Rates & Barrels - Eno Battles San Diego

Episode Date: December 12, 2019

Rundown3:45 Gerrit Cole: A $324 Million Bargain?9:13 Stephen Strasburg Stays in D.C.12:27 Zack Wheeler to Philly19:02 Didi Gregorius, Also a Philly Now26:30 Nomar Mazara Gets a Fresh Start33:32 Dylan Bundy Leaves the AL East37:52 The Rangers Add Two Starters42:41 Cole Hamels Goes to Atlanta45:49 Pineda Stays in Minnesota49:49 Rays-Padres Trade59:06 Omar Narváez & Fighting Blue Ink72:17 The Giants "Buy" a First-Round Pick74:59 Beer of the Week Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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No matter what you're looking for, the checkout process is easy. Two taps, Eno-friendly technology, and the ticket selection is great. Plus, you can see the view from your seats before you commit. The GameTime app is simple, quick, and easy to navigate. Download the GameTime app in the Google Play or App Store and score last-minute deals on tickets up to 60% off. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 56. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Some things have happened since we last spoke. The winter meetings still in progress.

It is a Wednesday recording this week. We moved it back a day to accommodate Eno's schedule on the road and to try and capture some of the things that were happening in the last couple of days. I think we may have succeeded because Garrett Cole is now a Yankee. Steven Strasburg has a new deal with the Nationals. The Rangers and White Sox made a trade that sent Nomar Mazzara packing. Those moves were in the span of about 24 hours. There's a lot of other stuff that happened before the meetings that we'll get to on this show as well. If you've been listening regularly, you know we are now available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much anywhere that you want to listen to podcasts. If you're

enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to leave us a nice rating and review, we would greatly appreciate that. It helps other people find the show, and that's good for us in the long run. So please do that if you have the time to do it. Some of you might be listening to the show for the very first time. If so, welcome. If you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Everything we do is included with a subscription to the site. Eno, happy winter meetings.

How's San Diego treating you so far? I think if you can hear what I sound like, that's one answer. The other answer I would give you is thank God for toast with a sunny side up egg. That's all I would like to say about that. Okay. That's fine. I mean, San Diego, if you had to design a city for Eno or for me or for most people, San Diego checks a lot of boxes to make people very happy. So I can see where going into your fourth day in the city with all the things that are happening, you'd be in less than peak condition.

But I think this show will be a good one. I'm warmed up death. It's my own damn fault. I started this thing with a beer crawl. We can even have a beer of the week because I started with a beer. We have to have a beer of the week. We're going to have beer of the week at the end. It's basically going to be a whole segment for you to talk about the beer crawl because

you experienced a lot of interesting beers along the way. We'll definitely get to that. But let's start with Garrett Cole. That was the news that broke pretty late last night on the East Coast, right around peak bar time and networking at the winter meetings. So that's always nice. But nine years, $324 million. Garrett Cole goes to the Bronx.

It's a staggering number to see. And this came up on Under the Radar this morning. And Ian Kahn, who's a lifelong Yankees fan and regular co-host in that show, of course, he said, it almost feels like Cole is underpaid somehow, which when you think about the value he brought the last two seasons in Houston, he has the potential to be underpaid if he's able to replicate a few of those years, especially early in the deal, and have an arc as he progresses through the nine-year deal, similar to what Justin Verlander's done over the past decade or what Max Scherzer's done over the past decade.

I mean, this was a groundbreaking deal, and it's just fascinating for a whole variety of reasons. Yeah, I mean, I would make the argument that Garrett Cole is the best pitcher in baseball, breaking deal and it's just fascinating for a whole variety of reasons yeah i mean i would i would make the argument that gary cole is the best pitcher in baseball and to have the best pitcher in baseball be a free agent at 29 years old is how you get to these record numbers and i i right now i'm struggling to really figure out how to value players. I'm sort of questioning some of the established frameworks in terms of dollars per war and supply and demand and how the marketplace actually works. But I will say the market seemed to work really well in this situation. And the

fact that it wasn't just one or two teams, there were at least three teams that were at the trough that were really going at it and you know with the Dodgers I'm sure I don't know I haven't seen a room or anything but I'm sure that they made an offer that was over 300 million I'm sure the Angels got over 300 million so pretty amazing to to give a pitcher that many years but if you look at the way starting pitchers age, if they have multiple pitches, the velocity part is actually not as important for a starting pitcher, the way they age. So it's mostly important that they have multiple pitches, that they can kind of emphasize at different points and kind of have different adjustments they can make in the future.

So all signs point to him aging well in that regard. And then on top of that, he's never had Tommy John. He's never really had a major injury. And so you're talking about what looks like the perfect storm for signing a pitcher. Pirates fans are still sitting in a corner just shaking their heads like, unbelievable, we traded this guy away and didn't get any franchise changing players back in the return i mean that that trade just gets worse and worse over time with colin moran jason martin michael feliz and joe musgrove being the four players

that they got a little less than two years ago i mean that was january 13th 2018 we're not even two years removed from that trade between the astros and Pirates, and now Garrett Cole is the highest paid pitcher in baseball, $36 million per year. There is an opt-out in the deal after the 2024 season, so if things don't work out for whatever reason, or Cole thinks he can hit another big contract in his early mid-30s, then that could be something we're talking about a few years from now. I saw a pretty interesting bit from Todd Zola on Twitter. I think they're called tweets. But he wrote, the park factors going from Minute Maid Park to Yankee Stadium are virtually a wash. And with the Cole projections for 2020, I think had he returned the Astros, the ERA and whip projection that Zola had was a 278 ERA and a 0.95 whip.

Going to the Yankees, it's a 282 ERA and a 0.96 whip. I mean, a negligible difference in the ratios. As you think about the difference moving into Yankee Stadium, pitching in the AL East, is that in line with how you expect things to unfold? Yeah, I don't anticipate. There is a little bit of a quality of opposition situation, but he's been facing Mike Trout and there have been decent games, decent offenses. He's gone into Texas a lot. I think he's bulletproof. I mean, just look at that strikeout rate and that walk rate you know even with a 1.2 homers per nine last year he was so dominant so i really feel like you know this uh

he's he's bulletproof i think and people want you know oh will he keep it up or was this like astro special sauce or something like if there is a special sauce he's bringing it with him and then secondly i have a lot of respect for Matt Blake, the pitching coach hire in New York. They took away from the Indians. The Indians are a pitching factory. Everybody tells me Matt Blake is super smart and really good at connecting people with people.

So I have no sort of reservations about probably making Cole the best fantasy pitcher in baseball, too. Yeah, he's a first-rounder. He's on the short list. Probably Cole and Jacob deGrom, definitely first-rounders in a 12-team league. I think you can argue for Justin Verlander in there. I don't know if that's a move I would necessarily make, but it's splitting hairs. He's a guy I'm at least thinking about in the later part of round one, if Colin and if Colin DeGrom are both off the board. Let's talk about Steven Strasburg for a moment. I mean, he had an opt out, he exercised it and he got a big raise seven years, 245 million

for Strasburg to stay in DC. A little salt in the wound maybe for Padres fans who thought that there was a chance that during these winter meetings in San Diego that maybe Strasburg would come home and be a big addition to that rotation. But he ends up staying put and getting $35 million per year. So Cole breaks the Strasburg AAV in about 24 hours. But this is a pretty big commitment for a guy that has had a lot of difficulty staying healthy. We talked about Cole as a guy that's been generally very durable. That has not been the case with Strasburg. You look back at 2018, only 130 innings.

