Rates & Barrels - Bat Speed Risers & Eno in Surprise

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Eno and DVR share a follow-up confirming that Gerrit Cole will undergo Tommy John surgery and discuss Francisco Alvarez's hamate injury, another delay for Rafael Devers' spring debut amidst a round of updates from Red Sox camp, before examining some of this spring's biggest bat speed risers. Rundown 3:52 Gerrit Cole: Will Undergo Tommy John Surgery 6:46 Francisco Alvarez: Out 6-8 Weeks with Hamate Fracture 10:45 Rafael Devers' Spring Debut Pushed Back; More Red Sox Updates 18:49 Follow-Ups: Jurickson Profar, Daulton Varsho, Tony Gonsolin & Dustin May 25:13 Spring Bat Speed Risers 42:59 Eno in Surprise at Rangers Camp 55:46 Let Billy Cook, A Personal Story Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Remember, Sunwing. Save more. Do more. Book with your local travel advisor or at sunwing.ca. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Tuesday, March 11th, Derek and I, Ber-Eno-Saris here with you. On this episode we dig into some more spring news and notes, surprise surprise, more injuries, including an update on the path forward for Garrett Cole. We have Eno on the scene in Surprise, where I think there were birds before we started recording, so we'll probably get some birds chirping in the background.

I think that's always the best part of the Spring Eno experience, is each Spring training environment does create some different background noise for the podcast. Yeah, surprise from surprise. Tons of birds. It's very nice. In fact, as I was walking in here, I was like, you know, it wouldn't be such a bad

sort of semi retirement job to to be groundskeeper in Arizona. Yeah, groundskeeper in Arizona or P.A. for fall league and spring training. That'd be a great gig. I'd love to do P.A. out there. Specifically with the grounds keeping, you're here when the weather's at its best, in the mornings and the evenings. Mostly hopefully you can stay out of the sun

during the right day. I did my run yesterday and the only time I could do it was at three o'clock and man, it was hot. Well, I applaud you for sticking to your workout plan on the road in those conditions. But yeah, that probably was the best time. All of this is not easy. I'm in a TV room or I'm in a radio room

or tomorrow I may be leaned up against a fence, you know, roasting in the sun. It's every day I come to the park and I get, I'm like, I need these three park and I get like I need these three players and I need someplace to be alone. If you're there early enough which you are I think it just barely fits into part of the schedule. By the way if you'd like to join our discord you can do that with a link in the show description send mailbag questions there we got team channels strategy talk all the stuff you want with just a couple of weeks to go before stateside opening day and one

week to go before the season opens with the Dodgers and Cubs playing a two game series in Japan that is sneaking up real quick that extra series coming up real real quick. We have our live shows coming up on March 27th and March 28th for 30 Pacific start time at Bear Bottle Brewing Company, the Bernal Heights location. Free admission. Merch has been ordered. Merch has been confirmed. It will land probably on Enos doorstep one day before these shows.

Let's hope. Just in time. Let's hope. The other thing that's fun is that I have now seen the label, the final label for the beer we brewed with Lester Koga at Bear Bottle. And it's super fun. And it has an Easter egg, a Rates and Barrels Easter egg for anybody who gets their hands on it.

Maybe we'll have some sort of Discord, you know, championship, some sort of Discord trivia championship for a giveaway for those of you who can't be in the area because it's too much fun and I just want people to see it. I feel like we need a member of our legal team to just sit over our shoulders and just like, kind of like producer Brian to send us little messages in the chat, like can't promise that. No, you can't do that.

Can't have a contest. Sorry, no. Can't give that away. Sorry, nope, nope. Hey, look, guess what? Gotta do the math problem in Canada. Nope. Discords are baby, baby.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what we think. That's what we think until we get in trouble. Let's get to some baseball news you should know. Quick follow-up, Garrett Cole had the second opinion from Dr. Neil Eltrash in Los Angeles on Monday, and that second opinion confirmed that Tommy John surgery is in fact the path for him to go down. So he's probably on the operating table right now as we speak.

It's going to cost him the entire twenty twenty five season. We talked about the implications of this. Will Warren becoming a lot more important for the Yankees on yesterday's episode. So we don't need to rehash that today, but we do have a resolution at least in the story, so I figured we'd bring that up as we got things started today. One more name real quick on that one. I just noticed I've been running spring numbers

for Stuff Plus and Cam, man, this is one of those ones where I just don't even want to say the last name. You're on your own here, buddy. You gotta go for it. You don't know who I'm talking about? I can't name that dude on this one. Cam Schlittler? Cam Schlittler, I think. He's popping in the spring set stuff plus numbers. I can't find it right now, but he is also probably the best combo of upside and readiness in the young guys behind Will Warren,

which is gonna be important because even if they sign somebody to push Warren down, because people are talking about Kyle Gibson is out there Who else was it Lance Lynn? Let's let's let's say they sign one of those guys to push Warren down some minor leagues So they don't have to depend on them the seventh starter for teams usually does matter and Cam has gotten to into two games Four and a third great strikeout rate, bad walk rate. He has struggled up and down a little bit with command and the size of his mix, you know, having a change up for lefties.

But you know, he pitched in AAA last year. He had like 33, 34 innings above the AA level last year. He's 24 years old. He is your depth piece. He's a little more exciting than Yo Andres Gomez who Keith Law said it may not even be a fifth starter. So Cam Schlittler is a name to remember. Yeah, Cam Schlittler is I think the correct pronunciation there definitely has a Wisconsin. It is very German. I should have made I did get it. I mean, I just you slip

on one letter there and you're in the. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you were worried about. That's what you were afraid of. I understand your hesitation. Okay. Okay. Good. Just couldn't quite pull that name out of thin air when it brought up the first name. Let's get this other injury news from the weekend that we didn't talk about yesterday. Francisco Alvarez is going to miss six to eight weeks with a fractured hand. Last year it was a UCL tear in his thumb that cost him significant time. Just can't really catch a break. We talked about the great piece Will Salmon wrote a few weeks ago with Alvarez trying

to change that approach. Really trying to pick the brain of JD Martinez last year and develop the all-field power approach. This is a pretty big setback. 6-8 weeks from today would knock him out all the way if it's the long end of the timetable until the middle of May. It's about six weeks worth of actual game action as far as actually dropping him down in the rankings. Yeah, he's gonna fall probably 40 or 50 spots on the hitter rankings once we get that update

in later on this week. But does this, with a roster construction problem that we have in a lot of leagues with limited or no IELTS spots. Do you actually just say even with the discount I'm not interested because other problems are going to come up in a six week window of the regular season. Right. You don't want to burn a bench spot even though Alvarez is good because you need that flexibility for other things like is his threshold of Value or his value above the threshold to justify a roster spot Even though he clearly deserves one like Francisco Alvarez might hit enough eventually to be a catcher in a 10-team one catcher league That's the type of ceiling he has but I feel like managing the roster for that long for this player It's actually a

challenging fantasy problem. Right. And let's say you have unlimited IL, it becomes a very narrow use case for Francisco Álvarez. It's something where like it has to be maybe 15 team, two catcher, unlimited IL. Because if it is limited IL or you just don't have a bench spot for him, what are you supposed to do having, you know, seven bench spots and one being chewed up by a catcher doesn't seem ideal. So maybe if he falls to the very end of your draft and it's a choice between him and Mitch

Garver. Yeah. Okay. And Garver has actually just got hit by a pitch yesterday, so he banged up now too. I mean if it's between him and Joey Bart I might take Alvarez I mean so he falls pretty significantly in most leagues I think if you can stash him on the IL he can be a final pick and and even a 12-team single-catcher if you want you know I'm thinking like a 12 team single catcher dynasty with an IL, we could be a smart one.

But it's really a narrow use case at this point. It's just tough to make the case for him. I had him on my breakout list. So if you can, if you are in one of those limited situations where he's available and it makes sense, do jump because longterm he's still an exciting young player. As far as the organizational depth there goes, Luis Terenz is the backup. They have two NRIs, Chris Williams, Jackson Reitz, they'll probably just share time,

but not much there from a fantasy perspective. The highest projected position player still available on free agency is a catcher. Can you guess who it is? I mean, it's a Gary Sanchez like player, but of course, he's an or really signed with them a couple months ago Once renowned for his framing ability Ghasmani grandal, that's right Projected he's the best of seven wins. Yeah, I would check that projection again I like he has money grandal is the keys all think he's toast

I think his legs are just shot at this point, but there you go. That could be your short-term solution where he comes in He's the backup Alvarez comes back and grind all is off the roster if that might be the way they have to handle it Given the backup situation there for the best. He's your starter. You're not that worried about it. I just saw the cryon I don't like that. Yeah, a lot of updates out of Red Sox camp from Jen McCaffrey and Rafael Devers spring debut got nudged back again. Crayon's a little worse than the overall bit of news.

The way this schedule is set up, Devers is gonna be in backfield games facing Garrett Crochet and Walker Bueller on Wednesday and Thursday and then making that Grapefruit League debut on Saturday at least as it is written on Tuesday so if that happens if that whole progression goes off without a hitch. does what he's supposed to do, plays, doesn't have any major complications, feels okay Sunday, maybe he's back in the lineup Monday. I think maybe we'll be out of the woods with this shoulder stuff. The only reason it's a big deal to me is because it was shoulders last year that he played through and that knocked him down

just a little bit. He was still very good, but Devers wasn't quite that peak Devers. I think that's where you lose in a situation like this is your ceiling outcomes start to vanish when you're playing through nagging problems like the ones that Devers had a year ago. Yes, but even if he just hits his projections, which is not necessarily about ceiling, they're about medians, he's still of value because he's dropping maybe a little bit too hard on this injury news. So there's still a sliver of upside here, which is just getting

what he's projected for at a difficult position third base is a difficult position Yeah, I'm gonna look at ADP from just the last three days Yeah, go back to March 8th So no drafts have been completed as of this morning for today last three days probably end of the third round Yeah, the range is pick 30 to 52 average pick 39 overall. So now he's a about six spots behind Manny Machado Usually they'd be clustered together. He's about 11 spots behind Austin Riley. They're starting to spread out just a little bit So you're right slight discount there If you think Devers is just managing this thing that he managed throughout last season pretty effectively

I also saw in Jen's blue sky. I'm still not going to say the S word, post. Brian Bayo is expected to return in April. He's not going to make opening day, but he's not expected to miss more than a couple of weeks as he works through an injury. But Lucas Gialito is making his spring debut today. And I think there was a belief at the beginning of the offseason that Gialito would not be ready at the start of the year. And it looks like he's actually going to be able to do that. Alex Cora even saying he's expected to have G Alito in the rotation for the second series of the regular season. They're not going to get him in that first matchup, but they will have him take the ball against the Orioles in the second series of the season.

Do you have any interest in G Alito? He's making his spring debut today. Is it dependent upon where the stuff's at post-surgery? Because Gialito just didn't look right when we last saw him in 2023. And he spent time with the White Sox, the Angels, the Guardians, just a mess of a year. Tons of homers, 41 home runs allowed in 184 and a third innings.

What version of Gialito are you expecting post surgery? He's Said all along that he's gonna be ready for the season and that he thinks there would be no restriction odds on him And he could be a great Value to the Red Sox without being a great value to fancy players value to the Red Sox without being a great value to fancy players. You know, I think that kind of park is difficult. Now, the park doesn't actually augment homers, which is kind of his issue. The park augments balls and play.

But what if he has a natural homer issue and it augments balls and play? That could be a pretty disastrous combination for him. So yeah, it kind of does depend where the stuff is at. We will get him probably in front of the stuff machines at some point. I don't know if it'll be right away, but even then, like, command is supposedly the second. I don't know. It's one of those things where he hasn't shown us in regular season games, and I wish he had. And because he hasn't, I can't go all in. But where he is now, he's like pretty much free.

You can kind of get him at the end. He can be one of your last two picks in most leagues. I think that Park, there's other guys. Bayo, for example, is available as one of your last two picks. If you had to wait a week to use him, he might be a better pick for me. Because he keeps, he has that change up

that keeps the ball in the ground. He's a sinker change up guy. I think the whip will be high, but I think the ERA will be lower. So I think Bayo's ERA will be lower. What you could get out of G. Lido is more strikeouts. Yeah, you look at the two injuries they're dealing with in the rotation right now.

So Bayo has had some right shoulder soreness that came up at the start of camp. They haven't really called it anything worse than that. And Cutter Crawford has been dealing with patellar tendon soreness in his knee. So he is actually headed to the aisle. It appears at this time as well. So you build the rotation. It's crochet, how walker, Bueller, G.

Lido in that second series. It's a four game series that they're opening with. So G. Lido is not pitching there. So we don't even know who the fourth starter is for the purposes of how they're lined up. It's one of Quinn Priester Richard Fitz or Cooper Criswell, I think based on how the depth chart is set up. They all have options Fitz Velo has been up in camp

He's actually been sitting mid 90s I'm gonna go if that's a bigs. I'm gonna go with Fitz. That's a big deal. You're gonna go Richard Fitz? Yeah, it's been a 32.1% K rate and just six in a third inning so far this spring. So missing some bats with that Velo as well. When he debuted last year,

the swinging strike rate cratered. He's always above 12%, all of his minor league stops. He was down at 6.4% in the brief time. He was with the Red Sox last year, so. Yeah, but Criswell's like a 89 poo guy. And as much as the stuff model like thinks its shapes are OK, like I just can never really trust it when it's the below that level. And the other player involved here is Quinn Priest.

And we sort of wondered when they made that challenge trade, former first round swap with the pirates, what would the Red Sox change about Quinn Priest? Or in what, if anything, would Pirates try to change about Nick York and it could be a win-win trade that works out for both sides but Priestor I don't think we've seen a lot of him this spring. Oh six and two-thirds so far having some command trouble with the walker eight up 17.2% carry I mean it's not interesting on paper but I have no idea what it looks like from a stuff perspective. I would assume that they're really throttling the fastball usage and if the the walk rate is up it might be

because he's throwing tons of breaking balls and he doesn't command them as well as his fastball so if that's the case I don't know how worrisome that is also I don't know actually how much they can throttle his fastballs usage he was 14% fastballs 30% sinkers last year He was already pretty maxed out in terms of doing the Boston philosophy If they're if they're turning that dial up to 30 or 40 percent of the slider That's that would be pretty impressive and I don't know where it takes away from maybe the sinker so

They obviously had a plan for him to work out and I don't want to rely too heavily on spring training results numbers But you know the two of those things in concert is like, okay they had a plan for fits fits had a whole year to implement the plan and Now his numbers are better. Whereas Priester the he just got there He's got this plan from them and he's in the middle of trying to execute it and doesn't look that great yet And it could look great better in the future, but of the three, Fitz is my guy for that opening rotation. Right, and you could send Priester down, let him keep working on a triple A, maybe a couple

months from now he becomes a more interesting guy to be called up when they have another opportunity in the Red Sox rotation. Seems inevitable since every rotation breaks at various points throughout the year. It's the season to shop new styles, electronics, and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back? With Rakuten, you can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone, clothes, skin care, or a getaway, well, you can get cash back. So treat yourself, family, and friends and book that holiday trip now.

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That's the first thing I do, play wordle while making coffee. I pour myself a cup and do the crossword, which is the jewel of my morning. What's our starting word today? I think it should be ocean. I have seen you do spelling bee during meetings. The New York Times crossword is a moment of Zen that cleanses my brain. I wish the days were shorter and that the wordless were longer.

Join us and play all New York Times games at NYTimes.com slash games. Subscribe by March 16th to get a special offer. A few odds and ends to catch up on. If you were watching the Braves this week and you may have seen jerks and pro far fall really awkwardly on his wrist, diving for a ball in the outfield, left the game with what looked like it could have been any number of things. Look, it could have been a wrist thing. Looked like it could have been an elbow problem or a shoulder problem. The good news is just a bone bruise in his wrist.

He's not expected to miss opening day. So as bad as that looked, he should be. Well, it was pretty bad, though. I mean, it's the kind of thing you could play through, and maybe you're just not as strong. You lose some grip strength. And I'm cautiously optimistic with the handmaid for Francis. However, when he comes back, you know, we've talked about this a lot on this show, and I don't want to rehash all of the handmaid stuff

But what we found was probably not that big a deal for his power But it is there is a pain there's pain there, you know, you've taken a bone out. There's pain there so Different players react differently to that amount of pain Some people play through it come back quick and play through it and have power some people You know struggle a little bit as they adjust their swing to deal with the pain. Yeah, and then my reckless speculation machine is turned on here, but I feel like a catcher is going to aggravate any sort of wrist soreness regularly,

just from the occupational hazards of doing the job. Probably be worse with your actual catching hand and your throwing hand of the two. But just something to think about. Right. Yeah, I guess with profile, I just I've been out on him. I just I just think it's about a 95 percent chance of last year as a career. It's what it feels like. And then look, for his sake, I hope I hope it's something he can mostly sustain and being in that lineup.

If he's atop the lineup, even against righties, that could be a way that he's able to sort of keep things afloat, assuming a big bounce back for those Atlanta hitters around him. Dalton Varsho, limited to D.H. duty so far this spring, still recovering from right shoulder surgery. Jays have not indicated whether or not he'll be on the opening day roster. Still some time to see how he progresses. If he is on the opening day roster and he's not playing in the outfit before then, then you can just pencil him in as a D.H. option.

But he has been hit in the show yet. Yeah, he's been hitting it. I've been staying away so far because I think for over the years we've we've wondered if he sort of dialed up the pulled fly ball approach too much relative to his overall raw power. Like, that's been one thing I've wondered about. It's cost him batting average. And you think about the type of hitter he could be. I look back to what he did in 2021.

That was the lowest strikeout rate we ever saw from him as a big leaguer. And it was in about a half season, slightly more than a half season for the plate appearances. Seven percent barrel rate that year. He popped 11 homers. He stole six bases. It was a 246, 318, 437 line. And I don't think we've really seen that same balanced version of Dalton Varsho in the years since. WRC Plus was a little better final year in Arizona. He hit a 106.

The fly ball rate every year up more and more and more. I just think maybe there's a way to put the old approach with the newer approach and push it back in that direction. But where are you at on Varsho, given that he's still coming back from this shoulder injury, even though we're seeing okay things at the plate so far this spring? I'm still kind of in because, you know,

power speed from what is essentially going in drafts as like a 15 man, seventh outfielder. There's not a lot of players like him available where he is. So I've been, I have some shares, I've been in to some extent. I think there's also something interesting going on. This is way too deep. But you know, if he's dh'ing, and even if he's not dh'ing, even if he starts opening day in center field, you wanna have a good center fielder behind him. And I know we talked about this already,

and people sort of didn't like the idea that Miles Strahm might make this roster, but it's either Strah or Colossae, one of them has to make it, because Lopofito is not my center fielder. George Springer is not my center fielder. And you know, Davis Schneider is not my center fielder. And you know, Davis Schneider is not my center fielder. So I think Strah or Classe is gonna make this roster.

And you could pick whichever you want, but you know, this news pushes me towards one of those guys making it. Yeah, Classe's had a quiet spring so far. It's only been six games. Got a couple of weeks to turn it around. I think he's the more interesting long-term guy. He switch hits.

There's a few tools there that are pretty good. He's shown the ability to get to power in games at a pretty young age, no less. So I'm intrigued by Klaus A for sure. Big top end speed numbers too in the minor leagues. If he finds playing time, he does a lot of the things that we really like from a fantasy perspective. I just don't know if he finds playing time, he does a lot of the things that we really like from a fantasy perspective.

I just don't know if he's quite ready. It's kind of an open question for me. One other news related item to get to, Tony Gonsolin suffered a minor back injury, I believe they said, lifting weights. I just picked him in TGFBI with my second to last pick. Yeah, I've been scooping up a lot of Tony Gonsolin in the reserve rounds the last 10 days or so Well, they didn't they didn't really specify like how long he's gonna be out But they did say that Dustin May makes sense now as their number five starter to begin the season. So

Yeah, it's the usual. Okay I guess we'll just wait for more details on Gonsolin and they'll slow play it if they have to because they've got plenty of depth But Dustin May I think is gonna jump up a little bit going from a guy you get from with one of your last picks to maybe maybe has to be your first bench pick if you actually want to sneak him onto a roster. I don't know what to do anymore with Dustin May like I think I said the other day on this kind of like I've fallen in love with him so many times. I can't even count. I say every time I watch him. I'm like, yeah Yeah, this is gonna work

And then something happens, I don't know I like destiny if he has its shot You should draft him in every league. This should be these ideal last pitcher in shallow early He's you know, you're gonna know pretty quickly what version you're getting. I think there's already been more than one situation where I paired both These guys as reserves in case of this scenario. So I really kind of prepared Prepared myself for the possibility of things turning out this way We had a mailbag question yesterday that was asking us about Pete Crowe Armstrong spring We talked about looking at playing time and a few other things and And there was kind of a follow up that I wanted to bring to the table for today's show. And you did some digging before we started recording.

Who has added that speed this spring? Right. I mean, that's that to me is like the more important thing. Where were you last year and where are you today? Before we dive into that, did we find anything trend wise last year in the data that pointed to bat speed either slowly declining over the course of the season as guys get tired, did it remain mostly steady throughout the year? My thought was maybe some of the guys that are showing a lot of bat speed or increased bat speed this spring just feel good right now.

It just starts here, which way is that gonna go? And then just dips, dips, dips, dips, dips, very, very gradually, nothing catastrophic. But I wondered if that might explain some of the names that have popped so far this spring. I haven't seen that analysis, but I will say that batspeed to me has an exact corollary to the pitching side. Pitch velocity.

I think it's exactly the same thing because people came out, when Batspeed came out and be like, oh, Batspeed's not that important. And like, I don't know how many times we've fought over whether or not pitching velocity is important early on in when velocity is being tracked. It's hard to believe that was an actual fight. Yeah, I think we'll look back on that with Batspeed too, but what complicates matters is, yes, other things matter.

And as we got better with pitching, we were like, oh yeah, you know, shapes matter. Command does matter, but it's kind of streaky, you know, that sort of deal. So the anti-bad speed people were like, what about Freddie Freeman? And you're like, what about Freddie Freeman? It's like pointing to the guy

who has the best command in baseball and being like, see see velocity doesn't matter. And you're like, OK, yes, Freddie Freeman exists. Luis Arias exists. They are like the short swing Meisters. You know, they are like really good at this one thing. But when we looked like when when Jordan Rosenbaum looked at bad speed, he found that he could project second half numbers better if he included bad speed in his projections. That's why OOPSIE has bad speed in it.

He looked at split half correlations last year, and he found that bad speed was predictive of future success on the in season level. Now that does leave open for question, like what happens year to year? What does the aging curve look like? And from what I've seen and what I've heard from internal team sources is,

bat speed pretty much just declines. And we've seen Tom Tango show us that bat speed really declines heavily once you turn 30. So generally you would see a decline. And if it was like pitching velocity, you would see a little bit it was like pitching velocity, you would see a little bit of bats being better You know as a season went on and then declining after August, maybe it's weather related health related tires You know, you know all sorts of things

But if it does have that exact correlate, that's the that's the pattern it would have one thing that is also Important about this is that pitch velocity, you know really quickly how much velocity a pitcher has on their fastball. Like you can watch a game and watch five fastballs and you pretty much know his fastball velocity, right? I've quoted this a million times. Jeff Zimmerman has this piece about returning from the IL. The first start that they returned from the IL, their fastball, they're already predictive of future fastball velocity. By their second start, you know their future fastball velocity, like it's 80% of future fastball velocities within a half tick of what they're doing

within two starts, right? So small samples mean a lot. So the level that I, the minimum level I set for this was five swings. And that seems like very little. But I think there's signal in five swings. So what do you think is more important risers or straight up leaders when we're trying to find value this time of year? Well, I wanted to put leaders up there because this is we're

missing context on a lot of these guys because it's spring, right. But it's also our first chance to see some numbers on prospects. So look at Spencer Jones and Jason Dominguez. What do you think the Yankees value? Yeah, it seems like there's a pattern there. 77 is top and bat speed. Jarring Canacion added bat speed somehow and was already like fourth in the big leagues last year.

We love Junior Camarero because he makes contact and does it with this great bad speed. But look at that Colt Emerson, fourth on bad speed. Like, that's super exciting. And Zach Descenso, you know, the news out of Houston keeps getting worse. Cam Smith is looking like he's's gonna play in the outfield and Jose Altuve is playing in the outfield those were two places that we thought Zach Descenzo might end up But there's a reason to like Zach Descenzo seventy seven point four Mile per hour bat speed almost identical to Julio Rodriguez. That's a name

You know Tyrone Lorenzo is the catcher that went to Detroit in a deal, a Flaherty deal maybe? That was the Flaherty deal, yeah. It was a Sweeney and Larranzo. Yeah, so Larranzo's there, that's good news. I mean, all the guys I've mentioned so far are ahead of Aaron Judge, who is the bad speed meister. Maybe bad speed matters.

Hunter Goodman was already, we've already talked about how he has good bad speed. I actually don't know, sorry, I don't know every player. Riley Tirada. You don't know who Riley Tirada is? Oh my God, this is not our Alan Roden situation where you're like, he's this, this, and this,

and he went to school here. He's a 26 year old Blue Jay. And he played college ball at Dayton which does rhyme with Creighton. Wait did you just look these up? I had to look up Riley Tirada. I was like this is a road in situation again damn it. If you got road in twice in the span of a week then I think that would be amazing. It's not everything. Adam Brett Walker had plus plus bat speed. You have to make contact too. So it's a little bit like pitching.

There's all these caveats. But these guys have 97 mile an hour fastballs. Adam Brett Walker, when that name comes up, will forever be a player when you say, looks like a ball player. Oh my god. That dude just looked like he'd be a player when you say like looks like a ball player. Oh my god. That dude just looked like he'd be a star like just when scouts are looking for

that the perfect baseball body for a position player that guy just like looked like he was getting for power plus run well everything. Missiles and batting practice. But it just is the hit tool. The hit tool just wasn't quite there, which is a bummer. I think it would have been a lot of fun if it all had worked out for Adam Brett Walker. The risers! Okay, let's see if we can find another random Blue Jay on here that we've recently made ourselves familiar with. Nope, doesn't look like there are any surprise Blue Jays on this list unless Cesar Salazar is a Blue Jay. Yeah, I don't even know who that is either. God, I make these lists.

He's an astro. I did put a couple extra columns on this. The beginning columns are bat speed in spring training, last year bat speed and the difference. I wanna put swing length on here too because you can get more bat speed by having a longer swing, changing your contact point. So if you have a shorter swing and more bat speed by having a longer swing, changing your contact point. So if you have a shorter swing and more bat speed,

then that is of note. I think I already mentioned on this podcast that Nolan Aronato may have his fastball back. Look at this, 74 mile an hour bat speed this spring, after 70.7 last year, 71 ish is about average in the big league 71 and a half or something so that's a extra 3.4 miles an hour bad speed and the swing length got shorter so he didn't add swing length to get there now something like Ben Rice his his is up his swing is a little bit longer now you

know Thomas the Gacy he has a decently short swing, so I think it might be a good move for Thomas Toghese to get two miles an hour bat speed and give up 0.1 feet of swing length. That might work out for him. But I think for me, Nolan Arnado is the name that really jumps off this list. It's a boring old veteran, but again,

pretty cheap in drafts, has the job. Even if he gets traded, he's not gonna get traded into part-time work. And if he does have the bad speed back, could have a little bit of resurgence. What's interesting about Nolan Aronado too is like, we thought we saw a decline already happening in Colorado. He got to St. Louis and he changed his approach

a little bit, pulled fly balls. And he had a resurgence that put him back on kind of a Hall of Fame track. Now he's teetered off again, but if he has another resurgence, I think we may be talking about Nolan Aronado as a Hall of Famer. And it is this kind of work throughout your career

and especially to stave off the end that kind of puts you in the Hall of Fame. Put up the list though, again, there's gotta be another name that's interesting on here. I think Tyler Locklear's kind of interesting because we've talked about how soggy the Mariners' infield depth chart is. 75 miles an hour on that.

You like Jordan Beck as a sleeper? Yep, I really don't think Sam Hilliard is more than a temporary roadblock to playing time. Beck could be an everyday guy in Colorado and has a lot of tools so that could click right away this year. There's a lot of Rockies on this list actually. Look at Noah. The Rockies do some bat speed training either as a group or maybe just on their own. I think they play in front of the machines. Yeah, that's the one thing about the spring leaderboards.

Yeah, we're missing a lot of data. So that's part of it, but it's encouraging. You can't treat this as like, oh, this is all the people playing in spring training. Like, no, we're getting like 25 to 30% of the data, I feel like. Nolan Jones, though, cut six inches off his swing and added three miles an hour. Nolan Jones, he makes me happy. He's my second favorite name on this list.

It speaks to what you were talking about. He must be feeling froggy. He must be feeling good. Like he must be feeling good. And then Jace Jung is just about to get the biggest chance of his life where injuries have opened the door for him at just the right time, maybe where he's suffered a little bit, you know, and he's he's had to adjust and he's had he's been hit in the face by major league baseball. I was just talking to to white Langford today about, you know, that first time you get hit in the face where you the first time you struggle, know Wyatt Langford won the perfect game home run derby when I said something about he's like well it wasn't one of the bigger ones I was like you won a perfect game home run derby and then you went to Florida and you went to the college World Series finals and then everywhere you went you mashed and you like you you were like super super successful and then April last year happened. He's like, yeah, I guess, you know, that's the pros.

So Jace Young, like good, bad speed. The wrist must be feeling okay. That's a marker for you. He's a guy that I have a couple of shares of where it's deep enough that I can do that. There are some unanswered questions I have and it's gonna vary from organization to organization. When you look at a player like Jace Young,

you look at Matt Veerling's injury, you look at the fact that he debuted at the end of last season, all the pieces are in place for him to at least get an early season look. His hold on that roster spot could be slippery. I wonder how important spring metrics are. Not full on results, but striking out less or doing damage.

How much do front offices care about that? And then when the switch flips and the games count, how much more do they care? Like there's definitely a gap, like they care more when it counts. But what are the Tigers utilizing right now to evaluate Jace Young and try to make a decision on how ready he is? And the same kinds of questions can apply to Trey Sweeney and a bunch of other younger players just trying to break through and either claim part of a platoon or even just get a temporary opportunity as a regular and then to keep it. it because the I feel like the samples are always really small and probably

smaller than we at all like even the people that work for these teams have to make decisions a lot faster than they would like to. Well you know the the GM in Detroit you know famously worked under Farhan Zaidi in San Francisco and I think we got a little bit of a peek into the process when Farhan started with the Giants and he was claiming everybody and he claimed Connor Joe and he claimed Blake Sable and he claimed Mike Dostremsky and he claimed Tyra Ostrada and he put all these people on the field and he gave them a shot at a major league job and he

cycled through some of them. He released Connor Joe, you know, he released other guys. I remember this time pretty vividly it was like three them. He released Connor Joe. You know, he released other guys. I remember this time pretty vividly. It was like three weeks. He gave him like three or four weeks. And three or four weeks is not a random sample. That is actually four weeks is around when barrels, you know, become significant, hard hit rate.

It's easily three weeks is easily enough time to get bat speed. I think you start contact swing strike rate is around four weeks. So they say, oh, you get to get a really good process picture of a guy in four weeks. Spring training is four weeks. You don't get the full four weeks of playing time.

You get in these half games. You get days off, you know? But there's what they will say publicly. If I ask the member of the media, you know, But there's what they will say publicly if I ask the member of the media, you know, they're gonna go on about, oh we need to think about what's good for the player, where they've been, we're gonna talk about this holistically and just where they've been, where they're going, what's best for them, you know. I've talked enough GMs, I know, I know they're BS. I think they look at

this sort of thing. So, you know, I think it's meaningful that Young's bat speed is up and that'll be part of the context when they make their decision. It's also kind of interesting that Tres Weenie's bat speed is down. He went from 74 miles an hour last year to he's at 69.9 right now. That's a big drop. Did he shorten up or anything? And he did not shorten up. So actually he did.

Yeah, he did shorten up. Sorry, he did shorten up. So that's part of the picture, I guess. He shortened up. I'm not that worried, like, White Lankford's bat speed is down, we're just talking about him. But it's down from 74 and a half to 71.1, which is still average-ish, and he shortened up.

So, you know, to some extent, you're kind of like, all right, there might be some measuring issues there because it says his swing length is four yeah I'm gonna guess no everybody else's is like seven to eight and his is four so yeah there's some there's obviously some some some issues there like I don't care that much that Garrett Hampson's down four miles an hour he's not about bat speed. Does start to approach interesting to me that like Willie Adamis' bat speed is down. He's down from 73.6, which is plus,

to 68.3, which is minus. And Josh Lowe is on the same level. Now, they're at nine and six swings, and you don't want to ring the bell too hard, which is why I'm not showing you the laggards list. But Kyle Tucker, down from 72.1 to 68 on eight track swings. So you know, take with a grain of salt, but you may want to move guys down one or two notches based on this information because I do think that at least progressive organizations

care they're tracking this stuff. Yeah, we're going to learn a lot more about it as we move further into the data, right? It's still relatively new for all of us. So a couple of years are going to pass when oh, this is a big deal. It does actually after a few swings in spring training even carry the sort of weight that we we think it could. We'll know eventually. You are on scene in surprise today, as I mentioned earlier,

if you're watching on YouTube, getting some infield watering in right now. Who you've been talking to in Rangers camp. Yeah, I made sure to go talk to Kumar Rocker, who was a joy to talk to. And, you know, we're working on a story right now about the rise of the college pitching labs and how that has affected the way college and pros interact and sort of how, you know, colleges are now producing pitchers that have been a little bit more coached up. And, you know, it's fair to ask, have they been maxed out or, you know, what if they're being talked incorrectly and it leads to injury or whatever, you know, but these pitching labs, so Vanderbilt has a pitching lab and I talked to Kumar Rocker about how, you know, the evolution of his pitches and all this stuff.

He said that breaking ball he has, that kind of death ball thing, it's not a spike grip which I'm surprised because it doesn't have slurvy, he has like a slurvy arm slot, but the pitch just goes straight down. And he said that basically he has to throw it. It's all feel and he throws it hard So if he throws it 83 it goes straight down if he throws it slower, it kind of becomes slurvy

So there's something about high effort that makes that work for him But he also said that his fastball used to be less to plane when he was at Vanderbilt because he was chasing vert. And he said that he was more upright. And he said, you know, the trend at the time was to pull the ball up really quickly. If you've watched G Alito or anybody, like there's guys that like pull the ball up really quickly and have the ball ready as they're coming in.

And he said he was doing that because that was what, you know, the pitching lab was saying, that's what they were working on with him in the pitching lab. And he thinks what there was they were working on with him in the pitching lab And he thinks that it may have had a little bit to do with his injury because as he was rehabbing from his injuries He found a new arm slot and it's this lower arm slot that has led to more of a two-plane Sinkery fastball and it's led to some problems, but he was like, you know, like which problem do you have? like be injured or

figure out how to pitch to the lefties? Right be nasty the hitters on both sides of the plate or you know not be able to get guys out I asked him if he thought about a cutter because his sinker his foreseam runs away from from lefties And he said right now he's just working more on sequencing And feel for the pitches he does have so that he can be unexpected and command the ball to places that'll work. I mean, we have talked here about how sinkers from righties to lefties still work if you throw them high. You know, high is still a place you can live.

And coincidentally, that's what Jack Leiter was talking about. He has added a sinker and a change up and he's throwing a true five pitch mix. And he changed a little bit about his delivery where, you know, he was talking, he was a smaller guy, you know, and he would hop into his release. Like think like never lenticum and Carter caps, like Carter caps is the most ridiculous, but caps was, yeah, caps was very unusual. Yeah.

But so he had that same thing where he's trying to hop into release to get the most out of his out of his extension and his body. And he said that create and if you think about it like that's one thing about caps, he had to be reliever because he wasn't going to command the ball like throwing like that, you know. And so lighter with all this emphasis on smoothing, quieting down his delivery has removed a little bit of a hop that he used to have. The command numbers are great in the spring. And to some extent, just having a four seam and a two seam could allow him to be less fine.

Because if the batter doesn't know if it's the four seam or two seam coming, he can still miss his spot, but they can misread the fastball and get the wrong one. You know, and miss hit it as opposed to being like all I throw is a four seam fastball and a breaking ball. And if I miss my spot on one of those, you have a 50-50 chance that you guessed right on the pitch and you get a mistake pitch. Now he's throwing a five pitch mix, which will help him to some extent deal with, you know, we talked about this on the show. Like there are many different ways to get out of a command issue. Like everyone's like, oh, just clean up your mechanics. That worked for Kumar Rocker to some extent,

but there's other people who've done it. Like Hunter Brown comes up, has a bad reputation for command. Well, how does he take a big step forward? Throwing a sinker. He didn't change his mechanics, he didn't clean up his command, like he he take a big step forward? Throwing a sinker. He didn't change his mechanics, he didn't clean up his command, he just threw a sinker and became less predictable

so that they couldn't decide, oh, this is a four seam, oh, he missed his spot, home run. And I think it kind of makes me think of what you were talking about yesterday with Tanner Bybee and his fastball, and he was saying he was yanking his fastball, right? Because it's just the, he's a pronator, I think he said. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's just, if you have a natural tendency to not be able to locate something because of something that's mechanically going to be very difficult to change. If you change mechanics so much that you're not doing something that's natural to you, it's gonna take forever to rebuild them.

If you could even rebuild them at all. Yeah. You have a new pitch and then you just kind of solve a part of the zone that hitters weren't honoring before. I think that's what was happening with Hunter Brown. That's what that that whole story with Bregman saying, hey, righties, they're not worried about stuff on the inside part of the plate, especially up and that unlocked a ton. Another thing that Tanner Bybee said that was really interesting was like, you know, we tend to work on the things that we're not great at,

but he's like, you have to remember to work on the things that we're not great at, but he's like, you have to remember to work on the things that make you great, because if you just constantly work on something, you know, I think of this with Chris Paddock. He had a great change up. Remember, he comes up with this great change up, he can command it, it's beautiful, lovely. I see him throwing front door change ups to lefties

and they're just baffled, you know, and he works so hard on a cutter and a curve that he blows his elbow out, loses the vert on his fore seam, and loses the changeup. I hate to be so definitive about something. I'm sure there's a lot of more mitigating circumstances, a lot of different coaches working with him.

They're all trying to do the best they can for him, but that does tell a little bit of a story of the crisp of the crispatic experience over the years. So anyway, yeah, and then when Langford just you know, just talking about what the mind process was like where he made this huge adjustment where he used to be more crouched over and used to have a huge like a bigger leg kick and then he became more upright and he said it just allows him to cover more and it also he says when you're crouched in and you and you kind of have this big leg kick you have to go back to go forward in your swing you kind of have to get out of that crouch and then go forward

he says if you with when I'm standing up I just swing. So basically what he did was reduce the amount of pre swing movement, load movement, that stuff. And that's definitely something that's happening all around the game is the reaction to velocity has been, and this is why I think you're seeing fewer and fewer interesting batting stances, is because they're throwing harder and harder you can't be fooling around. You got to get that bat there as quick as possible. So emphasis on bat speed and then cleaning up mechanics in the back has been a huge part of modern hitting,

just to deal with the fact that Velo's going up every year. Yeah, it's a constant string of adjustments that we're seeing hitters make, but yes, cleaner mechanics at the plate do seem like that's become a much more normal sort of thing. We had a question to help back about where's all the funk gone with deliveries? And I sent you a message, I'm like,

I don't know that it's actually gone down. I feel like on the pitching side, it's just sort of held steady, right? The low, low slots, the Tyler Rogerses of the world, like there's always been a handful of guys like that. I think you found it's generally about the same over time. We really haven't seen a massive drop off in that particular characteristic.

But at the plate, I would say the Craig Councils and the Julio Franco's and guys that do stuff like that, that's slowly been whittled away. Gone, think about it. Think about who has an interesting stance in today's game I I've got Luis Camposano and that's it. Like I really almost nobody it's Stanton being really closed off is pretty odd But it's not like I don't know. It's not like a hot It's a weird hand position or anything like that. I mean dear please in the discord

Tell us because I can't even think of them I've we're thinking about doing a story on this and we just there's nobody to talk to I think Nick Ahmed has his hands a little bit low I mean it's it that's it I talked to him about it. We're talking about unusual stances. The query I did was basically like release points under four feet and I just looked at percentage of all pitches and it did go down a little bit in the early pitch FX era and I think this is why early stuff plus numbers didn't use release point as much in their numbers and didn't have spin and you know didn't have exit

velocities because they didn't have Hawkeye and didn't have Trackman. So they weren't able to kind of link certain shapes and release points to soft contact the same way. So I do think there was just like Kumo Rocker, right? Where he's like, oh, the thing was to get on top of the ball and get ride, get vert, right? Chase vert at all costs. And that's early stuff plus that's early pitch FX where you're like oh I ran the numbers right is good let's get ride you know and then the tech improved and we started to get ax spin axis and exit velocities and we were

able to say oh you know the Adam Simbers of the world really produce a lot of crappy contact Tyler Rodgers may not strike a lot of guys out and he has the opposite of vert. But it works to reduce the efficacy of the ball in play. And so what you do see is, you know, I did it from 2007 on is like, you saw a reduction in the number of kind of side armors and under armors.

Under armors, yes. And then they came back. And we're just now where we were at the beginning of pitch that backs. And I think also the other thing is the batter has to get the bat to the ball on time. And so he doesn't have the benefit of doing whatever he wants to get there.

We talked about this hip shoulder separation is very good for fastball velocity. Hip shoulder separation is also good for trunk velocity for hitters. However, you could create the most hip shoulder separation by sort of coiling backwards as far as passable as a batter, right? And then you have a really long swing and you might not make any contact. That might be, I don't know that's what Brett Walker what Brett Walker dealt with but that could be something like that where you have great bat speed because you coil back and you wrap your bat and you get all the way back there and you miss the ball you know whereas

a pitcher he gets to decide the course of action and gets to decide when he releases the ball so if they want to do some crazy ass Nester Cortez stuff or like show their back or hop on their foot, I mean, that might be a balk, but you know what I'm saying. Carter caps, I feel like that was another one of the moments you go like, do I not fully understand balks? Like no one really does.

It's like that seems, that should be legal. That can't be right. fully understand box like seems you wouldn't teach anyone to pitch that way and you probably getting your share of arguments managing and coaching a kid like that oh my god imagine if he was doing that in Little League in college and people would lose their crap you're familiar with just how upset people get around Little League. We had one mailbag entry for today. It's not a question. The subject of the email was entitled, Let Billy Cook a Personal Story.

So we're gonna go back for a moment. On the February 10th pod, y'all discussed a mailbag question about whether Billy Cook is taking being a bit on the pod in good humor. And then y'all discussed whether Billy is the kind of guy who would waltz into batting practice in a let Billy Cook shirt.

A story I thought y'all would appreciate. Ozefan here, in 2023 I took my then 10 year old daughter to grab a Bowie Baysox game when they were in town to face the Richmond Flying Squirrels. We're sitting in the first couple rows behind the Baysox on deck circle because why not? Top of the first, Judd Fabian reaches on a fielding error by Marco Luciano. This is a very true story. Yeah.

Marco Luciano's fielding error. Sounds about right. Advances the second on a fielder's choice. Billy Cook batting clean up is on deck now. Fabian then advances to third on a pass ball. Crotchety, old squirrels fan yells, well just let him score two. Billy doesn't miss a beat, turns around in a circle, gives that fan the cheesiest grin and most emphatic thumbs up and says, great idea, endeared himself to my daughter forever. She was overjoyed to get his autograph

last season at a Norfolk Tides game. Who is Jackson Holliday anyway? I hated to break it to her that he got traded. Anyway, can Billy take a joke? Would he wear a let Billy cook shirt in jest? I think the answer to both is unequivocally yes. Appreciate y'all, John F. So thank you for that email John You know what I know I know pirates PR pretty well if we could get a shirt mocked up I can get it to him

You gotta do this quick I'm becoming a very slow expert in getting merch made. It's taking me a long time becoming a very slow expert in getting merch made. It's taken me a long time. But we're closer today to making the most of the one-offs. You could get one shirt made of just about anything. Yeah. All right.

Although if we're gonna make it, we should probably have a few. I'm gonna look into this. Or you could point me in the right direction. What we really need in the Discord, we need a Discord channel where we put an idea for a shirt up. We get it mocked up. We put it in there, you hit a little button like an icon and it does

actually like throw like, I don't know, whatever, some some account on there. And it's like, OK, 20 people actually want to share. I know this exists as a website. We need a simpler thing. Hits the number. It goes, OK, 20 shirts, it's going to be twenty two dollars to make 20 of these shirts. And it runs it and it ships it to them and everybody gets the shirt they want and we go on to the next one.

This is why my ideas are usually bad. I'm not trying to make money on the merch. I'm literally just trying to get people the shirt they want at the cost of producing it and then go on to the next one. So I'm a terrible businessman, but I think I'd be a phenomenal shirt maker if I had more resources at my disposal. Thank you for your for your email though John and I think we will try even harder now to get Billy and let Billy cook sure if we Have the ability to do that

We should go because that grounds crew making a lot of progress on the field behind you which means things are about to get louder than the birds Your computer and not in the Sun so the battery lasted just a little bit longer So on our way out the door a reminder that you can find us on blue sky You know Zeno Sarah's got B. Scott at social on DVR got B. Scott at social Thanks to Brian Smith our producer putting this episode together that is gonna do it for this episode of rates and barrels We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening Discords are baby, baby. Yeah