Rates & Barrels - Exercising Caution with High Velocity Starters, Tough Early Holds & Drops

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the idea exercising more caution with high velocity starting pitchers in the future, weekend news and notes, several recent drops and difficult holds amidst early struggles, and where the money went in weekly free-agent pickups from the weekend.  Rundown 2:28 Jackie Robinson Day, 2024 8:20 Another High Velocity Starter (Bobby Miller) Heads to the IL 15:40 Will Trends Make Starters with Slightly Less Velocity (93-94 mph fastballs) More Popular? 20:28 Justin Verlander Nearing Return 31:25 Surprising Drops & Difficult Holds 43:23 A Pod Divided: Brandon Pfaadt in Shallow Leagues 56:07 Where the Money Went: Colton Cowser, Kirby Yates, Jeff Hoffman and Jose Buttó  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, April 15th, Jackie Robinson Day, Tax Day, Earth Day, a lot of days actually, but Jackie Robinson Day, the one we are excited about from a baseball perspective, of course, on this episode, we're going to dig into some news and notes from the weekend. We're going to look at what's been happening to some of the starting pictures

with top end velocity on the injury front, because the conversation around fantasy baseball right now is maybe we should be more careful with these guys, given what's happening on the health front. We'll dig into whether or not that's actually a good idea. We're also going to take a look at where the money went over the course of the weekend. Weekly leagues ran fab again on Sunday night. And then we're going to talk a lot about some of the curious drops and some of the most difficult holds right now, because as people have probably noticed, there's not exactly an abundance of pitching available right now.

So you consider that there's not a lot to go get and you got a few guys that you really liked who've had a difficult start to the season. You have to balance with that. You actually wanna cut those players and roll the dice on someone you're not sure about, right? So we'll dig into some of those interesting names as well. Discord up and running,

it's been that way for about two months now. Get the link in the show description. You can jump in, answer questions like the reverse mailbag question that I posted before today's show, right? We wanted to know who was actually of interest that has been cut in a lot of leagues. So always try to make the show as interactive as possible with that. Eno, how was your weekend?

It was good. It was good. We've had some nice weather and then it went south a little bit on Saturday. And so we got two baseball games, two little league games canceled, which is okay. Because I had a lot of taxes to do. So the reason why this weekend was good is because it's over and taxes are filed, I guess. Did you win? I squeaked bye. Yeah. All right. That's good enough. That's all you need. It's similar situation here. Got hot, got up in the eighties, but got outside a couple of times,

got some family time in, got the pickups done, got the taxes done, it's as much as you can ask for in the middle of April. As I mentioned up top, it is Jackie Robinson Day. You'll see 42s on the backs of all the big league players in action on Monday. And I've found that in recent years, you know, the thing I like most about Jackie Robinson Day is reading the things we haven't read before, right? Seeing things that we haven't necessarily seen before. Shaquia Taylor, curly fro on Twitter, had a great column in the Chicago Tribune today

that covered a lot of ground and had a really surprising nugget in it. Neither the White Sox nor the Cubs have an American born black player on their roster right now, which is just kind of baffling. Year over year, there's a study, it's done by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in sport. It's out of central Florida.

And they found that black players represented just six point two percent of players on opening day rosters down from the previous low of seven point two percent. That was in twenty twenty two. So it's just one of those things that like Shakira's column looked at some of the things that are changing at lower levels, trying to increase participation among young black athletes. And it's, it's one of those things that's changing over time, but it's not going to happen overnight. But I just couldn't believe that neither the Cubs nor the white socks had an American born black player on their roster.

It never, never even occurred to me. Yeah. Less than half the national rate. Um, and there's no real easy answer for why it is, uh, the way it is. I mean, I think there's a lot of answers when we had, you know, Kyler Murray having the choice between football and bass and baseball in front of us. It was pretty obvious which sport he was going to pick. I mean, he was going to get drafted in football. He's going to make money right away and playing the big leagues right away, uh,

versus baseball, which you get drafted and you work hard in the minor leagues for three, four years, and then maybe you make the big leagues. So there's that aspect to it. Then there's just, uh, you know, popularity in the media, popularity across all sports. You know, some of it is just going to be, where are you looking as a kid? What are you looking at? Who are you, who are you, you know, idolizing? Who do you want to be like?

You know? Um, and so there is that little bit that if there's a little bit of that, if you can see it, you can be it. Um, you know, we have, we do have some superstars like M muki bats that can provide that kind of role model but what if you're not dodgers fan and you know there should be kind of one per team that could kind of give you that that role model so. Yeah i think it's a it's an interesting issue i think there's also some social economic parts to it i't know. I haven't had to kind of go through all the sports, you know, kind of the kids mostly gravitate towards baseball. We've done a little bit of soccer, but in terms of expense, I would say that baseball has to be one of the more expensive ones, maybe football.

There's a lot of equipment in football. And the parks are pretty big. It's kind of hard to have a pickup football game in the same way that it's hard to have a pickup baseball game, at least with all the equipment. Baseball and football both have, of course, their pickup versions that you can play. This is why I've heard, apparently, that that flag football has a real future. You know, it's it was chosen for the Olympics, you know, because it has less of the sort of fewer of the ramifications for your brain.

But, you know, it's also the pickup version of the sport, you know. But there's a lot of different reasons, and I think they're all tied together. I had a little fun just looking at Jackie Robinson's fan grass page, like, you know, how I see the world, I guess. And one thing, a couple of things popped out to me, which is I love players that, you know, walk twice as much as they strike out. Like, there's not very many of those in the big leagues and that is one of the things that Robinson did.

And of course that allowed him to have the 313 batting average for his career and a 410 on base percentage for his career. But one thing that is, that does also stick out, that's a little bit sad, is that, um, he didn't make the major leagues until he was 28. And I'm sure that has to do with the whole backstory. You know, I'm sure that has to do with the segregation of baseball. Um, and, but in the end, that means that we had, you know, three, four, five of his peak years stolen from us in terms of what he could have done You know, he's he had 141 homers and stole 200 bases and you know with you know, four or five more peak seasons He could have had, you know, 200 homers 300 stone bases

And just that pristine line he could have even pushed the average and the OVP and slugging further. So pristine line, he could have even pushed the average and the OBP and the slugging further. So, um, he could have had a season for the ages, although I will say 1949 for the Brooklyn Dodgers, 342 average, 432 on base percentage, 16 homers, 37 stolen bases, 122 runs and 124 RBIs. That is a season for the ages from Jackie Robinson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just a remarkable player, of course. And the K rate being that low, you don't see it now because the, the game is a little different in terms of how people approach it, the tolerance for strikeouts, but even still to be that good at making contact, having that power, having that speed, spraying the ball over the field. Just awesome to see that. It jumps off the page when you look at Jackie Robinson's player page. Lots of ground to cover today.

