Rates & Barrels - April's Starting Pitcher Risers & Fallers

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss some of the biggest risers -- and a few fallers -- among starting pitchers from the first month of the season.  Rundown 0:45 Jacob deGrom Returns to the IL 6:23 Nathan Eovaldi's First Month in Texas 13:51 Dustin May's Rise Up Eno's Rankings 18:50 Freddy Peralta's Velo Returns; Pitch Mix is Strong 23:08 Jesús Luzardo's Step Forward in Miami 26:26 Joe Ryan New Arsenal 28:54 Zac Gallen's Continued Dominance 31:20 Other Big Movers 44:10 JP Sears: Sneaky Fallback Add From April? 50:30 Hunter Brown's First 50 MLB Innings 57:04 Big Fallers in the Rankings Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/rates and get on your way to being your best self. Head to factor75.com/rates40 and use code RATES40 to get 40% off your first box. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built-in, so you can change the music. Oh yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca.

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, May 1st. Eno Saris here with Derek Van Ryper. We have got a great show lined up. We've got one month in the books. We've got a new set of pitching rankings that went up on The Athletic from Eno back on Friday. So we're going to dig into the biggest movers on the pitching side. some of the biggest risers and fallers to this point in the season. We'll dig into why those players have moved as much as they have, focusing, of course, on healthy pitchers, injured pitchers, not necessarily a fun part of the conversation. Although we do have one injured pitcher that we have to talk about, and that, of course, is Jacob deGrom.

DeGrom left his start on Friday with right forearm tightness, and he's been diagnosed with right elbow inflammation, so he's on the 15-day IL. And that was just hours after he was number one on your rankings. He did just enough, long enough, to move back to his rightful position

and then just tore our hearts into pieces again. Still a kick in the groin. It's not like he's enjoying the last time either. This is not fun. I feel like every time we talk about Jacob deGrom and his lack of health, the question I always keep coming back to is we look at his velo and we see him throwing harder almost every year of his career. And you can't help but wonder if that is a contributing factor in this.

It may have absolutely nothing to do with it, right? It could just be the human elbow can only take so much regardless. And if he was throwing 96 or 97 instead of 98, 99, the same sort of thing could have happened. There's no real way to know. same sort of thing could have happened. There's no real way to know, but it's the one thing in his year-over-year stats that really just kind of blows your mind, and it's just not working for him physically. So I don't know if we have any more than elbow inflammation as an explanation for the problem. Of course, they're going to be careful with him at this point. It's the beginning of a five-year stretch with the Rangers.

Hopefully this is not a precursor to Tommy John or something more serious, but that's always sort of kind of lingering there in the background with the Grom. It's just, it's such an unfortunate development because he has become such an incredibly dominant pitcher. And I feel like we just don't get to see him nearly as often as we should. Yeah.

I mean, the, the, the research that's out there suggests that there are a few things that are the most stressful on your elbow. One is just straight-up fastball velo. Okay, check.

The other is that breaking balls at 80, 85 are less stressful than fastballs, but breaking balls at 93 might be more stressful than 93 mile an hour fastballs. There's a piece by Driveline where they actually put the modus sleeve on and directly measured stress to the elbow for different pitch types, and they basically found Velo is the thing, but once you look at breaking balls by Velo, breaking balls can be more aggressive on the elbow.

So he does the two things that are... And then the third thing really is pitching close to your max, and he pitches pretty close to his max. So he's doing everything wrong by health. We don't know that much. That's my precursor to that. But, you know, there is definitely evidence when people say, oh, should he step back off of this?

Should he, you know, leave some in the tank? Should he sit, you know, 95? And my answer would be yes. It's at least worth a try at this point because this is now the third consecutive season in which he's going to miss at least some time and maybe a significant time. We don't know if it's going to be months beyond this IELTS thing yet. Still too early to tell. And it's interesting, too, that we look back at his career, 2017, 2018, 2019, Jacob deGrom top 200 innings in three consecutive seasons before the pandemic

shortened 2020 season and then this run of three years of injuries. He was sitting 95 with a 88, 89-mile-an-hour slider back then. Yeah. 95.9 on the fastball back in 2017 up to 97.1 in 2019. That sort of gives you the upper

bound. Maybe that's where the sweet spot actually was or maybe it was throwing as hard as he was throwing for 600 plus innings over a three year stretch. Maybe that's why he's dealing with this now. It could be a cumulative wear and tear sort of problem. Yeah, all

things though point to this just being one of those grip your seat and bear it kind of things things because you're not gonna drop them at least for the next two weeks until you find out you know what the prognosis is they're gonna it's like the the dance is clear for everybody who's owned uh someone like jake degrom or even jake degrom himself is just that you wait until he throws off the mound and then you and then he goes to AAA Sugarland.

Even then you don't know what it means, right? Then they say, oh, well, he feels good, and we're going to just rest another week. You're like, well, if he felt good, why are you resting another week? Yeah. It's the rehab assignment where he goes three innings throws 40 pitches and strikes out eight guys but leaves the mound saying he feels okay and you're like of course this puts the rangers in a terrible spot too because given what he brings to the table i

mean dominance pretty much every time out not having him and replacing him with one of their depth options. It's a massive drop off. And they've had a pretty weird season so far from Nathan Evaldi. I think it was a big step forward for him over the weekend because he had a complete game shutout against the Yankees. That sort of changed everything about the way his numbers looked. He went into that start with a 520 ERA and a 141 whip, and a complete game shutout with 8Ks, ended up with a 393 ERA and a 115 whip. And as we're going to talk about, the league has changed a lot. back at his last few starts, it's been a ton of Ks. He's keeping the ball in the park. He's not walking, guys.

It seems like a lot of the struggle really came in one start against the Royals back on the 12th of April. And we're still at that point in the year. Five, six starts where you can look back. One meltdown can make the ratios look pretty bad. And one gem can make them look really good. Yeah, he's he's uh sort of tickling us a little bit with the fastball velo i'm you know i've noticed that his fastball stuff has has climbed with every start he started out the year at like 97 overall stuff plus now

he's at 103 um and the stuff plus on his fastball now is 98 And if you look at his velo, you know, he had a couple 96s, you know, at the end of the season, in the spring, in the beginning of the season. 95.7, 95.9, 96, 95.7. And then his last start, 97.5. Now, hold on. That's like the beginning of last year. So I do hope he doesn't go into that velo tail slide that he went into last season when he started the season. High 96s, low 97s and end of the season 94.

And I think that part is just a little bit like the Grom thing where you just like you throw him because he's a good pitcher and uh maybe you're baby him through some but i think you throw him every start now you throw him every start and you look up in the first inning and look what his velo is and but you've already started i mean you've already committed yeah you can't swap him out you you could try to like monitor it if it does start to fall below 94 then maybe put him in that class of pitchery like okay now i'm going to be more careful about how i throw you even even if he throws 94 and shuts the royals out be like notice that notice he threw 94 and think about him if the next start is in Yankee Stadium or something. Maybe he'll be like, maybe I'll

put someone else in this week. I think with Evaldi, you've got him 58th in your updated rankings in that sort of 40 to 70 range. Those are guys that you generally want to start, but you still choose some of those more difficult matchups as times

to sit them down. A lot of it comes down to as it always does, well, who's your alternative? Who are you throwing instead? Because you might not be walking into a better situation going to somebody else on your bench, but a good turnaround for Evaldi with that big start against the Yankees on Saturday.

4-0-0 rest of season projection using Jordan Rosenblum's projections and yeah, 4-3. 4-3 is the new league average. So weird. You know, it's kind of hard to port that over necessarily to, you know, what does a 4-3 league average mean for your league, you know? Because you obviously don't want to be league average, you know, in your fantasy leagues.

And then every league has, like, a different amount of depth. In my 12-team Otter New League, the median median era is 387 um in my 12 team ale only league now we're gonna get a in the fours uh one two three four five six it's uh four three that's kind of interesting um so uh and by the way i'm in third place and uh have a decent amount of k's and saves and doing well but i have a five five era era wow yep so i don't know i would say that uh a 4-0 era is useful in any league um but in a 12 team league he's one of your lesser starters and in a 15 team league he's uh one of your mid-pack starters i would say i'm guessing from this that league average era uh for a 15 team league is around four so he's about a league average starter now yeah we've looked at the run environment a few times on this show this season and i think the

team runs per game sitting at 4.59 as of today as as of May 1st. That's similar to what we saw just two years ago in 2021, very similar to the shortened season in 2020. So we're not totally out of bounds compared to our recent norms. It's up from last year. I mean, I remember looking at stats and seeing a lot of the conversation at the end of the season saying there weren't enough good hitters. That was really more the function of just what happened to the league as a whole. I think we're going to have maybe the opposite conversation when the dust settles at the end of this season. People are going to say,

there's not enough pitching. Maybe we'll see pitching go even earlier, or we'll see premiums placed at least on the elite of the elite. You wrote about this at the beginning of the rankings. With the new rules, and this is something we probably suggested before the new rules went into place avoiding contact is the absolute best thing you can do because

contact is going to be punished more than it was previously thanks to where defenders are playing so do you think it's worthwhile to place the extra premium immediately on strikeout pitchers if you're making trades in your league or making pickups because you're talking about you know four era a pitcher projected for a four era and and their their value in a 12 team league i think it really depends on strikeout rate like a four era with a strikeout per inning thumbs up four era with a seven k's per nine i'm not sure I'm into that because that not only brings that downside, but it also causes you to lag in a category where

you want to be very competitive. If your ratios are a little wobbly, you've got to make sure you're dominant in Ks. That's a good point. For Eovaldi himself, it's not his best foot forward, actually. You know, he's a guy who strikes out.

I mean, yes, he strikes out a good amount of players, but, you know, it's a 26.5 and, you know, 20% for his career. And, you know, sitting around 22 to 25. When you're talking about elite starting pitchers, you're usually talking about 30 is the number you think of, right? 40 for DeGrom, of course. Even more. Absurd.

Yeah. Totally absurd. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Totally absurd. from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton bike or bike plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze.

And it felt a little like... Come on kids, back to the hotel room. Good night kids. Good night mama. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Let's dig into some of the risers from the first month of the season. And to do this, we're just looking at some of the differences in projections and where players were in Eno's rankings when draft season was coming to a close

and where they are now. Dustin May, I think, is among the biggest risers. Of course, health was a big part of it. Did he come back completely healthy? Showed us last year that he was back and able to pitch. I think it was just a question of, is there another level for him to reach in terms of stuff

coming all the way back? What have you seen from May in the early going, and how does it give you, or why does it give you so much confidence in his ability to maintain elite ratios potentially going forward? For the most part part just trusting the numbers in front of me because for my eye test it works too uh when i watch him i think he's

got dominant stuff the stuff ratings agree with me um and uh i know i know i know i got some feedback from this and people saying it's too high and you know he's not striking guys out but we have seen him push the strikeout rate i know 2021 was only 23 innings but he had a 38 strikeout rate in those 23 innings um and even last year he had a 23 percent um which i think will would combine with you know elite run suppression he suppression. He's got the kind of stuff that won't give up homers. So I think that matters. And then I just think he's going to strike out more guys going forward because he's struck out more guys in the past,

and he has this great stuff number. So I'm trusting the projections on Dustin May. And I don't know. He had not a great start in there in between, but, um, you know, even his bad starts are not bad,

you know, like yes, the, the game against the Mets, I guess was not great, but it's his only blemish. And it's, I don't know.

I, I'm, I'm still in, you know, look at his next start after that one. You know, people were like, Oh, you look oh, look, he's due for a bad game. He had a bad game. His next start against the Cubs, he's six strikeouts and five and a third with two earned.

Yeah. Every, I mean, so five starts out of the six this year, two earned runs or fewer. Yeah. That Met start was a clear outlier. It's weird to see the Ks down a little bit, as far as they are. Because I thought he had turned the corner pre-injury with the K rate. K rate seemed fine last year. I think we have seen enough to buy into at least a jump closer to 8 Ks per 9,

as opposed to the lower mark that he's carrying right now. What is he sitting at, like 6? Yeah, that's not Dustin May. The guys you watch that actually deserve six Ks per nine are guys like Zach Davies. Dustin May does not have stuff like Zach Davies. That's very easy to see with your eyes, with the model, with past results across the board.

Team contact's still very good, even though it's not necessarily at the level it was previously. We've also seen swinging strike rates much, much better than what he's had so far. Last year, it was 12.9% pre-injury in 2021, 14.1%. So I have a hard time buying 6.8% as a new baseline for Dustin May in that department as well. The swinging strikes are going to be there. And, you know, fortunately for him, he's been very fortunate on balls in play to this point. A 198 BABIP, I think that's helped propel those ratios to this point. But his skills will almost certainly help correct for that in the months ahead.

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, and then, you know, there is, there has been some change from start to start for me. He's he is looking to find, I think, the ideal mix for his fastballs. He, you know, he kind of is a guy that used to be a sinker guy that's like trying to push his way towards being a four seam guy. And that's been one of the big changes you've seen. But as each game has gone along this year, he's brought the sinker back a little bit.

And he's been, he's going back to his roots as kind of a sinker breaking ball guy. I think in the end, he'll be better for it. Even if it's like a Logan web, like a power Logan web situation that he gets to where he's, you know, a power,

a power sinker slider guy, he's going to have that four seam, you know, change up four seam cutter in his bag, you know? And I think that'll be important for him as he, as he figures out lefties and stuff like that. But,

you know, there's been change over the course of the season as he's gone back towards the sinker. And I think that'll be where he finds himself as a sinker slider guy that goes to forcing more and cutter more against lefties. Yeah, I'm there with you. I think he's definitely a riser.

Maybe I would have him a little lower than you ended up doing, but splitting hairs. The point is he's a big mover. He's probably a top 25 pitcher for me with ease, especially given some of the attrition we've had in this group. Freddy Peralta, also a big mover, also up about 28 spots. Same sort of movement as Dustin May. I think with Freddy, the thing that's really impressive for me is where he's locating his pitches. You see the four-seamer up under the hands of righties

pretty consistently elevated where it needs to be. The slider down and away from righties or backfooting it to lefties just consistently down in that corner. The changeup staying nice and low in the zone. I know when you watch him, he still has pitches get away from him. The command is still inconsistent, but it seems like the control is getting better for Freddy Peralta overall. He's finding ways to locate each of those pitches more consistently. And this is a guy that's a lot different than he was when he broke into the league. I know because he's going into Colorado this week to face the Rockies and his debut was a Mother's Day debut at Coors several years ago. All of those old highlights are going around.

Totally different guy than the guy that came in and thrived in that environment a few years back i mean yeah to be fair he's still the fastball is still his best pitch so he's still to some extent fastball freddie but you know this is one reason that i keep an eye on fastball stuff plus as separate from everything else. One reason is, first of all, that it is faster than any other pitch type. You can know a fastball stuff plus in 15 to 18 pitches. So that's useful for me in terms of really early season stuff. But I also wonder, and I'm not sure exactly how to research this,

it should show up in Stuff Plus as it is, but I wonder sometimes if there just is a threshold for Fastball Stuff Plus where it's either just more important season to season, maybe it's stickier season to season. I need to tease out this idea that I think fastball stuff plus is a little bit more important than other ones. And so I'm looking at somebody like Kenta Maeda. I've said this before, like, I know he's hurt right now,

but one reason that we dropped him in my main event league was that his fastball stuff plus was sub 90, you know? And yes, he still had the splitter and the slider as pitches and there's still with good stuff plus and that pushed his overall stuff plus to 100 or 101. But maybe he's not the same as another pitcher with a 101 stuff plus, you know what I mean? And what I like about Freddy Peralta is

he has that really great fastball and maybe there's another element to Freddy going forward. Right now, he's a great fastball and maybe there's another element to Freddie going forward right now he's a great fastball slider guy that kind of has a show-me curve what if the curve improves what if he goes to a cutter what it you know there's all there's like all the stuff you can do once you have a good fastball and he's good fastballs back he He spent last year 92, 93. He's back up to 95. I think you're right to look at the command because he's had inconsistent command in the past. But I also think that just looking and seeing,

oh, he's got the great fastball. Okay, put him back up in the top 40. You know what I mean? It was almost that easy. And as I was looking further, 28.5% predicted strikeout rate. Uh, so that pushed him up North 3.5 projected ERA that pushed him up North. Uh, the, he could have actually gone further than 23.

Uh, and the only risk for me, the only reason he wasn't, he was, I have him right around like sort of Tyler glass. Now call us or don't is that, I guess there's still some injury injury risk with him he is still kind of a guy who does get injured you know yeah he had the arm injury last year i think that was mainly sapped that velocity really didn't look he had it back when he came back but you go back like i said 2018 77.7 percent for seamer usage on arrival that was true fastball friday that. That's where the nickname came from. He has changed quite a bit to even get that down to the 53% range and to have an arsenal of four pitches that he actually throws. I mean, that's the surprising part. It's not just that he has four

and he throws two of them a combined 5% of the time. He actually throws those last two pitches about 25% of the time in total, so it makes them a lot more dynamic. Taking a look here at some other big movers up near this range, Jesus Lizardo pushing closer to the top 40. You just think about the players that the A's have given up on in the last few years. The Lizardo one, I think, was probably the most puzzling, and maybe there's always more to the story that we're not privy to, but it really looks like everything that people had hoped Jesus Lizardo could become as a pitcher back when the A's initially had him, it's happening for him in Miami.

Yeah. I mean, it's not a great look for Oakland development. I do think they thought he was closer to being a reliever than anything. I do think they thought he was closer to being a reliever than anything and that the risk of him being a reliever and the chance to go for it and get Starling Marte for one player, that was really the math they did. And to some extent, I don't want to give the Marlins like a ton of credit for changing Lizardo.

Because in terms of foreseam ride or sinker vertical movement or foreseam or sinker horizontal movement, they haven't done much with him. You know, like, you know, the big thing is he's throwing harder i mean that's really it all those numbers are the same and he went from you know uh 95 high 95s uh with oakland to this year 97.1 to some extent if you think you know if you think stuff it's too complicated and it's not that great sometimes you can just track velo you know and just be like oh oh this guy's throwing 97 now okay maybe he's better and you know stuff plus tells you the same thing that these pitches that he's throwing are kind of more velo dependent than any because he's throwing 97 miles an hour and only has a 108 104 you know stuff plus on his

fastballs you know what I mean like there are other people who throw 93 who have who have better stuff numbers it's not they're not great shapes but he's throwing harder and so that's enough for me to push him up but you know he's not as good as Freddie um and he's his shapes aren't that as good his projection is only for 393.393, 25.5% strikeout rate, and he has the same injury risk. So he ended up in my injury risk group that was a little bit further down, Tristan McKenzie, Tyler Malley, mid-40s. That's where I ended up putting Lizardo.

Yeah, I don't think I've got Lizardo anywhere this year. I've always liked him. Some of it was just kind of the preference for some of the more injured players in that bunch. Some of that has worked out. Some of that has not. Hopefully there's some time for correction to take place. But yeah, I'm kind of missing out on this.

Curious to see where the whip ends up for him. Always strange to see a mid-threes ERA with a 134 whip. Last year, over 100 innings and 103rd innings, it was a 332 ERA and a 104 whip. The control's not really a problem, so I tend to think we're going to see a little bit better in that other ratio, too, as we look at Jesus Lizardo going

forward how about Joe Ryan another one of your big movers on the ranks and he just I thought the league was going to figure him out after kind of seeing him for a year nope turns out no they're they're just not that's not happening so far there have been some changes though the twins have been popping as a group in the pitchingitching Plus model throughout this season. So what is it about Ryan that makes us capable of believing in these adjustments? You know, there is something similar here to Fastball Freddy, which is that Joe Ryan's best pitch by Stuff Plus was always the fastball. And I'm talking myself into it right here which

is like this could be a way to kind of identify guys like think of graham ashcraft right think of graham ashcraft freddie peralta and joe ryan they seem very different and yet they do have one thing really in common which is their best pitch is their fastball and you know in each case it's like a cutter or forcing they're different they're different fastballs they're good for different reasons but they're good and then they added something you know and i just see graham ashcraft's new sweeper joe ryan added a new sweeper now all of a sudden he has three pitches over 110 stuff plus. So with the sweeper, the splitter, and the four seed, he has a legit three-pitch mix. It's no longer, oh, we need to depend on just not letting him see

the third time through the order, and it's all deception, and it's all this, and he's just a fastball guy with good command like no man he's uh he's a full three pitch guy now and uh when i see that that's that's enough to be like well he already he always had the good fastball and now he's putting the arsenal around it so yeah i definitely pushed him uh i remember you know looking at it i think i even pushed him um yeah i i i guess i could have pushed him higher but he was bumping up against like shane bieber and hunter green types i've got him uh in the mid 20s and uh you know with the 27.1 projected strikeout rate and a 384 era um you know i think some of it has to do with unfavorable park factors

in some cases I felt like I could have pushed him harder I felt like I could have pushed him almost into the top 20 You could have maybe even pushed Zach Gallen a little bit more too because he has been outstanding 36.2% K rate so far this season

a guy that's always had good command, kind of put it all together from a control aspect last year with that 6.6% walk rate. He's cut that. He's at a 3.5% walk rate so far this season too. The mix, you look at what he's got going at four seamer, four seamer curve,

change up cutter. We've seen this from him before. This is not a new pitch mix. He's throwing the curve ball a little bit more this year. I guess that's part of the adjustments, but he's always had this nice arsenal that he could throw pretty well for strikes. So I know this is probably the ceiling for Gallon,

especially in the face of the Velo dipping a little bit on the fastball. That's the one sort of red flag I have with him. Velo has not recovered to pre-injury levels fully yet. But this is a tick more than what Joe Ryan has and he's got four pitches instead of three. So I feel like this is really solid. Yeah, I mean that's the other kind of thing that I keep an eye on is number of pitches because I know that I haven't been able to make the model spit out what i want in terms of how valuable having more pitches is but um yeah i

notice when somebody has like three or four pitches above uh 100 stuff plus um but but you know on his own team there's a there's an interesting comparison where zach gallon has uh three pitches above 100 stuff plus um and the changeup is close so you know a good wide mix uh Merrill Kelly has a slider curve and change that all are uh are above average by stuff plus and he's not as good right yes he's not as good because his forcing fastball stuff less is 78 his sinker is 90 and his cutter is 85 so like i still keep an eye on that uh on that fastball stuff plus is kind of almost a separate entry and his gallons at 106 uh is good uh but um i i just nervous what that'll look like at 92 and a half if he drops down um so i'm i'm watching the velo

on him a little bit and that if i didn't push him as far as you want i mean i got him at 12 so i pushed him pretty hard um you know the the reason i kind of stayed back was that velo as far as other big movers up it could be guys that either weren't ranked coming into the season because we didn't know if they were even going to be in the rotation or anybody else who really surprised you as you looked at the numbers, the rest of the season projections and broke things down. Was there anybody else that really popped for you that moved up a ton? You know, I may have made a mistake by not pushing Steele further. Justin Steele. He's had really

good results on the field and um you know we're talking now about uh 150 or so innings of an era around three or lower um good uh strikeout rates but not great um and yet sierra keeps pumping out you know hey this is a four era guy um you know fip you know remains uh you know uh skeptical basically um and the projections range from the bat 439 worse than league, all the way down to 3-6-5 for zips. And our projections had a 3-9-3, so hewed a little bit closer to the bat. And I'm just a little skeptical with that lower strike. I read 23% to date and 23.7% rest of season with a 99% overall stuff plus. It just felt a little soft.

And I've got some head scratchers ahead of him. And I didn't know. The big thing for me was, do I put him ahead of the head scratchers or behind the head scratchers? And what I mean by that is, Lance Lynn by the model, 4-3 projected ERA. Patrick Sandoval, 4-3-4 projected ERA. The model doesn't like these guys. And yet, you know, Lynn had a bounce back start.

And, you know, Alec Manoa is down here where, you know, no model likes him. Do I push Justin Steele ahead of those guys and push those guys down even further or do you know there's always a point where I just put in the guys that the model doesn't like that I've been like this is too far

you know like I can't I can't push this guy down any further I have Alec Minow at 60 I was like you know this is close to where the model has him I have Steele behind him I have Savali behind him they have better projections the model likes them better Kyle Wright the model likes Kyle Wright have steel behind them i have civalli behind them they have better projections the model likes them better kyle right the model likes the cow right better um but i at some point had to be like i gotta put alec manoa down you know what i mean so that's a little bit it's almost

like how the sausage is made it's just like sometimes rankings are like well i gotta put this guy in eventually i can't put manoa down at like a hundred you know what i mean so uh so steel ended up behind that group when he could have been behind the head of that group so if you really want to like use the model and and and you believe in it and you believe in steel i had him at 71 but i think you could have him as high as you know 59 60 uh ahead of savali because i have at 61 uh ahead of lynn ahead of Savali who's I have at 61 ahead of Lynn, ahead of John Gray ahead of Jose Barrios so

you could, and it also speaks to what you were saying earlier about the 40 through 70 there's a bit of a tier here, I think Nathan Eovaldi, Sonny Gray 58 and 59, I feel good about those guys and I want to roster them and then from

60 down to 75 there's like I don't know you know maybe and I don't really know how to sort these guys and each of them has like their backers like Patrick Sandoval at 66 like

he's got people that love him people love him yeah people really yelled at me uh about my stuff plus number and i was like i'm just reporting a number you know and it may not even capture everything about sandoval because he has a weird seam shifted wakes change up that drops less than people expect so it's like a sweeper change up or something and i don't know maybe we don't capture how good that is, but he also had like starts with one strikeout. So he's kind of, I know people, even people who own him are like a little nervous about him. So, um, you know, that was steel was a guy that, uh, that I kind of, uh, I struggled

with Mitch Keller. I like almost better than the model does. Um,, but we had him at 95 going into the season. I had him at 95 going into the season. I pushed him up to 75th because I think he's doing a lot of these things right. And he looks like he's good. But the model still punches out a 4.29 ERA for him. And I'm here on Twitter talking about how he's an ace, you know. So I wish I could have pushed him further, but I have to also listen to the numbers I'm here on Twitter talking about how he's an ace. So I wish I could have pushed him further, but I have to also listen to the numbers I'm looking at.

Well, he's baked a lot of bad cookies in the big leagues, so it's hard for him to recover. He's got to prove himself. It's a good way of putting it. We want to see more of the good Mitch Keller. And again, Mitch Keller in the history of rates and barrels, the rates and barrels word cloud, his name is in the biggest text. Yeah, it's definitely there.

The young guys, I think people always want to hear about the young guys, the debuters, the rookies. And, you know, they're always one of the highest risers because, you know, I usually have little pockets of rookies in the preseason rankings where I'm like, I'm just ranking some rookies here. I have no idea how many innings they're going to get, so I can't push them any higher than this, but here's a little rookie pocket.

Any case, I had Mason Miller one ahead of Taj Bradley because the model just loves Mason Miller, pumping out a 2.980 array, 31.5% strike array. Even with a little dip in Stuff Plus in the second start, he still was one of the top five in Stuff Plus. So, you know,

everything loves Mason Miller except when you start thinking about, I actually have to get some wins or I'm in a quality start league. The quality start league is the wall yeah the quality start league is the real problem yeah that's a real one and then but the a's also just went through 28 games without a in april without a starting pitcher getting a win it's a record isn't it yes it's

a record i thought i saw that was a record and i'm not sure it's gonna change much because the bullpen is bad the lineup is bad they don't let their starters'm not sure it's going to change much because the bullpen is bad. The lineup is bad. They don't let their starters go deep. So it's like, I don't think they'll go all year. But it doesn't speak well for Mason Miller's sort of peripheral stat numbers, his volume stat numbers. So I was tempted to put Taj Bradley ahead of him, but Bradley's in the minor leagues right now.

Well, yeah, that's tough. That's the tough part of this. The up and down nature of the prospects makes them even harder to rank because even with the data, you can more reliably compare apples to apples, but the more established starters don't have the risk of going

down just for the sake of roster management, right? I mean, it could happen to Tanner Bybee, even though he just commanded massive fab bids. The same thing that happened to Taj Bradley could happen to Tanner Bybee. We know these things going into it. At least we should.

We talk about it. People should understand the risk. But you're right about the Oakland bullpen. I can't believe there's a bullpen with a worse ERA than Oakland. They have a 683 ERA this season. They almost have their walk rate. I know we like percentages more, but the rates are on the screen right now.

7.2% K rate against a 6.1% or 7.2 Ks per nine against 6.1 walks per nine. What the heck is that? That is awful. How do you do that for a month? Who built this bullpen and why and like you can't you can't help but like put together like oh well they have the smallest

analytic staff in the big league and they're always trying to do something different so it's it's it's possible that they're like you know we're gonna we're gonna try and and build a bullpen on command. The Giants have done that to a certain extent. But what they're not doing is building it on Stuff Plus because they have a 90 Stuff Plus, the worst bullpen in the league. The second worst bullpen in the league is Colorado's, and that number doesn't even really count because altitude affects Stuff Plus.

So really you have to go to Cincinnati's 95 Stuff plus uh as the next one so they're an order below and if you're like okay well they're building on location plus well a team that just signed shintaro punjabi is not building it on location plus nope and they have the worst location plus in the big leagues a 92 you have to go all the way up to the yankees at 96 uh and the white socks at 96 i also think that proves that to some extent it's not really that useful of a stat, but they're bad in everything. And it's hard to figure out what they're doing down there.

Maybe they're collecting all those starters and they're going to sort through the starters and do that whole thing where the bullpen gets better as they put starters in the bullpen. Maybe Fujinami can do starters in the bullpen. Maybe Fujinami can do something in the bullpen. 350 ERA in September for the A's bullpen after an ERA north of six in April. That'd be quite the turnaround. Did they have the smallest analytics department in baseball in 2021

when they won 86 games? They had the smallest analytics department when they were good too, right? That's why you can't, like, you know. But I'd also think that the longer you do something, the more people are like, oh, I know what you're doing. You know, other teams are looking around the league being like, okay, what are the Reds doing? This is what the Reds are doing.

Okay, because they need to formulate trade plans, right? So, like, okay, if we want to talk to the Reds, they really like this and they really like this, so let's put together a package and see if they buy it on this right so i think right now uh the a's have become so you know used to their approach which is get guys who are in triple a or have played a little in the big leagues guys who are really close that had good numbers in the minor leagues that scouts don't love. I mean, not describe most of the return that they've ever gotten. Even the ones that worked. Simeon, scouts don't love him because he's not a shortstop, right?

You know, even the guys that worked out, a lot of times their acquisition, it wasn't something that scouts loved, but the numbers loved them and they were close to the big leagues. And if you ask somebody on the A's, it's, we don't like risk. We're buying we're buying floor well that just becomes super obvious to the rest of the league like i maintain that it's that there's it's in the realm of possibility that the milwaukee brewers traded for estuary ruiz only with the with the one idea in their head that they would trade him to the Oakland A's eventually. That's a very specific acquisition. We need a trade ship with Oakland.

We want to get a catcher. And it turned out they got a catcher from a different team. They maybe thought they were getting on Murphy, right? Yeah, they probably thought they were. They clearly needed a catcher. And how did they jump in on the Murphy deal? Because they were talking to the Oakland A's about Murphy. And the Oakland A's said, well, I don't know if Ruiz is enough for Murphy, right?

That's how it happened. Right. I think they traded for Asturi Ruiz to trade for Sean Murphy. And they were like, fine, we'll take William Contreras. And because we have a great ability to develop catching, like the Brewers' ability to develop catching like the Brewers ability to develop catching is like number one in the league we're going to take William Contreras and all his bad framing numbers and make him one of the top framers in the league that's that's how we do

so I you know even that can be manipulated because then you're like oh Milwaukee great catcher development we have you know Blake Sable or whatever it is we could trade bad somebody who's bad at all these framing things and we don't think we can do it and maybe they We have, you know, Blake Sable or whatever it is. We could trade badness into pitchers to them. We have somebody who's bad at all these framing things, and we don't think we can do it. Maybe they can't either, but let's see if they'll bite at this catcher or whatever, you know? So I don't know.

You have to – there's this weird thing in baseball where you have to have an idea, and you have to – it takes a lot to get to the minor leagues and to get your scouts and everybody everybody be like, this is our idea. Hey guys, listen up. This is what we're going to do. You know? And then everyone is on board. But then you become manipulatable if everybody else figures out what your idea is.

You have to have an idea. And then you have to have another idea. And you have to have another idea. And you have to either seamlessly jump to the next idea or find a way to like bring all the ideas together so that you're doing all the things at once but are you going to be good at doing all things at once well or you can be a drunk poker player like the rockies and just have no idea what you're ever doing no one knows what you're doing yeah that's right you're the wild card at the table so no one knows what What's the drunk player going to do?

I don't know. I've been rude to the A's. I do want to give him credit, one of the highest risers, and I do think he was really interesting to put up against all these other names. We went hard on Tadge Bradley in my main event, and so we may not have another $200 bid in us for at least for a starting pitcher right and so we were looking at uh logan allen and tanner bybee and the model likes logan allen better so we put in a couple like make good uh d make good bids uh of around 90 you know for allen and bybee knowing that we probably wouldn't get Bybee because the people were really frothing.

But in my heart, I was hoping we'd get Allen as he dropped a little further than he should. You know what I mean? Just get lucky and get Allen. Our third guy in that bid train was nowhere near 90. I think we had J.P. Sears in that bid chain. I think he was third and we had like an 11 bid on him or 16 or 13 or something like that but in there he has a projected 418 era rest of

season 23 strikeout rate he's improved his fastball to where it's getting close to league average and he jumped from 159th in my rankings all the way up to 96 it's a bit of a deep league play but it is i think instructive because it tells you a little bit of like you know oh well he has a 415 predicted rest of season tanner bybee has a 454 right and i have tanner bybee ahead of him because i understand how upside works um and and you know i have logan allen ahead of him because I understand how upside works. And, you know, I have Logan Allen ahead of him. It's a little bit like their fastballs are better than Sears. And, you know, they scouts say they're better. So, yes, I'll have them higher.

But Sears was like this little like idea we had. And Varlin may be the next one. Louis Varlin looks like he's going to come up. Looks like Tyler Malley is out for a month. And that gives Louis Varland a month. I have him 120 in my rankings because I didn't know that when I was ranking. And he's behind some guys with some real high-force ERA projections. If I knew Varland was in the big leagues,

I could push him at least to where Sears is. You know what I mean? Like at least to 96. And maybe even further up into where brian bayo is uh in the in the 80s um around where tanner halk is in the 80s so uh louis vonlan is someone you should pick up um i don't know how to to put that up against mason miller or taj bradley or anything like it's really it's really going to be up to your league settings there's a lot of stuff like that because if you are in a quality start league I just told someone

on Twitter maybe Louis Varland is the better play than Mason Miller in a quality start league because you're just if you get just zeros and quality starts from Mason Miller he's like a super reliever for you do you think that there's a price bump on the second and third wave of prospects that come up where you're not going to get Taj Bradley cheaply, but FOMO and desperation starts to set in a little bit more because it did seem like Bybee's bids, in the leagues I'm in at least, were higher than the Bradley bids. My model liked Bradley a lot better. It's a better home park for Bradley. It looked like a team more desperate for starting pitching. I still maintain that Bradley's going to be up pretty soon.

Yeah, and maybe part of this is the difference in how you feel about your team two weeks after the season starts on April 16th versus four weeks after the season starts on April 30th. Maybe more desperate need, especially as these four, three ERAs be racking up, earned runs. Yeah, you have a little bit more patience. You can say, okay, my pitchers are pretty healthy. I trust the guys I drafted.

It's a couple of bad starts, not a big deal. I'm going to bid, but I'm not going to bid as aggressively. And then there's also the supply of prospects remaining. We talked about this on the Friday show with Al a little bit. It's like how many more elite of the elite prospects are there? And trying to keep tabs on what that list looks like and when those players are likely to arrive

is very challenging. But it's almost like you get a good deal if you take a chance early and you get a better deal if you can wait until June or July. Like the fab prices across the board are cheaper later. There might be some pop-up prospects that don't have the same scouting back.

They weren't on preseason 100s. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, like Roy Bursalinas, just thinking about Oakland and trying to give them some credit. The best pitcher in their minor league organization right now by a K-BB percentage this season in very limited sample is Roy Bursalinus. He was

part of that three-team trade we were just talking about. 32.9% K minus BB. That's really good. It's very interesting. There's no reason, if he pitches well at AA for these next few weeks, no reason why he wouldn't see some time at AAA and possibly throw some innings for Oakland this year. But why would they hold him back? Yeah, and then you can look at the AAA sheet. If you're a subscriber, you can look at the AAA sheet. Someone like Simeon Woods Richardson, he's the next wave, right? Literally on his own team, even, because it sounds like he's behind Varlin. They'll cost even less, but you might have some model information on them from AAA.

It seems like a lot of teams are at least doing at least one stop, one start in AAA on the way to the major leagues, which benefits us. And so you can look at that, and you might find someone that's, like, coming up, has a decent runway, and costs you, you know, 11, 16 bucks like Sears, you know? So, you know 11 16 bucks like sears you know so um you know it's definitely i went hard on bradley and i pulled back on the second wave and i it went about as x as i expected

i didn't there were prices for bybee that i would never have paid i i got with an al labor i um i repaid. I got an AL Laver. I think I was $3 short of getting Logan Allen. I really wanted him. There's not a ton that separates those two based on what they're able to do. It's just that question we've talked about for about a week. Who's really in the Guardians rotation as they get more healthy? Both of those guys should be, but there's a very good chance that both of them won't be. I did want to ask you about Hunter Brown too. His first 50 innings in the big leagues have been outstanding. I saw a good chunk of his start last week against the Rays. I thought when Houston lost Justin Verlander, I thought this is going to be a level that the guy replacing him, effectively Hunter Brown taking a spot in the back and everyone else moving up. Hunter Brown's not going to come near Justin Verlander's ratios.

That couldn't possibly happen. It's only 30 innings so far this year. But the Astros are doing it again. They're letting a crazy good player go in free agency, replacing him with someone in the organization, and getting a remarkably similar result. Sierra's got him at.372, so the.230-70 RA you see right now, yeah, that's probably coming up based on some of the things that are happening. But the underlying numbers are good. And the biggest thing for Hunter Brown that I think has improved since he was a prospect is the control, the knock on him. He was a prospect of the week on this show, I think, in 2021.

I got my hands on some early location plus show, I think, in 2021. I got my hands on some early location plus numbers, I think, that year. Yeah. We were just worried about walks. We were just like, okay, what is this? Is this the Dylan Seas problem where he can strike enough guys out to get away with it? It's like, well, no, the K-rate's come down too, but this is probably a

more sustainable pitcher overall. This is a guy you can trust a lot more than the 32% K-rate guy with a 10-12% walk rate because that fluctuation is a really dangerous game to play. I don't see anything that

is a red flag for me. We're talking about 480 pitches, so actually Location Plus has come online for a lot of these starters, and he has a 104 Location Plus. It's maybe not super predictive, but it does tell you that he's not a terrible command guy.

You know what I mean? Like Brian Abreu, who does have a three-pitch mix that could be a starter, still has a 96 Location Plus, and that's fairly bad for a starter still has a 96 location plus and that's that's fairly bad for a starter ronald blanco who you know they wanted to stretch out and who has a fairly wide mix and a good stuff plus number he has a 95 location plus i think that's part of why he's not going to make it as a starter um but hunter brown 480 pitches 104 location plus fast fastball 104 uh splitter 109 slider 100 which is a little

bit surprising because he throws the slider like 100 he throws it like 92 or something his best pitch is his knuckle curve and you know I actually think that's kind of a fun little wrinkle because um you know there's there's a chance he could throw that more he's at 30 maybe maybe that's kind of a fun little wrinkle because there's a chance he could throw that more. He's at 30%. Maybe that's where he needs to be exactly. It's 30-30-30 right now, fastball, slider, curve. But I don't see a reason not to like him. No, it's been really impressive so far.

Exceeding expectations. He wasn't like he was a non-prospect. There was a pretty healthy scouting grade on him for a long time. And it was never a question whether he had good enough stuff. It was just a matter of, is he going to put it all together to be a consistent big league starter? And those first 50 innings we've seen are pointing to a resounding yes for Hunter Brown. I got one name I want to throw out here, Matt Strom.

You know, people have noticed that uh you know his he's got an interesting pitch mix he's definitely like a five and dive uh so maybe not a great quality start guy um but a 99 uh fastball stuff plus 104 on the cutter 103 on the slider. It seems like just enough of a mix. He's holding steady at 101 location, 101 stuff to 102 location, 345 pitches in. It all works, but I'm really, just really glad to have Jordan Rosenblum do these projections

because I think one of the hardest things is to just factor in park factor. Just to look at a guy like that and be like oh yeah he looks pretty good oh yeah he pitches in philadelphia does that does that take him off my list and what does that mean so you add it up together he gets a four two uh one you know projection with a 27 strikeout rate that's pretty good and it's uh i have him in the high 50s. What he is, I think, is a really good team streamer in that he's a guy that I would start on the road almost all the time.

And then at home, I would want to sort of pick and choose on some offenses. I think there will be some regression for him coming. But at the same time, he's a big jumper since he was not even ranked preseason because i thought they had andrew painter and other guys for depth and he was going to be a reliever for them so the kudos to the phillies for uh believing in strom and kudos to strom for doing the work and a little bit of coaching around the side and then belief that he could work at 93 and be this kind of pitcher at 93 instead of needing to be 94, 95 in relief.

So Will Smith is back for the Dodgers. That's the next start for Matt Strom. It's a Tuesday start at LA. It's not quite the same daunting task that it was a year ago. The Dodgers are scuffling. I think I'd start him. You think you'd throw Strom against them on the road? Yeah. I'm looking at those other options, but the question about Matt Strom

has never been talent. He's over a strikeout running for his career. I realize a lot of the time he's worked as a reliever. Good ratios for his career as well. It's just a matter of staying healthy. He's doing it as far as workload goes. He's at least reached 80 pitches in his start this season.

They do keep him closer to 60 or 70 on a pretty regular basis, so that might be the one thing working against him. There's soft wins. Wins is going to be a little bit rough. It's definitely more five and fly than than six plus consistently if he if he has more than a handful of six inning starts this year i'd be surprised but the quality of the ratios might be there and again it comes back to the

k rate k rate's probably high enough where this actually can continue to work for matt strom there were a few other new names on the list too guys that because they hadn't pitched in in the big leagues previously or hadn't pitched in the big leagues in a while they jumped up i think strom was a really good pull as far as someone that has taken a big step forward as far as fallers go we're not going to spend a ton of time dwelling on the biggest fallers but who is someone you really like going into the season who is presumably healthy today that took a big tumble on the list? It's usually related to health. Ryan Nelson wasn't real high on the list,

but he's taken a bit of a hit to start this season. Yeah, and the fastball's not there anymore. Ryan Nelson used to be, like, he used to be, and this is the one, like, where I was like, oh, I've just been talking about how important fastball is, and he had a great fastball last year,

and now he doesn't. I guess he still has a 98 stuff plus on the fastball, and that could totally work with a 106 slider. But he's down to 98 stuff plus 105 location plus. The one thing I can tell you about Ryan Nelson that keeps me afloat with him

is his schedule is about to get pretty good. Yeah, he just had a trip to Colorado over the weekend too. That's going to affect your stuff plus too. Yeah, I think it was part of a two-start week. So you may have actually been tempted to take that on and if you did, unfortunately, I think that turned out well. Do you have the date on that one real quick? Because I can just play some

schedule hopping here real quick. I can get that date. That would have been 29th. 29th, okay. So the D-back schedule. This is an awful way to show the schedule. What?

Oh, God, because they want me to buy the tickets. I get it. So the 29th. What are you doing to get the schedule? Next start is going to be Saturday against the Nationals. Next week, he's home against the Giants. These are two very good starts. And are they Marlins or he misses the Marlins?

He misses the Marlins. Well, they have two off days. They're off today. And by the way, fingers crossed that Corbin Carroll's MRI comes back clean. Off today, off Thursday. Is Welsh going to be okay to do the show tomorrow with Corbin Carroll? If Corbin Carroll

has a problem. And no fought in the Major Leagues. Oh my god. Yeah, we're going to have to make sure he's checking with him today just to make sure everything's okay. But yes, most likely Nationals, Marlins, and then possible Giants or a's after that yes and then this is a good stretch for these pitchers look at that until may 21st he gets pirates a's giants marlins nationals you know what you know it is kind of i think that's funny that you were like oh they have these two off days when people do play the schedule game this far out,

they get in trouble, I think. Because there's all these like, oh, well, we're pushing a start. Or, oh, we're using off day and we're skipping them. You know what I mean? It's like all this stuff. It almost never turns out the way they're expecting. But just looking at the quality of the offenses that they are facing generally, it looks like he's going to have a good part of the schedule.

May 22, they go to Philadelphia, and that's when it gets a little hairy. Yeah, we can worry about that in about three weeks, so that's good. It's a good stretch here for these next few series for the Diamondbacks pitching staff as a whole. Speaking of rotation machinations, it looks like the Dodgers are going to go to a six-man rotation,

at least for a little while, because they have an off day on Thursday, but it was announced over the weekend that Gavin Stone is supposed to come up and start at home against the Phillies. I know there were some Gavin Stone-specific questions on Twitter, and it was basically like, why doesn't the model like Gavin Stone more than it does?

What is the model seeing in him? What about Gavin Stone would come up light there? I don't know. It doesn't love his shape, so say oh he throws 95 but uh this model said he had a below average fastball uh by stuff plus so i'm guessing it doesn't love the shape um it liked his slider but it didn't like his his for his splitter and i would just say it's not a great amount of sample for splitter the model doesn't do great on change ups everyone says his splitter is amazing so if you give him let's say a 94 mile an hour fastball uh with

iffy shape um and then a plus splitter and a good slider i mean he really sounds like tony gonsolin um and the the thing that you want to know is exactly how good that shape is on the foreseam and how good his command is. So if he turns out to be Tony Gonsolin, we'll have arguments about how good he is, even if he is that good. So we don't even know how good Tony Gonsolin is,

but it does sound like Tony Gonsolin. And so I think that's interesting. I wouldn't take him off any list. I would put him somewhere around Tanner Bybee, where it's like, you know, the scouts love him, the model doesn't love him yet, but the model doesn't hate him. So I don't know that I'm saving a $200 bid for Gavin Stone.

That's what I'm saying. Right, right. Yeah, it might be more like the Logan Allen bids with the Dodger tax tacked on top, right? So that's 10% to 12% of a budget instead of high single digits. I would rather have Logan Allen. Well, and I think the challenging part of this is with the Dodgers, how long do they stick with that six-man rotation?

Or is someone actually hurt? Are they just lying to us? The Guardians need Allen more than I think the Dodgers, how long do they stick with that six-man rotation? Or is someone actually hurt? Are they just lying to us? The Guardians need Allen more than I think the Dodgers need Stone. So that's something to think of. The two biggest droppers that I can think of, I put right next to each other at 33 and 35, are Julio Urias and Christian Javier. Now, they both have a 4-2 ERA projection.

Urias has a 105 stuff plus, so he still has the good sweeper. He has a 23% projected strikeout rate. So that's where you have that Dustin May ask question mark about the strikeout rate without the sort of Dustin May ask heights in stuff plus. the sort of dustin may ask heights and stuff plus uh so that's why urias fell um javier has a 99 stuff plus this year and a 425 era projection and a lot of people really didn't like that but javier last year remember he was like a reliever going into uh starting and so he started the year in the high 93s even you know even 94 pluses and you know even in august and in july he had a 94 plus uh mile per hour fastball did christian javier he ended the season around 93 he started this season around 93 now he's 92.9 so some of it again is just a straight velo uh but also last year he had an inch and a half an inch more ride on his foreseam um and uh and his slider was you know obviously harder um

and uh you know had a little bit less depth. So I think he's a little bit more average. Last year, he had like this whiff of strider around him. You know, we've got plus ride on a 94 mile an hour fastball with a plus breaking ball. And he's just like, oh yeah, he's like strider. He's going to be a two pitch guy that dominates. This year, you're like, oh man, the four seam has really taken a step back.

And the slider slider 78 now like there's not that many people who are dominating with a 78 monitor slider yeah he throws that pitch a lot too so you know when i look at uh the the stuff plus for houston and i and i see javier like i kind of believe. It's a 103 stuff plus slider and a 96 stuff plus fastball. If you're going to be mostly a two-pitch pitcher, that's problematic. Those are not the kind of numbers you see from a two-pitch, dominating two-pitch pitcher. It's interesting, though, that with all of this, K-rate, of course,

is down, way down from where it was last year. 33.2% a season ago, 25.2% right now. He has cut the walk rate down to 5%. So there's a little bit of a trade-off there. I think part of this is that guys can hit him in the zone more often, 85% zone contact percentage. A more hittable Christian Javier might walk fewer batters, but it probably means that the home run rate we saw pre-2022, that could be here to stay. That's kind of baked in. This is a guy who gave up more than an armor per half

for nine for his first two years. Yeah, so unless something changes with those breaking pitches or unless some velo comes back, I think it's fair to lower the ceiling a little bit on Christian Javier. He's a bit of a sell-high candidate. Well, yeah, move him while you can because the ratios still look fine.

Most people out there are going to say strikeout per inning 350 ish era good whip on a good team i'll buy that i mean it could go all haywire and you know he he adds two miles an hour but that's not that's not what i see when i look at his his chart it's a very steady downward uh downward curve on his Velo chart. You know what I mean? It's not really up and down. It's just going down. I don't think he's the kind of guy that if you trade for him,

he's going to fall apart on you, though, either. I think he's solid. He's just not quite that Strider-esque like you said. We saw a ceiling from him last year that is looking like it's unsustainable based on what he's doing right now. One of the bigger droppers in VLO. I mean, if you just look year over year, he's went from 9-9 to 9-2-7

according to StatCast. So we covered a lot of ground today. There are probably 50 more pitchers we could have talked about. We'll try to get to them at some future episode. We're going to focus on some of the hitters that have moved up and down the most since the season started on our Wednesday episode. We're going to focus on some of the hitters that have moved up and down the most since the season started on our Wednesday episode.

We've got a prospect episode, of course, coming up on Tuesday. If you want to check these rankings and projections out, you can do that for a dollar a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper.

That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.