2017, he was at 175. 2016 and 2015 at 147 and 127, respectively. So this seems very risky based on the duration of the extension, but obviously it was a necessary thing for the Nats to do in order to retain him. Yeah, I wouldn't have given that deal. He's a little older, too. He's 31.

I wouldn't have given that deal. I think the main thing that creeps me out about seven years and 250 million to Strasburg is that he's had Tommy John surgery. And once you have had it once, you know, the success rate on the first Tommy John surgery is around 90%. The success rate on the second Tommy John surgery is around 50%. And that basically means that if he has to go under the knife again for his elbow, he's a 50-50 shot to pitch again. You know, so that worries me.

You know, I think that's a serious worry. And, you know, this is the second time in his career he's managed 200 innings. So I think it's fair to ask about his durability just in general, even not just the elbow ligament so you know i have a feeling that he'll be overdrafted a little bit next year too because the projections all say 200 innings but you know i put the over under on innings for him next year something more like 150 you know yeah that's where i'd go to the three-year average as a guide you know 150 155 maybe something in that range and if you get more than great things are fine but he's going to be

what a top five pitcher in in most rooms i would think yeah it's uh probably not one that i'm gonna do at this price i did like him a little last year as a secret ace, as a later ace, but now if he's going to join that top crew, I'm not sure I want to invest like that. We do have some early ADP. 25 leagues already in the books from the

NFBC. Strasburg, ninth among pitchers in ADP, 29.2, but it kind of clustered. You've got Mike Clevenger, Jack Flaherty, Shane Bieber, and Strasburg all between 24 and 29. There's a little bit of a break before you get down to Blake Snell. It's surprising to me. It's surprising to me. I would have thought there'd been more inflation. I think at that price, I'm still in. Yeah, it's wild. So that was a huge

signing that happened during the meetings. Another one to talk about is Zach Wheeler getting five years and $118 million from the Phillies. Kind of a similar deal to what Patrick Corbin got a year ago from the Nationals if we're looking for a comp. And I think with Wheeler,

you and I have talked about the things we like about him. The velo, the basic traits that you're looking for in a potential ace wheeler has them it's just a matter of him kind of putting it all together and getting up one more level of back-to-back seasons where he's been worth at least four wins above replacement for the mets so kind of looking at it scaling it down from the numbers that Cole and Strasburg got, it kind of fits into where the market is at right now. And for a lot of teams, that was their best shot at getting someone that could be as impactful in his best seasons as Cole and or Strasburg could be in their more typical ones. Yeah. It's a really interesting deal because,

you know, I think in years past, he would have gotten like one and 15 from a savvy team, like the Rays, you know, who would have had a fix waiting for him. And that would have made a lot of sense. But to spend $100 million on a player that probably in order to be worth that has to make an adjustment,

I think made me feel a little bit like it's a possible overpay. You know, I mean, if Wheeler does not change anything, I don't think he's worth $100 million. Yeah, well, I think he kind of breaks even at that price over five years, if he doesn't get up to that next level. But going into Philly, it's a more difficult place to pitch than pitching at Citi Field.

I mean, how much are you worried about that in terms of the change in park factors for his home starts? Yeah, you see a fairly large leap in his projected home runs i mean uh other than his uh injury shortened 2017 he's mostly had a good home run rate and um he's projected right now by steamer for 1.4 homers per nine um you know in my stat cast park factors in terms of terms of how often do high drives turn into homers, Philly is surprisingly not a top five team, but it is a top ten team. And only three slots ahead of New York. So interesting that they play closer than people might think in terms of fairness and they're

kind of middle of the pack uh but there's always like a component uh park factor situation where you know if lefties are having an easy time off of um off of wheeler then you know the the the new york and philly play differently to different parts of the park. And I'm trying to look at that. Well, look at that again. Philly, yes, it does play nicer to hitters, but there's not a huge difference between left and right field in Philadelphia. And there wasn't in New York either.

So I think maybe there's an opportunity to um get some return on your investment fantasy wise in that uh those home run part factors the home run production might be overblown um but i also feel like because we're so savvy to the fact that like oh he just needs to throw his fastball high in the zone more um and uh maybe like tweak the the shape of his fastball a little bit and it'll be great i think there's gonna be so much sort of hype around that and there's gonna be so many pieces about oh like this is how the phillies are gonna fix zach wheeler or whatever that uh the price may overinflate. The early price, again, NFBC ADPs to this point, has been really kind of low. 122 overall for the ADP, an early pick of 99.

I think knowing where he's at, even though the perception is that it's very hitter-friendly because it is hitter-friendly, he's going to jump probably close to where James Paxton is. I'm looking at James Paxton around pick 90. So he's in the top 30 among pitchers. I think Wheeler's going to close that gap down. I think that's probably where he settles in.

Maybe looking at Paxton versus Wheeler in a quick game of would you rather. Would you rather. Who do you like better for this season between Paxton and Wheeler? That was really bad. That one, I'm saving that cut forever. When I have a soundboard, that cut has a dedicated button. Oh my God, that was death. I'd rather have Paxton.

I think Paxton is in some ways in Steven Strasburg territory from a year ago. I know he hasn't had the one big season that Strasburg previously had before doing it in 2019. But the injuries that have piled up on James Paxton have finally got to the point now where I think you're getting a discount. Yeah. Paxton have finally got to the point now where I think you're getting a discount. Yeah. And if he has that year where he gets to 190 or 200 with the skills on that team, it's going to be a smash pick where you're getting an ace for the price of a mid-range SP2. And that's a big gain.

I mean, if you're the kind of person who wants to maybe wait on your rotation this year because you think you're just going to load up on bats those first four to five rounds, Paxton's probably the kind of guy that you can take as your first pitcher. You're going to back him up with some other guys around that tier, but he could actually end up returning ace value in these circumstances. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I absolutely love him as a pick. And, you know, I might love him as a pick and, um,

you know, I might rather he be my number two, uh, but you still could use them in a weight situation where, um, maybe you do like Nola Paxton, you get a backend top 12 guy, uh, and then add on Paxton, um, you could, you could easily walk out of the room, uh, with, you know, You could easily walk out of the room with 350 innings of kind of like a 3-3 ERA. Yeah, I think I like Paxton a lot, and I would take him over Wheeler in a heartbeat, I think. Yeah, I think for me they're similar in value, but I do prefer Paxton at this point as well. Let's talk about Didi Gregorius for a moment. He leaves the Yankees, goes to the Phillies, gets a one-year deal, $14 million, gets reunited with Joe Girardi. I like this fit because I think there were only maybe three or four other places Didi could go where I wasn't going to worry about a massive fall off in power.

Of course, people have seen the spray charts by now. It's all pull off in power. Of course, people have seen the spray charts by now. It's all pull side power. And being a lefty in Yankee Stadium, that's an amazing fit. It's the best possible fit for a guy that hits the ball like that. How well does he fit in Philadelphia, relatively speaking? I mean, if a healthy Didi Gregorius was going to hit 25 to 28 home runs for the Yankees in 2020. How many does he hit for the Phillies in 2020 now with that park change? 24 to 27. Yeah, it's not a bad drop at all. No, I don't think so.

And, you know, leaving New York is going to be, yes, it's going to be an issue. New York has, to right field, has the highest stat-cast park factor in baseball. And it's not even close. They're at 1.5 and everybody else is at 1.2 or 1.1. Actually, now that I'm looking at it, of course, Cincinnati is second. So it goes Yankees 1.5, Cincinnati 1.4, basically. And then there's a grouping at 1.1, 1.2 that actually includes Philadelphia.

