Rates & Barrels - Corbin Burnes to the Orioles, Jorge Polanco to the Mariners & Catching Up on Moves

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Eno and DVR catch up on several moves -- big and small -- including the trade of Corbin Burnes to Baltimore for DL Hall and Joey Ortiz, Jorge Polanco to the Mariners, two veteran additions to the A's rotation, and much more.  Rundown 1:10 Corbin Burnes Traded to the Orioles 8:15 Comps for Joey Ortiz 14:47 Jorge Polanco Traded to the Mariners 20:45 Carlos Santana Joins the Twins 23:55 Justin Turner Signs with the Blue Jays 28:25 Gregory Santos Traded to the Mariners 32:40 Dominic Fletcher Acquired by the White Sox 37:54 A's Add Alex Wood and Ross Stripling 42:55 Shohei Ohtani's Bid for Opening Day 44:53 News & Notes (Carlos Correa, Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, and more!) Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, February 5th. Derek Van Ryper, you know Saris. We've made it through the position preview series. We're on the other side of it, you know. Lots of great episodes in the feed if you're just joining us for the first time here now that we're into the early part of February and a lot of content in the last couple of weeks that we managed to get out. Yeah, and we're going to take a break before we go into team previews and just have a regular old news show. I mean, there's a lot of news that we've missed

that we sort of have to pick up and make sure that we get a little bit of analysis on at least. Absolutely. We squeezed in a little bit of news a couple weeks ago. It always feels weird to do that on those preview episodes. So we're going to start with a big trade that went down last week, Thursday. We almost had an emergency pod. I think we were both too tired to do an emergency pod. So we said, you know what?

Everybody else is going to have a pod about this. We'll wait until Monday and cover it as part of a bigger episode. The Orioles acquired Corbin Burns from the Brewers for D.L. Hall, Joey Ortiz, and the 34th overall pick in the 2024 first year player draft. There is a ton to unpack here. I would just like a moment to have the floor. The thing that bothered me about it is not necessarily the return, right? The return

might be fine. You can rationalize six years of D.L. Hall and six years of Joey Ortiz, and we'll talk about the value they bring. It's the misdirection, I'll call it, of adding Reese Hoskins, which created this idea for me, at least, that they wanted to make

one more run in Milwaukee with the core they had, as opposed to trading Burns now, trading Willie Adamas now, maybe trading Devin Williams now. Now all of that kind of feels back on the table, right? Had they not signed Reese Hoskins, I don't think I would have had the UGG reaction to this. It's just realizing that the job is now more difficult for this team. The questions about their pitching staff were there for this season, even with Burns as a part of that rotation. And now we've got even more questions. So first and foremost, congrats to the Orioles for finding a frontline starter. We've been talking about this as something they've needed going back to last winter, and now they've got their guy, at least for 2024. Yeah, I think one thing that's missing from some of the analysis, especially when you do this kind of like dollars for war surplus value analysis, where you say, okay, it's one year of Corbin Burns and they have to pay him $20 million. And so he's worth, you know, 30. And $20 million. And so he's worth $30 million.

He's only worth $10 million surplus. And so if you do that analysis, then the Brewers win. Because the surplus analysis on two young players under team control for six years is going to be worth more than just one year of corbin burns over his salary since you have to pay him anyway the thing that that's missing in that analysis is what other top three starting pitchers were available like there's a scarcity here war is a little bit more about like what if like what's what would your theoretical value be but when you talk about actual value he's a top three pitcher in the big leagues can you go call the Braves and gas for strider you could not no you could but they'll just laugh at you the Yankees aren't trading Garrett Cole I mean do you think the Mariners would be like, yeah, for Kirby, we'll take Ortiz and Hall?

But that's part of this too, is just, you're right. In a vacuum, everything's totally different. But because of the timelines, ages, contracts, salaries, free agency, all those factors really muck this up. This is, from a fantasy perspective, it's like imagine being in a keeper league with salaries. Let's say Corbin Burns is going into the last year where he can be held at like $40, and it's a $260

budget, and with inflation, because of all the prospects, he'd go for about $60 or $70 if he was available in the draft this year. But he's not available in the draft this year. He's the only player like that someone can trade. They trade him. They get two players back. Most of the league's like, oh, I would have given up more, and It's like, well, you know what? This is it. This was the market.

This is all we had. The savings are real, but the long-term value of those two players you get back, if you've played in the Keeper League before and you know that an inexpensive $1, $3, $5 player that you're going to have for several years can make an impact, you know that you do win that trade in the long run. It always feels bad to trade away the present value. It does. There's just no way around that. I think from Burns' 2024 value perspective, I don't think much changes here. Because from a Parks perspective,

I think it's maybe even a little easier to pitch at the new version of Camden Yards. We'll see what a few more years of data bear out on that. Tougher lineups being in the AL East as opposed to the NL Central, so probably a wash. I don't think I'm really moving him up or down on my board at this point. I think he's still probably an early second-round pick, a top-20 overall sort of player for me.

I had a high twos ERA projection on him maybe maybe it crosses over to like a 3-1 or something it'd still be one of the best in the big leagues it's still he's still one of the very top pitchers in the big leagues and i think you know it's funny when you say i would have offered more because there was a fair amount of that around the internets when that trade broke where it's like oh why didn't the yankees offer blah blah blah blah blah and you know they'll say things like why didn't they offer him chase hampton and uh everson perera and you're like well you might like those guys more than dl hall and joey ortiz but i'm fairly sure the brewers had an idea that they could get what they could get from a lot of different teams they they have

more complete information than us and i think you're selling short what they did get i think that they the way i see the two players they got i think must be the way they saw them because they chose this package and so i i'm here to just push back a little bit and just say you know if they're if this is if they have x amount of money to spend and there's always going to be at x and they're never going to sign cordon burns to a long-term extension then this is the kind of this is the this is the bin they got to play in you know and uh given that constraint which i don't really like but given that constraint um i like what they got so one thing that one thing that stands out for me is that dl dl hall has had above average locations in the major leagues

and in triple a over the last two years and that is really weird for somebody that supposedly has minus minus command minus minus command i think that it's true 30 grade command according to fan graphs that would be minus minus 40s below average so yeah and all the all the orioles fans that were happy were like he can't he can't hit he can't hit the broad side of the bar and we're happy about this but how does he have these above average locations if that's the case so um this reminds me of the hunter brown situation where you know everyone has just declared the command is no good um and you know i know hunter brown had an up and down season but i'm still pretty upbeat about him and i'm upbeat about

deal hall he has uh and some of this knowledge of his command and his stuff is comes before kind of a delivery mechanical change so ever since he's done that he's got the velo back up uh he's you know in relief he's sitting 96 um you know that you have to dial that back to to make him a starter but if he's gonna be at least average above average velocity he's got two really good breaking balls and a changeup that's supposedly his best pitch. So I see a starter's arsenal, man. You know, like I'm happy with that. And then I've got a little board for people up on YouTube. Joey Ortiz hit the ball 114.9 last year.

And he also had a swing strike in the major leagues of 11.6%. So I went and found some comps. I also took out the guys who had like 12 and 50% walk rates because he doesn't look like that kind of player. So I took out a lot of Ron Lacuna, Juan Soto's that would have been on this list. But just looking at major leaguers last year who had a similar max EV and a similar swing strike rate, you get a really good list. Christian Walker, George Springer, Royce Lewis, John Segura, and Noel V. Marte. I think he probably has a little bit more power than Segura. I guess Segura is the worst case outcome in terms of power because Joey Ortiz hasn't really gotten to that power all the time. And Fangraphs actually says he has minimal pop. But I think a guy who's hit a ball 114.9 has raw power. And I think this is probably what the Brewers are looking at is here's a guy who can make contact at an average or above average rate and has hit the ball really hard.

Let's see if we can coax like our own Royce Lewis out of this you know and uh I think it's maybe it's not probable but it's possible and worst case scenario is you've got a guy who you know has good raw power can't always get to it and smacks you like 15 homers a year but makes good contact and plays good infield defense. So that's a pretty high floor, too. So you get a high floor infielder who has some ceiling left and is ready to play in the big leagues, and that's sort of how I'd describe D.L. Hall from the pitching side, too. Decent floor as a closer,

but some good ceiling left as a starting pitcher. So I'm pretty excited about those two names that they got. I think it's a good get for them, even if the Orioles had that to give, given their other prospects that they've got. Well, this is the other thing, that teams that are willing to trade prospects usually have depth in their system.

That's why they're willing to trade. And then people say, well, we'd give our sixth or eighth best prospect up for this player. Your sixth best prospect isn't that good. Your sixth best prospect isn't that good. Your eighth best prospect isn't that good. This is the benefit of having a great system at work here as well. I believe Baseball America just gave them the best prospect, the best farm system or second best.

Yeah, and you see a lot of top 100 lists coming out. Keith Law's list just dropped at The Athletic. I think ESPN's just came out recently. You're going to see five, six brewers in those top 100s. Now, this is a team that is actually built to stay competitive, but I think that's where the one foot in, one foot out. They're right there. D.L. Hall, for me, is a guy you would have to start this year,

at least try it, and if it doesn't work, then shift him to the bullpen. I haven't seen a confirmation just yet, but he was starting last season at AAA. And I think it was a back injury or some arm weakness that might've slowed him down pitching really well for the first month or so of the season. It was 37 strikeouts in 27 and a third innings. He always misses a ton of bats. There's plenty to like here, but the need just seems so clear.

When you look at what's in this rotation, Sands, Corbin, Burns, Freddy Peralta's the ace. Freddy Peralta gets the opening day start now, which is actually, in a weird way, something that kind of warms my heart for Freddy. I'm really happy for him. That's great. The problem is what happens on day two, three, four, and five of the season. For a team that has been doing exceptionally well year over year?

You have to have a lot of faith in some of these guys behind him, right? You still see Aaron Ashby on that depth chart. We have to see him healthy this spring. I think Hall has to start. They're taking the flyer on Joe Ross as a comeback candidate this year. Colin Ray, we've talked about him before. He's a back-end innings eater. That's fine.

Clearly, Wade Miley is important to them. He's probably taking the ball on day two of the season as they're built right now. Maybe some other late move is coming to add another starter, but this is kind of strange. Then you start thinking about Robert Gasser, Jacob Misurowski, some of the prospects in this organization. Gasser, I think, is closer. If you said pick one of those two to be in the opening day rotation, it's Gasser for me. I think the command's a little better, and we've seen him at AAA a lot just in the past year alone.

So I think that's part of the solution, but it's sketchy right now. It's a big leap to think that this is a good enough rotation to win this division again as it's currently built. Yeah, I think Jacob Mizorowski has had some command issues of his own. He has a 30 present, 45 future on fan graphs, and I think that describes how people think of him as well. But 21 and had 21 innings at AA last year.

I don't know how many more you give him at AA this year if he's pitching well and the command seems to be better so i'd say you have mizorowski and gas are knocking on the door they probably start the the the season in the um minor leagues especially if joe ross pitches well enough to to give him a couple shots in the bullpen but in the in the starting rotation but i would say that like you know ross and ashby's health and ross's quality in the spring rotation. But I would say that, like, you know, Ross and Ashby's health and Ross's quality in the spring are going to determine how the end of that rotation looks. We're going to go ahead and take the Willie Adames hug watch meter

and bump it up to orange at this point. It's one notch away from the top, I think, when you look at the infielders they've got, by the way. I mean, think about Ortiz. He's a legitimate defensive option at short.'s a pretty big deal bryce terang can play short so it frees them up like take anything back from adamas instead of you know if the dodgers are talking to you and they want adamas but they don't want to give up lux you know in the past you'd be like well we kind of need an infielder now you can say

all right well let's talk about outfielders let's talk about starters you know like maybe you give us uh one of your young starting pitchers back along with a bat for adonis so a young pitcher and then like ryan yarbrough too to chew up innings like we need more of that right now this rotation we need more spackle right now just to put this whole thing back together. But a rough trade for me. I think in the long run, it probably works out for the brewers. Just not quite the timing that I was hoping for, especially with being back in Wisconsin, man. I want them all in all the time. I don't want these little lulls.

Maybe it won't be that much of a lull. I'm very selfish, as everyone can tell. There was another trade that went down not that long ago, kind of in between now and the last time we talked about the news. Jorge Polanco gets flipped by the Twins to the Mariners in a four-player swap. Gabriel Gonzalez, Justin Topa, and Anthony Descalfani all going back to Minnesota. And there's a related move that comes soon after for the Twins too, but we said the Mariners had a weird infield, I think. We talked about them a few weeks ago, and this certainly helps because now you've got a guy in Polanco who can be, when healthy, an everyday option at second base where it looked like there could be a bit of a revolving door before this trade.

increased his raw power and his game power over the course of his career and has been holding steady at you know kind of 111 max EV with 10% barrels those are both not necessarily like top of the line across baseball but definitely easily above average and so you can kind of believe in his power I think even translating on the level he's got like you know 20 25 homers a year i think he can do that in seattle uh one thing that was nice i was like kind of looking through his his spray charts to be like oh is this gonna work or whatever

i forgot he was a switch hitter it's nice to be a switch hitter i mean he's got a little bit less power against lefties um so it's not like he had doesn't have any platoon split but it just makes it more likely you're going to be in the lineup every day when you're healthy uh you know he's not going to be platooned i think with his arm he's the he's the guy at second and it uh creates on a team level sort of a Josh Rojas, Luis Urias, Dylan Moore battle in third base. Where I think they want Rojas to win the job. But I guess that's a position battle to watch in the spring. A position battle that may be featured on the upcoming Seattle Mariners preview segment of the show. But yeah, as far as the park factors goes,

look at the rolling three year for homers, especially in just seeing the overall target field is a one Oh four. You look at T-Mobile park. It's a 98. We know Seattle as a ballpark suppresses runs as a whole too. So it's a slight downgrade, but Polanco is going to be right in the heart of that order so it's only a modest drop and he was already undervalued for me in

terms of where people were taking him well outside the top 200 in drafts so far this winter I think he belongs inside that group so unless he jumps four or five rounds I could see myself having a lot of Jorge Polanco in the middle infield spot of my rosters this season. Yeah, he's kind of almost got the exact average batting line for fantasy baseball this year, at least in 15 teamers. His projected batting line, 257, 24 homers and seven steals is almost exactly what you need from every lineup slot, which sounds boring, sounds oatmeal-y, except that you can get him at a less than average price, basically.

You can get him later and get average from him, which is still pretty good. There's a fifth player involved in this trade. There's four players going back to Minnesota. Darren Bowen, a right-handed pitcher, also goes back. The interesting prospect for me was Gabriel Gonzalez. I thought that was the name that kind of popped as someone that got to high A last year,

was really young for the level, just turned 20 the first week of January. The numbers fell off a bit with that promotion, but there's been some power, there's been speed, there's been low strikeout rates. Long-term, he projects to be a great defensive outfielder. So a lot to build off of here. Maybe someone who's just more on the Dynasty League radar, of course.

It's going to take a couple of seasons before he's ready to contribute in Minnesota. I also wondered if they actually have a use for Dusclifani, whereas when we looked at him when the Mariners first acquired him this offseason, he kind of seemed like another redundancy. He seemed like a slightly healthier version

to replace the Robbie Ray roster spot on a team that really didn't need someone to do that. But in Minnesota, we had some questions about rotation depth, and maybe Descalfani gets to be early season glue if there are injury problems, and he's got to be healthy himself. But we've seen Louis Varlin kind of bounce around

between roles. Semyon Woods-Richardson could break through. Chris Paddock, we know there's a lengthy injury history there. That's a lot of uncertainty to rely on behind the likes of Lopez and Ryan and Ober as their first three. I think it's preferable to have optional, optionable starting pitcher depth. Because if you think about keeping a guy like discafani on the roster how do you get him enough innings to remain stretched out if he's not in the rotation but at some point with a veteran especially on a contract like this at least you don't have you're

not like you're not really worried about him you know like oh what about his progression what about this what about that i think he's just going to be glue where he's the sixth starter but he's worried about him. You know, like, oh, what about his progression? What about this? What about that? I think he's just going to be glue where he's the sixth starter, but he's on the roster, which means even if you start him, you're only expecting three or four innings. But he can come in and give Louis Varlin three innings, or he can come in and give Chris Paddock three innings if you give them rotation spots.

So I think he's going to be Jake Junis-esque for the Twins, where he's just the glue that keeps the roster together. It's not super enticing, I don't think, in fantasy. And it might even steal a little bit of value from guys I like a little bit more, like Lily Varlin and Chris Paddock. But for the Twins, who are trying to win regular season games um i think this kafani will be really important for them actually it's kind of a boring trade though a little bit for me uh for the twins um i know that people were really excited about it you know

just the fact that they have eduardo julian like doesn't mean that just because you have surplus doesn't make the surplus less valuable on the open market you know what i mean like they had an option they had an option if they got rid of polanco but that didn't mean they had to get rid of polanco yeah i think they also have the well they have a tv deal that's up in the air right on that list of teams They have some self-imposed financial constraints, although they did go out and get Carlos Correa, bring him back after all the drama last winter. I think every dollar they save maybe can be another they spend on something else.

We kind of saw that with Carlos Santana being the quick addition. It's good news for Edward Julian because he's just the guy at second base. We've talked about his limitations against lefties. So maybe he sits against southpaws if those continue. They play Kyle Farmer or one of their bench guys in those spots.

But Carlos Santana's arrival seems problematic for some of the other depth options here. Alex Kirloff's had a difficult time staying healthy. Jose Miranda's trying to play his way back into a role. Trevor Larnak's trying to find time either in left field or DH.

Some of these young guys will be depth as a result of Santana being there because I don't think they brought in Carlos Santana to play him half the time. Generally, coming off a pretty good season last year, I imagine they have ideas on giving him something close to the 600 plate appearance as he racked up between the Pirates and Brewers last year. I imagine they have ideas on giving him something close to the 600 plate appearance

as he racked up between the Pirates and Brewers last year. Yes, I would probably have cut that $4 Alex Kirloff from my auto-new team. Nino has regrets at this Monday morning. If this move had gone on before that. I still think Alex Kirilov is better, and he's projected better, and he's younger. And I think this could actually be that Kirilov is the preferred option,

and this is just a backup plan. It's $5 million. I actually think he could be kind of a part-time player for them. The projection is so mediocre. The Bat-X gives him a 90 WRC+. kind of a part-time player for them. The projection is so mediocre. The bat X gives him a 90 WRC plus. Even his best projection is for 103 WRC plus from Steamer. So, you know, I, and the defense has been sort of going down over time. So I could see them, him being their DH when Buxton is in the field, which is what they said. There's going to be more Buxton in the field. And first

baseman maybe against lefties when Kirilov is on the bench. But I think Kirilov is still the future at the position. And a 37-year-old, $5 million stopgap first baseman is not going to keep him out of that if he plays really well. And if he's healthy. I mean, that's just a huge, huge part of the story so far for Kirilov. I think your $4 Kirilov hold might actually be okay

because they can coexist at first base and DH. That's possible. But someone who's been buried on rosters that people are excited about won't actually get enough playing time as a result of Santana taking a significant share of what's there at first base and DH now in Minnesota. We saw Justin Turner land on a new team. He lands in Toronto.

Didn't quite see it work out that way. I mean, is he really a third baseman at this stage of his career? Does he help fix that problem where you could see IKF or Santiago Espinal getting a lot of run maybe some davis schneider like what's what's behind this signing is just the faith in the bat and kind of making the defense work yeah i think they wanted another bat and um it's a righty they've been long trying to get more lefty bats but uh in terms of batting uh he might be uh just batting alone he might be preferable to even match atman next year um you know so maybe they just said well by the

bat we have enough pieces on the rest of our roster to make things work defensively with davis schneider and santiago espinal and isaiah kinder falafel it still feels like one more infield bat might be the the way forward for this team but i'm uh right now trying to see um what ounce above average thinks of his fielding he has gone in the last three years from a positive to a big negative minus four last year uh by stack cast runs uh run run fielding run value so um i don't know if you do play him at third he will be bad there you could just play him at second i think i think it was rob silver who suggested that i know rob's a big jays fan it's like well, why not? If you have better range than the alternatives or even that's not necessarily going to be the case for Turner, but if you're more of an arm problem at third, try second.

That seems like a reasonable adjustment to make. It seems like it's range that he's lost though. But if it's missing range, then that's not going to work as well, especially in a reduced shifting era. I think he's most likely going to DH, but maybe circumstances will force them to play him in the field. At DH, that hurts Alejandro Kirk. I think Danny Jansen's the first catcher there. Alejandro Kirk's share of playing time went down. it does put that

group davis schneider santiago espinal and isaiah kind of leffa into kind of a battle for playing time with each other um where i don't think uh blue jays fans win although schneider is kind of a fun guy in terms of this is a guy who's trying to pull fly balls and hit tanks uh and he hits the ball hard enough i think to to do something like this the strikeouts that come from an approach like that um might keep the batting average down but right now he looks like a player who's projected to be at least maybe almost 15% better than the league average with a stick and give you positive defensive value. So I have just officially kept myself from underrating David Schneider. So let's just put David Schneider as the starter at second base and say third base will be manned by a collection of players. And that's fine.

It works if you have enough bats elsewhere and it's third base that you're going all glove at instead of center field or catcher or shortstop or some of the places we see teams at more often. It all works out just fine. I think Aurelvis Martinez is the guy kind of waiting in the wings, a big step forward from AAA, really young for the level everywhere he's

been. I'm kind of curious to see if he breaks through at some point this year, if they don't like what they're getting at second base from the likes of Schneider and the other cast that are currently rotating through that spot. Let's not forget about Addison Barger. He did not have a good season last year in AAA, but I do believe there was some injury participation

in that. And he did still hit the ball 113.7 miles an hour with an average strikeout rate and a better than average swinging strike rate so there's still the raw pieces there for addison barger um to to put it together at 24 might might be one of those guys since it's taking them a little bit longer to get there that you don't have you don't think you have the same ceiling but you know if he gets healthy and he turns that raw power into game power uh you'll be hearing his name again soon to move on to another trade the white socks had a busy weekend they made a trade

with the mariners first sending gregory santos to seattle and the return included prelander baroa zach deloach and the 69th pick in the 2024 draft. So it's the first of two trades that were announced by the team. And we thought Santos was the kind of clear favorite to be the closer for the White Sox. So nope, that's not going to happen now. Maybe he's one of the better threats to take over the role from Andres Munoz. Or if Munoz gets hurt, maybe he could step up for the Mariners and be that guy. But now he's just part of a loaded bullpen in Seattle instead of the standout option in a bad pen.

So I guess good for him. I mean, more fun to be Santos in Seattle than to be Santos on the south side of Chicago right now. Yeah, I think it's going to be a bad season in the south side. And I think that the bullpen may be one of the worst in the big leagues uh as it's currently put together all the guys that were good are gone gregory santos reinaldo lopez uh liam hendricks even a guy like johan ramirez jake deakman joe kelly kendall graveman these are all guys that had the best I'm just reading down the list of stuff plus in the bullpen last year,

and they're all gone. Kenyon Middleton. So the only guys now that are going to be in the bullpen this year that have above-average stuff is Garrett Crochet. Crochet. It's not Crotchet i know in the middle of that i was like am i about to say that word garrett crochet and uh michael kopeck if he is a reliever all right i mean i don't want to blow up the white socks preview before we get there but i think they kind of need to see if michael kopeck can make it one more time as a starter i think they kind of need to yeah so

that route well then you have uh incomer prelander baroa who again i think the same what you were just saying about kopek you kind of like you need to give him a chance okay so prelander baroa does not have a lot of pitches in the big leagues and i'm showing you a heat map now that has 28 pitches on it i took the i took the um there's like a setting you can have on fangraphs you take off the smoothing because i just wanted to see like if he only has 28 pitches don't smooth it out for me just show me where the 28 pitches were and the reason why i have this heat map up here 28 pitches that prelander bro through the righties is that you see some red in some places you don't want to see red so basically

in the waste zone as they put it on baseball savant so just non-competitive pitches uh of those 28 pitches he threw to righties eight nine ten ten of them were non-competitive like we're not talking even close to the zone we're talking talking, like, not anywhere close to the zone. Like, no one would ever swing at these pitches. So, like, a third of his pitches are, like, not competitive at all. So that is backed up by command grades and location plus data and whatever. That is the big problem with the quote-unquote problem with Baroa is the command and um you know you can start him but this is the kind of profile that usually ends up

uh going ending up in relief where you either slim down the arsenal or you just tell them to throw as hard as they can right down the middle because the command is pretty bad. As far as the other pieces that have come back, Zach DeLoach played all of last season at AAA Tacoma, popped 23 homers, got on base at a 387 clip. Yep, PCL

rules apply. Aged to level. He wasn't young for the level. A second rounder back in 2020, so he's a college guy drafted in 2020. I think he plays a lot though. I think that's sort of the theme of some of the pieces the White Sox are getting back in these trades. It's just guys are going to throw out there right away. Some maybe not quite finished products like Baroa.

Others like Deloach probably wouldn't have gotten an opportunity as wide open as the one they're going to have with the white socks this year, because the other trade they made is they acquired Dominic Fletcher from the diamond backs, Christian men and one of their pitching prospects goes back to D backs. And Fletcher was one of those guys, like no matter what you were, what you did with that depth chart in Arizona, you really couldn't find playing time for him,

at least not a steady role. He's at least been interesting enough throughout his time in the minors where you kind of want to see what will happen. It's probably, you know, big side platoon in the long run is the most likely outcome, but the White Sox don't have to do that. So I do think if you're in a league where playing time is just really important, usually 15 team leagues and deeper draft and hold monoleagues. Dominic Fletcher was quietly a pretty big winner this weekend, going to a rebuilding team in Chicago. Yeah. And we,

we'd had before, uh, Oscar Colas as a, as a bit of a low dem guy on the outfield, uh, uh, preview. And I got a question.

Uh, I forget where, you know, you can send us questions at, uh, what's the, what's the, uh,

email rates and barrels at gmail.com. Right. And, where you can send us questions at, what's the email? Ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. Right, and you can also on Twitter get us, but the question was, what is Lodum? Lodum is just modeled, spelled backwards, and it reflects the idea that like- Incorrectly. Incorrectly, yeah, right. But it also just reflects the idea that,

for me, is that sometimes I want to make choices that are just different from the choices I normally make so that I have a little bit of diversity of strategy in my leagues. I don't have exactly the same players in every league. I don't have exactly the same approach to modeling. And then there's also just a component to Lodum, which is opportunity sometimes trumps quality. And so you can get too focused on all the things Oscar Colas can't do

and then forget that he has an opportunity to play. Well, today, Lodum suffered a loss because now there are immediate options that are probably better than Oscar Colas, actually, at these corner outfield spots. I did see a joke that they're trying to fill the outfield with Ben Attendees. I'm not so high on Fletcher

because he doesn't hit the ball very hard and so I'm worried about him. Deloach doesn't make a lot of contact but I think longer term I'm into Deloach and as a, I of contact, but I think longer term, I'm into Deloach. And as a, I think he's already 24. And as you mentioned, 25, as you mentioned,

he's already spent so much time at AAA. I think the Fangraphs depth charts are getting Deloach wrong. They have like Kevin PR and Gavin Sheets and Dominic Fletcher ahead of him. I don't know. Why mess around with that lineup? Why not make DeLoach one of your four regular outfielders?

I'm just looking forward to that preview so much. Yeah, the trades are weird for me. They don't inspire a ton of confidence. Trades are weird for me. They don't inspire a ton of confidence. Like, generally, what I would say the trades have done so far is just bring in a lot of kind of mediocre players. They're getting volume. Yes, volume.

And I don't know if that means that they... So, when you have an organization that was as thin as the White Sox became, very top-heavy, the big league roster was pretty good. Nothing else was really working in the minor leagues for the most part. I know they got a couple of nice high-end prospects like Colson Montgomery, but generally, organizational depth has not been a strength of the White Sox. You can go get volume, but if you can't develop players, and if you can't identify the correct players who are blocked

in the first place, you're just going to speed at the bottom even faster. And I'm not trying to imply that that's exactly what's happening here, but that's my fear if I'm a White Sox fan. Look at this and saying, okay, sure, we're turning one guy who's really

good, Gregory Santos, who could get hurt and not have any trade value, into two players and a pretty early draft pick. That's kind of good for the long haul if we can make Prelander Barua better. We can hear those things happen, yeah. If we see something in Deloach that makes him good enough to be a regular. A lot of the guys they're getting, they're going to be so bad. Some of the guys they're getting are going to be traded before the White Sox get good again.

So you have to be able to turn these guys into another generation of tradable players if you're going to be successful in this rebuild. You're trading for older guys. That's the other part of this. You're not going to be a quick rebuild. It's not just player development. It almost makes people think always it's young player development encaptures coaching for me you know right so you saw what with the giants did even you can you know sort of coach up veterans too you should do both there's no reason why you have to pick one lane it's not not easy, but I think, you know,

prove as an organization, you have this skill and then this approach could actually bear some sort of fruit. Speaking of the previews that we're looking forward to, let's welcome two new members to the A's rotation, Alex Wood and Ross Stripling, getting there by different means. Alex Wood chose to be an Oakland A. Ross Stripling was informed that he's an Oakland A via trade with the Giants. This is going to be the bulk of the A's payroll, but two veterans that would

be kind of right on the cusp of a rotation for a championship caliber team who will actually get chances to just work every fifth day and basically pitch as much as their bodies let them in Oakland, which kind of makes them interesting for our purposes and fantasy. Yeah, it's funny for them too.

Their lockers are right next to each other in San Francisco. So, you know, locker mates going over to the other side of the bay for what will be one of the most depressing seasons in the history of baseball. Someone should almost chronicle it if they have the stomach for it. This is the last season that they have a lease on that stadium and they're currently frantically trying to figure out what they're going to do after that and before a theoretical stadium in las vegas is finished so that'll be terrible uh

what uh does happen is it hurts one of my favorite sleepers a little bit joe boyle is now going to be in a bit of a fight with With Luis Medina. For the fifth spot. In Oakland I think. And it'll be an amazing. An amazing battle. Because they both have really really high end stuff. And no concept of the strike zone. Both maybe some of the worst command.

Among starters in the big leagues. So that'll be an interesting thing to watch this spring i do think that uh they could either go to a six man or alex wood has kind of been somewhere in between a starting pitcher and a reliever uh recently i don't know if that's just san francisco i don't know what oakland has taught told them um i think you might be right that maybe they're just putting him in as as uh starting pitchers but they also haven't been the most durable guys themselves i don't know if it's phantom il slots they've been on but they've been on the il um so joe boyle will still get his

chances this year i'm hoping they just install him in the rotation and let him eat as they say but uh you know it is funny that you have these guys like ross stripling they kind of pop every year where they add a pitch or their command is better or maybe they just get a half tick of velo or just healthier um you know you talk about these wide arsenal guys with command um and stripling uh is working on something called the death ball uh which uh is one of the two pitches that we've been promised will be the future of baseball this year that and the splitter are supposedly uh going to be the it pitches in baseball this year the death ball alex lang throws one pete fairbanks throws one jordan mont Jordan Montgomery's curveball is a bit of a death ball. And what you get from a death ball is sort of a one

plane curveball. It's a curveball that does not have the sort of sweep that you think of normally curveballs having. It's kind of a one plane little flip. And, you know, of course, the harder you throw it, the more you throw it like Peter Fairbanks, the better.

And so when Jordan Montgomery throws his 80, and when Ross Stripling throws his 80, it's not quite as the moniker makes it sound. It makes it sound so intimidating. But, you know, Ross Stripling, opportunity, talent in his rearview mirror, and a wide arsenal where maybe just the addition of the death ball, along with the changeup that has been improving, gives him what he needs to kind of battle his way through five innings. That pitch name just immediately made me think of the canned water,

the liquid death. It's water. This is an effort to take a thing that is pretty normal, but to make it seem extraordinary. Oh, 100%. 100%. It's a pitch. It could be a good pitch.

You know, it's water. It's probably all right. Well, the marketing worked on my kids. We were at a show. We were at an Imagine Dragons show, and they were all drinking liquid death and feeling like teenagers. I guess as long as it does something good like that, that's all we really need. If it makes Ross

Stripling feel like a badass, then it might be what you need. Just call it the death ball. Confidence goes a long, long way. There's almost like a 10% chance he's an A after the trade deadline. He's going to be contending teams, pitching staff.

100% pitch your way off this team mentality. Everyone, everyone's trying to pitch their way off this team right now. And for good reason. We're coming up on pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. The news feeds are red hot as a 13 year employee of Roto-Wire. I use Roto-Wire for my news to gather it. It's much easier than trying to track everything on Twitter these days.

It's good. We got stuff at The Athletic too, of course, but if I needed all this condensed to one place, that's where I tend to go. Even the smallest items, you know. Yeah, and that's what always leads us to the, is this news? Do we care about this?

Some of this stuff, we definitely care about. We're going to start with the important stuff. Is that butterfly meme where the guy has the butterfly up and it's, is this, is this news? Yes,

that's exactly what it is. So we've been wondering, Shoya Otani, is he on track for the early opener, right? With the series in Korea against the Padres.

All indications that he will be per Fabian Ardaia of The Athletic, where Otani will be somewhat limited at the start of spring training. And there's still some questions about how they're going to handle his throwing rehab in season. But by all accounts, they had their fan fest, the Dodgers did over the weekend. Shohei expects to be in the lineup for those two games

in Korea in late March. Which will ruin all of our fantasy leagues, and there'll be people drafting after those, who get to draft stats from those games, and you'll come on, or your team won't count those, and you'll be like, oh, I lose two games?

Yeah, so, yeah. It's kind of cool, though, too. They should count. The game should count, even if you draft afterwards. Not a big deal. Long season. Yes, you get a free peak.

It's only two games. Two out of 162. I think it'll be okay. But good news overall on Otani. Other Dodgers related news. Gavin Lux full go for spring training after suffering a torn ACL last year. By all accounts, he seems to be their choice at shortstop, at least for now. Knowing we

talked about about 40 minutes ago on this podcast, anything could change at a moment's notice at this point. More importantly, here's one for you. Carlos Correa is having a normal offseason. This is part of a notebook that Dan Hayes wrote at The Athletic recently. Does this matter for you? Do you trust this? Do you believe that Carlos Correa is actually undervalued where he's been going? Well outside the top 200? I mean, it's a longer-term concern about his health that ultimately caused all of the rewrites of the contract during his free agency process last winter. But this seems like pretty good news. Yeah, I'm not a doctor,

so I don't really know the interaction of plates and screws in your ankle and how that might create a plantar fasciitis situation. It doesn't seem like a stretch to me that those things could be related. I mean, ankles and pins in your joints make them a little bit less flexible. You know, that plantar fasciitis connects basically the front of your foot all the way up to your Achilles. It's all like sort of connected in there.

So it may not sound like it's part of the ankle, but it's part of that mechanism down there. All I'm saying is I like Carlos Correa because the price is so low, not because I am projecting him for 670 plate appearances this year. Oh, so you're a rational person. Okay. I mean, he still hits the ball hard, and I don't think he should have a batting average on balls in play as low as he did last year.

And I don't think everything should fall apart at 29. And so, you know, I'm just intrigued by how cheap he is. Ooh, guess what? We got some breaking news. Breaking news, breaking news. Breaking news. Breaking news. This one's straight from Slack from our buddy Tim McMaster. Oh, what's that?

An extension between Bobby Witt Jr. and the Royals. Oh, there you go. 11 years, $288.8 million. Wow. ESPN has the story. Jeff Passan. They believe in him. They got him.

They gave him their Tatis deal. Yeah. He's their guy. It makes sense. I mean, he's moved into that elite of the elite range for fantasy purposes, elite kind of for real-life purposes as well. Nice to have a franchise player like that to build around and hopefully a sign of things to come.

I like that the Royals were aggressive this winter overall, and this is the move that you can be truly excited about. They only pay until he's 34. He's pretty young. He's pretty young. That's exciting. That's a nice deal for Kansas City fans. It's something to put your hands around there.

Literally just saw this as of like 30 seconds ago. It looks like there are some opt-outs after years 7, 8, 9, and 10. There's a club option for an 11 season that adds three more years to it potentially. So lots of different ways this one will play out. But an exciting day for Royals fans. Nice to see that. And we'll probably dig into that deal in more detail on a future episode perhaps even the royals preview let's talk about this one no limitations for joe musgrove and you

darvish this spring we wondered about this during pitcher week where are they at we got the update they've been throwing they've been act they've been normal normal normal normal normal normal that's all i want i want normal yeah speaking of not being doctors um uh my discussion of the bursa sack oh yeah you should give lectures on the bursa sack musgroves draining uh prompted someone to send us a picture of the elbow with the with the bursa sacks highlighted so thank thank you for that more talks of draining sacks on rates and barrels please um the uh and i also pointed out that the the injury that uh you darvish had is one he's had before in his career it's a repeated stress injury to the tip of your elbow and in what

happened to him last time was that he just backed off of it had a short season in terms of innings and he came back in 2019 and had one of his best seasons um you know i think ever i'm not saying that that's exactly what's going to happen for you darvish this year but i do think that you know with a repeated stress injury you you step off of it. He didn't have surgery. That's always good. It's always good to not have surgery. And he stepped off of it. He had a lower volume season last year. I think he could do 160, 170 innings of pretty good.

Hugh Darvish, maybe a little bit higher threes ERA than when he was at his peak, but still going to have the strikeouts. He can spin so many different pitches. And his sinker has been really great in San Diego. He told me that it had to do with the sort of humidity and the weather down there. So I think Hugh Darvish is a buy for me this year

and Musgrove to an extent too. He's a little bit more expensive, but both of them I think are buys relative to their price and is normal. Normal is good. And I think you'll see the price go up even further on both of them. And Musgrove, he's the 17th pitcher in the auction calculator right now by the bats projections. I think that's a very reasonable sort of expectation for him. I think he's being drafted as more like pitcher 25 right now by the bats projections. I think that's a very reasonable sort of expectation for him. I think he's being drafted as more like pitcher 25 right now.

So if you want to know where that gap is likely to close, it's probably about that far Darvish, I think jumps inside the top 200 overall pretty easily as we move through drafts here over these next two months or so. I mean, there's just plenty to like as far as the home park goes, but Musgrove Musgrove could be your wait for an ace type. That could absolutely work in more shallow leagues.

So, I'm definitely excited that both of those guys are having a normal winter heading into spring training. I think the pitchers and catchers for the Dodgers and Padres report on Friday already because of their earlier start to the season. Wow. Yeah. Is this also news? Jackson Merrill is going to take reps in the outfield this spring i think this was in the ken rosenthal notebook that i saw on monday at the athletic and they've also mentioned that xander bogarts could change positions at some point but at least with

merrill they're looking maybe at a way of getting him on the roster a little bit faster to have him fill a clear area of need in that rotation of outfielders. Yeah, 20 years old, a 211 plate appearance as a double A, but a very clear organizational need. Right now, you've got Cal Mitchell and

Terso Ornelas in left field. Ornelas in left field. Ornelas is projected to be 20% worse than league average with a stick. Mitchell is projected to be 15 points worse than league average with a stick. So that's not what you want out of a corner outfield situation. I think that Merrill's value is too strong at shortstop for this to be the solution,

but it does tell me with bright honking letters that there's playing time in this outfield to be had and that they are considering younger players and not maybe signing an Eddie Rosario type to block any of them. So that would be good news for, you know, so this sounds like it's news about Jackson Merrill. For me, it's good news for Grant Pauly and Jacob Marcy

because those guys have played in the outfield, are older, and are closer to the big leagues. And Jacob Marcy's coming off an AFL where he was the MVP. Grant Pauly had a really great season in the minors last year. I just think that they're a little bit more positioned as older players to maybe take this opportunity and run with it and get swim move past Cal Mitchell or Nellis and Jose Azocar who are atop the center and left field depth charts.

So if you want to take some shots at Marcy or Pauly late in your drafts, I think that might be a good idea. Yeah, they've got wide open opportunities. To compete at Marcano is maybe a name you'll see atop the depth chart over at Rotowire and left field. That doesn't seem like an ideal fit. I guess with Jake Cronenworth on the roster, you could play Cronenworth almost anywhere and shuffle guys around, too.

That could be one other way to work around it. But I think the Pauly and Marcy calls in particular make a lot of sense based on what's going on with this team right now. And if Jackson Merrill takes to an important defensive position, then, yeah, maybe there's a clearer path for him. Center field, you look at that, wide open. Jose Azocar top of the depth chart right now. I don't think that's going to be the full-time solution for this Padres team this season. I hope it's not. I don't think it is.

They're not nearly bad enough to just give up on spots like that. They can still be competitive. They can still be the last team in the playoffs in the NL this year. That's still at least in their range of outcomes, even though it feels like it's all falling apart quickly. There's still a lot of really good players on that team. And if Fernando Tatis, you know, bounces back a little bit and becomes, you know, a superstar,

there's a chance you have like two, 2.5 superstars on this team. So that's a really good foundation. And what they did with all their trades in the off season was try to attack their depth situation and get guys that trades in the offseason was try to attack their depth situation and get guys that are in the high minors to contribute, at least on the pitching side. So a lot of those guys could pop. At least they have more depth than they've had in the past.

And right now, a need in the corner outfield, if they do have $4 or $5 million left in the budget this year, they can still go get Eddie Rosario and he won't block Pauly or marcy if he's having a bad season and those guys are hitting well so i i think they do have one more move left in them but i still like those two young outfielders yeah eddie rosario to the padres does make a lot of sense now that you've mentioned it seems like pretty easy plug-in for them in left field here's another one colt keith is going to play second base for the tigers played more at third last year between triple a and double

a silent extension i don't think we talked about that because that happened during preview season but by all accounts keith's gonna have every opportunity to lock down a starting job in spring training i would say he's probably a favorite to win the job at second base which makes me wonder could we see justin henry malloy squeeze his way out of the roster at third? I know there's a lot of questions about his defense, but if Keith's playing second, that at least leaves that hot corner open. Yeah, they're going to say all these things about like, oh, Cole has to win the job and you know, blah, blah, blah. They don't want to seem like they're just giving it to him, you know, because they signed that contract. want to seem like they're just giving it to him you know because they signed that contract but you know really once you sign a contract like that there's no so financial impetus for the team to

keep you down right and there's in fact uh you know a reward in the collective bargaining agreement now where if they put colt keith on the opening day roster and he becomes rookie of the year they get a pick so there's so many incentives for them to start Colt Keith from the beginning that outside of just a horrible spring, I think he's got it. And I like his combination of, you know, the ability to spray the ball, but sort of turning that into pull power recently, turning that into pull power without losing his ability to make contact. He does have really good walk rates and decent strikeout rates so i think he's going to be a you know a benefit in every category i

don't know what the steals will look like so maybe it's kind of a a 260 25 20 homers five uh stolen base package for keith but i like him um with justin henry and and Malloy, they don't have that contract. I don't know that anybody thinks that Malloy would necessarily win Rookie of the Year. He's got a little bit more flaws in his approach, but the option right now that they're saying is Zach McKinstry and Andy Ibanez are going to fight it out for a platoon at third. McKinstry and Andy Abanez are going to fight it out for a platoon at third. And I think Zach McKinstry and Andy Abanez are like really good, uh,

platoon, uh, utility guys, um, you know, to, to help your depth of your team. But I don't know that they're long-term starters of the position.

So I don't know why Henry Malloy won't get a good look this year, if not from opening day. Yeah, I think there's probably more of a left field DH profile there. I was looking at the fielding numbers. We don't talk about fielding percentage a lot for good reason. Do you see an 897 on a lot of players that get to play on the infield? No, normally you see nines. Yeah, that was a 60-game sample at Toledo. So they split 60 games at third,

29 in left, 15 in right, and then 31 is the DH. I think left-field DH is the ultimate home, but he should hit enough to do it. And what does he have left to prove at AAA? He's been all of last season at Toledo, continued to be a well-above-average player,

417 on base with 20-plus home run power. I think it works. One thing you should do, maybe in the spring as above average player, 417 on base with 20 plus home run power. I think it works. One thing you should do, maybe in the spring as a fantasy player, if you're interested in him or a Tigers fan, is watch where he plays in spring. I think that'll give you

a good idea. If he's still playing third and they want to try him at third and he plays third and he plays and how much he plays. So does he get a lot of plate appearances and does he play third if both of those things are yes then he's closer to making the opening day roster because i think as a left fielder um you know they may want to put him out in left field uh you know to start the season in spring in in the minors just to be like okay we're gonna move you to the outfield now um and you know we want you to be comfortable out there.

Plus, they have more sort of representative major league starters in the outfield. I think with Riley Green and Parker Meadows, I think that's two all-the-time starters. And a Kanabadu-Vierling situation out there, I like that a little bit better than kind of like Vierling, McKinstry, Ibanez, you know? But both of those are surmountable obstacles for Moway.

We'll continue. Just another five minutes or so, probably. Jock Peterson is a Diamondback now. That actually is definitely news. It may have been part of why they were so comfortable trading away Dominic Fletcher, having one more lefty with power on the roster, made a guy that didn't have a lot of power a lot more expendable.

How does Jock fit in for Arizona? Just platoon, big side DH? Is that just what he is at this stage of his career? Or do you think they could actually make him an occasional outfielder again? I think he's going to DH. I've seen enough of Jck peterson in the outfield i got to see it up close and it's it's not good uh his his whole his whole vibe right now is sort of like beer league softball he's he's got this really kind of open stance and all he's got this really kind of open stance, and all he's trying to do is just turn quickly on pitches

on the upper inner part of the plate and yank them out of the ballpark. That is 100% what he's trying to do all the time. He has a good enough eye and good enough bat-to-ball naturally that he can do all that and sometimes serve the ball into the outfield uh or sometimes take a walk um so he's a he's a good player in terms of you know those skills but he's not he's not gonna he's not changing the diamondbacks much it's he's gonna give him a win or a win and a half uh for 12 million dollars like that's that's what that's what's happening here. For fantasy, I think it's a tough use case

because you basically want to be in a 15 team with daily moves. Auto-new. Auto-new, yeah. $1 auto-new guy, $2 auto-new guy that just helps you out when he's playing. I think that's the way to look at it. Big side platoon should work there,

should be in the heart of the order when he plays. I think universal DH extends the career of a guy like jock peterson if we were in 2017 looking at this skill set we'd be saying he's a year or two away from hitting dingers for the dutch goose softball team but there's still a lot of runway for him i think as a result of every team having that at their disposal i would say this probably puts emmanuel rivera on the small side of the DH platoon and squeezes a guy like Pavin Smith into a clear bench extra guy sort of role. I think if there's a clear loser, it's Pavin Smith. If he makes the roster, I think if you're talking about building a bench here, you go with Barnhart. How many benches do we have?

Five, right? Four. Four. You go with Barnhart behind the catcher. You have to have a backup shortstop, so I think Lawler makes that roster. Perdomo might effectively be

the backup sooner rather than later if Lawler's the guy. You've eaten up two of your spots. I guess there's a chance Jace Peterson makes it as the utility guy and then the fourth outfielder is Jake McCarthy

there you go we haven't even put Rivera in on this so it would be Rivera against Rivera and Pavin Smith against Jace Peterson for the last spot I think Peterson makes more money so that probably helps he's also very versatile so a really nice bench player to have Rivera doesn't have great defense I think Peterson makes more money, so that probably helps.

He's also very versatile, so a really nice bench player to have. Yeah, Rivera doesn't have great defense and really can only play third. Yeah, so that could be kind of fun to watch. Everyone stays healthy. Last one for today, Hunter Brown is working on a slider. This is according to Brian McTaggart of MLB.com. Does that move the needle for you? I read this stuff from Chandler Rome where he talked to Hunter Brown.

Ah, there we go. There is a piece on The Athletic about Hunter from chandler rome on january 26th and um hunter brown talks about his mechanics falling off a little bit i think some things in my mechanics change probably due to fatigue without realizing it brown said i was getting a little bit more crossfire which diminished my ability to get my fastball away to right-handed hitters and so he he talks about how you know he's mechanically got some things he wants to look at and i think that's uh interesting because i looked at his location plus you know i thought okay so the reason he added an er a run of era every month hunter brown was because you know his his command got exposed

and he was giving he was giving up taters and just couldn't command the ball. Maybe that's still true, but his locations were still above average. But that doesn't mean that necessarily he's getting exactly where he wanted. He was just getting it in the zone and getting into okay locations. So I think I'm still pretty bullish about him. If you look at Hunter Brown's projections, they're all good. You might be surprised at how good his projections are.

And his stuff plus is still pretty good, and here's a mechanical thing that he's working on to improve himself. So I'm into Hunter Brown this year. Yeah, this is actually a really good write-up that Chandler had too. I had not previously seen this where the problem was that the four-seamer and then that cutter slider. If you looked last year, he had a slider

that was showing up as a slider on baseball savant. This is just changing to something that looks a lot different, which makes sense for the pitch mix. Given how many different pitches Hunter Brown has shown, it seems like he's the guy that can make reasonable adjustments. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know exactly how to find the exact starter package I want out of a young player, out of a young pitcher. But the fact, because if you have all of them, then you're just perfect. And so then we'd just be looking for perfect players all the time. You know, like if I tell you, oh, yeah, he's got a great fastball by Shape and Velo. He can command it. He's got a bunch of highly rated secondaries. He can spin it, you know.

Then like, yeah, okay, I've described Bobby Miller and I don't think anybody else. You know, so, you know, you have to be like, okay, well, can people make it with not great fastball command or not great fastball shape if they have these other things? It's something I'm thinking about now because I want to write about, I'm going to do this soon, five young pitchers that are ready to break out. And if you think about it, they've got to have some sort of flaws. You have to think about what are acceptable flaws.

For me, something like hunter brown's command is an acceptable flaw uh given the rest of what he can do yeah i would wonder too command of some pitches like having command of some and not everything that might be more acceptable than just having no command right there's there's a lot of there's a lot of middle ground between perlander baroa and you know hunter brown right there's a lot of other possible combinations there like like you know is it more important to have fastball commander what if like we are in a slider league now there seems to be a lot of people who don't have great fastball command but can commander slider well right which is those is more problematic right generally it's hard to say

so that'll be a fun piece once that one comes out. If you want to check out the story that Eno just referenced, the one that Chandler Rome wrote about both Hunter Brown and J.P. France, check it out, theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. We'll get you in the door for $2 a month for the first year. We've got lots of great baseball content. We've got more fantasy baseball content rolling out. It's going to be a big, big year for us here

on Rates and Barrels and at The Athletic. You can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaras. You can find me at DerekVanRiper. You can follow the pod at Rates and Barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.