Rates & Barrels - Dylan Cease to the Padres, Devin Williams' Back Injury & Swing v. Take Decisions in The Shadow Zone

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the trade that sent Dylan Cease to the Padres, the impact of a significant injury for Brewers closer Devin Williams, the increasing possibility of an early-season opportunity for Victor Scott II in St. Louis, and swing decisions in 'The Shadow Zone'. Rundown 5:20 Dylan Cease Traded to the Padres 10:01 Assessing the White Sox's Return 14:10 Buying the Similarities Between Dylan Cease & Blake Snell? 22:17 Devin Williams' Extended Absence 30:43 Injury Updates: Ronald Acuña Jr. & Tommy Edman 35:58 Swings v. Takes and 'The Shadow Zone' 54:23 Mailbag Questions: Quinn Priester & Unique Leagues in FanGraphs' Auction Calculator Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes w/Trevor May! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's better than getting a small premium roast coffee and your favorite McMuffin? Getting a small premium roast coffee and your favorite McMuffin for only $4 plus tax for a limited time only at McDonald's. Exclude Egg Beelty McMuffin by participating McDonald's in Canada prices exclude delivery. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, March 14th, Derek Van Riper here with Edo Seris. On this episode we have a big March trade. Dylan Cease on the move to San Diego. So we'll talk about the return that the White Sox got,

the implications of the Padres, adding Dylan Cease to that rotation. We got an update on Devin Williams and it's not good. We'll dig into that situation and the Brewer's Bullpen. It will likely be a first half absence or something close to it for the Brewer's Closer. And then we had a really insightful mailbag question about swing decisions in the shadow zone.

We're gonna dig into that and a few other mailbag questions as well. So lots to cover over the course of the next hour. Couple reminders, the Discord is open and within the Discord we are now on to Listener League number three. So be sure to click on that link if you have not signed up for our listener league.

It is a salary cap contest, there is no entry fee, it's a customized league made over at FanTracks, really cool features being able to put that together. We're just making multiple leagues because it caps out at 200 entries, so we want to make sure that as many people who want to play can. The big thing here, prices are locked in already, We're not changing prices for guys who are hurt. And lock for the entire season is Tuesday night, the 19th at 10 o'clock Eastern. So got about five days, as I say this right now,

to get those rosters in. No in-season maintenance, which is really cool. See how everything plays out. And I think it's funny because I started to go through the mental process of, you know, how do I want to attack this? How do I want to play this? And I'm worried. Here's the thing I'm thinking about, which is the only strategy thing we're going to talk about before the contest actually locks, because I think we want it to just happen. I think we have a lot of like minded people playing this game and attacking it the same way.

And I don't think attacking it the same way is going to be the most effective path to win. Oh, but you just poisoned the well. Now we're all gonna be like, oh, I'm gonna do the other idea. And then we all switched to the other idea. I just wanted to throw it out there because I mean, so many of us like the same kinds of players.

You know, we have our biases towards certain things we've done. And so honestly, I've been trying to keep my like sort of draft and hold bias on the table during the early part of these podcasts because that's what I was drafting. Now I'm switching to, you know, I just had TGFBI and I'm gonna do a main event.

Those are teams with free agency. So those have slightly different. And so you're gonna hear my bias shift a little bit i mean i think i'm just a human being that that's that's where my focus is you know. And this one i think the biggest thing i can tell anybody about any game is learn the rules like if you're playing katana if you're like you know what learn the rules. And you're gonna maybe lose the first couple times times. Just learn what works in that format. That's 101. I think when you get to 201 and 301 courses in any given setup, you start, you know, taking kind of weird looks at it.

Punting, you know, doing this full this, a Labadini. What's a Labadini? Labadini is like. The dog. It's kind of Italian dog. Doing this full this a labadini. Oh, it's a labadini labadini's like the dog It's kind of Italian dog, but isn't it but it's also it's a it's a type of approach No, I think it's a Larry Larry labadini. I think had a straight. I forget the actual strategy. It's a very Plan that was all inexpensive starters the Sweeney plan I think actually Mike Gianella brought that one up. That one is punting power.

There's some wild old strategies out there. I think that goes back to four by four Roto. Just as an idea like how long ago that strategy was hatched. And there's awesome abstracts on that in the beginning of the forecast. If you wanna dig into some of those old plans in detail because a lot of those don't get used anymore, but Maybe maybe something like that actually could be effective. I don't want to tip my hand

I don't want anyone to tip their hand about what they're going to do But that was just the the primary thought is I'm like we're all trying to solve this problem Not all of us many of us are probably looking at this with the same kind of glasses on and I gotta try and Work against that a little bit. How much? That is the ultimate question. But the link is in the discord. Highly recommend you check it out if you haven't signed up for our listener league yet. And a shout out again to Phantrax. The customization at Phantrax is awesome. Like I've known for years their auction room is good. Their dynasty leagues are great because their player pool is so deep. Whatever scoring

categories you want they've got just about every scouting, scoring category you could want. And the biggest thing for us was making sure we could all play in the same league together. Right, it's fun to have an overall contest where we're all in groups of 12 and 15, but this is just different. Like it's like everyone is out there for themselves.

I really liked that aspect of this. Yeah. Yeah. It should be fun. Let's get to the news. Dylan Cease has been traded to the Padres. Nice return for the White Sox. At least the more I've looked at it, the more I've come around to liking it. Drew Thorpe, who was not a Padre for very long, going to the White Sox in this trade.

Jairo Iriarte, Samuel Zavala and Stephen Wilson, I believe the only major leaguer involved, current major leaguer involved in the trade, all going back to the White Sox and we'll start on the Padres side. This is pretty interesting given that they were seemingly shedding the payroll, making the Wonsoto trade earlier this winter, pulling back from the hyper aggressive approach that AJ Preller in that front office had employed for the last couple of seasons, it's clearly not over because this is a team with a starting five that's really good. They're top four with the addition of Cease's Musgrove, Darvish, Cease, Michael King. And now you're only relying on one of Brito Vasquez, Waldron, or the Prospects to be your

five. That's a good rotation. That's a playoff caliber rotation. More questions now focus on, are they going to score enough runs? Those questions will be answered in time, but Dylan Cease, how much does his value change for you leaving the White Sox and going to a Padres team that at least has playoff aspirations this year, even if they don't make it? I think the park factor is in his favor, in Dylan Cease's favor.

That's a good one. I think it might be neutralized by some superior opponents. Like how many times do you want to start Dylan Cease against the Dodgers is going to be sort of an open question mark for his owners. I, he's still firmly in the like 75, 90% bucket where you're going to start him most times. And I think personally, I will buy Dylan Cease and start him most times and I think personally I will buy Dylan cease and Start him against the Dodgers I think he's that kind of pitcher. So I'm all in there's been a lot of sort of

Grousing about his V lo being down and his stuff being down But I would say this if you had a guy who who threw 100 and had the best stuff in baseball and his VELO was down and his stuff was down the next year, would you not want him? So for me, Dylan Cease, you know, still top, he's the twelfth in stuff plus among 100 plus innings last year. His VELO was down to 95-6. I mean, that's still really good VELO for a starting pitcher. You know, there's a lot of guys, the average is for starting pitchers is 93-5.

So to be still two ticks above average is still good. Yes, I think there's things he can improve and obviously his command isn't good, but you know, the good news is command isn't super sticky year to year and he's going to a really good, I mean, he had a good pitching coach, but he's going to another good pitching coach. One that I really respected Ruben Diabola. And then the park is just going to clean up. Why do you hate command? Like why do you hate bad command?

A lot of times it's because it gets spanked. Well the park, if the park cleans up some of that, you know, like why did, is Joe Boyle going to have like a better chance of making it in Oakland than he was in Cincinnati? Because the mistakes are not going to be as painful. And so I think just the mistakes in San Diego are not going to be as painful. I think Dylan C is going to have a great year. I think this is a great, my first reaction to this was amazing Padres cleaned house. Like this was, this was one of, I think probably had some really, really good trades and I

was, I was ready to put this in the upper end of that. I think the only trade that was a little tough was the original Soto trade, just because he gave up a starting shortstop that looks really good and James Wood looks pretty good. So he gave up, but that was the most he gave up. In the other trades, the Snell trade was slam dunk for the Padres. I think the Darvis trade was pretty good. You know, there's a lot of the Clevenger trade wasn't great because of the Clevenger return, but I don't know. I guess they gave up. They gave up Joey Cantillo in that trade. It must have.

Sounds right. Yeah. Because I was like, why is Joe and Cantillo on the Guardians? I think the Prellors had a pretty good track record on trades. And if you just, if you say we have no more money, so it's either Soto and we have no pitching and it's all the rookies, you know, or you trade Soto and you make your best of it. I think he did a good job, you know, given financial, given these financial requirements, we can argue all day if those financial requirements are legit or not, you know, like I understand that part, but let's say they are, and he was given this

mandate. I think he did a good job. Part of this is Drew Thorpe's Velo is down. I mean, he was 92. He wasn't a great Velo guy to begin with, but he was 92 plus when he was traded mid-season last year, or, you know, from the Yankees. Like he was 92 plus for the Yankees last year in the minor leagues. I've got this tweet here from James E. Clark,

a credentialed writer for the East Valley, East Village Times in San Diego saying, he's struggling to hit 90 miles an hour. And that was two days ago. Whatever you think of him, like change up first is not always my favorite type of pitcher. Maybe you like the plane, but it's high vert from a high release point.

So that's a little bit more predictable. You know what I mean? Like what we really like are like the Striders who get like good vert from low release points. So the batter's like, I don't understand. This is more like, oh, I see this guy coming. You know, he's high, he's over the top. Okay, this is gonna have vert.

But if it's 90, you know, it reduces his possibilities. And we're not sure about the breaking balls, you know, we're sure about the change up, elite change up, but we're not sure about the breaking balls. And we've seen plenty of guys struggle like a gossamer. Like, okay, if he ends up gossamer, then, you know, I'm wrong. But like we've seen guys with great change ups struggle to add breaking balls and end up in the pen

or just end up sort of backhand pitchers. And so my initial reaction was, bully for you, Preller, you just nailed that one. But then I looked a little bit more at Jairo Iriarte and Savala. I still think Preller had to give those guys up because his butt is on the line in the next couple of years. He's got to do something. I think this is year 10 of AJ Preller and they're projected to be like an 83-winning team. You know, so, you know, there's,

he had some fire in his butt and he gave up two 18-year-olds. For the White Sox, you're on year one as Chris gets, right? And this is the first time that Chris gets, I think went and got some high variance youngsters, 18 year olds that could turn into stars in the other trades. He's gotten guys like Braden Shoemake, which is like, well, we don't have a shortstop for AAA. So, right. Yeah.

Maybe there's a shortstop for part of the season for us, but it's not a long term solution, you know, I think that's the, I have not been impressed by gets his first trades, so I'm going to say. I don't want to weasel out and say it's a win for both, but I, um, I'm going to give a higher grade to the Padres. But I was my first initial thought was if I was writing the trade grade piece, I'm giving an A to Preller and like a B minus C plus to get. But I think that's fair. I might make it a little bit smaller

and be like A minus B. I'm looking at the Picota projections right now and they have not rerun for today. I assume we're still looking at the pre-cease number here because they're projected. The Padres are at 26.3% chance of making the playoffs. I think the Fangraphs ones may have rerun already because they're up to 41.9%.

And I think that's a pretty reasonable adjustment. That's also worth making that trade, right? Yeah. To get from a one and four chance to closer to a one and two. I wonder if if the situation is as tight as the finances are with the Padres is still such that if you get to the trade deadline and your team is clearly in contention for a playoff spot, if you can go out and find ways to add a little bit more, they still have plenty of prospects.

That's part of the reason why I think it's so easy to like the Padres side of it, is that the top shelf guys in that system are all still there. You could use one of those guys later to go get a big piece at the deadline if you need to, or some of those guys might even be contributing for your roster. They could be the guys that help put you over the top as well. I've always thought they were similar because of the strikeout

and walk rates and then the variance from year to year in their performance. Are you buying the comps that people are throwing out there now like Cease and Snell that they are actually very similar, although they do it with different hands? Yeah, some people brought that up like that's a big deal. I don't know. Your starting pitcher, if you've demonstrated some success, how much does it matter? You know what I mean? It matters a lot for your first year in the league. One's a righty, one's a lefty.

Oh my God, better figure out those platoon splits. That's where it gets established. I think they're very much the same pitcher. They're the same guy. And the difference is that CIS is under contract for $8 million this coming season. And the Padres probably are not in the process of giving Snell an offer.

Right, I would say they're almost certainly not in that position right now based on what we know right now. But if you're the Yankees and you're the Giants, you know, maybe just go against Snell. The Giants are two months late. They should have done this two months ago. Yeah. But the other question I have for you about this trade are two months late. They should have done this two months ago. But the other question I have for you about this trade

is how much do we look at the current White Sox front office and player development system, Brian Bannister heading up to pitching development, do we have faith that they can take young arms, especially someone like Iriarte whose weakness is command, right? You see it in the walk rate, you see it in the scouting grades. Do we trust that they're going to arms, especially someone like Iriarte, whose weakness is command, right? You see it in the walk rate, you see it in the scouting grades.

Do we trust that they're going to take a lot of it? And they seem to be targeting guys that have some command issues because that's where you can get pitching. There's wrist that comes with that. Oh, Brileyn de Baroa. Right. How many of these guys

can they turn into high quality big leaguers? The floor for most of these guys automatically is high leverage reliever, but you have to. The floor for most of these guys automatically is high leverage reliever. But you have to be able to turn some of these guys into starters to make this rebuild actually work. So do you think with Brian Bannister at the helm and the new organizational player development approach they might be taking under Getz,

I know White Sox fans are like, it's the same, Getz was here before. It's a little different. Do you think they're at least headed in the right direction? Do you trust they can get enough development right to make these trades worthwhile? Yeah, it reminds me of the JJ Piccolo situation where you're like, well, he was there before,

but he's not the same as the last guy. No, there's different, yeah, there's similarities, there are differences when they're, internal promotions are still changes, even though it's not radical change. And sometimes they can be good at helping you sort of sort through what's there because they know what's there and now they're empowered to kind of make more decisions maybe about hiring and firing.

Like, for example, Brian Bannister was not there before, you know, so there's a complete there's a change. And that's something you can point to. And Brian Bannister is obviously going to know about something like the Raise One Target approach. He's obviously going to know even more advanced techniques possibly for training Command All in one say as a small side. I think maybe the best way to train Command is the oldest one in the book. It's called the nine pocket, you know, net, you know, and it's just basically a net that you can throw into that has nine pockets. Like a telephone, like buttons in the telephone.

Yeah, it's the way the strike zone's labeled. Yeah, yeah, just got those nine zones and you just try to throw it in one. That's, that's the best thing we've had. Although I guess there are more advanced techniques when you start talking about biomechanics and you start being like, how can we clean this up? Can we shorten up your arm path? Can we do this or that?

But I doubt that Banister has full access to those in year one. You know, like some of those things, you need to build a pitching lab. You need to have edutronics. If you don't even have Edutronics everywhere, like what are you going to do? Like you have to first you have to install that. So I don't know if you're one, they're going to be able to do all this. Because my experiences, you

know, from talking to analytics guys and people that have done this is sometimes you get to a situation where the first three years are just holy holy crap, they didn't do what we don't have. What can we do that first? Can we get some machines and plug them in? Yeah, can we plug them in? Can we can we actually collect the data off these machines or just look at them? We have people to process it or do we just collect it? Yeah, exactly.

So I think there's some of that going on right now in Chicago. So I wouldn't say, oh, Stephen Wilson's going to go there and be totally different. I think they got Stephen Wilson because he's an OK reliever and he might actually be their closer. He's got a shot. I think Brebia's even hurt. Healthy John Brebia is more interesting than I previously

give him credit for. That too. I was looking at him. But it is a little bit of a slider thing where his sliders better than his foreseen right so you get into that like Sergio Romo place where you're like I would rather have someone with a better fastball in there what if he throws multiple sliders though talked about this still I think I think people would rather have big fastball stuff in their closer spot.

And I think that's like Baroa or leisure. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's more like- Is it leisure or leisure? I just say that way because I love- I know the bit and I'm blanking on it. It's Scottish, the train, train spotting. Yeah.

In a word, pleasure. My pleasure in your leisure. That's a bad Scottish accent, sorry. Not great. We're stepping on new rakes on Rates and Barrels this year. We're not stepping on the old ones. That's the thing that I'd like to emphasize to everybody. That's the main goal for the season.

New year, new rakes. No, I forget where we started with this Oh, yeah banister similarities. Those are the similarities between Snell and your yard. Yeah Like I think every are today, you know, it's it's about sort of refining Refining it and and maybe dialing in that change-up. I think his his fastball sliders ahead of his change-up But you can also just turf the change up and say, hey, what about two breaking ball approach or three breaking ball approach?

Do you have that much feel for spin? So Iriarte's like some nice clay to mold. And then Saval is like a 18 year old center fielder in a ball that could go a million different directions. Yeah, I think the player outlook I read over at Roto Wire dropped an Ian Hap kind of floor sort of comp on him. That's a nice player. Like if that's that's what you get in the long run, you're happy and you could get more. He's so young. There's still some projectability there, too.

Probably the most interesting player from a keeper or dynasty perspective in the deal right now, given the distance Iriarte is away from the big leagues, not by a mile, but I think Zavala would be the one I'd be most interested in trying to stash away. I'm a little bit more skeptical about Thorpe. I was more positive about Thorpe when he was traded the first time, but since I've learned more about his release point and his VLO, and I'm a little bit more negative on him now. Understandable. I think I have taken this new terrible philosophy, probably terrible philosophy, again, stepping on new rakes.

I am increasingly skeptical of the information that comes out of spring training, not because I don't want the information, but because weird stuff happens, like the calibration of cameras and things that measure the information we're looking at. I'm skeptical that that's all done with the accuracy that we get from the big leagues throughout the season.

That is all. So it's a concern for sure with Thorpe. I think his value has a slight down arrow next to it on a lot of prospect lists, and it makes sense given all the reasons that you outlined. But great trade for the Padres could be a nice one, actually, for the White Sox. And that has not been the case for every trade we've talked about so far in the Chris Getz era.

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Let's get to a March injury, yet another March injury. Devin Williams, out at least three months, and it's a combination of fractures, two stress fractures in his back. He had a back injury at the end of last season. He was still having some soreness this spring. I got checked out, got a second opinion from Dr. Robert Watkins in Los Angeles. He confirmed the two stress fractures. The good news is the expectation that was in the Jeff Passon tweets about this

is that he will make a full recovery. This won't be necessarily a long-term sort of problem, but it's kind of like a six-week rest period before like about six weeks of trying to ramp back up. There's also though a question of how it happened because stress fractures are usually you get a stress reaction and then you get a stress fracture, which means that there's some sort of repeated repeated stress on that area that led to the stress fracture. It's like we don't have any evidence that he like fell or anything, right?

It's not that. No, no, nothing like that. It's a repeated pitching motion. It's a little bit like what Hugh Darvish was having on the tip of his elbow. It's like a stress reaction. Yeah, it makes sense since it was a problem at the end of last season and then it kind of cropped back up.

That's where that longer term, oh yeah, this has been building up for a while. It fits also that Trevor May timeline where he's talking about like, you know, back hurts still. Going to sit on it for a couple more weeks. Reported to spring, dang, back hurts still. All right, let's go get an MRI. Somebody was, I forget who tweeted, I just saw it fly by, but it was like, do players not go to doctors during the off season?

Yeah. I'm like, well, some do, some don't. Would have been nice if he'd gone two, three months ago. He'd be nearing the end of his rehab now. So tough break. So the questions on this one are kind of like, what are the implications for the closer pool as a whole? Does everyone just kind of move up a seat?

Does someone like Jordan Romano, who we've talked about as undervalued, end up getting nudged up around along with everybody kind of in the couple seats behind Williams? I assume that's what happens. People just chase a little harder at the next part of the tier. And then the bigger question is, who closes for the Brewers? Because among the candidates that you see people speculating about, Yoel Piamps, Abner Eribe, Trevor McGill, those are the three names most people throw out there. I think those are the correct three names. It's three. And when you start breaking them down, it's not necessarily easy to point

to one and say, that's the guy. P Amps by usage was frequently used in the eighth inning last season. Tide Games, games were there leading high leverage. Of the final two months of the season his performance kind of tailed off. He still had the highest leverage index of these three relievers even though his results by strikeouts to walks and ERA they were the worst. Like skills wise you'd look at Pi Amps late in the year and say hmm heavy usage maybe by strikeouts to walks and ERA, they were the worst. Skills-wise, you'd look at Pi Amps late in the year and say, hmm, heavy usage, maybe he faded,

maybe this stuff wasn't as crisp. Maybe they don't trust him, they're not gonna trust him as much in 2024 as they did in 2023, because there were some diminishing returns on some of the tweaks possibly. With your Rebe, you see the guy that is the capital C closer of the long-term future.

It doesn't mean he's necessarily the guy right now. The skills flaw for me is the control, right? If you look at his last two months, 31 to 16 strikeout to walk ratio in 24 innings. No homers allowed. Better leverage index than Trevor McGill. So he was in some tight spots. He picked up a save in extra innings. I think it was either a game where Williams pitched the ninth, the Katai game, or Williams wasn't available. I remember watching that game, but don't remember exactly how Uribe got the chance.

You could make a case for him. And given both Hayter and Williams walk related problems, it doesn't seem that the organization disqualifies guys from closing because of an elevated walk rate. So he's absolutely in play. And then there's McGill, who really jumps off the page about performance. 28 to five strikeout to walk in his last 17 innings over those final two months, one homer allowed. Lowest leverage index was coming in pretty early in the game, relatively speaking. So how do you balance all that plus other factors like arbitration and cost control

and a new manager in Pat Murphy. It's one of those situations. Well, Pat Murphy's been the bench coach for Craig Council for a long time, so maybe it's the same. Or maybe he's in the boss chair and he wants to do things his own way. It could be a committee for the first time.

Where are you leaning right now on this one? Yeah, the manager effect is an interesting one. He seems kind of a little bit more old school than counsel. And so I guess that if I'm sort of divining and you got my divining rod out, then I might say pions because that's like goes towards inertia and experience. I just think pions is the worst picture of the three in terms of stuff. Plus, he's the worst picture of the three. And then you just look at his career strikeout rates. the worst pitcher of the three in terms of stuff plus he's the worst pitcher of the three and then

you just look at his career strikeout rates last year was the first time he had an above average strikeout rate as a reliever so that just sort of screams new regression this spring he's done fine by strikeouts with three strikeouts and two and two-thirds innings but he has fewer innings than the other two which says something to me. They haven't been rushing to get them out there. Abner Uribe has four and a third and McGill has four. That's significant. That means that even if Paiyams went out

and threw an inning today, he wouldn't catch up. And so, I think McGill is my guy because I think Uribe is a little bit green. There's the command issue. He's also further away from arbitration. So you could keep him cheaper, longer maybe, if that is a concern. McGill was highlighted by Petriello, Mike Petriello

as a guy who's gonna break out and has great stuff and seems like closer stuff. In terms of, you know, best fastball of the three, it might be McGill's. he's 98 99 he's got that fastball I'm looking for from a closer so McGill's my guy. I think that's where I'm going outside of keeper in dynasty leagues I've been pushing for Uribe as a longer term stash it's very hard to do it in a lot of leagues that's really really deep rosters so keep that in mind to you like stashing closers for future years.

Very dangerous game. They also break a lot. So there's a ton of factors there. But I think I'm with you on McGill. Just the main thing for me is that Piamps was not the same guy at the end of the season that he was at the beginning. If he was start to finish as good as he was those first three and a half, four months, I think he'd have that inside track.

Your point about Murphy is like, yeah, I think he'd have that inside track. Your point about Murphy is like, yeah, I think he's a little old school. He was head coach at ASU, geez, probably 10, 12 years ago. Now it's been a little while. Does old mean old school? Well, he's interesting. The more I kind of hear clips from him and try to learn about him from afar, he's quirky.

He tries to give everybody nicknames. He had the bagel in his slider shorts for a while, that whole thing. He's kind of a goofy old school guy. So it's really hard. It's harder to get a read on him. It's not gonna be like a shave your face and say sir kind of.

It's not that kind of old school. I was hoping you were staying above the shoulders for the shaving Glad that's where that was but yeah, I don't think he's like a Mike Schilt completely, but he's kind of just unique in his own way I just don't know if we can really even read much into it's more of a let's just see what happens and that'll inform us the Next time this possibly happens, but I'm with you on McGill for this combination of reasons. I don't think you're dumb if you draft any one of the three. If they're all going reasonably late, I think the uncertainty creates opportunities. If they don't make an announcement, if they don't tip their hand with some kind of usage

pattern, which is hard to do in spring training, it's kind of just an open guess at this point. That's why you're going to get so many people saying, yeah, they're all kind of interesting, but I like this guy. That's going to're gonna get so many people saying, yeah, they're all kind of interesting, but I like this guy. That's gonna be the common refrain for the Brewers bullpen. Couple really quick injury updates. I saw Ronald Lacuna Jr. in the lineup to DH on Thursday. That's great news, given that we're two weeks away from opening day.

I think that gives you every indication you could want, at least at this point, that things are on track for him with that little scare we had with his knee. The other injury We haven't talked a lot about on the show is Tommy Edmund He's been shut down with some lingering wrist pain. He had surgery in the offseason no activity probably for a week Maybe a little longer it really seems like the door is opening for Victor Scott if not for Opening day for an opportunity maybe a little bit sooner than expected as a result of Edmund having a difficult time getting over this injury. Yeah, he's also having a great spring, which that's a thing I've been asking managers and heard people ask managers very often over my 10 plus years of going to spring training

is how are you making this decision? And I think increasingly actually over time it's's been, well, we have to, it's the whole body of work. It's, you know, we have to look at, and I even heard the Royals manager say, you know, what he's projected to do. So, you know, he was talking about projections and, you know, age and what he experienced, where he's been, what he's done,

all these things kind of roll into it. But Victor Scott was at the AFL, you know, like that's finishing school. The whole idea of sending a guy to the AFL is often just to say, like, can you handle, you know, 600 plate appearances? Can you get, can you be ready for that? And what we have from last year is 618 plate appearances without the AFL. So he did a full season and half of it was a double A

and he was 20% better than the average at double A and he's killing it this spring. Victor Scott, what's your, if we had a number, we should have a rating, like what's your like if we had a number, we should have like a like a rating, like a little, you know, like, like 50% to make the roster, like he's past 50% to make the roster. I only make the graphic if the needle wobbles a little even though it's in a clear section. It has to be shaking. 65 69. No, seriously, where's your percentage to make opening day for Victor Scott?

It's gotta be at least in the 40% range right now. Because of the need. Not going past 50. Because playing center field is important and I wonder how much they trust other guys. Plus Newt Bar's banged up too. Yeah, I think it's over 50. I think we're getting close to 60.

Here's the other question though with Victor Scott, like, okay, so somewhere in the 40 to 60 range, like and trending in the right direction. Why is his projection so bad? Is it the absence of numbers at AAA? It's like, he's not even close to league average from any of the projection systems really, even though he's

been 15% or better at low A, high A, and double A to this point in his career. I wonder if they make adjustments to slugging and ISO numbers based on speed, like if they downwardly adjust slugging projections. Because he had a 450 slugging at double A last year, that's only a 128 projections because he had a 450 slugging at AA last year. That's only a 128 ISO because he had such a big high batting average as Scott did. And then he had 44 stolen bases. He had over 100 when you count the AFL. I wonder if they're like, well, that's not a slugging ISO.

That's not a slugging slugging. That's a running slugging because because they all, most of the projection systems have a sub 100 ISO for him. I was impressed when I talked to the AFL, he was talking about, you know, improving his bat speed over the summer and having bat speed and launch angle benchmarks that were given to him by the organization

that he was trying to meet with his blast motion sensor. I kind of think this is a guy who might surprise with power, maybe not in year one at 23, but you know, I could see him having a peak season with, you know, 15 plus homers. So I like Victor Scott. I think this is a good player. And even if he is just a Ruiz and we don't have batted ball velo's, so it's kind of hard to tell if he's more history reason or somebody or Tommy Edmond, who had a little bit of

pop, you know, even if he is just an all speed guy, it is the opportunity to maybe beef up your speed if you came out of your your draft low on speed. Yeah, and I'm much more likely to throw the very late dart at someone like Victor Scott than try to even go where Asturias was going last year. Pick 200 range was the ADP for Ruiz in 2023. Scott's freer than that.

Scott's like a bench pick, probably 350, 400 even with a little bit of the spring helium that he's likely catching right now. So yeah, pretty interesting situation for the cards with the Edmund still having those wrist issues. And then of course the rib problem that Lars Nuppar came into over the course of spring training. Let's get to one of the big topics here today. And we had a mailbag question from Brendan. Brendan wrote, recent discussions about using zone minus chase percentage in the Seager metric to evaluate play discipline are very interesting. I was thinking about similar things last winter, ended up training my own simple model to evaluate

swing decisions. My question is about swing decisions in the shadow region, straddling the edges of the zone. These pitches are hard to hit, but also have a decent probability of being called strikes when taken. These are locations the pitcher wants to execute in. Recent discussions on Vlad Jr. suggest that he's making too much weak contact with these pitches while someone like Corey Seager is also aggressive in these locations and yet

is being considered the model of good play discipline. Given a player with good strike zone judgement, would you rather that player be aggressive in the shadows to maximize swings in the heart, or be more discretionary in the shadows to maximize swings in the heart or be more discretionary in the shadows and lose out on a few middle middle swings? How much does it depend on contact and barrel ability? I think my model says the latter is better, especially given it is correlated with chasing less, but I'm curious to hear any related thoughts or analyses. Yes, the year slugging ability is key here I think because we ran some numbers and we

we looked at some of the available research. First off, swinging the heart is really good. This is the heart of the zone. This you know it's basically middle middle. It's expanded a little bit but it's middle middle. You know all the numbers are great there and, um, you know, we have a reader Dominic is D O M I N I K K E U L is his Twitter handle on Twitter. He, uh, found that batters who like the batters who swung the most at the heart and had, uh, had like a decent ISO. So he always has a sort of, do you have power component to it? The people that swung 45% or more at in the heart had a 113 WRC plus people who swung under

35% had a 97 WRC plus so there is such a thing as too passive in the heart of the zone Because if you have barrel ability you should be swinging at those pitches So we do like swinging at the heart of the zone. Now we're looking at the shadow zone. Shadow zone is that gray area. The strike zone is the green box, if you're looking on YouTube right now. And the shadow zone straddles that strike zone. It's generally where pitchers want to pitch.

If you look at any location plus model, any location model, they're rewarding pitchers points for being able to pitch in these areas. It changes a little bit by count, by pitch type, but that's generally where they want to be. Now we then looked at called strikes. So if a batter doesn't swing at those pitches, they are called strikes 49% of the time in non-two strike counts strikes 49% of the time in non two strike counts. 49% of the time.

So basically it's 50-50 if you let it go that it's a ball or strike. What really surprised me, and I did this because we were having this back and forth when we got on here, this is what a batter is doing on balls, a non two strike pitches in the shadow zone, 314 batting average, 365 OBP, 492 slugging. Now we took out two strike counts. So two strike counts would reduce all those numbers. Massively favor the pitcher there. Yeah. You get breaking balls and stuff. But before you get to a two strike out, and the reason that we wanted to separate out two strike counts is, two strike counts you're battling.

You should probably swing at shadow zone because that 50-50 thing, you're 50% out. Right, yes, the cost of not doing good there is worse than not doing good earlier in the count. Yeah, it's not just a ball or a strike, you know, it's not just like count leverage that you're losing, you're out, you know, in two strike counts. So you should swing in two strike counts

and then you're prioritizing contact over power and we're talking two strike approaches, but before two strikes, it looks like, I guess you should swing? Especially, I think think if you can access that 495 that 495 slugging if you can do that or better I mean you're doing pretty good a 390 like a 360 OBP is like what you're saying is if I take it I have a 50-50 chance striker ball. If I swing at it, I have a 37% chance of getting

on base. Getting on base is better than getting count leverage, but I have a lower chance of it. I have a 51% chance of a ball, but I have a 37% chance of just getting on base. I don't know. Those numbers are getting close enough. Here's one last thing that muddies the water a little bit is Tom Tango's overall look at the value of swings and takes. And so what we have on the X axis here is run values on swings and takes. And then on the Y, oh no, on the X axis is run value on swings,

on the Y axis is run value on takes. And what you see is not many people have a good run value on swings. In fact, just if you're looking at this graph right now, do you see where zero is on run value for swings? It's all the way on the right side of the graph. So like 80% of the history of baseball has had negative run values on swings.

