Rates & Barrels - April risers, and an early look at previously unsettled closer situations

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss April risers on among hitters and pitchers, and take a look at previously unsettled closer situations to see if the dust as settled as the first month of the season comes to a close.  Rundown 0:51 Jesse Winker is Mashing 3:11 Nick Solak's Power Surge 8:27 Carson Kelly's Excellent April 13:06 Nate Lowe Cashing In with Opportunity in Texas 18:13 Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s Massive Leap 24:55 DVR Gets Yuli Gurriel Wrong Again 28:33 Carlos Rodón's Return to Prominence 33:11 Cristian Javier Continues to Shine 36:49 Trevor Rogers' Underwhelming Stuff+ Number 40:33 Danny Duffy Holds Early Velo Gains 44:07 Michael Kopech to the Rotation? 49:31 Skeptical of Steven Matz? 51:47 John Means, MLB Trade Candidate? 57:29 A Look Back at Previously Unsettled Closer Situations Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, April 28th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will talk about April risers and looking at hitters and pitchers on this episode. Plus, we'll take a look at the closer carousel after one month where we write about a few of these uncertain closer situations and what direction are some of the current unsettled closer situations likely to go in the months ahead. So lots to get to on this episode. You know, let's start off with the biggest April risers among hitters. Jesse Winker, who was just outstanding. Really every game so far this season, it feels like he's doing some damage. Homer again last night against the Dodgers. You can see if you're watching us on YouTube, 94th percentile now in barrel rate this season.

And really just doing everything we kind of hoped he would do as a prospect now that he's healthy again atop that Cincinnati lineup. Yeah, and I've talked about this a little bit before where I fall for gradual progression. And I don't know if it is any better than non-gradual progression. We'll talk about someone later in this one that kind of took a huge leap forward. And sometimes I struggle with that because I just feel like, oh, regression's coming. Even if I like what he's doing under the hood, there's regression coming. But for Winker, it's like the barrel rate went up steadily over time. The exit velocity went up steadily over time.

Max exit velocity is actually dropped, but that's just, I think, a thing that happens as you age. So basically, he's just gotten better at lifting the ball. And I don't know that he's necessarily figured out how to face lefties. I don't know that he was necessarily more terrible than other people. But I think that just the way the Reds are constructed, they realize we kind of need an everyday player there. So for the most part, playing every day, slugging the ball like we thought.

The one little wrinkle that's interesting to me is that this is the worst season by far for a chase rate for him um and uh it hasn't meant that his whiff rate is necessarily worse uh it hasn't been terrible for his contact rates so i don't know maybe it just means he's being aggressive trying to get on that front foot and uh hitting for power but uh he's a he's a guy who like maybe three years ago I pegged as having the hit tool and could possibly add the power. I think this is kind of what I expected for him in terms of progression. Yeah, especially in that park, it kind of makes the power play up a bit, but I think

that barrel rate supports the idea that that power would work just about everywhere. Entering play on Wednesday, Winker has a hit in 12 straight games. He's homered in three straight. So seriously, every day when you look at the box score, Jesse Winker, he got a hit again. He's still crushing atop that Reds lineup. Let's talk about Nick Solak for a moment. He's a guy that I like this draft season, and I don't have him that many places because I think a lot of people were into him. We looked at him as a guy that clearly had a role to call his own. And if you kind of took the best of Solak in the previous two seasons, again, very limited opportunities

in Texas, a total of 91 games with the Rangers prior to 2021. We saw some speed in the shortened season. We saw a little bit of power in 2019 once he started to get that playing time. And we did see nice plate skill. We saw a double digit walk rate two years ago, and we saw a K rate under 20% last year. So if you mushed it all together, you got a really nice player if he could do all those things simultaneously. And so far, he's doing everything except for the low strikeout rate. That's the only real concern I have with the approach right now is that Nick Solak is striking out 28% of the time this season, and he's walking less than he ever has in the big leagues. But for this start, I think you'd make that trade off. The question is, does this approach actually work

for him in the long run? And here's a guy that sort of follows that what I'm saying, a bit of a jump forward. You don't really see that nice progression when you look at his barrel rates or his swing rates or anything like that he kind of just popped up and and i don't know like i kind of almost it's almost like a philosophical question which you prefer i think that the numbers prefer winker you know the numbers prefer that say progression because they're going to do the regression they're going to do they're going to look back at the old stats and that makes sense but people also pop onto the scene and you kind of have to throw in some of the scouting i think because in solok the idea was this guy can hit he just doesn't have a position you know and so i

kind of wonder you know how people feel about that in terms of, you know, I think, you know, the story that I tell is that kind of Starling Castro story where it's like every year he's getting better. He's getting better. Like, look, he's just a little more isolated power, a little more this, a little more of this. And this year he's going to go 30-30. And that was the year that he totally fell apart. So, you know, I don't think that, you know, just the progression alone is enough. But, and I do have one, at least one prominent, I have a fair amount of shares of Solak. But it's weird for me too, because I didn't buy him for this. I bought him for a decent average and like 15 steals, but I thought he might hit 15 homers for the whole year. So I thought I was getting 280, 15, 15.

Instead, I'm going to get maybe 280, 25, 10, which, you know, I can handle it. I'll take it. Yeah, you'll trade a few bags for the extra power for sure. And I think because of the makeup of that Rangers lineup, he's pretty safely in a prominent spot. I think the other thing that really kind of stands out looking at this profile, he's hitting the ball in the air more often. You see a year over year improvement with that. He

was hitting the ball on the ground 52.9% of the time when he arrived in Texas back in 2019. He brought that number down to 48.8% last year, and he's brought it down again thus far in 2021, 0.8% last year, and he's brought it down again thus far in 2021, down at 43.3%. So if he keeps hitting the ball in the air at this rate and barreling balls as often as he has or even close to that rate, I think that 25 home run cap you put out there, that's actually attainable. I'm also curious to see how the ballpark in Arlington plays over a full season because it looked much more pitcher friendly than expected in 2020. But to me, that wasn't enough time to say, okay, it's a pitcher friendly park, lock it in. So maybe that's part of the intrigue for me here with Solak as well. Yeah. The two places where you might see a little bit of actual just slow progression,

the way you might want to see out of someone who's slowly improving is that ground ball rate went from 53, 48, 43 by Savant, and then topped balls went from 43 to 37 to 30, you know, about the same, but a little bit better. So I just think, you know, there is something here for Solak that there is some good improvement. You know, I worry a little bit about that chase rate. You see that on the screen right now on YouTube, 33rd percentile chase rate. It doesn't really line up, though, with what he was last year. I mean, this is what I'm talking about.

Last year, he was 66th percentile in reach rate and 23rd in barrel. And this year, he's 33rd in reach rate and 88th in barrel. Obviously, I'll take the barrel rate. So maybe it's not a big deal. Maybe he still has that in him, the ability not to reach. And maybe he'll have to kind of go to that when people start respecting him more as a power hitter. Yeah, that's definitely something to keep an eye on though, because of all the players, we're going to talk about the 33rd percentile chase rate that

Nick Solak has. That is the lowest of the bunch. And there's a few guys close, but you don't want to be the bottom in that category, especially when the K rate has followed suit to this point. Let's talk about Carson Kelly. He looks amazing on paper and like he's looked amazing. If you've watched the Diamondbacks this season to 340, 508, 766, only 17 games because you know, he's a catcher. He's not going to play every single day, but he's got six homers. He's already hit more home runs in 2021 than he hit in the entire shortened season when he had five. This is a massive step forward for Carson Kelly early on. We're talking about a guy that when he had his breakout in 2019, the first time he ever got to be a starter, 18 home runs. I thought that was kind of a ceiling for him. Maybe you get to 20 with more playing time. Hit 245 with a.340 OBP. I just felt like I thought I knew who Carson Kelly was,

and a 90-second percentile reach rate and a 90-second percentile barrel rate make me think that I probably underestimated him a little bit. Yeah, 26-year-old. It could just be a peak year, but when you look at the stuff under the hood when it comes to the reach rate improvement um i saw i saw a little thing today um you know about reach rate improvers and the best reach rate improvers i don't think kelly makes a lot of these lists because catchers don't qualify for the batting title for the most part um i think that this would actually qualify as one of the sort the top five reach rate improvers in the big leagues. He went from both sides to the other side.

He went from being pretty bad at it to being top ten-ish at it. What do we have on the screen right now? 90-second percentile reach rate. I love it. I love it. I'd love it. I'd Kelly Tabbed as one of those guys, along with Sean Murphy, that would just allow me to wait on catchers. At least second catchers or first catchers in 12, 15 team situations. So I don't know that I have that many shares, though,

so I can't really do any sort of victory of that. I don't know that I have that many shares, though, so I can't really do any sort of victory of that. And I will predict some sort of regression on the barrel side because he was 20th percentile in barrels last year. And, you know, you can play around and say like, oh, you know, he has enough batted ball events where there's a lot of signal here. That's true. How many batted ball events is it is it 38 he doesn't even have enough bad ball events you usually want to get to 50 so i would say there's some signal there but i would expect him to have the best obp of his career by ease by easily over that 348 in 2019

and maybe the best power of his career but i'm not extrapolating this out. I'm going to give him another sort of 15 homers. So he ends the year with a 275 average, 21 homers, and like a 360 OBP. Pretty sexy. It's a really good pick where he was going because I was a little bit skeptical of Kelly in part because I was a believer in Dalton Varshow. What happened in draft season though was Varshow got so expensive that I didn't get Varshow. And because I didn't believe the playing time was going to be there, I bypassed Kelly and that has absolutely worked against me. Some of the late catchers have been bad like they always are. So definitely a missed opportunity to get a well above average contributor. How many catchers do you think, and I didn't do a query for this.

This is just sort of occurring to me as we're talking. How many catchers do you think played somewhere else for a little bit and then ended up catching? Played a different position and then ended up behind the plate? I mean, you have Isaiah Kainer for life, but I don't think that's a really good example because he's not catching. Yeah. Isaiah kind of for life, but I don't think that's a really good example because he's not catching. Austin Barnes played a decent amount of second base. And then came back and really became a regular catcher.

Yeah, that's a good one. What was the progression on Craig Vigio? Other way, catcher out to the field. Yeah, catcher second center, I think, was his progression. I mean, there's like Josh Willingham was like a catcher and an outf the field. Yeah, catcher second center, I think, was his progression. Maybe there's like Josh Willingham was like a catcher and an outfielder, but I don't think he went back to catching. Definitely didn't go back.

Schwarber, they thought he was a catcher, wasn't. Didn't go back. You don't see a lot of guys go back behind the plate. With Varshow, though, were they moving him because they don't trust him or were they moving him because they have faith in him or were they moving him because they have faith in kelly and they just want to find a way to play both yes good good answer now uh i i think the book's still open we don't even know what he's doing

at the alternate site right it just could be could be catching catching Catching, push-ups, a little bit of everything. Let's talk about Nate Lowe for a moment. Another Ranger off to a good start so far. Six homers early on, slash line sitting at 267, 353, 500. Everything looks pretty good there. K-rate's down too compared to where it was last year. I think Nate Lowe's probably always going to be a guy with a decent bit of swing and miss in his game.

I think the reach rate being 81st percentile is actually a surprise for me, but he does walk, so maybe he's just swinging and missing at pitches in the zone, and there's some holes that big league pitchers can exploit. All that being said, I love that he's getting volume and taking advantage of it because he's someone I've long believed in

when he was more of an up-and-down guy with the Rays. You know, he actually, I think, of all the players today, has shown the least improvement. I mean, that is like a compliment, you know what I mean? But he wasn't bad to begin with. Yeah. He wasn't bad to begin with.

Yeah, so I'm trying right now to furiously to... We did preparation for this show, I promise. We have to. To do on-screen graphics, you have to have prep done. Yeah. But I'm also trying to do a query here because I feel like if Savant would help me, please. Savant, just. There you go.

There you go, Savant. Come on. You can do it. You can do it. All right. Here we go. So the thing on him was that he couldn't hit velocity, right? Oh, my God.

It's doing it by pitcher. Yes, that was part of the knock on Nate Lowe as a filibuster to let the search continue. No, okay. Okay, here we go. I just had to. Oh, my God. Could I be really good at this? This would be really great if I could be really good at it. Okay, here we go.

Last year, Woba on pitches over 94 miles per hour, 175. That is poor. Average is like, right now, Woba's down across the league. People are talking about it. What's the culprit? The culprit is strikeouts. That's the culprit. Strikeouts are at 25%.

Anyway, I digress. His Woba on pitches over 94 this year, 231. His ex-Woba was the same in both years. Those aren't amazing numbers, but let's see here. What do you think the league average number is on pitches over 94? Probably like 250. All right, so he was at 175, then 231, and the league average WOBA, yeah, that's surprising, 306.

It's 306 on those pitches? Yeah. Yeah, That's definitely higher than I was going to... I was at 250. That's a pretty big leap. You guys are pretty used to this sort of thing, huh? It's a strange flaw to have in today's game because there's so many guys throwing hard. You see the velocity.

It's not like you're surprised by it anymore. 20 years ago, a guy throwing 95. Oh, we've talked about this before. Here's the guy on this team that throws 95. Maybe they got a second one. Now it's just about everybody. Average VLO right now is 93.9.

So I just did a query for slightly above average VLO. So I guess he still has that flaw. I don't know. Is he just punishing sliders? Out of the six home runs he's hit, three have been against fastballs, three have been against breaking balls. That's somewhat encouraging.

Yeah. I like what I see. I think he's a little bit sort of your prototypical. I know he has two stolen bases. He's a little bit faster. He's younger than a lot, but he's kind of your prototypical modern hitter. I think he's going to have a low batting average,

okay OBP, some walks, and a lot of strikeouts, 28 to 30 homers. Projections the rest of the way. The bat has him at 253, 339, 454, 19 homers. That's in 111 games. He would probably end up playing more than that if he's healthy. They just giving him every day run are you at those numbers over those numbers or under those numbers a little bit over like i said yeah he's doing exactly what he did last year i'm a little surprised the bad x is the low man on this um and i'm gonna give him like 24 more homers so he ends

the year with 30 260 average 30 homers for the year. Where you got him, you're really happy with that. And that plays in shallow mixed leagues too, at least in the corner infield spot, if not at first base even. Because the run production should be there. Despite the fact the lineup around him is bad, his prominent place in that lineup

should be good enough for those stats to be comparable to other power hitting first base. There's no change in his max EV or his barrel percentage, which are things that matter in short samples. I mean, he is who he was. It's kind of amazing. So we probably couldn't talk about early risers without talking about Jess Chisholm. And unfortunately, he landed on the IL on Wednesday morning, suffered a hamstring strain while running the bases earlier this week. So probably going to be at least a couple of weeks before he's back in the fold. But I'm really encouraged by what we saw.

And I was trying to think about this just through the lens of if we were drafting again today, where would I actually draft Jazz Chisholm for the rest of the season in a 15 team mixed league because he was probably at best the fringy top 300 guy a month ago and now i think you could probably argue him at least into the conversation as a top 150 overall guy and i say that knowing he's been more like a top 50 guy to this point he's been excellent so so far. Yeah, and as much as I like him, that strikeout rate is pushing it. He's got a 30% strikeout rate. I had

some people wonder about Hura versus Jazz and what we'll see in year two out of Jazz and will it be like Hura? I guess the question is about if it's a if it's a hole like a specific hole right that they can or if it's like um like where do the strikeouts come from where do his strikeouts come from i think that matters

and i think it comes from a slightly different place than here. Because when I look at Jazz's swing rates, I actually see a guy who doesn't swing a lot. 40% swing rate is something that Votto has done. So given he doesn't swing so much, his swing rate on pitches in the strike zone should be higher. Like if he was a guy who swung a lot more, he might have like a 45% retrain. It's like, he doesn't have a good distance between his own swing and his, and his reach rate.

If you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Well, and I was looking for the, the hero comparison here for his career has swung 50.8% of the time. swing in his reach rate, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Well, and I was looking for the Hira comparison. Hira, for his career, has swung 50.8% of the time so far. That's a big difference. So Hira is swinging a lot, and he's reaching a lot, and he's got a very specific hole.

Jazz, I think, isn't amazing at discerning balls and strikes, but he just has a naturally sort of passive, I'm going to wait you out approach that I think works, you know, like if we're going to get 10% walk rates and 30% strikeout rates, and then he's going to squeeze the most as he can out of the batted balls, which is, I think kind of what he's doing. 94, 94th percentile barrel rate. Then he can be a guy that can maybe hit 240 even if he has a 30 strikeout rate so i go back to the conversation we had about minor league k rates and i think george springer was the other example kind of the opposite of here the guy that struck

out a lot in the minors and over time whittled that down in the big leagues. And I wonder about a few things. The first thing is whether a hitter can have a flaw that minor league pitchers simply can't exploit. So in this case, if we've said before, Keston Hira has really struggled with high velocity. There might not be enough good high velocity in the minors to find that flaw. And not just high velocity, but high in the zone where the umpires aren't as good.

So if you are a guy in the minor leagues that throws a high fastball, you might just walk a lot of people because you're not getting that call. And so maybe it's not being honed in the minor leagues as much as it could be. Yeah. And that would be the question then is, okay, if Jazz was just kind of more passive the entire time and was striking out because he was too passive, that's not indicative of a player who has a hole that pitchers are going to exploit. So, again, it's possible that he's got holes that pitchers are going to find. His swinging strike rate is lower than it was in the minors i don't know i just wonder if he's more like springer in terms of how springer came through the minor leagues than someone like hira and there were there were scouts there were a lot of scouts who said this was coming for jeff yeah i mean it takes a lot i'm sorry i'm zach gallen fans it takes a lot to to i think to to to send out zachen. It's a little bit different.

Like Caleb Smith was older. The fastball velo is already declining, more of a two-pitch pitcher. But Zach Gallen is kind of what a lot of teams want from a pitcher. A guy with command, velo, and four pitches. I mean, they took a real leap of faith in trading Zach Allen for Jazz. So they believed this was coming. It's interesting, too, though, when you look at Jazz's projections, because they were bad because the debut was bad and because there was the leap from double A to the big leagues. They're still bad even with... We're talking about 240.

They're ranging around 207 to 250. And I think that's a big part of why his ADP was as low as it was and why there wasn't that much buzz about him during draft season. He was just buried. If you used any projection system to run dollar values and rankings for your league, they were going to steer you away from jazz. You had to have scouting reports and prospect analysts who'd seen him, who believed in the tools pushing you to draft him. Price wasn't much, but it was just a case

where it was really easy to talk yourself out of him based on the numbers that those systems were generating. Yeah. I've, I, I had a couple of shares over time. One, I just sort of jettisoned for before the season, just for almost nothing okay good job uh the other one the other one hung around because uh nobody wanted him from me on my one of my rosters and so he was my starting second baseman so um yeah I can't claim any sort of victories on this one and and it still it points it sort of needles me in that one sort of bias that I have against guys with high strikeout rates. And it's like, you know, got to stop doing this. It's a bias I have as well.

And then on the pitching side for me, it's guys with high walk rates. I just like Ian Anderson. I missed on Ian Anderson. Frambois Valdez. I wasn't on him right away last year. I'm always slow to those players in both cases. It's the one skill for each player type that I'm most concerned about just from the broad view. And if you're watching on YouTube, you're looking at that 45th percentile reach rate and 36th percentile barrel rate. And you are confused because it doesn't make sense.

It never does for me with Gurriel. When the sign stealing scandal came out. Primo hit tool. Yeah, it's a great hit tool. But I just thought, well, there it is. It's the sign stealing. That's how he did it. That's how he did 31 homers? I could never figure it out. He had help. And it's like, no, it's it's the sign stealing that's how he did it i could that's how i could never i could never figure it out he had help and it's like no it's it's not just that like this is for some

reason this is a player that i continually get wrong and it's driving me nuts yeah i think hit tool is a little bit like uh command two where it'll help you reach your highest possible outcomes. So, um, you also have to look at grill in the context of where it was last year. So his barrel rate right now is a 36 percentile, but last year it was, well, I'm getting messed up cause I got a fan graphs number here. I think, but it was worse.

It was, uh, I think it was in it was uh i think it was in the 20s uh so he's improved that and then he also improved his reach rate uh you're seeing 45th percentile here on reach rate uh and it was like 25th percentile the year before so i mean these are the two things that matter in small samples. We have a demonstrated track record of great hit tool. We have had some really great power seasons from Gurriel. I would take the over on the batting average projections,

which are all around 269. First of all, his career batting average is 289, first of all his career batting average is 289 and i think they're reaching too much into 22 and 2020 to to uh get that 260 270 number and then um i'm a little bit more divided on this what do you think if i gave you an over under of 16 more homers oh i'm dumb so I'll take the under. So if you are betting on that, you should absolutely go opposite me on this one, because I think I've been wrong on Yuli Gurriel at every possible turn so far. Yeah, I don't think I've ever really had a share. I have him on one team this year, and it was desperation, needed playing time at first base. Last first base.

Yeah, I didn't feel like I was, oh, yeah, he's 36 now, and I'm sure he's going to get better. I kind of thought it was the beginning of the end last year. This is a Cuban legend, dude. Yeah. This is a guy who – and not just Cuban. I mean, it's pretty cool that he just stepped onto the field. He didn't have that many minor league years,

and he steps onto the field with Houston in his first year and is able to sit, you know, basically league average and then improve on that the second year. So I think it's a lot of hit tool. It's it's that's basically his only tool. It's working for him. And in that park, I think you can get away with some things.

We've seen that in Alex Bregman's numbers to some degree too. Not as extreme, of course, with the lower barrel rates. A guy that overshoots it because he fits the park or adjusts to the park so well that he gets the most out of those tools. Right handers that can deposit homers into the

Ford boxes. I always want to call it crawfish. I do too. I think that'd be an improvement. They should call them the crawfish boxes. I like crawfish. I always want to call it crawfish. Yeah, I do too. I think that'd be an improvement. They should call them the crawfish boxes. I like crawfish. I want to eat some crawfish. I do too. All right, let's move over to the pitching side.

Plenty of risers so far in that group. And we're going to focus on starting pitchers since we're going to have a separate closer segment here in just a little while. And I think we have to begin with Carlos Rodon, who's made it the long way back from multiple arm injuries to not only throw a no hitter, but just look like his old self again, in terms of velo, in terms of the fastball slider mix, throw some changeups in there too. This is the Rodon I saw several years ago in

spring training that I was pretty excited about. So just from a pure human standpoint, it's nice to see him back at this level again. The stuff number checks out. Stuff plus, you got him at 108 right now, which is really encouraging. Command plus, not quite there at 91, but not atrocious either. Is it really just a matter of health at this point for Rodan if he's going to sustain something that makes him a viable fantasy starter over the remaining months of the season? You know, one thing that is interesting too is that the changeup shows up poorly with an 87 stuff plus,

and he's been throwing it less often. We've seen some pitchers make it, you know, sort of 5% change in the changeup. That's the, you know, along with the command, that's what makes me pessimistic. But I still put him in my top 60 going forward as soon as I saw two things, velo up two miles per hour you know um and uh just that

the slider was back 145 stuff plus on that slider so the model really loves the slider and it's a good one and it's it's what makes it makes him makes it go this one made him throw that no hitter so i think they will have some bumps in the road. When I give a guy a ranking of 60, there's probably some weeks I wouldn't want to start him. I also don't know exactly what those weeks are. He's going to pitch at home in Chicago. You're going to not

pitch him at home because that's kind of a tough park? Maybe once the weather is consistently warm and it's getting there. You can be a little careful at home occasionally. Really, I think the matchup you worry about the most is Minnesota. They've got a few right-handed boppers. That would be the most common matchup he sees where I would be planning on sitting him.

And maybe that changes over the course of the season based on injuries and other factors. But otherwise, he's probably in my lineup in most mixed leagues for just about every other start that comes around. Also, a bit of a cake schedule at times. He gets to go into Cleveland, gets to go into Kansas City. I know Kansas City's offense is better. I know, I know, I know. It is better. But that park still suppresses offense. It's still a nice place to pitch. Yeah, I would still look at Kansas City, even if you buy into all the improvements. They are going to get Mondesi back eventually, and they may bring up Bobby Witt Jr.

Are they much better than a league average offense? Probably not. I think the park gives you that extra little bit of comfort that you might want. With Rodon, the projections are pretty wildly divergent. A 371 ERA and a 125 whip from the bat. I mean, if he does that the rest of the way, you crushed it with an early season waiver move or a guy that you took with one of your last roster slots on draft day. At the high end, we got zips at 446 and 142. If you kind of go down the middle, you get the low fours ERA. He's got a 402 for his career and a 136 whip.

That's basically splitting the difference at this point. So I'll set that as the barometer line here. Over or under the 402 ERA and the 136 whip going forward? Under. Under. Nice. Under on both? Under.

Under. Under. Nice. Under on both. Under. There's a lot of really big homer projections from Steamer and Zips. He really hasn't had a homer problem like that until going back to 2017. Yes, you have to go back

that far if you want innings totals, but just in terms of time, he hasn't really... Even back then, that was one year we had that bad home run total and then otherwise like 2016-2015 he didn't so I'm not sure that he's a home run guy I do know that he

kind of tends towards two pitches and you know could be but no I like him and I think he's got another white Sox on here, but those two White Sox are some of my favorite targets, I think.

Yeah, well, the next guy we're going to talk about, I know you've liked him for a while now, Christian Javier. Stuff Plus looks good. Command Plus, uh-oh, looks kind of like a typical Astros guy who ends up in the bullpen. The results so far, though, have been outstanding. K-rate close to 33% through four starts. Not walking that many guys.

7.6% is actually a slight improvement from what we saw in the shortened season. We're now talking about a guy who, through his first 75 big league innings, has a.276 ERA and a.95 whip. The results have been phenomenal for Christian Javier at this point. It's interesting that Max Bay, in his model, he has a thing called Location Plus, which is a little bit

different. You might have seen it on the cards that I'm doing on Twitter. In terms of Location Plus, he's not he doesn't stick out as being terrible. 97 Location Plus, a 92 Location Plus on the fastball, in terms of location plus he's not he doesn't stick out as being terrible 97 location plus a 92 location plus on the fastball so not maybe amazing placement on the fastball but looks like a guy who can control his slider 106 on the slider and good stuff numbers on the slider foreseam and knuckle curve so a good two breaking ball guy has a bit of a show me change that he can

command a little bit. So I location, you just real quickly, the difference between the two is location. Plus is a little bit more of the model where you just look at where the balls end up. And if those are good places to end up. And so command plus a little bit more,

can he do exactly what he wants with the ball? And the difference is that some people could throw pitches that end up in the right places, but not always do it right. Or kind of get, I would say that you could get luckier on Location Plus than you can get with Command Plus. Yeah, that makes sense.

And I think maybe another example of that would be Tyler Glass now in the past, the guy that doesn't necessarily do well in the command plus metric, but also gets away with his mistakes because the stuff is filthy and tends to miss in places where you can get away with it. Yeah. But Javier versus Urquidy and Urquidy's numbers a little bit off because he was in Coors.

But Javier versus Urquidy is very interesting because Rikidi was like a guy with above average stuff and above average command. Javier is a little bit more like outstanding stuff below average command and it's working out a little bit better for Javier. So, you know, but I still like a lot, both a lot. I think the temptation for me with Christian Javier is to try and buy high and keep her in dynasty leagues

because a lot of the previous expectations for him were more of a swing man or multi-inning reliever. And it looks to me like he can legitimately stick long-term as a starter. I don't think you can come up and have results as good as what he has done so far, and then fall on your face so badly that you're quickly pushed into the bullpen. I mean, he's right there at that shelf, though.

88 command plus is just, the lever shelf is 90. But also instructively right near him, Lance McCullers Jr., who doesn't have great command, his command plus number is 93. Do we think there's that level precision precision in command plus where you know there's a big difference between 93 and 88 maybe there isn't uh and if there isn't lance mccullers shows us the way with javier i mean hopefully not with all the injuries but you know otherwise uh and mccullers has been up and down so there there might be some up and down in

javier's future but i don't think that anybody at this point is seriously doubting whether McCullers can be a starting pitcher. Exactly. Let's move on to Trevor Rodgers. He had some late draft season helium. A little surprised to see the Stuff Plus number sitting at 93 so far. You were digging into that a bit more before we started recording. What exactly is the issue in Rodgers' arsenal?

Because he has been outstanding so far. Yeah, I guess it's the fastball. The changeup does do well, which is, thank God. Because changeups are actually a little bit tricky. But let me see here. I'm pulling up his player card on this awesome app that Max Bay made for me. It's amazing. If there was a way to put a sign in on it,

maybe I could make it available to people listening to this that are subscribed to The Athletic. But what we've got is change up 123 stuff plus love it slider improved slider that he worked on that that's why he got the helium 111 stuff plus we love it four seam fastball 78 he's throwing that pitch a lot too a 62.7 usage rate on a pitch that grades out like that is surprising well the plus, which we talked about, is good on his. And if you look at command plus, it lines up.

His command plus is good. So I don't think that this is a 93 stuff plus, 106 command plus is a viable package. I just don't think it's this good. And I think it'll just take a little combination of a team that's good at fastballs. I think maybe that has seen him before. There's a little bit of that arm slot that says to me, oh, like maybe people haven't seen him a ton.

You know, it's decent velo. It's not, you know, standout, top-of-the-shelf velo. I could see, like, he just kind of did okay against the Brewers in Miami, right? Yeah, actually did it in Milwaukee. But the matchups have been three easy matchups, I would say, and two tough ones. And holding your own against the Braves, even though they have not for the young season been a good offense yet. That's a good sign. 10 K is his season high that came against the Mets.

That's an offense that can do some damage and he's made his lady. Hasn't seen anybody right now or a layup. Hasn't seen anybody twice yet. Right. Picked on the, the Orioles at home, a banged up Brewers team on the road. Six K is his first start against St.

Louis. I think went for his first start against St. Louis. I think he went four his first time out, so it wasn't like he padded his ratios there. It's been very good across the board for Rodgers. I look at him going forward. If I were re-ranking pitchers right now, he's probably coming out somewhere in that 40 to 50 range for me, and he was just outside the top 75 starting the season.

So it's a pretty big leap and it would be you know 40 to 45 still with the the green up arrow next to his name because i think he could jump a little higher than that yeah i ended up giving him uh making him 46 despite the numbers because uh the strikeouts minus walker are good so there's some amount of results uh that point to that that you can even in even in the small samples, point to. And because, you know, these numbers aren't perfect. So I still like what I see. Also, there's a lot of value in a guy who pitches in Florida just by himself.

Just the fact that he pitches in Florida means that half the time he's going to have one of the best park situations in baseball. Yeah, a lot of cushion in that home park for sure as it goes with Trevor Rodgers. Danny Duffy came up on a show about a week or so ago. We got a question that was basically, so Danny Duffy looks decent, looks rosterable. decent looks rosterable and the big difference at the time was that the vila was back up closer to 2017 levels which so far it has held up he's still averaging 93.8 on his fastball that'd be his best fastball velocity since 2016 when he was averaging 95.5 on that pitch but is there anything else in the profile that catches your eye with duffy yeah i have uh you know two notes here plus 1.6 mile per hour plus uh five percent on the four seam which i think those things go hand in hand uh you get the velo and you get excited and you

get to to get to throw it more but i i am looking for one thing here which is uh his velo over time let's see if i can do this because i'm looking at his stuff number in this uh shiny app and uh april 12th at 115 stuff plus april 19th at 110 april 26 a 105 and so I'm looking for something that tracks. So the fastball velo peaked in that game where you had the best stuff number. And it has gone down to 93.7 from 94.7. But 93.7 is still pretty good for him, right? Yeah, that's enough for him to use that pitch 35 40 percent of the time and everything

else i mean it's a deep enough arsenal yeah he's always been a guy with a lot of pitches that that all kind of works and i i'm encouraged by the command too right the command being close to average that bodes really well for his chances of continuing to at least be kind of a league average starter or tick of a league average starter or tick above a league average starter which plays a lot we were talking about you know using starters earlier carlos rodan and the al central right there's so many soft landing spots maybe when you're not on one of the white socks or twins you've got two teams to be careful with instead of one but i generally think duffy is the kind of guy that at least for

his home starts and for any two start week you're probably going to go ahead and use them unless that velo dips good acquisition i think in al only situations where probably the person didn't spend that much to get them um and you will you'll have to take some lumps on the road maybe at certain times but all in all will end up being a good al only pitcher. I kind of think of Tyler Anderson, who looked really good by Stuff Plus and Command Plus, and I just acquired him in Devil's Rejects for Corbin Martin and Chris Rodriguez, which some people might say is an overpay because they love Corbin Martin. But at this point in the season, it's really hard to buy with prospects. And I think at this point in the season, it's actually still hard to make trades in a lot of places

because people are trying to feel out what they're doing. And they might think, oh, Danny Duffy is going to be part of a great staff for me. But Danny Duffy and Tyler Anderson are both those kind of like, this guy's been around. He doesn't really have any upside. He's just going to play to the numbers on the back of his card and that might not necessarily be true i mean that's why we use these stuff in command numbers to kind of get out in front of small changes um in their in their repertoire so i think he's a buy yeah duffy probably feels a lot like found money to the teams that were in deep enough leagues to have him on draft day. And even for teams that picked him up

as a week one or week two addition from the waiver wire. Let's talk about Michael Kopech. He looks amazing. We talked about this recently. Lance Lynn's hurt. So temporarily there's a spot in the rotation, but I could easily see the White Sox once Lynn is back saying, actually, Michael Kopech is better than Dylan Cease. So Dylan Cease is going to be our multi-inning reliever that we use to keep stretched

out and have him ready if someone else gets hurt. And Kopech's going to be our guy who's taking the ball every fifth day. That move would be totally justified if they wanted to make that move. Yeah. And it's going to be tricky getting that right, I think, because there's still some development that can happen with Cease. But you look at strikeouts minus walks, Dylan Cease is at 10%. You look at the command, it's reliever-level command. And if you want to win games, there actually is a need. That bullpen is good, but that bullpen could be better

if Dylan Cease was there in the sixth. Just look at, I mean, oh, my God. Did you watch that White Sox game that Gialito lost? Was it last night? I did not. They left him in too long, but I didn't see it. Oh, no. That was like, ooh, Tony La Russa, man.

