Rates & Barrels - Another Wave of Pitching, Tough June Rankings & Mailbag Monday

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss another wave of pitching prospects that have arrived in the big leagues including Andrew Abbott, Reese Olson, Bryan Woo and AJ Smith-Shawver. Plus, they discuss a few tough rankings from Eno's June Starting Pitcher Rankings update, and mailbag questions about Jazz Chisholm Jr., Luis Robert, and Taylor Ward. Rundown 1:15 Andrew Abbott Gets the Call 3:41 Reese Olson Pitches Well in MLB Debut 7:55 Bryan Woo's Tough Debut 14:32 AJ Smith-Shawver Arrives in Atlanta 19:47 Will the Yankees Continue to Show Patience with Anthony Volpe 27:48 Two Bad Months, Four Good Ones 35:18 Bad Injury Luck for the Brewers? 39:15 Jackson Chourio's Chances of a 2023 Debut 41:16 Banking on a Big Summer From Freddy Peralta? 49:12 Where Did Aaron Nola's Strikeouts Go? 54:47 Tough Rank: Nathan Eovaldi 58:13 Can We Trust Michael Kopech's Turnaround? 1:02:43 Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s Long-Term Outlook 1:07:18 Where Are Luis Robert Jr.'s Stolen Bases? 1:10:57 Taylor Ward's Disappointing 2023 Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, June 5th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris.

And you know, you know when you're starting a podcast and your internet has been shaky for the last half hour. It's kind of like when you're on an airplane and you take off during a thunderstorm. This is going to be bumpy. This might be a rough edit. So you're freaking sick this landing. Let's just see if we can get through this before the internet goes down for the entire afternoon. I can go without internet for pretty much the rest of the day, but I kind of need it to get the show done. So on this episode, we will dig into the upcoming debut of Andrew Abbott as he joins the Reds rotation. We saw

Reese Olsen make his debut over the weekend. Brian Wu got the call from the Mariners. That happened after the waiver pod was recorded on Friday. A.J. Smith-Shavar showed up out of the bullpen for Atlanta. We've got a June pitcher rankings update from Eno. So a few questions for me that I want to bring to the table. And then some Mailbag Monday questions as well. So lots of ground to cover. Internet permitting. We begin with Andrew Abbott,

who I think is extremely difficult to evaluate for several reasons. One, the pre-tacked ball that he started with at AA. Two, a very brief stop at AAA. And three, getting to pitch half of his games at Great American Ballpark as he breaks in for the Reds on Monday night. he breaks in for the Reds on Monday night. Yeah, I tend to, I'm a little shy there, given that even somebody that the model loves in Graham Ashcraft, even somebody that the model loves even more in Hunter Green is not necessarily thriving the way that you might expect someone with his scout pedigree and his background and his model numbers.

You've got a whole set of issues there in Great America. So I tend to kind of be out on Abbott. But there are things that are in his favor and certainly some amazing minor league strikeout numbers. Yeah, I mean, the stuff's going to play at least in terms of piling up whiffs. Whether or not we get anything close to ratios we've seen from him in the good stops in the minors, that seems like a bit of a reach. The projections that are out there have a 467 ERA and a 137 whip. That comes from the bat. I think Steamer's a little more optimistic at 403 and 129.

Both systems have him at or above a strikeout per inning. So that'll play. We're talking about someone who's going to be almost certainly a mixed league pickup, at least a deeper mixed league pickup come weekend, but not necessarily the high ceiling you'd expect given some of the successes we've seen at a few different stops. Yeah, one thing I'm nervous about about Abbott in particular is just that the fastball stuff plus, which is the most reliable of these stuff pluses, really the forcing fastball stuff was for him in the minor leagues was 88. And we know that you put that in

hand in hand with the, you know, outsized results you put that in hand-in-hand with the outsized results when he had the pre-tact ball, which is adding spin and adding life and making the fastball better. That puts me sort of in a place where I wonder about the fastball. And if the fastball is only okay,

I do think the breaking ball is plus. But he may have to learn how to pitch backwards. There may be a real adjustment period for him. It's sort of the opposite of what we've seen from Reese Olsen, where the pitches might be more high-quality, big-league pitches in Reese Olsen's arsenal, even though the results throughout his time in the minors, they don't really jump off the page.

You see a lot of ERAs above four, some struggles at AAA this year, but lots of strikeouts pretty much everywhere he's pitched since 2021. Occasional issues with control, and he was having those at AAA, but looked pretty good in that debut against the White Sox on Friday night, I believe. Time a little bit challenging for me as I continue to ease into dad life, but all in all, I thought that was a lot of success from resource and more than I expected right away. My concerns were really more about the schedule, because I think what we're looking for with Tiger starters in particular are runs of opportunities at home. But if you look at resource and upcoming schedule, he's going to make his second big league start at Philadelphia on Wednesday.

That's a tough spot in terms of park and matchup. And if you flash forward to next week, he's got Atlanta at home. So he gets one of the best offenses in the league in his home park. That's going to be kind of sketchy as part of a two-start week. And then he goes on the road to target field to face the twins. So part of what kept me away from Olsen is just not liking those matchups once we were able to start using him.

It's true. I'm a little nervous about throwing him in Philadelphia. I picked him up in a few places and will not, you know, in weekly places and will not pitch him in his first week. So a bit of a stash and see, but I'm a little excited about that two-step. I think that, you know, this, the Braves offense is amazing, but also it's a good park for him. Um, and they haven't necessarily seen him. So there's not a lot of familiarity with his shapes in particular,

and you get a two-step early on. So I'm excited about that. And, you know, Michael Lorenzen is showing us how that park can help someone who's, you know-ish uh play up so i'm i'm excited about him his major league numbers looked a lot like his minor league numbers which we talked about here on project prospect and other places um and i think that you're right i think that the struggles with command is the issue even in his debut he had 94 location plus on the sinker and 96 on the slider. So those are below average numbers, obviously, in small samples that I wouldn't normally report, except that there has to you kind of want to think, you know, like what is what could be the issue here? And I guess, you know, for a guy that has four pitches that are above average by stuff Plus and a 110 overall Stuff Plus,

I think, I guess the answer is, you know, watch the slider command, watch the fastball command. If you can't get into count leverage, that's how you get into trouble. That's how you show the strikeout rates he's had and the ERAs he's had. So it's going to be all about getting into count leverage getting those

uh good counts and doing so with pitches that he hasn't necessarily demonstrated a great ability to command but this is totally someone i fall for you know it's just like multiple pitches with stuff in a good park and seemingly a lot of runway i'm in yeah i mean the scouting grades from fan graphs 55 fastball 55 slider with a future 60 50 curve and a 70 change up and all that comes with 30 i don't i mean i say this a lot i don't know if i've seen this combination before i'm sure we've seen you know very good stuff with command grades in the 30s before but four pitches where everything is at least a 50 you think if he could like repeat four pitches he could command them so uh i i'm still i'm still in um i can i can see the flaws uh but you know even the regular projection systems are fairly nice you have to remember

that it's a 430 uh era is average as average. Four of the five projections on fan graphs have them as above average in ERA. The whiffs seem to be there. League context is very important as you think about what you see in projections right now and what your own expectations are for players as they debut. We saw Brian Wu debut over the weekend. He was not part of our conversation on the Friday Waiver Show because we didn't know at the time that he was actually coming to the big leagues.

Marco Gonzalez went on the IL as part of a corresponding move. By results, Brian Wu jumps off the page in terms of excellent strikeout rates, good walk rates in the minors, keeps the ball in the park. By underlying numbers, you have a few questions about the arsenal. It was a rough debut. He went just two innings. And drawing the Rangers, this year's version of the Rangers for your first big league start, is a tough assignment. So I'm curious what you saw from Brian Wu and where you think the next couple of turns might go.

Since it looks like he's going to get another opportunity or two. Even though they've got two off days on the schedule this week he could start over the weekend against the angels if he sticks around for another week he gets a home turn against the white socks another off day on the schedule next week too so three off days over the span of about 10 days for this mariners team which makes things a little easier to manage if they decide they want to be careful with brian woo you know, Bryce Miller is struggling, so he could push past Bryce Miller, but it's not like Wu's debut suggested that that's necessarily the next thing that's going to happen.

I think there's, you know, whereas with Olsen, I think that there's anybody who pitches well gets a rotation spot. I'm not sure that's necessarily true in Seattle, where they have veterans like Marco Gonzalez. They have Chris Flex, and they have a clear shot at staying in the wild card race. I don't think that Brian Wu will necessarily... He could pitch well and go back down, is what I'm saying. And the other thing that I see for Brian Wu will necessarily, he could pitch well and go back down is what I'm saying. And the other thing that I see for Brian Wu,

you know, I don't know if it's, if it's a trick of what happened specifically, like he only pitched two innings, right? So would he, if he had pitched five innings, would we have seen the change up more? You know, would we have seen the curve more? Would we have seen these other pitches more? Because all we did see in the two innings that he threw were the two fastballs and the slider.

So I'm not sure how deep his arsenal is. And then the other thing that really made me nervous was that the fastball, forcing fastball shape wasn't amazing. And the slider is a super sweeper. I mean, like 18 inches, big old frisbee. He didn't get a single whiff on it. He didn't get a single whiff on it. And so I don't know what to do with that.

I don't know what to do with the fact that it's a big old sweeper and the lefties in particular were a problem for him. And we didn't really see him do something different other than fastballs and sliders even to the lefties so I think there's some concern for me there with Brian Wu a little bit more concern than I have with some of the other young arms that we're going to talk about today so Brian Wu was on my radar more for keeper in dynasty leagues in the XFL league that I play in

the one that I co-manage with Ryan Bloomfield we have monthly supplemental drafts we don't do weekly fab we have deep enough rosters because of the minor leaguers and the benches to go four weeks between sets of pickups and then you do a supplemental draft on Sunday nights which I actually like kind of a lot as opposed to weekly fab. It doesn't work as well in redraft as it does in keeper because the rosters are smaller. All that's to say, Wu was someone that was available in that draft because he wasn't previously rostered as a minor leaguer.

It was more of a 2024 play. It was like, let's just pick him up. He's cheap. He'll be an inexpensive keeper if we like what we see. If it doesn't work out, no big deal. We're cutting someone who we're definitely not going to keep to make room for him. he's cheap, he'll be an inexpensive keeper if we like what we see. If it doesn't work out, no big deal. We're cutting someone who we're definitely not going to keep to make room for him. So I think there's, it kind of sounds like there's legitimate reliever risk if it doesn't go well, and given the quality of their rotation, that could happen.

But I think he will get a little bit of a window because the Gonzalez injury is a forearm strain. And they've already had a few other injuries chip away at some of their depth guys. I think it was Easton McGee who got a call up earlier this year. He's hurt. Ray's down for the year. Flexin's already in the bullpen. So there's a lot of moving parts in Seattle

and maybe, just maybe, because they're a team that seems to want to skip pitchers over AAA, maybe there's a chance he sticks around a bit longer. But I do like him better in those long-term formats where he can iron out some of the issues. Some crazy strikeout rates in the minor leagues. Yeah, I was trying to pull up a leaderboard before my internet died,

before I was looking at AA pitchers from the last five seasons who had strikeout rates and walk rates similar to what Brian Wu was doing. There were a handful of disappointing names on there. It was mostly good prospects. The kinds of guys that were underperformers. I mean, Ronzi Contreras has been an underperformer. He was in that group. I think Tobias Myers, who's bounced

around from Cleveland to Tampa Bay to Milwaukee and is still in the minor leagues. He's someone who had some success similar to Brian Wu at that level and it hasn't worked out for him. There was a guy, Isaac Mattson, I believe, for the Angels, who hasn't had it click yet. But I don't know. I mean, I think it's more of a question of, do you trust Seattle to help him continue to refine the arsenal? Because Brian Wu got to the big leagues a lot faster than expected. For a sixth round pick from two years ago,

no one expected him to be in a rotation right now. They may have to find a way to maybe narrow the arsenal for the short term, try to get four or five innings per start. This might be far from the best version of him that we see. I bet you he ends up being a glue guy. He's a guy who they use all his options this year he comes up and he's in different roles he ends up being kind of the long man out of the bullpen you know maybe the guy who takes over for marco gonzalez if you know they're they want to win the game and it's looking a little iffy or whatever you know like i don't i don't necessarily see him as a set it and forget it kind of guy yeah how do you see him compared to maybe gavin stone who has been demoted as we've talked

about who would you be more inclined to bet on in those long-term leagues where both might be available i like him more than stone but i like him a little bit less i think than resolson um i like him a little bit less than another name that we have on the rundown that people are looking at right now, A.J. Smith-Shawver. And Smith-Shawver and Wu, I think, will be used in similar ways this year. You know, will help us get through this season. You know, not necessarily declare one of these rotation spots your own. You know, I just, I see those a little bit crowded in both situations, both win now teams.

They're both players that don't have a ton of innings on their resume, you know? And so, you know, I think there's some, you know, how many innings do we get from this guy? And I don't know that either of them is necessarily like a finished product, quote unquote. And so Smith-Shawver, the reason I like him a little bit better than Wu is the forcing fastball stuff plus is really good. And the slider is average-ish. And the curveball has a ton of movement does not score well by stuff plus but

um you know give me a guy with a great fastball and figuring the rest of the stuff out uh is uh i think a great recipe uh for success and especially in the roles that these guys are gonna have i think it'd be better to have a better fastball. You're going to be in two, three inning roles probably, most likely. And those roles require, blow them away at the fastball and have a good enough secondary. And I see that with Smith-Shawver. He got whiffs on his breaking ball, even though the stuff plus wasn't amazing. I think it's tricky because with the lack of quality starters available in a lot of the deeper leagues that we're playing in,

the multi-inning relievers, the glue guys, could end up being uniquely valuable over these next four months. We have a long way to go. We need innings. We need chances the vulture wins. We need to make ratios better. And if you're getting multiple inning performances twice a week, two, three innings, whatever it might be, a total of five innings in a week from Smith-Shavar or even like Dre Jamison, who's back in the bullpen right now for Arizona, those options could be better most weeks than

your worst starter in some instances, depending on how deep your league is. So I think that's the other part of the equation, aside from how likely is it that this guy's going to stretch out and actually join the rotation. You have to factor that into calculus too, but even if they don't join the rotation, some of these guys can be very productive for us the way they're being utilized. you know what looks like the role but it's he's not performing that well and the model numbers for Soroka aren't aren't great either the the fast the change-up has been flat it has less ride than his sinker and that's been true ever since he's been injured which you know 56 stuff plus maybe that's a miss maybe that's maybe the model is just you know it's a change up it's nine innings you know maybe that's it's not getting but it is very rare in baseball to have a change up that has less drop than your fastball um and so there's something

strange going on there and the results are not great um So I suppose there is a little bit of daylight there for Smith-Shavar to maybe elbow his way past the Dylan Dodds and Jared Schusters of the world. Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? With new Olay Indulgent Moisture Body Wash, you can lather and glow. The 24-hour moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin B3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich indulgent

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No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Step one has already happened. We have some breaking news. If you want to do the riff, I'll leave the window open here. What is the breaking news? Michael Soroka has been sent to AAA.

