Rates & Barrels - Clevinger out for 2021, Drew Smyly to Atlanta and early rankings feedback

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss Mike Clevinger's absence for the 2021 season due to Tommy John surgery, Drew Smyly's quick move to Atlanta, injury risk for pitchers, overrating and underrating the same player simultaneously, and more.  Rundown 2:15 Mike Clevinger Undergoing Tommy John Surgery 6:06 Drew Smyly to Atlanta for 2021 8:41 Reassessing Injury Risk for Pitchers in the Wake of Clevinger News? 13:35 Or, Pushing Zac Gallen Up? 17:49 Where to Take Young Pitchers 23:44 Is He Underrated or Overrated? 30:48 Joey Bart’s Surprisingly Quiet Rookie Campaign 38:21 How Will Teams Handle Players Who Skipped Triple-A in 2020? 50:02 Targeting Austin Riley Late  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. The 2021 rankings are up on The Athletic. They're the first draft, of course. Lots of feedback coming in. It's been great to see that so far. We'll get to some interesting things that are popping up around those rankings. And we've got news. We have Drew Smiley finding a new home. We'll talk about our expectations for him in Atlanta. We found out just before we started recording that Mike Clevenger will undergo Tommy John surgery.

He will miss all of the 2021 season. He signed a two-year deal with the Padres to cover him for the 2022 season, which seems kind of like a made-up season right now, by the way. We'll talk about when you can gamble on young pitching, and we will talk about

a player who I have both overrated and underrated, which is pretty amazing that in the first few hours, at the same time, we should call his agent and see what he thinks

of your ranking. Let's leave the agents out of this. It's actually pretty fun. So for those who have not seen the tweet, our friend and boss, Dondo Dufino, used Cameo to have Rachel Luba talk about the pitcher rankings I put out. Trevor Bauer, near the back of the top 10, eighth among starting pitchers. Rachel is Trevor's agent. She didn't think that was a very good ranking,

and she doesn't think I'm a very good analyst or fantasy player. She even said she's glad that I'm not a baseball writer and that I don't have votes as in awards votes as well, which is actually, that's the best chirp anyone has ever given me. And honestly, I don't want people to try and top it because I'm not tough enough to take that many chirps, but that was really well done. So a huge thank you to Rachel for playing along

and pat on the back for our friend Nando for a pretty clever way of getting some extra eyes on the ranks as they came out. Let's start with the Mike Clevenger situation. That's bigger news than Drew Smiley finding a new home. You can't put a set of rankings out and not have a player have to be scratched off the list within a few hours. That's the Murphy's Law of doing rankings, which is unfortunate. We knew this was a possibility when Clevenger was hurt at the end of this season.

And it's frustrating because when we were looking at him last week, kind of previewing the ranks, if we had known he were healthy, he probably could have been a top 10 pitcher based on skills. And part of the reason why I didn't have him there was some concerns about possibility of something being wrong with his arm unfortunately that has become reality here in the last little while yeah and it's just been a a constant thing sort of at the back of any attempt to rank him as just you know is the delivery violent Is there something that leads to the back injuries and the other injuries, the hamstring injuries he's had? He's had a fairly long string of injuries. And so this one leads in.

This is just another one, and it's a second Tommy John. The success rate on the first Tommy John is something like 95%. The success rate on the second Tommy John drops to 80 to 85%. So, you know, he should be okay, but it's definitely riskier now. It's kind of amazing that the Padres have signed him to a two-year extension in front of that. But I guess they wanted the cost certainty or maybe it has something to do with averaging for luxury tax. I don't know. Sometimes it helps to sort of average payments over a couple of years. But in any case, I don't think they're that close to luxury tax.

So it just reads weird to announce at the same time we've signed him to a two-year deal and he's having Tommy John. They've made the move to sign Garrett Richards, knowing Garrett Richards is going to have Tommy John surgery a couple of years ago, right? Sign him to a two-year deal. You have the rehab year. And then of course you have the year the player comes back. So it's a little bit of that. Maybe it's a way of building up that relationship for when Clevenger reaches free agency and you want to try and maybe keep him around long-term at that time by giving him a little extra short-term security, letting him know you're not going to non-tender him or do something along those lines. Maybe that helps

as well, but you're right. There's probably something else in how the books are handled that maybe makes that a team-friendly sort of thing. But part of the appeal when they traded for Clevenger at the time, they thought, oh, hey, look, this is a guy that's going to bolster our rotation for a few years. Not having him in 2021 is going to lead us down the path of asking a lot of the same questions. Is Mackenzie Gore up in early 2021? Is Luis Patino, who didn't do very well working out of the bullpen in a really limited capacity, does he stretch out and begin 2021 as a part of the rotation? Do they go to Ryan Weathers, who we saw in the playoffs? Do we see him stretch out?

Or Adrian Morejon? There's no shortage of options, but Clevenger's Tommy John surgery, the lingering concerns about the health of Denelson Lumet, Chris Paddock has had Tommy John surgery in the last few years. There are some big question marks on the health front for the Padres, which would seemingly, if they're willing to spend some money, put them right in the thick of things for someone like Trevor Bauer or put them at least in the conversation for that next wave of starters, which also comes with risk. I mean, James Paxton is a risky guy. which also comes with risk. I mean, James Paxton is a risky guy.

You might get him on a short-term deal, but you might also get an ace sort of performance from him on a short-term deal as well. So high risk, high reward, but not high risk in terms of the length contract. I think that's a perfect segue into the other news item that we have, that Drew Smiley signing with the Braves. And to some you know 11 million seems too too tall of an order uh for drew smiley um who was good last year and showed

improved velocity uh best velocity of his career uh good stuff number uh decent command has always been an intriguing pitcher because he's this weirdo over the top release left-hander without very much wiggle, very up, very sort of north-south vertical pitcher. I've always found him fascinating, but I think that the reason the number is higher is not only the velocity spiking and the chance of getting him. Also, I think that, you know, there was a usage pattern that San Francisco discovered where they could be like, hey, you know what, Smiley, you throw four innings at 93 miles an hour and you'll be more valuable to us than if you throw five or six at 91. And I think that the Braves have enough of a bullpen where they could do that same approach, where they have the kind of four inning guy that transitions to the bullpen for the postseason. You know, that sort of number four, number five type guy.

And that might be worth $11 million, especially since you don't have to put down the money for years two and three and four and five, you know. And so I think that there is there are going to be a ton of one year deals this offseason and teams love one year deals. And this is part of why. Yeah, one-on-an-option, that's also something you're going to see a lot of. The Brewers gave out so many one-on-an-option type deals a year ago. It was kind of ridiculous. But I did also want to point out in the rankings, though, for Clevenger, did you end up with LeMet 17th? Yeah, LeMet stayed at 17th, yep, and Clevenger, did you end up with Lemaitre 17th?

Yeah, Lemaitre stayed at 17th, yep, and Clevenger was 19th, yep. Well, it might help us sort of conceive of this arm injury yellow flag and what it's worth in the rankings. Because you have in Lemaitre and Clevenger two guys who had arm injuries late last year that have had Tommy John surgery before that would have probably a yellow flag. Maybe Clevenger's is red and Lemaitre's is yellow, but you have these two injury flags on top 20 pitchers. How do you change your strategy to fit it?

When do you think Clevenger's arm risk becomes enough? Where's the risk to reward ratio right? And so I wonder, just asking you now, sort of off the cuff, do you think that this Clevenger situation will make you rethink where you put Lemaitre in your next update. It's a good question because I think on pure skills, my trust level with Clevenger was higher, but my concern about Clevenger was a little greater because of what happened at the end of the year. The very specific nature of how Lemaitre was handled versus how Clevenger was handled,

that was what was separating them in the ranks for the time being. Where do you go from this point forward? Do you lower Lumet? I mean, if I dropped Lumet, I have Zach Gallen right behind him. I have Sonny Gray a couple spots behind him. Hingen Ryu. Gallen and Gray have less risk than Lumet. So you could just purely on risk justify knocking him down a couple spots there.

Hingen Ryu. If he gets down to Strasburg, Ryu's playing at injury risk, and then if he gets to Strasburg, are you really going to flip Strasburg and LeMet based on injury risk? Yeah, you're not really going to make a move there. I mean, I kind of have them grouped with that risk factored in, so you're only talking about a couple of guys.

And with LeMet, I mean, the main reason he's ahead of Gray already, we're talking about a pretty big difference in strikeout rate if you look at the last two seasons combined. And I think the biggest flaw or the thing I worry about most with LeMet is actually the walk rate. And Sonny Gray has got a higher walk rate than Denilson LeMet since the start of 2019.

So that's why— Hard to put him above him. Yeah, I mean, they're close. They're very close. I think with Gray, you're getting a little more durability. With LeMet, you're getting more ceiling. And what you're trying to accomplish in that spot, we say this a lot, and I feel like it might be throwaway analysis.

I don't think it is. It really depends on where you're at with your pitching staff and how you're going to go about it. If you already have a pretty safe innings eater, if you're building around an Aaron Nola, or even Jack Flaherty, I think, is in that group. If you have a workhorse already, I think you can take on a little more risk with that second pitcher.

How you're going to build early with that group of pitchers dictates which option you're going to choose in that range. Yeah. Yeah. But I kind of see a place in the rankings. And I'm not saying that your rankings are incorrect. I think that we just played this game where we're like, where else are you going to put Lomet? And how far are you going to push him down? We played the game where we're like, where else are you going to put limit? And how far are you going to push them down? We played the game where we're like, we tried to find a new place for him. There's something about starting pitchers ranked 13th through 23rd that I

just, that just freaks me out. And the only person that I would be like, Oh, but I love Zach gallon. So, you know, and I'll,

I'll ignore whatever warning signs around him. This is a group that is full of warning signs and so many for being so high. I mean, I'm sorry. As great as Quinta Maheda was, there's not an agreement between how great he was last year and how great he's been in the past. Regression is coming. We've talked about Aaron Nola's weird high ERA if you combine the last two years. Blake Snell has the injury risk. Tyler Glass now has two pitches in bad command.

Lamette has two pitches bad command and injury risk. I love Zach Gallin, but he's in this list. Mike Clevenger, hurt. Sonny Gray, bad command, has had some bad years. Had some injury risk, too. Hunter Ryu, does he have a season with more than 150 innings? Steven Strasburg is the walking injury risk, and Zach Greinke is nearing the end of his career. That just seems like a murderer's row where I'm like, yo, I'm not involved in this.

I don't think this is a great year for the whole two aces strategy. Like, I don't think this is a great year for the whole two aces strategy. If you're going to if your two aces are Luis Castillo and Trevor Bauer or, you know, two guys above that, then sure. But you invested your first two picks in starting pitching and you're going to have to make it back on hitting. So I think for me, it's a one ace year. I want to I want a top 10 pitcher. If Scherzer and Kershaw fall in a crazy league or whatever, then maybe they'll be a second ace for me, but I don't think so. I think they'll be gone in the first two rounds.

So I want a top 10 pitcher, and then I am going to go hitter, hitter. I'm looking at Gallen again. I think the problem I have with Gallen being where I have him right now is the massive difference in command 119 command plus compared to 86 for Lumet and 87 for Glassnow. Everybody around him is pretty bad actually. And even compared to Snell, Snell's better than Glassnow and Lumet in that metric at 96. 119 to 96 is a big difference. So I think I'm kind of warming up to the idea that Zach Gallin, when this list gets updated, in addition to Clevenger being removed, might be like your 15th best starting pitcher.

Gallin's probably creeping up to 15 because I err on the side of stability in that range. I do think you can make pretty big mistakes with your pitching in that range, that 13 to 23 range you described. I mean, where you draw the lines depends on the year and who's healthy and who's not, right? It's terrifying, I have to tell you. That group just terrified me.

Yeah, I mean, you can see the bottom falling out on a bunch of those guys for all different reasons. The lack of a third pitch is a big deal, lack of command injury histories are a factor you know with grinky i think what we saw at the end of his season was scary in a different way right it wasn't a physical ailment necessarily that completely sidelined him but the way the astros used him in the postseason was troubling right oh that goes back to our other conversation yeah they don't seem to

trust him that seems like a meaningful thing he also had he did have a biceps thing though there was a start that was kind of skipped or he was pushed there was something plus he throws like 87 dude at some point it's not gonna work eventually it falls apart and i think with grinky as much as i don't want to bet against him, I'd rather be a year too early again in staying away than being on him one year too long. When he's going in the top 30 SPs, yeah, that's a lot of money. That's an investment. Yeah. Because we're talking in terms of ADP in the early drafts, we're still only up to maybe five or six drafts. It's not that many yet.

He's at 98.6. Still a top 100 pick, man. Top 100 picks I want to feel pretty good about. I'm right there with you. Smiley, by the way, I've got him ranked. He's tough. I've got him down 68th. It's a little

bit like he's kind of doing the Kevin Gossman thing. Picking his spot early, going to a good team, good situation. The Gossman situation was more about the park, I think, than anything else. I could see this working. It reminds me also a little bit of

how you might feel about Rich Hill. There's a little bit of that in there too. It could it reminds me a little bit of like how you might feel about Rich Hill. Yeah, there's a little bit of that in there too because – Could be good for a little bit, but, you know, fair amount of injury risk and getting older and may not get you a bunch of wins and, you know, how are they going to use him necessarily? 26 in the third innings? I mean, that's not a lot to go off of, but 11 million, that says something. It's a nice landing spot for him. It comes down to how they're going to use him. If they're going to use him for four innings at a time,

you're right. That's going to hurt him in terms of wins, especially. But if you're getting elite ratios or close to elite ratios and a strikeout rate anywhere near what he was doing in 2020, you'd take that. If someone said today, today okay you're going to get a 35 k rate and you're going to get a low three zra and you're going to get a well above average whip from juice smiley but you're only going to get that for 120 innings in 2021 it becomes increasingly more appealing with every year yeah yeah and in that case, maybe I've got him a bit too low, but I was still looking at the broader picture, the concerns about

durability. This is a guy that has a 571 ERA over his last 140 big league innings. Demonstrated home run risk. That is hard to get over. I think Atlanta as a ballpark, it's going to help him hide that flaw a little bit.

So that's a good thing. Run support. You mentioned the bullpen before. We still don't even know if there's a DH in the NL. Speaking of that. Please figure that out quickly. We really need to know the rules for the upcoming season. And there's some stuff we're not going to know until the season gets closer.

Will the season start on time? Will spring training start on time? And the pandemic is raging. We're not going to go down the season gets closer. Will the season start on time? Will spring training start on time? The pandemic is raging. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole on this show. I don't want to bum everybody out, but that's part of the unknown for 2021 now, too. We hoped it would have been in the rearview mirror by now, but unfortunately

it just isn't. So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments?

How do I find all the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh. But let's say that... FedEx.

What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. I think I want to talk about when to gamble on young pitching because Smiley being in the 60s in the rankings, that's more in the sweet spot where I want to take a young pitcher with a high ceiling, not necessarily an older pitcher who's been doing

some tinkering. You could be right about Smiley at that price, and you can be wrong about Smiley at that price, and it's not going to break you, and it could help you quite a bit if you hit. But I think you can get more from some of the younger guys who are going to go after that. Or even right there. I mean, you have Tony Gonsolin right there. Obviously, there's some risk with Tony Gonsolin given his postseason performance, but the upside is greater than Smiley. More wins, more strikeouts, just more everything, more bulk. Yes. I think with Gonsolin, you could easily see him getting used like a regular starter over a full season.

