Rates & Barrels - Breakout Bats & Tough Hitter Rankings for 2025

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss a few news-related takeaways from the first weekend of spring training action including the return of Sandy Alcantara, an oblique injury for Sean Manaea, and Dustin May's push back toward a place in the Dodgers' rotation mix. Plus, they examine a few potential breakout hitters from Eno's recent story looking for bats primed to take a leap in 2025, tough rankings on the hitting side as DVR puts the final touches on his Top 300 hitters, and a few mailbag questions. Rundown 3:03 Sandy Alcantara Is Back (and Touching 99 mph) 9:54 Sean Manaea's Oblique Strain & Growing Opportunities in Mets' Rotation 14:27 Excitement Around Tylor Megill's 2024 Adjustments 22:51 Dustin May's Return to the Mound; 2025 Outlook 25:25 Eno's Search for Breakout Hitters 41:06 Tough Hitter Rankings 51:55 Are Projections Missing on Jung Hoo Lee? 59:04 Mailbag Questions! 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 Check out Eno's 2025 breakout hitters story at The Athletic ($): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6151540 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

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. Start getting cash back today by joining Rakuten.

It's free and easy to use, and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Hey, it's Noah Chestnut from The Athletic.

If you're into games and sports, pay attention. I'm going to give you four sports terms. You tell me the common thread. Ready? Game. Match. Point. Set.

This one's kind of a gimme. Game. Match. Point. Set. This one's kind of a gimme. The answer is, how tennis is scored. Do you want more of a challenge? Check out Connections Sports Edition. It's a new daily game for sports fans. To play now, go to theathletic.com

slash connections. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, February 24th. Derek the Ripper, EnoSaris, here with you on this episode. We take a look at some spring training news and notes. we got some injuries, we got guys that are back from injuries, touching 99, that's pretty fun to see in the first outing back coming off of Tommy John surgery. We got some breakout hitters that Eno wrote about for the Athletic, we'll talk about his process and some of the players featured in that piece during this episode. We'll also take a look at some tough hitter ranks as my hitter rankings are finally getting closer to being released. This week will be the week. It will happen this week. Guaranteed. As much as I can guarantee anything in my life at this point in time.

Also got a few mailbag questions we're going to get to as well. How'd the weekend treat you? You know, pretty well. We had the barf draft, the Bay Area Roto fantasy draft where I'm still sitting in in Laura Michaels spot our rest in peace and I won it last year so the the pressure was on for the repeat and they pushed pitchers up and I was annoyed yeah just as a sort of gauge I I like Ryan Pepio and I've been getting him a lot as like my third and fourth starter. In this league, he's my second starter. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's a little bit like the Tyler Malley SP1 maneuver I tried a couple

seasons ago. Yeah. So my hitting, it's almost like a mullet I was saying. It's like my hitting is business in front and pitching is yolo in back. Yeah, how does the mullet approach relate to the yolo yo-yo? It happens when you don't yo-yo. Sometimes you throw the yo-yo down, it just doesn't come back. That's right. And it was Beer Week. So after that, which it's a draft that starts out with shots, like a legend, went out to Beer Week and had some East Coast beer, some Trillium. That was fun.

And then went to a show, the Savvy Fav, on Saturday night. So it was a long, long day, a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I have to report that the lead singer for La Savi Fav no longer has his fastball, as a friend said. The voice is not quite there anymore, but still a great night. It's still a great day. It was still a fun show. Well, sounds like an eventful weekend all around. Yeah, you're getting Trillium out on the West Coast.

It's a good weekend. I think you can say that everything went to script. Speaking of having the fastball, though, Sandy Alcantara was touching 99 during a scoreless inning against the Mets. I know you mentioned a few weeks ago on the show that touching any VELO band for a starter in spring training doesn't really matter if you're not going to sustain it over multiple inning appearances. But I'd put an asterisk next to that statement and say if we're talking about someone coming off of Tommy John surgery and if it's just their first appearance,

they're only going to go, you know, an inning or two anyway. This is only good news that the stuff looks like it's back to where it was to pre-surgery levels. And I did see that our friend Craig Mish over at the Miami Herald reported that the Marlins have no workload restrictions on Sandy Alcantara. They're just gonna let him go, which is kind of exciting as far as what he might do from a fantasy perspective goes and a little bit unnerving from the let's see if his arm holds up perspective. Yeah, Sandy was from the let's see if his arm holds up perspective. Yeah, Sandy was maxing out at 99 in 2019 and 2020 and last year. So, you know, there was a stretch there from 21 to 23

where he's maxing out at 101, but to have him get back to that 99 max is great. I've got a couple of places where I have shares of Sandy because I just thought he's kind of going like, do you have any, like, you know, would you rathers or ADP? Is he kind of going, what is he going like, is it SP4 or something? Yeah, that's what's been the more recent trend.

Look at the last seven days from the NFPC ADP, Sandy Alcantara's overall pick number up 159, MinPick 137,, max pick 206, that min pick's gonna come down. You come out touching 99 in your first spring appearance off TJ and you get the extra bonus report of no restrictions, people are gonna get increasingly excited

as the spring goes on. You know, I'm annoyed a lot of times when you draft early and then the injury information comes out or whatever. This is the flip side of that where, you know, I got Sandy Alcantara as like an SP six, I think in my first draft and that's going to look, I think, hopefully pretty good if he's, if he's healthy. I think you cannot still just say, Oh, they have no restrictions for him. So I will project him into 180 innings because he used to be a workhorse. I think it's just tricky. You know, he hasn't been pitching so it doesn't always have to be the arm. The hamstring could hurt or the back or something, you know, it's like,

and they could find reasons if they're terrible, you know, they could find reasons to give him like a long break around the all-star break and then ramp him back up slowly or whatever it is. So right, I think the ceiling is still lower than what it was pre-injury as it should be. And if he gets to that ceiling, great. But you shouldn't be drafting him with that sort of expectation. If you're looking at Sandy Alcantara, the would you rather as we play a little game of 80 P cliffhangers expecting rather expecting Sandy to move up. The next pitcher ahead of him right now is Jared Jones.

So Sandy Alcantara versus Jared Jones for 2025 only. Who do you take? I would take Sandy. You do start to have to do a little bit of math here where you're seeding strikeouts. Probably because of the workload not being over the top massive. That was one way Sandy got there in the past. But yeah. But even vintage strikeouts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the way that Sandy got to like 180 strikeouts was by pitching 210 innings, right? Yeah, it was both to get there right so okay, so even so Sandy versus Jared Jones I'm it's the good coin flip for me, but I think Jared Jones is also being under drafted right now Yeah, that's why it's hard for me going up one more more spot, Sandhya Contra versus Kodai Singha.

Who would you rather have for 2025? No, I gotta move Sandhya for my rankings, I guess. Ah, ha ha ha. He's gonna move. Was he already ahead of Kodai Singha? Yes, he was already, no, he was evenish with Kodai Singha. He's gonna move ahead of Kodai Singha because they both got serious health issues.

With Kodai, you're just like, did he fix it? What happened? Yeah, and we just didn't see that much of him late in the year coming back from that injury. So it's a similar situation. You're watching him this spring. If everything looks crisp, then he can move up on his own. But I think it's gonna be a wait and see a little bit

for me a little bit longer, least with Kodai Senga Next little group Jack Flaherty versus Sandy Alcantara. I've got that comfortably and Sandy. I already had that Yeah, I would not even the result of the weekend, you know, actually I'm gonna move Sandy pretty close to Jared Jones So Jared Jones might still be ahead when they when I update the ranks, but all right How about all the names you said for the would you rather All right, how about Brian Wu? Of all the names you've said for the would you rather since Ben Jarrett Jones. Brian Wu I'm in love with. Health concerns there too, right?

That's the one thing that kinda holds him back. The earliest Brian Wu's gone in a draft in the last week, pick 119, so we're starting to get a little closer to that pick 100 mark, kinda seventh, eighth round where you may have to reach for your guy if you're looking in this particular group of pitchers. Last one for this exercise, Carlos Rodan versus Sandy Alcantara. Sandy Alcantara.

All right. So you like Sandy quite a bit. So yeah, you're definitely on a team. I'm going to move Sandy into like the sort of 40 to 42 range somewhere. Sonny Gray is the healthy guy there, and Ronaldo Lopez, but maybe ahead of Shane McClanahan. All right, yeah, that puts them up close. Sort of like pick 120 by ADP.

Then it's gonna put them next to McClanahan. Strider goes in that range for now. I'll get some news on Strider, though. Spencer Strider may return in time to make a Grapefruit League appearance, which is not necessarily something we thought a month ago. So there's another way you could see a is not necessarily something we thought a month ago. So there's another way you could see a guy

just start taking off in a massive way. If that timeline looks like it's creeping up and Strider might be pitching in big league games in, I don't know, late April, that would probably be about right if you're able to pitch at all in the Grapefruit League. Then I think that ADP goes through the roof. I think they're just trying to have them in October,

so they're intentionally just shoving everything in October. So they're, you know, they're intentionally just shoving everything kind of a month late, right? Could be. So if he gets into a Grapefruit League, that's like, he's supposed to have gotten a new Grapefruit League this month, right? So for a month now, he gets into a Grapefruit League, then he's gonna take one inning in that one,

three innings in the next one, or two innings in the next one, three innings, you know? So they'll stretch out that way. And yeah, it's almost like mid mid-april late april yeah. The bad news on the pitching injury front continues to come from the Mets where Sean Manaya is expected to join Frankie Montas on the IL to begin the season it's an oblique strain for Manaya and the the depth some of the names we were intrigued by over the course of the winter the depth will be tested for the Mets right off the cuff There's always the possibility they bring Jose Quintana back again I think that's like kind of an automatic

Assumption is that they could just go out and do something along those lines But saying is healthy now clay Holmes went three three perfect innings with three Ks through 34 pitches in his spring debut, so that went about as well as you could ask a spring debut to go for a guy moving back into the rotation from the bullpen. Showed all of his new pitches, he's got a kick change and a cutter and a fore seam, so, you know, with the sweeper and the gyro slider, it's, you know, five, six pitches deep all of a sudden. So Senga and Holmes, as you're2 to begin the season looks pretty realistic then it probably just locks in some combination of David Peterson Tyler McGill and Griffin Canning with maybe like a Brandon Sprote or it's one of the

other young guys possibly pushing for that opportunity but I think the Mets were one of those teams that was hoping to use a six-man rotation to begin the season it doesn't really look like they're gonna have six starters They want to use based on how things are tracking right now time I would be good Nia is like a month probably at least yeah, and and it might be worse for Montaz Yeah, it looks like six to eight weeks for Montaz with that lat injury Yeah, I'm looking at the free agent tracker, and I thought Andrew Haney was a kind of a cool little snipe for the pirates. You know, they're always trying to get one of these veterans just to as insurance to keep Bubba down a little bit longer, I guess, whatever you

want. If you want to be cynical, however you want to put it. But I think Haney's was one of the better, you know, stretch reliever short starter whatever you want to call him at this point that was available what you got left is Kyle Gibson Lance Lin Jose Quintana and Spencer Turnbull is probably the top of the market right there. Quintana fan drafts rejected for two and 24 but if he's been sitting out here this long I think you can get him for 1-8 or something and maybe 1-10 and that might be just what they need to do because I think you can if they want to do the the six man it might still make sense with Kodai you know throwing Quintana in there and pitching Griffin Canning is alright. I wonder if they're just gonna be so injured all year that Griffin Canning just slips through and pitches a fair number of innings. He doesn't have any options. So whenever somebody's

coming back, even if they have a roster crunch, they'll have to option out, you know, like a reliever and use Canning in the pen or something. Otherwise they're just going to lose him outright. So that makes me think that Canning is on this roster for the season. The name that you mentioned that I think is good from a skills perspective and just maybe more of an unknown from a health perspective is Spencer Turnbull. I mean, he had a lat injury during the playoffs.

I think that kept him off the NLDS roster for the Phillies. But by skills, you look and you say, wow, last year 26.1% K- rate, that was a career best. It came kind of split between a starter and relieving role in Philadelphia. That's more interesting than the other guys who I did, when you say their names, I just hear bulk. It's a bulk matters.

You do need guys to go out there every fifth day and start and chew up four, five, sometimes six innings. But maybe Cannon can do that for you too. Like it has to be somewhat better than Sprote. And if you're going to a five man, it has to be better than the canning. Yeah, so I just keep looking at Turnbull as one of those guys that should land somewhere.

I'm with you on the Heaney signing. It probably just makes Bailey Falter less important for the Pirates. That's a good thing to just have Falter as more of a reliever than someone you're relying on every fifth day until you bring up the last of your your early 2025 prospects. On the Mets, I always had McGill ahead of Canning and ahead of Blackburn on the depth chart in my head.

You know, now it's Blackburn's in the mix, too. So right now, I think if they do do a six man, then Blackburn is the six, probably. But a guy that I'm excited about that we haven't mentioned much is Tyler McGill because you know he threw 78 innings last year through but he must have thrown some of the minors didn't he yeah okay so he threw like 120 innings last year through 153 in 2023 so like he can make it to 150 innings and he's a little bit like canning he doesn't have an option so that's always a possibility but he's a little bit like canning, he doesn't have an option so that's always a possibility but he's a little bit like canning where like I think he might just slip through the needle and just

you know like and you look up and you're like oh he pitched 145 innings in the major leagues this year, you know? And they were good because in terms of a mix, Tyler McGill has an acceptable fastball but he's also been metcified where he throws a fastball, a cutter, and a sinker. And his slider's above average by Stuff Plus, and his split is above average by Stuff Plus. So even if the curve is just an amuse-bouche, a change of flavor, a called strike kind of

pitch, it's a pretty big mix. And the command wasn't good by Location Plus last year, but he isn't a guy that got poor braids on command. I mean, his prospects, yeah, I guess he's 40, 45 by Fangrass. It's a long time ago. His walk rates haven't been terrible. So just a little bit of an improvement from him for command wise. He's got the mix to succeed. And right now he's definitely got a rotation spot. So I would bump Miguel up your, up bump Miguel up your draft boards a little bit. Yeah, I think the various graphics you've made

looking for pitchers that have multiple fastballs, good stuff, just looking for all those different filters, he comes up a lot as a very, very late, inexpensive on draft day sort of guy that's probably more important to the Mets because of these injuries, but it may have been more important to them all along than folks realized. I noticed the Roto-wire player outlook highlighted

this really well. McGill wasn't throwing that two-seamer until the end of June so he came back from the minors and he started throwing it and from that point on he had a 3 ERA, a 118 whip, 42 Ks, 13 walks and 39 innings over seven starts and one relief appearance. Just a different pitcher with that. It's crazy too because Stuff says it's 113 Stuff plus Sinker. It's suddenly his best fastball. I think some of the old school pitching development was you have to have a good foreseam and you're going to stay in the corner until you have one. And then I talked about this a little with Logan Webb where it gets to the big leagues and it's like, Hey, that sinker is pretty good, dude.

Yeah. Just throw that. Good. Just throw it. Yeah. I like make it a lot. And I think he's, he's all the way through. If canning does sneak through and get them a lot of innings this year, I'm not even

sure that's a good thing. I don't know. You know, we played this game with DFS and no options, right? And I talked about the Canario Owen Casey thing where Canario is going to make the roster because he had no he had no options. And then they just DFA. They DFA them when they brought in Justin Turner. And I have to think that canning is kind of reminds me of that.

It's right on the line. Like if they signed Kintana, what's the percentage chance that to think that canning is kind of reminds me of that. It's right on the line. Like if they signed Quintana, what's the percentage chance they just do you think? Still pretty low. They gave him a free agent deal for four million. Not that you can't DFA a guy for four million, but if they're having all these depth, like they sought him out. So I think he's a little bit safer. And he's been interesting before. Griffin Canning, you don't have to go back that far to find the career best strikeout rate. 2023 25.9% K rate, had a Sierra under 4 for the first and only time in his career. Now he's in a more pitcher friendly environment with an organization that certainly knows how to make tweaks to pitching. So I'm not going to rule out the possibility of Griffin Canning being part of the solution there either.

And this is a rotation group of depth guys that we will be targeting frequently in our leagues because it makes a lot of sense. Well then I think Blackburn and Canning are safe and they may not actually sign another guy because Blackburn and Canning both don't have options. Holmes, Peterson, and Senker are in and then I think you just play if you're going to go six man you play Magill. Right and if any of the veterans are bad or hurt, you go to Sprote. 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.

Start getting cash back today by joining Rakuten. It's free and easy to use, and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Hey, speaking of sinkers, what do you think about Chris Bubich having a new sinker?

Does that change your interest level in him as he's trying to compete for that number five starter spot in Kansas City. Well, the problem for me is just that he reminds me a lot of Brady Singer, where the fastball and slider are pretty good, but it's not a wide enough arsenal for me to be a really successful starting pitcher. And adding another fastball is cool, but still leaves him kind of short in my estimation. All right, because I think he's adding that he's a lefty trying to throw something in on the hands of lefties that moves, that gets a little weak contact, that seems to be the-

On righties, yeah. Yeah, so he just wants something in the arsenal to add another option for that split, yeah, trying not to get beat by the righties. But yeah, I'm more intrigued by Bubich, I think, than you are at this point. A few other news items to get to you. Wyatt Langford currently being held up with a mild oblique strain. They had a five to seven day timetable for that return and that was pre-weekend so maybe we'll see him back by the end of this week.

Obliques are one of those injuries. I lean more toward rounding up on the timetable. Hopefully it's the kind of thing they can just get calm down. But it is such a low number that you can round up and be like, okay, you'll be fine. Right, it should be fine for opening day if they don't keep making it worse. That's kind of where we're at on the calendar,

is like, just give them the extra couple of days, don't let this be a thing that lingers throughout the spring and then cost some time when the season starts. Basically, where I would be worried in terms of being ready for the season is once the timetable and two weeks before the season start overlapping. Because most hitters do tell me that they need two weeks to get their timing.

And we see even that hitters in general are behind pitchers in April. Maybe it's because of the weather, because it's colder weather, the ball doesn't go as far. But for every reason, hitters even do weird things like they don't swing as much in April. Maybe it's because of the weather, because you know, it's colder weather, the ball doesn't go as far. But for every reason, hitters even do weird things like they don't swing as much in April. Yeah, just takes a little bit of time to get the feel I think. So right now, White Lankford, you could take the seven day and you could even double it and say 14 days, and you'll still have his two weeks to get ready for the season.

Two full weeks plus of spring training games would be all he really needs to get that timing back and to get back up to speed. So yeah, just don't let this become a problem into the regular season for Wyatt Langford. We're also keeping an eye on a biceps injury for Parker Meadows. He's going to have some further testing today. That's according to I think Chris McCoskey of Detroit News. But we'll see if this turns into anything. It doesn't seem like a serious problem, but Parker Meadows, a guy that we both like, should the opportunity actually be there.

I was poking around a little bit on him because I had the story that like he was more aggressive in the second half. And that's why he broke out. But he had a really weird collection of things. So he had a 29 percent hard hit rate and a five% barrel relate with a 500 slugging in the second half last year. And I'm like, that doesn't all line up right in my head. No, but that's all worse than what he's done in his overall body of work as a big leader,

split over parts of two seasons, right? 7.4% for the barrel rate, 32.3% for the hard hit rate. I don't know, man. The one thing that bothers me is he's just not a guy who hits the ball that hard. No, it's not absurd, but it's also, it's not the weak contact either. It's like 15 to 18 homerun power instead of 25 plus.

But that's fine, he runs. That'll work itself out. It's not the six to seven homer power either probably, so it's probably fine. Just like knock down the ceiling a little bit. I think that's what that takeaway was for me when you brought up that issue for Parker Meadows. Last news item to pass along,

Dustin May had a scoreless inning in his spring debut. And I think we've talked about this on the Dodgers preview before. That was even right before they brought Kershaw back into the mix, but Kershaw's not coming back until sometime this summer So it's all very complicated. What was your expectation for Dustin May in terms of early season usage? Is he actually part of this rotation as as it's currently designed?

They said that we're gonna go to a five-man rotation and to Otani comes back and then turn it to a six But they still have Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in this rotation. So I actually think that maybe it'll be a Dodgers quote unquote five man rotation where it's actually still a six man rotation. They're like, oh, today Tony's bitchin'. So my expectation going into the season is actually that Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May both make the rotation. Dustin May has to make the team because he has no options and he's not at that DFA line, you know, so Dustin May is gonna make the team for sure and Tony Gonsolin has an option but he's pitched fine in the major leagues. Like I just I don't think that he's in danger of losing his rotation spot.

So I think Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May are both in this rotation. Maybe May is a long reliever, but I think he's above that line. And if I was the Dodgers, I would say, well, we'd planned on doing a five man, but we really want to see what Dustin can do in the rotation and give him give him another try at it. You know? Yeah, I do think the only thing that would make it more realistic for the Dodgers to use a five-man rotation is that you have more off days kind of stacked up on the calendar early in the year, so you just don't, you don't run to those stretches where you go six consecutive days of the game very often, and then you get to May, June. So Dustin May is your sixth starter that you skip because of the off days. And I mean, that's a risk.

I've been taking some late shares of May. I just took him in barf, I think. And one of the reasons that I did was because I think he was in the bench rounds and I thought, we'll know something. We'll know like in a couple of weeks, we'll have a better idea of how he's gonna be used. And then if that first free agency run, I need a a dropper it could be Dustin May, it's fine.

Right, good enough to be used if he has the role you expect, easy enough to cut if he doesn't. I think that's the way I would sum that up and that's a good way to build out your bench if you're doing early drafts. Let's shift the focus over to a story you wrote for the athletic looking for breakout hitters. We talked about these principles all the time on the show, but the story is called Emily Breakout, candidates, young hitters ready to step up in twenty twenty five. And we're not going to read all the names or anything like that, but I'm going to pop the table up that was in here because it's a nice visual.

If you're watching us on YouTube and you see a pretty interesting group of eight names on here, I love that Alec Thomas still continues to pop as someone that might have more in the tank as a hitter than we've seen so far I look forward to I think one of the commenters even said I'm gonna have Alec Thomas on my team for the eighth consecutive year and maybe this will be the year I'm guilty of that too I I keep looking at it and saying why not because defensively he does enough to earn playing time and we've seen just these little glimmers of hope. This is more like an L only or draft and hold whereas some of the other

guys on this list are going to be rostered in 10 and 12 team mixed leagues so we'll focus on some of the more shallow league targets of this bunch and it's kind of funny to me that we were at the point in the Jason Dominguez arc to begin his career where I think the hype has finally settled in at a manageable spot where it's appropriate people are excited about what he might do as a hitter but the expectation isn't that he's a shoe in for rookie of the year honors and he's going to go 30 30 this year for sure. Right.

There's things to like about him. The defense is still a little bit of a question mark, but it looks like the Yankees are finally positioned to just let it happen, just to let Jason Dominguez be a big part of their lineup. And there's a lot of things he's shown us that he's done very well up to this point in his professional career. Yeah, I think the Yankees actually coached this up pretty well. This came up in a piece that I did comparing the Yankees and Mets futures. And I found that thanks to Lance Bronszowski, found out that the Yankees were number one in 95th percentile exit velocity last year in the minor leagues.

And so I also know that they spent a lot of time on swing decisions. So you have, and Dominguez's 109.3 on this chart doesn't actually tell the whole story because, you know, he only had 67 play appearances in the major leagues. In the minor leagues, he had a 111.6, so he was better there. So when I see this chart, I see a guy who hits the ball hard, has really good swing decisions, just a little bit worse than Tyler Soderstorum's swing decisions, and runs like the wind. And the biggest flaw so far for him has maybe been K percentage and, you know, outfield defense. And I just can't believe that somebody with these skills that used to play centerfield can't handle left field even in Yankee Stadium

where maybe it is harder than other left fields. I don't know. But I think he will iron out the defense and he'll, you know, he'll do enough where they're like, okay, he's going to run fast. He's going to be acid on the base pass. He's going to take some walks and he's going to hit some rockets and we'll just put him low in the order and we'll just put him out there. I mean, that's been the risk with the Yankees prospects is do they make it into the starting lineup or do they have to go back down again and spend their time in the liners waiting? And I think he's at the point now where I look at that depth chart and I say that they're going to put them in all year. So I like him there. Tyler Soderstrom at the top, you know,

he does everything right, you know? And I was trying to look through what happened last year because he went down. I wanted to see what he did when he came back up. And I think he's just had a little bit of a hard time toggling his contact point out in front of the plate. Because if you look at his pull rates and his swing rates and stuff,

he's somewhere where like he can't decide how aggressive to be. And I think you've seen that with some of his fluctuating walk rates in the minor leagues. He's had some stops where it starts with seven and other stops where it starts from eleven. I think that generally when he came back up, he was more patient. And I think it was good for him. And he's a guy who obviously has the top in bat speed, hit a ball 113.5 in 2023 in the minor leagues, 112 last year up here, 14% barrel rate. And lastly, I just think that like, you know, everybody's projecting him for a low babbitt, but I don't see a 50% fly ball rate. I don't,

he is a little bit slow, but he doesn't pull outrageously. I don't think he's that easy to defend. So if you just give him 20 points of backup, everybody's saying like, he's gonna hit like the 280 on batting average on balls in place out of Tyler Soderstrom. And I'm saying, what if that's a 300? Then he's like a 245, 250 hitter with 30 homerun power.

In a middle third of the lineup placement too. I think he's a guy to circle. Yeah, he makes a lot of sense. When we were talking about our A's, A's preview about a week or so ago, or two weeks ago now, I looked at Soderstrom and was like, this is a guy that quietly did everything better

with more opportunity, had a wrist injury that cost him some time last year. And I think just missing that time has sort of hidden how good that step forward was from Tyler Soderstrom. So nice to see him included in that piece. I know we talked about Jordan Walker during the Cardinals previews.

We don't have to rehash him necessarily today either. Hunter Goodman popped in here. And I don't think we mentioned him during the Rockies previews. So I think we should talk about Hunter Goodman because the thing I've struggled with is figuring out how exactly he gets to enough playing time to make the leap from 15-team leagues

where you start two catchers to the more mid-size, more commonly played formats out there. I mean, his battle ball metrics are so good that even in 333 player appearances, oopsie says he's gonna hit 244 with 18 homers You know and I kind of think that I think WRC press is a little bit broken for for Colorado We talked about this in the past. It has to do with how they're pitched and Whatever, but if you just sort by Woba

Hunter Goodman is in the circle of trust in terms of he's a he's one of the top five hitters on this team You know and so I kind of think that it's one of those things where you know Maybe you have like a seventh inning reliever behind a bad closer, and you're just like he's headed that direction He's gonna take a job. You know he's gonna they're gonna be like oh well he hits the snot out of bomb We don't actually have that many people who do that. So let's find a place for him on the field. They announced that he's starting, he's catcher twice a week. So you're right to be worried about that.

I mean, that twice a week is, you could end up with 200 plate appearances. So what you have to circle are Michael Toglia, a switch hitter at first base, unfortunately, but with a lot of strikeouts. Jordan Beck in right field, who we are excited about, but who's in strikes out a little bit too much. And then maybe Chris Bryant at DH.

Yeah, Chris Bryant. I mean, I think I saw one of the first days of spring training gets drilled by a pitch by one of his own teammates. Oh, God, no. He's OK. But the video that was going around, like, you can't even make this stuff up. first days of spring training gets drilled by a pitch by one of his own teammates. He's OK. But the video that was going around like, you can't even make this stuff up. I mean, the guy just comes into camp first interviews. Yeah, I feel good. Steps out of the field. Boom. Gets drilled in the shoulder.

And you're like, come on, man. Like, that's how I felt, by the way, with Bobby Miller, because Bobby Miller gets up on the bump and he's throwing a new sweeper. And it looks OK, but he can't find the strike zone. And he just gets smoked up on the bump and he's throwing a new sweeper and it looks okay but he can't find the strike zone and he just gets smoked up on line drive and it's like oh gosh all right. So I mean I look at the situation as you described it I'm like okay yeah between Tolya, Beck, Nolan Jones and Chris Bryant you get first base mix of inexperience and injury risk. Tolia and Beck being inexperienced and Jones and Bryant having missed a lot of time with

injuries last year. There are a lot of paths for Goodman. It's just like waiting to see which one it is. Maybe he's more of a watch list player in shallow leagues, but yeah, even with a small playing time projection, the power numbers are pretty convincing. So it's nice to see he's also making some good swing decisions here

to support that big time power that he's shown really throughout his entire time in the minor leagues. One sort of issue I had with this list was that last year's list was not, I don't want to admit this in the story, but it was not super exciting. But you'll admit that on the podcast. Yeah, because we're among friends here. Who's reading your stuff?

Those aren't friends? No, they aren't too. I don't know. Like, you know, I just didn't want to start the story with, oh, it was terrible last year. Yeah, this wasn't very good. But read this. Here's the... Hit the smiley face. Exactly.

And share with friends. Here's the list from last year. Spencer Torkelson, Jack Sawinski, Nelson Velazquez, Christopher Morel, Francisco Alvarez, MJ Valendez, of course, David Schneider, Noel V. Marte, Michael Garcia, and Ellie Deela Cruz. So a couple of things occurred to me was just at some point I could have a better waiting for this and maybe each of the categories doesn't need to be weighted exactly 25%. Another one was that by focusing on barrel, I need more sample. I think hard hit comes through

faster. And also, if you think about aging curves, players tend to lift the ball a little bit more as they age. It's just how the aging curves for ground balls go. So if you focus on hard hit over barrel with young might be a good idea because they might be able to add that lift component to their hard hit and add power over time. I mean, that's what the aging curve says they will do in the aggregate anyway, you know, so you're betting on the aggregate. And so I took barrel out and replaced my hard hit in this rate. But I would just say

that just generally this group looks really exciting to me. And this year's list, I think, passes the sniff test a little better. Or at least I'm just like, any effort like this is going to go in and out just based on the personnel. Maybe last year's list was pretty good, and maybe this year they'll be better. Like, Chris and Ramarel could still kind of break out, you know, and just be like, oh, well, you're early, I guess. Alvarez got hurt. I still really like him. It still produced Alvarez and Eli de la la Cruz. So like it still produced some guys It's just yeah

I think there's also some benefit to keeping an eye out for the guys that have graduated from prospect status But still don't even have that much big league experience I mean like Soderstrom last year took the step forward Jordan Walker in his rookie season Showed us a lot that kept us excited. And Dylan Cruz, you know, we keep waiting for the version of the player we thought he was coming out of LSU to show up, but he's doing interesting things with the speed that we didn't necessarily expect coming out of that. I could have called it a post hype sleepers article too.

Like it's, you know, there's a lot of used to be hype on that list. And then of course you get some more earlier rounders in here too, with James Wood popping across the board of these metrics and junior Cameron Arrow and Cameron arrows in that, that rare group of young player that the projections also love. But that's not usually what you get with, with players that have as little time in the big leagues as junior Cameron Arrow. Yeah.

And I think he's because he's not costing the sort of Bobby Witt second round prices, you know, before he played. I'm actually still in on it. I think third base gets really bad. And so I have circled Junior Caminero, Matt Chapman and Alex Bregman. That's kind of where I want to be. Worst case scenario. I know there are a lot more third basemen

that come after that, but I don't really like a lot of them. I missed that cutoff in a league recently. I got Alec Baum and I immediately took two more third basemen because I was like, this is not good. And I'm not saying that Alec Baum is bad. It's just, you know, he really fell off in the second half last year.

He was even being like rested sometimes and not played. And even his upside is probably like 280, 18. Well, yeah, this is a good segue. I don't think you realized it at the time, but it was a perfect segue to something else we're gonna talk about today, tough hitter rankings. Did read the rundown for once. It's okay, you know what?

You're among friends, you didn't have to admit that you did or I confess if you didn't it's okay So I did find that looking through and I just took a look at ADP versus combined projections and can just did a sort by both and said okay Like who does the market like more or less than projections? I think those players often end up being our tough ranks and going through that process right now. Sure enough, it flagged a bunch of players that I was either much higher or much lower

than the market on, so the chaos was apparent. But there's a lot of third basemen on that list. Matt Chapman is among the players that projections really like, but the market is cautious. I don't know if it's an overcorrection because we as humans look at Matt Chapman stealing more bases at his age and say, oh, that's not really a big part of his game,

so I'm just gonna lop off almost all of those stolen bases. I get it because he stole more bases, 15, he stole more bases last year than he did in the rest of his big league career combined. So maybe it's an over-culture for that. I do think it has something to do with that because you look at 15, you look at the projections, the projections are going to be like, okay, a lot of last year, a little bit of the year before, a little bit of the year before, right?

And just not really consider his contract status or whatever it is. And you get to 10 basically. And 10, if you need what we said was kind of like 12 and a half, 13 per roster slot, 10 is one of those third base, one of the few third basemen that actually keeps you afloat, you know, in stolen bases. If you think it's really a three or four again, like he had been in the past, then he doesn't

give you any help in stolen bases. He's more like, you know, a Bregman type. And Bregman is going from a park that was pretty good for him to a park that might be even better for him. So you might be saying, well, if Bregman's a 280 hitter with the Green Monster, you know, I think he could be something like that. 280, you know, 25-3, then I'm going to take him over Chapman if I think Chapman's only going to steal three or four bags.

Yeah, I felt like the market was underrating Bregman as well. I hew pretty closely to projections but I have my quabbles. I find things in the projections that I don't always agree with, specifically playing time. That's the case with Jordan Westberg. So you have those three guys all at this position where there's some disagreement. Royce Lewis because of multiple ACL tears. I mean projecting his playing time, good luck. Right, so that's where you get all these, I think part of what makes that position

feel kind of terrible in the draft is that tension, that disagreement between what the market's doing and what the projections say you should be doing, and you're gonna have to really kind of work through that and make sure that you have a good feel for what you really expect from that group. Even if Matt Chapman steals three or four bags, which he was doing in the three previous years before the 15, if he's going to do that with high 20s power and the huge volume of

playing time he always gives you, to me it's almost more like a Marcus Simeon sort of workload that Matt Chapman takes on. And I don't think that's properly priced. And I think that's the thing people are overlooking about Matt Chapman takes on. And I don't think that's properly priced. And I think that's the thing people are overlooking about Matt Chapman. Like they're over-correcting for the speed, probably not being reliable, but they never seem to fully grasp just how good he is

from a durability perspective and what that leads to as far as those really high RBI and run scored numbers that you get from him most years. Yeah, and I don't love certain things about the way the batted balls are. But I also have to admit that this is a great place for him to be for for his skill set. I mean, righty, that pulls the ball like that. And then, you know, I think that there is something about Westberg that I discovered recently Alex Fast texted me this.

And he said, well, aren't you are you worried at all about Westberg's what he did in two strike counts or whatever? Westberg last year, where is he? Is this the opposite of Cody Bellinger, where you're like he didn't have a two strike approach or he was really bad in those situations? Whereas Bellinger two years ago, the narrative was he figured it out with two strikes. We know that he has that Westbrook has has a large swing strike rate and that, you know, that he should have maybe had a higher strikeout rate. So I think he did have a good two strike count.

a higher strikeout rate. So I think he did have a good two strike count, but with Cody Ballinger, so what he did was he hit 214 with a 386 slugging. And you know, that doesn't sound great, but it's actually top 20 in the big leagues. In fact, it's the same slugging percentage on two strikes as Jordon Alvarez had. And so I do think that might regress a little bit.

And I do think his strikeout rate might regress a little bit. So it's not all fun and gravy on Westberg for me. And he's being taken right between some veterans that have, I think, higher floors. Like what if Westberg comes out and strikes out more like 24, 25% of the time, and goes down to a two, like the league slugging in two strike counts is like 200, right?

So he goes back to a 200 slugging in two strike counts. And so then you might expect him to hit 245 with 15 homers and 10 steals. And then you might rather have those veterans that you passed on for him. Maybe, I don't know though. I keep looking at that projection for playing time and thinking it's just light.

I mean, I know he was hurt last year, but I think Jordan Westberg was much closer to every single day in the lineup than sharing his job. And all the projection systems over at Fangraphs are under 600 plate appearances. I'd be surprised. He's not just about to go into the Ramon Urias role where he only faces lefties. So as a righty who passes that bar, you just figure everyday guy.

I'm also surprised just as you look at the K-rate and say, it's probably going up. I think the walk rate is probably going up too. If he's working counts deeper, I think he's got a pretty good idea of the strike zone. We saw that really throughout his time in the minor leagues. So I don't think he's a true talent 4.9 percent walk rate guy either So maybe you lose a little bit of average But you gained some OVP that could wash things out a little bit more chances at first base, you know to take a stolen base Yeah, I ended up in the it's still still not quite published but the

Almost done. That's my whole life. It's almost done Jordan Westberg not not my actual life, but everything I've been working on in my life. I hope my life is not almost done. I had Westberg right next to Marcus Simeon. I think, you know, you could say I like Simeon better because I know he's going to play more and he's got the durability and Westberg doesn't.

Definitely, the arrows are in way different directions on those careers, as much as I like Semyon. I want the guy that's got a 45.6% hard hit rate as a big leaguer, give me that. And I think the speed for Marcus Semyon has kind of trailed off to the point too where you're not getting the edge that you might have been getting from him

in that category in the past either. So that's where I kind of settled in on Westbrook. Higher than the market, not like in a ridiculously aggressive sort of way, but probably gonna end up with more Westburg than a lot of folks this year. I loved him last year, I still like him quite a bit. This year is probably the main takeaway for me. Couple other tough projections.

Randy Orozarena, projections like him a lot, the market doesn't. One of the things you have pointed out is that with time in T-Mobile with the ballpark in Seattle, players tend to do better after spending a year there or even part of a year there. Right. I think just getting through an adjustment window seems pretty important there. We talked about it at the time of the trade when the Rays flipped Randy Rosarana to the Mariners like hey Maybe hitting in another difficult place to hit the trop will help him He'll make the adjustments faster And it was a it was a mixed bag for Randy Rosarana post trade the slash line looked about the same the K-rate did go Up to twenty eight point five percent at the end of the year. He wasn't running quite as much

Babap went up. He was hitting more grounders. I mean, it does sound like maybe he had a different kind of conversation with a hitting coach. There are definitely some strategy differences here. Yeah. And this is, I think, one of the more consistent power-speed combos by year over year that I think does it with a lot of waves over the course of the season. If you followed what happens in season

with Randy Arroz Arena throughout his time in the big leagues, there's some pretty high highs, there's some pretty low lows. And at the end of the year, you look at the final numbers, you go, oh, there's 20 plus homers, there's 20 plus steals, a lot of runs, pretty good average. Prior to 2024, he was trending in the wrong direction just in terms of the average kind of sliding down every year. But still, it was a 219, it was a big departure

from the sort of 250, 260s. Yeah, like 240, 250 seems more like where we're going and projections are more like 230, 240, so even the projections might be a tad lighter, at least baking in further aging and further struggles. I find myself more on the side of the projections with the bounce back on a Rosarana than I do on the ADP which is very cautious with him so far. Yeah I'm thinking he's gonna improve his second year in Seattle he's gonna see it see

the ball better for that figure out whatever that Sun batter's eye effect is and at least have some strategies to cope with it and I just generally find him in a place I was taking we He's on my barf team, on my barf team, which we just throw up. You got that board. Yeah. So you can see where I took him. I went Gunnar, Merrill, Devers to start. It was really, it was funny because I'd looked at ADP and I was like, I think I'm going to go Gunnar, Merrill, Machado, Cole, Bautista. Devers fell to me me and I said, well, this is exactly how I planned.

That means I'm gonna win, right? Then I went Will Smith, Brian Reynolds, Spencer Steer and Arosa Reyna. What I did figure out after I went Will Smith and Brian Reynolds was I had fallen behind in steals. So with my mind set towards steals a little bit, I went steer a Rosarena Bogarts. So that means I took Rosarena in the middle of the eighth, ninth round, which seems like a pretty good place to get a 240, 2020 guy. Yeah, it's more in line with what's been happening over the last seven days or so. Pick 135 right around the spot where you got him tends to be the average.

But that's to me, really good value that the market is giving you a pretty nice discount on a Rosarina. We saw the risk. It was on full display last year. That's a really nice foundation you built and look your strength, especially as being able to find more pitching. It's one of your many strengths at playing this game. So I think leaning into that because of what the room did that can't necessarily be a bad thing for you. Yeah, you want to hear my pitching staff just by itself, you'll notice something. I've been touting Ryan Pepio and love him and usually have him as my three or four, but in this one it goes Cole, Bautista Pepio is my second pitcher, lovely. Luis Heal, Taj Bradley, I had to be like,

okay, this is your Yolo staff. Reese Olsen, Ranger Suarez, Brian Baio, Justin Verlander. Now we're on the bench. It's Tanoko, Bidot, Sugano, Dustin May and Kasey Mize. With Sugano and May and Mize, it was like, I'm going to learn something this spring. Mize is throwing a new breaking ball. He had three Ks and two innings. If the K rate is up and the breaking balls look good, then I made a good choice. And with Sugano, I want to see the K rate

too because he didn't K that many people in Japan. And if it's only soft contact and we're worried with May, it's like, what's the role? So I predict right now that like, you know, to no co May and Sugano are my first drops. But it's OK. It's fine. Those guys at the bottom don't make it to the end. I like that draft a lot, though, man. I know it's the earlier draft will also make the first fab kind of loaded with some useful players that pop. So I think if you can find a pitcher to you really like coming out of spring

to help bolster that group Then you'll be in even better shape once the season begins But love the advantages you got on the hitting side building that out the way that you did One other guy that I want to talk about in a little bit of detail is Jung-ho Lee 37 games last year before his season ended due to injury and I just wondered do we get enough answers about? his season ended due to injury and I just wonder do we get enough answers about the type of hitter he will be against big league pitching to buy into the projections that are out there because I think the difficulty right now of figuring things out players coming over from professional foreign leagues is actually a little tricky it's a high level of difficulty I think and we're going to

go through this with high sound kim coming over to the Dodgers this year too. I've wondered if stealing bases easier in Major League Baseball than it is in the KBO because of the rules. That's one kind of quirk. And when we have, the last two seasons have been cut short with injury. Even the last season in the KBO being put into the system was only 86 games, I think that does some weird stuff to what this projection system will spit out for Jung-ho Lee. If you take the most optimistic projection of all, it's from Oopsy, 13 homers, 13 steals, 271, 329, 401 by the slash line, It's the most optimistic by power and speed, but it's a little bit lighter than the other slash lines.

So if you just take the projection systems you want, mix and match them, you could really get some pretty exciting numbers for Zheng Hu Li. So just based on the little bit we did see last season, 41% hard hit, right? Kept the K-ray under 10%, which is what he was doing in each of his last five seasons in the KBO. This looks like a profile that's going to work and the only thing I see that's really

jarringly different was a 47% ground ball rate during his time in San Francisco when he was in the high 50s each of his last three seasons in Korea. That's the one thing I'm looking at and going, did he change something? Is the way he's being pitched different? Does that actually make any sense? Where are you at on Jung-ho Lee? Because I feel like we haven't talked a lot about him over the course of this winter.

One thing that I'd heard in the scouting report was that, yes, he makes a ton of contact, but he does pick his spots and turn and burn on things. And if you just look at his limited time spray chart, you will see some home runs to the pull side. You can also look at things like, okay, well this profile is a lot like Stephen Kwan. Let me look at some bat speeds.

Oh, cause Stephen Kwan has one-th percentile. One-th percentile bat speed. First percentile. Yeah. 64.6. Jung-Hoo Lee swings the bat six miles an hour faster than Stephen Kwan. I think that's kind of meaningful.

Pretty exciting. Because, yeah, because, you know, otherwise I think they compare really well. Like in terms of squared up percentage, this is squared up not like on results. This is squared up based on where the ball hit the bat. You know, this is kind of a process thing. He compares very well to Stephen Kwan.

And in terms of with percentage and K percentage, now we're talking about results, he profiles well to Stephen Kwan and in terms of with percentage and capers, as now we're talking about results, he profiles like a Stephen Kwan. So if you take have a Stephen Kwan starter package plus six miles an hour bat speed, that's where you can start to be like, okay, yes, it's a worst park. So that's going to steal some but what if he just hits 10 homers on the road and three at home? You know, that's a pretty easy way for him I could that I could just hits 10 homers on the road and three at home. That's a pretty easy way for him, that I could believe on him to get to 13 homers.

And if he's gonna be 12 to 13 homers, then I'm trying to get 19 to 20 homers per spot, but it's again, it's almost like that 10 with Chapman, right? If you get 13 homers from Stephen Kwan, then he doesn't hurt you as much in the power category as you might think he does. And he helps you a ton in batting average and he keeps you afloat in stone bases.

He starts to become a really exciting player. If he hits you six home runs, he hurts you in a place almost as much as he might help you. So that might be why the market is saying they don't love him but you know the projections have some reason to love him. Yeah I'm definitely warming up to the possibility of Jung-ho Lee just being underrated in general and that that bat speed difference is it's much more than I would have guessed. I would have guessed

within a mile or two per hour just based on what you see on the back of the baseball card as far as strikeout rates and how they both approach their games. Interesting note here, producer Brian Smith dropping this one for us. Bob Melvin saying Lee could bat third this season and he did bat third in the Cactus League opener. That would also kind of lean more into the hey he's got more power than people realize. Like that would make some sense. The other part of that would be who else would they use in that spot based on the way that lineup is built to write?

Is it just the lack of of clear, better alternatives? What Bryce Eldridge is going to be there right away? But maybe he's maybe Bryce Eldridge has a path to the heart of the order a little faster than expected to if Jung-ho Lee is getting that opportunity right now. to the heart of the order a little faster than expected too if Jung-ho Lee is getting that opportunity right now. Yeah, I think that that you know, Willie Domus is in the top, Matt Chapman's in the top and then maybe Elliot Ramos. So that's your that's your four best hitters and

there's gonna be some sorting through process. Maybe maybe they want Lee a little bit higher and Ramos's power behind him. That could be but no matter what what you want out of being at the top of this lineup is us maybe they want Lee a little bit higher in Ramos's power behind him. That could be, but no matter what, what you want out of being at the top of this lineup is plate appearances. That's the number one thing. So if he's in the top three and it's easy the first, second or third, then it almost doesn't matter that that's good news. He's going to get a lot of plate appearances.

Then health-wise, I think also position-wise I know maybe Grant McCrae, if you start to do build a bench, Grant McCrae might make this team and he is a good defender, but offensively this team needs every little ounce it can get. And so I just don't see them sitting Lee from a cray very often. You know, that's more of a maybe true backup outfielder situation than I want. Lee has the best combination of glove and offense at centerfield, and that's probably what I want in there as often as possible. Yeah, I'm looking at Wilmer, one of Schmidt or Wisely, the backup catcher

and then McCray or Luis Matos, probably getting the last spot to be the reserve outfielder. That build a bench is not fun. Yeah, it gets a little tough. Yeah. And just having Wilmer Flores and Gerard Encarnacion on the same team makes it hard because if you want them both to make the team, you start running out of slots because Gerard has a backup and then Murphy is a backup.

Maybe Fitzgerald can play a backup short for you, but then you kinda want Wisely to make this team to play a backup second, backup short. So that's three of your four. That means the fourth guy is either Matos or McCray, right? All right, we got one more segment to get to, just a few mailbag questions to knock out here. The first came from OriolBird in our Discord.

Which Platoon players get a bump in daily leagues? A few in the question include Kerry Carpenter, Brandon Lau, Ryan O'Hern. Yeah, I would agree with all three of those, but who else are you bumping up in leagues with daily moves where you can take advantage of just way better than league average players in those splits? And the first guy that I think of right away is Jock Peterson, of course.

Jock, yeah. I mean, that's that's the dude. But I'm reprising my my lefty, lefty savant search to to to see what's going on here. What's going on? Oh, this is like, oh, I want, and I want to get the bottom of it. So Oswald Cabrera, Trevor Larnock,

the Trevor Larnock, Matt Wallner crew. Yeah, they get a good bump. They're both really good against righties. Lamont Wade Jr., depending on the depth of your league, especially if it's an OBP league. Gavin Lux has been in this in the past, so I don't know what his new rule is gonna be. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good list of names.

Yeah, I think the Jock Peterson one, people just forget. Josh Lowe. Lowe gets that pretty good bump too. Even with some of these guys, if they get playing time against lefties, you may not want them in the lineup against them, but they're so good against righties. You do I want to do that Mullins Yeah

Look how how big were his splits last year cuz he didn't immediately pop into my head since he keeps the playing time But it doesn't always his playing time is way softer in OPS or some WWRC plus What do you think is WRC Plus was against righties? Against righties I think he was probably like a 120. Yeah, 121, what do you think he was against lefties? Well they started sitting them so I'm guessing it was like an 85.

43. 43, yikes. Yeah, so Cedric Mullins is part of that conversation now. Now for sure. But yeah, definitely one where you can pop up a leaderboard over at Fan Graphraphs, split it down, you'll see some names that jump off the page when you sort by WRC+.

Look at silly Giants news, Tom Murphy hurt herniated disc. It says multiple weeks, like that could be something that he doesn't make opening day. Sam Huff time. Sam Huff, yeah. Sam Huff gets into the build a bench conversation for the Giants. This question is from MJ Logan. We were talking about Emmanuel Classe and being concerned about the number of innings he'd thrown year over year over year working

in the back of that Guardians bullpen. MJ Logan was wondering if we track high leverage appearances instead of innings because of the possible difference for guys that come in sometimes in lower stakes situations. Maybe they cruise through two or three innings because of the possible difference for guys that come in sometimes in lower stakes situation maybe they cruise through two or three innings but comparing that to a higher stress situation like finishing a game is that something you ever looked at before there's a lot of confining factors because if they are in a high leverage situation they are throwing harder right generally yeah and I think they throw harder even they throw themselves and other ones. So

yes, I would I would agree. I do remember john Smoltz telling me that like he thought every inning in the playoffs was was three innings in terms of stress on the arms. So we're trying to see if like the maybe the list becomes more predictive in terms of injury injury if that's that's sort of the subtext here maybe. I'm looking here at the last three years by high leverage only total batters faced. Alexis Diaz, number one. Kyle Finnegan, Jordan Romano, David Bednar, Emmanuel Classe, Kenley Jansen, Camila Del

Valne. Oh, this is split seasons. I'm re-updating that. So it's the last three seasons, not split by season. I was like, why is Romano on here twice? Twice the man. Anyway, yes, Clausé, 420 over the last three years, number one. Finnegan, second. Tanner Scott, Kenley Jansen, Camilo Deval, Josh Hader, David Bednar, Clay Holmes, Jordan Romano, Devin Williams. So I don't know. That has been mostly healthy. Should I do this like 18 to 19 or 17 to 19 and see if it's any better?

Maybe a quick historical look back to see if anyone's broken down or not. All right. So leading in high leverage innings from 2017 through 2019. Of course, we're going to be like, oh well 2020 everyone hurt. Blake Traynham was number one. Edwin Diaz still good. Alex Colomay sort of fell apart. Brad Hand fell apart quick. Felipe Vasquez, let's not talk about him. Kenley Jansen, Tony Watson, Ricella Iglesias still ticking. Archie Bradley fell off pretty quickly. Roberto Osuna. That must be near the end of his career anyway, but.

A lot of these guys though, I mean, relievers just burn out anyway. Oh wait, Osuna was the, yeah, okay. Finding all sorts of skeletons in the closet. Yeah, jeez. Stick them back in there. Hector Nares, Wade Davis, Cody Allen, Craig Stamman, Taylor Rodgers. I don't know. It's the same as the last list to me where it's like Yeah, some guys got injured. Some guys are fine. I don't know I think it might merit further exploration just something to think about in a different way because Like all relievers like I just feel like you look at any reliever leaderboard

Just find a bunch of guys that are out of baseball because they blew up their shoulder I can sort of that list with anything and it would have been the same. Some guys were hurt, some guys were still good, some guys who were just good for a year or two. I mean, relieving the tough thing about it is they're out there sometimes for 12 pitches. So high leverage or not, if I give you 12 pitches to show you what you got, you're probably throwing

as hard as you can and it's probably high leverage for you in your head, You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't want to get sent down, right? Like that's even for the guys that are pitching in the fifth or sixth inning, like that's going to happen. So that's a good question, MJ Logan. We appreciate it. We'll give a better answer at some point.

We'll come back around to it. This one comes from Bernsey, wants to use the Fangraphs auction calculator. I was kind of wondering if we could explain how the position priority section works and how it impacts the dollars for each player. And I wanted to ask you about this because I think you were at Fangraphs when that tool was introduced. And I've always wondered how much those toggles matter.

Oh, yes, but things have changed. And so I went back to check and get the exact inner workings on this and asked my source over at Fangraphs. And so what happens is this position priority is not like we're gonna change the whole list to like I thought it might be oh we're gonna give the position adjustment like an extra ten cents if you say first base over third base right it's not that what

it is is on the multi position players which position will you play them at? Oh, okay. So why that matters, maybe I'll start clicking for you a little bit, why that matters is because everything is relative to the field, right? So if you say that, oh, third base sucks this year, I'm going to play every first base, third base guy over in third base, then you can't have multiple, you can't have the guy in two places at one time. So you start judging the third base group

based on all the guys that have third base eligibility over first base or whatever. So it has to do with the group that you're comparing them to. So in this instance then, if you're looking at it and you're saying, I think the weights on catchers are too high, if I always felt like the auction calculator is pretty aggressive with how much it nudges up catchers, you gotta make an adjustment manually.

You gotta go through and knock a couple bucks off yourself. Yeah, putting catcher down low is not gonna change much. Like Salvador Perez, it'd be weird, I guess you would take Salvador Perez out of the catcher market and put him in first base if you put catcher all the way at the bottom. But it wouldn't change a lot. Good question, Bernsy. I think that's a good one because I think many of us were under the impression that by reordering those you might be actually manipulating those weights and that's not what's happening with that particular tool.

Just pretend you had it in the Enrique Hernandez, you know, and where would you play him? You know, if you had like all nine eligibility, where would you play him? And just like, sort of that way. All right, we got one more question here. This one came in from Jack. How much of a change in arm angle is meaningful? I think Jack's out in Angel's camp and noticed that Kyle Hendrick's arm angles keep dropping

about 2% each of the last three years. So how significant is that kind of drop? Oh, I think of a lot of things when I hear that. First, I think injury. One thing that you'll happen with what you'll see with players, and there is some statistical backing to this, is just that they're finding, trying to find a slot that doesn't hurt. And so pitchers over time, their arm slots do generally drop.

So there's an aging curve for arm slot, actually. And so pitchers over time, their arm slots do generally drop. So there's an aging curve for arm slot, actually. The other thing that I think of is that it can make a lot of difference for your pitches. And in some cases, it can make your pitches better or it can make them worse. And in fact, if Clay Holmes' arm slot is dropping, it's going to make his pitches worse because then he'll be more predictable. Something that Hayter kind of goes through sometimes. As haters arm slot goes up, it's not good for him

because it starts looking more like a four seamer arm slot. So arm slot does mean a lot. And then the last thing I'll say is that I've had some pitching coach, you know, pitching people, people in the industry reach out to me and tell me that something like what Sean and I did last year could be a precursor to injury. So a big change in arm slot can be a precursor to injury. And I think that makes sense

because generally your body has made these adaptations to pitch a certain way. And that just means in terms of the large muscle groupings, the way your muscles fire, the way your body works, it's like I'm going to produce the arm coming through in this way, right? You change that in a big way, then all of a sudden, maybe the oblique goes I mean, we've seen Shamanaya hurt, right? And I'm not trying to draw a direct line between the

two. But it's like, you know, that's something that somebody immediately reached out to me when everyone's like, Oh, my gosh, I'm and I have chrysalis now. And they were like, is he but or is he playing as Chris sale for a little bit? And then his body is going to be like, ow, you know, we're not actually don't normally do this. So I think generally it's again, it's a wishy washy answer. I'm always like this.

But I would say that I would lean towards bad news. OK, and even just a couple of degrees, like one to two degrees, like multiple years like that. Either he's hurt or he's, is a precursor to hurt, you know, the only thing that could maybe help him is it gives him more movement in a way that he likes and it does work for him. But that's something that stuff can answer. And stuff tells you with Calhendrix, probably not that good.

Yeah, in that case, that just feels like chemo of wear and tear trying to find something that works. Just think about all the scar tissue and stuff that would build up in your arm from years and years of pitching. You're probably going to change a little bit over time. That's what that seems like for Kyle Hendricks. Thanks a lot for that question, Jack. If you have questions for a future episode, you can send them to us through our Discord, use the Mailbag channel, or drop us an email, ratesandbarrels.gmail.com. We'll crack open that inbox again here in the near future. You can find Eno on blue sky, enoseris.bsky.social,

imtvr.bsky.social. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. That is gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday.