Rates & Barrels - Cooperstown Cases & Examining 'New' Starting Pitchers

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss current players (and a few recently retired ones) with Cooperstown worthy resumés and dig into the profiles of several pitchers that have recently received opportunities to hold big-league rotation spots -- including a new trio in Texas, Luis Gil, and Bailey Ober.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Get 50% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards, Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you. It is Wednesday, September 8th. It is Hall of Fame induction day in Cooperstown. Of course, that's not normally on a Wednesday, but Derek Jeter, Larry Walker being inducted today. So we're going to talk about some active players who we think could be headed for the Hall of Fame. There are a few shoe-ins, but there's some really fun cases kind of in the middle. There's some younger players who've put together an early career body of work that puts them on the sort of track you need to be on early in your career to have a chance to one day be a Hall of Famer. So we'll talk about them as well. We're digging into some of the new-ish pitchers in the pool, and a lot of questions came in on Twitter about different guys that have been debuting in recent weeks. We'll try to break them down and get a sense for whether there's any short-term

or long-term value to be had there. And we had a question come in about what is on Eno's Fangraphs dashboard. So we're going to go inside the mind of Eno Saris. We're going to see how Eno works from the inside. Terrifying, I know, but hopefully some entertaining things we'll learn about how eno likes to look at the information on fan graphs when he pulls up player pages and leaderboards so we begin with the hall of fame conversation the hall of fame conversation if you're talking about

current players you know it's like well there's mike trout he's a hall of famer already and he could be done playing today and would get into the hall of Fame in a few years, and we'd say, all right, Mike Trout's a Hall of Famer, no argument there. Obviously, we're going to see him probably producing for another 10-plus years and piling up more and more war, and there'll be probably more of a debate of how does he stack up to the best Hall of Famers? Is he the best player of all time? That is still, I think, on the table for him, health permitting. But rather than digging into how great Mike Trout is, figuring out where the lines are within these other groups. I think there's kind of a somewhat obvious late-stage career type here. Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, right?

I mean, two of the most feared hitters of the last 20 years. They are going to the Hall of Fame. Even though if you just started really getting into baseball in the last couple of years, it's harder to appreciate them in their current form. They are absolutely going to be Hall of Famers. Yeah, yeah. And then there's some guys that are a little bit borderline,

even at that stage, that just need maybe a couple more years. The one name that I think of is Buster Posey. I think that the intangibles, the storyline is there with the championships. And I think the production on the field has been very close to worthwhile. The last time I looked was, I think, a couple years ago, and I said basically he's already a Hall of Famer. However, there's a big thing. I think almost every Hall of Famer has 2,000 hits,

and he has 1,480. So that's not super close, but I feel like he'll finish off this season, get to 1,500. Will he play three more seasons? And if he does, will that get him the next 500 hits that he kind of needs to get in? I think he will, but there will be an interesting thing there. He already took a full season off in 2020 um to to be with his twins uh you know he

could uh he could win like like if they did something improbable and like won this year like i could see him just being like oh good family time yeah i could see it i mean he's done it before uh but i think he's right there on the bubble i I mean, I think he's pretty much in, but you can't say he'd be in if he never played another game. Yeah, I think getting a few more years to pile up more production would go a long way toward helping his case. Joey Votto, who I think we talked about maybe a week ago, he's probably in if we're both casting ballots. I will not be.

I think you will be by the time Votto is there, right? So that changes things quite a bit. I wonder one thing, though, about Votto. Because he's not going to have the benchmark home runs, you know, 323 home runs. He's not going to

get to another benchmark. Probably maybe 400, but that's not like the 500 club which is kind of it's not automatic entry but you know it's pretty close um he's not going to get there on hits uh you know he's not going to get there on the counting stats he has two it's 2012 hits um he's not going to get there on those things so he's going to get there uh on his slash line he'll be like one of the first i think to do that where uh he gets there on his slash line. He'll be like one of the first, I think, to do that, where he gets in on the slash line.

His career slash line right now is 302, 417, 519. He has a 300, 400, 500. That's one of the things I actually fell in love with with baseball at the beginning was Frank Thomas's 300, 400, 500 lines on the back of his card because I didn't have a concept of stats beyond that. And I think that those are pristine numbers. However, the longer Joey Votto plays,

the more he attacks that 300, right? He has been amazing this year with the second best isolated slugging of his career at 37 years old. That's great. That's good for his value. It's his best WRC plus in four or five years. It's good for his team. But it's not going to come with a 300 average.

Maybe it doesn't matter if he goes in with a 298. Maybe it doesn't matter if he goes in with a 298, but I certainly think that having that 300, 400, 500 would be a big deal. If he doesn't have that, maybe he can get in. Just on the strength of his OBP, he's one of the best OBPs of all time, and I still think he deserves it. But it is interesting that not everybody helps their Hall of Fame case at the end of their career. Right, exactly. I think a lot of players, if you case at the end of their career. Right, exactly.

I think a lot of players, if you look at the leaderboard for baseball reference as the first base Jaws leaders, Jaws is a system that Jay Jaffe put together a long time ago to really quantify what Hall of Famers look like or what they should look like. I find it very helpful because it helps you compare players across eras a little bit easier. There's a leaderboard at Baseball Reference. If you sort by OBP, if you just look at first base Jaws leaders, Joey Votto is seventh on that list in terms of OBP. The only player ahead of him with a higher OBP who's not in the Hall of Fame is Ferris Fane. And I had never heard of Ferris Fane until i saw this leaderboard so you look at guys ahead of him and frank thomas is right there todd helton is one of the few hall

of famers who also had or non-hall of famers who has a 300 400 500 line and i think everyone's snap reaction as well he played in coors at the peak of mlb's substance abuse era. So lots of questions there. But I think with Votto, I think he's in if I had to make the call. If he said, hey, you know what? I'm just done. I'm good. I'm going to go walk the earth

for the next 30 years, which- Like Kane in Kung Fu. Would it really surprise you? I think he would actually get in because I think the electorate now has a better feel for valuing the type of player that Votto was. If he were on the ballot 15 years ago, I think the same thing that happened to Todd Helton would have happened to Joey Votto for the reasons you mentioned.

I wonder what kind of people would have been helped if they've been on the ballot years ago rather than now, I kind of think maybe somebody, you were mentioning CeCe as being somebody like that. Just a ton of wins, but not necessarily the kind of war-related excellence that you might expect from a Hall of Fame he's pretty borderline I mean he's there in Jaws among some Hall of Famers he's ahead of Don Sutton for example

he had a better peak than Don Sutton but he's a bit of an accumulator like Don Sutton and I just don't know accumulation in a time when you're not putting up the war alongside it is an interesting thing. I mean, almost 3,600 innings from him, 3,400 strikeouts,

if I'm reading that correctly. Nope, those are hits. I think he's a narrow miss. Those are hits. Wait, let me take that back. Yeah, 3,093. I mean, 3,000 still means a lot in terms of strikeouts. That's going to get him a lot of votes.

The other fun leaderboard to pull up, and I started watching baseball as a kid in the early 90s, is take 1990 through the present day and just see how all the players you've watched from the entire time you've watched baseball, how they actually stack up to each other. CeCe Sabathia is 12th in war among pitchers since 1990. So guys ahead of him, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddox, Roger Clemens, Pedro, Mike Musina's fifth, Schilling, Smoltz, Kevin Brown, Justin Verlander Clayton Kershaw and Andy

Pettit. So CeCe Sabathia I think is in the conversation but if you said guess what the voters are going to do, I think he's one of those guys that came in just a little bit too late. I think voters five and ten years ago would have been more kind to his profile. Yeah, maybe

but I do think he helped himself by a little bit of that late career resurgence in new york with the cutter um and you know i think of that a little bit when i look at grenke uh that grenke because i think verlander will probably have another season in him of pretty excellent and it'll be excellent by war um kershaw i don't know how many more seasons uh he has but they'll always be excellent by war. He's very good at striking people out and limiting the walks. That's a big key point of war.

Greinke, however, the stuff has started to fall off. And it's fallen off to such a great degree that the strikeouts are falling off. So I wonder, even if he does pitch two or three more seasons, how much war he'll actually add. I do think at 2,800 strikeouts or 2,799 for Greinke, adding a couple more seasons and getting over that 3,000 hump might be all it takes. But when it comes to Jaws, Greinke, Verlander, and Kershaw are the top three

active players. They're basically right at average of the 65 hall of fame pitchers uh and jaws is is um j jaffe's system if we haven't mentioned that yet so granky verlander kershaw basically in but could all help themselves by getting above that average all in i think one of the more complicated cases for some might be Robinson Cano, who, if you look at the baseball reference war leader boards, is sixth among active players.

Actually, edges out Miggy, edges out Max Scherzer to this point, edges out Joey Votto. But I don't think Cano is getting in. Look how PED cases have been handled so far. Yeah, I mean, he's more Manny than even Bonds, right? Yeah. If you fail a test once they have tests in place, that seemed to be a line that people have drawn.

So, yeah, I guess I would guess he's not in. Scherzer's in for me just to finish off the starting pitchers. And Sale and DeGrom have a surprising amount of work to do. They are above Hall of Famers already, but they're above

Hall of Famers from different eras, basically. And also at the very bottom. So they would really need to do a fair amount of work to cement their Hall of Fame cases. Same with Garrett Cole, too. I think he's kind of in the same boat as those players right now. Bryce Harper, I think, is tracking toward being a Hall of Famer. Now you're talking about sort of slightly younger guys

that have a lot of work to do. Because I think the work from Salem to Grom could be on the order of two or three seasons. I think Harper kind of has to keep it up for a little while longer. Like five. Like five more seasons of four to five war, and then he can be a two to three war guy a few times, and it'll all look really good.

The arguments we will have and the yelling that there will be. There's always yelling. That's always yelling. Yes, that's correct. But I think it'll remind me a little bit. One of the things that has not been super fun today has been the sort of Derek Jeter rehashing.

And I just, I don't know. I think he was a really great player. I think the defensive metrics that people are using to judge him are imperfect. He probably wasn't a great defender, but he was definitely a leader and was kind of like the kind of perfect figurehead to have for the Yankees

where you have all this media, you have all this media, and all they're trying to do is elbow their way to the top of the media heap themselves, right? So they're all trying to get scoops. They're all trying to get that quote from you. They're all trying to break some story with the guy saying the wrong thing. And Derek Jeter never said the wrong thing. I mean, he never said anything really interesting, but he never said the wrong thing.

It's a little bit like Mike Trout. In the present tense, you might look at him and say, oh my God, that is a boring interview. It's calculated, man. It's Teflon it's it's uh it's the guy that every media could go to and get their boilerplate p the you know quotes for the piece and will never hurt the team with what he says uh it's it's brilliant it's annoying but it's brilliant and in terms of his offensive game really good good opposite field power, really good contact ability,

just a really, really good hitter. And I, you know, was his defense not great? Probably not great, but also I'm not going to look at UZR and be like, oh, obviously one of the worst defensive shortstops of all time.

Maybe, maybe not. I mean? Maybe, but maybe not, because those metrics are pretty flawed. Jeter is ninth in position player war since 1990, so I don't really have a strong argument

against him. What are we even talking about here? That's with negative defensive value for his career factored in. So I'm not going to scream that he shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. Yeah. Not really my brand anyway, but not today too. That will happen with Bryce Harper again.

I mean, for sure. I'm sure there will be people that don't want to vote for Bryce Harper when the time comes, even if the track record says you should absolutely do it once we get there. The early career guys, probably the most fun part of this conversation, you could look at Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis, and Ronald Acuna as three guys who I think have laid the groundwork to be Hall of Famers someday. Obviously, a lot of work to be done,

but if you had to bet on players in their early 20s who were going to reach Cooperstown 15 plus years from now, they'd be the first three names that I would look to every single time. Yeah, and one of the things that really sticks out for me is all those guys got going early. I think one of the things that happens with the Hall of Fame is you need to be really good and do it for a really long time. You know what I mean?

It needs to be, you need to have, that's why Bryce Harper, that's why we're kind of saying it's almost a fait accompli for him because he started out so amazing and just kept it going. I've got here, let me see if I can get this right. Rookies that debuted under the age of 22, sorted by their rookie season over the last 10 years. Mike Trout's number one. Managed 10 war. That wasn't his like real rookie season you know it was like his still had the eligibility yeah so the eligibility cory seager um i think the injuries have kind of taken him off that track but there is still

like sort of a bump in the road type chance for him, I think. Bryce Harper is fourth. Jason Hayward, the book has been read, I think, on that one. Lindor, you know, it's kind of hard to see it right now in this season. But if he had fantastic longevity like Derek Jeter, I think he could reenter the conversation late. Acuna's right there. Acuna, Soto, and Tatis are 9, 10, 11. Correa, maybe with longevity?

