Rates & Barrels - Biggest Movers in Stuff+, Searching for Meaningful Early Adjustments & Taj Bradley's Debut

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

DVR and Eno discuss some of the biggest movers in Stuff+ according to Eno's pitching model, early K-BB% laggards to target (and a few to worry about), and Taj Bradley's impressive arrival and potential for more starts due to another injury in the Rays' rotation.  Rundown 0:44 2023 Changes to the Run Environment 4:20 Stuff+ Improvers, No. 1 Graham Ashcraft 9:30 Looking for Differences Between Low-End Starters & Waiver Options 13:30 Ashcraft v. Bubic 17:17 Fastball Movement Impacted By Park Factors? 21:23 Good in the Model, Bad Results  32:12 Improved Command From Hunter Greene? 38:42 K-BB% Laggards; Potential Buy-Low Targets? 49:25 DVR Sticking with Chris Sale, Eno Sticking with Blake Snell 53:12 Taj Bradley's Debut; Chances to Stick Around w/Three Rotation Injuries Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Today's episode of Rates & Barrels is brought to you by ... Factor: Head to factormeals.com/rates50 and use code RATES50 to get 50% off your first box. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... Come on kids, back to the hotel room. Good night kids. Good night mama. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at best western Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Thursday, April 13th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to take a look at some movers on the stuff leaderboards in terms of fastball and stuff. So we're going to focus on some big changes there, digging into some maybe early risers. Do a lot of would-you-rathers. Working through these early days and trying to make sense of them.

It's just what we do in April. I think it's the toughest time of year to analyze baseball. Yeah, it's pretty weird. I was looking at the team leaderboards today for a radio hit in Hawaii. I was amazed by how many teams are allowing five runs a game. And I was thinking back to that team analyst who told me that the shift thing is going to be a big deal on the team and game level and it's going to add a lot in terms of offense because that's how it looks like it is looking right now.

And so if you're wondering, I think generally, people are like, what about all these pitcher blowups? And I think that the answer is never one thing. You know me enough, king of wafflers. I'm the lover of nuance. And so it's not just one thing that's contributing to all these. I would say that A, yes, some are dealing with the pitch clock. B, some are just dealing with the fact that the shift isn't helping them as much anymore.

And then C, some are just stinking. Yeah. And then D, like some are just running into some bad luck. Well, I'm looking at the, one of my favorite pages anyway, the page on baseball reference that shows you league stats year over year. It's really easy to see how things are now compared to the last few seasons. Team runs per game so far in 2023, 4.7. We've seen this very recently.

We saw this back in 2019. We saw 4.83 runs per game. But last year, rabbit ball year. Last year was down at 4.28, though. That's a pretty big jump.83 runs per game, but last year... Rapidball! Rapidball year. Last year was down at 4.28, though. That's a pretty big jump. Team runs per game. To put it in the context of slash lines, the league... Dude, that's almost exactly what my modeler said. Ah, see?

A run per game more. If you talk about team runs per game being up 0.5, wow. Way to nail it. The slash line so far, and it's early. Usually the slash line goes up over the course of the season, right? Weather gets better. Ball carries better. 250,

324, 410. So that's also kind of like 2019 where the batting average was 252. The OBP was 323. Slugging percentage was higher that year, 435. So the ball maybe isn't as juiced, or at least the power's not showing up quite the same way. It's kind of what they wanted to do is, you know,

more singles without a ton more homers. And I think that's, at least early on, it kind of looks like it's working. Of course, if you want to know how much our stolen base is up, it's 0.69 steals per team game. Last year, we were at 0.51. That is a huge increase. You go back to the year of the rabbit ball for comparison,

what that run environment was like. We had all that power, but it was 0.47 steals per team game instead of 0.69. So the early running is absolutely about this. Can you see how far back can you see right now? I can scroll all the way, but do you want to know the last time we had a 0.69 level? We're kind

of close in the 2011 and 2012 because we were at.67 and.66 those two years. So very, very close then. 1999 was the last time we actually had that many steals or more steals per team game than we've had so far this season. We've turned back the clock

quite a bit with speed in particular. And I don't mind that. Yeah, Babib is the best Babib we've had in about 15 years. Totally makes sense given all the adjustments that we've seen. Making sense of it, of course, is still something that's a work in progress. But you wanted to dig into some stuff risers based on fastball improvements right such an important thing to improve you made some giant leaderboards i'm still kind of parsing through them well the first the first one is uh just stuff stuff plus improvers just overall stuff for every for the whole arsenal

improvers yeah and and you want uh about 200 pitches we've got you know 60 starters or so that are there so you kind of want to focus in a little bit more on the starters because they've given you more sample there but even when you go through that there are asterisks so for um you know the the biggest stuff bus increase or this year in terms of starting pitcher year over year stuff plus is graham ashcroft um and that i think is due uh to some additions to his pitch mix um you is Jacob DeGrom, which is just ridiculous, and I don't even know what to do with that. But third and fourth are Alex Wood and Sean Minaya, who throw change-ups,

and change-ups take 40 pitches to stabilize, while fastballs take 20. And so, you know, even a guy who's had two starts and throws a fair amount of change-ups might not have gotten to 40 change-ups you know so i do believe in shaman i actually it's such a velocity based change that i'm just like that one's pretty easy i mean he's now throwing harder than he's ever thrown the big leagues. And I just talked to him last night about it. And he was like, not only is it about, you know, first time doing weighted balls in my career, but I just have a, like, I never had an arm care routine.

I just never, I was like, well, yeah. Thank you, Oakland A's. This man's 31 years old. He's pitching the big leagues since 2016. He's never had an arm care routine. At least not the kind that they have at Driveline. The rest of the stuff, I did ask him because the changeup has changed a little bit. He said, you know, there's been some tweaks to the slider in terms of his cues on it.

