Rates & Barrels - Baseball's best rivalry, building a winner in Colorado, dealing with early injuries, and making sense of slow starts

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the second round of Padres-Dodgers, Fernando Tatis Jr.'s huge weekend, Ryan Weathers' bid to keep a spot in the San Diego rotation, changes in the Rockies' front office, pitchers with good stuff and command, but without a rotation spot, and several players of interest through the first month of the season.  Rundown 1:35 Padres-Dodgers Continues to Deliver 5:59 The Braves' Offense Woes Continue 11:00 Ryan Weathers' Bid to Stick in the San Diego Rotation 17:43 Building a Winner in Colorado 28:47 Good Stuff and Command, Need Starting Role 33:32 How to React to a Roster Plagued by Early Injuries 45:19 Another Royal Records a Save 48:50 Sixto Sánchez's Long-Term Ceiling 55:07 Concerned About Kyle Tucker's Slow Start? 59:11 Still Believing in Austin Riley? 64:12 Alec Bohm vs. C.J. Cron vs. Joey Votto Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Sign up for a subscription to The Athletic for just $3.99/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, April 26th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. If you're watching us on YouTube, hopefully you're enjoying the new look of today's show. Looking to do a little more on screen to keep everybody entertained over the course of our shows going forward. Yeah, I got a closer shot of Eno too. So a more in-frame Eno. My head looks gigantic.

Things are coming together really nicely here on the YouTube side. So if you haven't subscribed to the YouTube channel, this is a good time to get in on the fun there. And of course, welcome to all of our listeners on the podcast platform where this show originated. So a lot to get to on this show. You know, Padres, Dodgers really looking like the best rivalry in baseball right now. That was another great series over the weekend. The Rockies and Jeff British have parted ways. So we will discuss how difficult it will be

to build a contender. We'll discuss how difficult it will be to build a contender in Colorado. And we had some great questions come in, including one about pitchers with good stuff in command who don't currently have a rotation spot, which could be a really helpful source of finding some potential sleepers, in-season sleepers, guys that you could pick up in deeper

leagues who might end up having a more prominent role later. Lots of player questions sprinkled in throughout the show as well. So we begin with the aforementioned Padres and Dodgers rivalry, which I think is the best in baseball right now. And the weekend series had everything in it. Tatis' shoulder, to me, is the main story here because any doubts we had after his first week back after that injury from a performance perspective were erased with a five-homer weekend in Los Angeles. Yeah, pretty amazing. And also amazing that he changed his swing, right?

He's now doing a two-handed follow-through to help with the shoulder and didn't blink. I thought there might be some repercussions. I thought maybe this wasn't going to be the year that we were hoping for out of Tatis. But the asterisk still remains maybe this wasn't going to be the year that we were hoping for out of Tatis but the asterisk still remains that

he could re-aggravate this but otherwise also the gameplay was amazing it was really fun it was just tight for the celebrate don't celebrate

debate. There was something to come in there with the one-eyed celebration from Tatis and the sword from Bauer. The kind of pitching ninja sword that he did. Apparently

Hosmer did it back to him. They were having fun with it. There was a that he did apparently Hosmer did it back to him um so you know they were they were having fun with it um there was a little bit of an edge sometimes when people got hit and some chirping um so it did feel like a real live rivalry it was like a high-end rivalry nice thing too they're both really good teams so it was really good play. I mean, it was just really good all around. It was just people throwing the ball really hard, command wasn't even that terrible, and just really good at-bats by the batters.

Yeah, I mean, and the comeback from the Padres on Sunday night was really impressive as well. Both of these teams have dealt with some early injuries. The Dodgers seem like they've had a lot pile up recently. I mean, Cody Bellinger, of course, is still on the IL. But I think when you look at these two teams, they're set up to be a great rivalry for a long time. The NL West is a strong division up top. We'll see what happens with those bottom teams in the months ahead, especially the Rockies, who we'll get to in a few minutes. They have got a long way to go before they're ever in the conversation. But the Giants are going to be good sooner rather than later, too. They have a young core on its way to the big leagues. So I think we're looking at a long, long-term rivalry here between the Padres and the Dodgers.

I think the other question is, what other candidates do we have for best rivalry in baseball right now sure yankees red socks always get sort of the the snap reaction as well yeah that's that's an all-time great and more often than not it is a good matchup but there are some other great rivalries the brewers and cubs have seen each other nine times already this season brewers pitching has looked great throughout those series i think that's part of the reason why the Cubs offense has looked so bad. I don't think it's a complete loss of skills across the board. I think it's having some really tough matchups,

especially with the Brewers being so right-handed with the front of that rotation as well. Yeah, I want to put the Mets in one, but just trying to pick means that maybe it's not obvious. Mets-Phillies was for a bit, but do the Phillies have the same quality right now? And is there really that history? Mets-Braves was pretty intense for a long time and should be again this year. So we may, I want to put that one forward as one that we may over the course of the season, see a little bit differently as the Braves rotation,

I think, and non Acuna lineup, uh, could, uh, uh, get it together and make that a, a better race right now.

It seems like everybody in the NL East is like nine and 11. I don't think that's statistically possible, but somehow I think that's what's going on. So once everybody gets past their 9-11 phase, I feel like we'll get to Mets-Braves as a possibility there. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I think there's a lot of potential for that series over the course of the season.

The Braves couldn't believe it. I mean, Zach Gallin and Madison Bumgarner were fantastic against them. Bumgarner going seven scoreless, no hit innings, called a no hitter. If you want, I'm not going to fight you. If you do it, the game was only seven innings long. So he did what he could to throw a no hitter in that matchup. If you'd have told me he was even going to get through five, no hit innings against the Braves lineup, I would probably laughed in your face with that, that prediction. Well, as Velo was up, I don't know how much to take from it because if you do look

at even before that game, Acuna was the only one hitting. I think there was a stat that I saw that non-Acuna Braves are hitting 199 as a group. Anybody who has shares of Albies or

Austin Riley or... Ozuna has been brutal. Ozuna, they know how bad it's been outside of Acuna. So I wouldn't push Longarner too hard in my rankings or whatever or based on that no-hitter. It's a little bit like Rodon, where it's like, okay, I think you should push a little bit, right? Because it's like, the stuff is a little bit better. If he's throwing a mile and a half harder, then he's throwing a mile and a half harder.

That's meaningful. And Rodon got a slider back and seems to be back, you know, had good VLO. That's meaningful. So they do move a little bit. But like Rodon, I think I made him sort of back in top 60. And Bumgarner, as a result, might crack the top 120 or something. I mean, how far would you push Bumgarner based on one star like that? I see him as more of a fringy top 100 guy.

But that means he's useful with good matchups, even in 12-team leagues. He becomes pitch and ditch, to quote our friends from the old Fantasy 411 show. I mean, I think a home matchup against the Rockies this week, that was probably enough for me to think about Bumgarner at least in 15 team leagues, even before what he did on Sunday. And I think that little nudge you might have needed to throw him out there in a 12, that's probably what you got with that start against the Braves. The velo being up does make him more interesting. And I said this on the Fantasy Baseball in 15

show for Monday morning. There's a long way to go between ace and unusable starting pitcher in fantasy. And where in that large middle Madison Baumgartner ends up, I'm sure, is still a matter of some debate. But if he's 2019 John Lester in terms of ratios and workload, that plays in a decent number of leagues as long as you spot him correctly. Obviously, you're never going to use him against the Dodgers. You probably don't want to use him against the Padres. So there's two teams in division that you have to avoid. But you can use him against his old club.

You can use him at home against Colorado. And you can use him in a decent number of matchups around the NL at home and maybe even a few spots on the road. So there's probably 50% to 60% usage for him just given the volume of innings he's going to provide. Yeah. Strange, though. He never was a huge strikeout guy, even when he was going well. I wonder if just park is maybe the biggest variable for me, almost beyond strength of opponent. I mean, he mowed down a lot of great opponents in San Francisco.

So, you know, if he's pitching in San Francisco, I'm into it. I think home, you know, Arizona is now mostly a pitcher's park. So I think I'd be a guy who pitched him in sort of like 80% of his home starts and his San Francisco starts. And that might be it for me. But another interesting note out of that was that Zach Gallin did the dominating. And tonight, Julio Urias and Tyler Molle are going. And between those three, I don't think I could put a healthier stamp of approval on young pitchers in the game, I think. I think those three are my favorite sort of emerging young pitchers.

I don't know if you can get any three of them in Dynasty League still. And also, I'm not a big proponent of trading for pitching as a building block um in dynasty leagues i'm mostly about get your bats together but if your bats are starting to get together and it's time to like try and have a keeper pitcher those three are the ones i think urias may be third just because of the labrum surgery that he once had um you know the other two don't really have a surgery like that on their docket. But if you want a building block pitcher, I feel like those three are the place to go. Just outstanding stuff and command numbers. Just really nice, broad arsenals now with command, good velocity. I mean, there's

no sort of asterisk with those three guys. Yeah, they've all looked really good so far. And I think Urias in particular, we've been waiting for this for a long time. And it really seems like all of the pieces are falling into place for him now here in 2021. Circling back to the Padres for just a moment, I wanted to ask you about Ryan Weathers, because he was somebody I chased in free agency this weekend. I think even with some relative good news on Denelson LeMet at the end of last week, I'm still skeptical about his long-term health. And we talked about it when the Padres put this rotation together. There's a lot of injury risk up and down that group of starters. So what looks like a temporary opportunity for Ryan Weathers to start right now could become more of a long-term opportunity somewhat easily. Now, we've got the numbers scrolling by if you're watching on YouTube. What have you seen from Ryan Weathers to this point and how sustainable is the encouraging start that he's had? Not the ERA below one, but just the fact that he's missing a lot of bats with a K rate close to 30% early on here this season.

Yeah. It's one of those things that I think just looks better to our eyes than it plays that the research suggests movement plays. And this is something that I've been trying to talk about with Jesus Lizardo a little bit where you watch and you say, Oh dude is throwing 95 from the left. You know, he's got a 85 mile an hour breaking ball. It looks like a good change up.

Like, you know, this is all this all looks really good. It adds up to around an average stuff number because the breaking ball doesn't have the right movement shape, you know, and the fastball is not really like a riding force seam. So everything is a little bit worse than you expect. That's what I suspect is the case with Weathers. Because if you look at these stuff and command numbers that are scrolling by, you'll see a 65 stuff plus on his fastball. A slider that looks legit, I think.

It's 99 stuff plus, but also 107 command plus. We found some evidence. Also, this is fun. legit i think it's 99 stuff plus but also 107 command plus we found uh some uh evidence also ah this is fun uh max bay who i'm working with so i i did that little piece that suggested that maybe command is more important than stuff for sliders and uh max uh did like an overlay where he did stuff plus versus command plus for sliders and location plus. And it did look like a command was more important than stuff for sliders. So sliders are the new fastballs. So you could say if you're being charitable weathers,

you could say, okay, he's got a big league slider that he can command. So that's a good thing for him. However, change up 56 stuff plus 94 command plus which means that um i think the fastball is going to start to get beat and if you don't believe the sort of i i understand stuff is a little bit black boxy um you can you can also just see it on a

stack cast page if you go down to uh the vertical movement by pitch type table for Ryan Weathers, his sinker, it's called a sinker there, or four seam, whichever one, gets anywhere from two to six inches less movement than average. The changeup gets six inches less movement than average vertically, and the slider gets three inches less movement than average uh vertically and the slider gets three inches less uh movement than average uh so his pitches just don't uh drop a lot and they don't ride a lot which is ideal and i and i think honestly that can be sometimes when you're watching like it's hard to see right yeah absolutely super easy you can see it with breaking balls a little bit, but as we said in this case, his breaking balls are right. It's the fastball that seems to be the problem. Now, having worked a lot of the bullpen prior to the two starts that he's made, the first start being a short start, we've only seen him throw 10 change-ups so far. So does that 56 stuff plus number carry a little less weight for you given how infrequently we've seen that pitch so far?

I mean, there's a chicken and egg thing here. We probably would have seen it more if it were a pitch he was more comfortable with or if it were an obviously better pitch. But can we look at the 10 pitches and say, okay, well, it looks bad so far, but it might not be this bad going forward? I mean, this is absolutely what stuff was created for, stuff plus and command plus, is to be able to react faster. going forward. I mean, this is absolutely what Stuff was created for, Stuff Plus and Command Plus, is to be able to react faster. So if you do look at the movement on pitches, they're very

stable. I mean, these are major league pitchers. They can replicate the action on these pitches. And so I would say that he doesn't have a good changeup. I think it's probably pretty lock solid between what you're saying and like, he doesn't use it. But he'd been relieving, so it could be his third pitch, but then we see the movement and we say, eh, that doesn't look like a very good pitch. Kind of a fastball slider guy.

More velo out of the pen. What happens if he loses some of that velo into these starts, trying to go deeper into the game? Does that 65 stuff plus on the fastball start to rear its head? I think that sometimes, and this was one of the things that came out of the stuff research, was just that I think that, yes, Velo is important. And it is a highly, it's a well-regarded number within stuff, right? And we look at it and we know that Velo is a big deal. However, I think that there's a bit of Velo that's like gets you in the door,

you know, gets you into the major leagues. Like I could have the bendiest pitches in the world and if I topped out at 75, I just couldn't be a major leaguer. But what if once you get to the major leagues and everyone's somewhere between 91 and 99

maybe in that range movement is more important because that's what we found is that when we looked at stuff movement was more important than velo and I think that's just probably because everyone's already at if everyone's already around 93, 94, then the big separator is actually going to be movement.

It's a really good point. And I think with Weathers, he's the kind of player that if you were thinking about a keeper league or a dynasty league, especially, you might have someone who wants to trade for young pitching reaching out to you right now. This could be a window, a relative peak in value just because the changeup is not good now, this could be a window, a relative peak in value. Just because the changeup's not good now or he doesn't have a third pitch he uses now

doesn't mean he'll always be a two-pitch guy. I mean, we're talking about someone who skipped over AA and AAA. So there's still some development to be done, but I think you're right to point out the likely possibility of some growing pains with that current approach, and I think that's exactly what the stuff in command numbers are pointing out to us right now. So really glad you got that insight, a little nervous about having him in a league like Tout Wars where he has to be in my lineup for this week. So fingers crossed the correction doesn't happen right away. Hopefully it's when

I've got a little more control over the matchups, if it's going to happen at all. The big news of the day on Monday, Jeff Bridich and the Rockies have parted ways, which seems like it was a long time coming, Eno, and this is going to be an uphill battle for whoever the Rockies decide is going to lead their baseball operations group going forward. It sounds like the interim GM is going to come from within, but a search for the next GM is going to come from within, but a search for the next GM is not far away from happening. They still have Trevor Story to possibly trade away mid-season, so that's hanging in the balance too. Obviously, the Arenado trade is one that looks

awful for the Rockies at this point. We talked about the unique challenges of building a winning team in Colorado, I think is one of our very first episodes of Rates and Barrels. So April, two years ago. And I'm sure a lot of the things we touched on way back then are things that are still absolutely true now. When you see the reaction to British's departure, you get a lot of the same sort of ideas that the Rockies need to become a team that is at the forefront of science and data and tech. They need to try different things. They need to be a laboratory as an organization. And to do that, it's not only going to take Dick Monfort and the ownership group hiring the right people, but it's also going to take

a lot of time for the right people to also get everything in place to even make it possible. Yeah, yeah. And I think that it is what it takes. It takes a new buy-in and someone who speaks the language to the owner and says, you know what, you need to take a step back. Or just like, I don't know how you convince the owner owner but you convince the owner that something new needs to happen and then you get in there and you say you i have total buy-in and we're starting this at the bottom and you have to give me like five years you know and i'm gonna do some weird stuff in the minor leagues and that's gonna start bubbling up and we're gonna look like more like the race like and not like the race i love how they were like oh we're like the race we're you're selling arenado and buying cj crone it's like you know we're buying and selling just

like the race did you know uh no i mean more like the raises and like innovating the sport being like oh we we looked at it and we decided that tandem starting is the way to go so we're actually gonna have like only four starters but we're gonna have eight starters and we're you know like they're gonna tandem with each other piggyback or whatever you want to call it or whatever it is you know we're gonna we're gonna look at how to make it work you know there are we there's a ton of research into what sort of pitch types work better uh in cores and and don't you know and you. And you have a minor league spot in Colorado Springs, I think, still. I'm not sure.

I hope they held on to it. Because you can do a lot of how baseball is doing, moving the mound back in indie leagues and stuff. You can do a lot of experimentation at Colorado Springs where you're getting the same sort of work environment to kind of see if you, like what if we just had a bunch of guys who threw 80% breaking balls, 80% sliders.

Sliders lose less movement than curve balls. What if every one of our guys just really pushes up the slider usage at home? So anyway, I did get a text from a friend in baseball, and I'm going to share it real quick because it might be surprising so my dream job just opened up well i mean i think it's like theo epstein man like if you go there and win that you could be a hall of fame executive almost based on just that well yeah and you're going to have your pick of your next job.

If you want to move on to a different market, if you decided, yeah, Colorado was nice, but I want to run the Angels someday. I'm not trying to fire Perry Manassian after a few months in the job or anything like that. But if you want to go to a bigger market someday, that would be a stepping stone to choose your own job. I mean, if Theo wants to get back into running a team, there's the biggest challenge of them all, organizationally speaking, because even before Jeff British became the GM of the Rockies, winning in Colorado was very difficult. They have not won a division title and they've existed for almost 30 years. So that gives you an idea of how tough it is. Part of that's the Dodgers, of course, are a perennial contender. But one thing that was in

the takedown, we'll call it a takedown, from Ken Rosenthal and Nick Groke that went up on the athletic a couple of weeks ago, the Rockies do spend money. Dick Monfort's not Bob Nutting. He's not sitting there saying, we're not spending money. He's willing to spend. The note in the column was their combined payroll ranked 11th in the big leagues from 2017 to 2020, even though the 21st in market size. So you've got an ownership group that seems to be willing to spend. And it's really just a matter of being really forward thinking and innovative and finding creative ways to get something on the field that actually wins consistently. It's going to take something different. I don't think it's impossible,

but I do think it's difficult. So I'm really curious to know how many other people around the game feel the way that the person who reached out to you feel, because I don't think that's necessarily as uncommon as we might think looking at the overall failures of the organization since its birth, really.

And one of the things that sticks out to me from that piece by Ken and Nick, too, was a real breakdown in... communication, I guess is the way to put it. Just people talking about the... In some ways, you could read it as kind of like disparaging his personality. And I don't really... I want there to be room for all kinds of personalities in the game.

I'm not trying to speak ill on Jeff's personality as a personality. But different personalities fit different roles better right and i like i think the gm i think the gm needs this is gonna sound weird i think the gm needs to be cheesy i think the gm needs to be cheesy and approachable i think the gm needs to have like catchphrases and like uh things that make people feel like inside jokes with people and and things that make people feel like inside jokes with people and things that make people feel they're being listened to, right? Because I think that the GM is the figurehead for the whole organization that gives the, that tells everybody how we're going to act. And if he's sort of, if he's warm with everybody and he creates a sense of belonging and you're being listened to,

then your R&D team can talk to the scouts. And it won't be like, we say this guy, you got to draft this guy in the first round. And the scouts are like, who the F are you? I've been in baseball for 30 years and get out of here. There is some of that still in baseball there is some of that still in baseball where things are being ignored from the analytics department or or this or or coaches are pushing back and being like we're not going to wear that technology what are you talking about uh so i think a good gm somehow like it might sound

cheesy and some people will like will be like oh, oh, man, I hate when he says that. Or like he makes those T-shirts, you know, like teams always have these T-shirts, right? But I think they work, man. I think that they give you a sense of like, we're all pulling together. We're all in this together. And if there's like, that's one thing that I really reacted to in that piece was like people saying that like they didn't feel like he was listening to them anymore that's that's you're done you need to that's what the gm needs to do he said not only does he need to listen to everybody who's giving him advice because he's gonna have agms and he's gonna have you know uh scouts he's

gonna have the r&d department all this this stuff. He needs to listen to them. But on top of that, he needs to make them feel like they're being listened to. You know what I mean? Like, you can't just listen to them and then make your own decisions. And then they're like, did he hear what we said? And he just doesn't care. You need to be able to explain to them, look, you guys made really good points about this or that. But the scout said this.

And, you know, i've tried to put it all together and that's the decision i made you know i was listening to you i i took your input we we we reduced the offer a little bit because you said this or you know what i mean like we took your stuff into account we care about you you you're doing something here nobody want that that's why the whole r&d department quit. You can put it together. Oh, we're not being listened to. Oh, we're getting paid terribly. Oh, this team is going south and it's playing terribly out there.

Okay, we're all going to quit. The whole R&D department quit. I wonder, I don't know if this applies to British specifically, but I think about it as a quality of many failed leaders. I think there are people who, if they're not the smartest person in the room, they are bad leaders. They're threatened, right? They're threatened by the possibility of being intellectually inferior to the people that are reporting to them. inferior to the people that are reporting to them. And that is a huge problem in a game that seemingly gets smarter every day with the types of people that get hired and the types of information that we're looking at. So if you have a GM who is willing to learn constantly and willing

to listen, that's going to go a much longer way, I think, especially in a place like Colorado, but really anywhere. It's going to go a much longer way toward actually having success than the GM who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room all the time and always follows what he wants to do regardless of what his or her very bright team of analysts and scouts is telling him or her to do. And Scouts is telling him or her to do. Yeah. Hire me to be GM because I will know immediately when I get there, everyone else there is smarter than me. Right. Yeah. I mean, the skills of a great leader do not include smartest person in the room more often than not. The best leaders you've worked with, think about the people on the team.

Were they the smartest person on the team? Probably not. Not in all cases anyway. Some of the best people I worked for, they had a lot of smart people working for them helping to cover their own blind spots. That's how you want to build an organization. So I'm really curious to see how this plays out.

If they are going to start paying people better, if they're going to be able to build an R&D department again after the last one all basically just walked away because it's going to take some time, but it could actually work in Colorado if, again, this is a big if, if it is done right. Trevor Story, got to trade him. Got to get something good though. You got to do the right things first. So there's already some stuff that has to be done that will shape even some small parts of the timetable for making all of this happen.

All right, you know, we had a great question come in from Taylor. And Taylor wanted to know basically what pitchers out there right now are showing good stuff in command but currently are without a rotation spot. Taylor plays in a lot of deep dynasty leagues and often gets the best fab guys by digging through low leverage relievers with interesting underlying numbers. So past examples would have been Alec Mills in 2019. John Gant has occasionally been useful in leagues like that. So he's looking for sleeper, seventh or eighth starter,

swing men types that could actually step up and take on a more prominent role here in 2021 at some point the i i i kind of had two two classes uh two groups when i when i thought about it one is like uh guys who are kind of being used to starters but aren't currently in the rotation or being piggybacked or kind of in between ish so michael fulmer uh has a 106 stuff and 105 command. You're in the last moment to get him if he turns because he's in between being a rotation guy and not. He's got like three innings in his last start, and they're kind of piggybacking with Therese Scubal. But Scubal's stuff and command numbers are inferior to Fulmer's, and they may want to showcase fulmer to to trade him you know because he's more on the way out than uh gonna be a part of the next great tigers team so um i think fulmer will take that

rotation spot and might actually be good his velocity is way up uh the bite looks good um like this is the best he's looked in a long time so So, former accounts. Andrew Kittredge on the Rays has a 121 stuff and a 106 command number. He's being used as a reliever, but I think he has the – he's also on the Rays. So, I feel like there's any type of possibility he ended up being a bulk guy, an opener, anything. I just think he's a pretty good pitcher. And then Tanner Houck has a 121 stuff, 92 command plus. It's not a great command plus, but it's above that 90. I call that sort of the reliever shelf is 90.

It's also he's kind of a two-pitch guy with a really low arm slot. But at the same time, with that kind of a stuff number and some of the results he's had in short samples, I'm really excited to see Tanner Houck back in the rotation at some point with the Red Sox. But more in the spirit, I think, of the question he asked were kind of the current relievers that could maybe make the jump. And that's a separate group. I've got a separate group of four here. JP FireEisen on the Brewers

has three pitches. 133 Stuff Plus. When you start looking at Stuff Plus, you start getting this, oh my gosh, the Brewers do really care about certain types of movement profiles. They're really

good at developing pitching, I think. He has a 99 command plus. That's totally enough to be a starter. And even if that 133 stuff comes down, because it would come down if he became a starter, right? Like you would just expect less velocity, velocities and input, so on and so forth. But he could use some degrading there and still be good.

Sean Poppin has a 113 stuff plus, 107 command plus. Taylor Clark in Arizona has a 104 stuff plus, 104 command plus. I think that's a little bit borderline stuff because then if he's starting and that's 99 stuff, 104 command plus, that could just be a very league average-y type pitcher, But in this guy's league, it sounds like a league-average pitcher would be a win. And then there's Ryan Beaureki, who we just keep waiting on. I mean, I think maybe a little bit like Merriweather,

at some point the injuries will mean he just has to be a reliever. But if he could stay healthy 105 stuff plus 104 command plus from the left side interesting guy there in toronto clark is in arizona poppin i think is a pirate i believe that's right and the thing about fire eyes and that's interesting is that he's been in three different organizations now he's got three pitches that he's throwing as a short reliever. And if he's got command, I wonder what it is about him that has kept teams from even trying him as a starter at some point. He's never even attempted to be a starter, which is pretty strange. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of injuries in his history.

It's kind of like I said with Bo Rookie and Merriweather. If you just can't stay healthy, sometimes it can be easier to stay healthy in short stint type situations. Yeah, definitely could be some of that. There's a common problem that Roger wrote to us about. And I want to talk about this because I think it's getting to that point in the season. We're almost a month in where if you have a lot of injuries on one team, especially if it's a longer-term league, but really in any league, you have this temptation to start making moves, starting to be aggressive right now. And it's only April 26th, so as frustrating as a bad month can be, trying to find some balance, making the right moves is really important. trying to find some balance. Making the right moves is really important.

The example that Roger sent us, he's in a 13-team mixed league with two IL spots, drafted Betts, Rendon, Starling Marte, Cattell Marte, also has Framber, Lourdes Gurriel, Erod, and Lance McCullers. And that's a group that has been just crushed by injuries. Even Betts, we talked about him, I think, last week. He just hasn't looked like himself early on because of some bumps and bruises, to put it mildly. So the question that Roger had that I think a lot of people out there have is, if you're in a situation like this, you're buried near the bottom of the league, and clearly you're missing out on some production from a lot of key players, do you remain patient with that core, especially if a lot of those players are coming back soon? Do you try to sell low on some injured players just to get somebody in there who's actually healthy and

offering you something? Or do you start to throw in the towel in April if it's a keeper league and just start to make some moves for the future? I've seen some large increases in standings points. I was last in AutoNew

Experts League for the first week or two, and now I'm fifth. And it's like, that was pretty fast. And it took some of my guys just coming back from being injured and getting back in there. So I do think that large movements

in standings are still possible. I don't think I'd kick, I'd get rid of, I don't think I'd give up on the season in the Keep are still possible. I don't think I'd kick, I'd get rid of, I don't think I'd give up on the season in the Keeper League yet. I think I'd give myself till May at least. I mean, it's a six-month season. We haven't even finished one.

I think I would want to go to mid-May at least. Kind of let a third of the season, get close to a third of the season before I gave up. You can't, I mean, you're kind of stuck too because nobody, it's a little bit like trying to trade a big contract in baseball.

No one's really buying injured players. So it's not really an option there. The only thing I figured out is just to keep pushing them down on your bench, into your benches, totally full, and then just try to make the most reasonable bids on interesting fill-ins that have a little bit of upside. So I just finished my FAB runs this week and I got players like Jordan Luplo. And who's another one?

Adelise Garcia is the kind of guy that's just playing a lot right now. He's not going to be on your roster all season necessarily in a 13-team mixed league, but you want someone who can do some damage with power and hits in the heart of the order, at least temporarily. Players like that can kind of bridge the gap until you start to get healthy again, even though their projections compared's the difference to me between Tommy La Stella and Anderton Simmons, Willie Adamas, you know, in some of these leagues where I just want one of them to step in for a couple of weeks until I, right now I have in one league, I think I have Segura and Marte both hurt. And another one I have Segura and, and a two way hurt. You know,

it's like, you just, you just need someone to play. So don't pay like $150 out of your thousand for an injury replacement. Try to pay like 30 or $40. Right. And that way, hopefully the idea is you get your guys back.

You'll sort through the injury replacements and start dropping them. And you'll still have a good amount of money for like maybe a big prospect that comes up or someone else's big injured dropper at the wrong time. Maybe they get so overfilled that they need to drop a pretty good player that you can stash. So I think that finding a way to get those injured players on the cheap is a good way to do it. I did a lot of bids where I had six, seven players. You have a conditional bid where it's like, I'm dropping Adam Haisley in this one league, and I have six or seven players that are all injury replacements under him, and they just went from like 70 to three in terms of how much money I was going to put down.

70 to 3 in terms of how much money I was going to put down. But all of them I felt I'd rather be low on the top guys because I feel like I'll get the $3 guy, and the worst-case scenario is I've got this $3 guy in there. I've got Josh Van Meter in there for a week because Altuve is close. You know what I mean? So that's what I was trying to do is just try not to spend too much on the injury replacement so that if you're talking about Fab, you still have

that later. I think this also turns into a different question with the keeper and dynasty approach because we're at the point now if you play in a league with Ian Kahn, you're getting offers from Ian because he knows that if you're off to a bad start in a keeper or dynasty league, you start to have those doubts right

now. As soon as you get an offer of at least one good long-term piece and possibly two for a bunch of guys that you might not keep, it's tempting to take it. And right now we're at the point where there are more teams that believe they can win any league this season than there will be a month from now. But I think given that we didn't have a minor league season in 2020, especially if you're trading for minor leaguers right now, you're basing it off of information from more than a year ago. I feel like just because of what happened last year especially, it's actually too early to start moving pieces away and keep her in Dynasty. Missing a huge piece of information. You don't even know what levels they're going to be put them at yet.

Right. You don't even know what levels they're going to be put them at yet. Right. And even on your own roster, you might see after a month in the minors that some guys that you thought were going to be close to helping you a year from now, that they might not be as close as you thought, or they might be closer than you thought. So I think you just want to get a little more information about the pool of minor league players in general before you start dealing players away. Yeah, sure. A couple teams are going to probably decide this isn't my year between now and the end of next month in a keeper in Dynasty League. If it's a 12 or a 15 team or even deeper sort of league, a few more teams will probably rule themselves out, but you're still going to have a decent number of viable teams out there trying to play for this year to trade with.

I don't think it's going to hurt your return that much to get some extra information. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it hurts buyers and sellers that there's no mileage right now because, um, I'm, I'm in seventh in devil's rejects out of 20. Uh,

but we have a good team we're sending. We, we've had a lot of injuries. So as these guys come back, we're, we're starting to go off the rankings. And so we're looking to buy, but a lot of our,

uh, as a, as a contender and without having these high picks, what we ended up doing is buying a lot of sort of J2 signees, high, like high A wunderkinds, you know, that could, if they were, if they landed in double A and started doing the same thing they were doing in high A, would immediately become huge names and would like rocket up the top 100. would immediately become huge names and would like rocket up the top 100. So a guy like Manuel Beltre,

who is a shortstop, I think in the Royals organization. But we have like a bunch of these. We have another one from Toronto, just a tools, the guys that we like the tools, they were doing well in high A, but we just don't even know where they are.

If they could land in double A, I could get a lot more for them. So I was trying to get some pitching early on because I traded away Means and Haney for Mitch Hanegar before the season with Tom Trudeau. And that blew a bit of a hole in our rotation. My backup, we got Logan Webb in that deal. He was like, if one of my starting pitchers had been injured,

well, I would have had to choose between like throwing a fourth reliever or throwing Logan Webb at San Diego next week. And I was kind of like, I'd rather have a little more cushion. So I've been trying to get pitching, trying to get pitching. And everyone's kind of like looking at our prospects and being like, you know, I don't know. Are those guys any good? And like um you know i don't know are those guys any good and i'm like i don't know we think so but we're not sure either so what i ended up doing was uh trading for a guy that command and stuff loves uh tyler anderson on the um on the pirates

uh really great command and stuff numbers and uh we traded away Chris Rodriguez, who's in the major league. So at least you can see, at the very least, he has Velo. He's getting major leaguers out as a reliever. He could end up going the reliever route and ended up being a closer, even on his own team. It's possible by the end of the season. Or he goes back to starting. Even his own manager doesn't know because Madden has said both

I think he looks like a future reliever which is amazing for a manager to say about a pitcher why would you do that and then he just recently said he I think he looks like a front-end starter so make up your mind Madden and then we we attach Corbin Martin to it just because there's a little bit of a track record with Corbin Martin you know's some knowledge of his abilities, and he does not have a great command number. So I thought maybe Corbin Martin is good. Maybe Corbin Martin is good this year. Maybe he's better than Tyler Anderson this year, but I'd feel a lot better about having Tyler Anderson in the fold. And he's back starting for us this week because he's got Kansas City at home. So anyway, that was a long-winded one.

I know nobody cares about your league, but it did bring in a lot of these topics that this person is asking about. Yeah, so I would just say even if you know this probably isn't your year, I don't think it's a bad idea to be a little more patient just to get some more information. Wait until we get at least a couple of weeks from the minor leagues just to see where players were assigned how they look early on teams might be aggressively promoting prospects who hit the ground running this year because they

may realize oh crap this guy did actually progress to the point where yeah he was a high a player last time we saw him but he's a triple a player now so starting him at double a was too low but they're going to need to kind of feel it out and prove it and they also have they also have more information than we do um you mentioned the san francisco giants prospects i think there's a mariners prospects account uh you can get little snippets where you're like oh like uh i think elliot ramos hit 107 mile an hour uh a home run the other day um i saw somebody hit 112 who was it I saw somebody hit 112. Who was it?

I don't remember. Oh, Luciano. Marco Luciano hit 112 mile an hour homer, which is actually, in terms of having one data point on a player, kind of exciting. That's a good one, to know that he can already hit 112 at his age and his point of development. That's all you can do is you get these little sort of –

but they know more because they're playing against each other. So I think we'll learn a lot when we start seeing assignments for players. Yeah, I want to know where Jason Dominguez is going to start his professional career this year. Could be low A, could be high A, could be double A, probably not. Probably one of the A ball levels, but I'm just really curious to see. I want to know where all my high A guys go. Really curious to see what these assignments actually look like

once the season gets underway. May 4th, opening day for the minor leagues. Definitely excited for that. Breaking news. Oh, no. Breaking news. Breaking news. breaking news breaking news breaking news the sixth person

on the Kansas City Royals today the sixth person to record a save and my personal favorite Josh Stomont come on down thank you Royals we love you so much it is so much fun to own

six players to try and get a try and get saved i think i was at a draft and hold with a listener actually um he was laughing about your scott scott barlow pick and he he was trying to he was trying to uh gather all of the royals closers to say you'd have at least the royals closer on his, he is a draft and hole. So he's like, he picked all of them. He picked all of them. But Scott Barlow,

I think Scott Barlow has a save. I think everyone has a save. I think, uh, Wade Davis has a save. Greg Holland has a save. Scott Barlow has a save. Josh Stoneman has a save.

And, and I think there's two more. It's like Oprah is running the bullpen. You get a save and you get a save. You get a save. I still bet on Stomont long term.

I feel like I threw away my grounds for complaint about this because I'm sure there are hours and hours of podcast episodes in years past of me saying that bullpens should be managed that way. So we deserve this. This was a long time coming, and should they really turn to one guy consistently beyond our purposes? Probably not.

Yeah. There's that Rob Arthur piece that the hot hand does kind of exist when it comes to pitching, which he said that small changes in fastball velocity are very predictive. So if you're monitoring your guys in the bullpen, there'll be minor fluctuations in velocity over time. And you may want to act quick on that and just be like, basically, in sort of old school parlance, you know, Stomont's throwing it better right now. Stomont, to me, going back to the first time we ever talked about him and the first time anybody ever wrote about him, I think, was my friend Bernie Pleskov. I saw him in the Fall League. Jeez, this must have been at least three years ago and possibly as many as five. And it was effusive praise about his stuff and some serious questions about his command like that was that was the scouting report then and i don't know if much has changed over the years of

him but if you want to give it to the guy with the best stuff yeah stalmont's the guy you want to give it to the guy who's most likely to not tip the vending machine over, it's probably not him. Let me see if I have a command plus number on here. I bet it's going to be somewhat disappointing. It might not be horrible. I mean, it's not Kikuchi-esque or Otani-esque. It's an 86, but that's why I talk about the 90 as the reliever shelf. Yeah.

So kind of typical for a reliever so maybe not as bad as it used to be if we had that number three four or five years ago it might have been like a 60 or something just completely outlandish and also he was trying to be a starter back then right so he's probably throwing two other pitches that he couldn't command yeah at this point he's simplified and said he's throwing his two best pitches. A lot of great questions came in, so we're going to go ahead and bring up these players in order. Sixto Sanchez was one of the guys that landed in the mailbag. The question was from Steve. Steve wrote, I've always been a little miffed by the Sixto fascination.

I get the Velo being amazing, and he sure does seem to limit hard contact, but how does he not miss bats at a higher clip? Elite Velo, elite chase rate, never had a K percentage that would make you think he has the stuff that he does in the minors or in the majors. What is going on here and do I just need to get on board because he's going

to be a stud? I lean towards, I lean stud. One of the things that's interesting about him is that um there was a good deal of injury in his history um and so i don't think he always had these velos in the minor leagues so when you're looking back at the strikeout rates uh those are there's some times in there when he was sitting 92 and 91 and 93 so like you know this this kind of like flamethrowing beast that's 96 97 98 like i mean he's throwing hundreds in games um i don't think that that's necessarily what you're looking

at when you look at the historical strikeout rate uh numbers it's also fair to say that his his fast or just his pitches in general are stand out more when it comes to horizontal movement than vertical movement and vertical movement is better for whiffs and horizontal movement is slightly better for ground balls and sweet contact but it's not fair to say that he's Dustin May before the changes this year, because he does have really good vertical movement on the slider, the changeup, and the sinker. But probably fair to say that he's sinker first sinkers better than his foreseem. And so there will be some, there will be some, uh, some ground balls that he gives up. There'll be, there'll be some, uh, strikeouts he misses out on.

Uh, I think he's still going to be elite. I still see the package as being elite. I mean, look at what Dustin May did. Dustin May made a very small tweak to his fastball. So his foreseem gets a little bit more ride and he's going to the foreseam more. And now he looks like the Dustin May we all thought he was going to be. Yeah. The curve ball is looking really good early this season for Dustin May as well. When you say elite for Sixto, do you mean perennial top 20, top 25 starter? Like what, what does that kind of mean value wise yeah i mean i think uh elite to me is

top 15 and uh i think i think he has that ability i mean i think that's still in him uh it might be a little bit more like when luis castillo is going well which i know that's the kind of a bad name to bring up right now but it might might be a little bit more on that end. But when I look at his projections, I see a homer per nine. I say no. He's never given up anywhere close to that, and with that sinker and those command rates, I just don't see him giving up a homer per nine. So you take that, you take some number off of there. I think he's got a little bit more strikeout upside than eight per nine. So I'd give him a little bit of a strikeout boost there. Now we're talking about a 3-5 ERA with a 1-2 whip.

I mean, it's pretty close to top 15. Yeah, that's definitely right in that conversation. So yeah, 20-25 short term with upside ceiling to get higher i think that's a fair description of of sanchez at this point i saw a lot of people drop him this weekend and i know they they probably had some tough decisions to make because of injuries just like we're saying but i've you know wherever i have i'm trying to hold on to him as long as possible yeah injuries pushed me to let him go in tgfbi but You had to let him go? I had to in TGFBI because there's no IL spots, and I've got a couple other injuries.

The way I looked at it was, let's say he's a month away from pitching in a game, which doesn't seem to be outlandish based on what he's coming back from. Just started throwing. They're going to have minor league games. They're going to probably have to stretch him out carefully. If he's a month away right now, I can't play short for four weeks. If I have to throw 10 to 15% of my fab at him later

to get him back, I can live with that. That's actually easier for me to justify than having one fewer option available with other more valuable players currently up on the bench with injuries. Let's talk about Kenta Maeda for a moment. Is there anything going on with him? The question here was about spin rate. Has anything changed with his spin rate on his slider that might be causing him to get hit early on here in 2021? Yeah, I didn't see anything. I looked for the spin rate on the slider. I also looked at, I think I shared in my rankings a pitch to start to start stuff ranking for Maeda. And didn't see anything there either. So let's see here.

It's not always easy to get spin rate changes on the player page, but I didn't see it there. And I also don't see that much of a difference in his movement. In fact, he last year in his great season did not have good movement on the slider, and in fact, by StatCast, he has better movement on the slider this year. The changeup drops more than it did last year. The changeup drops more than it did last year. The sinker drops more than it did last year.

And the four-seamer is about the same. So I don't see any corresponding movement changes to last year that would make me worried. The stuff number has been pretty steady at 110. And so I don't see a real reason to worry about him. The only thing that's there is that the sinker last year was, no, the sinker last year was 91. It's 91 this year, so I don't know. He hasn't really even lost any velocity.

Probably someone you can safely trade for if you get someone in your league who's panicking a bit after the sluggish start for Maeda. Thanks a lot for those questions, Steve. Next question here was about Kyle Tucker. Is it time to worry about Kyle Tucker after the start that he's off to? It could be worse. He's got five homers on the young season, hitting 181, 205, 398 entering play on Monday, has a stolen base, 13 RBIs, 10 runs. The counting stats haven't been terrible to this point. I was looking at the underlying numbers.

I didn't see anything as far as an outlandish reach rate or anything that just shot up to the point where I'm changing my expectations all that much for Tucker at this point. No, barrel rates are up and his barrel rate is up. I would say since barrel rates are up, his barrel rate is steady. But it's a pretty good barrel rate so you know that's something i would be looking at right now um in terms of uh things that become useful quickly uh his chase rate uh is a little bit up um and his walk rate is down so you could say that maybe this won't be his best season for OBP or whatever. But his expected slugging is 553 versus an actual slugging of 398. Even if expected slugging is a little bit broken.

I think that does paint a picture that I believe. Which is he's still hitting the ball really hard. He's maybe going through some issues at the plate in terms of chasing stuff. But I think he has enough of a track record this far into his career that I think he'll make the adjustment. Yeah, still talking about a guy that has less than a full big league season's worth of plate appearances. 461 career plate appearances so far for Tucker. 18 homers, 15 steals and that. 261 career plate appearances so far for Tucker, 18 homers, 15 steals and that.

So really just looks like a 2020 guy that might be a shorter term liability with the average and the OBP. Even when things were going well for him in the shortened season, it was a 268 average and a 325 OBP. That's not great. That's just sort of good for most leagues. But I'm not panicking with Kyle Tucker at this point. I'd kind of put him in that Maeda bin where if someone in my league is shopping him, I'm on the receiving end of that call willing to make a deal to get him. I've got a question here about Eugenio Suarez. He's been atrocious this year. My fantasy league is points-based, and I drafted him for short-step eligibility. However, we lose a point for strikeouts, and we lose a point for fielding errors.

Oh, no, which has made Suarez liability most days during this slump and position change how much longer should I give him before trying to trade for another bat I mean I don't worry about Suarez as a hitter generally you know I don't know if there's anything in his underlying numbers that would cause early panic but that format is definitely not the optimal format for Suarez anyway yeah you're really uh exacerbating the the flaws in his game um you know he is not reaching more uh he's not swinging more he's being super patient uh he's lost a lot of his ability to make contact on pitches outside the zone which is something that can age poorly but usually doesn't drop off 20 percent in one season um so i think uh generally i'd be

excited about owning him still but that league man he may strike out 30 percent of the time i would uh i'd have to look at, I want to run the auction calculator. I think the auction calculator and fan graphs does have a rest of season component. And I'd want to throw in errors and strikeout rate rest of season and see what the value is. If the value that the auction calculator gives you is on the value, on the number of like two, three, four dollars, then I think he's actually droppable because you can find a player that might pop and be better than that um and two or three dollars doesn't seem like it's that hard to find uh but if the auction calculator still says he's like 15 20 player rest is even

even with those flaws then i'm gonna hold yeah i would say while if you play rotisserie leagues the idea of dropping suarez seems pretty far-fetched, in a points league, it is actually a lot more realistic, especially given Nathan's points league in this case. Let's get to this question here. Are you still buying in on Austin Riley? If you pop the hood, what do the deeper metrics say about his start so far? And I think he started to warm up a bit over the weekend and the time since this question was sent in. But I liked Riley coming into the season, you know, because I didn't think he had a lot of competition for the job. And he showed improved plate discipline during the shortened season, bumped up the walk rate, cut the K rate. Early on, he's held that improved strikeout rate,

and he's walking even more than he did previously. He's up to a 12.5% walk rate here. A couple of home runs through 21 games, like a lot of hitters in this Atlanta offense, just hasn't found his footing yet. Yeah, I mean, he's made a really huge change to his play discipline. He came into the league swinging 56% of the time, and now he swings 44% of the time. And that's an adjustment in both years, a pretty major adjustment in both years. He came into this league reaching 41% of the time and is now reaching 27% of the time. So he's made real changes from year over year from last year, too.

Positive changes to his play discipline. You're seeing that in the walk rate. The strikeout rate are way better than they were in his rookie season. I think it's all there. I think it's all coming together. The barrel rate is not there. 42 batted ball events is not

an epitaph. We can't write that barrel rate in stone yet. Maybe there is something where he's focused on the strikeout rate and um and it's been to the detriment of his power a little bit but he has so much power that i would rather have the strikeout rate gains i think because then i think he can maybe hit 260 with like 25 homers as opposed to his projections which sort of suggests he'll hit like 230 with 30

home run type power. Yeah, those extra home runs are pretty costly when they drag down your average and OPP that much because then you run the risk of losing playing time. You have to be a still good real life player to keep playing time on a contending team like that. So that tradeoff seems like it's worth it for Riley. I do look at him as an early season by low. And just as we

said about the Yankees, I think on the Friday show, the Braves are going to hit. It's only a matter of time. The floodgates are going to open and hope that if you root for another team in the NL that you're not playing the Braves when that happens. I had a question come in about Marcus Simeon, who's five for five as a base dealer early on this season. And the question was, if you have good middle infield depth, is Simeon someone you try to move away from right now? In this case, Jazz Chisholm is the other player that Adrian could use if he trades Simeon away.

I'm on board with it because I trust Jazz. I know there's going to be some ups and downs, and it's been more good than bad so far from him. But I think with Simeon, I'm still stuck on this idea that 2019 is by far the best season we're ever going to get from him. And the K rate we're seeing early is more in line with what we saw in the shortened season. Yeah, he still walks. Yeah, he still plays a lot.

He's got power, obviously. I think he'd do pretty well in a trade for Simeon right now given that he is offering speed to go with that pop. The only rebuttal I can offer you, sir, is that on the trade market I feel Jazz would get more. Yeah.

And if you look at their rest of season projections, even with... Let's say you don't... Let's say you think that he's going to strike out more than 20% of the time. And so you don't believe the projections that say he's going to strike out 18% of the time and hit 260. Let's make it 22% strikeout rate and hits 245, right? We believe the power for the most part. We believe the speed for the most part. So what your rest of season projection, probably for for Simeon even with the added strikeouts I think would be kind of let's say 240

with 25 homers and 10 to 15 steals my rest of season projection for uh Jazz and this is better than what the numbers on Fangraph said I'm buying buying in. And so therefore, I think he can hit 240 with a decent on-base percentage, 25 homers, and maybe 20 to 25 steals. So I think the difference between these two guys might be about 10 steals going forward. And depending on what you can get for that, if you can get more for Jazz,

then I think that they may be a surprisingly similar value going forward so i might put both on the block and see what's going on and obviously i'm talking about redraft yeah because in a keeper league then you hold jazz and you shop send me in a second yeah for sure yeah and that email was uh signed stuck up the middle with you which is uh it's good that's like a bob's burger uh name really yeah i had another question come in here and it was a suggestion also from nathan who said for would you rather it should be named after a couple of ballpark staples i'm guessing that when watching a game for fun most of us would rather have a beer than a hot dog.

I think that gets tricky because I think there's a lot of us who would just say, I would like both a beer and a hot dog. I know there's people who don't even drink beer. Right, so that one gets a little slippery there, but Nathan is from Australia, listens to the show in the morning, watches baseball in the morning when drinking beer

is frowned upon, understandably so. Yeah, I could see why that would be a thing that he would think about. Absolutely. I remember seeing baseball games at like 3 in the morning in London and just being like, I'm alone in the living room with all the lights off watching baseball by myself at 3 in the morning. That'd be different. I don't know if I could really ever get used to that as a permanent thing i could do it for a short time but that's chris liss about his viewing habits out there in portugal i find that when you ask chris liss a question you rarely get a simple answer so

so i better block off some time for this question. The question from Nathan was, his first base options are Alec Boehm, Joey Votto, and CJ Krohn. Out of that group, do you have Boehm clearly ahead of Votto and Krohn at this point, or do you think that's actually a little closer than we might have thought coming into the season? You know, there's people out there that were higher on Boehm than I was, and the reason for me was that I just saw him as kind of steady Eddie. Um, and I wasn't sure that there was a whole nother level to him. Um, and his current start, how does it make me feel about that prediction i guess i guess i feel good about that prediction i mean he went from a 10 barrel rate to a 7 barrel rate if he's going to do like 7 to 10 barrel rate he's not going to be

like a 35 homer hitter you know and i thought he could hit 280 but he's striking out 27 of the time if he's going to strike out more than 20 of the time he's probably not going to hit 280 so uh you're still looking at a guy 270 with like 20, 25 homer power is the most likely outcome for Boehm. I think that kind of just makes him one of the pack if you're talking redraft. Which I think gives you an opportunity to possibly swing a deal. Like if you can trade Boehm and pick up Votto or pick up Krohn, I think Krohn over Votto is probably the way I'd go just because of the Colorado factor.

Have you seen the Bat-X projection for Krohn, by the way? 278, 347, 551. Easily the most optimistic projection for him, even just the regular Bat, 271, 338, 518. That gives him the best numbers, I believe, of the entire trio. So I do think you can get away with it, turn Bowman to something else, maybe a pitching upgrade or some speed or some saves, something else, because there is a decent number of people out there that believe in Alec Bowman

for good reason, but that gap's not wide enough to say, I'm going to pass on these quality alternatives and hold on to Bowman all season. I think third place on this group is Votto. As much as I'm excited about the new stat cast Votto, the new chasing barrel rate, chasing barrels

Votto, I don't think that it's going to lead to a great batting average. I think Votto will have the worst batting average and about the same power as the other three. Krohn should have the best batting average, maybe similar to Boehm.

And Krohn should have the most power and Boehm should have the second most power. Yeah, I would agree with that breakdown at this point. Thanks a lot for the question, Nathan. Glad you're enjoying the show on your way to work as a morning show in Australia. Love that we've got that global presence now. It's awesome to have people all over the world checking out our show. Some loose ends to tie up here. We had a few suggestions for our acapella group name.

One from Noel came in via email. Rates and Baritones could be the name of the Rates and Barrels acapella group. I think that could work, right? I had an email from Matthew, who is just like me, apparently. I think this is a common one, though. So this is not just the Derek problem. He only hears and sees the name Brock Holt as Brock Holt, like Steve Holt from Arrested Development. I'm just glad I'm not alone, right?

I've seen that one on Twitter before, though, so that's how I know I'm not glad I'm not alone, right? I've seen that one on Twitter before, though, so that's how I know I'm not completely strange. I'm just a little bit strange to have other players like that. I spent all of Sunday singing just the words Eduardo Rodriguez to the tune of Old Clementine. I can't top that. Why did I do that? I really don't know.

There was one other email that came in. This one came in from Ken. Ken wrote in to tell us that he thinks the Fast and Furious 10 premise that you dreamt about would actually get him on board with the franchise that you should push through. He said it's a way to promote the strength and power of women. So I think you should pitch this to Hollywood. strength, and power of women. So I think you should pitch this to Hollywood. I don't think of all the movies you could pitch,

I think that one's got a better chance to get a green light than just about anything else out there because the franchise has been so successful. Oh my gosh, that's my next move. Fast and Furious 20. Well, as always, feel free to shoot us an email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com.

You can get a subscription to The Athletic at just $3.99 a month to start at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels on Twitter. He is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.