I don't know. It seems a little impossible now. I got one to put up there with Harper. Wanda Franco's already 19th. Season's not even over. Was that the name you were going to say? No, no. I think he's kind of the next guy. It's like, hmm. He that the name you were going to say? No, I think he's kind of the next

guy. It's like, hmm, well, he's only had a third of a season, basically, to show us what he could do, but that's the kind of start you would need in your first 60, 70 games to say, hey, I'm probably going to be in this conversation someday. I would say Mookie Betts would be a guy that also belongs

firmly in this conversation. I mean, he's been around for so long, but he's only 28. He turns 29 in October. He's got plenty of time to continue providing big seasons. And I think one key indicator for me at this stage, because the massive contracts are increasingly rare, a team that gives a player 10 plus years, and Mookie Betts got 12 for 365

to me that's a sign that all the internal indicators are that a player is going to age very well and I think that gives me extra confidence that Betts will absolutely go on to be a Hall of Fame player but there's that chaos creator injury

you know it's just it does all sorts of stuff under the hood where you just maybe a lot of Mookie Betts his power outage has just been been this back issue that he's dealing with you know mm-hmm Tatis is saying that he won't get offseason surgery maybe despite what the team wants I don't know it doesn't seem like something will heal itself but there is that

Bob Horner connection where you just you know does Tatis stay healthy or does he end up being off to hurt like Bob Horner and we talk of what could have been rather than what was but yeah those mega contracts are really interesting

because they also seem to be like, let me put our hat on this guy in the Hall of Fame, right? Mm-hmm. Everyone will remember the last 10 years, the ones we paid for. So that's why you look at the big contracts. Manny Machado's contract was pretty big. I don't think he's on that track. Machado could get there,

but if you said pick a side, bet yes or no, based on what he's done so far, he'd be one of the best players not in the Hall of Fame. He'd be a no for me. I'm going to pick one of the young guys we're talking about, the youngest, the youngest crew. I'm going to pick one, Juan Soto. And it's because I think I have so much faith in his approach

and the way that he takes at bats. He's very Miguel Cabrera in that he has opposite field power. He has power to all fields, and he just loves taking pitches. It's built for longevity. I love Acuna's game, but we only have a very small sample. We have one season of him having good plate discipline, of having above-average plate discipline. Tatis and Acuna both share a penchant more than soto for whiffs which can become a problem

and then tatis has that that uh that injury asterisk and so does acuna i guess at this point um so so does my pick yeah soto i think is a really good smart money safe bet vlad jr starting to put those pieces in place too i I think you could easily see it happening. So I'm really curious what the next two to three years look like from him. If he's a perennial MVP candidate through 2025 and then he's just really good for a long time, that would probably be enough to get him there too. I hate to say it, but what does the body age like?

Right. Always a concern. I think you'd have to think that. You know, Fielder's body failed in different ways, but Prince Fielder seemed like he was on track at some point. Then he had a really early ending to his career. But Soto has reached the level where even the projections now spit out numbers for him better than what they spit out for Trout. And Trout's been breaking the projections for almost a decade.

So to see Soto reaching that level, I think he deserves to be in there too. I mean, I think the thing I wonder about with Soto, Trout earlier in his career was at least pushing some extra value playing center field, right? There was an extra nudge on a few of his seasons for his center field defense he's not getting that anymore he should probably go to a corner Soto didn't get that to begin with Soto has been a negative grade defender based on the ward defensive metrics like ever since he walked into the league so that's always going to drag his war down and I think that might bring him down relative to other hitters in the Hall of Fame.

But Juan Soto could be, of the hitters we're watching right now other than Trout, and maybe he gets to that level, but more likely than not, he could be the best hitter of all of these players we're talking about. He could be the one that history remembers as the best all-around offensive player from the current group of young players. Then it'll be a little bit like Votto, where we won't be talking about his war as much as we'll be talking about his slash line, or his OVP as best of all time. It also makes me think of Yadier Molina's case.

There tends to be a sense of absolutism when people argue about this sort of thing. He's definitely not a Hall of Famer, or definitely is a Hall of Famer. I remember a lot of absolutism when people argue about this sort of thing. He's definitely not a Hall of Famer, definitely is a Hall of Famer. And I remember a lot of people saying that Yadier Molina was definitely not a Hall of Famer. And that was kind of based on stats that didn't have framing in them. I mean, Van Graaff's War did not have framing in them. And then they added framing, and lo and behold,

Yadier Molina is a Hall of Famer, at least a borderline one. And that's before you consider the stuff you can't. I mean, there literally are things you can't put in the numbers. So it's like, I think it's okay to consider them. I know sometimes I say things that maybe other stat people would roll their eyes at. But I think it's fine to consider those. I think Yadier Molina is a borderline Hall of Famer on the numbers and then all of the secondary considerations in terms of game calling, leadership for that team,

how just decent his teams have always been, how he seems to demand that of people around him, and how his longevity itself and how that speaks to his work ethic. So I would vote for Yadier Molina when I have a vote. how he's just his longevity itself and how, how that, that speaks to his work ethic. So, um, I would vote for Yadi Marlena when I have a vote. Um, and, uh, I think that it also speaks a little bit to this, um, you know, Oh, Derek Jeter is the worst shortstop of all, you know, worst shortstop of all time by UCR, whatever it is, your, whatever stat you're,

you're, you're, you're yelling at yelling at me um well that's ucr you know and we've got we're getting better at these stats and are we gonna have there are times we have revisions where we actually go back like the yadi melina thing and we're able to take the new look at stats and take that back to the old stats and kind of clean them up a little bit we've done that a couple of times and it's changed how we thought of Yadier Molina as an example. And so, you know, we may have that sort of revelation when it comes to outfield defense or defensive metrics when it comes to Juan Soto. So I tend to kind of gravitate towards the hitting side, but you have to give credit to these kind of secondary concerns like Yadier has, like Buster has, and put those into the package.

compared to current Hall of Famers. I thought he was a Hall of Famer anyway, but I didn't spend a lot of time at the end of his career stacking up what he had done compared to Mike Schmidt, Eddie Matthews, and Wade Boggs. The best of the best at the position. Yeah, I mean, Adrian Beltre is an all-time great third baseman, like one of the best future Hall of Famers at the position. That's crazy.

I don't think I really appreciated that. I've always thought that Scott Rowland should be, and if you look at the top ten by war by Jaws, Scott Rowland is the person that's not in there. He's right between Paul Molitor and Edgar Martinez and Home Run Baker. I guess Edgar Martinez went in as a DH. You could say that. So maybe you could say Scott Rowland is a borderline case.

But it doesn't matter for Adrian Beltran. He's fourth. Yeah. John Haslam is the fourth best third baseman of all time. I don't think it's wrong either because he's fifth. He's fifth in war. Third baseman is one of the ones we have the least of, right? So there's 15 Hall of Famers for third base.

That does seem low. Go to shortstop because I know shortstop is the one that we have most of. Hey, do you ever heard of Home Run Baker before today? Well, the name. I had heard of the name. I don't Baker before today? Well, the name. I had heard of the name. I don't know anything about him, just the name. Yeah. It's a good name.

Fantastic name. There are 23 shortstops in. Well, all right. We didn't cause any fights, hopefully. I'm sure we left somebody off the conversation, so let us know who we forgot because that's what the Hall of Fame conversations are all about. I just think we're really at a fun time in baseball history where we have some young players on that trajectory. We have some guys right around their peak who are tracking that way, and we still have some guys even in their early 30s who, with the right mix of health and sustained great performance, could actually find their way into this conversation over the next couple of years.

