Rates & Barrels - Fearing the Fade: Starting Pitcher Regression Candidates

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss a lengthy absence of Pablo López following a Grade 2 teres major strain, and wonder if Chase Burns' arrival in Cincinnati might come earlier than expected with Hunter Greene's return to the IL. Plus, they dig into the regression cases of several starting pitchers -- including the always puzzling Andrew Abbott, Kris Bubic, Casey Mize, and several others.Rundown0:42 Pablo Lopez: Out 8-12 Weeks6:18 An Opportunity for David Festa8:03 Hunter Greene Goes Back on the IL11:50 Another Attempt to Understand Andrew Abbott's Success19:29 2025 ERA v. Rest-of-Season Projections (OOPSY/ppERA)25:43 Nathan Eovaldi's Tendency to Lose Velocity In Season32:10 The Best Version of Casey Mize We've Seen?41:02 Tyler Mahle's Low K% Will Become a Problem44:14 Should You Worry About Jacob deGrom's Last Two Starts?48:30 Checking In on the Drag on the Baseball54:58 How Would Dynamic Daily Park Factors Impact Your Game Plan?Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.socialFollow Trevor on Bluesky: @iamtrevormay.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisWith: Trevor MayProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, June 5th. Derek Van Riever, Inosaris, Trevor May here with you on this episode. We are going to look at some pitching candidates ripe for a fade as the season continues. We're going to try and figure it out, try to predict the future, find the guys who are going to come crashing back to earth, maybe to their projections or to something even worse. Challenging exercise but we're here to try it nonetheless. Lots of ground to cover today though guys. Got a couple baseball news items everyone should know about. We

learned yesterday Pablo Lopez is going to miss eight to 12 weeks with a grade two shoulder strain. The Terrys major to be specific. I believe it's the exact same injury that Joe Ryan had late in the year last year. Ended Ryan's season. The twins are optimistic of course with that timetable that they'll get him back sometime

after the trade deadline early August, kind of in the best case scenario, maybe early September, if he takes the longer end of that window. It does open up an opportunity for David Festa, just not really the way we hoped Festa was going to get that chance in the rotation. Real quick though, Pablo Lopez posting

career best ratios so far, you know, 282 ERA, 107 whip through 11 starts, so obviously a big loss, you know, regardless of form, but just is there anything different about Pablo Lopez so far this year that was pushing him to that next level? I didn't really notice much. I think that the change up was a slightly different, what was it that was so different about it?

But I like rage dropped him today. Not rage at him, you know, like I want to be clear. It's nothing about him. It's just the injury situation. And it was in autumn where like if somebody picks him up, I get all that money. And I needed the money. I needed the flexibility. But yeah, in terms of movement profiles or anything like you can't point to Velo being up or down. Like it's down half a tick, that's nothing.

You can't really point to much in the sweeper category. I mean, he does throw it. So if you're Dr. Keith Meister, I guess you're blaming the sweeper. Shade! Hear that, Meister? He's calling you out, dude. Well he's probably feeling like he's right today. The change-up did have four inches more drop,

but I just don't, I think it's just, this just happens. Like, I don't know. It also has two inches less of fade. So he definitely is very consciously trying to make it go down as opposed to right. I mean, it's still good. It's 15 inches of arm side, but. Maybe he just switched to like a four- four seam change instead of a two seam change.

You know, like maybe it's like a little kick situation. Maybe they add a little bit of a, I don't know. I don't know if it's because that kick change is just different than every other change up. So, but maybe they found a variation where you could like turn it a little bit and get more depth because I think that's what he was struggling with a little bit last year, which it wasn't it wasn't translating as well. Listen, I don't think splitters cause injury and I've done extensive research on trying to find the link.

I couldn't really find one. Did a whole piece on it. Talked to people. Yes, they showed me this. And I know Trevor has had his own sort of issues with it. So I actually have like an ear open. If you want to tell me that you think that splitters cause injury, then I will say I don't know for sure that they don't. The kick change though doesn't have that same, you know, like the splitter you're like, oh, your these fingers are wide and like you can feel it down here.

The flexor changes the flexor changes your mechanics. The kick change is just like you just took one finger and put it up. Yeah, it's the same motion generally. Yeah. and the pressures are the same on the fingers too. It's not different. I don't think that would have caused an injury. Just real quick on the splitter though, I don't think the splitter itself, like throwing it a bunch once you've learned it, or if you learned it first.

You notice that the guys who have thrown it their whole careers, like all these Japanese guys, they don't get hurt from the splitter. Learning it later, I think it may be more than other pitches because it is a different feel and there's pressure. It's an off-speed pitch where the pressure's on the same fingers as your fastball. Like, you can throw it incorrectly really easily

and then throw it really incorrectly as hard as you can and then that might, but like, it's not a grip and a rip it, oh, I learned this pitch yesterday, I'm gonna throw it in the game now. It's just maybe one of the only pitches where that's probably not what you should do because if you do throw it wrong or throw it in a way that isn't sustainable, then when it has the chance to change your mechanics,

like more so than every, any other pitch, I change your moments. So, and that's what I did. I was stupid. I just thought I was going to be resilient and, and whatever. Let's start throwing the splitter now. And I got, I got, I got, I got, and they told me it was good and that's all I needed. And I made got got I got got Good and that's all I needed and I made a mistake More of something you would want to add during an offseason where you can kind of slowly incorporate as opposed to finding that grip plan catch one day and a week or two later start throwing in the game that would be Ramping it up to but there are guys who seem to like lose their split

They're they're they're sliders when they throw splitters. Like Logan Gilbert has really leaned into the splitter and his slider has the worst stuff plus of his career. So there are weird interactions between your pitch types where I say this about Brian Baio too. It seems like Brian Baio either has a slider or has a change up in any given outing. And that's been problematic for him. It's the rare pitcher that has a really good breaking ball and a really good change up.

I mean, I think of Pedro is like sort of the patron saint of this. And, you know, I don't know that there are even that many examples today. I mean, like even Ryan Pepeo, I take his change up over his slider. And he's like kind of the example of maybe a guy who can do both. You know, as far as the Festa outlook goes, long window for him to really establish a spot, along with Zebby Matthews, they're both in the rotation together now with the Lopez injury.

What's your expectation this time around for David Festa? Can he beat a four ERA? Can he be a strikeout training guy? What's the appeal from a fantasy perspective now that he has a long window? I'm worried that it's a small arsenal and it's a guy that over his career, they've been really hesitant, you know, pitching more longer into outings, probably because it's such a short arsenal.

