Rates & Barrels - Anthony Volpe's Big Swing & Hitters That Missed Their Projections in 2024

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Anthony Volpe's huge Game 4 -- including a grand slam -- that may help the Yankees turn the World Series around as they continue to stave off elimination. Plus, they dig into several hitters that missed their 2024 season projections in both direction, looking for overperformers who had real breakouts, and underperformers with rebound potential in 2025.  Rundown 1:27 The Anthony Volpe Game & Volpe's Long-Term Ceiling 12:40 Austin Wells' Insurance Homer & Eighth-Inning Runs Saved Luke Weaver's Workload? 16:22 White Sox Hiring Will Venable as Manager; Offseason Targets? 26:58 Hitters that Missed Projections: Underperformers -- Long-Term Fallers, or Rebound Targets? 42:58 Hitters that Missed Projections: Overperformers -- Breakouts, or Players Bound for a Downturn in 2025? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Smells so good. Christine, have you ever bought something and thought, wow, this product actually made my life better? Totally. And usually I find those products through Wirecutter. Yeah, but you work here. Yeah, that's true. I do. We both do. We're the hosts of the Wirecutter show from the New York Times.

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Each week, we'll talk to someone from our team of 140 journalists about the very best product picks in every category. Plus, tips, tricks, and hacks that go beyond the products, because we don't just want to recommend great gear. We want to solve your everyday problems. And trust me, we have the expertise to do just that. Listen to The Wirecutter Show, hosted by me, Kyra Blackwell, and me, Christine Sear-Closette, available wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Wednesday October 30th. Derek the Ripper, Enos Saris here with you on this episode. We get you caught up on a few things that happened in game four of the World Series.

The Yankees got on the board, the offense woke up, we'll dig into a few possible longer term implications connecting to game four. Of course, many of you will hear this episode as that game is beginning or after it has started. So we have a lot of other things we're gonna talk about, including Will Venable going to the White Sox to be their new manager.

We'll talk about the other off-season moves that might be on tap for a club that is deep into a rebuild. We're also going to take a look at some over and under performers looking back at the full season projections for hitters, players that went way under, that disappointed us, players who went way over that surprised us, try to figure out what is next for several of those players. If you join our Discord, you can do that with the link in the show description. Be sure to do that.

We'll have a chat going again during a game five on Wednesday night. You know, let's begin with a few takeaways. The Yankees win game four. Freddie Freeman homered again. So it's now six consecutive games in the World Series that he has homered. All four games of this series, two from the previous World Series he played in. That is a major league record. But the story was the Anthony Volpe, right?

This was the Anthony Volpe game, the type of game you dream about growing up as a kid, especially as a kid, it was a Yankees fan doing it in front of the home fans, getting your team back on the board, maybe creating a turning point for the entire series in the process. Yeah. I mean, just a, uh, incredible grand slam for Anthony Volpe, a incredible game for him. I thought he was aggressive on the base pass.

He knocked a ball loose. Um, you know, it sliding into second with his head without his helmet. It was, um, that was a little bit lucky because the throw beat him, but he was being aggressive and, um, you know, being everything that a lot of other players on the Yankees can't be, you know, we've talked about this a little bit that jazz and him represent youth and energy in a way that, um, you don't expect out of, you know, somebody like Juan Soto, even though Juan Soto is young, you know, he doesn't, he does not fast.

He's not a good defender, you know, so Volpi and Jazz have a little bit more of that, like ability to bring an all around game to the table. And, um, you know, I think there's a few things stand out to me about that pitch if you, if you looked at the highlight. He threw it to where the catcher set up so i don't think it was a mistake it didn't move as much as hudson's pitches usually do it had about two inches less drop but what but i think he was throwing a get me over slider. He was throwing a zero zero steal a strike slider. And the reason I say that is because, uh, the league swung at 30% of first pitches this year, which is too low.

I think, you know, there's a lot of fastballs on first pitches that you don't see again. Um, and the Volpe swung at first pitches 20% of the time. And in the playoffs, Van The Volpe has been even more, uh, or even less aggressive. And you've seen his walk rate kind of soar in the playoffs. So I think, um, Dan Hudson and his catcher were thinking. This is going to be a strike one. And the reason he sets up on the inside for that slider is he doesn't want to set up on the outside and have the slider miss on the outside.

This is a, this is a steal your strike. And, um, we know that throwing sliders, you know, to the arm side, as opposed to the glove side, sometimes changes their movement. And I think the reaction from Hudson was so immediate, just as soon as he saw, like he didn't even turn around or anything, like he was immediately started screaming into the ground. And I think that's partially because maybe he just knew

from the sound of the contact, a lot of times you can just know, but also the fact that Volpe swung. You know, if you throw it and you see him swinging, you're like, oh crap, like already that's not what we wanted. So I think that's, there's something going on there. What, what I take away from the hitter side is just, I think it's, and they Volpe is just a really fascinating case for next year. There's a, you know, there's people who have watched them all year in New York

that have sort of declared that he's a zero at the plate. It's now a 1290 plate appearances with an 84 WRC plus during the regular season. Most even defenders of Anthony Volpe in the Yankees, uh, Twitter sphere, uh, seemed to lead with his defense and say he's a fine player, but he's no, he's no offensive, uh, you know, middle of the lineup bat. And he's just going to be there for defense while he's young or whatever. And I don't know. I think that there's, we've talked about this a little bit, but I think

there's enough of a toggle where I think there's two different Anthony Volpe's in there, two different swings he's shown in 2023 and 24, that if he can put them together and, and, and this postseason, I think he's showing that he can, and I think there's another level. So you know, in his first year, he had a 41% ground ball rate, lifted the ball well, 9% barrel rate, 174 ISO, 28% strikeout rate. He comes back the next year, he lets the ball travel. His pull rate goes from 46% to 32%.

His barrel rate goes from 9% to 32%. His barrel rate goes from nine to 3.9. His strikeout rate goes from 27.8 to 22.6. So, and his ISO goes from 174 to 121. So Anthony Volpe, you know, sacrificed, you know, for, for contact, let the ball travel. On that pitch, daddy hit the grand slam. He was on Volpeon. Well, he showed us something that he wasn't doing for most of this year, but that he, maybe he's been able to do in the past.

And I think there might not be in baseball. There may not be a more difficult situation to be in than to be an elite prospect at shortstop in the Yankees organization and then add the complication of growing up. Be a Yankee fan growing up and like all that. So not only do you have the constant comparisons to Jeter like automatically from growing up, you know, having watched him and all that, like you, you also grew up in the era of prospects getting more attention than ever. So this would have been hard 20 years ago, but it's even harder today.

People were watching your perfect game at bats. Heck yeah, they were. So think about this for a second. Jeter broke in, he was a rookie in 1995, only played 15 games. First two full seasons though, he was 22 and 23 years old. This was a 96 and 97. And he was a very good player right away. A 106 WRC plus and a 110.

Better than the 80s we're seeing from Volpe right now. I think you and I would agree, and maybe many of our listeners would agree, that it was a little easier to break into the league in the 90s than it is right now. The quality of stuff that you see is just off the charts good. There were great pitchers then. I think the things like the scouting reports, I think a lot of times when a

rookie came up, they're like, okay, you know, throw him low and away until he proves he can do something there and then we'll then we'll have a book on him eventually. And now it's like, no, we have stack cast and AAA like we know where all his hot zones are. We've got, you know, we've got a whole scouting report, you know, on this rookie from day one. Right.

And this is, I'm not trying to besmirch the quality of baseball in the nineties. I'm just saying it's more difficult now because of all of these other factors. And if we consider that, then we have to be more patient. And even then, if you look at Jeter's first two years, you say, okay, 106, 110, those first two full seasons, he found the next gear in year three. 10 those first two full seasons he found the next gear in year three it was a 128 wrc plus a 156 and a 133 in years three four and five so even for a player that good in that era to get to the peak sort of level it took some time volpe's been young for the level everywhere he's played the glove keeps him in the lineup every single day we talk all the time about the

the benefits you get as a hitter when your playing time is not going up and down. Volpi's got that part locked in. So yeah, I could see where you wanted Frankenstein, some of the approach things he's done, put it all together and say, yeah, of course there's one more level there. And I would agree with that just based on the benefits of more time and experience in the big leagues. I don't know if it's superstar, you know, 30-30 type ceiling, but I think you can get average power and speed all at once. I think he has shown us enough to believe Anthony Volpe has a ceiling like that. Whether the comps to Jeter ever go away and

whether their expectations are always unfair, I have no idea. I assume that expectations and comps will always be unfair. Like you, I'm interested for next year. The price right now, we now have eight early drafts in the books. Pick 136 is the average wide range. Pick 97 to 169 within there. It's about around earlier than where I think he was this time last year. If he continues to play well, as the series goes on, recency bias is real strong in the playoffs.

Yeah. After the year he had. Yeah. I think he was about 150 this time last year, maybe crept up a little bit. I remember Volpe versus Trevor story, I think was the toss up in this range. A year ago. What is the toss up now when, when near his average spot? Volpe versus Beau Bichette.

If we're looking shortstop to shortstop, Volpe versus Matt McLean. If we're looking middle infielders and McLean goes a tad earlier. McLean just went tank in the AFL yesterday. Yeah. Playing a little outfield out there too. I think it's a reasonable price. I think there's still a possibility that Volpe could end up higher in the order in the long run and that he doesn't necessarily have to move up a lot to

continue to be valuable. He's not a slam to continue to be valuable. He's not a slime dunk for me there though. I think I might take Bo over him. Okay. But a reasonable price you're interested for next year. I think what I'm interested in is being in that league where he drops to 160, 170, you know, and, and kind of being like, oh, he's, he's Bo's been gone. You know, I take him over Matt McLean because Matt McLean's

coming off a shoulder injury and we're not exactly sure what Matt McLean's true talent power is either. Right, there's a lot of questions about McLean. I think just simply playing in the fall league, Bo's really well for his chances of then having what we call a normal off season once he gets to that point. Right, getting some reps in now is a good sign. All of this is to say,

I think you have to invent time travel. If you want to get Volpi at that discount, that late price, I think it's only going to tick up from here based on a lot of the things we've talked about. A couple of other takeaways though from this game. I wonder if just feeling like that pressure is off changes anything once we get to game five. We'll have an episode coming out on Thursday where we kind of take a look,

either the Dodgers winning the series or the series going back to L.A. based on on the outcome. But it did feel like getting on the board with a couple of really big innings. They put five on in the eighth inning as well, which ended up carrying over to maybe give Luke Weaver some rest. If that game stays close, I think Luke Weaver keeps going. And then the impact on game five is that if we ever comes back, he's not available for as many outs or he's just simply more tired.

So the Gleyber Torres insurance runs were big. And now people are seeing Weaver a third time too. So, yeah. Yeah. So I wonder if that's going to be an important carryover for game five and beyond. That was definitely, um, you know, something that, uh, Tom, we had Tommy Fam on the live blog and, you know, on his sign out, he said, um, um, Yanks did what they had to do, but Dodgers have a lot of arms saved in the pen.

Yanks going to need Cole to go deep in order to win. And Dodgers have seen the Yanks bullpen too much That's a real thing in a seven game series. So just a player sort of Giving some validity to what we've been talking about with relievers You know, I think that there was something to Volpe and Austin Wells doing well in this which is You know takes a little bit of pressure off of themselves shows that the bottom of the lineup can do something. And I don't know. This is a little bit of vibes reporting, but, you know, Aaron

Judge did take a walk and got a hit. I thought he looked a lot better in the, in the game judged it. I think that he was just like, okay, I'm going to I don't need to expand the zone and try to hit a homer to win this game. It'd be useful for my team if I take a walk instead of striking out. So he seemed to spin on a lot more sliders down. And didn't seem as jumpy and seemed a little bit more calm at the plate. I don't know what that that's going to mean.

It could all be done tonight. But if Judge goes on a heater, that can change things a little bit more calm at the plate. I don't know what that's gonna mean. It could all be done tonight. But if Judge goes on a heater, that can change things a little bit, especially since I don't think Shohei looks right. You know, I don't think that he, I don't think that Shohei, I feel like you can see him grimacing. In the first game, not last night,

in Monday's game, he was like literally running off the field, holding his shoulder after at bats. Yeah, it's not like maybe a little bit better, but yeah. Everybody that started for the Yankees in game four, other than Rizzo had a hard hit ball. So it did feel like, you know, aside from 11 runs on the scoreboard that a lot of guys found something if they didn't previously have anything going, a little bit of

momentum could go a very long way. But it was also very definitively the Dodgers B team in terms of pitching. They did a great job not using anyone that they care about. I mean, like in a human way, I'm sure they care about Landon Nack and Brent Honeywell. Maybe not though. They let Honeywell throw 50 pitches in one inning. Maybe that's up for some debate, but it was Kasparius, two Hudson for one,

Nack for four, Honeywell for one, which keeps their A bullpen with the exception of Hudson as fresh as you could want in game five and you got Flaherty. So you don't necessarily go in expecting to use every single one of your A relievers. There's a chance Flaherty pitches well again and you only have to use three of those guys. So I think that does bode well, especially on the other side. They chase heel after four. The Yankees had to throw Tim Hill, they had to throw Clay Holmes, they had to throw Mark Leiter Jr. They had to throw Weaver, 21 pitches, so not as bad as it could have been. And then they finally got to someone they're not going to use again, unless they have to, in Tim Mesa.

So that was the silver lining for me, kind of looking at it from the Dodgers perspective is, we preserved a lot of our arms, the Yankees had to use a bunch of guys that they like to use when they're protecting leads. Maybe this will be the, it wasn't, it's not the Red Sox, but this could be maybe the Karmic comeuppance for losing to the Red Sox in the in the three down being down three Before maybe maybe they have it in them. The nice part is they have Garrett cold I have just have a feeling that you know, Jack Flaherty is not gonna have the 94 as often this time With more regular rest and I ended the team will have seen him, you know, and they'll have a better chance at him. He has fewer good pitches than Garrett Cole.

So Garrett Cole has different ways he can go. He could throw a bunch of change ups, you know, he has different places he can go in the zone with good command and good power. So I give the Dodgers, I give the Yankees a pitching advantage in this one. And I think I give them the advantage to win this game. So. Yeah.

Might have some baseball in LA while we go to first pitch Arizona this weekend, which 24 hours ago felt like it might've been a little bit of a stretch. Beyond the world series, how about this? The White Sox getting on the board of some news in October. It's hiring a manager. It's going to be Will Venable taking over, which from a tactics perspective and all that, I don't know if there's a whole lot for us to dig into there, but it to me opens the door for a

little deep dive into a rebuilding team going into an off season, talking about lowering payroll, having a lot of holes in the debt chart, needing to do a few things in free agency just to fill actual spots, just to make sure you've got enough guys on the roster, and then asking questions like who wants to sign on for year two of a pretty big rebuild? Like what types of free agents are you even able to bring in? Like Will Venable, hopefully for the sake of the White Sox, is their right long-term fit, hopefully a great fit for some of the young players

that are gonna be coming up. I imagine we're gonna see a lot of Colts in Montgomery in Chicago this year, right? There's no reason not to at this point. Maybe even for opening day in 2025 with a great spring. I think that's a possibility. But trying to figure out how they patch up the current holes before other prospects are ready, that to me is a really big question. They did pretty well last off season bringing Eric Fetty in. Probably some questions still about the returns

they got at the trade deadline and the deal that sent Fetty to the Cardinals and Copac over to the Dodgers. But nevertheless, like what do you think the rest of the off season looks like now that the White Sox have a new manager in place? I think they're just trying to be a little bit opportunistic and identify. I do think that there's a chance that they've got some okay processes in place for pitching. I respect Brian Bannister and I respect Ethan Katz. And one thing I'd heard was that part of the managerial search, prospective managers were

told that they couldn't necessarily hire their own pitching coach. So I kind of assumed that Katz and Banister are in place and that the team kind of feels good about that, you know? And so I would expect them to maybe bring somebody back from Japan or look at a bounce back guy, or maybe even, you know, be there as a pillow for G Alito. If nobody else is, you know, you know, come back, uh,

we'll give you a year and an option or, or just a year. And we hope to trade you away for a prospect. If you're, if you're pitching well, that sort of deal, you know? Um, so they'll just be opportunistic and, um, I expect them to lose a lot of games next year. Will Venable's accolades are, you know, you know, first of all, just an outstanding athlete that, you know, was a Princeton basketball player, um, and also, uh, drafted in the 15th round, baseball, played pretty well in San Diego, was kind

of ended up being a little bit of a tweener where not maybe exactly enough glove for center and maybe not enough bat for a corner. So that's why his career ended, but you know, as a player, but he's also the son of Max Venable, who is, uh, baseball royalty. Um, and so he's been around baseball his whole entire life. And, um, I've always found him a really good interview, a guy who, and this is good because he, he worked alongside Bochy, um, you know, since 2022, um, he, he gives me the same vibes as both Bochy where he's like, he's chill, you know, he's chill.

He's on top of his stuff and you know, he knows, he knows so much about baseball. Um, but he's not, um, he's not in your face. And I don't, I don't know about his sort of analytical bona fides. Um, but, um, you know, I do think that, you know, working with the red socks, working with the cubs, working with the Rangers, he's probably picked up a lot of that long side of the way. I mean, working alongside Alex Cora and Bruce Bochy, I think is a good way to learn on the fly and learn from good people.

So I think that they're just trying to like make sure that they're a representative team next year. They'll buy some cheap free agents and then try to turn them around into something new, but not let them block anybody. So yeah, Colson Montgomery, if he has a good spring, I think he could just break camp with the team. That's part of why he's at the FL I think. Um, and I, and then with Venable just try to bring some,

some everyday calmness, um, and professionalism to the job. We'll see if they end up trading Luis Robert or not. And I made the case that maybe they should consider it even though Robert's coming off of a down year. But if Robert's still there, there's a surprising second half performance from Andrew Benentendi, who had a 133 WRC plus, the same number of homers as Marcelo Zuna in the second half. 13. He was 52nd among hitters in the playerator. 15 team 5x5s.

He always had that raw power in him. I mean, he said bear weights as high as 9%. And I don't know, he for some reason did this on purpose where he was like, I'm going to make more contact and not hit the ball hard, which is a hell of a decision to make. I think that it's totally possible that he went to Tread or driveline or some, you know, he had his own hitting coach, but hopefully that there's something in there that the hitting coaching itself in Chicago has improved. And they said, Hey, you know, it might be good to hit the ball hard.

I hope that's intuitive for everyone, but yeah, but it's not, it's not that players wouldn't want to hit the ball hard. It's they would be trying to do something else and going so far in that direction that it's costing them the quality of contact. Right. He went from 40% pull rates when he had power to 30% pull rates when he had no power to back to 45% pull rates when he had power to 30% pull rates when he had no power to back to 45% pull rates. So, yeah, on a very basic level, there's this, there's a sort of

push and pull. There's a let it travel or go get it. And, um, you know, we found a while back that hitting coaches, they had the most impact on swing decisions. And that was, that was a set of research. I think it came from baseball prospectus and Russell Carlton. that was like, you know, the biggest impact that a new hitting coach can have is on swing decisions, on whether or not they swing more or swing less. And I have a feeling that if we re-rack that

and thought about point of contact, that we could find a similar coaching effect for point of contact. In fact, when I was hanging out at drive line with Jack Lambert, who, who works there, um, who's I forget his, his role there, but he, he's the one who came up with, uh, Arsenal plus we've talked about his work before Jack was saying that he thought that one of the things that you can coach best out of a hitter is, um, point of contact and attack angle.

Um, so swinging down on the ball and, uh, going, getting that ball or letting that ball travel. So, you know, this seems to be something that you could perhaps affect with coaching be like, Hey, you were letting the ball travel, but it really sapped all your power. Let's at least be selectively aggressive this year and try to try to hit a few homers. Maybe that's, uh, that's the story, but I was surprised that he was that

productive in the second half. And when I started to think about the types of players that any rebuilding team can get, I think about guys that are maybe caught in between starting and relieving, you know, Spencer Turnbull as a free agent, cause what you can offer to a major league free agent at this stage is a clear runway to playing time. If your long-term goal is to get a multi-year deal as a starter and contending team see you as more of a swing man in between guy, maybe that's where one year, eight million, whatever it is, ends up getting you to go to the white socks because you know you're signing on to get traded to a contender mid season.

Yeah. But you're getting four months to prove that you are actually a number three or number four starter and not a swing man or not a setup guy, right? Like those, those types of guys. Like what Tommy Pham did last year, you know. Right. Or, uh, in the case of, yeah, bats, like think about guys that are arbitration eligible to get non-tendered that are good players.

Those guys might be looking for everyday roles instead of semi-regular roles that the White Sox can offer that. So I think that's the sort of bin. Once we get through the November transactions, 40-man rosters have to be set before the brutal five draft, there's always a crunch, the non-tender deadline, all that stuff, that's probably gonna open up

a few players that actually makes sense for the white socks and other rebuilding teams that are looking for guys that are good trade pieces, but also not necessarily looking at the guys that are going to be on the radar of a lot of contenders. Yeah, MLB has some projected arbitration salaries up and, you know, it's kind of hard just like looking through it. But you know, if a team like especially if a team, you know, like the Angels made a poor decision on Joe Adele or something, you know, you know, a young player like that.

But I think even some older players that like the athletics will they pay Miguel Andojar three million dollars next year as they're projected to Seth Brown four million dollars you know those are pretty limited players and they may have a better replacement for cheaper you know that's the type of player that I think will end up in in Chicago yeah we'll see what they're able to do over the course of the off season. I don't think it changes a lot about where they finish in the standings, but it does help them long term if they can identify a few free agents,

flip them later in the season, help those players boost their own value along the way. I think that's the that's the rule you have in the league right now. White Sox, not as fun for fans, but hopefully they're at least active in that corner of the player pool. My name is Sam Anderson. I'm a staff writer for the New York Times magazine. Over the years, I've interviewed actors, artists, athletes. Recently, I've been spending time with animal people. Wait, what happens if I put my fingers in that bottom cage? He will probably bite you. Scientists, ferret breeders, a heavy metal band that rescues baby puffins.

You got one. Everyone has a story. When I was a kid, I had bats in the family bathroom. She didn't hear my mom backing into the driveway and she got her pushed by my mom. Jessica, the rat used to eat ice cream out of my mouth. Because thinking about animals seems to open up a little door.

This is the baby. An escape hatch out of my mouth. Because thinking about animals seems to open up a little door. This is the baby. An escape hatch out of the human world. Brady, we gotta lose Barry. Is that your blood or it's blood? I think it's hot. I'm coming really close to my head. From the New York Times, this is Animal. Listen to it wherever you get podcasts.

Let's take a look at some players that missed their projections this year. We are going to first take a look at some players that missed their projections this year. We are going to first take a look at hitters who underperformed. So we took a look at the bat X, then we looked at the results for this season. And I think what you find in the underperformers, at least the group of largest underperformers were focusing on players that had at least 250 played appearances because that at least gives us a decent snapshot and likely these players were expected to be regulars even if injuries prevented them from reaching that level.

You're going to find guys that dealt with injuries in many, many cases. The more fascinating ones are guys that were not hurt and were just kind of like, oh, they fell off a cliff. Why? Why did they fall off that cliff? So I recall that we were pretty excited about Chaz McCormick coming into the season. And of all the players that I see

near the bottom of this list, Chaz McCormick looked really safe to me. The projection was for a 103 WRC plus. We thought there was some power, some speed, nice stable floor of playing time. We thought that the departure of Dusty Baker was also a good thing because it seemed like that might even stabilize McCormick's role

in the everyday lineup. Well, it turns out the Chaz McCormick in and out of the lineup stuff goes beyond Dusty Baker. It was a 66 WRC plus, a 211 average, only five homers and eight stolen bases, over 267 plate appearances. What do you think went so wrong for Chas McCormick as a guy that we thought around that pick 150, 175 range was going to be a really solid outfielder with some growth potential?

You know, it's not injury, but there is something similar to this about injury. And he did have you know a couple injuries that that hurt him along the way, but You know, I think that the story here is his defense was maybe not as good as we thought Because they dated they preferred Jake Myers as defense in centerfield. It's not like Jake Myers had a great year offensively You know that really just pushed Chas out of the way in terms of offense. Jake Meyers had an 86 WRC plus this year, but he was the better defender and his shoulder

was healthy and they wanted to see what he could do. So I think some part of this is, you know, really analyzing the depth charts well and realizing that his hold on center field was not as strong as we thought. And then what happens is if you're not an everyday player, you start to have these issues where you can't get going. You're in for a couple of games and you're out for a couple of games. And that's what I saw with Chaz.

I was afraid it was happening with Cedric Mullins. I guess Cedric Mullins' defense was good enough to keep him in there long enough to finally get that hot streak and, you know, prop the numbers up. I guess Chaz McCorkle's defense was not good enough to keep him in the line up to get to that hot streak because a lot of the same skills underlying are still there. And at the very least, he should have been able to go to the hitter that went Oppo, you know, 14, 15 times of the year and, um, you know, hit 250 and, and got on base. He should have been able to go back to where he was, was in 2022 at the very least, and I think he just didn't get the opportunity because his defense

wasn't keeping him in the games. The team wanted to win games. Remember the team had to win games. They, they started out really poorly. So they, they had a lot of stress on them and they weren't going to, you know, just let Chas McCormick be out there and, um, you know, try to win games with the rest of the players. They had to try everything they could. In any case, I think it's, this is a depth chart thing. You have to be really careful about understanding

the player's defense when you're projecting playing time because that's going to be an underlying factor and it could play out really poorly as it did for Chas McCormick this year. And we had a couple other guys that were similar. I mean, I know Jack Sawinski was a player you really liked coming into the season too. Very similar projection, similarly missed.

I mean, I didn't, I think I may have done the same kind of thing where I thought there was more defensive value with Swinski that stabilized his playing time. And I think part of what kept us hanging on in season was that the K-rate came down. So we kept thinking, okay, he's not striking out as much. This is just a prolonged slump, but more must have been going on there.

I think the thing that is still intriguing to me about Jack Swinski, he's still just 26. It's not like impossible. And maybe he's the kind of guy with a change of scenery, ends up on a different team, ends up with the white socks and has less pressure on his playing time for a year and starts to put the pieces together. So similar to the large new bar question from yesterday, but at a much lower price, do you still think there's enough there

where Swinsky could find his way back into a large share of playing time, at least as large as he had in 2023 when he got to 534 plate appearances? I do actually. And I think that these guys, all of the outfielders that we've talked about today are interesting to me in draft and holds

and in dynasty leagues where, you know, you might be able to get them cheap and then they just recover from that blip and get back to where they'd been before. They're deeper, deeper league things. I think these aren't necessarily 12 team situations, but. They could become relevant again. They are names that you shouldn't just cross off and decide that they're never going to be good again.

And they they each have like different pathways back to relevancy. And they also speak to how deep the outfielder pool is. Cause I think there are more players like this that you could see. Becoming at least a two thirds outfielder, two thirds, playing time outfielder during the course of the season without, you know, major, you know, this guy has to get hurt and this guy has to get hurt and this guy, you know what I mean? Like, no, they just have to play to where they were a year ago and they'll

find playing time on the, even on the same team that they're on. And so, um, I think there's more people like that in the outfielder situation that in, then there are like, how many short stops can you say? Well, he didn't have a good year, but he might play his way into being the starting shortstop this year. That position just doesn't work that way. Generally speaking, the corners tend to play more like that. First base, left field, right field all seem to be more like that.

Second base sometimes can play your way into it, but you're right. The center field, shortstop, catcher, those tend to be more balanced, like as far as how the opportunities are distributed. You can't really just slug your way into a spot at those positions. Swinsky for me does represent the risks that you have with strikeout raids. And I think you see with Chas McCormick, Dylan Carlson, Nolan Jones, Edward Julian, Adam DeVall,

Luis Robert, Davis Schneider, Michael A. Taylor, Kevin Keirmeyer, Jack Sawinski, Javier Baez. Brian De La Cruz is in here, 27%. Like a bunch of dudes on here that have high K-rates. I just listed more than half of the worst underperformers this year. Yeah. And they all had bad care rates. Yeah. And regardless of injury status, I do think that's of the,

of the basic skills you can find of players that underperform that would lead you to not see by low. I think that's probably the biggest red flag for most of these guys. And I think that it does a couple of things. Like the way we were talking about Chas McCormick and like how he just didn't get enough sample to get back on online, like Moans did or whatever. You know, strikeout rate does that to you because it, you, it lets you have fewer lottery tickets in play.

And so you can actually just have a season where you have like a two 30 babbitt and you just didn't put enough balls in play. You had like 400 plate appearances with a 33% strikeout rate. You just didn't have enough plate appearances to actually get to where we know your true talent, Babbit, you know, you just didn't put enough balls out there for, for us to really know how good you are there. So I, most of those guys, um, with the high strikeout rates and underperforming, especially if they're of a certain age, play their way off of any sort of

sleeper list that I have, I think of the names that I mentioned that I would be interested still next year's Lewis Robert, still the right age, still the right defensive ability to play every day, still the right combination of power and speed to make himself interesting. And then the names that, you know, I have sort of circled among those guys that, that bother me and that I'm not exactly sure. Maybe we, we have to spend some more time, um, investigating them as Edward, Julian and Nolan Jones, where there's good patience, bad contactability. Julian has some platoon issues.

You know, both teams have shown reticence sometimes in the past to play people every day when you kind of think they should. Um, so I, I kind of have a shrug emoji when it comes to Julian and Jones right now. I'm actually kind of interested this weekend to hear people's opinions on those two players. I think they're kind of fascinating. They're, they're, you They're among the most fascinating names at the bottom of this list.

I think if you said you have to buy low on a player with a 30% K rate who's had a 30% K rate before, which Luis Robert has not. I think Nolan Jones is actually higher on my list of guys I believe in because his back was messed up for most of last season. Like I think it's multiple stints on the aisle at the back. So you have the injury component there.

I think with the retirement of Charlie Blackman especially, you're going to see plenty of Nolan Jones so long as he's healthy this year. I think because he does everything that you want, stat cast wise, I think that will matter to the Rockies enough to say, let's just see what we have if he's healthy and they'll give him another shot at 500 plus plant appearances now maybe Maybe even with health he was going to underperform Relative to the 30 30 pace he was on the year before that may have been a level he couldn't sustain over a full season But I think about how excited some people were about Jones going into last season. The discount you're going to get now seems pretty steep.

So as long as there's no sort of lingering concerns about that back throughout the winter, I could see myself having some Nolan Jones on a bunch of teams. It's outside the top 200 by ADP right now with a pretty widespread. There's a lot of things he does well. So if you're drafting him hoping for 230, 240 two 40, 20, 20, you don't need more than that at that price. There's a good chance you can get more than that because the opportunity should be there for him to play a lot.

So he, he's on the short list of high strikeout guys that I would like as a possible bounce back target. Yeah. As someone who's dealing with a little something in my back right now, I feel like backs are an interesting thing. Cause you know, it turns out that it was a big part of why Cabrion Hayes was no good this year. Right. Cabrion Hayes is easily like a, we don't even know if he took a step forward

this year because he was so hurt. Yeah. And I think, I think there's a lot of people who were just going to write them off completely. And to be fair, I don't know if he's a top 12 third baseman, but, uh, like we, in, we traded, uh, George Springer for him in the 20 team dynasty. I think that's smart. I think it's a good move.

And we were happy to hear about the back injury. Like I know that's that's screwed up. That's it's South fantasy players and brains work, but we were just happy. You can be happy for the player too. Cause it's like, okay, then, then fix that, you know, and, and come back. Right. It's a satisfactory explanation for the breakout that you thought you saw at the end of the previous season not happening and as long as it's not a major long-term problem then you can still believe that what we started to see at the end of 2023

is out there for kebryan haze what do you do for the players who are not strikeout machines that significantly underperform their projection? So I would say Caber Ruiz would probably be the guy that's jumping off the page to me a little bit. Michael Garcia fits into this group. Andres Jimenez also fits into this group. What do you think about guys like that as possible rebound candidates? And how do you explain their wide misses compared to their projections? I mean it's usually that we just didn't see the power expected. I mean Mikel Garcia 101 ISO, Andres Jimenez 0.087 ISO. I mean you even have Tyler Freeman on this list right next to them with the 112 ISO. It's that starling Castro problem that I was talking about with

Luis Garcia jr. Where? when you somebody hasn't demonstrated power, but you're You're kind of searching for it on the player page. You know what I mean? I'm calling up under some answers player page right now because he has hit 17 homers in there and you could say, Oh, well, you know, he had 110 Max EV in 2021 and he had a 6% barrel rate in 2022. It's not as non zero power, but you can do that with Michael Garcia's Max EV. And you can do it with some of Tyler Freeman's numbers.

These guys don't have any power. I'll push back a little. I think Jimenez has proof of some power in that he hit 17 homers in 2022 and 15 in 2023. The underlying power numbers weren't even great the second time Jimenez got the double digits. He had 15 homers with a 27% hard hit rate and a 5.5% barrel rate. And again, I know it's a lower K rate profile, so those numbers don't always pop. But if he could get back to 12, 15 homers, keep stealing bases, and then just keep playing every day because it was defense, which has been the case. Then I'm actually somewhat interested in Andreas Jimenez in 2025. And I think I had absolutely no interest in the inflated price that we just had in this past draft season.

It's just weird to me how much it fluctuates. So like the interest can, can shift so heavily. I got it. The reason I'm, I'm, I'm being a little bit. I per. Bollock. I got it. The reason I'm, I'm, I'm being a little bit. I per. Bollock. Drilled it right down the middle. Striped.

There's a lot of other things I was about to say with that same word, a lot of weird pronunciations that were occurring to me. Anyway, um, I was, I was sort of pushing it because they do have some power. And that's why we were interested in them. We liked that Michael Garcia hit the ball 110 last year and so on and so forth. Right. But I will say that I do find this package. Has representation in this part of the player pool, you know, like this package can underwhelm you this package will break your heart so.

You know i don't know who's going to be overdraft like one thing i want to do right now is go to the top of the list and say who. At the top of the list showed more power than we expected and may just drop back down so victor robles. expected and may just drop back down. So Victor Robles was the third biggest jump or over projections, right? 126 ISO. He could have a 0.06 ISO. You know what I mean? Like true talent.

Yeah, he definitely could. I have, I've lived it. I've, I've seen it. So, you know, really deserving, like really having like good power will keep you in the game. So Brent Rooker has no defensive value. He may play in the outfield next year, but you know, he has very little defensive value. He over, over his skis, number two in the big leagues in terms of outperforming his projections, but there's a lot more to hang on to, to sink your teeth into and to feel like he, you know, worst case scenario, he just hits, you know, two 30 next year, but he still hits 32 bombs or whatever.

You know what I mean? Like there's just power. Power is like demonstrated real power. Matt Walner really over his skis, 36% strikeout rate, not great defensively. I'm still going to prefer that to Victor Robles. You know, I, I, Hugh Tate, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I to prefer that to Victor Robles. You know, I, I hue towards power. So Jurriksson Profar with like a 0.179 ISO, you know, a top 10 over projection over production of his, of his what he's done. I think Jurriksson Profar is you can play the same game with his batted ball

stats that you would play with Andre Samanas and be like, Oh, he deserved it. He had a 7% barrel rate. No, for his career as a 4% barrel rate, you know, he's going to drop down and. He's an example of where even the playing time could dry up, you know? So I don't mind having small amounts of investment in these types of players where the power is really iffy, but I want to make sure that I don't buy them in the first five to seven rounds. That's fair. And that's why I wasn't in on Andres Jimenez last year. Like I saw that. I mean, it also kept me away from CJ Abrams to an extent too.

There was a little more interest in Abrams because there was more speed ceiling and being a little younger, I thought maybe he could get to more power, but that's the player type. I don't want early, but I'll gamble on late. And I think your profile example is exactly the reason why I am interested in Jimenez. There is proof he can hit for some power. If he hits can hit for some power. If he hits for more than some power, maybe it looks like that. And it's power speed and decent average. I, the benefit of his glove is that it will drive his playing time.

So that's, that's where I'm in. Like the profar it's different cause profar doesn't run as much, but it's similar in the sense that expectations were very low. Do you think Garcia benefits from the same? I mean, his defense is good, but it's also a team that's looking for more offense. I think so. I think he's good enough. Oof.

I had 69 WRC plus. That's a, that's borderline, man. He was losing some playing time down the stretch as they were trying to make the playoffs. You know, that's something I noticed about the lineups. I do think, you know, if they think they can get more offense at third base, I still think his glove puts him in the mix at second base. But I don't think it's a guarantee that he's a starter next year. He might become a super sub depending on who else they add. You can see Garcia maybe becoming a three or four position guy, that's not a bad thing for us

as long as the playing time is close to every day. But yeah, I think when you dip down that far below league average, then you do leave the door open for your team to replace you if things break a certain way. If the right free agent comes along with the right trade off or comes along that could shake things up enough. So I don't look at Garcia as a safe.

If defensive numbers weren't elite as Jimenez is either. Right. I don't think he's quite as safe as Jimenez. I think people might be more interested because he's younger and you could still talk yourself into more paths forward to get better. I was, I was tempted, I think Jimenez, I forget exactly what my vote was for the overall sort of like platinum glove that the Fielding Bible gave out, like the defensive player of the year, um, in the end, I think Dalton Varsha won it.

But, uh, I had Andre Cimenez in the mix for that. Deservedly so. So a few other names that really popped. You mentioned Rooker before. As far as guys that played every single day or close to it, Rooker was the biggest over performer on projections. Narrowly missed 40 homers at 39, stole 11 bases, had great run production and did it while hitting 293.

And now in early drafts, Brent Rooker versus Teoscar Hernandez is a draft day decision that you might be thinking about if you're looking for that early thump. And I think I prefer Rooker's more play-discipline approach. I think Teoscar is, and I've been wrong about this, you know, already, but I think Teoscar is heading towards the point where some of his, uh, chase percentage can start leading to more strikeouts. Yeah.

It's a couple of years older. He's 32. I do think with Teoscar Hernandez, if he were to re-up with the Dodgers, I'm probably on that side. If he ends up signing with a new team in the free agency that's mid-pack or even possibly below in terms of its overall lineup quality, that probably is enough to swing it in favor of a Rooker.

Like if you neutralize that, then I prefer a Rooker. But I think if Hernandez is on a contender, I think the counting stats end up being a little more stable. I think you can see it even a little bit with like Jorge Soler. He signs with the giants and he's the only guy, you know, with that kind of power, puts pressure on himself.

And I know this is again, you know, sort of vibes territory, but it's true that, you know, you can't just take a player that was great in a great lineup and just put them in a bad lineup and it's going to be the same. They're going to get pitched harder. They won't have people on base as much so the defense will get to play the way they want to They'll they'll walk them more than allow them to hit homers, you know There's all sorts of things that can happen You know, even if you take horsey or a cellar and put him back in the Braves lineup as you did You would expect better outcomes in the middle of the season.

So, you know, I think that's a good point. Where he ends up is gonna be a big deal. How about this? The other player that popped in a big way that we really liked from the postseason, Mark Vientos, had a 29.7% K rate. We were just talking about the volatility of the high K rate players relative to their projections.

So yeah, you get some ceiling, but you also get that lower floor. Do you have any reservations about Vientos as a result of the still high K rate in his breakout season became a really important piece of that Mets lineup and clearly has game changing power. But this is a guy that was projected for an 88 WRRC plus, and he came in at a 133. I mean, he does the things we like in terms of 14% barrel rate for Vientos, 113 max CV, 40% pull rate. So it's not quite, he's not like a 50% pull rate guy, 36% fly ball rate. So he's not a 50% fly ball rate. He doesn't have, Vientos doesn't have the like red flags other than 15.9% swing

strike rate, 29.7% strike already. Yeah. Those are pretty big red flags. And I'm going to put Vientos down for like a two 35 batting average projection. Okay. So you're definitely dinging him in that category, which is, and that's probably going to mean that I don't get him. Yeah.

Most likely. But't get him. Yeah. Most likely. But I like him and you know, at his age at 24, you would actually expect a couple years of strikeout rate improvement. There, if you could get it down to 28 or 27, even maybe get it to 72 80 with, you know, it's excellent bad ball. So I do like that, that part of the package defensive 280 with, you know, it's excellent bad ball oomph. So I do like that, that part of the package. Defensively though, you know, he might be headed towards DH. Which is fine because JD might not be back and they'll have that spot available regardless

what they do with Pete Alonso. How about this name, Joey Bart? Pretty nice pickup for the Pirates, a team that has a lot of options to catch, especially with Andy Rodriguez coming back from injury this year, but Rodriguez can play other spots. They've already played Henry Davis some in the outfield, and Bart popped 13 homers in just 282 plate appearances, had the K rate just under 26%, was 21% better than league average, was projected to be 23% worse than league average.

It did always feel like expectations on Joey Bart were a little out of, I don't know, out of bounds, I guess you'd say in San Francisco, like unfairly high as sort of the successor to Buster Posey. Wasn't he a one one? No. One two. One two. One two. But you know, a guy that was supposed to come in and provide power and be a

great defender and just take, take the mantle from, from Buster Posey behind the plate. The playing time was always kind of up and down, had a stretch, I think in the second half of 22 with the Giants where it looked like he was putting it together, barely played for them in 23 and then finds a new home in Pittsburgh and maybe looks like the guy that people thought he'd be coming out of Georgia Tech now. Yeah, I wonder I was there for a lot of the struggle. So some part of me wants to say it's just 282 play appearances. You know, he's not.

He's not that different than what he was before. One thing I can see with Joey Bart though, is he really changed his chase rate and he just swung less. And I just got finished saying that hitting coaches can affect your swing rates. And swinging less really worked for him in terms of, he took most of those,

when he had a more swinging less philosophy, it came out of the chases. And that really helped us swing a strike rate. Ten point five percent swing strike rate is pretty good actually. And that's more meaningful in a small sample because he saw a bunch of pitches in 282 play appearances. So I think he's an interesting second catcher. I don't think I'm willing to give him first catcher status. I think with Bart, I'd keep my watch list queue going

and keep him on the radar as a possible one catcher guy. I think he could be top 12 at the position. I think for now, I'm with you on limiting him to two catcher leagues because there's a lot that could change with his playing time that's out of his control. But I think he did really well. We have Andy Rodriguez, Henry Davis. I mean, there's other guys around there, yeah.

Yeah, and maybe there's a trade coming that'll open that up or at least alleviate some of those concerns. But Bart really kind of stood out to me as someone that was a lot better than we expected. One more A, there's other players on this list of course. We're not ignoring Tyler Fitzgerald, we're not ignoring Kerry Carpenter, we're just cherry picking some of the names that really jumped off the page to us.

Lawrence Butler, I think you talked mid-season about some adjustments he made, projected for a 78, finished with a 130 WRC plus, kept a K rate just under 24%. 22 homers and 18 steals with four hundred and fifty one plate appearances. In some ways, to me, this is kind of like the Nolan Jones, twenty twenty three season where you start to tell yourself a story that with a full season in the big leagues, maybe Lawrence Butler's a 30 homer, 25 steel type player and maybe less of a batting average liability than Nolan Jones because of the adjustments that he made this year. Surprisingly to me in the early drafts, you're actually able

to get Lawrence Butler outside the top 100 overall. So you're not quite paying 2024 draft day Nolan Jones prices to get Lawrence Butler, at least not yet. The weird thing about him is if you look at the, I like to do these rolling graphs on fan graphs and you know, one of my favorites is just to put on a chase rate, Oh swing percentage versus Woba. And you can very clearly see that, you know, early in 2024 Lawrence Butler was chasing a lot as he,

and the, the sort of physical manifestation of this cue was for him to keep his head still. And that allowed him to see the pitch better. That allowed him to reduce his chase rate. And that was the first sort of white hot peak where I think he had three homers in a game in Philadelphia and all this stuff. Then he started to come down off of that peak.

I talked to him about, well, now that you've proved that you can be on the heater, they're going to fill you up, you know, in the zone with pitches down and and breaking pitches and stuff like that. And that's literally what they did. And he responded by having like a hit streak, you had like a 20 game hit streak. And again, you see a little bit of rise in chase rate. And then as that reduces a big Wobba spike, the only thing that's a little bit worrisome is he had a third, uh, chase rate peak late last year at the end of

the season and his We boat was going down. So I see a pretty wide oscillation in chase rates where he's spending time at 40% chase rates and at 25% chase rates. That's a big difference. And so if I'm at all worried about him it's that he's way streakier than you'd expect from a guy with a 24% strikeout rate. It looks a little bit more like a 30% strikeout rate guy. So I, I don't know. I think he's probably a 24% strikeout rate guy, but maybe he's always going to be streaky.

And if a guy's always going to be streaky, there's always a chance that you just get the bad streak for more than, you know, a half the season. And it's a, it's a terrible season. The would you rather in this case based on current ADPs is Lawrence Butler versus Cody Bellinger for 2025. You know what? I think I'm taking the young guy. I just don't like with Cody Bollinger at 29, the just the fact that he doesn't seem like

he's ever going to get back to a plus barrel rate. And he only stole nine bases this year. Do we think he's like really likely to get back to 20 stolen bases next year? So I'm going to take Lawrence Butler because I think Lawrence Butler is going to 20 stolen bases next year. So I'm gonna take Lawrence Butler because I think Lawrence Butler is gonna steal more bases. I think he's gonna hit more homers. And the strikeout rate batting average part of it is a little bit of an unknown,

but not necessarily terrible for Butler, you know? Right, and we've seen some amazingly low floors from Bellinger in that category. Major shoulder injuries may have been a factor, but still, I think it's still an unknown. Like what the projections spit out for Cody Bellinger and how much I trust it is probably it's probably as wide a gap as you're going to find for a lot of players. A lot of questions for me. I'm like, man, I don't I don't know what to make of this guy. And I don't it seems like he continues to change in some ways.

It's like prolonging his career as a good above average player. And in other ways, it's maybe doing that without having the ceiling that we saw. Three, four, five, like more like five years ago. Now that's been the first. Yeah. Remember when he broke into the league with 27% strikeout rate and 39 homers? That seems like so long ago. Remember when he hit 47 homers with a 16.4% strikeout rate and 39 homers. That seems like so long ago. Remember when he hit 47 homers with a 16.4% strikeout rate?

Like that's, that's bananas. He stole 15 bases that year and that's when stolen bases weren't free. Yeah. It's hard to steal 15 bases when you hit 47 homers. But now he's just kind of a kind of a limp noodle, low strikeout rate guy. He had a 136 WRC plus in 2023, hit 307, popped 26 homers and stole 20 bases. I think they could both end up being good players at cost, but if you have to make the choice, he can only get one. I think I'm with the unbutler, but I'm not quite as dismissive of Ballinger, even though it's been a lot of question marks and a meandering road up to this point in his career.

He's still just 29, man. It's not, not that old. That's true. But part of the story in the 26, 20 season in 2023 for Bellinger was that he, like, he figured out his two-strike approach. And I was like, dude, that's. I don't know. That felt like grasping his straws.

Like, let's just do it again. Like, keep, keep doing it. If it's real, like keep, keep doing it. He hit two 60 in two strike counts. Well, the league hits like 160. So which, which number do you think is going to continue? Now more to come on Bellinger, I'm sure as time goes and more to come on some of the hitters that missed their projections as we get to position reviews in a few weeks and

eventually position previews at a couple of months beyond that, because are plenty of other interesting names to cover but we are out of time for today as I mentioned up top if you want to join the discord you can do that with the link in the show description find Eno on twitter at EnoSaris find me at Derek VanRyper find the pod at rates and barrels that's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.