It's like, or 90%. I mean, it's amazing. of baseball has had negative run values on swings. It's like, or 90%. I mean, it's amazing. The only ones that had positive run values on swings were like Juan Gonzalez and Todd Helton and Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez. Elite hitters. Like it's truly like elite hitters

because hitting is hard. Yeah, so everybody else had a harder time on those. Truly like elite hitters because hitting is hard. Yeah. Yeah, so everybody else had a harder time on those. So I would say that I have a bias going into this. I was a little surprised by the numbers on what batters do in non-two strike counts in the shadow zone. My overall bias going in was saying, swinging the hard is good. I don't want to swing in the shadow

because I think swings generally are too much. So, and that comes out of that Tom Tango thing. That's my overall bias going in. I was a little surprised about how well batters do on non-two strike pitches in the shadow zone. I love how Barry Bonds is basically a chart breaker on that one. Just almost off screen, top right corner.

Just floating right off the screen. The original question made me think that maybe there's more value in swinging at shadow zone pitches if you're good. So that was kind of what I thought. I was like, OK, so part, you know, so like, what do I want to see? Like, maybe I want to see barrels in the shadow zone, like who's still hitting the ball hard in the right angles when they're hitting stuff that's not in the heart of the plate. And so I just ran that simple search and it spits out a list of pretty much all good players.

Like if you're giving a lot of barrels and you're doing that from the shadow zone, you're probably good. That leaderboard, just for anyone who cares. Austin Riley, most in the league last year 29 show hey Otani Randy Rosarina Matt Olson Freddie Freeman Adolis Garcia Teasca Hernandez Devers bats Acuna that's your top ten those are all really good players right like you're not telling those guys not to swing in the shadow so of course not and I think about 30 barrels the interesting thing is if you go a little further down the list, you start to see some other names like Anthony Santander, Jake Berger, Nolan Jones,

Spencer Torkelson, Kyle Schwabers in there, top 15 as well, Jordaan is 17th, Jorge Salaer. It's a little bit of that 495 slugging on the shadow zone, right? It's like, okay, if I take, I could get a ball. But if I'm a slugger and I hit this, I get like, if my slugging percentage is expected is over 500, you know, or gets, you know, closer and closer,

the closer that gets to one, you know, then I want that base. I'd rather have that base. So I think the closer your package is towards slugging, the more you want to swing at shadow zone. And the closer you are to kind of a slap happy, you know, I think you kind of wanna take in the shadow zone. You sent me some stuff that Dominic had tweeted

before the show too. One of the searches he ran was looking at swing rates with inside the heart of the zone. Like pitches that you think guys would be able to crush, right? Looking at swing rates with inside the inside the heart of the zone like pitches You think guys would be able to crush right and the lower rates had some amazing players in it Bryce Harper was like bottom five and swinging at the heart of zone, right? so you see like Elluris Montero was the The lowest rate at swinging at pitches in the heart of the zone. I'm like, okay

I guess that that makes sense sort of based on what he's done so far But he's also a young player. A lot could still change. But yeah, I saw Harper. I saw Shohei Otani pretty high on that list. Like, OK, so a lot of these swing decisions hinge on who you are as a hitter. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

And probably most specifically, how much power do you have? Like, if you have a lot of power, you can do things a little bit differently than guys who don't. The guys that have kind of average power or below average power probably have to be a lot more selective about what they're trying to do with swings versus takes because their ability to drive pitches is so much more limited

by their raw power, their hit tool, their swing path, some combination of those things. I think pitch type is a little bit of it too. I'm just looking here. Like a fastball away in the shadow zone for some guys? Like they love it or you know that might be something they like, you know? Like Beau Bichette, I don't know, 17 barrels in the shadow zone. I wonder if a lot of those were like away for him.

You know Bryce Harper is increasingly seeing more sliders, right? He just saw a career most sliders last year, 23%. If he's seeing 23% sliders, that means he's seeing sliders in hitters counts. You know? Is that right? Yeah, he's seeing sliders in hitters counts when the pitcher is trying to get a strike. Where are they going to throw that slider? In the zone.

Sometimes they're going to throw that slider middle middle. Sometimes that slider is still not exactly what Bryce Harper wants. But then when you start breaking it down by pitch type, what you end up doing is starting to incorporate, is the batter swinging at things that he can do damage on? So their own personal heat maps. And I think that sounds appealing, but I will say that from my history of working with the pitching side of this, Command Plus and Location Plus, Command Plus was the stat that we had from Stats Perform where they actually looked, they scouted,

and they tried to find an intended zone. They're like, this is how far he was from his intended zone. So they were really looking at how close was the pitcher doing to what he wanted to do specifically that pitcher. And then I ran command plus against location plus, which is just agnostic of the pitcher and the batter and just says, this is where slider should go in this count. This is these are good places. These are bad places.

And location plus had more predictive value. The one that was agnostic of the very specific intentions of the batter and the pitcher. So I think you do run into and also like think about like the life of a hitter. You're like, okay, uh, you come up and you have the thing you do. You do great on Francisco Alvarez. I, I, I murder low pitches, you know, don't throw me a low pitch, low fastball. I murder those. Right. Well, then you get a steady diet of high pitches, right? And one reason I like Alvarez this year is at least high and tight, he's figured something out.

He can actually hit high and tight. And so that's the second iteration of Alvarez, right? So if you were like, should Alvarez, if your model is like, should Alvarez swing at high fastballs, what's your timeframe for that? And like, which Alvarez? Like for a while it could be a good idea, but eventually that might be a bad idea.

Yeah, exactly. Like what you do at 23 and what you do at 30 could be very different. I was really surprised when I looked at Kyle Schwarber's results on high fastballs. I even talked to him about it where I was like, okay, my narrative is that you came up, you couldn't hit high fastballs, you had to figure out how to hit high fastballs.

And that and then you did and that's sort of been your career has been bouncing around between like having a really good low fastball swing and developing something for high. And he's like, yeah, that's about right. But when I looked at his production on passballs in the top 30 zone, like there were good years and bad years and they seemed like there was no rhyme to it. It wasn't like even when he first came up, it wasn't that bad. So like advanced scouting has got to be one of the hardest things in baseball. That's where you look and you and you go and you watch the player and you come back and you say this is how we should pitch him. Because that hitter is just cycling through things in his head and he's looking at the same maps that you are and his hitting coach is saying man they're really gonna attack you you know like we were talking about this with the Dodgers like somebody was

advancing for against the Dodgers and said every time we advanced like we tell our pitchers what to do that seems like the hitters know on the Dodgers know what our pitchers are gonna do because the Dodgers like advanced scout themselves it's what you should do and then there's that they tell Freddie know what our pitches are gonna do. Because the Dodgers like advanced scout themselves. It's what you should do. And then they tell Freddie Freeman like, if I was pitching to you, I would be throwing you this, this and this.

So I think that's what you'll see today, you know? And then he's like, oh yeah, he's doing exactly what you. It's such a simple thing, but it makes so much sense. Like why would you not try to find your own weaknesses? Like figure out what people are going to do to you and counteract that, be ready for it. That explains so much about why they are who they are. It's not the full explanation, but it's just part of it.

It's part of their DNA. I'm looking at the Beau Bichette heat map for the shadow zone. Yeah, it's low in a way. I mean, it's gonna be low in the light. He's just digging those and serving those into the opposite field. That's what it looks like, yeah. But he's still doing it in a way. I mean, it's gonna be low in a way for life. He's just digging those and serving those into the opposite field. That's what it looks like, yeah.

But he's still doing it as a barrel. So it kinda makes sense because it's his hit tool, right? So I'm gonna dig more into some of the specifics on this, but I think hitters are just, man, they just have so many things they have to try and figure out. It seems like there are fewer adjustments they can make along the way compared

to pitchers. I don't know if that's actually true. It's like maybe a perception thing. The problem is we have so much more data on pitching and so little publicly facing stuff on hitters and the types of adjustments they're making. Even like the swing velocity, the bat speed stuff is new. We've been teased, but we haven't seen it fully. And then even then it's like understanding how it really works. Yeah, the bat path, like I would love to have bat path metrics and raw ones.

And then see, that's like down the road, I think we'll be able to do even better stuff with discipline because if I could say not this batter specifically, but a batter with this vertical bat angle, now I can say generally they're good in these areas. You know what I mean? You could sort of account for the shape of their swing, but that's out of reach for us right now. So right now, I think we

favor swinging in the heart of the zone. And I think we favored not swinging in the shadow zone, but it's just a big I think. So my face got really weird while you were saying that because I remembered something from a few years ago that you wrote about. It was about Vlad Jr. who was part of the question from Brendan and I wanna say Dan O'Coyne who was at the time at driveline is now in the big leagues as a coach with the Phillies maybe. Stop me if I've completely just.

He's director of R&D for the Phillies. Yes, okay. It was about attack angle for Vlad Jr., right? Something about his swing being kind of flat and not generating enough loft consistently. Is that the problem more so? Is that still the problem more than the pitches he's hitting? It could be both. But I think if you just change the pitches you swing at, can he just unlock more power, keeping the swing the same? Or does he have to change the swing to get back to that power we saw, geez,

three years ago, four years ago now? Yeah, that's part of it too, because you're talking about the shadow zone. We're also talking about the shadow zone as a monolith, right, but the shadow zone is different sections. Yeah, is shadow zone in? High and low, low and in and out. Isak Paredes, think he's pretty good

on the inside shadow zone. Yeah, I would guess. And Vlad actually, we saw from his home run derby that he loves it high and tight. That's his nuke zone. So, if you're talking about shadow swings, like, some of those are in the shadow, but he's nuking them.

But again, then you're starting to get into sort of the particulars of any one-hitter. Yeah. Cutting the pie into too many pieces. Happy pie day, by the way. This is a great day to get a slice of pie. I prefer pie the food to pie the number by a healthy, healthy margin. You can't eat the number.

No, you really can't. So I first came to Edward Jones with a great deal of trepidation when I first met with my advisor and I really was feeling vulnerable about what I would have to share. I was of course pleasantly surprised to find that there was absolutely no judgment and a lot of support. And when it was time to get serious, he really took my hand and helped me to do that. Edward Jones, we do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. A fresh voice can speak to you and open your ears and your mind to new views and new perspectives.

The call of the wild, a crescendo of culture. Listen as a chorus of fresh voices moves you, taking you to greater heights. Add your voice to the mix and let fresh answer back with perfect harmony in Pure Michigan. Keep it fresh at michigan.org. All right, let's get to a few mailbag questions here before we go.

This one came from our Discord from ManuFootball022, is Quinn Priestor interesting? And this came after I believe his first outing of the spring, which was a good one. He's had at least one bumpy one since then. But the main reason I think this was a question is that there's some pedigree there. There's a decent arsenal of pitches, five allegedly, since then, but the main reason I think this was a question is that there's some pedigree there.

There's a decent arsenal of pitches, five allegedly, according to the question at least. Any interest in him from a deep redraft or dynasty perspective at this point? Because he does seem like he's not discussed as much as Paul Skeens or Jared Jones, especially on this show. I think he's a classic bad fastball guy. The way that that works is just that they can become good pitchers, but I think that sometimes it takes longer and it takes great command of a bunch of different pitches and your ceiling isn't as high. You know, it's the, you know, do you want the future Chris Bassett

or the future, uh, you know know Garrett Cole question kind of over again It's a nice park to do this sort of thing in the spring He had a 98 stuff plus on his four-seam fastball, but he threw four of them in the sample. I'm looking at so this is Obviously obfuscated by the fact that it's a small outing. I just generally like Jared Jones a lot better and I put Quinn Priestor amongst, so they have these, the pirates have a whole rotation of old guys

and then a whole rotation of young guys behind them. If you're talking about the rotation of young guys, I've got Quinn Priestor, I guess, second to Jared Jones. I mean, or Skeen, so it's a Skeens, Skeens, Jones, Priestor, Ortiz, Ronzie. I'm kind of, Ronzie's just lost it for me. I think he's excited for that. But there's also like the next wave behind them

between Solometto and Bubba Chandler too. Right, but I think I'm just sort of doing the medium term, I guess. Yeah, yeah, looking more like how they're gonna to, how I'm on the next next group. I like Thomas Harrington, but like it's an A-ball or something. So, uh, so, uh, I guess yes, he's interesting because the, this, this, the veterans ahead of them are super boring. I mean, we've got Keller, but then we've got Marco Gonzalez, Martin Perez, Chase Anderson, and there's somebody else too.

They signed another person. What'd you seen anything on the day? They had Bailey Falter. And Bailey Falter, I'm gonna count him in that sort of veteran group. And I'm actually kind of thinking that might be the rotation. Oh, they got Lauer too. And I'm actually kind of thinking that might be the rotation. I think a lower too. That's that lower. So that's, you know, they're going to take the

five veterans and go in, I think, and then sort through those guys. But five veterans like that, you're going to get somebody's going to get hurt. So is scheme or the first guy up who had? That rotation. Perez, Gonzalez, Falter, Lauer, teams that are stacked with righties are gonna crush those guys. Oh, I didn't even think of that. In Pittsburgh, I think left field is the harder field.

So they're trying to build a rotation that fits their park? No, I think they're just trying to have enough pitchers to get through this. I don't, I don't think this is the secret sauce. I think this, this is no, that's, this is 99 cent. How do you order the good stuff is still to come. They're not trying to trick or deceive or show us how smart they are with the veterans.

They're gonna show us how good and smart they are with the next wave that comes up. So is the question like how the pirates are doing? So let's say the pirates are doing well and you got your first guy you wanna take out of the rotation or is hurt. Lauer just doesn't have it or Gonzalez is hurt or whatever, right?

If the Pirates are winning, Skeens comes up first. Maybe you even make room for him, and you just demote somebody out of that rotation. Because you didn't, they're all one-year deals, you don't care. If they're not doing well, is Skeens still the first guy out? Maybe it's Quinn Priestern. No, you're still playing, you're still playing

the long game with development and trying to get it right. If he's ready, he's ready. I think that's, that's gotta be their internal philosophy with skeins, with Jones, with any of those, those really good hitting products. So, Priester ends up being like, he's sort of interesting, but he's sort of varied. Even though if you look at Fangrass that says Priester is the sixth starter, if you actually kind of run through how this is going to work, I don't think that that actually captures what he is.

He's the third young guy behind five veterans, maybe six. Still have Luis Ortiz in there too, 11 Ks, three earned and eight innings so far. Five? Five, that's still. Yeah, still Luis Ortiz. So that's still there. So he's kind of part of that mix too.

Quint Priest and Luis Ortiz are like sort of neck and neck. I might put Priest ahead of Ortiz, but you know, I don't know that either of them is making the opening day roster. And I'm increasingly negative about Jared Jones's chance of making the opening day roster. That's a bummer. Thanks a lot for that question, Manu Football. Let's get to a couple more. This one's from, it's Jim on the Discord.

Jim was using the, the Fangraph's auction calculator for auto new to spit out projected points for the league setting using the ATC projections. How do you recommend we use the SP ranking within the auction calculator? Oh, that's pretty easy. One thing that I try to do,

I mean, it's easy, but it's not great. One thing I can tell you, advanced users on the Discord, there was a request for sort of component projections from StuffPlus PPRA and Jordan did that. So if you are an advanced user, you can go on Google Doc and like you can actually get projected, I think like singles, like all all that stuff. You can get sort of component stuff and build your own projection. Build your own valuation off of our projections. So that's one answer for the rest of us. One thing that I've done is just be like, you know, here are the top 20 starters.

You know, Enos got this guy 15th Let me just look at what the 15th best starter is on The auction calculator it's it's dirty but like you'll get into an auto no about in auction if you've realized that Like the auction calculator doesn't prepare you that well for them It doesn't because the league is pretty different if you're playing the points especially. It's not a knock on any one or anything. It's just that we have so much conversation, there are so many rankings that are based on

five by five roto that we're all wired to value the players for that and we don't make full adjustments to reflect a point system or something that's different. And then the auction calculator is just not that great for auto new because even if you put the players in and it tries to do inflation for you like the keepers and stuff You can't do that in the auction calculator Like each team is gonna have an own their own budget

And so like each there's gonna be just these players were like like the auction calculator said Jackson Who's a minus $10 player in my league in my five-by-five league, right? And so I was like, well, I hope to get him for a buck or two I bought him for six I think or seven because me and Alan Harrison both needed outfielders you know and so would like you end up in these little bidding wars and you're just like well this fits my puzzle this way now if this person is starting from scratch I think this is a better thing to do, is just be like, okay, Eno's fifth starting pitcher,

let me just look at the fifth starting pitcher, that's a general value. It doesn't help you with, but Strider and the auction calculator, I agree with Strider. I have him first, the auction calculator have him first. There is a big gap there. So you're not running into these big gaps. Once beyond that, they're just sort of ordered.

There's sort of pictures ordered by dollars. So you can get a sort of idea of like, okay, this guy should be about 20 bucks because he's the 10th best pitcher and the 10th best pitcher over there is 20 bucks. I would try to blend them a little bit, try to get them side by side and excel if you can. I'd kind of work off of the E-mail rankings,

but make sure you're adjusting for the settings of auto new accordingly, bumping up guys like Logan Webb, Fromber, assuming that those are the same settings that Jim's using. Yeah, some of the volume guys are going to pop more in the calculator. Just making sure you're making fine adjustments based on the big differences. That would be the important thing. The last thing about Auto New is it's a 12-team league, so you kind of like the auction calculator will like, will look at that and be like oh you know there's all the like there's only

this many pitchers that are that are useful and then the rest are gonna have minuses so you're gonna run into the Swinsky problem where you're gonna see a pitcher you like and he's gonna be minus three dollars on the auction calculator and you will buy him for three dollars you know or five dollars and it'll be okay because you have a long bench in auto new and You can actually cycle those guys as a daily lead you can cycle those guys in So my general strategy for building your staff would be to have a couple $20 guys Maybe a couple $10 guys and then you know have a long tail of kind of two to five dollar guys

Because you're gonna get a lot of mix and match opportunity and a lot of stuff you can do there to maximize your points because you will have a limit on how many starts you can do for the week but you can play around with which starts you want. Yeah, really well said. So hopefully that is helpful for anybody out there in a situation like the one that Jim described.

Thanks for that question, Jim. Thanks for the question, ManuFootball. Thanks for the big question from Brendan too that gave us a lot to chew on on this episode. As we go, a reminder you can get a subscription to The Athletic. It should be two dollars a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Be sure to get in. We're only two weeks away from full opening day and we're less than a week away from the opening series in Korea which means we're less than a week away from our two live episodes

at Other Half Brewing, the Domino Park location. It sounds like a 6.30 start time for the pod is now what we're landing on. It's been written in pencil. We're going to write over it in ink. We're going to start the games at three, you know, and just have the soul games on in the background, meet and greet and hang out. As those end, we'll transition to having the pods.

There you go. So I guess some of it depends on how long those games actually are in their rebroadcasted form too since those will be replayed from 6 a.m. Eastern first pitch. And we've got Nick Pollock on Wednesday and Mike Petriello on Thursday as the as the guests for our pods. So those are going to be fun. Looking forward to both of those shows and meeting a lot of you out there at other half in about a week. As we go, a couple of reminders here, you know, on Twitter at, you know, Sarah's I'm at Derek Vandiver, find the pod at rates and barrels. And again, join the discord.

You can find the link for the listener league. We're onto listener league number three, thanks to our friends over at FanTracks. 200 people in each league so far, hopefully we can fill a third one, I think that would be awesome. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on the YouTube page at one o'clock Eastern on Friday.

Thanks for listening.