Rates & Barrels - Draft Season Lessons, Risky Injury Profiles, and Pham, Grichuk & Tapia On the Move

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss a few takeaways from draft season so far including the choice between overpaying for early speed v. early steals, risky injury profiles, and new teams for Tommy Pham, Randal Grichuk and Raimel Tapia.  Rundown What Have We Learned This Draft Season? (So Far) Fernando Tatis Jr.'s Injury Discount Innings & Injury Risk Lingering Concerns About Shane Bieber? Randal Grichuk to Colorado, Raimel Tapia to Toronto Tommy Pham Signs with the Reds Tommy Edman's Hold on the Leadoff Spot Shane McClanahan's Hard Contact Issue Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, March 24th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris, the King of Waffles. That came all the way back on the 3-0 show this week. So I think we're going to stick with that on screen on YouTube for just a little while longer. Plus, waffles are such a fun food anyway. They're a good symbolic food for you anyway, you know. Ever since you gave us that waffle maker, that waffle iron, we've been making a lot more waffles.

I've gotten good at it. The key is to make it thin. The batter should be thin. Yes. The other key is to not fill the entire waffle iron with batter. Leave a little bit around the edges. A lot less to clean up. Yeah. Clean up for one.

And also the shape of the waffles comes out more craggly. And I think that's kind of fun and gives you a little extra texture as well. So your waffle tips for the day are already in the books in the first minute of the podcast a couple things i want to point out right up top there is a bracket going on we are in the finals that is the baseball pods bracket at baseball pods on twitter we won last year but we're losing in the finals this year we are currently losing and i think voting closes sometime around eight or nine o'clock eastern on thursday the day this podcast is being released. So if you happen to hear this episode as soon as it drops and you haven't voted for us already and you do like our podcast just as much, if not more than the CBS Sports Today Fantasy Baseball podcast, we'd appreciate your vote.

But thank you to anybody who's voted for us along the way. And also be sure to check out the other shows throughout the bracket, because I think it's a great tool to discover new podcasts. I think one of my pet peeves as someone who makes audio content is that it's very difficult to find new things that you might like. The algorithms tend to favor established shows that have been around for a little while. And discovery is like a broader podcast sort of problem. And I think this is one of those events that highlights a lot of great new shows that you've

maybe even never heard of before, at least haven't had a chance to listen to yet. Be sure to explore the bracket once you get a chance to do that. I'd like to think we're like Mike Trout or Willie Mays, where we're just obviously the best, but there's some fatigue

and people just don't want to give it to us every year i'm just kidding i love you guys thanks for listening and uh uh yeah if we if we lose they're they're a great pod and um you know we had a tough battle against sleeper in the bus which you know i hate that they put us in the same bracket a lot of times because those are those are our guys too so yeah i think we caught rotowire in the bracket last year it's just it's strange to go up against so many people that are legitimately your friends or at least are podcasts that you worked on before or both. Very odd, very unique, very meta situation.

But thanks again for all the support throughout the bracket. Today, we're going to talk about a few loose end topics. What have we learned so far this draft season? Because this weekend, for those who play in the NFBC main event, live events are picking up in Vegas. You're probably seeing tweets and different things from people who are landing and getting excited about their various events. I am not playing in the main event this year. I'm playing in the auction championship instead, kind of the main event equivalent, but with the salary cap format. That draft's two weeks from Thursday. So I've got some

time to still prepare or maybe it's two weeks from Wednesday. I don't. I'm doing my first main tonight and that's partially why I'm coming to you live from outside my bathroom. I think the best move today is to not leave the house and get all my work stuff done, prepare, maybe run, eat well, and be prepared for the biggest, highest stakes draft I've ever been in. Yeah, it's going to be strange, I think, as you sit down. You've done hundreds of fantasy baseball drafts in your life, and I think you're going to feel that extra little bit of pressure, at least at the beginning. I think as each pick comes up for those first few rounds, there's more of a sweat than usual because of the stakes involved. But it's also one of those

drafts where people are more aggressive about getting their guys in NFBC main events than they are in any other snake draft that you play in because of the aforementioned stakes. And because it is that last chance to really kind of put your flag in the ground and say, I believe in this player. And I'm seeing some pretty interesting trends. I built this ADP movers report where I can look at changes from month to month throughout draft season. And once we get to this point in the season, now I've got a week to week sort of change. So you can see it on more of a micro level and track who's really going up. My goal for that is to have a better understanding of where I actually have to go to get one of the rising

players. Sometimes players are rising, but they're not rising fast enough. Sometimes players fall, and they don't fall enough or they fall too much. Taking advantage of that is something that I'm trying to actually do. A broader question for you, you've gone through a few different drafts, a lot of different formats so far. We've seen more than a week's worth of spring training games. You're in Arizona right now, so you've had a chance to be around a few teams while you've been there. What have you learned this draft season? Is there anything about your approach or things you've noticed in the player pool, categories, anything at all that has really changed for you over the course of the last, let's say,

three and a half or four months now? I think there's two things that have sort of occurred to me. One has to do with steals and one has to do with innings. And when it comes to steals, the auction calculator does look at scarcity. It does try to pump up steals as a category. It does try to give you the relative value of every category, and it should, in theory, value players across the board. But what I found is that players without speed, without steals, are consistently the best, quote--unquote value by the calculator at the top of my board and remain there longer than anybody else.

So, I mean, there's two ways to react to that. One is to just pay the speed tax like everybody else. Or two, and I try to just pay less tax than everybody else and do the handful of steals approach from everybody because you seem to pay less for guys who will steal eight bases relatively than you will for guys who steal 20. However, there's another approach, which is try to get a lot of steals in the first two rounds with your players

so that you are ready to grab a falling Kyle Schwarber or whoever it is, JD Martinez later, because you feel like you had a solid base in steals. So there's two ways to react to that, but that's definitely something I've seen in terms of just a lot of speedless players at the top of my queue wondering how long they will stay there. Yeah, I think it forces you to make a decision decision at least snake drafts in particular force you to decide if you're actually going to overpay

for saves or if you're going to overpay for steals and in a lot of leagues that our listeners play in a lot of other leagues that we play in outside of the nfbc we can make trades so if we don't have the saves and steals that we need coming out of the draft we're not necessarily stuck only turning on the waiver wire only bidding against everybody else in the league for those same players via fab to get what we need. If you've got to make a choice up top of which one you're more likely to pay the tax for, is it speed or is it saves at this point? It's speed. I just think that there's research behind this. There's just more saves on the wire every year. I mean, there a wire in this one it's not a draft and hold there's still going to be fab there's still going to be pickups during the season i think you know the proof is pretty

obvious there are new closers minted every year of course there's a cost of having to use your auction money to chase those but just imagine having no speed and like be trying to watch the waiver wire for speed it's it's awful it's not it's no better there than it is in the draft so you know maybe you get lucky and some guy gets a call up and he has some speed but um then you're in the same pool with everybody else who's low on on steals at least with saves you can speculate you have a bench spot and i usually try to have a bench spot where i have someone that's behind a shaky closer so i don't have to spend a huge fab on it's just a one spot on my bench that's just going to be always somebody i'm speculating on and try to own him before he becomes the closer so um with that in mind dedicated a bench spot a little bit

fab i feel like i can cobble together together a bullpen and be fine with it. Yeah, and I think I have found that a lot of the players that return significant value within their projection in the stolen base category, a lot of those players come with significant downside either in other categories or with their hold on playing time. either in other categories or with their hold on playing time. I think it leads you to rely a lot more heavily on players like Akil Badu, Ahmed Rosario. They're good players. They may end up being guys that go earlier in drafts a year from now than they're going right now.

Or they may lose their jobs. But they definitely have that concern. I think in Badu's case, it's just a case of how much does he play against lefties? How crowded does that depth chart get with other young players all jockeying for playing time? And how patient will they be if he goes through another stretch of growing pains? I think he showed us a lot as a Rule 5 pick last year to the point where he looks a little safer than a lot of other players that tend to fall in this range. But usually when you're looking in that pick 150 to 200 range. He's a fast riser. He's going up.

Yeah, he's going up. Yeah. Yeah. He's starting to creep up a little bit too. So I just, I think that that willingness to overpay, if you have to overpay for speed does make a lot of sense. Initially this draft season, I wanted to get two great closers. I was willing to pay the saves tax a month,

two months ago. And it seems like more and more people are just pushing closers up even further. And I think it's hit this breaking point where I can't bring myself to get two anymore. I might still be able to get one depending on snake draft order, depending on dynamics if we're talking about a salary cap situation. But in a snake right now, you're talking about spending like a second round pick and a fourth round pick to get two top closers. Right. And when it was a third and a fifth or a fourth and a sixth that was a little easier to do and i think now that opportunity cost has finally become too high

for me to go ahead and pay the premium for two at least maybe maybe even pay for one but i think i've shifted my approach a little bit just because of how the room has been so aggressive i mean just with closers there's all sorts of risks associated with every player. So every player has an injury risk, right? And every player has a fallback risk of like, you know, and then there's every player has some amount of losing their job risk. However, the hitters that you're normally picking up there do not have the same lose your job risk as closers. It's just not, it's not comparable in any way and so even a play so a lot of times you talk about floor and ceiling like if you take a player

in the fifth round it's mostly like the worst case scenario is he doesn't give you a great season right but he still plays and so he gives you something right with a closer it's just so all or nothing it's like either he gives you exactly what you wanted or he gives you zero, like he's on the wire. And I don't, like if you look at who stays on your roster, like in TGFBI, I've seen some analysis of like who stays on your roster all year. What you see is the first five rounds, you have kind of like an 80% stayed on your roster all the season. You know, first round is something like 90% stayed on your roster all the season. You know, first round is something like 90% stay on your roster all season.

Then when you get past the first five and the first 10 rounds, you start getting like 40% on your roster all season, 60% on your roster all season. That's where I want to take the all or nothing chances because it's okay with teams that win, have players in those slots that don't make it to the end. You know? So, you know, I just don't want to spend a pick where he could be on my roster.

He could be an 80% on my roster all year pick, and I pick it on a closer who loses his job or gets hurt or whatever it is. Looking at some of the ADP risers, I did this on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast with Al Melke. You're focusing more on bigger shifts, February to March. Now that I'm looking at the last seven days, we're getting a snapshot of just how much of a discount you'll get on an injured Fernando Tatis Jr. and how much the premium is going to be on Chris Bryant in Colorado. And I think Tatis is one of those really format dependent players for me because what you just said about the first round, 90 plus percent of those players sticking on your roster all

year, the ones that don't got hurt. They had a devastating injury and they got dropped. That's that's it. There's not a I can't remember a single first rounder in the entire time I played fantasy baseball who was so bad by like midseason that people were cutting them based on on merit right so right you know the reason you cut these players i think moves down a little bit now i think with tatis is in a situation that you're in this evening where there's no il spots you have to burn a precious bench spot for the first probably two months of the season is getting Tatis around pick 60 end of the fourth round beginning of the fifth round.

Is that enough of a discount to go through the hassle of playing shorthanded and navigating those those problems on your roster? Because I think what it's going to do is going to force you if you if you're the person that wants to build around Tatis in a format like that, I think it's going to make you be a lot more aggressive with multi-position players because your bench is a little bit thinner for the first two months, and you're probably going to have to be careful about the number of players you're trying to stream on your pitching perspective too. So I just think a lot of other pieces have to be right in the construction if you want to take advantage of that discount. And then there's the question of whether or not that's enough of a discount for the time missed and the player you expect him to be coming off of a wrist injury. I don't want to tip my hand, but I don't think I'll join

in. The one thing that bothers me is that there is a little bit of a statistical risk once he even comes back because after he injured his shoulder last year, he really stopped stealing. back because after he injured his shoulder last year he really stopped stealing and so you know that is a risk i think also with like you know ronald lacuna jr like there's a risk that it does seem like the timeline's getting better and like you know oh now it's only maybe two weeks he's gonna miss uh before he comes back in dhs but will he steal bases coming off of the acl and if he doesn't then he's just a different profile. So what if you take that risk, you play shorthanded for two months to get Tatis back,

and then he's kind of like a 270 hitter, and he hits you like 20 homers and steals you like five bags, and then you're just like, wow, I did all that for that. And also, from my experience, the first mistakes I ever made on NFBC, the first year I didn't do that well, and mostly it was because I thought I could nurse a bunch of people on my bench, and I think the bench is for short-term injuries and for streamers, and for streamers.

For safe speculation, it's a better use of your bench than holding on to someone who's injured for a really long time. I think whatever difference there is in analytical ability for managers in the NFBC compared to managers in other leagues, I'm sure there is a difference. I don't know how to quantify it. I think the greater difference in those leagues versus the other broader pool of leagues that are out there is the number of people who miss out on maximizing playing time in your league is much smaller. People don't miss deadlines. They don't miss fab pickups.

They don't miss volume. And they're all drafting for innings and and plate appearances they're all like thinking very hard about that right the in-season grind is i think what makes it exponentially harder i think the rooms are tougher on draft day than a lot of other leagues most leagues for sure but i think it's it's a that that gap to me is even smaller than the one between in-season play in those leagues versus others. So I think it's a costly lesson that I think a lot of us coming from other places learned within a year or two of playing the NFBC. We thought, oh, yeah, yeah, we're fine.

We can have a prospect. We can have two prospects. We can have an injured pitcher and an injured hitter. We really need three bench guys because we've been able to play in other leagues like that in the past and get away with it. Not really the case here. There's other reasons players have actually dropped that aren't injury related. One of the more interesting ones for me is the discount on Jesse Winker because he kind of fits the description of the players you were talking about earlier. He doesn't steal bases.

He is a good hitter, but his park situation got worse from a homer's perspective at the very least, right? Great American ballpark, three-year rolling average, best ballpark for home runs. Yeah, might also be more platoonable on the new team. Maybe. That's possible. They've got more depth in Seattle than what the Reds have. So I look at the discount on Winker. He's fallen about a round in the last seven days, about 13 picks.

Is that enough of a discount to account for that park factors change because i liked winker a lot in cincinnati and now i'm i'm looking at that and i'm still not sure that's enough of a adjustment i'm not sure it's enough because uh the biggest thing that'll be robbed of him is batting average and that's the thing that makes him something other than a power threat you know in cincinnati i think he was a 290 hitter type guy. And now in Seattle, he might be a 275 hitter. Now, 275 is still above your benchmark in these leagues is 260 or something, 261. But it's not as far above that you can be like, oh, I'll pair Winker with Gallo or something. It's not enough.

It's more of a guy who can just push your team batting average up a point or two, as opposed to a guy who could just like push your team batting average up a point or two you know as opposed to a guy who could like really cover somebody for you so i think that removes his thing and he becomes a little bit more like other kind of no steals sluggers that are out there gliber torres has slipped a little bit recently and i'm kind of surprised by that i think you and i both like him anyway so there's reason to be interested. Stole a base. Even if the price hadn't fallen.

Stole a base in the spring game the other day. I don't know if that matters. It's a thing. He did it. I have limited what I think matters in spring training is previously injured players being healthy, velocity, new pitches and what those look like. It's very granular, just it's almost just

like error checking a lot of things and i started i thought i used to care about plate appearances a lot but i've sorted by plate appearance recently and was looking at some stuff and it's really it's not the best players it's just the guys who were on the brink the most it's the 26th man who's you know the the 25th through 28th men they're getting the most plate appearances right now so yeah that would be that like i wouldn't be like oh look elu heroes montero leads the cactus league in plate appearances yeah he might make the roster but he doesn't mean he's got a role. I do think prioritizing players in a way to get a look at them is probably what teams are doing at this time of the year. Or if they've got a player maybe who's a little behind, they want to

lead him off unexpectedly just to make sure that he gets the extra plate appearance in a game situation. Those little things do make a difference. I've started to wonder if the bottom of the order tells us something about how much a team has actually soured on a difference. I've started to wonder if the bottom of the order tells us something about how much a team has actually soured on a player. And the example of that, I was jokingly saying, Victor Robles is going to be the best number nine hitter

we've ever seen because the Nats threw out a lineup on Wednesday. They had him ninth. They had him behind LCD's Escobar. I think they had him behind Lane Thomas.

They buried him, right? It's like, if you see him as being less important to prioritize in the pecking order to make sure he maximizes plate appearances compared to those other guys, maybe that does actually mean something. And I'm going to call it the Travis demerit effect, because I went to a spring training game. Jesus was probably two springs ago. Now, one of the last spring training games we saw that year was a Yankees-Tigers game.

At the time, I thought DeMeritt's kind of on the roster bubble. They've got spots available. He was hitting ninth in the lineup that day. To me, that was the signal of we're not really looking at him as a part of the Major League roster. He's more of an organizational filler. What is the biggest thing that lineup slot does

for you? It's more plate appearances. More looks. More looks means we want to see more of you. thing that lineup slot does for you it's more plate appearances yeah so more looks yeah more looks more looks means we want to see more of you fewer looks means we don't the better starter on the other team too right like even in spring with like maybe everyone just gets three three plate appearances the ninth hitter might not get another plate appearance that third plate appearance against the starter that even the second one early on. So it does mean something. And maybe in this case, they want to see more of Escobar and Thomas

and some of those guys to understand how they prioritize playing those guys in various position battles. Maybe they know Robles is their center fielder, and he's a bottom third of the order guy to start the season regardless, but they want to sort out the rest. Maybe that's possible, but I do think it's possible to try and get inside the head of a team and understand some things that they think about a player

based on their priorities within spring training. But another thing that actually fits under this header that was the other thing that I've been learning that I didn't get to yet was innings. And it's injury risk. It's a draft day discount. It's a very format-specific thing. But like the no-speed slugger that's sitting around It's a draft day discount. It's a very format-specific thing.

But like the no-speed slugger that's sitting around and just available at any time, the 120-inning pitcher is becoming a difficult decision for me, especially if I think that they have a lot of talent and especially if I think they're going to start the season in the rotation. So, you know, there's plenty of Rays that fit this box. You know, there's other pitchers where you're like, but they're going to get injured or how much, you know, Means or Keedy. There's these high injury risk guys that will start the season in the rotation.

They're falling because everyone's trying to buy innings. And I, I understand that, but I would have to say, and I would love to have, you know, Jeff pop in right here and like Jeff Zimmerman and like, you know, answer this one. But I would, I know from talking to Jeff that, that this is the beginning, at least publicly of injury projection as more of a science. And so if we are okay at projecting players by, by like quality and like what they're going to do, we're years behind in trying to project their injury risk, you know? And, you know, so like just thinking about when to take these guys um i find them to be

values a lot and i think we overestimate our own ability to understand injury risk and so if i'm like if the guy's thrown right now and he looks all right and like you know we don't have an injury note on him right now are you sure that your guy you know has a bunch of no injury risk and my guy has injury risk like are you sure your guy's gonna make it through the season my guy's not you know and so the only thing is to just sort of balance that and make sure you do kind of get grabbed from each bucket but i do think that there are values sitting there of like sort of balance that and make sure you do kind of get grabbed from each bucket but i do think that there are values sitting there of like sort of players that people think are higher injury risk that

maybe we overestimate our ability to understand how high that injury risk actually is yeah i i've seen so many tweets over the years where i i think people are well-intentioned and trying to just to get it right. I don't think it's all this. I don't think it's all about, I want to be right at the end of the year. I think it's, I'm trying to understand risk and I'm trying to explain to other people how I think about risk. And I think we, we struggle with those terms because a lot of people don't think like, I don't know, an actuarial scientist, for example, right? Like that's more in line with how you have to properly quantify and assess these situations. And that's just not the background that most people have.

So this is a space where I feel like Ariel Cohen and Ruvane Guy, they host a podcast together. Ruvane has an injury background and Ariel, of course, is an actual actuary. has an injury background and ariel of course is an actual actuary they i think are the kinds of combinations that could work together and find something that is a little bit more detailed but also but it also needs to be easy to understand doing in the end is looking at each pitcher and like doing it by hand and doing it by like finding comps for each pitcher yeah the more effort you put into this space, I do think there's more reward, but I also think it's a nation science,

at least in fantasy. I feel like I'm just wandering around in the dark with a flashlight with pitching injuries a lot of times. I think even just maybe two years ago, Nathan Evaldi was a complete ignore for me just because of the history of arm injuries and what he'd shown us. And maybe it's a complete fallacy on my part.

Maybe it's going to come back. Maybe everyone thinks this year he's good at innings. And now, oh, there it is. But that's the thing. It's like, am I wrong for being in coming off of the 182 innings a year ago? Or am I right because his arm showed us last year? He can stay healthy. He can do it. He can have the velocity. He can do it with control. He can keep the ball in the park. He can do all the things we need him to do to be a good fantasy starter. I think that's

a really difficult thing for us to assess from the outside. Without a detailed understanding of all these injuries and their mechanisms and the long term effects. It's almost impossible. But I do think what we're seeing in San Francisco, what we've seen in Los Angeles with the Dodgers for a little while with injury risk, I think it kind of is an agreement to what you're pointing at. Like Matthew Boyd's deal with San Francisco, right? Grant Brisby had a great piece for The Athletic about that, and there's an old Mitch Hedberg joke where he says, a friend asked me if I wanted

a frozen banana, and I said no, but I want a regular banana later, so yeah. You can take that same joke, think about it. So what Grant did in the piece, this is brilliant, this is all Grant, this is not my joke.

If you're laughing now, then you're laughing because Grant's awesome. Grant basically said, my friend asked me if I wanted an injured pitcher, and I said no, but I want a healthy pitcher later. He said, yeah. That's what they're doing. If you have guys like Rodon and Alex Wood, and you have this in Logan Webb, even, I know they didn't go out and acquire him. They already had him.

But if you have this really risky group of pitchers, and they're good when healthy, and the when healthy part is the key, and they're healthy right now, you're thinking about your roster and saying, they're probably not all going to be healthy later. Well, where can I get a good pitcher who's going to be healthy later? I can get a guy who's hurt right now. And we know enough at that level, they know enough about injury outcomes and what's likely to happen and how quickly guys come back. They have the medical experts in their corner. They can appropriately assess that risk and take those chances. So if and when one or multiple starters in that Giants rotation are hurt later this season,

they'll eventually have a good starter at the ready in Matthew Boyd, right? So that sort of concept, I think, does really check out. And I think for us as fantasy players, if you're in a league with limited IL spots or no IL spots, you can't play it quite like this because you can't afford to hold injured players when they go down. I think the best example or the most difficult example of all this and your risk tolerance comes back to Jacob deGrom. Do you really want Jacob deGrom at the end of round one, which is probably where he's going to go throughout the weekend, if not a little earlier, because he's apparently healthy this spring. Healthy right now is what matters to most people. And it's just a question of, will he stay healthy? And are you comfortable with that risk at that price compared to say guys that have much lower ceilings like Luis Severino,

who I do like where he's going, going around pick 140 or 150. My approach has been be very careful with the Grom, see what happens this spring. He's doing the things this spring that I think he needs to be doing for me to be comfortable. And now I have to decide if I'm on board with the inflated price when the moment actually shows up. It's one thing to say, you'll, you'll do it later if he's healthy. And then he shows you he's healthy. And then the clock's ticking down and you're choosing between de Grom and a hitter with seemingly less health risk. Right. So that de Grom is like the most extreme example of this.

I have found I'm much more willing to take those chances on Severino and Kershaw or even Verlander. Verlander at pick 75 seems, because of the cost, less problematic to me than de Grom, even though I know you can get de Grom at pick 15 and end up with literally the most valuable player in the pool yeah and it's it has something to do with the part i think that ports over from what the giants do to fantasy is the idea of what's your replacement so like they can sign rodon to this big deal because they have carlos martinez matt boyd jake junis you know they've they've they've improved the replacement level on their own team you know and so i think that at the lower end where your investment is lower and you get you you your reward is a good picture, but your investment is lower, that means that the replacement for that investment will just be a pitcher you get off the wire.

Right? So if you are talking pick 200, you know, something like that, then I think you can replace that guy. The problem is when you're talking pick 14 pick 16 it those are the guys are supposed to be on your roster 80 right and that's going to be hard to like it's you're not going to find a de grom you know and you're just hoping i get like 110 innings like he can win it like kershaw one cy young's with like 140 150 innings right, DeGrom could be so excellent in 120 innings that it makes it all worth it.

So that's where it actually gets tougher for me because he could be that excellent that as long as you get the 120 innings up front, that it's fine. But yeah, I just have a harder time when the investment is that big because the replacement for that kind of investment is not on the wire.

But the replacement for like a Luis Severino investment is on the wire. It's another guy, you know, could be Luis Heal, you know? Severino goes down, Heal comes up. There's lots of things to like about Heal. Yeah, so I think the thing that I have learned over the course of this draft season as it pertains to pitchers coming back from injuries

is that the sweet spot tends to be no earlier than where Verlander goes and probably is really around the Severino Kershaw, Mike Clevenger, Noah Syndergaard range. But the reasons that you're mentioning, if you have to go out and replace those guys, I also think you're less likely to hold them in the event of the dreaded four

week injury. Like the four week injury is the most frustrating time table you can get for a player. You'll sit there and you'll try to talk yourself into it. You say, it's only four weeks. I can play short for four weeks. And four weeks turns into six. Or there's a setback and it turns into eight.

Or the initial diagnosis was wrong. Or there's so many... I don't like taking currently injured pitchers. That, I think, is a distinction that matters. Yes. I like taking them. If they're injury, I think, is a distinction that matters. Yes. I like taking them. If they're injury risk, then fine, later I'll give up. But, you know, if they're currently injured, that's just a dead bench spot

or just a dead roster spot that you're just looking at. It changes a little bit to unlimited IL or, like, large IL. And that's, you know, I have a home lead like that. And I've long kind of had this spot where I would say I would take more of these players in leagues with multiple il spots and i'll take an even greater number of these players in leagues that are more shallow if you play in an 18 mix league or a 10 t mix league where you have to as much as you improve the replacement level on the wire by making the

league smaller the more likely it is that you'll find a suitable replacement for nothing in season. And then you just have to be all about ceiling. Eight and 10 team leagues, just all you need is ceiling. They're not going to hit that ceiling and then move on. I think the hardest thing, if you take this approach, is deciding in season, when am I not getting enough from some of those guys who flashed that previously high ceiling, right? If Clevenger or any of those guys or Syndergaard, Severino, Kershaw. Is mediocre for a little bit. how long am i gonna wait one bad month one month of a 450 era and and maybe well i have good news for you ah stuff plus is pretty good in that right the stuff plus is i mean

i think that matters the guy here tells you something in 300 400 pitch in games at 300 400 pitches that's three four games that like maybe they're mediocre but there's their stuff and location are good then i'm holding if there's stuff in location no good then you can fear that they're still hurt or they've had to compensate by changing the mechanics or they've lost something from the time still working on some sort of thing at the athletic may have the other problem pitcher in the pool came up about i don't know two weeks ago i think on the show shane bieber and we got an email from another one of our listeners who sent us some pretty interesting stuff from a medical journal i

wish i knew exactly which medical journal it was and basically it was it was questioning i think what we said on the show was that after reading some analysis from Nick Savali that wrote the original piece, Nick's piece was saying that the nature of Bieber's injury in the subscapularis last season was less concerning than other shoulder injuries. People might have the, oh, it's a shoulder injury, I'm staying away, right? other shoulder injuries where people might have the shoulder injury I'm staying away right I think and I think we we did we were maybe guilty of a little bit of inexact language where I sort of suggested it wasn't part of the labrum it might be part of the labrum but I think it might also not be like labrum fraying or a labrum tear that requires surgery in the way that we think of labrums it's like a slightly different part of the labrum.

Right. That's how I understand it now. So what we were presented with, though, was some data that was looking at just how much strain, essentially, how much work is being done by each part of the shoulder in various parts of pitching. So wind up, arm acceleration, deceleration. It was broken down into about six categories. And that, that research did not agree with the idea that this would be less problematic. So I found that to be really interesting.

The part that he hurt was still very important for. Based on this particular bit of research. And so again, it's... This is what we're reduced to. I'm not trying to throw Nick under the bus at all. This is what it's like to try and predict injuries. No, no, yeah. In fantasy baseball, reading medical journals.

All of this is to say, I think with Bieber, what you want to see in spring training is similar to what you want to see with DeGrom, where he's cruising through, he's getting those reactions, the velo's there. The debut from Bieber yesterday was only one in the third inning. He's given a couple of home runs, one to

Gavin Lux and a moonshot to Miguel Varkas, who has been impressive. It's one spring outing. I'm not just writing off Bieber because of one spring outing. I still haven't found velo. I was looking around last night on Twitter for articles with Velo. Couldn't find anything.

But I do think a pitcher like Bieber is also really problematic because he's not showing the way DeGrom is right now in spring training. And we're only going to have a few looks before more and more drafts happen. And he's a higher pick too, right? It's a decently high pick still. He goes right around where the early closers go. So you're thinking about Bieber versus either Hayter or Hend hendrix or you're thinking about him compared to some speed guys whit merrifield tim anderson i mean that's a that's a really good spot yeah so i i'm i'm

finding right now i'm not there on bieber and if it costs me if he's good and healthy and someone gets a deal five or ten picks after that adp, I'm going to have to live with that. Yeah, I haven't drafted him once. All that's to say it's just the nightmare of trying to sift through details and trying to figure out where exactly guys are at. But compared to Sale, who probably goes similar place. Maybe Sale's a little bit dropping now. But compared to to sale at least beaver's pitching now right like we just talked about this like yeah being out there is better

than not being out there for sure sales discount by the way is pick 126 is where he's going now that's the discount that's a big discount yeah yeah he was like a fourth fifth rounder yeah the the adp just a week ago like the first week before we knew he was hurt adp was about pick 69 so he's dropped 60 spots almost from there it is a fracture so but it's a stress fracture let's's play this game again. Nope. Nope, we're not. Let's play a game that we're actually maybe a little better at, the trade game. Randall Gritchick is now Iraqi. Raimald Tapia is now a Blue Jay as part of a trade. A couple other players were moved in that deal as well.

I actually had shares of Tapia. And this bothers me because I don't think he's a good player and yet i did it because i was like hey like i did one where i have ramon loriano and i had to cover for him so i had tapia and i was like well you know the the rockies are home a lot in the first three weeks so like i'll just play tapia and then drop him when Laureano's back or whatever. And I thought it was a brilliant plan and, you know, wrenched my shoulder out, you know, patting myself on the back. But this is always the risk with not great players. So I think that his role in Toronto is, I mean, he's a lefty. They wanted a lefty.