No way. Yep. David O'Brien from The Athletic. They only gave him two chances. Wow. I mean, teams have stuff plus numbers. They are evaluating players like this. And some part of you could say, it's Mike Soroka.

He's finally healthy. He's got a track record. You've got to leave him up. And then the other part of you could say, it's Mike Soroka. He's finally healthy. He's got a track record. You've got to leave him up. And then the other part of you says, well, he's got a negative K-BB. The Stuff Plus numbers are awful. The WIF numbers are awful. There's a lot of process that's going wrong here as well as results. Yeah, and I don't know how much you want to read into the success

that he was beginning to have at AAA before they brought him back I mean the last 30 days at AAA 386 ERA 118 whip 21k is an 18 and two-thirds but not amazing strikeout or whiff totals right just kind of getting by getting good results without doing it in a dominant sort of way if you you took his name off of those results, I'm not sure that anybody would be pointing to that and be like, ooh, this pitcher's coming up. You could see, I mean, blind resume, I would guess that J.P. France was doing something similar and he didn't get the call until injuries happened, right?

So maybe that's what Mike Soroka is at this point. Maybe he's that extra guy that they can keep stretched out. I don't know if he can fix it on the fly. Maybe he needs a extra guy that they can keep stretched out. I don't know if he can fix it on the fly. Maybe he needs a full healthy offseason to go through some more adjustments before he's going to get back to being the guy that he was. I'm disappointed. I was hoping he'd get a longer window, but Atlanta is an organization making quick decisions. They are not sitting around waiting for things for several months. And we talked about it on the 3-0 show. Memorial Day last Monday tends to be that cutoff

where a lot of teams start to say, okay, this isn't working. Let's make a big adjustment. I was surprised. You told me before the show that Anthony Volpe was available in your TGFBI league. It's a 15-team mixed league. It's a pretty deep league.

He's hitting homers. He's stealing bases. He had a rough May, for sure. But here we are sitting on June 5th, and the Yankees are being patient so far. So you picked them up, so you must have an expectation that they will continue to be patient,

and it probably didn't cost you that much in fab, relatively speaking. So I'm just curious, how did you come to this conclusion and how, what gives you hope for Volpe to start to put more pieces together in the next couple of months? Well, I,

I'm having a little buyer's remorse actually, because, uh, I kind of just thought, you know, if Anthony Volpe came up right now without any of what he'd done, he would cost more than he cost me. He cost me like $100 out of $1,000, right? What was the next highest bid?

Do you happen to remember? $3 less than mine. Okay. So you didn't overpay by the market forces. Yeah. I think I paid, it was $ paid it was 108 to 105 or something so uh you know i it was like almost a keep him honest bid where i was like well i need homers i need steals and if this guy was coming up you know from the miners i would bid on him you know um but now

that i'm looking there's a couple of uh there's a couple of things that are worrisome. You mentioned that his April was better than his May. You kind of look at the rolling graphs, you'll see that he's chasing more and hitting fewer fly balls and striking out more. Those are not good things, all those things. And then I thought, well, at least he's playing a solid defense and he's being what the Yankees need in terms of an everyday shortstop. And he has a minus four outs above average, which is interesting. I mean, I've seen enough Yankees games and highlights,

and I thought he looked pretty good at shortstop overall. I don't know. Maybe I'm being duped by the pin stripes yeah and i just uh i worry that you know isaiah connor filefa has a three outs of average you know and i just i kind of don't think that this team is gonna go backwards like that you know like i they made the decision to take IKF off the position they put the the young guy in and I was there early in the season uh for games I was there for the second and third games of the season and people were excited about Volpe I mean he's a local kid they

were chanting his name it's you know he's a guy they love that everybody wants him to succeed so I kind of just have the feeling he does have a little bit more uh runway and that he's done a little bit of enough uh and he gives them that speed dimension uh that you know with baiter out and uh he's like he's their speedy guy you know they just want him to get on base and start wreaking some havoc on base and play a solid defense i don't i'm not sure he's doing the second half and you know the the chase rates going the wrong direction all that stuff makes me a little nervous that i just blew 100 bucks but at the same time you can blow 100

bucks on anybody and the fact that this guy has retained his role uh is interesting to me i think um you know he's retained it it through some thick and thin. And if they give him another month and he shows some adjustments, I think, and long-term, how do you feel about him long-term? Generally good. I think it's not totally unlike

the optimism I have for Gunnar Henderson, though I would say I feel even better about Henderson. Yeah. It's easy to see the differences. He's showing a little bit more signs of life, and he chases less. But Volpe hits the ball hard, and he runs real fast, and he's a pretty good player. 10.6% barrel rate, so he's making enough hard contact

where he doesn't look overmatched that way. I think it goes back to what you said at the very beginning if if the yankees had decided we need more time with anthony volpe at triple a we want to give him two more months at triple a and make sure that he gets 300 plate appearances in that level he had 99 there the end of last season. The level of excitement upon arrival, even if he had done similar, let's say he got a little better at triple A, kind of split the difference between his double A slash line

and his triple A slash line and give him that same kind of power speed mix. What would the bid have been upon arrival? Triple what you had to pay, right? Yeah, I think so. And I think this goes back to a conversation we've had on a few occasions where you take a really good prospect

and make them struggle for a little bit. Take some shine off. Take some shine off. The projections go pretty hard to the tank in many of those instances. Because they weren't that positive to begin with. Because the projections don't love prospects to begin with. Generally, you're right. Yeah, Kyleucker was a good example of a player like this

where he was so young for the level everywhere he played too and that's that's the case with volpe you look and you say look this this still works the 22 year old in the big leagues so the problem the problem comes from well it's so we're only playing for this season like we're analyzing two different things we're analyzing volpe for the next four months versus Volpe for the next four years. The next four years still look like they're going to be very good. The other part of all of this, it's just the way numbers work. Let's say there's six months in a season, because there are. You could have your worst two months in the first two months.

There are established veterans that do that. There's 30 combinations that you could have for your worst two months because any one of the six months could be your worst, then the remaining five, any one of those five, six times five is 30. They get to the math right. That means 3.5% of the player pool has its worst two months to begin the season.

Those are the players that end up on the waiver wire because in the case of Volpe, you do have to worry about demotion. Young player. It's more viable compared to Ahmed Rosario who's not going to get optioned to AAA and probably isn't going to get put on the bench either just because they're

looking at him as the guy in the final year of a contract, right, before they lose him to free agency. They're going to keep playing him. But these are concerns nonetheless. Yeah, either they're going to keep playing him. These are concerns nonetheless. They're going to be bad and trade him or he's going to get better and be part of the reason they got better. They don't want to kill his trade value and there's not really that much

options that are better. I think here it's not totally unlike the situation in Colorado but the difference is Ezekiel Tovar was horrible in April and showed a lot of growth by comparison in May. He looked more like he belonged in the big leagues in May. It was a 266, 310, 457. It's a 93 WRC plus. You can live with that for a 21-year-old shortstop if you're happy with his defense. I think the Rockies are happy with Tovar's defense,

21-year-old shortstop if you're happy with his defense. I think the Rockies are happy with Tovar's defense. But in both cases, even with the Rockies not contending, they could say, well, he's just struggling too much for too long of a stretch. We're going to send him down. The Yankees are more complicated because they're contending. Every single game matters in terms of trying to win the division, trying to make sure they get into the playoffs. I like both of these players. I trust Volpe a lot more. Volpe's chasing less than Tovar. He's stealing more bases than Tovar. The power looks more legit.