So Philadelphia has the third friendliest park to right field, but it's an order of magnitude lower. So there will be an effect, but I think it may be overstated and he's in a fairly friendly park for his power profile. He's in a little bit of a Yasmany Grandal situation from last winter. He takes a one-year

deal. He had back-to-back seasons where he was worth more than four wins in 17 and 18 before having Tommy John. Could bounce back this year and then get that multi-year payday a year from now. That wouldn't surprise me. I still think there's a pretty short list of teams that would be interested, in part because a lot of organizations have a younger shortstop entrenched at the position. But I think a lot of the same teams that were interested in signing Didi this winter

are going to then fall back on some short-term replacements and maybe come back to the table next winter yeah um yeah I could see him ending up on the Yankees again I think it's a fairly good idea for him to do this because I mean although I did you know projections mostly had him just signing a three-year version of the same deal. So he may be overthinking it, and he should have taken a 3-42 as opposed to a 1-14. But at the same time, if you look at his exit velocity numbers at the end of the season, they were through the roof, best exit velocity of his career. And exit velocity, there's no straight line connecting exit velocity to outcome. So that doesn exit velocity there's no uh straight line connecting

exit velocity to outcome so that doesn't mean you know he's going to be amazing but it does mean to me that he was getting healthy at the end of the year and that his numbers were suppressed last year you know by the fact he was coming back from tommy john surgery so um i think a healthy year may put him on track to to to have a better deal in the future. I think he picked the right park. He picked the right situation. The only problem for us as fantasy owners is shortstop is ridiculously deep. I mean, just ridiculously deep. And if you take the position off of it, these days, a 250, 25 homer hitting bat is I wouldn't say necessarily not playable but it's

borderline not playable in shallower leagues I mean it's way too dime a dozen just think about Freddie Galvis Freddie Galvis is going to hit 20 homers yeah he's going to play enough to do it which is wild

and he's not going to be that far off a 250s batting average. I mean, he could even reach that level. He's probably more likely to be a 230, 240 type guy. I think the key difference, though, between the two is going to be where they hit in their lineups. I think Galvis, because of the low OBP, lower OBP even than Gregorius, is more likely to get buried in the bottom third. I think Didi can kind of float around in the middle third a little more often, drives up those RBI totals, drives up those run score totals a little bit. Maybe not a cleanup guy the way he was for a few years with the Yankees,

but probably not sinking quite as far down in the batting order. So I think that's where those counting stats are a little bit safer. Yeah, and I mentioned Galvis more to be like, hey, with the ball the way it is, 40 power now is – 40 on the 28 scouting scale is supposedly not good power. I mean, Freddie Galvis was not supposed to hit 10 homers in a season, and now he's hitting 20. With that sort of situation if that's kind of your baseline for you know powerless players they're going to hit 20 homers then

dd gregorius becomes uh less special i would think that maybe the true would you rather for me is dd gregorius this is paul de young um and i just think uh they have a very similar profile. Not going to be an asset on batting average. Good power. You might get a little bit better batting average from Didi. You're going to get more power from Paul De Jong. Neither is really that exciting. That's sort of my true would you rather. I'm interested who would you rather.

I want the cheaper of the two because I see it the way you do where there's so little that separates them if i can get something else i need when the young is going to come off the board around pick 180 or 190 i'll go ahead and do that and then try to get dd next time through he's got an adp gap of about looks like 40 or so picks right now it's almost three rounds yeah 15 team league i mean with that discount i want dd i think that gap's going to close i think knowing that he's in a hitter friendly environment those two are going to be adp neighbors within the next month but um it's also uh you know fair to think of strategy at the point where those two are on the board you you may be the last one to need a middle infielder you know that might be the the sort of end of the bucket so you might as well just not pick them until very

very late if they're both there because nobody else is likely to pick uh one of those two for their bench you know they're not the kind of high upside players that you put on your bench they're not a young prospect or you know what i'm saying so like it's upside players that you put on your bench. They're not a young prospect. You know what I'm saying? It's very likely that you can just leave them out there for a long time if you're the last one to pick a shortstop. In fact, I think that's a very viable strategy for this year is to punch shortstop basically because the very bottom shortstops in your league

are likely to be Ahmed Rosario, Paul DeJong, Didi Gregorius, Willie Adamas, Jorge Polanco, Bo Bichette. That's the bottom of the barrel. And there's a lot of exciting names there. There's durable, nice players like DeJong and Didi. And then there's even upside in Bo Bichette. And I would say Willie Adamas has some upside. So if that's the bottom of the barrel, man, it's a stacked position. Speaking of kind of what looks like replacement level power, at least from a fantasy perspective,

Nomar Mazzara is on the move. He goes to the White Sox. Steele Walker gets traded back to Texas. That's an 80-grade name and a perfect player to put in Texas. Walker, Texas Ranger. It was just, yeah, it's flawless. You could not have put a better player on that team from a name standpoint. But Nomar Mazzara goes to the White Sox, and we've been pretty excited about what they've been doing all along this offseason.

And he's an upgrade over what they had in right field. Even if he's still an average-ish or a little below average in terms of what he actually brings to the table, the White Sox are also getting the possibility that he's a relative late bloomer. Not because he's old, he's only 24, but because he's been in the big leagues for four full seasons the barrel rate has crept up in each of the last two seasons from six and a half percent back in 2017 to eight and a half percent last year or 2018 and now 10.7 percent in the real last season 2019 so he's making some progress that hasn't necessarily been visible in the basic counting stats. How much do you like this move for the White Sox? Because they get Mazar for two years. He's a free agent after 2021,

and it keeps them away from some of the free agent corner outfielders that had a qualifying offer attached, like a Marcelo Zuna. And it keeps them from making a multi-year commitment up front maybe to a Yassiel Puig or a Nick Castellanos. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great that you mentioned Yassiel Puig. Because that's why Nomar Mazar got traded for a virtual... I don't want to be rude. I don't think that Walker's a great prospect. No, he's not highly regarded at all. I mean, there were plenty of people who know

baseball pretty well who were like who is steel walker yeah like why did they do that i mean our friend james anderson he has a top 400 prospect list and steel walker's not on it oh my god that's a big list 400 fantasy prospects and this is a guy that was drafted out of Oklahoma, I think, in the second round of the 2017 draft. So he's a little old, and he hasn't been crushing the lower levels of the minor leagues. So for that to be the return for Nomar Mazzara was a little bit jarring when you think about how good people expected Nomar Mazzara to be when his career began. good people expected Nomar Mazzara to be when his career began. Disappointment is always kind of relative to where our expectations are. And for Nomar Mazzara, our expectations have just been at a level that he's been unable to reach so far.

Does the change of scenery, not necessarily because of park factors, but just getting to work with some new coaches and just be around some new teammates potentially give him some lift? is there anything about this move that makes you more optimistic about him in 2020 than you would have been had he stayed put in texas yeah i mean i was trying to set it up where you know there's all these negative things there's there's yasiel puig is a great uh option you know that may not cost that much money you Corner outfielders are fairly available. You can get them. Nomar Mazzara has never put up a win of value on fan graphs. He has terrible defense. He doesn't walk much. He might be a first baseman with the glove. He's never actually hit above league average in terms of league and park

adjusted stats. So, you know, there's a lot of reason to be down on this, but I can't, I can't quit him. I can't quit him. I like him. I, I see, I like his swing. Uh, I think he has some untapped power, yes. And I don't bat an eye at all when I look at Steamer and it projects him for a batting average he's never put up and 27 homers when he's never hit more than 20. And I'm like, yeah, that's who I think he is. I think he's a 275, 30-homer hitting guy. who I think he is. I think he's a 275-30 homer hitting guy.