So there is a chance that he gets a big side of a platoon. But there's also a very large chance that he's the fourth outfielder and just very much a sort of replacement, like lefty bench bat. Yeah, if you look at how they are currently set up between outfield and DH, maybe there's another addition coming. Roster Resource puts Lourdes Gurriel on left,

Teoscar Hernandez in right, George Springer, of course, in center, and then Alejandro Kirk as the regular DH. I don't know how firm they are on Kirk DH-ing a certain percentage of the time versus catching. how do they quantify and value their catching options between danny jansen kirk eventually eventually gabrielle moreno reese mcguire's on the depth chart right now as a backup you can hold three catchers if one of them is a regular dh for you this looks like a situation where there's still one more move to come to me so for the moment you could probably talk yourself into 500 plate appearances for rhyme out to pia but i don't think that's necessarily going to hold up and i think you also have questions just about the core skills right so much of what he does comes from stolen

bases and maybe batting average and not being in colorado probably brings that batting average floor down a bit too yeah i, I wonder what could be left. Brett Gardner's a free agent. I thought I saw something in the trade rumors or some kind of tweet that was linking Gardner. What about Jed Lowry? Maybe. That's not crazy.

That would be an interesting one because he can play a little second where they're weak, makes Espinel more of a thing, and then you basically have a DH that's Lowry and Kirk. And if there's an outfielder that's injured or doesn't want to play the field, something with his arm or something, you can rotate them in.

I don't know. I could see there being one more move. I don't think that any team really wants to hold three catchers. And I think this looks like a rotating DH situation where if they could shore up one more position with a left-handed bat specifically, I think is the need, then they'll send McGuire down. Current bench is Reese McGuire, Greg Bird, Santiago, Espinel, and Tapia.

I think I would want to improve on that Greg Bird spot. Yeah, he's there on an NRI too, so not necessarily committed to him at all. But my takeaway here is that if you are drafting right now, yes, the Jays have a lot of expensive players with a couple of first rounders, but if you can get secondary guys in terms of their ADPs, you can get Springer, Teoscar,

Hernandez is also expensive, kind of a top 30 guy. More like Gurriel and Chapman. Those guys are going to play a lot. That's not a very good bench. That's not a bench that's going to push the starters for playing time. It's a great lineup. So your counting stats are going to be good. So I'm comparing them to, say, the Dodgers with the depth they've accumulated,

that they always have. Yeah, they don't quite have that sort of Dodgers depth. Right, you're knocking down the ceiling for some of those those other players in the dodgers lineup you're not really doing that with toronto right now as they're built yeah so it is it is interesting i didn't think that there was a weakness i thought they were fully formed and ready to go and i really like them as a team but um yeah i think that it's a little bit weak to have bird and a catcher an extra catcher on your depth chart. So over in Denver, I think there's a clear winner.

I do think that Randall Gritchick probably just slides right into center field and is the starter there. And that pushes Sam Hilliard to a reserve role, I believe. And Connor Joe's situation gets a little bit tougher. Sam Hilliard to a reserve role, I believe. Connor Joe's situation gets a little bit tougher. He becomes more of a platoon bat at first and DH in left field. But I do think he gets more playing time than Sam Hilliard, despite what the depth charts currently say.

So the Rockies were a top 10 team in run scored back in 2019. I know last year was a pretty disastrous season for them offensively. I mean, Story having a down year, trading away Arenado. There were plenty of factors in play there. And they still, last season, I believe were 11th in run scored. I think people might be sleeping on

the quality of their offense again. And I think Gritchick was a bargain. At least for fantasy purposes. I think for real life purposes, once you adjust to that park, it's not a very good idea. Right, right. For our purposes, Randall Gritchick, very undervalued during his time in Toronto

just because he's not a sabermetrically-pleasing offensive profile, but a high-flying playing time. He's always hit the ball really hard. I mean, he's a barrel guy. There is some sabermetrics that I can— You i mean he's a barrel guy you know there is some some sabermetrics if i can you're gonna put a barrel guy in colorado in the top six of a lineup that should be another top 10 offense this year might float his batting average a little bit yep i think it takes one of the categorical weaknesses and fixes that this is this is a great thing for randall kritchick's value as it often is for a player going to Colorado yeah I think I think he goes from not not draftable to draftable for sure I think he

might have been one of your last outfielders on the bench in a 15 teamer previously now you're almost excited to have him as what a fourth outfielder when you start five and a 15 teamer and probably your fifth outfielder in a 12 the one thing that you have to caution though he fits in that thing we're talking about where it's just it's speedless so you know a lot of times you're trying to find guys who have 510 speeds 510 steals at the speeds like bicycles and bicycles on the bottom on the bottom of your outfield roster because there's that's where it's kind of easy to find some guys um so he doesn't fit that. So I think he might stick around as a value. He might be able to pick him with a bench spot

and maybe pair him. Actually, a Gritchuk-Tapia pairing at the sort of 5-6 outfielder spot in a 15-teamer is still a little bit appealing to me. I'm convinced the Jays have another move up their sleeve if they don't. That would make Tapia worse. Yeah, if they don't, yeah,

if they don't, then I think Tapia remains pretty interesting because it should be a little bit of a drop for him leaving Colorado. Although that might be offset by expectations of the Jays lineup being elite this year too. So maybe there won't be as much movement there as I thought. Tommy fam has a team. It's the reds. I actually think they needed outfield help because they've got a ton

of injury risk in their outfield as much as i like nick senzel as a very inexpensive late dart someone that could be their everyday center fielder and has quietly improved his plate skills in very limited time around the injuries they have him and they have tyler naquin who's got a pretty ugly history of knee injuries plus jake fraleyaley, as much as the power-speed combo is enticing, there's no reason to believe that he's necessarily going to be an everyday sort of guy. He's probably more of a big-side platoon guy. So here's Tommy Pham

now going to Cincinnati, getting a nice park boost for Homer, still showing a little bit of cheap speed late. I'm just curious to know, how much is he going to jump in terms of price? Because he was a bargain without a team, and now I feel like there's going to be some overcorrection thanks to that ballpark. Yeah, it's unfortunate.

I'm a big fan of his and have a bunch of shares, which I'm happy for those shares, but there's a big draft tonight. I think you were pushing back on naquin um saying that he was a decent outfielder um when i had uh so when i had maybe disparaged his name so you know i think it probably goes fam senzel naquin fraley um and then dh becomes an akino Moran situation out there. So Shoko Akiyama is a fairly big loser here. He might have had some time, but he has not hit a homer. I just saw this.

He's not hit a homer since he came over. And I think he has two barrels. He's got a 63 WRC plus in 366 plate appearances. And I realized debuting in 2020, we talked about, I think, with Yoshi Tsugo, not optimal to make the move to a new league in a new country in 2020. Didn't fare much better last season. He walked less and he struck out more than he did in his first season. I don't think he's a big league hitter, unfortunately.

I think he's got options left. He might be, he might be dependent on a AAA. He might just be the kind of guy that gets 7 million to play at the AAA level at Louisville all season. Yeah, it's a tough spot for him, especially since Fraley's pretty versatile and can probably play center. And Naquin's played some center. So you already have two guys that can play center,

and that's one of the big questions that might keep him on the roster, right? Like, do I have a backup center fielder? Do I have a backup shortstop? Do I have a backup catcher? Those are like the first three things people ask when they're talking about a bench player and in this case shogo's defensive ability and center does not help him much who would you rather have for this season if the price ends up being even tommy fam or abisail

garcia i get the sense that you're building a little more often where you're in need of speed in that range. And Garcia runs a little and Pham should run a little bit more. The only thing I'm thinking about with Pham is if he pops a few extra homers, that does take away a handful of stolen base opportunities. So it might not be as much of a gap as we've seen in that category for those two players in the past. Both fairly close to 270-2010. I do think that the batting average will be worse for Garcia.

He will be hurt in that category, in that park. And he's projected more like 260. So if he's a 260- guy and fam is a 275 1913 guy yeah fam yeah i'm looking at fam from 17 to 18 to 19 you know up above 270 and average all those years even popped a 306 average for us way back in 2017 so he reminds me of shinsu chu oh okay like a chu profile yeah plenty of obp slightly lower average you'd think too many grounders a little bit but good speed yeah he's really he's got a

lot of a lot of things in common with sentry too good good uh good reach right good sense of the plate decent barrel right yeah very chewy and one thing like about FAM right now is if you look at the FANGRAFTS projections for playing time, they come out lighter than they've been in all of the last four seasons. And I realize past health doesn't guarantee future health, but you might be losing a little bit of playing time on the margins right now in the projections, which would be bringing down those counting stats slightly. So I could see if people are just running them through an auction calculator, just using those numbers and not adjusting

upwards to 550 or possibly even 600 plate appearances, there could still be a little bit of a discount or at least fair value when it comes to FAM and drafts over these next few days. The Bad X uses a lot of stack-ass stats and he had good barrel rates and

some good underlying numbers last year. The Bad X, he's going to be 19% better than league average. And then the Bad X for other Cincinnati hitters, it only has Joey Votto is better than that, and then India is sort of right there with him. Senzel, Naquin, and Moustakas are basically league average. Who are you going to play over tommy pham so i think he's i think he's a regular i think they play him as much as you physically

can because fraley is the guy move around fraley is the guy who plays more when senzel's down fraley's you know pair him maybe with naquin although they're both lefties or you know push one to dh or whatever i think Freire, you find him time, but you don't do it over the expense of fam. Very surprising signing, though, just given the shape of the Reds' recent moves. I thought they had a need for it. Didn't think they'd actually spend a little money,

but they did. The way someone described it down here is the Reds are stuck. They're stuck in between. They want to be competitive. They get attached to certain players and give them long-term extensions, but they also don't want to spend money. One more email to get to. This one comes from Nick,

and thank you to Dr. Tim for the email a bit earlier, focusing on Shane Bieber. Nick wants to know with Tommy Edmund, is there a world where you can imagine he keeps the leadoff position? He makes some good points in this email. Uh, most notably just that the OBP is very low for Tommy Edmund and they've got some alternatives that could take that spot in the lineup and move Edmond maybe to the bottom third. So as they change with their more analytics forward manager, Ali Marmal, how likely do you think it is that Tommy Edmond stays in that top spot? They don't actually have a lot of good OBP projected on that team. So maybe they've got different analytics in the front office too

but the i think the big improvement could be dylan carlson to the leadoff spot because he's got a 330 projected obp to tommy evans 319 however carlson has a better much better projected not much better a better projected slugging percentage. And there are lineup effects you can discover by putting power in things like the 2, 3, and 4 spot. So I actually think it won't happen. I think it will still be Edmund, and then maybe Carlson creeps up the batting order. But you've got Goldschmidt, O'Neal as probably the 2-3.

So you go Edmund, O'Neal, Goldschmidt. No, they've got Arenado. What's your lineup then? I think Edmund, O'Neal, Goldschmidt, Arenado. I think this is

really tough. I think you lead off Carlson. Maybe are you concerned about lefty-righty balance, though? There's some value in the fifth. I think there was the fifth spot in particular to having a high contact rate. The idea that there might be more players. You come up to bat with players on base more, and so just putting the ball in play is good.

How much difference is there between first and fifth? Because I don't think Edmund goes all the way down to eighth. He's not that terrible. He's like a league average bat. I think he would still bat around where Bader, maybe ahead of DeJong. So I think the question is first to fifth. If he does that, the change is 16 plate appearances per slot. is 16 plate appearances per slot.

So theoretically, if he were to get maybe 675 in a full season in the first spot, that full season would be more like 600 or 615 in the fifth spot. It's meaningful, but how many people get to 675 anyway? I think the thing that just puts edmund on thin ice though it was a 308 obp as nick points out in the email from last season at 91 wrc plus the projections

are for something better than that if he gets to the projection then he's right in this cluster of other cardinals that could all have a case for it dylan carlson makes more sense to me if you want to just put your your best non-masher among current bats in the spot. If they play Lars Neutbar more, Neutbar's got a 320 projected OBP, so he's right there with Edmund. Harrison Bader at 317 isn't far behind. He improved his plate skills last year. I wonder if the projection systems are maybe – they're kind of on what Bader did last year, but Bader showed a better walk rate in 2019 and 2020. I don't know. I think there's two or three different ways they could

swap Edmund out of that spot. If he lands middle third, maybe, but he just, contact rate is good. Power is just so light. Like, I don't know if they would actually commit to him there. So I like the spirit of this email just because it seems like the kind of thing that when you look at the playing time volumes and the expectations they could be erring on the high side because of something we saw tommy fam do back in his debut in 2019 that we really haven't seen him do in the 200 plus games from the last two seasons combined there's some simple math we can do where if it's cost him 60 plate appearances uh to drop down in the boarding batting order and he has basically gets on base you know a little bit less than a third of the time then we're talking about he's on base less 20 times 20 times less so that would

cost him what two three stolen bases yeah a few bags opportunities to score runs yeah yeah i mean i have not that in on edmund anyway because it's um i just i get nervous wanting to roster a player that projects to be a little worse than the average with the stick but i mean he's going to be in the lineup i don't think they have a choice, really. I doubt that Sosa pushes him off second base. I don't think that's going to happen. Edmund can move around enough to where the playing time volume, even if

it comes down from where it has been, I don't think it's going to crater. I don't think we're going from 691 down to 500 unless he's hurt. He got to 691 last year. Right, so if he moves to fifth, but he's hurt. He got to 691 last year. Right. So if he moves to fifth,

but he's only projected, so if you're looking at a projected value for him in an auction calculator, he's only projected for 606. So there could be some of that risk baked in, right? A small amount. Partial. Partial risk baked in. Like a handful of raisins

if you're making muffins instead of two handfuls. Is that what you're doing? You're making muffins over there? Man, now you make me think about lunch. Yeah, I barely just ate breakfast. We are on totally different time schedules even though we are in the same

time zone. Because the stupid clubhouses are open at 7. That's not good for anybody. We talked about that at the 3-0 show. You run your entire season based on a totally different body clock, and you run your training leading up to the season

on its own, like it's a totally own system. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. All right, one last question here. This one comes from Chris. It's about a pitcher that you and I both really like.

Chris wants to know, in one of his 12-team keeper leagues, he has the option of keeping Shane McClanahan at a low cost. He was a very late pick last year. I want to believe he has ace potential. I know both of you are generally proponents of him, but looking at his stat cast page does raise concerns. His player profile page has a lot of blue on his X stats, barrel rates, and hard hit rates.

Doing a very quick sample of Eno's top 25 starting pitchers shows an average 2021 barrels per plate appearance of 4.3 with a standard deviation in that 25 pitcher sample of 1.2. At 7% barrels per plate appearance, McClanahan is the worst in that group and two standard deviations worse than the average of the group. I would imagine this is due to a fastball with suboptimal movement and to an extent he's able to overcome it with high whiff rates on his arsenal are there historical comps of pitchers who have been elite with such hard hit rates and barrel rates or is it very likely that mclanahan will struggle to be a consistent top 20 pitcher giving up this kind of hard contact um i don't use that stat i haven't uh seen it as predictive and i you know

i just wanted to just as an example the leaders in barrel rate last year were dylan cease robbie ray garrett cole jose barrios you darvish i think you Yu Darvish describes some of the risk, I guess. He gives up more homers than you'd expect. But this list is full of a lot of good pitchers. Sean Mania, Max Scherzer is 15th in barrel rate allowed last year. Joe Musgrove is 17th. Walker Buehler was 20th. I don't find much value in it.

And the reason is pitchers do have some control over launch angle which we know because if you throw it high you know the launch angles on those pitches are high and if you throw it low that the launch angles on those are low and so you could theoretically have some control over barrel but the there's not much evidence that they control the EV that well, the exit velocity. So basically, this is a list of fly ball pitchers, right? I mean, Dallas Keuchel's in there too, but there's a lot of fly ball pitchers on here. I don't know.

I'm looking at the barrels per plate appearance list, and I don't think this is necessarily the list you want to be on. Maybe we're looking at different pages. I'm looking at that stack cast leaderboard and sorting by barrels over batted ball events in a percentage. Tarek Skubal is number one. This is just qualified pitchers. Jay Happ, Marco Gonzalez, Yusei Kikuchi,

Blake Snell, Brad Keller, Shane McClanahan comes in seventh there. Colby Allard, Michael Walker, John Means rounding out the top 10. That's to me not... You mentioned Cease and Ray and Cole. This is barrel-bell percentage on the Stackhouse leaderboard on Fangraphs.

Yeah, so I'm looking a little further down the list. Cease is at 15 on this list, Robbie Ray at 16, Cole at 17, Ian Anderson at 18. I'm also doing qualified pitchers maybe. Maybe you've got a different filter on the qualifiers. Yeah, that's probably what the difference is. There are good pitchers, maybe. Maybe you've got a different filter on the qualifiers. Yeah, that's probably what the difference is. There are good pitchers that are not that far down the list.

For example, XWOBA for hitters does have some predictive qualities. The StatCast XWOBA, the expected WOBA, does have some predictive qualities for hitters. It has none for pitchers. That's exactly what we're talking about here. This is like an ex-woba. Barrel rates. That goes into the ex-woba for pitchers. And I know that one has been shown pretty repeatedly

by different analysts that doesn't have predictive quality. So I think that the pitchers have some control over launch angle, but they don't have that much control over exit velocity. And so there's some luck. You might be looking at some luck factors here. Yeah. I think when you miss as many bats as some of the elite pitchers do, you can get by with this.

It's kind of like the opposite problem of a hitter that strikes out too much but does exponentially more damage than most when he makes contact it's like a tyler o'neill sort of situation but in the form of a pitcher i think that's more or less what we're looking at yeah like kyle gibson is fourth in the smallest barrel rate allowed and so i think there might be some command factors here because there are better command guys on the other side but i'm not going not going to get Kyle Gibson because he has a low barrel rate. Great question, though. And I think I'm going to look back at some previous years and see if anything catches my eye.

If anything does jump out, we'll share that on a future episode. But thank you for that question. If you've got a question for a future episode, email ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com or dropping a comment in under this video on YouTube would be the two best ways to get those in. Be sure to hit the like button on this video on YouTube if you are still watching and be sure to leave us a nice rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you haven't done so already. We really appreciate everybody who's done that. $1 a month for the first six months gets you a subscription to The Athletic. If you go to theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels on Twitter, you twitter you can find you know at you know serious you can find me at derrick van riper

you know good luck with your main event draft tonight good luck to everybody else listening out there who might be playing in those events over the course of this weekend we are back with you on monday thanks for listening and voting And voting.