It's possible he's stripling and he's in and out of the rotation. And it's frustrating because you have stretches where you have to hold on to him and he's on your bench because he's not getting a start for a couple of weeks. But when he does start, if he jumps up and he's a top 40 starter, that's worth a roster spot when you're not getting squeezed by injuries and other problems right i mean i think that's the way they probably see him i think the thing that surprises me is that 88 command plus on tony gonsolin i just i didn't think that was who he was and then we saw it though then we saw it we did then we saw it is there any reason to believe it'll get better i mean the prospect grades on him 45 present 45 future he might be a little more what you see is what you get than that i want him to be as a 26 year old i think an 88 command lines up with about with

about 45 uh command all right so that then he's more of a finished product. Or maybe it's a 40. Nobody ever really gives 40s. That's the problem. We've talked about this before. There's a lot of inflation on the scouting grades. If you think the guy is useful, you're not going to put many 40s on him. Good point. A missing grade in some ways. I think you're right.

I've already talked about that Dunning, Molly, Singer, Montgomery, Means, Howardarson section of your rankings that makes me all flustered so i mean i i think i would group i would take a lot of those guys i would wait and take a lot of those guys over the robbie rays and caleb smiths and drew smileys or you know a little bit of each you know take, take one, take one, take one. If Drew Smiley drops in the thing and he goes, you know, two rounds after Caleb Smith, then fine, I'll take a Smiley at that point.

But I agree with you generally, and I don't know if it's maybe a flaw. I mean, there are times when, I mean, look at what the Braves are doing. They're betting on Drew Smiley, and he might bump somebody like Bryce Wilson, a young, somewhat exciting pitcher, from the rotation. Yeah, but for Atlanta, I mean, there are major questions about the rotation going into the postseason. We talked about it on that episode that you and I and Britt did with Ken Rosenthal. It was their biggest flaw as a team. If Smiley is the kind of guy who's going to get a three- or four-year deal next winter,

four might be a lot. He's actually a little older than people realize, and with the arm injuries he's had, there's quite a bit of risk there. But if he's going to get a multi-year deal next winter, if he's their pitching equivalent of Marcelo Zuna, they're hitting on getting a lot of high-quality innings for the short term, that's a big win for them. And that's a big win for fantasy players at the price if he stays outside the top 200. I wonder how much Smiley landing in Atlanta will drive up that price. I wonder how much more the likelihood of him being fixed into a good rotation will build up that confidence. And I don't know. I mean, I got a little heat for the command guys being where they are, but

you have such a difficult time trusting the sub-20% strikeout rate guys. Start over start. There's so many ways it can go wrong for that group of pitchers. I'm standing by those guys where they are. I don't think you need to go earlier to get Marco Gonzalez. If someone else wants to take him in the 8th or 9th round, tip your cap, go get somebody else. You can find guys like him

in the late rounds. Dallas Keuchel seems very much like Marco Gonzalez. Yeah. You have them right next to each other, and there's a 100-pick gap in their ADPs. They both have great command-plus numbers. They both have poor strikeout percentages.

They both have poor velocity numbers, but they have a bunch of pitches. They carve people up. They're both left-handers. They both get left-in for wins and losses. They're both interesting bulk guys, but they're not someone you want to bet on to have much better than basically a 4-0 ERA. No, I think the Smiley thing might push him a little bit, but he's still too much like the other kind of veterans

with innings and performance red flags around him. I think I would take a late flyer every single time on Matt Shoemaker or if his thoracic outlet syndrome is fine by spring training. Someone like Merrill Kelly, who brings that excellent command and is available 200 picks later. I think we can see the upper bound and the lower bound of the range of outcomes pretty easily when we start looking at the low strikeout rate, good command pitchers, and the wildly different prices it takes to get them in our drafts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's also just the idea of paying a dollar for a $3 pitcher instead of paying $3 for a $3 pitcher. Yep. That's exactly right. That's exactly the way I would see it.

I want to go to the hitter side for a little bit because mike yastrzemski according to some of the feedback i got just in the first few hours i had one commenter who suggested that i had underrated him uh there was they were surprised that wander franco in particular was ahead of him given the uncertainty around franco and when he's getting called up but i also had somebody suggest that I actually had him overrated. And that made me feel like maybe I have Mike Yastrzemski just right. Yes, maybe he's very appropriately rated on the hitter rankings. But he is really interesting because just like the projection systems seem to struggle with young players who come up for that limited sample and get knocked around. I think the way aging curves are applied, I think they also work against players like Mike Ustremsky. You were just looking up on the Fangraphs auction calculator where the steamer

projections for 2021 have Ustremsky among outfielders. And man, whoever thought I had him underrated is going to go off on the Steamer people when he sees that projection from them. Yeah, yeah. And it's for a.247 average with 22 homers. And this is actually kind of weird for me. Seven steals in a full season. He stole two in 2019 and two in 2020.

Obviously truncated seasons, but I'm going to give his over under for steals at about three. So Steamer is not excited. There's a one player that in sort of a would you rather ish moment um we were comparing that kind of was like okay i could see like you have eddie rosario uh ranked 67th 10 ahead of mike justremsky and i i see them as very similar if you just look at their max evs for example they both are at like 105 106. They both make decent contact. Rosario a little bit more,

but maybe there's a little bit more power with Yastrzemski. They seem very similar players where they're not going to steal that much anymore, and it's more about can this guy not embarrass me in batting average and give me a bunch of bulk when it comes to homers and RBIs and runs, that sort of deal. So I could say yeah mike estremski um underrated but then you look at the projections for steamer um and the

projections for estremski and you're just like why are these so wildly different um and because they give eddie rosario 275 with 30 homers and five stolen bases ed Ed Rosario is 29, so it's not necessarily the aging curve. He's 30. I think that the problem here is, and this is the opportunity for people next year, I think the problem here is that San Francisco does not play like San Francisco used to. And I've got a story coming out maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday, with Andrew Baggerly where we looked into some stuff. I don't want to spoil it, but one thing that we found was that the Giants just had the

most, the second biggest turnaround from year to year as a team in terms of offense. And so one of the things you think about when you think about that is the park. So, you know, I've been doing park effects all day. I've been looking into the park effects all day. you think about that as the park so you know i've been i've been doing park effects all day i've been looking into the park effects all day and if you look at the part of the park where they changed the defenses um basically barrels play or or slugging there is about 25 better so in that one third of the park slugging is 25 better but you could say okay well there's still two thirds of the outfield that were there was no changes so you know it's just one little bit you know that should that should nudge numbers up a

little bit but not a lot but apparently they closed the archways um in the in the outfield there where it used to be able to sort of stand and look and the and the air could go through out to the bay and now that's closed so that's going to create a new wind pattern and maybe that maybe that brings things up when i looked at how barrels perform at the park across the board they they perform 12 better across the board so i think that there was actually a park thing going on in san francisco where it's playing more fair than it has in the past and there's a chance that projection systems won't get that and i'm not there's not enough talent right now on the roster but let's say the giant signed someone right i mean there's yestremski we've talked about him um you know brandon belt had a career year at 32 i'm not

necessarily lining up to get him, but maybe at the end of a draft or something. A lot of the other guys just seem like role players in terms of fantasy. I wouldn't necessarily want to bank on Evan Longoria for any reason. But there's a real opportunity with somebody signing there. If George Springer signs in San Francisco and everybody minuses eight home runs off his total,. If George Springer signs in San Francisco and everybody minuses eight home runs off his total,

go buy George Springer. I think that might be true of additions that they have. There's going to be some additions. They're going to spend some money. It's interesting you mentioned the offense changed so much from year

to year with this group of hitters. I mean, Brandon Crawford, not new to the situation. Evan Longoria, not new to the situation. Wilmer Flores, not the kind of impact player you'd expect to completely change the fortunes of an offense. Alex Dickerson is a nice hitter when healthy, but not a star by any stretch. Mauricio Dubon, nice utility type, maybe a regular. You don't see that lift coming from anybody that they had in the lineup last year. So yeah, the park factors being different is really important. I do think it takes more time than it should for a park's reputation to catch up to how it actually plays. I think we saw that for a few years in Minnesota.

I think Target Field had a reputation for being a more pitcher-friendly park than it really is. I think people are finally up to where that one goes. I think the Dodger Stadium being a lot more hitter-friendly now than it used to be. I thought it was, yeah. And I think both of those might be actually global warming related because Minnesota, I think, if it did play pitcher-friendly early on,

it was kind of rain and cold in the first months. People always talked about how it was an open-air park. I don't know if there's enough time in there to really affect because that hasn't been around as long, but I do think it's the case in Dodger Stadium where people used to think that it was a certain temperature at game time, and now it's like 95 at seven o'clock. So that's obviously going to lead to more offense. But yeah, I think you're right. I think Minute Maid comes to mind. The park factors on Minute Maid, if you look at one-year park factors like the ESPN park factors

on Minute Maid, they jump. They go up and down from year to year, and people can't really figure that one out. I want to ask you about Joey Bart since we're talking about the Giants. He has Buster Posey, like he's coming back into the equation in 2021. I would assume Posey is going to play somewhere other than catcher a little bit, whether that's first base again. If a Brandon Belt trade were to happen, that would obviously kind of solve the problem, I think,

with those two guys not having a spot to call their own. Bart didn't homer. He played 33 games for the Giants and didn't hit a home run, which is pretty surprising because there's plenty of power there. 60-grade power from a catcher is nothing to sneeze at. I think the hit tool is better than what we saw in his first 111 plate appearances. I don't think long-term Joey Bart's a 233 guy.

The plate skills, three walks against 41K, is a miserable start to his career, but it's only 33 games. It's almost like the opposite of Cabrian Hayes' rookie season, right? The quality of what Cabrian Hayes did in half of the shortened season is off the charts good, and Joey Bart's half-shortened season is just so underwhelming. And if you'd said going into last season that cabrian hayes was going to be that good and joey bart was gonna be that bad i don't think anybody really would have believed it i was out i didn't have any shares i mean mostly i talked about how catchers take longer to debut

and and take longer to peak and i'm just kind of out on on patch catching prospects for the large part but there was one time and i'm not i and I'm not a scout by any measure or means, but I was in Modesto to talk to a bunch of the Mariners pitchers, Logan Gilbert and LeJay Newsome and Penn Murphy. And while I was there, the Giants were in town, and I saw Elliot Ramos, Jared Kelenich, and Joey Bart play in this game. Kelenich, like, he pulled a ball for a homer. He hit an opposite field double,

and then he hit a single right up the middle. And it was just like, okay, dude can cover all the different parts of the plate and do different things with it and looks like okay dude can cover all the different parts of the plate and do different things with it and looks like he has a lot of power and looked really athletic and fast at the plate so i was like on the on the field so i was like okay this is i'm all in on him um ramos did to that to some extent i i liked what i saw from ramos and it's only one game but bart seemed really in between and if I couldn't think of

anything to describe Bart's first season in the major leagues it's in between and one of the things that stands out for me is this if you look at his swing rates they're all above 50 percent on the curve the slider and the change they're below 45 percent for the pass balls. So dude is swinging at the junk and taking the hard stuff. I, one thing I don't find helpful about this line of thinking is I just don't know if that's easier to fix, you know, like have people that have had this problem in the past fixed it.

Yeah. Or is this like a terminal blow? Um, you know, like have people that have had this problem in the past fixed it? Yeah. Or is this like a terminal blow? You know, like maybe it could be as simple as telling him, Joey, get out there and be aggressive on fastballs and don't worry about your strikeout rate. And maybe that actually fixes it. But you do see a fair amount of swing and miss in his minor league career. You do see a fair amount of swing and miss in his minor league career.

And you do see kind of mediocre projections next year for a 250 batting average with less than league average power. And I don't have any one thing I can tell you where I'm like, yeah, this is why I would buy low. Yeah, it is weird. I mean, the ground ball rate, 51.6%. That's not good. Yeah, bail rate is basically league average. rate, 51.6%. That's not good. Yeah. Bail rate is basically league average. Yeah. Yeah.

It's strange. But it's only 33 games. This is a guy that didn't play that long at AA and skipped AAA entirely. We could talk about how limited the value of even spending time at AAA really is. I think one thing we've talked about on this show is you see these seasoned veterans that just have a way of getting guys out. Maybe it's not the best stuff, but they're going to sequence in a way that is more like big league pitchers.

They're going to have better command because they've been around the block a few times. I think that would help with flaws like the ones you described with joey bard if we think this is a pitch recognition problem seeing guys that aren't throwing major league stuff and sequencing like that you know kind of stepping up to that would be an easier progression the adjustment period is going to take longer if they keep him up in the big leagues and continue to have him try and work through it as a part-time player behind Buster Posey. So I don't know, I guess based on what you're seeing

under the hood, it seems like an easy avoid for me for Bart for 2021, even if he's a somewhat logical buy low on principle for keeper in dynasty leagues but like you i don't necessarily want catchers as my long-term prospects like that's not the way i want to play i think the offensive ceiling for those players is often so limited that the payoff is seldom worth it yeah when i'm another piece i'm working on on the value of speed um as expressed in in ops and i'm not talking about turning singles into doubles i'm actually talking about how defenders play you i think we might have talked about this on the podcast a little bit and i've got some i've got some findings catchers are slow as balls and the these finds we have being really slow affects your ops by the way defenders can

play you on the infield like we've got we've got an actual sort of correlation and a a small f finding i mean it's it's definitely one of those things where you're like duh dude but like you know in this business whenever you things where you're like, duh, dude. But like, you know, in this business, whenever you find something where you're like, this looks real, this looks like an actual thing, you can kind of get excited about it. Because there's so many times where you're just bumping around the numbers and can't figure anything out. So I think catchers being super slow is meaningful. I don't know if that means you have to go get Varshow or anything, but, you know, it might be nice to have Dalton Varshow next year. I'd rather have Dalton Varshow than Joey Bart. Yeah, there's more ways for Dalton Varshow to be useful.

And that even kind of throws out the difference in hit tool. I just think the fact that Varshow runs well, that athleticism gives him more pass in the playing time defensively, but it also gives him a chance to be a rare catcher-eligible player who steals bases. I mean, I think about how excited everybody is when Isaiah Kiner-Falefa comes out, gets playing time, has catcher eligibility, and steals a few bases.

People go crazy. Dalton Varshow is a much better hitter, at least he projects to be a much better big league hitter than Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, but I think you're talking power and speed either from center field or from the catcher spot or from a split of both, depending on how the D-backs want to handle their situation. I would assume with Carson Kelly, Varsha is a part-time catcher and a part-time outfielder, and they're just going to move guys

around to get them both playing time. But I think one of the hardest things to figure out as we look ahead to 2021 is for players who we saw debut in 2020 in semi-regular roles, in extremely limited roles, how important will it be for teams to send those players back down either for the purposes of manipulating service time or even for just straight up development? If things didn't go the way they expected, how much are teams going to want to go back to sending those guys to double a or triple a and kind of pretend like the debut last year didn't necessarily happen from a what happens next year point of view oh yeah i think they will i think they will but i think they'll they'll already they already just be this blanket austerity push. I could probably say that for politics too, but let's not go there. There will be an austerity push in baseball that they'll just point back to losses from this year.

And so the austerity push means start your guys in the minor leagues. Although in some cases it might mean pay the prospect because you only have to pay him $500,000 this year. So I guess it won't be across the board super easy to figure out. But if you're a team that is not necessarily competing for the title, I could see Dalton Varshow starting next year in the minor leagues. Yeah, it's hard to figure out the balance between we're saving money so we want young guys to play

and this guy is good enough that we care about saving money later too so he's going back to the minors even though he was good enough to play on an almost everyday basis in the second half of the shortened season like yeah that is that is a logic pretzel to untangle yeah it really is like how are we supposed to really make a call on that maybe it'll be a flood of minimums it'll be a maybe it'll be actually be the opposite of what i just said. Maybe it'd be a flood of minimum salary guys and a lot of releasing year three non-tenders and non-tendering year three ARB guys and a lot of veterans that you thought might get one more deal not getting another deal. The other type of player who I feel like is an absolute blindfold player looking ahead to next year is the Tommy Edmund type player. The work guy who

took a step forward and is going to get an opportunity. With Edmund, it was, hey, he's played really well at the highest level of the minor leagues and he's a versatile defender. Let's call him up and see what happens. He gets that chance, plays all over. I think he had the best WRC plus of his career when he debuted with the Cardinals in 2019. Guys that are not on top prospect lists, but within an organizational prospect ranking, have that sort of glue appeal. They're in the 10 to 20 range on lists like that. what those guys were able to do either at the alternate site or if they're playing winter ball. Not getting the complete understanding of how their teams view and value them right now is also extremely frustrating. There are going to be so many players who end up finding playing time in 2021

who were just so far off our radar because we literally could not see them in 2020 that it's already driving me crazy you know who comes to mind is sort of like bryce to rank you know i'm looking at the back end of the top 100 uh tyler freeman guys we were super excited about you know we know a little bit more about andres jimenez because he came up and played but he's ranked right next to tyler freeman you know There are all these trade rumors of Francisco Lindor going for something packaged

headed by Andres Jimenez. It's like, well, they've got Tyler Freeman, but we don't know how good Tyler Freeman is. The AA piece of the puzzle is such a big piece that for guys that were supposed to have spent this past year at AA, I would assume they go to AA to begin 2021.

They might not stay there as long as they would have otherwise, but if you're a team, you want to see how they handle that competition. I don't think you can completely answer the questions you would answer at double a watching a 2021, 22 year old player face a random assortment of your own prospects. I think there's actually a lot we learn at that level. Daniel

Johnson? Yeah, he's a little bit more like that kind of player. What the heck did this season actually bring for him? Jonathan India. India needed the year. Corey Ray, a former top prospect. Guys that were close to being big leaguers or had

fallen in the rankings, they needed a minor league season last year like every team has several players like that who had something to prove maybe they were hurt the year before maybe somebody was kind of blocking them maybe they just had a down year and they needed to bounce back from it where those guys go and the form they're in to begin the next season good luck yeah i i run a team with james anderson and i literally texted him how the hell are you doing your job what did he say can you share the answer um i don't think this is uh i don't think he'd be mad if i if i if i um let you into his process a little bit.

He says, beat writer reports from alternate sites, players' Instagram pages, lots of Twitter and Google searches, and then the one that is not as repeatable to other people, emails to contacts, desperate emails to contacts. Sure, sure, yeah. Which I feel that in my bones. sure sure yeah which i i feel that in my bones every story i've been able to write this year has just come has at some point included desperate texts or emails to contacts the value of information that you can get from people who are seeing those players has probably never been higher it's always valuable but failing your own ability to dig into

the numbers and kind of paint a picture yourself, the lucky few who are seeing the players either now or had seen them at the alternate site, they can shed a little bit of light, maybe a lot of light on what is likely to come

and putting all that together again, very, very difficult to do. But it's so hard because a lot of times when you have a contact with a team in prospect world, like nobody else has seen their players, so you're asking them about their own players. So now you're going to email your contact at the Red Sox. Who looks good?

Well, they all do. Right. And then you don't even know when they are telling you something about it. And I've run into this a little bit myself. It's like, are they telling you because they want to pump up their trade value? Could be.

I don't know. This 2020 is just the year of the mind F. Any little rabbit hole you can go into you just it gets uh it gets dirty by the time you get to the bottom yeah does not take long in this year to uh have it all fall apart i felt like if i was going to extend the rankings or there's 500 players ranked in the rankings that came out if i was going to add another 300 players total, so maybe 200 more hitters, 100 more pitchers, or 250 and 50,

or some split, it would be very difficult, with reason, to get those lists to be that much bigger because the types of guys, the glue guys, the players you would draft for draft and hold leagues after the 30th round,

we have nothing to go off of. We have absolutely nothing except for those secondhand reports. And those, as you said, can be very flawed. So that's why we're grateful for teams like the Mariners when they put out little snippets like the max exit velocity. We talked about that on the last episode. Any data-driven information from these players is key. bits like the max exit velocity we talked about that on the last episode you know any data driven information from these players is key the instagram thing is also kind of interesting to me because

even if you're just able to figure out where a player is and what a player is doing maybe that gives you some indicators as to just how much that org values that player. Are they in Arizona right now at Instructs, or are they at home trying to figure it out on their own? That is a pretty big difference, right? If there is some kind of gathering that teams have put together, who's included and who's not sheds a bit of light on how their evaluations might be stacking up internally.

Yeah, yeah, except that sometimes there's, again, just stuff going on behind the scenes in terms of injury or what their current situation is. Sometimes a player in the Dominican Republic playing in actual games there is preferable to bringing him under your wing. So maybe you just let him stay there and play somewhere, and it may not look like you don't necessarily value him but you're just happy with his situation and where he's playing what he's doing um so it's just it's just really

hard to say anything definitive i think about prospects right now and i just i feel really badly uh for people who have to do it i get to just pick one and call them the prospect of the week. That's it. Yeah, picking one a week in season is a little bit easier. If you're missing baseball, by the way, the best value going on right now, the Dominican Winter League, you could stream for $20 for the whole season. And the default page is all the games at once you can click through and watch them one at a time if you want but you get the mosaic view right away for

20 bucks there are plenty of good players there are wander franco's playing there nate low is hitting behind him future ray is 3-4 combo i kid i think i'm probably just wrong about nate low at this point but hey it's now or never right he's he's in that bucket of players didn't really play much if i was watching that game i might be watching for nate lowe actually it's very like sort of actionable you know like can he hit for power to all fields is he you know is he going to be a part of the raised plan next year or is it just going to be more of the same i i saw that lineup and was like, I want to watch for Nate Lowe. And instead, they were like, somebody was marketing it and was like,

oh, Nationals 19th prospect, Trey's Barreira or something. I don't know who that is off the top of my head. The Nationals 19th best prospect. Can we promote Nate Lowe in some way that's more interesting than the nationals 19th best prospect like you could just be like you know major leaguer nate lowe yeah

guy that we were excited about not that long ago nate lowe i mean that's how quickly that's how quickly the game turns on you when you're a prospect. You're a top prospect, you become a major leaguer, and just not exciting enough anymore. You didn't come up your first year and hit 30 home runs, so now we think you're A.J. Reid or Brett Wallace or one of those guys. And look, the bar for a first baseman is really high. You have to come up and mash to continue to get playing time. But I want to see things like Victor Robles and whether or not he's shedding that extra weight. You can definitely learn different things by seeing players this way too. So I love the fact that this is only $20.

Best $20 I've spent probably throughout the entire year, which, man, it's been a miserable, miserable year. Anything else on your mind before we get out? Nope, nope. It's going to be an offseason characterized by overvaluing, perhaps, the 2020 season results and not knowing what to do about how to value all these prospects. I see on your hitter rankings that you have, like, you know, a couple places where you've grouped together prospects.

Like, there's around 230. There's the Kirilov, Downs, Royce Lewis, Vidal Brujan grouping, where they all seem really close, and they could play in the majors this year, and they do things that you would find exciting in the majors, and yet we have no idea really for the large part how well they're playing and how close they are to the big leagues and how much their teams are going are planning on penciling them in is trevor larnock you know penciled into the lineup next year is is you know everyone's saying spencer torkeson looks amazing

you know that's like you know you could hit a couple long homers and get a people excited about you you know like i i was super excited about austin riley after after i heard the sound of those homers back in the day and not saying that austin riley is is is kaput and and no longer useful but you know spencer torquason could have a similar up and down beginning to his career so we're just we're gonna're going to have to, you know, we're going to have to try and see through it and do the best we can. I talked to Steamer about how they're doing Steamer projections. And, you know, he said that Steamer is built because they have an in-season projection ability.

He said that it's built to kind of look back on whatever sample you have, weight the things that need to be weighted the right way in that sample and good look forward. Because when you have in-season projections, you have to be able to project the rest of the season after 10 plate appearances, after 50, after 250. So he says, we just look back on it and look at it like it's a 250 plate appearance season. You know, what would we do if we were doing in-season projections and we had 250 plate appearances so far so um i i think that i i don't want to get too fest like you know too tightly

wound up with projections but i think basing your strategy next year more on projections and less on eyewitness accounts would be a good move. I think projections are going to bring people back to earth and remove some of the recency bias that would be front of mind if you were going to go more off eye test and feel. I think that's the beauty of the projection coming off the shortened season. Speaking of Austin Riley, this will be my last thought here before we go. Average exit velocity up from 89.4 to 91 miles per hour in 2020. K percentage way down from 36.4 to 23.8%.

We've seen that for him, I think, at some of the minor league stops. He'd get to a new level. K rate would shoot up, but he'd bring it down after some time. Walk rate ticked up from 5.4% to 7.8% as well. The too early Mox ADP was 293. The earliest he went was 251. The latest was 386. I'm in at that ADP.

Strong barrel rate, strong max EV. I mean, this dude does hit the ball really hard, and he's gaining plate skills. He's getting a better sense of how people want to pitch him and what he can do about it. Yeah. I think next year will be his best year for sure. Yeah. And whether he's a trade piece.

And the projections are good. Two 53 batting average, 33 homers. That's a really nice projection. Two, that's like. Sign me up. Kyle Schwarber,

probably projection. Yeah. At a lower than Kyle Schwarber price. Kyle Schwarber projection with an Adam Duvall price tag. That's exactly what I'm looking for, right? That's plus 10, plus 12. I mean, hey, I'm here for that. So definitely in on Austin Riley at the price,

regardless of whether he's in Atlanta or if he's part of a trade. I mean, I think he's the kind of guy that a team that needs young position players should trade for. Yeah. The floor is really good for him. That'll be our closing thought for today. If you've got some thoughts on this show or anything we've been talking about or writing about or the rankings, feel free to reach out via email. Ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com.

If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, sign up for just $1 a week at theathletic.com slash If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, sign up for just $1 a week at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Riper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on

Wednesday. Thanks for listening.