Rates & Barrels - Chase Burns Is Headed to Cincinnati & Injuries Are Piling Up

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss a busy weekend around the league including the announcement that Chase Burns will make his Reds debut Tuesday night against the Yankees. Plus, key injuries to Chris Sale and Adley Rutschman, awaiting MRI results on Corbin Carroll, Francisco Alvarez's demotion to Triple-A, and where the money went with pickups in fantasy baseball leagues over the weekend.Rundown2:18 Chase Burns to Debut on Tuesday v. Yankees6:59 Corbin Carroll's Thumb Injury; D-backs' Offense Continues to Roll12:16 Chris Sale's Fractured Rib Cage; Opportunity for Didier Fuentes18:29 Adley Rutschman's Absence Through the All-Star Break20:15 Francisco Alvarez Optioned to Triple-A27:30 Injury Follow-Ups and Other News32:08 Moving Quickly Ranking Rookie Pitchers40:00 Where the Money Went, Brady House's Interesting Approach53:49 Lingering Concern About Max Scherzer's Thumb?Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Reads and Barrels, it is Monday, June 23rd. Derek Conryfer, Enos Serres here with you on this episode. Lots of baseball news to get to over the course of this episode. We are awaiting the results of an MRI for Corbin Carroll. We have an anticipated debut of another pitcher coming up, Chase Burns joins the Reds. We'll talk about what he brings to the table and some expectations for him. Unfortunately some other injuries though, Chris Sale down with a rib fracture. We'll get to that a little bit later on.

It does create an interesting opportunity for a prospect that has flown through the Atlanta system this year, indeed, here Fuentes. but more to come on that in just a bit. A surprising demotion of Francisco Alvarez to AAA. He has struggled, but we'll get into that story as well. We'll look at where the money went. Tons of other storylines along the way. You know, how's it going for you on this Monday? All right, a little bittersweet this morning, some bad news about John Snow, our cat of 10 years or so, had an unfortunate

interaction with a coyote and is no more. John Snow, RIP, I'll miss you, we did not see eye to eye. The thing I got mostly from him were hisses. Well, you know what? The fact that, you know, he spoke his mind. That's something I can appreciate. He mostly wanted to fight the rest of the animals we had and he did produce heavily during his younger years, was a good rat catcher for a while, but he's no more so RIP Jon Snow.

Sorry for the loss, man. Family pet's always hard to say goodbye, even even in a situation where the family pet may have been frequently hissing at you. It's a weird some baseball news. Chase Burns is going to join the Reds for his major league debut on Tuesday and if this is a permanent addition to the Reds rotation, it's a tough schedule to start his big league career at debut, home, Great American Ballpark, yes it's hot, yes the ball flies there, it's against the Yankees. So a very tall task his first time out and then if he sticks around next, it's hot. Yes, the ball flies there. It's against the Yankees. So a very tall task is first time out. And then if he sticks around next week, it's a two step. Yay. Oh, no, it's on

the road at Boston and at Philly. So, hey, if Chase Burns has big league caliber stuff, and I think we believe he does, this is a great way to see just how big league ready he is in a very short period of time Yeah I think the difficulty will be that a lot of the stuff is wrapped up in the slider And so will he be able to fashion an entire game plan that dominates major league hitters? Sort of based on the strength of that one pitch. I think eventually he will I don't know if it'll come right away. And the cards are not stacked in his favor,

as you mentioned, in terms of matchups and parks. So I also don't have any money, so I didn't have any money to get him this week. But I guess he wasn't available in most leagues. Right, because he hasn't pitched yet for NFPC leagues, he wasn't in the pool yet. I don't think he was drafted really in any of those leagues, or if he was, it was a very, very small number of them, so you couldn't add him this weekend.

In keeper leagues, he's been owned for a while. It's one of those weird things where I can't tell you not to go get him. I think he'll be exciting, but I don't think this is set up for him to just dominate for his first three starts. Yeah, could be some growing pains along the way. That happens. I think the uncertainty about his stay in the rotation for now at least is kind of tied to the injury news around Hunter Green. Hunter Green is in Arizona for rehab but has not actually started pitching in games yet.

So the longer he's out, the lengthier the rehab assignment's going to be to ramp him back up. That's part of it. Wade Miley went on the IL over the weekend. I think there's actually a reasonable path here for Burns to hang around, at least up until the All-Star break. And if he pitches well, then of course the Reds can just keep him up and use someone like Nick Martinez in a relief roll or make some other adjustment to accommodate him. But that's where the unknowns come from, is just the lack of clarity at this time at least about when exactly Green will be back. Yeah, you know, there's some lack of clarity maybe

in terms of what the Reds are gonna do at the deadline and which direction they're gonna go. They are in the mix, but not considered a favorite for one of those wild card spots. Right now in the wild card are the Mets Giants and Brewers

With the Cardinals and Padres out and then you get to the Reds So it'll be tough hoeing for them and most of it is pitching which is at high high demand in the deadline, right? most of it is pitching, which is at high demand in the deadline, right? So I think if the Reds do something, it will be minor. Maybe it has something to do with the bullpen or maybe they try to acquire somebody that will have value for them next year as well. But Martinez is one of those guys that might actually be leaving town at the deadline. He could have value to another team. He was, I think, top 20 in our trade chips series. He's on an expiring deal. You can't give him the QO again. And to another team, he could be a starter or and or a reliever. He's done both in this

recent past. So I think that in terms of opportunity in the rotation, he's got a fair amount. I wonder how much of the remaining salary the Reds would be willing to eat because that would probably change the number of teams interested. I still wonder if Nick Martinez, when you're thinking about a playoff rotation, does he flip into the bullpen in the postseason?

