Rates & Barrels - Draft musings, deadline winners, MiLB changes, and prospects to watch

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Baseball America's Matt Eddy joins Eno for this episode of Rates & Barrels. The duo, unsurprisingly, digs deep into the minors, discussing this year's amateur draft, the minor leaguers who were on the move at the trade deadline, and the sellers that did a good job of restocking or reinforcing their farm systems. After that, they discuss the changes at the minor league level this season and prospects to watch at the MLB level for the rest of the season. Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Matt on Twitter: @MattEddyBA 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 Perils, presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. I am your reluctant host, Eno Saris. I'm not good at these hosting things, and I'm glad that Derek Van Ryper will be done with his cross-country move soon. But I am doing my best, and to help me out here today is Matt Eddy from Baseball America. Thanks for coming on, Matt. Hello, Eno. Yeah, it's great to be here. You guys, you and Derek have such great chemistry. Great podcast.

Thanks for those kind words. Matt is in a league of mine, Devils Rejects, and so we may not discuss any of our players. Just kidding. not discuss any of our players. Just kidding. But we did have a discussion here on rates and barrels. I don't like to think of myself as a take machine, but I guess I had a take, which was that this sort of over-underslot game that teams are playing may have gone too far or may not be getting them what they're hoping because my thinking was if you look at a graph of value by pick slot, right? Like if you look at outcomes by pick slot, basically the top five are the best the top 10 are pretty good and then it's just a precipitous drop uh to where you're kind of like you hope one of those guys does something for you um and so when i look at this year's draft i was just sort of a little bit horrified uh to see pittsburgh go under slot at number one, because number one is traditionally

the really the one place where you can almost take a major league. Like it's almost like it's more likely you take a major league than not. And and that and that sort of ratio drops off after that. So I'm just looking at the draft tracker. You know, we had a little sort of discussion about this, and so I wanted to continue that. Because I'm just looking at the draft tracker. I don't – this is more your realm than mine,

but just looking at the draft tracker, Henry Davis, the catcher signed with Pittsburgh for a million and a half, almost two million under slot. Um, and then I also look at Colton Couser signing with, uh, Baltimore, uh, at a sort of million plus under, under, um, that does allow them to do things, um, you know, later on. But, um, I, I just wonder that doesn't it, isn't it silly to take maybe the fourth best guy at number one uh so that you can get the 25th best guy at 32 yeah we see this in some of the drafts in the bonus pool era in which there is no clear number one overall i think you could have made a case

for davis or for some of the high school shortstops. Who did you have number one? We had Jordan Lawler, who ended up going six to the Diamondbacks. We had him one, and we had Marcelo Mayer two, who ended up going four. So you can see that gives you a sense of how screwy the top of the board was. And, you know, what we kind of pull from that is that teams have studied the issue and determined that they're better off spreading the risk around. I agree more with your take. I haven't done the digging that the teams that are actually paying the players have done.

But that, to me, is presumably what the Pirates opted to do. And they did secure three other high school players who were inside our top 40, the Baseball America top 40 draft prospects. And they did that by going high school players who were inside our top 40, the Baseball America top 40 draft prospects. And they did that by going over slot on those guys. Yeah. They ended up having to pay the second, sub-second, and third rounder well above slot in order to make the money work. Well, that's interesting. So I guess it would be different if, say, Chipper Jones was in this draft or whatever, like these sort of consensus number ones that you can see from a mile away. Was that not in this draft? I think a 65 future value in this draft.

You know, so that's a very good major league player, occasional all-star, not necessarily a franchise player. And, you know, it is rare in the baseball draft for a Bryce Harper or Steven Strasburg to be sitting there for the number one team to take. Probably the two best recent examples would be Adley Rutschman and Spencer Torkelson. Like these no doubt number one overall guys. This draft didn't have that. Now you're saying, I'm not foregoing a number one. I'm sort of taking from a group of number threes.

I actually think this guy I'm taking at 25 might be top 10 in my, in my estimation. Um, yeah, there, there definitely was. Yeah. Uh, I mean, you said top 40, but. Yeah, there was a lot of, yeah, I think it's spreading the risk around is probably a better way to look at it. You know, you're taking kind of a riskier round is probably a better way to look at it. You're taking a riskier gamble at number one with a catcher, but you're making up for it in volume. Or so the theory goes. I don't know. To me, just the elite perform so

much better when you look backwards. But I suppose if you're not foregoing a true number one, maybe it makes sense. Haven't the Orioles now done this a couple times? Correct, yes. They did it last year when they took Heston Kerstad, number two overall. It's harder for me to figure out exactly what's going on there,

if not just cost savings. Because you did not see the Orioles sort of recouping that value as much as the Pirates did with their later picks? Yeah, I know they did that last year. They ended up signing a lot of high school players above slot. And they did that a little bit this year, later later on but it doesn't seem like it was as concerted an effort to do so um you know and ironically this is a time when the orioles are getting more involved internationally after the previous regime

they used to have like a whole anti-international thing yeah the orioles would you know usually just stock their dsl team, the players released by other organizations. But now they're trying to be players in that space. Have you seen, has the Orioles farm system benefited from this

underslot approach? Do you think it's is it getting to like to me, I would as a noob, I would kind of be like I would expect the Orioles system to be really good right now. It is strong, yes. They took Grayson Rodriguez, I think, three drafts ago. He might be the best pitching prospect in baseball, him or Shane Baz. Yeah, those guys are in the discussion for sure.

It's a risk tolerance issue with Rodriguez, just given how high school right-handers have traditionally done. But he's checked all the boxes so far. So their system is definitely improving. And at the end of the day, I do have a lot of faith in Mike Elias and his ability to turn this organization around. Player development is in good hands. And scouting is in good hands, too.

That brings up something that came up on Wednesday's Rates and Barrels, which was faith. I was thinking about this with regards to player development in Seattle and in in uh in chicago for the white socks and you know for my contacts and from you know i'd say sort of chatter around the game um white socks player development is lower tier i'm trying to be nice, but I would say bottom tier, like possibly bottom three.

And they're making strides. I think there's been some improvement, and they're trying to incorporate data and tech. But from the outside looking in, it seems like they have a lot of work to do. And Seattle, I think, is more well thought of, at least on the pitching side. Yet, the White Sox are loaded with young talent.

They may not be doing great player development. Do you think the White Sox are just really good at scouting? Or are we we sometimes from the outside looking in just sort of taking player development on faith, and it's really hard to sort of judge player development, or both? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think it's both. What the White Sox have done remarkably well that you hinted at is player development at the major league level like they get guys into chicago and you know it seems like they outperform expectations luis robert nick madrigal are great examples like even to smaller time uh players like gavin sheets or jake burger i mean these guys have come up and contributed which is you know a testament to the

coaching and just the environment they have there. Was Luis not considered a top prospect? Was he not a big signing? No, he was. He was definitely a top prospect, but for him to reach the majors and immediately impact, I think, is a good sign. And the upper edges of his possible outcomes. I mean, there were other outcomes where he strikes out too much and doesn't walk at all and is kind of a 3 and D from basketball. Defense and power and that's it.

But he's been more dynamic than that. Yes, absolutely. And then the pitching coaching, I think with Ethan Katz, I think you're right. I think they've done a good job tweaking Carlos Rodon's delivery to get the most out of him. Gialito, they've done a lot of stuff. It's kind of funny. You'll see some places where the major league pitching coaching is demonstrably better, I think, than the minor league pitching coaching. Do you know where I think of?

I think of Detroit because these guys all came up with a certain arsenal and then struggled. Schubel and Mize come to – and Manning. They've all struggled. Schubel and Mize have come out the other side looking almost completely different right like school came up with like four seams and now as a sinker guy or and uh and mys uh came up as a sinker guy and now as a four seam slider guy so it's like uh i i look at that one i say i think

you guys need to work on your on your play development you know down system but uh at least you got a good coach at the major league level. It always struck me as cruel and unusual to pair these young pitchers still feeling their way through the major leagues with Wilson Ramos behind the plate. It always seemed like the less than optimal approach. I guess that's the value of having a building block catcher. It'd be interesting to watch what happens to catching.

You know, it's also interesting to think that they, they, they, the Pirates took a catcher number one in Henry Davis at a time when robo arms seemed like they're about two to three years away. three years away. Do you have any opinions about his different facets behind the plate? Like what he's strong at and what he's not strong at? Is he like not strong at framing and they didn't care? Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. I think Henry Davis could be a model catcher for the new era, the ABS era, because he does have big power and he does have a big arm, but he's not as strong on some of the, you know, framing and receiving aspects. So interesting. He could become the prototype for major league catcher.

Yeah. The last, the interesting part is calling, but from what I gather, most games in college are called from the dugout. That's correct. Yes. That's correct, yes. That's unfortunate to me because looking forward,

calling is going to become more important because if you take something out of a package that's in there right now, if you take framing out as a value, then all the other things that the catcher can do become more valuable. So you mentioned the arm and the power, which I think, yes, I think offense will become more valuable, but there's still calling as this kind of black box that we've seen some work on. Harry Pavlidis and Beast Balls Protectors had a game calling number, but it's pretty tough

to nail down because there's so many different variables. But you're right. That is the big variable for catchers. Well, and so I also wanted to talk about this trade deadline, which is a slightly different group of players, of course. Now we're talking about people who are in systems already. But my... here we go. Take Machine again.

Gosh, my take on the deadline was actually that everyone understands that it was active and my take is not that it was active. My take is that it was active because prices dropped over the course of the last five years or so. I mean, I'm thinking of the package that got Chris Sale. The packages in the past that got cost-controlled players that were kind of star-level cost-controlled players. I think there was like a top 25 prospect in those deals, at least. I mean, Juan Mankata was like, what, top 10, I think, at the time that he was dealt.

He wasn't the only piece, but that's the foundational piece. Now you look at Joey Gallo going, what was the top rated prospect that went back to Texas for Joey Gallo? Ezekiel Duran, I believe. Him or Josh Smith.ith barely top 50 yeah no not even top 100 oh not top 100 for you guys okay i saw some chatter maybe bp was talking about duran might have might have scraped the top 50 but yeah so not even top 100 you're talking about a year and a half of a maybe he's not chris sale level uh trey turner is though okay so ruiz he was the

best prospect traded the deadline right yeah and you guys had him yeah we can verify that but yes i believe that's the case you guys had him around top yeah we had him in the vicinity of 25 okay still. Still, I would say that's Scherzer and Turner. So that's a pretty big deal that you're bringing in. And we've got a guy who's back in top 25, top 30. So I think the price has dropped. But there's also a couple other things going on. There's an information gap because we didn't have a minor league season last year.

And then there was real stratification, I think, in the market where the buyers and sellers are pretty obvious. It was like three or four teams that were kind of deciding what to do and everyone else was either a buyer or seller. But I wanted to sort of focus in on that prices dropping aspect if that's uh how you've seen uh the market kind of act in the last few years yeah i think i think your observation is correct um ba's kyle blazer likes to comment that um it's never been more affordable to buy a major league star yeah you know and you brought you brought up a good example um in that you know and i think also what we saw this year is that with depressed revenues from the pandemic i think money really talks you know with with jesus lizardo going really just so long as as the uh the marlins

would pick up the rest of starling marty's salary, you can have a potential future number two starter. And then with the Nationals trading Turner, who would have a high trade value on the open market, but he's going to be an RB3 player in the offseason, so his salary is going to go up exponentially. It just limits the amount of teams that are going to buy,

that possibly would buy Trey Turner, right? That too, yeah. And it probably was attractive to the Nationals as the amount of teams that are going to buy that possibly would buy Trey Turner, right? That too, yeah. It probably was attractive to the Nationals as they embark on this rebuild to say let's clear the books. Let's clear away for a potential Soto extension. Especially with all the deferred money. Have you seen this?

They deferred all the money on Strasburg and Scherzer and all that. They're going to have $30 million of dead money on their bill for like a while. Ouch. Okay, that adds further context. Yeah, right. But, you know, it seems like – I think that money was a big deal in San Diego probably too.

Where do you guys have Robert Hassel? In a top 100 context? Yeah. I would have to say off the top of my head, top 50. Let me verify that. So he was dangling Robert Hassel, AJ Preller in San Diego. From what I gather, he was dangling Robert Hassel. But what he really wanted was for Eric Hosmer's money to go away. And so I think the idea was, you know, we just saw some of this being reported today or yesterday that there was almost a Rizzo for Hosmer deal.

There was almost a Rizzo for Hosmer deal. And the idea would have been, you know, the only construct that would have made sense for me is some real good prospect talent goes, like better than what they got from the Yankees for Rizzo because they'd also be taking on the Hosmer money. And the reason that the Cubs would do that is they have that money, actually, and would rather have a better prospect. And they still didn't do it.

That's how hard it is to move money. Cause the Cubs 18 million right now for the Cubs for like three or four years. I don't think it actually matters. Like Hosmer could be an okay guy that you put out there. You're like, no, we have a major league first baseman barely.

And, and you, and you're not expected to kind of win in the next couple of years. I mean, I think he's like almost the ideal tanking first baseman situation. You're like, you know, like our payroll is not that low. You know, we're spending money. We acquired a guy. We acquired a guy at the deadline. Eric Hosmer, you know, leader.

Yeah, that's a good good point especially because they prioritized the upside in uh in the other trade with the mets to get beacrell armstrong yeah teaming in with hassle would have been attractive to the future outlook in some ways i'm surprised that didn't happen but i think it points to just how difficult it is to move money um i mean i you know like uh is to move money. I mean, you know, like it's just, you know, 70 million. I think that even Will Myers, who only has like sort of like 25 million at the deadline, only had 25 million left over like a year plus. That would have taken a pretty significant prospect. So I don't know. I don't hate what the Padres did in the end. They were kind of like just cautious buyers. You know, Daniel Hudson was a great rental buy.

And Adam Frazier they've got for next year and helps their depth and helps them play Hosmer a little bit less actually in a weird way. But, you know, it was kind of a surprising deadline. Was there a clear winner for you at least in terms of acquiring prospects and clearing the decks? Was it Chicago? Who do you think did really well in terms of goosing a rebuild and getting a lot of young talent back?

The Cubs did very well. I agree there. The Nationals did well getting K-Bear Ruiz, Josiah Gray. They're not elite prospects necessarily, but they will be fixtures for the team next time they're good. And they clearly prioritize that proximity value because that national system is devoid. Otherwise, they have some recent trapeze. That's it.

Yeah. It's an interesting idea. I think sometimes when I look at the Rays, they seem to trade for floor. You think about like Mejia. I think even Meadows, Glassnow, like a lot of their trades, if you look at them, you're like, oh, they were like, at the very least, Glassnow is a back-end starter for us. We see a back-end

starter. At the very least, Meadows can start in our outfield. At the very least, Mejia is a backup catcher. And there is upside there. But I think that they often buy for floor. If I kind of look at what the Cubs did versus what the Nationals did, there seems to be a little bit of a floor versus ceiling there where the Nationals are like, at least we got a guy who can just be our catcher. We think there's a lot to dream on there. And Gray can at least be a starter for us. We don't know where he eventually slots in, but there's some upside.

We bought some floor. The Cubs bought a bunch of prospects. Some of them are 17 and 18. Am I right? Some of the guys that they got for Rizzo are super young. Kevin Alcantara from the Yankees stands out as a young upside play. And then even, I get a gather from you, Pete Groh-Armstrong could go either way. Yeah, he's a good prospect. He was injured early this year, shoulder injury, so he's out.

And sometimes it takes time to recover. And some guys don't ever recover. I mean, like Profar was not the same guy after his shoulder injury. No, I agree. It is some risk, I think. But, you know, upside is gold glove, top of the order type of hitter, left-handed hitter. You can run a little bit and hit a little bit and defend. Would you, if you were running an organization, prioritize

floor or ceiling more? In the spot that the Cubs are in, probably ceiling. And probably just in general, ceiling. Is that because the Cubs have money and are at the beginning of a rebuild, and so they can always supplement with free agents, but they just need a couple stars to build around again? Yeah, and what we saw them do previously was really invest in young upside hitters.

They got really lucky with a lot of their pitching, their pro pitching acquisitions. Jake Arrieta, Kyle Hendricks were not perceived as future playoff starters, but the Cubs developed them into such. And then they signed John Lester, and away they went. Right. The Rays' plan, I don't know.

Do they draft differently than they trade? Like, do they draft, like, do, I don't know. I don't think it's totally fair to just say they're a floor team either because shane baz has ridiculous ceiling and they they got him in that deal right like he was all ceiling at that point he was in rookie ball at the point yeah yeah the ray like the rays you know because they draft at the back of the first round you know they don't really have access necessarily to the highest perceived upside guys. But they do a pretty good job this year taking the high school shortstop,

Carson Williams, 28th overall. That's a nice upside play there. Do teams have sort of tendencies? Because you're doing these mocks and stuff. And I gather that like making a mock is uh you know asking around what you've heard uh but then is there like uh these teams tend to do certain things i know that like uh high school arms right that that was like a thing where someone demonstrated in someone's front office at some point that high school arms are the riskiest group probably and don't pan out most of the time.

There have been teams that just were like, you know, took that to heart and were like, yeah, okay, we're not drafting high school arms anymore until like the seventh round or something. Are there, who is it? Did the Angels take like seven straight pitchers? The Angels took all pitchers. I think the Dodgers took seven in a row to start the draft. Is that like a normal Angels day or is that just this year? And like how many teams have like, oh yeah, the fill in the blank, they just drafted fill in the blank. fill in the blank, they just draft and fill in the blank.

Yeah, I think we do factor some of those preferences and tendencies into our mock drafts. I mean, it's perhaps an unavoidable bias that does lead us astray sometimes, but you kind of have to, you know, teams and scouting directors like who they like, and you have to pay attention to that. Do any guys like do any do any sort of tendencies occur to you when you as you sort of think about that

i know i'm putting you on the spot this wasn't on the rundown well the braves throughout their various regimes have favored high school pitchers more than other organizations on average um was soroka high school or freed yeah he would yeah sor Soroka a high school or a free? Yeah, Soroka was a high school pitcher. Ian Anderson and Soroka were first-round high school arms. Nice. High school right-handers, you know, among the riskiest demographic.

But the Braves, yeah, we'll take Ian Anderson from upstate New York. We'll take him third overall, no problem. Interesting. And then there are other teams that are like, no thanks. Yep. And Andersonerson is to this point one of the best first rounders from that 2017 draft that draft was very similar to this one where it didn't have a clearly defined number one that was the hunter green mckenzie gore uh royce lewis ended up being number one overall but none of those guys was seen as

um you know the future perennial all-star kind of guy so uh i believe yeah you guys just had a piece i think kyle wrote it um about um quality of play in the minor leagues and uh there was a couple sort of statistical ways in of just, you know, fielding percentage, not maybe necessarily the best stat by itself, but as a league wide thing kind of, you know, gets you in there. Walk rate, strikeout rate, sort of league wide trends are not positive right now for the minor leagues. And I think of course, um, there's the missing season. Uh, so I would expect, I think pitchers to be ahead of hitters, uh, coming off a missing season pitchers can spend the whole off season honing their craft, shaping a pitch, uh, uh, adding VLO, whatever it is, hitters, uh, lose that time reacting to pitches, seeing different pitches. You know, the machine can do some stuff, but it can't do everything. So I guess what I'm a little surprised is that the compression of the minor leagues, that the cutting teams didn't almost undo all of that missing time

by, I would guess, dropping a lot of the worst players and leaving behind better players. But then there's like this third aspect, which is just that housing has, you know, Britt just wrote about this, housing has just been a real problem for minor leaguers right now because I guess during COVID you're not doing the family host thing anymore. yeah I'm not making any money but at least this really nice family is like feeding me and putting me up and they're hoping I become like a major leaguer I guess but in any case there are probably some good players that are leaving baseball because they can't afford it and I in classic Eno Host

style just rambled. Don't have a literal question for you, but what are your thoughts sort of on that issue? Yeah, you're right that some of those metrics are imperfect and kind of proxies of quality of play. I think the key was comparing it with the 2019 rates to kind of see the degradation in the numbers that way. And you watch minor league baseball.

It's worse. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The scouts early on were very adamant that the hitters were very rusty. Most of the hitters were not prepared for the reasons you cited. And I think you hear it. I think the Brewers manager, Craig Council, has commented as such that the quality of play at AAA is such that the gap between that and the majors is wider than ever. So I think we see that in the rookies coming up and struggling initially because they're missing a step.

There's an intermediary step missing from their development in a sense. missing a step. There's an intermediary step missing from their development in a sense. I don't know how much you guys have explored the quality of pitching at AAA, but you have not only more Major League injuries forcing guys up, but you also have the taxi squads depriving these AAA staffs of quality arms. This all feeds into this dynamic that we have between AAA and the Majors and thus Major League Rookies, hitters in particular, square one. It's gotten to the point actually where I was just discussing this with a Major League outfielder

where he was like, he actually shared that Glazer piece with me and was like, this is what we were just talking about. He said they're calling people up, just what you said, they're calling people up. They're not ready. The injuries are a big part of it. It's a loaded question. Do you think that reducing the size of the minor leagues was an unqualified bad thing?

No. I think players will adapt, teams will adapt as they become more familiar with it. But by the same token, it wouldn't shock me if there is an intermediary short season league added or some sort of stratification of the existing rookie leagues where you have one league for young players. Because there's a missing level now, right? Yes.

The whole short season, there used to be New York, Penn, Northwest League. That whole level doesn't exist. You could even argue that the Appalachian and Pioneer Leagues, which were rookie advanced, quote-unquote, they no longer exist. So therefore, you have this conglomerate called rookie and you go straight from there into low a. And the problem is those are recently drafted people. So, uh, some of them are 17 and some of them are 22 and some of them are international

and have never lived in America in the same way. And some are like, that's why we had so many different rookie levels. It's like, okay, you 21 year old college graduate, like you can go here and you 17 year old from the Dominican Republic, you can go here. And the demands that are asked of you in terms of travel and in terms of

length of season and stuff are fairly different. Yeah. And baseball's always going to have this issue because the entry method, it's for 16-year-olds, it's for 18-year-olds, it's for up to 22, 23. I mean, it's hard to square one system to fit all of those player types. I think over time, I think the vision is probably to make low A more of a shorter season league.

That is the plan, to make it fewer games and also to kind of make it kind of a hybrid between low a and short season i think it's kind of how it will settle and on aren't teams really uh using slash abusing complex ball um you know just sticking a lot more players there and then kind of using that for players that would have maybe gone to short season? Well, there is certainly a competitive advantage to fielding more teams because you can sign more minor league contracts. You're not expecting every one of these guys to develop into something. Lottery tickets. In that sense, yes. There are five

organizations who are maxing out their rookie complex allowance, which is two domestic, two Dominican. That's the maximums you can have. Yeah. Am I saying it right then? Like in Arizona, that's complex ball? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But there's also... Yeah. Under that umbrella is Florida, Arizona, Dominican Republic. Okay. But then there's also sort of unorganized complex ball, like extended spring training? Is that separate?

Yeah, those are players who are still under contract with the organization because you have those reserve roster spots via the number of rookie teams you have. But they play organized ball, but the stats you have but they don't they they play organized ball but not the stats don't we don't get their stats correct it's just like a yeah it's a it's a glorified spring training for players who aren't ready for full season but they're all under the 180 player cap one i believe 180 pertains to full season only or no or that's like that is the so there you? That is the standard. There's the loophole. Expanded spring training.

Yeah, you can add to the 180 if you want to field additional rookie teams. I did have some farm directors telling me that they thought that extended spring training would be a bit of a loophole a little gray area where people would just stash a bunch of players and uh that's where the extra talent would go um in terms of trying to stash lottery tickets and and the like um i don't i i'm a little bit mixed because you know some of these guys, all they need to do is eat and weight lift and get bigger and older. And, you know, like, there's some 17 year olds that shouldn't

be traveling for 180, 80 to 100 game season yet. You know what I mean? There's this, there is this sort of group of players that I'm like, yeah, you should probably just play at a complex where they, they house you and feed you. But there's obviously also just this real gap in terms of housing and feeding people in the minor leagues that needs to be figured out. That's why in some ways it could be better to have a smaller minor leagues provided they, they take advantage of that to raise the to to

feed them to to house them to to pay them better um which some teams have and some teams haven't i'd like to see more leadership from from baseball on that issue i think is the softest way i can say it. In theory, you are correct. Yeah, right. I mean, it is pushback that sometimes we get when we discuss these things that theoretically having a smaller minor leagues would allow them to do that. But it's theory, dude. It's just not how it has been in practice. Yes, the Giants and some other organizations have gone out there, but there's also the Angels and the A's know the teams that are skinflint down there

and and uh i just feel badly for you know there's like a one of the details is like the bounce house where it's like this guy spent his whole uh his whole bonus on a house that he filled with air mattresses so that his team could sleep somewhere it's just like sad funny yeah that's that's the way it's always been in the minor leagues yeah and we'll see if the next decade brings any change yeah I hate that I hate I hate that that sort of that that's how it's always been you know I'm not saying that's true what you're saying it's just like

you know there is some people are like well why should they have it any better than I did I think that's why I think that's why

honestly the minor leaguers aren't covered by the MLBPA and and why major leaguers don't care about minor leaguers

there's this sort of ratio algorithm that I hear that's like well I made it through that gauntlet so you know they have to you know no no no you don't have to pull up the ladder you know no you can help them you can find that phenomenon on uh any on twitter very easily for yes any area yes yes uh oh my god don't start talking about white privilege oh god i made it yeah i'm i'm an immigrant uh i had i had no uh i had no furniture

for three years in my in when we came to america uh you know my, I had a single mom who was, uh, who was like basically Ubering. She was a limbo driver when we first came over. Uh, and yeah, I quote unquote made it, but, uh, that doesn't mean I didn't have some help along the way. Anyway. Um, uh, I, this is the part, uh, where, uh, uh, I gained a competitive advantage by picking your brain about players and devils reject. I know, but we are a fancy podcast. So I do want to ask you your perspective on some of those guys that we've

talked a little bit about, but also want to give you some floor, give you the floor at some point to, to maybe throw some names out there. But early on, I wanted to talk about the major leaguers, the new major leaguers, Toro, Abraham Toro, Cabert Ruiz, and Zuzia Gray. We've got some early numbers on them, and they're mixed.

I would say they're mixed. Toro has been hitting for power, but the sort of barrels, the underlying metrics don't suggest that he's necessarily this kind of power hitter, or at least they're not definitive yet. Kybert Ruiz should make a lot of contact, but there's what sort of power ceiling does he have? And then what is Gray? Is he a one, two, three, or 4? That's three questions for you there. I would defer to you with the Toro, with the analysis of him with the Major League data. The one thing is he had that terrific 2019 season in the minors.

A little older player, but great year. Some demand on the trade market, it sounds like. He's an analytics darling, perhaps, for some organizations. What was the knock on him, scouting-wise? Yeah, a little unconventionality, swing-wise. Perhaps not a huge impact power. They're a guy who's limited to third and first, maybe even DH. Not always the most desirable but um with with ruiz and gray i think you would probably see a more gradual ramp up to them being fantasy relevant i think um starting catcher for ruiz in

a like a 15 teamish league is a reasonable outcome and gray probably like a number three kind of starter potential what are the flaws i mean uh with like a number three kind of starter potential. What are the flaws? I mean, with Reese, it's actually kind of harder to see the flaws. Sometimes you look at his minor league numbers and you're like, whoo, I'm excited. So do you think he'll tap into more power or do you think he'll settle in at sort of 16 to 18 or something like that? Maybe even less. Yeah, I think 16 to 18 is a reasonable upside for him you know he's a i think his bat was described as a magic wand in the minor leagues

when he was i love those players man hit tool yeah oh god i love hit tool when he was tearing up the minors as a young player he was very young even at double a i think that was kind of the the rap you know like you would um i think victor martinez was dropped as a cop i mean there's some you've got a switch hitting venezuelan catcher so it's kind of maybe a little easy to go there i don't know i don't think he's gonna have ruiz or um martinez level power or discipline but i do think you know starting catcher is certainly a likely outcome. God, aren't comps just a morass? Isn't that just like a way to get yourself in trouble?

My God. I don't know how many times an Asian pitcher has been comped to another Asian. It's like every pitcher coming from Japan is either you, Darvish, or... It's terrible. I've done it too. Um, it's really hard to, to undo. It's just, it's like something your brain does. Um, but, uh, uh, with gray, uh, you know, and this is something that, um, I hate to be, I don't want to be dogmatic. I always want to learn. Uh, but one thing that I, uh, like people ask me all the time the stuff numbers you know um and the one the reason why i use them i try not to have it be a crutch because there are

players that succeed with lower stuff numbers and i i'm always like trying to research that and figure out why um but uh oh and a little teaser here for listeners uh We've done the validation on stuff and it's pretty freaking exciting. So they're basically, without doing any part factors, without doing any regression, without doing anything the projections do, Pitching Plus performs just as well as all the projections.

So we're hoping a little bit more work under the hood. We'll be able to beat the existing projection systems. And then in season 400 pitches, they start beating projections so uh for starters and relievers basically uh they start beating projections uh with like 50 pitches so um stuff and uh and location plus are super valuable uh and i hope as listeners you've found them to be as well but so the reason why other than this validation work that we've done that I like them so much

is that I find fastball shape super hard to scout I look at Jesus Lizardo's fastball I look at Julio Urias' fastball I look at Trevor Rogers' fastball, there's three Trevor Rogers' fastball.

There's three lefties. They all throw 96. And if you plop me in front of them in the minor leagues, I'd be like, Ooh, baby. I love these guys. You know what I mean? And I would not be able to necessarily differentiate with mine.

Now, I'm not a scout. Do you find that difficult to scout fastball shape on that sort of granular level? It almost matters on a granular level, it seems to, because Lizardo's fastball has turned out to be, I would say, almost like a 40. And Urias' is like a 60 plus, you know, and then Rogers is somewhere in between. Yet when you sort of watch them, at least on video, it's just kind of like, they're all pretty good.

They all throw hard. Did you scout any of these guys coming up or do any players come to mind when I talk about the difficulty of scouting fastball shape? That is kind of the next frontier with this. It is difficult to scout without having the numbers for the minor leagues. We kind of have to rely on what sources are telling us there.

What makes Gray's fastball shape imperfect by the stuff number? It doesn't, it doesn't have great ride and it doesn't have, it doesn't, it's not, it doesn't stand out in either direction. So it's a little bit just too close to average in terms of movement. Okay.

Right. Yeah. And we're seeing that in the draft a little bit just too close to average in terms of movement okay right yeah and we're seeing that in the draft a little bit i think a pitcher like ty madden from texas would have gone a lot higher 15 years ago in the draft because you have a six foot four pitcher who can dominate low in the zone which is 96 holds his velocity big physical right-handed pitcher i think he would have been top of the board 15 years ago, but now we see the fastball shape concerns with him. Where'd he go? 30-ish,

31, that range. Yeah. You can kind of, to some extent, use arm slot as a proxy, right? Like you can, are there there are desired arm slots slots are there not yeah i think i mean this this is more your territory than mine but i'm talking about

scouting like there are there are like uh you could like you could see a little bit of ride and then if you see a little bit of ride and the guy is more over the top, then you can kind of put that together and be like, this is a riding fastball and this is a shape that people desire. As opposed to, I think of like sort of Daniel Lynch and some lower slot guys that are more sinker heavy. There's been just a philosophical discussion,

I think about where to rate guys like that, just because we know that front offices. And then, I think it's fascinating because it fits in with Pintar because, you know, what if this guy's getting ride from Pintar, which is not really policed in college

and high school, and will be policed in the major leagues. This is something that you guys i i think this is a problem for you guys because you guys can't put in a public scouting report that this guy's using pine tar right right that would just be just awful and and yet you know, the teams are doing that because they have to. It is the great unanswered question

about the amateur players now because everything trickles down from the majors. It trickled down to the minors. It has trickled down to the amateur level. We know it, you know? Yeah, in fact, when I wrote about SpiderTAC, I got a feedback from someone who said,, yeah, my son's in Division I, and he's in the Northeast. So SpiderTac doesn't work in the Northeast because it doesn't work when it's cold.

So he uses something else. And I was just like, well, okay. But that just proves the point. Yeah. but that just proves the point yeah and this is not to criticize amateur pitchers because i mean the the benefit is so much greater than the cost why wouldn't you use it i mean they're not even they're not policing it and you're at your level no i mean it's it's literally millions of dollars in bonus money i mean yeah the incentive is is real. We're actually seeing

at the major league level that some spin rates are starting to recover. I don't know if that's just... You've seen some sweaty, sweaty pitchers out there. I think there might be just a... I'm going to touch my sweaty ass hair a lot before I get to Rosin

and see how many RPM I can squeeze, literally squeeze out of my hair. I would have my old long hair if I was a pitcher for sure. Yeah, and that's a good point. The trend is for more facial hair and for longer hair in major leagues. Yeah, people also talk about deception. yeah people also talk about deception like i thought about it with like a hater and there's this guy weems jordan weems where like uh when they pitch like there's all this hair coming like flapping around at the same time as their hand in the ball yeah i had never made that connection before thank you i i did a joke on twitter where Jordan Weems came up.

He's like a converted catcher. But he has super long hair. I was like, I don't know why this guy. This guy obviously never caught. He's obviously a pitcher. Just look at his hair. But just to finish up, I wanted to give you a little bit of the floor here to just sort of a general question. but just to finish up just

I wanted to give you a little bit of the floor here to just sort of a general question any prospects that have caught your eye recently or that were traded that people aren't talking about we do a prospect of the week here so I'm giving you prospect of the week by Matt Eddy. There you go. You get a little

serenade too. Who's the prospect of the week for you? Who's a prospect that's on your mind? Well, I'm going to go a little under the radar and break your rule slightly. Two players I'm interested to see get some run are on the Nationals. Carter Keboom at third base. Luis Garcia at second base. I think the Nationals are clearing the decks for those two. I think that's good. I like both guys offensive upside. Garcia was the youngest

player in the Major League last year, which I think gets lost a little bit because it was a strange season. There was no lead-up, no minor league lead-up. But I really like Garcia as a first division, second baseman. And Keeboom is starting to take some better swings. He's got homers in X number of his last few games. I think he's starting to put it together after a couple years of struggling. I like those two. I have a question about those two real quick. I love the plate discipline with Kibum.

I think that's kind of cool. And I think he can maybe get back to his old contact rates. I think the question there is power. Actually, I think it's the same question with Garcia. So, you know, if you could do like a future, a present future grade grade on the power like where would you sort of come in yeah not world beating i would say if you get if you get to 50 that would be a good spot for both you know present key booms a little bit behind probably yeah i would say maybe 40 50 versus 45 50 or something yeah i think that's reasonable.

Garcia also steals a little bit for fantasy. He might get you some bags, but I don't see Keeble. But Keeble might have slightly better average, maybe? Yeah, I think so. When you factor in the discipline, if he kind of gets everything going. The knock on him as a prospect was throwing. So third base could be an issue for him and might affect him at the plate if it persists. I did not know that.

Because neither one is a pure shortstop, so it's kind of imperfect. They've got to play one at second and the other has to find somewhere else to play. And also the organization does not seem to think it's going to work out. Is that a fair thing to say? Work out with what? Either of them. They've had plenty of chances to give those guys jobs. Oh,

no, I guess Garcia is younger than I thought, but Kibum is like, what is he? 24, 25. It seems like every year they're like, let's do something other than Kibum.

Well, yeah. He definitely did. He did not earn the trust for this major league performance in 1920. That too, I guess. But he's only 23. Okay. All right. All right.

Younger than I thought. And then a couple of prospects I'm kind of keeping an eye on. And this is deep league. This is not go out and get these guys immediately. I like. We have some deep league listeners. I like Curtis Terry. First baseman with the Rangers, now that they've cleared some playing time there.

There are scouts who are convinced that he's going to hit. So we could be looking at 50 hit, 60 power upside. That's exciting. I'm more of a corner infield kind of guy in a deeper league. One thing I like about him is I read a piece by Levi Weaver about he seems like plus makeup. Yes. It's really hard to scout makeup, but I think it's really important to because

there are people that are going to get the most out of whatever they've got. The Rangers love this guy for that reason. He's not super young for a prospect, 24, but he's coming off of a 2019 season where he was a Class A. He missed a full year of upper level development, but he really hit well at AAA this year and has struggled initially at the Major League, predictably. But I do like his upside potential.

And I would also mention Manuel Rodriguez of the Cubs reliever. David Ross has managed him to the ninth inning spot in a couple of appearances recently. And he did get his first Major League save the other night. There is some upside

there. Save potential. It's rare for a rookie to come in and be the guy at closer, but just looking at the managing pattern, there could be something there. Sweet. Where are you based? I live in Durham, North Carolina, which is where BA has been located since the 80s. That's right. Since Durham Bulls owner Miles Wolfe bought the company, relocated it from British Columbia. That's right.

And what parks do you get out to when you're out? Mostly Durham. Zebulon is pretty close. It's outside of Raleigh. We lost our affiliated team in Burlington in the Appalachian League. Greensboro is not too far. Those are our main proximity parks. And who are they affiliated with?

Well, Durham is raised, which is nice. Zebulon is Brewers. Greensboro is Pirates. Do you notice anything about Brewers prospects when they come through? Brewers player development is, I think, top-notch and also does things differently. I don't know if that sort of filters down to what you might notice in a minor league game. No, what do you mean by doing things differently? Just when I was talking to teams who developed Velocity well,

the Brewers popped as a team that developed Velocity well, and then also other teams said that they seemed to value slightly different shapes and that they had their own sort of unique view on stuff, I guess, what makes pitches good. And I think it's interesting when you think about it at the Major League level, Hayter's fastball is nearly unique, if not unique. Woodruff's is fairly strange where it doesn't pop by movement, but it has some interesting spin characteristics and is kind of

sort of an in-between fastball. But he also was sitting 91-92 in Mississippi State, I think, and is now sitting 96. He said it was all weighted balls when I talked to him at the All-Star game. I just don't know if that would be obvious with a pitching staff coming through. No, I can't say that I have. Woodruff is a tremendous development success story, as you mentioned. I forget what round he was.

Well, Peralta's looking like one, too, and Burns. Which of the three was more of a scouting success story? Were any of them highly thought of in scouting terms? Burns was a fourth-round pick from St. Mary's. I think it's fair to say he exceeded expectations very quickly. But he was well-regarded to go in the fourth, I guess. Yeah, but that could be a credit to what you're talking about. The Brewers' ingenuity could be behind that.

There's some major league difference, too, with the minor leagues. He came up one pitcher and then the major leagues switched up his pitching mix completely. Kind of interesting from that other discussion we were having. Yeah, and Peralta was traded out of the Dominican Summer League, I believe, by the Mariners. The Brewers were on him as a pro acquisition and were able to develop him. One sort of general thing that pops to me is just that starting pitching seems like catching where it seems to take them a long time to develop.

I think it's almost, I think you could almost just fade catching prospects and starting pitching prospects as a fantasy player because they just take forever, you know? And the ones that do make it, like the veterans, seem to have good value into their 30s. I mean, just look at Max Scherzer, how Justin Verlander was pitching,

like the sort of elite guys stick around. And it's almost like everyone's Randy Johnson now. It's like it takes a long time to get there and then is great for a while. And so even on somebody like Gray, I'm just like, I could see him being really good like three years from now. But I'm not sure I want to be there for the whole way there. 100% agreement. Yeah.

Seems like they begin to peak around 25-ish. And in a fantasy context, I'm fine paying up for these guys once they've established their ability. Yeah. You kind of, you know, I'll pay for the freaks who can actually withstand the rigors of this job. Yeah, and I thought Gallen would be one of those guys. I don't know if the jury's decided yet on that, but I was certainly surprised by the injuries this year because he's a guy with command, good velo, no bad... Maybe did he have TJ in the minors? No, I don't think so.

I think he's a pretty clean bill of health guy. He's a clean bill of health guy that's run into his first sort of quote unquote lost season, I think. I'm interested to see what he does next year. Yeah, that's a great buy low. There was a great staff in 2020 where he and Shane Bieber, I think, were the only pitchers with four pitches with positive run values. But even Bieber took a while, right? I mean, I just can't know. There's no pitcher to me that, I guess, Scherzer did sort of hit the ground running.

But even early on, there were questions with him about whether delivery would hold. Yeah, and he went back to the minors at one point. Yeah. The Tigers, yeah. So I don't know. I think starting pitching is really finicky. Finding that balance. And I think that's why the A's in the end, Trey Lozada, because they're like, I don't know, he could be a starting pitcher, but maybe it's going to be three years from now. And we may not have three years, especially in Oakland. Spot on. It's been a total pleasure having you on matt and uh thank you so much for your time

uh and uh let's make a trade no i don't know you know what's happening in our in our league is interesting um i think it's a terrible time to be a seller i you know i would consider ourselves sellers but sort of you know wanting to reload for next year because we've got a bit of a veteran squad. And I think with better health outcomes, we could be better off. You've been trying to sell. You've made some trades to sell. What are some of your trades you've made? Let's see.

The most recent one might not be a league winner. I traded David Fletcher for Bobby Bradley. All right. But for the most part, I've been targeting prospects. That was floor for ceiling, I guess. Yeah. It's also buying myself a couple of years of youth. But I've felt like the prospect return on some of the selling deals has been underwhelming.

Yes. To your point, the demand is low for there are like three teams that might buy we're all trying to talk to them and exactly and they they're sort of taking their pick out of you know what's the cheapest deal they can make uh so i in those situations i kind of my instinct is just be like peace out dude i'm not going to take part in this i'm i guess i'm going to go like sift through some veterans and try to reload for next year and uh you know sell when the time is right but we also have tom trudeau in our league who is just uh just

constantly doing crazy things where i'm just like most of the time i'm like why did someone do that deal with him and then every once in a while i'm like why did someone do that deal with him? And then every once in a while I'm like, why did he do that deal? He's got to keep his quota for ads and one trade per week. But anyway, thanks for staying on with us and see you around the internets. Thanks, you know, my pleasure. Well, that'll wrap things up for us here on Rates and Barrels right now there's a 50% off subscription deal if you'd like to read my

pieces or Brits or DVRs and this is the place where I say thanks for listening.