Rates & Barrels - Day 1 Draft Observations, the puzzling Chris Paddack, and has Statcast stolen the magic out of fantasy baseball?

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the surprises from Day 1 of the MLB Draft, a few observations from the Futures Game, the puzzling case of Chris Paddack, and if Statcast has stolen some of the magic out of fantasy baseball.  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 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 here with Eno Saris. It is Monday, July 12th. Just a few hours before the home run derby in Colorado. And we're going to talk about a few things that have gone down since the weekend started. Day one of the draft is in the books. We'll talk about a few of the players that were selected. A few surprises in that first round.

Got some Dynasty League questions to get to. And a question about Chris Paddock as we get another half season of information about him and the direction he is going in. So lots of ground to cover. The first question I'll have to ask, you know, how was the wiffle ball game on Sunday? It was so much fun. We had one game that was actually kind of a nine inning game that was, I think it was like eight on eight. Like it was almost like a real baseball game. Other than the fact that Lindsay Jones, our NFL reporter,

her like two or three year old daughter was one of the, was on our team. And with the special rules that we put in place for her, it was kind of an automatic score every every time she went up so we had people uh like bill shaken was out there he's a writer for uh in la anaheim uh and every time she ran the first if she made contact he would do this sort of like uh box out routine he's like kept any defender from getting to the bag um and then later on um trevor plouffe and peter moyland showed up so uh i i crossed an item off my bucket list uh i popped out to short

against a major leaguer in wiffle. You made contact, yeah. That's the important thing. Any sticky substances used in that game? There weren't, but we did discuss that pretty heavily. It was interesting to talk to Lindsay Jones and get a perspective of someone in football where they had deflategate. They had their own sort of equipment thing, and she was uh sort of

wondering if there was if there was more there in football and uh i guess baseball would say yes if we've learned anything from the last couple of months yes there probably was more to altering footballs not this is not about the patriots specifically but the value of altering a football is probably greater than we thought at the time of Deflategate. Let's get to the first day of the draft, though. Some pretty big surprises if you haven't really looked at any of the coverage or anything yet. I highly suggest you check out Keith Law's stuff on The Athletic. I also recommend the Fangraph stuff from Eric Langenhagen and Kevin Goldstein.

But the top of the board went as follows. Henry Davis, a catcher out of Louisville, ended up with the Pirates with the first overall pick. Jack Leiter from Vanderbilt went to Texas at two. Jackson Jobe, the kind of consensus best high school arm on the board, went to the Tigers at three. And then Marcelo Meyer fell to fourth. Boston got Meyer, who was among the favorites to go first overall in this draft, so pretty good early value for them.

The Orioles took Colton Couser, a great college bat in that fifth slot, an underslot guy that they can use to probably get better picks on day two as they put together the rest of this draft class. And then Jordan Lawler, who had been linked to the Rangers with that second pick, actually fell all the way to six for Arizona. So some other fallers, of course, we'll get to in just a little bit, Kumar Rocker and Khalil Watson. But just at the very top of the board, I think Jack Leiter is probably the guy that, from a fantasy perspective, we look at and say, he's going to be among the faster players to the big leagues in this draft class. And the way the new ballpark in Arlington has played, he actually has landed in what looks like a pretty good situation.

Yeah, you know, it was a weird draft for me because I felt like teams were playing games at the top. And it's hard to know what their board actually looked like and their sort of relationship between, you know, the cost of a player and what they want to do in the rest of the draft and what they think they can with the games they can play. I think with Leiter, it was like, we're not playing games. Let's just take this guy, you know. And the thing that separates him from Kumar Rocker, who fell, is that Leiter has the kind of fastball that sort of modern teams want,

kind of a high spin, high ride foreseeing with a good shape. Kumar Rocker's shape on his fastball is up to some debate if it's a great fastball or not. And we've seen even a guy like Tyler Mago on the Mets right now who's having great success and has broken some records, some rookie records there for the Mets. We've seen that if you don't have a great fastball, if you have great secondaries, you can still succeed. But it does put pressure on your secondaries.

That means you have to have great command of your breaking ball, which Kumar does sometimes and does in other times. And it means that you have to have multiple secondaries, like Tyler McGill does, just so that you can spice it up and mix it up. Whereas Leiter has the kind of fastball slider thing where you're like, worst case scenario, he's our closer. And best case scenario, he's at the top of the order A. So that was

why why those things were so different but i look at like baltimore's pick and pittsburgh's picks and i'm like i think you guys were being too cute i think they were being too cute i've talked to a major league executive recently about you know the games you can play in the draft oh you could blow out a draft where you blow past the uh the requirements on each one right and you just just get the very best player spend the most money and then take next year off basically because you'll have so many penalties you'll lose so many picks and you'll be fine but if you know like maybe you could from the back end of the draft, uh, draft, like, you know, a top 10 bat, right. You know, the back end of the draft and back in the first

round or something, you know, and maybe you could just get like, take all those players that they, that they're going under slot. Cause what other teams are doing is they're going under slot early. That's what I think Baltimore and Pittsburgh did go under slot early, where you're paying a little bit less for these players. And that gives you more money to kind of attack the second and third rounds and get players there. I think the problem with that thinking is the best players are always one through 10. Like if you look at the outcomes of the draft, it drops off precipitously after 10. So if you're a back-end first round, why are you going to play these games, piss off the commissioner, and do all that to maybe get the 21st best prospect instead of the 28th?