Is he one of those good enough to get you there, but also good enough to work in the middle innings? That's my read, yeah. I think he could work for the Padres if the Reds paid down the salary a little bit. Yeah, worked out pretty well for Nick Martinez in San Diego last time around, so a reunion there does make some sense,

but we're excited to see what Chase Burns does in that debut on Tuesday, and if that two-step materializes how that plays out for him on the road next week. Corbin Carroll scheduled for an MRI on his thumb that probably has happened by now recording at 2 o'clock eastern here on Monday so I would assume by now that MRI has been performed we just don't know the results of that MRI yet but he hasn't started any of the last

four games he did pinch hit on Saturday which gives you that little glimmer of hope that if it was real bad, they wouldn't have taken away the possibility of that retroactive IELTS thing going all the way back to Thursday. But we'll see if the MRI reveals anything else going on for Carol that might cause him to miss an extended period of time. I use this as an opportunity to plunge into the team offensive stats again, because my favorite stat from the 2024 season was at the Diamondbacks, led the league in runs.

They're still third this year in runs scored. Third in Woba, it's real. This is still an offense that you absolutely circle and try to avoid with a lot of your mid-range streaming type pitchers. And I'm always like, I don't know how perpetually surprised I can be by it. Like how does it still surprise me when I, because I guess it's the sum of the parts in some way. You know, some of these guys are undervalued.

It's, it's Perdomo being, you know, a little better than you'd expect. I think it's guys like Suarez, Naylor, Pavin Smith, doing things well in their roles and then also just being better than people think they are. Then there's a bit of a no holes aspect to this. The worst hitter in their lineup on any given day is Alec Thomas with an 82 WRC plus or Lourdes Gouriel Jr. with 100 WRC plus.

That's not a lot of holes. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. I think it's, you know, Carol kind of pushing back to his early career form this year and then could tell Marte around a stint on the IEL looking kind of like an NL MVP candidate in a Shohei Ohtani doesn't win the MVP award version of the National League. I mean, that's, that's how could tell Marte has been fantastic. 3, 10, 4, 20, 5's how, Gatel-Martet has been fantastic. 3-10, 4-20, 5-82, 13 homers in 51 games.

It's a 40 homer guy over a full season if he was able to stay healthy. The health though is why I have traded him away in keeper leagues in the past couple years. I just, it's a little difficult sometimes to own him because you don't feel like you can depend on him. And second base is such a difficult spot where if you're playing him there and then he gets hurt, you are playing somebody not good.

Yeah, but Cattell-Martay for 85% of the season and brutal replacement for the other 15% is actually probably going to give you a top end outcome at that position anyway. But yeah, I'm looking at the underlying numbers again, highest barrel rate of his career in his age 31 season for Cattell-Marte. I did not see that coming. We saw the big step forward last year. I thought that's the ceiling and now we're seeing one more level from him at least. Because he even cut some strikeout rate too. It's amazing. It's a great exercise in what if he hadn't been bothered by injuries at various points in his career.

Cause there's some years where he put up most of a full season games wise, but you knew he wasn't near a hundred percent. Like his 2022 season would be part of this big peak. That was his age 28 season. He played 137 games that year, but wasn't nearly as effective as he's been each of the last three seasons now, really.

He also is pretty interesting because early in his career, he had a good strikeout rate and a good max EV, but hit the ball on the ground and had terrible barrel rates. And so he's just, I mean, really, in the first three years of his career, his barrel rate was around 1.5% with a one thirteen point five maxi be so I think that's a type of profile where you can see a kid with that and that's why we were interested in Mikell Garcia for a while and there's other players where you're like man if he can just shave five percent like even a Roman Anthony you know shave five shave 5% off that ground ball rate, you know, they could really take off. And it took him a long time. He went from,

could tell Marte went from a 1.5 ish barrel rate for the first three years. His next three years, it was more around 5% barrel rate. Next three years more around 8% barrel rate. And then last is 12 and 15. It's like just a real gradual growth that you can't count on from every hitter that has that combination of early year skills, early career skills. But I do think when you have a good max CV and not a good barrel rate, you should pay attention. There's some of, some of those guys turn out to, to, to, and some of them turn out as Cabrion Hayes. I know. Shush.

No, we're just a couple of years early on Cabrion Hayes. I know, shush. No, we're just a couple years early on Cabrion Hayes. That's all. Yeah, any year now. I don't know if that's true. It wishes to be true, but I don't think it's true. I don't think so anymore. No, I'm losing some faith in that being the actual outcome at this point.

I promise I'm dialing down expectations, but we'll wait and see if we can get some more information on Corbin Carroll for Tuesday's show. Chris Sale has suffered a fractured left rib cage. This is kind of brutal because he turned things around after a slow start I think any any scenarios in which you want to help Tell yourself a story about Atlanta getting back into the playoff picture probably includes Key guys like sales staying healthy

probably includes Key guys like sale staying healthy There's not a timetable for his return yet But I know the baseball prospectus injury recovery dashboard has a couple of similar injuries in the ledger Those injuries typically take 30 to 40 days to heal So you're looking at a full month kind of at the low end and maybe a little longer I mean Chris sale could be out until after the trade deadline, possibly, which really puts them in a tough spot. They did decide to make an aggressive promotion.

Didier Fuentes has flown through their system and well, if anyone's going to move quickly through his system on a pitching side, it's probably because they have really good big league stuff. yeah that that's the case for Didier Fuente. So we saw make his debut over the weekend. Yeah 96 mile an hour fastball with 17 inches of IVB. It's it's not it's not like 18 or 19 inches of IVB but it is slightly above average and the 96 mile an hour VELO is good. 19 inches of IVB, but it is slightly above average and the 96 mile an hour Velo is good. He's got a split finger. He threw once, so we'll have to see what's the deal on that. But an 82 mile an hour sweeper with 12 inches of sweep and then a pretty big curve ball

at 79. I think he can spin it. I always like guys who can spin it. And then of course the model likes him as well with a 113 stuff plus on a 117 fastball 107 slider 110 curveball Although did he pitch when did he pitch that was Friday that he made the debut? Yeah, it's Friday against the Marlins That's good. So the arm angle has been updated in there. And so this is all copathetic. I'm into him. You know, it is weird when you get, you know, numbers like this and then

you look at kind of an up and down minor league. I mean, you know in 2025 when he first got into double A, 25% strikeout rate, 7% walk rate, an ERA near 5. It's not the best double A debut, but then he goes up, has a start in five, it's not the best AA debut. But then he goes up, has a start in AAA that's really good. And I guess in terms of Ks and BBs, it's pretty good. And then I think this need, need is why he's in the big leagues, you know, as much as anything. Some of it is just like, well, everyone else got hurt. And it was him or Waldrop, I guess.

And they liked what they saw. Is Waldrop even hurt? Waldrop had an injury I thought at the very beginning of the season. He's up to 57 innings in the AAA this year so I don't think he's... But he's not doing that well. He has a 23% strikeout rate, 13% walk rate and an ERA near 6 in AAA. So I guess Fuentes has just passed them by. But you know, need is a big part of the story too,

is that they've kind of brought all of their big pitching prospects to the major leagues and they've all gotten hurt or aren't as good as people thought they were. Yeah, they were quick to bring AJ Smith's Shavar up a couple of years ago. And this has kind of been part of the Alex Anthopopolis front office

mentality, though, is to take players and move them aggressively. If they feel they have a need, they feel that player can hold their own. They did it with Michael Harris on the position player side, too, is just one one other type of example. And with Wilder, man, like, I don't think command was ever going to be a strength, but I'm wondering if he's actually underperforming even a 40 command grade,

and if that's part of why it hasn't clicked for him so far in the minors this year. I mean, 13.3% walk rate is just kind of brutal if you're gonna not be elite in terms of strikeouts. And that's been the case. Waldrop's got a 23.5% K rate. If you're going to walk that many guys, you get a strikeout at least 30% of the batters he face.

And the model says his best pitch is the, is a splitter, which is one of those things that, you know, it shows up on pitching Ninja it's, it's a beautiful pitch, but it's really hard. Let's say your best pitch is a slider, like a chase burns or something, right? You can throw that pitch for strikes. You can throw that pitch for swinging strikes you can throw that pitch for swinging strikes, you know, you can build a whole arsenal off that. I think it's hard when your best pitch is a splitter.

It's going to be really hard to throw for strikes. And then, you know, I think that's what you see in the minor leagues is him probably trying to throw some splitters for strikes and missing with a 13% walk rate. He doesn't want to give in and give them his 87 stuff plus four seamer in hitters counts, you know, and his 98 stuff plus slider is maybe not good enough to throw in those counts as well. 2-0 count, he's probably trying to throw that splitter some and it's not really working. So I think that's a tough one. Fuentes gets the Mets on Wednesday. And if he's still in the rotation, I think he will be.

He gets the Angels next Tuesday and might have a two step next week. So there's a case you can make that you'd rather have Fuentes in the near future than Chase Burns. I mean, just those are better matchups, you know? Yeah. If you're thinking really only about the short term and you're concerned that Burns isn't up for good, I think you can talk yourself into that, but if you're banking on massive impact. I know, ceiling.

Yeah, yeah. I think they still go Burns over Fuentes, even with the very nice numbers coming out of that model. Yeah, that two step would be home against the Angels, home against the Orioles, and that's an Orioles team that is not at full strength right now Adley Rutchman is out through the all-star break He has what they're calling a mild oblique strain

But as we know oblique strains usually take about a month to fully heal as a catcher He's he's got like two or three different ways. He needs to be healed catcher and switch hitter. That is not a great, great situation for an oblique injury. So yeah, I understand why that's going to take a little bit of time. I also saw that collision, Maverick Hanley trying to make a play on a ball, throwing up the third baseline got clipped by a jazz chism, just an accidental collision. And he had to leave a game to the Orioles are getting really, really thin with catching depth right now. So I think we're going to see a lot of Gary Sanchez that was probably reflected in where the money went. I saw him picked up pretty much everywhere, pretty much all two catcher leagues, since he can hit enough to make an impact in those leagues,

and the playing time will be up for these next few weeks. 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? Axel, Loop, Lutz, Saukow. That's Axel, Loop, Lutz, Saukow. This one's like medium hard. The answer is figure skating jumps. Now, what if I gave you 16 different terms and you figure out how they come together

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To play today's puzzle, go to theathletic.com slash connections. I will say one thing that's annoying is like you're probably buying like a month of Gary Sanchez and that's fine It's probably worth a certain amount of money and it's worth I'm not saying it's not a good pickup, but having been in the situation where I'm cycling through Second catchers, it sucks It's not fun That's why I did spend like $50 on Kyle teal recently, because I was like, I just want to get out of this situation.

I want to actually buy a second catcher and have them all year and not worry about this position anymore. So if you have a certain catcher as your second catcher, certain like three or four catches as your second catcher, you had to do the steal. You had to be like, whatever. I have to keep trying. You directly had the Adley injury take away someone you're using, or if you were waiting for Francisco Alvarez to get it going, well, over the weekend, the Mets decided to send him down AAA Syracuse. Will Salmon had a good story about this for the Athletic. And I think this is a tougher call than some demotions because Alvarez has been on the big league team for a few seasons now Defensively he graded out really well like pretty much borderline elite in 2023

More average a year ago and now slightly below average so far in the time He's been able to play this year, but he had a handmaid bone He had a broken handmaid bone that put on the IL earlier this year I don't think his underlying numbers are horrible I think they in context of that handmade injury make a lot of sense It's a fifty point six percent hard hit rate with only a three thirty three slugging percentage It's hard to hit the ball hard that often and be rewarded that little So I don't have a good feel for how long this demotion is really gonna be

But I do think it was really the combination of struggles. Alvarez not being the same defender he'd been the previous two seasons on top of the lack of power output that probably nudged the Mets to go ahead and make this sort of decision. This guy's got a 98 WRC plus for his career, won't turn 24 until November so long term still kind of looks like their solution behind the plate for the next few seasons. How long do you think he's going to be down? I imagine most redraft leagues you're not going to hold him through the demotion because

that doesn't make sense but as you were just saying if you don't have a second catcher in a two catcher league you're going to be interested as soon as that news comes down that he's back with the big league club and taking his spot back from Luis Torens. There are factions within the Mets fandom that do not appreciate the hitting coaching of Eric Chavez. Fair, okay.

They have an ethos in New York. They make, as a team, they make contact deeper away from the pitcher. They let the ball travel more than any other team in baseball. You know, they do have a pretty good ideal attack angle as a team, but in terms of attack direction, they are more oppo than any team other than, I guess, them and the Brewers are the most oppo. So this is a team that's preaching opposite field to some degree, and that may not play to Francisco Alvarez as it strikes.

You know, when we saw him be his best, he had a 209 batting average, sure, but he was pulling the ball 44% of the time and had a 12.5% barrel rate. I would rather go back to that version of him and have him just make slight adjustments off of that than have this version who has a 29% pull rate and is not accessing his barrel rate as much, 8% barrel rate for Alvarez. So maybe there's some interaction between him and the major league hitting coach, coaching staff that they'd want to reset.

And they want him to go and maybe work with their director of hitting as opposed to their major league hitting coach. There's a possibility there. I think that Alvarez is an interesting person to acquire if you're rebuilding, if he gets dropped and you're in a keeper league. I still might rate him fairly high. I think he'll be in my top 15 for catchers in terms of projections for next year. But yeah, in terms of this year, I don't know how quickly they turned this around and they seem to like Luis Torrens and

it might take a while. He might be doing, he might be undergoing another swing change in the minor leagues. That's the part that's surprising to me though, is that if you remember, I think we talked about this back in February, Will Salmon wrote a story about the changes Alvarez made to his swing over the course of the winter, he spent the off season in Atlanta and was trying to, at the recommendation of JD Martinez, just be maybe more of an all field sort of hitter. He let the ball travel two inches more than he did in 2023 and he shortened up the distance

between his feet. So he's kind of more upright and his attack direction went from three degrees pull to five degrees oppo. So he became an opposite field hitter, but I don't know. He's kind of an all or nothing guy. I want him to make the most out of his power. Like, do we really care if he hits two 30 versus two 10? I don't like two 30 with, you know, 18 homers when I could have had two 10 with 26.

That's a very fair critique, but I do think it's just like, how do we know that that approach doesn't work for Alvarez yet? Would we ordinarily take any player and say, well, you've been struggling for 138 played appearances so this approach doesn't work, but that's kind of weird, right? It's pretty quick, yeah. I don't love it. I understand why they did it.

And I think I have a similar view long-term to what you have where I see him and say Francisco Alvarez, very good chance, still a top 15 catcher going into the next season. If he came back and had a big second half, he could be ranked much higher than that because he has that kind of power. I mean, that 2023 season as a 21 year old, 12 and a half percent Bayard rate, popped 25 homers and just 423 played appearances. And that's playing half his games in a place that's actually pretty difficult to hit for power. So there's still a good bit to like here. As far as doing some doing just a little bit of research digging into this story. And I'd heard the radio call actually on Sunday I was driving home heard a Sunday night baseball was like Mets Phillies and they were talking about Alvarez also became a father recently. It's like, well, that's like another kind of bummer on the story is like he's got to be away.

He's got to go up to Syracuse for a few weeks. Like, I know he's traveling anyway in the big leagues, but that's just another another part of it. Or like that kind of sucks. I also learned Francisco Alvarez makes great lasagna. You're like that kind of sucks. I also learned Francisco over as makes great lasagna It's just an accidental fact So now I just want I want the recipe I want to know like what's he doing with his lasagna Why is his little like they make a bunch of it? Is he gonna make a bunch of it and bring it with him to into the clubhouse in Syracuse? I

Assume in this instance. No, but in Syracuse. I'm assuming this instance no but no he's probably a little upset probably working on everything else instead but trying to get back as quickly as he possibly can but anyway I'm optimistic long term despite this short-term hiccup for Francisco Alvarez there was a lot of other baseball news over the course of this weekend. Shota Imanaga is actually coming back this week a much-needed lift I think for that Cubs team trying to hold on to first place in the NL Central. It's also just like for all of us,

they've been dealing with Aylston after Aylston on the pitching side. It's always nice when guys actually come back and start pitching again. Yeah, no, I'm excited to see him. He is coming back at a tough time. The wind is blowing out in Wrigley a lot recently, and I don't know if you've seen the box scores, but it's been hot with the wind blowing out,

and this is when Wrigley goes the other way and suddenly becomes like an incredibly tough place to play your pitchers. So not the greatest timing in the world because Imanaga is going to have to deal with what we think is regression coming for his home run rate in the face of wind blowing out at Wrigley. So I'm not saying don't start him. Yeah, he's a good starter. This is just why I've had him ranked a little bit lower than people want, I think. Extreme heat and humidity right now throughout the Midwest. I think it's all out east as well. So that's making the ball fly pretty much everywhere.

Scientific fact in baseball is that more humidity helps the ball fly further. I just I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense to me as a human being. Like, doesn't it feel sometimes with humidity that you're like walking through a wall of water, like you're just it doesn't feel like the world is like the world is heavy on your face. But water molecules, I guess are lighter than air molecules. Doesn't feel that way, but I have this on good information from Alan Nathan, our

resident physicist. So that was part of why Cincinnati, the ball was flying so well. And Wrigley to some extent too. Wrigley and for most of the weekend. You see those box scores. You see the twins Brewers, some of the scores from that series. Oh my gosh, yeah.

Brewers lineup looked like it got right in Minnesota over the weekend. We don't need to relitigate the ball thing. You know, for people that that were thinking about this, because I had a long interaction with somebody about drag and wind and weather and stuff, the drag is measured on the pitch from the pitcher to home plate, so over 60 feet.

So yes, there are weather effects and you adjust for them as much as possible, but the weather effects are lessened on 60 feet than when you're talking about 330 feet. And then when we looked at the weather effects, we tried to adjust for the weather effects, we still found missing distance on the well-hit fly ball. So I believe the ball is dead, and I believe that we're going to have to relitigate this over and over over the next couple of months because people don't remember that these things are directly measured. They want to just wonder out loud if the ball is juiced.

We've seen a lot of that online and no, I don't think the ball is juiced. I think the ball has higher scenes than ever before, but we're heading into some nice weather for balls. So yes, they are going to go far. Yeah. It was extreme this weekend and on top of the temperature and the humidity, the ball was also carrying at target field on Sunday because the wind was blowing out.

So add that to the equation too, just like you were talking about at Wrigley. It's like, oh, the wind pattern's on top of much warmer, much more humid weather, causing offense to spike. Unless, of course, Jika Mizorowski is on the mound, which I love his celebration.

I'm sure you've seen the clip by now, because it was from Friday night. I happened to be in the car at the time, so I was listening on the radio, and the Brewers radio crew kept composure much more than I would have if I was behind the mic in that instance. The best part of it, I mean, there's a lot

if you watch the full clip. Mr. Rouske's like clapping and just like, as he's walking off, you get William Contreras looking down at Castro just sitting there on home plate. Willie Castro looks like a toddler at the end of a breakdown. Yeah, you can tell he gets a little fresh, he kinda takes his gloves off in frustration,

he kinda chucks his batting gloves down. He knows that everyone's about to make a video of that. In that moment, he's like, oh, that's 100 million views of me taking a really rough hack. He's got posterized. I was thinking about this in the context of how we rank players and how it seems more like we could have confidence in young pitching faster than in young hitting because of the data and just knowing how pitches move is this big league caliber stuff

is this outstanding big league stuff and Mizorowski I think has that and I wondered if there's this window where because it's only been two big league starts, you could actually go make a trade for Jacob Mizorowski that seems like an overpay, that seems like a buy high, and probably isn't actually as ridiculous as it seems, just because it takes a lot of people time to comfortably say, that's a top 15 starting pitcher, that's a top 25 starting pitcher. And if you had to put a set of rankings out right now,

what's your gut feeling for where Mizorowski fits into that conversation right now based on the just the overall nastiness of the stuff that he has put out there for his first two big league starts? Yeah, I think that the effort that you know I've made with Stuff Plus is just to be able to move faster in my ranks. I've tried to be pretty aggressive. The thing that makes it hard is that I'm also a projections-based rancor. But the nice thing is that we now have Oopsy, where we've taken Stuff Plus, put it into projections.

That allows me to get a sober sense of what could be the future oopsie Has him with a 340 projection already and that is versus you know zips with a 4 9 6 right where To be fair to zips It's like the derrick cardi treatment, 437 from the bat. You're going to regress it heavily because he's a rookie. You've got 11 innings, right?

But oopsie says, Hey, it's not just 11 innings that we have. We have actually, what do we have in terms of numbers of pitches? We have 167 pitches. There you go. We have 167 pitches. That's a much bigger sample. have 167 pitches. There you go. We have 167 pitches. That's a much bigger sample. So the three with a three 40 ERA for Jacob Mazarowski,

I can't rank him. Like I think about things where I'm like, how low could I rank this? You know, and how high could I rank this? You know, like, you know, given this projection, how far could I push it? I cannot push him any lower than 25 because around 25 I start getting projections that are for three seven and three eight. I want a three four, you know what I mean? So, you know, the question then is, do I push him ahead of a Spencer Schwellenbach

who has like a three five ERA projection? Do I push him ahead of a Christopher Sanchez? Do I push him ahead of Joe Ryan,? Do I push him ahead of Joe Ryan? Freddie Peralta? Now those are tough because they have much more track record and they have much more sample. So that is where I would start getting nervous. So I would predict and my rankings will come out again in maybe a couple of weeks.

I will predict that I'll have them in the low 20s. I think the thing that would also maybe hold him back compared to some of the other names, and I'm with you in terms of that feeling kind of like skills wise, right? Then all the track record considerations and workload considerations come into this too. How is he going to be utilized the rest of the way? And before they promoted him, my concern was just that they might be trying to front load innings to make sure he could be a starter for all of next year, but then having some kind of plan to use him as a reliever.

But you watch how effective he is and you're like, if this team is going to be a dangerous playoff team, how do you- They want him. How do you convince yourself that Jacob Mizorowski going five plus in a playoff game is not your best chance to win? Game one, game two, you know? Yeah, the elephant in the room is also his walk rate. You know, 88 location plus is terrible.

The 13, 14% walk rates are bad and there might be a team that can really push him on that. But the interesting thing is, you know, he has such a great strikeout rate projected and such a great whiff rate and such great stuff that I think there is kind of this idea like if I just sit up there and just wait for Mizlorowski to throw he can still he can throw three strikes you know like if it's very obvious that I'm just trying to wait him out like he can throw three strikes it's not that bad so then they get aggressive and say oh well then I need to get his fastball before he throws me that nasty curveball you know or that 96 mile an hour How about this for a would you rather? Rest of season 2025 only.

Would you rather have Mizorowski or would you have Tyler Glass now, who just threw 48 pitches in a rehab start? It was just two innings. No runs allowed. Walk three struck one out. But I think he was in the like 96 plus range with his Velo. I think I'd take Mizorowski pitching now. That line does not suggest to me that he's completely healthy and everything's fine. plus range with his Velo. I think I'd take Mizorowski pitching now.

That line does not suggest to me that he's completely healthy and everything's fine. Right. A nice four or five strikeouts in those innings would have been great for Glass and Ale. Right, exactly. It's progress nonetheless. But yeah, I mean, I just think that 25 to 30 range on a ranking sheet is probably where you're going to see Mizorowski land, even with the concerns about command and the concerns about how they could manage that workload. Maybe they'll be careful with them around the all-star break and all those usual things

we see teams do with pitchers that are working in a situation like that. We did get Jackson Merrill back from the IL this weekend, which is really important for that Padres team, given some of the depth issues that we've talked about on this show. And we had Dennis Lin on the show recently to talk about the Padres. And I think you and I are both on the side that looks at Merrill and says, hey, if you're playing for the future, not going to win this year, he might be among the most impactful players you could actually trade for.

With a contending team saying, I'm just not getting quite enough from Merrill right now, but I can get two or three win now pieces I really like back for him in a trade, so you may be able to pull that off, and I think you're going to be pretty happy with yourself in the long run if you go down that path. Yeah, I mean, good luck, I think, probably not. Try, try.

Yeah, the one nice, I mean, the one thing that might do it is that like, maybe he is really slowing down on the steals. And so maybe the person who had him thought, oh, I was supposed to get 20 steals from this lineup slot. Maybe that's the other angle too. I did notice too Nathan Evaldi supposed to come back this week, probably skipping a rehab assignment to do it. So good news there 20 pitches off that might be a little hard to get the win the first time out unless he's cruising and gets through five otherwise I think you're generally leaning towards using him in most circumstances because he's good enough the pitching is just that thin right now with all the injuries. Let's get to our

usual Monday segment where the money went let's flip this one upside down who did you spend money on? You know, you said you don't have any because you have a lot of Jack Haglione, which was an expensive pickup a few weeks ago. But what did you do working on a budget this weekend? We are budgeting dollar days in the main event after after getting Jack and so when you're trying to buy for a dollar you don't get John Carlos Stanton you don't get a Ryan Kirkering what you do get are let's see here we got I believe for one dollar we got Zebby Matthews come on down he's injured currently but we thought it

might be a good stash another dollar bought us Patrick Bailey to come back to be our catcher number two. Yay. And another dollar bought us Paul Blackburn, who has a two-step this week. We were losing Tyler Magill, unfortunately, to that UCL strain that we were talking about last week. So I, you know, I think that that's decent. I got David Hamilton for $2 in TGFBI. And I think David Hamilton is the full-time starter at second base for now.

Maybe he sits against some lefties. And in my last league, I got Paul Blackburn again. And I got a Brady House for $3. And I do want to say, I have never looked at a weirder bat tracking page than Brady House. Now it's early going on this and we're all trying to figure this stuff out in terms of how to use it best but there are things on Brady House's page that I do not understand. For example, okay, let's start with the good. 72.2 mile an hour bat speed.

Pretty good. Now, 72 mile an hour bat speed with an intercept point that's five inches deeper than the league average. So, you know, he would actually have even better bat speed if he got the ball out in front. So you're like, okay, these are good things. Except, why does he let it travel five inches? That seems like an ideal. His attack direction is five degrees oppo.

Now here's the real weird part. He has a 54% pull rate. I actually don't understand the geometry of this. Like, I need someone to explain to me how you can let the ball travel five inches, have a five degree opposite field attack direction, and have a 54% pull rate I don't I don't understand and I don't even know how to turn this into

actionable advice like I I'm looking at house and I'm just like I'm not out on it I can't be all the way in on it like does he let the ball travel so much because with a 14 15% swing strike rate, he would have like a, if he went and got the ball, he'd have like a 33, 34% strikeout rate, and that'd be too much. Is that why he does that? And so if he does let the ball travel,

and he's just a hard hit spray guy, then I assume that the pull rate will go down precipitously. But it also means that maybe he'll never access that high end power rate. And that might be why you start to see these 160 ISO for Brady House in the minor leagues last year. I guess what I'm saying about Brady House is I don't know.

I don't know. I think I don't like. You think you don't like it. Yeah, but the bat speed is decent and the park is not bad for power. You think you don't like it. Yeah, but the bat speed is is decent and The park is not bad for power. What if he by going oppo keeps the strikeout rate to 26 27% But he manages to get the ISO up to 180 200 that kind of player with spray He might have a good babbitt might have like a 320 babitt with that. Might be able to hit 240 with 20 homers, right?

Is that 250 maybe if he's like really spraying it around and hitting the ball hard? I think that's doable. I think one of the variables I was thinking about as you were explaining kind of how unusual this approach is, is depth in the box. And if you lower the thresholds, you have to do it because Brady House hasn't been in the big leagues

very long, you just say one swing minimum and you take a look at the depth in the box off that. He's way in the front of the box. He's way up in the box. What is going on? Among all hitters, he's 30th in depth. Why would you go way up in the box and then let the ball travel?

It's so strange. It's really strange. There's gotta be something that we're just not thinking about that enables this approach to work. I wondered if it's just having great acceleration with the bat. He's able to start later because he can get the bat moving so quickly.

Yeah, I mean, maybe. One thing that I also think about is like, if you're doing a map of intercept point, like and outcomes, if you do it relative to the plate, then you might tell somebody, oh, look at all this good contact at the front. Why don't you move up to get that contact? But really, you should be doing this type of analysis relative to the batter's center of mass versus the plate. So if he moves up, then just getting the ball out in front

means further out. Yeah. I don't know that that's what happened, but I just want to impress upon people that I think that the intercept point versus your center of mass is much more important than versus the front of the plate. Because again, look, he lets the ball travel five inches versus his center of mass, but if you use front of plate, oh look, he gets the ball out in front of the plate three inches

more than the average, which one do you think is more relevant? I think it's the lighting that travel. More to come with breakdowns on Brady House. Now we had a meeting with Jed about the Wednesday show and I'm like this might be a great set of questions for Jed to help us understand this because there's something that's not quite clicking for us with Brady House but plenty of playing time, does hit the ball hard. I think there's reasons to like him even if we can't completely

explain how his approach will actually work. But it will help us understand eventually what some of the short-term limitations might be or how big league pitchers might be able to find some things that work against him because of what he chooses to do up there. This was a weird week for pickups. I didn't think anyway, there was this massive win in free agency to go out there and get anybody. There wasn't an unbustling player.

On the save side. He's there for you. I felt like Kirkering was already gone in a lot of my leagues. He was picked up. There were 38 main event leagues where he was available compared to like Gary Sanchez getting picked up in 53 leagues.

So there was a decent number of main events where he was out there. 191 online championships. Those are the 12 team NFBC leagues out there. The bids were more tempered than I thought I think I saw a max bid of only 138 for Kirkering in the online championship I think it's people running out of money a little bit too though. Oh, that's a good point But I was thinking the Phillies are like well Matt Strom got a save too, you know, it's like dang Phillies, but of the group, Ryan Kirkering, Matt Strom,

and Jordan Romano, I'm taking Kirkering. Right-hander, great breaking ball, good Velo. Our friend J.H. asked me, who would we rather stash? Bubba Chandler, who we've been waiting on all season in our online championship league. We've been playing short all year because of Bubba Chandler. Better stashed right now though in a redraft league. Chandler or playing short all year because of Bubba Chandler. Better stashed right now, though, in a redraft league.

Chandler or Emmett Sheehan, who pitched well and got sent down by the Dodgers last week. I'm going to take Chandler because he got the breaking ball. And I just feel like the Pirates have to do it at some point. I know he's struggling a little bit, Chandler, right now. I don't know why. But the Dodgers thing, it just seems impossible, dude. You like Ben Gasparri, he's up. He's now he's back probably in the back of the bullpen.

You know, like what? I think it's Chandler too. I just can't figure out what else they want to see despite the recent results. I mean, you got Burroughs in the rotation right now. Falter's been better than we probably expected, right? 359 ERA, and then the legend. I think they're gonna trade Mitch Keller.

They're gonna trade Mitch Keller. That's the solution. And then they're gonna have Bubba up. Okay, they're gonna trade Mitch Keller. Keller's the solution. And then they're gonna have Bubba up. Okay, they're gonna trade Mitch Keller. Keller signed that extension with the Pirates. Actually not a wild extension cost-wise though. No, I think it's a pretty affordable one. I think somebody that wants an affordable pitcher

for a few years would do it. Yeah, so he's in year two of a five for 77. So it comes out to like 15 million per year. Not bad at all. It's like three quarters of what the qualifying offer is now. The weird thing about Mitch Keller this year, 18.5% strikeout rates. His lowest strikeout rate since 2020?

Where'd the strikeouts go? He's really suppressed homers. I think it's probably a result of pitch mix change because he's really ramped the slider, the sweeper usage up. And sweepers can be better for miss hit, miss contact than they can be for swinging strikes, especially against opposite handed hitters. So I think that's probably the sweeper. We know that Keller has thrown a lot of different pitches and still has plenty of them in his arsenal. If he ends up in a new organization there's got to

be a plan to tweak him even more right? What would you do if you were running the team that traded for Mitch Keller? How would you try and maximize his effectiveness? I'd probably want to research that cutter that he used to throw. I like him with three fastballs I'd want to know if do we want you know, like a do we want more of a gyro slider? That's 88, you know has more movement or do we want a more of a cutter? That's 90 plus and and is more of a cutter My R&D department would tell me which one would be better You know

and I think that the fact that he's throwing a cutter in the past as much as 20% of the time means that he could throw it again and he has a feel for spin. We know that he has a feel for spin so you might up some of the curve ball usage or you might bring that cutter back but I think that having that cutter makes him a true sort of five pitch guy, six pitch even, and that's what I would lean into with him. None of his pitches are amazing. I want you to throw six of your pitches in all counts and I think the cutter can help him do that Yeah

I mean there's ways for Mitch Keller to continue tweaking and you can you can tell yourself a story that His best season still hasn't happened yet. That's at least a possibility We've been saying that for three or four years now to the best bitch killers have to come You know somebody might just be like hey would I like to have a number three four type pitcher for 15 million dollars for you know the next few years and I'd be able to write that in stone. Yeah I think I might want that. It's been pretty healthy too these last four years now so. Yeah totally. That's part of the equation too. Healthy innings can be hard to find but you're probably right that might be

what we need. Maybe Bubba Chandler's an August promotion instead of the May June I Thought I was sure they were gonna follow the Paul Skeen script with Bubba Chandler and I was wrong about that Other interesting names though. They get picked up over the weekend Mickey Moniac has been on a heater I don't think anything's different about Mickey Moniac, you know I think this is being thrust into an everyday replacement sort of role like he was during some of his time with the Angels. Yeah, I don't know. I've both picked him up and dropped him repeatedly in the same league.

He's right around the streamer level for me. You kind of, you're like, oh, he's got two or three home stands in Colorado for a while. Then I'm interested. Oh, he's going to New York and Florida. Not so interested anymore. Kind of quickly bounced off the roster and usually there's a couple lefties mixed in there

and you're like, oh, it's not even a full week of games on the road either. So that's where that on again, off again, keeps coming from. The weekly lineups, okay, so if you're in a daily lineup, it gets a little bit more exciting. This is probably the best plate skills he's ever shown, but I have to suggest to you that these are still poor plate skills.

You know, 25% strikeout rate, 6% walk rate, it's poor plate skills. If he wasn't a Rocky, I think we'd have very little interest in him. Right. Yeah, I think that's kind of jumping up a level from where it was when he was trying to break through with the angels Mac Scherzer comes back this week Against the Guardians so he got picked up in a bunch of 12s over the weekend I think bid range was two dollars to 150 I would not have been throwing the 150 down on Mac Scherzer if only because the way he keeps talking about this thumb

Makes me wonder if it's just not gonna go away like if it's a problem that he knows could be aggravated at any time and I think I'd feel generally comfortable streaming them using them this week in that match up. The Guardians are just an OK sort of team. You can generally throw most of your starters against them. But this was from the report that Hazel May of Sportsnet had, Scherz was quoted as saying, "'My stuff is fine. "'I'm trying to make sure, "'trying everything I can to manage this

"'and make sure I can recover. "'There's no knowing, just have to get out there.'" Yeah, that doesn't sound great. And also, you know, in the past, he's come back and the stuff has been fine, but he hasn't been able to command his slider. You know, that was kind been able to command his slider. That was kind of an issue with his back.

So it is funny to think back. Remember what we thought of him when he first came up was, oh, the stuff is great, but is the command gonna be there? And it might be, it's kind of weird, but maybe that's how he goes out as well. We're like, oh, the stuff is still there, but because of all the injuries,

he just can't really command it. So yeah, I think of him as slightly above just a streamer So streamers for me are like $11 bids. I have a thousand, you know I would have gone to maybe 20 or 30 I'm sure sir if I had the money Which is like, you know a little bit better than a streamer, but it's not in that hundreds level You know, I think we saw a fair amount of you forgot this guy You know, you remember this injured guy like Tyler O'Neil got picked up in a few leagues and this is the time to buy it Actually when he's still hurt

As opposed to when he's back, you know, so, you know $11 to Tyler O'Neill. I love that one in my main event I wish it was my pick and then the the other guy that we were in on that actually made like a little bit more than Mickey Moniac is Tyler Freeman. In deeper leagues, he's been being picked up and he has an 800 OPS projection. He always by the bad X, he's always had slightly better projections than he's put forward. But right now he's got an OPS over 800 and he just has that elite contact rate back. So like, would you want like a Steven Kwan-esque player in Colorado?

Yes, yes you would. And I think he's a little bit more playable away from home. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that I do like about Freeman, hard hit rates up a little bit in the time we've seen him in the big leagues this year is at 44.1%. I don't think he has to necessarily maintain that because the K rate is so low. It seems almost impossible that he would do both of those things simultaneously. He's

got the K rate down at 7.6%. That's absurd. But the thing that I think Tyler Freeman has done this time around in the big leagues that he wasn't doing as consistently a year ago with Cleveland is stealing bases. He's 8 for 11 as a base dealer. So if he's going to be a lighter in-game power guy that's mostly average OVP runs like a table setter, he's got to run and at least he's doing that. So I think it's a slightly different categorical balance than we once hoped for from Tyler Freeman, but maybe it is starting to click for him now in Colorado. I found those pickups to be interesting. And then, you know, I guess if you're also looking for an outfielder, uh, Kanzone, you know, through hit to two Holmers and in Wrigley over the weekend,

but that was really windated. And on the flip side, he's hit a ball 115.9 this year. Kanzone has with a 15.8% strikeout rate. So there's a, there's 8.7% swing strike rate for Kanzone. Like these are numbers that can mean something in a small sample and they're finally kind of pointing to a little bit more than just a league average hitter. I believe.

So I'm kicking myself cause in my, in our keeper league they were in together. We had Kanzone, you know, on the bench for a while. And then just had some sort of roster crunch and needed to have somebody that was alive this week and not in the minors. And then now he's up and now he's playing well and he's on somebody else's roster.

Yeah, it's always been the, when will he get a real chance to play and is his glove going to be so bad that it chips away at his playing time despite whatever he offers with the bat like there's those questions I Think are still still there But it's frustrating when a player like that gets that run and plays really well Canzone versus Isaac Collins, who do you like better as a deep league outfield flyer right now?

Canzone Was up but didn't play for three days in a row They don't like a bunch of They get a bunch of lefties. There's two lefties he sat against and then he sat against a righty on Saturday and then he goes in the game on Sunday and hits two homers. But you know, the things are in such a flux there that like hitting two homers in that game on Sunday

might change the lineup going forward. You know, Luke Railey has come back though, so that, it's like Railey, Solano, Kanzone, and Garver, you know, like trying to like be the second DH behind Raleigh and it's just, but I think that somebody could emerge pretty quickly. Whereas in Milwaukee, is there a little sense that maybe Collins who is playing every day right now is keeping the seat warm I think it gets more complicated once Blake Perkins gets back because they're gonna figure out how to make the whole Mitchell but Mitchell had a big setback

Maybe a big setback hurting his shoulder starting his rehab assignment. So they had to cut his rehab assignment already I like that Collins steals some bags. It's you know eight out of the last nine. He has started now, so they had to cut his rehab assignment already. I like that Collins steals some bags. It's, you know. Eight out of the last nine he has started now, so he's been basically an everyday player now for the last 10 days. All right, I'll take Collins. The Mariners have had chances with Kanzone in the past

and been reluctant to let him play, so I think that's where I'm at with Collins as well. It doesn't hit the ball as hard as Dominic Kanzone, but probably just plays more. Doesn't matter how hard you hit the ball if you're not playing. That's the main shortcoming I'm worried about with Dominic Kanzone.

We need to go, but on our way out the door, just a reminder, you can join our Discord with the link in the show description. You can find enowambluesky, enoceras.bsky.social, imdvr.bsky.social. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith Smith for putting this episode together. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.

You know, mani macho dough.