Rates & Barrels - Devers Rejects First Base & Weekend Waiver Preview

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss Rafael Devers' rejection of a move to first base and answer a few mailbag questions -- including an intriguing reason the Dodgers' Stuff+ numbers may be lagging in public models -- before examining several waiver-wire options to consider ahead of the weekend. Rundown4:30 Rafael Devers Rejects a Move to First Base10:56 The New Pope is a White Sox Fan, 2025 Chances?13:15 Is Dodgers' Low Stuff+ This Season Just Being Ahead of Public Models?20:29 Why is David Robertson Still a Free Agent?22:38 Does Trent Grisham Have Shallow League Appeal?36:29 A Waiver-Wire Leaderboard for This Weekend's Bats49:39 Adjusting Age for Players Switching Roles?53:01 Weekend Pitcher LeaderboardFollow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Michael Sullivan from Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times. And today we're in the kitchen testing canned tomatoes. What we're tasting for, sweetness, acidity, definitely the color, the texture. These tomatoes, they're pretty velvety, like they break apart easily with a spoon. The guides that we write are living, breathing things. It's a piece of fruit in a can, so it's going to change every year. At Wirecutter, we do the work so you don't have to.

For independent product reviews and recommendations for the real world, come visit us at nytimes.com slash wirecutter. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Friday, May 9th, Derek Van Riper, Innosaris here with you. On this episode we discuss the latest saga in Boston involving Raphael Devers and the Red Sox front office amidst another request for him to move positions following the season ending injury to Tristan Cassis. We'll discuss that whole situation. We've got some mailbag questions to get to today and we're going to do our usual late

week weekend waiver wire preview. Different format for it this week. We'll see if people like it. Let us know on Discord if it's a good change that we should try to keep for future weeks. If you have not joined our Discord yet, you can do that with the link in the show description. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to click that like button. If you're listening to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any platform

that allows you to rate and review the show, leave us a nice high rating if you wouldn't mind. You know, how's it going for you on this Friday? I'm doing well. You know, how's it going for you on this Friday? I'm doing well. I slept in a bed last night and have not run a hundred miles, uh, since, since Wednesday morning, uh, shout out to my mother who is just crossing the hundred mile mark on the Sedona Canyon's 125 mile running race.

I did the tweets and forgot to expressly say it was running. So some people I think assumed she was biking or whatever. She is running 125 miles like a crazy person. And I hope that she's doing okay because she ran through the night and she's got 25 miles to go. If she finishes, she wins. She wins. She's the only person in the 70 plus age bracket.

Holy cow. Your mom's over 70. Wow. So she's, she's rocking in a role. And I, this is going to be the hardest part though. The last 25 miles, when she hasn't slept last night, she has the choice right now that's facing her of trying to sleep some, which, and then getting her speed up and maybe trying to get up to like two miles an hour or, or two plus miles an hour, which maybe she could do after some rest or, uh, continue plotting along right now.

She's around like a mile and a half an hour. There's a lot of elevation also. She's going from down in the basement up all the way to Flagstaff. So down in Sedona basin all the way up. So, uh, you know, as one of the strategy situations that, uh, these long distance, any long distance runners, super long distance runners are listening know all about the winner of this race, uh, famously decided last year to take a nap. Um, and this year, uh, famously decided last year to take a nap. Um, and this year, uh, she decided to run through the night

and broke her own course record. So mom is going the way of not sleeping. Um, and she has till Saturday morning at 10 AM to make it. I mean, if she averaged just over a mile an hour, she could do it, but that would be two nights of not sleeping. So I'm just. As her son, I'm hoping she takes a little nap, but there's also maybe that moment. If you take a nap, you're just like, I can't get up. Yeah, I've already run a hundred miles. If I take a nap, I may not get back up again for like 18 hours. So, uh, yeah, it's, I don't know what she's thinking. She's probably a little delirious too. Uh, I have stopped receiving answers from her phone to phone might even be dead.

I mean, you know, it's been that long. So yeah, kind of intense, grueling, amazing. She's doing it at all and has done this well. Hopefully she finishes. We'll look forward to the update on our Monday show. And we're all, we're all pulling for it. Cause that's, that's an incredible physical accomplishment for anybody, regardless of age. Yeah.

She's invited me out on these and I'm like, ah, I prefer to run for like two hours or an hour and still that you can go a fair amount of miles, but then you're done. That's like, that's, that's one of the parts I like about running is when you're done. I mean, there's no shame in running for 20 to 30 minutes and showering and sleeping in your own bed afterwards. All of those things are absolutely fine. And he also helps whatever works.

Yeah. Let's talk about Raphael Devers and the Red Sox. So the reactions to the story have been as expected, disappointing. Often is the case. Player is asked to make a change. Player says no. Fans say we hate you in more words than that. But that's like a lot of reaction to

stories like this. I think there's a few different ways to think about it. First and foremost, I mean, the Red Sox moved Raphael Devers off of third base and he didn't want to move off of third base and made him a DH. And this is another request and information has changed, right? The situation is different. Asking him to move again now is a result of the CASIS injury. It's not just a, we changed our mind.

We really like you at first base instead of having his DH. So I can understand why and how Craig Breslow and the Red Sox front office would try and pursue this as a solution to their new problem at first base. But it also makes sense for him to say like, Oh, if some, he's actually literally said this. If somebody gets hit in their outfield, like you want me to play outfield? Like what if our shortstop gets hurt? You know? Right.

And I just think the, the, the translation of what Devers was saying, I think is, is also like really important to consider too, right? Devers answering questions from the media with Red Sox Translator. And the way translations work, A, it's a difficult job, and B, it's not always going to be perfect. And then aside from that, tone matters too. The actual tone of the comments is going to be a factor. So I think you have to kind of take a breath, take a step back and just like, think about the whole situation before rushing to any sort of judgment.

But a couple of things are just sitting with me right now. This is year two of the 10 year extension that Raphael Devers signed with the Red Sox and Craig Breslow did not give him that extension. Chaim Bloom did. And that to me kind of leaves this door open for other things that we ordinarily wouldn't see for a player of Devers caliber at his age with a contract like that. And I asked Jen McCaffrey about this.

I said, is this a galaxy brain fantasy guy thought that Raphael Devers could be traded at some point during or maybe after year two of a 10 year extension? She said, well, he doesn't have a no trade clause. So there you go. Like they. But it is a lot of money. I mean. It's a lot of money and the move to DH, what, I don't think it was only about Devers defense.

I think his shoulders were a major problem. And Jen came on the show a couple of weeks ago and explained how little Devers was able to do in preparation for the season over the course of the winter as a result of injury. And that I think largely explained why the slow start he got off to after opening day. But he was as bad as it was. He was a terrible third base.

I mean, I think honestly, Right. And I guess the conversations he had with Bloom at the time of the extension were more in the vein of eventually after a few years, we will make a position switch, like it was kind of a, some level of understanding that there was going to be a change over the life of the contract. Obviously not this quickly. This is year two. So all of that, all that background information matters. Yeah, I feel for him. But I mean, you can also see the, the fans perspective, which is like, you know, this is the, this is the one of the star players of my favorite team.

You know, I would do anything to be the DH for the red Sox, you know, and you're getting paid all this money and the team who employs you asked you to do something for the team, you know, and they're paying you. It's not like they're asking you to do something for free. And, you know, I think a lot of fans would be like, if I was in those shoes, I would gladly do it, you know, um, that give me the $30 million a year or whatever. So, uh, I, I understand that, but, um, I also understand him being like, okay, you asked me to do this thing. I didn't want to do it.

I did it. Now you're asking me a new thing. Like not even like, what is it? Like three weeks after that. We're talking about two and a half months after. Yeah. It hasn't been that long. And what I was saying before was like on this podcast, we were talking about this

before I was saying like, you're going to ask him to play first base, but it's only a temporary thing because cast is going to be back. And so then he goes back to, to DH. So it's not like, Oh, we really think this is your long-term home first base. That's what they were saying with DH, right? This is more like, and his point was go on the market. It's not that hard to find a first base. We tried to find a first baseman for them though.

And it wasn't super obvious who it would be. It doesn't look great out there, especially if you're looking for immediate starting caliber first baseman that are easily acquirable. Can you trade for one? Yeah, you're probably going to have to overpay it because teams now know your situation. And maybe that's the part of it, if you're in the front office that you're kind of irked by is like you have a guy that you think could play it, at least play it well enough to solve the problem. And then you can play Yoshida at DH.

Yeah, right? The cascading effect of that, like, oh, two birds, one stone. play it, at least play it well enough to solve the problem. And then you can play Yoshida at DH. Yeah, right? The cascading effect of that, like, oh, two birds, one stone. We're in good shape here. So yeah, I mean, I understand it from every perspective. I understand why Devers is kind of like, no, like you had me move here.

I understand why the front office is asking. Things have changed. I understand why fans are upset because baseball players make a lot of money to play a game that many of us played as kids and would love to play professionally, but guess what? We can't. But I definitely have a little bit of an issue with the, well, his job told him to do it, so he should do it. It's like, yeah, that's not quite how it works either. Like there's some. Workers should have some rights.

You have some ability to push back on this. And again, like if the shoulder is a long-term concern for the Red Sox, and that was at all part of their calculations and pushing him to DH beyond adding Alex Bregman, then that's a factor that they should continue to care about. Though playing first base should be less rigorous on your shoulders than playing third base. Let's move on to some mailbag questions.

This one's from Mark Moro. Great Pope jokes on blue sky and yesterday. Duh Pope. Duh Pope's a good one. I saw some Italian beef jokes out there. People brought it yesterday. It was actually one of the few like good days on social media we've had in a long time, but Mark Moro in the discord, timely question, is the Pope

being a Chicago White Sox fan mean they have a chance this year? Buddy, he's been a White Sox fan for a long time. That's right. And he's been an eye up in the organization. He's been a Cardinal, he's been blessing them. There's a picture of him at the World Series against the Astros.

Yeah, so I'm gonna say no. No. to get the Astros. Yeah. So I'm going to say no, but among the great content on blue sky, grant Brisbane, our friend from the windup, from the athletic writes a lot about the giants, you hear him a couple of times a week on the round table. He did not tweet the original one. You think the original is fake? Yeah, I think so. We can break this down over the weekend and

come back to it again on Monday. So Grant's original tweet dated May 8th, 2021. One of the reasons that I'm not a Catholic is that there's never been a Pope who's heard of Joe Credie, how can you claim to speak ex cathedra if you've never heard of Joe Credie? And Grant sharing that old tweet writes, man, there is some serious egg on my face right now,

which is a phenomenal bit. And I did not go back to see if that was an authentic tweet. It does seem, the fact that it's even possibly real tells you everything you know about Grant though, right? That's true. There is a chance. I'm not sure Grant though, right? That's true. Is there is a chance. I'm not sure.

There's a chance that's real. The thing that would give me some doubts is that it was posted on May 8th, 2021. And yesterday was May 8th, 2025. So I think Grant didn't do a good enough job mixing up the date to really pull it off. That's right. Why would he, why would he do that? And why would he tweet about Joe?

But that's the, that's the thing that could be true. You could have tweeted about Joe Creedy in May of 2021. Why not? That's 100% real, but good work by Grant on, on social as always. Actual mailbag questions. Well, the Mark one was a real question too, I think. Mostly real.

Are the Dodgers ahead of the public models? So Adam asked us this, what's more like the Dodger stars have all had below average MLB stuff this year, or they're leaning into something that public facing models don't yet capture. Hmm. I'm going to say both, which is, I know I'm a Waffler. I'm the king of waffles, but, um, the reason I'm going to say both is because, uh, I do believe they are ahead of public models.

Like I do believe like they, they hired Max. You know, he's been working and he did a tremendous amount of work for us. Um, at stuff plus in like a weekend basically so i do think that. They are head of public models and they have a really large group of people working for them and so. You know i am i'm checking this because i don't believe it's true but you're right land. Landon Nack is the only one at a hundred and none of them are over a hundred. The other thing I have to say, though, is. This is a bad number for Tyler Glass. Now his stuff is down.

Tony Gonsolin has always kind of been around here and overperformed. I think they do interesting things on defense that help their pitchers. They've they have the lowest babbitt going back like 15, 20 years. Uh, there could be some park effect plus how they, how they position their defenders. Uh, and then lastly, it wouldn't be surprising to me that any team that had so many injuries was pitching people that they didn't necessarily plan on pitching in the, in the preseason. Yeah. Yeah.

I do think the combination of injuries is a factor in there for sure. So I wouldn't, wouldn't write that off. I wonder is the defense actually grading out as well as it has in recent years? That. And they've been hurt a little bit. Right. They've been hurt a little bit by the rule changes. Yeah. Outs above average right now.

I don't know if I got to check the BABIP too, but I'm just looking outs above average has the Dodgers right now, middle of the pack, even zero. Defensive run save. They're plus 19 though, in DRS, which ties them for third. 18th and BABIP. This is one of their worst BABIP showing in many years. Yeah. So I do think it's a combination of those things. And there were questions about Yoshi nohara. which ties them for third. 18th and Bavip, this is one of their worst Bavip showing in many years.

Yeah. So I do think it's a combination of those things. And there were questions about Yoshinobu Yamamoto specifically wondering why his stuff number was so low. And me being the usual village idiot of our discord chimed in with a, yeah, it's a little weird that a guy with a near career 30% K right now over 130 innings in an improving zone contact percentage would have below average stuff plus, and he goes

out and has a bad outing against the diamond backs. Awesome. Good job. Classic village idiot work again on my part. But what do you think it is about Yamamoto that keeps his stuff number down? Because by every other measure we would care about, he looks like a true ace. I think it is about Yamamoto that keeps his stuff number down because by every other measure we would care about, he looks like a true ace. Yeah. Um, you know, stuff plus does make it mean less after a while. Um, and he's he's crossed that threshold and proven that we don't need to, you know, dissect his stuff plus as much as just look at what he's done on the field.

Uh, but when it comes to like his foreseen fastball movement, he has 16 inches of vertical break and that's basically average. Um, and, uh, the arm slot is not that unique. I think that maybe there's a chance that splitters, uh, perform better than model expects, um, his, his splitter has, you know, average ish quote unquote movement, but, and it's only five miles an hour and slower than a four seam. And so you could be like, it's too close to his four seam and it has average movement, but it's obviously been a really good pitch for him, you know? So, um, you know, there's no, there's no, there's not like great of a mystery here.

It's good command, not not like excellent, excellent command. It's a really good splitter and he plays it backwards off of it. He doesn't, I don't know, even people who love Yamamoto, I don't think would tell me that they think he has great breaking balls. You know, so if there's a number that is wrong, you know, in my guessing is the the number for his splitter of 106 stuff plus on the splitter. Maybe that should be elite. It was 114 last year because it should be higher than that. But I don't actually personally argue with the 93 stuff less on the fastball. It's like a pretty good fastball, a little bit above average in Velo, a little

bit below average in shape. I don't, I can't fiddle around with that one too much. So, um, I think it's a good mix and maybe the splitter is better than the model says. Yeah. I just noticed Kirby Yatesitter is better than the model says. Yeah. I just noticed Kirby Yates is pretty low in the model too. And we're focusing more on the starters. And he throws splitters all the time and they were. Yeah.

Yeah. 42% K rate so far this year and the lowest walk rate that we've seen from Kirby Yates since 2019, what the heck? What does he do? He's 38, man. How is he doing this? I have a feeling that splitters probably have really good arm speed. Because what pitchers tell me about splitters is that they, you know, they trust the grip. They just sort of throw it as hard as a fastball.

And you know, so there's none of this sort of babying the arm, that stuff that we sort of made fun of with, with Dylan Cease, you. So there's none of this sort of babying the arm. That's stuff that we sort of made fun of with Dylan Cease. There's none of this like, oh, I can see a change-up's coming. It's more like really mimicking the arm speed on the fastball. And if that's the case, hey, guess who could have that in their model? Arm speed teams. Yeah, that would be one way to make a big difference,

especially if that's a pitch that a few different guys in that team are throwing and their numbers are coming out a tad low. Man, I'm inspired though. And I was a little surprised they went after Yates. Like, they spent more money on a bullpen. They'd already spent a bunch of money on they didn't Yates almost seems like, why did you go get like a really old dude?

Yeah. 13 million on Kirby Yates. Yeah. At the time was like, really? I think maybe Bob Nightingale broke that one first. We're like, can someone confirm that? And yeah, it happened. They got their reasons, but yeah, this looks like the same guy we saw last year

where they've just cruised through the season with the Rangers. So good on them for seeing it. But it's inspiring. Like Kirby Yates being this good at 38 and your mom running the ultra desert marathons. And then they rolled his Chapman through 105. Hey, let's go old people, let's go. I know, my fellow olds are making me look bad,

but they're also inspiring me at the same time. And I wonder, this question came in from NMorris98. Why is David Robertson still a free agent? He's in our age range, you know, we're in the same. All the other olds are doing great. Yeah. And David Robertson turned 40 in April, I think a lot of us assume, sure, he're in the same. All the other olds are doing great. Yeah. And David Robertson turned 40 in April. I think a lot of us assume, sure.

He'll find a team. There's plenty of teams that need relievers. Good strikeout minus walk right last year. Good stuff. Plus. Yeah. And my best guess was just that you're 40 years old. You've had two big multi-year contracts in the big leagues.

You've had a great career. Might just be at a phase of life where he believes he's worth a number. Teams are a little bit below that and he's like, ah, it's okay, I'm good. Or he's got a short list of teams and locations he's willing to pitch in right now. Locations. Like I think that's something that we heard from Charlie Morton was like that he wanted to be on the East coast, close to his children, you know, like didn't want to be traveling up and down the West coast and stuff like that.

So maybe it's just not a great alignment of where he wants to pitch and for whom. And like, honestly, he probably doesn't want to pitch for a bad team. So, you know, like why? He's not going to be like, yeah, I'll be the closer for the White Sox at 40 years old like and hope that they trade me at the deadline. Like that's not an exciting way to live, especially if he does have children and he doesn't want to move that much, you know, like, Oh, go somewhere that they're going to trade me.

So he probably has like, you know, five to 10 teams. He maybe you've only five teams he wants to play for. And he has some number that it makes sense. And then no one's really getting there or there's an injury we don't know about and his medicals aren't good and nobody, like maybe there was a deal that got scuttled and we just didn't hear about. But it's not performance related as far as what he was doing last year.

It's not a Ryan Presley ask sort of like year over year over year decline where the results just haven't caught up yet. I think David Robertson's could still be a good addition to some bullpens out there. Cubs fans are like, hey, we had him here before. We're good. We could use some bullpen help.

How about us? I don't know. On the surface, it would make sense, but there might be some other factors there that we just don't know about in that case. Hey, I'm Robert Vinlo and I'm from New York Times Games and I'm here talking to people about Wordle and the Wordle Archive. Do you all play Wordle?

I play it every day. Alright, I have something exciting to show you. This is new. It's the Wordle Archive. What? Okay, that's awesome. So now you can play every Wordle that has ever existed. There's like a thousand puzzles.

What day would you pick? Let's go back to my birthday. My first guest is going to be birth because it's my birthday. What made you guys do an archive? It's one of our most requested features. A bunch of our other games have archives. Like the crossword puzzle? Yeah, exactly like the crossword.

You know, you can catch up if you missed one, which is pretty cool. Wordle Archive. Oh, cool! Now you can do yesterday's Wordle if you missed it. Thanks so much for coming by and talking to us and playing. New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wordle archive. Find out more at nytimes.com slash games. My default word is always bread.

Why? I like bread. Let's get to our weekend waiver preview, which I think is going to be a very large game of would you rather. I grouped the hitters into three different groups. I looked at the CBS roster rates and I put them into buckets of under 60%, under 40% and under 20% roster at the time that I put the rundown together. So we get a few guys that are like kind of like,

are these guys 10 team, 12 team, they're relevant now. Are these 12 and 14 team? Are these deeply relevant? So hopefully the structure of this ends up being useful for a lot of folks out there. Four names popped up in the frequently added hitters, but still under 60% rostered group, Trent Grisham, Javier Baez, Ryan O'Hearn, and Kobe Mayo. And wow, could you take four players and

and like have them all be in different points of their career doing different things all at once? I don't know if you can do a better job of that, but Trent Grisham, I think the question is this, is Trent Grisham the kind of player that is showing you something in a lineup, in a home park where he actually should be rostered in the 90 plus percent range? Like is this a series of adjustments that he's made that you believe in that have caused this turnaround

to begin the season? Obviously within massive changes like that, you can still also go on a heater. So I'm not saying is this the new baseline for Trent Grisham, but are you seeing enough there where you actually are interested in more shallow formats? Because I'm surprised to see that he's still out there in like 30 plus percent of leagues. I'm inclined to say I don't want any of these players actually, and I want some of the players that are lower on your list a little bit more, but Grisham is maybe the most interesting to me because I've always liked,

you know, his plate discipline as a foundational still skill that he has, he does not swing at pitches outside the zone and he has been like really good at lifting the ball. So when he does hit the ball hard, um, it's going to go far. He has a really unpleasing swing to my eye. Um, he has this weird thing where he, especially on low pitches, he cuts himself off. It's almost like he's closed or something.

He doesn't, his, his like follow through doesn't go all the way through. It's like this weird two-handed follow through On low pitches, but he he smacks him hard There's looks like there's some sort of skill change possibly in the strikeout swing strikeout Area which would be very interesting because if he could strike out strike out last put more balls in play He could push that batting average to maybe 230 240 It's been there before in the past but is really fallen as he struck out more so if you can really strike out less

you know I think that there are also to some extent using him in situations that are good for him like he he has faced some lefties and but there are also these weird sits against righties. Okay. Long story short, there's some stuff here that's good. If he was going to play all year, I'd like him if I didn't need the batting average, but what is the fit if Stanton comes back, if Stanton comes back? I mean, he is getting closer. I think rice goes down and it doesn't matter. Grisham

still plays. I don't think rice is going down, dude. I don't think that's happening. So if rice is not going down, let's just say like we have jazz and Stanton back. What is happening? So, I mean, it's easy to say like, Jor-Beet Vivas like goes away. Right. Right. And JC Escara goes away. So fine. We, we know how the roster works. Like Escara, Pablo Reyes, Vivas, they can go away, but the starting lineup, how does the starting lineup work? Who starts?

How do they mix jazz and Stanton back in? And if it, if it doesn't affect rice, is rice, rice starts playing first, which he's done. Our coachments sitting and goal should say that doesn't make sense. No, I think this puts some shorter term pressure on Jason Dominguez. If big, if, if we get to the point where both Stanton and jazz are healthy and nobody else currently contributing gets hurt. I think Dominguez would be vulnerable. You're going to play Stan in the outfield?

No. Rice in the outfield? You played Bellinger and Krisham together. Yeah. You played Bellinger in the outfield. Bellinger and Krisham, George. I'm definitely not playing John Carlos Stanton in the outfield. And then Rice and then maybe Rice and Stanton are in a platoon and Stanton

gets the short side of the platoon. Hey, that's okay. I mean, that might make sense. That's Stanton's not, he's old, you know, he's coming back from injury. Maybe just play him against lefties. Sometimes sit Rice. And Wells, yeah, you give Wells breathers. It is interesting because there is no player that can really supplant Grisham's

Defensively unless you start playing Bellinger and center So you can have Bellinger judge Jason out there, but Jason's then it's all in Jason. So it's it's sort of Jason versus Grisham right now One interesting thing that was pointed out to me, and I don't have the discord open right now because it's a little bit of a resource hog when we record, but one of our listeners pointed out

that the Yankees have seen a lot of lefties already this year. Just an abnormal distribution of lefties versus righties. And that has also kind of pulled down the early season performance of Jason Dominguez. He's got eight homers for his, yeah, he's got eight career homers, I think, now in the big leagues, all of them against righties, right? It's a 273 guy with good numbers against righties, and he's just learning how to hit lefties

at the top level right now. Yeah, he's 273, 359, 508 so far as a big leaguer against right. He's the one 44 WRC plus a three 75 Woba. That's good. That's real good, but he's got a 32.4% K rate against lefties with a two sale one 11, two 43, one 75. That's a two Oh eight Woba and a 28 WRC plus in the first two weeks of the season, they saw six lefties. So, yeah, yeah.

So Jason Dominguez against Trent Grisham for playing time, not necessarily for roster spots, right? Because Grisham can still play center. And we think that the book is out on that. But you start moving, you start playing Bellinger more in left field and Gr and Christian in center if if Jason doesn't start playing better. So i guess it's possible that Christian has a role all year and it's a pretty decent one it's in a good park and he can hit 230 with hasn't stolen any bases and only stole one last year so. And he only stole one last year. So, um, this is a kind of a thing where I think rest of season, I'm going to give him like two 40 and 15 homers.

Not bad. Better than the projections. Yeah, it's better. It doesn't change the, the fortunes of teams in shallow leagues though. So you're, are you, you're, your consensus is like, yeah, he's changed some things and he's better than projections, but he's not so far above projections that you're breaking into that top 30 top 40 outfield threshold You have to kind of get into for shallow Yeah, and I wouldn't look at his I wouldn't look at his babbitt and just be like, oh, he has a 267 babbitt

So he's not being lucky First of all his babbitt for his career is 267 and his babbitt as he's been hitting more fly balls is even lower than that. So if you look over the last three years is bad is somewhere around two thirty so he might actually be lucky right now and we don't know how much of this nineteen percent strikeout rate versus twenty six percent strikeout rate career for grisham is. Israel. career for Grisham is, um, is real. So, and then there's some, some team factors where if he does go into a funk and it starts hitting one 90 again, like he has for the last three years, you know, um, then there's other people that can play.

I think he's probably in, if I had to rerank all the outfielders, I bet he'd come in somewhere in the 40 to 60 range of the position. So not quite enough to be in a 10 team league, probably roster bowl in your 12 team, five outfielder type leagues. That's probably where I think the threshold should be. And in 15 team leagues, maybe some of these people are picking him up just because he's playing with now and he's hot now and those leagues, you know, need to pick these guys up and play them for a while.

And then he starts losing playing time. He's gone again. Probably. And probably even already picked up in a lot of those leagues though, because of the lineup, because of the home park, I have a little more optimistic about. Not the strikeout rate, but I think the, the quality of contact went up last year when he was a part-time player, he had a 46% hard hit rate. That was a big jump and he's sustaining that. He's at 48.6 so far this year.

So I think the babbips well low because was a big jump and he's sustaining that. He's at 48.6 so far this year. So I think the Babips, while low because of the type of player he's been throughout his career, they're never gonna run high. That 217 last year looks freaky low. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me at all. So maybe he's a little safer in that area than it appears if that hard contact

is actually here to stay. I think when we talked about Javier Baez before you were still kind of like, yeah, this is fun, but I'm not sure I'm going to believe it. I think that's fair. And I think if you look at his BABIP, he's running a 400 BABIP right now. So if you want to go down to his career norms and not as like more recent Tigers norms, knock a hundred points off there, and he's still going to become a batting average liability. I think there's still a pretty big gap between Baez, the real life player,

and Baez, the fantasy player, right? And this is a great twist for him as a guy that people were disappointed in because of the mega deal he's on. And look, he'll probably play enough to end up being a good source of profit in really deep leagues, but I don't think I'm aggressively pushing him onto my roster in shallow formats. Ryan O'Hern in this group, man, like I just, he's a nice player, but like, do you like anything about Ryan O'Hern?

There's a little bit of like, you know, this new strikeout rate that he found last year that he seems to be doing again this year, he's kind of maybe combining, um, with, uh, uh, with the better power or hernis. And so, you know, I like them a little bit, but again, it's a, it's a little bit like Grisham, but without any defense, which is to say that this team could get crowded again soon. You know, we're going to get Westberg back soon. We're going to get Kauser back at some point, you know, and maybe he's I mean, he's he doesn't have options or anything.

So you know, you could option Heston Kirstad down if he doesn't play better and still make room for guys. You can also just maybe release Ramon Larianno at some point. I don't want to say that they have to keep him on the roster. Right. But you got Kobe Mayo up here now playing DH and if he hits his way onto this team, that's going to take time from somebody. So I just think, you know, there's also the fact that

as much as his barrel rate has changed, his max.db has not, it's not where it used to be. So I don't know that he's actually found a new level of true talent power. So I think he's a guy who's going to hit 260. I think he'll hit better than Grisham and maybe has more job security than Grisham.

No, I don't know. I just find all these players kind of, I find them boring. The projections are actually kind of good. Yeah. But I think what Ryan O'Hern is for me is if you're looking for corner help in a deeper league, he'll be cheaper than guys that have a similar projection for the reasons you mentioned. He's old. And because we're seeing the combination of pre 2024 hard hit with the improved K

rate and thinking about where the Orioles been hitting him. I know they're banged up. We talked about that earlier in the week. Look where he hits. He hits third or fourth in the lineup. Most days, like he drops the fifth and he plays against lefties. It's not even a strict tune right now. He actually plays against some lefties, not all. So there's a little bit there.

Yeah. Okay. I, I, I, I like him as a short term pickup. Uh, you know, uh, maybe if you're in a keeper league, like he should be really easy to pick up, you know, if you need, if you just need somebody for this year, he can't, he can't cost you that much at 31, um, with this skill set. So I could see it. Uh, I like his, that's what I was trying to say at the beginning is I'd like his strikeout rate and his, and his barrel rate. That's a good combination with bias.

Like his speed is down. He's down below 50th percentile now. Um, we've, we've known all of the issues about, like, I don't believe his, his, uh, chase rate improvement really. Um, and I don't, I think that the strikeout rate is actually going to get worse going forward. Um, and so I wonder what happens when Parker Meadows gets back, if he goes back into sort of this 200 batting average with no OPP, uh, situation, maybe he just becomes the backup shortstop and backup centerfielder pretty quickly. I think a lot will depend on Trace Sweeney and how Trace Sweeney is playing once Parker Meadows comes back.

To pick from, yeah that's true, but I think Sweeney is a better defender at short now than bias at this age. So that may buy him some time. And then Sweeney is doing alright. If I was forced to choose between the players in this group, I'm gonna take Ohurn first, Grisham second, Baez third, and was there a fourth player in there? Kobe Mayo. Yeah, I'm taking Mayo last.

I mean, yes, I understand that like he has maybe the best upside of this group, but if we're saying that it's crowded for Ryan Ohurn, then then it's even more crowded for Kobe Mayo, who has options and can go back down pretty easily. Yeah, so it's only been four games so far this year. But you put together a leaderboard of all the hitters that are going to be featured on this show today. And Kobe Mayo, in that tiny, tiny sample,

has struck out 46.2% of the time. It has a minus 29 WRC plus, which, um, made me think of the old tweet from boring as heck mysterious old lady flips over tarot card revealing a dude who looks exactly like me flying a hot air balloon into power lines. Me is that good? In this case, I am the, is that good guy because I picked up Kobe Mayo in a few leagues and no, of course that is not good, but it's also a tiny sample, so I'm not as stressed about that as I am about the eventual crowding

that we talked about when Mayo was part of where the money went earlier this week. So I just think it's one of these things where Kobe Mayo has to get going in order to keep his role. Real simple. Like if he hits, there's a chance they find a way to make the pieces work because they can eventually option curse that instead. Like there, there's just a little bit of wiggle room there. Just not the start that I was hoping for.

The next group has, has a couple, maybe like three or four players that I've won out of it and maybe even more than the group in the first group. Yeah. If you're watching on YouTube and you check in Discord, we'll have the full board popped in there. The under 40% group right now includes Max Kepler, Jake Meyers, Dalton Varsho, Evan Carter, who's now back up after Leodi Tavares was sent packing by the Rangers earlier this week. And then on the infield, you got guys like Ty France, Cold Keith, JP Crawford, and Luis Angel Acuna. This is actually a pretty nice group of players in this cluster.

And you'll see a few of them do pop on the old WRC plus leaderboard. Again, sample sizes are small in the case of Dalton Varsho because he's only played seven games so far this year. But yeah, some, some names to get excited about. And Max Kepler has been playing well recently as well. Yeah, the in the sauce that I made, that toy stat that I made, Kepler and France are in the top 20% of the league. I think that the fact that Max Kepler is a platoon guy has really hurt him in this regard.

France's results I think don't quite match the underlying numbers. There's some better underlying numbers there. They're also playing him. They're just playing him. France is just playing. So if you need an everyday guy and you need some power, you know, I know France only has three homers and that doesn't sound like a lot, but I do think he might end the season with 18 to 20 homers you know. That seems like a Francian level that he can get to. And then Kepler I think is going to have 20 plus. He's just not a fit for people that need him to play every day.

You need to be able to sit him when he hits a lot of lefties. I just don't think they're gonna play him against lefties like very much at all. And so there's some use cases there for you. JP Crawford and Miguel Vargas, who's in the Vargas in the next group, are actually top half in sauce. And Crawford is another weird use case where it's like you can't really use them if you need homers or stolen bases or batting average which makes you sound like why would you use them then.

But he he won't hurt you in those places so Crawford to me is the ideal fill in like if you just have a short term need in the middle and field. term need in the middle and field, like put an extra dollar on Crawford. I think I can't, I don't know who's right now is hurt in the middle end field, but like, let's say you were waiting for Gell-off to come back. And Gell-off now has, you know, some rib stress fracture situation. And you're still kind of been, you thought he would come back this week or whatever. I think, uh, Crawford is, is a good fill in. He's not going to hurt you anywhere.

It's a, it's a, he's a good player. I think that's a nice way to describe JP Crawford is a good fill in. He's not going to hurt you anywhere. He's a good player. I think that's a nice way to describe JP Crawford. He's only had one day out of the starting lineup all season and entering play on Friday. He's actually let off for the Mariners in seven consecutive games. So there could be a little more categorical juice there if he holds that spot atop the lineup.

We talked about how they have made some pretty significant improvements in that lineup over the course of this year too. And I think Crawford gets a little underrated. I mean, I think because of the lofty expectations for him as a prospect and maybe the long road for him to become the player that he is now, people overlook him a little bit. But I think when you look at the last three seasons, and he was hurt pretty banged up for a good chunk of last year. You see more consistency in the hard hit rate department, right? You see 35% or higher each of these three seasons. You see a guy that's always controlled the strike zone. He's never been a chaser. He still isn't a chaser even with the hard hit rate going up. Sometimes you see that as sort of the trade-off.

We did see the high water mark, 19 homers by far a career best in 2023. I think some of that was the work he put out. I believe was he an early adopter of bat speed training? Is that what it was? JP Crawford, I think was a, a driveline hitter in an off season. I think the 2022 off season, if I remember correctly. He was a bat stream, bat-seized training guy. And I think you see a little, uh, jump in his hard hit rate and, um, his, uh,

max CV in 23 and 24, those are the years he started doing the bad three training. Of course, 24 looks like a bad season. You say, why would you want to point to that at all? He was hurt that year. It was, it was not a great year for injury. Yeah. Career high barrel rate last year, despite the injury though, too. And he runs a little bit, a couple steals so far this year,

he had five last year. So I don't know, maybe you get eight to 10 bags the rest of the way, and you get double digit homers. It's not going to be 19 at season's end, but if he gets the 13 and plays every day and scoring more runs than you expect, and maybe doesn't hurt you in batting average, those average projections could be a little bit low. I'm curious what you think of Evan Carter

because we didn't talk a lot about him the other day when we were talking about Leody Tavares getting sent packing by the Rangers. Do you see enough floor with Evan Carter where you would pick him up in a 12 team league where you're starting maybe only four outfielders? Is he a top 50 guy at his position right now or is he a little below that?

You know what's bothering me is just the dearth of quality contact. It's way worse than I thought it was coming up. I thought he would be a guy who could hit 15 homers and have like a 400 plus OVP, you know, and steal 30 bags. That's a pretty good player. Right now, I don't even know if I trust the rest of season projections for 10 homers, you know, and yeah, he stole six bases in the minors, but six bases in the minors

could be anything in the majors. You know what I mean? So right now I see him kind of as like a two 30 hitter with a surprisingly good OBP, um, that could, could you know kind of might go 10 10 the rest of season like him or Grisham you know it's that kind of conversation rather than oh this is a prize top prospect you know he wasn't even he was striking out in them in the minors too so you know that his true talent contact rate is in question his true talent batted ball quality is in question.

This is somebody I would put on bats be training. I think I wonder how much of this is a function of health though. You know, we had the back injuries last year needed surgery. Is it just a matter of getting some reps, getting the more comfortable in the box again, and maybe we're talking about him in a different tone two months from now. But you might not be excited to roster him between now and then.

There could be a point later on this year where even if you don't want Evan Carter now, you start to see some of the things we saw when he was a prospect simply because he's healthy again. Like that's to me, it's more of like a wait and see. If you're in a keeper dynasty situation, not playing for this year, try to get him back as a second or third piece. Don't make him the cornerstone of like a, a wait and see if you're going to keep her dynasty situation, not playing for this year, try to get them back as a second or third piece. Don't make them the cornerstone of a deal, but like, just look more to the future.

I'm mid table, uh, in my 12 team dynasty, um, right now, and I'm trying to hold on to him as like a bench piece, you know what I mean? Like trying not to, to drop him. So as much as I'm pessimistic about it, that's more of a redraft feeling. There's still some some building block pieces here where there could be some good athleticism. We know the eye is good. The swinging strike rates in the miners are really good. So if he can combine the right level of aggression, you know, there's maybe a Brandon Nimmo starting package here. Yeah.

Right. That's reasonable. It seems like a Nemo-esque situation. So Nemo was worth waiting around for. And so could be Evan Carter, but I just, I do want to talk about somebody on this list real quick before we run out of time. I think Dalton Varsha was a get. I think you got to go get him.

I think he's an acquire in dynasty leagues. Um, I think this is just the beginning of a mid career, uh, peak run here. And the reasoning that I'm giving is he improved his bat speed and he's now elite in bat speed. He has a 76 mile an hour bat speed. That's the best of his career and would put him in the 90th percentile, 95th percentile, um, if he qualified. And so therefore I kind of start to believe that 67% hard rate.

And I don't believe he's going to continue a 67% hard hit rate, but I believe that he will do better than his previous 36% career and 33% last year. So if you take the player he's always been and just juice that hard hit rate up to 45, 50%, you know, because that's where the elite bats speed guys live. They live at 50% hard hit. You got 50% hard hit. I know he hits a lot of fly balls, but you're going to get that. You're going to push that babbip and you're going to push that babbip into. Look at, look at what oopsie did. Oopsie gave him a 280 babbip because it sees the bat speed. So oopsie says two 43 hitter.

Well, that doesn't sound that great. Well, it's a two 43 hitter with 20 homers and 10 steals. Yeah. He looks healthy. A little bit of a difference for sure. If he's pushing back into the 2021 range, that's a two 43 hitter with 20 homers and 10 steals. Yeah. He looks healthy. A little bit of a difference for sure. If he's pushing back into the 2021 range, that's his slash line with that power speed combo.

Okay. We can get on board with that. Yeah. I think at least 2022 is K he's capable of 2022 with a little bit fewer steals, but maybe even that many steals 2022, he two 35, 27 homers, 16 steals. Sign me up, man. Sign me up. I think in any league, I think there's, I mean, 10 teams, you really, 10 teams are tough. Even in a 10 team league, that's a guy you have on your bench and you, and he plays, you know, you can play, he gets you some homers or stolen bases on good days. You sit them against

lefties in those leagues. In other leagues, you don't sit them against lefties. One more hitter thing to get to before we talk a little bit about pitching and get out. I know we're running short on time, but under 20% rostered bats, Dane Myers getting some nice run for the Marlins right now. Daniel Schneeman plays at least three different spots or is eligible three different spots for the Guardians.

Miguel Vargas came up earlier in the week, and then Eli White and Zach Desenzo. Of that group, who stands out to you as maybe the most impactful pickup? They're all available. There's Myers and who is it again? Myers, Schneemann, Vargas, Eli White and Zach Desenzo. Oh, I wanna look at Descenzo real quick.

Myers is okay. I mean, I like that he steals bases. I like that he's on a team that probably just needs him to play. Um, I like that he's getting to his power, even if his max EV, his bats we don't suggest he'll have plus power. I do think he can maybe hit like 15 homers on the year and steal 15 to 20 bags and have like a two 50 average at the end of the year, two 60 worst days ahead and average i obviously is a four thirty four babbitt. That's just that's pushing the needle on what's what's what's actually possible but sex the sense of you know has better bat speed has better maxi v has better power potential. better bat speed has better maxi v has better power potential he does strike out more doesn't steal as much doesn't have as much defensive qualities that will keep him in the lineup

he's on a on a tough team so i think in terms of playing time i don't know that i believe in him but i believe in his bat a little bit more in terms of power so meyers is my guy for playing for now but in keeper keeper leagues, I, there's something to like about what Descenzo has shown. Yeah. We've got a great question from Kika Coyote in our discord. How many years do you knock off a player's age when you see he was drafted as a pitcher and now he's a batter or vice versa, when I saw that Dane Myers

was 29, I wanted to discount everything he's doing, but then I saw he was drafted as a 23 year old pitcher, and now I'm taking three years off his age and he seems like a more interesting orange to squeeze. I mean, I think that's about right. Like it's a lot of lost development time if you were just doing something completely different to get that back and to prove yourself.

There's no perfect rule for this, but you have to reset because the projections are going to miss on the players that do this all the time. One thing I will point out though is like, there's still, there's still a body age. There's you're talking about sort of like a, a playing age, you know, experience age. Yeah. So the, you know, there, there's a confluence in baseball, I think, of learned skills and tools, you know, like athletic tools. And any player is probably in the midst of losing tools over time, losing bat speed, losing foot speed, you know, that sort of stuff. That's just the aging curve.

They aren't sprinters out there at 19. Usually they're in their mid-20s, they're already losing athleticism, but they're usually they're in their mid twenties, they're already losing athleticism, but they're gaining in in skills in learned acquired knowledge of the game in terms of they swing less they they know the zone better they know what pitch pitchers are trying to do them that sort of stuff. So, Take that learned acquired skills curve and move it around because he hasn't been playing as long the athletic skill level is going to be is still a fact of life you know it's just tied to his age. So i would i might be more like one or two years and i want to just remember that we had this discussion in twenty nineteen when jeff mcneil. When Jeff McNeil, um, you know, had his great season hit 318 with 23 homers. And there had been people who said he wasn't a prospect. And then everybody said, Oh no, he obviously is a prospect and his age is wrong because he played golf and all this stuff. I think that McNeil's career since then has shown you that like, that

wasn't his true talent level. Um, he might've debuted near his peak basically, because that's his athletic skills plus his learned skills. Um, and that he's, you know, kind of come off of that peak since he's been maybe a better player than the people who said he wasn't a prospect. Assume, right? So I think you can leave some room for that player, maybe leave a little bit more room for Dame Myers than you would in another player at his age. Um, but in terms of just like shifting the whole curve back through years, it's a little bit more room for Dame Myers than you would in another player at his age. But in terms of just like shifting the whole curve

back three years, it's a little bit much for me. Right, I think you would add age in a non-linear sort of way. If you knock three years off right now, he's gonna age faster than you'd think. He doesn't age. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Age 29 to 31 is not 26 to 28,

even if you wanna make 29 like 26. Like you have to age faster. That's sort of what I'm trying to 28, even if you want to make 29 like 26. Like you have to be faster. That's sort of what I'm trying to say. Yeah, exactly. That, that part makes sense to me on the back end, but on the front end, I think you just have to give more buffer for players that make these changes. David Peralta is another good random example of a guy that was a pitcher, blew out his shoulder, came back older as a position player, ended up having

a really good career that projections just couldn't give you a good foundation for what he was able to do when he did it. On the pitching side, we put together a leaderboard looking at the stuff plus of the, we'll call them largely available pitchers in the top bucket, under 60%, Gunnar Hoeglund, AJ Smith, Schaver, Shane Smith, Tyler Anderson continues to pitch really well and Tanner Hauck Who's been dropped because he has not pitched consistently well so far this season Those are kind of like your shadow league considerations your mid-range leagues get Luis Ortiz Colin Wray, Cade Horton's up right now, Ben Brown, lots of Cubs there, Ryan Weathers getting close to finishing up a rehab assignment

He just pitched really well in his most recent and probably final rehab outing and then the under 20% you get guys like Bryce Elder and Hunter Dobbins, Jonathan Cannon who was part of our draft on Thursday with Trevor and Jacob Mizarowski who I think keeper and Dynastolig people have been all over but now you've got some redraft folks maybe speculating that hey if I don't get Bubba Chandler stashed away maybe Jacob Mizarowski is gonna get a shot with the Brewers at some point here in the next few weeks. So of all those groups, which pitchers are you interested in where available? Just a couple things in terms of like literacy, I think in this situation is like, so Kate

Horton is coming up. I can share with you his minor league stuff. Plus we finally made it so that it's minor league versus major leagues so that we've reduced that inflation. If you would look at the Google doc, you will see new minor league numbers where the minor league that's, that's compared to the major leagues. So you'll see they're all lower. Kate Horton has a 125 stuff plus slider. So he has a major league slider.

That is a good foundation that will help him. There are people on this list that their best pitch is their slider. Maybe Colin Ray is a good example of that. Maybe Jonathan Cannon is a good example of that. The bad news for Kate and Horton was the four seam is a 96 stuff plus. Uh, so I don't think it's a plus plus four seamer. The curve was 96 stuff. Plus maybe that's a good enough as a secondary.

He's largely stopped throwing the change up in the minor leagues and stuff plus doesn't like it. But I just want to keep, I wanted to keep that up there real quick, because I think the other part of this is literacy when it comes to stuff plus. So all of these guys have like virtually comparable stuff plus really, um, because you know, it's there within one standard deviation of, of average. And there's a lot of different outcomes that can come from basically a 96 or 97 stuff plus, I think you can see it and be like, wow,

these are very different pitchers. So what I just want to say is then you look at the pitch types and what you ask yourself when you're looking at the pitch types is does he have what it takes to get opposite and same handed guys out? So that's why in our draft, I was talking about Jonathan Cannon. I was like, I know you can get a righties out cause he's got that fastball on that and that slider, um, he can be sick or sweeper to righties. That part is good.

When you start looking at, can you get lefties out? You're like, uh-oh, he might have an okay for seam, but the cutter is not good and the change-ups not good. So that's where you say, uh, oh, on Canon. Now you go down to Hogan, you're like, okay, still the elite. I would say not elite, but a plus change-up, you know, the, the spot scouting grades have said it's a plus change-up and a good sinker. Okay.

Slider. I would say that looks a little bit more hopeful for getting guys of both hands out. Look at Tanner how you're in trouble, dude, because you don't have a fastball you can use against lefties and your splitter is not rated well. Um, and the slider doesn't have like a one 30 stuff loss for you. Like, well, just throw it against lefties anyway, you know? So that's why Tanner Hauck is really struggling against lefties and he hasn't done anything about it.

So I use that rubric when I'm looking through these pictures. I thought that might be helpful. Smith Schaver is a really interesting case because, you know, the four seam fast ball, decent enough to make it. Um, the, the breaking balls have never graded as highly as the eye test or what the scouting test. And then the splitter might be something you can use against both hands. This splitter graph that's up right now is just really interesting because he has some splitters that are like straight changeups.

They look just like his four seam fastball. They're very close. And then he has some splitters that take off, catch a seam and go crazy. Those are the ones we saw at the beginning. Here's a splitter from him. I mean, look at this thing. It's like, I think this one's slower. It's just, that's nothing.

It looks like a little bit like an 80 mile an hour cutter almost. I mean, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, I think this one's slower. It's just, that's nothing. It looks like a little bit like an 80 mile an hour cutter almost. I mean, it's, yeah, it's, uh, it is, it's nothing. It's a straight change, but it works, I guess, because they're, they're, they're ramped up for his 93. He actually said about that pitch in particular in that day that the splitter wasn't doing what he wanted it to. So this is not a situation where AJC De Chauver has such feel for the splitter. They has two splitters.

He does not have two splitters. He has one and sometimes it's not working when it's not working. He doesn't really have great breaking balls. So I don't know if he keeps throwing those eighties 80 mile an hour straight changes down the middle of the pipe. I don't know. He's going to keep getting whips. I think as I looked at this group of these groups a few things came to mind from the top group Gunnar Hoagland of a 120 location plus that's bonkers.

And I think it lines up with this with the scouting idea. It's a little bit early to be to be believe a number like that, but he had 5560 command grade. So once you put those two together, you're like, okay. Yeah. Hogan might be my favorite on this list. He might just be a little underrated because he got hurt as a prospect stuff didn't come all the way back until more recently.

Change up first guy. People like breaking ball first guys. Yeah. And I think we talked about it when he got promoted. There's enough sogginess in the back of that rotation. Like and they could keep him in and bump somebody else out. But there's there's more job security there if he continues to perform well. So I'm pretty intrigued by him even in shallow leagues. Got to be a little careful with the more difficult matchups.

So watch the schedule with him. I think Ryan Weathers needs to be picked even in shallow leagues. Got to be a little careful with the more difficult matchups, so watch the schedule with him. I think Ryan Weathers needs to be picked up in more leagues. We talked about some of the changes. They didn't show on our leaderboard just because he hasn't pitched yet this year. But yeah, he looked like a different guy last year and even the rehab assignment, it kind of

seems like those changes are real. And at the very least you're going to use them a lot at home, but I think you're going to find that Ryan Weathers ends up, especially in deeper leagues, finding his way into your lineup kind of a lot going forward. And then from the bottom group, I kind of like Cannon, man, and the under 20% group. I just think there's just a question of like, does he have enough to boost the K rate? The K rate is really low. If you're going to use them even in deeper leagues, you know you're doing it with little chance of getting a win

anytime he takes the ball, because the team's such a deep rebuilding mess. But can Jonathan Cannon at least nudge the K rate in a better direction? I've been surprised to see how low his strikeout rates were throughout his time in the minors, given where his pitch is grayed out in the model. I'm a little intrigued by him. Like having a couple like sort of foundational pieces there, I think is good. And I'm not sure that the change up is any good, but I'm in on a cannon a little

bit. And that's, I just, I just want to say a little bit, like don't't 10 and 12 team leaders don't don't do anything on that no he's not even close for shallowly in the deep leagues we're finding any starting pitcher is tough or like an AL only league I think you can take the chance with but you're basically your last pitching roster spot if someone drops him or if he's been available I do want to point out that I that Luis Luis LRTs, you know, by the rubric I was giving earlier may have what it takes, uh, because he has a hundred stuff plus change up, 104 stuff plus a slider and then two fastballs that rate average or plus, um, the cutter being 86 is a bit of a problem because, uh, that lines up with

a 800 slugging on the cutter right now. Um, I didn't even want to say it, but it's even worse. 940 X slugging. I just, uh, uh, but as much as that's, uh, the four seamer, the slider, the change up and the sinker all have good slugging numbers. He may just dial down the cutter usage and that might be fine. Four seam slider change up against lefties, that works. You know that's still three pitches.

So I think Luis LRT's is a buy and another way of saying it in more sort of traditional language is it's a good K minus BB 24 minus 11.5. It's a good swing strike rate, 12 and a half percent. It's a good strikeout rate, 24 percent. It's good Sierra 416. Nice 6.5 mile an hour fastball. It's a decent home park. It's a decent team. I don't know.

I think that he's a good player, but maybe not, he's not a 10 teamer either, but 12, 15s, if you're careful about usage. I think you could stream them in a shallow league because the strikeouts have been there. That's the thing that stands out to me with Luis Ortiz. Like you're at least getting strikeouts, even if you get sort of league average ratios, the matchups where he's been knocked around the most are probably the places you'd expect him to be, right? I mean, the Nups where he's been knocked around the most are probably the places you'd expect him to be, right? I mean, the Nats getting him last time out was

maybe a little bit of a surprise, but his first start of the year against the Padres wasn't good. Padres can be pretty good dangerous lineup. Yankees got four across on them and four and a third, so that wasn't great, but geez, 10Ks over five and two thirds against the Royals. Don't start them against the Yankees. Don't use them against those top end

offenses, but I think you could use them 75, 80% of the time in most leagues. So that's pretty good. Way better than it looked in spring. I love it for some guys, add the cutter and other guys are like, scrap the cutter. At least dial it back a little bit. 900 X-Line. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll see what kind of tweaks they make with Luis Ortiz, but I bet they'll make some. We have to go. We are running over. Eno has to get to a chat. Join our discord. If you haven't done that, link is in the show description. You can find Eno on blueskyenosaris.bscott.socialimdvr.bscott.social. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Have a great weekend. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. In Sauce.