Now, Zebi, you know, they've kind of unleashed him a little bit. He has a seven inning on his ledger this year. But if you look at batters faced Festa for his career, you know, he started out with 23 and 24 and since then has never topped 21. So your basically expectation for him is to face 19 or 20 batters. That's really hard to get a win out of that. So I think it's kind of brilliant. It's modern pitching thinking. It's the Brewers right now are doing some version of that where they just had DL Hall throw three innings and then Quinn Priest or throw, you know, five or something after that for a win.

So like it's rethinking pitching roles and it's something that we've been doing for a while now, but it's hard. I think it'll be harder to own David Festa in fantasy than Zebi because Zebi has a wider arsenal and they sort of let him go deeper recently. Yeah. harder to own David Festa in fantasy than Zebi, because Zebi has a wider arsenal and they sort of let him go deeper recently. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Even in some of the good outings we've seen from Festa at AAA, they've been a little bit shorter

than you would expect. Hunter Green is back on the IL. It's a groin strain again. I always feel like when it's an aggravation or the same injury suffered a second time, you can just add a couple of weeks to the timetable. You're not coming back as quickly as you did the first time, which it's a tough blow because this is the second time on the IL.

And this is a Cy Young award winning foundation that Green was putting together before these injuries popped up. And when you look at the Reds, I know they've got some interesting pitching prospects that are not far away. I think Wade Miley was the corresponding adjustment to the roster, at least to replace Green, at least temporarily. But I wonder, is there anyone we should be excited about that will get an opportunity later with Green down, at least for the next couple of weeks, but probably a little bit longer? I don't know.

Who are you talking about? I have no idea. Yeah, who are you talking about? I don't know. Who are you talking about? I have no idea. Who are you talking about? I don't know who's coming up with the Reds, frankly. Chase Burns? Yeah, like a Chase Burns sort of decision, right? Can they go that quickly with him?

Yeah, I mean, he's a double A. He's dominating a double A. He's seen major leaguers in spring, right? He had a couple outings in spring, some really top end strikeout rates for Chase Burns. So he's interesting and I just don't know that they will do it short term like this. They already didn't you know so I don't know what we're waiting for. Maybe it's more of a long-term injury. The thing that is interesting about this for me is that Hunter Green is sitting 99 and he already was one of the hardest throwing pitchers in baseball.

And I just don't know if, I don't know, man, it seems like a kind of inevitable occurrence, you know? That's like, you're really gonna, you're like, you're closering it for five innings, six innings at a time. And it'll never work. You can never tell a pitcher to throw softer, but I just wonder if he can't,

he couldn't just sit 9798 like he did last year and be great and be healthier longer Injuries were still a problem for him even with a little less below though, so at least it's not his shoulder At least it's not his elbow. I guess that's the the silver lining here, but Burns just looks like he's over matching double-a hitters I mean jeez a forty point one1% K rate on the season, 38.6% at double A, not walking anybody. Just what's he gonna learn at double A? Maybe bump him up one more level, make sure he ticks the box as a triple A,

and perhaps we see him a month from now. The Reds are just one of those teams, you guys. They're just weird. They're three below 500. They're in a division where they could keep hanging around. So I don't really know what they would be waiting for with burns, like maybe getting on the right schedule. They have a decent run differential plus 23. That's, you know,

very close to the Brewers better than the Padres and Astros and you know, and the Red Sox and Brave. So they look like a decent team that maybe should have a better record, but then you look at their projection and they're projected for a minus 21 run differential. Mostly because they're going to give up a ton more runs, almost the same offensive projection. So like you're like, oh, that's interesting. So when somebody regresses in that system, maybe they could in that projected in that rotation, maybe they say instead of like dealing with Nick Martinez at a five ERA or whatever it is, I don't know who it is.

That's necessarily gonna redress the worst. They just be like, oh no, we're gonna use Burns. I guess I have a candidate for regression, but we'll get to that later. We can get to that right now if you want. Come on. Let's just get right after it. Who is your candidate for regression

in this Cincinnati group? Well, it's always Andrew Abbott. Always. It's always Andrew Abbott because I can't figure him out. Is he not actually on my list? Yeah, I was trying to figure out why. I don't know if you cut it off at a certain rank and he was ranked below everybody else

and that was why he didn't show up, but the difference between his actual ERA and his projected ERA by most projection systems is gonna be in the neighborhood of two full runs and the only thing that's different to me about Andrew Abbott this year versus last year we talked about around the same time trying to figure out what makes it all work for him in that ballpark he's brought his strikeout rate back up same as it was in 2023 in the upper 20s he's at 27.6% so far.

It's working, like it's somehow working. I don't know how it continues to baffle me. But I think when we did our deep dive last year, the pitcher that came up most similar was Nestor Cortez. And there's a few interesting things about Andrew Abbott. Andrew Abbott has a lower career ERA by about a quarter run at Great American Ballpark than he does everywhere else. That's a little weird given his fly ball tendencies

and what Great American Ballpark does boosting homers, but that's been the case through parts of three seasons now. So I think you can start to comp your way to a, he's just better than we will always think based on projections, even if we can't fully explain the why. And with Abbot, I mean, look, the K rates and the miners were excellent. So there's something about him that hitters just do not see particularly well. I don't know why the K rate fell as far as it did last year. The concern I would have is that we've seen fades from him every year and I would assume

that's a weather related thing. Fly ball pitcher, as the weather gets warmer, the ball's gonna carry a lot better. That's when he's gonna start to get dinged up. This isn't just an Andrew Abbott thing. There'd be a lot of other pitchers that fit into this bucket, but that would be more of my concern than the core skills

completely eroding at this point. Yeah, the ballpark that he's in does contribute to a 480 second half ERA for his career with a 280 first half situation. And we were looking at those stat cast park factors that talk about extra distance added. And if you look at Cincinnati right now, there's 17th in extra distance added. In fact, minus almost a foot in extra distance added right now because of temperature. It's been cool in Cincinnati, the environment,

the elevation, those things are going to be normal. And at some point the temperature is going to be hot. and I think it will be more in the distance added area and so I think this is this ballpark's gonna warm up, his flyball tendencies are going to hurt him more but I do wonder you know you bring up Nester Cortez and there's a little bit of this like does he just understand his park but you know he also did this in the minors and you know a bunch of different parks but I asked Wilmer Flores once like you know what do you what do you think about Andrew Abbott and what makes him good and he just said you know like good command of of all of his pitches and I don't know location plus says yeah around