All those things are good. And he's also in a good hitter-friendly environment. Team situation is tougher, but even if he's in the bottom third of this lineup for the next two months, the counting stats are probably better from Volpe than they are from Tovar, if playing time's equal.

Assuming Aaron Judge's toe is okay. We're still waiting for an update on that. It's funny that you mentioned Ahmed Rosario. I took a look at the biggest recovery last year between the first four months and the first two months. The latter four months and the first two months. And Ahmed Rosario is on there the the i think the biggest uh recovery was is pretty obvious is marcus semien he was the biggest

story last year in terms of a player that started out poorly and i just wrote last week in caught looking my um my notes column about how marcus semien was switching teams and there was a lockout, you know, and had young kids where he's waking up at 6am to send them off to school. So just a really, a lot of factors on the personal level that I think contributed to that poor start. And then,

you know, he got to where he gets with his hard work and, uh, and quality and talent that he's got. So, uh, Simeon was one of those, Nathan Lowe,

uh, Nathaniel Lowe was a second. I think maybe there was a little bit of a talent breakout there. Andrew McCutcheon, though, just a veteran that had two bad months and then four good months. But then Ahmed Rosario is right there

behind Julio Rodriguez as guys who had really better second halves. He had a 118 WRC plus in the second half and a 67 in the first two months. And so as much as like we look at these players and we try to like, you know, find these like, you know, process based trends and say, oh, you know, oh, Volpe's chasing more like that's a big problem like do you think there was a lot going on for ahmed rosario in the first two months last year that you were that you would say oh yeah like you know he's about to figure this out you know uh and and

now you look at rosario right now you say well he's striking out too much you know he's his worst uh you know second worst string strike rate of his career, and he's not barreling the ball, and I don't know, man. I wonder, I don't think Brian Rocchio is necessarily better, and I wonder that this player, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this player had another four months

where he hit 270 and hit eight or nine homers and stole 10 bases and ended up with very much the same line as he did last year and that's exactly what all the projections suggest he's going to do hard hit rates as good as it's ever been 45.7 it's a career best hard hit rate so there's some it's got to be some bad luck cooked in there from Ed Rosario so far, even if there are some flaws. The flaws he's showing are flaws that he's shown us in the past.

There's nothing new happening here. Really nothing. I mean, that's why we hew close to projections. At the same time, we try to discern between the different process-based stats to see if like maybe a player is a little bit more likely uh than another player to to make it happen and then the last pit is always the team context which just makes it so hard i mean there's no there's no projection that's going to tell you that rocchio is the uh solution and i would say that if you look at uh

the team usage i don't think that they necessarily think that they necessarily think that they are going to take Rokio and replace Ahmed Rosario with him. When Rokio comes up, I think Rokio has come up this year where he hasn't played and gone back down. Yeah, he's 22. He's a switch hitter. I think FanCrafts has him down for a 34.4 hard hit rate at triple a just one homer in 47 games that level so it's much more doubles 1065 max ev at triple a is that's below average what's going to make brian rocchio a good fantasy player is stealing a lot of bases potentially he's 12 for 12 as a base stealer in 47 games at triple a If he's going to bring 30 steal speed and a good average, decent OBP, and he's going to score runs because he could be atop the order.

They can't afford to put another guy like that in the lineup. I'm sorry. Not with Rosario and Straw. No, he would just replace Rosario, right? If there's a team that's contending, and maybe Cleveland still is, you could replace Rocchio with Rosario and still not be giving up. And I think that's what Cleveland does. You mentioned this, I think, on 3-0 show last week.

You can play the middle, as they often do. Cleveland is Oakland East. I've seen that on Twitter. I think it's RD Top, one of the guys I like to follow for Brewer stuff. He's right. That's a fair way to put it. They run thin budgets. They play both sides.

They are constantly wheeling and dealing and trying to squeeze every ounce out of their 40 man roster as much as any team does that's how they operate so you can trade a med rosario and still be good enough in the central i think yeah oh yeah i mean like just like better player development we're talking about you know pre 2021 yeah yeah so that's kind So that's where they live. And if they make that move, is that a white flag move for the Guardians? No, it's not.

But would it necessarily be Rokio over Arius? I've seen Arius playing all over so far. He's 23. Seems like a utility guy. He strikes out a lot more than they usually like. More barrels. So more like a guy we would like. Doesn't run.

Not amazing barrels. Hits the ball on the ground a little too much. Yeah. Chases a little too much, but young. When you look at his overall body of work, and you go back to 2021 at AAA, he was a 21-year-old at that level, coming off of a lost season, skipping over AA. He had a good year at AAA that season. That was a 115 WRC plus,

which for the age is very good. Yeah, you have to remember that because even when he re-upped and he wasn't as good the next year, he had an 89 WRC plus. We just had that math that was presented to us by Nate Stoltz and we talked about on project prospect that you know in 2022 he's a 22 year old in triple a which the average age is something like 26 27 so that 89 WRC plus is not as bad as it looks this is a you know this is kind of reminding me of uh it's not Isak Parades. It's a guy that... We've talked about the Frankenstein. They take all the best attributes of a player

and smash them all together. You're like, okay, you've shown this here and you showed this other skill here. If you did it all at once, you'd be really interesting. Yeah. If he had his 22% strikeout rate from that AAA year

and he had the walk rates he's shown in the major leagues. And he had his best power numbers. Yeah, he could put together something special. I actually kind of like him. The more I look at him, I see more good. And maybe it's because I'm so frustrated by the other types of hitters that Cleveland has.

I like that they're giving him some playing time. But he could also get passed over for guys that they like a little better. The more well-rounded players, he could be stuck in that glue guy role because they have depth if they ever do that thing that i want them to do which is sort of buy a power bat by collecting some of their prospects together a power bat with team control not some sort of rental you know uh like the eloy jimenez thing we floated on the 30 show that was the other reason why I like RD Top. He suggested the Brewers should swoop in and do that. I didn't suggest

that. Yeah, two teams that have surprisingly bad offenses despite they both have identities. They both have players they like and types that they like.

I could be convinced that both of those ideas are good ideas. Is it a good idea to have a lot of contact hitters? Yeah, sure, that's great. But the power guys that they've tried to supplement with those have not worked out. We talked about Jesse Winker a few weeks ago. He has been awful. I thought that was a good process, but he's just not been the same guy since the surgeries, I think. Yeah, just never made it back healthy.

I mean, as far as your power hitters that do consistent damage, it's basically Rowdy and William Contreras, and then secondary power sources, you get a little from Yelich. Adamas has been hurt, well, he just got hurt recently, but he should be he should be better than he's been so far and you can see their process in the past seems like it's solid like they got Adames

for you know injury starters when they had they had like arms to spare you know they got rowdy on like a claim I feel like it was either a claim or a very minor trade I forget offhand if it was completely free or not.

The Jays squeezed them off the roster because they didn't have room. Yeah, it was a minor trade. Bowden, Francis, and Trevor Richards. Yeah, Trevor Richards. They got a reliever for him. Again, this is twice that they've traded relievers for people

that are contributing maybe more than anybody else in their lineup. And at the same time, they've had a hard time putting together a full lineup. They've had a ton of injuries. So Winker is finally on the IL now. So you add him. Gary Mitchell got hurt earlier this year. All season. Gary Mitchell got hurt all season.

Nothing from Urias. Recently, not getting anything from Adames. That's only been like a week. Tyrone Taylor's back on the IL, and so many injuries on the pitching side, too. This team has been absolutely rocked by injuries between Woodruff, Ashby before that was going to be an important guy, even as kind of the glue guy. They've reached

down to the point. They're starting Julio Teran, dude. Like that, that is unreal. And Colin Ray, both, both of those guys are in the rotation. Oh,

and Adrian Hauser's in the rotation because Eric Lauer and Wade Miley are hurt. They have been crushed by injuries. I've kept it a flow. Okay. You could only do that for so long before everything falls apart. I don't know if there's a lot of internal help coming for the pitching side.

Walk rate's been bad. Ethan Small's moved to the bullpen, so maybe we'll see Small in that multi-inning relief role. I gotta see how they're using him more recently. Gasser's at least a triple-A. Maybe if he had a couple of games in a row with a little bit fewer walks, you could see Gasser

walk rate's been brutal but do you take the chance on the guy with the bad walk rate at least instead of Teran I probably would at some point how comfortable are you throwing Julio Teran at this point I'm not I'm not at all let me see if I've got some model numbers on Gasser yes I do

Gasser let's see here 113 stuff plus on the curveball that's good 100 on the sinker 97 on the cutter 95 on the slider 88 on the change up 85 on the four seam so it doesn't love his four seam but I love that he has six pitches and i see an out pitch in the curve ball uh and i bet you the slider is fine even though the stuff plus is mediocre so it's an interesting it's an interesting grouping though uh none of the location pluses are above average in fact they're all pretty bad yeah the uh the other part of the Brewers that I think I keep going back to is

with all the problems they've had and being a team that has an 88 WRC plus, I think, entering play on Monday, 25% K rate as a team, everyone's clamoring for Ellie De La Cruz to get the call up from the Reds. No one's clamoring for Jackson Chorio to get that look

from the Brewers, but if you fancy yourself a team that should be in the playoffs and you want to win that division and you are depleted by injuries the way they have been, you have to at least consider it if you feel good about how he's playing at the AA level. Just skip him over AAA entirely or give

him two weeks, three weeks at AAA and make sure he doesn't fall on his face and then give him the call. Yeah, he's not going to turn 20. You can't wait until he turns 20. He's not turning 20 this year. I would say that the last time I looked at his WRC Plus in AA this year, it was worse. So I think he's on his way. And if we're doing this math again, I mean, he's 19 in AA.

Supposedly, you would add 100 points of WRC Plus for him to get him to average. He would actually have 199 WRC Plus. My favorite Jackson Churio home run so far was like a 99 up at the top of the zone that he hit out opposite field. I was like, that's awesome. Let's do that. A little bit outside

swinging strike rates, but could be somebody that is just a bit of a free swinger that still hits for power. Man, this is going to be fun. He's going to be a fun player. If they call him up soon, growing pains are clearly part of it.

But he's going to be a really fun player to watch for a long time. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... life's a trip make the most of it at best western you've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself you live for experience and lead by example you want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you this is for you the canadian armed forces a message from the government of canada i also think they have two by low starters on their team um i continue to think uh cordon burns is going to figure it out and and uh he's going to strike more people out to be commensurate with his stuff numbers and um and i think i've seen we've seen a little bit of that um recently and then i

you know there's another name on there that uh we've loved forever that i think is a buy low opportunity that both of those guys getting back on on on uh on plane uh could be could be great uh freddie peralta looks uh like not great by results, but all of the projections say better is coming, and the stuff is there. They need it badly. I mean, I'm patiently keeping him in my lineup start after start, even when he hits the occasional speed bump.

It's not great so far. 462 ERA, 141 whip. 23% K rate is a career low in the face of a walk rate that's still normal. Home run rate that's become a problem. That's not usually an issue at all for Freddie. It's how he gets away with that slightly elevated walk rate. I think the most encouraging sign of all, fastball velo. 94.7 for him working as a starter as a career high for freddie peralta

that to me is a big part of the answer to the why would you be optimistic about him going forward based on what you've seen i saw your projections with jordan rosenblum sub 4era 27 k rate the rest of the year and he's got a 100 location plus so i think that's a slight improvement for freddie as well there's some underlying adjustments he seems to have made that maybe are going to make him a better starter in the long run. So I think this is important for the Brewers, but something that we can probably try and take advantage of maybe via trade in leagues that allow us to make trades. He's a real tension, I think, between, you know, he has these two dominant pitches in the fastball and slider. And then the idea that he wants to turn the ball over,

he wants to turn the lineup over, he wants to go deeper into games, he wants to be a starter starter, not just a five-inning reliever or whatever. So he is throwing the curve and the change a little bit more than he has in the past. And adding that together means he's throwing the fastball and slider less, but it's all to good cause. And I think that there could be a good mix for him in there where he's like, okay, the changeup's going to be more of a show me. The curve is going to be my third pitch.

The changeup's going to be a show me, and that's how I'm going to avoid some of these homers. So there's going to be, I think, a little bit of a mixed tweak that I would guess in the next few weeks, and we'll see that strikeout rate get back to normal and get some nice zeros out of them. My hope is that by the time I get back to Wisconsin, I didn't mean to suggest that I have a big move

and then not tell people where I'm going. I'm moving back to Wisconsin. Everything's great. California's wonderful. California's been great to me and my family. Very expensive. It's very expensive. The childcare alone, we started doing more math. We knew this was coming. It's like, yeah, maybe the third year

in California is going to be a little too expensive to be fun. That was the final solution so we're going back to wisconsin which is is great uh they brought back buffalo tenders at culvers which is the reason why i left in the first place so now i can move back buffalo tenders are huge always way easier as a child if you're near family i mean that was a big part of our move we were in in new york for 10 years and we didn't have any family nearby that could help

with a baby. And we just looked around and said, I don't know, it's going to be pretty hard. Everything you like about a place, if you don't have a kid, completely changes, I think, when you have one. So anyone who's experienced that knows. I love going back to New York now. I'm like, there are no kids? Yeah, I love this place. We'll probably come back and visit several times in the years ahead because it's been so good to us. So the move is only a month away. So, yes, second time in three years that I'm doing the big cross-country move. This year, my dad drew the shorts raw and gets to drive with me back.

So, yeah, that's going to be a lot of fun. But the question we had that actually kind of connects to Freddy Peralta comes from – oh, no, there was one other thing. it kind of connects to Freddy Peralta comes from, Oh no, there was one, there was one other thing. I hope that Freddy Peralta has improved enough to where I don't feel like I'm going to get kicked out of the supper clubs and bars when he pitches. Cause I think I got the ass so bad one night when Freddy Peralta was getting

squeezed in a start. And part of it was his own fault. Cause his command has always been kind of shaky. I was almost asked to leave when I went out for my fish fries, getting belligerent about it. I was asked to leave by my family, not by the establishment itself. I'm like, you're unpleasant right now. Why don't you just take your food to go and go eat in the car if you're going to be this much of a jerk? So I'm just hoping Freddie has grown to the point where I can still go out to eat with my family and not have it ruin my night.

But the question we had about location plus from Olaf is location plus shape adjusted. For example, does the model look at a four seam and say, these are good places for four seams, or does it look at the shape of the four seam and say, these are good locations for four seams that act like this one? I guess the differences could be subtle, but I would imagine that for a fastball with insane ride and velo, you can get away with going higher out of the zone, or maybe for a certain type of gyro, you can always stick it in the low and away pocket. And it's incredible even without typically great shape. Yeah. Uh, this is on the list of things to do. It's a great question. We do not do it right now. it's a great question we do not do it right now we do not shape adjust um and uh by pitch type adjusting which we do we are shape adjusting but uh not in a refined way as he's pointing out so

yeah generally four seamers have more ride and so you can get a general four seam uh map but there are kind of more two plane four seamers and you know super riders and and and then are kind of more two-plane four-seamers and, you know, and the role, the intertwined role of stuff and command and how it might be impossible to separate them, but do we really, like, do we do want to separate them? Another way of saying this is, are you, by shape-adjusting your location plus, actually bringing stuff plus into your location plus?

And if you are doing that are you muddying the waters or are you creating a better stat and some of that just comes out in the validation process you say well our new location plus with the shape adjusting is better so we're just going to go with it that's fine that's a way to do it that's that's probably how we will do it uh does it make the how we will do it uh does it make the model more predictive does it uh does it is it stickier this way you know uh that's that'll be something that we'll look at but there is a philosophical question it's like you know do you can we are trying to separate these things to stuff and command and like really trying to keep them separate and you know Is shape adjusting location plus

kind of bringing them closer back together again? But a lot of times you can just be quantitative about it and just be like, does it make the model better? Then I like it. And I have an inkling that it might make the model better. I think of it a lot of times with Adam Adovino. Adam Adovino's big old sideways breaking ball. Does that have

different location pluses than Logan Gilbert's little tight power slider? There's definitely something there and it's a great question. Alright, thanks for writing in Olaf. I got a few other questions about the pitcher rankings. A few guys

that popped up at various spots that I think are challenging to evaluate right now. Aaron Nola fell to number 26 in the rankings that went up. And if you haven't checked them out and you don't have a subscription, you can do that. $2 a month gets you in the door at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. The main question I have about Nola is where did the strikeouts go? Aaron Nola has shown more variance than I would expect for a pitcher with his skills. By results, you look at the ERAs and whips that he's thrown up during his career and you're like, wow, the good years are even better than you'd expect them to be and the disappointing years are worse than they should be. That's probably a whole conversation unto itself, but 21.5 k rate

this year for Aaron Nola that's a big drop from where he's been for most of his career it's the lowest strikeout rate he's had since he debuted all the way back in in 2015 so you pair that with the jump in homers compared to last season and quickly see how the era is now up in the high fours but the strikeout, do you see those coming back from Nola? What's been the problem for him these first two months? Well, his fastball velocity is down.

The way I've been explained is that he's doing it on purpose. It's his way of dealing with the pitch clock um but uh i see that as a problem and uh i'm beginning to to suspect that he sees it as a problem too because it is ramping back up so he he was comfortably 91.5 and low 92s until about five starts ago.

And the last five starts have gone 93.3, 91.5, again, 92.5, 92.3, 93.4. So a little bit of an inkling of like, maybe he's getting tired of these results and is going to throw harder. But that's something that's sort of secondary we can't the machines can't see that so the machines see lower fastball velocity he has the lowest stuff plus of anybody in my top 30 um other than zach efflin who's uh got a great home park compared to arenola and uh and then and the the the projected strikeout rate is about the same as its actual strikeout rate.

So I just looked across that and said, oof, like this is, Stuff Plus is capturing this. This is a guy who has, he wasn't ever a guy that had, you know, 120 Stuff Plus overall. But this is down for him. And so I see stuff that's down, projections that are down,

bad home park. I mean, if you're running a team, he's still a top 30 pitcher. He's still your ace. It's okay. But you might also say, hey, I don't know, man. Maybe you got to at least sit the 93. Yeah, I think when I look at Nola right now, I mean, the thing that he's always done well

is have a pretty deep arsenal. His location strategies look good as far as like where he's throwing stuff. This all makes sense. We popped up the Savant page on YouTube if you haven't been watching there, but it doesn't look like a location problem. It is interesting that...

He's always been good at this, yeah. We probably have other pitchers who have adjusted their own velocity. They've taken a little off in hopes of not wearing down with the pitch clock and now we're probably far enough in. If you've had a dozen starts

like Nola has and you say, this is just not going the way I thought it would, you'd make those individual sorts of adjustments. The optimism probably comes from a very long track record, great location, all the ingredients other than Velo still being there, and the trust and belief that the Velo drop is in fact by control and seeing those little upticks more recently maybe give you that extra confidence you need. But even if, I was asked about this maybe a week ago on the Roto-Wire XM show, and I said, well, if you look at Nola in this package, if the Velo doesn't go back up, he's probably

an SP3 or an SP4 the rest of the way. In this environment, that's still someone you're going to use just about all the time. Yeah. It's still good, even though it's not what you hoped for, not what you paid for back on draft day. And it's really tough to like, I would, it would be tough for me to sell low even though i'd even though i haven't ranked lower than maybe some people uh because it's useful he's healthy he's there he's gonna get your wins you know like like what are you gonna get back if you were gonna sell low like i think the most likely thing is

somebody would be trying to sell high and sending you like bryce miller and you know what i mean like two sort of guys that you can't depend on as much in terms of projections right like at least aaron nola's projectable veteran you know gonna be there they're not gonna send him down you know what i mean like there's you know he's he's gonna be there and uh for what's worth my projections are not actually that far from anybody else's. We had a straight four ERA and a 25% strikeout rate. We've got a 3-9-1 from Zips with a 26% strikeout rate. So we're just a little bit more pessimistic. But, you know, you can see that in our projections, it gets to fours really quickly. He's the first four, you know, in my rankings projected wise.

So I did push him a little bit higher than, you know, an Eflin is a 391 or Joe Musgrove is a 386. I have him higher than those guys. But you also see that by the time you're in the mid 30s in my rankings, everybody's over four. You also see that by the time you're in the mid-30s in my rankings, everybody's over four. You have to, on some level, just recalibrate and think, a 3-9-1, a four, that's okay. The other pitcher I thought we should talk about today,

maybe there's time for two, but there's one for sure. Nathan Evaldi has been excellent. I just imagine he's pitched so well, and the team is playing really well, so the team context is probably better than we thought going into the season. It's really hard not to push him into the top 25. I got some feedback like that. But when you look at the underlying skills, he's been this guy before.

This is what healthy Nathan Evaldi looks like. And I think you could start to argue, though. You could say, well, this is just a great home run rate. This is a very good pitcher with good skills who's also having a nice run of luck on homers. And that's made him play at this elite, elite level. And the other part of this is like, in my mind, he's one of those players that I'm always wrong on his age.

Every single time I look at the age column, like he's, wait, he's only 33. He's not 36. He's not 37, 38. He's 33. But but he's an old 33 he's an old 33 i mean just last year we saw him start out really well and then the the fastball velocity just declined over the entire season we've seen him uh multiple times you know surgery and and and pain pain and missed time. So some part of this, and I think a huge part of these rankings,

if you disagree, I think often the source of the disagreement is how many innings are you expecting the rest of the way? How much health are you expecting the rest of the way? And in that case, he started out 96. He was doing some 97s. His last game was 95-3. You know, is that, you know, he started out last year 98s and 97s.