So I just don't want to just sort of confirm my own bias and just be like, yes, that's right because I think it's right and yay. But just on projections, he's going to be a valuable player. And I think there's

still an opportunity to do a little better than that. And maybe because of the trade, he'll start to creep up ADP-wise too. Again, it's not because people are going to look at guaranteed rate field, which still does not roll off the tongue for me. It's not because it's a better spot to hit than whatever they call the ballpark in Texas. Nomar Mazzara has fallen outside the top 200 in terms of ADP. And when players who are still relatively young get that opportunity to play every single day and show some even small underlying signs of growth,

I'm interested. And I think if he'd stayed healthy for a full season in 2019, we would have seen better counting stats than we'd ever seen before. We would have seen probably 25 home runs instead of the 20 that he hit in each of his first three seasons. We would have probably got into the 85 range for RBIs, which would have been his second best total. He had 101 back in 2017, and he already last season scored a career high, 69 runs, despite all that missed time. So he probably been in the 80 to 85 range there i also wonder because of the the makeup of the the white socks roster

if they still will go after a veteran corner outfielder because they could pretty easily justify you know letting mazara be a regular dh like they they have a path to do that whereas texas was always a little bit crowded in the outfield, had some older players they didn't want to put out there a lot. That kind of made Mazzara have to play the outfield a lot more. And he's getting further along in the aging curve, so you don't necessarily worry as much about saying, hey, he's a 22

year old that we're DHing. Teams don't generally want to do that. It's going to be 25 in April, so maybe you can have that more realistic expectation that he's only a part-time outfielder, but he's mostly a DH. Yeah. Um, I don't think that they're necessarily flush with outfielders in that organization though. So, um, I think that DH is likely going to be a rotating cast of, you know, trying to keep our healthy players healthy, but there is a way that you can maybe lessen the impact of Mazzara's, uh, poor outfield defense by, uh, judiciously DH-ing him, DH-ing him, uh, behind

a fly ball pitcher or fly ball hitting team or whatever. So, um, I definitely do think that the DH will, uh, add some value to the, having a sort of open DH situation will add some, add some value to having a sort of open DH situation. We'll add some value for the White Sox and for their usage of Mazzara. But I don't think that they hope to DH in full time. Let's keep grinding through the moves that have gone down over the past week. Dylan Bundy gets a fresh start. He gets traded to the Angels.

Isaac Mattson was among the prospects shipped back to Baltimore in that deal. Bundy's one of those guys I think we've been waiting for a couple of years for him to get a chance outside of Baltimore. Getting out of the AL East is a good thing, but just getting out of Camden Yards when you have a home run issue that's been as extreme as Bundy the last two seasons can only help. He's given up 70 home runs the last two seasons, 41 in 2018, 29 in 2019. And that's for a guy who wasn't maxing out innings wise. He was at 171 in 2018 and 161 and two thirds in 2019. What's your interest level in Bundy now that he's no longer an Oriole?

It's fairly high, actually. I mean, I know the numbers are just terrible on results, but you just have to think that he'll at least give up fewer homers when he's away from Baltimore. It's going to be a fairly big difference for him. untapped potential in him in that when I look at his pitches, I see a lot of good. I see a lot of ride on the fastball. I see a ton of movement on his power change. The slider gets great results, and I think it's it's it's a great pitch for him so you've got those three pitches the sinker even has decent numbers so maybe you kind of mix that in judiciously and um i'd say the curve is as a representative pitch so you've got a five pitch pitcher and each of their each of those pitches has interesting movement that That's a recipe just by itself for potential profit as a fantasy owner and for potential breakout seasons. Because if you have five pitches, there's a high likelihood

that you can alter the way you use them and have a different outcome. Whereas if you have two or three pitches, there's not as many permutations to your mix. There's not as many possible things you can do. So those two facts to me, the park factors and that he has good pitches with good movement, and he's five of them, mean to me that he's a very decent um sort of late game play uh al only sort of three to five dollar type pitcher uh you know even 15 team league bench

pitcher uh play i don't want the hype to get too big and make him an actual pitcher that people are spending close to 10 bucks on and al onlys or um you know putting you know in the middle of their their pitching roster in 15 teams but i i do like him as a as a flyer type yeah it's not a gross dylan bundy anymore it's hey this could be interesting either for home streaming or possibly for a bit more especially in those mid-sized mixed leagues and anything deeper than that. There's definitely room for him to play in those formats. One thing I also wanted to mention that's interesting

is that it used to be in the past, if you play in the West, you say, oh, there's a lot of good pitchers parks, but there's also Texas. And I wanted to mention this with Mazzaro. It's very good for Mazzaro to get out of Texas right now because I think Texas next year is going to play much more neutral. The biggest part of Texas's outsized park factors and the offense that happens in Texas, the biggest part of that is how

hot it was. And the new stadium has a dome. So that's going to be more temperature regulated. So it's going to be a much more even-handed situation there in terms of park factors. So now you're talking about he's going to pitch in Anaheim. He's going to pitch in Oakland. He's going to pitch in Texas. And Houston plays fairly, you know, pretty fair. So that's a really different situation than pitching in fenway uh with its unique park factors uh you know yankee stadium and baltimore most of the time yeah and the rangers

just kind of staying on them for a minute thinking about the pitchers they have signed over the past a few days they add jordan lyles they add kyle gibson They've done really well in that chunk of free agent pitching the last couple of off seasons. The Mike Miner deal has been great for them. Lance Lynn was outstanding a year ago. If the park becomes more neutral, that gives the pitching a lift as well. So I'm looking at where some of the new Rangers have been going. And by that, again, I mean Gibson and Lyles specifically. And I'm wondering if maybe this whole rotation is a little bit underpriced in early drafts. Yes, I would say that a lot of people just want to stay away from uncertainty and or may not even realize realize that texas is

getting into a new stadium or or uh may think that it'll play similarly to the last one uh so i do think there's just an opportunity there in terms of information gap possibility uh but also the rangers there's a there's a thing here i don't think a lot of people know that the Rangers had a, I would say a tight relationship, uh, have been working with a driveline for a couple of years. And, uh, I think they have a really underrated sort of pitch design, major league pitching coach, um, analytics and analytics based, um, pitch coaching situation there, um, that, uh, that is going to play out. I mean, obviously they've, they've had some success in Lennon minor. I would say that, um, I wouldn't be surprised if Gibson has a good season, uh, next year for them. Um,

and at the same time, I would like to say that I'm a little bit suspicious of a lot of them just because their stuff isn't amazing. You know, Gibson has five pitches in command, so he fits in this sort of Bundy bucket. But if you're going to have to pay established pitcher prices and you're pitching, you're paying, you know, five to ten dollars for him in AL only, or you're really putting Gibson in your starting lineup, then I'm actually a little bit nervous. Yeah, what I think it comes down to for me is just being open-minded about them if the market continues to leave them where they are. And I just looked up their ADPs,

just again to run through what's happening so far. Lance Lynn, 133. If you just drafted based purely on the skills from last season, he'd go earlier than that. There's no doubt about that. Mike Miner at 165. Jordan Lyles 356.

And Kyle Gibson at 363. His handwriting was so bad that I almost couldn't read it. That's so bad. At that price i like gibson i like gibson better than lyles so i'm pretty surprised that there he's that dirt cheap i mean maybe people are having a little bit of cal gibson fatigue um because he he's really only had that one great maybe two great seasons but um i'm into him so at that price i love him.

If he's a dollar pitcher in AL only or a $2 pitcher, yes, give me. I would guess for the sake of AL labor, you're looking at closer to five or seven, but I think... I think I still like him in there. I mean, I would say he has a slightly higher floor than yeah, he has a higher floor than Dylan Bundy, uh, a better projection than Dylan Bundy. Um, and a similar ceiling. I mean, the things that I said about Dylan Bundy are true about Kyle Gibson. They generally this, the, the movement numbers are good. He's got five pitches,

you know, he can move them in and out. So, um um i would say that they're very similar and i would uh i would take the cheaper of the two but i would i would roster both of them yeah just a group of pitchers that if you kind of think back to how you played four or five years ago texas pitchers were kind of an easy avoid when they didn't have uh aces you know they had some terrible staffs like darvish and Cole Hamels were fine, but a lot of their back-end guys for a while were just untouchable. That's not really the case anymore. They definitely got something figured out.

Did you say Gerardo? Yeah. It's so bad. Those guys. Chi-Chi. Oh, Chi-Chi. Oh, Lord. My heart.

Speaking of Cole Hamels, he gets a one-year deal with the Braves. Kind of an interesting little signing. They need innings. Julio Teran probably going to move on as a free agent. Not a lock, but just seems like something that might happen depending on the offers he's getting. But one year, $18 million for Hamels. Basically, the qualifying offer that the Cubs didn't give him. What do you see for Hamels going into Atlanta?

Is last year kind of a sign of the beginning of the end for him, or do you think there's still some sub-4 ERA and kind of better-than-league-average whip potential over a lot of innings in him? I like him, and I have a feeling that he's with projections for like a four, three ERA being 35 years old, being on a one year deal. I have a feeling that people are going to sleep on him.

I have a feeling that he's, you know, gonna be in a group where I don't know. I'd like to, I'd like to hear his ADPs. Where is he going? Because I feel like if he's going against a group of, I don't know, I'd like to hear his ADPs. Where is he going? Because I feel like if he's going against a group of oh, this guy could be good,

he's going to be undervalued. One of his ADP neighbors is a massive potential hype guy, especially with Grandal being with the White Sox. Ronaldo Lopez is right there. 293 is the ADP for Cole Hamels in 25 drafts to this point.

Cole Hamels every day. Cole Hamels a million times over Ronaldo Lopez. Here's a rapid fire. Here's a bunch of the guys that are going ahead of him. I'm curious if any of these guys are guys that you actually would take over Cole Hamels. These guys are going earlier right now. Dakota Hudson. No.

Adrian Hauser. Nope. are going earlier right now. Dakota Hudson? No. Adrian Hauser? Nope. Anthony Duscafani? Nope. Yanni Trinos? Cole Hamels. Cole Hamels. Okay.

Yanni Trinos. Yanni? Maybe. You got me, yeah. Okay. Dylan Cease? That one's really interesting because that's kind of the name

that was in my head where I think I would still take Cole Hamels, obviously not in a keeper league. I would rather have cease a million times. And I, and I'm fairly excited about Dylan sees if he can stop cutting his fastball, I think it'll turn into more ride. And then he could be a really,

really exciting pitcher. And I know that he personally wants to cut the ride on his fastball. So he's aware of this issue. He wants to cut the cut on his fastball, so he's aware of this issue. He wants to cut the cut on his fastball down, so I know that he's aware of that issue, and that makes me hopeful. But he's a little bit more of the sort of bird in the hand. Who's in the bush? Oh, the bird is in the hand.

Versus two in the bush? Yeah. Yeah, bird in the hand versus is in the hand. Versus two in the bush? Yeah. Yeah, bird in the hand versus two in the bush. Cease is the two in the bush, and Hamels is the bird in the hand. Sure, yeah. I'll just accept that as something I understand. I also like Dylan Cease, if that's what you said. Yeah, it depends a little bit on the on what your staff

looks like if you've been taking a lot of risks then maybe it's time to take hamels and kind of lock down some okayness uh but if you haven't been taking the risks obviously cease um has more upside yeah again you're you're definitely positioned where you can end up with both and other guys in that cluster, but that seems like a very low price for Cole Hamels. Michael Pineda goes back to the Twins, so that's pretty interesting that he stays put. Pineda, okay, we've had a long-standing up-and-down sort of relationship with him. And he still, in the last four seasons that he's pitched at the big league level, has been unable to finish with an ERA under four. Last year had a 116 whip, a lot of strikeouts,

140 Ks and 146 innings. Things are all there in terms of the pieces. Home runs are always going to be part of what you get from him. Do you like the fit with him staying in Minnesota? I do. I do. They've done a really great job of making him into a great tunneler. He tunnels really well. I think they're doing a really good job of getting the most out of him.

I think he's just a flawed guy that's going to give up home runs. That's the true constant through his whole career. And a little shout out to Paul Spohr's nickname for him, Michael Piñata. That's really good. There is some Piñata in him and there always will be, I think, unless they really de-juice the balls next year. So, you know, if the ball is de-juiced the balls next year. If the ball is de-juiced, I think he could be an amazing play because if that home run rate is disproportionally goes down compared to other people's, he could have a really exciting season, I think. He still has some time left on a suspension, so he's going to miss 39 more games.

That ends up being about eight starts, roughly. That's significant. And it means that if you buy him, you've got to have space for him on your bench for a while. What would the rules be in labor? Could you put him on the bench? A suspended player, you could move out of your lineup. Okay, all right.

But still, if you have a shallow bench situation, it's going to be difficult to roster him, I think. And in terms of projections, they are not fun. So if you're a straight projectionist, like 4'7 ERA for Pineda. So I see reasons to avoid him and possibly just try to be early on him, buy him, get him off the waiver wire two weeks into the season or something. But he's not as terrible as some people think.

No, he's still just going to be 31 in January. So he's a bit younger even than I thought. I thought he'd be like 34 because it feels like he's been around forever, broke in for the first time way back in 2011. Yeah, oh my God, what was that trade? It was Montero. Jesus Montero, yeah. And there was a real feeling for a while in there,

especially how long Pineda was hurt in 2012 and 2013, that both teams had somehow lost the trade. It did seem like lose-lose, but the Yankees ended up getting the win in that one. Yeah, they got a pretension. They got, I would say, a good 400, 500, 400 productive innings out of it. Yeah, had to wait longer than expected, but ended up being a pretty nice payoff

compared to what they probably would have got had they held on to Jesus Montero. Just a footnote here, Alex Zavila signed with the Twins. Kind of interesting, because I think it just means Mitch Garver plays more. That was likely to happen anyway, with Jason Castro being a free agent, but the fact that they signed a guy that really doesn't play a lot and has had multiple concussions, I think bodes well for Garver's push to remain a top five catcher in 2020. Yeah, I would expect his, you know, per at bat power to go down, but the playing time to rise to sort of meet it. And, um, you know, I would expect him to

hit sort of like 25-ish homers and not really skip a beat. Let's talk about some more pre-meeting stuff. This trade I think will always be known as the slap trade. Blake Snell, if you didn't get to see the reaction yourself or hear the reaction yourself, was streaming online when he found out the Rays traded Tommy Pham and Jake Cronenworth to San Diego for Xavier Edwards and Hunter Renfro. Blake Snell was not happy in the moment upon learning that that deal happened, which I think

was really, above anything else, just an expression of disappointment that Pham was leaving. I think Pham is one of those players that maybe has earned the respect of his peers in the clubhouse. One of those kinds of things where it's like, oh man, I like playing with this guy. He's a good player. He prepares. He plays hard. I want to have this guy on my team. He's got an edge to him.

He's an uplifter. Sometimes he's a rabble rouser and sometimes he causes situations, but he's an energetic guy that just standing next to him you kind of feed off his energy. And I wonder if the chip on his shoulder will get even bigger now that the Rays have flipped him to San Diego. Going to another new team,

not being wanted, just seems like the kind of thing that motivates Tommy Pham. It's a great trade for San Diego just from the, hey, they need guys that get on base. Pham is an underrated player. I think you and I both like him. We talked about him a few weeks ago as someone

that probably deserved to be going earlier in some of the very early drafts that we've been a part of. But Xavier Edwards, long term, is a really fascinating player. So you can kind of understand why both sides made this deal. And it wouldn't surprise me if the Rays win in the long run, just based on the way we evaluate players in the long run. And the wild cards here, I mean, are the other we evaluate players in the long run and the wild cards here i mean are the other players involved cronenworth and renfro renfro is kind of where i want to begin because the rays have this knack it's one of their specialties of taking players that you think

have kind of just leveled off and unlocking a little more and usually those players aren't around very long so hunter renfro's time in tamp time in Tampa Bay might be one season or two seasons at most. But I'm curious to see if they can push him up to 40 homers, or maybe they can combine the 2019 power with better average in OBP. What do you think the tweak is going to be potentially with Hunter Renfro? Why did the Rays take him back as a part of this deal? I think Edwards was the key, but I don't think Renfro is insignificant here. You know, there's a lot of people that point to Renfro's splits as evidence that, you know, there's upside in him that remains.

And it has to do with the fact that he hurt his foot. And, you know, if you look at what he was doing in March through June, he pretty much had like a near 400 ISO and did a ton of his damage, a 600 slugging, you know, basically for those three months. And then he hurt his foot and then his ISO kind of tanked and he went from a 361 ISO in the first half to a 138 ISO in the second half. So that's a compelling narrative. 138 iso in the second half um so that's a compelling narrative i would like to point out that just from a real baseball's perspective tommy fam also had an injury and held up the deal um even went to his elbow and his splits there's a little bit of a different spreen post injury but he was way more valuable even given that injury plate discipline having played discipline means

that when things aren't going great for you on the power and you're still giving your team value and uh that to me uh i don't want to get i don't want to just be like i think it feels a little bit like faith casting to be like okay uh with a healthy foot renfro is going to have a 600 slugging. I'm not sure that I can give my sort of stamp of approval to that argument. But I did want to represent that argument is out there. And at least on some level, it represents his upside. It's kind of like a 250 average 600 slugging, just power monster. Yeah, I would imagine that's where the ray is going to draw the line on him i don't think they see much more than that because that seems impossible

maybe this is the the bird in the hand for two in the bush where they think xavier edwards is going to be a four or five win player for multiple years at his peak they'll have him for you know the opportunity for them for seven years they do what teams generally do maybe they just saw like okay you know what like fam yeah maybe he's a little or even a lot better than renfro right now but this is an opportunity to make our team a lot better and we feel like we can pick up the gap between Pham and Renfro with other tweaks on our roster. Edwards is, you know, fits the Tampa Bay stereotype perfectly. They love hit tool. They love people who can make contact. And that's something that Edwards really does well. You know, looking at his, you know, he does never put up 100 ISO. He's got 55% ground ball rates. It doesn't look like he's going to develop power.

But I was talking to J.J. Cooper from Baseball America, and he agreed. I don't think he's going to develop much power. But he was like, look at Freddie Galvis' early production in the minor leagues. And Xavier Edwards is very similar statistically to freddie galvis just uh slightly better in terms of contact rate definitely better in terms of strikeout and contact rate but in terms of isolated isolated power and ground ball rates you know it's a like a fair clone uh so even though xavier edwards has hit one home run in the minor leagues, it's possible that he has terrible power and he comes up

and hits 15 to 18 home runs a year in the major leagues. I mean, you see the scouting grades that Fangraphs has on them too. They got 40 present raw power and 45 future raw power. That's something. I mean, if i'm trying to figure out a roto comp for xavier edwards long term i'm probably thinking like what trey turner is the best case scenario yeah yeah i mean it depends a little bit on how much they let him steal um and how much he how much that's a package that's going to come with him all the way. But it's 80 speed, so it should be like that.

And that's another difference between him and Galvis, actually. Galvis never really had that speed. But I would say sort of baseline is 2017 Freddie Galvis. So I definitely think that xavier edwards can have a season like that 255 12 homers 14 uh stolen bases maybe make it 275 on the batting average i think freddie got uh he can definitely do that but in terms of turner with 80 speed that's a possibility i'm just not i'm not quite sure he's gonna have trey turner power yeah it's it's hard it's really hard to buy into a scouting report when you see that one yeah that one home run like you're really like you're really testing yourself i think as a scout

when you're like no i see i see 40 raw power, and it's just not there yet. It's going to get there. We think he's going to get stronger. But he's really young, too. So I would assume you're projecting some physical maturation to be a factor that brings up the pop. But you brought up the grades on Xavier Edwards. And yeah, the raw power is 40, 45, but game power is 20 and future game power is 30. So, yeah, I mean, it almost, like my initial reaction is it's not going to play.

Like he can't be a major leaguer because if you look at, you know, qualified major leaguers, so to people that hit enough in the bottom of the iso rung uh there's only one guy with a sub 0.90 uh iso that was yomer sanchez he just got released you know so if he has yomer sanchez power it may not it may not be there for him but if he can play uh shortstop um and there's any sort of power growth elvis andrews Jose Iglesias and Brandon Crawford all had sort of like .12-ish ISOs and were regulars.

So I think Elvis Andrews is my outcome for Xavier Edwards. And that does seem like more like a median sort of thing, whereas Trey Turner is like pie in the sky, what you're hoping if you have him in a keeper or a dynasty league. It's a couple more moves to talk about. Let's talk about Omar Narvaez going to the Brewers. I think there was this snap reaction, and I was messaging you behind the

scenes because I wrote a piece for The Athletic about it, but there was a snap reaction that because Omar Narvaez is a bad defensive catcher, that it's not a good move. And the fact of the matter is, replacing Yasmany Grandal, I mean, Grandal's kind of a unicorn, especially in this free agent market. You're not going to find a guy that hits like he does, gets on base like he does,

and frames the way he does. That just doesn't exist. You have to choose one or the other. And I think by trading for Narvaez, the Brewers basically got a version of a catcher who hits as much like Gizmany Grandal as anybody else they could get. And they get him for multiple years. Through the 2022 season, he's much more affordable. You can make up the runs you were saving with Grandal's defense elsewhere.

runs you were saving with Grandal's defense elsewhere. To find a catcher or at least a part-time or large side platoon catcher that hits that much, I think makes us a pretty good fit, especially with the move into Miller Park. Yeah. I mean,

he had bottom 8% exit velocity, Omar Nevaez, and the barrel rate is not good. And the ex- We bacon is not good uh so it's a little bit it's a little bit tough to actually see i think personally what the brewers are thinking here um you know the projection is for like it's a league average bat maybe they just wanted the league average guy for not much,

but I'm not sure he'll hit 20 homers again. I think he's got a shot at it because I think the playing time is going to be there. Even if he's moving around a little bit, plays maybe more first base potentially than Grundahl did. It depends on how well he takes the position, but I think the key for me, the blue ink on his page was a real concern.

It was one of the first things people were sending me screenshots of when I started to say, okay, this is kind of interesting. They're like, well, he doesn't hit the ball hard. Very true. He doesn't hit the ball hard, but he has this weird thing. He uses the opposite field pretty well. The power is almost entirely to that pull side, but he's a pretty good hitter,

strikes out less than 20% of the time, and he has a lot of balls clustered as opposite field. They're basically flares, just balls that he dumps over the left side of the infield or into short center. And those are really low exit velocity hits that pull down that average exit velocity number and make it look worse than it really is. I think that might be part of what's going on with Narvaez.

It's possible it's strategy because there's definitely something called the donut hole. If you look at StatCast, all the stuff that people are chasing are the 95 mile an hour, 20 degree launch angle type launch angle, uh, type hits. And that's, that's where a bunch of red is, but the red, uh, you know, creates a sort of a circle. And then there's another red piece, uh, that's low exit velocity, low angle, uh, but not, not super low angle, you know, but like sort of 10 to 15 degrees and those hits, uh, are hits. But I think mostly

in terms of strategy, in terms of hitting coaching, in terms of, um, what you look for when you acquire hitters, mostly you think those are, um, luck, you know, that, that those are just, uh, things that happened and you don't want to aim for them but if he is honestly aiming for that and he wants that to happen and he can repeat that skill uh yeah i could see him being under value yeah that was sort of the hypothesis i had is like maybe they see something the brewers because this was a two-year sort of thing where his x stats uh lev just not necessarily supported what he has done as a hitter. And it's the same thing as when a pitcher induces a lot of soft contact, right?

There's something there that's a skill, and if you're not missing a ton of bats, you're worried about how much things can fluctuate. But you look at that and say, there's something going on there. I would say it's kind of like Omar Narvaez's stat cast page is basically the inverse of CJ Krohn's stat cast page. Like you see red ink all over CJ Krohn's stat cast page in a back-to-back seasons. Good teams have been willing to part with him, which is really strange, right? Like it's just it's counterintuitive when we realize that hitting the ball hard is awesome, but it's just like there can be some things with

Krone that don't quite work for how teams are looking at players. I think there are some things that happen with guys that are lower EV players that we looking at stat cast on the outside would be kind of scared off by that teams are looking through and saying maybe

we prefer red ink to blue given the circumstances but the blue ink doesn't matter as much because of these types of things and i i wonder if that's where we're at with like these kinds of places it's possible and it's possible that the luis castillo or luis urias um uh acquisition for the brewers uhers fits a trend then, you know, because, you know, Urias' stat cast numbers are also underwhelming. So, and I wonder if there's a sort of traditional scouting element to it because the way that you talk about him, the way that you've been talking about him,

it strikes me that it's possible that he has like two swings, you know. He has the, you know, pull power swing that if the ball's inside on the inside half of the plate and up maybe, or inside and middle, uh, he puts the pull power swing on it and takes it deep and otherwise is looking to put his sort of inside out swing, uh, and go the other way. And if that's true, uh, and I, and you know, Kevin Euclid's always told me that, you know, he thinks that batters have to have multiple swings because it's hard to use the same exact swing to get to all nine sort of quadrants of the strike zone, to get to all the different sort of spots in the strike zone. So maybe it's a sort of traditional scouting element that's like, yeah, CJ Krohn, just like a pull power blasted guy that is exploitable low in a way and high in a way,

because he's got one thing and he does it. Whereas Narvaez, not as exploitable because he's at least got these two different swings and he can do something on the inner half and he can do something on the outer half. Yeah, I think this is also under the umbrella of valuing hit tool a certain way i think that's kind of what's going on here luis urias definitely a hit tool sort of guy the player i thought of with urias recently was i was writing some things up was jorge palanco because jorge palanco had this big step forward power wise i know there was a ped suspension

in there too and it's not like taking PEDs, getting caught. You just lose the effects of them. You can get stronger and maintain that potentially. But he had this big exit velo jump from 17 and 18 to 2019. He was under 84 miles per hour in the previous two seasons and got up to 87. And there's a lot of hit tool there as well where the average was safe and we liked him because he could steal a few bases you know the steals kind of went away when the power ticked up but that's sort of the what could he be in 2020 that i was starting to

come to with luis urias thinking about how much he's going to play and being in a hitter friendly environment and again like if if the field, if most of the people out there are looking at certain things and applying it all kind of the same way, they're still likely to make mistakes. Even as helpful as StatCast data is, it's still relatively new. There are still going to be things that we

think are important that aren't or things that we get tricked by in some of those surface numbers especially. Yeah, and I think that the last two we get tricked by in some of those surface numbers especially yeah and i think you know i think that the last two aspects of the game that are we are worst at um valuing and putting a number on and that we may potentially never be amazing at putting a number on those two things are hit tool and defense and i know we've made some strides

with outs above average and stat cast and in the outfield but infield defense even even as they were i know they're working on it as they're they're probably ready to to announce something soon um you know i'm a little skeptical because there are so many components i think there's so many components to both hit tool and defense, infield defense, where you've got, you know, micropositioning, where the player might take a half step or something, see something. You've got staying in front of the ball, hands. Then you've got transfer from the glove to the hand.

You've got, you know, double clutch. Is Hawkeye really going to be able to, to catch the Miguel Andrew hard double clutch? Uh, because that's a fairly fast movement of the hand, you know, uh, you know,

does he double clutch? Does he, does he not? Then you've got arm strength, arm accuracy, and you've got to separate arm strength and arm accuracy away from, uh, what the,

the, uh, first baseman is doing with his glove. You know, you got to kind of pull, tease out the first baseman aspect of it. So I think, uh, what the, the, uh, first baseman is doing with his glove. You know, you got to kind of pull, tease out the first baseman aspect of it. So I think, uh,

infield defense, we are years and years and years away from having a good number, even if we are going to make some progress this year and a hit tool, I think because of the conversation we're having is similar. You can't just say he has a good strikeout rate. He has a good hit tool, uh, because of the things we're talking about. How did he get to that strikeout rate? What, how many, how much, how much variability is there in a swing? How much, uh, sort of command of the

barrel is there? How much, uh, sort of, uh, how, how does this plate discipline work into, uh, and work with his, uh, with his ability to make contact. Um, you know, you could probably get to a good strikeout rate with great plate discipline and not a great hit tool. So, you know, I think Narvaez is a great example. He has league average strikeout rate, but if he truly does have two swings, uh, then he's ahead of a lot of other people. That's, that shows more bat control and more hit tool than, uh, than, you know, other people that's that shows more bat control and more hit tool than uh than you know other people that have lower strikeout rates right again just trying to figure it out and trying to understand why a team that had a very different player catching for them a year ago

traded for a guy that if you said doesn't frame doesn't stack cast yeah like try to predict the guy they would trade for he would have been on a list of 10 no higher than 10th for me so like maybe i'm like i i'm humbled all the time by what teams do and outcomes of players and that's what makes what we do so far wrong yeah it's it's it's hard it's it's really hard to i love the people who play gotcha i'm like yeah i was wrong once like dude like you've never been wrong i i take a lot more l's uh than doubles i know it uh the key is just to keep shifting that balance in the right direction uh tom murphy is going to play a lot more in seattle now it's just kind of like the the mitch garver thing relatively speaking where they is going to play a lot more in Seattle now, which is kind of like the Mitch Garver thing, relatively speaking, where they're going to bring somebody in to work with them. Or maybe they're going to use Austin Nola, some behind the plate, you know, kind of see what they do.