league average command of all his pitches and if you look at his movements, you're like, oh, he has exactly dead zone fastball pretty much at 92 miles an hour, which is not even that impressive for a lefty. His changeups a little bit better this year, but his sweeper has 10 inches of sweep. Like there are people who have 20 inches of sweep, you know? Yeah, that's not good. So he's got a pretty high arm slot, right? 49 degrees, but he has no vertical on anything. So like nothing breaks downwards,

nothing breaks, nothing fade, like nothing. It's awful. There's a lot of really bright blue, honestly top of the league worst vertical, but everything moves horizontally. He's got some positive, you know, foreseeing moves more than most horizontals, which you don't really want, but he's got the 15 inches fade on the change up and then the curveball

it's got like nine inches of glove side. So like, I think they're just moving differently than it looks like it's going to move. It's just weird. I mean, I guess it's a little undead zone in that he has a high arm slot and has some has extras horizontal movement. So kind of Clay Holmes you where you're like oh it's a high arm slot I expected more to be you know like Pavetta for example is another guy on this list and he's actually another pick of mine to to rest a lot and it hurts me to say this because I just came out rankings I put him like 30th and it is the ranking that I regret maybe the most and I'm getting the most crap for Chris Buehwitch, but Piveta, you know, I think we saw the problem

in what last night is he's home run. He gives up home runs. He hasn't so far, but San Diego is going to warm up. You know, it's still a cool park, but it's going to warm up. He's going to go into other parks that are warm. And you know, we got a homer last night out of Matt Chapman against him. He throws from a similar high arm slot as Andrew Abbott and gets the vert. But it's like a little bit like, oh yeah, I see your slot.

I expect the vert. So maybe there's a little bit playing with expectations of Abbott. You mentioned Clay Holmes and Clay Holmes has that. But then he, his rep, everyone's like it but this thing sinks like crazy it's so different that you can like anticipate it I bet might be just like a Little bit there. So guys like a little bit off Which would lead to like pop ups of my balls like lazy fly balls might just be like, oh, that's just not on my barrel It like still looks like vert to them and there is it isn't there

It's horizontal and it's like and there's I can't put my finger on this the, and it isn't there, it's horizontal. And they're just like, I can't put my finger on this the same way we can't. Maybe that he's just weird enough, which is a weird, maybe there's a Goldilocks zone for weirdness. Well, and I know we don't often look at hard hit rates allowed and barrel rates allowed and kind of reverse engineer those numbers.

They don't seem to be as helpful on the pitching side as they are on the hitting side. But even going back to last year, 33% hard hit rate allowed by Andrew Abbott down to 29.6% this year, like that sort of crash. Exactly the type of numbers I never look at. They don't usually mean anything. And I think just based on how I like the lodum,

the spice of lodum on a roster, something different, I think I should like Andrew Abbott. I think I should believe in him. If he's just weird enough, he's going to keep beating his expected ERA numbers by a run. That's just what he's done up to this point. It's 300 innings now. This is what he does.

Yeah, 300 innings is a lot. It's a pretty good sample at this point, and most people are gonna look at it through through the lens of there's no way he's this good, I'll trade him. So he's gettable in just about any league. And maybe you're just a little bit careful about some of the more extreme matchups he gets over the course of the season. But I think he's just better than we've given him credit for this entire time.

And I'm willing to just take the L and say, it's working even if I can't completely explain it. I don't know why he should be at the top of this list, but if you want to throw up the list, this is the biggest difference between oops, he projected the ERA and actual ERA. I guess there might be some missing people because right there at the top near two runs,

there should be an Adriabbit. But Chris Bubich leads the list right now. He was the ranking that caused the most consternation in the comments of my, you know, I have the rank there too. I'll throw this in Discord later because it's a valuable chart I think. Some of these guys I didn't care because I think the projections are still good. So Hunter Brown and Max Fried, still really good projections. You wouldn't really expect them to have an ERA that starts with a one unless it's just that golden Cy Young season, which it could be for Freed or Brown, but you know, that's not how projections work. They're going to regress them. I didn't care about crochet

for a similar reason, but some guys where it did affect the rankings was Imanaga. You know, he's got a four ERA projection for most systems. I think he's got you kind of a smallish arsenal. It's not the greatest fastball. It's relying a lot on that forkball. That's why Kodaisenga is also on here. And maybe like a really good forkball splitter is a ghost in the system that messes up the projections. But you can also see, you know, regression coming on Kodai Sengas cutter and four seam. And Kodai Sengas K-minus BB is not very good. And Imanagat has given up home runs in the past. So that's why he's on the list. Seth Lugo is on the list. And I had someone draw a comparison

between Seth Lugo and Chris Buvich. I don't know, Kansas City is about to heat up too right now. They have always had surprising park factors. It's not as pitcher friendly as people expect it to be right now on the park factors in terms of added distance. It's adding four feet and it's only going to get hotter. I don't know about the disconnect there, but a lot of interesting names on this I'll share it. But Boobich is the guy I wanted to talk about real quick because I had an interesting interchange with Alex Chamberlain who was talking about, he said that the fastball is pretty decent and has been suppressing exit velocities so far. That should show up in stuff.

So stuff says it's a good fastball. And I don't really believe in suppressing exit velocities as a thing that happens for a long time and it's very repeatable because it's like a command-based thing. So I think at some point he's gonna drop in there. But he did say he has like an implied misdistance he's created where it's like, I don't know how he's necessarily doing it, but he's trying to find like a misdistance.

And he said that Bubich's fastball was second best among all fastballs thrown at least 200 times. So if Bubich is doing something that I'm missing, it's fastball command with a decent fastball shape and a really good change up. What I yell at when I watch his things is he throws this big old sweeper that you know is slow and you're not really supposed to throw you know sweepers to opposite hands and his is like a pretty blah sweeper that's, you know, not fast. And I watch hitters just watch it all the way to the middle of the plate.

I feel like that's an adjustment they're going to make. Right now, Chris Buvich has on a sweeper a 206 slugging and I just, that's weird for throwing a bunch of them to righties, lefty on righty, and for the pitch to be how fast is it? It's 83 miles an hour. I think that's what's going to change. And I want to, somebody who said, well, people who held Lugo all year last year were happy about it. And I was like, Lugo had a 4.8 ERA in July and August last year. I think that sometimes we just remember things differently because they start out well. And then at the end of the year, you're like,

yeah, I had a three year array for the year. And you're like, yeah, but there were some tough times in there. So I feel like Bubic is going to end the season with like a three, six or three, five, and people are gonna be like, see, you were wrong. And I'm gonna be like, yeah, but in July and August, he had like a four, six and there was some regression.

