Rates & Barrels - Another injury spike, the Rays' Glasnow replacements, and confusing roster decisions

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Tyler Glasnow's injury in the wake of MLB's sticky stuff enforcement, the Rays' options to step into Glasnow's place, how teams might come to surprising conclusions with in-season roster decisions, Aaron Nola's ordinary-looking results to this point, the struggles of Matt Chapman, and more. Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Wednesday, June 16th, second half of June already here on this episode. Yes, the Sticky Substance Saga rages on. Of course, we have to begin there. The crackdown process has begun. And of course, as it could only be done, it is being done in a very unusual and problematic

sort of way so we'll dig into that a lot of player reaction there we have a follow-up on some of the park factors things we discussed on monday's show so i want to make sure we pass those along in this episode as well and then we will attempt to answer the age-old question why do teams play the players they do this was inspired by an email from one of our listeners, McCabe, that came in when Albert Pujols debuted with the Dodgers. But it dives into a bunch of players that play a lot more than you think. And we'll try to unpack why that might be. A few other interesting questions to get to as well. So, you know, let's begin with the sticky stuff.

It's where all the shows have started for like four episodes running now. And as you can see, if you're watching us on YouTube, smash that like button if you're watching us there. Tyler Glass now came out after news broke that he has suffered a UCL injury and linked the fact that he was no longer using a more tacky substance to suffering that injury. And the way he explained it made some sense to me. Because if you have to change the way you grip something, if you feel the muscles around your elbow as you squeeze your hand, you feel different things in your arm tightening up, right? So you can kind of go through this process and say, okay, if I grip the ball here and had to squeeze it a little tighter, maybe that would cause some little muscles or even some big muscles

or ligaments to react differently, be tighter. I can sort of get on board with that. But my problem here is that that's not the only mechanism that causes pitchers to get hurt. So I think this link is really interesting, and I think it's one of the subplots of the frustration that I think a lot of people are going to have with these rules now being enforced midseason as opposed to being enforced

with some lead-up into a new season. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing. I'm really envious of people that can look at what's happening right now or look at this and have like an easy top line black and white kind of reaction. Like I, I, when I look at this, especially maybe maybe because I've been reporting on this since 2018 is just that like,'s so complicated it is so complicated it was a rule but it was a book it was a rule that was already on the books right so to to say that like the players were blindsided is incorrect the players were told before 2020 um even started that you know through their managers they were there was a there was a memo that before this season they had a they had a full uh briefing uh in june this year so like you know they've tried like baseball tried to tell them repeatedly that this thing was coming

but at the same time like why do why start this enforcement in the middle of the season? It's very strange. And I think that the way that this becomes the worst is the way that Glassnow is talking about. Because I think you can't deny that there is a mechanical aspect of having to grip the ball harder if you can't grip it loosely because there's a grip substance there. Now, you can have a philosophical question about whether or not you should even be allowed to throw the ball with a grip substance, making it easier, right?

So maybe all along, they should have been gripping it harder because they shouldn't have had the grip substance. Yes. However, to make that adjustment in the middle of the season does not allow any of the pitchers, like you should almost give everyone, like maybe change the ball, like make a better ball that's a little bit tackier, give everyone the ball and give them homework and be like, okay, next season we're using this ball and no substance. And so take this ball home. We'll give you each of you like 50 balls to take home or 100 balls and spend the

offseason and get adjusted to this uh it's a lot different than just being like no we're not going to change the ball mid-season but we are going to totally enforce these rules uh differently mid-season um anyway dr mike son has a tweet out there that i retweeteded that looked into fatigue factors given a 15% increase in grip strength. Now, that part is a guess. We don't necessarily know how much more grip strength it takes, but 15% sounds plausible. And a 15% increase in grip strength in his model would create a 30% increase in fatigue. I mean, it doesn't sound like an amazing number, but just think about it.

They're going to be a third more fatigued? They're already maxing out fatigue-wise or nearly maxing out with their current approaches by the time the start is over for a starting pitcher, even by the end of a relief appearance for a reliever. When you think about how much effort they're exerting, they're living right near maximum effort and therefore ending up at or near maximum healthy amounts of fatigue.

And the teams, the smarter teams that have models for fatigue, right? And they do have these models where you can be like, okay, how much did you throw in your bullpen? What was your velocity in the bullpen? What was your heart rate rate like you'll be wearing a catapult that'll tell you your heart rate and all these sort of things they can throw that into a model and then be like okay that's what your fatigue is it might those models might be wrong because you've changed a large input into that model and so now now your models might be wrong. Even if you're a smart team trying to be like, okay, we're watching everybody. We're going to sit people and we're going

to send them down. We're going to manage their innings. We're going to make sure no one gets hurt this year. Even the smart teams might be wrong about how fatigued they think their players are. So I kind of go back and forth and of course I'm working on these stories go back and forth and, you know, of course, you know, I'm working on these stories

with Britt and Ken and, you know, when we talk to the league, they try to push back. When we talk to players, they push back. And so that's what I'm saying that I'm sort of jealous of anybody who sees this as a very clear, you know, a a clear like the numbers don't even agree Britt will have a piece that will come out soon that where the league's numbers about something and the public numbers about something are at odds about

you know, certain aspects of this argument, so I don't know man we're just trying to figure it out you know, when I started this in, I had no idea what spider tack was or that there might be something that was plus 500 RPM because Trevor Bauer is just showing us that pine tar was plus 250. There's a lot of figuring this out as we're going along,

but you do kind of expect baseball to, if they're going to take the slow approach, which they seemingly are, uh, to, to kind of get it right then. Because why are you taking the slow approach and also getting it wrong? Yeah, that's, um, well, that's just the nature of how it goes a lot of times in this game, unfortunately. So we have not heard the last of this story. We have not heard the last of people being frustrated by this story or suffering injuries and possibly blaming it. I mean, I think there was one other interesting bit that was going around. It was Carlos Rodan, and I think he was talking to someone from NBC Sports Chicago, and he was just expressing frustration with the fact that the Astros, for the trash can sign-stealing situation, none of the players got punished there. And yet, we're cracking down on players for using substances, which has gone on for a long time, too. The hypocrisy is there.

All of this, to me, is just a bigger symptom of the mistrust and the frustration and the anger between the players in the league. Right. We knew we knew three years ago that the CBA that expires the end of this season was going to be a very contentious renegotiation process like that. That's been known for a while. And I think this issue is just really kind of turning up the heat. If that's a pot or a kettle or something on the stove, the heat is maxed out right now and the lid is rattling and about to fall off. And it's just where we're at right now. Yeah, I don't know that I, you know, think that the baseball is doing this, like, you know, baseball's front office, like MLB, Manfred, whatever, that they're doing this on purpose to create a wedge issue or something.

Because if I'm a player, if we're at the table, if I'm like with the MLB PA and we're at the table and the other side is talking about, you know, rule changes or balls or anything, I'm like, that's nice, but let's get back to the money.

You know, like, or maybe the union could use this as an opportunity where they say, no, no, we really care about, you know, you can't make unilateral rule changes or you, you have to, you have to talk to us about the ball. And then the owners say, no, we should be able to do that. And you say, okay, give us, you know, 15 more dollars per DM a day. And we won't care about that. That's the level of the issue. Like the, the bigger issues are expanded trading, expanded playoffs for trading,

expanded playoffs for, I think everybody's super two and double the minimum salary. I don't know if the numbers work out and that's for, I think, everybody's Super 2 and double the minimum salary. I don't know if the numbers work out, and that's for the bigger talking heads, and they will also have different numbers when they come to the table, and that's part of why there's been all this distrust is that the players don't ever think that they know

exactly how much revenue is coming in and how much revenue they're getting out of what pie. The whole MLBAM kind of sale, they felt like they didn't get any of that i think they were correct uh and baseball's owners would say you didn't deserve any of that so they are always arguing what the pie is before they even get to what who gets what share of the pie but this sort of thing seems like um it just it seems small, compared to the argument. Right now, there's a $500 million lawsuit against the owners by the players that they cheated them out of money last year by dragging their feet on the COVID negotiations. So, $500 million or a couple 10-day paid vacations.

I don't know. That was among the strange things about the enforcement. 10 days paid, but you can't replace the player on the roster, which I think is – I thought that was an interesting tactic. I think it's the rule in the books. So they really could – yeah, they couldn't change that to unpaid. Yeah, I don't think they're going to change a rule in the middle of the season. I think the rule in the books is 10-day paid suspension. That's just what

Pineda got and other people have gotten. So I think they were just like, this is what's happened in the past and we're going to actually enforce it now. We can do that because it was a rule in the books. And we already told you about this a couple times and now we're actually going to enforce it. The upshot

is there's been a lot of work done to be like, oh, spin rates across the league are down. And I don't know why people are doing it in the function they're doing where they're looking at all spin rates and being like weighted spin rates are down 25. That's like averaging all the changes. I think it's much more effective to look at who's down and to look at how many people are down. So there was, after the memo dropped Monday, there was another group of pitchers that quit. So there was basically like 11 pitchers that were down two standard deviations before the memo.

And now there's about 18 to 20 that are down two standard deviations. That's still about 6% of the league. So if you think that, like, you know, it's all a guess because you ask the hitters they're like 90 percent and you ask the pitchers they're like maybe 20 um so uh uh you know and that was in our in our reporting but i would say that it's bigger than 6% or 12 or 10% or whatever it is now. So there's more people to quit and there's more names to come out.

And I think the players to some extent are pushing back on some parts of this. I don't know, to save their own asses. I don't know. There's definitely more people that haven't quit yet. There's been an effect, yes, but it's not on the order of magnitude that we expect there to be by the end of this. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of different ways

we could go with this, but since the topic's not going to go away, I think we should talk a little bit about the Rays' situation with Glass now down because it's a partial UCL tear and it's a flexor strain in his right elbow. They're hoping he can return before the playoffs. How realistic do you think that is? Because oftentimes even a small UCL tear, even sometimes a flexor strain ends up being the clear precursor to Tommy John surgery. Yeah, I was trying to look at Derek Rhodes's injury tool to get some some knowledge on that. But it's, it's been ported over to based

on perspective. And I think there was some functionality that's missing. Because when I typed in UCLA, UCLA, when I typed in UCL, I got current UCL injury. So maybe it's user error. I am an idiot. But I wanted to know what has happened in the past. And I'm now forced to use my memory, which is utter dog poo. Just a little side to that. I was at the park hanging out with Andrew Baggerly. And we were talking about players, and he was like, oh, yeah, that guy's a Cornhusker, but he didn't go.

He didn't come from Nebraska. He's from Iowa, and he just went to college in Nebraska. And I was like, what? Yeah, you've told this story before. I think this is the third time you've told this story now. No, that just happened this week you've had that conversation with andrew baggley exactly i don't even remember having told this story that's how useless my brain is twice but i so i just have to keep having the same conversation with andrew baggley at some point andrew bagg, you know, we've had this conversation.

Anyway. Not to make light of the situation, but you may be in a situation where you have to start writing things on your arm. Just for Baggerly, at least. Things I've talked about with Baggerly, yeah. I've talked about players playing one place, being from another, and

I've done this multiple times. But anyway, so my point is Masahiro Tanaka, Denilson Lemaitre, and then weren't there a bunch of angels that tried to do it? Like Garrett Richards, but then he ended up having the surgery? Yep. But then did somebody not have the surgery? Did Haney not have the surgery? Or did he have the surgery? I know Richards was surgery delayed

because the Padres eventually signed him. He rehabbed there, came back, and moved on. Haney I believe had the surgery because if you look back at 16 and 17, those two seasons combined, he pitched 27 and two-thirds innings. He had to have had the surgery. I think the Angels kept

trying to do it and it didn't work with anybody. The Padres with DeNilson, I mean, I would say that it's still an open question with DeNilson-Lamette. There's just something. But, you know, he's doing three, four innings. He's trying to build back up and he's

throwing pretty hard. So, um, you know, Danilson, Lamette, Masa, Tanaka is the big, uh,

story, but glad Tyler glass now seems a little bit more like Garrett Richards and Danilson, Lamette, then Masa, Tanaka. Yeah, that's me.

Yeah, for sure. So, uh, I don't know that I'm a hundred. The other person that I was thinking about was Nick Anderson. Yeah. The rays are going through that right now with him too. He's listed as an elbow sprain.

I don't even know what that is. And that compares. But with Nick Anderson, they were like, this happened in March, and they're hoping to get him back in July. So basically half the season. So that's my working assumption here is that he's going to miss the middle half. We're already a third through,

so I think that would just bring him back for September. I think that they just hope to get him back in September quick enough to maybe ramp up to being an effective playoff starter. That's the best-case scenario. A sprain in the case of Anderson, that's a tear. Spra or tears yeah so it's a well and a ucl injury is a tear so the question just is when you say elbow right that's why the specific mechanism whether it's a ligament or muscles that's very important to know i think it is uh but yeah uh anyway dr saris back on it yeah dr saris reporting for

dirty um i would say i have no idea is the real uh short answer and i would try to hold glass now as long as possible but 10 12 15 teamers if your IL is just getting dirty, like, I mean, just look at this. Like, I've been holding onto Luis Severino forever and Chris Sale forever in these leagues where I was like, oh, maybe second half Boone. And it's probably, usually I did it in leagues where I had unlimited

or lots of IL spots. But it's, you know, there's been other places where i've just like i gotta i gotta drop this guy like carlos carasco is hanging on a thread in a couple places and i'm just like i need some good news a little bit of good news today he started throwing it's good news might be another month don't even know if the hamstring exists, but he's throwing. Come on, hamstring exists. But the guy that's going to have to pitch more for the Rays, at least in the short term, is Michael Waka.

He's the guy that gets the extra little innings bump in the short term. Luis Patino! Luis Patino! Luis Patino! Right, if you're a more proactive sort of person looking for the better long-term solution. Or some sort of Neanderthal at the kitchen table. Either way. Is that you when you're hungry and you want more meatloaf?

Yeah, right. Doing my kids. Kids are probably hilarious like that sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. Hilarious. Hilarious. Patino, I'm just looking to see what's his workload been like last couple times out. Last time out, June 12th against AAA Charlotte, five innings. There you go. Scoreless innings. One hit. Especially pitching a night, maybe. to pitch tomorrow. And I think with Waka pitching soon,

they're pretty close in terms of schedule. And I think the thing we're going to see with Patino, we've talked about this going back to draft season. We just saw it literally with Ryan Weathers, I think, yesterday or today. Some of these guys have such tight innings caps. They're going to have to be brought along slowly. And I think that's exactly what the Rays were doing with Patino on the big league roster earlier this season. I mean, you might remember the quality of

the innings he was giving the Rays earlier this year was actually pretty high. 360 ERA, 107 whip in 15 innings, mostly two and three inning performances. One was a four inning outing against the Yankees. And looking at how they've kind of gradually built him up, well, actually he got knocked around his first start at AAA, but they've just been pretty careful with his workload there. He's not going six or seven there, but now they've got the guy who could come up and maybe give them something closer

to the quality of the innings they were getting from Glasnow. You can't put Glasnow expectations on Patino. That's unfair. But I would say Patino is more likely to give you something that resembles those innings than Michael Waka is, even with proper usage of Waka. I think you and I would agree, like, you want Patino in that spot.

Yeah, or Shane Baz. I think that Waka and Fleming should be considered one spot, and that gives you an opportunity for Patino right now. one spot. And that gives you an opportunity for Patino right now. And I think that if you think that there's the innings there for Shane Boz, or you wait for the eventual Rich Hill injury,

which I'm not wishing that upon him, I'm trying not to be flip, I'm just saying, he's old, old guys get injured, I would say that Shane Boz gets a little bit closer to possibly coming up this year. I mean, he's dominating at double A. You need the innings.

You need some upside innings. You could just do the Fleming. You could just make Fleming and Waka full-time starters. But even then, when Hill gets injured, then you have to bring up Patino. And then there's one more injury and Boz is up, I think. I don't think that Honeywell is figuring in. So I think Boz is, you know, Boz now. So I was talking earlier, maybe on Monday, about Boz, Grayson Rodriguez, and Meyer being my favorite.

Great recall. It was Monday. Thank you. I can remember some things. But the Marlins are 10 games under.500. There's not a lot of... And Grayson Rodriguez, the Orioles, there's not a lot of...

But Boz is the one where it's like... Am I saying his name right? I've heard Boz in the past. I will verify prior to the next episode at the latest because he is much more on the radar for a redraft league right now than he was a week ago because you could have seen him all season long between AA and AAA and then maybe getting that late year extra arm in the bullpen treatment

that the Rays give a lot of their young guys and then said, yep, okay, early 2022, he's in the rotation also. But now there's a much greater need. Yeah, I mean, there's always a question of, you know, if the Rays are willing to start clocks and that sort of thing. But I think that, you know, I think that sometimes they're willing to start the clock because they're just willing to trade the guy away three years later. If they see an opportunity to win the division, I think that they would rather win the division than go in as a wild card. Clarification, by the way, it's Boz. The pronunciation guide, B-O-Z, all caps, Boz.

Thank you. Yeah, good to have that clarity because I think we're going to be talking about him for a long time. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think he's going to be an impact guy once he gets that opportunity. All right, you know, on Monday, we were talking about park factors,

looking over at baseball savant and digging into some of the nuance of those calculations. And we talked about a few different things, most specifically near the end, we were talking about even some parks, how specifically near the end. We were talking about even some parks, how they boost strikeouts

or even suppress strikeouts because of maybe a high quality or low quality batter's eye or some other environmental factors. But you noticed that there was something that was a little bit incomplete about the way the factors

we were talking about are calculated versus some of the other things you can look at over at savant so i'm just curious what did you find yeah it's it's funny how there was like like an ongoing joke at fangraphs that i didn't know all the different functionalities at fangraphs yes that's on fangraphs you know that was kind of a meme uh in in uh in meetings uh office meetings when i was

over there and sometimes it's the same with Savant. So I did get something wrong, Mia Coppa. The actual park factors that they have listed there are traditional, conventional park factors. They are calculated by looking at my matching players at different parks. I think that's old school. I think that we're going to move past that i think that we need to move past that uh the one thing that did occur to me about why that it might be

difficult to move past that in the era of stat cast and a changing ball yeah let's uh take come with me uh on a journey go to the park factor oh no you know what i just have to say something um that dude creeped me out mr rogers oh mr mr rogers the the mr rogers the pbs mr rogers he creeped me out even his daniel tiger offspring even that creeped me out i don't know how an old man gave birth to a tiger. I don't quite understand how that is related. I think he did or whatever.

He creeped me out. Just the whole come with me on a journey made me think of him and creeped me out. Anyway, go to the Baseball Savant Park Factors leaderboard. When you're there, click on the, you'll see that each stadium is actually underlined. So you can go to Kauffman Stadium and open that.

And when you're in there, now you're in something that's called Primary Park Factors. And there's a cool little rotating park that you can actually sort of zoom in on that's fun I like that there's a little bit more of a breakdown year-to-year there's some stuff there but then when you go down to speed and angle park factors it says tracking all you can go tracking speed and angle alright so as I understand what's happening here is you know once you do that it'll default to 95 plus fly ball so this will say how does a 95 this is what we wanted how does a 95 plus fly ball do in Kauffman Stadium versus other places now that's great and it tells you that over time kaufman stadium helps uh first helps singles

uh helps doubles uh hurts overall wobba on contact inflates triples but just is is a place that suppresses offense right um great look at 2021 it's all red it's totally different it's totally busted it's telling us that Kauffman Stadium is an average place for homers and that Wobbecon in Kauffman Stadium is up 13%

I would assume that that is just because of the new ball and that early on they had to make a public adjustment to ex-Wobbecon and some of their expected factors and even hard hit, I think, had to have some sort of adjustment because the ball is coming off the bats faster. I think because they're lighter. Anyway, so I would use this.

I would not use the current season. Hmm. Because if you look at 2020 through 2016, it's really close to just simple, right? It is pretty consistent. Like you see the red and blue flags and the shades don't even change that much year to year and even throughout that longer block some weird some

really weird oscillations on one b on singles but you know what i bet that sample is low because how many 95 plus mile an hour fly ball singles are there right not many so i would assume that that's why some years it's 40 and some years it's 140 so like use a little bit of common sense um but this is this i think is the true park factor um now well what this is missing and what hopefully i know that andrew perpetua is working on bringing xstats.org back um and that one of the big things he's working on is his park factors. I think what you can do to make this really effective is now start to have splits between left field and right field

because we know that you might have a building out there or a big, what was it in San Diego, a big scoreboard. Yep. That messes things up. So, once you, and that's something that I tried to do really early on. Actually, Yonder Alonso asked me to do that for him, and I

tried to do it, and what you could do is almost like a heat map of the outfield walls. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think I'm following. Red where the ball goes further for different sections of the park yeah in colorado i think you probably have a darker red wood in right center where that jet stream is that's that's exactly there would be some wind factors there um you know and uh and if you if you like took everything out like if you

accounted for everything but wind, those heat maps would actually almost be like a wind park factor. So anyway, what I'm saying is that there is still a lot of opportunity. If anybody's listening to this and wants to study it, I think this is actually a super exciting thing that would be really useful for fantasy players, especially when a player changes teams or when a visiting player comes to town if you want to play DFS.

Just knowing how a particular player's spray chart will interact with a particular wind situation and park situation in a park. So Ken Arneson on Twitter has a service that really looks and models the wind in every park. So you could actually partner with him and StatCast and do something that no one's ever done. It's pretty exciting if you've got the interest in it.

Be the park factors guru for the industry. Almost sounds like the kind of thing that could lead you to a job in baseball if you did it right. I think so. I mean, you know, wind is notoriously the agent of chaos. And so people try to, like, just do everything but wind. But Ken's got a model for wind that he's actually supplying to the Cubs and the A's for broadcasts. got a model for Wynn that he's actually supplying to the Cubs and the A's for broadcasts. So, you know, maybe just some sort of profit sharing or just, you know, can I see the data to work on my model? And then, you know, some sort of deal with him could get you somewhere. I mean,

anyway, that's just a thing I find super fascinating, and I think that we're still a little bit in the dark ages. Just a quick friendly note, too. If you're using those primary park factors and the park is spinning and it starts to bother you, there is a stop spinning button at the top of the page. Where is that? Oh, yeah, at the top, stop spinning. If you had too much to drink last night, press the stop spinning button. Yeah, if it's early Sunday morning and you're playing with that page,

the stop spinning button could be your friend. So anything we can do to help, happy to do that. Mention this up top. We got an email a few weeks ago, back when Albert Pujols was just starting to begin the part of his career with the Dodgers, that a few of us, at least me, I was very surprised they signed him. And so far, it's worked out great because as a mostly righty bat against lefties,

he's produced no limited spots. And there's also been some pretty profound reports from the clubhouse, just the ways that he's kind of elevated that whole team, which is pretty interesting because I had not considered that at all. I have this very negative view of players on their way out the door just not necessarily caring about their teammates, which is totally unfair. It's unfounded and unfair, and it would vary from player to player, of course. Well, a lot of times they're just older.

They have kids. This is something that came up with the warriors like i do believe that you know sometimes there's a you're just at a different stage of life and they're like let's go out to the strip club and you're like um the baby's gonna wake me up at 5 a.m right but then there's players like pools though who were literally dominated in the league while his teammates were developing their love for baseball so it it's like having for for current players it's actually possible to have someone you really truly looked up to as a player as a teammate so i kind of i just underestimated that i didn't underestimate how amazing for all accounts looks reinvigorated on the field because you know the angels have been not so great for a while.

Yeah, a chance to go back to the playoffs. Yeah. If it all works, if he keeps hitting and the role still fits. They've had a lot of injuries. Cody Bellinger back on the IL. Back on the IL, man. Is he injury prone? I hate to put that on a player so early in their career, but he's killing me right now.

on a player so early in their career, but he's killing me right now. It is not good for my NL labor team where he and Jack Flaherty and Bryce Harper, who took up a large share of that budget, they have missed a lot of time this year, but it seems it's still afloat. So we'll see if I can just ride it out and maybe make a run in the second half.

But McCabe's email highlighted several players. The bid was to find the worst fantasy regulars. He wrote up several names from Connor Joe to V-Mail Machine to Elvis Andrews, Matt Carpenter, Franchi Cordero. Just a really nice who's who of guys that were finding their way into the lineup a lot in the last couple of weeks. And it kind of drives this question, why do teams choose to play

some of the non-productive players they have as often as they do? And I think you can find different reasons for a few of those names. Like for Andrews and Carpenter, I think you have guys that are on the wrong side of 30, sometimes well beyond the 30 marker that have this long track record

that teams just want to see, can we get something, even a part-time role out of those players? And sometimes they have to overexpose them because of injuries and they feel like that's their best option. I genuinely think that's the case with some of the guys with more established track records. I think there's two other types of players, though, where I get really tripped up. And it's the Connor Joe, Adrianza types where I look and say, is that guy really the best player? And I think in the case of a contending team like Atlanta,

where Adrianza plays, of course they're trying to play the best guy. They're trying to make the playoffs this year. In the case of a non-contending team, it's a little easier to say Connor Joe, huh? I feel bad. I'm not picking on Connor Joe, but whoever that player is, the Tigers are doing this right now. They literally

just sent Isak Paredes down. You were mad about that. I was very mad about that on Twitter. I've calmed down a little bit. And the reason I was mad about it, it's not because Isak Paredes has so obviously mastered AAA that they're wasting his time by sending him back. It's

that they're playing Harold Castro instead. And Nico Goodrum. But I'm really focused on Harold Castro. Castro is like more than five years older than Paredes, hasn't really shown anything offensively. If you're trying to teach a guy to possibly play a new position, which the Tigers were doing over the weekend, they were playing Isak Paredes at shortstop.

I don't know why you wouldn't take the opportunity to just play him at the big league level, let him learn against big league level, let him learn against big league pitching, and continue the youth movement. That was the part that bothered me in that case. So this Tiger situation is probably the epitome of, I really don't know why they're choosing Harold Castro over Paredes. I don't even think in this case, we're talking about service time or Super 2 or anything related to that. I just I cannot figure it out.

And it frustrates me to my core. Yeah, there was an article at some point about, you know, the new culture they're trying to put in place there in Detroit where, you know, results matter. results matter and it's not always just about building for the future and that they're going to put the best team on the field. I'm looking for Harold Castro. Where is he?

It's like Paredes is the best player on the JV team who's clearly better than the kid that they're starting on the left side of the infield who's a senior. Okay, so he's replacement level right now. He's 22% worse than league average. He is 27 years old. He's projected to hit 20% worse than league average.

He's not a defensive whiz. He doesn't have power or patience. Right, and Paredes' projection is almost league average. It's about 5% below league average in terms of WRC+. And I mentioned before, five-year age gap. So there's a chance that Paredes is on your team the next time you play in October. There's zero chance that Harold Castro is on your team the next time you play in October. And you can't even say that you're grooming him to be like a super utility guy on the next good team because you already have like too many players like that on the Tigers, right?

If you're doing that with him, what are you doing with Nico Goodrum? I would describe that situation as a redundancy. And I feel bad talking about people and whatnot that way, but I'm just looking at it from the, how do you make your players as good as you possibly can? The Tigers bumped up a bunch of their prospects pretty quickly. Did Scope hurt? Scope wasn't hurt as of a couple days ago.

He was on a heater, actually. Oh, they're playing him at first? That's pretty weird. I think they were mostly playing him at second. Man, three for five again today. He's red hot. He's on the Fangraphs thing at first. Let me see where he's playing.

And by the way, Scope has been average or better as a hitter basically every year since 2015, with 2018 as the one exception. Scope is playing first base. with 2018 as the one exception. Scope is playing first base. He's played second twice, three, four, five, six times in the last like 30 games. So they're playing him because he plays second better than Scope.

Why does that even matter? And continue to try Willy Castro. So they're... Oh oh jamer's getting regular at bats in the minor leagues and harold castro only has minimum at bats available to him so it's a commitment to someone else that's causing them to not make the commitment to paratus yes it's having scopeope on the roster. And then they assume that Scope will get traded. And not making Candelario the first baseman.

No, Candelario, I think, has been away from the team and then trying to clear COVID protocols to come back. So his situation's been a little odd the last week or so. But I think if you were doing that, in three years, the Tigers lineup will look like this. Candelari would be at first. Goodrum at second. Willie Castro at short.

Two years? I don't know. I don't think Goodrum's on the team after this season. I don't think Goodrum's on the team anymore. I don't have any hitter prospects that are... I guess Torkelson's at first, and Ken O'Leary's at third, and Willie Castro's at short. Then you've got to play Paredes at second.

Paredes at second. Maybe he's down there playing at second. I don't know. Yeah, there are... So anyway, that was way too much. But it is interesting to kind of try and think of that through because another name, there are other situations. Like Eric Hosmer in the last two weeks is,

there's nobody who's been worse than Eric Hosmer in the last two weeks in terms of war. And only Reese Hoskinson has been worse than Eric Hosmer in the last two weeks. He's under replacement for the season, and yet he's a qualified batter that situation is due to money so i think sometimes you can draft guys who may not be good but they're paid too much to be released but then i think you can get into trouble too because those guys eventually become dhs part-time dhs or get released i mean like i know

people that i think maybe ian khan even traded for albert pujols well he's probably happy now because he's actually playing some again but but you could have traded for pujols he might have gotten dfa'd and not gotten a job anywhere very likely i if you told me at the time it happened is he going to get another team or not i would have absolutely said no i would have said first ballot hall of famer amazing player let's celebrate this guy's career but no it's over we have a few years where he's been clearly below average it's time to move on and so far the dodgers are kind of laughing at me at that one though they don't know i exist so not laughing at me but they're there's laughing in general because it's worked out. Michael A. Taylor's on the list of terrible in the last two weeks and terrible in the last month,

but I think there's a defensive situation there. Right. Defense can be a part of it. Juan Lagrars is terrible with the bat. He's going to play because of defense. That's not breaking any ground. We've known that, that there will be guys who play good enough defense but that's not what elvis andrews is doing right well and i think that was the so darwin barney was mentioned in mccabe's email from almost 10 years ago now he won a gold glove in 2012 and he had a 76 ops plus with almost 600

plate appearances the reason he played that much was because he was playing great defense. Yeah. There's a little bit fewer of those. I'm looking at the last month's qualified batters, which means they had to play a lot and sort of reverse by Woba. I'm not seeing maybe Kevin Newman is in there for defensive reasons. I would assume Michael A. Taylor, Juan Ligaris. And that's almost the end of the list of, like, defense forward guys that are playing enough to be qualified.

Yeah. Like, I don't think baseball really wants to play a defensive forward guy enough to qualify for the batting title. baseball really wants to play a defensive forward guy enough to qualify for the batting title no because if if that were true then billy hamilton would play every day in center field for a team that had enough offense everywhere else it's kind of like the 70s thing yeah we don't really do that anymore so it's i think it's i you know it's one of those things that does happen every year but just think about the players that we're talking about. It's not easy to predict. It's like this, when you're like in season, you're like, oh, there's always a reliever that gets like eight wins

and he's going to have a lot of value and that's going to be great. Yeah, predict that guy ahead of the season. Like I love Johnny Loizaga. I had a bold prediction for him to lead the Yankees in wins last year. I think he might be leading the Yankees in wins this year. That's what it's like to kind of try and predict which pitchers, you know, like Chad Green seemed like the guy that you could bet on every year,

and maybe he still is, but at some point it's not going to be. So I think, you know, I think it's better to go after talented players. I don't know, that's a crazy idea what are you doing you want the skilled guys because it's not going to be easy to pick out and elvis andrews for what it's worth like i think he's hanging on i i don't know that it's i don't know that he's going to finish the season with like 650 plate appearances you know chad pinder plays them short uh they got um what's his name nick allen in the minor leagues and definitely

scouts are very split on him something he's just a slappy guy um especially uh left-handed i think but um he's shown some power in the minor leagues, and he's definitely defensively better than Pinder and Elvis Andrews. Yeah, I think just the last closing thought is a lot of times teams play these guys because they don't have anybody else. Hanser Alberto, a couple years ago for the Orioles, definitely in a situation where they didn't have someone else they were blocking. More often than not, for rebuilding teams, they don't have someone who they feel like is ready, and if they had someone who was ready and they weren't have someone else they were blocking. More often than not, for rebuilding teams, they don't have someone who they feel like is ready.

And if they had someone who was ready and they weren't playing that guy, it's probably an extreme case where it's a... I think that's the sort of Castro situation, dude. They just don't think Paredes is ready. They want him to play more time in the minor leagues. Yeah. I know when I'm saying this,

having written about Kelnick and figuring out when a player is ready and how difficult that is. But I think Paredes has a very mature approach. And I think a mature approach and a good hit tool are things that you could look at and say, you know what? We're not sure, but we think this will work. And if we're wrong, he's probably not going to completely fall apart if he goes back down. It'll cost us Harold Castro. Right.

Sorry, Harold. Very, very sorry. It'll cost us Harold Castro. Right. Sorry, Harold. Very, very sorry. Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Castro. All right, you know, we had a few questions trickle in for the last episode that we didn't quite have time for, so we're going to close the book on those. This one's sort of similar to the question we got about Shane Bieber,

who we learned on Monday, of course, was hurt, but Aaron Nola hasn't quite been himself so far this year, and we learned on Monday, of course, was hurt, but Aaron Nola hasn't quite been himself so far this year. And we had a listener who was actually targeting Bieber and ended up with Nola and thought, well, this is going to be close enough. But what have you seen? The email pointed to a lazy look at StatCast shows that he may be upping his four-seam usage for more control. And this indeed has resulted in reduced walk rate, but his fastball has been getting hit. Do you think this is a common early-season trend,

or do you think this is something that's here to stay? Thoughts on Nola as a top-15 starting pitcher for the rest of the season. His lifetime numbers are 3-4-9 ERA, 1-.116 whip, 10 strikeouts per nine, 2.7 walks per nine, homer per nine. Right now he's got a.369 ERA, a.114 whip, 10 strikeouts per nine, two walks per nine, and a homer per nine. I don't know. people keep talking about this i think you got to zoom out sometimes just be like he's he's really good this is who he is he's i don't know i don't i don't expect him to have like another 237 era year no that in that park especially that's really tough to do and i don't think that i think he'll have another stretch

like he did last year it was a 70 inning stretch last year we had a 3-2-8 era right so yeah i think he'll have another 70 inning stretch where he has a 3-2-8 era and at the end of the season he'll have a 3-4-9 era i mean not exactly but you know it'll be like that i i don't i I don't think this is like a we need to uncover why he's not good or what's broken situation. I also think because we've seen some pretty gaudy numbers from pitchers early on this season, by comparison, Nola doesn't look like the ace you expect him to be. But yes, by the measuring stick of his own career

and the best case scenario that he showed us in 18 and some of the worst case scenarios he's shown us, he's just splitting the difference. I mean, that's what you're saying. The ratios walk right next to those career marks. I think this level is very sustainable for him. And I think the reason why he doesn't have a low threes ERA all the time is, for me, I've always thought it's the ballpark in Philadelphia. Now I'm curious to know how much the splits actually back that up. I just assume that that's where he gets hit the most. This season, that's not the case.

Traditional park factors say fifth friendliest park for hitters augments homers by 20%, augments runs by 10%. But it's career ERA at home, 294, career ERA on the road, 411. Players are better at home. Yeah. Creature comforts, you get more calls, you know, all sorts of factors. That's interesting, though.

Yeah, I just don't, I'm looking at his game log. I mean, he just came off a great start did we get this question before the great start probably i think it came just before his last start we held he held the yankees scoreless in 7.2 with nine strikeouts in a walk so made those ratios look a little better yeah maybe his numbers didn't look as good before that it's fair you know but he has these stretches i think i just think that generally um he's a little bit more command first than some of the other guys at the top and i think like let's see here i'm looking at stuff plus right now yeah like his stuff plus is 95 which for a pitcher is basically a little bit around average i think for

a starting pitcher uh the curve is 140 the change up is 103 the cutter is 93 sinker 74 four seam 65 so like his fastballs aren't that good but he has good command and he has five pitches so he's a little bit closer to ryu than might expect. I think our friend Nick Pollock over at Pitcher List has always had Nola and Barrios sort of glued together. He's lower on Barrios than most. I think he must also be lower on Nola than most. What is really striking, I'm looking at the Roto-Wire Earn dollar values to this point. Nola has only been worth $10 to this point. Five wins is part of that. Plenty of Ks.

But a.369 ERA and a.114,.115 whip, when you start seeing names ahead of him, like Anthony Descafani is in the low threes with a better whip. You see Kyle Gibson in the low twos with a better whip. There's a bunch of dudes like that that are beating him.

He'll hold on and some of those guys will regress. You know what I mean? he'll write it over the course of the year as regression sort of does its thing with some of the guys that have exceeded expectations yeah earn money is a little bit like war right like you you're like oh you just earn money and so you know it's a positive it's like a counting stat but no it's not he you knowcofani is going to have some weeks where he loses you money. Right? And so, like, Gibson is going to have weeks where he loses you money. Come on. So, you know, I would say that Nola is a very steady producer.

And that's why I have him high. Now, I will admit, now looking at my rankings, that he has the softest stuff plus in my top 20. And just saying he's close to Ryu, I had Ryu at 22. So maybe I was aggressive with Nola and maybe he's more top 15, top 20 than top 10. Yeah, but it's still good.

That's not a complete crash based on what you paid on draft day. Best command plus in the top 25, including Ryu. So, I think he's a command artist. And I do think that that has good ramifications for long term. Now, you look at guys who have really

good command in my top 25, that includes DeGrom, Nola, Flaherty, Urias, Wheeler, Gossman, and Ryu. Ryu has an established injury history. To some extent, Gossman. I guess Flaherty now.

And Urias. But I would say that those guys are relatively good bets for longevity. Dynasty type situations. Yeah, I'm in on Nola as a top 15 starter the rest of the season, or 15 to 20 range starter the rest of the season. I think he's more likely to fit in that range than a lot of other guys who've popped up near that range for the first time for all the reasons we mentioned. And I realized that that was the situation. Christian sent us the email.

Thank you for the email, Christian. Shane Bieber was a keeper, so he paired Nola with Bieber to get two aces. And it's like, well, I don't quite have two aces. I've got like an ace and a jack right now. It's like, well, you might have two aces by the end of the season if Bieber comes back healthy and, of course, if Nola just keeps doing Nola things. Less volatility than some of the pop-up guys. Even as much as we love Freddy Peralta on this list,

where would you rank Freddy Peralta going into next season? And where would you rank some of these guys who pop up? You're not going to rank Descafani in the top 20 going into next season. There's always a little bit of a pop-up nature to these things. I think that Bieber and Nola are among the better long-term bets. Yeah, definitely. Thanks a lot for that question, Christian. Ani was curious, just looking at the K-BB percentages for DeGrom and Cole. DeGrom's in the 40s and Cole's in the 30s. He was just wondering how much of that is the NL pitchers not having to face the DH. I think that's a huge part of it. It's a huge part of it. If you look just at the increase in overall league percentage in strikeouts from last year to this year, a huge part of it is actually just explained by pitchers striking out.

There's a Petriello piece about it. In fact, pitchers right now are striking out more than they ever have in the past. They're striking out at 48% of the rate. So half the time you get to face a pitcher, you strike them out. So, you know, that should give you an extra two strikeouts per game. Adds up. Strikeout or two. I mean, it adds up.

That means a guy who's in the AL is going to get six to eight, and then the other guy's going to get seven to nine. It's a big deal. Got one more question I want to get to before we go, and this one is about the struggles of Matt Chapman. I have Matt Chapman at third base, and I'm wondering if we should move on now that we're in mid-June with no improvement.

I feel like I've already fielded this one, and I've already done all the groaning. Well, the alternatives in this case are Alec Boehm, Mike Moustakis, Kevin Biggio. Like, that's not. So he's got an actual, this isn't like AL only where, do I just rage drop him and pick up race? It's a kind of a shallow mixed league where there are interesting names there.

But Moustakis just had a setback with his injury. Biggio, I think, just came off the IL. Yeah, Boehm hasn't quite been right. I don't think I see any of those three guys as an immediate upgrade. Definitely not taking Biggio. Let me look at Boehm. Definitely not taking Biggio. It's a terrible batting average.

If you're going to take a terrible batting average, I'm going to take Chapman's chance at 240. I don't think that Biggio necessarily has a chance at 240. He's had a lot of home runs to get up to 240. I don't think that Vigio necessarily has a chance at 240. He's had a lot of home runs to get up to 240. Yeah, Chapman's exit velocity and max exit velocity

is still way down. I don't know if that's even showing a sign of tracking in the right direction. His max EV is up. His barrel rate is down. His hard hit rate is up. His expected slugging is 426. Hmm.

I mean, the one nice thing about Boehm is that he strikes out less and is projected to strike out less going forward, so at least he could give you batting average. So I could see maybe a categorical change where you're like, I can make more headway using Boehm's you batting average. So I could see maybe a categorical change where you're like, I can make more headway using Baum's projected batting average going forward than I can with Chapman's projected homers. Because I do believe that Chapman will,

you know, I mean, how many does he have right now? He's got seven. I think he'll get to 25 to 30. That means there's a pretty nice three and a half month stretch coming here. It has to happen at some point. But I liked what he was doing year over year pre-injury. How much of this is just recovering from a major surgery?

Yeah. He's moving around and playing a ton. A 10% bail rate is better than Baum's bail rate. It's good. It's not bad A 10% barrel rate is better than Baum's barrel rate. It's good. It's not bad. 10% barrel rate is pretty good. I think, and what's his expected slugging? I'm sure it's higher than what he's got.

369. Oh, God, it's not. How does that work? How do you have a decent barrel rate? Maybe it's all tied into the strikeouts. It is a bad strikeout rate. And I think now we're talking about almost 400 plate appearances, a bad strikeout rate.

Could he be among the players who stands to benefit from what we started with, fewer pitchers, having extra tacky substances? That is interesting. I've seen him get beat up in the zone, high and tight. And one of the big differences will be how those high fastballs play, how much ride is on the fastball. The four-seam fastball is going to take a ding if it's de-gooped. I'm looking at some of his pitch-type values, and he's having trouble against the fastball for the first time in his career. So there's a little bit of a narrative you can spin there.

Curveballs, he's also having trouble with curveballs, and curveballs will suffer a little. It's fastball sliders and curveballs. I think it probably is fastball curveball sliders in order if you want to kind of try and think about how taking the air out of these balls is going to matter fastball curveball slider was your order yeah because if you look at sliders and this is something you can play around with too like look at some of the pictures like if

you've noticed that a pitcher is down and spin oh i can't offer that to people i can offer you this ping me and i can show you the feature interaction or you can look at the slider feature action on my piece called What is Stuff. There is a slider heat map. I don't know if I put spin on there, but or I can share it with you, but you can actually, you know, on this tool that I've got, I can put spin along with something else and show you that high spin sliders are good, but there are also some slow spin sliders that are good. So depending on where your pitcher is, they will stand to lose more or less on the slider

depending on what kind of slider they have. All right. Ping Eno, accordingly, if you're looking for more there. This email came from Michael, by the way, who also included a beer question. He writes, I recently exchanged some Atlanta beers with a friend on the west coast for some California beers what do you got there

there you go hi y'all from Atlanta very nice this is also as you can tell it's a baseball diamond yeah but also one of my oldest shirts it's got a hole in it it's hot here today and so this is like my lightest

shirt it's like one of those shirts that you've worn so long that it barely exists yeah when you when you hold it when you hold it up it's almost like translucent weird and i paid not really covering the thing is i live in atlanta but i paid like10 or $15 for this and bought this on sunset in LA. Totally makes sense. So as part of this beer trade, Michael got some beers from Humble C in Santa Cruz. So far, so good after tasting a foggy triple IPA and a double dry hopped IPA that were both excellent. I'm told they can quote, do no wrong. Eno, have you had anything from Humble C? Yeah, yeah, I like them.

They're on my list of, I would say, sort of top five-ish, maybe, haze purveyors in California, at least in the top ten. The only thing that sometimes gets to me is that they taste very similar from beer to beer. is that they taste very similar from beer to beer. But that's a tough criticism of Levy because I feel like that happens in a lot of breweries, man. You can taste a monkish and kind of spot monkish pretty easily. You can taste an Alvarado Street and spot it pretty easy. Even Cellar Maker has a kind of approach. So they have a signature style they make good hazies

uh i enjoy their cans humble c is gets the thumbs up for me all right any other recent beers of note that you've had we haven't talked beer in a while on this show i know we'll have to reconvene on a beer of the week in next in the next week because I have not had a beer. I had my first beer actually in like 10 days or two weeks. Yesterday at the park on my way out, I had a hazy, hazy little thing because the public house is closed and it's still in COVID situation at the park where there's only like three stands open. But I'm not complaining. Hazel thing was a pretty high baseline.

And have one and just sort of watch the players. I did miss Yaz's grand slam, and I did think that the Giants had lost that game pretty handily when i left it was like eight to three and uh i was like yeah i think the diamondbacks will win this one and stop their streak so perhaps the diamondbacks will lose 30 in a row because they get gossman today no disco discofonda today gossman tomorrow and then they go on the road in like LA so they might push this to like

25 26 then they go to St. Louis I think which you know they could win a game there maybe St. Louis' pitching staff is suffering right now yeah Descalfani might be their best shot to get one well yesterday was their best shot.

It was a Johnny Holstaff game. I mean, before things get worse, though. I mean, this might be their truly last exit before the next stop in 50 miles to possibly get one. Before you set the record for road losses. They must be close. They're at 21, 22 now. You better get some gas and a Kit Kat now if you're the Diamondbacks

because it's going to be a couple hours before you're going to have another chance to pull off. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to laugh at somebody while they're down. I think it's got to be somewhat luck. They're not that terrible of a team. No, when they were good a couple years ago, it was really efficient defense. They had a lot of injuries so far this year, too. Plenty of teams have gone through that, but I would err on the side of,

hey, if there was a team that was going to surprise us in the West this year, not one of the Dodgers and Padres, I thought it was more likely to be the D-backs and the Giants. So that gives you an idea how I felt about that team coming into the season. I'm as surprised as anyone that they're this bad. They shouldn't be this bad. It doesn't look like they're this bad. If you want to read more about any of the things we're talking about, for the most part, you can do that, especially sticky stuff.

Plenty of great stories about that. A lot of good perspective from around the game. I put our coverage of that up with anyone's. Get a subscription. $3.99 a month gets you the door at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels on Twitter. He's at Saris. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. You can always email us

ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com with any questions you've got for a future show. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.