And when you know that the outcomes after the first 10 picks just drop, this is the value of those picks and the chances those players perform after the first 10 picks just drops off the table. So if you have a 1 through five pick, get the best player. There was some disagreement about who the best player in this class actually was. Which is why I don't want to go too off the rocker with some hot take. I guess maybe I did. But it did feel like there were some sort of head scratches where people were like, ooh, why did they do this? Maybe it's the underslot thing.

Right. And I think there could be some diminishing returns with that strategy when more teams are trying to do the same thing. Because the guys that you think you're going to get later and go over slot for, there are other teams that are doing the same thing. That have the extra money in their pocket. there are other teams that are doing the same thing. You're going to get sniped and you're not going to get the guy that you wanted to get and then you gave up talent earlier. I think that's a concern I would have as that strategy seems to become a little

more prevalent. Yeah. Having a catcher is really important. Right now, with RoboArms on the way, I think evaluating a catcher is really difficult. If they think he's just an amazing offensive catcher for Pittsburgh

and he can be the catcher of the sort of future in terms of not only being the Pittsburgh catcher when they're good again, but being an offensive catcher that maybe doesn't matter how much he frames because there's Robbo-arms. Maybe that's their thinking. But I think with so much tumult, tumult, coming to – YouTubers got a pretty funny look after that one. Tumult coming to the catcher position, I would gravitate towards up-the-middle talent. I guess catchers are up-the-middle, but you know what I mean.

Middle infielders and centerfielders. I think the other defense I could throw out there for Henry Davis is that as a catcher, it's not his framing that has been drawing praise during his time in college. It's his arm. It's a 70-grade arm, and that'll play somewhere else, too. If he ever moves off the position and he's in the outfield, he can have a can of an arm from the outfield. It'll become more important, especially if they implement some of these rules

they are implementing in the minor leagues with regards to lefty pick-off moves, bigger bases, trying to augment the stealing. If framing goes away, I was trying to make a point. I made it sort of hand- the stealing. If framing goes away, this is, I was trying to make a point. I made it sort of ham-fisted. If framing goes away, I did say like maybe a DH would be on the plate. I don't believe that's true because you still have to have game calling

and throwing, which are two important things, and blocking. But blocking is a relatively small thing. I think people think it's a really important thing. But for example, right now on Baseball for Sectics, the leader in framing runs has 5.6 framing runs already. And I forgot who it is. I looked at it before. Anyway, and the leader in blocking runs has 0.5 blocking runs. So framing is like literally 10 times more important than blocking.

So you take framing out of the picture and you have blocking, which is not that important. Then you really only need an arm behind the plate and a bat. So I just think that just taking framing out of the picture puts, was going to put more pressure on offense. You're going to want, you're going to have more offense coming from the catcher position in the future.

There was also a really interesting idea of maybe the catcher will stand up. Yeah, that would also be like an infielder, right? Yeah. Somebody was pushing back on that and saying, what about the 45-foot curve? I'm like,

I don't know. Isn't that just a ground ball? I mean, there's more spin. But it might just be a ground ball, you know? It is hard to imagine catchers just standing upright because they've never done that in our lifetime. And the person who suggested this to me

was like, well, won't they be almost like boxing out and fighting the umpire for space? But the umpire was like, won't they be almost like boxing out and fighting the umpire for space? But the umpire is like, does the umpire really even need to be there if they're in trouble? Does he have to be that close? So the catchers are like, go away.

Move away further. I want to stand here like a short stop. Yeah, I mean, the ump could stand in a different spot or at least further away because it doesn't matter he only needs to come up in case there's a play i guess maybe uh swings swing not swing but that's better done by first and third base anyway right so what it looks like behind the plate could change as a part of those adjustments but henry davis first overall pick he's gonna hit

he's an above average hitter for a catcher. He's got a great arm. Could end up being a great pick, but if I had to make the pick based on the much, much smaller amount of information that I have about the players, Marcelo Meyer was going to be the pick for me if I was the Pirates. I wanted the guy that I thought had the highest ceiling but also brought a floor to play up the middle defense. Maybe he's more of a third baseman in the long run that's possible but i think there's a better chance he sticks at shortstop so i feel like

the red socks really got a steal when meyer fell down a little bit the other notable picks you mentioned some of the flaws with rocker the command definitely an issue for him everyone loves that khalil watson pick that the marlins made at 16 because he was a guy that in a lot of mocks was going in that fifth or sixth spot to baltimore arizona for the marlins made at 16 because he was a guy that in a lot of mocks was going in that fifth or sixth spot to Baltimore Arizona so for the Marlins to get him 10 picks after that that looks like a huge steal you know high school shortstop has some swing and miss concerns but tooled up could be a really good impact player I think when we're thinking about dynasty leagues he's going to go a lot earlier in dynasty league drafts than

he did in the draft on sunday night yeah generally um you know i've been in dynasty leagues where there's a lot of like um you know trying to pick up players that will be in the first round of the draft um you know and that's a that's okay sort of value proposition in terms of, like, if you're going to trade those guys away. But I kind of find those, I think, like, you know, the 14th to 20th pick in the draft, like I've said earlier, I think is a little bit overrated in terms of dynasty value and fantasy. And, like, I just remember, like, picking up Juan Cavientos before the draft, and then he got picked, like, 14th.

And I was like, woo-hoo. And then I couldn't trade him to anybody. I dropped him, and then he sort of had a resurgence as a, as a prospect, right? And now he's kind of interesting again, but that's like three years later and he's been on 14 since, you know, and nobody, nobody traded for him or anything. So, um, I, I think Marcelo Meyer is, um, maybe the guy who catches my eye the most, uh, in terms of, uh, I think, you know, a lot of people had a number one, dropping a four for the Red Sox. I think that, you know, Corey Seager comps on fan graphs.

I'd be pretty excited to get him. Yeah, definitely. If you're a Marlins fan, you are excited about that. But if you're a Red Sox fan, this draft went as well as it possibly could for you in that four spot. There was another Max Muncy drafted, also drafted by the A's, who drafted the Max Muncy that we all know currently with the Dodgers. This is a high school shortstop. Hopefully they keep him if he's good.

Yeah, yeah. Power is his carrying tool from the reports that I've read. And then Ty Madden is apparently the steal of the later part of day one, going to the Tigers at 32, which is interesting because I was reading more about this. They had a deal worked out with Jackson Jobe, and they probably didn't expect Marcelo Meyer to be there when they cut that deal. So having known that, like, okay, things could have been different had they not cut that deal. But they ended up getting a guy in Madden who's a college pitcher who will be a lot quicker at the big leagues, which if you were Tigers and seeing Jack Leiter going to them in mocks, seeing Leiter not go to them in reality,

you're probably a pretty frustrated fan on Sunday night until that Madden pick happened. And then it was kind of like, oh, well, these two guys together, we did really well. We got a guy who was going to be quick to the big leagues, and we got the guy with the high ceiling, both, of course, hard-throwing righties with bright futures. But Ty Madden at 32 was that other pick that I think a lot of people I follow in the scouting community thought was a big surprise.

Yeah, I like it. There's some part of me that's like, wow, they really need bats. They went with two arms. But that's not how it works. You can't – you're looking to accrue value. You're looking to pick up the best player every time you can, and you don't really draft worrying about what your major league team looks like because,

you know, half these guys won't make it. And then they might get traded and you just want to, you know, pick up the best players that you can. So I think that was a great, it was a good win for the Tigers as far as I can tell. Definitely a team that had a good draft.

And I'll point it out again. I mean, I think the core of hitters there is rapidly improving. Riley Green's having a good year in the minors. Spencer Torkelson, Dylan Dingler, they've got a nice core already. I'm pretty excited about Green, actually. I think Green looks pretty good. I saw

him yesterday at the Futures game. Him and Torkelson were having a good time together. They look like they enjoy each other's company. Green had a pretty good VP, I think. Nice. The Futures game, seven innings

long because of all the pitching changes. Worth re-watching if you get a chance to see if Brendan Davis was the star of the show, that one with a couple home runs. It's funny. He had a bad VP. People were talking about his VP not being really impressive.

It's just I'm not a scout. I don't know. As an analytics guy, I'm like, we're going to watch a VP and make decisions about him. I was trying to watch BP and be like, what could I watch for?

What could we be watching for here? For the most part, people are just hitting dongs, right? But you can look for distance. So Michael Harris really kind of stood out. And he's interesting because his game power hasn't really gotten there yet. So I talked to him about game power versus raw power. And he talked about basically pitch selection,

you know, getting his A swing off in games and knowing from BP that he had the raw power and he just needed to sort of tap into it. And that was one of the main things that he's trying to do this year. And so Harris had a really good BP and then he struck out. Then again, he faced Jane Baz who was dotting 99 and throwing both of his secondary. He's got a whiff on the changeup and just really showing off his entire arsenal.

Looked super ready to me. Sadly, he's off the Olympics, so there's no way that he'll be up really soon. I'm just watching him. I was like, he should be in the major leagues right now. They have a need. We talked about this with the Glasnow injury. I assume Patino gets another shot coming out of the break,

and they'll try to bridge the gap that way. But, yeah, Shane Baugh is still a little further away because of his obligation, opportunity, opportunity, really, to represent Team USA in the Olympics. But it would be nice to see him in the big leagues as soon as possible. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that caught my eye. I've got to rewatch that game from yesterday. But, yeah, Davis with the two home runs. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that caught my eye. I got to re-watch that game from yesterday. But yeah, Davis with the

two home runs. I think here's the thing about Davis that I think is a problem. The K-rate at AA is a problem. That matters to me. BP, I would agree with you. The only thing you're going to measure in BP is raw power. And raw power almost doesn't matter if your hit tool isn't

good enough to get to in-game pitching, which is why... A lot of guys with tremendous raw power that have not made it. Right. It's just one of those things where I hope we continue to see that evolution of what BP is to make that a little easier to get a sense

of like, oh, this is actually what this guy can do. I don't know. I think it's one of those weird things that is slowly, oh, this is actually what this guy can do. I don't know. I think it's one of those weird things that is slowly, slowly, slowly being pushed out of the game. But yeah, rewatch it. MLB Network had it on. Lots of good pitching in that game in particular if you're into

young pitching. I had some interesting conversations with Matthew Libertor and Reed Detmers, and I'm going to have to save some of that content for a bigger piece because there's something going on there. But they are interesting because they are not in organizations that everyone think, that sort of the group thinks has maybe great pitching development. And they both said one phrase, which I'm going to expound upon, which is'm going to expound upon,

which is you have to take your career into your own hands. And I just find that super interesting because, like, the modern player has three to four months on his own with now this proliferation of kind of player development labs. I don't know how to call them because there's pitchers and hitters there, but it's like driveline-esque, but each place has their own sort of philosophy, their own analytics. But, you know, they go to these places and they learn on their own and then they know sort of, they can be coachable, they can be coachable with their organization. They're not going to just turn

off their ears when they, you know, get back with the major league team, but they have to, Matthew Libertore was just amazing on it, just in terms of that dance where you have to just uh be accountable for yourself and and you know listen to other people and listen to their ideas but also know um that in the end um you you're kind of responsible for your own career so i just found that interesting and then he goes out and um i think when he pitched to julio rodriguez we were talking about like how everyone's going to throw 100 and not that many people threw 100 first of all um and then we were talking about how they'd all be all fastball and that wasn't actually my lived experience in the game i was like matthew libertore i think didn't throw a fastball in an entire plate appearance to

julio rodriguez i think it was like change up slider change up slider curveball or something it was uh uh he got rodrig Rodriguez out and he had a clean inning, but I was waiting for fastballs from him. He was almost hiding the fastball. He threw without looking at the numbers. I remember seeing three or four fastballs in the inning. Especially with that game being played in Denver, the heavy fastball expectation I think was a very fair one,

but with it being a showcase game and trying to light up the radar gun, that was the other. Well, I think maybe there's that idea of like, you have to take your own career in your own hands. I think they know that this is a, um, this is a pitching showcase and that there are scouts there and stuff.

And so I feel like almost they, they were like, no, here are all my pitches. You know, I need to show you all my pitches. It's not just about hitting 99. I feel like most of us up here can hit at least

97, 98. If we all just did that, we wouldn't set each other apart. It was Shane Baz getting a whiff on the changeup is kind of really exciting. You know what I mean? Shane Baz is obviously going to be like, hey, here's my changeup. It's awesome too. I think there was a little bit of that where everybody wanted to show up all their pitches.

And thinking about Libertor being one of those guys who is taking his career in his own hands, I mean, he's been traded. And I think that's something that young players are much more aware of now too. The help that you're getting from an organization, they could all be gone. You could get flipped any time. And suddenly those resources you were depending on are no longer yours. You get a new organization, different philosophy. If you have your own mindset, your own approach, your own way of doing things, that sticks with you in the event of a trade. It sticks with you all the time. And that seems like

a much better, much healthier long-term approach to have if you're a young player right now. Had a bunch of questions come in this week. Let's start with one about a couple of young players who have been struggling. Frank is in a shallow dynasty league. It's an eight-team league, and he's wondering what he should do with Dylan Carlson and Gliber Torres, both of whom are showing better plate skills

this year, but to varying degrees, a lot less power than expected. So Frank wants to know if we think these guys are worth holding on to right now, if you're in a contending situation, if you would be comfortable possibly trading them away, or if they're available in different leagues if you trade for them. Let's start with Dylan Carlson. What's the long-term outlook for you on Dylan Carlson? We're still talking about a guy who's got less than a calendar year's worth of big league experience, and he's still very young, just 22 years old. The overall body of

work through 123 games is a 243 average, a 321 OBP, and a 384 slugging percentage. I mentioned the play discipline, right? He's got a double-digit walk rate, 10.3%. He's got the K rate down at 24.3%. Only 10 homers so far in 123 games. But given his age, I'm not worried about that power. I think the power could still come maybe even in the second half of this season. So I remain pretty optimistic about Dylan Carlson long-term. Have you seen anything else to this point that would lead you to be a little more cautious about expecting him to emerge as a long-term top or middle-of-the-order star in St. Louis? Carlson is interesting to me because I actually depart from the numbers a little bit. And every time I look at the numbers, I'm like, God, man, they're so mediocre. Like in terms of the numbers I traditionally look at in terms of barrel rate, max EV, that sort of stuff,

he's, you know, hard hit percentage. He's in the bottom 30% in hard hit percentage, you know? He's in the bottom 30 percentile in barrel percentage. He strikes out a fair amount. So it's kind of like, why do you like him, you know? But I do. And it's, I think it's, it's like, it's, I don't know. It's my scouting, my scouting hat, which I always get nervous when I put it on. Cause I don't think it's necessarily my best foot forward. But when I watch him, I see a guy who can spray it to all fields, has good power to all fields. I don't know why it hasn't played out exactly as I thought it would in my head. And so maybe I'm just wrong, but I love starting with play discipline and All Fields power.

And I know that it hasn't, like I'm saying All Fields power, but it hasn't, you don't really see it in the numbers, but I swear it's there. I swear it's there, you know? So I guess what I'm saying is both of those guys are on my dynasty acquire list. I would be looking to acquire both of them. I think they're at a low point in their value. I think they'll do better going forward. I love that they both have great play discipline, that they're young and that they've shown power in the past power. It's the hardest thing to remember.

passed power we are it's the hardest thing to remember power results like slugging percentage uh are not meaningful in half seasons you know there's a lot of noise and so that's an that's an easy place to to kind of go get someone it would be be easier if he had better barrel rates. The power is coming. You know what I mean? I think Gliber actually, I'm loading it, but without looking, I think Gliber has I would say better underlying

stat cast stats. Am I wrong? 86.4 average exit velocity, 6% barrel rate this season. Same sort of stuff. Good max exit Vlo, at least. Better than Carlson's. Slightly better hard hit rates, but that's never been a super strength of his.

But he has years of 9% and 10% barrel rates in his history. And 8.4 for his career, 6 this year. So I would say going forward, I'd regress him towards an 8.4% barrel rate, which if he has an 8% barrel rate and the play discipline he has, I think he's a guy who's going to hit like 275. Like his career numbers are 265, 337, 456. Like I think he can play to that.

And if he plays to that, he's like a 275, 20 homer, 10 stolen base guy every year like you don't want that i think we went through this a little bit with ozzy albies and maybe there's a little more stolen base potential with albies but you get to the big leagues at such a young age and you make these contributions and you have a prominent spot on a good team no less and then you have a bad year yeah and it just sets the bar at a level that is really high to get back to. And you don't ever get as much of a discount on these younger players when they go through this progression,

because it's easy to look at them and say, no, no, this is coming back. I still see it coming back to labor. I want to acquire them, but I think it might be hard to acquire. Like,

you know, I just, in his league though, he's, he's think it might be hard to acquire. In his league, though, he's a shallow league. There's so much pressure on these guys. Maybe a 265-20-10 guy is not that valuable in this league. Yeah, in an eight-team league, that's definitely a lot closer to...

It's not replacement level, but it's closer to that line than it would be in a lot of deeper dynasty leagues. We talk about 15-20am dynasty leagues all the time. So that's definitely a concern. But I think both Carlson and Torres are good enough players to easily be top 100 guys going forward these next couple of seasons. So that makes them easy keepers in a dynasty league like that, guys that you do want to have. And I think both are in situations

where they have maximum playing time shares. Both should be in situations to rack up good counting stats as a result, Torres especially. Torres is in a better position overall. If you had to choose between the two, I guess I would take Torres because Yankee Stadium.

If I had to choose between the two, if I'm playing for this year and I have to trade one away because I'm trying to get help, I think Carlson gets you back more to trade because he's younger. I think there's a chance that you get a better return. And I feel good enough about Torres getting back into that range that you described, maybe even a tick above that power wise.

I mean, we know 2019 was flawed for all the rabbit ball reasons, but he hit 38 home runs as a 22-year-old that year. That happened. I think you can talk yourself into getting a great deal for Carlson and still having some long-term bounce-back potential with Torres if the right deal comes along. And you don't have to move them. You could keep them both. You could be absolutely fine not moving them. I think generally speaking, these are two players that we both like in the long run that we'd both be trying to trade for, whether playing for this year or especially if we're playing for the future. Agreed.

All right. Thanks a lot for that email, yeah an eight team dynasty league is really tough because those thresholds are so different i got a question here from alex about chris paddock a lot of good stuff in your really long email and i'm going to boil it down to a few of the the finer points but alex is wondering if paddock is just one of those guys who was served a large slice of humble pie since getting into the league and if that helps to explain some of his current struggles we've talked about him before with the lack of depth in his arsenal being a problem and I think more recently he's shown some signs of maybe getting things back on on the right track so just looking at the overall arc for Chris Paddock so far what you've seen this

season what we saw in the shortened season what we saw when he debuted where are we at right now on his true talent level and his long-term ceiling because the 333 era and the 0.98 whip that we saw with more than a strikeout per inning back when he debuted it seems out of reach at this point, but how far out of reach is it really? Yeah, it's interesting. I think that he needs to be... In that question, there was a question like, does he need a fourth pitch? And we've been waiting for the third pitch.

I think we finally got the third pitch. The curve looks pretty decent right now. Stuff Plus says that it's gone up and down, but it's settling in around league average. So you've got a league average curveball, a plus changeup, and a fastball that hovers around league average, and then great command. I think that's already, you think, okay, that should be enough, because he's got a 116 command plus. Like this is a guy who can really command it. But maybe all those things are too close to league average, you know?

And if they are going to be so close to league average, then he needs to have maybe a fourth pitch or maybe a fifth pitch. Like maybe he needs to go to the Kyle Gibson, Hunjin Ryu, you know, pathway where he just has to keep adding pitches. So in that case i think that humble pie is good because it means that he's going to keep like we're going to add one thing that we saw last year was a cutter that looked like he had some potential but it also may have impacted the ride on his fastball which he's finally uh gotten back so um right now i think

finally gotten back. So right now I think it's weird because I think in some ways it's one of the better packages we've seen out of him. You know, league average curveball, the ride on his fastball is back to almost exactly where it was before, and the changeup is still plus. If this is the best package, then it's kind of sad that it comes off of that shellacking.

It just makes you wonder if maybe he just doesn't have that ace upside. Maybe it's more Kyle Gibson than Hunter Drew. We've seen some pretty widely ranging results for Kyle Gibson over the years. But I still get some Tyler Molle vibes.

You know, where it's like, here's a guy with great command, good fastball. He's kind of searching for another pitch. And look at what happened with Tyler Molle and how he used that command, the good fastball, and then found this new cutter. Right? And how good Tyler Moll Molly's been this year. So I still have some love for Paddock for sure. I don't know if it's perfect one for one,

but longer term, I'm always willing to bet on someone with a really good hit tool. And I think Paddock on the pitching side has really good command. And I tend to trust that. There's enough there with it to think that he is probably that extra pitch away. And getting off the fastball even more would be a big part of it fastball while it's back to where it used to be

it wasn't great back then it's not the kind of fastball you should throw as much as he throws it so that that's part of the problem that's why that review path that you described makes so much sense that's why alex suggested the fourth pitch i think he does need that to get back to being a mid threes ERA guy or high threes ERA guy with a better than average whip. I think if you said over under on the bat projection for him for the rest of the season, four 21 ERA, one 24 whip,

those feel pretty close to right. I'd probably take the under the slight under on both. I think there's enough working in his favor where he can actually be pretty good over the court the second half. It's just not going to be as good as he was two years ago. You've got to fight some recency bias with that bad game in your rearview mirror. Nationals are an underrated offensive team, I would say. And people have bad starts. I think that's about right, actually.

4-2 ERA, good whip. He did it again. The Cardi system yet again, spitting out numbers that we look at. We're like, yep, that's logical. That's where it goes. Thanks a lot for that email, Alex. Good questions in there.

I had a question come in from Isaac, who was curious about Dylan Cease. He picked him up earlier this season with the increased spin and ride on his four-seamer. And since mid-May, he's decreased his usage of the fastball and increased the usage of his curve and changeup. When you look at the underlying stats for the changeup and curve, they seem pretty good in terms of whiff rate and Woba against. But when I look at the movement for them on Savant, specifically the change, they are pretty subpar. I feel like his change and his curve are only really effective since he previously threw them infrequently.

I'm wondering whether they'll get barreled up more once opposing teams are no longer looking for that 97-mile-an-hour fastball as much as they have been. So he's curious to know about the stuff and command numbers on Cease's pitches and whether those pitch mix changes lead to improved K-BBs in the short term or if there's anything else going on with him that we should point out. Yeah, I mean, the stuff plus on the changeup is 95. It's not an amazing pitch, but I think it works fine as a fourth pitch.

I think you're right to be worried that if he pushes that percentage, it won't necessarily be great for him right now. It looks like, you know, just looking at the pitch mix, I think that he's replacing most of the four seamers with sliders and curves, which stuff plus is a good idea. Both of those. Well, actually the curve is not rated well by Stuff Plus. That's an 89 pitch. So, yeah, there's some risk here.

Cease is a very risky pitcher. He's improved his command this year to 92, which still puts him in the very back end of uh of all starting pitchers uh there's maybe something like 10 starting pitchers that have a sub 90 command plus uh so he's still kind of borderline when it comes to stuff uh you know the secondary stuff his best pitches are the four seam slider uh by far, and then he's very borderline by command plus. He's a sell high. If you can sell him, I would sell him.

Yeah, it's kind of the opposite of Paddock in terms of what he's done so far versus where the projections think he's going to go. Maybe not quite as extreme, but 449 ERA, 138 WIP projected by the bat for the rest of the season. I do think there can be a lag when you make some adjustments. The league eventually does see what you're doing differently and comes up with a better game plan to account for that. I think these are the typical ebbs and flows of a young starter

who does bring a pretty significant risk profile. It's on everyone's mind, though. It's the number one thing on everyone's mind. I talked to an executive that said for a buying team and he said, I've seen all the guys that we might buy

and I'm flying out on Tuesday to see them again because we want to see them post Sticky Stuff Ban. That's definitely going on. And Farhan laughed when he was asked about it, if it was going to matter.

Yeah. Obviously, yes. Yes, we're monitoring everyone's spin rates, and we're looking at movement post and pre and post. So I would say that you're right, that there's some scouting lag, but there's also the best teams at least are all over this on top of this and are trying to use models plus scouting experience and,

and trying to get new eyes on everybody. Since that stuff was implemented, the sticky stuff ban was really implemented and started to be enforced July 20th or so. I'm just glad teams are as invested, obviously, for good reason. But they're as perplexed by all this as we are, right? They don't quite know what's coming next. They're getting extra looks.

They're trying to figure it out along with the rest of us. It could be one of the reasons. along with the rest of us. It could be one of the reasons. If you were looking at a pitcher that dropped against public rankings in the draft the first day, you could be looking at the reason. I mean, because a lot of the stuff is pervasive in college too, and so scouts have to include in their scouting report internally.

It's a little bit awkward maybe to do that public facing because then you're kind of maybe scapegoating a young guy. You don't want to, you don't want to be like, Oh, he's breaking the rules. So it could be awkward to talk about it on fan graphs or on baseball perspectives or anything, but internally, you know, the scout that just looked at, you know, this Vanderbilt pitcher, that one, this Wake Forest pitcher had a whole section on different. If he went to his brim of his cap a ton, if he looked like he was using something,

if his spin rates oscillated, and what they were able to observe in that regard. Yeah, you're right. That could be part of that explanation for why the first round was full of surprises, I would say, on Sunday night. Thanks a lot for that email, Isaac. Alright, you know, I had a couple more questions to get to

before we go. Let's get at least one more squeezed in for today's episode. I thought this was a pretty intriguing email. The subject line read, has StatCast stolen the magic out of fantasy? It reads as follows. I wanted to pose another philosophical fantasy item

that's been pestering me. Statcast, specifically barrels, ruined the shallow league. First, a few figures coming into today, at the time of this email. There had been 3,797 barrels. 80% of those barrels resulted in a home run. Only 14% of all home runs were not barrels. Obviously, home runs are heavily correlated with key hitting stats, runs, RBIs, average OBP, etc.

Just a few years ago, there were many competing strategies for team builds in shallow leagues, each focusing on a metric that was inherently flawed and gave an incomplete picture. There was more variance and there were more advantages to be had by actually watching games and scouting players. Now it seems that 90% of what you need to know about a hitter can be summed up by barrels over plate appearances and the remaining mostly filled in by K rate. If you aren't just hawking the free agent wire for high barrel players like Adelise Garcia, Brandon Crawford, you're probably doing it wrong. Am I wrong to think that Statcast has actually made fantasy less fun?

That email comes from Matthew. Now, we love StatCast. We love numbers. So have you ever had that thought looking at the data that it's becoming easier to analyze players because of these tools? Oh, yeah, 100%. And it makes trading harder because what he's saying, if you're trying to come to my team and you're trying to take a player that has slightly lower

slugging but great barrel numbers, I can see you coming a mile away. I think that's what he's getting at. As to the larger question about Magic, I think think back to our conversation about Dylan Carlson and Gleyber Torres. Those players now become the magic you're looking for.

And I think that's why I've always loved Dynasty. Because just look at Vlad Guerrero. Vlad Guerrero had a 6% barrel rate, 7% barrel rate, and yeah, we knew that he hit the ball hard with a max EV, and there was potential there, but now he jumped up to 19% barrel rate in one year. That happens

if you're looking at year-to-year. So that's why I would say go find a keeper in Dynasty League, because in that league, you can debate Deliber Torres and Dylan Carlson over a longer period. And so then go find a keeper in dynasty league because in that league you can debate gliber torres and dylan carlson over a longer period and so then you know their current mediocre barrel rates have to be put in perspective of will he get stronger will he uh you know like have a better plate approach you know is there potential for growth here what is his age uh and those things are harder to figure

out and can't just be boiled down to glider torres has a four percent bail rate and so he will never be good again you know what i mean you could say glider torres may not have a great year this year you know but when you're asking about the rest of his career then it gets a lot more complicated and there's a lot more chance for scouting, you know, makeup issues, you know, the kind of things that can extrapolate off of the numbers, you know, more sort of dreaming past what their current status looks like. Yeah, I think the other way to look at it too is just sifting through the bottom of the StatCast leaderboard, digging around the laggard board, I guess we could call it, and finding reasons to believe in players, looking for something else.

The other example, just thinking about a year-over-year player who got a lot better over the last five years is Byron Buxton. If you looked at Buxton's StatCast numbers at the beginning of his career versus what he's doing now that completely different right is barrel rate his first year in the big leagues was 3.4 percent he had a couple of five percent seasons in 16 and 17 and now he's up at 20.5 percent in 2021 he was at 13.5 percent in the shortened season you know the average ev has taken off everything everything in the profile can change over a longer period of time. K rates can go up or down.

Walk rates can go up or down. And I think I'm trying to – I don't have a clear rubric for what exactly I'm looking for. But I do find where StatCast thinks a player is terrible, that's where there are opportunities to actually get a discount. And sometimes you're just buying a player who's actually bad. The numbers are telling the entire story. Other times there's more to it and you can actually find someone who just hasn't made those adjustments yet, just hasn't found that last couple things they have to do to be the player we expected them to be. Yeah, I'm perusing kind of outside of the top 100 in barrel rate.

Just around there is Alex Verdugo. Dylan Carlson, Glibert Torres are 101, 102. Josh Rojas is there. Gavin Lux is at 112. DJ LeMay is at 113. JP Crawford is at 120. Rymel Tapia is at 113 JP Crawford Is at 120 Rymel Tapia is at 125 You know

These are all really interesting players You know those are all players That have value The shallower it gets yes The more the pressure is to Combine great power With great play discipline But in the deeper leagues JP Crawford has been a find for people this year.

And it has to do with the fact that he can add some steals, he has a really good plate approach, and he will knock a few out. And that's the kind of thing that you're looking for that may not be captured amazingly by StatCast. Think of Michael Brantley, where he's got the elite hit tool and terrible barrel numbers from year to year. Then you're just buying, it's like Verdugo, kind of. You're buying the 300 average.

You're buying the high average and sort of 15 homers and a few steals package for Verdugo. But for Brantley, you're just buying. Brantley versus LeMahieu. Why spend a bunch on LeMahieu when Brantley, you're just buying... Brantley versus LeMahieu. Why spend a bunch on LeMahieu when Brantley is also a high average low home run hitter? That was a sort of would you rather for me going into the season, which is why I didn't end up with any LeMahieu shares. Yeah. So to answer the question, has it taken some of the magic away?

Well, no, but it has made it harder to get those advantages. I would agree with that take entirely. It's pushed us to a different frontier, a different approach, different things we need to be looking for if we're going to actually find players that the rest of our league mates might be overlooking. Thanks a lot for that email, Matthew. Last one that came in for today,

we had another candidate for the next Jesse Winker, and that is Trevor Larnak. That email came from Jason, who also wrote that he appreciates our podcast, and while it hasn't helped him take down Mr. Michael Beller in my home league this year, it has put me in a position to lay the ground floor of a rebuild so hopefully jason can take down beller in the near future but what do you think about larnac as a winker comp it's uh it's okay in terms of uh there's like a good uh max evian barrel raid like it could get better uh but it's not great in terms of the one thing that I thought separated Winker was the great hit tool and strikeout rate. So I think the Larnach is maybe just a little bit more of a traditional

28 to 30% strikeout rate, low batting average, good homer guy. There are some years in Larnach's minor league history with lower strikeout rates, but they're all a ball and lower, you know, since he's hit the high minors, it's been more, more strikeouts and a 16% whiff rate in the big leagues.

A swing strike rate does not suggest to me that he's there. I think somebody like Verdugo is actually closer to be a candidate for the winker because even though he doesn't have great barrel rates yet, he has this great contact rate and if he did make some adjustments to hit the ball in the air for more power, he could wink or rise.

I think Larnak is a bit of a like a Michael Conforto comp for me, but even Conforto in the upper levels of the minor leagues didn't have his k rate jump as much as larnac did so that does give me some pause just in terms of expecting too much too fast i think when you watch him you have to decide how well does he adjust does he work the count well enough where he can bring that k rate down does he have good enough coverage they've gotten a fat speed i think for most part, he does have the tools you're looking for to improve.

But I feel like when we get to the best version of Larnak, he's probably the kind of guy that strikes out 23% to 25% of the time. You could absolutely do that and be a 30 home run hitter with a decent batting average in the big leagues. I think that's more or less what he's going to be. But I don't think that puts him quite in that same tier. Whereas Winker has become an MVP candidate. Larnik's the kind of guy that's going to play in a couple of all-star games, maybe a home run derby. And that's a really good outcome if that all comes to fruition. Yeah, I agree.

All right. Thanks a lot for the great questions throughout this episode. Rates and Barrels at TheAthletic.com is the best way to reach us with an email if you'd like to go that route. On Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Vanletic.com is the best way to reach us with an email if you'd like to go that route. On Twitter, he's at Inoceros. I am at Derek Van Ryper. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for just $3.99 a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. One quick schedule note, things are a little bit strange this week, of course, with it being All-Star Week. So we have another episode coming up for you on Tuesday. So it's Monday, Tuesday, Friday this week. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of R for you on Tuesday. So it's Monday, Tuesday, Friday this week.

That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you tomorrow. Hey, the home run derby is tonight. Thanks for listening.