But let's talk about some of these new-ish pitchers. And I reached out on Twitter just trying to figure out who are people really the most interested in. And there were several pitchers in Texas that came up, which is kind of nice to see. All guys that have come from various trades that this team has made over the last four years or so. The three names are Glenn Otto, Taylor Hearn, and AJ Alexi. Otto, they acquired most recently. He was a part of the Joey Gallo trade. And we'll start with him. I mean, I think the broader appeal for me with the Rangers pitchers right now is how the park has played. I think you can stream pretty effectively in that ballpark, which was not something you could do at the old ballpark in Arlington. But is Otto more than a home streamer for you?

Do you see anything in the underlying numbers that gives you some hope that he's more than a back-end sort of starter? He debuted with amazing numbers. I think it was like a 119 pitching plus, but if you kind of poked under the numbers and kind of looked at stuff versus location, it was mostly location. He had one pitch that was above average by stuff in his debut. I think it was a slider, and the rest were average-ish, he'd like located

located them really well now that we got two appearances in there it looks like the two breaking pitches are the knuckle curve is about average the slider is average by stuff is above average by stuff so that's a that's a good foundation the location has remained pretty good in both starts uh to very good um but overall a 98.5 stuff reflects the fact that his fastball is below average and uh there is a bit of that year-to-year thing where uh will will he have the same um command next year because stuff is stickier year to year than location. I would think of him as a decent pitcher that could pop. He kind of reminds me a little bit of like a JT Brubaker, like a guy in a good park with a good amount of pitches and good command.

And you've seen over the course of this season how Brubaker has been good and also struggled a little bit as he's lost some of that command after the enforcement, I think, a little bit. So, you know, I think that he's a good pitcher. I like him. I don't think that he will be in my top uh uh 60 or anything uh but uh i think he'll make top back in top 100 yeah it seems like a reasonable

place to put it which makes him rosterable in a lot of mixed leagues maybe not a permanent fixture on rosters in 10 and 12 team leagues but someone you're at least thinking about for the two-start weeks or the occasional home matchups, as I suggested. But as far as the other two go, Hearn and Alexi, do you see anything more in their profiles compared to Otto's? You know, what's funny too about Otto, just as another note, is that he doesn't necessarily have a reputation for great command. The fan graphs uh a grade on his command was 35 40 um and his walk rates are up and down in the minor leagues uh so that's something you have to you have to throw into the mix when you're looking at this um hearn uh you know he added a a sinker or a two seamer um and uh and there was like a little bit of a good stretch i think that was a little

bit of a mirage in terms of you know you throw in a new pitch and it has some value just as a change of pace and as a different kind of pitch um than than you were throwing before so it's not on the scouting reports and teams are like what's this and they're a little bit surprised by it. But in terms of the actual numbers, the stuff numbers, the movement numbers, whatever, it's not that great of a pitch and it's not going to save his career. So I've got Hearn as a... I would put Hearn below auto.

And just waiting here for the applet to load. I'd put like doing research on the screen on YouTube right now, but really we're just waiting. Just waiting. We're trying to get this app uh off of the the current servers that it's on and into uh the hands of the people uh at some point in september just so you can sort of prove the concept and see what it looks like and also said it'll move faster than the glacial place because one thing that's happening is that it's kind of recalculating

uh stuff on like an hourly basis and so it's just like continually re-updating and uh it's not giving me her oh it's wednesday so there's day games so that's probably part of it too yeah well it's it's it should be nightly okay let me let me reload i was afraid this might happen. While you're doing that, I think with AJ Alexi, I think he might be the one of the three that I'm most interested in,

but I'm concerned about in that profile is that he has had issues with walks throughout his time in the minor leagues. And I don't know if that will go completely away. I think the look I had at him for part of Monday, I didn't think his command stood out to me as bad in that outing. I didn't get to see all of it, but it was just one of those things where I was like,

well, if I were guessing the command grade, I wouldn't have guessed 30 command based on the bit that I saw. It doesn't mean he doesn't possess 30 command, but he didn't look hopeless to me. So I was surprised to see the walk rates were as bad as they were given the command score and

what I had seen just in that little bit of a look. But at least two good pitches based on the scouting report. A 60 grade fastball and a 55 curveball with a 60 future grade. The location plus agrees with the shaky command. Yeah, it also sees the inconsistency.

Really poor location numbers for the slider and the foreseam. And, of course, that could change, but I'm not seeing enough stuff there. Right now, 93 stuff plus. The changeup is average, and everything else is below average or close to it. I mean, three average pitches with good command, I think you would say could be an average pitcher, or slightly above average pitcher, but it's three average pitches with poor command.

So I have Alexi comfortably last of the three. So it's Otto, Hearn, Alexi for me. And with those kind of location numbers, honestly, Alexi's probably headed towards the pen. Interesting, though, the results that he had in the minors are probably a big part of why people were chasing him in fab the last couple of weeks. He had a sub-2 ERA at AA and briefly at AAA this year,

whips near one at both of those stops. He had a left-on-base percentage at AA a at 93.1 and he was at 98.4 at triple a so wow that's that's really gonna skew the numbers i mean that's weird like weirdly high at 65 combined innings of like a 95 left on base percentage and it's 70 of the big leagues that's why he's projected to have a 70. They nodded in his direction. He's at a 71.5% left on base percentage in his projections. And it is surprising to see those nice K-9s in the minor leagues change so much. But there's a little bit of overratedness because your K-9 goes up if your BB-9 is high.

That's why K percentage is better than walk percentage. I mean, that's why K percentage is better than K-9 because K-9 is actually linked to BB-9 because the more innings you have, the more... Am I saying that right? Why is that? Because, let's say you... You could be inefficient.

You could be inefficient and still have a high K per nine. That's it, yeah. But strikeout percentage is obviously more effective at telling you how good a player is because it's just how many strikeouts out of how many batters you faced. Still some pretty good strikeout rates, so I'm a little surprised at the numbers when I look at the stuff,

but I have a feeling that this is just not going to work out that well because in the minor leagues, I think maybe you can get away with command that you can't get away with in the major leagues, and I think that's sort of what we're seeing here. Right. Well, I think the good news here is that if the stuff's going to play up in a relief role, there's some high leverage opportunities to be had in the Texas bullpen. So failing as a starter for the Rangers doesn't necessarily mean that Alexi be without fantasy value, even looking ahead to next season. You

know, if he fails quickly enough as a starter, they make that move sooner rather than later. Maybe we're talking about him as an eighth inning guy or a possible closer in the not so distant future. One other guy that I thought was really interesting is the new Reynaldo Lopez. I have not seen Lopez with numbers that look like this really ever. I was comparing his 2020 stuff plus and location plus to what we're seeing in 2021, he's up 10 points in Stuff Plus. He's at 103.8 right now. Location has improved as well. He's above average there now.

The CSW has ticked up a little bit, so your called strikes and whiffs look a little better. I'm surprised it's not actually up more relative to the increase in stuff, but I think what we're seeing from Ronaldo Lopez might be real. I know one thing that changed for him is that he had LASIK. And I think we always think of LASIK as the sort of thing that helps a hitter more than it helps a pitcher. But I imagine seeing your target still helps you quite a bit as a pitcher. Yeah, and I think one of the big things for him has just been simplifying the arsenal, you know.

He kind of has gone to fastball slider. And I think that's going to be a big part of why he's better. It's just, you know, I think he commands the slider best out of his secondary pitches. The location plus on a slider is the best out of his three. It's the best by stuff plus. And he's just simplified the arsenal the curveball has never ranked really well by any metric

and maybe the changeup it says here that he has above average location strategy on the changeup but fastball slider is really working for him you know what he might be? He might be one of these four-inning type pitchers. If they want to throw an opener in front of him, I'm all here for it.

I mean, it's just, what wasn't working before was that he didn't have great fastball command. He didn't have a secondary pitch he could command. Now with the slider, he has that, but if he starts mixing the changeup in, maybe the command starts falling apart again. So think if i if i look at a pitcher like this who's pitching for me and he can give me three or four innings with this approach and then i'm into it yeah it just it may not lead to a lot of fantasy value well he's going to be important for the white socks all the injuries they've piled up in the back of that rotation over the last couple of weeks.

I think that description, though, that four-inning sort of thing, probably applies to Albert Elzele as a floor. I think there's still room for him to be better. He came up as kind of a postscript in a tweet from our friend John over at MLB Moving Averages on Twitter. John put four names together, one of them, Glenn Otto, who we just talked about, against Bailey Ober, Carlos Hernandez, and Vladimir Gutierrez. Now, I think with the other three guys here, other than Otto, we've had a little bit more of an extended look at those guys over the course of the second half. So how does Otto kind of stack up for you compared to the likes of Ober and Hernandez and Gutierrez? Hernandez and Gutierrez.

Yeah, Ober is an extreme command play. Makes me a little bit uncomfortable year-to-year because we've talked about the stickiness of stuff versus command. Stuff is stickier year-to-year than command. And if you look at Bailey Ober's pitches, he has one pitch that's above average by stuff. That's curveball. And then four pitches that are above average by location. The nice thing is that he doesn't have any pitch that's just terrible.

You know, all of his pitches, like 96 on the changeup, 90 on the slider, and 89 on the fastball. So he has four representative pitches. It's a little bit Roarkian. A taller Tanner Roark? Maybe. It's definitely in that sort of Ryu, you know, if Ryu is the champion of all guys that doesn't have a lot of stuff but has command of a lot of different pitches

and has at least one out pitch, he's in that corner of the pitching world um but i feel like that can just come and go um so uh what were the other names so we got over carlos hernandez and vladimir gutierrez yeah uh so carlos hern Hernandez is like the opposite of over, right? Yeah. More stuff. Yeah. So more stuff.

Uh, and then, uh, Gutierrez is kind of, uh, in between the, the one thing I will say is that, uh,

boring, like sort of boring in between this, I think is less appealing to me, you know, uh, at least with over and Hernandez, I can be like, ah, Ober has elite command, and hopefully has enough stuff to make it work. Ah, Carlos Hernandez has elite stuff,

nearly good stuff, and hopefully his command will improve because he has this backstory of not having that many innings in the minor leagues. Vladimir Gurdjieff is just okay on both fronts he has a good slider good curveball the change up and force him a little bit below average the locations is is basically average a little bit below average i think he's an average pitcher and for what it's worth he's an average pitcher in a really terrible park yeah so i'm going to order these guys carlos hernandez because stuff is stickier year to year and then i'm going to take bailey over over vladimir gutierrez because he has that one elite skill to fall back on yeah Yeah, I think the Hernandez,

Ober, Otto, Gutierrez order is the way I'd go. And I think Ober versus Otto in the middle is probably maybe the closest of any of the possible debates in there. They're kind of similar. They have an out pitch. They have three other decent pitches. And they have really good command.

Except Otto does not have good command grades from the scouting community and his minor league numbers don't show the same command so that's why Ober is ahead of Otto for me all right we got another rankings question this one comes from Simon really looking more for just some general advice here but what's wrong with Ryan Weathers you know he came up and was getting good results right away I think you looked at some of the underlying numbers at the time and said, this probably isn't going to last. I think he's kind of crashed even harder than we would have expected, which is a bit bizarre.

I know he's dealt with a minor injury this year, so there's that kind of lingering in the background. How much of this is just Ryan Weathers needing to find a third pitch if they're going to keep using him as a starter? Well, to me, it's bad fastballs. It's fastball shape. I don't think that they

really did a good job of it. I mean, if you look at his baseball savant page, you can kind of see it without needing to look at his stuff page. His vertical movement versus average is all deep blue um he has a little bit of wiggle on his foreseam which is not ideal

you don't necessarily want wiggle on your foreseam so uh you're looking at a sinker with less drop than you'd want in fact his sinker and his foreseam have the same amount of drop it just you know there's nothing nothing that i can say this this is nice he's doing a good thing this is this is what you want it to look like um so i i think if i were them i would uh go heavy into the sinker and try to find a way to get more drop on that sinker you know to to throw and and you know sinker sinker change up slider like you know i know logan webb is a righty but like logan webb was doing the same thing where he was trying to throw a four seamer right and uh and it wasn't really working because the four seamer wasn't that good And he was being forced into a bucket, you know, like everybody else.

And I think he's just a traditional sinker guy. So this year they said, no, be yourself, be a sinker guy. And when they did that, he really took off. So that's what I would do with Ryan Weathers. I would embrace that he's a sinker guy and I would do some seam shifted wake work with him where I would kind of go through the grips and find the one grip that correlated,

that went well with his arm slot and created more dip and dive on that sinker. And I'd be working on that. Because if he came back as a sinker change up guy with an occasional slider that isn't amazing, but looks very different than the rest of his arsenal. I think he could be successful. I see.

Tweak the fastball, scale back the slider, throw more change-ups. It takes some retooling, but not impossible. I think Simon's playing in an NL-only league, so he's looking pretty deep. I would say Weathers, as a cheap, cheap keeper, could be worth holding, but he had a few other options. He has Kyle Muller, Edward Cabrera, and Ranger Suarez. Cabrera, I mean, I know the early results have been pretty typically like a mixed bag, but at the same time, he could be really good, easily the best ceiling of all these pitchers.

And I'm not going to look at him after three big league starts and say, oh, he's walking too many guys. He's got a home run problem. He's not missing bats. Like, come on. He missed a whole bunch of time this season because of injuries. So I'm wondering how much stock are you willing to put in to what you've seen in the underlying numbers so far with Cabrera,

given the amount of rust that he was knocking off from the long layoff in the first half. You want more pitches, but Stuff Plus does like the slider curveball and four seam for edward cabrera so um you know that's something i would hold on to i would say that uh despite his really small walk numbers in the minor leagues edward cabrera did not what's his scouting grade on his on his command it's like 45 40 45 yeah 45 so it's it's that's a little bit surprising for a guy who had like zero walk rates and i really it's like had some walk rates that started

with ones and twos um so i think that uh you know it's not too surprising then that uh his location plus numbers um you know aren't aren't amazing either so i would uh i would take edward cabrera out of the bunch he has the best home uh park situation he has the best stuff plus and he has the best three pitch mix out of anybody um and uh i think even if the change up isn't any good for eduardo cabrera uh which this suggests maybe might be the case, the slider and curveball and four-seamer are enough to make it work. Is there anything good in Kyle Muller's profile? I feel like we talk about a lot of these Braves depth prospects a lot and don't come up with a lot to be excited about. As I have it loading, the way I remember Kyle Muller is not good command um and uh a decent slider but uh possibly uh the kind of command that might

that might make it hard to to be successful as a starting pitcher and then there was a ranger suarez was part of that question as well he's shifting back into the rotation for now he kind of seems like a guy that's going to get stuck in between and fall into that permanent swingman role. If you said choose one of Suarez or Bailey Falter, who do you think is more likely to be a useful deep league starter in 2022? I'd actually take Falter, even though Suarez is getting that chance right now. Yeah, you know, very lackluster strikeout rates in the minor leagues for Suarez. lackluster strikeout rates in the minor leagues for Suarez. And if he returns

to that as a starting pitcher, then I kind of think he might be just a little bit boring. But a nice K rate as a swingman this year. A lot of relief appearances. 25% K rate for Suarez here in 2021.

It's true, but some of that was what was what you're saying as a reliever right yeah a lot of that has come as a reliever yeah let me i'm pulling up his his numbers because i would assume um that he does not have a standout thing what bailey falter has it's not good stuff at all but he hasout command, so he's a little bit like a low-rent Bailey Ober. Ranger Suarez is showing up here as having a good changeup and slider by stuff, having above-average location, and being basically an average pitcher. I will point out, though, that his last five appearances, he's had basically a 90 stuff, and those are his appearances as a starter.

Yeah, so that gives you a better idea of how things are going there. I think if you're in a situation looking at that group of pitchers. What was the group? That was Weathers. Cabrera, Weathers, Suarez, and Muller. I think I'd go Cabrera one by a good margin. Good margin. Weathers probably second, and then I think I'm Mueller over Suarez,

mostly because of the park. I do not like trying to take shots in Philadelphia on pitchers that I'm just not sure about. Not until that pitching program has proven something. Kyle Mueller has a 112 stuff plus on the

slider, and then he's 95 on the curveball and 85 on the foreseam. He just has really poor location numbers. Average on the slider, but 86 on the curveball and 90 on the fastball, which is tough. If you have poor fastball command, it's going to be pretty rough on you. But, you know, at least he has a good breaking ball.

You know, I might put Muller ahead of Weathers. There's some aspects of the Atlanta pitching program that I think are in good shape. And we still have some questions about San Diego in that regard. Right.

I can see where that comes from. Sometimes you are kind of trying to read the tea leaves of how do these teams, what kind of things do these teams do with their pitchers and how do they approach this. Kyle Muller, also what you can see in Atlanta is that he might have multiple bites at the apple. I mean, look at how Tukey Saint is back in the rotation after being in the bullpen.

So they're going to kind of play around with pieces and have the, you know, Sean Newcomb got a couple of tries at it. He's probably a reliever now, but he got a couple of tries at it. So I would say Kyle Muller gets a couple of tries at it, and I like him better than i ever liked bryce wilson um i like him better than uh kyle wasn't there another kyle who's that who's the other who's the guy i'm thinking of kyle right yeah i like i think i like him better than kyle right but he reminds me of kyle right but i think if you had two or three kyle rights one of them becomes a good Major League pitcher.

So this is a little bit like kind of a second coming of Kyle Wright, just kind of looking at stuff and how the arsenal fits together. Good breaking balls, poor command. Had another couple of questions come in about Aaron Ashby, 2022 expectations for him. What are we seeing in terms of the underlying numbers of Ashby so far yeah it's that was was interesting because it gets brought up a lot in the context of the brewers uh pitching development program which uh 100 percent uh i have total admiration for i did you know a stuff plus thing where i looked at uh stuff plus by team and the brewersers really stood out. However, Aaron Ashby does not stand out for me.

The changeup has good stuff plus. The slider has good location plus. So you could make that work. But here's the numbers on the sinker. 77 stuff plus, 92 location plus. So that's why he's already kind of almost 50 50 slider versus sinker i mean he's also throwing the change up but he's equaling the amount of sinkers with this slider because he can command the slider better we're already at near 300 pitches for ashby so we're getting

a decent sample i think he will be a guy that might pop in small samples when like his strategy is working, but it's not the kind of thing I want to bet on somebody who has a 77-stuff-plus on their sinker. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, it's weird because the scouting grades in those pitches are good. I mean, the fastball slider and curveball got a 55 from Fangraphs.

Changeup got a 45. It's the command that they were worried about. The TLDR on Fangraphs mentions his command. So here's the command that they were worried about the the tldr on fan graphs mentions his command so here's another thing that would be interesting what if his primary pitch is a sinker um why did he have such boring uh ground ball rates in 2019 he did take off with that this year small small sample compared to like the innings of 48, 49% ground ball rate, that's not useful. Maybe he was working on the foreseam those years,

and they said, nah, screw it, back to the sinker, right? Yeah, sinker's good, keep throwing the sinker. And he did take a big step forward this year in terms of strikeout rate, but you can see in the walk rates already that the command is shaky. So I see shaky command, iffy sinker good change up can locate the slider he could have uh some sort of uh career as a sort of slider you know as his kind of primary pitch i'm a little surprised by the projections um yeah projections are probably as good as anybody we've talked about so far. But I think that's some artifact of them not projecting him as a starter or something.

Because if you look at it, the bat projects him for six more games and 12 innings. So I think they're projecting him as a reliever. Yeah. Ashby versus Brian Weathers probably seems like a good starting point. And I would err on the side of Ashby. I think there's more ways for it to work for him. Lefties with sinkers, good. And the Brewers have maybe a better pitching development program.

I mean, yeah, I think I would go Ashby over Weathers. But if we're returning to the list, Edward Cabrera is still an easy number one for me. And then Muller, I have to fit Muller in somewhere around there. Might go Ashby or Mullerer ashby weathers fringy for the top 100 if we think he's got a rotation spot none of these guys is really popping for me as somebody that like i'm going to put my hands around and and uh and promote as like you know my sleeper next year. I'm still sort of waiting for that

in this group. I think Edward Cabrera is the closest. Maybe I got one here from the next question we got. At Baseball Pods, our friend Chris wanted to know if you had to draft a 2022 redraft league today, how would you rank Carlos Hernandez, Luis Gil, Nestor Cortez, and

Josiah Gray? Get a little more upside pushed in there to use the bad U word. I should throw a couple bucks into the swear jar if I can find it. Where's my swear jar? So Gray has been getting hit a bit recently. Cortez has been great kind of in the surprise starter role for the Yankees. Heal, I was looking this up because someone asked on Twitter about using him against the Blue Jays on Wednesday. Their situation

was really good numbers based on the stuff plus and location plus model. I still didn't want anything to do with the Jays given that this particular question was about ERA and whip for that matchup. The Jays are a lineup you don't throw.

I don't want to call Luis Heal a fringy starter based on the stuff but just fringy based on track record like i i think there's still too much risk there to to go ahead and and throw him out there in that matchup but i think of all the names we've talked about so far you said who's most likely to maybe push edward cabrera and be the highest ceiling pitcher of the entire group louise heel might be that guy. Yeah, yeah. Reminds me a little bit of, I mean, on the wrong side,

maybe a young Michael Pineda. Really good command of the fastball slider if you change up. But I think he also could develop that change up a little bit and I'm fascinated by this combination of just a wipeout foreseam and slider combination with command of those two and I think that will go further than you might expect two pitches to go in Yankee Stadium.

Who were the other names? And then Carlos Hernandez actually. I think Carlos Hernandez, Luis heel and edward cabrera are my favorite three uh names we've talked about today those are guys that i will have possibly higher than other rankers going into next season yeah i think cortez and gray can probably go into the the ashby weathers muller cluster which gray is this. Yeah, man. The model doesn't like him. Let me see if it's changed recently.

It's an interesting one. There might be a possibility that we're missing something on his fastball. But when he first came up, I remember the model was just not there for Josiah Gray. What was the other names?

It was Hernandez, Heal, Cortez, and Gray. Oh, okay. Nestor Cortez? Yep. I love him. I don't have the stuff in front of me. There's just something about how quickly he went to every old pitcher trick in the book that just makes me think that I know what I'm going to see when I open his page.

You know what I mean? I feel like when I'm watching him pitch, I'm watching somebody that just is trying every damn thing he can try. I mean, he's got like three different arm slots. He does this like shimmy thing. He does quick pitches all the time. I swear he's going to throw an aphos any day now. I can't imagine.

I'm loading his Stuff Plus page right now, but I can't imagine that it's going to tell me a nice story. No, wise beyond his years, it seems like. Yes, wise beyond his years. it seems like. Yes, wise beyond his years. The mound presence. Old early. The 35-year-old, 26-year-old. Yeah, exactly.

I'm fascinated now. It does like his change-up. Yeah, but 87 stuff plus. This is a guy who's just barely hanging on. I'm not that into it, but let me get. I'm not, not that I didn't do it, but let me get Josiah gray up because that's fascinating to me that here's a guy who does have,

would you say that he, he has the scouting play degree and the minor league numbers to suggest that everything's in place for him to succeed? Yes. And I think the only thing that would be even a yellow flag with him is that the Dodgers were trading him, but they traded him to get Trey Turner and Max Scherzer. You have to trade good players to get good players. That shouldn't just be the red stamp of,

well, he's never going to be good. Give up on him. The Dodgers traded him. I don't think that's fair at all. I mean, I think the breaking balls are okay, but 93 stuff plus in 735 pitches, on top of the fact that he's now demonstrating some proclivity to the home run.

I think he's kind of just like a modern pitcher that lives at the top of the zone, gets a lot of whiffs for it, and gives up a lot of homers for it. I don't think that his stuff necessarily stands out as going to be effective in that situation. Like his four-seam fastball is a 93 stuff plus and a 95 location plus. Right, so maybe the mindset, the approach is good, but the stuff doesn't lend itself to making a lot location plus. Right. So maybe the, the mindset, the approach is good,

but the stuff doesn't lend itself to making a lot of mistakes. And he's in a park that gives up homers, um, you know, with the best of them. And then on top of that, uh, there might be a DH next year.

So he wouldn't be any different than, um, you know, somebody who pitches in a, in a, uh, band box in the AL right now. I can see Gray having more rotation job security than a lot of the other guys we're talking about, especially the guys on contending teams, though. So that might push him a little higher in the rankings, even though there are some causes for concern.

We had a few questions coming about Drew Rasmussen, who we were surprised to see in the Rays rotation recently. What do the underlying numbers tell us about what Rasmussen has been doing more recently in that expanded role? I'm so mad. I was talking to somebody in the Rays organization. I was like, you guys got Rasmussen to start, didn't you? Didn't you? Didn't you?

Did you get like an upside down smiley emoji back? No, they were like, no, we think they're both good relievers. I'm like, you, you, I'm shaking my fist at you. How long has Rasmussen been starting? I think it's probably about five now. been starting i think it's probably about five now um in those five starts three have uh three of them have remained above a 110 stuff plus and two have been more like 102 103 right and that's getting him out fairly early he did face 20 batters in two of those five starts but 15 or less in the other three so he might be landing right in that ronaldo

lopez can't push him quite as hard but we can use him and get a lot of outs with him yeah and what do you do about that in fantasy it's gonna be more of a thing we're gonna have more of these guys and they're gonna be good and i bet you they're gonna be better than people think because they won't give you wins remember like we've had fantasy players to tell us there are elite relievers that don't get saves that are that are good to roster and we ignore them all the time because we're we're going after saves you know uh and we'd rather have that clunky you know uh 10 save uh terrible reliever on our team than somebody like Josh Hader 1.0 that was out there putting up zeros but no saves. I feel like we're going to have that same thing happen

with these four inning guys where you'll have old baseball heads saying, we don't have enough place on the roster. It's going to screw up your bullpen. You can't do, like, that's going to be, in terms of real life baseball, they're going to be like, ah,

the four, the four, the four pitch, the four inning starter is, is just the end of baseball. It's the death of baseball. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to baseball. Then you'll have other teams that totally embrace it and have like two or

three, four inning starters. And, uh, like the giants have just like, you know, and the Dodgers just have like a really active train between their AAA team and their major league team with the relievers to keep their bullpen fresh.

And then in fantasy, I don't know what the equivalent is. I think in a 15 team league, it absolutely makes sense to have to take a shot a a couple of these guys especially if they start behind an opener then they might get the win. A lot of times if they start the game and go four they won't get the win. It's a dumb thing in scoring. Can we just fix the win rule? Wouldn't that solve so many of our problems? Should we just fix that anyway?

I'm a big advocate of trying to just talk to scorers and like think of a different way to award the win I think that sometimes they get too they get too caught up in like the actual advice of how to score for a win that they they should we should almost empower them we should say hey score take a step back look at the box score and don't worry about WPA or this or that look at the box score, and don't worry about WPA or this or that. Look at the box score

and say, which one of these pitchers contributed the most? Because WPA can be flawed. It can have, it can weight certain innings too much. If a guy throws four innings and gives up no runs, and his team wins three to one or three to two or something, give it to the guy who pitched four innings. Don't give it to the guy who happened to be pitching on the mound when they scored that third run. Yeah. Sorry. You know what?

You know what's funny? It's the weirdest things that get me all upset. I think it's funny when I'm calm and you're riled up about stuff because it seems like it's the total opposite. I'm just sitting here. I'm like, whatever. I went to the beach on Monday. Do whatever you want with your wins.

It's fun. Beautiful day at the beach. Yes, but score. Score better. And Rasmussen and Heal are going to be guys that I have higher than other people, I'm guessing, because they're good. And sometimes they'll luck their way into a fifth inning and get those wins.

And it'll be those days when they're super efficient and they don't have them throwing a bunch of pitches, right? And they let them have that fifth inning because they're still below 80 pitches or whatever. Those games exist. And in the meantime, he won't trash your stats. I got another name to throw at you. We don't have stuff plus numbers on him

because he's still in the minors. We were asked about Cody Morris. He's a pitching prospect in the Cleveland organization. Scouting grades there are pretty good. Three pitches, 50 or better, 55 fastball, command a tick below average, but having a great year between AA and AAA. Hasn't thrown a lot of innings. You talk about a prospect of the week candidate candidate this is a guy that's been kind of creeping into the conversation i think came up on under the radar a few weeks ago this is a this is a nando prospect special like right here like this is this is a guy that i think is legitimately good who has flown to the radar and i think he based on the level he was at his his age, the lost season, is exactly the type of player that kind of popped up and really surprised a lot of people this year.

Let me count this up. He's got 40, 84, 129, 130 innings in the minor leagues in his career. 130, keep that number in your head. And then strikeouts, he's got like 175. Woo! That works. Yikes! Love you. your head he and then strikeouts he's got like 175 that works yikes love you oh man i love when i see a line like this uh like a bit of a fly ball pitcher uh suggests these is a four seam guy uh i love this uh one of the things is that i too, is that even though he has a 40-45 command, I think that the Indians are really, really good at game planning. So they'll be able to take his strengths and take his weaknesses

and sort of find a way around him, I think. Yeah, a little surprising given all the need they've had at the top level for innings this year that he hasn't had an opportunity yet maybe it'll still happen in the next couple of weeks i mean clearly workload wise really no reason why he can't keep throwing maybe a guy that ends up in the fall league this year actually just to keep getting some work in just based on the way his season has taken shape but definitely not a name that you see on top prospect lists here's why he's not uh he's not up yet he's not on the 40 man i think that's it so right now the the the guardians have 44 people on the 40 man because of the 60 day il yeah so he'll be added this winter because the deadline's probably coming up soon for him um yeah and they actually the

indians are screwed look at this this is pretty interesting long and hagen has a has a breakdown of the 40 man crunch this actually this season this is actually an interesting bloodbath that's coming because we made the minor league smaller um and then we didn't have a minor league season and so now there's like this sort of backlog of players that need to be cut. Here's a 40-man crunch situation for the Guardians. They need to add Tyler Freeman and Brian Rocchio. I think they need to add those guys.

We've talked about them on this podcast. Joey Cantillo, I think, has enough upside that they're going to add him. Cody Morris is next. George Valera is on that list. That's already five people they need to add. They only have two pending free agents in Brian Shaw and Eddie Rosario. Rosario's already gone.

And Cesar Hernandez is gone. They have three spots for those five guys. That means somebody like Daniel Johnson, Bradley Zimmer, Harold Ramirez is going to lose their job, or Yu Chang. Those are the guys that are on the fringe. Could be some more activity than usual as a result of these circumstances.

Yes. When you get to November, there could be some trades that come before all the non-tenders come in December. I think so. I think there could be some interesting things happening as a result of these crunches that people are going to see. Nice. Excited about that. We got to just about every name we were asked about. I think Justin Steele and Paolo Espino

were two more that trickled in. Steele, I think, is more interesting to me than Espino. Espino is very old for someone who hasn't pitched a lot in the big leagues. Not old compared to just the general population of humans projections for him are scary 546 era 140 whip like i really want nothing to do with paulo espino steel i i just see kind of a a bulk guy there i mean for nl only leagues and the reserves next year maybe maybe he'll be on my radar. I've been streaming him some.

The stuff plus is 98, and the location plus is 98. It actually adds up to a 99 pitching plus somehow. But basically an average guy. But average guy in Chicago, there is some opportunity for streaming with some of the National League's worst matchups in times. They have Pirates. I have used him in some of these streaming options. The good news is that his foreseam is above average by stuff, and his slider is as well.

And because Location Plus isn't super sticky year to year year maybe he can improve the location on those maybe ditch the sinker a little bit and focus on being a four seam slider curveball guy with better command there is a little bit of an opportunity for him to be better next year but i think i put him in that sort of muller weathers mix where something he has to do something to uh jump out of that group if they sit on their hands as much as i expect them to this offseason there will probably be an opportunity for him so that's why i fully expect uh cardi and i to be yeah sitting there staring each other down during the labor reserves only for the player pitcher next year yeah like second nl labor

reserve pick that's where i expect justin steel to. I think he'll be on and off rosters in mixed leagues next year if he does, in fact, get that opportunity. Let's save the Eno's dashboard dive for a later date. We've run pretty long because of the Hall of Fame talk, and Eno got pretty riled up about the wins and the official scoring. Yeah, blame it on me. No, we had a lot of good questions. These are the kinds of players that as you're making keeper decisions

or you're trying to stream, or you're thinking about the future, they can kind of fall in the cracks. They could be early draft season sleepers if you're into the early DCs. So, uh, we've got a bunch of great stuff coming up on Friday between now and then you should sign up for the athletic because we're offering 50% off a

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putting some little Easter eggs in once in a while to see if anyone's actually paying attention to all the stuff that does go in there. But theathletic.com slash rates and barrels on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can always email us rates and barrels at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels on Twitter. He's at, you know, Saris. I am at Derek van Riper. You can always email us rates and barrels at theathletic.com. The quest for inbox zero seems futile right now, but I'm telling you,

we're going to get there eventually. So keep the emails coming. We'll keep reading them and hopefully we'll answer as many of those as we can here in the next few weeks, but that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.