But Tom Murphy hits the ball hard. He's kind of like the opposite, where it's like the framing looks good. Hard contact is there, but he strikes out a ton, doesn't walk much. Interesting, though, for our purposes and especially in leagues where you got to start two catchers might be a batting average drain but could basically do you know mike zanino type things uh without previous mike zanino prices i know mike zanino's falling off now but there was a point a couple years ago when people were throwing mike zanino up as like a top 10 sort of catcher i know it because i was one of those people. Tom Murphy's like a 20 to 25 range catcher that might get you a good amount of power. Yeah, I think he's fairly

interesting in two catcher leagues. I think he could be a really good one. I think he's going to really play. Even if they add another catcher or talk about splitting time or whatever it is, I think he's going to play because the pitchers like throwing to him.

If the pitchers like throwing to you and you're kind of a rebuilding team, then you are going to play because you're going to help develop that pitching staff. And I think, you know, he hasn't really, he last year was the first time he got regular playing time. Uh, so he showed the power, you know, I think the strikeout rate is uh where the upside is so if you give him a second year of just all the play appearances he can get there's an outside chance he could strike out like 28 of the time and if he did uh he would be a fairly valuable catcher if you could get that down to 27 28 he could hit 230 240 and hit 25 bombs so now you're talking borderline you know back end deep league first catcher and definitely like an asset if you got him for you know three to five bucks or you know that sort of deal yeah very late round pick one last move to talk about before we get

to beer of the week the giants basically bought last year's first round pick from the angels will wilson went 15th overall back in june he goes to san francisco along with zach cozart and the 12.7 million dollars that zach cozart was going to be paid in 2020 player to be named later or cash eventually will go back the other way in that deal pretty interesting to to see the Giants make that move. I mean, they could also, if Cozart's healthy enough to play, just see if they're able to get something out of him, have him take up space. But it's also possible that he never plays a single game in San Francisco

because the key here was just getting Wilson for basically taking on that cost. Yeah, you know, Farhan tried to push back and say say if if kozart is healthy you know he'll be on the team but there's a there's a fair amount of work being done with that if you know because kozart is currently hurt and currently rehabbing um and so it could be pretty easy for them to say you know we're gonna bring him back on a minor league deal or whatever, and we'll keep him in the organization. We'll want monitors rehab, but we're going to take,

we'd rather have that roster slot, the major league roster slot for rule five or whatever it is. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's a different kind of announcement, um, uh, coming out of, uh, San Francisco at some point about Cozart's future of the team.

But, uh, Will Wilson, they, they said they had, they had him, uh, San Francisco at some point about Cozart's future of the team. But, uh, Will Wilson, they, they said they had, they had him, um, high on their board, uh, last year, and they were really excited to, to be able to basically acquire, you know, it was a 15th pick overall, uh, you know, just this last year. So, uh, you know, will he be a shortstop primarily? They said he's already going to split time between short and second, but they tried to say that, that it would be that that's just what everybody does in the giants organization that they even Joey Bard is going to play some first and maybe

outfield and they just want positional flexibility from all their guys. Uh, but I think that's the one sort of question mark, um, is, you know, is he a second baseman or is he a shortstop? Yeah, I think it's a pretty interesting concept, though, especially for a team that somehow got the Braves to take on the final year of Mark Melanson's deal at the trade deadline last year. I mean, that was going to cost the Giants more in 2020 than Zach Cozart, and they get a first round pick back as part of that too. So Farhan continuing to tinker and shuffle and find creative ways to add talent to the organization. And this is just the latest of what I'm sure will be a long list of moves they continue to make over the course of the upcoming season.

Let's get to our Beer of the Week segment, which is going to be a bit different this week because you set up a beer crawl to begin the winter meetings on Sunday. It's a great way to kick off the trip. I got to tip the cap to you because that's brilliant. It was stupid. It's brilliant. It was so stupid. It was the dumbest thing. First of all, I announced to everybody my dereliction that I'm going to be for seven hours on the sunday before the winter

meeting start emma emma span said uh we already knew you were derelict uh so uh that that part i guess may be overrated but also um it's kind of hard it's very hard to get people away for the winter meetings there's a lot of gravity there it's a great bar scene itself and there's so many conversations we had so that was maybe a poor idea and then uh the crawl aspect like getting people to leave one place and go to another um is is difficult so uh those i may rethink those and just kind of set up shop somewhere in the future if I do this again. But, uh, the, the positive aspect of it was a, uh, I got out of the winter meetings, you know, I could have been there forever. Um, and, uh, B, uh, got to go to pure project, which is, uh, a really exciting new brewery in San Diego that does really good beer and tries to source sustainably

and has a relationship with farmers in Costa Rica with direct relationships for their fruit and was making great hazies, I mean, just really top class, hazy IPAs. Um, and it was a really fun, like bar, like it was a really nice looking bar. It was like a, you know, all sort of glass and cement and just a really cool, cool scene there. So I was really happy to, uh, to get to see that. And so I guess my beer of the week is, Pure Project. I mean, it's just the brewery. I think whatever sort of tropical-sounding, hazy IPA they've got on tap right now is my beer of the week. I'm just going to follow. Instead of making a selection, I'm just going to follow up with a question.

I know you, because of having professionally written about beer in the past, you've seen a lot more of the beer scene across the states. Is San Diego the best beer city in America? I have not been to Portland. the interesting thing about Portland is that, uh, it's so, the beer is so pervasive that it almost brings it down a notch because like you go to a coffee shop and they brew their own beer, you know? So it like everywhere has beer and that, that sort of brings down the overall quality a little bit, uh,

just because it's so pervasive, you know? Um, whereas San Diego, down the overall quality a little bit uh just because it's so pervasive you know um whereas san diego i think gets some credit for being kind of a birthplace of modern craft in a way um and uh at least when it comes to to west coast styles and west coast ipas and um so there's a lot of resting on those laurels in san diego and that's one of the reasons i was really excited about pure project was because it was something new you know since um you know modern times and uh you know there's a couple breweries i like that have been newer uh half door is decent we went there uh 32 north is good uh there's a you know north uh park i've heard some good stuff about north park brewing

so there's some good stuff but pure project was the the first brewery in a while that kind of, that was new and told me that it's a vibrant scene. You know, it's still a vibrant scene. It's still being innovative. It's still really good. It's not just the, you know, the old school goats like Pizza Port and Stone and Ballast Point and then the middle school stuff like Modern Times and Society. There's actually a third wave now. And I think it's rare to find a city where you have not only that sort of old school and not only that second wave, but also a current, innovative, vibrant third wave situation going on. I think the short list of cities like that are probably Chicago, you know, Seattle, and San Diego. I think that that's probably my list. Maybe you could put Boston on that list.

If you call Sam Adams a goat, and like society and Trillium as like the second wave, I'm not society, it's Trillium and Lamplighter. And they have some innovative things going on there now. So I think that's probably my top three there. Yeah. I'm just thinking so much about nice weather because it's become hurt your face cold here in Wisconsin.

So thinking about hazies in San Diego has me pretty jealous. You know what? I'm glad everybody who's there is having a good time. I'm glad you're having a good time. I'm happy for you. I'm not mad. I'm happy for you. I am. I'm trying to be at least. As always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com if you want to reach us.

Got a show coming up probably on the usual day next week, back on Tuesdays, of course. You can find Eno on Twitter, at Eno Saris. You can find me, at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Thanks for listening.