Rates & Barrels - Change Atop the AL East, Past Calendar Year Standouts & Mailbag Monday

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss the change atop the AL East with the Orioles taking first place away from the Rays over the course of a four-game series and a few movers on Eno's latest Starting Pitcher Rankings. Plus, they examine a few surprising pitchers from the past calendar year leaderboard, and answer several mailbag questions.  Rundown 4:44 O's Move to First Place in the AL East (& The Rays' Recent Slide) 13:21 What Did Baltimore See in Ryan O'Hearn? 18:48 Pitcher Improvement Amplified by Camden Yards Changes? 23:41 Surprises From the Past Calendar Year Leaderboard (SPs only) 32:33 An Inside Track to Extending Shohei Ohtani by Trading For Him Now? 39:06 Kutter Crawford's Emergence in the Red Sox's Rotation 45:57 Paul Skenes & Mound Placement 52:01 Is Alek Thomas Fixed? 56:55 Ongoing Concern About Emmanuel Clase; Is It Justified? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out these offers from our ad partners.... Get 25% off your order when you go to jamesallen.com and use code RATES! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Try Tim's new Sweet Chili Chicken Loaded Wraps and Bowls today. Take your taste buds on an exciting new adventure for lunch or dinner with our delicious new Sweet Chili Sauce. It's time for Sweet Chili Chicken. It's time for Tim's. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, July 24th.

Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you on this Monday. We're going to dig into a whole bunch of topics. One of them is a bit 3-0-y in nature. Big change atop the AL East. We'll talk about the Rays and the Orioles and some of the issues facing those teams as they look ahead to potential post-season runs. Having a little fun with the

past calendar year leaderboard. I've got a lot of mailbag questions to get to along the way as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Monday? It's good. It's good. It's good. We've had a good weekend this weekend. Some birthday parties.

And yeah, for the adults even. Oh, real nice. Yeah, it's nice to go to an adult party. And now we're doing the thing that like sort of Mad Men style. The kids are just, you know, I joke that, you know, we had this whole thing where we went to open plan in all our houses, you know, and a lot of it was like, oh, I need to be able to watch the kids while I'm cooking dinner,

but also just to make the most out of the space we had so that you just open it all up and you feel like, oh, it feels much grander when I combine my kitchen and my dining room. Right. You know? And so I think we went through a lot of that but then it's also nice to have like a door to shut and put the kids in a separate space and so they had uh my friends have uh done a renovation where um their their garage is now like uh like a unit um and we just stuck all the kids in the garage and closed the door. And we're like, thank you. The adults are going to hang out in here now.

You guys figure it out in there. Thunderdome. I wonder if we'll ever have a trend where we go back and we have all the Property Brothers on HDTV. And they're going back in. Let's close this up and give you some more privacy in here. Let's put a door here i think there's a chance that could become a trend because everybody is not everybody but a lot of people have shifted to working from home over the past couple of years right and because

everybody had cubicles working be like shut up yeah everyone's gonna want to enclose their spaces more because it's the it's the opposite of what they wanted before because of having to work at home. So I think there could be something to this. I'm on a tear here in July, much like Jackson Churio. I had Culver's three times in the first eight days that it was a possibility. As soon as I crossed the border into Iowa and saw the first one, that was my lunch on the drop back. Put it in my veins. Yes, and I've settled in. that was my lunch on the drop back. Put it in my veins. Yes.

I've settled in. I've gone four days without it now. I think I'll get back to my pre-California once a week or every other week sort of routine. What's so great about Culver's? It's kind of just the junk food I grew up on. It's smashed burgers. The butter burger is what they call it. The other stuff on the menu is pretty good too.

Chicken tenders, buffalo tenders. If you love custard, thick ice cream, they got great shakes, stuff like that too. But some people like their cheese curds. I think if I'm going to commit to cheese curds, there are so many other places. Also cheese curds on the menu at a hamburger place. That's pretty, that's interesting.

That's different. Yep. I actually like the onion rings more than the fries and the cheese curds there. So it's back in my life. There's one very close to where I live. Onion rings are underappreciated, dude. They are.

Underrated. And they're not on any other menus. They don't have them at In-N-Out. They don't have them at Five Guys. Shake Shack, I don't know if they have them. Maybe Shake Shack. They have some options. Yeah. There's a couple other places that have them, but it's not them. Maybe Shake Shack. They have some options. Yeah.

There's a couple other places that have them, but it's not everywhere. It's not automatic. So that's what I've been doing, just tearing up junk food. And I did move my desk. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see there's a corner behind me now. There's nothing on the walls yet because I'm in the phase of the move where I have to basically rotate a room full of boxes to get something where it goes. A Tetris. One at a time.

So I'm getting closer. And also you're trying to, by putting yourself in the corner, you're showing us the only clean part of the room. Yes, exactly. And I gave myself two walls to put nice photos and things on too. So it's getting there. It's slower progress. And the good thing, of of course being back home close to

family we get to visit with people all weekend which means i got nothing done in my office so yeah you know life goes on it's good to see people again do the tour yeah into the topics we go the 308 topic on my mind the rays no longer atop the al east the o's past them they took three or four over the course of a weekend series. The Rays have actually been in kind of a prolonged slump as a team. They're now 10-20 in their last 30 games. So they're kind of hanging out with the Rockies, the Pirates, the Royals, and the A's during that span. Not really the company to expect them to be in.

I don't think anything's actually... What's been the problem? Yeah, I don't know if anything's actually wrong, but remember when everything they did in April was just ridiculous? The way they opened the season on that incredible winning streak and every single player on the team was up in barrel rate and getting to power at a level we really hadn't seen before. That cooled off as you expected, but it went like more it went like

well below average for a lot of guys for a stretch i guess but if you look at tampa as a team in the last 30 days they're third in wrc plus yeah i mean it's not as great as it was so i would just wouldn't blame the lineup is all i i'm saying let me see if it's the starters fault whose fault is it tampa bay third wooden war in starters oh it's the relievers isn't it oh look at this oh look at this 26th in bullpen war over the last 30 days. That'll do it. That's a team that uses its bullpen a lot, too. And I would say that just from my appraisal of this bullpen from afar, and sometimes

combing through it, I like Jason Adam and Peter Fairbanks. I think Robert Stevenson is pretty good. This is not as quality a bullpen as it's been in the past. They've had better bullpens than this. That's fair. But of all the problems they could have,

this is a pretty correctable one on the fly. We're starting to see the minor trades happen. Atlanta picked up a couple of relievers. I mean, you knew they thought it was a little bit of a problem if they go get Robert Stevenson in an actual trade in like a month ago. Pete Fairbanks has missed some time with

injuries this year, so they were already playing one short, but Pete Fairbanks' injury history also is one that you're fully aware of if you're the Rays. It's part of how you got him in the first place. I think it's surprising to me that Luis Patino hasn't worked out yet as a reliever. There's a handful of things that you could have looked at depth-wise with them and said,

okay, this happens here, this moves up into this role, we'll move this guy into this spot, and we'll be close to what we normally are. If the lineup is hitting, if the starting pitching is healthy, and they're able to go out in these next eight days and add a couple more relievers they could still be the dangerous team they always are come october it does look like i mean a otani kind of uh faith casting aside i think i mean it does look like this would be the easiest way for them to add to their team and the nice thing is that like they're not looking at a lineup where they're like, you know, most years you want to be like,

get them a big bat, any big bat. And that's when they make mistakes, maybe. I mean, the Nelson Cruz trade, Joe Ryan, is that one of their biggest mistakes? Yeah. I mean, they certainly could benefit from having Joe Ryan right now, right? Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't?

But, you know, in improving the bullpen is something that the Rays would do real easily. And I think that the Otani thing is pretty crazy nuts. I mean, I think the most likely thing right now with their angels at 51-49 is actually that Otani stays home. The lineup actually has slumped a little bit, though. Even though Yanni Diaz and Isak Paredes have been great in the last 30 days. Luke Raley has continued to hit. Brandon Lau has been fine when healthy from a WRC Plus perspective. But Wander has been relatively quiet over the last

30 days. Randy Rosarena has been pretty quiet over the last 30 days. And those are two guys that you expect to be pretty far above league average on a regular basis. So I think that's part of it. It's not all of it, but they're still very good. I don't look at this Rays team and say it's time to panic or anything like that. Stevenson's been fantastic in the last 30 days. 41.4% K-BB percentage. He has been lights out. What an addition for them getting him in that minor trade with the pirates and they did make a change with him i was looking at it i forget now what it was i think it was a a pitch mix change i thought

stevenson made sense back in draft and hold season as the the next option up if anything happened to David Bednar or if Bednar had to set back with a back injury that gave him some trouble a season ago. I really thought that was going to work out great for the Pirates. I was surprised when they moved away from Stevenson as quickly as they did. Yeah, he stopped throwing his slider so much. It's a cutter now for Stevenson. I think it's a little

bit similar to what his slider was, but his slider was like 84, 85. His cutter is 89. And his cutter has, it basically convert, they converted his slider to a cutter. his slider to a cutter and in terms of usage uh right now uh the cutter is 71 percent he in his last start in his last appearance stevenson threw this the clutter 71 percent of the time so uh yeah he's taken to this new slide this new cutter that uh he throws that yeah and it's it's it's so funny god man the Rays dude I would be so annoyed like like if you're Pittsburgh and you're like yeah Stevenson's pretty good but like we were hitting the schneid here and they're willing to give us you know somebody we have you know under team control for a while like this is a small deal and we can pull this off under the radar nobody will accuse us of of tanking or whatever.

Let's just trade Robert Stevenson over there. And then the rays are like, nah, it's now let's add two miles an hour to your breaking ball and stop throwing your four seam. Like, okay, now he's awesome.

Yeah. The trade. I don't remember this trade. I just remember Stevenson went to the race. A league of Williams went to the Rays. Alika Williams went to the Pirates. Williams was the 37th overall pick from the 2020 draft. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time that they went ahead and flipped him. It looks like he has reached AAA both last season and now this season with the Pirates.

It's taken him a while to get to above average WRC+. And now that he's 24 and in AAA, he doesn't get any sort of age boost for it. But it is interesting that he went from a 93 WRC+, in Tampa, to 126 WRC+, for Pittsburgh in AAA. So they must have seen something they really liked, and maybe they've started to unlock that already. Yeah, looks like it's happening. Seven homers, three

steals in just 36 games at AAA Indianapolis so far. Good slash line too. 305, 384, 531. So could be a trade that looks a little better for Pittsburgh once Williams gets up to the big leagues, but a nice addition to the Rays bullpen so far. I saw a graphic on MLB Network

breaking down the series, looking at runs and starting pitchers, everything. And it was funny that the Orioles took 3-4 because if it were a head-to-head Roto series, the Rays categorically were the better team in the series in like six out of the eight categories on the screen. It's like, oh, that's pretty frustrating. Watching these two teams battle it out,

and the Jays aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and maybe we'll see the yankees with judge close that gap maybe the red socks will still hang around it's still going to be a great battle all the way to the end before we move off the race isak parade ace is reaching a level even above what i thought he could do we liked him back during draft season i don't think we were shy about that at all, but he's now tied for 23rd in position player war league-wide. He's second only to wander among the raised position players so far this year. So that's going very right. So hopefully if you got him on your teams,

you've been able to use him at a bunch of spots and you're reaping the benefits of this new level that Parades has reached. But on the Orioles side, there's a lot of things about this organization that have changed under Mike Elias. The long rebuild, the quality of the prospects, the player development. And I think some of the things they've done with guys that didn't have significant prospect pedigrees has been really impressive, too. It's something that the Astros did for a long time, and that's where a lot of that front office came from. So you look at a player like Ryan O'Hearn, that's a scrap heap sort of player.

He ends up in Baltimore. He's taking time away from Ryan Mountcastle right now. When O'Hearn plays, mostly against righties, he hits cleanup. What on earth did the Orioles see in Ryan O'Hearn that led them to take the chance and end up giving him this time that's now costing Mountcastle a good share of his job? Yeah, I don't know that I've got a great example for you, but I would say that somebody with an 111 max CV, as O'Hearn has demonstrated, uh, you know, for three out of the four years in

Kansas city has good raw power. And, uh, you're looking at, you know, decent ground ball rates. He's not hitting the ball, like on the, on the ground, you know, 60% of the time. But, um, one thing that does leave off the page is he used to hit fly balls at a under 40%, you know, well under 40%. It was like sort of 27% in 2022 for Ryan O'Hearn in terms of fly balls in Kansas City. And it's 39.7% this year. So somehow they've managed to get him to lift the ball better. And there's a couple different ways you can do that.

I mean, there can be a mechanical approach uh and then there can be uh you know what happened with paredes was that there was a a swing decision approach and i think you see some of that with ohern where if you look at his swing maps from last year and compared to this year um he's not swinging at low balls as much he's definitely not swinging on back foot uh back foot sliders and stuff as much and he's targeting balls in the upper half of the zone and those balls go for better launch angles so i bet you is there was actually some sort of similarity between rhino hair and his operators where it's like he's demonstrated a certain amount of ability to make contact um and make powerful contact and And if we just change what he's targeting in terms of what he's swinging at, that can actually change the quality of the balls he puts into play. And that's why he's having the best barrel rate, Ryan O'Hearn, since 2018.

Yeah, tons of hard contact, a 56.3% hard hit rate so far. And as you mentioned, best fly ball rate we've seen since he debuted. Ryan O'Hearn, when he debuted back in 2018, had a great stretch. It was 44 games, hit a dozen homers, hit.265 with a.353 OBP, .597 slug, and then came crashing down with a bigger opportunity in the year of the rabbit ball

of all things, which was really kind of bizarre. But really good work in that front office, really digging up a guy that has turned into just a nice piece of their offense and has taken some of that pressure off of Mountcastle. We were looking before the show. Ryan Mountcastle's been brutal against right-handed pitching this year. WRC Plus is in the 40s right now, which is not normal for him. Usually he's a little above league average against same-handed pitching.

It seems like a guy that could actually be flipped by the Orioles. There's still club control left. The depth chart's getting crowded. There's positional limitations there as well. And for a right-handed hitting player especially, that player becomes a lot harder to roster and play frequently when your team gets a lot better the way the Orioles have over these past couple seasons.

Yeah, there's a question of, like, you know, statistically, I can tell you that Wright and Mountcastle will be better against Wrighties in the future. I mean, he's demonstrated, you know, in all of his years before this one, that he's, like, sort of a 105 to 110 wrc plus guy against right hander so like yeah statistically this is an anomaly this year that he's struggling so hard against righties but you know i pose that question to you uh you know off air that like how long can the orioles as they try to win their division uh stare at his numbers against righties and say, well, statistically, he

should be better soon. And your answer is, well, the answer is about three months. About three months. He got hurt, came back, didn't have the same share of the playing time that he had when he got hurt. Yeah. What were the numbers you had on how often he started since he came back? He's been back for 10 games and he's started five.

So, I mean, he's gone from what looked like a 90-plus percent share of playing time to begin the season to 50-ish in these last 10 days. And I would put a minus sign on that, too. Well, yeah. Because he's a righty. It starts against lefties, and it's against some righties. It also depends on how well O'Hearn plays and then how healthy everybody is. righties it also depends on how well ahern plays and then how healthy everybody is but especially with the opportunity to upgrade this roster in the next eight days the playing time outlook is not good for mount castle unless he is part of a trade to go somewhere else he's ideally

on a team that can just say it's fine just run him out there we know he's going to get to his 25 30 home run power pretty easily there's probably 40 home run power for Mountcastle in his peak season if he doesn't have competition for time. In another park, too, maybe. I mean, Mount Baltimore was really devastating for Mountcastle, I think. Yeah, I agree. I think that was a huge blow for him. You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself.

You live for experience. and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces. A message from the Government of Canada. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... life's a trip make the most of it at best western the other part of all of this is how much of the orioles development success with the pitching.

We've talked about Kyle Braddish a lot this year, Tyler Wells. How much of their ability to make those guys better comes back to that decision to change the dimensions of the ballpark? It's a percentage of their improvement. Is it a quarter? Is it half? Is it three quarters? How much do you attribute to the home park being much more forgiving now than it used to be for pitchers?

I just think it's impossible to develop good pitchers when you throw them into the fire and every small mistake they make, it just gets blasted. I mean, Andrew Abbott aside, it doesn't surprise

me that Hunter Green and Graham Ashcraft and other Cincinnati Reds pitchers that have seemed ready to go have struggled in the major leagues because it's just like, you know, confidence is so important to production and to command and to all sorts of things that if you start, if you just make one mistake, it gets blasted out then are you going to throw that same pitch again are you going to try to be super fine are you going to try and dance around you're going to start walking guys are you going to you know what i mean like there's all these like unintended consequences um or not necessarily intended

but it's just all these consequences of having a park that skews hitter friendly that i i think yes i think not only can you look at their performance and say oh you know in the old park those guys would have been worse but also it's just so much easier to develop wells better if every time he makes a mistake it doesn't get blasted for a home run you know what i mean so there's like soft factors and hard factors and i think that's why you've seen basically across the league everyone's trying to make their parks uh more neutral yeah i think it makes sense that that confidence is huge not having to have pinpoint command of everything all the time that takes a little pressure off the pitching staff the kyle bradish ceiling balloon just keeps adding helium, by the way. I just saw he's fourth in Stuff Plus league-wide now

with the minimum 50 innings pitched. He's behind two of the Reds that you mentioned. Ashcraft and Hunter Green are in the top three. Spencer Strider sandwiched in there at number two. And we talked about this before. Bradish does it with the excellent secondary. He doesn't really have a good fastball, but everything else, slider, the curve, and recently all good. He's pushed that forcing fastball to 101 stuff plus,

which doesn't sound great, but that's, I think, uh, that's, that's enough. You know what I mean? That's, that's enough. I did struggle to see how hard I should push him in my rankings that came out on friday um because i still had um you know let me see what the projection was on him a 394 projected era right around hunter green actually 388 for hunter green um and i think you had in this in the notes brash's strikeout rate isn't plus plus. No, it's not. And that always makes me a little nervous. Like Hunter Green, the park makes me nervous, the size of his arsenal

makes me nervous, but the 30.3 projected strikeout rate that I have for him does not make me nervous. Kyle Bradish, I've got a 24.2% projected strikeout rate, and ahead of him, the only players that had 24 or worse are logan webb and george kirby i mean logan webb is a ground ball guy george kirby

is you know a total savant when it comes to command um efflin another guy with a bunch of different pitches. Sandy Alcantara, ground ball guy. And Max Freed, who has always just outperformed my model. So I just put him ahead there. But I put Kyle Braddish at 31. I think it would have been fair to push him maybe ahead of Max Freed, ahead of Radon. Joe Ryan has a poor projection and has been kind of taking a step back.

So I think you could push Bradish all the way up to 26, 25. But when you get to 25 and 26, I've got Sandy Alcantara and Jesus Lizardo there. I'm not out on Sandy Alcantara yet, and Jesus Lizardo's been great. How much further could you push Kyle Bradish than that? I don't think you can go a whole lot higher than that. I think the mid-range SP2 for a 15 team league

is about as high as you can go unless he finds a way to miss more bats. That's the ceiling for the guys that land in this range. Yeah, it's a huge part of our game. I think it's interesting. 22.6% K rate during the past calendar year now for Bradish. So again, acceptable, but a long window with this improvement where he hasn't shown more than kind of an average ability in that particular area.

You mentioned Lazardo. I couldn't put Bradish ahead of Lazardo. And I think the biggest knock on Jesus Lazardo for a long time, aside from in-game effectiveness and consistency, was his ability to stay healthy. In the past calendar year, Lizardo's in the top 20 now for innings pitch. It's like 190 plus innings. It's a 315 ERA. It's a 109 whip. And he is ninth, ninth in K minus BB percentage. So I think if you look in that range, you say, who would you consider pushing up or who could still take another leap and become maybe a top 15 starting pitcher between now and the end of the season? I think Jesus Lizardo is showing us all the things we need to see to be capable of making that leap. Yeah, and I do think there's some research that I want to do this offseason that, uh, is relevant to Christian Javier and maybe he's a Cesar, which is that I do think that there are fastballs that are precarious. And so,

you know, I think that there are certain fastballs you can take a mile an hour of velocity away from, and they'll still be fine. Um, and then there are certain fastballs you take a mile and off mile, mile, mile hour off

of the velocity and they totally fall apart so I think Javier's been showing that he's kind of in that category where the tick and maybe a little bit of change to the release point and it's just been an awful fastball all of a sudden where I get a little sense of that with Lizardo because you remember he was down a tick in Oakland, and he was just getting blasted, really.

I mean, it was not good in Oakland. And then the major change in Miami has not been a change of shape or even pitch mix. He's been throwing harder in Miami. So I do wonder if it's a precarious fastball. I do wonder if he's less of a dynasty asset than he certainly first appears. But in terms of, yeah, this season,

nothing I'm doing there. I'm going off the run down a little bit here, but we did just talk about three teams now. The Marlins, the Orioles, and and the rays that i do expect to be active at the deadline and i'm we can do more of a deadliney um you know type show at some point but um you know most of the time we focus on uh players that are traded away so trevor may gets traded away from the athletics who's closing i think maybe lucas ursag but you know that's that's the kind of conversation we're used to are there any players on the orioles the marlins or the rays that you think are a risk because of the deadline so i guess that something like i think maybe

tanner scott is becoming the closer in miami uh but do you think like jordan hicks closes over tanner scott if he comes to town i think maybe yeah probably Probably, yeah. Do you see, how about in the Marlins or the Rays or the Orioles lineup, somebody that could really lose their spot? I think Mountcastle, we just sort of talked about how that might be happening anyway. What would they acquire in the lineup? It might just be a slugger that can play first or DH or something. I don't know if they're going to get any. Do you think they're going to get any hitters in Baltimore?

I don't think they need a hitter. No, I don't think they're going to get a hitter. I think it's going to be pitching. I think we sort of have that solved already with the first part of the conversation. Mount Castle is already experiencing it, and it gets worse if he doesn't get traded. I think the best player who's been good from a Roto perspective so far that could be a problem in the final two months might be in the Tampa Bay outfield, Josh Lowe,

because we've seen him sort of take a step back in the last 30 days. The K rate's well above 30% again. And yeah, even though he banked you 13 homers and 21 steals and the surface numbers for the season are still pretty good, they may be positioned to keep playing him in that part-time role or even play him a little less than that, depending on what happens at the deadline. They're always active. I wonder if he's actually more susceptible to losing time than a typical player who has put up numbers like that over basically a half season. He's played 83 games this year.

You wouldn't normally look at a guy on a 26-40 pace and say, I'm worried about his playing time. But they already use him as a big side platoon guy. Could his playing time actually drop off a little more? Yeah, I wonder. I think they'll probably get him in there against most varieties but um you know if you you might run into situations where there's an opener and he's a lefty opener and uh then you know you're in a daily league and is josh low starting today or is he not or is he just not starting for the first inning and then he's going to come in the second inning uh you know there might be some uncomfortable things there and

as much as again with mountcastle i would say i don't think he's a true talent 72 wrc plus guy against lefties the rays don't care uh because they have many more go they have other guys that are righties that can do better than whatever the true talent number is. And there's just the fact that Josh Lowe is striking out 40% of the time against lefties. So he's just not going to get in there against lefties. And, you know, maybe there's opener stuff or just funky things where, you know, or he has tough against – he's had problems against this one type of pitch with this type of movement.