But mostly it's been three or four drills they gave him, the arm care routine, and the weighted balls in the offseason. It's just such a simple recipe that I believe in it. Plus he has such a high floor given. He has kind of like home run dampening skills, and he's in a home run dampening park. It's just a good marriage of ability and and jumping upness but but alex wood has burned us before as a stuff plus guy

and um you know i don't know how much i believe uh you know sort of change-ups going up and down this way so you know the next name that i would highlight and i'm going to highlight in my piece that i'm going to do about fastball changers is jp sears he's back and does he have an arm care routine because he used to be a yankee yeah probably old binder does he still use that Yeah, he probably does. And I'm going to write this up, but J.P. Sears has had the fourth... Well, actually, he's tied with Chris Bubich, who we'll talk about in a second, but he's had the third best increase

in his four-seam fastball stuff plus. And I just think that's super meaningful because Sears has been a bad fastball guy in the past. We have talked about this a little bit on the pod before. I think maybe it was spring numbers. But just getting a guy who has good secondaries up to this level, it's something that I will mention in the Ryan Weathers write up in my piece too which is just getting a fastball that was in the 60s and 70s and 80s and stuff plus

and getting it up to 99-100 is huge I mean it's just going to make all his other stuff play up and he already had good secondaries it's something that i think teams are are trying to do from here and there maybe it's part of the cleveland experience um you know oh you have a good slider and you throw 91 well let's throw in weighted balls and see if we can get it from 94 um the shane beaver uh clone clone line, you know, I think J.P. Sears looks a lot better to me now than he did a start or two ago. And again, like Minaya, you know, pretty good home park

to at least be like, hey, I'm going to start him most of the time, like maybe 100% of the time at home, and maybe, what, 25, 50% of the time on the road? I mean, that's probably useful in most leagues. Yeah, it's playable. of the time at home and maybe 25-50% of the time on the road. That's probably useful in most leagues. Yeah, it's playable. That's the guy that stays on your roster in a 15-team league and someone that could actually stick long didn't expect, depending on how the schedule breaks for

a stretch, in a 12. That's the company he would keep. I think we started to get into this a little bit on our last episode on Monday. At least our last episode was just you kind of going through some early season stuff. I find it very difficult to separate the pitchers in this group because many of them have similar flaws. It's either velocity that's not premium, even if it's improved, or it's only having one really good whiff pitch, not really having two. It's always something. Or it's even just being on a bad team. So you're always worried about

what you're actually going to get in terms of win probability. And then coaching. What kind of coaching is Chris Bubich going to get when he's with the team? And what kind of coaching is Sears going to get with Oakland? It hasn't seemingly been producing a lot of starting pitchers in this iteration of the coaching staff. Yeah, and for me, I've had those guys within the same group as Michael Grove when Grove was available, I want to say it was two weekends ago now, and I thought, well, hey, Michael Grove is a Dodger.

The Dodgers tend to be very good at developing pitchers, so Michael Grove will be just as successful, if not more successful than some of these other guys. I prioritized him as an add, and two starts later, he's given up 12 earned runs on 14 hits over 7 in the third inning, so it doesn't mean he'll never be good, but... Only so far you can push an 88

stuff. Right. I think it was trying to will someone to be better than he probably was, just based on context. Yeah. And the Dodgers, I think for what it's worth, seem willing to

bring a lot of these guys up, coach them up to their top, and then trade them away. You never know which one you're going to get, right? You're like, oh, he's a Dodger. I believe in him. Well, which one are you getting? The one that they keep or the one that they trade away? Are you getting the Dustin May

or are you getting Josiah Gray? Yeah, and in Grove's case, I mean, the big problem has been home runs in the minor leagues. If you look at just K's walks and homers. And an 81 fastball plus. Fastball stuff plus. That's why, you know, a guy like Steers getting up to 95, I think, is a big deal.

Yeah. So, mention Bubic. He came up a couple times in the last week or so because he's made a lot of changes. Is he compared to these other guys? You mentioned Graham Ashcraft, too. Ashcraft, to me, seems like he might be the best of the bunch. I mean,

Minaya, maybe because there's more track record there. Maybe there's more trust with him. But Graham Ashcraft just looks a bit different on paper. The arsenal is really good. He gets a lot of ground balls. So I don't think that home park is going to burn him. I don't think we have any concerns about how the Reds are going to use him, which seems to be a little bit of an issue for the Giants rotation.

I don't know if that was just a blip for Minaya, the shorter outing his first time out. Now they're doing that with Ross stripling out of the bullpen. But how do you prioritize in this group when you're in a situation like the more shallow formats where multiples or even all of these guys could still be available? I mean, I'm tempted to say work the schedule but if you get too deep into that then you're you're just streaming you know and uh that's a difficult um way out so um i do probably i do like home parks that bring up the floor.

And that is a difficulty for Ashcraft, as much as I believe in it. When we had him projected, we said, this is a guy with a 3.6 True Talent ERA projection. And then we had to knock it up to 4.2, I think, for the park. Now, he went back and he looked at it, you know, Jordan Rosenblum looked at it, and he came back and he said,

well, maybe it's a 4-1. That's still a big park factor increase. So, you know, I don't know. You have to be specific here on some level. What's the who would you rather that you're putting in front of? Ashcraft versus Bubic.

Because Bubic does have a much better home park. And I think Ashcraft has... I think Ashcraft has better stuff. Better arsenal. I think he's the guy that... If I'm trying to figure out who's going to have more success long-term in the big leagues based on what they can do today, I would bet on Ashcraft over Bubic even though I do think Bubic's

adjustments are legit and worthwhile yeah I guess I'm going to take Ashcraft you know one thing that I've noticed with Bubic was that

he gave back some of his games in the second start so there's a great piece on fan graphs about boobage in terms of his his his changes and I think it's by jake my i don't actually know how to say his last name i think it's if i was talking about it in french it'd be mayo but i doubt that male hot he's good his stuff's always good when i read it yeah yeah uh jake's uh piece about Bubic was like, oh, he added this much ride to his fastball. And then I looked at the player page for Bubic, and he gave back an inch in the second game. Trying to get it up right now, but let me just look at it here vertical movement on the four seam per game uh in the in the first game of the season was 899 uh which was significantly uh better than his seasonal average last year uh for the year last year he had an 869 so it's like a you know a third of an inch it's still still a difference um but and then the horizontal movement uh on the fourth seam has gone down this year but if you look at it

per game um it went back to where it was last year so he had this one game where he had you know almost zero horizontal movement on his fourth seam and he had more vertical movement than he did last year. In the second game, he had the same horizontal movement that he had last year. So he gave back a fair amount of it. Now, the slider is new. The slider is great. Anybody who can throw a

slider should throw a slider. Anybody who started throwing a slider who never threw a slider before is more interesting to me. Alex Cobb is more interesting to me today than he was even before. So Bubic is more interesting because he threw a slider. But Ashcraft's changes in terms of his movement and stuff are not as drastic. And he's held on to them game to game. His slider is a little different.

And it's been a little different than it was last year game to game so that's part of my reasoning it may be off it is so powerful to throw a slider in today's game that maybe that is all I should care about Blue Bitch throws a slider and he didn't before

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Slider command. Do you have good slider command? Do you have a breaking pitch that you can throw where you need to throw it, wherever you want to throw it? That can be a big equalizer. That can give you a foundation to at least be a useful five-inning starter if the fastball's not garbage and there's some third pitch

that you can use just to keep hitters guessing a little bit. I think it is that the slider addition for Bubic matters more to me. I think the other thing I was thinking about

with the fastball movement, are there fluctuations in that due to any sort of park factors? I think about how Oracle Park, San Francisco, where he made that second start. The second start was the better of the two. That was 9Ks, six scoreless, two hits.

It was a fantastic start. Stuff Plus liked it less. Do you see fluctuations based on atmospheric conditions, park factors? Because pitching in San Francisco is a lot different than pitching in Kansas City. Well, I know that we're at altitude adjusting, and I don't think there's a significant difference between Toronto and San Francisco in terms of altitude. I might be wrong. San Francisco's right on the water.

Toronto may have some height to it. But you would think that it would be better at that level. Toronto's elevation is 251 feet. This is what my life has become. I've spent so much time in the last week because of our PCL conversation, Googling city elevations. I'm going to get a notification soon from Google. There's this guy who's like five.

Yes. That one I can confirm with my eyes. It's close to zero. There's the water. We're not much higher than it. We haven't looked into so much atmospheric conditions. That could be part of it, and it is something that I noticed with Andrew Haney, who is the number one fastball shape improver.

In his first start, he had a worse vertical movement on his fastball than he had in five years in his second start he had a better fastball vertical movement than he'd had in a year so there is still game to game variation that is why it is still better to sort of get that third start in you get maybe three different atmospheres to kind of level it out but on some I would say

Bubic's main improvement has come from throwing a slider when he didn't throw a slider I remain agnostic on the fact that his four seems that much different. Seems fair, just given that we want to see a bit more. But thinking about Andrew Heaney

versus both of Ashcraft and Boobage, Heaney was a guy people liked. People wanted to draft him. The K-minus BB percentage was really good. You know, the adjustments he made with the Dodgers seemed like they were legitimately longstanding adjustments that would help him continue to get hitters out

and strike more guys out. The bigger question has always been health for Andrew Heaney. It's not really a talent question, but do you still prefer Heaney, someone who was consistently and clearly drafted ahead of Ashcraft and Bubich, or have some of these guys who have been waiver guys actually closed the gap?

Heaney seems like he was going closer to where you can start to make these arguments. The difference between the pick 200 starting pitcher and the guys that go undrafted is actually pretty small, relatively speaking. Have those guys closed the gap? Are they more interchangeable? Is it almost a question of schedule

more than anything else when you're looking at Heaney versus the other two guys that we've been talking about? What did he struggle in in the first game? Royals was good. First game was Baltimore was bad. Yep.

But he was so Heaney-esque against the Royals I mean that's 10 strikeouts I mean yeah he should have given up a homer that would have been the more full handier Heaney experience I still think he's a level ahead I think Heaney

and Ashcraft I wouldn't I wouldn't drop if they had like a two week schedule that I might have to nurse them through uh boobage maybe is there i don't know but that's that's how i feel right now here's a name that we i think it's i think the hardest ones are the ones that the model really likes that aren't doing well and none of the other numbers like yeah i mean clark schmidt is clark schmidt and ryan nelson i think are just i like i don't

even know what to do man i don't know what to do because it's not as simple as just, you know, how good is your stuff plus. You know, we talk about that a lot in this show. We're talking about it a lot in this particular show. But it's also kind of how things fit together. And his new arsenal of like kind of being sinkweeper curve with the cutter. He's getting blown up by lefties, is my impression. Let me just make sure that I'm right on that.

And you're talking about Clark Schmidt right now. Yeah, Clark Schmidt has a 535 Woba against lefties. That's not going to work. And a 237 against righties. That's some Tanner Houck stuff. But his strikeout minus walk rate is not

as aggressively different, although still 26% strikeout rate against righties, 17.6 against lefties. Teams are going to stack lefties against them, and he becomes a kind of cutter curve guy against them. And becomes a kind of cutter curve guy against them and even when you look at his stuff plus numbers those are not necessarily his best pitches the curve is

rating well right now but in terms of a hard pitch he can go to the sinker is not that good the foreseam rates well but he doesn't use it very much and the cutter right now is a 92 stuff plus so is there a problem here is there a problem with uh with with stamina because i i saw his i saw his game against the giants and the first two innings i was like this is the guy throwing 96 sweepers love him he went three and a third. Yeah. I think just given the injuries and the way he's been used in the past, that was something that I probably should have been more concerned about with this opportunity.

I wonder. I mean, Carlos Rodon had a small setback, but it sounds like he's probably coming back in May. It's not going to be these next couple of weeks. Severino, still a few weeks away also. Domingo German is pitching better than Clark Schmidt. I thought Clark Schmidt had a chance to just pass him.

He's not taking advantage of the opportunity. And then Johnny Brito has emerged to pitch pretty well so far too. And I think if your problem... Both of them with worse stuff plus numbers than Clark Schmidt. But if your biggest flaw is getting lefties out and your home park is that park, that's going to amplify that problem. That's a flaw that

you can get away with some places, but you're not going to get away with it there. And if he's fading within those outings, it's so easy for the Yankees to say, you know what, you're really good four, five, six outs at a time. You're going to be that glue guy. We've seen Michael King has been a

guy that uses that role a lot. If that's what Clark Schmidt ends up being, that's good for the Yankees. It's not good for us. It's an unfortunate call from a he's a good sleeper sort of perspective. I guess, are you giving him any more opportunities? He just pitched yesterday against Cleveland, four innings, season high, three earned, six hits, 3K. I don't know, 72 pitches. Three earned, six hits. 3K. I don't know. 72 pitches. He's throwing enough

pitches to go deeper. He's just not efficient enough. What was the... You said he went yesterday? Yeah, he went Wednesday against Cleveland. 72, 84, and 76 pitches. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So you'd have the Angels at home.

1, 2, 3, 4, four five and the blue jays at home oh god one two three four five his third start is yankees rangers maybe he's a maybe he's just a streamer dude maybe i don't like maybe i play him against the angels but i'm not playing against the blue jays especially if he doesn't do anything better against the Angels. The next time that I would want to circle on the schedule is Yankees at Rangers. And that's April 26th. Now you're talking about, is Severino back?

Possibly. And it's so hard to have someone on your roster that you don't want to start, because if someone gets hurt and all of a sudden that's your only alternative, it's either a zero or the high-risk start that you didn't want. So if you're seeing him more as a limited-use streamer, you've got to go ahead and cut your losses,

even though the model still believes in what he could become. Do you have any... Thinking back to the last season... Like, are you... Like, you have to also think, like, okay, let's say he does break out against the Angels. Would that even change you that much in terms of wanting to start him against the Blue Jays? Probably not enough because three starts where he's gone four innings or less.

And then one good start against the Angels at home still is like... And there's not a lot of lefties in that Angels lineup. Otani, obviously, is a lefty. But Trout, Renfro, Drury, Rendon, Ohapi. Those guys are all righties. So then you got Ryan Nelson who's going to pitch today or tomorrow.

I have bad math. I should have like a probables open. I think he's today. Today's a real short list. I think he's today. Today's a real short list. I think he's Saturday because the Diamondbacks are off today. We'll get the Madison Bumgarner experience on Friday.

And then Nelson goes Saturday against Miami. I would use Nelson in that spot because Miami's a bottom five offense. It's an easy place to pitch. Easy to hold in the short term. Right. This is sort of a quality start last time out against the Dodgers so you at least pitch deep.

It's hard because of the lack of K-BB and like yes, stuff is supposed to be K-BB but like you can't help but look at it. K-BB is still one of the most important stats out there for pitching evaluation.

But, but, but, at San Diego, home against the Dodgers for those first two starts, those are two really tough matchups to start the year. Now, I realize being in the NL West, he will see those teams a lot, so you have to think about it a little more long-term at some point. How much are you going to want to use him in those spots?

He gets the Padres again after the Miami. Yeah. But then he gets the Royals at home and the Rangers on the road. His schedule does lighten up. That actually helps me keep him. I'm a lot more optimistic about Nelson than I am about Schmidt. Schmidt's more of an easy cut.

Nelson, I think, is right on that borderline. If you're sitting there with Nelson and you're looking at the Ashcraft-Bubich cluster, I might be inclined to stick with Nelson. Yeah, I think so. It's just a really tough part. I got right into this a lot when I was trying to rank Cole and DeGrom at their peaks. I think I put DeGrom ahead of Cole. Every time I did one or the other, I was like, I think I put Cole ahead of, uh, no, I put the Grom ahead of Cole and,

or, you know, every time I did one of the other, I got attacked from one of those, one other side of New York. And, uh, and I was like,

well, you know, I think that part, part of with Cole might be the sickest of enforcement, but also just, it's a really tough park. Like what if you put Cole in New York, the other stadium,

I think he would be easily the best pitcher in baseball by all our stats. Yeah, 225 ERA,.95 win. Yeah. That's probably what you're getting. Instead, he's in New York, which he's doing like 3-2-5s, and you're like, yeah, he's really good, and he's leading the league in strikeouts, but he also has his home run problem,

and he's got to break out this cutter this year. By the way, I know it's already going, but Cole versus Gossman is the Cy Young for me right now. I think he hasn't thrown it a lot, the cutter, but I think I saw enough out of it in spring where I'm like, this is a pitch that he's going to go to a little bit more as the season goes on and it's going to help him against lefties and he gives up more homers to lefties so i i i see something good in the early going and from spring uh on cole and gossman was

the biggest stuff lesson prover in spring among starting pitchers and he's got ride back on his fastball and i think he's throwing a sweeper and a gyro slider. There's something there. Even if those are not the best breaking balls, there's just an opportunity there for him to maybe finally have an average breaking ball. I watched a little bit of the Spencer Strider-Hunter Green matchup on Wednesday night.

Plenty of Ks. Two five-inning closers. Five-inning closers. I remember there was a sequence I forget who was up, but Spencer Strider threw that changeup, which he doesn't throw very often. It doesn't look like a bad pitch to me.

Does the model like it? Or is it one of those changeups that he hides it because it really isn't that good and it really can only work with this limited usage. Hey, he's got a 103 on it. In fact, it's better than his slider stuff plus right now.

Which would be a change from last year. Yeah, but I'm going to predict that that doesn't hold. Yeah, right. I'm also going to agree with you. Especially given how long it takes. But he had an 86 stuff plus on the change up last year. That's a usable pitch you know especially since being able to throw it helps you turn the line up more often you know it was an interesting conversation with him to talk about why should i throw this pitch

when my other two pitches get so many whiffs and every pitch should have a purpose but sometimes the purpose is get this guy out without showing him my slider. Because the more you show him your slider, the more he can hit it. I like a pitch like that. If you get into when Spencer Strider faces some of the elite of the elite hitters that he goes up against. Guys that can deal with two plus pitches a little bit better. I think that's when you sneak the change up in. You're having one of those battle,

you know, seven, eight pitches maybe. They're rare plate appearances. Freddie Freeman's going to be like on your fastball and he's going to be spitting on your slider. Yeah. And then you just throw him one that, you throw him a changeup in the zone and he'll probably spit on it

and maybe he can steal a strike. Right. I think that's when you're going to use it the most is just when you have to have something else in your pocket to get an elite hitter out in a tight situation. Maybe that's the other time. It's the complete element of surprise. But if he gets that up to 10% or 12% at some point,

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I don't think he'd be throwing his two amazing pitches too little. I think it would actually be an okay adjustment to keep ticking that up just a little bit. Hunter Green, I'm curious what the model is showing for the command for him. That was always the concern with Green coming through the red system. It was a concern upon arrival last year. Are we seeing signs of growth in his ability to locate his pitches? It says a 100 location plus.

And he's really slimmed down his arsenal to just the foreseeing the side of really occasional change-ups. So I think that basically by being like, hey, just throw the pitches you can command that have high stuff, it's really helping him. And it reminds me a little bit of the Hunter Brown situation

where he gets worse command grades than maybe he deserves because I think it's more important to be able to get it in the zone than it is to be able to really place it in the zone because I don't honestly think that pitchers have that much ability to place it around the zone some do but as a general a general uh group i don't know that they do you know another another group that's that's hard for me is the the poor stuff guys that are that are performing sunny gray has an 88 stuff plus uh david pet Gray has an 88 Stuff Plus.

David Peterson has an 88 Stuff Plus. Alex Cobb is actually down to 90 because his foreseam has really fallen off. Alec Manoa, though, there was poor Stuff Plus there and predicted what's going on. Eduardo Rodriguez, Miles Michaelis

a lot of the strugglers, Josiah Gray 79 stuff plus, Patrick Corbin 78 but you know when you're down here and you're looking at Sonny Gray and you're saying well he still has the elite breaking balls and he's dealing

and he's had better stuff plus in the past. What do you do with that? I don't know. I didn't get to see that start in its entirety against the White Sox that was on Wednesday for Sonny Gray. Seeing the highlights of it, it looked pretty good. It looked like everything was moving. Everything was crisp. Velo looked solid.

I was surprised when you mentioned him as someone who had bad stuff numbers. I would have thought he would have been kind of in the average, slightly above average. That was not even on my radar. I just sorted on Fangraus. I was like, what is this guy's name doing?

Interesting enough, though, they didn't have a huge lead. They did take him out after 78 pitches when he was cruising. Five scoreless, five case, two walks out after 78 pitches. The big start he had was a 13K start at home against the Astros back on the 7th. Threw 98 pitches in that one. And I was trying to figure out, just looking at that box score, no, that wasn't a case where they had a big lead or anything either. Really odd.

I don't know if that was just preventative maintenance. Every couple turns, they're going to try and get him out a little earlier. It has been injury prone. Bullpen rest maybe was a factor. They had everybody they wanted available in the pen. They have their own stuff plus numbers for him too. He can't afford to fall off of that, especially with the fastball.

I wouldn't go shopping in here. I might hold on to someone that seems like found money. I might be more careful with them than I thought. Bryce Elder has the second worst stuff plus among starting pitchers who've thrown 10 innings. And right behind him is Bailey Falter. Now, I do think there's a little difference there

where you're like, well, Bryce Elder has had good numbers in the minors, whereas Bailey Falter has been up and down. And Bailey Falter pitches, I guess Bryce Elder does pitch in a tough home part. I might be less inclined to start Bryce Elder at home than other people. And I definitely, if I've got a

Bryce Elder in a keeper league, I'm shopping it. So on an individual pitch basis, does Bryce Elder have a good slider and nothing else the model likes? Is that why he's got a bad stuff number? Nothing the model likes. Zero.

Zero pitches. He has a 70 sinker out of 100. 100 is that average. A 53 cutter, a 78 slider, and a 24 changeup. Now, the changeup number could be totally wrong. That could be totally wrong. You want 40 pitches, and the changeup stuff loss is not great. Even if the changeup, let's say the change up

instead of 24 is 124. I still wouldn't love that line. Well, I know pitch results are not perfect, especially when we're talking about 104 change ups thrown last year, but the league hit 286 against the change up that Bryce Elder threw last year. 464 was the slugging percentage against it.

That doesn't make me think good change up. I don't think it's a good changeup. What I do know is we have not platoon adjusted stuff plus. Sometimes lefties are hurt. You will see more lefties on the

bottom of this list than you'd expect. Kyle Freeland is number one elder is lefty correct elders are righty elders are righty this is a throw hard that one out yeah you look at his pitch mix like that's a soft tossing lefty you're like look at the ball you're like damn that's in his right hand well i don't have that excuse for him but but david peterson who has an 88 uh that might be part of uh why he's down there uh eduardo rodriguez who has an 89 i believe that he has uh poor stuff he's always kind of had poor stuff um marco gonzalez could

be his changeup could be underrated but he's always been kind of a poor stuff high command guy um so there are there are a few more lefties than righties in the bottom of this list and we're going to work on that that's that's on the list to improve but bryce elder is a head scratcher for me and he's a little bit like clark schmidt where you know if i was deciding between clark schmidt and bryce elder it's so extreme and the park differences are so extreme and the model differences are so extreme i might just throw up my hands and be like fine i'll pick up right so you know um but i will still uh hedge towards the model like johan oviedo is throwing 96 and so you might be tempted to say you know pittsburgh all this 88 stuff plus no pitch above 100. If Luis Ortiz comes up, I'm much more excited.

I'm dropping Johan Oviedo for Luis Ortiz. There's a world where they coexist in the rotation, though. So it's, you know, hopefully it doesn't come down to that. Especially with JT Brubaker hurt. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App.

There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. So here's the other pitching-related question. I'm looking at the laggard board for K-BB percentage. Of course, very early. Everything's very early. I'm looking at the guys who are under 6% right now,

and there are about 15 names. I'm going to rattle them off real quick. Ken Waldachuk, Ryan Weathers, Merrill Kelly, Chad Kuhl, Patrick Corbin, Nick Martinez, Charlie Morton, Dean Kramer, Patrick Sandoval, Marco Gonzalez, Ryan Nelson, Alec Manoa,

Jack Flaherty, Chris Flexin, Jose Ureña, and dead last Edward Cabrera. Edward Cabrera! Dead last minus 7% right now. Shush. Two and three start samples are fun. Yeah, I mean, I think that's pushing it

even for K-BB. Negative seven? Come on. Where is he on this? How many innings has he pitched? Oh, I'm in 2022. That's your problem.

He's thrown 11 and two-thirds innings. 108 fastball, 131 bat sinker, 120 slider, and 84 changeup that's most assuredly wrong. So that's a dude who has had two starts that look really bad on the surface that you probably would want to go ahead and go get. If you could trade for him or finish out a league,

he becomes available. So yeah, who else are you picking off this list? Obviously, Ryan Nelson, Edward Cabrera are some names that we still like off this list. Yeah, Manoa, I'm not worried about Manoa. I don't think that's I am. Worried to the point where you wouldn't want to roster him, though? Yeah, I guess not.

He's not really available anywhere. Right, and so the question, like, I would shop him, but it would be a terrible time to shop him, so I don't know. I avoided him. I have no shares of him. The projections didn't like him. My projections didn't like him. Stuff didn't like him. I have no shares of him. The projections didn't like him. My projections didn't like him.

Stuff didn't like him. So this is not a question I have to deal with. If I had him, I would wait for a good stretch and trade him in a keeper league. If I had him in a 15-team league, I would just be careful about how I use him, I guess. I wouldn't know what to do, honestly. Jack Flaherty has a good synchro number, stuff plus 113, but he doesn't throw it, actually, so that's meaningless.

84 stuff plus on the fastball, 96 on the slider. I don't think he's back, and the K-BB doesn't like him. I'm not in on Jack Flaherty. 13 walks in his first two starts. I mean, he only walked one in Colorado, which is just bizarro. It's not a good lineup, though, really.

No, it's not. I'm kind of lukewarm on Flaherty. He's missed so much time. It's a little bit of the Chris Sale problem where you want to be right in terms of not expecting the old guy to come all the way back immediately. But you also don't want to dismiss the possibility that the rust is causing the early struggles. So I'm still I'm not quite ready to give up on Jack Flaherty.

Definitely not ready to give up on sale, even though other people are. Other guys on this list that I actually like, I don't know if there's anyone. I want to look up Morton real quick. Sandoval? Am I trying to go get Patrick Sandoval from someone on a trade? I do think this is an area where if you're going to make an early trade... How about Charlie Morton? I was going to ask you about him.

You know what's happening is his fastballs are just leaking, and he's becoming more Adam Wainwright than we want. Yeah, and I just think it's so easy to look at the date of birth and say, this dude's 39 years old. Maybe the wheels finally did fall off. I mean, he's got the elite curveball. That's why I say Adam Wainwright, though. I mean, he's liable to figure something out

and have a Wainwright renaissance. To me, that's a streamer. Less and less likely every year. 100% spot him carefully a streamer. The fact that he got back and reached the levels he did after all the injuries he had, it's a pretty fascinating arc for his career. I'm so biased towards him because he's such a quality.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I can root for him while not putting him in my lineup. That's possible. Hugh Darvish is kind of down here. He's not under 6%, but 6.3%. His first few starts don't look great on paper, at least as far as the underlying numbers go. I'm sticking with him.

He didn't strike me as someone that I would be worried about, but I'm surprised to see him down here. The Waldachuk, he's very up and down. It is bad command. Location has been bad. It was bad last year.

His fastball is not great. His slider and change are good. I can't buy that too heavy. I guess, so I'm buying, I'm buying, I like the short-term buy on Nelson. And maybe even a long-term, like, hey,

can I take him off your hands for nothing sort of deal, right? long-term like hey like can i take him off your hands for nothing sort of deal right um i uh edward cabrera is probably going to be hard because the person who who owns him believes in him 100 yep so it's not like you're just gonna pilfer him in a but but if if it's like a 10 team leaving he's out there and you could stash them on your bench, I would definitely do that. Um, I think Nick Martinez is going to the bullpen. I like Morton a little more than you,

but it's not a dynasty play. And it's, it's more like putting them on my 15 team roster and thinking I can nurse him through some bad starts on my bench and stuff. You know, if he's been dropped, even as a skeptic right now, I would have Morton in for this week against the Royals. I would have been using him for that.

So that'd be fine. Next week against San Diego, probably on my bench. Looking real carefully at the alternative that I could use in his place for that. It's a Padres team I don't want to mess with with starters that I'm unsure about. Sandoval's a guy that the model never really liked, but he always outperformed the model

in terms of his change up in specific and it's it's actually some sort of reverse seam shifted wake it's a it's a it's a it's a very strange change up and so i'm willing to give him a little a bit of rope i don't know if he's like a strong acquirer but i'm gonna hold him i mean the the you know at least he's got a 164 ERA, and he's outperformed different models in the past. He seems like kind of a grinder. I'd hold Sandoval. I'm not necessarily dropping him. When you start getting up closer to you Darvish territory,

Sandy Alcantara, I'm totally fine with. I think he'll even strike more guys out. I know that's a big part of the discourse right now. I think he'll be fine. Dustin May, I think, will strike more guys out and walk for your guys. There is something interesting there where he has high stuff plus, but it hasn't always turned into strikeouts. I think he's just a guy that you can depend on more for ERA than strikeouts, but I think he's just a guy that you can depend on more for ERA than strikeouts. But I think he's still dependable.

I heard from a little birdie that Michael Kopech is tipping his pitches. Oh, that would explain part of why he's getting smacked as much as he is. Yeah, what do you do with that though? Is someone going to tell him? My thought would be that if you're hearing about it, then someone maybe told him about it by now. I would hope that the flow of information is such that if word gets around to the media,

then internally they have figured it out. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, because, I mean, the Kevin, and maybe even if not before now like maybe someone gets word to them now because I remember I tweeted about Kevin Ginkle's was tipping his pitches and he fixed it the next day

so Finkel and Einhorn there Ginkle somebody was sitting up there with their laptop they just they're like what's going on with Ginkle and all of a sudden tipping pitches they looked at the video and they're like yep yeah that's that's it brady singer was everyone's darling last year uh he's got a nine percent k-miles bb um and i don't think i think the model thinks exactly the same as it did last year which i think he's a plus and that's this this is what

makes boobage so hard for me is that like singer did the like did something so good last year all last year and i sort of expected what he's doing now for most of it so i could be so wrong about boobage because he could just do what he's doing now all year. There is that sort of year-long fluke that definitely happens. I'm not buying Singer. Still not buying Singer. Okay. I'm buying Mike Snell.

You are? Okay. 30th worst in K-BB. But here's an easy one. If you're looking at K-BB and you look over slide over your eyes over the k part and the k part's still okay then he's more likely i'm gonna buy like michael kopech i'm still interested in you know uh patrick sandoval with a nine percent k rate that's that's pushing it chris sale man that's what 29.7% K rate. And tough stuff numbers.

3.75 homers per nine so far. 208 whip. It's lower than Blake Snell's whip, though. Yeah, I'm buying Snell. And the other thing is Snell, this is totally anecdotal and I don't think predictive, but

he himself has had really bad starts to seasons. True. It just seemed like something clicked for him last year with the adjustment, right? He scrapped that changeup that you hated and went in that role, and he looks kind of like typical Blake Snell so far,

racking up the high pitch counts. You're watching Blake Snell, and there's two outs in the fourth inning, and he's thrown 78 pitches. There are guys everywhere. The bases are packed. There's only one out and you're just sweating to death because you don't know

if he's going to find the zone and get out of it. He seems so sweaty. He's got the bags under his eyes. He's like, God, did you get any sleep last night, dude? That man does not look rested. But you can't blame the change-up this year. No, you know, at least you gotta

find something else to blame it all on. I'll put it out there. I'm still being patient. I'm still believing in Chris Sale. I know that puts me in a smaller group of people today than it would have a month ago. I didn't get sucked in by spring training.

I'm the one saying I still believe Blake Snell. Well, hey, we're going down on the... We picked our lefties. To choose our fighters do we have some sort of... Sale versus Snell which is total roto value by season's end. Buy beer.

We could do a pint on that. I think you're going to win this one, damn it. But that's fair by ADP. I we could do a pint on that. Dude, I think you're going to win this one, damn it. But I'll throw it out there. But that's fair by ADP. It's not. I'm not getting an edge on that. That's true. And they're starting from the same crappy spot.

That's true, too. This is a fun bet. It's a bit of a Stuff Plus play. I'm going to bet with Stuff Plus. I'm going to bet with my model. You should. I'm out here just looking at pages, just guessing what I'm doing right now. So injuries have been a bit of a problem again this week.

Jeffrey Springs is left to start on Thursday with some kind of hand or arm injury. Yeah, this happened right in front of us. He was flexing his hand after delivering a pitch at the top of the fourth inning through one practice pitch and then walked off the field. So we don't know the extent of the injury yet. Time to take back our Taj Bradley versus Simeon Woods Richardson take. That aged as poorly as anything we've ever said on this podcast because by the time we stopped recording, we got the text. They were like, Taj Bradley's up.

Welsh texted us. He goes, Bradley's got promoted. And we were in a position where the three of us could jump back on and go further on that. But we were like, he's not going to be the first guy up. He's the first guy up. He's the first guy up. And he pitched pretty well. And we also thought, well, if he comes up, he's going back down because the Rays got plenty

of pitching. Well, that part was true. That part was true for about 12 hours. And then Jeffrey Springs got hurt. And now, even though Bradley got optioned back down, if this becomes an IL situation, Bradley can come right back up and take that spot, which seems like their preferred path

at this point. I mean, they didn't go to... I mean, is it still true that Patino and Yanni Chirinos have not pitched in AAA? I don't think it was true. No, no. Two starts so far for Patino.

Seven innings pitched eight k's seven walks two homers that's a 771 era and a 186 whip the best thing i can say about luis patino right now is that he's still 23 years old that's when someone brings up your age is the best thing thing about you. Oh, God. Yanni Chirinos. What? 859 ERA. We should have. Apologies. It's only a matter of time, but it could be rust for him, too.

He's missed a lot of time with injuries. Had Tommy John and had a setback with his arm. Bradley broke the stuff model, by the way. Did he? Were his stuff numbers from his big league debut better than what he was doing at AAA? Yeah.

That seems unusual. Well, there is actually something called the debut bounce, the debut adrenaline velo bounce. So I would assume that he comes down off of that that's something we've seen in the past but he's so high up there with a 142 fastball stuff plus he was third among starters in fastball stuff plus behind strider and degrom so it's like all right he can come off of that and still be pretty good um you know the cutter did really well. People really liked the curveball from watching it. People were watching it and liked

it, but it rated about average. I'm interested to see if that number changes maybe in the positive direction. There's a lot of factors in play here. We don't know the Springs injury information in full yet. Zach Eflin's on the IEL. That opened up the spot for Bradley in the first place, and then Glass now is working his way back from the oblique injury. He just threw a 15-pitch bullpen session. That was a bullpen session.

So to me, that's at a month. He's four weeks out. Maybe May 11th we could see him, and that's probably the early end of the timetable because that was a grade two strain. They're not going to rush him back from a grade 2 oblique. So I think Bradley, if he broke the model, got pretty good results. Now you've got two injuries in the rotation on top of the original one with Glass now.

He's probably worth a pretty hefty FAAB. Yeah, and I think I go back to the earlier part of last season, right? I mean, George Kirby, I think was one of the bigger early fab pickups for me. I threw 20 plus percent at him in tout, and he was in my lineup if not every week,

very close to it. I would say that Taj Bradley, I would have a similar view for him. Because if Glassdell comes back, you know, assuming Springs is. Because if Glassdell comes back, assuming Springs is injured, if Glassdell comes back before him, you can still push Josh Fleming out.

And then you're saying, okay, by the time Springs comes back, don't you think somebody else needs a break? Yes. I think there's a whole bunch of ways this can still go very right for taj bradley so i'm i'm amazed at how quickly things can change 48 hours after we talked about sammy and woods richardson probably being in the better position throw all your money at him

here's all my fab but it was never that we doubted his his ability never no it just seemed like he was slightly more blocked. Now you just have a better sense of where he is on the pecking order. Yep. And yeah, I think 20 plus percent of your budget is probably what it's going to take to get him. I think people are going to be really aggressive with Bradley given the success the Rays have had

with pitching prospects and just given what Bradley showed us in that debut. That I'm guessing a flex or strain. Yeah, based on the reaction, that's probably a good estimate as to what they're looking for. Ulnar neuritis, actually, is the diagnosis. What is that? Oh, he's saying he can't feel it.

He was saying something, he couldn't feel it. Neuritis is nerves, right? Yeah. I mean, that's still got to be like, what? It's still got to be a month or something. Still some time, I would imagine. Yeah. Well, there goes my labor team.

Well, hey, look. I've got one team. It's the XFL. Basically, it's like Tout Wars, but it's a keeper league. And I co-manage this team with Ryan Bloomfield. So there's moves made throughout the entire offseason. Michael Harris is one of our best keepers. He's on the IL. We traded for

Trevor Story before he had surgery. That happened, so that's pretty big. Brandon Woodruff was another surprise shoulder IL out of nowhere that happened early this week. Hopefully that's a short one. I hope it's a short one. I hope they just little soreness,

give him a couple starts off and he's fine. I've got Brandon Woodruff a lot of places again. Obviously, I'm a Brewers fan for anyone who's new to the podcast, so it's unsettling for all those reasons. Sometimes you just see four, five, six injuries. Luis Darius is on that team. Even our mid-level guys

are all banged up. I'm like, man, that team might be a quick seller for a keeper league. That might just be play for the future. And I'm like, man, that team might be a quick seller for a keeper league. That might just be play for the future. The Woodruff thing, though, and even the Zach Eflin injury, he's not on that team. That kind of came out of nowhere, too. Tuesday, we got the news.

Weekly lineups were locked. And I was sitting there, I'm like, come on. Why are we playing on sites that... Or why are we not pushing sites to be more flexible with IL rules? I like weekly baseball leagues. I think weekly is better than daily because it's a little more accessible for people. But in daily, if your guy gets hurt, at least you can replace him.

Right. What if you could just replace a guy from your bench in a weekly league if he gets hurt? I think that would be the perfect compromise. It's not that you, yeah, it's like a midweek il swap tout wars has it on on roto it can be programmed it can be built all it is you get a flag where someone has an actual il designation they can come out someone off the bench goes in no further changes that's it because it still rewards you for having good pitching on your bench right in the case of my own Woodruff team, the midweek IL replacement I could have had, this is actually a league where I can do that.

It was Spencer Turnbull against the Blue Jays. And Ryan and I text each other. You might not have even done that. We were like, do we want this start? And we were like, no, no. We'll just take the zero. We'll take our medicine on this one. But you like having the option because you may have had one more good starter or you may have a reliever

that you want to throw out there. You shouldn't get burned because the injury news came out the day after lineups locked. Had you known what you knew, you would have easily just played somebody else because you had somebody else. I don't know. I just think that's a simple accommodation. It's such a trick of the schedule. They probably would have

announced it if maybe they didn't play on Monday that day. They don't have to announce anything because it's a day off. They have to announce something on Tuesday before the game because they're going to make a corresponding roster move. That's just a really frustrating thing about weekly leagues. I hope we can get past that. I just think it would make the game more fun for everybody if we had a little more wiggle room on injured players. The midweek injuries, being able to swap those players out, I think would make our weekly leagues a lot more fun to play. If you've got questions for a future episode, hit us up,

ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. We'll start getting to that mailbag again next week. It's been a little while. I bet that mailbag's as messy as the old mailbag, which is a total disaster right now. I've got lots of thank you notes to send and lots of follow-ups to send to people, and I don't know when I'm going to get them. So if you get emails from me at like 4.30 in the morning, you know exactly what's happening.

I am holding a baby, trying to get the baby to sleep and trying to respond to some emails with like one eye open. It'll keep me awake. That's the good thing. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. If you'd like to get a subscription to The Athletic, it's a dollar a month for the first year at theathletic.com. It's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday.

Thanks for listening. Thank you.