like even if every single team evaluated players by the same standards and then the levels were right, some teams wouldn't have enough guys, organizations with enough guys to play on every team because they don't have enough good players. Like there's all these other issues that would come up. And then if you, as an analyst, we're trying to be like, okay,

I'm going to look at this player and I'm going to adjust for the quality of competition. No matter what your appraisal of the true talent of that player has noise. If you then add, I'm going to appraise the true talent of all the people he's opposing that has noise. So whatever this new thing is where you're like, Oh, I've talent adjusted this player. Well, you just put noise on top of noise for sure. Yeah. You took a sample and you made it so small that now the sample is harder to rely on.

So that's no good. So he faced three good batters in AAA last year and he got them all out. Well, he's amazing. How about this? Here's one other thing about pitching development and just thinking about where the game is and who the best pitcher in fantasy baseball is right now. Maybe the best pitcher in real baseball too.

It could be Spencer Strider. I think I'm still not sure. He's the best scenario of this, make them have good pitches, right? Yeah. Oh, here are two good engineered pitches. Yeah. But think about this for just a second.

The best pitcher in baseball, if it's Spencer Strider, wasn't even in the rotation for a team that we think is really good and really smart. In 2022. Two years ago. Yeah. Like the beginning of the season, two years ago, he was a reliever. Spencer Strider didn't start a game until May 30th of 2022.

So like that's. Who's that guy this year? He got to, he got to the top fast, like real fast. And we, we had this conversation in a different form with Jacob DeGrom several years ago, where I thought it was wild that the best pitcher in baseball, one of the best pitchers on a per inning basis of all time was a two-way player in college at Stetson, a ninth round pick. The shortstop and the closer. How wild is that? And he didn't debut in the big leagues until he was 26. Like that's crazy to me.

Like that's crazy to me. Yeah. It takes time, but everybody's on a different timetable and with pitching, it just seems like it can click so fast. I think that or those things are all kind of. Pushed into how we'd look at pitching and we can look at Bobby Miller and Grayson Rodriguez. And when he was healthy, Yuri Perez and guys like

Shane McClanahan and Shane Bosz. And we could say, whoa, this is first round, second round stuff, if it all comes together. And then we kind of build up in our minds like, well, this might be the year and we want to be right because being right has a huge payoff. But the truth is if there's group think on this group of pitchers that makes them so pricey that

they have to be good and stay healthy for a full big league season, things that they're doing for the first time. Yeah. It's possible I have Bobby Miller and Grayson Argus too high. Maybe. You know, you have Zach Efflin right there.

Like. It's just sort of like, well, are you OK with someone else being right instead? Because I almost feel like we're overestimating. That's the FOMO. The likelihood that it all clicks. Yeah, maybe. So I think that's a really tough group of pitchers because you want those pitchers. And I found when I build teams where they're not really a fit or an option,

I feel better about myself. I know we're not really a fit or an option, I feel better about myself. I know we're not playing a self-esteem based game. But this is also the Luis Robert thing where you've just done other things so you don't have to do it. I don't have a deal. I'm such a non-confrontational person. I will drive around the block twice until the

neighbor goes inside. If I don't want to talk to the neighbor, I'm not actually like that with my neighbors, but that's the level of, I don't want to confront this problem that I could, I'm going to draft this way. So I don't have to deal with these players. I'm going to draft this way because I think these players are bad value.

That's a better reason. That could be one to actually pursue. There's more than just this group though. be one to actually pursue. There's more than just this group though. Zach Galin, if you're a hero long enough, you become a villain, right? There's some- Yeah, we used to love Zach Galin. Zach Galin, go back to 2019.

We had 87 fantasy baseball podcasts at the athletic. We all loved Zach Galin. We loved Zach Galin so much. We had listeners of under the radar. I think it was Steve G, one of the Steve G's, there's more than one Steve G. Yeah. Steve G thought we were talking about Zach

Allen and was like, I can't find Zach Allen. You guys keep talking about this Zach Allen. And we said, oh no, no, it's Zach Gallin. And it's with an E and an O, it's not like a gallon of milk. And now everyone knows how to's Zach Gallin and it's with an E and an O. It's not like a gallon of milk. And now everyone knows how to spell Zach Gallin's name. And now all of a sudden Zach Gallin does the things he's supposed to do. Pitches really well, deals with injury, comes back, gives you quality,

gives you volume. And now you've got model disagreement. Yeah, I've got, I've got a projected four ERA for him. Yeah. I think it's because, you know, what we have seen is a sort of frittering away of the stuff. You know, you've seen a little bit of the Velo going down. The stuff plus for the season last year was 103, which is actually pretty low for where I have them drafted, where I have them ranked. I have I saw him ranked 13th, but he's the only guy with a four PP ERA, like a four

projected ERA until you get to Cole Reagan's at 24, who's also I think in this list. You know, so I've got, I've got him, you know, maybe 10 ranks ahead of where my model says I should have him. And another thing you'll see if you look at the Velo graphs over time is just that he was it was softer and softer as the season went on and a little bit more sort of game to game variation, too, on his average fastball. So I just worry that, you know, right now it looks like here's a guy who has four above average pitches in command, you know, where does the stuff come off?

But I also just said to myself, and this one, I don't agree with the model. And like literally in my little, you know, blurb that goes next to it, I'm like, sometimes the model spits out something that you just don't understand. So you just move on. So, you know, I think, you know, Zach Galen has demonstrated enough over the last two years that I believe in him. But I also think it's interesting that we decided that he's one of the more volume guys and less injury risk guy, but he's got a partially torn ligament in his elbow right now.

You know, and you know, to it must be a state of the modern game to think that, um, a guy who, you know, has 180 and 210 innings is all of a sudden a workhorse. Um, but, uh, I'm not sure that I want to anoint him workhorse. I think that's the same thing people say about Pablo Lopez now. I think they both whatever health grade you want to put on gallon, I think you put the same grade on Pablo Lopez.

I think they're both really good pitchers. I just think the risk from a health perspective is. Not something I'm in love with, even as someone that takes on my occasional Tyler Glass Now share. Because I think the difference is Tyler Glass Now, Tyler Glass Now has the ceiling you can dream on a little bit more. I don't know what else Lopez or Gallon can do

to like, to vault themselves up higher. So if I'm gonna take on that risk, I want someone that can be a first rounder. I don't think Pablo Lopez is a future first rounder in fantasy. I don't think Zach Galen is a future first rounder in fantasy. I think Tyler Glass now has that ceiling and because of his health, hasn't reached it yet. I think if he does what Lopez and Galen have done the last two years and comes out healthy this year, that's where he's going.

That's the difference. That's why I'm there. But the model disagreement with the projections, I'm glad you're a human about it. I think there are some people that run a projection system and are like, this is what it says, this is what I'm doing. And I feel like people like that, when it's fantasy baseball, it's fine.

In other facets of life, that's kind of like dangerous. Like to just be like, model says this, here we go. It's like, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. Does it really know everything? Let's talk through this a little bit. Let's just see if there's something we might've figured out that the machine is not quite accounting for.

You know, last week of college being like, well, you know, the models say that, you know, most people meet their wives at college. So somebody this week is getting lucky. I got to meet somebody now. I got to get out there like, no, no, just keep doing what you're doing. It'll probably work itself out later.

I mean, Gallin has been the sixth and eighth best starting pitcher the last two seasons. Yeah. He's really good. In fantasy, Gallin has been the sixth and eighth best starting pitcher the last two seasons. Yeah. He's really good. In fantasy, according to the Alcatran calculator. I mean, should he be higher than 13? I like, you know, that's what, that's where it gets so hard.

And then like Cole Regans is actually not only is he in this bin because the model spits out a 443 ERA for Cole Reagan's, but he's also in the last bin, where we only really have like 100 innings that were like, whoa. I mean, like they were like, whew. Yeah, but still not like two or three seasons in a row. So yeah, Reagan's was a really hard rank for me for the same reason.

And then there's guys that have been, I think like Edward Rodriguez was really good last year, but there's a new sort of bucket for these guys. Yeah, Edward Rodriguez, the model doesn't like him. So there's a model disagreement. They're all in a way model disagreements of one sort or another. But this one, the non doesn't like him. So there's a model disagreement. They're all in a way, model disagreements of one sort of another. But this one, the non-Buzzy veterans, Eduardo Rodriguez is in there. Meryl Kelly is in there.

Chris Bassett who, uh, you know, put another counter on the Chris Bassett on this, uh, pod has counter. Uh, I think Jose Barrios, um, he counts. Yep. He's become one of these guys. You sort of age into this by hanging around, pitching pretty well, not breaking down. You've been around long enough where your ceiling has been lowered and maybe you've

even had a bad enough season where, you know, people are just afraid. Eduardo Rodriguez has had some downside seasons that have scared people away, probably permanently. So I I get it. But then there's a 467 ERA projection on there, so it's still a model disagreement, you know, but it's a certain kind where they're doing all those things that I was talking about earlier. They're doing all the little things that may not show up in the model.

And you can't model the world. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but I think you do have to accept that some things are not going to fit into the model. Like the outliers are the probably the most interesting thing about having a model. It's trying to figure out why you can't model them and what they're doing differently and what they're doing differently and what should maybe be included in the future versions of the model.

This is why LODEM exists. This is why the whole concept is, it's not this galaxy brain thing. It's a, hey, everybody else is looking at this and that and that thing over there, but what about this other thing? Like maybe this could be worthwhile. And then another thing you could do also is be like, okay, here's this grouping of pitchers that the model

that I follow doesn't really like. Let me not be early on these guys, you know? But let me get some of them, you know, have some diversity of approach in your rebuilding of a staff. Let me get some of them. Have some diversity of approach in your rebuilding of a staff. Let me get some of these, but let me pay less. So let me just group all these together. And if I end up with Aaron Savali, because for some reason the ADP is lower on Aaron

Savali than Meryl Kelly, but I think that they're kind of similar guys, then I'll just take Aaron Savali. So I guess I'm not going to get Jordan Montgomery. I'm not going to get Merrill Kelly. I do have some shares of Braxton Garrett's unfortunate. The injury is unfortunate, but I think he's in this groove a little bit. He's, he's sort of like a young old, you know, he hasn't established he's in this group, but he kind of gives me whiffs of being in this group.

He doesn't throw hard. He's got a lot of pitches. It's yeah. You know, so I've got some shares of Braxton Garrett. I'll take that. Who do you think is you know, a, you know, Marcus Stroman is kind of, you know, in this bucket in his own way. You know, Kenta Maeda. Yeah. My, Kenta Maeda is I think, uh, one that I would love to end up with a couple of shares of. And then my young old that I, I've been pimping a little bit as Dean Kramer, he's got the same thing. He's just got a lot of pitches.

I think he's got a little bit of a feel for pitching and if he can just make one pitch a little bit better, I think the whole thing could really work. So, um, I, I would just say, that's actually my, maybe my universal advice for this podcast is in each of these buckets that we're discussing, don't be totally out of any of them, I don't think. Right. But don't necessarily set the minimum pick. Don't, yeah, don't set the min pick if you can help it.

I think if there's a bucket of pitchers that I would be comfortable ignoring, it might actually be that high ceiling future ace that are already priced up group. It might be the Bobby Miller, Grayson Rodriguez, Uri Perez, the exciting guys, the guys you wanna go pay money to go watch. That's, it's so weird,

but I think it's because you're paying the most for that group. And you can get young, exciting pitching in fab or even later in your draft. And yeah, you don't have the certainty of role. You don't have as much cut. You don't have 124 great innings to rely on at the big league level, but I think you can win that way. I mean, I think back to the year George Kirby debuted, it was a big splashy fab

ad for me and tout that year he was expensive everywhere, but it was worth every penny and probably double that in fab because he was just so good. You know, draft is not that, you know, the slightly worse version later for a lot cheaper, you know, I can name some guys I think, you know, Kyle Harrison, Ryan Pepio, Brian Bayo, Cutter Crawford, you know, there are, you know, Louis Varland who just, you know, probably got a Tanner Hauck. Joe Boyle, you know, there's, you know, obvious flaws on these guys that, you know, that are make them different than those other guys.

But young guys that have roles that probably will pitch most of the year that if they made things click, you know, could at the end of the year be like sort of top 25 type pitchers. And that's what you're hoping to get anyway with Miller and Rodriguez, although you've told yourself that you might get a first round pitcher out of it. That's how you do it. That's how you pay the tax. You tell yourself that story. I've done it before and I don't know that it's always worked out the best for me. But Kyle Harrison is sort of interesting because he loops back around to something we were talking about earlier. The lack of young players that come up on the pitching side and have a lot of success. Kyle Harrison debuted as he turned 21 last summer and by like K minus BB percentage was actually above 15% it's really good for a guy that's just getting his first opportunity in the big leagues. He's got a great home park This I think it's actually reflected in the projections. The ratio projections aren't bad. They're just they don't stand out as great

That's part of the problem. Like if you kind of look at the projections for Kyle Harrison and say, okay, you know, 423 ERA, that's actually not that bad in the current game. 435 whips a little high because of the concerns about walks, but he might be a more useful pitcher than people realize, even if he's still figuring it out. And there's still plenty of ceiling with Kyle Harrison. Kyle Harrison starting to like point me into the,

maybe I don't care about command either group. The team I root for doesn't seem to care that much about it between Misurowski and DL Hall and like. Oh, that's right. But maybe the command, maybe this is the buying opportunity. Like the guys that have multiple pitches, shaky command, but good stuff, maybe that's where everybody else is saying,

ah, too risky for me. It's like, not really, not too risky at price. Kyle Harrison's going to pick 150? Yeah, that's too risky. Kyle Harrison doesn't go at pick 150. Yeah, yeah. I was just talking to Chris Lang in a driveline had some drinks with him in Arizona was down there.

And that was a really fun session. We were talking a little bit about that finding that they had for command effects or whatever, they checked the glove and they said that pitchers miss their target by 13 inches on average. And so I think we overvalue how good their command is. And so I brought that up again with Chris because they at driveline can actually have a very good sense of where the target is because you know using the catcher's mitt as a as a proxy for target is not great because you'll have some catchers, a lot of for framing.

They'll do something where they kind of go low and then try to come up at the pitch so that bring everything back to the strike zone, you know? And so there's different techniques with your glove. Sometimes they'll hit the ground with a glove just to be like, you know, keep the keep the thing down. Are you saying that the ground is the target or you know what I mean? Like, so catcher's glove is not the greatest proxy for actual intended target, but if you're at a

driveline or a tread, you can say, uh, okay, throw this in the a one pocket, you know, cause there's nine pockets, throw us a one, throw this a two, whatever it is, you know, name the pockets, throw this there. And he, and I was like, so like, so it's better than 13, right? And he's like, no. No, it's not. So I think generally, it's tough though. So on the flip side, Alex Chamberlain has just come up with a really interesting piece where he defined for like location plus quote unquote, like for these location numbers, he defined it more loosely. So instead of saying, you know, this one inch by one inch area is a location,

he did it more like this five inch by five inch area is a location. And so if we define this more loosely, do pitchers have more command year to year? And he said, yes, there's, do pitchers have more command year to year? And he said, he said, yes, there's evidence that pitchers have repeatable command year to year if you define it more loosely. But I'm like, in my head right now, I'm saying, okay, so what you're saying is, if we agree that pitchers don't have command, then pitchers have command year to year.

pitchers don't have command, then pitchers have command year to year. Like if we, if we just loosen what we call command, if we make the threshold worse for having command, then they have command. So are we just making the threshold worse? You know, so I, I generally agree with you. I, that's why I will always fall for a Joe Boyle. That's why I'll always fall for a Joe Boyle. That's why I'll always fall for a Kyle Harrison. My biases are on the table. I do think command is important,

but it's just a weird thing that you have to work in almost with your brain and not the model. Just kind of watch or think, I don't know. It's one of the frontiers. Command is definitely interesting. I don't wanna say that nobody has any command, but I definitely am a stuffist. Building on this thought just a little bit more,

if you had to be a scout, that was your job. If you've been scouting, let's say you've been scouting for 10 years, I feel like you'd learn a lot that would give you a better feel for game plan and what a pitcher would be trying to execute in every situation once you've been in it for that long. So I do think as subjective as command is,

if you understand game planning well enough and you know where they were likely trying to execute, you could probably grade command reasonably well. Yeah, that was how command plus was done. Yeah, like I kind of believe it. It was like sort of a scout's intended target. Yeah, he's trying to throw this cutter up.

I think it's very, very, very hard to do it. I think it's an excellent skill if you have that, but for the rest of us, the rest of us that are watching mostly from TV especially, I think figuring out a command is just, it's like wearing a blindfold and just hoping that you guess right. I also mean it sort of from the standpoint of like, well, okay, Tom Tango ran the numbers

and Location Plus didn't have much predictive quality, you know, it could be tempting to never look at the location plus bucket, you know, and I'm suggesting that maybe it's worth looking at that. That's as far as I'll go with, with, you know, sort of pushing command. It's like, I do want, I do have that example still of the 50 breakout young arms last year only Ashby didn't have above average location plus on his on a hard pitch like a fastball or slider. So so if you want to be in the forty nine out of fifty they better have command of some pitch. And that's that's how I that's how I see I think location plus and and and it's worth, when Tom Tango did his predictive stuff, he didn't say, did this predict that they were a starter or not? He did the same thing that I was talking about early about the relievers.

So I did this predict outcomes in the future. Did you get to the big leagues or not? And we care if they're, we don't care just that they make the big leagues. We care. We, we, we care if Taj Bradley is a starter or reliever. Yes, he could be a closer, but we care this year, can he be a starter? And so you kind of have to, I think for us, we have to look at location plus

and we have to at least find one hard pitch that they can locate. Do you think it's interesting that Taj has, on the Fangraph scouting grades, has 50 command with future 60, given what he is struggling with? I mean, this is why the young, I think it's, maybe it's stuff chasing to some extent.

You know, you have Taj Bradley throw his best pitches because they're the best stuff pitches, but which are the ones he can command? And when does he make that transition? I think a lot of that transition happens at the big league level because the minor league level, the umpires aren't great, the hitters aren't great. And so you're just throwing your best stuff. You get to the major league level and that little, little bit of command difference makes a big difference. It's a good way to think about it. The non-Buzzy veterans, the boring old guys though, generally an under drafted group.

And again, can you build an entire rotation of these guys? I don't think so. Pretty boring. Do you really want Miles Michaelis on your team? I just think you, yeah, where do you think it hurts you more? Do you think it hurts you more in Ks or do you think it actually hurts you more in ratio damage potentially? Because you're getting bulk usually from these guys so they can make up ground if they have or in Ks or did it actually hurt you more in ratio damage potentially?

Cause you're getting bulk usually from these guys. So they can make up ground if they have a lower K rate they can come up. I mean, Miles Michael has 16% K projection. He's kind of brutal like for these purposes. But Kelly is better and I have, listen, I have 50 draft spots between them, but Kelly 21% strikeout rate projection. I have right next to Nick Pavetta who has a 26% strikeout rate

projection. So I think it'll hurt you in strikeout rates and I bet you it'll hurt you in homers because we found a lot of evidence that stuff plus, you know, helps you project home run rate better. Yeah. See that, that makes me think that the ratio risk is a little bit greater where you could, you could, you have a higher range of outcomes for the ERA could go completely wrong. The case I think they're going to be there. This is why I got like this pop, right?

Like think about this. If you're, if, if stuff has something to do with home run rates and home run rates are noisy and you have these guys with low stuff that do pop sometimes. Maybe they're just popping in the years where they're home run lucky. Most likely, yeah. Which we know is a lot of it.

We know that's the thing. And when they're home run unlucky, they have the Miles Michaelis 2023. You know what I mean? So that's why I don't, this is actually the group that I might piece out on myself. You think you'd avoid this group.

I actually, I'm. I mean, when I'm buying Dean Kramer, I'm cool. I mean, sure. That's super late though. That's cheap and free, you know, but I'm not paying Merrill Kelly prices. Geez, even Bassett last year though, Bassett had a bad year air quotes for home runs.

1.26 homers per nine was up. It did everything else wrong. Compared to his previous three seasons though, it was up in home run rate. Walk rate was a little worse, but about the same. K rate was in line with all of his norms. It all just seemed like it kind of worked for him. And because of volume, it was good for K.

It's still 186 Ks, you'll take that. I mean, that's, I think this group's really tough. I think you do want at least some exposure to it. And I think the hard part is when will the wheels fall off? Like. Yeah, that too. Because I feel like the decline is less, it's less likely to be gradual with pitchers like this, even though, even though we talk about this group as many of them having.

That's my risk that I'm talking about with Kenta Maeda, right, like at some point he'll throw 87 with his fastball and it's just not gonna work. Right, because then I think that it's home run rate through the roof, that's the year the home run rate just goes from not very good to like, yeah, it goes up to like two homers per nine. And it's a, he's trained.

Yeah. He's flirted with that a couple of times. I wonder, I wonder how much the home park could protect him in Detroit and keep that at bay just a little bit longer. They probably think about two years since they gave him a two year deal. That's right.

Yeah. If I had to estimate it. Do we have one more or are we saving the rest for, for, for New York? I think we should save it because I think it's too big of a conversation to squeeze in. So it'll be in the feed later in the week. If you can't join us live. You've just been listening in these last two podcasts to, uh, at least a small preview of at least one section that we've,

so we've left the tough ranks. We've left a couple of tough ranks of hitters and a couple tough ranks for pitchers. We'll get Mike Petriello's input on some of the hitters and we'll get Nick Pollock's input on the rest of the groups, the tough ranks for pitchers. I think these are good discussions to keep having. So it's all right. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Reminder, get into the Discord. If you want to get into the listener league, it locks 10 o'clock Eastern, Tuesday night. So be sure to get in there.

I just opened up the news or one last look before we end up heading to the airport tomorrow. Oh, what happened? Everyone's hurt. Jordan Alvarez left Monday's game against the Marlins earlier than anticipated. He followed the ball off his left foot on Friday apparently, and then there was some report of an allergy. I don't know.

This one I'm going to ignore. I'm going to ignore it for now. I'll be keeping a close eye as more drafts. I've got one Tuesday night. I've got, I've got one Tuesday night. I've got, I actually got one Monday night too. That'll already have happened by the time you hear this. I got a main event, uh, coming up this week.

Yeah. Saturday or is it during the week? It's a wee weekend one. Yeah. Yeah. Probably Saturday. That's when most of them, most of them doing one, you know, one of them was like the Thursday after our live pod.

And I was like, Nope. Nah, not a, not a good idea. You know yourself well enough to know at this point that it's not a good idea, but hopefully if you're hearing this, you are in the area. We can see you at other half in Domino park, the Williamsburg location. Uh, should be a lot of fun. Six 30 pod star will be at the brewery at like three for the replays of Dodgers and Padres on both Wednesday and Thursday. It should be a lot of fun 630 pod star will be it at the brewery at like three for the replays of Dodgers and pod Rays on both Wednesday and Thursday should be a lot of fun. Hope to see many of you out there

Give us a follow on Twitter. You know, is that you know, Sarah's I am at Derek from Riper The pod is at rates and barrels. That's gonna do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back in the feed on Thursday Thanks for listening!