And they say, well, you know, the starter tonight has that type of movement so we're gonna you know a great change up right you know righty with a great change up maybe he's not great against grayson rodriguez types because it's going away from him so maybe they sit him even against somebody like that so um yeah i could see that i could see that uh in the craziest of of, Lowe goes for Otani or something. Part of the package, yeah. I don't know. I think Otani stays. I don't think he goes to Tampa Bay, as fun as that would be.

I don't know. I wonder if the team that trades for him has to be one of the teams that would actually consider also signing him. It takes away a lot of the sting if you also get the long-term deal done. You're giving up a lot of long-term talent for a guy that's only going to be on the roster for

two plus months, but you may win a World Series because of it. And then if you extend him, you don't feel quite as bad about giving up four, five, six future big leaguers potentially to get him. What was the deal about Mookie Betts when he was traded to the Dodgers? At the time, it was believed that Mookie Betts, or at least I think it was reported that he

didn't want to sign an extension with Boston. And he had like one more year of team control and they had him for that postseason. And then I think in the next offseason, with one year left, they extended. Yeah, forget the exact timing of that extension offhand. I don't know with Otani that all that stuff matters. I feel like he wants to go to free agency. I feel like for him it's felt like a long time coming. Sure, yeah. to go to free agency i feel like for him it's felt like a long time coming sure yeah and uh i think he let i think just reading from we know for a fact that when he was decided between the angels

and all these other teams that there was no monetary aspect to it because they all could all offer him the same amount of money um and so we know that he chose his last thing off of soft factors i have a feeling that this next choice for him will be a hard factor money i mean i think money will be a big part of it and the second part of it is how much tech and data and like how how progressive are your are your coaching techniques and i think you can sell them on that anytime. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think the benefit, the silver lining, if you don't get him, well, guess what? He's a free agent. Like you said, he's going to test the waters.

But I do think there's something to getting a few months to get him in your organization, show him the new city, if it's a new city, if he's actually. I mean, look, Anaheim and Los Angeles, not the same city. Lived in California long enough, even though I was in the other part of the state. I've always understood they are not the same city. They're actually very different. The one team that really, in this way, strikes me is... Just a little bit of a siren song here.

I'm not sure if it's real or not, but San Francisco... If he doesn't come and play with you for a little bit and he's just looking at san francisco from the outside he might think well the taxes are high who's really that good on that team you know you know that sort of deal but maybe if you got him in there and you're and he's there every day he would see you know oh they have 15 coaches you know they they have like they they're like you know trying to get the most out of these players every day and that's why you know despite the fact that you're not sure who the best player on the giants is uh they usually

do better than you expect i mean that's i i think at this point we can say that kind of about the giants they had one bad year and all the other years they've been better than you thought they'd be yeah constantly making me look dumb but i oh you you got cj abrams so far so good on that call um before i move on completely from that past calendar year leader board by the way the other thing that really caught my eye just looking at some of the numbers bailey over has a sub three era and a sub one whip over the past calendar year it's over a hundred things pitch too so you know you talk about players that have exceeded expectations in a pretty big way i would say bailey over is one of them it's interesting looking at where your last set of rankings had him he's in the 80s is number 81. I think there's a case for him to at least be in that 50 or so range because that would put him up next to the Bassets and Alex Cobb.

I could see Bailey Ober outperforming those guys pretty reasonably. I know. He's got an 82 stuff plus, and you can see why he's ranked where he is because of our projections on him with an 82 stuff plus we've got a 4.8 projection and a 22 strikeout rate i actually have him uh higher than those things which is just like he's right next to andrew rabbit the other guy where i'm like maybe the model's wrong i don't know um i wouldn't say that there's so much sample that i want to uh not look at the model at all but i've also uh pushed those guys higher than um guys of the model really likes that

you know like like the model for some reason stuff plus loves jp france and nick pavetta i'm gonna have bailey over ahead of jp france and nick favetta so you know i am reasonable in that regard but i have a hard time pushing him all the way up to 50 when the numbers that i trust you know are spitting this out so i i do admit that there are things that possibly missing he's when i watch bailey over i think what's strange is he's so tall and he throws from like a lower slot, actually, given his height. So I wonder if I should have like a height adjusted release point in my model instead of just a raw release point. That's what I think of when I look at Bailey Ober. Yeah, I mean, the extension, just looking at the extension numbers on StatCast, Bailey Ober's 4CM or extension 7-4.

Yeah. That's actually up from last year. He was at 7 even. And that should be in there. Extension is pretty important in the model, but I don't get it. Ober's, maybe I should have just pushed him up. It would have looked really weird on the thing, though, to have a guy projected for 480 ra in the 50s but yeah uh i mean if you're if you are asking like

now that i'm looking i mean i would rather have i think i'd rather have edward cabrera than bailey over uh but i've got jordan montgomery up there i guess that's you know maybe i'd rather have bailey over i'd rather have grayson rodriguez who i have a 60 over uh bailey over myself yeah i think grayson has the up arrow next to his name at this point lynn though my projections for him are 406 era ah it's the opposite it's the look at that projection and it's like wait a minute that's too low it seems too low right that's too nice yeah yeah so maybe lynn and over should have been nearer to each other because i'm like i don't get either of these numbers i just want projections to be like making chili where you can just keep tweaking it you can just keep adjusting it to your liking add add add just change the number

just change it yeah just throw some more alex cobbb has a 3-8-9 projected rest of season ERA, and I've got him 53rd, even though there's a bunch of fours ahead of him. And it's just partially because he doesn't go deep into games, and I don't know about wins, and his team does weird things with him. And also, that's like a 3-8-9 ERA, where it's like 3-7 at home, but 4-2 on the road. You you know what i mean it's like uh can i use him all the time or not and so if i can't

use him all the time then it doesn't matter what the aggregate number is uh i'm gonna have to put him in among the the players that are sometimes on my bench and sometimes uh in my lineup and so then it doesn't make sense for me to have him in the 40s. You know, like, would I rather have Uri Perez or Alex Cobb? That's pretty obvious to me. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, you know, somebody asked, like, you know, when looking at my rankings, I've got Tyler Wells, Cutter Crawford, James Paxton

Garrett Whitlock, Andrew Abbott and Bailey Ober they're all through 70-80 and they're like your model spit this out and they're all doing really well what's your model missing on these guys

you have to distinguish between what the model does and I'm a subjective ranker to distinguish between what the model does and then i'm a i'm a subjective ranker on top of it so the reason all those players are together is because i lumped them there i put them there because i said you know this is where i'm going to put all the people i don't understand basically and so like there's i want to i want to reflect the fact that they're still draftable and if they're on your free agency you know and and the 75th starting pitcher on in your league matters

then they should be owned so i'm not saying don't own them but i'm also saying you know i prefer these other pitchers ahead of them 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 membership separate.

Terms apply. So we had a question that came in about Cutter Crawford. So I'm kind of glad he came up as part of the conversation organically. We tried to answer this on a previous episode and one of the microphones broke. So that was a lot of fun. Kurt's question was, we'd be very interested in hearing our thoughts on Cutter Crawford. Three throws, five pitches. Three are above average by Stuff Plus.

The thing that jumps off the page is the four-seam Stuff Plus at 116. It's the 16th best four-seamer if you look at pitchers with a minimum of 50 innings pitched so far this season, which Kurt thought was interesting, just given that Cutter Crawford doesn't throw particularly hard. Results so far are good, but somewhat underwhelming. This is a guy that's just waiting to break out. This was from a couple weeks ago.

He's pitched pretty well in the time since. He's a little older for his service time, but in a dynasty context, that doesn't scare me. He seems like a low-mileage arm. So please talk me out of giving up too much to go and get Cutter in my super deep 20-person hole-to-28 dynasty league. Yeah. cutter in my super deep 20 person hold 28 dynasty league yeah uh so in the meantime uh cutter crawford's fastball has really fallen off um he's lost a significant amount of ride on the fastball

i i think it's partially because you know this is a guy who's kind of in between starting and relieving and you know when we first saw him he's thrown 96s with this great vertical movement on his foreseam and he's doing it in smaller outings and now we're asking him to do bigger outings and he's gone from having you know this plus ride uh to losing you know in the course of the last uh five starts he's lost a half inch to an inch of ride uh on his on his fastball and that has been reflected in the stuff plus so now it's down to um you know a 93 stuff plus on the fat seam. But I believe in the cutter. I believe in the slider. And I think the splitter is good enough.

So what I see is a guy a little bit like Tyler Wells. When Tyler Wells first came up, it was, I need to throw my best stuff, you know, plus or best stuff with a small s, you know, for five innings. And, you know, and that's the best way I can go forward. This year, what we've seen from Tyler Wells is, okay, my stuff plus is going to go down because I'm going to throw some pitches that aren't my best stuff plus pitches,

but they fit together, and they help me turn the lineup over, and they get me to the sixth inning. I had the exact same conversation with clark schmidt where he was like dude like yeah i understand that you know uh this pitcher this patch pitch is not as great by stuff plus but i can't like what did you see out of clark schmidt early in the season three innings great fourth and fifth inning what just happened graham ashcraft what do you see out of Clark Schmidt early in the season? Three innings, great. Fourth and fifth inning, what just happened? Graham Ashcraft,

what do you see out of him? Three innings, great. I've watched so many Graham Ashcraft starts. The first three innings, I'm like, yeah, this is what I'm talking about. And then the fourth inning, you're like, wait a second. And then the fifth inning, you're like, God. Nah. So I think what you were seeing out of

Cutter Crawford is he's transitioning from like that that that he's doing the same thing that clark schmidt and tyler wells are doing which is you know taking the promise uh of that really good cutter and that really good slider uh and finding other pitches and ways to like sort of mix them all together of those three pitchers i probably like cutter crawford the least um do you have a like if you're going to rank those three pitchers how would you rank them that was crawford wells and wells do you see something similar with them where it's like they're kind of like they've had some things that we've liked about them in the past and now they're putting together in a different sort of format yeah i think schmidt

for me is just like a half notch above if they're in the same tier like schmidt's kind of the guy that i want the most because he's always had a little more of ceiling wells versus crawford i mean it's going very well for tyler wells so far the similarities with these guys i think are that cutter crawford has had a home run problem going back to double a and he was over the level i don't think it's going away there's no indication that his true talent includes a low home run rate and that's exactly the problem with tyler wells but you get away with it if you don't walk a lot of guys and that describes cutter crawford as well having enough pitches to work with we could go through the rest of this season

crawford could stay in the rotation get the innings up pretty high come back next year and be more prepared as a starter as a result of what he did this year. Very similar to Wells. We can see very good ratios. We could see maybe the ERA being a little higher than you expect for a really good whip. That happens a lot with the guys that have higher home run rates. Inconsistent strikeout rates from both. Yeah, yeah. Some starts, he's going to go out there and he's going to miss a ton of bats. Other days, he's going to go out there for five or six innings and maybe the cutter is the pitch that's working for him. He's not getting whiffs with it. He's getting weak contact, but he's efficient and he pitches

pretty well. I think he's kind of like a typical good number four real life starter and those guys on good teams tend to be a little undervalued from a fantasy perspective because their ceilings are somewhat limited. Yeah, but they can get you wins. at least they're on a good team and they're not in oakland like the same pitcher in oakland is like maybe unrosterable even though he has a better home park i would say that the wells home park uh not just notches nudges me a little bit ahead sure i just wrote a piece today about the mounds across baseball and i'd never thought of this before but uh the you know the one mound that did come up as being a bad mound quote unquote uh more than once was uh

boston um and so i think uh i don't the piece was all about how we can't be sure about the uh this because we're not actually out there measuring these mounds. And then also that there were some comments from different players about how much of it is already sort of mental. And so I think that Boston intimidates people, intimidates pitchers, because not only is the monster so close, that turns some outs into hits, you know, but the dimensions, way that the the park feels i think most of the pitchers were talking about how it feels small you feel like everything's on top of you yeah and so you feel i think you just feel like if i give up a hit if i give up a ball and play it's just going to be

it's going to be a smash so um i think boston's a an underrated tough place to pitch and so cutter's like figuring it out uh but i think he'll have some bad days in boston as well thanks a lot for that question is a good one from kurt let's get to another question that came this one came from andy andy wanted to know with paul skeens, Andy recently read that Skeens would switch locations on the rubber depending on the handedness of the batter. Is this a common practice? It makes sense to get the optimal angle for the batter you're facing, but seems to be incredibly difficult. Is there anyone else that does this? Thanks as always, and go Brewers.

I just read what the email says. I don't editorialize the emails. I just read what the email says. I don't editorialize the emails. Well, it's a tough query to figure that one out because you have to do maybe standard deviations of pitch release points and stuff. But I can say that this is absolutely important and, in fact, sort of foundational disagreement

or argument within the analytic circles about release point and if it should be in stuff plus and where where where release point information should reside and so if you think about it release point super important in stuff plus and that's because of the angle that the pitch is coming in so the vertical angle the vertical release point is super important for the vertical angle we we understand that but the horizontal is also important for the horizontal angle because you can like max serzer throws you know far to the right to the third base side so if he throws a slider uh to a righty it looks like it has even more horizontal movement because it's coming from way out there. He's like, he's, he's manipulating that. So I, but the the the part that's like become a question among analysts is, is that stuff? You know, because it is important to outcomes, but is it stuff?

And so, you know, one analyst asked me, if I move to the left or right on the mound, and my stuff is better? Like, why is my stuff better? I just moved on the mound. And I would say, well, that's still the starting point of your pitches. And I would say that hitters say his stuff is so much better from that side of the mound. You can read that two ways, though. His stuff is so much better from that side of the mound. You can read that two ways though. His stuff is so much better than that side of the mound. His stuff is just playing better from that side of the mound. In any case, release point matters, release point angles matter, changing your spot on the release point on the rubber

matters. I've looked around at who has changed their release points the most, their horizontal release points the most over the course of the season. Branton Fott is probably number one. He didn't show up in my query because of how I did it, but Branton Fott has moved almost two inches on the rubber since he came back. And it looked really good there in Cincinnati for five innings again. It's only been seven starts this year for Brandon Fott at the big league level. It feels like it's been twice as many given how frustrated we've been by him.

Yeah, yeah. It's been in our minds. Other people who have changed their release point, Sean and I was just talking to me about moving basically the heat map a little bit. He's moved an inch and a half. Another

one that's changed a lot is Alec Manoa and Jose Barrios have both changed their spots on the mound a significant amount since the beginning of the season. So I think Manoa is basically trying to find some of that horizontal movement that he's lost on the slider and trying to find it in moving on the mound and just making it look like there's more horizontal movement

by where he is on the mound. I think it's a great question. It leads to many more questions like good questions usually do. And I haven't answered anything for you um but if you do look at a certain pitcher and their horizontal release point has changed a lot like go look at brandon fott's page on on uh brooks baseball or on savant you can see their release point when you see a big change like that um i would circle that point and look at results around it before and after because um i think it is a fundamental

change yeah and i think the the vision that i had when this question came in was rbi baseball for nes you move your pitcher side to side you move your batters in the box. Whatever you wanted to do, you could just give different looks that way. I don't know if anyone's that extreme where they're sliding from all the way to the extreme third base side to all the way to the first base side because that's very hard to do. You're changing a lot about where you're starting to do that. I think from the pitcher's side, you have to have some good natural command, I think, to some extent. You're just looking at it totally differently. I think it'd be subtle.

It'd be half of the rubber at most. Like that within, I don't even, I can't, I've never actually looked closely enough at a pitcher's feet in a plate appearance. I've never looked for this before, even though it could be there. Three inches, sometimes three inches. Sometimes people are just a little bit more this way, even though it could be there. Three inches, sometimes three inches. Sometimes people are just a little bit more this way, a little bit more that way. Yeah. You know, the extremes of both sides. Yeah, that is rare.

I think sometimes the more larger the wholesale adjustments you see are like offseason adjustments saying, OK, I'm going to relieve it. I think Fernando Rodney was one that when the Rays had Fernando Rodney and he had that amazing season, if I remember correctly, they moved him all the way over to the first base side of the rubber as a righty. So sometimes it's like changing it all completely and just going with the new spot and that unlocks some things, but it's not necessarily I'm here for one pitch. I'm over there for the next one. And then I'm back over here because that's just not something that would start telegraphing pitches too. Yeah. You'd have to have a lot of, a lot of different looks that keep hitters guessing.

Otherwise they'd be able to figure out exactly what you're doing. If it's yeah. It's telegraphed that way, but thanks a lot for that question. Andy, a couple more to get to before we go. Mark wanted to know is Alec Thomas fixed. It looks like the diamondbacks opened his stance, modified the leg kick,

early returns look promising. I was hoping to discuss these adjustments and any evidence you see in exit velocity, launch angle, etc. So what do you see since Alec Thomas returned to the D-backs? I believe that was in June when he came back onto the roster. Well, one thing that was going horribly bad for him in May was he had 24 batted balls in May before he was sent down, and he had a minus 12 degree launch angle on those balls.

So he was just really smashing the ball on the ground, and if you look at his history, this has been a problem over his career. I was a little surprised that this didn't register in my head when I was evaluating him as a prospect before I think it's as he moved towards Arizona the ground balls got a little better there's that triple A 2021 where he had a 50 ground ball rate and I said okay this guy can do it um you know he's got a good strikeout rate good walk rate rate, good speed, good power. He's increasing his fly ball rate. That's not what happened.

He has, since that moment, Alec Thomas, in 2022 and 2023, has a combined ground ball rate north of 56%. So this is a problem. He went down, and he's lifting the ball a little better now in terms of monthly launch angles. It was minus 2.9 in June and back up to 5.5 in July. So he is managing to at least hit line drives, hit the ball in the air a little bit more.

And I think that is good for him long term. But in terms of projections and in terms of his yearly ground ball rate, it's still 56%. He still hits the ball on the ground too much. He doesn't have... Elie de la Cruz hits the ball on the ground too much. Elie de la Cruz hits the ball 120 miles an hour.

Same for O'Neal Cruz, other guys. There's some guys who hit the ball on the ground too much uh but i i've spent way too long telling you how great cabrian hayes is going to be to jump on to cabrian hayes part two here that's basically what i'm saying it's a little bit like alex verdugo similar kind of profile verdugo had a slightly lower ground ball percentage and a better strikeout rate. I think the other thing I would wonder about with a player like Thomas, hard hit rates up

a little bit this year. I like what we're seeing there. He's always shown that patience. If he's hitting a ground ball instead of striking out, is that still a better outcome? Because you could still get a hit on a ground ball.

It's not the optimal going to hit a home run sort of outcome. But I wonder if we can be too quick to dismiss the... Brian Hayes is a good example of the... All he has to do is make one adjustment and he's there. But are we too quick to dismiss this in the face of someone who's done a good job tempering strikeouts? Because if the cost of not striking out more is hitting the ball on the ground you'll take that as the trade-off you'll say okay fine maybe maybe let's say 10 of that ground ball rate comes from pitches that you would have struck out on but he's got a good enough hit tool to

at least put it more likely to put up a better batting average. I would also think that it would be, it's a little unfair to Alec Thomas to throw Cabrian Hayes on him with 600 plate appearances. So, you know, if he does this, if he does everything he's doing right now for a full year next year, I think I'd be fully out.

Right now, I'm just stuck in this weird limbo where I don't want to take away the promise of a young player, especially one that makes good contact but I just keep staring a hole into that ground ball rate hey you know what Brian Hayes down to a 43.4 percent ground ball rate it's down from 49.4 percent last year down from 56.7 percent back in the year of the rabid ball. Maybe it's happening. You don't have to tell me.

I was just staring a hole into his page, just being like, hey, this is exactly what I wanted out of him. One of the better barrel rates, one of the lowest ground ball rates for Hayes, and it's all there, and of course he hurts his back. Yeah, the projections now from the bat x have him as a league average hitter the rest of the way 268 325 410 so slowly but surely maybe it is in fact happening for a lot of similarities here with Alec Thomas actually now that I'm looking I just have the pages up and both of them don't you think good defenders both

of them so playing time pretty stable that helps defenders, both of them. Playing time, pretty stable. That does help them stay on the field. Absolutely. Thanks a lot for that question, Mark. Last question for today. This one came from John. It came in about three weeks ago when Emmanuel Class A was in the midst of a pretty rough stretch. He gave

up runs in three consecutive appearances. We got this email from John that read, he's become unusable in the short term ground balls down fly balls up hard hit rate up walk rate up velocity down any suggestions about what side of the plank i should jump from seriously your thoughts yeah don't jump from the plank not a good idea the water hurts bad idea no direction is a good one don't don't get on the plank in the first place. Since then, Class A has settled down again. And I

keep looking at Class A, you know, I keep saying nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong. And part of it's that I probably am overcorrecting in my head for how safe I think his hold on the job is. Emmanuel Class A signed a very team-friendly

extension through 2026 before he was even arbitration eligible. There are club options up through 2028. So we're talking about a guy that could be a 10-year closer, potentially. Jeez, I mean, it's a short list of players that you could look at like that. Even when we dug into him maybe a month or so ago, it was kind of the usual story. The K rate's not that great relative to how good his actual stuff is, and the ERA is a little high compared to the norms. I'm still very optimistic about Class A. If you're in a keeper or a dynasty league, he's still, for me, 30 35 k rates every year i think he's become

one of the absolute safest players for 30 plus saves on an annual basis i think uh i think doval is uh is a comp for me and one thing that's interesting for both of them uh is that they're being used pretty heavily. Duvall had, let me see, 67 and a half, 67 and two-thirds innings last year. He's at 45 already this year. And similar kind of 99 with cut kind of profile. uh devol's velocity is still going up though the difference uh for for class a is that class a's velo has started the decline um it's 98.8 so i'm not i'm not saying it's it's bad um but um, uh, I think it just points to, I wouldn't like in a keep six situation,

I almost never keep a closer, even if it's closet, you know? Um, because, uh, they're too tied to their VLO and I just wondered like at 97 one, you know, what does class a look like? So. Man, he's still, he's still giving up two homers so far this year. It's ridiculous. And he's done that forever. He's suppressed that.

He's had great ground ball rates. This is one of his worst, but he's still 63% for his career. I guess my only thought as far as what could make him better and maybe what could be his adjustment if he loses another tick on the fastball, be that next year or the year after. Add another pitch or something. Could he just throw his slider more? His slider gets plenty of whiffs.

It seems like a pretty good slider. I mean, just go to the slider more often. 40% or 50-50, yeah. Yeah, I think a cutter at 97 with a slider that he's throwing 40 to 50 percent of the time might lead to the same results or maybe even better maybe more swings maybe more whiffs yeah and more strikeouts slightly more homers or whatever but maybe more strikeouts yeah so i i think as frustrating as that recent stretch was and even though this hasn't been exactly what you signed up for for emmanuel. I'm not worried about him this year.

I'm not even necessarily worried about him next year. This is more a conversation about within that whole contract and what his career is going to look like. Yeah, I think we're still two or three years away from really being worried about him. If you want to slide him back to the bottom of tier one,

top of tier two among closers, he's still pretty firmly in that circle of trust for me. Thanks a lot for that question, John. Hopefully you didn't get off the plank. Hopefully you got off safely, at least, since we waited a little while to answer that email. If you've got a question for a future show, you can send those our way at ratesandbarrels at gmail.com.

You can also drop a comment under this video on YouTube. I'm finally back to the point where I can check on those a bit more again. Now that I'm getting settled back in on Twitter, you can find, you know, at, you know, Sarah's,

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It's going to do for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.