Rates & Barrels - Baseball is Back! More Tough Pitcher Rankings (Live at Other Half Brewing -- Domino Park)

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Eno and DVR are live in Brooklyn and joined by several friends as the 2024 MLB season is underway! Guests include Nick Pollack of Pitcher List, Niv Shah of Ottoneu, Chris Towers of CBS Fantasy and Ellen Adair from the Take Me In to the Ballgame podcast, and several great listener questions! Rundown 0:45 What Are We Trying to Learn From One-Game Samples & Early-Season Baseball? 10:30 Nick Pollack of Pitcher List Joins the Show! (Cole Ragans Love) 20:52 Tough Rankings: Converted Relievers 30:56 Tough Rankings: Model Surgers w/Bad Spring Results 38:30 Would You Rather? Toss-Ups 52:10 Niv Shah of ottoneu Joins the Show! 59:24 Chris Towers of CBS Fantasy Joins the Show! 1:11:13 Ellen Adair from the 'Take Me In to the Ballgame' podcast Joins the Show! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Nick on Twitter: @PitcherList Follow Niv on Twitter: @nivshah Follow Chris on Twitter: @CTowersCBS Follow Ellen on Twitter: @ellen_adair Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes w/Trevor May! (next live show: 3/29) https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It is Wednesday, March 20th. Derek Van Riper, you know, Saris. On this episode, baseball season has started and it is wonderful. I'm happy. I'm so happy right now because it's not 6 a.m. It's not 6 a.m. The games count. We get to start grinding fab. all the things we've been preparing for

for the last six months. Now we get to find out if we're right. 162 coming. Oh yeah, 26 weeks. Here it comes. It starts with a simple question, right? We have this game that's thousands of miles away in an unusual place for many of the players who played, and you say, what can we learn from a one-game sample

that's so far away from a normal major league environment? I mean, these guys had to speed through spring training. Pitchers weren't necessarily fully stretched out. We saw that with both Darvish and Glassnought today, kind of stopping in the 70-pitch range. So what do we take away from any one game? Because for the next couple of weeks the samples are tiny and we want everything to mean something, but a lot

of things mean nothing. So how do we rectify that? I don't know man. I mean one of the things that happened at Padres camp when I was talking to Mike Schilt was he said because of this schedule I get we get the opportunity to do a lot of interesting things and I think that my definition of interesting and Mike Schilt's definition of interesting are different things because it was pretty obvious that he was gonna do this parade of relievers that he did today we had one two three four five six seven relievers everybody loves relievers and the kind of the dumb thing is that

this is what happens early in the season too. You're gonna think that all your guys are stretched out because they got the full six weeks, but if I remember right and I barely remember last week, I would say that like it's gonna be the same way in the first week of the year and you're gonna be tempted to be like Well, the temperatures are low. This is a great time to stream I'm gonna pitch all my starters early because you know, the offense will be down Yeah, but your starter might go three and two-thirds like you Darvish did today and Tyler Glass down was lucky to go five considering they walked four guys, So there is this sort of

give and take I think with early seasons and the entire game's trend anyway towards bullpen games, towards relievers pitching more, which is hard enough. The wins today and the losses went to Daniel Hudson and Johnny Brito who pitched, who got one out. And if your wins and losses are things that you chase in these leagues and they're gonna go to these relievers half the time. So it seems like these are bizarre games but at least for the first couple weeks of the season it's gonna be like this. So I'm wondering if we learned more about the Padres bullpen by who we didn't see?

Did Robert Suarez not actually getting into this game but warming up in the 8th when the Padres were in trouble? Did that give us a good indication that he's their key high leverage guy that will probably get saves but occasionally maybe have to work more than one inning or occasionally have to face 2, 3, and 4, or 3, 4, and 5 in the 8th inning and will have someone else sort of sneak in and take the occasional save in this bullpen. I mean, he had the opportunity to come in there, so I feel like we got the B lineup at that point, because the reason he didn't come in was because the Dodgers had scored those runs. We were doing this silly dance with Mike Schill where someone was like, okay, if Suarez was given the ninth, what sort of things about him would make him a good fit for that role? And I was like, all right, we're just playing games now. Because I think it was a little bit like Jackson Merrill.

They were like, okay, Jackson Merrill has made the flight. He has a seat on the plane. He has a seat on the plane. He has a seat on the plane. It's like, no dude, he's your starting center fielder. You can say it out loud, it's fine. Suarez is your closer. I don't know, there's this weird dance between the reporters and the managers.

And yes, the managers do lie, so you can't even really take what they're saying for truth. But in this case, the way that they were acting was that Robert Suarezs is a closer. That's how I've been acting all spring. If you have drafts left, Robert Swarrs is a closer. That's something we learned a little bit more about today, I think.

I think lineup construction early in the season is something we look at, and we try to put a lot of meaning into it, but things are so fluid. Jackson Merrill had three hard hit balls in this game. If he's making consistently good contact, he's not gonna hit ninth for very long. They're gonna shuffle things around in a way

where he's either a table setter or at least he's hitting above guys like Tyler Wade. I was gonna list the names of players on the Padres that I don't think are good. I won't do that, that's rude. But he can at least bat like six or something I think. On the Dodger side, I mean it's just a loaded lineup. I thought Mookie Betts looked fine at short.

I think he's going to be there all year probably. And there's not much to be learned other than like if you like Jason Hayward, he's going to be taking out Erlene Games for Kike Hernandez. And that's just how it's going to go. Yeah, that part was expected Mookie it sure to something we didn't really talk a lot about on the pod previously given the issues Gavin Lux was having there this spring It makes sense to try it and the thing that I think people probably know by now is Mookie Betts has been taking Infield reps at shortstop pregame for years

Which is very unusual for someone who spent most of his time in right field during that span. I mean Mookie Betts is a madman. I mean he's like obviously like he goes in he's like oh I'm bored I'm in a bowl of 300 you know And then they were asking people around the league like who like who's the most athletic guy? They're like Mookie Betts, you know And you know he goes to driveline and like adds bat speed in his whatever, 10th season. Like he's, he's like doesn't want to lose, wants to bowl the perfect game, wants to be

the shortstop, wants to do all these things. And he has been taking ground balls at short for four or five years now. And it was something that anytime I talked to Kyle Bodie at driveline about him, he's like that, that dude is crazy. Like he's never going to be a shortstop well Kyle you were wrong he's the shortstop I love it more position eligibility is always a good thing for us in fantasy as well other bullpen no Evan Phillips with a clean save on the Dodger side I wonder if in leagues that haven't drafted yet if he starts to move up a little bit

because we've had so many closer injuries and I think some people have been waiting all spring for the Dodgers to make a late trade to stabilize that bullpen, bring back old friend Kenley Jansen in a trade or something along those lines. It really doesn't look like that's the plan at least for the next several months so even if it's two-thirds of a season where Phillips is the guy given what he's done over the last two seasons there's no reason why he can't run like a top-five closer so long as he has the job. Yeah, it's not your traditional package. I do like more velocity for my closer. Jack Moore did a study a while back that said the new closers had more velocity

than the guys they replace. I think that, you know, I think you generally want big fastballs. It's one of my problems. I like James McArthur in Kansas City, but he does not have a big fastball. And I think we sort of expect our closers to have big fastballs. I think that's why everyone's like, oh, they're going to get someone better than Evan Phillips. Maybe they won't. I mean, they've got big fastballs. Broussard-Gradaral is going to come off the IL and, you know, be their big fastball in the seventh or eighth. And he's not a great mix to be a closer because he doesn't get all his whiffs. So I think Evan Phillips, he reminds me of Clay Holmes.

One of these guys, Andres Munoz, Andres Munoz, Clay Holmes, and Evan Phillips are my favorite guys to take because I've been waiting on closers. I've not been taking the top closers. And those guys in my model stick out as top closers anyway. They project with very low threes ERAs. They are the closers for their teams. They don't really seem to have people that are, you know, like fighting to take their roles away.

So if you decide to wait, and I think you should, considering how many of the guys we've seen get hurt, Jordan Romano's hurt, John Durin's hurt. Who else is hurt? Yeah so thank you for all the texts tweets emails and phone calls when Devin Williams got hurt I'm I'm blessed that you all like care enough to make sure I'm okay when bad things happen to the Brewers or to Victor Robles that still happens Victor Robles does anything. I get a lot of notifications about it. So thank you for just checking in. He keeps showing up on these

lists. It's so weird. So I don't know. Do you know that he's like top 30 in Seeger? No. You're lying. Do you know that he's a starting center fielder for the Nationals? Seeger is broken. If Seeger has Victor Robles as a top 30 anything, Seager is broken and we need to check it out. I have a couple shares. I mean, I guess he doesn't. Zero. Anyway, oh, I do want to say this beer is excellent. I'm having a stacked lineup from Other Half and they've been so great with their space. I wanted to mention that you go to OtherHhalfbrewing.com and you're not here right now

and you're listening to this on tape recorder. A tape recorder? I realized as I was coming out of my mouth how old I sounded saying that. After we record, I go make 100 cassette tapes and mail them to people. If you're listening to this on your 8-Track, you can go to otherhalfbrilliant.com

and get delivery and get to go. So that's something that you can enjoy this beer with us as you're listening to your 8-Track. And I am a fried onion enthusiast, so I'm enjoying some fried onions while we're up here. There's three things we love about live shows. First off, all of you, thank you again for being here. Cheers.

Cheers. The sandwich, which is delicious, the beer, there's actually four things. And guess, we have many friends here who can share the stage with us tonight. So we're going to bring Nick Pollack of Pitcher List up. Come on, Nick. Come on down. Hi. Nick why do you love Cole Reagan so much? Why don't you love him more? He's a unicorn he has five pitches that he commands well. All of them I think are elite. Cutter inside to nullify righties. Lefties that he developed midway last

season to take down lefties and get strikeouts against righties. I'm sorry, not a 92, not a 96, but a 97 mile per hour fastball that he keeps upstairs and then he's also the guy that wants to throw a 3-2 changeup every single time. He's the best. Oh, and by the way, he's also learning a sinker to do better things against lefties now. He has six pitches now. Six. We talk about like, oh hey, maybe this guy's gonna get a third pitch. Col Reagan says five and maybe six. I can speak to one of the things I like that is the hardest to quantify and I think adds bias to my own analysis is talking to the players and having them convince you how good they are. Although that didn't work with Brady Singer recently, that sort of famously.

But what I get from him is that Zach Granke vibe, which is like, oh, I saw this other pitcher do this thing and it was really good so I'm gonna do it you know and it's gonna take me like two weeks he's so good so Cole Coleragons has that same kind of Savanti feel George Kirby I think has that same kind of like oh I'm gonna I want to throw my slider like three miles an hour harder and like a week later you're like oh you did well good job right I mean threw the best knuckleball of last year right yeah he's like I'm gonna throw a knuckleball you're like stop oh that's pretty good can we can we tell him to relocate his

fastball though just like a little bit I'm not telling George Furby poop please do that is that a Mariners problem not throwing fastballs high enough I mean maybe I saw that with Brian Wu to throw throwing like middle away as opposed to just a little bit more. I don't think Logan Gilbert actually can yet and I hope he can, but yeah that is something I've noticed a little bit where these guys that have like especially Brian Wu who has like the best approach angle on his fastball of any one of all starters and yet he doesn't take full advantage of it yet. He still had an 18% swing striker or something ridiculous last year on that fastball, but he just has to get a little bit higher to make it even more dominant. It's like, it's so close.

It's interesting because you, it's not like, you're not like you go to the analytics departments for the Dodgers or these other teams that don't necessarily throw that many high fastballs and you say, hey buddy, high fastballs are good for whiffs. Yeah, but that's what I do. I think maybe they're making just different decisions about the trade-offs between homers and whiffs, right? Right. I mean, the Dodgers, maybe it has to do with parks, but you'd think that the Mariners would be like, yeah, we can throw a lot of high fastballs because there's not going to be

a lot of homers. It's cold here. Yeah, definitely. You know, the Dodgers on the other hand are a team that don't throw high enough in your estimation Well, I mean, that's why I think Ryan Pepeo was acquired by the race We've even seen this in the spring training right now He has a four seamer that works better when it's upstairs like when I say it's a flat four seamer that means that it's

Detrimental not to throw it upstairs because then you're matching the bat path low and making it easier to Hit for home runs in line drives and get hits all the time. When you throw it upstairs it is generally just more effective to do that. And the Rays noticed this and we've seen in spring training that Ryan Pepeo is doing way more high fastballs this year in spring than he was all of last season. So I wonder if you know I wonder one of the things that might happen is if you think about the zone and you're thinking about like go high higher higher and you know some of those are balls right and so if you're if you're just thinking about the value of these pitches in like a sort of analytical vacuum you're gonna

be like oh those pitches that are above the zone are no good because they're expected balls sure right but you think about the spray chart of a pitcher if you tell them to go higher you accept a lot of those balls for all the whiffs. And if you go high enough, you avoid those homers. Right. So there is something about the gunshot nature of a pitcher's spray chart that you can manipulate. And some teams just think about it differently.

Yeah. What's interesting too is you see Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan who are so good at taking advantage of their heaters and throwing it upstairs. Who both give up like a home run a half or nine? This is the thing about Joe Ryan, and I think it's really important to understand the context of this is just in a vacuum, it's not that great because like with Joe Ryan, they just decided to sit four seamer. He had nothing else to supplement it, right? Nothing else to say like, stop swinging at this pitch. So fine, it's not as effective, but also Jordan Ryan did have a fair number of those fastballs that leaked too far down instead of leaking too far up.

While Billy Ober does not have as dominating of his fastball as Joe Ryan. He throws 90 poo. Right, but it works because he's so good at painting it upstairs and then he has a change up that works well off of that. And that somehow is very effective there. So like with Ryan Pepeo is a perfect example of this because he has, he came up with like an 80 grade change-up. He just couldn't come in at a first and then all of a sudden he started to last year. So he's the perfect guy that should be able to take advantage of this and actually be

more effective upstairs and not allow those home runs. And now that we see Joe Ryan with a better slider it looks like finally and the sinker that he throws what four times in a game. I'm very excited about Joe Ryan this year. I just feel like 10 singles maybe. Get Joe Ryan everywhere. Yes, 100%. You have Joe Ryan everywhere? I have him, I got him in tout over the weekend. So that's what I'll say.

I've been getting him, I don't know, I think I have two or three shares. Just by like traditional metrics alone, like strikeouts minus walks He's like a charity guy and you you home runs have noise year to year So you just expect a guy like that to be better this year and then you get this stuff like oh He's throwing a better splitter and he's throwing a better. You know, right that's just like gravy really Well, the thing about the high fastballs if you miss up on a high fastball, nothing bad is going to happen. A ball though. A ball. Compared to other types of misses, especially in the shadow zone, there are more dangerous places to miss, relatively speaking.

You miss inside with a kind of flat, problematic fastball, good hitters are going to just rip it. Right. And it's a mentality thing too, is where are you trying to go with it? I see some guys, I think honestly with George Kirby Kirby he just wants to throw strikes all the time he does not walk anybody right and he's thinking well no no I need to make sure that I don't walk anyone but honestly George you can probably throw more balls and be more effective overall his super nine was way too high last year in my view

like he's good enough he's like opposite complete opposites so weird yeah both were pretty good last year. Not bad. So I got a simple question for you. Who is your sleeper for 2024? The anti-Reagan. Someone you haven't talked about at every possible opportunity. Well I mean I've talked about a lot of these guys that are a lot of like the fifth starters on teams that are just really exciting. It's really nice to see like Louis Varland right now doing his thing. There's Bernardo Lopez getting an opportunity. that's fun. At first I wanna go more like the 15 team side

and say like hey, Michael Soroka is just getting ignored and that's just a really fun situation for him. When I think about sleepers a ton too, I'm all about making early decisions. It's the worst thing to do is you go in on a sleeper and you don't know if they're good or bad for your team for like a month. Hang on too long. Hang on and also you're missing out on everyone else you could be getting. So go for the ones that have a good opening schedule that you'd at least start them

for, then you can see if it's worth your your time or not and then you can move on. Soroka has a fantastic matchup early on. Isn't that kind of hard though? Like I mean Soroka, where is he slot? Second, third, fourth, fifth? Like, they announced all the opening day guys, but we don't know who's two, three, four, and five. I mean, Soroka has to be second or third, yeah, I think. It's like Eric Fede and Soroka. But isn't there a big difference in terms of like this how the schedule works?

Like, you might all, all, well, just Yankees or Royals. Let's just think opening weekend was Soroka, right? I mean, that's really what we need. You just want one star. See some numbers. Exactly. And also, we haven't seen Soroka for ages. I watched the game because we get no data on Soroka this entire offseason. It's driving me absolutely insane fast. I know you're here. Okay. All right can you do something about this thing? Thank you so much. Thank you. We need it. I know.

I'm gonna still yell at him because it's his fault completely. But no with Soroka like I saw all of a sudden him throwing sliders down into lefties. I was like, wait, you didn't do that. That's like a new put away pitch for you that you never had before. And he's also throwing the fourth team more. Right, which he was more of a sinker. So this is a brand new guy.

Cool, I'll take that in a 15 team where he's gonna at least have the leash the entire season to go six innings or so. There's also Tyler Wells, because the Orioles have a fantastic opening schedule and he's the fourth starter and I don't know he's gonna go five six innings for a winning ball club with a good defense like that sounds great to me but if you want you know the really super fun one sure like Trevor Rogers and AJ Puck I mean both of those guys I'm very much in

on. AJ Puck's fastball is amazing he throws a ton of strikes he just had an eight strike out zero walk spring training game against the Astros. He's the number two I think right now for the Marlins. Yeah. And then you have Trevor Rogers who is not gonna get displaced in that rotation. Like if Trevor Rogers is looking like he does in the spring right now, which is sliders and change-ups that are very effective, yeah he's gonna be there the entire season. Again another really good opening schedule. I believe they get the Pirates the opening weekend which is great. I'll take that all day, see how

they look and then you can move on from there. And actually want to ask you DVR, how do you feel about DL Hall? Because I love him. I love DL Hall. I think the Brewers are making a consistent bet on command or below average command not being that problematic if your stuff is that good and your arsenal is that deep. It sounds like he's starting the second game of the season. Seems like it's Freddie Peralta on opening day, DL Hall is their number two. That's amazing. It seems like there's also not a lot of late draft season helium on him yet. So you're getting a lot of ceiling at a relatively low price. I think he does fall into this sort of challenging tough

rank group where it's converted reliever or at least someone who wasn't a full-time starter last year and you don't quite know what the shape of the innings is going to be. You mentioned Puck. Puck has been fantastic this brand. I think he leads everybody in strikeouts. All pitchers, Cactus Lee Graper. Ryan Weathers is in there in Emanaga. Yeah, I mean the converted relievers like Jordan Hicks, Puck, Ronaldo Lopez is the fifth starter in Atlanta, Garrett Crochet is another one. He's the opening day starter for the White Sox. Like to varying degrees you have a

certain amount of faith that these guys will make it as a starter for some or most or all of the season. I'm curious how you rank them. Do you, when you make a set of season-long rankings for pitchers that are kind of tough to figure out, are you saying I'm ranking for the first half because pitchers get hurt, roles change anyway, all sorts of factors could change, stuff deteriorates, stuff improves. How far through the season are you really thinking when you're trying to rank players like this? I am very much about just even the first two, four weeks because when it comes to 12 teamers, it's around I I'd say, the 50th guy off the board.

Everyone after that, you look back at your drafts, it's like the 14th, 16th round. Those guys are off your team in like June. You know, you look back at your draft, you do not have those guys in your team anymore. And it's so important to understand that there are so many that you add in season. I do this table every year inside of my rankings saying like, look at all of the guys that we added in season that were drafted after 270. If you think about it by round I think by like the 10th round you fall below 50% they're gonna make it the rest of the year on your roster. So go and get value now of someone that has a good schedule so

you're not just like sitting dead weight for 10-15 days even because yeah I might want to start that guy against Atlanta in the first round like then what's the point of drafting him? You're turning down not only someone else that could actually surprise you but also if that guy doesn't surprise you then you have an open roster spot for someone else who could surprise you right? So when it comes to those guys like DL Hall, AJ Puck, I'm going for a good matchup early and then if I'm not seeing the stuff that I like, I'm just gonna cut bait. Don't think about future values so much. Think about the now more than ever. Except for all of us in keeper leagues. Well I'm not talking about keeper leagues, okay? You're not drafting a best ball

league. I think there's a huge difference just in 12 team redraft versus 15 team redraft though and how patient you have to be because there, if you spend the whole winter playing, drafted a hole which are usually 15 teams your brain goes to the absolute depths of the player pool and some of those guys that you fell in love with aren't necessarily rosterable or startable right away on a 12 so then you trick yourself into thinking you might have more ceiling or more upside than you actually do and you hold on too long and you miss out on some guys that have shown process-driven

improvement. They have better stuff, they have a better strategy, and maybe they had a better schedule too, and that's what should have tipped you off. But I think that's a huge part of where things can go wrong, is just trying to toggle between different league sizes. Yeah, I could not agree more about that. I mean I'm putting out an article next week that's just the first two starts for every fringe guy after the top 50 starters. I think my Discord has it now. I was like, I just made the table. It's no article. Here you go, just look at this. But yes, Soroka Wells to me really pop out as guys. I mean, even Eric Fede, I don't know what he's doing. I have no data. I want data.

Really badly. I have some. Not the kind you're looking for. The best strikeout minus walk percentage in the KBO is far back. His fan graphs has it. Is Eric Fetty. It's unbelievable. I mean, what would you say his Fastball stuff plus was last time we saw him? 65. Like, I don't know. I hate to be like this skeptic, but I'm like, so he added a sinker and the sinker's 75?

Like, I don't. It's a sweeper, it's a splitter, he's throwing harder. It's like, I'm just treating it like a different guy. I don't know any of that. It's such bad raw clay. Did you tell him that? You could maybe, yes, next time I interview him, I'll be like, he's like, well, how did you do this

from such a bad beginning? You look terrible out there. You're just burning the bridge with White Sox PR, huh? So you don't trust the feds. I don't really trust them, no. And I think that park is not a soft landing. Yeah, sure. It kind of changes seasonally.

I think early in the year, you can stream there a lot more than you want to stream there in July and August. I think that's a big, big difference. That's actually an underrated thing about Cleveland. Cleveland is cold at the beginning of the season. It's a pictures park and then it's not it's not later. I almost brought up Tristan McKenzie here because... Well we are about to. Oh good. Keep your mouth shut. Sir, I need a run down. There is a run down right here. Okay, okay. Look at it. I don't look at it. You could try looking at it. Well I think McKenzie falls into another bucket of tough ranks.

It's the post-hype health questions guys, as we call them, because they've shown they can do it. Tristan McKenzie is a good pitcher, a very good pitcher on a per inning basis. It was a bumpy start, fastball command was shaky when he first broke in with the Guardians, but he settled down and here's a fun one for you. Going back to 2020, looking at starters with at least 300 innings, Tristan McKenzie is top 10 in whip, which is huge.

Like, there's all elite guys in that group. You just gave away an answer to the trivia. Yeah, people forget things really fast. I mean, you forget. I will remember because I'm having onions. You will forget. Yeah because I'm having onions you will forget. I mean the story about Tristan McKenzie that's so interesting for me is that like he has like okay stuff and he was supposed to have a great command and he came up and

he just threw as hard as he could and this is literally a thing that pitchers tell me is when I get to the big leagues I'm just gonna throw as hard as I can because if something pops I'm on the big leagues, I'm just gonna throw as hard as I can because if something pops, I'm on the big league IEL. I'm getting big league service time. I'm getting big league money. I'm getting that 700K instead of that 20K. And like, Cade Cavalli literally did this in front of all of us.

Like, Cade Cavalli came up and was like, ah, oh, sorry, TJ. And I feel like Tristan McKenzie did the same thing, but the thing that, There was a really interesting piece by Ben Clemens on Fangrass recently about two strike fastballs and he shows like Kevin Gossman throws his two strike fastballs harder than anybody compared to his regular fastball and then he shows that it's maybe not a great deal because his command goes down when he does that and then he shows that a lot of the other people who do this,

their command goes down a lot. I would just say that like, that might be okay. You got two strikes. You're not necessarily trying to throw a strike. You're just trying to throw it hard. But we also saw their stuff go down. And I think that Tristan McKenzie is throwing so hard that it might actually affect his stuff in a negative way. And it definitely affected his stuff in a negative way and it definitely affected his command in a negative way and it definitely seems to have affected his health in a negative way. But I also don't want to tell Tristan McKenzie try throwing 90. Absolutely not. Oh my god. No, don't do that. That would not

work. I mean what's interesting about him though, I mean we were talking about this yesterday was Cleveland. I didn't realize this. I mean okay every year I look at it and I say man who are the guys that really surprised me? Who are the ones that overperformed for whatever reason? And so often it was the San Francisco Giants for a moment, it was Arizona Dimebacks, the Cubs a bit, all these guys all of a sudden had elite infield defenses. And I'm really bad at judging who's going to be the elite infield defenses. But you were telling me yesterday about Kai Korea. And the Kai Korea was a part of the Giants. You called him I believe a genius. I mean, I think I care as a defensive genius, right?

He's the guy who made JD Davis a passable third base, which is unbelievable. So as Mets fans, you're like what maybe you missed that but like it did happen so so Kykria being this incredible defensive coach for their infields is now with Cleveland and I take that on I go oh man wait Tristan McKenzie's kind of undervalued still and he also by the way him and Nick Pavetta were the two highest in the last I think 300 innings in IBB. Pavetta and Mackenzie which is explaining a lot honestly about that fastball a bit for both the players there but but then I'm like Tanner Bybee that makes a little bit more sense and then you have Logan Allen

actually like no one cares about Logan T Allen right now. No one does and no one remembers that I really really liked him. Don't remember that. I think I said at one point he was better than Tanner Bybee. So don't get the receipts on that. Logan Allen is a Toby, unfortunately. I will admit my wrongs. I can admit I was wrong. I can admit I was wrong. But no, yeah, there are these sort of ancillary things that matter. But Trevor Rogers, great park. Casey Mize, great park. Matt Manning, great park.

Yeah. What do we think of the defenses there? Probably the defenses. I mean, who was joking with me just now about how the Marlins have acquired all second basemen? Yeah. The Padres have all short stops. And we were talking about the Padres have all short stops and the, we were talking about the Padres have all short

stops and the Marlins are building a team on second baseman. They have Xavier Edwards playing short stop. They have Vidal Brujan playing short stop. They have Tim Anderson who said publicly, I will sign as a second baseman if you need me to, playing short stop. So maybe we should bet against the Marlins a little bit but the park is so heavy in their favor I mean honestly it's just in good schedule early on I'll just take it from there but I mean of this on the top of

your head I it's pirates and then all I have it I made it this morning I just good enough it's pirates and then maybe oak Trevor Rogers at this point is like the Marlins ace cuz they're all right They're all dead. Oh, hey Ryan Weathers. Okay, Ryan Weathers, please He's the number two. Yeah, he's number two. Well, I used to think he was number two But now he might be better than that I mean the fast was a little bit worse now in the last art from spring training This is what happened last year apparently to I I mentioned I talked to this with the pot somebodyed me should I take him with my 800th pick and I was like, I'm comfortable there

800th pick yes, no, I want the SP I want the SP five for the Marlins. Huh? I want Yanni Trenos Well, the complete joke guys. No, I don't absolutely not Did you really get sent down? I think blank is starting for them I think Blank is starting for them, fifth. That's really sad. I wanted Yanni to make it. The other group is the guys that pop in a model, Stuff Plus, whatever model you're looking at, and they have bad spring results. So by process, the innings we're getting this time of year seem like they should be better, but it's not working yet.

How do you rectify that? Do you trust your model and say, it's gonna work out. I can go after AJ Smith-Schaber and stash him until Ronaldo Lopez falls apart, or until someone else breaks and he gets an opportunity, or do you say, I actually wanna see results maybe at AAA before I try to stash him, or I just pick him up in fab

once he gets that opportunity again. Right, I usually just yell at Kyle Bland that our model is bad. That's what I do. Do better. Model better. All right. This is a leaning, teachable moment, Kyle. We got to look at this and be like, no, that's not right. No way. Not right. Although Smith Schafer was like throwing pretty hard. He was. His command was bad. He was up, right? He wasn't locating well with his four seamer and his secondaries weren't really impressing me. Well, the interesting thing about this list too is we've got Josh Winkowski, AJ Smith-Schauber, and Rowanze Contreras. This is like the third time we've talked about Josh

Winkowski. I'm so shocked at this. We talk about everyone. But all these guys are sick starters, huh? Is anybody making a rotation in this list? Well, no. Cooper Criswell is probably above Winkowski. And then there's like 10 guys ahead of Contreras at this point. Eric Lauer is there, Chase Anderson is there, he's a reliever. Valter is there, Quinn Priesters, some guy named Domingo, I don't know him. This actually reminds me, Jeff Pontus at Baseball America said that if you chase stuff plus too hard, you get a bunch of relievers. And I was actually just texting with Zach Renke about how pitchers are not taught to... teaching a pitcher to throw is easier than teaching a

pitcher to pitch. And we just on the last podcast did a thing where it was like under 23... Oh yeah. Over 100 innings. You just don't find guys getting heavy workloads like that. It's just not happening. I wonder if I'm just getting like a real reliever vibe off of all these guys. Well, I mean, Contrarias, absolutely. Yeah, he's out of options, so they gotta keep him. If you had to pick one of these guys to be a starter,

who would it be? Smiths Schaver. Smiths Schaver does have a more wide arsenal, and you look at Atlanta's depth at the moment I mean Hurston Waldrop is the reliever to me. Oh you think he's really convinced this is the example of what Jeff's saying. He's not yeah terrible command he's also fastball splitter I don't need to say more right like that's you know me and splitters man. I really hate splitters. It can't be your number two. Did everybody here know that your number two pitch in college was a splitter?

Yes, it was. OK, I just want everyone to know that. Why do you think I know about this volatility so well? This is some serious long term self-hate. I think that's happening. You're projecting your self-hate on all the pitchers that throw splitters. And yet... Some of them can command them.

That's really nice. That's great. I'm so happy for them. I'm just being your therapist right now. I'm just trying to work you through this. But no, with Waldreb also, you see his mechanics. You see how every single pitch he does, he doesn't know where it's going. But Smith-Schauber's curveball is like is terrible in our model. Yeah so with AJ Smith-Schauber at the very least I think he has a more sustainable heater that can be a foundation for him then to develop more and he's really young too. Sounds like a reliever to me. It's possible I mean he just upticked his velocity what two ticks or something?

This spring he's 22 And also Atlanta doesn't have... I'm too early on this. Well, the thing is, Atlanta doesn't have any other options, really. Behind Lopez. It's, I mean, sure there'd be joke that they had all of these guys last year, but none of them were anything that they really wanted. Alan Wyman's, Darius Vines, like all of this. Oh, you know who has a stuff plus surge this spring and bad results?

Bryce Elder. Did a surge? I keep looking at it. Why? I mean, it's a surge to like 90 or something. But like, it's not, I don't get it. Sometimes you look at these things and you don't get it. It's like how a drop becomes a puddle, but it's not a lake.

And that's what I'm worried about with Weathers. Yeah. Well, yeah, I know, I actually, I understand that completely. It's just about the first start with Weathers. It was just really good on the first start. And he's the one that goes out before Rodgers does. So once you get Braxton back and then you get Ebro Cabrera, like, Weathers is gone. I think I would draw the line at deep league streamer, Ryan Weathers. If he's better than

that this year, I think he's gone very well. 800th pick. 800th pick. Pick 700 maybe, 800 okay. I was mad. I wasn't in a league where it was like the 800th pick and someone snagged him and I Was like ah Devils reject for me for me that was Martin I am here I have Martin Perez my 85th round in my guillotine league in petrolist in Martin Paris

And I actually accidentally auto picked Cal rally, and I thought I was like no I want Martin Perez Oh, okay, I'm gonna go wear the rundown. Can I go? How did want Martin Perez. Oh okay I want to go off the run down. Can I go off the run down? How did I get here? I don't know. I always go off the run down. I'm a bad guy. So how about this? Boring, no model likes them but they are major league pitchers and they are in a rotation and they're going to pitch. Who do you like? Martin, I have one on one team, Martin Perez, Marco Gonzalez, Eric Lauer, give me some more. Wade Miley. Wade Miley. Come on. Anybody? Huh? Tyone has better stuff. How dare you? That's a good one. Yeah, Jose Quintana, opening day starter Jose Quintana. Kyle Gibson. Oh, most of the the Cardinals rotation. Miles Michael. I mean

most of the Cardinals rotation. Yeah. Pick your favorite because I buy these guys sometimes. I mean Eric Fede. Hi right. Soroka. What does it say about Soroka? Do we have anything on him? Soroka used to be someone we were excited about. These guys have something you're excited about. I'm talking about guys you are not excited about. Give me a something you're excited about I'm talking about guys you are not excited about Give me a name you're excited about that. You're not excited about okay. I have a name. I'm not excited about him Chris flexing Chris No person. He's a person what team is he on white socks? I think there are things to like about mania with shaman. Ia. Okay. Well give me a name Well, I'm just saying shaman Ia know I was in a league recently. I took King Tana

It's a nice park Patrick Corbin. Oh What did you know that he has a new cutter He throws the righties now instead of having to throw sinkers and he's had a decent spring because of it Look, you asked me for so what I'm excited about not excited about. I gave you Patrick Corbin. I'll take it. I'll take it It's not a great park. Is his schedule good? No. No. Full season. He's like Braves. Braves. Home and away. Does Matthew Libertor qualify for this? He doesn't have a spot yet. No, don't do that. He's on the Cardinals, so he qualifies. Yeah, he qualifies that way. Yeah. Don't do that. It's a tough group. I mean, Colin Ray isn't the worst thing ever. He's had moments.

Who's that? He's had moments. Kyle who? Kyle and Wray. Kyle who? Colin Wray. Colin Wray. I was thinking Kyle Gibson and no.

No? You were combining people? No. I mean, Jose Quintana was mentioned too. Last year, he actually, when he's able to command force, he was upstairs, change of sliders, effectively, like in the Imperial shuttle, like the triangle. you're wandering off of the off of the rundown

well you asked me for exactly this and I got you and I was I was not excited about no you weren't no you're welcome okay well that was boring I'm gonna stay off the rundown oh but I'm gonna make it more interesting. Thank you. Here's some would you rathers. Let's talk about landslams. We have would you rathers. Dylan Cease. Would you rather. New Padre Dylan Cease or Justin Steele

in that pick 90 range. You said his name wrong. Cease. I'm letting you say it. Justin Steele. That's the right way to say it. 100% him, it's not close. I am really excited though about Dylan

Cease all of a sudden because I want to believe that the Padres will teach him a cutter. That is like the thing he needs to do. His foreseam has a lot of induced vertical brake, that's good, but he doesn't have good, it doesn't have a good flat fastball, it's not very flat, and he doesn't locate it well at all. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't, and then the slider was really inconsistent last year, so he just needs a strike pitch. That's not either of those two. It's not the curveball. That thing is just way too big for its own good. And just take your four seamer grip and tilt it slightly

and just throw it like the fastball and he already gets natural cut on that four seamer sometimes. Like just slightly sometimes. Then he'll lose the force there. No don't say that. He'll lose the'll lose the they are good enough to maintain it okay I just think he's got like his pitches are better than Justin Steels mmm okay so this is actually a good command stuff argument and I would actually say you probably have Dylan sees that like first stuff plus or second for his slider Steels is five last time I checked and then you have a better commanded fastball with Justin Steal. So I'm gonna go there. And more manipulation of that limited arsenal with Justin Steal

too. Oh yeah we were talking about different shapes on these bitches. But to me that's a function of command. Like if you can manipulate like that and change shapes even slightly, that's something Justin Stealle has that Dylan Cease doesn't. I like Dylan Cease better. I trust the Ks. I think you're... Wait, what? You had me going in the first half there.

Yeah, I was making a face like nobody agrees with me. And I'm so sad. No, I'm on Dylan Cease. Oh my gosh, unbelievable. Screw you. Yeah, I've got him on my side. Team quality's now comparable. Home park, I think, is slightly better.

And I think you're getting 200 Ks again. No No I hope so. It's huge in that range. I hope so. I hope the whip isn't like 140 or something like that. When in doubt, find the K's. So you're going after 100 green? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Two. Shut up your face. Four now. It's amazing. I still like 100 green. I'm sorry. Here's another one. Two somewhat... He throws like a hundred. Terrible.

Two somewhat buzzy risers. Bailey Ober, who's really moving at boards. And Tanner Bybee. Bailey Ober's going in like the fifth round now. No, well that's just not me. I didn't do that. Yes, you did. Oh, dang it.

I think somebody like you did it. He said you wouldn't say anything. You did it or he did it. You know, somebody... Well, that's overrated, okay? Dang it. I think somebody like you did it. You said you wouldn't say anything. You did it or he did it, you know, somebody told you. Well, that's overrated, okay? No. But, nope.

Who was the second one there that he mentioned? Because I didn't like them. Bybie. Yeah, no. I actually don't think that I, Bybie is a command guy. He has a really bad fastball. It is, and it's kind of interesting because he says- In the spring he's actually talking about

he needs the command as fastball better. Well, that's the thing, it's not about command. It's like not a good profile And he actually says I think it's either on his hat or in his glove It says stay Verde because he's like hey, I gotta stay vertical on this guy I get my fastball up here then I get these things down here. I don't care if you get it upstairs It's still a bad fastball and his slider and change up which actually did perform well in the zone last year Aren't you the high location guy? It doesn't matter how good your fastball is. Absolutely not. No, you have to lean into what you're good at. So I see guys that have that skill and then

don't use it I get upset. But you gotta adapt if you don't have that. So, Bybee is a slider change-up guy. He's kind of reminds me of Carrasco in a sense that slider change-up really good for the Guardians. But but actually think that Carrasco had some really good years with the Guardians. Let me continue. Okay. You're like it kind of reminds me of Pete Carrasco which was terrible. Yeah no it's a discount Carrasco because Carrasco knew how to utilize both pitches effectively not in the zone but actually underneath put away pitches and actually save his fastball and get good called strikes. Bybee can't do that with his fastball and a lot of times last year you just watch a game of him he does not know how to surgically take down a batter during

a bat. Well you asked for a would you rather and he gave you like 15 minutes. I told you. You're too much like me sometimes dude. This is the best compliment you've ever given me buddy. The king of waffles just talked too much. Yeah So I'm gonna pick one. Okay, Bailey over you're going over. Why over? because I think my model might be wrong about him and I like the cut of his jib. Okay. I know the thing I think might be wrong is that I think he has a unique collection of height and release point and angles and of height and release point and angles and command and bad fat like it's it's just weird I think weird is good I've told my children this many times weird is good you want to be weird someone calls you weird say thank you and Bailey

Ober is way weirder than Tanner Bybee. If I look at two kind of meh stuff plus numbers you know they're both in good parks. I'll take the weird one. That's so weird. We are our PLV player projections, not your PP ERA. Oh, it's named so perfectly. PP ERA. I can't believe it.

It just rolls off the tongue. I just come to me. My children love it. Of course they do. Yeah. So no, they have our projections have Bailey Ober top 20 pitchers, so maybe command like we believe in Ober's command. You guys believe too much in command. Well Bailey Ober Rizzi for a reason. I'm just saying I'm sorry. Right because Four Seamers, he is a guy that can go to his Four Seamers upstairs and because of that we believe that.

He also threw like 89. So now you got me waffling. I it over I agree with you I'd love to 93 the spring Billy Ober yeah no he's like that's and he has a better slider and cutter no no he's sitting yeah I got you I wouldn't do that no okay I wouldn't do that to you all right about one more from the Seattle rotation Bryce Miller or Brian Wu we we've done this one for a bit. Oh, go ahead. We've tossed this one around. I'm taking Bryce Miller. Yeah, no. I'm taking Bryce Miller because I think the fastball,

Brian Woo has two pretty good, interesting fastballs. Bryce Miller's fastball is better. Bryce Miller's cutter is, like, Brian Woo has two interesting breaking balls. Bryce Miller's cutter is better. And they're both trying to add a splitter so that's a wash. So I think it's it's Miller pretty clearly I think. So I've been seeing this a lot I think that command is the market inefficiency. Yeah yeah I know you love command. Oh my gosh. Well it's fine because you're the stuffest. I am the command-uffest

because I like both. No that's terrible. I was trying. Okay. Stamand. Now okay. So Ryan Wu's, I would actually argue that this is very similar to me of Kirby versus Gilbert. I used to call them Jerby. Now they're actually Kirby and Gilbert separate. And Wu is the better command guy than... Oh yeah, well coming up they were. They're like fastball slider needs to get better. We got to see who has the better command of it and so on so forth. And now Kirby is separate from the pack, right? And I see Bryce Miller and I do not see a guy that knows where this fastball is going. I don't see a guy that can actually adapt and add a new pitch and make that a real effective

thing, especially against lefties, his fastball did not perform well last year and then I see Brian Wu Let me just say Brian Wu had the worst Platoon split in baseball. So he performed so much worse against lefty that he was the very worst Between lefties and righties. So who would you rather? suggest is going to get better in their second year? The guy who has command or the one who doesn't? And Brian Wu reminds me of Aaron Ola at the time. The way he releases it, he has again, a hundredth percentile foreseam or flatness.

Not a compliment. 1.9. Well, that's more of a he's a command guy, though. That's what I mean, the way he releases it. So that foreseam or to me has more of a ceiling based on its flatness and its command than I do Bryce Miller who I don't actually believe is going to hit that theoretical ceiling of actually being able to spot that force seamer a ton. We also saw Brian Wu introduce a sinker last year that was incredibly effective against righties and located properly inside arm side. And we saw the sink, the cutter and the slider not really act

in the way that we want it to. And we normally see second year development for these guys. These are the kind of things that do grow for command pitchers. We saw that with George Kirby. I think that's going to happen with Brian Wu. And Bryce Miller to me, I feel like is in this weird place of... Bryce Miller is not like Tyler Glass now or something. He doesn't have like terrible command.

It's not great. It's not something that where I think like how I see it. Wu had a 12.8% walk rate against lefties. Lefties hit 283, 389, 539. This is against Brian Wu. Those are Tanner Hauck splits. He's fantastic against righties but he's horrible against lefties so that's that's gonna make or break him. If this is big road here. Yeah he has to figure that out. I absolutely agree with you and I would say that the way that he has his fastball it should actually be better against lefties there is room to adjust and tweak there and of course development of

those the slider and cutter I mean I think that's a big thing for both Bryce Miller and Brian Wu. I'm gonna bank on Wu being the one that actually is able to figure that out. Fair enough. One more broad question for you. What are you most excited about among new metrics, new tools, new things at your disposal either at picture list or elsewhere? Because there's other stuff popping up in the space all the time. Honestly, I know this is gonna sound weird. popping up in the space all the time. Honestly, I know this is gonna sound weird.

We are now utilizing PLV into minor leaguers this year. And we're having the tools that we had this off season that I just really got like, had like my enlightenment of like pitch design and foreseamers shape and everything. And we're gonna be applying it to AAA players relative to major league players. And oh my God, my job as like a prospect guy who's not a prospect guy is gonna get so much easier I cannot wait just because this guy's a good hitter I just know he is already that's great I'm done I don't

need to watch anything this is awesome and then pitchers I can just say oh cool that's good extension that's good verts and I don't like those words yeah I don't I don't like hitters they're cardboard cutouts for us pictures you know rise man never just look in the stats see cutouts for us pitchers. You have to use your eyes man. Never. Don't just look in the stats. See that's the thing, pitchers though I can do that and I have the data and I need that. I need both of those. That's one of the things I'm looking forward to and of course. I do think that we'll get better at projecting. Like we there's a lot of like well the bust rate on prospects is 50-50 even on the top ones and we're not that good at

knowing who's gonna be good. I do think that we're gonna get better at projecting them if we have these stats for the minor leaguers and I think that we've seen teams act this way where like certain guys are untouchable and certain guys like Asturi Ruiz are just passed around you know because they get to see their hard hit rates and their barrel rates and they're like you know so there's I think that we can get a clue sometimes in like a twice traded player you know that's like two teams being like we have a little bit more knowledge than you do we have these numbers and we've decided to move on so I do think that we're gonna get better at prospecting if we add some of these some of these metrics

in the mind I need to talk to to make sure that every double A stadium has that cast to? Not Alex Vast. Don't talk to him. He never gets anything done. You guys are just harsh to our front-end. We love Alex and I would say in his defense, this is not actually something that the league office could just mandate and get done. It's a complicated process of agreements between teams and the league and the people that provide

the technology. And so you know when you have like for some reason we have single-A parks that's like an agreement between teams that have single-A Hawkeye that just decided they're gonna share that data and so we have access to it. It's not that there's not Hawkeye in all these stadiums, there mostly is, but a lot of those teams would rather keep their double-A Hawkeye proprietary and make like single trades. So they'll do things or like, oh you give me the Florida State League and I'll Hawkeye data and I'll give you and a lot of times like AL, NL, so like maybe the Padres and Mariners would be like you give me Florida State League I'll give you

this league and they do that in college too so it's a complicated place out there for data in the minor leagues I'm just happy actually to get triple-A and get a little peek into single-A and I don't know that this is actually headed towards us getting all of the minor leagues because there's still a competitive advantage there's still all these agreements in place so I don't know that this is actually headed towards us getting all of the minor leagues because there's still a competitive advantage. There's still all these agreements in place. So I don't know exactly where it's headed. But I do, there's a cool new search function. Mike Petriello is coming tomorrow.

He'll talk a little bit about this, but cool new search function where you can do some hard hit stuff on Savant. That's mostly triple A and a little bit of single A. Maybe we'll get little bits of leagues as they add. That'd be amazing. Like get like Dominican of leagues as they add might be amazing like Get like Dominican winter leagues or something like but we won't know what's coming and it'll be some weird agreement between teams to be like fine Let's just put it up put it online and it won't be like Alex Fass be like, can you please put this online? It won't matter what Alex says about it. Oh, I know but here's the thing

I have this really good trench coat and if I you tell me where to go I've got a good mustache. I can put on We can make some back Work as long as you're slapping the base when you come in always Sorry about that, let's bring them shop here for a second a second. Hey Niv. Hi you know. We love Auto New. Ever since I went to First Pitch Arizona in like 2010 or something. Yeah. And played that game and said hey Dave Alvoman you need to put this on your site. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about maybe something that's new or like

a hot player. You have all these like cool like who's being drafted now and like who like the prices are moving like you have some access to that. Then you show you show that you have actually leaderboards and stuff about yeah whose prices are moving. So we have a all our players are acquired through auction so it's 48 hours it's a lot of time to evaluate how much you want to spend on a player or whatever. The guy who's popped up recently is Victor Scott. I think everyone at the exact same time realized the bases got bigger, like at the exact same time. And they were like, oh, he's going to steal 80 bases.

Some people got hurt too. Yeah, that's part of it for sure. But Zips has him at like half a stolen base a game. Yeah, that's nice. And so he popped up like very recently and like basically every five by five and every points leak like snapped up. Oh, I have a question for you.

Yeah. This just popped up. What is the most, what are the most, like rank the most popular settings? Cause you have four by four, which is I just think the most bizarre thing ever. There's no stolen bases. Come on man, I love four by four.

And K's? Yeah, no, no, there are K's. Oh bizarre thing ever. There's no stolen bases and Ks? Yeah, no, no, there are Ks. Oh, then okay, no wins. No wins, no saves. Okay, no wins, no saves, that makes sense. They took good things out. There are home runs for jobs. So what are the most, and then you have like points,

and like, what are the most popular? So points are really popular, and our points are like linear weights weighted. So they're based on Wob and and FIP basically. And so a lot of people are attracted to them because again almost to what DVR said like it's very aligned with what baseball is trying to accomplish. What what real baseball teams are trying to accomplish is success in terms of like like stolen bases are good but let's weight them

correctly versus a double. Let's... Yes, but this is actually popular. Sorry? What's the most popular? Five by five? No, no, no, no. No, points. Points? Yeah. People, man, people love points. It's just like, look, if you're like really dorky about baseball and you just want the good teams to be good. I know, but here's my problem with points. It's like I'm trying to make a trade with you and my guy has a points number next to him, your guy has a points number next to him. I'm like crap your points number is higher. I play 4x4. I play chaos. I play 4x4. So yeah I play chaos. I don't play points. That's called chaos. It's chaos. Why? Because there's only like 5x5 you can say something like oh I need steals. That's only, like, five by five, you can say something like, oh, I need steels.

That's why I like it. I'm going to trade you some steels or some homers or whatever. Four by four is like points but dumber, right? In a sense. Because you have this on base, you have slugging. And so you're like, is there a trade-off between on base and slugging? Yeah, there are certainly guys who hit for power, like Patrick Wisdom, for example, that will never get on base.

And then there are guys who are good on base guys. But making those trades is still like, it's rate stats and it's like a little, it's a little less direct than like accounting stat. I would love to know like where the most trades were. Like by, you know, by. So you did point out that. I would guess that five by five makes the most trades.

Points make a lot of trades too because people. Just I'm winning now. People want action, yeah. So it's a keeper game. 5x5 makes the most trades? Points make a lot of trades too because people want action. So it's a keeper game so people are able to make trade-offs between a success today versus building for the future and that's like an important part of the game right and so points, it allows you to make trades across any format. 5x5 is definitely the format that allows for trades, I think the most straightforwardly though. Anything new on the platform this year? It works, which is nice. Like everything, we

got through draft season, everything's good. Like the sites worked this morning, I'm very happy about that. That's the day-to-day grind. Yeah, that's the day-to-day grind, that's right. March is stressful in your position. Sorry? March is stressful. March is really stressful man. So no like employees grifting $300,000. If any checks are written out to Nivshaw to MGM, cancel those right now. No, I think the site's in good shape. I'm excited for real baseball. We've been playing basketball. So you've got basketball and you have football?

I have football too, yeah. And we've been doing basketball. That's one of the newer ones. So it's a three-sport thing. I actually have one league that they have leagues in each sport and they trade players from baseball to football and stuff. It's crazy Kind of like a league of leagues thing. Yeah, it's it's intense. It's very cool. Yeah, how about a sleeper? You mentioned Victor Scott kind of being targeted right now, but who do you like? Who do you think is on?

Breakout. Yeah, so I don't know if my guy's a sleeper anymore because I've sort of I floated his name out a little bit and a lot Of people are like, oh, yeah, that's that's if a lot of people tell you you're sleeper. He's a good sleeper He's not sleeper anymore, right? But I'm a Cleveland guy and I'm really excited about Shane Bieber this year we spent two years trying to trade him and It never came together, right? And now I'm happy that it didn't come together, right? Also as a Cleveland guy I have to go back and you guys talked about Tristan McKenzie for a really long time.

And he didn't say Dr. Sticks, which is the best nickname in baseball to me. And I'm a little disappointed to be honest. Dr. Sticks. Dr. Sticks, he's so skinny. You guys see him on the mound. He's so skinny. Did you see like, Bitching Ninja said something about,

here's a guy who's never seen leg day? Yes, yes, yes. But I'm excited about Bieber. And we were talking about Bieber a little bit where and it's upsetting as a Cleveland fan to know that my front office isn't catching this stuff but his curveball grip changed and it changed sort of like without him knowing because he was hurt and he came back and he started throwing his curveball and he was like I don't remember how to hold this and he was like trying to just get that, that good movement,

by repeating that movement, it changed. He changed his grip. And so then what happened is, uh, and he was told your grip changes. And then like on October 30, he went to drive line. They were like, your grip changed. And he was like, Oh, okay. So Cleveland, what were you doing? I don't want to talk about that. Amazing business. You just show up at driveline like well you change your own grip go back to the old one. Yeah right

like now yeah congratulations driveline gets another check on there. He's also throwing a little harder again though too so yeah his velocity is up right? Also his price has fallen so much that he's like an SP4 almost like it's it's really in a good spot. Yeah I feel like he's in the $25 range in auto new which is like a $400 cap So like yeah $25 is still like is he a sleeper? I don't know but like I'm you know, he's worse ways to spend 25 undervalued I mean that yeah, and I think that a lot of the pitchers that go in that range in Roto Don't have the inning ceiling that Bieber does there's right

There's no reason why the Guardians can't throw Bieber out there for 200 innings. And he will be like, yes, please. He's going to get a contract. It's a walk here. It's a huge year for him. Alright man, we're headed towards the Q&A. Thank you for coming up, dude. Always good to see you. Thanks guys.

Come on up, Chris Towers. Are we battling you right now? We're literally right now. It's a little awkward. We're just going to have some fisticuffs right here. We'll find out. There's a bracket. The baseball pods account on Twitter.

Vote for us, not him. A podcast bracket. We're going up again. Vote for them. Yeah. CBS, Fantasy Sports Today podcast. Vote with your. We're going up again. Vote for them, yeah. CBS Fantasy Sports Today podcast. Vote with your heart. They do great stuff.

And baseball pods is fun because it just really brings up some new podcasts every year. And I'm always excited to sort of see who he's got on the scene. But who is somebody that you've been talking about on the podcast recently and bring it up? All right, so I want to ask you guys because I really like Reid Detmers as a sleeper. I had him as a top 20 starting pitcher last year and

obviously that didn't go well. But the thing when I look at Reid Detmers is like you've got a left-handed starting pitcher who throws 96 miles an hour and got a great slider, or at least 96 miles an hour and got a great slider or at least what should be a great slider. And he was really good against righties last year. He had a sub 700 OPS against righties, 28% strikeout rate. That's what you want to see. And he allowed an 870 OPS to lefties. And so that's the thing for me with Redemmers, I look at and I say, if he can just fix what should be the easiest thing for a left-handed pitcher to fix, which is getting lefties out, he should be really good. And they're going back to a five-man rotation, and his stuff has looked really good in the

spring. He's got like 17 strikeouts to two walks over his last three starts. Like he's been really good. And so I like him as a sleeper. You can get him outside of the top 200. But is there something I'm missing? Am I wrong about Reid Detmer's? In a word, no, I don't think you are. I mean, he didn't have this problem against lefties in 2022. And the thing that people should know,

like your samples against lefties are very small. It's like 140 plate appearances. Yeah, they're so noisy. If this were a problem from day one for him in the big leagues, I would say, OK, there's something here that's just completely broken. Unless he comes back with a different arsenal or a different plan, more of the same is likely. I think we could get another notch up from Detmers.

I mean, I think the best case scenario for me with a guy like Detmers is like a 380 ERA, 120, 125 whip, but a lot of K's and that's a valuable picture where he's going. So he'd kind of fit into like a later version of Bieber. I don't think there's any sort of cap on his innings. The ratio should be good if it all clicks and I don't really think unless he struggles there's any restriction on him at all. So I think it's pretty interesting where he goes. I was just talking to someone tonight about like if you look at highly rated young starters, highly drafted young starters

like they eventually become good and if you look at like who's good they were a lot of them were highly drafted. It just takes them longer than it used to I think, or I don't know if it's you know, than they used to just takes them a long time to become a starting pitcher. It takes a long time. And I think that one of the things that it is, it's like, how do you put the pieces together? I see a little bit of a sweeper here, a sweeper from a lefty against lefty should be good, probably a strong idea. And if he's been having trouble getting them out with his tighter gyro slider, throwing a sweeper might be the answer. I see like not a great fastball and this is a weird thing about all the Angels. They all have terrible fastballs even though they

throw 93-94. He just doesn't have good extension. They're bad, yeah, but I think it's a good bet. I think that sort of these post-hype guys on the pitching side is a good idea because at some point they're gonna put it together. At some point, and that's why, I mean, we've been big fans of Casey Meyers and Matt Manning on the same sort of level where it's like, these are first round picks.

There have been some ups and downs, there's injuries. It hasn't been working out, but maybe this is the year that they put it together and The price is dropping. They used to be KC Myers used to be like you had to pick him up here And now you get to pick him down here Yeah, and everything changes when you get to pick him down here So I may not love Reed Denmers, but at the price I'm starting to love him more So I think it's a good one. Yeah KC Myers you mentioned he I wrote about my my most drafted players yesterday I think I have him in five of my 11 leagues now and it's mostly because his ADP is

580 in those deeper leagues my ADP is like 370 I like Ryan Weathers, pick 800 My ADP for Casey Myers is 370 which just means that I'm drafting him with one of my last picks and I'm I don't know if I believe in the secondaries, but the fastballs up two miles per hour this year. I also really like you say, Kikuchi. I know I'm not alone in that one. I, he figured things out last year, got the added that curve ball. Now he's working on the circle chains in like a group where you're like, I can bank these innings. Like I can believe in these innings. Like,

I'm not, I guess he can get injured like anybody else. But I just feel like 150, 160, 170, if he's healthy he's going to do that. There might be games I don't want to start him. But that type of pitcher, I found a lot of leagues where boring is cheap. You say Kikuchi is kind of on the boring side. The thing with Kikuchi is you like you compare into like Nick Pavetta Who's got a decent amount of helium this year and they kind of had similar stretches last year were like the final 110 or so innings, you know for Kikuchi It was like a low 3z array for Pavetta was more made twos high twos

but 11 K per 9 good ratios I mid-2s, high 2s, but 11k per 9, good ratios. I struggle with Pavetta, I want to believe, but I was there in 2019. You know, I was ranking him as a top 25 starting pitcher, and I just can't see the ERA getting below 4. Like, I can't see the path to it, even if he gets a bunch of strikeouts. One late round pitcher that you guys were talking about, like boring boring pitchers and there's one guy I keep drafting and and the guys on fantasy baseball today keep making fun of me it's become a recurring joke but in what we do these head-to-head points leagues and these relief pitchers who are these starting pitchers who have relief pitcher eligibility are really valuable.

Cody Bradford is the the number five starter for the Texas Rangers. I don't know if he's good, but in this format, where you're in a rotation and you're relief pitcher eligible, the number one relief pitcher last year scored as many points as the number 19 starting pitcher. So if you can get a decent starting pitcher. I love these very specific niche cases. Yeah, I love it. And so am I just being silly? I mean I put Cody Bradford as a deep league sleeper for any league so you

know I think I think it's worth it because he's gonna get some runway he's gonna get at least a month or two before all the other guys come back you know and and a lot of times you're just trying to buy a guy for the first couple months because you don't know what's gonna happen the rest of the year. So yes, love it. I mean if he has a 4-2 ERA, he might win 12 games if he stays in the rotation. That is a nice offense. Yeah, that's exactly it. So the circumstances are really good there.

And he's just searching for a breaking ball and you're like, you know, cycle through the man, cut her, just try something. There's gotta be something out there for you. So I like that. I like that call. Yeah, those are some of my guys. Yeah. Sweet. We got to move it up to Q&A. And you have to get dinner. I do have to go pick up dinner from my wife. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you have questions, there's a big concrete pillar right back over here. Tim McMaster, shout out to Tim for producing tonight, has the microphone. Head on over to the microphone, we'll take Q&A. Any questions you have for either one of us about pretty much anything really, I think anything's on the table.

table. Question from the one of the leagues I'm in, other than some of this stuff that's become a little more popular like K minus walk or some baseball savant or maybe FIP something, what kind of pitcher stats a little under the radar are you looking for for pitchers this year? I'll start with one that's not because I almost just got there when we were talking to Chris. I think everybody who has to write about fantasy baseball looks at second half splits and takes the K minus BB percentage leaderboard and gives you reasons to boost that player up. That leaderboard, Freddie Peralta, Nick Paveta, Spencer Strider, okay we talk about him all the time,

Glassnow Cole, Zach Efflin, George Kirby, Pablo Lopez, Justin Steele, Zach Wheeler, Cole Regans. That's a ton of people that everyone likes. Christopher Sanchez is 14th on that list. Kenta Maeda, baby. Kenta Maeda's up there, right? You say Kikuchi. I think it's useful. I think I would use that as a means

to dig into those players. Did they do something different? Did they add a pitch? Did they have more VLO? Was there a reason why they got better or was it just a good half? Sometimes it's just statistical noise. The actual answer to the question, I'll let you have to crack at that one. I really like Alex Chamberlain's website. It's a terrible name. It's like Pitcher Leaderboard version 6. We should help

Alex with marketing. He's very smart. If you actually go to his, Alex Chamberlain, which, and his, what is his Twitter? Dolph Halgren? Yeah. Is that a reference to something? Home Star Runner. Huh? Home Star Runner, okay. Hey, Home Star Runner's timeless. So, go to at Dolph Halgren, look in his, is it H-A-U-D?

You're not helping. I'm not helping anyway Sorry, I'm an old man. Anyway, sorry Alex chamberlain Twitter go to this thing. There's a tableau What's nice about it is you get IVB in IVB fashion, which you don't get anywhere else Maybe oh, yeah pictureless pictureless. Oh, what not a well-known site. You really have to you have to really look for it Some guy named Nick Pollack runs it. But there are some fun things you can do at Alex Chamberlain's site that you can't quite do it at Pitcher List yet. You can find comps, you can you can do sorting by certain IVB, certain metrics, and he's got he's got

some fun tools. So I would just I would just take a look at it. I spent too much time on Brooks for a site that's way out of date, really hard to use, takes forever to load. I don't know why I'm talking about it. I still use it though, because in certain ways, the graphs load quickly and you can see changes over time quickly. So I can get on there really

like if we're on the podcast and I didn't look at the rundown and he says a name I can like get on Brooks baseball real quick and be like oh he's lost three inches of his fastball. It's almost easier to do that like savant takes forever to load. But like you know savant is a good one. These are all tools that I use. Yeah you're using Internet Explorer on a Mac? I don't even know how you did that, but that's where you're at text-wise. On the hitter side, I have some interesting ideas. Robert Orr has a Shiny that has a damage rate that's kind of like a dynamic barrel rate. And he also has Seegerager which is a really good play discipline stat and it's all sort of sortable and you can play with it and

there's a lot to learn off that site like Victor Robles has a top 25 Seager. You brought that up twice I don't even bring him up anymore. Anyway these are not the Bobby Orr on Twitter. Let's call up Ellen real quick. Ellen Adair, come on up. No, I'm only asking you because I've forgotten all the details of the thing I was supposed to say. So please say that thing, and you can give us a sleeper or a question, whatever.

Ellen Adair, everybody. We love Ellen Adair. Hello. Hello, everyone. Yes, what Inu is so kindly referring to is that my new friend, Keith O'Brien, has written a brilliant book about Pete Rose called Charlie Hustle and it is coming out next Tuesday and so there's going to be a book launch event at the Upper

West Side Barnes & Noble and I am going to be talking to Keith about his book because I was also the audio book narrator for the book So yes, if you prefer to listen to instead of read your books, you can also listen to me read it and it's a runners like me Yes. Yes, and it's a really good book. I think Keith makes a very compelling argument. How does he deal with the like things we don't like about Pete Rose? Oh, he just puts them in the book. Yeah. Yeah, it's really... It's very... Does Pete Rose like this book? I wouldn't think he does. It's gonna be a very large book. Then I like this book maybe. Yeah, well I think it's very balanced. Well, I mean he's such a good player that it's so hard. And then I think it's just really interesting in

this time period that the things he did that got him banned for life, we're now trumpeting like MLB Network is like the pick of the night and then you're like you're watching your local broadcast and they're like oh I think he's gonna hit more than 2.5 bases tonight. My over of the night is like okay but Pete Rose sucks and he has to be banned for life, I guess. But this is where we are now. Yeah, it's a point that O'Brien makes in the book very well, that the thing that has ostracized Pete Rose from baseball is a thing that is now heavily endorsed, right? That

you could be at a baseball stadium placing a bet on a game, and that is the thing that got him banned. I don't personally think that betting on baseball is in the top 10 bad things that Pete Rose did in his life. Oh, man, no he's not. Which you can also find out about if you read the book. But that is the thing that got him banned from baseball. And so I do sort of think that particular thing,

yes, is maybe unfair. Do want to give us a sleeper? Arenola? Is Christopher Sanchez good? Yeah yes yes I will give you a sleeper of Christopher Sanchez. Is it a problem that he's throwing harder? I wouldn't think so. I don't think so either. Yes exactly he's a lefty if he can throw any harder that's always gonna be good the change-up is so excellent. Have you been watching this in the spring? Is it worse because he's throwing harder? My life has been very complicated recently. Yes, I've just sold a movie, so I've been working very hard on...

Oh yeah, what are you doing? Yes, I've just sold a movie. So, thanks. It's called Damned If You Do. I co-wrote it with my husband Eric Gildy. And so we have been- Oh, an accent on this one. Yes, yes he is. And so yeah, we've been like- You're the lead?

I am not, I'm not the lead. They're trying to get somebody fancier than me for this movie. And look, that'll be good for my career as a writer if they can. That's a little bit. I mean, if they can get somebody genuinely fancier, then I'll be able to see a look.

But you're going to be like, is that person fancier than me? Yes, I might be. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah, it's an indie production company and a million dollar budget, so we'll see who they can get. All right. Yeah.

It's very exciting. Do you see that speech? The guy at the Oscars said, we should be making $500 million movies instead of one $500 million movie. Although I didn't actually watch the Oscars, because I've been just completely underwater. But I was aware. Yes, that is how busy I am.

I was aware that he said that. And I am aware that Christopher Sanchez is throwing harder. All right. Yes. Thank you. Thanks, Ellen. Any more questions back there? Yeah, we'll take more questions from the back.

All right. So I have two questions. Question one is, so over the past few years, the trend just seemed to be more and more towards pictures having filthier stuff but less of a sense of where it's going and less ability to stay healthy. Is there anything you see on the horizon disrupting that, healthier stuff, but less of a sense of where it's going and less ability to stay healthy. Is there anything you see on the horizon disrupting that or is that just where we're going forever and ever and ever? And pivoting off that, question two, if an 18-year-old Greg Maddox was a senior in high school right now, where would he get drafted in July?

Ooh. I like the second question a lot because I've never thought about it before I feel like he'd be a 12th round pick we still have a 12th round I Mean like that that's the he would get I'm pushing back on this He would get completely over I think he threw at least 93 94 and if he threw at least 93 94 he touched 97 What we touched 97 you go you can go in the first couple rounds Yeah, that was fully grown Greg Maddux as an adult. As a high school senior, he was probably throwing 86. Yeah, that's true. But, you know, I don't think the stuff models would hate Greg Maddux.

Maybe. He threw a sinker. Would they see like a Kyle Hendricks? Oh! That what they would see at first? Where did Kyle Hendricks Oh, ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho reliever button any harder. You know it's like the the rat with the with the the button you know no the dopamine button yeah they'll like they'll hit the dopamine button till they die like in I don't shoot I don't know baseball's gonna die in this one I don't know anyway so I don't think you can hit the reliever button any harder than you have and I and I think that you start to see the

limits of bullpen games and you start to see the limits of how far we can push this. Like the Giants, like really trying to like even the Rays, like you're starting to see the limit of like, like just have a like a Johnny Holstaff every game. We'll just figure it out. We're starting to see limits of that. So I don't think you can hit the bullpen thing any harder. When it comes to stuff over command, I actually turn my eyes to Theo Epstein and say, you need to do something about this. Mr. Epstein, you need to change the rules. You need to implement a switch rule where the DH has to come out of the game when the starting pitcher comes out of the game. And I think something like that could just make it harder for teams and be like okay when my starting pitcher comes out I lose the DH then I have to pinch hit or the pitcher has to hit nobody wants to see that anymore we're done past that so you're gonna be like maybe I would

like to get Jordan Montgomery and have him pitch into the seventh so that my pit my DH can hit further so I'm looking a little bit towards like sort of fiddling with the dials. There's certain roster rules. One thing that I don't like about the roster rules is that MLBPA is going to get involved. So if you said something like you can only have 11 pitchers on your roster, MLBPA would be like, well, no. Those are jobs. We don't want to lose those jobs. But there's some stuff maybe about active pitchers. I'm not sure that'll work, but like active pitchers for tonight. Like you have to pick five pitchers to be active for tonight.

Maybe a six emergency pitcher. I like the double switch rule. I'm just looking for baseball to do something with the rules because, listen, I'm like when I tell my kids, you know, I have a younger kid who cannot lose and will cheat and will change the rules and do whatever, I'm like, just tell me what the rules are and I'll beat you. This is what I tell my nine-year-old.

But this is also what I think analytics squads do for teams. It's like, just tell me what the rules are and we'll beat you. So there's no, like, MGMGM is gonna say let's throw it softer there's no there's none of that's gonna happen so you just have to change the rules so the analyst squad says mmm maybe we do need more Kyle Gibson's no no we don't need more Kyle Gibson's like that for mentions yeah I'm sure he is nice. I'm not sure Lance Lynn is so nice. We'll take some more. As an Orioles fan, I definitely concur that we need more Kyle Gibsons.

Even if I'll never take him in fantasy. So Chris touched on my point a bit, but I guess my question is more like, how and when do you choose to hedge when you are not just a little bit severely off from the fantasy community. Like my special sauce, I have Matt Wallner weirdly high, DL Hall in my top 30 if I just went by based on my actual projections for it and the numbers. Obviously it would not be helpful for me to rank these people there. And I know you do the same with like Cole Regans and Edward Cabrera and a few others you're not like in on, but like when do you choose to do that essentially and how do you balance that? So I think when I rank players I'm ranking against the market. So if we have somewhat reliable draft data and it changes of course over draft season, if

Matt Wallner is going around, pick 300 consistently and I had a model that said he's a top 150 player, I'm probably taking him at 250 because I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna get him but I don't wanna overpay grossly. I wanna leave a little bit of buffer because the further you go down the board, the more likely it is someone else is gonna just

jump up a player that you might like, right? People tend to break away from ADP the further down they go. So I think it is sort of tempering what your model spit out with what the market's doing and then saying okay I'll pay a round or two more maybe three rounds if I really have a total outlier sort of thing. That's how I tend to handle it. I think there are also like YOLO rounds as I call them where once you have, I don't know, something like eight hitters and four pitchers, yolo, baby.

Just take the guy you want, because you never know there might be somebody else in your league who also has Matt Waller at 115, and he's playing that same game, and he's like, oh, I'm gonna take this guy. So I think there know There are certain points I was talking earlier about after 10 rounds you're dropping below 50% that that player is on your roster all year long And so I think that's that's the yolo switch for me

Is that I'm just going to once it's 50% that that guy's even on my roster at the end of the season Let me take a guy. I. So I hate to be, I don't want to make it too binary. There's some feel when you're in the draft room, see when other people start taking shots. There'll be other people who like other players, but you'll start to see big jumps in the ADP in your draft at some point and you can just be like, oh, okay, okay, we're doing it now, we're doing it now. It's time for Matt Wallner, baby, it's time for Dio Hall. So it's a little bit of feel, but it's also just a knowledge of like when you stop building your core, which is, should be guys that you think will be on your roster all year that you believe in, the

projections believe in, everybody believes in, the market believes in, to when you switch to like taking some chances. Sorry that it's not more definitive, but there is some feel involved. It's like knowing the room. You know, you gotta, there's some knowing the room involved too. Yeah, like beyond the people you play against, if you know them, that certainly helps. If you don't, that's where ADP kind of gives you some idea of what the group is thinking. Hey guys. So my first question is kind of a two part question, but the first part of it will be one, do my Detroit Tigers have a pitching factory?

And secondly, in the event that they do, do you think this gets properly taken into account when we're looking at fantasy valuations, which teams and organizations are turning out pitchers and maximizing their output in teams that conversely don't, where they're missing the mark on their talent. And I just, yeah, in a fantasy context, is this taken into account? Because I kind of see that sometimes it's not. We're looking at individual talents so deeply.

And yeah, that's my question. And before I log off off I'll say if Scott Harris and Chris Illich are listening give Chris Fetter a lifetime contract please thank you. I think they're probably where in my head I see them the way I saw the twins two or three years ago where they're doing some interesting things Fetter looks legit they're choosing different types of pictures and they seem to be making them better. Like if you think about the adjustments KC Mize made while he was hurt, coming back with more Velo and more Ride, that's a

mark of an organization that has a better plan for making pictures better. So I think they're absolutely an up-arrow organization in that regard. I also think you can see it and based on how people treat the Tigers pictures right now with the exception of scubal The market hasn't fully bought in and like yeah projections will bake in the home park and how much like that helps them along the way But they still seem collectively pretty underpriced to me right now I think one thing that's hard about giving credit to organizations is that they're always changing and so What I know is that like the Blue Jays spent a bunch of millions of dollars on like a facility and like hired a bunch of new

people and yet I mean we we maybe Bowden Francis is fun maybe there's some stuff percolating but you don't see a lot of pitchers go to the Blue Jays and get better I mean maybe Kikuchi, Gossman was already like fully involved, Berrios got worse and then he got better. I don't know. I think it's just hard. Like I know the Mets for example are spending a lot of money on coaching and like a new lab and a lot of that stuff is good but that doesn't make me think any better of David Peterson or that doesn't make me think like I'm not sure that Tyler McGill is any good, and I'm not gonna be like, well, they spent all this money,

so he's gonna be good, and I wanna be careful about it, even with the Dodgers, the Dodgers seem like a team that do everything right, and they spend all the money, and they have all the labs, and they do everything right, but like they also, like, they have, who's the guy who's not Gavin Stone, his other one, Grove. Michael Grove, not good and and so But they come up through the miners looking good

Some of these teams know how to coach players up to make them look good by stuff models and know and like Make them look good to be tradable. I think the Yankees do this, you know, like I think that on some level They're they're just like well We're gonna teach everybody sweepers because it's gonna be way easier to trade all of our guys with sweepers because the stuff plus model would be good and everybody else has stuff plus.

So like, here we go, here's my guys. They all have 106 stuff plus. You can buy any one of them. I mean, that's what they did with Soto, right? So I feel like it's really hard to like get a... Trailer development is already hard. You take a player, you think you know how good they are, right? And then you do some stuff and then you think you know how they're good at your end. There's noise in knowing how good they were there.

There's a bunch of noise being like, oh, the stuff we did with them, that was good. And then there's noise again at the end when you're like, oh, this guy's a finished product. How good is he? So as an example, how good is Casey Meyers right now? And how good is Matt Manning? We're all excited but we don't know. We don't know how good they are. We don't even really know how good Terry Schummel is. So it's like, that's what makes it so difficult. Then you start thinking about it organizationally. Like, are the Phillies a good team at turning out pitching? Christopher Sanchez says yes, but there are other examples that say no,

and they sort of acquire guys, so maybe they're an acquired team. Are the Mariners amazing? Or do they teach everybody sweepers? I don't know, so I have teams I like. I'm a little predisposed to the Mariners, but I don't like Emerson Hancock. I'm a little predisposed to the Dodders,

but I don't like Michael Grove. So you gotta be a little bit careful where you think things are going well things might be improving under the hood things are changing even the even the Braves who are so good at turning out position players they haven't really turned out that great pitchers but they hired Alex Fast I mean access Mike Fast Mike Fast Mike Fast away from the Astros, who is a pitching guru. He had one of the first Stuff Plus models. He's obviously helping AJ Smith or Oliver

get better. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. And I think another part of it is scouting. You scouted KC Mays and you bought a guy who had a sinker and a splitter, and maybe that wasn't the greatest pick for what was he? 1-1? 1-1. I don't know if that was a great pick 1-1. But years later he's coming back and he's like, now I have a four seamer.

Now I have a good breaking ball that works. So it goes also back to what we were saying earlier about pitchers taking six years to be fully formed. In that six years, how many directors of pitching do they have? How many GMs do they have? How many times do their player development process turn over? So it's not easy to sort of put that finger in the wind and be like, oh he's a Dodger, he's good or whatever, you know? So it's long-winded answer. We've got time for one more.

Hey guys, this plays a little bit off the last question, but as pitch design and It's a long-winded answer. We've got time for one more. Hey guys, this plays a little bit off the last question, but as pitch design and pitch development gets so much more homogenous, gets more advanced, kind of becomes a little homogenous. We're chasing the same traits. We want ride, we want sweep, we want drop, we want spin. I feel like the last few years we've seen this concept of very unique pitches become very effective and sometimes They get missed in the model, but they always get really good the airbender the ghost fork Justin steals four seam fastball whatever dory moretta throws So I just wanted to ask you guys one if there's going to be a way you think ever to quantify pitch uniqueness

And two and i'd like nick to maybe get in on this too too What do you think is the most single unique pitch in baseball? I? Always think it's the airbender probably most unique pitch, but I watch it a lot So maybe I'm just in love with it Brewers fan. What are you? How do you use it? How do you throw it like that? It look it just looks like the most like a little pitch to throw looks like it's bad for him Yeah, and hopefully it's not the reason why his back is messed up. Yenir Canoz, sinker, comes to mind. Dory Moreta. There was the guy on the A's who threw a backup slider. It was a slider that kind of went the wrong way, like a change-up. Domingo Acevedo. I think that to some extent those pitches can be found out. The league

can see enough of them, especially if you're a starter and you're throwing that pitch a lot, the league can figure it out. And we've tried some things, and I don't know how many super nerds we have, but we've tried some things with like Bayesian bootstrapping where we're like, you know, if this pitch is super unique, can you find things that are somewhat close to it and like just approximate how good it is? And we haven't made it work. So I would say that if you are looking at somebody

who has a good K-BP and an awful stuff plus, maybe pick him up. I don't know, as the father of stuff plus, like, maybe pick them up. But weird is good, it's like you said earlier. Weird is good. Weird is good because hitters don't like weird. Hitters don't like things they don't ordinarily see.

And as long as that stuff works with the in that picture's arsenal, it's fine. But Eric, FAT-A65, stuff plus, no, that's not good. Well, yeah, that's not good weird. That's the rare bad weird. It's really hard to think about this. I mean, Zach Galen's cut change was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, which he can't replicate.

He has no real idea how that happened, but that did happen and I still think about that every day. Well, Kyle Hendricks messes up models because he can do it. Right. I mean, Gosman's splitter is the weirdest thing ever to me. I mean, you've seen that grip that I can't do it. And he does it with such consistency. And I think also using that grip is why his splitter is as consistent as it is.

Because it isn't a traditional one. And he's able to do that effectively. Also, I don't understand why anyone ever does the Vulcan change-up. It's just the stupidest, hardest thing to do. Kalosh, baby! Let's just make a splitter harder to do. And let's throw that. You want me to mention him before with like the not exciting but exciting guy? If you want to do a we didn't start the fire of all the

crappiest brewers I've watched in the last 20 years be my guest. Is Matt Garza in there? Yeah he does. I still have a gif of him shouting at his mitt. You actually pitched I was never any any good but this do you think there were actually movement patterns that like people haven't figured out oh no they're like really like oh like I tried to lose once I was like if it was almost the screwball it was like if you could make a pitch go like this right so I mean okay there's like kind of righty yeah like if I get thrown like this that's. So I mean, OK, there's a kind of like a shootout. Yeah. Like if I get thrown, it's like this. It's sort of Devin Williams.

It's like Devin Williams, but with like a curveball. Yes. All right. That's what a true screwball is to me. It's like you throw it like walk like an Egyptian. You know, you just go like that. But the problem with that is I don't think anything else you could throw would look like that coming out of your hand. So that pitch. Oh, yeah. You're like, yeah, there's nothing else you can throw with that.

Especially a grunt like that, it's pretty obvious. I only grunt when I throw this. Because it hurts my arm so bad! What's with the airbender, it's a super-pronated change-up. So he's getting close to that full C with your right hand. He's doing this. He's doing that at a time, which is very interesting. Shudo is more of just the full-on over two seamers as opposed to

leaning with like down the rails on the right side which can be very interesting too. I always think the turbo sinker, like the one seamer, to me is this like mythical wonderful pitch like Zach Britton's, Blake Trinen. Joe Musgrove used to throw one too. And those to me are ones that honestly guys guys could actually do. What is that? That's a sinker that goes like this but doesn't do this? It's like this? It's really, it's a really, really hard sinker. It's like a reverse cutter.

It's like this. It's almost like a gyro slider at times too. Like this? Yeah, just like, no, like this. Like swoop. Okay. You heard that on the podcast. Not this.

Yeah. Not zwi, but zoop. Yeah, you can feel the exhale. But no, can feel the exhale. That was really good radio. Yeah, there it is. Absolutely. No, that's a really interesting one because like everyone tries to do it, but there's like a unique spot on the ball that you have to release it at to make sure it seems shifted wake is right with your arm angle to make it so you can actually do it. And it's so hard to do. That's actually, I think, where there's undiscovered world. It's like, someone was saying to me that they recently thought that a hater's fastball was

a seam shifter wake fastball, in that it was like a sinker grip, but the loops were keeping it up. And so with seam shifter wake and a knowledge of that in Edutronics, we can now keep pitches that we think should go down up or take pitches that we think should go up down just by putting the seams in the right place. So there are certain things like a ball that's get released that looks like a four seam but instead does this or something. You could do stuff like that or a thing that looks like it's going to be a two seam but it stays up. I actually threw that.

That's slightly different. I think there might be some seamstriker wake in that actually. He's doing seamstriker wake to make the ball go down except he pitches upside down so it goes up. I actually used to throw that four seamer that would drop but that was when I was in ninth grade and through 50. Oh yeah because the ball just went like this. I've seen lots of those. I watched Little League. The ball just goes like this. I'm like what's the pitch effects on that? Not good. It'd be funny though just break that out in the major leagues and be like whoa I haven't seen that since Little League. It just went like that. Not good. It'd be funny though, just break that out in the Major Leagues and be like, well, I haven't seen that since the League. It just went like that. Well, it was in Rookie of the Year, right? That's just the floated fish.

We didn't say this earlier, but thank you so much. Oh, no, thank you guys so much for having me. Of course. And thank you guys. Thanks to all of you for being here. Thanks to Tim McMaster again for producing this episode. Thanks to our friends here at Other Half for taking great care of us. Chef Ryan made an awesome sandwich. Thank you for the Gopulgogi apparatus. I saw you with a sandwich in your hand.

That's good for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back here tomorrow at 630.