So maybe I'll just take the L on Boobich like you were willing to on on Abbott. I'm not taking it on Abbott. I'm going to stick my stick in the mud with Boobich. I'm trying to listen to the people who are criticizing me and trying to learn. And then Matt, Eddie would say he's a lefty you idiot both of these guys are lefties and and lefties get good lefty hitters out of the lineup you know and that you don't see lefties as often but we try to put a lefty boost in the model. Who caught your eye on that list Trevor? To be honest BooBitch was the guy I looked into the most so he got me there. You say K Kaguchi is interesting to me

because he's, for all intents and purposes, kind of a two-pitch pitcher. Guys, especially when you're division, depends on when you see your division a bunch, I think. Do, if they've gone through that. I feel like they've been all over the country earlier in the year, and maybe then they go and play the AL West a ton at the end.

That sometimes is an issue. You have a couple clunkers there, especially when you're a two-way guy. It's is an issue. You have a couple clunkers there, especially when you're a two-way guy. It's entirely possible. If something's not working, what are your options after that? And on this list, Kikuchi might be the one with, oh, slider's not working. So I fastball. Like, what, am I gonna throw my change up a bunch now again? Because he just never has been able to throw it over the plate anyway. So that is one kind of red flag that I would usually look for, look at,

and then, you know, anyone who deals with, and then Iavaldi is also interesting because you're right, he does fade towards the end pretty much every single year. I'm always fascinated by guys who start strong and finish, finish a little bit kind of fade at the end because the way I was taught growing up is with my dad, my dad's like, it's not how you start, it's how you finish. And so I was always like obsessed is with my dad. My dad's like, it's not how you start, it's how you finish. And so I was always like obsessed with finishing strong. And some guys just like that's not the way that they operate. So, Eivaldi is interesting to me. He's got a long history of injury as well. This might be a fatigue thing.

We've got a graph for you. Check this out. So this is Eivaldi's fastball velocity over time. And obviously there's just the general edging curve of getting older. But if you look within the little bands, 2019, fairly big velocity loss over the course of the season, 2021, big velocity loss over the course of the season, 2022, like really big, like from 97 to 94 over the course of 2021. So if you look at within these little bands, you see huge velocity losses over the course of season, like three, four ticks in some seasons.

And he's continued that to his day. So he's just, I don't know, it's, you know, it kind of speaks to maybe that, I don't wanna say like reliever-ish mentality that's creeped into starting, but just the idea of like throw as hard as you can until they take the ball from you, right? So, I think maybe one of the ramifications for that

can be that you lose velocity over the course of the season. Like Jordan Hicks last year, we put him in the rotation, he's throwing as hard as he was as a reliever, and then just every start a little bit less, a little bit less because your rest of recovery is not the same. Like you can't, because you can't do that. That's, I guess that's why I'm talking about the Hunter Green that way. It's like, it's like, can you do this? Like, can you really throw as hard as a reliever for five innings, six innings at a time?

There's also a mental element, right? Like I was actually thinking about that. A video came across one of my feeds and it was the kid from Tennessee, the lefty, just throwing fastballs, 99 right down the middle and just dominating college guys. But the way he was celebrating, right? Just using all this energy. And I'm like, everyone's like,

why did they not do this in the big leagues? And I was thinking about it's because we, there's too many games. Everyone at home, you watch your team, watch the outfielders running on and off the field through the game. They're barely moving. It's because they do it 10,000 times.

Intentional conservation of energy. Yeah. Look at basketball. These guys are like, they don't play defense because it's a waste of energy at this point. Like that's why they do. So like apply that to starting pitching versus relievers. Oh, I think of it very much in basketball

because what you'll find is there are stars that are not two way stars. I saw it a lot with Jimmy Butler, where it's like if he, if Jimmy Butler was spending a lot of energy on defense, defending their better star, he was not scoring a bunch. And Shai Gilgis Alexander is like a great player, but they hide him on defense.

That's why Alex Caruso is like often on the court with shy is because Alex Caruso does the defensive work and they kind of smoosh the two together where it's like shy gets the ball on offense and Caruso gets the ball on defense basically. And so yeah, there's a conservation. It's a trade off. I hadn't thought about that.

So if you're really like, ah, when you do that, that's energy. That's energy. And of course, that's after you're done throwing. But the reason you don't approach it with that emotional level of like every AB or every time you're pitching is because you run out of gas. There's nothing you can do.

You can't run. It's adrenaline. You're utilizing a finite resource in adrenaline. So I think even from starting pitching, especially Nate Ivaldi, everything I've heard about Ivaldi, and most of these are anecdotes from Ottavino, to be honest. He's become such a kitchen sink pitcher,

like he's always like, I'll just, one day I'll be like, I like this pitch today, I'm gonna throw this a ton. He's realized that I think there is a physical component to he's a really athletic guy. He's really mobile. Those guys tend to not be able to maintain it as well. Yeah so you get kind of out of your mechanics over time as you get fatigued and then things drop off a little bit more stark but also he's just like what's the point? What's the point of trying to throw this 97 if I'm already a little bit tired? I could probably do it but will it be

better than me just throwing 94 and a half and then throwing a bunch of off-speed pitches? No and as you get older you make that decision too. Do I need to save some bullets for the postseason? Everyone gets an extra tick or two in the postseason right so it's like are we going to be in the postseason? And I wonder there's got to be some sort of mental component for like, oh, we're the Texas Rangers and we're awful right now and it's August and. Why? Yeah, I might hurt myself, I have before. Another guy who does this pretty starkly,

that's really interesting to watch, because you can tell by his body language a lot, Framber Valdez. Like there's days he'll be there, 92, not care at all. 92, 89 mile an hour, change up, and then that big curveball. And then there's, like he's in 92, not care at all, 92, 89 mile an hour change up and then that big curve ball. And then there's like, he's in plastic now he's 97, 98. And he's still doing the recoil thing. And he just like, doesn't seem bothered by it.

And it's just not something he, he just doesn't care about that number up on the board. And then there's guys like me and Tyler Glass now and Ben Joyce who are all just like, whipping up to the Velo gun. And it's part of our identity, it's part of how we value ourselves as a pitcher, all that's part of it too, like the type of guy they are.

So you're gonna see some of that in there and maybe the guys who care about the velocity as starters fade, there might be a correlation between they fade a little bit more because they're just, or they're maximizing their output 100% then you have to reset your body and that could catch up with you if you're not doing Perfectly perfect every single time and getting that extra rest when you need to if it's not handled right then that fatigue will just compound Because I don't think four days is enough to get you fully back to hundred percent. It's not over season I think we're seeing the the best version of Casey Mize that we've seen in the big leagues right now

I think you know seeing the best version of Casey Mize that we've seen in the big leagues right now. I think, you know, you mentioned him yesterday. We're pulling some names together for the rundown as someone you might be a little bit worried about. But he's got 12% swinging strike rate under the 21.6% K rate. You could argue maybe there's a little room for the K rate to go up. Getting hit in the zone less than ever by a wide margin. Usually Casey Mize lives in the 86 to 87% range down to 81.8 so I think that's a good sign. Home run rates up a little bit and it's been cool in the upper Midwest so you know

maybe you got a home run problem you have to worry about but if you're going to take a few extra K's and give up the occasional homer I think you can live with that with Mize's control right. He's not walking enough guys for that to really come back and absolutely crush him. Oopsie has a 404 ERA on Mize the rest of the way. So it's a full run, a little more than a full run above what he's done so far, but certainly not a crash all the way back to the bad struggling versions of KC Mize

we've seen over the course of his time in the big leagues. The one thing I struggle with though, for a fantasy rankings is that K's are still a category. He's not going to be necessarily an asset in that category. So if he's like a four-year-old guy with below average K's, then he becomes kind of a guy that you want to be careful with. You use more at home against certain offenses. Just not maybe like a top 40 or top 50 guy. It's just hard to be that

without the strikeouts. On the other hand, he's a good pitcher and this is the best version of himself. I love ended up being after all the bellyaching about, you know, what his breaking ball would be. I think the real step forward for him has just been throwing the heck out of that splitter, throwing it harder and throwing it a lot more. It's not that any of his raking pitches are that good. None of them are above average by stuff plus. He's got two or three of them that he throws and he just mixes them in, but he's become basically a fastball splitter guy.

It's worked. One thing that's also interesting is that he's not a perfect comp for a Gossman because he doesn't have the feel on the splitter that Gossman does. He throws an 89 mile an hour splitter, so I don't know that there is a comp for KC Myers. I think Gossman is a guy who comes to mind, but there's obvious differences here. This is a hard splitter. Hard fastball, hard splitter, bad breaking balls. The closest I can get is Cosman really.

His splitter command actually, I mean at least in terms of, I'd say his control is wildly impressive. I'm looking at the cluster here. He hits the bottom rail of the zone just, but it's just in the middle every time. And he gets a bunch of fade and not any, and gets no vert on it, which is kind of important because he's throwing foursies atop the zone.

So the movements are a little bit ride, fade thing, so he's just not getting it. He's getting hit, the splitter's getting hit kind of hard and he's maybe leaving it down the middle a little bit too much, but he never misfires with it. He never throws a crazy one. They're always kind of general in the same area, which could hurt him a little bit,

but you're right about the slider. The slider's just, to be honest, the run value, he only has two positive run values, that's forcing fastball on slider, and his split finger's negative three, so he's getting hurt by it. But maybe he should throw it a little bit more. I mean, their batting average,

he's only giving up singles on the slider, he hasn't given up any extra base hits. But the only real whiff pitch is the split finger, yeah. So he has to throw it for whiffs, and he sometimes gets hits for hom homers or whatever for extra base hits Maybe that slight a wrinkle pitch to get ahead of guys mid counts He could use it a little bit more because even if he gives up a hit It's nothing to get him to make the splitter a little bit better and a little bit less predictable because he's you know

60% splitter fastball It's a good maybe that's a slight adjustment He could make but like I see why there might be some concern. Because again, it's one of those things like, say you get some nagging thing, the splitter rises an inch on average, and now it's getting absolutely pummeled. And now there's one pitch. It could go from really, really good to really bad, really fast, because it effectively is too pitch pitcher.

Trevor, you mentioned the concern about Kikuchi. It's weird because usually, even if the ratios are bad, you're getting concern about Kikuchi. It's weird because usually even if the ratios are bad, you're getting strikeouts in bunches and you sort of live with that when you're building your fantasy roster. You say, well, I've got a shot at 175, 200 Ks depending on the number of innings he puts up. This has been weird though down to a 20.3% strikeout rate. The walk rates back up to its 2022 level 12.9 percent and beneath the strikeout rate drop it's an 8.7 percent swinging strike rate. So Kikuchi has some pretty big shifts here where he's getting hit more in the zone. I mean a 323 ERA rarely goes with a 159 whip doesn't take much to look at that and go that ERA is gonna jump considerably if he doesn't find a way to start missing some bats again but why

is he struggling so much to miss bats? This is wild there's some big differences with him one he's got a 1-5-9 whip that's way too many base runners eventually those guys are going to score more and the ERA is gonna balloon in 2020 his he had a 59 degree arm angle. It's a 34 degree arm. He's dropped it this year. It's dropped eight inch, eight degrees this year from last year from 42 to 34. And it was consistent. It was 42, three years in a row and dropped it again. So maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe his stuff is lining up. How it's moving is lining up with where his hand position is a little bit more

and guys are fouling it off and just not missing it as much. Though he is still not giving up the runs, this is definitely like a regret. If you had to predict anybody on this list to regress to the mean, it's Yusei Koguchi, especially because he's a two-pitch guy. So add all those things together. Maintaining a three-two-three is probably not gonna happen.

One thing that's like old school but like has some value and it was the first tool I ever used in fantasy baseball is whip. You just generally don't see guys with high whips with low URAs. You know, the exceptions are maybe like ground ball pitchers sometimes will have like a 1-3 whip and you know, they'll keep the ball in the yard but they give up hits but Kukuchi is not a ground ball pitcher and he has a one five whip. So that's definitely some old school thing that that's in my ear. The other thing that that is just I just want to bring up is that his pitching coach said that his grips had changed on like all his pitches.

He kind of used that same sort of passive language like they just change. So maybe it's a little bit, Shane Bieber was talking to me about how he went to driveline and they surprised him by being like, your grip has changed on your curve ball. And he's like, what? Like my curve ball that I've been throwing forever, what? And so maybe it's just over time, Kukuchi's been making small adjustments,

hasn't realized it and the ball has actually kind of moved around in his hand. And so, and right. And the Astros can catch, and the ball has actually kind of moved around in his hand. And so, Enright. And the Astros can catch that, and the Angels definitely can't. Well, they just did, I guess. I mean, Enright said it. Oh, I mean, they changed.

I don't know what to do about it, but they changed. I don't even know. I don't know. I probably shouldn't throw shade, but the Angels are just frustrating as hell. Yeah, I mean, I think that Enright might be one of the better situations of the entire organization.

Like, and it makes sense, right? If you are an organization that has problems with player development and stuff, maybe your best pitching coach is your major league pitching coach. That can exist in some places. So maybe Kukuchi will turn it around and keep the ERA low just by finding his old grips. But generally, yeah, with the arm slot changes and stuff, I'm out on it. I know we talked about the angle dropping being maybe

a good thing from a health perspective, but the other reason it could happen is the wear and tear sometimes. It's just the only spot where your arm feels comfortable. And I wonder if it's more along those lines, given how sour the results have been. This doesn't seem like it was intentional, or if it was. along those lines given how sour the results have been. This doesn't seem like it was intentional or if it was, I want to know more about the

plan because the pieces are not working the way they usually do for Yusei Kikuchi and it's just harder to talk yourself into a bounce back given all these things that have shifted. Another name that should be on the list, I just re-ran it and I don't know why but this one has all the names we've been talking about on it. But Tyler Malley would actually be, the top would be Andrew Abbott and then Tyler Malley and then Chris Bubich. He's got a 202 right now. When I ran this, he had an even lower ERA than Malley did. His Sierra, which is actually a decent, is one of the better in the suite of ERA estimators in terms of predictiveness, is a 4-4-8. We know that his stuff isn't great. At this point,

we can believe in his location, which is great. Let's say he has great command and he throws a four-pitch mix, a fastball, splitter, cutter, slider. How far are we willing to push a guy with a 92 mile an hour fastball, no pitch that's above average by Stuff Plus, and four pitch mix and command? That's how I would put it. You really think this is a two or a low threes? I think this is just basically he looks like a fourier guy. He's going to have ups and downs. And so I just think that some downs are coming.

We saw in the last one. One thing I will put on my tombstone is that ERA is not predicted. What else are you going to put on there? Have you thought this through? You said one thing. I mean that makes me think that you've thought of several things that you'd like written on there. Oh, I don't know.

I met somebody at an event recently that said, I hope that they, I hope that they put on my, on my tombstone that he likes sports. It's like, all right. You have to put that on. They'll just assume that. Yeah. The people that knew you are going to know that. So you know, the people that didn't know you probably don't need to know anyway.

Anybody else, though, that you're worried about based on performance to this point being unsustainable, I think the boobage mentioned earlier, it makes sense, but also, like, I think he's probably a little bit better than we all realize coming in showed that pre-injury. And if he's a 350 ERA, 375 the rest of the way, with a good whip and plenty of strikeouts, I think you're still gonna be pretty happy with where you drafted him.

You know, the Evalde explanation made a lot of sense. We got into Mize a little bit already. Oh, the aces, you mentioned them in passing. This is the last part of this conversation. The guys who are really, really good, like Crochet, Freed, Brown, the sub 2 ERA guys, like I don't think there's anything actionable to do with them. You're not trading them right now because you're not trading them because you're expecting

a crash or because the numbers say they won't be this good. Here's one I am worried about that I might trade. DeGrom? DeGrom would be unique in this group because of age and injury history and all those things. But also, recently, a dive in Stuff. And that's not-

You struck out at nobody the other day. Yeah. That's unacceptable, Jake. But also unacceptable for me as the keeper of Stuff+, he had a below average Stuff Plus for the last two starts. Jacob DeGrom of all people, when we started Stuff Plus, he was always like, and DeGrom is first, you know, that was like how you started the sentence,

you know, and he would be up there with the relievers. You didn't even have to put the starter filter on and be like, DeGrom has the second best Stuff Plus in baseball, period. Like right behind, enrolled as Chapman or whatever it was, you know? So I have to say, I'm worried. And it's fairly obvious that, you know, it's partially velocity related, you know? His slider's down to 88. This is a guy who had been throwing at 92, 93. I know that's still high. His average fastball's 97 still. I know, I know.

But that's, it's 96-5 and that's the worst of the season. And it's two in a row. I'm just worried that it's like, oh, and you know, he grabs a hamstring or something, you know, and then we're like, oh, that this was always the risk. So I don't know. I could see the case to be made to trading to Grum. How about he turns 37 in two weeks and maybe he's just human?

Like, is that a satisfactory explanation here? And like- No, that's fine one too, but like, what does that mean going forward? I mean, it's like more humanity. Well, I just- And if he strikes out zero in another game, he's not gonna give up zero runs.

I'd probably eat a hat if he made another five plus inning start without striking at least one guy out that Probably won't happen again. I'm surprised that ever happened Decline and stuff in these last two starts the decline to his level is not so bad that you're like Yeah, no strikeouts in five and a third. That's normal so bad that you're like, yeah, no strikeouts in five and a third. That's normal. Just a weird outlier performance. I'm not any more worried about de Grom. Whatever level of worry I had at the beginning of the season, it's the same.

Just worried about him breaking because I'm always worried about him breaking. This has added another level of worry for me where I'm like, there's a third path in the wood. There was like, well, we always thought at the beginning of the year, he's like, either he's healthy and he's dominant or he's not healthy. But there's a third path, which is he's healthy and okay. He's 80% of the guy he used to be or 65% of the guy he used to be, but he's healthy. That's still a very good picture. That's a positive outcome in general.

If that's what he ends up doing. I'd be interested in like what other people thought, you know, I would at least float him and be like, how are other people evaluating him in my league? I don't think you're going to find a lot of blind optimism. You're going to find the reasonable skepticism that everyone has about him because of the age and the injury history. Is there a theme with any of these guys though as far as like certain things they do? Generally it's a group of guys that are a little lighter in strikeouts

overall. So that's kind of a major red flag. Even Oopsy that uses stuff plus and location plus and you know everything will use K minus BB. So K minus BB is a huge part of projection systems. Most of these guys don't do great in K-BB because they're not striking guys out. But I'll also say that there's a fair amount of these guys who have good command. I'm looking now at the top and if you're just looking at location plus, Tyler Malley 112, Bluebeach 105, Festa 102, Iovaldi 106, Logan Henderson came up with the 111, Brian Weathers has a 106. So it's mostly green in the location plus department, like a Sugano, who is one of the guys who's supposed to regress the most, you know, has a 105 location plus and a bunch of pitches. And that's, that's

your way around the model, the projections, everything is command and a bunch of pitches. way around the model, the projections and everything is command and a bunch of pitches. What if there's another way around all of this? The ball, the drag on the ball. It's good if you're a pitcher with home run problems, right? Like maybe you're less likely to crash as a result of all of this. Like, how do you feel about this ball, Trevor?

I love it. I think it was a great ball. Come out of my retirement. Back in shape. Coming back it was a great ball. Come out of retirement. Back in shape. Coming back, it's gonna join the Cubs bullpen. Yeah, when joining the Rockies, fix them. Be up there with Jake Bird, be the highest four on the team.

Yeah, that's crazy. I'm just making a big- We're looking at a graph that shows the most drag on the ball, basically since we've tracked it. The drag coefficient percentage wise, because obviously this graph is the way it's scaled, makes it even look really, really glaring. But they had to change the scaling

to fit that top ball in this year. Ooh, okay. All right, so in my head I'm trying to figure out what the difference between a.25, which was the average in 2009, and then what,.35, that it is this year on average, which is plus three. Like what's plus three drag coefficient mean in, I don't know.

It's Greek. But I went and looked at barrels and barrels are going seven feet less far. So I say, okay, maybe it's seven feet. Tango has a thing out that says, no, no, no, no, no, there's not that much difference. And then I was saying, well, if there's not that much difference and then I was like well if there's not that much difference but we know drag is different then what else is different? But before I thought I'd get to conspiracy theory I checked with resident physicist of baseball.

This is our scientist extraordinaire. He's independent. He's unassailable. I love him. Alan Nathan. Checked with Alan Nathan and I said, how do I square this? And Alan sent me an email where he did the math thankfully so that I don't have to do it and just so I'm quoting him correctly. He looked at launch angles and exit velocities and found the mean distance to be 370 feet, you know, 25 to 30 degrees, launch angle, 90 mile per hour exit velocity is higher. However, when I corrected for air density

using game time temperature and elevation, I found that the ball traveled about 3.2 feet further in 2024 with a standard error about a half a foot. So I'm gonna say three feet. This is worth three feet. And three feet is not nothing. Three feet is a- Ask a fielder chasing a ball of three feet's nothing.

Can you rob a homer if it's three feet less? Can it leave warning track? Three feet is gonna lead to fewer home runs. That's what we've seen this year. You know, three feet is going to rob is going to lead to fewer home runs. That's what we've we've seen this year. So it's not a huge effect. But if you're looking at something like home run per nine innings, we're back down to 2022 one point oh nine homers per nine innings, which is which is like drag would tell you.

Yeah, you would probably go back to 2022 the last time we had dragged this high. Yeah, I mean, the only thing that's going to change that rate potentially is just the warmer months still haven't happened yet. So I would imagine you get a little bump as a result of the temps around the league just being higher in the middle three months. I think we'll still find in some it should be down a little bit because we're missing missing three feet and Now the question is why is this happening? I've collected of some ideas

I there's somebody texting me that used to work in manufacturing with the with the league and he was talking about the dies that they make to cut the ball and So if you basically don't ball. And so if you basically don't replace that and like don't make new ones all the time, which is an expensive process because we're talking about manufacturing, we're talking about like, you know, the metal, then it doesn't cut as sharply, you know, or it, you know, or it doesn't cut as as correctly every time, you know, the metal will soften or, you know, somehow not make the cut as quickly or as nicely as you want. So basically, quality assurance over time goes down.

What you normally should do is get a new die, get that made. Here's a wrinkle that is meaningful that I hadn't even thought about, the tariffs. Now all of the minor league balls are made in China and surprise the the reason that they do that is it's about I Don't know 20 to 30 percent cheaper to make the ball in China. And so they're making a bunch of minor league balls They're like we're gonna save some money on this Well 20 to 30 percent is an interesting number because that's around what the terrorists went up so if all of a sudden the minor league ball is interesting number because that's around what the tariffs went up. So if all of a sudden the minor league ball is as expensive or more expensive to make than the major league ball,

you have to think that baseball would change something. Brawlings would change something because you wouldn't want to just lose a bunch of money making minor league balls. So this is all conjecture, but it's informed conjecture. We have a change in the ball and the major level. We don't have an explanation for it. And we do know that there are changing economic factors that could change the way you would process, you would make a ball. So I don't know exactly what's happening,

but it is pretty stark when you look at that drag graph. I would love to know how they're making the decisions because I don't even know what the tariffs are right now, right? I've heard 91 different numbers They could just let me know how how they're confident and making those decisions. That'd be great. Thanks Don't know if you're gonna get clarity on that one Trevor, but I'm rooting for you So there was an interesting thing we were talking about yesterday with park factors. We were starting to dig into the new things we found,

the temperature-related factors and the increased distance caused by a few different environmental conditions. And the basic question we were starting to tackle was, do park factors fully capture park effects? And it got me thinking, what if you showed up to the ballpark on a day you were going to pitch Trevor and you looked at a tablet, looked at the screen and it had dynamic real time park effects to account for the conditions of that day.

Would it change your preparation for that day in a significant way? Would you be accounting for that information in your game planning and things you were gonna try and do with all that information at your disposal? I would say that I would approach that the same way that I would approach Knowing I was going to pitch in Colorado I'm not changing an arch like most guys can't be like I'm a ground ball guy today like avoid the fly ball or something That's not I don't think that's a feasible way still have a core identity I guess you still have a core identity You just try to choose the choose the things that might be like you try to stay away from the things that are gonna be crushed

By those park factors if there are any and then you're gonna try to just lean maybe more heavily on the thing That's not affected as much for example in, in Colorado. Gyro sliders, for whatever reason, are slightly affected, but not quite as much as sweepers are dead, gone. Like, it's just, there's so much depth that they can't sweep. And a four-seam fastball is like, I lost four and a half inches on average on mine, which is bad to the point where it's like turning into a sinker.

So that's like one thing you're like, maybe I'll just flip gyros up all day and then try to- That would be like gyro change up today or whatever. Yeah, or try to sneak a four-scene fastball just with Velo because try to push and pull more. That's how it would change. For example, the wind just was howling in and we had actual data showing what direction it was in

and whatever. Maybe you're more inclined for a guy who could get you, or a guy would not turn a pop, but there's one spot that he lifts that goes out of the park a lot. Maybe you're more inclined to a guy who could get you, or a guy who would not turn a pop, but there's one spot that he lifts that goes out of the park a lot. Maybe you're more inclined to attack him there, or try to, because you're just not gonna get it out today. He probably doesn't get attacked there that often.

He might get surprised. He might get a surprise cult strike in there or something. Exactly, so then you'd be like, what are a couple new cards that I now have to play that I didn't have before, and you're counting on the hit or not making the same adjustment that you made, right? Because you have the ball at the end of the day. It's easier for hit pitchers to make this adjustment

than it is for hitters. I think that that's it. So you're like, are there any new cards that I can add to my hand today and what cards do I need to take out? And if there's any, and sometimes you look and you're like, well, it just makes everything I throw bad. So guess the card I wanna play is don't put me in.

Let's put someone else in. Hand me his little tender. I would love to pitch the day before. As a reliever, I'd love to pitch the day before you go to Coors. Just give me at least one game off. Yeah. I'll do it back to back the day before we go to Coors. I only had one career outing there, which...

Really? Wow. That's a good one. I remember I was talking once to Brandon McCarthy about something that had nothing to do with cores and he's like, do you know how much core sucks? That's like, what? Never been more tired running to the mountain. And it's so far to you, you're in center field.

It's so far and you're like, man, I feel like I got a weighted vest on right around here. I did want to ask you, do you remember any specific alterations that you ever made to your approach given your home park? Now, home park is something that you have a whole year of. So, it's not necessarily today we're going to do something different. So, you know, I'm thinking the foul ground in Oakland. I'm also thinking that Minnesota, maybe that changes over the course of the year, but Minnesota is cold in the beginning of the season. Yeah, like you'll throw more fastballs when it's cold, just because guys are just, they

want something softer to try to get a barrel. They don't want to get off the barrel and no one's super excited to get the bat bat bat going either. So like that's when that's when you can just you're jamming guys and stuff right down the middle because everyone's just miserable and it could be snowing, it's just not yet. That's kind of usually what it is. Yeah. Pitchers just have a huge advantage when it's cold out. The pitcher versus hitter advantage is huge.

How about the foul ground? Did you ever use, can you use foul ground? Again, it comes down to some places you're okay trying to get them under the ball all the time. You're like, I'm just gonna throw up, let them lift it. Oakland, yeah, it's cold. Oakland's perfect. You're probably not gonna hit a homer.

Yeah, it's hard to hit a homer already and I'm a fly ball pitcher. Lean heavily into that. Throw things that are gonna get popped up all the time because it might just be a foul out. My first pitch I ever threw in the Big Leagues was a foul out in the Oakland Coliseum. And for your pitches, you have pop-up rates

or launch angles that are available to you And do you ever did you ever see like expected? Launch angles or expected with rates or expected pop-up rates for your pitches in passing? Padron always a pitcher know which ones are your pitches get yeah, yeah I just I looked at him like it's I just that's all I give up is like my ground ball Fly ball rate was just ridiculous is like 1.5 or Towards like all it was like point three three point five point five. Yeah, so it was it was just insane So like I don't think there was a moment in my major league career at ever in ten years of thinking thinking

Let's go for a ground ball here. I don't think I thought that one time It was I need to punch this dude out, I need to punch this dude out, or I need to punch this dude out. Those are my two options. Old school pitching coach's dream. Me and, I watched Nolan Ryan a lot when I was a kid. Well, I just wanted to share one thing real quick that might resonate with you before we leave.

It's just a great piece from Russell Carlton, AKA Pizza Cutter over at Baseball Prospectus. He was looking into park factors and I love the way he thinks. He was like, can I legislate all this stuff out and find an effect for, and I never thought of this before, guys returning to parks that they used to call home. So this is you as an Oakland A coming back to New York or you as a Met coming back to Minnesota, right? And so his theory was like,

if those people were in a third class where like they said there's the home pitcher, the away pitcher, and then there's a third class, which is like the away pitcher used to call at home. Then he would say, he's saying, if that is true, and it is, that basically there's something about that familiarity with a park and a situation that breeds comfort,

maybe it's confidence, whatever it is. Here's the sort of big paragraph. Sure enough, once we do this, which is basically account for as much as things as possible, right? We see that batters, home, as batters, home players strike out less than we would otherwise expect of them. Visitors strike out slightly more. The returning players who are visitors in name but had once called this place their home struck out more than we would otherwise expect, but not as bad as the other

players on their team. So there's this third class of like returning to your home. Did you ever feel that? Like when you were back in Minnesota, you're like there's always the joke of like, I almost went to the wrong clubhouse. You're like, but did you go to the old coffee place you always went to? Or did you have an old apartment that you could just sleep in? Or like you rented, you did rent out that week and you were like, I slept in basically my old bed. Or what was it like when you came back to Minnesota as a Met or came back? I never went back as a Met.

I actually, it was the last road trip as an A. Oh, wow. I got to go back. But did you feel a sense of comfort back in Minnesota? I did because the hotels are just across the bridge on the Mississippi River from the apartment I had for two years and into COVID too, so I could see the building,

all of the North Loop restaurants and stuff. I went to the same coffee shop. You mentioned that, that I've gone to a lot. There you go, I know, I see that. I got recognized a couple times, but people were like, that I've gone to a lot. There you go. I know. I see that. I got recognized a couple times, but people were like, ah! You played here. Hey, you're back.

And it was weird being on the visitor side a little bit, but not so much because during COVID, for summer camp, they split the pitchers and the hitters up, and the pitchers were over in the visitor clubhouse. Because of course we were! So I was like, this feels, I've been back here. And then for Twins Fest and stuff, that would be like the staging area for all the players club house. Cause of course we were. So I was like, this feels, I've been back here. And then for twins fest and stuff, that would be like the staging area for all the players too.

So I spent a lot of time in there and eating in there. So it wasn't that, that wasn't super weird. It was weird though. When I, when I texted the PR team, I was like, Hey, I'm really excited about this welcome home video you guys made for me. And he's like, oh yeah, we totally got, I'm like, you guys didn't do anything.

And then we got there and they there guys get on it quick and they they did it and it was clearly just whipped up which is so funny I'm like I'm like I'm like I knew you didn't do it but I did want one so I'm like everyone's like who's that guy like it's I'm like hey 11th all time and holds in this team guys did they have some b-roll of you eating sandwiches in the clubhouse and like not even doing stuff on the field just to fill the time? It was like giving up a fly ball to get a save or something.

Like I fucked up so many guys. And then there was, and then the Mizuba's commercial I did for them, which is legendary. I gotta go find it. But then they played that, like it kept popping up like those, all my teammates were like, what the hell's that? I'm like, wow.

And there was some Fortnite dancing in there somewhere. Like, it was, it was, I know the guys who put it together too, so it was all good fun. They're like, did you like it? I'm like, yeah, dude, I loved it, send it to me. Thanks for making it last night, appreciate that. I just love that you shamed them into making you a welcome home video. That is...

They still deny it to this day. Dustin. Dustin Morse. He's like, no, no, no, we thought of him. I'm like, no, you didn't. Dustin is great. I like Dustin. He's a good dude.

He's great, yeah. We're going to go. On our way out the door, a reminder, you can join our Discord with the link in the show description. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. You can find Eno on Blue Sky, enocerastopbeescottatsocial, Trevor is imtrevormay, imddr. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday.