Rates & Barrels - Early Worry, Fast-Rising Pitchers & Jacob deGrom's Velocity Conundrum

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss early worry, weekend drops, fast-rising starting pitchers, Jacob deGrom's long-term approach with velocity, Alex Verdugo's impressive start to the season, and Jarren Duran's eventual path back to a prominent role in Boston.  Rundown When to Worry: Early Slump v. Problematic Underlying Numbers Healthy Drops From Week 12 Is Owen Miller a Significant Upgrade? Fast-Rising Starting Pitchers Am I Mad at Jacob deGrom, or Am I Just Wrong? Kyle Wright's Adjustments Pitching_Bot's 2022 Team Pitching Summaries Alex Verdugo's Early Statcast Numbers & Jarren Duran's Path Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Monday, April 18th, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we continue our early season question of when to worry about slow starters. A few more names have surfaced for me as I've gone through the process of making some more moves. We're going to talk about dart throws off to excellent starts and how to adjust their values. Several mailbag questions. We'll get one about Jacob deGrom. We got one about Alex Verdugo's fast start. So tons of ground to cover today. And frankly, you know, if I had to pitch in the early game in Boston today, I would have got shelled just like Lucas Giolito did a year ago because I'm pretty groggy for a Monday. Usually I come into the week and I feel really good. I'm not rested coming off of this weekend, which is a rare thing for me. And I think this is probably what people with young children feel like all the time, if I had to approximate it.

And it's kind of terrible. Yeah, we turned the dial to 11 this weekend by having over two babies and two toddlers and one two three four five six family members staying over uh for a first birthday party a 10th birthday party and an easter egg hunt so i am toast i am i'm just like happy that there's nobody in the house right now i just i feel like it's time for me to go take a nap. Right. Monday and Tuesday will be your weekend from the weekend that you just had. I think the funny thing that has changed in my family, you know, now that myself and my siblings are all grown up and all three of us have spouses now, and there's even a couple grandkids, we have Easter eggs at my parents' house,

and we also have beers hidden around the yard for the grown-up children to discover. And I think that's the new wrinkle that has made me appreciate the bunny and egg side of Easter a bit more now that they have found a way to adapt it for degenerate grown-ups like myself. We had those two little small dogs pooping everywhere, so there were some other surprises to be found.

Yeah, not the Easter eggs that you're really looking for. A lot less fun than beer. Yeah, I recommend beer, not the dog mess if possible. But let's dig into some things we are worried about, players we are worried about. This came in as a question last week. We kind of poked at it a little bit on Thursday, but I said it would be more of a recurring topic because I think the more we get into this, the types of players we're worried about are going to change. Initially, it's Kevin Smith isn't playing enough.

Should I cut him or should I wait it out? Nick Senzel has been on the COVID list. Is he going to come back and be the guy I expected him to be? Or is that little bit we saw before he went on the COVID list a sign that he's not the guy we thought he was, right? We're dealing with these micro samples and eventually we get to the point where big players, guys like Mookie Betts, start to creep into our thoughts of, is something actually wrong with Mookie Betts or is this just an early season slump? And I know this is something you started talking about. It's probably been five years at least since you first introduced this back at First Pitch Arizona, where you could look at rolling exit velocity graphs and different things with StatCast and potentially find clear

indicators that a player is not healthy but i'm curious to know is it possible this early to see something like that in the underlying numbers and i think this is a broader question but for me i am thinking about bet specifically i've mentioned on the show before of of early players he is my most heavily rostered like foundational early player and it's been a rough three series for him so far certainly not enough to panic and reserve him but definitely a guy where i'm concerned that because we had underlying health issues last year i'm starting to wonder if he's actually just not healthy right now yeah it's tough i mean like anything that we're supposed to be looking at barrels uh even hard hit rate any of anything that we're supposed to be looking at barrels uh even hard

hit rate any of those things we're supposed to be looking at at least about 50 balls in play before we get more signal than noise and i'm looking at the top of the barrel leader board and we've got guys with 23 25 events matt olsen who's on fire putting everything in play, has 30 events. But I would say the average player right now has 20 to 22 batted ball events. So it's about halfway, which means... And what happens at 50 is that you would take

both what happens... You would regress it, but you would regress it about 50 to league average and 50 to their current demonstrated what they're doing right so if you're halfway to halfway that means you're pretty much still 75 percent league average right now in terms of when you're looking at somebody and you're saying oh he has a you know jose Abreu has a 26% barrel rate. Well, you would use 25% of that 26% and then you would use 75% of league average is like four and a half, right? So you would still regress super heavily.

And so I'm just not panicking. And I think the longer the track record, the more and the lack of any sort of chatter, you know, I think, think you know it's hard to read between the lines on what managers say and stuff but there's are there like frequent updates about how he's feeling you know are there

is his manager talking about his hip or his back or is he taking days off to nurse it seems like he's playing most of the time so you know maybe if there's more smoke around it i'd be a little bit more worried but uh you know and then the flip side you know there are some really nice things that christian yelich is doing right now he's got a really good barrel rate

the max ev the average ev is up max ev looks good like you know a lot of this looks good i don't know that i would sink a ton of uh capital into getting him but the nice thing is he's got the low batting average so maybe that makes him uh a mild buy low but it's a mild buy low because mostly because of the track record right not like you're not buying low but like 100 because it's like 15 percent bail rate that you that you've seen in in 20 what in, in 20 bad ball events. Yeah, just 20 so far. Missed the home run by about a foot in the beginning of that series against St. Louis.

I think that was back on Thursday afternoon. Has been hitting the ball hard, a 75% hard hit rate early on. I think the places you're seeing the red ink right now for Christian J yelich are comparable to what we saw before the 2020 and 2021 slide the only thing that's still different and again dealing in the tiny samples the k rate's still up and that's one of those things that was starting to go the wrong way back in 2020 that we wondered like is is that an underlying skills change? Even if these surface numbers are all out of whack, can we trust that the K rate is not going to be as good as it was earlier in his career? We saw it settling at 23.8% last year.

I think these early indications this year are that, yeah, we're probably not looking at a guy that's going to strike out 20% of the time anymore. It's going to be some level above that previous K rate, which does chip away at some of the ceiling. But if he's going to hit the level above that previous K rate, which does chip away at some of the ceiling. But if he's going to hit the ball as hard as he's been hitting the ball, he's still going to draw walks, still going to play nearly every day. It looks more like a Yelich rebound than a Yelich underperform start. Yeah, it is interesting though. I mean, like, could you compare him to Mookie? You know, would you, like, be like, oh, I think,

would you say something like a hot takery? Like, would you take Chris and Yelich homers over Mookie Betts homers the rest of the way? That I probably, ooh, I probably would consider it. That's a great toss-up, actually, for home runs. I mean, I think both have reduced expectations. At the beginning of the season, you would have said easily Mookie. Yeah.

I'm a little off guard. I'm a little surprised. I think the fact that I'm waffling on it gives me a sense that it's pretty close, an appropriate question, a fair line to draw between those two players a nice to nice to look at the bat x though which you know is maybe one of the most aggressive progressive projection systems when it comes to stat cast information not really wavering bat x still has boogie bats for 279 average and 30 homers so i will calm myself down and tell myself it's only been three series,

and they're not talking about him still having any sort of physical issues, but he's the player that I'm worrying about because of how much I have him and the places I have him being pretty important. I know Charlie Morton is off to a bit of a disappointing start, and you and I both liked him quite a bit as a good value throughout draft season curious if you have anything you've seen in the underlying numbers you know watching these first couple starts from Charlie Morton that are giving you some cause for concern as we move forward yeah when I did the stuff plus movers for a piece last week you know there was the sad other under belly of it which is the the stuff plus losers um and uh you know one one of the guys that was on that list you know sunny gray minus 17 charlie morton

minus 16 uh with a 96 stuff plus after his first start. Let me see if I've got his second start in here yet. Yes, 104 stuff plus after his second start. So that could have been some early season, short spring stuff. Happy to see it jump up to 104. That's still not where he was in the past. I would say that I think that aging has come from Morton a little bit, and I don't think we're going to see just a straight repeat of that 3-3 ERA last year and 11K9.

I would say he comes down off of that a little bit. How much would you consider a player's past levels of variance with something like stuff plus? Like if you could look at previous years of Charlie Morton, if his highs and lows were wider, if there was a bigger gap between his best stuff numbers on a given day and his worst stuff numbers on a different day, stuff numbers on a given day and his worst stuff numbers on a different day would that give you like more confidence in his ability to get back to where he should be it's funny you know i think one of the largest uh sources of change in stuff plus like from start to start is pitch mix and he's not one of these guys that really has you know a lot of other pitches to go to right so you know it's not like uh he should uh be going uh really far up and down i think

he'd probably be tied to his velo on any given day um and so i think you could do something as simple as i mean if you if you look at a lot of those guys that lost stuff plus, you know, they lost Vito. Sonny Gray's down. Morton was down in his first start. He's down a little bit on the year. But, you know, half a tick, I think he can maybe survive. half a tick, I think he can maybe survive. I had another general question for you as we think about, you know, what's changing, what's moving the needle as we make these early season decisions.

Do you have any healthy players that you were consistently dropping as you went about your fab on Sunday night? You know, sometimes you just, it gets too crowded. You have certain needs. the jonathan india thing was interesting for me um oh just an example real quick on charlie morton last year he did have some oscillation he kind of was either 115 or 110 stuff plus all year so there is that sort of expectation that maybe he could be up or down five points at any given time uh so when he started out in 96 you're like oh even if i give him two standard deviations to

106 he's down you know what i mean yep and then he did have a better start in the next one now he's at 104 so i would i would i would say that he also this year he's going to oscillate between 105 and 110 maybe uh whereas last year he pretty much oscillated between 110 and 115 with some peaks at you know 120 and 125 but um any case when it comes to uh healthy guys i dropped uh i did drop a couple shares of mike moustakas it just you know i was looking at the projection the projections are for like 230 with 22 homers the start wasn't that great and i was just i'm not like i was i was just like what am i holding on to here i need and with john in india uh which i have a few more than a few

shares of up in the air until later today i couldn't have not have a middle infielder ready to go behind him you know so i just sort of decided that charlie morton that mark moustakas was in that almost like streamer bat territory where i just had to i'd have something better this week and maybe i'll get him back next week yeah i think with moustakas i mean i liked him throughout draft season because I thought even before the Suarez trade, I just thought he was going to play a lot because of the universal DH. I thought because of time lost these last couple seasons, part of the big issue for him was just not being on the field, being able to rack up stats the way he ordinarily does.

It's a bad start. I mean, the K rate's way up above 40% early on, hasn't drawn a walk yet, doesn't have a barrel yet, only 19 batted balls. But especially in 12-team leagues, I think that makes a lot of sense. And it hurts to drop a player that you really did like for the last four months. But sometimes you have to realize that the player you liked was on the fringe of your roster, even when you liked them. And the player you liked was on the fringe of your roster, even when you liked them and how you felt about that player does not change the skills, does not change the concerns, does not change the projections. This is where the projections, I think, are a really good way to sort of ground your expectations. You mentioned that with Kevin

Smith, I think, going into the weekend. And I think the thing that I'm still really struggling with as I make these drop decisions is what's the difference between the player I'm adding and the player I'm dropping? Is it just a week's worth of good results? If playing time is comparable, is there enough of a difference to justify making the move? I think we have this early pressure to try and find value right away because value opens up immediately. And there's some truth to it. You can't sit on your hands and wait for six weeks to see if Moustakis hits. But I also think the player you might be adding for him, is Owen Miller that much more interesting than Mike Moustakis? Maybe. Is Ramon Urias that much more interesting than Mike

Moustakis? Probably not. There's kind of a sliding scale there where I just think it's very difficult to find players who are clearly better than the bottom-end guys that you're dropping. And what ended up happening was I had other stash guys that I liked the upside of better. And so I basically said, okay, Mike Moustakis is my functional backup player. He's functional. I'm not holding him for his upside anymore and so his function is going to be 230 hitter with power i think that's

replaceable so i just what really happened is i chose to keep o'neill cruz on my uh you know for another week or two because i would rather lose mike moustakas' upside than O'Neal Cruz's. That's a concrete example, but it is something that sort of happened across the board where there was just a stash that I was like, I'm not going to drop that guy, so Mike Moustakas, you've got to go. I'm keeping Ronald Acuna around another couple of weeks. Sorry, Mike Moustakas, you've got to go. So it was a crunch created by some of my other tactics but um i think that i now lump mike mustakis together in in a sort of functional

bat and there's it more he's more susceptible to to weekly matchups he's not a guy i'm just gonna stick in there anymore he's a guy that was gonna be my bench. So, you know, he can go and he can come based on, you know, sort of streaming and what matchups are coming and what my needs are at any given time. I also dropped a healthy Matt Barnes. I mean, a supposedly healthy Matt Barnes. I didn't like the way he was being used. His pitching plus is fairly awful. Let me look at the most recent number before I report it. This isn't a position player thing, so I know I'm all over the map with you. It's just what actually moves the needle to get a player dropped.

They had Jake Deacon get a save last week. Hansel Robles had a save. I was talking to Todd Zola before pickups on Sunday, and we were looking at Robles, and he said Robles was warming up before the Red Sox had a big inning in the eighth to make that a non-save situation. So I think there's just a lot happening in Boston where it's either a full-blown committee

or there's actually a chance that Alex Cora likes someone else better. 91. That's bad out of the pen. That's really bad. 100 is supposed to be average. People are asking about the's really bad. 100 is supposed to be average. People are asking about the scale and stuff. 100 is supposed to be average, but it includes relievers.

So you will have some pitchers that are at 95 and 96 that are definitely usable, starting pitchers, where maybe they have multiple pitches. Eduardo Rodriguez doesn't have a great stuff number, but he has good location. He has multiple pitches. He's still a viable starting pitcher. I don't know if I think he's that great, but i'd still want to see good stuff out of a starter but you know so for a reliever the functional average is more like 105 right so barnes is really far off

and um i what i saw and this could be actionable still for some people i I know we don't do a Sunday show, but Josh Stomont has like a 109 stuff plus, and he got that save in Kansas City, and we've been waiting for that forever. I don't know if we get to say that we were right about Josh Stomont because we've been saying it for like two years. So we were right, but just really, really late. But I think Josh Stomont's going to take that job. I think he's got a job already and so i i feel like with uh something a model like this you just gotta be you gotta be you gotta move fast i think with relievers it's a little bit different than mike mistakis i might have waited longer if mike mistakis had protection projection for like 260 and 30 homers then i would have waited longer you know because he would have had the track record he

would have had a nice projection i would have waited longer on you know, because he would have had the track record. He would have had a nice projection. I would have waited longer on that. But with relievers, I think you just got to move fast, man. I think, you know, Stomont didn't cost as much as some other closers because he didn't get two or three saves, and maybe people don't think he really got it. And so I went for it, and I needed a third close in a lot of places. So Stomont was my big acquisition this past week. And just looking at the big NFPC league that I'm in,

Matt Barnes, among the players cut, someone cut him straight up for Diekman. And that was a 17% bid to get Diekman. Interesting that that was the preference because I think Robles was available in that league and he went for a bit less. Actually, maybe he had been picked up already in that particular league. But in leagues where Robles was available in that league, and he went for a bit less. Actually, maybe he had been picked up already in that particular league.

But in leagues where Robles was available, I saw Robles going for more than Diekmann. Kyle Finnegan was a drop out of the bullpen. I think that makes sense. I think people dropping Alex Colomay. It seems like Daniel Bard is the preferred closer there, so no need to hold Colomay in that situation. Blake Trinan getting dropped, which with Craig Kimbrell there,

I think as good as Trinan is skills-wise, if you don't have holds, I understand. You just can't get away with a player like that. Drew Steckenreiter was a drop this weekend, Jake McGee. So I think most of those cuts all make sense. I try to look at this every week because sometimes you find players

that were dropped unexpectedly and you can plan on bidding on them the following week when it comes up but it also can give you some ideas like hey maybe something else is going on with this player like i didn't have this player and someone else in this league where i tend to trust the judgment of these other players cut this player loose i should take a look and see if something's wrong because maybe i got this player somewhere else i think carlos santana is another example kind of like bustakis i think you can look at carlos santana and tell yourself fairly convincingly that he's just done i think the difference the thing that makes it even worse for santana is that we know the royals have a lot

of bats knocking on the door in the minors too so santana is even some positional versatility in the major leagues yeah we're like hunter doger we can go over and play first and uh-oh. Yeah, so that whole playing time situation can shift really quickly. So I think a player like that is a little easier to let go of. But I think it's those younger guys. I think it's Smith and Urias and Diego Castillo and some of these names we've talked about a lot the last couple of weeks that if you are caught in the middle of cutting or keeping them and you're looking at Owen Miller as the replacement, that's to me one of the most difficult decisions to make.

When you look at Miller, Miller and Jose Siri, I think, were the two big position player pickups in the league that I'm looking at right now. Miller was a big pickup everywhere, had a fantastic week. Totally makes sense. K rates down. He's showing power. Last season when he debuted in Cleveland, the ground ball rate jumped up a little bit if you look at what he was doing in the upper levels in the minor leagues he was showing i think you could say probably close to like 15 to 20 home run raw power i don't think that's a stretch based on what we saw at triple a last season especially

career high walk rate at triple a last year doesn't seem like he's going to steal a lot of bases because in the minor leagues i think he was 9 for 18 for his career so not necessarily a lot of green lights there but as we know opportunities are there in cleveland and miller can move around a little bit so looking at him versus smith castillo a, all those other guys that have been kind of tumbling around on the bottom of our roster for these first couple of weeks, is Miller clearly an upgrade? I'm not sure. There's a couple of things that bother me about Miller. One is that the Maxi V 108, I know it's just a raw power descriptor and maybe doesn't have the greatest correlations to some of the outcome stats that we're all chasing, but 108 is just not it's not impressive it's in the sort of 15 to 18 homer

territory is where i put his raw power right that's isn't that almost what did you just say for his homers like 20 i think is the high end yeah yeah so i i think he's more like a 15 to 18 the other thing i don't like is he's right-handed. There's another debut that I think is pretty meaningful. Josh Naylor got back on the field this past week. Owen Miller was playing first base, which is weird because he was like a shortstop. He was like a light-hitting shortstop when he got traded over there. Bobby Bradley seems like he's kind of on the outs they're uh striking out too much not playing um but uh so they're playing some some owen miller over there but if you get josh nailer in there

you got steven kwan miles straw mosca mercado is playing pretty well and Ahmed Rosario is also playing in the outfield now you've got what you might call a crunch it's not like any of the players is amazing but they could play to a better level going forward than Owen Miller you could be playing Jimenez Rosario on the infield Kwon Straw Mercado in the outfield, Naylor at first, and then Miller becomes more of a backup. So there's a lot of moving parts there. They do seem like they're doing kind of a Razian thing where they're going to move guys around a lot, and I just don't think that that produces seven starts a week for Owen Miller

where you really want to get all those plate appearances. a week for Owen Miller where you really want to get all those plate appearances. Yeah, I'm going to say maybe he's a slight upgrade over a lot of the infielders mentioned, but if you told me right now Josh Naylor's slash line is going to be better than Owen Miller's at the end of the year, I'd say, yeah, you're probably right. It might not be by a lot, but I think it's interesting that Naylor is younger than Owen Miller, even though we've seen Naylor in the big leagues for a few seasons. I think the lefty-righty thing makes a big difference too as things get more crowded.

He's hit balls harder. He has more of a track record of more power, and he's no slouch when it comes to making contact either. And he's left-handed. I just think the problem I have with a player like Miller is that if he plays and just doesn't hit home runs, just plays every day all week, the bids are 1% to 2%.

But because he hit a couple of home runs, bids are 12% to 15%. And you're paying for past results in many cases. And I just think it seems like a fool's errand more often than not to chase the big week, even though there's some things Owen Miller does pretty well. I feel like I'm always talking down about Cleveland. I'm really not.

I think for as little money as they spend, they do exceptionally well. You hate their favorite team. I'm not. That's not my turf. That's that other guy. That's his job. But Ohio State, on the other hand. Well, hey, look, I got my jab in.

I'm not going to pile on. That would just be rude. Maybe there is some evidence you hate their favorite team. No. I had a great time in Cleveland. I had candied bacon when I was there. It was amazing. That sounds good.

Yeah. I had a nice trip there. So let's move bacon when I was there. It was amazing. That sounds good. Yeah, I had a nice trip there. So let's move on to some pitching questions. There was a question that came from Mike on Twitter, and it was looking at players that were sort of mid to late round dart throws who are off to good starts to the season. They've had a couple turns in the rotation. They're pitching well so far. And I think it's almost a process-related question about how you rank players and how we adapt to early season changes in

value. And it's also maybe just prioritizing these players in case there's a trade opportunity or even it's a shallow league. Maybe one or two of these guys are still out there. Dynasty, like how much can you depend on these guys past this year even? Yeah yeah so the names that were thrown in here matt brash hunter green jesus lazardo andrew heaney tyler mcgill alex

cobb and nester cortez and i think of the list there we've talked about the first five quite a bit cobb that we talked about him on the velo was reportedly up this spring i'm kind of curious where the stuff numbers have landed on him because I haven't looked him up yet. And then Nestor Cortez, I didn't get to see the outing against the Orioles yesterday, but I saw the stat line go by. Kays galore in that outing.

And I think of all these guys, Nestor Cortez was sort of just ignored this draft season relative to what he did a year ago. It was only 93 innings, but a sub-3 ERA, a 108 whip, 103 strikeouts. Did it with good control. A little bit of a home run issue. Not that big of a surprise, though, for a guy making half his appearances in Yankee Stadium. So I guess I'm going to start this with a sub-question.

Does Nestor Cortez belong in the conversation, fantasy-wise at least, with some of these other names, these guys that were more highly regarded prospects? You know, it was surprising to me that his best pitch by Stuff Plus is his foreseeing. He doesn't throw hard. He doesn't throw hard. He's 90-91, but it's really good shape. And his worst pitch is a slider. So it is kind of tough to appreciate someone like that and to rank them and to think about them going forward. But Ryan Yarbrough had some really good seasons. And I think there's a

bit of a comparison there for me. The one problem is that, you you know Cortez's best secondary is a slider Yarbrough's is a change-up so he's kind of more of a soft contact guy which is a little bit scarier year to year Cortez more strikeouts a little bit more velo but I do think that in any given season I'm willing to bet on a profile like this but I'm not willing to bet on it long-term. I just feel like when you drop out of 88 into 87 and 86, you saw how bad that season was for Yarbrough last year. I'm excited for Yarbrough when he comes back because he's supposed to be throwing 91. I think he could have a good season again.

And if you look at Yarbrough's numbers before last season, he had like a 3-2 ERA. He was way better than people thought. So I You know, he was way better than people thought. So I think Cortez could be way better than people thought and yet also not be a good bet year to year. Can be a good pickup in season when the command is good and he's got all his pitches working. But like as a dynasty asset,

I still don't think he's a great dynasty asset. You know, I'm just not going to believe in a profile like that long-term. But as a pickup this year, yes, I would say he's in the top four. Uh, yeah, it's top four or five in that he's the way I have him linked is with cop, you know, not much dynasty, not much dynasty long-term, but has popped. Uh, they both have good command. They both have multiple pitches. They both know how to turn the lineup over. Cobb and Cortez are excellent pickups this year. I think they are pick-up-and-keep guys,

but they just don't have any dynasty value. So those are my comparisons there. Yeah, I mean, Alex Cobb, good across the board right now in the pitching model, and obviously being in San Francisco, even if he was just kind of average across the board, it would play up in that ballpark. Right.

I think Cortez has the opposite problem, but I think Cortez, at least, you know, you could maybe avoid some like Toronto at home, but, and maybe Toronto is such a beast, but, you know, just avoid a few spot spot starts that's another thing about cortez i think i would have cob ahead of him cob uh 135 on the the the splange the split change that he throws splange uh 97 on the uh on the case on the knuckle curve and then 86 stuff plus on the sinker even with the good velo but you know as a package it all does much better with that velo has the great home park so yeah i think neither one of these is somebody i would want to bet on long term like i said but you know so hunter green

obviously always had dynasty value was already like you know a big pick going in. I'm really happy to see not only that his fastball stuff plus is 160, which is in LOL territory, but that his slider is at 120. So I think that's two good pitchers, pitches by stuff. No real problem with location that I saw so far. Maybe the occasional lefty will touch him because the changeup wasn't great. But that's a really good package. He's number one on this list by dynasty and keeper value. And I think in this season value, this might be surprising. This season value, Magill, Magill, Magill?

Tyler Magill. Magill, Magill, Magil, Magil? Tyler McGill. McGill. McGill, Brash, Green. I'm going McGill, Green,

Brash. Hmm. Which may be a little bit surprising. My, my, my revelation was this. Brash's

fastball stuff plus is 85. Now, his slider stuff plus $209, which is funny because somebody went on the radio and said that internally, the Mariners had a Stuff Plus on Brash's slider between $170 and $190. So our models are not that far apart,

which I thought was a nice sense of validation. But yeah, $209, i don't think i've ever seen that on a slider it's maybe the best slider in the game suddenly um but the fastball uh was surprisingly uh poor numbers for the v-low that he has so um and then medial has medial has pushed his fastball stuff plus to 107 and he has three legit pitches in the change-up slider and fastball, and they go in different directions. So I think Brash may run into

some problems with lefties, may walk a lot of them. I didn't look at exactly what every single one of his walks was against the White Sox, but I would figure that sometimes the guy with this profile with not the greatest fastball and two great breaking balls may choose to walk lefties.

And last thing I wanted to say is Stuff Plus does not consider platoon splits. So you'll find that Luis Hill or Matt Brash, they will be like way up there in Stuff Plus, and then maybe not as lofty heights in pitching plus because pitching plus does consider platoon splits of pitches uh so that's something that matters um you know it may be that tyler mcgill has the best season out of the three in fact i might go in this season value mcgill green brash in keeper value green br, Brash, McGill. Because McGill could drop a tick or two and then be more like he was last year.

Yeah. I mean, I think the long, long term, it definitely makes sense to have McGill third of the group. I think it's all going to come back to location for me with Hunter Green. I mentioned this last time he came up. I still think he gets too much of the plate. He gets too much of the plate with his changeup. He gets too much of the plate with his changeup. He gets too much of the plate with his fastball. He throws his fastball kind of middle-middle.

It's just so much stuff. But it's like 99 miles an hour. You're going to get away with that more often, whereas Brash being, what, 95 with his fastball? He's not going to get away with that location as often as Green does. I think the thing that makes it harder for me to trust Green in the short term, though though making that mistake and seeing so many hitters taking good swings on high velocity early on this season the park is a problem for me with hunter green so i think that still pushes me

brash over green even though both are way up in value compared to where you were getting them on draft day if we were redrafting right now you've seen a couple starts they don't count but we're drafting today for the rest of the season is hunter green up in the pick 200 range i mean that's a pretty big leap from where he was brash in that range are they earlier i mean i think there's also a case to move them up even higher so like when i thought brash was a sixth starter, he was in the rankings around 115 to 120. That's where I put six starters that I thought were super interesting. There was a bunch of good names there, right? When it was like he's locked for the fifth starter, and we didn't have any data yet,

any sort of stat cast or any sort of data, I put him in the 80s. That's where I putcgill to start the season right so just so you can kind of have a window and how my rankings are the 80s so sort of 75 to 90 is where i put really interesting arms that i think have a role but we just don't have the track record we're betting on we're faith casting a little bit i think all three of these guys have just gone past that. They are no longer where they would be in the 80s. So if I was ranking today,

I would rank them probably in the 40s and 50s, you know, maybe the 40s. Should I push it harder than that? I don't know. I mean, there's still the track record isn't amazing, right? And, you know, there's probably a lot of really good pitchers with track records that I can put 1 through 30, 1 through 35.

Maybe these guys sneak into the 30s. So that's where I would have them, late 30s, early 40s probably. Yeah, I was just starting to think about where the rookies that really dominated last year, guys that came up. Logan Webb. Showed really well. Logan Webb and Shane McClanahan, I mean, they ended up cracking. I think we could say McClanahan was in the top 180 PYs

in April. He was at 101. So we're splitting hairs. Webb was going a lot earlier than that. Logan Webb finished with an ADP of about 65 this season. No, this season. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Going into this season. This is the season after. Right. So I think this season. Yeah. Yeah. Going into this season after. Right. So I think, you know, we need to see more. We need 15, 20 plus starts each from these guys to really get them up that high.

But, but they are like Logan. They are the new Logan Webb. McGill is the Logan Webb. Brash and green are the Alec Manoa, Shane McClanahan. That's, that's,

that's what's happening. That's, that's, that's how they pop in the model. That's what's going on. And there was two more names in there. I think they were interesting that we should not just swim move past too quickly. Lizardo and Haney. There are some things that have changed.

Lizardo has changed the movement on some of his pitches. He's got a little more ride on his foreseam. He's got more velocity across the board. Haney has changed his breaking ball to more of a sideways breaking ball that goes a little bit harder. However, there's still some softness to it, if you get what I'm saying like they're still uh their stuff plus is like between 99 and 105 like the both of them you know like it's okay they're not like popping like green at 160 you know what i mean like they they did some stuff it's okay i don't trust them 100 neither of them i would be very careful lizardo on the road in ph? No. That ain't happening. What's his next start? I'd like to know his next

start. That says more about at Philadelphia, though, and not wanting to throw non-top 40 starters there. The Corsean? It's tracking that way, I think. Toronto is a team that I want

nothing to do with. I'm not playing Jose Ur or Kitty against the Jays where I can help it this week. And I, I like her Kitty model still likes him. I know it's been a bumpy start so far, but I want nothing to do with the Jays when it comes to or Kitty and guys in this range. So I,

I wouldn't look at the, the lack of confidence in Lizardo at Philly and say, eh, that's not much of a step forward. It's no, this is a matchup that we're generally staying away from. Let me get the schedule. Where are the Marlins playing right now? I need to schedule music. Where do you go?

I go to the Roto-Wire grid. Okay, so Lizardo's got St. Louis at home. Lizardo's got a good schedule. That's a start. He's got St. Louis at home and Atlanta on the road this week. But you've got to take them both in weekly leagues. I know. So you're using them in weekly leagues.

I guess I'm using them in the weekly league, but if I could avoid that Atlanta start, I would not want to do that. All right, so if you're in the 3-0 show league. My prediction is he does not do that well in that Atlanta start. Sure. And then he's home against Seattle in the only start next week. So two out of three, I'm using him. Yeah.

And it's really three out of three. I think that's a pretty good example. I think the Atlanta line is better than the Philly line. Because Atlanta is not Philadelphia, but it is offensive friendly and it's a good lineup. Park's not as extreme. Still no Acuna. Lineup is scary, even without Acuna.

It's a lineup you don't want to face. You got Haney on that grid? Yeah, he's got at San Diego coming up this weekend. Nothing to be worried about there. Home against the Tigers next week. Nothing to worry about there. So two green lights for him next two times out i do think of all these guys he i mean it's interesting too they've really kind of changed

up the fastball right used to be more of a sinker guy he's going heavier with the four seamer now kind of splitting it almost evenly with the slider he's basically a two-pitch guy right now the way they've been using him that's still an easy way to give up homers you know what i'm saying like he's still a two-pitch guy with a homer problem you know it's like let's just remember that nothing that he's done has been like oh he's gonna he's gonna stop giving up homers like i like what he's done and i think he's gonna maximize what he's what he's got but there are gonna be teams that can touch him up there's gonna be some right-handed heavy teams that can touch him up. All we're going to do is we're just going to get to the end of April

and people are going to have their buy low and sell high articles and podcasts and everyone's going to say to sell high on Andrew Haney. He's going to be more of a hold or a buy until he gives us a reason not to. I'm just saying he's schedule dependent. Lizardo and Haney of that group are more schedule dependent i'm more likely to say start the other guys all the time here's my question for you and this goes back to what we were getting at earlier what is the actual difference right now between andrew haney and chris. I mean, I know they throw with different hands.

Thank you if you thought I did too. But I'm saying two pitch guys with ugly ratio problems in the past. But always great strikeout minus walk rates. Both of them have always had great strikeout minus walk rates. And they're the type of guys that in any given season could just get lucky on homers and have a great season which that describes some of archer if you yes archer is a great place to look look at archers because he had some great seasons archer is the guy that's the rest of the time he gave up homers he was one of my most added

players this weekend i didn't i i mean as a friday he wasn't really someone i was thinking about but it was part of the weekend preparation i was like actually this this looks okay he's healthy right now a lot of the issues with him are health al central a lot of spots where i'm going to use him had a two-start week coming up this week at kansas city and then home against the white socks which the first one is soft enough to justify it yeah but but i'll take my chances i mean hopefully he's had since 2019 i just think this could actually work out about the same way and i know it's weird to say that with heaney coming off of a really good outing last time but these two guys are probably more similar for our purposes than we would think based on how they're valued by the market right now yeah archer is really

interesting too because uh he was giving up uh you know round one homer per nine before the rabbit ball emerged in 2015 and then after that he has given up more like a homer and a third per nine since and his era has gone from sitting in the three threes to sitting in the low fours basically even when he was healthy um there is some early evidence that home run rate is down and there is a tweet from derrick cardi that you can look at that it's down more than uh 2015 so it's down back to to where it was in 2015 when Archer was given up, you know, 0.8 homers per nine. Derek Hardy has looked at it and adjusted for temperature and all of the sort of characteristics of the batter balls. And it's down from, you know, let me find it it was uh it was in the fives before five percent um and

it is now uh 4.3 percent so i just want to get the full tweet to to give you the uh accounting but um let's see here this is all replies because everyone's asking about it uh so this is accounting for weather 2018 4.5 percent 2019 5.5 percent that was the rabbit ball that's the year we we broke all the records 2020 5.2 percent 2021 uh 5.0 percent 2021 is when they started putting the new ball in that was supposed to be deadened, except they use some of the 2020 ball. So there was a mix in 2021 of the ball we're using now and the ball from 2020. So that actually makes sense. You go from 5.2% in 2020 to 5.5% in 2021 to maybe 4.3% in 2022. It's early going. I think the pitchers are ahead of the hitters and there's, you know,

in the first couple of weeks anyway. So that is something that's hard to account for in a model like this. So I would guess that we end up with 2018 home run rates. In 2018, Archer gave up a 1.15 homers per nine. That's just one player. but if you want to think of where we're at we're we're going back from before this sort of rabbit ball and we're going to have some pitchers that used to be really homer friendly having some of their best home run rates this year it's pretty interesting yeah i mean an appropriate adjustment on the dial potentially based on what the league was trying to do as much of what's going to happen with Haney this year as any sort of changes he made.

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's 30% adjustments he made and 70% the ball. Okay, well, that's little from column A, a lot more from column B. To close the book on Mike's question, you had Brash and Green

up in that first group together, and McGill was kind of in that first group. Is Lizardo part of that conversation? If you're looking longer term, at least? No? He still falls short? I don't like it. 101 stuff plus on the fourth seam with this change is the best shape he's ever had.

I think it's a bad fastball. Also, he's throwing it like 97. Do I have confidence he's gonna throw a 97 next year no so i think next year you're likely to have a you know 105 stuff plus curveball and like a 95 stuff plus four seam i just don't think that's a profile i want to bet on long term now i'd put him ahead of heaney and cobb and nester Cortez long term, but I guess that keeps him behind Brash, Green, and Tyler McGill. Yeah, long term, he's ahead of those veterans, yeah. I guess there is some percentage.

I don't know what the percentage is. There's some percentage chance that he could improve the shape on his pitches within a second year there. Yeah, I think that's fair. I just think it's a tough slot dude you know he throws out of this this weird slot that's just more conducive to sinker throwing it's not a slot that uh people are selecting for right now let's move on to uh another question here thank you for that question mike this one comes in from josh josh wants to know am i mad at jacob degrom or am i just wrong hey guys

i need some help figuring out how upset i should be with degrom's unending parade of injuries degrom has followed a league-wide trend by keeping his average fastball velocity very close to his max velocity now he's had incredible results but he's also missed an enormous amount of time over the last several years with so much talent at his disposal. Why doesn't DeGrom keep his average fastball closer to 95 to 96 to try and keep himself healthy? I'd much rather see him as the fifth best pitcher in baseball and play most of the time than for him to be the best pitcher in baseball and miss half of each season. Josh points out an example. When he was younger, Justin Verlander held a 94-95 average fastball velocity,

even though he could hit 100 and he was extremely durable. Maybe it's not fair to compare those guys, but it seems like DeGrom could benefit from a change in approach here. What do you think? Am I on to something here? No, I think he's 100% right. There's even a study from Glenn Fleissig about the relationship between fastball velocity and elbow varus torque in professional baseball.

Does greater velocity suggest higher stress on the ulnar collateral ligament? I love science so much. That was my science voice. There was a takeaway here, and I asked Glenn about it when I wrote about this back in 2017. And he said, there's a strong relationship correlation within a person that the faster the throat you throw the more torque you produce on your elbow there's not a strong association between among people meaning that you know somebody's 94 noah syndegard might be able to throw 94 easier than zach granky right and that's that's the point, is that the stress on the elbow matters

how close you are to your own personal max. So he says here, looking at one person, the faster you throw, the closer you throw to your maximum, the more torque you put on your arm. So 100%, I think we saw it with Chris Sale too, right? Chris Sale was more largely healthy

and had a pretty good baseline of of success in chicago and he was he he had a sort of six mile an hour range uh up to his up to his maximum then he goes to boston they say throw harder he had some amazing years there and some really good uh output but also here come the injuries a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's the problem with pushing pitching development this way. But I would also wonder, are we looking at a pitcher's established max velocity in games and saying that's his max? Or are we talking about something that a pitcher could do on the side in a workout, right? Those are two different numbers. on the side in a workout, right?

Those are two different numbers. I think we might not see the true max for some guys because they've figured out where they comfortably should be. This is also really important for when people talk about, oh, that guy's tired, or how many pitches do you throw in that start? And, you know, oh, can we take this guy out of this no-hitter? Or how many pitches does he have? There's a lot of stuff we don't see. I think that was a great point for you to pick that up.

There's a lot of pitches we don't see. There's a lot of bullpens we don't see or lack of bullpens. There's a lot of training that we just don't know and we don't see. You're right. There are some personal maxes that aren't hit in games.

But I would assume that given adrenaline and the fact that the games are what get them paid, that most of the time they're hitting their maxes in the games. However, are you going to tell a guy, you know, you just made it to the big leagues? If you get hurt here, you get big league money. to the big leagues you know if you get hurt here you get big league money i even heard someone say that they they heard a player say i'm just gonna throw as hard as i can for the next week and if i if something pops i'm going to be on the major league il and get major league money and service time so you know uh i think it's uh it's a tough one for uh and it's tough one to say people, no, you can't do that. Anybody who's going to go into the Major League game right now is going to do the most they can.

Also, the game is just asking everybody to do their peak athletic performance while they're in the game. We're doing load management. We're doing all sorts of different training to make sure that they get rest and recovery. And we're trying to do as much as we can to keep them healthy but when we're in the game we want you to give 100 like literally 100 so that's just that's the way the game is i mean look at basketball i watch basketball they are what we ask big men to do in today's basketball is not what they used to do like i i don't even think that shack could necessarily keep pace with some of the big men today.

If you look at DeAndre Ayton, you look at Jokic, you look at these big guys now, they run. They sprint. They're fast. They are running nonstop. We're asking them to run at 100% almost the entire time they're in the game. We train them to do that. We give them as much rest as we can, but we're asking them to give 100% almost the entire time they're in the game. We train them to do that. We give them as much rest as we can, but we're asking them to give 100% in the game.

Maybe there's some rule changes that we could explore and stuff, but that's what we ask people to do when they get in the game. This is always the great debate of what would happen if this player played in a different era. If Shaq didn't come up 30 years ago, if Shaq came up 5 five years ago he would have been different all along like the way he was coached

the way he trained his body was different yeah right he might have been a more lean version of Shaq which it's just a weird thought but anyway it's just those kinds of things are always on my mind like how how different would could Babe a brood hit today's pitching probably like i mean especially if you gave him the training i mean you're like obviously great bat to ball and like you know you know great eyes like yeah but but if you if you dropped him in without the training yeah he would look like witchcraft to him like yes of course not but to to go through the exercise you put the player like through a development arc similar to the other players of the era that you're talking about you can't just pick a player up from 70 years ago and throw him on the field be like good luck buddy to answer

your question for de grom i think de grom would have maybe half the k rate he has now and maybe twice the innings it would be funny if he ended up with the same amount of strikeouts oh man i mean half the k rate you're talking like 23 percent i mean he has like the best k rate of all time but it's tied to throwing as hard as he can when he's in there you know what i mean it was back i mean back when he was giving us more innings back in 2015 27.3 percent k rate still very good i'm not saying okay i was saying more half the i was saying half the raw yeah that's right guys well i think we've been frustrated by this this part of pitching for a while and it would be interesting to see like if if de grom makes that decision coming off this injury is he going to come back and try and max out again i mean he

said before he's going to opt out so if he still he wants the best performance while he's on the field yeah i think it'll tell us a lot about how he views health relative to his approach but a good question and one that we wrestle with all the time on this podcast. Generally, baseball, if you're looking at averages, generally pitchers are throwing closer to their maximum. And they have been. It happened first in the playoffs, and then people were like, hey, if I'm going to throw as hard as I can in the playoffs,

I get paid off of all my year. So maybe I should just throw as hard as I can in the playoffs, I get paid off of all my year. Maybe I should just throw as hard as I can all year. Let's get to a question about Kyle Wright. Mentioned previously that his curveball usage was way up. He's also throwing more change-ups. There's a question from Paul. He just wants to know if there's anything

else going on with Wright that's caused him to get off to a great start. He was on the opposite side of Mackenzie Gore's big league debut, pitched very well against San Diego. Two two good starts from Kyle Wright, obviously a lot of pedigree there. And as Paul pointed out in his email back during the lockout, not being able to work with Atlanta's coaches, he actually went back to work with some old coaches. I think probably going back to his days at Vanderbilt. So what are you seeing with Kyle Wright here through his first two starts of 2022? To me, he just looks like a completely different picture than we've seen in the past in atlanta yeah a little bit more of a

vertical curveball but what i really like is that he has more drop on his curveball than he had last year and it's four miles an hour faster like usually there's a trade-off yeah yeah so when you do both of those things that's really good um and i think that you know i think usually there's a trade-off yeah yeah so when you do both of those things that's really good um and i think that you know i think that there's also a thing that's happening in baseball where you know people are being pushed towards the four seamer because that's where baseball is he just never had a good four seamer and you know i think turfing a bad four seamer in his case and going with a sinker, which, you know, does not, you know, rate that highly in the model. And I don't think is an amazing sinker. And if he does get hit, it'll be a problem.

But the sinker has, for example, an 82 stuff plus and his four seam last year, I think, had a 70 stuff plus. So you're still swimming upstream. You're still doing better here. I do like the improved curveball also because it gives him a legit three-pitch mix. He seems to command his secondaries pretty well. And so right now, he's basically 103s across the board. And I think that makes him a slightly above average pitcher i think i would trust him a little bit more than lizardo yeah i think i was gonna go i think i'm gonna put him

in that territory if we're talking about rankings right now i think that green brash grouping uh is in the 30s and 40s i would say that the lizardo haney is still in that sort of 70s for me i mean it's it's up from where they were ahead of season, but I just don't trust him that much. 70s is where I have people where the schedule matters. I think Wright would be early 70s for me, but maybe late 60s. But he's definitely climbed up the rankings.

And I think the challenge here is finding the next one, right? If you missed out on Kyle Wright, you didn't jump in the first week, maybe you didn't have clear cuts, you thought the players you had were just as good, if not better, you wonder who could be the next one. And I think that's where that pitching model

comes in so handy. And seeing some players that are still not in those ideal roles, we've talked about Strider, we've talked about Ruanzi Contreras. Contreras. I picked up a lot of Contreras this Sunday. In some of my deeper leagues,

Corbin Martin was the guy that I was taking a chance on because it just looks like he's put it back together. And I think opportunities are plentiful in Arizona. It's not going to take much for him to end up back in that rotation. So it just depends on the type of league you're in and whether or not you can wait on a non-starter. But if you're in that situation

and that's more keeper in dynasty, it's more's more mono league centric to play that way i would say corbin martin has the up arrow next to his name again yeah he does have poor command uh it's an interesting uh line right now uh i've got uh one start in here with a 106 uh stuff plus 91 location plus 95 pitching plus that's something that is been true for martin uh ever since he's pitched in front of the machines for us but uh i do think there's opportunity in that rotation he's definitely somebody uh i picked up contraris uh same story actually 109 stuff plus 89 command plus 92 pitching plus but I think that the you know where Martin has had some questions of command throughout his career I don't think those questions have been as loud for Ronzi Contreras so I'm willing to look past that as a two-start small sample thing Christian Javier do you think he's no he's already he's

already owned everywhere yeah he's he's pretty much because rostered in nice mccullers injury uh let me see carlos hernandez has a big start coming up uh tomorrow i'm watching that one uh pretty pretty intensely because 110 stuff plus despite the velocity going down, but 96 pitching plus because of the poor command. And I actually asked a scout because I was considering a trade for Carlos Hernandez this weekend. I did connect with the scout and ask him what they thought from their last viewing of Carlos Hernandez

and if they thought he had enough command to make it as a starter, and they thought that he did not. Well, he'll be a really good reliever if it doesn't work out for him as a starter. But, you know, I'm still looking at him and seeing more to like than I see with a lot of the other Royals pitchers, which, interestingly enough, maybe you saw this tweet that came out on Sunday

from pitching underscore bot Cameron Grove. We talked about some of the stuff he's done on this pod before, but he had a great chart. It was team pitching summaries to this point in 2022, where he had poor stuff, good locations up in the top left corner, poor pitching all around bottom left. You don't want to be down there. Good stuff, poor locations down in the right corner and then good stuff in good locations. Yeah yeah those are the teams you want to look at up in the top right and the usual suspects the rays the giants they're up in the top right corner marlins are up there that's not a huge surprise either given how much we like their

young pitching the mets are up there the red socks are up there and the orioles are up there and i thought the orioles were interesting seeing that and seeing some of the names that have jumped up in in the pitching plus models tyler wells and keegan aiken are two guys and i think michael bauman out of the bullpen too is keegan aiken good enough to be a useful starter i mean i think with wells we saw the bounce back that second time out and well there's keegan aiken is there more of a workload coming that's that's the question I have about him. There's a relationship between how many pitches you have in an outing and your stuff plus, right? So he's had 33 pitches times two, 66.

He's averaged 33 pitches. So I would say that's pretty close to reliever workload. And so he's shown this 110 stuff plus in the reliever workload. I would regress that to maybe a 102 103 as a starter and then now you're you're putting him in that park against maybe the yankees and stuff so i would say maybe on him wells has been doing what he's been doing in longer stints so he's averaged almost 60 pitches per outing and has the 110 stuff plus.

So I think Wells' second outing was a great bounce back. And I don't know. I'm going to say, I'm just, I don't know on Aitken. I'm going to say bye on Wells. I think that's a bye for me. I think he showed enough that I'm in. Tyler Wells' track record in the minors was actually really good. Good starter coming through.

It was in the Twins organization. Didn't pitch in 19 and 20. Injury and lost minor league season. So there's a track record here to get excited about. There are underlying numbers to like. There are opportunities in Baltimore. And yeah, the division still presents a lot of tough matchups. But as we know, with fences moving back at Camden yards,

it's less scary of a home park than it has been. And a new ball. Is it seeing, seeing where Logan Webb is in the model right now and seeing where Tyler Wells is right now. If you're saying who could be this year's Logan Webb based on the model, it's not. I think it's Tyler Mago.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, but, but yeah, no, I mean,

Tyler Wells, uh, Tyler, well, I mean, who would it be? Like, it'd be more like,

more like this year's drew Rasmussen or something. Right. Like a reliever that stretched out and surprised us. Yeah. But the thing is, I think we, we put Wells in the reliever bucket just because that's what the Orioles did with him last year, but he wasn't a reliever before just because that's what the Orioles did with him last year.

But he wasn't a reliever before that. He was a good starter. Yeah. With plenty of pitches, too. I had an interesting thought about the twins placement on that graph. It's not good. Oh, it's bad. It's the worst.

And yet, we know, for example, I worked with Ethan Moore. He went to Minnesota. We know that Josh Kalk, who used to work publicly with stuff-type metrics and worked with the Rays on pitching, we know that there's these two people that care about these kind of things, stuff metrics and stuff. So I think it's – I do not like appeals to authority, right? Like we're trying to all figure this out ourselves and we don't want to just

pick, well, baseball teams don't better or whatever. You know what I mean? But there is a little bit of a whiff as maybe the twins have a deception metric. That the one thing that's really missing from stuff plus that, that an internal team could have that's better than what we have out here is deception because they have the angles of the forearm. They have stuff like how long can you see the ball before it's released. And if you look at guys, I think specifically Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan,

who are in their rotation right now, they have reasons to believe that they could be more deceptive than have actual stuff. So maybe we're missing 10 points of deception that should be in Stuff Plus that they have internally that we don't. Bailey Ober is extreme over the top like Ian Anderson and yet has some interesting profiles on his pitches. Maybe the model is not giving it enough credit. extreme over the top like Ian Anderson and yet has some interesting profiles on his pitches maybe

maybe I'm not maybe the model is not giving out enough credit and then Joe Ryan leads with his elbow and the ball pops up like using Eric Petit so you know maybe they have a deception number that brings their stuff plus an up number internally that we're just not seeing I guess as I look at the chart which which is now on the screen, if you're watching us on YouTube, but you should give Cameron a follow anyway, lots of great pitching insight from him on Twitter. The Dodgers are in a weird spot there.

They're definitely more left on this chart than you'd expect. I mean, they're kind of above the center line vertically, but that's a strange placement. One thing I would say is that I, one thing I know that our stuff model has that the hat cameron hasn't put in his yet or is studying it um and he's aware of it is uh we have seam shifted wake in our stuff plus and i know for a fact that the dodgers are pretty heavily into seam shifted wake like uh they've been adding

sweepers to a lot of their pitchers not every sweeper benefits from seam shifted wake but most sweepers do have a benefit from seam shifted wake so i would assume that once you add in seam shifted wake because when i look at my model the dodgers there is a lot of similarity of course but the dodgers are a plus team the dodgers last year i think it was the dodgerses, and Rays had the best stuff in baseball. Yeah. Always interesting stuff though, so appreciate Cameron tweeting that because I thought it was food for thought,

especially with a few Orioles showing up high individually in your model. Since we were talking about poppers, you know, guys that could, that may be out there, I just wanted to show a quick shout out to Nicola Dolo. He belongs in this

conversation of that we just had of high stuff low location uh he had like a 119 stuff plus in his first start and the reason why you would bet on guys that have high location high stuff and low location numbers in their first few starts is that stuff is stickier and becomes stabilizes faster so uh the location numbers may just be one start aberrances for lodolo and ronzi and corbin martin a little bit less so for corton martin but yeah yeah lodolo and ronzi contraris i think they fit into the same mold that we didn't expect control issues like based on the past so i do think it's important to keep that in mind thanks a lot for that question that got us down that road i think that one was from paul at least the kyle right question was alex verdugo early stat cast numbers

look really good he's got a couple more hits in the early monday game too and the question we had about him was just a request to do a quick deep dive into his stat cast number so far and any thoughts on how he has the second most defensive run saved in left field so far this season actually since 2020 behind only Tyler O'Neill so what do we think about Verdugo overall and any thoughts on his ceiling if he can start hitting lefties the way he did earlier in his career? I mean, if Betts is doing everything wrong by stat casting the early going, Verdugo is doing everything right,

everything you would want to see out of him. He has raised his launch angle. He's upped his barrel percentage. He's hitting the ball harder on average or by sweet spot or by hard hit rate. All of his numbers are red, and he's doing it with a shorter strikeout rate, a really, really nice strikeout rate for right now. Strikeout rate becomes meaningful quickly. Barrel rate becomes meaningful quickly.

He has 29 batted balls. So he's doing all the stuff that becomes meaningful quickly. He has 29 batted balls. So like he's doing all the stuff that becomes meaningful quickly. I would point out that he's also seeing the most fastballs he's ever seen. And it's kind of strange. He's seen 69% fastballs right now. So maybe he's doing some damage on breaking balls, but I would also assume that he would go back down

to at least a 60% fastball rate the rest of the season and that that will affect his numbers somewhat. It might be easier to lift a fastball, especially if you're getting high fastballs. It is easier to lift those than it is to lift a low breaking ball. So that's one of the reasons why we look at these early numbers and we say they look great, but give him another week and see what happens if he, you know, hits some sinker ballers or some guys who are going to fill up the zone with breaking balls that he can't lift as well.

But, you know, if you want to see what it looks like to start out well and fix past wrongs, like he's done everything you would ask for Dugo to do to break out. It looks beautiful. It's primo. It's what you want. You have a guy who makes great contact, has a good eye at the plate,

and you're just like, can you just lift it? And he's lifting it. That's just been the recurring skills question with Verdugo is can he get to more power because he does everything across the board well as a hitter otherwise. We've seen flashes of him hitting the ball in the air more consistently. It looks like he is taking that next step just based on the start he's off right now. I think numbers against lefties,

I would just throw the usual cautionary tale out there. We just haven't seen enough to know that he can or can't hit lefties. So if they keep giving him chances, I think with a hit tool like that, I'd be more inclined to bet on a player like Verdugo hitting same-handed pitching from the left side than your prototypical masher that has a lot more swing and miss in his profile. Yeah, yes, I agree. He has more ways to do something right there's a lot of guys who are all or nothing that face same-handed guys and then maybe lose the walk rate because they can't

see it as well and if you've lost the walk rate and you're all or nothing then you can easily become a guy who hits 100 against same-handed guys but just but just runs into one every once in a while. Whereas Verdugo has more ways to be good. I just noticed this also. His average launch angle on fastballs right now is just short of 20. And on breaking balls, it's up, but it's closer to 12. So you can see right there that there may be some regression coming as he sees fewer fastballs. Still, both of those numbers are higher than usual for his entire career.

So it could be a really good season for him. Thanks a lot for that question, John. Last question for today, Jaron Duran. This question comes from Terry. Haven't heard much about Jaron Duran this season. Curious what you guys think his role could be in the Boston offense. And we know he struggled last year, but the power and speed combo seems like it could be legit. Part of the reason you haven't heard a lot about Jaron Duran this year is because he missed about 10 days on the COVID IL at AAA. He just started playing again

on Sunday. He's got a hit in each of the three games he's played so far he's got a couple of steals so far i i still like him a bit as a post-hype sleeper i think there might be some questions as to how i don't know how much power he's going to have against big league pitching even though he added a lot of power in the upper levels of the minor leagues he's already 25 years old he played college ball and everything so he's not a young player i mean i think alex verdugo is younger than jaron duran if i'm not mistaken which is really pretty interesting but the the duran situation i mean i don't know if i'm holding him outside of al only leagues right now you know because i don't know when they're going to actually push him back onto this roster i guess there's some room for him um even with a story acquisition, because I'm looking right now at Fangraphs at the right field depth chart, and it's saying Bradley, JD Martinez, who's going to DH most of the time, Christian Arroyo, and Franchi Cordero. It's basically a platoon.

It's a Bradley-Arroyo platoon, I think, at this point. Or Royo Platoon, I think, at this point. I mean, I think all you're looking for, if you're looking for Durant to push that out of place, is watch Durant's strikeout rate and whiff rate. I think that's probably one of the things they want him to work on most. If he can combine the power with a good strikeout walk rate, then he'll be up because he would offer an improvement over Jackie Bradley. Right now he's projected to be sort of 10% to 15% worse than league average

with a stick. I mean, that's already pretty close to where you would think Jackie Bradley would be. Right. I mean, Bradley, I think, is there in part because center field defense on the bench is a concern. I think Duran, he is actually a little bit younger than Verdugo, a few months younger,

just to correct something I said earlier, Duran. I just think that they're the speed, like cheap speed is hard to find. So as soon as they flip that switch, even on the big side of platoon, potentially that might be enough to play. Yeah.

And in leagues where you're starting five outfielders, you're talking about a 12 team league. He's probably going to be a nice pickup. And the other thing you got to keep in mind, too, this is a point that Al Melkier made on the Fantasy Baseball podcast on Friday, we're probably not going to have that big

wave of call-ups because a lot of top prospects already debuted. As you're thinking about spending fab, I think you can spend a little more aggressively because you're not saving it in mixed think you can spend a little more aggressively because you're not saving it in mixed leagues you're not having this early to mid-may the typical fabapalooza where four or five really interesting prospects are all coming up at once i mean we'll get a handful of guys that come up here and there but i would err more on the side of spending than

saving and also mixed leagues it also makes me think about what you should be doing in weeks when you are um when you're largely healthy and you think you don't have to make a move so what i did in those leagues like that's why i ended up with ronzi contraris is if i had a full starting rotation that i was happy with and i didn't really want to pick up a streamer i picked up ronzi contraris right And I tried to do it for reasonably cheap so that I could have him on my bench. Maybe he becomes a full-time starter this week and he becomes a better option than my guy next year. So if you have a fully healthy lineup, you're looking pretty good,

and you maybe have a spot to play with on your bench, then now is the time to put like a $3 to $5, like a very small percentage uh play on duran if you can uh to pick him up and put him on your bench and then you don't even have to spend 150 that it might take to get duran if he has that big call up although it might depend on if he was drafted or not just check your rules yeah he might have some leagues where he's not available until he actually comes up but i do think but if he does try to not, just check your rules. Yeah. He might have some leagues where he's not available until he actually comes up,

but I do think, but if he does try to do, it's probably to play right. And it's probably to push Bradley into more of a backup. Yeah. And there's lots of ways that Jaron Duran can be useful. So still interested, even though the debut last year was underwhelming for Jaron Duran.

If you've got questions for us for a future episode, by the way, send them via email rates and barrels at the athletic.com or drop them underneath this video on YouTube. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button because you can ask questions in the comment section. We'll be sure to sweep through those and bring those onto future shows as

well. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. Find me at Derek Van Ryper. And if you don't have a subscription to the athletic, you can get one for $1 a month for the first six months at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening..