Rates & Barrels - Early fallers, the Dodgers' rotation depth, and starter vs. closer roster balance

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss early fallers among hitters and pitchers, the Dodgers' replacement options for Dustin May, the new look Ryan McMahon, and the viability of banking more saves in the first half of the season with a reliever-heavy lineup before making up ground in the second half with more starting pitchers.  Rundown 2:25 Mookie Betts 8:44 Francisco Lindor 16:46 Marcell Ozuna 21:56 Kyle Tucker 25:03 Jose Abreu 28:55 DJ LeMahieu 31:53 Lucas Giolito 37:45 Luis Castillo 41:18 Kenta Maeda 43:38 Blake Snell 45:46 Kyle Hendricks 51:31 Frankie Montas 57:15 Dodgers Replacement Options for Dustin May 64:01 Is Ryan McMahon for Real? 67:20 Closer Balance Early v. Late Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We're digging into April Follers, both on the hitter and the pitcher side. Lots of players to get to over the course of the show. We're going to take a look at the possible replacements for Dustin May in the Dodgers rotation. We had a mailbag question come in about Ryan McMahon's fast start, whether or not he has made some adjustments for the long-term better. And we've got a great question about what to do with your balance of starters and relievers.

If you're closer heavy early, how long should you go closer heavy in that lineup before you have to flip and go more starter heavy to balance out your stats in a rotisserie league? Eno, how's it going for you on this Monday? It's going well. It's going well. I went to an actual party this weekend and it was so much that I didn't do anything on Sunday. I just laid around. I guess that was a hangover. I hadn't had one in a long time. But yeah, we had this, uh, we had this thing where we rented a bus and drove around,

um, uh, the Bay area to treasure Island and to the beach and, just had music on the bus and drinks on the bus and everybody was, uh, vaccinated or had a negative test to get on the bus. So once that part was done with, it was, uh, it was almost

like old times. It was fun. I'm closing in on getting back to old times. I had my second dose of the vaccine on Saturday. I felt hungover. I felt like I ran a 10K and then drank a dozen beers on Saturday even though I didn't do any of those things.

I got my shot. I took a nap. You hydrated like a maniac all Friday. Yeah, I drank water and Gatorade and liquid IV. I was doing everything possible to reduce symptoms on Sunday, and I just felt bad for a day. I'm grateful I feel a lot better today and obviously grateful to have had that second dose, but looking forward to getting back to some normal gatherings here in the very near future. Let's start with the fallers among hitters. We are going to take a look at some early rounders who have disappointed us so far.

Maybe run through a couple laggard boards as well for some other players of concern. I don't have Mookie Betts on any teams so far this year. Maybe I'll end up trading for him somewhere. It's hard to trade for a star player, but he is one of those guys, if you don't have him, you might not realize he just hasn't quite been himself thus far. I keep wondering though,

you know, if it's really just been a few minor injuries that have caused his first month numbers to lag behind expectations. You look at some of the underlying numbers, the barrel rate being the 26th percentile, it's a concern without context. Once you realize that Betts is not usually among the league leaders in barrel rate anyway,

it's a little easier to see that number next to his name. Yeah, I mean, his current barrel percentage is right in line with his career norms, maybe just a little tick down. What concerns me a little bit in sort of Keeper League parlance is just that his max EV peaked in 2016, and you can just sort of watch it go down

if you're looking at a stat page. And it used to be good, and now it's 107, which is not very standout. The one thing I will say, though, is that even with the speed asterisk that we had with him, and he's still down there to the 57th percentile, 58th percentile here, with the broad base of skills that he started with, I feel like he can afford to lose in certain places.

So if he was an Adam Dunn type character and his barrel rate did what his barrel weight is doing and his max if he did what he was doing, I'd be like, this career is almost over. But he runs and he plays defense and he has really good plate discipline and he makes really good contact. runs and he plays defense and he has really good plate discipline and he makes really good contact so i mean it's a long-winded way of saying that i think that probably his true talent these days is something more like uh if you just like for example you say his expected batting average is 283 so i think you know even though he's hitting 250 i would say that his true talent right now is more like a 280 to 300 hitter with like 25 homers and 15 steals it's wild though because he had 16 homers and 10 steals in 55 games last season that just seems like a pretty rapid drop off from a level that looked like almost a new level from

bets during his first season but his barrel rate wasn't that great last year the only thing that was better was his sprint speed. And maybe it was just like, you know, I can put the pedal to the metal for, you know, two months a lot easier than I can for six. Could be. I think I'm not quite ready. And there's the back.

You were talking about the back. Yeah, I'm not quite ready to lower the ceiling because of health, right? If we get to June or July and everything's kind of trending the same way it has the first month at that point, maybe I'll bring the ceiling down. But I still think you have an early first round ceiling. What part of my description do you have the most quibble with?

I actually think the power is still there. I think with bets, the max EV tailing off over time is pretty interesting. I do think the park being one that still boosts homers, the high drives in particular, you wrote about this two years ago now, I think that's going to help. I think when you look at the plate skills still being intact, that does give them that high batting average floor,

but I look at the overall approach and I still see a guy that makes enough hard contact and makes contact frequently enough to continue doing just about everything he's done well at a very high level. So I'm attributing the slow start to the injuries to this point. I do think the keeper dynasty angle, maybe that's where the conversation should be focused, right? The peak for Mookie Betts in terms of his long, long-term value,

maybe right now, or we may be even slightly past that. So if you had him on a team and you're not really positioned to win this year or next, this could be the rare opportunity to turn him into some elite younger players, right? We talk about never wanting to trade away guys like Soto and Tatis and Acuna in a dynasty league, but you always want to make sure that the first rounders who are going to become second and third rounders in the years ahead, you max those guys out if you're not contending. So I think this could be a time to possibly do that with bats,

especially if he does start to warm up a little bit and those numbers look more like what we saw in the past. Here's a fun thing. Statcast debuted their park factors. And if you look at their home run park factors um for this year dodger stadium fourth friendliest to home runs with a 118 park factor it goes reds phillies orioles dodgers above the rockies, White Sox, Astros. A little bit surprising. I can also do all years so that it's not just this year. And check that one out.

This is officially a digression now. But I can't then break it up by home runs. So this is just distance. I don't understand that. So then it's a minus six foot distance on Dodger Stadium. Hmm, very strange. Anyway, I would say that Dodger Stadium is, for homers, a hitter's park. It doesn't play as a fully hitter's park across the board,

which, as you can see, their overall park factor is a 99, middle of the pack. Right. So I still look at that and say that power aspect of the park ultimately keeps that power ceiling a tick higher. It seems to be the most important thing for fantasy, right? I mean, yes, it overall matters if you're picking pitchers and stuff. But, you know, a lot of the point systems have home runs allowed, you know, so the pitchers, that matters. And then for the hitters, we know we're all chasing homers.

Absolutely. that matters. And then for the hitters, we know we're all chasing homers. Absolutely. Let's move on to another early rounder who's been disappointing people, including Mets fans, but fantasy managers also pretty disappointed so far with Francisco Lindor. I do have Lindor a few places, and I keep thinking he's going to be absolutely fine. And sometimes we see this with players who signed a big contract. There's this added pressure to earn every dollar of that contract with every single swing to begin the season. I wonder if that's a little bit of what's been going on with Francisco Lindor through his first 23 games as a Met. Sorry, Lindsay Adler. Talk to you later.

Francisco Lindor. Francisco Lindor. See, here's the weird thing about what you're saying, and I agree that he even sort of self-reports some pressure on him. His chase rate is the lowest of his career. So he's in that weird place where he's he's stressing but most people manifest stressing with chasing and instead he's manifesting it by not swinging like trying to find the perfect pitch maybe and ending up in some situations that he's not used to being in yeah yeah i mean like for example his swing at meatballs is lower than usual.

He's also getting fewer meatballs than usual. So is the pitching somehow better? Is the competition better? Or is it, you know, I think there's just a number, there's just a level of, like, familiarity that happens. Where, like, if you're in in the central a lot of the pitchers will carry over and you'll be like oh yeah i saw this guy last year he has this this and this i know what to do here you know now he's just like who's this guy who's who's trevor rogers why is

this guy throwing 95 you know like what is going on here he's got this weird slot it's gonna take him three times to really get to it uh i would say that the max EV being up from last year is good. The barrel rate being so tiny is terrible. I mean, that's not good at all. But in his best year, he's never been like a top 10 percentile barrel rate guy either. So, and I hate to do this to him right after bets, but I'm revising my ceiling on him. to him right after bets, but I'm revising my ceiling on him. And I kind of think of him now as like a 270 hitter with 25 homers and maybe, you know, maybe 10 steals because he hasn't even taken off this year. Yeah. I mean, he hasn't been getting on base all that much. So that's part of

the issue, but I do think the speed is the kind of thing that starts to go away as you get into your late twenties anyway. And after you've signed that big contract, teams are a little less likely to expose you to the possible risk of stealing bases. So I understand lowering the ceiling in that category. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on this progressive field versus city field and how the ballpark might actually impact Lindor's power ceiling as well. how the ballpark might actually impact Lindor's power ceiling as well. We did have something from Derek Cardy on this going into the season where he said that Cleveland, if you take temperature out of it, is actually a hitter's park, which to me does bring up to the point like how much do you want to take temperature out because it is colder in Cleveland than it is in other places right now. But to take a look at the new stat cast features, overall, Citi Field plays as on par with the Mariners as the pitching is friendliest.

Pitching is pitcher friendliest to pitchers right there between the Mariners like right after the Mariners Giants and A's and when the Cardinals are 19th that's all very interesting to me but it still plays okay for homers and it also plays up strikeouts

Citi Field does so there's something going on and actually I think if you look at that batter's eye, I think that the Apple home run structure, the Apple. The literal Apple? The Apple, I think, is in the batter's eye. So interesting that they augment strikeouts more than any other park in the big leagues. I think that's a park factor that I overlooked for a long time,

just the differences in how difficult it can be to pick up the ball coming out of the pitcher's hand. I see it prominently in parks where I watch games most frequently. It's not a surprise at all to me to see American Family Field, formerly Miller Park in Milwaukee. What's that batter's eye like? You have the slide. Does the slide go through the batter's eye? No, it's on left field.

The batter's eye itself doesn't seem unusual to me at Miller Park. What seems odd to me is that for day games, especially if you have a mid-afternoon start, like those Saturday afternoon games, you get the sun coming through the various panels high up in the ballpark, casting all these shadows. Where sometimes you're going to have the batter's box in the shadow and the mound is in the sun and picking up the ball.

And the ball will go in and out of the sun. Right. I think there are some some times like that where it gets a little bit funky that might be contributing to that number i'm sure there's other factors in there too that's very interesting i always go to the batter's eye because giants park is number two uh in in strikeout uh park factor and they have a very simple one which is they have metal bleachers that do not paint. And if for the first two innings or so, the sun is setting behind.

And if there's not a lot of people on them for COVID or even just, you know, getting to the ballpark reasons, those are empty metal seats where the sun comes over the back of the park and reflects right there. And I've stood behind home plate around BP and just been like I can't see anything so that's definitely what players are reporting and then Tampa is fifth and I think Tampa just has just weird whiteness everywhere you know just weird white bag this is a strange part I think of his tropic and it's just a strange park. That's what I think of as Tropicana. It's just like, why is everything white canvas? It seems like one of the most challenging places

to play a professional baseball game. And obviously Dunedin has temporarily taken that crown, I think, just because the lighting in that park is not nearly the same as it is in a typical major league park. But you've lowered the ceiling for Lindor, but you're still talking about 270, 25, and 10, which should be really good counting stats by season's end. He still seems like the kind of guy, if you have him, he's a hold. If you can get him any sort of discount, he's a buy low.

Yeah, but that stolen base thing, one of the reasons why we took him early on were stolen bases. We figured he'd steal some bases. I mean, now he has zero stolen bases, and how many bases you steal in a given year kind of becomes sticky fast. It's like a thing that shows up. His success rate can be a little bit wonky. Sometimes he'll just get caught a couple times, and that'll change his success rate. But attempt rate, especially on the team

level, even two weeks of spring training can tell you how often a team will take off. So the fact that he's attempted one steal this year says to me that projecting him for 15 is off base. Yeah, I guess you would see a pretty significant drop in where he was going to be drafted if you knew going into the year, 20 plus isn't on the table anymore.

Yeah, you would have lowered him probably two or three rounds, even ADP, just because of the uncertainty around his power and that he has to be a max volume player to kind of hit that high end expectation that he's built for himself over the last several years. Let's get to Marcel Ozuna. This is a surprising one for me because even though what he did in the shortened season seemed like a level that wasn't that far away from what he actually did in 2017

over 159 games with the Marlins, I didn't expect him to repeat it, but I thought the power was extremely safe. And through 28 games, he's only got three homers, only slugging 306. K rate hasn't gone completely through the roof, though. Walk rate's still decent, even though it's down from where it's been the last two seasons.

What do you make of the early output from Marcelo Zuno? Yeah, supposedly, you know, 79 battered balls supposedly the fact that he has to only have six barrels is um significant but there is this idea about stability and significance that's interesting it's just that it means that after 50 balls in play uh the the current stat that the player has um contains signal it does not mean it does not contain noise you know? And there's still this sliding relationship between the signal and the noise going forward. It just means that it's more signal than noise. But if you were regressing that, if you were going to project

his barrel rate going forward, you would still use a decent amount of his career barrel rate, right? Like I'd love to see what the bat x uh projection in terms of barrel rate for azuna because right now he's at 7.6 last year was a 15.4 uh which if you took a three-year average going into last going to this year would have been around 11 or something so uh that's a significant drop but i think going forward you'd project him for something like a nine to ten because you're still using signal. You're still saying that 7% matters, but you're still regressing somewhat to his personal average or his personal history.

So I think going forward, you'd almost give him his career barrel rate, which is 9.4. And part of that reasoning is he still has a top 5% in baseball max EV. is he still has a top 5% in baseball max EV. So he's had a couple of singular events that say I'm still here. The barrel rate doesn't look great, but I think you could expect more going forward. And generally, I like his strikeout and walk rates right now.

So I know he's 30, and he could be a barrel rate absolutist, but I think in this case, I still think he's a bylaw. We're not seeing an increase in O-swing percentage. It's actually the best it's ever been at 29%. It just seems like it's only a matter of time

before Ozuna sort of gets back into the 2018 form. Hasn't he also been fairly streaky? I mean, he's not like a high strikeout guy. A lot of those guys are really streaky. But I just think of Ozuna as like a player of the week guy. Kind of like Chris Davis at his peak. Oakland Chris Davis.

He has like five homers in like a week or something. And like we were all talking about how great Marcel Ozuna is. And the week before, we're like, is he a boy love? on how great Marcelo Zuna is in the week before. We're like, is he a boy love? In terms of dynasties, though, if you were not competing this year, I'd wait for that hot streak and then probably sell him.

I mean, we're getting closer to the point. Unless you, like, let me riddle me this. Do you think he can be like a Nelson Cruz type? I think. Where he just does this the rest of his life like he does it for like six more years seven more years while i think we're seeing some evidence that he could be that kind of player i think it is smarter to bet against anyone being like nelson cruz than it is to bet on someone being like nelson cruz so for just from a general philosophy and playing the odds

sort of perspective i think you'd be wise to move Ozuna in a keeper or dynasty league once things look normal again. I do think things are going to look normal again. So yeah, I would agree with you that it makes sense to trade for him if you're looking for some pop. Especially since he's not going to steal you any bases.

So what's he going to do year in, year out for you? He's probably something like a 280 average and a bunch of homers which is fine but we all know that steals come from young players and so if you're in a dynasty league and someone could offer like you could maybe put him together for for wander or something like i think i might do it like i don't know your personal taste will say do i need something thrown in with wander but like you know azuna forander is the kind of deal that I would have been like, you are crazy. What are you doing? What are you doing? Ozuna is like a real life major league

player and you're going to turn them in for a prospect. But more and more, I'm like, number one prospects are just, the stars come from number one prospects. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on Ozuna, though. I do think there's some longer-term cause for concern. I think one thing that stands out to me, though, that gives him a little more floor than a lot of other power hitters, like comparing him to someone like Nick Castellanos, who from a rotisserie perspective might look similar more often than not with the power and the counting stats,

Ozuna walks a lot more or has been walking a lot more. And the strikeout rate. the plate skills are pretty good. Yeah, so it's probably a lot more graceful of a decline than a lot of other players like him. I think that's the one thing really working in his favor for long-term leagues. Let's talk about Kyle Tucker, a player that I have liked a lot for a long time.

And as much as I liked him in 2021, I did not end up with him anywhere, I believe. Unless I've completely forgotten about a team on which I drafted Kyle Tucker. I have him nowhere. It was a bit of an awkward spot in snake drafts. I think he was kind of like early fourth. And you had to be,

I think you had to be on one side of the, like you had to have an early pick. I think the place where I have Kyle Tucker, he was my fourth pick and I had like you had to have an early pick. I think the place where I have Kyle Tucker, he was my fourth pick and I had like a top three or top five pick. So it was like one, two, three, four, or maybe fifth pick. This is around the turn at

four or five, I think. Five homers, two steals, but 188, 248, 366 so far. Underlying numbers in terms of strikeouts and walks really haven't changed. Nothing to be alarmed by there. Hitting the ball in the air a little more than he did in the shortened season. I don't really see anything, at least on the surface,

that gives me reason to believe that he's not going to come back to being the player we all expect him to be going into the season. Yeah, I mean, maybe he's a little pull happy. going into the season? Yeah, I mean, maybe he's a little pull happy. You know, a few too many pop-ups, but he's done some pop-ups in his career. You know, the chase rate is about in line with what he's doing and about average.

His zone rate's about the same. His meatball percentage has gone down, but he's still swinging at meatballs when he gets them i don't know man i i look across his package and i just see like bylo buy him and one of the major things that i like is that 18 strikeout rate i just love that a 10 barrel rate and an 18 strikeout rate and he's gonna steal. In fact, of all the names that we're talking about today, he is the one that I want to put my buy low stamp of approval on the hardest. Maybe Ozuna, but with Ozuna, there's still the he's 30 thing, asterisk, right? With Tucker, it's like, no, he's 24, dude.

I love Tucker. And I think if you're in a dynasty league and competing, maybe somebody has some prospect fatigue love Tucker. And I think if you're in a dynasty league and competing, maybe somebody has some prospect fatigue with Tucker. This might be one of the last few times you could buy him in a dynasty league before, you know, he's 28 or 29. Yeah, my thought here was if you are not contending this year and you're looking for a building block for the long haul, the window might be open.

You might have someone who's playing for the immediate future who's more willing to trade him today than they would have been prior to the keeper deadline back in February or March. So I think Tucker makes a lot of sense as a buy low. Ozuna and Charlie Morton for your Kyle Tucker. Yeah, maybe. Something like that could, I mean,

it's at least a starting point for the conversation. Maybe you throw in a reliever too. I mean, a lot of times when you're making Something like that could be at least a starting point for the conversation. Maybe you throw in a reliever, too. I mean, a lot of times when you're making trades like that, you're just trying to get Tucker. So it almost doesn't matter what you throw in, right? It's just like, whatever veterans I've got, take them. Any good players that you really can't keep, I think, would be the bundle that you're looking to send to the contending team

to pry Kyle Tucker away. Jose Abreu was a player that I did not draft anywhere this season. Common thread for really a lot of these guys, which is strange. I didn't avoid all the bad players. You're smart is what you're saying. No, I've made enough mistakes. You didn't buy all these bad players. I don't know why.

I bought different bad players. Whatever could it be? Couldn't be my smarts. Could it? My play was perfect. The game is flawed. So, Jose Abreu, the reason I didn't draft him anywhere is because I just felt like you were really consolidating

all of the best possible things he could do into one shortened season. It was reflected in the price. I think he's a totally fine high floor sort of player. It's a slow start in that the average is down over 100 points and K rates actually up, but he is walking more than ever. I think like everybody we've talked about, I'm not panicking by what we're seeing.

I didn't like price for him on draft day in the first place. So it again comes down to what it actually takes to get them. I think if you look at a Bray you versus Marcelo Zuna, that's actually kind of an interesting sort of would you rather for the rest of the season like who do you think is more likely to come back to the levels that we're accustomed to and i think for me i'd be more willing to bet on ozuna simply because abreu is already 34 years old i have to think of an age. Also, Abreu striking out 28% of the time, which is not just sort of like, oh, that's who he is now.

But compared to Ozuna, who's striking out about 24% of the time, y'all know my bias by now. I like guys who don't strike out. It is interesting to me. I would not have guessed that Abreu actually was such a max EV darling.

Did you know that? That he's constantly at or near the top of that list? Yeah. He's not a barrel rate darling. I knew that because there's a fair amount of ground ball in his swing. And that's way up this year. He's at 58.8% for his ground ball rate. That's 13 percentage points higher than his career mark.

Yeah, the only two really concerning things for me are the strikeout rate and the underlying parts, which I think you're talking about. Also, on top of that, he lost his chase contact. His contact outside the zone went down pretty precipitously. That's something that sometimes just goes away. You see bell curves with players, right? You see them return to the flaws they had when they first came in. In that

case, too many ground balls and too many strikeouts worries me a little bit. Not that Abreu came in with too many strikeouts, but we also saw Abreu enter the league at his peak. He's a Cuban that came over at his mid-20s. I would say that I like him and he's fine, but I think I'd rather buy Zuna. Abreu was about 15% better than a league average hitter in 2018 and 2019. That's probably the player you're getting the rest of the way,

not the guy that was popping the 166 WRC plus in the shortened season. But again, you probably should have known that going into the season. So adjust accordingly. 280, 28. 280, 30. Maybe he makes the back end of 30. And then maybe he doesn't make the 280 fully because he hasn't been a 280 hitter every year.

So maybe this is one of those 265 years. Yeah, 265 and 25. I mean, this is one of the best lineups, maybe the best lineup he's had around him during his entire time with the White Sox. So the counting stats could still get there. And that's another nice thing is that he won't probably have terrible think pieces in the local media about how broken is Jose Brehu because the team is doing fine. Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen at all.

Let's talk about DJ LeMayhew hitting 269, 356, 346 for the slug. So pretty big drop in that column in particular. K rate still good, 15.3%. walking more than ever at 11.9%. Still hitting a lot of balls on the ground, which is something he did even when things were going right for him last season. I think this is just kind of the normal ebbs and flows of DJ LeMayhew as a hitter that provides more power than you'd expect for a player with his profile. Yeah, I mean, the short porch there helps. I wonder, this ball, I don't think

that we have a full concept of what this ball is doing. So maybe an opposite field fly ball, if the ball is not traveling as far, then that's going to be the type of the classification of ball in play that's going to hurt the most is the opposite field fly ball. That's often where he gets his homers. So maybe you revise the homers down. I would say that this is kind of interesting. You might see on the YouTube ticker that DJ LeMay, whose barrel rate is 10th percentile. And you might say, whoa, that seems really low. Well, last year it was ninth percentile, I believe. Let me see.

Yes, ninth percentile. Five barrels last year. So he's never really been a standout there. He's more of a guy who has, for example, a high XBA because he's kind of more of a line drive hitter and he's got a a high XBA because he's kind of more of a line drive hitter and he's got a 297 XBA right now. So you bought him for batting average. You're going to get the batting average.

I think you might only get 15 homers this year. Maybe he gets hot. Maybe it's 12. Well, 15 is definitely less than you expected. If the average comes back all the way into the low 300 range by season's end and the run production ends up being there because the lineup fixes itself, then it's not a complete bust.

I'm not falling all over myself to go trade for DJ LeMayhew right now. There's got to be a league, though, where and this is the only place I think I might be falling all over steps to get him, is a batting average league that you've fallen behind,

but you're not punting it. Because if you do want to make damage to get back into batting average, you've got to do it now, I think. Yeah, you can't wait long to get back. Like I'm looking at my ERA and whip and labor and being like, I'm in second place, my my era and whip aren't great and i'm just like what do i do what do i do what do i do do i trade a closer yeah you got to make that decision sooner rather than later and i think you're wise to try and make the move now if if there's an opportunity to do it otherwise you

got to kind of lean the other way and say well oh, I'm giving up on this category. So I'm going to go ahead and try to max out everywhere else and try and find value in those spots wherever possible. All right, you know, let's get to some fallers on the pitching side. And much like we did with the bats, we're going to start with a few early rounders. Lucas Giolito kind of fits into that Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor group of well okay he was an early rounder a late first rounder in some high stakes leagues by the end of draft season maybe it's not as bad as it seems on the surface the stuff plus number at 104 is a step in the encouraging direction but the command plus number at 88 is something that gives me some pause and

we've seen good pitchers get by with command plus numbers in that range. But given the flaws we've seen from Giolito in the past, does that give you any added concern about his ability to pitch at the level we were expecting him to coming off of last season? I think that the command plus number is just sort of an always-on problem. I think that the command plus number is just sort of an always on problem. And so I want to distinguish between like what's an always on issue with him, which is, you know, his command is going to be kind of come and go a little bit. And what there seems to be maybe something stuff wise that's actually going on that.

I don't know. One thing is like how temporary is it? So in his debut, G Alito this year had a one 25 stuff. Right. And so one of the reasons we like to use at least two starts is to make sure calibration park to park, you know,

just make sure that maybe he had like a opening day adrenaline bump. He was the opening day starter. Right. So maybe he had more view that day since that day uh he's had a 105 a 101 a 109 stuff so now you're settling in okay okay this guy is more like a 105 ish stuff okay got it uh his second to last start a 100 and his last start an 88 so okay maybe we're just seeing the ebbs and forces ebbs and flows of this stuff number not true most of the stuffs i see are much more like we'll talk about kenta

later and he's just been mostly a metronome so i said well let me look at when we find what what caused this stuff number to to jump to drop and i'm seeing a 100 rpm drop in spin rate on the fastball and a four inch loss of ride that's with gravity it's a little bit different than the numbers i used to say because i used to be a brooks baseball person uh rip brooks um and so now I have to learn Trackman with everybody and so I'm speaking Trackmanese to you now and if you go to the Savant page I'm looking at average

vertical break with gravity and he started off with a minus 10 and in his last one he had a minus 14 so he lost 4 inches of ride on the fastball, which is concerning to me, along with the always on command thing.

So how much would you make of something like that if I told you that was the case with Lucas Giglio right now? I think I would say the difference between SP5 and SP12 is so small anyway that you could justify moving him down within that range to any spot of your liking. And I think the one thing that kept me away from Giolito when that price crept up a little bit at the end of draft season is the historical issue with the walk rate. And the homers. I think the bit at the end of draft season is the historical issue with the walk rate. And the homers. I think the walk and the homers, that's the command.

Right. We talk about being able to get away with one of those flaws. You can have a near 10% walk rate if you have home run suppression as a skill, and you can get away with an inflated home run rate if you have good control. But even with the great strikeout rate even with very good team providing run support and a solid bullpen protecting his leads it didn't quite make sense to me at least to push giolito all the way into the back of the first round again that's splitting hairs so that that's why i didn't end up with him yeah i got no shares i'm not gonna bury him i'm not gonna say oh he's a fringe top 20 starter at this point, but I do think bringing him down slightly. Fair. 15, 16, 17, somewhere in there. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like the ceiling being lower for

Lindor, right? Just as we're not expecting Francisco Lindor to steal 20 plus bases this season. Maybe we're not expecting Lucas Giolito to push a whip in the 105 range here on out. The bat has 373. I like that. 373 ERA and the highest home runs allowed. 1.39 homers per nine. That's where

I brought where I have him. That would still be an okay whip. I had him 11th in my rankings update. I brought where I have him. That would still be an okay whip. I had him 11th in my rankings update. I think I'd push him. Buehler's interesting. We won't talk about him in depth, but the Velo being down with Buehler, I don't know.

But Nola, Gallin, Urias, maybe even Musgrove, those guys, it seemed aggressive to push them above Giolito with Giolito's track record, but I think I would do that now. I think I'd have all those guys above Giolito, and then I'd probably have Giolito Bueller at 15, 16. I think Giolito for me would be down closer to Nola and maybe Blake Snell in that range. Those guys were 13 and 15 originally. And Giolito was five. But again, I think the difference for me between five and

12 coming into the season where I had Kershaw was next to nothing. It was more just like, I want one from that group, depending on where I'm drafting, I sort of get who I get. And the differences between them is pretty small. And the next guy we're going to talk about was in that group too. It's Luis Castillo. And we talked about him, I think, after his very first start of the year because the velocity was down a lot. The weather was bad in Cincinnati. So I was wondering just how much that might still factor into the overall stuff plus number that people are seeing on the screen. If they're watching on YouTube right now, it's 94.

So below average stuff, but above average command at this point with a 107 command plus how much can we attribute poor conditions to a suboptimal stuff plus number at this point you can assume and i may make this little app that i've been doing cards from on twitter you might have seen i may try to find a way to make that available to subscribers but um you can see in stuff and if you just want to kind of see this for yourself uh somewhere else velo rises will will make a difference in stuff so castillo's velo has gone up over time and he's went from um at his worst he had a stuff number at 85 in a second in the second game and that went to 90 to 95 in his last start he had a stuff number at 85 in his second game. And that went to 90 to 95.

In his last start, he had a 105 stuff. And so that has to do with his Velo going up and returning to normal. I hit him pretty hard because I got that stuff number in the middle of his nadir, right? So when my rankings update dropped, he had a 92 stuff number. Right now, he has a what do we have up there 94 and i bet you if he has another starter so he'll get that closer to 100 or even above it um by the end of the season so even though i had luis castillo 32 um and uh that wasn't that long ago i think i'd push him to at least within the back end of the top 30.

And he's someone now that I would consider sort of Berrios-esque. Not for you? No, it's just not a compliment. I like Berrios though. Okay, Flaherty-esque? I like Barrios, though. Okay, Flaherty-esque? I had Flaherty.

Jeez, I had Flaherty even one notch ahead of Castillo coming into the season. Flaherty's been really good so far. I think for me, yeah, Castillo's... I had Barrios at 18. So if we're dropping Castillo from fringe top 10 to back of the top 20, I guess there's not much of a pushback against that. The projections are even more bearish on Castillo than they are on Giolito. So whatever drop you're giving Giolito, you have to give even a little more than that to Castillo at this point. That tracks with how I feel.

Let's talk about Kenta Maeda for a moment. He came up on a listener question last week. Let's talk about you and me. Let's talk about all the good things. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I couldn't get in on that one. I'm sorry. You didn't want to do the chorus. Let's talk about stuff.

Let's talk about stuff. Is our acapella angle going to be kind of taking a weird Al approach to the lyrics of songs to make them more about baseball? Because that could be kind of taking a weird al approach to the lyrics of songs to make them more about baseball because that could be kind of fun or super corny both simultaneously you know what for for a group of people that really thoroughly enjoys puns though i kind of feel like we have a chance of surviving that's right twitter community maybe we made them sea shanties instead if we only sang sea shanties with baseball puns.

We could capitalize on the meme of the moment. Although that's probably the meme of like two weeks ago. Sorry, you old man. Keep up. Yeah, try to keep up. So the question that came in previously at Maeda, was there anything in the underlying numbers with spin or otherwise that looked like he was broken?

And the answer to that was no, not really. And it's interesting to see that the stuff plus number is at 113, command plus at 99. That to me is maybe the most encouraging combination of those two numbers of the three pitchers we've talked about so far. And if I'm not mistaken, Maeda's had the worst results by far, maybe of the entire group of pitchers we're going to talk about with one, maybe two exceptions coming up. But are you in on Maeda as maybe one of the best by-low starting pitchers out there right now? Because he was a first-time early rounder in draft season,

so I think you may have people who are a little more willing to give up on him quickly after he's thrown a 23 inning stretch with a 656 era to begin the season yeah man i'm buying and i'm buying beyond his projections i dios mio those projections look at that they all want like a 4-3 ERA or worse. It's not as bad as Castillo, but it's worse than Giolito. It would also be his worst ever. They're projecting him to be worse than ever, which I understand. He was with the Dodgers. He was pitching to pitchers.

Then he had a breakout year with the Minnesota Twins. But I see in the stuff over time, it has never dropped below 105, and it has been above uh 120 once so he's he's humming along in that sort of 105 to 115 level and location plus is uh a thing that max bay did the that's like command plus but it's just does he throw to the right locations and location plus has been positive so um i i think i think we could like put our heads together and try to come up with a reason where you know here's an inch dropped or inch gained or something like that or he's throwing the wrong counts or something this to me is just

an old-fashioned buy though i'm all into it yeah i think it checks out for me as well and i think even though the adp was higher than ever for Kenta Maeda, and I wasn't necessarily drafting him at that price everywhere, I didn't think he was so far overpriced where it was impossible to talk yourself into him. So it doesn't take much for me to say, yeah, I'm definitely in now that we're getting a slight discount. How about Blake Snell? I mean, the walk rate is up right now at 12.8%. I would say much like Giolito, he's always been a guy that's issued his fair share of walks,

and he's had occasional issues with the home run rate as well. 37Ks in 25 and two-thirds innings. Stuff Plus still looking good at 107. Command Plus, not surprisingly, sitting at 92. Anything else under the hood with Blake Snell that would give you some pause about thinking he can still get back to the levels that we expect? Because the projections on him are still very good. I think three out of the four systems on Fangraphs have him under a 3.5 ERA going forward.

Yeah, I don't have a real problem with him. I think that some of the source of his issues this year is the changeup. The changeup has a 75 plus stuff number and he is throwing it more than ever and it has his worst command plus number. So I think he, you know, I've talked to him over times before where he's like, I'm in love with the change-up right now, you know? So I just think, I think he was in love with the changeup right now. So I just think he was in love with the changeup for a little bit. And

I don't know. It's not like he has such terrible numbers that you can be like, dude, don't do that. But a 1-4-8 whip, I think. And the 5-2-6 walks per nine. That to me is the changeup. Also the best ground ball right of his career so you you you're giving your take right yeah i mean i really don't have a strong argument

against snell at this point i imagine that someone's in his ear saying hey don't throw this change up that often it's not it's not working for you, Blake. Throw the other stuff. The other stuff's all better, and they'll make that adjustment, and the numbers will follow suit. Or he'll walk guys with a changeup, and then he'll realize that he has to strike them out, so he goes back to the breaking balls, right? Because now he's got people on base. One way or another, I think he's going to figure it out.

Probably the worst pitcher so far results-wise that we're going to talk about, Kyle Hendricks. And I am stunned when we were putting together the information for the show today. The Stuff Plus and the Command Plus numbers are both above average. Stuff Plus at 104, Command Plus at 120. It's been a miserable start for Hendricks.

A 754 ERA a 1.76 whip looking at the pitches too on Savant his sinker so far has been his most effective pitch and usually that's his worst pitch. His changeup is getting beat up everything's just upside down right now for Hendricks yeah I don't really get it

the one thing that does stick out is that I think this fix is mechanical. I think there's something going on. And the place that you could see it, if Savant would help me, is when you look at what? You're not helping me. It's what you're doing. Look at average release vertical. And then you have to look, I guess.

Well, that doesn't help any. It's got a lower release point, right? Yeah, but, you know, it's hard to see because they have zeros in for 2015, and that's just annoying. But here, let's see if I can do it. Four-seam fastball, 6. Four-seam fastball, six. Four-seam fastball, 607. Yeah, that was a bust.

Let's see here. Yeah, you can actually... It's not so much that it's lower, it's closer to his body. Is that a flaw that needs to be corrected? There's a different release point. He has changed this release point before and it has been where it is right now before and he corrected it so let me see if i can go over

games and see if he corrected it in the season where it was so bad if he tried to by the end of the season figure it out that would be interesting right because then you would show that he's done it before i mean it's interesting with Hendricks while you're looking that up. The projections for him also point to worst of his career results going forward, much like Kenta Maeda. All the projection systems have him above a 4 ERA. He's never done that over a full season. The best whip projection is the bat at 121.

The rest are at 126 or higher. And for his career, he's at 112 and i know this was something that our friend yancey was tweeting about this morning i mean beating the metrics with the ability to induce weak contact specifically is something that hendrix seemingly has as a skill as much as anybody out there and it just has not been there so far the weirdest thing of all home run suppression generally seems like it's at least not a problem for hendrix i don't know if it's a skill you'd say is above average because he's right around like one homer per nine for his career and he's kind of within that mark every single year off the charts high on home runs right

now control is something he definitely has. And that provides you the least information out of anything. Right. Well, the control being a little out of whack is strange though because there's one season. I wonder if it was 2017 the year where he had this release point before because that's the only other year of his career where he's had a walk rate this high.

I feel like a character on Scooby-Doo right now trying to solve the worst mystery of all time in the second half of 2017 he was as low as he was in his first few starts and then in his last start he got his release point back

but it wasn't a good start right last time out yeah it was bad 3 and 2 thirds against the Braves 7 earned 3 Ks, 3 homers, 11 hits the problem with buying Oh, it was bad. Three and two-thirds against the Braves. Seven earned. Three Ks, three homers, 11 hits.

The problem with buying low, too, on him is just that if you're buying low on Luis Castillo, this guy has struck out 32% of batters he's seen before once in his life. You know what I mean? If you're buying low on Kyle Hendricks, the high for him ever was 22.8 so even if you're buying low on hendricks you're putting so much pressure on that walk rate that home run rate that babbitt you know you're you're you're putting all that pressure on that instead of being like well at least if i buy him he'll strike out 30 of the batter cc's you know what i mean you're buying low on lukis castillo like well probably the strikeouts will come back. But I do think

Kyle Hendricks is the type of pitcher because of that, you can actually trade for him. I think it's a lot harder to find people who are willing to trade you, Gialito or Maeda or Snell or Castillo. All those guys are a little easier to say, yeah, I can understand why they're going to bounce back

with Hendricks. I think because he doesn't have overwhelming stuff, that can lead someone who has him to be more willing to give up on him. What I've done is, because I had a couple shares, I've just been trying as hard as possible to keep him on my bench. And just wait for some signs of a turnaround. Yeah. I will say that it is interesting to me,

seeing this rapid change in release point in his last start. Wait, this is saying his last start was April 28th. The start I was referencing in which he was hit around by the Braves was April 28th. Okay. Well, I'd love to see if he holds this new release point and has a better start next time out. Yeah, it's actually been two good starts and three brutal ones, including one against Pittsburgh on opening day. Which is just rough. But the two good starts against Milwaukee is interesting. Yeah. Atlanta

has just torched him. Listen, I think I would feel much better if two things happened. If he had a good start next time out and if he held the new old release point. Well, something to keep an eye on here as the next turn for Kyle Hendricks comes up here in the very near future. Let's get to Frankie Montas. Also with pretty ugly ratios to this point in the young season. Underlying numbers, not terrible. Stuff plus at 107.

Command plus at an even 100. 620 ERA, 150 whip. Not terrible. Stuff Plus at 107. Command Plus at an even 100. 620 ERA, 150 whip. These ratios look very similar to the ratios we saw from him in the shortened season. K rate is down, but the walk rate is also down. Homers still up like they were last season as well. What's going on with Frankie Montes right now? I mean, we're still seeing the three-pitch mix. It's still fastball, slider, splitter. So it's not like he's ditched anything there. He's throwing more fastballs than he has the last two seasons.

So maybe that's part of the problem, not having slider command. Oh, yeah. Let me look at the breakdown of the pitches. That might be instructive. Pitcher by type. Here we go. pitcher by type here we go uh it is weird for me to look at these strikeout rates and these walk rates and now see about 75 innings in a row of like a five plus era isn't that a little bit weird to you to like watch him pitch and then look at his numbers and see his strikeout rate and then be like he has a what era

two seam fastball 106 command plus split finger 88 nobody commands that well four seam fastball 96 command plus slider 112 i don't see anything that obviously is wrong here especially since he uses his sinker more as a strike pitch and his foreseam more as an above-the-zone whiff pitch. So typical Montas approach is two-seam away, foreseam up and in, slider down. I think you've got a little bit of a 2020-2021 Frankenstein situation that actually keeps the window to make a deal for Montas open too. keeps the window to make a deal for Montas open too. Much like Hendricks, I think this is a player you can actually, in a decent number of leagues, actively pursue and maybe actually get a deal done. I watched the Tampa Bay start

for Montas. I'm checking now to make sure that I'm not speaking out of my buttocks. I remember Montas was dealing, and there it is. They left him in to try and get all the way through the six, and Brett Phillips homered. That's a real backbreaker. Without that, Montas goes,

I mean, if he finishes that, he goes six with one run, and his overall numbers look better. Maybe they left him in too long? Yeah, and then you have to, I mean, if he finishes that, he goes six with one run. And his overall numbers look better. Maybe they left him in too long? Yeah. And then you have to ask yourself, how good do you think that A's pen is? And how early can they take him out?

But they've been trying to go six with him. In his good games, he's gone six. In his other ones, he's been blown out and taken out. But actually, that's interesting to me, too. That there's these two blowouts and then otherwise really good. Like in the three games that he didn't get blown out and taken out. But actually, that's interesting to me too, that there's these two blowouts and then otherwise really good. In the three games that he didn't get blown out in, he had 18 innings, four earned runs. What is that?

17 strikeouts against four walks? I think this is an actual buy low. Yeah, I'm buying. Yeah, I'm right there. The only thing that bothers me is just that like yeah that's frankenstein situation where you're like damn like if you put that if but they're not the same season so you can't put them together but if you put them together you'd be at 75 innings of a five you know six oh oh era yeah i did i wrote this piece once that said that seasons were arbitrary endpoints. It's just like typical idiocy. It's just like probably some spring break where, you know,

some late Friday night I was like, dude, dude, seasons are arbitrary. But I think it's sort of like, think about it this way. Like, because we like to say, oh, the last 75 innings, Montauk's been terrible. Well, you know what? There was a pandemic. There was a bunch of months off. It's not like he just pitched 75 innings in a row in one season with the same stuff and had a 60 RA.

Right, which is why the Frankenstein method could be effective. And not effective. I think in this case, it actually leads you astray. Well, I mean, I think it's effective and that leads you to a buy low. Like, if someone's using that and saying, this is who he is, they're probably wrong. It's still just 75 innings. Yeah. You mean he had, the year before, he had 96 innings of a 2-6-3 ERA.

Like, we still haven't even gotten to the number of his breakout year, right? Yeah, so if you look at the projections for Montas, this is exactly where I would have figured they are. The bats got him at 4-12 and 1-26 for the ratios. They're all kind of in the low 4s. 1-20s for the whip for the most part.

1-30, 1 from zips. You're not buying the 2-6-3 ERA for that breakout year, but... I think you're getting an SP3 with an above average strikeout rate. And because of his ability to pitch deep into games, you might come away with a few more wins than you would from a lot of other pitchers that fall into that group. Yeah, because the A's may have to try and push him a little bit. Yeah. Back during draft season, maybe he was treated more like a four. So he was already a little underpriced. The slow start pushes him down a little more.

I think he can go from an SP5 sort of valuation today to more like a three for the rest of the season. I think that's in his range of outcomes at this point. So I'm in. I've got him right between a three and a five. I have him at 48 on the RERAC of my rankings. Still feels about right. Yeah.

Give him the up arrow, though. Give him the little sign. He's 48 and rising. 48 with a bullet. Breaking news here before we started recording today. Yeah, it came through on my phone. We got the confirmation. Dustin May is going to undergo tommy

john surgery kind of seemed like that's where things were headed he was sent for an mri earlier in the day on monday left his start over the weekend with elbow pain and the problem for the dodgers in the short term is that tony gonsolin is also hurt and he appears to be a few weeks away from stepping into the rotation so they've got a little bit of a buffer, a couple of off days coming up in the next 10 days that keep them from needing a fifth starter for a little while. How do you see them, without Gonsolin being ready to step in, replacing May when those turns come up? They said they needed three to four weeks to build him up because they need to stretch him out. to four weeks to build him up because they need to stretch him out.

I guess let's say for the organization, the best case scenario is that in two weeks they need him and he's slightly stretched out. Then you bring up Gonsolin and you say, give us three innings today as just your progression. Let's just treat this like your progression. Here's our three inning day. Next week, hopefully you can get to four. And they've got the bullpen to figure that out, right? The four and they've got the bullpen to figure that out. Right. The medium case solution is just the bullpen days. I could wear them down pretty good though. In May,

in the middle of the year, cause they've got a lot of bullpen injuries right now. I mean, Joe Kelly, bruiser, Gratterall, David Price, and Tony Gonsolin all on the IL right now.

Well, okay. So the closest people to starting, Dennis Santana started 17 games in 2019. Jimmy Nelson, Mitchell White. Jimmy Nelson, I think the train is left. Yeah, he's got 12 appearances this year and he's pitched 12 innings. And he was a hurt guy.

Price. Once he's healthy, he could be good to go. Oh, he's hurt. What the heck? He's down right now Mitchell White threw two innings in one of the games against the Brewers over the weekend out of how did they go from having so much depth to now we're trying to get him through two weeks that's crazy they're probably going to be fine but it it's just one of these things where the obvious replacement isn't quite ready to be the obvious replacement right, but it's just one of these things where the obvious replacement isn't

quite ready to be the obvious replacement right now. And I mean, it's a long-term absence too. So not only does it change the short-term value for whoever steps in, but I think the longer-term appeal, if you're in a deeper league and you're trying to stash the next guy up behind that, that's a question worth figuring out too. Okay. Well, we did get some feedback that perhaps in my chat, perhaps we should have been talking about Shane McClanahan before he came up. So should we give some love right now to Josiah Gray? Seems appropriate because I think we have to at least consider the possibility that now that there's a long-term absence in the rotation,

that Gray actually has a chance of filling it. And it might not be immediately. He hasn't pitched above AA, but he pitched really well at AA in 2019. He could pitch his way into this rotation. Looking for the innings count from that year, it looks like he threw, if I'm doing the math correctly on the fly, 130 innings across three levels. So with a one-month delay to the start of the minor league season, he could be used like a regular starter

pretty much the rest of the way in the upper levels of the minors and potentially in the Dodgers rotation. So even if he's not the guy that's getting the first opportunity to replace Dustin May, he's now on the deep league radar as someone to possibly stash away on your bench for the opportunity that may come in june or july or it may just come uh because they can option him up

and down they can save those days later right so they can just do it now so i would say by this by the end of this week like listen i guess you just have to listen, right? Because in terms of ability, I think Josiah Gray is a top 10 pitching prospect right now. Seems fair. And one of the things I like about him is things that make me worried about a prospect, if they're change-up first. It just means they don't usually have as high strikeout rates.

We've talked about this. It's just a breaking ball league, and I want you to have slider command. Absent me knowing your command grade for each of your pitches, I would say I'd much rather you had good command and a good breaking ball. What I'm seeing from Josiah Gray,

the Fangraphs team, 55 fastball, 55 slider, 50-60 command. I'll take that package. It seems like a good package. It seems like it's not one that is only going to be two pitches. He's going to have command, but he's a breaking ball first guy.

So, you just have to listen. I mean, we're talking about like, is it a weak? Right now, if you have space and it's a deep league and you're like a, this weird thing though, like there's deeper leagues, he's owned. Well, a keeper in Dynasty, sure. He's owned. But I'm thinking NL only leagues, he may not have been stashed away as a reserve. So I think there you want to pick him up now. Depending on your rules, if you can stash a

reserve, yeah, pick him there. Yeah, what percentage of leagues out there follow the rules? How about NFBC, where he could be in the player pool? He would have had to have been drafted in your NFBC league and then dropped to be in the pool before he debuts, which is probably only a

handful of those leagues. So you're just waiting for his debut, which in that case would be just like the same as the McClanahan situation, where you're just like, he's not in the player pool even, so I can't even pick him up. Right. That becomes a shut up and take my money situation. It's a very specific group of people that can pick up Josiah Gray

before he comes up. But let's stash the name at least. Yeah, so he's the long-term guy that I think could emerge to take on the bulk of the innings vacated by this unfortunate injury to Dustin May. I think it comes down to the health of David Price versus the health of Tony Gonsolin. The edge to me goes to Gonsolin. If both are healthy, I think they prefer him to Price. They could tandem start those two guys if they wanted to as well.

There's also this interesting thing that their injuries may give Gray a two-start shot, just in that week two, three, and then Gonsolin's ready to go. Right, and if it goes really well, they say, hey, actually, Josiah Gray's our best option, so he stays right now. If he gets hit around a little bit, then he goes back now. Gonsolin's our stretch mid-reliever guy. I wonder if they'll also consider just pushing Bauer a little bit in the short term while they get healthy. Well, here's your chance to do that starting every four days thing, Guy.

Yeah, absolutely. We had a question come in about Ryan McMahon. Great question from Nick, a guy I haven't heard or seen much analysis on despite a great start, is Ryan McMahon. Preseason consensus had him outside the top 200 and so far in standard 5x5 leagues, he's been the 14th most productive player. rate he made in the shortened season last year, and I don't know what to make of it. His K rate is up, his walk rate is down, his launch angle has doubled, and his spray chart this year versus last begins to paint a picture of an all-fields hitter who's learning when to turn on the right pitch for pull-side power. I drafted him as a late flyer in all my leagues and was planning to ride the hot streak then cut, but now I'm wondering if I should be treating his start as a sign of a legitimate

lineup staple for the full season. What do you all think? Is it real? Anxiously anticipating the acapella album release. Nick. One thing I really like about McMahon, and this is kind of rare, is that he has become more aggressive, so he's swinging more, but his reach rates stay the same.

So he's swinging more at strikes, which that trick is hard to pull and i like it i like it a lot you know i think that maybe his new strikeout rate is believable um he has the same swing strike rate which you'll see but since he's being more selective and aggressive he can get out in front of the whiffs right he's swinging at his pitches um yeah the batter ball stats like yeah they look fine he's got an 11 barrel rate a good max ev um i can i believe that he can put up like a 230 iso which would give him you know 33 34 homers on the year it's a really nice season for where he was going. So I kind of think this is real as well. I mean, these improvements are pretty significant. The K rate being down,

I'll take a seven plus percent increase improvement in K rate over a career numbers. If it comes with a slight drop in walks, especially with the underlying numbers as they are, but he's always hit the ball hard. That's always been a skill that he's had. And he's no longer looking over his shoulder, worrying about playing time, right? I mean, he was the guy that when the Nolan Arenado trade happened, I think we looked at Brendan Rodgers as the net playing time winner when healthy. But Ryan McMahon went from the guy that could get squeezed to a guy that finally had a position, his natural position that he could call his own, which never really looked like it was going to be possible

so long as Nolan Aranato was a Rocky. Yeah, I mean, he's the one guy they're not effing with right now, right? Just plug him in and go. So take advantage of that. And then there's always the bonus of the worst-case scenario of keeping McMahon is the guy

that you're on bench you know when he's away for six games and you play when he's home for three three games and you're super happy when he's home for six you know yeah i think you do want to be a little more careful with him than other high quality players when he's on the road because there could be some woefully unproductive series for those week-long stretches outside of Colorado. But thanks a lot for the question, Nick. Glad that we got at least one person looking forward to that album dropping someday.

Years, many, many years from now. Let's talk about stuff, baby. Yeah. Let's talk about closer balance. Last question for today. This one came from John. John writes, I have five NFBC leagues, which are a mix of 15 and 12 team satellites. I did really well drafting and fabbing closers so far, and I have between three or four on each team. So I've been starting three each week, which has left me lower in wins in Ks.

I want to keep rolling with the strategy until most likely some of them lose their job. Does this seem reasonable? Most likely some of them lose their job. Does this seem reasonable? Will only starting one closer for the second half of the season leave me enough time to catch up in the wins in K's categories? And he mentions he's got a lot of Trevino and Gregory Soto, Ian Kennedy, Alex Reyes, and Cesar Valdez. I also drafted a top 10 closer in each league that hasn't lost their job yet. So he does have some stability. Obviously, in NFBC leagues, there's no trading, so you can't do anything with that excess.

This is actually a weird problem to have, but I think it's a somewhat common problem where your pitching staff is imbalanced one way or the other. Maybe you have eight starters and one closer. You're not getting enough saves right now, and you have to start taking some chances on relievers later. I think this can work. I think you can bank the saves now and push two-start pitchers and streamers later in the year because there will always be options to start games later in the year. Where you can hurt yourself is the ratios, right? The risk is if you don't lay a great foundation for ERA and WIP

while you're doing this, if your pitching's not coming through with high-quality innings, the starters you. If your pitching's not coming through with high-quality innings, the starters you do have right now are not coming through with high-quality innings, if you're mid-pack in ratios, you can fall to the bottom of the league in ratios very quickly once you start streaming more heavily off the wire later this season. But if you're running relievers out there, you probably have a decent ERA right now.

Right. So long as those guys keep their jobs, the ERAs at least will be good, even if the whips aren't quite as good for some of those guys. Yeah. So I'm hoping that you're doing really well in ERA and whip and saves, and you're going to stream your way to some Ks and wins later, work the wire. You're going to stream your way to some Ks and wins later. Work the wire. One thing that I do notice is that it's a lot cheaper to stream than it is to try and buy into the Closer stuff. I mean, Closers, I think I got Stomont for $75 or something.

That's really cheap, actually. That's almost an outlier for how cheap that is. Yeah, or $90 something. Maybe I went over $100. But streamers, I mean, streamers are like, you get them for $21 and $11 and stuff. Because nobody's paying. There's a lot of people who are just freaking out and trying to plug all the holes in their boat and trying to get the new big prospect. And that's what they're going to spend all that money on and if you're just like well tyler anderson has a two strike week you know two

two you know spot week this week and i'm gonna just throw a 36 on there you know like it is a lot easier to attack uh starting pitching that way but i would just be worried about the shape of your season where offense peaks in August. So you will be trying to stream into the lion's teeth a little bit. But if you have that good foundation, like you said, maybe it doesn't matter if you have a bunch of 4-5 ERA weeks from some two-star guys that get a win. Yeah, this came up, I think, on the Friday show, though. By the end of the season, there's less parity in the league. The sellers have sold off

and they're running a lot more quad-A caliber players out in their lineup. I think that makes some of the bottom feeders even easier targets, where you can take even more skills risk than throwing, let's say, I don't know, the Austin Gompers of the world out there against

a bottom five, bottom seven lineup. They've sold Polanco and this and that. Yeah, and you're even more likely to get away with it with a good result. So I think this can work. I think this is the right way to play it. I think if you're using shaky closers now, playing a few more of them, again, assuming you're not sitting good starters, I think you can bank saves now and push back for the wins in Ks a bit later.

He doesn't have that much of a choice. He can't trade the guys. And they're going to drop Soto right now. So I like it. And I think it does have a little bit of implications for draft day strategy, which is that maybe for your bench pitching, maybe you should pick up a bunch of relievers. Because like we said during draft season,

you'll know those guys are droppable in week one if they didn't become the closer, right? I mean, you could have drafted Soto like I have and just not know what to do with him for three weeks. No, it's so fun to live in that space. Yeah, so that does exist still. could have drafted Soto like I have and just not know what to do with him for three weeks. No, it's so fun to live in that space. Yeah, so that does exist still. But, you know, there are other guys, Sims too, right?

I think I've had Sims on a roster from draft day. And I'm just like, can I drop him yet? Five weeks where you've used them once and you've thought about dropping him every Sunday. Yes, and I still own him. I still own him that way. He could be the closer this week. Will he be the closer the week after that? I don't know.

You probably got to cut him. That's a good question, though. Thanks a lot for writing in, John. One request that came in and i just want to put this out there if there are things that we reference in terms of subjects or even just like acronyms that we use in the show and you're sitting there listening and you're saying what is that let us know drop us a line rates and barrels at theathletic.com if it would help a lot of people we can put together aary. We can make sure frequently used acronyms are defined more consistently in the show. So I just wanted to kind of gather as many of those as we could because I never want us to have a conversation where we're throwing any sort of term out there and just assuming everyone understands what we're talking about.

And this industry is full, full, full, full, full of jargon. Yes, we will help you break down the jargon. And a lot of the things are so long and a bit to explain that you just slide towards the jargon so easily. Should I explain what Call of Strike's Wist is, the whole thing, or can I just say CSW and keep talking? Right. That's a good example, though, where we want to help as much as we possibly can. We'll reset topics, even though we've talked about the NFPC or labor or tout wars

or whatever it is that we say. What actually is that? Feel free to drop us a line. You can have a whole list of things that we say a lot that don't make sense, and we'll be sure to clearly define them in a forum that makes it easier to understand them going forward. On that note, we are going to go. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, understand them going forward. On that note,

we are going to go. If you don't have a subscription to the athletic, you should get one three 99 a month. We'll get you in the door at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels on Twitter. He is at, you know, Sarah's I am at Derek van Riper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels.

We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.