A lot of injuries from the weekend. So some good news, we've got some players coming back, which we need as well. Bobby Miller will start on the negative side. Bobby Miller's on the IL with shoulder inflammation, no structural damage revealed by an MRI. So maybe we're avoiding a major problem. But I think the bigger question with Miller drives back to something I talked about at the very top of the show is, are we really going to go to this place as a group where we're starting to be more skeptical of guys that sit at the higher end of

the range for VELO, especially among starters. Do we think there is anything to the idea that this group of pitchers is more likely to break since they're generally going to be sitting a lot closer to their max on a regular basis? Yeah. I mean, there's, uh, there's research just that direct, that, that velocity is a direct stress around the elbow.

So you don't even have to go into, max and how close to the max to find some truth already in terms of what's out there in terms of peer review research. If you look at this chart the easy chart that i made just you can you can go on any site and do this is a little bit early in the season on the left you'll see fastball velocity last year, minimum 90 innings. And I had X'd out all the people that were hurt. So Sandy Alcantara, Yuri Perez, Spencer Strider, Shohei Otani, Shane McClanahan, Garrett Cole. That is six out of the top 10 in fastball velocity. The remaining guys are Bobby Miller, who is number one, Hunter Green who has had TJ already Grayson Rodriguez at fifth who has had some injury history and Hazel Cesar who's had some injury history. So six out of the ten if you just went by straight velocity although you know over the course of the season won't you get what if we get really good seasons from Grayson Rodriguez? And still a good season from Bobby Miller after he comes back

What's it worth to avoid the six that got hurt? What about the two that have excellent seasons you know? So that's that's one way to think about it another way to think about it here is a from John Leguiza We've got how close they are to their max and that's this year. So we can't sort of you don't have last year to look at who got hurt last year. There's all the names that we want are on this list all the names that we've been like talking about picking up that we're interested in Jose Jose

Soriano is number one and closeness to his max. Ben Brown is three Bobby Miller is four. Mackenzie Gore with his nice new Vilo is five. Luzardo is six. Louis Varland who, you know, has been showing up on some of our lists is seven. Yario Rodriguez is on there. Jordan Hicks, Luis Severino. These are all guys, you know, Keaton Wynn, Cole Regans, Hunter Green, Tyler McGill.

They're all on this list and they're all under two, two point three or under, uh, in terms of the difference between their fastball velocity and their max, um, league league average across everything is three point two. Um, and, uh, you know, that's sort of where Glenn Fleissig from the ASMI who is pioneered this research about the stress on being close to your max. He sort of talking talks about three and wanting to be closer to four. So these guys are at two basically and lower and if you annotate that list Jose Soriano had TJ in 2021, Ben Brown had TJ in 2019, Mackenzie Gore missed a lot of time in 22, Lizardo had TJ in 16, Hicks had TJ in 19, Severino had TJ, Ryan Weathers had TJ, Hunter Green had TJ, Keaton Wynn had TJ, Cole Regans had two TJs.

Uh, so annotating this list also kind of has the same effect as annotating the other list. So the only problem is there's not a really easy way to kind of look up closeness to your Max. Yeah, that is kind of strange. You don't see Max pitch Velo on leaderboards anywhere just yet. So you have to, and even on places, just where the data is, you have to go over to Brooks. You know, Brooks has Max, Max Pitchfee though. I haven't really seen that anywhere else.

Yeah, I'll have to put some kind of spreadsheet together to track that better myself. I'd say, I'm glad Brooks has it at least. I need it in one easy to find location. So, but like, like I've just named not only like 10 of the best starting pitchers going into the season, you know, by just straight velocity, but then by closeness to max, I just named like all of our favorite sleepers. Right.

So you're just not going to draft those guys anymore. What is the corrective action? And then, you know, you know, because we're working on this Everyone's working on this and you know, I'm talking to them about it, you know, let's say you're like, okay Well, I'll just take the the guys who don't throw hard You know, I can annotate that list too. If you like real quick Here are the guys that don't throw hard This year. I'm gonna just do, yeah, I'm gonna do qualified, why not? I'm gonna do the bottom of the list.

All right, so the bottom of the list is Kenta Maeda, Tyler Anderson, Dane Dunning, Jose Quintana, Marco Gonzalez, Cody Bradford, Marcus Stroma, Dakota Hudson, and Erinola, Patrick Corbin. So, okay, actually, they're all all healthy and they've been fairly healthy. A lot of these guys, but Kenton Maeda had surgery. Um, and Marcus Stroman is, has struggled to stay on the field sometimes. Um, and, uh, also do you really want those players?

Right. That's part of it. And Marco Gonzalez is hurt right now. He's got a forearm injury. So it's not like you could want those players? Right. That's part of it. And Marco Gonzalez is hurt right now. He's got a forearm injury. So it's not like you completely avoid the injury problem. And it's a smaller number, smaller percentage of players that are currently hurt working from the bottom of the leaderboard instead of from the top. So yeah, there's a difference, but the skills loss is so dramatic that naturally

you're going to start saying, okay, maybe, maybe I want to live near the middle of the list, or maybe I only want to live near the top of the list when we're not talking about early round players, given the elevated risk, right? Then draft day price becomes part of the way you think about this. And it's not a particularly fun exercise because then you have this, well, this guy throws too hard. He's too good. I can't have him on my team.

That's kind of dumb. Yeah. I can't have him on my team. Like that's, that's kind of dumb. Yeah. I don't want to go to that place. No, I really don't want to go there either. So I don't know, man. Like I, I think we've talked about how the injuries have typically jumped in the early part of the season. We're kind of in the thick of it right now.

You know, once we go ahead and get to the second half of the season, we're kind of in the thick of it right now. You know, once we go ahead and get to the second half of this season, if this is a typical year for injuries, we'll probably calm down, cooler heads will prevail and we'll think a little more about the pool the way we've always done it, or at least with a, a slightly more calm sense about us when we're digging through it, because right now the snap reaction is, Oh, I had those guys and they all got hurt. I got five teams and I've got at least two of them on every team and I'm chasing pitching and the pitching on the wire is bad. It's a problem, but we're all dealing with it. And I think there's also this other funny thing that would happen if

if somehow group think dictated that I don't want anyone throws harder than 94, there'd be this weird premium on guys that throw like 93 and 94, because they're not at the top, they're not at the bottom. And they've got a lot of pitches. They've got command like which pitchers would become the really trendy pitchers that aren't quite the trendy pitchers of the current way we look at it. Dean Kramer, 93.9. Woo.

It's right there. It's right there. Zach Efflin, SP1. That'd be the strategy. Like, I want to wait. I'm going to wait for my SP1. I want to guide us and throw hard. He has a lot of pitches and good control. It's not a dumb idea. It's just not the best idea.

And it doesn't always produce, you know, the very best players, you know. But the downside of those players is if they lose a tick, then they're in that danger zone. Then they're just like that first group of low velocity guys we were talking about that you don't necessarily want on your team. So we're living that for some players right now, too. And yes, by the way, I do know that Aaron Nola pitched one game in the cold, but I also know that Aaron Nola's fastball velocity was down before that game. So yeah, you were pretty clear about not really wanting Nola where he was going

in most drafts on draft day. And to this point, you know, the K's are way down under 15% for the season swinging strikes. Also down 7% swinging strike rate for Aaron Nola. That'd be the lowest of his career. It's only 16 innings, but it's a pretty big drop off for him. Who's, who's a real, uh, the really exciting guys, uh, do at least throw 91. Um, there, you know, you could, you could build a roster with Aaron

Zavale and Tanner Hauck and Seth Lugo. Always Seth Lugo. I love you, Seth Lugo. Uh, Logan Webb, 92, uh, you know, but you, and Christian Javier 92, but even there you're, you're running into Joe Musgrove 92, like sometimes velocity is relative to what the person has given you before, you're running into Joe Musgrove, 92. Sometimes velocity is relative to what the person has given you before. Seth Lugo's 92 is a little different than Joe Musgrove's 92

because Joe Musgrove really did his best when he was 94. If you're as obsessed with basketball as I am, then you know there's no better time of year than the NBA playoffs. Hey guys, this is JJ Redding. Twice a week, I'm cooking up something special for basketball junkies on my podcast, The Old Man and the Three.

I bring on guests in all stages of their careers to talk about the league and share stories you won't hear anywhere else. Like Devin Booker on why he talks so much trash, or Pablo Bencaro on his shooting workouts with Kevin Durant, Ray Allen's epic free throw competition with LeBron when they were teammates in Miami. But it's not just about the player interviews.

Every Monday, I break down the top three things happening around the NBA without the outlandish takes. Often joined by masterminds of the game like Tim Legler, we dive deep into topics like rookie reports, trade breakdowns, and why is mean mugging now a tech? The Old Man and the Three is the only companion podcast you'll need during the playoffs this year. Be sure to listen to The Old Man and the Three ad free on Wondry Plus or wherever you get your podcasts. So what do you think the corrective action from a training perspective is it going

to be? Is it going to be trying to push your max up into the low triple digits, but then find a way to comfortably sit at 95, 96. So that way you're, you're not top of the board, but you're not far from it. And you're not too close to your max. I have some hope of this because, you know, I've heard maxims like this. I've heard, there are like, there are like quotes, there are like things that people say. And one of the things that people say is have 99 or have a hundred sit 96. Yeah, that's that's kind of a quote for it then like, all right, let's do this. Yeah, let's have

have 100 in your back pocket. Sit 96. That's a good that's a good mantra. Because Glenn Flesik would say, yeah, that's good. You're four miles an hour off. You're not, and then, you know, you can use your a hundred like Berlander used to, right? Where you'd have your 99, your a hundred in your back pocket when you, you need an out, it seems like a good blueprint. I almost wonder if it's a lot harder to execute though, then, then we think, I think, I think a big part of it was that's why the Justin Berliner quote was

so big. It was like, Justin Berliner is like in the context of these harder balls and all these offensive rule changes, like I just, I'm fighting for my life every time I'm out there as a pitcher, I need to get every out I can get. And if you realize that these pitchers that are closing to their max, how many of them are just trying to make it as big leaguers? Like listen to that list again. Jose Soriano, please. I'm a starter. Please look at me I can I can sit with high Velo as a starter. Please give me a role Joe Boyle I want I'm a starter, please Ben Brown, please. Let me be a starter Mackenzie Gore

Like let me be a front end starter, you know, like I've been here, I've done some stuff, but I want to be a front end starter, Louis Varland, I just need to make it, Jair Rodriguez, please let me be in the, on the team, you know, Ryan Weathers, I've been struggling and I'm so much better now at 96, you're going to tell me to dial it down to 95? I'm sorry. I'm not even sure I can be in the big leagues at 95. That's how like they've got to feel on some level. So it's not surprising to see, you know, a bunch of young players being like,

you know, I'm throwing as hard as I can every time I'm out there. Yeah. And whether it's even with that uptick in velocity still has a carry under 20% still walking guys at a double digit clip. It's fringy even with the VELO for him. Of course he's going to throw as hard as he can every time because he's just got to prove that he's got some role in the big leagues. Even he'll take reliever at this point probably.

Right. It's about just not getting sent down, I think, if you're in a position like that. Speaking of Verlander, just going back to some news and notes here, he is tracking toward making his season debut Friday against the Nationals. So the wait really hasn't been too long. If you took the injury discount on Justin Verlander, this draft season, the question is just going to be, where's the stuff going to check in? Is he going to be the pre 2023 Verlander from the overall arsenal and VELO

perspective, or is what we saw last year, probably a more fair place to put the expectations at this point. I'm just scanning. I was like, Oh yeah, Verlander's coming back. Making sure he's not available in some leagues. Well, no, I've got, I've actually been sitting on him in a couple of places. So Verlander at Washington versus Paul Blackburn at home against St. Louis.

Yeah. Yeah. The Paul Blackburn experience has been very positive to this point, but I think you would probably take the shot on Verlander season debut. Yeah, so I thought that Verlander was in that class of players that, you know, was worth waiting for because the wait wouldn't be too long. You know, I have another league where it's the choice of Trevor Rogers at Chicago. Um, you know, I have another league where it's the choice of, uh,

I don't know, Trevor Rogers at Chicago. Trevor Rogers got pushed because Edward Cabrera is up. Yeah. AJ puck is sick. Edward Cabrera is back from the IL and he's actually starting on Monday. So thank you for helping me put Verlander in my lineups. Hey, I'm're to help. I think, you know, it's, it's not without risk. Verlander at home against SF where he was supposed to,

Rogers at home against SF was the choice before he, something happened in the schedule. Now he's at Chicago. That makes it the easier choice. If it was Trevor Rogers at home against SF versus Verlander's season debut against the Nationals, it might have been a closer decision just because Verlander is coming back off of injury. He hasn't had the most amazing rehab in terms of results.

What did he do? He had an ERA over 10. He did strike people out though. And I do expect him to strike more people out this year than 21%. He had such a long career of, you know, like seven years in a row of striking out closer to 30%. So I'm expecting more strikeouts this year. Maybe he'll be on the upper end of his home run issues because

he's just getting older. But give me a more than a strikeout per inning and an ERA under four pretty comfortably. That'll play. Not just Verlander getting ready for his season debut this week. Looks like Jordan Montgomery is going to go Friday as well. He'll be on the road against the Giants. Kind of a good time for the Dbacks. Edward Rodriguez was already hurt, had a setback last week dealing with some shoulder tightness. So to get their late spring edition in the rotation

is a good boost for them. I think Montgomery actually had a pretty rough outing at AAA Reno, but it's like, how do you build up? How do you rehab? How do you do that stuff in the PCL? I wonder if he had the, um, if he had ABS, cause his strike, his, his walk rate is the thing that really struggled. Yeah. Yeah. Good question.

I think ABS is a problem, man. I, I, I understand wanting to, you know, get things correct and being precise, but like we've seen walk rates explode and I don't really want that for myself at the major leagues. Like I watch enough little league with all those walks. I don't, I like, what if the major league walk rate went to like 14%, don't you think it would be watching baseball less fun? They could make the games take longer.

And I think that's a counter to what the league's been trying to do with all of its efforts at the pitch clock and disengagement rules. So it'd be a big step in the wrong direction. I mean, yes, in theory, I definitely want automated balls and strikes. I love the system that they use where you can make a challenge. They put the strike or the pitch up on the board. You get the ball, strike call. The crowd can react.

I feel like it's quick. It makes sense. We want to get borderline difficult calls right. And I say this as someone who thinks being an umpire is really hard. Plus if you've read any of the recent stories about it lately, umpires are getting collectively better.

It's just that Angel Hernandez is still bad. It's out there just making them all look bad. And he's just pulling them back down. Umpires soaring to new heights, Angel Hernandez, yoink, just making them all look bad. Pulled him back down. Umpires soaring to new heights. Angel Hernandez. Yoink. Just pulling down. Nope, nope.

We're not going up there. We're not going to a new level. We're staying right down here. It's just one of those goofy things, man. Like it. Listen, there's an actual kind of serious problem with Angel Hernandez, which is like, he sued the league and like, he's accused them of discrimination. And so I think it's hard for them to like fire him, even though it's just

seems like he's bad at the job. I don't really know why he still wants to do the job at this stage. You know, like, do you think it's fun to be Angel Hernandez? Like, I don't think it'd be fun at all. I still remember there's an old clip from sometime in the nineties where there was an amazingly bad strike zone or the minor league game. And sure enough, Angel Hernandez was behind the plate.

It was him. It was an old little press clipping that made the rounds. Like, wow, this has been going on for a long time. And it happened even before the big league level. It's like, hey, he made it. But I just, I hope, I hope for the sake of all of us, he just says, you know, I've had enough, enough calling games. I'd like to, like to ride off into the sunset.

That'd be, that'd be great for everybody involved. Uh, Jordan Romano coming back this week. Hopefully, uh, you got them activated where you can, you know, probably going to be early in the week. So good news there. Ooh, that does help me make a decision somewhere else. Actually. I'm just helping Eno right now. We're just following along as Eno sets his lineups is what we're doing. No,

but this one might be interesting to people. I have a choice between Chad Green and Ben Brown and Ben Brown right now is scheduled for a two step, um, against Miami and Arizona, which seems like a good one. And we had been dilly dallying because we're just not sure that Ben Brown is going to get the second start. Cause Jameson Tyon's on his way back.

But if you kind of rank the pitchers on the, uh, cubs, uhubs that are healthy right now. I think Ben Brown is in the top five. I mean, the question is basically you've got Shota, Tyon, Assad and Hendricks, I think are in the top four. And then the question will be between Wicks and Ben Brown. I kind of like Ben Brown. I think Wicks is a little bit ahead in the natural pecking order. He's had more chances at starting, but if Ben Brown is pitching well and Wix is not

really getting the results. I think you're still a couple of weeks away from Justin Steele coming back. So you do have a little bit of a window here to see what Ben Brown can give you. I do like him better than Wicks also. So I think that could be the only. They could put Brown and Wicks on the same day, maybe? They could, just to have some options. And I think the other way to look at it too

is even if Ben Brown loses the two-step, those are both good enough matchups where you're not totally ruined, right? As long as he gets one of those starts, it's probably as good as Chad Green. Well, the Mono news just came down and made it easier to take Chad Green out. Yeah, yeah, I think I would go the route of Ben Brown

in that situation as well. A couple position players that are banged up, Carlos Correa is on the IL with a mild intercostal strain and now Christian Jelic may need an IL stint. He missed the final two games of the series against the Orioles after leaving Friday night's game early with a back issue and it's been kind of an on again, off again problem for yellow chin.

Recent years, you get the sense that since it's April, if they think it needs a brief IELTS stint, they'd rather just nip it in the bud and try to put it behind them as opposed to playing with a slightly shorthanded roster in the next couple of days. Yeah, it's, it's, it's always hard to, to make these decisions on someone who's like, you know, hurt, but maybe not super hurt. I mean, I think, I think of also like from, but Valdez and, uh, Bobby Miller, where they're like, well, we think it'll be two weeks or so.

And then you just gotta hope it is. Early numbers from yellow to by the way, include a 51.6% pull rate. You may have noticed he's actually pulled a few home runs. When Kirsten Jelic starts pulling barrels, good things tend to happen. So it'd be a shame if this injury cost them more than a little bit of time. The Correa one is annoying to me just personally because he stepped in for story in one leg and now I'm like, now it's a draft and hold so I'm all the way down to Daryl or Nice. Yeah. Not where I wanted to be.

Well and Correa's start to the season has been pretty good as well, average OVP, nice and high, only one homer through 11 games but just kind of looked like he was back in some sense of the word through the first few weeks. So I wonder if abductor intercostal oblique strains are the elbow injuries of hitters. I mean, the there is a corollary to fastball Velo being important, which is bat speed is important. And, you know, obliques are kind of, you know, trunk rotation is a big part of pitch velocity, but also, uh, bat speed. So we've seen, and then it seems like we get these, I don't know that we get these more, uh,

but it seems definitely that we get more, uh, oblique strains early in the season. Yeah. I mean, it's just the ramping all the way back up, even though you have spring training, it's still different to go at game speed than it is to train throughout the winter. So I think that's a good thing to point out this time of year seems to be more conducive, I guess, to the problem in temperatures too, right? You've got a lot of cold weather games this time of year.

That's always part of the story. We're talking about baseball in, in March. He doesn't have a history of cold weather games this time of year. That's always part of the story. We're talking about baseball in March. He doesn't have a history of these though, right? This is kind of a, you know, he's his foot injuries and. Korea had like a rib problem from a massage or something. Oh, that's right. You just go. So yeah, I don't know if this is in any way long-term related to that,

but at least it's not his foot, ankle, like nothing down there with that hardware. So I guess that's good. You know, I think he's, you know, he's probably a guy that you had mostly in deep leagues. So I guess I would hold, but you know, obliquely, obliques are one of those things that could be a month. Yeah. And he's popped up,

Korea has popped up on a few different lists of players that were actually dropped in some 12 team leagues over the weekend, which I thought was kind of interesting. I mean, do you think coming off of the year he just had in 2023 where the power really dipped 399 slugging percentage from Carlos Correa is a concern, even though the underlying numbers the hard hit rate 45.9% barrel rate was still 9.6% would lead you to believe there's still better power than that in his bat. the hard hit rate 45.9% barrel rate was still 9.6% would lead you to believe there's still better power than that in his bat. Do you think he's really fallen as much as the redraft market knocked him down? He was outside the top 200 pick in just about every league I saw

back in the winter and spring. Because is this what Carlos Correia is now even in keeper and dynasty leagues has just a lot of luster worn off to the point where he's actually a player that can be reasonably dropped in shallow leagues when he's not playing. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it's just, I think the ceiling is, it's just not as exciting as you're going to have with other players. You could pick up like think of even just someone Jordan Westford, somebody we've talked about, we like,

Yeah. He was available in a few of my 12s. I was excited to pick him up. And he's stealing bases, you know, like what is the absolute ceiling on Westberg for this year? It probably looks a little bit like Korea plus stolen bases. Yeah. Which is, and Korea is just not going to steal those bases for you anymore.

So, you know, I think he is kind of a using when you've got them. And the reason why his his price was so cheap in 15 teamers and deeper leagues was just this this seemed inevitable that he would be heard on some level. Yeah, I guess a player that doesn't run in an environment where bags are basically free, it's even more problematic. There's even more ground to make up. We've talked before about how you generally want to get speed from the middle infield. And if you're not getting elite batting average like you do from Corey Seeger, then you have a really difficult player to roster. There's a couple things you have to do in a build to justify having Correa on a roster.

I'm looking back at 2022 in the auction calculator. He was a $12 player in a 12- 12 team league. Is that the ceiling now? I mean, probably. And I guess when a $12 player gets hurt in a 12 team league, it depends on what the rest of your roster looks like. You can actually see them through. He's not a player you'd look at as a must keep and a keep five or even a keep seven scenario because you got to be a top 100 guy. You have a top 60 sort of guy in a plinthly like that. And Carlos Correa is not that guy anymore, even if he's still a solid player.

Well, you know, like you were right to point out that like, since there's such a stolen base rich environment, your expected number of stolen bases per roster slot goes up. And so any zero you take becomes more painful because you were expected to get this many and so i just did the quick math and given the sort of hundred eighty stolen bases that was kind of a target for me in these fifteen teamers going in and with free agency. I'm like the main event those teams i wanted a hundred eighty yeah fourteen roster slots but you also have to catch slots. So you're kind of baking in at least one zero up there. And if you're doing that, then you want to have basically 15 stolen bases per roster slot. So having Korea means you need to pick up 50, you need to have a 30 somewhere.

And that's just to keep serve basically. Yeah. Yeah. It makes things really, really difficult when you build that way. We've got a couple notes in our Discord from the reverse mailbag version of this question. A big Prince fan on our Discord. I would die for you. Why you?

You Darvish. Who are guys you shouldn't quite drop yet? That's what sort of inspired this segment. They've had a tough shake in their first three starts, but there's cause for optimism. So some of the pitchers that were thrown in there, Michael King, Hunter Brown, who got just rocked by the Royals last time out. Brandon Fatt was a popular answer from a few folks in the discord. He was cut in a lot of leagues. Christopher Sanchez. Let's just start with those four because I feel like by price, you're looking at guys that were in that pick 125 to maybe 200 range. And, you know, King especially was very trendy throughout draft season.

As soon as he ended up in San Diego, there was a lot of excitement about him getting to be a full time starter, especially in that ballpark. What have you seen from Michael King so far? I mean, how much of it is schedule related? How much of it is having to ramp up early for that opening series in Korea? Like, do you try to give him a pass? Because my my snap reaction is this type of player, especially someone you drafted that early, but really this type of player, if you believe in him,

is the reason you have a few bench spots like you shouldn't go from. I think he's my third or fourth best pitcher to he shouldn't be on my roster. That seems like too much of an overcorrection based on a bumpy, bumpy run through these first four outings. Yeah, I guess the thing that's worrisome is just that the VELO is down. It's, it's creeping up a little bit by game. Um, but I don't think he's going to be sitting 95 plus this year at any point. Um, and I think what that has done is made him more vulnerable against lefties.

That's what I've seen when I've watched. If you think about it, uh, if you have a great sinker and a sweeper, and then a four seam fastball that's 95 or 96, and that drops down to 93, um, then, uh, you could see that the four seam might get get hurt you might still be able to dominate righty so his right line against right is 171 average 190 OBP 463 slugging there are some homers in there but overall that's a 278 woe but that's fine that's that's good he's been doing good against righties against lefties 265 457 500 slugging for 28 Woba they have been doing a great job against him and it's supported by weird peripherals 13% strikeout rate against

lefties 26% walk rate for Michael King so it's basically all in that foreseen that's not as good as it was with the the missing below so he's nibbling against lefties I don't know I guess in a 10 team I could see it you know in a 12 team I'm trying to hold and a 15 team he's on my bench this week and and I and I agree with you generally that you know I would like to hold a little bit longer especially since the game by game results have been up and down. I feel like, you know, you still got a shot and as bad as his walk rate was against the Giants, you would play him for those 11 innings. You would have given him, he gave up two runs and giving you 10 strikeouts in those 11 innings.

So if you play the, you know, playing against the giants and not the Dodgers game, uh, right now you're still doing fine. So I think I would just downgrade Michael King into a hold, but someone that you, uh, are more careful with in terms of starts this week's. The initial draft price would have led you to say he's in all the time. this week's the initial draft price would have led you to say he's in all the time. That's probably not quite the right usage with that downturn in Vilo. I wonder if that's going to be a walkie. I'm choosing Keaton win at Miami over him at Milwaukee.

I'm choosing Dean Kramer at Kansas city over him. Oh, that's, that's the little spicy. I want to give Michael King a go at like a medium offense. You know, like, I feel like giants, they'll score some runs, but giants, I would have been that's like, Oh, I'll play him. Dodgers is like, Oh, I won't play him. Milwaukee is somewhere in between. I kind of want to see where that in between is with him on the bench.

You know what I mean? Good chance that yellow, she isn't playing in that game though. He's their most dangerous left handed man. Over, over Dean Kramer. I think, I think King over Dean Kramer is something I'd probably do. It's close, but I think I'd go King. It's, it's so much easier to make that call when it's not your roster. It's like, yeah, I would definitely do that.

If I was staring it down myself, I'd probably have more nerves about it to say to the, to say the least, but. And I've, and I've got this thing where usually I'm like last year I was fighting, you know, to get back in all year. And there's something that's interesting when you have this fighting energy, when you're lower in the table, you're kind of be like, oh, you can also do more fun things where you're like, I'm not worried about you already. That's it's already going so badly.

I'm just going to, you know, try to get strikeouts and wins. Right. You can make those decisions and then you can make some real heyday by like sort of advancing in the places and giving up on something. But when you're in first, I mean, like right now, I'm in like first or second in most of my leagues. And it's like, I don't want to give up anything. I want to be good at everything. Yeah. You plan tight.

You get the lead, but it's making you make me look nervous. One of those two is more likely to blow up. Maybe Kramer, probably Kramer. I mean, Kramer so far this season, his first three starts has been getting hit in the zone a lot, almost 95% for a zone contact percentage, lower K rate potential than King anyway. Royals have been playing pretty well. That's kind of what I'm thinking.

It's like the Brewers offense looks good too, but I think without Yellich especially, I think the Royals might be just as dangerous. I think you're starting at a lower baseline of skills for Dean Kramer too. So that's what. That's what makes me nervous. Too much time spent on my teams. You got a lot of Dean Kramer. I do think these are like the things that

people were thinking about. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean. What were the other names? I mean, I think Fahd, I think it's a little bit easier to drop. I saw him on there, but you, you gave me, uh,

you gave me, you gave me names that weren't Fahd yet. Hunter Brown was on there. I mean. Yeah. Hunter Brown is a really tough one. I mean, the model still says that like, I mean, the one thing that I was surprised by the model says his fastball is worse this year than last year. And significantly. So, so he no longer has a plus fastball by stuff plus.

And so now, you know, if that's true, you're putting Hunter Brown in a class of players that's like has three good breaking balls and an iffy fastball. You know, who does, who's like a person like that? Javier Asad. So yeah, you've lowered to waiver wire skills by that measure, at least. Right. So if you want to drop him, drop him, I think just go with your gut. You know, if that's, if that's how you feel, I still think there's some upside here, I think in keeper leagues, I'm, I'm holding on my bench as much as

long, as long as I can in 15 plus, I'd rather prefer to hold him. If he gets dropped a bunch, you know, this is jumping ahead to a little some where the money went a little bit. But like, for example, this week, I spent a dollar on Ryan Felton or in the main event and felt like has always had good stuff numbers. And then, but he's a, he's still a Rocky. So it's not something I would ever want to start at home. It's just a toe in the water. I, Brown had been an option instead of Ryan Feltner, and he might be next week, I forgot to look at the drops, I might do the same thing.

Two, three dollar pick up, toe in the water, stash him, see what's going on. Yeah, I think they're still, despite the slow start, a lot to like with the team context. Astros are still going to win plenty of games. They have a great bullpen. They have a lineup that's going to score runs. I think because of the way they're built, they need to get Hunter Brown right. So even if he were to get demoted, I don't think he's necessarily a four plus week demotion candidate.

It'd be more like two or three starts, get the confidence back, get the fastball back. In particular, I'd be more on the side of holding if possible and then certainly trying to pick him up and stash him if he's available in your league. Brandon Fodd, why is Fodd an easy cut for you? We talked a lot in the winter about how he made some adjustments late last season. We saw it through the postseason. 23% K-rate early on, 4% walk rate. So the surface numbers look pretty good. Home runs are still a little bit of a problem for him, but at a quick glance, I actually think Fatt's a great trade target if you're in a league where someone's a little bit jumpy and doesn't want to have them going. Yeah.

I just, uh, the one thing that was like the thinker does not fix that we even saw in the playoffs is that he's really tentative against lefties. And again, lefties are hitting 310, 344, 552 against him. You know, it's a little bit early to like write any of these splits down in stone, obviously, but I will say that splits for pitchers become like lefty righty splits for pitchers become meaningful quicker than they do for hitters. And that's because they have a certain type, they have pitches, you know what I mean?

And the pitches themselves have platoon splits, you know, so, you know, he may not just have, he may not have a great arsenal for getting lefties out. Uh, right now the sinker is a 96 stuff plus the four seam is 69. Um, and the change up is below 100. So his best pitches right now are sinker sweeper. He's in that class. You know, he's a sinker sweeper guy looking for ways to get lefties out. You know he's a sinker sweeper guy looking for ways to get lefties out. And as far as we've advanced as a culture we're still talking about Justin Masterson types.

Really? We think that we've figured it out how can we make a sinker slider guy work? We give him just enough for foreseen we give him a cutter. You know we give him a gyro slider. I don't know man I think I think Fats showing us something with the control, like the fact that the walk rates down is a really good early sign from him. I think it's going to be okay for Fats. I do think the problem against lefties is going to be there. So maybe you have to look at some of the more dangerous lefty heavy

lineups and consider a more of a matchup play where you take them out for those. He might give up homers. Like the bat says he's going to give up 1.6 homers going forward. But if he keeps the walk rate even, even close to, I mean, last year, 6.2%, that's for the entire season. 96 innings was 6% of AAA. He's got a good command and that's, that's always going to speak in his favor. Right.

So maybe the, maybe the thing that's changed for Brandon Fod is if you previous up the ceiling was that of a guy that could be an SP two to if it all clicked, maybe that's starting to fade a little bit. But I think this is just a slow start. A couple tough matchups sprinkled in there as well. He'd be a target for me in shallow leagues where someone else let him go. Some of the names are for deeper leagues. DL hall, his fast ball just looks horrible. His secondary stuff looks okay. Had a funny sequence. He was a head Oh two on Anthony Santander facing his former team this weekend. Hit him in the back foot with a pitch and then give up a homer to the next batter. So that was kind of a funny like sequence that he was one pitch away from getting

out of it and stuff that happens. He doesn't have a pitch over 100 and said the, and says the four seam is really bad. Probably going back to the bullpen at some point, once the brewers have the depth to pull it off. So I totally understand. I cut DL hall in a few different leagues. He's got to be like 15 team leagues and deeper, probably for me to even have him on a roster right now.

I mean, he'd be a streamer. He'd be in that bucket. Yeah, I think so. AJ puck with the early struggles. Did you given up on Puck yet? Yeah. Model didn't never really like him, even when the spring numbers were great as far as the results went. So I could see, I could see that being someone you were you're quick to to move on from. Matt Manning is in here. He's made a couple of

starts as the extra starter. Really hard for me because I liked him. I've gotten a bunch of draft and holds where it's irrelevant. Um, and I think he is the sixth starter there. The model is just kind of like, he's pretty good, but like my eye test, I feel like I like him better than my model does. Um, and he's, the results have pretty much always been there, you know, not in terms of strikeouts necessarily,

but you know, a 430124 a whip for Matt Manning for his career in 238 innings. Like he's a decent major league pitcher. But I guess I would focus on the word decent and you know, think about what leagues you want a decent major league pitcher and how long you would wait around for a decent major league pitcher I don't necessarily think he has the upside of SB one through three really in most fancy leagues, so But I would say you know because the results especially since 2022 in this Debut season in 2021 is when a lot of the the ratio damage was kind of baked into those overall numbers, which really aren't bad.

I think you could look at him kind of in a similar light to a Miles Michaelist, but with an up arrow next to his name because he's 26. He could still get better. And even if he's not an SP one, two, or three, as we're learning, the SP four, five and six group is really wobbly. So if we think he can get into that group, that's good enough to hold onto. I think a 12 team league is really tough when he's not on the roster though, because the ceiling's not that high.

A 15 is kind of like my team's healthy and I'm not stashing anybody else. And I think someone in that tiger's rotation is going to break. That'd be your thinking if you're going to stash them. So I see the case for having to cut them and then trying to bid on them later. Once the opportunity comes back around. He is squarely in a class of pitchers that I find more interesting in draft and hold, and then I have to remember when draft and hold season ends that like to like them less.

Because the reason why you love Miles Michaelis and Matt Manning in draft and holds is, you know, even in their worst seasons they're going to have a good, you know, a good week that they're going to play. They may actually have lower injury history, you know, lower injury risk because they don't throw as hard, you know, uh, in that context, but there are also just, uh, parts of major league, uh, one through sixes, you know, major league rotations. And, uh, they're not exciting to anybody else. And what I find in, in these leagues where draft and hold means you can't pick up anybody the rest of the season.

You know, what I find is that people switch too early to picking up prospects and they want to take pictures with high ceiling. And I'm like, well, let me, while you're doing that, let me gobble up all these boring arms so that I have options when people get hurt as opposed to, oh, my stars got hurt. Now I have prospects who are not in the major leagues. Oops. You know, so that's, that's why I'm, I'm happy with the Matt Mannings I have. I'm not looking to necessarily acquire a lot more Matt Mannings and I could see people dropping him in shallower leagues for sure.

require a lot more Matt Mannings and I could see people dropping him in shallower leagues for sure. Sticking with the Tigers, one more surprising drop Spencer Torkelson cut in some shadow leagues, still looking for his first barrel of the season, 15 games in 222, 279, 302 in the very small sample striking out less, but also walking less chasing pitches outside the zone a little bit more just a blip or actually reason to be concerned about torque. I'm a hold I'm going to acquire. I'm going to, I'm going to stay in on this. I like the new swing and strike rate and strikeout rate.

I'd like that. And it comes in with a big pull rate. So right now he's pulling fly balls and making more contact. Like on a process level, he's doing all the right things except for maybe chasing a little bit more and the chasing a little bit more is not like, Oh, now he's chasing 50% of the time. So, um, yes, the hard hit rate is down. There's some signs that aren't good, but I think in terms of process,

I'm still in on him. Yeah. I think there's still plenty to like with Torkelson. And that league was a keeper league. That was from Jeff Good, low guppy, saying he was dropping a league, keep a limited number of players, not a keep everyone scenario,

but that's a pretty quick hook. I mean, I think he could play his way into like a keep six or eight or whatever, you know, like keep 10, you know, like. Yeah, I mean, power, speed is abundant. Power is a little harder to come by. And if we get a little more from torque, you never know. That was a general question I saw somewhere. I, you know, we get a lot of questions, not different places.

So, so I'm sorry that can't, um, attach it to the person who asked it, but there was, you know, people asking about people that have established power, um, you know, in their past, but are having trouble with power in the early season. I would just tell you to really wait on that. You know, Torkelson is a little bit more annoying because he hasn't hit his max CV and his hard hit rates aren't good. But I would say that one of the noisiest things out there is power, because he could have a two homer game tomorrow and most of his numbers would start to look normal. I was just looking at this custom date range thing from last season on fan graphs just

trying to say, okay, what happened at the beginning of the season last year? We're quick to forget. It happens. You know, you look at some of the guys that go into a beginning of a season and show no power it's happened. It happens to everybody. At some point you just get off to a slow start. Again, it's cold, not quite right or something.

Couple tough matchups. It don't just write players off because of that. Would you have in that on your, on your leaderboard from last year? I switched from pitchers to hitters. I'm just going to make sure it's actually running properly real quick before I read the names. Because I'm looking at the names, I'm like, wait a minute. These are some of the same guys that are struggling right now.

Here we go. Here's last year's list. Wilson Contreras at this time last year, he was no homers. He ended up being fine. Let's see, Eric Hosmer, not good. Justin Turner, he ended up having a good year. Gene Segura, Donovan Solano, and I will look for power for them. Anyway, Nick Castellanos had zero through 15 games last year.

What did he finish with? 25, 29. Yeah. So, I mean, 15 games don't mean a whole lot. There are some names on here that didn't ever figure it out. Tim Anderson being among them. Trey Turner. Yeah. It's like, what were you expecting? Turner was a little bit down.

Took him a few months, but he got going. He got back to where he should go. He got to enough power. Yeah. Jose Reu was a zero this time last year. And what's interesting about that one is that we, I thought he was toast last year and then he had, you know, a little bit of resurgence, but you, you know, like, he is one of like four players that his age or older,

that was as bad as he was in the first half that had okay second half. It's like really, do you have like 500 people like him? And he was one of four that was like, Oh, I'm above average in second half. And I just feel like asking him to do that again would be a bad idea. Here's another, here's a strange one. Lane Thomas who had a great season last year. That is so good because Lane Thomas is maybe acquirable right now. He's someone that you could maybe go and get in, in leagues, uh,

because the batting average is down, the homers aren't great. Um, geez, get seven steals already. Yes. If the other team has a steals need, they won't give them to you. But, um, you know, he, I think he's borderline acquirable. If the other team had a bunch of steals elsewhere and they feel like maybe this is a paper tiger situation, uh, you know, then they might trade him. He's also, you know, he's 28. He's never was a big prospect. So, you know, it's right in the line of like good enough to want to acquire and bad enough

sort of start that you can maybe get him. Um, and the nice thing is, I did talk to him about those, the stolen bases and it's like, he's like, it's a combination of the team, just being like, you, you can go, like, you can go on your own if you want. Like there's, there's like a green light we give you. And then there's like, uh, your first base coach will turn to you and be like, you know, you don't really technically have the green light, but this is not a bad spot to go. So, uh, they are, they are pro stolen bases in Washington. And I expect that he will have at least, I would say like 35 stolen bases this year.

Yeah. I mean, great start for Lane Thomas. And as we saw, power was quiet early on last season came on just fine as the weather warmed up, so it's just an okay exercise to use if you're trying to calm yourself down about players that are underperforming. Let's get to a few sources of where the money went over the weekend for fab bids. Colton Couser in 12-team leagues was the big player to get, or maybe some deeper leagues he was out there, but mostly 12s. He was on fire this past week too. We talked about it going into the weekend, Certainly looks like a guy that could be an impact player going forward in 12

teamers, if they're willing to back off the playing time for guys like Austin Hayes. Yeah. And what we saw since we talked was he played all weekend. Yeah. Keep hitting. It'll happen. One thing that I saw that was a little bit interesting, a little bit upsetting to me because I have a fair amount of Cedric Mullins shares is that one day against lefties, he

played over Mullins in center. At least Mullins got back in the game and got a hit. And I do think that they prefer Mullins defense in center. So they started against the left handed starting pitcher, they put him in center and then they moved him off of center. Once the lefty was out of the game. So Mullins said a little bit more risky than I wanted him to be, but that means that Kousers a little bit safer than I first expected because there's going to be some starts in center against lefties.

Nice early rumblings getting that chance against the lefty. He's got a couple of steals to go with the four homers as well, but one of the hottest hitters in the league right now. Not a surprise that he was getting triple digit bids across the board in the RotaWire online championship. Player that I didn't go after anywhere that some people I trust were going after. Kirby Yates. Are you trusting Kirby Yates to be the capital C closer for the Rangers?

I am not really and one of my one of the things that I expect to be true, which I have not proven yet, is that fastball stuff plus is is over of oversized importance for the closer role as as opposed to relievers. And I think that Kirby Yates can be a good reliever with the stuff he has right now, but he has a 90 Fastball stuff plus. And I just feel like that makes him more of a Luke Gregorsen, Sergio Romo type, which were good relievers that never really, they closed very rarely.

And I think it's because they're kind of crafty and they have a really good secondary. Kirby Yates's splitter is very good and the slider is pretty good too. But in the closer role, sometimes you need them to just blow it by them. The you know, there's just there's that's the ninth inning, you need to have a good fastball. And so the clerks got the best fastball stuff plus in that bullpen and his manager said recently, it's not, not the clerk. So, um, yeah, I know the, the things that we have to kind of read between the lines on, but, um, the clerk may not have lost his job yet.

Kirby Yates doesn't even have a save yet. And so I'm not, I'm not, in my leagues I put like a make good bid on him, but I put the similar bid on Jeff Hoffman and I totally expected to win Jeff Hoffman given the same bids on both of the players and that's what happened. So we put $30 on Yates and $30 on Jeff Hoffman

and we won Jeff Hoffman and I'm more excited about that because I think Jeff Hoffman is a better pitcher. It's a slightly more crowded situation that he finds himself in in the Phillies bullpen. But in terms of fastball stuff, plus it is him and Seranthony Dominguez and Orion Kirkering. I don't think, you know, Ryan just coming off of the the IEL and being as young as he is, I don't think it's going to go to Orion right away.

And Seranthony is is pretty wild, you know, and he and he, you know, he's up and down and he's, they've given him 11 saves in the last three years. So I just feel like Hoffman could actually just take this and run with it. Yeah, I would agree with that assessment. More crowded, but better baseline skills. Most specifically, I'm just worried that Kirby Yates

is gonna walk a lot of guys. I think that's, if you don't have a great fastball and you're going to walk guys the ninth inning, you're not going to be in the ninth inning very long. He's 37 years old at this stage of his career. I think he's more of a sixth or seventh inning guy being miscast in that extra high leverage situation for the Rangers. One other picture I wanted to ask you about before we go, Jose Budo gets picked up in a bunch of 12 team leagues and some deeper ones where he's available.

He gets the Dodgers this week though, and I found it really difficult in most situations to pick up a pitcher that I wasn't going to use this week when even the schedule beyond this week is somewhat difficult for him. But the numbers, they're trending in the right direction. Budo looks like he might have an opportunity to make an impact in a Mets rotation that needs a couple of guys to step up.

Yeah. I'm really surprised by a 34% strikeout rate. I mean, he peaked at 27 and 28 in the minors. Um, so I think that's a little bit, uh, untrue. One thing that's interesting is that stuff plus may undervalue him because his change up is a legit pitch and I don't know why it's showing interesting is that stuff plus may undervalue him because his change up is a legit pitch and I don't know why it's showing as a 59 stuff plus. So if you, I think it's, it's, it's useful to like look at a person's stuff plus pitch by pitch because first of all, like

the different pitches stabilize faster. So if you're looking at a guy's breakdown by pitch type, you can look at the fastballs in the slider and say those are ahead of the other pitches in terms of stabilization. And what I see is a guy with a 98 stuff plus sinker that's actually well above average for sinkers and a 102 stuff plus slider. That's good. So that's a foundation. And then he's got this change up that has been working and it did the model doesn't like. So I think I like him better than the model does. Um, but the schedule wasn't super useful for me. Um, uh, the, uh, a person that, uh, you know, may have, uh, the green light to be in a rotation for a little bit that also got some big deals was Yario Rodriguez.

He got some a hundred dollar bids. Um, his four seam is better than Budo's, uh, his slider is better than Budo's. And, um, I think that's a surprisingly good foundation. Um, I, it's a cut ride four seamer for Yario Rodriguez and a sweeper. Um, that's a really interesting combination. You know who throws that? Justin steel. So a little bit of righty Justin steel action here. Um, and more pitches than Justin steel.

So I think Yarra Rodriguez is someone to pick up. And Rodriguez makes the stuff look different too. Like it's, you could kind of see from some of the clips from that first outing. Like it's not every fastball he throws doesn't look the same. Yeah, that's that cut foreseam and then he's got the sinker. And I bet you he probably has like a regular foreseam that he like plays around with. He seems like a guy that's like, um, it's not El Duque necessarily just because he's Cuban, but like, you know, has that kind of like, I've got a lot of pitches, man. And I'm going to,

I'm going to play around with these. I'm going to, I'm going to have some feel on these pitches. So uh, that's the, that's the vibe I got from him. Um, you know, otherwise, uh, we spent some money on like stashing Ryan Feltener who, who's, you know, always the models always liked him, but he's, you know, a Colorado pitcher. I also stashed Wade Miley. If people want to look ahead a week, he's got the Pirates and the Yankees and then a two step next week. And I just had a whole long conversation with Jesse Winker about how smart Wade Miley is and how good he is at at getting the most

out of what he has. So you know, that's and then I got a Trevor Rogers for 20 bucks. I got him back. I always the possibility when you cut someone you could scoop them back up later. I just got him right back and it wasn't actually that expensive. I also think that Rogers is like a good 15 team guy to be like, he's on your bench. He's in the lineup. He's on your bench. He's he's a Marlins pitcher.

He's a Marlins pitcher that you want to pitch in Miami. And that's about it. Yeah. Home streaming built in. Funny you mentioned Jesse Winker, too. It seems like he's healthy again. Finally, after two years of not being healthy between Seattle and Milwaukee. Uh, one of the leagues I picked him up, Spencer Strider was the drop that felt awful.

I was like, Oh, let me take a flyer on Jesse Winker, who I liked last year and seemingly broken all year. And I missed out on Jesse Winker. We bid $2 and one other person bid $6 and the winner got him for $12. This is out of a thousand. So, uh, this is really low stakes fighting over Jesse Winker just to give you an idea of where he's useful but the strikeout rate is back to where it was when he was good. You know the hard hit numbers aren't great so I expect him to be kind of like maybe a 15 homer guy, but the playing time is there. They're playing him.

He's going to play. He's going to drive a lot of runs. They're rebuilding in a way that's at least sustainable to the guys that play. It's not quite like a white socks, a's situation where you look at it and go, Oh, this is, this is so bad. It's going to actually hurt the guys that are high volume players. I don't think that's the case at all. So yeah, same thing. He's like 2%.

We'll see. We'll see. I mean, cause obviously James Wood and, uh, and Dylan Cruz are the people that are coming for Jesse Winker's job. You know, when they pull that, when they pull that switch is going to be a big deal. So, you know, obviously don't invest heavily because that might happen at any time.

James would 19% K rate. Triple A right now, 20% walk rate to, you know, ABS triple A. What can you do? But two homers, five steals doing everything he can to, uh, to push his way onto that roster in DC. That is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. On our way out the door, a reminder, you can get a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris. Find me at Derek and Riper. Find the podcast at Rates and Barrels.

We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.