Oh, man. He lost. I i'm gonna say something here he lost that game tony larusa lost that game he made three really terrible decisions just awful decisions i mean he had uh a choice of vaughn um i forget who's on the bench. He had three good batters and he let Lurie Garcia with the tying run on base. He let Lurie Garcia and was it Jake Lamb or

somebody just whiff. Two straight whiffs with the tying run on base. And he had people on the bench. He had G Alito out there doing body language being like I'm done. Like, you can see it. And then Gio even says after the game that I was gassed. And Tony La Russa had made this look like,

oh, he shouldn't have said that. Oh, it was on me to know that. But the first look that Tony La Russa gave in the press conference afterwards was like, oh, he said what? He said what he said what and then Adam Eaton falls down trying to field a fieldable home run he could have caught it he falls down and Gio is just staring bullets out to right field I like I think the White Sox could win this division, but right now, I would guess that Tony La Russa does not have his players and that it is not actually that fun of a clubhouse.

I would speculate, as someone who has spent zero seconds in the White Sox clubhouse, I would guess that he's never had the entire clubhouse since the day he was hired for that job. It was something that he had to earn over time and could still earn over time. You know Tim Aniston's like, he said what? Yeah. We all looked at hire when it happened and we were all very surprised. And they are a powder keg.

And used correctly, that's a good thing. If not used correctly, that's a very bad thing and and how does that how does the cease decision fit in then would it be like could it make you less popular to take seats out of the rotation it should make you more popular because you're doing the thing that clearly makes your team better yeah maybe if you've ever been on any team before where someone who didn't deserve to start or have a certain role had that role and Yeah, maybe. if they actually make the decision correctly, especially when it's the harder decision to make. It's worse with a more veteran player than Cease. Cease is a young enough player where you can just do it. Because I was going to say, Dallas Keigel?

Right, if it were Dallas Keigel, it'd be a lot harder because the veterans in the clubhouse might think it's too soon to do that. Dallas Keigel has an even smaller K-PB. But he doesn't have the kind of fundamental issues, I don't think. And I don't know if that's necessarily ever... Was peak Dallas Keigel ever popping on the K-BB leaderboard?

No, he's a command, weak contact, really high ground ball guy. Yeah, so I think in that case, I'm not that worried about that. He's still getting plenty of outs on the ground. Wow, that K rate is even lower than I thought. It's really low. 11.3%. Wow. You haven't seen one that low since Mark Burley.

Now, he's the new Mark Burley. You know, he'll fit right in. Yeah, I think if we were talking about removing Dallas Keuchel, there might be some locker room repercussions. But I also think, you know, Cease has a 415 ERA. I think we both just talked about the underlying issues, but we don't know that all the other players are on top of those underlying issues the same way.

He's got a 15% walk rate. I think you can justify shuttling him to the bullpen, trying to iron out those control issues in shorter stints. And it's better than optioning him down to the alternate site site that might be the kind of thing that gets some people pretty frustrated if they were to do something like that let's talk about steven matts i'm always skeptical of matts and yes the stuff plus number being 84 will make me skeptical once again even though he's been good so far command plus looks okay at 97 i think part of the problem for me too, Eno, is Steven Matz has a pretty unfortunate track record of injuries. So that also makes me very skeptical

that even if he's pitching well, and let's say in this case, we're talking low fours ERA, league average whip, that even that might not come over an additional 28 starts this season it might be you know littered with some il stints or some extremes that are as bad as the start of his season has been good yeah um i've brought up the fact that maybe toronto has a slightly different stuff number um you know i know that's a thing um there's a interesting thing here with the location on steven matt's that his location plus number is better than his command plus um and i think this is a little bit of theory that i have is that that could be coaching so if you are consistent like if you don't have great command but they're telling you to throw it in the right places

consistent like if you don't have great command but they're telling you to throw it in the right places you could have like a decent good location plus they have a good knowledge of where you miss so they're like these are the places you can aim and you'll miss in these ways and they'll be good and so his location plus on the curveball and change are good he's increased the uses of his slider, which is better than his sinker. So anyway, he's a 74 stuff plus on the fastball. I think that's what it comes down to in the end. It's just not a good fastball. It doesn't have good movement.

It doesn't have good shape. And it does have okay velocity. But I think when you're talking about okay velocity at 93, 94, like we're just talking about, we just saw the Wobba on 94 mile an hour pitches, right? I don't think 94 moves the needle for a major league hitter anymore. No, it's so much sink or change up right now. I just, I don't like the way he's getting these results, even though you're certainly happy if you've been banking these results thus far. I would not expect anything close to this level to be sustained let's get to one of your favorites john means what do you see

from john means here through his first few starts of 2021 you know there's uh there's this awkward phase uh when one of your babies grows up uh and then you have to throw the sell high moniker on them. It's just a sad moment because the reality is that every player has a true talent and a true value. And I think that he's over his skis a little bit. You know, if you look at his stuff plus numbers, and I think that he's over his skis a little bit. If you look at his stuff plus numbers,

none of his stuff plus numbers are over 100. Even if you want to say, okay, it's a straight changeup, straight changeups sometimes are hard to quantify. His stuff number on that is a 54. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe we just haven't figured out the right way that a straight changeup interacts. Maybe we're not weighting things in the right way. Fine, give him an average changeup. That means he would have an average changeup, out the right way that a straight change-up interacts. Maybe we're not weighting things in the right way. Fine.

Give him an average change-up. That means he would have an average change-up, an average four-seam, and an above-average curveball with average command, right? Yeah, above-average command. And the worst park situation in baseball that's only going to get worse. Yeah, the worst. I think in some ways it's worse than Coors. But, okay, second worst.

We'll give him second worst. Because as it heats up, temperature's a big deal, and Baltimore gets hot, and those balls start flying. So I think, what did I put means? I put means 47. I'm just not going to move him off of there,. I feel like you can maybe sell him as higher than the 47th best pitcher. You really have to hope the person who's interested is looking at the career numbers. 232 innings now with the Orioles for John Means, 365 ERA, 109 whip. I think if

you're in that front office, he's a controllable starting pitcher that you're trying to shop now because you probably look at what happened in Detroit with Matthew Boyd and you say, hey, if this goes off the rails for a little while, he's going to be a really tough guy to trade, but if we trade him with a few years of control left,

we might be able to get some pretty intriguing prospects back from someone. Three years of control left and yeah, but don't the Baltimore Orioles want to be good pretty intriguing prospects back from someone. He's got three years of control left. Yeah, but don't the Baltimore Orioles want to be good in three years? Maybe not. How good is John Means going to be in three years, though? I mean, I think that's the question. So let's put him on our list of starters that could or should be traded

at some point later on this season. It would certainly make sense from Torrey's perspective. That would increase his fantasy value. It'd be great. I'd be thrilled to see that. Okay, over, under, he gets traded. I'm putting it at 15%. I think it's over.

It's more likely than that. Yeah? Mm-hmm. I think it's not. It's more likely than that. Yeah? Mm-hmm. I think it's not quite 50-50. I'll say 40%. You're right. Okay, so how many good starting pitchers on teams like this that could be acquirable are there maybe?

The supply is not very high. On a definite seller? Who's a definite seller? We've tried to trade Max Scherzer on this show the pirates tyler anderson's uh trade or trade not well my trade over under on tyler anderson's like 65 yeah definitely higher than means but he also has uh i don't know if he has any years of control of maybe go to the rockies and try to get herman marquez or uh antonio senzate? I think if you are looking for pitching, that's the team you should be calling. I think if you were the person who

owned that team, you might tell your GM, your interim GM, hey, how about we let the next guy make the trades other than Trevor Story? You kind of have to do something with Story, but the pitching with control left, maybe you wait that out a little longer. Yeah, yeah. You know what? Because right now their COO is in charge. Good job, Rocky.

The business guy, yeah. So let's have the COO trade away all our guys. I'm sure he'll get the best back. Without an R&D department too. Prior to working for the Rockies, rockies worked for the rockies for 26 years i think the article said his last job was at coca-cola so you know zero baseball ops experience probably shouldn't be making trades so you know just a thought don't uh don't trade away your pitching right now if you are uh i mean you have some other sellers like the tigers

maybe but the tigers don't want to... Boyd. Yeah, Boyd, but they don't want to sell their young guys. Yeah. Who would you actually rather trade for right now, Means or Boyd? Tyler Anderson. Nice. Nice cop-out.

Means. Yeah. I mean, younger, probably a little more room for growth, a little more consistency too. Yeah. I would like John Means a lot outside of Baltimore. Part of the reason I've been so hesitant to believe this entire time is the park and not feeling like I want to use him for more than half of his starts. Yeah. I mean, just look at his career home run per nine, 1.5.

And then look at how, like, yeah, I love Dylan Bundy now. Sure. Who doesn't? Yeah. Yeah, I love Dylan Bundy now. Sure, who doesn't? The bat projection, though, 4.4 ERA, 1.2 whip. If that's usable in your league, I think he can do that. Yeah, I would agree with that. But definitely on my list of guys that I think we'll see on the move at some point this season,

even though I'm only at 40% right now, that's 40% and rising. Now, it's funny to see how much things can change in the closer pool over the course of a month. I was looking back at our rundown from the reliever preview, which we did in late February. And there were at least a dozen bad closer situations that we looked at. And some of them, I think we were actually right about the best way to go. At least we were right for the first month. Others, it seems like it's so easy to figure it out now that we've seen how it played out for a month, but we were way off. And I wanted to run through and just kind of talk about some of these situations again, how confident we are in what has happened so far. One of the situations that was a little bumpy at that time was Minnesota.

It came up as a question from one of our listeners, and now it's really Taylor Rodgers versus the field because Alex Colomay has been moved into a low leverage role after a brutal stretch through the first month of the season. So if you were choosing today, if you were picking the side, who gets more saves, Taylor Rodgers or the rest of the Twins relievers combined, who would you choose today? Taylor Rodgers. It's got to be the guy, right? He's good. What did we say before? I think at that time I said Rodgers being discounted because of Colomay

as a partial closer made sense because the skills were good. I'm 99% sure that was my take back in late February on this. And I have Rodgers a few places. I still think it could be a share. It could be 75-25. I said that Colomine's got the cutter and cutter is by i've been wrong about guys in the past but i'm still gonna bet against columbine again whoo victory laugh no rogers is good yeah not amazing view though actually 95 for closer is around average.

Uh, but in terms of strikeout rates, strikeouts, minus walks, home runs, um, I think he'll, I think he'll keep the job all year.

And good command, I think too, for a closer too. So I think that's the other skill that Rogers has shown over multiple seasons. So I'm on the Rogers side as well, but with the caveat, 75, 25 split with Hansel Robles or a little bit of colomay if he gets right or jorge alcalá or duffy like they've got they've

got plenty of good relievers in minnesota i like that bullpen as a group yeah just just the way they're gonna go with with rocco baldelli calling the shots This one seems easy now because of the way San Diego has handled it, but we didn't know that Mark Melanson was the closer two months ago. We thought it was Pomerantz. People thought it was Emilio Pagan. I got both Pomerantz and Pagan in a labor, and they're fine for NL only leagues, but they're not getting saves. It's Ben Melanson, so does it continue?

I ended up peacing out on the whole thing uh i yeah uh maybe there should be a meal culpa that uh i thought it would be pomerantz the one thing i would say is that pomerantz is obviously next in line he's the obvious setup guy so you know if melanson struggles uh it'll be there there's the other thing that i was saying about with Calame Melanson has a cutter cutter suppress exit velo and so sometimes I think they look better than their strikeout

rates. Cutter guys look better than their strikeout rates Mariano Rivera is like the big example of that and then the last thing is that I guess they promised him the closer role when they signed him and we just didn't know that too bad we didn't know that that would help us a lot i was like oh thank you

thank you it would have been a nice thing to drop somewhere along the line to somebody uh though and the last thing is uh do does uh closer experience matter i just i've seen people study this and not find it and i've also seen in this year other examples of closer experience not mattering you know so it's uh uh it did matter in this situation maybe or maybe it was the cutter um i don't know exactly uh why it worked out for mark melanson um but you know what do we what are some examples of closer experience and not mattering? How about Kansas City? I'm pretty sure it's Stomont, finally.

I'm finally right. Yeah, you are right. I'm taking the L. It took a long time. I thought it was going to be Scott Barlow. It was Holland for a minute, but Holland, his goose is cooked. Wade Davis looked cooked immediately. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say that's a situation where experience is not dictating the role. Stelmont looks like their best reliever by far, and they shouldn't cut up saves six ways. They should let him be the guy. My trust level is on the rise for sure. And I think he could be the guy for several years. I mean, he's a controllable reliever that they could have closing out games for three or four years before we start worrying about the stuff really tailing off.

Because he's always had Velo. He's always had just pure filth, really, in the arsenal. It's just been a matter of not walking the world when he's out there. Speaking of walking the world, Alex Reyes has been great at getting saves. He's got a 6-1 edge over my pick, Giovanni Gallegos. We knew Jordan Hicks would be a factor at some point, based on the way they were describing him, at least, in his recovery. But that hasn't quite materialized yet. Gallegos has the best skills of the bunch so this is one where i could see

what we've had happen in april not necessarily being a roadmap to what's going to happen in may and beyond yeah it's tough because hicks is kind of trying to get his his feet under him i thought he'd be my my pick there um and uh there's a guy with with that is not running and not taking over the role. Reyes, the things that I look at are, if I'm looking for a change, I'll look at holds, because that's what they're, you know, I'm looking at who's being used for holds. That's the person that will next be used for saves. And then the other two things I look at that have been shown with research to have some effect are velocity rank and strikeout rank.

So Alex Reyes does really well by velocity, actually. I have 84 relievers here that pitch 10 innings, and he's seventh in velocity. Guess where he is in strikeouts minus walks. I don't even have a good guess. 81. 81. Yeah, just buried. Not good. Not good at all.

And even if you want to take the walk part out of it and just make it strikeouts, the 23% strikeout rate for Reyes is not good for a closer. So I'm not betting long-term on Reyes. I think I'd like to give it to gallegos uh and when you look at the metrics uh you've got you know three holds he's obviously the setup guy uh velo rank 40th so kind of average velo but uh really great strikeout rate um you know like a really good one and really good strikeout minus walk rate uh you know i don't know why would you not give it to him maybe because you see more potential volume and you want to just have him ready seventh eighth ninth for the best

combination of hitters coming up regardless of when that is. Gallegos? Yeah. 13. Oh, you're right. 11 games, 13 innings. All right, so there's some of that. I'm also seeing a fairly high slider rate, but it's not like it used to be. He was at 51% before. And 51% slider guys do actually make me nervous as closers. Sergio Romo never got the gig, really.

I mean, he's gotten some saves over time but sergio romo and luke regerson are my like oh man but they throw so many sliders that you know matt whistler i just don't think those guys are gonna be closers because uh they hang one eventually like homer rates you know um but i don't think guyaiogas is really there. So I think, yeah, Gaiogas is going to be closer. Yeah, he's on the short list of current non-closer relievers that I think you can roster with the hope of getting saves, but he's also good enough where you can plug him in, get some Ks and ratios,

vulture the occasional win as well. You don't want to have too many guys like that, but I think he's good enough and close enough to taking over the role where it's worth putting him on that list. Let's talk about the closer carousel in Spinsonati. Amir Garrett was the guy coming into the season for me. He said issues with walks just hasn't been as effective as we'd hoped. Lucas Sims is dinged up right now, and then Sean Doolittle comes out and gets a save on Tuesday against the Dodgers. So is Doolittle moving into that role a sign of things to come, or is that an aberration based on some recent bullpen usage?

They had to get pretty deep into that pen to get through Monday's game. TJ Antone finished it off with three innings. He was fantastic in that game. I don't really know what to make of this situation because I thought Sims was on the brink of taking over before the injury. I'm still going with Sims. I'm still going with Sims because Anton is being used in those multi-inning roles. And I think there is still some interest in making him a starter. Doolittle, Sims pitched 32 pitches the night before

and had three in a row at some point. So I think that it's Sims' job fairly soon. Let's go to Boston where I was on the wrong side. I thought Adam Adovino was going to replace Matt Barnes. Matt Barnes has been excellent so far. About a 46.8% K rate early in the season. Home run rates down early on. Walk rates down early on.

Kind of putting all of the pieces together. If this holds up, he's going to be one of the better late relievers, non-top 15, non-top 20 relievers this season what do you think his chances are of holding some of these massive skills gains there is a fairly large change in how he's pitching and what he's doing so and it it kind of lines up with sustainability for me. I'm not talking about a 190 Babbit or whatever. But right now, he's throwing the most fastballs he's thrown in like five years. And he's being aggressive.

And I think he's not allowing himself to get into these bad counts where he has to throw the fastball. So I think he's just really putting the hitter on his back heels you know what I mean whereas in the past he's kind of been like curveball curveball ooh I'm going to surprise you with the fastball except now it's the 3-2 count and geez what am I going to do now

just look at that walk rate just changing overnight you know the high strikeouts on the fastball like I I don't see a reason to take it from him. Door's shut right now as far as Matt Barnes goes. He looks excellent as K percentage, 47%. Dude, you know DeGrom is striking out 50% of the batters he's seen.

I don't recall seeing that from a starter in late april maybe i've just missed it in the past but that is amazing i kind of wanted to keep it up all year because it just would be so ridiculous he struck out half of the people he saw well anyway barnes is at 200 innings barnes at 47 with a nice six percent walk rate. Just beautiful. Everything looks beautiful. The velo is there. The aggression is there. I think, and it's his walk year, right? Yeah. Yep, might be getting a nice multi-year deal somewhere.

I don't know that I'm rushing to give him gobs of money at the end of this, but I love him this year. Trevor Rosenthal got a decent one-year deal. Obviously, he got hurt. No, Barnes is going to ask for multiple years. He's been healthy. He's going to try to get three for 30 or something like that. I mean, it's possible.

He's going to try for the Hendricks deal. He's going to try for the Hendricks deal. I don't think he'll get it with a shorter track record, but he's not going to be as far off Hendricks as we would have thought even a month ago if anything close to this continues. One more for the road. Stephen Crichton's the guy right now in Arizona. He will not stay the guy.

Kevin Ginkle. No, no. It's not Kevin Ginkle. It's definitely not Kevin Ginkle. Just get out of here with Kevin Ginkle. I'm looking at a bullpen report now where he's second in there right there. Spin again. Pick another name.

I think this might be the dreaded. I think we put this on earlier too, right? Just the avoid. It was an avoid, I think, going into the season. It is no longer an avoid for me. It is a stash situation. Who? J.B. Bacoskis. J.B. Bacoskis.

J.B. Bacoskis. Not Ginkle. No Ginkle. No Ginkle. This is a Ginkle-free podcast. Never Ginkle. Because you don't think that Crichton is good. I really don't.

I don't mean to be mean. I don't see anything in the profile that I like. Ginkle, if I had to pick one of Crichton and Ginkle, I like Ginkle better. Yay! But the answer there is... Yay, that's a drop. Bacauskas.

The answer is Bacauskas. Oh, wait. Am I looking at Stephen Crichton's numbers? Wow. Those are shockingly mediocre. Mm-hmm. What? Wait, wait. I'm missing something Mm-hmm. What? Wait, wait.

I'm missing something. Are you? What? He throws 91? And he strikes out fewer than eight per nine? Yeah. And he walks guys, too. Walks guys?

What? He's walked about 9% of the batters he's faced the last two seasons now. Because they have no reason to make Bukowskis expensive. But I guess they're above 500. They could dream on being a wild card team. Dude, you're right.

It's gotta be Bukowskis. So he's on the stash list for me. Throws three pitches doesn't have bad command 94 huge whiff rate uh in the minors and here you know also it's interesting uh I remember one of you know you kind of we've been spending so much time apart you kind of try to remember back to moments we spent together. And I remember sitting with James Anderson and Bogman and Welsh behind home plate watching JB Bukowskis,

I think two Arizona Fall Leagues. The last one, 19. Was it the last one? Yeah, it had to have been 19, I would think. Because he wouldn't have been in 2018? He would have been a D-back in 2019 because that was the year no see i think we saw him in 2018 i think it was the year before he was still an astro and yeah he was still an astro and uh was watching him and i was like you know he cut the baby fat man like i remember him as being kind of short and just like bigger.

Now he looks like kind of nasty. He looks like he's been lifting. So yeah, thumbs up. I'm in. That's the answer. If you're looking for saves in Arizona, J.B. Bukowskis. Although I kind of want to make a dropout of you saying no ginkle. We could probably pull that off.

If you've got questions for us, fire them our way. Ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com is our email address on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. As you can see on the screen, if you're watching us on YouTube, $3.99 a month gets you in the door at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. It gets you Eno's rankings.

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Thanks for listening.