And then just about the time June started, 96, 94, 94, 94, 94, never got above 95 again. So there is, I know it sounds a little bit like, oh, he's a slow starter or he's a bad finisher. A lot of that stuff is not predictive. But generally what I'm saying is this is an oft injured guy who's had great stretches like this before and uh you know has generally not been very sturdy and so that's baked into the projections a little bit for me if you were going to go the challenge trade route would you offer evaldi if you had him to get Aaron Nola which who I have higher you've Nola ranked higher right I mean the velocity trends are are going the right way for Nola and the wrong way for Evaldi

and I have Nola ranked higher I have Nola giving more innings I have Nola giving more strikeouts I have Nola getting more wins. So, yes. It's tough. It's just tough, though. It's tough to actually do it because of the success. Because you're looking at, you're staring at a 2-2 ERA. You see the numbers, you're like, wow, I'm giving this away and I think it's the right process, but it doesn't make it any easier

to actually do it. The way I always make it easier for myself is to just add two more players to the deal. Yeah, right. You balance it out by getting something else. I'm going to send you Eovaldi and this hitter, and you're going to send me Nola and a better hitter. And then you might win on both parts. Yeah.

And then I also feel better about trading with the guy with the two ERA. I didn't get all the way through the comments on the rankings, but I wonder if anyone was asking you about the Michael Kopech turnaround and whether or not we could start to believe in that. He came in at number 61 in those ranks. Last four starts, a 205 ERA, a.57 whip, and a 38 to 4 strikeout to walk ratio.

Just three homers allowed. The thing that caught my eye, though, digging a little more closely into the schedule was Royals rode against the Guardians. Home against the Angels was the one in which he got hit a little bit. Miami next, I think. Yeah, it's a good run. And Tigers, home against the Angels was the one in which he got hit a little bit. But he's got Miami next, I think. Yeah, it's a good run.

And Tigers, home against the Tigers. So three out of four at home, three out of four easy matchups for Kopech. But okay, making your layups, if you're not, if something's wrong. Was he Miami next? I think, what does he have next? I'm going to look.

I liked his next matchup. But yeah, what you were saying, is it just matchups? I think it's more than just matchups, though. This is a level of pitching well that's not just beating up on bad teams. I think this is a guy that's also fixed some of the issues he was having earlier this season.

How much more would you need to see before you start to trust Kopech again and nudge him back up? Because I think at his absolute best, I saw him as kind of a top 30 starting pitcher. And it's not difficult to imagine him getting back to that level if the walk issues he was having earlier in the season are truly fixed. A lot of threes, fours, a five and a six all sprinkled in there in the first eight starts

or so. But the control being better is, I think think a huge part of why he's turned things around recently and that's and that's why uh that's why i'm buying is you know this is a guy who's always had good stuff plus and you know 114 stuff plus it's he's the got the highest stuff plus uh south of 42 in my rankings you know um and that was that always had me pushing him up more. The reason I didn't push him up even more than I did was that the projections, the PPERA projected was 444, and I think that has a lot to do with the park factors

and past results as well as, you know, poor command. But here's a guy with bad knees that, you know, seems like they're feeling fine and he's commanding the ball better so um yeah i could push him i could push him a little harder into uh into the 50s i mean i think you could have an interesting would you rather between him and tanner hauck um maybe interesting would you rather between him and clark schmidt who you know also has good stuff plus numbers and some up and down results. But I do think that once you start pushing him to the low 40s,

if you made me do a would you rather between him and Blake Snell or Marcus Stroman or Taj Bradley, I'm more likely leaning to those latter names than Michael Kopech, I think. I think I'm only Bradley. I think that's the cluster where I'd have him. I think Bradley over Kopech is where I'd be a little more comfortable with Bradley because the control looks better. Kyle Braddish versus Kopech is tough.

Kyle Braddish is tough. He started turning around in the second half of last year, pitching well right now. He's not a great fastball. I think you're always just nervous with a not-a-great-fastball guy. You're like, it's an elite breaking ball, but every once in a while he'll get keyholed and they'll just go off on the fastball.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. I'm thinking about in the future doing some study in the offseason about the stickiness of fastball forcing fastball stuff plus year to year if that's a uh something that should be emphasized more on the projections especially year to year um if players with good fastball uh for uh stuff pluses um are better bets as their mixes move and change around them you know what i mean like um if if uh that should be somewhat more emphasized if we should start picking apart the per pitch type stuff pluses in our projections and weighting them more that's not something we do yet you have to remember this is we're three years into stuff plus existing in this form um and we

have we're in the first year of projections. But that's the exciting thing that projections can do for you, is start to pull apart some of the stuff we're talking about and kind of put that, ensconce that in something that's more regimented and weights these things year to year. But I do have my eye on Fastball Stuff Plus as something that might be slightly more important than the rest of the package sometimes.

Very cool. We're going to move on from pictures, get to a couple mailbag questions before we sign off. We had one from Kevin. Kevin writes that he is a travel registered nurse, and we get him through a two-and-a-half-hour weekly commute across the state of Michigan. That's awesome. Great work, Kevin. Glad we could help make those drives a little bit easier. Kevin wants to know, what is your take on Jazz Chisholm's future outlook?

I'm in a 12-team Dynasty Keeper League. Would it be out of line to think I could get one of these guys straight up for Jazz? He's got Bobby Miller, Tanner Bybee, Dylan Lesko, Gavin Williams, Gavin Stone, Tyler Soderstrom, Nick York, Colt Keith, and Oswald Peraza. I think in a dynasty league, Jazz is probably more valuable than just about everybody on that list. I mean, I think you'd be moving Jazz at a relative low point since he's hurt right now. I still think he's a player you want to have

on your team in the long run. I think we've seen enough good underlying skills, even though there's still a lot of swing and miss, to be generally optimistic. And I think the other part of what we've seen enough good underlying skills, even though there's still a lot of swing and miss, to be generally optimistic. I think the other part of what we've seen from Jazz is Esteban Rivera over at Fangraphs had a nice breakdown of how well he's transitioned into center field. He does look very good out there. I think he plays up the middle. You're not worried about playing time.

We're seeing power. We're seeing speed. about playing time we're seeing power we're seeing speed and even if he's always going to be a higher k rate sort of player he barrels up enough balls to get away with it and he draws enough walks to not be a liability in obp and fall in the order even though the obp has run a tad low through his first thousand big league plate appearances yeah 25 i think you can still play the frankenstein game and be pretty excited about how you could come out with this. I mean, right now he's showing his best chase rate of his career. If he puts together the best chase rate of his career

with the best barrel rate of his career, I mean, you could have a really special season. He's the only guy on that list that I think is capable of an MVP-type season. And so I'm going to keep this around a little while longer, at least to sell high versus low. And the other thing that is funny to me, though, is I did have a trade in one of my leagues that made me super angry where last year, Jazz was traded for some prospects that I didn't think were quite up to the value of of jazz and maybe for a second want to quit the league and i was pretty angry and in some part of it is

jealousy like oh i kind of wish i had offered two lesser prospects for jazz and had jazz right now uh part of it is we just didn't see eye to eye about jazz's future that other owner thought you know this is a guy who struggled to keep a 300 obp that just had a 325 obp for one season um you know i'm selling high on this guy you know and uh i think that's fascinating because it's uh his his viewpoint on it could be right and i could be wrong i mean we've we now have uh four seasons uh four seasons of major league data and only one of them is really comfortably clear 300 ovp um but uh I don't know the athleticism is superb and you're just hoping a little bit of learned experience in games and you can see some of that in the chase rate,

just as that learned experience goes hand in glove with his athleticism, that there really could be a special season in here. I think you could probably justify trading Jazz in a situation like the one Kevin described in his email. If you were playing for this season, so you couldn't really wait for him to get healthy. He's close to coming back though. You take jazz and you get back a young pitcher that makes you better. Bobby Miller looks legit. Bobby Miller looks like he's top 40 pitcher. But then I want like an Altuve or something back too. I want like an old guy that's going to be

better. Give me an old player that I trust to fill in that spot that doesn't have a lot of long-term value, but has plenty of short-term value because then at least i'm covering the jazz spot in a way where i'm like happy with what i'm getting from the hitter in that place and then i've got the extra thing that i need that could be a good long-term keeper that'd be the only way i'd really think about trying to move jazz chisholm in a trade because i don't write we don't recommend usually trading for pitching but in this case if you were like jazz for altubin bobby miller is that is my like is that crazy i don't think that's crazy jazz is the youngest guy the most upside the other guy could be thinking i'm trading a pitcher for a hitter like a long-term hitter you know maybe you'd have to throw something into that to make it work but you probably got to

balance it out a little bit with the second player going back but that's the framework i'd be thinking about if i were going to make a deal like that. John wanted to know, is it time to trade away Luis Robert? He's playing well, and it might be time to get ahead of the next IL stint. I think with Luis Robert, it's similar to the problems we've seen for Jazz, but better overall results. A little over 1,000 career plate appearances now. Low-ish OBP at 329, but not problematic good batting average so if you're in a typical league that uses average 283 career at hitter is great and we're seeing enough barrels we're still seeing pretty erratic oh swing percentages that's just part of who he is part of the good includes that process so that's not going to change. I'm wondering with Luis Robert,

where the stolen bases are at right now. Yeah. Two for three and stolen bases in 58 games. Like that's the missing part of his game this year. That's where my, my eye went. And, uh,

you know, he is, uh, this is the second slowest season in terms of times to first. It's his, his, uh, told his,

uh, you know, he's seems to be slowing down a little bit compared to when he first got into the league however his sprint speed is 82nd percentile still you know so he's not slowed up all the way it must be an idea of i want to stay on the field and stolen bases are just another way I can get hurt. However, if the stolen bases aren't there and I don't think the plus OBP is going to be there most seasons, you are talking about a guy who's a little bit too uncomfortably profiling like a 260, 30 homer hitter with five stolen bases. You know what's strange to me about Luis Robert is that he shows clear high-end raw power.

That's never been a question, right? We have the barrel rate, and that's been there every year. That's good. It's like he has a mysteriously low hard hit rate right now, 33% hard hit rate overall. When he hits it hard it's it's only in the air it's only in the air which i mean that's not a bad thing it's more just a strange thing uh-huh so he's a really complicated player to figure out like his strikeout rate has been very different in different years but his whiff rate has always been bad yeah so it's like do you

just average everything out and say the answer is in the middle that the the career numbers the 24 k rate and the five percent walk rate those 280 average or the 330 obp right and that kind of gives me more of like an adelece garcia result defense is going to keep him in the game every day so long as he's healthy. There's no playing time concern. He's 25. I'm not sure I'm selling. The 25-year-old version of a guy that we had a hard time

believing in because he did it at 28. It's like, well, okay, this actually can make some sense. Adeliz Garcia, after 1,300 played appearances in the big leagues, has actually started to make better swing decisions too. He's down to a 31.2% O swing this year. Yeah, and Robert's O swing is the best of his career.

I kind of think Robert is a guy that I do want for the next three years, and then I'm not sure I want him at 30. Sure, and he's 25, so like you said, there's plenty of time to get good value here. I don't really see this as a sell-high. I actually see this as an opportunity to get really good production and kind of wait and see what happens with those steals. I don't have a good reason beyond what you suggested.

It's either going to be good or great, and that's a good place to be. Yep, so thanks a lot for that question, John. Last question came from Eric. What are our thoughts on Taylor Ward? Was last year just a flash in the pan? Oh, no, we're checking back in with Taylor Ward. I'm always like, no, he's still doing everything good process-wise, but it's a little bit uncomfortably boring.

Well, okay. And he's 29, so he does not have age on his side. Still hitting the ball hard, not barreling it the way he did last year or the year before that. Chasing more than he has. Mickey Moniak's there to take away some of the playing time, potentially. In a platoon scenario, Moniak would play more if they'd like him and trust him. The alternatives in Eric's case were, this is a points dynasty situation, Jesus

Sanchez, who's actually hitting the ball hard and doing some good things. Striking out a lot. Jake Fraley, who looks pretty good overall, and Trevor Larnik. I think Fraley would be the swap for me if I was going to make a move. One thing that's a problem is that you see missed games on

Taylor Ward's game log. Games where he's pinch hitting, and then fully missed games, Taylor Ward's game log. You know, games where he's pinch hitting. And then fully missed games, I think, too. That's not good. No, that is not. And then you think about that outfield, and you're like, well, Trout and Renfro most days when they're healthy. And so it does become a kind of

Taylor Ward versus Moniak thing. And this is one, though, like the results so far this year look worse than they should be. I'm not talking about X stats. I'm saying if you covered up. Yeah, for Taylor Ward, if you cover up the slash line. And you're looking at a strikeout rate like that, and a whiff rate like that, and a barrel rate like that.

Yeah, you would expect 260, 335, 470. And no, you're 241, 308, 354. Projections still like them. So are you trusting the projections with Taylor Ward? The only

difference for me with Fraley is that Fraley steals some bases. I think that's where you get a little extra. I think they're actually kind of similar in terms of lower. And I love Jesus Sanchez's batted ball stance. Is it finally happening for Jesus Sanchez? We've asked that question half a dozen times. And for what it's worth, he's kept his strikeout rate under 30% two years. We're going on 420 plate appearances now where it's under 30%.

So he might be at 26% to 27%. played appearances now where it's under 30 so he might be at 26 to 27 like jesus sanchez in a dynasty situation you're getting four years back i don't know sanchez is maybe the the way i'm going it's for me it's sanchez if you're playing the long game it's fraley if you're playing the immediate who helps me the most right now game yeah Yeah. And in either case, Ward is maybe third place. Or second place to whatever your needs are. In like an AL only, I would love to trade for Taylor Ward right now, I think. Yeah, and if he pops up in a 15-team league,

we ever wire him. But then I don't have Jesus Sanchez available as an alternative. Sanchez is really interesting right now. He's missed time with an injury, so it's only 97 plate appearances this year, but these are similar skills to last year with a few improvements sprinkled in there as well.

If this is the everything is clicking, that gives the Marlins a pretty dangerous bat, at least on the big side of a platoon. Maybe they won't play much against lefties because they don't have to, but maybe it finally is happening. I just said this in a bad way about Robert, but Robert was expected to be kind of a 30-30 guy,

but I see Sanchez as a guy who can hit 260 with 30 homers and five stolen bays. Yep, that will work, and underlying tools have always been there. So this is the time to get in if you're going to take a chance on Jesus Sanchez, that is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. Got lots of great stuff. We did it. The internet held up the gods of internet. Yes,

I will. I will withhold my praise until after the, after the internet provides a chance to upload the episode for people to listen to, but very encouraging that we didn't have to splice multiple files together. That's way too much behind the scenes. You can find, you know,

on Twitter at, you know, Sarah's, you can find me at Derek for hyper. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Take care.